My Life as an Author Part 2

_N.B._--I remember that Dr. Buckland, whose geological lectures I attended, had the words "Stolen from Dr. Buckland" engraved on the ivory handle of _his_ umbrella: he never lost it again.

In the way of prose, not printed (though much later on I have since published "Paterfamilias's Diary of Everybody's Tour") I have kept journals of holiday travel _pa.s.sim_, whereof I now make a brief mention.

Six juvenile bits of authors.h.i.+p are before me, ranging through the summers of 1828 to 1835 inclusive; each neatly written in its note-book on the spot and at the time (therefore fresh and true) decorated with untutored sketches, and all full of interest ab least to myself in old memories, faded interests, and departed friends. As very rare survivals of the past (for who cares to keep as I have done his schoolboy journals of half a century ago?) I will give at haphazard from each in its order of time a short quotation by way of sample,--a brick to represent the house. My first, A.D. 1828, records how my good father took his sons through the factories of Birmingham and the potteries of Staffords.h.i.+re, down an iron mine and a salt mine, &c. &c., thus teaching us all we could learn energetically and intelligently; it details also how we were hospitably entertained for a week in each place by the magnate hosts of Holkar Hall and Inveraray Castle; and how we did all touristic devoirs by lake, mountain, ruin, and palace: in fact, a short volume in MS., whereof quite at random here is a specimen page. "Melrose looks at a distance very little ruinous, but more like a perfect cathedral. While the horses were being changed we walked to see this Abbey, a splendid ruin, with two very light and beautiful oriel windows to the east and south, besides many smaller ones; the architecture being florid Gothic. The tracery round the capitals of pillars is in wonderful preservation, looking as fresh and sharp as on the first day of their creation; instead of the Grecian acanthus _Scotch kail_ being a favourite ornament. Some of the images still remain in their niches. In the east aisle is the grave of the famous wizard, Michael Scott, and at the foot of the tombstone a grim-looking figure,--query himself? In the ruined cloisters the tracery is of the most delicate description, foliage of trees and vegetables being carved on them. This Abbey was founded by David the First, but repaired by James the Fourth, which accounts for his altered crown appearing in stone on the walls," &c. &c.

The Scotch kail is curious, as indicative of national preference: and is the wizard still on guard? Recollect that in those days there were no guide-books,--so every observant traveller had to record for himself what he saw.

The next, in 1829, was a second visit to the Continent, my first having been in 1826, with those quotations from "Rough Rhymes" which have already met your view. In this we took the usual tour of those days, _via_ Brussels and the Rhine to Switzerland, and I might quote plenty thereof if s.p.a.ce and time allowed. Here shall follow a casual page from the 1829 MS. Journal, now before me.

"Heidelberg has a university of seven hundred students, who wear no particular academicals, but are generally seen with a little red or blue cap topping a luxuriant head of hair, a long coat, and moustaches which usually perform the function of a chimney to pipe or cigar. All along our to-day's route extended immense fields of tobacco, turnips, and vegetals of every description. Most of the women seem to be troubled with goitres, and we observed that all who have them wear rows of garnets strung tight on the part affected, whether with the idea of hiding the deformity, or of rendering the beauty of the swelling more conspicuous, or of charming it away, I cannot tell. The roads in these parts are much avenued with walnut trees: Fels, our courier, told me that of all trees they are most subject to be struck by lightning, and that under them is always a current of air. I insert his information, as he is both a sensible man, and has had great opportunities of observing," &c. &c. Here is a gap of three years.

In 1832, my journal about Dorsets.h.i.+re and the Isle of Wight is chiefly geological: as this extract shows, it was mainly a search after fossil spoils at Charmouth:--"Would you like to see a creature with the head of a lizard, wings of a bat, and tail of a serpent? Such things have been, as these bones testify; they are called Pterodactyls, and are as big as ravens. Thus, you see, a dragon is no chimera, but attested by a science founded on observation, Geology. As their bones (known by their hollowness) often occur in the coprolites or fossil dung of Plesiosauri, mighty monsters of the deep like gigantic swans, it is thought they were their special prey, for which the long and flexible neck of the Plesiosaurus is an _a priori_ argument," &c. &c.

