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  BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

  NO. CCCLXVIII.   JUNE, 1846.   VOL. LIX.

THE LITERATURE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.[1]

Lord Brougham has resumed his memoirs of the eminent writers of England;
and every lover of literature will feel gratified by this employment of
his active research and of his vigorous pen.

One of the most striking distinctions of English public life from that
of the Continent, is in the condition of statesmen after their casual
retirement from power. The Foreign statesman seems to exist only in
office. The moment that sees him "out of place," sees him extinguished.
He is lost as suddenly to the public eye, as if he were carried to the
tomb of his ancestors. He retires to his country-seat, and there
subsides into the garrulous complainant against the caprices of fortune,
or buries his calamities in the quiet indulgence of his appetites;
smokes away his term of years, subsides into the lean and slippered
pantaloon, occupies his studies with the _Court Gazette_, and his
faculties with cards; and is finally deposited in the family vault, to
continue the process of mouldering which had been begun in his
arm-chair, to be remembered only in an epitaph. France, at the present
day, alone seems to form an exception. Her legislature affords a new
element in which statesmanship in abeyance can still float: the little
vessel is there at least kept in view of mankind; if it makes no
progress, it at least keeps above water; and, however incapable of
reaching the port by its own means, the fluctuations of the national
surge, sometimes so powerful, and always so contemptuous of calculation,
may at some time or other carry the craziest craft into harbour. But the
general order of continental ministers, even of the highest rank, when
abandoned by the monarch, are like men consigned to the dungeon. They go
to their place of sentence at once. The man who to-day figured in the
highest robe of power, to-morrow wears the prison costume. His rise was
the work of the royal will--his fall is equally the work of the royal
will. Having no connexion with the national mind, he has no resource in
the national sympathies. He has been a royal instrument: when his edge
becomes dull, or the royal artificer finds a tool whose fashion he likes
better, the old tool is flung by to rust, and no man asks where or why,
his use is at an end, and the world and the workman, alike, "knoweth it
no more."

But, in England, the condition of public life is wholly different. The
statesman is the creation of the national will, and neither in office,
nor in opposition, does the nation forget the product of its will. The
minister is no offspring of slavery, no official negro, made to be sold,
and, when sold, separated from his parentage once and for ever. If he
sins in power, he is at worst but the Prodigal Son, watched in his
career, and willingly welcomed when he has abjured his wanderings.
Instead of being extinguished by the loss of power, he often more than
compensates the change, by the revival of popularity. Disencumbered of
the laced and embroidered drapery of office, he often exhibits the
natural vigour and proportion of his faculties to higher advantage;
cultivates his intellectual distinctions with more palpable success;
refreshes his strength for nobler purposes than even those of ambition;
and, if he should not exert his renewed popularity for a new conquest of
power, only substitutes for place the more generous and exalted
determination of deserving those tributes which men naturally offer to
great abilities exerted for the good of present and future generations.

We must allude, for the national honour, to this characteristic of
English feeling, in the changes of public men. On the Continent, the
hour which deprived a statesman of office, at once deprived him of every
thing. All the world ran away from him, as they would from a falling
house. The crowded antechamber of yesterday, exhibited nothing to-day
but utter solitude. The fallen minister was a leper; men shrank from his
touch; the contagion of ill-luck was upon him; and every one dreaded to
catch the disease. It was sometimes even worse. The loss of power was
the ruin of fortune. The Dives had been suddenly transformed into the
Lazarus; the purple and fine linen were "shreds and patches," and not
even the dogs came to administer to his malady. But, among us, the
breaking up of a cabinet often only gives rise to a bold and brilliant
opposition. It is not like the breaking up of a ship, where the wreck is
irreparable, and the timbers are shattered and scattered, and good for
nothing; it is often more like the breaking up of a regiment in one of
our colonies, where the once compact mass of force, which knew nothing
but the command of its colonel, now takes, each man his own way,
exhibits his own style of cleverness; instead of the one manual exercise
of musket and bayonet, each individual takes the axe or the spade, the
tool or the ploughshare, and works a new fertility out of the soil,
according to his own "thews and sinews."

The moral of all this is, that the distinguished author of these Memoirs
is now devoting himself to a career of literature, to which even his
political services may have been of inferior utility. He is recalling
the public memory to those eminent achievements, which have so
powerfully advanced the mental grandeur of our era; and, while he thus
gives due honour to the labours of the past, he is at once encouraging
and illustrating the nobleness of the course which opens to posterity.
But Lord Brougham's influence cannot be contented, we should hope, with
merely speculative benefits; it is for him, and for men like him, to
look with interest on the struggles of literary existence at the hour;
to call the attention of government and the nation to the neglects, the
narrowness, and the caprices of national patronage; to demand protection
for genius depressed by the worldliness of the crowd; to point out to
men of rank and wealth a path of service infinitely more honourable to
their own taste, and infinitely more productive to their country, than
ribands and stars; than the tinkling of a name, than pompous palaces, or
picture galleries of royal price; to excite our nobles to constitute
themselves the true patrons of the living genius of the land, and
disdain to be content with either the offering of weak regrets or the
tribute of worthless honours to the slumberers in the grave. A tenth
part of the sums employed in raising obelisks to Burns, would have
rescued one half of his life from poverty, and the other half from
despair. The single sum which raised the monument to Sir Walter Scott in
Edinburgh, would have saved him from the final pressure which broke his
heart, elastic as it was, and dimmed his intellect, capable as he still
was of throwing a splendour over his native soil.

This neglect is known and suffered in no other province of public
service. The soldier, the sailor, the architect, the painter, are all
within sight of the most lavish prizes of public liberality. Parliament
has just given titles and superb pensions to the conquerors of the
Sikhs. The India Company has followed its example. We applaud this
munificent liberality in both instances. Two general officers have thus
obtained the peerage, with £7000 and £5000 a-year. They deserved those
rewards. But the whole literary encouragement of the British empire,
with a revenue of fifty-two millions sterling, is £1200, little more
than the tenth part of the pensions allotted to those two gallant men.
£1200 for the whole literary encouragement of England! There can be no
greater scandal to the intellectual honour of the country. The pettiest
German principality scarcely limits its literary encouragement to this
sum. We doubt whether Weimar, between literary offices and pensions, did
not give twice the sum annually. But named in competition with the
liberality of the leading sovereigns, it is utterly mean. Louis XIV.,
two hundred years ago, allotted 80,000 francs a-year to his forty
members of the Academy, a sum equivalent in _that day_, and in _France_,
to little less than £5000 a-year in our day, and in England. Frederic
II. gave pensions and appointments to a whole corps of literary men. At
this moment, there is scarcely a man of any literary distinction in
Paris, who has not a share in the liberal and wise patronage of
government, either in office or public pension.

But if we are to be answered by a class, plethoric with wealth and rank;
that literature ought to be content with living on its own means; must
not the obvious answer be--Is the author to be an author, down to his
grave? Is there to be no relaxation of his toil? is there to be no
allowance for the exhaustion of his overworked faculties? for the
natural infirmities of years? for the vexations of a noble spirit
compelled to submit to the caprices of public change? and with its full
share of the common calamities of life, increasing their pressure at
once by an inevitable sense of wrong, and by a feeling that the delight
of his youth must be the drudgery of his age? When the great Dryden, in
his seventieth year, was forced, in the bitterness of his heart, to
exclaim, "Must I die in the harness!" his language was a brand on the
common sense, as well as on the just generosity, of his country. We now
abandon the topic with one remark. This want of the higher liberality of
the nation has already produced the most injurious effects on our
literature.

All the great works of our ancestral literature were the works of
leisure and comparative competence. All the great dramatic poetry of
France was the work of comparative competence. Its writers were not
compelled to hurry after the popular tastes; they followed their own,
and impressed its character upon the mind of the nation. The plays of
Racine, Corneille, Molière, and Voltaire, are nobler trophies to the
greatness of France than all the victories of Louis the XIV., than
Versailles, than all the pomps of his splendid reign. Louis Philippe has
adopted the same munificent policy, and it will be followed by the same
honour with posterity. But, in England, the keeping of a stud of
racehorses, the building of a dog-kennel, or the purchase of a foreign
picture, is ignominiously and selfishly suffered to absorb a larger sum
than the whole literary patronage of the most opulent empire that the
sun ever shone upon. We recommend these considerations to Lord Brougham:
they are nobler than politics; they are fitter for his combined
character of statesman and philosopher; they will also combine with that
character another which alone can give permanency to the fame of any
public man--that of the philanthropist. His ability, his knowledge of
human nature, and his passion for public service--qualities in which his
merits are known to Europe--designate him as the founder of a great
system of public liberality to the enterprise of genius. And when party
is forgotten, and cabinets have perished; when, perhaps, even the
boundaries of empire may have been changed, and new nations rise to
claim the supremacy of arts and arms; the services of the protector of
literature will stand out before the eye with increased honour, and his
name be rescued from the common ruin which envelopes the memory of
ostentatious conquerors and idle kings.

The present volume contains biographies of Johnson, Adam Smith,
Lavoisier, Gibbon, Sir Joseph Banks, D'Alembert. We shall commence with
the lives less known to the generality of readers than those of our
great moralist and great political economist, reserving ourselves for
sketches of their career, as our space may allow.

Lord Brougham commences his life of Sir Joseph Banks by a species of
apology, for placing in the ranks of philosophers a man who had never
written a book. But no one has ever doubted that a man may be a
philosopher, without being an author. Some of the greatest inventions of
philosophy, of science, and of practical power, have been the work of
men who never wrote a book. In fact, the inventor is generally a man of
few words; his disciples, or rivals, or imitators, are the men of
description. The inventor gives the idea, the follower gives the
treatise; but the inventor is the philosopher after all. The question,
however, with Sir Joseph Banks is, whether he was any more an inventor
than a writer. It does not appear that he was either. Of course, he has
no right to rank among men of science. But he had merits of his own, and
on those his distinctions ought to have been placed. He was a zealous,
active, and influential friend of philosophers. He gave them his time,
he received them in his house, and he assisted their progress. He
volunteered to be the protector of their class; he sympathised with
their pursuits; and, while adding little or nothing to their
discoveries, he assisted in bringing those discoveries before the world.
He loved to be thought the patriarch of British science; and, like the
patriarch, he retained his authority even when he was past his labour.
If he filled the throne of science feebly, none could deny that he
filled it zealously. The true definition of him was, an English
gentleman occupying his leisure with philosophical pursuits, and
encouraging others of more powerful understanding to do the same.

Sir Joseph Banks was of an old and wealthy family, dating so far back as
Edward III.; first settled in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and
afterwards in the county of Lincoln. He was born in London in January
1743. At the age of nine he was sent to Harrow, and at thirteen to Eton,
where the tutors observed, as has happened in many other instances, that
he was fonder of play than of books. In about a twelvemonth, however, he
became studious, though not to the taste of his schoolmasters. The
origin of this change was described by himself, in a letter to Sir
Everard Home, as accidental. One afternoon he had been bathing with some
of the Eton boys, and, on returning to dress himself, found that they
had left him alone. Walking down a green lane, whose sides exhibited the
wild-flowers of the season, the thought occurred to him, how much more
natural and useful would be the knowledge of plants, than of Greek and
Latin. From this time he devoted himself to the study of botany, though
still continuing that of the classics. On returning to his father's
house, he found a copy of Gerard's _Herbal_, which fixed his taste. He
now added to his collecting of plants that of butterflies and other
insects. Lord Brougham mentions that his father was one of Banks's
associates at this period, and that they employed themselves together in
natural history.

Natural history has been so frequently the pursuit of studious triflers,
that it is difficult to exempt it from the charge of trifling. To gather
plants which have been gathered a thousand times before, to ascertain
their names from an herbal, and classify them according to its list,
seems to be little more than a grave apology for playing the fool. A
determination to gather all the butterflies and blue-bottles within the
limits of the realm, certainly has nothing that can dignify it with the
name of scientific pursuit. The collecting of pebbles and shells, or
even the arranging of animals in the cases of a museum, are
accomplishments of so easy an order, and of so little actual use, that
they serve for little else than to wile away the time. But this trifling
assumes a more important shape when it rises to the acquisition of
actual knowledge; when, instead of classifying plants, it develops their
medicinal virtues, and, instead of embalming animals, it examines their
structure, as throwing light on the conformation or diseases of man.

But Sir Joseph Banks was fortunately relieved from subsiding into this
foppery, by circumstances which forced him into vigorous and useful
exertion. An approaching transit of Venus had been long looked to, as
giving an opportunity for ascertaining the distance of the sun from the
earth. It was recommended, that observations on this phenomenon should
be made from different stations on the globe. Accordingly, in 1761, the
British government sent out two observers, one to the Cape and the other
to St Helena. The French government at the same time sent out three--to
Pondicherry, Siberia, and the Mauritius. But the weather was
unfavourable, and the observations were to be regarded as a failure. But
there was a second transit in 1769, and the leading powers of Europe
sent out observers; England sending a vessel to the South Seas, an
observer to India, and two to Hudson's Bay. Captain Wallace having
lately made several discoveries in the Pacific, public attention had
been strongly drawn to that hitherto scarcely known portion of the
globe. The celebrated Captain Cook was appointed commander, and Sir
Joseph Banks, stimulated by an honourable zeal and a rational desire of
knowledge, obtained leave from his friend, Lord Sandwich, to join the
expedition. He took with him Dr Solander the botanist, and two
draughtsmen.

