Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 402, April, 1849

"Turning in despair from this civilised world of ours, I have cast my eyes to a world far older, – and yet more to a world in its giant childhood. India here, – Australia there! – what say you, sir – you who will see dispassionately those things that float before my eyes through a golden haze, looming large in the distance? Such is my confidence in your judgment that you have but to say, 'Fool, give up thine El Dorados and stay at home, – stick to the books and the desk – annihilate that redundance of animal life that is in thee – grow a mental machine. Thy physical gifts are of no avail to thee; take thy place among the slaves of the Lamp," and I will obey without a murmur. But if I am right – if I have in me attributes that here find no market; if my repinings are but the instincts of nature, that, out of this decrepid civilisation, desire vent for growth in the young stir of some more rude and vigorous social system – then give me, I pray, that advice which may clothe my idea in some practical and tangible embodiments. Have I made myself understood?

"Rarely do we see a newspaper here, but occasionally one finds its way from the parsonage; and I have lately rejoiced at a paragraph that spoke of your speedy entrance into the administration as a thing certain. I write to you before you are a minister; and you see what I seek is not in the way of official patronage: A niche in an office! – oh, to me that were worse than all. Yet I did labour hard with you, but —that was different! I write to you thus frankly, knowing your warm noble heart – and as if you were my father. Allow me to add my humble but earnest congratulations on Miss Trevanion's approaching marriage with one worthy, if not of her, at least of her station. I do so as becomes one whom you have allowed to retain the right to pray for the happiness of you and yours.

"My dear Mr Trevanion, this is a long letter, and I dare not even read it over, lest if I do, I should not send it. Take it with all its faults, and judge of it with that kindness with which you have judged ever

Your grateful and devoted servant,"Pisistratus Caxton."LETTER FROM ALBERT TREVANION, ESQ., M.P. TO PISISTRATUS CAXTONLibrary of the House of Commons, Tuesday Night.

"My dear Pisistratus, – * * * * * is up! we are in for it for two mortal hours. I take flight to the library, and devote those hours to you. Don't be conceited, but that picture of yourself which you have placed before me has struck me with all the force of an original. The state of mind which you describe so vividly must be a very common one, in our era of civilisation, yet I have never before seen it made so prominent and life-like. You have been in my thoughts all day. Yes, how many young men must there be like you, in this Old World, able, intelligent, active, and persevering enough, yet not adapted for success in any of our conventional professions – 'mute, inglorious Raleighs.' Your letter, young artist, is an illustration of the philosophy of colonising. I comprehend better, after reading it, the old Greek colonisation, – the sending out not only the paupers, the refuse of an over-populated state, but a large proportion of a better class – fellows full of pith and sap, and exuberant vitality, like yourself, blending in those wise cleruchiæ a certain portion of the aristocratic with the more democratic element; not turning a rabble loose upon a new soil, but planting in the foreign allotments all the rudiments of a harmonious state, analogous to that in the mother country – not only getting rid of hungry craving mouths, but furnishing vent for a waste surplus of intelligence and courage, which at home is really not needed, and more often comes to ill than to good; – here only menaces our artificial embankments, but there, carried off in an aqueduct, might give life to a desert.

"For my part, in my ideal of colonisation, I should like that each exportation of human beings had, as of old, its leaders and chiefs – not so appointed from the mere quality of rank, often, indeed, taken from the humbler classes – but still men to whom a certain degree of education should give promptitude, quickness, adaptability– men in whom their followers can confide. The Greeks understood that. Nay, as the colony makes progress – as its principal town rises into the dignity of a capital – a polis that needs a polity – I sometimes think it might be wise to go still farther, and not only transplant to it a high standard of civilisation, but draw it more closely into connexion with the parent state, and render the passage of spare intellect, education, and civility, to and fro, more facile, by draughting off thither the spare scions of royalty itself. I know that many of my more 'liberal' friends would pooh-pooh this notion; but I am sure that the colony altogether, when arrived to a state that would bear the importation, would thrive all the better for it. And when the day shall come (as to all healthful colonies it must come sooner or later) in which the settlement has grown an independent state, we may thereby have laid the seeds of a constitution and a civilisation similar to our own – with self-developed forms of monarchy and aristocracy, though of a simpler growth than old societies accept, and not left a strange motley chaos of struggling democracy – an uncouth livid giant, at which the Frankenstein may well tremble – not because it is a giant, but because it is a giant half completed.8 Depend on it, the New World will be friendly or hostile to the Old, not in proportion to the kinship of race, but in proportion to the similarity of manners and institutions– a mighty truth, to which we colonisers have been blind.

