Bogle Corbet: or The Emigrants 9781474449489

Table of contents :
The Edinburgh Edition of the Works of John Galt
CONTENTS
Preface to The Works of John Galt
Acknowledgements
Chronology of John Galt
Introduction
Bogle Corbet; or, The Emigrants. Part 1
Bogle Corbet; or, The Emigrants. Part 2
Emendations
End-of-line Hyphens
Appendices
Explanatory Notes
Glossary

Citation preview

Bogle Corbet

The Edinburgh Edition of the Works of John Galt General Editor: Angela Esterhammer

The Edinburgh Edition of the Works of John Galt General Editor: Angela Esterhammer (University of Toronto) Editorial Board: Gerard Carruthers (University of Glasgow) Ian Duncan (University of California, Berkeley) Penny Fielding (University of Edinburgh) Suzanne Gilbert (University of Stirling) Regina Hewitt (University of South Florida) Robert P. Irvine (University of Edinburgh) Alison Lumsden (University of Aberdeen) Katie Trumpener (Yale University) Published so far: Annals of the Parish, edited by Robert P. Irvine Three Short Novels, edited by Angela Esterhammer The Entail, edited by Mark Schoenfield and Clare A. Simmons The Ayrshire Legatees; The Steam-Boat; The Gathering of the West, edited by Mark Parker Lawrie Todd, edited by Regina Hewitt Bogle Corbet, edited by Katie Trumpener In preparation: Sir Andrew Wylie, of that Ilk, edited by Sharon Alker The Provost, edited by Caroline McCracken-Flesher Scottish Tales, edited by Anthony Jarrells Transatlantic Tales, edited by Angela Esterhammer International Tales, edited by Angela Esterhammer The Autobiography and The Literary Life, edited by Gerard McKeever The Life of Lord Byron, edited by Robert Morrison The Member and The Radical, edited by Robert P. Irvine The Spaewife, edited by Zachary Garber

JOHN GALT

Bogle Corbet: or The Emigrants Edited by Katie Trumpener

edinburgh university press 2023

Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © editorial matter and organisation, Katie Trumpener, 2023 © the text, Edinburgh University Press, 2023 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in Arno Pro at the University of Toronto and printed and bound in Great Britain A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library 978 1 4744 4946 5 (hardback) 978 1 4744 4948 9 (PDF) 978 1 4744 4949 6 (EPUB) The right of Katie Trumpener to be identified as author of the editorial matter has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

CONTENTS Preface to The Works of John Galt . . . . . . vii Acknowledgements. . . . . . . . . . ix Chronology of John Galt. . . . . . . . xi Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii Origins. . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii Historical Contexts .. . . . . . . . xxv Literary Contexts . . . . . . . . . xxxvii Reception . . . . . . . . . . . . xlvi Bogle Corbet; or, The Emigrants . . . . . .

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Emendations . . . . . . . . . . . . End-of-line Hyphens . . . . . . . . . Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . 1: Excerpts from Reviews and Reception . 2: Maps of Significant Locations . . . . Explanatory Notes. . . . . . . . . . Glossary. . . . . . . . . . . . .

460 461 463 . 463 . 477 483 513

PREFACE TO THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF THE WORKS OF JOHN GALT John Galt was among the most popular and prolific Scottish writers of the nineteenth century. He wrote in a panoply of forms and genres about a great variety of topics and settings, drawing on his experiences of living, working, and travelling in Scotland and England, in Europe and the Mediterranean, and in North America. Yet only a fraction of his many works have been reprinted since their original publication. In 1841–43 Galt’s most important publisher, Blackwood, reprinted seven of his novels in volumes 1, 2, 4, and 6 of the Blackwood’s Standard Novels series. In 1895, the Blackwood firm republished these novels, with one change to the selection, as the eight-volume Works of John Galt; this collection was reissued in 1936, again with one additional novel. Modern annotated editions of some individual works have appeared since then. However, the Edinburgh Edition of the Works of John Galt presents for the first time a much fuller range of Galt’s fiction in authoritative texts, together with materials that add to an appreciation of his historical surroundings and his cultural heritage. Each volume includes an introduction that places Galt’s work in the context of history, genre, and the print culture of the period; annotations that explain specialised vocabulary as well as historical, geographical, literary, cultural, and philosophical allusions; and other features such as a glossary of Scots words and expressions, maps, and excerpts that illuminate Galt’s sources and his contemporary reception. Galt wrote and published his work quickly, sending portions of manuscript to the printer to be set in type as soon as he finished them; he and his publisher would frequently correct proofs of part of a text while he continued writing the remainder. Although he was usually busy with several projects at once, his correspondence documents his involvement in all stages of the publication process and shows that he undertook proof-corrections himself, except in cases where he developed especially close working relationships with a publisher or fellow writer and allowed that person editorial control. However, with few exceptions, no manuscripts or proofs of Galt’s published fiction have survived. For many of his works, only a single edition appeared during

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his lifetime. Sometimes there were one or more ­further editions, lightly revised and corrected; in other cases, the text was originally published in a periodical and then revised for publication in book form. As a general editorial principle, subject to adaptation based on research by the editors and the particular publishing history of each text, the present edition adopts as the copy-text the latest version in which Galt is known to have had a hand. In the case of texts first published in periodicals and later revised by Galt to appear as a book, the book publication is preferred as the copy-text. Each volume of the present edition includes the editor’s account of the composition and publication history of Galt’s text, with reference to extant versions in the form of periodical publications, multiple book editions, and manuscript materials. All editorial emendations to the copy-text are recorded in a list of emendations at the end of the volume. The Edinburgh Edition of the Works of John Galt presents Galt’s fiction accurately as it appeared during his lifetime, reflecting his intentions to the extent that they can be ascertained. Galt’s work was thoroughly interwoven with the publishing practices and reading habits of his age. He wrote for currently popular publication venues such as monthly magazines and literary annuals; he acquiesced to the expected format of the three-volume novel, but also attempted to popularise alternative forms such as single-volume ­novels and shorter fiction. His works therefore present a r­ evealing ­pic­ture of the literary marketplace during the second and third decades of the nineteenth century. The Edinburgh Edition of the Works of John Galt highlights these insights through the editors’ contextualising notes on early-nineteenth-century print culture and through the presentation of Galt’s texts on the page. With respect to page layout, font, punctuation, and many other details, this edition seeks to replicate the look of Galt’s original editions while providing an enjoyable reading experience for modern readers. The editors hope that the results will make Galt’s clever, insightful, multifaceted, often innovative fiction accessible to a wide range of readers and researchers, and reaffirm Galt’s importance within literary history.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This edition is dedicated to my son Alexander Maxwell, who lent the project invaluable material, technical, cartographic, and moral support. Its editorial notes draw on the expert knowledge of my colleagues Tim Barringer, Leslie Brisman, and Ruth Yeazell; my brother John Trumpener; Yale Law Librarian Evelyn Ma; and the incomparable detective work of Carla Baricz, Yale Librarian for English and Comparative Literature. Yale librarian Ro Ross showed expertise and solidarity at the microfilm reader. My fellow Galt editors shared their own deep knowledge and a spirit of camaraderie. Robert Irvine and Regina Hewitt offered invaluable leads and editorial suggestions. Gerard McKeever, Clare Simmons, and Mark Parker helped untangle apparently intractable Galtian knots. We all owe great thanks to Angela Esterhammer, our wise, calm, visionary General Editor and to her indefatigable editorial team at the University of Toronto. Delaney Anderson, in particular, offered invaluable help in reconstructing Galt’s reception history, as did Jovana Pajović with the preparation of the typeset text. Michael Borsk, Michele Hutyra, Astrid Lacroix-Desanti, Elaine Lee, Rion Levy, Guy Mizrahi, Celine Sleiman, and Adele Wechsler provided conscientious and resourceful assistance with many stages of research and editing. Lisa Sherlock and Douglas Fox of the Victoria University Library in Toronto kindly helped prepare a scan of the original title page of Bogle Corbet for use in this volume. Thank you to Sarah McCabe at the Ontario Historical Society and to Douglas Tripp at the Globe and Mail for permission to reprint (in the Appendices) pieces by Carl Klinck and Zena Cherry, respectively. A big thank you to my co-curators Kathryn James and Melina Moe and to Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book Library for sponsoring our 2018 exhibition, Text and Textile, from which I learned much about the intertwined histories of mechanisation, textile manufacture, and political radicalism. My longest thanks go to my teacher, the late David Jackel, who first illuminated for me the connection between British regionalism and Canadian experience, to my siblings, Betsy and John, as to the many

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friends—especially Deidre Lynch, Danielle Baxter, Katherine Orrell, Christine Collinson, Alison Keith, David Schulze, Dennis Theobald, James Nyce, Laura Rigal, Sandra Macpherson, Loren Kruger, Katerina Clark, Alison MacKeen, and Gretchen Brundin—who have helped me, over the years, understand what Canada was. Katie Trumpener Yale University

CHRONOLOGY OF JOHN GALT 1779 John Galt is born (2 May) at Irvine, Scotland, as the oldest child of John Galt (1750–1817), a ship’s captain involved in West Indian trade, and Jean Thomson (1746–1826). 1787–88 Attends the Old Grammar School in Irvine. 1789 Father becomes a ship-owner and moves the family to Greenock. Attends school in the Royal Close. 1795–1804 Clerk in Greenock Customs House, then in the mercantile office of James Miller & Co. 1797 Founds a literary and debating society with two former schoolfellows, William Spence and James Park. 1798 Death of brother James at Montego Bay (17 July). 1803 Publishes a memoir of Greenock poet John Wilson in John Leyden’s Scotish Descriptive Poems. Extracts from “Battle of Largs, a Gothic Poem” appear in the Scots Magazine (April 1803 and January 1804). 1804 Invites James Hogg to a public dinner in Greenock and meets him there. Moves to London (May). Publishes The Battle of Largs in book form, then suppresses it. 1805 “Essay on Commercial Policy” in the Philosophical Magazine, edited by Alexander Tilloch (November). Enters into business with Hugh McLachlan, factor and broker.

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1807 “Statistical Account of Upper Canada” in the Philosophical Magazine (October). 1808 Bankruptcy of the McLachlan-Galt business (April). Enters into business with brother Tom, who soon departs for Honduras. 1809 Admitted to Lincoln’s Inn to study law (18 May), but after four months embarks on travels in the Mediterranean and Near East, at times in the company of Lord Byron. Visits Gibraltar, Sardinia, Malta, Sicily, Albania, Greece, and Turkey; journeys overland between Constantinople and Vidin for the sake of a mercantile scheme that proves unsuccessful. 1811 Returns to London (October); abandons the study of law. 1812 Voyages and Travels in the Years 1809, 1810, 1811; The Tragedies of Maddalen, Agamemnon, Lady Macbeth, Antonia, and Clytemnestra; The Life and Administration of Cardinal Wolsey, about which Galt receives a complimentary letter from Walter Scott. Briefly edits Redhead Yorke’s Weekly Political Review. Travels to Gibraltar to open a branch office for Kirkman Finlay & Co. ( June), but the business falls through. 1813 Returns to London to seek medical treatment. Marries E ­ lizabeth Tilloch (20 April). Death of brother Tom in Honduras (2 August). L ­ etters from the Levant; contributions to Lives of the Admirals. Last encounters with Byron. 1814 “On the Art of Rising in the World” and “On the Principles of the Fine Arts” in the New Monthly Magazine. Edits and contributes dramas to The New British Theatre (4 vols, 1814–15). Visits France, Belgium, and Holland on a potential business venture (May). Birth of son John (13 August). 1815 The Majolo (vol. 1). Birth of son Thomas (12 August). Becomes Secretary of the Royal Caledonian Asylum, a children’s charity established by the Highland Society in London. Death of friend William Spence. 1816 The Life and Studies of Benjamin West (vol. 1); The Majolo (2 vols).

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1817 Death of father (6 August). Birth of son Alexander (6 September). Death of friend James Park. Begins writing for Richard Phillips’ Monthly Magazine. 1818 The Appeal: A Tragedy, in Three Acts performed at Edinburgh with prologue by J. G. Lockhart, epilogue by Walter Scott. Moves to Finnart near Greenock to work for Reid, Irving & Co., but the venture is aborted. 1819 “The Late Mr. William Spence” in the Monthly Magazine (May). Returns to London to lobby Parliament as agent for the Edinburgh & Glasgow Union Canal Company. Begins writing school textbooks under pseudonyms for publishers Phillips and Souter, as well as children’s books including The History of Gog and Magog. Publishes occasional articles in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. 1820 Glenfell; Andrew of Padua, the Improvisatore; Life, Studies, and Works of Benjamin West (2 vols); The Wandering Jew; All the Voyages round the World; A Tour of Europe; A Tour of Asia; The Earthquake; “The Atheniad, or The Rape of the Parthenon: An Epic Poem” in the Monthly Magazine (February); “The Ayrshire Legatees” in instalments in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine ( June 1820–February 1821). The Union Canal bill is successfully passed by Parliament. Appointed agent for claimants in Upper Canada (now Ontario) seeking compensation from the British government for losses sustained in the War of 1812. 1821 Annals of the Parish; Pictures, Historical and Biographical; The Ayrshire Legatees (in book form); “The Steam-Boat” in instalments in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (February–December). Resides in Edinburgh during the latter part of the year while writing for Blackwood. 1822 Sir Andrew Wylie, of that Ilk; The Provost; The Steam-Boat (in book form); “The Gathering of the West” in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (September); The Entail. Visits Scotland during the summer; in Edinburgh during the visit of George IV (August), then in Greenock; returns to London in December. 1823 Ringan Gilhaize; The Spaewife. Moves his family from London to Musselburgh near Edinburgh.

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1824 The Bachelor’s Wife; Rothelan. Forms the Canada Company to broker the sale of Crown lands and promote settlement in Upper Canada; appointed as its Secretary. 1825 Travels to York (now Toronto) via New York as one of five commissioners sent to Upper Canada on a fact-finding mission ( January to June). Presented with the Freedom of the Burgh of Irvine. Death of father-in-law Alexander Tilloch. Travels to Scotland after his mother suffers a stroke (December). 1826 The Omen; The Last of the Lairds; “Bandana on Colonial Undertakings” and “Bandana on Emigration” in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (August– September). Death of mother (18 July). Appointed Superintendent of the Canada Company, which is granted a royal charter (19 August). Embarks for New York (October); reaches York in Upper Canada (12 December). Studies the operations of land companies in upper New York State. 1827 Visits Quebec for a month (February). Founds Guelph (23 April) and Goderich in Upper Canada. Visits the settlement of Galt (now part of Cambridge, Ontario) which William Dickson named in his honour. 1828 Sustains a lasting injury from a severe fall. His wife and sons join him in Canada; sons attend school in Lower Canada. 1829 Recalled from management of the Canada Company (2 January). Arrives in Liverpool (20 May) and proceeds to London. Committed to King’s Bench Prison for debt (15 July – 10 November). Recurring spells of illness begin. “My Landlady and Her Lodgers” in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (August). 1830 Lawrie Todd; Southennan; The Life of Lord Byron. Wife and sons return from Canada ( June). Briefly edits The Courier, a London evening newspaper. Begins contributing regularly to Fraser’s Magazine, the New Monthly Magazine, and literary annuals. 1831 Bogle Corbet; Lives of the Players; short stories (including “The Fatal Whisper,” “The Unguarded Hour,” and “The Book of Life”) in The Club-book, edited by

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Andrew Picken. Forms and becomes Secretary of the British American Land Company for settlement of the Eastern Townships in Lower Canada. 1832 Stanley Buxton; The Member; The Radical; “Our Borough” in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (October). Begins writing for Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine (e.g., “The Howdie,” September–October 1832). Suffers a stroke (October); illness becomes more disabling. 1833 Eben Erskine; Poems; The Stolen Child; The Ouranologos, a joint venture with painter John Martin; Stories of the Study (containing “The Dean of Guild,” “The Jaunt,” and “The Seamstress,” among others); The Autobiography of John Galt. Resigns from the British American Land Company due to illness. Sons John and Thomas emigrate to Canada. 1834 The Literary Life, and Miscellanies, of John Galt; “The Mem, or Schoolmistress” in Fraser’s Magazine (August). Son Alexander leaves for Canada to work for the British American Land Company. Moves to Greenock and settles with his wife at the home of his sister, Agnes Macfie. Death of William Blackwood. 1835 Efforts of an Invalid (poetry). Continues to write and publish short fiction, chiefly in Fraser’s Magazine and Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine (e.g., “Tribulations of the Rev. Cowal Kilmun,” November 1835–January 1836). 1836 “A Rich Man” in Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine ( June–August). 1838–39 Edits Diary Illustrative of the Times of George the Fourth. 1839 Dies at Greenock (11 April). The Demon of Destiny and Other Poems published posthumously. Elizabeth Tilloch Galt joins her sons in Canada.

INTRODUCTION [T]he subject of Colonization … has, in upwards of fiveand-twenty years, occasioned me to more reflection than any of my literary productions; indeed, than all my other works put together … . If we look at home, all is in revolutionary fermentation, and it is only by casting our eyes to the colonies—those safety-valves, to which the existing frame of society may owe its preservation—that the ebullition, the progress of knowledge, may be continued with safety. —John Galt, “Colonization”1

Origins Over the course of 1827, John Galt wrote regularly from Upper Canada to his publisher William Blackwood in Edinburgh.2 Well known for his many novels of Scottish life, Galt was also the founder and inaugural superintendent of the new Canada Company. This joint-stock venture had garnered a million pounds in capital investment and a Crown charter to clear and settle the Huron Tract, a million acres of land between Lake Ontario and Lake Huron that, for millennia, had been home to indigenous peoples including the Wendat (Huron). Galt arrived in Upper Canada in 1826. By the end of 1827, he had already founded two towns in the Huron Tract: Guelph, “reported to be situated in one of the finest tracts of land probably in the whole American continent”;3 and Goderich, the “remotest British settlement on the 1

“Colonization,” in The Literary Life, and Miscellanies, of John Galt, 3 vols (Edinburgh: Blackwood and London: Cadell, 1834), II, pp. 36–60; here, pp. 36, 46. 2 On Galt’s relationship to Blackwood, see Robert Morrison, “John Galt’s Angular Magazinity,” in John Galt: Observations and Conjectures on Literature, History, and Society, ed. Regina Hewitt (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2012), pp. 257–80. 3 Galt, “Guelph in Upper Canada,” Fraser’s Magazine 2.10 (November 1830), pp. 456–7: here, p. 457.

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continent of America, out[side] of the Hudson Bay territories.”4 Galt and his associates, moreover, had surveyed the Tract, cleared forest, built roads, established schools, and begun welcoming hundreds of British emigrants, having created the infrastructure to support them— and boost the value of Huron Tract land. As he reported to Blackwood on 20 November 1827, the work of settlement was proceeding apace—and in the process inspiring new literary plans. Hence, after a hiatus of several years, Galt looked forward to resuming work as a writer: It is now determined that I am … to remain as sole superintendent with a salary of sufficient respectability, inferior only to that of the Governor. With the country I am much pleased. It opens out far finer than I had expected and my avocations suit my disposition. But although I have as yet had no time for tales, still I look forward to comparative leisure when I shall have org­anized the routine of my business and perhaps then I may do something. What would you think of a series to be called “the Settlers or the Tales of Guelph”? The idea has come often across my mind, and the materials are both novel and abundant.5 From 1807 onward, Galt had repeatedly published articles on the political situation in Upper Canada and the desirability of settling there.6 Now, in the midst of overseeing actual settlement, Galt envisioned the colony’s novelistic possibilities, floating the “Tales of Guelph” idea not only to Blackwood but to two further Scottish friends, William (Tiger) Dunlop and John MacTaggart, both working alongside him in Upper Canada (and eventually to publish their own non-fictional 4

Galt, “The British North American Provinces,” Fraser’s Magazine 5.25 (February 1832), pp. 77–84; here, p. 83. 5 Galt, letter to William Blackwood, 20 November 1827, in Jessie Kennedy Herreshoff, “Letters of John Galt: The Canadian Years,” PhD Diss., Wayne State University, 1988, p. 282. 6 As Kevin Halliwell has pointed out, Galt’s publications about Upper Canada span twenty-eight years and a wide range of genres including statistical surveys, articles, editorials, and short stories (“John Galt and the Paratext: The Discourse of Authentication in North American Emigration Literature,” https://studylib.net/doc/7428009/3-intratextual-and-intertextual-relations).

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accounts of settler life there).7 Galt’s investment in Canada, Jennifer Scott has argued, was simultaneously financial, political, and literary. Despite mixed success in the mercantile world and considerable success in the literary world, Galt identified himself as a businessman more than an author. The way he set up the Canada Company nonetheless offered both employment and literary opportunities for himself as for fellow authors like Dunlop.8 The Canada Company was a for-profit business venture. Yet in the colonial context of Upper Canada, the British Crown conferred quasi-official powers upon it. Galt’s letter to Blackwood thus seems to anticipate a financially secure, active, high-status future in Upper Canada. And although Galt, paid a salary second only to that of the colony’s governor, might no longer need to write for a living, the unusual situation in which he found himself continuously generated interesting new things to write about. Within a year, however, Galt found himself back in London, uncere-​ moniously fired from the Canada Company, having alienated both the Company’s London investors and the conservative, oligarchical “Family Compact,” the Anglican landowners and church and government officials who governed 1820s Upper Canada. The former feared, among other things, that Galt’s spending on infrastructure would compromise their own profits. (In fact, Ian McGhee points out, Galt had “established a business model that kept the Canada Company profitable for over a century.”9) The latter were angered, among other things, by Galt’s relative tolerance for the colony’s radical politicians, as by his insistence on treating the Huron Tract’s fledgling Presbyterian and Catholic churches on an equal footing with its Anglican churches. 7

A letter MacTaggart wrote to Dunlop asks, “How is our dear Galt? ... Has he finished his novel of ‘The Settler?’ That character, the Indian Witch, is true poetry, Doctor” (Three Years in Canada: An Account of the Actual State of the Country in 1826–7–8, 2 vols [London: Colburn, 1829], I, p. 190). 8 Jennifer Scott, “Reciprocal Investments: John Galt, the Periodical Press, and the Business of North American Emigration,” Victorian Periodicals Review 46.3 (2013), pp. 368–82. 9 Ian McGhee, “How John Galt Wrote North America,” in The International Companion to John Galt, ed. Gerard Carruthers and Colin Kidd (Glasgow: Scottish Literature International, 2017), pp. 57–69; here, p. 58. Yet for Galt’s administrative shortcomings, see also Clarence G. Karr, “The Two Sides of John Galt,” in Historical Essays on Upper Canada, ed. J. K. Johnson (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1975), pp. 278–85.

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On 20 May 1829, Galt landed back in England. Two weeks later, in a letter to William Blackwood, Scottish writer John Gibson Lockhart mentioned meeting Galt in London: “Here is Galt, large as life and as pompous as ever, full of title-pages and unwritten books, the ‘Tyger’, the ‘Squaws’, and, I am sorry to add, his own personal troubles, which are neither few nor trivial.”10 On 15 July, indeed, Galt suffered the further indignity of imprisonment for debt, from which he was forced to write his way back to solvency. Yet this period of professional defeat and financial instability occasioned a varied corpus. Blackwood and friends among Galt’s old coterie at Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine offered him financial assistance by publishing his many first-hand essays on Canadian subjects. When they could absorb no more, he wrote a life of Byron, and assembled a book of biographical sketches about major British actors. Galt also wrote three novels—contracted not with Blackwood, but with London publishers Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, who offered more ready money (advances of £300). One novel (Southennan, 1830) was a historical romance about Mary, Queen of Scots. The other two drew on his years in North America. Lawrie Todd, or The Settlers in the Woods (1830) was based partly on the memoir of a real-life radical Scottish artisan who fled sedition charges to settle in upstate New York. Galt’s novel told the largely comic story of a fictional Lowland nail-maker who, fleeing a history of entanglement with radicalism, emigrates to the fledgling United States, where he founds a business, a family, and a town, thriving economically before homesickness drives him back to Britain. Lawrie Todd was very well received, and reprinted rapidly and repeatedly (reaching fifteen editions by 1847).11 Given Lawrie Todd’s instant popularity, Coburn and Bentley urged Galt to write a companion novel, to be likewise conceived, they insisted, in a three-volume format (rather than the much more compact onenovel regional novel-of-place Galt had pioneered in the 1820s).12 Galt’s 10

John Gibson Lockhart, letter to William Blackwood, 5 June 1829, cited in Keith Costain, “Sticks and the Bundle: Lawrie Todd and Bogle Corbet: Galt’s Portraits of Two Nations,” British Journal of Canadian Studies 7.1 (1992), pp. 26–38; here, p. 26. 11 On Lawrie Todd’s reception, see Regina Hewitt, “Introduction,” in Hewitt, ed., Lawrie Todd (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023), esp. pp. xxxvi–xliii. 12 On Galt’s distinctive conception of the compact novel, see Josephine McDonagh, Literature in a Time of Migration: British Fiction and the Movement

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8 March 1830 Memorandum of Agreement with Colburn and Bentley, indeed, specifies that “Alek Pirn, or The Emigrant, a companion to Lawrie Todd” was “to consist of at least three volumes,” and each volume to consist of at least 320 pages. Compared to their prior publication agreement for Lawrie Todd, “the number of pages [was] a new stipulation, possibly inserted because Lawrie Todd only reached the required length by the addition of appendices.” The novel Galt wrote “did deliver what was asked but only by inserting a fourteen page short story towards the end of Volume II … and by ending the third volume with a factual statistical account of eight districts of Ontario.”13 A year later, Colburn and Bentley duly published the finished triple-decker under its final title, Bogle Corbet, or The Emigrants. Yet as Galt complained sardonically in his Literary Life, “it is another proof, if one were wanting, that booksellers step from their line when they give orders, like to an upholsterer for a piece of furniture.” For “to write three volumes at the request of another, in a satisfactory manner, and without an occasional sense of drudgery, is beyond my power.”14 Galt clearly felt forced to write a considerably longer Bogle Corbet than was necessary. And the novel itself, according to Angela Esterhammer and Jennifer Scott, makes visible its own adverse circumstances of composition. Bogle Corbet, Esterhammer points out, concludes as a meta-narrative —with Bogle Corbet finishing his manuscript in Upper Canada so that it can be sent on to Britain—as with a discussion, between Corbet and his second wife Urseline, of what kind of narrative might be more compelling than the (long) novel we are about to finish.15 Scott emphasises the economic pressures underscoring Corbet’s narrative. Like Galt himself, she argues, Corbet understands writing as a source of income rather than the result of literary inspiration. Corbet has emigrated to bolster the fortunes of his family. Yet far from finding new prosperity, “the only success possible post-emigration is to enter the literary marketplace.”16 of People, 1815–1876 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 75–82. 13 John [Ian] McGhee, “New Lands; Old Ways: John Galt’s North American Corpus,” MPhil Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2015, pp. 97–8. 14 Galt, Literary Life, I, pp. 311–12. 15 Angela Esterhammer, “John Galt’s Fictional and Performative Worlds,” in The Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Romanticism, ed. Murray Pittock (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), pp. 166–77. 16 Jennifer Scott, “The Business of Writing Home: Authorship and the

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As Galt himself concludes in his Literary Life, Bogle Corbet was “the most peculiar” of all his literary efforts, given its “attempt to embody facts and observations collected and made on actual occurrences.”17 Although he had long experimented with various forms of historical fiction, Galt clearly saw Bogle Corbet as a new, hybrid form of documentary reportage. To an unprecedented degree, the Literary Life explains, the novel took on an ambitious agenda of social and historical explanation: it was designed to demonstrate the causes for Britain’s unprecedented wave of emigration by a “genteeler class of persons” than previous emigrants; these causes included “the natural effects” of “introducing the cotton manufactures into Scotland” and the commercial inflation caused by the long war with France, “both in its republican and imperial stages.”18 At moments, nonetheless, Bogle Corbet overlaps quite literally with Lawrie Todd. Corbet resolves to emigrate to North America after he meets “one Mr. Lawrie Todd” who “has since published some account of himself, and of his adventures and experience as a settler in the woods” (241).19 Both novels not only focus on Scottish settlers in North America but also track what happens to former political radicals in emigration. Lawrie Todd’s plot arc, Jennifer Scott has argued, is redemptive: a once-suspected radical becomes explicitly loyal to the crown, even as he is successfully integrated into both the new- and the old-world community.20 In Bogle Corbet, in contrast, the radical weavers whom Corbet once, in Glasgow, joined in their Jacobin meetings remain politically unrepentant even as Corbet himself becomes more conservative. Once they have settled together in Upper Canada, the weavers become increasingly critical of his self-interested paternalism, indeed his assumption, given his greater gentility and business experience, that he must naturally become their political leader. This was neither the first nor last time Galt conceived novels in relation to one another. Annals of the Parish (1821) and The Provost (1822) offer contrasting perspectives on the histories of two Lowland towns through the political turbulence and economic transformations Transatlantic Economies of John Galt’s Literary Circle, 1807–1840,” PhD Diss., Simon Fraser University, 2013, p. 138. 17 Galt, Literary Life, I, pp. 312–13. 18 Ibid., I, p. 312. 19 When no further specification is given, numbers in parentheses refer to pages in the present volume. 20 Scott, “Business of Writing Home,” pp. 122–3.

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of the late eighteenth century. While Annals is narrated by a humane, conscientious, sentimental minister, The Provost is recounted by a self-serving, self-satisfied, small-town politician, happy to sacrifice his constituents’ economic and political rights (and setting in motion sweeping historical changes) to increase his own power and fortune. A year after Bogle Corbet, Galt’s two 1832 parliamentary novels, The Member (narrated from the vantage point of a Scottish Tory member of parliament, a nabob grown rich in India) and The Radical (narrated by a Radical member of parliament) approached political reform from divergent angles. Nonetheless, the particular contrast between Lawrie Todd and Bogle Corbet remained a source of fascination for the novels’ early readers and reviewers. Later scholars, too, saw the novels as comparing the self-understanding and immigrant experience of the early American republic with that of Upper Canada, as a newly-settled British colony.21 Yet Bogle Corbet’s singularities are equally instructive. The overview map of Bogle Corbet’s travels (Appendix 2) underscores how continent-spanning the novel is—to an extent quite unprecedented in Galt’s earlier fiction, or even his travel writing. Born on Jamaica’s Plantagenet sugar plantation into a Scottish planter’s family, Corbet is orphaned in early childhood and brought “back” to the Scottish Lowlands to be raised by relatives. When Corbet is a young adult (presumably sometime in 1789, after the storming of the Bastille in Paris), his guardian moves him to nearby Glasgow, putting him to work as a weaver to learn the textile business from the bottom. But when (in the heady aftermath of the French Revolution) Corbet is discovered attending the secret Jacobin meetings held by his fellow weavers, his guardian removes him. Eventually Corbet is sent to London to become a businessman. After becoming the protegé of an AngloIndian nabob, he marries the nabob’s ward—who dies tragically, during pregnancy or childbirth. Bereaved, and anxious about his firm’s West Indian investments, Corbet revisits and tours Jamaica at the end of volume 1. In an 1830 letter to fellow Scottish writer D. M. Moir, Galt describes 21

See Charles E. Shain, “John Galt’s America,” American Quarterly 8.3 (1956), pp. 254–63; Costain, “Sticks and the Bundle”; Carl Klink, “John Galt’s Canadian Novels” (excerpted in Appendix 1 of the present volume); Juliet Shields, Nation and Migration: The Making of British Atlantic Literature, 1765–1835 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); McDonagh, Literature in a Time of Migration.

