Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. VI, November 1850, Vol. I

This may justly be styled the golden age of the pre-adamite world; the globe having now cooled to a sufficient temperature to promote the growth of plants without being injurious to them, is for the first time clothed in all the rich verdure of a tropical climate. Doubtless the earth would have presented a lovely aspect, had it been possible to have beheld it; the mighty forests unawakened by a sound save that of the sighing of the wind; the silent seas, in which the new-born denizens of the deep roamed at will; the vast inland lakes for ages unruffled but by the fitful breeze; all present to the mind's eye a picture of surpassing, solitary grandeur.

The creatures that existed, though differing from those of the previous age, were still confined to the waters; as yet the dry land remained untenanted. The fishes give evidence of a higher organization, and many of them appear to have been of gigantic dimensions. Some teeth which have been found of one kind, the Megalichthys, equal in size those of the largest living crocodiles.

There is one peculiarity respecting fossil fishes which is worthy of remark. It is that, in the lapse of time from one era to another, their character does not change insensibly, as in the case of many zoophytes and testacea; on the contrary, species seem to succeed species abruptly, and at certain definite intervals. A celebrated geologist[18 - Dr. Buckland] has observed, that not a single species of fossil fish has yet been found that is common to any two great geological formations, or that is living in our own seas.

Continuing our investigation, we next find the fruitful coal era passing away; scarcely a trace of vegetation remains; a few species of zoophytes, shells, and fishes are to be found, and we observe the impression of footsteps, technically called ichnites, from the Greek ichnon, a footmark. These marks present a highly interesting memento of past ages. Persons living near the sea-shore must have frequently observed the distinctness with which the track of birds and other animals is imprinted in the sand. If this sand were to be hardened by remaining exposed to the action of the sun and air, it would form a perfect mould of the foot; this is exactly what occurred in these early ages, and the hollow becoming subsequently filled by the deposition of new sediment, the lower stone retained the impression, while the upper one presented a cast in relief. Many fossil footmarks have been found in the rocks belonging to this period.

It is evident from the fact of footmarks being found, that creatures capable of existing on dry land were formed about this time, and we accordingly find the remains of a new order – Reptiles. These animals, which now constitute but a small family among existing quadrupeds, then flourished in great size and numbers. Crocodiles and lizards of various forms and gigantic stature roamed through the earth. Some of the most remarkable are those which belong to the genus Ichthyosaurus, or fish-lizard, so called from the resemblance of their vertebræ to those of fishes. This saurian Dr. Buckland describes as something similar in form to the modern porpoise; it had four broad feet, and a long and powerful tail; its jaws were so prodigious that it could probably expand them to a width of five or six feet, and its powers of destruction must have been enormous. The length of some of these reptiles exceeded thirty feet.

Another animal which lived at this period was the Plesiosaurus. It lived in shallow seas and estuaries, and would seem, from its organs of respiration, to have required frequent supplies of fresh air. Mr. Conybeare describes it as "swimming upon, or near the surface, arching its long neck like the swan, and occasionally darting it down at the fish which happened to float within its reach."

This reptile, which was smaller than the Ichthyosaurus, has been found as long as from twelve to fifteen feet. Its appearance and habits differed from the latter materially. The Ichthyosaurus, with its short neck, powerful jaws, and lizard-like body, seems admirably suited to range through the deep waters, unrivaled in size or strength, and monarch of the then existing world; the Plesiosaurus, smaller in size and inferior in strength, shunned its powerful antagonist, and, lurking in shallows and sheltered bays, remained secure from the assaults of its dangerous foe, its long neck and small head being well adapted to enable it to dart on its prey, as it lay concealed amid the tangled sea-weed.

This has been called by geologists the "age of reptiles;" their remains are found in great numbers in the lias, oolite, and wealden strata. These creatures seem to form a connecting link between the fishes of the previous era, and the mammalia of the Tertiary age; the Ichthyosaurus differed little from a fish in shape, and its paddles or feet are not unlike fins, the Plesiosaurus, on the contrary, as its name denotes, partook more of the quadruped form. Dr. Buckland in describing it, says: "To the head of a lizard it united the teeth of a crocodile; a neck of enormous length, resembling the body of a serpent; a trunk and tail having the proportions of an ordinary quadruped; the ribs of a cameleon, and the paddles of a whale." Besides these animals we find the Pterodactyle, half bird and half reptile; the Megalosaurus, or gigantic lizard; the Hylæosaurus, or forest lizard; the Geosaurus, or land lizard, and many others, all partaking more or less of affinity to both the piscatory and saurian tribes.

