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, Dr. Clawbonny, and Johnson, accompanied by Foker and Strong, the cook, got into the whaling-boat, and went on shore.

The Governor, with his wife and five children, came courteously to meet their visitors. Dr. Clawbonny knew enough Danish to establish friendly relations between them, and Foker, the ice-master, who was also interpreter, knew about twenty words of the Esquimaux tongue, and a good deal can be done with twenty words if one is not very ambitious.

The Governor was born in Isle Disko, and had never been out of it in his life. He did the honors of his town, composed of three wooden houses for himself and the three Lutheran ministers, a school, and a few shops, which were stocked by shipwrecked vessels. The rest of the town consisted of snow-huts, with one single opening, into which the Esquimaux crawled on all-fours.

A great part of the inhabitants had gone out to meet the Forward, and more than one advanced as far as the middle of the bay in his kayak.

The Doctor knew that the word esquimaux means eater of raw fish, but he also knew that this name is considered an insult by the natives; and he therefore took care to call them "Greenlanders."

And yet their oily sealskin clothes and boots, and the greasy, foetid smell of both men and women—for one sex is hardly distinguishable from the other—told plainly enough the description of food on which they lived, as well as the disease of leprosy which prevailed to some extent among them, as it does among most ichthyophagous races, though it did not affect their health.

The Lutheran clergyman and his wife, with whom the Doctor was anticipating some pleasant intercourse, were on a visitation in the south, below Upernavik, so he was obliged to make the best of the Governor. This worthy functionary was not very lettered; a little less intelligence would have made him an ass; a little more, and he would have known how to read.

The Doctor also wished to make a personal inspection of an Esquimaux hut, but, fortunately for him, the entrance


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 was too small to allow of his admission. It was a happy escape, for nothing can be more repulsive than the interior of a Greenland hut, with its heap of dead and living things, seal-flesh, and Esquimaux rotten fish, and stinking garments; not even a solitary window to purify the air; nothing but a hole at the top, which allows the smoke to escape, but not the fœtid smell.

Shandon, meanwhile, was obeying the instructions of his unknown commander, and procuring means of transport over the ice. He had to pay £4 for a sledge and six dogs, and even then the natives wished to get out of their bargain. He also sought to engage the services of Hans Christian to manage the dogs, the same young man that accompanied the McClintock expedition, but found he had gone to the south of Greenland.

But the most important part of Shandon's business was to try and discover whether there was any European at Upernavik waiting for the arrival of the Forward. Was the Governor acquainted with any stranger, an Englishman most probably, who had taken up his abode in this region? When had he last had any intercourse with whalers or other vessels?

To these questions the Governor replied that not a single stranger had landed on the coast for more than ten months. It was evidently a hopeless mystery, and Shandon could not help crowing a little over the disappointment of the sanguine Doctor.

"You must own it is quite inexplicable," he said; "nothing at Cape Farewell, nothing at Isle Disko, nothing at Upernavik."

"Wait a few days, and if it turns out there is nothing at Cape Melville either, I shall hail you as the only captain of the Forward."

Towards evening, the whale-boat came back to the ship, bringing Strong, the cook, with some dozens of eider-ducks eggs, twice the size of common hens' eggs, and of a greenish color. His forage for fresh provisions had not been successful, but still the eggs were a very welcome addition to the salt junk.

The wind was favorable next day, but Shandon still delayed weighing anchor. He determined to wait till morning to give time for anyone to come on board that wished, and

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 fired a salute from the cannon every hour to make known the presence of the vessel. It made a tremendous noise among the icebergs, but had no effect beyond frightening the molly-mokes and rotches, who came flying out in clouds. Squibs and rockets in abundance were sent up during the night, but equally without result. There was no alternative but to proceed.

By six o'clock next morning the Forward had lost sight of Upernavik and its ugly posts all along the shore, with strips of seal intestines and paunches of deer hanging to dry. The wind was S.E., and the temperature had risen to 32⁰. The sun appeared through the fog, and the icebergs began to give way a little beneath his melting beams.

The white, dazzling reflections of his rays, however, had a disastrous effect on the men. Wolsten the gunner, Gripper, Clifton, and Bell, were attacked with snow blindness, a very common disease in spring, and often terminating among the Esquimaux in total loss of sight. The Doctor advised everyone, and especially those suffering from the complaint, to wear a green gauze veil, and he was the first to follow his own prescription.

The dogs Shandon had purchased at Upernavik turned out rather wild at first, but they soon became used to the ship, and Captain got on very well with his new associates. He seemed no stranger to their ways, and, as Clifton was not slow to remark, he had evidently been among his Greenland brethren before.

After leaving Upernavik the appearance of the coast quite changed. Immense glaciers stood out against the gray sky, and in the west, beyond the opening of Lancaster Sound, vast ice-fields extended, ridged with hummocks at regular intervals. There was great danger of the brig becoming nipped, as each instant the leads got more impracticable. Shandon had the furnaces lighted, and till the 11th managed to pursue a winding course among the loose floes, but on the morning of the 12th the Forward found herself beset on all sides. Steam proved powerless, and there was no alternative but to cut a way through the ice-fields. This involved great fatigue, and a mutinous spirit began to manifest itself in some of the crew, such as Pen, Gripper, Warren, and Wolsten. Certainly it was hard labor to saw through huge masses six and seven feet thick, and when


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 this was accomplished it was almost as hard to tow the vessel along by means of the capstan and anchors fixed in the ice in holes made with a center-bit. The broken ice, too, had to be constantly pushed back under the floes with long poles tipped with iron, to keep a free passage, and all this physical toil, amid blinding snow, or dense fog, combined with the low temperature, the ophthalmia, and the superstitious fears of Clifton, contributed to weaken the mental and bodily energy of the men.

When the sailors have to deal with a bold, intrepid, decided leader, who knows his own mind and what he intends to do, confidence is felt in spite of themselves; they are one in heart with their captain, strong in his strength and calm in his calmness. But the crew of the Forward were conscious of Shandon's irresolution and hesitancy, for, notwithstanding his natural energy of character, he betrayed his weakness by his frequent countermand of orders, by imprudent remarks, and in a thousand little things that did not escape the notice of his men.

The simple fact, besides, that Shandon was not the captain, was enough to make his orders matters of discussion, and from discussion to rebellion is an easy step.

Before long, the malcontents had won over the head engineer to their side, a man who had been hitherto a very slave of duty.

On the 16th of May, six days from the time the Forward had reached the ice-fields, Shandon had not made two miles farther north. This was a very serious aspect of affairs, for they were in imminent danger of being locked in till the next season.

About eight in the evening, Shandon and the Doctor, accompanied by Garry, went out on a voyage of discovery over the vast outstretching plains of ice. They took care not to go too far from the ship, for it would have been difficult to find the way back. The Doctor was quite amazed at the peculiar effects of refraction. He came to a place where he thought he had only to make a little jump, and found to his surprise he had five or six feet to leap over, or vice versa, a fall being the result in both cases, which, though not dangerous, was painful on such a hard sharp surface.

Shandon and his companions were in search of leads, or navigable openings, and in pursuance of this object, about


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 three miles from the ship, they climbed, though with considerable difficulty, to the top of an iceberg, above three hundred feet high. From this they had an extended view over a widespread heap of desolation. It was like gazing at the ruins of some mighty city, with its fallen obelisks and overturned towers and palaces. It was a veritable chaos, and far as the eye could see, not a single lead was visible.

"How shall we get through?" asked the Doctor.

"I don't know," replied Shandon, "but get through we must, even if we have to blast those mountains with powder. I certainly have no intention of being imprisoned in the ice till next spring."

"As the Fox was, just about this very same part," said the Doctor. "Bah! we shall get out, never fear, with a little philosophy. I would back that against all the engines in the world."

"One must confess things don't look very favorable this year."

"That is true enough. The aspect of the regions is much the same as it was in 1817."

"Do you suppose, then, Doctor, it is not always alike—the same to-day as it has always been?"

"Unquestionably I do, Shandon. From time to time sudden breakings up occur, which scientific men have never been able to explain. Till 1817 this sea was constantly blocked up, but in that year an immense cataclysm took place, which hurled the icebergs into the ocean, and many of them fell on the Bank of Newfoundland. From that time Baffin's Bay has been nearly free, and has become the rendezvous of numerous whalers."

"It is easier now, then, for ships to go north?" asked Shandon.

"Immensely so," said the Doctor; "but it has been a subject of remark, that for some years past there has been a tendency in the Bay to refill and close again, an additional reason why we should push on with all our might; though, I must confess, we are much like a party of strangers going through unknown galleries, when each door closes behind as they pass through, and cannot be reopened."

"Do you advise me to go back? asked Shandon, looking at the Doctor, as if he would read his inmost soul.

"I advise you to go back! No, I have never yet learned


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 to put one foot behind the other, and I say go on, even should we never return; only, what I wish to impress on you is this, that if we set to work imprudently, we know the risks we incur."

"And you, Garry," asked Shandon, "what is your opinion?"

"I should go right on, certainly, sir. I agree with Mr. Clawbonny. However, it rests with you entirely. Give your orders, we will obey."

"All don't say so, Garry," was Shandon's reply. "All are not in the mood to obey. Suppose they refuse? What then?"

"I have told you my mind," replied Garry, coldly, "because you asked me, but you are not obliged to follow my advice."

Shandon made no response; but after carefully scanning the horizon once more, climbed down the iceberg again, followed by his two companions.

Shandon's absence the crew had been busily engaged in various attempts to lessen the pressure of the ice. This task was entrusted to Pen, Clifton, Bolton, Gripper, and Simpson, in addition to the two engineers and the stokers, who had to take their share of work as sailors, now that their services were not required at the engine.

"I tell you what," exclaimed Pen, angrily, "I have had enough of this, and I swear that if the ice does not break up within three days, I'll fold my arms, and not do another hand's turn!"

"Fold your arms!" said Gripper; "you had far better use them to get back. Do you suppose we are inclined to stay here all the winter till next spring?"

