"THE STORY OF OUR LIVES FROM TEAR TO TEAR,"—SHAKBSPEAEE. ALL THE TEAR ROUND. A WEEKLY JOUENAL. CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED HOUSEHOLD WORDS.

N°- 166.] SATURDAY, APRIL 19, 1862. [PRICE 2d.

to Prank—"my congratulations, and my apo­ m MME. logies. When I caught you kissing Mr. Prancis BT THE AUTHOR OF " THE WOMAN IN WHrTE," &C, Clare in the summer-house, I had no idea you • were engaged in carrying out the intentions of CHAPTER X, your parents. I offer no opinion on the subject. ON retummg to the house, Magdalen felt her I merely regret my own accidental appearance in shoulder suddenly touched from behind, as she the character of an Obstacle to the course of true crossed the hall. She tumed, and confronted love—which appears to run smooth in summer- her sister. Before she could ask any qu^tions, houses, whatever Shakespeare may say to the Norah confusedly addressed her, in these words : contrary. Consider me for the future, if you "I beg your pardon; I beg you to forgive please, as an Obstacle removed. May you be win " happy!" Miss Grarth's lips closed on that last me. sentence like a trap; and Miss Garth's eyes Magdalen looked at her sister in astonishment. looked ominously prophetic into the matrimonial All memory, on her side, of the sharp words which future. had passed between them in the shrubbery, was lost in the new interests that now absorbed her ; If Magdalen's anxieties had not been far too losiT as completely as if the angry interview had serious to allow her the customary free use of her never taken place. "Forgiveyou!" she repeated, tongue, she would have been ready, on the in­ amazedly, " what for ?" stant, with an appropriately satirical answer. As " I have heard of your new prospects," pur­ it was. Miss Garth simply irritated her. " Pooh!" sued Norah, speaking with a mechanical submis- she said—and ran up-stairs to her sister's room. siveness of manner which seemed almost ungra­ She knocked at the door, and there was no cious ; "I wished to set things right between us; answer. She tried the door, and it resisted her I wished to say I was sorry for what happened. from the inside. The sullen, unmanageable Will you forget it ? Will you forget and forgive Norah was locked in. what happened in the shrubbery ?" She tried to Under other circumstances, Magdalen would proceed; but her inveterate reserve—or, perhaps, not have been satisfied with knocking—she would her obstinate reliance on her own opinions— have called through the door loudly and more silenced her at those last words. Her face loudly, till the house was disturbed, and she had clouded over on a sudden. Before her sister carried her point. But the doubts and fears of could answer her, she turned aWay abruptly and the moming had unnerved her already. She ran up stairs. went down stairs again softly, and took her hat The door of the library opened, before Mag­ from the stand in the hall. " He told me to put dalen could follow her; and Miss Garth ad­ my hat on," she said to herself, with a meek vanced to express the sentiments proper to the filial docility which was totally out of her cha­ occasion. racter. They were not the mecWnically-submissive She went into the garden, on the shmbbery sentiments which Magdalen had just heard. side; and waited there to catch the first sight Norah had struggled against her rooted distrust of her father on his return. Half an hour passed; of Prank, in deference to the unanswerable de­ forty minutes passed—and then his voice reached cision of both her parents in his favour; and had her from among the distant trees. " Come in to suppressed the open expression of her antipathy, heel!" she heard him call out loudly to the dog. though the feehng itself remained unconquered. Her face tumed pale, " He's angry with Snap!" Miss Garth had made no such concession to the she exclaimed to herself, in a whisper. The next master and mistress of the house. She had minute he appeared in view; walking rapidly, hitherto held the position of a high authority on with his head down, and Snap at his heels in all domestic questions; and she flatly declined to disgrace. The sudden excess of her alarm as she get off her pedestal in deference to any change in observed those ominous signs of something the family circumstances, no matter how amazing wrong, rallied her natural energy, and determined or how unexpected that change might be. her desperately on knowing thC worst. "Pray accept.my congratulations," said Miss She walked straight forward to meet her Garth, bristling all over with imphed objections father.

^ VOL, vn. 150 122 [AprU19,1862,j ALL THE YEAR ROUND, iCCondnctedby " Your face tells your news," she said, faintly, her husband. " My old friend has justified my "Mr, Clare has been.as heartless as usual—Mr,, opinion of him." Clare has said. Nop" ' "Thank God!" said Mrs. Vanstone, fervently. Her father tumed on Iher with ;a «udden " Did you feel it, love ?" she asfced, as her has. severity, so entirely unparalleled in her experi­ band an-anged the sofa pillows—" did you feel ence of him, that she started back in downright it as painfully as I feared you would P" terror. " I had a duty to do, my dear—and I did it." "Magdalen!" he said, "whenever you speak After replymg in those terms, he hesitated. of my old friend and neighbour again, bear this Apparently, he had somethmg more to say- in mind. Mr. Clare has just laid me under an something, perhaps, on the subject of that pass­ obligation which I shall remember gratefully to ing uneasiness of mind, wliich had been produced the end of my Mfe." by his interview with Mr, Clare, and which Mag- He stopped suddenly, after saying those re­ dalen's questions had obliged him to acknow- markable words. Seeing that he had startled ledge, A look at his wife decided his doubts in her, his natural kindness prompted hun instantly the negative. He only asked if she felt com­ to soften the reproof, and to end the suspense fortable; and then tumed away to leave the from which she was plainly suffering. " Give me room. a kiss, my love," he resumed; "and I'E tell you " Must you go ?" she asked. in return that Mr. Clare has said—^YES." " I have a letter to write, my dear." Slie attempted to thank him; but the sudden " Anythmg about Prank ?" luxury of relief was too much for her. She could " No: to-morrow will do for that. A letter only chng round his neck in silence. He felt her to Mr. Pendril; I want him here immediately." trembling from head to foot, and said a few words " Business, I suppose?" to calm her. At the altered tones of his master's " Yes, my dear—business." voice. Snap's meek tail reappeared fiercely from He went out, and shut himself into the little between his legs; and Snap's lungs modestly front room, close to the haU-door, which was tested his position with a brief experimental called his study. By nature and habit the most bark. The dog's quaintly appropriate assertion procrastinating of letter-writers, he now incon­ of himself on his old footing, was the interruption sistently opened his desk and took up the pen of all others which was best fitted to restore without a moment's delay. His letter was. long Magdalen to herself. She caught the shaggy enough to occupy three pages of note-paper; it little terrier up in her arms, and kissed him next. was written with a readiness of expression and a "You darlit^," she exclaimed, "you're almost as rapidity of hand which seldom characterised his glad as I am!" She turned again to her father, proceedings when engaged over his orduiary cor­ with a look of tender reproach. " You frightened respondence. He wrote the address as foUows, me, papa," she said. " You were so unlike your- "Immediate: — William Pendril Esq,, Searle- seK." street, Lincoln's Inn, London"—then pushed the " I shall be right again, to-morrow, my dear. letter away from him, and sat at the table, draw­ I am a little upset to-day." ing lines on the blotting-paper with his pen, lost *'Not by me?" in thought. " No," he said to himself; "I can " No, no." do nothing more till Pendril comes." He rose; "By something you have heard at Mr. his face brightened as he put the stamp on the Clare's?" envelope. The writing of the letter had sensibly "Yes—nothing you need alarm yourself about; relieved him, and his whole bearing showed it as nothing that won't wear off by to-morrow. Let he left the room. me go now, my dear, I have a letter to write; On the door-step, he found Norah and Miss and I want to speak to your mother." Garth, setting forth together for a walk. He left her, and went on to the house. Mag­ "Which way are you going?" he asked. dalen lingered a little on the lawn, to feel aU the "Anywhere near the post-officeP I wish you happuaess of her new sensations—then tumed would post this letter for me, Norah. It is very away towards the shrabbery, to enjoy the higher important—so important, that I hardly like to luxury of communicating them. The dog fol­ trust it to Thomas as usual." lowed her. She whistled, and clapped her hands. Norah at once took charge of the letter. "Pind him!" she said, with beaming eyes. " If you look, my dear," continued her father, " Pmd Prank I" Sna,p scampered into the shrub­ " you wiU see that I am writing to Mr. Pendril. bery, with a bloodthirsty snarl at starting. Per­ I expect hiin here to-morrow aftemoon. "Will haps he had mistaken his young mistress, and you give the necessary directions, Miss Garth? considered himself her emissary in search of a Mr. Pendril wiU sleep here to-morrow night, rat? and stay over Sunday.—Wait a mmute! To­ Meanwhile, Mr. Yanstone entered the house. day is Priday. Surely I had an engagement He met his vrife, slowly descending the stairs, for Saturday aftemoon?" He consulted his and advanced to give her his arm. "How has pocket-book, and read over one of the entries, it ended ?" she asked anxiously, as he led her to with a look of annoyance. " Grailsea Mill, three the sofa. o'clock, Saturday. Just the time when Pendril " Happily—as we hoped it would," answered will be here; and I must be at home to see hun. Charles Dickens.] NO l^AME. [April 19, 1862.] 123 How can I manege it ? Monday wiU be too late he's going off, thrice, now yot^xt taken me. If for my business at Ghrailsea. I'll go to-day, in­ it wasn't for you, I should wish I had never been stead ; and take my chance of catching the miUer bom. Yes; your father's been kind to me, I at his dinner-time," He looked at his watch. know—and I should have gone to China, if it "No time for drivii^; I must do it by railway. hadn't been for him, I'm sure I'm very much If I go at once, I shaU catch the down train at obliged. Of course, we have no right to expect our station, and get on to Grailsea, Take care anything else—still, it's discouraging to keep us of the letter, Noi^. I won't keep dinner wait­ waiting a year, isn't it P" ing; if the return train doesn't suit, I'll borrow Magdalen stopped his mouth by a summary a gig, and get back in that way." process, to which even Frank submitted grate­ As he took up his hat, Magdalen appeared at fully. At the same time, she did not forget to the door, returning from her interview with set down his discontent to the right side. " How Prank. The hurry of her father's movements fond he is of met" she thought, "A year's attracted her attention; and she asked.him where waiting is quite a hardship to him," She re­ he was going. tumed to the house, secretly regretting that she " To Grailsea," replied Mr, Yanstone. " Ydir had not heard more of Frank's complimentary business. Miss Magcfelen, has got in the way of complaints. Miss Garth's elaborate satire, ad­ mine—and mme must give way to it," dressed to her while she was in this frame of He spoke those parting words ia his old hearty mind, was a purely gratuitous waste of Miss manner; and left them, with the old charac­ Grarth's breath. What did Magdalen care for teristic flourish of his trasty stick, satire P What do Youth and Love ever care for, "My business!" said Magdalen, "I thought except themselves ? She never even said as much my business was done."' as " Pooh!" this time. She laid aside her hat in Miss Grarth pointed significantly to the letter serene silence, and sauntered languidly into the in Norah's hand. "Yout business, beyond all moming-room to keep her mother company. doubt,^' she said, " Mr. Pendril is coming to­ She lunched on dire forebodings of a quarrel morrow; and Mr, Yanstone seems remarkably between Frank and his father, with accidental anxious about it. Law, and its attendant trou­ interruptions in the shape of cold chicken and bles already! Governesses w^o look in at sum­ cheesecakes. She trifled away half an hour at mer-house doors are not the only obstacles to the piano; and played, in that time, selections the course of trae love. Parchment is some­ from the Songs of Mendelssohn, the Mazurkas times an obstacle, I hope you may find Parch­ of Chopin, the Operas of Yerdi, and the Sonatas of ment as pliable as I am—^I vmh you well through Mozart—all of whom had combined together on it. Now, Norah!" this occasion, and produced one immortal work, Miss Garth's second shaft strack as harmless entitled "Prank." She closed the piano and as the first, Magdalen had retumed to the went up to her room, to dream away the hours house, a little vexed; her interview with Prank luxuriously in visions of her married future. having been interrapted by a messenger from The green shutters were closed, the easy chair Mr, Clare, sent to summon the son into the was pushed in front of the glass, the maid was father's presence. Although it had been agreed summoned as usual; and the comb assisted the at the private interview between Mr. Yan­ mistress's reflections, through the medium of the stone and Mr, Clare, that the questions dis­ mistress's hair, tiU heat and idleness asserted cussed that moming should not be communi­ their narcotic influences together, and Magdalen cated to the children, until the year of probation fell asleep. was at an end—and although, under these cir- cimistances, Mr. Clare had nothing to tell Prank It was past three o'clock when she woke. On which Magdalen could not communicate to him going down stairs again she found her mother, much more agreeably—the philosopher was not Norah, and Miss Garth all sitting together en­ the less resolved on personally informing his son joying the shade and the coolness under the open of the parental concession which rescued him portico in front of the house. from Chinese exile. The result was a sudden Norah had the railway time-table in her hand. summons to the cottage, which startled Mag­ They had been discussing the chances of Mr. dalen, but which did not appear to take Frank Yanstone's catching the return train, and getting by surprise. His filial experience penetrated the back in good tune. That topic had led tliem, mystery of Mr, Clare's motives easily enough, next, to his business errand at Grailsea—an " When my father's in spirits," he said, sulkily, errand of kindness, as usual; undertaken for the " he likes to bully me about my good luck. This benefit of the miller, who had been his old farm- message means that he's going to bully me servant, and who was now hard pressed by now," serious pecuniary difficulties. Prom this they " Don't go," suggested Magdalen. had ghded insensibly into a subject often re­ "I must," rejomed Prank. "I shall never peated among them, and never exhausted by hear the last of it, if I don't. He's primed and repetition—the praise of Mr. Yanstone himself. loaded, aud he means to go off. He went off, Each one of the three had some experience of her once, when the engineer took me; he went off, own to relate of his simple, generous nature. twice, when the office in the City took me; and The conversation seemed to be almost painfully 124! [April 19,1862,] ALL THE YEAR ROUND. CCondactedliy interesting to his wife. She was too near the the voices of labourers at work in a field near, time of her trial now, not to feel nervously reached the house cheerfuUy; the clock-beU of sensitive to the one subject which always held the viUage church as it struck the quarters, the foremost place in her heart. Her eyes over­ floated down the wind with a clearer ring, a flowed as Magdalen joined the little group under louder melody than usual. Sweet odours from the portico; her frail hand trembled, as it signed field and flower-garden, steaUng in at the open to her youngest daughter to take the vacant windows, fiUedth e house with their fragrance; chair by her side. "We were talking of your and the birds in Norah's aviary up-stairs, sang father," she said, softly. " Oh, my love, if your the song of their happiness exultingly in the married life is only as happy " Her voice sun. failed her; she put her handkerchief hurriedly As the church clock strack the quarter-past over her face, and rested her head on Magdalen's four, the moming-room door opened; and Mrs, shoulder. Norah looked appealingly to Miss Yanstone crossed the hall alone. She had tried Garth; who at once led the conversation back vainly to compose herself. She was too restless to the more trivial subject of Mr. Yanstone's re- to lie still, and sleep. For a moment, she directed tum. "We have all been wondering," she her steps towards the portico—-then tumed, and said, with a significant look at Magdalen, " whe­ looked about her, doubtful where to go, or what ther your father will leave Grailsea in time to to do next, WhUe she was stUl hesitating, the half- catch the train — or whether he will miss it, open door of her husband's study attracted her and be obliged to drive back. What do you attention. The room seemed to be in sad confu­ say?" sion. Drawers were left open; coats and hats, "I say, papa will miss the train," replied Mag­ account-books and papers, pipes and fishing-rods, dalen, taking Miss Garth's hint with her cus­ were all scattered about together. She went in, tomary quickness. " The last thing he attends and pushed the door to—but so gently that she to at Grailsea, will be the business that brings stUl left it ajar. " It wiU amuse me to put his him there. Whenever he has business to do, he room to rights," she thought to herself, "I always puts it off to the last moment—doesn't he, should Uke to do something for him, before I am mamma ?" down on my bed helpless," She began to arrange The question roused her mother exactly as his drawers; and found his banker's book lyii^ Magdalen had intended it should. " Not when open in one of them, " My poor dear, how care­ his errand is an errand of kindness," said Mrs. less he is ! The servants might have seen all his Yanstone. "He has gone to help the miUer, in affairs, if I had not happened to have looked in." a very pressing difficulty " She set the drawers right; and then turned to "And don't you know what he'll do?" per­ the multifarious litter on a side-table. A little sisted Magdalen. "He'll romp with the miller's old-fashioned music-book appeared among the children, and gossip with the mother, and hob- scattered papers, with her name written in it, in and-nob with the father. At the last moment, faded ink. She blushed like a young girl in the when he has got five minutes left to catch the first happiness of the discovery, "How good he train, he'U say,' Let's go iato the counting-house, is to me ! He remembers my poor old music- and look at the books.' He'U find the books book, and keeps it for my sake," As she sat dreadfully complicated; he'U suggest sending for down by the table and opened the book, the an accountant; he'll settle the business off-hand, bygone time came back to her in all its tender­ by lending the money in the mean time; he'll jog ness. The clock struck the half-hour, strack the back comfortably in the mUler's gig; and he'll three-quarters—and stUl she sat there, with the teU us aU how pleasant the lanes were in the music-book on her lap, dreaming happUy over the cool of the evening." old songs; thinking gratefuUy of the golden days The Uttle character-sketch which these words when his hand had turned the pages for her, when drew, was too faithful a likeness not to be recog­ his voice had whispered the words which no nised. Mrs. Yanstone showed her appreciation woman's memory ever forgets. of it by a smUe. " When your father retums," she said, "we wUl put your account of his pro­ Norah roused herself from the volume she was ceedings to the test. I think," she continued, reading, and glanced at the clock on the Ubrary rising languidly from her chair, "1 had better go mantelpiece. in-doors again now, and rest on the sofa till he "If papa comes back by raUway," she said, comes back." "he wiU be here in ten minutes." The little group under the portico broke up. Miss Garth started, and looked up drowsily Magdalen sUpped away into the garden to hear from the book which was just di'opping out of Frank's account of the interview with his father. her hand. The other three ladies entered the house together. " I don't think he wiU come by train," she When Mrs. Yanstone was comfortably estabUshed replied. " He wUl jog back—as Magdalen flip­ on the sofa, Norah and Miss Garth left her to re­ pantly expressed it—in the miUer's gig." pose, aud withdrew to the library to look over the As she said the words, there was a knock at last parcel of books from London, the Ubrary-door. The footman appeared, and If was a quiet, cloudless summer's day. The addressed himself to Miss Garth. heat was tempered by a light westem breeze; " A person wishes to see you, ma'am." Charles Dickens.] SOLDIERS' LEISURE HOURS. [April 19, 1862.] 125

