Chapter VI: Part 6

In his neighbouring Switzerland the poet seems to see the image of his ideal freedom, modest and self-respecting; founded on the laws of decency and order; possessing its ancient charters and title-deeds; no ephemeral offspring of democratic chaos; a gentle and serene goddess of justice holding the exact balance between despotism and universal suffrage. Such freedom as this, in many grand patriotic strains, he desires for Würtemberg—a country whose praises he enumerates in soil, products, climate, scenery, and manners, only lamenting one want, without which it would be a paradise, the want of “Good Right.” He is certainly justified in his praise of his country, which, with the Grand-Duchy of Baden, forms a corner in the map of Europe which is a garden of fertility, a museum of antiquities, and a labyrinth of natural grandeur; but we question whether Uhland is not over-sensitive as to its political misery.

When we pass from his ‘Songs of Freedom’ to his ‘Songs of the Affections,’ we find the same moderation and purity of sentiment. Uhland always seems afraid of saying too much. His exquisite taste is a constant check upon him. He leaves the lines of his sketches to speak for themselves, and shrinks from too much elaboration. The imaginative reader may, if he pleases, supply for himself much of the inessential detail. What a picture of a bashful old-world lover he gives us in his poem called ‘Resolution!’

RESOLUTION.

She comes to walk in this sweet wild;
To-day I’ll banish all alarm;
Why should I tremble at a child
That does no living creature harm?

All give her greeting near and far;
I would, but dare not do the same;
And to my soul’s transcendent star
I cannot lift my eyes for shame.

The flowers that bend as she doth fare,
The birds with their voluptuous song,—
All these their love so well declare,
Why must I only feel it wrong?

To highest Heaven I oft prefer
Through livelong nights a bitter plaint;
Yet would I say three words to her,
“I love thee,” then my heart is faint.

In wait behind the tree I’ll stay
She passes in her daily walk,
And whisper “My sweet life” to-day,
As if in dreaming I did talk.

I will—but oh the fright I feel!
She comes, and she will see me sure;
So here into the bush I’ll steal,
And I shall see her pass secure.

For pathetic simplicity, perhaps none of his love-poems stands higher than Die Mähderin—the ‘Female Mower.’ There is a pathos in the very fact of the delicate girl—delicate at least in feeling—being engaged in rude masculine toil, a case but too common in many countries; then, again, in her hopeless attachment to the son of the rich farmer; then in her overtasking her strength in mowing the whole field without refreshment or repose, because the avaricious and selfish old man has promised her his son’s hand as the price; and again, in the killing deception at the close. She dies a martyr to the combined effects of the labour and the disappointment, and the old man has virtually murdered her to prevent her marrying his son and for selfish gain. Another example of a deep and simple pathos, produced by two pictures of the same place, is ‘The Castle on the Sea;’ it is a dioramic change of effect produced by a dialogue. First the castle stands superb in rising or setting sunlight, towering to heaven and bowing to the deep; the king and queen walk on the terrace in their royal insignia, and a beautiful princess walks with them: the scene changes to a weird moonlight effect, where the castle stands in ghostly grandeur; the king and queen are there on the terrace, but without their robes or crowns; they are in mourning, and the princess is no longer with them. This ballad has been effectively translated by Longfellow. Though verging on the impossible in subject, ‘The Mournful Tournament’ is a grand tragic sketch. Seven knights came to joust for the favour of the king’s daughter, but as they came in through the castle gate they heard the knell of her funeral. They persist in the tournament; for the one who loves her most truly, holds that still, though dead, she is worthy to be fought for, the victor gaining her wreath and ring. All fall in the fight but he, and he is mortally wounded, but, as the prize of victory, is buried with his lady-love.

Similar in actual improbability of subject, but demonstrating its bare possibility by its tragic truth, is the ballad of ‘Three Young Ladies.’ The father brings to mind the Greek bandit, the hero of About’s ‘Roi des Montagnes,’ who keeps his daughter at school at Athens, and when she wants a new piano, harries a village. As he returns from his rides, or raids, the three maidens ask this feudal tyrant what he has brought for them. The first, he knows, loves gold and finery; he has killed a knight for her, and brought her the spoil. But the dead knight was her lover; she strangles herself with the stolen chain, and dies beside his body. Two maidens only welcomed the father on his next return. The second, he knows, loves the chase; so he brings her a hunting-lance with a gold band, having killed a wild huntsman to obtain it. The wild huntsman was her lover, and she falls on the lance and dies beside him. One maiden only greets him the next time. Flowers are her passion; so he brings her flowers, having slain the bold gardener to obtain them. She takes the flowers and seeks the body of the dead gardener, who was also her lover; but flowers can inflict no wounds, so she stays beside him till the flowers wither, and she withers with them. ‘The Black Knight’ has been done full justice to by Longfellow. The practice of wearing visors in the ages of chivalry made such tales a poetic possibility. Death comes to joust in a king’s court, like a knight in black armour on black steed; he kills all the champions, dances with the king’s daughter, pours out a draught for the prince and princess, from which they quickly grow pale and sink. The old king begs him to take him also, but he says that “he only breaks flowers in spring,” and stalks away. In the ‘Luck of Edenhall’ Uhland gets upon English ground. His own preserves are so well stocked that he had no need to poach on those of the minstrels of the Scottish Border. But the offence is a single one, and may be forgiven for its admirable success and the world-wide interest of the beautiful Cumbrian legend.