"Truly it would be a dismal place to winter in," said Plover, "for the vessel is exposed on all sides."

"And who knows," asked Brunton the engineer, "whether the sea will be a bit more open next spring than it is to-day?"

"It isn't a question of next spring," replied Pen; "this is


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 Thursday, and if the passage is not open by Sunday morning we turn round and go south"." [sic]

"That's a sensible speech," said Clifton.

"Do you go in for that?" inquired Pen.

"Yes," was the unanimous reply.

"And it is only just," said Warren; "for if we are obliged to work in this fashion, and tow the ship along by main force, my opinion is that our labor would be better spent in dragging it back."

"We shall see that on Sunday," said Wolsten.

"Let me get orders," said Brunton, "and I'll soon light the furnaces."

"As for that," returned Clifton, "we can light them ourselves."

"If any one of the officers," continued Pen, "has a fancy to winter here, he is quite at liberty. He'll find no difficulty in making a snow-hut for himself, where he can live like a regular Esquimaux."

"That's out of the question, Pen," said Brunton, "we cannot leave anyone behind; and, what's more, I don't think the chief officer will be difficult to persuade. He seems very uneasy now, and if we propose the thing quietly to him"

"That remains to be seen," said Plover. "Richard Shandon can be a hard, obstinate man when he likes; we must feel our way carefully."

"Only to think," said Bolton, eagerly, "that in a month's time we might be back in Liverpool. We shall easily get over the ice-belt down south. Davis's Straits will be open at the beginning of June, and we have only to get right out into the Atlantic."

"We have this to take into account besides," said the prudent Clifton, "that, in getting Shandon to come back with us, we act on his responsibility, and our shares and bounty money are sure; whereas, if we return alone, it is at least doubtful if we get them."

"But suppose the officers will not go back?" resumed Pen, bent on pushing the question to the extreme.

There was no reply for a moment, and then Bolton said: "We shall see when the time comes; all we have to do now is to win over Richard Shandon to our side, and I don't think that will be difficult."


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 "There is one on board, at all events, I'll leave behind," said Pen, with a frightful oath, "though he should eat my arm off."

"That dog?" said Plover.

"Yes, that dog; and I mean to do for him before I am much older."

"The sooner the better," replied Clifton, never weary of his favorite subject. "He is the cause of all our misfortunes."

"I believe he dragged us into the ice," said Gripper.

"Ay, and gathered it up like this in front of us, for such compact masses are never seen at this time of the year," added Wolsten.

"It is through him my eyes are so bad," said Brunton, wearily.

"And through him we have neither gin nor brandy," said Pen.

"So the men went on, each one having his own grievance against the dogdog. [sic]

"Worst of all," said Clifton, "he is the captain!"

"A curse of a captain he is too!" exclaimed Pen, in a paroxysm of senseless rage "Well, he determined to come here, and here he shall stay."

"But how shall we got hold of him?" said Plover.

"Now's our chance," replied Clifton; "Shandon is not on board; Wall is alseepasleep [sic] in his berth; and the fog is so thick that Johnson will never see us."

"But the dog?" interrupted Pen.

"Captain is lying asleep this moment close beside the coal bunker," replied Clifton; "if anyone chooses to"

"I'll undertake to get him," cried Pen in a fury.

"Take care, Pen; he has grinders that can break iron bars."

"If he stirs I'll rip him up," declared Pen, taking up a knife, as he rushed down between decks, followed by Warren, who wished to have a hand in the business.

Both came back presently, carrying the dog in their arms, muzzled and tied up. They had surprised him in his sleep, and escape was impossible.

"Hurrah for Pen!" exclaimed Plover.

"And now what's to be done with him?" inquired Clifton.


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 "Drown him, and see if he ever makes his appearance again," replied Pen, with a grim smile of satisfaction.

About two hundred paces from the ship was a seal-hole, a circular crevasse made by the animals, out of which they come to breathe at certain intervals, basking on the surface of the ice, retreating below when danger approaches.

Pen and Warren directed their course to this hole, and, in spite of the poor dog's vigorous struggles, succeeded in plunging him into the sea, pitilessly placing an immense block of ice afterwards over the opening, to deprive him completely of all hope of release from his liquid prison.

"A good voyage to you!" shouted the cruel Pen as he returned to the vessel with Warren, unperceived by Johnson, for in addition to the thick fog the snow had commenced to fall heavily.

About an hour afterwards Shandon and his two companions came back. Shandon had discovered a single lead to the north-east, and determined to take advantage of it. The crew obeyed his orders with alacrity, for three days still remained; and, moreover, they wished to prove the impracticability of proceeding farther north.

Sawing the ice and tracking went on busily during a part of that night and all next day, and the Forward had gained two miles.

On the 18th they sighted land, and came within five or six cables' length of a singular peak, called, from its strange shape, the Devil's Thumb.

At the very same place the Prince Albert, in 1851 and the Advance, with Dr. Kane, in 1853, were caught in the ice and detained for several weeks.

It was a dismal spot. The weird, fantastic form of the towering peak, the dreary, desolate surroundings, the ominous crackings of the glaciers, echoing and re-echoing over the distant plains, and the vast encircling icebergs, some of them three hundred feet high, invested the whole region with peculiar gloom, and Shandon felt no time must be lost in getting out of it. By dint of strenuous efforts, in twenty- four hours he had pushed on about two miles; but this was not enough. Yet what was to be done? He felt as if his energies were paralysed by the false position in which he was placed, and a sort of shrinking fear began to creep over him, for he knew that he could not carry out the in-


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 structions of his unknown captain, without exposing the ship to great danger. The men were worn out. It took them more than three hours to cut a passage twenty feet long through floes four or five feet thick, and their health was already seriously impaired. Shandon was also uneasy at the silence of the crew and their unusual zeal; he dreaded it might be the calm which precedes a storm.

Imagine, then, the painful surprise and disappointment, even the despair, which he felt to find, through an insensible movement of the ice-fields, the Forward lost in one night the ground she had gained at the cost of so much fatigue. On the morning of Saturday, the 18th, they were right in front of the Devil's Thumb again, in a more critical position than before, for the icebergs had increased, and passed like phantoms through the fog.

Shandon was completely unnerved. His intrepid heart failed him, and he, like his men, quaked for fear. He had heard of the disappearance of the dog, but did not dare make any inquiry, lest a mutiny should break out.

It was terrible weather that day. A whirlwind of snow and thick mist wrapped the brig in an impenetrable veil. Occasionally the violent tempest would dispel the fog for an instant and disclose to the terrified gazer the gaunt, spectral form of the Devil's Thumb. Nothing could be done or even attempted except to anchor on an immense floe, for the darkness momentarily increased, and the man at the wheel could not even see the officer on watch at the bows.

Shandon retired to his cabin, a prey to the most tormenting anxieties. The Doctor employed himself in arranging his notes, and the sailors lounged about the deck, or betook themselves to the forecastle. The hurricane increased, and, through a sudden rift in the fog, the Devil's Thumb appeared slowly rising higher and higher.

"Good Heavens!" exclaimed Simpson, starting back in dismay.

"What's the matter?" asked Foker.

He needed no answer; for terrified outcries were heard on all sides—one exclaiming, "It is going to crush us!" and another, "We are lost!" and a third called loudly for Mr. Wall and Shandon, who speedily obeyed the summons. The Doctor followed, and for a minute all three stood in silent amaze.


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 It was a most alarming spectacle. Through a partial opening in the fog, the Devil's Thumb seemed quite close to the ship; its size increased to colossal magnitude, and on the summit a second cone appeared, point downwards, as if pivoted on the first, oscillating to and fro, and apparently about to fall on the brig and crush her beneath its enormous weight. Instinctively, everyone drew back, and several of the sailors jumped down on the ice and left the ship.

"Every man to his post," shouted Shandon, in stern tones. "No one is to leave the ship."

"Don't be afraid, my friends," said the Doctor. "There is no danger. It is simply the effect of the mirage, Mr. Shandon and Mr. Wall."

"You are right, Mr. Clawbonny," said Johnson. "These silly fellows are terrified at a shadow!"

Most of the sailors came back at the Doctor's reassuring words, and fear gave place to admiration, as they stood gazing at the marvellous phenomenon, which only lasted a few minutes longer.

"They call that a mirage," said Clifton, "but take my word for it, some fiend has to do with it."

"That's sure and certain," said Gripper. But the rift in the fog had revealed to Shandon's eyes a favorable lead, and he determined to profit by it without delay... [sic] He placed the men on each side of the opening. The hawsers were thrown out to them, and the work of tracking commenced.

They went on for many long hours, and Shandon had the furnaces lighted to use all available means of getting rapidly on.

"It is a providential chance," he said to Johnson, "and if we can only make a few miles farther, we may be out of difficulties. The men are in a mind to work, for they are glad to get clear of the Devil's Thumb, so we will take advantage of their mood as long as it lasts."

All of a sudden the brig ceased moving.

"What's wrong, Wall?" asked Shandon. "Any of the ropes broken?"

"No, sir," said Wall, looking over the side, "bu the sailors are all running helter-skelter towards the ship, and here some of them are climbing up the side as if they were out of their wits with fright."


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 "What's the matter?" called Shandon, coming towards the bows.

"Let us on board! Let us on board!" exclaimed the sailors in panic-stricken tones.

Shandon looked towards the north and shuddered.

A strange-looking animal, with smoking tongue hanging out of enormous wide open jaws, was bounding towards the ship, and had come within a cable's length of her. He seemed more than twenty feet high; his hair stood on end, and his formidable tail, full ten feet long, swept the snow and sent it flying in thick clouds. He was evidently in pursuit of the sailors, and the apparition of such a monster was enough to scare the bravest.

"It is a bear!" said one.

"It is a dragon!" exclaimed another.

