Part 6 (1/2)

[NOTE 4.

”_Sn.o.bs_,” and its ant.i.thesis, ”_n.o.bs_,” arose among the internal fractions of shoemakers perhaps ten years later. Possibly enough, the terms may have existed much earlier; but they were then first made known, picturesquely and effectively, by a trial at some a.s.sizes which happened to fix the public attention.]

[NOTE 5.

”_False echoes_”--yes, false! for the words ascribed to Napoleon, as breathed to the memory of Desaix, never were uttered at all.--They stand in the same category of theatrical inventions as the cry of the foundering _Vengeur_, as the vaunt of General Cambronne at Waterloo, ”_La Garde meurt, mais ne se rend pas_,” as the repartees of Talleyrand.]

[NOTE 6.

”_Privileged few_.” The general impression was, that this splendid costume belonged of right to the mail-coachmen as their professional dress. But that was an error. To the guard it _did_ belong, as a matter of course, and was essential as an official warrant, and a means of instant identification for his person, in the discharge of his important public duties. But the coachman, and especially if his place in the series did not connect him immediately with London and the General Post-Office, obtained the scarlet coat only as an honorary distinction after long or special service.]

[NOTE 7.

”_Households_.”--Roe-deer do not congregate in herds like the fallow or the red deer, but by separate families, parents, and children; which feature of approximation to the sanct.i.ty of human hearths, added to their comparatively miniature and graceful proportions, conciliate to them an interest of a peculiarly tender character, if less dignified by the grandeurs of savage and forest life.]

[NOTE 8.

”_However visionary_.”--But _are_ they always visionary? the unicorn, the kraken, the sea-serpent, are all, perhaps, zoological facts. The unicorn, for instance, so far from being a lie, is rather _too_ true; for, simply as a _monokeras_, he is found in the Himalaya, in Africa, and elsewhere, rather too often for the peace of what in Scotland would be called the _intending_ traveller. That which really _is_ a lie in the account of the unicorn--viz., his legendary rivals.h.i.+p with the lion--which lie may G.o.d preserve, in preserving the mighty imperial s.h.i.+eld that embalms it--cannot be more destructive to the zoological pretensions of the unicorn, than are to the same pretensions in the lion our many popular crazes about his goodness and magnanimity, or the old fancy (adopted by Spenser, and noticed by so many among our elder poets) of his graciousness to maiden innocence.

The wretch is the basest and most cowardly among the forest tribes; nor has the sublime courage of the English bull-dog ever been so memorably exhibited as in his hopeless fight at Warwick with the cowardly and cruel lion called Wallace. Another of the traditional creatures, still doubtful, is the mermaid, upon which Southey once remarked to me, that, if it had been differently named (as, suppose, a mer-ape,) n.o.body would have questioned its existence any more than that of sea-cows, sea-lions, &c.

The mermaid has been discredited by her human name and her legendary human habits. If she would not coquette so much with melancholy sailors, and brush her hair so a.s.siduously upon solitary rocks, she would be carried on our books for as honest a reality, as decent a female, as many that are a.s.sessed to the poor-rates.]

[NOTE 9.

”_Audacity_!”--Such the French accounted it; and it has struck me that Soult would not have been so popular in London, at the period of her present Majesty's coronation, or in Manchester, on occasion of his visit to that town, if they had been aware of the insolence with which he spoke of us in notes written at intervals from the field of Waterloo. As though it had been mere felony in our army to look a French one in the face, he said more than once--”Here are the English--we have them: they are caught _en flagrant delit_” Yet no man should have known us better; no man had drunk deeper from the cup of humiliation than Soult had in the north of Portugal, during the flight from an English army, and subsequently at Albuera, in the bloodiest of recorded battles.]

[NOTE 10.

”_Three hundred_.” Of necessity this scale of measurement, to an American, if he happens to be a thoughtless man, must sound ludicrous. Accordingly, I remember a case in which an American writer indulges himself in the luxury of a little lying, by ascribing to an Englishman a pompous account of the Thames, constructed entirely upon American ideas of grandeur, and concluding in something like these terms:--”And, sir, arriving at London, this mighty father of rivers attains a breadth of at least two furlongs, having, in its winding course, traversed the astonis.h.i.+ng distance of one hundred and seventy miles.” And this the candid American thinks it fair to contrast with the scale of the Mississippi. Now, it is hardly worth while to answer a pure falsehood gravely, else one might say that no Englishman out of Bedlam ever thought of looking in an island for the rivers of a continent; nor, consequently, could have thought of looking for the peculiar grandeur of the Thames in the length of its course, or in the extent of soil which it drains: yet, if he _had_ been so absurd, the American might have recollected that a river, not to be compared with the Thames even as to volume of water--viz. the Tiber--has contrived to make itself heard of in this world for twenty-five centuries to an extent not reached, nor likely to be reached very soon, by any river, however corpulent, of his own land. The glory of the Thames is measured by the density of the population to which it ministers, by the commerce which it supports, by the grandeur of the empire in which, though far from the largest, it is the most influential stream. Upon some such scale, and not by a transfer of Columbian standards, is the course of our English mails to be valued. The American may fancy the effect of his own valuations to our English ears, by supposing the case of a Siberian glorifying his country in these terms:--”These rascals, sir, in France and England, cannot march half a mile in any direction without finding a house where food can be had and lodging; whereas, such is the n.o.ble desolation of our magnificent country, that in many a direction for a thousand miles, I will engage a dog shall not find shelter from a snow-storm, nor a wren find an apology for breakfast.”]

THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH.

[THE reader is to understand this present paper, in its two sections of _The Vision_, &c., and _The Dream-Fugue_, as connected with a previous paper on _The English Mail-Coach_. The ultimate object was the Dream-Fugue, as an attempt to wrestle with the utmost efforts of music in dealing with a colossal form of impa.s.sioned horror. The Vision of Sudden Death contains the mail-coach incident, which did really occur, and did really suggest the variations of the Dream, here taken up by the Fugue, as well as other variations not now recorded. Confluent with these impressions, from the terrific experience on the Manchester and Glasgow mail, were other and more general impressions, derived from long familiarity with the English mail, as developed in the former paper; impressions, for instance, of animal beauty and power, of rapid motion, at that time unprecedented, of connection with the government and public business of a great nation, but, above all, of connection with the national victories at an unexampled crisis,--the mail being the privileged organ for publis.h.i.+ng and dispersing all news of that kind. From this function of the mail, arises naturally the introduction of Waterloo into the fourth variation of the Fogue; for the mail itself having been carried into the dreams by the incident in the Vision, naturally all the accessory circ.u.mstances of pomp and grandeur investing this national carriage followed in the train of the princ.i.p.al image.]

What is to be thought of sudden death? It is remarkable that, in different conditions of society it has been variously regarded as the consummation of an earthly career most fervently to be desired, and, on the other hand, as that consummation which is most of all to be deprecated. Caesar the Dictator, at his last dinner party, (_coena_,) and the very evening before his a.s.sa.s.sination, being questioned as to the mode of death which, in _his_ opinion, might seem the most eligible, replied--”That which should be most sudden.” On the other hand, the divine Litany of our English Church, when breathing forth supplications, as if in some representative character for the whole human race prostrate before G.o.d, places such a death in the very van of horrors. ”From lightning and tempest; from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder, and from sudden death,--_Good Lord, deliver us_.” Sudden death is here made to crown the climax in a grand ascent of calamities; it is the last of curses; and yet, by the n.o.blest of Romans, it was treated as the first of blessings. In that difference, most readers will see little more than the difference between Christianity and Paganism.

But there I hesitate. The Christian church may be right in its estimate of sudden death; and it is a natural feeling, though after all it may also be an infirm one, to wish for a quiet dismissal from life--as that which _seems_ most reconcilable with meditation, with penitential retrospects, and with the humilities of farewell prayer. There does not, however, occur to me any direct scriptural warrant for this earnest pet.i.tion of the English Litany. It seems rather a pet.i.tion indulged to human infirmity, than exacted from human piety. And, however _that_ may be, two remarks suggest themselves as prudent restraints upon a doctrine, which else _may_ wander, and _has_ wandered, into an uncharitable superst.i.tion. The first is this: that many people are likely to exaggerate the horror of a sudden death, (I mean the _objective_ horror to him who contemplates such a death, not the _subjective_ horror to him who suffers it,) from the false disposition to lay a stress upon words or acts, simply because by an accident they have become words or acts. If a man dies, for instance, by some sudden death when he happens to be intoxicated, such a death is falsely regarded with peculiar horror; as though the intoxication were suddenly exalted into a blasphemy. But _that_ is unphilosophic. The man was, or he was not, _habitually_ a drunkard. If not, if his intoxication were a solitary accident, there can be no reason at all for allowing special emphasis to this act, simply because through misfortune it became his final act. Nor, on the other hand, if it were no accident, but one of his _habitual_ transgressions, will it be the more habitual or the more a transgression, because some sudden calamity, surprising him, has caused this habitual transgression to be also a final one? Could the man have had any reason even dimly to foresee his own sudden death, there would have been a new feature in his act of intemperance--a feature of presumption and irreverence, as in one that by possibility felt himself drawing near to the presence of G.o.d. But this is no part of the case supposed. And the only new element in the man's act is not any element of extra immorality, but simply of extra misfortune.

