Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No.308

Another pest are the dullals (brokers), who haunt the markets, and levy a handsome per-centage on everything that is bought and sold. 'Go into the chouk,[4 - Market-square.] and attempt to purchase the most trivial article: take up a pair of shoes, or a shawl, and you will find a dullal at your elbow. The man praises one thing, abuses another, beats down the price of the vender authoritatively; and you are surprised that such disinterested officiousness should be shown to a stranger in a crowded chouk. The man civilly offers to take you whithersoever you please, and to assist you in purchasing whatever you may require. You return home, wondering what was the man's inducement to waste his own time in chaffering for you. I lift the curtain to show you that the venders and your chaperone are in league; that your complaisant friend is a dullal, who takes very good care to lower the vender's price only so much as to admit of his coming in for a handsome dusturee.[5 - Customary douceur.] The difference between the bazaar price and the amount price of the article sold is the huq[6 - Right.] of the dullal. You will ask whether the vender may not himself pocket the whole of the money? I answer that he dare not. The whole of the dullals would cabal against him; would cry down his wares; would thrash him within an inch of his life; would by force prevent purchasers from attending his shop. Can such things be? you ask. Can the authorities submit tamely to such outrages? Why do not the parties who are cheated or bullied complain to the magistrate? They have tried the experiment; and although in a few instances successful, they have generally failed in obtaining redress from want of judicial proof. Moral conviction is one thing, and judicial proof another. And were a magistrate to punish on moral conviction alone, his judgment would in all probability be reversed by the judge in appeal; who, having to form his judgment by the written evidence, must be guided by judicial proof alone.'

The Budmashes practise a trick that is not unknown in England, although known there chiefly under the modification of bills of Exchange obtained from the unwary by means of advertisements in the newspapers. 'Another common trick of the Budmashes is to entice people of decent condition into their private houses with seductive solicitations; and after amusing them, to keep them there until they put their names to papers, just by way of showing specimens of their autographs. They have documents ready cut and dry on stamp papers of different value, duly witnessed by people who are in their pay, or who participate in their frauds, to be converted into penal bonds for value received. Months afterwards the unfortunate visitor is accosted in any public place, in the presence of numerous witnesses, and asked for the amount of his (extorted) bond. Of course the debt is denied, and the demander is cursed only for his pains. But the Budmash calls people to witness that he did ask his debtor to pay the amount of his bond, which he refused to discharge. An action for debt is instituted. The Budmash produces the bond before the Moonsiff. The witnesses are summoned, and are merely asked, "Did you witness this tumassook?" "I did, your worship," is the reply: "this is my signature." The witnesses before whom the Budmash demanded the amount of the bond also confirm the plaintiff's allegation. The defendant can only deny the claim, and submit that the bond was extorted. "Where is the proof?" says the Moonsiff. "I have none," is the reply. And a decree is given in favour of plaintiff with costs. It is only when "Greek meets Greek" that the result is different. Then the defendant acknowledges the deed, but alleges that he has paid the amount with interest; and files a receipt for the amount of the bond, with interest at twelve per cent., duly attested by three "credible" witnesses, who appear before the huzoor, and swear to their signatures, as well as to having seen the money repaid to the plaintiff.'

We come now to the swindling rajah, whose proceedings are almost amusing in their rascality. 'A common mode of swindling in the city of Kashee, as practised by the clever Budmashes, is for one of the party to personate a rajah on a visit of ceremony to the holy city, while his companions pretend to precede him, and hire a stately huvelee in Dal-ka-Munduvee, which they furnish for the nonce. Bulbhuddur Singh sits in state as Rajah Guchpuch Rae, bedecked in false gems, and dressed in shawls and kimkhabs.[7 - Kingcobs.] His retainers go about the city, and entice shawl-merchants and jewellers to the rajah's house. They arrive with costly wares, and eagerly proceed to expose them; but the rajah turns an indifferent eye upon them, and declares they are not sufficiently choice for him. The Soudagurs[8 - Tradespeople.] promise to return next day. In the meantime the song and dance proceed with fierce rivalry. Six sets of the best dancing-women exert their lungs and limbs, and go through every fascinating movement to delight and amuse Rajah Guchpuch Rae. "Where is my treasurer?" exclaims the rajah. "Bid him bestow a largess of 100 ushurfees[9 - Gold mohurs.] on these soul-enslaving, terrestrial houries." A retainer, after going through the farce of a search, respectfully approaches his highness, and intimates that the treasurer has not yet arrived. "The nimukharam!behaeyah!"[10 - Unfaithful to salt – shameless.] exclaims the rajah. "Here, fellows, see that a proper treasurer be in attendance on the morrow, to whom we shall deliver our treasure and toshehkhanah."[11 - Place for keeping valuables.] The rajah enjoys himself until no longer able to sustain excitement; and then the Gundrupins[12 - A caste of Hindoo Nautch-girls.] retire, and the torches are extinguished.

'Next day there are several candidates for the honour of the treasurer's office, who eagerly offer to serve. "The salary is 200 rupees a month," says the rajah; "and I hate accounts. Constant attendance and implicit obedience are all I require." After rejecting some, his highness fixes upon Lalla Umbeka Sahaee, who receives a well-worn shawl as a khillut,[13 - Dress of honour.] and an immense key. He ventures to ask where the treasury is? and is told to wait until the huzrut has leisure to show it to him. In the meantime the rajah suddenly recollects that he has an immediate occasion for 1000 rupees, and he shouts out, "Here, Bahadoor, take one thousand rupees from Lalla Umbeka Sahaee, and give it to Bisheshur Singh, and be sure to take a receipt for the money. Tell him it is the price of a ring I bought of him for my favourite Goolbehar." Bahadoor asks the treasurer for the money. The poor man looks aghast, and shows a huge key as all he has received of the rajah's treasure. But Bahadoor tells him that Rajah Guchpuch Rae never fails to cut off the ears of a disobedient servant. So the hint is taken, and Lalla gives an order on his shroff in the city for the amount; and Bahadoor at once proceeds to realise the money. As evening approaches, shawl-merchants and jewellers again appear, and press their wares on the rajah. They see Lalla Umbeka Sahaee figuring as treasurer. They are old acquaintance, and they ask him the amount of Guchpuch Rae's treasure; in reply to which he simply shows the key, about a foot in length. The merchants open out their wares to entice the rajah, but he says he will wait until all his things arrive. They offer to leave their bundles for the rajah and his ladies to choose, which is agreed to with apparent indifference. The song and dance proceed, as usual, until midnight, when the torches are extinguished.