The 1833 journal is Welsh; and, _inter alia_, I therein drew and I now record that recently destroyed and more recently restored Druidical movement, the Buckstone: "A solid ma.s.s of rock, not of living adamant but of dead pudding-stone, seemingly 'by subtle magic poised' on the brow of a steep and high hill, wooded with oaks: the top of this ma.s.s of rock is an area of fifty-four feet, its base being four, and the height twelve. It was once a logan stone, but now has no rocking properties; though most perilously poised on the side of a slope, and certainly, if in part a work of nature, it must have been helped by art, seeing the mere action of the atmosphere never could have so exactly chiselled away all but the centre of gravity. The secret of the Druids, in this instance at least, was in leaving a large ma.s.s behind, which as a lever counteracted the preponderance of the rock." I drew on the spot two exact views of it, taken to scale,--whereof this is one,--now of some curious value, since its intentional destruction last year by a sn.o.bbish party of mischievous idiots. (However, I see by the papers that, at a cost of 500, it has been replaced.) Let this touch suffice as to my then growing predilection for Druidism, since expanded by me into several essays find pamphlets, touching on that strange topic, the numerous rude stone monuments from Arabia to Mona.

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The 1834 journal regards Scotland,--a country I have since visited several times, including the Orkneys and Shetlands, and the voyage round from Thurso _via_ Cape Wrath to the Hebrides; whereof, perhaps, more anon. For a specimen page of this let me give what follows; the locality is near Inverness and the Caledonian Ca.n.a.l: "We now bent our steps toward Craig Phadrick, two miles north. This is the site of one of the celebrated vitrified forts, concerning the creation of which there has been so much learned discussion. And verily there is room, for there is mystery: I will detail what we saw. On the summit of a steep hill of conglomerate rock we could trace very clearly a double oblong enclosure of eighty yards by twenty, with entrances east and west, a s.p.a.ce of five yards being between the two oblongs. The mounds were outwardly of turf, but under a thin skin of this was a thick continuous wall of molten stone, granite, gneiss, and sandstone, bubbling together in a hotchpot!

The existence of these forts (occurring frequently on the heights and of various shapes) is attempted to be explained by divers theories. One man tells us they were beacons; but, first, what an enormous one is here, one hundred and twenty-four feet by sixty of blazing wood, timber being scarce too! next, they sometimes occur in low situations from which a flame could scarcely be seen; thirdly, common wood fire will not melt granite. Another pundit says they are volcanic. O wondrous volcano to spout oblong concentric areas of stone walls! Perhaps the best explanation is that the Celts cemented these hilltops of strongholds by means of coa.r.s.e gla.s.s, a sort of red-hot mortar, using sea-sand and seaweed as a flux. This is Professor Whewell's idea, and with him we had some interesting conversation on that and other subjects." Of this Scotch tour, full of interest, thus very curtly. Turn we now to Ireland in 1835. My record of just fifty years ago is much what it might be now, starvation, beggary, and human wretchedness of all sorts in the midst of a rich land, through indolence relapsed into a jungle of thorns and briars, quaking bogs, and sterile mountains; whisky, and the idle uncertain potato, combining with ignorance and priestcraft, to demoralise the excitable unreasoning race of modern Celts. Let us turn from the sad scenes of which my said diary is full, to my day at the spar caverns of Kingston. "At the bottom of a stone quarry, we clad ourselves in sack garments that mud wouldn't spoil, and with lit candles descended into the abyss, hands, knees, and elbows being of as much service as our feet. Now, I am not going to map my way after the manner of guide-books, nor to nickname the gorgeous architecture of nature according to the caprice of a rude peasant on the spot or the fancy of a pa.s.sing stranger. I might fill a page with accounts of Turks' tents, beehives, judges' wigs, harps, handkerchiefs, and flitches of bacon, but I rather choose to speak of these subterranean palaces with none of such vulgar similarities. No one ever saw such magnificence in stalact.i.tes; from the black fissured roofs of antres vast and low-browed caves they are hanging, of all conceivable shapes and sizes and descriptions. Now a tall-fluted column, now a fringed canopy, now like a large white sheet flung over a beetling rock in the elegant folds and easy drapery of a curtain, everywhere are pure white stalact.i.tes like icicles straining to meet the st.u.r.dier mounds of stalagmite below; whilst in the smaller caves slender tubes extend from top to bottom like congealed rain. One cavern is quite curtained round with dazzling and wavy tapestry; another has gigantic ma.s.ses of the white spar pouring from its crannied roof like boiled Brobdingnag macaroni; others like heaps of snowy linen lying about or hanging from the ceiling. The extent of the caves is quite unknown: eleven acres (I was told) have been surveyed and mapped, while there are six avenues still unexplored, and you may already wander for twenty-four hours through the discovered provinces of the gnome king."