On the 25th of August 1768, Cook's vessel, the Endeavour, sailed from
Plymouth Sound, and the first point of land at which they touched was
the Terra del Fuego, the southern extremity of the American continent.
There they encountered such severity of cold, that, although it was the
summer of those regions, Banks and Solander, in one of their botanical
excursions, had nearly shared the fate of three of their attendants, who
perished from the intensity of the cold. The effect of this excess of
low temperature has been often felt and often described. It was a
general torpor of the frame, producing an almost irresistible propensity
to sleep. Every exertion was painful, and the strongest desire was to
lie down in the snow and give way to slumber. Solander, who had acquired
his experience in botanizing among the Swedish mountains, warned the
party of their danger. "Whoever," said he, "sits down, will sleep;
whoever sleeps, will wake no more." Yet he himself was one of the first
to yield; he insisted on lying down, fell asleep before he could be
brought to the fire which Banks had kindled, and was restored with
difficulty. His companion had felt a similar inclination, but resisted
it, by the greater energy of youth, and probably of a more vigorous
mind.

Cook then sailed for Otaheite, which he reached in April. The contrast
of the luxurious climate with the inclement region which they had left
behind them, was doubly striking to men who, for upwards of half a year,
had seen nothing but the ocean or the deserts of Cape Horn. They now
proceeded vigorously to the chief purposes of their voyage. The captain
and his officers prepared their instruments to observe the transit,
while Banks and his botanical attendants ranged the island, made
themselves acquainted with its natural productions, and conciliated the
natives. The effect of his intelligence and intrepidity was conspicuous
on an occasion which might have involved the scientific fate of the
expedition. The quadrant, though under charge of a sentinel, had been
stolen by the adroitness of some of the natives. But without it no
observation could be taken. Banks volunteered to go in search of it into
the woods, made himself master of it, and conveyed it in safety to the
observatory; though followed by parties of the natives, and occasionally
compelled to keep them at bay by exhibiting his pistols.

The transit was successfully observed, but it took six hours for the
operation. As the period approached, even the crew had felt the
strongest anxiety for its success. The state of the sky was reported
every half hour during the night before, and their spirits rose and fell
as the report gave its answer, clear or cloudy. But at dawn the sky was
brilliant, and the day passed without a cloud. Four other observations
had been simultaneously made, in Siberia, Lapland, Hudson's Bay, and
California. The general result gave the sun's distance at nearly
ninety-four millions of miles.

The next object of the voyage was a search for the great southern
continent, which the philosophers of the day had conceived to exist, as
a "necessary balance" to the mass of land in the northern hemisphere.
But conjectural philosophy is often at fault, and necessary as this
terrestrial balance was asserted to be, no "great" southern continent
has yet been found. For a while, even Cook's sagacity seems to have been
deceived by the mountains of New Zealand, which had been discovered, in
1620, by Tasman. Cook sailed round it, and explored its shores for six
months. He then, on his homeward voyage, examined the east coast of New
Holland. Of course, it is not the intention of this paper to trace a
career so well known as that of the celebrated navigator. We refer to
its incidents, merely as connected with Sir Joseph Banks. They had run
about thirteen hundred miles of the coast, when, after having received
some alarm from the neighbourhood of coral reefs, the vessel suddenly
struck. It was Cook's sagacious habit, nightly, to give all his orders
and precautions before he went to rest; and thus, after having done all
that prudence could do, he undressed, went to bed, and such was the
composure of his mind that he instantly fell asleep. But immediately on
the vessel's striking, the captain was on deck, and giving his orders
with his characteristic coolness. The light of the moon showed the
sheathing boards of the ship floating all round, and at last her false
keel. Their fate appeared imminent, but it was only when the day broke,
that they became fully sensible of their forlorn condition. The land was
at eight leagues' distance. There were no intermediate islets on which
the crew might be saved, and the boats were wholly insufficient to take
them all at once. To lighten the ship was their first object. Guns,
ballast, stores, every thing was thrown over. After two tides they were
enabled to get the ship afloat. To their great relief, the leak did not
seem to gain upon them, though to keep it down required the labour of
the men night and day. At length a midshipman fortunately suggested an
expedient which he had once seen adopted at sea. This was to draw under
the ship's bottom a sail, to which were fastened oakum, flax, and other
light substances. The sail thus covered the leak, and enabled the ship
to swim. On pursuing their voyage, and reaching a river, in which they
attempted to repair the ship, they found that her preservation, in the
first instance, was owing to the extraordinary circumstance of a large
fragment of rock which had stuck into the vessel, and thus partially
stopped up the leak. In this most anxious emergency Sir Joseph Banks and
his party exhibited all the coolness and intrepidity which were
required; and in the subsequent account of the voyage, received from
Cook himself well-merited praises.

Another peril likely to be attended with still more certain ruin, now
assailed the crew. The scurvy began to make its appearance. The
devastations of this dreadful disease, in the early history of our
navigation, fortunately now appear almost fabulous. It was a real
plague; it seemed almost to dissolve the whole frame; teeth fell out,
limbs dropped off, and the sufferer sank into a rapid, and, as it was
once thought, an inevitable grave. It is a remarkable instance of the
powers which man possesses to counteract the most formidable evils, that
this terrible disease is now scarcely known. It has been overpowered
solely by such simple means as fresh meat and vegetables, and a drink
medicated with lemon-juice. Simple as those expedients are, they have
saved the lives of thousands and tens of thousands of the sea-going
population of England.

But new hazards, arising alike from the imperfect condition of the
vessel and their ignorance of the coast, continued to pursue them. Never
was a voyage attempted with greater difficulties to surmount, or
achieved with more triumphant success; after having explored two
thousand miles of this perilous coast, Cook took possession of it in the
name of his king, giving it the title of New South Wales.

At length he arrived at Batavia, where, on laying up his ship to repair,
it was discovered that their preservation throughout this long voyage
had been little less than miraculous, her planks having been in many
instances worn "as thin as the sole of a shoe." But their trials were
not yet over: the marsh fever quickly laid up the crew; the captain,
Banks, and Solander, were taken seriously ill. They set sail from this
pestilential island as soon as possible; but before they reached the
Cape, three-and-twenty had died, including Green the astronomer, and the
midshipman whose suggestion had saved the ship. At length, on the 12th
of July 1771, they cast anchor in the Downs, and Cook and his companions
were received with national acclamation.

The triumph of the navigation was naturally due to Cook, but the most
important part of the knowledge which had been communicated to the
empire was due to the labours of Banks. It was from his journals, that
the chief details of the habits, manners, and resources of the natives
were derived. The vegetable, mineral, and animal products of the Society
Islands, and of New Holland, New Zealand, and New Guinea, had been
explored, and a vast quantity of general intelligence was obtained
relative to countries, which now form an essential portion of the
British empire. The novelty of those possessions has now worn off, their
value has made them familiar. We are fully acquainted with their
products, however we may be still ignorant of their powers. But, at the
period of this memorable voyage, the Southern Hemisphere was scarcely
more known than the hemisphere of the moon. Every league of the coasts
of New Holland, and the islands of the Great Southern Ocean, abounded
with natural perils, heightened by the necessary ignorance of the
navigator. Even to this day, many a fearful catastrophe attests the
difficulties of the navigation; the coral rocks were a phenomenon wholly
new to nautical experience; and, in all the modern improvements of
nautical science, full room is left for wonder, at the skill, the
intelligence, and the daring, which carried Cook and his companions safe
through the perils of this gigantic navigation.

A new expedition was soon demanded at once by the curiosity of the
people and the interests of science. The dream of a great southern
continent was still the favourite topic of all who regarded themselves
as philosophers in England, although Cook had sailed over an
unfathomable ocean, in the very tract where he ought, according to this
adventurous theory, to have found a continent. Sir Joseph Banks again
gallantly volunteered to join the expedition which was equipped for the
discovery. His large fortune enabled him to make unusual preparations;
but such was his zeal, that he even raised a loan for the purpose. He
engaged Zoffani, the painter, with three assistant draughtsmen. He
selected two secretaries and nine attendants, instructed in the art of
preserving plants and animals; he also provided books, drawings, and
instruments. But his natural ambition was suddenly thwarted by the
opposition of Sir Hugh Palliser, controller of the navy. For whatever
reason--and it is now difficult to imagine any, except some jealousy too
contemptible to name--so many obstructions were thrown in the way, that
Banks relinquished the pursuit, and turned his attention to a voyage to
Iceland. His suite, seamen and all, amounting to forty persons, reached
the island in 1772, examined its chief natural phenomena, Hecla and its
hot springs, and furnished its historian, Von Troil, with the materials
for the most accurate history of this outpost of the northern world.

On his return to England, he commenced the career, natural to an opulent
man of a cultivated mind, but yet so seldom followed in England by
individuals of even higher means than his own. He fitted up a large
house in Soho Square with all the preparatives for a life of literary
association--a copious library, collections of natural history, and
philosophical instruments. He held frequent conversaziones, gave
dinners, and easily and naturally constituted himself the leader of the
men of science in London. In Lincolnshire, where his chief property
lay, he performed the part of the liberal and hospitable country
gentleman on a large scale; while in London, he was the first person to
whom scientific foreigners were introduced, and the principal patron and
protector of ingenious men.

On the resignation of Sir John Pringle as President of the Royal
Society, Sir Joseph Banks was placed in the chair, in 1778, almost by
acclamation. He had some obvious qualifications for the office, but he
as obviously wanted others. His opulence, his hospitality, and his zeal
for science, were valuable, and are nearly indispensable in the
president of a body which concentrates the chief intellectual force of
the community. But his favourite pursuit, botany, has never deserved the
name of a science, and inevitably bears a character of triviality in the
eyes of the mathematician and the philosopher. The distinction given to
a comparatively young man, known to the world only as a voyager, and a
collector of plants and animals, not unnaturally tended to breed
scoffing among the professors of the severe sciences. The feeling
spread, and the opportunity for its expression was soon found. Dr
Hutton, the mathematical professor at Woolwich, happened to be secretary
for foreign correspondence. His residence at Woolwich was said to
produce some inconvenience in his intercourse with the president; and
the council passed a resolution, in 1783, recommending that "the foreign
secretary should reside in London." The secret history of this
transaction is, that Hutton was one of the mathematical party; though we
cannot distinctly ascertain whether he had actually gone so far as to
sneer at the president. Upon this Hutton resigned the office; to accept
which, the emolument could not have been his object, the salary being
but L.20 a-year--a sum that cannot be mentioned without a sense of
disgrace to a society reckoning among its members some of the wealthiest
men of England.

Hutton's resignation, or rather dismissal, produced an open war in the
society. The mathematicians ranged themselves on the Huttonian side; the
cultivators of natural history, and the cultivators of nothing, ranged
themselves on the side of the president. The mathematicians were headed
by Horsley, afterwards the bishop--a man whom Lord Brougham
characterizes as extremely arrogant, of violent temper, and intoxicated
with an extravagant sense of his own scientific merits, which his noble
biographer pronounces to be altogether insignificant, heading this
charge with the unkindest cut of all, namely, that he was "a priest."
Horsley was certainly no great mathematician, as his publication of the
_Principia_ unluckily shows; but the picture is high coloured, which
represents him as a hot-tempered, loud-tongued, bustling personage--a
sort of bravo of science and theology, who took up the first opinion
which occurred to him, scorned to rectify it by any after-thought, and
plunged from one absurdity into another, for the sake of consistency.
The eloquence of his attacks upon the chair, of whose possession he was
supposed to be foolishly ambitious, was vaunted a good deal by his
partisans. But, as the only evidence of his rhetoric in these squabbles
ever quoted, is one sentence, it is like the pretension to wit on the
strength of a single pun, and may be easily cast aside. This boasted
sentence was uttered, in threatening the secession of the mathematical
party. "The president will then be left with his train of feeble
amateurs, and that toy (the mace) upon the table--the ghost of the
Society in which Philosophy once reigned, and Newton officiated as her
minister."

Horsley's theology was too nearly on a par with his mathematics--he
_was_ harsh and headlong. The fortunate folly of Priestley in
challenging the English clergy to a trial of strength in the old arena
of Unitarianism, gained him an opportunity of crushing an antagonist
whose presumption was in proportion to his ignorance. Accordingly, the
Unitarian was speedily put _hors-de-combat_, and Horsley was rewarded
with a mitre.

The president had long felt that the purpose of this violent lover of
parallelograms was, to unseat him. The question was therefore brought to
a decision, in the shape of a resolution "approving of Sir Joseph Banks
as president, and resolving to support him in his office." This
resolution was carried by 119 to 43.

Honours began now to gather upon him. In 1788 he had been made a
baronet. In 1795 he received the order of the Bath, then generally
restricted to soldiers and diplomatists. In two years after, he was
called to the Privy Council. On the death of the Duke of Ancaster he was
chosen recorder of Boston; but, though often solicited to stand an
election, he was never a member of Parliament. Though professing himself
a Tory, he seems never to have taken any active part in politics,
preserving a curious practical neutrality in Lincolnshire, and giving
his interest to Mr Pelham, a Whig, and Mr Chaplin, a Tory. This, which
his noble biographer curiously seems to consider as a happy proof of the
absence of all party feelings, we should be apt to look upon as a proof
of a degenerate wish to consult his own ease, and of a sluggish
neutrality discreditable to the character of an Englishman.