'Next morning, what a change has taken place! One old man is seated at the doorway, dozing over a chillum of ganjah. No other sign of life is visible in Rajah Guchpuch Rae's palace. The treasurer arrives first, opens and rubs his eyes, and asks the old man where the rajah and his people have gone? He replies that they decamped before dawn. In due course the Muhajuns, the jewellers, and birds of song arrive, but nothing of the rajah is to be found; and smoke-stained walls, and filth, and litter about the rooms, alone betray that revelry had been there! The jewellers and Muhajuns turn in wrath upon Lalla Umbeka Sahaee, and tax him with having aided to cheat them. They proceed first to abuse, and then to beat him. In vain the poor man shows the huge key, and laments his thousand rupees lost for ever. They drag him to the kotwal, and charge him with having cheated them; and the defrauded treasurer remains in durance vile for a week at least, and gets off at last on proving himself to be one of the victims of this system of swindling, and after feeing the police myrmidons pretty roundly.'

Here we close, without further remark, a book from which the reader will learn that the crimes of India are not remarkably different from those of earlier England, although fostered by the worst police system that ever disgraced and demoralised a country.

TRACINGS OF THE NORTH OF EUROPE

GOTTENBURG TO CHRISTIANIA

At six o'clock of the morning of the 4th July, Quist duly appeared with the carriage at the door of the Gotha Kellare. It was a dull, cool, drizzling morning, and I mentally rejoiced in having, against many advices, resolved upon a vehicle which could afford me protection from the elements. My baggage being arranged beside me in the carriage, so that I could readily command anything I wanted – one of the greatest of all comforts in solitary travelling – I hastily swallowed the cup of coffee presented to me in my bedroom – the common custom of the country – and was soon on the road to Christiania. I observed that two hardy little horses were yoked to the carriage with rope-traces. Beside Quist, who drove them, sat a man who was to bring back the cattle, the first of a long series of such persons whom I was to see in that situation during my journey, of all varieties of age, from twelve years to threescore, in all kinds of clothes, from stout wadmaal down to bare decency. The robust, bulky frame of honest Quist generally made these people appear like dwarfs by his side. As we drove rapidly along the swampy plain surrounding Gottenburg, we met an immense number of small market-carts, driven by peasant men or women, or both, generally very lightly laden, and going at a trot, the people being usually seated on a sort of chair, perched on elastic beams passing back at an angle from the beams of the vehicle, so as to give somewhat the effect of springs. I felt affected at seeing such a multitude of people engaged in a labour so uneconomical, and which must consequently remunerate them so ill; for of course where a man or woman give a day of their own time, along with a horse's labour, to the business of selling a single pig or lamb, a few chickens and eggs, or some such trifling merchandise, the remuneration must be of the most miserable kind. The poor too often struggle on in this manner, always busy, as they allege, often working very hard, and wondering that, with all their exertions, they make so little, when the plain truth is, that their labour is so ill-directed, or is so uneconomically conducted, and in the result of their labours they consequently do so little for their fellow-creatures, that their little gains are exactly what is to be expected, and what is strictly their due. The very best lesson that we could teach a poor man, with a view to improving his fortunes, would be that which led him, as far as possible, to extend his usefulness, to substitute economical for uneconomical labour, and to concentrate and divide employments. I beheld, with interest, in this exhibition of the Swedish peasantry, the first aspect of an economy out of which it has been the business of the last hundred years to reform the farming population of my own country.

At the first station, which we reached in little more than an hour, the horses which had been ordered were in waiting, along with a new loon of some kind to take care of them. The man in charge of the used horses was then paid at a rate which appeared nearly equivalent to threepence-halfpenny per English mile. But something more was needed —dricka-pinge, or drinks-money, as Quist called it. In England, something like half-a-crown would have been expected. In Sweden, a few skillings – about twopence of our money – was given, and most thankfully received. We then set out with our new horses. The station, it may be remarked, is a place like a carrier's inn. Travellers of a humble class may stop and refresh at it; but it expects no gentlemen customers, and is unprepared for their reception. One or two out of a long series are tolerable places, and it is necessary to calculate so as to have any needful meals there, instead of the meaner houses; but even with these better-sort of houses it is necessary to order meals by the forebud, for a guest is so rare, that they have no standing arrangements for his reception. My breakfast had been ordered at the third station. It proved a decent, plain house, with clean-boarded floors, and a few rude prints along the walls; and, had there been wheaten bread, the eggs and coffee would have enabled me to make a tolerable meal.

The country passed over to-day consisted of low rocky hills of soft outline, with alluvial plains between. It is impossible for any person of common powers of observation to fail to be struck with the appearance of the rocky surface presented around Gottenburg and along the road upon which I was now travelling. All the abruptnesses and asperities usually seen upon rocks are here ground off: all is smooth and rounded. Here you see great ridges, resembling the hull of a ship turned keel uppermost, both in the general form and the smoothness of surface. There you see great slopes, as straight and smooth as an ashlar wall. Sometimes a kind of trough or channel is seen between rising ridges, and of this the sides are usually quite smooth. In general, there has been a certain weathering of the exterior, though leaving the general plane – if I may use such an expression – in its original state. Where the surface has been from any cause protected from the elements, the smoothing is clearly seen to be a true mechanical polish; that is to say, not a result of some causes connected with the formation of the rock, but an effect proceeding from some external agent which has operated on the rocks after they had been thrown into their present arrangement as a surface for this part of the earth. On these preserved surfaces we find striæ or scratches, evidently a portion of the general operation, whatever it was; and these striæ, as well as the channellings and ridges, lie in one direction – namely, compass N. E. and S. W. In numberless instances in travelling to-day I took out my compass to test this point, where much struck by the appearances, and the result was invariable. The valley of the Gotha Elv lies from north to south; but this seems merely to have exposed it to being impressed with these singular appearances. There are several hill-faces which may be considered as an exception, being rough and cliffy, sometimes with a talus of débris descending from below the cliffy front, as in Salisbury Crags near Edinburgh. In all such instances the face of the cliff is to the south-west; and where this occurs in a valley, the opposite hill-face is invariably smooth, with rounded surfaces, showing as if the smoothing agent had moved from the north-east, failing to press against faces turned away from that point of the compass, but bearing hard upon such as were presented towards it. It was most impressive and interesting to read in these facts so strange a tale of grand preterite operations of nature. I had seen some of the few and scattered markings of the same kind which exist on the surface of my own country, but was nevertheless unprepared for the all but universal grinding to which Sweden has been subjected. In Scotland one has to seek for the appearances in nooks of the country; but here they are met at every step. Very often farm establishments, and the inns at which the traveller stops, are placed on smoothed plateaux of rock, the place thus acquiring from nature all the benefit of a paved courtyard, as well as of a perfectly firm and dry foundation. Often you can trace in these natural pavements the primitive channellings and striæ, though hob-nails and wagon-wheels have clattered over them for centuries.

