Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 408, January 1849

WHAT HAS REVOLUTIONISING GERMANY ATTAINED?

It is now rather more than a year since we asked, "What would revolutionising Germany be at?" A full year has passed over the dreamy, theorising, restless, and excited head of Germany, then confused and staggering, like "a giant drunken with new wine," but loudly vaunting that its strong dose of revolution had strengthened and not fuddled it, and that it was about to work out of its troubled brains a wondrous system of German Unity, which was to bring it infinite and permanent happiness; and now we would once more ask, What is the result of the attempted application of German revolutionising theory to practice? In fact, what has revolutionising Germany attained? Our first question we asked without being able to resolve an answer. The problem was stated: an attempt was made to arrive at something like a solution out of the distracting hurly-burly of supposed purposes and so-called intentions; but, after every effort to make out our "sum" in any reasonable manner, we were obliged to give it up, as a task impossible to any political mathematician, not of German mould; to declare any definite solution for the present hopeless, – and to end our amount of calculation by arriving only in a cercle vicieux at the statement of the problem with which we started, and asking, as despairingly as a tired schoolboy with a seemingly impracticable equation before him, "What, indeed, would revolutionising Germany be at?" Are we any further advanced now? We will not attempt the difficult sum again, or we might find ourselves obliged to avow ourselves as much deficient in the study of German political mathematics as before. But we may at least try to undertake a mere sum of addition, endeavour to cast up the amount of figures the Germans themselves have laid before us, and make out, as well as we can, what, after a year's hard – and how hard! – work, revolutionising Germany has attained. The species of sum-total, as far as the addition can yet go, to which we may arrive, may be still a very confused and unsatisfactory one; but in asking, "What has revolutionising Germany attained?" we will not take it entirely to our own charge, if the answer attempted to be made is thus confused and unsatisfactory. German political sums are all too puzzling for English heads.

Last year Germany was, as yet, very young in its revolutionary career. It galloped over the country like an unbroken colt, or rather like a mad bull, "running a-muck" it scarcely knew, and seemingly little cared, at what, provided that it trampled beneath its hoofs all that stood, and, with proper culture, might have flourished and borne fruit. It tried to imitate the frantic caperings of its fellow-revolutioniser in the next paddock, just over the Rhine; but it imitated this model in so clumsy a fashion, that it might have been very aptly compared to the ass in the fable, had not the demonstrations it sought to make been destructive kicks, and not mistaken caresses; and the model it sought to copy resembled the bloodhound rather than the lap-dog. It kicked out to the right and to the left, and, with its kicks, inflicted several stunning blows, from which the other states, upon whose heads the kicks fell, found some difficulty in recovering. Even the maddest of the drivers who spurred it on, however, found it necessary to present some goal, at which it was eventually to arrive in its mad career – that goal was called "German Unity" in one great powerful united Germany. Where this visionary goal existed, or how it was to be attained – by what path, or in what direction, none seemed to know; but the cry was, "On, on, on!" That it should miss this goal, thus visionary and indistinct, and plunge on past it, through the darkness of anarchy, to another winning-post, just as indistinct and visionary, called "a universal republic," was a matter of little consideration, or was even one of hope, to those of its principal drivers who whipped, and spurred, and hooted it, with deafening and distracting cries, like the Roman drivers of the unridden horses in the Corso races. A breaker-in was attempted, however, to be placed, and not, at first, precisely by those who most wished to check it, upon the back of the tearing beast, in order to moderate its paces, and canter it as gently as might be, onwards to the denied goal – which still, however, lay only in a most misty distance, to which none seemed to know the road. In this rider, called a central Frankfort parliament, men began to place their hopes, they trusted confidently that it might ride the animal to its destination, although they knew not where that lay. The revolution, then, was decked out with colours of red, and black, and gold – the colours of an old German empire, and of a new derived German unity – and the rider mounted into the saddle. How the rider endeavoured to show the animal's paces – how he strove to guide him forwards – how sometimes he seemed, indeed, to be proceeding along a path, uncertain, it is true, but apparently leading somewhere– how often he stumbled – how often, in his inexperience, he slipped in his saddle – how, at last, he slipped and fell from it altogether, in vain endeavouring, maimed, mutilated, bruised, and half stunned, to spring into the saddle again, are matters of newspaper history that need no detail here. It suffices to say, that the rider was unhorsed – that the animal gave a last desperate plunge, kicking and wounding the only one of the states around that strove to the last to caress and soothe it with gentle treatment – that it now stands perspiring, shaking, quivering in every limb – snorting in vain struggle, and champing the bit of the bridle which Prussian military force has thrown upon it. To what, then, has Germany attained in its revolutionising career? It has, at all events, not reached that imaginary goal to which men strove to ride it without direction-post. The goal is as far off as ever, perhaps farther off than before, as may be shown. It remains just as vague, and visionary, and misty. Not one step seems to have been taken towards it. Has no farther step whatever been taken, then, after all this mad rushing hither and thither? And if any, how, and whither? We shall endeavour to see, as far as we are able. Our readers must, then, judge whether it be forwards or backwards, or whether, in fact, it be any step at all.

The Frankfort parliament has fallen from its seat. Last year, when we gave a sketch of its sittings in that Lutheran church of St Paul in Frankfort – now bearing a stamp which its sober-minded architect probably never dreamt of, as a historical building – it was young, still in hopes; and amidst its inexperience, its vapouring declamation upon impracticable theories, its noise and confusion, its clamorous radicalism, and its internal treachery, that sought every pretext for exciting to anarchy and insurrection, it put forward men of note and ability – who, however lacking in practical experience, gave evidence of noble hearts, if not sound heads, and good intentions, if not governmental power. It contained, amidst much bad, many elements of good; and, if it has no other advantageous result, it has proved a school of experience, tact, and reason – as far at least as Germans, in the present condition of their political education, have been able to profit by its lessons and its teaching. De mortuis nil nisi bonum as far as possible! It is defunct. What its own inability, want of judgment, internal disorganisation, and "vaulting ambition, that o'erleaps its sell," commenced, was completed by the refusal of the principal northern German states to acknowledge its ill-digested constitution. It sickened upon over-feeding of conceit, excess of supposed authority, and a naturally weak constitution, combined with organic defects, weakened still more by a perpetual and distracting fever; it was killed outright by what the liberals, as well as the democrats, of Germany choose to call the ill faith and treachery of Prussia in declining to accept its offers, and ultimately refusing to listen to its dictates. Its dying convulsions were frightful. It fled to Stutgardt, in the hopes that change of air might save it in its last extremity: and there it breathed its last. Its very home is a wreck; its furniture has been sold to pay the expenses of its burial; its lucubrations, and its mighty acts, in which it once fondly hoped to have swayed all Germany, if not the world, have been dispersed, in their recorded form, among cheesemongers and greengrocers as waste-paper, at so much the pound. Its house – the silent, sad, and denuded church of St Paul – looks now like its only mausoleum; and on its walls remains alive the allegorical picture of that great German empire, which it deemed it had but to will to found – the grim, dark, shaded face of which grows grimmer and darker still, day by day; whilst the sun that rises behind it, without illuminating its form, daily receives its thicker and thicker cloud of dust to obscure its painted rays. Of a sooth, the allegory is complete. It is dead, and resolved to ashes. Its better and brighter elements have given up their last breath, as, in their meeting at Gotha, they made a last effort to discuss the acceptance of the constitution which Prussia offered in lieu of their own, and strove, although only still wearing a most ghostly semblance of life, to propose to themselves the best ultimate means of securing that desideratum, which they still seem to consider as the panacea for all evils – the great and powerful "United Germany" of their theoretical dreams. This last breath was not without its noble aspirations. Its less pure, more self-seeking, and darker elements have striven, by wild and no longer (even in appearance) legal means, to galvanise themselves into a false existence; their last struggles were such hideous and distracted contortions as are usually produced by such galvanic applications; and now the German papers daily record the arrest of various members of the so-called "Rump Parliament," (so nicknamed by the application or rather misapplication of an English historical term,) which received its final extinguishing blow at Stutgardt, mixed up, in these days of imprisonment, as the consequence of mistaken liberty, along with insurgents and rebels engaged in the late disastrous scenes acted in the duchy of Baden. Such was to be their fate. But, be it for good or for evil, the Frankfort parliament has died, as was prophesied, and not without convulsions: its purposes have proved null; its hopes have been dispersed to the winds; its very traces have been swept away; its memory is all but a bitter mockery. Thus far, then, we may indeed shake our heads despairingly as we ask – "What has revolutionising Germany as yet attained?"

What has it attained? Let as go on. In the first place, what remains of the gigantic cloud, which men attempted to catch, embody, and model into a palpable form, although with hands inexperienced, and with as little of the creative and vivifying health really within its power, as Frankenstein, when he sought to remould the crumbling elements he possessed into a human form, and produced a monster. What remains of the great united German empire of men's dreams? Nothing but a phantom of a central power, grasping the powerless sceptre of a ghostly empire; surrounded by ministers whose dictates men despise and disregard, in veritable exercise of their functions, as ghostly as itself. The position of the Imperial administration has become a byword and a scoff; and it is lamentable to see a prince, whose good intentions never have been doubted, and whose popular sympathies have been so often shown, standing thus, in a situation which borders upon the ridiculous – an almost disregarded and now useless puppet – a quasi emperor without even the shadow of an empire; and yet condemned to play at empire-administrating – as children play at kings and queens – none heeding their innocent and bootless game. How far the edicts of the defunct Frankfort parliament, and the decrees of the government of the Imperial Vicarage – paralysed in all real strength, if not utterly defunct now – are held as a public mockery, is very pithily evidenced to the least open eyes of any traveller to the baths of Germany, at most of which the gambling tables – supposed to be suppressed, and declared to be illegal by the shade of the "central power," – openly pursue their manœuvres, and earn their gains as of yore; or, at most, fix upon the doors of their hells a ticket, written "salons reservés," to give them the faint appearance of private establishments, and thus adopt a very flimsy pretext, and effect a most barefaced evasion of a hitherto useless law. Croupiers and gamblers sit squatting, most disrespectfully, at almost every bathing-place, upon the Imperial edict – as the toads and frogs squatted upon King Log – treating him as a jest, and covering him with their filthy slime. By what authority – of the same Imperial Vicar also – the whole country around Frankfort is overrun with Prussian soldiers, it would be difficult to show. That the so-called free city itself should be occupied by a joint garrison of Prussian and Austrian troops for its protection, may be looked upon as a legal measure, adopted and authorised by a new parliament, and a central power, such as it is, as by the old Diet. But when we see in every village round about – in every house, in almost every hovel – those hosts of Prussian spiked helmets gleaming in the sun – those Prussian bayonets planted before every door – those Prussian uniforms, studding, with variegated colour, every green rural scene; when we never cease to hear upon the breeze – wherever we may wander in the country – the clang of Prussian military bands, and the tramp of Prussian infantry; when we find the faces of Prussian military at every window, and observe Prussian soldiers mixing in every action of the common everyday life of the country; and then turn to ask how it comes that Prussian soldiers swarm throughout a part of the land in no way belonging to Prussia, we are able to receive no more reasonable answer than that "they are there because they are there" – an explanation which has a more significant meaning in it than the apparently senseless words seem to express. "They are there because they are there" – that is to say, without any recognised authority from any central German power. "They are there because they are there," – because Prussia has sent them. Where, then, is the central power? – what is its force? what its authority? what its sense? If, then, all that still remains, in living form, of that great united Germany of men's dreams, is but the "shadow of a shade," in power – a power disregarded – even more, despised and ridiculed – what has revolutionising Germany attained in its chase after the phantom of its hopes?

If in this respect it has attained nothing which it can show, after more than a year's revolution, for the avowed or pretended purpose of obtaining some result to this very end, it cannot be said, however, that nothing remains to Germany of its dream of unity. Spite of sad experience – spite of the uselessness of every effort – spite of sacrifices made and sorrows suffered – Germany still pursues its phantom with as much ardour as before. Like the prince in the fairy-tale, who, panting, breathless, half-dead with exhaustion and fatigue, still hunted without rest for the imaginary original of the fair portrait placed in his hands – untired and unyielding, after the repeated disappointments of lifting veil after veil from forms which he thought might be that of the beloved one – still driven on by an incurable longing – still yearning despairingly, and with false hope, – so does Germany, after lifting veil after veil only to find delusive spectres beneath, still yearn and long for the object of its adoration. It is impossible to travel, even partially, through the country, without discovering, from every conversation with all classes, that the intense craving for this object – this great blessing of a grand and powerful United Germany – is as strong as ever – far stronger than ever! For what was not very long ago only the watchword of the fancied liberal student, in his play of would-be conspirator – what was but the pretext of really conspiring and subversive democrats – what grew only by degrees into the cry of the people, who clamoured, not knowing what they clamoured for – has taken evidently the strongest root throughout the whole mass of German nationality, and grows– grows in despite of the rottenness of the branches it has as yet sent forth – grows in despite of the lopping, breaking, and burning of its first offshoots – grows in despite of the atmosphere of contention, rather than of union, that becomes thicker and more deleterious to its growth, around it, and of the blight it daily receives from the seemingly undispersable mildew of hatred, suspicion, and total want of sympathy between Southern and Northern Germany, which formerly arose only from uncongeniality of temperament, mixed up more or less with difference of religious creed, but now is generated by a thousand causes. This intense craving for the possession of the phantom – increasing, it would seem, in proportion as the phantom flies farther and farther from the grasp – is no longer expressed by the student, the democrat, and the man of the people: it pervades all classes from below to above; it is in the mouth of the man of caution and of sense, as in that of the wild and poetico-political enthusiast; it becomes more and more universal, and it amounts to a mania. Ask of whom you will, "Whither tends German hope?" and the answer will still and ever be the same – "German unity." But ask no more; for if you inquire, as last year, into the "how," the "when," the "where," the answer will in most cases be given in the same strain of incomprehensible and still more impracticable rhapsody – visionary, poetical, noble sometimes, but purposeless as before; or men will shrug their shoulders, shake their heads, and sigh, but still dream on the dream of German unity – still clamour for it loudly. And well may they shake their heads and groan, if such be the end and aim of all German aspirations! for where, indeed, is the pith that leads to it? That which Germany is itself following up, leads (for the present at least) visibly from it, and not towards it. Prussia has promulgated its constitution, – and we may ask, par parenthèse, whether that is to be put forward as the great end which revolutionising Germany has attained, after more than a year's revolution? Prussia has called upon all Germany to join with it, hand in hand, in this constitution, granted and given, but not accepted, at the hands of a Frankfort parliament. In answer to its call, it has found the cleft between Northern and Southern Germany – the cleft, of envy and jealousy, suspicion and mistrust – growing wider and wider to oppose it. It has attempted to form a partial union of Northern Germany – between the more northern states of Prussia, Hanover, and Saxony; but even in this union has been disunion – reticence, and suspicion, and doubt, and indecision, among the proposed allies themselves; while Austria, Bavaria, and even Wurtemberg, have held aloof to sulk and scoff, and have seemed to bide that time when Austria should be less shackled, and could better oppose the supremacy of Northern German influence. Coalitions even now are talked of, to which, if Prussia be not a stranger, it is to be admitted only as a humbled ally. With these feelings, which exist not only between powers, but in the people, the cry of United Germany is but a jest – the longing a green-sickness. Certainly revolutionising Germany has not thus far attained any step in its progress towards the great desideratum of its nationality. The only semblance of progress has been, in the advances of Prussia towards supremacy, in the cession of the principality of Hohenzollern Sigmaringen to its territory, (an example which other small German principalities may follow,) in its present occupation of the free town of Hamburg, in its military occupation of the duchy of Baden, of which more further on. But if these be steps towards a united Germany, tell it to Southern Germany, and hear what it will say!

