Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, March 1885

As vagabonds are frequently mentioned in this narrative, and Mokrievitch himself became one of them, it may be well to explain that the wanderers so designated are simply tramps unfurnished with passports. A double stream of these waifs is always on the move through Siberia – one towards the east, the other towards the west – the latter free, the former generally in bonds. Many of the involuntary settlers either do not take kindly to work, or find their lot intolerable, and so make off on the first opportunity, begging their way, and living on the charity of the peasants, who never refuse a destitute traveller a crust of bread and a night's lodging. Not a few of these wanderers sink under the hardships to which they are exposed, or freeze to death in the forests, and the survivors are nearly always arrested before they reach the frontier of European Russia; but they cause the police a world of trouble. Having no papers, they are able to give false names, and deny being fugitive transports – which they almost invariably do. There is then nothing for it but to write to whatever address a man may give – generally some remote village – and inquire if he is known there. Should the answer be in the negative, the fact is taken as proof of the paperless one's guilt, and he is sent back in chains to the interior of Siberia. As likely as not, however, it will be in the affirmative, for there prevails among these outcasts a strange yet regular trade in what the vagabonds call “nests.” For instance, Ivan Ivanovitch, being in want of money, sells to Peter Iliouschka, who has a few kopecs to spare, the name and address of some mujik of his acquaintance, who long ago left his native village for parts unknown – or, perhaps, his own name and address. This is Peter's nest, and when he falls into the hands of the police he tells them he is Paul Lubovitch, from, let us say, Teteriwino, in the government of Koursk. On this, a missive is sent to the starosta of Teteriwino, who replies, in due course, to the effect that the village did once possess a Paul Lubovitch, but whether the person in question be the same man he is unable to say. The next proceeding is to send the soi-disant Paul to Teteriwino for identification. This proceeding naturally results in the detection of the imposture, whereupon our friend Peter is condemned to a new term of exile, and sent back whence he came.

2

Admiration, Hope, and Love. Excursion, b. iv.

3

Admiration, Hope, and Love. Excursion, b. ix.

4

Not only the Ancient Mariner and the first part of Christabel, but also Kubla Khan were composed at Nether Stovey among the Quantock Hills in 1797. The second part of Christabel belongs to the year 1800, and was written at Keswick, although not published till 1816. Nothing of the same quality was ever produced by Coleridge, although he continued to write verses.

5

It is strange, however, to find Mr. Traill commending Coleridge's very last volume (1830) On the Constitution of Church and State, as “yielding a more characteristic flavor of the author's style” than the Aids to Reflection. Characteristic, no doubt, this volume is of the author's mode of thought; but in point of style, it and his Lay Sermon or Statesman's Manual in 1816 appear to us the most desultory and imperfect of all his writings.

6

By Dr. James Marsh, an American divine, whose preliminary essay is prefaced to the fifth English edition, and by Mr. Green in his Spiritual Philosophy (1865), founded on Coleridge's teaching.

7

Spiritual Philosophy, founded on the Teaching of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge. By Jos. Henry Green, F.R.S., D.C.L. 1865.

8

This was a favorite thought with Coleridge, as for example, in his Literary Remains (vol. i. p. 393-4): “The Trinity of Persons in the Unity of the Godhead would have been a necessary idea of my speculative reason. God must have had co-eternally an adequate idea of Himself in and through which He created all things. But this would only have been a speculative idea. Solely in consequence of our redemption does the Trinity become a doctrine, the belief of which as real is commanded by conscience.”

9

In his well-known translation of Wilhelm Meister.

10

Charles Hawley, Addresses before the Cayuga County Historical Society, 1883-84, p. 31.

11

The King Country; or, Explorations in New Zealand, by T. H. Kerry; see Nicholls in the Academy, Aug. 23, 1884, p. 113.

12

The League of the Iroquois, p. 12.

13

Hawley, l. c., p. 17.

14

See, however, Daniel Wilson, Pre-Aryan American Man, p. 47.

15

Unity of Nature, p. 393.