The matter massed up against the smoothed valley-sides has all the appearance of that of moraines amongst the Alps. A moraine, as must be known by many persons, is the accumulation of loose matter which a glacier brings down in its course, and deposits at its base. The matter seen here, as at the skirts of the Alpine glaciers, is a coarse, pale, sandy clay, mixed with rough stones of all sizes up to many tons – mixed confusedly – with here and there little nests of matter, where the clay and sand have been separated and laid down by water. Over this matter in some places are stratified sand and gravel, coming to flat, terraced forms, like sea-beaches. These, however, are rare objects. The tendency of the whole appearances, in an unprejudiced mind, is to convey the idea that ice has been the cause of the main phenomena. That water in any form could have produced them is utterly inadmissible, though this was the supposition formed by the first scientific observer, M. Sefstrom. Persons who have only read descriptions of the appearances may think them explainable upon an aqueous theory; but if they visit Sweden, and look at the surface with their own eyes, they must, if open to conviction at all, see that no such agent could have produced such effects. Only some agent applying forcibly, pressingly, and with an equable, continuous motion – like a plane going over a deal, or a plough in a furrow – could have so dressed the original surface. Such an agent is ICE. The identity of the loose matter with the moraines of existing glaciers points to the same conclusion. I therefore believe, with M. Agassiz and others, that ice has been the means of smoothing the surface of Sweden – ice on a scale of grandeur beyond what we are accustomed to see; though how such a glacial sheet was originated, and how it could move across the whole irregular face of a large country, up hill and down hill, maintaining over wide provinces one direction, I think it would be difficult to explain. We perceive clearly the nature of the agent, and we see this agent still at work upon the earth, though in a limited manner: the only difficulty is as to the different physical circumstances on which depended the magnitude of the phenomenon and the manner of its application. The superficial arrangements of the loose matter speak of a subsequent dip under water, a fact of which I shall have occasion to show other evidences.

The country passed over in this day's journey is not interesting to any but the geologist. It presents only a series of humble-looking farmsteads, and one or two small and unimportant towns. The farmhouses bear a general resemblance to those of Switzerland, but want the overhanging eaves, and are less picturesque, though some are painted of a red or ochrey colour, which gives a cleanly effect. Unlike Switzerland, too, barns, byres, and all sorts of store-offices occupy detached buildings, an arrangement by which the risk of fire is materially reduced. The scenery, though sufficiently rude, is not romantic; for the hills are in general only a few hundred feet above the level of the sea, and their outline has been rendered tame by the glacial polishing above described. The ice, as I sometimes surprised my Scandinavian friends by remarking, has been a great enemy to the picturesque in this region of the earth. Though there is no want of population, the country is dull. One misses even the little taverns and huckstry-shops which everywhere give a sort of life to the roadsides in England and Scotland. In the afternoon we came to a fiord, and found at its upper extremity the town of Uddevalla, containing from 3000 to 4000 inhabitants. Uddevalla is a name of no small interest in science, because of a great bed of ancient shells found near it. This, too, is a kind of object very rare, and only seen on a most limited scale in the superficial formations of Britain. The effect was novel and startling when, on the hill-face overlooking the fiord, and at the height of two hundred feet above its waters, I found something like a group of gravel-pits, but containing, instead of gravel, nothing but shells! It is a nook among the hills, with a surface which has originally been flat in the line of the fiord, though sloping forward towards it. We can see that the whole space is filled to a great depth with the exuviæ of marine mollusks, cockles, mussels, whelks, &c. all of them species existing at this time in the Baltic, with only a thin covering of vegetable mould on the surface. That surface has been broken in several places by the peasantry, who dig and carry away these spoils of ancient seas to spread them over their lands. I feel sure that some of their excavations are twenty feet deep; yet that is not the whole thickness of the shell-bed. Of course it is a proof of the sea and land having formerly been at a different relative level; and one more convincing could not be desired. I was familiar with this as a geological fact; but the shell-bed of Uddevalla presented it with a freshness and liveliness of evidence beyond what I would have expected. Seeing these shells so entire, so like in all respects to any bed of shells on the present shore, one looks upon the period antecedent to the assumption of the present relative level as a thing of yesterday; the whole series of intermediate events, including, what is probably but a small part of it, the course of the written history of the human race, seems concentrated into that brief space which, relatively to the entire history of the universe, it actually occupies.

My halting-place for the first night was at Quistrom, ten and a-half Swedish, or about seventy English miles from Gottenburg. This reminds me to remark that the mile in Sweden, in consequence of an arrangement adopted during the last century, is fixed at the tenth part of a geographical degree, which, it will be remembered, is about 69½ English miles. For such spaces as we require the term mile to designate, the Swedes speak of quarter and half-quarter miles. The roads exhibit formidable 'milestones' for each quarter, usually adorned with the initials of the king under whose reign they were erected. In the whole of this day's journey I had passed only one gentleman's house – a pretty place with a park, near Quistrom; and I was afterwards informed that it belonged to an Englishman. Country-houses, of a character approaching that of an English gentleman's mansion, are objects scarcely existing in either Sweden or Norway, except in the immediate neighbourhood of the larger towns.

