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SHORT STUDIES
ON
GREAT SUBJECTS.
THIRD SERIES.




THE COMPLETE WORKS OF
JAMES     ANTHONY        FROUDE, M.A.
HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
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SHORT


i                   o
STUDIE^,:                    *      at-  ^*W,  Q  A I.' '
-   -  11 ".k   S
1.  ~ I,   - - -


ON


GREAT SUBJECTS.
BY
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, M.A.
LATE FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD.


THIRD SERIES.
NEW YORK:
SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & CO.
1877.




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52 & 54 N. Sixth Street,
PHILADELPHIA.




PREFACE.
MOST of the ESSAYS in this volume have already
appeared in English or American journals.  The
Essay on "Divus Caesar" and the "Leaves from a
South African Journal" are published for the first
time.








CONTENTS.
ANNALS OF AN ENGLISH ABBEY........      1
REVIVAL OF ROMANISM...........          93
SEA  STUDIES.................          147
SOCIETY IN ITALY IN THE LAST DAYS OF THE
ROMAN REPUBLIC............ 185
LUCIAN...................             210
Dvvus CAESAR................           241
ON THE USES OF A LANDED GENTRY......280
PARTY POLITICS...............309
LEAVES FROM A SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL.. 343








ANNALS OF AN ENGLISH ABBEY.
I.
HUMAN HISTORY, say the philosophers, is the evolution
of events which lie already in their causes, as the properties of geometrical figures lie in the scientific definition of
those figures. The qualities which Euclid proves to belong to the circle, exist in the circle eternally. There is
no before and no after, and the sense of sequence is only
in the successive steps by which proposition after proposition is made known to the limited understanding of man.
In like manner the unnumbered multitude of living things,
the animated throng of beings which fill the air, and crowd
the water and the earth, lie potentially in the elemental
germs out of which they seem to be developed; and the
life of the individual man, the long sequel of the acts and
fortunes of his race, and all that he has done and is to do,
till the type is exhausted and gives place to other combinations, is governed by laws as inherent and as necessary
as those through which the mathematician develops his inferences from the equation of an ellipse.
Were the equation of man constructed out of elements
as few and simple, we should know all that has been, and
all that is to be, without moving from our library chairs;
but with the knowledge we should lose the uncertainty
1




2


Annals of an English Abbey.


which gives life its purpose and its interest. The pleasure
of existence depends upon its anxieties, and if we are indeed but the automata spiritualia which Leibnitz defines
us to be, then, of all the gifts which God has bestowed upon
us, the choicest is the trick which He has played upon our
understandings-which makes the certain appear as uncertain, which cheats us with the belief that the future is
in our hands, to mould either for good or ill. Of the dynamic forces of humanity the most powerful is for ever
concealed from us. The acorn has produced the oak, and
the oak the acorn, from the time when oaks first began to
be, and one oak, for practical purposes, is identical with
another. Man produces man; but each individual brings
into the world a character and capabilities differing from
those of his fellows, and incalculable till they have had
room to display themselves. An idea generated in a single
mind penetrates the circle of mankind, and shapes them
afresh after its likeness. We talk of a science of historywe dream that we can trace laws of causation which governed the actions of our fathers, and from which we can
forecast the tendencies of generations to come. The spontaneous force in the soul of a single man of genius will defeat our subtlest calculations:-and of all forecasts of the
future, there is but one on which we can repose with confidence, that nothing is certain but the unforeseen.
So long as the rules of our spiritual navigation were
supposed to be definitely known; so long as conscience was
believed to be the voice of God in us, and there were celestial constellations to which we could appeal to correct its
variations, it mattered little whether we comprehended to
what port we were bound. Our course had been laid down
for us by the Master Navigator of the Universe, and we
could sail on without misgivings over the ocean of untried
possibilities. From a combination of many causes we are




Annals of an English Abbey.


3


passing now into a sea where our charts fail us, and the
stars have ceased to shine.  The tongue of the prudent
speaks stammeringly. The fool clamours that he is as wise
as the sage, and the sage shrinks from saying that it is not
so. Authority is mute. One man, we are told, is as good
as another: each by Divine charter may think as he
pleases, and carve his actions after his own liking. Institutions crumble; creeds resolve themselves into words;
forms of government disintegrate, and there is no longer
any word of command. In place of the pilots who stood
once at the helm, gave their orders and compelled obedience, we have crews now, all equal, who decide by the
majority of votes. We have entered on an age of universal
democracy, political and spiritual, such as the world has
never seen before; and civilised mankind are broken into
two hundred million units, each thinking and doing what
is good in his own eyes.
Experience of the past forbids the belief that anarchy
will continue for ever. Man is a gregarious animal, and, as
the earth fills up, the flocks must be packed more densely.
Fresh combinations are inevitable-and combinations cohere only when formed on definite principles to which individual inclinations must bend.  Strong minds have a
natural tendency to direct weak minds. Majorities vote
wrongly. The wrong course runs the ship upon the rocks;
and the fool, when his folly issues in practical disaster, understands in some degree that he is a fool. The universal
sand-heap will and must once more organize itself; though
in what shape politically, or round what kind of spiritual
conviction, it were waste of labour to conjecture. Meanwhile
the results of life as they appear in advanced countries like
England and America were never less interesting. Each
Englishman, each American, left to his own guidance and
compelled by the restlessness of his nature to aspire to some



4


Annals of an English Abbey.


thing, turns to the one direction plainly open to him, and
sets himself with might and main to make money. Money
is power; money commands a certain kind of enjoyment;
the excessive want of it is palpable disenjoyment. We desire to succeed; to make ourselves considerable among our
fellows; and money is the best standard of measurement
readily appreciable. But when we have got it we are still
unsatisfied. The pleasures which money will buy are soon
exhausted. The chief delight has been in the getting; the
thing got becomes a weariness: and we must either throw
our inclinations into chains and determine to desire nothing
but what the dollar will purchase for us, or else to escape
vacuity we fling ourselves into dilettante sciences, study the
anatomy of shells and beetles, or find a spurious interest in
the fictitious world of novel-writers, which reality denies us
in our own.
On these terms the better sort of men and women find
existence grow tedious. So long as they are obliged to
work they are in contact with facts, and retain their moral
health. When money is provided in sufficient quantities,
and work has become unnecessary, they cast about for occupation. The new order of things has none to give them
of a noble kind, and in despair they fling themselves into
the past. They see in the old world what the modern world
fails to provide. The Catholic Church, which their fathers
broke with, tells them that the disease from which they suffer is the natural fruit of apostasy. The Catholic Church
alone can fill the void in their hearts. The noble employment for which they pine the Church holds out with everopen hands-employment in which the companies of the
saints earned the aureoles around their brows-and many
and many a high-souled man and woman among us is taking
the Church at its word, and trying the experiment. The
Reformers led them out into the wilderness, but in that wil



Annals of an English Abbey.


5


derness was no Sinai with the revelation of a new lawonly a sandy desert strewed with nuggets of gold. There
was no Jordan, with a promised land beyond it-only a
deluging mirage with gold-dust for water.
Thus, among other strange phenomena of this waning
century, we see once more rising among us, as if by enchantment, the religious orders of the Middle Ages; Benedictines, Carmelites, Dominicans: houses of monks and nuns,
to which American and English ladies and gentlemen are
once more gathering as of old, flying no longer from a world
of violence or profligacy, but from a world of emptiness
and spiritual death.
In Spain and Italy, where the continuity of Catholicism
has been unbroken, and the conventual life has been too
long familiar to seek to disguise its true features, it is regarded with the same hatred with which it was abhorred
by our fathers; it denotes nothing but sensuality, ignorance
and sin. The Italian Government is rooting out the whole
system as ruthlessly as Henry VIII. Royalists and Republicans may make their alternate revolutions in the
Spanish peninsula; the provinces submit indifferently,
knowing that to them it matters little whether they be
ruled by king or president; but suggest a restoration of the
cowled fraternities, and the paving-stones of Valladolid and
Burgos would rise up in mutiny. In England, where the
past is obscured by sentimental passion; in America, where
there is no past, or where the lessons of the old world are
supposed to have no application; in France, where the entire nation is swimming in a sea of anarchy, and the vessel
of the State is shattered and the drowning wretches cling
to each floating plank which the waves drift within their
reach, conventual institutions are springing up as mushrooms after an autumn rain. As mushrooms is it to be?
growing as fast, and as soon to perish? i Or are we really




6


Annals of an English Abbey.


witnessing the revival of an order of things which, after a
violent overthrow, is recommencing a second period of enduring energy and power?
Time will answer. It depends on whether the Catholic
form of Christianity can recover its hold on the convictions
of educated men. Meanwhile it will not be uninteresting
to look particularly at the history of one of these foundations as it actually existed in ancient England. As in science, if we would know the nature of any animal or plant,
we can learn much, if not the whole, of its character from
a single specimen, so the career of a distinguished abbey,
from its beginning to its end, can hardly fail to resemble
what other abbeys are likely to be, if we are again to have
them among us. Planted in the same soil of human life,
surrounded by the same temptations, and nourished by the
same influences, the idea will naturally develop in the same
direction.
The old English records, in the course of publication
under the Master of the Rolls, provide an exceptional opportunity for a study of this kind; and without further
preface I shall introduce the reader to the Abbey of St.
Albans, in Hertfordshire, the wealthiest and most brilliant
of all the religious houses of Great Britain, the annals of
which have been lately edited by the accomplished and
learned Mr. Riley.'
The surviving ruins cbnvey a more imposing sense of the
ancient magnificence than Melrose, or Fountains, or Glastonbury. The moral ruin which preceded the suppression
-not magnificent, but shameful and ignominious-has the
1 [1. Gesta Abbatum monasterii Sancti Albani. A. Thomd Walsingham compilata, regnante Ricardo Secundo.
2. Johannis Amundesham Annales mon. S. Albani.
3. Registrum Abbatice Johannis Whethampsted. Edited by Henry
Thomas Riley, Barrister-at-Law.]




Annals of an English Abbey.


7


advantage of being attested to us by evidence to which the
most passionate admirer of the ages of faith can make no
exception. But to this we shall be more properly led by
pursuing the course of the story.
The town of St. Albans, famous in English history for
two battles fought there in the Wars of the Roses, stands
on the great North Road, twenty miles from London, on
the site of the Roman Verulam. The aboriginal British
village was a military post in the time of the Emperor
Nero.   Destroyed by Boadicea, the works were reconstructed when Britain was finally subdued, and Verulam
grew into a municipal town of wealth and consequence.
The preachers of Christianity followed in the track of the
legions; and in the Hertfordshire colony was shed the blood
of the first English martyr to the new faith. Albanus, a
citizen of Verulam, was called under the Dioclesian persecution to give account for his apostasy from the religion
of the masters of the world, and, preferring Christ to the
emperor, was sent to join his Lord by the sword of the executioner. Legend embellished the death-scene with miracles which it is needless to repeat. The general fact that
a person bearing the name Albanus was killed at this spot
because he was a Christian may be accepted as true. When
the persecution ceased the martyrdom was commemorated
by an inscription on the wall of the town. A church was
built on the site where the blood had fallen. It acquired
a special sanctity, and during the Pelagian controversy
was the scene of a provincial council. St. German of Auxerre, the champion of orthodoxy against Pelagius, preached
and paid his orisons at St. Alban's tomb.
A more dangerous enemy than a theorist on the freedom
of the will appeared upon the scene immediately after;
Britain was overwhelmed by a flood of Saxon heathens;
Roman civilisation disappeared in smoke and ruins; and




8


Annals of an English Abbey.


of Verulam and all that it contained, there was nothing
left by the middle of the sixth century but a green rounded
hill, sloping up from the little river Ver, where sheep
browsed on the undulating ridges which clothed and concealed the wreck of street and market-place. There, for
generation after generation, lay unthought of and undisturbed the bones of England's Protomartyr. The fame of
his suffering was revived when Augustine brought back
Christianity. But Alban himself still slept in his unknown grave, and three hundred and fifty years of rain
and sunshine, and gathering mould and springing herbage,
had effaced the last traces of his traditional resting-place.
Somewhere under those turf-mounds he was still lying.
Piety forbade the belief that remains so precious could
have perished like common bones. But there was no divining-rod to detect the buried treasure. Only God could
reveal where it was deposited; and devout souls could but
wait and pray that in time the mystery might be made
known.
Miracle like that which restored the cross on which the
Saviour had suffered to the adoration of the Christian
world, discovered in the fulness of time the relics of His
servant.
In the year 758, Mercia, the central kingdom of the
Saxon Heptarchy, was shaken by civil disorder. Ethelbald, the king, was killed. Beornred, who snatched at the
throne, was defeated and had to fly for his life. The
Thanes, unanimi consensu, elected as their sovereign a
youth named Offa, brave in battle and noble in blood, for
he was seventeenth in descent from Odin himself. The
seven kingdoms were already tending to become one. Offa
was no sooner in the saddle than he began to extend his
borders at the expense of his neighbours, fell into correspondence with Charlemagne-aspired, perhaps, to imitate




Annals of an English Abbey.


9


Charlemagne on a smaller scale, and become monarch of
a united England. Aiming especially at securing a seaboard, he coveted the Eastern counties, and he proposed a
match for one of his daughters with Ethelbert of East
Anglia. The proposition was well entertained, and Ethelbert paid a visit to the Mercian court to make acquaintance with his bride. The mind of Offa was set rather on
the territories than the person of his intended son-in-law.
His own queen was ambitious like Lady Macbeth for her
husband's greatness, and as little scrupulous to the means
that she used. She suggested that Ethelbert was in his
power, and that there was a shorter road than marriage
towards the annexation of the coveted province. Offa, a
professing Christian, started in horror at the hint of murder. Ethelbert, nevertheless, having entered Offa's castle,
never left it alive. Feasted in splendour, and placed to
rest in a gorgeous bed hung with gold and purple, he was
let down through a trap-door and smothered below with
pillows. Offa seized East Anglia and obtained his desires;
but the ghost of the murdered Ethelbert haunted his
slumbers and made night hideous to him. He shut himself up in his chamber. He refused to touch food. Awake
he was haunted by his crime-when exhaustion brought
sleep, it was to exchange the pain of remorse for the more
fearful anguish of imagination. At length in a dream, or
from the suggestions of his confessor, he learnt the condition on which he might be pardoned. He must discover
the bones of St. Alban, and raise an abbey in his honour.
The sceptical reader will have his private thoughts on
the mode in which the adventure was achieved. In the
legend which passes as history, King Offa sent to the
Bishop (or Archbishop as he was then called) of Lichfield
to meet him with his brother prelates on the site of Verulam. It was a summer day, August 1, 793, a year after




10


Annals of an English Abbey.


the murder. Offa, then a grey-haired man of sixty or
thereabouts, appeared on horseback attended by his son
and his thanes. The prelates marched in procession with
banners and crosiers, and long files of priests and monks
chanting their Litanies. Lightning flashed suddenly out
of the sky and struck the ground before their feet with
blinding splendour. The bishops threw themselves on
their knees and prayed. The king and his lords prayed.
The spectators who had gathered in a crowd joined in expectant adoration. At length, trembling with excitement,
terram percutiunt, " they strike the earth."  " There was no
need of long search when Heaven had pointed to the spot."
St. Alban's skeleton, or the bones composing it, was found
entire. Evidence of an earthly kind to identify them as
really those of Alban there was none-but none was
needed. The celestial indication was itself proof conclusive. Weak believers, if any such were present, had their
doubts dispelled by the powers which the sacred things at
once displayed. Lame men leapt upon their feet, deaf
ears heard, and blind eyes were opened. A band of gold
was fastened about the skull with Alban's name inscribed
upon it. The relics were deposited tenderly in a loculus or
box inlaid with gold and set with sapphires, and Offa set
out instantly for Rome to impart his discovery to Pope
Adrian the First. He confessed his guilt for the murder
of Ethelbert. He related his dream and the result of it.
Adrian admitted the Protomartyr at once on the roll of the
Saints, gave Offa power to found his monastery in tuorum
peccatorum remissionem, and promised that it should be
the peculiar charge of himself and his successors. No
bishop, archbishop, or even legate should have authority
to meddle with it.
On the king's return to England a great council of
thanes and bishops was held at Verulam, for the ceremony




Annals of an English Abbey.


11


of laying the first stone; a number of monks were collected
from the best ordered existing houses; and endowed with
broad lands, fenced around with privileges and liberties,
and exempt from fees and taxes to king or pontiff, St. Alban's Abbey began to be a fact.
Of Willegod, the first Abbot, little survives but the
name. This much only is distinctly visible, that about
the year 793 there was established here, as in so many
other places, a community of persons who had bound themselves by the usual vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience,
men and women (for a separate convent of sisters formed
part of the foundation) who had forsworn all earthly ties,
all earthly interests and ambitions, and had determined to
spend their lives in devotional exercises, in attending the
poor and sick, in meditation and intercessory prayer. In
this conception, the monasteries were to be ever-burning
lamps, from which Divine grace should perennially radiate.
Reality, in this world of ours, falls generally too short
of theory. The shortcomings at St. Alban's became visible
scandalously soon. The first care of the monks should
have been for their founder. Offa died soon after the
abbey was set going. The ungrateful Willegod allowed
the king's body to be consigned by unknown hands to an
unknown grave. It was uncertain whether the burial was
so much as Christian. Willegod was punished for his
negligence by an illness of which he died. The brethren
could but hope that Offa's soul might not be suffering for
it in purgatory.
The sapling, planted, as it was, full grown, was slow in
taking root. Eadric, the second abbot, a relation of Offa's,
showed the same carelessness, and ended soon also an
equally undistinguished rule. Wulsig, the next, was actively objectionable. He was of the blood royal, and,




12


Annals of an English Abbey.


erectus est in superbiam, was lifted up with pride. Thinking
more of his descent from Odin than of his bondage to
Christ, Wulsig dressed in silks, spent his time in huntingfield and banquet,-was a politician and a courtier. With
these expensive tastes he was accused of wasting the
Church's treasures, and, worst crime of all, he invited ladies to dine with him in the abbot's parlour, and lodged
the nuns too near his private chamber. Was it for this
that lightning had come from heaven to discover the relics
of the Protomartyr? The scandalised lbrethren rose in
mutiny against their Carnalis Abbas. Wulsig, too, closed
his career prematurely. He died, as was said, by poison,
-ut dicitur potionatus,-and was followed to his grave by
the curses of the community.
Slightly, very slightly, matters now mended. Abbot
Wulnoth, who succeeded, shifted away the nuns, established
discipline, and recovered lands which Wulsig had alienated. But Wulnoth too was far from a saint. Too often
he was to be met afield in buffjerkin, with horn and hunting-knife, when he ought to have been at chapel. He
preferred hawk and hound to mass-book and breviary. St.
Alban's Abbey seemed likely to be a failure after all. Eadfrith, fifth abbot, was no better. Eadfrith was nobly born,
but filius hujus sceculi, a child of this world, who set a pernicious example to the weaker brethren. Clearly enough,
the tree which Offa had planted so carefully needed to be
watered afresh or it would wither away.
Help came when it was least looked for. Uneasy times
had dawned for Saxon England. Each summer brought
fleets into the Channel of plundering Danes. They landed
in force. Half the country was overrun and wasted by
them. Their chiefs were heathens, who spared neither
shrine nor altar, monk nor nun. St. Alban's, far inland
as it was, had not escaped a visit from them, and half the




Annals of an English Abbey.


13!treasures of the Church had been carried off. From these
istones was raised up a saviour. Wulfa, a Danish rover,
whose heart was penetrated, became, on one of these marauding visits, converted to Christianity. He carried his
fervid spirit into his faith, turned hermit, settled himself
down in St. Alban's woods to crusts and watercresses; and
so famed among the degenerate Saxons became the pirate
recluse, that high prelates went to him to confess their sins
and be absolved; while Abbot Eadfrith, shamed by such
an example at his door, laid down his crosier, took to the
woods at Wulfa's side, and the community, inspired with
fresh enthusiasm, mended their ways.
A series of abbots followed who brought St. Alban's
into the average condition of Saxon monasteries. They
were neither devout especially nor especially undevout.
They were wholesome churchmen, of solid, substantial type,
who carried on their business with propriety and decency.
As the country became more settled, a town sprang up under the abbey's shadow, with a market and a parish church.
Marshes were drained, woods were cleared. The abbey
itself was enlarged. In laying the foundations for the new
buildings the ruins were exposed of the ancient Roman
city: walls and pavements, cellars and vaults, and arched
passages which became the dens of thieves and highwaymen. The bricks were used again for modern houses. The
vaults and caves were filled in and levelled. Inside the
abbey and outside chaos was reduced to order, and life became rational and human. As at present, in the disinterment of the Assyrian and Babylonian monuments there is
an eagerness to discover connecting links with the sacred
Hebrew history, so at St. Alban's pious eyes were on the
watch for traces of the martyred saint. Imagination, and
possibly invention, came to the assistance of fact. In the
debris of a Roman house were found urns of pottery and




14


Annals of an English Abbey.


glass, containing, as was assumed, ashes of men and women. Both urns and ashes, as belonging to unbaptized
heathen, were carefully destroyed. Old scrolls and books
were said to have been discovered also, which the learned
declared to be books of religion, or rituals of devils, and
which, therefore, were consigned to the fire. A crumbling
box, however, was turned up, with a parchment in it in
ancient British, and this on examination proved to be a
life of St. Albanus himself, agreeing in all particulars with
the account given of him by Bede. It was part of the
duty of monks to learn by heart the biographies of their
patron saints. The minuteness of agreement, therefore,
throws suspicion on the independence of the testimony. The
British version was, nevertheless, at once translated into
Latin, and appointed to be read in the church, and further
curious inquiry was cut short by miracle. The translation
was no sooner complete than the parchment crumbled to
dust.
Monkish fraud! the modern reader exclaims impatiently. Rather, perhaps, without more fraud or thought of
fraud than has been displayed by some enthusiastic decipherers of the arrow-head inscriptions. A veritable record
of some kind or other, in a half-known language, may easily
have been construed into a preconceived meaning by an
over-credulous imagination, without any dishonesty at all.
When the balance is eventually struck between the opposing tendencies which evolve between them the spiritual
history of mankind, an over-readiness to believe in a cause
generally honourable will be found to have been less mischievous than the scepticism which creates nothing, and is
content to sneer and to destroy.
So long as the Saxon monastery continued, the prelacy
of the abbey continued to run in the great Saxon families.
Two nobly-born brethren, Leofric, and Alfric who was af



Annals of an English Abbey.


15


terwards Primate, ruled successively at St. Alban's,-both
men of distinguished piety, both of them a perplexity to
the monastic community, which knew not whether most
to praise or blame their administration. Those abbots
found most favour with the brethren who most enriched
the corporation. Large land grants fell in under Leofric
and Alfric, and therefore they were admired and honoured;
but the monks considered that they were themselves the
first object of Christ's care, and that the increased wealth
should show itself in increase of comfort. The two brothers regarded the poor and miserable as having a superior
claim, and lavished Christ's patrimony in relieving the necessities of the neighbourhood. Even the jewels intended
for St. Alban's shrine were sacrificed in a severe famineAbbot Leofric daring to say that the true temples of Christ
were the bodies of his suffering members.
Whether the abbot did well or ill in this judgment of
his, snuffled a discontented brother, Noverit ille qui nihil
ignorat-"Let Him determine who knoweth all things."
The apostle who thought most about the poor was the traitor Judas. The poor we had always with us, and pious
monks of St. Alban's were not to be met with every day.
There was open mutiny at last, and the secular arm had
to be called in. Leofric, excellent as he was, proved rebellibus austerus-a severe master to rebellious servants.
Rough policemen came down from London and chained up
the most refractory in their cells. The rest were left to
grumble in private over their shortened rations.
Under Abbot Alfric the monotony of ordinary life was
broken by a curious episode. The special distinction of
the abbey was the possession of the genuine relics of the
great Protomartyr. No one questioned that they had been
really discovered by Offa. A doubt was raised, however,
and it will be seen with reason, whether the shrine at St.




16


Annals of an English Abbey.


Alban's continued to hold them. The abbey had been
plundered by the Danes. The Danes, it was asserted,
were not likely to have left behind the greatest treasure
that it possessed; and tradition so far admitted the argument that in the current story the relics were said to have
been actually carried away to Denmark, and to have been
recovered by the adventurous ingenuity of a member of
the convent. That a band of pagan warriors should have
burdened themselves with a box of bones is not very probable. It is likely enough that they stripped the gold from
the shrine., It is just possible that, seeing the extraordinary
importance attached to such things by the monks, they
might have taken them away intending to ransom them.
The Danish business, at any rate, whether real or imaginary,
is a necessary feature of the story which is now to be told,
and a better illustration could not be found of the respect
with which the remains of saints were regarded. They
were more precious and more coveted than any other form
of property, yet the ordinary rules of property did not apply to what it was held permissible and even commendable to steal.
A pretension was suddenly set up by the monks of Ely
that they and only they possessed the genuine skeleton of
the martyr of Verulam, and they had come by it in the
following manner: In Abbot Alfric's time half England
had become Danish, and other fleets of Danes were going
and coming. The abbot had reason to expect that a troop
of them were about to visit St. Alban's, and, in resentment
at the trick which had been played upon their countrymen, might take away the relics once more. The Ely
monastery lay among swamps and morasses not easily
penetrable. Abbot Alfric therefore wrote to his friends
there asking them to take charge of St. Alban's loculus
till the danger should be over. The monks of Ely pro



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17


fessed themselves highly honoured by so precious a charge.
According to their account the box was sent, and the box
was afterwards restored, but it had been restored rifled,
with a skill of which they were not ashamed to boast, of
its sacred contents. They had consigned the bones of the
real Alban to their own treasure house. They sent back
to Htertfordshire the bones of a sham Alban who had been
one of their own abbots. So Ely insisted, and so the
wor d believed, and forgave the fraud in consideration of
the temptation.
Abbot Alfric however was equal to the occasion. He
too, i Isisted that he had played a trick, and a trick still
riiol, notable. His object had been to throw the Danes
i' t he scent, but he declared that he had never seriously
tl llitrht of parting with his choicest jewel. He knew the,,sons with whom he was dealing and had been beforehand with them. The real Alban had lain buried all
along in a secret place in his own chapel. The loculus had
carried to Ely the relics of a commonplace respectable
brother, accompanied, to prevent suspicion, with jewels
which were genuine. The monks of Ely might have made
the change which they pretended, but they had gained
nothing h)v it, and were themselves the parties deceived.
Sic dolori atuo dolo pio decepti sunt Elyenses; so, to their
sorrow, by a pious fraud the monks of Ely were taken in.
Thus encountered, the world who required St. Alban's
help knew not to which shrine they should pay their
adorations. Edward the Confessor was called in, and
gave judgment for St. Alban's; but who was Edward, and
what could Edward know of such a matter more than
another man? The Pope was appealed to. The Pope decided for the Hertfordshire abbey also; but even the Pope
was not yet infallible. Heaven itself gave an uncertain
answer. The St. Alban's relics worked miracles. The
2




CI


18         Annals of an English Abbey.
Ely relics replied with other miracles. The power of selfmultiplication, attributed by modern Catholics to the wood
of the true cross, would have explained the difficulty; br.t
no one thought of this hypothesis, and the controversy
raged on for two centuries. In the hope of making an end
there was at length a formal examination of the relics
themselves. The Bishop of Lincoln and a commissioner
from Ely came to St. Alban's. The shrine was solemnly
opened and the bones were lifted out. King Offa had
fastened a band of gold about the skull. To the consternation of the men of Hertfordshire the band was gone, and
in the place of it a strip of parchment, attached by a silk
thread, on which, however, was emblazoned in golden
characters of great antiquity: Hic est Sanctus Albanu&.
Ely claimed the victory. What now could St. Alban's
say? But St. Alban's was not yet at its last resource.
An account was produced that an artist, employed many
generations before in decorating the shrine, had taken the
gold and used it. The abbot of the time discovered what
had been done too late to recover the band, and had attached the scroll as a substitute.
All parties were thus again at sea. The knot was too
intricate for human hands to untie. Doubts had spread.
The townspeople, and even the monks of the house themselves, were beginning to waver, and the blessed Alban
himself found it necessary to interfere. A person of the
neighbourhood, one Herbert Duckit, declared that one day
when praying at the shrine he felt an emotion of incredulity. He found himself suddenly shrivelled to the dimensions of an ape, and returned to his natural size only when
he renewed his convictions. This ought to have been
sufficient: but assurance was made doubly sure. A sceptical brother of the house was alone praying at night in
the church. The shrine burst open; an awful form strode




Annals of an English Abbey.


19


out of the obscurity, and stood in front of the prostrate
unbeliever.
"Ecce ego Albanus," the figure said. "Hic quiesco.
Nonne me vidisti de meo feretro exire  Behold me. I am
Albanus. Here I rest. Didst thou not see me issue from
my tomb?"
"Yea, Lord and Martyr, I did see thee," the monk
answered.
" Hoc de ccetero penitus palam testificare," said the saint.
"Bear me witness then, for the future, in the face of all
men."
With these words, Beatus Albanus rediit in loculum
suum, the blessed Alban returned into his box.
Thus satisfactorily the uncertainty was well ended; for,
as the chronicler naively observes, "doubts of this kind
were working mischief." Questions had been raised of the
genuineness of the relics of many other distinguished saints,
-and fewer miracles had been worked in consequence
[unde minus solito in eorum ecclesiis miracula corusc4runt.]
On the Norman Conquest St. Alban's narrowly escaped
shipwreck. Connected as it had been with the native
princes, it was a stronghold of Saxon sentiment. At a
convention which met at Westminster, soon after the battle of Hastings, the king let fall an expression of contemptuous surprise at the ease with which the Saxons had allowed
themselves to be overcome. The Abbot of St. Alban's,
Abbot Frederic, himself a passionate nationalist, had been
exasperated perhaps at the submissiveness with which the
Saxon priesthood had sacrificed their patriotism to the
Pope's dictation.
"Most illustrious prince," the abbot said, "you owe
your triumphs to the clergy of this realm. Our late
sovereigns have been so heavenly-minded, that they have
bestowed a large part of English soil on the houses of




20


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religion. Had temporal lords held it, they would have
made a stouter fight. The clergy could not and would not."
"Ha!" answered William, "is that the secret of it? because the lands were taken from knights and gentlemen
and given to you? Then the same thing may happen to
me. The Danes may come again, and there will be no
one to fight with them. Out of your own mouth I judge
you. I will have your St. Alban's lands again, and settle
men on them that I can depend upon."
The domains of St. Alban's extended at this time from
their own gates to London Stone, and the forest, with
which the intervening country was covered, was the hiding-place of Saxon outlaws. Half was at once resumed
by the Crown. The woods were cleared, roads were opened
through them and patrolled. Abbot Frederic, taking to
treason, was hunted off into the Ely marshes, where he
died. The abbey itself was saved by the intercession of
Lanfranc; and, shorn of its splendour, it was placed under
the rule of the Norman Paul, who was Lanfranc's near
kinsman.
The change was in all ways beneficent. The days of
ease and idleness were over. In Church and State the
Norman Conquest meant the end of anarchy-called in
modern language "liberty,"-and the inauguration of order and discipline. We travel rapidly in these historical
sketches. The reader flies in his express train in a few
minutes through a couple of centuries.  The centuries
pass more slowly to those to whom the years are doled
out day and day. Institutions grow and beneficently develop themselves, making their way into the hearts of
generations which are shorter-lived than they, attracting
love and respect, and winning loyal obedience; and then
as gradually forfeiting by their shortcomings the allegiance
which had been honourably gained in worthier periods.




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21


We see wealth and greatness; we see corruption and vice;
and one seems to follow so close upon the other, that we
fancy they must have always co-existed. We look more
steadily, and we perceive long periods of time, in which
there is first a growth and then a decay, like what we
perceive in a tree of the forest.
The thing which has taken root and become strong has
thriven only because it had life in it-and the question
which we ought to ask of any organised system, political
or spiritual, is not whether it is good or evil, but whether
it is alive or dead. If it is alive, we may take the rest for
granted. Age follows age, families remain from father to
son on the same spot and subjected to the same conditions. Where the conditions work to create happiness,
favourable impressions are formed and are handed on, and
deepen with the progress of the years. Where they work
ill, displeasure, at first imperceptible, changes to anger
and then to impatience, and then to scorn, and rage,
and active enmity. The spectator, looking back from a
distant period, sees a worthless government tyrannising
for generations, or sees an exploded creed continuing to
mislead the world after every active mind has divined its
falsehood. He is impatient for the catastrophe. He wonders how men of sense could bear so long with the intolerable. He thanks God with snug self-satisfaction that he
is not such a fool as his ancestors. Nature happily is more
enduring than we are; or rather we, wise as we think ourselves, are in turn bearing unconsciously with theories and
systems which philosophers will equally see to have been
at this moment dying or dead, and they will meditate on
our patience with equal perplexity or with equal self-complacence.
In the two centuries which followed the Conquest, the
monastic orders in England were in the maturity of vigour




22


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and worth. The Normans, while they retained their individuality, were among the noblest races which the earth
has possessed. They were no blameless saints who picked
their way through life in dread of spots upon their garments.
They were Nature's policemen, whose mission was to substitute law and order for self-will and self-indulgence. They
were rough-handed, but not rougher than occasion required,
and they possessed the restrained moderation which is characteristic of real strength.
Paul, the first Norman abbot, was appointed to St. Alban's eleven years after the Conquest, in the year 1077.
The historian Walsingham, the collector of the annals, and
himself a monk of the abbey, thus speaks of him:
"This Paul was a man of piety and culture. The monastic discipline, which had been forgotten both by rulers
and ruled in the seductions of pleasure, he determinately
and yet prudently restored. He was content to work by
degrees, lest too sudden changes should lead to mutiny;
but so well he succeeded, that under him St. Alban's Abbey
became a school of religious observance for all England."
King William, seeing the abbey rescued from Saxon license, restored part of the lands. Money was found with
Lanfranc's help, and the abbey church, which had been allowed to fall to ruins, was simply and solidly rebuilt. The
splendour so much admired in these later days was still
absent. Monasticism did not begin to care about adorning
its shell till the soul of it had begun to sicken. The Normans were content with sound and strong buildings which
would last, if necessary, till Domesday. Abbot Paul collected books, and set his monks to read them. The easy
life which had become a second nature was at an end. No
pleasant lying in bed was allowed any longer in the mornings; no meat dinners upon fasting days; no retirement
under pretence of sickness to the indulgence of the infir



Annals of an English Abbey.


23


mary; no agreeable running in and out was permitted any
longer with the sisterhoods.'
The rule of the order was set up in its rigidity, as a law
to be obeyed; and as a mark of disapproval of the loose
ways which had been so long tolerated, the austere Norman destroyed the monuments of his predecessors on the
floor of the chancel, and "spoke of them as idiots and
blockheads."
Offa had obtained from Rome, as a special favour, the
exemption of the abbey from episcopal visitation. The
abbots had gone their own way in consequence, and the
absence of supervision had been the cause of degeneracy.
Abbot Paul's successor, Richard, ut monachos suos rigidius
gubernaret, that he might keep his monks in still tighter
order, surrendered the so much cherished independence to
the see of Lincoln; and thus by these two rulers St. Alban's
was made fof the first time to assume an aspect of genuine
saintliness. The work which it was intended to do was
actually done. In the person of the abbots were combined
the functions of earthly magistrate and spiritual father;
and for two centuries the monastery was at once an example of saintly life, and a living centre of authority where
severity was tempered by affection. " Happy," says the proverb, "is the country whose annals are a blank." Happy
the institution which works silently. Written history is a
record of crimes and errors and their consequences. When
there is nothing to relate, day follows upon day, and year
1 At the best of times the morals of the Saxon monasteries seem
to have been indifferent. In the Penitentials of Bede and Egbert,
monks and nuns appear in as vicious colours as the most uncharitable Protestant has represented them. The details cannot be quoted,
even in Latin. The curious may satisfy themselves by referring to
the third volume of Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to
Great Britain and Ireland, pp. 327-8-9, and see pp. 417-428.




24


Annals of an English Abbey.


upon year; and each has brought its allotted duties, and
those duties have been fulfilled. In one direction only
were symptoms visible of growing disorder at St. Alban's.
Settled government and increasing fervor of piety brought
with them a taste for the decoration of the shrine. Each
abbot sought to add something to the magnificent receptacle in which the martyrs reposed. The appetite for splendour extended to the church, and as the treasury failed to
meet the demands upon it, money was borrowed from the
Jews, who alone had money to lend. The usurer's trade
was held dishonourable, yet those who condescended to
borrow had to stoop to the endurance of insult from the
ministers of their necessities. In the twelfth century Aaron
of Winchester, a noted money lender of the day, presumed
to present himself at the sacred gate of the abbey. Of
course the porter spurned at him. As he turned away he
flung an invective behind him, which stung by its truth.
Proud as the martyr's shrine might seem, it was he-he,
the despised Jew-who had found the gold with which it
was inlaid. To him the monks owed the very roof over
their heads, yet he was unworthy to set foot within their
walls.
Slowly, too, very slowly, the severity of the rule was relaxed, as enthusiasm cooled into habit. Twice a year, to
keep down unruly inclinations, the monks were bled. Under Abbot Paul and his successors the bleeding was in the
afternoon. It was treated as a matter of course, and those
who had undergone the operation went about their business
afterwards as if nothing had happened. In process of time
they complained that the bleeding exhausted them. They
were placed on the sick list, and they were bled in the
mornings that they might have their dinners afterwards to
comfort them. They were excused matins that they might
lie in bed and recover strength. They were allowed a




Annals of an English Abbey.


25


siesta after refection, or were sent into the country for
change of air.  The convent, as an act of general relief,
were permitted to lay aside their heavy cloaks at shavingtime-an indulgence which, as the shaving house was the
scene of gossip and pleasant talk, was received with extraordin4ry gratitude.
Traces again began to be visible of quarrels with the
neighbouring gentry about the boundaries of property. The
monks in their spiritual aspect might still be objects of awe
and veneration. As land-owners they descended to the level of the laity, and received layman's usage.  Parties
formed even in the abbey itself. Profligate brothers took
the side of the children of this world for private objects of
their own.  Sir Robert Fitzwilliam laid claim to a wood
on the church estate. Brother William Pygon, who had
a grudge against the abbot, forged a deed in Fitzwilliam's
favour, stole the abbot's signet and sealed it. The fraud
was discovered, and the wood was rescued, but the scandal
had been terrible. The convent knew not how to proceed
for fear of exposing their shame. Providence ultimately
took the matter into its own hands. Deorum injurice diis
curce. Brother Pygon had been sent to expiate his sins by
penance in a dependent priory. His allotted diet was meagre. One night, to console himself, he secreted a pasty and
a flagon of wine, and not daring to enjoy himself where he
would be seen, he carried his spoils to the cloaca. There
seated, he got drunk and fell asleep, and the night being
cold, he was frozen to death. In his joviality he had trolled
catches which the frightened brothers conceived afterwards
to have come from a chorus of devils; voices had been
even overheard shrieking, "Catch him, Satan! Catch him,
Satan!"
Of the Norman abbots, the most interesting after Abbot
Paul was John of the Cell, elected in 1195, who had been




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a student in the University of Paris. The heads of the
religious houses, having extensive property to administer,
were usually men of business. Abbot John, however, the
chronicler observes, had more of Mary than of Martha in
him, and contributed, in the brethren's opinion, less than
he ought to have done to the outward greatness of his
charge. Nor was he otherwise as considerate of them as
a good abbot ought to have been. He rebuilt the refectory and the dormitory. He employed two of the monks,
who were artists, to execute some of those exquisite carvings and paintings in the chapel which are the despair of
modern architects; but to pay for these things he stopped
the wine allowance for fifteen years, and kept the house
upon beer and water.
On idleness, too, the secret poison of monasticism, Abbot
John made constant war. When monasteries were first
instituted, the monks were made to work upon the farms.
As they grew in wealth and importance, outdoor labour
was passed over to the serfs. For healthy industry a substitute was found in blood-letting; and the duties became
exclusively "religious."  The business of a monk was to
pray and meditate. Prayer and meditation converted
themselves inevitably into the mechanical repetition of
devotional forms, and the victims of an unnatural system
were driven as a relief for their weariness to amusements
or to vice out of doors. Abbot John took the rule as he
found it. He could not return to the practice of earlier
times. He could not force the community to experience
in themselves a revival of spiritual emotion, of which
enthusiasm alone makes ordinary temperaments capable;
but he could, at least in his own person, set an example
which might rouse them to imitation. None were stricter
than he in vigils and fasts. He committed the Psalter to
memory and repeated it through without book or note.




Annals of an English Abbey.


27


When the convent was sleeping the abbot was on his
knees in the oratory, and the drowsy monks dreamt they
heard celestial music, as if companies of angels had descended to sing nocturns with him. He lived to be a very
old man, and when he came to die at last the singular
beauty of his end became part of the traditions of the
abbey.
He had studied medicine at Paris, and while in health
had watched by many a sick-bed. Knowing by his symptoms that his end was approaching, he called the monks
together, crawled into the chapter house, and took his
usual seat.
"My dear brethren," he said, with a faint playfulness,
"Prcefui et minus quam decuit profuii. I have been your
prsefect, but less your profit than I ought to have been.
My time is now come. There is not one of us who does
not sin and offend in many things. If I have injured
any one among you here, on my knees I beg your forgiveness, and as far as lies in you I desire you to absolve
me."  Fiat ut petistis, " Be it as you demand," they all
answered. The abbot then sent for a stool which was
called Judicium, Anglice the "flogging-block." He threw
off his gown, leant over it, and bade the brethren each
strike him on his bare back. His frame was shrunk-the
bones stood out from the shrivelled skin.. The monks
burst into tears, but each approached and did what he
desired. They struck lightly-how could they do otherwise? He reproached them for their weakness, crying at
every blow, Confiteor. 3lisereatur Deus!
The sad ceremony over, an attendant covered his wounded body. He then bade them all farewell, and was assisted back to the infirmary, where, on the hard stones,
after receiving the viaticum and extreme unction, migravit
ad Dominum, he departed to the Lord. [July 17, 1214.]




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Beautiful! even if it was an illusion.
Man, it is said, walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain. We know not what we are or
what we shall be. Feeling only that all is not as it
seems, that within this animal frame there is a something
which links us inexplicably to the mystery of spiritual
existence, some few here and there, like Abbot John, have
flown to strange remedies to appease the longing of their
souls. The enlightened modern smiles with a scorn which
he scarce cares to conceal. Yet Abbot John may after
all have been nearer the truth than his complacent critic
who, in his arm-chair, is satisfied to believe that he is but
animated dust, returning, when the pulse ceases to beat,
into the clay of which he is composed, and holding it
therefore his best wisdom to enjoy such pleasure as he can
snatch so long as the life is in him.
II.
ABBOT JOHN was almost the last of the genuine monks.
His death created a passing emotion-but the age of
progress had set in, and reform and new ideas. Very
curious is the picture of the convent when Abbot John left
it. There was brother John the Proud; brother Almeric
the wit; Alexander the orator; Walter de Standen the
bullying demagogue. While the late abbot was among
them they had formed into a mutinous cabal under a
brother William of Trumpington, to agitate for their liberties and their rights. William of Trumpington was
now chosen in Abbot John's place, and a new era set in.
Abbot William was homo scecularis-a man of this world,
a friend of kings and earls, and a politician. Cloister life
and the flogging-block might suit a feeble Abbot John.




Annals of an English Abbey.


29


The new abbot was most at home at princes' banquets and
in the cabinets of statesmen. The road down-hill is not
at first abrupt. The motion is easy, the alterations not
violent enough to shock. Abbot William gained golden
opinions. He bought a house and garden in London,
instar magni palatii, like a great palace, and brethren of
the house who had business in the city were allowed to
stay there. He set up an establishment at Yarmouth to
supply the convent with fish. He acquired fresh lands
for the abbey. Religion too (the outside of it) was not
neglected. He purchased some precious relics, the cross of
St. Amphibalus, stained with the martyr's blood, for one
thing, and a rib of St. Wolstan for another. He added
two aisles to the church, decorated the windows, raised the
towers, and roofed the house with lead. The liberal cabal
had lifted him to power to carry out popular ideas. They
found, as often happens in such cases, that there is no such
despot as a liberal when raised to authority.
Abbot William attended the Council of the Lateran
called by Innocent the Third; he won his way into favour,
and when he returned to England had the papal legate
at his right hand.  Almeric and Walter de Standen
clamoured for their privileges again. The abbot invited
the legate to St. Alban's, and brought them down upon
their knees in shame and discomfiture. Alexander the
eloquent paid his court more skilfully, and was at first in
favour. Alexander, says the chronicler, was a wonderful
man. He knew everything. " He could write a letter, if
necessary, to the Pope himself, and an excellent letter it
would be." He was made keeper of the abbot's seal, and
for a time all went well with him. But the old Adam
remained. Vanity puffed him up. He, too, grew insolent
and mutinous. The abbot had him whipped in the chapterhouse, usque ad copiosam sanguinis effusionem, "till his




30


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back was bloody;" and then exiled him with fetters on
his ankles to Bingham Priory, where he died.
The times were stormy. King John and the barons were
at war. Pope Innocent had thrown England under an interdict. It was well for St. Alban's that there was a ruler
at its head with a clear eye and a firm hand. Abbot William steered his way in those troubled waters without committing himself too dangerously, and, after weathering the
storms, withdrew into a quiet age, and the practice of decorous piety.
Each day, when he returned from his walk, he brought
a troop of beggars with him to be fed. He was always in
his place in chapel, said his responses in an audible voice,
never missed processions, and even preached at times, to
the delight of all who heard him. In all ways, in his vigour and in his decline, Abbot William was a favourable
specimen of the great political churchman of the new age.
Outwardly decent and decorous-at the bottom he was a
statesman and a man of the world, to whom religion had
lost its seriousness, and had grown into a dignified and respectable ceremonial.1
1 The discipline had undoubtedly by this time been much relaxed again. In repairing the high altar the bones of thirty monks
were uncovered which had lain in the earth a hundred years. They
were "as white as ivory and as sweet as incense." The bodies had
been buried in the ordinary dress of the order. The shoes were
perfect, and the degenerate brothers of the thirteenth century were
put to shame by the contrast with the soft boots which had then
come to be allowed. "How admirable were these fathers of ours!"
they sighed.  "How ought we who should be treading in their
steps to blush for the delicate garments in which we are rather
adorned than clothed! If Benedict could see us now, how would
he be offended! If Bernard could see us-Bernard who wrote that
of all objects hateful in God's sight, thehatefullest was a monk with
boots on-how would he scold!'




Annals of an English Abbey.


31


So rich and so powerful under such administration the
abbeys were now becoming, that both kings and popes began to clutch at a share of their wealth. On the death of
an abbot, the chapter could only proceed to an election after receiving a conge d' elire from the Crown; and the fine
exacted by the Treasury had been fixed at not less than a
thousand marks-twelve or fifteen thousand pounds of modern English money. The eagerness for the enforcement
of discipline which had led the first Norman abbots to part
with their exemption and to place the abbey under episcopal jurisdiction had been of brief duration. Bishops, like
other dignitaries, were learning to convert their authority
into money, and had proved perhaps more covetous than
serviceable. The old liberties, at any rate, had been restored by the Popes; but at the Council of Lateran, Pope
Innocent had decided that the abbots-elect of the exempt
houses should present themselves in person at Rome to receive confirmation. and the meaning of this was that their
Holinesses as well as the king intended to have a slice of the
plunder. The new rule came into operation on the death
of William of Trumpington. John of Hertford, who was
chosen in his place, not knowing that it would be construed
literally, pleaded advanced age, and sent two of the brethren
to represent him. Conjecturing what was wanted, they
went with purses well supplied, and at their first interview
laid a sum of money, pecunice quandam summame, at the
Pope's feet. Dominus Papa bade an attendant take it
away, but otherwise treated the monks with much superciliousness, and "did not so much as ask them to dinner."
They bribed the officers about the palace, finding the mouths
of these persons wide open, gaping for presents (quia sic
oportuit cum patulis rictibus ipsi donis inhiarent). They
assailed the cardinals donis uberrimis. The cardinals heard
no petitions which came unaccompanied with gold. At




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length the confirmation was obtained, but attended by a
private condition which the Bishop of London imparted
to the abbot when the confirmation was sent over. The
abbot must still appear at Rome in person within three
years, and when he inquired why, the bishop pleasantly
answered, "Amice, ut offeras," My friend, that you may
make offerings. Remonstrance was useless, resistance was
impossible. Abbas invitus et dolens Romanorum jugum
subiit servitutis. With grief and reluctance the abbot submitted to the yoke of the Roman bondage. And he and
each abbot after him was obliged to travel to Italy at a
vast expense, and pay the Pope a second thousand marks,
besides lavish presents in the sacred college, before their
bulls were granted-in magnum ecclesice damnun et gravamen et insatiabilis Romance curice emolzumentum." Much
good too the bulls brought us," grumbles the chronicler.
"The Pope's arms were set up over our gate, but when a
thunder-storm came they did not save us from the'lightning. We were struck twice in three years and the house
was set on fire."
Money, in fact-how to get it and who had a right to
share it-became the question of chiefest moment in the
Church, and the chiefest subject of discussion, from the
sacred conclave at Rome to the shaving-houses in abbey
and priory. A levy was now, with the sanction of Pope
Alexander IV., ordered for a crusade. The religious
houses were required to contribute, and after their experience of past crusades expecting small results from
another, they drew their purse-strings. Such a demand
was unheard of, they said. Hitherto the laymen had paid
tithes to the Church. Now Churchmen, et inviti, against
their will, were to furnish money for knights and men-atarms. The monks were irritated out of all propriety, and
the language in which their passion boiled over was more




Annals of an ErLnlish Abbey.


33


emphatic than decent. The exempt abbots had agreed to
resist, and had almost made good their opposition, when a
non nominandus cpibcoIpts, Peter de Egilbanke, Bishop of
Hereford, cujus memoria sulfureum,foctoreml exhalat et tcterrimum-whose memory breathes a stink of sulphur and
abominations-suggested a plan to the Pope by which with
a stretch of prerogative he could force them into submission. The Pope raised money from Italian merchants.
The names of the exempt abbeys were in some way introduced as securities; and "these vile extortioners "-the
chronicler losing control of his pen-" quos Franci bugeros
vldgariter appellant," received powers to distrain upon
"the innocent children of the Church."
One might have wished the poor monks better fortune,
had not their lamentation been so often intercalated with
entries recording increased allowances of beef and beer
from the kitchen and the buttery:hatch. The "innocent
children," when the power was theirs, had been distraining
also to considerable purpose: squeezed themselves by the
Pope, they had in turn squeezed their tenants, and had
commenced a system of tyranny which led at last to open
insurrection. The common law of England is the creation
of custom.  The lords of manors, such of them as had
courts of their own, were thus allowed in local matters to
make the law what they pleased.    The Abbot of St.
Alban's ruled, in the name of custom, that the inhabitants
of the town and of all the neighboring villages should
full their cloth and grind their corn at the abbot's mills,
the abbot himself fixing the charges which they should be
required to pay. The monks were a less venerable body
than they had been. The burgesses were growing wealthier
and more independent. They questioned the abbot's right
to force them. They fulled their cloth where it could be
done more cheaply. They set up querns or handmills
0




34


Annals of an English Abbey.


and ground their wheat in their own houses. The abbot
tried violence. The townsmen resisted and carried their
cause to the courts at Westminster. An appeal from the
decision of their spiritual lord to a secular judge appeared
to the monks no better than sacrilege. They tolled their
great bell. They walked in procession singing the penitential Psalms and invoking the aid of the blessed Alban.
The blessed Alban, or the general sympathy of established
authorities with the claims of the lords of manors, determined the decision of the court of appeal, and judgment
on all points was given in the abbot's favour. The townsmen had to surrender their querns, and purchase forgiveness by a present of wine. The abbot, in turn, promised
moderation in the charges which were to be demanded at
his mills.
So the figures pass by on the slide of history as the monastic drama unfolds. Political convulsions tear England
in pieces.  There are the Barons' wars, with Simon de
Montfort and the first great struggle for political liberty;
the monks feeling the disorder of the times, and self-indulgence eating deeper into the conventual rule. Successive
bodies of regulations indicate the rising tide of corruption,
and the efforts, real or pretended, to keep the water flowing within the banks. Special injunctions become necessary to check incontinence-compelled celibacy producing
its inevitable fruits among men who were heavily fed and
had no work with which to occupy themselves. Officers
are appointed to sleep either in the dormitory or at its
door-the brethren having fallen into habits of sitting up
at night telling stories, and so being drowsy at matins.
The young monks have taken to hunting with "greyhounds."  The kitchen has to be supplied from the -warrens,
and running down the deer has proved too agreeable a relief from the monotony of the chapel services. They are




Annals of an English Abbey.


35


ordered to stay at home or confine themselves to permitted
modes of "recreation." They have been fighting and quarrelling in the town, eating and drinking at ale-houses, " even
in the presence of women."  The sin of possessing a private
purse of money has been too much forgotten. The brethren
are forbidden to swear per plagas, per sanguinem nostri
Creatoris-" Zounds" "'Sblood," "God's wounds and God's
blood" having passed into their vocabulary. Within the
precincts as well as without there is disorder and dissoluteness.  Unmentionable vices are alluded to as practised
in the sleeping-rooms, as the Norman hand loses its grasp.
The enlarged allowances at the buttery create intemperance.
On the festivals of the Church the monks are drinking their
pocula charitatis as l   as daylight lasts. In the winter
season there is scarce an interval inter unum potum et alium
-between one drink and another; hence proceeds Ebrietas
qutc per apostolum enmoeratur inter opera Turcarum.
The remedies insisted on are of the mild kind, which indicate that the temper of the times forbade the tightening
of the strings. The indulgences which caused the disorder
are restrained but not abolished. The pocula charitatis are
permitted on Sundays as usual. The healthy are directed
to be moderate. The infirmary is still a land of plenty.
The pitancia, "pittance," of the sick is to be bona etfertilis; they may eat and drink juxta desiderium sulum, " as
much as they like." The mischief of idleness is recognized,
but the suggested antiaotes are too weak for the disease.
The brethren are directed to learn by heart the lives of the
saints and the abbey chronicles; to study, to transcribe, to
illuminate, to correct errors in MSS., to bind volumes
falling to pieces. Those who are too illiterate are to be set
ad alia opera honeeta monasterio magis necessaria. To make
life less dreary and monotonous a second dining-room is established, called the oriel, to which the brethren are to be




36


Annals of an English Abbey.


invited by turns. In the refectory they have to eat in silence while one of theml reads an edifying book. In the
oriel they may talk and amuse one another: they are required only to abstain a superfluis potationibus, from ilmmodest talk, or scandal, or dispute. An indecent joke is
punished by exclusion from the oriel for a fortnight.
Thus the monastic world went on, the authorities dreaming feebly that they would arrest the inevitable by laying
their little finger on the driving-wheel. Corporations of
men are only individuals enlarged. They pass their prime
but they are unconscious of the change. At times they
have their spasms of misgiving. But they still feel the
blood in their veins; they gather what they call experience; and as long as there is no outward collapse they can
even believe that they are improving and gaining strength,
as common sense takes the place of enthusiasm. Their
wealth comforts them, for it is an evidence of growing
prosperity; and they boast of progress, though it is a progress towards death. Luxury shows only that they have
thrown off the barbarous habits of a less enlightened age,
and the powers and privileges which were won by nobler
natures for nobler purposes, they imagine that they have
only to enjoy in an ornamental manner. Existence on the
established terms they find extremely agreeable. They see
no reason why they should not continue for ever. At
worst the next generation may encounter its own problems.
For themselves they are on the primrose path, and dream
of nothing so little as the goal to which that path is tending. Later on, when the truth can be no longer concaled,
they assume the virtues which they have lost. The tree is
dead, the branches are withered, and where leaves will no
longer grow they hang artificial sprigs of green; they pretend to a fabric of decency to persuade the world to give
them credit for continued life. That is the lat stage iwiich




Annals of an English Abbey.


37


precedes the end. But for the monasteries it was yet far
off. In England, indeed, they scarcely reached this point,
for Henry VIII. cut them down when most of them were
in the very blossom of their sins. As yet they had no
thought of hypocrisy-or desire to seem other than they
were. The inward spirit revealed itself, with happy unconsciousness, in visible shape.
After a series of mild reforms there was elected to St.
Alban's, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, "our
late cellarer," Hugh of Eversden, a typical abbot in his
way, on whom we may pause for a moment to look. Abbot Hugh was still a youth when he was chosen, tall, handsome, and, in the modern sense, an accomplished gentleman.
He had been a student of English and French literature,
sed paruzn nactus de Latino-indifferently provided with
Latin. " You might have chosen a more learned head, my
brethren," he said, when the choice of the convent was
made known to him, " sed pro certo nullum magis socialenm,
but assuredly no pl!asanter fellow."  Edward I. was dead.
The new abbot was the friend and boon companion of Edward of Carnarvon, the slave of parasites and his own
folly. The want of Latin mattered little at the Court of
Edward; for the necessary journey to Rome it was a more
serious deficiency. At the Vatican a prelate of the Church
must talk Latin or must hold his tongue; and the Pope might
think twice before lie granted so illiterate a gentleman his
bull of confirmation. Abbot Hugh, like his predecessor
John, sent proctors with his excuses. Edward and Edward's favourites wrote in his behalf.  Ile spent enormously:-er:peTns(c horribiles went in bribes to the cardinals
-quia nihil ilus tiimit quam, Latinam linguamn, "for he
feared nothing so much as the Latin tongue."  The cardin als pocketed the money, but the Pope still insisted that to
Rome the abbot should go-and to Rome perforce he went.




38


Annals of an English Abbey.


The first business there was to examine into his fitness for
the abbacy. As he could ill bear scrutiny he was obliged
examinatores suos emolire, ut mitius agerent eum eodenn-to
anoint his examiners' palms, that they might handle him
gently. The Virgin Mary he invoked, probably with appeals of the same kind, for on his return he added a Lady
Chapel to the abbey church; and a similar golden road he
laid down by which to approach his Holiness.
Tarn munificum se prcebuit Domino Papce et universee
curice ut magnificentiam suam avarissimi horninumn predicarent-so munificent he showed himself to our Lord the
Pope, and the curia, that the greediest of the crew were
obliged to applaud his generosity. To such an abbot the
want of Latin could be pardoned. He was driven to
borrow; he had to plunge himself in debt and difficulty;
consolationibus tamen divinis non caruit-he was not without divine consolation. The Pope dismissed him with his
blessing. Edward of Carnarvon smiled upon him when he
came back, and, so long as Edward's sun was shining,
"happy was the man who could call the Abbot of St.
Alban's his friend." He was modest in his prosperity and
shrank from asking favours; but the brethren who had
elected him insisted; and pulsatus hortatu suorumnhe presented himself among the suppliants among whom the
royal treasures were being distributed with lavish hand.
Edward desired nothing better than to heap favours on his
attractive friend. Edward I. had carried through Parliament the famous mortmain statute, which forbade the appropriation of any more English soil in the dead hand
of the religious houses. But the lawyers made a way
through the Act.  Mountains of gold were piled upon
St. Alban's; and now began in earnest the erection of
those splendid buildings, amidst the ruins of whicl sentimental ritualists sigh over the ages of faith and pray for




Annals of an English Abbey.


39


their return. Let the ritualist observe a naive confession
of the spirit which went along with the architectural efflorescence. When the exquisite Mary Chapel was finished,
an extra mass was said daily there for the abbot and the
brethren; et quia temporalis consolatio spiritualem devotioneol excitare frequentius consuevit-and because the cpnsolations of the flesh are often wont to excite spiritual
devotion, the officiating brother had an additional allowance assigned him from kitchen and cellar, and was allowed the privileges of the infirmary, to eat and drink
juxta desiderium suum. With all his magnificence the
abbot had his faults. Dominus Abbas frequenter admittere
consuevit familiaritatem damnosamz fceminarum. The lord
abbot indulged too frequently in pernicious familiarity with
women. Rich as he was, he was embarrassed by his expenditure. The resources of the abbey were exhausted, and
he began to pinch and squeeze the dependent priories, till
"he made his name abhorred among them." At Binham,
especially, he was so extortionate that the brothers mutinied. The gentry of the neighbourhood took their part,
and the prior, a certain William of Somerton, shut his
gates and broke into open revolt. The king came to the
abbot's help. The gentry were driven off, the priory was
forced, and the monks were made to walk in procession in
chains to St. Alban's. The sequel of this adventure was
curious. The prior escaped. He too is a characteristic
figure. With a mendicant friar for a tutor he had been a
student of alchemy, seeking in the universal gold-hunger
for the philosopher's stone, and edging into magic. Finding he could not defend his priory, he collected as much
treasure as he could carry, fled to Rome, and bestowed it
freely in the right quarter. A citation was served in consequence on Abbot Hugh to appear at Rome and answer
for himself. The abbot was acute in his generation. He




40


Annals of an English Abbey.


professed compliance. He set out and had reached Canterbury, where he was overtaken by a writ, which he had
himself no doubt secretly procured, reclaiming the cognisance of the cause to the Crown, and forbidding him to
plead in a foreign court. The abbot's loyalty was unimpeachable; he pretended, however, that he dared not disobey his spiritual lord. He went on to Dover. As he was
stepping on board the packet he was arrested by the subconstable of Dover Castle, and submitted with a protest to
superior force. Sic, si dicifas est, miraculose, evasit, Dominus Abbas-thus by miracle, if such a word may be used,
the lord abbot escaped.
Somerton, on the abbot's non-appearance, obtained minatory bulls from the Pope, and came over with them to
England, disguised as a layman et sine tonsurd. He was
discovered in London, seized, and with his papers handed
over to the abbot. The abbot threw him into a dungeon.
What became of the bulls, ille cui cognita sunt omnia solus
novit-He only knows from whom nothing is hid.
This was not the end. Somerton's cause was taken up
by Edward's disaffected barons, and by Edward's Queen
Isabella. The "she-wolf of France" gave the abbot to
understand that he must reconsider his ways, or it would
be the worse for him. Somerton was released and was
even replaced in his priory. In a little while he disappeared a second time. Whether, as the chronicler suggests, he had promised rewards to his friends the barons
which he could not pay, or whether he had fallen back
into magic, no one knew-anyway he absconded; roved
about the world; and many years after, when Abbot Hugh
had gone to his rest, reappeared as a suppliant at the Abbey gate, to be taken in and to die there. Strange history
of a noticeable man! Had William of Somerton written
his autobiography, it would tell us more than we know, or




Annals of an English Abbey.


41


are ever likely to know, of the England of the second Edward.
Nor was it with his ecclesiastics only that avaricious
ways brought Abbot Hugh into trouble. Since the judgment at Westminster, the relations with the St. Alban's
burgesses had gone from bad to worse. The abbots, presuming on their success, had proceeded to enclose large
tracts of wood and pasture land, over which the people
had hitherto held common rights.   Meadows had been
fenced off where they had fed their cattle for centuries.
The forests were made into game preserves. Ponds and
streams where the farm and village lads had caught perch
and pike, were now watched over by the abbot's keepers.
So long as the times were quiet they controlled their
wrath; but Edward II.'s follies bore at last their natural
fruit. He was deposed and murdered in a revolution.
The country was in a ferment, and now was the day of
vengeance for the inhabitants of St. Alban's. The abbot's
patron had fallen, and there was a chance that wrong
might be made right.
A. D. 1327. Queen Isabella had borne the chief part
in her husband's overthrow. Passing through St. Alban's
she rested a night in the abbey. The mob of the town
flocked about her carriage as she was driving away clamouring for justice. They had other wrongs to complain
of besides the loss of the common lands. The chronicler
must tell the story in his own Latin:
Subornaverunt uxores suas et quasdam villce pellices ut
occurrant, nudatis pectoribus cum lactenibus pusiolis, regince
Isabella egredienti de monasterio, ad infestandum earn clamoribus importunes, et mentiendum quod hi essent pueri quos
monachi de eis generaverunt eas violenter opprimentes.
The queen, who did not understand English, inquired
what the women wanted. A lord who rode at her side




42


Annals of an English Abbey.


said, laughing, " They are only telling you, my lady, that
they are all harlots and adulteresses."
Isabella waved her hand impatiently and passed on.
The citizens meanwhile, taking revolution to mean justice,
proceeded to draw a list of their grievances. As before,
they insisted on their right to grind their own corn. They
would not wait till it was conceded, but procured dozens
of querns and set them to work. They demanded their
common rights on meadow, wood, and pond. They
claimed their privilege as freemen of returning members
to Parliament; and whereas hitherto their disputes had
been heard and decided in the first instance in the abbot's
courts, they desired that for the future their causes should
be tried by a common jury before a secular judge.
A deputation carried these petitions to the abbot. The
abbot answering enigmatically, the people snatched their
bows and clubs, streamed out of their houses like a swarm
of wasps, and swearing their demands should be granted
or they would burn the abbey, gathered in a crowd about
the gates. The abbot, who had foreseen the probability
of a tumult, had two hundred men-at-arms with him. The
people rushed on with loud shouts, calling the monks ribaldos fures-ribald thieves. They were received more
sharply than they expected, drew back with loss, and determined to blockade the entrances and starve the abbot
out.
The confusion in London had by this time settled itself.
Edward III. was established on the throne, and the laws
resumed their authority. The Sheriff of Hertfordshire
was directed to keep order in St. Alban's. Both the citizens and the monks sent counsel to represent their case at
the king's court. A commission sat at St. Paul's to consider the people's complaints, and, courting popularity for
the new reign, decided this time in the people's favour.




Annals of an English Abbey.


43


An order was forthwith despatched to the abbot directing
him to embody in a charter the liberties which the townsmen demanded, and to let them have it without further
trouble. The abbot called a chapter on the arrival of the
king's letter. The monks, who would scarce believe their
ears, declared that they would rather die than yield. But
the abbot bent to the storm, and made a virtue of necessity. It was his enemies' day, and resistance would only
exasperate them uselessly.  He enjoined the monks to
patience-virtute sanctce obedientice.  The charter was
drawn, and amidst groans of disappointed rage the convent seal was attached to it.
Most of the requisitions were thus conceded: the handmills especially, and the pasture rights. The game preserves had still been withheld, but the people were not to
be put off. The cry rose: "Give us back our fisheries!
Give us back Barnet wood! We must have Barnet
wood!" " The Abbot hearing these words, and perpending
that the world was at enmity with God's Church and His
ministers," thought it best to bend altogether. At once,
mad with delight, the boys dashed off with their nets and
lines to the ponds. The men rushed to the woods, tore
down the fences, and marched back to the town in procession, carrying branches of the trees as a symbol of their
victory.
The convent looked on with despair and indignation.
For five years "these enemies of God and man" killed
the hares and rabbits without respect or fear. For five
years they ground their corn in their own querns, and paid
no more tolls at the abbey mills. It killed Abbot Hugh.
He died in the same year, bewildered and heart-broken
with the change of times; all his splendour vanished, and
his sun gone down in storm. His profusion left a heavy
load of debt behind it, and the brethren, humbled and




44


Annals of an English Abbey.


mortified, were brought into a transient mood of penitence.
They elected in Abbot Hugh's place a plain, unpretending
blacksmith's son from  Wallingford, chiefly noted as a
mathematician, and they addressed themselves to moral
reform. There was a general inquiry into incontinence,de lapsu carnis. Some made their purgation-quomodo
Dezus novit-God knows how. Others confessed and did
penance. They could bear neither their vices nor their
remedies. They professed a desire for correction. WIhen
correction came they mutinied. "Abbot Richard was
over-rigid with us," says the chronicler. " Partly he was
himself to blame, partly his predecessor, who had let us
all do as we pleased." The new abbot took their grumbling coolly. "He had not coveted his place," he said;
"there was little pleasure in ruling a set of mules; but
since abbot he was, he meant to be obeyed, and at least
would preserve decency." They were obliged to bear with
him, and he in turn rendered them a service, after a few
years, which made them forget their grievances.
The abbot, who had begun life, perhaps, at his father's
forge at Wallingford, had retained his mechanical tastes.
With the help of his mathematics he constructed, amidst
the scoffs of the convent, an astronomical clock which was
the wonder of the age. Besides the ordinary functions of
time-keeping, it described the motions of sun, moon, and
planets; the fixed stars; with the rise and fall of the tides.
He called it, punningly, Albion-All by one-quasi totum
per unum;-at once the glory of England and an instrumental embodiment of existing scientific astronomy. He
was a student of the weather, too, and foretold rain and
sunshine. But while he appeared to be amusing himself
thus harmlessly, he was biding his time to avenge the dishonour which the town had inflicted on the abbey. Among
his other accomplishments he was a lawyer. In Edward




Annals of an Enrglish Abbey.


45


III. there was again a vigorous sovereign on the throne;
revolutionary ferment had cooled down, and the barons
were reasserting their feudal authority and bringing their
vassals back into obedience.
Between order and liberty the struggle is as old as the
world, and is likely to be coeval with it. In ages when
belief in duty is superior to the temptations of interest,
large powers fall naturally to men of high ability and
lofty character. Society is only healthy when the laws
are obeyed under which harmonious action is possible.
Such laws can only be discerned by intellect; they can
only be enforced by authority; and intellect and authority
are allowed to govern in the interests of all. Power brings
temptation. Rulers are betrayed by selfishness. Their
high functions are abused to fill the pockets of themselves
and their friends. Authority becomes legalized oppression, and the multitude clamours for the restoration of
their liberties, which are taken from them without adequate return. Thus come revolutions and a war of classes.
The rulers fall back upon the theory.  Subjects think
naturally of the practical wrongs which the theory, grown
degenerate, inflicts upon them. And so the strife goes on
till organisation dissolves into anarchy; the commonwealth becomes a chaos of divided units, each contending
for itself: when again, the confusion becoming intolerable,
a new order shapes itself, and grows and gathers power;
and again, as the wheel goes round, it is abused and forfeited. Of such material is human history composed.
Abbot Richard sat watching the political currents in
the intervals of his mathematics. The abbot's courts had
still jurisdiction over faith and morals. Corrupt as were
the ecclesiastics in their own persons, they retained the
right of punishing offences which are technically described as sins. The people, after their late success, be



46


Annals of an English Abbey.


lieved that the abbot's authority had become a scarecrow
which they might defy with impunity, and according to
the abbey records they broke faith and perjured themselves, and seduced each other's wives and daughters as if
there was no longer any law over them at all. The abbot
waited for a flagrant scandal, and then resolved, se demonstrare cornutum, "to show that he had horns."  A citizen
of St. Alban's, one John Taverner, was living openly with
another man's wife. He was a person with whom it was
dangerous to meddle, propter malitiam ipsius Johannis.
The abbey marshal ventured at last to serve a writ upon
him. The mob rose; Taverner assaulted the marshal;
the marshal defended himself, struck Taverner down,
killed him, or, as the chronicler mildly puts it, so wounded
him ut de percussione idem Johannes postea moriebaturthat the said John did afterwards die of the blow. The
citizens flew to their weapons-swords, lances, pitchforks,
sticks, stones, anything that came to hand. Their leaders
calmed their fury before they resorted to open violence,
and not knowing that times were changed, they indicted
the abbot for the death of their townsman. The wise abbot desired nothing better. He was acquitted, and at once
retaliated. The riots at the revolution were brought up
again for re-examination. The citizens were accused of
having extorted their charter of liberties by force. The
judgment of the commission was reversed. The burghers
were found guilty, and lost all that they had won. The
charter was surrendered. The woods and meadows were
reinclosed. The fish-ponds and warrens were again patrolled by keepers. Even the querns, the sorest matter of
all, were once more taken from the people. The millstones were carried in triumph within the precincts and
were let into the pavement of the abbey " parlour," iin pcrpetum rei mnenoriam. The cunning clock-maker had rc



A   anncdls of an English Abbey.


47


established the old tyranny, and in pleasant irony, and to
end the quarrel in good humour, lie invited his defeated
subjects to dine with him in the hall.  After such a
triumph it is needless to say that Abbot Richard's popularity in the convent was unbounded. He became leprous.
An enemy, one Richard of Ildesley, intrigued at Rome to
have him incapacitated on account of his disorder. The
Ildesley intruder gained over the Pope and obtained letters
of provisor, nominating him in the abbot's place. The
monks sent word to Richard of Ildesley that if he ventured near St. Alban's with bull or provisor they would
kill him. And indeed, says the chronicler, it is likely they
would have kept their word. Erant namque eo tempore in'
moznasterio iri magzce staturce et fortitudinis sed parvrm
habentes in licd parte conscientic.-" There were at that
time in the monastery men of huge stature and fierce, who
had but little conscience in such matters."
"Men of huge stature and fierce, with but little conscience" to take life. Let us pause for a moment and look
at these gentlemen with other eyes, as they and their like
appeared to the English laity. Abbot Richard's reforms
had been but skin deep, if they had gone so far; and not
at St. Alban's only, but throughout England, by the middle of the fourteenth century, the religious orders had
grown into little better than lecherous ruffians.
The worst of them were the Friars Mendicants, who in
conception ought to have been the best. Instituted to supply the shortcomings of the secular clergy, they were bound
by their vows to special poverty, and to the special duties
of apostles.  Their business was to travel from town to
town, from village to village, preaching, teaching, and
hearing confessions. They were chosen or supposed to be
chosen for extraordinary sanctity; and the monks of the
regular houses were allowed by special license from Rome




48


Annals of an English Abbey.


to transfer themselves into the mendicant order, as if to
consecrate themselves to a higher grade of self-devotion.
Enthusiasm, as usual, cooled down, after a few years' experience. The transfer continued to be sought by "brethren" who were weary of restraint-no longer, however,
from motives of piety, but as an act of favour which they
could purchase by money. Freed from obligations of residence, these friars wandered through England at their
pleasure; in theory beautiful beings-itinerant angels of
mercy; in reality-but let us view them as they are described by a contemporary poet, going about with pedlars'
packs upon their mules, watching till the good-man of the
house had turned his back and only the women were at
home.'
Preste ne Monke ne yit Chanoun,
Ne no man of religioun,
Gyfen them so to devocioun
As done thes holy frers.
For somme gyven them to Chyvalry,
Somme to riote and ribaudery,
Bot firers gyven them to grete study,
And to grete prayers.
Who so kepes tlair reule all,
Both in word and dede,
I am full sicker that he shal
Hav heven bliss to mede.
Men may see by their countenance,
That thai are men of grete penaunce;
And also that their sustynaunce
Simple is and wayke.
I have lived now fourty yeres,
And fatter men about the neres,
Yet saw I never than are thes frers.


