Chapter VII: Part II (3)

The number of inhabited houses in Great Britain in 1801 amounted to 1,870,476; in 1851, to 3,648,347: these contained 4,312,388 families—persons, 20,816,351. Thus it is seen that the number of houses since 1801 is nearly doubled. How commonly we boast, Eusebius, of things that have passed away! You hear it now often said that an Englishman’s house is his castle, the garrison of which has been hitherto supposed to be known only to himself. There has been an idea that not only the master, but all down to the very scullion, are ready to stand with spits and skillets to keep out unwelcome invaders; whereas the truth is, as shown in this Census, that the castle has its government inspector, who notes down and registers the numbers, ages, names, sexes, and occupations of every individual the said castle contains. Houses are a very nice tangible property for the convenience of government taxation; by judicious scrutiny, of which the Census Commission provides ample means, it will be easily ascertained what each family has to live upon; or, what is quite the same thing for the getting the taxation, what on “an average” the Commissioners may think the said family ought to have to live upon; thus the income-tax is facilitated in computation and collection. These are surely encroachments, that, by little and little, are domineering over the subjects’ liberty. There are other Acts of Parliament also which affect this liberty in the “castle;” some general, some local. In few places can a man make alterations in his building, inside or out, without an application for consent, and of course a fee to some commissioner or other. If he succeeds, there is a further penalty upon his improvements, though they may have been required for the very health of his family. He has, through this Census scrutiny, to pay a tax upon his improvements, nor is he allowed any deduction for repairs. This Englishman’s castle, then, you see, is as much besieged as Bomarsund! At first it was pretty well thrown out of its own windows by the window-tax, and is always at the mercy of commissions, whether it shall or shall not be turned out of doors. Many a one is there that has a ten-pound battery playing upon it all the year round. If, weary of watching your besiegers, you turn yourself out of house, and live a rambling, roving life how you can, you will not so easily escape; you will have an inspector after you with note-book and ink-horn, and you will be booked and pigeon-holed for further use when wanted. “Finally, there is the population sleeping in barns, in tents, and in the open air, comprising, with some honest, some unfortunate people out of employment, or temporarily employed, gypsies, beggars, strollers, vagabonds, vagrants, outcasts, criminals. The enumeration of the houseless population, unsettled in families, is necessarily imperfect, and the actual number must exceed the 18,249 returned; namely, 9972 in barns, and 8277 in the open air.” The poor strollers! why should they be stigmatised and classed with vagabonds, vagrants, outcasts, and criminals? are they not following their lawful vocation, and doing something, as it is hoped they are, towards civilising the people through legitimate amusement? Is the compiler of these statistics a descendant of the old Puritans, and still retaining an unwarrantable prejudice? It were better he had the charity of the chimney-sweeper boy, who remonstrated with a brother sweep, who pointed his finger at Garrick in the streets, and said, “There be one of the player-folk.” “Don’t say so,” said the discreet one, “for thee dostn’t know what thee and I may come to.” But I know, as you rather patronise gypsies, you will be pleased to hear that one tribe of them baffled the officials. “It is mentioned in one instance that a tribe of gypsies struck their tents, and passed into another parish in order to escape enumeration.”

The great king whom we read of in history, who, in the excess of his felicity, thought it needful to have a flapper appointed to remind him every day that he was mortal, though he was made the example of many a theme in our school days, I look upon now as a very silly fellow. I have often heard you express your dislike of any impertinent _memento moris_—you have even thought it irreligious, and unthankful for present good; and tending to chill the life-blood, the little that is left in the old, and to throw a wet blanket over the cheerfulness of the young, out of which cheerfulness elastic manhood is to spring, and to take upon itself to do the manly responsible duties of life vigorously. I repeat that you have always maintained, that to thrust a _memento mori_ in every man’s face, or to carve it upon his walking-stick, is irreligious, because it is essential unthankfulness.

It is not pleasant, certainly, to have one’s days numbered by other people, and sent to you in circulars. I knew one of these life-calculators; a clergyman called to condole with him on the recent death of his wife. All he could get from him was partly a submission to a necessity, and partly a congratulation that death had not taken him. “Yes, sir,” said he, “if A does not die, in all probability B will; and if neither A nor B die, C must.” You will be indignant, but your philosophy will have the pleasure of its indignation, if I pointed out to your notice Busybody’s table of mortality. When last he knocked at your door, and booked your age, did his eyebrows arch with surprise? Eusebius, that look meant to tell you that you had no right whatever at that moment to be alive. He longed to filch your name out of his pigeon-hole of life. You are a hale man, and will, I hope, doing so much good as you do, outlive a couple of censuses yet. Have your eye upon Busybody when he next appears; not like Death, with one of his warnings, but ready to receive a certificate of burial. There is a table showing how very few who were alive in 1801 are now living, and so on, at every succeeding census. “By the English Life Table it is shown that the half of a generation of men of all ages passes away _in thirty years_, and that more than three in every four of their number die in half a century.” But I pass by this unwelcome subject—nor will I be the one to say to you or to any man, “Proximus ardet, Ucalegon.” Let Ucalegon’s house escape if it can.