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his forthcoming novel as “a Glasgow story.”22 In its first volume, however, it seems equally a London and a Jamaica story. In volume 2, Corbet remarries, and his London business continues to worsen. Hence, after a tour of the Scottish Highlands, he emigrates permanently near the end of volume 2 to settle with his family in Upper Canada. Volumes 1 and 2 thus involve four trans-Atlantic transits as well as journeys over short and extremely long distances (perhaps thus helping to pad the novel to three-volume length). The book’s longest set-piece is the voyage to and into Canada, a journey whose length and complexity takes up a great deal of narrative space: seven chapters at the end of volume 2, plus the first four of volume 3. Unlike previous round trips, this is a voyage of no return. And once in place, Corbet barely moves for the rest of volume 3 (save a brief comic excursion to Niagara Falls). The scale, the pace, even the mood of the novel thus shift significantly in the final volume, as the inadvertent cosmopolitan and globe-trotter becomes a financially constrained immigrant, attempts to settle, and sinks into depression. Like Lawrie Todd, and many of Galt’s previous novels, Bogle Corbet uses Scots-speaking characters to vivid effect. Bogle Corbet remains his only novel containing passages both in Scots and in Jamaican patois. Although Galt never visited Jamaica himself, his father was skipper of a West Indian trading ship, then a shipowner. Galt thus spent his youth in Greenock, Scotland’s key port of call for the British West India trade. One of Galt’s brothers later died in Jamaica’s Montego Bay (while another worked and died in Honduras). Bogle Corbet is the orphaned scion of a West Indian planter’s family; Galt was likewise raised in a family whose fortunes were intimately connected with the West Indies. Hence, as he puts it in his Autobiography, “From early associations I was induced to take a particular interest in the West Indian slave question, arguing the necessity of making some provision for the negroes before emancipation, and claiming for the planters compensation for depriving them of their property.”23 Corbet’s itineraries superimpose much of Galt’s father’s regular Greenock–Jamaica route with Galt’s own route to Upper Canada, a 22

Galt to Moir, 30 December 1831, cited in D. M. Moir, “Biographical Memoir of the Author,” in The Annals of the Parish and the Ayrshire Legatees, by John Galt; with memoir of the author: a new edition (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1841), pp. i–cxiii; here, p. lxxxix. 23 Galt, The Autobiography of John Galt, 2 vols (London: Cochrane and McCrone, 1833), II, p. 264.

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generation later, as an emigrating superintendent. The third volume’s account of Canadian settler life, in turn, draws heavily on Galt’s own years of first-hand experience in the Huron Tract.

Historical Contexts Galt was a pioneering political and historical novelist. And over the course of Bogle Corbet, memorable set-piece scenes—underscoring the economic uncertainties and shifting mores of Jamaican sugar plantations; showing pro-Jacobin principles take hold among Glasgow’s weavers; following these weavers’ eventual group emigration to Upper Canada, and their growing unhappiness with the colony’s undemocratic tendencies—give contour and texture to recent political and economic developments. Bogle Corbet is set (as Jennifer Scott puts it) “between the Maroon Wars in Jamaica, in the early days of the French Revolution, and just before the Haitian slave revolt … at a time when the world’s political and economic stage was in flux.”24 Galt’s novel was published in Britain a year before the passage there of the 1832 First Reform Act (Representation of the People Act), expanding voting rights to a higher percentage of British men; the same year as a major slave rebellion in Haiti; two years before the Slavery Abolition Act ended slavery across the British Empire; and six years before the Upper and Lower Canada Rebellions, major revolts that protested oligarchical government and catalysed the beginnings of representative government in both Canadas. Bogle Corbet’s movement between Jamaica, Scotland, London, and Upper Canada enables instructive contrasts between these places’ simultaneous yet differently premised political struggles over freedom, rights, and governance. The novel thus opens in the West Indies, a part of the British Empire where slavery seemed particularly deeply enshrined, yet where the signature plantation system was beginning to break down politically, socially, and economically. By its final volume, in contrast, the novel has moved to Upper Canada, the British Empire’s earliest place to enact, already in 1793, the gradual abolition of slavery, yet which was once again in the throes of fierce debates about freedom, governance, and political representation. In between, the novel focuses on Glasgow and London as economic and political centres. As Glasgow absorbed raw materials from 24

Scott, “Business of Writing Home,” p. 127.

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Britain’s old and new colonies, it—and Scotland’s textile industry— became the first epicentre, worldwide, of the Industrial Revolution. And in the aftermath of the French Revolution, as the mechanisation of their work began causing massive unemployment, Lowland weavers became unusually susceptible to radical ideas. By the end of the eighteenth century, then, Scotland’s increasing emphasis on business, profit, and the organisation of labour had produced growing political consciousness and advocacy among its skilled labourers. Galt’s novel closely mirrors the historical situation of Scotland’s radical weavers. E. P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class (1963) memorably reconstructs the way English Jacobin political organisations—workers’ corresponding societies, newspapers, and gatherings—shaped a newly militant working-class culture.25 Corbet’s Glasgow factory too proves a veritable “jacobine club” (25). The weavers have collected money to “buy a democratical newspaper for the use of the members; seditious pamphlets were eagerly bought and borrowed” (24); longing to hear and disseminate news of the French Revolution’s political gains, the weavers hire someone to read aloud to them while they work. In this highly politicised workplace, the weavers—including Corbet—participate eagerly in political culture even as they labour. For decades thereafter, as their employment continued to worsen, real-life Lowland weavers continued to feed Scotland’s radical protest movement. By 1819, Glasgow had 10,000 to 15,000 unemployed people living on charity—and (despite the town council’s repeated deployment of cavalry to clear crowds of unemployed protesters), reform meetings there attracted crowds of 5,000, 10,000, even 30,000. The British government thus considered Glasgow Britain’s most dangerous centre of reform activity. Nonetheless, when Glasgow weavers agitated that winter for assistance to emigrate to Upper Canada, the Colonial Office in London refused their petitions. Things came to a head in April 1820. A call to arms (perhaps issued by radicals, perhaps by agents provocateurs) urged a strike among all Glasgow-area workmen—and insisted it was necessary “to take up ARMS for the redress of our Common Grievances.”26 As Robert 25

E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London: Victor Gollancz, 1963). 26 “Address to the Inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland,” rpt in Gordon Pentland, The Spirit of the Union: Popular Politics in Scotland, 1815–1820 (Milton Park and New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 97–8; here, p. 97.

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Irvine has demonstrated, Bogle Corbet repeatedly references the ensuing events.27 Across the towns of west-central Scotland, some 60,000 weavers, spinners, and colliers participated in the strike. Some towns saw military-style drilling and marching among strikers—and one small village forge produced a thousand pike heads. Hoping to secure further weapons, a small contingent of radicals marched towards a large ironworks, but were fired on and dispersed by the army, with casualties on both sides. Many radicals had believed there would be a coordinated rising in England. When this clearly failed to occur, their resistance faded. In the wake of the Radical War (as the 1819–20 period of unrest came to be known), the government sentenced two dozen people and executed three for treason.28 Yet it fully grasped the potential for further unrest. By May, the British government had agreed to assist the emigration of weavers specifically from Glasgow and Lanarkshire (even as it turned down petitioning weavers from Renfrewshire and Paisley). For Glasgow and Lanarkshire weavers, the government helped fund their passage to Upper Canada and loaned them the money to buy land and establish themselves once arrived. Already by July 1820, 800 people had departed, helping to restore political calm in Glasgow, and by the end of 1821, 2,700 had emigrated.29 When these Glasgow weavers arrived in Upper Canada in 1820 and 1821, most settled on land which proved virtually non-arable. Pressed against the geological Canadian Shield, and consisting mostly of rock, sand, or swamp, this was later described as “the worst tract of land on which any extensive settlement was ever attempted in Upper Canada.”30 Many would-be settlers persevered nonetheless; only in the 1840s did most of the weavers move to the more fertile ground of the Huron Tract (then being sold by the Canada Company on easy terms). Even during the worst of their hardships, however, most settlers had written optimistic letters home, spurring intense, continuing interest among their fellow Glasgow weavers in immigrating to Upper Canada. Yet throughout the 1820s, Glasgow weavers continued in vain to petition for another assisted emigration program, pointing out that 27

Robert P. Irvine, “Canada, Class, and Colonization in John Galt’s Bogle Corbet,” Yearbook of English Studies 46 (2016), pp. 259–76. 28 Pentland, Spirit of the Union, pp. 98–9. 29 H. J. M. Johnston, British Emigration Policy 1815–1830: “Shovelling out Paupers” (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), ch. 3. 30 Ibid., p. 54.

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their trade had continued to decline. But since the political situation in Glasgow was quieter, the Colonial Office now saw no reason to assist them.31 Galt’s 1829 essay, “Thoughts on the Times” (published under the pseudonym “Agricola”) condemned Britain’s government for its lack of support for impoverished silk weavers. Agricola suggests the government found a “colony at home” within Britain, buying land, supplying tools, and enabling artisans to become agricultural laborers. Should their business revive again, they could return to artisan life. In key respects, Galt thus transports the Canada Company settlement model back into Britain itself.32 Between 1815 and 1826, successive British governments did sponsor six short-lived assisted emigration programs (to colonies spanning the Cape Colony and Upper Canada) in the hope of calming domestic political unrest. And from 1815 onward, Britain experienced what James Belich has dubbed a “settler revolution,” a massive surge of voluntary emigration. During the 1820s, 100,000 British and Irish emigrated to British North America; during the 1830s, their number tripled.33 Contemporaneous debates over emigration, Irvine has argued, treated Upper Canada largely as a “space outside of politics, an economic resource that could be used to prevent an economic problem from becoming a political one at home.”34 Yet the debates also involved fundamental disagreements. Should the new colonies permit far more social mobility than Britain itself (hard work enabling the making of new fortunes, raising the value and price of the land the colonists settled)? Or, as in Upper Canada under the Family Compact, would poor emigrants find a society as or more hierarchical than the one they had left behind? Bogle Corbet’s closing volume demonstrates what happens when political dissidents arrive in Upper Canada, and how the difficulties of settlement generate new political divisions. The “peculiar situation” of Upper Canada, as Aileen Dunham argued in her classic 1927 Political 31

Ibid., pp. 54–6. “Thoughts on the Times,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 26.158 (October 1829), pp. 640–3; here, p. 643. 33 James Belich, Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World, 1783–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), ch. 5. 34 Irvine, “Canada, Class, and Colonization,” p. 263. On the impact of Malthus’s theories of overpopulation on the emigration debate, see Charlotte Sussman, Peopling the World: Representing Human Mobility from Milton to Malthus (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020), ch. 7. 32

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Unrest in Upper Canada, 1815–1836, was to become a place where “the old empire merged with the new. It was inevitable that imperial eyes should see in Upper Canada virgin soil for the pioneer, whereas the pioneers themselves, still warm from the struggle against the volcanic elements of the old empire, detected in the new community the same combustible materials which had existed in the old.”35 Bogle Corbet is one of the first novels in English to address the contemporary phenomenon of industrialisation—and its human costs. Both Jamaica and Scotland, at different moments and in different ways, were key sites for this process. “The Jamaican sugar plantations of the late eighteenth century,” Tim Barringer has argued, “were pioneering endeavors in mass production, utilizing the division of labor and shiftwork—sometimes involving many hundreds, even thousands, of enslaved men and women—to achieve the swift processing of sugarcane in season,” processed by waterwheels, windmills, and steam. By the nineteenth century, nonetheless, Jamaican estates had become notoriously inefficient given “the backwardness and inadequacy of their tools and implements.”36 During his traverse of Jamaica, Corbet comes to much the same conclusion. Galt’s own relationship to slavery and anti-slavery remained complex, as evidenced in his series of articles from 1830 onwards on West Indian questions. In Jamaica, specifically, the 1807 abolition of the slave trade inaugurated a period of decline for the island’s plantocracy and of growing unrest among the island’s slave population. In 1831, the year of Bogle Corbet’s publication, a slave strike demanding greater freedom and a living wage escalated into full-scale rebellion. This so-called “Baptist War” (since the initial strike leader was an enslaved Baptist preacher) lasted ten days, mobilised almost twenty percent of Jamaica’s 300,000 slaves, and catalysed brutal repression that led to almost 500 Black fatalities. Yet these events ultimately accelerated the process through which, by 1834, the British empire officially abolished slavery. Galt’s 1830s articles castigate what he sees as the demagoguery of the abolition movement—particularly in its demonisation of individual slave-owners, and its deployment of petition drives to try to sway 35

Aileen Dunham, Political Unrest in Upper Canada, 1815–1836 (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1963), p. 178. 36 Tim Barringer, “Land, Labor and Landscape: Views of the Plantation in Victorian Jamaica,” in Victorian Jamaica, ed. Tim Barringer and Wayne Modest (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), pp. 281–321; here, p. 308.

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policy. Yet he simultaneously concedes that “I admit the grievance of slavery … I admit at once that the slave should have his freedom.”37 Emancipation too, in Galt’s view, is a moral as well as political inevitability: “The principle and right of all mankind to universal freedom is frankly admitted.”38 What worries him are the dire economic prospects of emancipated slaves. In their enslaved state, he argues at moments, they seem recently risen from the state of “animals.”39 At others, he suggests that “you must treat the negro as the child, to make him understand the actual condition in which he will be placed when he gets his panacea, emancipation, the boon intended to be given.”40 Freedom, Galt suggests, has been vaunted as an end in itself—but it alone will not ensure survival. In a region with no history of nor infrastructure for poor-relief, he foresees a post-Emancipation West Indies unable to provide for its population of newly freed slaves, owning no property of their own and lacking any means of self-maintenance. Upper Canada was a much more recent, very different kind of British colony. Jamaica had been captured by the British in 1655. More than a century later, Upper Canada was created as “a by-product of the American Revolution.”41 In 1791, the British parliament passed a constitutional act officially subdividing the Province of Quebec into Lower Canada (long the home of a largely Catholic, French-speaking population) and Upper Canada (then largely unsettled but newly envisioned as the future home of the 10,000 United Empire Loyalists who had fled the United States after the American revolutionary war). Unlike the nascent republic to its south, the new colony was designed to be governed hierarchically rather than democratically. Upper Canada’s first governor, John Simcoe, was an ardent abolitionist who, at the colony’s inaugural 1793 legislative assembly, successfully passed a pioneering legal framework for the gradual abolition of slavery. Simcoe hoped to outlaw slavery outright—yet this was 37

Galt, “West Indian Slavery.—By J. Galt, Esq. Letter III,” Fraser’s Magazine 2.12 ( January 1831), pp. 706–13; here, pp. 709–10. 38 Galt, “Letters on West Indian Slavery.—By J. Galt, Esq. to Oliver Yorke, Esq. Letter I,” Fraser’s Magazine 2.10 (November 1830), pp. 440–9; here, p. 440. 39 Ibid., p. 448. 40 Galt, “Letters on West Indian Slavery.—By J. Galt, Esq. to Oliver Yorke, Esq. Letter II,” Fraser’s Magazine 2.11 (December 1830), pp. 563–71; here, p. 566. 41 Dunham, Political Unrest in Upper Canada, p. 19.

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opposed by almost half the assembly’s members (themselves slaveholders). The compromise “Act to Prevent the further Introduction of Slaves and to limit the Term of Contracts for Servitude” immediately freed all enslaved children once they reached the age of twenty-five, and limited terms of indenture to nine years. But it also legally acknowledged Upper Canada’s practice of slavery, confirming already-enslaved adults’ (permanent) slave status, as well as their owners’ right to own them. (Many Upper Canada slave owners, moreover, continued to sell slaves in upstate New York until 1799, when New York enacted a similar law ensuring gradual abolition.) Before 1793, Upper Canada’s population encompassed 500 to 700 slaves, most held by Americans who had moved north as United Empire Loyalists during or after the Revolutionary war. By the late 1820s, in contrast, the Upper Canada Galt knew was virtually free of slavery, being settled and worked under very different conditions than the plantation economies of Jamaica or the American South. In other respects, however, Simcoe was eager to replicate Britain’s hierarchical social model. As he wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1790, “every establishment of Church and State that upholds the distinction of ranks, and lessens the undue weight of the democratic influence, ought to be introduced.”42 He favoured both the formal “establishment” of the Anglican Church as the official state church, and the formation of an elite class to function like an aristocracy. In practice, land reserves and giveaways were intended to shore up both goals. In its early years, Upper Canada set aside large land reserves for the financial support of the Anglican Church, while bestowing outright a vast amount of free land, largely on privileged persons. By 1824 about eleven million acres had been distributed, at a time when the colony’s population was still under 150,000.43 What this largesse had created was a colonial equivalent of an aristocracy, a new class of large landowners. Given the dearth of actual aristocrats, or even highly educated settlers, a smaller group had been rewarded for their service with multiple government offices, multiple salaries, and sometimes large, even vast tracts of land. The subsequent swell of more impoverished, less-educated settlers would be subject to the very different principles advocated by colonial 42

Letter of 30 December 1790; rpt in Canadian History in Documents, 1763– 1966, ed. J. M. Bliss (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1966), p. 35. 43 R. K. Gordon, John Galt (Toronto: University of Toronto Library, 1920), p. 53.

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reformer Edward Gibbon Wakefield (and disseminated in his influential 1829 A Letter from Sydney). Wakefield specifically opposed any free land distribution to immigrants. Emigrants edged out of Britain partly by the scarcity and expense of purchasable land tended to be greedy for colonial land, not realising the difficulty of clearing and cultivating it. Wakefield warned that making free land available would feed such greed, doom their settlements to probable failure, and create colonies whose settlements were not sufficiently dense to produce adequate infrastructure.44 The new colony of Upper Canada thus began to engender sharp social divisions between land-rich and land-poor. Galt’s time in Upper Canada coincided, moreover, with a period of growing unrest over the colony’s mode of government. This struggle pitted reformers, radicals, and some new emigrants against the Family Compact, culminating in the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837. In its wake, the official investigation into the rebellion and its causes, Lord Durham’s “Report on the Affairs of British North America” (1839), led directly to the establishment of more democratic government. In the 1820s, however, the Compact still both represented and reinforced social hierarchy. Its de facto leader, John Strachan, Anglican Archdeacon of York (present-day Toronto), was actually a Lowland Scot, born a Presbyterian but now determined to enforce Anglican ascendancy. His nemesis, likewise, was a Lowland Scot now based in York: radical printer William Lyon Mackenzie, publisher of the Colonial Advocate, and the leader of local agitation for more democratic government. If the Family Compact came to see Galt as high-handed and irritatingly non-deferential, they saw Mackenzie as potentially dangerous and disruptive. Galt, in contrast, was initially interested by Mackenzie’s journal. Yet even as Galt’s own settlement practices diverged increasingly from Family Compact ideology, Galt quickly came to resent and resist Mackenzie’s attempts to co-opt him into open anti-Compact stands. For the financial health of the Huron Tract, the Canada Company considered it vital to avoid all conflict with 44

See Peter Burroughs, ed., The Colonial Reformers and Canada, 1830–1849: Selections from Documents and Publications of the Times (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1969), esp. part 3, “Systematic Colonization.” On Wakefield’s influence on Galt, see Bruce Curtis, “Colonization, Education, and the Formation of Moral Character: Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s A Letter from Sydney,” Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’histoire de l’éducation 31.2 (2019), pp. 27–47, and Irvine, “Canada, Class, and Colonization.”

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Upper Canada’s authorities. In 1827, Galt incurred the wrath both of the Family Compact and the Canada Company with his handling of a humanitarian emergency: the unexpected arrival of 135 indigent, starving, Gaelic-speaking Highlanders, almost half of them children, fleeing a failed agricultural colony in Venezuela and sent on from New York by the British consul there. As a commercial enterprise, the Canada Company was designed to sell land to those with the means to buy it—so its directors looked askance at Galt’s financial outlay for these refugees (even as the government objected to the inflated prices Galt asked for the land he mortgaged to them).45 Both Galt’s increasingly guarded dealings with the radical Mackenzie, and the opprobrium he heard from all sides about his handling of this refugee crisis, may inform some aspects of Bogle Corbet. For by the time he reaches Upper Canada, at the end of volume 2, Corbet has become the unlikely leader and would-be oligarch of a group of radical Glaswegian emigrants—his former friends and colleagues the Jacobin weavers. Much of volume 3 is given over to the political tensions that beset the group in relationship to Corbet. In Corbet’s vision, their wish to own and develop their own property must be countered by instituting more a paternalistic and hierarchical form of collective life: “they only wanted a gentleman with capital to come among them, who would take a magisterial interest in their general affairs” (305). When most of the settlers threaten to decamp to the nearby United States, which promises them more rights, status, and economic opportunity, Corbet persuades them, by the metaphor of a bundle of sticks, that they must not only remain but live in community. Keith Costain’s article “Sticks and the Bundle” explicates this metaphor as key to the contrasts Lawrie Todd and Bogle Corbet draw between American and Canadian life. For while Lawrie Todd envisions immigrant and settler life in the United States as driven by an ideal of urban life and monetary prosperity, Bogle Corbet envisions Canadian life as potentially pastoral and communal. Galt’s focus, Costain argues, is on the settlement of a village as an intentional community, in contrast to a new city’s more randomly accreted population. Corbet himself might be said to harbour visions of an organic, communally built settlement. Yet in practice, the problem of land ownership and labour relations sunders his town’s initial group of settlers. 45

Robert C. Lee, The Canada Company and the Huron Tract, 1826–1853: Personalities, Profits and Politics (Toronto: National Heritage, 2004), pp. 59–60.

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In Upper Canada, as Andrew Picken clarified in his 1836 overview The Canadas (dedicated to Galt and based in part on documents Galt had collected), new immigrants had three ways to acquire land: directly from the government, in exchange for clearing and road-building work; buying property in multi-year instalments from bodies like the Canada Company (themselves in the business of reselling parcels from the large tracts of land they had already minimally developed); or buying it outright from private individuals “in more or less of a cleared state.”46 For Picken as for Galt, the prospect of paupers emigrating from Britain to Upper Canada merely risked importing destitution into the new colony, threatening its development. For those unable to put up any money towards land purchase will be forced to move into the bush, hoping to clear their way to ownership. Once there, however, few will have the necessary skills and stamina to rise above subsistence.47 Even if emigration may seem most logical for those who are truly desperate, both Picken and Galt conclude, its hardships are more suited for those who already have some means, education, or developed skill. Corbet thus reserves rare praise for Andrew Gimlet, one of the Glasgow artisans who quickly demonstrates or masters various skills necessary for constructing a settlement. Corbet’s parable of the bundle of sticks thus cuts two ways. On the surface it underscores the need for cooperation, by which all may be made stronger. In practice, however, Corbet strongly favours the stronger, better stick—whether because it is better-born or personally more resourceful. Galt himself worried that Upper Canada’s land system “is only calculated to breed democrats,” as he put it in an 1827 letter to Robert Wilmot-Horton, Britain’s most vocal proponent of assisted emigration.48 Galt thus both advocated and practised an alternative mode 46

Andrew Picken, The Canadas: comprehending topographical information concerning the quality of the land, in different districts; and the fullest general information: for the use of emigrants and capitalists, compiled from original documents furnished by John Galt, Esq., 2nd edn (London: Effingham Wilson, 1836), p. 291. 47 For a more sanguine view of squatters’ prospects in the bush, see MacTaggart’s Three Years in Canada, which stresses the Canada Company’s willingness to accept squatting as de facto ownership and to make favourable adjustments to land prices if the buyer had already cleared the land being purchased (“Settlers and Squatters,” I, pp. 192–208). 48 Galt, letter to Robert Wilmot-Horton, 5 February and 7 April 1827, cited in Gilbert A. Stelter, “John Galt: The Writer as Town Booster and Builder,”

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of settlement, both more hierarchical and more communal, designed to avoid encouraging radicalism, even as it mitigated the financial peril facing many emigrants. Like Governor Simcoe before him, Galt imagined trying to attract actual British aristocrats to Upper Canada, “younger members of the Aristocratic families, who do not choose to adopt professions, to become the Leaders of Settlers.”49 Failing that, he hoped to attract more educated, less penurious settlers to the Huron Tract by building towns for them to settle in. To that end, his initial towns spent money building roads, log-houses for early settlers, a tavern, and—by investing some of the profits from early sales of lots—a schoolhouse. His original plans for Guelph likewise involve significant land set aside for public space, intended to foster commercial and social activity. Yet Galt himself also worked personally to convene, adjudicate, and in a sense rule over the settler community he had gathered in “my city.”50 As Canada has grappled with its own settlement history (particularly its treatment of indigenous First Nations), historians of Canada have become newly interested both in comparative colonial analysis, and in the complexities of early Canadian governance. For generations, Canadian school curricula emphasised the move from colonial governance to self-determination, a narrative in which Mackenzie’s opposition to the Family Compact, the Upper and Lower Canada Rebellions, and Lord Durham’s Report represented key turning points. Yet the challenge to oligarchy in Upper Canada, Albert Schrauwers has argued, came not only from political agents like Mackenzie but from various kinds of associations, from radical political groups to chartered stock companies like the Canada Company itself.51 Conversely, in Elizabeth Waterston, ed., John Galt: Reappraisals (Guelph: University of Guelph, 1985), pp. 17–43; here, p. 26. Wilmot-Horton’s own stance is echoed by the Undersecretary of State in Bogle Corbet’s chapter “The Colonial Office” (volume 2), likewise determined to “send the superabundance out of the labour-market by emigration” as “the only way of preventing revolution” (218). 49 Stelter, “John Galt,” p. 26. 50 Ibid., p. 33. 51 See Albert Schrauwers, “Union Is Strength”: W. L. Mackenzie, the Children of Peace, and the Emergence of Joint Stock Democracy in Upper Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009). While benevolent societies and utopian political groups self-evidently enshrined democratic principles in their own structure, even for-profit corporations like the Canada Company, in their

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in Upper Canada as in Australia and New Zealand, Ann Curthoys has stressed, the very process of granting more local rule effectively transferred the safeguarding of indigenous rights from imperial oversight to local settler-controlled governments (with very mixed results for indigenous peoples themselves).52 As Aileen Dunham argued already in 1927, the colony’s political situation in the decades leading up to the Upper Canada Rebellion was conflictual, contradictory, and transitional. From one point of view, its political institutions looked backwards, presenting numerous analogies to the history of the thirteen colonies under the old empire. The form of government was the old form; the struggles between government and assembly were the old struggles … . The ideas of the privileges and duties belonging to a dominant class of society which were held by the officials of Upper Canada, were the old ideas of the eighteenth century … . [Yet] from the standpoint of British colonial history the early nineteenth century must be recognized as a period of beginnings. An old empire had been overwhelmed by a political and economic volcano, and before the ashes had cooled, a new empire was founded beyond the borders of the old. 53 Dunham’s analysis is relevant not only for parsing the Upper Canada sections of Bogle Corbet but for understanding the larger array of colonial places and historical moments the novel traverses. In Bogle Corbet, Galt created a fictional world in which Jamaica and London, Glasgow and Upper Canada, old empire and new empire, old-world political combustion, new-world political combustion, the practice and the breakdown of colonial governance were all simultaneously made visible. pooling of financial resources (and limiting of financial liability), represent a cooperative organisational structure in stark contrast to the hierarchical, quasi-feudal model of government originally envisioned for the colony. 52 Ann Curthoys, “The Dog That Didn’t Bark: The Durham Report, Indigenous Dispossession, and Self-Government for Britain’s Settler Colonies,” in Within and Without the Nation: Canadian History as Transnational History, ed. Karen Dubinsky, Adele Perry, and Henry Yu (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), pp. 26–48. 53 Dunham, Political Unrest in Upper Canada, pp. 177–9.

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Literary Contexts The Romantic period was an extremely fertile period for the novel, as novelists developed a host of new genres, written and read in all corners of the anglophone world. A lively vignette in Robina and Kathleen M. Lizars’s In the Days of the Canada Company: The Story of the Settlement of the Huron Tract and a View of the Social Life of the Period, 1825–1850 (1896) enumerates some of the British novels shipped to Goderich, and eagerly consumed by local readers: The book chests, lumbering over what was scarce more than a bridle path, or soaked in the over-topping lake waves as the chartered schooner perched upon the ‘bar,’ had in them volumes rivalling in romance, excelling in impossibility, and far less healthy in tone than such Canada Company literature, of which ‘The Castle of Otranto,’ ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho,’ ‘Thaddeus of Warsaw,’ ‘The Scottish Chiefs,’ ‘The Children of the Abbey,’ and ‘The Romance of the Pyrenees,’ ‘Emmeline,’ and ‘Celestine,’ were the chief. The measles were not more catching than were these books when epidemic. Purple sunsets and castles built on craigs; secret staircases and bloody fingermarks; heroes whose plumed helmets, swords and banners were gloomy or magnificent as the mystery required, yet always gigantic; damsels and dungeons, ghouls and lovers, formed the literary food of the newly-arrived maidens in poke bonnets … and of the matrons in stiff black satin and brocade, who held the latter up daintily to fry the pink trout provided by their redshirted lords.54 These book chests apparently contained mostly historical romances 54

Robina and Kathleen M. Lizars, In the Days of the Canada Company: The Story of the Settlement of the Huron Tract and a View of the Social Life of the Period, 1825–1850 (Toronto: William Briggs, 1896), pp. 296–7. The novels listed in this passage are Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story (1764); Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794); Jane Porter’s Thaddeus of Warsaw (1803) and The Scottish Chiefs (1809); Regina Maria Roche’s The Children of the Abbey (1796); Catherine Cuthbertson’s The Romance of the Pyrenees (1807); and Charlotte Smith’s Emmeline: The Orphan of the Castle (1788) and Celestine (1791).

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and several generations of gothic novels, authored almost entirely by women writers (Ann Radcliffe, Jane Porter, Charlotte Smith, Regina Maria Roche), whose geographically and temporally remote settings (mediaeval European castles) contrast starkly with the time and place in which Upper Canada readers found themselves. The Lizars gently mock the disconnect between readers and subject matter, but they also stress the deep appeal of such reading, as immigrant readers struggle to adjust their own ideas about fashion, dignity, and ladies’ work in the raw conditions of the log cabin and frontier town. The first novel both written and published in Upper Canada followed the same mode of gothic melodrama. Like its European predecessors, Julia Beckwith Hart’s St. Ursula’s Convent, or The Nun of Canada (written in 1814, published in 1824 in Kingston) drew partly on local colour. In 1639, the Ursulines had been the first order of nuns to arrive in New France (later Lower Canada). Under the leadership of Mother Marie de l’Incarnation, this teaching order established the first institution in North America for women’s education, and specialised in the Christianisation of Algonquin women. Hart herself was half French-Canadian; while her novel followed many of the gothic conventions of the convent thriller, it toned down the genre’s usual anti-Catholicism.55 Despite its own melodramatic moments, Bogle Corbet largely occupies a very different literary register.56 Nonetheless, Corbet’s British second wife Urseline, who emigrates to Upper Canada with him, presumably owes her unusual name either to the Ursuline order—or to Hart’s gothic novel, set in their midst. In the early Huron Tract, the Lizars point out, escapist romances coexisted with didactic and improving Canada Company literature. Where does Bogle Corbet fit on this continuum of escapism and improvement, the novel as a conduit for exotic historical fantasies or the novel as a reflection of contemporary social realities? And how, on the eve of the Victorian period, does it draw on the plurality of novelistic genres available in its moment—and anticipate the subsequent development of the nineteenth-century novel? In some respects, Bogle Corbet’s opening volume offers a very early 55

Jennifer Blair, “Reading for Information in St. Ursula’s Convent, or The Nun of Canada,” Yearbook of English Studies 46 (2016), pp. 201–18. 56 Martin Bowman’s “Bogle Corbet and the Sentimental Romance,” however, sees the novel alternating between sentimentalism and anti-sentimentalism (in Elizabeth Waterston, ed., John Galt: Reappraisals [Guelph: University of Guelph, 1985], pp. 63–71).