"Who is it?" " The harm is done," she said: 'you may speak " I don't know, ma'am. A stranger to me—a out. Is he wounded, or dead ?" respectable-looking man—and he said he particu­ "Dead!" larly wished to see you." Miss Gai-th went out into the haU, The foot­ SOLDIERS' LEISURE HOURS. man closed the Ubrary door after her; and with­ drew down the kitchen stairs. EvEKY private soldier in the English army, The man stood just inside the door, on the when on colonial service, has been calculated by mat. His eyes wandered, his face was pale—he political economists to cost the nation about one looked Ul; he looked frightened. He trifled hundred pounds sterling per annum. Without nervously with his cap, and shifted it back­ reckoning his heart or Drain, which are thrown wards and forwards, from one hand to the into the bargain, each individual soldier, there­ other. fore, whether at home or abroad, must represent, " You wanted to see me P" said Miss Garth. we presume, a cost of nearly one hundred "I beg your pardon, ma'am.—You are not pounds sterling—red coat, cross-belts, bayonet, Mrs, Yanstone, are you ? " &c., included. " Certainly not. I am Miss Garth. Why do Now, as we are an over-taxed people and you ask the question?" ought not to throw more money away, let us for a moment, as sincere friends of the soldier, con­ " I am employed ui the clerk's office at GraU- sider how we can honestly make the most of him sea station " in times of peace, when, as the old proverb goes, " Yes P" a soldier somewhat resembles "a chimney in "I am sent here " summer," We do not want to overwork him, . He stopped again. His wandering eyes looked or to make a slave of him, but we want to pre­ down at the mat, and his restless hands wrung vent his becoming a worthless vagabond, idle his cap harder and harder. He moistened his and miserable himself, a cause of misery to dry Ups, and tried once more. others. We want above aU, if we can, to pre­ " I am sent here on a very serious errand," vent his enlisting in that already far too weU- *' Serious to me?" manned regiment, the BLACKGUAKDS, " Serious to aU in this house," We have seen English soldiers in many Miss Garth took one step nearer to hun—took parts of the world^—in Gibraltar and Corfu, at one steady look at his face. She tumed cold in Zante, in Canada, at Malta, in the Channel the summer heat, " Stop!" she said, vnth a Islands, in Ireland, in Scotland—and we know sudden distrast, and glanced aside anxiously at their daily life, its pleasures and vexations, its the door of the moming-room. It was saJfely petty annoyances, its monotony, its prison-like closed, " TeU me the worst; and don't speak loud. severity, its innumerable temptations. We ITiere has been an accident. Where ?" have listened to English officers, hour after " On the raUway, Close to GraUsea station," hour, as they told of scrab-fighting in Caffre- " The up-train, to London?" land; of capture of forts in China; of hand- " No : the down-tram at one-fifty " to-hand struggles with the Maories of New , " God Almighty help us! The tram Mr, Yan­ Zealand; of stormy charges of the Sikh horse­ stone travelled by to GraUsea ?" men; of terrible beleaguerments by yeUiug Sepoys. We respect the courage shown by the " The same. I was sent here by the up-train: English soldier in every country; we admire the Une was just cleared in time for it. They his noble endurance; we love to hear of his wouldn't write—they said I must see 'Miss grave unostentatious heroism; but the more we Garth,' and teU her. There are seven passengers hear of him, the more we wish to render him a hadlyhurt; and two " useful and prudent citizen. The next word faUed on his Ups: he raised The civilian, we must premise, must not look his hand in the dead sUence, With eyes that on the soldier in peace as by any means an opened wide in horror, he raised his hand and idle man. If he be a foot soldier, he has pointed over Miss Garth's shoulder. his belts to pipeclay, his uniform to brush, his She tumed a little, and looked back. boots to clean, liis gloves to wash, his rifle to Face to face with her, on the threshold of the furbish, his bayonet to scour or sharpen; he study-door, stood the mistress of the house. has also his parades and sentinel duty, his bar­ She held her old music-book clutched fast mecha- rack-room work, and all sorts of regimental for­ mcaUy in both hands. She stood, the spectre of mulary to carry on. If he be in the cavalry, his herself. With a dreadful vacancy in her eyes, horse gives him infinite trouble ; not a hair on with a dreadful stUlness in her voice, she re­ the animal's hide must be out of place, and peated the man's last words: then there are the sword, carbine, saddle, " Seven passengers hadlyhurt; and two " stirrups, and bridle chain, and many other trap­ Her tortured fingers relaxed their hold; the pings, to keep free from the all-penetrating book dropped from them; she sank forward rust, and to clean, scour, scrub, mb, and wasli. heavUy. Miss Garth caught her before she feU— If he be an artUleryman, there is endless gun caught her; and turned upon the man, with the driU, and there are many new rules of science wife's swooning body in her arms, to hear the hus­ hourly, to learn or to practise. If he be a band's fate. musician, there is his mstmment perpetually

