Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 374, December, 1846

Found where it is, it is certainly a remarkable phenomenon, this waltz. Look now at that young lady – how cold, formal, stately! – how she has been trained to act the little queen amongst her admirers and flatterers! See what a reticence in all her demeanour. Even feminine curiosity, if not subdued, has been dissimulated; and though she notes every thing and every body, and can describe, when she returns home, the dress of half the ladies in the room, it is with an eye that seems to notice nothing. Her head has just been released from the hair-dresser, and every hair is elaborately adjusted. To the very holding of an enormous bouquet, "round as my shield," which of itself seems to forbid all thoughts of motion – every thing has been arranged and re-arranged. She sits like an alabaster figure; she speaks, it is true, and she smiles as she speaks; but evidently the smile and the speech have no natural connexion with one another; they co-exist, but they have both been quite separately studied, prepared, permitted. Well, the waltz strikes up, and at a word from that bowing gentleman, himself a piece of awful formality, this pale, slow, and graceful automaton has risen. Where is she now? She is gone – vanished – transformed. She is nowhere to be seen. But in her stead there is a breathless girl, with flushed cheeks, ringlets given to the wind, dress flying all abroad, spinning round the room, darting diagonally across it, whirling fast as her little feet can carry her – faster, faster – for it is her more powerful cavalier, who, holding her firmly by the waist, sustains and augments her speed.

Perhaps some ingenious mind may discover a profound philosophy in all this; perhaps, by retaining this authorised outlet for the mere rage of movement, the rest of civilised life is better protected against any disturbance of that quietude of deportment which it is so essential to maintain.

But if the waltz appeared to Mr Bloomfield like dancing gone mad, the quadrille which divided the evening with it, formed a sort of compensation by carrying matters to the opposite extreme. A fly in a glue-pot moves with about the same alacrity, and apparently the same amount of pleasure, as did the dancers this evening in their crowded quadrille. As no one, of course, could be permitted to stand with his back to royalty, they were arranged, not in squares, but in two long files as in a country-dance. The few couples that stood near their majesties were allowed a reasonable share of elbow-room, and could get through their evolutions with tolerable composure. But as the line receded from this point, the dancers stood closer and closer together, and at the other extremity of the room it became nothing less than a dense crowd; a crowd where people were making the most persevering and ingenious efforts to accomplish the most spiritless of movements – with a world of pains just crawling in and out again. The motions of this dancing crowd viewed from a proper elevation, would exactly resemble those slow and mysterious evolutions one sees, on close examination, in the brown dust of a cheese, in that condition which some people call ripe, and others rotten.

As to Miss Bloomfield, she keeps her eyes, for the most part, on the king and queen. Having expected to see them rise and join the dance, she was somewhat disappointed to find them retain their seats, the king chatting to a lady at his right, the queen to a lady on her left. Assuredly, if there were any one in that assembly who had come there out of charity, it was their Majesties. Or rather, they were there in performance of one of the duties of royalty, perhaps not the least onerous, that of showing itself in public on certain occasions. When they rose, it was to take their leave, which they were doubtless very glad to do. Nor, indeed, were those who had been most attracted by the advertised presence of their Majesties sorry to witness their departure. They would carry many away with them – there would be more room for the dance – and the quadrille could reassume its legitimate form.

But Mildred – what was she doing or thinking all this time? To her the scene was entirely new; for though Mr and Miss Bloomfield probably attended county balls in their youth, they had not, for some years, so far deviated from the routine of their lives as to frequent any such assemblies. Besides, she had to encounter, what they certainly had not, the gaze of every eye as she passed, and the whispered exclamations of applause. But to have judged from her manner – from that delightful composure which always distinguished it, as free from insipidity as from trepidation or fluster, you would have thought her quite familiar with such scenes and such triumphs. Reflection supplied the place of experience. You saw that those clear blue eyes, from which she looked out with such a calm and keen inquiry, were by no means to be imposed on; that they detected at once the true meaning of the scene before her. She was solicited to dance, but neither the waltz nor the quadrille were at all enticing, and she contented herself with the part of spectator. Her chief amusement was derived from the novel physiognomies which the room presented; and indeed the assortment, comprising, as it did, a sprinkling of many nations – French and Belgian, English and German – was sufficiently varied. There were even two or three lions of the first magnitude, who (judging from the supreme hauteur with which they surveyed the scene) must have been imported from the patron capital of Paris. Lions, bearded magnificently – no mere luxuriance, or timid overgrowth of hair, but the genuine full black glossy beard – faces that might have walked out of Titian's canvass. Mildred would have preferred them in the canvass; they were much too sublime for the occasion. Then there were two or three young English exquisites, gliding about with that published modesty that proclaimed indifference, which seeks notoriety by the very graceful manner in which it seems struggling to avoid it. You see a smile upon their lips as they disengage themselves from the crowd, as if they rallied themselves for taking any share in the bustle or excitement of the scene; but that smile, be it understood, is by no means intended to escape detection.