The trumpet-like bray and strange metre of this poem render it one of the most difficult for a translator to grapple with; Longfellow, however, has done it almost without fault, the only exception we might take being to the repetition of the “crystal tall,” and the expression “the cup to praise” instead of “the cup to honour.” But in sonorous cadence his rendering equals the original. There is a thrilling solemnity in the remark at the end, that the world will one day be dashed to pieces like the shattered Luck of Edenhall. In a note below Longfellow’s translation it is said, “The tradition on which this ballad is founded, and the ‘shards of the Luck of Edenhall,’ still exist in England. The goblet is in the possession of Sir Christopher Musgrave, Bart. of Edenhall, Cumberland, and is not so entirely shattered as the ballad leaves it.”

If not the very best of all the ballads, at least the most characteristic of the poet’s ethical bent, is ‘The Singer’s Curse.’ With this we may fitly conclude our specimens, as it is a declaration of the greatness and holiness of the poet’s mission, and a prophecy of the annihilation of all earthly pomp that is founded on injustice and wrong, which it is the poet’s highest duty to raise his voice against. It might also be entitled ‘The Martyr-Minstrel.’

THE SINGER’S CURSE.

In days of old a castle stood, it stood so haught and high, Wide o’er the lands it shone to where the blue sea met the sky; All round it lush flower-gardens a perfumed girdle made, Wherein with radiance rainbow-arched reviving fountains played.

Sat there a proud king rich in spoil of war and rich in land, Upon his ancient throne he sat so gaunt and grimly grand; For all he thinks is Terror, and all he looks is Hate, And all he speaks is Scourging, and all he writes is Fate.

Once did a noble minstrel pair up to this castle go, The one with golden ringlets, the other with locks of snow; The old man with the harp he sat on a goodly steed astride, The while his blooming comrade tript gaily at his side.

Spake to the youth the old man, “My son, be strong to-day; Our deepest songs remember, attune thy fullest lay; Knit all the nerves of music, the joy, the pain, in one; Our task it is to-day to touch the tyrant’s heart of stone.”

Now stand the singers twain within the lofty pillared house, And high upon his throne the king sits with his royal spouse;

The king so fiercely splendid, like blood-red northern light, But sweet and mild the queen as looks the full moon on the night.

Then smote the strings the old man right wondrously and well, That full and fuller on the ear the tides of music swell; And then angelically clear the young man’s voice did flow In the elder’s pauses, like a choir of spirits, weird and low.

They sing of spring and true love, of an age of golden youth, Of freedom and of manhood, of holiness and truth; They sing of every sweetness that makes man’s bosom soft, They sing of every greatness that bears man’s heart aloft.

Forthwith the courtier circle unlearns the courtly sneer, The king’s disdainful warriors bow down to God and fear. Then, as her soul with tender pain and rapture overflows, The queen before the singers from her bosom flings the rose.

“Ye have beguiled my people—will ye bring my wife to shame?” So cries the king in fury, quivering through all his frame; He hurls his sword, that flashing strikes through the stripling’s heart; Now from the source of golden songs a blood-jet high doth start.

Strewn as by sudden tempest is all the listening swarm, The youth hath sobbed his life out upon his master’s arm; Upon his horse he sets him, wound in his mantle’s fold, And fastly binds him upright, and quits with him the hold.

But at the high gate halting, the old man stands sublime, His harp he seizes wildly, of harps the peerless prime; Against a marble column he hath dashed its strength in twain, Then cries aloud that garden and castle peal amain.

“Woe, woe to you, proud halls, no more echo melodious word Through all your vaulted hollows, nor ever song or chord; No, moans alone and wailing, and coward step of slaves, Till sprites of vengeance trample you to dust and mould of graves.

“Woe to you, odorous gardens, in May-tide’s lovely light, As ye behold this dead face, so sadly changed to sight;

Even so untimely wither, with every fountain dry, And naked all and turned to stone through coming ages lie.

“Woe to thee, murderer accurst, of minstrel-craft the bane, For crowns of savage glory strive on, and strive in vain; And be thy name forgotten, in endless midnight sunk, And pass as into vain air that last death-rattle shrunk.”

The old man’s voice hath pealed it, and Heaven hath heard on high; The mighty walls are levelled, the halls in ruin lie; One pillar lone and lofty still tells of vanished power; Ev’n that is cloven, and may fall before the morning hour.

Around for perfumed gardens is a heath of desert land, No tree sheds welcome shadow, no spring leaps in the sand. That king he perished all unnamed in hero-scroll or verse, Forgotten, blindly overwhelmed!—so wrought the singer’s curse.

Shortly before his death Uhland wrote a little epigram on the death of a young child, which it would be inexcusable to attempt to give in any other language than the original, especially as it has not yet appeared in any collected edition of his works.

AUF DEN TOD EINES KINDES.

Du kamst, du gingst mit leiser Spur,
Ein flücht’ger Gast in Erdenland
Woher? Wohin?—wir wissen nur
Aus Gottes Hand in Gottes Hand.

In these lines the childlike spirit of the old poet may have conceived a fitting epitaph for himself, so calm and simple was his life and death. But the “mit leiser Spur,” “with faint footfall,” could not have been applied to his own case except by his own modesty; for, unmistakably, if ever man did so, to use the language of his admirer, Longfellow, Ludwig Uhland has left some very enduring “footsteps on the sands of Time.”

MY INVESTMENT IN THE FAR WEST.

“A golden opportunity, sir; Fortune knocking at your door, as she knocks but once in a man’s lifetime; and if you refuse to let her in, excuse me, sir, but you will repent it—you will.”