This is not to be compared with Kentucky, perhaps not quite with Derbys.h.i.+re; but it seemed to me marvellous at the time. Let this much suffice as hinted reference to those early journals, which, if the world were not already more full of books than of their readers, would be as well worth printing in their integrity as many others of their bound and lettered brethren.

In connection with these journals, I have been specially requested to add to the above this record following (dated forty-four years ago) as a specimen of my letter-writing in old days: it has pen-and-ink sketches, here inserted by way of rough and ready ill.u.s.tration. The whole letter is printed in its integrity as desired, and tells its own archaeological tale, though rather voluminously; but in the prehistoric era before Rowland Hill arose, to give us cheap stamps for short notes, it was an economy to make a letter as long as possible to pay for its exorbitant postage: for example, my letters to and from Oxford used to cost eightpence--or double if in an envelope, then absurdly surcharged.

_My Cornish Expedition._

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8th and 9th of January 1840.

"FOR ONE AND ALL"]

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My Dear Mother, and all good Domiciliars,--

I suppose it to be the intention of our wors.h.i.+pful and right bankrupt Government that everybody write to everybody true, full, and particular accounts of all things which he, she, or it, may have done, be doing, or be about to do; and seeing I may have something to say which will interest you all, I fulfil the gossiping intentions of the Collective Wisdom, and give you an omnibus epistle. Now, I recommend a good map, a quiet mind, and as Charley says, Atten_tion_.--The bright, clear, frosty morning of the 8th found me at Devonport, and nine o'clock beheld the same egregious individual, well-benjamined, patronising with his bodily presence the roof of the Falmouth coach. A steam ferry-bridge took us across the Hamoaze, which, with its stationed hulks, scattered s.h.i.+pping, and town and country banks, made, as it always makes, a beautiful landscape. At Torpoint we first encountered venerable Cornwall; and a pretty drive of sixteen miles, well wooded, and watered by several intrusions of the unsatisfied sea, brought coach and contents to Liskeard, a clean, granite, country town, with palatial inn, and (in common with the whole of Devons.h.i.+re and Cornwall) a large many gabled church, covered with carved cathedral windows, and shadowed by ancient elms. Not being able to accomplish everything, I heard of, but saw not, divers antiquities in the distant neighbourhood of St. Clare, such as a circle of stones, an old church and well, and the natural curiosity called the cheese-ring, being a ma.s.s of layered granite capriciously decomposed: these "unseen ones" (what a mysterious name for a three-volumed Bentleyism!) I do not regret, for I know how to appreciate those wonders, the only enchantment whereof is, distance. So suffered I conveyance to Lostwithiel, a town lying in a hollow under the pictorial auspices of Restormel Castle, whose ivied ruins up the valley are fine and Raglandish: while the rest were bolting a coach dinner, I betook me to ye church, and was charmed with a curious antique font, and the tower, an octagon gothic lantern with extinguisher atop, like this: as far as memory serves me. Onward again, through St. Blazey, and a mining district, not ill-wooded, nor unpicturesque, to the fair town of St. Austle, which the piety of Cornish ancestors has furnished with another splendid specimen of ecclesiastical architecture, the upper half of the chief tower, a square one, being fretted on every stone with florid carving, and grotesque devices: but what shall I say of Probus tower, which from top to bottom is covered with delicate tracery cut in granite? it rises above the miserable surrounding village, a satire upon neighbouring degeneracy in things religious: you must often have seen drawings of Probus at the Watercolour Exhibition, as it is a regular artists' lion. At about half-past six we got into Truro, a clean wide flouris.h.i.+ng town with London shops, a commemorative column, a fine spired church, bridges over narrow streams, and, like most other West of England towns, well payed and gas-lighted. From this, I had intended to go to Falmouth, but a diligent brain-sucking of coach comrades induced me to jump at once into a branch conveyance to Penzance, so pa.s.sing sleepy Redruth, Camborne, and St. Erth in the dark, I found myself safely housed at the Union Inn, Penzance, at half-past eleven. Talking of unions, the country is studded here as everywhere with them; fine buildings put to the pernicious use of imprisoning for life those whose only crime is poverty, and destined to be metamorphosed ere long (so I prophesy) into lunatic asylums for desperate ministerialists, prisons for the Chartists, veterinary colleges for cattle with the rot, and as one good end, hospitals for the poor.