It is more agreeable to contemplate births than deaths. There is something very curious in that hidden law which evidently regulates the proportion of the sexes to each other. It has been commonly thought that the males have exceeded the females, in order to make allowance for the greater waste of life to which the males are subject by wars and the elements. But the facts show the contrary. “The number of the male population of Great Britain was 10,386,048, of the female population 10,735,919; the females exceeded the males by 349,871; and the males at home were 10,223,558; consequently the females exceeded by 512,361 the males _in_ Great Britain. To every 100,000 females the males were 96,741, including 1538 males abroad, the exclusion of whom leaves 95,203 males at home. The excess of females over males was nearly the same proportionally in 1801 and 1851. Thus, in 1801, to every 100,000 males there were 103,353 females; in 1851, the females were 103,369 to the same number of males. The proportion in both periods was nearly 30 males to 31 females.” It may be inferred from this that there is rather a greater waste of female life than of male. It would be worth while to ascertain how long this excess has been found to have taken place; I am inclined to suspect that the unhealthy employments of young women, to so large an extent, may have been the cause; for it seems to be the law of nature to make a supply for the greater waste. Humanity requires a strict scrutiny into the healthy or deleterious employments of young women, especially in our manufacturing districts, to account for this excessive supply, that as far as is possible some remedial measures may be adopted. That all is regulated by a law of Providence, there can be no doubt in any mind. My present knowledge of the Census is entirely confined to the Report No. 1 of 1851. I shall look to the second Part for an elucidation of this problem.

It is surprising, however, on the whole, to see how evenly the sexes are balanced; it would be a speculation not uninteresting to see what causes may have induced occasional variations. Thus speaks the Report:

“The sexes have apparently increased at different rates in certain decennaries, but the average annual rates of increase through the whole period have been so nearly the same (males 1.328, females 1.329 per cent) as to cause a slight difference only in the third decimal place, and have differed little from 1⅓ annually. The decennial rates of increase were, males 14.108, females 14.111.” The “law of population,” as it relates to proportion of sexes, is a mystery. No human polity can provide for that. It is plain to see, however, that there is a wise, benevolent, superintending power which makes and maintains the law in a just equilibrium. Whether people shall marry or no may depend on human laws and civil institutions; whether due encouragement be given, or the reverse.

We learn from Herodotus that among the Sauromatæ, a people in the northern parts of Europe and Asia, the women dressed in the habits of men, and, like them, engaged in battle; that none were allowed to marry till she shall first have killed her man. Hence it happened, we are further told, that many died old maids, never having been able to fulfil the conditions. How any population could be kept up under the existence of such a law, no one now can question the historian. I suppose, from the necessity of the case, that a reform was demanded, and more peaceful marriages were the first-fruits of a free trade. It must have been an adventurous thing for a man to marry a woman who had once killed her man to obtain one husband; he might have lived in continual fear that she might kill a second man to have another husband.

It appears that marriage, though it is nominally free, is under restriction; were it otherwise, the increase of population would be far greater. “In ordinary times a large proportion of the marriageable women of every country are unmarried.” The writer might have spared his ink; but he adds: “And the most direct action on the population is produced by their entering the marriage state.” As one example may serve a general purpose, the Census gives that of the south-eastern division, comprising Surrey, Kent, Sussex, Hants, and Berks, in which “the number of women of the age of 20, and under 45, amounted at the last Census to 290,209, of whom 169,806 were wives, and 120,403 were spinsters or widows. 49,997 births were registered in the same counties during the year 1850, or 10 children were born in 1850 to every 58 women living in 1851.” It is to be presumed that among matrimonial chances every lot is a prize. The difficulty of a choice, where multitudes assemble, maintains a law of hesitation—of indecision—by which it happens that celibacy becomes wise, and is fond of repeating the philosopher’s advice as to the time to marry: if young, not yet; if middle-aged, wait; if old, never. Let us see how the reverse operates where the choice is very limited. St Kilda, in the parish of Harris, is 70 miles away from the mainland in the Western Hebrides; the population is 110—48 males, 62 females; 32 families in 32 houses. “There are 19 married couples on the island, 2 widowers, 8 widows. _Five unmarried men, 5 unmarried women of the age of 20, and under 46._” One would imagine these had only to meet and to marry. Five is no great choice; the greater haste, you would suppose, to take a partner. Is the solution to be found in this extraordinary fact, that there is no clergyman to unite the couples resident on the island? The five couples must wait; and as the clergyman on the mainland may hesitate to go 140 miles to marry one couple, he is probably waiting for all five to come to a decision. It must have been some such unfortunate place as St Kilda which supplied the wit to the epigrammatist upon the question of marriages ceasing elsewhere, the priest asserting that women are not to be found there; the reply being—

“Women there are, but I’m afraid
They cannot find a priest.”