1 Political Songs and Poems, vol. i. p. 263. Iublished under the
direction of the Master of the Rolls.




Annal8 of an E igliSh Abbey.


49


In countreys wher they raike (wander),
Mtceles so megre are thai made,
And penaunce so puttes them down,
That ichone is an horslade,
When he shall trusse of town (depart out of town).
Thai dele with purses, pynnes and knyves;
With gyrdles, gloves for wenches and wyves.
Bot ever backward the husband thryves,
Ther thai are haunted tille.
For when the gode man is fro hame,
And the frere comes to our dame,
Ie spares nauther for sinne ne shame,
That he ne does his wille:
If thai no help of housewyves had,
When husbandes are not inne
The freres welfare were full bad,
For thai should brewe full thynne.
Were I a man that hous helde,
If any woman with me dwelde,
There is no frere hot he were gelde,
Should come within my wones,
For may he till a woman wynnc,
In priveytie he wyl not blynne,
Thof he lours under his hode,
With semblaunt quaynte and mylde,
If thou him trust as dos him gode,
By God thou ert begyld.
In another poem, called "The Complaint of the Ploughman," there is a picture of the ecclesiastics generally, which
the admirers of the ages of faith might be expected to study
with advantage, were it not as true to-day as it was three
thousand years ago, that "though you bray the fool in a
mortar, yet will not his folly depart from him."
4




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The priests had the keys of Heaven and were the dispensers of spiritual censures.l
That is blessed that they blesse,
And cursed that thai curse woll,
And thus the people thai oppresse
And have their lordships at fulle,
And many be merchants of wull,
And to presse pennies woll come thrall,
The poor people thai all to pull,
Such false faitours foul them fall.
Who so woll prove a testament,
That is not all worth ten pound,
IHe shall pay for the parchment,
The third of the money all round;
Thus the people is raunsaund,
They say such part to them should apend,
There as they gripen it goeth to ground,
God for its mercy it amend!
For a simple fornication,
Twenty shillings he shall pay,
And then shall have an absolution;
And at the yere usen it forth he may.
Thus they let him go astray,
They recke not though the soul do brend,
These keepen evil Peters kay,
And all such shepheards God amend.
For the tithing of a duck,
Or an apple or an aie (egg),
They make men swere upon a boke,
Thus they foulen Christes faie.
Such bearen evile heaven kaie,
They mowen assoile; they mowe shrive,
With mennes wives strongly plaie,
With true tillers sturt and strive.
1 Political Songs and Poems, vol. i. p. 308.




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At the wrastling and at the wake,
And chief chantours at the nale (the ale),
Market-beaters and meddling make,
Hoppen and houten with heve and hale (might
and main),
At faire fresh and at wine stale,
Dine and drink and make debate,
The seven sacraments set a saile,
tow kepe such the keys of Heaven gate.
Though a Priest lye with his lemman all night,
And tellen his felow and he hilm,
Ile goeth to Masse anon right
And saieth he singeth out of sinne:
His bride abydeth him at his Inne,
And dighteth his dinner the mean while,
IHe singeth his Masse for he would Ainne,
And so he weneth God begile.
Many a page might be filled with similar humorous
denunciations against these so-called ministers of God, as
they existed in the days of the third Edward.   Within
the abbeys and without the story was the same, for the
monks went and came at their pleasure, while the rules
hung idle upon the wall as relics of a barbarous age.
Out of this mass of corruption and tyranny came Wicklife and the famous Lollards.  Out of this came the great
rising of the Commons under Richard II., half religious
and half secular, which was crushed at last by sword and
gallows, but not till it had shaken the English throne, and
frightened the Church into a galvanic revival, which prolonged its sickly days for another century and a half.
Part religious, part secular,-for amidst the outward splendour of the reign of Edward III. there had flowed over
England one of those periodic tides of ungodliness which
have recurred again and again, and have been the invariable precursors of convulsion. Prelates and nobles




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lihd abandoned themselves to luxury; men of intellect, in
natural cynicism, had come to look on religion as an
imposture, and on God and another world as a dream of
knaves and fools.l Wages were ground down, and the
taxes and exactions multiplied; trade became dishonest;
false wares were passed off for good, and were forced on
the workmen in payment of hire.     The world was the
rich man's world, and the poor were bade scornfully look
for better days in heaven, which might be or might not be.
The poor had the labour, the ryche the winning,
This according noughte it was heavy parting.
Little can be said in this place of the spiritual side of
Wickliffe's teaching.  The movement began in indignation at lies and injustice; and the revival of earnestness
was accompanied with a furious spirit of political revolt.
Inquiries, ominous, and at such times inevitable, began to
be made into the principles on which the good things of
the world were distributed.  Discussion rose as to the elemental rights of man, and as the result of them there was
an explosion of communism. Labour only, it was said,
gave a right to live, and those who were doing no intelligible work were denounced as thieves and drones.
It is to this, which is known in history as Wat Tyler's
Rebellion, that we are now coming.   The feuds between
the Abbots of St. Alban's and the neighbouring people
were typical of similar quarrels in every part of England.
The same causes produced the same effects. But St. Al1 F. Walsingham, speculating on the causes of the rebellion of
1381, says some attributed it to the sins of the nobles: "quidam
illorum credebant (ut asseritur) nullum Deum esse, nihil esse sacramentumr altaris, nullam post mortem resurrectionem, sed ut jumentum moritur ita hominem finire."-Hiistoria Anglicana, vol. ii. p. 12.




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ban's fell in for an exceptional share of the danger; and
the account of what took place there is especially interesting and instructive.
ITI.
III.
THE English peasantry and the smaller tenants were as
yet, it is to be remembered, only partially emancipated.
Serfdom and villanage were still parts of the Constitution.
"There was an usage in England," says Froissart, speaking of this particular time, "that the noblemen had great
franchise over the commons, and kept them in servage:
that is to say, their tenants ought by custom to labour the
lord's lands, to gather and bring home their corn, and
some to thresh and fan; and by servage to make their hay
and hew their wood and bring it home. All these things
they ought to do by servage; and there are more of these
people in England than in any other realm, and the noblemen and prelates were served by them. These unhappy
people began to stir because they said they were kept in
servage, and in the beginning of the world they said there
were no bondsmen. They were men formed to the similitude of their lords; why should they be kept so under like
beasts? the which they said they would no longer suffer;
for they would be all one; and if they laboured or did
anything for their lords, they would have wages therefore
as well as others."
"When the people complain," said a wise man, "the
people are always right." The long-suffering of the poor
under the inequalities of fortune is a phenomenon which,
as long as it lasts, shows that the spring of all the virtues
which have at any time done honour to humanity is still
flowing among us. Cold, hunger, nakedness-they bear




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them all with preternatural patience. Even injustice they
endure till it becomes insolent. So long as masters condescend to be courteous, the drudges of society accept their
inferiority, and honour and respect those whom Providence
seems to have set over them. Only when the human relations are at an end, when they find themselves treated as if
they were made of other clay, as if they were machines to
extract wealth from the soil, and were rewarded sufficiently in being permitted to exist-only then they begin
to ask the meaning of the word gentleman, and for what
purpose the lord and lady are robed in silks, and housed
in palaces, while the peasant does the work, shivers in
soiled fustian, and is worse lodged than his employer's
cattle.
The abbot whose fate it was to encounter the skirts of
the storm as it swept over Hertfordshire was Thomas de la
Mare, son of a distinguished soldier, Sir John de la Mare,
who had fought in the French wars. Thomas, who was
a younger child and a boy of great personal beauty, was
entered at St. Alban's at his own desire under Abbot
IHugh. Rising rapidly through the inferior offices, he was
sent, while still young, into Northumberland to govern
the dependent Priory of Tynemouth, and while there became intimate with the great family of the Percies. In
1369 he was promoted to the rule of the abbey. He had
the usual experiences at Rome. The Popes, whether infallible or not, have been at least homogeneous.  "The
sums," writes Walsingham, himself a monk at St. Alban's
and the abbot's biographer, " the sums which Abbot Thomas
spent at Rome would have been incredible, nisi nota fuit
omnibus avaritia ejusdenm curice-had not the avarice of the
Papal court been so notorious."  Cupidity grew by what
it fed on. The fees for St. Alban's having been paid, a
second charge was presented for the vacancy which the




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55


abbot had made at Tynemouth.   It was without precedent:
but the Pope threatened if the claim was resisted to appoint to Tynemouth himself by Provisor. Fusa est iu,mlensa pecutnia-an immense sum of money had to go before the matter could be settled. But the abbot was firm,
and at last, servatus est locus ille a prcdationibus iHarpyiarum-the priory was rescued from the Harpies' claws.
Nothing can show more clearly than these words of Walsingham the real attitude of the Church of England towards its Italian head. The statute of Provisors, which
was passed shortly after, to put an end to such exactions,
was no more than a formal expression of resentment on the
part of the clergy at a system of unendurable extortion.
New brooms sweep clean. Abbot Thomas, like most of
his predecessors, began with attempts at reformation. He
perhaps succeeded unusually well, for Edward III. employed him soon after to visit other abbeys which were
under Crown jurisdiction, ad reformandam religionem pczne
collapsam in mnagcnis monasteriis-to restore religion, which
in the large monasteries had almost fallen to ruin. The
abbeys of Abingdon, Battle, and Reading were purged of
gross scandals. The Abbot of Chester, who was exceptionally vicious, was deposed from office. Reforms, however, when institutions are worn out, are like the patch of
new cloth on an old garment. The monks were so little
used to discipline that they could not or would not bear it.
Of the younger brethren many apostatised, deserted their
order, and returned to the world.'
1 Note.-Some of them went in search of a purer life than could
be found in the abbeys, and therefore fiercely repudiated the charge
of "A postasy."
"Full wisely"' (says one of these runaways)
" Can they preach and say,




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Some became soldiers, betaking themselves ad res bellicas et armorunz strepitus.  Others (Pope Urban VI. being
known to be in want of funds) sent money to Rome, ubi
cognoscebant omnia fore venalia, and purchased their emancipation and admission among the secular clergy. The
abbot, vir magnanimus et cordatus, drifted on as he could
through his difficulties. When in extremity, fudit se ante
corpus Dominicum vel corpus beati Albani-he threw himself before the wafer or the body of the blessed Alban,
and never rose till one or the other had promised to help
him. If he could not manage his monks he could at least
fight for the abbey's rights and do battle with his dependent knights and tenantry. Never had any abbot been
more litigious than Thomas de la Mtare. Half his life
was spent in law-suits or distraining for his rents, driving
his neighbours' cattle and starving them in his pounds.
His high-handed ways answered with him; suit after suit
he won. Fiery gentlemen swore revenge; they threatened
But as thai preche no thing do thai.
I was frere full many a day,
Therefore the sothe I wot (the truth I know).
But when I saw that thair lyvyng
Acordyd not to thair preching,
Off I cast my frere clothyng,
And wyghtly went my gate;
Other leve ne took I none
Fro ham (them) whan I went,
But toke ham to the devel yehone
The prior and the covent.
" Out of the order thof I be gone,
Apostata ne am I none.
Of twelve months we wanted one,
And odd days nine or ten,




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to make the abbot pay for his oppression even if the lead
had to be stripped from the abbey roof-but Thomas de la
Mare held on, and the courts at Westminster remained
steadily his friends.
Under such a ruler the warren rights and fishing rights
were upheld in all their stringency. Woe to the stray cow
or horse that trespassed on the appropriated meadows once
common to the town; woe to the luckless boy who snared
a rabbit, or to the youth who sent a cross-bow bolt through
a fat buck which had come out in the moonlight to feed.
Jealously every sack of wheat was carried to the abbey
mills. The stones of the handmills preached from the
parlour pavement the story of the townsmen's defeat, and
warned them against further resistance.
A few detailed instances of the abbot's proceedings show
with painful clearness how little yet was known in English law of the elementary principles of justice.
A claim for eighty shillings was presented against
Nicholas Tybbeson, one of the abbey tenants. Tybbeson
disputed the debt. The abbot's servants beat him, wounded
him, shut him up in a dungeon till he paid the money.
Tybbeson sued the abbot for assault and wrongful imprisonment. The abbot pleaded that Tybbeson was his born
"bondman," and was therefore not entitled to be heard
against his superior lord. The court ruled that the abbot
was right. The complaint was dismissed, and the unlucky
Away to wend I made me boun
Or tyme came of professioun.
I went my way throughout the town
In sight of many men,
And God that with paynes ille
Mankynd bought so dere
Let never man after me have wille
For to make him frere."




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t villain" was further fined pro falso clamore, for bringing
a false accusation.
The rule held throughout. In theory " villains " were
entitled to protection from  the law.  In practice they
found little.  The abbot pretended that another tenant,
John Albyn, of Winslow, a substantial farmer, owed him
money. The debt was disputed, the abbot invaded him
with a party of archers, broke into his yard, destroyed
forty pounds' worth of property, and carried off a bull
and twenty cows. Albyn brought an action against the
abbot at the Hertford assizes. The abbot pleaded as before
that Albyn was villanus suuts; and it was sufficient answer
-the plea was allowed.
Imagine all over England the lords of manors, secular
and spiritual, carrying matters at this high rate; the
knights and barons, some of them suspected of atheism,
dining, drinking, hunting, and   amusing   themselvessqueezing their tenants at their pleasure, with the law
ready-made at their backs;-the religious houses cruel as
the lay lords, yet the members of them seen rollicking at
fairs, haunting brothels and ale-houses, fighting, swearing,
seducing honest men's wives; the world given over to
blackguardism, and the clergy standing in the first rank
of Satan's army.    It was past bearing.   Edward III.
died, watched over in his death-bed by his concubine.'
1Alice Perrers. But the story of this lady's relations with Edward III. has been accepted with too little enquiry. The authority
is Walsingham, who describes her as pellex, infcanda meretrix, a vile
woman who acquired an influence over the king when in his dotage, and heartlessly robbed himn of his rings when he was on his
death-bed. The scene has formed a favourite subject for moralising historians, who would have been better employed in examining
the circumstances. The witness to the theft was a priest, who,
Walsingham says, was the only other person present. But was it




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The Black Prince, the best hope of loyal men, had gone a
few months before him.     The crown fell to Richard of
Bourdeaux, a boy of eleven.    The reins fell loose on the
horses' necks, and authority was dead. A priest named
a theft? The king was alive and conscious. It may have been a
parting gift. Who was the lady? and was she the king's concubine at all?
Lady Alice Perrers was the daughter of Sir Richard Perrers, a
gentleman of fortune in IIertfordshire. She was the wife of Lord
Windsor, a nobleman attached to Edward's person, who had been
a distinguished viceroy in Ireland. Her family had for many
years been involved in angry law-suits with the Abbot of St. Alban's; and long after this affair, which Walsingham describes so
rhetorically, we find her still a great lady, her father's heiress, carrying on the controversy with the abbey. She was evidently regarded there with bitter personal hostility, and charges from that
quarter require to be scrutinised.
Turning now to other evidence against her, we find from the
Rolls of Parliament that she was complained of by the Legislature
as presuming on the king's favour to interfere in the business of the
courts of law. Although there is no hint in the Rolls that she was
the king's mistress, the complaint has appeared to harmonise so
well with Walsingham's charge as at least to confirm it.
The Speaker of the House of Commons, however, who presented
the charge (qui hrwc universa proposuit), was Peter de la Mare, the
abbot's brother or cousin; and thus again there is a suggestion of
personal motive. The particulars, when looked into, amount to no
more than this: Lord Windsor was a favourite with Edward, and
an object of jealousy both with other noblemen and with the popular party in Parliament. A hostile commission was to be appointed
to inquire into Lord Windsor's conduct in Ireland. Lady Alice,
wlho may have been a favourite with the king also without being a
concubine, interceded with him successfully in her husband's defence
to prevent his being sacrificed to his enemies.
Edward III. is one of our great English sovereigns. lie was
sixty-five at the time when this liaison is supposed to have taken
place; and I decline, without better reason, to receive a story as
proved which throws a stain of dishonour on his end.




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John Ball, said to be infected with Wickliffe's heresiesinfected at any rate with impatience of wrong-dealing, and
with visions of the Contrat Social-had been preaching for
twenty years to the peasantry of Kent, on the brotherhood
of mankind. Injustice in England has rarely taken the
form of repression of free speech. Among us the origin
of injustice has been excess of liberty, and the right, real
or supposed, of every man to do as he wills with his own.
As long as the rich can fill their pockets, they make a conscience of leaving the poor to talk. John Ball had taught
liberty, equality, and fraternity with little interruption from
authority. All mankind, he said, have descended from
the original gardener and his wife.
Whan Adam dalf and Eve span,
Wo was thanne a gentleman?
As nature meant it, those only were noble who were good.
Those only were slaves who were slaves of sin. "it would
never be merry in England till there were no bondmen
and no gentlemen," but all shared together as children of
their common parent.
Such doctrines found willing hearers. The people followed John Ball in crowds through field and market-place.
He would catch them as they came on Sundays from mass
in Canterbury Cathedral, and finish the service with a political sermon. Respectable gentlemen denounced him to
the archbishop as dangerous to the State. The archbishop
sent for him more than once, lectured him on his imprudence, and shut him up for a month or two, but to little
purpose. He was urged to hang him, but "had conscience
to let him die."  In the summer of 1381, the period at
which we have now arrived, Ball was for a third time in
the archbishop's house of correction. The air was electric.:
Wickliffe was preaching at Oxford. Chaucer and Gowcr




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were in the meridian of their fame. English intellect was
in full activity. But no outward signs portended immediate disturbance.
King Richard was then fifteen years old. A heavy tax
had been granted by Parliament. The commons, stripped
bare already by priest and baron, were slow to pay, and
Crown officers had been sent about the country to lay on
pressure. Local quarrels, breaking out at twenty places
at once, kindled into a universal conflagration. Kent, Essex, and the eastern counties rose simultaneously to make
an end of serfdom.
Sixty thousand men with pikes and pitchforks set out to
march on London, to demand redress of grievances. The
London mob, they had reason to know, were of the same
mind as themselves, and were ready to receive them  as
friends. Their leaders were a second priest, named Jaques
or Jack Straw, and a man described by Walsingham as
vir versutus et magno sensu prceditus-of strong sense and
talent, named Walter or Wrat Tyler, " who was indeed a
tyler of houses."' Their first step was to break open the
archbishop's prison and release Ball, and with these three
at their head the insurgents pursued their way.
It was not an age of newspapers or public meetings, popular debating assemblies, or stump oratory. When the
people rose they rose meaning business, in a temper which
was the bursting of pent and smothered fury.
Instinct pointed out to them their worst and immediate
enemy. It was the lawyer who had ruled that " a villain"
could not sue his lord. It was the lawyer's parchment by
which the tenantry were held as chattels-part and parcel
of the soil. It was the lawyer again who lay in watch for
1 One of the collectors had offered a gross insult to Tyler's
daughter. Tyler struck him on the lead on the spot and killed
him.




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them like some wild beast, dragging them through king's
court, bishop's court, or abbot's court, serving writs upon
them for any trifling oath or hasty sin, or enforcing dues
and fines at the pleasure of the manorial chief.l
Pinched, ground, and starved as they had been in the
name of law, they fell at once on the instruments of their
oppression.
"Let us hang all lawyers," was the cry which Shakespeare places on their lips in describing the later insurrection of Jack Cade, and Cade is made to answer:'
"Nay, that I mean to do.     Is not this a lamentable
thing, that the skin of an innocent lamb should be made
parchment-that parchment scribbled over should undo a
man?"
Shakespeare in his account of Cade was but translating
(though giving life by his own touch to the dead words)
from the Monk Walsingham's history of the earlier rebellion of 1381. In those inarticulate days passion turned
instantly to act. With a sharp axe (hanging had not yet
come into fashion) the Kent insurgents chopped off the
heads of every judge, lawyer, or lawyer's clerk that they
could catch upon their march. To be able to write was
sufficient evidence of guilt.
The exactions of the spiritual courts were peculiarly hateful.
The king taxeth not his men,
But by assent of the comminalte,
But these each yeare will ransoum them,
Maisterfully more than doth he.
Her seales each yeare better be
Than is the king's in extend,
Her officers have greater fee,
But this mischef God amend.
[Complaint of the Ploughman. Political Songs and Poems, vol.
i.p. 323J.]




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p'


" Dost thou use to write thy name?" says Cade to a clerk
who was brought before him with his implements in his
satchel, "or hast thou a mark to thyself, like an honest,
plain-dealing man?"
'*I thank God," the clerk answers, "I have been so well
brought up that I can write my name."
"Away with him!" cry the mob, "he hath confessed."
"Away with him!" says Cade. "Hang him up with his
pen and inkhorn about his neck!"
This is no more than a paraphrase from Walsingham.
Periculosmn erat agnosci pro clerico, sed multo periculosius
si ad latus alicujus atramentarium inventunm fuisset. iTanm
tales vix ant nunquam ab eorum manibus evaserunt.
The abbeys and manor-houses on their route were
broken open and sacked.   The muniment chests were
searched, and every roll and deed was taken out and
burnt.
Then gathering frenzy and growing savage with the
taste of blood, the wild army swept on over Blackheath to
London Bridge. The city had risen as they expected at
the news of their approach. The counties to the west and
south had taken fire, and troops of villagers were streaming up along the road from Hertfordshire and Bucks. The
gentlemen, fluttered and helpless, gathered into small knots
for self-protection, but, without orders from the Court, knew
not which way to turn. The gates on the bridge had been
closed; but they were opened by the mob from within.
Peasants and citizens flung themselves into each other's
arms; and London and all that it contained lay at the
mercy of a hundred thousand madmen.
It was Corpus Christi day, the 13th of June, when Wat
Tyler entered the city.  The enormous multitude was
parted into three divisions. Jack Straw made his headquarters at Highbury Barn, outside the walls, on the




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North Road. Half the rest seized Tower Hill. The others
lay at Mile End, at the head of Whitechapel Road.
With method in their fury they sent separate detachments on the work of destruction. The king, with the
Archbishop of Canterbury, who was Lord Chancellor, Sir
Nicholas Walworth the Mayor of London, the Earls of
Salisbury, Warwick, and Suffolk, had shut themselves into
the Tower without attempting resistance. Still aiming at
the lawyers, the people attacked the Temple and burnt it,
with the records which it contained.' They proceeded
next to destroy the Savoy Palace belonging to the Duke
of Lancaster, the most beautiful house in England, and
afterwards the Hospital of the Knights of Rhodes, the
bloody axe beating time to their march, and every supposed enemy of popular rights that was unable to escape
being dragged to the block.
Another section attacked Lombard Street. There dwelt
the bankers, the Flemish merchants, the money-lenders,
those who fixed the rate of interest and were the representatives of the usurers, who took advantage of the poor
man's necessities and ground him to grist in their mills.
On these poor wretches wild vengeance alighted; scaffolds were extemporised in the streets, and their bloody
heads rolled in the kennels.
"So the ungracious people demeaned themselves like
men enraged and wode (mad), and did much sorrow in
London."
The fury waxed through all that midsummer day,
Thursday, the 13th of June. In the evening the tide
rolled up against the Tower. All night it raged about
the gates-a crowd of furious men crying for the king,


1 Ubi plura munimenta quse juridici in custodia habuerunt igne
consumpta sunt.




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swearing they would not go till they had the king at their
pleasure, and till they brought to his account the head of
the legal profession in England, the Archbishop-Chancellor, Simon of Sudbury. Unhappy Archbishop Simon!
not specially guilty above other chancellors, judges, magistrates, officers of an unjust law; but having the bad luck
to be the foremost representative of all the heedless wrong
which had been heaped for generations on the back of the
English commons, at an hour when authority was struck
down, and the forces of nature had broken loose to bring
all these things to judgment.
Inside the Tower there were 1,200 soldiers besides the
retinues of the king and the nobles. Walworth the Mayor
proposed a night-sally on the half-armed, half-drunken
mass of howling frenzy. A few determined men might
slay the rebels in their sleep-slay them, as was said,
"like fleas." What more horrible than a murdering
crowd of maniacs! What more likely than that London
itself might perish, as the Savoy Palace had perished, unless order dared to assert itself? Blood enough was on
the hands of the miserable wretches. Little cause might
a brave magistrate have seen to hesitate. But behind the
mob lay the crimes which had kindled the conflagration
and unnerved the hands of the saviours of society. "The
Earl of Salisbury and the wise men about the king said,
"Sir, if we can appease them with fairness it were best
and most profitable, and to grant them all that they desire; for if we should begin a thing which we could not
achieve we should never recover it again, but we and our
heirs ever to be disinherited."'
The earl's " counsel was taken." Another victim, the
most innocent and the most illustrious, was yet necessary
before the plague could be stayed. As day broke the mob
again roused themselves to action. Dark gangs of work5




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men swarmed about the Tower archway, while a yell rose
from sixty thousand throats, " Bring out the Archbishop."
The gates were opened and the human torrent poured
through them. The men-at-arms stood in files with their
halberts and battle-axes, but with orders not to resist, and
"more dead than alive." Horny hands caught the knights
by their beards and stroked them. Artisans in their
greasy jerkins surged into the royal apartments, flung
themselves into the satin chairs and rolled on the velvet
counterpanes. The Princess of Wales, the king's mother,
was there. Some workman or practical preacher of equality begged a kiss from her. But for the present at least
the people meant no hurt to her or the king. The cry
was still for the traitor prelate, the oppressor of the commons. Where was he?    They seized a servant in the
archbishop's livery, a dagger was held at his heart, and
he was told to lead them to his master's hiding-place. He
brought them to the vaulted chapel in the central tower,
where the old man was kneeling before the altar, foreseeing his fate, and impatient to have the business over, moras
eorum arguens.
He rose to meet them. "Welcome, my children!" he
said; " I am he that you seek, though no traitor and no
oppressor." They rushed upon him. His chaplain held
up the Corpus Dominicum. They flung him aside and
dragged their prisoner unresisting across the court, and
through the Tower gates to Tower Hill. As he appeared
there rose a yell from the crowd not like any human
shout, but like "a scream from Satan's peacocks"-vocibus
pavonun  diabolicis-swords flashed over his venerable
head. "What means this?" he said. "What have I
done? If you kill me, the Pope will lay you under an
interdict."
" Pope and interdict go to their own place," was the




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answer. "Thou art a false traitor. Lay down thy head."
The archbishop was most eloquent-eloquent, it was said,
above all Englishmen of his day. He pleaded hard, but
it availed nothing. A ruffian struck at him. "Ah, ah,"
he cried, putting his hand to the wound in his neck, "it is
the hand of the Lord." The next stroke severed his
fingers and cut an artery. At last, with eight blows they
hacked the head from the body, and left him in dust and
blood.
IV.
THE story now returns to St. Alban's, where we left the
townsfolk and the abbey tenants smarting under the hands
of Abbot Thomas de la Mare. The news of the insurrection shot through the midland counties. The passionate
cry was heard everywhere that serfdom and villanage were
at an end-Englishmen were to receive at last their
eternal birthright of freedom.
On the same Corpus Christi day, the 13th of June, on
which Wat Tyler entered London, companies of men came
trooping into St. Albans, old and young, horse and foot,
from the neighbouring towns. They were received with
shouts of welcome, and quia totum genus humanum pro
majori parte ad malum cities quam in bonum semper est
proclivum, peasants, farmers, and burgesses at once addressed themselves to the abbey to demand their liberties
once more. Dusty messengers were following one another
from London, some from Wat inviting the commons of
Hertfordshire to his standard; some to tell the abbot that
London was in the insurgents' hands. The abbot proposed that a joint deputation should go up and learn the
king's pleasure; what the king should order. he said, that




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he was ready to do. The leader of the St. Alban's rising
was a burgess named William Grindcobbe,' who had been
educated at the abbey school. His experience of the
monks, either then or afterwards, had not disposed him
to look favourably on them, and the dislike was mutual.
There had been a quarrel between the abbey and the town
about the limits of the abbey precincts. Grindcobbe's
house, it was pretended, encroached on the abbot's premises. The abbot had sent officials to inspect; Grindcobbe had beaten them, and had been excommunicated
in consequence, and been compelled to do penance naked
in the presence of the assembled convent. It was now
Grindcobbe's turn. The required respite was conceded,
and the next morning (Friday, the day of the archbishop's
murder) he started with a few hundred of his best-armed
followers to see how matters were going. He found Wat
holding his ragged court at Mile End. The king, despairing of immediate assistance, had conceded every request
that was presented to him. He had abolished serfdom
so far as an act of the Crown could abolish it. He had
granted charters to all who asked for them. He had pardoned all the murderers. In a word, the English peasantry were free, and multitudes of the country-people,
supposing their object gained, were trailing back to their
homes. Wat himself, who knew the difference between
paper grants and real victories, intended to take more
substantial guarantees, and had determined to remain till
he got them. It may be that he had views for himself
too. For a leader who had climbed to so high an eminence, there was no easy or safe descent. Grindcobbe
1 Patriotism ran in the family. The name of another Grindcobbe
appears on the charter granted by Abbot Hugh, among the signaturesof.the burgesses.




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was admitted to an interview, and told the story of the
abbot of St. Alban's misdoings. Wat sent him on to
Richard. The king gave him a letter to the abbot, and
promised, as he was pressing to be gone, to send a charter
after him. Wat undertook to see that the promise should
be kept, and bade Grindcobbe return in peace and tell the
abbot that unless justice was done immediately he would
go to St. Alban's himself with twenty thousand men and
shave the monks' beards for them. With this message,
and the king's promise, Grindcobbe rode back in the
gloaming. The news of the murder of the archbishop
in the morning had gone before him. The prior who
managed the estates, and knew himself to be specially
hated, seeing how things were going, had slipped out at
a postern with his attorney and his clerks, and had ridden
for his life to the north.
The following morning, Saturday, June 15, St. Alban's
was early astir to assert its regained rights. Every gentleman and commoner residing within the liberties of the
abbey had been ordered by the delegates of the people to
attend on pain of death. So had commanded Wat Tyler,
champion of England's freedom. The inhabitants marshalled in procession, moved once more upon the detested
fences which shut them out from their woods and meadows.
Swearing first a solemn oath to stand by each other, they
levelled the walls and paling. A rabbit starting from its
seat among them, they speared it, carried it on a lancepoint into the market-place, and set it up there as a symbol
of free warren. "Wherefore," comments the chronicler,
characteristically, "because they had infringed Christ's
patrimony, their leaders were afterwards dragged over
those meadows and through those woods, and then hanged
according to their demerits, as shall be hereafter told."
Christ's patrimony was the abbot's game preserve; so




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thought the monk Thomas of Walsingham. Under such
convictions are serious, well-intentioned men permitted to
live and act, and sow the seeds of revolutions to come, as
history has also to tell.
The impaled rabbit thus being duly set on high, Grindcobbe led his company to the abbey once more. The abbot's order was to make no resistance, and to leave the
gate open. The first step was to break the door of the
abbey jail and release the prisoners. Most of them probably were, like Nicholas Tybbeson, confined for non-payment of questionable exactions. One unhappy wretch, for
an unnamed reason, perhaps because he was a real criminal, who had claimed benefit of clergy, the mob decided to
lynch. A block and axe were extemporised-they struck
his head off under the abbot's windows and set it beside
the rabbit's. So far they had gone when a horn was
heard, and a company of horse galloped up with the royal
standard flying. It was Richard of Wallingford, one of
the chief burgesses, who had accompanied Grindcobbe to
London the day before, and had been left behind to receive the king's letter, which he was now bringing with
him. The standard was planted; the people were directed
to remain by it, and Grindcobbe, Richard, and other delegates, entered the church and sent to the abbot to come to
them.
The abbot had been sitting in sad chapter with the convent. He had said that he would rather die than yield
the Church's rights. The brethren had told him that his
death would not help the situation. The people would
either have their way or would kill them all and burn the
abbey. Thus pressed, the abbot repaired to the insurgent
leaders. Richard of Wallingford placed in his hand a
command from the king to restore the charters which had
been granted by Abbot Hugh; to grant a complete release




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of all rights over wood and meadow; all rights of cornmill and fulling-mill, ceo que lei et reson le requeront-as
law and reason required. This done, all grudges should
be thenceforth removed.
The abbot said, feebly, that although it was true his
predecessors had granted such a charter, it had been afterwards surrendered.
Richard of Wallingford answered that times were
changed. The people were now masters, and the people
meant to have their way. "There stand," he continued,
as he saw the abbot still hesitating, "a thousand men
before your gate waiting your answer. Either yield, or
we send word to Wat Tyler, who will burn your abbey to
the ground."
"Alas! alas!" exclaimed the abbot. "For these thirtytwo years I have been your father. I have injured none
of you; and now without cause will you destroy your
kind master?"
It was to no purpose. Richard of Wallingford said he
must have a yes or no.
The abbot librans pericula yielded. He gave up the
charters, and certain bonds with them into which the burgesses had entered to submit for the future. The bonds
were carried off and burnt at the market-cross under the
rabbit's and the prisoner's head. Another charter was
promised de libertatibus villanorum, setting the "villains"
free. One more piece of justice, this time an innocent one,
the people executed for themselves. The millstones in the
floor of the "parlour" were torn up and broken, and the
fragments distributed through the town "as if they had
been pieces of holy bread."
The abbey was now left to itself. The citizens withdrew. The monks went to dinner, which they ate in sorrow, " mixing their meat with tears and their drink with




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lamentations." Here was a change. Richard the clockmaker's work all undone again. The master down, the
servants up, the abbey likely to be burnt, and their very
lives in the hands of clowns. At night the mob were at
the gates again crying for the promised emancipation
charter. Five hundred peasants bivouacked under the
walls, threatening to break in at any moment, and were
only kept in good humour by bread and beer from the
buttery. All persons who had claims on the abbey were
invited to bring them in for settlement. "An abbey tenant, who himself owed us money, came and demanded a
hundred marks, of which he said the prior had robbed
him. The wretch at last accepted twenty pounds, saying
he would gladly lose all if he could but catch the prior
and settle scores with him."
The night wore away in misery. The monks were
meditating flight and meant to be off in the morning.
The day, when it came, brought news that the tide had
turned.
Not this time, nor for many an age to come, was England to be a commonwealth after Wat Tyler's pattern.
Commonwealth indeed on such terms it could never be,
but only a pile of units without power or coherence, ready
at the first blast of wind to be scattered like dust. It
would be no very excellent England when a Wat Tyler's
or a Cade's mouth was to be its parliament.1 This, and
all nations which deserve the name, can exist only where
1 "Dicc.-I have a suit to your lordship: that the laws of
England may come out of your mouth."
" CADE.-I have thought upon it. It shall be so. Burn all the
records of the realm. ' My mouth shall be the parliament of England.'"
Wat Tyler declared, says Walsingham, " that all things should
be in common, and the laws should come out of his lips."




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there is settled order and settled rule, and where fools and
knaves submit to let wise men guide them; yet with this
condition also laid down in the Eternal Statute-Book, that
the wise shall also be just,-or red republics will rise and
again rise, and mad socialisms, and reigns of terror, and
archbishops must be shot on barricades, or have their heads
hacked from their shoulders by the swords of clowns.
Wat Tyler's work was done. The bloody lesson had
been read, and a small step gained for suffering mankind.
Nature or destiny was for the time satisfied, and the tools
with which she had worked were flung away.
This same Saturday morning, Wat Tyler, Jack Straw,
and Ball lay with twenty thousand of their followers in
Smithfield. They were meditating, it was said, a general
confiscation of property. London was to be plundered
and the spoil divided. The king's person was then to be
secured, and the new triumvirs were to govern England in
his name on communist principles. Richard-so the story
goes-was intending to escape, if possible, from London,
and with the mayor and forty gentlemen about him left
the Tower and rode past the skirts of the mob. If he had
really meant to fly, it is singular that he should have
chosen the route which exposed him most certainly to
interruption.  At all events he appeared in Smithfield.
Wat Tyler, on horseback, placed himself in the king's
path, struck at one of the equerries, Sir John Newton, and
then insolently addressed the king. Walworth, the mayor,
coming up at the moment with a party of horse, rode in
upon the rebel leader and bore him to the ground. One of
the king's attendants sprung off and ran him through the
body with his sword, and at once all was confusion. Wat
Tyler had been the life of the insurgents. The sudden
blow upon the head stunned and stupefied them. Other
parties of gentlemen with armed servants were riding in




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from the cross streets, likely enough with preconcerted
purpose. The king, with a courage which promised a
better future for him than he lived to realise, rode forward
and spoke with address and presence of mind. He renewed his promise of emancipation, with pardon for all
that had passed. The crowd melted away. The two
priests went off with the rest. Ball was immediately
taken.  Jack Straw escaped into the eastern counties.
It was now the turn of the ruling powers. Promises
freely given might require to be observed. Promises made
to rebels in arms were binding only while the force which
extorted them remained. Walworth, with the city guard,
seized such straggling wretches as had been left behind
and struck their heads off. Knights and barons came up
with their followers in haste from the country, to prevent
the disgrace of the Crown and to " save society." In four
days the king had 40,000 men-at-arms about him. Justice
was not allowed to linger. A special commission was
appointed to try offenders, and Richard, with Chief-Justice
Tressilian, went down into Kent to hold his court. The
miserable people inquired with wonder if they were in a
dream. "Had they not been promised pardon and promised freedom?" Rustici fuistis et estis, the king replied"Clowns ye have been, and clowns ye are. In bondagio
permanebitis, non ut hactenus, sed incomparabiliter vilioriIn your bondage ye shall remain; not as heretofore, but
infinitely worse. So long as I live and reign I will make
you an example to future ages."
"My father chastised you with whips, and I will
chastise you with scorpions." So answered a foolish
Hebrew king, and lost an empire for his pains. So often
answer the rulers of this world in the pride of their power.
But there is a higher power in nature which will not be
so answered-as Richard found when Henry of Lancaster




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hurled him from his throne; and as the barons found
when, a generation later, they watered the English
meadows with each other's blood. For the present it was
the hour of authority-authority which had forgotten its
own injustice in the crimes of those who had risen in arms
against it. Prisoners were brought in in gangs, and sent
at first with short shrift to the block. Propter multitudinem perimendorum, "on account of the multitude of those
who were to be executed," there was no leisure for more
discriminating proceedings.  When the first fever of
revenge was slaked, Tressilian sat for ordered justice, and
the criminals were hanged, drawn, and quartered with the
usual ceremonious ferocity.
The insurrection died hard. Jack Straw fled to Norfolk, where the commons were still unbroken. They knew
now the mercy for which they had to look. A crowd of
infuriated people, said to have numbered fifty thousand,
again gathered about him. Sir John Cavendish, one of the
judges, was in the county. They killed him and set his
head on a pike in Bury St. Edmund's. Off too went the
head of the prior of St. Edmund's monastery, and was set
lip to lip with the head of Cavendish. A mock monarch
was set up to succeed the Tyler, one John Littestere.
They called him "King of the Commons," and set themselves in force to attack Norwich.
But the tide had turned, and the barons were now on
their guard. Henry le Spencer, a fiery youth whom the
fates and a disordered age had made into a bishop,
gathered his lances round him. He found Straw and
Littestere entrenched at North Walsham, behind a ditch
and a barricade of carts. Le Spencer, in full armour,
snatched a spear from a comrade, put his horse at the
water, and flew over it velut aper frendens dentibus-" like
a boar grinding his tusks." The first man that he encoun



76          Annals of an English Abbey.
tered he pinned to the ground. Then, with a huge
double-edged sword, he plunged into the crowd, hewing
round him and lopping heads and arms. Fast after the
bishop came his mailed companions. The wretched commons were cut down in heaps till none were left to be
killed.  Straw was sent to London, where Walworth
promptly hanged him. The bishop himself took charge of
the King of the Commons. Combining the functions of a
ghostly father and provost-marshal, he first heard the
poor king's confession and made him ready for eternity.
Then throwing him on the hurdle and with his own hand
holding up his head-n-e collideretur a terra-" lest it should
be dashed against the ground" as he was being dragged
to the gallows, he hung him in chains for the crows to
feast on as a lessoni to all revolters against the rule of
priests and barons.
Sharp practice, and perhaps necessary; yet to be followed promptly by the division of these same high persons
into two camps, like the Centaurs and the Lapithre, twothirds of them to perish by each other's swords.
Thus rapidly was Wat Tyler's rebellion extinguished in
its own blood. The last scene of the drama remained only
to be played out before the curtain fell. The stage chosen
for the close of the performance was St. Alban's.
We left the abbot in despair-the monks preparing to
fly; the Hertfordshire mob drinking the abbot's ale before
the gates; Wat Tyler, perhaps, looked for in the morning
to reduce the abbey to ashes. So had passed the night of
Saturday, June 15. Sunrise brought news of the change
in London. The king and the mayor had recovered the
city, and Wat Tyler was dead.
A knight followed on a horse, bloody with spurring,
bringing orders in the king's name for every one to return
to his house. Events had come so thick one upon the




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other, that the meaning of the new catastrophe was not at
once understood. King Richard had renewed his promise
of emancipation. The cause survived, if the leader was
gone. The mob were not savage, but they persevered in
demanding what they considered their rights. Reinforced
by the tenants of every farm in the county which the
abbey possessed, they required a paper under the abbot's
hand, guaranteeing to them in perpetuity a list of specified
concessions. Their leaders dictated the principal points
in the abbot's chamber. It was not necessary to insist
further on emancipation. The king, it was assumed, had
put an end to serfdom, by an act which he had solemnly
renewed in Smithfield over Wat Tyler's body. The burgesses of the town and the tenants required further their
pasture rights, their fishing and warren rights, and the
right to grind their corn, free of toll and tithe to the abbot's mills.
A clerk took down their words. The charter of rights
was reduced to form; it was duly signed and sealed, and
was carried off and read at the market-cross. Villanage,
and all forms of forced labour were declared to be abolished. Carts went round distributing bread and beer.
Peace and good-will were to reign thenceforward between
high and low, and the day was spent in jollity and mutual
congratulations.
"The fools believed," says Walsingham, "that all were
now as noble as the family of the king himself, and that
there were to be no more masters upon earth."
For several days they were left in their illusion. A
few St. Alban's people had been taken in Essex, and were
in danger of the gallows. They sent word to their friends.
The abbot was appealed to, and the abbot swore, se maluisse
trajectum fuisse gladio quam talia audisse-" he would rather
have been run through with a sword than have heard such




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a thing." He and his monks were still defenceless, and, if
the people suspected that they were betrayed, the abbey
might be destroyed before help could reach them. He
despatched a courier to the Court, bidding him spare
neither whip nor spur. The prisoners were released, after
taking an oath of fealty, and the alarm passed off.
Shortly after, it was reported that Sir Walter at Lee,
a Hertfordshire knight, was coming with a party of soldiers to quarter himself at St. Alban's to preserve the
peace of the county.
What was the meaning of this? Grindcobbe, the champion of the burgesses, plenus improbe animositatis, "full of
wicked resolution," came once more to the front.
" Pluck up your hearts, my friends," he said; "we are
rich; we shall not want friends while our money holds.
There are eight or ten townships of us confederated. Let
us mount our horses and meet this Sir Walter, and learn
if he comes in peace."
Out of the nettle danger was to be plucked the flower
safety. The St. Alban's citizens encountered Sir Walter,
with Grindcobbe at their head. Sir Walter had but fifty
lances and a company of archers, who, if he tried violence,
might go over to the people's side.
"Gentlemen," said Sir Walter smoothly, "his Majesty,
who is patron of the Abbey of St. Alban's, has heard of
certain wrongs being done to the abbot. He was coming
hither himself with a force so large that it would have
consumed the whole country. Out of my affection for you
I persuaded him to leave the inquiry to me. If you can
satisfy the abbot, you have nothing to fear from the king.
Let me know who the persons are that have occasioned the
riot."
The speech was apparently well received. The two
parties rode together to the town. Sir Walter selected




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twelve burgesses as a grand jury to present the names of
the men who had done anything wrong. The grand jury
returned for answer that no wrong had been done. They
were all loyal subjects together.
Sir Walter and his company passed on to the abbey and
heard mass, and having then a stout wall and a barred
gate to shelter him, he informed the citizens that they
must surrender the charters which they had forced the
abbot to give them. The citizens answered promptly that
they neither could nor would. The country would tear
them to pieces.
Sir Walter's followers were not to be relied on. A body
of three hundred archers, who had come into the town to
support the people, were handling their bows ominously.
Sir Walter waited till night, and then, with a small party,
he contrived to surprise Grindcobbe in his bed, and with a
certain John the Barber, who had been prominent in tearing up the millstones in the abbey parlour, he sent him
under a strong guard to Hertford jail.
At Hertford these two gentlemen were likely to have
received summary treatment. They were taken before the
magistrates in the early morning, and were on the point
of being ordered for execution, when an express came from
the abbey. The people had risen again, swearing that if
their fellow-citizens were injured they would take a hundred
lives for one. The garrison was too weak to be depended
on, and justice must pause. Grindcobbe and the Barber
were released on bail, the burgesses undertaking that they
should surrender on the following Sunday, if peace had
not been made meanwhile.
This was on Tuesday, the 18th. Again at St. Alban's
they called a meeting, and Grindcobbe, cujus cor induratum
in malo fuerat, whose heart was hardened in evil, rose
and spoke: " Fellow-townsmen," he said, "after long op



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pression, you have at last secured your freedom. Stand
now, therefore, while stand you may. Fear not me. If
they take my life it will prove better in the end for you.
I shall count myself happy if I am a martyr in your
cause. Act for yourselves as you would have acted if my
head had fallen yesterday at Hertford. Nothing saved
me then but the abbot's message. The judge was sitting,
and they were calling out for my blood."
Of course there were cheers for Grindcobbe. They were
free men, and sooner than their liberty should be torn
from them they would all die. They would have Sir
Walter's head, and set it on a pole as a warning to tyrants.
Hard as Walsingham considered Grindcobbe's heart,
the poor man kept his word which he had given at Hertford. The town held out as he recommended. He himself, when the week was out, went back to jail, and too
probably to death.
Fate was closing round him. Sword and rope had done
their work elsewhere; Jack Straw and the King of the
Commons had been hanged; the towns of Kent and Essex
and the eastern counties had been duly decorated with the
heads and quarters of the executed criminals; the king
and his chief-justice were now at leisure to attend to Hertfordshire, and to put the finishing stroke to the work of
justice. As the month came to its end, there was no
longer a doubt that the royal army was really approaching. The fate of the other counties told but too surely
what would follow on its arrival.
In honest alarm for the imprisoned Grindcobbe, the
burgesses now fell on their knees. Rights, charters, all
should be surrendered. They offered the abbot two hundred pounds, equal perhaps to three thousand of our
modern money. In vain. The time of grace was past.
Abbas non reputavit illam horam idoneam esse ad tractanr




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dum cum illis super re tam ardua. —" The abbot did not
think it a fitting moment to treat with them on a matter
of such importance." The meaning of this was not to be
mistaken. As it had been in Kent, so it was to be in
Hertfordshire. The humbled wretches carried back the
fragments of the millstones and replaced them in the parlour floor. They flung their charters at the abbot's feet.
They brought their gold in bags and meekly prayed the
abbot to accept it. The abbot took the gold, but the king
came notwithstanding, with his knights and barons and
his chief-justice, and St. Alban's, like other places, was to
taste the value of royal promises.
A jury of burgesses was again empanelled. Tressilian
told them that if they trifled again they should be themselves indicted for treason; and between terror and skilful
handling they were drilled into complacency. Grindcobbe
and the Barber were brought back from Hertford, and,
with thirteen other citizens, were tried, found guilty, and
hanged.
A wail of indignant lamentation rose from the town;
execrations were heaped upon the abbot, the women especially being eloquent in their fury: and it was feared that
the soldiers who had come with the king, and had little
love for churchmen, were being seduced by the women's
arts.' Stake and gallows were threatened freely to silence
slanderous tongues. But the abbot was his own worst accuser. What deeper condemnation could be pronounced
against a house of religion than to have inspired all its
dependants with so deadly a hatred.
One more victim had yet to be sacrificed-the original
cause of the rebellion, the preacher who had questioned
1 Suadebant et mulieres eorum quod viri non valebant quae satis
communes fuerunt eisdem tempore hospitalitatis.
6




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the existence of gentlemen, when Adam delved and Eve
was learning to spin. John Ball had been taken at Coventry and had been handed over to Tressilian. The
Bishop of London had procured him a few days' respite,
being anxious for his soul, quia circa salutem suce animce
solicitus fuit. The saving state of mind being arrived at,
he too was made over to the executioner, and on the 15th
of July-a month and two days after his triumphal entry
into London, fate having overtaken him at last, he was
hanged, drawn, and quartered at St. Alban's in the king's
presence.
Richard, who had found the month a trying one, and
required some amusement after it, now went off on a hunting-party. The mourners who were left behind in the
town less easily recovered their spirits. The night of the
king's departure the bodies of the burgesses were taken
down from the gibbets and buried. The news of the daring exploit found Richard at Berkhampstead. He did
not return; but he, or those about him, sent back orders
with which it was necessary to comply. The people were
compelled to take the bodies out of the earth and again
hang them up in chains.
"Such," says Walsingham, with childish malignity,
" such was the liberty which they had won for themselves,
the liberty of being made into hangmen."
V.
ALL was now over, and the chains were once more riveted on the English commons. Something had been gained.
The barons recognized that slavery could not last for ever;
that means must be found for gradual emancipation;
from this time the serfs and villains were allowed, when




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their lords were willing, to purchase their freedom. All
else settled back into the old grooves. The commons failed
to rescue themselves from the gripe of the manorial lords.
The Wickliffites, who at one time were likely to have antedated the Reformation, were beaten back in the same way
along the lines of the spiritual revival. The barons were
brought to justice in the wars of the following century,
when the feudal system virtually perished. The monasteries, with the superstitions on which they rested, prolonged their sickly days for another hundred and fifty
years. So much grace was granted them if haply they
could learn their lesson and repent. Over them, alas! the
storm had swept in vain; and they used their respite only
that monks and monkery might steep themselves in deeper
infamy, and make their very names loathsome in the nostrils of honest Englishmen.
Not willingly did the St. Alban's tenants bend again
into obedience to Abbot Thomas de la Mare. Their handmills were gone, but sooner than grind at the abbey mills
they carted their corn to be ground many miles away beyond the abbot's jurisdiction. The relations of the poor
men who had been executed, " so deadly was their malice,"
set fire to the abbot's barns. For many months the bitterness and hate continued. Gradually, however, they bowed
their necks to the inevitable. Life in town and convent
fell back into the old routine, and the abbot recovered his
spirits and forgot his calamities. The king and his soldiers had eaten him bare, but another harvest or two replenished his stores. The lawsuits which he won brought
him wealth, and with the wealth he added splendour to
the abbey. He bought pictures for the church in Italy.
He regilt the shrine, rebuilt the hall and gateway; he
glazed the cloister, and found an artist to paint in fresco
in front of the chapter-house the likeness suce lMajestatis,




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i. e. of Christ.  Sore at the attacks upon his warrens, he
became the strictest of game-preservers. The monks complained that they could not be allowed now and then so
much as a day's shooting. Otherwise they admitted that
he was a kindly old gentleman, good to the sick, gracious
in manner to all, and not too harsh in enforcing austerities
upon others which he scrupulously practised himself. He
wore a hair-shirt, with which he never parted. Once or
twice a week, corporales disciplinas satis asperas suscepit,he gave himself a severe flogging. At length, growing
very old, he became helpless in body and imbecile in mind.
In this state he lingered till he was 87 years old, and when
he died, there died with him all that was left of worth in
the Abbey of St. Alban's.
The Prior, brother de la Moote, who had for some years
managed everything, had made his own arrangements for
his election as successor. No sooner was the breath out
of Abbot Thomas's body, than the prior's friends voted
him in by acclamation without prayer or ceremony; seized
him in their arms, carried him into the church, and
seated him on the altar. Huge presents to the king and
Pope secured the ratification of the otherwise scandalous
proceeding, and then set in in earnest the age of riot and
extravagance. The monks did not fill up their numbers,
that there might be more money to share among those
who remained. Their complement was a hundred. They
fell away to sixty-four and thence to fifty. The abbot
lavished the revenues upon costly buildings-the most
worthless of these great persons being always those whose
tastes were most magnificent. -He spent large sums at
St. Alban's. He spent sums still larger on a private
palace which he erected on a distant estate. He kept no
accounts; all was waste and confusion. No note was taken
of days of rest or saints' days. Alike on fast and festival,




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spade and pickaxe, trowel and hammer were kept busy.
All regard for religion appeared to have perished. At
length the "pains of Gehenna" overtook him. He died of
remorse and pleurisy.
There is no occasion to follow step by step the descent
of the stair which ended in destruction. Two abbots only
out of the remainder of the list require to be noticed, the
second of whom may be said to have achieved a supremacy of infamy; the other at the better end of the scale
lived to show how well-intentioned men found their moral
nature contaminated in the conventual atmosphere.
Abbot John, of Whethampsteade, having held office for
some years in the early part of the 15th century, retired as
unable to conduct the business satisfactorily to himself or
others. He was succeeded by an Abbot Stokes, whose
administration was again a scene of confusion and peculation. At Stokes's death, in 1452, there being no other
tolerable candidate, the convent invited the aged Abbot
John to resume the ungrateful duty. On taking the reins
once more, Abbot John found the management of the
house had fallen entirely into the hands of a young monk
of sharp business qualities, named William of Wallingford.
On this William were heaped the offices of archdeacon,
cellarer, sub-cellarer, bursar, forester, and chamberlain.
He was officiarius generalis-official general, in fact, and
was known by that name in the abbey.
Abbot Stokes, among his other delinquencies, had been
a miser. On his death-bed he was surrounded by a group
of brethren, among whom the prior, as spokesman for the
rest, thus addressed him:
"Sir," he said to the dying man, "you have been a
Midas, seeking only for gold. For the Church you have
done nothing. To us monks you have been mean and parsimonious. Death is now at your door, and has almost




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sealed your lips. Tell us now, while you are able to speak,
what have you been doing these eleven years with the
abbey revenues?"
The abbot muttered feebly that he had saved and
secreted a thousand marks. Four hundred of them he
left to the convent for repairs. The rest he bequeathed
to the next abbot, who would find the accounts in disorder.
The prior inquired where the hoard would be found.
The abbot pointed to the offciarius and his brother Thomas.
They could indicate the place, he said. It was in a chest
under the dormitory. The abbot died. The officiarius
was invited to produce the treasure. He brought out two
small locked boxes, which, when opened, were found to
contain two hundred and fifty marks. He protested that
he knew of no more.
The prior, stupefactus, said no more at the time. This
little incident was probably the secret of the recall of
Abbot John, whose age and weight might counterbalance
the power of this questionable William. Abbot John, after
his second installation, felt himself long unequal to pressing
so delicate an inquiry. It was plain to him that in the
official and his brother he had to deal with an Ananias
and Sapphira; but he knew not precisely how to act towards them. In theory the possession of private property
was a breach of the monastic vow; but the rule had been
effete too long to bear sudden revival. At length he collected his courage, sent for the offciarius and questioned him.
The unabashed officiarius stood to his story. He admitted that Abbot Stokes had spoken of a thousand marks;
but the abbot's senses must have been wandering. He
swore by God and all the saints, he even offered to swear
on the sacraments, that for his part he knew of nothing
but what he had produced.




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" Brother," Abbot John answered, "no God-fearing man
can believe that my predecessor told a lie when he was
dying. To lie at that time is to go straight to the author
of sin and everlasting darkness. Do not slander his
memory. If you have kept back the money, confess. You
commit one sin in having money at all; you commit another,
and a worse, when you perjure yourself."
The officiarius had gone too far to draw back. He
persisted in his innocence. His brother Thomas persisted
with equal confidence. Both wished they might go to
hell, and never see paradise, if they were not speaking the
truth.
The abbot bade them have mercy on their souls. He
told them that they were doing worse than murder; the
pit might swallow them up.
They had probably come to consider the pit a highly
problematical place. They swore again, with all most
solemn attestations, that Abbot Stokes had been mistaken;
and the Abbot John, knowing that they had a strong party
in the convent and out of it at their backs, and that if he
pressed too hard, odium potius quam aurum extorqueret, he
might extort more hate than gold, again seemed to let the
inquiry drop.
But he kept his eyes open. Two accounts are given,
slightly differing, of what followed. Substantially, however, it was something of this kind. The most cautious
rogues are not always consistent in their stories. At one
time the officiarius admitted, in confession, that he owned
property to the amount of 1601. At another he said, in
conversation, that he had paid 1401. to the abbot. The
abbot sent for his accounts under the heads of his different
offices; under each head the convent was made out to be
in debt. The abbot asking what was to be done, the
officiarius said coolly that the treasury was empty, and he




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must borrow. It was too much. Secret investigations
had revealed that the officiarius had been speculating with
the funds of the abbey "like a child of this world," filius
hujus sceculi. He had been buying in the cheapest and
selling in the dearest market,l and pocketing his gains.
On his first entrance into the convent, while yet a lad, he
had been a capitalist, and was found to have lent money
upon usury. As bursar he had cut down wood and sold
it, and had made no entry of the payments. He had
manumitted "villains," and the price of their freedom had
gone to his private purse.
The abbot, in mente abhorrens, delivered his soul!
" What!" he exclaimed, "have you not confessed? Is
not the whole convent ringing with it, that you have
160.? Have you not said that you have brought 1401. to
me? Blush, brother, blush. This is the most audacious
lie that you have yet told. Under what planet were you
born? You know well you have brought me no money.
You so swear and forswear and contradict yourself that
there is no truth in you. It is now plain, as others have
told me, that you will say anything. You are not to be
believed though you swear on book or sacrament. You
have plundered us in your places of trust; we are in debt
and cannot maintain our state. How unfit are you then
to hold office in the family of the Lord! Where is the
money for which you sold our woods? Where is the price
of our villains' freedom?"
In Abbot Paul's time the punishment for such an oficiarius would have been excommunication till full confession; after confession the hair-shirt, the scourge, the
1 Studuisti assidue bono pretio emere et caro pretio vendere. It
ils interesting to find a man charged as if it were a crime with
having acted on the cardinal maxim of the modern science of sciences.




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penitential vigil; years of disgrace and suffering; and
absolution hardly earned at last. Times were changed.
The new age had trampled out the old, and penance was
out of fashion.
Abbot John was a good man in his way, but he was
more anxious to recover his money than to punish sin. If
he could wring out of the alarms of the officiarius a share
of the spoils, convent discipline might lie over till better
times, and brother William's talents for business might be
useful to the abbey.
"Go now," he continued; "in recompense for these
transgressions bring the late abbot's hoard. Bring what
you have yourself gained by your unlawful tradings. The
brother that conceals treasure departs from God and becomes one of the family of the Devil. Dives, for his avarice, had his reward in hell. Lest you too go to the same
place, fetch the money. It must be a thousand pounds in
all. If you refuse, I will proceed against you by the
canons. Use no more vain subterfuges. The good servant may live by his office, but if he is a robber and a
thief he is fit only to be hanged, and to burst asunder like
Judas. Tell no more lies. Peccatores, are they, brother,
not precatores (the abbot condescending to pun), who heap
up riches and deny the possession of them? Prcevaricatores, are they, not prcedicatores, who justify themselves,
and wash their hands in innocency when they are really
guilty? Bring the money, I say; bring it, and you shall
find me your gracious lord. You may keep something in
your own purse, that you may live like an honest fellow.
You must not pile up gold for yourself, and give nothing
to your brethren. I can allow you to do a stroke of business now and then for yourself. Confine yourself within
the limits which I prescribe, and you shall not be worried




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about your vow of property;' but do not plunge into the
mire, or for a little gain risk being swallowed in the pit for
ever."
So ended the abbot's harangue, and the officiarius withdrew to bethink himself. If he gave up the money, he
confessed to perjury. If he held out, he might be prosecuted and the whole convent might turn against him. He
was a monk of resources. He went privately to the abbot's chaplain. If the abbot, he said, would indeed be his
gracious lord, and would leave him in his offices, he would
pay all the outstanding debts of the abbey. He would pay
the sums which were due to the Pope and king on the last
election; and he would undertake further that in three
years his abbot should have three hundred pounds in the
treasury, and should owe nothing to any man.
The compromise was eagerly caught at. What more
could be desired? Gold flowing like the stream of Pactolus; and scandals smoothed over and buried.
Abbas gavisus non modice. The abbot was delighted.
Brother William, who had been filius perditionis, was once
more an heir of salvation. The chaplain was empowered
to say that, on these terms, all should be forgotten. The
officiarius "was as glad as one that had found great spoils."
The debts were paid; the abbey flourished, as well as the
Roses wars would allow, so long as Abbot John lived;
and when he died, we read without wonder that, after a
short interval, this William of Wallingford, by consent
of the whole house, reigned in his stead.
Little more remains to be said. We shall read without
wonder also, that of all abbots of St. Alban's this William
of Wallingford contributed most towards the erection of
1 Et nullus contra te objiciet aut super vitio proprietatis improperabit in seternum-a faint pun again on the word property.




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that magnificent pile of buildings whose ruins breathe celestial music into the spirit of sentimental pietism.
It was the same William of Wallingford who made the
Abbey of St. Alban's, while he ruled over it, a nest of sodomy and fornication-the very aisles of the church itself
being defiled with the abominable orgies of incestuous
monks and nuns.
The evidence of their infamy lies recorded with deadly
conclusiveness. The cry of indignation against the condition of the exempt English abbeys reached to Rome, and
shocked even the tolerant worldliness of the much-enduring
Pope. When the civil war was over, and Henry VII. was
settled on the throne, Innocent VIII. enjoined Cardinal
Morton to visit St. Alban's, and report upon it. Cardinal
Morton, after examination of witnesses, has left in his Register' as the result of his inquiry, that the brethren of the
abbey were living in filth and lasciviousness with the inmates of the dependent sisterhoods; that the adjoining
Nunnery of Pray was a common brothel; the prioress setting the example, by living in unrebuked adultery with one
of the monks. The abbot himself, too old for pleasures of
the flesh, had reverted to his early habits: had cut down
the woods and sold them; had made away with the altarvessels, and stolen and disposed of the jewels of the shrine.
The few members of the house who retained a sense of decency were oppressed and persecuted; and the beautiful
abbey, the home of the Protomartyr, which had been born
in miracles and cradled in asceticism, was given over to
the abomination of desolation.
Another fifty years, and the religious houses in England
1 Cardinal Morton's letter to the abbot, detailing the scandals
which had been discovered, is printed in the third volume of Wilkins' Concilia. The original is in Morton's Register at Lambeth.




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-the soul of them long dead, the body putrefying and poisoning the air-were swept away by the besom of Henry
VIII. The land could bear with them no longer. So abhorred were they, that in many places the country people
rose on them and, when the Government gave the word,
tore them down, aisle and tower, groined arch and fluted
column, down to the very ground, not leaving one stone
upon another, and driving the plough over the spot where
they had stood. In the general ruin, the church of St. Alban's was saved by the burgesses. The long battle was
over at last. The scene of so many struggles was endeared
to them by the recollection of the fight. On the passing
of the Act of Suppression, they purchased the buildings
from the Crown for 4001.; and part of the church itself
has been used since the Reformation for the Protestant
service.
The ruins of the rest have stood for three centuries, instructive emblems of the fate of noble institutions which
survive the spirit which gave them meaning and utility.
They preach with a silent force more eloquent than the
tongues of a thousand orators, that the most saintly professions are not safe from the grossest corruption, and that the
more ambitious the pretensions to piety, the more austere
is the vengeance on the neglect of it.
There is a talk now of restoring St. Alban's. We are
affecting penitence for the vandalism of our Puritan forefathers, and are anxious to atone for it.
Cursed is he that rebuildeth Jericho. Never were any
institutions brought to a more deserved judgment than the
monastic orders of England; and a deeper irreverence than
the Puritan lies in the spurious devotionalism of an age
which has lost its faith, and with its faith has lost the power
to recognize the visible workings of the ineffable Being by
whose breath we are allowed to exist.




REVIVAL OF ROMANISM.
SECTION I.
REVIVAL OF ROMANISM.
THE proverb which says that nothing is certain but the
unforeseen was never better verified than in the resurrection, as it were out of the grave, during the last forty
years, of the Roman Catholic religion.  In my own boyhood it hung about some few ancient English families like
a ghost of the past. They preserved their creed as an heirloom which tradition rather than conviction made sacred
to them. A convert from Protestantism to Popery would
have been as great a monster as a convert to Buddhism or
Odin worship. "Believe in the Pope! " said Dr. Arnold,
" I should as soon believe in Jupiter." The singular change
which we have witnessed and are still witnessing is not
due to freshly-discovered evidence of the truth of what
had been abandoned as superstition.  The intellect which
saw the falsehood of the papal pretensions in the sixteenth century, sees it only more clearly in the nineteenth.
More than ever the assumptions of the Holy See are perceived to rest on error or on fraud. The doctrines of the
Catholic Church have gained onlyincreased improbability
from the advance of knowledge. Her history in the light
of critical science is a tissue of legend woven by the devout
93




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imagination. Liberty, spiritual and political, has thriven
in spite of her most desperate opposition, till it has invaded every government in the world, and has penetrated
at last even the territories of the Popes themselves. In
his own dominions, at least, the Holy Father flattered
himself he could maintain an administration based on
Catholic principles as an example to the unbelieving
world. His rule became so abhorred that it could be upheld only by the bayonets of the stranger. When the
stranger withdrew, his power fell from him by its inherent worthlessness, and he has been driven by his subjects in irreverent impotence within the walls of his own
Vatican.
The tide of knowledge and the tide of outward events
have set with equal force in the direction opposite to Romanism; yet in spite of it, perhaps by means of it, as a
kite rises against the wind, the Roman Church has once
more shot up into visible and practical consequence.
While she loses ground in Spain and Italy, which had
been so long exclusively her own, she is gaining in the
modern energetic races, which had been the stronghold of
Protestantism.  Her numbers increase, her organisation
gathers vigour. Her clergy are energetic, bold, and aggressive. Sees, long prostrate, are re-established; cathedrals
rise, and churches, with schools, and colleges, and convents,
and monasteries. She has taken into her service her old
enemy the press, and has established a popular literature.
Her hierarchy in England and America have already
compelled the State to consult their opinions and respect
their pleasure; while each step that is gained is used as
a vantage-ground from which to present fresh demands.
Hildebrand, in the plenitude of his power, was not more
arrogant in his claim of universal sovereignty than the
present wearer of the tiara.