"It is the lion in the Revelation!" suggested a third, while Shandon ran to his cabin and seized a loaded pistol. The Doctor armed himself with a revolver, and stood ready to fire at the huge animal, who seemed, from his enormous size, to belong to the antediluvian world.

The beast came nearer, making tremendustremendous [sic] leaps and Shandon and the Doctor discharged their weapons simultaneously. An unlooked-for result followed. The sudden explosion shook the atmosphere and changed the entire aspect of things

The Doctor burst out laughing, and said, "Refraction again!"

"Refraction!" exclaimed Shandon.

But the crew shouted "The dog! the dog-captain!" and Pen thundered out, "Ah! it is the dog, always that cursed dog!"

And the dog it really was, who had snapped his cords and managed to get out on the ice again at another seal-hole.

Refraction, which is common enough in Arctic latitudes, had made him assume these formidable dimensions, while the vibration in the atmosphere had restored him to his original proportions. But this occurrence had a bad effect on the sailors, who were by no means disposed to accept a purely physical explanation of it. The strange phenomenon at the Devil's Thumb, and the reappearance of the dog under such peculiar circumstances, brought things to a climax, and loud murmurings were heard on all sides.


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Forward steamed rapidly along through the open channel. Johnson took the wheel himself, and Shandon kept a vigilant look-out on the horizon. His joy was of short duration, for he soon saw that the channel terminated in a circle of mountains.

However, he determined to go on and take his chance, rather than turn back.

The dog ran beside the brig on the ice, but kept a good distance off. Strangely enough, however, if he got too far behind, a peculiar whistle was heard, which recalled him immediatlyimmediately [sic].

The first time this whistle was noticed, the sailors were all on deck. They looked about, but no stranger could be seen far or near, and yet the whistle was distinctly repeated several times.

Clifton was the first to sound an alarm.

"Do you hear that?" he asked; "and, look, how the animal bounds along when he is called."

"It is quite incredible," replied Gripper.

"This finishes it," exclaimed Pen. I'll go no farther."

"Pen is right," said Brunton. "It is tempting Heaven."

"Tempting the fiend!" replied Clifton. "I'd rather lose my share than go another step."

"We shall never return," said Bolton, in a dejected tone.

It was clear the crew were ripe for mutiny.

"Not another step! Are we all agreed on that?"

"Yes!" was the unanimous reply.

"Well, then," said Bolton, "let us go to Shandon; I'll be spokesman."

Off they went in a body to the poop.

The Forward was just entering at that moment a vast amphitheatre, perhaps about eight hundred feet in diameter, without a single outlet save the passage by which they had reached it.

Shandon felt he had imprisoned his ship and himself, but what was to be done? A heavy responsibility rested on his shoulders.

The Doctor folded his arms and silently gazed at the surrounding ice-walls, the average height of which was three hundred feet.


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 At that moment Bolton came up with his friends, and said in a voice trembling with excitement:

"Mr. Shandon, we cannot go farther."

"You say that to me?" exclaimed Shandon, his cheek crimsoning with passion.

"We say this, we have done enough for our invisible captain, and we have made up our minds to go no farther."

"You have made up your minds? You speak like that, Bolton? Take care."

"Your threats won't hinder us," said Pen, rudely.

Shandon had made a few steps towards this rebellious crew, when Johnson came up to him and said in a low voice:

"If we wish to get out of this there is not an instant to lose. An iceberg is fast nearing the channel, which may completely block it up, and keep us here prisoners."

After a brief survey, Shandon turned towards the men and said:

"You shall give an account of this conduct to me by-and-by. Meantime, turn about the ship."

The sailors rushed to their posts. The Forward shifted rapidly. Fresh fuel was supplied to the furnaces, and the engine worked at high pressure, for everything depended on speed. It was a race between the brig and the iceberg.

"Put on more steam!" shouted Shandon, and the engineer obeyed at all risks, almost endangering the safety of the brig; but his efforts were in vain. The iceberg had been caught by some deep-sea current, and was bearing down fast towards the passage. The brig was still more than three cables' length off when the berg entered, and, adhering firmly to the ice on either side, shut up the outlet entirely.

"We are lost!" exclaimed Shandon, imprudently.

"Lost!" re-echoed from the crew.

"Let each take care of himself!" said one.

"Try the boats!" said another.

"Let's go to the stores!" said Pen. "If we are to be drowned, we may as well drown ourselves in gin."

The general disorder had reached its highest pitch, and broken all bounds. Shandon felt himself powerless. His tongue seemed palsied, and the power of speech forsook him. The Doctor paced up and down in an agitated manner, while Johnson folded his arms, and maintained a stoical silence.


text: The Earth Turns South/The Return

title: The Earth Turns South/The Return


text: The Earth Turns South/Star-Bees

title: The Earth Turns South/Star-Bees


text: The Earth Turns South/And There Was Light


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 fend the city (by so doing?) behold Yankhamu says (or asks)  that wheat be given to Ribadda  to him  corn (the bread of men?)  and now with Yapaaddu  their money henceforth  ask him, he will tell all in your presence. Mayest thou know when it is spoken in the presence of the King my Lord. And this year of storms makes the wheat scarce (in) my unhappy land there was scarcity before in the city Simyra, and now behold in the city Gebal.”

The text is here too broken to be read. It seems, perhaps, to refer to the enemy having possession of the sea, and to the entreaties of Yankhamu, and to certain waters, and the general wretchedness. A paragraph then begins:

“The King of the Land Taratzi has coveted the city of Simyra; and they desired to march to the city of Gebal; and none now has urged him, and he has stayed in his land. Now as he is strong he will send to the great by my wish s they have returned to us.” The letter is again much broken; it refers to a ruler, saying: “His heart is with my heart; but Abdasherah has conquered beyond the land of the Amorites, also since the time of your father the city of Sidon has submitted to the occupation by his allies: the lands are for the men of blood, so now there is none who is a friend (or kin) to me. Let the King regard the message of his servant. Let him give men to guard his city. Is not she insulted by all the men of blood?”

The latter part, referring to allies, is much broken.

54 B.—This is broken at the top, and considerably injured. It demands soldiers, and the restoration of the rulers. “The city of (Sidon?), and the city of Beirût, the sons of Abdasherah have silenced: they fought for the King, but the city of Sidon and the city of Beirût are not the King’s. We sent a Paka: he did not desert his duty to you, but she has rebelled to your face: for it was permitted by the freemen. The men of blood have seized the city. Behold as for me this is my repetition city Atsar  restraint ”


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 ought to be writing Memoirs—Lord Dropmore.'"

"Does my Lord Manfred keep his mansion there, next to the Misses Otranto?"

"I believe so, and lives there."

"I knew him in Germany—a singular man, and not understood. Perhaps he does not understand himself."

"I'll join you in an instant, Cleveland. I just want to speak one word to Master Osborne, who I see coming down here. Well, Osborne! I must come and knock you up one of these mornings. I've got a nice little commission for you from Lady Julia Knighton, which you must pay particular attention to."

"Well, Mr. Grey, how does Lady Julia like the bay mare?"

"Very much, indeed; but she wants to know what you've done about the chesnut?"

"Oh! put it off, Sir, in the prettiest style, on young Mr. Feoffment, who has just married,

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 "Murray can't do better. It's absolutely necessary that he should do something. Lockhart is a man of prodigious talents. Do you know him?"

"Not in the least.—He certainly is a man of great powers, but I think rather too hot for the Quarterly."

"Oh! no, no, no—a little of the Albemarle Anti-attrition will soon cool the fiery wheels of his bounding chariot. Come! I see our horses."

"Hyde Park is greatly changed since I was a dandy, Vivian. Pray, do the Misses Otranto still live in that house?"

"Yes— blooming as ever."

"It's the fashion to abuse Horace Walpole, but I really think him one of the most delightful writers that ever existed. I wonder who is to be the Horace Walpole of the present century? some one perhaps we least suspect."

"Vivida Vis, think you?"

"More than probable. I'll tell you who

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 they were so numerous as to preclude the attempt to do more than briefly mention the more important items.

The Microscopical display was unusually large and interesting. There were some seventy microscopes in use, including some kindly lent by Mr. T. W. Watson, Mr. E. Wheeler, and Mr. F. Enock, of London, and they were so excellently disposed at such convenient stances that all were easily accessible by the many visitors. Commencing with the living objects illustrating Pond Life we have to enumerate the following:—Freshwater Polyzoa—Alcyonella fungosa, Frecdericella sultana, and Paludicella Ehrenbergii; Melicerta ringens, (the building rotifer,) and Epistylis natans, exhibited by Mr. Thos. Bolton; Lophopus crystallinus, by Rev. Dr. Deans, Conochilus volvox, and Actinosphærium sol, by Mr. T. J. Slatter; Hydatina senta, one of the largest of the British rotifers, by Mr. H. C. Forrest; and Hydra vugaris and Hydra viridis, showing the reproduction by budding, by Mr. J. Levick.—Then there were among many mounted objects Angninaria spatulata, (Snake's head Coralline,) and section of Pearl, exhibited by Mr. W. H. Pearson; Plumularia setacea, with tentacles expanded, Membranipora pilosa, and Alcyonidium hirsutum, with tentacles expanded, by Mr. A. W. Wills; larval forms of Crab, and Sertularin with tentacles expanded, by Mr. W. Graham; Star-fishes and Sea-urchins, (illustrations of structure.) young Oysters, and Entozoa, illustrating the Trematoda, Cestoda, and Nematoda, by Mr. W. R. Hughes; spines of Echinus, by Rev. Dr. Deane; Dog's Tongue,—section showing the glands and villi, Dog's Foot-pad,—section showing arterial vascularity, and Human Intestine,—section showing villi injected, by Mr. F. W. Spiller; Palate of Cuttle-fish, by Mr. C. Pumphrey. Mr. F. Enoch, of London, (an old member of the Birmingham Natural History Society,) showed a number of insects, mounted whole, without pressure, by an entirely new process, which has taken Mr. Enoch some years to bring to perfection. These insects retain all their natural form; some show their internal muscular structure; in these can be seen every minute muscle, and the purpose for which it is intended can he clearly traced out; others, such as tongues of various insects, are prepared so as to retain all the natural form, colour, and characteristic markings without any distortion whatever, thus rendering the preparations of the utmost value to the student. We may specially mention Stylops Spenii, parasite of the wild Bee; Polynema ovulorum, the Fairy fly, (its larva is born and matured within the egg of the Cabbage butterfly;) Atypus Sulzeri, English trap-door spider. Stylops Spencii, in the act of emerging from body of wild bee, was also exhibited by Mr. J. Potts, Mr. Edmund Tonks exhibited Spinnerets of Spider. Mr. E. Wheeler, of London, exhibited 1,200 microscopic objects, (no two alike,) representing every department of microscopy. His elaborate groups of Diatoms, Foraminifora from "Challenger" dredgings, Polariscope objects, Möller's, Webb's Micro-engravings, anatomical specimens, opaque objects, Geological objects, and the Colorado Beetle, proved most attractive.