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instance of the British industrial novel, two full decades before Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley (1849), Charles Dickens’s Hard Times (1854), or indeed Charles Kingsley’s Chartist novel Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet (1850), in which the impoverishment of the textile trades leads the hero to emigrate to Texas. Galt’s novel anticipates Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South (1854) in using the advent of an outsider into the factory floor to elucidate the weavers’ work culture and political attitudes. Yet that narrative template also derives, in part, from Charlotte Smith’s Desmond (1792, set in Revolutionary France) and from Walter Scott’s pathbreaking historical novel Waverley, or ’Tis Sixty Years Since (1814), in which an outsider stumbles into a place and a moment of political agitation and insurrection, is initially swept up by its excitement, then steps back and belatedly distances himself from the political zealousness and extremism this moment produced. Desmond and Waverley, to be sure, end more happily than Bogle Corbet, whose more melancholy mood and tone prefigure post-1848 European novels of post-revolutionary political disillusionment (such as Gustave Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, 1869). The plot of the outsider coming repeatedly into a new place (a Glasgow textile mill, London business culture, Jamaican coffee and sugar plantations, the wilds of the Huron Tract) as a vehicle for exploration, description, and intercultural comparison also has its roots in enlightenment epistolary novels of cross-cultural discovery. So too the Romantic-era Irish, Scottish, and continental “national tales” allegorised both the possibility of transnational political unions and the limits of cultural relativism. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, especially in the era before Emancipation, early anglophone novels of the Caribbean created similar narrative arcs. Like the Jamaican interlude that concludes Bogle Corbet’s first volume, colonial plantation novels like the anonymous Marly; or, a Planter’s Life in Jamaica (1828) or Cynric R. Williams’s Hamel, the Obeah Man (1827) were structured around a white Scotsman’s arrival in Jamaica or a creole’s return, to reclaim inheritances—and their dawning comprehension of the complexity of local economic and political conditions. Despite sometimes empathetic depictions of slave life, such novels were often implicitly pro-slavery, extolling the rational stewardship and economic “plight” of the impoverished white slave-holder class.57 57

See Candace Ward, Crossing the Line: Early Creole Novels and Anglophone Caribbean Culture in the Age of Emancipation (Charlottesville: University

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From the 1780s through the 1820s, in contrast, another group of Romantic novels, especially courtship and children’s novels, recorded deep moral anxieties about empire and slaveholding. Their concern was not so much the plight of slaves or conquered peoples as the myriad ways colonial officials’, businessmen’s, and slave-holders’ ingrained imperiousness and habits of command unfit them for domestic life in Britain—concerns Galt himself echoed in The Last of the Lairds (1826). In the long aftermath of the 1791–1804 Haitian Revolution, as Marlene Daut has underscored, famous novellas from Heinrich von Kleist’s “The Betrothal in Santo Domingo” (1811) to Hermann Melville’s “Benito Cereno” (1855) anatomised white terror in the face of Black violence and potential perfidy, even as they raised complex questions about the presumption of white superiority and of Black guilt. Meanwhile, key political texts like Baron de Vastey’s Le Système colonial dévoilè (1814) defended the Haitian slaves’ violent actions as “solely a reaction to the violence of the colonial system and not the perfidious result of being of ‘African’ or of ‘mixed’ race.”58 The figure of the native nurse loomed large across Romantic fiction, often allegorising the relationship of native subalterns to British masters. By forging strong, quasi-familial ties, body servants or slaves ostensibly lose their primary identification with their own culture; even at moments of slave uprising or native rebellion, caught in the crossfire of loyalties, they “naturally” ally themselves with their charges—who in turn grow up creolised. Bogle Corbet’s opening paeon to his slave nurse Baba accords with these Romantic templates— and its stress on the traumatic legacy of childhood separation from the nurse, in the passage between continents, between colony and metropole, remained a key trope of later colonial and postcolonial fiction.59 Corbet’s Jamaican birth, Tim Watson has underscored, means he is actually a ”creole,” a native-born West Indian who may be part of the of Virginia Press, 2017); Tim Watson, Caribbean Culture and British Fiction in the Atlantic World, 1780–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 58 Marlene Daut, Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, 1789–1865 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015), p. 39. 59 See, for instance, Rudyard Kipling’s “Baa Baa Black Sheep” (1888); Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1911); Margaret Lawrence’s The Diviners (1974); and Helen Gardam’s Old Filth (2006).

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planter class and racially white, especially within the racial economy of Jamaica itself, but whose multiple geopolitical and cultural frameworks make him both an insider and an outsider “back” in Britain, as in Jamaica itself. As Watson notes, the British novel tradition (from Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda [1801] to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre [1847] and William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair [1848]) tended to position creole characters as destabilising figures, naïve provincials, immoral nouveaux riches, as unreliable or even mentally unstable.60 Corbet was born into a Scottish planter family on their Plantagenet Estate in Jamaica. The House of Plantagenet had held the British throne from 1154 until 1485 (when the dynasty lost the throne after defeat in the Hundred Years’ War, popular revolts, and internecine “War of the Roses” struggle between the cadet houses of Lancaster and York). Their successors subsequently laid the ground for the modern British state. To name a colonial estate after the Plantagenets might be to evoke a heroic era in British history—unless it is (also) to anticipate the estate’s eventual demise and loss of power in the face of slave unrest and shifting political and economic conditions. More generally, Bogle Corbet intersperses its extended political and economic discussions about slavery and abolition with episodic, parable-like literary set-pieces and literary references, including to Shakespeare, the Bible, and the anti-slavery story of Inkle and Yarico. These all link Bogle Corbet’s feelings and observations to a long, complex history of literary depictions. Throughout Galt’s novelistic career, moreover, his heavy use of allegorical names links the humour and didactic thrust of his satire to the traditions of Jacobean city satire (the hypocritical Puritan Zealof-the-Land Busy in Ben Jonson’s 1614 comedy Bartholomew Fair), Puritan religious allegory ( John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, 1678) and Restoration comedy (Mr Pinchwife in William Wycherley’s The Country Wife, 1675). Some of Bogle Corbet’s names likewise appear allegorical, part of what Robert Graham has dubbed Galt’s secular “parables of progress.”61 Bogle Corbet’s schoolmaster is named Rhomboid. The merchant whose family fortune was made in British India, and who has himself long worked in the West Indies, bears the name 60

Tim Watson, “The Colonial Novel,” in Ato Quayson, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Postcolonial Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 15–34; here, p. 20. 61 Robert J. Graham, “John Galt’s Bogle Corbet: A Parable of Progress,” Scottish Literary Journal 13.2 (1986), pp. 31–47.

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Mr McIndoe. The proprietors of Jamaican sugar and coffee plantations are, respectively, Mr Canes and Mr Beans. Eric Pullicate, the Glasgow weaver, is clearly named for the pullicate, a checked cotton or silk handkerchief. And according to Galt’s initial Memorandum of Agreement with publishers Colburn and Bentley, he originally intended to name his main character—and thus the novel itself—“Alek Pirn,” a name that would have extended the textile-associated naming: a pirn is a special type of bobbin that holds the weft yarn within the weaving shuttle. Instead, Galt eventually renamed his protagonist-narrator Bogle Corbet. In Scots, a “bogle” is both a scarecrow and a bogey-man or ghost (and, as Elizabeth Waterston suggests, it can imply “curbed, or made crooked”).62 This final choice of name both allegorises a state of mind and being, and suggests the lingering effects of the past on Bogle’s present and future. Bogle’s name may instruct the reader to understand him as a hollow man, a shell of a man, reduced by past experience and loss. Conversely, the reader may be asked to consider him in the light of a revenant, who returns to old haunts and brings the ghosts of the past into new situations. Either way, the protagonist’s name aligns Bogle Corbet with earlier Romantic novels presenting themselves as confessional psychological case studies, and reviving Daniel Defoe’s model of the semi-reliable first-person narrator. William Godwin’s Mandeville (1817), Galt’s own Ringan Gilhaize, or the Covenanters (1823), and James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), for instance, seek to explain the historical and cultural factors contributing to mental or moral breakdown. Like Galt’s The Provost, moreover, Bogle Corbet might be read as a satirically inflected portrait of a self-centred political actor. Corbet leads a party of his Jacobin former work colleagues to his settlement in the New World, only to try to establish, once there, an oligarchy based on differences of class and inherited wealth. On one level, the novel might be read as political satire—perhaps even as topical satire about Galt’s own misadventures as the leader of a settlement expedition, and with the decidedly oligarchical Family Compact. 62

Elizabeth Waterston, “Galt, Scott and Cooper: Frontiers of Realism,” Journal of Canadian Fiction 1.1 (1972), pp. 60–5; here, p. 63. Waterson also sees Aesopian resonances for this name in conjunction with Lawrie Todd. If, in Scots, “Lawrie Todd” evokes a fox, “Corbet” may “suggest a crow or corbie. Somewhere the fable of the fox and crow is lurking, fox depriving crow of a prize by flattery and cunning” (ibid.).

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At the same time, quite unlike with the Provost, readers are repeatedly invited to understand Corbet as conflicted, melancholy, ineffectual in business and in politics, perhaps at war with himself. Yet, as his Literary Life insisted, Galt also understood his novel as documentary fiction. The 1820s “settler revolution,” with its physical surge of emigrants leaving Britain for the British colonies, had been paralleled by a corresponding surge in settler literature.63 One immediate textual context for Galt’s novel was thus the many articles Galt himself was producing about Upper Canada, as well as the cluster of first-person accounts written by John Howison, John MacTaggart, William Dunlop, Andrew Picken, and later Samuel Strickland—fellow Scottish émigrés or sojourners, and Galt’s friends and employees during his years at the Canada Company.64 The now-canonical accounts of Upper Canada settler life date from a slightly later period, yet originate from an overlapping milieu. In 1832, Strickland’s sisters Susanna Moodie and Catherine Parr Traill emigrated from Britain with their husbands to homestead in Upper Canada, near Peterborough. Both were fledgling writers whose ensuing autobiographical sketches—especially Moodie’s Roughing It In the Bush, or Life in Canada (1852), and Traill’s The Backwoods of Canada … Illustrative of the Domestic Economy of North America (1836)—focused particularly on domestic life and female settler experience. The somewhat earlier cluster of writings around Galt and the Canada Company presented themselves rather as synoptic accounts, compendiums of maps, facts, and figures, or works of political economy (in the tradition of Arthur Young and of Galt’s own 1807 “Statistical Account of Upper Canada”) which work to reconcile subjective travel impressions, interviews, and statistics to arrive at a comprehensive portrait. Bogle Corbet was at once part of this corpus yet quite distinct from it.65 Galt himself and many early reviewers present it as a didactic 63

Belich, Replenishing the Earth, p. 279. These include John Howison’s Sketches of Upper Canada, Domestic, Local, and Characteristic (1821); John MacTaggart’s Three Years in Canada (1829); William “Tiger” Dunlop’s Statistical Sketches of Upper Canada: for the use of emigrants, by a backwoodsman (1832); Picken’s The Canadas (1836); and later Samuel Strickland’s Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West, or The Experience of an Early Settler (1853). See also Robin Jarvis, Romantic Readers and Transatlantic Travel: Expeditions and Tours in North America, 1760–1840 (New York: Routledge, 2016), esp. ch. 3. 65 See Halliwell, “Galt and the Paratext”; Honor Rieley, “Writing Emigration: 64

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emigrants’ guide to Upper Canada. Through Corbet’s impressions and experiences, the novel conveys both information and advice about settling there. It even features, as a brief appendix, a list of soil and settlement conditions in various places in the colony. (This paratext, Kevin Halliwell has argued, functions not so much to convey usable information to prospective settlers, but as realia or authenticity effect, vouching for the reality of the novelistic setting and the verisimilitude of its plot.) Yet the novel form also enables more complex depiction than statistical surveys or guides, describing the classes of people presently settling, and how their backgrounds and attitudes alternately foster or impede the settlement process. None of the period’s other settler guides or narratives roots Upper Canadian settlement so fully in a larger world or imperial system. Only the famous satiric fictional sketches being written in Nova Scotia in the 1820s and 1830s make comparable efforts to think about the formation of a new colonial culture in relation to immigration, emigration, and transnational trends. In the first of his Letters of Mephibosheth Stepsure (serialised in The Acadian Recorder in 1820–23), Presbyterian minister Thomas McCulloch thus suggests that the allure of easier fortunes in other slave-based or convict-based British colonies is undermining colonial settlement in Nova Scotia, even as the triangle trade in slaves and sugar threatens the Maritimes’ own moral fibre. Thomas Chandler Haliburton’s influential Clockmaker sketches, published from 1835 to 1840 in The Novascotian, located Maritime culture, differently from his mentor McCulloch, in relationship to the depredations of American capitalism. Waterston reads Haliburton’s famous antagonist, trickster Yankee clock salesman Sam Slick, as an elaboration on Bogle Corbet’s caricatures of American capitalism.66 “Before and after Galt left British North America,” Waterston observes, “he had many readers and admirers in the colonies,” and “his Scottish books had found a big sale in the new Scotia.”67 Although there was no subsequent “school of Galt” in Canada, and Canada in Scottish Romanticism, 1802–1840,” PhD Diss., Oxford University, 2016, esp. pp. 192–5; and N. M. Whistler, “John Galt and the New World,” PhD Diss., Cambridge University, 1993, esp. pp. 200–5. 66 Elizabeth Waterston, Rapt in Plaid: Canadian Literature and Scottish Tradition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), p. 110. Robert Graham sees Bogle Corbet’s ideas about hierarchical community reflected in Haliburton’s 1849 The Old Judge, or Life in a Colony (“John Galt’s Bogle Corbet,” p. 45). 67 Waterston, Rapt in Plaid, pp. 110–11.

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“no direct response to his tone, form, or topics,” Waterson argues that Galt’s work nonetheless helped set in motion a long Canadian tradition of writing “discontinuous sketches, without central unifying force of novelistic plot”—which, in its decentred form, “reflect the realities of the Canadian small towns that matured from ‘Stockwell’ roots.”68 In Britain, likewise, “Galt’s work opened the way for the great regional realists of the mid-nineteenth century: Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, George Meredith.”69 Yet Waterson also notes that the narrative of Bogle Corbet has “no consequential pattern … chapter headings suggest the fragmentary structure, almost like a series of sketches of essays: ‘Emigrants,’ ‘Visitors,’ ‘Evasions,’ ‘Depression,’ for example.”70 On the level of social description, on the level of the scene, Bogle Corbet may anticipate realism. But on the level of plot, the novel hews closer to patchy modernist novels like Jean Toomer’s 1923 novel Cane —or the circular plotting of eighteenth-century meta-novels like Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and Denis Diderot’s Jacques le Fataliste. As Halliwell points out, the temporal shape of Bogle Corbet’s narration resembles that of a private journal, noting only what seems worth preserving, rather than attempting more continuous narration.71 The novel is thus (increasingly) full of lacunae. As Corbet himself explains as he departs for Canada, “I have now only detached notes to make, merely to keep up a connexion in the narrative, until I shall have been settled on our land” (272). Bogle Corbet’s Upper Canada volume differs from most other Romantic-era fiction set in Canada in its apparent lack of interest in indigenous peoples. The parts of Bogle Corbet set in Jamaica are haunted by the presence both of slaves and Maroons (fugitive slaves who have formed their own renegade society in remote parts of the island). Upper Canada, by contrast, includes no comparable local colour scenes involving indigenous peoples. The colony, indeed, is portrayed largely as previously uninhabited and still largely uncleared bush. This was the perspective of the Canada Company. Yet Galt himself enjoyed a cordial working relationship with Upper Canada Mohawk leader John Brant (whom Galt had represented as a British 68

Elizabeth Waterston, “Town and Country in John Galt: A Literary Perspective,” Urban History Review/Revue d’Histoire Urbaine 14.1 (1985), pp. 17–22; here, pp. 21–2. 69 Waterston, Rapt in Plaid, p. 104. 70 Ibid., p. 107. 71 Halliwell, “Galt and the Paratext,” p. 4.

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parliamentary lobbyist and who later, in turn, would assist Tiger Dunlop in surveying the Huron Tract). Guelph, the town Galt founded in 1827, was proximate to Brantford and the populous Haldimand Tract, awarded to the Mohawks for their loyalty to the British Crown, as to several further First Nations reserves bordering Lake Huron and the Huron Tract. If there is little local ethnography, D. M. R. Bentley sees Bogle Corbet offering Upper Canada landscape set-pieces in the mode of settler “picturesque.”72 Like some of Corbet’s moments in the Highlands, key episodes in the novel’s Canadian section—the iceberg looming in the St Lawrence, the non-satirical parts of the Niagara Falls expedition— also evoke the register of the sublime. Eighteenth-century discussions of the sublime described it as inducing overwhelmed awe—and fear. Victoria Woolner argues, indeed, that the “Depression” chapter, and much of volume 3, clearly anticipate what Northrop Frye would define as a quintessential Canadian attitude: a “tone of deep terror in regard to nature.”73

Reception Galt, Josephine McDonagh has observed, frequently separated his life as a businessman from his life as an author, a divide reflected in the differing emphases of his two autobiographies. Subsequent criticism and scholarship, likewise, produced “in effect two Galts: a Scottish Galt who was a novelist and regional writer, and a Canadian Galt who was a colonial pioneer and an early contributor to Canadian literature.”74 Bogle Corbet offers terrain on which these two Galts clearly overlap. Yet most of the novel’s reception history reflects the bifurcation McDonagh identifies. This reception history encompasses three distinct phases. In 1831, as a newly published novel, Bogle Corbet was reviewed quite widely in Britain (and to a lesser degree in North America) as the latest work by the renowned and prolific Scottish regional novelist. More than a century later, in English Canada, the novel was rediscovered as the emergent field of “Canadian Literature” sought usable nineteenth-century ancestors. This phase of reception 72

D. M. R. Bentley, “Romantic Aesthetics of Settlement in NineteenthCentury Canada,” Literary Compass 9.1 (2012), pp. 66–79; here, p. 72. 73 Victoria Woolner, “Scottish Romanticism and Its Impact on Early Canadian Literature,” PhD Diss., University of Glasgow, 2014, p. 41. 74 McDonagh, Literature in a Time of Migration, p. 72.

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spanned about twenty years, beginning in the late 1950s and culminating in 1977, when McClelland and Stewart, a Toronto-based trade press, issued Bogle Corbet (albeit in severe abridgement) as part of its canon-forming New Canadian Library series. Bogle Corbet’s more recent (and still ongoing) rediscovery, in widening (anglophone) scholarly circles, has been interested not so much in the novel’s place in Canadian literature as in its status as an early literary work concerned with emigration, colonisation, capitalism, and globalisation. In practice, most of this scholarship has confined itself to the Scottish and Canadian aspects of the novel; its Jamaican interludes still await sustained scholarly attention. At the same time this wave of scholarship (including several ambitious doctoral dissertations) draws simultaneously on British and Canadian sources, archives, and frameworks. Hence the long gap between the two Galts has finally begun to close. Bogle Corbet’s initial 1831 reception was generally enthusiastic. Its publication was advertised and noted in a wide range of Scottish, English, and North American periodicals.75 And it also garnered a number of substantive reviews in the British press—many in turn reprinted or excerpted in further British and North American newspapers. Many of the substantive reviews praised the novel’s comic and dramatic set-pieces. Indeed the repeated reprinting of particular scenes (the maternity hospital in Jamaica; the iceberg encounter; the comic misprision of Niagara Falls) suggests that the novel’s success lay partly in the development of excerptable episodes.76 In the words of 75

In the United States alone, notice of publication appeared in 1831 in periodicals from the Boston Masonic Mirror and the Edinburgh Review (Boston) to the Lancaster Intelligencer (Pennsylvania) and the National Gazette (Philadelphia). 76 The review of Bogle Corbet in the Standard (London, 23 April 1831), as was often the practice in the period, consisted primarily of lengthy excerpts from the work under review—and was itself in turn excerpted in the Philadelphia Album (5.27, 2 July 1831, p. 211). The Standard, moreover, deemed the third volume’s focus on emigrant experience in Upper Canada of such importance as to deserve a separate Standard article, consisting entirely of excerpts. Much of the review in the London-based Spectator (14 May 1831) was also reprinted in the Edinburgh-based Caledonian Mercury (30 May 1831, p. 3). Several paragraphs from Galt’s introduction to the novel were republished in the Philadelphia-based United States Gazette (24 June 1831, p. 3). A

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the Examiner review, “Though the author never puts himself forward, and lets the course of the story run without interruption, as if it were telling itself, we have seldom read a book more copious in matter for extract amusing and instructing.”77 A handful of rave reviews offered insightful commentary on the novel’s structure and plot—and were themselves polished literary essays in their own right. (Four are therefore excerpted in Appendix 1 of the present volume.)78 These essays tend not only to situate Bogle Corbet in relationship to Galt’s earlier novels, but to offer preliminary summations of Galt’s literary career. Most praised him as a novelistic innovator. The New Monthly Magazine extols Galt as a master of realism in his attention to psychological verisimilitude and understated technique.79 The Edinburgh Literary Journal likewise praises Galt’s fiction for its subtle, psychologically nuanced account of individual and collective lives. Unlike Walter Scott’s Waverley novels, this reviewer notes, most of Galt’s fiction is not obviously historical, set instead in the present or very recent past, yet it remains cognisant both of social pressures and of historical undercurrents. At the same time, this reviewer sees in Galt the sophistication of Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy, alongside the experimental realism of the early eighteenthcentury novel. The reviews both in the New Monthly Magazine and the Edinburgh week before publishing its long review, the Examiner (22 May 1831) had run a brief Bogle Corbet quote: “Statesmen are the only things that look greatest at a distance.” On the same day, the Manchester Times and Manchester and Salford Advertiser and Chronicle had excerpted a longer description from the Jamaica section of the novel of a “Negro Lying-In Hospital” (28 May 1831, p. 7). On 3 July 1831, the Examiner also ran a short excerpt from the Niagara Falls episode, as “Yankee Lingo on Niagara,” while the Bath Chronicle (7 July 1831) ran a paragraph-long excerpt on emigration. Perhaps most strikingly, “An Island of Ice” (an excerpt from the St Lawrence iceberg encounter) is repeatedly reprinted in the United States: in the Evening Post (New York, 22 July 1831), the Franklin Republican and Advertiser (Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, 23 Aug 1831), the Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky, 26 September 1831), and the Free Enquirer (New York, 8 October 1831). 77 The Examiner, 29 May 1831, p. 341 (see Appendix 1, p. 467 of the present volume). 78 See pp. 463–76; further references to the reviews in Appendix 1 are given by page numbers in parentheses. 79 The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal 31 (1831), pp. 553–6.

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Literary Journal are striking for their early and close attention to the relationship between novelistic realism and Dutch genre painting (later to become a key point of comparison for mid-century novelists like George Eliot and her critics). The Edinburgh Literary Journal thus emphasises Galt’s interest in milieux, his attention to the psychic pressures of a mercantile society, the fineness of his detail. Galt’s work, argues the Spectator, is woven so finely that vulgar eyes may fail to detect what it does—and only “a microscope and a patient eye” can discern its full artistry (466). Such terms offer an appropriately textile-centred analogue to Jane Austen’s now famous self-characterisation, in an 1816 letter, as a miniaturist, working with “so fine a Brush” on a “little bit … of Ivory.”80 The 1831 reviews of Bogle Corbet consistently stress Galt’s masterful use of local detail, first-person narration, and characterisation. Corbet’s tale of economic failure in an age of economic and colonial expansion, they argue, evokes the relative ruthlessness of the new dispensation. The London Literary Gazette, however, finds Corbet’s character interesting precisely in the ways his core seems fundamentally untouched by contemporary economic and political pressures: “Bogle Corbet himself is a dreamy, imaginative and somewhat inactive person, ill fitted for a stirring time—and his mercantile prosperity vanishes like a dream, leading eventually to his emigration.”81 “In Bogle Corbet,” writes the Morning Post, “the author has added to his stock of inimitable autobiographies … quite entitled to stand on the same shelf with … Provost Pawkie [narrator of The Provost] … and Micah Balquhidder [actually Balwhidder, narrator of Annals of the Parish].”82 So too for the Spectator’s reviewer, general praise of Bogle Corbet’s subtle characterisations necessitates particular emphasis on its eponymous narrator and principal character, who lays “himself or his assumed self bare, as it were unconsciously, to the world.” Galt, to this reviewer, possesses the power of a “fictitious autobiographer” surpassing “every writer certainly of this day, and perhaps of any time” 80

Letter to James Edward Austen, 16–17 December 1816, in Jane Austen’s Letters, ed. Deirdre Le Faye, 4th edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 337. 81 “Bogle Corbet, or The Emigrants,” The London Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts and Sciences no. 744 (23 April 1831), pp. 260–1; here, p. 261. 82 The Morning Post, 9 June 1831, p. 3.

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(465).83 For the New Monthly Magazine, “he is the novelist, of this age of novelists, whose genius is most nearly of kin to that of [Daniel] De Foe.”84 Yet by the same token, criticisms of the novel focused particularly on its episodic structure, as on its proliferation (and killing off) of characters. Some reviewers registered impatience with Bogle Corbet’s length, seeing in it a sign that commercial pressures shaped Galt’s work. Even the Spectator reviewer, otherwise very positive, wishes that the third volume, with its “more novel and interesting scenes of an emigrant’s life,” could have come sooner (466). Bogle Corbet’s most negative review, in the Englishman’s Magazine of June 1831, finds the novel disappointing. It lacks the “commendable brevity” of Annals or The Provost, and, “written with a unity of didactic purpose” unusual in Galt’s previous writings, is “inferior to them all in this very respect … the interest created … more transitory and vulgar” (468–9). Interestingly, this same reviewer praises Galt’s more comic depictions of idiosyncrasy and eccentricity as equivalents to Laurence Sterne’s delineation of Uncle Toby and Joseph Addison’s of Sir Roger de Coverley. Yet in this particular case, Corbet’s depressive, solipsistic tendencies are held to lead the novel off course. This reviewer also finds Bogle Corbet problematic for its proliferation and underdevelopment of characters, as for the untimely deaths of some of the most interesting and promising characters. The Englishman’s Magazine likewise faults the novel as radically lacking plot, overlong, and with “scenes … described, and characters … introduced, merely for the purpose of swelling out the volumes” (470). Characters are “brought on the stage like the characters in a puppet-show,” yet “all these personages, whom we foolishly expect are about to play an important part to the end of our hero’s fortunes, are 83

See likewise Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s note in his personal copy of The Provost: “This work is not for the Many; but in the unconscious, perfectly natural, Irony of Self-delusion, in all parts intelligible to the intelligent Reader, without the slightest suspicion on the part of the Autobiographer, I know of no equal in our Literature” (cited by Ian A. Gordon, “Introduction,” in John Galt, The Provost, ed. I. Gordon [London: Oxford University Press, 1973], pp. ix–xv; here, p. xv). Ian Campbell concurs: “Galt’s triumphant achievement is the style of fiction in which narrators again and again betray this unconscious self-delusion” (“‘Dependents of Chance’,” in Waterston, ed., John Galt: Reappraisals, pp. 109–18; here, p. 113). 84 New Monthly Magazine 31 (1831), pp. 553–6; here p. 554.

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snatched from the world in a violent and unexpected way” (470).85 Yet Bogle Corbet was also praised by many reviewers as a practical guide to colonial emigration and to the business of empire. A “fitting companion to the inimitable Lawrie Todd,” according to the two-sentence notice in the Bath Chronicle, Bogle Corbet “must prove invaluable to emigrants, from its containing the records of a life full of practical experience.”86 A short review in the Gentleman’s Magazine lauds Bogle Corbet as a delicately didactic novel, bound to give young readers insight into the secrets of trade, while supplying “the most useful suggestions” to “settlers themselves in Canada.”87 Most reviewers concurred that the novel’s final, Upper Canada section was both the novel’s most diverting and the most practically useful part—and more than one wished that similarly nuanced and didactic accounts were available for settlers in other parts of the British Empire. In the Spectator’s words, “We wish New South Wales had now such a book as Canada can boast” (466). The Examiner has generally high praise for Bogle Corbet. Yet it expresses real reservations about the novel’s relatively sanguine depiction of Jamaican slave and plantation life: We have but one quarrel with him, indeed, of any magnitude—which is, for an unfair support he has attempted to give to the advocates of Negro Slavery. Because the slaves in the West Indies are seen animated and mirthful at a festival, is it to be supposed that their condition is one of happiness? He knows less of human nature than Mr. Galt who so judges from such an appearance. (467) And the New Monthly Magazine uses its review to offer a critique of the 85

Like most other reviews, the Englishman’s Magazine makes no mention of the Jamaican parts of the novel—although (in the continuous run-on fashion of the Englishman’s review section, in which reviews are not separated by empty space, subtitles, or any other editorial marking) a review of Rev. W. Wright’s Slavery at the Cape of Good Hope appears in a facing column, opening with a comment on the topicality of the project of Negro emancipation, a hope that it will play an ever larger role in public thinking, and the expectation that it will quickly be enacted. 86 The Bath Chronicle, 25 August 1831, p. 3. 87 The Gentleman’s Magazine, and Historical Chronicle 101 ( January–June 1831), p. 621.

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colonial project itself, here pitched less in an ethical than in a satirical, even cynical tone. Galt’s representation of colonialism, it argues, mystifies its ultimate goals, despite the plethora of local information and tips for settlers it struggles to provide. “Mr Galt knows full well that according to the notion of the Tory Government … the great purpose of Colonies was the maintenance of a Governor, Secretaries, Chaplains, a Staff, and Troops.”88 On the whole, early nineteenth-century reviewers found exceptional interest in Bogle Corbet, both as fiction and as how-to manual. Thereafter, however, Galt’s novel seems to have been quickly forgotten. To be sure, it is mentioned in T. Ostell’s 1832 column in the Calcutta weekly The Oriental Observer, alongside Galt’s The Member and works by Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Susan Ferrier, John Banim, and Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Ostell’s column urged “Secretaries to Mofussil [rural or provincial Indian districts] Book-Clubs, and others possessing a taste for the Literature of Fashionable Life” to purchase from this list of highly praised British and American books for their subscribers or readers.89 This notice serves as a reminder (alongside Bogle Corbet’s own plot) of the British Empire’s economic and literary interconnectedness. And it remains possible that copies of Bogle Corbet were purchased for and were still being read and discussed in rural or provincial Indian towns, even long after its initial publication. Yet there are no obvious traces of further Indian reception—nor even that the novel attracted readers in Upper Canada.90 In Britain, too, Bogle Corbet was never reprinted. Thus by the turn of the century, as J. H. Millar put it in his 1903 Literary History of Scotland, “Some people have read Laurie Todd [sic] …. But no one living (so far as I am aware) has ever read Bogle Corbet.”91 The belated revival of interest in Bogle Corbet, from the 1950s onwards, was focused almost entirely on the novel’s Canadian material. 88

New Monthly Magazine 31 ( June 1831), pp. 553–6; here, p. 554. T. Ostell, “Fashionable Literature,” Oriental Observer 6.53 (29 December 1832), p. 588. 90 It is mentioned in one Montreal journal: “Retrospective Reviews—No. IV: John Galt” [by A. R.], Literary Garland 3.6 (1 May 1841), pp. 263–72. A lengthy review essay of Galt’s work, it describes Bogle Corbet merely as “a guide book, in which amusement is only the vehicle to convey instruction” (p. 269). 91 J. H. Millar, A Literary History of Scotland (London: Unwin, 1903), p. 549. 89

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In 1957, when the Ontario Historical Society had its annual meeting in Guelph, pioneering Canadian literary historian Carl F. Klinck delivered an incisive paper on “John Galt’s Canadian Novels” (partly reprinted in Appendix 1). The talk ended with a searching consideration of why Lawrie Todd and Bogle Corbet were neither the mature masterpieces Galt was clearly capable of, nor the “‘great Canadian novel’ at the very inception of such writing in our country,” works for later Canadian writers to build on. During the late 1950s, a new and ambitious literary reprint series, the New Canadian Library, would seek to ground the recent renaissance of Canadian literature in relationship to Canada’s earlier literary representations. The New Canadian Library was the brainchild of Canadian literature professor Malcolm Ross and publisher Jack McClelland, whose Toronto trade house, McClelland and Stewart, published the series. It proved widely successful, and during the 1960s, given the rise of English-Canadian nationalism, rapid university expansion, and the beginning of Canadian Studies as a discipline, the New Canadian Library became the de facto research and teaching canon of Canadian literature. Yet the New Canadian Library’s volumes were not scholarly editions, and its older works, particularly, were always abridged. The 1977 “reissue” of Bogle Corbet, as its 135th volume, almost twenty years after the series began publication, offers an important case in point. In 1957 and again in 1965, Klinck had called for an annotated edition of Galt’s novel.92 Its New Canadian Library reincarnation lacked not only any annotation but most of the novel’s first two volumes.93 Even McClelland and Stewart’s framing of the reissue, timed to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Guelph and Goderich (the Ontario towns Galt had founded in 1827), tied the book directly to Galt’s legacy as a Canada Company founder and superintendent, arguably at the expense of his standing or interest as a writer. 92

Carl F. Klinck, “John Galt’s Canadian Novels,” Ontario History: Papers & Records 49 (1957), pp. 187–94, and “Literary Activity in the Canadas (1812– 1841),” in Literary History of Canada: Canadian Literature in English, ed. Carl F. Klinck, 3 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), I, pp. 139–58. 93 On New Canadian Library abridgement strategies, see Janet Friskney, New Canadian Library: The Ross-McClelland Years, 1952–1978 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), ch. 4, and Carl F. Klinck, Giving Canada a Literary History, ed. Sandra Djwa (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1991), pp. 152–5.