Revival of Romanism.             95
What is the meaning of so strange a phenomenon?
Is the progress of which we hear so much less real than
we thought? Does knowledge grow more shallow as the
surface widens? Is it that science is creeping like the
snake upon the ground, eating dust and bringing forth
materialism? that the Catholic Church, in spite of her
errors, keeps alive the consciousness of our spiritual being,
and the hope and expectation of immortality? The Protestant Churches are no less witnesses to the immortal
nature of the soul, and the awful future which lies before
it than the Catholic Church. Why is Protestantism standing still while Rome is advancing? Why does Rome count
her converts from among the evangelicals by tens, while
she loses to them, but here and there, an exceptional and
unimportant unit?
Many causes have united to bring about such a state of
things. Many and even contradictory tendencies can be
seen to have combined in the result. When the Oxford
theologians began, in 1832, their attempt to unprotestantise the Church of England, they were roused to activity
chiefly by the Latitudinarianism of the then popular Whig
philosophy.  The Whigs believed that Catholics had
changed their nature and had grown liberal, and had insisted on emancipating them. The Tractarians looked on
emancipation as the fruit of a spirit which was destroying
Christianity, and would terminate at last in atheism.
They imagined that by reasserting the authority of the
Anglican Church, they could at once stem the encroachments of Popery and arrest the progress of infidelity.
Both Whigs and Tractarians were deceiving themselves.
The Catholic Church is unchanging as the Ethiopian's
skin, and remains, for good or evil, the same to-day as
yesterday. The Tractarians' principles led the ablest of
them into that very fold against which they had imagined




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themselves the most efficient of barriers. From the day
in which they established their party in the Anglican
communion, a steady stream of converts has passed
through it into the Catholic ranks; while the Whigs, in
carrying emancipation, gave the Catholics political power,
and with power the respect and weight in the outer world,
which in free countries always attends it.  No principles
could have seemed more opposite than those which in
1832 divided the Oxford divines from the Radical philosophers. Yet they have combined in the same effect. They
are even combined in the single person of the late Prime
Minister of England, who wished to force the great liberal
party there, the inheritors and custodians of the free
traditions of the nation, to unite with him in handing
over the national education of Ireland to the Catholic
prelates.
The phenomenon is not confined to England. An attempt of the same kind to get possession of the education
funds has been made and will be repeated in New York.
In America, in Holland, in Switzerland, in France, whereever there is most political freedom, the power of the
Catholics is increasing.
The battle of Sadowa overthrew the Jesuits in Austria,
where they had so long reigned over soul and body. The
re-establishment of the German Empire under Protestant
Prussia is virtually the crowning victory of the struggle
which began in the Thirty Years' War. The papal party
there is, at last, finally broken, and when the Jesuits begin their old intrigues again they are made to know, by
the most abrupt and decisive measures, that there is a
master over them who now means to be obeyed. In free
countries, on the other hand, where the right of every one
to his own opinion is a cardinal proposition, where the
executive authority is purposely kept weak, and parties of




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97


all kinds are encouraged to combine to advance their own
theories, there Jesuitism finds itself at home. There, by
the possession of those peculiar qualities which States constitutionally governed are least able to develop, it works
at special advantage in a soil ready prepared for the seed.
Partly from the desire of change and from the weariness
with what is familiar; partly from superiority of organisation in countries where power is proportioned to numbers,
and where the peasant of Tipperary or the tide-waiter of
New York has the same value as a voter as the more cultivated English or American citizen; partly from intellectual causes which require more careful examination; it is
a fact not to be denied that in countries where, at the
beginning of the century, a Catholic was as rare as frost
in July, and the idea of a return of Popery would have
been ridiculed as madness, there, nevertheless, Popery is
returning with a rapidity and a force so remarkable as
to challenge attention and explanation. The reaction is
strongest where the movement in the opposite direction
was most violent. France, the France of the Revolution
and the Goddess of Reason, the France of Science and the
Academy, the France which, however dark her outward
fortunes, held with easy pre-eminence the intellectual sovereignty of Europe-France has seen, during these last
years, her most accomplished sons and daughters flocking
as pilgrims to the scenes of a pretended miracle; and a
woman who deserved rather a year's hard labour in jail is
erected into a saint.
Pio Nono, in the midst of his calamities, declares himself infallible. Italy answers with contempt. Germany
replies with telling the bishops that whether their master
be exempt from the failings of other mortals or not, they
shall obey the law of their country. In America, and
England, and France, many millions, of pious people bend
7
A




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before the decrees of the late Council as if they were
indeed pronounced by the Holy Spirit. As the reality of
his power passes from him, the Pope's pretensions shine
larger than ever. In spite of reason, in spite of history,
each day he finds his dominion extending. Each day he
has a firmer grasp upon the public press, the education,
and the government of the countries which had revolted
against him with greatest fierceness. Whither all this is
tending, and what are the causes of so unexpected a phenomenon, I propose to consider briefly in a succession of
short essays.
SECTION II.
ATTRACTION OF ROMANISM FOR UNEASY PROTESTANTS.
RELIGION differs from moral science in the authority
with which it speaks. Moral science addresses the reason,
and is contented with probabilities. It indicates what, on
the whole, after examination of the evidence, appear to be
the ethical conditions under which human beings exist in
this planet. Religion, on the other hand, speaks with
command, and corresponds to the laws of the State. The
law lays down a set of rules, and says to every man,
"Conform to these, or you will be punished."  Religion
lays down a set of doctrines, and says, "Believe these at
your soul's peril." A certain peremptoriness being thus of
the essence of the thing, those religious teachers will always
command most confidence who dare most to speak in positive tones. Assertions hesitatingly expressed, or qualified
with modest reserve, may suit the lecture-room or the
study; but they are out of place in the pulpit. An eager,
heavy-laden soul crying out from its heart, " What must




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I do to be saved?" will listen only to a preacher who
shows that he believes himself with all his energy in the
answer which he gives. It is no secret that of late years
Protestant divines have spoken with less boldness, with
less clearness, and confidence than their predecessors of the
last generation. They are not to be blamed for it. Their
intellectual position has grown in many ways perplexed.
Science and historical criticism  have shaken positions
which used to be thought unassailable. Doctrines once
thought to carry their own evidence with them in their
inherent fitness for man's needs, have become, for some
reason or other, less conclusively obvious. The state of
mind to which they were addressed has been alteredaltered in some way either for the worse or the better.
And where the evangelical theology retains its hold, it is
rather as something which it is unbecoming to doubt, than
as a body of living truth which penetrates and vitalises
the heart.
Thus where truth was once flashed out like lightning,
and attended with oratorical thunders, it is now uttered
with comparative feebleness. The most honest, perhaps,
are the most uncomfortable and most hesitating, while
those who speak most boldly are often affecting a confidence which in their hearts they do not feel. At the time
of the revolt from Rome, and for a century after it, the
characteristic of a Protestant was his hatred of falsehood.
The ingenious sophistry which would make a proposition
at once false and true, false in one aspect and true in another, was a snare of Satan to be trampled on and detested.
Truth was truth, to be loved beyond all earthly or unearthly things. Lies were lies, and all the philosophy in
the world could not make them cease to be lies, or make
an honest mind put up with them.      Had Protestant
preachers the ancient courage, they might still display




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this, the noblest aspect of their characters.  But from
some cause, it seems they dare not speak, they dare not
think like their fathers. Too many of them condescend
to borrow the weapons of their adversaries. They are not
looking for what is true; they are looking for arguments
to defend positions which they know to be indefensible.
Their sermons are sometimes sophistical, sometimes cold
and mechanical, sometimes honestly diffident. Any way,
they are without warmth, and cannot give what they do
not possess.
The Romanist has availed himself of the opportunity.
Every difficulty which troubles his rival ought to trouble
him still more, but he has long since confounded truth with
the affirmations of what he calls the Church. The Protestant finding three centuries ago that the institution
called the Church was teaching falsehood, refused to pin
his faith upon the Church's sleeve thenceforward. He has
relied upon his own judgment, and times come when he is
perplexed. The Romanist, in fancied triumph over him,
points to his infallible authority. "See," he says, " what
comes of schism. The Church is the appointed guide.
The Church alone guarantees to us the existence of God
or of the soul. Believe with us or be atheists; there is no
alternative."  In the Hindoo legend, the world stands on
the back of an elephant, the elephant on a tortoise. We
ask where the tortoise stands, and we get no answer. Similarly, we ask the Romanist where his Church stands. "It
stands," he says, "on Peter, and Peter stands upon Christ."
That is, stripped of verbiage, it stands precisely on the
same foundation on which the Protestant religion stands
-on the truth of the gospel history. Before we can believe the gospel history, we must appeal to the consciousness of God's existence, which is written on the hearts of:us all. There is no real alternative between the Catholic




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Church and atheism, for the Catholic has no evidence of
the being of God which is not common to every other
Christian-nor any of the truths of the gospel narrative
but such as the Protestant shares with him. But his
Church stands as a visible thing, which appears to the imagination as well as the reason. The vexed soul, weary
of its doubts, and too impatient to wait till it pleases God
to clear away the clouds, demands a certainty on which it
can repose-never to ask a question more. By an effort
of will, which, while claiming the name of faith, is in
reality a want of faith, it seizes the Catholic system as a
whole. Foregoing the use of the natural reason for evermore, it accepts the words of a spiritual director as an
answer to every difficulty, and finds, as it supposes, the
peace for which it longed, as the body which is drugged
with opium ceases to feel pain.
The convert, if he has been brought up a Protestant,
asks for an interpretation of this or that doctrine which
he had heard condemned as idolatrous, of this or that historical event where the Church had seemed to have acted
as if inspired, not by God, but by the devil. The director
meets him with a confident assertion that Protestant tradition is based on lying; that the Church was always tolerant and loving; that the tyranny and ferocity were with
the sects which had broken from her communion. Prepared by his emotional sympathies to welcome the explanation, the convert listens willingly, satisfies his remaining scruples with books put into his hands, the truth
of which he greedily assumes, and his dissatisfaction with
the creed from which he has separated deepens into resentment and hatred.
To no purpose afterwards is evidence laid before such
a man-evidence which would pass for conclusive in a
court of justice-that the Protestant traditions were, after




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all, true; that history remains where it was; that the lying is on the side of the new teachers. He chooses to
think otherwise. He no longer reasons, but feels. Opinions
adopted through the emotions are thenceforward inaccessible to argument. Excited by his new position, he throws
himself ardently into the devotional exercises which the
Church prescribes, and the zeal of which he is conscious
becomes a fresh proof to him that he has really found the
truth.
A Protestant, from the nature of things, comes in contact with the Catholic system in its most seductive form.
Where it has been in power, the Church of Rome has
shown its real colours. It has been lazy, sensual, and tyrannical. It has alienated every honest mind in Spain
and Italy, just as three centuries ago it alienated the forefathers of those who are now returning to its bosom. In
Protestant countries where it is in opposition, it wears the
similitude of an angel. It is energetic and devoted; it
avoids scandal; it appeals to toleration, and, therefore,
pretends to be itself tolerant. Elsewhere it has killed the
very spirit of religion, and those who break from it believe nothing. Evangelicalism has kept alive a spirit of
piety and hunger for the knowledge of God. The Catholic missionaries make their market out of feelings which
but for the Protestantism  which they denounce would
have ceased to exist, and find easy victims in those whose
emotional temperament is stronger than their intellect or
their faith.
Trials there have always been, and always will be, intellectual as well as moral. Our business, when they overtake us, is to bear them. We may not immediately see
our way out of a difficulty; but we may still keep our
conviction unshaken that they are explanations which we
do not see ourselves. To go over to an alien Church, be



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cause for a moment some evidence on which we had relied
in our own seems less strong than we had supposed, is,
when rightly looked at, mere cowardice and treason against
our own souls.
How far these conversions may go it is impossible to
say. So much only can be foretold with certainty, that if
by this or any other cause the Catholic Church anywhere
recovers her ascendency, she will again exhibit the detestable features which have invariably attended her supremacy.
Her rule will be once more found incompatible either with
justice or with intellectual growth, and our children will
be forced to recover by some fresh struggle the ground
which our forefathers conquered for us, and which we by
our pusillanimity surrendered.
SECTION III.
POLITICAL STRENGTH OF ROMANISM IN FREE COUNTRIES.
THE peculiarity of the Roman Church as a system of
discipline and government lies in the universal character
asserted for it by the medieval Pontiffs. The sovereign
authority is external to the different nationalities, the individuals of which belong to the Roman communion. It
knows nothing of national institutions, and cares nothing
for national interests except so far as it can employ them
for its own purposes. Complete in itself, acknowledging
no equal upon earth, and listening to no remonstrance,
the Holy See remains unchanged, and incapable of change.
Often baffled, often driven back and defeated, it recoils
only to readvance on the same lines. It relinquishes no
privilege. It abandons no province over which it has once
asserted its right to rule. It treats the world alternately




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as an enemy to be encountered, or as an instrument to be
bent to its own designs, and caring nothing for any institution but itself, free from all prejudices in favour of any
nation or any political form of government, it allies itself
with all the principles which sway successively in the
various 0rganisations of society. Monarchies, aristocracies,
democracies, it accepts them all, and utilises them indifferently; regarding none of them as having a right to
exist save by the will and pleasure of the wearer of the
tiara; but treating them  as phenomena of the world,
which it is the business of the Church to control, and
lending the Church's authority to whatever party promises
to be most useful to it.
Never was the Church better disciplined, never more
completely denationalised and unpatriotic than at the
present moment. When her creed was really and universally received and believed, her bishops and archbishops
were engaged in the local government of their several
countries. They were English, they were French, they
were Spanish. They shared in national aspirations, they
were swayed by national prejudices. The Popes themselves
were often rather Italian princes than vicegerents over the
mystic organism which was co-extensive with mankind.
As temporal governments have become secularised, the
influences have ceased which so long interfered with the
centralising tendencies of the system. As division of
opinion grows among the masses, those who remain or
who become members of the Catholic Church find a closer
bond of union in their creed than in their temporal allegiance. The Church of Rome is now herself and nothing
else. From the Pontiff to the humblest parish priest, her
ecclesiastics acknowledge no object save the assertion of
the Catholic cause. Her bishops and clergy all over the
world are as completely obedient to orders from Rome,




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they work together as harmoniously and enthusiastically
as the officers of a perfectly organised army. Whether
in their own minds they approve or disapprove the orders
which they receive-it is no matter-they obey them.
The Immaculate Conception is proclaimed; there is a
murmur of surprise, but it dies away: the miracle in the
womb of St. Anne becomes thenceforth a matter of faith.
Papal infallibility claims to be acknowledged; clamour
follows, and even active resistance, but when the decree is
pIast, submission is absolute. The hierarchy regard themselves as soldiers of a cause to which all minor interests,
all personal opinions must yield. Unanimity and cooperation are essential to success; and with a heartiness,
an enthusiasm, a singleness of purpose which is never
forgotten, and to which every enjoyment and occupation
of life is deliberately postponed, the entire ecclesiastical
order devotes itself, body and soul, to the propagation of
the principles of the Roman Church. Rarely, or never, do
we hear now of personal scandals, rarely of rash experiments which expose the cause to discredit. If a mistake
is made, as with the vision of the virgin in the south of
France, there is no confession or retractation. The united
power of the priesthood is brought to bear to carry imposture through; opposition is faced down, and courage and
resolution turn the shame into a fresh triumph.
An organization of this kind acts obviously with extraordinary advantage in countries which have free institutions.  Where there is a vigorous executive, where the
secular government has an existence of its own, and the
representative body is simply consultative or legislative, the
growth of an imperiuzm i inmperio, an authority, distinct
from the State, and moved by impulses exterior to the
realm, is always jealously watched, and when it becomes
aggressive, is encountered and restrained. So it was in




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the old German empire. So it was in England under the
Plantagenet and Tudor princes. Even in Spain, the
most Catholic country in the world, the Church's aspirations were often uncomfortably checked. The State in
France supported the Gallican liberties. Joseph II. in
Austria beats down priestly encroachment and ties its
hands. Germany is no sooner united again under the imperial crown than the same problem returns. The Church
is encountered by principles which intend to assert themselves. She has declared war against those principles.
She opposes them with her old arts. She is at once seized
by the throat, and driven back within her own lines.
In countries governed by authority, intelligence rules.
In free countries, numbers rule. The supremacy of the
Church is incompatible with any kind of liberty-liberty
of conscience or of reason, liberty for man to expand in
any direction save what the Church marks out for him.
Obviously and confessedly, it is the enemy of everything
which we now call civilisation and improvement. Yet it
is an enemy against which self-governed peoples, who are
most proud of their supposed advancement, contend at
greatest disadvantage. Power follows the majority of
votes. The Church marshals its forces in an unbroken
phalanx. The theory of a free government supposes every
citizen to be influenced by patriotism, to exert his own intelligence, to take a personal and individual share in the
business of the State. The Roman Catholics have no
country but their Church. They are allowed no independence. They are private soldiers in an army which is
commanded by the priests, and united and organised action is as superior at the polling-booth as an army is superior to a mob in the field. They claim their right to
the free assertion of their opinions in the name of republican principles, and it cannot be denied them. But no such




Revival of Romanism.              107
republican liberty is permitted within their own lines.
They obey their commanders, and their commanders care
nothing for the nation in the management of which they
are challenging a share. They are members of a spiritual
empire which aims only at submitting all other powers
under its feet. They are Catholics first, and Americans
or English afterward. Yet as English or American citizens, they possess the privileges of freemen, and the wirepullers at political elections, whose horizon is bounded by
the result of some immediate struggle, know too well the
value of such allies to be unwilling to bid high for their
support. Thus it is that in the English Parliament,
though England does not herself return a single Catholic
representative, the Catholics, through the Irish members,
often hold the balance of power, and governments exist
but by their sufferance. Thus lately the Catholic vote
controlled the city of New York, and but for the disgrace
in which they were involved by the scandalous corruption
of the party which they had borne into power, the Catholics would have probably controlled it at this moment.
Those who believe, as I do, that the Catholic doctrines
are false, that the Catholic pretensions to universal sovereignty are absurd, and that, in the long run, truth and
good sense are certain to prevail, see in this apparent recovery of strength but an eddy in the great stream of
tendency. They will be provoked at the folly which may
throw back for a generation individual nations, delay the
general improvement, generate, perhaps, once more political complications; but they will rest confident of the general result. In the sixteenth century the Catholic Church
courted the alliance of the despotic sovereigns. The despotic sovereigns seemed towers of strength to it; but
when they fell, it was buried in their ruins. It avails
itself now of the weak side of party government in con



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stitutional monarchies and republics, and it achieves an
apparent success; but the success can only last till patriotism and intelligence are awake to its advances. The
minds of a whole people are less easily penetrated than
the mind of a minister like Prince Bismarck, but when
the conviction reaches them, they will assert themselves
with the same emphasis and the same effect.
SECTION IV.
CAUSES OF WEAKNESS IN MODERN PROTESTANT CHURCHES.
ALWAYS when men are in earnest about religion, it will
appear as a visibly controlling influence in their daily
habits. Men who have a real, genuine belief in God, men
to whom God is not a name, but an awful, ever-present
reality, think naturally before all other things how they
best can please Him; how they can make his law the law
of their own existence. This is the meaning of saving
faith. A faith that is alive, a faith that is a faith in deed
and in fact, issues necessarily in a life of holiness.
The Reformation of the sixteenth century was the waking up, after a long slumber, of a living conviction of this
kind; and the Reformers were not more distinguished from
the Catholics by the simplicity of their doctrines than by
the austerity and purity of their lives. The veil of imposture which had so long shut out the light of the sky
had suddenly been rent away. The ritualistic paraphernalia which had usurped the functions of piety appeared
as the tawdry furniture of a theatre when surprised by
daylight. Masses, penances, absolutions, pilgrimages to
the shrines of saints-mechanical substitutes, all of them,
for a life of righteousness-were recognized in their infinite




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contemptibility as but the idle mummery of a spiritual
puppet-play. The true nature of human existence, the
tremendous responsibilities of it; the majesty and purity
of God, and the assurance of his judgment, came home as
they had never come before to the hearts of those whose
eyes were opened. Thus, while in their consciousness of
sin and infirmity, the Reformers repudiated with passionate earnestness every notion of human merit; while they
denied that by the fullest obedience men could either deserve
God's favour, or escape his wrath, they endeavoured, nevertheless, with all their souls, to learn and to do his will.
They loved what they knew to be good; they hated what
they knew to be evil. They lived soberly, purely, modestly,
honestly, and industriously. They modelled themselves
after the highest conceptions of duty which they were able
to form. Wealth would have been showered on Luther
had he cared to receive it: his scale of expenditure was
that of a modern artisan. Calvin might have commanded
any income that he liked to name from the revenues at
Geneva: he was contented with the average wages of a
clerk. The example of the apostles of the Reformation
was the rule to their followers, and when the congregations
were in a position to give to their convictions the effect of
law, they framed their institutions on the principles of the
strictest morality. In Geneva, in Scotland, in Englandas long as the Calvinistic party retained power-the civil
magistrate was the guardian of the morals of the people.
A sin against the Almighty was treated as a crime against
the State; and adultery, and drunkenness, and impurity,
foul language, disobedience to parents, and all the various
forms of dishonesty which the law now lets alone, were
brought within the cognisance of the secular authority.
A discipline so severe could only have extended into the
public administration when it had been introduced spon



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taneously by the mass of the citizens into their private
families; and a religion which could display its power in
characters so legible had no need of the support of arguments. When we see a tree in vigorous health, we do not
ask it to prove to us that it is alive. The fact carries its
own evidence with it, and we demand no more. A religion
which holds possession of our lives, which directs us at
each step which we take, becomes part of our own souls.
Unless, in some shape or other, it prescribes a rule of conduct, it inevitably loses its hold. The Catholic system
scarce leaves an hour without its stated duties; such and
such forms to be gone through, such and such prayers to
be repeated. Night and day, morning and evening, at
meals and in the intervals between meals, the Catholic is
reminded of his creed by a set form. Calvinism superseded
these formal observances by yet more noble practical observances. It was ever present with its behests in fixing
the scale of permitted expenditure, in regulating the dress,
the food, the enjoyments, the hours of sleep and labour;
sternly cutting short all idle pleasure and luxury; sternly
insisting on the right performance of all practical work,
the trade, the handicraft, or whatever it might be, as something for every thread and fibre of which a man would
one day be called to account.
There is no mystery in the influence which Calvinism
was thus able to exercise as long as the spirit of it lasted;
neither is there any mystery in the decline of that influence when the fruits of faith became less and less conspicuous. Ideas are more powerful when they are fresh.
Enthusiasm cools, emotions die away, when the cause
which evoked them grows familiar. Our hearts are like
metal, malleable at high temperature, but hardening as
the heat evaporates, and selfishness begins to reassert itself.
After the middle of the seventeenth century Protestantism




Revival of Romanism.            111
ceased to be aggressive. It no longer produced men conspicuously nobler and better than Romanism, and, therefore, it no longer made converts. As it became established,
it adapted itself to the world, laid aside its harshness, confined itself more and more to the enforcement of particular
doctrines, and abandoned, at first tacitly and afterward
deliberately, the pretence to interfere with private life or
practical business.
Thus Protestant countries are no longer able to boast
of any special or remarkable moral standard; and the
effect of the creed on the imagination is analogously impaired. Protestant nations show more energy than Catholic
nations, because the mind is left more free, and the intellect is undistorted by the authoritative instilment of false
principles. But Protestant nations have been guilty, as
nations, of enormous crimes. Protestant individuals, who
profess the soundest of creeds, seem, in their conduct, to
have no creed at all, beyond a conviction that pleasure
is pleasant, and that money will purchase it. Political
corruption grows up; sharp practice in trade grows updishonest speculations, short weights and measures, and
adulteration of food. The commercial and political Protestant world, on both sides of the Atlantic, has accepted
a code of action from which morality has been banished;
and the clergy have for the most part sate silent, and
occupy themselves in carving and polishing into completeness their schemes of doctrinal salvation.  They shrink
from offending the wealthy members of their congregations. They withdraw into the affairs of the other world,
and leave the present world to the men of business and the
devil. For the working purposes of life, they have allowed
the gospel to be superseded by the new formulas of political
economy. This so-called science is the most barefaced
attempt that has ever yet been openly made on this earth




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to regulate human society without God or recognition of
the moral law, The clergy have allowed it to grow up,
to take possession of the air, to penetrate schools and colleges, to control the actions of legislatures, without even
so much as opening their lips in remonstrance.
Imagine Knox, or Calvin, or Latimer coming back to
us again. To what would they address themselves? To
the settling doctrinal differences between Ritualist and
Evangelical; Broad Churchman and Socinian; Episcopalian and Independent? Or to the cynical complacency
with which the very existence of a God is discussed as a
problem of speculation; with which the principle of Cain
is enunciated as the elementary axiom of life, that man is
his own keeper and not his brother's; that his first duty is
to himself; that the supreme object of his existence is to
make his fortune, and enjoy himself in this lifeQuam minime credulus futurse?
I once ventured to say to a leading Evangelical preacher
in London that I thought the clergy were much to blame
in these matters. If the diseases of society were unapproachable by human law, the clergy might at least
keep their congregations from forgetting that there was a
law of another kind, which in some shape or other would
enforce itself. He told me very plainly that he did not
look on it as part of his duty. He could not save the
world, nor would he try. The world lay in wickedness,
and would lie in wickedness to the end. His business was
to save out of it individual souls by working on their
spiritual emotions, and bringing them to what he called
the truth. As to what men should do or not do, how
they should occupy themselves, how and hoW far they
might enjoy themselves, on what principles they should




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carry on their daily work-on these and similar subjects
he had nothing to say.
I needed no more to explain to me why Evangelical
preachers were losing their hold on the more robust intellects: or why Catholics, who at least offered something
which at intervals might remind men that they had souls,
should have power to win away into their fold many a
tender conscience which needed detailed support and
guidance.
SECTION V.
WEAKNESS OF CERTAIN POSITIONS ADOPTED BY
PROTESTANT THEOLOGIANS.
THE Reformers of the sixteenth century were contending
against definite falsehoods, which had been taken up into
the system of the Church of Rome, and were offered by
it to the world as sacred realities. Purgatory, penance,
pilgrimages, masses, the worship of the saints-supported
by and in turn supporting the monastic orders, which had
become themselves unendurably corrupt, these and their
kindred superstitions the Reformers denounced as frauds
and impostures. They declared the established service of
the Church to be the practice and worship of a lie. They
appealed to the Bible as an authority which Catholics
themselves acknowledged. With the Bible in their hands
they pointed from the idolatrous ceremonial to the spiritual
truths contained in the Gospels and Epistles, and the service which man owed to his Maker they affirmed to be
integrity of heart and purity of life and conduct.
They insisted on faith as the ground of acceptance,
because faith was the spirit out of which acceptable obe8




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dience rose as the plant rises from the seed, because mechanical obedience rising from selfish hope or selfish fear was
not obedience at all. But it is dangerous to take passionate
language, and in cool blood construct out of it a positive
article of a new theology. Even in the lifetime of St.
Paul, justification by faith only was construed into a
sanction of Antinomianism. It has been the excuse and
the apology of modern preachers, who have allowed religion
to decline from a rule of conduct into a thing of emotion
and opinions.
Again, intense piety, when it reflects on the Divine
nature, perceives and feels that it is all-pervading, all-controlling, absolute and incapable of change, existing in its
immutable essence from eternity to eternity.  To that
which is all-powerful there can be no rival or enemy;
hence the conviction that all things are and must be predetermined by the Divine will. The will which appears
to us free in man is but apparent only. A will which is
really free can exist only in the Being which is selforiginated.
Nevertheless, it is no less plain that there is in the
constitution of things something good that is to be infinitely loved; something also that is evil to be infinitely
hated-a spirit opposed to God, however it comes into
being-eternally cut off from Him, and the subject, therefore, of eternal reprobation.  God, it may be said, has
made all things for himself, even the wicked for the day
of wrath-but how or why is impossible to say.
All these positions are severally true-justification by
faith, predestination, and reprobation-yet they are fitting
objects of meditation only to the profound intensity of
devotion in which alone they can be harmonised. It is
dangerous, it is worse than dangerous, to take these high
mysteries which require us to be lifted out of ourselves before




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they can be even faintly comprehended, to formularise
them deliberately into propositions, and in catechisms and
theological articles thrust them on the conscience as something which it is necessary to believe. To represent man
as an automaton, sinning by the necessity of his nature, and
yet as guilty of his sins-to represent God as having ordained all things, yet as angry with the actions of the
puppets whom He has Himself created as they are-is to
insist on the acceptance of contradictory assertions from
which the reason recoils-to make Christianity itself incredible by a travesty of Christian truth.
An error yet more mischievous has been the Protestant
treatment of the Bible. The Canon of Scripture was at the
Reformation received by the Church as universally true.
No serious question had been raised about it since the
Canon was fixed. No internal difficulties had been discovered in any of its parts. Historical criticism had not
yet come into existence. But, again, the superstitious and
magical theory of the Bible had not come into existence
either. The sacred books contained the records of the
faith; they were the lively oracles of God, and as such
were regarded with a special, if undefined, reverence.
The Reformers, appealing from   the Church to the
Bible, finding in the Bible the true nature of religion which
the Church had obscured, finding there utterances so profound and awful as to pierce their very hearts, spoke
naturally of it as the one source of truth. The Bible was
to be the religion of Protestants.  From  an Infallible
Church they appealed to the Infallible Book. Yet, as
before, it proved dangerous to erect words, which were
more the expressions of emotion than of intellectual conviction, into dogmatic statements of fact. Just as with the
sacraments-symbolic rites were turned to idols, so the inspiration of the Bible was interpreted into the mechanical




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dictation by the Holy Spirit of every word and letter.
Pretensions were advanced for it, which only once, if ever,
it appears to advance for itself, and that in a single ambiguous text. The Bible contains the literature of a nation
who, more clearly than any other nation, were allowed to
perceive their dependence on their Maker and Master in
Heaven. But like Him of whom it is said that He increased in wisdom and stature, it is evident that the Jews
were not exempt from the conditions under which all
people have grown from childhood to maturity. They
were carried through the usual stages of infancy, youth,
manhood, and decline. Childhood, with its innocent piety;
youth, with its impetuosity; manhood, with its regal vigour; and afterwards, worldliness and luxury. Accompanying all these stages is a literature, corresponding
precisely to what we have experienced in nations growing
under the common conditions, not excluding even the
scepticism to be found in Ecclesiastes and certain of the
Psalms, where it would seem even to a sovereign of the
chosen people, that there was one event alike to all, to the
good and the bad, the wise and the foolish; and so far as
was visible in the common current of human things, the
hand of God was not apparent in them at all. In the
whole series of the books which form the Old Testament
-historical, legislative, lyrical, or prophetic-there is
manifest, throughout, the peculiarly human element which
so fits them to be the instructors of humanity. Every
age, every mood of mind, is represented there with its
distinguishing features; God, as the apostle says, making
Himself known to his people, "at divers times and in
divers manners."
It is to rob the Bible of its instructiveness, it is to leave
us bewildered before a phenomenon too intricate either for
our reason or our imagination, to assume that in these




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" divers manners" the Holy Spirit was using historians
and evangelists, prophets and apostles, as mere machines.
It is to leave us confronted with contradictions of which,
on this hypothesis, we can find no tolerable explanation,
with opposing statements which no skill can reconcile;
with the repudiation in one book of the temper and spirit
of another. Yet this is what Protestants have done, and
are doing still. They insist on the verbal correctness of
every word and sentence. They have committed the truths
of Christianity to a theory of their own creation, and
when they find themselves in difficulties they fall back on
sophistry. The six days of the creation are defined precisely by the writer of the Book of Genesis. The period
between evening and morning could have been meant only
for a day in the ordinary sense of the word. Science
proves unanswerably that the globe has grown to its present condition through an infinite series of ages; and Protestant theologians, entangled with their own fancies, have
imagined that "day" may signify a million, billion, or
quintillion of years. Construing literally the vehement
expression of St. Paul, they have insisted that death
originated in Adam's sin. They are confronted with evidence that death has reigned through all creation from the
earliest period, of which the stratified rocks preserve the
record.  They hesitate, they equivocate, they struggle
against the light, they do anything save make a frank
confession of their own error,
Critics again demonstrate that more than one book of
the Old Testament is of later date than tradition has assigned to it; that glosses have crept into the text; that
no miracle has been wrought to preserve the sacred literature from the same accidents to which other ancient records have been exposed. There was a time when faith
was stronger than it is now, and good Protestants were




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not afraid of truth. Why can they not still recognise
that this name of Protestant implies that they are soldiers
of truth, set to fight against falsehood wherever and whenever falsehood is detected? Why can they not see that
they have themselves caused the unbelief which is disturbing them, by having repeated the sin which they denounced
in the Catholics three hundred years ago, and having
overlaid the reality of the Gospel by gratuitous assumptions of their own?
We have erected dogmas, and made idols of them.
The idol falls down broken. The man of the world concludes that God Himself has been ejected from his throne,
that religion is folly, and that atheism is the only reality.
The conscientious and devout, perplexed by doubts and
thirsting for certainty, take refuge in the communion
which claims to speak with an authority from which there
is no appeal. Weary of the hesitating utterances of
Evangelical theologians, they fail to see that the Church
of Rome is unchanging, not because it is in possession of
the truth, but because it is impervious to it. The overbearing attitude of that Church, the insolent assumptions
of it, overawe their imagination. They take it at its own
estimate of itself, and make themselves over body, soul,
and intellect, to be its slaves for evermore.
These are the two directions in which the minds of
men are now drifting; and in these directions they will
continue to drift more and more till Protestant theologians
assume a nobler attitude, till they prove by their fearlessness of truth that they have a real belief, that they detest
equivocation with as much heartiness as Latimer or
Calvin detested it; and are not afraid, because a passing
cloud intercepts the rays, that the sun has therefore
dropped out of the sky.




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SECTION VI.
THE ANGLICAN EPISCOPAL CHURCH.
NOTWITHSTANDING some difficulties which embarrass
them, chiefly of their own creating, the Evangelical
Churches furnish, after all, but an insignificant number of
converts to Romanism compared to another reformed communion which aspires to a double character, and to be both
Evangelical and Catholic.
It pleased Queen Elizabeth to arrest the spiritual revolution in England when it had run but half its course.
She would not, perhaps she could not, permit what we now
mean by religious liberty. She instituted a system, and
intended it to be co-extensive with the empire, which would
comprehend as well Catholics as Protestants, those who
believed in the magical efficacy of the sacraments and those
who regarded the sacraments as forms which had a flavour
of the idolatrous.
She established a hierarchy, which yet should not
be a hierarchy; bishops who might be called successors
of the apostles, yet at the same time should be creations
of her own, deriving their authority and their very breath
and being from the Crown. She instituted a liturgy and
articles of an analogous double composition-to Catholics
assuming the complexion of the ante-Nicene Church, to
Protestants embracing the most vital doctrines of the Calvinistic theology.
Neither the queen nor those who acted with her were
themselves under any illusion as to the real nature of
their work. The queen, in her impatient moods, refused
her prelates a higher name than Doctors; suspended,




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imprisoned, and threatened to unfrock them. On the
other hand, she punished dissent as a crime. She insisted
on conformity with an institution which she had made
deliberately insincere. She fixed her eyes on the complications which lay immediately before her.  She constructed her Church for a present purpose, with a conscious
understanding of its hollowness. The next generation
might solve its own difficulties; Elizabeth was contented if
she could make her way undethroned through her own.
With the artifice which was engrained in her disposition,
she admitted what she knew to be false into the organisation which was to control the education of the English
race; and the deadly thing has remained where she placed
it, bearing its poison-laden blossoms century after century.
Never has history pronounced a sterner condemnation on
the experiment of tampering with truth. The bishops, as
they settled into their places, assumed the airs and repeated
the crimes of the prelates whom they succeeded. They
constructed a theology to suit their position, and when
the genuine part of the people saw through it and refused to accept it, they persecuted them till they provoked
a revolt which cost a king and an archbishop their lives,
and for a time overthrew the whole constitution of their
country.
The Commonwealth was followed by a reaction in
which the same chain was again imposed.   Spiritual
institutions can be remodelled only at high temperature. When the metal is cold they can be broken, but
they cannot be altered. Charles II. believed in the
Anglican bishops no more than Elizabeth believed in
them; but he and his friends hated the Puritans, and
to be revenged on them they braced together again the
dislocated pieces of Anglicanism. The reaction went so
far as to encourage James to attempt the restoration of




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genuine Popery. The Revolution followed. The Kirk
established itself in Scotland. Popery was proscribed
in England and Ireland; but the same shadowy Episcopal Church maintained its form, in these two countries,
unimpaired and unmodified. It was supposed to have
learned its lesson; to have been made to understand,
at last, that, spite of its Episcopal consecrations and its
pretended priesthood, it was a Protestant institution and
not a Catholic one. The body and appearance might be
Catholic. The voice, when it opened its lips to teach, must
be Protestant.
The Revolution had really and truly produced some
temporary effect of this kind. For a century and a half no
more Romanizing tendencies were heard of in England;
and such life as the Church possessed was Calvinistic.
But the free action of the spirit was paralysed by the
dead body to which it was attached. The emotions of
genuine piety were choked in the utterance. Religious
paralysis still prevailed over England, and more fatally
over Ireland.  Nepotism, Erastianism, and self-indulgence became the characteristics of the Anglican clergy;
the best of them taking refuge in a stoical morality which
was powerless except over the educated.  It could not
last. First Wesley and Whitfield rose, blowing into flame
the ashes of the Reformers' theology which Parcadise Lost
and the Pilgrim's Progress had prevented from growing
entirely cold. Afterwards followed the great Evangelical
revival which spread into intellectual society, and, aided
by the terrors produced by the French Revolution,
checked for a time the advancing tide of materialism.
But Evangelicalism was morally timid and intellectually weak. It did not grapple boldly with the vices of
society, still less with the greed of money-making, which
was saturating politics with ungodliness. The reviving




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earnestness of the nineteenth century demanded something
which it described as deeper and truer than had satisfied
the preceding generation. The insincerity of Elizabeth
and her advisers had yet to bear its last and deadliest
fruits.
Forty years ago a knot of Oxford students, looking
into the Constitution of the Church of England, discovered principles which, as they imagined, had only
to be acted on to restore religion to the throne of the
empire. With no historical insight into the causes which
had left these peculiar forms in the stratification of the
Church like fossils of an earlier age, they conceived that
the secret of the Church's strength lay in the priesthood and the sacraments; and that the neglect of them
was the explanation of its weakness. The Church of
England so renovated would rise, they thought, like
Achilles from his tent: clad in celestial armor, it would
put to flight the armies of infidelity, and bring back
in a modern shape, adapted to modern needs, the era
of Hildebrand and Becket. They and only they stood on
ground from which they could successfully encounter
atheism. They and they only, as tracing their lineage
through imposition of hands to the apostles, could meet
and vanquish the pretensions of Rome.
Singular imagination! The battle which ensued is
not yet over, but the issue of it has long ceased to be
uncertain. Of the conflict with materialism, these gentlemen made less than the Evangelicals had made. Materialism is sweeping over the intellect of the age like
a spring tide, continually on the rise.  They did not
conquer Rome. The ablest of them after all their passionate denials, were the first to see that if their principles
were sound, the Reformation had been a crime; and that
they must sue for admission into the bosom of their true




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mother. They submitted; they were received; they and
the many who have followed them have been the most
energetic knights of the holy war; they have been the
most accomplished libellers of the institution in which
they were born. The Anglican regiment, which pretended to be the most effective against the enemy in the
whole Protestant army, is precisely the one which has
furnished and still furnishes to that enemy the most
venomous foes of the English Church and the largest
supply of deserters.
What these gentlemen have really accomplished is the
destruction of the Evangelical party in the Established
Church. While the most vigorous of the Anglo-Catholics
have gone over to the Papacy, the rest have infected
almost the entire body of the Episcopal clergy with principles which seem to add to their personal consequence.
The youngest curate affects the airs of a priest. He
revives a counterfeit of the sacramental system in which
he pretends to have a passionate belief. He decorates
his altar after the Roman pattern; he invites the ladies
of his congregation to confess to him and whispers his
absolutions; and having led them away from their old
moorings, and filled them with aspirations which he is
unable to gratify, he passes them on in ever-gathering
numbers to the hands of the genuine Roman, who waits to
receive them.
The Episcopal Church of England, with its collateral
branches in this and other countries, no longer lends
strength to the cause of Protestantism. It is the enemy's
chief depot and recruiting-ground. The ascendency which
it enjoys through its connection with the State; the exclusive possession of the old cathedrals and parish churches;
the tradition that hangs about it that dissent is vulgar,
and that to be an Anglican, if not a Papist, is essential to




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being a gentleman, are weapons in its hands which it
uses with fatal ingenuity. The Dissenters themselves are
not proof against the baneful influence which is extending
even into their own borders. To those who have eyes to
see, there is no more instructive symptom of the age than
the tendency of Presbyterian, Independent, and even
Unitarian clergy to assume a sacerdotal dress and appearance. Their fathers insisted that between laymen and
minister there was no difference but in name, and they
carried their protest into the outward costume.  The
modern ministers form themselves into a caste. They display their profession in the collars of their coats; whether
they are Roman or Genevan can be learned only on particular inquiry. Their fathers ejected from their chapels
the meretricious ornaments so dear to sentimental devotionalism. The bare walls seemed to say in their stern
simplicity, that no lies should be spoken or acted within
them. Now each chapel must have its delicately-moulded
arches, its painted windows, its elaborate music. The
exterior of an Independent meeting-house is no longer a
symbol of the doctrine which is still preached from its
pulpits. We enter, and we are still uncertain where we
are, till we study the construction of the East End-and
even the still blank East End suggests in its form the
idea of the not distant altar and sacrificing priest.
SECTION VII.
FRANCE.-LOUIS NAPOLEON.
OF all countries in both hemispheres, France is the peculiar boast of the Roman Catholic reactionaries. France,
the eldest child of the Church, has returned, after her revolutionary orgies, to the feet of her true mother. France




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is once more the chosen Knight of the Cross. The unbeliever and the heretic are invited to bend with awe and
admiration before the majestic and confounding spectacle.
The overwhelming disasters which have overtaken her are
really but the most decisive indications of the favor with
which she is regarded by Providence. She is suffering,
but she suffers in mercy to expiate the sins of her fathers.
She suffers as a discipline to purify and reinvigorate her
for the magnificent work which she is yet to achieve.
Let us look a little closer at this phenomenon. In the
sixteenth century, France, like other countries, was stirred
to its heart by the Reformation. The noblest part of her
made a splendid effort; but the baser elements proved too
strong to be overthrown. The Huguenots were destroyed
by war and massacre; the offer of salvation having been
once rejected was not repeated, and the light, when it came
again, came in the form of lightning, the guillotine, and
the Reign of Terror. The fatal work was not accomplished
at once. Henry of Navarre, when he conformed to the
Church of Rome, confessed in doing so that he had no religion at all. Yet he retained so much of his early training that he continued tolerant, and neither practised nor
permitted persecution.
Even under Richelieu, France supported Protestant
Germany against Rome and Austria, and the Gallican
liberties remained an evidence that she was not yet wholly
enslaved. But the Gallican liberties died away. France
became in the last century as submissively orthodox, and
as debased in becoming so, as the most devoted Romanist
could desire.  The debauchery of her prelates was an
astonishment even in the most profligate of European
courts. The nobles sank into the most barbarous tyrants
that ever preyed on the industry of the poor, and when
conscience awoke at last and found a voice in Voltaire, it




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confounded religion with the counterfeit, which had usurped
its name and place, and declared Christianity itself to be
a worn-out fable. The nation whose weakness and superstition had consented to and caused these degradations
caught the cry and echoed it. The Revolution came.
Kings, nobles, priests, churches, all were overwhelmed;
and the altar of reason, with Bishop Talleyrand for a
hierophant, was a fitting sequel of the recall of the Edict
of Nantes.
The Revolution cleared the air.  With the spiritual
poison flung violently out, with lies at last gibbeted as lies,
if there was little positive truth, the French people recovered energy and courage. The splendid successes of
the revolutionary generals showed how strong men may
become, however uncelestial the light which is burning in
them, when they have the spirit to rise in revolt against
palpable imposture. Napoleon came, compounded of the
hero and the quack. He turned France into an empire.
He considered himself a second Charlemagne. He was to
be liege lord'of Europe, and other princes were to reign
as his vassals. The Church was willing to become the
handmaid of his ambition; and, too ignoble to understand
that the strength of nations lies in their representing some
kind of truth, Napoleon made his concordat with the Pope.
He re-established the Catholic religion in a humiliated
form. An army of priests in the churches was to supplement his army in the field, and equally to look to him for
its orders. " Is it not splendid?" he said to one of his
marshals when the first High Mass was again celebrated
in Notre Dame. " Very splendid!" growled the marshal
turning away in scorn. "It needs only the half million
of men to be here who have lost their lives to get rid of
all that to make it perfect."
Imposture and vanity ran their course hand in hand




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till the great image with its feet of clay was at last prostrated. The Bourbons came back, and the Church, on the
fall of Napoleon, recovered still more of its lost power.
Again a revolution. Louis Philippe followed, and the
Liberals regained their feet; but no sign appeared
in them of reviving piety after a Puritan or Huguenot
type. A literature rose, on the contrary, of which Balzac,
Eugene Sue, and Madame Sand were the chief priests
and priestesses-a literature so debasing, so vile, so detestable, so completely saturated with intellectual and spiritual unmanliness, that "Candide" and "La Pucelle"
are wholesome reading in comparison.
The soul-poisoning was accompanied remarkably with
material progress, and the result shows how much this
much-vaunted material progress is worth when it means
only that great employers of labour are to pile up fortunes
and live in splendour on the appropriation of the wage of
the artisan. After eighteen years there was a revolution
once more; and this time there was to be no mistake.
The millenium was to come in earnest. Labour was to
have its rights; all men were to have their fair share in
the profits of their toil, each according to his desert. One
thing only was wanting-an indispensable thing, yet the
absence of which occurred to no one-that before a millenium could come there must be a renewal of what used
to be called a fear of God.
A year ensued of murderous battles in the streets, and
the hero of the new period then came forward upon the
stage. Another Napoleon-nephew, so called, of the great
uncle, but with no better title than his mother's word to
the name which he bore-a man who had twice attempted
to make a civil war in France in his own interest, had
twice escaped the scaffold to which a healthier age would
have assigned him with the general approbation of man



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kind, crawled into the Presidency of the Republic under
the shelter of his name. By perjury twice repeated, and
the murder of some thousands of innocent people, he
opened himself a way to the Imperial throne. He imposed on the peasantry. He debauched the army. He
took to his heart on one side the commercial swindlers of
the Bourse to manage his finances for him. He flung
himself, on the other, upon the Pope and the Catholic
Church; and the Pope and the Catholic Church received
their new champion with characteristic benedictions. The
Tuileries and the Elys6e became the scenes of the most
boundless self-indulgence, tinctured with the rose-pink of
sentimental piety. Elegant abbes hung about the cabinet
of the empress or the boudoirs of the ladies-in-waiting, like
fashionable doctors round the couches of the malades imaginaires. And thus set in under the patronage of the Empress Eugenie the wonderful Catholic reaction which we
are to recognise as so manifestly divine.
French society, after its course of Balzac and Madame
Sand, sighed for a less dangerous diet. Too enervated for
wholesome food, the Parisians found what they needed
in the emotional pseudo piety in which they could indulge
in the intervals of their vices. A religious literature sprung
up in the same key as the literature of adultery. The modern Catholic Sentimental Novel is the growth of the same
hotbed which produced "Indiana" and the "Scenes de la
Vie Privee," being, perhaps, however, one degree more
detestable from the sacred names and associations which
are made to show themselves in that poison-loaded atmosphere. The emperor corrupted the honour of the army.
The fathers confessors corrupted the souls of the educated
classes. The people, kept in order, as it was called, by
despotism, throve and made money, raising a harvest,
however, to be gathered by others. Truth, honour, pa



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triotism, manliness, every virtue which ennobles humanity,
withered at the root; while the Church prospered upon a
system of wholesale lying which revived the worst impostures of the Middle Ages. The disorders of France
appeared specially to require the interposition of the Virgin
Mary. The Virgin, therefore, as a Dea ex machind has
been ready any moment for the last twenty years to put
her hand to the work. Eleven years ago, in a tour in the
South, I saw a party of Sisters passing through the street.
I inquired who they were. I was told that shortly before
the Virgin had appeared to a neighboring cur6, and had
directed him to announce as her pleasure that money must
be subscribed, and a convent built on a spot which she
named.   The cure delivered his message in his chapel.
The money came in, the ground was given, the house was
built and filled. Again, Our Lady came, expressed herself
pleased, but required now another and a larger house.
This, too, was erected by the same means, and was thriving vigorously when I last heard of it.
The story of Our Lady of Salette is notorious to all
the world. Two children declared that the Virgin had
shown herself to them on the mountain-side. Their tale
was examined into by competent persons, and was declared
to be idle nonsense. The Pope and bishops thought differently, and the pious mind of France listened to the Church.
A magnificent shrine rose on the scene of the marvellous
vision, and devout countesses and eminent counts stream
from all quarters thither, to contribute their offerings and
pay their humble adorations.
And what was the result of all this?  The Catholic
Church was agitated at the reconstruction of the German
Empire under a Protestant dynasty; and the emperor
was tempted to strike a blow at it before it had consolidated itself. Never has the world seen a retribution so
9




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instant and so tremendous. The "Man of December"
was hurled from his throne, after covering himself with
infamy. Had one glimmer of manhood survived in him, he
would have ridden among the grapeshot at Sedan, and
have died though he could not live with honour. He
preferred inglorious decrepitude in the luxury of an English country-house. The Imperial generals behaved like
fools or traitors, and clouded the glory of their country by
undergoing the most shameful defeat which ever befell
a European army. The Pope, the chief offender, forfeited
his temporal sovereignty. The dreaded Italian kingdom
became a complete and established fact. His Holiness
was enclosed in the Vatican, and Protestant Germany was
made the central stone of the arch in the new organisation
of the Continent.
Such is the fruit of the Catholic revival of France.
This is what we are called on to admire. " Who," to use
the words of John Knox, "who that has a spunk of godliness in his heart," can fail rather to see in this great overthrow the Divine retribution upon unveracity? God is
neither dead or sleeping. Now as ever the Avenger is on
the watch.
SECTION VIII.
GERMANY.
As the present state of France is the measure of the
value of the Catholic revival, so Northern Germany,
spiritually, socially, and politically, is the measure of the
power of consistent Protestantism. Germany was the
cradle of the Reformation. In Germany it moves forward
to its manhood; and there, and not elsewhere, will be




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found the intellectual solution of the speculative perplexities which are now dividing and bewildering us. The
truthfulness, the manliness, and simplicity which characterise so specially the German race, were incarnated in
their highest form in the miner's son who headed the original revolt. Luther, like all very great men, was essentially single-minded. He did not attempt, like Calvin,
to form religion into an institute, and shape the system of
it into dogmatic perfection. Where he was ignorant, he
acknowledged his ignorance. What he saw clearly to be
false, he denounced as false and flung away. But he did
not far outstrip the insight of the generation to which he
belonged; and he was its guide because he was its representative. The mechanical theory of the mass was hateful to him, for it was inconsistent with the honour due to
the Almighty. The mystic virtue of the priesthood was
incredible to him. He saw priests to be liars, impostors,
and sensualists, and he refused to believe that such men as
those could be the spiritual rulers whom God had appointed for mankind.
But in an age when magic was universally held to be a
real power he saw no reason for denying that the desire of
the believer to unite himself with his Saviour might work
a change in the eucharistic elements.- He took the words
of Christ literally. He would not venture to assume a
metaphor without positive ground.
He translated the Bible; and in translating it he
created the modern German language as an instrument of
literature. He impregnated the minds of the German
people with light, and life, and piety, and reverence. He
was a man of genius in the noblest sense, and looked into
nature with the eyes of a man who was at once a believer
in God, and a poet, and a philosopher. Luther was the
root in which the intellect of the modern Germans took




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its rise. In the spirit of Luther this mental development
has gone forward ever since. The seed changes its form
when it develops leaves and flowers. But the leaves and
flowers are in the seed, and the thoughts of the Germany
of to-day lay in germs in the great reformer. Thus Luther
has remained through later history the idol of the nation
whom he saved. The disputes between religion and
science, so baneful in their effects elsewhere, have risen
into differences there, but never into quarrels. There has
been no passionate repudiation of Luther, as Cranmer and
Latimer have been repudiated by English Liberals and
High Churchmen. Luther's memory is enshrined in the
German heart, and his hymn is the battle song with which
the German legions still advance to victory.
Luther believed in truth with all his soul. He understood, as few others have understood, that truth will
make us free-truth and nothing else. There was no
patching up in Luther's workmanship of institutions and
doctrines which were felt to be false for personal convenience; no politic handling of exploded lies to make
the functions of the State work easily. Therefore, being
true to himself, he has been held in honour by all who
have loved truth as he loved it, though they may have
travelled far beyond the boundaries which, in Luther's
day, were held to circumscribe the scope of human vision
or speculation. As Luther studied always how to sift the
false from the true, so those who have come after him have
imitated the noble example. Other Protestant bodies
have clung to the letter of the Bible; have made it into
an idol; have considered that they discharged a religious
duty when each day they spelt mechanically through a
chapter of it. The Germans have set themselves, with all
their might, to understand the Bible, and to learn all that
can be known about it. They have laboured, as no other




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scholars have done, to obtain the exact text. They have
sifted the evidence for the date and origin of each book.
They have searched, with microscopic minuteness, through
the huge folios of the Greek and Latin fathers. They
have studied the corresponding literature of the East as a
key to the Biblical language; from the stone and picture
writing of Egypt and Assyria, to the philosophy born
of the intermarriage of Asiatic and Grecian thought.
The criticisms and essays of Ewald alone throw more
light on the obscure passages of the Jewish Scriptures
than all the dissertations of the scholastic divines, all the
unnumbered Commentaries which have been produced by
the industry of English and American Protestants from
the seventeenth century to the present hour. Others have
looked into the sacred texts for types of, or allusions to,
their own peculiar doctrines; the Germans have looked
rather for the meaning that was in the mind of the writer;
and in their boldest innovations on popularly received
opinions, they have shown a more real appreciation of the
nature and value of the Bible than those who have only
studied it for confirmation of theories which they were
already determined to believe; who, being unfurnished
with the rudiments of exact or real knowledge, have endeavored to force conclusions by clamour which they have
been unable to justify with argument.
There is something touchingly beautiful in the passion
with which English and American Protestant divines cling
to the letter of the Bible. It is an unconscious perception
that in this Book, in some form or other, lies the solution
of the enigma of existence. Their fault has been that they
have assumed without reason that, while the truth is there,
anyone who can read will find it there; that it is as intelligible to the unlearned as the learned. They have seen
in the Bible the meaning which their eyes brought with




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them. They have, I repeat, made the Bible into an idol.
Their theories, being the work of their own minds, mortal
like themselves, though dignified by the name of eternal
verities, recoil on them, as superstitions always recoil,
through the natural expansion of knowledge. The ground
slips under their feet; religion loses its grasp. Materialism takes hold of philosophy; corruption takes hold of
politics; speculative money-making and vulgar ambition,
of the individual souls of the millions. They look on bewildered and helpless, while the Popery, which had been
lying so long prostrate under the blows of the Reformation, lifts its unsightly limbs out of the grave, walks erect,
and flings its shadow over the world once more.
Protestant Germany stands almost alone, with hands
and head alike clear. Her theology is undergoing change.
Her piety remains unshaken. Protestant she is; Protestant she means to be. She has no philosophic radicals
to hold out their hands to Jesuitism.   Consistent in
practice and in theory, she has gone on from strength
to strength. The first to do justice to the peasantry, and
to solve the problem of the division of the land without
dissolving the national organisation, Prussia has found
an answer to the hardest political riddles; while nations
who fancied themselves far ahead of her in the freedom
of their institutions are looking at her now with dismay
and perplexity. By the mere weight of superior worth,
the Protestant States have established their ascendency
over Catholic Austria and Bavaria, and compel them,
whether they will or not, to turn their faces from darkness
to light. North German literature has penetrated whereever the language is spoken. The educated Austrian feels
the spell of Goethe and Schiller; Kant and Herder,
Schleiermacher and Ewald are too strong for Jesuit casuistry. German religion may be summed up in the word




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which is at once the foundation and the superstructure of
all religion-Duty! No people anywhere, or at any time,
have understood better the meaning of duty; and to say
that is to say all. Duty means justice, fidelity, manliness,
loyalty, patriotism; truth in the heart and truth in the
tongue. The faith which Luther himself would have described as the faith that saved, is faith that beyond all
things and always truth is the most precious of possessions,
and truthfulness the most precious of qualities; that where
truth calls, whatever the consequence, a brave man is
bound to follow.
This is real Protestantism. Knowledge grows; belief
expands; the facts of one age are seen by the next to have
been no facts, but creatures of imagination. The sincere
Protestant accepts the new revelation; he piously abandons what God has taught him to recognize as error, and
he gathers strength by his fidelity. The insincere Protestant, forgetting the meaning of the names under which
he was enlisted in the war against falsehood, closes his
eyes, and clings to his formulas. Therefore, like St. Peter
failing through want of faith, he finds the ground turn to
water under his feet. His mortal eye grows dull. His
tongue learns to equivocate. From his pulpit, week by
week, he delivers mechanically the husk of his message.
The seed falls out on ground which each day is strewn
more thick with stones; while the world on one side, and
Popery on the other, are dividing the practical control
over life and conduct.
North Germany, manful in word and deed, sustains the
fight against both the enemies, and carries the old flag to
victory. A few years ago another thirty. years' war was
feared for Germany. A single campaign sufficed to bring
Austria on her knees. Protestantism, as expressed in the
leadership of Prussia, assumed the direction of the German




136            Revival of Romanism.
Confederation; and, while occupied with her internal organisation, Prussia found herself assailed with the most
vindictive determination by France. Furious at the defeat of Austria, hating and dreading the supremacy of a
Protestant power, the Jesuits had driven France into the
field to destroy it. Instead of breaking down Germany,
France was herself shattered as a wave shatters itself
against a rock; and the greatest of modern crimes was
punished with the most tremendous retribution.
The sword failing them, the Roman ecclesiastics betake
themselves to other weapons. They intrigue; they refuse
obedience to the law. They cover disaffection behind pleas
of conscience, and appeal for sympathy to mankind in the
name of religious liberty. The German Government, as
little moved by clamour as by force, replies steadily that
every German subject, Catholic or Protestant, shall submit
to the law; while free England and free America, divided
into parties which covet alike the support of the Catholic
vote, and having lost the power of distinguishing between
realities and formulas, affect to think that the Jesuits are
an innocent and an injured body, and clamour against
Prince Bismarck's tyranny. Surely we are an enlightened
generation.
SECTION IX.
FORMS OF MORAL DISORDER GENERATED IN MODERN
SOCIETY.
IN the absence of the more spiritual interests which in
other ages have occupied the intellect of liberal commonwealths, the pursuit of wealth has in our modern world
for many years become more and more absorbing. We
still hear at school of the Auri sacra fames, the scelerata




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insania, or the fable of Midas. We listen in church with
formal assent when the love of money is denounced as the
root of all evil. But we hold practically that this language has ceased to be applicable to the conditions of
modern society. Energetic men are ambitious and desire
to excel. The only road by which they can now rise to
pre-eminence lies in the accumulation of riches. Success
is measured even in literature and art by the money which
can be made out of them.
Social and political complications lie visibly ahead,
though yet perhaps at some distance, resulting from this
tendency, which may bring home to us the truth of an
experience which, we have flattered ourselves, cannot be
ours. The principles are understood on which money can
be gathered together. The principles are yet to be found
on which money can be justly distributed. Wealth of all
kinds represents labour. It is produced by the labour of
somebody. If one man secures too large a share of it,
another has to be content with too small a share; and
when the large shares fall to men who do not work and
the small shares to those who do, there arise discontent,
clamour, and mutiny.
Hereafter, possibly or certainly, the dissatisfaction will
assume a practical form. For the present, the moral
restraints are still felt which are inherited from other
times. In America the unoccupied lands form a safetyvalve. In the old world, emigration answers an analogous
end. And unless some "idea" arises in the masses which
may become the article of a creed, generations may pass
before the problem will become dangerous. Meanwhile,
the actual conditions, as they now exist, and will probably
long continue to exist, are producing an evil of another
kind which attracts less attention than it deserves.
The natural and healthy condition of man is one in




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which he works for what he receives. Those who contribute nothing to the general stock ought to take nothing
from it. The accummulation of capital in private hands
is creating, in continually enlarging numbers, a class of
persons who have abundant means to spend on themselves,
while they have nothing to do in return. A man makes
a fortune, as it is called; he leaves it to his children, who
find themselves to have inherited the services of an army
of genii, potent as those of Aladdin's lamp, to minister to
their pleasures. Fools spend their share on indulgence.
Indulgence is usually synonymous with vice; and as long
as their purses hold out they do mischief to every one who
comes near them. This kind of thing happily does not
often last long. The money is soon gone, and there is an
end of it. But the majority have sense enough to avoid
ruining themselves by extravagance. They live on their
incomes, ladies especially, and, having their time to themselves, and being spared the necessity of exertion, are considered as exceptionally happy-yet happy they cannot
te. Satisfaction of mind is allotted by Providence only
to industry; and not being obliged to be industrious, they
lose the capacity for it.  Enjoyments pall on them.
Having allowed the period of life to pass unused when
occupations can be successfully learnt, they are unable to
take their places afterward on the beaten roads of life.
They stray into fancy employments; they become dabblers
in politics, dabblers in art, dabblers in literature and
science. Nothing succeeds with them sufficiently to put
them on good terms with themselves; and then men and
women alike, and particularly the better sort of them,
being without wholesome work, and craving for something
which will satisfy the demands which their minds are
making on them, they fly to the opiates and anodynes of
the quack doctors of the spiritual world.




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I know not how it may be in America, but in England
and France there are multitudes of half-educated persons,
possessing, to their misfortune, sufficient means to subsist
on without working, who thus lapse into the condition
which I describe. They form a class which tends to exist
of necessity as long as the present relation between capital
and labour survives; and among them, as from a compost,
arise the poisonous spiritual exhalations of which so many
round us are sickening. These are the persons who, having nothing better to which to put their hands, take to
mesmerism and consulting the dead through rapping
tables. When mesmerism palls on them, they turn to
Romanism, which is its intellectual counterpart, but veiled
with a show of piety and a semblance of decency.
In the past generation there was an attempt to make
Evangelicalism serve the purpose. The resolution of religion into emotion, the negation of the value of work,
the contemplation of the scheme of salvation, with a certain quantity of devotional reading, partially supplied the
craving of the empty and hungry soul. But the Evangelical creed is too near the truth to serve as an anodyne for
mental disease. In its robuster forms, it is the spur of
energy and the companion of industry. The effect to
transmute Protestantism into feeling and sentiment has
happily been a decisive failure, and the spoilt and indolent
children of the unwholesome side of civilisation find an
element infinitely more agreeable to them in the incenseladen atmosphere and the languid litanies of the Catholic
chapels. In England certainly, perhaps elsewhere, thousands of ardent souls without the resources of employment, and feeding upon themselves, have turned from the
unsatisfying pietism of Hannah More and Wilberforce to
the system which is so happily organised to meet their
own necessities.




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They want occupation. It is thrust into their hand.
The priest presents them with a round of duties which will
keep every segment of the day employed. Attendance at
mass and vespers, reading the hours at the fitting intervals, special acts of penance or special somethings on
which the mind can dwell. The confessor attends like a
physician to the spirit's disorders, listens with consoling
sympathy to the tale of disquiet, and is ready with his
hemlock juice when the pain becomes intense. Is there a
complaint that God will not let Himself be seen? He is
present eternally on the Catholic altars, amidst the enchanted light which steals through painted windows and
the celestial music which imitates the choirs of the archangels. In the bedroom or closet at home, the Virgin
gazes lovingly from the walls; a crucifix stands concealed
behind folding-doors, to be looked on only in the most elevated or exquisite moments. Nature, the sovereign physician, bids us let our wounds alone, live healthily, do
right, and leave the rest to her. The confessor understands the value of the open sore. He knows that a soul
when cured of its pain will no longer need his aid, and insists on a continued repetition of a torturing self-examination which will make recovery impossible.
Thus the life is filled up. The victims of delusion
lavish the money which they ought never to have possessed on the system in which they are absorbed; and
chapels rise and cathedrals, and they dream that they are
doing service to God.
The money at least is a reality, and rebuilds the fallen
shrines of the old imposture. The labour of some poor
industrious man, in some far part of the world, stolen from
him by a cunning capitalist, is applied to a purpose which
the true owner would have probably despised and abhorred;
but, rightly or wrongly, the purpose of the hierarchy is




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served, and the proud structures rise, which, in turn, enchant the imaginations of the stupid multitude.
So long as the existing organisation of human society
continues, so long the class out of which recruits are furnished to the various armies of folly and falsehood will
multiply. Nature will provide a remedy in time; but
nature, when she interferes, more often destroys the patient
than cures the evil from which he suffers. Natural remedies, if we wait for them, come in the shape of socialism,
communism, and revolutionary outbreaks.
Let the Protestant ministers look to it. They are at
present the sole surviving representatives of true religion
in the world, and they have allowed their lights to burn
terribly dimly. Religion is the wholesome ordering of
human life; the guide to furnish us with our daily duties
in the round of common occupation; the lamp to light us
along our road and show us where to place our steps. If,
instead of using the light to see our way with in the darkness, we gaze into the light itself, the eye turned inward
will see at most only the structure of its own spiritual
retina; while the owner of the eye will plunge headlong
into the nearest ditch, or wander off the path into the
wilderness.
SECTION X.
MODERN LITERATURE AND MODERN EDUCATION.
To expressions of alarm at the progress of Romanism
it is generally answered that society is sufficiently secured
by the modern system of education. I am unable to
agree in that opinion. I do not believe that what we at
present mean by education is a guarantee against the




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Roman or any other superstition. From the criticisms
which have appeared in the English and American
periodical press any time these twenty years, one would
infer that during this period there have been at least a
dozen novelists more humorous than Sterne and more
pathetic than Richardson; as many historians and philosophers who were eclipsing Gibbon and Hume; as many
dramatists who, if not yet equal to Shakespeare, were
easily second to him. The writings of these gentlemen
flourish for the season, and are in the mouths of all men.
A year or two pass, and, as David says of the ungodly,
"I went by, and lo, they were gone; I sought them, but
they could not be found." Some other idol has started
up as brilliantly and equally ephemeral, and the fickle
world has left the old favourites for the new. The nineteenth century (or that second half of it in which our lot
is at present cast) is possessed with an idea that it eclipses
all the ages which have preceded it. Every goose that it
produces must be a swan, relatively if not absolutely.
Nevertheless fact and nature are inexorable. The goose
is a goose, and not a swan. Even if the illusion lasts for
his life, and conducts him to a grave in Westminster
Abbey, his emptiness finds him out, and the pages which
were read with admiration by one generation, the next
turns from with wonder at the taste that endured them.
The phenomenon is partly explained by the character of
modern criticism. In criticism there is a singular inversion of the rule which holds with ordinary employments.
Usually the practical part of things comes first; the judicial afterward. In literature, the aspirant to fame begins
upon the Bench, and when he has served his time in passing judgment on others, he descends to the Bar to practise
on his own account. The world follows the critic, and the
critic is still an apprentice in his trade.




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To any one acquainted with really great works in our
own or any other language, it has long been obvious that
rodern books are adapted simply to modern taste, and
that probably at no time has the amount of intellect or
knowledge requisite for literary success been so small as at
the present hour. Year after year the material becomes
thinner and weaker.  English popular books are not
vicious like the French-at least not generally so; but, if
possible, they are more utterly empty. They are constructed on the principles of homceopathy, the smallest
globule of wit being diluted with unlimited water. Yet
they are such as the age requires; the public stomach is
unequal to stronger diet. The mass of educated men are
worked hard at business which exhausts their energy,
while it makes no demand on the higher faculties of
thought. Something is needed as a relaxation, something
which will distract the attention, and can be read without
effort; something, therefore, which will require no exertion, either of intellect or imagination.
To the general habits of men in these days, the scale
of popular education is adapted. If we are proud of anything, it is our school system. We look back on the
education of preceding centuries with mingled pride and
shame: pride that we have left those wretched ways so
far behind us; shame that we descend from ancestors so
blind and negligent as to have been contented with so
miserable a makeshift.
In those centuries it is true that boys and girls learnt
but little; and they learnt in a fashion very unlike ours.
Those of them who were intended for manual work were
as early as possible apprenticed to their business. They
learnt in their religion that their duty was to do their work
well; they learnt by practice how to do the particular thing
which they were set to do. What they were taught, they




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were taught thoroughly-taught till they were become
masters of their craft. Similarly in the higher schools
and colleges, the intellectual student travelled over an area
limited in extent. He mastered completely two languages,
the most perfectly organised that have been produced by
human intelligence, and in learning the languages he became so intimately acquainted with the most perfect of all
literary work, that they were wrought into the texture of
his mind. I go to a school in New England, where the
modern system is developed in its highest completeness.
I see the most admirable mechanical arrangements. I find
class-rooms and classes where boys and girls of all ages,
from five to twenty, are ascending step by step through all
varieties of knowledge. Ancient languages and modern,
science and art, history and philosophy, poetry and mathematics, music and drawing-nothing is omitted, nothing
is unattempted, and progress is made in all. The senior
pupils are lifted through political economy into the higher
problems of statesmanship; a race in a competitive examination between a student of the old school and a student
of the new is a race between a tortoise and Achilles.
Yet the experiment has now continued for a generation
or two, and the fruits are less apparent than they ought
to be. A better education should have produced more
vigorous original thinkers, a more elevated standard of
taste, information more exact as well as more diffused, and
nobler principles of action. We find instead an increased
readiness to turn to any one of a hundred employments
by which money can be made: a sharpness of faculty, a
belief in mechanism as the ruling genius of all things, a
remarkable adaptability to mechanical pursuits; but along
with it not only an absence of real knowledge on ninetenths of the subjects with which their memories have
been loaded, but an absence of genuine interest in any



Revival of Romanism.


145


thing not convertible into dollars, an impoverishment of
literary taste, while at the same time there is a conceit of
knowledge on all subjects, rising from a smattering acquaintance with the surface of them, perhaps more mentally injurious than complete and conscious ignorance.
People so trained read, and form and express their own
opinions about everything. They are the patrons of art,
and their taste is the standard of excellence. The education acts upon the literature; the literature reacts on the
education; and instead of the sinewy thoughts of the
classic writers, which were strung into the minds of the
older students, instead of the exact knowledge of a few
excellent things which made them understand what knowledge was, and enabled them to distinguish at a glance
the charlatan from the true master, we have an infinitely
extended sciolism which has no accurate acquaintance
with anything, and is ready at any moment to be the dupe
of confident imposture.
All ranks and all sorts are educated together. It is
the boast of the United States that all her children are
started fairly in the race of life, that every boy in a common school knows that he may become President of the
Republic. So it was said a few years ago that every
French drummer-boy knew that he carried a marshal's
baton in his knapsack. Yet the knowledge does not seem
to have produced a very elevating effect in the French
army.
We may look down as much as we please on our grandfathers' ideas; but their notions on this subject were more
rational than ours. We ought not to set before a boy the
chance of becoming President of the Republic, or president of anything; we should teach him first to be a good
man, and next to do his work, whatever it be, as well as it
can possibly be done. It is better that a boy should learn
10




146            Revival of Romanism.
to make a shoe excellently than to write bad exercises in
half a dozen languages. The wider we make the area of
superficial cultivation, the more we destroy the power of
perceiving what good cultivation means; the more weare
condemning the generations which are to succeed to creative barrenness and intellectual incapacity. Our philosophy and our practice seek unconsciously the same level.
Our creed about ourselves and our destiny takes the colour
of the objects which we pursue with the most serious
earnestness. Our men of science are fast satisfying themselves, at last, that mankind are highly developed apes.
The theory has been suggested many times already. It
could find no hearing while religion and intellectual culture retained their old dominion. The Gospel of St. John,
the "Antigone," or " Hamlet," lie external altogether to
the sphere of the ape's activity. The achievements of the
nineteenth century, of which it boasts as the final efflorescence of the human soul, lie a great deal nearer to our
newly-recognised kindred.
The steamship and the railway, the electric telegraph
and the infinite multitude of kindred machineries, may
easily enough be evolutions of qualities, of which we perceive the germs in many creatures beside the apes. If
these are indeed our last and sublimest triumphs; if it is
in the direction of these that the progress of the race is to
continue, then indeed I can be content to look back with
proper tenderness on my hairy ancestry. Instead of ' a
little lower than the angels," I can bear to look on myself
as " a little higher than the apes;" and "Pickwick " shall
be as beautiful as the "Tempest," and Herbert Spencer
more profound than Aristotle, and the electric cable of
greater value to mankind than the prophecies of Isaiah or
the Republic of Plato.




SEA STUDIES.
To a man of middle age whose occupations have long
confined him to the unexhilarating atmosphere of a
library, there is something unspeakably delightful in a
sea voyage.  Increasing years, if they bring little else
that is agreeable with them, bring to some of us immunity from sea-sickness. The regularity of habit on board
a ship, the absence of dinner parties, the exchange of the
table in the close room for the open deck under an
awning, and the ever-blowing breeze which the motion
of the vessel forbids to sink into a calm, give vigour to
the tired system, restore the conscious enjoyment of
elastic health, and even mock us for the moment with
the belief that age is an illusion, and that "the wild
freshness" of the morning of life has not yet passed
away for ever. Above our heads is the arch of the sky,
around us the ocean, rolling free and fresh as it rolled a
million years ago, and our spirits catch a contagion from
the elements. Our step on the boards recovers its buoyancy.
We are rocked to rest at night by a gentle movement
which soothes us into a dreamless sleep of childhood,
and we wake with the certainty that we are beyond the
reach of the postman. We are shut off, as in a Catholic
retreat, from the worries and anxieties of the world.
No Times upon the breakfast-table calls our thoughts to
147




148


Sea Studies.


the last news from Paris or St. Petersburg, or the vehemently-expressed nothings of last night's debate in Parliament. Once, indeed, when I was crossing the Atlantic
in a Cunard Steamer, the steward entered the saloon
with a pile of fresh damp sheets under his arm. "Has
it come to this?" I said to myself. " Has Yankee enterprise invaded even the ocean, and robbed us even of our
ten days' respite from the leading article and the latest
intelligence?" But the steward was but playing pleasantly
with the spiritual appetite of the passengers. He had kept
back half the stock which he had brought with him from
Liverpool, and had preserved it between moistened blankets;
if the reality was beyond our reach we might stay our
hunger with the imaginary substitute. This was the explanation of the mystery; the waste of waters was still unconquered, and such of us as prized our brief interval of
tranquillity were left undisturbed.
I am speaking at present, however, not of the stormy
passage across what the Americans call the herring pond,
but of the delicious latitudes of the trades, where the
water is sapphire blue, where soft airs breathe lightly on
the surface, and the sharp jerk of the angry wave is never
felt; where the flying fish spring from under the bows on
either side of the ship like lines of spreading foam, where
you sleep with your door and windows wide open, a sheet
the heaviest covering which you can bear, and the air is
sweet and balmy as in that far distant land where Menelaus dwells because he was the son-in-law of Zeus:
Where never falls or rain, or hail, or snow,
And ever off the sea the cooling breezes blow.
Here newspapers, here letters even from those who are
nearest to us are an intrusion into "the session of sweet
silent thought" which has been snatched out of the tumult




Sea Studies.


149


of our ordinary existence. We enter the world alone, we
leave it alone. There is always a part of our being into
which those who are dearer to us far than our own lives
are yet unable to enter. The solitary side of our nature
demands leisure for reflection upon subjects on which the
dash and whirl of daily business, so long as its clouds
rise thick about us, forbid the intellect to fasten itself.
The mind, nevertheless, cannot steady itself by its
single strength; we require companions-but companions
which intrude upon us only when we invite them: we
require books, and the choice is a serious one. Of novels
in the cabin library there is always a liberal supply. Passengers provide themselves with shilling and sixpenny
editions, which are strewed about the benches and the
hatchways, and by those whose future is still a land of
hope and uncertainty are greedily perused. As we grow
old, however, the class of novels which we can read with
interest rapidly diminishes.  The love agonies of the
Fredericks and Dorotheas cease to be absorbing, as the
possibilities of such excitements for ourselves have set
below our horizon. At the crisis of the lovers' fortune we
incline to the parental view of the situation, knowing as
we do, by painful experience, the realities of the weekly
bills and the rent day. A novel which can amuse us
after middle life must represent such sentiments, such
actions, and such casualties as we encounter after we have
cut our wise teeth, and have become ourselves actors in
the practical drama of existence. The taste for romance
is the first to disappear. The taste for caricature lasts
longer, but eventually follows. Truth alone permanently
pleases; and works of fiction which claim a place in literature must either introduce us to characters and situations
which we recognize as familiar, and which would interest
us if we fell in with them ourselves, or, like the adventures




150


Sea Studies.


of the Knight of La Mancha, must play gracefully and
humorously with the disappointed pursuit of those high
ideals which the noblest follow longest, and which never
lose their fascination for us, even when their ill success is
most ridiculous:
But the best company at sea are the immortals, those on
whom the endurance of their works has set the seal of
excellence; which are read from age to age, from era to
era, and prove, by the tenacity of their hold, their correspondence with the humanity which under all changes
remains the same.
Homer, 2Eschylus, Sophocles, Pindar, Horace, Virgil
we never weary of, and in our later enjoyment of them
we forgive and even bless the once unpleasant measures
by which Greek and Latin were driven into us so indelibly.
One or other of these had gone along with me over many
a mile of land or ocean. When not long ago I was preparing for an expedition to South Africa I was considering
which of them should accompany me on this occasion,
when I bethought me of the third great Athenian tragedian, whom at college we had been taught to despise.
At school I had read the statutory four plays and forgotten
them, and had never looked into Euripides since. Aristophanes had sneered at him-deans and tutors disliked his
tone, and taught us to prefer the more austere grandeur of
his rivals. Deans and-tutors were probably right. They
knew, it is likely, no more of him than we did; but they
had inherited a prejudice; and prejudice on large subjects
is usually a conclusion formed in earlier times by men who
could give a reason for their convictions.
Yet it was evident that Aristotle greatly admired
Euripides. The most critical audience that ever damned
or immortalised a poet had given him a place as a dramatist on a level with the greatest masters of Athenian




Sea Studies.


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sculpture. To Goethe his merits as an artist appeared of
the very highest order. I determined that this time I
would take Euripides with me, and try to ascertain the
qualities which had led at once to so marked neglect, and
to an appreciation so emphatic from judges so well able to
form an opinion.
On the first contact with a remarkable writer, we often
exaggerate his relative magnitude. He is for the moment
closer to us than others with whom we have been long
familiar; and his light eclipses them because they are for
the time more distant, as the moon, the petty satellite of
an insignificant planet, quenches the brilliancy of the
stars. For six weeks Euripides became an enchanter for
me, and the Grecian world was raised from the dead into
a moonlight visibility, with softest lights and shadows
black as Erebus.
I could soon sympathise with Goethe's admiration.
No great poet whose works have come down to us equals
Euripides in the handling of Choric Metres. The arrangement of the words follows the thought as a musical
accompaniment; now soft as the lowest breathing of an
iEolian harp, now rising into a scream or leaping into the
stately magnificence of the suddenly introduced hexameter.
In the use of language as a musical instrument, Euripides
ventured on liberties which offended the severer taste of
the older school, but which, for the same reason, make his
composition of peculiar interest to the modern artistic
student.
The method, however, is but the result of a cause, the
effects of which are broader and deeper.  There is a
peculiar correspondency between the tone and feeling with
which the plays are penetrated, and the thought on
analogous subjects of our own age.
The Greek mind ripened rapidly in a single century.




152


Sea Studies.