.^m 126 CAprU 19,1862,] ALL- THE,YEAR ROUND. [Conducted by to study, alone or in company with other in­ who has been a mechanic, the man who has stmments. Indeed, so much have private taken at an early age to reading (Scotchmen soldiers to learn, individually and coUectively, generally do, to tlieir infinite honour be it said), that it is supposed that a good and complete wUl naturally solace their leism-e moments with foot soldier can scarcely be turned out in less books; and in these days of good cheap Utera­ than three years. By a complete soldier, we ture, they Can do so easily, hut these are not mean one who performs by instinct every indi­ the men whose leisure hours we want to find vidual and coUective manoeuvre, whether he has occupation for. These men probably, in any to work in battalion or company, in solid square, profession, would be prudent, quiet, and indus­ or in broken and retreating masses. trious. To some men it is pain and grief to be It is, we think, universally allowed, that in­ idle. These readers soon get recognised, become tellectually, the English labourer improves by corporals and sergeants, and pass into better becoming a soldier. The red-faced vacant- places. It is the rough rank and file, the brute eyed lad, who moved his legs only a year ago ordinary mass, that we want to see more civUisetJ as if they were solid lead from the knees and better employed. It is the thoughtless Irish downward: can he be that smart neat nimble madcap, the bully of the regiment, the drunkard, feUow in the Guards standing sentinel at a the habitual deserter, the refractory, the muti­ door in PaU-Mall? A mountain of black nous, that we want to find healthy recreation bearskin hides the low heavy forehead; the for, and to wean from the misuse of the gin- legs, cased in red-corded black trousers, are bottle, the dirty cards, the tavern songs, the firm, straight, and alert in movement. They obey bagateUe-board, the dice, and the beer-jug. the officer's orders as the ivory key of the piano Now, there are men of certain temperament, of does the finger of the player. The lad's mind certain ages, and of certain education, who can­ has more grasp now, and, like his legs, can move not derive pleasure from intellectual pursuits. more quickly and spontaneously. He is not a They have no imagination, no powers of refleo- braver man than he was when he only knew tion; they bring nothing to the book, so the: how to handle the scythe or the reaping-hook; book brings nothing to them; they prefer to but he is a more orderly and methodical crea­ see things rather than to read of them. They ture, and knows how to move about to some could talk for an hour over Sergeant Pontoon's purpose, and that too in the fire and smoke of story of the Kaiber Pass, but to read ten Unes tattle. His mind, too, is prompter, because it has about it in a book would set them a yawning. been taught to reflect on a wider ran^e of They like a play, they Uke a story, but they topics. He is a better man now, not merely be­ have not the sort of mind, that can appreciate cause he has learnt to move his feet and hands a book, nor has culture of any kind ever enabled in a certain way on certain words being uttered, them to replace their loss. Their pre-regimental but because he has been exercising his powers life, spent in a colliery, or in the street, or in a of reflection on a difficult routine, and in a new barge, or in a factory, was too hard and busy. profession. His every-day life is in fact an edu­ No! Our soldiers want what the mere cation itself, compared to his old dreary exist­ healthy animal—man—always craves for, and ence in Downshire, where sheep-minding, pig- that is, EXERCISE, made pleasurable in the form feeding, and driving horses to water, presented of athletic games, constant exercise stimulated few subjects for thought, by gymnastics, exercise that, under a tepid de­ MoraUy, however, we cannot say as much for pressing climate, must be rendered competitive him, for he has fellen among a set of men who and exciting; exercise, above aU, that wiU tend spend all their time in the low public-houses to make him a stronger, a more agile, and a leading from Pimlico to Westminster: who more self-reliant soldier. drink, gamble, swear, and cut unoffending Our officers know weU enough that it is not people's heads open with their heavy-buckled mere drill that makes the perfect soldier. It is belts : a vicious, idle set, with many broken con­ not learning by mechanical instinct to fire so stitutions among them that would not sustain many times in a minute, or to click on and off the fatigues of a single campaign, the bayonet with astonislung but automaton Alas, that we can nowhere see English quickness, that makes the model soldier. No soldiers but there are such men among them. drill can give men stamina or endurance, and Go to Gibraltar, and there inside the low rum- no drill wUl enable them to "puU through" shops in " Snake-in-the-Grass-lane," you wiU blundering Walcheren expeditions, or to baffle find such feUows roaring, cursing, and threat­ Yellow Jack in fever quarters at Barbadoes. ening death. Go to Malta, and there in the DrUl alone does not make thesoldierretumsafe back streets of Yaletta reel along the same sort and healthy from Corunua retreats, or restore him of men. Go to Quebec, and there, close to the and the hundred pounds sterling he represents, ramparts, there is no aUey in which you wUl not to the anxious tax-payer. meet a bruised drunken soldier being bumped Our officers know weU that it is their solemn along, in the hands of the picket. Go to many duty to direct their soldiers' amusements; to for­ an EngUsh garrison town, and ask the magistrate get now and then the bUliard-room, Rotten-row, of the day if he findsth e soldiers troublesome. and what not, and to lead away their men's minds Now, cheap or gratuitous Reading Rooms and from the incessant filthy grog-shop and low vice ; Free Libraries are exceUent things for the more but yet they too often neglect this duty. They need thoughtful and inteUectual soldier. The man sacrifice no position j they could still be officers Charles Dickens.] SOLDIERS' LEISURE HOURS, [April 18,1862.] 127 and gentlemen, though they did lead the men We rise long after the sun and the anim^ds, at single-stick, at leaping hurdles, at boxing, long after they are asleep we are wasting our at fencing, at back-sword and quarter-staff, at brains and thinning our blood in heated rooms; Ufting weights, at climbuig. At all of these The world is too much with us! Late and soon. healthy and useful amusements, education, a Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. Uttle science reflection and comparison, would Little there is in nature that is ours. give them an advantage over the mere brute Now, as new forms of dress and diet are strength, and impetuosity of the common men. adopted by us aU, hereditarUy, irrationaUy, They might occasionaUy offer smaU prizes, whUe without reflection, and without any knowledge the corporals and sergeants could maintaui order or thought of their wide-spreading results, it and prevent any unfairness, any brutality, or may be long before we learn how to stop this any undue exhibition of temper. physical degeneracy. It is, therefore, most im,- It is not enough that such exercises should portant, that by all means we contrive to keep be spasmodic and occasional; they should be our soldiers strong and vigorous, whosoever incessant, in aU cUmates and in jdl places. else may degenerate. Wherever English soldiers are stationed, there Every barrack should have a zinc-covered shed, athletic games should be established, and in­ open to every soldier when off duty, without' cessantly be kept a going. Such sports would fee and at aU hours. Gymnastic poles, ropes, soon, by their pure healthy influence, wean the foils, and other such appliances, shoiUd be fur­ drinker from his drink, and the gambler from nished by government, aided (perhaps) by regi­ his cards. They would do much, to " set up" mental subscriptions. The men should or should our soldier: to widen his chest, to harden his not contribute, according to future opinion on limbs, and to make him as he should be—the the subject. The soldiers' Ubrary should con­ strongest, hardiest, and most active of English­ tain books on all gymnastic subjects; and the men. He surely needs hardening, for Heaven sergeants and corporals should be taught by knows what rough weather and heavy blows he proper professors, at the government expense. may have one day to endure; or in what bloody We would go even fuither than this. If an ditch or red-hot breach, he may have to fight enormous standing army, occasioning miUions for his Ufe. of taxatiouj must be maintained, in spite of a Our army, it must be remembered, is not aU hundred and fifty thousand volunteers, why not made up of strong countrymen; it is at least make our army as much as possible an army of two-thUds composed of poor thin mechanics, of good and not an army of evU, a force of industry London prodigals, of decayed spendthrifts, and and not of idleness, a power for use and not for the wandering scum of our towns. No mere show: a great regiment working with smUes driU can give these men broad chests, strong arms, from Heaven on it, and not smiled on from or quick legs, though regular food and settled below ? Why should we pay thousands of men, hours make them, in time, stout, red, and hearty. merely for pipeclaying belts, and standing at It is the army with the best and most enduring doors, guarding what never did, and never will, stamina that wins—such had Csesar's legionaries. want guarding ? Why should we not get work It is the keenest and alertest inteUigence that is for our wages? Have we no great national victorious—as in the case of Napoleon versus needs to direct driUed labour upon ? Are there Wurmser, when the latter complaiaed that the no bog of Allan, no Curragh of Kildare, no young Corsican general did not fight according Counemara morasses, to drain, and render fit to " the old-estabUshed rules." It is the good for the crops to blossom over; no great national cause and the pure heart, Uke Garibaldi's, that de­ liiU-roads to make; no refuge harbours to pUe feats the trained army aud the Austrian wooden- up, no Dartmoor to clear, no forest to cultivate ? heads. It is the fervid faith, as of the Swiss Suppose we did pay the soldier a few pence mountaineers, that can break up a great power beyond his pay while engaged on these national as if it were an image of ice. works, would one tax-payer grudge it ? When There are vrise and far-seeing doctors now did great national works ever return a per­ Uving, who think that from some unknown cause centage ? The Pyramids never paid; the Co- our race is physicaUy degenerating, and that Useum must have been commerciaUy a failure. our sons are growing up physically weaker It ia only the old stupid Chinese conservatism and more nervous than ourselves.* Some think which bade GalUeo faU on his knees, and, on it is the incessant tea, that has taken the place pain of death, swear before God and the angels of hearty breakfasts of meat and weak wine; tliat " the world did not and could not move," others attribute it to smoking, late hours, that would oppose such work. and the increased wear aud tear of our brain Were it possible that not merely the idle sol­ and nerves. It isi found dangerous now, to diers, but also the great shivering army of starv­ bleed in cases of fever or of apoplexy. Men, ing Englishmen, could now defile before me, I apparently hearty, sink suddenh* into old age. would then cry in their hearing, in a voice that Nervous diseases increase daily. Our social should shake the Circumlocution Office and the hours grow every day less healthy and natural. Barnacles, these memorable words of one of our greatest thinkers: * We do not adopt this opinion, which ia, to the " My misguided friends, I should think some best of our knowledgtii opposed by all Life Oifice ex- work might be discoverable for you to become peiieaoe and Aoauity Calculatiocs.—ED., from a nomadic banditti of idleness, soldiers of 128 [April 19,1862.] ALL THE YEAR ROUND. [Conducted by industry, I wiU lead you to the Irish bogs, to ness became—young Doctor John's wife, and the vacant desolations of Connaught, to mis- both Mary and Doctor John would have been tUled Connaught, to ditto Munster, Leinster, better for the arrangement. She would have and Ulster, I will lead you to the English fox suited him better than Mrs. John, who was of a covets, furze-grown commons, new forests, high temper, and somewhat overbearing man­ Salisbury Plains; likewise to the Scotch hill­ ners ; and she would not have lost all her sides and bare rusty slopes, which as yet feed roses so soon, or have been so ready to adopt only sheep, moist uplands, thousands of square gloomy views of life, and to believe in the virtues miles in extent, which are destined yet to grow of conventual rule. Poor Miss Mary! If she green crops, and fresh butter, and mUk, and had only known under which casket lay her beef without limit (wherein no foreigner can happiness, and where was hidden the talisman^ compete with us), were the sewers once opened of her fate ! Aud yet how easily it might have on them, and you with your colonels carried been ! thither. In the three kingdoms, or in the forty If rich old Mr, Scroggs, worth half a million, colonies, depend upon it you shall be led to had not paid such persevering and demonstrative your work. To each of you I will say: Here attention to pretty Evelina at that very dinner­ IS work for you; strike into it with manly party where young Captain Blake had decided soldier-like obedience and heartiness," to propose, she might now have been the happy wife of the portly Colonel, instead of the faded WHAT MIGHT HAYE BEEN. spinster, angular and peevish, who passes half her time in bewailing her positive misfortunes, WHAT significance lies in that little phrase— and the other half in lamenting her possible What might have been! Who does not know blessings had fortune but taken tne other turn­ the days when his fortune was balanced on the ing in her lane of life. She knew that Captain chance of a moment, when the turning into one Blake—timid, poor, and proud—wanted but street instead of another, the paying oue visit courage and uninterrupted opportunity, and she, and leaving another owing, the writing of this let­ on her part, desired nothing better than to ter and letting that remain unanswered, changed bring matters to a crisis and whisper " Yes," as the whole current of his Ufe, aud gave the world her echo to his " Do you ?" But that hideous old another cycle of generations to what might have Scroggs who never meant anything serious, been ? I can count up on my fingersnumerou s must needs plant himself between them at dinner, instances known to me, among my own friends, and make such open love to her over the cham­ whose fortunes were this creation of chance mo­ pagne, that all her plans were brought to nought. ments, and who might as easily have obtained Her pretty eye artUlery and liberal armoury any other combination as that which gave them of charms missed fire and fell harmless of then happiness or ruin. See what chance did for mark; the shot fell into the ditch when she poor Miss Mary, the young governess at Merton aimed it at the tower, and neither ditch nor HaU. Miss Mary had two offers—I mean for a tower yielded. Captain Blake, who thought his situation, nothing more—one, was from a vicar's hundreds no match against the old sinner's wife somewhere down in Wales; the other, from thousands, went off to Norway for the summer, Miss Merton, of Merton HaU, a county family and next season married Laura May whom he place in Devonshire. Miss Mary was a goose— had met upon his travels, and who understood as Miss Marys often are—and thought that the to perfection the art of angling, hooking, and grand county family who sealed with a flourish­ landing desirable fish. And all this brought ing coat of arms, and who had their names in the county history, must be a better speculation than about Decause Mrs, A. asked Evelina and Mr, a little unknown parsonage behmd the Welsh Scroggs to the same dinner, and forgot to orga­ mountains; besides, they offered five pounds a nise her table with due regard to the best plea­ year more, which represented a gown, a cloak, sures of her guests ! If Captain Blake had been and a bonnet to Miss Mary. So, stifiing the in­ placed next the fair Evelina, what might not have stinct which inclined her to the gentle motherly been of happiness for both! vicar's wife, who wrote so kindly and so mo­ And if Aunt Susan had never given that me­ destly, she preferred Dives and nis flourishing morable party of hers, or if her favourite friend coat of arms, and transported herself to the grand had not walked home in the moonlight with her county family, AU very weU; nothing to find favourite niece? Ah me ! the years of pain and fault with; Mrs, Merton as condescendingly agony, and hope deferred, and long unending considerate as fine ladies of good hearts generally strUe of love and circumstance that would have are to their dependents; and Miss Mary was been spared—the bitter anguish of the present ' thankful, and remained where she was till the hour—the solitude of the one, the fettered lone--' bloom of her youth had passed. She might have liness of the other ! Oh! all that might have found a hundred worse situations, she said, and been now passing before my eyes, had love and she said truly. But down in that Welsh village circumstance agreed together! I see a home lived a certain clear-eyed clean-limbed brave- set in a fair place, with love and honour like hearted young doctor, just setting up in practice, sweet blossoming roots about its gates : I see and sorely in need of a wife. If Mary had ac­ a troop of little children, blue-eyed and brown- cepted that gentle lady's modest offer ?—well! haired, noble, brave, and strong as the father, Mary would have been what the other gover­ faithful, loyal, and loving as the mother—I see them standing there, their baby fingers knitting -Charles Dickens.] WHAT MIGHT HAYE BEEN. [AprU 19, 18C2.J 129 together two souls with links stronger than If yoimg Horatius had taken his beloved ma­ death; I see two lives gently passed in love nuscript to the publishers on any day but the day and good works—two Uves softly blent into on which the pubUsher's Reader had had a quarrel one great bond of truth and peace, making an with his wife at home—that quarrel brought exemplar of wedded bUss for future generations about, if one goes down to the origin of things, to quote and Uve by: I see all this in those because he had supped on pork-chops the night dreamy words, " What might have been!"—but before—very likely his verdict on the youth's first the visions pass, the dreams fade, the stern efforts would have been favourable, and the pub­ trath smites down those pleasant phantoms of lisher would have taken his poem and paid for the possible, and I see, instead, two suffering it Uke a man. The poetry was good, and Horatio human hearts ruled over by desolation and had in him the potentiality of fame and riches; despair. What might have been! what might but under the malign influence of chance, em­ have been! bodied in pork-chops, he came to the actuality And again: if that poor mother had not been of poverty, despair, and suicide! Again: if struck with death when her friend went down he had caUed on his friend Atticus by the on an ordinary friendly visit—if that illness way home, and if he had heard his cheery had been deferred but a week or hastened but voice ring out its " Never Despair," like a a week—what then ? Then there might have trumpet-call to manhood, and if ne had drunk been a motherless famUy abandoned and left half a dozen glasses of his fine old port, to go down to rain, and one lesson of do you think he would have bought that human duty and God's loving-kindness to beggarly twopenny worth of laudanum to quench the desolate the fewer for the world to read. the fire of a masterly brain, and to still the If Gustavus, too, had not come to RosaUnda's throbbings of a noble, if too sensitive, heart ? wedding, or if, coming, he had not faUen sick, Not he! Had he tumed aside for oue brief and so Deen kept beyond his term, RosaUnda's half-hour, he might have been alive to this sister would not have been Mrs, Gustavus, and day, and in the foremost ranks of fame. The a certain pair of soft gazelle-like eyes would not Might Have Been of his life was no ignoble now be gazing curiously at Ufe, with all too theme—what was, was a lesson of hopelessness, probable sorrow to many future beholders. And cowardice, unmanly despair, and childish im­ if RosaUnda herself had not gone to pay that patience—all because a certain man had a Brighton visit, Edward, or George, or Frederick, surcharged Uver. Poor young Horatius! or Charles, might have won the flower of price If Tardius had asked for that consulship in instead of Jacobus, and the world have seen Spain, a day sooner, my lord's secretary would _another line and generation. If Jessie had not have pledged his interest to Prudentius just put on her bonnet but half an hour earlier when twelve hours in advance; and if my reverend she went one day, mournfully enough, to walk cousin had preached that other sermon of his by the sea-shore, she would have met young before my lord bishop, at the visitation, he WUlie alone; they would have stopped and would have got the vacant living he had applied spoken, and the misunderstanding which had for. But he chose the discourse on good works, somehow sprung up like a sudden spectre be­ which cut against my lord bishop's private tween them, and which reached its culmination views concerning the dignity of the order, and last night at the ball, would have been ex­ so lost six hundred a year for want of that na­ plained, and ultimately would have been lost tural clairvoyance which goes by the name of m the traditional orange-blossoms and white tact. I was sorry for my clerical cousin, and veU. But Jessie sat and played idly with Fido that pretty Uttle girl down in Lincolnshire instead; and tlie half-hour, lost, saw Willie waiting to be married; but you cannot give packing his portmanteau for London, determined a man natural clairvoyance when he is as bUnd not to be fooled again. She would have been as a beetle, and as obstinate as a mule: so happier with him than she has been with that the six hundred a year, with the pleasant par­ long Scotchman of hers; and Willie would not sonage among the roses, went into the pocket of have gone to India to fall a victim to alcohol a red-haired Welshman, who told my lord bishop and caloric. What has crippled my poor young that he held aU right reverend fathers to be so sister, and doomed her to a coucii of pain many Uttle popes, and gloried in forming and years of lonely suffering, but that one one of the consistory of cardinals appertain­ single pic-nic, arranged \jf chance, and by ing. The Might Have Been of my cousin's chance joined by her, when she over-walkeS life was a very sweet and touching idyl, but lierself, got heated, and then had the chiU wliich the reality ended drearUy somewhere down all but killed her, and left her what she is now ! among the Essex marshes, with the pretty Uttle What might not her fate have been, had she Lincolnshire girl married to a captain of artil­ gone down into Kent before that third of July, lery, because papa and mamma disliked long as she intended, and so never rambled through engagements, and because my reverend cousin's the Loughton Woods and lost herself so tar clerical preferment seemed a thing not of this away from all the rest? Sadly those words century. stand now written up against her shattered Ufe—" What might, have been !" What a full In that kind of biography which is rather a harvest of love, and happiness, and he^th ruined leaf out of general history tnan the writing of one for ever, lies Uke bUghted grain in every letter! Ufe, the Might Have Been of chances lies very thick. If Mr. Wortley, grave, fastidious, and 130 [Aprilig, 1862,] ALL THE YEAR ROUND. [Conductedby