If so little, then, has been attained by revolutionising Germany, in its progress towards its most loudly clamoured desire, let us see what else it has attained. After a year's labour, which was not without its throes, revolutionising Germany, as represented by its central parliament, brought forth its constitution – a rickety child, but fully expected by its fond, and in many respects infatuated parents, to grow into a giant, and flourish under the edifice of a United German Empire. The implicit adoption of this bantling by the several German states, as their heir and future master, was declared by revolutionisers to be the sine quâ non of their sufferance still to exist at all, under the will of the people. Unhappy bantling, decked out with all sorts of promised gifts for the future weal of mankind by its would-be fairy godmothers! it proved but a changeling – or rather an imp, provided with every curse, instead of every blessing; as if the gifts it was intended to bestow had been reversed by a wicked fairy among the godmothers, who had more power than the rest. And, of a truth, there was such a one among them: and her name was Anarchy or Subversion, although the title she gave herself was Red Republic, and the beast on which she rode was Self-interest. The consequence was, that the very contrary occurred to that which revolutionisers had prophesied or rather menaced. Prussia, and the other states, which refused to adopt the bantling, thus menacingly thrown into their arms, have gone on, we cannot say the "even," but uneven "tenor of their way" – no matter now by what means, for we speak only of the strange destinies of the much-laboured, long-expected, loudly-vaunted Frankfort constitution. Almost the only one – at least of the larger states the only one – that seemingly accepted the adoption forced upon it, with frankness, willingness, and openness, has been convulsed by the most terrible of civil wars. In Baden, the acceptance of the Frankfort constitution, and not its rejection, by a well-meaning, mild, but perhaps weak ruler, was eagerly seized upon as a pretext for disaffection, armed insurrection, civil war; while Wurtemberg, where it was received by the king, although with evident unwillingness, or, as he himself expressed it, in a somewhat overstrained tone of pathos, "with bleeding and broken heart," narrowly escaped being involved in the same fearful issue. The process by which this result was attained in Baden was curious enough, although fully in accordance with the usual manœuvres of the anarchical leaders of the day, who, while denouncing Jesuitism, in many parts of the world, as the great evil and anti-popular influence against which they have most to contend, evidently adopt the supposed and most denounced principle of Jesuitism – that "the ends justify the means" – as their own peculiar line of conduct; and use every species of treachery, deceit, falsehood, and delusion, as holy and righteous weapons in the sacred cause of liberty, or of that idol of their worship which they choose to nickname liberty. In showing what revolutionising Germany has, or rather perhaps has not, as yet, attained, we must briefly, then, revert once more to that insurrection and its suppression, that has so fearfully devastated the duchy of Baden, and its neighbouring province of the Palatinate, which, although belonging to Bavaria, is so distant and divided from that kingdom as to be included, without further distinction, in the same designation.

It was with almost prophetic spirit that we, last year, spoke of the unhappy duchy of Baden, which had then, as since, the least cause of complaint of any of the several subdivisions of Germany. "Nothing," it was then said, "can be more uneasy and disquieting than its appearance. In this part of Germany, the revolutionary fermentation appears far more active, and is more visible in the manner, attitude, and language of the lower classes, than even in those (at that time) hotbeds of revolutionary movement, Austria and Prussia. To this state of things the confinity with agitated France, and consequently a more active affinity with its ideas, caught like a fever from a next-door neighbour's house, the agency of the emissaries from the ultra-republican Parisian clubs, who find an easier access across the frontiers, and the fact also that the unhappy duchy has been, if not the native country, at least the scene of action of the republican insurgents, Hecker and Struve, have all combined to contribute." "It is impossible to enter the duchy, and converse with the peasant population, formerly and proverbially so peacefully disposed in patriarchal Germany – formerly so smiling, so ready, so civil, perhaps only too obsequious in their signs of respect, now so insolent and rude – without finding the poison of those various influences gathering and festering in all their ideas, words, and actions."

Such were the views written last year; and this state of things has since continued to increase, as regards popular fermentation, and disposition to insurrection. Demagogic agitators swarmed in the land, instilling poison wherever they went, and rejoicing as they saw the virus do its work in the breaking out of festering sores. The tactics of this party, in all lands, has been to try their experiments upon the military; but it has only been in Baden, thus demoralised, and disorganised by weakness of sufferance, and a vain spirit of concession and looked-for conciliation, that these subjects were found fitting for the efforts of the experimentalisers. The virus had already done its work among them, to the utmost hopes of the poisoning crew, when the New Frankfort Constitution – the rejection of which was to be the signal for a quasi legal insurrection – was accepted by the Grand-duke of Baden. But the agitators were not to be thus baffled. A pretence, however shallow and false, was easily found in the well-prepared fermentation of men's minds; and the military, summoned by demagogic leaders to tumultuous meetings, were easily persuaded that a false, or at least a defective draught of the new boasted constitution had been read to them and proclaimed – that, in the real constitution, an enactment provided that the soldiers were to choose and elect their own officers – that this paragraph had been carefully suppressed; and that the military had been thus deprived and cheated of their rights. Easily detected as might have been the falsehood, it nevertheless succeeded in its purposes. The military insurrection, in which the tumultuous and evil-disposed of the lower classes, and a great portion of the disaffected peasantry joined, broke out on the very evening of one of these great meetings; and, by means of a well-prepared and actively organised concentration of measures, in various parts of the duchy at the same time. Thus was the very acceptance of the revolutionary constitution made in Baden a pretext to stir the land to insurrection.

After the full account already published in these pages, it is needless to enter into detail, with regard to the events which marked the progress and suppression of this great insurrection. It is only to show the insensate state of mind to which revolutionary agents, left to do their will, were able to work up the military; the confused ideas and purposes, with which these would-be revolutionising German heads were filled; the ignorance that was displayed among these men, said to be enlightened by "patriots," and their want of all comprehension of the very rights for which they pretended to clamour – in fact, the utter absence of any experience gained by the lower classes, and especially the military portion of them, after more than a year's revolutionising, that we briefly recapitulate some of the leading events of the outbreak. It was with a perfect headlong frenzy that the garrison of the fortress of Rastadt first revolted; it was with just as much appearance of madness that the mutiny broke out simultaneously in the other garrison towns. There was every evidence of rabid mania in the deplorable scenes which followed, when superior officers in vain attempted with zeal and courage to stem the torrent, and, in many instances, lost their lives at the hands of the infuriated soldiery; when others were cruelly and disgracefully mis-handled, and two or three, unable to contend with the sense of dishonour and degradation which overwhelmed them as military men, rushed, maddened also, into suicide, to have their very corpses mutilated by the men whom they had treated, as it happened, with kindness and concession; when others again, who had escaped over the frontiers, were, by a violation of the Wurtemberg territory, captured, led back prisoners, and immured, under every circumstances of cruelty and ignominy, in the fortress they had in vain attempted loyally to guard. There was madness in all this; and then we learn, to complete the deplorable picture, from a very accurate account of all the circumstances, lately published by a Baden officer, as well as from another pamphlet, more circumscribed in detail, but fully as conclusive as regards narration of feeling, in almost every page, that when the insurgent soldiers were asked by their officers what they wanted, they could only answer, "Our rights and those of the people;" and, when questioned further, "What are those rights?" either held their tongues and shook their heads in ignorance, or replied with the strangest naïveté, "That you ought to know better than we." Still more strikingly characteristic of the insensate nature of the struggle are the examples where the infatuated soldiers parted from their officers with tears in their eyes, then, driven on by their agitators, hunted them to the death; and then, again, with eyes opened at last to their delusion, sobbed forth the bitterest repentance for their blindness.

It has been already seen how the Grand-duke fled the land, how Baden was given up, in a state of utter anarchy, to a Provisional government, that existed but long enough to be utterly rent and torn by the very instruments which its members had contributed to set in movement; and to a disorganised, tumultuous army, prepared to domineer and tyrannise in its newly-acquired self-power; how the insurrection was suppressed, after an unwilling appeal to Prussia by the Grand-duke – how the insurgent troops were dispersed by means of a Prussian army – and how Rastadt was finally surrendered by the revolutionary leaders. As these events have already been detailed, and as it is our purpose to ask in general, "What has revolutionising Germany attained?" we need do no more on this head, than ask, "What, by its late movement, has revolutionising Baden attained?" "What then is the present position, and the present aspect of the country, after the armed suppression?"

What, indeed! Poor old Father Rhine, although still, in these revolutionary days, somewhat depressed in spirits, does not now, however, exhibit that aspect of utter melancholy and despair which we last year pictured; he has even contrived to reassume something of that conceited air which we have so often witnessed in his old face. Foreign tourists, if not in the pleasure-seeking shoals of aforetime, at least in very decent sprinklings, return again to pay him visits; and the hotels upon his banks give evidence that his courts are not wholly deserted. Ems, from various causes independent of its natural beauties – the principal one of which has been the pilgrimage of French Legitimists to the heir of the fallen Bourbons, during his short residence in that sweet bathing-place – has overflowed with "guests." Homburg has had scarcely a bed to offer to the wanderer on his arrival. Rhenish Prussia, then, has profited, by its comparative state of quiet, somewhat to redeem its losses of last year. But the poor duchy of Baden still hangs its head mournfully; and Baden-Baden, the fairest queen of German watering-places, finds itself utterly deprived of its well-deserved crown of supremacy, and seems to have covered itself, in shame, with a veil of sadness. Although all now wears again a smiling face of peaceful quiet, and Prussian uniforms, which at least have the merit of studding with colour the gay scene, give warrant for peace by the force of the bayonet, yet tourists seem to avoid the scene of the late fearful convulsions, as they would a house in which the plague has raged, although now declared wholly disinfected. A few wandering "guests" only come and go, and tell the world of foreign wanderers with dismal faces, "Baden-Baden is empty!" Travellers seem to hurry through the country, as swiftly as the railroad can whirl them across it, towards Strasburg and Bâle – ay! rather to republican France, or fermenting Switzerland: they appear unwilling to turn aside and seek rest among the beautiful hills of a country where the reek of blood, or the vapour of the cannon-smoke, may be still upon the air. In Baden-Baden bankrupt hotels are closed; and the lower classes, who have been accustomed to amass comparative wealth by the annual influx of foreigners, either by their produce, or in the various different occupations of attending upon visitors, wear the most evident expression of disappointment, listlessness, and want. Baden pays the bitter penalty of insurrection, by being utterly crippled in one of the branches of its most material interests. It bears as quiet an aspect outwardly, however, as if it were sitting, in humiliation and shame, upon the stool of repentance. There is nothing (if they go not beyond the surface) to prevent foreign pleasure or health seekers from finding their pleasure or repose in this sweet country; and in what has been simply, but correctly, termed "one of the loveliest spots upon God's earth," as of yore; but they are evidently shy, and look askance upon it. Baden pays its penalty.

Although nature smiles, however, upon mountain and valley, and romantic village, as cheerily as before, and there is gaiety still in every sunbeam, yet traces of the horrors lately enacted in the land are still left, which cannot fail to strike the eye of the most listless, mere outward observer, as he whisks along, the country – sometimes in the trampled plain, on which nature has not been as yet able to throw her all-covering veil again, and which shows where has been the battle-field, which should have been the harvest-field, and was not – sometimes in the shattered wall or ruined house – sometimes in the wood cut down or burned. At every step the traveller may be shown, by his guide, the spots on which battles or skirmishes have taken place, where the cannon has lately roared, where blood has been shed, where men have fallen in civil contest. Here he may be conveyed over the noble railway-bridge of the Neckar, and see the broken parapet, and hear how the insurgents had commenced their work of destruction upon the edifice, but were arrested in its accomplishment by the rapid advance of the Prussian troops. Here again he may mark the late repairs of the railroad, where it has been cut up into trenches, to prevent the speedy conveyance of the war-material of the enemy. If he lingers on his way, he may seek in vain in the capital, or other "residence towns" of Baden, where ducal palaces stand, for the treasures of antiquity which were their boast. Pillage has done its work: insurgents have appropriated these objects of value to themselves, in the name of the people; and the costly and bejewelled trappings of the East, the rich gold inlaid armour, and the valuable arms, brought in triumph home by the Margrave Louis of Baden, after his Turkish campaigns, are now dispersed, none knows where, after having fed the greed of some French red-republican or Polish democrat. But it is more particularly in the neighbourhood of the fortress town of Rastadt, where the insurgents last held out, that the strongest traces of the late convulsions may be found. Marks of devastation are everywhere perceptible in the country around; the remains of the temporary defences of the besiegers still lie scattered in newly dug trenches; and the blackened walls of a railway station-house, by the road-side, tell him how it was bombarded from the town by the besieged insurgents, and then burned to the ground, lest it should afford shelter to the besiegers. These are, however, after all, but slight evidences of what the duchy of Baden has attained by its late revolution. If we go below the surface, the dark spots are darker and far more frequent still.

It is impossible to enter into conversation with persons of any class, without discovering, either directly or indirectly, how deeply rooted still remains the demoralisation of the country. The bitterness of feeling, and the revolutionary mania of revolutionising, to obtain no one can tell what, may have been crushed down and overawed; but they evidently still smoulder below the surface and ferment. The volcano-mouth has been filled with a mass of Prussian bayonets; but it still burns below: it is clogged, not extinct. The democratic spirit has been too deeply infused to be drugged out of the mass of the people by the dose of military force. Fearful experience seems to have taught the sufferers little or nothing; and although, here and there, may be found evidences of bitter repentance, consequent upon personal loss of property, or family suffering, yet even below that may be constantly found a profound bitterness, and an eager rancour, against unknown and visionary enemies. Talk to that poor old woman, who sits with pale face upon a stile on the mountain-side. She will weep for the son she has lost among the insurgents, and deplore, with bitter tears, his error and his delusion; and yet, if you gain her confidence, she will raise her head, and, with some fire in her sunken eye, tell you that she has still a son at home, a boy, her last-born, who bides but his time to take up the musket against "those, accursed enemies of the people and the people's rights!" Enter into conversation with that shopkeeper behind his counter, or that hotel-keeper in his palace hotel – both are "well to do" in the world, or have been so, until revolutions shattered the commerce of the one, or deprived the other of wealthy visitors – you may expect to find in them a feeling, taught them at least by experience, against any further convulsion. No such thing; they are as ripe for further revolution as the lower classes, and as eager to avenge their losses – not upon those who have occasioned them, but upon those who would have averted them. Even in the upper classes you will find that craving for the idol, "United Germany," to which we have before alluded, and which seems to invite revolutions, rather than to fear them. Of course exceptions may be found, and many, to the examples here given; but in putting these figures into the foreground of the picture to be painted of the state of Baden, (if not of Germany in general,) we firmly believe we have given characteristic types of the prevailing feelings of the country. German heads, once let loose into the regions of ideal fantasy, be it political or philosophical, or the strange and unpractical mixture of both, seem as if they were not to be recalled to the earth and the realms of palpable truth by the lessons of experience, however strongly, and even terribly, inculcated.