Between the expulsion of Hippias and the death of Socrates, the Athenians passed through a series of political
and spiritual changes which modern Europe has scarcely
accomplished in five hundred years. In the general conception of human life, in the nature of the problems with
which men of intellect were occupied, Euripides is a curious
interpreter of the elements which are now surrounding
ourselves. We are travelling fast on lines parallel to
those on which he travelled, and he is probably nearer to
us to-day than he was to our fathers forty years ago. We
admire the plays of JEschylus as we admire the Prophecies
of Isaiah, as something beyond ourselves, something with
which we are in imperfect sympathy, which defies imitation, and was possible only under intellectual conditions
which lie outside our own experience. With Euripides,
on the other hand, we can scarcely read a page without
pausing to say, how true, how subtle, how delicate! without experiencing the agreeable surprise of meeting forms
of thought and feeling which we had imagined peculiar to
ourselves, expressed in language of exquisite appropriateness. We are especially conscious of an emotion of this
kind at the points where Euripides comes in contact with
the established Greek Theology; and we read at these
points with deeper attention, because we know that a Popular Dramatist is not representing to us his own thoughts
alone, but is the interpreter of the prevailing sentiments
of his age.
How far, to use an expression of Father Newman, the
Greek traditional mythology was the subject of" a real
belief" among the contemporaries of Pericles, is a question to which, at this time of day, we can give no very
certain answer.  What is "a real belief?"  There was
some belief, for an Athenian assembly voted the execution
of Socrates for impiety. The sacrifice of a cock to.Escu



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lapius shows that Socrates himself considered it decent to
follow the customs of his country. Sophocles, while he
touches rarely on mythological details, is profoundly reverent to the gods. Pindar, though he was fully aware
how deeply fable had tinged the accredited theogonies,
though he admits that it would be sin to credit the stories
popularly received, yet places his hand upon his lips as if
to say the gods are in heaven and we on earth, therefore let our words be few. Pindar when he sung of the
virtues of Athene, Phydias when he carved the ivory
statue of the virgin goddess for the Parthenon, could
neither of them have been distinctly conscious of direct
incredulity. Creative genius is tamed as effectively by
scepticism as a bird by a broken wing; and the tendency
of high intellect to bow before the invisible powers which
control the existence of the material universe is sufficient
generally to resist the disposition to quarrel with difficulties in detail. Once only, so far as his works have
come down to us, AEschylus breaks into revolt. The Zeus
or Jove of the " Prometheus " is the " tyrant " of Grecian
politics. The supreme ruler of Olympus is represented as
*a malignant and cowardly usurper, trampling upon right
and justice, owning no law but his own licentious passions,
and careful only to keep his subjects in misery and degradation. Promotheus, a Titan of the elder generation
of gods, retains the. gentler feelings of the dethroned dynasty. In pity for the misery of mortals he teaches them
the first rudiments of the arts, which will lift them above
the level of the beasts. The jealous despot, to whom the
degradation of his creatures was a pleasure of which he
did not choose to be deprived, rewards the enthusiast for
humanity with an agony of endless ages. Prometheus is
chained to the highest peak of Caucasus, the sport of sun
and storm, the vulture gnawing at his breast. Yet even




154


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then, in the midst of his sufferings, he defies the demon
who may torture but cannot destroy him. Though wrong
is for the present triumphant, he holds steady to the conviction that right will conquer in the end, that there is
a power in the universe stronger than Jove, and that at
least, far off, yet on this side of eternity, justice is destined
to prevail.
How a nation whose religious sensitiveness was so acute
as to sentence Socrates to death could yet permit a drama
like the " Prometheus" to be represented and applauded
on an Athenian stage, is a problem of which no satisfactory solution has ever been offered. Professor Blackie
has produced lately a theory peculiar to himself, that although Prometheus may appear admirable to us, who
believe in progress and the rights of man, he might have
been held in less esteem by an audience of a more conservative temperament, and that we must not make ]Eschylus
responsible for our own impieties. The play was but one
of a trilogy of which the remaining parts have perished.
Professor Blackie conceives that if the whole had survived
we should have seen Zeus vindicated and the Titan penitent upon his knees. To this argument there is no answer.
We can but judge the situation with such notions of right
and wrong as we possess in our present state of moral
development. We may regret that we are so far advanced
upon the downhill road that we cannot help ourselves.
The inversion of moral attributes is, however, to modern
eyes, complete. Not a single trait is omitted in Prometheus himself of all that to us appears the most disinterested goodness. Not a single glimpse is allowed to show
itself of cloven foot or claw, while every quality which we
most detest and despise is assigned with equal care to his
oppressor. Every feature, we may add, is present which
belonged to the tyrant of Greek tradition, the peculiar
i'. '; '.:.:




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abhorrence of Republican Athens. For what purpose,
save to make Zeus more hateful, was the wandering Io
brought to the scene of the punishment of Prometheus?
Io answers no purpose of the central play, and is connected with it by the loosest of threads. She appears
only as the victim of Zeus' lust, and abandoned by him to
the relentless vengeance of his no less hateful queen. It is
not seriously possible to question 2Eschylus' serious intention
in this play. But it stands alone, and never afterwards,
so far as we know, did he resume the defiant tone. Keble
was nearer right than Professor Blackie, when he called the
" Agememnon " the Palinodia of the " Prometheus." In the
"Agamemnon," as in all his remaining dramas, the tone of
Elschylus is the tone of Pindar-a tone of lofty devotion
which recognises in human existence the awful workings
of an all-ruling Providence, supremely terrible, yet supremely just.  2Eschylus, like Goethe after him, had
battled down his rebellious thoughts, content with giving
one expression to them, and no longer kicked against the
pricks. The truth when looked at steadily was not intolerable. It was no part of a gifted poet to destroy the
faith of his fellow-citizens in the reality by tearing in
pieces the traditionary costume in which it was popularly
presented to them. Such an attitude a wise man will
always preserve, so long as popular beliefs do more good
than harm, and retain moral life in them.
But as a living genuine belief is the best of all possessions, so a dead putrefying creed is the most pernicious;
and in the generation which succeeded iEschylus Greek
theology had arrived at a condition when impassioned
and genuine minds could no longer keep the peace with it.
The traditional mythology had grown unconsciously out
of the national intellect, natural phenomena and spiritual allegories combining and crystallising in supernatural




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narrative. Religions which assume a definite shape are
composed almost invariably of the half-understood and
corrupted legends of earlier ages. They are protected
against criticism by superstition, and are thus often for
long periods behind rather than in advance of the moral
level of the time. Mystical or strained interpretations
prevent the mischief which would arise from a literal acceptance of the dogma or tradition as it stands, and postpone the ultimately inevitable collision between reason and
the creeds: but nothing can arrest the law which condemns bodies which have once been alive from corrupting
when they are dead, or from spreading round them pernicious and poisonous vapours, so long as misplaced reverence persists in blinding itself to their true condition. A
decaying religion is accompanied always by developments
of superstition, absurd or cruel; because wise men cease
to concern themselves with it, and make over the whole
subject to cowards and fools, knaves and enthusiasts.
Such a process had actively commenced in Greece in the
intellectual ferment which followed the Persian war. It
continued uninterruptedly till the completion of the
Roman conquest, when Paganism had become a medley
of licentious rites and ghastly incredibilities. Mankind
could then bear with it no more, and Christianity arose
over its grave. The five centuries while the corruption
was going forward witnessed a spiritual condition so intolerable that Lucretius was driven to denounce religion
as the blackest curse which had ever afflicted humanity.
Three hundred years before Lucretius composed those
memorable lines, the incipient poison had evoked a
dramatic protest from the latest of the great tragedians
of Athens.
The Bacchic orgies were the grossest of the new ceremonies which were bred out of the corpse of the once pure




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faith of Greece. Dionysus is rarely mentioned by Homer.
The worship of Dionysus was introduced into Europe
from the East, and was at once ingrafted upon a Greek
stem. Dionysus himself was represented as of PhcenicoGrecian parentage. His mother was Semele, the daughter
of Cadmus. She had the fate, like so many other ladies,
of attracting the attention of the Father of the Gods, and
of becoming with child by him. He had come to her disguised. She had never seen the brightness of his real
presence, and persisted in a desire to behold it. Her rashness destroyed her. She perished, and her divine infant,
being not yet sufficiently matured for complete birth, was
concealed in his father's thigh during the remainder of the
period for which he ought to have been in his mother's
womb. On this wild and extravagant story were grafted
the licentious rites which towards the close of the first
period of Greece were intruding themselves into the service of the gods. A legend' more or less was of small
consequence, and might have passed withoutremonstrance.
It was less easy to sit quiet when drunkenness and lust
were being sanctified under the name of mysteries.
The play of the " Bacch'e" opens with a monologue
from Dionysus himself, who has appeared at Thebes, his
mother's city, and demands to be adored as a god. The
Thebans have hesitated to recognise his divinity. He has
therefore turned the women's heads, filled them with the
foulest passions, and sent them out into the forest with the
queen at their head transformed into worse than beasts.
The throne of Thebes is occupied by Pentheus, the impersonation of practical good sense. Pentheus hearing that
a strange youth has appeared, driving women mad and
calling himself a god, regards him either as some mischievous impostor or Asiatic conjuror-at any rate, as
an immoral scoundrel whom it is his business as chief




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magistrate to arrest and punish. A being who shows his
power in such fashion could not be God, nor anything like
God. If he was, as he pretended, the son of Semele, the
probability was that Semele had been no better than she
should be, and had been deservedly burnt up for laying
her bastard at Zeus's feet. He commands Dionysus to
leave the State immediately under penalty of the gaol and
the whip. The aged Cadmus is still living, and the prophet Teiresias also, who has supreme spiritual authority
over the Theban people. These two in most approved
fashion caution Pentheus against a hasty resolution. The
youth might possibly be an impostor, but it was no bad
thing to have it believed that a Theban princess had borne
a son to Zeus. If he was not a god it might be as well to
call him so, and venture upon a pious fraud.'
An Athenian audience could not have missed the irony
of such characteristic advice. But Pentheus is too upright
to listen. He talks like An intelligent Home Secretary
who is determined to repress rogues and protect public
morals. Dionysus is arrested and sent to prison, but of
course only to triumph. He is represented like a questionable genius out of the " Arabian Nights," a glorious being
of irresistible power without moral attributes of any kind.
The rational Pentheus is mocked, played upon, made ridiculous, led through the streets with the Thyrsus above his
head to be the scorn of the citizens, and the comedy concludes in horror. He is persuaded to go out into the
forest. His mother and her attendant Maenads mistake
him for a wild beast, fly upon him, and rend him limb from
limb; and the wretched woman brings his head in her lap
1 K' el L yap eCarv 6 0ebc ovrog & acv anyu
Trapa aot teye6aOo  Ka aarateb6ov Ka~Sc'
S & ar:, EeFLej 0' va SOK? Oeov TreKev.




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to the palace, to recover from her drunken frenzy and find
that she has destroyed her son.
The mysteries of the Cyprian Venus correspond to those
of Dionysus, and the "Bacch.e" has its parallel in the
" Hippolytus."  The "Bacchoe" opens with a speech from
Dionysus; the Prologue of the "Hippolytus" is spoken by
Kupris. She too informs us that she is a goddess, and that
being a goddess she chooses to be honoured.1
Theseus's son, Hippolytus, she tells us, has been wanting
in respect for her, and she means to be revenged. Hippolytus, a brilliant beautiful youth, is pure in spirit as
in body. No sensual emotion has ever clouded for a
moment the unsullied mirror of his imagination. Artemis
is the goddess whom he adores, and the virgin Artemis is
of all her sister divinities the most odious to the Divinity
of Lust. Kupris addresses herself to her work in characteristic fashion. She inspires Phedra, Hippolytus's stepmother, with an incestuous passion for her son. Phsedra,
who had been a true wife to Theseus till the fiend took
possession of her, struggles against temptation, abhors
herself, prefers death to dishonour, and attempts self-destruction. A wicked old nurse persuades her that a sin is
nothing so long as it is undiscovered, and is allowed to go
in search of Hippolytus and bring him to her mistress's
relief. Hippolytus, in dismayed surprise, bursts into expressions of indignation, which Phsedra overhears; she
hangs herself in rage and despair, and leaves a letter
informing Theseus that Hippolytus had attempted her
honour.
Posidon, Lord of the Sea, had for some previous service
bestowed on Theseus the privilege of three curses. He,
the God Posidon, who might be supposed to know whether
1 ivcrt yap e Kai Ev 0euv yEvet rode,
riTlUjevot xailpova1v ivOp67rv iro.




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the persons whom Theseus might name deserved a malediction, yet had undertaken without reserve to execute
Theseus's pleasure, indifferent to desert or indesert. Theseus, in blind rage, refusing to listen to the protestations
of Hippolytus, discharges one of the three bolts upon his
son. Posidon, true to his engagement, comes up upon the
strand in front of Hippolytus's chariot in the form of a
hideous monster. The terrified horses plunge among the
rocks. Hippolytus is thrown out and mortally hurt, and
Theseus congratulates himself on the prompt execution of
the divine revenge.
Too late for any useful purpose, Artemis now appears
and explains the story to him. Hippolytus whom he had
destroyed was innocent. Phkedra, though in part guilty,
had struggled to the best of her ability to be an honest
woman, but had been driven mad. The mischief had been
caused entirely by the machinations of Kupris. She would
herself have interfered, but Zeus, for reasons of his own,
chose to let Kupris have her way. Hippolytus is brought
dying on the stage to expire in his father's arms; while
Artemis flies away with a half apology that being a goddess she may not with propriety be present at a death
scene.
Here, as in the "Bacchse," human virtue is overborne,
human tenderness is rent in pieces, human life is turned
to horror and mockery by the interference of the gods
with it.  Kupris, a malignant devil that chose to be complimented, and resented indifference to her allurements,
extends her revenge to those who had never offended her,
to make it taste the sweeter. Zeus, the father of the gods,
looks on approving or consenting. Artemis is forbidden
to assist her own innocent votary; while Posidon, one of the
three supreme deities of the Pantheon, has bound himself
to do the bidding of a blind mortal, and promptly fulfils




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his word, though aware that the curse will recoil on the
person whose wishes he is gratifying.
Imagination can scarcely conceive a group of divine
beings less deserving human reverence than the omnipotent
demons who are thus described. The sentiment expressed
with sad conviction by Herodotus, that the character most
traceable in the gods was jealousy of human happiness,
seemed to haunt Euripides as a dreadful certainty; or else
he was aiming in these varied illustrations to hold them
up to the incredulous destination of his countrymen.
The same line of thought appears under a different
aspect in the " Hercules Furens."  Hercules, compelled by
fate, though son of Zeus, to obey the orders of Eurystheus
descends as the last of his twelve labors to Hades to bring
up the dog Cerberus. He leaves his wife, Megara, with
his children in the care of Creon, king of Thebes, Megara's
father. Hercules is long absent. The Theban citizens
rise in revolt for liberty, self-government, the rights of
man, or some similar chimera.   Creon is killed.  The
power is seized by Lycus, a vulgar demagogue who despises
Hercules as an overrated coward, supposes that he will
never return, and threatens his family with destruction.
The Chorus, which, with IEschylus and Sophocles, uniformly takes the pious side of things, is here less careful
of its language, and observes that Zeus must be a most
negligent god to beget children and leave them to such
strange disasters as he has permitted to befall Hercules.
Lycus persists in his evil purpose.  Megara and her children are brought out robed in black, and are about to be
slaughtered, when Hercules comes back at the critical
moment, destroys Lycus, and delivers them. Here an oldfashioned, commonplace drama would naturally end. The
crime is designed. The victims are in the power of the
villain. The knife is lifted, and is about to fall, when the
11




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saviour appears; the tyrant is struck down, and the innocents are saved. Very different from this is the issue of
the " Hercules Furens." The rescue of the wife and children
by the father is exquisitely tender; the Chorus becomingly
moralises, and concludes that the gods are less unjust than
they sometimes seem; but the light is only introduced to
enhance the gloom which is to follow. Hercules, and
Megara, and the little ones retire into their house. The
stage is left clear, and Ino descends from the sky with
Lutta, or " Madness," at her side. Her mistress Juno, so
Ino intimates, regards Hercules with implacable hatred,
because he was the offspring of one of the many amours of
her husband. Fate had protected him till his last labour
had been accomplished; but his work was now finished.
He had fulfilled his course; he had completed the task
which had been allotted to him. Her hand was now free.
Zeus had delivered Hercules to her revenge, and he was to
learn the consequence of having the Queen of the Gods for
a foe. Ino had been sent down to Thebes with her horrible
companion, and Hercules was to be made the victim of the
genius of frenzy. Lutta, the impersonation of the most
frightful spirit which distracts humanity, is herself moved
with pity at the doom which she is ordered to execute.
She remonstrates that Hercules has committed no crime;
he has been distinguished always by piety towards the
gods, and has been the best of benefactors to man. Lutta
pleads in vain. Hercules has gone to the altar to offer a
thanksgiving sacrifice for the preservation of his family.
The madness seizes him. His eyeballs roll; his mouth
foams; he believes that in his own little ones he sees before
him the children of his foe Eurystheus; he snatches his
bow and destroys them; he kills his children; he kills his
wife. The arrow is on the string which is to kill the old
Amphitryon, his mother's husband, when Pallas flings him




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into a swoon, from which he awakes restored to his senses
to learn what he has done. He lies down in the dust, his
mantle gathered over his head, in speechless agony. There
Theseus finds him among the bleeding bodies, and the play
ends in unavailing efforts at consolation under a burden
of misery from which no relief is thenceforth possible for
ever.
Aristotle declares the object of tragedy to be St' t1ouv
xal (polou V xoroiaae rC Tio OOUTw CD  aOldirw Ov xad0apfv. The
words are usually taken to point to the sanitary influence
of dramatic composition. The poet works upon the passions
of " pity" and "terror" to produce a moral purification of
those and their kindred emotions.   Goethe refuses to
believe that Aristotle contemplated a purpose in tragedy
so remote from the province of art. He understands him
to mean that after the audience has been carried through
scenes which strain passion and sentiment to the uttermost,
the storm abates, the agitated water sinks to rest, and the
mind is soothed with moderating reflections which restore
it to calm and self-possession.
Either purpose is so little attained in these plays of
Euripides that we must look further for his real aim. The
one reflection left behind is a horrid consciousness that
human life is the plaything of a set of hateful beings, in
comparison with whom the worst imaginable mortal is an
angel of grace and benignity.
We turn next to the "Io," which, if not perfect as a
work of art, contains some of the most beautiful passages
which are to be found in all the Greek poetry which survives.
Here at last we find gods with some touch of conscience in
them. They are still wanton and careless. They cause
prolonged misery, and might have caused terrible crimes
if accident had not interposed. The reflections upon their
characters, which are scattered about the play, are too,




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keenly expressed to be less than the distinct conviction of
Euripides' own mind, but the catastrophe restores them to
some possibility of respect. 5When the curtain falls, they
are discovered not to have been absolutely heedless of the
consequences of their recklessness, and the xdOapfef of
which Goethe speaks is in this instance tolerably attained.
Creusa, daughter of Erectheus, and heiress of the Athenian throne, has been violated by Apollo. She produces an
infant boy, which she lays secretly in the cave to which
Apollo had carried her, in the hope that his divine father
will not neglect him. She returns to look for him, and he
is gone. Years pass, and she can hear no tidings of him,
and she concludes at last that the child must have been
devoured by vultures or beasts of prey. In time she marries Xuthus, who in her right succeeds her father on the
throne. She has no second offspring, though she and her
husband are passionately anxious for an heir. At length
they go together to Apollo's temple at Delphi to consult
the oracle, the lady with many curious thoughts, to which
her husband, who is ignorant of her previous misfortune,
is not admitted.
Apollo, meanwhile, though he had not relieved the
anxiety of his mistress, had not been as careless as she
supposed.  Hermes, at Apollo's desire, had carried the
boy from the cave to Delphi, and had laid him at the door
of the shrine, where he had been brought up by the
priestess as a foundling cast on the charity of the god.
Here, little guessing whom they are encountering, Creusa
and Xuthus find him a beautiful youth, just passing into
manhood, under the name of Ion.    Xuthus enters the
temple to learn his own prospects. Creusa remains under
the portico, falls into a talk with Ion, and at last, she
scarce knows why, tells him her own story, as of some
third person, one of her friends.




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It is Ion's first introduction into the tangled skein of
life, and he forms not unnatural reflections on the tale
which Creusa has related to him. " How can the gods
give laws to man," he asks, " when they themselves do not
observe those laws? Will ye, oh Phoebus, oh Zeus, oh
Posidon, punish men for seducing women, when ye give
the rein thus freely to your own licentiousness? How can
men be evil when they tread in the steps of the gods?
The guilt is in the gods themselves," who commit the same
crimes which they condemn in others.
While Ion is thus learning his first lesson in scepticism,
the oracle has informed Xuthus that no further children
will be born to him, but that he has a child already, though
he knows it not, and that the first youth that he sees after
he leaves the temple will be his own. Xuthus goes out,
and at once falls in with Ion. He remembers an early
indiscretion which makes the story possible. He embraces
his supposed offspring; Ion accepts the parent who is thus
preternaturally awarded to him, and they depart together
to celebrate the occasion at a banquet.
This is well for Xuthus. For Creusa it is not so well:
she learns that Apollo has given her husband all that he
desired, while herself, though he was the cause of her
misery, he has left to barrenness.
The Chorus suggests that Xuthus owes the Athenian
throne to her. He will now neglect her. He will scheme
that this new-found son shall be his successor. It is too
likely, indeed, that, jealous of her influence in Athens, he
will secretly destroy her. Ignorant, like all the world, of
her own misadventure, the Chorus advises her to anticipate her husband and make away with him and his
brat, before they make away with her. Her passion then
bursts out:




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Shall I be silent still, or tell my shame?
What now withholds me? Not for me to blame
My husband's fault, when my own thoughts conceal
An equal sin I shuddered to reveal,
The guilty secret of my honour's stain,
My own lost babe so long bewailed in vain.
Must I lose all? Ah, must I now see perish
The one last hope I ceased not still to cherish,
And yet endure? Nay, by yon star-set sphere,
By the pure margin of Tritonis' mere,
By Pallas' self, the world my wrongs shall know,
I will no longer bear this hidden load of woe.
Oh Thou who dost from lifeless things distil
Sweet music, Thou who canst the forest fill
With the clear bugle note, and from the string
The breathing soul of melody dost bring;
Latona's son, Thee, Thee I will arraign;
Thee, Thee I charge as cause of all my pain.
I in my maiden innocence was straying,
Among the bright spring meadows idly playing,
Gathering in my lap the saffron crocus flowers;
Thou camest glittering with thy golden hair;
Thou caught'st me by the wrist and held me there.
And then thou ledst me to thy cavern bower.
"Mother," I shrieked. Ah, far away was she,
And I was left to Destiny and Thee.
The months went by; at length I bore a boy,
Thy child and mine, and with an awful joy
I laid him in the cave on thy own bed,
Where I had lain beside thee. Sure, I said
That thou wast near, that thou wouldst hear him cry,
And save and shield his helpless infancy.
Too fond illusion-not for those high spirits
To heed the woes which child of earth inherits:
His baby limbs became the wild beasts' food,
The eaglet's claws were reddened in his blood;
While through the azure air his shining sire
Was sounding paeans on his golden lyre.




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The Chorus is properly compassionate, and delivers itself of the moral reflection that the mixed offspring of
men and gods rarely make a good end-but they persist
in their advice to Creusa to take care of herself. She resolves in consequence to give Ion a dose of poison, and
very narrowly misses doing it. She is discovered, and Ion
as nearly escapes having his mother executed for the crime
she has failed to accomplish. The dignus vindice nodus
had arrived. Only Apollo could now set matters straight.
He still hesitates to appear in person, being afraid of the
reproaches which Creusa would probably heap upon him.
Athene, however, descends in his place. She explains
to Ion and Creusa the mystery of their respective identities. She suggests that to spare Xuthus disappointment,
they had better keep their secret to themselves, and she
winds up the play with the pious observation that though
the gods miglht seem for a time to act ambiguously, they
contrived generally to bring matters to a wholesome issue
in the end.
With these words this singular drama concludes. It
is not a tragedy, for it closes with general satisfaction. It
is not a comedy, for the passions worked upon are throughout too serious for laughter. It is an exhibition of the
cherished objects of Athenian devotion, not in a light so
wholly detestable as that in which they appear elsewhere,
but as contrasted to the utmost disadvantage with the
mortals whom they had injured.
So it is throughout. Even in plays not especially directed against the popular creed, expressions are let fall as
if by accident, which show how fast Euripides was travelling in the direction of secular intelligence. Helen says,
in the Hecuba, that Kupris or Aphrodite had compelled
her to elope with Paris. Hecuba answers scornfully, " A
1 /i TwV rdpoOes let/t'L et P-Eaov o/l;l.




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pretty jest! My son was fair to look on. The Kupris
that compelled you was your own appetite.    Aphrodite is
mortals' folly, and so is fitly named from Aphrosune " (intemperance).
Again, in the Helena:Disgraceful is it to understand Divinity and
dogmatic truth,
And yet be ignorant of justice.
aiaxpbv leUt, ae 6eia iravr' Et6SEvat
rTr' OvTa Kaai, r'a ie 6iKiata fli eievalt.
Or again this passage, also from   the Helena, on "Divination." In the Helena the Egyptian legend is preferred
to the Homeric.   The true Helen is supposed to have been
snatched away from Sparta, and carried to Memphis, to
save her from Paris; while the Helen that fled with him
to Troy was a phantom. Upon this Euripides speculates
why none of the soothsayers in either Greece or Troy
warned the Archives to spare their trouble. Divination
was an art still profoundly respected at Athens, yet Euripides says:Vain is the Seer's art and full of lies,
No insight e'er was gained by sacrifice;
Foolish and fond the dream that things concealed
Can be in flight or note of birds revealed.
Had Chalchas told the army 'twas betrayed,
Its chiefs were fighting, dying for a shade,
Their bones would not be bleaching on the sand,
And Ilium's towers would still unruined stand.
Will ye pretend the gods forbade him speak?
Why then with divination do ye seek
For unpermitted knowledge? Leave the fool
By Seers' arts his erring steps to rule;
Birnt-offerings never filled the idler's store;
Knowledge and insight are the best diviners-ask no more.




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There remains another feature in the Greek creed, a
form of superstition not apparently growing faint, but increasing in distinctness of recognition and gathering increasing hold on the imagination; which possessed for Euripides
a terrible interest, and seemed to fascinate him with its
horror.  It was a superstition marvellous in itself, and
more marvellous for the influence which it was destined
to exert on the religious history of mankind. On the one
hand, it is a manifestation of Satan under the most hideous
of aspects; on the other, it is an expression or symbol of
the most profound of spiritual truths.
Throughout human life, from the first relation of parent
and child to the organisation of a nation or a church, in
the daily intercourse of common life, in our loves and in
our friendships, in our toils and in our amusements, in
trades and in handicrafts, in sickness and in health, in
pleasure and ia pain, in war and in peace, at every point
where one human soul comes in contact with another,
there is to be found everywhere, as the condition of right
conduct, the obligation to sacrifice self. Every act of man
which can be called good is an act of sacrifice, an act
which the doer of it would have left undone had he not
preferred some other person's benefit to his own, or the
excellence of the work on which he was engaged to his
personal pleasure or convenience. In common things the
law of sacrifice takes the form of positive duty. A soldier
is bound to stand by his colours. Every one of us is bound
to speak the truth, whatever the cost. But beyond the
limits of positive enactment, the same road, and the same
road only, leads up to the higher zones of character. The
good servant prefers his employer to himself. The good
employer considers the welfare of his servant more than
his own profit. The artisan or the labourer, who has the
sense in him of preferring right to wrong, will not be con



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tent with the perfunctory execution of the task allotted to
him, but will do it as excellently as he can. From the
sweeping of a floor to the governing of a country, from the
baking of a loaf to the watching by the sick-bed of a
friend, there is the same rule everywhere. It attends the
man of business in the crowded world; it follows the artist
and the poet into his solitary studio. Let the thought of
self intrude, let the painter but pause to consider how
much reward his work will bring to him, let him but
warm himself with the prospects of the fame and the praise
which is to come to him, and the cunning will forsake his
hand, and the power of his genius will be gone from him.
The upward sweep of excellence is proportioned, with
strictest accuracy, to the oblivion of the self which is
ascending.
From the time when men began first to reflect, this
peculiar feature of their nature was observed. The law
of animal life appears to be merely self-preservation; the
law of man's life is self-annihilation; and only at times
when men have allowed themselves to doubt whether they
are really more than developed animals has self-interest
ever been put forward as a guiding principle. Honesty
may be the best policy, said Coleridge, but no honest man
will act on that hypothesis. Sacrifice is the first element
of religion, and resolves itself in theological language into
the love of God.
Only those, however, who are themselves noble-minded
can consciously apprehend a noble emotion. Truths are
perceived and acknowledged, perhaps for a time are appropriately acted on.  They pass on into common hands;
like gold before it can be made available for a currency,
they become alloyed with baser metal.  The most beautiful feature in humanity, the distinct recognition of which
was the greatest step ever taken in the course of true pro



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gress, became, when made over to priests and theologians,
the most hideous and most accursed of caricatures.
By the side of the law of sacrifice it was observed also
from obvious experience that the fortunes of man were
compassed with uncertainties over which he had no control. The owner of enormous wealth was brought to the
dunghill, the prince to a dungeon.  The best and the
worst were alike the prey of accidents. Those who had
risen highest in earthly distinction were those who seemed
specially marked for the buffets of destiny. Those who
could have endured with equanimity the loss of riches
and power, could be reached through loss of honour,
through the sufferings of family and friends, through the
misgivings of their own hearts on the real nature of the
spiritual powers by which the earth and universe are
governed.
The arbitrary caprice displayed in these visitations of
calamity naturally perplexed even the wisest.  Conscious
that they were in the hands of forces which it was impossible to resist, of beings whose wrath the most perfect
virtue failed to avert, men inferred that the benevolence
of the gods was crossed by a sportive malignity. They
saw that all that was most excellent in human society
was bought by the sacrifice of the few good to the many
worthless. The self-devotion of those who were willing
to forget themselves was exacted as the purchase-money
of the welfare of the rest. The conclusion was that the
gods envied mankind too complete enjoyment. They demanded of them from time to time the most precious thing
which they possessed, and the most precious possession of
any family or nation was the purest and most innocent
member of it.
It was among the Semitic nations that the propitiatory
immolation of a human being first became an institution.




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Sea Studies.


Homer knew nothing of it. The Trojan youths who were
slaughtered at the pyre of Patroclus were the victims
merely of the wrath of Achilles, and the massacre of them
was the savage accompaniment of the funeral rites of his
dead friend.  By the Semitic nations of Palestine, the
eldest born of man and beast was supposed to belong to
the gods, and at any moment might be claimed by them.
The intended sacrifice of Isaac is an evident allusion to
the customs from which the son of Abraham was miraculously redeemed. The deaths of the first-born in every
house in Egypt on the night of the Passover, the story of
Jephtha, the brief but expressive mention of the king of
Moab, who, in distress, impaled his son on the wall of his
city, the near escape of Jonathan, whom the lot had detected, as marked by the curse of his father, the Phoenician
legend of the exposure of Andromeda to the sea monster,
point all in the same direction. The Carthaginians, a
colony from Tyre, at the crisis of their struggle with Rome,
devoted to the anger of the gods four hundred of the sons
of their principal nobles.
At some time in the interval between Homer and the
Persian wars, this singular superstition was carried into
Greece, and was at once incorporated in the received mythology. The great national story of the Trojan war was
probably the first which it interpenetrated; and there
sprung up in the midst of it the as yet unknown incident
which has impressed so powerfully the imagination of mankind, the sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis.
The name Iphigenia is probably Jephthagenia, a Grecised version of " Jephthah's daughter," and reveals the
origin of the story. The "idea" once accepted passed
into other heroic traditions. Human sacrifice, symbolic
or actual, was adopted into the religious ceremonials of
Athens. It was a growing belief which spread through




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successive generations, and prepared the way in the end for
the reception of the doctrine of the Christian Atonement.
But before the key to the mystery was revealed, the frightful conception inspired the purest minds in Greece with a
repugnance proportional to the fascination which it exercised on the multitude.
No less than six of the most important plays of Euripides
revolve on this Semitic innovation on the creed of Homer;
the two Iphigenias, in Aulis and in Tauris, the liecuba, the
Alcests, the Heraclidce, and the P1cenissce.
The HTecba, perhaps, marks a transition stage in
which the Semitic notion of sacrifice to the gods is imperfectly blended with the earlier Greek necromancy.
The scene of the play is the Thracian Chersonese, where
the Grecian fleet is detained by foul winds after the fall
of Troy, as it was detained before at Aulis. The shade
of Achilles appears, and intimates that the army will
not be allowed to return till some young maiden is made
over to him. The Ulysses of Homer, when he visits
the realms of the dead, slaughters a heifer and a ram.
The blood is collected in a trench, where the ghosts
present themselves and drink, and in drinking obtain
strength to speak. Achilles similarly requires blood to
drink; but the stream which flows from the veins of an
animal will not satisfy his thirst; he demands the blood of
a human being.1
A victim is found in Polyxena, the last surviving
1 Neoptolemus says at the altar:
C) T7CZ IITf7O  Tald? 7 77rf/,
AEat 2c oa',pot rag 6(  K7?r7/.r~7piOV
VElcpunv a6y7'oi'. EMOe y' "  r Trigf i.av
KOpC [Kpaipvf alpl a f' B aot 6povysOa
arpar6f re Kdyeo.




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Sea Studies.


daughter of Priam's queen who remains to her mother,
after Cassandra had been appropriated by Agamemnon.
The poetic ingenuity of Euripides is employed in its
highest form to exhibit the piteousness of the selection,
to excuse, so far as excuse is possible, the human instruments of so dark a deed, and to hold up to indignant
hatred the fiends who compel it to be done. He shows
us Hecuba, late the honoured wife of the imperial Priam,
on the pinnacle of earthly splendour, now husbandless, a
wretched slave, with the terror, fresh upon her soul, of the
sacked city and "of garments rolled in blood."  Her
youngest son Polydorus, who had been sent to Thrace for
security, she believed to be still left to her; but Polydorus had been murdered by his guardian, and she must
now see her innocent Polyxena offered up to the ferocity
of a vampire.
Polyxena, when she hears her fate, thinks only of her
mother's desolation. The mother thinks only of her child,
and hopes that Achilles will be satisfied with her own
wretched life in exchange. The hard-eyed warriors themselves- are melted with the pity of the scene. The cause
is pleaded before the council; Agamemnon, remembering
his own agonies, feebly interposes. But Ulysses, in whom
Euripides embodies the object of his bitterest detestation,
an Athenian demagogue, replies that good service to the
commonwealth must not be left unrewarded; Achilles must
not have to complain of the ingratitude of his comrades,
and Achilles requires a daintier morsel than a broken-down
old woman.
It is decided that Achilles must have his will; yet while
the chiefs insist upon the death and witness it in person,
all other feelings are lost in admiration of the bravery of
the Trojan maiden. She refuses to be bound, she bares
her throat with her own hand and presents it to the knife.




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She arranges her modest dress that when she falls she
shall fall decently.
KpvTrova' a Kpfv7r7retv b/ular' ap6Evov XpEUv.
She dies amidst cries of applauding pity, and the spectators bound forward to pay the last honours.
7r Trikpta' EVaKCpSz1)
bPvX)v r' apioar.
And what follows? We are to look now for the x.adapoer,
the soothing sense of final satisfaction or the moral elevation or purification; and what is it? The mother becomes
a furious maniac.  Talthybius, the herald who brings the
news of her daughter's death to her, doubts whether the
existence of God be not a dream    of fools, and whether
man is not the sport of blind fate or chance.
O God! what shall I say? That thou regard'st
our deeds,
Or that the faith that there are gods at all
Is better than a visionary dream
And Chance alone is lord of human things?
The play is complicated by a double tragedy. Polyxena
is sacrificed. Polydorus is murdered by his host to enhance the misery of the mother, and the attention is
divided between the treachery of Polymnestor, and the
necessity imposed upon the unwilling Grecian leaders by
the religious sentiments of the age. Not the least noticeable feature is the degradation of the heroes of the earlier
tradition by the debasement of the popular creed. Achilles has become an Asiatic Ghoul. Ulysses has degenerated
into the eloquent orator, the dexterous master of the arts
of democratic persuasion, whose natural manliness is lost




176


Sea Studies.


in the commonplace sentiments of the received beliefs of
his contemporaries.
We come now to two Iphigenias, in Aulis and Tauris.
The Vampyre of the Hecuba becomes here a goddess. In
both these plays the sacrifice of an innocent victim is the
sole motive of the action. In both the natural virtues of
humanity are exhibited as endeavouring to avert the catastrophe. In both the virgin Artemis, the object of the
pure devotion of Hippolytus, appears under the revolting
aspect of an Indian idol.
As in the Hecuba, an unseen cause prevents the fleet
from sailing out of Aulis. The Fates have decreed that
Troy must fall, but none the less the conditions must
be fulfilled. Artemis requires, through the lips of the
prophet Calchas, that the most beautiful damsel in Greece
must die. Iphigenia, Agamemnon's daughter, possesses
the unhappy pre-eminence, and the unanimous voice of
the camp demands that she must suffer.  Achilles, for
whose bride she had been destined, would have saved her,
but he declares sadly that his own myrmidons would be
the first to turn upon him. Iphigenia is carried to the
altar. Like Polyxena she stands there alone, her father
weeping at her side, and the purpose is carried out till
the knife is buried in her throat.  Then only the popular
feeling, not too utterly corrupted by sacerdotalism to
acquiesce without a pang, allows the dramatist to throw a
cloud over the closing scene. Iphigenia disappears. A
bleeding kid is seen upon the ground in her place: the
grim goddess had snatched her, like another Isaac, from
destruction.  The intention is accepted for the act.  But
Iphigenia is reserved only for a fate to which death would
have been preferable. She is carried by Artemis to the
gloomy Tauric Chersonese, where the rites which in Greece
were yet but as occasional, were the established custom of




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177


the Scythian savages.   She becomes priestess at a shrine
where every stranger is slaughtered who lands on that inhospitable shore.  On Iphigenia falls the duty of preparing
them for execution, and she discharges her horrid task
without remorse or objection, till fate brings thither her
brother Orestes and his friend.  The frequency of the religious murders in which she has borne her part is indicated in a line which recalls the description of the block
in the King's Palace at Coomassie. The altar stone is
daubed thick with russet stains from the blood which has
been shed upon it. Iphigenia, ignorant that Orestes is her
brother, commences the preliminary rites with cold and
scarcely felt compassion, and only when she discovers the
truth her obligations as a priestess yield before the emotions
of relationship. She consents to fly with Orestes and
his companion, carrying with her the image of the precious
goddess to whose service she is still devoted. They are
pursued, and would have been taken, when Athene takes
command of the situation.   Thoas, the king, is warned to
let them go. Orestes is to return to Greece with his sister,
and be purified at Athens for his mother's murder, while
an altar is to be raised in Attica for Artemis; and that
she shall not be robbed of her customary honours a festival
is to be instituted, at which a priest shall annually shed
the blood of some human victim.'
1 v64ov re /9 v r6v"'  rav iopra,  2tei(
-rr?5 adC apay7( arroI^ e77 TaXEro I S;og'
dsepi 'rpof avdpof altaar' ikavtero
o6ia eCKart, Oka O' B'rx7  r1uadg ~X.Iphigena in Aulis, II. 1458,-1461.
The words imply that the throat was to be pierced till the
blood ran. Without shedding of blood there was no remission,
but it need not have been absolutely the life's blood.
12




178


Sea Studies.


It might be doubted so far whether Euripides obliged
us to believe that human sacrifices were actually offered
to the gods in Greece itself. Polyxena was an offering to
the shade of a mortal; Iphigenia had been rescued at
the moment of death; but three plays remain which leave
no room for uncertainty: the Alcestis, the Pliacissce, and
the Heraclidce. In the Alcestis the wife is sacrificed for
her husband, in the Phienissce a Theban youth for his
country, in the Iteraclidce a sister for her brothers.  In
each case there is no natural connection between the suffering of the victim and the advantages received from it.
The occasion is merely the arbitrary pleasure of an omnipotent something that chose to make the death of an
innocent human being the condition of his favor.
The Alcestis has lately been made familiar to English
readers in the version of Mr. Browning. Excellent as
Mr. Browning's workmanship invariably is, he will himself acknowledge that no English rendering can produce
the effect of the original. English words carry with them
English associations, and no modern language can generate the intellectual atmosphere in which the characters of
a drama constructed on so extravagant an hypothesis can
appear like breathing men and women.  It is only in the
speech of a people among whom this and its kindred
superstitions entered into the ordinary belief, that the
imagination can be brought into sympathy with the actors,
or in which the motive can have sufficient verisimilitude
for the purposes of dramatic illusion. A translation so
recent, however, and so well known, makes it unnecessary
to dwell in detail upon this play; and the more so, as even
here also to some extent Euripides condescends to human
weakness, and after Death has carried off his prey permits
Hercules to tear it from him.
The Phwcedissce takes its name from  the Phoenician




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women of whom the Chorus is composed; but the plot, the
scene, and the actors -are purely Greek; and Phoenicians
were doubtless introduced into it, and the name was
selected for the play, to indicate the source of the superstition against which it is so evidently directed. The subject is the legend of the House of CEdipus, the familiar
and favourite ground of the Greek tragedian. The period
of the story is the same which 2Eschylus selects for the
Seven against Thebes, and Sophocles for the Antigone.
Euripides, however, treats the subject in his own manner,
and introduces incidents peculiar to himself.
He traces the original cause of the curse which had
fallen on the Labdacidse. Laius, the father of (Edipus,
had fallen into the peculiar vice which dishonoured Greek
civilisation. Euripides hints that he was but imitating an
example already set by Zeus; but a curse overtakes him
notwithstanding. If he has a son he is to die by that son's
hand. The son who kills him is to commit incest with his
own mother, and to beget sons in turn who are destined to
destroy one another. Two of the three catastrophes have
been accomplished when the Phcenissce opens. (Edipus,
ignorant of his parentage, has killed his father and has
married his mother Jocasta. On discovering what he has
done he has torn out his eyes in despair. Eteocles and
Polynices, the offering of this incestuous connection, to
escape the doom which threatens them, have agreed to
reign in Thebes on alternate years, and never to be there
simultaneously. Eteocles, as the elder, takes the first turn,
and when his year is out refuses to resign. Polynices has
married an Argive princess, and brings an Argive army
with six Peloponnesian chiefs to compel his brother to fulfil
his compact. Thus, in spite of precautions, the doom is
complete. The brothers meet in single combat and die as
had been foretold. So far Euripides runs along the estab



180


Sea Studies.


lished lines; but within the larger circle he introduces his
peculiar underplot. The fate of Eteocles and Polynices
has been determined irreversibly by destiny. The fate of
Thebes itself is still uncertain. Whether Thebes is to fall
before the invaders, or whether the race sprung from the
dragons' teeth are to keep inviolate the sacred city, hangs
still unsettled in the balance of the gods. Thebes may be
saved, but the gods require blood. A beautiful youth of
the dragons' race must be sacrificed. One poor lad alone
meets the required conditions-Menccceus, Jocasta's nephew,
son of the aged Creon. As Hecuba would have died for
Polyxena, and Pylades for Orestes, so Creon prays the
gods to take him in the place of the boy whose life is all
before him. The gods adhere to the sweeter victim. Creon
in his misery prefers that Thebes should perish, and implores Menceceus to fly. Menceceus declares that while
his companions are risking their lives in the battle before
the gates it shall not be said of him that he is careful of
his own. He ascends the wall and drives the knife into
his heart.  The hosts of the Argives melt away and
Thebes is saved.
Heroic, it may be said-a noble example to the youth
of Athens, whose country was now threatened by the
Spartans. In part, perhaps this was the poet's meaning,
but the name of the play points to an ulterior object.
His real purpose appears, where no mistake is possible, in
the Heraclidce.
After the death of Hercules, the persecution which he
had endured from Eurystheus was extended to his surviving children, the Heraclidse. They had fled from Argos
with their grandmother Alcmena and their aged guardian
Iolaus. Wherever they had taken refuge they had been
followed by the messengers of Eurystheus to demand their
surrender or expulsion. They had thus wandered from




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181


court to court till they arrived at Athens, where they appealed to the generosity of Theseus. There, too, the Argive messenger appeared. Theseus replied to the imperious menace of his master, that Eurystheus might do his
worst. Eurystheus, in consequence, invaded Attica, and
the Athenian people resolved gallantly to protect their
guests.
Brave men fighting on the side of justice might expect
the gods to be on their side. The gods are willing, but
the condition is insisted on as indispensable that a maiden
must be sacrificed, and Theseus, who is willing to meet
Eurystheus in battle, yet cannot ask an Athenian citizen
to surrender his daughter to a fate so horrible. If the
Heraclidce were given up they were to die, and Alemena,
who had borne Hercules to Zeus, was to suffer along with
them. Under such circumstances Zeus might have been
expected to interpose to save his mistress and his grandchildren. Alcmena exclaims not unnaturally:
I may not reproach him,
But he does know if he deals justly by me.
But Zeus was at a banquet with the 2Ethiopians, or he
was asleep, or toying with some new mistress. From Zeus
there was no hope. If there was hope anywhere, it was
from some generous human soul. Macaria, one of the
Heraclide, and seemingly the only sister among them, is
the most beautiful figure which Euripides has drawn.
Her name, "the blessed one," indicates the delight with
which he regarded his own invention. Macaria considers
that if Theseus and his countrymen are ready to risk their
lives in defence of her brothers, and if the gods make a
maiden's blood the price of their support, she is herself
the most appropriate victim.  Iolaus in despair would
rather die himself a hundred times; but a hundred Iola



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uses would not be accepted: the gods must have a lamb
without spot, and Macaria chooses her lot, and sweetly
and calmly resigns herself to it. She indulges in no illusions. Life is beautiful to her and death is terrible, and
death may not be all. Theology had made the gods so hideous that the thought of a possible future brought no relief or
consolation with it. The hope was rather that death at
least was a limit to the dominion of beings so wanton in
their cruelty.  If another life lay before her, Macaria
trusted that her voluntary self-immolation might pass to
her credit. But no poet ever wrote lines more true to the
real thoughts of sad and serious humanity than the passionate desire that the grave may be the end of everything
which he places in the lips of his dying heroine.
el? 6(E /evrolit #fje ei yap eCofiev
KaqKEi tiEpIjVtV ok Oavovyevot P3porov,
OVic OLt bsroLt rC pi TpeeraT'   r yap Oaveiv
KaKOv fieytarov idpyaKov a voyilerat.
Oh, that there may be nothing I If again
Beyond the sleep of death we wake to pain,
What hope will then remain to us? To die
Is of all ills the surest remedy.
Saddest aspiration to which in the darkest hour a suffering
mortal can be driven! Against so gloomy a background
the sacrifice shines with more brilliant intensity-yet what
better could Macaria ask or wish? If we are to regard a
life beyond the grave with hopeful expectation, we must
believe that some just, wise, and good Being in the last
resort presides over the universe. When, instead of a
wise, good Being, mankind have created for themselves a
power whose attributes, so far as they are recognisable on
earth, resemble those of some malignant fiend, a Macaria




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can but exclaim, "May there be nothing!" A Hamlet
will say:
To die,-to sleep,No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural ills
The flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished.
Iolaus shrieks against the sentence which Macaria has
pronounced against herself. The Chorus, sadly knowing
with how small a hope of recompence hereafter she was
departing, rebukes his profitless impatience, knowing that,
recompence or no recompence, the road of self-devotion is
still the best to follow.
The tides of life uneven flow,
And ever betwixt *eal and woe
We drift and waver to and fro,
Because the gods will have it so.
I see the great ones prostrate lie,
I see the beggar lifted high,
And none his destined fate can fly,
And all in vain we strive or cry,
Fret not, old man, nor feebly rave,
For one thou canst not, must not save;
The maid, self-doomed and nobly brave,
For land and kindred meets the grave.
True daughter of a princely line,
Eternal glory shall be thine,
From age to age, with light divine,
The glow of this thy deed around thy name shall shine.
All generations shall call thee " Macaria" or "Blessed."
Not thee, but one not wholly unlike. Not one who was herself
the victim, but one through whose heart the sword pierced
as she sat under the Cross where these impassioned conceptions found at last their explanation and consummation.




184


Sea Studies.


The Epicurean philosophers, as religion waned, threw
themselves into the study of natural phenomena. They
believed that as man became acquainted with the physical
laws of the universe, superstition would disappear, and a
code of practical rules could be created on theories of
expediency. Science might plume itself on its splendid
discoveries; but human nature was stronger than science,
and in spite of it, and by the side of it, witchcraft, magic,
necromancy, with their attendant abominations, developed
out of the putrescent corpse of Paganism.   Lucretius
would not have selected the sacrifice of Iphigenia as an
illustration of the atrocities which could be provoked by
religion, unless the spirit which had presided at Aulis had
been still alive and active. Those who would draw the
horoscope of the spiritual future of mankind from the
progress of knowledge, will find their forecasts defeated
by forces which they disdain to recognise. Far as they
may extend the confines of discovery, the shoreless infinite
of the unknown will still extend beyond them, and the
hopes and fears of what may lie in that impenetrable
region must ever have an influence stronger than reason
on the spiritual convictions of humanity.   Lucretius
boasted that he had trampled religion under his feet, and
that natural philosophy would sit henceforth triumphant
on the throne from which God had been deposed. The
especial aspect of religion which had been chosen to
illustrate its hatefulness was on the eve of becoming the
soul of a creed which was to remodel human society, and
open a new era. The doctrine of human sacrifice, which
had exerted so strange and growing a fascination, was to
lose its horrors while retaining its ennobling influence.
The emotions and the conscience were reconciled when
God Himself became his own victim.




SOCIETY IN ITALY      IN  THE LAST DAYS OF
THE ROMAN      REPUBLIC.
WHETHER free institutions create good citizens, or
whether conversely free institutions imply good citizens
and wither up and perish as private virtue decays, is a
question which will continue to be agitated as long as
political society continues. The science of history ought
to answer it, but the science of history is silent or ambiguous where, if it could tell us anything at all, it would
be able to speak decidedly. What is called the philosophy of history is, and can be, only an attempted interpretation of earlier ages by the modes of thought current
in our own; and those modes of thought, being formed
by the study of the phenomena which are actually round
us, are changed from era to era. We read the past by the
light of the present, and the forms vary as the shadows
fall, or as the point of vision alters. Those who have
studied most conscientiously the influences which have
determined their own convictions will be the last to claim
exemption from the control of forces which they recognise
as universal and irresistible. The foreground of human
life is the only part of it which we can examine with real
exactness. As the distance recedes details disappear in
the shade, or resolve themselves into outlines. We turn
to contemporary books and records, but we lose in light
185




186


Society in Italy in the


and in connection with present experience what we gain
in minuteness. The accounts of their own times which
earlier writers leave to us are coloured in turn by their
opinions, and we cannot so reproduce the past as to guard
against prejudices which governed those writers as much
as they govern ourselves. The result, even to the keenest
historical sight, is no more than a picture which each of
us paints for himself upon the retina of his own imagination.
These conditions of our nature warn us all, if we are
wise, against generalised views of history.  We form
general views. This, too, we cannot help, unless we are
ignorant of the past altogether. But we receive them for
what they are worth. They do not repose upon a knowledge of facts which can form the foundations of a science.
We see certain objects; but we see them not as they
were, but fore-shortened by distance and coloured by the
atmosphere of time. The impression, before it arrives in
our minds, has been half created by ourselves. Therefore
it is that from philosophy of history, from attempts to
explain the phenomena of earlier generations by referring
them to general principles, we turn with weariness and
distrust. We find more interest in taking advantage of
those rare occasions where we can apply a telescope to
particular incidents, and catch a sight of small fractions
of the actual doings of our fellow-mortals, where accident
enables us to examine them in detailed pattern. We may
obtain little in this way to convince our judgment, but we
can satisfy an innocent curiosity, and we can sometimes
see enough to put us on our guard against universal conclusions.
We know, for instance (so far as we can speak of
knowledge of the general character of an epoch), that the
early commonwealth of Rome was distinguished by re



Last Days of the Romacn Republic.


187


markable purity of manners; that the marriage tie was
singularly respected; that the Latin yeomen who were
the backbone of the community were industrious and
laborious, that they lived with frugality and simplicity,
and brought up their children in a humble fear of God or
of the gods as rulers to whom they would one day have to
give an account. That the youth of a plant which grew
so sturdily was exceptionally healthy is no more than we
should naturally infer, and that the fact was so is confirmed to us both by legend and authentic record. The
change of manners is assumed by some persons to have
come in with the Cesars.  Virtue is supposed to have
flourished so long as liberty survived, and the perfidy and
profligacy of which we read with disgust in Tacitus and
Juvenal are regarded as the offspring of despotism. With
the general state of European morals under the first
centuries of the Empire we are extremely ill-acquainted.
Tacitus and Juvenal describe the society of the capital.
Of life in the country and in the provincial towns they
tell us next to nothing.  If we may presume that the
Messalians had their imitators in the provinces; if we
may gather from the Epistles of St. Paul that the morals
of Corinth for instance were not distinguished by any
special excellence, yet there was virtue or desire of virtue
enough in the world to make possible the growth of
Christianity.
Accident, on the other hand, has preserved the fragments of a drama of real life, which was played out in the
last days of the Republic, partly in Rome itself, partly
in a provincial city in South Italy, from which it would
appear that the ancient manners were already everywhere
on the decline; that institutions suited to an age when
men were a law to themselves, could not prevent them
from becoming wicked if they were inclined, and only




188


Society in Italy in the


saved them from punishment when they had deserved it.
The broken pieces of the story leave much to be desired.
The actions are preserved; the actors are little more than
names. The flesh and blood, the thoughts that wrought
in the brain, the passions that boiled in the veins-these
are dry as the dust of a mummy from an Egyptian catacomb. Though generations pass away, however, the earth
at least remains. We cannot see the old nations, but we
can stand where they stood; we can look on the landscape
on which they looked; we can watch the shadows of the
clouds chasing one another on the same mountain slopes;
we can listen to the everlasting music of the same waterfalls; we can hear the same surf far off lapping upon the
beach.
Let us transport ourselves then to the Neapolitan town
of Larino, not far from the Gulf of Venice. In the remains
of the amphitheatre we can recognise the Roman hands
that once were labouring there.
Let us imagine that it is the year 88 before Christ,
when Csesar was a boy of twelve, when the Social War had
just been ended by Sylla, and Marius had fled from Rome,
to moralise amidst the ruins of Carthage. Larino, like
most of the Samnite towns, had taken part with the
patriots. Several of its most distinguished citizens had
fallen in battle. They had been defeated, but their cause
had survived. Summoned to Asia to oppose Mithridates,
Sylla had postponed his revenge, and had conceded at
least some of the objects for which the Italians had been
in arms. The leaders returned to their homes, and their
estates escaped confiscation. The two families of highest
consequence in Larino were the Cluentii and the Aurii.
Both were in mourning. Lucius Cluentius, who had commanded the insurgent army in Campania, had been killed
at Nola. Marcus Aurius had not returned to Larino at




Last Dcays of the Roman Republic.


189


the peace, and was supposed to have fallen in the North
of Italy. Common political sympathies had drawn the
survivors together, and they were further connected by
marriage. There remained of the Cluentii a widowed
mother named Sassia, with two children, Aulus Cluentius
Avitus, a boy of sixteen, and his sister Cluentia, a year
younger. Dinea, the mother of the Aurii, was a widow
also. Dinea had been the sister of Sassia's husband, and
was therefore herself a Cluentia. She had four children,
all some years older than their cousins-Marcus Aurius,
whom she believed to be dead; Numerius Aurius; Cnseus
Magius Aurius; and a daughter, Magia.
The Aurii had other relations of the same name at
Larino-Aurius Melinus, Caius Melinus, and several more.
The Cluentii were the last of their race. Both families
were rich. The wealth which had poured into Rome after
the conquest of the East had filtered over Italy. These
provincial magistrates lived in handsome villas, with comforts which would have made Cato shudder, and waited
upon by retinues of slaves. Otherwise scandal had no
harm to say of either Aurii or Cluentii. They were
honoured for their patriotism, and beloved for their private
virtues.
A  third family at Larino, the Oppianici, though
also connected with the Aurii, belonged to the opposite
faction. Caius Oppianicus, the younger of two brothers,
was married to Dinea's daughter Magia. Statius Albinus
Oppianicus, the elder, and the head of the clan, had been
three times married: first to a sister of Dinea, who had
died, leaving him with a son; next, to a lady named
Papia, who bore him a son also, and whom he had
divorced; lastly, to Novia, who was for the present living
with him and had brought him a third son, an infant.
He had squandered his own fortune and the fortune of




190


Society in Italy in the


his first wife, whom he was suspected of having poisoned.
He had since been living by his wits, and had figured
unpleasantly in a late trial at Rome. A foolish youth of
Larino, appropriately named Asinius, had come into possession of a large sum of money. Like Iago, who made
his fool his purse, Oppianicus took possession of Asinius,
carried him to Rome to see the world, and launched him
among the taverns and the gambling houses. A confederate, Avilius, a Larinate also, made a third in the party;
and one night, when Asinius was absent with a female
companion, with whom they were assured that he would
remain till morning, Avilius affected to be taken suddenly
ill, and said that he must make his will. A notary and
witnesses were introduced to whom the persons of Avilius
and Asinius were alike unknown. Avilius bequeathed all
his property to Oppianicus, signed his name Asinius, and
then recovered. The true Asinius was waylaid and killed
a few days after. Oppianicus produced the will, claimed
the estate, and obtained it-not, however, without some
notice having been drawn to the matter which might have
ended unpleasantly for him. Suspicions had been aroused,
it does not appear how. Avilius was arrested and carried
before one of the city magistrates, to whom in his terror
he confessed the truth. Fortunately for Oppianicus, the
magistrate was discreet and not inaccessible. The spoils
were divided and the affair was hushed up, but it had
naturally been much talked of at Larino. Oppianicus
had been looked on askance; in the matter of fortune he was in a desperate condition, and he was on the
look-out for the nearest means of improving his circumstances.
He was a man, it appears, of considerable personal attractions. He had made himself agreeable to his brother's
wife Magia, and had seduced her. Her brother Numerius




Last Days of the Roman Republic.


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caught a fever and suddenly died, leaving his share of the
Aurian property to his brother Cnmeus Magius.
CnaTus Magius fell ill also very soon after. He, perhaps, suspected the cause of his sickness. At any rate he
had seen with alarm and suspicion his sister's intimacy
with a person of so questionable a character as Albinus
Oppianicus. His alarms were not diminished when her
husband, Caius Oppianicus, was found dead in his bed,
from some unexplained visitation; and growing rapidly
worse, and feeling that his own end was not far off, he sent
for his sister, and in the presence of his mother Dinea he
questioned her as to whether she was pregnant. She assured him that it was so. She half satisfied him that she
was herself innocent of guilt, and that Caius Oppianicus,
and not his brother, was the father. He made a will bequeathing the whole inheritance which had fallen to him
to this child as soon as it should be born. He appointed
his mother, Dinea, the guardian, lest Albinus Oppianicus
should interfere. If the child should miscarry, or should
not survive, Dinea and Magia were then to divide the estates between them.
The arrangement had scarcely been completed when
Cnaeus Magius died. Oppianicus then induced Magia to
take a medicine which produced abortion. Magia and
Dinea became thus coheiresses, and Oppianicus saw almost
within his reach the accumulated wealth of the family.
At this moment a stranger appeared in Larino who
brought news that the elder brother, Marcus Aurius, was
still alive. He had not been killed, as report had said,
but had been taken prisoner, and was confined with hard
labour at a convict station in the North of Italy. The story
was not improbable, and the new-comer produced credible
evidence of the truth of what he said. He gave Dinea the
names and addresses of persons who had seen Marcus Au



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Society in Italy in the


rius, and could find him. The hope that she had still a son
surviving came to comfort her in her desolation, and she
despatched friends to discover him, purchase his release,
and restore him to her.
So unpleasant a discovery came inopportunely for the
schemes of Oppianicus; but he lost neither heart nor presence of mind. He made acquaintance with the stranger,
purchased his help, and induced him to vary his account,
and throw Dinea on a false scent. He sent off a confederate to gain the parties in the North and mislead the
mother's messengers, while a certain Sextus Vibrius was
despatched to obtain true directions from them, to find out
Marcus Aurius, and assassinate him. The game was dangerous, however, so long as Dinea lived. She had Aurian
kinsmen in Larino who were powerful, and to whom she
might possibly appeal. He was aware that her suspicions
would turn upon himself as soon as she should hear that
her son could not be found, and he thought it better to
anticipate future trouble by removing her at once. She
was growing old, and her health had been shaken by
sorrow and anxiety. Oppianicus recommended to her the
assistance of a physician of whose skill he professed to
have had experience. Dinea declined his advice, and sent
for another doctor from Ancona, whom Oppianicus had
some difficulty of gaining over to his purpose. He succeeded at last, however, with a bribe of four thousand
pounds, and the unfortunate woman was poisoned. Before
she died she, too, made a will; but Oppianicus destroyed
it. His agents in the North sent him word that his work
had been successfully done.  Marcus Aurius had been
found and killed, and all traces were destroyed by which
his fate could be discovered. Oppianicus at once divorced
his present wife, married Magia, and took possession of the
estates in her name.




Last Days of the Roman Republic.


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He had played his cards skilfully; but again, as with
his adventure at Rome, without having succeeded perfectly
in averting suspicion from himself. Many eyes, no doubt,
were watching him. The Larinates could not see with
complaisance the entire disappearance of one of their most
honoured families, and the Aurian estates passing into
the hands of a blemished and bankrupt adherent of the
Oligarchic faction. The messengers sent by Dinea reported
that they could not discover Marcus Aurius; but they had
found that secret efforts had been made to baffle them.
They had ascertained that Oppianicus had been concerned
in those efforts, and they wrote to Larino, charging him
with foul play. Dinea being dead, tho letters were taken
to the nearest relative of the family, Aurius Melinus.
This Aurius Melinus had already appeared before the
Larinate public in a not very creditable manner. Soon
after the death of her father he had married Cluentia,
daughter of the widow Sassia, and sister of Aulus Cluentius
Avitus. Sassia, who was a licentious, unprincipled woman,
became enamoured of her son-in-law. Under the ancient
Roman law, the marriage tie had been as indissoluble as
in the strictest Christian community. But the restraint
of marriage, like every other check on the individual will,
had gone down before the progress of democracy. To
divorce a wife was now as easy as to change a dress. The
closest affinity was no longer an obstacle to a new connection. Sassia succeeded in enchanting her son-in-law. The
daughter was' divorced, and the mother was installed in
her place.
Public opinion, though degenerate, was not entirely
corrupted. The world of Larino considered itself outraged
by what it still regarded as incest. Aulus Cluentius, the
son, took his mother's conduct so much to heart that he
refused to see either her or her husband, and the domestic
13




194


Society in Italy in the


scandal had created almost as much agitation as the
tragedy of Dinea and her children.  The two vicious
streams were now to unite. Aurius Melinus, perhaps to
recover the esteem of his fellow-citizens, put himself forward
to demand justice against the murderers of his kinsmen.
He called a public meeting; he read aloud in the assembly
the letters from the North denouncing Oppianicus. He
demanded an immediate investigation. If his cousin Marcus was no longer alive, he charged Oppianicus with
having assassinated him.
Suspicions already rife turned to certainty. The people
rose.  They rushed to Oppianicus's house to seize and
tear him in pieces. Exceptional villains appear at times
to be the special care of Providence, as if they had a work
given them to do and might not perish till it was accomplished. Oppianicus had fled; and unhappily a political
revolution had not only provided him with a sure refuge,
but with means yet more fatal of adding to his crimes.
While Sylla was fighting Mithridates in Asia, Marius had
returned to a Seventh Consulship, and the democracy had
enjoyed a brief and sanguinary triumph; but Marius was
dead, and Sylla had returned a conqueror, and the name
of every eminent advocate of popular rights was now entered on a proscription list.  Sylla's lieutenant, Quintus
Metellus, was encamped not far from Larino. Oppianicus
threw himself on Metellus's protection, representing himself, perhaps, as the victim of a popular commotion. Metellus sent him on to the Dictator, and from Sylla he
received a commission to purge Larino of its suspected
citizens, to remove the magistrates, and to execute every
one who had been connected with the Marian faction. In
the haste of the time he was allowed to draw the list of
the proscribed himself, and to enter upon it both his open
enemies and the accomplices of his crimes, whose too inti



Last Dcys of the Roman Republic.


195


mate acquaintance with him he had reason to fear. Aurius
Meclinus perished, and every remaining member of the
Aurian kindred. Sextus Vibrius perished, who had been
his instrument in hiding the traces of Marcus Aurius and
murdering him. The proscribed were seized and killed
without being allowed to speak; and thus at one blow
Oppianicus was able to rid himself of every one whose
vengeance he had to fear, and of the only witness by whom
the worst of his crimes could be brought home to him.
For his services to Sylla he was probably rewarded
further out of the estates of his victims, and by a series of
enormous crimes, which even in that bad time it is to be
hoped could not be easily paralleled, he had become the
most opulent and most powerful citizen of his native town.
Oppianicus had obtained all that he had desired, but he
found, as all mortals find, that the enjoyment had been in
the pursuit-that the prize when won still failed to give
perfect satisfaction.  Happiness was still flying before
him-almost within his grasp, but still eluding it. Perhaps
the murder of her husband, her mother, and her brothers,
may have sate uneasily upon Magia. At any rate he had
grown weary of Magia. She too was now cleared away to
make room for a more suitable companion. On the death
of Aurius Melinus, Sassia was again a widow, and Oppianicus became a suitor for her hand. It was true that
he had killed her husband, but he swore, like Richard,
that he had done it " to help her to a better husband." It
was Sassia's "heavenly face" which had set him on, and
Sassia listened, not unfavourably. There were difficulties,
however, which had first to be removed.  Sassia was rich,
and in a position to make conditions. Oppianicus had
three children, whose mothers she may have disliked, or
whom she expected that she would find in her way. She
was willing to tolerate the eldest, who bore his father's




196


Society in Italy in the


name, but she refused to marry him till the two little ones
had been removed.
The horrible woman was showing herself a suitable mate
for Oppianicus. Her wealth, her person, perhaps this last
proof of the hardiness of her disposition, determined him
to secure her on her own terms. One of his little boys was
being brought up with his mother at Theano. He sent for
the child to Larino. In the night it was taken ill and died,
and to prevent inquiry into the manner of its death, the
body was burnt before dawn the next morning. TwQ days
after the other little boy died with as mysterious suddenness; and Sassia became Oppianicus's wife.
The people of Larino shuddered and muttered. They
could not challenge the favourite of Sylla, the chief magistrate of the town, who had the local authority in his hands
and the confidence of the Dictator at Rome; but they
shrank from contact with him. They avoided both him
and his wife as if they had the plague. Young Cluentius
especially held aloof from his mother more sternly than
ever, and would neither speak to her nor see her.
At length Sylla died; the middle classes through Italy
drew their breath freely again, and at Larino as elsewhere
the people could venture to make their voices heard. There
was in the town an ancient and venerable college of Priests
of Mars, a sort of Cathedral Chapter. The priests had
obtained the Roman franchise as a result of the Italian
war. It had been confirmed to them by Marius. It had
been taken away again by Sylla. And now that Sylla was
gone, a deputation from the town was sent to the Senate
to petition for its restoration. With this deputation, as one
of its members, went young Aulus Cluentius, who was
then acquiring fame as a public speaker, and he soon
attracted notice at Rome by his vindication of the rights
of the Chapter. Oppianicus, who had been Sylla's instru



Last Days of the Roman Republic.


197


ment in carrying out the disfranchisement in Larino, had
his own good reasons for dreading to see his work overthrown. With the restoration of political liberty municipal
self-government would be restored along with it. He
feared Cluentius on personal grounds as well as political.
He saw in him his future accuser, and he had a further
motive of another kind for wishing to destroy him. Cluentius had not yet made his will, for he would not leave his
fortune to his mother, and he could not bring himself to
make a disposition in which her name should not be mentioned. In the absence of a will she was his heir-at-law.
It was but one more murder, and Oppianicus would at once
quit himself of a dangerous antagonist, gratify his wife, and
add the lands of the Cluentii to the vast estates which he
had accumulated already.
Cluentius was out of health. Cleophantus, the physician by whom he was attended, was a man of eminence
and character, whom it was unsafe to approach by the
means which he had used so successfully in the poisoning
of Dinea. But Cleophantus had a slave who worked in his
laboratory, whom Oppianicus calculated on finding corruptible, and the assistant by whom medicines are made up
is in such cases as useful as his principal. He did not
think it prudent to appear in person, but a patrician friend,
one of the Fabricii, undertook the business for him; and
Fabricius felt his way with the slave through his freedman
Scamander.
Villains have an instinct for recognising one another,
and rarely make mistakes in the character of the persons
whom they address. The necessary tact, however, was
wanting to Scamander; and in the class of wretches
who were bought like sheep in the market, and might be
flung at pleasure into the fishponds to feed the aristocrats'
lampreys, a degree of virtue was found at last which was




198             Society in taly in the
to bring Oppianicus's atrocities to a close. Diogenesso the slave was called-received Scamander's overtures
with apparent acquiescence. He listened, drew Scamander
on to reveal the name of his employers, and then whispered the story to his master. Cleophantus carried it to
Cluentius. An honest senator, Marcus Bibrius, was taken
into counsel; and it was agreed that Oppianicus should be
played with till he had committed himself, when punishment could at last overtake him. Diogenes kept up
his correspondence with Scamander, and promised to administer the poison as soon as he was provided with materials.  It was arranged that Cluentius should purchase
Diogenes, that he might have a skilled attendant to wait
upon him in his illness. The conspiracy would then be
carried on under Cluentius's own roof, where the proceedings could be conveniently watched, and conversations be
overheard. Oppianicus was outmanceuvred at last. Both
he and Fabricius were tempted to betray themselves. The
poison was conveyed to Diogenes; the money which was
to pay for the murder was brought to him, and received
in the presence of concealed witnesses. The criminals
were caught red-handed, without room for denial or concealment. They were seized and denounced, and brought
to immediate trial.
Horrible crimes have, unfortunately, been so frequent
in this world that they have no permanent interest for us;
and, unless they have been embalmed in poetry, or are
preserved by the exceptional genius of accomplished historians, the memory of them rarely survives a single
generation. The tragedies of Larino would have passed
into oblivion with the lives of those who had witnessed and
shuddered at them. Posterity, if it cared to recollect, would
have had their curiosity and their sense of justice satisfied
if they could have learned that the chief villain was de



Last Days of the Roman Republic.


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tcted and punished at last; and to revive an interest i:t
a detailed chapter of human wickedness after nearly two
thousand years would have been alike superfluous and
impossible. The story, however, now assumes features of
deeper importance.  Oppianicus and his victims are
nothing to us. The rise and fall of the Roman Commonwealth is of undying consequence to the political student;
and other thousands of years will still have to pass before
we shall cease to study the most minute particulars which
will interpret to us so remarkable a phenomenon. The
judicial investigation into the crimes of Oppianicus was
to form an illustration of the incurable corruption of the
Roman Senate; and that Senate's most brilliant member
-better known to English schoolboys than the most distinguished modern classic (Kikero they now call him;
but we are too old to learn the new nomenclaturc)-was
to be the principal instrument in exposing it.
Criminal trials at Rome were conducted before a body
of judges or jurymen, the selection of whom had been one
of the chief subjects of contention during the recent political struggles. The privileged orders affected to fear that
justice would be degraded if the administration of it was
extended to persons who were incompetent for so honourable an office. The people complained that their lives and
properties were unsafe in the hands of proud, extravagant,
and venal aristocrats. The Senators declared that if members of their own order had not been always pure, the
middle classes would be found immeasurably worse. The
middle classes, without laying claims to superior virtue,
protested that the Senators had already descended to the
lowest depths of the abyss of dishonesty.
That the office of a judge, at any rate, might be made
one of the most lucrative situations which the State had




200


Society in Italy in the


to offer became apparent in a prosecution which happened
about the same time of the Praetor Verres for the plunder
of Sicily. In the trial of Verres it was proved that the
governor of a Roman province under the Republic, looked
on his period of office as an opportunity of making his
fortune by extortion and the public sale of justice. To be
successful, he must carry off three times as much booty as
he expected to be allowed to retain. A third had to be
bestowed in buying the goodwill of the consuls, tribunes,
and other magistrates; a third in corrupting the juries,
when he was called to account by the pillaged provincials;
the remaining part only he might calculate on keeping
for himself.
The Court which was to try the case of the Larinates
was composed of thirty-two Senators. Caius Gracchus
had granted the jury-right to the Equites; but it had
again been taken from them by Sylla. The judges were
now exclusively patricians, the purest blood of which
Rome had to boast. Scamander, Fabricius, and Oppianicus were indicted successively for conspiring the murder
of Cluentius. The prisoners were tried separately. Though
rumour had caught hold of some features of the story, the
circumstances were generally unknown.    Oppianicus,
through his wealth and connections, had secured powerful
patrons; and Cicero, who rarely took part in prosecutions, was retained in the first instance to defend Scamander.
Publius Canutius opened the case for Cluentius; and
Cicero, though he exerted himself to the utmost, very soon
discovered that he had a bad cause. The evidence was
absolutely conclusive. Scamander was condemned, and
Fabricius was brought to the bar. Cicero withdrew from
the case and contented himself with watching it. Fabricius's brother, Cepasius, took his place as advocate; but




Last Days of the Roman Republic.


201


with no better success.  Fabricius, too, was convicted,
but with a slight difference in the form of the result. A
unanimous verdict was given against Scamander; a single
Senator, called Stalenus, voted for the acquittal of Fabricius. There was no more doubt of his guilt than of his
freedman's. The evidence against them both was the same.
Stalenus had not been bribed, for Fabricius was poor; but
he intended to intimate to the rich Oppianicus that he was
open to an arrangement when his own turn should
come on.
Stalenus was a man of consequence.   He had been
questor, and aspired to the higher offices of State. He
had obtained some notoriety in a recent civil case in which
one of the parties was a certain Safinius Atella. Safinius
had the worst of the argument, and Stalenus had boasted
that for a round sum of money he could purchase a verdict notwithstanding. The money was given to him, but
Safinius lost his cause, and ill-natured persons had whispered that Stalenus had kept it for himself. Such a
transaction, however, if successful and undetected, might
pass for a stroke of cleverness. At all events the suspicions attached to it had not interfered with the further
employment of this ingenious young nobleman. He was
merely observed, and anything singular in his conduct was
set down to its right motive.
Oppianicus's case might well be considered desperate.
Scamander and Fabricius had been accessories only to a
single attempt at murder. The past history of Oppianicus
had probably been alluded to generally in the preliminary
trials. He would stand at the bar an object of general
abhorrence for various other enormities, and the proofs
which had been sufficient to condemn his accomplices
would tell with tenfold force against their instigator, whose
past career had been so dark. In the vote of Stalenus




202


Society in Italy in the


only some glimmer of hope remained. The Court adjourned for a few days. In the interval Oppianicus
made Stalenus's acquaintance, and they soon understood
one another. Stalenus told him frankly that his situation
was a difficult one, and would probably be expensive. The
judges who had condemned the other prisoners would
commit manifest perjury if they acquitted Oppianicus.
Public feeling being excited, they would be exposed to
general opprobrium, and they would require to be well
paid for their services. Still, however, he thought it
might be managed. He knew his men, and he considered
that he could secure fifteen votes out of the thirty-two,
which in addition to his own would be sufficient. Money
only was necessary: each vote would require 4001.
Oppianicus's fortune would be of little use to him if he
was convicted. Being a Roman citizen, he was not liable
to a sentence of death from a criminal court, but exile and
a fine amounting nearly to confiscation were as bad or possibly worse. He assented to Stalenus's terms, and paid
into his hands 6,4001.
It was understood by this time that a negotiation with
the prisoner was going forward. Stalenus had felt his
way, dropping hints here and there in whatever quarter
they were likely to be operative, and at length the corruptible fifteen had given conditional assurances that they
might be relied on. But the terms, as he expected, were
high; very little would be left for himself; and he began
to reflect that with perfect safety he might keep the whole
of it. The honest part of the jury would, he thought, undoubtedly vote for a conviction. Those who had agreed to
sell their consciences would be so angry if they were now
disappointed that he might count on them with equal
certainty, and it would be in vain that after a verdict of
guilty such a wretch as Oppianicus would appeal to public




Last Days of the Roman Republic.