There were a greater number of fat and elderly gentlemen than Mildred would have expected, taking part in the dance, or circulating about the room with all or more than the vivacity of youth. How happy! – how supremely blest! – seems that rotund and bald-headed sire, who, standing on the edge of the dais, now forsaken by their Majesties, surveys the whole assembly, and invites the whole assembly to return the compliment. How beautifully the bland sympathy he feels for others mingles with and swells his sense of self-importance! How he dominates the whole scene! How fondly patronises! And then his smile! – why, his heart is dancing with them all; it is beating time to twice two hundred feet. An old friend approaches him – he is happy too – would shake him by the hand. The hand he gives; but he cannot withdraw his eye from the wide scene before him; he cannot possibly call in and limit his sympathies at that moment to one friend, however old and dear. And he who solicits his hand, he also is looking around him at the same time, courting the felicitations of the crowd, who will not fail to observe that he too is there, and there amongst friends.

In the female portion of the assembly there was not so much novelty. Mildred could only remark that there was a large proportion of brunettes, and that the glossy black hair was parted on the head and smoothed down on either side with singular neatness and precision. Two only out of this part of the community attracted her particular notice, and they were of the most opposite description. Near to her stood a lady who might have been either thirty, or forty, or fifty, for all that her sharp and lively features betrayed. She wore one of those small round hats, with the feather drooping round it, which formed, we believe, a part of the costume of Louis XV.; and that which drew the notice of Mildred was the strange resemblance she bore, in appearance and manner, to the portraitures which some French memoirs had made familiar to her imagination. As she watched her in conversation with an officer in full regimentals, who stood by her side, her fancy was transported to Versailles or St Cloud. What a caustic pleasantry! What a malicious vivacity! It was impossible to doubt that the repartees which passed between her and her companion were such as to make the ears of the absent tingle. There were some reputations suffering there as the little anecdote was so trippingly narrated. Her physiognomy was redolent of pleasant scandal —

"Tolerably mild,
To make a wash she'd hardly stew a child;"

but to extract a jest, there was no question she would have distilled half the reputations in the room.

The other object of Mildred's curiosity, we pause a moment to describe, because she will cross our path again in the course of this narrative. Amongst all the costly and splendid dresses of her sex, there was a young girl in some simple striped stuff, the most unsophisticated gown imaginable, falling flat about her, with a scanty cape of the same material about her neck – the walking-dress, in short, of a school-girl. The only preparation for the ball-room consisted of a wreath imitative of daisies, just such a wreath as she might have picked up in passing through a Catholic cemetry. And the dress quite suited the person. There she stood with eyes and mouth wide open, as if she saw equally through both apertures, full of irrepressible wonder, and quite confounded with delight. She had been asked to dance by some very young gentleman, but as she elbowed her way through the quadrille, she was still staring right and left with unabated amazement. Mildred smiled to herself as she thought that with the exception of that string of white tufts round her head, no larger than beads, which was to pass for a wreath, she looked for all the world as if some spirit had suddenly snatched her up from the pavement of the High Street of Wimborne, and deposited her in the ball-room of Brussels. Little did Mildred imagine that, that crude little person, absurd, untutored, ridiculous as she was, would one day have it in her power to subdue, and torture, and triumph over her!

CHAPTER III

Mildred was at this moment checked in her current of observation, and reduced to play something more than the part of spectator. Her ear caught a voice, heard only once before, but not forgotten; she turned, and saw the stranger who had surprised her when, in her girlish days, she was sitting in the minster tower. He immediately introduced himself by asking her to dance.

"I do not dance," she said, but in a manner which did not seem to refuse conversation. The stranger appeared very well satisfied with the compromise; and some pleasant allusion to the different nature of the scene in which they last met, put them at once upon an easy footing.

"You say you do not dance – that is, of course, you will not. I shall not believe," he continued, "even if you had just stepped from your high tower of wisdom, but that you can do any thing you please to do. Pardon so blunt a speech."

"Oh, I can, I think," she replied. "My uncle, I believe, would have taught me the broad-sword exercise, if any one had suggested its utility to him."

