CHAPTER XI. FROM THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO TO THE ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA.-A.D. 1815 TO A.D. 1837. "PEACE hath her victories, no less renowned than War," wrote Milton, and many victories remained for peace to win when the war closed in 1815. When the United Kingdom contained fifteen million of people, the produce of taxation was seventy-two million of pounds. In that year, in a time of abundant harvest, our English Parliament set up a Corn Law that closed the ports till wheat rose to the price of eighty shillings. Bread was at famine price in 1816, 1817, and 1818. There were riots, and there were executions. In 1817 the House of Lords threw out a Bill introduced by Sir Samuel Romilly, and passed by the House of Commons, for repealing the Act which made private theft in a shop to the amount of five shillings punishable with death. Juries had generally ceased to convict, but in 1785 ninety-seven persons had been hanged for that offence, and twenty of them at one time. When Sir Samuel Romilly brought in his Bill, there was a child of ten lying in Newgate under sentence of death for that offence. A Committee of the House of Commons, appointed in 1815 to inquire into the state of beggary in London, was told of two thousand miserable people crammed into forty houses in George Yard, Whitechapel. Another Committee found in 1816 that there were 120,000 children in London wholly without means of education, the whole population of London being then not very much over a million. The cost of illadministered poor relief had risen during the war from two millions to seven. Before 1816 there was no such thing as a savings bank in London. In 1816 William Cobbett began publishing his Weekly Register for twopence, and became the political mind of many thousands who felt in their daily lives the wrongs and evils of their time, and had no minds of their own formed to right use of reason. When a knot of vigorous young men, met in Francis Jeffrey's room at Edinburgh, planned The Edinburgh Review which made its first appearance in 1802, there was a resolve that it should battle, with help of the best attainable wit and wisdom, against ills manifest to many educated thinkers. In 1839, when furnishing a preface to his collected essays from The Edinburgh Review, Sydney Smith wrote, "To appreciate the value of The Edinburgh Review, the state of England at the period when that journal began should be had in remembrance. The Catholics were not emancipated--the Corporation and Test Acts were unrepealed the Game Laws were horribly oppressive -steel traps and spring guns were set all over the country-prisoners tried for their lives could have no Counsel-Lord Eldon and the Court of Chancery pressed heavily upon mankind-libel was punished by the most cruel and vindictive imprisonment the principles of Political Economy were little understood the laws of Debt and of Conspiracy were upon the worst possible footing-the enormous wickedness of the Slave Trade was tolerated-a thousand evils were in existence, which the talents of good and able men have since lessened or removed; and these effects have been not a little assisted by the honest boldness of The Edinburgh Review. When The Quarterly Review followed in 1808 there was the needed fellowship of work among minds of equal honesty and culture, but with opposite views of many points of controversy. Free conflict of opinion is not least a fellowship to be warmly welcomed, when it assures that full discussion of unsettled questions by which alone the truth can be made clear, and the slow gains of civilisation become fixed wealth of the future. The newspaper system was slowly making way, against great difficulties, to its place as the representative of free continuous debate of the whole nation on its own affairs, as honestly set forth together with the comments on them representing every form of thought. The monthly magazines began to take their place in the great council after 1815. Blackwood's Magazine began its career of unbroken success in 1817, and drew to itself the vigorous mind of John Wilson so completely that in literature he is nothing if not "Christopher North." The London Magazine, established in 1820, contained in its early numbers Charles Lamb's 'Essays of Elia," Thomas Carlyle's "Life of Schiller," Thomas De Quincey's "Confessions of an English Opium Eater." The fifteen volumes of De Quincey's works consist wholly of articles contributed to magazines; and Charles Lamb, till his own story is revealed and has made him known to us as something better than the best that he can write, comes nearest to men's hearts as Elia. John Wilson and Thomas De Quincey were nearly of an age, one born in 1785, the other in 1786. Wilson was the son of a manufacturer at Paisley. De Quincey was the son of a Manchester manufacturer. Both lost their fathers early in life; Wilson inheriting a somewhat large fortune, De Quincey