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The New Canadian Library editors asked University of Guelph English professor Elizabeth Waterston both to introduce the Bogle Corbet reissue and to undertake its radical abridgement. Her decision was to omit the first two-thirds of the book, thereby allowing the rest (including the appended “Statistical Account of Upper Canada”) to be published completely unabridged.94 In the process, however, Waterson’s version of Bogle Corbet became a novel entirely about Upper Canada—and her introduction analysed the new abridgement as if it formed an organic text of its own (only belatedly mentioning that the republication is but part of a much longer, three-volume novel). As published by McClelland and Stewart, the text itself contained no notes explaining what had been excised, where the novel’s previous 262 pages had taken place, nor what characters were alluding to when they discussed earlier episodes or locales. The chapters too were renumbered, leaving no sign of abridgement nor original volume breaks.95 In 1977, when Waterston hosted a dinner in Guelph to celebrate the launch of the New Canadian Library Bogle Corbet, the Toronto Globe and Mail, Canada’s largest and most influential newspaper, covered the party (see Appendix 1). Waterston’s guest list included city dignitaries and a regional who’s who of Canadian literary studies.96 Yet although the dinner made the Globe and Mail social column, the reissued novel itself did not make the newspaper’s book review section—nor did other publications (in Canada or elsewhere) seem to have reviewed it. In the wake of the republication, Douglas Daymond and Leslie 94

As Waterston describes it in a later publication on Galt, “This is an unabridged reprint of Part III of the original three-volume edition” (“Town and Country in John Galt,” p. 22). 95 The New Canadian Library version thus begins on page 262 of the present edition, without any editorial punctuation indicating cuts. Its chapter 1, “Causes of Emigration,” begins four paragraphs into the original chapter of that name (volume 2, chapter 30). It ends with chapter 49, “The Conclusion” (originally volume 3, chapter 39; in the present edition pp. 443–5) followed by the original Appendix (“Statistical Account of Upper Canada”). The New Canadian Library silently omits all other Galt paratexts, including the epigraph and the preface. Even the publication page says simply, “This book was originally published by Colburn and Bentley in 1831,” without mentioning that that original text had been cut by almost sixty percent. 96 Zena Cherry, “After a Fashion: Farm at the Top,” The Globe and Mail (Toronto), 26 July 1977, p. 10 (see Appendix 1).

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Monkman’s 1981 meta-critical anthology, Canadian Novelists and the Novel, did include a passage from Galt’s Autobiography on Bogle Corbet.97 In that context, at least, Galt was now considered a Canadian novelist, and Bogle Corbet a Canadian novel. Yet in W. H. New’s widely taught 1989 History of Canadian Literature, in contrast, Bogle Corbet appears only in the appended chronology—tellingly not in the column listing key works of Canadian literature but in the facing-page column, giving such works’ non-Canadian intellectual and literary content.98 Waterston continued to champion Bogle Corbet. As she argued in 1980, Galt wove many of the threads that would remain as a recognizable part of the Canadian fabric … . The book is very Canadian; and it has been very much ignored. Why? Because it is autumnal, and dour, rather depressing in its story of bush realities …. John Galt’s honesty did not please his contemporary audience in Canada. Will it come to its own in the current wave of interest in early Canadiana?99 It remains unclear, in fact, whether Bogle Corbet ever had any “contemporary audience” in Canada. And even in the 1970s and 1980s, at the height of English-Canadian nationalism, Bogle Corbet, presented as a prophetically Canadian novel, found few buyers or readers.100 Yet around the millennium, scholars began to rediscover and write about Bogle Corbet for obverse reasons: because of its cosmopolitanism, its fascination with emigration as a mass phenomenon, its depiction of unsettled settlers at the dawn of the nineteenth-century British Empire—and perhaps precisely because of its “dourness,” melancholia, and dejection. In recent years, Bogle Corbet—sometimes paired with Lawrie Todd, sometimes on its own—has repeatedly been discussed as exemplary: of nineteenth-century settlement literature’s hybrid, docu-dramatic, self-dramatising character; of the 97

Douglas Daymond and Leslie Monkman, Canadian Novelists and the Novel (Ottawa: Borealis Press, 1981), pp. 28–9. 98 W. H. New, History of Canadian Literature (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989), p. 308. 99 Elizabeth Waterson, “John Galt’s Canadian Experience: The Scottish Strain,” Studies in Scottish Literature 15.1 (1980), pp. 257–62; here, p. 261. 100 For New Canadian Library sales figures see Friskney, New Canadian Library, Appendix B.

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colonial novel; of the entwinement of nineteenth-century Scottish literature and imperial expansion; of circum-Atlantic literature; and of the ways capitalist—and racialist—ideology unself-reflexively permeated Cana​dian settler culture and literature. Some of this reception examines the way issues of class play themselves out in Britain and its colonies, old and new. Bogle Corbet dramatises the high unemployment weavers face in Glasgow, the moral turpitude of London’s nabobs, and the slow economic decline (and moral unsustainability) of the Jamaican plantation system, before moving to Upper Canada, which is thus positioned as the last best hope for the colonial system as for new economic beginnings. Yet for some scholars Corbet’s increasing depression and paralysis suggest he has instead brought imperial malaise along with him to Upper Canada. Psychically, too, Corbet is seen as epitomising the mental cost of repeated displacement and failed homecoming, conditions increasingly common in an age of mass emigration.101 Others read Bogle Corbet with more ideological caution and suspicion. For them, Galt’s novel does anatomise the capitalist transformation of Scotland, Britain (and potentially the world). Yet even more importantly, they argue, it uses its increasing focus on Corbet’s own mental vacancies and sense of lostness to naturalise and mystify this capitalist transformation. In this reading, Corbet’s mental state is not the hallmark of a new psychological realism, but anatomises the psychic contradictions which capitalism and imperialism engender.102 Widespread scholarly concerns about accelerating migration in an economically unequal, ecologically fragile world, about the long-term costs of colonialism and racism, and about indigenous and refugee 101

Katie Trumpener, Bardic Nationalism: The Romantic Novel and the British Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), ch. 6, and “Annals of Ice: Formations of Empire, Place and History in John Galt and Alice Munro,” in Scottish Literature and Postcolonial Literature: Comparative Texts and Critical Perspectives, ed. Michael Gardiner, Graeme Macdonald, and Niall O’Gallagher (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), pp. 43–56; Kenneth McNeil, Scottish Romanticism and Collective Memory in the British Atlantic (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), ch. 5. 102 Daniel Coleman, White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006); Jeffrey Cass, “John Galt and the Colonisation of Canada,” The Wordsworth Circle 44.2/3 (2013), pp. 136–9, and “John Galt: Capitalism and Ecology,” The Wordsworth Circle 50.2 (2019), pp. 247–64.

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rights have helped animate new interest in Bogle Corbet, illuminating new aspects of Galt’s didactic concerns, central character, and comparative case studies. Galt’s novel is catalysing new scholarly debates and opening new vistas for the study of the nineteenth-century novel. May this belated republication of the whole novel not only attract new readers for Galt and for Bogle Corbet, but fuel ongoing interpretations and exchanges.

PREFACE. The object of this work has been to give expression to the probable feelings of a character upon whom the commercial circumstances of the age have had their natural effect, and to show what a person of ordinarily genteel habits has really to expect in emigrating to Canada. Information given as incidents of personal experience is more instructive than opinion. The author’s opportunities to acquire knowledge of the kind which he has here prepared, have been, at least, not common, and it was studiously gathered to be useful to others. The author had proposed to offer the result of his observations in a regularly didactic form, but upon reflection, a theoretic biography seemed better calculated to ensure the effect desired. We disguise medicine, and he but mixes truth with fiction. Whatever, therefore, shall be thought of his attempt, the book will, perhaps, be considered as possessing in some degree a redeeming quality, inasmuch as it contains instruction that may help to lighten the anxieties of those whom taste or fortune prompts to quit their native land, and to seek in the wilderness new objects of industry, enterprise, and care. 20th April, 1831.

N. B. The view in the Appendix of more than two-thirds of the Provinces will probably be esteemed valuable.

BOGLE CORBET; or,

THE EMIGRANTS. CHAPTER I. the prologue. I have led but a rigmarole life, and in preparing to give the world some account of it, I feel myself considerably embarrassed. If I commence with my childhood and school-boy days, assuredly it will oblige me to repeat many things that have been a hundred times better told by as many others; so much alike is the early history of all men. Only monsters and princes are objects of wonder at their birth; and I happen to be neither the one nor the other; but in capacity and in all my characteristics a very ordinary man, distinguished, however, I must say, by a few strange adventures, and, without having an eye in my neck, a little able to discern something within the bosoms of others. I will in consequence properly begin the history of myself about the period when I attained the years of discretion. Perhaps it may be thought in that case it will be a short work, and that I should have better consulted the innate modesty of my nature, had I merely said, leaving all the tale of pleasing sports and boyish days behind, I intend to commence with the æra at which, according to our Scottish law, I exercised the rights of judgment, and chose my curators—those worthies who are known in vernacular parlance by the style and title of doers. But to do so abruptly would perplex my task, and therefore, although I propose to relate only the moving accidents which checquered my fortune from the age of fourteen to the present time, it is still necessary that I should inform the courteous reader that

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both my parents died early, and that I inherited a small modicum of money, which obliged my friends to advise me, at the legal epoch, to place myself under the care of wise and prudent persons, chosen by myself, when possessed of the usual wisdom and knowledge of the world commonly enjoyed by boys of that age. How early other people may date their recollections is a matter of perfect indifference to me; my own remembrance does not distinctly extend farther back than the close of my second year—I mean a clear remembrance of dates and epochal events; for undoubtedly I enjoy a hazy reminiscence of anterior occurrences. I recollect, for example, the sight of a great water, of men who made a loud noise, and of a narrow bed in a dark place. I think also, when at times in the solitariness of the twilight I recall the past, that a dim and distant vision of bright faces smile from the other side of a cold rough wave, and that there is one among them lovely. Oh, how sadly that lovely face still wistfully looks on me! There was another kind one of a different hue; methinks I see her, blithe and carolling, with large good-natured eyes, and though she be black, she has such cheerful teeth, every one of them is a smile in ivory. Her name rings to my heart like a note of the musical glasses— It was Baba. More than fifty eventful years have passed away since the downy-hearted creature left me, and the wound of our parting is still fresh and painful. She had been my nurse on Plantagenet estate, in Jamaica, and was sent with me to this country to see me safely consigned to the care of Mrs. Busby, a relation of my mother. But never was I in arms more fond and kind than in thine, my dear, my dark, but comely Baba! It is just fifty years, a month, a week, and a day, counting backwards from this very night, that Baba left me. It was a beautiful evening, hallowed in my memory by many caresses, and the tears are yet warm on my neck with which she fondled over me, and then departed. From the window I saw her embark in a chaise; I stretched out my hands towards her; the sun was setting; in a little time the carriage moved away, and the sun disappeared behind the mountains;—but the only sun that set to me that night, and it never rose again, was the singing and ever-caressing Baba. Many an evening after, as I have since been told, did I stand watching at the window, and as often as the sun sank behind the hills I stretched out my hands and wept, because she would come no more. Strange! that I should be thus so sentimental—I, who have so

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often been deemed but indifferently furnished with the gentler feelings. But so I fancy it is with most men; the outward gladness and the inward grief are often in harsh discord with one another. They have through life been so with me—and with others.—Alas! man is less a hypocrite than Fortune; she it is that makes us wear a mask—a smiling countenance with a weeping heart, and to assume a virtue when we have it not.—But to return:— I once knew an old man, a man of genius too, as those who are endowed above the commonalty of humankind are said to be, and in speaking with him, as I am now to the reader, he incidentally observed, that were it in his power to live his life again, and had a choice of fate, he would ask for no other than that life and lot with which Providence had been pleased to favour him. It struck me, as he said so, it was with the cunning of age, to ascertain if in my youth and prosperity—for then I was young and prosperous—I anticipated the fruit which my hopes have not yet produced. I looked at him steadily and replied, “Then you must have passed a youth of anguish.” He was an artist, one of great reputation in his line; his pencil dropped from his hand as he looked on me and replied: “Young man, you observe too curiously.” “Nay,” I rejoined, “I have but said what my experience teaches; no man had ever a happier childhood than mine. It was a morning dew-drop glittering to the rising sun, and only so gently shaken on the blade at which it hung as to make its sparkling brighter.” He stopped me, and half earnestly half jocularly said, “You will be happier if you think less of the past; but you have guessed shrewdly of the condition of my early life. It was one scene of unvaried wretchedness; the wherewithal was scant in my father’s house, and poverty begat grudges: my happiness began when that of most men ends.” “What say you?” cried I, as if moved by misanthropy. “Your happiness began when that of most men ends! Is such indeed the gold that the alchymist, Age, obtains from the crucibles and ingredients of experience?” “It is not wise,” was his thoughtful answer, “to tell the world what Age teaches; nor is it judicious to reckon too confidently on the results of experience. But though pain was my portion, I would yet live it over again; and all those who write their own biography, even where it tells but of sorrows, are of the same opinion, and delight, by reflection, in their sufferings.”

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The recollection of this incident reminds me, that in speaking of my life I should not speak of all my actions, and should only let my motives be occasionally disclosed: My intention is to describe frankly, to tell nothing but the truth, not however all the truth; what is not related, the ingenious will be at no loss to discover; and it is only to those able to understand me that the story is addressed. I shall speak as a ghost would relate the tale of its mortal adventures, without fully disclosing the entire motives by which, in that previous state of being, it was actuated. My natural character, variegated as it has been by many vicissitudes—and sudden haps and surprising chances,—will not be concealed. I do not, however, intend to write my confessions, but only so much about things seen and known as will serve to show why I have resolved to seek another world. In doing this I may be deemed a little eccentric—all my days I have been so—and I suspect emigrants are generally of that description. Impatient under the circumstances of the old world, how wretched would the present generation have been, had not an asylum opened for so many of us across the Atlantic!

CHAPTER II. my curators. It was during the spring of the year 1789, that I was instructed to choose my curators. Two gentlemen were proposed to me by Mrs. Busby, the richest, and, of course, the most respectable in the village and its immediate neighbourhood. Had I followed the bent of my own inclinations, I would have made a far different election—I would have preferred Mr. Rhomboid, the schoolmaster, one of the most learned men I ever knew—in his own opinion. There was no fathoming the depths of his knowledge, and I was then beginning mathematics under his erudite tuition. Captain Gorget would also have been my other choice, for he possessed a surprising number of the queerest stories respecting exploits in camps and quarters, and other adventures of subaltern enterprise. I shall never forget how he used to place me on a chest, and talk to me as if I had been King Solomon, comforting me with apples. But I well remember, that although I had not a will in the election, I was yet greatly commended for my prudence, in soliciting the guardianship of the only two gentlemen, who, for many miles around, could in the slightest degree be useful to me in my orphan condition: all their other good qualities and fitness for the office were never mentioned, nor was I ever able to discover them. Mr. Macindoe deserves to be first described; not that he was superior to his colleague, but he was not second to any body—at least he thought so. He had in early life been a merchant, and made, as it is called, some money; when his uncle, an officer in the East Indies, happened to die, and left him a purse that would not flutter in an ordinary breeze. With it and his own savings he bought a farm adjoining to the village, where, having closed his ledger, he built a handsome house, and lived at his ease. He had a Glasgow weekly newspaper brought to him regularly; sometimes he got a letter by the post, and was withal a talkative, hearty, sly, and shrewd retired organization of good humour and corpulency. In so far as the man was concerned, there was certainly no just

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cause for much objection. To me he had uniformly been both kind and civil: while I was yet a child he often bestowed on me nuts and sweeties; and once he gave me a gingerbread lady, with a golden watch by her side, and two black currants for her eyes: she was actually more than two entire hours in my admiring possession before I bit off her head. Having himself been in trade, he had a great reverence for that way of life; and he was in the practice of going often to Glasgow, to hear, as he said, what news King William had gotten. This King William is a statue of his Orange Majesty of that name, and is about as intelligent in his intellectual speculations, as many of those in their mercantile, who study the London Prices Current at his feet. But at the period of which I am speaking affairs of commerce did not trouble me; I was busy with Mr. Rhomboid among the stars, and thought a swaggering comet no less than a planet in the tadpole state, and one of the finest wonders in Nature. To such heights Mr. Macindoe could not aspire. The chief cause of my dislike to him arose from an assurance of his, when I spoke of the heavenly bodies rolling through space millions of miles away, that falling stars were only a kind of scowthers that somehow or another dropped out of the air; I pitied his supreme ignorance. But nevertheless, upon Mrs. Busby’s kind admonitions and maternal hopes that he would be of great use to me, I chose him for one of my curators. The other was Dr. Leach, the surgeon and physician of the village and its vicinity: of him I knew but little previously; he had attended me during the measles, and visited his patients on an old horse as pale as the Courser of Death in the Revelation. He was a lean, tall personage, with a white head, a pigtail tie, and had inspected wounds and given physic in the State of New York during the American war. The exact reason for which he was recommended to me by Mrs. Busby was not very clear; but I think it was because he read pamphlets, and could speak of the improvements in the trade of the world, and the circumstances of man. I do not repeat her precise words, I only give the sense of them in that phraseology with which time has taught me to invest similar ideas. He was, in short, considered an economic philosopher. He knew more of what was then going on among mankind than any of his neighbours; and he had good connexions, in the royal city of Glasgow, not only with gentlemen belonging to the College, but with his brethren of the faculty, and many of the principal merchants. Him also I did not much relish. He was arid in his address—a

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dried alligator—spoke what he said with the emphasis appropriated to wisdom, and though his sentences were few and brief, they were like the mint and other sweet herbs that hung from the lines across the ceiling of his study, not eminent for their substance. He had but one fault, and had Mrs. Busby possessed the discernment of the Queen of Sheba, she would have seen that, although the Doctor so far resembled Solomon, that he could probably talk of the hyssop which grew on the wall, he was never, with all his characteristic taciturnity, solid sentences, and learned pamphlets, able to refuse obedience to the opinions of those who had no pretence to so much knowledge as himself. I doubt if the courteous reader, after this account of my worthy guardians, will be quite satisfied that they were so fit for the trust as the friends of Mrs. Busby thought; so much do station, wealth, and manners govern the notions of society both in town and country. For myself, I look back in vain to discover, if I can, in what their qualifications consisted. Their chiefest excellence, probably, lay in their wives; Mrs. Leach made delicious tea sometimes, and treated her guests with marmalade, of which Mrs. Busby occasionally partook; and there was not a milder, more submissive lady in the three adjoining parishes than Mrs. Macindoe; but I am not quite sure if her meekness came of nature, or was an effect of her obstreperous, bustling, and good-humoured husband. However this may be, I am inclined now to think that the preference for the gentlemen originated in some partiality for their ladies, who indeed were ever particularly kind to me. It being resolved that I should choose the two, Mrs. Busby and myself were invited to take tea in the evening after with the Doctor and his wife—well do I remember the occasion, it was an æra in my existence. The civilities I received from Mrs. Leach would not be credited if I attempted to describe them, but by those who have undergone the same ordeal. She promised that I should find her a mother, and all that; while the Doctor showed me a new book of singular merit. It was the first time I had heard the term; and he told me a still more abstruse fact, that things in France were in a crisis, for man was evidently in a state of perfectability. Altogether, when we came home at night, Mrs. Busby congratulated me on having made so sage a choice, and I only wondered how it was that I could not feel nor see any thing in it to cause rejoicing. Next day, hearing to what trust and honour he had been called,— for he was on one of his wonted visits to King William, in Glasgow,

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when the appointment was made—Mr. Macindoe came himself, and invited Mrs. Busby to bring me with her to dinner; and at dinner it is impossible to describe how much he said and had to say. He talked to me of trade in general, and I replied most pertinently about the wonders of the solar system. Tambouring, he informed me, was making great progress in Glasgow, and was a Godsend to industrious women. Looms were clattering, as he said, and shuttles flying; so that he could not advise me to a trade that was so likely to be a good one as a manufacturer. This dinner, and the tea-drinking of the preceding evening, with the previous important event of choosing my Curators, assured me that some great change had come upon me. New cares, new hopes, a thousand feelings without name took possession of my breast; I became instantly, as it were, a part of the world, and Mrs. Busby, though I had but turned my fourteenth year, said as we were on the road from Weebeild, the residence of Mr. Macindoe, that I really looked that afternoon like a man.

CHAPTER III. the choice of life. For some time after the choice of my Curators had been determined, no particular occurrence took place in my life. I went to school as before, and heard the evening lectures of Mr. Rhomboid on astronomy as usual—of which, to say the least, they remain in my young remembrance as dissertations on mathematical instruments, interspersed with anecdotes of the planets. A little change was, however, made in the course of my studies; instead of geometry I was, on the advice of Mr. Macindoe, advised to learn book-keeping, as he could not see in what way geometry, or indeed any kind of mathematics, could ever serve a merchant, as I was destined to be, especially too as land-surveying was, in his opinion, but a poor trade, and my fortune justified me to look for something better. This was the first inroad on my favourite study of the stars and those hidden influences that move between the seasons of the earth and the orbs of time. Dr. Leach did not quite agree with him that education should be directed exclusively, as he expressed it, to the departments of practical knowledge, and strenuously urged, till overborne by his colleague’s resolute will, that I should persevere a little longer in my classical studies; but towards them my mind never lay. I got my lessons, it is very true, about as well as the other schoolboys, but I never understood them. Grammar was to me the most inexplicable mystery; like Jack Cade of old, I held a verb to be an abomination, and the parts of speech as trammels on the human understanding. When I had gone through my first course of book-keeping, I waited with the proofs of my proficiency, first on Dr. Leach, who, when he had looked at the writing and commended its fairness, apprised me that in the course of a few days he and Mr. Macindoe were to have some serious conversation respecting my future destinies, and among other things he informed me that a new light of exceeding splendour had burst upon France; which intelligence set me much a wondering if the comet, which Mr. Rhomboid had told

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his class was then expected, had appeared there. I then proceeded with the books under my arm to Weebield, where my other doer dwelt, and whom I found with both a letter and his weekly newspaper on a table before him. His lady sat opposite, with domestic cares intent, darning a stocking, a mean employment, premeditating poverty. He received me with his wonted blithe garrulity, and as he was turning over the books, not seemingly greatly satisfied with the penmanship, he talked of what he had just been reading, and occasionally, as it were by marginal notes or parenthesis, addressed himself to me, much in the following manner. “You don’t hold your pen firm enough,—very extraordinary!— Double the quantity of cotton come into Liverpool,—Yes, right enough;—the French are really a flighty people.—Is not this wrong? Sundries, debtor to cash; it should be Indigo to Bills Receiveable.— Only think of six looms in James Aird’s back closs!—that beats print.—Talking of weaving, that’s a good trade, ’twill just suit you, Bogle Corbet,—this Monsieur Necker,”—and so forth. Having thus spoken at some length, he closed the books, and subjoined. “’Tis full time you were looking about you, Bogle Corbet; I have appointed Monday next for Dr. Leach to take a bit of beef with me, you will come, and we shall then settle what you are to be. My mind’s made up that you should be a manufacturer;—bairns must creep before they walk,—you’ll begin with being a weaver—Dr. Leach thinks it not genteel enough, but I say there was no such trade in my younger years. Cotton’s another word for blessing. No, no—I’m determined you shall be a weaver first, and then elevate yourself into a muslin manufacturer—a fine thing that, nothing like it in former days. Only think of John Aird, that lived in the thatched-house behind my spirit cellars, has bigget a shop for six looms, and will give me an heritable bond over the whole, for two hundred pounds to buy cotton; such is the thriving and the thrift of this new trade. Odds! I almost wish I had not left business. Bogle Corbet, my man, ye’ll be a weaver—Phoo! about gentility; I’ll insist on’t; King David himself, was at first but a herd laddie. And does not the Scriptures talk of a weaver’s beam. No, no, Bogle Corbet, ye’ll be a weaver, as the song sings, “‘If it was not for the weavers what should we do, We would lie in our beds and go naked too,  If it was not for the honourable weavers.’

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“No, no, Bogle Corbet, though I wonder how we should get blankets more than clothes, but for the honourable weavers.” After he had spoken some time in this his customary rattling, I at last understood that Dr. Leach was inclined to make me genteel and professional, but that Mr. Macindoe, with a sharper eye, looked into the state of the world, and seeing the evident progress of the cotton-trade, had resolved to make a weaver of me, as a preliminary to establishing me as a partner in some respectable manufacturing house in Glasgow. “Paisley,” said he, “I’ll never think of, for its but an operational place; Glasgow is the town of the trade. They were clever at silk gauze in Paisley, I own that, and by it they are wonderful at the fine muslin; but Glasgow’s the place for you. So ye see, prepare yourself: ye’ll wear a green apron, and may be in course of time, grow lank and lantern-jawed;—but its all in the way of business, Bogle Corbet. By and by, ye’ll strut on the plain stones, cheek by jowl with King William, and I hope in time to see you with as big a belly and as heavy a purse as the best of them;—my word, Bogle Corbet, ye’ll be my Lord Provost!” It was thus manifest that the meeting on Monday next was only pro forma, for my doom was already decided by the firmness of Mr. Macindoe. Whether, however, it was altogether judicious to determine a point of so much importance, without consulting the tastes or bias of the pupil himself, may admit of some doubt; mine certainly never were, nor indeed had I any predilection on the subject. I was the most docile of wards; labour, I perceived, of some kind or other, was the doom of man, and that I must take my portion; it therefore little disturbed me of what kind it was, provided only it was not wet or dirty, for these two qualities, inherent in the nature of some things necessary to the comfort of man, I loathingly disliked; neither do I think was weaving in much estimation with me; but there was a sort of plausibility in the manner in which it was recommended to me, that my slight repugnance was subdued. The choice of business was certainly the second event in my life by which I was to any influential degree affected; and the courteous reader will see that the line proposed by the more worldly of my two curators was just exactly the one which might have been expected from his character. Had Mr. Rhomboid and Captain Gorget been chosen, the probability is, that instead of a manufacturer, I should have been made a military engineer. But in what would it have been better for me? During the war I might have been a little more gay

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and insolent, and at the peace become as humble as soldier-officers in general, when Birmingham blades are seen in pawnbroker’s windows. However, let my tale tell its own moral. I was ductile in the hands of my guardians, and although Mrs. Busby, when sometimes she was not quite pleased with me, used to say that I was as odd and obstinate as a philosopher, I am certain it was a calumnious ebullition of passion. That I may have had something of the oddity of humour ascribed to the lovers of truth, perhaps was not altogether matter of suspicion. When flourishing in my May of trade, it was called wit, and curious shrewdness; but now, in my sear and yellow leaf, the October of my days, the old phraseology has come up again, and more than once I have overheard it said of myself, he had always something odd about him. This, however, is unmerited disparagement, for, in my own opinion, I have been as wise as my neighbours; and perhaps now and then saw as far into a millstone as the sharpest sighted of them all.

CHAPTER IV. the deliberation. The courteous reader cannot expect, after the lapse of so many years, that I should be able to recollect exactly the conversation which took place between my curators on the ever-memorable Monday. The substance, however, can never fade from my mind; it was prospective to an event that was to bias and colour all my future life, and it made an indelible impression. I do not, therefore, hesitate in giving the dialogue in its original form; soothing any reluctance which may happen to arise in my conscience for doing so, by recalling to mind that it will not be erroneous in the most important particulars. Indeed, on this occasion I have no alternative, for without the dramatic style, I should fail to convey a just and fair idea of the two gentlemen—now long departed and “remembered only for their virtues,”—as an amiable clergyman, who here shall be nameless—says as often as any, even the least correct in conduct of his parishioners, passes the Rubicon of eternity. The affair was dignified to the household of Mr. Macindoe, with what in common talk is called, a company. Besides the Doctor and Mrs. Leach, Mrs. Busby and myself, the aforesaid Mr. Aird with his spouse from Glasgow were invited to dinner, and judiciously too, for it was with him that I was destined to be placed, if the Doctor should be consenting, and of his consent Mr. Macindoe made no bones, but with the habitual indulgence ever vouchsafed to his own intentions, he had previously determined it should come to pass. Of the feast I shall not describe the particulars; it no doubt consisted of all the delicacies of the season within the compass of our host’s means, and the extent of the village. I only recollect that we had an exquisite Florentine pie, from which I deduce that it was holden sometime about the end of the year; I have not, however, a clear remembrance of any other circumstance. The Florentine alone still lingers sweet in my memory. As soon as the cloth was removed, according to the custom of those days, the wine decanters were placed on the table, and with

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them a punch bowl of the size commonly called a cobble, with a square bottle of old rum, an article for which Glasgow has been always famous, and which has procured for it the almost poetical epithet of the rum antique city, ever since Walter Scott called Edinburgh his own romantic town. Beside the bottle was placed a sugar-basin, and a plate with a knife on it. “Shusy,” said Mr. Macindoe to the girl, winking at the same time to the Doctor, “if thou’lt look in the cupboard, I must give the gentlemen—and the ladies will be none the worse of another of the same, according to the Psalms of David appointed by the General Assembly and so forth—thou’lt see a few testimonials, six yellow bonny things, that it is not always for nothing I pay my devoirs to King William—wilt thou bring them hither, and set the granny jug at my foot.” Shusy did as she was desired, and produced six limes in a teasaucer, and placed at the same time near her master’s feet a pitcher of the purest from the coolest corner of the well. I should here mention, to account for the almost English tongue of Mr. Macindoe, that he had in his youthful years been some time in the West Indies, where he had learned to speak in a manner intelligible to Christians, for it was not then the fashion to consider Scotch as a classical language and worthy of acquiring, to enable all the world to understand the works of the Border Minstrel. I may as well add, that Doctor Leach, having passed his early life in the Army, spoke in the emphatic language of the service, a brief decisive and energetic vernacular, more like English than is the American dialect, but something of a broader sound, with less of cadency, than may be uniformly heard in London. As for Mr. Aird, his speech was genuine Trongate. Whilst the bowl was brewing, two glasses of the wine circulated, but before a third was filled, it was discerned by the whole party that the punch was ready. Accordingly they all drained their glasses, and sent them in to receive the new beverage, for in those frugal times it was not the usage in such houses as Mr. Macindoe’s to furnish the guests with more than a single glass each. However, that was no obstacle to convivial munificence in other respects. The punch being ready and the glasses charged,—the King and Constitution were previously drank in the wine,—Mr, Macindoe turned himself to me, then about seventeen years of age, and said, “Bogle Corbet, my lad, this is an occasion made on purpose for you, and may you never get a worse dinner, though certainly the

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broth might have been better boiled,—ahem! gude wife, do ye hear that!—well, Bogle Corbet, we are here met, and I have duly considered what the Doctor has often said to me—ahem!—or ought to have said,—That there is nothing now-a-days like the manufacturing line.” “Mr. Macindoe,” interposed the Doctor, “I do not recollect that I ever emitted an opinion on the subject.” “Well, well, Doctor, we’ll not cast out about that; but if ye did not, no man could better than yourself prove all its advantages. However, we can defer the consideration of that particularity till another time, and keep to the matter in hand, which, Bogle Corbet, as I was saying, is a lucky thing for you; ye have only to put your heel in your neck and whirl yourself into Mr. Aird’s loom-shop;—I hope, James, ye’ll not object to take him; but how is the punch? don’t you think it would stand a leetle squeeze of the lime?” “I am of opinion,” replied the Doctor, “that we should consult the predilections of our ward himself. It has not been the custom for many years—” “You are quite right,” interrupted my other curator, “and I think it smacks too much of the souring; a small nob of sugar will mend all. Ladies, this is real prime; take off your heel-tops and send me your glasses. No doubt, Mr. Aird, ye’ll have some notion where Bogle Corbet, poor fellow, should be boarded. Don’t you think, Doctor, that Mrs. Wadset, if she could be persuaded to take him, would make a capital Landlady? Oh! such an alteration it is, to even her, to taking lodgers. There was not a more topping merchant than her husband in all the Virginia trade, before the war. Bogle Corbet, would not you like to bide with Mrs. Wadset?” “He never heard of her before,” said my most worthy Mrs. Busby. “If ye had riddled with a riddle, the whole tot of the widows of Glasgow, ye could na hae chosen from the leavings a more discreet woman.” “But,” said Dr. Leach, “are we not proceeding too fast? I beg to observe——” “Ay, ay,” cried Mr. Macindoe, “I should have given the toast first; this is Bogle Corbet’s health, and good luck to him, both as a weaver, and as a manufacturer!—I’m thinking, gude wife, your teakettle’s boiling;—Bogle Corbet, here’s your health, my lad.” “Really, Mr. Macindoe,” interposed the Doctor, “we ought not to be in such haste; I was not aware that the matter had been decided before I came here.”