“On St Kilda,” says the Census, “there is a manse and a church, but no medical man—no clergyman resident on the island.”

Will the world be better, Eusebius, for all these statistics; will civilisation be one jot advanced, by _registering_ our tailors as well as their paletots?—by knowing how many tinkers there are in the world to mend our kettles? They will, be sure of it, trudge about just the same, and do their work as badly or as well as before. All trades will be governed by their own instincts, without the least difference; unless, indeed, statistics take a more useful turn, and fix their stigma upon the adulterators of goods. We may have reason to say something in favour of the ScrutinizerGeneral, when he can tell us where the wines called port are manufactured that never came from Portugal, and who make them; who adulterates our drugs, so that people are dying for lack of the genuine; who, in fact, poison all we eat and drink, and put devils’-dust on our backs for woollen cloth. It is very little to the purpose to have the number of thieves and rascals that infest the world, if the Augean stable of crime is left uncleansed. If dishonesty should ever be driven out of common trades, which it has so notoriously infected, a great thing would be done; and we might bear with a grateful quietude more numbering and registering of us and all our concerns than we quite like; although it surely is not necessary for this to carry on such espionage as this Census contains. Perhaps even its absurdity is dangerous, for it induces people to fix their minds upon that, not upon its ulterior purposes. While men are laughing at things, wilily ridiculous in themselves, they know not what mischief is secretly brewing. I maintain that it is a great offence in any way to touch the sanctity of the hearth—that what economists and statistic inventors may please to call public liberty, should be allowed to destroy home liberty. It is something monstrous that every one should be obliged to give an account of every inmate in his house, their ages, conditions, and their relationship. It is better to let some of the peccadilloes of life escape notice, than register them and the house. If Miss or Mrs Debora Wilkins shall receive under her hospitality a big nephew, it is very hard upon her to be obliged to certify the exact relationship, or induce her into the great error of writing down a falsehood. Men may be a little more careless in such matters, but feminine nicety is touched to the quick. I remember once an Irishman walking into a drawing-room, and introducing to the lady of the house a tall youth, as, “Give me leave to introduce my nephew;” then putting his hand aside of his mouth, he added, in a whisper which may be truly termed Irish, for it was quite as loud as the first introduction, “he’s my son.” Could you, having any bowels of compassion, extort a like confession from such an unprotected female as Miss Debora? A registration commission might, if encouraged, hereafter ransack her unfortunate boxes to find baby-linen. Is there to be nothing but one rigid rule—no charity shown to sex and age—but the unsparing discovery of both on that fatal 30th of March? Must no female, then, escape to her lover’s arms in male attire—no “lubberly boy” pass for a sweet Anne Page, that sweet Anne Page fall not to the lot of a fool? Must foibles, frailties, and follies be all registered in damnatory schedules? Surely there might be a little decent connivance, such as would spare the two village ladies, who, being born in the same _anno Domini_, annually visited each other to determine what should be their ages for the ensuing year. Their only comfort will be in bribery and corruption, which they will be thankful is not yet put down, and a fee will spare what uncharitable census would expose. There may be something in attacking crimes and discovering frauds which touch the whole community. These are not much harboured in homes, but in public-houses, and in shops, which are not homes, but as having a public character, and giving public invitation to all to enter them, ought to come under some kind of surveillance; but when the citizen shuts his street-door, let none force an entrance. Let no Asmodeus take off his roof, and publish the within little histories, nor make gimlet-holes in walls and ceilings. Such doings are but, as at present, a slight exaggeration or caricature of a census. Let there be a police, and a good one; even with much secret scrutiny allowed them,—it is for the public safety; but there let it end in its admitted authority. Make not a police of a census commission, nor let the one interfere with or usurp the office of the other. Let a census be content to number the people—a police take crime under its cognisance. The undying, ever-seeing, and acting arrangement of a police is one of the most curious phenomena of society. For revolutions that appear to overturn everything, scarcely touch a well-ordered police; the excellence of which is, that it lives and moves unseen, unfelt, by the good—that it is a protector.