a small one. Both went to Oxford, but their friendship was not formed at the University. In all accidents of person and character they were opposites. John Wilson was tall, vigorous, athletic, warmly social; was excelled by none at Oxford in length of whiskers, length of flat jump, or hearty relish of poetry, English or Greek. Thomas De Quincey was small, sensitive, feeble of frame; a shy recluse at Oxford, paying little heed to the ways or studies of the place, though studying after his own fashion. With his quick nervous temperament he read to such good purpose that before he left school his master had said of him to a friend, "That boy could harangue an Athenian mob, better than you or I could address an English one." Both Wilson and De Quincey went from Oxford to the Lakes, and they first met in the house of Wordsworth. Thereafter they became firm friends. Wilson had money to spend, and spent it freely at Elleray; had as many boats as he pleased on Windermere, roamed over the hills, at night with his mind full of poetry, and by day among the people of the district with a cheery nature ready for all fun. De Quincey had acquired in early life a sense of pleasure in the use of opium. It became a daily habit after 1813, and in 1816 he is said to have been taking as much as eight thousand drops of laudanum a day, but reduced the number to a thousand, when, in that year 1816, he married. John Wilson also married, and paid for his wedding journey with a poem, published in 1812, "The Isle of Palms." About the year 1815 it was John Wilson's fortune to lose all his money. An uncle who had charge of it failed, and all was gone. Wilson pitied the actual misfortune of the older man, uttered no word of complaint, gave up Elleray and his boats, went to Edinburgh, took to law as a profession, and the establishment of Blackwood's Magazine just afterwards gave him an outlet for his energies. He had written moderately JOHN WILSON. From a Portrait by Sir John Watson Gordon, engraved as Frontispiece to his" Noctes Ambrosiana" (1863). good poems, but he wrote now excellent prose, and put his feeling as a poet into many a passage that expressed his deep enjoyment of nature. He and his fellow-contributors to Maga dealt audaciously with the public and with one another, but the breadth of John Wilson's powers of enjoyment, and his sympathetic insight into life and nature, made him the chief source of the magazine's early prosperity. He could be Christopher North in his shootingjacket, with his whole mind on the moor or by the stream; he could discourse upon the poets, loving books as none can love them who see life only in printer's ink; could tell a Scottish tale with kindly grace, or sport in fancy at Ambrose's Tavern, and put wit, poetry, and eloquence, with some wild nonsense at times, into a dialogue of divers speakers. Among these Christopher North, representative of an editor where editor was none, was as much a creation of fancy as the playful treatment of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, who, as a poet of nature, was made godfather to a good deal of the poetic prose that made one feature of the "Noctes." Here is part of a sitting, complete in itself. NORTH AND THE SHEPHERD. SCENE-Ambrose's Hotel, Picardy Place.-Paper Parlour. North. How do you account, my dearest Shepherd, for the steadiness and perseverance of my affection for thee, seeing that I am naturally and artificially the most wayward, fickle, and capricious of all God's creatures? Not a friend but yourself, James, with whom I have not frequently and bit. terly quarrelled, often to the utter extinction of mutual regard -but towards my incomprehensible Brownie my heart ever yearns Shepherd. Haud your leein tongue, ye tyke, you've quarrelled wi' me mony thousan' times, and I've borne at your hands mair ill-usage than I wad hae taen frae ony ither mortal man in his Majesty's dominions. Yet I weel believe that only the shears o' Fate will ever cut the cords o' our friendship. I fancy it's just the same wi' you as wi' me, we maun like ane anither whether we wull or no-and that's the sort o' freendship for me-for it flourishes, like a mountain flower, in all weathers-braid and bricht in the sunshine, and just faulded up a wee in the sleet, sae that it micht maist be thocht dead, but fu' o' life in its cozy bield' ahint the mossy stane, and peering out again in a' its beauty at the sang o' the rising laverock. North. This world's friendships, James Shepherd. Are as cheap as crockery, and as easily broken by a fa'. They seldom can bide a clash without fleein intil flinders. O, sir, but maist men's hearts, and women's too, are like toom nits 3-nae kernel, and a splutter o' fushionless dust. I sometimes canna help thinkin that there's nae future state. North. Fie, fie, James, leave all such dark scepticism to a Byron-it is unworthy of the Shepherd. Shepherd. What for should sae mony puir, peevish, selfish, stupid, mean, and