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“Doctor, Doctor, if ye had been a man of business, ye would have known that matters of trade are best managed by settling them at once, and consulting about them after. However, it is a great satisfaction to me, to find your opinion so conjunct with mine. Take off your glass, Doctor; and, Mr. Aird, ye’re no’ feared for the road. It’s no’ the length but the breadth of it that should trouble you when ye go from my house.” “Deed, Mr. Macindoe, I’ll ne’er deny that your drink’s worth the taking away wi’ us. It’s no’ the first time that I hae stagger’d aneath the burden; but I’ll gie you a sentiment: ‘Let Glasgow flourish by the weaving of cotton.’ Bogle Corbet, ye canna but cock your wee finger aboon your neb to that.” At this crisis the ladies rose and went away. An end was removed from the table, which was wheeled towards the fire, and after some other adjustments the deliberation was resumed. “Well,” said Mr. Macindoe, after he had again filled the gentlemen’s glasses, “this has been a highly satisfactory conversation, and I must here before my colleague frankly declare, that in all the three years we have acted together as Bogle Corbet’s doers, we have never once differed. Is not that true, Doctor? Indeed, considering your experience, I have had but to bow my head to the suggestions of your practical understanding, and to follow in the right course.” “I am much obliged to you, Mr. Macindoe,” said Dr. Leach, “but in this matter—” “There could indeed be no difference of opinion. The cotton trade presents a great opening, and we could not shut our eyes to the manifest advantage it is to Bogle Corbet. Don’t you think we would be the better of a biscuit, a slice of tongue, or a capling? Bogle Corbet, touch the bell; we’ll have it to the next bowl. A cobble is but a small boat; I wish the gude wife had thought better of the occasion, and given me the bigger bowl; but women will have their own way sometimes, though I must allow Mrs. Macindoe is one of the best of her kind; but, Mr. Aird, will ye see to Mrs. Wadset? It was a happy thought to think on her.” “And are ye really resolved, Mr. Macindoe?” inquired the Doctor, in a tone that betokened compliance. “Not if there is any thing to be alleged against the fitness of the lady; and it will help her—she’s cousin to my wife—and you know the old saying ‘a friend in need, is a friend indeed;’ we’ll make it our sentiment.”

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Thus was it decided, that I was to be a manufacturer. The courteous reader will discern how ably and fully all points of the question were discussed, and with what hilarity it was so unanimously arranged.

CHAPTER V. the workshop. After some necessary preparations had been made, a day was appointed when I should leave my rural haunts, and take up my abode as an operative in the workshop of Mr. Aird. This was to enter life; an event, the first which makes youth thoughtful, and is equally important to young men, as marriage to the gentler sex; I felt it to be of great importance to me. The few remaining lessons which I received from Mr. Rhomboid went in at the one ear, and out at the other. They were like the flight of migratory birds, and left no trace behind. All around the village became more and more interesting, but there was an apathy, as I thought, in the aspect of every scene which made me feel as if sullenness had touched Nature, and she was ungrateful for the adoration with which, in my simplicity, I had worshipped at her shrines. The stars too, that had ever been my darling study, lost much of their influence, and my whole imagination was filled with shuttles and looms. It could not, however, be justly said, although the workshop did supply my mind with the furniture of many images, that they were selected with much solicitude; quite the reverse. I had submitted to the proposition of Mr. Macindoe as I learned the lessons of the school at the request of Mr. Rhomboid, merely from a habit of acquiescence, a little elevated by a vague conception that I might find a use for them hereafter. Thus it happened, that the event of sending me into Glasgow, while the contemplation of it eclipsed all previous records in my memory, and gave rise to strange and even fantastical trains of reflection, was in itself far from being the most alluring that might at the time have come to pass. It was not, however, disagreeable, for it presented a change of scene and of occupation, and that to a boy of seventeen is, if not always a pleasure, something in which there is much enjoyment. But if my head was plenished with the apparatus of my trade, I had formed no very correct idea of many other things which make

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the weaver’s shop initiate to the world. Looms, yarn, and pirns, a whirring noise, and men with pale lank faces, made up the sum of all I thought of. The cares and anxieties that many suffered, the light-hearted gaiety which prompted others to sing, the murmurings of spirits uneasy with their fortunes, the carkings of discontent, and the arrogance of ambition, which were all there, I had not imagined, and they burst upon me as if I had been plunged into a new element. At first, from the village notions of the condition of a weaver, and the ribaldry of my school companions, I did not much expect to meet with beings altogether equal in degree to myself, but I was mistaken; the majority of Mr. Aird’s men consisted of young gentlemen, the younger sons of neighbouring lairds, destined like myself to be settled in due time in warehouses, and to have workshops of their own. There was in consequence, perhaps, more of decorum amongst us than in the common factories, and, undoubtedly, we regarded our tasks more as lessons than as real business. Still there was a necessary proportion of men who followed weaving as a trade, sedate and considerate, who looked to no higher station in the world, and were habitually reconciled to their lot. The contrast between these and the novices, if I may so call those who were like myself, was, soon after my initiation, very obvious. Day after day the true operatives worked in an even tenour—they were punctual in their attendance, industrious and uniform in their manners; but the young gentlemen were in almost every respect different. They seldom observed punctuality as to time; often yawned over their looms; and some grew irritated in tying broken threads. I remember an irascible lad who in a passion flung himself headlong through his web, and hurrying from the shop, enlisted for a soldier; his friends obtained his discharge with difficulty, but were ultimately obliged to buy him a commission. These, however, were rather exceptions to the general rule amongst us; without question, however, the distinction between the weavers by profession, and those destined for another and a higher sphere, was very obvious. Mr. Aird in the mean time continued to thrive; the trade became every day more and more prosperous, and he repaired other premises for the reception of additional looms. I could not boast of any extraordinary proficiency neither with him nor when I had been at school; nor was I always the steadiest among my fellows; but it so happened that when the new workshop was ready, I was, on the peremptory advice of Mr. Macindoe, given in a jocose style, placed

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in it, chiefly on account of the tainting example of the irregularities in which my other companions indulged. In this new shop a different scene presented itself. The men were all equals and companions in humble life; I was the only one there that could in any measure aspire to the rank of a gentleman, and a certain constitutional pensiveness restrained me from mixing in their familiarities. My disposition, however, to observe was now awakened; at least it was in that shop I first became conscious of receiving pleasure by remarking the harmony between conduct and character. Among the men, a great diversity in their predilections was obvious. They were generally young, dependant solely on their own earnings, and in consequence were much freer in their humour and actions than even the more irregular youths from whom I had been removed. The gentlemen were self-controlled by some regard to their connexions and stations, and the mature and steady workmen, among whom they were placed, had families to provide for, and were brought up in quieter times, and lived as if their lot admitted of no considerable vicissitude. My companions were a race of another kind; they consisted chiefly of those sort of reckless young men by whom the ranks of the army are filled; clever, industrious, though in the latter quality not equal, and, like others entering the world, prone to speculation, and often discussing questions that but little pertained to their condition. At this time the doctrines of the early French Revolution were making rapid progress, and Mr. Aird’s weavers caught the epidemic. Some of the gentlemen, not however many, became tainted, and, to a man, every one of the ordinary weavers was infected. The shop was actually a jacobine club. A subscription by a small sum was raised to buy a democratical newspaper for the use of the members; seditious pamphlets were eagerly bought and borrowed; a man was actually hired to read to those who were either not good at the art themselves, or were solicitous to work and be instructed at the same time. Still, though the French example, and the crude and ill-digested philosophy of the pamphlets ministered to the dissatisfaction of the men, and intoxicated their sanguine fancies with unattainable hopes, there was nothing like a combination among them. A few wild and intemperate spirits no doubt entertained insane projects of reform in the Government and the state of man; but undoubtedly the far greater part were actuated in their schemes for the improvement of

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society, as it was deemed among them, by motives of good-will and fair dealing, undeserving, in many instances, of the contumely with which they were regarded by the higher ranks and those attached to the existing order of things. This is but justice, and without the truth of it be admitted and borne in mind, it will be difficult to account for many of the phenomena that I saw in the morning horizon of my life.

CHAPTER VI. a proposition. During the winter of ——, I was one day warming myself at the workshop fire, in the interval when the men were all absent at breakfast, except one Eric Pullicate, with whom I happened to fall into conversation concerning the French affairs. Something extraordinary had occurred in them, and formed a prominent feature in the London Newspapers, received that morning. The accident of his being there alone, I am unable to explain, but it excited my attention; it seemed as if it had been intentional, and a slight air of studied carelessness visibly perplexed the freedom of his accustomed manner. I made, however, no remark on his appearance; I was indeed but slightly acquainted with him, knowing him only as one belonging to the establishment, and possessed of considerable influence over the other men. Eric Pullicate was about thirty, but a gravity of demeanour made him look older. He was of very humble origin, and yet his education was much above his station; for he had been the poor scholar of a grammar-school, in which all the ordinary branches of instruction were taught, with mathematics and geography. In stature, he might be rather under the middle size; he was sturdily built, and though his complexion was pale, the effect of his sedentary vocation, his countenance indicated vigour, and possessed a singular cast of expression, which I cannot better describe than by saying it was the dawn of an inward intelligence. He stooped; and although his dark eyes were at once bright and inquisitive, he had a sinister way of looking from under his brows occasionally, which materially impaired the general fortitude of his features. This peculiarity, with a high forehead approaching to baldness, and oily black hair, gave him a puritanical austerity of appearance, which often caused him to be observed, and even to prompt the spectator to inquire who he was. In a word, without being at all prepossessing, he was undoubtedly an interesting person; and yet I must confess that he inspired me with something like the antipathy entertained for Doctor Fell,

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I do not like thee, Doctor Fell,   The reason why, I cannot tell; But ’tis a thing I know full well,   I do not like thee, Doctor Fell.

However, as we were standing together in a cold morning at the fire, it would have been sullenness not to have spoken with him, and accordingly, as I have said, we entered into a kind of political conversation; for all sedentary tradesmen are curiously disposed to be politicians. “I’m thinking, Mr. Bogle Corbet,” said he, “that ye’ll soon be quitting the shop? It’s well for the like of you that have friends to do for you. I have been now, since I left the tailor’s board, five years a weaver, and I see no better opening than I did at first.” There was so much of biography and of discontent in this address, that it surprised me, and I wist not very will what to say, so I only answered to his preliminary interrogation. “I believe it is intended that I shall be removed in the course of the summer.” “Have you any notion where they mean to place you?” was his reply, looking at me with one of those shrewd sidelong knavish glances which I have noticed as one of his remarkable peculiarities; without hesitation, I at once said, “To Mr. Thrums’ warehouse; or to Pirns, Treadle’s, and Co.” “Two very different sort of places,” replied Eric; “Thrums is a natural high-flyer, and Treadles is a real equitable man. If I were you, I would put in a word myself for his warehouse.” This might not have been the first occasion in which I heard political partialities spoken of as qualities which enhanced the good or bad of character; but it is the earliest instance I now recollect, and it was imprinted on me by what followed and engrained by after rumination. “Thrums,” said I, “has always been considered a true gentleman; and Treadles, I have heard, carries his black-nebbit notions beyond good manners.” “Gentleman!” replied my companion, with a soft sneer; “that’s fast becoming a poor trade. Thrums looks as he were made of pipe-clay, and all his men of common mud. He has not a heart for a fellow-creature’s rights; the like o’ me,—he may be easier to you— he regards with widened nostrils. But the day’s dawning—we’ll be upsides soon with him and his.”

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Whether there was any alteration in the accent with which this was said from Pullicate’s usual manner, and that it implied a threat, it is impossible at this distant period to say, but the words are still all clear in my memory, and I well remember that I inquired with so much force what harm Thrums had done to him, that he surveyed me with a glance from head to foot, and then eyed me suspiciously for a moment. “Harm! the man has done no harm to me,” was the reply; “but he’s one of the crew that thinks the world was made for them, and all of a lower degree for toil and servitude. But the time’s coming when justice will evenly rule the earth, and Thrums be taught that he’s no better than Eric Pullicate. It’s the duty of us all to help it forward. Will ye no’ lend a hand in the good work?” “What work?” was the single question with which I replied. At that time the republican spirit of the French revolution was wide abroad, and I had, in common with the whole nation, heard of the secret machinations of the democrats, who were then shaking the very foundations of society. I had therefore no doubt from the preceding strictures on Mr. Thrums, that the good work was to assist in some evil design on him and his party; my answer, in consequence, ought more properly to be considered as an interjection of wonder than as an inquiry: Eric Pullicate did not, however, so receive it; but coming nearer to me, and lowering his voice, he said in a whispering tone:— “It’s a shame, Mr. Bogle Corbet, to keep you longer in the dark— all of us in the shop are of the same mind, and when you go from us at night, though others seem to leave the house also, they come back, and debate concerning the rights of man. We have twice considered about letting you into the secret, and last night I was authorized to break the ice. There’s no harm in it, only the time’s not ripe in this country for us to come forward as we will do.” It had not then been acknowledged by any measure of the Government, at least it was not thought so by the weavers, that there could be much danger in discussing points of politics; the exposition of Pullicate did not therefore greatly surprise me; on the contrary, my self-love inhaled flattery from what he said, conceiving that, as I was the only individual of the gentle class in the shop, the other workmen had been backward merely from bashfulness in asking me to join in their deliberations. Accordingly I expressed my thanks to Pullicate for inviting me to their nocturnal sittings, and that same evening I was regularly admitted as a member, for they

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had constituted themselves into a club, and held a correspondence with several others of the same kind. In this manner I was drawn into the democratic connexion. It could not be said that I was naturally inclined to the doctrines of the sect—my inclinations lay the other way—and my curiosity, always strong, had perhaps more to do in the business than my judgment. The wary observations on the respective politics of Thrums and Treadles had struck me as singular, and the plausible insinuation to the prejudice of the former; above all, the secret sittings of a debating society, combined to interest me. But I was not fit to be a distinguished orator among them; my nature was, if not modest, nervous and shy; I was too easily agitated ever to deliver myself with the equanimity so essential to a speaker, and had imbibed in the course of my juvenile reading and the traditions of our village, an enterprising predilection for the olden and adventurous. It was one of my boyish fancies to dream of making myself famous.

CHAPTER VII. the club. Without doubt the deliberations of the club assisted to enlarge my understanding, for we discussed all subjects, never deterred by ignorance from investigating the most abstruse. At last, however, the progress of events in Paris began to affect our deliberations in Glasgow; general philosophy, religion, morality, and metaphysics, gradually declined amongst us, and the rights of the human race became more and more our most impressive topic. Out of doors, Alarm began to shake himself, and to rouse the kingdom with his baying. A wall of partition was erected, and every day strengthened, between the defenders of social order, and the friends of the human race. The Aristocrats mounted their pedestals, and their adversaries shouldered the pickaxes of destruction; Government girded its loins for war, and my curators somehow heard of our nightly meetings, and deemed it their duty to interpose for my salvation, as it was called in the strong language of the time. There was, however, but little reason, had they correctly estimated my character, to apprehend that my principles would suffer any taint; for I had been always, from constitutional bias, though in manners soft and pliant, one who indulged his own imagination, and was not greatly susceptible of impressions from others. When I look back at our nightly meetings through the haze of many years, diminished in their importance by the later knowledge of greater things, I can scarcely imagine by what enchantment they should have ever appeared otherwise than ludicrous; and yet they were managed with a degree of decorum that seemed to want but the illumination of a brass chandelier, and a wig on the president, to have been as dignified as those of the noblest senate on the whole earth. The fire was lighted up anew. Two cross sticks, suspended by a string from a rafter, presented four lights; Eric Pullicate, the chairman, with his hat on, sat at a lame table, one foot of which was supported by a brick; on this table stood a halfpenny glass inkstand, and

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a boy’s copy-book for the minutes of the proceedings, with several pens and sheets of paper, lay before him, and a candle in a bottle served to reveal the holes under his arms, and other emblems or realities of democracy at his elbows. Still, though at the recollection of these circumstances a smile will rise, I cannot disguise that I have tasted there the pith and marrow of sweet eloquence, and listened to occasional exclamations of natural energy that will ever ring in my remembrance. One evening, as we were thus assembled in conclave, a smart rapping on one of the windows disturbed the session. It happened that I was nearest the door, and in consequence went to open it. No sooner had I done so, than a rude hand roughly drew me out, while the authoritative voice of Mr. Macindoe commanded me to leave that den of sedition, and come with him. A slight rustle within followed this boisterous order, but no attempt at hindrance was made, and I submissively did as I was desired. Mr. Macindoe, as he walked in the moonlight before me, appeared expanded to a magisterial magnitude, and flourished his whip like one in indignation. He passed on with stately strides to the Black-bull Inn, looking every now and then behind to see that I was coming, giving as often an emphatic swing with his whip-arm, but never condescending to speak. On our arrival, he walked straight up-stairs, desiring me to follow; and, without questioning the Highland waiter, who was then standing on the landing-place, proceeded to a parlour at the west end of a long passage. On entering it, there was Dr. Leach, seated with another gentleman, whom I soon learned was Mr. Thrums, who had, during the American war, been a member of the Town Council, and cherished some expectation of being soon so again. “I catched them in the fact!” were the first words that Mr. Macindoe uttered; “a fine story; such a set of state coblers! but I did not stop to ask any question, for this great Mirabeau of the convention came himself to the door, and I snatched him forth, a brand plucked from the burning: my word! but yon is a gunpowder-plot.” “Hey, hey!” said Mr. Thrums, “then it is a’ true, and we’re on the eve of a’ French work.” “True! I never thought that things had come to such a pitch; they had all on bloody caps of liberty.” This happened to be the fact, but only in one instance; for an elderly man, who was a visitor, being troubled with the rheumatism in his head, had brought his red kilmarnock in his pocket, and actually had it on, but the intelligence was astounding. Dr. Leach

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declared it was monstrous! adding— “Things were bad enough in the American war, but the Yankees never were so bad as to wear red night-caps; though on the night when the King’s statue was destroyed at New York”— “Don’t talk of Yankee-doodle doings. They never had a Bastille to take”—and turning to me, he added, shaking his head, “No more of yon,—no, no, neither Dr. Leach nor I would be answerable for the consequence. The morn’s morning you shall go to the warehouse of Mr. Thrums and eschew the evil one. I could see him as I looked in at the window, sitting yonder like Lord Braxfield in the Court of Session,—‘A tousy tyke, black grim and large,’ as Robin Burns has said of auld Nick.” “I thought,” said I meekly, “that it was meant to send me to the warehouse of Mr. Treadles?” “What you thought, and what your mother thought when you were born, are two different things, young man;” replied Mr. Macindoe. “But that freewill doctrine comes of your concoctions yonder.” “I must say,” interposed Dr. Leach, “that I also did think we had spoken of Mr. Treadles—no offence, Mr. Thrums—men of more credit than you and—” “I should be sorry if put to the necessity of differing in opinion with you,” replied Mr. Macindoe; “but this is a case of speed. Mr. Treadles is full-handed at present; trade has been slackening, and, no other of my friends will have an opening in his warehouse before Midsummer; that comes of the lower orders growing political. I’m sure both of us are much obliged to Mr. Thrums here for his readiness to oblige us. I would not wish my worst enemy a heavier judgment than the cares of a doer, especially a democratic genius like this scoundrel here. How durst you, Sir, to meddle with liberty and equality without the leave of me and Dr. Leach?—However, this is dry work, gentlemen—we’re no’ without the need of a solacium; touch the bell and order the where-with-all;—well, well, but yon was a jobicine club; I saw a blackaviced one, with an eagle’s neb, and a wide mouth, was he your Robin Spiers?—Such parley voo doings were never seen in Glasgow.” Thus my transit from the workshop to the warehouse was as sudden as from the school-desk to the loom; for Mr. Macindoe was one of those men who pride themselves on the rapidity and decision of their actions. He affected in every movement as my guardian to consult his colleague, and I am inclined to think that he really believed he did so, but the result was uniformly according as he had

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himself alone predetermined. And thus it happened, even when he had calmed from the agitation occasioned by the haste with which he acted in his duties, that the Doctor’s endeavours to slip in a word of tendency to expostulation, as he did on that evening, were always without effect. The business was then settled, and happily too, and so completely in accordance with what the Doctor had advised on the subject, that he was never able to offer an opinion at all. He would in fact have been quite safe in conceiving himself to have really directed the whole course of my wardship, though he never once suggested or could take a part in any proceeding; all was the work and plan of his coadjutor, and yet I remain to this hour verily of opinion that Mr. Macindoe persuaded himself, in whatever he did, that he was swayed by the advice of Doctor Leach.

CHAPTER VIII. the warehouse. I had not been long placed in the warehouse when I perceived that the agitations of the world were increasing: perhaps being then more in the public than when at the loom I only saw more of them. We often deceive ourselves, by imagining an augmentation of affairs, when we but sink deeper among the narrower and more rapid circles of the vortex. Of one fact, however, I certainly soon became sensible, a fast-widening breach between the higher and the lower classes. This produced a vague apprehension that the latter would in the end prevail; and as I had, during my attendance in the warehouse, rather too much solitary leisure, it filled me with many odd and strange speculations respecting society and the destinies of mankind. It would have been wiser had my reflections been directed to the craft and mysteries of trade; but I have never yet been wise. I could sell cotton cloths and muslins adroitly at the prices fixed upon them; no clerk could make neater bills; but it never happened in all the time I was with Mr. Thrums, that I was required to purchase a single article—and it is in buying that the whole craft of trade consists—yet my steadiness, assiduity, and neat penmanship begat for me a reputation of some distinction, as a promising young man of business. I was thought to enjoy the light of the full orb of fortune, while only the half of its disk was revealed. It is necessary to request a special remembrance of this, for without doubt my one-eyed knowledge had an important influence on my subsequent career. I had not, however, been long in the warehouse, when the different interests which I had observed arising in the world, received a sudden shock. The French had rushed to such extremities in their haste to mend the state of things, that it was deemed necessary, for the security of the old institutions of the neighbouring nations, to make war. Commerce, in consequence, was suddenly driven back— much mercantile distress ensued—the orators and philosophers of the workshop were thrown into idleness—their meetings were disturbed and broken up—many looms stood still, and the weavers

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in hundreds enlisted. Mr. Thrums was among the sufferers, and was in the course of the year obliged to declare himself a bankrupt. In that crisis, Mr. Macindoe again interposed. Naturally shrewd in matters of business, and wary to a degree, almost seemingly inconsistent with the garrulity which formed the most remarkable of his peculiarities, he pointed out to me the dislocation of the times, and advised me to see a little of the world, before thinking of forming any new connexion. I did so; I went to the neighbouring mart of muslins, Paisley, and prolonged my journey to Greenock, savory with shipping, herrings, and tar. Edinburgh was my next excursion, and I returned home by the way of Fife, passing through Dundee, Perth, and Sterling. When I had thus improved my understanding, and acquired, as Mr. Macindoe said, a correct knowledge of the world—some idea of the value of which may be conjectured by the two several journeys having occupied thirteen days,—I felt myself in the enjoyment of great advantages. Few then of the young men of Glasgow had in so short a space of time seen so many strange places: travelling for information was indeed, at that period, not much accounted among them; I was therefore fully justified in holding my travelled head considerably above those of my neighbours. Dr. Leach, whom I first visited—for at the time Mr. Macindoe was with his wife at Gourock, dabbling in the salt water—did not, I freely acknowledge, very highly appreciate my attainments during the tour; and there was perhaps some degree of justice in the coolness with which he seemed to listen to the marvels I had witnessed: but this was to be pardoned in a man who had been at New York, and seen so much of the world among soldiers in a transport. When Mr. Macindoe returned home the case was far different. He received me as one considerably augmented in importance; treated me with the respectfulness due to a man and a traveller: he even condescended to joke with me as an equal, and made me sensible that the epoch of my boyhood was passed. To him I was most minute in my descriptions, which he enjoyed as a feast of fat things. I had kept a journal, I lent it to him, and he declared, when he returned it, that he did not think there was such another entertaining book out of print—it might be so. He was, however, much delighted, above all, with one word. In speaking of undulatorated Edinburgh, I described it as a city, in which the inhabitants were distinguished over those of many capitals by the variety of their genuflections. These he chose to make a bad pun upon, and whenever he became a little tosy after dinner and over the

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punch-bowl, he used to tell his cronies when I happened to be there, how much I had been jocose with the Edinburgh Jenny Flections. The autumn after my summer tour was undoubtedly the first sabbath of my life. School I always have thought was one of the most drudging of workshops; and as for Sunday with Mrs. Busby, who was a sincerely pious lady, and had a sister married to a minister of the Gospel, it was remarkable as the heaviest day of labour in the whole week—what with getting the Catechism and the Mother’s Courages by heart, Psalms of David, and reading chapters; sometimes the Pilgrim’s Progress, and Visions of Heaven and Hell, but, above all, Woderow’s Church History, Fox’s Book of Martyrs, and such other legends of Scottish Presbytery—Jesu Maria! it was to me truly a serious and a solemn day! But as I was saying, that idle autumn was the first time of rest I had ever enjoyed, and I made the most of it. I doubt, however, if the reader will greatly approve of my manner of doing so, especially if he be a sober, pains-taking man, and prudently considers that his chief end is to make money and to feast neighbours a little more topping than himself. Mr. Macindoe had, after my return, held with me, in the presence of Dr. Leach, a very satisfactory deliberation on my affairs, in which of course he carried every thing his own way. At that deliberation it was determined I should have the interval at my own disposal till the spring, by which time the ravelled skein of trade and manufactures, it was expected, would be disentangled and cast into clues again, when he would look out for a sedate young man of business, with a little money, to begin the world with me as a manufacturer; for in the ensuing January I was to become of age, after which, as he very sagaciously observed, I would be of a legal capacity to do for myself. Well do I remember his speech on the occasion when at last it did come to pass. He was naturally a jolly-hearted man, free of the best he had in cupboard and larder, and fond of holding high days and festivals, when he could stir his biggest bowl and tell his queerest stories. Accordingly, on the anniversary of my birth-day, there was a gathering at his house to dinner of all my kith and kin within what he called the bounds of invitation. The fatted calf was killed. It was indeed a plum-pudding day, and he acknowledged to Dr. Leach before dinner that he had himself taken a salutary pill that morning to coax his digestive organs and to palliate the interlocutors of his inside. Having filled all the glasses after dinner, he rapped the brim of the

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bowl with the punch-ladle, and silence being obtained, addressed himself to me. “Mr. Bogle Corbet,” said he, “the day is at last come that we have long looked forward to with the anxiety of parents for the welfare of a son—Have we not, Dr. Leach?—and our——: I cannot recollect the law term here, but he is in every particular there where he sits a purpose-like young man, able to do for himself, to marry a wife, beget sons and daughters, to make a will and testament when he chooses, and to do all the other et ceteras that belong to the ordinances of the realm, as it was called in the time of the olden kings, the kingrik of Scotland. For this, gentlemen and ladies, I have drawn you together, to drink, as it were, the dirgie of the young man’s minority, in a bumper of no bad stuff, made of the best auld Jamaica, flavoured with pine-apple Antigua, and an infusion of the grace of a lemon, for I could get no limes.—But to speak more to the purpose: this day our ward, Mr. Bogle Corbet, has come of age—Is he not, Dr. Leach?—therefore let us be merry; it is my lady’s holyday, and so forth,—and ye see both Dr. Leach and myself,—for I must bring in that, unworthy as I am, it being a conjunct trust jointly and severally with heirs assigns, &c.—We have done our best for the young man’s behoof—for your advantage, Bogle Corbet—and, though I say it myself that have no right to say any such ostentatious thing in the presence of the Doctor there, where will ye hear of a better behaved young man? He’s a credit to you, Doctor, and for that we’ll by-and-by have a bumper; but, in the mean time, I’ll no’ say in the lad’s face what I might, but I hope he is not ordained to be a flower to blush unseen—nay, nay, hold up your head, Bogle Corbet, ye have no cause to think shame, and I’ll put my thumb on the Jenny Flections of the closses about the Luchenbooths of auld reeky. However, from this day ye are your own master, and it’s my duty to give, in our old Scotch custom, by way of a propine, ‘Success and understanding in life and trade to Mr. Bogle Corbet!’”

CHAPTER IX. the interim. But I have been digressing a little too far and fast, for I ought, before giving such a full, true, and particular account of the obsequies of my minority—to have told the benign reader of the manner in which I spent the interval between my summer tour, for the benefit of my hopes in trade, and that event. It was a most felicitous period; the season was propitious; more sunny days than usual blessed the holms and fields, and if the blight that had fallen on the industry of the city, in some measure thinned the canopy of smoke that overhung its spires and chimney-tops, the spirit of those who could afford to have nothing to do revelled lighter; and that of those who could find no work, undoubtedly breathed a freer air, which, under a great variety of circumstances, is the best sort of medicine. I generally rose betimes, and having been bred amidst rural scenery, and inheriting from Nature a taste for her fields and flowers, and other imagery of country freedom and calm, I solaced myself with a walk, sometimes on the Green, but oftener on the banks of the Molindinar and the environs of the cathedral, where, in the dewy stillness of the morning, and the ancient aspect of the building, I always found an innocent inexplicable delight. After breakfast I visited, sometimes the muslin warehouses of my acquaintances, examined new patterns, and was sedulous about prices. Occasionally, however, I forgot business, talked of fields of battle, the last news from France, and other topics, which, compared with the sacred themes of the manufacturing line, may well deserve the epithet of secular. In the course of the forenoon, I invariably, by some strange instinct or reminiscence attracted, went to Mr. Aird’s workshop, and as Eric Pullicate still languished there, I as regularly had some conversation with him. His democratic propensities were none abated, on the contrary, it may be justly said, that the temporary interruption which had made so many flying shuttles halt in the web, had exasperated his enmity against those who considered the comforts

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of the world their birthright, and labour as his. In these conversations, I was much interested by the wild and bold fancies which they never failed, on reflection, to afterwards suggest; but, now and then, our talk was of looms, for, notwithstanding his mangled philosophy, he was a shrewd man, and endowed with a zealous and penetrating spirit which he managed with uncommon equanimity. From the workshop I went to the Tontine coffee-room, where I read the newspapers till the hour when the Sample-room was opened, to which I regularly adjourned, and heard the West India merchants, then the gorgeous and grand of the town, talking of sugars, the London market, and the merits of coffee-beans. When the time of sale was over, I frequently strolled by myself to the Green, where I might have been often discovered in a ruminating mood, and with brows as firmly knotted as if I had many rich argosies in peril on the ocean. The regularity of this life, my daily visits to warehouses and workshops, together with the constancy of my attendance in the focus of business, and the unbroken uniformity of my solitary walks, with the reputation I had acquired by my neatness and punctuality during the noviciate with Mr. Thrums, established for me a character, that I would some day make a figure among the merchants. There were, however, a few meddling and intrusive persons, who, in mere contradiction to this opinion, mentioned that I had something about me that they thought was not just the right thing for a merchant, and though I seemed to be a most discreet lad, an example to the young men of the age, I did not just think as I ought to do, which made them doubt if I would ever properly adorn the plain stones; in short, they did me at once honour and disparagement, in saying that I was better fitted for the College than the Exchange. The opinion of these invidious observers did not much affect me, indeed I had some suspicion myself that their notions were not erroneous, for I must honestly declare, that although I was ever at the proper time in the thoroughfare of trade, and daily at the places where the knowledge of business could be best acquired, I made no proficiency. When I heard the merchants talk of their West Indian articles, I used to speculate, not in them, but on what, in time, would become of the islands when the Negroes got understanding; and when I heard the proud things in the coffee-room which the king’s men talked in their newspaper politics, about heroes and glory, I could never help thinking that soldiering was only a trade, and that the man who was paid for carrying a musket, was but little

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different from the pale weaver that earned his living by driving a shuttle. Whether this feeling arose from any taint imbibed from the doctrines of Eric Pullicate, or was the effect of some moral secretion of my own mind, I have never been studious to ascertain; but reflections of that kind were neither favourable to the making of money, nor to the attainment of eminence in Glasgow; yet still my character was estimable in the mouths of many, and the wariness, as it was considered, of my not entering too hastily in those times into business, redounded greatly to my respectability. In the mean time Mr. Macindoe was not negligent of his charge, nor of my interests, but he found more difficulty in discovering a partner suitable for me than he had at first supposed. Young men, of quiet business habits, with a little money, the most important qualification of all, were not so plentiful as blackberries. On the contrary, they were very scarce; for although there was undoubtedly a relaxation in the ancient habits of the country, and Lairds began here and there to stoop from their dignity to pick up commercial money, still the practice had not yet become common. Their eldest sons were still the inheritors of their estates, and the younger espoused their own fortunes as adventurers, either by becoming lawyers in Edinburgh, who need but little capital beyond their brains, and even of them they generally somehow contrive to do with a small amount; or by going into the army as subalterns, or as cadets to India. At last he alighted on what he deemed a prize,—the cock when he found the diamond on the dunghill was not so elated. This was in a Mr. Possy, the only relation of an old officer, who had bequeathed to him his gathering, a pinching and paring of some six or seven thousand pounds. The old gentleman had died when his heir was young, and the boy had been brought up as a godsend by a country clergyman, who endeavoured to save all he was allowed for keeping him, and to live on his stipend, which was one of the smallest in the whole Synod of Glasgow and Air. Possy was but slenderly furnished with mental talent; he was soft, gawky, and credulous, and his education, by the tuition he received, evolved all these qualities to their utmost. But he had the money,—even something more than I possessed, and Mr. Macindoe discerned that he would do well enough for a partner. “He is not bright,” said he; “and he has not been brought up at the foot of Gamaliel; for yon minister’s but a stot, like many more of the black cattle; but ye must look out for a clever, sober, well-doing, and

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well-spoken foreman, and with his help, you and Mr. Possy need not seek to call the King your cousin.” As he said these words, my whole frame gave a tingle, and I thought of Eric Pullicate. The situation was one which he of all men, I had then known, was the best qualified to fill well; and though there might have been some objection to him, on account of what were called his jacobine principles, still he was in conduct and intelligence an honest man. I spoke of him, and mentioned what I had seen of his sagacity and address; Mr. Macindoe clapped his hands, and taking up his hat and stick which he had placed in a corner of the room, bade me follow him, and instantly posted off to Mr. Aird’s workshop, flourishing his stick as he went along with rapid strides, evidently animated with some important project.

