BOY. I shall, some day. Wont I go in and win! FOREIGNER. I suppose you tink you take Sebastopol yourself? BOY. No, I am not old enough,-my cousin George will be at the taking of Sebastopol this year; he is just gone out. FOREIGNER, aside. Oh de foolish boy! But all boys is alike. [He moves off to MR. MIDHURST.] Ah, a ver fine day, Sir! I wonder whether they have dis weather at Sebastopol. But it is no matter what weather they have there, it is sure not to be took. You will soon go away, I suppose, from there? MIDHURST. Yes, when we have taken it, I suppose we shall. FOREIGNER. It never will be took, I tell you. I have de best of informations. MIDHURST. Sir, our people are sometimes imposed upon by priests, always overridden by lawyers, played with by authors, idled over by legislators; but we are not going to be bullied by any foreign potentate upon earth. [Foreigner looks aghast, not having expected such an outburst.] Do they dine well on board this steamer? Had we better dine here, or wait till we get to Liège ? FOREIGNER. Oh they dine ver well. [Aside.] He tink of nothing else. [Foreigner moves on to MILVERTON.] Pardon, Sir, but your friend over there said you would be ver happy to talk to me about the war. I say Sebastopol will never be took. He says it will. But he is a man, I can see, who likes to jeer and laugh and mock, but you are a more grave man, much wiser as he. You are a Philosophe. MILVERTON. It is certain to be taken. I have never had the most distant shadow of a doubt of that.* You do not understand us, Sir, though I see you understand the English language well. We are, in some respects, a stupid people, a melancholy people, a forbearing people; but we are a sure people. Look at the matter now in the most business-like manner. The gross materials for war are at least equal. You will not contend that any given Russian is superior to any given Englishman or Frenchman. The science on the side of the allies is incomparably greater. It is not, as yet, directed into one channel, namely, that of war, but it will be, if the thing goes on. The power of money is all on our side; and, in short, the whole affair is but a question of resolve. The needful resolve has been taken by the people of England; and though I know much less of France, I do not doubt that such resolve has been taken by the French also. The old story of the Sybilline books, that vast old truth, is going to be enacted over again; and you may depend upon it, Sir, that as each month passes away, the Emperor of Russia will have worse and worse terms; and, if the war lasts for some years, he will be absolutely stripped of a large part of his dominions. That sin of Poland will come home yet. FOREIGNER. [Bows and withdraws, muttering to himself, Oh they have always such a number of fine words, the Philosophes, they have no sense what is common." He walks away to JOSEPH the servant.] Well Josef, you are ver glad to be making de tour with your master? JOSEPH, pulling his hair. Yes sir, his Reverence never goes anywhere without me. Missus, his sister, says he could not take care of hisself. *This conversation took place in August, 1855. 1856.] British Obstinaey in all Classes. FOREIGNER. 11 You are of the poor people in England. Ah, bah, they suffer ver much from this war. I suppose you is all ver tired of him. You lost a relation or two, I dare say. JOSEPH. I suppose Master has been telling you about poor John Digswell, my cousin. He was the gamest young fellow in the whole village. The Rectory kitchen has never been the same since. Lord love you, Sir, I will tell you how it was. The Rooshians came up one foggy morning, and John Digswell was nigh about the first man as seed 'em. The bugles blow like mad; out they all come. Bang, fire, charge-druv out for a minute. Bang, fire, charge again-druv out once more. Charge againno more powder. Charge again and right good use they make of the butt ends of their muskets and stwoans (Hampshire for stones). John Digswell (he could throw a horse down) knocked over a Rooshian officer, almost without seeing him, a poor pale boy, with them delicate long fingers you can look through like; just for all the world, he said, like Master Charles's, master's nephew as died; and John Digswell said as how, as he was kneeling over him, he felt as they two were alone in the world; and in his letter, which was three pages long, says he, all the fuss and rumpus about the war, and all the grand talk of the newspapers, seemed so far off, and this poor boy, who got more like Master Charles as he was dying, seemed so near; and just as John was thinking this, tramp, tramp, comes a lot of the enemy's sodgers right over them both, and broke John's arm, and he went into the hospital, where that dear good lady is; but there is a many like her in England, and one not far off, as I'm a thinking; and John wrote us the long letter then, telling us as I have told you, and said he had got a diarrey or some'at of that sort the matter with him, and he thought he should not be long for this world, but he was not sorry, and he would die a hundred times, he said, for his Queen and his country; and he sent Martha-that's the parlour maid at the Rectory—a little chain of bright hair and gold thread, which had been on the poor Rooshian officer's wrist, and which he was a kissing of just afore he died; and then we saw in the next paper John's name amongst those who died at the hospital; and Martha's never been the same girl since, and she's always a talking of the beautiful Rooshian young lady whose hair she's mortal sure it was, and a pitying on her, and a may be thinking on her own trouble as well, for she was mortal fond of John, and that's all about it. [Here poor JOSEPH began to cry.] FOREIGNER. But, my poor fellow, you are wiser than Monsieur Jean-dis Deegesvell, what you call him?