Such were the persuasive words of Colonel Coriolanus Sling, as he cracked his filberts and sipped his sherry in the snug dining-room of my villa at Stamford Hill. The Colonel, as his name indicates pretty clearly, was an eminent citizen of the model republic, not long arrived on British ground, and the bearer of an introductory letter from my esteemed friend Cassius Corkey, a late Secretary of Legation. I had given a little dinner in honour of my new acquaintance; the repast had gone off pleasantly enough, and the ladies had left us four gentlemen to our wine and politics, when the Colonel uttered the above remarks.

It was early autumn, and, if the flower-beds of the garden were somewhat faded, the shrubberies of Magnolia Villa had still a cheerful aspect; and the lawn, as seen through the French windows, was smooth and trim as a gigantic piece of Genoa velvet. Not a weed, not a withered leaf, marred the neatness of the bright gravel of the walks: the fountain was in full play, liberally sprinkling the goldfish in the little marble basin; and the transparent walls of the conservatory showed a wealth of many-tinted flowers within. There may be larger and more stately residences than Magnolia Villa, but I flatter myself that few proprietors could make more of four and a half acres of ground, imperial measurement, than your humble servant, George Bulkeley. We were, as I have said, four in company—the Colonel; young Tom Harris of the Stock Exchange; a friend and countryman of the Colonel’s, by name Dr Titus A. C. Bett; and myself.

“Why, Colonel Sling,” answered I, doubtfully, “I don’t quite know about that. The distance, you see, is great, and the risk may be——”

“Nothing at all!” interrupted my guest, warmly; “I pledge you the honour, sir, of a free-born citizen of the U-nited States, nothing at all! The plum, sir, is ripe, and ready to drop into your mouth spontaneous; and I may safely assure you, sir, that nothing but my gratitude for your hospitality would have induced me to promulgate a scheme so out-and-out auriferous as the Great Nauvoo and Nebraska Railway will eventuate.”

I did not always find it in my power to follow the Colonel through all the windings of an argument. His exuberant diction was occasionally too much for me; but the drift of what he said was pretty clear, and I was greatly struck with it.

Tom Harris, who had been staring at the Colonel with his round eyes very wide open, here ventured to say that he supposed there would be considerable expenditure before any returns could be expected.

“Guess you’d better shut up,” said, or rather snuffled, Dr Titus A. C. Bett. “I have documents in my pocket to substantiate the number of miles metalled, and the bridges, and the viaducts, and general plant. A mere flea-bite of outlay, sir, would suffice to establish another of those mighty arteries of communication in respect to which America, it’s pretty much admitted, whips the world; and none but a soft-horn, sir, would have the least dubiosity about it.”

The Doctor and the Colonel were compatriots, one being a Boston man and the other a New-Yorker, but they were very unlike each other in aspect and manner. For whereas the Colonel was six feet two inches high, at the very least computation, and had an eagle beak, keen dark eyes, and a forest of lank black hair streaming around his sallow face; the Doctor was a little man of five feet three, or thereabouts, with weak eyes, spectacles, a head almost bald, and a little wizened countenance. Furthermore, the Colonel was a soft-spoken man, with conciliatory manners and a peculiarly honeyed tone; and though he smoked prodigiously, he consumed tobacco in no other way. The Doctor, on the other hand, was quarrelsome and warlike to a degree, capped every anecdote, contradicted everybody, hummed and buzzed in society like an angry wasp, and kept a silver box full of quids in his coat-pocket. These two were partners. Ill-natured people were malicious enough to say that the Colonel’s department was cajolery, and the Doctor’s bullying, in the joint interest of the firm. I gave no ear to these unkind rumours, and indeed I justly considered the Colonel to be a man of superior abilities and remarkable eloquence. He did not omit, on this occasion, to spread a little soothing salve on the wounds which his countryman’s rudeness had inflicted.

“Excuse the worthy Doctor,” he murmured, in bland accents, to Tom Harris, whose face was very red with awkward indignation, “he is accustomed to the free discussions of our colossal country, where the restrictive etiquette of older and more despotic lands is spurned beneath the boot-heels of enlightenment. Do not be riled, I beseech you, at the freedom of his remarks; truth inspires them. You do not know, gentlemen” (here the orator’s voice swelled into a sonorous fulness)—“you cannot know—the resources of our glorious country: none but American citizens can fully appreciate the mines of profitable pro-duce always awaiting the civilising pick-axe of the hardy western pioneer. But never, never since first our Pilgrim Fathers began to improve the Indians off the face of nature—never since Manhattan changed its name to New Amsterdam, afterwards to be New York—has such a speculation as this, of which I am the felicitous herald, been going a-begging. Hail, Columbia, happy land! as our inspired bard, who whips your Swan of—ahem!” And here the Colonel ended in some confusion, and hid his fluent lips for a moment in his wine-glass.

Tom Harris was quite appeased. He was not a bright personage, Tom, but he did very well on the Stock Exchange, to which he may be said to have been born and bred. He was the only son of the well-known old Peter Harris, the man who made so much, as a bear, at the time of the Nore mutiny. He, Tom—not old Peter—had inherited a great deal of money; and though he set up for a sporting man, and generally hedged so artfully, and made up such ingenious books on the races that his alternative was between great losses and small ones, he was richer than when he came into his father’s fortune. For money accrues to money, as a snowball gathers in rolling; and it no more requires a genius to thrive in the Stock Market than it does to rule in a Cabinet, if Chancellor Oxenstiern tells the truth. And Tom had married a young lady of property, Miss Mungle, daughter of Chuttnee and Mungle, or rather of the junior partner in that great firm. Tom Harris, therefore, was wild for lucrative investments, and so, in a qualified way, was I; and money was plentiful in the City, as the ‘Times’ correspondent daily informed the reading public. We therefore already began to nibble at the tempting bait which the Colonel placed before us so dexterously.