The other remark has reference to the meaning of the word _sudden_. And it is a strong ill.u.s.tration of the duty which for ever calls us to the stern valuation of words--that very possibly Caeesar and the Christian church do not differ in the way supposed; that is, do not differ by any difference of doctrine as between Pagan and Christian views of the moral temper appropriate to death, but that they are contemplating different cases.

Both contemplate a violent death; a [Greek: biathanatos]--death that is [Greek: biaios]: but the difference is--that the Roman by the word ”sudden” means an _unlingering_ death: whereas the Christian Litany by ”sudden” means a death _without warning_, consequently without any available summons to religious preparation. The poor mutineer, who kneels down to gather into his heart the bullets from twelve firelocks of his pitying comrades, dies by a most sudden death in Caesar's sense: one shock, one mighty spasm, one (possibly _not_ one) groan, and all is over. But, in the sense of the Litany, his death is far from sudden; his offence, originally, his imprisonment, his trial, the interval between his sentence and its execution, having all furnished him with separate warnings of his fate--having all summoned him to meet it with solemn preparation.

Meantime, whatever may be thought of a sudden death as a mere variety in the modes of dying, where death in some shape is inevitable--a question which, equally in the Roman and the Christian sense, will be variously answered according to each man's variety of temperament--certainly, upon one aspect of sudden death there can be no opening for doubt, that of all agonies incident to man it is the most frightful, that of all martyrdoms it is the most freezing to human sensibilities--namely, where it surprises a man under circ.u.mstances which offer (or which seem to offer) some hurried and inappreciable chance of evading it. Any effort, by which such an evasion can be accomplished, must be as sudden as the danger which it affronts. Even _that_, even the sickening necessity for hurrying in extremity where all hurry seems destined to be vain, self-baffled, and where the dreadful knell of _too_ late is already sounding in the ears by antic.i.p.ation--even that anguish is liable to a hideous exasperation in one particular case, namely, where the agonising appeal is made not exclusively to the instinct of self-preservation, but to the conscience, on behalf of another life besides your own, accidentally cast upon _your_ protection. To fail, to collapse in a service merely your own, might seem comparatively venial; though, in fact, it is far from venial. But to fail in a case where Providence has suddenly thrown into your hands the final interests of another--of a fellow-creature shuddering between the gates of life and death; this, to a man of apprehensive conscience, would mingle the misery of an atrocious criminality with the misery of a b.l.o.o.d.y calamity. The man is called upon, too probably, to die; but to die at the very moment when, by any momentary collapse, he is self-denounced as a murderer. He had but the twinkling of an eye for his effort, and that effort might, at the best, have been unavailing; but from this shadow of a chance, small or great, how if he has recoiled by a treasonable _lachete_? The effort _might_ have been without hope; but to have risen to the level of that effort, would have rescued him, though not from dying, yet from dying as a traitor to his duties.

The situation here contemplated exposes a dreadful ulcer, lurking far down in the depths of human nature. It is not that men generally are summoned to face such awful trials. But potentially, and in shadowy outline, such a trial is moving subterraneously in perhaps all men's natures--muttering under ground in one world, to be realized perhaps in some other. Upon the secret mirror of our dreams such a trial is darkly projected at intervals, perhaps, to every one of us. That dream, so familiar to childhood, of meeting a lion, and, from languis.h.i.+ng prostration in hope and vital energy, that constant sequel of lying down before him, publishes the secret frailty of human nature--reveals its deep-seated Pariah falsehood to itself--records its abysmal treachery. Perhaps not one of us escapes that dream; perhaps, as by some sorrowful doom of man, that dream repeats for every one of us, through every generation, the original temptation in Eden.

Every one of us, in this dream, has a bait offered to the infirm places of his own individual will; once again a snare is made ready for leading him into captivity to a luxury of ruin; again, as in aboriginal Paradise, the man falls from innocence; once again, by infinite iteration, the ancient Earth groans to G.o.d, through her secret caves, over the weakness of her child; ”Nature, from her seat, sighing through all her works,” again ”gives signs of woe that all is lost;” and again the counter sigh is repeated to the sorrowing heavens of the endless rebellion against G.o.d. Many people think that one man, the patriarch of our race, could not in his single person execute this rebellion for all his race. Perhaps they are wrong.

But, even if not, perhaps in the world of dreams every one of us ratifies for himself the original act. Our English rite of ”Confirmation,” by which, in years of awakened reason, we take upon us the engagements contracted for us in our slumbering infancy,--how sublime a rite is that! The little postern gate, through which the baby in its cradle had been silently placed for a time within the glory of G.o.d's countenance, suddenly rises to the clouds as a triumphal arch, through which, with banners displayed and martial pomps, we make our second entry as crusading soldiers militant for G.o.d, by personal choice and by sacramental oath. Each man says in effect--”Lo! I rebaptise myself; and that which once was sworn on my behalf, now I swear for myself.” Even so in dreams, perhaps, under some secret conflict of the midnight sleeper, lighted up to the consciousness at the time, but darkened to the memory as soon as all is finished, each several child of our mysterious race completes for himself the aboriginal fall.