I remember years ago reading an anecdote showing the perfection of the old Parisian police. A gentleman had sojourned in Paris a week or two, when one day he was requested to attend at the police-office. He was surprised when told how he had occupied himself since he had been in Paris—what houses he had frequented, what friends visited, what business he had transacted. He was finally asked the home-question, “Are you a man of courage—can you rely upon yourself?” He thought he might. Then he was told that there was a plot to murder him in his bed that night—that his own servant was in conspiracy with others for that purpose. He was desired to go to bed as usual, and, if he did not sleep, to appear to sleep, and to fear nothing. In the night he heard his room-door open, a person or persons enter—he knew steps were softly approaching his bed—he fancied the arm uplifted to murder him. His reliance and his courage failed him not. Under his bed, and elsewhere in his room, soldiers had been secreted. To make the story short, his servant and the accomplices were taken. The census which a police quietly makes has an object of general safety. It has its one pursuit. It has its particular game, and we may well give it its license. By it we sleep safely in our beds. It does its complicated but defined work silently; whereas the other census is perpetually knocking at every man’s door, to ask impertinent questions. It is a perpetual warning to “beware the Ides of March;” for then it will come and toss the clothes off your bed at earliest dawn, lest you should rise and escape; and you must give an account of all the beds, and all who slept in them. And what is all this disturbance for? For no earthly good that any of the persecuted can yet see, but all mistrust the end. Must every one of us have a ticket and number on his back? It is the same thing, if he and his concerns, and all the relations of his life, are down in Busybody’s book. There he sits in his Centralisation Office, with his millions of electric wires passing underground, and coming up unseen in every man’s house. He means to have his hook in every man’s nose, nay, every man’s, woman’s, and child’s, and to draw them in when he wills, as a big spider does his flies, and perhaps to leave them sucked as dry, suspended in his million-threaded web. And has he not as many eyes as that ugly creature, and as many ways of spreading out his ubiquitous legs—backward, forward, or circular? Oh, this Busybody!—he means to have a line in every one’s mouth, and to draw all after him as Gulliver did the diminutive fleet. But I say, Eusebius, that, Liliputians as we are in his eyes, it is hard if we cannot combine, get our multitudinous toils round his legs, and with a long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull altogether, throw him on his back, tie him down hands and feet, search his pockets for his hooks, and then shoot our sharpest arrows into the body of this Quintus Flestrin. We will not be any more gulled by this huge Gulliver. He is the Great Humbug and Deceiver, cajoling silly ones into a belief in the marvel of his arithmetic; that all the commonest things of life must be done by his mystical numbers, or will be done ill; that they must count and think of how many joints, bones, muscles, and sinews they have in their toes, before venturing their feet a single step.

What is become of civilisation all this while, Eusebius? This Census, which was to tell so much, has not thrown light upon the question. Yet, perhaps, after all, it is a more simple one than you or I thought it to be. I go back to the placidity of the Chinese lady in the picture. I am now gazing on her expressive trustfulness—upon a complexion that, if there be many such, justifies the title of “Celestial Empire.” She, the feminine representative of a nation, the prized pearl of the Romance of the Porcelain Empire, the very “Gentilezza,” the embodied purity of a people’s best thoughts, the endowed growth of a perfection above nature, for so much worship as humanity may, for its improvement in civilisation, be allowed to set up in the garden of imaginary virtues, the very Goshen where grow plants and flowers, and sweet waters glide unknown to working nature, and all courting the enchanting and enchanted beauty.

“L’acqua la terra in suo favor s’inchina.” Not to be tedious with you in this fancied passion, Eusebius, I come to the point I aim at. She is the emblem of civilisation, and that is feminine influence. Its ideal has beautified that porcelain world, as it will ever beautify every other where it is felt and maintained.

Yes, Eusebius, civilisation, like common sense, aptly called mother-wit, comes from the mother. He who, as child and boy, loved and reverenced for all her purity, truth, and goodness, a mother, when he becomes man will ever do his part in civilising the world. From the first romance of mother’s love groweth every other romance; for romance is a noble and delicate sentiment. To propagate this is to propagate civilisation. But if any lack this reverence, from whatever cause, and would palm upon society, as better than its romance, an idle knowledge, a low spirit of calculation, an accumulation of mere facts and figures, trust him not with the secrets of your breast; all his doings tend to selfishness and rebarbarism. A mother to him is but as poor old Mrs Bounderby ignored. For my own part, Eusebius, when I see such glib statistical calculators boasting of their practical knowledge, I bethink me of the learned dog in the show, who with perseverance has acquired the trick of putting his paw upon letters and numbers, and of arithmetising required ages. Take heed to your pocket on such occasions; for though you have paid your admission-ticket, there remains the last acquirement, the last main trick to be exhibited, the going round the company with the hat in his mouth.

A RUSSIAN REMINISCENCE.

Upon one of the coldest days of February 1853, I left Paris by the Orleans Railway. The weather was extremely severe, the frozen snow lay thick in the streets, the asphalt of the boulevards was slippery as glass, sledges scoured the Champs Elysées and Bois de Boulogne. An icy wind whistled round the train as we quitted the shelter of the station, and I regretted, as I buttoned myself to the chin, and shrank into my corner, that the carriage was not full, instead of having but one occupant besides myself.

Opposite to me sat a hale man of about sixty-five, with a quick bright eye, an intelligent, good-humoured countenance—somewhat weather-beaten—and the red rosette of the Legion of Honour in his button-hole. During the first half-hour he pored over a letter, whose contents, judging from the animated expression of his physiognomy, interested him strongly. He seemed scarcely aware of my presence. At last he put up the letter, and then for the first time looked me in the face. I had been but a few days out of a sick-bed, and was sensitive to the cold, and doubtless my appearance was chilly and woebegone enough, for I detected a slight approach to a smile at the corners of the stranger’s mouth. To one or two commonplace remarks he replied courteously but laconically, like a man who is neither unsociable nor averse to conversation, but who prefers his own thoughts to that bald talk with which travellers sometimes weary each other rather than sit silent. So our dialogue soon dropped. The cold increased, my feet were benumbed, and I stamped them on the floor of the carriage to revive the circulation. My companion observed my proceedings with a comical look, as if he thought me a very tender traveller.