“But,” said I, “is the traffic certain to be remunerative? The line runs through rather a thinly-peopled tract of country, doesn’t it?”

Colonel Coriolanus Sling slapped his leathery palm upon the polished mahogany with an emphasis that made the glasses ring. “Sir,” said he, “you are the most sensible man I have met in this benighted—I mean this beautiful kingdom. You have hit the exact point, my dear Mr Bulkeley, on which the eligibility of the whole affair pivots, only you must look at it from that sublimely piercing elevation from which the American intellect surveys it. Sir, we must _create_ a population: sir, we must found cities: sir, it must be ours to people the western solitudes and to implant the germs of a nascent commerce, a new learning, a fresh community, where now the coon and the prairie dog dwell unmolested and alone: and, sir, future ages will decree to us colossal statues of imperishable brass; while in this we shall realise the applause of our consciences and of our bankers.” Here the Colonel stopped, overpowered by his feelings, and blew his nose with a martial dissonance.

“By Jove!” said Tom Harris, “I’ll speak to old Muggins about it: if he says ‘all right,’ I’ll take a thousand shares in the concern.”

“Muggins, sir! who is Muggins?” demanded the Doctor, waspishly: “is Muggins, sir, a fit judge when such an enterprise is in question—an enterprise to reflect eternal honour, sir, on its spirited and high-feluting projectors, with the finger of ignominy to point at the craven that draws back. Muggins! some stony-hearted London capitalist—some toad-eater at the beck of a bloated aristocracy—some miserable haunter of the gilded saloons of a Chancellor of the Exchequer” (the doctor was not very particular as to the authenticity of the accusations he flung broadcast). “Muggins, indeed!”

Tom Harris was an ingenuous youth. He looked excessively ashamed of his allusion to Muggins, and was quite borne down by the volubility of his transatlantic opponent. Thus it came about that a meeting was arranged for the next day at Colonel Sling’s chambers, at which we were to discuss the propriety of forming a company to work out the concession of the Nauvoo and Nebraska Railway, of which our American friends were the fortunate owners. I was an older man than Tom Harris, and had necessarily seen more of the world. And I had been “bit,” as the phrase goes, once or twice, by Mexican Debentures, Spanish Deferred, and unsaleable Scrip. I therefore asked, as delicately as I could, why my new acquaintances had not raised among the enlightened capitalists of their own country a sufficient amount to pay all preliminary expenses, thus keeping the golden fruit entirely among Americans. But the Colonel had an answer ready for me. He frowned, pursed up his month, bit his lips, and assumed very much the air of a conspirator.

“Hush!” he uttered, in tragic tones; then rushing to the door, whisked it open, putting to rout Adolphus the page, who always is listening at keyholes, in spite of repeated corporal punishment. Adolphus scuttled away across the hall in great dismay, and the Colonel returned to his seat with an expression that Iago might have envied. “Hush!” said he, “walls have auriculars, and spies are always on the watch to re-port the words of Columbia’s children. It is well known that your arbitrary Government has long adopted the wicked maxim due to the crafty forethought of your Pitt, Earl of Holland, that ‘America’s danger is England’s opportunity.’”

I could not help laughing as I answered, “I am afraid, Colonel, your memory has not rendered the passage in exactly its original form.”

“Excuse me,” croaked the Doctor, “but nothing is more wonderful than the ignorance which prevails in Britain, with regard to the sayings and doings of your grandees and public persons.”

“Allow me, Doctor,” said the Colonel, oracularly, “to finish my explanation. You see, gentlemen, we might have offered this concession in Wall Street in the Empire City, and Wall Street would have snapped it up; yes, sir, as an alligator would chaw pork.”

This was a forcible simile, but it did not quite content us. “Why didn’t you?” was trembling on the lips of both Tom Harris and myself, but politeness restrained us from uttering what our looks must have plainly said.

The Colonel answered our looks thus: “Because, squires, there was this difficulty in the way,—Buck, you know, is our old man.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Tom, reddening again; “but I don’t quite catch your meaning. Buck, did you call the gentleman?”

“Buck! the old man! White House—deputations—soirees—soft sawder,” explained the Doctor; and then we discovered that President Buchanan was the object of discourse.

“Well,” pursued the Colonel, “Buck’s very far gone—notice to quit—time nearly up. His successor is sure to be Abe Lincoln, if the little giant don’t beat him at the election. Nobody else has got a chance. Caucuses all at work! dark as moles. Now, sir, we have plugged the platform.”

“You’ve done what?” exclaimed Tom Harris.

“We’ve made it all safe, and Lincoln stands to win,” exclaimed the Colonel, condescendingly. “Now we suspect those Southerners mean to ride rusty if they get an anti-slavery man, like old Abe, to be President over them; and though our folks air screamers, and that’s a fact, the South’s an ugly customer, and our line of railway is too close to Missouri State to be safe, if owned by Northerners. But in the smartest row the South can make, you Britishers are sure to be handled as tenderly as a hoosier handles a squirrel’s skin; and so it’s best the property should be in the name of British subjects, not free citizens. Don’t you see?”