We come now to illustrations of Vegetable Life. Of Freshwater Algæ there were Spirogyra nitida, Musocarpus scalaria, Zygetina lutescens, and Staurocarpus gracilis, showing formation of spores by conjugation; Batrachospermumn alpestro and vagum, and Draparnaldia plumosa, all exhibited by Mr. A. W. Wills; Volvox globator, (living specimens showing the rotation.) by Mr. Leviek and Dr. W. Hinds; spores of Equisetum, showing the contraction of elastic filaments by moisture and their expansion on drying, by Mr. W. B. Grove. Protonema of mosses, showing germination of spore; section of Mnium subglobesina, showing male and female flowers of moss; Peristomes of mosses; sections of leaves of holly, grass, and fern;


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genus is considered by many authorities to be merely a section of Cupressus or of Thuya. The foliage and cones, however, are remarkably distinct, and justify its retention as a separate genus.

Evergreen trees, belonging to the tribe Cupressineæ of the order Coniferæ, with reddish bark scaling off in longitudinal shreds. Branches in false whorls or scattered, giving off secondary branches, which terminate in very flattened branch-systems, disposed in horizontal planes. These resemble in their general arrangement those of Thuya and Chamæcyparis, and are mostly tripinnate, all the axes being covered with small coriaceous leaves, adnate in part of their length, and arranged in four ranks in decussate pairs. The leaves on the main and ultimate axes differ only in size.

The ventral and dorsal leaves are flattened and ovate or spathulate, with rounded apices; the lateral leaves are carinate, more or less spreading, with a slightly acute apex, which is bent inwards. The dorsal flat leaves are shining green, and marked with a central ridge, which is often hollowed in the middle line. The ventral flat leaves have a central green ridge, with a concavity white with stomata on each side. The lateral leaves, green on the dorsal side, exhibit a single stomatic concavity on their ventral side.

Flowers monœcious, solitary, and terminal, the male and female flowers borne on separate lateral branchlets as in Thuya. Male flowers cylindric, ¼ inch long, with six decussate pairs of stamens. Female flowers with five ovules on each scale. Cones globular, almost erect, with eight clavate, woody scales, in decussate pairs from a central axis, the upper pair abortive. Seeds three to five on a scale, laterally winged, the wing not notched at the summit.

The seedling resembles that of Thuya plicata, but has broader and very blunt cotyledons, with shorter and broader primary leaves.

Rh


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 natures of all others. I say, Cleveland, here comes the greatest idiot in town; Craven Bucke. He came to me the other day complaining bitterly of the imperfections of Johnson's Dictionary. He had looked out Doncaster St. Leger in it, and couldn't find the word."

"How d'ye do, Bucke? you 're just the man I wanted to meet. Make a note of it while I remember. There is an edition of Johnson just published, in which you'll find every single word you want. Now put it down at once. It's published under the title of John Bees' Slang Lexicon. Good b'ye! How's your brother?

Pray, Cleveland, what do you think of Milman's' 'new dramatic poem,' Anne Boleyn?"

"I think it's the dullest work on the Catholic Question that has yet appeared."

"Is it true, that Lockhart is going to have the Quarterly?"

"It was told me as a positive fact to-day. I believe it."

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 "His conduct has been beautiful—and Byron had a thorough affection for him in spite of a few squibs, and a few drunken speeches, which damned good-natured friends have always been careful to repeat."

"The loss of Byron can never be retrieved. He was indeed a man—a real man; and when I say this, I award him, in my opinion, the most splendid character which human nature need aspire to. At least, I, for my part, have no ambition to be considered either a divinity, or an angel; and truly, when I look round upon the creatures alike effeminate in mind and body, of which the world is, in general, composed, I fear that even my ambition is too exalted.  Byron's mind was like his own ocean—sublime in its yesty madness—beautiful in its glittering summer brightness—mighty in the lone magnificence of its waste of waters—gazed upon from the magic of its own nature, yet capable of representing, but, as in a glass darkly, the

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Index talk:TheTreesOfGreatBritainAndIreland vol02B.djvu

Different from vol 1
This file differs slightly from volume 1: it is from a different biblio-set on BHL, which has the Plates incorporated in the volume. The reason for taking this file is that the file for vol 2 of the first set is gone corrupt during the process of uploading from BHL.

--Dick Bos (talk) 09:35, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

pagenrs

 * page v and vi appear two times Dick Bos (talk) 19:36, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
 * pagenumbering is interrupted by Plates

Format headers (sub-)chapters
see vol 1:
 * header chapter - example: Page:TheTreesOfGreatBritainAndIreland vol01.djvu/29
 * subchapter: Page:TheTreesOfGreatBritainAndIreland vol01.djvu/34

Procedure
Then the text is ready for proofreading.
 * I'll make a very quick round for the even pages, first. ✅
 * then for the odd pages. ✅ Dick Bos (talk) 06:34, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
 * then do the italics etc. for all pages. ✅ --Dick Bos (talk) 08:47, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
 * then do the cleanup ocr and footnotes for all pages. ✅ --Dick Bos (talk) 09:14, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

--Dick Bos (talk) 19:51, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Plates

 * Plate 60 was published in the Plates to vol 1.
 * Plates 61 and following are from the separate Plates volume
 * Frontispiece is from the book
 * Plate 59 was published in the Plates to vol 1.

--Dick Bos (talk) 09:40, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Tables
For now some tables inserted as images, e.g. p. 307, p. 313, p. 360.

But some tables already made up completely, e.g. same p. 313, p. 305.

--Dick Bos (talk) 09:25, 26 May 2024 (UTC)


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202

The species has been described in detail above.

Two well-marked geographical forms occur, both confined to the main island of Japan:—

1. Var. australis (var. nova). A small tree 40 to 50 feet in height, or a shrub growing as underwood in the dense shade of forests. As a tree it has a slender trunk, with drooping branches and a narrow pyramidal top. Branchlets very flat and only slightly overlapping, the lateral leaves ending in acute points bent inwards. Cones broadly ovoid, with scales thickened at the apex, which is prolonged externally into a blunt triangular process. This is the form which is known in cultivation in Europe, and described and figured in the works cited above.

2. Var. Hondai, Makino. A larger tree, attaining 100 feet in height, with a stem of over 3 feet in diameter. The branch-systems are more densely ramified, the branchlets being placed close together and overlapping one another by their edges more than is the case in the preceding variety. The leaves also are smaller, whiter underneath, and crowded more closely on the shoots; those of the lateral ranks being usually blunt and not curved inwards at the apex. The cones are globular, with scales not thickened at the apex, which is devoid of the process so conspicuous in the other form, or merely shows it as an obsolete transverse minute mucro. The seeds appear to be more broadly winged, the wings being more scarious in texture.

This form has not yet been introduced. Elwes has brought home excellent specimens of it in fruit from the Uchimappe Forest, near Aomori, in the extreme north of Hondo. These differ in the characters given above from specimens of the ordinary form obtained by him in the forest of Atera, Kisogawa, and Yumoto (4000 to 5000 feet altitude) in Central Hondo. The smaller leaves, set more closely on densely ramified branchlets in this variety, may be due to the influence of dense shade. The difference in the cone is paralleled by what occurs in the fruit of the different geographical forms of Cryptomera japonica. I am inclined to think that var. Hondai is not a distinct species; but as it is very different, from the point of view of cultivators, it may conveniently bear the name Thujopsis Hondai.


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204 company of Mr. Shirasawa in June, and after passing through the flat rice-fields which extend from the sea to the foot of the hills, entered the forest, which consists mainly of Thujopsis naturally reproduced, though here and there, trees of Quercus glandulifera, Magnolia hypoleuca, and other species occur, whilst Cryptomeria and Cupressus obtusa are planted in the valleys, and Larix leptolepis on those parts of the hills where the natural forest has been destroyed by fire. From observations taken at the meteorological observatory of Aomori, it appears that the climate of this part of Japan is cold in winter and the snowfall heavy, the thermometer falling in February to —15° Centigrade, and rising in September to 32°5° Centigrade; the average temperature for the whole year being 9°, and the average moisture 78 per cent. The average height of the trees here is about 70 to 80 feet, attaining in deep shady valleys 100 feet or perhaps more, and about 2 feet in diameter when closely grown, at the age of 150 to 180 years when it is considered ripe for felling.

The stems are often much curved at the butt from the pressure of the snow on the young seedlings, which require eight to ten years to get above its surface in winter, and these butts are usually cut separately and used for special purposes. The tree does not seem to have the power of reproducing itself from the stool, but produces abundant seed, which in dense shade germinates freely, though the growth of the seedlings is very slow at first.

The undergrowth of the forest is very different from what I saw in other parts of Japan, bamboo-grass (Arundinaria Veitchii) being much less prevalent, but in the damp places tall herbaceous plants were numerous, with Aucuba, Skimmia, and Ilex, and other evergreen shrubs on the drier ground, and many pretty liliaceous plants and orchids in places.