And saying this, she turned to her uncle, to give him an opportunity, if he pleased, of joining the conversation. It was an opportunity which Mr Bloomfield, who had heard a foreign language chattered in his ear all the evening, would have gladly taken; but the patience of that gentleman had been for some time nearly exhausted; he had taken his sister under his arm, and was just going to propose to Mildred to leave the room.

The stranger escorted them through the crowd, and saw the ladies into their carriage.

"Can we set you down any where?" said Mr Bloomfield, who, though impatient to be gone, was disposed to be very cordial towards his fellow-countryman. "We are at the Hotel de l'Europe."

"And I opposite at the Hotel de Flandres– I will willingly accept your offer;" and he took the vacant seat in their carriage.

"How do you like Brussels?" was on the lips of both gentlemen at the same time.

"Nay," said the younger, "I have been here, I think, the longest; the question is mine by right of priority of residence."

Mr Bloomfield was nothing loath to communicate his impression of all that he had seen, and especially to dilate upon a grievance which, it seemed, had sorely afflicted him.

"As to the town, old and new, and especially the Grande Place, with its Hotel de Ville, I have been highly interested by it; but, my dear sir, the torture of walking over its horrid pavement! Only conceive a quiet old bachelor, slightly addicted to the gout, accustomed to take his walk over his well-rolled paths, or on his own lawn, (if not too damp,) suddenly put down amongst these cruel stones, rough and sharp, and pitched together in mere confusion, to pick his way how he can, with the chance of being smashed by some cart or carriage, for one is turned out on the same road with the horses. I am stoned to death, with this only difference, that I fall upon the stones instead of the stones falling upon me. And when there is a pavement —a trottoir, as they call it – it is often so narrow and slanting, and always so slippery, and every now and then broken by some step put there purposely, it would seem, to overthrow you, that it is better to bear the penance at once of the sharp footing in the centre of the street. Trottoirs, indeed! I should like to see any one trot upon them without breaking his neck! A spider or a black beetle, or any other creature that crawls upon a multitude of legs, and has not far to fall if he stumbles, is the only animal that is safe upon them. I go moaning all the day about these jogged pointed stones, that pitch me from one to the other with all the malice of little devils; and, would you believe it? my niece there only smiles, and tells me to get thick shoes! They cannot hurt her; she walks somehow over the tops of them as if they were so many balls of Indian rubber, and has no compassion for her gouty uncle."

"Oh, my dear uncle" —

"No, none at all; indeed you are not overburdened with that sentiment at any time for your fellow-travellers. You bear all the afflictions of the road – your own and other people's – very calmly."

"Don't mind him, my dear," said Miss Bloomfield, "he has been exclaiming again and again what an excellent traveller you make; nothing puts you out."

"That is just what I say – nothing does put her out. In that she is a perfect Mephistophiles. You know the scene of confusion on board a steamer when it arrives at Antwerp, and is moored in under the quay on a hot day, with its full complement of passengers. There you are baked by the sun and your own furnaces; stunned by the jabber around you, and the abominable roar over your head made by the escape of the steam; the deck strewed with baggage, which is then and there to be publicly examined – turned over by the revenue officers, who leave you to pack up your things in their original compass, if you can. Well, in all this scene of confusion, there sat my niece with her parasol over her little head, looking quite composedly at the great cathedral spires, as if we were not all of us in a sort of infernal region there."

"No, uncle, I looked every now and then at our baggage, too, and watched that interesting process you have described of its examination. And when the worthy officer was going to crush aunt's bonnet by putting your dressing-case on the top of it, I rose, and arrested him. I had my hand upon his arm. He thought I was going to take him prisoner of war, for he was about to put his hand to his sword; but a second look at his enemy reassured him."

"Oh, you did squeak when the bonnets were touched," cried the uncle, "I am glad of that: it shows that you have some human, at least some feminine, feeling in your composition."