Near Redruth, I took notice in the moonlight of Carn-breh, the remains of a British beacon or hill-fort, much of the antiquarian interest of which has been destroyed by a neighbouring squire having added to it _modern_ ruins, to make it an object from his hall! the whole hill, like much of the country, is sprinkled with granite blocks higgledi-piggledy, and it is a grand dispute among the pundits, whether or not the Archdruid Nature has been playing at marbles in these parts; I wished to satisfy myself about it, but couldn't stop, and so there's no use in grummering about regrets.

I've seen enough, to be able to judge _a priori_, that father Noah's flood piled the hill with blocks, which have served one Dr.

Borlase and others as occasions for earning the character of blockheads. One thing is man's doing, without _much_ dispute, and that is, an obelisk in honour of old Lord De Dunstanville, which is a conspicuous toothpick on the hilltop: no doubt, as in this case, nature brought the stones there, and man did his part in arranging them; poor Dr. B. would have you believe that every natural rock had been lifted here bodily for architectural purposes, and as bodily made a most elaborate and labyrinthine ruin afterwards. At Penzance, a broiled fish supper, and to bed by midnight, having ordered a twilight gig, wherein by 7 on the ninth I was traversing the beautiful bay. Penzance is a fine town in a splendid situation; the bay, bounded by the Lizard and its opposite bold brother-headland, inclosing St. Michael's Mount, and having a fertile and villa-studded background; the town full of good handsome shops (one like the Egyptian Hall), a large cathedralish church, and with a very special market-place, of light granite, in the form of a plain Grecian temple, surmounted at the middle by an imposing dome. As I had duly culled information from the natives, I lost no time in breakfasting, but drove off, bun in hand, to explore the country of the Druids. Now, if the matters I succeeded in visiting were in isolated and plain situations, they might have been less disappointing; but where the face of the whole soil is covered naturally with jutting rocks, and timeworn boulders of granite, one doesn't feel much astonishment to see some one stone set on end a little more obviously than the rest, or to find out by dint of perseverance a little arrangement, which may or may not be accidental: added to this, the cottages, and walls, and field enclosures are built of such immense blocks cleared off the surface of the fields, that one's mind is prepared for far more than the Druids ever did: many a Stonehengeified doorway, many a t.i.tanic pigstye, many a "Pelion-on-Ossa" questionable-sentry box, puts one out of conceit with our puny ancestors. I went first to the Dans-mene, a famous stone-circle; and felt not a little vexed to find that I, little i, am feet taller than any of the uprights there, not 25 in number, and no bigger than field gateposts. It is evidently the consecrated portion of a battlefield, for there are several single stones dotted about the neighbourhood, to mark where heroes fell; like those at Inveraray, but smaller. The habit all through Cornwall of setting up a stone in every field, for cattle to scratch themselves withal, seems to be a sly satire against other rubbing-stones for A.S. Ses. A few dreary miles further brought me to the "voonder of voonders," the Logan-Rock, which on the map is near Boskenna. The cliff and coast scenery is superb; immense ma.s.ses of granite of all shapes and sizes tumbled about in all directions; what wonder that in such a heap of giant pebbles _one_ should be found ricketty? or more, what wonder that the very decomposing nature of coa.r.s.e granite should have caused the atmosphere to eat away, gradually, all but the actual centre of gravity? both at the Logan, and Land's End, and Mount St. Michael, I am sure I have seen a hundred rocks wasted very nearly to the moving point, and I could mention specifically six, which in 20 years will rock, or in half an hour of chiselling would. In part proof of what I say, the Land-End people, jealous of Logan customers, have just found out a great rock in their parts, which two men can make to move; I recommended a long-handled chisel, and have little doubt that my hint will be acted on; by next season, the Cornish antiquaries will be puzzling their musty brains over marks of "druidical" tools; essays will appear, to demonstrate that the chippings were accomplished by the consecrated golden sickle; the rock will be proved to have been quarried at Normandy, and ferried over; facsimiles of the cuts will be lithographed; and the Innkeeper of the "First and Last house in England" will gratefully present a piece of plate (a Druid "spanning" [consider Ezekiel's "putting the branch to the nose" as a sign of contempt]!) to the author of "Hints for a Chisel," "Proverbial Phil.," &c. &c. &c.