However, he had more honourable distinctions. In the furious
Revolutionary war--a war of principles and passions, not less than of
public interests, the president of the Royal Society largely exerted his
interest with both governments, to alleviate the sufferings of
scientific men who happened to fall into the hands of the belligerents,
and to effect the restoration of scientific property captured by our
ships of war. In 1802 he was chosen one of the foreign members of the
Institute of France; and his letter of thanks, a little too ardent in
its gratitude, was said to have involved the baronet in some vexations
peculiarly felt by his courtly temperament. He was instantly attacked
for his Gallican panegyric, by a portion of the Royal Society. Cobbett,
who was then looking out for a victim, and whose loyalty was at that
period peculiarly glowing, flew at him like a tiger-cat; and, last and
most dreaded of all, he was said to have received at Windsor some of
those frowns, which to a courtier are a total eclipse of the sun. But
the nation soon had higher things to think of than a slip of the
President's pen, or a little betrayal of his vanity. Napoleon ascended
the throne; and, when the thunderbolts began to fall, the squibs and
crackers flung from hand to hand of little men are of necessity
forgotten.

His latter years were signalized by acts of unequivocal public service.
He is designated by Lord Brougham, and no one can have a better right to
be informed of the fact, as the real founder of the African
Association.--His lordship also regards him as the real founder of the
colony of Botany Bay.--He was the first to suggest the transfer of the
tropical fruits to the West India islands.--British horticulture owed
him great services.--And the British Museum, during forty-two years of
his trusteeship, was the object of his peculiar care, and finally
received the bequest of his excellent library and of all his
collections.

His career, however, was now, by the course of nature, drawing to its
close. Yet, he had lived seventy-eight years in this anxious and
disappointing world, in opulence, in peace, and in public estimation.
But his lot had been singularly fortunate. Few men are without their
share of those troubles which characterize the general condition of
human nature. Sir Joseph Banks had _his_ trial, in physical suffering.
In the first portion of his life he had been remarkable for robust
health and activity; but, from about his fortieth year, he suffered
severely from attacks of gout, which increased so much, that for his
last fourteen years he was scarcely able to walk. His robust mind,
however, enabled him to encounter his disease by increased and extreme
temperance. He gave up all fermented liquors and animal food. He seems
to have derived considerable benefit from D'Huisson's medicine. But his
hour was come; and on the 19th of June 1820, in the seventy-eighth year
of his age, he died--just one year after his honoured and royal friend,
George III.

Thus passed through the world one of those men who are among the most
useful in their generation. It would be idle to pronounce him a genius,
a discoverer, or a profound philosopher. But he served an important
purpose in society; he suggested philosophical enterprise, he protected
the honourable ambition of men whose career, without that protection,
might have closed in obscure suffering: he gave the philosophy and
literature of his time a leader, and formed it into a substantial shape.
In this spirit he employed his life; and he accomplished his purpose
with the constancy and determination of a sagacious and systematic mind.
He might not be a pillar of the philosophical temple of his country, nor
its architrave; but he performed the office of the clamp--he bound
together the materials of both pillar and architrave, and sustained the
edifice alike in its stateliness and in its security.

Lord Brougham's biography of D'Alembert commences with a brief
dissertation on the interest which the mind takes in the study of
mathematics. This study he regards as superior in gratification to every
other, from its independence of external circumstances. In all other
studies, he observes truly, that a large portion of the researches must
depend upon facts imperfectly ascertained from the reports of others,
and upon knowledge impeded by the capricious chances of things; while in
pure science, the principles, the premises, and the conclusions, are
wholly within our own power.

In a passage exhibiting the affluence of the noble lord's language, he
says, "The life of a geometrician may well be supposed an uninterrupted
calm, and the gratification which is derived from its researches, is of
a pure and also of a lively kind--whether he contemplates the truths
discovered by others, with the demonstrative evidence on which they
rest, or carries the science further, and himself adds to the number of
the interesting truths before known. He may be often stopt in his
researches by the difficulties that beset his path; he may be frustrated
in his attempts to discover relations, depending on complicated data,
which he cannot unravel or reconcile; but his study is wholly
independent of accident, his reliance is on his own powers. Contestation
and uncertainty he never can know; a stranger to all controversy, above
all mystery, he possesses his mind in unruffled peace. Bound by no
authority, regardless of all consequences as of all opposition, he is
entire master of his conclusions as of his operations, and feels even
perfect indifference to the acceptance or objection of his doctrines,
because he confidently looks forward to their universal and immediate
admission the moment they are comprehended."

All this is strikingly expressed, yet it is after all but a showy
hypothesis. That pure mathematics have nothing to do with external
existence, may be easily granted; but that mathematicians are exempt
from controversy, is no more a matter of experience than that all
mathematical assertions are self-evident. The history of science is a
direct contradiction of this halcyon hypothesis. The bitterest
controversies, and the most ridiculous too, have been raised on
mathematical opinions. Universal experience tends strongly to the proof,
that no exclusive exertion of the mind is more fatal to its general
vigour, more apt to narrow its range of conception; more distinctly
operative, by its very exclusiveness, and by its making minute truths
the especial object of the mind, in rendering it incapable of those
loftier and broader truths on which depend all the great concerns of
society, all the efficient progress of civilisation, and all the nobler
growth of human powers--than the mere study of mathematics. A spider
drawing his web out of his own fibres, and constructing his little lines
and circles in his dusty corner, is the fittest emblem of the mere
mathematician. In this language, we acknowledge the use of the science;
we protest only against its pretence of superiority. Every man's
experience of college studies may supply him with examples; but we have
room but for one, and that of a sufficiently high order.

When Napoleon assumed the French throne, in his ambition of being
regarded as the universal patron of science he appointed the author of
the _Méchanique Céleste_ a member of his privy council. But La Place,
then and since, the first scientific name of France, was found utterly
inadequate to even the almost sinecure duties of his office. Napoleon
soon found that he could make no use of him. He accordingly consulted
him no longer. "I found his mind," said he, "like his book, full of
_infiniments petits_." Or if we look for further illustration among the
French geometers--the only men among whom the trial can be made, from
their opportunities of power in the Revolution--there was not one of
them who exhibited any qualification for the higher duties of public
life. Bailly, Condorcet, and their tribe, proved themselves utterly
feeble, helpless, and trifling, where manliness, activity, and
intelligence of mind were required. The Savans were swept away like a
swarm of mice, or crushed like musquitoes, when they dared to buzz in
the presence of the public. That they were first-rate mathematicians
there can be no question; that they quarrelled about their mathematical
theories with the bitterness, and not a little in the style of village
gossips, is equally certain; and that, though the Encyclopedists had
chiefly died off before the Revolution, their successors and imitators
were extinguished by their preposterous combination of an avarice of
power, and of an inadequacy to exertion, is a fact written unanswerably
in the history of their trifling career, and of their early scaffolds.
The ridiculous figure made in politics by the first astronomer of
France, at this moment, only strengthens the conclusion.

The life of D'Alembert is, however, one of the happiest illustrations of
the use to which science may be applied, in raising an obscure
individual into public fame. Yet, it is not to be forgotten, that
D'Alembert's European celebrity commenced only when he had laid aside
the exclusive study of mathematics, and devoted himself to general
literature, and, shaking off the dust of his closet, he became a man of
the world.

Jean le Rond d'Alembert was born in November 1717, and was exposed as a
foundling near the church of St Jean le Rond in Paris, and thus called
by the name of the parish. The commissary of the district, taking pity
upon the infant's apparently dying condition, instead of sending it to
the hospital, where it would have inevitably died, gave it to be nursed
by the wife of a poor glazier. In a few days, however, a person named
D'Estouches, a commissary of artillery, came forward, acknowledged the
child, and made provision for its support. The habits of foreign life
are generally so scandalous, that they can scarcely be alluded to
without offending our sense of delicacy. The mother of this infant was
an unmarried woman, living in the very highest circles of Paris, the
sister of Cardinal Tencin, archbishop of Lyons. This woman thus added to
her vice the cruelty of exposing her unfortunate offspring to die of
cold and hunger in the streets. It does not appear that her profligacy,
though notorious, ever affected her position in society. Her coteries
were as gay, her circle was as complete, and her rank as high, as ever.
In the Paris of those days, "throwing the first stone" was unheard of;
its reaction would have been an avalanche; there was no scandal where
there was no concealment; there was no crime where there was no
conscience; and thus danced the world away, until the scourge of a
higher power swept the whole noblesse of France into beggary and exile.

D'Alembert seems to have taken his surname from that of his nurse, and
was sent, when twelve years old, to the College of La Nation, then in
the possession of the Jansenists. There he learned mathematics. On
leaving the college, he returned to the glazier's house, there had one
room for his bedroom and study, lived on the family fare, supported
himself on a pension of £50 a-year left to him by his father, and in
that house lived for forty years. He once made an abortive attempt to
study the law and medicine, but soon grew weary of both, and returned to
mathematics, for which he had a decided predilection. His application to
this study, however, by no means pleased the homely sense of his old
nurse. "You will never be any thing better than a philosopher," was her
usual saying. "And what's a philosopher?--a fool, who wears out his
life, to be spoken of after he is dead."

But D'Alembert had evidently a passion for science; and in his
twenty-third year he sent to the Academy of Sciences an analytical
paper, which attracted general notice. This was followed by his
admission into the society, at the unusually early age of twenty-four.
From this period, he proceeded for eighteen years, constantly furnishing
the Academy with papers, which added greatly to its reputation and his
own. In a note on the presumed discovery of Taylor's Theorem by
D'Alembert, the noble biographer alludes to what he regards as a similar
event, the discovery of the "Binomial Theorem" by himself. We must
acknowledge, that we cannot easily comprehend how any student, within
the last hundred years, could have had this "discovery" to make--the
Binomial Theorem being one of the very first which meets the eye of the
algebraist, in Newton's, and every other treatise on analysis. It seems
to us very like an English reader's "discovery" of the alphabet, or, at
least, of the recondite art of spelling words of two syllables. But
D'Alembert was at length to find, that if he was to obtain either fame
or fortune, he must seek them in some other road. At this period,
infidelity had become the distinction of all who arrogated to themselves
intellectual accomplishment. The power of the crown, and the power of
the clergy, had hitherto made its expression dangerous; but the new
liberalism of the throne having enfeebled its power, the reign of the
libeller, the rebel, and the sceptic openly commenced. The opulence of
the clergy increased the bitterness of their enemies; and the blow which
was intended to lay the throne in the dust, was nominally aimed at
religion. Voltaire had commenced this crusade half a century before; but
the arch-infidel lived beyond the dominion of France, possessed an
independent income, had acquired the reputation of the wittiest man in
Europe, and had established a species of impunity by the pungency of his
perpetual sneers. During this period, French infidelity had been silent
through fear, but it was not the less virulent, active, and general. It
appeared in the result, that almost the whole of the French higher
orders were either deists or total unbelievers. All the literary men of
France followed the example of Voltaire, and a scoff at religion was
always accepted as an evidence of wit. France loves extremes; and, as
the poplar literature of Paris is now plunged in impurity, fifty years
ago it was characterized by outrageous blasphemy. The only religion
which France knew, was certainly not calculated to repress the evil. Its
fantastic exhibitions and grim formalities, were equally obnoxious to
the human understanding. Its persecuting spirit insulted the growing
passion of the people for liberty; while its fierce dogmas, contrasting
with its ridiculous traditions, supplied the largest materials at once
for horror and ridicule.

At length the storm broke forth. The infidelity which had danced and
smiled, and made _calembourgs_ and scoffed, in the full-dress circles of
the nobles; made its appearance in the streets and highways, in rags and
riot, with the axe for the pen, and blood for the ink, and trampled the
whole polished race of scoffers in the mire of Revolution.

The _Encyclopédie_ was the great text-book of the literary faction, and
Diderot and D'Alembert were the editors of its first seven
volumes--D'Alembert writing the preliminary discourse upon the progress
of the sciences. But the latter mixed caution with his courage; for on
the issue of the government prohibition of the work, he abandoned the
editorship and left it to Diderot.

At length, in 1752, the King of Prussia, who, with all his fame, had the
weakness of being emulous of French flattery, offered him an appointment
at Berlin, with an allowance of five hundred pounds a-year, and the
reversionary office of president of the academy. But this royal offer he
refused, on the ground of his reluctance to quit Paris, and the fear
that the employment would be inconsistent with his freedom. At this
period his fixed income seemed to be about seventy pounds a-year; yet,
when we suffer ourselves to be astonished at the apparent magnanimity of
the refusal, we are to remember that this sum, a hundred years ago, and
in Paris, would be about equivalent to two hundred pounds a-year in
England at the present day; that, like all Frenchmen, he hated Germany;
that Frederic's dealings with Voltaire gave by no means a favourable
specimen of his friendships; and that, to a Frenchman of that day,
Paris was all the world. But, ten years after, the Empress Catharine
made him the much more tempting offer of the tutorship of her son,
afterwards the unfortunate Emperor Paul. The salary was to be
magnificent, no less than four thousand pounds a-year; still he refused
the offer, and preferred remaining in Paris.