The prevailing feeling, however, at the present time in Baden, among the lower classes, seems the hatred of the occupation of the Prussian army, which has saved the land from utter anarchy. The very men who have been taught by their demagogues to clamour for "German Unity" as a pretext for insurrection, look on the Prussian military as usurping aliens and foreign oppressors. Military occupation is certainly the prevailing feature of the country. Prussian troops are everywhere – in every town, in every village, in every house, in every hovel. Whichever way you turn your eyes, there are soldiers – soldiers – soldiers – horse and foot. The military seem to form by far the greater half of the population; and, much disposed as many may have been to greet the return of the Grand-duke to his states, as the symbol of the cause of order, yet, in spite of birthday fêtes, and banners, and garlands, and loyal devices in flowers, which have bedecked the road of the traveller in the land not long since, these same men will grumble to you of those "accursed Prussian soldiers," who alone were able to restore him to his country, when the Baden army, as troops to support their sovereign, existed no longer – when those who composed it fought at the head of the insurgents. The very shadow of a Baden army, even, is not now to be found. And it is this fact, and the evidences that an insurrectionary spirit is still widely spread abroad, which are given as the excuse of a continued Prussian occupation. It is difficult, certainly, for a traveller in a land so lately convulsed, and still placed in circumstances so peculiar, to arrive at truth. Prussian officers will tell him how, on the arrival of the Prussian army in the country, and the dispersion of the insurgents, flowers were strewn along its path by the populations, who thus seemingly hailed the Prussian soldiers as their deliverers; and in the next breath they will inform him that this was only done from fear, and that, were it not for this salutary fear, the insurrection would break forth again. He may suspect that this account is given as the pretext for a continued occupation of the land. But Baden officials will tell him that such is the case – that Prussian troops alone keep, down a further rising; and if he still suspects his source, he will certainly find among the people, at all events, both the hatred and the fear. Meanwhile the Prussian officers seem to think that both these feelings are necessary for the pacification of the land; and, upon their own showing, or rather boasting, they inculcate them by flogging insolent peasants across the cannon, by shooting down insurgent prisoners, who spit upon them from prison windows, without any other form of trial, and by other autocratic repressive measures of a similar stamp. Meanwhile, also, they seem, by all their words as well as actions, to look upon Baden as a conquered province, acquired to Prussia, and openly and loudly vaunt their conquest. Let it not be supposed that this is exaggeration. It is the general tone of Prussian officers – ay, and even of the common Prussian soldiers occupying the duchy of Baden – with a super-addition of true Prussian conceit in manner, indescribable by words. In spite of what we may read in late newspaper reports, then, of conciliation between the two great powers of Northern and Southern Germany, we may well ask, What will rival Austria say to this? Where is the prospect here of a great United Germany? And, after this resumé of the present position of Baden as a part, we may well ask, also, What has revolutionising Germany attained as a whole?

We have seen that the main object, and at all events the chief pretext of the revolution, the establishment of a great United Germany, is still further from the grasp of the revolutionising country than ever – although it remains still the clamour and the cry. Prussia may point in irony to its advances, by the occupation of the duchy of Baden and of Hamburg, and by its acquisition of the principality of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, and smile while it says that it has effected thus much towards a union of Germany under one head. Or, in more serious mood, it may put forward its projected alliance of the three northern German potentates. But, with regard to the former, what, in spite of the reports we hear of conciliation, will be the conduct of jealous Austria, now at last unshackled in its dealings? The latter only shows still more the cleft that divides the northern portion of the would-be united country from the southern. "United Germany" only remains, then, a plaything in the hands of dreamers and democrats – a pretty toy, about which they may build up airy castles to the one – an instrument blunted and notched, for the present, to the other. What has revolutionising Germany attained here?

What declared last year the manifesto of Prince Leiningen, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, and leading member of the cabinet of the newly established central power – put forward, as it was, as the programme of the new government for all Germany? It denounced "jealousies between the individual states, and revilings of the northern by the southern parts of the empire," as "criminal absurdities;" and yet went on to say that "if the old spirit of discord and separation were still too powerfully at work – if the jealousy between race and race, between north and south, were still too strongly felt – the nation must convince itself of the fact, and return to the old feudal system." It declared, however, in the same breath as it were, that "to retrograde to a confederation of states would only be to create a mournful period of transition to fresh catastrophes, and new revolutions." Failing of the realisation of the great union, to which the revolution was supposed to tend, the manifesto then placed revolutionising Germany between the alternative of returning to a part, which it declared impossible, or further convulsions and civil wars. It put Germany, in fact, into a cleft stick. Has a year's revolution tended to extricate it from this position? The alternative, remains the same – Germany sticks in the cleft stick as much as ever. Revolutionising Germany, with all its throes and all its efforts, has attained nothing to relieve it from this position. Without accepting the manifesto of Prince Leiningen, either as necessarily prophetic, or as a political dictum, from which there is no evasion or escape, it is yet impossible to look back upon it, while trying to discover what revolutionising Germany has attained, without sad presentiments, without looking with much mournful apprehension upon the future fate of the country. To return, however to the present state of Germany – for the investigation of that is our purpose, and not speculation upon the future, although none may look upon the present without asking with a sigh, "What is to become of Germany?"

We find the revolutionary spirit crushed by the events of the last year, but not subdued; writhing, but not avowing itself vanquished. The fermentation is as great as heretofore: experience seems to have taught the German children in politics no useful lesson. Now that the great object, for which the revolution appeared to struggle, has received so notable a check, the confusion of purposes, (if German political rhapsodies may be called such;) of projects, (if, indeed, in such visionary schemes there be any,) and pretexts, (of a nature so evidently false,) is greater than ever – the confusion not only exists, but ferments, and generates foul air, which must find vent somewhere, be it even in imagination. Of the revolutionary spirits whom we sketched last year in Germany, the students alone seem somewhat to have learned a lesson of experience and tactics. Although many may have been found in the ranks of insurgents, yet the general mass has sadly sobered down, and, it may be hoped, acquired more reason and method. The Jews – we cannot again now inquire into the strange whys and wherefores – still remain the restless, gnawing, cankering, agitating agents of revolutionary movement. The insolence and coarseness of the lower classes increases into bitter rancour, and has been in no way amended by concession and a show of good-will. Among the middle-lower classes, the most restless and reckless spirits, it appears from well-drawn statistical accounts, are the village schoolmasters, (as in France) – to exemplify that "a little learning is a dangerous thing" – the barbers, and the tailors. Had we time, it might form the subject of curious speculation to attempt to discover why these two latter occupations, (and especially the last one) induce, more than all others, heated brains and revolutionary habits; but we cannot stop on our way to play with such curious questions. Over all the relations of social, as well as public life, hover politics like a deleterious atmosphere, blighting all that is bright and fair, withering art in all its branches, science, and social intercourse. And, good heavens, what politics! – the politics of a bedlamite philosopher in his ravings. In the late festivities, given in honour of Goethe at Frankfort, the city of his birth, to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of that event, when it might have been supposed that all men might have, for once, united to do homage to the memory of one whom Germans considered their greatest spirit, politics again interfered to thwart, and oppose, and spoil. The democratic party endeavoured to prevent the supplies offered to be given by the town for the festivities, because they saw the names of those they called the "aristocrats," among the list of the committee, even although men of all classes were invited to join it; and, when a serenade was given before the house in which the poet was born, the musicians were driven away, and their torches extinguished, by a band of so-called "patriots," who insisted upon singing, in the place of the appointed cantato composed for the occasion, the revolutionary chorus in honour of the republican Hecker – the now famous song of the revolutionary battle-field, the Hecker-Lied. And such an example of this fermentation of politics in all the circumstances of life, however far from political intents, is not singular: it is only characteristic of the everyday doings of the times. Among the upper classes, those feelings which we last year summed up in the characteristic words, "the dulness of doubt and the stupor of apprehension," have only increased in intensity. None see an issue out of the troubled passage of the revolution. Their eyes are blinded by a mist, and they stumble on their way, dreading a precipice at every step. This impression depicts more especially the feelings of the so-called moderates and liberal conservatives who had their representatives among the best elements of the Frankfort parliament, and who, with the vision of a united Germany before their eyes, laboured to reach that visionary goal, at the same time that they endeavoured to stem the ever-invading torrent of ultra-revolution and red-republicanism. "The dulness of doubt, and the stupor of apprehension," seem indeed to have fallen upon them since the last vain meeting of the heads of their party in Gotha. They let their hands fall upon their laps, and sit shaking their heads. Gagern, the boldest spirit, and one of the best hearts that represents their cause and has struggled for its maintenance, is represented as wholly prostrate in spirit, unstrung —missgestimmt, as the Germans have it. He has retired entirely into private life, to await events with aching heart. If any feeling is still expressed by the moderate liberals, it has been, of late, sympathy in the fate of Hungary, which the Prussians put forward visibly only out of opposition to Austria, at the same time that, with but little consistency, they condemn all the agents of the Hungarian struggle.

We have endeavoured to give a faint and fleeting sketch of what revolutionising Germany has attained, after a year's revolution. The picture is a dark one, of a truth, but we believe in no ways overdone. In actual progress the sum-total appears to be a zero. The position of Germany, although calmer on the surface, is as difficult, as embarrassing, as much in the "cleft stick," as when we speculated upon it last year. All the well-wishers of the country and of mankind may give it their hopes; but when they look for realisation of their hopes, they can only shake their heads, with the Germans themselves, as they ask, "What will become of Germany?"

THE GREEN HAND – A "SHORT" YARN

PART V

The next evening our friend the Captain found his fair audience by the taffrail increased to a round dozen, while several of the gentlemen passengers lounged near, and the chief officer divided his attention between the gay group of ladies below and the "fanning" main-topsail high up, with its corresponding studding-sail hung far out aloft to the breeze; the narrative having by this time contracted a sort of professional interest, even to his matter-of-fact taste, which enabled him to enjoy greatly the occasional glances of sly humour directed to him by his superior, for whom he evidently entertained a kind of admiring respect, that seemed to be enhanced as he listened. As for the commander himself, he related the adventures in question with a spirit and vividness of manner that contributed to them no small charm; amusingly contrasted with the cool, dry, indifferent sort of gravity of countenance, amidst which the keen gray seawardly eye, under the peak of the naval cap, kept changing and twinkling as it seemed to run through the experience of youth again – sometimes almost approaching to an undeniable wink. The expression of it at this time, however, was more serious, while it appeared to run along the dotted reef-band of the mizen-topsail above, as across the entry in a log-book, and as if there were something interesting to come.

"Well, my dear captain," asked his matronly relative, "what comes next? You and your friend had picked up a – a-what was it now!"

"Ah! I remember, ma'am," said the naval man, laughing; "the bottle – that was where I was. Well, as you may conceive, this said scrap of penmanship in the bottle did take both of us rather on end; and for two or three minutes Westwood and I sat staring at each other and the uncouth-looking fist, in an inquiring sort of way, like two cocks over a beetle. Westwood, for his part, was doubtful of its being the Planter at all; but the whole thing, when I thought of it, made itself as clear to me, so far, as two half-hitches, and the angrier I was at myself for being done by a frog-eating, bloody-politeful set of Frenchmen like these. Could we only have clapped eyes on the villanous thieving craft at the time, by Jove! if I wouldn't have manned a boat from the Indiaman, leave or no leave, and boarded her in another fashion! But where they were now, what they meant, and whether we should ever see them again, heaven only knew. For all we could say, indeed, something strange might have turned up at home in Europe – a new war, old Boney got loose once more, or what not – and I could scarce fall asleep for guessing and bothering over the matter, as restless as the first night we cruised down Channel in the old Pandora."

Early in the morning-watch a sudden stir of the men on deck woke me, and I bundled up in five minutes' time. But it was only the second mate setting them to wash decks, and out they came from all quarters, yawning, stretching themselves, and tucking up their trousers, as they passed the full buckets lazily along; while a couple of boys could be seen hard at work to keep the head-pump going, up against the gray sky over the bow. However, I was so anxious to have the first look-out ahead, that I made a bold push through the thick of it for the bowsprit, where I went out till I could see nothing astern of me but the Indiaman's big black bows and figurehead, swinging as it were round the spar I sat upon, with the spread of her canvass coming dim after me out of the fog, and a lazy snatch of foam lifting to her cut-water, as the breeze died away. The sun was just beginning to rise; ten minutes before, it had been almost quite dark; there was a mist on the water, and the sails were heavy with dew; when a circle began to open round us, where the surface looked as smooth and dirty as in a dock, the haze seeming to shine through, as the sunlight came sifting through it, like silver gauze. You saw the big red top of the sun glare against the water-line, and a wet gleam of crimson came sliding from one smooth blue swell to another; while the back of the haze astern turned from blue to purple, and went lifting away into vapoury streaks and patches. All of a sudden the ship came clear out aloft and on the water, with her white streak as bright as snow, her fore-royal and truck gilded, her broad foresail as red as blood, and every face on deck shining as they looked ahead, where I felt like a fellow held up on a toasting-fork, against the fiery wheel the sun made ere clearing the horizon. Two or three strips of cloud melted in it like lumps of sugar in hot wine; and, after overhauling the whole seaboard round and round, I kept straining my eyes into the light, with the notion there was something to be seen in that quarter, but to no purpose; there wasn't the slightest sign of the brig or any other blessed thing. What struck me a little, however, was the look of the water just as the fog was clearing away: the swell was sinking down, the wind fallen for the time to a dead calm; and when the smooth face of it caught the light full from aloft, it seemed to come out all over long-winding wrinkles and eddies, running in a broad path, as it were, twisted and woven together, right into the wake of the sunrise. When I came inboard from the bowsprit, big Harry and another grumpy old salt were standing by the bitts, taking a forecastle observation, and gave me a squint, as much as to ask if I had come out of the east, or had been trying to pocket the flying-jib-boom. "D'you notice anything strange about the water at all?" I asked in an offhand sort of way, wishing to see if the men had remarked aught of what I suspected. The old fellow gave me a queer look out of the tail of his eye, and the ugly man seemed to be measuring me from head to foot. "No, sir," said the first, carelessly; "can't say as how I does," – while Harry coolly commenced sharpening his sheath-knife on his shoe. "Did you ever hear of currents hereabouts?" said I to the other man. "Hereaway!" said he; "why, bless ye, sir, it's unpossible as I could ha' heer'd tell on sich a thing, 'cause, ye see, sir, there an't none so far out at sea, sir – al'ays axin' your parding, ye know, sir!" while he hitched up his trousers and looked aloft, as if there were somewhat wrong about the jib-halliards.

The Indiaman by this time had quite lost steerage-way, and came sheering slowly round, broadside to the sun, while the water began to glitter like a single sheet of quicksilver, trembling and swelling to the firm edge of it far off; the pale blue sky filling deep aloft with light, and a long white haze growing out of the horizon to eastward. I kept still looking over from the fore-chains with my arms folded, and an eye to the water on the starboard side, next the sun, where, just a fathom or two from the bright copper of her sheathing along the water-line, you could see into it. Every now and then little bells and bubbles, as I thought, would come up in it and break short of the surface; and sometimes I fancied the line of a slight ripple, as fine as a rope-yarn, went turning and glistening, round one of the ship's quarters, across her shadow. Just then the old sailor behind me shoved his face over the bulwark, too, all warts and wrinkles, like a ripe walnut-shell, with a round knob of a nose in the middle of it, and seemed to be watching to see it below, when he suddenly squirted his tobacco-juice as far out as possible alongside, and gave his mouth a wipe with the back of his tarry yellow hand; catching my eye in a shame-faced sort of way, as I glanced first at him and then at his floating property. I leant listlessly over the rail, watching the patch of oily yellow froth, as it floated quietly on the smooth face of the water; till all at once I started to observe that beyond all question it had crept slowly away past our starboard bow, clear of the ship, and at last melted into the glittering blue brine. The two men noticed my attention, and stared along with me; while the owner of the precious cargo himself kept looking after it wistfully into the wake of the sunlight, as if he were a little hurt; then aloft and round about, in a puzzled sort of way, to see if the ship hadn't perhaps taken a sudden sheer to port. "Why, my man," I said, meeting his oyster-like old sea-eye, "what's the reason of that? – perhaps there is some current or other here, after all, eh?" Just as he meant to answer, however, I noticed his watch-mate give him a hard shove in the ribs with his huge elbow, and a quick screw of his weather top-light, while he kept the lee one doggedly fixed on myself. I accordingly walked slowly aft as if to the quarterdeck, and came round the long-boat again, right abreast of them.