But--_revenous a nos moutons_: to _the_ Logan: until it was scrupulously pointed out, by so tangible a manner as my boy-guide getting _on_ it, I could scarcely distinguish it from the fine hurlyburly of rocks around. That it moves there is no question; but when I tell you that it is now obliged to be artificially kept from falling, by a chain fixing it behind, and a beam to rest on before, I think you will agree with me in muttering "the humbug!" Artists have so diligently falsified the view, _ad captandum_, that you will have some difficulty in recognising so old a friend as the Logan: it is commonly drawn as if isolated, _thus_, and would so, no doubt, be very astonis.h.i.+ng; but, when my memory puts it as above, stapled, and _obliged_ to remain for c.o.c.kneys to log it, surrounded by a much more imposing brotherhood, my wonder only is that it keeps its lion character, and that, considering the easy explication of its natural cause or accident, it should ever have been conceived to be man's doing; perhaps the Druids availed themselves of so lucky a chance for miracle-mongering, but as to having contrived it, you might as well say that they built the cliffs. It strikes me, moreover, that Cornwall could never have been the headquarters of Druidism, inasmuch as the soil is too scanty for oaks: there isn't a tree of any size, much less an oak tree in all West Cornwall: they must have cut samphire from the rocks, instead of misletoe from oaks, and the old gentlemen must have been pretty tolerable climbers, victim and all, to have got near enough to touch the Logan: to be sure it was a frosty day, and iron-shod shoes on icy granite are not over coalescible, but I did not dare scramble to it, as a tumble would have insured a particularly uncomfortable death; and although the interesting "Leaper from the Logan, or Martin Martyr" would have had his name enshrined in young lady sonnets, and azure alb.u.ms, such immortality had little charms for me. I contented myself with being able to swear that I have seen 90 tons of stone moved by a child of ten years old. Near it is another, called the logging lady, a block, upright like its neighbours, about 12 feet high, and which the boy told me could only be made to log by two men with poles; in fact, one end is worn with levers: well, I told him to try and move it; no use, says he; try, said I; he did try, and couldn't; well, I took a sight of where I thought he could do it, and set him to push; forthwith, my lady tottered, and I told the boy, if he would only keep to himself where he pushed it would be a banknote to him.