As I drew near to the Manchester post office, I found that it was considerably past midnight; but to my great relief, as it was important for me to be in Westmorland by the morning, I saw by the huge saucer eyes of the mail, blazing through the gloom of overhanging houses, that my chance was not yet lost. Past the time it was; but by some luck, very unusual in my experience, the mail was not even yet ready to start. I ascended to my seat on the box, where my cloak was still lying as it had lain at the Bridgewater Arms. I had left it there in imitation of a nautical discoverer, who leaves a bit of bunting on the sh.o.r.e of his discovery, by way of warning off the ground the whole human race, and signalising to the Christian and the heathen worlds, with his best compliments, that he has planted his throne for ever upon that virgin soil: henceforward claiming the _jus dominii_ to the top of the atmosphere above it, and also the right of driving shafts to the centre of the earth below it; so that all people found after this warning, either aloft in the atmosphere, or in the shafts, or squatting on the soil, will be treated as trespa.s.sers--that is, decapitated by their very faithful and obedient servant, the owner of the said bunting. Possibly my cloak might not have been respected, and the _jus gentium_ might have been cruelly violated in my person--for, in the dark, people commit deeds of darkness, gas being a great ally of morality--but it so happened that, on this night, there was no other outside pa.s.senger; and the crime, which else was but too probable, missed fire for want of a criminal. By the way, I may as well mention at this point, since a circ.u.mstantial accuracy is essential to the effect of my narrative, that there was no other person of any description whatever about the mail--the guard, the coachman, and myself being allowed for--except only one--a horrid creature of the cla.s.s known to the world as insiders, but whom young Oxford called sometimes ”Trojans,” in opposition to our Grecian selves, and sometimes ”vermin.” A Turkish Effendi, who piques himself on good breeding, will never mention by name a pig. Yet it is but too often that he has reason to mention this animal; since constantly, in the streets of Stamboul, he has his trousers deranged or polluted by this vile creature running between his legs. But under any excess of hurry he is always careful, out of respect to the company he is dining with, to suppress the odious name, and to call the wretch ”that other creature,” as though all animal life beside formed one group, and this odious beast (to whom, as Chrysippus observed, salt serves as an apology for a soul) formed another and alien group on the outside of creation. Now I, who am an English Effendi, that think myself to understand good-breeding as well as any son of Othman, beg my reader's pardon for having mentioned an insider by his gross natural name. I shall do so no more; and, if I should have occasion to glance at so painful a subject, I shall always call him ”that other creature.” Let us hope, however, that no such distressing occasion will arise. But, by the way, an occasion arises at this moment; for the reader will be sure to ask, when we come to the story, ”Was this other creature present?” He was _not_; or more correctly, perhaps, _it_ was not. We dropped the creature--or the creature, by natural imbecility, dropped itself--within the first ten miles from Manchester. In the latter case, I wish to make a philosophic remark of a moral tendency. When I die, or when the reader dies, and by repute suppose of fever, it will never be known whether we died in reality of the fever or of the doctor. But this other creature, in the case of dropping out of the coach, will enjoy a coroner's inquest; consequently he will enjoy an epitaph. For I insist upon it, that the verdict of a coroner's jury makes the best of epitaphs. It is brief, so that the public all find time to read; it is pithy, so that the surviving friends (if any _can_ survive such a loss) remember it without fatigue; it is upon oath, so that rascals and Dr. Johnsons cannot pick holes in it.

”Died through the visitation of intense stupidity, by impinging on a moonlight night against the off hind wheel of the Glasgow mail! Deodand upon the said wheel--two-pence.” What a simple lapidary inscription! n.o.body much in the wrong but an off-wheel; and with few acquaintances; and if it were but rendered into choice Latin, though there would be a little bother in finding a Ciceronian word for ”off-wheel,” Marcellus himself, that great master of sepulchral eloquence, could not show a better. Why I call this little remark _moral_, is, from the compensation it points out. Here, by the supposition, is that other creature on the one side, the beast of the world; and he (or it) gets an epitaph. You and I, on the contrary, the pride of our friends, get none.

But why linger on the subject of vermin? Having mounted the box, I took a small quant.i.ty of laudanum, having already travelled two hundred and fifty miles--viz., from a point seventy miles beyond London, upon a simple breakfast. In the taking of laudanum there was nothing extraordinary. But by accident it drew upon me the special attention of my a.s.sessor on the box, the coachman. And in _that_ there was nothing extraordinary. But by accident, and with great delight, it drew my attention to the fact that this coachman was a monster in point of size, and that he had but one eye.

In fact he had been foretold by Virgil as--