Harry was pacing fore and aft with his arms folded, when his companion made some remark on the heat, peering all about him, and then right up into the air aloft. "Well then, shipmate," said Harry, dabbing his handkerchief back into his tarpaulin again, "I've seen worse, myself, – ownly, 'twas in the Bight o' Benin, look ye, – an' afore the end on it, d'ye see, we hove o'board nine of a crew, let alone six dozen odds of a cargo!" "Cargo!" exclaimed his companion in surprise. "Ay, black passengers they was, ye know, old ship!" answered the ugly rascal, coolly; "an' I tell ye what it is, Jack, I never sails yet with passengers aboard, but some'at bad turned up in the end, – al'ays one or another on 'em's got a foul turn in his conscience, ye see! I say, 'mate," continued he, looking round, "didn't ye note that 'ere 'long-shore looking customer as walked aft just now, with them bloody soft quest'ns o' his about – " "Why," said Jack, "it's him Jacobs and the larboard watch calls the Green Hand, an' a blessed good joke they has about him, to all appearance, – but they keeps it pretty close." "Close, be d – d!" growled Harry, "I doesn't like the cut of his jib, I tell ye, shipmate! Jist you take my word for it, that 'ere fellow's done some'at bad at home, or he's bent on some'at bad afloat – it's all one! Don't ye mark how he keeps boxhaulin' and skulking fore an' aft, not to say looking out to wind'ard every now an' again, as much as he expected a sail to heave in sight!" "Well, I'm blowed but you're right, Harry!" said the other, taking off his hat to scratch his head, thoughtfully. "Ay, and what's more," went on Harry, "it's just comed ath'art me as how I've clapped eyes on the chap somewheres or other afore this – d – n me if I don't think it was amongst a gang o' Spanish pirates I saw tried for their lives and let off, in the Havanney!" "Thank you, my man!" thought I, as I leant against the booms on the other side, "the devil you did! – a wonder it wasn't in the Old Bailey, which would have been more possible, though less romantic, – seeing in the Havannah I never was!" The curious thing was that I began to have a faint recollection, myself, of having seen this same cross-grained beauty, or heard his voice, before; though where and how it was, I couldn't for the life of me say at the moment. "Lord bless us, Harry!" faltered out the old sailor, "ye don't mean it! – sich a young, soft-looked shaver, too!" "Them smooth-skinned sort o' coves is kimmonly the worst, 'mate," replied Harry; "for that matter ye may be d – d sure he's got his chums aboard, – an' how does we know but the ship's sold, from stem to starn? There's that 'ere black-avizzed parson, now, and one or two more aft – cuss me if that 'ere feller smells brine for the first time! An' as for this here Bob Jacobs o' yours, blow me if there an't over many of his kind in the whole larboard watch, Jack! A man-o'-war's-man's al'ays a blackguard out on a man-o'-war, look ye!" "Why, bless me, shipmate," said Jack, lowering his voice, "by that recknin', a man don't know his friends in this here craft! The sooner we gives the mate a hint, the better, to my thinking?" "No, blow me, no, Jack," said Harry, "keep all fast, or ye'll kick up a worse nitty, old boy! Jist you hould on till ye see what's to turn up, – ownly stand by and look out for squalls, that's all! There's the skipper laid up below in his berth, I hears, – and to my notions, that 'ere mate of ours is no more but a blessed soldier, with his navigation an' his head-work, an' be blowed to him – where's he runned the ship, I'd like to know, messmate!" "Well, strike me lucky if I'm fit to guess!" answered Jack, gloomily. "No, s'help me Bob, if he knows hisself!" said Harry. "But here's, what I says, anyhow, – if so be we heaves in sight of a pirate, or bumps ashore on a ileyand i' the dark, shiver my tawsels if I doesn't have a clip with a handspike at that 'ere soft-sawderin' young blade in the straw hat!" "Well, my fine fellow," thought I, "many thanks to you again, but I certainly shall look out for you!" All this time I couldn't exactly conceive whether the sulky rascal really suspected anything of the kind, or whether he wasn't in fact sounding his companion, and perhaps others of the crew, as to how far they would go in case of an opportunity for mischief; especially when I heard him begin to speculate if "that 'ere proud ould beggar of a naboob, aft yonder, musn't have a sight o' gould and jowels aboard with him!" "Why, for the matter o' that, 'mate," continued he, "I doesn't signify the twinklin' of a marlinspike, mind ye, what lubberly trick they sarves this here craft, – so be ownly ye can get anyhow ashore, when all's done! It's nouther ship-law nor shore-law, look ye, 'mate, as houlds good on a bloody dazart!" "Ay, ay, true enough, bo'," said the other, "but what o' that? – there an't much signs of a dazart, I reckon, in this here blue water!" "Ho!" replied Harry, rather scornfully, "that's 'cause you blue-water, long-v'yage chaps isn't up to them, brother! There's you and that 'ere joker in the striped slops, Jack, chaffing away over the side jist now about a current, – confounded sharp he thinks hisself, too! – but d'ye think Harry Foster an't got his weather-eye open? For my part I thinks more of the streak o' haze yonder-away, right across the starboard bow, nor all the currents in – " "Ay, ay," said Jack, stretching out again to look, "the heat, you means?" "Heat!" exclaimed the ugly topman, "heat be blowed! Hark ye, 'mate, it may be a strip o' cloud, no doubt, or the steam over a sand-bank, – but so be the calm lasts so long, and you sees that 'ere streak again by sundown, with a touch o' yallow in't – " "What —what, shipmate?" asked Jack, breathless with anxiety. "Then, dammee, it's the black coast iv Africay, and no mistake!" said Harry. "And what's more," continued the fellow, coolly, after taking a couple of short turns, "if there be's a current, why, look ye, it'll set dead in to where the land lays – an' I'm blessed if there's one aboard, breeze or no breeze, as is man enough for to take her out o' the suck of a Africane current!" "The Lord be with us!" exclaimed the other sailor, in alarm, "what's to be done, Harry, bo', – when d'ye mean for to let them know, aft?" "Why, maybe I'm wrong, ye know, old ship," said Harry, "an' a man musn't go for to larn his betters, ye know, – by this time half o' the watch has a notion on it, at any rate. There's Dick White, Jack Jones, Jim Sidey, an' a few more Wapping men, means to stick together in case o' accidents – so d – n it, Jack, man, ye needn't be in sich an a taking! What the – " (here he came out with a regular string of topgallant oaths,) "when you finds a good chance shoved into your fist, none o' your doin', an't a feller to haul in the slack of it 'cause he's got a tarry paw, and ships before the mast? I tell ye what it is, old ship, 'tan't the first time you an' me's been cast away, an' I doesn't care the drawin' of a rope-yarn, in them here latitudes, if I'm cast away again! Hark 'ye, ould boy, – grog to the masthead, a grab at the passengers' wallibles, when they han't no more use for 'em, in course – an' the pick on the ladies, jist for the takin' o' them ashore!" "Lord love ye, Harry, belay there!" said Jack, "what's the good o' talkin' on what an't like to be?" "Less like things turns up!" said Harry. "More by token, if I hasn't pitched upon my fancy lass a'ready – an' who knows, old ship, but you marries a naboob's darter yet, and gets yourself shoved all square, like a rig'lar hare, into his heestate, as they calls it? For my part, I've more notion of the maid! An' it'll go hard with me if we doesn't manage to haul that 'ere mishynar' parson safe ashore on the strength of it!" "God bless ye, Harry," answered Jack, somewhat mournfully, "I'm twice spliced already!" "Third time's lucky, though," replied Harry, with a chuckle, as he walked towards the side again, and looked over; the rest of the watch being gathered on the other bow, talking and laughing; the passengers beginning to appear on the poop, and the Scotch second-mate standing up aft on the taffrail, feeling for a breath of wind. The big topman came slowly back to his companion, and leant himself on the spars again. "Blowed if I don't think you're right, 'mate," said he, "you and that 'ere lawyer. You'd a'most say there's a ripple round her larboard bow just now, sure enough – like she were broadside on to some drift or another. Hows'ever, that's nouther here nor there, – for my part, I sets more count by the look o' the sky to east'ard, an' be blowed, shipmate, if that same yonder don't make me think o' woods!" "Well," said Jack, "I goes by sunrise, messmate, an' I didn't like it overmuch myself, d'ye see! That 'ere talk o' yours, Harry, consarnin' dazarts and what not – why, bless me, it's all my eye, – this bout, at any rate – seein' as how, if we doesn't have a stiff snuffler out o' that very quarter afore twenty-four hours is over, you call me lubber!" "Ho, ho! old salt," chuckled Harry, "none o' them saws holds good hereaway, if its the coast of Africay – d – n it, 'mate, two watches 'll settle our hash in them longitudes, without going the length o' six! Han't I knocked about the bloody coast of it six weeks at a time, myself, let alone livin' as many months in the woods? – so I knows the breedin' of a turnady a cussed sight too well, not to speak on the way the land-blink looms afore you sights it!" "Lived in them there woods, did ye?" inquired Jack. "Ay, bo', an' a rum rig it was too, sure enough," said Harry; "the very same time I tould you on, i' the Bight o' Benin." "My eye!" exclaimed the other, "a man never knows what he may come to. Let's into the rights of it, Harry, carn't ye, afore eight-bells strikes?" "Woods!" said Harry, "I b'lieve ye, ould ship. I see'd enough o' woods, that time, arter all! – and 'twan't that long agone, either – I'll not say how long, but it wan't last v'yage. A sharp, clinker-built craft of a schooner she wor, I'm not goin' to give ye her right name, but they called her the Lubber-hater,[13 - Quere – Liberator?]– an' if there wan't all sorts on as aboard, it's blaming ye – an' a big double-jinted man-eatin' chap of a Yankee was our skipper, as sly as slush – more by token, he had a wart alongside o' one eye as made him look two ways at ye – Job Price by name – an' arter he'd made his fortin, I heard he's took up a tea-total chapel afloat on the Missishippey. She'd got a hell of a long nose, that 'ere schooner, so my boy we leaves everything astarn, chase or race, I promise ye; an' as for a blessed ould ten-gun brig what kept a-cruising thereaway, why, we jest got used to her, like, and al'ays lowers our mainsail afore takin' the wind of her, by way o' good bye, quite perlite. 'Blowed if it warn't rum, though, for to see the brig's white figger'ed over the swell, rollin' under a cloud o' canvass, sten-s'ls crowded out alow an' aloft, as she jogged arter us! Then she'd haul her wind and fire a gun, an' go beating away up in chase of some other craft, as caught the chance for runnin' out whenever they sees the Lubber-hater well to sea – why, s'elp me Bob, if the traders on the coast didn't pay Job Price half a dozen blacks a piece every trip, jist for to play that 'ere dodge! At last, one time, not long after I joined the craft, what does he do but nigh-hand loses her an' her cargo, all owin' to reckonin' over much on this here traverse. Out we comes one night in the tail of a squall, an' as soon as it clears, there sure enough we made out the brig, hard after us, as we thinks, – so never a rag more Job claps on, 'cause two of his friends, ye see, was jist outside the bar in the Noon river. Well, bloody soon the cruiser begins to overhaul us, as one gaff-taups'l wouldn't do, nor yet another, till the flying-jib and bonnets made her walk away from them in right 'arnest, – when slap comes a long-shot that took the fore-topmast out of us in a twinkling. So when the moonlight comed out, lo an' behold, instead o' the brig's two masts stiff and straight against the haze, there was three spanking sticks all ataunto, my boy, in a fine new sloop-o'-war as had fresh came on the station – the Irish, they called her – and a fast ship she wor. But all said and done, the schooner had the heels of her in aught short of a reef-taups'l breeze, – though, as for the other two, the sloop-o'-war picked off both on 'em in the end." At this point of the fellow's account, I, Ned Collins, began to prick up my ears, pretty sure it was the dear old Iris he was talking of; and thought I, "Oho, my mate, we shall have you directly, – listening's fair with a chap of this breed."