“This carriage must be badly closed,” I remarked. “It is bitter cold to the feet.”

“For that discomfort I have little pity,” replied the Frenchman. “A ride on the railway is soon over, and a good fire or a brisk walk is a quick and easy remedy. Mine is a different case. For forty years I have never known warm feet.”

“For forty years?” I repeated, thinking I had misunderstood him.

“Yes, sir, forty years; since the winter of 1812—the winter of the Russian campaign.”

“You were in that terrible campaign?” I inquired, in a tone of interest and curiosity. My companion, previously taciturn, suddenly became communicative.

“All through it, sir,” he replied; “from the Niemen to the Kremlin, and back again. It was my first campaign, and was near being my last. I was in others afterwards; in Germany in 1813, when the combined Germans and Russians drove us before them, for want of the brave fellows we had left in Muscovy’s snows; in France in 1814, when the Emperor made his gallant struggle against overwhelming forces; and at the closing scene in Flanders: but not all those three campaigns put together, nor, as I believe, all that this century has witnessed, can match the horrors of that dreadful winter in Russia.”

He paused, and, leaning back in his corner, seemed to revolve in his mind events of powerful interest long gone by. I waited a while, in hopes he would resume the subject. As he did not do so, I asked him to what arm he belonged when in Russia.

“I was assistant-surgeon in a regiment of hussars,” he answered, “and in my medical capacity I had abundant opportunity to make acquaintance with the horrors of war. On the 7th of September, for instance, at the Moskwa—Heavens! what a shambles that was! Ah, it was fine to see such valour on both sides—for the Russians fought well—gallantly, sir, or where would have been the glory of beating them? But Ney! Ney! Oh! he was splendid that day! His whole countenance gleamed, as he again and again led the bloody charge, exposing himself as freely as any corporal in the ranks. And Eugene, the Viceroy, with what vigour he hurled his masses against that terrible redoubt! When at last it was his, what a sight was there! The ground was not strewn with dead; it was heaped, piled with them. They had been shot down by whole ranks, and there they lay, prostrate, in line as they had stood.”

The surgeon paused. I thought of Byron’s beautiful lines, beginning, “Even as they fell, in files they lay;” but I said nothing, for I saw that my companion was now fairly started, and needed no spurring.

“_Monsieur_,” he presently resumed, “all those things have been brought strongly to my mind by the letter you saw me just now reading. It is from an old friend, a captain in 1812, a general now, who went through the campaign, and whom I was so fortunate as to save from a grave in those infernal plains where most of our poor comrades perished. I will tell you how it happened. We were talking of the battle of Borodino. Seventy thousand men, it is said, were killed and wounded in that murderous fight. We surgeons, as you may well think, had our hands full, and still could not suffice for a tithe of the sufferers. It was a rough breaking-in for a young hand, as I then was. Such frightful wounds as were there, of every kind and description—from shot, shell, and bullet, pike and sabre. Well, sir, all the misery and suffering I then saw, all that vast amount of human agony and bloodshed, whose steam, ascending to Heaven, might well have brought down God’s malediction on His creatures, who could thus destroy and deface each other, was nothing compared with the horrible misery we witnessed on our retreat. I have read everything that has appeared in France concerning that campaign—Ségur, Labaume, and other writers. Their narratives are shocking enough, but nothing to the reality. They would have sickened their readers had they told all they saw. If anybody, who went through the campaign, could remember and set down all he witnessed, he would make the most heart-rending book that ever yet was printed, and would be accused of gross exaggeration. Exaggeration, indeed! there was no need to heighten the horrors of the winter of 1812. All that frost and famine, lead and steel, could inflict, was then endured; all the crimes that reckless despair and ruthless cruelty could prompt were then perpetrated.”

“And how,” I asked, “did you escape, when so many, doubtless as strong and courageous, and more inured to hardship, miserably perished?”

“Under Providence, I owed my preservation to the trustiest and most faithful servant ever master had. Paul had been several years in the hussars—was an old soldier, in fact, although still a young man; and at a time when all discipline and subordination were at an end, when soldiers heeded not their officers, officers avoided their generals, and servants and masters were all alike and upon a level, Paul proved true as steel. As if cold and the Cossacks were not enough, hunger was added to our sufferings: there was no longer a commissariat or distribution of rations;—rations, forsooth!—dead horse was a luxury I have seen men fight for till death, lean meat though it was, for the poor brutes were as starved as their riders. What little there was to eat in the villages we passed through fell to the share of the first comers. Empty larders—often smoking ruins—were all that remained for those who came behind. Well, sir, when things were at the worst, and provender at the scarcest, Paul always had something for me in his haversack. One day it would be a bit of bread, on the morrow a handful of grain or some edible roots, now and then a slice of horse-beef—and how delicious that seemed, grilled over our smoky scanty fires! There was never enough to satisfy my hunger, but there was always a _something_—enough to keep body and soul together. Paul, as I afterwards discovered, husbanded his stores, for he well knew that if he gave me all at once I should leave nothing, and then I must have fasted for days, and perhaps have fallen from my horse for weakness. But think of the courage and affection of the poor fellow, himself half-starved, to carry food about him day after day, and refrain from devouring the share secretly set aside for me! There were not many men in the army, even of general’s rank, capable of such devotion to the dearest friend they had, for extreme misery had induced a ferocious selfishness, which made us more like hyenas than Christians.”