Passing on now to the period when the great chalk rocks which prevail so much in the southeastern counties of Great Britain were deposited, we find the land in many places submerged; the fossil remains are eminently marine in character, and the earth must literally have presented a "world of waters" to the view. Sponges, corals, star-fish, and marine reptiles inhabited the globe, and plants, chiefly of marine types, grew on its surface. Although, however, a great portion of the earth was under water, it must not therefore be supposed that it was returning to its ancient desolation and solitude. The author whom we last quoted, in speaking of this subject, says: "The sterility and solitude which have sometimes been attributed to the depths of the ocean, exist only in the fictions of poetic fancy. The great mass of water that covers nearly three-fourths of the globe is crowded with life, perhaps more abundantly than the air and the surface of the earth; and the bottom of the sea, within a certain depth accessible to light, swarms with countless hosts of worms and creeping things, which represent the kindred families of low degree which crawl upon the land."

This era seems to have been one of peculiar tranquillity, for the most part undisturbed by earthquakes or other igneous forces. The prevailing characteristic of the scenery was flatness, and low continents were surrounded by shallow seas. The earth is now approaching the state when it will be fit for the reception of man, and in the next age we find some of the existing species of animals.

It is worthy of observation, that at the different periods when the world had attained a state suitable for their existence, the various orders of animal and vegetable life were created. In the "dark ages" of geological history, when the globe had comparatively lately subsided from a state of fusion,[19 - The theory of the original incandescence of the earth has been much debated, but we believe it is gaining ground among geologists.] it was barren, sterile, and uninhabited; next, the waters having become cool enough, some of the lowest orders of shell-fish and zoophytes peopled them; subsequently, fishes were formed, and for ages constituted the highest order of animal life; after this we enter on the age of reptiles, when gigantic crocodiles and lizard-like forms dwelt in fenny marshes, or reposed on the black mud of slow moving rivers, as they crept along toward the ocean betwixt their oozy banks; and we now reach the period when the noblest order of animal life, the class to which man himself belongs, Mammalia, began to people the earth.

The world now probably presented an appearance nearly similar to what it does at present. The land, which in the chalk formation was under water, has again emerged, and swarms with life; vast savannahs rich in verdure, and decked in a luxuriant garb with trees, plants, grasses, and shrubs, and inland lakes, to which the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the hippopotamus, with many extinct races of animals, came to slake their thirst, form the principal characteristics of this period.

There is something peculiarly interesting in looking back to this early age, while Adam was yet dust. We picture to the mind's eye the gigantic Deinotherium, the largest creature of terrestrial life, raking and grabbing with its huge tusks the aquatic plants that grew in the pools and shallow lakes, or, as Dr. Buckland describes it, sleeping with its head hooked on to the bank, and its nostrils sustained above water so as merely to breathe, while the body remained floating at ease beneath the surface. We see its twin-brother in greatness, the Megatherium, as it comes slowly stalking through the thick underwood, its foot, of a yard in length, crushing where it treads, and its impenetrable hide defying the attacks of rhinoceros or crocodile. In the waters we behold the mighty whale, monarch of the deep, sporting in the pre-adamite seas as he now does amid the icebergs of the Arctic ocean; the walrus and the seal, now denizens of the colder climes, mingling with the tropical manati; while in the forests the owl, the buzzard, and the woodcock, dwelt undisturbed, and the squirrel and monkey leaped from bough to bough.

Arrived at the close of the pre-adamite history, after having traced it from the earliest ages of which we possess any evidence, down to the eve of human existence, the reflection that naturally presents itself to the mind is the strangeness of the fact, that myriads of creatures should have existed, and that generation after generation should have lived and died and passed away, ere yet man saw the light. We are so accustomed to view all creatures as created solely for human use, rather than for the pleasure of the Divine Creator, that we can at first scarcely credit the history, though written by the hand of nature herself; and the human race sinks into insignificance when it is shown to be but the last link in a long chain of creations. Nevertheless, that such, however humbling it may be, is the fact, we possess indubitable evidence: and when we consider, as Mr. Bakewell observes, "that more than three-fifths of the earth's present surface are covered by the ocean, and that if from the remainder we deduct the space occupied by polar ice and eternal snows, by sandy deserts, sterile mountains, marshes, rivers, and lakes, that the habitable portion will scarcely exceed one-fifth of the whole globe; that the remaining four-fifths, though untenanted by mankind, are, for the most part, abundantly stocked with animated beings, that exult in the pleasure of existence, independent of human control, and in no way subservient to the necessities or caprices of men; that such is and has been, for several thousand years, the actual condition of our planet; we may feel less reluctance in admitting the prolonged ages of creation, and the numerous tribes that lived and flourished, and left their remains imbedded in the strata which compose the outer crust of the earth."