learned, had not taken it into his head to dictate And lifting up her low eyes, dashed with ram, sentimental letters to Lady Mary Pierrepoint, it "I paced," she said, "between the east and west; might have been that we should never have Heaven's fairest flowers were subject to my hand, heard of innoculation, and that a great many But I did gather what I loved the best" unnecessary deaths and useless disfigurements Answered the radiant angel, " Sweet and wise, would have been spared the young people Thy tender care hath chosen the fairer part, of the last century. Also, it might have Henceforth shall violets be loved of love, been " that the wicked wasp of Twickenham" And marigolds refresh the tir^d heart. would have died with fewer stings proceeding, " Awake!" And she unclosed her eyes to see and that posterity would have lost some witty The morning sunlight beating on the blind; but very crael and unmanly rhymes. If poor And round her bed the breath of marigolds Mrs, Thrale had not seen Piozzi standing at the Swam with the violets' on the garden wind. shop-door, and had not spoken to him concern­ ing music-lessons for her daughter, it might MEDIUMS UNDER OTHER NAMES. have been that she would have died of ennui and' her children's coldness, and the society of the WHEN was juggUng a thing that was not, and time would not have been torn to pieces with when were there no prestidigitators in this frantic horror of so ungenteel and debased a lumbering old world of ours P Men with clean match; Dr. Johnson would not have written his brisk fingers daintily tapering at the tips, supple- famous Remonstrance; Baretti would not have jointed, and with a marvellous amount of penned his infamous lampoons; and human life sensibUity about the cushion; men with fiexible would have lost the lesson which a brave little palms, broad and yet compact, well lioUowed in woman's preference of love to artificial distinc­ the cup, and with the large blue muscle of the tions, preached to it from the house-tops. If thumb, soft, springy, and well developed; men Nelson had never met that seductive gipsy with hands and fingers which, if viciously edu­ Lady Hamilton, it might have been that a cated, would take to picking, the pockets of a long line of lawfully baptised Nelsons would lay figure hung round with beUs, and never stir have sustained the family honour for genera­ the most loosely hung clapper of them all; but tions yet to come; and then it might have which would, if virtuously inclined, content been that, with family influence to stir up the themselves with forcing cards, bringing pigeons lagging, and with family feeling to urge to that out of wine-bottles, and sending half a dozen stirring, the Uons at the base of the Trafalgar half-crowns rattling into a glass box by no other column would be now completed. means apparently possible than an invisible raU­ But the field is Ulimitable; and if we fly at aU way. Among the ancients and among the sa­ the game we might mark down, beginning with vages—in the rough old mediaeval times and Adam and Eve, and ending with DisraeU's His­ now, in this luxurious learned scientific and tory of Events which have not happened, we all-inquiring nineteenth century—whenever men shall not finish the subject under a volume; and have gathered together in companies there has then there might be, and in aU probability would been the juggler among them. Sometimes be, for the result—the rejection of this paper, under a religious garb, as the " medicine-man," and the world's enlightenment so far delayed. the priest teaching truths, or the pythoness uttering oracles, one to whom the Great Spirit has given peculiar gifts and consecrated to YEOLETS. the task of instructing men by bestowing an SWEET is the legend of a happy soul, exclusive knowledge of divine things; some­ Pacing, in dreams, the sward of Paradise; Above her hung fruits 'tinct with fiery flush, times as the magician, the professed trafficker Around her blew flowers myriad in device. with viewless spirits, good or bad, according to the moral nature of the man and the cha­ Low was the clime, a twilight arched with stars, racter of the tricks done, but viewless spirits Long, arrowy lights on cedared hill and dale, nevertheless—things of supernatural powers and Filled with a mellow atmosphere whose heart supernatural existence, wnich, if they did in Breathed of myrrh and spice and garlingale. trath haunt any man, would send him mad She, pausing underneath the tree of life. outright, or kill Mm with awe and horror; Heard all its mystic branches palpitate, and sometimes, more simply, as the true jug­ And a low voice:—^Take thou the fairest flower gler, the professor of hocus-pocus, who con­ Between the eastern and the western gate. fesses that he does all his marvels by trick And, rising up, she wandered forth amidst and sleight of hand, and who pretends to no Lilies beloved in time by Solooion; superiority save what is found in keen sight, And forest frankincense and wondrous blooms. well-shaped fingers, a good memory, and untking Whose chalices were dyed with moon and sun. industry. It is of these last, by far the cleverest, Rounding her path, there glimmered in blue dusk and the honest men of the MEDIUM: tribe, that Vast star-eyed blossoms, bright and marvellous— I am now going to speak; and when one knows Great charms of streaked splendour; living flowers what has been done by mere dexterity of ar­ Lost to the fallen world and unto us. rangement and quickness of hand, sundry mi­ At dawn the angel found her at the gate, racles of the present time wiU sink into insig­ Weeping, but looping in her vesture's folds nificance, and wiU be held as by no means to be Of all the gorgeous blooms of Paradise, compared with hundreds of acknowledged tricks, Passionate violets and marigolds. "Charles Dickens.] MEDIUMS UNDER OTHER NAMES, [AprU 19, 1862 ] 131

about which was neither falsehood nor audacious liest moonUght effects of Ught—very like the pretence of communication with the dead. luminous hands in present vogue. I can walk Here is a glass of plain water, perfectly clear, on hot metal plates, if you give me time before­ limpid, colourless; bold it up to the light—^you hand for the preparation of my feet; and I, and see nothing whatever but an innocent glass of M. de Boutigny, and some others, can boldly spring water, without even an animalcule float­ plunge our naked arms into glowing vats of ing unconscious in the midst. Strike into it a fiercely boiling metal, which only feels to us like glass rod or an iron tube. In a moment the plain liquid velvet. All this I can do, by the aid and water flashes out into innumerable crystals, and teaching of natural magic, and without any help the glass is filled with brUliant prismatic spicula, from the " dear spirits," But I can do much glancing back aU the colours of the rainbow. more than this: as you wiU see if you go on. That is magic, if you Uke; natural magic; which Even so long ago as Chaucer's time, when I is better than human. Another glass of pure was a joculator or jougglour, I was an adept in water fresh from the spring—breathe on it the art of sleight of hand. I could cut off a ooy's gently, and it is no longer clear and pure but head as he lay on a table, and you should see the milky and turbid; another bit of nature's jug­ blood on the platter, and the Uvid hue of death gling very useful in its way. Do you see this on the face, as the jaws gaped and chattered piece of ice ? Here, I press something down on in the last throes : when, with a " presto! pass! it with my penknife; the ice bursts into flames, hey cockaloram fizgig!" I could put it on again, and the names Uck up the drops as they run. and the grinning jackanapes be none the worse; Again, I bringa lighted match to the surface of I could thimblerig as well as the best of the this block of Wenham, and there is at once an modem professors on Ascot Heath, pass immistakable bonfire, which bums until I put it cards at my will, and make the ace of hearts out, I have another tumbler of quite clear water a live pigeon; I could make an egg dance here. Gently I slip an egg into the tumbler, then a hompipe indifferently weU; I could change raise my hand when it has slipped down mid­ a groat into a tester,, and a tester into a way, and bid it stop and float; it does stop, and noble, if I had such a thing about me: yet it does float; and I hold up before my audi­ somehow I never' got the richer for the trans­ ence the admirable spectacle of an egg sus­ formation. I could tie innumerable knots in a pended in the water without hook, cord, magnet, handkerchief, or you could tie them yourself, or or any other visible agent whatsoever. Why as many of you as chose; but at the word of not ? If my wUl can go into chairs and tables command they should all unloose themselves and and make them walk and talk, why not into fall out. I could give you ale or beer, sherris an egg to arrest its downward career ? I have or sack, all out of the same barrel, and in larger a slender-necked jar or bottle, bulbous in the (juantity than the said barrel would hold without body, contracted in the throat, yet comfortably jugglery intervening—so Master Houdin's trick located in that bulbous body is another egg, of the inexhaustible bottle, clever as it was, had whole, sound, unbroken, but of such dimensions its forerunners. I could cut off my nose; thrust as could never possibly have passed through a padlock through my cheek and tum the key the neck. Yet it did. The bottle was not made upon myself to show you it was aU right, and no over the egg, and the egg was got through a deception, my masters. I could eat fire, and passage a full inch too small for it. How? breathe it out again; swaUow knives, pull a Jlggs are brittle things, and, so far as I know, rope through my nose, and draw countless yards not compressible: yet this mystery of the egg of ribbon out of my mouth. I could swaUow a '.and the bulbous narrow-necked jar is true. tin pudding, a yard long; make three bells come I can light my candles by only pointing at them where you could aU see for yourselves were only with a glass rod; I can pour a bucketful of two before, and no possibiUty of a third; I water onto aheap of sand, and bring up the sand could make a card vanish and turn up unex­ as dry as if I had taken it off Hampstead Heath pectedly in another place; I could juggle you on a windy day in March—a trick, by the way, many a pretty pictui-e beyond aU chance for any made great use of by the Hindu jugglers, and of your duUer wits to understand how. Could also of Ufe or death valuJin the orders of that you teU me how I brought into my lord's hall, enlightened people: the priests having the privi­ that water—seemingly fair living water—in lege of manipulating the sand. I can freeze which were boats with men rowing up and down ? water in a red-hot vessel standing close by Or how I conjured up the show or presence of the fire; I can dip my hand into water, and that grim lion? and of that ample field with bring it out again as dry as if just wiped posies growing rich and lush among the grass ? with a Baden towel—-another Hindu trick How did I make the vine grow up in a moment, known to the West. I can pour water on to a bearing white and red grapes, real to the touch sheet of paper, and instead of wetting the paper, and sweet to the taste ? How did I build you a it shaU run about in little baUs Ukecrazy quick­ goodly castle with actual stone, and at a word silver. A dead twig or a branch of summer make all disappear as swiftly as it had come ? beauty, green and leafy, I can fumigate with a Uttle sweet-scented incense, and in a short time A " leamed clerk," a friend of mine, to amuse bring it you again white and sparkUng with the his company, made a " forest fuU of wUd deer, , crystalUsation ot hoar-frost. By merely sliaking where niiglit be seen a hundred of them slain, iua uncorked bottle of oil, I can produce the love­ some with hounds and some with arrows; then the hunting being finished, he caused a company 132 [AprU 19,1862.] ALL THE YEAR ROUND. [Conductedby o( falconers to appear upon the banks of a fair The Acorn he pnll'd out, I'll tell you here no Lye, river, where the birds pursued the herons and And shewed it all about. The Chips there then did In his Hand then he took slew them, and then came knights jousting on a it agayne, ^^^^' plain"—all by the noble art of jugglery and In the presence of them all, Buzzmgabout like Flyes, natural magic. Do you not believe me ? Read In the middle of the Hall, And Men were forced to Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, and then you will He sett downe theAcorne ward. find that I have not boasted, and that when 1 playne. Their Faces well to guard, merely clapped my hands together, "aU was While one could drink aCup, For fear they sh'd loose gone in an instant." I don't say that aU this Then did an Oake spring up, their lyes. Which was so huge and He bade them then behold, was not by a kind of magic lantern known only tall. And ev'ry one take hold, to the initiated. True, Kircher invented the With Arms it so put out, This Oake for to carry real magic lantern as we have it now, but we And Branches all about, away. were not all fools before Kircher came, and we That it almost fill'd the And they all hold did get. HaU. But c'd not stirr't a whit, had a pretty little store of optical secrets among But still along it lay. us, ana at least knew the effects of cylindrical This Oake then did beare, Which was a thing most He said they had no mirrors, and the principles of reflection and re­ Strength, fraction. Then people were so thick-witted and rare, Acomes both black and Which he would prove at so superstitious ! (almost as superstitious as they brown, Length, are now), and were so ready to cry magic and For which the Swine did For it sh'd not lye long on the Floor, the devil, that if we ran more danger of being busk, Two Goslings young' and spitted and roasted as magicians, we got olf And they did loose their green, with less criticism and far less chance of detec­ Husk, As they came tumbling They then came whewtmg tion. Sir John MandevUl, a few years later, down. in, saw something of the same kind of thing as what And carried it out of the This great Oake there did Door. I and my friend, the learned clerk, did in Chau­ stand, cer's time. There were jugglers at the court of To the View of every Man, Then gone was the Oake, the great Chan, who made night at noon, and Who saw, it was so That had so many a Stroke, noon at night; who brought in fair damsels, playne, Before that it fell down, heaven knows whence or how, and caused boar But Koome then to afford, Thus as it grew in Haste, To bring Supper unto Bord, So quickly did it waste. hunts and knights jousting, to appear: the They wish't it gone Not a Chip then could be splinters of whose spears flew over the hall. agayne. found. In 1579, I went down to Ashwell Thorpe, Then lowdly he did call, This Story is very true, where I performed a trick—I cannot do it now, And Two came into the Which I have told to you, I wish I could—like the famous mango trick of Hall, 'Tis a wonder yon didn't the Hindiis, I set an acorn in the midst of Who were both stout and heare it, the hall, watered it, watched and tended it, and strong. I'll lay a Pint of wine, And with the Tools they had, If Parker and old Hinde, in a few moments caused it to grow up a goodly To work they went like mad. Were aljrve that they w'd tree, bearing real acorns—I appeal for testimony And laid this Oake along. sweare it. to the swine of the period—which acorns ripened, feU, and were devoured, according to This is precisely the mango trick of the pre­ the laws of acorn life. Two stout woodmen with sent day. The Hindu juggler takes a dry stick, difficulty cut down this tree, the chips of which plants it in a pot with some earth and water, flew far and wide about the hall; but at my makes his invocations, and covers it up. In a short time he removes the cover, and, behold, command my two green goslings carried away the mango has sprouted. Again he covers up, the fragments without any difficulty. Which is and again he looks—the sprout has widened to exactly the kind of thing some Hindu juggler is a fuU-grovm shoot, with expanding leaves and doing at this very moment somewhere in British forming blossom. Again—the blossom has now Hindiistan. A ballad was made on this trick of fructified, and the petals lie withering on the mine, which, lest you have not got Bloomfield's mould. Again—the fruit is fuUy formed. Agam History of Norfolk by you, I wiU transcribe: —it is ripening; and now, again, and for the last THE BALLAD OP ASHWELL THORPE, MADE IN time, the cover is removed, when the mango, SIR THOMAS KNEVET'S TIME. fully ripe, is pluckecrfrom the tree fuUy grown, Once there lived a Man, There was a Gentleman, and gracefully handed to the Mem Sahib to Deny it they that can, From London Citty came, taste. In another moment the mango-tree is the Who liberal was to the The countrey for to see, withered stick it was in the beginning. Yet Poore; And all in the Pryme, this is professed jugglery, a mere delusion of I dare boldly say, Of jovial Christemas Time, They ne're were sent away, There merry for to be. the senses by manual dexterity, such as the juggler of Ashwell Thorpe achieved when he Empty-Handed from his This Londoner did say, Doore. If the Gentry would give planted his acorn and reared his oak, and way, caused the two gosUngs to carry away the WhenMisers inHoIes crept, A Trick to them he chips which the couple of stout labourers had Then open House he kept, w'd show, made. Where many then did That an Accrue he would resort, sett, Another Hindu trick is the girl and the basket. Some for love of good Beere, If they would please to A circle is formed, say of soldiers, standing And others for goodCheere, ha'te, thick and serried; the juggler, the chUd, the And others tor to make Which to a great Tree Sport, basket, Mem Sahib, and Mem Sahib's friends should grow. are in the centre of the circle j and the whole Charles Dickens.] MEDIUMS UNDER OTHER NAMES. [April 19,1SG2.] 133