“I should think the cold must have been even worse to endure than hunger,” said I, screwing up my chilly extremities, which the interest of the doctor’s conversation had almost made me forget.

“It was, sir, harder and more fatal—at least a greater number died of it; although, to say the truth, frost and famine there worked hand in hand, and with such unity of action, that it was often hard to say which was the cause of death. But it was a shocking sight, of a morning, to see the poor fellows lying dead round the bivouac fires. Unable to resist fatigue and the drowsy influence of the cold, they yielded to slumber, and passed from sleep into death. For, there, sleep _was_ death.”

“But how then,” I asked, “did any ever escape from Russia, for all must have slept at times?”

“I do not believe that any who escaped _did_ sleep, at least not of a night, at the bivouac. We used to rouse each other continually, to prevent our giving way, and then get up and walk as briskly as we could, to quicken the sluggish circulation. We slept upon the march, in our saddles, and, strange as it may seem to you, even those on foot slept when marching. They marched in groups or clusters, and those in the centre slept, propped and supported by their companions, and moving their legs mechanically. I do not say that it was a sound, deep sleep, but rather a sort of feverish dozing. Such as it was, however, it was better than nothing, and assuredly saved some who would otherwise have sunk. Others, who would have given way to weariness upon the long monotonous march, were kept from utter despair and self-abandonment only by the repeated harassing attacks of the Cossacks. The excitement of the skirmish warmed their blood, and gave them, as it seemed, fresh hold upon life. In one of those skirmishes, or rather in a sharp combat, a dear friend of mine, a captain in the same regiment, had his left arm carried off by a cannon-shot. After the affair was over, I came suddenly upon him, where he lay moaning by the roadside, his face ashy pale, his arm still hanging by the sinews. His horse had either galloped away, or been taken by the fugitives.

“‘_Ah, mon ami!_’ he cried, when he saw me, ‘all is over—I can go no further. I shall never see France again!’

“I saw that, like the majority of those who received severe wounds in that retreat, his moral courage was subdued, and had given way to despair. I was terribly shocked, for I felt how slight was his chance of escape. I need hardly tell you there was very little dressing of wounds during that latter part of the retreat; most of the surgeons were dead, the hospital-waggons with medicine and instruments had been left on the road; transport for the sick was out of the question. I assumed as cheerful a countenance as I could.

“‘Why, Préville,’ I cried, ‘this will not do; we must get you along somehow. Come! courage, my friend! You _shall_ see France again, in spite of all.’

“‘Ah! doctor,’ replied he, in piteous tones, ‘it is no use. Here I shall die. All you can do for me is to blow my brains out, and save me from the Cossack lances.’

“By this time I had dismounted and was at his side. The intense cold had stopped the bleeding of his wound. I saw that there was no lack of vitality in him, and that, but for this mishap, few would have got out of the campaign in better plight. Even now, his despondency was perhaps his greatest danger. I reminded him of his wife and child (he had been married little more than a year, and news of the birth of a daughter had reached him on our forward march), of his happy home, his old mother—of all the ties, in short, that bound him to life. Whilst speaking, I severed the sinews that still retained his shattered arm, and bound it up as best I might. He still despaired and moaned, but suffered me to do as I would. He was like an infant in my hands—that man who, in the hour of battle, was a very lion for courage. But long suffering and the sudden shock—occurring, too, when we seemed on the verge of safety—had overcome his fortitude. With Paul’s help I got him upon my horse. The poor brute was in no case to carry double, so I walked and led it, although at that time I could hardly hobble.

“‘It is all useless, my dear doctor,’ Préville said; ‘this is my last day; I feel that. Far better shoot me, or leave me by the roadside, than risk your life for my sake.’

“I took no heed, but tried to cheer him. Those unclean beasts, the Cossacks, were hovering around us as usual, and at times the bullets fell pretty thick. Not a quarter of an hour had elapsed since I set Préville on my horse, when a shot struck his right eye—not entering the head, but glancing across the globe, and completely destroying the sight. Well, sir, then there occurred a physiological phenomenon which I have never been able satisfactorily to account for. This man, whom the loss of an arm had reduced to despair, seemed to derive fresh courage from the loss of an eye. At any rate, from that moment he complained no more of his fate, resumed his usual manly tone, and bore up like a hero. Paul was lucky enough to catch a riderless horse, which I mounted. The worst was over, and we soon got a respite. Without troubling you with details, and incredible though it may seem to you, my poor friend escaped with life, although with a limb and an eye the less.”