At Quistrom I was shown into a large room in an upper floor, uncarpeted, but strewed thickly with small pieces of pine spray and juniper bush, the scent of which is abundantly pungent. This is a description applicable to most public rooms in the country inns of Scandinavia, the vegetable sprinkling being designed for exactly the same effect as a sprinkling of yellow sand in British houses of a humble class. In obedience to the forebud order, a meal was ready to be laid down for me, consisting of two small dishes of animal food, with milk, cheese, and hard cakes of rye. Everything was clean, though homely. A married pair with a child had arrived in a light vehicle about the same time with me; and as soon as I was done with eating, I retired to my bedroom, that they might sup in privacy at the same table. They had a bedroom at one side; I one at the other, a plain small room, also uncarpeted, and possessing little furniture besides a small couch of plain deals. I mention these things as characteristic of the roadside inns all over the country. Here, as everywhere else, there was snowy bed-linen. I feared the entomology of the house, but was agreeably disappointed. The stories told of Sweden and Norway in this respect are surely exaggerations. At least I can say, with a safe conscience, that of the cimicidæ I never saw one example, and of the species pulex irritans only two, during the whole time I was in the country. It is a point not unworthy of notice, for, under different impressions, I had for many nights much less steady sleep than is desirable for a traveller.

An early walk next morning showed me the situation of the inn in a pleasant valley, where a river terminates in a fiord. The river, I was told, contains abundance of fine fish, and I bethought me that for an angler such an opportunity of sport, with so cleanly an inn to live in, might be very attractive. Quist having contrived the night before to get several forebud notices sent on by a private hand free of expense, I started at eight o'clock, with some uncertainty as to the conclusion of my day's journey. The country passed over to-day consisted of low rocky hills, all smoothed, with spaces between, filled up to various heights with detrital matter. This matter usually composes flats, and the ground therefore joins the rocky hills almost as mountain lakes join the sides of the basins containing them – a feature speaking significantly of the operations of the sea upon the stuff left at the conclusion of the glacial action. Contrary to my expectation, very few boulders appeared upon the hills. Sometimes a rill cuts down the alluvial flat, and then we see a series of cultivated fields on the bisected level spaces, frontiered by steep pastoral banks, all in a flush of wild-flowers. The rounded gray rocky hills; the alluvial flats, sometimes cultivated, sometimes in moorland; low, gray, stone enclosures; red wooden houses scattered at wide intervals; now and then a whitened church, with a red wooden spire, topping a low height – such were the predominant features of the landscape during this morning's drive. The people are remarkably civil and inoffensive: not a man or boy do I pass or meet who does not take off his hat. I feel this as courtesy, not as servility, and am careful to return each greeting duly, in order that so amiable a custom may not suffer by me. There is one singular impediment in travelling: almost every few hundred yards – though often at very much wider intervals – a gate crosses the road, being part of the system of farm enclosures, and having a regard to the exclusion of cattle from the corn-fields. Generally some cottage child or group of children is ready to run and open the gate for the approaching vehicle; and for this service a minute coin, such as the third or sixth of a skilling, is regarded as a rich reward. Where no such aid is at hand, the charge-taker of the horses has to descend and throw up the bar. Another novel feature of the roads is the frequent appearance by the wayside of little posts bearing small boards, which contain an inscription – as 'Hede, 200 alnar,' 'Hogdal, 134 alnar,' &c. The explanation is, that the roads in Sweden and Norway are kept up by the bonder or peasants, each taking charge of some small section near his farm. The boards show for what piece each is answerable, the space being indicated in ells. A public officer makes periodical rounds, to see that each person executes his portion in a satisfactory manner, and to impose fines where the duty is neglected. This system partakes of the character of the compulsory furnishing of horses, and imparts a curious idea of the state of public opinion in these countries as to personal liberty. It appears that, let there be never such liberal or democratic forms established on the continent, the state of individual liberty remains the same: the central government is still permitted to bandy about the simple subject at its pleasure. And the oddest consideration is, that, amidst all the democratic struggles and revolutionary writhings which occasionally take place, no one thinks of complaining of these trammelments, or getting them corrected.

In the evening I approached a fiord called Swinesund, which forms the northern limit of Sweden in this direction. At the last station on the Swedish side an elderly officer-like man came up with great politeness, and addressed me, first in Swedish, and afterwards in German. It was his duty to search the baggage of travellers before they should pass into Norway, though I cannot imagine for what reason, unless the exaction of a rigs dollar, or some such trifle, which I paid to save myself from detention, furnish one. At a house on the Norwegian margin of the fiord something more was paid, my passport inspected, and my name entered in a book. The tendency on the continent to petty impositions of this kind is so great, that here, even between two countries under one sovereign rule, they are kept up. At this point a bag of Swedish money, with which I had been furnished at Gottenburg, and with which I was just beginning to become familiar, ceased to be useful, and a new kind became necessary. Laying down rigs-gelt dollars and skillings, I had to take up with specie dollars and marks. A rigs-gelt dollar, I may remark, is equivalent to 13½d. of English money, and the skilling is its forty-eighth part. Calculations are, however, made in an all but imaginary denomination called dollars and skillings banco, which are as 3 to 2 of the actual rigs-gelt. The prevalent monies are, in reality, notes of 1, 3, 5 rigs-gelt dollars, and for 8, 12, 16 skillings banco, the smallest of this paper-money being for 3½d. English. As may readily be imagined, the threepence-halfpenny note is generally found in no very neat or cleanly state; yet though it may be a mere clot of dirty paper, not much different in appearance from a huddled-up spider's web, it will be preferred by the natives to coin, provided it only retain the signature of the government banker. In Norway, they have notes for 1 specie dollar (about 4s. 6d. English), 2, 5, and 10 dollars, with silver marks and half-marks (9d. and 4¼.), and copper skillings. I need scarcely remark that the plunge into a new money in the course of continental travel is always a painful thing, and that it is a vexation which occurs the more frequently the more rapidly you travel. On this occasion I had had to make acquaintance with three kinds of money in about a week.

I spent the night at Westgaard, the first station within Norway, and one somewhat superior to the last. I here observed the first examples of a piece of substantial furniture very common in the north – namely, large chests or arks, usually bearing the name of a person, and an old date in quaint lettering, such as 'Agnes Olsen, 1733.' During the two previous days the weather had been dull and ungenial. The third morning proved bright and clear, and I started at an early hour for Frederickshald with elevated spirits. This place was a few miles out of the way; but I was anxious to see the scene of the death of that extraordinary prince who, as Johnson says —

– 'left a name, at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral, and adorn a tale.'