malignant creatures no just lie still in the mools among the ither worms, aneath their bits o' inscribed tomb-stones, aiblins railed in, and a' their nettles, wi' painted airn-rails, in a nook o' the kirkyard that's their ain property, and naebody's wushin to tak it frae them-What for, I say, shouldna they lie quate in skeleton for a thousand years, and then crummle, crummle, crummle awa intil the yearth o' which Time is made, and ne'er be reimmatterialeezed into Eternity? North. This is not like your usual gracious and benign philosophy, James; but, believe me, my friend, that within the spirit of the most degraded wretch that ever grovelled earthward from caudle-day to corpse-day, there has been some slumbering spark divine, inextinguishable by the death-damps of the cemetery Shepherd. Gran' words, sir, gran' words, nae doubt, mair especially "cemetery," which I'm fond o' usin mysel, as often's the subject and the verse will alloo. But after a', is't mair poetical than the "Grave"? Deevil a bit. For a wee, short, simple, stiff, stern, dour, and fearsome word, commend me to the "Grave." mortal human creatures, sair, sair unwilling to die! Whare's the snuffers, that I may put it out o' pain. I'm tell't that twa folk die every minute, or rather every moment. Isna that fearsome to think o'? North. Ay, James, children have been made orphans, and wives widows, since that wick began to fill the room with its funereal odour. Shepherd. Nae man can manage snuffers richt, unless he hae been accustomed to them when he was young. In the Forest, we a' use our fingers, or blaw the cawnles out wi' our mouths, or chap the brass sticks wi' the stinkin wicks again' the ribs and gin there was a pair o' snuffers in the house, you might hunt for them through a' the closets and presses for a fortnight, without their ever castin up. North. I hear that you intend to light up Mount Benger with gas, James. Is that a true bill? Shepherd. I had thochts o't-but the gasometer, I find comes ower high-so I shall stick to the "Lang Twas." O man, noo that the cawnle's out, isna that fire unco heartsome? Your face, sir, looks just perfeckly ruddy in the bleeze, and it wad tak a pair o' poorfu' specks to spy out a single wrinkle. You'll leeve yet for ither twa hundred Numbers. North. And then, my dear Shepherd, the editorship shall be thine. Shepherd. Na. When you're dead, Maga will be dead. She'll no surveeve you ae single day. Buried shall you be in ae grave, and curst be he that disturbs your banes! Afore you and her cam out, this wasna the same warld it has been sin' syne. Wut and wisdom never used to be seen linkin alang thegither, han'-in-han' as they are noo, frae ae end o' the month to the ither ;-there wasna prented a byuck that garred ye break out at ae page into grief, and at anither into a guffaw;-where could ye forgather wi' sic a canty crew o' chiels as ODoherty and the rest, passin themselves aff sometimes for real, and sometimes for fictious characters, till the puzzled public glowered as if they had flung the glamour ower her?-and oh, sir, afore you brak out, beautiful as had been many thousan' thousan' million, billion, trillion and quadrillion nights by firesides in huts or ha's, or out-by in the open air wi' the starry heavens resting on the saft hilltaps, yet a' the time that the heavenly bodies were performing their stated revolutions-there were nae, nae NOCTES AMBROSIANÆ! North. I have not, I would fain hope, my dear James, been altogether useless in my generation-but your partiality exaggerates my merits Shepherd. A man would require an oss magna sonaturum to do that. Suffice it to say, sir, that you are the wisest and wittiest of men. Dinna turn awa your face, or you'll get a crick in your neck. There's no sic a popular man in a' Britain the noo as Christopher North. Oh, sir, you'll dee as rich as Croesus-for every day there's wulls makin by auld leddies and young leddies, leaving you their residiatory legatee, sometimes, I fear, past the heirs, male or female, o' their bodies lawfully begotten. North. No, James, I trust that none of my admirers, since admirers you say the old man hath, will ever prove so unprincipled as to leave their money away from their own kin. Nothing can justify that-but hopeless and incurable vice in the natural heirs. Shepherd. I wush I was worth just twenty thousan' pounds. I could leeve on that-but no on a farden less. In the first place, I would buy three or four pair o' tap-boots-and I would try to introduce into the Forest buckskin breeks. I would niest, sin' naebody's gien me ane in a present, buy a gold musical snuff-box, that would play tunes on the table. North. Heavens! James-at that rate you would be a ruined man before the coming of Christmas. You would see your name honourably mentioned in the Gazette. Shepherd. Then a gold twisted watch-chain, sax gold seals o' various sizes, frae the bigness o' my nieve amaist, doun to that o' a kitty-wren's egg. North. Which