Whether we are to applaud his magnanimity, or blame his habits, on this
occasion, may fairly be a question. The possession of the four thousand
pounds a-year, even if it were limited to the period of tuition, would
have made him opulent; and his opulence would undoubtedly have given him
the means of extensive benevolence, of relieving private distress, of
assisting his less fortunate literary brethren, of promoting public
objects, and ultimately, perhaps, of founding some valuable institution
which might last for ages. But D'Alembert, and men like him, seem to
live only for themselves. It would have cost him an absence from Paris
for a certain period to have obtained this power of public good; and he
preferred living without it, and haunting, night after night, the
coteries of the old blue-stockings who kept open house for the evening
gossipry of the capital.

Nothing can form a stronger contrast to the general passion of the
French character for change, than its devotion to the same coterie for
half a century together. In the middle of the eighteenth century two
houses in Paris were especially the rendezvous of the talkers, idlers,
and philosophers of Paris. That some of those visitants were men of
remarkable ability, there can be no doubt. But this perpetual haunting
of the same coffee-cups, this regularity of trifling, this wretched
inability to remain at home for a single evening, is so wholly
irreconcilable with our English sense of domestic duties, of the
attachment of parents to their families, and of the exercise of the
natural affections, that we find it utterly impossible to attach any
degree of respect to the perpetual lounger at another's fire-side.
Madame Geoffrin had now succeeded to Madame de Tencin, as the receiver
of the coterie. Madame du Deffand held a kind of rival, but inferior,
coterie. The former had a house, the latter had only a lodging; the
former was good-humoured, amiable, and kind--the latter satirical and
cold; but both were clever, and, at all events, both received the
gossips, wise and foolish, of Paris. At the lodging of Madame du
Deffand, D'Alembert met Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse, a species of
companion to Madame. She was the illegitimate daughter of a woman of
fashion, as D'Alembert was the son. The circumstance was too common in
Parisian high life, to involve any censure on the parents, or any
disgrace on the children; but it may have produced a degree of sympathy,
which suddenly rose to its height by their taking a lodging together!
Those things, too, were so frequent in France, that, except the laugh of
the moment, no one seems to have taken notice of the connexion; and they
continued to carry it on, as well received as ever, and holding their
evening coterie with undiminished applause.

"No one," observes the noble biographer, "whispered a syllable of
suspicion, respecting a connexion which all were fully convinced could
be only of the most innocent kind." This French credulity is too simple
for our credence. That a he and she philosophic pair should have lived
in the same apartments for a dozen years with perfect innocency, may
have been the case in Paris; but the story would not be believed in any
less immaculate region on the face of the earth. The plain truth seems
to be, that the general looseness of Parisian society saw nothing gross
in the grossest connexion. Even where they affected virtue, they
palpably preferred their having an evening lounge open to them, to any
consideration grounded on common propriety and a sense of shame.

But the philosopher was a dirty fellow after all, and it only does
credit to his noble biographer's sense of propriety to admit, that "his
conduct must seem strange to all men of right and honourable feelings."
In fact, the philosopher seems to have lent his aid very zealously to a
correspondence carried on by his sensitive fellow-lodger! with a view to
a marriage with a Spanish Marquis Mora. Among other proofs, he went
every morning to the post-office to receive the Spaniard's letters for
the lady. "I confess," says Lord Brougham, "I am driven, how reluctantly
soever, to the painful conclusion, that he lent himself to the plan of
her _inveigling_ the Spaniard into a marriage." And this was not the
only instance of his by-play. Mademoiselle professed also to have fallen
in love with a M. Guibert, known as a military writer. Guibert exhibited
his best tactics, in keeping clear of the lady. "All this time, she
continued," says his lordship, "to make D'Alembert believe, that she had
no real passion for any one but himself." No one can easily suppose that
they were not connected in a plan of obtaining for her a settlement in
life by marriage. But, if this marriage-intrigue was in every sense, and
on all sides, contemptible; what are we to think of the nature of the
connexion existing between this sensitive lady and D'Alembert, living
for years under the same roof? The whole matter would be too repulsive
for the decorums of biography, if it were not among the evidences of
that utter corruption of morals, and callousness of feeling, which were
finally avenged in the havoc of the Revolution.

D'Alembert's income had been increased by his appointment to the office
of secretary to the Academy, in 1772. Unfortunately for his literary
fame, it became a part of his duty to write the _éloges_ of the deceased
members, an office which he fulfilled with equal diligence and
unproductiveness; for, of those unfortunate performances he wrote no
less than eighty-three. But the French are fond of fooleries of this
kind; a few sounding sentences with them are biography; a few rambling
sketches fill up the outline to their taste; and the whole forms a
specimen of that eloquence which men are content to admire on the other
side of the Channel.

At length his career drew to a close. Towards his sixty-fourth year, his
health began to decline. It had never been robust, though his habits had
been temperate; but feebleness of stomach, and an organic disease,
predicted the approach of his dissolution. He died on the 29th of
October 1783, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. Notwithstanding his
feebleness of body, his intellectual vigour remained--thus adding one to
the many proofs of the distinct natures of mind and body. In his
intervals of ease, he continued to occupy himself with mathematical
investigations. With a deplorable want of feeling, he talked with levity
of his approaching departure--an event awful to the best, and, to the
wisest, solemn in proportion to their wisdom. He died in the fulness of
that scientific reputation which he deserved, and of that literary
reputation which he did not deserve; but, by the combination of both,
ranking as the most distinguished intellectual name of Europe in his
day.

The life of a later philosopher, the unfortunate Lavoisier, gives Lord
Brougham an opportunity of rendering justice to an eminent foreigner,
and of vindicating the claims of his own still more memorable
countrymen, Black and Watt. Chemistry is especially the science of the
eighteenth century, as geometry was of the seventeenth. It is a
characteristic of that great, however slow, change, which is now
evidently in progress through Europe, that those sciences which most
promote the comforts, the powers, and the progress of the multitude,
obviously occupy the largest share of mental illustration. Of all the
sciences, chemistry is that one which contributes most largely to the
dominion of man over nature. It is the very handmaid of Wisdom,
instructing us in the properties of things, and continually developing
more and more the secrets of those vast and beneficent processes by
which the physical frame of creation is rendered productive to man. It
must thus be regarded as the most essential instrument of our physical
well-being. It takes a part in all that administers to our wants and
enjoyments. Our clothing, our medicine, our food; the cultivation of the
ground, the salubrity of the atmosphere; the very blood, bone, and
muscle of man, all depend on chemical evolutions. But it has its still
loftier secrets; and the experimental philosopher is constantly
stimulated and delighted by his approach to at least the borders of
discoveries which promise to give a nobler insight into the laws of
matter; to exhibit more fully the mechanism formed and moved by the
Divine hand; and to develop the glories of the universe on a scale
continually enlarging, and continually more luminous.

A matchless source of interest in this most effective and essential of
all the sciences, is, that it seems capable of an infinite progress. The
chemical philosopher cannot even conceive any limit to its variety,
multitude, or utility of purpose. The more he discovers, the more he
finds is still to be discovered. Every new property awakens him to the
existence of some other property, more capacious and more profound.
Every difficulty mastered, only leads him towards some deeper and more
tempting problem. And, in addition to the ardour derived from this
triumph of our intellectual ambition--as if all the incentives that can
act upon man were expressly accumulated upon this pursuit--there is no
science in which the actual triumphs are more directly connected with
personal opulence. The invention of a new acid or alkali might create
unbounded wealth. The discovery of a new principle of the most vulgar
use--for tanning leather, for extracting oils, for strengthening soap,
for purifying tallow, might place the discoverer in possession of wealth
beyond the dreams of avarice. But a loftier ambition may still find its
field in this science. A chemical discovery might change the face of the
world. Gunpowder had already changed the whole form of European society.
A chemical discovery might give us the power of managing at our will the
storm and the lightning, of averting the pestilence, or of ensuring the
fertility of the soil, and the regularity of the seasons. The Divine
intention in placing us here, was evidently the perpetual exercise of
the human understanding. For that purpose were given the wants, and the
remedies of the wants, of man; for that purpose all sciences are perhaps
inexhaustible; but of all, the most palpably inexhaustible, the most
teeming with immediate results, and the most remedial as to human
necessities, is Chemistry--fitted by its extent to supply the largest
proportion of human objects, by its power to excite the most eager
inquiry, and by its richness to reward the intelligent labour of man, to
the last ages of the world.

Antoine Laurent Lavoisier was born in Paris in 1743, the son of one of
the "farmers-general." As the office was nearly hereditary, and was
proverbially connected with great opulence, the son of the rich
functionary was highly educated. But science soon attracted all his
study, and, devoting himself especially to chemistry, he made himself
conspicuous among the leading philosophers of his time.

At the age of twenty-two, he presented to the Academy of Sciences an
analysis of gypsum. At twenty-five he was admitted a member of the
Academy, an unusually early age. In his next year he succeeded his
father in his lucrative office. He then married the daughter of another
farmer-general, and having made this provision for a life of luxury or
public employment, with all that political ambition might offer in the
old _régime_ of France, he collected his books about him, shut himself
up in his study, and gave up his time, fortune, and energy to the
advancement of science.

After occupying himself for a brief period with geology, he commenced
his chemical career by refuting the theories alike of Margraff and Stahl
on the conversion of water into earth. The chemistry of the gases had
made rapid progress in England; and the names of Black, Priestley, and
Cavendish, had already attracted the attention of scientific Europe.
Lavoisier followed in their track by a series of experiments in the
calcination of metals, pursued with remarkable intelligence and
industry. The biographer observes that he was now on the verge of two
dazzling discoveries--the composition of the atmosphere, and the
identity of the diamond with carbon. But he stopped short, and left the
glory to more fortunate investigators.

We hasten from the controversies to which the claim of priority in those
distinguished discoveries gave rise, and come to the more authentic
services of Lavoisier. He was appointed by the minister to superintend
the royal manufacture of gunpowder, which his chemical knowledge enabled
him greatly to improve. He next, by appointment of the National
Assembly, drew up his laborious and valuable memoir on the _Territorial
Wealth of France_. He was now appointed one of the commissioners of the
treasury, and introduced an unexampled regularity into the public
accounts. He aided the formation of the metrical system, the security of
the assignats against forgery, and seems to have borne an active part in
every public matter in which practical science was concerned. In the
mean time he employed himself in scientific agriculture, and set apart a
tract of land on his estate for experimental farming. His style of
living in Paris was at once rational and splendid. His house was open
twice a-week for the reception of distinguished persons, both foreigners
and natives, and especially if they brought with them the recommendation
of scientific ability. With the finest philosophical apparatus in the
possession of any individual in France, he was constantly carrying on
experiments on his own account, or performing them for others whose
means could not meet their expense. This conduct, united to remarkable
amiability of manners, made him popular, and placed him at the head of
French science in his day. But the evil time had come when opulence was
to be a crime, and virtue was to be no longer a safe-guard. The
democratic triumvirate of 1794 issued an order for the seizure of
twenty-seven individuals who had been farmers-general before the
Revolution. The true charge was the crime of being opulent. The popular
and ridiculous charge was, their having mixed deleterious ingredients
with the tobacco. Lavoisier having received information that the order
was about to be executed, fled, and remained for some days in
concealment. On understanding that his flight might injure the other
prisoners, and as his father-in-law was among them, he, with a rash
reliance on the public justice, yet with manly generosity, returned to
Paris, and gave himself up to his oppressors. The course of the
Revolution had been so palpably that of general plunder, that he had
long expected the loss of fortune, and proposed, in case of ruin, to
begin the world again, and live by the profession of medicine.

But, by a furious act of violence, he was condemned to die. He asked
only a few days to complete some experiments which were going on during
his imprisonment. The scoffing answer of this merciless tribunal was,
that the Republic had no need of philosophers; and on the day after this
sentence, the 8th of May 1794, he was hurried to the guillotine with no
less than one hundred and twenty-three other victims, who all died
within a few hours.

On this melancholy and desperate atrocity of republicanism, Lord
Brougham makes the following remark, which, though natural in the lips
of any human being, has double force as coming from one who has seen the
operation of the revolutionary spirit on so large a scale, and during so
extended a portion of his public career.

"The lustre," he observes, "which the labours of Lavoisier had shed over
the scientific renown of France, the valuable services which he had
rendered her in so many important departments of her affairs, the
virtues which adorned his character and made his philosophy beloved as
well as revered, were all destined to meet the reward with which the
tyranny of _vulgar faction_ is sure to recompense the good and the wise,
as often as the _base unlettered multitude_ are permitted to bear sway,
and to place in the seat of dominion their idols, who _dupe_ to
_betray_, and finally punish them."

Lord Brougham justly reprobates the suspicious silence of the celebrated
Carnot on this occasion, and the still more scandalous apathy of
Fourcroix, who had been the pupil and panegyrist of the great chemist
during many years. He acquits him of the deadly imputation, that he had
even been instrumental in sending his master to the guillotine. But he
praises, in contradistinction, M. Hallé, who had the honest courage to
proclaim Lavoisier's public services before the dreadful tribunal,
while he consigns the pupil to perpetual scorn. He was murdered in his
fifty-first year.