We did see, and we resolved that on the morrow we would sift the matter thoroughly.

“Try the claret, Colonel,” said I; “you have been drinking nothing but sherry, and this is Chateau Margaux that I got at Bilkingham’s sale. Those are pretty good peaches, Doctor, of my own growing.”

“Don’t talk of peaches,” said the Doctor, who, I will own, was anything but an agreeable guest; “you must cross the broad Atlantic before you talk of peaches, I reckon. I’ve fed pigs with better than your dukes and earls could show. I’ve bought in the market twenty-nine big peaches for thirty cents, I have. We do crow over you in peaches, as in most, only your national vanity won’t permit you to see it.”

The Colonel jumped from his chair. “You be quiet!” said he; “the Doctor is a glowing patriot, Mr Bulkeley; but I know he admires your delightful snuggery, embellished by art and high-flying taste, as much as I do myself. Some day, as a director of the Nauvoo and Nebraska, you may, if you please, build a palace on the site of Magnolia Villa that will take the shine out of the sumptuous halls of your nobility. But enough of business. Gentlemen, if you have liquored sufficiently, we will join the ladies.”

We did join the ladies. We found them strolling over the lawn in the cool of a September evening, and presently we all went in to coffee. I noticed that the Colonel was very polite and attentive, not only to my wife, but to young Mrs Harris, who was exceedingly stupid and plain of feature. As for Mrs and Miss Jarman, they were entertained by the Doctor with an amusing dissertation on the difference between America and England, and especially between London and New York. If Mrs Jarman had hitherto cherished a belief in the pre-eminence of London, as she apparently had, she must have received a considerable shock as the Doctor informed her that Belgravia was but a poor place to Fourth and Fifth Avenue, and that we were benighted creatures in all matters of elegance and taste.

“Not a mahogany door, I guess, have I seen in this smoky beggarly town of yours,” said Dr Bett, with both thumbs in the pockets of his black satin vest; “and as for silver knockers and bell-pulls, I might as well look for liberty in your institutions, or for sincerity in your press. The helps are enough to disgust all free-born men; to see them in plush and powder, with gold-sticks and nosegays, standing behind the gilt vehicles of an effete aristocracy, is alone a spectacle that beats earthquakes; and your Life Guards would sing small, I guess, by the side of the Brooklyn Volunteers.”

The Colonel, however, could be complimentary and gentle, if his brother republican could not; and so well did he play his cards, that when the company drove off, and the last grinding of their carriage-wheels upon the gravel had died away, my wife and daughters turned to me with beaming faces, and began to sing the praises of their departed guest.

“A most superior, well-informed, gentlemanly man, is Colonel Sling,” said the partner of my joys, emphatically.

“A delightful man!” lisped Georgina, my eldest.

“Quite an Admirable Crichton,” said Selina, my second, who is a bit of a blue.

“Delightful! he has _so_ much conversation, and makes one laugh _so_!” cried artless Lucy, the third and youngest of my daughters.