It was yet scarcely past seven o'clock when we drove into the inn-yard at this little town. The landlord soon came, and being able to speak well in French, and a little in English, he proved a most serviceable ally. I was quickly on my way, under proper conduct, to the scene of the assassination of poor Carl Tolv. Frederickshald is a neat, cleanly town, at the head of one of the smaller fiords, and the fort lies close by, perched upon a rocky eminence of considerable extent, at the foot of which runs a river, noted for several fine waterfalls. A painful ascent of two or three hundred feet, along zig-zagging causeways and fortified walls, brings us to the fortress, which seems to be now chiefly a mere post for soldiers, like Edinburgh and Stirling castles. Behind the main buildings is a space of irregular rocky ground, enclosed within the exterior defences. Here an enclosure of trees and shrubs, and a little tumulus of stones, one of them bearing a half-obliterated inscription, marks the spot where Charles XII. was slain. He had invaded Norway in his usual madcap style; one of his armies, consisting of 7000 men, had there been literally buried in a snow-storm; he was now directing in person the siege of this fortress, when an unknown hand despatched him by a shot which penetrated his temple (December 11, 1718). He was found dead, but with his sword half-drawn, as if to defend himself from some enemy, or to punish an assassin, and it is accordingly believed that the wound was inflicted by one of his own people. A survey of the ground supports this view of the matter, as at such a place one does not readily see how the fatal shot could have come from the fortress. I had afterwards an opportunity of examining the dress worn at this time by the king, in the Riddarsholm Church at Stockholm. The plain cocked-hat shows the hole by which the bullet entered, and the right glove is stained with blood, as if the unfortunate monarch, under the first impulse of the moment, had clapped his hand upon the wound.

After breakfast, I took a walk around the town, and very much enjoyed the views almost everywhere presented, but particularly one from a noted place within a gentleman's pleasure-grounds. Frederickshald appears to me a more pleasing and interesting place than the guide-books allow. In the little park alluded to I found a private cemetery, containing the graves of eight adults and three infants. Each grave is a well-defined heap, with turf sides and ends, but a top of bare earth, on which is laid a single wreath; all the rest of the ground bare earth. Such is a prevalent style of sepulture in the north; it has a neat and pretty effect. One likes to see a grave well-defined. That smoothing of the ground, introduced in some of the improved modern cemeteries of England, is not, I think, an approvable step. We desire the 'mouldering heap,' so affectingly significant of what is below, and so associated with all our old literary ideas upon the subject.

After receiving a lesson in Norwegian money from my intelligent landlord, Mr Stein, and so many civilities of various kinds, that I felt ashamed of the small bill which I had to pay, I set out on the way to Christiania, returning for some miles along the way by which I had come from Westgaard. As we drove out of the town, I was, as a stranger, honoured with a sufficient quantity of observation by the people. To add to the fracas produced by the carriage, a foal came clattering along by our side, apparently under a filial mistake as to one of our horses. Presently a cart was heard making a furious rattle along the stones behind us, as if still further to make my poor equipage an object of public attention. It was the mamma of the foal, who, having missed her progeny in the market-place, was now anxious to recover the lost one: there she came, with mouth distended, and eyes glaring, the whole aspect expressing the utmost excitement, and saying as plainly as words could have spoken it, 'What's all this? – taking away my child!' The whole was so vividly like human affairs, that I felt inclined to stop and apologise for our unintentional concern in the elopement; but Quist settled the matter more summarily by a smart application of his whip to the haunches of our undesired attaché. It may be remarked that in Norway the foal is often allowed to accompany its parent, even in coach-travelling. I have seen it come the whole stage, never missing any opportunity afforded by a pause of our machine to come up and indulge in the mode of nutrition appropriate to its age. Horses are altogether less under strict rule in the north than with us, and it appears to me as if they consequently were more natural in their conduct. For one thing, they are eminently social with one another. In the course of a long stage over a thinly-peopled country, if we come at length to a park where a horse is feeding, even I could almost say though out of sight, our own pachyderms are sure to get up a great skirl of recognition, just as much as to say, 'How are you? – how are you?' My predecessor, Mr Laing, alleges that they have a rational way of eating not observed in the horses of less democratic countries – taking first a quantity of their hay or corn, and then a drink; but I cannot say I ever could observe them acting in this bite-and-sup manner. Of their amazing steadiness, sureness of foot, and hardiness, abundant evidence is presented to every traveller.

In the middle of the day we arrived at the brink of the river Glommen, a copious stream, which contains the drainage of a large district in the centre of Norway, and which is here remarkable for a cascade of great grandeur. The fall is at a place about an English mile above the ferry: the flood pours in one mass through a narrow channel, and makes a descent of about seventy feet. It would be an unexceptionably fine sight but for the details of an enormous timber-sawing and exporting establishment which press in upon its beauties, and usurp not a few of its most romantic points. The river runs fourteen English miles below the waterfall, but so gently, that ships come up for the timber; and the river is there accordingly an active commercial scene. I observed at the falls specimens of the smoothed and dressed rocks, over which the water streamed in an oblique direction – a fact than which nothing could be more convincing as to the incompetency of water to produce the effects attributed to the ice. The country is here low, and not marked by any features of grandeur. There is an alluvial plain of the most absolute flatness for fully a mile in every direction around the ferry; and from the measurements which I made (starting from the surface of the river at that point), I suspect this to be identical in elevation above the sea with the terrace at Elsinore. This is, however, a point which must be left for determination to the native inquirers.

We stopped for the night at Moss, a town on the Christiania Fiord, where my servant and I had each an evening and morning meal, with lodging, at a charge of about six shillings. Yet this was a good large house, very tolerably furnished. A small silver coin (value about 5d.) laid in the hardened palm of the blithesome lass who served as an attendant in all capacities made her the happiest of the happy. As a serving-girl in Denmark, Sweden, or Norway, only gets about 30s. a year of wages, it may readily be imagined that even so small a gratuity as this is a great prize to her. It is necessary, however, to be careful to give such a gratuity directly to the person for whom it is designed, as it will not otherwise reach its destination. At this place there are alluvial terraces at various elevations above the sea, and precisely resembling the ancient sea-margins of the British coasts. A circumstance worthy of note occurred in the business of measuring their elevations, which I did with a regular levelling apparatus. The sea is here presented in two detached bays, embracing a peninsula of several miles in extent, yet approaching within two hundred yards of each other, with only the division of a low isthmus. One of these bays appeared by my survey as 0.9 foot above the level of the other. The cause was in the wind, which blew up the one bay, and down the other.