I mention this to ill.u.s.trate what I verily believe, to wit, that, if a man only took the breakneck trouble to clamber and try, he would discover several rocking-stones; but the fact is, this would diminish the wonder, and c.o.c.kneys wouldn't come to see what is easily explained: your Druids, with imaginary dynamics, invest nature's freaks with mysterious interest. But away to Tol Peden Penwith, where there is another curiosity; in the smooth green middle of a narrow promontory, surrounded and terminated by the boldest rock-scenery, strangely drops down for a perpendicular hundred feet, a circular chasm, not ill named the Funnel, and which not even a stolid Borlase can pretend was dug by the Druids: at the bottom there is communication with the sea by means of a cavern, and in stormy weather the rush up this gigantic earth's chimney-must be something terrible: will this convey a rough idea?

the scenery all round is really magnificent, and the looking down this black smooth stone-pit is quite fearful; it slopes away so deceitfully, and looks like a huge lion-ant's nest. Few people see this, because you can only get at it by a walk of a mile, but I think it quite as worth seeing as the logan-rock. My next object was the Land's End, where, as elsewhere, I did signalise myself by _not_ scribbling my autograph on a rock, or carving M.F.T. on the sod: the rocky coast is of the same grand character; granite bits, as big as houses, floundering over each other like whales at play; the cliffs, cavernous, castellated, mossgrown, and weatherbeaten; it looks _like_ a Land's end, a regular break up of the world's then useless ribs: an outlier of rocks in the sea, surmounted by a lighthouse: looks _like_ the end of the struggle between conquering man, and st.u.r.dy desolation. One place, where I tremble to think I have been, struck me as quite awful: helped by an iron-handed sailor, who comforts you in the dizzy scramble with "Never fear, sir, you shan't fall, unless I fall too," you fearfully pick your way to the extreme end, where it goes slick down, and lying prostrate on the slippery granite (which looks disjointed everywhere, and as if it would fall with you, bodily) with head strained over you see under you a dreadful cavern, open nearly to where you are, up which roars the white and angry sea. O brother David, and foot-tingling Sire, never can you take that look; and never would I again. Only think of tipping over! ugh.--Into the gig again, beside my shrewd Sam Weller driver, and away. Here and there about this part of Cornwall are studded rude stone crosses, probably of the time of St. Colomba, as they are similar to those at Iona: about two or three feet high, and very rude. In one place, I noticed what seemed to be a headless female figure, perhaps the Virgin, and as large as life: my Jehu said he had heard that it once had a head. We soon came to a small square inclosure, said to be a most ancient cemetery; I scrambled over the wall, and found among the briars and weeds one solitary tomb of a venerable and Runic aspect, but I soon found out that it recorded the name of somebody who departed Ye LYFE somewhere in 1577; nothing so extremely ancient. A rough rock-besprinkled hill now attracted me, as I heard it was called another Carn-breh, and was surmounted by some mound, or ruin: so out of the gig, and up in no time. Clearly it had been an ancient beacon place, as atop are the remains of a small square-built terrace inclosing some upright stones placed irregularly,--a sort of huge fireplace. One of the neighbouring rocks presented on its surface a fine specimen of what are called rock basins; but unluckily for the antiquary, this excavation is on the side of the stone, not on the summit; so that it could not possibly hold water, and is clearly caused by some particular moss eating away the stone.