Lord Brougham's French predilections do credit to his sense of
cosmopolitism; but he appears to us somewhat more disposed to conciliate
the jealousy of his very irritable French _confrères_, than to deal
rigorous justice. No man deserves the reputation of science but a
discoverer. To know all that has been hitherto known on a subject,
deserves the character of diligence; to promote the progress of a
science by largeness of expenditure, or steadiness of exertion, deserves
the praise of liberality and labour; but the man who adds to the science
by original invention, who enlarges its boundaries, and detects new
principles, is the man alone to whom the name of genius can be applied.
Lavoisier was, unquestionably, an important minister of science; he
possessed singular assiduity, unwearied zeal, and remarkable sagacity.
What these could do, he did; what knowledge could accomplish, he
performed; but the inventors were of another country, and of a higher
order, and he must be content with the honours due to imitation. Yet he
had considerable happiness in the difficult art of communicating his
knowledge. His _Treatise on Chemistry_, though now superseded by
subsequent arrangements, is singularly clear; and no great teacher of
chemistry has hitherto given the world a more striking example of
exactness in detail, and clearness in conception.

His cruel death, too, may be almost said to have continued his services
to society. It proved, with irresistible force, the true character of
Infidel Revolution. It showed a noble-minded and benevolent man the
victim of revolutionary rage; an intelligent, studious, and retired man,
obnoxious to the rabble love of ruin; a mild, generous, and patriotic
man, the instant prey of revolutionary government, which boasted of its
superiority to the vices of kings, of its homage to intellect, and of
its supreme value for the virtues of private life. Yet it murdered
Lavoisier without a moment's hesitation, or a moment's remorse, and
flung the first philosopher of France into a felon's grave.

The biography of Adam Smith gives Lord Brougham an opportunity of
pouring out, at the distance of nearly half a century, that knowledge of
Political Economy which first brought him into notice. His _Colonial
Policy_, a remarkable performance for a student of eighteen, exhibited
in miniature the principles and propensities which his long career has
been expended in maturing and moulding. Adam Smith was the idol of all
Scottish worship in the last century; and his originality of conception,
the weight of his subject, and the clearness of his judgment, made him
worthy of the elevation.

Adam Smith's birth was of a higher order than is often to be found in
the instance of men destined to literary eminence. He was the son of a
comptroller of the customs, who had been private secretary to Lord
Loudoun, secretary of state, and keeper of the great seal.

An accident in infancy had nearly deprived the age of its first
philosopher, even if it had not trained him to be hanged. At three years
of age he was stolen by travelling tinkers, a race resembling the
gipsies, and which in that day formed a numerous population in Scotland.
But a pursuit being speedily set on foot, he was fortunately recovered.
He was well educated, and, after the routine of school, was sent to
Glasgow for three years, where he obtained an Exhibition to Baliol
College. At Oxford he remained for seven years, chiefly addicted to
mathematics--a study, however, which he subsequently wholly abandoned.
He had been intended for the Church of England; but whether from dislike
of its discipline, or from disappointment in his views, he retired to
Scotland, to take his chance of employment in its colleges. In 1748 he
settled in Edinburgh, and, for three years, read a course of lectures on
rhetoric. His contemporaries, then obscure, became, in some instances,
conspicuous; for among them were Hume, Robertson, and Wedderburne. In
1751, Smith was elected to the professorship of Logic in the University
of Glasgow, which he soon after exchanged for that of Moral Philosophy.

Thus far we run on smoothly with Lord Brougham; but when he comes to
discuss religion, we must occasionally doubt his guidance. For example,
in speaking of Smith's lectures on Natural Theology, he denounces the
jealousy of those who regard it as other than "the very foundation
essential to support its fabric." From this opinion we totally dissent.
It is perfectly true that natural religion and revelation are consistent
with each other, as must be presumed from their being the work of the
same Divine wisdom. But their foundations are wholly distinct. Why did
the Jew believe the Mosaic revelation? Simply and solely, because it was
delivered to him with such evidences of supernatural origin, in the
thunders of Sinai, and substantiated at subsequent periods by miracle
and prophecy, that he must receive it as divine. Why did the early
converts receive Christianity? Simply on the same direct evidence
supplied to their senses. No apostle sent them to examine their notions
of the Godhead, or left them to inculcate the doctrines of the gospel by
their reason. But he declared his doctrine as a new truth, and gave
proof of its truth being divine, by working wonders palpably beyond the
power of man. Of course, unless man knew what was meant by the power of
the Deity, he could not have comprehended the simplest communication of
the apostle. But we are speaking of the foundation of a belief--not the
intelligibility of a language. We are entitled to go further still, and
say, that the first idea of the being of a God was itself a
revelation--a much plainer solution of the extraordinary circumstance,
that so lofty and recondite a conception should have existed in the
earliest and rudest ages of society; than to suppose that the
antediluvian shepherd, or the postdiluvian hunter, should have ever
thought of tracing effects and causes up to that extreme elevation,
where a pure and supreme Spirit creates and governs the whole. We are
entitled even to doubt whether the idea of Spirit was ever _naturally_
conceived in the mind of any human being, difficult as is the conception
to a creature surrounded with materiality, with every thought derived
from his senses, and with the total incapacity of defining to this hour,
or even imagining, the nature of Spirit. It will be fully admitted, that
when the idea was once communicated, its reality was substantiated by
the frame of nature, by the regularity, the extent, and the beneficence
of the great physical system. But the origin was revelation. Lord
Brougham quotes Tillotson; but the archbishop had earned his mitre by
other means than the vigour of his understanding, and often trifles like
other men.

In 1759, Smith published his _Theory of Moral Sentiments_--a work of
skill and invention, but which has long since fallen into disuse with
the intelligent world. It, however, had the rare good fortune of
attracting the notice of an individual, possessed at once of the taste
to honour, and the will to befriend, a man of original ability. This
volume fell into the hands of the celebrated Charles Townsend, who
proposed that the author should take charge of the young Duke of
Buccleuch, whose mother, the dowager-duchess, he had married. Nothing in
the life of Townsend was more honourable to him than this choice, not
only for its judgment but for its rarity. The generality of men in
possession of affluence think only of themselves, and would value the
most common-place gratification more highly than the encouragement of
the obscure genius, which wanted only that encouragement to shed a new
lustre on its generation. The man of power in general feels its
possession the primary object of his patronage, and sees no purpose in
the immense opportunity given to him by his rank, but to obtain
adherents, and make his power impregnable. Though there may be
exceptions, such is the rule; and with this recollection of the
established course of things, we give all honour to the memory of the
man, without whose patronage the world would probably have lost the
ablest work of its century, the immortal _Wealth of Nations_.

In 1763, Smith was appointed tutor to the young nobleman, resigned his
professorship, and went with his pupil to France. After a residence of a
year and a half at Toulouse, he travelled in Switzerland, and then,
returning to Paris, spent ten months there. His French residence was
peculiarly fortunate. It rubbed off the rust of his seclusion; it
introduced him to the best society of courtly life; and it brought him
into direct intercourse with that whole circle of active intellect and
novel philosophy, which made the Parisian coteries at once the most
bustling and brilliant of Europe. However the horrid profligacy of the
court, and the contemptuous infidelity of high life, might have either
disgusted the morals, or startled even the scepticism of the stranger,
there can be no doubt of the interest which he felt in the society of
such men as Turgot, Necker, D'Alembert, and Quesnay. Smith, some fifteen
or twenty years before, had drawn up a sketch of the principles which he
afterwards developed in his _Wealth of Nations_. Political economy was
then beginning to take a form in French science. Whether it ever
deserved the name of science, or will ever deserve it, may be a grave
question. It depends upon such a multitude of facts, and the facts
themselves vary so perpetually, the "principles" derived from those
facts are so feeble and fluctuating, and common experience so
provokingly contradicts, from day to day, the most laboured conclusions,
that every new professor has a new theory, and every new theory turns
the former into ridicule, itself to be burlesqued by the next that
follows. This at least is known, that Fox declared his suspicion of the
whole, saying, that it was at once too daring to be intelligible, and
too indefinite to be reducible to practice. Even in our day, no two
authors on the subject agree; all the successful measures of revenue and
finance have been adopted in utter defiance of its dogmas; while all the
modern attempts to act upon what are called its principles, have only
convulsed commerce, shaken public credit, and substituted fantastic
visions of prosperity for the old substantial wealth of England. No
occupation could have been fitter for the half-frivolous, half-factious
spirit of France. A revolution in revenue was openly regarded as the
first step to revolution in power; the political economists indulged
themselves in a philosophic conspiracy, and vented their sneers against
the government, under pretext of recognising the rights of trade. It
took but a little more than twenty years to mature this dexterous
contrivance, and the meek friends of free trade had the happiness of
seeing France in a blaze.

Smith, on his return, shut himself up in his study in Kirkcaldy for ten
years. His friends in vain attempted to draw him from his solitude to
Edinburgh: he steadily, we may almost say magnanimously, refused; and at
the end of the tenth year, in 1776, he explained the mystery, by the
publication of the two quarto volumes of his _Enquiry into the Nature
and Causes of the Wealth of Nations_. The work was received with general
congratulation; it was regarded as a new science, although it is
well-known, as stated in the introduction to the biography, that many
others had previously discussed the same subjects. Smith's views,
however, were so much more comprehensive, his division so much more
distinct, and his remarks so much more practical, that he deserved all
the credit of the architect who combines in beauty and utility the beams
and pillars which he finds scattered on the ground. And here we advert
to the obvious benefit of that patronage which had been extended to this
very able man by Townsend. The annuity which had been settled on him as
tutor, had enabled Smith to give up the whole of his time, and the whole
powers of his mind, during those ten years, to this great work. During
nearly twenty years of lecturing, on the other hand, in which his pen
was necessarily employed without ceasing, he seems to have published but
one work, _The Theory of Moral Sentiment_. That he constantly formed
ingenious conceptions, may be easily admitted; but that he wanted either
time or inclination to complete them, is evident from the fact, that he
never suffered them to appear in print, and that one of his dying
directions was, that they should be destroyed by his executors.

He was now a man of fame, and to enjoy it came up to London, where he
resided for two years in the midst of the best society, political and
literary, to be found in England. He was now to be a man of fortune as
well as of fame; he was appointed a commissioner of the customs in
Scotland. He returned to Edinburgh, and commenced the agreeable life of
a man at once distinguished, and opulent to the full extent of his
simple desires, in a society whose names are still regarded as the
lights of Scotland. He lived hospitably, and entertained good society,
but he wrote no more; he was growing old, and Lord Brougham evidently
thinks that the duties of his office exhausted his spirits and occupied
his time. But those duties always partook largely of the nature of a
sinecure; and there is every reason to doubt whether they could have
worn down a man of regular habits, and who had been trained to the
routine of daily business by an apprenticeship of a quarter of a
century. The greater probability is, that Smith felt that he had done
enough for fame; that, knowing the world, he was unwilling to expose
himself to the caprices of critical applause; and that he even felt how
inadequate the early theories which found admirers in the lecture-room,
might be to sustain a character already brought into full publicity by
his own volumes. The fact is certain, that he produced nothing more. In
July 1790, he died, at the age of sixty-seven. It was his custom to give
a supper on the Sunday evening to a numerous circle of friends. How far
this entertainment, which was more consistent with the latitude of his
Paris recollections, was reconcilable with the decorums of Scotland, we
cannot say. But on one evening, after having destroyed his manuscripts,
finding himself not so well as usual, he retired to bed before supper,
and as he went, said to his friends, "I believe we must adjourn this
meeting to some other place." He died in a very few days afterwards.

Lord Brougham has obviously expended his chief labour on the life of
this favourite philosopher, of whom, fifty years ago, every Scottish
economist was a devoted pupil. Times are changed, yet this intelligent
biographer has given a very ample and accurate, so far as we can judge,
analysis of the _Enquiry_. But he would have greatly increased the
obligations of the reader, by giving some portion of his treatise to the
questions which modern artifice has devised, and modern infatuation has
adopted.

An interesting "memoir" of Johnson commences the volume; but the topic
would lead us too far. The biographer gives that literary Samson full
applause for the strength of his understanding, the boldness of his
morality, and the pungency of his wit. Rather to our surprise, he pours
out an eloquent panegyric on Boswell. That we are indebted to this
versatile personage for one of the most amusing and instructive
collections of reminiscences in the history of authorship, will be
readily conceded. But this is the first time of our hearing a demand
that we should pay him any more peculiar homage. But Lord Brougham is
himself the head of a school: his _ipse dixit_ demands acquiescence, and
none can doubt that, if he is singular in his dogmas, he deserves
attention for the vigour of his advocacy.

REYNARD THE FOX.[2]

The natural history of the Cockney has been frequently illustrated, and
never so successfully as in time past in the pages of Maga. But nature
is inexhaustible in all her creations. You might study a lifetime, and
yet not fully master the properties of one of those little Infusoria
that wriggle or spin about in a phial of foul or fair water, and a still
wider subject of study is of course supplied by any larger animal, such
as a Cockney, placed as he is a little lower than the angels, and
half-way down, or there abouts, between a man and a chimpanzee.

Upon careful inquiry it would probably be found, that in most nations
the population, though all purporting to be men and women, consists in a
good measure of beings that stand several degrees below the point of
humanity. France, among several specimens of a higher order, has
occasionally shown that a considerable proportion of its inhabitants was
a hideous cross between the tiger and the baboon. Holland has had its
Grotius and its Erasmus, but the otter and the beaver breed make up the
mass of those who go by the name of Dutchmen. There has been no want in
Germany of clear-sighted men, but the mole, the bat, and the owl furnish
a large contingent to the ranks of its _literati_. In other nations we
see a greater or less preponderance of the wolf or the bear, the goat or
the goose, the ass, the hog, or the hippopotamus. Such being the
universal condition of the world, we should rather be proud than
otherwise, that, in England, we can boast of a secondary tribe, made,
perhaps, by some of nature's journeymen, but that yet imitate humanity
so respectably, so amiably, and so amusingly, as the Cockney must be
admitted to do.