THE MANIA FOR TULIPS IN HOLLAND

The inordinate passion, which at one time prevailed for Tulips, amounted to actual madness, and well deserved the name of Tulipomania, by which it is distinguished. The Tulip was introduced into Europe from Constantinople in the year 1559, according to Gesner. After it became known to the Dutch merchants and nobility at Vienna, it became a most important branch of trade in Holland, and they sent frequently to Constantinople for roots and seeds of the flower. In the year 1634, and for three years after, little else was thought of in Holland but this traffic; all embarked in it, from the nobleman to the common laborer, and so successful were many that they rose rapidly from abject poverty to affluence; and those who had been barely able to procure the most scanty means of subsistence were enabled to set up their carriages, and enjoy every convenience and luxury of life; indeed, when we read of the enormous sums paid for a single root, we can feel no surprise at the immense and rapid fortunes which were made. It is on record, that one wealthy merchant gave his daughter no other portion to secure an eligible match than a single root. The plant to this day bears the name of the "marriage portion." We find that 2 hogsheads of wine, 4 tuns of beer, 2 lasts of wheat, 4 lasts of rye, 2 tons of butter, 1000 pounds of cheese, 4 fat oxen, 8 fat swine, and 12 fat sheep, a complete bed, a suit of clothes, a silver beckess, valued at 2500 florins, were given in exchange for a single root of the tulip called the Viceroy. This mode of barter, being attended with inconvenience, could not be general, and gave place to sale by weight, by which immense sums were made. Single roots have sold for 4400 florins; 2000 florins was a common price for a root of the Semper Augustus; and it happened that once, when only two roots of this species could be procured, the one at Amsterdam, and the other at Haarlem, 4600 florins, a new carriage, and a pair of horses, with complete harness, were given for one; and for the other an exchange made of 12 acres of land: indeed, land was frequently parted with when cash could not be advanced for the purchase of a desired root; and houses, cattle, furniture, and even clothes, were all sacrificed to the Tulipomania. In the course of four months, a person has been known to realize 60,000 florins. These curious bargains took place in taverns, where notaries and clerks were regularly paid for attending; and after the contracts were completed, the traders of all ranks sat down together to a splendid entertainment. At these sales, the usual price of a root of the Viceroy was £250; a root of the Admiral Liefkuns, £440; a root of the Admiral Von Eyk, £160; a root of the Grebbu, £148; a root of the Schilder, £160; a root of the Semper Augustus, £550. A collection of Tulips of Wouter Brockholsminster was disposed of by his executors for £9000; but they sold a root of the Semper Augustus separately, for which they got £300, and a very fine Spanish cabinet, valued at £1000. The Semper Augustus was, indeed, in great request. A gentleman received £3000 for three roots which he sold; he had also the offer of £1500 a year for his plant for seven years, with an engagement that it should be given up as found, the increase alone having been retained during the period. One gentleman made £6000 in the space of six months. It was ascertained that the trade in Tulips in one city alone, in Holland, amounted to £1,000,000 sterling. To such an extent was this extraordinary traffic carried on, that a system of stock-jobbing was introduced; and Tulips, which were bought and sold for much more than their weight in gold, were nominally purchased without changing hands at all. Beekmann, in describing this curious traffic, for which all other merchandise and pursuit was neglected, mentions that engagements were entered into, which were to be fulfilled in six months, and not to be affected by any change in the value of the root during that time. Thus, a bargain might be made with a merchant for a root at the price of 1000 florins. At the time specified for its delivery, its value may have risen to 1500 florins, the purchaser being a gainer of 500 florins. Should it, on the contrary, have fallen to 800 florins, the purchaser was then a loser to the amount of 200 florins. If there had been no fluctuation in the market, the bargain terminated without an exchange of the money for the root, so that it became a species of gambling, at which immense sums were lost and won. The decline of the trade was as unexpected as its rise had been surprising. When settling day came, there were many defaulters; some from inability to meet their engagements, and many from dishonesty. Persons began to speculate more cautiously, and the more respectable to feel that the system of gambling, in which they were engaged, was by no means creditable. The Tulip-holders then wished to dispose of their merchandise really, and not nominally, but found, to their disappointment, that the demand had decreased. Prices fell – contracts were violated – appeals were made to the magistrates in vain; and, after violent contentions, in which the venders claimed, and the purchasers resisted payment, the state interposed, and issued an order invalidating the contracts, which put an end at once to the stock-jobbing; and the roots, which had been valued at £500 each, were now to be had for £5: and thus ended the most strange commerce in which Europe had been ever engaged.

Some curious anecdotes connected with the mania may be found. Among them is one of a burgomaster, who had made interest for a friend, and succeeded in obtaining a very lucrative situation for him. The friend, anxious to testify his gratitude, entreated of the burgomaster to allow him to show it by some substantial proof. His generous benefactor would accept no favor in return; all he asked was the gratification of seeing his flower-garden, which was readily granted. The friends did not meet again for two years. At the end of that time, the gentleman went to visit the burgomaster. On going into his garden, the first thing that attracted his observation was a rare Tulip of great value, which he instantly knew must have been purloined from his garden, when his treacherous friend had been admitted into it, two years before. He gave vent to the most frantic passion – immediately resigned his place of £1000 per annum – returned to his house merely to tear up his flower-garden – and, having completed the work of destruction, left it, never to return.