203


opinion. No one would believe him, no one would pity
him. Thus the night before the trial came on he informed
his friends upon the jury that Oppianicus had changed his
mind, and that no money was forthcoming. They were
as exasperated as he hoped to find them. Ile was himself
not suspected, and they met the next day in court with a
most virtuous resolution that justice should not be baulked
of its object.
The voting in a Roman trial was either open or secret,
as the Court might decide for itself. Oppianicus not relying too perfectly on his friends, and anxious not to be
cheated of the wares for which he had paid, demanded
that each judge should give his verdict by word of mouth.
The tribune Quinctius, who was secretly his friend, supported him, and his request was agreed to. Every one was
aware that there had been bribery, and the members of
the jury who were open to bribes were generally well known.
It was, of course, assumed that they would vote for an
acquittal, and Stalenus and his friends were observed with
contemptuous curiosity, but without a doubt of what their
judgment would be.
It happened that Stalenus was the first to vote, and
two of his intimate associates were the second and third.
To the astonishment of every one, all three without the
slightest hesitation voted guilty. The rest of the judges,
or rather the respectable portion of them, were utterly
bewildered. The theory of corruption implies that men
who take bribes will generally fulfil their contract, nor
again do men usually take bribes to vote according to
their real convictions. They were assured that Stalenus
had been corrupted by some one to give a false verdict.
'They thought he had been corrupted by Oppianicus; but
he had voted against Oppianicus; he had voted for
Cluentius,-therefore it seemed he must have been bribed




204


Society in Italy in the


by Cluentius, and Oppianicus might be innocent after all.
Thus argued the outside public almost universally, having
heard the story but imperfectly. Thus argued even a
section of the judges themselves, and in their confusion
five of the more honest of them actually voted for Oppianicus's acquittal. The larger number concluded at last
that they must go by the evidence. Stalenus and his
friends might have taken money from Cluentius. Cluentius might have been afraid to trust himself entirely to the
justice of his cause. But corruption could not alter the
truth. Oppianicus was unquestionably guilty, and he was
condemned by a large majority.
He for his part was banished, clamouring that he was
betrayed, but unable, as Stalenus expected, to obtain a remission of his sentence. In modern eyes such a punishment was immeasurably too lenient. To a Roman who
wanted courage to end his misfortunes with his own hand,
exile was held to be the most terrible of calamities. Caesar
pleaded against the execution of the accomplices of Catiline, that death ended all things. He would have them
live and suffer. "Life," said Cicero on the present occasion, "was worse than death to Oppianicus. No one believed any longer the old wives' fable of Tartarus. Death
would be but a happy release to him." He left Rome to
wander about Italy, as if marked with a curse. Sassia
followed him to torment him with her reproaches and infidelities. One day as he was riding his horse threw him.
He was mortally injured and died.
So ended Oppianicus. So, however, did not end the
consequences of his various villanies. Political passions
were again rising. The people in Rome and out of it
were clamouring to the skies against the iniquities of the
Senate. The story went abroad that a senatorial jury had
again been bribed; and being without detailed knowledge




Last Days of the Roman Republic.


205


of the case, the Roman populace rushed naturally to the
conclusion that an innocent man had been condemned.
Oppianicus had protested against the verdict, and had denounced his judges. It was enough. The verdict was indisputably corrupt, and a corrupt verdict, as a matter of
course, must be a false verdict.
Quinctius the tribune, Oppianicus's friend, encouraged
the agitation. It was an opportunity not to be neglected
of bringing the Senate into disrepute.  Thrice he harangued the General Assembly in the Forum. He insisted
that the degraded patricians should be stripped once more
of the privileges which they abused. Cluentius's name
became a by-word. He who in his humble way had been
the champion of his own townspeople was identified with
the hated senatorial monopoly. So furious were the people
that for eight years, Cicero says, they would not so much
as listen to a word that could be said for him. Every
senator who had voted for Oppianicus's condemnation was
prosecuted under the Jury Laws. Some were fined, some
were expelled from the Senate by the Censors. One of
them, Caius Egnatius, was disinherited by his father.
The Senate itself was invited to condemn its own members.
Not daring to refuse, the Senate saved its conscience by a
wise generality, and passed a resolution that any person
or persons who had been instrumental in corrupting public
justice had been guilty of a heinous offence. Finally
Cluentius himself was brought to trial, and so hot was
public feeling against him that Cicero was obliged to confine his defence to a legal technicality. The law, he said,
was for the restraint of corruption in the juries. The
juries under Sylla's constitution could consist of senators
only, and Cluentius being an Eques, the law could not
touch him.
Gradually the outcry died away, melting into the gen



206             Society in Italy in the
eral stream of indignation which in a few years swept
away the constitution, and under new forms made justice
possible again. But the final act of the Cluentian drama
had still to be played out. Again Cluentius was to appear before a tribunal of Roman judges. Again Cicero
was to defend him-no longer under a quibble, but on the
merits of the whole case, into which at last it was possible to enter.
From the speech which Cicero delivered on this occasion we have gathered our story. It is not a favourable
specimen of his oratorical power. There is no connection
in the events. There is no order of time. We are hurried from date to date, from place to place. The same
person is described under different names; the same incident in different words. The result is a mass of threads
so knotted, twisted, and entangled, that only patient labour
can sort them out into intelligible arrangement.
What Cicero lacks in method, however, he makes up in
earnestness. He was evidently supremely affected by the
combination of atrocities and misunderstandings by which
an innocent, well-deserving man was likely to be overwhelmed.
The various lovers of Sassia had been either murdered
or had died, or had deserted her. She had lost much of
her ill-gained fortunes. She had grown too old for the
further indulgence of her pleasant vices. One desire alone
remained, and had devoured the rest-a desire for revenge
upon her son Cluentius. In the prejudiced condition of
public feeling at Rome, any wily accusation against him
might be expected to obtain a hearing. Iaving escaped
the prosecution for the bribery of the judges, he was
charged with having murdered one of his friends, whose
property he hoped to inherit. The attempt was clumsy
and it failed. The friend was proved to have died where




Last Days of the Roman Republic.


207


Cluentius could have had no access to him; and a nephew,
and not Cluentius, was his heir. The next accusation was
of having tried to poison the surviving son of Oppianicus.
Cluentius and the younger Oppianicus had been together
at a festival of Larino. Another youth who was also
present there had died a few days later, and it was alleged
that he had drunk by mistake from a cup which had been
prepared for Sassia's stepson.  But again the evidence
broke down. There was no proof that the death was
caused by poison, or that Cluentius was in any way connected with it.
The accursed woman, though twice baffled, would not
abandon her object. In both instances proof of malice
had been wanting. Cluentius had no object in perpetrating either of the crimes of which she had accused him.
If he had no grudge against the young Oppianicus, however, he had undoubtedly hated his father, and she professed to have discovered that the father had not died, as
had been reported, by the fall from his horse, but had
been poisoned by a cake which had been administered to
him at Cluentius's instigation.  The method in which
Sassia went to work to make out her case throws a fresh
and hideous light on the Roman administration of justice
in the last days of liberty. She produced two witnesses
who were both slaves. To one of them, Nicostratus, a
Greek, she owed an old grudge. He had belonged to Oppianicus the elder, and had revealed certain infidelities of
hers which had led to inconvenience. The other, Strato,
was the slave of a doctor who had attended Oppianicus
after his accident. Since neither of these men were willing
to say what she required them to say of their own accord,
she demanded according to custom that they should be
tortured.  The Roman law did not acknowledge any
rights in these human chattels: a slave on the day of his




208


Society in Italy in the


bondage ceased to be a man. Nicostratus and Strato were
racked till the executioners were weary, but nothing could
be extracted from them. A distinguished advocate who
was present, and was not insensible to pity, said that the
slaves were being tortured not to make them tell the truth,
but to make them lie. The court took the same view, and
they were released.
Once more Sassia was defeated, but she waited her
opportunity. Three years later, the orator Hortensius, a
general protector of rogues, was elected to the consulate.
The vindictiveness with which she had come forward as
the prosecutrix of her own son had injured her cause.
She made one more effort, and this time she prevailed on
the young Oppianicus, who had meanwhile married her
daughter, to appear in her place. She had purchased
Strato after his escape from the torture, and had power of
life and death over him. He had murdered a fellow slave;
and it was alleged that when he confessed to this crime he
had confessed to the other also. He was crucified, and
to prevent his telling inconvenient truths upon the cross,
his tongue was cut out before he was nailed upon it. On
the strength of his pretended deposition, a criminal process was once more instituted against Cluentius before a
Roman jury. The story had by this time become so
notorious, and the indignation of the provinces had been
so deeply roused, that deputations from every town in the
south of Italy came to the Capital to petition in Cluentius's favour. How the trial ended is unknown. It may
be hoped that he was acquitted-but it is uncertain.
Innocent men have suffered by millions in this world.
As many guilty wretches have escaped, and seemed to
triumph; but the vengeance which follows upon evil acts
does not sleep because individuals are wronged. The
penalty is exacted to the last farthing from the community




Last Days of flhe Roman Republic.     209
which permits injustice to be done. And the Republican
Commonwealth of Rome was fast filling the measure of its
iniquities. In another half-century perjured juries and
corrupted magistrates had finished their work; the world
could endure them no longer, and the free institutions
which had been the admiration of mankind were buried
under the throne of the Ctesars.
14




LUCIAN.
THE men of genius who had the misfortune, under the
later Roman Emperors, to be blind to the truth of Christianity have been punished by a neglect which they do
not wholly deserve. With Tacitus the era closes in which
a Roman of ability has been allowed to have shut his eyes
to the light without wilful sin. Thenceforward all men
of intellectual reputation who remained unconverted have
been held guilty by Christendom of deliberate unbelief.
Their writings have been thrown aside as either mischievous or useless. The age itself and the character of their
contemporaries has been left to be described by the Fathers
of the Church; and unless for special reasons, or by exceptional and curious students, the last representatives of
the old classical literature remain generally unread. Nor
is this neglect diminishing or likely to diminish. When
modern books were scarce, any writing which had value
in it was prized at its true worth.  Plutarch was Shakespeare's chief authority for his Greeks and Romans. Men
of culture, who were weary of the quarrels between Catholics and Protestants, preferred the calmer atmosphere of
Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus. The lofty spiritualism
of the Alexandrian Platonists was a favourite food with
the Cambridge philosophers of the seventeenth century.
The exacting demands of modern literature, however,
210




Lucian.


211


leave inadequate leisure for the study of even the most
accomplished of the classical writers. Modern languages
encroach more and more on the old domain of Greek and
Latin, and either divide the schools with them or threaten
to expel them  altogether.  The ready quotation from
Horace has disappeared from society and almost from the
Senate house. Still less of leisure has been left for the
less polished, if not less interesting, writers of the succeeding centuries; and except an occasional metaphysician,
who makes excursions into Proclus or Plotinus, or an antiChristian controversialist, who goes for assistance to the
fragments of Celsus or Porphyry, it is rare that any one
wanders aside into the pages of authors who are looked on
as degenerate classics of dangerous tendency, without the
literary merit which might compensate for their spiritual
deficiency.
Our indifference costs us more than we are aware of.
It is supremely desirable that we should be acquainted
with the age in which Christianity became the creed of
civilized mankind, and we learn but half the truth from
the Christian fathers. Whether we regard Christianity
as a miracle from without, or as developed from within,
out of the conscience and intellect of man, we perceive, at
any rate, that it grew by natural causes, that it commended itself by argument and example, that it was received or rejected according to the moral and mental
condition of those to whom it was addressed. We shall
understand the history of its triumph only when we see
the heathen world as the heathen world saw itself. The
most indispensable guides in such an inquiry are the
writers who remained unconvinced.  Nor is it uninteresting to see why they were unconvinced, or how, when they
noticed its existence, the new creed appeared to them.
We invite our readers to forget their prejudices, and




212


Lucian.


to accompany us, so far as our few pages will allow, on an
expedition into Lucian. Every one has heard of Lucian's
name; nine people out of every ten, if asked who Lucian
was, would be ready with an answer that he was a scoffer
and an atheist, and in that answer would show decisively
that they had never read a page of him. The censure
and the ignorance rise from the same source. On the
strength of a Dialogue, which has been proved to be
spurious, Lucian has been denounced as a direct enemy
of Christianity. Lucian is supposed to have encouraged
with his satires the hatred which took shape in the persecutions. He has been, therefore, spoken of systematically as a special servant of Satan, as a person whose
company decent people were bound to avoid.
Yet Lucian, in his genuine writings, mentions the
Christians but once, and then only as a simple-minded
sect whose credulity made them the easy dupes of quacks
and charlatans. He had looked at Christianity, and had
passed it by as one of the thousand illusions which were
springing like mushrooms in the hotbed of Greco-Asiatic
speculation. The abominations of paganism and the cant
of the popular philosophers were the real objects of his
detestation; and, so far as concerned the common enemy,
the Fathers and Lucian were fighting on the same side.
Yet it is doubtful whether, had they known him as he
was, he would have been regarded as a welcome ally,
or otherwise as anything but intolerable to them. The
lightning-like mockery with which Lucian strikes at folly
and imposture was unfavourable, however legitimate its
objects, to the generation of a believing spirit. To the
Fathers the pagan cultus was a worship of devils, to
Lucian it was a dishonest or base affectation; and his
dissecting knife cuts occasionally into theories where their
own nerves were susceptible. His detestation of falsehood




Lucian.


213


was a passion. No xa2r)v 'zDJos, no edifying falsehood,
no ideal loveliness or supposed beneficent influence to be
derived from illusion could blind his judgment or seduce
his allegiance to truth. He lived in an age when the
established creeds were a mockery, and philosophy was
a juggle of words; when itinerant thaumaturgists, like
Proteus or Apollonius, were the favourites of emperors
and were regarded by millions upon millions as representatives or incarnations of the gods; while politicians and
men of the world were labouring in desperate conservatism
to keep the pagan religion on its feet, for fear society
should fall to pieces if it was openly confessed to be
untrue. With this ignoble terror, and with the quackery
and dishonesty which were the    inevitable  fruit of it,
Lucian lived in perpetual war, striking at it with a
pungency of satire which is perhaps without its equal in
literature.  I-e has the keenness of Voltaire, the moral
indignation, disguised behind his jests, of Swift; but
while Lucian, no more than Swift or Voltaire, will spare
the scoundrel any single lash which is his due, he, like
Shakespeare, has still a pity for the poor wretch, as if to
be a scoundrel was itself the sharpest of penalties. When
Charon's boat-load of ghosts is carried before the judgment bar of Rlhadamanthus, a powerful nobleman is found
among them who had exhausted the list of possible human
depravities-cruelty and avarice, gluttony and lust indulged beyond the limits of nature. Witness after
witness deposes to the dreadful truth. His bed tells its
tale of horrors. His lamp, unable to say what had been
done in daylight when it was not present, details its
catalogue of midniglht orgies. Each crime, discovered or
undiscovered, was supposed to leave its scar upon the soul.
The prisoner, being ordered to strip, discloses a person so
wealed and marked that the natural substance of it was




214


Lucian.


nowhere visible.  Ehadamanthus exclaims in horror for
some new punishment adequate to such enormous villany.
A poor cobbler standing by suggests that justice will be
vindicated sufficiently if the cup of Lethe, which each
shade was permitted to drink as he passed from the
dread tribunal, should in this instance be withheld. To
remember what he had done in life would be retribution enough for the worst of criminals, without further
torture.
But there is an interest in Lucian beyond his satire
and beyond his literary excellence. Lucian more than any
other writer, pagan or Christian, enables us to see what
human beings were, how they lived, what they thought, felt,
said, and did in the centuries when paganism was expiring
and Christianity was taking the place of it.
The kingdom of heaven, it was said, was like a grain
of mustard seed. The world of spirit and the world of
matter are alike full of such seeds, full of the germs of
living organisms, waiting for the fitting conditions in
which they can take root and grow.   The germ, as it
unfolds, gathers its substance out of the soil in which it is
rooted, and out of the atmosphere which it inhales; and
it is to that soil, to that atmosphere, and to the elements
of which they are composed, that we must look, if we
would understand how and why at any particular time a
new form of organised life makes its appearance. Critics
have wearied themselves in searching for the origin of the
Gospels, and arrive at nothing. They would discover the
secret of the life of Christianity, and they are like children
digging at the roots of a plant to discover how and why it
grows. The plant withers when the root is exposed, but
the network of entangled fibre tells them nothing which
they desired to know. The historical facts recorded in the
Gospels formed the tissue of the seed out of which the




Icican.                  215
Christian Church was developed, but the tissue of the seed
is not the life of it. How the Gospels were written, or
when or by whom, is concealed, as the grain when growing
is concealed in the earth. The life of the Church was a
new ideal, a new spiritual principle to which humanity
turned for deliverance from the poison of the established
theology and philosophy. In Lucian we learn what that
tleology and that philosophy was, and how the belief or
want of belief in them was affecting intellect and morals.
IIe has been called an apostate Christian. It is perfectly
evident that he neither had been a Christian, nor, with
such a mind as he possessed and at the age at which lhe
lived, ever could have been a Christian. Two centuries
later, when Christianity had become the sole authoritative
teacher of practical morality, Lucian would have examined
with reverential interest a doctrine which was exerting so
excellent an influence over the education of the human
race. In point of fact he never gave to it more than passing attention. To him it was but one of many struggling
sects, an unintelligible offshoot of Judaism. Iie was constitutionally incredulous, and the atmosphere of lies with
which he was enveloped hardened further his natural distrust of new opinions. Tales of miracles and mysteries, so
far from acting as inducements to command his attention,
would only be occasions of suspicion. Had he even looked
seriously into the Christian formulas of faith, and had
found himself invited to believe that the child of a Galilean
artisan had 100 years before been born of a virgin, had
worked miracles, had been put to death, had gone down
to Hades and had again returned to life, he would have
answered that he could match the story by a hundred
parallels from his own contemporary experience. Each
generation produced its own swarm of pretenders to supernatural powers. Life itself would be gone before he could




216


Lucian.


have examined minutely into the claims of each of them.
An aged student in one of his Dialogues confessed to have
spent 60 years in comparing the schools of philosophy,
still hoping that he would find the truth, and still unable
to decide in which of them the truth was to be found.
Lucian tells him that he has missed his road, that life is
action, not speculation, that one good deed is better than
a thousand syllogisms; and in some such terms it is likely
he would have replied also, had Justin Martyr attempted
to make a convert of him.
But he was not careless in such matters. He had taken
exceptional pains to inquire into the claims and expose
the impostures of the pretenders of his own time.
A sketch of the character of Alexander of Abonotichus, an earlier Cagliostro, is dedicated to his friend Celsus, the same Celsus who, after his death, was attacked by
Origen. More interesting, from the mention in it of the
Christians, is the account of the life and death of Peregrinus, whom Lucian knew and whose extraordinary end
he witnessed.
This person was born in a village in Armenia. He
commenced his public career, after growing to manhood,
by murdering his father. To conceal himself he joined
the Christians at a distant town, where he became professor of exegetic theology, revised some of their sacred
books, wrote others, and seemingly was made into a bishop.
Ile was thrown into prison in one of the persecutions.
The Christians behaved to him with the affection which
they never failed to show to any of the brethren in distress. They raised subscriptions for him; they brought
him food; widows and orphans watched about his cell,
and with the gaoler's connivance shared the solitude of his
confinement. At length he was released, but the sacred
character which he had assumed sat uneasily upon him.




Lucian.


217


His disease was a passion for notoriety. Lucian says that
he shocked the Christians by eating forbidden food; more
likely he developed some new form of heresy. He was
excommunicated, or at any rate he was expelled from the
Church, and joined the Cynic philosophers. In this capacity he went to Rome, where he achieved a new celebrity
by the insolence of his tongue. He assailed Marcus Aurelius himself with his ribaldry. The wise emperor rewarded him with the impunity of a privileged fool, and
the public, to whom there is no pleasure greater than to
hear good men sneered at and libelled, for a time applauded the libeller. But the novelty wore off. Peregrinus
was again sinking into a neglect which he could not endure. To rouse the interest of men once more he announced that at the next Olympian Festival he would give
the world a lesson in the contempt of death, and would
publicly burn himself. He expected that his admirers
would interfere, but curiosity or indifference kept them
silent. He had committed himself and was too vain to
retract. The pile was raised.  The fire was kindled.
Peregrinus leapt into it and perished. Lucian, who was
himself present, being eagerly questioned as to what had
taken place by one of the martyr's disciples, answered a
fool according to his folly, and told him that an eagle had
risen out of the flames and had soared into the sky. The
story which he had himself invented passed at once into
the popular belief, and was afterwards retailed to him by
another spectator, who declared that he had witnessed the
extraordinary portent with his own eyes.
After such experience Lucian was not likely to give
easy credence to tales of miracles, and Christianity had
not attained in his lifetime a position of the commanding
importance which would hasve induced him to study its
meaning with real attention.




218


Lucian.


Ie was born at Samosata, not far from Antioch, about
the year 130 A.D. His father was a sculptor, and Lucian
was intended for the same pursuit. In a sketch which he
calls " A Dream," he describes his difficulties in the choice
of his profession under the familiar shape of the two
Fairies. The Genius of mechanical art and the Genius of
intellectual culture each work upon him their powers of
persuasion. The first promised him employment and'competence, the second promised him poverty and wisdom.
He had shown special gifts as a child for modelling in
clay. Had he been contented with a narrow career he
might have achieved the eminence with which the first
fairy tempted him. But he chose the nobler and higher
course. He left his mallet and chisel. He travelled; he
practised as a lawyer. He studied in the schools of philosophy at Athens. His life was honourably innocent, and
if the fairy kept her word about poverty, Lucian seems
never to have seriously suffered from it. The minuteness
of his description of the situation suggests that he was at
one time a dependent on some wealthy Roman patron. A
Roman noble in the second century thought his establishment incomplete without a domestic philosopher to amuse
his guests, correct his verses, and applaud his witticisms;
and men of genius who might have been distinguished
accepted the degrading position for the convenient ease
which it held out to them. Lucian, as a warning to a
friend who was meditating such a step for himself, describes what he is to expect. A young man gains a reputation at college. The world takes notice of him. A great
man invites him to dinner, and the entertainment is got up
specially on his behalf. He finds himself in a saloon more
splendid than he had ever seen. He is uneasy in his chair.
The dishes are strange to him. He does not know how to
eat, or sit, or use his napkin. He watches his neighbours.




Ltcian.


219


He dreads the ridicule of the servants. His health is
drunk, and he has to make a speech. He stammers
through it in misery, drinks more than is good for him,
and wakes the next morning sick and miserable. But he
has given satisfaction. He is taken into the great house,
and is envied by his friends for his supposed good fortune.
Lucian traces sadly his downward progress, after sacrificing his liberty and self-respect to a low desire for luxurious living. His intellect becomes debased. He'forgets
the little that he knew. He ceases to entertain his master,
and is discarded for a new favourite. Having lost courage
to encounter the hardships of independence, he is content
to remain a neglected parasite of a patron who has forgotten his existence.  He is set to travel in the same carriage with my lady' s maid, and is charged with the care
of my lady's pug dog.
If Lucian ever himself made an experiment of this
gilded slavery, he resumed his freedom before he had
allowed it to injure him. He rose to be the friend and
equal of the chosen few of his age whose good opinion was
best worth possessing. In mature life he was appointed
by Marcus Aurelius to a high civil post in Egypt, and
lived to be a very old man. His writings are not voluminous, but they belong to the rare class which will be
read with delight as long as human nature renains unchanged; and to us, in the present speculative condition
of our minds, and confronted with problems so like those
which troubled Lucian's contemporaries, they have an
exceptional and peculiar interest.
Of the true nature of our existence on this planet, on
the origin of our being, and of the meaning and purpose
of it; of what is life and what is death; and of the nature
of the rule which is exerted over us, we really know
nothing. We live merely on the crust or rind of things.




220                    Lucian.
The inner essence is absolutely concealed from us. But
though these questions admit of no conclusive answer,
there is something in our character which perpetually impels us to seek for an answer.  Hope and fear, conscience
and imagination, suggest possibilities, and possibilities
become probabilities, when allied with high and noble
aspirations. We feel the action upon us of forces which
we cannot see. The world in which we live we perceive
to be moving in obedience to some vast overmastering
power. We connect our inward emotions with what we
outwardly perceive. Observation of facts creates a scheme
or form into which our own souls infuse a spirit, and thus
arise theogonies or theologies which for a series of ages
seize possession of human belief, take control of conduct,
and silence, if they fail to satisfy the questionings of the
intellect.
Such, undoubtedly, however degraded they became,
were once the pagan religions. Incredible and absurd as
they appear on first acquaintance with them, they reveal,
when inspected more closely, essential facts at the heart
of them. They reveal generally a rude observation of the
simplest astronomical phenomena, a recognition of the
mysterious character of physical life, a perception of the
eternal difference between nobleness and baseness of conduct, and they contain vague aspirations after immortality.
The convictions and opinions thus honestly formed
clothed themselves in a dress of myth and allegory, and
the imaginative costume was no more than a graceful
drapery of ideas which were easily seen through it. But
knowledge outgrew its infant cycle.  Imagination flowed
in new channels, and no longer pursued the sacred legend
to its source.  Poetry became prose.  The picturesque
fable became a literal fact, and when claiming to be a fact
became a mischievous lie. The loves of the gods and god



Lucian.


221


desses, transparent symbols of the workings of natural
forces, became demoralising examples of vice. The system
without the clue to its meaning was no longer credible,
and the conflict began between piety, which dreaded to be
irreverent in refusing to believe, and conscience, which
dared not profess upon the lips a creed which was felt to
be false.
Under such conditions the keenest intellects are brought
once more face to face with the limits of attainable knowledge.  The problems to which faith had provided an
answer are again recognised as insoluble as soon as the
faith has disappeared; and the painful questions have
again to be wrestled with, which had been concealed
behind the accepted traditions of healthier and happier
ages.
If we may judge from the prevailing tone of modern
popular literature, from the loud avowals of incredulity on
one side and the lamentations on the other on the spread
of' infidel opinions, it seems as if, after sixteen hundred
years of satisfied belief, which came in with Christianity,
we were passing once more into a cycle of analogous
doubts; and the sentiments of so robust a thinker as
Lucian under the same trials are the footprints of a friend
who has travelled before us the road on which we are
entering. We hear him telling us in every sentence to
keep a, sound heart. in us; to tell no lies; to do right
whatever may befall us; never to profess to believe what
we know that we do not believe; to look phantoms in the
face, and to be sure that they cannot hurt us if we are
true to ourselves.
But Lucian must speak, for himself. We offer our
readers a translation of one out of his many Dialogues,
not as more celebrated than the rest, or as exceptionally
superior; but as being the most characteristic on the




022


Lucian.


special subject of which we have been speaking.    It may
be called The Twilight of the Gods of paganism.     It describes the dismay in the Pantheon when the Olympian
divinities perceived that men were ceasing to believe in
them, and were affected with the ludicrous alarm that if
not believed in they might cease to exist.
The scene opens in heaven.     Zeus is seen walking up
and down, muttering to himself; others of the gods, perceiving that he is uneasy, approach him to learn what is,
amiss.
The Dialogue begins theatrically, iambics and hexameters alternating.
ScENE.-Heaven.
ZEUS in the foreground. Enter HERMES, ATHENE, and HERE.
Hermes.-W-hat ails you, Zeus? Why do you mutter so?
Why pale and greensick pace you to and fro,
Like a philosopher? Impart your grief;
A sympathising friend may lend relief.
Athene.-Aye, my dear father Kronion, my prince, my monarch of monarchs,
I thy grey-eyed daughter, thy Trito-born, kneeling beseech thee,
Speak. Conceal it no longer, the sorrow that weighs on thy spirit;
Why dost thou sigh so deeply, and why is thy countenance troubled?
Zeus.-There is no agony, no wrong, no ill
Of such overmastering potency, but still
An immortal God may brave it if he will.
Athene.-Great Heaven, what words! what next are we to
fear?
Zeus.-Oh wretches, wretches, spawn of sin and earth!
Oh to what woe, Prometheus, gav'st thou birth!
Athene.-What is it?  Tell us; none but friends are here.




Lucian.


223


Zeus.-Oh ye loud echoing thunders, ye lightnings, burst fiom
the cloud bank.
Athene.-Moderate these wild storms. Euripides fails us.
We are unskilled in these rhymes; and cannot keep pace with you.
HIere.-You suppose we do not understand what is the matter.
You presume too much on our simplicity.
Zeus.-Didst thou but know, thou wouldst be sad as 1.
Ilere.-I know generally. You are in love again, and practice
has taught me to be patient. You have found another Semele, or
Europa, or Danae. You are going to make a bull of yourself
again, or a Satyr, or a shower of gold to run through the roof into
the beloved's bosom. There are the usual symptoms, sighs, tears,
and pale cheeks; all undoubted tokens of love.
Zeus.-Sweet creature! and you think I am disturbed by
trifles like these.
Ilere.-What else can it be then? You, the supreme God, in
serious trouble!
Zeus.-I tell you, Here, we are all in trouble. Our very existence as Gods is in peril. It stands on the edge of a razor, as men
say, whether we are to be honoured as we have been, or to be neglected and turn into nothing.
hJere.-Has a new race of giants been born? Have the Titans
broken prison and taken arms again?
Zeus. —Ah no, not that. There is no fear on that side.
Jhere.-On what side then? What imaginable danger can be
threatening us?
Zeus.-Only yesterday, my Here, only yesterday.  Timocles
the Stoic and Damis the Epicurean fell into an argument before
a large and distinguished audience on the nature of Providence.
Timocles was on our side. Damis maintained either that we had
no existence, or, at least, that we had no influence over human
affirs. The argument was not concluded, but the disputants separated agreeing to meet again and finish it, and all the world is in a
fever to know which of the two will win. You see the danger. We
depend on a single man, either to continue as we are, or to sink
into mere names.
Hlere.-A serious affair, no doubt. I don't wonder that you are
uneasy.
Zeus.-And yoa thought it was only a fresh Danae! Ahl well!




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But what is to be done?  You, Hermes, Athene, Here, give me
your opinion.
Ilermes.-If I were you I would bring it before Parliament.
Call the General Assembly.
hlere. -My advice is the same.
Athene.-It is not mine, father. I would not make a scandal
and let the world see that I was alarmed. Surely we can arrange
that Timocles shall beat Damis, and have the best of the argument.
HIermes.-That is not so easy. We shall be found out, and if
we interfere in a matter personal to ourselves we shall be thought
unconstitutional.
Zeus.-Hermes is right. Call the Parliament. Let all the
Gods attend.
Hermnes.-Oyez, Oyez, Oyez! All the Gods are required to
meet now for important business in the General Assembly.
Zeus.-Use better language, Hermes. Your proclamation is
too bare and inadequate.
Hermes.-How would you have it, Zeus?
Zeus.-How would I have it?    I would have it set out with
metre and grandeur, and a poetic dignity equal to the weight of
the occasion. The Gods won't stir for prose.
Hermes.-Where is a bard to be found? I am no poet. My
lines will halt with uneven lengths, and you will laugh at me.
Why, now and then you laugh at the verses of Apollo himself;
though his oracles are so mystifying that you hardly think of his
metre.
Zeus.-Take a proclamation out of Homer. I daresay you
remember lines enough for that.
Hermes.-I shall not make a good job of it, but I will try.
Come each masculine God, and come each feminine also,
Come every single River, except Oceanus only,
Come each Nymph and each Faun, come all to the Hall of Assembly.
All who can challenge a right to share in the banquet of Heaven.
You, the inferior orders, the middle and lower classes,
Seat yourselves under the salt, where the steam ascends from the
altar.
Zeus.-Good, Hermes, good! Here they come. [Enter Gods
from all sides of Heaven.]  Place them in order of merit. The
gold Gods first, then the silver, then the ivory, bronze, and stone;




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and give preference to aty work of Phidias, or Alcamenes, or
Myron, or Euphrenor, or other artist of distinction. The rank and
file milt stay together at a distance, being here only to fill the Hall.
Herrmes.-Your directions shall be obeyed. But stay: suppose a hideous gold idol comes, weighing many talents. Is he to
rank above the marble and bronze of Phidias? How is that to be?
Zeus.-You must observe the rule. Gold ranks first.
Itermcs.-I perceive-we are a plutocracy, not an aristocracy.
This way the gold Gods! this way to the reserved benches! Bah!
they are all barbarians. The Greeks are beautiful —they are
faultless in form and feature-but the most precious of them are
only ivory. The few of gilt wood are rotten, with a colony of mice
in their entrails. Bardis and Atys, and Mithras, and Men are of
solid substantial bullion.
Posidon.-Do you mean to say, Iermes, that this dog-faced
Egyptian rascal is to sit above me?
Hermes.-So it is ordered, my shaker of the earth. The
Corinthians had no gold to spare, and Lysippus made you of
bronze. The Egyptian is above you by whole metallic degrees.
Look at his snout-and real gold too I You ought to be proud to
sit under such a god.
Aphrodite.-You will give me a front seat, at any rate, Hermes? All the world calls me golden.
Hermes.-I cannot see it, my dear. You appear to me to
have been cut from the quarry at Pentelicus. By the grace
of Praxiteles you became Aphrodite, and were sold to the Cnidians.
Aphrodite.-But I call Homer to witness. He calls me golden
a hundred times.
Hermes.-So Homer calls Apollo golden; but there Apollo sits
on the lower form. Thieves have stolen his gold crown and his
lute strings, and you may sit by him and be thankful that you are
not among the maid-servants.
Colossus of Rhodes.-Who is the equal of me? I am the first
of gods, for I am the biggest. My friends at Rhodes made me so.
I cost as much as sixteen gold gods of average size. That is what
I am worth, and there is the art besides.
Hermes.-What am I to do here, your Majesty? The substance of him is bronze, no doubt; but take him at his money
value, and he must be among the upper ten.
15




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Lucian.


Zeus (aside).-What is he doing here, disturbing the assembly
and making the rest of us look small?-My best of Rhodians, we
are aware how precious you are; but if I place you among the gold
gods, they must all move to make room for you, and you must sit
by yourself. You fill the Pnyx with one of your thighs. Will
you kindly stand? You can stoop when you want to hear.
Hermes.-Another difficulty. Here are Dionysus and Hercules, both of first-rate workmanship; both by the same artist
Lysippus; both sons of your own. Which is to sit first of them?
They are at words about it.
Zeus.-We waste time, Hermes. We should have been at
work long since. Let them sit any way for the present; we can
settle their precedence afterwards.
Hermes.-Hercules! what a noise they make? "Where is the
nectar?" cries one. "The ambrosia is out," cries another. " Tle
hecatombs are not fairly divided," says a third; "they are meant
for all of us; share and share alike!"
Zeus.-Tell them to be quiet, Hermes. I must now inform
them why they are assembled.
Hermes.-Half of them won't understand me. I can speak no
language but Greek, and here are Scythians, Persians, Thracians,
and I know not who. I will sign to them with my hand.
Zeus.-Do so.
Hermes.-They are mute as sophists. Speak away; they are
all attention to hear what is coming.
Zeus.-Oh! my son, my son, what am I to do? You know
how ready I generally am on these occasions.
Hermes.-That I do. You terrify me sometimes when you
talk so bigly of hanging us all, and earth and sea to boot, on that
gold chain of yours.
Zeus.-And now-whether it be the occasion, or all this crowd
of gods, I know not-but I have forgot my speech. I had prepared it carefully, with a splendid exordium, and I can't remember a word.
Hermes.-This is ruin. Every eye is fixed on you. Your
silence makes them expect wonders.
Zeus.-Shall I start with the established line from I-omer,
Hear me, all ye Gods, and all ye Goddesses also?
Ilermes.-Nonsense. I made nme:s enough with IIomer. Do




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as the orators do; take the opening of one of Demosthenes' Phillipics, altering a word or two.
Zeus.-Aye, that will do. A few well-turned expressions and
we are all right. Iere goes:The most splendid present which I could bestow upon you, gentlemen Gods,1 would be less acceptable in your present disposition
than an explanation of the cause for which I have now assembled
you together. I must beseech you, therefore, to attend to the
words which I am about to utter. The time in which we are
living, gentlemen, calls upon us to exert ourselves with a voice
all but articulate, and we sit still in negligent indifference —
But my Demosthenes has run out. Let me tell you plainly what
is the matter. Yesterday, you are aware, Captain Pious gave a
thankoffering for the preservation of his vessel, which was nearly
foundering.  Such of us as were invited were entertained at
Piraeus. When we broke up after dinner, I, as it was still early,
strolled up into the city, meditating on the shabby provision
which Captain Pious had made. Sixteen of us had sate down.
On the altar there was but a single cock, and that one too old to
crow. The few grains of incense were mildewed, and would not
burn, and there was scarce a whiff for the nose of one of us. The
wretch had promised hecatombs when he was running on the
rocks. I was standing in the Porch engaged in these reflections,
when I observed a crowd about the hall, some inside, some pressing about the door. I heard voices in loud contradiction. I understood at once that a couple of professors were disputing, and I
determined to hear what it was about. By good luck I had a
thick cloud on. I adjusted my dress, gave my beard a pull to
make myself like a philosopher, and elbowed my way in. There
I found a good-for-nothing scamp of an Epicurean named Damis,
and the respected and excellent Stoic, Timocles, arguing together.
Timocles was perspiring with eagerness, and hoarse with shouting.
Damis was turning him into ridicule and driving him distracted
with his coolness.  The subject of discussion was ourselves.
Damis maintained that we had no concern with men and their
doings, and almost denied our existence. Indeed, this was what
1 g aivSpes,Oeo instead of the  aivSpe 'AOlqvarZo. Thile humour is lost in
the translation.




228                     Lucian.
he meant, and many of his audience applauded. Timocles took
our part, passionately and indignantly.  He argued well of
Providence. He dwelt on the order which is observed throughout
nature. He was not without his friends, but he was unequal to
his work. He spoke badly. The party in favour of Damis
grew larger every moment, till, seeing what was likely to happen,
I ordered up Night to bring the meeting to an end, leaving them
to finish the argument to-morrow. I mixed in the crowd as the
people went home. I found most of them, I am sorry to say, on
Damis's side; a few only remained undecided until they had heard
out what Timocles had to reply. You will now, my divine friends,
be no longer at a loss to understand your summons to this assembly.
From men we derive our honour and glory and our revenues. Let
men once conceive that either we do not exist, or that we have nothing to do with them, and victims, incense, and prayers will cease to be
offered to us. We shall be left sitting idle here in Heaven, banquets and ceremonies at an end, perishing of hunger. It concerns
us all, gentlemen, it concerns us all. What is to be done? How
is Timocles to get the best of the argument and answer Damis sufficiently? I have no confidence in Timocles. He means well, but
unless we help him he will certainly be beaten. Give the usual
notice, Hermes. Any God who can give advice in our present
emergency, let him rise and speak.
Hermes.-Oyez, Oyez, Oyez! Order in the assembly! Any
God who desires to speak is requested to stand up. —What, all
motionless! All struck dumb at what you have heard I
Momus.Turning each one of you all into water and clods of the valley.
If freedom of speech is permitted here, Father Zeus, I should like
to make an observation.
Zeus.-Speak on. You have nothing to fear. We shall be
delighted to hear you.
Momus.-Listen then, Gods. I will address you, as men say,
from the heart. I have long seen how things were going. It has
long been evident to me that philosophers would rise up and pick
holes in us. By Themis, I cannot blame Epicurus and his disciples for the conclusions at which they have arrived about us.
What other conclusions could they arrive at, when they saw the




Lucian.


229


confusion around them?    Good men neglected, perishing in
penury or slavery; and profligate wretches wealthy, honoured
and powerful. Sacrilegious temple-robbers undiscovered and unpunished; devotees and saints beaten and crucified. With such
phenomena before them, of course men have doubted our existence. The oracles, forsooth, ought to be an evidence to them.
An oracle tells Croesus that, if he crosses the Halys, he will destroy a mighty empire; but it does not explain whether he is to
destroy his enemy's empire or his own. An oracle says
Many a mother's son shall in thee, O Salamis, perish.
BIothers produce children in Greece as well as in Persia. There
are the Sacred Poems. Oh yes! Poems which tell them that we
have our loves and our fights; that we quarrel one with another;
that some of us are in chains; that a thousand things go wrong
with us, while we pretend to immortal blessedness. What can they
do but hold us in contempt?  We affect surprise that men who are
not fools decline to put their faith in us. We ought rather to be
pleased if there is a man left to say his prayers. We are among
ourselves, with no strangers present. Tell us, then, Zeus, have you
really ever taken pains to distinguish between good men and bad?
You cannot say you have. Theseus, not you, destroyed the robbers
in Attica. As far as you and Providence were concerned, Sciron
and Pity-o-campus might have murdered and plundered to the end
of time. If Eurystheus had not looked into matters and sent Hercules upon his labours, little would you have troubled yourself
with the Hydras and the Centaurs. Let us be candid. All that
we have really cared for has been a steady altar service. Everything else has been left to chance. And now men are opening
their eyes. They perceive that whether they pray or don't pray,
go to church or don't go to church, makes no difference to them.
And we are receiving our deserts. Our advocates are silenced.
The Epicuruses and the Damises carry the world before them. If
you wish mankind to reverence you again you must remove the
causes of their disbelief. For myself, I care little how it goes. I
was never much respected at the best of times. Now they may
think as they please.
Zeus.-Don't mind this rude fellow. He is always so. Any
one can pick holes, as the divine Demosthenes says. The diffi



230


1- ucian.


culty is to discover what is to be done. And now that Momus has
finished you will give me your suggestions.
Posidon.-My place, you are aware, is under water at the bottom
of the sea. To the best of my ability I take care of sailors, help
ships to harbours, and keep down the winds. At the same time I
am not indifferent to matters here, and to prevent more trouble,
I recommend you to knock Damis down with a thunderbolt. He
is plausible: we shall prevent his words from gaining more hold;
and we shall give a proof that we are not to be trifled with.
Zeus.-You jest, Posidon. Have you forgotten that the manner
of every man's death is predestined for him? Do you suppose that
if it had rested with me I would have let the robber escape who
cut off my gold curls at Olympia, that weighed six pounds apiece?
What could you do with the fisherman that stole your trident at
Geraestus? Besides, to put Damis out of the way would only show
that we were afraid of what he might say, and didn't care to let the
case be argued out.
Posidon.-It seems to me to be the easiest road out of the
difficulty.
Zeus.-A most dense notion, Posidon, worthy only of a sea-pig.
Posidon.-If my idea is piggish, find a better of your own.
Apollo.-May a beardless youth venture to address the assembly?
MAomus.-This is not a time to stand on ceremony, Apollo.
You are within the law too. You have been of age these many
years. Why, you are one of the twelve. I am not sure that you
were not in the Privy Council in Cronos's time. None of your
infant airs. If your own chin is smooth, you have a son,.Esculapius here, whose beard is long enough. Give us some of that
philosophy which you have learnt from the Muses in Helicon.
Apollo.-It does not rest with you, Momus, to give leave or refuse it. If Zeus permits, however, I may show, perhaps, that
my conversation with the Muses has not been thrown away.
Zeus.-Say on, my child. I allow you.
Apollo.-This Timocles appears a worthy, pious man, and is
well thought of as a professor. His lecture class is large. His fees
are heavy, and he speaks fluently and convincingly among his own
friends and disciples. On a public platform, unhappily, he is less
satisfactory. His accent is not good. He lacks presence of mind,




Lucian.


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and is confused. He labours to produce an effect with fine words,
and then he is laughed at. Those who are familiar with the Stoic
formulas say that he understands his subject well enough, but he
wants clearness of exposition. He loses his head when he is crossquestioned, and flounders into absurdities. Now, the object is to
make him speak so that he shall be comprehended.
Momus.-As you appreciate plainness, Apollo, it is a pity you
don't practise it. Your oracles usually want another oracle to
interpret them. IHow do you propose to cure those faults in
Timocles?
Apollo-Couldn't we provide a junior counsel to take Timocles's ideas and put them into words?
Momus.-Utterly childish.... A leader in an important
case to be unable to express his own thoughts at a meeting of
philosophers! Damis is to speak for himself. Timocles is to
whisper his notions to his junior, and his junior is to find the
rhetoric without understanding what he is saying. That will be
too absurd. We must find a better expedient than that. My fine
fellow, you are a prophet. You have made a fortune by prophesying. They have given you whole bricks of gold. Let us have
a specimen of your art. Tell us what is to happen in this business.
I suppose you know.
Apollo.-Impossible, Momus. I have neither tripod nor censers-not so much as a fountain of Castalia.
Mommus.-You are afraid, are you? You think you will be
found out.
Zeus.-My son, you had better do it. Don't let this caviller
mock at you-as if your inspiration depended on your tackling.
Apollo.-I could make a better business of it at Delphi or
Colophon, with my instruments at hand. I will try, however, if
you wish. You must allow for irregularities in the verse.
2lfomus.-Never mind the verse, old fellow-only speak intelligibly. No rams and tortoises are being boiled in Lydia to catch
you. You know what we want to learn..
Zeus.-What is coming?    The spirit works in him. My
child! oh, my child I His colour changes! His eyes roll! HIe
is convulsed! Most mysterious, most fearful I
Apollo (in the prophetic trance).List, oh list to my words, the words of the Augur Apollo,




Lucian.


IIow the dread strife shall have end which has now commenced
among mortals,
Mortals with voices shrill, and armed with the weapons of logic.
Many a blow shall be struck as the foemen close in the battle;
Many a blow shall be dealt in the solid wood of the plough-tail.
But when the locust is caught in the mighty gripe of the vulture,
Then shall be heard the last croak of the ominous wet-boding
raven.
Then shall the mule be strong and the jackass shall butt at his
offspring.
Zeus.-Why do you laugh, Momus? It is no laughing matter.
Stop, you sinner; you will choke yourself.
3omus.-What can I do but laugh at so simple a prophet!
Zeus-If you understand the oracle, tell us what it means.
Momus.-What the oracle meansl Why, it means that the
prophet is a humbug, and that we who believe in him are mules
and asses, without the wit of a grasshopper.
Hercules.-I am not quite at home up here-but I don't like
to say nothing. What I think is this. Let the philosophers meet
and argue. If Timocles has the best of it, well and goodnothing more need be done. If Timocles is beaten, I will pull
down the hall on Damis's head, and make an end of the miserable
creature.
3lomus.-Hercules, dear Hercules, most rustic of BoeotiansI
To punish one bad man you will destroy a thousand, and the hall
besides, with the frescoes of Miltiades and Marathon. What is to
become of the orators when the fountain of their illustrations is
gone? Besides, you can't do it. When you were a man you perhaps might, for you did not understand the conditions of things.
Now that you are a God you are aware, are you not, that these
matters are pre-arranged by the Fates?
Hercules (to Zeus).-Is this true, sir? when I killed the Lion
and the Hydra, was it the Fates that killed them, and not I?
Zeus.-Not a doubt of it.
Hercules.-And if any one is impudent to me, or robs my temples, I may not punch his head unless the Fates please?
Zeus.-Indeed, you must not..ercules.-With your permission then, Zeus, I will make an
observation. I am a plain man, and call a spade a spade, as the




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233


poet says. If this is to be a god, may you long enjoy your blessed
condition. For myself, I will go to Hades with my bow and hunt
the ghosts of the monsters which I slew when I was alive.
Zeus.-Out of our own mouths we stand convicted. We may
spare Damis the trouble. [But who comes here in such a hurry?]
Enter HERMAGENES.
This bronze youth with his hair in the style of the last century.
It is your brother, Hermes. Your brother that stands in the Agora,
next the Poekile. He is covered with pitch. The statuaries have
been moulding upon hiam. What brings you here, my son? Is
anything wrong?
Iermnagenes.-Indeed there is, Zeus, wrong with a vengeance.
Zeus.-What is it? a revolution in Athens?  We ought to
have been informed of it.
Hermagenes.-The founders' men were with me. 'Twas but
now
They smeared me round with resin, back and brow;
Thick coated was I, and the rind or peel
Bore my correct impression like a seal.
Just then a crowd came by, and in the midst
Two pale, loud-screaming, wordy pugilists,
Damis and —
Zeus.-Not another word of your tragedy, my dear Hermagenes. I know the men. Has the fight begun?
Ilerrnagenes.-Not yet in earnest. They are skirmishing, pelting each other with words at a distance.
Zeus.-We will go down and hear. Draw the bolts! pull up
the cloud curtains! open the gates of Heaven. Hercules! what a
multitude! Timocles looks ill: he shakes: he is no match for
Damis, I fear. We can help him with our prayers at any rate.
Softly, however, lest Damis hear.
Scene changes to the Theatre at Athens. The benches crowded with
citizens. TIMOCLEs and DAMIS on the stage, and the GODS invisible to the audience, looking on.
Timocles.-What! you blasphemous villain, you! you don't
believe in the Gods and in Providence?




234                      Lucian.
Damis.-I see no proof of their existence. I wait your reasons
why I should have a positive opinion about it.
Timocles.-I will give you no reasons, you wretch. Give me
yours for your atheism.
Zeus.-Our man is doing well. He has the rudest manner
and the loudest voice. Well done, Timocles! give him hard words.
That is your strong point. Begin to reason and you will be as
dumb as a fish.
Timocles.-By Athene, you shall have no reasons from me.
Damis.-Very well, then; ask me questions and I will answer
them. Don't use foul language if you can help it.
Timocles.-Speak, then, you accursed monster. Do you or do
you not believe in Divine Providence?
-Damis.-I do not.
Timocles.-What? Do you mean that the Gods do not foresee
future events?
Damis.-I do not know that they do.
Timocles.-And there is no divine order in the universe?
Damis.-None that I am aware of.
Timocles.-And the world is not governed by reason and intelligence?
Damis.-I do not perceive that it is.
Timocles.-Will you bear this, good people?  Will you no
stone the blasphemer?
Damis.-Why inflame the people against me, Timocles? The
Gods show no displeasure.  They have heard me (if hear they
do) without interposing. Why should you be so fierce in their
behalf?
Timocles.-They hear you. They hear you? They will give
it to you by-and-bye.
Damis.-They will not have much leisure to bestow on me
if they are so busy as you say, Timocles, managing the universe.  They have not punished you for certain   perjuries
that I have heard of.  I will not go into particulars, but
they could scarcely have a better opportunity of vindicating
their existence than  by bringing you  to question.  They
are away across the ocean, perhaps, among the,Ethiopians.
They dine there frequently on their own invitation, do they
not?




Lucian.                      235
Timocles.-What reply can I make to such horrible irreverence?
Damis.-You can give me the reply for which I have been so
long waiting. You can tell me why you yourself believe in Providence.
Timocles.-I believe in it first on account of the order which
is visible throughout the universal scheme of things. The sun
and moon move in their allotted path; the seasons revolve; the
plants spring; the animals come to the birth, and are organized
with exquisite skill. Man, yet more wonderful than they, thinks
and acts and makes shoes and builds houses-all evident proofs of
design and purpose.
Damis.-You beg the question, Timocles.   You have not
proved that things are as they are by design. What is, is. That
it has been so ordered by Providence is no sure conclusion. Once
there may have been disorder where there is now order. You
look at the universe as it exists, you examine the movements of
it, you admire them, you assume that those movements were intended, and you fly into a passion with those who cannot agree
with you; but passion is not argument, as they say in the play.
What is the second reason for your belief?
Timocles.-Thlere is no need of a second; but you shall have
no excuse for your impiety. You allow that Homer is the first of
poets?
Darmis.-I do.
Timocles.-Well, then, Homer says that there is a Providence,
and I believe Homer.
Damis.-My excellent friend, Homer may be a first-rate poet,
but neither he nor any of his kind are authorities on matters of
fact. The object of poetry is to amuse, not to instruct. Poets
arrange their words in metre, they invent legends out of their
imagination, they desire to give their hearers pleasure, and that
is all. But to what passages in Homer do you refer? He tells
us, if I remember, that the wife and brothers and daughter of
Jupiter conspired to dethrone and imprison him, and that if
Thetis had not called in the help of Briareus they would have
succeeded.  He tells us that Jupiter, to reward Thetis, cheated
Agamemnon with a false dream, and that tens of thousands of
Acheans perished in consequence. Or you believe, perhaps, be



236


Lucian.


cause Athene set on Diomed to wound Aphrodite and Ares, because the whole celestial company fell afterwards into fighting
one with another; then Ares, who I suppose had not recovered
from his hurt, was thrashed by Athene, and
Up against Leto arose the doughty champion Hermes.
Or you have been convinced by the story about Artemis. Artemis
was angry because (Eneus had not asked her to dinner, and sent a
monstrous boar to ravage the country. These, I presume, are the
illustrations of divine power mentioned by Homer which you have
found so satisfactory.
[Applausefrom all parts of the Theatre.
Zeus.-Bless me, how they cheer; and our fellow is looking
over his shoulder...       He trembles. He will drop his
shield in a moment, and run.
Timocles.-Euripides brings the Gods upon the very stage.
He shows them in the act of rewarding the good heroes, and punishing wretches like you. Is Euripides mistaken too?
Damis.-Most wise philosopher, if you argue from the stage,
why then the actors Polus, Aristodemus, Satyrus must be Gods;
or perhaps it is their masks, and boots, and shawls, and gloves
and false stomachs? When Euripides speaks his own opinion, he
says:
Thou seest the aether, stretching infinite,
Enveloping the earth in moist embrace,
This-this is Zeus-this is the Deity.
And again:
Zeus be Zeus whatever he may,
I know but what the legends say,
and more to the same purpose.
Timocles.-Then the multitudes of men and nations who have
believed in the existence of the Gods, and have worshipped them,
have all been deceived?
Damis.-Thank you for reminding me of national religious
customs. Nothing exhibits more plainly the foundations on
which theology is built. There is one religion on one side of a




Lucian.                       237
border, and another on the other. The Scythian worships Acinaces, the Thracian a slave, Zalmoxis, who escaped from Samos.
The Phrygian adores the moon or the month; the /Ethiopian
the day. The Cyllenian prays to Phanes; the Assyrian to a
dove; the Persians to fire; the iEgyptians to water. At Memphis
a bull is a God; at Pelusium  an onion. Elsewhere in Egypt
they worship an ibis, a crocodile, a cat, a monkey, a dog-headed
ape. In some villages the right shoulder is sacred, in others the
left; in others a skull cut in half; in others a bowl or plate. Do
you really mean, Timocles, that such things are a serious proof
that the Gods exist?
2lomus (to the Gods).-I warned you, my friends, that there
would be an inquiry into these matters, and that the truth would
come out.
Zeus.-You did so, and you were right, Momus. If we survive our present trouble I will try to mend them.
Timocles.-Oh, thou enemy of God! what dost thou say to oracles and prophecies?  Whence come they, save from divine foreknowledge?
Danmis.-To what oracles do you refer? You mean, I presume,
the answer that Cresus got from the Pythoness, for which he paid
so dearly, that ruined him and his city. An oracle with a double
face, like the statues of Hermes.
Momus.-Exactly what most I feared. Where is our soothsayer? Go in, Apollo, and answer for yourself.
Zeus.-S'death, Momus, this is no time for irony.
Timocles.-See'st thou not, thou sinner thou, that thy arguments will make an end of Church and Altar?
Damis.-Not all Churches and not all Altars, Timocles. We
will let the Altars stand where they burn only incense. Of the
Shrine of our Lady in Tauris I would not leave a stone.
Zeus.-Frightful. The fellow spares none of us. He speaks
as if from the back of a wagon, and curses you all in a heap, alike
the guilty and guiltless.
Momus.-Not many of us can plead not guilty, Zeus. Wait;
he will strike higher presently. (A thunderstorm).
Timocles.-Dost thou hear, thou impious Damis? Dost thou
hear the voice of Zeus himself?
Damis.-I hear the thunder; but whether it be the voice of




238


Lucian.


Zeus you know better than I. You have been in Heaven, I presume, and have seen him. Travellers from Crete tell me they show
his grave in that island. If he has been long dead, I do not perceive how he can be thundering.
Miomus.-I knew he would say that; I was sure of it. You
change colour, Zeus. Your teeth chatter. Pluck up your spirits.
Never mind what these monkeys say.
Zeus.-Never mind! It is very well to say never mind. Don't
you see that Damis has the whole Hall with him?
3lomu-s.-Let down that gold chain of yours, and
Drag them all up in the air with earth and ocean together.
Timocles. —Have you ever been at sea, miserable man?
Damis.-Many times, Timocles.
Timocles.-And did not the winds in the sails help you more
than the rowers? And was there not a pilot at the helm to keep
the vessel true upon its course?
Damis.-Assuredly.
Timocles.-The ship could not reach its port without a pilot;
and the ship of the Universe, you think, requires neither captain
nor helmsman?
Zeus.-Well put, Timocles, A good illustration that.
Damis.-Most inspired Timocles, the captain you speak of
arranges his plans beforehand. He settles his course and adheres
to it. His men are all in order and obey his word of command.
Spars, ropes, chains, oars are on board in their places, and ready
to his hand. But the great captain of the Universe shows none
of this forethought. The forestay is made fast to the stern, and
the sheets to the bow. The anchors are sometimes of gold, and
the bulwarks of lead. The bottom is painted and carved; the
upper works are plain and unsightly. The crew are disposed at
random; the craven fool is a commissioned officer; the swimmer
is sent aloft to man the yards; the skilled navigator to work at
the pumps. As to the passengers-knaves sit at the captain's
table; honest men are huddled into corners.   Socrates and
Aristides and Phocion lie on the bare boards, without room
to stretch their feet, and without food enough to eat. Callias
and Midas and Sardanapalus revel in luxury, and look down
on the rest of mankind. This is the state of your ship, Timocles, and it explains the number of shipwrecks. Had there




Lic ian.


239


been a captain in command, he would have distinguished the
good from the bad, have promoted worth and capacity, and have
set vice and folly in the place belonging to it. The able seaman
would be master or lieutenant; the skulker and poltroon would
be tied to the triangles. In short, my friend, if your ship has had
a commander, he has not been fit for his place, and there is need
of a revolution.
Mlomus.-Damis is sailing with wind and stream direct into
victory.
Zeus.-It is so indeed. Timocles produces nothing but common-places, and one after another they are overturned.
Timocles.-As the example of the ship does not convince you,
I will give you one more argument, the last, the best, the sheetanchor of theology.
Zeus.-What is he going to say?
Timocles.-Attend to the positions as they follow one from the
other, and discover a flaw if you can. If there are altars, then
there must be Gods. But there are altars, therefore there are
Gods. There, what say you now? Laughing? What is there to
amuse you?
Damis. —My dear friend, I doubt if this sheet-anchor of yours
will hold. You hang the existence of the Gods on the existence of
altars, and you fancy the link will hold; but if this is your last
position, we may as well close the discussion.
Timocles.-You admit that you are vanquished.
Damis.-Of course; you have taken refuge at the altar as men
do in extremities. On that altar and in the name of your sheetanchor we will swear a truce, and contend no more.
Timocles.-Oh! oh! you are sarcastic, are you! you gravedigger! you wretch! you abomination! you gaol bird! you cesspool! we know where you came from; your mother was a whore;
and you killed your brother and seduced your friend's wife; you
are an adulterer, a sodomite, a glutton, and a beast. Stay till I can
thrash you. Stay, I say, villain, abhorred villain!
Zeus.-One has gone off laughing, and the other follows railing and throwing tiles at him. Well, what are we to do?
Hermes.-The old play says, you are not hurt, if you don't
acknowledge it. Suppose a few people have gone away believing
in Damis, what then? A great many more believe the reverse;




240                      Lucian.
the whole mass of uneducated Greeks and the barbarians everywhere.
Zeus.-True, Hermes, but that was a good thing which
Darius said about Zopyrus. "I had rather have one Zopyrus than
a thousand Babylona."




DIVUS CESAR.


THE "Pharsalia" of Lucan is a passionate imprecation
on the destroyers of the Roman Constitution. The Gods
had permitted that in this world the enemies of liberty
should triumph. Struggling for consolation, the young
patriot persuades himself that perhaps in another world
the balance may be redressed. With the aid of the witch
Erictho, he re-animates the corpse of a lately killed
soldier. The livid lips describe the forging in hell of the
adamantine chains which are to bind Cmesar to the crags
of an infernal Caucasus. The poet bids the champions of
the Republic make haste to die, that in Tartarus they may
trample under foot the tyrants whom Rome was adoring
as divinities. At other moments the future seems as hopeless to him as the present. He flings the guilt upon the
Olympians themselves, and finds no comfort save in the
hope that they may suffer retribution at the hands of the
common usurpers. The Gods had forgotten to be just,
and their power would be taken from them. The civil
carnage would raise mortals to the throne of heaven, their
hands armed with lightnings and their brows crowned with
stars.
As his last and practical conviction, Lucan seems to
have concluded that from Gods of any kind no redress was
to be looked for.


16


241




242


Divus COesar.


Victrix causa Deis placuit sed victa Catoni.
Justice was in man, or it was nowhere. If crime was to
be avenged, it must be on earth and by a human hand.
He sacrificed his life, while only in his 28th year, in
an abortive conspiracy against Nero, and along with his
life the extraordinary gifts which his frenzied passion
could not wholly spoil.
Throughout his poem a confidence that the right cause
ought to triumph struggles with a misgiving that, in the
administration of the universe, no moral purpose is discoverable.   Perhaps it was in irony, perhaps it was in a
sad conviction that the Gods-if Gods there were-were no
better than Nero, that he addressed the emperor in the
amazing lines with which he opens his subject.
After describing the desolation which Caesar's wars had
spread over the Roman world, he proceeds:
But if no other means the Fates could find
To give us Nero-if the Thunderer's self
Could reign but when the Giant's wars were done;
We then, oh Gods, complain not. For such boon
Our trampled laws, our violated rights,
Woe, sacrilege, crime, we gladly bear them all.
Strew thy dread plains, Pharsalia, with the slain.
Spirits of fallen Carthage sate your thirst
With Latin blood on Munda's fatal field.
Famish Perusium, perish Mutina,
Fleets drift to wreck on Leucas' iron crags,
And battles rage 'neath Etna's blazing crest.
Yet Rome is still a debtor to the Gods
When she has thee. To thee, when late thou goest,
Thine earthly sojourn ended, to the stars,
The Heavenly palaces will fling wide their gates,
The Gods will lay their sceptres at thy feet
And bid thee choose among them. Wilt thou reign
Monarch supreme? Wilt thou prefer to guide




Divus Ccesar.


243


The car of Phcebus? Earth will know no fears
From change of lords beneath thy sure command;
And each divinity to thine must yield.
This only grant, that when the choice is made,
And thou art fixed in thy august dominion,
Seek not a throne within the icy North,
Incline not to the low-sunk Southern sky,
From whence on Rome thy beams askance may fall:
Too near the Poles thy overmastering weight
Will strain the nice poised balance of the world.
Dwell in the Zenith, where each rival light
Shall pale in thine and thou shalt shine alone.
Then shall the mists melt from the face of Heaven,
The sword fall blunted from the warrior's hand,
And peace shall reign and Janus' gates be closed.
Me now inspire, in this my enterprise.
With thee within my breast I shall not need
To sue the Pythian God for mystic fire;
In thee alone a Roman bard will find
Fit aid at need to sing a Roman song.
Many explanations may be given of this extraordinary
language, yet no one    of them   is wholly satisfactory.
When the deification of Claudius was voted by the Senate,
Lucan's uncle, Seneca, had written a farce on the occasion,
the dazoxoroxohr7-wq, or translation of the late emperor into
the society of pumpkins. Lucan's lines may be conceived
to have been written in a similar spirit of mockery. Claudius, however, was dead when he was turned into ridicule.
Nero was alive, and was not a person with whom it was
safe to take liberties. Call it adulation! But adulation
of the Cesars was the last quality to be expected in the
"Pharsalia" or its author.    Let it have been conventionality; but there will remain to be explained the popular sentiment to which conventional language is necessarily
addressed. How could educated Romans, who were still
punctilious in observing the traditionary forms of the es



2144


Divus Ccesar.


tablished religion, either utter or tolerate language which
appeared like a satire upon religion itself? The elevation
of illustrious mortals, when their earthly labours were
over, to a throne among the stars had been for ages a
familiar conception. The Twins glittered in the Zodiac
among the August Twelve. Hercules, Perseus, and Orion
displayed in the nightly sky the rewards prepared in
heaven for the deeds which they had accomplished as men.
Quirinus, the mythic founder of Rome, remained the tutelary guardian of the Roman people. The spirits of
heroic warriors, reincorporated in jewelled constellations,
spread over the surface of the entire celestial sphere. That
the great dead should have a home among the Gods was a
natural and reasonable expectation. But never till the
days of the Roman Empire had men been found to say
of a man like themselves, still living among them, still
subjected to the conditions of mortality, " He is but waiting till he passes from the earth for the Gods to abdicate
and leave the choice to him of the vacant thrones in
heaven."
For Nero it must be said that he was but accepting
honours which had been already claimed by Caius Caligula, and which had been offered by the Senate to the
least arrogant of his predecessors; for Lucan, again, was
but repeating a note which had been struck already by a
poet of an incomparably higher order. Augustus was
studiously simple-careful to conceal the power which he
really possessed behind constitutional forms, and sternly
contemptuous of idle flattery. Horace, of all men of intellect that ever lived, was the least likely to condescend
to extravagant and unmeaning compliments. Horace was
not religious, but he never mocked at religion. Long indifferent to such considerations, he tells us, half seriously,
that late in life he had been frightened back into belief.




Divus Crcsar..t -X


In the grandest of his odes, he refers the miseries of Rome
to forgetfulness of the Gods, and he warns his countrymen
that the sins of their fathers will continue to be visited
upon them till they rebuild the temples and restore the
fallen shrines. Yet Horace could address Augustus, with
whom he was personally intimate, and with whom he continually dined, in language not less extravagant than Lucan's.  Whichever of the Gods Augustus might be,
whether Apollo, or Mercury, or Mars, Horace affected to
believe that he was at least one of them. In pity for the
wretchedness of his children, the Great Father had sent
an immortal as " a present God " to take charge of them,
and to bring back the golden age. Under the beneficent
rule of Augustus, the cow did not cast her calf, the corn
waved yellow over the fields, the ship sped to its port with
calm seas and favouring airs, man no longer broke his
faith to man, and wives were chaste, and punishment followed sin or crime. To Augustus the grateful husbandman offered his evening sacrifice after his day of toil before
he retired with his family to sleep.' What the Virgin
Mary is to the modern peasant of France or Italy, such
Augustus was, while still living, in the farm-houses of
Latium and Etruria-as real, perhaps more real, because
1Condit quisque diem collibus in suis,
Et vitem viduas ducit ad arbores,
Hine ad vina redit Ietus et alteris
Te mensis adhibet Deum.
Te multa prece, te prosequitur mero
Defuso pateris et Laribus tuum
Miscet numen, uti Grsecia Castoris
Et magni memor Herculis.
Horace, Odes: Lib. iv., Ode 5.




246


Divus Ccesar.


he was "prcesens Divus," because his rule was regarded as
a " kingdom of God upon earth."
Virgil's Fourth Eclogue, which was read by Constantine's order at the Council of Nice as an evangelical prophecy, is no more than a beautiful repetition of the same
idea. In the year of Pollio's consulship " unto Rome a
child was born, unto Rome a son was given," who was to
reign as a God upon earth. In his time the earth would
bring forth abundantly. In his time the lion would lie
down with the lamb, the infant would play on the cockatrice's den and take no harm, and sin and sorrow would
fly away. The babe for whom this brilliant horoscope
was drawn was probably one of Augustus's grandsons,
who died in early youth. We need not look, at any rate,
beyond the imperial family to understand and even sympathise with language which was the expression of a universal feeling.
To a Roman who had witnessed what Italian society
had become in the last days of the Republic-the incredible depravity of manners, the corruption of justice, the
oppression of the provinces, the collapse of the political
fabric in a succession of civil wars which had overflowed
the Roman world like a sea of lava-the reign of Augustus, protracted as it was through half a century, with
order restored, and life and property secure, and peace
such as the earth had never known established throughout
civilised mankind, may well have seemed a kingdom of
heaven; and Augustus himself, from whom these real
blessings appeared to flow, may have been mistaken without extravagant credulity for something more than a mere
mortal.
But let us turn to what we actually know of the introduction of this singular idolatry.
The Romans, like all great peoples, were, in the earlier




BDivus COcsar.


247


stages of their history, eminently religious. Their habits
were frugal, their private lives were austerely moral, and
wherever conduct is pure, piety springs up by an unvarying law of nature, as grass and flowers grow from a wholesome soil. Reverence for God, or the Gods, was interwoven with domestic habits and with public laws. The
fact of the Gods' existence and of their sovereign rule
over all things was accepted with the faith which had
never heard of scepticism. The simple rites which the
early Latins were called on to observe neither troubled
their consciences nor perplexed their understandings. The
whole duty of man lay in virtus-virtue, manliness; and
unbelief is an infection which manly minds are the last to
catch.
But they could not escape the inevitable. The Gods of
Latium might perhaps be supreme in Italy; but when the
authority of the republic was extended beyond the Peninsula, the conquerors encountered other nations with other
creeds, and it fared with the Romans as it fared with the
Israelites among the Semitic tribes of Canaan:
Grnecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes
Intulit agresti Latio.
The Israelites identified Jehovah with Baal. The Greeks
taught the Latins to see in their own Jupiter and Minerva
and Venus, the Zeus and Pallas and Aphrodite of Homer
and Hesiod.   With the new names came the impure
mythology of the Hellenes; and the Latin morality, which
was founded in religion, dissolved and disappeared in the
presence of Deities whom it was no longer possible to
respect.  The cultivated Athenians could resolve their
legends into allegory. The practical Romans took the
letter of the mythology as they found it, and discovered
that it was no longer credible. Those beings could not be




248


Divus COesar.


Gods in any true or real sense who lived in the practice of
the worst vices which their ancestors had taught them to
abhor. The public ceremonial survived, but the heart had
gone out of it. The fear of God departed, and morality
and justice departed with it; and the ancient Latin creed
underwent the fate to which all religions are condemned
which are connected with partial sympathies or have risen
out of imperfect knowledge.
Religions which have exerted a real influence over
masses of mankind have always begun in genuine conviction. They have contained an answer to questions which
men were anxiously asking at the time when they originated, and to which they appeared to give a credible reply.
Once accepted, they petrify into unchanging forms. Knowledge increases; religion remains stationary. Fresh problems rise, for which they provide no solution, or a solution
transparently false; and then follow the familiar phenomena of disintegration and failing sanctions and relaxed
rule of action, and, along with these, the efforts of wellmeaning men to resist the irresistible-reconciliations of
religion and science, natural theologies reconstructed on
philosophic bases, with at intervals unavailing efforts to
conceal the cracks in the theory by elaborate restorations
of ritual;-or again, on the other side, the firm avowal of
disbelief from the more sincere and resolute minds, such
as rings out of the lines of Lucretius.
With Lucretius we are all familiar: not less interesting-perhaps more interesting, as showing the working of
more commonplace intellects-is the treatise " On the Nature of Gods," which Cicero wrote almost at the same
time when Lucretius was composing his poem, and which
contains the opinions of the better sort of educated Romans.
That such a dialogue should have been written by a
responsible and respectable person in Cicero's position, is




Divus Clesar.


249


itself a proof that religion was at its last gasp. Tradition had utterly broken down: serious men were looking
in the face the facts of their situation, and were asking
from experience what rule they were living under; and
experience gave, and always must give, but one reply.
Men are taught to believe in an overruling Providence;
they look for evidence of it, and they find that, so far as
human power extends over nature there are traces of a
moral government; but that. it is such a government as
man himself establishes for the protection of society, and
nothing more. To what we call good and evil, nature
as such is indifferent, and nature submits to man's control, not as he is just or unjust, believing or sceptical,
but as he understands the laws by which the operations
of nature are directed. The piety of the captain does not
save his ship from the reefs. He depends on his knowledge of navigation. Prayer does not avert the pestilence;
but an understanding of the conditions of health. The
lightning strikes the church, but spares the gambling
house provided with a conducting rod. Disease and misfortune, or the more mighty visitations of the earthquake,
the famine, the inundation, make no distinction between
the deserving and the base. The house falls and spares
the fool, while it cuts short a career which might have
been precious to all mankind. This is the truth so far as
experience can teach; and only timidity or ignorance, or
a resolution, like that of Job's friends, to be more just
than God, can venture to deny it; and thus arises the dismayed exclamation which has burst in all ages from the
hearts of noble-minded men: Why are the wicked in such
prosperity? Not that they envy the wicked any miserable
enjoyment which they may obtain for themselves, but
because they see that all things come alike to all, and that
there is no difference-that as it is with the wise man, so




250


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it is with the fool; as with him that sacrifices, so with him
that sacrifices not. The manifest disregard of moral distinctions discredits their confidence in Providence, and
sends a shuddering misgiving through them, that no such
power as a moral Providence exists anywhere beyond
themselves.
Again and again in the progress of human development
mankind have been forced into an unwilling recognition
of the truth, and the crisis has been always a painful one.
So long as religion is fully believed, the inattention of
nature to impiety and immorality is compensated by the
increased energy of government, and by the higher aspirations of individual men. Impiety does not escape unpunished when it is treated by the magistrate as a crime.
In a society which is penetrated by a consciousness of
responsibility to God morality is rewarded as such, and
vice and impurity are punished as such by temporal inconveniences. When religion no longer guides the intellect
or controls the conduct, society confines itself to the punishment of offences against itself. Having no longer any
high consciousness of duty, society is tolerant of profligacy
which avoids the grosser forms of crime. For the rest, the
magistrate exclaims cynically: Deorum injurice Diis curse,
well knowing that if the Gods' injuries are not punished
by himself the offender's slumbers will be undisturbed.
So matters stood at Rome when Velleius the Epicurean,
Balbus the Stoic, and Cotta the Pontifex Maximus, the
Pope, the head of the national religion, the guardian of
the sacred oracles, met together at Cicero's villa to discuss
the nature of the Gods.    The argument was opened
properly by Velleius. Epicureanism was the popular
creed of the day, the creed of the men of science and intellect, the creed of the poet, the artist, and the statesman.
The Epicureans believed in phenomena. They held with




Divus Cacsar.