A Cockney is by locality very much what a tailor is by trade. Though a
remote sub-multiple of a man, he is enterprising, indefatigable, cutting
his way to his object through every thing with a ready tongue and a
quick wit. Yet he is deficient in some qualities indispensable to the
species _homo_. Courage the Cockney undoubtedly possesses, because he is
always among those who are said to rush in where others fear to tread.
But veneration is utterly wanting in his composition; and here the
resemblance to the tailor is conspicuous; as we never knew a single snip
that had the slightest reverence for any thing under heaven--if, indeed,
the assertion should not be made in still broader terms. In the tailor
this effect, defective, comes by an obvious cause. The intolerable
liberties which the vulgar fraction is permitted to take with people's
persons, divesting the best and bravest of us of the halo of heroism
that surrounds us at a distance; and the fact that the great mysteries
of dress, the paraphernalia of our dignity and decency, and the chief
emblems of our manhood and domestic authority, emerge exclusively from
the hands of this insignificant but indispensable maker of men, are
enough to extinguish within him all sentiment of respect for any thing
human or divine. The Cockney arrives at a similar state of easy and
impudent _non-chalance_ by a different process. Littered in London, and
living there all his life, he is proud of its position among cites; and
he comes, by a natural process of reasoning, to ascribe its importance
to its connexion with his own person and people, and to see nothing
better or greater in the universe than himself and what belongs to him.
The feeling grows with his growth, and is fed by a full indulgence in
all the good things with which the land of Cockayne abounds, and which
the most morose of mortals must admit to be eminently conducive to
self-complacency.

The Cockney, thus devoid of all diffidence in himself, is prepared for
every thing in the scale of human thought or action; pleasuring or
politics, theatricals or theology, an Epping hunt or an Epic poem. In
literature we may say of him, nearly in the words applied by Dr Johnson
to Goldsmith, that there is scarcely any kind of composition that he
does not handle, and none that he handles which he does not adorn with
graces all his own.

It is wonderful, however, to see with what success a Cockney can
sometimes disguise himself. He will write you a book, in which, several
pages on end, you think you are reading the thoughts of some ordinary
mortal. But the cloven foot always appears before you are done with him.
In poetry, indeed, you can go but a short way till the cat is let out of
the bag. That unfortunate letter R! No lessons in elocution, no change
of climate, can eradicate the deep-seated mischief of its
mispronunciation in a Cockney whose years of pupilarity have been passed
on the spot of his birth.

These remarks have been elicited by a disappointment we have recently
suffered, in being led to purchase the book referred to at the
commencement of this article. We saw it advertised by an alluring
title--"REYNARD THE FOX--a renowned Apologue of the Middle Ages
reproduced in Rhyme." We bought the book, and were delighted with its
appearance. A quaint, antique, cream-coloured binding--a golden vignette
on the outside, of the fox making his obeisance to Noble the king of the
beasts, and the lioness his spouse--a beautiful paper and type within,
with red and blue illuminations interspersed at the heads of chapters
and paragraphs;--all this combined to whet our appetite for a delicious
treat. We read the preface and introduction, if not with pleasure, at
least with patience, and with wonderfully few misgivings as to the
truth, the worst feature in them being the tendency to Carlyleism, to
which, however offensive in itself, custom has made us somewhat callous.
But we had not perused a page or two of the reproduction in rhyme
itself, when we discovered that we were wandering in the regions of
Cockneyland, with one of its most distinguished natives for our guide.

Our immediate purpose is to offer an exposition, not of the old Reynard,
but of its present "reproduction." We may say, however, that we think
the original work is one peculiarly ill-suited to be appreciated or
reproduced by one of Mr Naylor's compatriots. It is a product of true
genius, humour, and sagacity. The author must have looked at beasts and
men with a keen eye, and from the vantage ground of a contemplative
mind; and he has worked out his thoughts in a plain and simple style of
illustration, and embodied them in easy and natural language. There is
much merriment in his work, but no straining after wit. There is all the
knowledge of the day that an accomplished man could be expected to
possess, but no parade of learning. There is no quaintness in the style,
and no effort in the verse. The age of _Hudibras_ had not come; and that
of the _Ingoldsby Legends_, or _Miss Kilmansegg_, was still further off.
The old Flemish writers of Reynard exhibit judgment as well as talent,
and their Low Saxon successor, though himself a reproducer, has asserted
a claim both to freedom and originality. The quiet, sensible, unaffected
treatment of their subject, which these old versifiers exhibit, where
the topics offered so much temptation to burlesque and extravagance, is
the thing of all others least likely to be comprehended or relished in
the meridian of Bow Bells.

But, then, Goethe has successfully translated the book; and, therefore,
Mr Naylor must do the same. This is a common mode of syllogising in
Cockayne. Homer, Dante, Milton, Goethe, Wordsworth, have done such and
such things, and therefore a Cockney is to do them also. Whatever may be
the precise minor premise involved in this argument, we venture to
suggest a doubt of its soundness. Mr Naylor tells us he has followed
Alkmar's and Goethe's example, "mindful ever of the requisitions
insisted on by Novalis in all paraphrastic translations, that they
should convey accurately an idea of the first type, whilst, at the same
time, the translator made his author speak after that appreciation of
his work which exists in his own mind, no less than according to the
poet's original conception." Mr Naylor may have succeeded in making his
author speak after that appreciation of his work which exists in his own
mind; but if the "first type" of Reynard had been no better than the
reproduction gives us an idea of, the shapeless and sickly cub would not
have lived an hour into the thirteenth century.

Before Mr Naylor resolved on reproducing Reynard in English rhyme, he
should have inquired whether it was not already as well done as he was
likely to do it. In his elaborate enumeration of his predecessors in the
task of translation, he thus writes:--"There is also _said_ to be a
translation of Reynard into English _doggerel_, by _one_ Soltau, a
German"--"known," as he adds in a note, "as the translator of _Hudibras_
into German." We have now before us the translation so slightingly
alluded to, published at Hamburg in 1826. In all external and physical
recommendations, this homely volume is far inferior to the London
reproduction; but we shall immediately give our readers an opportunity
of judging whether the doggerel of "one Soltau, a German," is not at
least as good as that of "one Naylor, a Cockney."

Take the opening of the poem, which, in the original, is full of
freshness and spirit, with all the joyousness of a holiday scene.

SOLTAU.

    "It happen'd on a Whitsunday,
  When woods and fields look'd green and gay,
  When balmy flow'rs and herbs were springing,
  And feather'd folks were sweetly singing;
  The morn was fine, the weather clear,
  And fragrant odours fill'd the air,
  When Noble, sov'reign king of beasts,
  Proclaim'd a court and public feasts.
  His loyal subjects, lords and commons,
  Obey'd their master's royal summons;
  And many a valiant knight and squire
  To court repair'd in grand attire,
  With their attendants, great and small--
  'Twas difficult to count them all."

NAYLOR.

    "Now Pentecost, the feast, by some
  Call'd 'merry Whitsuntide,' was come!
  The fields show'd brave, with kingcups dight,
  And hawthorns kercheft were in white:
  Her low-breathed lute the fresh'ning rill
  Unto the waken'd woods 'gan trill;
  Whilst, hid in leafy bower remote,
  The cuckoo tuned his herald-note;
  The meads were prankt in gold and green,
  And 'leetel fowles' of liveried sheen,
  Their pipes with JUBILATE! swelling,
  From bush and spray were philomelling--
  The breeze came balmy from the west,
  And April, harness'd in her best,
  The laughing sun led forth to see--
  When Noble (lion-king was he,
  And sceptre sway'd o'er bird and beast,)
  Held ancient ways, and kept the feast,
  The trumpets clang'd loud proclamation--
  The couriers coursed throughout the nation--
  Full many a Brave and many a Bold
  Came hastening in troops untold."

The German translator here keeps precisely within the same compass of
fourteen lines with his "first type," while the Londoner has one-half
more. But this is not the main difference. The German is neater and more
natural, and nearer the spirit as well as the letter of his model. All
the trash in the new reproduction about hawthorns "kercheft in white,"
the low-breathed lute of the rill trilling, the cuckoo and his herald
note, the 'leetel fowles' swelling and philomelling, and April harnessed
in her best, are mere frippery sewed on by the reproducer, to make the
venerable old garment look finer in the eyes of his co-Cockneys.

We next give the two translations of that part of the poem which
represents the Cock's complaints against Reynard, for killing his
daughter, and which is supposed to give so accurate a representation of
the form of process in the Middle Ages in an accusation of murder.

SOLTAU.

    "Gray scarce had done, when Chanticleer
  The Cock in mourning did appear;
  Two sons accompanied their sire,
  Like him in funeral attire,
  With hoods of crape and torches lighted,
  And doleful lays they both recited.
  Two others follow'd with a bier;
  Mournful and slowly they drew near,
  With heartfelt sighs and deepest groan,
  Their fav'rite sister to bemoan.
    "The Cock in tears the throne approach'd,
  And thus his sad harangue he broach'd:
  'My Liege, have pity on a man,
  The most distressed of his clan,
  Who, with his children here before You,
  Is come, for vengeance to implore You
  On Reynard, who, with fell design,
  Hath done great harm to me and mine.
  When hoary Winter left the plain,
  And Spring smiled on the world again,
  When leaves were budding, daisies springing,
  And tuneful birds in thickets singing,
  The sun at dawn of morning found me
  With my young family around me;
  Ten sons and fourteen daughters fair,
  Breathing with joy the genial air,
  All of one breed, and full of life,
  Brought up by my good prudent wife.
  Protected by a massy wall
  And six bold mastiffs, stout and tall,
  They lived, in spite of Reynard crafty,
  Within a cloister-yard in safety.
    "But lo! our enemy contrived
  Our joy, alas! should be short-lived.
  In hermit's garb the traitor came,
  With letters, written in your name,
  Where strictest orders were express'd,
  To keep peace between bird and beast.
  He said, he scorn'd the joys of sense,
  And led a life of penitence,
  To expiate his former guilt,
  And streams of blood, which he had spilt;
  He vow'd, in future he would eat
  No poultry, nor forbidden meat.
    "All joyful, to my little crew,
  To tell the happy news I flew,
  That Reynard friar's garments wore,
  And was our enemy no more.
  Now for the first time we did venture
  Out of our gate. A dire adventure
  Awaited us; for whilst we stray'd
  And sported on a sunny glade,
  Reynard, conceal'd below a bush,
  Upon us suddenly did rush;
  One of my hopeful sons he slew,
  And of my fairest daughters two.--
  Five only out of twenty-four
  Are left; the rest he did devour.
  My daughter Rake-up, on this bier,
  Slain by the murderer, lies here;
  He bit her neck off yesterday--
  Revenge her death, my liege, I pray.'
    "'Sir Gray,(quoth Noble,) did you hear?
  Fine things of th' hermit-fox appear.
  Was't thus, that with his fasts he meant it?
  Sure as I live he shall repent it!
    "'Good Cock, we've heard your mournful tale,
  And we your daughter's fate bewail;
  Thus, first of all, we'll see the honour
  Of funeral rites bestow'd upon her;
  Next with our Council we shall further
  Consult, how to revenge this murther.'"

NAYLOR.