Goto says of this tree, that it formed under the old regime, together with Cupressus pisifera, C. obtusa, Thuya japonica, and Sciadopitys, the so-called "Goboku" or Five Trees, which enjoyed careful protection at the hands of the feudal authorities; he also says that it is rarely planted, being regenerated naturally by seed, and that it forms extensive forests in a mixture with other conifers such as Thuya japonica and Pinus parviflora, in the mountains on the northern frontier of the province of Rikuchu, in Goyosan, and in the mountains of the Tone districts, Kozuké. It has lately come to be in great demand for railway sleepers.

Plate 60 (in Vol. I.) represents a dense growth of trees of this species in the forest of Uchimappe very similar to what I saw in the Kisogawa district at about 3000 feet. I am indebted to the Japanese Forest Department for the negative from which it was made.

The wood of Thujopsis is highly valued in those parts of Japan where it grows, on account of its great durability. This is proved by specimens shown at the St. Louis Exhibition, one of which had been used as a gate-post for eighty-three years, another as a plank in a fishing-boat for eighty-four years, others as railway sleepers in use for fourteen years. [he wood has an aromatic smell, takes a fine lustrous polish when planed, and is yellowish white in colour, showing a fine grain, which makes selected planks from the butt length very ornamental. Exceptional


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 must return to Rome. Cicero had never left it but for his short occasional holiday. Though no longer in office, the ex-consul was still one of the foremost public men, and his late dignity gave him important precedence in the Senate. He was soon to be brought into contact, and more or less into opposition, with the two great chiefs of parties in whose feuds he became at length so fatally involved. Pompey and Cæsar were both gradually becoming formidable, and both had ambitious plans of their own, totally inconsistent with any remnant of republican liberty—plans which Cicero more or less suspected, and of that suspicion they were probably both aware. Both, by their successful campaigns, had not only acquired fame and honours, but a far more dangerous influence—an influence which was to overwhelm all others hereafter—in the affection of their legions. Pompey was still absent in Spain, but soon to return from his long war against Mithridates, to enjoy the most splendid triumph ever seen at Rome, and to take the

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52 lead of the oligarchical party just so long and so far as they would help him to the power he coveted. The enemies whom Cicero had made by his strong measures in the matter of the Catilinarian conspiracy now took advantage of Pompey's name and popularity to make an attack upon him. The tribune Metellus, constant to his old party watchword, moved in the Senate that the successful general, upon whom all expectations were centred, should be recalled to Rome with his army "to restore the violated constitution." All knew against whom the motion was aimed, and what the violation of the constitution meant; it was the putting citizens to death without a trial. The measure was not passed, though Cæsar, jealous of Cicero even more than of Pompey, lent himself to the attempt.

But the blow fell on Cicero at last from a very different quarter, and from the mere private grudge of a determined and unprincipled man. Publius Clodius, a young man of noble family, once a friend and supporter of Cicero against Catiline, but who had already made himself notorious for the most abandoned profligacy, was detected, in a woman's dress, at the celebration of the rites of the Bona Dea—a kind of religious freemasonry amongst the Roman ladies, the mysteries of which are very little known, and probably would in any case be best left without explanation. But for a man to have been present at them was a sacrilege hitherto unheard of, and which was held to lay the whole city under the just wrath of the offended goddess. The celebration had been held in the house of

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208 Leaf-scars obovate or crescentic on slightly prominent cushions, with three groups of bundle-dots; opposite scars joined by a linear ridge. Terminal buds long oval or fusiform, pointed; scales numerous, the upper rounded, the lower pointed at the apex and keeled on the back, minutely ciliate in margin. Pith wide, circular, green.

9. Æsculus austrina, Small, ''Bull. Torrey Bot. Club,'' 1901, xxviii. 359; Sargent, ''Man. Trees N. America, 647 (1905); Æsculus Pavia, β discolor, Torrey and Gray, Fl. N. Amer.'' i, 252 (1838), in part. A small tree, attaining 30 feet in height, occurring in Tennessee, S. Missouri, E. Texas, and north-western Alabama. This resembles the last species. The leaflets, however, are usually more irregularly but finely serrate, and pale tomentose beneath. Panicles pubescent, 6 to 8 inches long. Petals bright red, meeting at the tips, unequal, oblong-obovate, rounded at the apex, glandular, those of the upper pair about half as wide as those of the lateral pair, with claws much longer than the calyx. Stamens longer than the petals. Fruit brown, slightly pitted. Not introduced.

III. Buds not viscid. Calyx five-toothed. Petals four to five, white, claws longer than the calyx. Stamens exserted, very long.

10. Æsculus parviflora, Walter, Flora Caroliniana, 128 (1788). South-eastern North America. A shrub. Leaflets five to seven, elliptical or oblong-ovate, densely grey-tomentose beneath, finely serrate. Panicles erect, 8 to 10 inches long, slender, narrow. Flowers white, faintly tinged with pink. The long and threadlike stamens are pinkish white and very conspicuous.

This is a valuable shrub, as it flowers late, in July or August, some five or six weeks later than any of the other species except californica. Occasionally it forms a short single trunk, but generally it sends up a crowd of stems from the ground. It is figured in ''Gard. Chron.'' 1877, viii. fig. 129; and is often known in gardens as Pavia macrostachya, Loiseleur, or Æsculus macrostachya, Michaux. See ''Bot. Mag.'' t. 2118 (1820), where it is stated that the species was introduced by Mr. John Fraser in 1785. Canon Ellacombe reported in 1877 that he had at Bitton a specimen, which was at least forty years old, but that it remained a bush, not exceeding 8 or 10 feet in height.

IV. Buds viscid. Calyx two-lipped or five-lobed. Petals four, pink or white, claws not longer than the calyx. Stamens exserted.

11. Æsculus californica, Nuttall. California.

12. Æsculus Parryi, A. Gray, ''Proc. Amer. Acad.'' xvii. 200 (1881); Sargent, Garden and Forest, 1890, p. 356, fig. 47. Lower California. A small shrub, resembling the preceding species; but differing in the five-lobed calyx, and in the leaflets, which are small, obovate and hoary pubescent beneath. It has not been introduced.

V. The most important is Æsculus carnea, Hayne, which is a cross between the common horse-chestnut and A. Pavia. This is described fully below.


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Rh Cæsar, as prætor, under the presidency of his wife Pompeia; and it was said that the object of the young profligate was an intrigue with that lady. The circumstances are not favourable to the suspicion; but Cæsar divorced her forthwith, with the often-quoted remark that "Cæsar's wife must not be even suspected." For this crime—unpardonable even in that corrupt society, when crimes of far deeper dye passed almost unreproved—Clodius was, after some delay, brought to public trial. The defence set up was an alibi, and Cicero came forward as a witness to disprove it: he had met and spoken with Clodius in Rome that very evening. The evidence was clear enough, but the jury had been tampered with by Clodius and his friends; liberal bribery, and other corrupting influences of even a more disgraceful kind, had been successfully brought to bear upon the majority of them, and he escaped conviction by a few votes. But he never forgave the part which Cicero had taken against him; and from that time forth the latter found a new, unscrupulous, indefatigable enemy, of whose services his old opponents gladly availed themselves. Cicero himself for some time underrated this new danger. He lost no opportunity of taunting the unconvicted criminal in the bitterest terms in the Senate, and of exchanging with him—very much to the detriment of his own character and dignity, in our modern eyes—the coarsest jests when they met in the street. But the temptation to a jest, of whatever kind, was always irresistible to Cicero: it was a weakness for which he more than once paid dearly, for they were remembered against

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 of his dragoon captains, and pensioned poetasters, and he dared not come back to England with, what he considered, a tarnished reputation. His only thought was of some desperate exertion to clear himself. It was for this he went to Greece. When I was with him, he was in correspondence with some friends in England, about the purchase of a large tract of land in Colombia. He affected a great admiration of Bolivar."

"Who, by the bye, is a great man."

"Assuredly."

"Your acquaintance with Byron must have been one of the most gratifying incidents of your life, Cleveland?"

"Certainly; I may say with Friar Martin, in Goetz of Berlichingen, 'The sight of him touched my heart. It is a pleasure to have seen a great man.'"

"Hobhouse was a very faithful friend to him?"

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 "Slovenly?"

"Oh! no, no, no—in the most dandified style that you can conceive; but not that of an English dandy either. He had on a magnificent foreign foraging cap, which he wore in the room, but his grey curls were quite perceptible; and a frogged surtout; and he had a large gold chain round his neck, and pushed into his waistcoat pocket. I imagined, of course, that a glass was attached to it; but I afterwards found that it bore nothing but a quantity of trinkets. He had also another gold chain tight round his neck, like a collar."

"How extraordinary! And did you converse much with him?"

"I was not long at Pisa, but we never parted, and there was only one subject of conversation—England, England, England. I never met a man in whom the maladie du pays was so strong. Byron was certainly at this time restless and discontented. He was tired

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54. him when he had forgotten them. Meanwhile Clodius—a sort of milder Catiline, not without many popular qualities—had got himself elected tribune; degrading himself formally from his own order of nobles for that purpose, since the tribune must be a man of the commons. The powers of the office were formidable for all purposes of obstruction and attack; Clodius had taken pains to ingratiate himself with all classes; and the consuls of the year were men of infamous character, for whom he had found a successful means of bribery by the promise of getting a special law passed to secure them the choice of the richest provincial governments—those coveted fields of plunder—of which they would otherwise have had to take their chance by lot. When all was ripe for his revenge, he brought before the people in full assembly the following bill of pains and penalties:—"Be it enacted, that whoever has put to death a Roman citizen uncondemned in due form of trial, shall be interdicted from fire and water." Such was the legal form of words which implied banishment from Rome, outlawry, and social excommunication. Every man knew against whom the motion was levelled. It was carried—carried in spite of the indignation of all honest men in Rome, in spite of all Cicero's humiliating efforts to obtain its rejection.