"Passing from these more distant speculations to this positive present before us, you see already, from what I have said, that I sympathise with your aspirations – that I construe them as you would have me; – looking to your nature and to your objects, I give you my advice in a word – Emigrate!

"My advice is, however, founded on one hypothesis – viz., that you are perfectly sincere – you will be contented with a rough life, and with a moderate fortune at the end of your probation. Don't dream of emigrating if you want to make a million, or the tenth part of a million. Don't dream of emigrating, unless you can enjoy its hardships, – to bear them is not enough!

"Australia is the land for you, as you seem to surmise. Australia is the land for two classes of emigrants: 1st, The man who has nothing but his wits, and plenty of them; 2dly, The man who has a small capital, and who is contented to spend ten years in trebling it. I assume that you belong to the latter class. Take out £3000, and before you are thirty years old, you may return with £10,000 or £12,000. If that satisfies you, think seriously of Australia. By coach, tomorrow, I will send you down all the best books and reports on the subject; and I will get you what detailed information I can from the Colonial Office. Having read these, and thought over them dispassionately, spend some months yet among the sheep-walks of Cumberland; learn all you can, from all the shepherds you can find – from Thyrsis to Menalcas. Do more; fit yourself in every way for a life in the Bush, where the philosophy of the division of labour is not yet arrived at. Learn to turn your hand to everything. Be something of a smith, something of a carpenter – do the best you can with the fewest tools; make yourself an excellent shot; break in all the wild horses and ponies you can borrow and beg. Even if you want to do none of these things when in your settlement, the having learned to do them will fit you for many other things not now foreseen. De-fine-gentlemanise yourself from the crown of your head to the sole of your foot, and become the greater aristocrat for so doing; for he is more than an aristocrat, he is a king, who suffices in all things for himself – who is his own master, because he wants no valetaille. I think Seneca has expressed that thought before me; and I would quote the passage, but the book, I fear, is not in the library of the House of Commons. But now – (cheers, by Jove. I suppose * * * * * is down! Ah! it is so; and C – is up, and that cheer followed a sharp hit at me. How I wish I were your age, and going to Australia with you!) But now – to resume my suspended period – but now to the important point – capital. You must take that, unless you go as a shepherd, and then goodbye to the idea of £10,000 in ten years. So, you see, it appears at the first blush that you must still come to your father; but, you will say, with this difference, that you borrow the capital, with every chance of repaying it, instead of frittering away the income year after year till you are eight-and-thirty or forty at least. Still, Pisistratus, you don't, in this, gain your object at a leap; and my dear old friend ought not to lose his son and his money too. You say you write to me as to your own father. You know I hate professions; and if you did not mean what you say, you have offended me mortally. As a father, then, I take a father's rights, and speak plainly. A friend of mine, Mr Bolding, a clergyman, has a son – a wild fellow, who is likely to get into all sorts of scrapes in England, but with plenty of good in him, notwithstanding – frank, bold – not wanting in talent, but rather in prudence – easily tempted and led away into extravagance. He would make a capital colonist, (no such temptations in the Bush,) if tied to a youth like you. Now I propose, with your leave, that his father shall advance him £1500, – which shall not, however, be placed in his hands, but in yours, as head partner in the firm. You, on your side, shall advance the same sum of £1500, which you shall borrow from me, for three years without interest. At the end of that time interest shall commence, and the capital, with the interest on the said first three years, shall be repaid to me, or my executors, on your return. After you have been a year or two in the Bush, and felt your way, and learned your business, you may then safely borrow £1500 more from your father; and, in the meanwhile, you and your partner will have had together the full sum of £3000 to commence with. You see in this proposal I make you no gift, and I run no risk, even by your death. If you die, insolvent, I will promise to come on your father, poor fellow! – for small joy and small care will he have then in what may be left of his fortune. There – I have said all; and I will never forgive you if you reject an aid that will serve you so much, and cost me so little.