    "He ceased; and scarce a sand had run
  When Chanticleer and all his clan
  Appear'd in court: right in the van
  A pullet's corse accompanied,
  'Clept Dem'selle Scratchclaw ere she died;
  By Reynard's bite decapitated--
  This wise the tidings were related.
  Close to the throne the Cock drew nigh:
  Deep anguish dimm'd his upturn'd eye:
  Two little Bantams, right and left,
  Wept bitter tears, as birds bereft.
  Sir Flapwing was of high degree,
  As fine a bantling as you'd see
  'Twixt Amsterdam and Paris, he.
  Sir Strain-neck was the other 'clept,
  And, like the first one, proudly stept.
  Before them each a torch they bear,
  Alike the same; for twins they were.
  Young Cocks yet twain bare up the pall,
  And help'd the wail with voices small.
  Then Chanticleer, before the King
  Commenced, in tones deep harrowing:
  'Ah, gracious Lord and King! give ear
  To my disastrous tale! The tear
  Of pity shed on us who stand
  For justice, suppliants at your hand.
  Sire! thus it chanced;--The frosted beard
  Of Winter scarce had disappear'd;
  Scarce had the thorny brake put by
  Its hosiery of fleece, and I
  As happy felt as though a chicken;
  About me, strutting, crowing, picking,
  In comeliness my little ones:
  I counted up ten stalwart sons;
  Of daughters, too, a wondrous store,--
  Plump Ortolans, and full a score.
  My dame, the thoughtful prudent Hen,
  Had train'd their youth beneath her ken
  All virtues cardinal to practise,
  Best learned from mothers, as the fact is.
  Our house was in the convent yard,
  High wall'd around: six dogs stood guard;--
  All kept for our peculiar care,
  By night and day to shield us there.
  Now, gracious Liege! mark what I tell.
  Reynard, (the knave!) with cockle-shell
  And pilgrim's staff, wellworn, appears,
  Bearing a packet: as he nears,
  I note your royal seal, and read
  Announcement of the truce decreed:
  No more, he said, he played the royster,
  But sought repentance in a cloister:
  Observed the rule o' th' strictest sect,
  His sins to purge with sure effect;
  Whereby myself might to the end
  My life secure and fearless spend.
  Said he, 'flesh diet I have sworn
  Never to touch from night to morn.'--
  Unto my children all, I stated
  The royal message, then related
  How Reynard had assumed the cowl,
  And left off hankering after fowl.
  Myself I led them far and wide,
  When lo! the Fox's guile defied
  My anxious cares: in that same hour
  He'd mark'd a victim for his power!
  Perdu behind a bush he lay,
  And took, before mine eyes, his prey!
  The best of all my brood he seized,
  And ate her up. The morsel pleased
  His scoundrel maw--'twas dainty meat--
  And soon he sought another treat.--
  Full four-and twenty hopeful chicks
  As e'er peck'd corn from out fresh ricks
  Were mine,--and now, as I'm alive,
  The villain's kill'd them all but five!
  Pity, O King! my sorrowing tale:
  Grant succour in this hour of wail!
  But yesterday, the huntsman's cry
  Surprised him in the act to fly
  With Scratchclaw's body, which you see
  Kill'd by his murd'rous tooth--ah me!
  'Tis here as witness of my woe--
  Oh that my hardhap to your heart may go!'
  Enraged, the King: 'Sir Badger, ho!
  The monk your uncle (troth!) doth know
  To keep his fast,--the holy man!--
  Match me the like of this who can?
  What need of further question here?
  Draw nigh and listen, Chanticleer!
  Ourself your daughter dead will see
  Entomb'd with all solemnity
  Of dirge and mass, in her last slumber,
  And vigils also without number.
  This done, from these our lieges true
  We'll crave their help and counsel too,
  Touching the murder and the vengeance due.'
  To Bruin then the King thus spake:
  'Bruin! look well you undertake
  This journey with dispatch--'Tis I,
  Your Sov'reign, calls upon you--fly!
  Be wise and wary: Reynard's guile
  Is practised in each crafty wile.'"

Neither of the translators is here very good, and Naylor is perhaps as
near hitting the nail on the point (to use the phrase of a friend of
ours of the Fogie Club) as his competitor. He still gives us, however, a
great many silly superfluities, though some of them we have ventured to
cut out.

Finally, as our readers may begin to think they have enough of this, we
shall close our comparative view by some quotations from the Wager of
Battle, by which the Wolf and the Fox ultimately terminate their
disputes.

SOLTAU.

    "The trumpets then began to sound,
  And next the wardens did appear,
  And call'd the champions forth, to swear.
  Growler advanced, his oath to take;
  He swore, that Reynard was a rake,
  A murd'rer, and a treach'rous wight,
  For which assertion he would fight.
    "Then Reynard in his turn did swear,
  That Growler was a perjurer;
  To prove his charge, he did defy him,
  Because he basely did belie him.
    "The wardens then admonish'd both,
  To fight with honour and good troth.
  This being done, the lists were clear'd,
  Where both the combatants appear'd.
    "The combatants with equal rage
  And fury now began t'engage.
  The Wolf, by dint of strength and art,
  Attack'd the Fox with leap and start;
  But Reynard, being shrewd and light,
  Avoided him by cunning flight,
  And while he ran, he did not fail
  To water well his rugged tail.
  When Growler meant to hold him fast,
  He nimbly veer'd about at last,
  And with his tail the dust and dirt
  He full into his face did flirt.
  Whilst Growler rubb'd his eyes with pain,
  Reynard his flirts renew'd again,
  Till Growler was quite spent at last,
  And by the throat he held him fast.
  'Sir Wolf,(he said,)if heretofore
  Poor lambs and kids you oft have tore,
  It is high time now to repent,
  Before your last breath you have spent,
  And with contrition to behave,
  If you would wish your soul to save.'
    "In this provoking style he spoke,
  Striving his enemy to choke;
  But Growler was for him too strong,
  And broke loose from his hold erelong;
  Though ere he got out of his jaws,
  Reynard gall'd him with teeth and claws;
  One of his eyes was almost out,
  And streams of blood ran down his snout.
    "As soon as he his blood did view,
  At Reynard in a rage he flew;
  He got him under, and his paw
  He seized, and held it in his jaw.
  'You caitiff, your last hour has come,
  (Said he,) and you'll meet with your doom.
  'T shall not avail you now, to shear,
  To flirt, kick up a dust, and smear.
  I'll make you pay for all your lies,
  And for the damage of my eyes.'
    "Whilst Growler kept hold of the paw,
  Sly Reynard with his other claw
  Seiz'd him in such a tender part,
  That it made Growler howl with smart,
  And forced him soon to ope his jaw,
  And to let go the imprison'd paw.
  Reynard now tugg'd, and pull'd, and tore,
  And made the Wolf spit blood and gore;
  He brought him senseless to the ground,
  And dragg'd him through the lists around.
    "When this his wife and friends perceived,
  They were much terrified and grieved.
  Then pray'd the king to use his right,
  And to suspend the bloody fight.
    "The king took their request to heart,
  And bade the champions straight to part,
  To whom the leopard and the ounce,
  As wardens, did his will announce.
  "Reynard," they said, "the king has sent
  To let you know 'tis his intent
  To put an end to all your strife.
  He bids you to spare Growler's life;
  For 'twould be a pity after all,
  If either of you both should fall.
  Meantime all, who are present, say
  That you at last have won the day.'"

NAYLOR.

  "Hark! hark! the tuckets sound on high!
  'He comes! Sir Isengrim!' they cry.
  The Wolf and all his kith and kin
  Approach in long array! The din
  Their multitudinous trampling made
  Resounded like a cavalcade
  Of mailèd warriors on the march,
  Or winds that, through a wood of larch,
  The groaning branches swing and sway,
  And thunder out and roar alway.
  Still forward they their course observe,
  Neither to right nor left they swerve;
  But onward to the lists the band
  March up, then halt, and take their stand.
  When first the Wolf--'I here repeat
  The Fox a villain is, and cheat!
  I brand him murderer to boot!
  Adulterer! with heart, as soot
  Is, black! that solemn truth do I
  Wager on hazard of this die!'
  Then Reynard--'What the Wolf alleges
  Are lies! I'll prove it! and my pledge is
  The victory, which I by battle,
  This day will gain o'er yon _base cattle_!'
  The marshal of the lists then cried:
  'The right shall by the might be tried,
  What fair and fetis is, that do!
  The god of battles prosper you!'
  He said, then towards the side withdrew.
  The rest soon follow'd; save the two,
  Who occupied alone the space,
  And stood for action face to face!
  The marshal now, with plumed hat on,
  Beside the barrier stood; his baton
  Of office thrice he whirled aloft;
  And not a soul or spake or _cough'd_.
  'Oyez! oyez! oyez!' he cried,
  'Will each of ye the issue bide?'
  'We will!' they answer. 'Are ye ready?'
  'Yes!' 'Yes!'--'Then LAISSEZ ALLER!' said he.
  Reynard address'd him then to fight;
  And Isengrim commenced to bite
  The air, and show'd his teeth, by way
  Of prelude to the coming fray;
  Next, rear'd his snout, and brought the jowl
  To Reynard's level; one loud howl
  He utter'd, ere he crouch'd, then bounded
  To where the Fox, no whit astounded
  By noises so unknightly, stood;
  For raising lofty as he could
  His voice, the foe the terms defied.
  'Come on,' he resolutely cried.
  The struggle was commenced! The sternest
  There present felt it was right earnest;
  The Fox, as smaller of the two,
  Was favourite; and when he drew
  '_First claret_,' at that _tapping_ action
  The mob express'd their satisfaction;
  Exclaiming, '_go it! ten to one
  Upon the varmint little 'un!'_
  By this time had Dan Phoebus clomb
  The summit of his glowing dome,
  And Isengrim his power to feel
  Began, which made the Wolf to reel.
  He mourn'd his hapless want of claws,
  His teeth, too, batter'd by the paws
  Of Reynard, woefully he miss'd;
  For grasp'd within his well-clench'd fist,
  The Fox a flint stone firmly held,
  With which he deftly aim'd and fell'd
  One after t'other every fang,
  Till down his weasand, at each bang,
  Successively they flew. This thing
  To Isengrim _so punishing_,
  Set him forthwith to calculate
  The odds on his _superior weight_,
  How best it might the foeman tell on--
  Which done, he threw himself pêle-mêle on
  The Fox, to bear him down intending.
  But Reynard saw: instead of spending
  His strength in any vain endeavour
  'Gainst Isengrim, he waited ever
  Upon the Wolf--so this time he
  Perceived the rushing enemy,
  And as he near'd him slipp'd aside.
  The Wolf came on with awful stride,
  But meeting not with Reynard there,
  He buffeted the yielding air
  Instead, found no impediment,
  His force him to the barrier sent,
  Where toppling heels o'er head he went
  With emphasis--a heavy _flop_,
  '_My eyes,' the mob cry, 'what a whop!_'
  Then Reynard to the Wolf stepp'd close,
  And said aloud, 'How lik'st the dose?
  Friend Isengrim, there yet may be
  For pardon opportunity
  Ere thou departest, only speed ye,
  Or else the wandering ghosts, I rede ye,
  Of all the lambs and kids thou'st slain
  Will haunt thee through the wide champain
  Whither thou'rt ebbing fast, down yonder;
  But softly, is he kill'd I wonder?'
  For so it seem'd. Through that vast crowd
  A pin drop had resounded loud.
  Thought Reynard, he has got it now!
  I'll rest awhile, for any how
  If he the fight again begin
  I'll try the trick upon his shin.
  Stunn'd lay the prostrate Wolf quite still
  And stiff, nor moved a peg until
  His squires, much fearing for his life,
  Rush'd in, preceded by his wife;
  And lifting him upon their knees,
  They gave him _salts to make him sneeze_,
  Which thirteen times he did repeat,
  Then started lively to his feet.
  A feeling of relief ran through
  The crowd, whose visages look'd rue,
  To think their fun forestall'd and spent
  By that untoward accident.
  Again the tuckets sound--again
  The dauntless heroes give the rein
  To their revenge. The Fox now charges
  The Wolf, and both his eyes enlarges,
  With _right and lefters planted well_,
  And _punches on the nob that tell_;
  So hard and fast the bangs and thumps,
  You'd thought that firemen at their pumps
  Were working--
          ----crafty Reynard quick
  Deliver'd him a villain kick
  Right in the midriff--down he dropp'd!
  Like some tall forester when lopp'd
  By stroke of woodman's axe. 'Twas all
  He spake, not groaned in his fall,
  Outstretch'd upon the ground there lay
  The Wolf--he'd fainted clean away.
  No herald's voice, no tucket's cheer,
  The noble Isengrim could hear;
  An all but victor lately, now
  Prostrated, palsied by one blow;
  Nay, not so, by a kick unknightly,
  Foul aim'd, yet for the mark too rightly,
  Alas, its only merit that!
  But what cared Reynard, it was pat,
  And told, and did its business well;
  'Twas every thing desirable.
  The fight was o'er--the Wolf dragg'd out
  More dead than living, 'mid the shout
  Of rabble, whilst the heralds cry
  'Largesse,' the others 'Victory.'
  The air with noise and din resounded.
  The friends of Isengrim, confounded,
  Slunk off, whilst Reynard's stay'd; indeed
  The very people who agreed
  The Fox's death a public good
  Had been, now 'mong the foremost stood,
  By acclamations to attest
  Regard outheroding the rest!"

We have not the heart to criticise this last and greatest effort of the
reproducer. Its slang speaks for itself, and certainly carries along
with it an undeniable "certificate of origin".

A good translation of any thing is perhaps an impossibility. But it must
be confessed, that the attempt of the German foreigner is highly
creditable to him, and, with a little amendment, would probably afford
our countrymen as fair an idea of the original as they are ever likely
to see. Certain it is, that Mr Naylor has not improved upon it.

If our readers think, that in the samples we have given of Mr Naylor's
beauties, we have not sufficiently brought forward some of the more
striking peculiarities of the Cockney school, we shall meet this
complaint by presenting them with the subjoined anthology, the fragrance
of which we think will satisfy their highest anticipations.

  "The first in consequence at _court_,
  As foremost in the public _thought_."

  "Your cap and gloves you've left in _pawn_,
  Thus adding ribaldry to _scorn_."

  "What visitors had been? they _tell her_
  How Reynard call'd, and said, 'nice _fellow_.'"

  "Malkin should fall! and now the _fork_
  By Martin turn'd to toma_hawk_."

  "No sooner had the foe with_drawn_
  To howl around the priest for_lorn_."

  "Besides, he must have more than _thought once_
  Upon the very vast _importance_."

  "Of solemn asses half-a-_score_,
  Who kick, when tickled with a _straw_!"

  "I left him trapp'd, and then made _sheer off_:
  His sufferings you can't form _idea of_."

  "From underneath the frame I _draw_
  The pin that propp'd it: with a _roar_."

  "Their eggs upon a heap of _straw_,
  Then loitering hindermost, the _more_."

  "When it was bruited round the _court_
  How Reynard was by greybeard _brought_."

  "Grimalkin there one eye had _lost_,
  His scalp from Bruin's head been _forced_."

  "With any thing, in short, to _fasten_
  Guilt on him--burglary--e'en _arson_!"