"Well," said he, "'twas the next trip after that, we finds the coast clear, as commonly was – for, d'ye see, they couldn't touch us if so be we hadn't a slave aboard, – in fact, we heerd as how the cruiser was up by Serry Lony, and left some young lufftenant or other on the watch with a sort o' lateen-rigged tender. A precious raw chap he was, by all accounts, – and sure enough, there he kept plying off and on, inshore, 'stead of out of sight to seaward till the craft would make a bolt; an' as soon as ye dropped an anchor, he'd send a boat aboard with a reefer, to ax if ye'd got slaves in the hold. In course, ye know, Job Price sends back a message, "palm-ile an' iv'ry, an' gould if we can," – h'ists the Portingee colours, brings up his Portingee papers, and makes the Portingee stoo'rd skipper for the spell, – but anyhow, bein' no less nor three slavers in the mouth of the Bonny river at the time, why, he meant to show fight if need be, and jest manhandle the young navy sprig to his heart's content. Hows'ever, the second or third night, all on a suddent we found he'd sheered off for decency's sake, as it might be, an hour or two afore we'd began to raft off the niggers. Well, 'mate, right in the midst of it there comes sich a fury of a turnady off the land, as we'd to slip cable and run fair out to sea after the other craft what had got sooner full, – one on 'em went ashore in sight, an' we not ninety blacks aboard yet, with barely a day's water stowed in. The next morning, out o' sight of land, we got the sea-breeze, and stood in again under everything, till we made Fernandy Po ileyand three leagues off, or thereby, an' the two ebony-brigs beating out in company, – so the skipper stands over across their course for to give them a hail, heaves to and pulls aboard the nearest, where he stays a good long spell and drinks a stiff glass, as ye may fancy, afore partin'. Back comes Job Price in high glee, and tould the mate as how that mornin' the brigs had fell foul o' the man-o'-war tender, bottom up, an' a big Newfoundling dog a-howlin' on the keel – no doubt she'd turned the turtle in that 'ere squall – more by token he brought the dog alongst with him in a present. So away we filled again to go in for the Bonny river, when the breeze fell, and shortly arter there we was all three dead becalmed, a couple o'miles betwixt us, sticking on the water like flies on glass, an' as hot, ye know, as blazes – the very moral o' this here. By sundown we hadn't a drop o' water, so the skipper sent to the nearest brig for some; but strike me lucky if they'd part with a bucketful for love, bein' out'ard bound. As the Spanish skipper said, 'twas either hard dollars or a stout nigger, and t'other brig said the same. A slight puff o' land-wind we had in the night, though next day 'twas as calm as ever, and the brigs farther off – so by noon, my boy, for two blessed casks, if Job Price hadn't to send six blacks in the boat. Shorter yarn, Jack, – but the calm held that night too, and 'blowed if the brigs would sell another breaker – what we had we couldn't spare to the poor devils under hatches, and the next day, why, they died off like rotten sheep, till we hove the last on 'em o'board; and frightful enough it was, mind ye, for to see about fifty sharks at work all round the schooner at once, as long as it lasted. Well, in the arternoon we'd just commenced squabbling aboard amongst ourselves, round the dreg water, or whether to board one o' the brigs and have a fair fight, when off come a bit of a breeze, betwixt the two high peaks on Fernandy Po, both the brigs set stensails, and begins slipping quietly off – our skipper gave orders to brace after them, and clear away the long gun amidships; but all on a suddent we made out a lump of a brig dropping down before it round the ileyand, which we knowed her well enough for a Bristol craft as had lost half her hands up the Callebar, in the gould an' iv'ry trade. Down she comed, wonderfle fast, for the light breeze, if there hadn't been one o' yer currents besides off the ileyand, till about half-a-mile away she braces up, seemingly to sheer across it and steer clear of us. Out went our boat, an' the skipper bids every man of her crew to shove a short cutlash inside his trousers. Says he, "I guess we'll first speak 'em fair, but if we don't ha' water enough, it'll be 'tarnal queer, that's all," says he – an' Job was a man never swore, but he looked mighty bad, that time, I must say; so we out oars and pulls right aboard the trader, without answerin' ever a hail, when up the side we bundled on deck, one arter the other, mad for a drink, and sees the master with five or six of a crew, all as white as ghostesses, and two or three Kroomen, besides a long-legged young feller a-sittin' and kicking his feet over the kimpanion-hatch, with a tumblerful o' grog in his fist, as fresh to all seemin' as a fish, like a supper-cargo or some'at o' the sort, as them craft commonly has. "What schooner's that?" axes the master, all abroad like; an' says Job, says he out o' breath, "Never you mind; I guess you'll let's have some water, for we wants it almighty keen!" "Well, says the other, shaking his head, "I'm afeared we're short ourselves – anyhow," says he, "we'll give ye a dipper the piece," – and accordingly they fists us along a dozen gulps, hand over hand. "'Twon't do, I guess, mister," says our skipper; "we wants a cask!" Here the master o' the brig shakes his head again, and giv a look to the young 'long-shore-like chap aft, which sings out as we couldn't have no more for love nor money, – an' I see Cap'en Price commence for to look savitch again, and feel for the handle on his cutlash. "Rather you'd ax iv'ry or gould-dust!" sings out the supper-cargo – "hows'ever," says he: "as ye've tooken sich a fancy to it, short o' water as we is, why a fair exchange an't no robbery," says he: "you wants water, an' we wants hands; haven't ye a couple o' niggers for to spare us, sir, by way off a barter, now?" he says. Well,'mate, I'll be blowed if I ever see a man turn so wicked fur'ous as Job Price turns at this here, – an' says he, through his teeth, "If ye'd said a nigger's nail-parin', I couldn't done it, so it's no use talkin'." "Oh come, capting," says the young fellow, wonderfle angshis like, "say one jist – it's all on the quiet, ye know. Bless me, captin," says he, "I'd do a deal for a man in a strait, 'tickerly for yerself – an' I think we'd manage with a single hand more. I'll give ye two casks and a bag o' gould-dust for one black, and we'll send aboard for him just now, ourselves!" "No!" roars Job Price, walkin' close up to him; "ye've riz me, ye cussed Britisher ye, an' I tell ye we'll take what we wants!" "No jokes, though, captin!" says the feller – "what's one to a whole raft-ful I heerd of ye shipping?" "Go an' ax the sharks, ye beggar!" says the skipper; – "here my lads!" says he, an' makes grab at the other's throat, when slap comes a jug o' rum in his eye-lights, and the young chap ups fist in quick-sticks, and drops him like a cock, big as he was. By that time, though, in a twinklin', the master was flat on deck, and the brig's crew showed no fight – when lo an' behold, my boy, up bundles a score o' strapping men-o'-war's-men out of the cabin. One or two on us got a cut about the head, an' my gentleman supper-cargo claps a pistol to my ear from aft, so we knocked under without more to do. In five minutes time everyman jack of us had a seizing about his wrists and lower pins, – and says Job Price, in a givin-up sort o' v'ice, 'You're too cust spry for playin' jokes on, I calc'late, squire,' he says. 'Jokes!' says the young feller, 'why, it's no joke – in course you knows me?' 'Niver see'd ye atween the eyes afore,' says Job, 'but don't bear no malice, mister, now.' 'That's it,' says the t'other, lookin' at the schooner again, – 'no more I does – so jist think a bit, han't you really a nigger or so aboard o' ye – if it was jist one?' 'Squash the one!' says Job, shakin' his head nellicholly like – an' 'Sorry for it,' says the chap, ''cause ye see I'm the lufftenant belongin' to the Irish, an' I carn't titch yer schooner if so be ye han't a slave aboard.' 'Lawk a'mighty! – no!' sings out Job Price, 'cause bein' half blinded he couldn't ha' noted the lot o' man-o'-war's-men sooner. – 'But I can,' says the other, 'for piratecy, ye see; an' what's more,' he says, 'there's no help for it now, I'm afeared, mister what-they-call-ye!' Well, 'mate, after that ye may fancy our skipper turns terrible down in the mouth; so without a word more they parbuckles us all down below into the cabin – an' what does this here lufftenant do but he strips the whole lot, rigs out as many of his men in our duds, hoists out a big cask o' water on the brig's far side, and pulls round for the schooner, – hisself togged out like the skipper, and his odd hands laid down in the boat's bottom." You won't wonder at my being highly amused with the fellow's yarn, since the fact was that it happened to be one of my own adventures in the days of the Iris, two or three years before, when we saw a good many scenes together, far more, wild and stirring, of course, in the thick of the slave-trade; but really the ugly rascal described it wonderfully well.

"Well," said Harry, "I gets my chin shoved up in the starn-windy, where I see'd the whole thing, and tould the skipper accordently. The schooner's crew looked out for the water like so many oysters in a tub; the lufftenant jumps up the side with his men after him, an' not so much as the cross of two cutlashes did we hear afore the onion-jack flew out a-peak over her mains'l. In five minutes more, the schooner fills away before the breeze, and begins to slide off in fine style after the pair o' brigs, as was nigh half hull-down to seaward by this time. There we was, left neck an' heel below in the trader, and he hauled up seemin'ly for the land, – an' arter a bit says the skipper to me, 'Foster, my lad, I despise this way o' things,' says he, 'an't there no way on gettin' clear?' 'Never say die, cap'en!' I says; an' says he, 'I calc'late they left considerable few hands aboard?' 'None but them sleepy-like scum o' iv'ry men,' I says, – but be blowed if I see'd what better we was, till down comes a little nigger cabin-boy for some'at or other, with a knife in his hand. Job fixes his eye on him – I've heerd he'd a way in his eye with niggers as they couldn't stand – an' says he, soft-sawderin' like, 'Come here, will ye, my lad, an' give us a drink,' – so the black come for'ad with a pannikin, one foot at a time, an' he houlds it out to the skipper's lips – for, d'ye see, all on us had our flippers lashed behind our backs. 'Now,' says he, 'thankee, boy, – look in atwixt my legs, and ye'll find a dollar.' With that, jest as the boy stoops, Job Price ketches his neck fast betwixt his two knees, an' blowed if he didn't jam them harder, grinning all the time, till down drops the little black throttled on the deck. 'That's for thankin' a bloody niggur!' says he, lookin' as savitch as the devil, and got the knife in his teeth, when he turned to and sawed through the seizing round my wrists – an' in course I sets every man clear in quick-sticks. 'Now!' says Job, lookin' round, 'the quicker the better – that cussed lubber-ratin' hound's got my schooner, but maybe, my lads, this here iv'ry man'll pay expenses – by th'almighty, if I'm made out a pirate, I'll arn the name!'

"Well, we squints up the hatchway, and see'd a young midshipman a-standing with his back to us, watching the brig's crew at the braces, an' a pistol in one hand – when all at once our skipper slips off his shoes, run up the stair as quiet as a cat, an' caught the end of a capstan-bar as lay on the scuttle. With that down he comes crash on the poor fellow's scull from aft, and brained him in a moment. Every man of us got bloody-minded with the sight, so we scarce knowed what we did, ye know, 'mate, afore all hands o' them was gone, – how, I an't goin' for to say, nor the share as one had in it more nor another. The long an' the short on it was, we run the brig by sundown in amongst the creeks up the Camaroons river, thinkin' to lie stowed away close thereabouts till all wor cold. Hows'ever they kicked up the devil's delight about a piratecy, and the sloop-o'war comes back shortly, when night an' day there was that young shark of a lufftenant huntin' arter us, as sharp as a marlinspike – we dursn't come down the river nohow, till what with a bad conscience, fogs, and sleepin' every night within stink o' them blasted muddy mangroves an' bulrushes together, why, mate, the whole ten hands died off one arter the other in the fever – leaving ownly me an' the skipper. Job Price was like a madman over the cargo, worth, good knows how many thousand dollars, as he couldn't take out – but for my part, I gets the brig's punt one night and sculls myself ashore, and off like a hare into the bush by moonlight. No use, ye know, for to say what rum chances I meets with in the woods, livin' up trees and the like for fear o' illiphants, sarpents, an' bloody high-annies, – but, blow me, if I didn't think the farther ye went aloft, the more monkeys an' parrykeets you rowsed out, jabberin' all night so as a feller couldn't close an eye – an' as for the sky, be blowed if I ever once sighted it. So, d'ye see, it puts all notions o' fruits an' flowers out o' my head, an' all them jimmy-jessamy sort o' happy-go-lucky yarns about barbers' ileyands and shipherdresses what they used for to spell out o' dicshinars at school – all gammon, mate!" "Lord love ye, no, surely," said Jack; "it's in the Bible!" "Ay, ay," said Harry, "that's arter ye've gone to Davy Jones, no doubt; but I've been in the South-Sy ileyands since, myself, an' be blowed if it's much better there! Hows'ever, still anon, I took a new fancy, an' away I makes for the river, in sarch of a nigger villache, as they calls 'em; and sure enough it warn't long ere right I plumps in the midst on a lot o' cane huts amongst trees. But sich a shine and a nitty as I kicks up, ye see, bein' half naked, for all the world like a wild man o' the woods, an' for a full hour I has the town to myself, so I hoists my shirt on a stick over the hut I took, by way of a flag o' truce, an' at last they all begins for to swarm in again. Well, ye see, I knowed the ways o' the natifs thereabouts pretty well, an' what does I do but I'd laid myself flat afore a blasted ugly divvle of a wooden himmache, as stood on the flour, an' I wriggles and twists myself, and groans like a chap in a fit – what they calls fittish, thereaway – an' in course, with that they logs me down at once for a rig'lar holy-possel from Jerusalem. The long an' the short on it was, the fittish-man takes me under charge, and sets me to tell fortins or the like with an ould quadrant they'd got somewheres – gives me a hut an' two black wives, begad! and there I lives for two or three weeks on end, no doubt, as proud as Tommy – when, one fine morning, what does I see off shore in the river but that confounded man-o'-war tender, all ship-shape an' ataunto again. So, my boy, I gives 'em to understand as how, bein' over vallible at home with the King of England, in course he'd sent for to puckalow me away – an' no sooner said, but the whole town gets in a fluster – the fittish-man, which a knowing chap he was, takes an' rubs me from heel to truck with ile out on a sartain nut, as turned me coal-black in half an hour, an' as soon as I looks in the creek, 'mate, be blowed if I'd a knewn myself from a nigger, somehow!" To tell the truth, as I thought to myself, it was no wonder, as Master Harry's nose and lips were by no means in the classic style, and his skin, as it was, didn't appear of the whitest. "So there, ye know, I sits before a hut grindin' away at maize, with nothink else but a waist-cloth round me, and my two legs stuck out, till such time as the lufftenant an' two boats' crews had sarched the villache, havin' heerd, no doubt, of a white man thereabouts – an' at last off they went. Well, in course, at first this here affair gives the fittish-man a lift in the niggerses eyes, by reason o' havin' turned a white man black – 'cause, ye see, them fittish-men has a riglar-bred knowledge on plants and sichlike. But hows'ever, in a day or two I begins for to get rayther oneasy, seein' it didn't wash off, an' accordently I made beknown as much to the fittish-man, when, my boy, if he doesn't shake his mop-head, and rubs noses, as much as to say, 'We an't agoin' to part.' 'Twas no use, and thinks I, 'Ye man-eatin' scum, be blowed if I don't put your neck out, then!' So I turns to with my knife on a log o' wood, carves a himmage twice as big an' ugly as his'n, and builds a hut over it, where I plays all the conjerin' tricks I could mind on – till, be hanged if the niggers didn't begin to leave the fittish-man pretty fast, an' make a blessed sight more o' me. I takes a couple more wives, gets drunk every day on palm-wine and toddy-juice – as for the hogs an' the yams they brought me, why I couldn't stow 'em away; an' in place o' wantin' myself white again, I rubs myself over an' over with that ere nut, let alone palm-ile, till the bloody ould fittish-man looks brown alongside o' me. At last the king o' the niggers thereaway – King Chimbey they called him, or some'at o' the sort – he sends for to see me, an' away to his town they takes me, a mile or two up the country, where I see'd him; but I'm blowed, Jack, if he'd got a crown on at all, ounly a ould red marine's coat, an' a pair o' top-boots, what was laid away when he warn't in state. Hows'ever he gives me two white beans an' a red un, in sign o' high favour, and gives me to know as I wor to stay there. But one thing I couldn't make out, why the black king's hut an' the josst-house, as they calls it, was all stuck round with bones an' dead men's skulls! – 'twan't long, though, ere I finds it out, 'mate! That ere fittish-man, d'ye see, wor a right-down imp to look at, and devilish wicked he eyed me; but still anon I sends over for my wives, turns out a black feller out on his hut, an' slings a hammock in it, when the next day or so I meets the first fittish-man in the woods, an' the poor divvle looks wonderfle friendly-like, makin' me all kinds o' woeful signs, and seemin'ly as much as to say for to keep a bright look-out on the other. All on a suddent what does he do, but he runs a bit, as far as a tree, picks up a sort of a red mushroom, an' he rubs with it across the back o' my hand, gives a wink, and scuttles off. What it meaned I couldn't make out, till I gets back to the town, when I chanced to look at my flipper, and there I see a clean white streak alongst it! Well, I thinks, liberty's sweet, an' I'm blessed if a man's able to cruize much to windward o' right-down slavery, thinks I, if he's black! Howsomever, thinks I, I'll jest hold on a bit longer. Well, next day, the black king had the blue-devils with drinkin' rum, an' he couldn't sleep nohow, 'cause, as I made out, he'd killed his uncle, they said – I doesn't know but he'd eaten him, too – anyhow, I see'd him eat as much of a fat hog, raw, as ud sarve out half the watch – so the fittish-man tells him there's nought for it but to please the fittish. What that wor, blowed if I knew; but no sooner sundown nor they hauls me out o' my hut, claps me in a stinking hole as dark as pitch, and leaves me to smell hell till mornin', as I thought. Jist about the end o' the mid-watch, there kicks up a rumpus like close-reef taups'ls in a hurricane – smash goes the sticks over me; I seed the stars, and a whole lot o' strange blacks with long spears, a-fightin', yellin', tramplin', an' twistin' in the midst o' the huts, – and off I'm hoisted in the gang, on some feller's back or other, at five knots the hour, through the woods, – till down we all comes in a drove, plash amongst the very swamps close by the river, where, lo an' behold, I makes out a schooner afloat at her anchor. The next thing I feels a blasted red-hot iron come hiss across my shoulders, so I jumped up and sang out like blazes, in course. But, my flippers bein' all fast, 'twas no use: I got one shove as sent me head-foremost into a long canoe, with thirty or forty niggers stowed away like cattle, and out the men pulls for the schooner. A big bright fire there was ashore, astarn of us, I mind, where they heated the irons, with a chap in a straw hat sarvin' out rum to the wild blacks from a cask; and ye saw the pitch-black woods behind, with the branches shoved out red in the light on it, an' a bloody-like patch on the water under a clump o' sooty mangrooves. An' be d – d, Jack, if I didn't feel the life sick in me, that time – for, d'ye see, I hears nothin' spoke round me but cussed French, Portingeese, an' nigger tongue – 'specially when it jist lightens on me what sort on a case I were in; an' thinks I, 'By G – if I'm not took for a slave, arter all! – an' be hanged but I left that 'ere, 'farnal mushroom a-lying under that there tree yonder!' I begins for to think o' matters an' things, an' about Bristol quay, an' my old mother, an' my sister as was at school – mind ye, 'mate, all atwixt shovin' off the mangroves an' coming bump again the schooner's side – an' blow me if I doesn't tarn to, an' nigh-hand commences for to blubber – when jist then what does I catch sight on, by the lantern over the side, but that 'ere villain of a fittish-man, an' what's more, King Chimbey hisself, both hauled in the net. And with that I gives a chuckle, as ye may suppose, an' no mistake; for, thinks I, so far as consarns myself, this here can't last long, blow me, for sooner or later I'll find some un to speak to, even an I niver gets rid o' this here outer darkness – be blowed if I han't got a white mind, any ways, an' free I'll be, my boy! But I laughs, in course, when I see'd the fittish-man grin at me, – for thinks I, my cocks, you're logged down for a pretty long spell of it!"