16

The Indians in the United States.– In an interesting paper read at a recent meeting of the Académie des Sciences, M. Paul Passy, who has recently returned from a visit to the North-Western States of America, endeavored to show that the generally accepted theory of the eventual disappearance of the “red man” is erroneous, and that though certain tribes have been exterminated in war and others decimated by disease and “firewater,” the contact of civilisation is not necessarily fatal to the Indians. M. Passy states that there are at present 376,000 Indians in the country, of whom 67,000 have become United States citizens. The Indians in the reserve territories are in part maintained by the Government, many of them, however, earning their living by shooting and fishing, and also by agriculture. The progress which they have made in farming is shown by the fact that they had under cultivation in 1882 more than 205,000 acres of land, as against 157,000 in India. Moreover, the total Indian population, exclusive of the Indians who are citizens of the United States and of those in Alaska, had increased during the same interval by more than 5,000. M. Passy says that the Federal Government, though not doing nearly so much as it should for the education of Indian children, devoted a sum of $365,515 to this purpose in 1882, and in the State of New York the six Iroquois “nations” settled there have excellent schools, which three-fourths of their children regularly attend. The five “nations” in Indian territory are also well cared for in this respect, having 11 schools for boarders, and 198 day schools attended by 6,183 children. In 1827, a Cherokee invented a syllabic alphabet of 85 letters, and this alphabet is now used for the publication of a newspaper in the Cherokee language. In addition to the tribes in cantonments, a great many children (about 8,000) are disseminated among the schools in the different States. There are also three normal and industrial schools in which, apart from elementary subjects, the boys are taught agriculture and different trades, and the girls sewing, cooking, and housekeeping. A journal in the Dakota tongue, called the Yapi Oaye, is published at Chicago for the benefit of the pupils in that region, and it is said that the Indians of the territories show themselves very anxious to learn, so much so that the Ometras of Nebraska have sold part of their territory so as to be able to keep up their schools. M. Passy adds that the Americans differ very much in their estimate of the sum required for providing all the young Indians with a sound education, some of them putting it as high as $10,000,000, while the lowest estimate is $3,000,000, or ten times as much as is now being spent. His conclusion is that if the Indians are destined to disappear, it will be because they become fused with the other citizens of the United States. —Times, Sept. 8, 1884.

17

See Hawley, l. c., p. 31.

18

Lectures on Science of Language, vol. i. p. 308.

19

See Giacomo Bove, Viaggio alla Patagonia ed alla Terra del Fuoco, in Nuova Antologia, Dec. 15, 1881.

20

Travels, Deutsch von Dieffenbach. Braunschweig, 1844, p. 229.

21

Darwin, Narrative of the Surveying Voyage of H.M.'s Ships “Adventure” and “Beagle,” 1839, vol. iii. p. 226.

22

D. Wilson, Pre-Aryan American Man, p. 4.

23

Rig-Veda-Sanhita, the Sacred Hymns of the Brahmans, translated by M. M., Vol. i. p. xxxix.

24

Tertullian, Apolog. 16: “rabula et mendaciorum loquacissimus.”

25

See Strabo, iv. 196; Plin. xvii. 12; Liv. xxxviii. 17.

26

The annual returns of the very necessary squirrel slaughter in the woods of Altyre, of Cawdor Castle, Beaufort Castle, and Darnaway Castle, each average one thousand squirrels. Thus these four estates might furnish four thousand tails per annum.

27

Lassalle was killed in a duel in 1864, at the age of thirty-nine.

28

In the play, Charles V. has a long conference with Franz, but ends by saying of him what Bismarck must have said to himself about Lassalle: “The man is great, but his is not the greatness which I seek, and which I can employ.”

“Der mann ist gross, doch ist es nicht die Grösse,

Welche ich suche und gebrauchen kann.”

29

Karl Sand, a student of Erlangen, assassinated Kotzebue at Manheim in 1819, and having ineffectually tried to commit suicide, was executed in the following year. In striking Kotzebue, he meant, as he said, “to exterminate the apologist of despotism.”

30

“Personne n'a de l'esprit, comme tout le monde.” “On peut avoir plus d'esprit qu'un autre, mais non plus d'esprit que tous les autres.”

31

Prince Bismarck does not care much about the theatre, and it may be mentioned that when he visited Paris in 1867, Offenbach's “Grande Duchesse,” which, as a skit upon militaryism, made so many laugh, excited in him only anger. He was especially indignant at the song of “Here is the Sabre of my Sire.” “You can't expect a pair of Jews (Offenbach and Ludovic Halévy) to feel any reverence for military traditions,” he said; “but now 'Le Sabre de mon Père' will be associated with ludicrous ideas in the minds of Frenchmen, and old generals will be ashamed to give their swords to their sons on account of this odious jingle.” At this same visit to Paris, however, Bismarck saw a performance of Sardou's “Nos bons Villageois” at the Gymnase, and he laughed loudly at the scene in which a Colonel, who is Mayor of his village, makes all the municipal Councillors sign a document acknowledging that they are “a troop of donkeys.”