scene, remember, takes place out of doors. The jugglers the rope-dancers and tumblers of old juggler, after going through his less exciting times. In Elizabeth's reign they all went to­ tricks—keeping up a shower of balls with his gether, classed with " ruffians, blasphemers, hands while he keeps up a shower of rings with thieves, vagabonds, heretics, Jews, pagans, and his toes, perhaps at the same time balancing a sorcerers :" yet the old Uoness liked looking at loose stick tower on his chin—buUding up his them weU enough; and in Laneham's descrip­ jointed pole on his forehead, up which the tion of the Sports of KenUworth, he speaks of trained goat runs and stands with all four feet " a man so flighty that he doubted if he was a on the top, on a space not half so large as one's man or a spirit," and could not tell what to make hand—piling four or five waterpots on his head, of him, save that he might guess his back to be with a girl standing on the top of all, with which " metalled like a lamprey, that has no bone, but singular head-dress he dances about the circle a Une like a lutestring," Before then. Queen juggling his balls as usual, or stringing beads on Mary and Cardmal Pole, reviewing the royal a thread with his tongue—after holding a staff pensioners in Greenwich Park, laughed heartily in his waistband and letting a brother juggler at the " pretty feats " of a tumbler; as genera­ swarm up it and lay himself aU abroad on the tions agone Edward the Second had laughed, top, legs and arms flying to all four quarters, who was signally amused by a feUow who fell and the body balanced only on one part of the off his horse, and vaulted on his back again, as stomach—after these and other kindred displays quick as you might see, Froissart speaks of he comes to the finale of all: the girl and the a marvellous bit of rope-dancing, quite as good basket. The juggler caUs the Uttle girl to him as Blondin's, if not better, on the occasion of and begins to play with her, at first gently, then the entry of Isabel of Bavaria into Paris. a little more boisterously, until at last h^ " There was a mayster came out of Geane; he thrusts her roughly under the basket, and tells had tyed a corde upon the hyghest house on her he shall keep her there tiU she is good. the brydge of Saynt MicheU over all the houses, The Uttle girl begins to whine and remonstrate and the other corde was tyed to the hyghest from underneath the basket; the juggler gets tower of Our Ladye's churche; and as the angry, scolds her, and tells her to hold her tongue, queue passed by, and was in the great streat else he will whip her; but the little one is un­ caUed our Ladye's strete; bycause it was late, appeasable, and the quarrel goes on, increasing this sayd Mayster, with two brinnynge candeUes in intensity, until at last the man, in a paroxysm in his handes, issued out of a littel stage that of anger, draws his sword and thrusts it wildly he had made on the heyght of Our Ladye's into the basket. The screams of the child are tower, synginge as he went upon the corde aU heartrending, her yeUs and cries agonising; but along the great strete, so that all that sawe him the juggler stabs and stabs again, and works his hadde marvayle how it might be; and he bore sword about the wickerwork in uncontrollable still in hys handes the two brinnynge candeUes so and fiendish fury. Then, the child's voice ceases, that he myght be well sene aU over Parys, and and just a few heavy sobs are heard; then, some two myles without the city. He was such a fainter moans, fainter—fainter—as the last gasps tumbler that his Ughtnesse was greatly praised." of a murdered chUd would be—aud then, all is still. The juggler pulls his bloody sword from Another rope dancer in Edward the Sixth's the basket, wipes it, and composedly salaams time excited great wonder here in London. He Mem Sahib and her friends, who are gene­ stretched a rope as thick as a ship's cable, from rally in a state of hysterical distress; some­ the battlements of Saint Paul's steeple down to times, indeed, the soldiers are with difficulty the floor before the house of the Dean of Saint restrained from tearing the man to pieces, Paul's, where he fastened it with an anchor; and especiaUy in one case known to me, when the down this rope he came, "his head forward, captain of the company, himself quivering in casting his arms and legs abroad, running on his every Umb with horror and agitation, had actuaUy breast on the rope, from the battlements to the to defend the juggler from the excited men. ground, as it had been an arrow from the bow, How it might have fared with him Heaven only and stayed on the ground." Then he went to knows, but that on his giving a peculiar cry, the king and kissed his foot, and then swarmed the Uttle girl came bounding and laughing into up the rope again, halting midway to play the circle—coming from behind the soldiers— " certain mysteries," as casting one leg from the .though every man was ready to swear that she other, and tumbling and dancing on the rope. had not passed him, and could not have passed Then he tied himself to the cable by his right through the thick ranks anywhere. Now, how leg, "a Uttle space beneath the wrist of the is that trick done? It is nothing but jugglery foot," and hung by that leg a long while; from first to last—as much mere jugglery as then played more mysteries; and so up the Torrini's trick of sawing one Uve page into two, rope agam to safety and the high steeple of or as Robin's of pulUng one pigeon into two; Samt Paul's. but, mere trick as it is, it is undiscovered yet, Very clever, too, were the egg-dancers (" hop- though hundreds of shrewd hard-headed un­ peste»es" in Chaucer's time), and the sword- imaginative and scientific Englishmen have seen dancers, and the vaulters, and the eutortiUa- it, thought about it, tried it—and been baffled— tionists. At the end of the last century there for half a dozen generations. was a magniflcent vaulter, an Irishman, over six We must rank amongst the more legitimate feet in height, admirably made, and only eighteen years old: he could jump over nine horses 134! [April 19,18G2.] ALL THE YEAR ROUND. [Cohfltictedby standing side by side, with a man seated on the on the stage with four naked swords, two in middle one; he could iump over a garter held each hand, with which she danced with incredible fourteen feet high, and kick a bladder at sixteen swiftness and dexterity; turning the weapons feet; and at his own benefit he leaped over a now out, now in, sometimes thrasting them into machine like a broad wheeled waggon with a tUt, her bosom, sometimes holding them over her He had no spring-board, and jumped from an head, then dashmg them down by her side, at inclined plane of three feet. Strutt saw him, last stopping suddenly after ten or fifteMi and examined his starting-place. Poor feUow ! minutes of this perilous work, apparently never He sprained the tendon of nis heel at last, so his a bit the worse. Sword-dancing was more fine vaulting got a little damaged, Joseph Clark, common once, than it is now. Even a child of who lived under Charles the Second, and died eight danced among the points of swords and in King William's reign—a taU thin well-made spears at Bartholomew Fair in Queen Anne's man—was one of the great entortiUationists of time. And one of the Sadler's Wells company the past. He could make himself up into all said that aU who went to his place should manner of humps and deformities, and dislocate see "a young woman dance with the sword, his backbone in the most shocking manner; and upon a ladder, surpassing aU her sex," plaguing the taUors to death by going to them as One of the most wonderful (if tnie) bits of a slender weU-conditioned man, and receiving jugglery that I have met vidth is to be found in his clothes as a crabbe'd and crooked old hump the Southern Litera^ Messenger of 1835, from back, with humps sticking out aU over his per­ a manuscript of D. D. Mitchell, Esq,, and pur- son, and not a joint in its proper place. Then orting to be an account of what the Arickara there was Powel the fire-eater, whom Strutt fndians can do in that way. In 1831, Mr. saw eating burning coals brought from the fire, MitcheU and some-friends, traveUing up the Mis­ and putting a Ughted match mto his mouth, souri, lost their horses near an Arickara village. blowing the sulphur through his nostrils. He also Now, the Arickaras, says Mr, Mitchell, are carried a red-hot heater round the room in his about the worst set of red men going, with aU the teeth, and he, as Richardson had done before vices and none of the virtues of their race; but him, broiled a piece of beefsteak on his tongue. they don't murder those whites who throw them­ While the meat was broiling, one of his assist­ selves on their hospitality: the reason being, ants blew the charcoal that lay under his tongue, that they once murdered a white man, and to prevent the heat from decreasing, and in a short his ghost haunted their viUage ever after­ time the beef was thoroughly cooked, and not wards, and frightened away the buffaloes. The too much gravy remaining. By way of a con­ traveUers therefore took lodgings in the viUage clusion, he made a composition of pitch, brim­ itself, and the tribe all turned out to do them stone, and other combustibles, adding a small honour. And one of their ways of doing them {)iece of lead; he then melted it all in an iron honour was to show them what their band of adle and set it on fire. This was his " soup," "bears," or "medicine-men," could do. In a and he spooned it out of the ladle with an wigwam sat, in a circle, six men dressed as bears; iron spoon, and ate it, boUing and blazing the spectators standing round them, and the white as it was. Another worthy ate stones and men being given the best and nearest places. cracked them, or was said to do so, and ap­ For a few moments the bears kept a mournful peared to do so; he probably juggled them silence, then they bade a young brave go to a away instead. certain part of the river-side, and bring them a Then Clench, a Bamet man, was a wonderful handful of stiff clay. The clay was brought, imitator of aU things, Uving and dead. He was and the bears set to work to mould it into in Queen Anne's time, and imitated horses, certam forms—buffaloes, men, and horses, bows huntsmen, and a pack of hounds, aU at once; and arrows—nine of each kind, as by the true he was great in dranken men and shrUl old bear recipe. They then placed all the buffaloes women, but greatest of aU in beUs, flutes, the in a Une, and set the clay hunters on the clay double cautreU, and an organ with three voices. horses, with their bows and straw arrows in then: He had a rival, one Rossignol, the foreshadow­ hands. They were about three feet distant from ing of Herr Joel, who sang aU the notes of aU the game, and in parallel lines. When mar­ the birds, and played on a stringless violin, shalled, the elder bear said: "My childen, I making the music with his mouth. But some of knowthat you are hungi-y; it has been a lopg time the more curious found out that he had a small since you have been out hunting. Exert your­ instrament concealed within his lips when he did selves to-day. Try and kiU as many as you can. this, so his trick lost value. Taught animals— Here are white persons present, who wiU laugh dancing bears, leamed pigs, the " baU of Uttle at you if you don't kiU, Go! Don't you see dogs," which personated fine ladies and tlieir that the buffaloes have already got the scent of beaux so wonderfuUy well, canaries that made you, and have started P" At the word aU the themselves into grenadiers, and shot the deserter buffaloes started off at full speed, and the men canary at the word of command (this was at after them, shooting their straw aiTOWs from Breslaw's), clever horses that could do every­ their clay bows, so that the buffaloes feU down thing but talk, a rope-dancing ape as good as as if dead; but two of them ran round the whole human—aU these came into the juggling depart­ circumference of the circle, about fifteen or ment ; so did that brave Uttle girl at Plockton's, twenty feet, and one received three and the "a noted but clumsy juggler," who appeared 1 other five arrows before they feU over and Charles Dickens.] MEDIUMS UNDER OTBEER NAMES, [April 19,1862.] 13.5 liied decently, as clay buffaloes shoiild. They the speaking automaton which got to the always kept apart at the distance of three feet, lenojth of real sentences, and might, perhaps, at which they were originally placed. When with faith and patience, have at last been brought the buffaloes were dead, said the bear to the to intelligent conversation—who knows? And irnnters, " Ride into the fire:" a small firehavin g by-the-by, that speaking automaton was the been made expressly for the experiment in the most ingenious of all, but susceptible of great centre of the nut. They set off as before, but improvement, owing to certain quite modem stopped at the edge of the •fire. Said the bear mechanical and scientific advancement; and there angrily: "Why don't you ride inP" and then was Robert-Houdin's own automaton, that drew the riders beat their horses vrith their clay so ominously—for the pencU broke in the act bows, and so they rode into the flames, and of tracing the figure of a crown for his dis­ fell down, and were baked to powder. Then, possessed heirship, the Count of Paris. WiU the bears took the powder from the floor, and the count ever fulfil the old king's remark, and, •cast it abroad to the four winds of heaven, at " as he has leamed to draw, finish the crown for the top of the lodge. Which may be taken on himself" ? the whole as a very pretty bit of jugglery in­ Houdin's system of second sight, too, was deed. as clever as it was bold. The trick exists There are some capital anecdotes of sleight of now, as any one may see who chooses to pay M. hand in the last new book on the subject put Robin an evening visit at the Egyptian Hall, forth—the Memoirs by M, Robert-Houdin, Con- PiccadUly, and hear Madame detail the things j.uTor, Mechanician, and Ambassador, But almost held in his hand, one after another, and always the best of all, as an instance of clever scheming accurately, according to the preconcerted system and neat prestidigitation, is that anecdote of how of verbal signs. (M. Robin's is a very admirable Torrini juggled the Cardinal's unique and price­ entertainment, and he is an excellent conjuror, less Breguet watch into the Pope's holy pocket, who to surprising dexterity of hand and eye, after having firststampe d it to pieces and brayed unites a very prepossessing appearance and -it to gold dust in a mortar—that valuable watch address.) How clever, too, was that hand­ •:about which there could be no mistake or delu­ kerchief trick at Saint Cloud!—how appa­ sion, for there was not such another to be had rently without preparation, and only due to anywhere. Yet Torrini had caused its fellow to the inspiration of the moment! — what spiri- be made expressly for this experiment; which tuaUst Mediums could do anything half so shows at least what these juggling men wUl do striking ? At that seance at Saint Cloud, in 1846, liwhen the humour takes them. Much, too, is Robert-Houdin surpassed himself. Borrowing said in that volume of the aid and assistance six pocket-handkerchiefs from the " Ulustrious" •given to juggUng by ventriloquism; and much company, he desired several persons to write on •of the many clever automata, both the tricky cards the names of places whither they desired and the legitimate, which have helped to bewil­ the pocket-handkerchiefs to be transported. Of der men's minds and disturb the relations be­ the mass written, Houdin desired the king to tween the real and the false. There was "Vau- select three; on one was written, " On the dome canson's flute-player, copied from Coysvoix's of the Invalides ;" on another, " Under the can­ marble statue of the faun, which was of the trae delabra on the chimney-piece;" on the third, " In or legitimate kind; there was his mechanical the last orange-box of the avenue." The first was 4uck, which, though marvellously clever, was of too distant, the second too easy, thethird was the the tricky or juggling order—^the said duck not right one. Yes, in the last orange-box of the performing all that it undertook to do, but de- avenue, well under the roots of the tree. Imme­ •ceiving folk's eyes by a crafty substitution and diately messengers were sent off by the king to admirable pretence. Then, there was his famous see that no one played tricks with the chest, and loom on which a donkey worked cloth; made in then the royal servant was commanded to go and revenge for the bad treatment of the Lyons open the side of the orange-tree box, and see what weavers, who had stoned him because he wanted he could find. And there, sure enough, he found to simplify the ordinary loom (at the present an old rusty iron casket, quite under the roots of 'day the weaving wonder is Bonelli's loom, the tree, which casket he brought to the king, 'Worked by electricity); then, there was his asp no one touching it by the way. Tiien Houdin •which fastened on the actress's bosom with a hiss lifted up the bell of opaque glass under which - and a spring, sickeningly real; likewise, his end­ he had put his packet of handkerchiefs, and, lo! less chain, at which ne was working when they were gone, while in their stead was a 'he died. Then, there was the Prussian Kop- )retty Uttle white dove, with a rusty old key en's musical instrument, the Componium ex- {astened to a ribbon round its neck. The king f ibited in 1829, which Componium was a me­ took the key, opened the casket, saw first a chanical orchestra, aU kettle-drams and big paper or bit of parchment with some non­ drams and Uttle drums, tambourines and fifes sense on it by CagUostro, then ^ paper parcel 'and flutes, triangles and cymbals, and what sealed with Cagliostro's seal. This paper parcel not; and there was the chain of rings all en­ he untied, unsealed, and opened; and behold closed in each other, which, if you blew upon, the pocket-handkerchiefs borrowed not half an •4hough never BO lightly, fell to pieces of its hour before! own accord, to theastonishment of all beholders. Now, ho w came tiiey there ? It was j ugglery, Then, there were the rhyming automaton,.and but mighty pretty jugglery, and very much out 136 [April 19,1862.] ALL THE YEAR ROUND. [Conducted by of the common, as people say. Then the Duchess away, one by one, even to the cardboard stomach of Orleans brought a green case, which was not of the self-sabrer, who, when he seemed to pass to be opened, and the contents of which EmUe, the sword right through his abdomen—for was by virtue of his second sight, was to reveal. Of there not the blood to testify ? and was he not course Houdin opened it with a rapid, unseen a lean man, and with no superfluity of abdominal gesture, gave the password to Emile, and re­ muscles ?—was yet found to have done nothing ceived, as the reward of his dexterity, the dia­ more wonderful than pass it through a leathern mond pin, with its stone surrounded by a garter scabbard led across a cardboard front, in which of sky-blue enamel, which was its enclosure. It was a smaU sponge filled with blood : the real was Houdin, too, who, at the time when mag­ abdomen being aU the while comfortably (or un­ netic trances aud cataleptic phenomena were at comfortably) braced up against the spine, and in their height, invented the trick which it pleased no danger of anything save inflammation from him to call " Etherial Suspension," wherein he over-pressure. This was a very clever trick, knocked off, one by one, the frail supports on possible only to an extremely lean person like which he had placed his youngest son, and left the self-sabrer—the invulnerable, as he was him seated on nothing, apparently suspended in called. Sometimes, indeed, physical peculiarities the air in a state of cataleptic trance—a sight aid a mau in performing unique tricks ; that is, which never failed to bring down on the juggler's tricks possible only to himself, and the few ex- good-fooking head, a storm of maternal indigna­ ceptionals like himself. Like the sabre-swaUower tion, and a shower of twopenny post letters, with his enormous gullet, which could take m threatening prosecution and the police. And it an egg and gulp it down, without cracking it; or was Houdin who improved on PhiUppe's trick like the pug-nosed invulnerablebefore mentioned, of producing five or six huge glass bowls, with who, while tricking the public with a juggle, live gold fish swimming about, from nothing but performed a real feat when he thrust knives up an empty shawl wrapped round his body. What his nostrils without hurting himself, because are the luminous hands in the carefully darkened his nostrils were so wide and flexible. These room, or under the carefuUy covered table, to cases are rare, but when they do occur they are this, or to the heap of feathers brought out of the never inexplicable or out of nature as the cre­ hat of an unoffending spectator—feathers in such dulous would have us believe. quantities that they cover up a boy kneeling Yet, with aU the evidence before them pf on the stage? Look at the tin cases flung the cleverness of jugglers, and the dexterity out of that hat—enough to set up a tinman's with which deft of hand can deceive the wisest shop; at the bouquets of flowers—a whole Co- —with all the mass of evidence of frauds which vent Garden Market full; at the toys, the have been discovered, both pious and impious— pigeons, rabbits, and ducks—all tossed out of people go on beUeving in miracles, and the a single black hat! Our mediums are bunglers. " possession" by unseen spirits of carnal-lookuig An ordinary fair-day conjuror could beat the mediums. Why, the latest miracle of all, is the best of them. old stigmata medium; the medium with the large What can the Arab jugglers do? They are white-skinned arm on which the spirits scrawl noted men in their trade, and are not unfre- blood-red letters in a very bad hand, and lookuig quently quoted by the superstitious as possess­ marvellously like an earthly scratch with a ma­ ing more knowledge than is good for them, and terial pencil! This flesh-writing is of no re­ as having a more intimate connexion with the cent date. The Oxford CouncU of 1222 cruci­ Powers of Darkness than they choose to own. fied two "naughtie fellows" at Arborberie for They eat glass and nails and thorns and thistles feigning the stigmata; but St. Prancis of Assissi (the great prickly leaves of the cactus one was canonised for his fraud two years later—as of their grand feats); and they strike their a compensation, probably. The Dominicans arms, and the flesh opens and bleeds, and they who got caught in false flesh-writing tricks at strike again and the flesh closes and the blood Berne, and Maria da Visitifam who disgraced ceases; they leap on the edge of sabres and lierself in the same way at Lisbon, brought don't cut their feet; they walk upon red-hot the fashion iuto temporary disrepute for a long iron and don't burn their feet; they lie all along long time, untU lo! it starts up again m the sharp sabres; and they eat snakes and scorpions; Irish revivalist who had " Geasus" written over and aU this they do accompanied with frantic ges­ her stomach, and in the medium who bares his tures and mad excitement, so that the grain of arm to show a scrawling " John" scratched there. jugglery bears a treble harvest of credulity, and What believer in the power of Revivals would the senses of the spectators are confused, ft does doubt the heavenly handwriting of the one not belong to this present paper to explain, by (never mind the spelling) ; and what enthusiast Houdin's method, all the arts and manoeuvres of in the cause of mediumship and spiritualism these mad Arab Marabouts; but it is enough to would question the ghostly origin of the other? say that they are aU to be reduced to simple jug­ 0! how strange it is, that with the collective gling tricks, or the crafty application of some not knowledge and advancement of the ages for commonly understood chemical and mechanical his guidance, a sane mau can witness the mar­ secrets. So far as we have gone yet, we have vellous dexterity of a modern juggler who con­ come to nothing miraculous or inexplicable any­ fesses that aU he does is by fraud of sense and where. Quite the contrary. The most appa­ mechanical combination, and can then accept the rently miraculous things are aU getting explamed " spirituaUsm" of a bungler, who cannot speak ^^-