"Well, bo', somehow I knows no more about it till such time as I sort o' wakes up in pitch-dark, all choke and sweat, an' a feller's dirty big toe in my mouth, with mine in some un else's eye, – so out I spits it, an' makes scramble for my life. By the roll an' the splash, I knowed I wor down in the schooner's hold; an' be hanged if there wan't twenty or thirty holding on like bees to a open weather-port, where the fresh wind and the spray come a-blowing through – but there, my boy, 'twere no go for to get so much as the tip o' yer nose. Accordently, up I prizes myself with my feet on another poor devil's wool, – for, d'ye see, by that time I minds a man's face no more nor so much timber! – an' I feels for the hatch over me, where by good luck, as I thought, there I finds it not battened down yet, so I shoved my head through on deck like a blacksmith's hammer. Well, 'mate, there was the schooner's deck wet, a swell of a sea on round her, well off the land, no trifle of a morning gale, and the craft heeling to it – a lot o' hands up on her yards, a-reefing at the boom mains'l and fo'taups'l, an' begod if my heart doesn't jump into my mouth with the sight, for I feels it for all the world like a good glass o' grog, settin' all to rights. Two or three there was walkin' aft the quarterdeck, so out I sings 'Hullo! hullo there, shipmates, give us a hand out o' this!' Two on 'em comes forud, one lifts a handspike, but both gives a grin, as much as to say it's some nigger tongue or other, in place o' good English – for, d'ye see, they'd half their faces black-beard, and rings i' their ears – when up walks another chap like the skipper, an' more the looks of a countryman. 'D – n it,' roars I again, 'I'm a free-born Briton!' with that he lends me a squint, looks to the men, an' gives some sort o' a sign – when they jams-to the hatch and nips me fast by the neck. 'Devil of a deep beggar, this here!' says he; 'jist, give him the gag, my lads,' says he; 'the planters often thinks more of a dumby, 'cause he works the more, and a stout piece o' goods this is!' says he. Well, 'mate, what does they do but one pulls out a knife, an' be blowed if they warn't agoin' for to cut out my tongue; but the men aloft sung out to hoist away the yards; so they left me ready clinched till they'd belay the ropes. Next, a hand forud, by good luck, hailed 'Sail-O,' and they'd some'at else to think o' besides me; for there, my boy, little more nor three miles to wind'ard, I see'd the Irish as she come driving bodily out o' the mist, shakin' out her three to'gallant-sails, an' a white spray flying with her off one surge to another. Bloody bad it was, mind ye, for my wind-pipe, for every time the schooner pitched, away swings my feet clear o' the nigger's heads, – 'cause, d'ye see, we chanced for to be stowed on the 'tween-decks, an' another tier there was, stuffed in her lower hold – an' there I stuck, 'mate, so as I couldn't help watchin' the whole chase, till at last the hatch slacks nip a bit, and down I plumps into the dark again."

"Well, bo', the breeze got lighter, an' to all seemin' the cursed schooner held her own; but hows'ever, the sloop-o'-war kept it up all day, and once or twice she tips us a long shot; till by sunset, as I reckoned, we hears no more on her. The whole night long, again, there we stews as thick as peas – I keeps harknin' to the sighs an' groans, an' the wash along the side, in a sort of a doze; an' s'help me Bob, I fancies for a moment I'm swinging in my hammock in the fox'sle, an' it's no more but the bulkheads and timbers creakin'. Then I thinks its some un else I dreams on, as is d – d oneasy, like to choke for heat and thirst; an' I'm a-chuckling at him – when up I wakes with the cockroaches swarming over my face. Another groan runs from that end to this, the whole lot on us tries hard, and kicks their neighbours to turn, an' be blowed if I knowed but I was buried in a churchyard, with the blasted worms all acrawl about me. All on a sudden, nigh-hand to daybreak it was, I hears a gun to wind'ard, so with that I contrives for to scramble up with my eye to the scuttle-port. 'Twas a stiffish breeze, an' I see'd some'at lift on a sea, like a albatrosse's wing, as one may say – though what wor this but the Irish's bit of a tender, standing right across our bows – for the schooner, ye see, changed her course i' the night-time, rig'lar slaver's dodge, thinkin' for to drop the sloop-o'-war, sure enough. But as for the little f'lucca, why, they hadn't bargained for her at all, lying-to as she did, with a rag o' sail up, in the troughs of the sea, till the schooner was close on her. Well, no sooner does they go about, my boy, but the muskeety of a cruiser lets drive at her off the top of a sea, as we hung broadside to them in stays. Blessed if I ever see sich a mark! – the shot jist takes our fore-top fair slap – for the next minute I see'd the fore-topmast come over the lee-side, an' astarn we begins to go directly. What's more, mate, I never see a small craft yet handled better in a sea, as that 'ere chap did – nor the same thing done, cleaner at any rate – for they jist comes nigh-hand tip on our bowsprit-end, as the schooner lifted – then up in the wind they went like clock-work, with a starnway on as carried the f'lucca, right alongside on us, like a coachman backing up a lane, and grind we both heaved on the swell, with the topmast hamper an' its canvass for a fender atwixt us. Aboard jumps the man-o'-war's-men, in course, cutlash in hand, an' for five minutes some tough work there was on deck, by the tramp, the shots, an' the curses over our heads – when off they shoved the hatches, and I see'd a tall young feller in a gold-banded cap look below. Be blowed if I wasn't goin' to sing out again, for, d'ye see, I'm blessed if I took mind on the chap at all, as much by reason o' the blood an' the smoke he'd got on his face as aught else. Hows'ever, I holds a bit meantime, on account o' Job Price an' that 'ere piratecy consarn – till what does I think, a hour or two arter, when I finds as this here were the very lufftenant as chased us weeks on end in the Camaroons. So a close stopper, sure enough, I keeps on my jaw; an' as for scentin' me out amongst a couple o' hundred blacks in the hold, why, 'twere fit to Paul my own mother herself.

"Well, Jack, by this time bein' near Serry Lone, next day or so we got in – where, what does they do but they lubber-rates us all, as they calls it, into a barracoon ashore, till sich time as the slaver ud be condemned – an' off goes the tender down coast again. Arter that, they treats us well enough, but still I dursn't say a word; for one day, as we goed to work makin' our huts, there I twigs a printed bill upon the church-wall, holdin' out a reward, d'ye see, consarnin' the piratecy, with my oun name and my very build logged down – ownly, be hanged if they doesn't tack on to it all, byway of a topgallant ink-jury to a man, these here words – 'He's a very ugly feller – looks like a furriner.' Well, mate, I an't a young maiden, sure enough – but, thinks I, afore I fell foul o' that blasted fittish-man an' his nut, cuss me if I looks jist so bad as that 'ere! So ye know this goes more to my heart nor aught else, till there I spells out another confounded lie in the bill, as how Cap'en Price's men had mutinied again him, and murdered the brig's crew – when, in course, I sees the villain's whole traverse at once. So seein' I watched my chance one night, an' went aboard of a Yankee brig as were to sail next day; an' I tells the skipper part o' the story, offerin' for to work my passage across for nothin' – which, says he, 'It's a hinteresstin' narritife' – them was his words; an' says he, 'It's a land o' freedom is the States, an' no mistake – an't there no more on ye in the like case?' he says. 'Not as I knows on, sir,' I answers; an' says he, 'Plenty o' coloured gen'lmen there is yonder, all in silks an' satins; an' I hear,' says he, 'there's one on 'em has a chance o' bein President next time – anyhow I'm your friend,' says he, quite hearty. Well, the long an' short of it was, I stays aboard the brig, works my spell in her, an' takes my trick at the helm – but I'm blowed, Jack, if the men ud let me sleep in the fok'sle, 'cause I was a black, – so I slung my hammock aft with the nigger stoo'rd. D'ye see, I misgived myself a bit when we sank the coast, for thinks I its in Africay as that 'ere blessed mushroom are to be found, to take the colour off me – hows'ever, I thinks it carn't but wear out in time, now I've got out o' that 'ere confounded mess, where, sure enough, things was against me – so at last the v'yage were up, an' the brig got in to New Orleens. There I walks aft to the skipper for to take leave, when says he, wonderfle friendly-like, – 'Now my lad,' says he, 'I'm goin' up river a bit for to see a friend as takes a interesst in your kind – an' if ye likes, why, I'll pay yer passage that far?' In course I agrees, and up river we goes, till we lands at a fine house, where I'm left in a far-handy, ye know, while the skipper an' his friend has their dinner. All at once the gen'lman shoves his head out of a doure, takes a look at me, an' in again, – arter that I hears the chink o' dollars – then the skipper walks out, shuts the doure, an' says he to me, 'Now,' he says, 'that's a 'cute sort o' tale you tould me, my lad – but it's a lie, I guess!' 'Lie, sir!' says I, 'what d'ye mean?' for ye see that 'ere matter o' the iv'ry brig made me sing small, at first. 'No slack, Pumpey,' says he, liftin' his fore-finger like a schoolmaster, – ain't yer name Pumpey?' says he. 'Pumpey be d – d!' says I, 'my name's Jack Brown' – for that wor the name, I'd gived him, afore. 'Oh!' says he, 'jest say it's Gin'ral Washinton, right off! Come,' says he, 'I guess I'd jest tell ye what tripe you belongs to – you're a Mandingy niggur,' says he. 'It's all very well,' he says, 'that 'ere yarn, but that's wot they'd all say when they comes, they've been dyed black! Why,' says he, 'doesn't I see that 'ere brand one night on yer back – there's yer arms all over pagan tattooin' – ' 'Bless ye, cap'en,' I says, a-holdin' up my arm, 'it's crowns an' anchers!' 'Crowns!' says he, turnin' up his nose, 'what does we know o' crowns hereaway —we ain't barbers yet, I guess.' – Of what he meaned by barbers here, mate, I'm hanged if I knowed – 'sides,' says he, 'you speaks broken Aimerricane!' 'Merricain?' I says, 'why, I speaks good English! an' good reason, bein' a free-born Briton – as white's yerself, if so be I could ownly clap hands for a minnet on some o' them mushrooms I tould ye on!' 'Where does they grow, then?' axes he, screwin' one eye up. 'In Africay yonder, sir,' I says, 'more's the pity I hadn't the chance to lay hands on 'em again!' 'Phoo!' says he, 'glad they ain't here! An does you think we're agoin' for to send all the way over to Africay for them mushrooms you talks on? Tell ye what, yer free papers 'ud do ye a sight more good here!' says he – 'its no use, with a black skin, for to claim white laws; an' what's more, ye're too tarnation ugly-faced for it, let alone colour, Pumpey, my man!' he says. 'I tell ye what it is, Cap'en Edwards,' says I, 'my frontispiece an't neither here nor there, but if you calls me Pumpey again, 'blowed an' I don't pitch inty ye!' – so with that I handles my bones in a way as makes him hop inside the doure – an' says the skipper, houldin' it half shut, 'Harkee, lad,' he says, 'it's no go your tryin' for to run, or they'll make ye think angels o' bo'sun's-mates. But what's more,' says he, 'niver you whisper a word o' what ye tells me, about nuts an' mushrooms, or sichlike trash – no more will I; for d'ye see, my lad, in that case they'd jest hush ye up for good!' 'Who d'ye mean!' I says, all abroad, an' of a shiver, like – mindin' on the slave-schooner again. 'Why, the planter's people,' says he, 'as I've sold ye to;' an' with that he p'ints into his mouth, and shuts the door. Well, 'mate, ye may fancy how I feels! Here I stands, givin' a look round for a fair offing; but there was bulwarks two-fadom high all round the house, a big bloodhound chained, with his muzzle on his two paws, an' nobody seems for to mind me. So I see'd it were all up wonst more; an' at the thou't of a knife in my tongue, I sits right down in the far-handy, rig'lar flabbergasted, – when out that 'ere blasted skipper shoots his head again, an' says he 'Pumpey, my lad, good day,' says he; 'you knows some'at o' the water, an' as they've boat-work at times hereaway, I don't know but, if you behaves yerself, they'll trust you with an oar now an' then; for I tould yer master jist now,' says he, 'as how you carn't speak no English!' Well, I gives him a damn, 'cause by that time I hadn't a word to throw at a dog; an' shortly arter, up comes the overseer with his black mate, walks me off to a shed, strips me, and gives me a pair o' cotton drawers an' a broad hat – so out I goes the next mornin' for to hoe sugar-cane with a gang o' niggers.

"Well, 'mate, arter that I kept close enough – says no more but mumbles a lot o' no-man's jargon, as makes 'em all log me down for a sort o' double-guinea savitch – , cause why, I were hanged afeared for my tongue, seein', if so be I lost it, I'd be a nigger for ever, sure enough. So the blacks, for most part bein' country bred, they talks nothin' but a blessed jumble, for all the world like babbies at home; an' what does they do but they fancies me a rig'lar African nigger, as proud as Tommy, an' a'most ready for to washup me they wor – why, the poor divvles ud bring me yams an' fish, they kisses my flippers an' toes as I'd been the Pope; an' as for the young girls, I'm blowed if I wan't all the go amongst em – though I carn't say the same where both 's white, ye know! What with the sun an' the cocoa-nut ile, to my thinkin', I gets blacker an' blacker – 'blessed if I didn't fancy a feller's very mind tarned nigger. I larns their confounded lingo, an' I answers to the name o' Pumpey, blast it, till I right-down forgets that I'd ever another. As for runnin', look ye, I knowed 'twas no use thereaway, as long as my skin tould against me, an' as long as Africay wor where it wor. So, my boy, I see'd pretty clear, ye know, as this here bloody world ud turn a man into a rig'lar built slave-nigger in the long run, if he was a angel out o' heaven!