There remained only a forenoon's journey to Christiania. As we approached this capital, there was no observable improvement in the appearance of the country; no better houses, no trimmer or larger fields, no smarter-looking people; the same rough and homely character over all things. The roads are made of the sand and gravel found everywhere near their borders; no cuttings anywhere for improved gradients. A rise of 1 in 5 is not uncommon when any of the rocky ridges between the plains has to be crossed. Two miles from Christiania we come to the brow of a hill, whence we see the bright white city with its blue and red-tiled roofs lying below at the head of its fiord, backed by green slopes ascending to the pine-clad hills. The descent of this hill is terrible, from the extreme steepness of the road, especially at its somewhat sharp turnings. Having a geologist's climometer in my pocket, I measured the slope in some places with all possible care, and found it actually on an angle of 16 degrees, implying a rise of 1 in 3½ feet. I deemed this a strange sight so near one of the capitals of Europe; but I must do the Norwegians the justice to say that a better road is in the course of being made.

On the two last days' journeys we met many parties of Norwegian infantry on their march or exercising. They are a good-looking soldiery, neatly dressed in white duck-trousers and green frock-coats, with burnished-leather hats rising to a metal peak, each bearing the arms of Norway – a ramping lion holding a battle-axe. As to this ensign, by the way, though gratifying to the national vanity, and poetically conveying the idea which its originators intended, it belongs to a class which cannot be scientifically contemplated without a shock. The philosophical zoologist reflects on the adaptations of the natural organs, and knowing the very peculiar formation of the anterior extremities of the feline family – so well contrived for clutching and tearing a prey, so useless for every other kind of prehension – he cannot endure the idea of one of these animals being supposed to hold a weapon only adapted to the hand of man. Heralds, if they could think of anything beside their own profession, should study these things!

    R. C.

PLAN FOR MAINTAINING THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE LABOURING-CLASS

It has often occurred to us, and we have once or twice hinted at the idea in the Journal, that the working-classes might make a provision for themselves in times of want, whether occasioned by failure of employment or natural disability through disease or old age, if they could be induced to agree to a system of stoppages like that which has existed for ages in the mercantile navy for the support of Greenwich Hospital. We find that, in 1843, probably before the date of any reference of ours to the subject, though unknown to us, Mr David Milne, a patriotic country gentleman of Scotland, and member of the Scottish bar, made a suggestion to this effect to the commissioners who conducted the Poor-Law inquiry in Scotland. His idea was this: – Let some small sum, say sixpence a month, be deducted from the amount of wages under a law to that effect, and thrown into a fund upon which every contributor would have a claim. He conceived that, in five years, so much would be accumulated, that the managers might begin to give support to any number under a twentieth part of the original contributors. Some one had suggested to Mr Milne that it might be well if the law taxed the masters to an equal extent for the benefit of the fund; but he rejected this idea, on the ground of its injustice, and because it would induce employers to be less anxious to carry on their works in unfavourable times for the sake of giving bread to their people. 'It is also to be considered,' says Mr Milne, 'that the duty of sixpence a month for each workman would, in ordinary times, when trade is prosperous, and labourers in demand, actually fall upon the employers, because the natural competition of trade would make up for the deduction of duty by a corresponding rise of wages.' Mr Milne was, however, not unwilling that appeals to, and even a general assessment upon, the rich should be resorted to when the fund failed under the pressure of any unusual calamity.

There cannot, we think, be a doubt that if this plan were practicable, it would be a great improvement in our social economy. At present, the bulk of the working-people of this country have scarcely anything to save them from a state of dependence whenever they fail in getting work, or are no longer fit for it. In Scotland, the able-bodied man who cannot obtain work and wages, has no legal recourse to the poors' funds. In England he has, but accompanied by conditions calculated to lower the man in his own eyes; and therefore the privilege is no true advantage. Even though the poors' funds were more available than they are, the honest workman who wishes to maintain his self-respect can never complacently place his trust in them; for though it is not uncommon to hear individuals in humble life proclaiming that they have a right to them, the fact really is, that these funds are only a product of the humanity and economy of the country, designed to insure that there shall be no class left to misery and the barbarism attending it, but not to interpose between any one and his obligation to gain his own subsistence if possible. In plain truth, he who accepts parochial relief sells away some of his very best rights as a citizen, as well as his dignity as a man; and any one who wishes to exalt either the social or political position of the labouring-class, should desire nothing so much as to see them in the first place superior to all but a remote chance of coming to this wretched expedient. If any feasible and easy-working plan could be devised for enabling them, mainly by sacrifices on their own part, to defy the prospect of becoming paupers, or leaving their children to pauperism, they would certainly have received the greatest boon that any philanthropist could confer upon them.

We fear that no such plan is at present practicable. There is too much prejudice among the labouring-class against their employers to admit of its being received with general favour. While an honourable minority would be glad to see their independence secured, the great mass would undoubtedly prefer going on upon their present footing, careless how soon the failure of business or the occurrence of sickness should deprive them of an independent subsistence. Some such plan, however, may be expected to be realised when the labouring-class shall have acquired a just feeling for their own character, and a just sense of their relation to the rest of society. It would only be a fair and proper part of a social system in which the highest behests of a true civilisation were worked out. How soon it may come about will depend on the rapidity with which the education of the masses of the people shall proceed. If, from any narrow views of whatever kind, a member of the middle or upper classes in this country finds himself thwarting the movements towards universal and improved education, let him understand what he pays for the gratification he thus obtains. He pays for it in large poor-rates and prison-rates, and in the distress which his humanity must be continually receiving from the spectacle of a multitude of his fellow-creatures lost to the sense of self-respect, and consequently subjected to a vast load of misery.