251


Locke that the intellect could reason only upon facts conveyed to it through the senses, and that knowledge could
not extend beyond the objects of sensible experience. The
earth and all that existed upon it had been created by
nature, and was governed by laws of natural causation.
Nature was sovereign, and no external power could be
proved to have ever interfered with it. As to the supposition that another order of beings existed somewhere
superior to man, the Epicureans had no objection to acknowledge that it might be so; they thought it rather
probable than otherwise: they denied only that such
beings took an interest in man.
Briefly and completely their views on this subject had
been expressed by Ennius:
Ego genus esse semper dico et dixi Celitum,
Sed non eos curare opinor quid agat humanum genus.
Nam si curent, bene bonis sit malis male, quod nunc abest.
"I always say and have said that the race of the celestials exists, but I opine not that they concern themselves
with the doings of the sons of men. Did they so concern
themselves, it would be well with the good and ill with
the wicked, which now it is not."
Men had no care for the animals which shared the
earth with them. The Gods might exist, yet might care
as little for men as men cared for beetles or butterflies.
The admission of the possibility of such an existence was
perhaps a condescension of philosophy to popular prejudice, or arose from a wish to avoid the reproach of
Atheism. Yet Velleius insisted on it with an appearance
of earnestness. He appealed to instinct and internal emotion as an evidence 1 that somewhere in the universe were


1 "Anteceptam animo rei quandam infornationeia sine qua nec
intelligi quicquam nec disputari potest."




252


Diuvls Ccesar.


to be found beings, in a state of unbroken repose, perfect
virtue and perfect happiness, and that in the adoration of
them-disinterested, because no favour was to be looked
for in return-was the highest felicity of man.
These views are set out in the dialogue with a brevity
which shows that Cicero did not think them to deserve
more elaborate treatment, and in the reply of Cotta the
most interesting feature is his statement of his own position. He was the Pontifex Maximus. The duty of his
office, he said, required him to defend the religion established by law. He would be pleased if the existence of
the Gods could be established, not only on the authority
of tradition, but as a fact which admitted of proof; but
it was surrounded with difficulties which Velleius had
only increased. That mankind could worship beings who
were and would be always indifferent to them, was hardly
to be expected. The openly expressed scepticism of bolder
reasoners, the exulting claim of Lucretius that the spectre
of superstition had been for ever exorcised by science,
spared the necessity of graver argument.
The Epicurean being thus dismissed, the word was taken
up by the Stoic Balbus. With the Epicurean, morality
was enlightened self-interest. The Stoic believed in duty.
To act rightly, to love justice, and truth, and purity, and
to hate their opposites, were matters of absolute obligation to him. A law implied a lawgiver; responsibility required a ruler, to whom an account would have to be rendered: the Stoic therefore looked about him in a very
modern fashion for answers to popular objections to the
truth of religion. If the age of miracles had ceased, he
found that miracles, portents, or prodigies were recorded
in tradition; the instances of design in nature, the adaptation of means to ends in the structure and functions of
animals were evidence of an intelligent Creator; and the




Divus Ccesar.


253


elaborate pains with which Cicero explains the Stoic position shows that at least he felt it to deserve respectful
treatment. Balbus maintained the existence of the Gods
to be an established truth of history. Castor and Pollux
had appeared in the battle at the Lake Regillus. Sacrifices had been offered and accepted. The Decii had devoted themselves, and a victory had been won. Oracles
had been delivered at Delphi and elsewhere, containing
clear prophecies of future events. These events had afterwards taken place, and a foresight which was not to be
accounted for by human sagacity was manifestly preternatural. In Italy again, although it had fallen lately
into neglect, the art of divination had been practised from
the earliest period, and too many instances could be produced of disaster from the neglect of divine injunctions so
conveyed to admit of being explained away. The sacred
chickens had refused to eat in the First Punic War. The
Consul Claudius had cried impatiently that they should
drink then, and had flung them into the water. The
Roman fleet had been lost in consequence, and Claudius
had been tried for impiety and executed. In the traditions of these things fable might have been mixed with
truth, but when all possible deductions had been made on
the score of historic fallibility, sufficient evidence remained
for an enlightened and reasonable belief.
Passing from tradition to natural philosophy, Balbus
next appealed to the motion of the stars, and the regularity of the operations of nature. Posidonius, whom
lie called his friend, had constructed an orrery, in which
the movements of the sun and moon and planets, and
their relative positions throughout the year, were exactly
represented.  Anticipating literally Paley's illustration
from the watch, Balbus asked whether, if this machine
were exhibited in Scythia or Britain, the veriest savage




254


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could avoid perceiving that it was the work of a designing
mind. Pursuing the same line of thought, and anticipating
the Bridgewater treatises, he went in detail into the
structure of plants and animals, and dwelt on the
adaptation of their various organs to their method of life.
The Stoics had interrogated nature in the same spirit as
modern religious philosophers, and had arrived at the
same conclusion. They believed themselves to have found
a proof of contrivance, and therefore of a contriving
Creator. But the real difficulty remained. Nature might
have an intelligent Author, yet intelligence was nothing
without morality; and if the evidences of design were
abundant, yet evidences of moral government were as
conspicuously absent. With ingenious boldness Balbus
addressed himself to the central problem, and approached
as closely, perhaps, as any mere philosopher has ever done
to the only possible solution of it. Morality, when vigorously alive, sees farther than intellect, and provides unconsciously for intellectual difficulties. The Latins had
extended their reverence beyond the mythological divinities
and had built temples to the moral virtues as the guardian
spirits of mankind.  Constancy and Faith, Valour and
Wisdom, Chastity and Piety, had each their separate
altar, where human beings paid their orisons, and prayed
for strength to overcome temptation. "You complain,"
said Balbus, " that you can see no sign of an overruling Providence in the administration of the universe; the Virtues
are Providence, and themselves constitute the moral government which you pretend that you cannot find. Justice may
not be perfect; some crimes may be left unpunished, some
good actions may be unrewarded. It is so with earthly governments, and may be so with the divine  It is enough that
we see a tendency which may become stronger with time, and
may be carried out further in later generations."




Divus Ccesar.


255


In the close of his argument, he returns to the
auguries. It was a historical fact that from immemnorial
time the Etruscans had supposed that they could read
coming events in the entrails of sacrificed animals. On
great occasions, with the utmost solemnity, and in the
presence of the highest functionaries of the state, the
body of a calf or a sheep had been gravely opened, and
the most important actions had been undertaken, or laid
aside, according to the condition of the heart or liver of
the dead animal. This was a plain matter of certainty.
The experiment would not have been repeated for so long a
time if the events had not corresponded to the indications
so obtained. Even Tacitus, a century and a half later, could
speak of these foreshadowings as still fully credited, and
as apparently established by evidence. Balbus, however,
was content with 'the fact, and laid little stress upon it.
He did not profess to regard the blackened liver of a calf
as caused by divine interposition; he regarded it merely
as a natural phenomenon rising from some internal correspondence of things.
On these reasonings, with more of which in a modern
form we are all familiar, the High Priest proceeded to
comment at length, and with more seriousness than he
had shown in discussing the arguments of the Epicureans.
He commenced with a peculiarly solemn reference to his
own official position, and like Dectartes, while doubting
everything from the point of reason, he insisted that his
private convictions remained unshaken, because they reposed on belief and authority. He was Pontifex (Pope),
he repeated. He was appointed by the State to uphold
the established creed and ceremonial.  These he ever had
maintained, and always would maintain, and no one,
learned or unlearned, would succeed in shaking his faith.
So far as the truth of the Roman religion was in question




256


DIivus Ccesar.


he should follow his predecessors in the papal chair,
Coruncarius, Publius Scipio, and Scevola, and not Zeno,
or Cleanthes, or Chrysippus. Caius Lselius, the augur,
had more weight with him than the wisest philosophers of
the porch. The ceremonial, the haruspices, and the Sybilline books were the pillows of the Roman Commonwealth.
The foundations of it had been laid in religion by Romulus and Numa, and by the immortal Gods alone it was
sustained. That was his position as Pontifex.
"You philosophers, however," Cotta went on, "appeal
to reason. I myself believe without reason, etiam nulld
ratione redditd. The authority of my ancestors is sufficient
for me. But you reject authority, and you will have reason
only. I must therefore set my reason against yours, and
I tell you that you with your arguments make doubtful
what without argument is not doubtful at all.  Your
appearance of Castor and Pollux at the Lake Regillus
may be but a legend.  It is unauthenticated by certain
history. The Decii were probably only brave men who
threw themselves among the enemy, knowing that their
countrymen would follow. And what a character are you
not attributing to the Gods when you represent them as
beings whose favour must be purchased by the sacrifice of
good men! You describe the Gods as all-perfect, and
omniscient, and you suppose them to exist under conditions where no quality which we call good can possibly
be found.  Where there is no evil there can be no preference of good to evil. Where all is already known, there
can be no active intelligence. Where wrong-doing is impossible, there is no justice; no temperance where there is
no temptation; no valour where there is no evil to be overcome.   The theogonies of Hesiod and Homer are too
childish for belief, and when all is said, there remains the
enigma, which you have not resolved: if the Gods exist,




Divus Ccesar.


257


and if the world is ruled by them, why is it well with the
wicked? and why do the good fall into calamity? The
commonwealth and the family are ill ordered when virtue
is not rewarded, and crime is not punished; so far as
we can trace the action of the Gods no such distinction is
made. Argue as you will, this is the fact. In the distribution of good and evil, so far as it is left to forces
external to man, no question is asked about character.
You say that we ought not to be surprised if the Gods do
not punish every crime, because earthly governments do
not. Where is the analogy? Earthly governments fail
for want of knowledge. You leave no such excuse for the
Gods, for the Gods are assumed to be omniscient. You
say that though the wicked man may himself escape, his
crimes may be visited on his children. Wonderful justice!
What should we say of a commonwealth where the law
condemned the son or grandson for the sins of his father?
In the system of nature there is no rule of a just God
discernible. One event comes alike to all. Men, cities,
nations, perish undeservedly, because, forsooth, God cannot attend to everything. And yet you expect us to pray
to Him! It cannot be.
So far in substance the Pontiff Cotta; and with Cotta's
scepticism the dialogue ends. A fourth speaker, especially
if he could have had the light of later history to guide
him, might have shown Cotta that his own foundations
were as feeble as those which he overthrew.  Ve, too,
have heard of faith which rests upon authority, and dispenses with reason; but what does authority rest upon?
Such a faith may prolong a sickly existence for one or
more generations, but it cannot endure -the buffets of practical life. Questions to which it can give no reasonable
answer hang multiplying like barbed arrows in its side.
The ceremonial becomes stereotyped. The faith resolves
17




258


Divus Ccesar.


itself into words repeated without conviction. Packthread
might as easily hold a giant gone insane, as arguments
for the probable truth of the Pagan religion hold in check
the wolfish appetites of unbelieving mankind. In Cicero's
time the once God-fearing Latins had become a commonwealth of Atheists, in which chastity and innocence
blushed to show themselves, and corruption had lost the
consciousness of its own deformity.  Three conquered
continents lay at the feet of the Republic. The oligarchy
and the democracy were snarling and fighting over their
prey. Italy was torn with civil wars, and decimated by
proscriptions. Ordered freedom was lost in anarchy, and
the state was staggering in drunken frenzy. The senators
sold justice, and great ladies sold their persons, to the
highest bidder. The provinces were stripped to the bone
by the praetors. The praetors spent their spoils in gluttony
and bestiality.  As to religion, and the respect which
authority could command for it, Cotta's successor in tihe
Pontificate was young Caesar, notorious then for the dissoluteness of his habits, and for an intellect which for
many years he appeared to disdain to use. For the constitution, it had fallen into such extraordinary contempt,
that Catiline, with a small knot of fashionable young
men, had proposed to burn the city and kill the consuls
and half the patricians. Yet Rome was so conscious of
its own worthlessness as to be almost incapable of indignation; although the plot was discovered, and Catiline knew
that it was discovered, he could venture to attend the Senate House, and sit and listen while the particulars of it
were detailed by Cicero. He could walk out unmolested,
continue his preparations at leisure, leave the city without
an attempt at arrest, and put himself at the head of an
open insurrection.
To this it had come in the first capital of the world,




Divus Cccsar.


259


and the most advanced nation of it, because, in the Hebrew
language, they had forgotten God. They had no belief
remaining in any divine rule over them. The cement
was gone which held society together, and the entire fabric
of it had fallen in shapeless ruin. Some vast change was
inevitable, some powerful reassertion of the elementary
principles of authority and justice, or the enormous Roman
empire would have burst like a bubble.
In recorded history no single man (perhaps with the
exception of Mahomet) has produced effects so vast and so
enduring as Julius Cesar. It is the more remarkable that
in no language, ancient or modern, is there any adequate
biography of him. To Lucan he was an incarnation of
Satan. Suetonius, the fullest authority on his early life,
accepted and recorded every scandalous libel which was
current in patrician coteries. To Suetonius the loose songs
of the Roman soldiers were sufficient evidence to charge
Caesar with infamy. With as much reason similar accusations niight be brought against Nelson or Collingwood,
because, in loose affectionate talk, they were freely spoken
of in the English fleet under the name which Johnson defines as a term of endearment among sailors. To Cicero
Csesar appeared at first as a young man of genius and
fashion, who was wasting time and talents, while he was
himself improving both. As the talents showed themselves more unmistakably, and Cicero was obliged to allow
that Cmesar's powers as an orator, when he cared to use
them, were as great as his own, that his style as a writer
was unmatched, that his influence almost without effort
was growing, and, worse still, when it appeared that he
was the advocate of the democracy, contempt and pity
changed to fear and suspicion. And as Cesar at last
towered up above both him and all his contemporaries,
Cicero came to dread and hate him, and sate approving in




260


Divus Coesar.


the Senate when he was murdered. Thus from Cicero,
except in scattered glimpses, we gather no credible picture,
and we are driven back to Coesar himself, who in his " Commentaries " has left the most lucid of all military narratives; but, except in the studied absence of self-glorification,
and in a few sentences in which for a moment he allows us
to see into his own inner nature, he leaves us scarcely
better provided with the means of understanding him.
Patrician constitutionalists, judging as men do by the
event, were assured that he had early conceived an intention of overthrowing the republic; and that his object in
obtaining his command in Gaul was merely to secure the
support of an army to bring about his country's ruin.
Nothing can be less likely. A conspirator would never
have chosen so circuitous a road, or one so little tending,
according to common laws of probability, to lead to his
object. He was past forty before he began to show what
was in him. May it not have been rather that he remained in Rome, hoping that some useful career might
open for him, till the steady growing anarchy and corruption taught him that nothing was to be looked for there?
Life was slipping away, and he wished to accomplish
something memorable before he died. The Germans were
pouring in over the Rhine.  But for Cmesar Ariovistus
might have been an Alaric, and Europe might have been
Teutonized four centuries before its time. In -ten years
Csesar had forced back the Germans into their forests.
He had invaded Britain. Gaul he had not merely overrun with his armies and coerced into submission, but he
had won the affection of the people whom he had subdued.
The Gauls became an integral part of the Roman nation,
and infused new vitality into the brain and sinew of the
empire. For such a service the reward which the Roman
aristocracy considered him to deserve was degradation, dis



VDivus Ccesar.


261


honour, and afterwards, of course, death. The common sense
of mankind repudiated the enormous injustice. His adoring legions, instead of demanding pay to remain on his side,
contributed out of their own purses the expenses of the
wars which followed.  The aristocracy died hard.  The
flower of them fell at Pharsalia. With the degrading
support of the Numidian chiefs, they fought through a
fresh campaign in Africa. When Cato had fallen on his
sword at Utica, the scattered fragments of Pompey's and
Scipio's armies drifted into Spain, and threw their last stake
in a desperate struggle upon the Ebro. Then it was over.
The Republican constitution of Rome had fallen, destroyed
by its own vices. Caesar was sole sovereign of the civilised
world; and so effectively the work was accomplished that
his own death could not undo it.  Order and authority
were re-established under a military empire, and the Roman dominion which had been on the edge of dissolution,
received a new lease of existence. Was it to be wondered
at if men said that the doer of such an exploit was something more than man?  CSsar had found the world going
to pieces in madness and corruption. All that mankind
had gained from the beginning of recorded time, all that
Greece had bequeathed of art and culture, all the fruits of
the long struggles of Rome to coerce unwilling barbarians
into obedience to law, was on the brink of perishing. The
human race might have fallen back into primeval savagery. Cesar, by his own resolute will, had taken anarchy
by the throat and destroyed it. Quirinus, the first founder
of Rome, was called a God. Was there not here a greater
than Quirinus? Philosophers had cried despairingly that
the Gods (if Gods existed) had no care for man. Had not
a living God come among them in the form of man? Was
not Caesar a God?
There is a doubt whether Cesar himself, in his own life



262


Divus Ccesar.


time, permitted the indulgence of these fancies. Probably not. So calm, so rational an intellect was not so easily
intoxicated, nor was it like him to encourage, for political
reasons, any lying exaggerations. Suetonius says that he
allowed honours to be paid to him-am2pliora huimano
fastigio-that temples were raised to him, with sacrificing
priests, and his own image above the altars. Tacitus, a
far better authority, says that Nero was the first of the
Cesars who was officially recognized as a God before his
death, "the Emperors not hitherto receiving this distinction until their sojourn upon earth was ended."  So far
as can be seen, Coesar had personally no religious convictions whatever. He had no belief in a future life. He
considered death to be the limit of human existence, and
on existence in the present life he set but little value.
When warned of the conspiracy to kill him, he refused to
take precautions. He had lived long enough, and did not
care to continue. Whatever, however, might have been
his own thoughts upon the subject, the popular feeling was
not to be restrained. He was enrolled among the twelve
Gods. The month of July, which still bears his name,
was allotted to him in the Fasti. His successor was but
carrying out the universal wishes of the army and the
people when he built a temple to him and instituted a
formal service there. At the time of his consecration a
brilliant and unfamiliar star was seen for several nights in
the sky, and was generally regarded as the spirit of Cesar.
That he had been received up into heaven, Suetonius says,
was not merely a figure of speech, but the real conviction
of mankind.
Augustus, who had been brought up by Caesar, shared
1 "Nam Defim honor Principi nod ante habetur quam agere inter
homines desierit."-Tacitus' "Annals," lib. xv., cap. 74.




Divus Ccesar.


263


probably in his uncle's opinions on these subjects. Legend
said that, when a young man, Augustus had made one of
a once famous supper )arty-Coena iSwzi0.o;-" supper
of the twelve Gods-" where each guest had represented
a God or Goddess, and Augustus had personated Apollo.
The authority was only certain notis'inmi versus —verses
well known in IRome a hundred years after. The story is
out of character with Augustus, and is probably a lie.'
Cesar had named him his heir, with a just inslght into
his extraordinary qualities. He returned the confidence
which had been placed in him with a profound veneration
to Casar's memory; and when the first confusion was over
which followed Cesar's death, whlen the attempt to re-establish the constitution had utterly failed, and the popular
will had ratified Cesar's disposition and raised him to the
throne, Augustus set himself with a feeling of sacred obligation to punish the murderers. In three years not one
of the whole of them survived: Brutus, Cassius, Casca, all
were gone-some killed, some falling by their own hands;
Cicero himself, an accomplice though not an actor, not
escaping, having no longer Cesar to protect him. Scribunt
quidam, says Suetonius, not undertaking, however, to
vouch for their accuracy, that, on the Ides of March, after
the fall of Perusia, three hundred selected prisoners were
sacrified at an altar to Divus Julius. Augustus had no
predilection for melodrama. If the story is true, it was an
extraordinary illustration of the fanaticism to which he
1 Cum primum istorum conduxit mensa Choragum,
Sexque Deos vidit Mallia sexque Deas,
Impia dur Phcebi C.esar mendacia ludit,
Dum nova Divorum coonat adulteria,
Omnia se a terris tune numina declinarunt
Fugit et auratos Jupiter ipse toros.
Suetonius, "De Vita Octavii."




264


Divus Ccesar.


was compelled to condescend. More probably a severe
example was made of the Perusians. Some passionate
partisan may have said that the victims were offered to
the names of the Dictator, and a metaphor, as often happens, may have passed into a fact.
However this may be, Augustus was no sooner settled
in the purple than he endeavoured to bury the recollections
of the civil war in a general amnesty. Society had grown
ashamed of its orgies, and returned to simpler habits of
life, and the Emperor led the way in the reform. Like
Charles V., Augustus banished plate from his household,
and was served with the plainest food on the plainest
earthenware. He slept on a truckle bed without hangings.
His furniture was vix privates elegantic scarcely fine
enough for a private gentleman. His dress was homespun, not distinguishable from the dresses of his attendants, and to emphasize the example, was manufactured by
the Empress and his daughter. With the improvement in
manners there set in also one of those periodical revivals
of religious sentiment with which history at such times
is familiar. Augustus, either from policy or because the
feelings which could influence Horace had also influenced
him, encouraged the symptoms of recovering piety. Like
his uncle he was Pontifex Maximus; but unlike him he
made his office a reality. Caesar had defied auguries,
Augustus never ventured an important act without consulting the haruspices. His name, according to Suetonius,
he derived from his attention to the flight of birds-tamquam ab avium gestis-the birds, as inhabitants of the air,
being the supposed messengers between earth and sky.
If the etymology is incorrect, the suggestion of it is an
evidence of' the popular belief in this feature of the
imperial character. He was punctilious in each and all
of his religious observances. He reformed the priesthood,




Divus Ccesar.


265


he revised the canon of the Sybilline books, and destroyed
the apocryphal additions. He held, like Cotta, to the
traditions of his fathers, looked unfavourably on heresies
and new opinions, and forbade the novel forms of worship
which with the turn of fashion were coming in from the
East.
For himself, notwithstanding the language addressed
to him by Horace, he declined, while he was alive, any
public recognition of his superhuman qualities. He did
not permit himself to be addressed as Dominus or Lord.1
No shrines or temples were erected to him in Rome,
and in the provinces only in connection with the genius
of the empire. On public buildings at Ephesus, he is
found, from inscriptions on recently discovered buildings
there, to have been described by the singular title TFo"
EoE3, " Son of God."  It is curious to consider that St.
Paul must have seen these words there. The idea of the
Sonship was already not unfamiliar. Nevertheless, notwithstanding his modesty, it is certain that throughout
the Roman dominions Augustus was regarded, not only as
the Son of God, but as an incarnation of God-a prcesens
Divus, a second revelation in the flesh of the reality of the
celestial powers; and during his long reign the harassed
peasant, who at last could till his farm and eat his bread
in safety, poured libations with unhesitating faith to the
divinity of the Emperor. On his death the popular
belief received official ratification. In the Fasti he was
placed next to Julius. The uncle and nephew became the
tutelary deities of the fairest months in the year. Legends
gathered about his history. He was found to have been
born of a virgin. His mother had conceived him in a


1 "Domini appellationem et maledictum et opprobrium semper
abhorruit."




266


6Divus Coesar.


vision in the Temple of Apollo. The place of his nativity
was held sacred. No curious visitor was allowed to intrude
there. No one might enter, except to pray. A still more
remarkable story was believed in Rome in Suetonius'
time, on the authority of Julius Marathus, which it is
difficult to suppose was not in some way connected with
the Gospel history. A    few  months before his birth a
prodigy was observed, which the augurs interpreted to
mean that a child was coming into the world who was to
be King of Rome. The Senate passed a vote that no
infant born in that year should be allowed to live.'
Any superstition is tolerable so long as it is sincerely
believed, so long as it is a motive to moral conduct, and
makes men morally better than they would have been without it. Under Augustus Coesar the language of Virgil's
Fourth Eclogue was scarcely more than a hyperbole.
Society, in the last pangs of dissolution, had been restored
to life, and if the divine rule over the world be a rule of
justice, the public administration under the second Caesar
must have seemed, when compared with the age which
preceded  it, like the return of Astrsea.  And again, if we
look at the ulterior purposes of Providence, it was the
consolidation of the empire, the establishment of peace,
order, and a common government round the basin of the
Mediterranean, which enabled the Apostles to carry Christianity through the world, and to organise a Catholic
Church; while the chief difficulties were already removed
which would have interfered with the acceptance of the
1 "Auctor est Julius Marathus ante paucos quam nasceretur menses prodigium  Romse factum publice quo denuntiabatur regem
populi Romani naturam parturire. Senatum exterritum censuisse
ne quis illo anno genitus educaretur; eos qui gravidas uxores
haberent, quod ad se quisque spem traheret, curasse ne senatius consultum ad aerarium deferatur. "-Suetonius, De Vita Octavii, cap. 94.




Divms Ccesar.


267


Christian creed. Already the Roman world believed that
a Son of God who was himself God had been born upon
earth of a human mother and divine Father, that he
had   reigned as a king, that he had established his
dominion over mankind, and that after his death he had
gone back to Heaven, from which he had descended, there
to remain for ever.
It was in no figure of speech that St. Paul spoke
of the secular power as ordained of God. So far as the
power was the instrument of justice, so far as it was an
instrument of Providence, it was the power of God; and
yet a brief trial sufficed to exhaust the divinity of the
imperial purple. The general administration continued
to be tolerable for centuries; but the imperial dignity tended
to become hereditary; to be born to mere earthly greatness is a severe trial; and the youth never existed who
could be educated uninjured in the belief that he was more
than a man. When Herod spoke, the people said it was
the voice of God, and he was smitten with worms because
he gave not God the glory. The younger Csesars were
smitten with the genius of wickedness, as a rebuke even
more significant to the unpermitted and audacious assumption. Tiberius and Claudius were neither of them born
in the purple, and however atrocious their conduct, their
crimes were not traceable to their pretensions to divinity.
Tiberius was a man of science and a fatalist,' and, amidst
his enormous vices, did not pretend to powers of which he
disbelieved the existence.  Claudius was a miserable
pedant, whom Augustus had considered unfit for any
higher office than that of a chief priest (augurale saccrdotium), and when Claudius was made a God at his death,
1 " Circa Deos et religiosos negligens quippe addictus mathematicae, persuasionisque plenus cuncta fato agi."-Suetonius.




268


Divus Ccesar.


the universal ridicule showed that already the divinity of
the Csesars was passing into a jest. It had hardly survived
Caligula. Caligula, the son of Germanicus, who, if bred
as a soldier, might have been a useful centurion, being
brought up a Caesar, was the strangest figure which ever
sat upon a European throne. He was a savage, and he
knew it. When they told him he was a God, in grotesque
mockery of himself and his instructors he challenged
Jupiter Capitolinus to fight, and Jupiter not responding,
he took the head from his statue and replaced it with his
own. He stood on the temple steps and bade the people
pray to him. He appointed a chapter of priests to ofer
sacrifices to him, the choicest that could be found (excogitatissimas hostias), and either in servility or in the same
spirit of wild riot, the patricians contended for the honour
of admission to the extraordinary order.
The translation of Claudius " among the pumpkins" was
another step downwards; but worse was to come. Claudius
had been more sinned against than sinning. Caligula had
a trait of humour in him. His profanities had been expressions rather of his contempt for the baseness of the
court, than of any conceit of his own greatness. It
remained for Nero, the pupil of Seneca, the accomplished
artist, poet, painter, sculptor, musician, public singer; the
sentimentalist, who sighed when called to sign a deathwarrant, and wished that he had never learned to write;,
who, when told that three legions had revolted, said that
he would recover them to their allegiance with his tearsit was reserved for him to exhibit, as a prcesens Divus, the
most detestable qualities which have been ever witnessed
in combination in any human being. For Nero exhausted
the list of possible enormities, leaving not one crime unperpetrated of which man is capable, and always in the
most hideous of forms. To make his wickedness complete,




Divus COsar.


269


he was without the temptation of violent appetites, which,
in reducing man to a beast, give him in some degree the
excuses of a beast. He was cruel, without being naturally
ferocious; he was depraved, yet he had little capacity for
sensual enjoyment; and, with intellect sufficient to know
what was good, he chose evil from deliberate preference
of it.
A famous French actress watched by death-beds in the
hospitals, that she might study the art of expiring on the
stage. The bolder Nero committed incest with his mother
that he might realize the sensations of CEdipus, and
murdered her that he might comprehend the situation of
Orestes. Under Nero's fearful example the imperial court
of Rome became a gilded brothel. Chastity was turned
into a jest, vice was virtue, and fame lay in excess of
infamy.  The wisest sunk to the level of the worst.
Seneca composed a'vindication of the assassination of
Agrippina, accusing her of having conspired against her
son. The Senate decreed a thanksgiving to the Gods for
Nero's deliverance from Agrippina's treachery. The few
honourable men, like Paetus Thrasea and Soranus, who
refused to follow with the stream, were made away with;
as if the emperor desired, in the tremendous language of
Tacitus, virtutem ipsam exscindere-to cut out virtue itself
by the roots; and with a yet stranger appropriateness than
even Tacitus himself could recognize, when Nero had set
Rome on fire, he selected the Christian converts as scapegoats for his guilt. He smeared them with pitch, and set
them to blaze as torches in his gardens to light his midnight revels. What those revels were no modern language
can decently reveal. In a torchlight festival on Agrippa's
lake, the noblest ladies in Rome appeared as naked prostitutes, the emperor sailing up and down among them in his
barge. Tacitus must tell the rest in his own words: Ipse




270


Divus Ccesar.


per licita atque illicita fcedatus nihil flagitii reliquerat quo
corruptior ageret, nisi paucos post dies uni ex illo contaminatoruln grege cui nomen Pythagorce fuit in modum solemnium conjugiorum denupsisset. Inditum   Imperatori flalmmemn-visi auspices-dos et genialis torus et faces nuptialcs.
Cuncta denique spectata quoe etiam in foemina nox operit.
(Tacit. Ann. 15, 37.)
After these outrages it seems a desecration of a sacred
word to speak of Nero in connection with religion; yet it
was Nero's destiny in this world to fulfil the measure of
perfect infamy. As he had destroyed virtue, one further
step was necessary-to destroy the belief in any source of
virtue. He was an artist, as was said: Qualis artifexperio
were his words when he was dying. He was without conscience and therefore could have no reverence. He was
fearless, and had no superstition.  Belief of his own he
had none, save for a time in the Syrian goddess of indecency, to whom he was soon worse than faithless.' The
Syrian Goddess being repudiated, his object of worship
was afterwards a female statuette (ieuncula puellaris.) IH
had some notion of fate; for fate, he had a strange inagination, was to make him one day " King of the Jews."
But Nero was his own God and maker of Gods, and belief in God became impossible when Nero was regarded
as a personation of him. On medals and in public instruments he solemnly assumed the name of Jupiter. He,
too, had his temples and his priests. He had murdered
his wife Octavia; he afterwards kicked to death his mistress Poppeaea; but while Poppsea was in favour slih
shared his divine honours with him, and a child which she
1 "( Rligionum usque quaque contemptor, prseterunius Dem Syrie.
TIanc mox ita sprevit ut urina contaminaret."-Suetonius De Vita
rcronis.




Divus Ccesar.


271


bore to him was to have been a God too, had it not unfortunately died.
To this pass the world had come in the kingdom of
heaven upon earth which was to have been realised by the
divinity of the CUesars. It is startling to remember that
Nero was the Caesar to whom St. Paul appealed, that it
w-as in the Rome of Nero that St. Paul dwelt two years in
his own house, that it was in the household of Ncro that
he found or made converts to Christianity. The parricides, the incests, the wholesale murders, the "abomination of desolation" in the polluted saloons of the palace,
wore actually witnessed by persons with whom he was in
daily intercourse. St. Paul with his own  eyes may have
soon " the son of perdition sitting in the temple of God,
showing that he was God," and we need go no further to
look for his meaning. Yet in his Epistles written from
Rome he says little of these things. Those words are perhaps his only allusion to them.
The administration of Augustus was the most perfect
system of secular government ever known, and the attributes assigned to Augustus were the apotheosis of it. The
principle of Augustus was the establishment of law and
order, of justice and decency of conduct. Of the heroic
virtues, or even the modest virtues of purity and sense of
moral responsibility, such a system knew nothing, and offered no motive for moral enthusiasm. Order and law and
decency are the body of society, but are a body without
a soul; and, without a soul, the body, however vigorous
its sinews, must die and go to corruption. Human improvement is from within outwards. A state which can
endure must be composed of members who all in their way
understand what duty means and endeavour to do it.
Duty implies genuine belief in some sovereign spiritual
power. Spiritual regeneration comes first, moral after it,




272


Divus Cesar.


political and social last. To reverse the order is to plant
a flower which has been cut from its natural stem, which
can bloom but for a day and die.
The ways of Providence are obscure and perplexing,
but scenes such as those which Rome had witnessed under
Nero are not acted on this planet in the most neglected
condition of it without retribution. Nero perished miserably, and on the accursed city which had sinned with him
the wrath of Heaven, or destiny, or nature, or whatever it
may be called, was not long in falling. We read in the
Roman historians of military revolutions, of three emperors
enthroned and killed in less than as many years, of provinces wasted and cities stormed and burnt. The page
before us is stained with no blood: slayers and slain, conquerors and conquered, are words, and words only. The
events recorded are far off, and stir no longer any emotions
of terror or pity. Yet those years were an outpouring of
the wrath of the Almighty on polluted Italy. The armies
of the several frontiers demanded the purple for their fa-.
vourite commanders, and gathered down upon the peninsula to make good their furious pleasure.  They came
from Spain and from the Rhine, from the Danube, from
Britain, from the Euphrates, from Egypt. The empire
was like an oak, hollow at the heart, but vigorous in the
branches. The legions, recruited no longer from the Latin
peasants, were filled with Gauls and Spaniards, Thracians
and Germans-fierce animals, half tamed by military discipline, but with the savage nature boiling out when the
rein was slackened. With no common purpose, except
perhaps some resolution that the accursed scenes which
they heard reported from Rome should come to an end,
those nearest at hand streamed down over the passes of
the Alps. Others followed. Town after town was sacked
and given to the flames. The Imperial city, the harlot of




Divus Ccesar.


273


the seven hills, the mother of iniquities, was taken and retaken among the partisans of rival claimants for the purple. The Capitol was burnt, the streets and gardens were
littered for weeks or months with unburied bodies. Debauched legionaries rioted in the palaces of the nobles till
indulgence had broken their strength, and other wild bands
burst in to tear the spoil from them. A Christian, with a
real belief, must have seen in this tremendous visitation
the immediate hand of Providence, and, if he was a person of any imaginative intelligence, the description of the
opening of the seals in the vision of St. John would not
seem an exaggerated description of the history of those
fearful years. That vision may have had other meanings.
No one can say certainly to what St. John refers.  Yet
metaphor might be piled on metaphor, and image upon
image, and all would have been too little to have expressed
the feelings likely to have been experienced in that deluge
of fire and blood by a Christian who had escaped alive
from the torch festival of Nero.
It had been prophesied that salvation was to come
from the East. The eyes of the Roman world were turned
with passionate longing to Vespasian and the army of
Syria. That Vespasian had been "marked as extraordinary," had been proved by miracles which he was reluctantly persuaded to attempt in Alexandria, and which
he had succeeded in accomplishing. A blind man was
restored to sight, and a man with a disabled hand had recovered the use of it under circumstance which curiously
resemble those of the Gospel miracles.' His future great1'C E plebe Alexandrina quidam oculorum tabe notus genua ejus
advolvitur, remedium caecitatis exposcens gemitu, monitu Serapidis
Dei quem dedita superstitionibus gens ante alios colit: precabaturque principem ut genas et oculorum; orbes dignaretur respergere
oris excremento. Alius, manum seger, eodem Deo auctore, ut pede
18




274


Di:us Cccsar.


ness had been foretold to him by a prophet on Mount Carmel!   lie was first saluted emperor by the legions of Caesarea.  If Cornelius the Centurion, the first Gentile convert, had not died in the short interval after St. Peter's
visit to him, he, it is reasonable to suppose, was one of the
actors in the revolution.  Vespasian was welcomed to the
purple with acclamation, and a time was found again for
"frighted peace to pant."    The race of the C(esars was
gone, their glory and their crimes alike ended, and a more
modest era again commenced.     The Fasti, adcllatione temporZu1 fccdati, were purged of their enormlous additions.
The Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus was rebuilt with peculiar solemnity.  The impious rites were abolished, sacrifices and litanies were offered once more to the old accredited Gods and Goddesses, and a wet sponge was drawn
over the hideous past. After the temple at Jerusalem was
destroyed by Titus, the two million Jews who were dispersed over the empire contributed the annual double
drachma, previously remitted to the High Priest, to the
sacred edifices at Rome.   Once more there was decency
ac vestigio Caesaris calcaretur orabat. Vespasianus primo irridere,
aspernari, atqueillis instantibus modo famarm vanitatis metlere,
modo obsecratione ipsorum et vocibus adulantium in spem induci:
postremo oestimari a nedicis jubet an talis caecitas ac debilitas ope
humana superabiles forent.  Medici varie disserere. Iluic non
exesam vim luminis, et redituram si pellerentur obstantia: illi
elapsos in pravum artus si salubris vis adhibeatur posse integrari.
Id fortasse cordi Diis, et divino ministerio principem electum.
Denique patrati remedii gloriam penes Cesarem, irriti ludibrium
penes miseros fore. Igitur Vespasianus, cuncta fortunse sue patere
ratus nec quicquam ultra incredibile, lseto ipse vultu, erecta que
adstabat multitudinejussa exsequitur. Statim conversa ad usum
manus, ac cseco reluxit dies. Utrumque qui interfiere nunc quoque memorant, postquam nullum mendacio pretium."-Tacit. Hist.
lib. iv., c. 81




Divus Ccesar;


275


and order, and men could live and breathe with some
shadow of self-respect. Thus were secured eighty more
years (with intervals of relapse) of peace, equitable government, and moderate manners, a renewal and prolongation in a weakened form of the era of Augustus; eighty
years which Gibbon considered to have been, on the whole,
the happiest which mankind have ever experienced.
But this was all. The dead Gods could be replaced in
the temples. The mythology was made endurable for a
time by allegoric interpretations. But belief had become
impossible for ever. And again the question rose: Where
was Providence? what signs could be found of a divine
rule? Not in the emperors. After the experience of
Nero, that illusion was no longer possible. The CTesars
themselves required to be explained and accounted for in
a universe presided over by a moral power.     The distracted provincials had to be told that a bad emperor was
a natural calamity, like tempests or plagues. They must
bear with him   and hope for a change.'    On thinking
minds, therefore, the problem returned, " Where was the
promise of his coming?"    Why was it well with the
wicked?   Why were the good allowed to suffer?   What
was the nature of the rule under which the universe was
governed after all? Tacitus wavered between chance and
fate.2 The mocking spirit in Lucian asks Jupiter if ever
1 Thus Cerealis, the Prefect of Northern Gaul, said at Treves,
when Vitellius was emperor: " Quomodo sterilitatem aut nimios
imbres et csetera naturae mala, ita luxum vel avaritiam dominantium.
tolerate. Vitia erunt, donec homines: sed neque hsec continua et
meliorum interventu pensantur." —Tacit. Hist. lib. iv., c. 74.
2 "Sed mihi haec atque talia audienti in incerto judicium est,
fatone res mortalilm et necessitate immutabili an forte volvantur.
Quippe sapientissimos veterum, quique sectam eorum  nmulantur,
diversos reperies, ac multis insitam opinionem non initia nostri, non




276


Divus Ccesar.


once since he came to the throne he had attempted to discriminate between good and bad, and apportion reward to
merit, and dares him to mention one such instance. Some
there were, so Tacitus says, who tried to believe that the
popular notions of good and evil might be mistaken; that
men might suffer and yet be happy, and prosperous and
yet be miserable. But this was paradox. No real conviction could be based on obscure possibilities; and the'
great Roman world went upon its way back into vice,
back into madness and atheism, till the dead shell fell off,
and a living Christian Church, grown to imperial stature,
was found standing on the ruins of the constitution of the
Csesars.
Why was it well with the wicked? The theology of
paganism  could give no answer, for the "wealth" of
paganism was the " wealth " of the modern Englishmanmoney and broad lands and health to enjoy them-and the
most pious disposition to believe could not blind itself to
the principles on which wealth of this kind was distributed.
Paganism had allotted as the special dominion of the Gods
the natural forces which were beyond man's control. In
the operation of these forces there was no trace of a moral
Governor, and men who refused to lie looked the truth
in the face and acknowledged it. Moral government,
which openly and visibly rewarded merit and punished
vice and crime, extended precisely so far as the authority
of man extended and no further. The oracles, the legendary tales, the devout imaginations of what the Gods had
done in the old times, the prophecies of what the Gods
would do in the future, these would no longer satisfy.
The facts of experience were too stern to be trifled
finem, non denique homines Diis cure; ideo creberrime tristia in
bonos, 1eta apud deteriores esse."-Tac. Annals, vi., 22.




Divus Ccesar.


277


with. The struggling conscience had demanded reality,
and had built temples to Divus Csesar. This, too, had not
availed. A society constructed like that of the Caesars,
on the policeman and economic laws, is a body without
life; and by an everlasting law of nature, which men may
quarrel with, may deny to exist, yet from which they can
no more escape than they can escape from their own dissolution, such a society, such a kingdom of this world,
will become a kingdom of the Devil.
What was the truth, then? What was this inexorable
sphinx which sat by the highway of humanity, propounding its enigma and devouring every one who could
not divine the answer? In the most despised of the Roman
provinces, among groups of peasants and fishermen, on
the shores of a Galilean lake, the answer had been given,
and there, in that remote and humble region, a new life
had begun for mankind. They had looked for a union
of God with man. They thought that they had found it
in Caesar. Divided from Caesar by the whole diameter
of society, they found it at last in the Carpenter of Nazareth. The kingdom of Caesar was a kingdom over the
world; the kingdom of Christ was a kingdom in the heart
of man.
I am a King, he said (if it be permitted to paraphrase
his words). I bid you follow me and be my servants; but
my kingdom is not such a kingdom as you look for. It is
the kingdom of God. The philosophers of the world say
there is no kingdom of God, because no justice can be
found in the apportionment of good and evil. What
the world calls good is not the fit reward of human
virtue. What the world calls evil is not the punishment
of sin.  The Galileans, whose blood Pilate mingled
with their sacrifices, were not sinners above other Galileans.  Suffering, you say, if it is just, must be a punish



278


Divus Cccsar.


ment of sin, and you ask where the sin lay when a man
was born blind? Does this perplex you? Do you say
God is indifferent? I bid you find rather in this indifference an example for yourselves to imitate.  Your Father
in heaven makes his rain to fall on the just and the unjust,
and is good to the unthankful and the evil. Be you like
Him. The kingdom of God is within you. If you would
enter it, put away your false measure of good and evil;
the road into that kingdom is through the Cross.  I will
not make you great. I will not give you honours, and
lands, and gold and jewels. I will promise you no immunity from disease, or suffering, or death.  To these things
the Gentiles look, and when they are not awarded, on
principles which they call just, they doubt if there is any
God in heaven. These are not the wages which you will
earn in my service. Come to me and I will make you
good men. I will make you rulers over your own selfishness, your own appetites and lusts. I will set you free
from sin. Make this your object, to be free from sin, to
lead pure and true and honourable lives. I will then be
with you. I will dwell in you. I will give you a peace
of mind of which the world knows nothing.  I will be a
well of water in you, springing up into everlasting life.
You wish for prosperity, you wish for pleasure, you wish
for the world's good things. But prosperity will be no
help to you in the conquest of yourselves. It may rather
be a hindrance. Sorrow and suffering are not evils. They
are the school in which you may learn self-command. The
empire to which I bid you aspire is higher than the Cesars'.
It is the empire over your own hearts. The reward I offer
you is greater than the purple. It is the redemption of
your own character. This is the Providence of God, for
which you looked and failed to find it. And it is just to
the smallest fibre of it. External things obey the laws




Divus Ccasar.


279


assigned to them. The moral Ruler whom you desire to
know is not to be found by looking at these. IIe is here;
he is in the heart of man. He is in me who now speak to
you. He will be in you if you struggle to obey him and
to do his will. To be happy is not the purpose for which
you are placed in this world.  Examine your own hearts.
Ask your conscience and it will answer you. Were the
choice offered you, whether you would be prosperous and
wicked, or whether your life should be a life of prolonged
misfortune, and you should rise out of it purified and ennobled, every one of you knows the answer which he ought
to give. Therefore your complaint, that it is well with
the wicked, and that the good are afflicted, is confuted out
of your own lips. You would not change conditions with
the wicked, however prosperous they may seem, unless you
are yourself wicked. To that man life has been most kind
whose character it has trained most nearly to perfection.
Desire, first, to be good men-true in word, just in
action, pure in spirit. Seek these, whatever else befall
you. So you will know God, whom you have sought and
could not find. So out of men who have life in them shall
grow a society that has life, and the kingdom of the world
shall be made in truth a kingdom of God.




ON THE USES OF A LANDED GENTRY.1
BEFORE I proceed with the address which I have undertaken to deliver this evening, I ought to explain why I
have chosen a subject which lies outside the usual lines.
Your institution is philosophical not political, and these
lectures are properly confined to subjects on which, if we
cannot all agree, we ought to be able to agree to differ.
I might say that the question of the Uses to the Community of a Landed Gentry is in this country purely a
philosophical one. It is certainly not a practical question.
It is no question of practical politics. No reasonable man
that I know of seriously wishes for an agrarian law, or for
a forcible division of landed property, or for an interference with the right of making settlements, or with our
right to make our own wills in whatever way may seem
good to us.
There are persons, perhaps, who do not like the way
in which the land is apportioned-who would wish it was
more evenly shared among the people. But they wish it
only as they might wish that we had a drier or a milder
climate. There are others who are well satisfied with
things as they are; who have no objection to the large
estates, who do not quarrel with primogeniture, who are
1 Address delivered at the Philosophical Institution at Edinburgh, November 6, 1876.
280




On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.


281


well satisfied with entails, particularly if they have the
happiness of benefiting by them. But they do not like
the subject to be talked about, and would prefer that it
should be judiciously let alone. I cannot see that there is
any need for reticence. In a free country like ours the
distribution of land depends on economic laws as absolute
as the law of gravity. So long as the British nation continues as it is, the landed gentry are as fixed a part of it
as the planets of the solar system. Individuals may fall
from their spheres and ruin themselves by their own folly.
The institution itself is as secure as the succession of the
seasons as long as the inclination of the pole remains
unaltered.
Why this should be is an interesting problem of social
philosophy well deserving more enquiry than it has received. My own object, however, when I originally thought
of addressing you on the landed gentry, was far less ambitious. Three years ago, when your directors were kind
enough to ask me to come here, the nisdoings of a certain
class of landlords had been much talked about in connection with the Irish Land Act. An acquaintance of my
own, Mr. Smith, of the Scilly Isles, had recently died.
Mr. Smith had possessed exceptional and unusual powers
in those islands, and had not abused them. I thought
that at such a time an account of such a man and his
doings might not be unwelcome as an evidence that a
landlord was not necessarily as pernicious a being as some
people appeared to think.  It used to be said before
the American war that masters who were kind to their
slaves were the worst enemies that the slaves had. They
were made the apology for a detestable institution. I have
heard the same objection made to good husbands by advanced advocates of the rights of women. On similar
grounds a bad opinion may be formed of Mr. Smith, and




282


On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.


now at this distance of time I do not mean to trouble you
at any length about him. Circumstances prevented my
taking up the subject when it would have been more to
the purpose, and the years which have since rolled by
have brought other interests with them. Good actions do
to some extent serve as salt to keep a man's memory fresh,
but the world is for the living and not for the dead. A
very few words on Mr. Smith are all to which I shall ask
you to listen.
I will bespeak your good opinion for him by saying
first that he was an advanced Radical. He was a believer
in Bentham.   "The greatest happiness of the greatest
number " was the rule of his life. Besides his property in
Scilly he had an estate at Berkhampstead, in Hertfordshire. At Berkhampstead there is an extensive common.
one of the few great commons remaining in England, a
free expanse of grass and forest, much valued by the
country side and by all the neighbourhood. Adjoining
the common stretches the property of a great nobleman.
And the common troubled his repose as Naboth's vineyard troubled King Ahab. As belonging to the people, it
seemed to him to belong to nobody. It was the haunt of
vagrants. It encouraged idleness. It gave poachers an
opportunity of shooting his pheasants. On pure moral
grounds he thought it would be to the public advantage
if the occasion of so much disorder was enclosed within
his own park palings. He doubted the result of an appeal
to law, but a plea was found which he hoped might sustain
him if he was once in possession. He fenced the common
in, and he left the people of Berkhampstead to find their
remedy. The smaller landowners, as he expected, did not
like to quarrel with their powerful neighbour. The poor,
who were the most injured, had the least means of protecting themselves, and Bcrkhampstead Common would




On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.


283


have gone the way of a hundred others except for Mr.
Augustus Smith. Mr. Smith heard what had been done.
He perceived that the advantage would be with the party
which was actually in occupation. Instead of bringing
an action against the noble lord, he brought a hundred
and fifty navvies one dark night down from London.
When morning came fifteen hundred yards of iron railings
were lying flat upon the ground. They were never set up
again, and Berkhampstead Common still belongs to you and
to me, and to any one who chooses to enjoy bhimself there.
But now for what Mr. Smith did in Scilly.  The Scilly
Isles are a prolongation of the granite backbone of Devonshire and Cornwall, and are, in fact, but a cluster of
granite hill tops standing out of the water. The largest
island is fromn four to six miles round. Three others are
about half that size; the rest, some hundreds in number,
are little more than rocks. Before the Reformation, Scilly
was occupied by monks, who had a fancy for such places.
When the monks went it became a pirate's nest, and then
a haunt of privateers and smugglers. After the great war
it sank into the condition of some of your own western
islands. The population was large, as it always is where
there is no motive for prudence.  The people were miserably poor; they lived in squalid hovels, with a half-acre
or an acre of ground, which they manured with seaweed.
They eked out their livelihood by fishing, piloting, and
occasional smuggling ventures. They had no schools, and
they had public-houses; and spirits were cheap where
customs duties were so easily evaded.
The Crown is the owner of these islands.  Circumstances, about forty years ago, induced Mr. Smnith to take
a long lease of them. As sole lessee he became absolute
master there; and if any one wishes to see what can be
done by one man of no extraordinary abilities, but with a




284


On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.


strong will and a resolute purpose to do good, let him employ his next summer holiday in paying Scilly a visit.
Mr. Smith at once altered the small tenures so as to
make improvement possible. He broke up the small
holdings and combined them into farms on which a family
could be maintained in decency. He provided work at
competent wages for those who were deprived of their
potato patches. He drained. He enclosed the fields.
He rebuilt the cottages in a form fit for human beings.
He set up boatyards, and organised the fishing business.
He stopped drunkenness with a high hand. Incorrigible
blackguards he shipped off to the mainland. He built
chapels and endowed them. He built schools and provided proper teachers for them. The young lads were
trained generally for the sea, and with such effect that
when I last enquired I was told that the Scilly pilots had
the best name of all the pilots at the mouth of the Channel, and that there was not a Scilly boy in the merchant
service, about twenty-one, who was a sailor before the mast;
all were masters or petty officers.
The soil, properly cultivated, began to produce unheardof crops. The soft, warm climate brings vegetation forward early, and the Scilly gardeners are now making their
fortunes by supplying spring vegetables to the London
market. Throughout the compass of the British Islands
you will not find an equal number of people on an equal
area, on an average, so well clothed, so well fed, so well
lodged, so well educated. In the largest island there is
but one constable, and he is the only person there who has
nothing to do. The whole place wears-or did wear when
I was there-an air of quiet industry, prosperity, order,
and discipline.
These results Mr. Smith arrived at by the arbitrary
exercise of his power as landlord. He was a Radical who




On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.


285


looked to ends rather than means. He desired to promote
the greatest happiness of the people dependent on him,
and he took the readiest road to his object. He found
Scilly a rabbit warren of paupers. He made it a thriving
community of industrious men and women. If boys and
girls wanted to marry, and could not show that they were
in a condition to support a family, he told them that he
had no room for them; they must wait till they had
money at the savings' bank, or they must move off to the
mainland. He was a king on a small scale. Within the
law his authority was absolute, and he used it not for
himself but for his subjects. He made no money in Scilly.
He told me a few years before his death that he had laid
out more there than he had ever received. He was a
thrifty man in his own habits, and had few luxuries but
his garden. His rents he spent upon the people, and
when he died he left the islands trebled in mere money
value.
"There is prosperity of a kind, undoubtedly," said a
philosophic Radical to me, who had been to Scilly to study
what was going on; " but it is paternal government. I
detest paternal government." Paternal government may
be detestable where you have the wrong sort of father.
Men like Mr. Smith are rare; but I am none the less
thankful when a rare chance gives the right man the right
opportunity. If the islanders had been as free as Mr.
Mill would have desired to see them, and if they had been
all animated with the most determined spirit of selfimprovement, they could not have accomplished in a
hundred years what Mr. Smith accomplished for them in
one generation. He valued liberty as much as any man
when liberty meant resistance to what was wrong. He
was less patient of liberty to resist what was clearly and
indisputably right.




286


On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.


He had his foibles. He was the wicked man of the
islands. You know the story of the wicked man. It is so
old that perhaps I ought not to mention it. A clergyman
of the Church of England had taken a friend's duty
in a parish where there was a despotic squire who did not
allow the service to be commenced before his arrival.
The clergyman, not knowing the custom, began at the
proper hour with the opening words of the English Liturgy, "When the wicked man turneth away," &c. The
clerk started up in his seat and said, "I beg your pardon,
sir, he is not come yet."
This was the rule in Scilly when I was there.  The
Lord of the Isles, as Mr. Smith was called, was supreme
in Church as well as State. IHI is gone now. Another
king rules in his stead. I trust he may prove a wicked
man too, like his uncle.
This may be all very well, says my Radical friend, but
we cannot keep up a system which gives one man a power
over the fortunes of thousands because one in a hundred
may now and then make a wholesome use of it. It might
answer when the nation was half grown. We are of age
now, and have done with leading-strings.  The land belongs to the people. No limited number of persons have
a right to raise fences round their thousands or ten thousands of acres, and say, " This land is mine. None but I
shall enter upon it."  The soil is the common inheritance
of all sons of Adam who are born into the world.  The
way to improve landlords is to improve them out of existence.
The same idea was once expressed to me by Mr. Hartley Coleridge. "Property!" he said, "I hate the word;
because I have not got any of my own."
Of course every one born into this world must live on
the land, and be fed on what the land produces; at least




On the Ulscs of a Landed Gentry.


287


outside China, where a few millions, I believe, live in
barges and are fed on fish. But we don't want a general
scramble. There must be some arrangement.      The Socialist says the land should be held by the State, and be
portioned out to those who will cultivate it. Is the Stlat
to resume these portions at its pleasure? If yes, what 1,come,:s; of personal liberty? If no, you have a multitudle
of small proprietors instead of a few large ones.  And
what is to prevent them from selling their interest, and
the large estates from growing again?  In Great Britain
and among the lDritisL people such as we know them, you
may divide the land asI, you please; but if you leave personal liberty the phcenomenla which you deprecate are certain to recur.
A few years ago tiere was a loud outcry at what was
called the nmonooly of land. Twelve noblemen were said
to own half Scotland, a few hundreds to own half England. The quarter of a million frceholders who existed in
Queen Anne's tim     ee swere  upposed to have dwindled to
thirty thousand, and their iumibers to be yearly diminishing. An enquiry was madeo.    e have a new Domesday
Look, and it appears tllat instead of no more than thirty
thousand f-reholcders in this counttrl, we have nearly a
i"llion. Yet thle details, when looked into, do in part
hear out what the agitators complained of. The House
of Lords does own more than a third of the whole area of
Great Britainl. Two-thirds of it really belongs to (reat
peers and cotlaIoners, whose estates are continually devourig, tl   i small estates adljoining them. Tile remaininig
third, in atdtl abl:out tlie great towns, is subdivided, and tlh
subdivisioil i. conllinually ilcreasing, but the land there
also is still ia:ing Iailly into tlle hands of the rich.
Cear the cities slpade cul.i tivon answers from the ready
marluct, fr garden produco; and small freeholds, purely




288


On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.


agricultural, are held in this way. But in general rich
speculators buy land about the cities for building, and bid
high for it. Successful tradesmen, merchants, or manufacturers want houses of their own in the neighbourhood,
outside the smoke, with gardens and a small dairy-farm as
a luxury.   Under these conditions the small holdings
multiply.
At a distance from the cities we have exactly the opposite. Agricultural land, on an average, pays but two per
cent. interest on its selling value. A yeoman cultivating
his own land finds it to his advantage to sell it, rent it
from some one else, and employ his purchase money in his
business. A young Scotch or Englishman, coming into
possession of an estate worth a few hundreds a year, if he
has any spirit in him, does not settle down upon it in
obscurity. He sells his scanty acres, takes his capital
with him, and invests it where he can get some better
return, or he goes into trade or emigrates. There are
these two tendencies in operation which you cannot interfere with while you leave us our liberty, and both of them
give the land to those who can afford to pay for it as
a luxury.
Will you tell the embarrassed owner of a small property that he is not to sell it? The law of entail does say
this in some instances, and so tends to preserve the small
properties. People complain of the law of entail as if it
interfered with the subdivision of landed property. It
rather sustains such small estates as remain. Abolish
entail if you please, but accumulation will only proceed
the more rapidly.
Will you tell a large landowner that he is not to buy a
property adjoining his own, when he will give a higher
price for it than any one else? You cannot do this without
robbing the person who wishes to sell.




On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.


289


Will you have the Code Napoleon? Will you insist
that when a landowner dies his estate shall be divided
among his children? If you were to pass such a law you
would fail still to produce the effect which is produced in
France, because the British and French people are essentially different. The home of the French peasant is France,
and he will thrive nowhere else. The home of the Scot or
the Englishman is the whole globe.  Three centuries ago
we were confined within our own four seas. Where are
we now? We have spread over North America. We are
filling Australia, New Zealand, South Africa. There is
scarcely a seaport in either hemisphere where you will not
find an English-speaking community. I once heard a discussion at a table-d'h6te at Madrid, between twenty or
thirty commercial travellers, as to which language was of
most use to them. There was not an Englishman in the
party, but they all agreed that the English language
would carry them farthest. Create your small landed proprietors by law, and the energetic among them will still
sell, and carry their capital to a better market.
Primogeniture! you will say. At least there ought to
be no primogeniture. Why make a distinction between
personal property and real property? Why should an
eldest son be preferred to his brothers and sisters, to his
own injury and theirs? Abolish primogeniture by all
means if you can. I need not say a word in favor of it,
but understand what it is that you would change.
It is not a law.  It is a custom.  The law gives the
land to the eldest son if the father dies without a will.
But he need not die without a will. He can divide
his land among his children if he pleases. The fact is
that he does not please. Primogeniture is the custom
which he follows and assists to make. The law does not
take effect in one case out of a thousand. Even the law is
19




290


On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.


not universally the same. The Saxon gavelkind remains
in Kent. But the practice in Kent is the same as the
practice elsewhere. Men leave their lands to their eldest
sons because they wish to preserve their families. If you
want a change you must alter their nature, or else you
must take away their liberty.
Again, it is said the conveyance of land ought to be
easier than it is. In other countries you can buy a piece
of land as easily as a yard of calico. In England the
process is so expensive as to put a few acres beyond a poor
man's reach. You may cheapen conveyancing, yet the
poor man will till not get his acres. The more easy the
transfer, the faster the land will flow in the channels which
it tends of itself to follow.
But the less obstruction the better. Let us have free
trade in land by all means, as in everything else. There
is but one serious objection that I know of. I cannot tell
how it may suit the lawyers. When the Reformation
began in England, the House of Commons complained to
the Crown of the enormous expenses of the Ecclesiastical
Courts. The Archbishop of Canterbury said in reply,
that no doubt the proceedings in the courts were costly,
but the costs went to maintain a very excellent class of
persons, without whom the country would be exceedingly
ill off, the learned gentlemen of the long robe. There is
force in this answer. I should be sorry to say anything
against it. One of the most valuable lessons which I
have learnt in life is the prudence of keeping on good
terms with the lawyers.
On the whole it seems to me certain that unless the area
of Great Britain could be made larger than it is, or until
the British people change their nature, a peasant proprietary is a dream. So long as a free energetic race of men
are crowded together in a small space with every variety




On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.


291


of employment open to them at home, with wide avenues
to distinction offering themselves abroad, and with every
individual striving to push his way to a higher station
than that in which he was born, so long the ownership of
land will be the luxury of the comparatively few. A
time I suppose will arrive when the giddy whirl of industry and progress will cease among us, when we shall
no longer struggle for a first place among the nations.
Then the tide will ebb; then the great estates will dissolve, and the soil will again be divided among unambitious agricultural freeholders. The land then will suffice
for the support of all who live upon it. The grass will
grow in the streets of Manchester. The Clyde will eddy
round the rotting wrecks of the Glasgow merchant-ships,
and the plough will pass over the gardens of its merchant
princes. The reign of Saturn will come back, and the
golden age of pastoral simplicity. Till that time comes
you must lay your account for a landed gentry of some
kind, and accepting the inevitable fact, you must try to
make the best of it.
Nor do I think the prospect need much disturb us.
Our landed system is like our political system: it consists
of a number of petty monarchies, which are gradually
becoming restricted by custom, till the monarch shall remain powerful for good and comparatively powerless to
hurt. Let us put the worst side of it first. The restraints
upon a landlord's power which are not self-imposed by the
grant of leases, are still mainly restraints of usage and
public opinion, and men are unequally amenable to these
influences.
The possession of a large estate carries with it authority
which can still be abused, and this authority may fall by
the accident of birth to a person unfit to be trusted with
it. The young heir is a fool or a spendthrift, and tenants,




292


On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.


labourers, every one dependent upon him, suffer in consequence.
Nature provides a remedy of a kind. Folly brings
difficulties, and difficulties bankruptcy. The incompetent
owner is sold up. Nature shakes him off, and puts a better
in his place. Society, like each of ourselves, is perpetually
renovating itself. The used-up tissue of our bodies passes
away at every moment-young and healthy tissue is growing instead of it. Watch the land tenure in any busy
county in England, and you will be surprised to see how
rapidly a similar process is going on. I was standing a
few years ago on a hill about fifteen miles from London,
looking round over the richly cultivated country-dark
woods marking here and there the parks and pleasure
grounds of the lords of the soil. I asked my companion,
who himself was one of them, how long on an average an
estate remained about there in the same family. He answered, perhaps twenty years.
Again, there is the wilder remedy which we used to hear
of in the sister island.  The landlord may become a
direct oppressor. He may care nothing for the people,
and have no object but to squeeze the most that he can
out of them, fairly or unfairly. The Russian Government
has been called despotism tempered by assassination. In
Ireland for many years landlordism was tempered by assassination.
Unfortunately the wrong man was generally assassinated. The true criminal was an absentee, and his agent
was shot instead of him. A noble lord living in England,
two of whose agents had lost their lives already in his
service, ordered the next to post a notice in his Barony
that he intended to persevere in what he was doing,
and if the tenants thought they would intimidate him by
shooting his agents, they would find themselves mistaken.




On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.


293


Thus the desired result was not effected, and Ireland
could not be left to natural remedies; every circumstance
combined in that country to exasperate the relations between landlord and tenant. The landlords were, for the
most part, aliens in blood and aliens in religion. They
represented conquest and confiscation, and they had gone
on from generation to generation with an indifference to the
welfare of the people which would not have been tolerated
in England or Scotland. The law had to interfere at last
to protect the peasantry in the shape of Mr. Gladstone's
Land Act; the best measure, perhaps the only good measure, which has been passed for Ireland for the last two
hundred years.
In Ireland there are good landlords, more than are ever
heard of. The object of Mr. Gladstone's Act was simply
to shape a law out of the good landlords' practice and make
the bad conform to it. It was called confiscation; I know
not what was confiscated.  Nothing certainly to which
the landlord had any equitable right. The selling value
of land has not diminished in Ireland since that Act was
passed. It has rather risen from the increase of security.
It is possible that a similar law may become necessary
in England and Scotland. It is possible, if infinitely improbable. Responsibility is the shadow of a great position. If a time should ever come when the heirs of great
estates forget that they have any responsibility, if they
come to suppose that the world was made for them, not
they for the world, that the sole duty laid on them is the
duty of enjoying themselves, that they are permitted to
idle away a life made weary to them by its inanity between the London season, the foreign watering-place, the
deer forest, the battue, or the salmon river; then it is easy
to prove that an end will come to all that.
I was staying the year before the Irish famine at a




294


On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.


large house in Connaught. We had a great gathering
there of the gentlemen of the county; more than a hundred of us sat down to a luncheon on the' lawn. My neighbour at the table was a Scotchman, who was over there
examining the capabilities of the soil. " There," he said to
me, " you see the landed gentry of this county.  In all the
number there may be one, at the most two, who believe
that the Almighty put them into this world for any purpose but to shoot grouse, race, gamble, drink, or break
their necks in the hunting-field. They are not here at all
for such purposes, and one day they will find it so."
The day of reckoning was nearer than he thought.
Next year came the potato disease. The estates of
most of them were mortgaged, and at best they had
only a margin to live upon. Rents could not be paid.
The poor people were dying of hunger, and a poor-rate
had to be laid on amounting, in places, to confiscation.
The Encumbered Estates Act followed, and the whole set
of them were swept clean away.
We are not come to that pass here, nor do I believe
we are likely to come. Even here we have heard occasionally of strange things being done; uncalled-for evictions of tenantry, with mountain and glen closed against
the tourist and the artist, that a noble lord and his friends
may shoot a few miserable deer. But the tendency of
things is not to an increase of all that, very far otherwise.
Another noble lord that I know of has a mountain property in Kerry which would make the finest deer-forest in
these islands. He has the same temptation to make a
deer-forest as those others have. As a forest it would
bring him five times the present rent. Some forty or fifty
families only would have to be removed from their farms,
and they could be bought out under the Land Act with
enormous profit to the landlord. But the deer are not on




On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.


295


the mountains, and those families remain on their farms.
The same noble lord spends four-fifths of the income which
he draws from that property in improving the condition of
the people. No one speaks of this; no one ever talks of
what is done wisely and well. Health is never conscious
of itself. We are only conscious of our own bodies when
something is amiss with us. Offences only attract notice.
Judge of British society from the police reports, and we
are a nation of savages. Yet we are always forgetting this.
We hear of the bad exceptions. We hear of them because
they are exceptions, and we argue as if they were the rule.
Well then, gentlemen, let us turn from the mischief
which may come of a landed gentry, and let us see what
good comes of them.
Since land does not pay as a commercial speculation,
why do rich men give such large prices for it? Land is
sought after for the social consequences and for the political
influence which the possession of a large estate in such a
country as ours confers. It is sought after from an
ambition to leave our names behind us, rooted into the
soil to which the national life is attached. To obtain or
keep such a position, money must be sacrificed to other
considerations; and the sacrifice must be maintained and
continued if the landowner is to preserve the objects for
which it is made. The same force in nature appears
now as heat, now as motion; one can be converted into
the other. Wealth in the same way may appear in the
form of luxury, or it may appear in the form of power.
The landowner who desires honor and influence spends
the rents which fall to him rather as a revenue than as a
private income. The manager of the estates of a noble
duke who is nominally one of the richest men in Great
Britain said to me, that in his experience dukes never had
any money.




296       On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.
On those estates more than a million had been laid out
in a few years in rebuilding the cottages.
And the farther what is called the land monopoly is
carried, the more, that is, the small estates are absorbed
in the large, the better these duties will be performed.  I
don't know how it may be in Scotland, but I know that in
England you can tell by the look of the country which
you are passing through whether it belongs to a large
land-owner or a small one.
Compare an estate owned by one man with a hundred
thousand a year, and a similar estate divided among a
hundred owners with a thousand a year each. On which
of these will the working tenants find themselves best off?
The one great man's establishment may be expensive, but
after all it is but one. The expenses of the most splendid
household will not reach a hundred thousand a year, or
half that sum, or a quarter of it. The great man is on a
pedestal. If he is evil spoken of his pedestal becomes a
pillory. Therefore he does not press his rights when he
might press them. The customs of the manor are generally observed. Farm buildings are kept in good condition,
fences are in good repair, cottages have roofs which will
keep the rain out. You find churches, you find schools,
you find everything which public opinion demands or
approves.
Turn to the estate which is divided between the hundred
less conspicuous proprietors. Will an equal margin of income be forthcoming for improvements? Will there be
the same consideration for tenants and labourers? There
cannot be, because a hundred private establishments have
to be supported instead of one, and a hundred families
struggling to maintain the position of gentry with inadequate means. By them every farthing which their estate
will yield is required for their ordinary expenditure.




On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.


297


They are embarrassed. They must borrow. Their obvious
duties are left undone. You read the story in unmended
fences, in broken gates, in decaying farm-houses.  At
length a crisis comes, and unless entail interferes the land
is sold to some one who can better afford to keep it.
Latifundia perdidere Italiam-the great estates ruined
Italy. The yeomen who had formed the Roman armies
had disappeared. The land had become the monopoly of
the rich. What ruined Italy we are told will ruin Great
Britain.
The argument mistakes the character of what is going
on. The great estates in Italy under the empire were cultivated by slaves. The free men had been destroyed. Are
the estates in Great Britain cultivated by slaves?  Is the
Scotch tenant who is farming another man's land a slave?
Is he on the road to becoming a slave? He would be
much amused if he was told so. At the bottom of his
mind he knows that he is moving in an entirely opposite
direction. We are but treading over again the same road
which our ancestors travelled four or five centuries ago.
The villein, or cultivator, under the feudal system, had
originally no rights but what his lord allowed him. The
lower kind of villein or serf was his lord's property as
much as his horse or his dog. But custom gave the villein,
by degrees, the rights of a free man. He was allowed to
plead against his lord the usage of the manor. Usage
passed into law, and villein tenure became copyhold
tenure.  The English farmer became independent in all
but the name, and hence grew the yeomen freeholders
whose loss we are now deploring. They are gone most of
them; gone because they chose to go. Look for the British copyholders now; you find them founding empires in
the four quarters of the globe; but another race of them
is springing from the same stem. The absolute rights of




298


On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.


the modern landowner are slipping from his hands, with
his own consent, by precisely the same process. The subtle
meshes of opinion are spread over him, and landlord right
submits to be restrained by reasonable tenant right.
But what the landlord loses in direct authority he regains, if he is wise, in influence, and this leads me to say
a few words about countries in which a landed gentry no
longer exists.
France shook off her landed proprietors at the Revolution. Many lost their heads, many more were exiled.
The French landed aristocracy had become intolerable.
They began to disappear of themselves. The Revolution
completed what nature had commenced. France is now
divided into between five and six million freeholds. At
the death of a proprietor his land is shared among his
children, and the partition is only arrested at the point at
which the family of the cultivator can be fed. A friend
of mine who wanted two or three acres for a garden had
to purchase from seventeen different owners. A tenant
farmer (for there are tenant farmers even in France) rents
often from as many landlords as a landlord in England
has tenants.
The result, undoubtedly, is thrift, industry, good spade
cultivation, and great material prosperity. The magic of
property, as Mr. Mill long since pointed out, will turn an
arid waste into a garden. The peasant works and saves
because he knows that he works for himself and his
family. He is conservative, for he has something of his
own to lose. Were the British nation like the French,
had we no colonies, and no outlet for industry at home,
then a peasant proprietary might grow also in Kent and
Hampshire.   But what a price has France to pay for it!
There is no emigration; yet the population diminishes.
The law of subdivision forbids the peasant the luxury of




V


On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.       299
many children. How the numbers are kept down it is
needless to speculate.
While, again, a nation composed of a multitude of disconnected units is to an organised society what a heap of
sand is to a block of granite, incapable of cohering for
sustained political action. We shall see what the Republic
can do-we are bound to wish it well-but for nearly a
century France has alternated between anarchy and despotism. She tears her bonds in pieces.  She allows them
to be refastened when she aspires to be politically strong,
and then she snaps them again when the strain becomes
too violent to be borne. Never in the history of the world
has any great nation been so rapidly and completely overwhelmed as France was in 1870.  When her armies were
defeated she had no organisation left.
The French are as public-spirited as other people, but,
except under the influence of political or religious passion
of a definite kind, public spirit cannot combine masses of
men together for a common purpose.   They have not
knowledge enough, they have not confidence enough for
spontaneous action. They require leaders whom they can
trust, and leaders cannot be extemporised in an emergency.
The natural leaders in a healthy country are the gentry:
public-spirited and patriotic because their own fortunes are
bound up with the fortunes of their country; personal
centres of organisation because their neighbours know
them, and are accustomed to look up to them. France is
better without the aristocracy which she destroyed, because
they are worthless. She has yet to show that she can
thrive as a nation without any gentry at all.
Look again at Spain. In Spain there has been no such
convulsion as the French Revolution; but in Spain, too,
there is no longer any order of hereditary gentlemen.
The people have not degenerated. The peasantry of Castile




300


On the Uses of a Landed Genbty.


are as strong, as brave, as loyal as the men who followed
Cortez to Mexico. Their humour is fresh as ever. Sancho
Panza and his ass you may meet any day in a morning's
walk, but you will find no Miguel de Cervantes and no
Duke of Lerma. The tombs which lie in silent beauty in
the cathedrals are all that remains of the stately Mendozas, the Olivarez, the great houses of Cordova and Toledo;
and Spain is what we see. The magnificent men who
three centuries ago made the Castilian monarchy the most
powerful in the world have given place to eloquent orators
and military adventurers. And Spain has fallen from her
pride of place; her arts, her literature, her arms, once
alike her glory, are now alike degraded, and the national
life has perished along with them.
I have often asked myself why the hidalgos, hijos d'algo,
sons of somebody, as the Cid and his comrades haughtily
called themselves, have so totally disappeared. I believe
it was because they did not reside on their estates among
their people; because they lived in the great cities attached to the court. In Burgos, in Valladolid, in Medina,
you see the palaces of the old nobles, their coats of arms
carved in granite over the massive portals. But they had
no personal relations with their tenants, or their tenants
with them. They had no root, and they have withered;
and they have left their once proud and glorious country
the prey of priests and political charlatans and soldiers of
fortune.
I shall be told that I am confounding past and present.
The hidalgos are gone because they are unsuited to modern
times. Public opinion, a free press, and a free platform
dispense with these hereditary influences. Let the peasant
and the artisan read their daily papers, and they will have
no need of a gentry to lead them. It is true that much
changes in this world, but there is much also which does




On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.