Charles Dickens.] RUSSIAN TRAVEL. [April 19,1862.] 137 tolerable EngUsh, and whose perpetuaUy-faiUng In some parts of Russia the huts have a tricks are of the lowest and most explainable low under story, for sheltering cattle during order of legerdemain known. vrinter. It admits horses, cows, sheep, pigs, goats, and poultry. The flooring is open, and RUSSIAN TRAVEL. the animal heat from so many bodies, ascending SBEPS OP A VILLAGE IN THE INTEKIOB, A LOOK to the inmates above, helps to keep them KOITND THE CHURCH, warm. In the summer, the quadrupeds go to IN outward expression the Russian serf is a the field, and the bipeds above take possession mere clod of the valley. His dress is seldom of the vacant cellar as the coolest place for the varied. A little round low-crowned black felt hot weather, A trap-door admits from above hat, with narrow tumed-up rims, covers the usual to this ground-floor, and a long sloping board profusion of brown or carrotty tangled locks, outside, with cross pieces of wood naUed on it, which are sometimes parted in front, and cut like the temporary ladders used for building straight at the neck. Every serf I have seen, who purposes in England, is the way out into the had reached manhood, had a beard, whiskers, open air. In the villages belonging to Count and moustache, untouched by razor or scissors, Pomerin, the cattle of tlie peasants are housed so that most of these natural beards were mag­ in outbuildings immediately adjoining the low nificently long, rolling in soft curls, or spreading huts, the communication between them being and bushy. always open. It follows that the men and Beards are in Russia the peculiar prerogative women and the cattle Uve very much on the of two classes only, but those the most numerous social principle, and have all things in common, if not the most potent—serfs and priests; aU I saw cow and horse dung built up three or four other Russians crop and shave, Govemment feet high from the ground, and one and a half officials of aU kinds—and they are a host—gen­ feet thick, all round the huts, to keep out the tlemen, barons, and soldiers, will not allow a coming winter frost. What windows I noticed, hair to be seen, unless it be an imperial, a royal, were mere pigeon-holes. or a Napoleonic moustache on the upper lip. The street or road betweeen these habitations Beard is the mark of servitude and priestcraft, was fully six times as broad as Cheapside in and is, therefore, abhorred by the "respecta­ London, and a double row of taU trees ran dovra bility" of Russia. Count Pomerin's serfs were the centre, forming, no doubt, a cool and plea­ profusely hairy under their hats, were dressed sant promenade in summer. Be it remembered m loose, often ragged, coats of grey, brown, or that this was no roadside viUage, neither was it black felt, or in cloth, coarse as " herland an outskirt to a town, but a genuine Russian heather," reaching a little below the knees, and feudal village, or as the Scotch would say, held together at the waist by a belt, like a " clachan," a long way from any pubUc road or narrow horse-girth. Under the coat would be corporate town, embosomed in tne heart of a found either a striped cotton, or plain linen large vaUey, between immense regions of forest shirt, of the coarsest material, called " crash,*' and the rolling plains. sometimes used for kitchen towels. Trousers After a long ride, we reached the church. of the same material were stuck into brown or It seemed to stand in the centre of the grey felt boots, and the toes within the boots village; and the other long lines of mud would be wrapped round with a coarse Unen streets, like the one we had passed, radiated rag in Ueu of stockings. On their hands the from it as a centre. It was a very large and serfs wear fingerless leather mittens; and in handsome new building of stucco brick, with the girth-belt, on the right hip, carry's, short- a Corinthian front, and constructed—as all handled axe. Russian churches are—in the form of a cross, After passing through the crowd of serfs, we with gilded domes, cupolas, minarets, and two proceeded down the hiU, crossed a morass immense belfries, eacn containing one large which caused the horses some trouble, and then and six smaU beUs, fourteen in all, which over a low wooden bridge, spanning a frozen were now keeping up a most atrocious jangle. stream, passed to the outskirts of the village of Over the front entrance was at one end a very Evanoffsky. The peasants, who followed list­ fairly executed painting of the last supper, and lessly, sauntering, and sUent, gradually vanished at the other a picture of some saint's story which into their wooden huts. These thatched village I did not understand. A.11 the architectural huts are so low, that one wonders how such designing and outside decoration was the work, weU grown men stand up in them, especially as I was told, of a serf belonging to the place. their walls are sunk at all manner of angles off The church was open. It happened to be a the square. The gables face the street or road; Saint's day (St. Vladimu-, I, think), and the no door is visible, but there is a large wooden count, with his party, including myself, entered j;ateway next the house, and a small door lead­ the sacred edifice. We were not very long ing to the dwelling, somewhere in the rear. The in it, the count and the other Russians of gateway is for horses and cattle, carts, &c., and our party getting very swiftly through their the allotment of each peasant is fenced in from religious observances; but the reUgious faith the road by a close high paling, which extends and observances of any people have a powerful to the next hut. These allotmenfs being of effect in the formation of their character, and considerable breadth, a viUage spreads over a what one sees of the Greek Church in its prac­ great space of ground. tical bearing on the Russians is worth note. 138 [April 19, 1862,] ALL THE YEAR ROUND. [Conductedby This Greek _ Church is a schism from the prostrations were complete, to the touching of Roman Catholic, or the Roman CathoUc is a the cold flags with the forehead, and the kiss­ schism from the Greek; at all events the one ing of the ground, A few reading-desks were spUt into two, on the elevation of Gregory placed here and there about the church among the Sixth to the patriarchal chair of Rome. the people, and on each lay for study a smaU Before that time the four patriarchal chairs picture of some particular saint. Tne one I of Rome, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Con­ examined was a miserably mean representation stantinople, had been independent, the one of Joseph and Mary, with a chUd between them. of the other, and each patriarch ruled in his On these desks beside each of the pictures, lay own division; but squabbles had been going on a plate for the reception of money, and there between the patriarcli of Rome and his brother was a stand for tapers and candles. The poor patriarch of Constantinople, for the supreme devotees crowded to kiss the pictures, made leadship of the whole Christian world. The their chUdren do so too, and when the chUch-en TWO grand divisions which to this day are were babies held the pictures to their lips. After maintained—the Eastern or Greek, and the a time the performing priests retired behind the Western or Roman Churcli—now present so side-scenes, and reappeared on the stage beside many points of simUarity that a common the altar. Then, was heard a choir of very good origin is evident, and so many points of dis­ voices commencing another part of the perform­ similarity that the impossibility of any united ance, and now, bending, crossing, and pros­ action is equaUy evident. The Greeks have trating were renewed with added energy. During no purgatory, their priests must aU be mar­ 'aU this time the people were going and comiog, ried, the Emperor is head of the Church in the same sense as the Queen of England is head passing and repassing, through the church, as of the Church of England and defender of the Ithey sought out the particular saints' pictures faith, and each diocese has a supreme patriarch before wffich they desired to perform their de­ who is only supreme in his own district. It is to votions. No one seemed willing to rest for a the especial honour of the Greek Church that it single moment. Wax tapers and candles were has not been intolerant of other creeds, has being sold near the door, varying in price from not persecuted with fire and faggot, and at the three kopecks to many rubles. I am told that the priests derive a considerable revenue from )resent time allows in Russia every form of re- the chandlery trade—first selling their candles figious belief to be pubUcly followed by strangers for sacred purposes,, and after they have b'lrnt and foreigners. But no proselytismg is per­ for a short time, putting them out to be resold mitted. The great defect of the Greek system for common use. is the almost total exclusion of moral teaching, On this and on many other occasions, I did not AU is display of ceremony. hear one syllable of preaching orhomUy reading, Service was being performed when we entered nor one hint of the moral precepts of Chris­ the church by four long-haired priests, attended tianity. by their clerks, and robed splendidly in sacred At Easter, thei'e is absolution given to the vestments of cloth of gold, with chains of gold and Greek Church people. Six weeks of common crosses hanging from them. The services con­ fasting have been previously observed, and a sisted of chantings, genufiexions, crossings, and week of uncommon, almost absolute starvation readings from a book of prayer; the voices of precedes Easter Sunday. During that week con­ priests and assistants rising and falUng the whole fession is made, and absolution in some sense pitch of the gamut at a word, running in a low given in a very wholesale manner by the priests monotonous tone for a few seconds, then bursting ;who attend for the purpose. afresh into a high key for a word or two, and then " Evan, where are you going ?" said a fiiiend sinking into a mumble of inarticulate sounds. of mine to his servant man, on one of these days Immediately behind the popes (aU priests are of " Gavating;" that is, confessing. called popes in Russia), and facing the entrance, " I am going to confession; I'll be back in a was a raised platform or dais, extending across quarter of an hour, the church is just at hand.** that part of the church: with wings and side " But I cannot let you go to-day, I want doors, not unlike the stage of a tneatre. In you." the centre of this stage, stood the altar, around " God help me, John the son of Thomas, hut which were blazing a large number of wax. ir must go; this is the last day of gavating, candles. At the side-wings, were images and and if I don't go, I shall have no certificate to pictures by the dozen. A small raU, with an get a clean passport; I wiU be back in a few openuig in the centre, separated this altar, and minutes." its attendant holy images, from the main body " How can you manage to confess aU your of the building. year's sins in a few minutes P" The audience was pretty numerous,, chiefly , " Your honour, if I had only five kopecks, the composed of women, many of whom carried ipope would keep me a long time, but I have a babies, and were getting themselves crossed rouble and that wUl get me through in five and sprinkled with holy water by one or other minutes I know how to do." Off the feUow of the priests as they passed. There was went, and returned in less than half an hour not a single seat in the church; aU worship­ with all his spiritual accounts squared. On the pers were standing, bending, bowing, prostrat­ Sunday after this week of confession, all Russia ing, and diUgently crossing themselves. The, is cleaned and purged of twelve months' sins. ir