We have read of a sailor, who had brought a heavy load to the warehouse of a merchant, who only gave him a herring as payment and refreshment. This was very inadequate to satisfy the man's hunger, but perceiving, as he thought, some onions lying before him, he snatched up one, and bit it. It happened to be a Tulip-root, worth a king's ransom; so we may conceive the consternation of the merchant, which is said to have nearly deprived him of reason.

It has been said that John Barclay, the author of the romance of "Angenis," was a victim to the Tulipomania. Nothing could induce him to quit the house to which his flower-garden was attached, though the situation was so unwholesome that he ran the risk of having his health destroyed. He kept two fierce mastiffs to guard the flowers, which he determined never to abandon.

The passion for Tulips was at its height in England toward the close of the seventeenth and the commencement of the eighteenth century. The tulip is a native of the Levant, and of many of the eastern countries. Though common in Persia, it is highly esteemed, and considered an emblem of love. Chardin tells us, that when a young Persian wishes to make his sentiments known to his mistress, he presents her with one of these flowers, which, of course, must be the flame-colored one, with black anthers, so often seen in our gardens; as, Chardin adds, "He thus gives her to understand, that he is all on fire with her beauty, and his heart burned to a coal." The flower is still highly esteemed by florists, and has its place among the few named florists' flowers. Many suppose it to be "the Lily of the Field," mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount, from its growing in wild profusion in Syria, and from the extreme delicacy of the texture of its petals, and from the wonderful variety and dazzling beauty of its colors. It may be so; and the flower acquires from this an interest which nothing else could give.

THE SALT MINES OF EUROPE

The salt-mines of Cheshire, and the brine-pits of Worcestershire, according to the best authority, not only supply salt sufficient for the consumption of nearly the whole of England, but also upward of half a million of tons for exportation. Rock-salt is by no means confined to England, it is found in many countries, especially where strata of more recent date than those of the coal measures abound. Though in some instances the mineral is pure and sparkling in its native state, it is generally dull and dirty, owing to the matter with which it is associated. The ordinary shade is a dull red, from being in contact with marls of that color. But notwithstanding, it possesses many interesting features. When the extensive subterranean halls have been lighted up with innumerable candles, the appearance is most interesting, and the visitor, enchanted with the scene, feels himself richly repaid for the trouble he may have incurred in visiting the excavations.

The Cheshire mines are from 50 to 150 yards below the surface. The number of salt-beds is five; the thinnest of them being only about six inches, while the thickest is nearly forty feet. Besides these vast masses, there is a large quantity of salt mixed up with the marl beds that intervene. The method of working the rock-salt is like that adopted for the excavation of coal; but it is much more safe and pleasant to visit these than the other, owing to the roof of the excavations being much more secure, and the absence of all noxious gases, with the exception of carbonic acid gas. In the thinner coal-seams, the roof, or rock lying above the coal, is supported by wooden pillars as the mineral is withdrawn; while, in the thicker seams, pillars of coal are left at intervals to support the superincumbent mass. The latter is the plan adopted in the salt-mines. Large pillars of various dimensions are left to support the roof at irregular intervals; but these bear a small proportion to the mass of mineral excavated. The effect is most picturesque; in the deep gloom of the excavation, the pillars present tangible objects on which the eye can rest, while the intervening spaces stretch away into night. The mineral is loosened from the rock by blasting, and the effect of the explosions, heard from time to time re-echoing through the wide spaces, and from the distant walls of rock, gives a peculiar grandeur and impressiveness to the scene. The great charm, indeed, on the occasion of a visit to these mines, even when they are illuminated by thousands of lights, is chiefly owing to the gloomy and cavernous appearance, the dim endless perspective, broken by the numerous pillars, and the lights half disclosing and half concealing the deep recesses which are formed and terminated by these monstrous and solid projections. The pillars, owing to the great height of the roof, are very massive. For twenty feet of rock they are about fifteen feet thick. The descent to the mines is by a shaft – a perpendicular opening of six, eight, or ten feet square; this opening is used for the general purposes of ventilation, drainage, lifting the mineral, as well as the miners. It varies in dimensions according to the extent of the excavations. In some of the English mines the part of the bed of rock-salt excavated amounts to several acres; but in some parts of Europe the workings are even more extensive. The Wilton mine, one of the largest in England, is worked 330 feet below the surface, and from it, and one or two adjacent mines, upward of 60,000 tons of salt are annually obtained, two-thirds of which are immediately exported, and the rest is dissolved in water, and afterward reduced to a crystaline state by evaporating the solution. It is not yet two hundred years since the Cheshire mines were discovered. In the year 1670, before men were guided by science in their investigations, an attempt was made to find coal in the district. The sinking was unsuccessful relative to the one mineral, but the disappointment and loss were amply met by the discovery of the other. From that time till the present, the rock-salt has been dug, and, as we have seen, most extensively used in England, while the surplus supply has become an article of exportation. Previous to this discovery the consumption was chiefly supplied from the brine-pits of Worcestershire.