--By three o'clock returned to Penzance, had dinner (it was breakfast too), bought a mineral memorial, and in the gig again, over the sands to the outlandishly named Mara Zion, or Market Jew, words probably of similar import. Opposite to this little place, and joined to it by a neck of rocks pa.s.sable at low-water, stands that picturesque gem, Mount St. Michael. You know the sort of thing; an abrupt, pyramid of craggy rock, crowned with an edifice, half stronghold and half cathedral. It is a home of the St. Aubyn family, and is well kept up in the ancient style, but in rather a small way: a portcullised entrance, old armour hanging in the guard-room, a beautiful dining-hall with carved oak roof, and panels, and chairs; a chapel to match, with stained windows; an elegant Gothic drawing-room, white and gold; and everything, down to black-leather drinking jugs, in character with the feudal stronghold. I mounted the corkscrew tower, and got to the broken stone lantern they call St. Michael's chair; an uncomfortable job, but rewarded by a splendid panorama, gilt by the setting sun: in the chapel too, I descended into a miserable dungeon communicating with a monk's stall, where doubtless some self-immured penitent had wasted life away, only coming to the light for matins, and only relieved from solitary imprisonment by midnight ma.s.s. This has been discovered but very lately in repairing the chapel: it was walled up, and contained a skeleton. As a matter of course, this old castle contains a little hidden room, where that ubiquitous vagabond, the royal Charles, laid his hunted head: the poor persecuted debauchee sponged upon all his friends like Bellyserious Buggins. Back again, by water this time, to little Mara Zion, but ever and anon looking with admiration on that beautiful mount; the western rocks are really magnificent, as big as the largest hay-stacks, and tumbled about as loosely as an emptied sugar-basin; some hanging by a corner, and others resting on a casual fragment; I am sure of one logan-stone, if a little impertinent bit of rock were only moved away; and I walked under and between more t.i.tanic architecture than Stonehenge can show: the Druids, for my part, shall have their due, but not where they don't deserve it. At nine, after a substantial fried-fish tea, I mounted the night coach to Falmouth,--outside, as there was no room in, and so, through respectable Helstone, remarkable for a florid Gothic arch erected to some modern worthy of the town, to decent Penryn, and then by midnight, to the narrowest of all towns, Falmouth. I longed to get back to my darlings, and resolved to see them by next morning, so booked an outside (no room inside, as before) for an immediate start. Now, you can readily imagine that I was by no means hot, and though the night of Thursday last was rather mild, still it was midwinter: accordingly I conceived and executed a marvellous calorificating plan, which even the mail-coachman had never heard of. Haying comforted my interiors with hot grog of the stiffest, I called for another s.h.i.+llingsworth of brandy, and deliberately emptied it, to the astonished edification of beholders, into my boots! literal fact, and it kept my feet comfortable all night long. And so, wrapped all in double clothing, sped I my rapid way, varying what I had before seen by pa.s.sing through desolate Bodmin, and its neighbourhood of rock, moor, and sand: hot coffee at Liskeard, morning broke soon after, then the glorious sun over the sea. Hamoaze, the ferry, and Devonport at 1/2 past 8. Much as I longed to get home, I went forthwith into a hot bath at 102, to boil out all chills, and thence went spick and span to my happy rest, having within 48 hours seen the best part of Cornwall and its wonders, and rode or walked 250 miles. And so, brother David, commend me for a traveller. HERE ends my Cornish expedition. Does it recall to thee, O sire, thine own of old time, undertaken (if I remember rightly) with Dr. Kidd?--Mails then did not travel like the Quicksilver, averaging 12 miles an hour, and few people go 40 miles before breakfast. Now, I feel able to get nearer my Albury destination, and in a week or so, shall hope to be residing at Dorchester, near the Blandford of paternal recollections. Did you, dear mother, get a letter from me directed to Albury? I hope so, for it sets all clear: and if not, I'll set the nation against cheap postage. I don't feel the least confidence now in the Post Office, forasmuch as they have no interest in a letter after it is paid, and many will be mislaid from haste and multiplicity. Please to say if it came safely to hand, as I judge it important. If you, dear mother, got my last, I have nothing more to say, and if not, I'll blow up the Post Office: unpopularity would send all the letters by carriers: but whether or not, I can't write any more, so with a due proportion of regards rightly broadcast around, accept the remainder from--Your affectionate son,