ODoherty would chouse you out of at brag, some night at his own lodgings, after the play. Shepherd. Catch me at the cairds, unless it be a game at Birky; for I'm sick o' Whust itsel, I've sic desperate bad hauns dealt to me noo-no an ace ance in a month, and no that unseldom a haun without a face-caird, made up o' deuces, and trays, and fours, and fives, and be damned to them; so that to tak the verra weakest trick is entirely out o' my power, except it be by main force, harling the cairds to me whether the opposite side wull or no; and then at the close o' the round, threepin that I had twa honours-the knave and anither ane. Sic bad luck hae I in a' chance games, Mr. North, as you ken, that were I to fling dice for my life alang wi' a haill army o' fifty thousand men, I wad be sure to be shot; for I would fling aces after some puir trumlin drummer had flung deuces, and be led out into the middle o' a hollow square for execution. 4 North. James, you are very excursive this evening in your conversation-nobody is thinking of shooting you, James. Shepherd. And I'm sure that I hae nae thochts o' shootin mysel. But ance-it's a lang time syne-I saw a sodger shot —dead, sir, as a door-nail, or a coffin-nail, or ony ither kind o' nail. North. Was it in battle, James ? Shepherd. In battle?-Na, na; neither you nor me was ever fond o' being in battles at ony time o' our lives. North. I was Private Secretary to Rodney when he beat Langara, James. Shepherd. Haud your tongue!-What a crowd on the Links 6 that day! But a' wi' fixed whitish faces-nae speakin-no sae muckle as a whisper-a frozen dumbness that nae wecht? could break! North. You mean the spectators, James. Shepherd. Then the airmy appeared in the distance; for there were three haill regiments, a' wi' fixed beggonets; but nae music-nae music for a while, at least, till a' at ance, mercy on us! we heard, like laigh sullen thunder, the soun' o' the great muffled drum, aye played on, ye ken, by a black man; in this case, an African neegger, sax feet four; and what bangs he gied the bass-the whites o' his cen rowing about as if he was glad, atween every stroke! North. I remember him-the best pugilist then going, for it was long before the days of Richmond and Molineauxand nearer forty than thirty years ago, James. Shepherd. The tread o' the troops was like the step o' ae giant sae perfate was their discippleen--and afore I weel kent that they were a' in the Links, three sides o' a square were formed-and the soun' o' the great drum ceased, as at an inaudible word of command, or wavin o' a haun, or the lowerin o' a banner. It was but ae man that was about to die-but for that ae man, had their awe no hindered them, twenty thousan' folk wad at that moment hae broken out into lamentations and rueful cries-but as yet not a tear was shed -not a sigh was heaved-for had a' that vast crowd been sae Beggar-my-neighbour. Threepin, asserting pertinaciously. First English, "threapian." 5 Off Cape St. Vincent, on the 16th of January, 1780. Links, windings of a river; flat ground by river, sea, or elsewhere. 7 Wecht, weight. mony images, or corpses raised up by cantrip in their deathclaes, they couldna hae been mair motionless than at that minute, nor mair speechless than that multitude o' leevin souls! North. I was myself one of the multitude, James. Shepherd. There, a' at ance, hoo or whare he came frae nane could tell-there, I say, a' at ance stood the mutineer. Some tell't me afterwards that they had seen him marchin along, twa-three yards ahint his coffin, wi' his head just a wee thocht inclined downwards, not in fear o' man or death, but in awe o' God and judgment, keeping time wi' a military step that was natural to him, and no unbecoming a brave man on the way to the grave, and his een fixed on the green that was fadin awa for ever and ever frae aneath his feet; but that was a sicht I saw not-for the first time I beheld him he was standin, a' unlike the ither men, in the middle o' that three-sided square, and there was a shudder through the haill multitude, just as if we had been a' standin haun in haun, and a natural philosopher had gien us a shock o' his electrical machine. "That's him-that's him-puir, puir fallow! Oh! but he's a pretty man!"-Such were the ejaculations frae thousan's o' women, maist o' them young anes, but some o' them auld, and grey-headed aneath their mutches, and no a few wi' babies sookin or caterwailin at their breasts. North. A pretty girl fainted within half-a-dozen yards of where I stood. Shepherd. His name was Lewis Mackenzie-and as fine a young man he was as ever stepped on heather. The moment before he knelt down on his coffin, he seemed as fu' o' life as if he had stripped aff his jacket for a game at foot-ba', or to fling the hammer. Ay, weel micht the women-folk gaze on him wi' red weeping een, for he had lo'ed them but ower weel; and mony a time, it is said, had he let himsel down the Castle-rock at night, God knows hoo, to meet his lemansbut a' that, a' his sins, and a' his crimes acted and only meditated, were at an end noo-puir fallow-and the platoon, wi' fixed beggonets, were drawn up within ten yards, or less, o' where he stood, and he himsel havin tied a handkerchief ower his een, dropped down on his knees on his coffin, wi' faulded hands, and lips moving fast, fast, and white as ashes, in prayer! North. Cursed be the inexorable justice of military law!