“There must have been many extraordinary escapes from that campaign,” I remarked.

“Innumerable. There was a sergeant of dragoons, a former comrade of my servant’s, who, for many days, marched beside me and Paul. He received a severe wound. There were some vehicles still with us at that time, and we got him a place in one of them, and made him as comfortable as we could. The following night we stopped at a town. In the morning, as we were about to march, the Cossacks came down. There was great confusion; several baggage-carts were captured in the street, and some of the wounded were abandoned in the houses where they had passed the night. Amongst these was Sergeant Fritz. Not many houses in the town were still in good condition—most of them had been burned and knocked to pieces by the soldiers. The house in which Fritz lay had still its doors and windows, and was one of the most comfortable in the place, on which account it had been converted into a temporary hospital. Well, the Russians came in, brought their wounded, and turned out our poor fellows to make room for them. Some, who could not move quickly enough, were brutally pitched through a low window into a garden behind the house, there to perish miserably. Fritz was one of these. Only just able to crawl, he made his way round the garden, seeking egress. He reached a gate communicating with another garden. It was locked, and pain and weakness forbade his climbing over. He sat close to the gate, propped against it, and looking wistfully through the bars at the windows of a house, and at the cheerful glow of a fire, when he was perceived by a young girl. She came out and opened the gate, and helped him into the house. Her father was a German clockmaker, long settled in Russia, and Fritz, a Swiss, spoke German well. The kind people put him to bed, hid his uniform, and tended him like a son. When, in the following spring, his health was restored, and he would have left them, the German proposed to him to remain and assist him in his trade. He accepted the offer, married the German’s daughter, and remained in Russia until his father-in-law’s death, when he was taken with a longing to revisit his native mountains, and returned to Switzerland with his wife and family. I met him since at Paris, and he told me his story. But although his escape was narrow, and romantic enough, there must have been others much more remarkable. Most of the prisoners made by the Russians, and who survived severe cold and harsh treatment, were sent to Moscow, to labour at rebuilding the city. When the fine season came, some of them managed to escape, and to make their way, in various disguises, and through countless adventures, back to their own country.”

I have set down but the most striking portions of our conversation—or rather, of the doctor’s narrative, since I did little but listen; and occasionally, by a question or remark, direct his communicativeness into the channel I wished it to take. We were now near Orleans.

“The letter I was reading when we started,” said my companion, “and which has brought back to my memory all that I have told you—at risk, perhaps, of wearying you,” he added with a slight bow and smile, “and a host of other circumstances, to me of thrilling and everlasting interest, is from General Préville, who lives in the south of France, but has come unexpectedly to Orleans to pass a month with me. That is his way. He lives happily with a married daughter; but now and then the desire to see an old comrade, and to fight old battles over again, comes so strongly upon him, that he has his valise packed at an hour’s notice, and takes me by surprise. He knows well that ‘The General’s Room’ and an affectionate reception always await him. I received his letter—full of references to old times—yesterday evening, and am now hurrying back to Orleans to see him. He may very likely be waiting for me at the station; and you will see that, for a man who gave himself up for dead forty years ago in the snows of Russia, and begged, as a favour, a bullet through his brain, he looks tolerably hearty and satisfied to live.”

“There is one thing, _Monsieur le Docteur_,” I said, “which you have not yet explained to me, and which I do not understand. Did you mean literally what you said, that since the Russian campaign you have never had your feet warm?”

“Literally and truly, sir. When we got to Orcha, where Jomini was in command, and where the heroic Ney, who had been separated from the army, rejoined us with the skeleton of his corps—having cut his way, by sheer valour and soldiership, through clouds of Platoff’s Cossacks—we took a day’s rest. It was the 20th of November, the last day of anything approaching to comfort which we were to enjoy before crossing the Russian frontier. True, we made one more halt, at Molodetschino, whence Napoleon dated his bulletin of our terrible disasters, but then only a portion of us could find lodging; we were sick, half-frozen, and numbers died in the streets. At Orcha we found shelter and tranquillity; the governor had provided provisions against our passage, the enemy left us quiet, and we enjoyed a day of complete repose. My baggage had long since been lost, and my only pair of boots were torn to shreds. I had been riding with fragments of a soldier’s jacket tied round my feet, which I usually kept out of the stirrups, the contact of the iron increasing the cold. At Orcha, the invaluable Paul brought me a Jew (the Jews were our chief purveyors on that retreat) with boots for sale. I selected a pair and threw away my old ones, which for many days I had not taken off. My feet were already in a bad state, sore and livid. I bathed them, put on fresh stockings and my new boots, and contrived with a pair of old trousers, a sort of leggings or overalls, closed at the bottom, and to be worn over the boots. From that day till we got beyond the Niemen, a distance of one hundred and ten leagues, which we took three weeks to perform, I never took off any part of my dress. During that time I suffered greatly from my feet; they swelled till my boots were too tight for me, and at times I was in agony. When we at last were comparatively in safety, and I found myself, for the first time since I left Orcha, in a warm room, with a bed to lie upon and water to wash, I called Paul to pull off my boots. Sir, with them came off my stockings, and the entire skin of both feet. A flayer’s knife could hardly have done the thing more completely. For a moment I gave myself up as lost. I had seen enough of this kind of thing to know that my feet were on the verge of mortification. There was scarcely time to amputate, had any been at hand to do it, and had I been willing to preserve life at such a price. Only one thing could save me, and I resolved to try it. I ordered Paul to bring a bottle of brandy; I put a piece of silver between my teeth, and bade him pour the spirits over my feet. I can give you no idea of the excruciating torture I then endured. Whilst it lasted, assuredly no martyr’s sufferings ever exceeded mine. It was agony—but it was safety. I bit the florin nearly in two, and broke this tooth.” (Here the doctor drew up his lip and exhibited a defective tooth, in company with some very white and powerful grinders.) “The martyrdom saved me; I recovered, but the new integuments, which in time covered my scarred feet, seem chilled by the recollection of their predecessors’ sufferings, and from that day to this I have never had my feet otherwise than cold. But here we are at Orleans, sir, and yonder as I expected stands my old Préville.”