  "Than at the words the Queen, _alarm'd_,
  Nigh swoon'd before her fears were _calm'd_."

  "The son dishonour'd: not a _straw_
  It weigh'd with him, to think how _sore_."

  "There dwelt my father; him they _sought_,
  And plotted, whilst they soak'd his _port_."

  "To practise after my pa_pa_--
  Through life my light and exem_plar_!"

  "Another life to lead he's _sworn_:
  And will to-morrow at the _dawn_."

  "Then, turning to the Queen, _besought_
  Her majesty in merry _sport_."

  "Quoth Reynard, as with sudden _thought_
  Before the portal stopping _short_."

  "We have so many a sally-_port_,
  And _cul-de-sac_, we can't be _caught_."

  "Send far and near the heralds _forth_,
  By blast of trump to tell my _wrath_."

  "At Rome, I on our banker _draw_,
  And when that's gone, I send for _more_."

  "That none dared venture! This he _saw_
  And felt his pluck return once _more_."

                  "But I've no _claws_
  And therefore am not fit for _wars_."

  "By envy eaten up, they _saw_
  Me prosper; looking all _before_."

  "And ever, when they walk'd _abroad_
  Each arm'd with hunting-whip and _cord_."

If any of our readers doubt the authenticity of some of the rhymes above
set down, we are willing that they should buy the book, as we have done,
and ascertain for themselves.

Merciful as we are by nature, and growing more and more so every day by
age, we yet feel that the enormities we have now denounced are beyond
endurance. Such poetry as this, neither gods, men, nor booksellers
should tolerate; and with the highest respect for the very excellent
publishers who have assisted in the birth of this production, and to
whom we owe so many useful and admirable contributions to knowledge and
literature, we do venture humbly to submit, that their peculiar duty
makes them somewhat more responsible for what is thus brought forth,
than ordinary obstetrical practitioners can be for what they may help
into the world. There is no reason that such a bantling should be born
at all, and at least we would recommend the continuance of gestation for
nine times the Horatian period. Seriously speaking, we always regret to
miss the general security which the title-page should give us, that in
what we buy, we shall have something for our money. A bad or inferior
book may, inadvertently, issue from the most respectable quarter. But
when a work is ushered into the light with such pomp and pageantry of
paper, printing, and getting up, as are here lavished, we hold that the
public have a right to expect that it has received the imprimatur of
some discerning judge, and to enforce the implied warranty that the
inside, as well as the outside, is a merchantable commodity in the
market of Parnassus.

But the publisher's part of it is the least of the evil. It is obvious
that the natives of Cockneyland are forgetting themselves. A new
generation has sprung up that do not remember the castigations bestowed
on their fathers of yore, and which for a time kept them in tolerable
subjection. A young Londoner, who happens to have enthusiasm, or
industry, or information, on a particular subject, may deserve
commendation for the laudable direction of his private studies; but is
he, therefore, entitled to _haspire_ to write, and not to write merely,
but to write poetry, and to disfigure a venerable old poem under
pretence of reproducing it? That is a different question, which needs to
be seriously and decidedly dealt with. This is not the first time,
within a brief period, that we have been compelled to make an example of
similar delinquencies; and, as sure as the crutch is in yonder corner,
it shall not be the last, if the nuisance be not speedily and completely
abated.

THE AMERICANS AND THE ABORIGINES

A TALE OF THE SHORT WAR. PART II.

The conclusion of our first notice of "The Americans and the
Aborigines," saw Hodges, the midshipman, on his way to the Mississippi,
and, if he could find it, to his ship; whilst Tokeah and his Indians
returned to their village upon the banks of the Natchez. There, upon the
day after the arrival of the warriors, we find the Indians assembled and
deliberating in their council-house. Some important matter is evidently
in agitation: an ominous gloom hangs over the village; and Canondah, to
whom her father has not spoken since his return, and who is in complete
ignorance of what passed between him and Hodges, is shut up in her
wigwam with Rosa. The absence of one of the Indians, sent as a guide
with the Englishman, the silence of Tokeah, and their state of
semi-captivity, render the two girls sad and anxious, and they busy
themselves with a thousand conjectures as to what has occurred, when a
shrill whistle attracts them to the window. The sight that there
presents itself chases the blood from the cheeks of Rosa, and causes her
to sink, terrified and half-fainting, into the arms of her friend.

A large boat, of similar build to the one in which Hodges had arrived,
ascended the river, impelled by the strokes of six vigorous rowers.
Besides these, two other men were seated in the skiff, which now entered
the creek where the canoes were moored. The Englishman's boat was
amongst the latter, and seemed to attract the particular notice of one
of the two men; he glanced sharply at it, and then made a remark to his
companion, who nodded his head, as if assenting to his observation. The
man who had spoken stepped on shore. He was of the middle height and
slightly made, with a sunburnt complexion, hollow cheeks, in which the
smallpox had left black, unpleasant-looking scars, and a pointed and
rather red nose. The expression of his eyes, which were sunken and of a
dark-grey colour, and his enormous whiskers and mustaches, gave him any
thing but an agreeable physiognomy. There was an air about him as if he
strove to appear natural and unassuming, but at times his false
side-glances and malicious smile more than neutralized all his efforts.
His dress was a short blue frock, buttoned up to the chin, trousers of
the same colour, and a cap. After addressing a few words to his
companion, who had also come ashore, he walked with a quick step and
military gait towards the Miko's wigwam. Just then the Indian council
broke up; the old chief strode slowly and gravely towards his dwelling;
whilst the warriors hurried in various directions to their respective
wigwams. It seemed as if they avoided the new-comer; for not one of them
crossed his path, although he evidently expected them so to do. He gazed
silently after the receding groups, shook his head, and entered the
Miko's hut.

"Here I am, friend Tokeah!" cried he, with a forced smile, stretching
out his hand to the Miko, who was seated upon his couch, calm, and with
his head bowed upon his breast. "I'm a man of my word, you see. Arrived
only last night in the bay; but the devil take me if I could keep quiet:
started off again, and rowed all night and all day; and here you see me,
old friend, as hungry as a sea-lawyer, and as dry as a dolphin." He
spoke in English, fluently enough, but with a strong French accent.

Tokeah knocked with his finger upon the table, and Canondah came out of
her room.

"Canondah!" cried the man, stepping forward with an air of gallantry to
salute her. The young girl avoided his embrace, and with the single
word, "Welcome!" slipped out at the door. Our guest appeared
thunderstruck.

"What does this mean, friend Miko?" cried he. "Am I in disgrace? Should
really be sorry for it. As I came across the meadow, your people made
all sail from me, as if I had been a privateer; and now you are as cold
as a nor'-wester, and your daughter as stiff as a frozen cable.
Apropos--you have had a visit. The young Englishman, I see, has been
amongst you."

As he spoke these last words, the stranger cast a lowering glance at the
old man.

"Of whom does my brother speak?" said the chief.

"Of a prisoner--a young fellow who escaped whilst I was at sea."

"My young brother has been here and is gone," replied Tokeah, dryly.

"Gone!" repeated the other; "you probably did not know that he had
escaped from me. But it matters not," added he, indifferently.

"The Miko knew," replied the old man in a firm tone, "that his young
brother had escaped from the chief of the Salt Lake. My brother ought
not to have made him prisoner."

"What! would not the Miko of the Oconees seize the Yankee who came as a
spy into his wigwam?"

"And was my young brother a Yankee?" inquired Tokeah, with a penetrating
glance.

"Not exactly; but an enemy"--

"My brother," interrupted the Miko, "has too many enemies--the Yankees,
and the warriors of the great father of the Canadas."

The man bit his lips. "Pshaw!" said he; "you have the Americans on the
wrong side of your heart, and I have both. That's all the difference."

"The Miko," said the old chief, "lifts the war-hatchet to protect his
people against the palefaces, and to avenge his slain brethren. But my
brother has lifted the tomahawk against every one, and, like a thief,
steals women and children."

A burning crimson overspread the countenance of Tokeah's visitor, and
his teeth chattered with rage. "Truly, Miko," said he, "you say things
which I can hardly stomach;" and with gleaming eye he measured the old
man from head to foot. Suddenly, however, resuming his former
smile--"Nonsense," said he; "we won't quarrel about trifles. Let every
man do what he likes, and answer for what he does."

"When the Miko of the Oconees gave his right hand to the chief of the
Salt Lake, and welcomed him to his wigwam, he held him for a friend and
a brother, who had declared war against the Yengheese. Had he known that
he was a thief"----

"Monsieur Miko!" interrupted the pirate, threateningly.

"He would not have taken him for his friend. Tokeah," continued the
Indian with dignity, "lifted the tomahawk against the palefaces as the
Miko of his people, but the chief of the Salt Lake has made him a
robber. What shall he, the chief of the Oconees, say to the Yengheese
warriors when he falls into their snares? They will hang him on a tree."

The truth, thus fearlessly and decidedly spoken, made an impression upon
the pirate. He walked several times hastily up and down the room, and
then again stopped opposite to the old man.

"We'll say no more about that, friend Tokeah," said he. "I do not count
the scalps that you have stripped from the skulls of the Yankees, and
you must not reckon too severely with me. What is done is done; but the
future will be very different. I am fully decided to abandon my wild
course of life, and then we'll sit down quietly, and live together in a
little paradise, half à l'Indienne, half à la Francçaise. Jovial and
joyous."

"The Miko of the Oconees," replied Tokeah, "has never stained his hand
with the blood of his friends. He is poor, but his hand has never
touched what belonged not to him. His fathers would look down on him
with grief, if he lived in friendship with a thief; the Great Spirit
would hide his face, if he disgraced his people by an alliance with the
robber."

The Frenchman had listened to these words more tranquilly than might
have been expected, but with a slight twitching of his features, that
showed they touched him to the quick. Suddenly he turned away.

"Is that your way of thinking?" said he. "You fancy you can get on
better without Lafitte? I've no objection. If I had known it sooner, I
would have spared myself the trouble of listening to your insolence, and
you that of uttering it. Adieu! Monsieur Miko."

"My brother is hungry," said the Indian, starting up, and greatly
shocked. "He must eat. Canondah has prepared his favourite repast."

"And after he has eaten, he may make himself scarce?" said the pirate,
surlily.

"My brother is welcome in the wigwam of the Miko. His hand never closes
when it has once been opened," said the old nan, soothingly.

"Come, that sounds like reason. I thought my old friend had only caught
a fit of spleen from the Englishman. I trust it will soon be over.
Meanwhile, we'll see what the ladies are doing."

He stepped up to the curtain, and tried to open it, but in vain.

"Is it not allowed?" said he to the old man.

"My brother must seek another squaw. Rosa shall not enter his wigwam."

In the adjoining chamber a sound was heard. It resembled a cry of joy,
but presently subsided into a gentle murmur, of one in prayer.

The pirate stood stupefied opposite to the curtain. "Our alliance broken
off, the door shut in my face!" muttered he. "_Eh bien! nous verrons._"
And so saying, he left the hut. The next minute he again put his head in
at the door.

"I suppose I may make use of my own boat?" said he. "It is likely that I
may have unwelcome visitors during my absence."

"When the chief of the Salt Lake is on the war-path, he knows how to
meet his foes."

"Sensibly spoken for once," said the pirate.

"My brother is hungry," said the Miko, pointing to his daughter, who now
entered the room with several dishes.

"We'll come directly. Duty before pleasure."

And so saying, the bucanier hurried down to the shore, and approached
his companion, a short square-built man, who was walking up and down
with folded arms, and whose dark olive countenance was so buried in an
enormous beard, that scarcely any part of it, except a long fiery
Bardolphian nose was visible. This man, so soon as he saw the pirate,
assumed a less _nonchalant_ attitude, and his hands fell by his side
into the position proper to a subordinate.

"Nothing happened, lieutenant?" said Lafitte.

"So little, that I should almost doubt this to be the Miko's village,
did not my eyes convince me of it. Beg pardon, captain, but what does it
all mean?"

"I might ask you the same question," replied the other, sulkily.

"On our former visits," continued the lieutenant, "it was like a fair;
but to-day not a creature comes near us. The squaws and girls seemed
inclined to come down, but the men prevented them."

The lieutenant paused, for his commanding-officer was evidently getting
more and more out of humour.

"How many hands have we below on Lake Sabine?"

"Thirty," was the reply. "To-morrow, the others will have finished
clearing out."

"Giacomo and George," said the pirate, in a sharp peremptory tone, "will
go back and take them orders to come up here. Let every man bring his
musket and bayonet, pistols and hanger, and let them wait instructions
in the great bend of the river, two miles below this place. Don't look
down stream, and then at me," said he angrily to the lieutenant, who had
cast a glance down the river. "The young Englishman has been here, and
the old savage has let him go."

"That's what you did with his companions, captain. I wouldn't have done
it."

"There are many things that Monsieur Cloraud would not have done,"
replied the pirate, sarcastically. "But this younker has made an
infernal confusion."

"Any thing else happened, captain?"

"Nothing particular, except that the old man is tired of our alliance."

"Pshaw! we don't want him any more, and may well indulge the people with
a merry hour."

The bucanier glanced at his subordinate with unspeakable scorn.

"And therefore, as Monsieur Cloraud thinks, do I send for the men. The
hour's pleasure would be dearly bought. I hate such folly. You shall
learn my intentions hereafter."

The lieutenant's low bow showed that the lawless pirate was on no very