There is a remarkable deposit of salt in the valley of Cardona, in the Pyrenees. Two thick masses of rock-salt, says Ansted, apparently united at their bases, make their appearance on one of the slopes of the hill of Cardona. One of the beds, or rather masses, has been worked, and measures about 130 yards by 250; but its depth has not been determined. It consists of salt in a laminated condition, and with confused crystalization. That part which is exposed is composed of eight beds, nearly horizontal, having a total thickness of fifteen feet; but the beds are separated from one another by red and variegated marls and gypsum. The second mass, not worked, appears to be unstratified, but in other respects resembles the former; and this portion, where it has been exposed to the action of the weather, is steeply scarped, and bristles with needle-like points, so that its appearance has been compared to that of a glacier. There is also an extensive salt-mine at Wieliczka, in Poland, and the manner of working it was accurately described some years since. The manner of descending into the mine was by means of a large cord wound round a wheel and worked by a horse. The visitor, seated on a small piece of wood placed in the loop of the cord, and grasping the cord with both hands, was let down two hundred feet, the depth of the first galleries, through a shaft about eight feet square, sunk through beds of sand, alternating with limestone, gypsum, variegated marls, and calcareous schists. Below the stage, the descent was by wooden staircases, nine or ten feet wide. In the first gallery was a chapel, measuring thirty feet in length by twenty-four in breadth, and eighteen in height; every part of it, the floor, the roof, the columns which sustained the roof, the altar, the crucifix, and several statues, were all cut out of the solid salt; the chapel was for the use of the miners. It had always been said that the salt in this mine had the qualities which produced magic appearances to an uncommon degree; but it is now ascertained that its scenery is not more enchanting than that of the mines in Cheshire. Gunpowder is now used in the Polish as in the English mines; but the manner of obtaining the salt at the time of the visit we are recording was peculiar, and too ingenious to be passed over, even though it be now superseded by the more modern and more successful mode of blasting. "In the first place, the overman, or head miner, marked the length, breadth, and thickness of a block he wished to be detached, the size of which was generally the same, namely, about eight feet long, four feet wide, and two feet thick. A certain number of blocks being marked, the workman began by boring a succession of holes on one side from top to bottom of the block, the holes being three inches deep, and six inches apart. A horizontal groove was then cut, half an inch deep, both above and below, and, having put into each of the holes an iron wedge, all the wedges were struck with moderate blows, to drive them into the mass; the blows were continued until two cracks appeared, one in the direction of the line of the holes, and the other along the upper horizontal line. The block was now loosened and ready to fall, and the workman introduced into the crack produced by the driving of the wedges a wooden ruler, two or three inches broad, and, moving it backward and forward on the crack, a tearing sound was soon heard, which announced the completion of the work. If proper care had been taken, the block fell unbroken, and was then divided into three or four parts, which were shaped into cylinders for the greater convenience of transport. Each workman was able to work out four such blocks every day, and the whole number of persons employed in the mine, varied from twelve hundred to about two thousand." The mine was worked in galleries; and, at the time of this visit, these galleries extended to at least eight English miles. Since then the excavations have become much more extensive.

The method of preparing rock-salt is very simple, and differs little from that employed in manufacturing salt from springs. The first step in the process is, to obtain a proper strength of brine, by saturating fresh water with the salt brought from the mine. The brine obtained in a clear state is put into evaporating pans, and brought as quickly as possible to a boiling heat, when a skin is formed on the surface, consisting chiefly of impurities. This skin is taken off, so also are the first crystals that are formed, and either thrown aside as useless, or used for agricultural purposes. The heat is kept at the boiling point for eight hours, during which period evaporation is going on – the liquid becoming gradually reduced, and the salt meanwhile is being deposited. When this part of the process is finished, the salt is raked out, put into moulds, and placed in a drying stove, where it is dried perfectly, and made ready for the market.

MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE

(Continued from page 672.)

CHAPTER X

In my next chapter I shall present Squire Hazeldean in patriarchal state – not exactly under the fig tree he has planted, but before the stocks he has reconstructed. Squire Hazeldean and his family on the village green! The canvas is all ready for the colors.

But in this chapter I must so far afford a glimpse into antecedents as to let the reader know that there is one member of the family whom he is not likely to meet at present, if ever, on the village green at Hazeldean.

Our squire lost his father two years after his birth; his mother was very handsome – and so was her jointure; she married again at the expiration of her year of mourning – the object of her second choice was Colonel Egerton.