M.F.T.

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CHAPTER IV.

COLLEGE DAYS.

In 1829 I was entered as a commoner at Christ Church, Oxford, and went through the usual course of lectures with fair success. As a family we have all favoured Oxford rather than Cambridge: my father and two cousins, Elisha and Carre, were at Exeter College, to take the benefit of its Sarnian Exhibitions; my brother Daniel was at Brasenose, and my brother William gained a scholars.h.i.+p of Trinity. When at Christ Church I wore the same academical gown which my father had,--and have it still; a curious antiquity in the dress line, now some fourscore years old, and perfect for wear and appearance,--such as would have rejoiced the Sartor Resartus of Carlyle. At college I did not do much in the literary line, unless it is worth mention that translations from the Greek or Latin poets were always rendered by me in verse not prose, and that I published anonymously "A Voice from the Cloister," being an earnest appeal to my fellow-collegians against the youthful excesses so common in those days.

From this pamphlet I give an extract, as it is scarce; it began with blank verse and ended with rhyme, all being for the period courageously moral and religious. The end is as thus:--

"Enough, sad Muse, enough thy downward flight Has cleft with wearied wing the shades of night: Be drest in smiles, forget the gloomy past, And, cygnet-like, sing sweeter at the last, Strike on the chords of joy a happier strain And be thyself, thy cheerful self, again.

Hail, goodly company of generous youth, Hail, n.o.bler sons of Temperance and Truth!

I see attendant Ariels circling there, Light-hearted Innocence, and Prudence fair, Sweet Chast.i.ty, young Hope, and Reason bright, And modest Love, in heaven's own hues bedight, Staid Diligence, and Health, and holy Grace, And gentle Happiness with smiling face,-- All, all are there; and Sorrow speeds away, And Melancholy flees the sons of day; Dull Care is gladden'd with reflected light, And wounded Sin flies sickening at the sight.

"My friends, whose innate worth the wise man's praise And the fool's censure equally betrays, Accept the humble blessing of my Muse, Nor your a.s.sistance to her aim refuse, She asks not flattery, but let her claim A kind perusal, and a secret name."

I scarcely like to mention it, as a literary accident, but being a curious and unique anecdote it shall be stated. I had the honour at Christ Church of being prizetaker of Dr. Burton's theological essay, "The Reconciliation of Matthew and John," when Gladstone who had also contested it, stood second; and when Dr. Burton had me before him to give me the 25 worth of books, he requested me to allow Mr. Gladstone to have 5 worth of them, as he was so good a second. Certainly such an easy concession was one of my earliest literary triumphs.

My first acquaintance with Gladstone, whom I have known from those college days now for more than five and fifty years, was a memorable event, and may thus be worthy of mention. It was at that time not a common thing for undergraduates to go to the communion at Christchurch Cathedral--that holy celebration being supposed to be for the particular benefit of Dean and Canons, and Masters of Arts. So when two undergraduates went out of the chancel together after communion, which they had both attended, it is small wonder that they addressed each other genially, in defiance of Oxford etiquette, nor that a friends.h.i.+p so well begun has continued to this hour. Not that I have always approved of my friend's politics; mult.i.tudes of letters through many years have pa.s.sed between us, wherein if I have sometimes ventured to praise or to blame, I have always been answered both gratefully and modestly: but I have ever tried to hold the balance equally too, according to my lights, and if at one time (on occasion of the great Oxford election, 1864) I published a somewhat famous copy of verses, ending with

"Orator, statesman, scholar, wit, and sage, The Crichton,--more, the Gladstone of the age,"

my faithfulness must in after years confess to a well-known palinode (one of my "Three Hundred Sonnets") commencing

"Beware of mere delusive eloquence,"

and a still more caustic lyric, beginning with

"Glozing tongue whom none can trust,"

and so forth, as a caution against a great man's special gift, so proverbially dangerous. Some of our most honest Ministers, _e.g._, Althorpe and Wellington, have been very bad speakers: some of our most eloquent orators have proved very bad Ministers.

And in this place I may introduce some account, long ago in print, of the famous Aristotle cla.s.s under the tutors.h.i.+p of Mr. Biscoe at Christ Church, wherein (among far n.o.bler and better scholars) your present confessor took the lowest seat.

Fifty years ago Biscoe's Aristotle cla.s.s at Christ Church was comprised almost wholly of men who have since become celebrated, some in a remarkable degree; and, as we believe that so many names, afterwards attaining to great distinction, have rarely been a.s.sociated at one lecture-board, either at Oxford or elsewhere, it may be allowed to one who counts himself the least and lowest of the company to pen this brief note of those old Aristotelians.