-you would not go to de war, would you? JOSEPH. Oh, dang it, but I would though, to-morrow, if it were not for old master, and if young Master Charles was alive and would take us all. Lord love ye, there's a dozen of us in the village as would have followed him to Sebastopol, or the end of the world. But I suppose that 'ere place be took by this time. At any rate it will be afore long. That you may depend on, Sir. FOREIGNER, moves away with a peevish gesture. Bah! they are all alike. It is a people that you cannot make the head or tail of. They are as obstinate as a brick wall. I shall not go over to the young ladies. They all sing the same song; and that tall mocking man looks as if he made one bit of fun of me. I should not like to have many dealings with him, though I know a thing or two myself. But Sebastopol will never be took for all dis talk. Ah, mon Dieu, mon Dieu, what a silly people it is, what an obstinate pig of a people, dese English. [A bell rings, and dinner is announced on board the steamer. MR. MIDHURST is seen in the distance, anxiously securing good places for the young ladies and himself.] SCENE. V. The public gardens near Aix la Chapelle, the same persons present, but not yet assembled together in one party. ELLESMERE and DUNSFORD are sitting under some lofty fir trees in the highest part of the garden. ELLESMERE. I beg to say, my dear Dunsford, that my remarks to him never are impertinent, that is, in the true meaning of the word. You do not see the vices of style, and even of thought, which he might fall into, if he were not kept within bounds by a splenetic critic such as I am. Imagine for a moment that he had been a petty provincial notoriety, instead of living all his life in the world, kicked about here by men, knocked down there by facts, as every man who lives in the world must be,-why, those tendencies to see everything through a poetic medium, and to chip up everything into aphorisms, would have gained upon him; and he would have been one of your many Grand Unintelligibles of whom the world is very tired. I do not know what that man does not owe to me. I believe that one reason why I like him so much, is that I have been so useful to him; and, as for giving him offence, I never did in my life,-at least, for more than a moment. He cares too much about substantial success, by which I mean persuading people to think as he thinks, not to bear with floods of criticism if he can get any good out of them. DUNSFORD. But you are so disrespectful, my dear Ellesmere. ELLESMERE. Am I particularly so to him? Is there anybody to whom I am respectful? It seems absurd to say to you what I am going to say, for you ought to know it, but the fact is I like that man almost better than anybody in the world. He has sense enough to see that. And, let me tell you, he is not a man so very easy to be loved, notwithstanding all his outward appearance of good nature, and the fine things he says about friendship. I know him well. There is that in him which puts me in mind of something in the mountain scenery we used to walk about so much when I was your pupil. All of a sudden, high up in the mountain, you come upon dark, silent, deep, cold pools. Somehow or other they make you shudder. DUNSFORD. Blaming poetic tendencies, you rush into poetry yourself, and certainly do not avoid the obscure. ELLESMERE. It may be so; but, in a queer fashion, do I not convey to you my meaning ? DUNSFORD. I think I understand you. But these pools are all invisible to me. ELLESMERE. Then, again, those men who have very wide sympathies, and large objects which are ever before them, are not such very loving friends, let me tell you. Now just listen-suppose I were to die suddenly, and he was to hear of it on the same morning in which he received news that some clause, he had long been driving at, was introduced into a Health Act, or a Nuisances Removal Bill, he would set the one thing against the other. Oh yes, you may shake your head, but he would do so. He would be very much affected, I own, at breakfast time. The ladies, for I must tell you what the whole family would do, would cry a little-but it would be very handsome of them to cry even that little; and then they would say, for they are forgiving creatures, Mr. Ellesmere was not near so rough as he seemed; we shall miss him very much; our conversations will never be what they have been; and then, in a few minutes afterwards, Miss Blanche would whisper to Miss Mildred, Emily Graham tells me in her 1856.] The wisdom and unwisdom of Aphorisms. 13 letter that there is to be a change this winter in bonnets, they are to be worn a little on the head, and are not to be quite so fantastical.' Then there would be some mutterings about 'guipure,' 'barège,' and 'moiréantique.' So much for their sorrow. He would go into his study, very sad, I admit. He would pass in review our school days, and college days, and think very harmonious and pretty things about me and them. After a time, he would turn suddenly to his amanuensis and say, 'Be good enough, Mr. Pennington, to look out for me the average rating of a tenement in Bethnal-green and in Shoreditch. You will find it in the Appendix to Grubb and Dusty's Report, which was printed in the Blue Books of last year. We have referred to that valuable Paper before. My firm belief is, that you will find the average rating under £7 15s. 6d. If so, at least two hundred thousand persons will come under the operation of this clause, and be benefited by it. Upon my word this House of Commons is doing its work very well;'-by which he would mean that some of his notions were entering into legislation; for that is the definition each of us gives of the House of Commons working well, namely, when it happens to agree with our particular selves. Then he would sigh deeply, and say, 'Poor dear Ellesmere, how I should like to have written to him on this matter; but he never took the interest I could have wished in such things' (very ungrateful of him this speech would be, because I have always voted upon