The train stopped as he concluded, and a fine-looking veteran, with white hair, an empty sleeve, and a silken patch over one eye, peered inquisitively into the carriages. Like most Englishmen, I have a particular aversion to the Continental fashion of men kissing and hugging each other, but I confess I beheld with interest and sympathy the cordial embrace of these two old comrades, who then quickly separated, and, with hands grasped, looked joyously and affectionately into each other’s faces, whilst a thousand recollections of old kindness and long comradeship were evidently swelling at their hearts. In his joy, my travelling companion did not forget the attentive listener, whose journey he had so agreeably shortened. Turning to me, he presented me to the general, as an Englishman and a new acquaintance, and then cordially invited me to pass the rest of the day at his house. But the business that took me to Orleans was urgent, and my return to Paris must be speedy. And had it been otherwise, I think I still should have scrupled to restrain, by a stranger’s presence, the first flow of intimate communion to which the two friends evidently looked forward with such warm and pleasurable feelings. So I gratefully declined, but pledged myself to take advantage of the doctor’s hospitality upon my next visit to Orleans. When that occurs, I shall hope to glean another Russian Reminiscence.

RECORDS OF THE PAST.—NINEVEH AND BABYLON.

History must ever possess an undying fascination for the minds of men, for its subject is the story of their race, and its interest is ever human to the core. Its burden is now a song of rejoicing at the triumphs, or a wail of lamentation over the errors and sufferings, of mankind. How history, in gifted hands, exults as it reaches those blooming points in a nation’s career—those eras of Pericles, of Augustus, of Haroun-Alraschid, or of our own Elizabeth,—or, piercing back through the veil of time, discerns with joy the brilliant era of a Vicramaditya in the old world of the Hindoos,—the grandeur of a Rameses, or still remoter monarchs in Egypt—or a rule of then unequalled justice and beneficence extending back for countless ages in the early history of secluded China. And how it saddens to see these old empires pass away,—to behold Rome, and Greece, and Nineveh, and Egypt, Susa and Persepolis, and the grand old cities of India, withered, rolled up like a scroll, and vanishing from the face of the earth. Yet with what quiet hopefulness, with what assured resignation, does it contemplate all those changes. “Passing away,” it knows, is written from the first upon the brow of empires as well as of men; and even when the mighty fabrics of human power are seen crumbling into dust beneath internal decay or external assault,—when the stores of knowledge, the monuments of art—in fact, a whole civilisation—seems rushing into oblivion before an onslaught of barbarism, the philosophic historian, with an assuredness of faith stronger than other men’s, knows that the human race is but on the eve of some new and higher development—that all is ordered by One without whom not a sparrow falls to the ground, and that from out of the present chaos will emerge new kingdoms and communities of men, purged from the dross of the old, yet inheriting the larger portion of their wisdom.

“All changes, naught is lost. The forms are changed,
And that which has been, is not what it was,—
Yet that which has been, is.”

History has a grand work yet before it,—one which mankind is just beginning to long for, and which will yet one day be accomplished. History must grow wider in its scope and nobler in its aims as the career of our race advances. It must rise above the colourings of national bias, and the prejudices of particular eras. It must cease—and some day it will cease—to reflect but one phase at a time of that many-sided thing Truth, and will seize and set forth for the instruction of mankind the priceless gem under whatever form it appear, however attired in the strange costume of distant times or foreign countries. It must tell to man a continuous story of his existence. It must recognise the truth that in all those various nations that have flourished and passed away, there has been enshrined the self-same human soul, which the great Creator made in His own image, and which, however manifold in its aberrations, will still be found, on the whole, to reflect more of truth than of error.