THE LATE DR ZUMPT

At an early stage of our labours, many years ago, we took occasion to offer, for the consideration of the young, a memoir of Professor Heyne of Gottingen, one of the greatest scholars of the age, and who, by dint of perseverance, rose from a very humble to an exalted station in life. Heyne presented not an uncommon instance of German enthusiasm in scholarship. In our own country, erudition seems to be pursued chiefly for the sake of professional advancement, and consequently it seldom attains to any very lofty pitch. How few of our scholars, it may be asked, know anything critically of the ancient classics? How few write or speak Latin with elegance or purity? How few ever saw any more recondite exemplars of Roman literature than elementary school-books – the copy of a copy? In Germany, where no sort of painstaking seems to be grudged, scholarship has gone, and still goes on, immeasurably farther. As in the case of Heyne, Wolf, Hermann, Boeckh, Vater, Gesenius, and others, men are there found devoting themselves to a whole lifetime of earnest study in complete forgetfulness of self. Living perhaps on the merest trifle, they bury themselves in a library surrounded by old vellum-bound classics; and there, poring over dingy yellow pages, they compare words with words, examine into the merits of punctuation and orthography, and detect new meanings, till they transfuse into themselves, as it were, the very soul of their author. In this way, by collating old and priceless versions of the classics – some of them in manuscript, and unique – they are able to produce modern editions, which are greedily accepted throughout European universities, and which have usually formed the basis of elementary works for British compilers. We at least know of few works in Latin common in our schools which have not been copied in a reduced form from the painfully-constructed editions of German scholars. We have been led into these observations from a desire to do honour to the memory of one whose name has gone to swell the already long list of German philologists.

Carl Gottlob Zumpt, the individual to whom we refer, was born at Berlin in 1792. His parents were not wealthy: but in the circumstances in which Prussia was placed at the beginning of the present century, this was a matter of little importance. The oppressions of France pretty nearly brought down all ranks into one common mass of distress and poverty. To meet the cruel exactions of Napoleon, families gave up every article of value to the state. For their gold they received tokens in iron; and these acknowledgments are still treasured by families, as lasting memorials of an adversity which took away almost everything but life. Amidst these national sufferings and humiliations, Carl Gottlob Zumpt received such an education as could then be procured. Fortunately he required no incitement to learn: from childhood he had been a diligent porer over books; and the acquisition of languages cost him no trouble. Nature made him a scholar. After passing through a series of schools and gymnasia in Berlin, he was sent, by the advice of Buttman, the well-known grammarian, to the university of Heidelberg, which at that time enjoyed a high reputation. Kreuzer, Voss, Boeckh, belonged to it, all of them men of talent, and celebrated for their philological learning. During Zumpt's residence at Heidelberg, the university of Berlin was founded; and returning home, he finished his education in his native city.

Though still a young man, Zumpt was already noted for his remarkable attainments in the Greek and Roman languages. Thrown upon his own resources, he soon distinguished himself, and was appointed a teacher in one of the principal seminaries. From this position he subsequently rose to be Professor of History in the Royal Military Academy, and finally to be Professor of Roman Literature in the university of Berlin.

The life of a scholar is usually barren of incident. There is little to tell about Zumpt. Amidst the cares of public teaching, he found time to occupy himself in writing various works, critical and historical, all connected with his favourite branch of study. To improve his knowledge of antiquities, he made a tour through Italy and Greece, which, while of considerable service to him as a man of letters, unfortunately tended to injure his health. This tour was made in 1835, and after that year Zumpt laboured still more assiduously at his critical editions of the classics, unmindful of aught but that love of digging among ancient words and thoughts which seems a fanaticism in the German mind. His great aim was to be a Latinist worthy of the Augustine age itself. Nor was he unsuccessful; for he wrote Latin with great elegance. He was seldom required to speak the language; but when called on to do so, he delivered himself with correctness and fluency. In this respect he is supposed to have had no superior among his learned countrymen.

Holding this man in respect, not alone for his intellectual, but his moral and social qualities, we shall always consider it as something to say that we have enjoyed his personal acquaintance. In the course of a tour in Germany, and short residence in Berlin in 1847, we had the pleasure of visiting him at his house in the Burgher Strasse – a terrace-like street on a branch of the Spree. We found Zumpt entombed amidst his books. Tall in person, emaciated from study, and wrapped in a dressing-gown, he rose and affectionately welcomed us to Berlin in tolerable English – a language which, in compliment, he insisted all his family should speak on every occasion of our visit. At this time he was engaged on his edition of 'Quintus Curtius' – a work which will long be regarded as a monument of his industry and learning.

One of the objects of our visit to Zumpt was to consult with him on the subject of an enterprise in which he had recently engaged – the joint editorship, with Dr Schmitz of Edinburgh, of a series of Latin classics for use in schools. The projectors of this undertaking were the publishers of the present sheet. Having in our own early days experienced the dreary heaviness of ordinary school classics, unrelieved by the slightest explanations in English touching the subject or the authors, we were glad to be instrumental in putting into the hands of youth a series which they could peruse with some degree of pleasure, or at all events not with absolute weariness and disgust. As Dr Zumpt entered heartily into the design, the arrangement promised to have the advantage of naturalising in Britain a set of editions drawn freshly from comparatively original sources, in place of the bald reprints of antiquated copies. The task occupied the amiable scholar during the remainder of his too short life, at the close of which he had prepared the whole series excepting a portion of Horace, which has consequently fallen into the hands of his nephew and son-in-law, A. W. Zumpt. A victim to his study of ancient literature, his failing eyesight first, and afterwards disordered viscera, admonished him to take some species of relaxation. This counsel he took when too late. In the hope of relief from his sufferings, he repaired to Carlsbad, a watering-place in Bohemia; and there, to the great grief of his family and friends, he died on the 25th of June last, in the fifty-eighth year of his age. The decease of the illustrious Zumpt, together with the loss of Orelli, and the veteran Hellenist, Gottfried Hermann, both of whom died within the last eighteen months, leaves a blank among European scholars which will not soon be filled up.