— he might have been pardoned. Shepherd. Pardoned! Hadna he disarmed his ain captain o' his sword, and ran him through the shouther--in a mutiny of which he was himsel the ringleader? King George on the throne durstna hae pardoned him-it wad hae been as much as his crown was worth-for hoo could King, Kintra, and Constitution thole a standing army, in which mutiny was not punished wi' death? North. Six balls pierced him-through head and heartand what a shriek, James, then arose ! Shepherd. Ay, to hae heard that shriek, you wad hae thought that the women that raised it wad never hae lauched again; but in a few hours, as sune as nightfall darkened the city, some o' them were gossipin about the shootin o' the sodger to their neighbours, some dancin at hops that shall be nameless, some sittin on their sweethearts' knees, wi' their arms roun' their necks, some swearin like troopers, some doubtless sittin thochtfu' by the fireside, or awa to bed in sadness an hour sooner than usual, and then fast asleep. North. I saw his old father, James, with my own eyes, step out from the crowd, and way being made for him, he walked up to his son's dead body, and embracing it, kissed his bloody head, and then with clasped hands looked up to heaven. Shepherd. A strang and stately auld man, and ane too that had been a soldier in his youth. Sorrow, not shame, somewhat bowed his head, and ance he reeled as if he were faint on a sudden. But what the deevil's the use o' me haverin awa this way aboot the shootin o' a sodger, thretty years sin' syne, and mair too-for didna I see that auld silvery-headed father o' the mutineer staggering alang the Grassmarket, the verra next day after the execution, as fou as the Baltic, wi' a heap o' mischievous weans hallooin after him, and him a' the while in a dwam o' drink and despair, maunderin about his son Lewis, then lyin a' barken'd wi' blood in his coffin, six feet deep in a fine rich loam. North. That very same afternoon I heard the drums and fifes of a recruiting party, belonging to the same regiment, winding away down towards Holyrood; and the place of Lewis Mackenzie, in the line of bold sergeants with their claymores, was supplied by a corporal, promoted to a triple bar on his sleeve, in consequence of the death of the mutineer. Shepherd. It was an awfu' scene, yon, sir; but there was naething humiliating to human nature in it,- -as in a hangin; and it struck a wholesome fear into the souls o' many thousan' sodgers. North. The silence and order of the troops, all the while, was sublime. Shepherd. It was sae, indeed. North. What do you think, James, of that, by way of a toasting cheese? Ambrose calls it the Welshman's delight, or Davies' darling. Shepherd. It's rather teuch-luk, luk, hoo it pu's out, out, out, and better out, into a very thread o' the unbeaten gold, a' the way frae the ashet to my mouth. Saw ye ever onything sae tenawcious? I verily believe that I could walk, without breakin't, intil the tither room. Luk hoo it shines, like a gossamer-filament, a' threaded wi' what Allan Kinnigham would ca' dew-blobs, stretching across frae ae sweetbriar bush to anither, and breaking afore the step o' the early lassie tripping down the brae, to wash her bonny face, yet smiling wi' the glimmerin licht o' love-dreams, in the bit burnie that wimples awa as pure and stainless as her ain virgin life! North. Sentiment - divine sentiment, extracted by the alchemy of genius from a Welsh-rabbit! Shepherd. Noo that I've gotten't intil my mouth-I wush it ever may be gotten out again! The tae1 end o' the line is fastened, like a hard gedd2 (See Dr. Jamieson) in the ashet--and the ither end's in my stammach-and the thin thread o' attenuated cheese gets atween my teeth, sae that I canna chow't through and through. Thank ye, sir, for cuttin't. Rax me ower the jug. Is't yill? Here's to you, sir. From Thomas De Quincey let us hear the Introduction to an ironical Lecture ON MURDER, CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS. GENTLEMEN,-I have had the honour to be appointed by your committee to the trying task of reading the Williams' Lecture on Murder, considered as one of the Fine Arts; a task which might be easy enough three or four centuries ago, when the art was little understood, and few great models had been exhibited; but in this age, when masterpieces of excellence have been executed by professional men, it must be evident, that in the style of criticism applied to them, the public will look for something of a corresponding |