It was in vain that he put on mourning, as was the custom with those who were impeached of public crimes, and went about the streets thus silently imploring the pity of his fellow-citizens. In vain the whole of his own equestrian order, and in fact, as he declares, "all honest men" (it was his favourite term

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 herculean task, offers a type of human industry in the midst of the vague "diffusion of forces into the illimitable," and the visionary development of "wasted labour" in the sea, and the winds, and the clouds. No character was ever thrown into such strange relief as Gilliat. The great circle of sea-birds that come wanderingly around him on the night of his arrival, strikes at once the note of his pre-eminence and isolation. He fills the whole reef with his indefatigable toil; this solitary spot in the ocean rings with the clamour of his anvil; we see him as he comes and goes, thrown out sharply against the clear background of the sea. And yet his isolation is not to be compared with the isolation of Robinson Crusoe, for example; indeed, no two books could be more instructive to set side by side than Les Travailleurs and this other of the old days before art had learnt to occupy itself with what lies outside of human will. Crusoe was one sole centre of interest in the midst of a nature utterly dead and utterly unrealised by the artist; but this is not how we feel with Gilliat; we feel that he is opposed by a "dark coalition of forces," that an "immense animosity" surrounds him; we are the witnesses of the terrible warfare that he wages with "the silent inclemency of phenomena going their own way, and the great general law, implacable and passive:" "a


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 conspiracy of the indifferency of things" is against him. There is not one interest on the reef, but two. Just as we recognise Gilliat for the hero, we recognise, as implied by this indifferency of things, this direction of forces to some purpose outside our purposes, yet another character who may almost take rank as the villain of the novel, and the two face up to one another blow for blow, feint for feint, until, in the storm, they fight it epically out, and Gilliat remains the victor;—a victor, however, who has still to encounter the octopus. I need say nothing of the gruesome, repulsive excellence of that famous scene; it will be enough to remind the reader that Gilliat is in pursuit of a crab when he is himself assaulted by the devil fish, and that this, in its way, is the last touch to the inner significance of the book; here, indeed, is the true position of man in the universe.

But in Les Travailleurs, with all its strength, with all its eloquence, with all the beauty and fitness of its main situations, we cannot conceal from ourselves that there is a thread of something that will not bear calm scrutiny. There is much that is disquieting about the storm, admirably as it begins. I am very doubtful whether it would be possible to keep the boat from foundering in such circumstances, by any amount of breakwater and broken


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 rock. I do not understand the way in which the waves are spoken of, and prefer just to take it as a loose way of speaking, and pass on. And lastly, how does it happen that the sea was quite calm next day? Is this great hurricane a piece of scene-painting after all? And when we have forgiven Gilliat's prodigies of strength (although, in soberness, he reminds us more of Porthos in the Vicomte de Bragelonne than is quite desirable), what is to be said to his suicide, and how are we to condemn in adequate terms that unprincipled avidity after effect, which tells us that the sloop disappeared over the horizon, and the head under the water, at one and the same moment? Monsieur Hugo may say what he will, but we know better; we know very well that they did not; a thing like that raises up a despairing spirit of opposition in a man's readers; they give him the lie fiercely, as they read. Lastly, we have here already some beginning of that curious series of English blunders, that makes us wonder if there are neither proof-sheets nor judicious friends in the whole of France, and affects us sometimes with a sickening uneasiness as to what may be our own exploits when we touch upon foreign countries and foreign tongues. It is here that we shall find the famous "first of the fourth," and many English words that may be comprehensible perhaps in Paris. It is


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Rh for men of his own party), adopted the same dress to show their sympathy, and twenty thousand youths of good family—all in mourning—accompanied him through the city. The Senate even met and passed a resolution that their whole house should put on mourning too. But Gabinius, one of the consuls, at once called a public meeting, and warned the people not to make the mistake of thinking that the Senate was Rome.

In vain, also, was any personal appeal which Cicero could make to the only two men who might have had influence enough to sway the popular vote. He was ostensibly on good terms both with Pompey and Cæsar; in fact, he made it his policy so to be. He foresaw that on their future course would probably depend the fate of Rome, and he persuaded himself, perhaps honestly, that he could make them "better citizens." But he trusted neither; and both saw in him an obstacle to their own ambition. Cæsar now looked on coldly, not altogether sorry at the turn which affairs had taken, and faintly suggested that perhaps some "milder measure" might serve to meet the case. From Pompey Cicero had a right to look for some active support; indeed, such had been promised in case of need. He threw himself at his feet with prayers and tears, but even this last humiliation was in vain; and he anticipated the execution of that disgraceful edict by a voluntary withdrawal into exile. Piso, one of the consuls, had satirically suggested that thus he might "save Rome" a second time. His property was at once confiscated; his villas at Tusculum and at For-

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 Byron's mind than another, it was his strong, shrewd, common sense—his pure, unalloyed sagacity."

"You knew the glorious being, I think, Cleveland?"

"Well; I was slightly acquainted with him, when in England; slightly, however, for I was then very young. But many years afterwards I met him in Italy. It was at Pisa, just before he left for Genoa. I was then very much struck at the alteration in his appearance."

"Indeed!"

"Yes; his face was very much swollen, and he was getting fat. His hair was grey, and his countenance had lost that spiritual expression which it once so eminently possessed. His teeth were decaying; and he said, that if ever he came to England, it would be to consult Wayte about them. I certainly was very much struck at his alteration for the worse. Besides, he was dressed in the most extraordinary manner."

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 His opinion of 'the historian"s' style—that it combined, at the same time, the excellencies of Gibbon, and Hume—was one of the most exquisite specimens of irony that, I think, I ever met with: it was worthy of former days. I was just going to give up the Edinburgh, when I read that sentence, and I continued it in consequence."

"We certainly want a master-spirit to set us right. Grey. Scott, our second Shakspeare, we, of course, cannot expect to step forward to direct the public mind. He is too much engaged in delighting it. Besides, he is not the man for it. He is not a litterateur. We want Byron."

"Ah! there was the man! And that such a man should be lost to us, at the very moment that he had begun to discover why it had pleased the Omnipotent to have endowed him with such powers!""

"If one thing was more characteristic of

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 think. 'Scribble, scribble, scribble,' as the Duke of Cumberiand said to Gibbon, should be the motto of the mighty 'nineteenth century.'"

"Southey, I think. Grey, is an exception."

"By no means. Southey is a political writer—a writer for a particular purpose. All his works, from those in three volumes quarto, to those in one duodecimo, are alike political pamphlets. Sharon Turner, in his solitude, alone seems to have his eye upon Prince Posterity; but, as might be expected, the public consequently has not its eye upon Sharon Turner. Twenty years hence they may discover that they had a prophet among them, and knew him not."

"His history is certainly a splendid work, but little known. Lingard's, which in ten years time will not be known even by name, sells admirably, I believe."

"I was very much amused, Cleveland, with Allen's review of Lingard in the Edinburgh.

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 of knowledge!' and 'the progress of liberal principles' is like that of a man too late for post-horses. A fall in stocks! and where are your London Universities and your Mechanics' Institutes, and your new Docks? Where your philosophy, your philanthropy, and your competition? National prejudices revive, as national prosperity decreases. If the Consols were at sixty, we should be again bellowing, God save the King! eating roast beef and damning the French."

"And you imagine literature is equally affected, Grey?"

"Clearly. We were literary, because we were rich. Amid the myriad of volumes which issued monthly from the press, what one was not written for the mere hour? It is all very well to buy mechanical poetry, and historical novels, when our purses have a plethora; but now, my dear fellow, depend upon it, the game is up. We have no scholars now—no literary recluses—no men who ever appear to

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 duction, which has flourished from the artificial state of our society—the mere creature of our imaginary wealth. Every body being very rich, has afforded to be very literary—books being considered a luxury almost as elegant and necessary as Ottomans, bonbons, and pier-glasses. Consols at 100 were the origin of all book societies. The Stockbrokers' ladies took off the quarto travels, and the hot-pressed poetry. They were the patronesses of your patent ink, and your wire wove paper. That is all passed. Twenty per cent difference in the value of our public securities from this time last year—that little incident has done more for the restoration of the old English feeling, than all the exertions of Church and State united. Oh! there is nothing like a fall in Consols to bring the blood of our good people of England into cool order. It's your grand state medicine—your veritable Doctor Sangrado!

"A fall in stocks! and halt! to 'the spread

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 sufficiently at ease to enjoy the attic salt of the Countess’s pleasantries; full of terror, they pressed close to her side, trembling and sobbing. “Ah! ’tis Rubezahl! ’tis the Spirit of the Mountain!” But Mamma, who believed not in spirits, rebuked the young ladies for their vulgar credulity, and undertook forthwith to prove to them that all ghost stories were the offspring of a disordered imagination; and that there never had been an alleged instance of spectral appearance which was not susceptible of a natural solution. She was getting on swimmingly with her argument, when Black Cloak, who had for a moment withdrawn himself from the watchful eye of John, came out of the thicket into the middle of the road. It was now found that John had, after all, made a mistake; the stranger was by no means without a head; only, instead of wearing it as usual, on his shoulders, he carried it, like a parcel, under his arm. Such an apparition within three yards of the coach was perfectly frightful. The young ladies, and the Abigail, who was in the habit of doing, as nearly as she could, everything they did, screamed with one scream; and then, on the principle of the ostrich, which, when it can run no further, drives its head into the sand, and so, not seeing the hunter, imagines the hunter cannot see him, they pulled down the carriage-blinds; and, no longer seeing Black Cloak, hoped to pass unobserved by him. Mamma clasped her hands


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 proceed, you begin to suspect that the man is only a wag, and then, surprised at not "seeing the point," you have a shrewd suspicion that he is a great hand at dry humour. It is not till you have closed the volume, that you wonder who it is, that has had the hardihood to intrude such imbecility upon an indulgent world."