So he had pleased them all, and, I admit, he had pleased me too; but he mostly showed his tact in winning the suffrages of the feminine members of my household. For Mrs Bulkeley is not a cipher by any means, even in my business transactions, and she has an amiable habit of warning me against entering into commercial relations with any one she mistrusts or dislikes. The next day beheld assembled in the showy Pall Mall chambers of Colonel Sling the same quartette that had closed around the mahogany in Magnolia Villa on the preceding day. Tom Harris and I drove down there together from the City, and we found the two Americans awaiting us with a hearty welcome. There were maps on a great table, and plans, and minerals, and parchments, and heaps of papers, carefully stacked and docqueted, and files of letters with great red seals to them that would have carried conviction home to the most incredulous. And the Colonel, after the first salutations were over, and after tenderly inquiring about the health of my womankind, commenced a lucid explanation of the exact position of the Nauvoo and Nebraska Railway—its position, I mean, in a pecuniary point of view, not its geographical position. The latter, we ascertained by a glance at the map, to be in the free State of Iowa, skirting Missouri, and with one terminus in Illinois State and the other in Nebraska Territory. But information now came showering upon us, and the Colonel was extremely careful to prove every fresh axiom which he laid down by an appeal to documents of the most incontrovertible character. There was the original concession of the line, approved by the State Legislature, signed by the governor, registered by the State’s law officers and by the Federal attorney of the district. There were similar documents, to which the autographs of the governors of Nebraska and Illinois were attached. There were the reports of surveyors, the accounts of contractors, subcontractors, architects, machinists, and ironmasters. Moreover, there were specimens of minerals found in the immediate neighbourhood of the line, and within the liberal grant of land which the State had made—which specimens the Colonel showed us, in rather a careless way, as mere incidental advantages. But the eyes of Tom Harris and myself sparkled at the sight; for although we were not adepts in geology, we knew iron ore, and copper ore, and limestone, and hornblende, and fine marble, when we saw them; and visions of mines and quarries to be worked at vast profit, or leased for high rentals, flitted brilliantly before us. What wonder that, on hearing the generous terms on which the two American gentlemen were willing to admit us to a full participation of their advantages, Tom and I shook hands most heartily with Doctor and Colonel, and devoted ourselves from that moment to the establishment of the projected Company? And then Colonel Coriolanus rang the bell for lunch, and we all drank, over and over again, in creaming bumpers of Clicquot, prosperity and success to the Nauvoo and Nebraska Railway. Two day after, out came our prospectus to dazzle the City. A more flowery manifesto, or one more fertile in temptations, I have seldom seen. It proved, moreover, as plainly as that two and two make four, that the investment was as secure as the bank, if not more so, and a hundred-fold more remunerative. Never was there such a railway; never were there directors so opulent, so respectable, so conscientious, so experienced; never was there a line on which the expenses were so trifling, the traffic so enormous, or the dividend so princely, as that of the Nauvoo and Nebraska. Iowa was a State of boundless fertility, of inexhaustible resources—cereal, mineral, commercial. The line would be part of a main highway to the Far West, and the Old World and the New World pour tribute into the cornucopia of its matchless wealth. Cities were to spring up, fair and flourishing provinces were to blossom, where the virgin soil now awaited the spade and the ploughshare: we were to carry tobacco, madder, corn, cattle, immigrants, and ore. The gigantic fortunes we were to make were thrown into the shade by the benefits we were to confer on posterity and our contemporaries. Unborn millions were to canonise the projectors of the Grand Nauvoo and Nebraska; and we were not only to insure for ourselves the smiles and blessings of ages yet to come, but were to feather our nests pretty handsomely in a few short months. Not only were we to take rank as philanthropists of the first water, but to rig the market as well. Nor were the advantages of the new railroad confined to the eminent and clear-sighted capitalists who had first embarked in it. No; in that good cause the widow’s mite was welcome. Never, it was pointed out, was so admirable an opportunity offered to ladies of limited income, to struggling professional men, to decayed gentry or others, to double or treble their little store by means of the splendid dividends, the bonuses, premiums, and other good things, to be expected from the Company. Who has not read many such glowing proclamations as this, promising to realise the dreams of an El Dorado for the lucky speculator, bolstering up each statement by an imposing array of figures, and always concluding by the recommendation that (to prevent disappointment) _immediate_ application be made at the office for shares? We had a secretary and cashier, and Dr Titus A. C. Bett was so kind as to undertake the latter responsible position; while the celebrated Wyldrake Flam, Esq., a gentleman who had been concerned with a good many companies in his time, was happily secured for the former situation. Sir George Gullings, M.P., a rich banker who had earned his baronetcy by his long course of voting for a Whig Ministry, was our chairman; and, of course, Tom Harris, Colonel Sling, and I, were among the managing directors. We took a great many shares amongst us; but, of course, by far the greater number were submitted to public competition, and the frequenters of the money market bit with tolerable freedom. But there were some wary old fish who refused so much as to nibble at the glittering bait, and foremost amongst them was old Muggins, that veteran stockbroker of whom Tom Harris had made mention at my table. Muggins was a character, and disagreeably outspoken. One day I met him at the Royal Exchange, and taking him playfully by the button, I asked him why he gave our Company the cold shoulder.

“Mr Bulkeley, sir, I’ll tell you,” said Muggins, with a frown: “I shirk your Company, sir, because I can’t afford to lose my property in duck-and-drake fashion among those swindling Yankees. I hate bubbles, sir, and this is worse, for it is a cruel robbery.”

“Sir, sir! Mr Muggins!” said I, choking with anger. What did this remarkable man proceed to say? Just this:

“George Bulkeley, I have known you from a boy, and you are an honest man, though not very bright (I was speechless at his effrontery). When I call this affair a swindle, I don’t impute blame to you, for I am aware that you are a dupe, not a duper. But I don’t pity you for losing some pen-feathers out of your wings, as you will do; I keep my pity for the poor wretches who will be plucked bare, and who can least spare the little savings or capital your fine prospectus has wheedled them into investing,—I mean the widows and old maids, the half-pay officers, the needy clergymen, that your Company is to ruin. I wish I could see your American friends in the pillory, I know! Good-day.”