CHAPTER X. the co-partnery. The first sentence Mr. Macindoe addressed to Eric Pullicate, showed that in the course of his vehement journey to the workshop, he had convinced himself that Eric was the most eligible person who could be chosen. People are not sensible how often this sort of election prevails, even when they persuade themselves that they are marvellously circumspect. It is true, that Pullicate was a man of far superior natural endowment to my curator, and that after all the discernment the latter could exercise, there must still have remained much of his character which Mr. Macindoe was unable to penetrate, while he considered himself, by the difference of condition, so much above him; at least I am inclined to adopt this opinion, in consequence of the result subsequent to our connexion. But to let the matter speak for itself, Mr. Macindoe applauded the choice I had suggested, and by his clever handling a partnership was soon in due form arranged between Mr. Possy and me, to which Eric Pullicate was engaged at a liberal salary to be foreman and factotum. Though much could not be said for the brilliancy of Mr. Possy’s parts, yet my reputation for talent in business was generally applauded, especially when it came to be known that we had made so judicious a choice for an assistant as Eric Pullicate, for he had not been long in our warehouse till his ability made itself conspicuous; his intelligence, assiduity, and above all a sedate tenour of respectful manners, served to ingratiate him not only with our customers, but with the friends of the partners. At the period when our co-partnery was formed, the shock which the commerce of the country had suffered by the declaration of war had, in a great measure, subsided, so that it may be said we commenced auspiciously. Our capital enabled us to go with ready money into the market, and as the purchases were to be made by me, who was really ignorant of that branch of trade, my unskilfulness was not much observed. Our opening was therefore in all respects prosperous, and Mr. Possy, considering himself as settled in the

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world, resolved to take a wife, to which I certainly had no objections, for it was chiefly on account of his money that he was made my partner, and as he had neither head nor hands for business, I thought but little of what he did for his amusement. Soon after his marriage, however, as I was indulging myself in one of those reflective perambulations which have already been described, I fell into a reverie, or rather a mood of reminiscence, during which I recalled to mind several items in the conduct of Eric Pullicate that collectively at the moment were not satisfactory, although separately considered they were each of a trivial character, so much indeed so that it would be difficult to specify one of them deserving alone of the slightest consideration. How they had become classed together unconsciously in my memory, a better metaphysician than I can pretend to be might perhaps, after due study, be able to explain. I only know the fact that they were so, and that the occasion on which they occurred to me, may, without exaggeration, be regarded as a new æra in my life. I remember the time well; it was a calm afternoon in September, and the place was the banks of the Clyde, below the Broomilaw, and a cargo of cotton was landing from a gaubart on the quay as I passed. The incident was no otherwise remarkable than that I have no doubt it was shrewdly supposed by the wiseacres who watched my plodding steps, that the visit to that part of the river was to take a sly peep at the quality of the cotton. Heaven knows that cottons of all kinds, and all that make warehouses rich, and shops as well as ladies gay, had no place in my ruminations; I was thinking only of improbabilities as I passed along, glancing backward, as I have said, with my mind’s eye, and neither cogitating wisely nor deeply, when suddenly, like a ray of creative light, it flashed on my understanding that Eric Pullicate, without being in any obvious degree remiss in his duties to me, was beginning to pay more than usual deference to Mr. Possy. It would be extremely difficult to describe the feelings with which this suggestion at the moment affected me—I had no precise cause—few thoughts could be more justly described as the progeny of fancy, but with it came a suspicion that Eric was secretly playing a game for his own advancement. I do not know if he was under any awe of me, but if he were, he had dexterity enough to conceal his cards. However, not to reason either too finely or philosophically, I could not from that moment hide from myself that he apprehended he could not make an instrument of me for his purposes, and in

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consequence was directing his ingenuity to gain the ascendancy over my partner, whom, I may venture to say without boasting, was a more ductile subject. My attention being thus awakened, I watched the progress of the plot, more from curiosity to see how it would end, than with the solicitude due to my own interest. When he had fairly entangled his bird in the snare an accident finished the work. One day I had occasion to leave the warehouse while he was in attendance, but some cause or another, which I have now forgotten, obliged me unexpectedly to return, and I found the door open; a momentary business having called him to the flat above. By this occurrence, wholly unsought, I entered unknown to him. The place we had for writing was inclosed by a railing and screen off one end of one of the rooms where our goods principally lay, so that strangers coming on business could not see the person at the desk. I went straight into this place, and immediately began to employ myself, as my wonted custom was when not busy, by drawing houses and landscapes with my pen on the blotting paper. While thus employed Eric came in, followed by Mrs. Possy, who had called in expectation of finding her husband. By the nature of her question perceiving she was not likely to remain long, and having a fine vision in my imagination, I did not disclose myself, but remained quiet. Just as she was on the point of leaving the room, she happened to cast her eyes on a piece of tamboured muslin of a tasteful pattern, and which had only that morning been sent home. For the same reason that Eve was attracted to the rose bush in Paradise, Mrs. Possy went to the muslin, and, after a few interjections about its beauty, she remarked to Pullicate, that she thought, for all the business she saw us doing, Mr. Possy might manage it very well himself without me, and that he had money enough, she was sure, to do so. Eric, with considerable delicacy, fostered this notion; and as listeners, according to the proverb, seldom hear much good of themselves, I heard, before the lady took her leave, that it was a pity the contract of co-partnership was for seven years, for undoubtedly Mr. Possy would lose during that time the half of the profit he might himself make but for me. Friend Eric was decidedly of the same opinion. My ears tingled while this conversation lasted; but fortunately Pullicate went out at the same time with the notable young madam, and locked the door. This afforded me an opportunity to escape unnoticed by my own key, but such was my perturbation at the moment, that although it was the wonted hour at which I daily went

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to read the newspaper, I turned my steps towards the Green. It is not easy to say what else I ought to have done, but it so happened that in going down the Salt-market, I met three successive bands of my acquaintance, who observed my troubled countenance, and whom I had reason afterwards to know, thought they could perceive in it symptoms of the most judicious resolution to rupture my connexion with Mr. Possy, who was commonly known among them by the nickname of “dressing,” his brains being esteemed by them as equally intellectual with the substance employed in preparing the warp for the shuttle.

CHAPTER XI. extended prospects. The suspicion so miraculously engendered of the drift and aim of Eric Pullicate’s nameless courtesies to Mr. Possy, with the auricular confirmation received from his plausible remarks to the lady, had, I may safely say, a painful effect on me. I felt for the first time that I stood in the way of the welfare of others; and had I consulted my own feelings, I would have instantly proposed a dissolution of our co-partnery: but a man does not live long in the world, till he discovers that there is something more like chance in the fortunes of men than is quite consistent with philosophy. On going to the Green, I encountered Mr. Rapier, a friend of Macindoe, who was esteemed a person of no ordinary capacity. He had but one fault, in the eyes of the merchants who knew him—an early disappointment in love, made him determine, without taking any ill-will at the world, to lead a retired life, and to remain free from trade, contented with his paternal patrimony. This was his fault, and for this they condemned him. Often had I heard their animadversions on his alleged apathy, and I was among the number who thought, with respect to him, that it is of no use to possess sharp tools, if we will not or cannot use them. From his reservedness, and the prejudice which I had been led to entertain against him, there had not been much intercourse between us, but we were known to each other; he knew me from my childhood, and from an early period I had always thought him a morose man—still, wherever we met, he appeared glad to see me—and occasionally, when we dined together with Mr. Macindoe, he seemed desirous of cultivating my regard by the civility of his attentions. Whether on that day he had noticed any symptoms of mental infelicity about me, or that the atmosphere, which was calm and balmy, had softened him to a congenial temperament, profounder sages may determine; but when he saw me enter the Green, he came towards me, and with unusual cordiality, he requested leave to join me in my walk. At the moment I would have been pleased had

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he asked almost any other thing, but I consented, and we went up along the river’s bank together, chatting of indifferent subjects—the state of trade, the prospects of the country, and many other of those topics which are still dear, and long may they continue so, to the generous community of Glasgow. This desultory talk led him to make some observations on the rapidly-increasing manufactures of the kingdom, and to point out to me the signs of inevitable progress arising from the wars and rumours of wars on the Continent; he added:— “I am surprised you should not think of extending your concerns. Here you wait for customers, or merchants that deal in distant markets; why do not you think of trying London? Mr. Possy, with that clever foreman of yours, could very well manage here, and, if I am not mistaken, from what I have heard of yourself, the metropolis is your proper sphere—the business is growing—it is the only trade that will thrive in these troublesome times, and you should reflect that you are still an unincumbered young man.” This speech produced a deep impression on me at the time. It banished the hasty intention I had almost formed of dissolving my co-partnery with Mr. Possy; it tended to mitigate my resentment towards Eric Pullicate, and it opened to myself an avenue, which led to a greater eminence than I had ever before contemplated. I disclosed, however, to him nothing of what agitated me, but simply remarked that his hint came most opportunely, for I had myself thought that by dividing the business with Mr. Possy, adding other mercantile-looking ideas, that a bright chance was started to us which we might advantageously pursue. This was the first time that the thought of removing myself to London entered my head; I perceived all the benefits that might accrue from it, and that it was easily practicable and honourable to all concerned to make such a separation of our affairs. Accordingly, next day, after having reflected well on it in the night, I spoke to Mr. Possy of it as a scheme which had occurred to myself, and asked his advice, though I knew very well he had none to give, until he had consulted his wife or Eric Pullicate. In the course of the forenoon he had no opportunity of conversing with his right hand, for so may our foreman be justly called. He was at the time busy making up goods for America; I still recollect very well, it was a shipment for the house of Sham and Co. to be sent by the Fanny Daniel, H. Braine, Master; the only trader then between Greenock and New-York. But he went home to his wife,

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and by what took place in the evening, there can be no doubt that the project received her most hearty approbation, for much to my surprise, but which from the altered frame of my mind, was not greatly impressive, Pullicate was invited to take tea with them—no doubt to talk over the affair. This I heard next morning from Mr. Possy himself, with many commendations to the honour of Eric’s sense and sagacity. But not to lose time, I must cram space with a multitude of small matters; it was speedily arranged that I should proceed to London to manage an establishment there, and that the business in Glasgow should be placed under the joint care of Mr. Possy and now Mister Pullicate. The only thing not perfectly agreeable in this arrangement, was the reluctance of Pullicate to accept a share in the business, but he received a handsome addition to his salary in so much that he was well satisfied, and his friends accounted him a lucky fellow: Mr. Possy was delighted with the whole scheme, for he was a little averse to receive a servant on the footing and equality of a partner, such things among the Glasgow manufacturers of those days not being common. And as Mrs. Possy said to myself, “though Mrs. Pullicate was a genteel and well-behaved young woman, yet she was not just of a degree to be her coeval, except in the way of a dish of tea.” I certainly agreed so far with Mrs. Possy; but I was not quite so sure, that the diffidence which Eric had, or pretended to have of himself as a partner, was the offspring of true modesty. It was evident that he saw through and through Mr. Possy, and, that when I was out of the way, he thought means might be found for better feathering his own nest than by being in partnership. But when I say this let it be taken with reservation; I do not impute any thing derogatory to his integrity, for he was without question an honest man, although some think it is the very nature of the democratical to consider the rich and great as usurpers and the enjoyers of usurpations, and to feel less compunction in plucking their plumage, than if mankind were all on an equality. But while I say this to his prejudice, I would go no farther; he was ambitious it is true, and if he had a concealed reason for preferring a salary to a share, still in no trust was he ever found wanting; and so long as he continued with Mr. Possy, he constantly maintained the rectitude and prudence of his early character. I am, however, proceeding a little too fast, and anticipating events long afterwards accomplished, but which flowed naturally from the premises. When they did come to

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pass, they were to me of great importance, but their consequences were foreseen, and in the occurrence they were regarded as things expected. It is weak now to repine that I had not been better prepared for them.

CHAPTER XII. a departure. Among other judicious habits and Scottish maxims, which my early and excellent friend Mrs. Busby took great pains to teach me, were, to observe the utmost orderliness in my apparel, and to keep my wardrobe at the lowest possible minimum. By these means she assured me I would be ever neat in my appearance, and always in fashion at the least cost; nor was her opinion so much the result of theory as of practice, for she had been throughout life accustomed to a genteel economy, and had in the course of long administering a narrow jointure, acquired all the respectable methods of frugality without meanness; a study of no easy application, and which is generally huddled over in an alternate feast and famine way, by those who have the misfortune to be pressed by straitened circumstances. It thus came to pass that the preparations for removing myself to London were soon and easily accomplished, for I had learned to appreciate the benefits of her prudent instruction, and was at all times ready, on a short notice, to undertake the longest journeys; not that travelling had been much in my business, but her lessons remain with me still; and I am in mentioning my departure for the metropolis, speaking rather of what I have always been, than of my conduct on that occasion. I am the more induced to record it, particularly because among my acquaintances, notwithstanding saving is so much of an old Scottish custom, I have observed many weak deviations from the rule. Among the industrious classes the outfitting of a young adventurer for the world is matter of vast importance. The utmost stretch of endeavour is employed to provide becoming clothes, and to pack the attendant trunk with many articles, of which, though the use may not be obvious, are supplied to meet unforeseen casualties. This in their circumstances is perhaps wise, and doubtless the fruit of reported experience, but among those who enjoy affluence, the practice of Mrs. Busby is more applicable, especially when the transit is to such an emporium as London.

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About two or three months before the idea of an establishment in the capital had been suggested to me, I remember an acquaintance, whom his relations had resolved to send to a counting-house in Liverpool preparatory to his being fixed in business. His absence from Glasgow was limited to twelve months, and he was going to a larger town. But his mother, one of the most bustling and notable matrons within the barony, and all its contiguous parishes, thought she could not do enough, or get sufficient for this extraordinary Exodus; shirts of more than common delicacy of texture, fit in number for an East Indian voyage, were got ready, and a daily forenoon visit to the seamstress, to see how she proceeded, was indispensable; neckcloths, coats, waistcoats, the nameless, and stockings, with all those other manifold et ceteras of habiliment which could have been purchased much cheaper and better in Liverpool, were provided in huge quantities, together with such rare articles as bundles of tape, balls of thread, and the no less unattainable appurtenances, papers of needles and pins. This I had witnessed, and in consequence, was instructed; so that when the period was determined for my departure, what with the knowledge and wiser economy of Mrs. Busby, I went lightly to the mail coach, with only a small leathern portmantua dangling at the finger of our warehouse porter; nor was it altogether filled with linen cravats and stockings, for in the one end a plentiful packet of introductory letters was stowed, to say nothing of those that were to pave the way to the credit and consequence of the concern to be formed. Of my business letters I shall say nothing, farther than that they were like all of the kind, concise and to the point effective. The others were more miscellaneous; some were from the dominies of the college to learned men; others from mercantile gentlemen to pleasant persons of whom they knew something; and I was assured by an old lady who favoured me with one to her nephew, that I might be proud of it. Few and far between were those she thought deserving of the honour. For he was no ordinary personage, being a Deputy of the Common Council. I had many others, big ones too, from ladies of different degrees, who advised me, if I could not deliver them myself, to put them into the twopenny post-office, and no doubt their friends would find me out, as I would naturally be found at the coffee-house.—Oh, innocent daughters of Glasgow! novice as I even then was, I could not repress a smile at such Trongate simplicity! But in that mail of recommendations, there was a note from a

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respectable old woman who lived in the garret above our warehouse, and with whom I had made some acquaintance, by speaking to her on the stairs, and paying her a few slight civilities. She was of the venerable maiden gender, and had a small income payable half-yearly by drawing on London, and I was of some occasional use in passing her bills. She had been the daughter of a country minister, and being educated with uncommon care, spent her time chiefly in reading, for she was too old to stoop over the tambouring frame, and her little stipend was adequate to her moderate wants. I have said she was respectable, but I speak more of her manners and conduct, than of her condition in a mercantile community. Naturally mild and recluse, she had but few visitors; I am not sure that I ever saw one, save on the sacramental occasions, when now and then an elderly country clergyman knocked with his knuckle at our warehouse door, inquiring if Miss Leezy Eglesham was within. There was an air of sober meekness in her demeanour that I have never seen equalled, a resignation to her lot which greatly interested me, for it seemed less the effect of habit than of resolution. Had she been a carl in a cave, she would have merited the praise of being a pious hermit; and yet there was no austerity about her, but in all her ways a gentle contentedness, that even while it pleased, engendered compassion. From all I could learn before I left Glasgow, she had never suffered adversity, but her pale cheek and calm pathetic eyes were unaccountably subduing. She looked like one of those lowly spirits who are predestined to become the companions of thoughtfulness and sorrow. Her note was addressed to Sir Neil Eccles, Bart. on whom she drew for her income. She said nothing even of the degree of relationship in which I had supposed he stood to her, but in giving me the letter, she requested with an emphatic earnestness, that I would deliver it myself, or send it to him under a cover, telling him where I should be found. “You must do that,” said she, “for I think he’ll maybe like to speak to you about me. You may tell him what you have observed of me, and that I have no wishes,”—at these words she sighed deeply, and her eye glistened for a moment; and then she added, with a smile, “They say he lives in a grand way, and has many servants, but he’ll be greatly altered, if for my sake he does not treat you well. Be sure and tell him how I live, and how I am wearing away.” This little scene took place on the morning of my departure, and served to lend a pensive grace to the event; without it, I might have

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bade adieu to my early friends, and the haunts of my youth, without experiencing the slightest sentiment of that sadness which, at such a time, should wait upon farewell. I had the preceding afternoon gone out to see Mrs. Busby for the last time; Dr. Leach had bade God bless me with much kindness; Mr. Rhomboid, the schoolmaster, with parental affection, exhorted me to resume the study of the stars in London, to which I had once been so addicted, as soon as I found leisure;—leisure! it is as far off as ever;—and Mr. Macindoe, with his wonted heartiness, joked, advised, and talked a thousand things, besides making a cobble bowl of punch; for knowing his humour, I had carried to him half a dozen limes. Still all affected me not like the patient sadness of the solitary spinster, and as the coach drove along the street, I felt that my thoughts were melancholy concerning her. It was a melancholy, however, not accompanied with any pain, but a remembrance like the fragrancy that scents the vase where the gathered rose has been.

CHAPTER XIII. a journey. It would afford but small pleasure to the reader were I to describe the journey by the mail-coach to London, and yet it was not without incidents which I still recollect with cheerfulness. The company consisted of three others besides myself; two of them were seated, before I reached the coach-office, on the back seat. One, an elderly, corpulently-inclined drysalter, Mr. Fustick, bent on some occasion of business to Carlisle. When he saw me at the door he made an apology for not resigning the back seat, by saying that when he was driven with his back to the horses he was always troubled with sea-sickness. His neighbour was a Greenock skipper, hastening to Liverpool to look after a vessel which had been cast away on the Calf of Man, the remains of which he was authorized to sell, as he informed us, for the benefit of the underwriters. The third had not yet come, but I was scarcely seated when he appeared at the door, attended by Mr. Spreul, an old Tontine acquaintance of mine, with half boots, the ears hanging out, and cotton stockings of “heavenly blue,” a staff under his arm, and in his best snuff-coloured coat and swandown waistcoat. He was attended by his handmaid Girzie, with a portmanteau under her arm, and a paper with comfits in her hand. The passenger, however, was his English relation, the afterwards justly renowned Mr. Cyril Thornton, then a smartly well-dressed young man, of a calm, engaging physiognomy, with a sly, or, what is a better term, a pawky devil lurking in the corner of his eye. After many hearty shakings of the hand, and injunctions to “be sure and write,” Mr. Spreul bade him adieu; he took his seat, and Girzie, giving the portmanteau to the guard, bent into the coach and said, “Mr. Seerl, ye hae forgotten something ye’ll be none the waur of— there’s twa three peppermint draps to raise the wind under cloud o’ night.” I could discern by the smile with which he good-naturedly accepted her little present, that he was above the ordinary Trongate;—not that there is any want of true feeling there, but it is not

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always that the homages of lowly affection are so delicately received by those whose business is so much in the retail line. This little incident a good deal prepossessed me in favour of my fellow-traveller, and soon after the coach got underweigh the impression was deepened by an observation he made as we drove along the Gallowgate. It happened just as we were passing up towards the barracks, a sudden shower burst in at the near-side window, and on the face of the worthy Mr. Fustick; it, perhaps, also smote the visage of Captain Breezes, but he being Greenock, and habituated to such things, winced nothing at the assault, while his companion drew up the glass with great vehemence. “We’re in luck,” said Mr. Thornton, whispering to me: “our friends here have not been much used to night travelling, or they would not have taken the back seat.” This led on to farther conversation, and the time passed as swiftly as if it were like Cuchullin’s car, borne on wheels as rapid as those of the vehicle that carried us. Our opposite neighbours had also their conversational amusement, but it did not exactly fit the calibre either of Mr. Thornton or myself. An inquiry, however, of the Drysalter’s, certainly amused us both, and was a fair specimen of the intelligence which pervaded the minor Glasgow merchants of that time. “Captain,” said he, “it canna’ be possible that logwood grows with its roots in the sea?” “Oh no,” replied his companion, none surprised at the question, “it only grows on the water’s edge, and that’s the cause of its dyeing yellow.” “Nay, hooly hooly Captain,” said Mr. Fustick, “you sea-faring folk are no’ just in the way of knowing much. Logwood does not do for yellow at all, but it’s one of the condiments of black.” Whether this was correct chymistry or not I shall not undertake to say; for any thing that I knew to the contrary it might, but Mr. Thornton gave me a nefarious wink at the knowledge displayed by both. Nothing more particular occurred to interest my attention till we reached Carlisle, about the dawn of day, when we were treated with the coarseness, haste, and hurry so animating in an English inn to stage-coach passengers. At Carlisle we changed coaches; the Drysalter left us, the Greenock Skipper proceeded to Liverpool, and Mr. Thornton took his seat only to Penrith, whence he intended to cross the country; but their places were supplied by three others, one of whom, notwithstanding

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that the weather was chill and raw, accommodated himself, under the pretext of being obliging to the other two passengers, by riding outside till he could get Mr. Thornton’s seat. He was a young Edinburgh advocate going to London for the first time, with a single brief in his bag, on the celebrated appeal case concerning the firkin of butter, which was pleaded with so much ability before the Lords of Session, sounding the depths of the whole Scottish bar—a tribunal before which plaintiffs go not in quest of justice, but for the mere patriotic purpose of settling points of law. The two insides which Mr. Gledde, the advocate, so amiably insinuated he so obliged, only because he saw they were not used to travelling, was an old Highland gentleman, the Laird of Glengowl, and a Mrs. Peerie, who had a sister in some great way about Nightingale-lane, near Wapping, who was thought to have made, as she said, “a bit gathering,” and had written to her, that being in a bad state of health, she was thinking of leaving a mortification of the best part of it to the parish of St. George in the East—which, as Mrs. Peerie most cogently observed, would be a thing, “horridible in a Christian land, where she had her own blood relations!” What motive drew the Glengowl from his misty hills and heaths was not rendered to us at all; but Mr. Thornton wormed out of him, that at the recent Falkirk cattle fair, in consequence of the rising demands of the war, black cattle had sold well, and that the mountains, which in ancient times rung with the warlike notes of the pibroach, were, as the ci-devant sans-culotte said—“Al’ quaiking with the goot prices.” Our conversation, consisting of these interesting topics, continued without any material pause till we reached Penrith, where Mr. Thornton took his leave, and I was rather agreeably surprised at the cordiality with which he shook me by the hand, and expressed his hope that chance would afterwards make us better acquainted. I much regretted his departure, for his many agreeable qualities, his easy politeness, and gentlemanly frankness, together with his general appearance and unstudied manners—for I am one of those who think that virtue is not deteriorated in combination with the blandishments of a winning nature. It was not so, however, with the venerable chief of Glengowl, between whom and Mrs. Peerie, before the advocate had taken his place, a zealous controversy had arisen concerning him. The lady extolled him as one of the most capturing young gentlemen that ever she had set eyes on; and the Celt, with equal ardency, affirming that he was nothing but an astronom, or

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something else no less intelligible. The horses being harnessed, their dispute was abruptly concluded; and Mr. Gledde, the Athenian, took his place alongside of the chieftain, who evinced a kind of selvatic joy at seeing him again; for they had come from Edinburgh to Carlisle in the same coach, and during the journey Mr. Gledde had explained to him, in the most accomplished manner, how a defunct is precognition to an heir, or some other legal preliminary.

CHAPTER XIV. mail travelling. After leaving Penrith, the remainder of the journey was performed much in the same state of discomfort as travelling in those distant days was usually accomplished. The hedges and trees flew past us as fast as the coach went forward, and the Advocate’s tongue was not slower. The chief was more taciturn, speaking in a voice hoarse and constipated; and the old lady, Mrs. Peerie, was only occasionally loquacious. From Glengowl’s inquiries and Mr. Gledde’s interlocutors, I could gather that there was some secret understanding between them, relative to a cousin of the former, who had died in England, leaving him a considerable legacy; which, with the good prices of black cattle, was one of the causes of his journey to London, as for some time their discourse was of stirks and inheritances. It did not, however, appear that the old gentleman knew much of the matter; and I am not sure, as he lived in the misty Morven, that law had in those days reached farther than Inverary. Mrs. Peerie distinguished herself, much to my amusement, by some of her observations, and occasional touches of shrewd humour. Once, for example, when we happened to halt for a moment, a peasant spoke something to the guard, which was not the best of English, being in the broad dialect of the district: as soon as we were again underweigh, giving a wink to me, she said to Glengowl in her most mellifluous and merriest manner, “No doubt the young man was speaking Gaelic.” In reply to which the old gentleman gave an emphatic grumph, at the same time also winking to me in marvel at her ignorance. The weather was raw and humid, and the remainder of the day was spent with drawn-up windows and silent mouths. When we stopped to dine, only Mr. Gledde and myself partook of the refreshment; Glengowl cheered himself with a gill of brandy and a biscuit, but Mrs. Peerie did not alight. She had a paper of biscuits and sandwiches in her basket, and recruited in the coach, so that neither of

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the two were in any degree incommoded by the haste and hurry of the mail-coach. In the evening, the dull haze of the day lowered in clouds; the wind rose, and the glass of the windows was uncomfortably gemmed with large drops of rain. The aspect of the country was gloomy, and every object betokened a dreary night, but the spirits of Mrs. Peerie were lively; she spoke of the anticipated felicity of a nice cup of tea and a fine fire; nor was the chieftain less animated on the enjoyments to come, and which we were rapidly approaching. At last we reached the house, one of those small, pert-looking inns, which had originally been constructed for a roadside alehouse, but which, by the improvements of society and the progress of stage-coaches, had been elevated into a baiting stoppage for the mail. Here we all alighted. Glengowl was gruffly pleased with what he called the heelarity of the house; and Mrs. Peerie also acknowledged that it was like a place where they were used to the civility of boiling a tea-kettle. Mr. Gledde looked at them both with blended humour and pathos. As the outside and newly-whitened walls and fresh painted sign and windows led us to expect, we were shown into a neat parlour with a roaring fire, a tea-tray and table before it plentifully garnished. A smart maiden, with the height of discretion, as Mrs. Peerie judiciously observed at the time, spared her from the trouble of making tea, so she placed herself at the one side of the fire, and Glengowl, quite as cosily inclined, seated himself at the other. The old lady, who had two or three times in the course of the journey complained of cold feet, took off her shoes and placed them snugly on the grate against the wall to toast; and Glengowl, equally erudite in the mysteries of travelling, untied a shawl which he wore over his neckcloth. Never did a couple appear to set themselves in more happily for a snug hour or two, than these worthy passengers; for myself and Mr. Gledde we were irreverently voracious, for we at once began to devour, and before the tea was half ready to drink. Mrs. Peerie saw, as she delicately remarked, that the cold weather had given us an appetite; she would, however, wait till the tea was better masket. But many things happen between the cup and the lip; even with all our speed, before the gentleman learned in the law and myself had poured out our second cup, the guard winded his horn, to the inexpressible astonishment and indignation of the lady and gentleman so snugly enjoying the fire. Then there was anarchy and confusion, like as among the French nobles, when the Revolution,

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with the wild ringing of the tocsin, disturbed that state of things which was so calculated for their particular solace. The wrathful Glengowl threatened, if the coach ran away before he was ready, that he would pursue it in a post-chaise at the expense of the proprietors. The lady was no less disconcerted; however, without wasting time in idle talk, she gathered up her gear, and was speedily in the coach. The maid followed her in rather a flurry, and said, “Mem, you have left nothing for the waiter.” “All is left for the waiter,” was the alert reply; “and I’ll thank you, my leddy, to shut the door.” This perilous adventure afforded various animated topics for much of the rest of the journey. Glengowl was not altogether in the sweetest contentment; but Mrs. Peerie, having still both biscuits and sandwiches remaining, could talk of the fright with considerable jocularity. The chieftain, however, vowed that he would have revenge; and accordingly, with true Celtic resolution, when we again halted to take supper, where the hurry was equally alert, Glengowl, on being again “put to the horn,” as Mr. Gledde described it, seized a leg of mutton by the shank, and carried it along with a piece of bread into the coach. This outrage was, however, as the lawyer justly remarked to him, not altogether legitimate, though it might be Highland, the inn from which the mutton had been taken, belonging to another man. “It’s al’ one for the benefit of a reformation,” said Glengowl; “they’ll have a remembrance for the good of their posterity, how I lifted the black mail in the shape of this leg of sheep.” Unfortunately, however, we live in an age when even Highland chieftains are used to knives and forks, and Glengowl, after being properly seated, and about to eat, found himself much at a loss to begin, having come abroad without his dirk or these implements. It was dark, and we could not see, but we heard him growl in soliloquy at this embarrassment, and wondering what he should do. His condition was exceedingly diverting; the Edinburgh advocate in vain essayed to suggest an expedient, and descanted on the force of habit, and how much a man, by the influence of society, was now rendered unfit for a state of nature. “Ne’er trouble your head, Sir,” said Mrs. Peerie, “naebody sees you in the dark; just take a bite from the bone, like a dog, and make yourself comfortable.” Next day we had indisputable evidence that man is perfectible in travelling as well as in intellectual and moral knowledge. There was

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no longer any attempt at such a barbarous practice as toasting shoes, or untying shawl cravats, but the utmost celerity in every action, and the most strenuous endeavours to masticate and swallow the greatest quantity of food in the least possible time, so that we reached the Bull and Mouth Inn, so renowned among the visitors to the metropolis, without meeting with any other occurrence. Mrs. Peerie was, however, greatly disappointed at the appearance of the house, as it showed itself at break of day, in a windy and wet morning. She had even doubts if such a disjasket looking inn was na’ one of the abominations of London, “into which her innocence was sinfully betrayed.” As it happened that the whole of that morning’s immigration by the mail were entire strangers to each other, and to London, we were not quite so clever in getting ourselves ready to proceed to our respective places of intended abode. The Edinburgh limb of the law was the first ready; he came well instructed, called a coach, leaped in with his portmanteau, bade us good morning, and was driven off to some hotel in Parliament Street. Glengowl was the next, for, although he was encumbered with a most untravelling-like hairy box trunk, he also at last got himself hoisted into a hackney coach, and was conveyed to No. 120, King-street. The rogue of a coachman never inquired which King-street, but with knavery in his eyes, drove him away in the civilest and slowest style possible. Mrs. Peerie being frugal and methodical, did not choose to be at the expense of a coach to take her to Nightingale-lane, Wapping, but engaged a porter to carry her trunk to her cousin’s there, she following through the dirt, glad of being so near her journey’s end. I was as green as herself, and not knowing the latitude and longitude of Nightingale-lane, saw her depart in the rain, without offering any advice. For myself, being advised to that effect, I went to bed at the Bull and Mouth, until the day was far enough advanced to enable me to deliver one of my most particular letters, preparatory to fixing my domicile.