"Come, come! Mr. Puff is a worthy gentleman. Let him cease to dusk the radiancy of Ariosto's sunny stanzas, and I shall be the first man who will do justice to his merits. He certainly tattles prettily about tenses, and terminations, and is not an inelegant grammarian."

"Another failure among the booksellers to-day!"

"Indeed! Literature, I think, is at a low ebb."

"Certainly. There is nothing like a fall of stocks to affect what it is the fashion to style the Literature of the present day—a fungus pro-

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text:
Author:John William Garrett-Pegge

Works

 * A Transcript of the First Volume, 1538-1636, of the Parish Register of Chesham: in the County of Buckingham (1905)

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 in silent fear, and lost sight of all her philosophical disbelief in ghosts and spectres. John, whom Black Mantle appeared to have selected for especial notice, had just, in the anguish of his heart, commenced the exorcism so dreaded by evil spirits: “All good angels”when, before he could get out another word, the apparition threw his head at him with so true an aim as to knock him off his perch; at the same instant, the postillion was stretched on the ground by a blow from a cudgel, and the phantom exclaimed, in a hollow, sepulchral voice: “Take that from Rubezahl, the Lord of the Mountain, whose domain thou hast dared to trespass upon! As to the rest, vessel, crew, cargo, all are mine; a lawful prize.” The spectre then sprung into the saddle, put the horses to full speed, rattled the carriage over one hill after another, over stock and stone, at such a rate that the noise of the wheels and of the horses entirely drowned the screams of the poor ladies.

Suddenly the party was increased; a horseman rode for a few minutes by the side of the postillion, without seeming to pay any attention to the unusual circumstance of his being without a head; he then rode on in front, as though he were the Countess’s courier. The accession seemed not at all agreeable to Black Cloak, who changed his direction, but the courier did the same; and, turn which way he would, the headless postillion saw his troublesome companion before him.


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 here that we learn that "laird" in Scotland is the same title as "lord" in England. Here, also, is an account of a Highland soldier's equipment, which we recommend to the lovers of genuine fun.

In L'Homme qui Rit, it was Hugo's object to 'denounce' (as he would say himself) the aristocratic principle as it was exhibited in England; and this purpose, somewhat more unmitigatedly satiric than that of the two last, must answer for much that is unpleasant in the book. The repulsiveness of the scheme of the story, and the manner in which it is bound up with impossibilities and absurdities, discourage the reader at the outset, and it needs an effort to take it as seriously as it deserves. And yet when we judge it deliberately, it will be seen that, here again, the story is admirably adapted to the moral. The constructive ingenuity exhibited throughout is almost morbid. Nothing could be more happily imagined, as a reductio ad absurdum of the aristocratic principle, than the adventures of Gwynplaine, the itinerant mountebank, snatched suddenly out of his little way of life, and installed without preparation as one of the hereditary legislators of a great country. It is with a very bitter irony that the paper, on which all this depends, is left to float for years at the will of wind and tide. What, again, can be


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 1em

"I came here on Wednesday, being summoned a day sooner than I expected, in order to be in time for Thackeray's second lecture, which was delivered on Thursday afternoon. This, as you may suppose, was a genuine treat to me, and I was glad not to miss it. It was given in Willis' Rooms, where the Almacks balls are held—a great painted and gilded saloon with long sofas for benches. The audience was said to be the cream of London society, and it looked so. I did not at all expect the great lecturer would know me or notice me under these circumstances, with admiring duchesses and countesses seated in rows before him; but he met me as I entered—shook hands—took me to his mother, whom I had not before seen, and introduced me. She is a fine, handsome, young-looking old lady; was very gracious, and called with one of her grand-daughters next day.

Thackeray called too, separately. I had a long talk with him, and I think he knows me now a little better than he did: but of this I cannot yet be sure; he is a great and strange man. There is quite a furor for his lectures. They are a sort of essays, characterised by his own peculiar originality and power, and delivered with a finished taste and ease, which is felt, but cannot be described. Just before the lecture began, somebody came behind me, leaned over and said, 'Permit me, as a Yorkshireman, to introduce myself.' I turned round—saw a strange, not handsome, face, which puzzled me for


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 And not a little was his alarm increased on perceiving that the white horse ridden by his persecutor had but three legs, with which, however, it went through all its paces in the best style. Black Cloak began to be exceedingly ill at ease on his usurped saddle, in the conviction that the real Rubezahl was about to make him pay dearly for having dared to usurp his name.

After a little time the cavalier, suddenly backing his horse, brought himself alongside Black Cloak. “Whither away so fast, friend?”—“Whither?” replied the other, with a wretched attempt to seem as though he was not at all afraid; “where dost think? After my nose.”—“Oh! indeed!” returned the horseman: “let’s see, then, where thy nose is, comrade.” So saying, he stopped the horses, seized Black Cloak round the waist, and dashed him to the ground with such force that all his limbs quivered again; for this spectre, it now appeared, had flesh and bones. The horseman then alighted, and tearing open the black cloak and the great ruff, there issued from out them a stout, curly-headed young man.

The knave, finding himself detected, dreading a second time to feel the weight of the cavalier’s arm, and convinced that he had now the real Rubezahl to deal with, surrendered at discretion, and entreated pitifully to have his life spared. “High and potent Lord of the Mountain!” cried he, “have mercy on a poor unfortunate fellow whom Fate has been cruelly


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 finer in conception than that voice from the people heard suddenly in the House of Lords, in solemn arraignment of the pleasures and privileges of its splendid occupants? The horrible laughter, stamped for ever "by order of the king" upon the face of this strange spokesman of democracy, adds yet another feature of justice to the scene; in all time, travesty has been the argument of oppression; and, in all time, the oppressed might have made this answer: "If I am vile, is it not your system that has made me so?" This ghastly laughter gives occasion, moreover, for the one strain of tenderness running through the web of this unpleasant story: the love of the blind girl Dea, for the monster. It is a most benignant providence that thus harmoniously brings together these two misfortunes; it is one of those compensations, one of those afterthoughts of a relenting destiny, that reconcile us from time to time to the evil that is in the world; the atmosphere of the book is purified by the presence of this pathetic love; it seems to be above the story somehow, and not of it, as the full moon over the night of some foul and feverish city.

There is here a quality in the narration more intimate and particular than is general with Hugo; but it must be owned, on the other hand, that the book is wordy, and even, now and then, a little


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 appeared, to take up a dull, tame, compilation from Bingley's Animal Biography!"

"Yes! and the impertinence of dedicating such a work to the Officers of His Majesty's Household Troops! Considering the quarter from whence it proceeded, I certainly did not expect much, but still I thought that there was to be some little esprit. The poor Guards! how nervous they must have been at the announcement! What could have been the point of that dedication?"

"I remember a most interminable proser, that was blessed with a very sensible-sounding voice, and who, on the strength of that, and his correct and constant emphases, was considered by the world, for a great time, as a sage. At length it was discovered that he was quite the reverse. Mr. Puff's wit is very like this man's wisdom. You take up one of his little books, and you fancy, from its title-page, that it's going to be very witty; as you

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 exclaimed Phil Cohen, looking up at the clouds. For the sky was overcast and there was no sun.

"That's all right," answered Chet. "We made up our minds to start to-day and we'd start if there was a thunderstorm on."

"Brave sailors!" mocked Callie Shaw, with a smile.

"How long will you be away?" shouted Frank.

"Until the grub runs out."

"That should be about next December," ventured Iola. "It looks to me as if you have enough provisions there to last you a year."

"Not with Chet Morton on the trip, we haven't," grunted Biff Hooper, looking up from the engine. "We'll be lucky if it lasts us a week. I've seen him eat before."

"I'll do my share," Chet promised modestly.

"We should have had the City Band down to give you a proper send-off," Joe Hardy remarked.

"It doesn't matter. We'll forgive you this time. But be sure and have the band here to welcome us when we come back."

"You'll be back by to-morrow night," declared Iola. "I know you! Why, I'll bet you'll both be scared green when darkness comes on. One night will cure you of sleeping in the open."

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 poetical powers; possessing no vigour of language, and gifted with no happiness of expression. His translation is hard, dry, and husky, as the outside of a cocoa-nut. I am amused to see the excellent tact with which the public has determined not to read his volumes, in spite of the incessant exertions of a certain set to ensure their popularity; but the time has gone by, when the smug coterie could create a reputation."

"Do you think the time ever existed, Cleveland?"

"What could have seduced Puff into being so ambitious? I suppose his admirable knowledge of Italian; as if a man were entitled to strike a die for the new sovereign, merely because he was aware how much alloy might legally debase its carats of pure gold.

"I never can pardon Puff for that little book on Cats. The idea was admirable; but, instead of one of the most delightful volumes that ever

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 wearisome. Ursus and his wolf are pleasant enough companions; but the former is nearly as much an abstract type as the latter. There is a beginning, also, of an abuse of conventional conversation, such as may be quite pardonable in the drama where needs must, but is without excuse in the romance. Lastly, I suppose one must say a word or two about the weak points of this not immaculate novel; and if so, it will be best to distinguish at once. The large family of English blunders, to which we have alluded already in speaking of Les Travailleurs, are of a sort that is really indifferent in art. If Shakespeare makes his ships cast anchor by some seaport of Bohemia, if Hugo imagines Tom-Tim-Jack to be a likely nickname for an English sailor, or if either Shakespeare, or Hugo, or Scott, for that matter, be guilty of "figments enough to confuse the march of a whole history—anachronisms enough to overset all, chronology," the life of their creations, the artistic truth and accuracy of their work, is not so much as compromised. But when we come upon a passage like the sinking of the "Ourque" in this romance, we can do nothing but cover our face with our hands: the conscientious reader feels a sort of disgrace in the very reading. For such artistic falsehoods, springing from what


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 half a minute, and then I said, 'You are Lord Carlisle.' He nodded and smiled; he talked a few minutes very pleasantly and courteously.