"Well, 'mate, one day I'm in the woods amongst a gang, chopping firewood for the sugar-mill, when, by the Lord! what does I light on betwixt some big ground-leaves and sichlike, but a lot o' them very same red mushrooms as the fittish-man shows me in Africay! – blowed if there warn't a whole sight o' them round about, too! So I pulls enough for ten, ye may be sure, stuffs 'em in my hat, an' that same night, as soon as all's dark, off I goes into the woods, right by the stars, for the nearest town 'twixt there an' New Orleens. As soon as I got nigh-hand it, there I sits down below a tree amongst the bushes, hauls off my slops, an' I turns to for to rub myself all over, from heel to truck, till daybreak. So, in course, I watches for the light angshis enough, as ye may suppose, to know what colour I were. Well, strike me lucky, Jack, if I didn't jump near a fadom i' the air, when at last I sees I'm white wonst more! – 'blessed if I didn't feel myself a new man from stem to starn! I makes right for a creek near by, looks at my face in the water, then up I comes again, an' every bloody yarn o' them cussed slave-togs I pulls to bits, when I shoves 'em under the leaves. Arter that I took fair to the water for about a mile, jist to smooth out my wake, like; then I shins aloft up a tree, where I stowed myself away till noon – 'cause, d'ye see, I knowed pretty well what to look for next. An' by this time, mind ye, all them queer haps made a feller wonderfle sharp, so I'd schemed out the whole chart aforehand how to weather on them cussed Yankees. Accordently, about noon, what does I hear but that 'ere blasted bloodhound comin' along up creek, with a set o' slave-catchers astarn, for to smell out my track. With that, down I went in the water again, rounds a point into the big river, where I gets abreast of a landin'-place near the town, with craft laying out-stream, boats plying, an' all alive. D'ye see, bo', I'd got no clothes at all, an' how for to rig myself again, 'blowed if I knows – seein' as how by this time I'd tarned as white as the day I were born, an' a naked white man in a town arn't no better nor a black nigger. So in I swims like a porpus afore a breeze, an' up an' down I ducks in the shallow, for all the world like a chap a-takin' a bath; an' out I hollers to all an' sundry, with a Yankee twang i' my nose, for to know if they'd see'd my clothes, till a whole lot on 'em crowds on the quay. Hows'ever, I bethinks me on that 'ere blasted brand atwixt my shoulders, an' I makes myself out as modest as a lady, kicks out my legs, and splashes like a whale aground, an' sticks out my starn to 'em for to let 'em see it's white. 'Hullo!' I sings out, 'han't ye seen my clothes?' 'No, stranger,' says they, 'some un's runned off with 'em, we calc'lates!' With that I tells 'em I'm a Boston skipper new comed up from New Orleens; an' not bein' used to the heat, why, I'd took a bath the first thing; an' I 'scribes the whole o' my togs as if I'd made 'em, – 'split new,' says I, 'an' a beaver hat, more by token there's my name inside it; an'' says I, 'there's notes for a hundred dollars in my trousers!' By this time down comes the slave-catchers, an' says they, hearin' on it, 'That 'ere tarnation niggur's gone of with 'em, we'll know un by them marks well enough,' says they, an' off they goes across river. 'Hullo!' I sings out to the folks, 'I'm a gettin' cold here, so I guess I'll come ashore again, slick off!' I twangs out. 'Guess ye can't, straunger!' they hails; 'not till we gets ye some kiverin's! – we're considerable proper here, we are!' 'An't this a free country, then?' I says, givin' a divvle of a splash; an' with that they begs an' axes me for to hould on, an' they'd fix me, as they calls it, in no time. Well, mate, what does they do but one an' another brings me somethin' as like what I 'scribed as could be, hands 'em along on a pole, an' I puts 'em on then an' there. Arter that, the ladies o' the place bein' blessed modest, an' all of a fright leest I'd a comed out an' gone through the town, – why, out o' grannytude, as they says, they gets up a supper-scription on a hundred dollars to make up my loss – has a public meetin' logged down for the evenin', when I'm for to indress the citizens, as they says, all about freedom an' top-gallantry, an' sichlike. Hows'ever, I jist sticks my tongue in my cheek, eats a blessed good dinner in a hot-ell, watches my chance, an' off by a track-boat at sundown to New Orleens, where I shipped aboard a English barque, an' gets safe out to sea wonst more." "Lord love ye, Harry!" exclaimed Jack hereupon, "the likes o' that now! But I've heerd say, them fittish-men you talks on has wonderful knowledge – why, mayhap it's them as keeps all the niggers black, now?" "Well, bo'," said Harry, "I don't doubt but if them 'Merricane slaves jist knowed o' that 'ere red mushroom, why, they'd show the Yankees more stripes nor stars! D'ye see, if a Yankee knowed as his own father were a-hoein' his sugar-canes, 'blowed if he wouldn't make him work up his liberty in dollars! All the stripes, d'ye see, 'mate, is for the blacks, an' all the stars is for the whites, in them Yankee colours as they brags so much about! But what I says is, it's curst hard to get through this here world, shipmate, if ye doesn't keep well to wind'ard of it!" I was the more amused with this account of the ugly rascal's adventures, that I remembered two or three of the occasions he mentioned, and he told them pretty exactly so far as I had to do with them. As for the fetish-man's curious nut, and that extraordinary mushroom of his, why 'ten to one' thought I, 'but all the while the fellow never once touched a piece of soap!' which, no doubt, had as much to do with it as anything besides. Somehow or other, notwithstanding, I had taken almost a fancy to the villain – such a rough sample of mankind he was, with his uncouth, grumpy voice and his huge black beard; and he gave the story in a cool, scornful sort of way that was laughable in itself. 'So, my lad,' I thought, 'it seems you and I have met twice before; but if you play any of your tricks this time, Master Harry, I hope you've found your match;' and certainly, if I had fancied my gentleman was in the slaver's hold that time off the African coast, I'd have 'lubber-rated' him with a vengeance! "I say, 'mates," said he again, with a sulky kind of importance, to those of the watch who had gathered round during the last half of his yarn, "there's three things I hates – an' good reason!" "What be's they, Harry?" asked the rest. "One's a Yankee," said he, "an' be blowed to him! the second's a slaver; and the third is – I carn't abide a nigger, nohow. But d'ye see, there's one thing as I likes – " Here eight bells struck out, and up tumbled the watch below, with Jacobs' hearty face amongst them; so I made my way aft, and, of course, missed hearing what that said delightful thing might be, which this tarry Æsop approved of so much.

While I was listening, I had scarcely noticed, that within the last few minutes a light air had begun to play aloft among the higher canvass, a faint cat's-paw came ruffling here and there a patch of the water, till by this time the Indiaman was answering her wheel again, and moving slowly ahead, as the breeze came down and crept out to the leeches of her sail, with a sluggish lifting of her heavy fore-course. The men were all below at breakfast, forward, and, of course, at that hour the poop above me was quite a Babel of idlers' voices; while I looked into the compass and watched the ship's head falling gradually off from north-east-by-north, near which it had stuck pretty close since daybreak. The sun was brought before her opposite beam, and such a perfect gush of hazy white light shot from that quarter over the larboard bulwarks, that thereaway, in fact, there might have been a fleet of ships, or a knot of islands, and we none the wiser, as you couldn't look into it at all. The chief mate came handing a wonderfully timid young lady down the poop-ladder with great care, and as soon as they were safe on the quarterdeck, she asked with a confiding sort of lisp, "And where are we going now then, Mr Finch?" "Well, Miss," simpered he, "wherever you please, I'll be glad to conduct you!" "Oh, but the ship I mean," replied she, giggling prettily. "Why," said Finch, stooping down to the binnacle, "she heads due south-east at present, Miss." "I am so glad you are going on again!" said the young lady; "but oh! when shall we see dear land once more, Mr Finch?" "Not for more than a week, I fear," answered the mate, "when we arrive at the Cape of Good Hope. But there, Miss, your poetic feelings will be gratified, I assure you! The hills there, I might say, Miss Brodie," he went on, "not to speak of the woods, are quite dramatic! You mustn't suppose the rough mariner, rude as he seems, Miss Brodie, is entirely devoid of romance in his sentiments, I hope!" and he looked down for the twentieth time that morning at his boots, as he handed her down the cabin hatchway, longing to see the Cape, no doubt. 'Much romance, as you call it, there is in ugly Harry yonder!' thought I; and comparing this sort of stuff, aft, with the matter-of-fact notions before the mast, made me the more anxious for what might turn up in a few hours, with this gallant first officer left in full charge, and the captain, as I understood, unable to leave his cot. A good enough seaman the fellow was, so far as your regular deep-sea work went, which those India voyagers had chiefly to do with then; but for aught out of the way, or a sudden pinch, why, the peace had just newly set them free of their leading-strings, and here this young mate brought his new-fangled school navigation, forsooth, to run the Seringapatam into some mess or other; whereas, in a case of the kind, I had no doubt he would prove as helpless as a child. By this time, for my part, all my wishes for some ticklish adventure were almost gone, when I thought of our feelings at the loss of the boat, as well as the number of innocent young creatures on board, with Lota Hyde herself amongst them: while here had I got myself fairly set down for a raw griffin. Yet neither Westwood nor I, unless it came to the very worst, could, venture to make himself openly useful! I was puzzled both what to think of our exact case, and what to do; whereas a pretty short time in these latitudes, as the foremast-man had said, might finish our business altogether; indeed, the whole look of things, somehow or other, at that moment, had a strange unsettled touch about it, out of which one accustomed to those parts might be sure some change would come. The air, a little ago, was quite suffocating, the heat got greater; and the breeze, though it seemed to strengthen aloft, at times sank quietly out of her lower canvass like a breath drawn in, and caught it again as quietly ere it fell to the masts. What with the slow huge heave of the water, as it washed glittering past, and what with the blue tropical sky overhead, getting paler and paler at the horizon astern, from fair heat – while the sunlight and the white haze on our larboard beam, made it a complete puzzle to behold – why, I felt just like some fellow in one of those stupid dreams after a heavy supper, with nothing at all in them, when you don't know how long or how often you've dreamt it before. Deuce the hand or foot you can stir, and yet you've a notion of something horrid that's sure to come upon you. We couldn't be much more than a hundred miles or so to south'ard of St Helena; but we might be two thousand miles off the land, or we might be fifty. I had only been once in my life near the coast thereaway, and certainly my recollections of it weren't the most pleasant. As for the charts, so little was known of it that we couldn't depend upon them; yet there was no doubt the ship had been all night long in a strong set of water toward north-east, right across her course. For my own part, I was as anxious as any one else to reach the Cape, and get rid of all this cursed nonsense; for since last night, I saw quite well by her look that Violet Hyde would never favour me, if I kept in her wake to the day of judgment. There was I, too, every time I came on deck and saw those roundhouse doors, my heart leapt into my throat, and I didn't know port from starboard! But what was the odds, that I'd have kissed the very pitch she walked upon, when she wasn't for me! – being deep in love don't sharpen the faculties, neither, and the more I thought of matters the stupider I seemed to get. "Green Hand!" thought I, "as Jacobs and the larboard watch call me, it appears – why, they're right enough! A green hand I came afloat nine years ago, and by Jove! though I know the sea and what belongs to it, from sheer liking to them, as 'twere – it seems a green hand I'm to stick – seeing I know so blessed little of womankind, not to speak of that whole confounded world ashore! With all one's schemes and one's weather-eye, something new always keeps turning up to show one what an ass he is; and hang me, if I don't begin to suppose I'm only fit for working small traverses upon slavers and jack-nasty-faces, after all! There's Westwood, without troubling himself, seems to weather upon me, with her, like a Baltimore clipper on a Dutch schuyt!" In short, I wanted to leave the Seringapatam as soon as I could, wish them all a good voyage together away for Bombay, sit down under Table Mountain, damn my own eyes, and then perhaps go and travel amongst the Hottentots by way of a change.

The chief officer came aft towards the binnacle again, with a strut in his gait, and more full of importance than ever, of course. "This breeze'll hold, I think, Macleod?" said he to the second mate, who was shuffling about in a lounging, unseamanlike way he had, as if he felt uncomfortable on the quarterdeck, and both hands in his jacket pockets. "Well," said the Scotchman, "do ye not think it's too early begun, sir?" and he looked about like an old owl, winking against the glare of light past the mainsheet to larboard; "I'll not say but it will, though," continued he, "but 'odsake, sir, it's terrible warm!" "Can't be long ere we get into Cape Town, now," said the mate, "so you'll turn the men on deck as soon as breakfast's over, Mr Macleod, and commence giving her a coat of paint outside, sir." "Exactly, Mr Finch," said the other, "all hands it'll be, sir? For any sake, Mr Finch, give thay lazy scoundrels something ado!" "Yes, all hands," said Finch; and he was going below, when the second mate sidled up to him again, as if he had something particular to say. "The captain'll be quite better by this time, no doubt, Mr Finch?" asked he. "Well– d'ye mean?" inquired the mate, rather shortly; "why no, sir – when the surgeon saw him in the morning-watch, he said it was a fever, and the sooner we saw the Cape, the better for him." "No doubt, no doubt, sir," said the second-mate, thoughtfully, putting his fore-finger up his twisted nose, which I noticed he did in such cases, as if the twist had to do with his memory, – "no doubt, sir, that's just it! The doctor's a sharp Edinbro' lad – did he see aucht bye common about the captain, sir?" "No," said Finch, "except that he wanted to go on deck this morning, and the surgeon took away his clothes and left the door locked." "Did he though?" asked Macleod, shaking his head, and looking a little anxious; "didna he ask for aucht in particular, sir?" "Not that I heard of, Mr Macleod," replied the mate; "what do you mean?" "Did he no ask for a green leaf?" replied the second mate. "Pooh!" said Finch, "what if he did?" "Well, sir," said Macleod, "neither you nor the doctor's sailed five voy'ges with the captain, like me. He's a quiet man, Captain Weelumson, an' well he knows his calling; but sometimes warm weather doesn't do with him, more especial siccan warm weather as this, when the moon's full, as it is the night, ye know, Mr Finch. There's something else besides that, though, when he's taken that way." "Well, what is it?" asked the mate carelessly. "Oo!" said Macleod, "it can't be that this time, of course, sir, – it's when he's near the land! The captain knows the smell of it, these times, Mr Finch, as well's a cockroach does – an' it's then he asks for a green leaf, and wants to go straight ashore – I mind he did it the voy'ge before last, sir. He's a quiet man, the captain, as I said, for ord'nar' – but when he's roused, he's a – " "Why, what was the matter with him?" said Finch, more attentive than before, "you don't mean to say – ? go on, Mr Macleod." The second mate, however, looked cautious, closed his lips firmly, and twirled his red whiskers, as he glanced with one eye aloft again. "Hoo!" said he, carelessly, "hoo, it's nothing, nothing, – they just, I'm thinking, sir, what they call disgestion ashore – all frae the stommach, Mr Finch! We used just for to lock the state-room door, an' never let on we heard – but at any rate, sir, this is no the thing at all, ye know!" "Mester Semm," continued he to the fat midshipman, who came slowly up from the steerage, picking his teeth with a pocket-knife, "go forred and get the bo'sun to turn up all hands."