"But àpropos of the pavement," said the young stranger, who could not join the uncle in this banter on his niece, and was therefore glad to get back to some common ground. "I took up, in a reading-room, the other day, a little pamphlet on phrenology, by M. Victor Idjiez, Fondateur du Musée Phrenologique at Brussels. It might as well have been entitled, on animal magnetism, for he is one of those who set the whole man in motion – mind and body both – by electricity. Amongst other things, he has discovered that that singular strength which madmen often display in their fits, is merely a galvanic power which they draw (owing, I suppose, to the peculiar state of their nerves,) from the common reservoir the earth, and which, consequently, forsakes them when they are properly isolated. In confirmation of this theory, he gives a singular fact from a Brussels journal, showing that asphalte pavement will isolate the individual. A madman had contrived to make his escape from confinement, having first thrown all the furniture of his room out of the window, and knocked down and trampled upon his keeper. Off he ran, and no one would venture to stop him. A corporal and four soldiers were brought up to the attack: he made nothing of them; after having beaten the four musketeers, he took the corporal by the leg and again ran off, dragging him after upon the ground. A crowd of work-people emerging from a factory met him in full career with the corporal behind him, and undertook his capture. All who approached him were immediately thrown down – scattered over the plain. But his triumph was suddenly checked; he lighted upon a piece of asphalte pavement. The moment he put his foot upon it, his strength deserted him, and he was seized and taken prisoner. The instant, however, he stepped off the pavement, his strength revived, and he threw his assailants from him with the same ease as before. And thus it continued: whenever he got off the pavement, his strength was restored to him; the moment he touched it, he was again captured with facility. The asphalte had completely isolated him."

"Ha! ha!" cried Mr Bloomfield; "the fellow, after all, was not quite so mad as not to know what he was about. A Brussels pavement, asphalte or not, is no place for a wrestling match. Isolated, indeed! Oh, doubtless, it would isolate you most completely – at least the soles of your feet – from all communication with the earth. But does Mr – what do you call him? – proceed to theorise upon such facts as these?"

"You shall have another of them. Speaking of animal magnetism or electricity, he says – 'There are certain patients the iron nails of whose shoes will fly out if they are laid in a direction due north.'"[41 - "Il existe des malades dont les clous jai'lissent des chaussures quand ils sont étendus dans la direction du nord."]

"But you are quoting from Baron Munchausen."

"Not precisely."

Miss Bloomfield, who had been watching her opportunity, here brought in her contribution. "Pray, sir, do you believe the story they tell of the architect of the Hotel de Ville – that he destroyed himself on finding, after he had built it, that the tower was not in the centre?"

"That the architect should not discover that till the building was finished, is indeed too good a story to be true."

"But, then, why make the man kill himself? Something must have happened; something must be true."

"Why, madam, there was, no doubt, a committee of taste in those days as in ours. They destroyed the plan of the architect by cutting short one of his wings, or prolonging the other; and he, out of vexation, destroyed himself. This is the only explanation that occurs to me. A committee of taste is always, in one sense at least, the death of the artist."

"Yes, yes," said Mildred; "the artist can be no longer said to exist, if he is not allowed, in his own sphere, to be supreme."

This brought them to the door of the hotel. They separated.

The next morning, on returning from their walk, the ladies found a card upon their table which simply bore the name of "Alfred Winston." The gentleman who called with it, the waiter said, had left word that he regretted he was about to quit Brussels, that evening, for Paris.

Mildred read the name several times – Alfred Winston. And this was all she knew of him – the name upon this little card!

There were amongst the trio several discussions as to who or what Mr Alfred Winston might be. Miss Bloomfield pronounced him to be an artist, from his caustic observations on committees of taste, and their meddling propensities. Mr Bloomfield, on the contrary, surmised he was a literary man; for who but such a one would think of occupying himself in a reading-room with a pamphlet on phrenology, instead of the newspapers? And all ended in "wondering if they should fall upon him again?"

THE LAW AND ITS PUNISHMENTS

It is no uncommon boast in the mouth of Englishmen, that the system of jurisprudence under which they have the happiness to live, is the most perfect the world has ever seen. Having its foundation in those cabalistic words, "Nullus liber homo," &c., engraved with an iron pen upon the tablets of the constitution by the barons of King John, the criminal law, in their estimation, has been steadily improved by the wisdom of successive ages, until, in the present day, it has reached a degree of excellence which it were rashness to suppose can by any human sagacity be surpassed. Under its protecting influence, society reposes in security; under its just, but merciful administration, the accused finds every facility for establishing his innocence, and is allowed the benefit of every doubt that ingenuity can suggest to rebut the probability of guilt; before its sacred tribunals, the weak and the powerful, the poor and the rich, stand in complete equality; under its impartial sentence, all who merit punishment are alike condemned, without respect of any antecedents of rank, wealth, or station. In such a system, no change can take place without injury, for it is (not to speak irreverently) a system of perfection.

This is the dream of many – for we must characterise it rather as a dream than a deliberate conviction. Reason, we fear, has but little to do with the opinions of those who hold that English jurisprudence has no need of reform.