301


not change, and human nature is the least changeable of
all things. The English Barons extorted Magna Charta.
The Long Parliament was a Parliament of English landed
gentry. The English gentry made the Revolution of 1688.
There is work still to be done by the descendants of those
men in the country and in Parliament. Let us have all
the talents in Parliament. Let trade, let science, let the
learned professions, let wealth, if you like, be represented
there, but it will be an ill day when we have no longer in
public life the men who represent the historic traditions
of Great Britain, who are returned to Parliament with
no object of their own to gain, and whose services are
already pledged to the commonwealth by birth and fortune.
A distinguished American once said to me, "Hold fast
to such institutions as you have left. We have none, and
must do as we can without them. But do not flatter yourselves that by destroying yours you can make England
like America. We are young and growing. You are in
your maturity or past it. We shall rise through our difficulties. If a time comes when the English Parliament is
filled with men who go there to push their own fortunes,
you will perhaps not rise through yours."
Once more. We speak contemptuously of sentiment,
and yet the noblest part of our existence is based on sentiment. Patriotism is sentiment. Conscience is sentiment.
Honour, shame, reverence, love of beauty, love of goodness, every high aspiration which we entertain, all are
sentiment. All are unpractical according to the profit
and loss philosophy. Yet without them man is but an
animal, lower not higher than his fellow creatures, as his
desires are more insatiable. When I say that this question is a question of sentiment, I mean that it touches the
quick of our national being.




302


On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.


A nation, it is said, which does not respect its past will
have no future which will deserve respect. Great Britain
is what it is to-day because thirty generations of strong
brave men have worked with brain and hand to make
it so. Nothing great ever came to men in their sleep. The
fields now so clean and neatly fenced were once morasses
or forests of scrub, or were littered with boulder stones.
Our laws, our literature, our constitution, our empire,
were built together out of materials equally unpromising.
We, when we were born, came into possession of a fair inheritance.  We are bound to remember from whom it
came, and not to think because we have got it we have
ourselves only to thank for it. You may test the real
worth of any people by the feelings which they entertain
for their forefathers.  With the Romans reverence for
ancestors was part of the national religion. It was something like a religion here not long ago, and when the
nineteenth century has sufficiently admired itself for its
steam-engines and electric telegraphs, something of the
same feeling, we will hope, may revive.
Every step of what is called progress for the last thousand years has been the work of some man or group of
men.   We talk of the tendencies of an age.  The tendencies of an age, unless it be a tendency to mere death
and rottenness, means the energy of superior men who
guide or make it; and of these superior men who have
played their parts among us at successive periods the
hereditary families are the monuments. Trace them back
to the founders, you generally find some one whose memory
ought not to be allowed to, die. And usually also in the
successive generations of such a family you find more than
an average of high qualities, as if there was some transmission of good blood, or as if the fear of discrediting
honourable lineage was a check on folly and a stimulus




On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.


803


to exertion. In Scotland the family histories are inseparable from the national history. How many Campbells,
for instance, have not established a right to be remembered
with honour? How many hundred Scotch families are
there not who have produced, I will not say one distinguished man, but a whole series of distinguished men, distinguished in all branches, as soldiers, seamen, statesmen,
lawyers, or men of letters?
It is true the highest names of all will not be found in the
Peerages and Baronetages. The highest of all, as Burns
says, take their patent of nobility direct from Almighty
God. Those patents are not made out for posterity, and
the coronets which men bestow on the supremely gifted
among them are usually coronets of thorns. No titled
family remains as a monument for Knox or Shakespeare.
They shine alone like stars. They need no monument,
being themselves immortal. A dukedom of Stratford for
the descendants of Shakespeare would be like a cap and
bell upon his bust. Of Knox you have not so much as a
tomb-you do not know where his bones are lying. The
burial-place of Knox is the heart of Protestant Scotland.
But, speaking generally, the landed gentry are enduring
witnesses of past worth and good work done, and until
they forfeit our esteem by demerits of their ovn, they
deserve to be respected and honoured. High place is lost
so easily, that when a family has been of long continuance
we may be sure that it has survived by exceptional merit.
Nature rapidly finds out when the wrong sort have stolen
into promotion. When a knave makes a fortune his son
spends it-one generation sees an end of him. Even
among the best there is a quick succession. The marble
monument in the church outlasts the living one. There
are no Plantagenets now; no Tudors and few Stuarts of
the old stock. The Lacies and the De Courcies drop out.




304


On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.


The Nelsons and the Wellesleys step into their places.
Warriors, lawyers, politicians, press perpetually to the
front. Each age has its own heroes, who in its own eyes
are greater than all that went before. The worn-out
material is for ever being replaced with new. Each family
thus raised is on its trial. Those who survive remain as
links between the present and the past, and carry on
unbroken the continuity of our national existence. In
such families the old expression Noblesse oblige is a genuine
force. In a chapel attached to the church of Cheynies in
Hertfordshire lies the honoured dust of ten generations of
the house of Russell. There is Lord William, carried
thither from the scaffold at Lincoln's Inn. There is Lady
Rachel. There are the successive Earls and Dukes of
Bedford, who, wise or unwise, have always been true to
the people's side through three centuries of political struggle. At one end of the chapel are the monuments of the
first Lord Russell, King Henry's minister at the Reformation, and of the first Lady Russell, from whom all the
rest are descended. There she lies, a stern, austere lady,
as you can see in the lines of her marble countenance,
evidently an exact likeness, modelled from her features.
I could not but feel, as I stood in that chapel, what a
thing it would be to know that in death one has to be
carried into the presence of that terrible ancestress and
that august array of her descendants, and to be examined
whether one had been worthy of the race to which one
belonged.
But enough of this, and I will bring what I have to
say to an end. it appears to me, for the reasons I have
given, that a landed gentry of some sort must exist in a
country so conditioned as ours. The only question is
whether we shall be satisfied with those that we have, or
whether we wish to see them displaced in favour of others,




On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.


305


to whom the land would, or might, be a mere commercial
speculation. Abolish primogeniture, compel, either by
layv or by the weight of opinion, a subdivision of landed
property, it will still be bought up and held in large
quantities, but it will be held by successful men of business, who, being no longer able to look forward to permanence of occupancy, and therefore having no motive for
wishing to secure the goodwill of the people living around
them, will regard their possessions from a money point of
view, and will aim at nothing but obtaining from them
the largest possible amount of profit and pleasure for
themselves.
A change of this kind will not conduce to our national
welfare. It is perhaps coming; but I think it is still far
off. The revolutionary wave which began to rise in the
middle of the last century seems for the present to have
spent its force. Men no longer believe that revolution
will bring the millennium. They have discovered that
revolution means merely a change from an aristocracy to
a plutocracy, and they doubt more than they did whether
much advantage comes of it after all.
The aristocracy are learning, on their side, that if they
are to keep their hold in this country they must deserve
to keep it. And just so far as a conviction makes its way
among them that they exist for some other purpose than idle
luxury, they will take out a new lease of recovered influence.
No one grudges the hard-worked member of Parliament his holidays on the moor or in the hunting-field.
The days by a salmon river with the flood running off, the
south-wester streaming over the pool, and the fish fresh
run from the sea, are marked with chalk in the lives of
the bitterest Radicals of us all. Amusement is the wine
of existence, warming and feeding heart and brain. But
amusement, like wine also, if taken in excess, becomes as
20




306


On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.


stupid as any other form of vulgar debauchery. Wher
we read of. some noble lord, with two of his friends, shooting two thousand pheasants in a week, or that another has
shot four hundred brace of partridges to his own gun in
a day, we perceive that these illustrious personages have
been useful to the London poulterers; but it is scarcely
the work for which they are intended by the theory of
their existence. The annual tournament of doves between
the Lords and Commons at Hurlingham leads to odd conclusions about us on the Continent.  Every institutioneven the institution of a landed aristocracy-is amenable
to general opinion; and it may have worse enemies than
an Irish Land Act.
Fashionable follies are like soap-bubbles; the larger
they are the nearer they are to bursting. Pheasant battues and pigeon shooting will come to an end, as bull-baiting
and cock-fighting came to an end. Meanwhile, the world
is wide, and the British have secured handsome slices
of it beyond our own island.   Who in his senses —
even if it were possible-would be the peasant proprietor
of half a dozen acres in England when, for the sum for
which he could sell them, he could buy a thousand in countries where he would be still under his own flag, among his
own kindred; with an unexhausted soil, and a climate any
thing that he prefers, from the Arctic circle to the tropics?
You who are impatient with what you call a dependent
position at home, go to Australia, go to Canada, go to
New Zealand, or South Africa. There work for yourselves.
There gather wealth as all but fools or sluggards are able
to gather it. Come back if you will as rich men at the
end of twenty years. Then buy an estate for yourselves;
and when you belong to the landed gentry in your own
person, you will find your eyes opened as to their value to
the community.




On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.


307


Will you have an example of what may be done by an
ordinary man with no special talents or opportunity? A
Yorkshireman, an agricultural labourer, that I knew, went
to Natal twelve years ago. I suppose at first he had to
work for wages; and I will tell you what the wages are
in that country.  I stayed myself with a settler on the
borders there.  He had two labourers with him, an Irishman and an Englishman. They lived in his house; they
fed at his own table. To the Irishman, who knew something of farming, he was paying fourteen pounds a month;
to the Englishman he was paying ten; and every penny
of this they were able to save.
With such wages as these, a year or two of work will
bring money enough to buy a handsome property. My
Yorkshireman purchased two hundred and fifty acres of
wild land outside Maritzburg. He enclosed it; he carried
water over it. He planted his fences with the fast-growing
eucalyptus, the Australian gum-tree. In that soil and in
that climate, everything will flourish, from pineapples to
strawberries, from the coffee-plant and the olive to wheat
and Indian corn, from oranges and bananas to figs, apples,
peaches, and apricots. Now at the end of ten years the
mere gum-trees which I saw on that man's land could be
sold for two thousand pounds, and he is making a rapid
fortune by supplying fruit and vegetables to the market
at Maritzburg.
Here, as it seems to me, is the true solution of the
British land question. What a Yorkshireman can do I
suppose a Scotchman can do. There is already a new
Scotland, so called, in South Africa; a land of mountains
and valleys and rocky streams and rolling pastures. And
there is gold there, and coal, and iron, and all the elements
of wealth. People that country, people any part of any
of our own colonies, from the younger sons who complain




308        On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.
that there is no room for them at home. Match the New
England across the Atlantic with a New Scotland in Soath
Africa; only tie it tighter to the old country. Spread out
there and everywhere. Take possession of the boundless
inheritance which is waiting for you, and leave the old Island to preserve its ancient memories under such conditions as the times permit.




PARTY POLITICS.1
A plague of both your houses I
THE surprise with which the elections of February were
received in the political world has passed away. The new
Cabinet has settled quietly into the place of its predecessors, and the country pursues its way as if nothing had
happened of serious consequence. The Minister who six
years ago was brought into power and endowed, in an effervescence of apparent enthusiasm, with overwhelming
strength, has been dismissed with an emphasis of disapproval as distinct as the applause with which he was installed; yet no satisfactory explanation has been offered
of the change of sentiment. No great questions were at
issue on which opinion was divided. The victors have
been modest in their success, and the vanquished have
borne their defeat meekly; and after the first shock of
disappointment have made no angry demonstrations of
intending to renew the conflict. The general feeling, so
far as can be observed, is mere indifference, as if in our
hearts we were weary of politics, as if we desired for the
present to hear no more of them, and turned instinctively
to the party who were more disposed to leave us in peace.
1 This Essay was written after the last general election, and the
accession of Mr. Disraeli's Government.
309




310


Party Politics.


And yet the phenomenon is remarkable: the more remarkable the closer it is examined. The reaction (or
whatever it is to be called) is essentially English. Scotland and Ireland continue true to the Radical colours.
England has not only become Conservative, but is so overwhelmingly Conservative as to overbear with the most
peremptory decisiveness the combined majorities of the
sister kingdoms. The Press has offered its various explanations. A Cabinet which comes into office with unusually brilliant promises is like a four-in-hand brought round
in the morning from the stable-yard, the horses fresh and
in high spirits, the harness glittering from the hands of
the grooms, the, carriage spotless in its paint and varnish.
The weather is uncertain, the roads are in bad repair, littered with stones, or deep in mud which conceals treacherous holes and pitfalls. The splendid equipage of the
morning reaches the end of a few stages bespattered from
wheel to roof, the horses jaded and languid, perhaps
lamed, traces broken and ill mended, the glory gone, the
show and sparkle soiled with the accidents of common
vulgar work. Changed appearance is in great degree inevitable, and is not necessarily discreditable. The favourite
of the moment raises expectations which he is compelled
to disappoint. He passes measures which are to inaugurate a millennium. The millennium is no nearer than
before. Factions have combined to raise him to power.
Each has its special object, demands attention to it, and
resents neglect. Sudden exigencies of State have to be
provided for or encountered. They may not admit of
being dealt with satisfactorily; yet the Minister in power
is made responsible for what goes wrong. By the mere
necessary acts of administration-if Government is not to
be reduced to a farce-the weeds which are for ever growing in the social state must be rooted out, and powerful




Party Politics.


311


interests are alienated in the process. Every step is
scrutinised by jealous antagonists, and trivial mistakes are
aggravated into deliberate injuries.
Public writers have thus been at no loss to account for
the fall of Mr. Gladstone. His Irish policy may bear fruit
in the future. For the present Irish agitation refuses to
abate, and has been encouraged only to make fresh
demands. Many persons who supported him in overthrowing the Church Establishment already doubt the
wisdom of a measure into which they were hastily betrayed.  They may not wish the step to be retraced, but
they would refuse their consent if it was again to be done,
and they show their remorse by withdrawing their confidence from the statesman who led the attack.
The Washington treaty and the Alabama arbitration,
though Mr. Gladstone was in strictness responsible for
neither, yet are supposed to have lowered England in its
statue as a great power. We did not wish to maintain a
quarrel with Russia, yet we were sore and resentful when
the treaty of Paris was torn to pieces and flung in our
faces. We had no desire to meddle in the French and
German war, yet we did not like to see England unconsulted when the map of England was remodelled. Internally the Ministry made enemies whether they did well or
ill. The Irish Land Bill alarmed the owners of property.
The Education Bill offended the Dissenters. The abolition
of purchase in the army, though welcome in itself to most
reasonable persons, yet shocked us all, when the prerogative was called in to overcome the resistance of Parliament. The Licensing Bill exasperated the brewer and
publican.  The Adulteration Bill stirred a hornet's nest
of cheating tradesmen in every town in the kingdom. The
Collier and Ewelme scandals were made too much of, but
they indicated a disposition which Englishmen dislike and




312


Party Politics.


distrust. Mr. Gladstone himself contributed the last and
fatallest blow to his popularity by the suddenness of the
Dissolution, which, however he might explain it, resembled
rather the coup of a Wall Street speculator, than the
broad and open display of purpose and policy which
Englishmen demand of Ministers in whom they are to
place confidence.
In these and other shortcomings of the late Cabinet we
may see some explanation of the fate which has overtaken
them. Yet it is not satisfactory or sufficient. Many of
Mr. Gladstone's crimes were accidents. Mr. Disraeli will
be fortunate, should he remain six years in office, if he escapes worse mischances.  The country shares in the responsibility for the Irish policy, and should blame itself
as much as the Minister. If the Adulteration Bill made
enemies of the grocers and bakers and milkmen, it should
have secured the gratitude of the million consumers,
whose stomachs are no longer poisoned, and their pockets
emptied, by knaves and scoundrels. As to the manner of
the Dissolution, the reaction was already in progress, conspicuously visible in the single elections throughout the
country, which almost without exception were going in
favour of Conservatives.
It is not the purpose of the present paper to swell the
list of conjectures on the causes of the fall of Mr. Gladstone, but rather to offer a few remarks which this bloodless revolution has suggested, on the mode in which the
affairs of this country are at present carried on.
The Liberal party, in the first place, ought to rejoice at
their defeat as making possible a continuance of the system of Government by party. Mr. Gladstone, after his
failure to carry the Irish University Bill, complained of
the opposition as unconstitutional. He laid down as an
axiom that the House of Commons is bound to accept




Party Politics.


813


measures introduced by the administration; unless, in the
event of those measures being rejected, the opposition is
prepared to undertake the Government. If this be a correct statement of the theory, the country must insist on
giving the two parties alternate turns of office. If the
House is forbidden to consider measures on their own
merits irrespective of the consequences of rejecting them,
there must be on both sides in Parliament a body of statesmen capable of taking charge at any time of the management of public affairs; and no such body of men can be
trained or held together unless they have their share of
the opportunities of gaining experience, and of learning,
where alone they can be learnt, the nature of the duties
which may at any time be thrown upon them. The Liberals have held office with rare and brief intervals for more
than forty years. The Conservatives must take their turn
at the wickets, or they will have forgotten how to handle
the bat.
Party Government-the crown and glory of the British
constitution-is a peculiar structure, and involves a peculiar assumption. It assumes that in Great Britain, and
indeed everywhere, since we invite all mankind to copy
our example, there are two lines of thought, two principles on which intelligent men form their judgment on
political affairs, one or other of which every public man
will adopt, but in no case will adopt both.  Nature has
created us with two eyes, but in matters of state, either
of necessity or deliberately, we must extinguish one.
We must be either hot or cold; Liberal or Conservative;
advocates of change, or advocates of resistance to change.
It assumes again that the leading representatives of these
opposing principles shall be men, if not of equal ability,
yet of ability of a first class order.  There must be on
either side accomplished men of business, men who can




314


Party Politics.


manage the finances of the State, who can administer the
army and the navy, who can take the reins of the imperial
foreign policy, who can fill the highest offices of the law
not only without discredit, but with honour to themselves and
advantage to the nation and to the great profession to which
they belong; yet all the while it must be the business of
their antagonists to persuade the country that the party on
the Government benches misunderstood the public interests,
are incapable of their duties, are misled by prejudice, tradition, or particular interest or ambition. Whether the charges
against them be true or not, their rivals must so represent
them, must endeavour in season and out of season, in Parliament and on platform, in pamphlet and leading article, from
the day they enter upon office, to undermine their stability,
and destroy the respect of their countrymen for them.
Before the Whig Hejira of 1688, or at any rate before
the ascension of the Stuarts, the Sovereigns selected their
Ministers from the most approved members of the Privy
Council. When the Sovereigns were wise, they made
their selections from all sides of opinion. They assumed
that distinguished Englishmen, whatever might be their
leanings, agreed in desiring the welfare of their country.
The battles on particular measures were fought out in the
Cabinet behind closed doors, and to the world the administration appeared as a united and harmonious whole.
Under the modern system the choice is transferred from
the Crown to the House of Commons. The two parties
confront each other on the public arena, as rivals always,
and in time of excitement as enmies. The nation is
assumed to be wiser than its leaders. The leaders are to
see but one side of a public question, the nation is to see
both, and to decide as it sees fit between them.
Such a system is, to say the least of it, extremely artificial. Able statesmen can usually see further than the




Party Politics.


315


multitude. They are exceptionally intelligent. They have
fuller information; they are especially trained for their
work. And yet we expect them to be like the officers of
an army, forbidden to have opinions in detail on the condition of the war in which they are engaged. They are
employed by half the nation to beat the other half, and
are to know no other obligation.
Party Government, no doubt, has its conveniences. It
is useful to have jealous rivals on the watch to expose
jobs and to detect flagrant incapacity. The nation is, for
the present, well content with it, and has shown by the
late elections a determination that it shall be preserved.
Yet, if the Radicals are right, party Government is near
its end. They tell us that although they have been themselves defeated, their principles have not been defeated.
There is now, they say, no real difference between Conservative and Whig. No one proposes to undo the past.
Whoever governs England must govern in the same spirit
and on the same lines of progress. If this be true, their
victory has been too complete, and' they have destroyed
their own idol. Disagreement as to the mere rate with
which changes shall be carried on will not suffice to maintain two parties in the House of Commons. If Radical
principles have finally prevailed, they will not long be left
to be administered by Conservatives. The present Conservative leaders may retain an attitude of resistance
during their own lives, but they will find no successors to
prolong a hopeless struggle for a lost cause. Talent,
energy, and ambition will choose the side on which a successful career is possible. The Constitution will silently
change its character. There will be no longer an opposition capable of undertaking the management of the
country; and, according to Mr. Gladstone's theory, the
few forlorn defenders of the old ways will not be even




316


Party Politics.


justified in resisting in detail the dominant faction. Their
functions will be over. The constituencies may now and
then have their intervals of impatience; the party chiefs
for the moment may be unpopular; the country may again
wish, as it did last February, for a change of men; but
the men will not be found; the materials for a Conservative Government will no longer exist.
Such a time will come.  Popular governments have
hitherto uniformly glided into democracies, and democracies as uniformly perish of their own excess. If they
escape a violent end by faction, they die of a disease which
they cannot escape. Men are made by nature unequal.
It is vain, therefore, to treat them as if they were equal.
The able and energetic insist on gaining an outward position which shall distinguish them from their fellows.
Under democracies the old notes of distinction are abolished. Equality is too jealous to allow differences of rank
and power, and differences of wealth alone remain. The
pursuit of wealth becomes thus the predominant passion,
degrades the national character, raises to eminence the
leqst worthy of elevation, corrnpts those who obtain it by
luxury, stimulates a false and unworthy ambition in those
who aspire to it, and having inverted society, lifts to the
top the vulgar and common-place, and flings the worth and
intellect into the dustheap. Finally, democracy itself is
overthrown by the nature which it has insisted on defying.
To this end England may, perhaps, be moving. All
human things pass away, and the British Constitution will
pass away among them.
Too well I know the day will be when sacred Troy will fall.
If it is true that all possible Cabinets are now agreed in
principle, that one Prime Minister must follow the track
of another, and pursue the same ends, the consummation
may be nearer than we believe.




Party Politics.


317


Let us look, then, at the principles to which, on this
hypothesis, we are committed.  The glory of modern
English politics, we are told, is Progress: a good word,
but somewhat vague. We are all progressing-up hill or
down, growing or decaying. Progress, however, we are
told, means growth. We are growing, of course. Who
can doubt it?  Look at England before the Reform Bill,
and look at it now; its population almost doubled, its
commerce quadrupled; every individual in the kingdom
lifted to a higher level of comfort and intelligence-the
speed quickening every year; the advance so enormous,
the increase so splendid, that language turns to rhetoric
in describing it. Where there is rapid increase of velocity
it is usually a sign that the train has reached the level, or
perhaps is on a slight decline. Up-hill motion is usually
slow with more things than locomotives. The question is
not of the results of progress-good or bad-but of the
means by which they are brought about. What is the
line of action which the modern statesman is hereafter
inevitably to follow? It may be described briefly as what
sailors used to call sawing through the bulkheads. Slavers
chased by the English cruisers used to cut through their
own timbers. The vessel being able to work more freely,
gained speed, and while she was running before the wind
was in no particular danger. If the weather changed and
she was met by a head gale, she went down, crew and
cargo. The great Liberal measures of the last forty years
have been intended, all of them, to increase individual
liberty, to abolish artificial restraint, interference of
authority, and privilege of class or institution.  It has
been assumed that the productive energy of the nation
then only shows what it is capable of, when each person
is left as far as possible his own master, free to choose his
own career for himself, free to use his own faculties to his




318


Party Politics.


own best advantage; flung on his own resources, to sink
or swim, and left to find the place for himself which belongs to his character and capabilities.
Thus the work of the Liberal statesman has been
chiefly destructive. England in past generations cared for
other things more than money, and did not believe that
the chief end of man was the development of " productive
energy." The English Constitution had been directed
rather towards training the character of the English people than to generating wealth. The powers in the State
were mainly held by the owners of the land. Trade was
controlled by corporations and companies. The Established Church, after it lost the power to prohibit schism,
was still able to punish it by disabilities. It was supposed
that men were the better for being governed, if they were
not to be run away with by folly and knavery. Landlords,
however, became unjust and tyrannical; trade companies
were avaricious; the Established Church became indolent
and corrupt. Privilege, it was said, had answered no
end but the oppression of the many and the deterioration
of the few whom it was designed to benefit. The power
was thus transferred to the people; privilege was swept
away, and trade and religion were set free. The public
service has been popularised; the dependence of man on
man has been abolished wherever the knife could reach to
cut the strings. Sham governors have been abolished, and
have gone the way belonging to them; and there has
grown up a corresponding political philosophy that we do
not need authority at all.
In fact, the paternal theory has been perceived to be a
cheat. Every man and every body of men consider only
their interests, and one therefore cannot be trusted with
power over another. Birth, fortune, intellect, education
may challenge pre-eminence, but they confer no real right




Party Politics.


319


to it. Where all are selfish, the sage is no better than the
fool, and only rather more dangerous. The State exists
for the equal benefit of all. All classes best understand
what is to their own advantage, and are best able to take
care of themselves. Power must be evenly divided; and
when equality of power has been fairly achieved, a better
world may be looked for from the free efforts of each
individual to raise his own condition than from the
attempts at guidance by the most far-sighted statesman
that ever lived. In a perfect community, liberty would
be complete. Every one would do as he pleased. Human
nature is for the present unequal to the realisation of the
ideal. Ferocity and knavery are not yet extinguished,
and the policeman remains a necessity. But interference
must be limited to the coarser and grosser crimes. If
Liberal Governments have consented to protect factory
children, and punish adulteration and false weights, they
have consented under protest. In dealings between man
and man the true maxim is caveat emptor. Every one
should make his own bargain, and the less the State meddles with him the better.
Fortune has been kind to this daring school of politicians. They have fallen on peculiar times, and they can
claim for their system a certain appearance of success.
Subjects of paramount consequence to our fathers have
become to us of little interest or none. We no longer go
to war for rival dynasties, and we leave doctrinal quarrels
to the press and the pulpit. The decline of vitality in
theology has turned intellect upon physical science, and
the results have been mechanical discoveries which have
multiplied suddenly a hundredfold the productive strength
of mankind. Peace, scarcely broken for half a century,
has given an unprecedented opportunity to commerce,
while steamships and railways have opened the still un



320


Party    Politics.


peopled half of the globe to enterprise and occupation.
There has thus been elbow room to try new experiments.
When wealth has been increasing faster than population,
it may be scrambled for without immediately disastrous
consequences. But the globe is a small place after all.
Population treads on the heels of production, and soon
overtakes it. Political troubles may again interfere with
emigration. If no more political troubles come to disturb
us, the area of soil on which the European races can settle
profitably will be filled perhaps in a couple of centuries.
The question rises, therefore, whether old problems will
not return in the old form, and whether the final secret for
the management of mankind has yet been discovered.
The labouring man demands equitable wages. The political economist answers that there is no such thing as equitable wages. Labour is worth what it will fetch in the
market, and what it will fetch in the market depends on
the supply. What would have become of England and
Ireland on this principle, had steam not been invented,
and had the New World provided no room for emigrants?
Left to the higgling of the market, with employers of all
kinds looking in strict economic orthodoxy to their own
pockets, what would have been the condition of the
people? Wages must have fallen in the struggle for existence till they reached starvation point. If the principle of non-interference had been still adhered to, half the
children that were born would have died for want of food.
Liberty to the English and Irish workman would have
meant liberty to choose between a life of abject and hopeless misery or an immediate end by starvation. The
country would have been in the condition in which the.
late Mr. Augustus Smith found the Scilly Isles when he
came into possession of them forty years ago. The population of Scilly was too dense for the means of subsistence.




Party Politics.


321


Liberty was perfect. Untaught, ungoverned, the people
were free as air to think and act at their own wills, but
they dragged out their lives in want and misery. The inhabitants of Scilly are now better housed, better fed and
clothed, better educated, better conditioned in all senses
than any equal number of persons who can be found on
an equal area of British soil.  The liberty was curtailed
on many sides. Mr. Smith was strictly just, but also
peremptory and determined. When he saw that certain
things ought to be done, he gave his orders and his orders
were obeyed. Yet strange to say the people did not degenerate under authority. Let the enlightened Liberal
who supposes that they must have lost their manhood and
become mean and cringing, ask the captains of the ocean
steamers for an account of the Scilly pilots, or read in the
lifeboat reports the exploits of the Scilly fishermen who
were bred in Mr. Smith's schools.
All England would have been driven back ere this to
analogous authoritative methods, but for special circumstances which are necessarily temporary. Let us look at
another instance. If the laws of political economy are
laws of nature, they are as true for Asia as for Europe.
The population of the Indian Peninsula before Great
Britain took charge of it was kept within limits by wars,
famines, oppression, and organised crime. Life had no
sacredness in those teeming countries, and human creatures
were swept away in masses like weeds. English rule has
kept the peace, has abolished Thugs and child-murder,
has protected Ryots against the owners of the soil, has
made existence on every side more easy. The 190,000,000,
which at the beginning of the century occupied the provinces which now form our Indian Empire and its dependencies, have grown in consequence to 250,000,000. The
native manufactures have perished under British competi21




322


Party Politics.


tion. The people depend entirely upon agriculture, and
their number has reached the limit which the land can
support even in favorable seasons. Famines thus recur on
an ever increasing scale, and we are confronted with an appalling problem. The laws of nature, as they are called, give
their own answer. Sufficient food is not provided, and
the superfluous members must die. The economist will
say they ought not to have been there. Agreed! but what
is to prevent them?  So long as laissez-faire is the rule,
there they will be, and if nature is to rule, nature must
rule altogether. The economist, who has the courage of
his opinions, will say, let them die, and let the survivors
learn prudence in suffering. To feed them at the cost of
the State is to encourage the unthrifty at the expense of
the industrious and provident. To do this at all is unjust,
to do it permanently is impossible. A collapse must come
at last, and it will be worse in the end than if we had
never interfered.
Humanity replies to these objections that to leave
millions of the Queen's subjects to die of hunger is equally
impossible; at all risks and costs starving people must be
fed. But humanity must revise its political philosophy, or
it will never solve the Sphinx's riddle. There are but two
remedies for an excess of population as great as that which
now confronts us in India. If we are to find food for the
people in famine time, we must extend our authority, or
else we must look through our fingers while ancient methods
come back into use for preventing a redundant population;
artificial means will be employed to prevent children
being born, or they will be destroyed deliberately as they
have been for ages destroyed in China.
What is now true of India will be true of all the world
at no very distant time. The creed of laissez-faire is
therefore no exposition of eternal principles, but an




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accident of the age-a bubble floating upon the river of
time. Liberalism is powerful to destroy. It has not yet
shown that it has grasped any true and living principle;
and if England is irrevocably committed to it, so much the
worse for England.
Perhaps analogies may help us. What, let us ask, is
the constitution of an army-such an army as a great
conntry can rely on for protection? It exists by discipline,
by strict rule and just gradation. The rank and file look
to their petty officers, the petty officers to their regimental
officers, the regimental officers to the colonel, the colonel
to the general of the division, the general of the division
to the commander-in-chief. Beyond the limits of his work
each man may have his small range of independence; but
so far as duty reaches, he is the mere instrument of the
will of his superiors. Is the good soldier therefore discontented? Does he complain when ordered into danger.
that his particular interests have not been consulted, or
that his particular opinion has not been sufficiently
attended to? Is he a slave, has he forfeited his manhood,
because he is bound to obey his superiors, and has no
voice, direct or indirect, in determining what his orders
are to be? The more strict the discipline, provided it is
just and equal, the more happy, the more brave, the more
steady is every individual soldier; the better is the army
itself for the purpose for which it was intended. Each man
is free, because he has relinquished his freedom in the
service of his country. He is free not in the sense of the
demagogue. He is free in the sense that the Christian is
free when most a servant of his Master in Heaven. Reverse the process. Introduce into the ranks the liberty
of politicians. Give each soldier a vote, let him choose
his own officers; let the army be divided into two portions, each with a chief at its head, whose business when




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his friends are in a minority shall be to denounce his rival
as incapable, to thwart his measures, to embarrass his administration, to persuade the troops that he and not the
other is the only person who can lead them to victory; to
tell the privates that they are unworthy of the name of
men if they obey commands on which they have not been
consulted, and which a majority of themselves have not
approved,-what will ensue? Infallibly mutiny and discontent will ensue, and utter and immediate ruin. Yet
these same principles applied politically, are expected to
generate loyalty and order, to elevate character and to
promote universal good-will. A nation is not an army, it
is said-true-but it is an association of human beings,
and it is at least strange that in different combinations of
the same material the same methods should produce results so opposite. If the analogy of an army is inappropriate, consider any other undertaking in which a number
of persons are associated. Will the house of business
prosper when the merchant or manufacturer must consult
his clerks and his workmen, when the vacant places in the
counting-house must be filled by competition, when the
employer may embark in no enterprise until he has first
laid his plans before his subordinates and obtained their
consent? Will a farm prosper where the labourers sit in
judgment on the rotation of the crops, the qualities of the
cattle, the scientific manures, and the capabilities of the
soil? Will a ship find its way to port, if, when the storm
comes, the seamen may depose their captain and direct.the course for the pilot-if science and skill are to be
overborne by the combined voices of ignorance, and fear,
and conceit? The seamen themselves would not covet a
liberty which would destroy them. A crew for a ship so
conducted could only be found in a lunatic asylum.
But the illustrations are nonsense, we are told impa



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tiently. A nation is no more a ship or a house of business than it is an army. No doubt. But ships and houses
of business imply combinations of men; and, wherever
men combine for a common purpose, the same necessity
reveals itself for command and obedience. What, after
all, according to the Liberal theory, is a nation? The
Liberal answers that a nation is an aggregate of individuals, brought together within certain local limits, by
birth or accident, with no organic relations one to another.
They have each their varied aims and varied occupations.
Some move upon lines of their own, and are responsible only
to themselves. Some form into professions, some hire themselves out for special purposes, and submit to rules which
they must obey so long as they retain the benefit of their
engagements. Among themselves their interests are not,
identical; they are more often antagonistic. Being confined to the same locality, it is their common concern to
defend themselves against foreign enemies, to preserve internal peace, to prohibit violence, and enforce contracts.
Outside these narrow limits each person is the only proper
judge of his own concerns. Each has an indefeasible
right to his own opinion, to the disposal of his own time,
his own talents, his own property, and, since some kind of
authority cannot be wholly dispensed with, to a voice in
the formation and limitation of it.
We talk and think upon the surface. Few of us examine the major premises of half our conclusions. Yet a
principle of this kind lies unavowed at the bottom of the
popular political philosophy. Look at our colonial policy.
Emigrants leave our shores annually in hundreds of thousands. We allow them, we encourage them, to go; but
we are ostentatiously indifferent whether they choose their
new home within our own dominions or pass under an alien
flag. The word allegiance has lost its meaning. Our




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colonies themselves are behind the age, and profess an oldfashioned loyalty. But they are weak. They entail responsibility, and a little trouble. They are in another
locality, and locality is the only bond which is now understood to hold men legitimately together. We tell them,
therefore, that we do not want their loyalty, and do not
believe in it. Their duty is to themselves. We expect
nothing of them, and in return we require them to expect
nothing from us.
The argument seems satisfactory so long as the conclusions are those at which we desire to arrive. But how
if it is applied nearer at home? If Canada has a right to
independence, why is it to be refused to Ireland? Why
may not Scotland ask for it? or Wales, or Cornwall, or
Devonshire? We may tell the Irish independence will be
of no use to them. They may answer they are the best
judges of that themselves. We may appeal to our corporate necessities. We may say it is not the interest of
the majority in these islands to permit secession within
their limits. But who is to judge of the limits within
which majorities are to be counted? And if the corporate
nationality of Great Britain and Ireland together has a
right to coerce the separatist tendencies of a local majority
in Ireland alone, why may it not, if it so please, interfere
with freedom in other directions precisely as far as experience shows that the nationality will gain coherence by
it? The same mass of iron may be in the condition of a
heap of dust, each particle separate from the rest, and the
whole held together in a box, or it may be in the condition
of solid metal, in tenacious and indestructible cohesion.
In the state of dust it is useless for any common purpose.
Each granule is emancipated from its fellow, gravitates
into its place by its own tiny tendencies, and, if enjoying
liberty, falls an easy prey to the vapours which are on the




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watch to devour it. In the solid state, the same iron may
become a sword, a plough, a rifle.  It is available for the
million purposes of science and art.  It will last as many
centuries as its atoms would have continued for days. The
atom before it can endure must part with its independence,
must consent to be sacrificed in the furnace to the common
good. It becomes useful as it ceases to have individual
aims of its own; as it loses the freedom of the politician
and accepts the freedom of the soldier.
It is with a man as it is with the iron atom.  It is only
in permanent combination that human beings develop
their finest qualities. If the obscure and intricate existence of man in this planet has any meaning at all, he is
placed here as in a training-school for his character; and
paradox though it sound, those individuals become personally the greatest who most lose their individuality; who
form a part of some noble institution, and whose personal
nature is elevated by association with something greater
than itself. Wisdom, authority, and justice, these three
form the conditions under which men can live and work
harmoniously together, and grow each by himself to the
highest perfection possible to him. Justice without wisdom
is impossible. Authority without justice is most accursed
of all things as the perversion of the best. In combination, they are the three pillars of social life, from its first
elements in the family to the finished unity of an Imperial
State. We talk, not in metaphor, of the body politic, and
to the body politic alone belongs complete freedom.  The
units composing it are free in the freedom of the body. If
they seek a separate freedom of their own, they can obtain
it only by degradation.   Goethe, contemplating somewhere the human hand, observes how the monads composing it have sacrificed themselves or been sacrificed in
perfecting its organization. Each finger-point, for instance,




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might conceivably have had a separate existence, and
have fluttered as a butterfly in uncontrolled and vagrant
liberty. Have the monads gained or lost in the restraint
which had elevated them into being the servants of a servant, and incorporated them in this delicate instrument of
human skill? Nature has so appointed their destiny, and
the monads loyally acquiesce; they accept their functions,
and claim nothing save their share of vital sustenance to
keep them in condition for their work. As the unknown
force seizes, fashions, and subordinates the elements which
form the body of a man, so the genius of the State gathers
up the human units, co-ordinates them in villages and
towns, educates them in schools and colleges, purifies their
lower instincts, by leading them through religion into a
recognition of their higher destiny and of the obligations
attaching to it, and then distributes them among the
trades and professions which are the beaten highways of
practical life. The tissue of the body perishes hourly, and
is hourly renewed. The individuals die, but the State has
its own life independent of them; as one falls another
takes its place; the functions continue unimpaired so long
as the monads remain loyal. When the monads begin to
mutiny and clamour for their rights and demand liberty,
then, and not till then, dissolution begins.
This is the ancient notion of a community, which regards it not as an aggregate of dust, but as a compact and
organised being; and out of this notion of it grow the
virtues which Englishmen used most to admire-patriotism, loyalty, fidelity, self-forgetfulness, and sense of duty.
The sense of what is due to a man's self-his rights, as he
calls them-is as conspicuously absent. The prevailing
sentiment is distrust of change, adherence to customs and
ancient ways, reverence at all times for authority, the
authority of persons, and the authority of established in



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stitutions. Hence arises the spirit which we call Consertive; and were institutions never degenerate, were persons
in authority always those who deserved to hold authority,
were the life of a man as stationary as the lives of animals,
of which a thousand generations may follow each other,
and each reproduce the one preceding without advance or
change, then we should all be Conservatives. While life,
however, depends on organisation, all organised bodies are
in a state of growth and decay.  The body of a man
sickens. He requires the physician, or perhaps the surgeon. The institutions of a State grow rusty, or are corrupted from their original purpose. Persons in authority
abuse their station for their private advantage. In the
best of us there is a baser nature on the watch to betray
us. Privilege, conferred for some noble end, becomes a
great deal too often an excuse for tyranny, exaction, or
indolence; and we call in the Reformer and the Radical.
But let us look closer at the meaning of Conservatism.
Two tendencies are forever at work wherever men are
found, one binding them together, the other separating
them.   Necessity compels them  to form into societies.
Personal ambition, personal desire, set them one against
the other. As members of society, their interest is cooperation; as individuals, they are each other's enemies;
or, if not enemies, at least they are competitors with each
other. They seek the same objects, and the objects which
they seek being limited in quantity, they cannot all possess
them. But the mischiefs to the majority of unrestricted
competition are greater than the possible advantages of the
few. We find ourselves placed in the earth in numbers
perpetually increasing. We can live only by extracting
out of the soil the means of subsistence, and the productiveness of work increases in a geometrical ratio with combination among the workers.   The family, the unit of




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society, holds together by natural instinct. The animals
pair for a season, and fling off their offspring when old
enough to find their own food. Civilised men and women
pair for life, and the mutual obligations of parents and
children continue till death divides them. Blood relationship extends the circle. Where kindred ends convenience
begins. Communities form for mutual defence and assistance, and then expand and grow into States and nations.
But men cannot live together without laws. Laws require
force to make them respected, and force implies a government. Talent, industry, intellectual capability, strength
of mind and body are distributed unequally. There is a
permanent idle class who hate work and hunger infinitely
for pleasure. Fools work amiss, and, if unguided, do more
harm than good. Idleness breeds crime, and for crime
there must be punishment. If work is to be productive,
the wise must direct and the fool must obey; and as the
business of life cannot stand still till the fool is convinced
of his folly by argument, direction must take the form of
command. Thus gradually the continent of human occupation is trodden into roads, which experience proves to
lead most directly to the desired end. Experience teaches
slowly, and at the cost of mistakes. The roads are at first
rude, mere tracks of custom, and are improved as knowledge increases; but at any given time the beaten track
is safer for the multitude than any independent course
which originality may strike out for itself; and if a person
who fancies that he is not one of the multitude chooses to act
in another direction, he is regarded with natural distrust.
In one instance in a thousand he may be right, and if he
has courage to persevere he will earn an exceptional place
for himself in the honour of his kind. But the presumption is against him, and penalties are fitly imposed on eccentricity in proportion to the disturbance which it threatens.




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As it has been with practice, so it has been with
opinion. Surrounded by invisible forces, their destination
and their origin alike concealed behind a veil, yet liable at
any moment to accidents by which their lives, their fortunes, their happiness might be affected for good or ill,
men began early to speculate on the nature of the powers
which seemed to envelope their existence. They gave the
rein to their fears and to their fancy.  They filled the
darkness with imaginary beings, which in general were
but the projections of their own shadows upon the mist;
and falling down before the creatures of their imagination,
they built temples to them, constituted themselves the
champions of their idols' honour, and fought and destroyed
each other for their glory. Ignorance is the dominion of
absurdity. Fear is the parent of cruelty. Ignorance and
fear combined have made the religious annals of mankind the most hideous chapters in history. Lust, avarice,
ambition, revenge, have added each its terrible contribution to the general misery. But these passions have
their definite objects, and can, in some sort, be guarded
against. The forms assumed by superstition are incalculable. The most supreme absurdity it can hallow into
mystery. The most fiendish atrocity it can metamorphose
into the service of a god, and make conscience the willing
slave of its own passions.
Therefore on this side also it was soon found necessary
to restrain the licence of speculation, and the best conclusions which wise men could arrive at on these dark questions were early digested into form, and prescribed as a
limit to extravagance. State religions, as they come down
to us, appear childish, ridiculous, and often horrid. The
best that can be said for them is that they are less childish
and less horrid than individuals at the same epoch would
have devised for themselves. The world of outward ex



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perience has been conquered slowly and with difficulty.
The invisible world lies beyond experience; where experience ceases to be tangible, emotion and conjecture hold
their own with exceptional tenacity, and intellect and
observation have been comparatively powerless to check
them. Something, however, has been done, and something
continues to be done, without which our religious insanities
would rapidly make us intolerable to each other. From
the earliest recorded times the lawgivers have endeavoured
to connect the service of the gods with moral duty, as duty
has been from  time to time understood. Moral duty
standing at length on a ground of its own, they content
themselves with preventing men from killing one another
in the name of religion. They have established, so far as
the law can be a guide, that differences of opinion upon
subjects on which all men are equally ignorant shall not
be punished as crimes. If the advocates of different
creeds continue to hate each other, the law has compelled
the more tolerant to confess that the hatred shall not be
carried into act. This is called religious liberty, and by
some religious indifference. It may be said rather that by
keeping steadily before it the principles of justice, the
law has become the witness and the sanction of the highest
religion yet attained, or perhaps attainable, by man, that
the service of God is obedience to the moral commandments.
Thus, the domain of man's activity, practical and
speculative, has been mapped out through a series of ages.
His so-called natural rights to the free disposition of himself have submitted to the restraint of rules which practice
has proved to be useful. So the work of individuals
becomes valuable to the community, being guided by
intelligence and custom; and'thus-as a higher end, in
which lies the true meaning of life-the individual cha



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racter becomes elevated into something greater than itself
by accepting a share in the larger life of the community
to which it belongs. Broad directions become expressed
in laws. Where law cannot work, custom    begins; and
customs form into institutions. The more institutions any
nation possesses, so long as the institutions are wise in
themselves and wisely administered, the more healthy and
vigorous such a nation will be, for the larger portion of
the activity of its members will be protected from the
erratic inclinations of selfishness and folly. All great
nations, therefore, prize and foster their institutions. The
surest sign that states are strong and growing is when the
organic and controlling fibre is pushing further and
further, and taking stronger and more varied hold; just
as, on the other hand, it is a sign of the approaching end
when institutions begin to disintegrate, and the monads
recover control of their own motions. If the nation is to
be great and free, the monads must be great and free as
parts of it, not as independent of it. In a healthy community the normal spirit will be the spirit of conservatism,
the spirit of order, the spirit of submission to established
rule and custom.
Another symptom, therefore, in all noble peoples is to
admire, and perhaps exaggerate, the greatness of the past.
Nothing is more curious than to observe the difference of
attitude in the Radical and Conservative to what is called
" the wisdom of our ancestors."  The Conservative sees in
an institution which has descended through a series of
generations an organisation which has borne the test of
time, which has taken root and grown, and by living and
working has proved its suitableness to the exigencies of
society. The theoretic critic may detect mischief in it.
He may assure himself that it ought to create only evil.
Facts may be wiser than he. If any long-existing institu



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tion had not been really useful, it would not have forced
its way into being; and though the critic may measure
the consequences of its presence, he cannot tell what will
happen when it is gone. The life of the nation may, for
all that he knows, be bound up in the life of its institutions. A limb may be diseased, but a wise physician will
not cut it off till he has tried whether it cannot be restored
to vigour by improving the general health. The patient
may die under the operation; if he survive it, he is
thenceforward but half his former self, or his constitution
may be irreparably injured.
What the limbs are to the body institutions are to the
body politic, and ought to be meddled with only at the
last extremity, when it has been proved beyond possibility
of doubt that unless they are removed the State must die.
Men look on the State as a machine with which they may
try experiments. If the experiments fail, they suppose
that they can replace things as they were. An institution
which has been brought to maturity in a thousand years
may be cut down by a quack in a single session of Parliament, but he can no more restore it than the woodman
can replace the fallen oak. It seems a fine thing, a great
achievement, to cut down a tree-a small effort produces a
vast effect, and surrounding fools clamour and applaud.
For the moment a few strokes of the axe seem an operation as admirable as the action of the organic forces which
out of a small acorn, working silently through a series of
ages, produced the tree and set it in its place. Should it
be found afterwards that the mischief charged against it
continued, and was due to another cause, should other evils
undreamt of appear when it is gone to have been created
by its removal, the glory of the destroyer, whether woodman or reforming Radical, will be as short-lived as it has
been cheaply gained.




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335


"Our fathers that had more wit and wisdom than we"
was a common saying in England in the era of Shakespeare.
Antiquitas sceculi juventus mundi is the favourite expression now. The argument from antiquity is reviled as
the absurdest of fallacies; the further back an opinion or
a custom can be traced the clearer is said to be the proof
that it originated in the infancy of knowledge.  The
length of its duration is regarded as in itself a proof of its
unsuitableness for modern necessities.  Our fathers, the
Reformer says, were very well in their time. Had they
possessed our advantages they might have been as good as
ourselves. But each generation, from the fresh accumulation of experience and the fresh development of science, is
necessarily superior to its predecessor. It would be ridiculous affectation in us to pretend to think ourselves inferior
to the English of Elizabeth or Cromwell. " The present
age," said the most distinguished of the Tractarians, unconscious that he was the mouthpiece of the spirit which
he most dreaded and most despised, "requires something
deeper and truer than satisfied the last century." Old
things are passing away; opinions, habits, practices, modes
of action and modes of thought, all are to be made new.
When the nation has been chopped in pieces and flung into
the cauldron, the revolutionary enchantress will mutter a
spell over it from the Gospel of Progress, and it is to spring
to life again in the elasticity of recovered youth. So the
Radical prophesies. He sees only in the traditions of the
past the relics of a barbarous age, when the strong tyrannised over the weak and shaped the Constitution of their
country to enable them to maintain for ever a rule of
injustice. The few, he considers, then shared the wealth
and power among themselves, and left the many to toil and
hunger. The laws were contrived to perpetuate inequality
of rank and along with it inequality of happiness. Every




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political institution was invented or perverted to benefit
the privileged orders at the poor man's cost, while the
Church, which should have been his champion, made a
league with his oppressors, promised him relief in another
world, and bade him be content for the present in the
state of life to which God had called him. The higher
classes might be called rulers: they ruled by a code from
which justice had been obliterated. The poor man would
continue to be trodden upon till the monopolists of the
earth were made to fear him, and therefore it was necessary to take their power from them and give a share of it
to the enslaved millions. They might keep their wealth
and continue, if they pleased, to live in idleness and luxury; but others, not they, must have charge of the laws,
and the people must be restored to the natural independence which had been filched from them.
So in all ages the advocates of popular rights have declaimed against authoritative government, and, unfortunately, very often with the truth essentially on their side.
Rulers who are not responsible to the people are terribly
apt to forget that they have duties towards them; unless
they are men of piety, unless they really believe that they
have to answer to God Almighty, if not to man, they
always will forget it; and when religion degenerates into
a creed or a ritual, they have never long resisted the
temptation to abuse power. Men born to great place, and
surrounded from their cradles with luxury and splendour,
come soon to believe that they are made of other clay than
the common herd-that they are appointed by nature to
enjoyment, while others are appointed to toil, and that it
is fit and right to administer the affairs of mankind on
these principles. Radical reformers are indispensable
persons-some one must be found to tell these high persons
unpalatable truths-to tell them that, on this hypothesis,




Party Politics.              337
they are a burden upon the earth, and had better take
themselves away. Power they might have had and kept,
had they used it for the common good; but if the common
good is forgotten, and wealth, office, dignity are to be
made the appanage of great families, and their dependents
and kindred, then they are the drones of the hive, fit only
to be led in custody to the doors; to be there turned
adrift, and told to return at their peril. The misfortune
is that it has been left so generally to enemies to remind
rulers of truths which they should have been the first to
remember for themselves. The State is split in two.
Parties form which have an interest of their own beyond
the interest of the community.  The Conservatives, to
prevent the alienation of their friends, defend the indefensible, and cling obstinately to the abuses which they
ought to abhor; while the Radicals invent new theories
of Government, and fly passionately at principles which
lie at the root of social organisation. The more soberminded on either side rely on their antagonists to correct
the excesses of their own extravagance; yet instead of
acting as a check, each section, by its one-sidedness, excites and justifies the violence of the other. The result is
a waste of power in a perpetual battle; the practical
ability of statesmen is neutralised for all purposes of guidance and authority by their mutual antagonism, the State
itself meanwhile drifting before the prevailing wind.
Growth, it must be repeated, is slow, destruction rapid.
Destruction long continued finds nothing more to destroy,
and the nation and its Radical champions come to an end
together. Conservatism is the very genius of life; but
Conservatism is only possible when the vital forces, as in
animals and plants, provide in themselves for the continual removal of decaying or vitiated substances, and with
perpetual effort revive and renew their organic energy. In
22




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Party Politics.


the oblivion by ruling powers of half their obligations or
the deliberate transfer of them to their Radical antagonists
lies the secret of national decrepitude. Kings lost their
power when they tired of being ministers of the law, and
aspired to be its masters. The Guilds fell when the rules
of trade were no longer safe in their hands. The Catholic
Church fell when its sacred ordinances were prostituted to
fill the pockets of monks and bishops. The Peerage will
fall, and the system of landed inheritance will fall; property itself will fall, and all else which has given England
coherence and stability, if the inheritors of great names
and the owners of enormous wealth suppose that these
high privileges have been awarded them that they may
have palaces in town and country, and lounge out their
existence among pleasures which, from their abundance,
have lost their power to please. Institutions cannot be
maintained which fulfil no wholesome purpose. Great
persons may choose between luxury and power. Both
they cannot have. The English aristocracy might recover
their ascendency to-morrow were they to become Spartan
in their private habits.
In  England, before the Long Parliament, political
liberty in its modern sense was unknown. The virtual
rulers of the people were the nobility and gentry, yet a
gentry and a nobility who were scarcely more distinguished
in their personal habits of life from their servants and
dependents than their ancestors in the German forests
who were the admiration of the Roman historian.1
1 In omni domo nudi ac sordidi; in hos artus, in haec corpora,
quae miramur, excrescunt. Sua quemque mater uberibus alit nec
ancillis ac nutricibus delegantur. Dominum ac servum nullis educationis deliciis dignoscas. Inter eadem pecora, in eadem humo
degunt, donec setas separet ingenuos, virtus agnoscat."-Tacitus,
Germania, 20.




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339


The Earl and Countess of Northumberland, in Henry
VII.'s time, breakfasted, at six in the morning, on a
hunch of bread, a cold round of salt beef, and a black
jack of claret. There are more appliances for easy living
in the housekeeper's room in a modern English mansion
than Elizabeth herself ever saw, or would have cared to
see. As political inequalities have been filled in, the social
gulf has widened. The more the people were admitted to
share in the power of the State, the better, we were assured,
would become the feeling between classes. In the fifteenth
century England was torn in pieces by a furious civil war.
The cause of it was a division among the nobles as to
the sovereign to whom their loyalty was due. The armies
on both sides were the tenants and serfs of the nobles
themselves. To them it signified not the breadth of a hair
whether they were reigned over by an Edward or a Henry;
yet they went willingly into that desperate and bloody
conflict from no other motive than personal devotion to
their chiefs. We may congratulate ourselves that we
have escaped the possibility of another edition of the Wars
of the Roses. The Durham colliers or the Staffordshire
iron-workers would scarcely take the field at the invitation of Lord Londonderry or Lord Dudley. The millowners of Manchester do not expect the factory hands
even to touch their hats to them in the streets. The agricultural labourers, finding that they might wait for justice
till doomsday if they trusted to their landlords, have
shaken themselves clear of the traditions of dependence.
The change may be good in itself, but it does not indicate
an increasing attachment between class and class; and
the ease with which those who, when they are dissatisfied
with their progress at home, transfer their allegiance to
America, and the acquiescence and approbation with which
the abandonment of their nationality is regarded, indicate




340


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as little an increased attachment to their country in the
constituents of the British Empire.
The grounds for dissatisfaction with the existing management of things were, forty years ago, so many and so
serious that a period of reform was inevitable, and the
English people, naturally enough, took the reformers at
their word, and really believed that a new era was opening
upon them. For some time symptoms have appeared of a
change of feeling,-a doubt whether the progress of which
we hear so much is progress in a safe direction. They
have desired, at all events, to stand still for a while and
survey their situation. The Liberal camp were showing
signs, in 1867, of serious disorganisation. Mr. Gladstone
discerned in the Irish Church a last means of re-uniting
his followers, and the measures for the pacification of Ireland having been duly passed, and the misgivings of the
country having been rather increased than diminished by
the result, Mr. Gladstone has been dismissed; his party
has collapsed, and the Conservatives, after a practical
eclipse of almost half a century, have been entrusted, once
more, with the charge of the State.
Is it but a pause in the down-hill road from mere passing weariness? Is it that the English have begun again
to understand that there are two kinds of liberty-the
liberty of anarchy, which is death, and the true liberty,
which alone is worth a wise man's caring for, the liberty
which is made possible by obedience to rational authority?
In either case the attack will be renewed, and the respite
will be brief. If the reaction has honest purpose in it, we
shall see no more attempts at tinkering the Constitution.
Constitutions are but means to ends. The people of England have asked for better food, better clothes, better
houses, better education, a fairer share of the wealth
which they have helped to produce. Our cunning mil



Party Politics.


341


lionaires have replied, " We cannot give you what you call
a fair share of our profits. We will give you votes instead,
votes which will cost us nothing, and which we know very
well how to control." This is not a reform to which a
Conservative minister should condescend.  Counterfeit
coin of this kind he may well leave to the opposite party.
His chief business at present is reform of another kinda reform of his own followers. If he can carry the aristocracy with him in passing measures for the general
advantage, which shall have some relish in them of selfsacrifice; if he can persuade them that in return for their
splendid inheritances they owe a debt to the people which
they are ready to recognise and pay, the House of Lords
may again become a reality, and wrest from its rival some
share of the power which has passed away from it.
If this be impossible, if men of wealth and rank continue to accept one side of the political economist's creed,
attend exclusively to their own interests, and do as they
will with their own; if their sublime function is to fritter
themselves away in magnificent indolence, as Mr. Disraeli
describes them in Lothair, then the present return to
Conservatism is but an eddy in the stream. There is no
conserving what does not deserve to be conserved. From
the noble Lords, if from any one, we have a right to expect
a noble example. If it be vain to expect that in any class
high motives can be looked to as a motive force in the
community, then, indeed, we must resign ourselves to the
democratic current. Each human being among us will
then set himself with an undivided heart to make money
and spend it as he pleases. All of us being on the same
moral level, all have equal rights, all will obtain an equal
share in political power, and in a little while, distinctions
of wealth, being the most odious of all distinctions, the
great estates will follow with the rest. The Democratic




342                Party Politics.
majority will then be supreme. There will be but one
political party who will carry out the dissolving programme, till the State is reduced finally to the congregation of self-seeking atoms, which they declare to be its
natural state. The Americans are before us on the same
road. The English Colonies are treading on the heels of
the Americans. The same temper seems to have infected,
more or less, all the Western nations; and we may expect
that the type of character of which the half-educated
middle-class Anglo-Saxon is the best existing representative, will enter before long into complete possession of
the inheritance of this planet. I have every respect for
my kindred in the New World as well as the Old; but if
this is the meaning of "the progress," the praise of which
is trumpeted out so loudly, the epic of human history will
be wound up with the dreariest of farces.




LEAVES FROM      A SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL.
IN the summer of 1874 I paid a visit to South Africa.
Having leisure on my hands, I wished to use it to study
the working of an English colony. I had been interested
in the exertions of Miss Rye to carry the waifs and strays
of our swarming population of children to countries where
their chances in after life would be more favourable than
here, and I desired to ascertain how far the colonial authorities would be willing to assist in carrying out a systematic
emigration of such children on a larger scale. My attention had been drawn especially to South Africa, through
what is known as the Langabalele disturbance in Natal, in
which two large native tribes had been destroyed. The
head of one of them, Langabalele himself, had been tried
and condemned by Kafir law, the Governor presiding in
the capacity of supreme chief. The proceeding appeared
to have been arbitrary and violent, and I desired to know
the truth about it. I resolved at the same time to extend
my tour to the neighbouring republics. Between these
republics and the Imperial Government a quarrel had
arisen in consequence of the British occupation of the
lately discovered Diamond Fields, which had previously
formed part of the territory of the Orange Free State. The
dispute had interested me from the contradictory statements which I had read about it. I wished to learn the
343




344     Leaves from a South African Journal.
history of the transaction from disinterested parties upon
the spot, and to learn especially how far the annexation
had been approved by colonial opinion.
The following pages contain extracts from the journal
which I carried with me. A few light sketches of the
society and scenery of a country in which England is
beginning to be interested, may serve as a relief to the
serious subjects with which this volume is chiefly occupied.
I leave them almost as they were first written. What merit
they possess-if they possess any merit at all-will be due
to the freshness of impressions which were noted down as
they were formed.'
1874, August 23.-Left Dartmouth in the " Walmer
Castle." Full complement of passengers. Africanders all, or
most of them, with whom I shall in time make acquaintance.
Before we left the harbour I was introduced to a Natal
judge, who was on his way home. The judge had been out
of the colony when Langabalele was tried, but answered
readily any questions which I asked. He said that in his
opinion there had been no intention of rebellion. It was a
mere police case and ought to have been treated so; still,
naturally enough, he endeavoured to excuse the authorities.
A youth at dinner, reflecting, I suppose, colonial opinion,
insisted that but for the timely vigor, &c., which had been
displayed all Africa would have been on fire.
August 25.-Weather fine. Sea smooth. Air growing
rapidly hot. The passengers with whom I fall into conversation speak of the Kafirs not unkindly. They describe
them as having splendid natural qualities, but as being
ruined by the mistaken treatment which England insists
upon. If the Dutch and the English of the colony were
1 In the following year I went again to the Cape. The present
journal refers only to my first experience.




Leaves from a South African Journal.


34,5


allowed to deal with them in their own way, they conceive that the native character might be really improved;
as it is they look to rum and brandy as the probable
solution of the problem. If rum and brandy why not
strychnine at once?
August 28.-The judge gives up the Natal affair. He
says that they are obliged to use the friendly tribes to
keep in check the dangerous tribes.  The friendly tribes
being savages of course do savage things, and if they are
punished they will never help us again. The story is now
plain enough; it was another Glencoe.
August 29.-Exquisite weather. The sea calm    as
Torbay in stillest summer. The water violet colour. One
thinks of Homer's
Iosltea 7r6Toyv.
Last night we had a remarkable sunset. The disk, as it
touched the horizon, was deep crimson. As the last edge
of the rim disappeared there came a flash, lasting for a
second, of dazzling green-the creation I suppose of
my own eyes. The trades now beginning. The judge
and I talk and smoke, and gradually the condition
of the colony comes out.  Coloured men do not serve
on juries in Natal, and the result is what might be
expected. He once himself tried a white man who had
murdered a Kafir, and was caught red-handed. The jury
brought a verdict of not guilty, and the audience in the
court cheered. The judge said he could hardly speak for
shame. I do not yet make out the Boers, who are described
as lazy, indifferent to progress or money making thinking
little of politics, and only resenting English interference
with them; yet most people to whom I talk seem to agree
that in the Orange Free State the natives are better managed than in any other part of Africa. Such a business as
15*




346'    Leaves from a South African Journal.


that of Langabalele could not possibly have happened
there.
August 31.-Yesterday was Sunday; the sky overcast
and the air close. The Captain read prayers in the cabin
in the morning. In the evening the quarter-deck was
cleared for chapel. Lamps were hung under the awning
and a Wesleyan "conducted a service."  Several hymns
were sung, " Oh Paradise! Oh Paradise!" and " Rock of
Ages," among them. The choir was composed of young
ladies, whose weekday performances I had thought vulgar
and underbred. It was strange to observe how completely
the vulgarity disappeared under the constraint of forms
with which they were unable to take liberties. The sermon
reminded me of the motion of a squirrel in a cage: the
repetition of a single idea with scarcely a variation of
words, without natural beginning and without natural end,
and capable, if necessary, of going on forever.
Sept. 2.-Reached St. Vincent at noon yesterday. The
approach to the harbour lies between the islands of St.
Vincent and San Antonio. San Antonio is a mountain
ridge, 7,000 feet high and thirty miles long, the sloping
sides split into chasms, in which, so far as I could see, not
so much as a blade of grass was growing. St. Vincent,
on the left, is naked rock, sharp, jagged, and precipitous,
the highest point of it under 3,000 feet. The harbour is
land-locked. Talk of the sunny south, the land of cypress
and myrtle and orange grove! At St. Vincent grows
nothing but a dusky scrub, in a hollow into which the
wind has blown the sand. The rest of the island is sterile,
stern, and savage. No kindly rain or frost here pulverizes the stone into soil. The peaks stand out sharp, like
the teeth of some primeval dragon, huge molars and incisors, with here and there a gap where a tusk has decayed
with age. There are no springs, no streams. Throughout




Leaves from a South African Journal.


347


the year scarcely a shower falls there, and therefore not a
green blade of grass can show itself. The town is a coaling station, much frequented by passing steamers. The
inhabitants are chiefly blacks or half-castes, whose business is to prey on visitors. Naked nigger boys swim
round the ship diving for sixpences. Black sirens, handsome and immodest, tempt the passengers into the dancing
saloons, which are opened when a steamer comes in. What
a notion must these wretched creatures have of the outer
world, from the glimpses which they are thus able to get
of its passing occupants. I went over the gaol, which is
attached to the Governor's house, and the nigger turnkey
showed me with a grin a special ward reserved for the
English. The talk of the colonists on board ranges between wool, ostrich feathers, and ten per cent. on freightage. Colonial politics they regard as avowedly nothing
but a scramble for the plunder of office. They bet every
day on the number of the miles which the ship will have
run at noon in the past twenty-four hours, and are as
eager about it as Yankees.
Sept. 4.-To-day we are exactly under the sun. Fresh
stars come into sight every night, and Sirius shines grandly
like a planet. I have been feeding hitherto on Greek
Plays: this morning I took Homer instead, and the
change is from a hothouse to the open air. The Greek
dramatists, even JEschylus himself, are burdened with a
painful consciousness of the problem of human life, with
perplexed theories of Fate and Providence. Homer is
fresh, free, and salt as the ocean. Ulysses and Agamemnon are once more living and breathing men. Religion
is simple and unconscious, and the Gods, rough and questionable as they may be, are without the malignity of later
centuries. Achilles, when he sacrifices the Trojan youths
at the tomb of Patroclus, is rather censured for his cruelty




348    Leaves from a South African Journal.


than praised for his devotion. The notion of human sacrifice as a means of propitiating the anger of the Gods
must have been imported from Phoenicia, perhaps with the
Phoenician alphabet, progress, and the march of intellect!
Sept. 6.-We are now in the south-east trade, the sun to
the north of us, and the heat less oppressive. I hear much
of the Cape Dutch. The English colonists seem not to
like them, and see their characters askew.  The judge
says a Boer's religion is like the Kafir Obeah. He is
afraid of doing wrong, because he expects to be damned
for it. Perhaps, substantially, this is the most valuable
part of all religions-so long as it is really believed.
Sept. 7.-Sunday, a day of weariness: rest when there
has been no toil to rest from-rest only for amusement,
and therefore not rest at all. Captain W. read the morning service. The divines (we have two on board) were
both sick, and unequal to an evening function. Another
ten days ought to bring us to the Cape. The stars are
changed. The pole star is under the horizon. Already a
new heaven; in a few days there will be a new earth.
The sea is no longer violet, but brilliantly transparent
bluish green. It is spring this side of the line. At the
Cape I shall find the almonds coming into flower.
Sept. 18.-The south-east trade dead in our teeth. The
air grows colder and colder, for a week past we have gone
back to our pea-jackets. The sea increases daily and the
rolling becomes more violent. This morning three distinct sets of waves, one set from the south-east, in the line
of our course, another from the south, another from the
south-west. They did not neutralize each other, but continued to propagate themselves, each in their own direction,
producing shapes entirely new to me. The cabins are in
confusion: books tumbling off the shelves, portmanteaus
slipping on the floor, boots and shoes dancing in wild dis



Leaves from a South African Journal.  349


order. Every day I grow more convinced that colonial
and all other political questions resolve themselves into
one: What object do the ruling powers set before themselves? Is it to produce a noble race of men, or is it to
produce what they call wealth?  If they aim chiefly at
the second they will not have the first. Every wise man,
whether Solomon or Plato, Horace or Shakespeare, has
but one answer on this subject: where your treasure is,
there will your heart be. Let wealth be the sublime end
of our existence, and no new English nations will be born
in the Cape or in Australia. England itself will be a huge
grazing farm, managed on economical principles, and
the people, however rich they may appear, will be steadily
going down to what used to be called the Devil.
Sept. 19.-Four weeks out. Still rolling with a fierce
sea and a head wind. I have given up serious books, and
have taken instead to Little Dorrit. Dickens' wine has
an excellent flavour, but it is watered for present consumption, and I doubt if it will keep. Captain W. tells
me that with S.E. winds in this latitude, a high barometer
indicates that the wind will rise, and that if the mercury
reaches 30'2 (it has been standing for the last fortnight
at 30'1), I shall see a heavier gale than I have yet experienced in my life.
Sept. 21.-Running into Table Bay.  The mountain
magnificent, 4,000 feet high, and hanging over the town,
with cliffs so sheer that a revolver would send a bullet
from the edge of the precipice into the principal street.
Sept. 25. —At sea again.  The three days, which was
all that I could at present afford to Cape Town, have been
extremely interesting, and have already opened my eyes
to much which I did not anticipate.
The town itself, which was built by the Dutch, is a
curious old-fashioned place, with a modern skin imper



350    Leaves from a South African Journal.


fectly stretched over it. You see great old mansions in
bad repair, with stiff gardens overrun with weeds, and old
gateways flanked by couching lions.  The Dutch, among
their many merits, introduced pine and oak here. The
pine forests now cover the sides of the mountain. The
oak grows rapidly to an enormous size, being in leaf for
nine months in the year. Everywhere you see the marks
of the stiff, stubborn, Calvinistic Holland. The hotel in
which I stayed was once the house of some wealthy citizen.
The floors upstairs are of stone. The walls are panelled,
the ceilings carved. The sash windows are huge, heavy,
and close fitting. The dining-room is so stiff of aspect
that the pert modern waiter seems subdued by the atmosphere of it into old-fashioned politeness. Cape Town has
twice had its day of splendour. Once under the Dutch
government, and again when it was the sanatorium of
Bombay and Bengal, and the East Indian magnates used
to come there to recruit their livers. Now, even now, it
was a pleasant thing to see the English flag flying over a
spot, which, whatever might be its fortunes, was still the
most important naval station in the world.
Among other persons I called on Mr. Saul Solomon,
whom I had often heard of as the advocate of the Exeter
Hall policy towards the natives. Nature has been unkind
to Mr. Solomon. He is scarcely taller than Tom Thumb.
It is the more honourable to him that, with such disadvantages, he has made himself one of the most useful, as well
as one of the most important persons in the Cape colony.
The Colonial Parliament and Ministry having approved of
the operations in Natal against Langabalele and his tribe,
having indeed taken charge of Langabalele as a state prisoner, I thought I should learn from Mr. Solomon what
was really to be said in defence of the Natal Government.
Mr. Solomon spoke, on the contrary, in terms of the




Leaves from a South African Journal.  351


strongest reprobation of what had been done; but he was
shy of promising any help in the Cape Parliament should
the Imperial Government desire Langabalele to be released.
He seemed satisfied to think that the Imperial Governinent was in a mess, and must get out of it as well as it
could. He was cold also about emigration. White and
black labourers, he said, never worked well together, and
he seemed generally afraid that if the white race became
more numerous, the natives might be handled less scrupulously.
The day following I accompanied the still more eminent Mr. - to his country house near Constantia. The
road lay through groves of oak.  The house itself is a
hundred and fifty years old, and is well built, with large
airy rooms, strong, warm, and enduring. The solidity of
everything here contrasts strangely with the showy flimsiness of the mansions run up by contract in more modern
settlements. They had no responsible Government when
Cape Town was built. What is it which has sent our colonies
into so sudden a frenzy for what they call political liberty?
The aloe, when it blossoms, leads the infant aloes attached
to it to develope too their own aspiring flower stalk, and
the health of neither is much better for the effort. England has blossomed into reform and progress and unexampled prosperity. The colonies have adopted the pattern.
They had indeed no choice but to adopt it. For party
government once established at home, the colonial patronage would have been appropriated to the promotion of
home parliamentary interest. Time will show how far the
aloe illustration will hold good. Mr. --   is an extremely
interesting person. He drove me through the Constantia
country, among pine and oak forests, opening into exquisite vineyards, about the slopes of the great mountain.
Leaving the forests, we then struck across the natural




352     Leaves from a South African Journal.


plains, clothed with silver trees and sugar bushes, and
carpeted with wild heather and wild geraniums, the sea in
the distance soft and beautiful as the Mediterranean. The
peninsula of Table Mountain, cut off from the rest of
Africa, would certainly make one of the most precious
possessions in the world. It could be made impregnable
at a moderate expense. It is about the size of Madeira,
and of infinite fertility. It contains the only harbour
available for ships of war either on the east or west coast
for many thousand miles. Whoever holds this peninsula
commands the ocean commerce round the Cape. The
peninsula commands South Africa, for it commands its
harbours. Were England wise in her generation, a line
of forts from Table Bay to False Bay would be the
northern limit of her Imperial responsibility.
Mr. --, unlike Mr. Solomon, entered warmly into
the suggestion of an extension to the Cape of Miss Rye's
emigration system, and promised his effective co-operation.
We talked over possible schemes for the representation
of the colonies in the Imperial Legislature. Representation
in the House of Commons we agreed to be impossible.
There seemed to be less difficulty in the House of Lords.
Distinguished colonial public servants might be nominated
for a number of years. A peer for life would probably
become a permanent absentee, and being unknown in the
colony, would lose its confidence.
Sept. 27.-We arrived yesterday at Port Elizabeth, on
Algoa Bay, after a rapid run of thirty-nine hours, distance
500 miles from Cape Town. Port Elizabeth is a handsome modern town, the chief port of the eastern provinces,
lying on an open hill-side as Brighton does. There is no
harbour, but the roadstead is sheltered on the dangerous
quarter, and is crowded with vessels of all sizes. The
loading and discharging is by lighters, and managed as




Leaves from a South African Journal.