"Afterwards came another man with the same plea, that he was a Yorkshireman, and this turned out to be Mr. Monckton Milnes. Then came Dr. Forbes, whom I was sincerely glad to see. On Friday, I went to the Crystal Palace; it is a marvellous, stirring, bewildering sight—a mixture of a genii palace, and a mighty bazaar, but it is not much in my way; I liked the lecture better. On Saturday I saw the Exhibition at Somerset House; about half a dozen of the pictures are good and interesting, the rest of little worth. Sunday—yesterday—was a day to be marked with a white stone; through most of the day I was very happy, without being tired or over-excited. In the afternoon, I went to hear D'Aubigné, the great Protestant French preacher; it was pleasant—half sweet, half sad—and strangely suggestive to hear the French language once more. For health, I have so far got on very fairly, considering that I came here far from well."

The lady, who accompanied Miss Brontë to the lecture at Thackeray's alluded to, says that, soon after they had taken their places, she was aware that he was pointing out her companion to several of his friends, but she hoped that Miss Brontë herself would not perceive it. After some time, however, during which many heads had been turned round, and many glasses


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 I have called already an unprincipled avidity after effect, no amount of blame can be exaggerated; and above all, when the criminal is such a man as Victor Hugo. We cannot forgive in him what we might have passed over in a third-rate sensation novelist. Little as he seems to know of the sea and nautical affairs, he must have known very well that vessels do not go down as he makes the "Ourque" go down; he must have known that such a liberty with fact was against the laws of the game, and incompatible with all appearance of sincerity in conception or workmanship.

In each of these books, one after another, there has been some departure from the traditional canons of romance; but taking each separately, one would have feared to make too much of these departures, or to found any theory upon what was perhaps purely accidental. The appearance of Quatre Vingt Treize has put us out of the region of such doubt. Like a doctor who has long been hesitating how to classify an epidemic malady, we have come at last upon a case so well marked that our uncertainty is at an end. It is a novel built upon "a sort of enigma," which was at that date laid before revolutionary France, and which is presented by Hugo to Tellmarch, to Lantenac, to Gauvain, and very terribly to Cimourdain, each


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 kicking about from his infancy; who has never been permitted to be what he wished to be; never been suffered to do what he wished to do; never allowed to play out the part he had studied with the greatest care; and who, now that his existence among human kind is annihilated, cannot even be a spirit for once and away.”

This lamentable ditty had its effect. The Gnome was, indeed, greatly exasperated against the fellow for daring to assume his name and attributes, and had fully intended, after the example of the magistracy of Hirschberg, to have inflicted summary justice on the offender; but his curiosity got the better, for a time, of his indignation, and he postponed the fellow’s punishment until after he had heard his story.

“To your saddle, sir,” said he, “and await my orders.” He then turned to his own horse, and drawing out from under its ribs the leg which was wanting, rendered it a perfect animal. He next opened the door of the carriage, for the purpose of paying his respects to the travellers; but all within was still as death: excess of fear had so acted on the ladies, that all the vital spirits had retreated from the outworks of sensation to the chamber of the heart. Every living soul in the carriage seemed dead. The cavalier, who seemed to know exactly what to do, threw open both doors of the coach to let in the air, and then flying off to a spring near at hand,


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 "Have you seen his quarto volume—'The Cure for the Catholic Question?'"

"Yes."

"If you have it, lend it to me. What kind of thing is it?"

"Oh! what should it be!—ingenious, and imbecile. He advises the Catholics, in the old nursery language, to behave like good boys—to open their mouths, and shut their eyes, and see what God will send them."

"Well, that's the usual advice. Is there nothing more characteristic of the writer?"

"What think you of a proposition of making Jocky of Norfolk Patriarch of England, and of an ascertained credo for our Catholic fellow-subjects? Ingenious—isn't it?"

"Have you seen Puff's new volume of Ariosto?"

"I have. What could possibly have induced Mr. Parthenopex Puff to have undertaken such a duty? Mr. Puff is a man destitute of

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 of whom gives his own solution of the question, clement or stern, according to the temper of his spirit. That enigma was this: "Can a good action be a bad action? Does not he who spares the wolf kill the sheep?" This question, as I say, meets with one answer after another during the course of the book, and yet seems to remain undecided to the end. And something in the same way, although one character, or one set of characters, after another comes to the front and occupies our attention for the moment, we never identify our interest with any of these temporary heroes nor regret them after they are withdrawn. We soon come to regard them somewhat as special cases of a general law; what we really care for is something that they only imply and body forth to us. We know how history continues through century after century; how this king or that patriot disappears from its pages with his whole generation, and yet we do not cease to read, nor do we even feel as if we had reached any legitimate conclusion, because our interest is not in the men, but in the country that they loved or hated, benefited or injured. And so it is here: Gauvain and Cimourdain pass away, and we regard them no more than the lost armies of which we find the cold statistics in military annals; what we regard is what remains behind; it is the principle that


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 "Rats!" replied Chet good-naturedly. "I'm not afraid of the dark."

"Cut out the jawing and let's get started," said Biff Hooper. "No use hanging around here. Are you ready?"

"All set!"

"Let's go then. Good-bye, everybody."

"Good-bye!" every one shouted. Frank and Joe cheered, the girls clapped their hands, and the Envoy slowly moved away from the dock, with Chet Morton and Biff Hooper waving to their chums.

Tony Prito swung his motorboat around.

"I'll go along with you to the end of the bay," he shouted.

Frank glanced at Joe.

"Why didn't we think of that?"

"It isn't too late yet. Let's get the boat."

"Would you and Iola care to come?" said Frank to Callie. "We're going to get our boat and follow them down the bay a bit."

"Oh, that'll be great!" exclaimed Callie. "I'd love to go. Wouldn't you, Iola?"

"I'll say!" Iola replied, slangily.

They hurried down from the dock and went along the roadway back of the boathouses until they came to the boathouse where Frank and Joe kept their craft.

In a few minutes, the Sleuth was nosing its way out into Barmet Bay, but already Chet

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 put up, in order to look at the author of "Jane Eyre," Miss Brontë said, "I am afraid Mr. Thackeray has been playing me a trick;" but she soon became too much absorbed in the lecture to notice the attention which was being paid to her, except when it was directly offered, as in the case of Lord Carlisle and Mr. Monckton Milnes. When the lecture was ended, Mr. Thackeray came down from the platform, and making his way towards her, asked her for her opinion. This she mentioned to me not many days afterwards, adding remarks almost identical with those which I subsequently read in "Villette," where a similar action on the part of M. Paul Emanuel is related.

"As our party left the Hall, he stood at the entrance; he saw and knew me, and lifted his hat; he offered his hand in passing, and uttered the words "Qu'en dites-vous?'—question eminently characteristic, and reminding me, even in this his moment of triumph, of that inquisitive restlessness, that absence of what I considered desirable self-control, which were amongst his faults. He should not have cared just then to ask what I thought, or what anybody thought; but he did care, and he was too natural to conceal, too impulsive to repress his wish. Well! if I blamed his over-eagerness, I liked his naïveté. I would have praised him; I had plenty of praise in my heart; but alas! no words on my lips. Who has words at the right moment? I stammered some lame expressions; but was truly glad when other people, coming up with profuse congratulations, covered my deficiency by their redundancy."


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 rated into a mere personal bickering between the Laureate and Butler. Southey is, of course, revelling in the idea of writing an English work with a Latin title; and that, perhaps, is the only circumstance for which the controversy is prolonged."

"But Southey, after all, is a man of splendid talents."

"Doubtless—the most philosophical of bigots, and the most poetical of prose writers."

"Apropos to the Catholic Question—there goes Colonial Bother'em, trying to look like Prince Metternich;—a decided failure."

"What can keep him in town?"

"Writing letters, I suppose. Heaven preserve me from receiving any of them!"

"Is it true, then, that his letters are of the awful length that is whispered?"

"True! Oh! they're something beyond all conception! Perfect epistolary Boa Constrictors. I speak with feeling, for I have myself suffered under their voluminous windings."

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 put these men where they were, that filled them for a while with heroic inspiration, and has the power, now that they are fallen, to inspire others with the same courage. The interest of the novel centres about revolutionary France: just as the plot is an abstract judicial difficulty, the hero is an abstract historical force. And this has been done, not, as it would have been before, by the cold and cumbersome machinery of allegory, but with bold, straightforward realism, dealing only with the objective materials of art, and dealing with them so masterfully that the palest abstractions of thought come before us, and move our hopes and fears, as if they were the young men and maidens of customary romance.

The episode of the mother and children in Quatre Vingt Treize is equal to anything that Hugo has ever written. There is one chapter in the second volume, for instance, called "Sein guéri, cœur saignant," that is full of the very stuff of true tragedy, and nothing could be more delightful than the humours of the three children on the day before the assault. The passage on La Vendée is really great, and the scenes in Paris have much of the same broad merit. The book is full, as usual, of pregnant and splendid sayings. But when thus much is conceded by way of praise, we come to the other scale of the balance, and


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 find this, also, somewhat heavy. There is here a yet greater over-employment of conventional dialogue than in L'Homme qui Rit; and much that should have been said by the author himself, if it were to be said at all, he has most unwarrantably put into the mouths of one or other of his characters. We should like to know what becomes of the main body of the troop in the wood of La Saudraie during the thirty pages or so in which the foreguard lays aside all discipline, and stops to gossip over a woman and some children. We have an unpleasant idea forced upon us at one place, in spite of all the good-natured incredulity that we can summon up to resist it. Is it possible that Monsieur Hugo thinks they ceased to steer the corvette while the gun was loose? Of the chapter in which Lantenac and Halmalho are alone together in the boat, the less said the better; of course, if there were nothing else, they would have been swamped thirty times over during the course of Lantenac's harangue. Again, after Lantenac has landed, we have scenes of almost inimitable workmanship that suggest the epithet "statuesque" by their clear and trenchant outline; but the tocsin scene will not do, and the tocsin unfortunately pervades the whole passage, ringing continually in our ears with a taunting accusation of falsehood. And then, when we come to the place where