The praises which are so lavishly bestowed upon our criminal law may be, to a great extent, just; but it is to be doubted whether they are altogether judicious. It is true, that in no other system of jurisprudence throughout the civilised world, or among the nations of antiquity, has there existed, or is there so tender a regard for the rights of the accused. In Germany, the wretch who falls under suspicion of the law is subjected to a tedious and inquisitorial examination, with a view to elicit from his own lips the proof, and even the confession of guilt. This mental torture, not to speak of the imprisonment of the body, may be protracted for years, and even for life. In France, the facts connected with an offence are published by authority, and circulated throughout the country, to be greedily devoured by innumerable lovers of unwholesome excitement; and not the simple facts alone, but a thousand incidental circumstances connected with the transaction, together with the birth, parentage, and education, and all the previous life of the supposed offender, making in the whole a romance of considerable interest, and possessing an attraction beyond the ordinary tales which fill the feuilleton of a newspaper. In England, the position of the accused is widely different. We avoid the errors and the tyranny of our neighbours; but have we not fallen into the opposite extreme? Our magistrates scrupulously caution prisoners not to say any thing that may criminate themselves. Every thing that authority can effect by means of advice, which, under the circumstances, is equivalent to command, is carefully brought forward to prevent a confession. And if, in spite of checks, warnings, and commands, the accused, overcome by the pangs of conscience, and urged by an irresistible impulse to disburden his soul of guilt, should perchance confess, the testimony is sometimes rejected upon some technical point of law, which would seem to have been established for the express purpose of defeating the ends of justice. Indeed, the technicalities which surround our legal tribunals have been, until very lately, and are still, in too many instances, most strangely favourable to the escape of criminals. The idlest quibbles, most offensive to common sense, and utterly disgraceful in a court of criminal investigation, have at various times been allowed as valid pleas in defence of the most palpable crimes. Many a thief has escaped, on the ground of some slight and immaterial misdescription of the stolen article, such as a horse instead of a mare, a cow instead of an ox, a sheep for a ewe, and so on. True, these absurdities exist no longer; but others still remain, less ridiculous perhaps, but not less obstructive of the course of justice, and quite as pernicious in their example. Great and beneficial changes have been effected in the criminal code, and too much praise cannot be bestowed upon Sir Robert Peel for his exertions in this behalf. To her Majesty's commissioners, also, some thanks are due for the labour they have expended with a view to the consolidation and subsequent codification of the various statutes. Their labours, however, have not hitherto been very largely productive. The excellent object of simplifying our criminal laws still remains to be accomplished, and so long as it does so, so long will it be obnoxious to the censures which are not unsparingly heaped upon it.

But if our jurisprudence be in one respect too favourable to the criminal, in another, as it appears to us, the balance is more than restored to its equilibrium. If, in the process of investigation, justice leans too much to the side of mercy, the inquiry once over, she quickly repents of her excessive leniency, and is careful to justify her ways by a rigorous severity. The accused, if he is not lucky enough to avail himself of the thousand avenues of escape that are open during the progress of his trial, must abandon all hope of further consideration, and look to undergo a punishment, of which the full extent cannot be estimated by any human sagacity. Once condemned, he ceases to be an object of care or solicitude, except so far as these are necessary to preserve his life and restrain his liberty. Through crime he has forfeited all claim upon the fostering care of the state. He is an alien and an outcast, and has no pretence for expecting any thing but misery.

Surely there is something vindictive in all this – something not quite consistent with the calm and unimpassioned administration of justice. The first impressions of any man of ordinary humanity must be very much against a system which fosters and encourages such a state of things. We believe that those first impressions would be confirmed by inquiry; and it is our purpose in the present article briefly to state the reasons for our belief.

The treatment of criminals under sentence of imprisonment must now be well known to the public. Repeated discussion and innumerable writings have rendered it familiar to every body. A man is condemned to undergo, let us say, three years' incarceration in a jail. A portion of the time is to be spent in hard labour. He commences his imprisonment with no other earthly object than to get through it with the least possible amount of suffering. Employment, which might, under better circumstances, be a pleasant resource, is distasteful to him because it is compulsory, and because it is productive of no benefit to himself. The hours that are unemployed are passed in company with others as bad as, or worse than, himself. They amuse themselves by recounting the history of their lives, their hairbreadth escapes, their successful villanies. Each profits by the experience of the whole number, and stores it in his memory for future guidance. Every good impulse is checked, and every better feeling stifled in the birth. There is no room in a jail for the growth of virtue; the atmosphere is not congenial to its development. The prisoner, however well disposed, cannot choose but listen to the debasing talk of those with whom he is compelled to associate. Should he resist the wicked influence for a while, he can hardly do so long. The poison will work. By little and little it insinuates itself into the mind, and vitiates all the springs of good. In the end, he yields to the irresistible force of continued bad example, and becomes as bad as the worst.