"I accept your congratulations on Fanny's engagement with Lord Castleton. When you return from Australia you will still be a young man, she (though about your own years) almost a middle-aged woman, with her head full of pomps and vanities. All girls have a short period of girlhood in common; but when they enter womanhood, the woman becomes the woman of her class. As for me, and the office assigned to me by report, you know what I said when we parted, and – but here J – comes, and tells me that 'I am expected to speak, and answer N – , who is just up, brimful of malice,' – the House crowded, and hungering for personalities. So I, the man of the Old World, gird up my loins, and leave you with a sigh, to the fresh youth of the New —

'Ne tibi sit duros acuisse in prœlia dentes.'"Yours affectionately,"Albert Trevanion."

CHAPTER LXV

So, reader, thou art now at the secret of my heart.

Wonder not that I, a bookman's son, and, at certain periods of my life, a bookman myself, though of lowly grade in that venerable class, – wonder not that I should thus, in that transition stage between youth and manhood, have turned impatiently from books. – Most students, at one time or other in their existence, have felt the imperious demand of that restless principle in man's nature, which calls upon each son of Adam to contribute his share to the vast treasury of human deeds. And though great scholars are not necessarily, nor usually, men of action, – yet the men of action whom History presents to our survey, have rarely been without a certain degree of scholarly nurture. For the ideas which books quicken, books cannot always satisfy. And though the royal pupil of Aristotle slept with Homer under his pillow, it was not that he might dream of composing epics, but of conquering new Ilions in the East. Many a man, how little soever resembling Alexander, may still have the conqueror's aim in an object that action only can achieve, and the book under his pillow may be the strongest antidote to his repose. And how the stern Destinies that shall govern the man weave their first delicate tissues amidst the earliest associations of the child! – Those idle tales with which the old credulous nurse had beguiled my infancy – tales of wonder, knight-errantry, and adventure, had left behind them seeds long latent – seeds that might never have sprung up above the soil – but that my boyhood was so early put under the burning-glass, and in the quick forcing-house, of the London world. There, even amidst books and study, – lively observation, and petulant ambition, broke forth from the lush foliage of romance – that fruitless leafiness of poetic youth! And there passion, which is a revolution in all the elements of individual man, had called a new state of being, turbulent and eager, out of the old habits and conventional forms it had buried, – ashes that speak where the fire has been. Far from me, as from any mind of some manliness, be the attempt to create interest by dwelling at length on the struggles against a rash and misplaced attachment, which it was my duty to overcome; but all such love, as I have before implied, is a terrible unsettler: —

"Where once such fairies dance, no grass doth ever grow."

To re-enter boyhood, go with meek docility through its disciplined routine, – how hard had I found that return, amidst the cloistered monotony of college! My love for my father, and my submission to his wish, had indeed given some animation to objects otherwise distasteful; but, now that my return to the University must be attended with positive privation to those at home, the idea became utterly hateful and repugnant. Under pretence that I found myself, on trial, not yet sufficiently prepared to do credit to my father's name, I had easily obtained leave to lose the ensuing college term, and pursue my studies at home. This gave me time to prepare my plans, and bring round – how shall I ever bring round to my adventurous views those whom I propose to desert? Hard it is to get on in the world – very hard! But the most painful step in the way is that which starts from the threshold of a beloved home.

How – ah, how, indeed! "No, Blanche, you cannot join me to-day; I am going out for many hours. So it will be late before I can be home."

Home! – the word chokes me! Juba slinks back to his young mistress, disconsolate; Blanche gazes at me ruefully from our favourite hilltop, and the flowers she has been gathering fall unheeded from her basket. I hear my mother's voice singing low, as she sits at work by her open casement. How – ah, how, indeed!