353.


expeditiously as if the ship was in dock. The beach is
flat; the available extent of it has been much reduced by
an attempted basin, enclosed by wooden piers, which was
no sooner made than it filled in with sand. The bales
and boxes are landed through the surf on the backs of
natives; splendid fellows, with the shape of an Antinous,
stark naked, and shining from the water as if they were
oiled. The black skin, which is of the texture of hippopotamus hide, seems to answer the purposes of modesty.
These fellows earn six shillings a day; they live on one,
save the rest, and when they have enough, they go inland,
buy cattle, and two or three wives to work for them, and
do nothing the rest of their lives. They all have the
firanchise. I asked one of the members for the town how
they managed at election times. " Oh," he said, " we send
a few barrels of brandy into the native location." The
Port Elizabeth people are as eager as Mr.    for a
child emigration. They say it is the very best system
which could be devised, and in fact is the only one to
bring the English population to a level-in numbers-with
the Dutch.
Every one here approves of the action of the Natal
Government in the Langabalele affair. I am told that if
Natal is irritated, it may petition to relinquish the British
connection, and to be allowed to join the Free States. I
cannot but think that it would have been a wise policy,
when the Free States were thrown off, to have attached
Natal to them. The object was to limit British responsibilities and to throw an independent community in the way
of any further advance into the interior. The Free States
without Natal and a seaboard do not answer the purpose.
As matters stand, Natal is a danger and a difficulty. We
keep troops there, and as long as a single regiment is in
Maritzburg the Cape Government will never exert itself
23




354     Leaves from a South African Journal.


to maintain an adequate colonial force. We leave Kafir
law standing in Natal, because the Kafirs cannot be governed by the laws of civilised communities. The Governor
has the arbitrary powers of supreme chief. But if the
possession of these powers tempts him to use them, English
opinion is outraged. It would be better to make the natives into serfs under an organised system, with security
for property and life, than to give them the rights of freemen and leave them to be eaten up, as it is called, when
public policy pretends that an example is wanted. On
the other hand, nothing can be worse than to teach the
Kafirs that there is a power behind the colonists on which
they can rely if they are mutinous. The normal condition of the country must be the supremacy of the white
race in the colony. They alone come in contact with the
natives, and they must manage them.
This necessity will become greater if we are to have a
confederated South Africa. If we go on with the policy
of 1854, if we keep behind the Orange River and refuse
to allow an extension of territory into the interior, the
native management may be dictated from Downing Street.
In a Federal Parliament the Dutch party will be overwhelmingly preponderant. They may wish to extend to
the whole country the more severe system which they find
to succeed excellently in the Orange Free State, and if we
are then to insist on having our way, we shall fall out with
the constitution as soon as it is made. If there is to be a
British African empire conducted on British principles, it
must be governed as India is governed. To attempt it
otherwise is to invite certain failure. On the other hand,
a confederate and self-governed South African dominion,
which was allowed to manage the natives in its own way,
would remain, I believe, loyal to the British Crown, and
would have no wish to change its flag. The blacks would




Leaves from a South African Journal.  355


be controlled, their Kafir law would be abolished, and
they would be made to conform to the usages of civilised
life. But at any rate there would be no such outrage
possible as this affair of Langabalele. To-morrow we
start in the " Florence" steamer for Natal, another 500
miles to the east.
The " Florence," September 30, 7 A.M.-Running along
the African coast. Yesterday, we called at East London,
and lay all day there with a fearful roll discharging cargo.
East London lies at the mouth of the Buffalo River, at the
most exposed point of the continent. The shore is strewed
with the wrecks of miserable vessels which have gone to
pieces there. By-and-by I am told that it is to be the
finest port in the colony, and so sanguine is the Colonial
Government, that extensive railway works are already in
progress in connection with it. Inside the river it is like
the Dart, and is about the same size, with a fair depth of
water for a couple of miles. The banks are high and
wooded with Mimosa, prickly pear, the giant Euphorbia
Candelabra, and other trees which I did not know. The
mouth, unfortunately, is at present closed with a sand bar,
over which, by watching our opportunity, the day being
exceptionally fine for East London, we contrived to pass
in a life-boat. The engineers are hard at work narrowing
the entrance, which they conclude that the scour of the
tide will then keep open. But the rise and fall even at
the springs is only six feet, a small force for so large an
enterprise, and the Indian Ocean is a formidable enemy.
Mr. Leicester, the chief engineer, is certain of success. I
should have felt more sanguine if he had been himself less
enthusiastic.
We are now off Kreli's country-independent Kafirland-a strip two hundred miles long, which divides
Natal from the Colony. We pass within half a mile of




356     Leaves from a South African Journal.


the shore to avoid the current which set outside steadily
to the west. From the sea it seems as if Kreli was king
of Paradise itself.  A series of exquisite English parks
succeed one after the other; undulating grassy lawns,
interspersed with woods and divided every four or five
miles by rivers, the course of which we trace by the projecting crags and the rich verdure of the ravines. Each of
these streams is unhappily blocked by sand as East London
is.  The surf roars at their mouths with monotonous
thunder, never resting, never perhaps to rest while the
globe continues to revolve. The people of the nation to
come, who will by-and-by fill this beautiful country, will
never sail in either ship or boat on the water which they
will see so near them. The steamers will go by their
windows almost within hailing distance, but the passengers must be carried on for a hundred miles before they
can set foot on shore.  The skilfullest crew that ever
launched a life-boat would be dashed in pieces in a moment in those tremendous rollers.
We had excellent fresh fish for breakfast this morning.
Gigantic mackerel, twenty to thirty pounds weight, follow the steamer. The passengers are fishing for them
with halyard ropes for lines, and flies constructed of strips
of scarlet cloth fastened on shark hooks. The mackerel
rise in the wake like salmon. We are going ten knots.
Four out of five break off from the speed, a fifth catches
tight hold, and three or four of the men are required to
haul him in. We had nine of these monsters on the deck
in half an hour this morning. So far as my experience
goes they are the only fish worth eating that the Indian
Ocean produces.
On shore there are few signs of life and less of cultivation.
A few herds of Kafir cattle, a few kraals (native villages)
at long intervals, here and there a black figure slowly




Leaves from a South African Journal.  357


moving along the sands, seem the solitary human occupants of a land as fair as Homer's Island of the Blest.
We have a distinguished journalist on board. I scandalised him by saying that I thought that in a hundred
years newspapers would be abolished by general consent
as a nuisance. A gazette of authentic news would be
published by authority, and that would be all.
I was told a characteristic story of a Dutch farmer
to-day. His estate adjoined the Diamond Fields. Had he
remained where he was he could have made a large fortune. Milk, butter, poultry, eggs, vegetables, fruit, ran
up to fabulous prices. The market was his own to demand
what he pleased. But he was disgusted at the intrusion
upon his solitude. The diggers worried him from morning to night demanding to buy, while he required his farm
produce for his own family. He sold his land, in his
impatience, for a tenth of what he might have got had he
cared to wait and bargain, mounted his wife and children
into his waggon, and moved off into the wilderness.
Which was the wisest man? the Dutch farmer or the
Yankee Englishman who was laughing at him? The
only book that the Dutchman had ever read was the
Bible, and he knew no better. The whole talk among
these people is of diamond fields and gold fields, and diamonds and gold never made the material of a nation, and
never will.
Dutrban, October 2.-The harbour at Durban, named
after Sir Benjamin D'Urban, the most popular governor
who ever ruled at the Cape, is the spot where Vasco da
Gama landed on Christmas Day, in 1498. The country of
which Durban is the port, acquired in this way the name of
Natal. After an interval of 400 miles nature has relaxed
in her monotony, and has created of herself a channel
of the same kind as that which Mr. Leicester is attempt



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ing to make at East London. A high wooded ridge or bluff,
curved and narrow, just out from the coast-line, stretches
parallel to it for two miles toward the east, and then
bends round and terminates, forming a natural breakwater. A long point runs out to meet it, and thus inside
is formed a landlocked basin ten or twelve miles in circumference, the sea entering through a single narrow passage,
and the scour from so large a body of water being thus
considerable. Even here there is a bar which the engineers
in their attempts at improvement have made rather worse,
but in moderate weather vessels of 1,000 tons can enter
without much difficulty.  The scene as we run in is
singularly beautiful. The sky is cloudless. The sun, just
risen, is faintly veiled by a soft Italian haze.  The ships
in the bay are dressed out in flags, white puffs of smoke
break from a battery as the guns are fired in honor of
the arrival of the steamer.  We bring up in a deep
channel close under the bluff, in the shade of tropical
trees, among which the monkeys skip to and fro, and from
which occasionally a too-curious python makes his way
along the cable by which ships are moored to the shore.
We land at the custom house, among a group of Natalians,
who have hurried down to meet their friends. I am
struck, as at Port Elizabeth, with the florid fleshy look
of the settlers. The climate of the Cape suits well the
lymphatic Teuton. The Dutch, who have been there for
two centuries, have expanded into the dimensions of
Patagonians. I walked with one of the latter along the
sands to the town.  We had to cross a stream, and a
Kafir undertook to carry us over. He staggered under
the Dutchman, and had nearly fallen with him. With me
he trotted away as if I had been a child. But I had as
nearly dropped from him from another cause. It was my
first experience of the smell in such close proximity.




Leaves from a South African Journal.  359


Oct. 3.-The South African colonists are proud of their
country, and are pleased to show it. I should have liked
a day to look about me at leisure, but I was in the suite of
a great person, to whom it was necessary to show the
sugar plantations with the least possible delay, and I have
this moment returned from a thirty miles drive over roads as
rough as Browning's poetry, having been jostled into idiotcy,
and having three times fainted (or very near it), from the
combined odour of negroes and molasses. But the country
is pretty enough, undulating in rounded hills, the soil red
and rich, the sugar plantations most extensive, and considering the difficulty of the labour question, most creditable
to Natal energy. The forest, when uncleared, is rich with a
variety of trees, all new to me, and the varieties of wild
creepers which I admired at East London. The planters'
houses are prettily surrounded with orange and lemon trees.
The affair of Langabalele (or Longbelly, as he is called
in Durban), is in everybody's mouth.  They cannot conceive what the Aborigines Protection Society is displeased
at. A chief was going to rebel. He and his people and
his allies were eaten up. What else would we have? The
chief indeed ought to have been hanged, but that was the
only mistake. A Government official said to me that the
Governor was supreme Kafir chief, and that everything
had been done regularly according to Kafir usage. Langabalele had committed an offence, and the tribe were
responsible for the sins of their head. It was no more
than the law   in Ireland which made the baronies
answerable for murders. As if in any Irish barony for
the last 200 years a set of savages had been let loose upon
a barony to plunder indiscriminately, and to shoot down
the people if they resisted. As if Europeans settled in
Africa were to act like savages themselves because it was
the custom of the country.




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The climate of Natal is exquisite. The days are brilliant and not overpoweringly hot.  The nights are cool
and fragrant with orange blossom. The stars shine with
a steady lustre.  The fire-flies gleam.  The moth-hawk
hunts his fluttering prey. The Indian Ocean moans on
the shore, and will moan on till the day which Tintoret
has painted, when the ships shall drift deserted on the
waves, and the inhabitants of the earth shall have passed
away from it for ever.
Oct. 8.-The people are most kind. I have been staying for a day or two with a clever planter who has an estate and a sugar-mill outside the town. His house-a very
handsome one-is finely situated on a brow overlooking
the harbour; it is itself of wood, and was brought out
complete from Paris. My host talks much and rather bitterly on the Nigger question. If the Kafir would work,
he could treble his profits. As matters are he depends
mainly on coolies. If liberality and personal kindness
would bring the Kafir into his service he would not find
the difficulty which he does. There could not be a better
master. It is an intricate problem. Here in Natal are
nearly 400,000 natives, who have come in under shelter of
the British Government, to escape the tyranny of their
own chiefs. They are allowed as much land as they want
for their locations. They are polygamists, and treat their
women as slaves, while they themselves idle, or do worse.
Of whites in the colony there are but 18,000 all told. It
is too natural that the whites should feel uneasy.
There are large pythons in the woods here. My host
told me (perhaps he was playing with my credulity) that
one moonlight night he was cantering down his avenue
meaning to sleep at his place of business in the town,
when he saw, as he thought, a tree left lying on the road.
He got off to remove it, when the tree became alive and




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attacked him. He was in evening dress, and had no
weapon of any kind. The engagement lasted for twenty
minutes, when getting tired of it, he made a slip-knot in
his silk pocket handkerchief, passed it over the python's
neck, and then drawing it tight, he jumped on his horse,
and dragged the monster behind him into Durban. There,
as it seemed dead, he thrust it into a warehouse for the
night. When he went to look at it in the morning, it had
recovered from its adventure, but not wishing to renew
the battle, dashed past him into the street and rolled away
into the forest. I tell the story as X Y-  told it to me.
Last night we had a native musical exhibition on the
lawn.  Forty or fifty Kafirs were brought in for my
amusement. A large fire was made of pressed sugar-cane;
and then in the distance we heard a long low monotonous
cry, growing louder as it approached, with a bugle breaking in absurdly at intervals. The ladies of our party arranged themselves in chairs in the verandah. Presently a
naked figure, with feathers in his hair, ran in on all fours
like a baboon, capered round the fire dangling an assagai
and disappeared. More howling followed, and the procession came out from behind the bushes, chanting something
which was like the baying of hounds at the moon, and
stamping violently in time. The creatures ranged themselves round the fire and squatted on their haunches. Two
or three had shirts, the rest had a thin short wisp of
goat's hair round their loins, and that was all. In the
uncertain light, in which they looked horribly ape-like,
they continued their song or whatever it was. " Ho ha yah,
ho ha yah," growing gradually louder and more guttural
into "Hogh ha, hungh ha," till their chests began to heave
and work, and fifty human beings were grunting like so
many mad pigs inspired suddenly with an ambition to
become musicians.  They sweated, they steamed, they




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swung their clubs over their heads, pausing at intervals
to gaze in each other's faces with rolling eyes and shining
teeth, as if in rapt admiration of each other's loveliness.
Notwithstanding their exertions they were not exhausted.
They continued eternally repeating the same movements
and the same words. I asked what the words meant.  It
was no more than what a wolf intends by his howl. " I like
killing. I like killing bull. I like killing buck." The
sole variation being a grunt of praise to the chief of the
tribe. " Hrunch, brunch, brunch! " and at the end of a
prolonged "Haugh!" in honour of me as an English
stranger.
Such is the free Kafir of Natal, as he lives at his own
sweet will under the shelter of the British dominion.
Under his own chief in the forest he is at least a man.
Trained and disciplined under European authority he
might become as fine a specimen of manhood as an English or Irish policeman. Left at liberty to do as he pleases
this is what he becomes. Do we think the black races so
superior to Europeans that they can improve without
training? Our grandfathers treated them as cattle; we
treat them as if it were a sin to lay them under the same
restraint as our own children. Our cruelty and our tenderness are alike fatal to them; the second, perhaps, is the
most fatal of the two.
There is little wonder that with such surroundings
few English colonists think of Natal as a permanent
home. The English and Scotch in South Africa have gone
there mostly to make fortunes and return when they are
made. The Dutch alone are attached to the soil, and unless we change our ways the Dutch must be the ruling
race there.
Maritzburg, Oct. 17.-Arrived here a week ago, after
a picturesque drive of fifty miles on the mail cart. After




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leaving the coast and the sugar plantations, signs of cultivation disappear almost wholly.  There are a few farms
scattered along the roadside, but with little sign of work
upon them. The energy of the colony has gone into the
transport department.  The enormous wealth suddenly
developed at the Diamond Fields has revolutionised South
Africa. Horses, men, and cattle are out upon the roads
waggon-driving between the Fields and the ports. The
poor Kafirs must have many merits. The farmers go
away, leaving their houses and their families and property
undefended. No outrage is ever heard of. The waggons
are sent many hundred miles through a country almost
uninhabited. They are loaded with a thousand articles
which the natives much covet, and highway robbery is
unknown. Yet the whites are afraid of them. No wonder,
considering the disproportion of numbers. If they could
be induced to work they would be manageable; but the
settlers legitimately dread the effects of deliberate idleness,
supported by polygamy and female slavery on the native
character. The Langabalele affair was an explosion of
the normal uneasiness, and the blame of it lies with the
system more than with the Natal Government.
What is to be done with this country? It cannot be
left as it is. Is it to be annexed to the Cape Colony? Is
it to be a confederate province of a South African dominion? Is it to be a Crown colony with a military governor?   Should it be made independent and allowed to
attach itself to the Dutch republics? Time will show.
But it becomes more and more clear to me that if South
Africa is to remain under the British flag, the choice lies
between one of two policies, and that any other will fail.
If we can make up our minds to allow the colonists to
manage the natives their own way, we may safely confederate the whole country. The Dutch will be in the




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majority, and the Dutch method of management will
more or less prevail. They will be left wholly to themselves for self-defence, and prudence will prevent them
from trying really harsh or aggressive measures. In other
respects the Dutch are politically conservative, and will
give us little trouble.
If, on the other hand, we are determined to direct the
native management from home, it will be mere insanity to
erect a powerful and united constitution, with a legislature
and a responsible ministry, with which we shall immediately come into collision. A united South Africa must
then be governed as a province of India. We must keep
the military and police force in our own hands, and along
with it the entire administration and the entire responsibility. In this way, so far as I can see, there will be no
great difficulty either. But attempts to combine the two
methods will certainly lead to disaster.
At Maritzburg I am occupied in preparing for my
journey into the Free States. My equipage will be a
strong African cart, six mules, a tent, a gun and a rifle, a
black driver, and a young Dutchman, son of a member
of the Natal Council, who goes with me to interpret and
be otherwise useful. Maritzburg being the seat of Government, I find an unexpectedly cultivated and agreeable
society there, and my friend the judge, who has accompanied me from Dartmouth, is the most charming of hosts.
The country round is at present a mere desert. How
beautiful it will one day be, when it is irrigated and
planted, a single specimen of what the soil can produce
will suffice to show.
Six years ago the judge, who understands gardening,
purchased forty-five acres of perfectly open moor. The
spot which he selected was well situated, and sheltered by
a mountain, down which falls a stream of water. He






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365


fenced his ground in, and round the borders he sowed the
seeds of a variety of conifere and the Australian eucalyptus. In this short interval these seeds have shot up into
trees forty or fifty feet high. Passing through them you
find yourself among groves of oranges, and lemons, and
citrons, and limes, figs, peaches, apricots, and almonds.
On a favourable slope are a few acres of coffee trees loaded
with fruit. You leave the coffee and you are among
flowering trees and shrubs. In a hollow is a sheet of
water, fringed with roses, azaleas, and geraniums. There
is so much shade that you never feel the heat oppressive.
If you require refreshment, you can stroll among the
strawberry beds, or if you prefer it, among pineapples and
melons. Whatever of rare or beautiful, either of the Old
World or the New, European, African, or American, will
flourish in this climate and soil, the judge has here cultivated, and so admirable are both that each plant contends
with its neighbour which shall spring the soonest to the
highest perfection.
We had our luncheon in a dripping cave, festooned with
ferns, at the edge of a waterfall. A fairer haunt was
never seen for legendary spirit, and I had poured a silent
libation to the nymph of the grotto before I remembered
that I was in a land where there was neither nymph nor
fairy, faun nor saint. These airy beings do not thrive in
English colonies under constitutional governments.
But I have a long story to tell, and, much as I should
like it from its many pleasant remembrances, I must not
linger over Maritzburg. Two extracts more are all that
I can afford.
Langabalele pleaded on his trial, as his excuse for not
coming when he was sent for, that he feared he might be
shot, as Mr. John Shepstone had shot Mattyana. Mattyana was a young chief accused of murder. Mr. Shep



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stone, as an active excellent officer, had been sent to arrest
him, when the alleged shooting took place. Langabalele's
plea was not allowed, and he was even held to have aggravated his offence by alleging it. Mr. Shepstone himself told me what took place, and the story is a characteristic one.
Mr. Shepstone did not think Mattyana guilty of the
murder, but he sent for him, and he refused to come unless
attended by a bodyguard of 300 warriors. On these terms
Mr. Shepstone would not receive him.  They fenced with
each other for two months. At length a conference was
agreed on, with a condition that both parties should be unarmed. Mr. Shepstone could have meditated no treachery,
for he had his wife with him. He heard, however, that
treachery was intended against himself, and he concealed
a short double-barrelled gun under his cloak: He told off
a party of men to watch where Mattyana's followers deposited their arms, and ordered them, on receipt of a private signal from himself, to gallop off and secure them.
Mattyana came and his people with him apparently unarmed, but Mr. Shepstone thought that he detected the
handles of short assagais showing under their leopard skins.
A quarrel followed; blows were struck on both sides. Mr.
Shepstone sent off his signal. Mattyana said that he was
betrayed, and sprung back among his men. Mr. Shepstone fired two barrels over his head, as he says, to create
a panic. The Kafirs ran for their arms, and found them
gone, and then Mr. Shepstone's armed men fell on Mattyana's disarmed men and killed thirty of them.
Mr. Shepstone told me that he was sorry for what had
happened, but that he could not help it. He had not
intended any foul play, but he said that even if he had
he would have been fully justified. Mattyana and his people
were resisting a lawful warrant. He, as a police officer, was




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sent to take him, and was at liberty to use any means tlat
he pleased.
I do not presume to blame Mr. Shepstone, nor do I
suppose that he deserves blame. On the other hand, I
think Langabalele might innocently enough have remembered the story, and have thought twice before he obeyed
a similar summons. The value of the incident, however,
lies in the proof which it furnishes of the impossibility of
governing a wild population with so weak a police force as
alone Natal can afford.
My last Maritzburg extract refers to a visit which I
paid to three of Langabalele's sons.  They with 500 of
their tribe were then, and had been for the last twelve
months, prisoners with hard labour in Alaritzburg gaol.
They had never been tried, and had simply been sentenced by Kafir law, i. e., the pleasure of the Governor.
My interpreter was a Mr. F, who had spent many
years among the tribes, and was by no means predisposed
in their favour.   The young chiefs are gentlemen in
manners, and were perfectly dignified and self-possessed.
The prison dress could not conceal the superiority of their
breeding. The youngest was silent. 'The eldest spoke
little, but with a full sonorous voice, and an expression of
authority. The second, to whom the principal part of the
conversation fell, was like an Italian, with a handsome
forehead and nose, soft dark eyes, a mouth, though
coarse, far finer than the tribe mouths in general, and
features singularly mobile.  His complexion was dark
olive, and I observed that his nails and the last joints of his
fingers were almost white.
I asked him a series of questions. First: why his father's
men were leaving the Colony when they were interrupted
by the volunteers. He said that they were running away.
They had heard that they were to be destroyed because




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their father had not given himself up to the Governor.
Their father had done no wrong. But the Governor had
sent for him peremptorily, and he was afraid that he
would be killed. Besides he was ill and lame.
I said he was well enough to go over the Pass. They
laughed, and answered that, when a man's life is at stake
he will do a good deal.
I enquired why they had received the Governor's messengers under arms. They said they were on the point
of starting; and when a man runs he does not leave his
arms behind him. We came to the gun question, the
original cause of the trouble. Natives are not allowed to
possess guns in Natal without a special licence. I asked
why they had not brought their guns in to the magistrate
when called upon. They said they had earned their guns
by labour at the Diamond mines. When they bought
them, the British Governor at Kimberley had promised
that they should be allowed to keep them. On their
return to Natal, some of them had brought their guns to
the authorities to be registered. They had been taken
from them and had not been returned. The guns were
their own, fairly purchased with the consent of the
Queen's representative. They had never meant to make
a bad use of them, and insisted that they had not for one
moment dreamt of rebellion. My own impression was that
they were speaking truth so far as they knew it. My interpreter, who was not prejudiced in their favour, said that if
they had been lying he would have detected it in a moment.
I asked if they had anything more to say to me. They
said that they had confidence in English justice. They
made no complaints. One of their Indunas had fired on
the white men in the Pass, and the destruction of their
tribe appeared to them the natural consequence. Only
they insisted that their father had not been to blame.




Leaves from a South African Journal.   369


And now enough of Maritzburg. To-morrow I start
upon my long journey into the Free States.
Bushman's River, Oct. 24.-The road through Natal is
a gradual ascent from the sea level to the high plateau
of the interior. From the summit of the Drachenberg
range, the fall on the eastern side is marked by all the
characters of mountain scenery; sharp precipices, abrupt
ravines, and rivers leaping down in a succession of cascades. When I pass the crest, I am told that I shall find
myself on a boundless plain, sloping westwards imperceptibly for a thousand miles to the Atlantic. The roadside is
fringed with the skeletons of the wretched mules and oxen
which, overdriven and brutally treated, have dropped out
of the waggon teams and have fallen down and died. In
a few hours their bones are cleaned by the vultures. We
are now 5,000 feet above the sea. The Drachenberg is
right in front of us, looking like the Pyrenees from Dax,
the colours only softer and more Italian. The farms
appear more and more neglected. I have not seen one
labourer working in the fields since I left Maritzburg.
Horse, man, and ox are on the roads. It is all right,
economically, I suppose.  More money is to be made in
this way. And the remains of the miserable cattle which
have been flogged to death? Well, they must have died
some time.
The camping places are strewed with broken tins
and fragments of Hennessy's brandy bottles. The Kafir
costume varies with the climate. Down at Durban
it was a hat and shoes, or more oftener neither. Up
here the air is colder, and a cast-off soldier's jacket is in
fashion, lower garments being dispensed with everywhere.
In the park at Maritzburg I saw a dandy Kafir groom
holding the horses of a curricle. He had a short smartly
cut groom's coat, a hat with a cockade, and nothing else.
24




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His lower limbs shone so brightly that they appeared to be
polished with blacking. The hotels on the road are tolerable, but the manners of the colonists since I left Maritzburg
do not improve. In the English colonies-in South Africa at
any rate-there are a set of people who answer to the mean
whites of the Southern States of America. A large part
of our emigrants are more or less vagabonds, whom their
friends have got rid of. When they see out here any one
who looks like a gentleman they make it their business to
teach him at once that he is not in England by a rudeness
which they mistake for independence. They suppose this
country to be virtually a republic, and they consider courtesy to be a bad tradition of the Old World.
Tugela River, Oct. 25.-A lovely evening, with a full
moon and a soft east wind blowing. I have been sitting
in the verandah of the hotel, reluctant to go in. The
landscape, the great forms of which are always beautiful,
can here be best enjoyed at night, when the dead oxen
are no longer visible, or the nakedness to which the
country is doomed by the laziness of man. The land here
as elsewhere is boundlessly fertile. A large river runs
through it with abundant fall.  Irrigation is perfectly
easy, yet nothing is done. At this hotel we drink the
dirty drain water. I asked the landlord if he had no well.
Within twenty feet of thesurface there was obviously pure
water in abundance. "A well!" he said, indignantly;
"and who is to dig it? The Government won't make the
Kafirs work, and if they want wells, they must make them
themselves."
Hotel under the Drachenberg, frontier of the Free State,
Oct. 27.-Here at least in the mountains, where the hill
sides and valleys are watered by nature, I hoped that I
should at last taste fresh milk.  But I could get only the
eternal tinned milk from Switzerland, and they are out of




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vegetables, for an expected cargo of potatoes has not arrived from Limerick. My landlord at the Drachenberg,
however, is not of the idle sort. He is a Boer, the first
that I have seen, large-boned, healthy, and good-humoured.
He is a cattle and horse breeder, and being on the border,
has a farm on the edge of it, where, under the Free State
laws, the Kafir servants can be better depended on.
I leave Natal with unhopeful feelings.  The settlers
themselves are not to blame.  In the presence of a vast
and increasing native population, encouraged in idleness
by the indulgence of those detestable systems of polygamy
and female slavery, it is impossible to expect white men to
exert themselves for the genuine improvement of the
colony. But the fact remains, that a country which seems
to have been made by nature to be covered with thriving
homesteads and a happy and prosperous people is given
over to barrenness and desolation.  Before there can be
a change, some authority must be introduced there which
will control both blacks and whites, and bring the relations
between them into a more natural condition. The sole
remedy thought of here is more freedom, and what they
call a "'sponsible ministry." They look to America, and
they fancy the colonies have only to be free to grow as
the United States have grown. America was colonised
before the aloe had blossomed. The grain of the old oak is
in New England. The English in South Africa are pulpy
endogens.  They may make a nation some day, but they
have a long journey to travel first.
One would like to know the reflections which the aloe
makes upon itself when it throws up its flowering stem.
Did ever plant make such unexampled progress? and
progress so sure, too; for is not the flower the promise of
the seed of future aloes, the heart of the aloe's life? One
splendid leap and bound, and a dull prickly shrub has




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shot into a tree, which is fringed with pendant bells.
Each infant aloe colony at its side, blossoms too in tiny
mimicry, saying to its parent, " Am not I as good as you?
or possibly better? " How little either of them know the
price which must be paid for their burst of vanity!
America was not established in this way. The price is
death.
Harrismith, Orange Free State, Oct. 29.-Crossed into
the Free State yesterday. The top of the pass is 1,800
feet above the hotel.  Our cart was dragged up by oxen.
The imules walked. The road on the Natal side winds up
against the face of the mountain. We arrive at the top,
and find, as I was led to expect, a plain level and boundless as the sea. Harrismith, the first place we come to, is
named after Sir Harry Smith, of Aliwal and Kafir war
notoriety, and is a growing, well-conditioned town. The
change of government is already apparent in the absence
of loafing natives. The Free State laws against vagrancy
are strict. Every man found wandering about may be
called on to show how he is gaining his subsistence, and if
he can give no satisfactory account of himself, he is set to
work on the roads.
Leokof (Lion-head), Saturday, Oct. 31st.-I was in luck
at Harrismith. I fell in with Sir M. B-, an English
baronet, ex-captain of dragoons, who after some years of
service in India, was obliged by bad health to leave the
army, and not wishing to idle away the remainder of his
life in England, determined to settle as a farmer in South
Africa. He entered into partnership with another Englishman, Mr.-, an extreme Radical, but as Sir Msaid, with apparent surprise at the possibility of such a
thing, "a gentleman to the heels of his boots." They
bought two tracts of land, one in the Transvaal, one in the
Free State, and five years ago Sir M — was set down on




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the estate which was to be his future home, sixty miles
east of Harrismith. It consisted of 19,000 acres of grassy
wilderness, without so much as a shed or Kafir hut upon
it, with a round kopf or hill, flat at top, with steep sides,
rising out of the middle of it, which a few years since was
a noted lion preserve. The plains were still covered with
infinite herds of antelopes. His nearest neighbour was a
Boer, twelve miles distant. He was unmarried and alone.
Up to this time Sir M   had lived in the luxury of a
smart cavalry regiment, and had never had less than three
or four servants to anticipate every want. In South
Africa at starting he had nothing to depend on but himself. He built his house with his own hands, with only a
native or two to help him. He made fences and sheds and
farmbuildings. He gathered cattle, sheep, and horses about
him. He drove his own plough, he sheared his own lambs,
he was his own mason, house carpenter, cook, and housemaid. Gradually he gathered servants and labourers about
him, as a man who will work himself is sure to do. The
hardest part of the business is over. His farming prospers,
and he is steadily and surely making a fortune.
I met Sir M-    at dinner at Harrismith. He was to
return to Leokof the next day, and he invited me to go
with him. It lay on my own road to Pretoria, so it was
settled that my cart and mules should follow at leisure.
Sir M    took charge of me in his dog-cart, and we started
with four half-broken horses, which he drove splendidly.
We slept on the road at a winkel, or roadside store,
where Sir M     had an enthusiastic welcome. In the
morning we started early, and were here to breakfast. Sir
MI —is a tall handsome man about forty, with a hooked
nose, a grey soldier's eye, a well-cut chin; and in face,
figure, and mind a thoroughbred aristocrat. By courtesy,
uprightness and natural superiority, he commands the




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respect of the Boers. He accepts his situation, not cheerfully, but without complaint, sustained by the consciousness of success, and too proud to quarrel with a lot which
he has made for himself. Nature is hard up here 6,000
feet above the sea.  No more orange groves and rose
gardens; but the treeless, shelterless plain, with the fierce
sun by day and frosts at night, and thunder-storms beyond the worst I have ever witnessed in Europe. Sir
M-    is showing what an Englishman can still be. It is
a relief to me after what I saw in Natal, and I admire the
character that has fought through so rude a trial. At
meals he has but one table, and he sits himself at the head
of it, with his white servants on each side of him, well
mannered and respectful. So it was in England for many
centuries, while the feudal loyalty, which democracy has
not yet wholly worn away, made its way into the blood
of our race. So old Cato dined with his serfs in the farm
kitchen, probably on just such fare as we had before us
to-day; soup, mutton, bread, and a glass or two of wine
of the country.
Nov. 1.-A Boer rode over this morning to enquire
after Sir M —, a report having gone abroad that he was
mad. It seems that he had lately bought a stallion for
breeding purposes. The stallion was unequal to his duties,
and was fit for nothing else, so instead of selling him
under false pretences to another neighbour Sir M —had
him shot. It was thought in the neighbourhood that no
one in the right possession of his senses could have done
so wild a thing.
Nov. 4. On the road to the Vaal River-First experience of camping out. I am alone in my tent with a
glaring sun raising the temperature inside to 90 degrees.
The mules have strayed, being insufficiently hobbled. I
sent Charley, my black driver, in search of them in the




Leaves from a South African Journal


375


early morning. He returned with his face as near white
as nature permitted, declaring that the devil had jumped
out of the ground at his feet with four young ones. I
suppose it was an antbear. Any way the mules are lost.
He has gone back to our last halting-place to look for
them. My other youth has started with a rifle to shoot
buck, which are round us in tens of thousands, and here
am I by the side of a pond which is trampled by the antelopes into mud soup, the only stuff in the shape of water
which we have to depend on for our coffee, and, alas! for
our washing. To add to the pleasure of the situation the
season of the thunder-storms has set in. The lightning
was playing round us all yesterday afternoon, and we shall
now have a storm daily. Whole teams of oxen are often
killed. To a white man, they say, there is no danger
while he has a black at his side, the latter being the better
conductor. When one is struck another must be immediately substituted.
The Boers are shooting on the hills round me. They
ride up to the herds and fire into the middle of them, a
cart follows to carry the game, and the vultures wheel in
hundreds overhead on the watch for the wounded. These
antelopes consume the grass, and must be exterminated
before sheep and cattle can be reared.
Heidelberg, Nov. 7.-A young Boer brought in the mules,
which he found fifteen miles off, making their way back
to Natal. We were soon on the road again, and yesterday
evening crossed the Vaal River.  We are now in the
Transvaal Republic, the Alsatia of South Africa, where
every runaway from justice, every broken-down speculator,
every reckless adventurer finds an asylum; while the gold
just discovered is tempting stray Californians and Australians to try their fortune there as well. Over the river
at the passage is an accommodation house kept by a




376    Leaves from a South African Journal.


Prussian. Outside were two half-drunk English sailors
who had deserted at Simon's Bay. After a wash in
the river and a tolerable supper the Prussian offered me
a bed on a sofa which I was rash enough to accept,
though a sheep just killed was hanging almost over the
place where I was to lie. Before I had been five
minutes on my couch I had to fly for my life from the
legions of vermin crawling over me, and take refuge with
Charley in the cart. The night was bitterly cold. We
were off at daybreak.  At night we reached Heidelberg, a
small but growing place, with a magistrate's house and a
church. The proprietor of the hotel told me as I entered
that he was born in Grosvenor Square. His family had
been ruined, and he had come to this. At supper I met
an Australian geologist, who is making a mineral survey
of the Transvaal for some company. This gentleman has
travelled all over the country, and gave me his opinion of
the native question. In the Orange Free States the blacks
are few in number, and are under perfect control. In the
Transvaal they swarm as they do in Natal. They do as
little work, and as little does any one think of forcing them
to work. Their women cultivate their corn patches. The
men wander about and steal cattle. In Natal they stand
in some awe of the British Government. In the Transvaal
they stand in none, neither of the British nor of the Boers
nor their President, and my Australian friend's opinion
was that a war of races was not far off.
Pretoria, Nov. 12.-At the farthest point of my journey.
Pretoria, the capital of the Transvaal and the seat of
government of its famous President, lies in a basin surrounded by rocky hills, at the rise of the Limpopo River.
Springs of abundant and beautiful clear water break out
in the adjoining valleys. The Dutch, who have a genius
for irrigation, have carried open conduits along the streets.






Leaves from a South African Journal.  377


The trees in the moistened soil flourish with the greatest
luxuriance. We have descended 2,000 feet from Iarrismith; and although the place is not yet a quarter of a
century old, you seem as you come down into the hollow
of Pretoria, to be entering a forest of eucalyptus and
oleander. The Volksraad is in session, and the town is
full. There are several hotels. I enter one called the
Edinburgh, and am shown into a room where a Kafir
woman is washing the floor. The floor is of a sandy clay
taken from the ant-hills.  The washing is with loose cowdung, of which an enormous pile is emptied out upon it.
Cow-dung is a vermin-killer, and like many other things
not intolerable when one grows used to it.
Pretoria is full of English, though at present they have
but two voices in the Raad. Being now politically powerless, and knowing that the English flag would treble the
value of their properties, and give them security from
Kafirs, they are naturally anxious for annexation.  I
tell them that with self-government in the Cape Colony
the time is past for high-handed methods; the Dutch
majority in the Cape Parliament would take any violence
offered to their kinsmen in the republics as an injury to
themselves.
Nov. 18.-I have been here for ten days. I have
seen the President many times, and he and his different
officials have talked to me freely. I must not repeat confidential conversations, but this much is becoming every
day more clear to me. I heard at Cape Town, I heard
at Port Elizabeth, I heard everywhere, only with gathering emphasis since I entered the Free States, that Lord
Kimberley's annexation of the Diamond Fields was one
of the most foolish mistakes which has ever been made
by a British Colonial Minister. Six years ago the two
Republics would have welcomed confederation under the




378    Leaves from a South African Journal.


British flag.  Their independence was originally forced
upon them. They petitioned afterwards to be taken back
and were refused.  But for that one unlucky step the
petition would probably have been renewed. They consider
now that they have been robbed, slandered, and insulted,
and every Dutchman in South Africa is indignant about
it.  If we had said openly, when the diamond mines were
discovered, that circumstances were altered, and that it
was no longer convenient to leave these provinces in their
present state, they would have grumbled, but they would
have borne it. But when we broke a treaty which we
had renewed only a year before, and then set to work to
worry them, and pick quarrels with them, and make it
seem as if they had been the aggressors, the stubborn Boer
set his back up, and his kindred in the colony it seems will
stand by him. The facts are briefly these. The Diamond
Fields lay within the territory which had been occupied
by the Boers since 1854.  In the treaties by which we
made the two Free States independent, we promised to
leave them for the future to settle their differences with
the natives without interference on our side. The most
important of these treaties we had actually renewed in
1869. In 1870 the diamonds were discovered. A claim
was put in for the diamond district by a native chief, and,
directly contrary to our engagement, we took the chief's
side in the quarrel. We settled the dispute in his favour;
we took possession in his name; we then induced him to
make it over to us, and to justify ourselves we have heaped
charges of foul dealing on the unhappy Free State
Governments. We have sent menacing ultimatums to
both of them, as if we were deliberately making or finding
excuses to suppress them. Had we only let the Diamond
Fields alone, the mere influx of British population would
long ago have brought both the provinces back to us. By






Leaves from a South African Journal.


our stupid interference we have exasperated the entire
Dutch population in the colony and out of it, and as confederation, by bringing the Dutch states into the dominion,
would give the Dutch element an overwhelming preponderance, we have made it a serious question whether confederation is a step which can now be safely ventured.
My own private opinion is more and more that the Imperial Government should confine itself to the Table Mountain Peninsula, fortify the two harbours, and hold it as a
naval and military station, leaving the rest of the country
to itself.
The President spoke at a public dinner last night, talking with vague enthusiasm about united South Africa.
I asked him what the flag was to be. He hesitated, but I
saw what he meant. I told him that a South African flag
would float over Cape Town Castle and Simon's Bay when
South Africa was strong enough to drive us out, but
neither he nor I would live to see it. I wish the good
people in England would resolve definitely as to what they
want to be done. When they know their own minds, the
colonists will know what to expect.
Potschefftromn, Nov. 20.-On the road once more. On
my way to this place from Pretoria I spent a night at the
house of a representative Transvaal Boer, Oberholster by
name.   Camping out has grown disagreeable. The forenoons are clear and hot. About two o'clock flecks of cloud
begin to show. By sunset the horizon is black all round,
distant lightning flashing in every direction.  The air
becomes deathly still, and by this time your tent must be
pitched, and a trench dug round it; your cart must be
secured, and your belongings lashed as tight as ropes can
bind them. Suddenly, with a loud roar, comes a hurricane, sending dust, sand, gravel whisking past, as if the
bags of Eolus had burst. This lasts five minutes or so.




380     Leaves from a South African Journal.


Again a pause, and then the artillery of heaven opens out
upon you, a crash as if from a thousand cannons, east,
west, north, south, overhead and everywhere. The forked
lightning blazes without interval, red, white, blue, green.
The rain happily pours in cataracts along with it, or the
trees and animals exposed would fare worse than they do.
This sort of thing continues six or seven hours, and is
repeated almost every day while the wet season lasts, so
that a tent, notwithstanding the superior cleanliness of
it, no longer forms the most comfortable of night
lodgings.
My old Boer host on this occasion is a patriarch of
sixty. His farm is large, well planted, and well cultivated, and inside his house and outside there is' an appearance of rude abundance.  On his hall table stands a
huge clamped Bible of 1750, with a register of the family
for 120 years. His sons and daughters are married, and
live with their wives and husbands in cottages on the
estate at no great distance. With each new family another
hundred acres have been fenced in and brought under the
plough. Children and grandchildren dropped in for the
evening meal at the common table, young giants, handsome, grave, and ponderous, and bright-eyed girls dashing
through the doors out of the storm, and flinging off their
dripping hoods. Our supper consisted of cold venison,
eggs, bread, and Indian corn, with here at any ratefresh milk. The old man said a long grace before and
after. I glanced at the youths. There was not a sign of
weariness about them.  Their manners were perfectly
simple and reverent.
My bed was rough, but clean, and I was not disturbed
by intruders. In the morning I was awoke by a psalm,
with which the day's work always begins on a Boer's
farm. The breakfast was like the supper overnight. The




Leaves from a South African Journal.  381


old lady and two young ones, who alone appeared of the
party of the evening before, looked as stiff and prim as if
they had walked out of one of Van Eyck's pictures.
The Diamond Fields, Nov. 28.-The storms put an end
to my gipsy life. I sold my cart, mules, and guns at
Potscheffstrom, sent my two lads home by a waggon to
Natal, and took to the mail cart. The roads are mere
tracks, littered with stones the size of thirty-two pound
cannon balls. The mail travels night and day, with ten
mules or horses, and plunges on with supreme disregard
either of rock or hole. The cart is roofed and curtained
with leather, the brass buttons by which the curtains are
fastened being so conveniently arranged that at each jolt
you are likely to have your temple cut or your cheek laid
open. The distance from Potscheffstrom to this place is
from four to five hundred miles. I lad several fellowpassengers, all characteristic of the spot for which I was
bound. One was a 5Jew diamond dealer, another a storekeeper, another a digger, another a land shark or speculator. A fifth amused and instructed me. "When I first
came to this country, sir," he said, "I tried industry;
but it didn't pay, and I took to scheming and did better."
His scheming consisted in going to England when the
Diamond diggings were opened, buying a gambling and
drinking saloon with all necessary fittings, securing the
services of half a dozen young ladies from the Haymarket
to attend, and carrying it all out and setting it going.
With this contrivance he made thirty or forty thousand
pounds in one year, but he lost it the next in gambling.
"Alas!" he said, "all that I touch turns to gold. Any
iool can make a fortune here, but it requires a wise man
man to keep it."
The nearer we approach the Fields the louder and more
universal the cry against the injustice done to the Free




382    Leaves from a South African Journal.


States. An Englishman whom I met at Christiana told
me he was ashamed of his country.
On the evening of the third day after leaving Potscheffstrom we came down to the Vaal River, intending to
cross in a ferry boat an hour before sunset. The thunderclouds unfortunately had gathered up that afternoon
blacker than I had yet seen them. Between four and five
o'clock the storm began, and between the darkness and
the blinding effects of the lightning, in the intervals of the
flashes we could scarcely see ten yards from us. Even in
South Africa I never saw such a display of celestial fireworks. The lightning was rose colour, deepening at times
to crimson. Each flash appeared like a cross, a vertical
line seeming to strike the earth, a second line. crossing it
horizontally. The air was a blaze of fire. The rain fell
in such a deluge that the plain in a few minutes was like
a lake. Of course we could not move. The horses stood
shivering up to their fetlocks in water.  At one time
there was no interval between the flash and the report, so
that we were in the very centre of the storm. The sense
of utter helplessness prevented me from being nervous; I
sat still and looked at it in mere amazement. In two hours
it was over. The sky cleared almost suddenly, and, with
the dripping landscape shining in the light of a summer
sunset, we splashed on to the river, here about as broad as
the Thames at Westminster. We crossed with some trouble,
the ferry boat being half full of water. Night being now
on us in earnest, we had to wait at the ferryman's hut
till the moon rose. He had caught some barbel (so he
called them) in the river with night lines. One of these
monsters, as big as a moderate sized pig, with an enormous
head and long horns, the conductor bought, to take on
and sell at the Diamond Fields. The diggers are openhanded, and the price of anything at Kimberley (as my




Leaves from a South African Journal.  383


speculating friend told me) is whatever the owner likes to
ask. I objected to this addition to our company in the
waggon, so it was lashed to the pole underneath, the tail
flapping on the sands. At 10.30 we started (having lost
time to make up) with ten half-broken horses. I asked
how the road was, and got a shrug for an answer. In a
few minutes we were bounding at full speed over a track
littered with cannon balls, and our bodies flying like shuttlecocks between our seats and the roof. I for one felt as
if I should go to pieces. At intervals the conductor looked
in, coolly saying, "Well, gentlemen, how do you feel
yourselves?"
He knew by experience, I suppose, that we should be
none the worse for it, and people do not go to South
Africa to be comfortable. Enough that at ten this morning we arrived at the spot which has caused so much
heart-burning in South African Society, and disturbed the
market for jewels all over the world.
The town of Kimberley, so called because Lord Kimberley was the Colonial Minister who is responsible for the
annexation of this precious possession, is like a squalid
Wimbledon Camp set down in an arid desert. The houses
are of iron, wood, and canvas, every particle of which has
been brought out from England, and has been carried up on
waggons from the sea. The streets are axle deep in what
is either mud or dust, according to the season. The inhabitants, who are of all nations and colours, muster at the
present time between twenty and thirty thousand, and
may be described as the Bohemians of the four continents.
By Bohemian I do not mean to be uncomplimentary. I
mean merely a class of persons who prefer adventure and
speculation to settled industry, and who do not work well in
the harness of ordinary life.  Here are diggers from
America and Australia, German speculators, Fenian head



384    Leaves from a South African Journal.


centres, traders, saloon-keepers, professional gamblers,
barristers (I heard one of these say it was a lawyers'
Eldorado), ex-officers of the army and navy, younger sons
of good family, who have not taken to a profession or
have been obliged to leave it.  A marvellous motley assemblage, among whom money flows like water from the
amazing productiveness of the mine; and in the midst of
them a hundred or so keen-eyed Jewish merchants, who
have gathered like eagles over their prey, and a few
thousand natives who have come to work for wages, to
steal diamonds, and to lay their earnings out in rifles and
powder.
There are three pits out of which the diamonds are
taken. One of them two miles off is comparatively unproductive, one better, but still negligently worked; the
third is the famous Koppe, about which the town has
formed itself. This Koppe was once a rounded hillock,
swelling out of the plain and covered with mimosa trees,
under the shade of which passing wagons stopped to rest.
Eyes negligently looking round one day saw something
shining in the grass; a tuft was pulled up, and more
sparks were seen about the roots. Digging began, and it
was discovered that through the level shale which forms
the ordinary surface an oval hole had been cut, as if by
some elliptical boring tool, working with singular evenness. The length of the opening is about 1,200 feet, the
breadth 900, the sides perpendicular; the depth unknown,
for they are afraid to bore. A discovery that the bottom
is near would destroy the value of the property. A discovery that there is no bottom would convulse the diamond market. At present they have cut down about 120
feet.
Four or five thousand blacks are picking into the blue
crumbling substance, neither clay nor stone, in which the




Leaves friom a South African Journal.  385


diamonds are embedded. The area is divided into claims,
or quadrilateral sections, thirty feet by twenty, which are
held as freeholds, and.again are subdivided into half and
quarter claims. Each owner works by himself or with
his own servants. He has his own wire rope, and his own
basket, by which he sends his stuff to the surface to be
washed. The rim of the pit is fringed with windlasses.
The descending wire-ropes stretch from them thick as gossamers on an autumn meadow. The system       is as demoralising as it is ruinous. The owner cannot be ubiquitous: if he is with his washing-cradle, his servants in
the pit steal his most valuable stones and secrete them.
Forty per cent. of the diamonds discovered are supposed
to be lost in this way. The sides fall in from the strain
of so much weight on the brink. A company working the
mine systematically with a couple of steam-engines could
produce the same results with a tenth of the labour, and
so obviously is the interest of the claim-owners in making
the change, that if left to themselves they would form into
a company to-morrow. The Government, however, forbids it; for the natural reason that the vagabond population would disappear, the army of gamblers, keepers of
saloons and drink-shops; a single magistrate would then
suffice for peace and order, and the Governor and his staff
and the 100,0001. a year which is now raised and spent
out of the produce of the pit would disappear together.
The Governor himself, Mr. Southey, is one of the most
remarkable men in South Africa. He won his spurs in
the Kafir war of 1834. He was with Sir Harry Smith
when Hintza, the Kafir chief, was killed, and he so much
recommended himself that he rose fast in the public service. He was for many years Colonial Secretary, and
held that office when, in opposition to his protests, responsible government was thrust upon the colony. He could
25




386    Leaves from a South African Journal.


not believe that it would work successfully. His desire
was and is to see South Africa British up to the Zambesi
River, the native chiefs taken  everywhere under the
British flag, and the whole country governed by the
Crown. When the Diamond Fields were annexed as a
Crown colony, he accepted the governorship, with a hope
that, north of the Orange River, he might carry out his
own policy, check the encroachments of the Transvaal
Republic, and extend the empire internally.
It has been the one mistake of Mr. Southey's life.
Being without a force of any kind he could only control
the republics by the help of the native chiefs, and the
coercion of the republics in any way became impossible from
the moment that the control of the Cape Colony was passed
over to its own people. Otherwise I have rarely met a man
whom I have more admired. Mr. Southey is over seventy.
He drove me one day seventy miles in a cart with as wild
a team as I ever sat behind, and he went to a party in the
evening. I said to myself as I looked at him, " If some one
came in and told you that you were to be taken out and
shot in five minutes, you would finish what you were about
with perfect deliberation, and not a muscle of your face
would alter."
I have heard much while here of the manner in which
the claim of Waterboer, the native chief whose cause we
espoused, was pressed against the Free States. It has
become painfully clear to me that the English Government
has been misled by a set of border land jobbers into doing
an unjust thing, and it is equally difficult to persist and
to draw back.  I am now going to Bloemfonteine, where
I shall see the President, and hear what he has to say.
1 Mr. Southey has now returned to the Cape Parliament, where it
is to be hoped that he will once more render valuable service to his
country.




Leaves from a South African Journal.


387


Bloemfonteine, Dec. 6.-After a week at the Diamond
Fields, I started again in the mail cart for this place. The
distance is but ninety miles.  The roads, I was told, were
good, and that we should do it in a single day. Alas!
between the Diamond Fields and Bloemfonteine lies the
Modder or Mud River, fitly so named, especially if it be in
flood as it was when we came up to it. Dense volumes
of turbid filth were rolling along at the level of the banks,
and the passage seemed impossible. We spent the night
at a shanty. In the morning the water did not seem to
have fallen. "It was stark," the driver said, but he had
seen it worse, and we must go any way. He took us three
miles higher up, to a place where he said the river was
broader and not so deep. Passing through the fringe of
bushes we had the Modder again before us, perhaps 200 yards
wide.  The bank on which we stood was twenty-five feet
above the river, with a steep track cut through it, down
which the carts could go. The horses were taken out, as
they cannot be trusted to draw steadily in deep water, and
they at once plunged in and struggled across half
swimming.   A dozen heavy oxen then appeared on the
opposite side led by Kafirs, who were to come over and
take charge of us. The stream was violent.  The Kafirs
were up to their necks, and sometimes slipped and rolled
under. The oxen and they reached us undrowned, however, and were "inspanned " to our cart. We put our
boxes on the seats, and ourselves climbed to the top of
them, and commended ourselves to Providence. The slide
down the bank was the first and worst danger, for the
pole was crazy and bent and twisted as the weight fell
upon it.  It held, however, and in we went, and with the
driver swearing, the Kafirs yelling, and the water pouring through the cart within an inch of the seats, we
scrambled across somehow, and found brandy and hot




388     Leaves from a South African Journal.


coffee ready, prepared for us in case we had met with a
misadventure.
Without further misfortune we arrived at Bloemfonteine, a pretty town 4,500 feet above the sea, clustered
round the foot of the old British fort on which the
Free State flag is now flying.  It is now the Dutch
capital, the stronghold of Dutch politics and Dutch
religion, the central object of the pride and hope of
Dutch nationality.
For some reason unknown to me, Bloemfonteine has
been selected also as a special scene of missionary exertion
by the extreme High Church party in England. There is
a bishop here whose vestments would look gorgeous on a
Greek archimandrite, there is an Anglo-Catholic nunnery,
in the neighbourhood there is a college of Anglo-Catholic
monks, and attached to the nunnery an excellent girls'
school, of which the Dutch themselves speak in terms of
high admiration.
The day after my arrival was Sunday. I went to the
cathedral, when the bishop preached.  Being in a republic he had caught something of its spirit. He told us
that we lived in days of democracy, when the principle of
loyalty had no longer any earthly object to which it could
attach itself. But every natural principle must have some
object, and loyalty would therefore instinctively turn to
Christ, and to the Bishop. I thought the anticipation
rather sanguine. But the Bishop is an accomplished and
even superior person. I dined with him afterwards, and
heard much that interested me on the state of the country.
He tells that the price of everything is five times what it
was before the diamond discovery. Living is three times
as expensive as in England. The country is flooded with
money; but with butter at seven shillings a pound, and
milk a shilling a pint-the present prices in Bloemfon



Leaves from a South African Journal.  389


teine market-no one is much the better for it. The English trade and speculate, but do not care to cultivate the
soil. The Dutch grow what they require for their own
households, but being indifferent about money they will
not go out of their way to raise supplies for others; and
yet we are told that the Diamond Fields have saved the
country. Politically, socially, and economically they appear to me to have been a mere nuisance. The feeling
here is extremely bitter against the English Government.
I cannot wonder at it.
Dec. 7.-This morning I called on the President. He
is a resolute, stubborn-looking man, with a frank, but not
over conciliatory, expression of face. The day of my visit
being his birthday, he was sitting in state to receive
visitors. He has just recovered from a severe illness, and
lis people are enthusiastically attached to him.  His
manner to me was short and abrupt. He said that the
English Government had ill treated him. He had done
what he could to bring about an arrangement; but he had
failed, and we must now take our own course. Experience
showed that all colonies became sooner or later independent. At no very distant time the British would leave
South Africa altogether, and he could afford to wait. I
said the Cape was not a colony only, but a naval and
military station, and of vital importance to us. I did not
think it likely that we should abandon it. He was cold
and incredulous, and we have parted without any wish
expressed on his part to see me again. I am sorry, for
though his face is hard as a flint, integrity is written in
every line of it.
Dec. 8.-Better prospects. The President has sent to
ask me to dine with him.
I here omit many pages, chiefly occupied with the




390     Leaves from a South African Journal.


Diamond Field Transactions. The President has been
since in England. The dispute with the Imperial Government has been arranged on terms mutually satisfactory.
There is no occasion to pursue further details which are
now superfluous.
I stayed over a week at Bloemfonteine. Two days were
given to a visit to Trabancho, an independent native territory lying in the middle of the republic, and ruled over
by an old Bechuana chief or king, named Moroco. Moroco was a middle-aged man when the Dutch first crossed
the Orange River. He is a relic of another age, and the
State Secretary and the Chief Justice offered to drive me
over to see him. Here is the account of our expedition.
Friday, Dec. 13.-We started yesterday in a cart with
four horses for Trabancho. It is thirty-five miles off, the
mountain being clea ly visible from Bloemfonteine.
The drive was of the Usual kind. It is hot summer,
the rain has stopped for a while, and the mud in the
roads is baked as hard as brick. We had again to cross
the Modder River. The leaders bolted as we were going
down into it, and we were swinging for a moment over
the edge of a precipice. As we scrambled up the other
side the wheelers jibbed; we were saved from rolling back
into the water only by the depth of the clay in which the
wheels were buried. These adventures pass for nothing
in South Africa. The Bishop's archdeacon was upset in a
river a week ago, and lost his cope and chasuble.
At four o'clock we reached our destination, and drove
to the Wesleyan Missionary Station, a long straggling
house with a chapel and school-room attached. Across a
ravine stands the new Anglican monastery. Between the
station and the monks there is little or no communication.
It was a lovely summer evening, and the missionary and
his family being out, we strolled up to call on the King.






Leaves from a South African Journal.  391


In the South African towns generally the natives are relegated to the suburbs. At Trabancho the King and his
court have the post of honour. The white traders and
clergy are in the back premises. The city is composed of
about 1,500 beehive huts, thatched with reeds, each surrounded with a stone wall.  Swarms of children were
playing in the sunshine, necklaces of beads being their
chief or only covering, and the little stomachs blown out
till they shone, with mealies, or buckwheat porridge. A
flagstaff denoted the royal residence. We made for it, and
presently the eldest of the princes came out, a middleaged thick-set man, dressed in a Methodist parson's castoff suit of clothes, followed by other chiefs in skins. We
shook hands, and immediately after the old King himself
came up, handsomely dressed in leopard-skins, and walking slowly with a knob-stick. Chairs were placed for the
King and the visitors. The Prime Minister and the court
jester sat on the ground on each side of his majesty, and
a circle of thirty or forty of the principal people squatted
round, some of the youngsters wearing military caps. All
were covered more or less, and had at least a blanket.
The King asked after the Queen, whom he professed to
hold in high respect, and then made some minute enquiries
into the Diamond Field business. Having satisfied his
curiosity, I asked him if he had heard of the Langabalele
affair. He looked surprised, affected ignorance, and appealed to his minister. The minister seemed to know no
more than he. I discovered afterward that they had been
watching the whole business with the intensest interest.
At that moment a party from Langabalele's tribe were in
Trabancho, and were probably in the suite listening to us
at that moment.
Two of the princes are Christians, and are anxious for
their father's conversion. But he sticks to his heathenism.




392    Leaves from a South African Journal.


" My sons," he said, "want me to be baptized. I say to
them Christians here," pointing to the Wesleyan Station,
"and Christians there," pointing to the Anglican monks,
"Christians there won't speak to Christians here. When
one of them has converted the other it will be time to
come to me."
Trabancho is maintained by the Free State, partly to
show the world how good a Dutch State can be to the
natives, and partly as a nursery for labourers; but it was
not a pretty sight to me. Food of course has to be supplied for so many people, and a certain quantity of ground
is cultivated; but the work here as elsewhere is almost
wholly done by the women. The men are not allowed to
fight, and fighting being the only labour they understand,
they are hopelessly idle.
When we returned to the station the missionary had
come in. He entertained us to the best of his ability.
He gave us a supper, which, if plain, was abundant.
Hunger was the best of sauces, and his conversation was
instructive if not amusing. To lodge us was the chief
difficulty. There was one spare bed, and there was a
sofa in the sitting-room. The Chief Justice and the Secretary of State took the bed and gave the sofa to me. My
mind misgave me. I remembered my experience with a
sofa at the Vaal River. There were neither matches nor
candles, so I prudently did not extinguish the lamp when
I lay down. Five minutes were all that I could bear. I
bounded back into my clothes, turned up the lamp again,
and settled into a chair. What was I to do? On the
table lay a history of Methodism in seven volumes, a commentary on St. Paul in five volumes. Happily on a distant shelf, concealed modestly behind a curtain, I discovered a pile of novels, and read myself to sleep with
" Modern Accomplishments."




Leaves from a South African Journal.   393
Dec. 15.-I have heard all that the President can tell
me. I have seen evidence of the plainest kind that in the
time of the sovereignty the British authorities themselves
occupied the territory where the Diamond Fields have
been discovered, and that we then recognised no right to
it in Waterboer or his Griquas. It had been under the
jurisdiction of the Free State ever since the proclamation
of independence. Another Griqua chief had asserted
some vague right to it. The Free State Government,
wishing to be conciliatory, had paid this chief a sum of
money to extinguish any doubt which might remain. The
English Government, in taking up Waterboer's cause,
have distinctly broken a treaty which they had renewed
but one year before in a very solemn manner, and the
Colonial Office, it is painfully evident to me, has been
duped by an ingenious conspiracy. Duped perhaps is
scarcely the right word. Had we ourselves remained in
possession of the country, not much would have been heard
of the claims of Waterboer.
I have now learned as much as I am likely to learn,
and may make my way back to Port Elizabeth. I am
tired of knocking about. I have still 500 miles of Cape
roads before me. The rivers in the colony are reported to
be in flood, and the bridges to be broken. Mr. H —,
an exceptionally agreeable English gentleman, who is
here, undertakes to drive me in his cart to Fauresmith,
seventy-two miles of the way. There I shall fall in with
" Cobb's coach" from Kimberley to Algoa Bay. I have
tried to point out to people here how absurd it is for them
to talk of South African independence. In the towns they
import everything which they consume. They import
their flour; they import Australian meat; they import
milk, butter, tinned vegetables; they import their furniture, their clothes, and even timber to floor and roof their




394    Leaves from a South African Journal.


houses. They manufacture nothing except waggons and
harness. They are dependent on Europe for their commonest necessaries of life. They produce, to buy these
things, wool, diamonds, gold, copper, and ostrich feathers.
But they cannot live on these. Three frigates could close
their harbours, and they would be at once upon their
knees.
cFauresmith, Dec. 19.-An agreeable drive brought us
here yesterday. Mr. H-    told me on the way that the
President believes that he is in no danger of forcible
annexation. He supposes the European powers would
interfere to protect him. If he has no better security, I
don't think that will save him.
We saw a curious sight on the way: a locust swarm, a
great brown cloud sweeping through the air, pursued by
an army of locust-birds, large fly-catchers, like swallows,
but twice the size. These birds sweep up and down the
swarm clipping off the wings of the locusts, which then
fall like rain to the ground, when the birds alight and
devour them at leisure. There are all the plagues of
Egypt in this country except one. The flies blacken your
breakfast table. The frogs have given me many a sleepless night. Lice there are none, but change the translation
slightly, and you are provided to your skin's discontent.
The locusts desolate the fields and gardens. The hail is
so violent that in Natal and the Transvaal it will pierce
holes through roofs of corrugated iron. Under a thundercloud there is the darkness of midnight. Red-water and
horse-sickness are an equivalent for murrain, and if the
rivers are not turned to blood, they come down after rain
with the consistency of red soup.
There is another diamond pit at Fauresmith, not encouraging on the surface, but no one knows what may not
lie a few feet below. I have met here a man who was




Leaves from a South African Journal.


395


agent for the branch of the Griqua tribe that claimed the
Kimberley country. It was this man who sold it to the
Free State Government in the Griquas' behalf. He told
me that the whole transaction with Waterboer was a
piece of thimble-rig, and he could prove it in any court
of arbitration in the world.
Colesberg, Dec. 19.-Again in the Cape Colony. Cobb's
coach hanging fire, and there being some doubt whether
any coach would run again till the floods had gone down,
I found a friend to drive me to the Orange River. At the
passage I was told that I should find a ferry and a carriage which would take me on to Colesberg. The Orange
River, though it has still 800 miles to run, is even here
an impressive stream-600 feet across, deep and rapid.
The ferryman, a Dutchman, and therefore never in a
hurry, was slowly transporting vast droves of oxen to the
colonial border.- Would he send me over? He would.
He would not. He did not know. Why could I not go
by the mail cart? It was then noon. He promised me
an answer at three. I sat down with a cigar and a drawing
book. Three hours passed. I again applied, and again
found myself treated with phlegmatic indifference. The
alternative before me was to sleep supperless on the sands.
I said nothing, lighted another cigar, reseated myself, and
sketched on. He approved of my composure, relented,
and told me I should go.   There was really not the
slightest difficulty. There was a carriage with a pair of
horses on the other side, which was ready in a few minutes,
and in two hours I was again in a British colonial town.
The best hotel is full. I have to take up with a place
kept by a drunken lout from High Wickham, whose wife,
however, has sense and cleanliness. The bad specimens
of colonists copy the Kafirs, and leave their wives to work
while they drink and sleep. This poor woman slaves to




396     Leaves from a South -African Journal.


keep things straight, but with imperfect success. The
diamonds, she says, have turned everybody's head. There
is more money, but living is ruinously expensive, and no
*    one is the better for it.
I passed a farm on my way here which was a model in
its way. The owner was an Englishman, and when an
Englishman will work at agriculture, he shows the Dutchman how to do it.
Colesberg itself lies in a rocky valley, more than 4,000
feet above the sea, and is geologically the strangest place
I ever saw. A huge flat-topped mountain rises over it,
formed of alternate layers of stratified rock and limestone,
the horizontal beds perfectly even, as if they had never
been disturbed, yet beds of igneous rock, many hundred
feet thick, lying on the top of them.
New Bedford, Dec. 24.-We are descending from the
highlands at last, and are again among the jessamines
and the orange-trees. Five days ago I left Colesberg with
a cart and pair of horses to make my way down the
colony, and I have travelled at the rate of about fifty
miles a day. The first evening after sunset I passsed a
handsome house belonging to a Dutchman. He was
sitting in the twilight outside his door with his wife, a
middle-aged lady, but still handsome, and with beautiful
eyes. I stopped to give the horses some water. We fell
into conversation. I asked for fresh milk. They sent a
boy to the stable with a tumbler to milk a cow for me.
They invited me to stay there for the night, with a courtesy and repose of manner which no English lord and
lady could have outdone. The Dutch having been long
settled in the country have a dignity about them which
contrasts favourably with Anglo-colonial smartness. I
regretted to leave them, but it was moonlight, and we
pushed on. The roads, which are bad enough by day, are




Leaves from a South African Journal.  397


horrible at night. They are mere wheeel-tracks, the ruts
a foot or two deep, and the baked clay through which
they are cut now as hard as stone. The road commissioners are the country farmers. I said to some one that
I met on the way, that I supposed the Dutch rarely left
their homes, and so did not care. I was told that if I
could choose a road that led to a church I should always
find it good. The farmers will go with their families fifty
miles to a church, and never miss a church festival. The
ministers are better paid than average state officials, and
the Dutch meeting-houses are the handsomest buildings
in South Africa. I saw, in passing through Cradock, a
church which would have been called fine anywhere in
Europe. The Dutch farmers of the neighbourhood had
built it entirely. The news about the floods is too true.
Although it is summer there has been a heavy fall of
snow on the mountains. It has melted suddenly. Violent
rain falling at the same time, has burst simultaneously a
number of ill-made reservoirs, and the Great Fish River
has risen to forty feet above its natural level. The banks
are wooded. The torrent rushing over them tears out the
trees by the roots, and the river rolls along, carrying with
it enormous masses of floating timber. No imaginable
bridge can stand such a strain, and it is a serious problem
how the railways are by-and-by to be carried over these
rivers. A druggist at Cradock, whose son is at a Scotch
university, kindly took charge of me as an ex-Lord Rector. He placed me in the hands of an experienced young
Dutchman who knew the points where the Fish River
could be crossed, and, after less serious difficulties than
befel me at the Modder, I am now within 120 miles of
Port Elizabeth. New Bedford is one of the prettiest towns
which I have seen, nestled among densely wooded mountains, and luxurious with the wild variety of sub-tropical




398    Leaves from a South African Journal.


vegetation. Half a mile distant, among orange groves,
and approached through vast oak avenues, lie the remains
of the ruined house of Sir Andrew Stockenstrom, who was
so honourably distinguished in the last generation by his
endeavours to protect and raise the native tribes on the
borders. The house was burnt in one of the Kafir wars,
and has not been restored. The trees which were planted
round it would be splendid even in an English park.
All else is desolate. Wild jessamines creep among the
broken casements.  A  dismounted cannon of the last
century, with a Dutch inscription, lies half-buried under
leaves, and as a practical comment on the owner's chivalrous
efforts to elevate the Kafir race by mere benevolence, the
town to-day is full of black creatures, of both sexes and
all ages, who have come in to drink, and are lying about
in the sun idle and masterless.
Tunbridge, Dec. 26.-Only thirty miles left. Saw the
sea to-day from the final ridge over which we crossed, and
after my long battering journey, I cried out like the vanguard of the ten thousand when they looked down on
Trebizond. For the last two days we have been descending through picturesque ravines, studded with the African
aloe. The open hills blaze with mesembryanthemums. The
ivy-leaf geranium runs like a creeper up the stems of the
trees on the river sides, and pours its flowers in cascades
over the branches. The banks of the streams are fringed
with the fronds of giant ferns. This afternoon we took
our last leap, 1,200 feet, down into the plain, through
winding glens, once the scenes of our most desperate
battles with the Kafirs, now warm and glowing in the
soft light of a summer sunset, fragrant with the million
blossoms of the wild Cape jessamine, and with no more
formidable animals concealed among the thickets than
armies of grey baboons, which were playing on the grassy




Leaves from a South African Journal.


399


lawns that opened in the intervals of the forest. One very
large fellow, with white whiskers and sharp twinkling
eyes, stood half hidden in a bush to watch us as we passed.
AMy negro driver, silent and solemn hitherto, burst into
shouts of delight at the sight of his relation. I begged
him to be silent, that I might get a nearer view, but he
understood the matter better than I did. He addressed
Jock, as he called him, in terms of affectionate greeting.
Jock chattered, slipped round the bush, and waved his
paw.   I had just seen worse manners at the last hotel
which I had passed, where the innkeeper boasted to me
that, when the late Governor, Sir Philip Wodehouse, called
there, he had made Sir Philip know that he, in his own
house, was as good a governor as the other.  A free
Africander was not going to humble himself before the
best Excellency that could be sent from England.
Tunbridge, Sunday evening, Dec. 27.-The last day of
my singular journey. I have travelled 1,500 miles on
the roughest roads that I have ever been jolted over,
amidst thunderstorms and hard living and nights without
sleep. Had I been thirty, it would have been the most
delightful of adventures. When one is near sixty, adventures cease to be exhilarating.  When I was leaving
Maritzburg, plunging into the heart of an unknown wilderness, I thought of Faust descending to "the Mothers"
and Mephistopheles's
Ich bin neugierig wenn er wiederkommt.
I am a stone lighter than when I was last at Port Elizabeth. In a Potchefistrom newspaper I saw myself described
as "a lean grey old gentleman," but I am strong and well,
and none the worse for what I have gone through. If I
can convince others as I have convinced myself that the
annexation of the Diamond Fields was a crime and a




400      Leaves from a South African Journal.
blunder, and that if South Africa is to prosper as a British dependency, we must find some means to repair the
wrong which we were misled into committing, my small
exertions will not have been wholly thrown away.'
I Compensation has since been made to the Free State, and the
Diamond Fields are British territory, with the full consent of the
President and the Volksraad.-Feb. 1877.




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will comprise a number of compact, handsomely printed manuals, prepared by thoroughly
competent hands, each volume complete in itself, and sketching succinctly the most important epochs in the world's history, always making the history of a nation subordinate to this
more general idea. No attempt will be made to recount all the events of any given period.
The aim will be to bring out in the clearest light the salient incidents and features of each
epoch. Special attention will be paid to the literature, manners, state of knowledge, and all
those characteristics which exhibit the life of a people as well as the policy of their rulers
during any period. To make the text more readily intelligible, outline maps will be given
with each volume, and where this arrangement is desirable they will be distributed throughout the text so as to be more easy of reference. A series of works based upon this general
plan can not fail to be widely useful in popularizing history as science has been popularized.
Those who have been discouraged from attempting more ambitious works because of their
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THE FOLL 0 WING VOL UMES ARE NO W READ Y:
THE ERA OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION. By F. SEEBOHM, Author
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THE CRUSADES. By Rev. G. W. Cox, M.A., Author of the "History of
Greece."
THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR, 1618-1648. By SAMUEL RAWSON GARDINER.
THE HOUSES OF LANCASTER AND YORK; with the CONQUEST and
LOSS of FRANCE. By JAMES GAIRDNER of the Public Record Office.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND FIRST EMPIRE: an Historical Sketch;
By WILLIAM O'CONNOR sMIORRIS, with an appendix by Hon. ANDREW D.
WHITE, President of Cornell University.
THE AGE OF ELIZABETH. By Rev. MI. CREIGHTON, M.A.
THE FALL OF THE STUARTS AND WESTERN EUROPE FROM
1678 to 1697. By Rev. E. HALE, M.A.
THE PURITAN REVOLUTION 1603-1660. ByS R. GARDINER.
THE EARLY PLANTAGENETS. By Rev. WM. STUBBS.,o    Copies sent post-paid, on receipt of Irice, by the Publishers,
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EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY.
[Uniform with Epochs of Modern History,]
Just published, the initial Volume with four colored maps. Price $i.oo.
THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS. By the Rev. GEORGE W. Cox, M.A.,
late Scholar of Trinity College, Oxford.
THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE, from the Flight of Xerxes to the Fall of Athens.
By the Rev. G. W. Cox, M.A., Joint-Editor of the Series.
THE ROMAN TRIUMVIRATES. By the Very Rev. CHARLES MERIVALE, D.D.,
Dean of Ely.
THE EARLIER EMPIRE. By the Rev. W. WOLFE CAPES, M.A., Reader of
Ancient History in the University of Oxford.
*** To be followed, at frequent intervals, by the following Works in continuation of the same Series:SPARTAN AND THEBAN SUPREMACY. By CHARLES SANKEY, M.A., late
Scholar of Queen's College, Oxford, Joint-Editor of the Series.
MACEDONIAN EMPIRE, its RISE and CULMINATION to the DEATH of
ALEXANDER the GREAT. By A. M. CURTEIS, M.A., Assistant-Master,
Sherborne School.
ROME, to its CAPTURE by the GAULS. By WILHELM IHNE, Author of
"History of Rome." (Shortly.)
ROME AND CARTHAGE, the PUNIC WARS. ByR. BOSWORTH SMITH, M.A.
Assistant-Master, Harrow School.
THE GRACCHI, MARIUS, AND SULLA. By A. H. BEESLY, M.A., AssistantMaster, Marlborough College.
THE AGE OF TRAJAN AND THE ANTONINES. By the Rev. W. WOLFB
CAPES, M.A., Reader of Ancient History in the University of Oxford.
EACH I VOL. I6MO., CLOTH, UNIFORM. PRICE, $1.00.
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