CHAPTER XV. london. The metropolis to a stranger is most uncomfortable. The crowd that fills the streets is more friendless than the sands of the Arabian desert, or the trees of the American woods. I felt this the moment that I left the inn, for I went unattended. The map with which I had provided myself, showed that as my destination was Cheapside, I had not far to walk; but in the course of that short journey, the unrecognising earnest looks of the passengers, smote me with that peculiar destitute feeling, which is alone experienced by the stranger when he first enters London. However, this was soon dissipated when I entered the counting-house of our correspondent Mr. Patterns, who, in consequence of my previous letters, was well aware of my intention, and expressed himself pleased to make my personal acquaintance with more warmth than I expected; for our business was, as we thought in Glasgow, no bad spoke in his wheel, and I could hardly persuade myself that he could be sincere in the cordiality he expressed at seeing me. Among his earliest questions was, where I lodged? my answer was, “at the Bull and Mouth.” “That will not do,” said he, frankly; “the first thing a man should do who comes to town, is to provide himself with proper lodgings, that he may be able to give his address to his friends. If you call on any one before that, you will have to pay two visits—come, I’ll spare a few minutes, and see you properly suited somewhere in this neighbourhood.” In saying this, he took his hat from a peg, and locking his desk, went out with me. This brevity considerably surprised me, for, although in Glasgow we do not waste much time in useless conversation, we are not quite so alert. In the course of a short walk down a lane near his house, we found convenient but dark lodgings in Budge Row. “Now,” said he, “you will, I doubt not, find yourself comfortable here. Fetch your luggage at once from the inn, and then look out

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in this neighbourhood for suitable premises, and at four o’clock I shall expect you to go with me to dinner. It is only those who are connected with the shipping and foreign trade that go to ’Change; I have no occasion to be ever there.” With these words he left me, and I proceeded for my portmanteau to the Bull and Mouth, marvelling and pleased at the decision of Mr. Patterns. I thought it then only characteristic of himself, but I soon discovered it was a customary effect of the just estimate which the Londoners have formed of time. When I had deposited my luggage, which I brought from the inn in a coach, agreeably to his advice, I went immediately in search of a domicile for my business, and in the course of a few minutes, found a very eligible warehouse in Cannon-street, which I immediately rented, so that before twelve o’clock I was fairly settled in London, much to my own amazement, and no less to the astonishment of Mr. Possy my partner, whom I advised of what was done by the post of that evening. The celerity of my proceedings on the day of my arrival, has always been recollected with pleasure. It awoke in myself energies unfelt before, and the report of what I had so soon accomplished, obtained for Mr. Possy, as he wrote by return of post, the congratulations of his friends, that I had settled in London, the best sphere for so active a person. His fortune was considered as made. Not calculating on being able to accommodate myself so speedily, some time elapsed before our goods came to hand, and I had leisure to amuse myself with the lions of the metropolis. In this business, having the anxiety of my commercial prospects constantly before me, I was not less assiduous than in seeking for the warehouse. I soon saw every thing deemed curious by the stranger, and I was treated with many invitations to dinner in the mean while, by those to whom I had brought letters: but I know not from what cause arising, a continual feeling of loneliness took possession of me; my leisure was dead time, for I was too deeply affected by the novelty of the scenes around to adapt my mind to reading, and was too much in a flurry, by the anxieties inseparable from my situation, to be able to indulge my wonted habit of observation. The first three months were in consequence the most irksome, and yet the most rapid of my life. When, however, that epoch, as I may justly call it, had elapsed, I became gradually more composed; I grew as insensible to all as the rest of the multitude, and even when some of my old acquaintance

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from the North visited the metropolis, I amused myself with pretending sometimes more indifference than I really experienced, merely to enjoy their wonder. I have always been an eager amateur of fires and other public sights and pageants. One day, when walking with two Glasgow friends, we happened to pass a lane in which several houses were delightfully burning. It would have been at night a spectacle equivalent to King Crispianus, or a real coronation. I had in my heart a longing to stop and look at it. My friends were petrified at the roaring devastation; “What are you gazing at?” said I, “it is only a fire;” and walked forward without evincing the slightest emotion. They looked at me, and reciprocally communed with their eyes concerning my apathy; nor could they conceive how, in so short a time, I should have been so hardened to metropolitan indifference. I was, however, but altered in my outward seeming, for even to this day, a conflagration, especially if women and children are seen screaming at the windows in the utmost jeopardy, is to me much more interesting than the tragedy of Macbeth. This little anecdote is important in several ways, but my object in introducing it here is, not so much to explain the effect which the local genius of London had on me, as to show how readily, and with what little effort, I could adapt myself to situation, at least appear as if I did so—for, in truth, I was never much changed at heart—my spirit delighted in the country. The wild, the beautiful, and the grand of Nature, have ever been the objects of its homage, and I never was less myself than when engaged in the turmoils of trade, and most applauded for discernment and dexterity as a merchant. My case, however, is not extraordinary; few men, if they would venture to confess the fact, ever have any real enjoyment in the diplomacies of commerce—and the judicious practice which so much prevails in England, of retiring from business as soon as a competency is earned, confirms this opinion. I have already mentioned how the great art of the merchant, purchasing, happened never to be learned by me. My situation in London was as little favourable to acquire it as when I was in Glasgow; but the increasing commerce of the country made me nevertheless an expert salesman, and that was all I had to do. Every season was more prosperous than the foregoing. The war raged upon the Continent, but trade flourished in England. Our connections increased; the house in Glasgow, under the shrewd management of Eric Pullicate, was an example to every other; it was the earliest in every new

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fashion, and my warehouse in Cannon-street had the best assortment of goods in our line. But still, I was not altogether satisfied that our wonderful success was sound. I had often strange doubts, and never could reconcile my mind to believe that the reasons which induced Eric Pullicate to decline a partnership with us, were his true motives. I had not been much more than twelve months settled, when I wrote to himself, proposing to him a handsome share of our profits; urging how much more respectable it would make him in the world, than to be dependant on a salary; but he was as steady to his purpose as ever, and Mr. Possy informed me, that my proposal had only served to animate his diligence in our service. Less therefore could not be done to reward his uncommon assiduity, than to augment his income, and we did it liberally. But still, his moderation as to rank in society was perplexing; for, I had observed, that the democrats were ever the most ambitious, and the republicans the most arbitrary. The conduct of Eric Pullicate was an exception to the rule, and to human nature an anomaly. From what can it proceed? was a question I so often put to myself, that it at last infected me with an aimless suspicion, I knew not wherefore, for in no one transaction could the slightest blemish be imputed to his integrity; on the contrary, as Mr. Possy assured me, in reply to some inquiries dictated by my uneasy fancy, his assiduity for the interests of his employers was the theme of general admiration.

CHAPTER XVI. letters of introduction. But before I proceed to the regular current of my narrative, I should mention an incident of some importance, which occurred soon after my arrival in London; indeed, it cannot be said that I very strictly confine myself to any regular story. The course of my biography is like the character of my life, somewhat desultory, and the events seem to arise from causes apparently inadequate to their consequences. I ever felt that I was out of my road; not in peril, but the events when they came to pass were somehow uniformly untoward. The course was like those wild American streams, sometimes dividing their force into different channels, occasionally on the one side of the island that sends the flow in different directions, passing onward in a sober current, while on the other they are hurried into turbulent rapids. On the day immediately following my arrival, I took out my letters and arranged them in different classes to be in that order delivered. Those that I expected would facilitate my business arrangements were placed in the first class, and received priority of attention. Those of the second, that were to bespeak for me the friendship of private gentlemen, constituted the second. The third were more miscellaneous, consisting of introductions to persons of public note, but I had only one that was not specific,—the one from Leezy Eglesham to Sir Neil Eccles: it seemed to me the least particular, and ought in consequence to be made an object of curiosity deserving no ordinary attention. I laid it therefore aside by itself, with the design of being made of more consideration than most of the others. It thus happened that the proverb, out of sight out of mind, was verified with respect to it; it lay in the drawer of my Pembroke table unheeded several months, and it was only on accidentally pulling out the drawer, that I was rebuked by its presence in beholding it there. I have ever regarded letters of general introduction merely as dinner tickets, and the longer I have lived the more have I been

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convinced, that in that early opinion I did not underrate their value: mine were numerous, and in general obtained for me both hospitality and civility; but about a guinea was the worth of most of them. They showed me handsome dinners, enabled me to partake of elegant fare, and that was all. By some of them I flattered myself that I was an object of solicitude, I could not tell why; but I soon discovered that there was a secret in this; I was only so for a decent time, until I had probably written home how well I had been received, and then there was an end of all farther kindness. This, however, was a discovery in the way of the world that it was some time before I made; it was only after hearing how much others in similar circumstances had been by the same parties so flattered, that I acquired a judicious notion of the worth of letters of introduction to persons famed for their attention to young strangers. But to return to the original intention of this chapter. By the simple casualty described, it so happened that Sir Neil Eccles’ letter fell aside, and months having elapsed after it ought to have been delivered, I was on the point of throwing it into the fire, with some chagrin at my own negligence. Fortunately I arrested my hand, and the time being a Saturday evening, I preserved it, and resolved that the next forenoon I would take it home, and apologize for the delay, by recounting the simple fact. The Sunday morning opened with unusual sunshine; London was blessed by the appearance of the weather, and her streets quickened with rejoicing myriads, hastening to and fro to partake of the holiday. It was a day when no one grudges to dress himself in his gayest, and when an exulting sympathy makes the human breast share in the brightness of Nature. Soon after breakfast I sallied out. Sir Neil Eccles, by the address on the letter, lived in Harley-street, and I went there by the Newroad, knowing scarcely more than the direction in which it lay. But on approaching the number, I was astonished to see that the house was one of the most considerable in that torrid zone of commercial fashion. However, I knocked with a rap that would have been most impudent in Glasgow, and a smart, but respectable elderly footman answered the summons. His master was from home, he was in the country; but he civilly requested me to leave the letter with my card, and I might rely that it should be regularly delivered. The appearance of the man, his becoming manner, and the respectfulness of his assurances, interested me. The letter with the card was left, and I went away wondering by what strange

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accident Miss Leezy Eglesham conceived herself to be on a footing to introduce a stranger to one so far beyond her condition of life, and evidently in the possession of great opulence. In walking along, I repeated the old proverb—like master like man—and concluded from what I had seen, that Sir Neil Eccles was no ordinary character: nor was he; for, besides being an India Director, he was a Member of Parliament, and, as Dr. Johnson said to Mr. Perkins, in taking an inventory of the stock of old Thrale, it was no inventory, but a potentiality to become rich beyond the dreams of Avarice. Some days passed away, in each of which, as they passed consecutively, I heard nothing of my letter, and began to account it as nothing; when one morning Sir Neil Eccles was announced—an old ruddy-faced gentleman, whose white colourless hair announced that he had spent years in a warmer climate. I received him in my counting-house, and after a few general observations respecting the delay in delivering the letter, for I told him frankly how it happened, he invited me to dinner; an invitation which I accepted with unaffected pleasure; for there was something exceedingly prepossessing in his address, and a warmth in the manner of his invitation that was no less interesting. The invitation was for a Saturday, and on my arrival at his town-residence, the general style of his establishment, and the composed splendour of the house, without being strikingly uncommon, struck me as even above the opulence which he evidently enjoyed. An intellectual charm was diffused over all, and I could not sufficiently admire the sober harmony which at once pervaded the domestics, the furniture, and the elegance of the mansion. He received me politely—perhaps, I should say, with something like distinction—at least I felt it as such, and I could see when he thought himself unobserved, that he glanced his eye towards me, as if I were his study. The dinner was served in the best style. The company consisted of elderly persons, who were seemingly but little interested in the events of Europe. Their talk was of Bengal, and the politics of the Peishwa, but neither distinguished by any brilliancy of wit, nor the substance of much wisdom. The entertainment, if not the feast of reason nor the flow of soul, was becoming to the ample fortune of the giver. I do not recollect, however, that in leaving the house, I had any wish to be re-invited; I was in no way interested in what I had witnessed. There was evidently more wealth than talent in the company; and undoubtedly, although it was impossible for a king

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to provide a table better furnished, for the same number of guests, a pristine vulgarity showed that some of them had not been long used to such refinement. Yet I had enjoyed an excellent dinner, with delicious wines; and in walking home, I reckoned that Sir Neil Eccles’ ticket was worth a trifle more than a guinea. I counted, however, that I had received all it was destined to procure for me, and the incident was soon forgotten. Still, I could not refrain from wondering how the letter from Miss Leezy Eglesham had obtained for me such an invitation, nor the cause of those occasional glances which Sir Neil Eccles often threw at me, in which there was evidently as much of sorrow as of curiosity, with now and then the gathered brow of cogitation.

CHAPTER XVII. characters. About a month or five weeks after my first visit to Sir Neil Eccles, I received a second invitation. The party was greatly different: it consisted principally of young men of my own age, lively scions of rank and fortune; some of them possessed of more various ability than I had ever before met with in company: but I remarked that our host seemed to regard his entertainment with the constraint that marks the performance of a duty. I looked, however, in vain around, to discover, if I could, for whom the banquet was made. The entertainment was not at all inferior in elegance and propriety to that I had previously enjoyed; and from the more juvenile character of the company, I relished it more; still, I could clearly see that more was meant by it than met either the eye or the ear. What can it be? was a question repeated to myself an hundred times as I walked homeward. One day, it might be rather more than a week after, Sir Neil called at my counting-house—I was not at the time within, but he left his compliments, and begged that I would take a part of his Sunday dinner. The invitation was alike unexpected and surprising; for by this time I had been informed that he was, notwithstanding the general respect in which he was held, considered a pompous Oriental, and prided himself on the excellence of his table. The invitation was, however, flattering to me; it was indeed the kind of thing which I most wished for; of show dinners I had enough, and those promiscuous assemblages of guests, which have not been inaptly compared to meetings of creditors, being chiefly composed of personages to whom dinners are due for value received. These I never could abide, because, somehow, such was the number of good things commonly at them, that there was no need of any intellect. The party on this occasion consisted of only four persons, two guests besides the landlord and myself, and I have rarely spent a pleasanter day. Sir Neil appeared altogether a different man. Instead of the staid and regulated method of his ordinary manners, he was

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simple, facetious, and amusing. I thought his conversation more highly flavoured with literary allusions than usual, though it was always rich in that respect, far beyond the common talk of most men, and it had the effect of deepening the interest which I began to take in his character. There was evidently an enigma and a mystery about him; he was visibly actuated by other motives than those which influenced the conduct of mankind in general; for in the midst of a remarkable air of natural candour, I could discern an abyss in his bosom, in which some secret of sorrow or of passion lay as in a hiding place. Dr. Lembeck, one of the guests, seemed to be on a footing of more familiarity with Sir Neil than any other person I had seen in his company; it was not, however, the familiarity which begins in youthful life, and mellows into the friendship of riper age, but that easy habit which springs from the intimacy of a mutual good understanding cemented by reciprocal favours. It required no superior perspicacity to perceive that they had been useful to one another, and had encountered difficulties together. The Doctor had been a physician in India, and had not walked the world with his eyes unemployed. What may have been his professional talent I had never the means of knowing, but his mind was of the best and shrewdest quality, without any of that peculiar garnish which contributes to individual distinction. He was what is known in society as the most valuable of its members, a sensible and judicious man. All he uttered bore the mintage of prudence, and was ever so discreetly applied, that it passed for its just value. Like his friend, he could boast of no striking accomplishment, but he had been so long alone at his station in India, that he had made many curious observations on the inhabitants and the country, by which his conversation, without being brilliant in phraseology, was often highly interesting. His facts and anecdotes were better than wit, inasmuch as they often added to the knowledge of his auditors. I am speaking of him after an acquaintance of many years, for I have no distinct recollection of the impression he made on me when we first met at dinner. The other gentleman, Mr. Woodrife, was a being of a different element. He was emphatically a man of genius, but the force of his mind was expended on intentions. To hear him speak, no doubt could be entertained that he was either already, or destined to be of great note in the world; and yet the bud never blossomed. He seemed capable of effecting whatever he would undertake; his mind was truly a winged spirit, all sight and activity, but it only ever

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prepared to fly. At the period of which I am speaking he was well advanced in life, turned of fifty, and he had literally done nothing. He was the only man I ever met with of whom it could be justly said, that he For all things was able, for nothing was fit.

Like the herb his name resembled, which yields no fragrance until dried, his wonderful endowments were not fully appreciated by his friends until after his death; it was only when that event made it no longer possible to enjoy the affluence and glory of his conversation, that all those who knew him in life were sensible he had left a vacuum in the world. He had inherited a small fortune, was thoroughly educated, but he spent his time and income in projecting plans which, had he sought the means of carrying into effect, would have raised him to the pinnacle of renown and fortune. He could only, however, be compared to a torch, illuminating all around, but consuming itself. This gentleman and Dr. Lembeck were the two earliest acquaintances I made in London, out of the circle of my commercial associates: it is unnecessary to inform the reader that I could not but account myself fortunate in them. They were neither, it is true, exactly congenial to my taste, but the freshness of the knowledge possessed by the one, and the inexhaustible originality continually scintillating from the other, I have no doubt tended to stir the latent elements of my own character. I dwell on the event of my introduction to these gentlemen the more particularly, because, while I performed my duties in business with exemplary carefulness, I experienced the influence of their respective peculiarities gradually affecting my reflections, not, however, to the prejudice of the mercantile responsibility I had incurred to my partner, but in teaching me to consider mankind with a jealous and inquisitive eye. In truth, all kinds of business are much the same; the details of dealing furnish no adventures, whatever the line may be, if fortune be favourable. One day after another came and went in my affairs for several years so much alike, that my life, but for the additions which, through the means of Sir Neil, I was enabled from time to time to make to my society, would have been the most monotonous possible; the sameness was unalleviated by a single incident that I can recall to mind. But I must check my desultory pen, and return back to the immediate results of the dinner.

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In leaving the house. Dr. Lembeck’s course lay in a different direction from mine, but Mr. Woodrife had occasion to come part of the way with me. Our conversation, like that which commonly takes place when guests leave the hospitable board together, was at first of our host; we both agreed in thinking highly of him, and were equally convinced that he was one of those men who have two characters—one for the world and another for his friends. “He is,” said Mr. Woodrife, “not in his place; he may be prosperous, but he pays dear for it.” I requested him to explain what he meant; but his reply was perplexing. “I have no reason to know that Sir Neil is not happy in his thriving circumstances, but still, as often as I have the gratification to be with him, he seems as if he had on a new suit of clothes:” he then added briskly, “the feeling he excites, I apprehend, can only be experienced after some study of mankind; or rather, the rule of judging of others must be a result of experience. The principle on which it is founded is, however, very simple. I formed it young, and it has never misled me; it is nothing more than to observe attentively the respective conditions of men, and to ask myself if the individual, with whom at the time I happen to be interested, is in circumstances above or below the rank of his mind; when I find a disparity, I then say, if I think him higher than his fortune seems to befit—his progress in life will be advancement, but if otherwise, he will sink in the scale of society. There may be exceptions to this rule, for it cannot be denied, that good and bad luck sometimes occur in human affairs, but generally speaking, I rely upon the rule; for even in instances of good and bad luck, it will be found that the sagacity of the individual, who is the subject of either, has a material influence in producing it.” I thought the observation curious at the time, and was on the point of saying so, when he subjoined. “But perhaps you will say, the power of accurately discerning in what the discord and harmony between character and circumstances consist, is itself an endowment. It may be so, but I am not sensible that it is original in me.” “Then,” said I, a little puzzled by his metaphysics, “you imagine that there is something not well assorted between Sir Neil Eccles and his opulence.” “There is,” was the reply; “but it does not regard the progress of his fortune. He is in unison with his circumstances—he has acquired riches, and knows the wise use of them, but he has paid dearly for them; for, as often as I dine with him, I observe that he uniformly

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sighs, as he surveys his splendid table, and his physiognomy is overcast for a moment with a shade of regret. Do you know, that I suspect you are somehow connected with the cause, for I noticed him this evening once or twice looking at you with the same expression of countenance.” By this time we had come to the street where we were obliged to part, and he bade me good night, but the remark with which he left me, occasioned many a long rumination.

CHAPTER XVIII. troubles. The success which attended my commercial establishment in London was gratifying; in fact, I had every prospect of realizing a large and rapid fortune, when one morning, without any previous intimation, I received a letter from my partner Mr. Possy, informing me that Eric Pullicate had given him notice to provide a substitute, as he intended to go into business for himself. His savings in our service were considerable, and to do him only justice, his conduct quite deserved our liberality. But the information puzzled me. Had we not offered to advance him, there could have been no surprise at his determination; we had, however, pressed him to accept a share with us, and his refusal had never ceased to excite my wonder. My partner, in communicating the news, made light of it. He even considered Eric’s desertion,—the wary and far-forecasting Eric—as an effect of self-will, and only the common ingratitude of man for the sincerity of the respect we entertained for him, at the same time assuring me, that although indeed he had been a praiseworthy servant, yet he was not so rare as such that his place could not be easily supplied. Mr. Possy expressed himself in the customary language of the world, but his letter contained not one reflection from his own mind. It was all made up of the opinions of others, and filled with the commonplaces of vulgar confidence. On me, however, it had a great effect; I felt as if an amputation had been performed, and one of my limbs lopped off. I had no faith in the judgment or sagacity of my partner: in a word, I suffered an internal fear; a kind of prophetic conviction, that the secret canker of decay had attacked the roots of our prosperity. Another such as Pullicate might no doubt be obtained, but why did he quit our service? Did he see any thing amiss in our foundations? He could scarcely hope to attain, with his small capital, in many years, profit equivalent to the share we would willingly have given him? It was an event that surprised and grieved me, but like other griefs incidental to the lot of man, it wore away

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into a mere recollection of the fact, and our business still continued to thrive, and chiefly from an event which, a short time before, had taken place. Our profits had enabled us to accumulate the means of extending our dealings, and agency was added to our own business. We received goods similar to those we sold for ourselves, and made advances of money to the manufacturers. It was just when we had adopted this change in the nature of our establishment, that Eric Pullicate suddenly withdrew; but he became among the earliest of our constituents. He did not, however, adhere very long to us; and, in the increase of our business, in consequence of the agency, I soon lost sight of him. It is not my intention to relate all the history of our mercantile transactions; I shall only, therefore, occasionally allude to them when they happen to influence the colour or the current of my life. Singular, however, as it may seem, the retreat of Eric Pullicate from our employment, was perhaps the most important incident that befell my commercial pursuits, and I may as well explain here at once how it was so, although I write from conjecture, and from subsequent long and intricate rumination. I am persuaded, from the natural talent of the man, that he soon perceived the inherent commercial defects, not only obvious in my partner, but in myself. This is a humiliating acknowledgment, but unless it be frankly confessed, and freely explained, this work will neither produce the effect intended, nor be easily understood. I shall therefore first speak of those things which he could not but observe in me, and secondly of his probable motives. I have already said enough of my partner, to convey a fair idea of the danger of my connection with him; we were both but the creatures of that amazing internal prosperity which resulted to the country from the French revolution and the war; and although it was impossible to trace any degree of our success to me, yet such was the consistency of my conduct, that much of it was ascribed, among our acquaintance, to my skill and sedate habits of business. Eric Pullicate could not, however, avoid observing that all the inclinations of my character were averse to trade. His necessary constant attendance in the warehouse must have disclosed to him, before I left for London, that I was, to a most unfitting degree, prone to the indulgence of a meditative disposition, fantastical notions, and other follies of thought which, though they resemble philosophy, are in reality but the froth of the mind. While money enough for our own concerns

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was among my hands,—while my task was but to superintend sales, and while all those modifications of address and expediency which constitute the vis of trade, were not required, I was competent to perform well the part assigned to me; but when the case was otherwise, as it soon became by the growth of our agency, no uncommon sagacity was necessary to perceive that I should be found wanting, and this, I have no doubt, Eric Pullicate was wide awake to. It may, however, be supposed that he was chiefly guided in his decision by the character of Mr. Possy, and doubtless he was; for our agency, which I regard as the main cause of it, placed the very vitals of our commercial existence in that weak person’s incapable hands. The process was this:— In consigning the goods of our constituents to me, he became the judge alike of their suitableness to the market and of their value, and made his advances by drawing on me, according to the invoices rendered with them. In this, as I afterwards too late discovered, he exercised no discretion, which was indeed all that he ever possessed; and, in consequence, made advances far above what prudence could approve, and often on articles unfit for their destination. The inevitable consequences could not escape the shrewd Eric; but the catastrophe, partly owing to the stability of our credit, and to the public events which from time to time opened new markets, was postponed for several years. It was not until I happened now and then to find myself perplexed for funds to meet the draughts of my partner, that I apprehended any hazard; even then I could not but be pleased with the nominal increase of our gains, and it was natural that I should become so far infected with the vapour of the time, as to ascribe my occasional difficulties to the irregularities of winds and convoys, which so often deceived the merchants of that period. From the temporary loans, the earliest indications of my jeopardy, I was obliged at last, in order to provide for impending payments, to buy cotton at first, and gradually afterwards other merchandise, apparently on speculation, but in truth to sell again—to raise the wind; and in this practice I almost always suffered loss. One year the losses amounted to more than our commissions. In the methods I pursued, my wonted character sustained no injury; my life was steady, my personal expenditure moderate, and my company agreeable to my acquaintance; but I had no distinct perception of what I was doing. I knew not how to buy, and suffered more from my ignorance, both as respected the quality of the goods I bought, and my prospective estimates of the seasons when they would come

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into demand, than from the haste in which the necessities of my business obliged me to sell again. I never look back on this epoch of my life, without marvelling at many things which need irresistibly impelled me to do, and in which my native integrity was drawn aside by some inscrutable attraction; an infatuation which hurried me on to the ruin I was so struggling to avert, and which day after day I represented to myself as but a passing cloud. Having thus described the causes which were undermining my prosperity, I may be pardoned for seeking to fly from the recollection of many an anxious incident, but it was not among the speculations to which the imprudent bills of Mr. Possy so often obliged me to have recourse, that I married.

CHAPTER XIX. love. Some ten or twelve days after I had partaken with Sir Neil Eccles of one of his familiar Sunday dinners, at which Dr. Lembeck and Mr. Woodrife were commonly present, he came to my counting-house, and inquired if I happened to be engaged for that afternoon, for if not, as he would be detained late in the India-house, he would dine with me. The frank style of this self-invitation was flattering, and I gladly acceded to the proposal; but although by that time I was familiar with him, there was ever something about his manner, as often as I chanced to see him in any new circumstance, that more or less mysteriously interested my curiosity. On this occasion I felt it particularly. During the few minutes he remained with me, nothing in any degree could justly be said to have attracted my attention, saving only that unaccountable sidelong-look which I had so often before noticed; but when he went away, one of my fits of reverie came on, in which I began to think on that look and his remarkable visit. “It is evident,” said I, in soliloquy, “that there is some strange method in the civilities of Sir Neil. He has some purpose to promote by the manner in which he uniformly treats me. What can it be? And how has it arisen? All he knows of me is by the introduction of Miss Leezy, and yet he regards me with more than common distinction:—It must have some personal motive, for he never speaks of my business—he may not even know its nature—his attention is to myself alone!” The afternoon became damp and humid, the streets were, what the Cockneys call, greasy, and a lowering of the atmosphere, a dullness, between a fog and clouds, a muddiness of the air, rendered the evening uncomfortable. As Sir Neil expected to be late, I ordered my bachelor’s dinner half an hour after the usual time, and a fire to be lighted that would be social when it broke out; but to my own surprise and the cook’s displeasure, he made his appearance

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considerably before the anticipated hour, while the parlour was chilly, and the fire still ineffectually kindled. This incident sharpened my curiosity. We talked lightly of the topics of the day; nevertheless the preceding frame of my thoughts led me, from the pauses into which his discourse often suddenly fell, to conjecture that he had some communication to make. Nothing, however, of the kind took place; but in the course of conversation he said, in an apparently negligent manner, that he had never been at Canterbury, where some business obliged him to go in the course of a few days, and asked me, as if he did not care much whether I consented or not, to take a corner of his carriage on the following Sunday to Rochester, where he would dine and stop for the night. I have always been fond of marking my reverence for the institution of the Sabbath, by spending the day in some short excursion. His proposal was in unison with this habit, and, accordingly, soon after breakfast I was seated by his side, and on the Kent-road: nothing out of very commonplace observation took place between us till the carriage arrived at Rochester, where, having ordered dinner at the Crown, we walked out together. Going in the direction of the Cathedral, as he passed along he recollected, as it were accidentally, that the daughter of an old Calcutta acquaintance was then staying with a widow lady in that neighbourhood, and, by way of consuming the time, he proposed that we should visit her. On entering the room where Anella was sitting alone, I was struck with the cordiality of their meeting, but chiefly with the affectionate earnestness with which he embraced her. Their conversation then principally turned on the manner in which she passed her time; and his inquiries had a parental gentleness which evinced more softness of heart than any thing I had ever seen about him. Anella herself was, indeed, worthy of that care; with eminent mildness, the aspect of her character, she was calmly beautiful. There was, if I may use the expression, a benignity in her manner that in itself was an indescribable charm, in addition to the exquisite sweetness of her nature, which was as the hue on the plumb, or the down on the peach. I felt myself smitten with this delightful vision. The rich full tones of her musical voice thrilled through me, and her unequalled taste in the choice of her words, and the intelligence which glowed in all she uttered, awoke in me feelings of homage and admiration before unknown; and yet, saving in the extraordinary influence of the spell

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in her conversation, when examined fastidiously, she could only be described as invested with elegance, but it was of that fascinating kind which is more enchanting than beauty. Sir Neil saw that I was deeply interested by the appearance of his ward,—for so he spoke of her in adverting to some bills of expense which he authorized Mrs. Evelyn, the lady with whom she lived, to discharge; but I was at the time so much engaged that I paid no attention to what they were saying. In returning to the inn, he, however, jocularly insinuated that I seemed to be caught. “Who is she?” I exclaimed: “rarely have I seen so much of that inexpressible charm about any other which is her peculiar beauty.” He did not immediately reply, but looked for a moment suspiciously, as I thought, and then said, while a faint and momentary blush gleamed over his features, “She is the daughter of Major Tuffins’ widow, an old Indian friend of mine.” “Her mother, is she—” He hastily interrupted me, saying with precipitancy, “She is no more.” “I thought that her mother was still alive, by what you said.” He made no reply in words, but again threw at me one of those sudden javelin glances, which never failed to rouse my most vivid wonder. He then, as if unexpectedly struck with some beauty in the landscape of the Medway, which he had not previously observed, abruptly changed the discourse, and, with visible carefulness, during the remainder of the day, never once alluded to Anella. Perhaps I had before noticed the extreme anxiety, if it may be so called, with which he regulated himself in every thing. His most simple and seemingly accidental actions, yea, the very inadvertencies of his conversations, were all the progeny of method. I do not now, however, remember that I had previously even desired to search, but only to wonder at the cause by which he was actuated; but the change that came upon him in the way described, flashed upon me a wish to discover whence it proceeded. Our reciprocal behaviour at dinner would in consequence have probably amused a stranger. I was all eye and ear, and he, perhaps observing my solicitude, was as carefully on his guard. In the midst of this embarrassment, for it deserves no lighter name, we each forgot the object which had brought us to Rochester: he, that he had business at Canterbury, or the pretence that was couched in it, and I, that I had accompanied him only so far for a Sunday excursion, intending to return by one

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of the coaches in the course of the night; but still, although there was undoubtedly too much ingenious thinking between us, at least on my part, the recollection of the evening will always be bright and pleasant. As we sat over our wine, he explained some details of his early life, and although they were perhaps not uncommon, they were to me greatly romantic. His father had been a country schoolmaster, and had bestowed his best care on his education. A youthful attachment had, prior to his departure for India, been fostered between him and Leezy Eglesham, and, with the young simplicity of fond and early passion, they betrothed themselves to each other. The tale, however, should be told as he related it, and I cannot do more for the reader’s amusement than to give it as nearly as possible in his own words. It is one of worldliness and love, in which the word of promise was truly kept to the ear, but sadly broken to the hope.