And off he went, leaving me very angry, but a little dismayed as well. After all, old Muggins passed for an oracle in the city; and seriously, _had_ I examined sufficiently into the foundation of all the alluring statements we had published with the sanction of our names? What Muggins had said about the widows and poor helpless folks gave me an unpleasant twinge in my heart, and conscience came and whispered, “George Bulkeley, the accomplice of rogues, is not very far from being a rogue himself, is he?” I made a bold resolution. I determined to go out myself to America, and, on the spot, thoroughly to investigate the condition and prospects of the line of railway. When I broached this proposal at the next meeting of the Board, Colonel Sling and the Doctor were found to be violently opposed to it, and to be inclined to resent such interference on my part as an insult. And the influence of the two Americans was very considerable with the committee, partly because all our information was derived from the authority of Colonel Sling, and partly because the transatlantic gentlemen had a custom of putting down and pooh-poohing whatever any one but themselves happened to say. But I was firm this time; and besides, as I offered to go out without putting the Company to any expense whatever, the opposition to my departure could not decently be continued. Then, to my surprise, Colonel Coriolanus Sling very kindly offered to accompany me, and to save me all trouble and inconvenience by lending me the aid of his perfect knowledge of the localities. The Doctor, as cashier, must of course remain at his post; but the Colonel could be spared, he felt assured he could be spared, and indeed he proposed that we should go as a deputation, and at the cost of the Company. Why not? Our shares were at a premium. Money was flowing in. All went prosperously with us. Why not? The Colonel’s proposition was carried _nem. con._, and it was agreed that George Bulkeley, Esq., and Colonel Coriolanus Sling, should proceed at once to Iowa, there to survey, report, and inspect. Mrs Bulkeley’s consent was procured; and indeed, but for the terrors of sea-sickness, she would have insisted on accompanying me. The Cunard packet, Mersey, was to sail from Liverpool on the 17th of the month; our berths were engaged on board her; and it was duly agreed that the Colonel and I were to go down together on the day preceding that of embarkation. I never thoroughly understood why the gallant American officer did not keep his appointment. He wrote me a hurried note, saying that important business detained him in town, and that he would join me in Liverpool; but I believe a dinner at the Star and Garter, at Richmond, was the engagement in question. At any rate I travelled alone; alone I embarked; and though I looked out for the Colonel till the last moment, till the bell rang, and the plank was withdrawn, and the huge paddlewheels began to revolve, no Colonel came. And we went to sea with his name in the roll of passengers, but without his corporeal presence on deck or in cabin. I cannot say that I was altogether sorry. I felt instinctively that I was by far more likely to form an unbiassed judgment when alone. I felt that in company with a man so plausible, so fluent of speech, and so experienced in all the ways of the singular country for which I was bound, I should be in danger of seeing all objects through the rose-coloured haze in which it was the Colonel’s policy to mask them. But, at the same time, I was a little nervous at the prospect of exploring the Far West without a Mentor; and the weight of the responsibility attaching to my report was not exactly reassuring. The packet was crowded, for many were desirous of making use of the last week or two of fine still weather, before the November gales should begin to expend their fury upon the vast breadth of the Atlantic. There were but few Britons on board; but there were Dons in abundance; and great numbers of pallid ladies, with Parisian toilettes and faulty teeth, and of sallow lean-visaged men in tail-coats and varnished boots, returning from a tour of European baths and cities. Also, there were plenty of keen-looking persons, who eyed all mankind with suspicious scrutiny, who had memorandum-books sticking out of the pockets of their black satin vests, and who were probably not unconnected with commercial pursuits and the cotton trade. Aware that I was on my way to a new world in more senses of the word than one, a world whose standard of morality was wholly novel, I took every opportunity of acquiring information which might afterwards prove invaluable. I therefore associated exclusively with natives of the Western Continent, studied their sentiments, and stored up every scrap of information bearing on traffic and transit. I will own that my pride met with frequent abrasions; that my deepest-rooted convictions were rudely assaulted; and that I was unable to avoid observing that my neighbours would have been all the better for a little more attention to the precepts of Lord Chesterfield. We are not always very fastidious in the city: I am constantly obliged to bargain, dine, and converse, with uncommonly rough diamonds; but I do not think that any Cockney alive can contrive to render vulgarity so glaringly offensive as his Yankee congener. I was most unlucky in my fellow-passengers, some of whose habits were distressing to a degree, and did not show any remarkable improvement since the days when Mrs Trollope and Captain Hamilton crossed the Atlantic. I began to owe Sir Walter a grudge for his discovery of tobacco, since tobacco, chewed to pulp, and lubricating the deck and cabin-stairs with its nicotian extract, became the bugbear of my existence. Besides, I prefer to see gentlemen sit with their feet in a more normal position than an undue elevation of the boot soles can afford. I wish our transatlantic brothers would smoke a little less and wash a little more; and I never could entirely pardon young Mr Tips for whittling my portmanteau. Mr Tips—young Mr Tips, that is—Minos Blackstone Story Tips—was the sharer of what was facetiously called my state-room. The latter was a wedge of a cabin, with two little berths in it, not quite so spacious as the box-beds in an old-fashioned Highland cottage, and was naturally meant to accommodate two passengers. Under ordinary circumstances, Colonel Sling would have held divided empire over this den with myself; and I believe that, in strict justice, the whole should have been mine, seeing that I had signed the cheque in payment for both passages. But berths were at a premium: several passengers had come on board at the last, and had to shift for their quarters as they might, and among them the Tips family. Now, although the “state-room” was rightfully mine, yet I was easily induced to permit the installation of young Mr Tips in the undermost berth, though I admit that my temper was sorely tested when I found him in bed, one rather blusterous afternoon, very sick, and beguiling the tedious hours, by operating with a sharp penknife on the glossy leather of my new portmanteau—Allen’s best, fitted for India and the colonies. Also this delightful youth—a lawyer from the cradle, as his names imply—was fond of using my pet razor, and borrowing my scissors and brushes; was not over partial to soap and water; and sang queer nasal songs at untimely hours, besides smoking in bed. I might have had a pleasanter companion, but I had let him in, and there was no help for it, while, after all, the voyage was but for ten days. Why had I let him in? For two reasons: firstly, because exclusiveness is most unpopular among Republicans; and the old sentiment which dictated the New York proverb, that “A man must be a hog to want a bed all to himself,” still exists in a modified form. Another reason was, that I wanted to make friends, and get letters of introduction to some Western citizens who would be able to tell me all about the Nauvoo and Nebraska Railway, and perhaps a little about Colonel Sling. I knew that Americans, amongst each other at least, were most generous in this respect. I was aware that few retired storekeepers or land-jobbers brought over their charming families without being provided with introductions from ex-ministers and secretaries to half the peers and princes of Europe; that American diplomacy was subservient to any one who could influence an election; and that very queer folks indeed had the honour of figuring at royal levees and state balls under the wing of Franklin’s eagle. I determined, therefore, to be as conciliatory as possible in all my dealings with the citizens and citizenesses of the model commonwealth.