    W. C.

COLA MONTI

The conceptions of female beauty which men form for themselves are frequently, if not always, overturned by some plain face, in which they find the mystic influence they had supposed to belong only to features of a particular and more perfect mould. In like manner our theories touching certain departments of literature are liable to be damaged now and then by the appearance of a work which fulfils not one of the conditions we had laid down as absolute necessities. Now here, for instance, is a volume of fiction without even an attempt at a plot, and yet with a perfect enchainment of interest – a hero without adventures and without a heroine, yet whose fortunes we follow with a true excitement! How does this come about? Why do we love plain women, and admire ill-constructed books? Because there is an innate power in the irregular features to excite our sympathies, and a quality in authors, called Genius, to command them. No man, we will venture to say, possessing common sensibility, can read 'Cola Monti,'[14 - Cola Monti; or the Story of a Genius. By the Author of 'How to Win Love,' 'Michael the Miner,' &c. London: Arthur Hall and Co. 1849.] although it is of the class of books for young people, without a thoughtful brow and a glistening eye; and we have heard a family circle declare that 'they had found it impossible to lay down the volume till they had finished it.'

Cola Monti is an Italian boy educated economically at a boarding-school in England. His talent for drawing exhibited itself first in caricatures of his companions, and he then ventured to try his hand upon the master himself. 'This was irresistible; and when the Doctor stood out in relief from the slate in all his peculiarities – his stiff collar, his upright hair, and his spectacles – the likeness was such, that the boys gave a general hurra. So much noise did they make, and so intent were they, that no one heard the door open, until the original of the portrait looked over Cola's shoulder and beheld – himself! It was a terrible moment in schoolboy annals. The Doctor looked, frowned, glanced round at the young rebels, then again at the slate. Whether it was that natural vanity made him feel rather pleased to see the only likeness of himself which had ever been taken, or whether Cola's sketch had less of caricature than nature, it is impossible to say; but Doctor Birch smiled – absolutely smiled! He was a good-tempered man, and the boys knew it: they took advantage of it sometimes, the naughty fellows! So the smile gradually went round, until it became a laugh, and the schoolmaster could not help laughing too.' The boy-artist then, at the instigation of his companions, resolved to try his chivalrous friend and patron Archibald M'Kaye: – 'Archibald looked surprised, and rather vexed; for one of his weaknesses was, that he could not bear being laughed at; however, he took his station. Cola finished the sketch, but it was no caricature: it was a capital likeness of Archibald's thoughtful head, with the soft curling hair, and the calm, serious eyes. "Why, Cola, you ought to be an artist," cried the boys when they saw it. Cola smiled, and his eyes kindled. "I will try!" he said in his own heart, and from that day he drew no more caricatures.'

Cola Monti's national and personal sympathies were now strongly excited in favour of a poor little Italian organ-boy, who was found dying of starvation by the roadside. He had no other means of permanently assisting him than by supplying him with drawings to sell, in the hope of thus enabling him to collect a fund sufficient for the purchase of a new organ, his own having been destroyed. This fund at length amounted, by slow accumulations, to L.10 in silver; but the organ-boy, who had become devotedly attached to his patron, could not consent to be thus paid off. Poor Cola was now in destitution himself. His mother had died; his stepfather refused to contribute longer to his support; and in fact he was thrown adrift upon the world. The generous debate between him and his protégé was terminated by both proceeding to London upon the fortune of L.10 – Cola to pursue his career of an artist, and Seppi in the quality of his servant.

Arrived in London, 'Cola woke the next morning, dreaming that he was at school again, and that, somehow or other, his class was all composed of great stout farmers, who would persist in repeating their Italian verbs with a strong Staffordshire accent. The dream vanished under the influence of a bright sunbeam that crept through the small uncurtained window, and just reached his nose. In London, the good-natured sun is more partial to attic windows than to any other, and it made Cola's tiny room quite cheerful. From thence he looked, not at the street, which lay many feet below, but skywards, where, above the tops of the houses, he could see the great dome of St Paul's lifting itself up, grand and giant-like, with its ball and cross glistening in the clear light of early morning. This was the first sight that struck Cola in London. His artist-mind felt it to the uttermost. The numberless streets below seemed so solemn and quiet, lying in the shadow of the scarcely-risen sun; and though even now the sounds of life were beginning to stir, they were but faint as yet, while over the dark and half-awakened city watched its great temple, already illumined with the sunbeams. It was a scene that Cola never forgot, and never will while he lives.' He finds his way as soon as possible to the National Gallery. 'I shall not enlarge upon the feelings of the boy-artist when he beheld for the first time this grand collection of paintings. He had seen many in his childhood; but the memory of them was grown dim. He looked on these with the sensations of one blind, who re-enters a long-forgotten world with his eyes opened. He began to understand and to feel what Art really was. This new sense dazzled and overwhelmed him; his heart beat wildly; he trembled; and fairly subdued with emotion, he sat down in the darkest corner he could find, turned his face away into the shadow, while the tears rose, large and silently, to the long lashes, and dropped on the arm which he raised to hide them.'

Cola worked, played, and starved by turns, like other friendless adventurers in London; and then came the grand event of his life – his first Academy picture – which was very near being too late. 'Night and day Cola worked, allowing himself only an hour or two for sleep, and scarcely taking any food. His wild and desperate energy sustained him to a degree almost miraculous. Under the influence of this terrible excitement his powers seemed redoubled: he painted as he had never painted before. Archibald, evening after evening, walked up from Islington, not to talk or reason – he dared not do that in Cola's present state – but to sit quietly in the painting-room, watching his labours, and at times encouraging them with a few subdued words of praise, which Cola sometimes scarcely heard. Even M'Kaye was astounded by the almost miraculous way in which, day after day, the picture advanced to completion beneath the young artist's hand; and as he looked, he could not but acknowledge that there is nothing in this world so strong, so daring, so all-powerful as genius.

'The first Monday in April came – there were but four-and-twenty hours left; Tuesday – there were but twelve! Seppi stood by with the untasted dinner, his bright black eyes continually filling with tears. He dared not even speak to his young master, who, with wild and haggard looks, was painting still.

'The clock struck six as Cola's now trembling hand put the last stroke to his picture, and sank on a chair.

"It will do now, I think; it will not disgrace me at least."

"No, indeed it will not, dear Cola! It is a beautiful picture," whispered the gentle, encouraging voice of Archy, who had come direct from Bread Street hither. "And now, do have some dinner, or, what will be better for you, some tea."

"No, no; I can't eat: we shall lose the time: the Academy will be shut. Seppi, I must have a cab, and go there at once."