Charles Dickens.] RUSSIAN TRAVEL. [April 19,1862.] 139 A dramatic exhibition of the resurrection is man reputed for his wonderful sanctity, austerity, given in every church in the empire on the Mid wisdom. Many extraordinary cures had he Saturday evening at twelve o'clock precisely. On effected, which were ascribed by the simple Easter Sunday there are kisses and congratula­ peasants to supernatural power. He belonged tions, eggs are handed about from hand to hand,: to the real old uncorrapted Greek religion, such feasting is at its he^ht, and the hospitals are as it. was in the days of its purity; he nageUated foU by Tuesday or Wednesday. ; himself unmercifully for his deficiencies, be­ There is a manufactory near St. Petersburg, moaned the falUng off of the primitive faith, at which about two thousand hands used to be and prophesied dire calamities m consequence. employed. On a week previous to a certain One of his favourite prophetic visions was the latter Sunday, while confession was going on, downfal of the Ottoman empire, the total de­ in order to take as Uttle time from Mammon as struction of aU the Turks, the substitution of possible, the machinery was stopped in sections, Russia for those "dogs" in the East, in the and the people were permitted to go in batches, reign of a namesake of his own, a NikoU, and according to the nature of the work at which they the simultaneous restoration of the pure old were employed. Weavers confessed together at faith. One day he was on a sloping bank of the one time, spinners at another, and so on. Con­ great lake, seated on a large boulder-stone, nected with and adjoining these works was the talking and speaking words of wisdom to friends church wherp confession took place, and a who had come a long way to hear him, and at private passage led from the works to the the same time inwardly praying to be removed church by which the penitents passed into the to the capital, that he might have there a wider church; having confessed, they went into the field of duty, and give his counsel to the street by the main church entrance to go home. emperor, who was at that time consolidating Now, in Russia, aU workpeople are strictly Petersburg. At once the stone on wldch he sat searched by male and female searchers as they began to move, and, sliding gently down to­ pass out from their place of employment; but wards the lake, carried him with it, iu spite of m confessing season when these particular the exertions of his friends. On the lalce the workpeople went direct to the church, by the stone swam like a duck, and set off, dead against the wind, across the sea (the Ladago is {irivate way, to confess a year's sins in the some sixty mUes broad, and eighty long). nmp, the right of search had never been en­ Nikoli waved a farewell to his astonished forced. But on a certain day the director of friends, and calmly held his course. For six this factory received a hint concerning this weeks he saUed on, buffeting winds and waves, omission, and took his measures accordingly. not knowing whither he went. At length he At eleven o'clock a large batch (four hundred passed from the great lake into the Neva. But in ^l) of women, young and married, girls and he did not reach the capital. A ukase had gone old wives, left their various posts, and took out against the arrival of any more big stones, their way across the yard, with demure and or monoUths, after that which Peter rides on, in penitent looks, to the private entrance, where the Admiralty Plains, NikoU's stone must they were admitted as usual, filling the staUs have known this, for when it came to a place and passages. When aU were inside, the bottom caUed Ishora, it tumed into a smaU tribu­ door was bolted and guarded. Means of escape tary, and held on up the narrow river, dead being thus cut off, the front rank on approach­ against the stream, for four good mUes. Then ing tne door of communication with the church, it stopped stone stiU at the viUage of Col- found half a dozen searchers, backed by as many pino, where the saint was obUged to get policemen. The first two women searched were off and land. It so happened tliat just as stripped of a large quantity of valuable ma­ Nikoli came ssuUng up this small river, the pea­ terial secreted under their clothes, in their sants had coUected, and were dancing one of boots—in fact, wherever they could stow it. their holiday dances. They saw the strange Each had as great a weight of plunder as she sight of an old man saiUng on a stone, and could possibly carry. The work of searching thought they saw the EvU One, "Churt! went on, but the mass of women on the stairs churtl" they cried, and ran off. One man, and in the passages got scent of the presence however, who had more sense, cried out, " God of the searchers. The word was passed, a pe- be with us! that is old NikoU NikoUovitch, cuUar sound was heard as of many persons from the Ladago, the wise man," This discri­ dressing and undressing, and in a few minutes minating man took the poor exhausted mariner the women were aU standing as innocent as in, and dried his feet, set bread before him, got lambs, and as harmless as doves, up to theu: the samovar ready, and laid him on the peach knees in material, valued according to an after bed, doing aU he could to revive his poor computation at five hundred pounds sterling. weatherbeaten frame. But the saint's time was This had been going on for years. But let it come; he died in the arms of his kind enter­ be remembered that the people are not taught tainer, prophesying many events, " which have moraUty and honesty as part of their reUgion. all come to pass, and havmg by this expedi­ I will attempt to give an idea of what Holy tion on the stone entitled hunself to be ca­ Russia can achieve in tUs line. Saint Nicholas, nonised and placed in the highest rank among or Nikoli, as he is termed in Russia, was " a Greek saints. So, canomsed he was; a picture saint so clever," who, many years ago, Uved on of him was made aud encased.under sUver, with. the banks of Lake Ladago tlie Great. He was a NS»

140 [April 19,1862,] ALL THE YEAR ROUND. [Conductedby rays of glory springing from his head; the pic­ their journey, unless they would spoil the ture was hung up iu a frame, and a small church blessing they expect. The sun may be blazing built on the spot where he died. To this church on their devoted heads, the rain may be coming resorted many thousands every year on the an­ down in torrents—this does not signify, on flows niversary of his death, the ninth of May, They the stream of devotees. I have seen them ill who had diseases were healed, the lame walked, and sick and fainting, and I have seen cordials and the blind saw, after a visit to Colpino on the given to them by kind English women. Tlie saint's day, By-and-by the Empress Catherine lame pass, and the blind, and the rheumatic, and established at this place a cannon-foundry, and people afflicted with various diseases; sick brought Gasgoine, from Carron, in Scotland, children in the arms of their fond mothers, aud to teach her to make guns. He brought more old tottering age supported by stalwart sons and people, and she also sent a host of Russians, so daughters. On the eighth the road is densely the little church became too small, besides being crowded; the Petersburg pilgrims, who do not found at an inconvenient distance from the great take the liberty " to boil their peas," start m new village. Then there was built a grand new the evening to walk all night, and arrive in good church, as large and handsome as any ordinary time in the morning, Por those who do " boil saint could desire, for Nikoli; and as he had been their peas," trains run to Colpino, beginnmo' a source of great profit in the old church, it was early on the ninth, and pour out their teemin° deemed that hewould be more profitable than ever freight at the stations every half hour until in the new one, Tiiey thought, therefore, to re­ twelve o'clock. Those who can command a move him; and one day they did, with great pomp team, drive down, instead of mixing with the and ceremony, remove him from among his old poorer sinners in the train. The pedestrians friends and old faces. The ceremony over and the and more sincere dupes have by this time reached door locked, the popes retired to play at cards the spot, so that on the final day carriages at a party in Vassilia Petrovitch's grand go­ only are seen on the road. vernment house. But if Nikoli came to Colpino I have been present at Colpino Place on the on a stone without any free wiU of his own, he evening of the eighth, and have seen from fifteen was not going to be removed from his old com­ thousand to twenty thousand wayfarers such fortable quarters by the will of the priests with­ as I have described, lying in the wind and rain out his own sanction, so he got up m the night, all night around the church, I have been kicked open the door, walked three miles back there on the ninth, and have seen this num­ to his dear old church, and hung liimself up ber doubled by fresh arrivals from Peters­ again on his old nail, close to the altar. There burg by train and road. Taking my stand at he was found in the morning. The priests ten o'clock to see the procession, which begms were not to be put out by an old picture, so they at noon, I have had to wait until one, because took NikoU back, double nailed him, rolled NikoU would not consent to move, untU the stones to the door of the church, and set a large iron box for offerings was filled with watch. It wouldn't do, Nikoli came out at money, I have gone into the church and taken a window, and was found in his old berth on the my hat off to as ugly an old saint as it is pos­ moming of the second day. The priests now sible to see; I have waited, not I am afraid m a appealed to the empress, who sent Potemkin to very patient frame of mind, untU my eyes have negotiate with the saint, aud after considerable been gladdened by the sight of the holy banners, trouble he managed to bring the old fellow to old tawdry and motheaten images and pictures, terms. NikoU.consented to be removed, on the to the number of thirty, carried each by two condition that on the ninth of May in every priests clothed in sacred vestments. Then I year for all time to come, a procession of great have seen this great multitude rushing, crushing, priests should carry him on a visit to the old squeezing, and pushing, to get into the Ime of church, and carry him back. Por, he was deter­ march, and prostrating themselves in the mud in a mined that the people should have this oppor­ long Une huddled together, a mile long and more, tunity of receiving his blessing and enjoying his enjoying the extreme felicity of having these miraculous healing powers. This is the legend; banners and pictures—but especially old Nikoli now for its effects. —in a wormeaten frame, carried over them by the Por a week previous to the ninth of May, I priests, who trod without mercy on the poor have seen the principal road to Colpino gradually superstitious slaves. Then, as I have thought of assuming the appearance of a road leading to the Indian Juggernaut, 1 have had my hat some great fair. PUgrims of all ages and both knocked over my ears, because I forgot to take sexes begin to pass me first singly and at in­ it off as the humiUating spectacle passed by, I tervals, then by groups in closer file, until the have foUowed this immense crowd with my eyes, road is covered with weary travel-stained footsore as the people rushed agaiu and again to be and hungry-looking traveUers. Many of them trampled over by the priests, and throw them­ come from far distances, two or three hundred selves again and again in the mud and dirt before mUes away. The great proportion are not mou- and under the images. I have heard of miraculous shuks, or mere peasants, but very respectably- cures effected on that great day; of those who dressed persons above the rank of serfs, and came bUnd, going away seeing; of those who evidently possessing means. They are nearly came on crutches, going away without them; of aU barefoot, and carry the pilgrim's staff and those who brought rheumatisms, leaving them •waUet. They must not enter a house on behind; and even of women who never had "^

Charles Dickens.] AN ELASTIC TRADE. [April 19,1862.] 14*1 children, bearing children thereafter. Beyond that. This substance is the concrete milky juice what I have described, however, nothing was obtained from several trees, but chiefly from to be seen, unless it were the shows, the one of the fig tribe. When first drawn, it re­ dancing-bears, the sweetmeat stands, and the sembles cow's milk in appearance; it has also segans or gipsies, brown as copper, who are a sweetish milky taste, and may be drunk with miracle-workers, and who for half a rouble read impunity. Like milk, it curdles, and theu yields my hand, and bestowed upon me three wives, thirty or forty per cent of soUd caoutchouc. fifteen children, and four estates. Eton to Sunday scholar: Go on, little one. Why do you call it caoutchouc ? Sunday-scholar AN ELASTIC TRADE. to Eton: Caoutchouc from the Indian cachucu. The mUky juice is received upon a mould of INDIAN-EUBBEE, thirty or forty years ago, clay, generally pear-shaped, is white at first, was known to the grown-up English world as a but assumes its aark colour upon being dried in substance necessary to the furnishing of draw­ smoke. It is prmcipaUy imported into Europe ing-boxes, and to the use of all men and boys, from Brazil, Columbia, and other parts of South women and girls, who had at any period of their America. Of late years, however, a considerable lives pencU marks to efface. PaterfamiUas quantity has been brought from Java, Penang, • smelt it on the surface of the holiday letter, Singapore, Assam, and Africa. Eton trium­ electrical with energetic rubbing at the faint phant. HoUo, youngster. Foot short! ruled lines which had saved the pen of the young caligraplier from travelling up hill and Java Pe j nang SingS I pore I Assam and 1 AfSrI(!) I ca. down hill and round aU manner of corners. The In the early days of Indian-rabber, the milky consumption of Indian-rubber at some schools juice itself was now and then brought to us used to astonish the masters. My first school unchanged. Sir Joseph Banks had a bottle of acc|uaintance with this article was, in fact, as a it that did not for some time decompose. When qmd When, therefore, I lately visited the it did, he in vain offered at Lisbon fifty louis- Indian-rabber Works at Silvertown, and, being d'ors for another. In our own time it has been taken into the presence of the Masticator, was imported in barrels under the impression that told that in the mastication of Indian-rubber advantage might come of its use in processes of began all its wonderful applications to the use manufacture; but it travels ill, and when it of man, I saw in that engine an old grown-up arrives in good order, after all the expense of schoolfellow. Mastication of Indian-rubber! cooperage and extra stowage, it is hardly so Why, I have seen forty boys chewing like one, useful as a preparation that can easily be made by steadily, though surreptitiously; I have heard, treatment of the solid rabber, whictf takes up the here the creakof the tough fresh quid between the least possible room, and requires no care on grinders; there, the juicier souna of work on the the journey hither. Only a hundred years ago, half-masticated article. The first machine mas­ Indian-rubber, which is now in some form part of ticator was found able to get through only about almost every person's dress, of every room's two ounces at a time. In the mouth, it was fumiture, was in this country a rare curiosity. more than a day's work, and wearied the jaws In seventeen hundred and seventy, Dr, Priestley to reduce to the right consistency a piece as published a Theory and Practice of Perspective, big as a small filbert. Our manufacture was with the following addition to its preface: perfect when the hard rubber was transformed " Since this work was printed off, I have seen into a soft plastic mass, which we could use as a substance excellently adapted to the purpose dough for the manufacture of air-puffs or turn­ of wiping from paper the marks of a black-lead overs. This pastry was to be heard bursting pencil. It must, therefore, be of singular use di^ring school hours with unaccountable Uttle to those who practise drawing. It is sold by cracks that might have converted some school­ Mr. Nairne, mathematical instrument-maker, masters of the present day to a belief in spirit- opposite the Exchange. He sells a cubical rapping. We had a prejudice in favour of Black piece of about half an inch for three shilUngs, rabber. When white inside, we were firmt o an aud he says it will last several years." opinion (estabUshed by the rounded shape of the Before this time the new substance had ex­ fragments cut from the imported flask-shaped cited'in France the attention of the leamed. M. mass) that it was a cunning preparation of cow's de la Condarnine, a great French mathematician, udder. We did not accept whiteness as a sign who was sent in seventeen 'thirty-six to Pera, of purity. to observe the figure of the earth at the equator, Well, we who survive have now lived to wrote from Peru to the Academy of Sciences know all about it. No schoolboy's mind thirty the first account of the curious juice used by or forty years ago was ever poisoned with in­ the native Indians (after whom it has been formation on natural history. Indian-rubber caUed) and by other residents, for making was leathery, therefore hide; was Indian, there­ syringes, bottles, boots, and so forth. He told fore, hide of elephant. When spurious, or Eng­ how the articles were moulded in soft clay, how lish, it was got from bull or cow. Some such the moulds were broken, and the soft mass or­ opinion may still prevail at Eton, though every namented by pricks with a point of hard wood. Uttle Sunday-schoolboy has this'niysterious affair He described the use of the Uquid in those by heart as a " common object," and wUl reply parts as a waterproof coating for cloth, and his to questions at a gallop with the information. own use of a great canvas prepared with Uquid N*