I had the pleasure of making acquaintance with old Mr Tips,—Judge Tips, of Salem, Mass.—his Christian name was Magnentius,—in rather a curious manner. He sat next to me at the general dinner in the best cabin or saloon. The table was crowded, but there were three below me, on the same side of the long board. The dinner was a capital one: the Cunard directors are famous for good feeding; and Judge Tips, father to my young companion, played an excellent knife and fork. A dish of peas came round, the last of the marrow-fats, the latest peas of summer; and indeed I cannot conceive from what remote market the steamboat purveyors had imported them, seeing that Covent Garden had been barren, in respect to this vegetable, for some weeks. I am very fond of peas, and was rejoiced to see my favourites once again; and I anxiously awaited their arrival. Miss Tips, Miss Julia Tips, and Tips _mère_, as the French would say, had each taken a decorous spoonful from the flying dish, and now the black waiter was offering the delicacy to Tips himself, enough being left for five persons at least. What was my horror to behold the Judge deliberately monopolise the whole—sweep, as I live, every pea into his own plate—and then turning to me, with a greasy smile, remark, “I guess, stranger, I’m a whale at peas.”[4] Yes, Mr Bright tells sterling truth. There are some matters in which the most acquisitive of us all are distanced by an American. Judge Tips was obliging enough to favour me with a good deal of his improving conversation, and by meekness and affability I won his heart. He not only invited me to visit him at Salem, but when I hinted that I was on my way to the West, and should be glad to make the acquaintance of any notable citizens of Illinois or Iowa, he gave me the coveted letters of introduction to more than one magistrate, sheriff, and popular preacher. Nor did any accident mar the even tenor of our agreeable passage to New York. We had almost uniform good weather; and before the evening of the eleventh day, we were standing on the wooden landing-places of the Empire City, surrounded by German porters, Irish car-drivers, and Yankee touts. The latter race, wise in their generation, prefer head-work to the toil of actual muscle, and permit old Europe to furnish them with soldiers and foremast-men, stevedores, navvies, and dock labourers; while they supply officers, foremen, mates, and overlookers, to regulate and profit by the exertions of their hirelings.

The Astor House is not what it was. It has been distanced by more gigantic competitors; and as for the Tremont, it is left high and dry, like a stranded whale, by the tide of fashion. Nevertheless, I bestowed my patronage on the latter, perhaps for Sam Slick’s sake, and spent a couple of days under its hospitable roof while recovering from the sensation of cramp, tedium, and nausea quite inseparable from a sea voyage. Then I set out for the West. The journey, as far as Fort Madison, on the western boundary of the State of Illinois, I performed by railway, expeditiously perhaps, and not very uncomfortably, in spite of the amount of rocking and swinging due to a carelessly-metalled “permanent way,” if I may employ the phraseology of engineering. But I could not, with a clear conscience, agree with the enthusiastic comments of my fellow-travellers, as to the immense superiority, in speed and accommodation, of American railroads over those of Britain. After being jolted and swung till one’s bones ached, all the time, perhaps, being at a net speed of thirty miles an hour, it was rather provoking to listen to such remarks as the following:—

“Wall, mister, I expect our flying locomotives do rayther astonish you. They kinder take the conceit out of Old England, I some think.” Or, more gravely, “I believe, sir, it’s pretty universally admitted that America whips the world for speed. We have beaten your yachts, we have licked your racers, and our trains must make you think small beer of your expresses. We go ahead, _we_ do!”

I take great praise to myself that I was always able to keep my temper, and to abstain from polemics. But argument would have been useless. I had to do with a people who saw the outer world through the spectacles of their journalists, and who would no more admit the imperfections of America than a lover will see a blemish in his mistress. To them America was all in all; and the mightiest countries in Europe were esteemed by them as rotten and worthless, only existing by the sufferance of the Giant Republic. As for my praise of the British Constitution, they simply laughed at it, assuring me that I knew nothing about the matter, and that there could be no liberty where a plain man was not allowed to go to court in his working dress if he chose. But I had not crossed the ocean to argue: I had come to pluck out the heart of the mystery concerning the Nauvoo and Nebraska Railway. And I was very careful at dinner-tables, bars, cafés, and railway cars, to elicit all available information with respect to the resources of the West. What I heard was, of course, vague; but on the whole it contained some comfort. It appeared certain that a great trade was carried on by land and water; that towns started up with incredible quickness in the midst of desolate prairies, or, like Chicago, on piles in a swamp; and that hardy men were taming the wilderness. So far so good. But it did not appear to me that security to life and property went in exactly the same ratio as the increase of wealth. I heard odd stories about regulators, vigilance committees, and Judge Lynch. Mob-law seemed paramount to written statutes; and the fiat of a legal court required to be backed by the good pleasure of a majority before its execution could be guaranteed. Besides, the moral standard of the community did not rank as high as perhaps a very delicate sense of honour required. Commercial tricks were spoken of as “clever,” or “ingenious,” which in other lands would have engaged the serious attention of the law-officers of the Crown; and the most unprincipled ruse was mentioned with laughter and indulgence, if not with approbation. All this augured badly, methought, for the prospects of the Nauvoo and Nebraska Railway. And yet I did not despair, and still less did I drop a hint of my suspicions to any casual acquaintance. It was not for me, a managing director, to denounce the project with which my name was, alas! inextricably linked, until it should be proved a bubble on the very clearest evidence. I reached Fort Madison, the most remote point to which the steam-horse could convey me, and had, at any rate, the satisfaction of knowing that I was within a few miles of Nauvoo. I hired a mule-waggon for the journey, and sitting down to dinner at the public table of the hotel, I inquired what sort of a place Nauvoo might be?