In every generation of Englishmen (at least since the lively reign of Charles II.) there are a few whom some elegant Genius skims off from the milk of human nature, and reserves for the cream of society. Colonel Egerton was one of these terque, quaterque beati, and dwelt apart on a top shelf in that delicate porcelain dish – not bestowed upon vulgar buttermilk – which persons of fashion call The Great World. Mighty was the marvel of Pall Mall, and profound was the pity of Park-lane, when this supereminent personage condescended to lower himself into a husband. But Colonel Egerton was not a mere gaudy butterfly; he had the provident instincts ascribed to the bee. Youth had passed from him – and carried off much solid property in its flight; he saw that a time was fast coming when a home, with a partner who could help to maintain it, would be conducive to his comforts, and an occasional humdrum evening by the fire-side beneficial to his health. In the midst of one season at Brighton, to which gay place he had accompanied the Prince of Wales, he saw a widow who, though in the weeds of mourning, did not appear inconsolable. Her person pleased his taste – the accounts of her jointure satisfied his understanding; he contrived an introduction, and brought a brief wooing to a happy close. The late Mr. Hazeldean had so far anticipated the chance of the young widow's second espousals, that, in case of that event, he transferred, by his testamentary dispositions, the guardianship of his infant heir from the mother to two squires whom he had named his executors. This circumstance combined with her new ties somewhat to alienate Mrs. Hazeldean from the pledge of her former loves; and when she had borne a son to Colonel Egerton, it was upon that child that her maternal affections gradually concentrated.

William Hazeldean was sent by his guardians to a large provincial academy, at which his forefathers had received their education time out of mind. At first he spent his holidays with Mrs. Egerton; but as she now resided either in London, or followed her lord to Brighton to partake of the gayeties at the Pavilion – so, as he grew older, William, who had a hearty affection for country life, and of whose bluff manners and rural breeding Mrs. Egerton (having grown exceedingly refined) was openly ashamed, asked and obtained permission to spend his vacations either with his guardians or at the old Hall. He went late to a small college at Cambridge, endowed in the fifteenth century by some ancestral Hazeldean; and left it, on coming of age, without taking a degree. A few years afterward he married a young lady, country born and bred like himself.

Meanwhile his half-brother, Audley Egerton, may be said to have begun his initiation into the beau monde before he had well cast aside his coral and bells; he had been fondled in the lap of duchesses, and galloped across the room astride on the canes of embassadors and princes. For Colonel Egerton was not only very highly connected – not only one of the Dii majores of fashion – but he had the still rarer good fortune to be an exceedingly popular man with all who knew him; so popular, that even the fine ladies whom he had adored and abandoned forgave him for marrying out of "the set," and continued to be as friendly as if he had not married at all. People who were commonly called heartless, were never weary of doing kind things to the Egertons. When the time came for Audley to leave the preparatory school, at which his infancy budded forth among the stateliest of the little lilies of the field, and go to Eton, half the fifth and sixth forms had been canvassed to be exceedingly civil to young Egerton. The boy soon showed that he inherited his father's talent for acquiring popularity, and that to this talent he added those which put popularity to use. Without achieving any scholastic distinction, he yet contrived to establish at Eton the most desirable reputation which a boy can obtain – namely, that among his own contemporaries – the reputation of a boy who was sure to do something when he grew to be a man. As a gentleman commoner at Christ Church, Oxford, he continued to sustain this high expectation, though he won no prizes and took but an ordinary degree; and at Oxford the future "something" became more defined – it was "something in public life" that this young man was to do.

While he was yet at the university, both his parents died – within a few months of each other. And when Audley Egerton came of age, he succeeded to a paternal property which was supposed to be large, and, indeed, had once been so; but Colonel Egerton had been too lavish a man to enrich his heir, and about £1500 a year was all that sales and mortgages left of an estate that had formerly approached a rental of ten thousand pounds.

Still, Audley was considered to be opulent, and he did not dispel that favorable notion by any imprudent exhibition of parsimony. On entering the world of London, the Clubs flew open to receive him; and he woke one morning to find himself, not indeed famous – but the fashion. To this fashion he at once gave a certain gravity and value – he associated as much as possible with public men and political ladies – he succeeded in confirming the notion that he was "born to ruin or to rule the State."

Now, his dearest and most intimate friend was Lord L'Estrange, from whom he had been inseparable at Eton: and who now, if Audley Egerton was the fashion, was absolutely the rage in London.

Harley Lord L'Estrange was the only son of the Earl of Lansmere, a nobleman of considerable wealth, and allied by intermarriages to the loftiest and most powerful families in England. Lord Lansmere, nevertheless, was but little known in the circles of London. He lived chiefly on his estates, occupying himself with the various duties of a great proprietor, and rarely came to the metropolis; so that he could afford to give his son a very ample allowance, when Harley, at the age of sixteen (having already attained to the sixth form at Eton), left school for one of the regiments of the Guards.