them exactly as he told me); and then he would set to work-not that he would do much that day, but he would try to work: he would try to forget me by means of working. Now, if all the inhabitants of Bethnal-green were to become angels and fly away (which they soon would, if they had wings), it would not affect me so much as the weal or woe of any friend, even of my philosophic friend. But I am a base fellow, loving the concrete, the visible, the known-I mean the known to me. DUNSFORD. I have heard you with patience, Ellesmere, but you are shamefully unjust. I cannot meet you in ridicule; you are a master of that science. By the way, may it not be as much abused as any other mode of style and thinking? ELLESMERE. It may,--but nobody cares what I say. DUNSFORD. There is no catching you: you elude one, sometimes by a skilful mo. desty, sometimes by downright impudence. I cannot hope to change your opinion of your friends; but upon questions of style I claim to be heard a little and I maintain that every way men have of expressing themselves is good. I mean that metaphors, similes, aphorisms, all forms of embodying human thought, have their place, and enter into a good style. ELLESMERE. Good gracious, Dunsford! you need not make such an uncontradictable assertion with so much pomp. The question is about abusing this right of entry. DUNSFORD. Well then, I will ask you a question. Have you never had cause to recollect anything, simply because it was expressed pithily and aphoristically ? ELLESMERE. Yes; I shall never forget one of his aphorisms; but it was not because the thing was true, but because it was apposite. I cannot tell you all the circumstances, because it would be betraying political secrets; but our friend had been endeavouring for some days, or rather nights, to persuade a certain cold, wise, eloquent, powerful man in the House of Commons to take a particular line on a certain subject. Great was the war of words; and each of the antagonists was very anxious to overcome the other with out offending him. I am not sure that the orator had not the best of the argument. At any rate he had, looking at the matter from his point of view, and with regard to his future influence on the House of Commons. I assisted at one of their midnight conferences (the political man had no other time); and it was as good as a play. Our friend stated his case—of course leaving out some of the principal difficulties (it is not lawyers only, my dear friend, who deliberately make the best of their own side of the question). The orator replied with great force. Our friend made his rejoinder with whatever subtlety and vigour he could bring to bear upon the question. Each pretended that he was only working out the other's views to their just conclusions. There was then a pause. In our college days, both of these men, who had been well acquainted, were fond of some of the out-of-the-way Latin poets,—Fracastorius, Vida, Sannazarius, Johannes Secundus,-(there are such people, are there not?) people who wrote this kind of thing,— Mihi crede voluptas Nectit, sint quamvis aurea, vincla tamen,' trash I suspect for the most part, but neither the author nor the orator were of my mind, and they now resumed their old college ways, quoting what they were pleased to call 'beautiful passages.' All the time I could read in the anxious eye of our friend his desire to resume the serious conversation, and even in his choice of passages I thought I could detect a meaning. Well, as I said before, it was as good as a play to me to see these wily combatants,-but I wont tire you with an account of their proceedings. However, late one cold night, as I was coming home from my chambers, I met our friend in the street by accident. It was after the last of these conferences, which had not ended very successfully according to his opinion. We stood, I remember, just under the gaslight, close to that tank, which is sometimes not very savoury, at the top of Piccadilly. Our friend looked haggard, and, for a philosopher, somewhat fierce; and his expressions of indignation were not exactly those he would have used if you had been present. What impostors we all are! Wishing to turn his mind to other thoughts, I pointed out to his sanitary mind the unsanitary nature of the water. But it would not do: he was not to be diverted or pacified. At last, however, we parted, and I was thinking in sorrow what a pity it is that all people who have the same objects cannot agree, and work together (a thought rather Dunsfordian than Ellesmerian), when suddenly he called me back. I went; he looked steadily at me, and said in a low, distinct voice, We may be lost by our weaknesses, but we shall be damned for our strengths.' He then turned about and walked rapidly away, and has never since alluded to the subject. DUNSFORD. Ah, the aphorism is sadly true. I do not wonder that you re member it. ELLESMERE. No, it is not true, not a bit true. The 'strengths' in question are merely weaker weaknesses, or rather weaknesses crystallized. But I could not help remembering the thing on account of the circumstances. Now, have I answered you, my dear Dunsford? [DUNSFORD could make no answer. He often finds that his best answers occur to him a day or two after the questions have been asked.] But I must go and see after our fat friend, who looks very melancholy walking by himself. I declare I like that man more and more every day. Milverton hints that he is other than he seems-some person we ought to know. At any rate he is a morbid sort of fellow, with a great deal of poetry, or disease, or something of that kind, about him. By the way, do you observe that in all his tirades, which come out like so many musket shots, he is very choice and careful in his use of words? It is evident that, though he is talking hastily and abruptly, he is only uttering sentiments which have long been in his mind. His discreet use of adjectives shows that. Indeed |