32

Two of Bismarck's heroes in history are Wallenstein and William the Silent. He once said of Marshal von Moltke: “Lucky man, he need only make his one speech a year in the Reichstag and then the echoes of cannon seem to be speaking for him!” Marshal von Moltke, however, speaks as well as he writes. His Letters to his late wife, while he was travelling in Turkey and the Danubian Provinces, are faultless in their composition, instructive, amusing, and models of style. All the qualities which distinguish them are to be found in the Marshal's speeches, which are clear, short, and captivate the attention, not less by what they contain than by the tuneful voice in which they are uttered.

33

Some years ago, when a young Prussian officer of noble family was turned out of the army for declining a challenge on conscientious grounds, an English clergyman sent Prince Bismarck a copy of the Diary of Mr. Adams, who was American Minister of the Court of St. James's at the beginning of this century. Mr. Adams speaks with admiration of the efforts which were being made to put down duelling in England by force of public opinion. Prince Bismarck, in courteously acknowledging the book, wrote: “There is much good sense in England, but you have not done away with duelling, as you suppose. There is more of it among your schoolboys, who fight with fists, than among those of any other country; and this may prevent the necessity for much fighting in after-life. English boys take rank at school according to their pluck, and hold that rank afterwards.”

34

M. Teste had been one of Louis Philippe's Ministers. Getting into disgrace through financial jobberies, which subjected him to criminal proceedings, he had to resign his portfolio and retire altogether from public life. To revenge himself on Louis Philippe's family (though no member of it had had any share in his ruin) he privately drew up for Napoleon III. the report that was required to justify the seizure of the Orleans property. No respectable lawyer could be found to do this work.

35

After a dinner at Count Lehndorff's the conversation once fell upon religious topics, and Bismarck exclaimed: “I cannot understand how without faith in a revealed religion we can believe in God; nor do I see how, without faith in a God, Dispenser of all good and Supreme Judge, a man can do his duty. If I were not a Christian, I should not remain at my post. It can yield me nothing more in the way of honors; the exercise of power is no longer a pleasure but a worry, since I can never carry out the simplest scheme without struggles, trying to a man of my age and weak health. If I were ambitious of popularity, I could get it by retiring. All men would speak well of me if I lived in retirement. I should then perhaps have more real power than I have now. I should certainly have more power to help my friends. But it is because I believe in a Divine dispensation which has marked out Germany for great destinies that I remain at my post. I have a duty to perform and must continue to do it so long as I am permitted. If I am stricken down and rendered incapable for work, then I shall know that my time of rest has come; but not till then.”

36

Bismarck has never had much veneration either for diplomatists or diplomacy. Here is an extract of a letter which he wrote to his wife in 1851 when he was at Frankfort: “In the art of saying nothing and in a great many words, I am making rapid progress. I write many pages of letters which read like leading articles, and if Manteuffel, after perusing them, can tell what they are about, he certainly knows more than I. Every one of us pretends to believe that his colleagues are full of ideas and plans; and yet all the time the whole body of us knows nothing, and each is aware that the others know nothing. No man, not even the most malicious sceptic of a democrat, can believe what charlatanism and big pretence is all this diplomacy.”

It may be remarked, in view of Prince Bismarck's opinions on duelling, that for an affront like that which he offered to the young attaché, a French Admiral, the Bailli de Suffren, was killed by a lieutenant. The affront was offered on the high seas; the subaltern bore it at the time without a murmur, but on returning to France he resigned and sent the admiral a challenge, saying: “You are no longer my superior now. We are both gentlemen and you owe me a reparation.” In Germany this would have been impossible, for the attaché must have belonged either to the Landwehr or the Landsturm, so that the Chancellor as a general of the Landwehr remained always his superior. Thus in military countries one of the chief excuses for duelling – namely, that it enables a man to punish the insolence of office – cannot be urged.

37

A fact that speaks well for Prince Bismarck is that ladies are not afraid of him. Napoleon I. made women cower; they knew that his Corsican spitefulness would disdain no means of retaliation for a slight or an injury. But ladies have often been maliciously epigrammatical, or downright saucy to the Chancellor, without having anything worse to fear from him than scowls and grumbles.

38

The process of obtaining an engagement is the same for a lady as a gentleman, i. e. a visit to an agent's office, &c., &c. Here is an advertisement which evidently offers a rare chance: —

“Wanted, ladies of attractive appearance, with good singing voices. Can be received for long pantomime season. Dresses found. Salaried engagement (an exceptionable opportunity for clever amateurs desirous of adopting the profession).”