ANCIENT PRACTICE OF PAINTING.9

We are beginning to find out that the "dark ages" were not so utterly dark as they have been represented. We ascertain that there was not that universal blight upon the human mind which it has been the practice of historians to contrast with the flourishing condition of their own times. Nay, if we are now to take that measure which those historians adopted, we should estimate their own era with as disparaging a comparison with the present. But the inventions of our own days – the great advance of arts and sciences – so far from having a tendency to depreciate, throw a light upon, and acknowledge the value of, those of the middle ages. The appreciation is becoming general. We are old enough to remember the time when it was thought of little moment to block up with low unseemly edifices, or mutilate for any purpose, those amazing works of mediæval genius, our Gothic religious structures. We need but refer to the dates on the mural deformities in most of our old churches and cathedrals. Who, that will turn his eye in disgust from such monstrosities of taste, to the decorations they have misplaced and mutilated, and to the general aspect, of an indestructible character, of our minsters, will not rather ask, which were the dark ages – those of the builders and founders, or those of the obliterators and defilers? It is astonishing that such wondrous magnificence should ever have been viewed with indifference, and still more astonishing that disfigurement and desecration should have been suffered; yet men thought themselves wise in those days, and learned, and ingenious. And so they were; but in respect of arts they were dark enough – and the spirit of Puritanism was indeed a blight infecting that darkness; and the effects of that blight have not yet passed away. It may appear strange that, after a long period of worse than neglect, we not only appreciate, but such is our admiration of those works of past genius, that we imitate them, and study them for a discovery of the canons of the art which we think we cannot with impunity set aside. We here speak of those large and conspicuous monuments of the mind of the middle ages, but the increasing admiration leads to discoveries of yet more hidden treasures. The genius that designed the structures was as busily and as devotionally employed in every kind of decoration; and with a surprising unity of feeling; and as if with one sole object, to carry out the new Christian principle – to make significant a "beauty of holiness" in all outward things, that men might look to with an awe and reverence – and learn. The sanctity of that one religious art – architecture – demanded that nothing without or within should be left "common" or "unclean," but that in the whole and minutest parts this precept should be legible and manifest – "Do all to the glory of God." All art was significant of the religion for which all art, all science was pursued. The workers of those days laboured with a loving and pious toil, and lifted up their works to an unseen and all-seeing eye, and not to the applause of men; for who was there to value, or to understand, even when in some degree they felt the influence of the skill which designed and executed such infinite variety of parts, to the manifestation of one great purpose?

We must no longer speak of the middle ages as a period of universal intellectual darkness. If it were so, it would be a miracle, contrary to the intention of miracle; and the thought has in it a kind of blasphemy, which would weaken the sustaining arm of Providence, and imply an unholy rest. We do not believe in the possibility of the human race universally retrograding. We trust that there is always something doing for the future as well as for the present; something for progression, neither acceptable nor perceived by the present generation – from whose sight it is, as it were, hidden – buried as seed in the earth, to spring up in its proper abundance, and in its due time. We want a history of the human mind, sifted from the large doings – from events which fascinate us to read of, born as we are to be active, taking interest in things of a bold violence, that have really benefited the world but little, at least in the sense in which we have accepted them. The rise of one nation, the subjugation of another; dynasties, the dominion of the sword – these are the themes of histories. But in reality all these historical actions, viewed for their own purpose, are of little value; while out of all the turbulence an unintended good has been the result. There has been throughout some quiet and unobserved work going on, whose influence, felt more and more by degrees, has at length become predominant, showing that the stirring events and characters which had figured the scenes and amused spectators, were but the underplots and subordinate personæ of a greater and more serious drama. Since the overthrow of heathenism, the world's drama, still going on, is the development of Christianity; and doubtless even now, however sometimes with a seeming contrary action, every invention, every extension of knowledge – all arts, all sciences, are working to that end. It is strange, but true, that our very wars have furthered civilisation. The Crusades, worthless and fruitless as regards their ostensible object, have ameliorated the condition and softened the manners of our own and other nations.