142 [April 19,1862,] ALL THE YEAR ROUND. IConductedby

Indian-rubber to cover his quadrant circle, when heating itself with such tough resistance that a set up, and save him the trouble of removing it man could only work the handle on two ounces to shelter in bad weather. At the mission of the at a time, the tearing and grinding with the heat CordiUeras and Andes they use, he said, water­ reduced aU to an uniform workable mass. All proof boots, which appeared to have been smoked, waste cuttings and scraps of the workshop SprinkUng with Spanish white, or even dust went into the mUl, and the process, unpatented, removed the stickiness of surface. In one place was, wonderful to tell, kept a secret for twelve he found caoutchouc, wrapped in two leaves of years by Mr. Hancock and his workmen- the bananier, used as a torcn; and when after­ inquisitive nunds being put on the wrong scent wards in seventeen 'fifty-one, M, Fresneau dis­ by the name of "pickling" given to the secret covered in the French colony of Cayenne, trees process. The first wooden hand-machine had yielding elastic resin, M, Condamine revived the soon been replaced by a larger iron machine discussion by dwelUng upon the probably great wrorked by horse-power, which prepared fifteen commercial value of such a discovery. Never­ pounds at a time, and of which the work was theless, the only commercial use found for the faeiUtated by previous heating of the raw caoutchouc in Prance was that of the surgeons; rubber to a temperature of three hundred who dissolved the rubber in ether, and by suc- degrees. The charge of a steam masticator jcessive dippings of wax rods obtained elastic now, in the Manchester works, is nearly, or coatings from which, the wax being melted out; 'quite, two hundred pounds. This works the by boiUng water, elastic surgical tubes, seldom; rubber into a soUd uniform block six feet long, of uniform thickness, were obtained. Some-! a foot wide, and seven inches thick. "'- what later it was applied by Messrs, Charles| The fifteen-pound blocks made by Mr, "Han­ and Robert to the manufacture of an air-tighti varnish for balloons; but even at the end of thcj cock's smaUer horse-power machine m eighteen last century it was rarely put in Europe to; 'twenty-one, were in the following year cut by any use except that of rubbing out pencU him with an apparatus stiU in use for the pur­ marks; little was known of it more than that iti pose at all Indian-rubber works. The block, fixed came from America, and that its price was a! on the movable bottom of a sort of trough, was guinea an ounce. raised, by simple machinery, to meet the sharp wetted edge of a slicing-knife that works over its Its toughness, elasticity, imperviousness to face. Thus it was cut into those smooth oblong water and air, its power to withstand corrosion cakes for the drawing-school, which used to show by aU acids (except concentrated sulphuric or the sawing strokes of the knife as a sort of grain nitric, which act on it slowly) aU alkalies, upon their surface. In the same year, Mr, Han­ chlorine and the chemical agents, with other cock solved the problem of the turpentuie solu­ qualities only now being recognised, passed tion, and in the next year he took out his wholly without practical attention untU our own patent for undersheathing ships (beneath their day—until, in fact, the year eighteen hundred copper bottoms) with a mixture of dissolved and nineteen, when Mr. Thomas Hancock, who is caoutchouc, pitch, tar, &c. Now followed, fau'ly to be called the founder of the new school naturally enough, the use of solution as a of industry arising from the application of cement instead of thread, in the joining of caoutchouc to the arts, and who deserves a sta­ Indian-rubber to other substances, as in gloves, tue in Indian-rabber more perennial than brass, &c. Boots coated with the solution became began his experiments. He looked for a con­ waterproofed. Then also the way was open, venient solvent, and looked in the right direc­ and was taken at once to many new appliances tion, namely, to oU of turpentine; but he faUed of caoutchouc, as in noiseless wheels, cushions at first, abandoned that search for a time, and in of billiard-tables, gas-bags, collars for stop­ eighteen 'twenty took out his first patent for cocks, experimental baUoons. By mixing ,tne cutting the raw bottle-shaped mass into glove liquid caoutchouc brought from America, with wrists, waist-belts, garters, stocking tops,'straps, felt, hair, and wool under pressure, Mr, Han­ waistcoat backs, unpickable pockets, boots, cock made a strong watertight artificial leather. shoes, pattens, clogs, &c. His elastic pieces ^ere fastened where they were inserted by But in the same year, eighteen 'twenty-four, a stitches, from which the Indian-rubber broke new name became prominent. -away. Then, thicker edges were made, and Five years earlier the late Mr, Charles Macin­ prepared by steeping in hot water. The im­ tosh, then a manufacturer at Glasgow of the violet ported bottle of rubber was cut into rings for red dye called cudbear, had contracted with the gloves and stockings. Next, a way was found Glasgow gas works for their tar and ammoniacal of joining cut edges by pressure under hot water, refuse. Getting naphtha from this, it occurred and the use was discovered of a stream of cold to him that naphtha might prove a good solvent water to keep constantly wet the sharp blade of Indian-rubber, He therefore experimented, that passed through the rabW to be cut. But and succeeded in doing with naphtha what Han­ the great help in Mr. Hancock's manufactory cock had done with turpentine. Then, in the year came from the use of a small hand-machine—a 'twenty-four, he took out a patent for the masticator with sharp and strong teeth, like the use of his solution in a new method of water­ hand masticator now generaUy used for mincing proofing. He made a smooth sandwich of his meat. The imported rubber was by no means caoutchouc paste, between two large slices of uniformly pure. Thus tom and ground whUe cloth, pressing and smoothing aU together under roUers; and this double fabric was' the water-

•m ^ Charles Dickens.] AN ELASTIC TRADE. [April 19,1862.] 143 proof which became so widely known under his some Indian-rubber mail-hags which he took name, Messrs. Hancock and Macintosh were to be good and durable, tliey softened and in the following year one firm,workin g at Glas- decomposed nnder service, through heat, aided ow and London, and setting up a factory at by some chemical action of their colouring ma­ f lanchester for the working, by common agree­ terial. The failure rained the trade. Mr, Good­ ment, of their patents. More applications of year made some simple experiments of curiosity caoutchouc were devised by Mr, Hancock, who, on the effect of heat upon the composition that among other contrivances, achieved a patent destroyed his maU-bags, an^, accidentally letting leather of the solution (mstead of tlie original a piece faU on a hot stove, found that instead of cream) pressed into flat fleeces of carded wool, melting, as caoutchouc does at a high tempera­ between two layers of cloth: a tough substance, ture, it charred and hardened. Further experi­ much used in machinery. Then, because taUors ments led to the use of sulphur under a certain discouraged the use of their material, Messrs. heat for making that great and valuable change Macintosh and Hancock opened shops for the in the caoutchouc, now caUed vulcanisation. sale of ready-made coats, capes, leggings, and He sent an agent to England with his new other articles of dress, whereby the use of them elastic rubber, durable, workable, deprived of its was spread among travellers throughout the stickiness, and able to pass unchanged through country. Twenty years ago, those old double aU vicissitudes of weather. He desired to sell fabrics, stiff in winter, and stinking in summer his secret. Nobody would buy. But Mr? Han­ of turpentine or naphtha, keeping the wet out cock, on seeing Goodyear's material, without and all exhalations of the body in—feeling as analysis of it, or any unfaur dealing, appUed his if they were truly made of what Indian-rabber •wits to the discovery of a process that would used sometimes to be called, lead-eater, and a lead- effect such a change. He discovered for him­ eater that retained all its food upon its stomach: self the sulphur process, to which Mr, Brocke- —stiU were in common use, although one be­ don gave the name of vulcanisation. It is ginning of the end of them had been made ten effected now in several ways : by rubbing toge­ years before. ; ther caoutchouc softenedih naphtha, with ten or That lesser beginning of their end was made twenty per cent of sulphur, and heating to in Vienna, where the plan was devised of weav­ three hundred and twenty degrees; by immers­ ing goods with caoutchouc in the warp or weft, ing sheets of Indian-ruDber sUced from the A thread of Indian-rabber had been made in block, for two or three hours in melted sulphur, •'twenty-six or seven by Messrs, Rattier and at two hundred and forty degrees, and then 'Gnibal, of St, Denys, by a machine for cutting heating to three hundred and twenty, when the spiraUy a flat-pressed disc got from the bottom: change takes place immediately; or by dipping of one of the imported bottle masses. The pro-: only for two or three minutes in a certain che­ cess has since been perfected. A strip of mical tub that contains bisulphide of carbon, caoutchouc stretched to five times its length, with two and a half per cent of protochloride of heated to the temperature of boiling water and sulphur, and then washing to remove excess of then slowly cooled, does not again contract. chlorine. The vulcanised rubber undergoes a The operation may be six times repeated, and; change not at aU weU understood theOreticaUy a strip a foot long may be made to yield, by when it is thus made to absorb ten or fifteen per this sort of wire-drawing, fifteen thousand six cent of sulphur, whereof only one or two per •hundred and twenty^five feet of Indian-rabber cent is joined to it chemically. The great thread. Threads of caoutchouc made somewhat practical fact is that it then not only ceases to after this manner were sheathed by a braiding-ma­ be sticky, but remains elastic at aU tempera­ chine with thread of silk or other fabric. Sheathed tures. when at fuU stretch, and made elastic again by In 'forty-three^Mr, Hancock took out a patent a hot iron passed over them, they contracted for his process of vulcanisation. In the year the surrounding thread into an uniform wrink­ following, an English patent was also taken out ling, and afterwards allowed the play of the for Mr. Goodyear, and the two patents were •elastic core v^ithout breaking the fibres of its worked without open dispute until seven years inelastic covering. Such compound thread was ago, when an action being brought to try woven into elastic fabrics, first at Vienna, then whether Mr, Hancock had stolen the idea of in Paris, afterwards in London, Mr. Goodyear, it was proved that he had not, _ Meanwhile, pump-buckets, engine-hose, buffer- though Goodyear's material suggested the inde­ •rings, elastic malting-shoes that would not crush pendent investigation towards an achievement the grain, caoutchouc corks, were coming into of the same result. To return to the history, •use, and the Manchester factory of Macintosh we finishi t by adding that in 'forty-five a new and Hancock produced four thousand square patent was taken out for getting rid of excess yards a day of double fabric waterprooif doth. of sulphur by use of a strong hot solution of At last, in the year eighteen 'forty-two, there sulphate of soda or potash, and since that time began a great revolution in the Indian-rabber new ways have every year been found of work­ trade. ing and applying the vulcanised'material: which The natural rubber feels weather to an incon­ has driven most of the old fabrics out of the venient extent; softens and becomes sticky market. Vulcanised in moulds under pressure, under heat, and stiffens under cold, Mr, Good­ the Indian-rubber becomes hard Uke ebony, can year, an American, having supplied by contract be turned in a lathe, and wUl make combs,' cups. 144 ALL THE YEAR ROUND. [April 19,1862,] light incorrodible scale-pans, opaque chemical to this use of caoutchouc Messrs. Silver and bottles, ornaments of many kinds. Fifty patents Co. have for some time past paid peculiar at- were taken out by the firm of Macintosh and tention. The workpeople of the factory have Hancock for new appUcations of the vulcanised their invention stimulated by the capabilities of material, Mr, Cow, of one of the royal dock­ the material they work upon. Here, for ex­ yards, suggested the use by ships at sea of a ample, is a shrewd foreman who has stumbled large sheet of vulcanised Indian-rubber to be over the vulcanised Indian-rubber hoqfycomb thrown over the side in case of leak by acci­ mats now in much use, whereof all the hexagons dent or shot-hole. The pressure of the water have to be separately cut from cast tubes, and forcing it against the ship's bottom would stop glued together. " Why the waste labour ?" he the leak untU the carpenter had done his work asks; and tuming to account the elasticity of on it. The quantity of caoutchouc imported his material, and the fact that a certain treat­ has been doubled and again doubled within ten ment with heat will make it retain any- form years. Mr. Brockedon has kept vulcanised into which it is stretched, he stamps his mat out Indian-rubber for fourteen years in still water, of a single block, without letting fall a shred of and for ten years in damp earth without visible waste, and so produces, with an enormous eco­ change. He has beaten a small piece, an inch nomy of labour, the same article, cheaper, nearer and a half thick, with a steam hammer of five to perfection, and by far more durable. tons /ailing two feet, without injuring it or destroying its elasticity—falling four feet, with Every inventive workman at Silvertown has the result of tearing it, but without injuring its credit for his own contrivances, not only from the elasticity, which has borne the test of a pound­ firm, but from aU visitors to the works who are ing as between cannon-balls under the heaviest informed of his discovery. It is most noteworthy steam-hammers. Logs of wood, coated with that beyond this, inthe space that is to represent vulcanised rabber, have been towed in a ship's SUvertown industry at this year's International wake to Demerara and back: the coated logs Exhibition, inventions peculiar to the estabUsh­ coming home perfectly sound, while the un- ment wiU not be claimed in gross by the heads coated timber was ridaled by marine creatures. of the house. Every device originating with Several projectors have declared that Indian- the men will have attached to it the name of rubber resists cannon and rifle balls, and some the workman who is its inventor. This is part have even offered to stand fire in their shot- of a liberal and wise system, by which factory proof Indian-rabber armour. But a leg of life is being greatly humanised in the hands of mutton so armed, shows in itself the bullet- many English firms. At Silvertown, employ­ hole, though the complete contraction of the ment is found for women as far as possible, and elastic sheath effaces all trace of the points at in departments of those works occupied by other which the buUet entered and passed out. branches of the business of a great outfitting contractor—as in the caning of chairs among Such is the story of a trade yet in its infancy. the cabinet-makers—there is work for children. At Silvertown—the Woolwich works of Messrs. For the children there is a school; for all SUver and Co. of Comhill and Bishopsgate— hands there is a chapel, with the superinten­ aU the processes here indicated may be seen dence of an active chaplain-schoolmaster. The at work, from the masticating-room with a cup­ men form a rifie-corps of tlieir own, with a head board full of raw material in bottle and crude of the house for major; and they have mustered lump, and the central machine that converts it among themselves a good brass band. Com­ into workable blocks, to the show-room of fortable dweUings are built in a Uttle street " ebonite" manufactures from the hardest vul­ outside the factory gates. There is a SUver­ canised material, useful and ornamental, includ­ town Mechanics' Institute, with free weekly ing even a hard and pleasantly elastic Indian- lectures, there is a school-treat on Easter rubber pen. Beyond this, is to be seen evidence Monday, and there is a concert on Wliit of the constant tendency of the new trade to Monday. The tall chimney by the river-side at conquer to itself new ground. Here, is an electrical room, with an outlook upon railway Woolwich, marks, in fact, not only a place of posts carrying electric wires, passed through all mechanical industry, but the centre of a cheer­ forms of insulators in addition to those of ful, wholesome influence; and this is, happily the crockery-ware or glass now commonly used. and honourably, becoming true now-a-days of Each wire runs to a test apparatus, and it is many a tall chimney in our land of factories. demonstrated that no material can be employed that insulates so perfectly as the vulcanised MR. CHARLES DICKENS'S NEW READINGS. Indian-rubber, which is also indestructible whe­ On Thursday, April 24tli, at ST. JAMES'S HALL, Piccadilly, ther by fracture or corrosion. Over the way, at 8 o'clock precisely, therefore, we find in the factory, women and gUls at work, making insulators. Mr, CHARLES DICKENS wUl read his DAVID COPPERFIELD In another room, is a marine telegraph cable, (In Six Chapters), ranning across great reels, and being swathed AND in successive bands of the same tough incor­ ME. BOB SAWYER'S PARTY, rodible and perfectly insulating substance ; for FROM PICKWICK, The Bight of Translating Articles from ALL THE YEAH ROUND is reserved by the Authors.

Pablished at the Office. No. 26, Well!n{;ton Street, Strand. Printed by C. WiiiTIxn Ucauf ,rt House, Strand.