"Sir," said I, stepping up to the mate next moment, before the roundhouse, "might I use the freedom of asking whereabouts we are at present?" Finch gave me a look of cool indifference, without stirring head or hand; which I saw, however, was put on, as, ever since our boating affair, the man evidently detested me, with all his pretended scorn. "Oh certainly, sir!" said he, "of course! – sorry I haven't the ship's log here to show you – but it's two hundred miles or so below St Helena, eight hundred miles odd off south-west African coast, with a light westerly breeze bound for the Cape of Good Hope – so after that you can look about you, sir!" Are you sure of all that, sir?" asked I, seriously. "Oh, no, of course not!" said he, still standing as before, "not in the least, sir! It's nothing but quadrant, sextant, and chronometer work, after all – which every young gentleman don't believe in!" Then he muttered aloud, as if to himself, "Well, if the captain should chance to ask for a green leaf, I know where to find it for him!" I was just on the point of giving him some angry answer or other, and perhaps spoiling all, when I felt a tap on my shoulder, and on turning round saw the Indian judge, who had found me in the way either of his passage or his prospect, on stepping out of the starboard door. "Eh!" said he, jocularly, as I begged his pardon, "eh, young sir – I've nothing to do with pardons – always leave that to the governor-general and councillors! Been doing anything wrong, then? Ah, what's this – still calm, or some of your wind again, Mr officer?" "A fine breeze like to hold, Sir Charles," answered the mate, all bows and politeness. "So!" said Sir Charles, "but I don't see Captain. Williamson at all this morning – where is he?" "I am sorry to say he is very unwell, Sir Charles," said Finch. "Indeed!" exclaimed the Judge, with whom the captain stood for all the seamanship aboard, and looking round again rather dissatisfied. "Don't like that, though! I hope he won't be long unable to attend to things, sir – let me know as soon as he is recovered, if you please!" "Certainly, Sir Charles," said the chief officer, touching his cap with some appearance of pique, "but I hope, sir, I understand my duties in command, Sir Charles." "Daresay, sir," said the Judge, "as officer, probably. Commander absent! – horrible accidents already!" he muttered crossly, changing his usual high sharp key to a harsh croak, like a saw going through a heavy spar, "something sure to go wrong – wish we'd done with this deuced tiresome voyage!" "Ha, young gentleman!" exclaimed he, turning as he went in, "d'ye play chess – suppose not – eh?" "Why yes, sir," said I, "I do." "Well," continued he, overhauling me more carefully than he had done before, though latterly I had begun to be somewhat in his good graces when we met by chance, "after all, you've a chess eye, if you know the game at all. Come in, then, for godsake, and let's begin! Ever since the poor brigadier went, I've had only myself or a girl to play against! 'Gad, sir, there is something, I can't express how horrible to my mind, in being matched against nobody– or, what's worse, damme, a woman! But recollect, young gentleman, I call not bear a tyro!" and he glanced at me as we walked into the large poop-cabin, as sharply and as cold as a nor'-wester ere it breaks to windward. Now I happened to know the game, and to be particularly fond of it, so, restless as I felt otherwise, I gave the old nabob a quiet nod, laid down my griffin-looking straw hat on the sofa, and in two minutes there we were, sitting opposite over a splendid China-made chess-board, with elephants, emperors, mandarins, and china-men, all square and ataunto, as if they'd been set ready for days. The dark Kitmagar commenced fanning over his master's head with a bright feather punka, the other native servant handed him his twisted hookah and lighted it, after which he folded his arms and stood looking down on the board like a pundit at some campaign of the Great Mogul – while the Judge himself waited for my first move, as if it had been some of our plain English fellows in Hindostan commencing against your whole big India hubbub and finery, to get hold of it all in the end. For my part I sat at first all of a tingle and tremble, thinking how near his lovely daughter might be; and there were the breakfast cups laid out on a round table at the other side, behind me. However I made my move, Sir Charles made his, and pitched in to the game in a half impatient, half long-headed sort of way, anxious to get to the thick of it, as it were, once more. Not a word was said, and you only heard the suck of the smoke bubbling through the water-bottle of his pipe, after each move the Judge made; till I set myself to the play in right earnest, and, owing to the old gentleman's haste at the beginning, or his over-sharpness, I hooked him into a mess with which I used to catch the old hands at chess in the cock-pit, just by fancying what they meant to be at. The Judge lifted his head, looked at me, and went on again. "Your queen is in check, Sir Charles!" said I, next time, by way of a polite hint. "Check, though, young gentleman!" said he, chuckling, as he dropped one of his outlandish knights, which I wasn't yet up to the looks of, close to windward of my blessed old Turk of a king; so the skirmish was just getting to be a fair set-to, when I chanced to lift my eyes, and saw the door from the after-cabin open, with Miss Hyde coming through. "Now, papa," exclaimed she on the moment, "you must come to breakfast," – when all of a sudden, at seeing another man in the cabin, she stopped short. Being not so loud and griffin-like in my toggery that morning, and my hat off, the young lady didn't recognise me at first, – though the next minute, I saw by her colour and her astonished look, she not only did that, but something else – no doubt remembering at last where she had seen me ashore. "Well, child," said the Judge, "make haste with it, then! – Recollect where we are, now, young gentleman, – and come to breakfast." She had a pink muslin morning-dress on, with her brown hair done up like the Virgin Mary in a picture, and the sea had taken almost all the paleness off her cheek that it had in the ball-room at Epsom, a month or two ago, – and, by Jove! when I saw her begin to pour out the tea out of the silver tea-pot, I didn't know where I was! "Oh, I forgot," said the Judge, waving his hand from me to her, in a hurry, "Mr Robbins, Violet! – ho, Kitmagar, curry l'ao!" "Oh," said she, stiffly, with a cold turn of her pretty lip, "I have met Mr – Mr – " "Collins, ma'am," said I. "I have met this gentleman by accident before." "So you have – so you have," said her father; "but you play chess well, Mr – a – a – what's his name? – ah! Colley. Gad you play well, sir, – we must have it out!" The young lady glanced at me again with a sort of astonishment; at last she said, no doubt for form's sake, though as indifferently as possible, – "You have known your friend the missionary gentleman long, I believe, sir? – the Reverend Mr Thomas – I think that is his name?" "Oh no, ma'am!" said I hastily, for the Judge was the last man I wished should join Westwood and me together, "only since we crossed the Line, or so." "Why, I thought he said you were at school together!" said she, in surprise. "Why – hem – certainly not, ma'am – a – a – I – a – a – I don't remember the gentleman there," I blundered out. "Eh, what? – check to your queen, young gentleman, surely?" asked Sir Charles. "What's this, though! Always like to hear a mystery explained, so" – and he gave me one of his sharp glances. "Why, why – surely, young man, now I think of it in that way, I've seen you before in some peculiar circumstances or other – on land, too. Why, where was it – let me see, now?" putting his finger to his forehead to think, while, I sat pretty uneasy, like a small pawn that had been trying to get to the head of the board, and turn into a knight or a bishop, when it falls foul of a grand figured-out king and queen. However, the queen is the only piece you need mind at distance, and blessed hard it is to escape from her, of course. Accordingly, I cared little enough for the old nabob finding out I had gone in chase of them; but there sat his charming little daughter, with, her eyes on her teacup; and whether the turn of her face meant coolness, or malice, or amusement, I didn't know – though she seemed a little anxious too, I thought, lest her father should recollect me.

"It wasn't before me, young man?" asked he, looking, up of a sudden: "no, that must have been in India —must have been in England, when I was last there – let me see." And I couldn't help fancying what a man's feelings must be, tried for his life, as I caught a side-view of his temples working, dead in my wake, as it were. The thing was laughable enough, and for a moment I met Lota's eye as he mentioned England – 'twas too short a glimpse, though, to make out; and, thought I, "he'll be down on Surrey directly, and then Croydon – last of all, the back of his garden wall, I suppose!" "Check" it was, and what I was going to say I couldn't exactly conceive, unless I patched up some false place or other, with matters to match, and mentioned it to the old fellow, though small chance of its answering with such a devil of a lawyer – when all at once I thought I heard a hail from aloft, then the second-mate's voice roared close outside, "Hullo! – aloft there!" The next moment I started up, and looked at Miss Hyde, as I heard plainly enough the cry, "On deck there – land O!" I turned round at once, and walked out of the roundhouse to the quarterdeck, where, two minutes after, the whole of the passengers were crowding from below, the Judge and his daughter already on the poop. Far aloft, upon the fore-to'gallant-yard, in the hot glare of the sun, a sailor was standing, with his hand over his eyes, and looking to the horizon, as the Indiaman stood quietly before the light breeze. "Where-away-ay?" was the next hail from deck. "Broad on our larboard bow, sir," was the answer.

PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY.[14 - Physical Geography. By Mary Somerville.The Physical Atlas. By Alexander Keith Johnston.]

We have here combined the best of all books, and the best of all maps, for the study of the most interesting description of geography. Mr Johnston's Physical Atlas, now published in a form which renders it accessible to greater numbers, is without a rival as a companion and guide in this department of study; and by dwelling on its merits and utility, we should be only echoing a verdict which has already been pronounced by almost every journal of scientific or critical celebrity. And, indeed, the same might be said of our commendation of Mrs Somerville's book; our praise comes lagging in the rear, and is well-nigh superfluous. But not only are we desirous to tender our tribute of respect to one who has done more than any other living writer to extend amongst us sound, as well as general knowledge of physical science; we are anxious also to recommend to our youth the enlarged method of studying geography, which her present work demonstrates to be as captivating as it is instructive.

Mrs Somerville's Physical Geography does not assume so profound an aspect, nor has it so lofty an aim, as the Cosmos of Alexander Von Humboldt; neither can it claim, like that work, to be written by one who has himself surveyed the greater part of the terraqueous globe he undertakes to describe. This latter circumstance gives an extraordinary interest to the Cosmos. From time to time the professor of science, gleaning his knowledge from books, and laboratories, and museums, steps aside, and we hear, and almost see, the adventurous traveller, the man Humboldt himself, who seems to speak to us from the distant ocean he has traversed, or the sublime mountain heights he has ascended. Our countrywoman can claim no such peculiar prerogative. Who else can? To few – to none other – has it ever been permitted to combine so wide a range of knowledge with so wide a range of vision – to have carried his mind through all science, and his eye over all regions. He is familiar with all the grandeurs of our earth. He speaks with the air of the mountain still around him. When he discourses of the Himalaya or the Andes, it is with the vivid impression of one whose footsteps are still lying uneffaced amongst their rarely-trodden and precipitous passes. The phenomena he describes he has seen. He can reveal to us, and make us feel with him, that strange impression which "the first earthquake" makes even upon the most educated and reflective man, who suddenly finds his old faith shaken in the stability of the earth. And what lecturer upon electricity could ever arrest the attention of his auditors by so charming a reference to his personal experience as is contained in the following passage? —

"It was not without surprise that I noticed, on the shores of the Orinoco, children belonging to tribes in the lowest stage of barbarism amusing themselves by rubbing the dry, flat, shining seeds of a leguminous climbing plant (probably a negretia) for the purpose of causing them to attract fibres of cotton or bamboo. It was a sight well fitted to leave on the mind of a thoughtful spectator a deep and serious impression. How wide is the interval which separates the simple knowledge of the excitement of electricity by friction, shown in the sports of these naked, copper-coloured children of the forest, from the invention of the metallic conductor, which draws the swift lightning from the storm-cloud – of the voltaic pile, capable of effecting chemical decomposition – of a magnetic apparatus, evolving light – and of the magnetic telegraph!"

The writer naturally reflects on the wide interval which separates the knowledge of electricity shown by these naked children on the banks of the Orinoco, and the inventions of modern science, which have taught the lightnings of heaven to do our messages on the earth. But, to our mind, this wide interval is far more strikingly displayed by the picture which is here presented to the imagination, of the profound and meditative European looking down, pleased and surprised, at the first unconscious steps in experimental philosophy which these copper-coloured children of the forest are making in their sport.

But if Mrs Somerville's book has none of this extraordinary interest which the great traveller has thrown over his work, and if it does not aspire to that philosophic unity of view, (of which a word hereafter, in passing,) it must take precedence of this, and of all other works, as a useful compendium of the latest discoveries, and the soundest knowledge we possess, in the various subjects it embraces. Nowhere, except in her own previous work, The Connexion of the Physical Sciences, is there to be found so large a store of well-selected information, so lucidly set forth. In surveying and grouping together whatever has been seen by the eyes of others, or detected by their laborious investigations, she is not surpassed by any one; and the absence of all higher aim, or more original effort, is favourable to this distinctness of exposition. We have no obscurities other than what the imperfect state of science itself involves her in; no dissertations which are felt to interrupt or delay. She strings her beads distinct and close together. With quiet perspicacity she seizes at once whatever is most interesting and most captivating in her subject.

The Cosmos of Humboldt has the ambitious aim of presenting to us the universe, so far as we know it, in that beauty of harmony which results from a whole. Thus, at least, we understand his intention. He would domineer, as with an eagle's glance, over the known creation, and embrace it in its unity, displaying to us that beauty which exists in the harmony of all its parts. The attempt no one would depreciate or decry, but manifestly the imperfect state of science forbids its execution. We have attained no point of view from which we can survey the world as one harmonious whole. Our knowledge is fragmentary, uncertain, imperfect; and the most philosophic mind cannot reduce it into any shape in which it shall appear other than uncertain and fragmentary. We cannot "stand in the sun," as Coleridge says in his fine verse, and survey creation; we have no such luminous standing-point. There never, indeed, was a time when the attempt to harmonise our knowledge, and view the universe of things "in the beauty of unity," was so hopeless, so desperate. For the old theories, the old methods of representing to the imagination the more subtle and invisible agencies of the physical world, are shaken, or exploded, and nothing new has been able to take their place. What is new, and what is old, are alike unsettled, unconfirmed. In reality, therefore, the work of Mrs Somerville is as much a Cosmos as that of Von Humboldt; and, as a work of instruction, is far better for not aiming higher than it does. Mrs Somerville presents to us each gospel of science – if we may give that title to its imperfect revelations – and does not bewilder or confuse by attempting that "harmony of the gospels" which the scientific expositor is, as yet, unable to accomplish.

As yet, we have said – but, indeed, will science be ever able to realise this aspiration of the intellect after unity and completeness of view? To the reflective mind, human science presents this singular aspect. Whilst the speculative reason of man continually seeks after unity, strives to see the many in the one – as the Platonist would express himself – or, as we should rather say, strives to resolve the multiplicity of phenomena into a few ultimate causes, so as to create for itself a whole, some rounded system which the intellectual vision call embrace; the discoveries of science, by which it hopes and strives to realise this end, do in fact, at every stage, increase the apparent complexity of the phenomena. The new agencies, or causes, which are brought to light, if they explain what before was anomalous and obscure, become themselves the source of innumerable difficulties and conjectures. Each discovery stirs more questions than it sets at rest. What, on its first introduction, promised to explain so many things, is found, on further acquaintance, to have added but one more to the inexplicable facts around us. With each step, also, in our inquiry, the physical agents that are revealed to us become more subtle, more calculated to excite and to elude our curiosity. Already, half our science is occupied with matter that is invisible. From time to time some grand generalisation is proposed – electricity is now the evoked spirit which is to help us through our besetting difficulties – but, fast as the theory is formed, some new fact emerges that will not range itself within it; the cautious thinker steps back, and acknowledges that the effort is as yet premature. It always will be premature.

There is a perpetual antagonism between the intellectual tendency to reduce all phenomena to a harmonious and complete system, and that increase of knowledge which, while it seems to favour the attempt, renders it more and more impracticable. With our limited powers, we cannot embrace the whole; and therefore it must follow, that it is only when our knowledge is scanty, that we seem capable of the task. Every addition to that knowledge, from the time that Thales would have reduced all things to the one element of water, has rendered the task more hopeless. And as science was never so far advanced as at the present time, so this antagonism was never so clearly illustrated between the effort of reason to generalise, and the influx of broken knowledge, reducing the overtasked intellect to despair. How much has lately been revealed to us of the more subtle powers and processes of nature – of light, of heat, of electricity! How tempting the generalisations offered to our view! We seem to be, at least, upon the eve of some great discovery which will explain all: an illusion which is destined to prompt the researches of the ardent spirits of every age. They will always be on the eve of some great discovery which is to place the clue of the labyrinth into their hand. The new discovery, like its predecessor, will add only another chamber to the interminable labyrinth.

Let us, for instance, suppose that we have discovered, in electricity, the cause of that attraction to which we had confided the revolution of the planets; of that chemical affinity to which we had ascribed the various combinations of those ultimate atoms of which the material world is presumed to be composed; of that vital principle which assimilates in the plant, and grows and feels in the animal. Let us suppose that this is a sound generalisation; yet, as electricity cannot be alone both attraction in the mass, and chemical affinity in the atom, and irritability and susceptibility in the fibre and the nerve, what has the speculative reason attained but to the knowledge of a new and necessary agent, producing different effects according to the different conditions in which, and the different co-agencies with which it operates? These conditions, these co-agencies, are all to be discovered. It is one flash of light, revealing a whole world of ignorance.

To the explanation of the most obstinate of all problems – the nature of the vital principle – we seem to have made a great step when we introduce a current of electricity circulating through the nerves. If this hypothesis be established, we shall probably have made a valuable and very useful addition to our stock of knowledge; but we shall be as far as ever from solving the problem of the vital principle. We have now a current of electricity circulating along the nerves, as we had before a current of blood, circulating through the veins and arteries; the one may become as prominent and as important a fact in the science of the physician as the other; but it will be equally powerless with the old discovery of Harvey to explain the ultimate cause of vitality. To the speculative reason it has but complicated the phenomena of animal life.