In the fall of heathenism, fell the arts of heathenism; not, indeed, to be entirely obliterated – not for ever, but for a time. Their continuance would have been one of imitation: such imitation would have little suited the new condition of mankind; they were therefore removed, and hidden for awhile, that the new principle should develop itself unshackled. The arts had to arise from, and to be rebuilt upon, this new principle: all in them that would have interfered with this great purpose was allowed to be set aside, to be resumed only in after times, when that new principle should be safely and permanently established. It was only by degrees that the old buried art showed itself, and that the new was permitted to resume some of the old perfection. It may be that even yet the two streams, from such dissimilar sources, have not, in their fulness and plenitude, united: the characteristic beauty which they bear is of body and of soul; but they bear them separately, severally. What will the meeting of the waters be? and may we yet hope to see it? If it was required that there should be a kind of submerged world of heathenism, the germs of the true and beautiful would not necessarily perish. The church was, in fact, the ark of safety, to which all that intellect had effected, all arts, all sciences, all learning, fled for refuge. And as was the ark among the dark waters, so was the church and the treasures it bore providentially preserved amid the storms without that darkened and howled around it. What heathenism was to the middle ages, in respect of the hidden treasures, the middle ages are or have been to us. Their arts, their sciences, in their real beauty, have been hidden; they have had, indeed, invisible but effective virtues – the darkness, the blindness, has been ours. We have been doing the work of our age, and are now discovering the good that was in theirs, and how much we are indebted to them for our own advancement. Let us imagine for a moment all that was then done obliterated, never to have been done, we should now have to do the work of the so-called "dark ages." It would be impossible to start up what we are without them. As we reflect, their works present themselves to us in every direction. Look where we will, we shall see that the church has been the school of mankind, in which all knowledge was preserved, and from which new sources of knowledge have arisen. She was the salt of the earth, to rescue it from rankness. The germ of life was in her in the winter of the times. When the wars of the Roses would have made our England a howling wilderness, there were places and persons unprofaned and respected by the murderer, the ravisher, the spoiler. When the nobles, the great barons throughout Europe, were little better than plunderers, and robbers even on the highway – Robin Hoods, without that outlaw's fabulous virtue and honest humanity – what was then doing within the walls of convents and monasteries? What were then the monks about? Embodying laws of peace, and, with a faith in the future improvement of mankind, cultivating sciences; planning and building up in idea new society, foreseeing its wants, and for its sake pursuing the useful arts; inventing, contriving, constructing, and decorating all, and preparing even the outward face of the world, by their wondrous structures, their practical application of their knowledge, more worthily to receive a people whom it was their hope, their faith, to bring out of a state of turbulence into peace. So far as the church was concerned in governments, it is astonishing how, when the body of the state was mutilated and dislocated, she kept the heart sound; so that where it might seem tyranny would have overwhelmed all, she made, and she preserved those wholesome laws to which we now owe our liberty and every social advancement. But it is in the light of the arts and sciences our present purpose directs us to view their doings. Let us take one fact – walk the streets of even our inferior provincial towns, see not only the comforts which, in their dwellings, surround the inhabitants, but the magnificence of the shops with their glass fronts. Whence are they? The first skill, the first invention, arose from the study of ecclesiastics, and was practised by cloistered monks. Monastic institutions grew out of the church; we speak of them as one. It would not be very difficult, in fact, to trace every useful invention, in its first principle, to the same source. But with a great portion of mankind it would not be pleasing so to trace their means of enjoyment. They have been habituated to think, or at least to feel, otherwise. History has been too often written by men either averse to religion itself, or inimical to churchmen. History, such as it has been put into the hands of children, for the rudiments of their education, has taught them to lisp falsehoods against the church, the priesthood. The "rapacity" of churchmen is an early lesson. Nor can we wonder if men so educated grow up with a prejudice, and, when they begin to, scramble themselves for what they can get in the world's active concerns, and know something of their own natures, are little inclined to cast the film from their eyes, and more fairly to unravel the mysteries of historical events. Were they in candour to make the attempt, they would see rapacity elsewhere; and that, in times more irreverent than the middle ages, the churchmen have not been the plunderers, but the plundered. The church has been the nurse, of art, of knowledge, of science. Let those who are accustomed to see light but a little way beyond them, and to think all a blank darkness out of the illumination of their own day, consider how they have often seen, in many a dark and stormy night, little lights shining through a great distance, and hailed them as notices of a warm and living virtue of domestic and industrial peace; and then let them see, if they will have it that the middle ages were so dark, the similitude; when the light in many a monastic cell shone brightly upon the depth of that night, and dotted the general gloom with as living a light; when monks, when churchmen, were making plans for the minsters that we now gaze at with so much astonishment – were transcribing, were illuminating works of sacred use, were registering their discoveries in art, their "secreti" – and at the same time, were not unobservant of the highest office to watch and keep alive in their own and others' hearts the sacred fire, which still we trust burns, and will burn more and more, sending forth its light into surrounding darkness. We would speak of a general character, as we from our hearts believe it to be the true one – not asserting that there were no instances, as examples from which hostile writers might draw plausible inferences to justify their prejudice. The fairest spots are overshadowed by the passing clouds of a general storm, though there may yet be lights of safety in many a dwelling. The history of the arts is the history of civilisation, and these arts were preserved or originated in monastic institutions. If the monks were legislators, were physicians, were architects, painters, sculptors, it was because all the learning of the age was centered in them. "Neither Frederic Barbarossa, John, king of Bavaria, nor Philip the Hardy of France, could read; nor could Theodoric or Charlemagne write. Of the barons whose names are affixed to Magna Charta, very few could write."