Few knew what to make of Harley L'Estrange – and that was, perhaps, the reason why he was so much thought of. He had been by far the most brilliant boy of his time at Eton – not only the boast of the cricket-ground, but the marvel of the school-room – yet so full of whims and oddities, and seeming to achieve his triumphs with so little aid from steadfast application, that he had not left behind him the same expectations of solid eminence which his friend and senior, Audley Egerton, had excited. His eccentricities – his quaint sayings and out-of-the-way actions, became as notable in the great world as they had been in the small one of public school. That he was very clever there was no doubt, and that the cleverness was of a high order might be surmised not only from the originality but the independence of his character. He dazzled the world, without seeming to care for its praise or its censure – dazzled it, as it were, because he could not help shining. He had some strange notions, whether political or social, which rather frightened his father. According to Southey, "A man should be no more ashamed of having been a republican than of having been young." Youth and extravagant opinions naturally go together. I don't know whether Harley L'Estrange was a republican at the age of eighteen; but there was no young man in London who seemed to care less for being heir to an illustrious name and some forty or fifty thousand pounds a year. It was a vulgar fashion in that day to play the exclusive, and cut persons who wore bad neckcloths and called themselves Smith or Johnson. Lord L'Estrange never cut any one, and it was quite enough to slight some worthy man because of his neckcloth or his birth, to insure to the offender the pointed civilities of this eccentric successor to the Dorimonts and the Wildairs.

It was the wish of his father that Harley, as soon as he came of age, should represent the borough of Lansmere (which said borough was the single plague of the Earl's life). But this wish was never realized. Suddenly, when the young idol of London still wanted some two or three years of his majority, a new whim appeared to seize him. He withdrew entirely from society – he left unanswered the most pressing three-cornered notes of inquiry and invitation that ever strewed the table of a young Guardsman; he was rarely seen anywhere in his former haunts – when seen, was either alone or with Egerton; and his gay spirits seemed wholly to have left him. A profound melancholy was written in his countenance, and breathed in the listless tones of his voice. At this time the Guards were achieving in the Peninsula their imperishable renown; but the battalion to which Harley belonged was detained at home; and whether chafed by inaction or emulous of glory, the young Lord suddenly exchanged into a cavalry regiment, from which a recent memorable conflict had swept one half the officers. Just before he joined, a vacancy happening to occur for the representation of Lansmere, he made it his special request to his father that the family interest might be given to his friend Egerton – went down to the Park, which adjoined the borough, to take leave of his parents – and Egerton followed, to be introduced to the electors. This visit made a notable epoch in the history of many personages who figure in my narrative, but at present I content myself with saying, that circumstances arose which, just as the canvass for the new election commenced, caused both L'Estrange and Audley to absent themselves from the scene of action, and that the last even wrote to Lord Lansmere expressing his intention of declining to contest the borough.

Fortunately for the parliamentary career of Audley Egerton, the election had become to Lord Lansmere not only a matter of public importance, but of personal feeling. He resolved that the battle should be fought out, even in the absence of the candidate, and at his own expense. Hitherto the contest for this distinguished borough had been, to use the language of Lord Lansmere, "conducted in the spirit of gentlemen" – that is to say, the only opponents to the Lansmere interest had been found in one or the other of two rival families in the same county; and as the Earl was a hospitable, courteous man, much respected and liked by the neighboring gentry, so the hostile candidate had always interlarded his speeches with profuse compliments to his Lordship's high character, and civil expressions as to his Lordship's candidate. But, thanks to successive elections, one of these two families had come to an end, and its actual representative was now residing within the Rules of the Bench; the head of the other family was the sitting member, and, by an amicable agreement with the Lansmere interest, he remained as neutral as it is in the power of any sitting member to be amidst the passions of an intractable committee. Accordingly, it had been hoped that Egerton would come in without opposition, when, the very day on which he had abruptly left the place, a handbill, signed "Haverill Dashmore, Captain R.N., Baker-street, Portman-square," announced, in very spirited language, the intention of that gentleman to emancipate the borough from the unconstitutional domination of an oligarchical faction, not with a view to his own political aggrandizement – indeed, at great personal inconvenience – but actuated solely by abhorrence to tyranny, and patriotic passion for the purity of election.

This announcement was followed, within two hours, by the arrival of Captain Dashmore himself, in a carriage-and-four covered with yellow favors, and filled, inside and out, with harum-scarum looking friends who had come down with him to aid the canvass and share the fun.

Captain Dashmore was a thorough sailor, who had, however, taken a disgust to the profession from the date in which a Minister's nephew had been appointed to the command of a ship to which the Captain considered himself unquestionably entitled. It is just to the Minister to add, that Captain Dashmore had shown as little regard for orders from a distance, as had immortalized Nelson himself; but then the disobedience had not achieved the same redeeming success as that of Nelson, and Captain Dashmore ought to have thought himself fortunate in escaping a severer treatment than the loss of promotion. But no man knows when he is well off; and retiring on half-pay, just as he came into unexpected possession of some forty or fifty thousand pounds bequeathed by a distant relation, Captain Dashmore was seized with a vindictive desire to enter parliament, and inflict oratorical chastisement on the Administration.

A very few hours sufficed to show the sea-captain to be a most capital electioneerer for a small and not very enlightened borough. It is true that he talked the saddest nonsense ever heard from an open window; but then his jokes were so broad, his manner so hearty, his voice so big, that in those dark days, before the schoolmaster was abroad, he would have beaten your philosophical Radical and moralizing Democrat hollow. Moreover he kissed all the women, old and young, with the zest of a sailor who has known what it is to be three years at sea without sight of a beardless lip; he threw open all the public-houses, asked a numerous committee every day to dinner, and, chucking his purse up in the air, declared "he would stick to his guns while there was a shot in the locker." Till then, there had been but little political difference between the candidate supported by Lord Lansmere's interest and the opposing parties – for country gentlemen, in those days, were pretty much of the same way of thinking, and the question had been really local – viz., whether the Lansmere interest should or should not prevail over that of the two squirearchical families who had alone, hitherto, ventured to oppose it. But though Captain Dashmore was really a very loyal man, and much too old a sailor to think that the State (which, according to established metaphor, is a vessel, par excellence), should admit Jack upon quarter-deck, yet, what with talking against lords and aristocracy, jobs and abuses, and searching through no very refined vocabulary for the strongest epithets to apply to those irritating nouns-substantive, his bile had got the better of his understanding, and he became fuddled, as it were, by his own eloquence. Thus, though as innocent of Jacobinical designs as he was incapable of setting the Thames on fire, you would have guessed him, by his speeches, to be one of the most determined incendiaries that ever applied a match to the combustible materials of a contested election; while, being by no means accustomed to respect his adversaries, he could not have treated the Earl of Lansmere with less ceremony if his Lordship had been a Frenchman. He usually designated that respectable nobleman by the title of "Old Pompous;" and the Mayor, who was never seen abroad but in top-boots, and the Solicitor, who was of a large build, received from his irreverent wit the joint sobriquet of "Tops and Bottoms!" Hence the election had now become, as I said before, a personal matter with my Lord, and, indeed, with the great heads of the Lansmere interest. The Earl seemed to consider his very coronet at stake in the question. "The man from Baker-street," with his preternatural audacity, appeared to him a being ominous and awful – not so much to be regarded with resentment, as with superstitious terror: he felt as felt the dignified Montezuma, when that ruffianly Cortez, with his handful of Spanish rapscallions, bearded him in his own capital, and in the midst of his Mexican splendor – "The gods were menaced if man could be so insolent!" wherefore said my Lord, tremulously, "The Constitution is gone if the Man from Baker-street comes in for Lansmere!"

But, in the absence of Audley Egerton, the election looked extremely ugly, and Captain Dashmore gained ground hourly, when the Lansmere Solicitor happily bethought him of a notable proxy for the missing candidate. The Squire of Hazeldean, with his young wife, had been invited by the Earl in honor of Audley; and in the Squire the Solicitor beheld the only mortal who could cope with the sea-captain – a man with a voice as burly, and a face as bold – a man who, if permitted for the nonce by Mrs. Hazeldean, would kiss all the women no less heartily than the Captain kissed them; and who was, moreover, a taller, and a handsomer, and a younger man – all three, great recommendations in the kissing department of a contested election. Yes, to canvass the borough, and to speak from the window, Squire Hazeldean would be even more popularly presentable than the London-bred and accomplished Audley Egerton himself.

The Squire, applied to and urged on all sides, at first said bluntly, "that he would do any thing in reason to serve his brother, but that he did not like, for his own part, appearing, even in proxy, as a Lord's nominee; and, moreover, if he was to be sponsor for his brother, why, he must promise and vow, in his name, to be stanch and true to the land they lived by; and how could he tell that Audley, when once he got into the House, would not forget the land, and then he, William Hazeldean, would be made a liar, and look like a turncoat!"

But these scruples being overruled by the arguments of the gentlemen and the entreaties of the ladies, who took in the election that intense interest which those gentle creatures usually do take in all matters of strife and contest, the Squire at length consented to confront the Man from Baker-street, and went, accordingly, into the thing with that good heart and old English spirit with which he went into every thing whereon he had once made up his mind.

The expectations formed of the Squire's capacities for popular electioneering were fully realized. He talked quite as much nonsense as Captain Dashmore on every subject except the landed interest; there he was great, for he knew the subject well – knew it by the instinct that comes with practice, and compared to which all your showy theories are mere cobwebs and moonshine.

The agricultural outvoters – many of whom, not living under Lord Lansmere, but being small yeomen, had hitherto prided themselves on their independence, and gone against my Lord – could not in their hearts go against one who was every inch the farmer's friend. They began to share in the Earl's personal interest against the Man from Baker-street; and big fellows, with legs bigger round than Captain Dashmore's tight little body, and huge whips in their hands, were soon seen entering the shops, "intimidating the electors," as Captain Dashmore indignantly declared.

These new recruits made a great difference in the muster-roll of the Lansmere books; and, when the day for polling arrived, the result was a fair question for even betting. At the last hour, after a neck-and-neck contest, Mr. Audley Egerton beat the Captain by two votes. And the names of these voters were John Avenal, resident freeman, and his son-in-law, Mark Fairfield, an outvoter, who, though a Lansmere freeman, had settled in Hazeldean, where he had obtained the situation of head carpenter on the Squire's estate.