CHAPTER XX. affection without interest. “The story,” said he, “is in its incidents not remarkable. My father was the parish schoolmaster of Kilravoch, of which Mr. Eglesham was the minister. We were the only two children in the village nearly on a footing with each other, for, although the difference in degree between the domine and the clergyman was, if I may say so, naturally wide, yet a legacy which my mother had received made the income of their respective families almost equal; for Kilravoch, as you probably know, was then one of the poorest stipends in the west of Scotland; indeed, perhaps, of the two, my father’s means were the freest. “Between Leezy and myself an early affection grew into passion, and when I received my Indian appointment, we agreed that as soon as I found myself justified by my circumstances to return, I should come back and marry her. In the sincerity of inexperienced youth, we pledged ourselves to each other, and we have faithfully kept our vow. But you will be surprised that it should never have been consummated, and that poor Leezy should be living in so humble a manner in obscurity at Glasgow, while I am in the enjoyment of so many more comforts; but you shall hear, for in that lies the romance of our lives. “Soon after my arrival in India, a gradual prospect of wealth was suddenly opened to me, and, with sanguine hopes and unabated love, I wrote with delight of my situation to Leezy; but in that chance of fortune there was an insensible bane to the happiness of both. It was part of the duty of my new situation to be often in attendance on the Governor-General, and frequent invitations to his table were the consequence, by which higher tastes and different habits and manners were induced; but still I thought my heart remained unharmed by the change, and my correspondence with Leezy was continued with undiminished warmth, and the cement of our attachment on her seemed to be equally unalterable. “In the course of a very few years I had realized fully the amount

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prescribed as the sum with which I should return to redeem my pledge, and actually was about to carry my intention into effect; but when I spoke of it to a friend, he remonstrated against my imprudence in so soon thinking, with untainted health, to quit an appointment, in which I had the happiest assurances of opulence and reputation. It happened at the same time, the self same day, that I received letters from Europe, and among them one from Leezy, in reply to an account I had given her of my hopes and condition, in which she advised me, not for her sake to mar the prospects too rashly which Providence had prepared for us both. In this advice I discovered for the first time a modest peering of latent ambition, and my own inclinations seconded her suggestions. To this cause I ascribe my long residence in Bengal: had I come away when I first intended, how different, perhaps, had been our lots—perhaps, however, not much happier. “Year after year served to foster our early hopes, and the promise of returning; but in the same time, unconscious to myself, I was becoming another man; increase of fortune, and the society into which I was thrown, led to the acquisition of ideas beyond the frugal fancies of my youth, and an accident completed the moral metamorphosis. “My friend Captain Tuffins had married a lady from England; she had been sent to a relation, as one of those common consignments which supply the matrimonial markets of India, as that of Constantinople is supplied with Circassian slaves. The connexion was not very fortunate; he was naturally a grave, and, perhaps, except in his marriage, the most prudent of men. His lady was the reverse: possessed of singular beauty, animated with the liveliest gaiety, and devoted to company, she was in every point a contrast to his sober character. The accident to which I alluded was his death: we were then at war with Hyder Ali, and he died of a wound received in a skirmish with a detachment of that intrepid tyrant’s army. Mrs. Tuffins, still in the bloom and grace of youth, was committed to my care, with many requests to afford her my friendship and protection.” Sir Neil reddened a little at this part of his story, but after a momentary pause he resumed. “Notwithstanding that her beauty and gaiety interested my admiration, I remained still faithful to the promise I had contracted with the confiding, patient, and gentle Leezy Eglesham. “But I need not enter into the particulars of what followed: you behold me still a bachelor, and in all things truly attached to my first

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love; our mutual passion was never impetuous; it was an even quiet flow, and she knows that she may command my fortune as freely as if she were my wedded wife. “About twelve months after the death of her husband, Mrs. Tuffins found it convenient to return to England, when, in little more than a month after her arrival, she died.” It seemed to me, as he thus spoke of her, that a visible embarrassment clouded his countenance, but he speedily passed on to his own story. “In the mean time,” said he, “I continued in India, until I had accumulated a fortune equal even to my enlarged wishes. But when I came back to England, and hastened to Kilravoch with ardour to fulfil my youthful engagement, I soon found that, although only a slight tinge of years had mingled with the complexion of Leezy, I was no longer the same youth to whom her affections had been pledged: well do I remember our meeting, and the pang of disappointment which both suffered. “It was early in the forenoon that I drove in a post-chaise to the manse-door. The adjacent hedges were covered with newly-washed linen, and cords drawn across the little path, which led from the highway to the house, were so hung with other articles of household thrift, that I was obliged to stoop as I approached the door. This scene of domestic housewifery was not at variance with my reminiscences; but there was a meanness, I thought, in it, not agreeable to my feelings; and all about the Minister’s residence seemed much deteriorated in neatness and propriety from what I thought it had once been. “I was readily admitted by the old gentleman himself, and kindly received. Leezy was up-stairs, but the moment she was informed who had come, she came rushing down, all heart and gladness, and in no disturbing degree changed. But as I eagerly approached her, some strange impulse obliged me to retire backwards; she paused abruptly, looked at me—and suddenly bursting into tears, without the expression of any welcome, quitted the room followed by her father. “In vain did I attempt, in the painful interval which ensued before we again met, to soothe my own feelings, and to palliate the inadvertency of my action; but the die was cast; and yet I was not greatly to blame; for, instead of being dressed with her former neatness, the drudgery of the washing-day had dishevelled her appearance, and in the hurry of her joy she had flown towards me in the ungarnished

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garments of the bed-chamber. Her hair, which I remembered so affluent and so neatly braided, was covered with a coarse and common bed-cap. She wore a calico short gown, and her petticoat, of scanty longitude, showed her limbs with stockings, it is true, but her slippers, according to the economy of her father’s narrow income, were made of cast-off shoes. She was in all things scarcely one degree more respectable in her appearance than a common maidof-all-work. It was this sight that occasioned my involuntary revolt as she entered. “I was myself very different; throughout life I have been always particular in my dress: I had, on my arrival in London, equipped myself in the best style, and I had that morning, before leaving Glasgow, apprehensive that the Indian climate had made some unfavourable impression on me, taken more than my usual care in dressing myself. I stood before her a gayer man than her fancy had formed, and with a worldly air, as she afterwards told me, which, as a stroke of lightning, smote her heart, that I could not be the one for whom she had so long nourished her faithful patience. “A considerable time elapsed before her father returned, and when he did his face was saddened, I may almost say darkened. But he came kindly to me, and said:— “‘Mr. Eccles, I am sorry for what has happened. Your meeting with Leezy has not been such as I believe both anticipated, and she is a good deal afflicted by the disappointment; but perfect bliss in nothing of this world should be looked for. By and by, however, she will be calmer, and she bids me say, although she has fled from you, that I must detain you until she is able to come again.’ “I made the best answer I could to this speech, which, though expressed with tones of kindness, was accompanied with looks of sorrow: but how wayward is the heart of man! It gave me, yes—I must say all—pleasure; I felt as if a burden had fallen from my shoulders, and chains of bondage from my hands.—What was there in the scene to give me such relief?”

CHAPTER XXI. a turn in life. I remember that at the time when Sir Neil Eccles expressed how much he was liberated by the intelligence of the grieved father, I was struck with a pang as if a sudden infection of some unpleasant fear had tainted my mind, and I observed by the look he cast at me, that he had noticed its effect on my countenance. He was faithful, but his love was gone: I must, however, continue the story. “The old man, when Miss Eglesham returned, immediately retired. In the interval, she had dressed herself with her wonted neatness, but there was a calm solemnity in her eyes that silently told of heartfelt resolution. She spoke first. ‘Let us not,’ she said, ‘waste words: this is the most important hour in the lives of both, and perhaps calls for our utmost fortitude. You, Neil, were surprised at something different about me from what you had expected. Alas! Neil, I was no less at the change which has taken place in you. We have long looked forward with anxiety for this meeting—at least I have—and your faithfulness to your promise with this early visit, is an assurance that you have done so too. But—’ and her lips quivered, and her eyes glistened with tears as she added, ‘it is a meeting to part—Yes, to part! My retired way of life, a village recluse, I have undergone no variation, save that of time. But your active and grand pursuits have made you a different man: I can no longer be fit, under so great a change, to be what I once thought.’ “She wept as she said this, but I seized her hand, and, though I felt less then than I did afterwards and now, I assured her that my heart and affections were still faithful. “‘True,’ she sadly exclaimed, ‘you may yourself think so, but your fortune and appearance witness how much you deceive yourself. No, Neil; I am not insensible to the cause which made you start at my homely garb and household drudgery. These hands, roughened as they are with our necessary thrift, are not such as you would like to see paddling on a spinnet.’ “I assured her that it was not for such trifling that I had so long

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cherished my constant affection. “‘Oh, Neil!’ she replied, and I felt myself melted, as it were, with sorrow; ‘Neil, you do not understand me. I complain not of you; the change has been worked upon you by far scenes and strange faces; but, as I cannot be your wife, I wished to prove to you the sincerity of my undecaying regard. I am no longer the woman that can add to your comforts: my lowly lot and inexperience have prevented me from acquiring those fashions and accomplishments which your wife ought to possess.’ “‘Good Heavens!’ I exclaimed, ‘what do you mean?’ “‘I am not one of those blind women who cannot discern how much of mutual feeling enters into the happiness of married life. Alas! I cannot bring a fit companion to your success. Often and often, when in imagination looking forward to this day, have I said to myself, ‘There is a guilty selfishness in the love of her that sees not the hazard she runs when she ventures to contend with habits and feelings not congenial to her own.’ I love you still, and these many years of patient and humble endurance show how dearly; but from this hour I am a widow.’ “There was a greatness of mind, and a sadness in the way she uttered this, that smote my very heart with a strange coldness, and rendered me unable to speak. She smiled, and, withdrawing her hand, added, ‘I see you are affected; but let us not play the hypocrite to each other. You make no remonstrance against my determination,—a proof that in the secret places of your bosom, unknown it may be even to yourself, it gratifies some lurking wish. Now, Mr. Eccles, I have told you my decision; from this time we shall be only as ordinary friends—more we can never be; but I will yet do justice to your generosity. My father’s narrow stipend ends with himself; the death of my mother cuts me off from any share of that pension she might have enjoyed from the Widows’ fund. If I survive my father, I shall be very poor; I therefore ask, as a token of what we once hoped to be together, that you will settle on me an income equal to what my mother would have received from the Fund.’ “‘You shall have half my fortune; you deserve it all;’ and I again would have seized her hand, but she moved gently away. “‘No, Mr. Eccles,’ was her firm answer; ‘give no more than what I ask; I am now a widow; and what would have been deemed sufficient for my father’s wife should satisfy his daughter. I will accept as my own what I have requested, but not one farthing more: no present, no gift more, must you ever offer—thirty pounds a year is enough,

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and you, from the day you fix it, must seek to know me no more.’ “I sometimes,” added the old gentleman, much affected, “think I hear her yet—but I hasten to conclude. The settlement was made, and, saving her bills, and the letter she wrote by you, soliciting me to pay you some attention for the civility you had shown to her, is all that I have since ever known of her existence: but her example has not been barren—I am a solitary bachelor, and it somehow seems to me that I should be, on her account, more than a common friend to you.” This disclosure of the early events of his life, partly explained the mystery I had observed about him, and at the same time the seeming art and wariness with which he had cultivated an intimacy with me, insomuch that from that time he treated me more as a son than a friend. I never, however, entirely possessed his confidence, as the sequel will serve to show; and perhaps owing to that circumstance, the current of my subsequent life became so often troubled. This conversation, of which I have only been able to give an imperfect outline, became so interesting, that before it was finished, the coach for London was allowed to proceed without me, and in consequence, I was obliged to remain all night at Rochester, expecting that in the morning he would resume his journey to Canterbury. But I was agreeably disappointed; whether his business admitted of delay, or his disclosure had made him, as he said, unfit for it, will be seen hereafter; we, however, came back to town in his carriage, and, to use the phrase befitting my condition, my heart was undoubtedly left behind with Anella. I was not, however, so much at that time sensible of the impression she had left on me, as I soon after experienced. I am not, indeed, sure, if in the course of the journey I thought much of her, and I perfectly recollect that her name was never once mentioned. But in the course of the week her image too often molested my thoughts, and I was endowed with a strange faculty of perceiving some surprising resemblance to her most remarkable features in the particular beauties of other females: sometimes I saw the soft blue of her eyes where the rest of the countenance was dissimilar—now and then, the fairness of her gentle complexion—and, curiously enough, I have thought that there was often more than one sound of her voice in the notes of a street-organ,—for lovers are as fanciful as poets;—before Sunday came, I had all the symptoms of an ardent passion. Sir Neil invited me on the Sunday to dine with him, and indeed requested me to come every Sunday; but I rarely went, for it so

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happened that the weather was each succeeding day seducingly beautiful, and my confinement all the week amidst the smoke of the city, made it highly proper, at least I thought so, that I should avail myself of such weather to inhale a little country air. The only thing I did not observe myself, was the direction my excursions took; for it happened that either the tide or the coaches were regularly convenient for going to Gravesend; and that I was always of opinion it was more suitable to my health to go down the river, than to Richmond or Hampton Court. This might be the case; and it was also the most natural thing in the world, that as often as I went to Rochester, I should always accidentally call to inquire if Anella had any commands for Sir Neil. But the most surprising thing in all those unaccountable journeys, was my never once mentioning to him where I had been, nor whom I had seen, even though once or twice he somewhat particularly threw out the question, and certainly I had no reason for evading it in the manner I did.

CHAPTER XXII. an event. When those judicious anticipations of ill health had been several times repeated, and my excursions to Rochester had become as regular as the Sunday, I was surprised one day, the first in which Anella had accompanied me in a walk to the castle, by the apparition of Sir Neil Eccles’ carriage coming over the bridge. I say apparition, for had it been the Flying Dutchman in full sail, it could not have disconcerted me more; to escape discovery was impossible, and my thoughts fell into utter confusion; while my fair companion was scarcely less moved. Before either had time to prepare an excuse for the accident which brought us so strangely together, the carriage drew near, but to our immediate relief, although it passed within a yard of us, Sir Neil happened at the time to have his eyes directed towards some object in the view up the river, and he did not, in consequence, as we feared, observe us. In the belief that we had been unnoticed, we hastened back to the house, and having taken a by-path, reached it before Sir Neil arrived. I would have gone in with Anella, but some unaccountable indecision induced me to hesitate, and I left her; but just as I chanced to turn round, there, awful before me, was Sir Neil; his smile was terrific. However, not to make more ado of the matter, I may sum up the whole in a few words,—I returned with him into the house, and from the date of that adventure, I was admitted as a thriving wooer to his ward, and learned, to my inexpressible astonishment, that he had been apprised of all my visits after the second, and exulted in the feigned indifference which he had maintained towards me concerning them. Anella having no relations nor friends, but only Sir Neil to consult, a day was in due time fixed for our marriage. Farther than her surname I never inquired, it was the common one of Smith, and it was only by hearing her always spoken of by her baptismal, that I was under the necessity of asking even that. Sir Neil, indeed, superseded all inquiry respecting her family and connexions, by early informing

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me, that her relations were very remote, and that she was entirely dependant on him, as her father’s friend. “The regard,” said he, “that I must ever cherish for the memory of her beautiful mother, gives her, besides the rights founded on her own merit, a strong claim upon me; I intend that her children shall inherit the best half of my fortune.” “I thought her father had also been your particular friend: was it not he that persuaded you to remain in India?” This interrogation was said in the innocence of a lover’s simplicity; but I observed that a momentary shadow passed over his face, like the overcoming of a summer cloud on the sunny fields, and he immediately smiled, adding, “Her father has, I believe, been, if not my best, undoubtedly my best beloved associate.” “I thought,” was my eager reply, “that he had been long dead of his wounds.” “But,” said he,—“but let us not now talk of him. Anella’s children shall come to a good fortune, nor shall you and she be forgotten.” I believe this is all that ever passed between us concerning my bride. I was too happy on any terms to receive the hand of Anella, and although the extent of my commercial transactions were, as I have already described, often the cause of much annoyance, still my income was liberal, and not a shade of blemish or imprudence could be imputed to the marriage. Sir Neil gave her away at the ceremony, with the interest of an affectionate father, and immediately after presented her with a casket of jewels that would have gratified a duchess. They were indeed too splendid for a merchant’s wife of my station, and I said so to himself; but he repressed my remarks, by saying it was the only occasion on which he had ever indulged his fancy in things of that kind. “I bought them,” he added, “in India, and they were intended for her mother. Let her wear them as an earnest of what shall be done hereafter.” The liberality, or, more properly speaking, the magnificent generosity of Sir Neil to my wife on her wedding-day, astonished us both, and he continued ever after to treat us as his children. In his own establishment he made no change, but his home was with us, and his attention devoted to promote the felicity which we enjoyed in no unenviable degree. The first five or six months subsequent to the marriage were indescribably blessed; doubtless, during the time, I had, like other merchants, my anxieties, but there was more of pure and unmingled pleasure in my cup, than is often enjoyed in the uncertain

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fortunes of men. Somewhere about the seventh month, several severe disasters happened among our correspondents, and my partner, sanguine that although they molested our arrangements, the effect would soon pass off, suggested that I should raise a permanent loan, to render, as he said, our hands easy. He spoke of the proposal as of easy accomplishment, and dwelt much more on the prospects of our business increasing, than on this fatal suggestion, for fatal it proved. It was like a shot in my heart. I know not why it so overwhelmed me; why the sober image of Eric Pullicate flashed upon my recollection; why I suffered, as it were, an inward sense of ruin; but the proposal touched my spirit with suspicion and dread. An awful vision of Anella in penury rose before me, and I actually was so far shaken from my habitual equanimity, that I read the letter again, and, being alone, gave way to tears of apprehension. I was alone, and still deeply distressed by the prophetic effect of the letter, when Sir Neil Eccles came in. He saw that some misfortune had befallen me, and, with the wonted art and delicacy so finely blended in his character, inquired what had happened. I could make him no answer, but, lifting the letter, which lay on the table, presented it open, and requested him to give me his advice. He received it with agitation; I saw his hand tremble as he took his spectacles from his pocket, but he said nothing. Having finished the perusal, he replaced it on the table, removed his glasses, and restored them to his waistcoat-pocket without uttering a word. After a pause of several minutes he said calmly, “This certainly does not look like sound prosperity, but your credit is still in a healthy state. I am amazed, however, to see how, in the same breath, Mr. Possy talks of increasing advantages, and yet suggests the expediency of raising a loan—a loan for some time. I will readily assist yourself with a few thousands, if that will be enough, but you must previously go to Scotland and ascertain the real state of your affairs there, and if you find them in the condition you fear they are, separate at once from Mr. Possy, and form another connexion with some more judicious man.” As he uttered these words, which have ever remained engraven on my memory, the image of Eric Pullicate, his sedate aspect and bright shrewd eye, peering sidelong, again came across my mind, and in the same instant I resolved to set off by that evening’s mail to investigate the circumstances of our transactions in Glasgow. Sir Neil, who was himself an alert and decisive character, applauded the

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promptness of my determination, which, however, was not formed without a pang; for Anella was several months advanced in that interesting state in which all good ladies wish to be who love their Lords, and it was with an exquisitely painful reluctance that I left her. I wish not, however, to indulge my feelings here. The consequences that ensued supply materials for a sad tale, but I shall try to speak with cheerfulness, and to tell my story as the events came to pass.— Vain attempt! it is not in my power; my paper is blistered with the tears of remembrance, and I must pause.

CHAPTER XXIII. glasgow. My journey to Glasgow was probably not much different in its incidents from that to London, but my mind was so engrossed with cares, that I retain no recollection of them. An oblivion like this, is the surest proof that a man in subsequent life can possess of the anxiety he has suffered at a former time. I have remarked the same thing on other occasions, and as often as memory is at fault, when it seeks to recover a remembrance, I am persuaded that the circumstance had occurred in some crisis of intense solicitude or passion. My partner, Mr. Possy, was greatly surprised when I came suddenly upon him, and still more when I described how much his letter had alarmed me. He assured me that I had conceived a false notion of the condition of our affairs, for that every thing was flourishing to which he had put his hand, and that in advising the loan, he was only actuated by a wish to keep me easy in our pecuniary transactions, and that we might be the better able to meet our increasing business. Still this assurance did not satisfy me; my fears were awakened, and I could not reason myself out of an apprehension that the business which obliged me to have recourse to such expedients to raise money as I had been subjected to, could not be in a sound state. It even struck me, as we were in conversation, that he seemed to be under a spell of infatuation in what he said, for during my residence in the metropolis, the impression which I had originally received of the natural defects of his understanding, had in a considerable degree been worn away, and his letters, filled with plausibilites, absorbed from others, apparently indicated both thought and observation. However, as the purpose of my journey was to investigate, I did not rest satisfied with his hopes and convictions, but immediately applied myself to ascertain the facts of the case. Nothing could be more flattering than the first results. We had received vast consignments, and sold prodigious quantities to merchants trading to different parts of the globe, especially to North and South America, and the West India Islands, neutral as well as British;

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and although our advances were heavy, yet, when the returns would come in, our profits would indemnify us richly. I had every reason therefore to be pleased, and became vexed at my own want of confidence. I wrote in this spirit to Sir Neil Eccles, and alluded to the assistance which he had given me cause to expect; but I was astonished at his reply, and felt inexpressibly chagrined at the haste I had been in to give a premature opinion. He expressed the warmest satisfaction at the statement I had made, but he reminded me how much our prosperity was dependant on that of others, and that the universal opinion of his most sagacious friends was, that the trade in which I was deepest interested was overdone; urging me rather to contract than to think of extending our dealings. I could not resist the force of his counsel, seconded as it was by my own latent fears; I saw at once, that instead of consulting the arithmetical figures in our books, I should turn my attention principally to ascertain the true state of our correspondents; and this secret inquiry, known only to myself, the more it was prosecuted proved the less encouraging. It is necessary to explain so much, to account for my stay in Glasgow having been prolonged far beyond what was required by the examination of our own books, and at a time too, when my wife was in the most interesting situation. I heard that something like wonder was now and then expressed at my apparent apathy, and I was also two or three times troubled with questions by old gentlemen whom I respected, uttered in a kind of condoling tone, expressive of their hope, that I found all things in the best state with Mr. Possy. These friendly interrogatories had something oracular in them; and I use not language too strong, when I say they exasperated my hidden anxieties. I speak of my commercial concerns thus seriously, both because at the time they greatly affected me, and led to the vicissitudes which have since overcast my prospects; for in other respects my visit to Glasgow was one of much enjoyment. All my early friendships were renewed: Dr. Leach still continued as commonplace and erudite as ever; Mr. Macindoe, according to his own intimations, had more affairs on hand than a first minister of state. But little change had indeed taken place in the village, and the only person in Glasgow, of all those I formerly numbered as my intimates, to whom any very eminent change could be imputed, was Eric Pullicate; and upon him a metamorphosis both moral and commercial had taken place to an extraordinary degree.

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From the period when he quitted the employment of our house, the world had gone well with him. He was become distinguished, had made a great deal of money, and was cautiously and constantly thriving. He still, however, wore the same plain shrewd appearance as formerly; but from a democrat of the very jacobine order he had evolved into a temperate Whig. Had he acquired an estate, he would undoubtedly have been a Tory. Just before my arrival he had purchased an elegant house, and aspired, much in the usual way of the topping citizens, to give costly dinners; but his wife, with a competent share of good sense, could never cast off her early habits; nor himself, with increasing fortune, acquire the demeanour of a gentleman—and yet it would be far from truth to insinuate that he was either a coarse or a vulgar man. The husband and wife, on the contrary, were judiciously paired, if the expression may be allowed, and it was only when they imagined that they should emulate the weak splendour of their neighbours, whom they conceived were not richer than themselves, that they did not both merit the praise of carrying their full cup with a steady hand. Nothing could be better suited to their circumstances than their domestic habitudes. Their attempts at style and fashion were, however, extremely absurd and ridiculous. Of course there were a few whom the rank prosperity of the early cotton trade occasionally so inflated—but it serves to alleviate the uniform simplicity of my narrative, to introduce an exception now and then to the general burgess sobriety which has always been so sedulously cultivated by the Glasgow manufacturers! During the period that I remained in the Royal city, listening with open ears to all the intelligence I could possibly have access to, concerning the circumstances, the character, and the prospects of those with whom our affairs were ravelled, I had many opportunities of seeing Eric Pullicate when he was seen best, in a quiet chat with himself by his own hearth. I also was regularly invited to his show-banquets, and though I never felt myself comfortable at them, they were still scenes from which a species of exquisite pleasure was derived—enjoyment, mingled with regret, at seeing a man in all respects so superior to the commonalty in discernment, prudence, and information, making an exhibition of himself, and to no advantage—merely because his purse enabled him, now and then, to set out a gorgeous table. One occasion of this sort ought really to be described; it was remarkable, not only as the greatest banquet he had ever given, but was distinguished by an incident, of which no probable augury could have been discovered in his previous life.

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The democrat entertained a Lord! The details, however, furnish materials for another chapter, and I must beseech the indulgence of the reader while I try to recollect them, for it took place while I was suffering from anxiety, and I have already explained, that in such a time, passing events make but little impression upon me: indeed, I cannot account to myself how it has happened that I retain any remembrance of the affair at all; for, independently of the cares with which I was then environed, an event came to pass, that, in the energy of the anguish, which still bursts out afresh when it is recalled, I feel as if all lighter things should have been washed out with tears from the tablet of my brain.

CHAPTER XXIV. a new man’s feast. My friend Cyril Thornton has lately, in his very admirable autobiography, told us of a dinner with which he was entertained by one of the Magistrates of Glasgow, but it seems to have been an ordinary genteel affair, what in common Trongate parlance is called a beefer, or pot-luck, compared with the high and solemn banquet to which I was invited with the Lord. English peers, as it is well known, beyond the Tweed, are not at all so respectable as those of Scottish growth; but the Earl of Moorheather was of the best blood in the Highlands, and, commanding the regiment then quartered in the city, was justly entitled to all manner of ceremony. Accordingly, Mr. Pullicate being recently chosen into the town council, could do no less, as his lady told me, than be civil to him, like the rest of the magistrates. “’Deed,” said she, “Mr. Bogle Corbet, it’s far from our line o’ life to think of making any occasion of the sort; the gude man, however, cannot weel be off testifying his respect for my Lord, but the thought o ’t takes away my night’s rest.” I sympathized with her sincerely, and subjoined, “That gentlemen in public trusts are obliged to do many things exceedingly disagreeable to themselves.” “That’s very true,” was the reply, “and so I said to Eric,—I have not got my tongue yet used to call him Mr. Pullicate,—when he was obligated, by course of dignity, to see the man hanged: but this is a real great han’ling. Howsomever, if I can get through’t with credit to the gude man, pains shall not be wanting. I have ordered every thing o’ the best; for on an occasion like this we must put our hand in our pouch.” I cordially assented to the propriety of her opinion. This conversation took place during a morning visit which I happened to make, much to her inconvenience. May I add the motive?—to see how her preparations were proceeding, for I, too, was interested in the event. In the afternoon, when I went a little before the exact time, to

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be the first of the party, all had gone on prosperously. The drawingroom chimney, however, not being often in use, smoked a little, and the air of the apartment was still cold and raw, one of the windows being opened until the fire properly kindled. “I’m glad to see you,” said Mrs. Pullicate, dressed inordinately in her gayest. “The gude man will be down-stairs presently; ye’ll sit next to him at dinner, for he’ll need the help and council of a friend.” At this juncture he came into the room, and almost immediately after the guests began to arrive, respectable elderly gentlemen with white waistcoats and big bellies. Then the parish minister, a venerable person, habitually more grave than naturally so. One of the other guests, at the moment, looking out at the window, said, “There’s the Principal, in his cocket hat, a sign that he expects a long cork will be drawn the day.” To the Principal succeeded the Lord Provost, two of the Bailies, Mr. Aird, as an old friend, and anon came the Earl, a douce, baldheaded carl in regimentals, which, not having been put on till late in life, did not seem to sit easily upon him. He was received of course, with great elaboration of homages, and Mr. Aird, as well as our host, appeared to be much incommoded with their hands. Mrs. Pullicate, having bare arms, which were tinged into a deeper red by her household visits to the kitchen fire, placed them a-kimbo, and taking hold of each elbow made a lowly curtsey, like a miss of old at a minuet, as his Lordship approached towards her. Saving the profoundness of her sinking, nothing remarkable took place before dinner. On the feast neither pains nor cost had been spared. Plate and china were gorgeously intermingled, and lamps to warm the dishes, lighted with oil of cinnamon, would have breathed all Arabia—but for the fragrance of the meat. I remarked, however, that the use of the lamps had not been disclosed, no one, either from ignorance or bashfulness, ventured to touch them. “He’s very plain,” whispered Mr. Pullicate to me; “he’s only eating the salmon with common vinegar just like an ordinary man.” I looked towards the Earl, and it was so. “Lord, will I help you?” said Mrs. Pullilate to his Lordship, as if she had some difficulty in uttering the freedom of such an inquiry.—I must not, however, relate, if I could, all the particular details. Just at this juncture a servant filled a goblet to one of the guests near me with champagne; I saw him drink it, and wring his lips deliciously after, but he made no immediate remark; he then drained the dregs, and turning to me, said, “That’s no an ill brewst;” and

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extending his voice, he added, “Mr. Pullicate, is Strothers or Carruthers your brewer?” This suggested me to challenge my old friend, our host, to champagne. “It’s the first time,” said he, “ever such costly drink has been in my house, and therefore I’ll no’ make an objection for a ploy to taste it.” Accordingly the wine was poured out, and he added, “Well, let it bide a wee till the bizzing’s o’er.” “Very proper.—Well, Eric, how do you like it?” He held up his glass and looked through it, adding wisely, “It’s surely a fine wine for a flam; but, in my opinion, port’s a better liquor—as a liquor.” “Lord, will ye be served,” said Mrs. Pullicate, “with one of yon round bonny-things, forenent Mr. Bogle Corbet? They call them French patties: they’re made o’ oysters, and are real fine.” My attention was thus drawn to his Lordship, but he preferred the mutton, and every guest whispered to his neighbour, with a face of admiring piety, “It was indeed wonderful that a Lord should eat mutton!” However, dinner was at last concluded; and making due allowance for a few little inadvertences, it was a sumptuous feast, and did credit to the opulence and liberality of the entertainer and his indefatigable lady; but, just as the cloth was removed, I was summoned from the table. “Mr. Possy wished to see me particularly,” said the messenger. He was during the day at Paisley on some matter of business, and although I had opened the letters by the post in the morning, there had been one for him untouched when I left the counting-house. I doubted not, therefore, that although this letter was addressed to himself, it had some relation to our common affairs. The urgency with which he had sent for me I ascribed to his wonted folly, and on hearing the message, was on the point of returning back into the dining-room. But the person who had come for me, arrested eagerly my arm, saying— “Sir, ye had better go home.” “I’ll go to the warehouse,” was my answer, observing something more serious than common in the looks of the messenger. “Mr. Possy is at your lodgings, waiting for you.” “In the name of Heaven! what has happened?” “Nothing very uncommon, but ye’ll hear the worst of it from himself.”

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“The worst!—has there been any failure?” “He’s in sore affliction; I could not have thought Mr. Possy would have felt so much, had it concerned himself.” “Does it not then concern him?” and in the same moment I put on my hat to accompany the man. “Sir,” he added respectfully, “would you not be the better of the assistance of Dr. Porteous, the minister?” “Why?” cried I, halting. The man looked at me compassionately, and said, “Mr. Possy has had a sad letter anent your leddy—It’s all over.” I heard no more; for a moment the whole house appeared as if it had been crushed in around me, and I fainted.

CHAPTER XXV. a resolution. Few men reach fifty without having experienced that there are accidents in life which, as it were, transmute the very nature of the mind. I have felt this change more than once, but never to so great a degree as when I was recovered to the full sense of my loss. Under any circumstances, the calamity would have been unspeakable; my first love was no more, and all the expectations I had cherished of becoming a father, utterly quenched. It seemed to me as if a mortcloth had been thrown upon the future, and that I was doomed, for the remainder of my days, to mourn by the bier of departed happiness, forlorn beside the coffin of my hopes. But the indulgent reader will spare me from describing the agony of grief with which I felt the blow; I only recollect the tidings, and that I awoke in my bedchamber from a hideous dream, which left no image on the memory, but a dark and formless omen of woe, and the long black shadow of something that had passed never to come again. Fortunately, in the dreadful interval, the troubles of our mercantile affairs began to show themselves;—yes, fortunately, for had it not so come to pass, such was the consternation which had fallen upon me, that the faculties of my mind must have withered. I could think only of the void made by Providence in my lot, and ponder why it had been so suddenly permitted. But after ten days of vacuity and sorrow, I was roused by an early visit from my partner, entreating me to think of our affairs, which were in great jeopardy, in consequence of the capture of a ship with a consignment of dollars uninsured, belonging to one of our correspondents; a disappointment which rendered it necessary that the loan he had spoken of should be raised without delay. During my abstraction, several letters had come to me from Sir Neil Eccles, condoling with the most touching kindness on the loss I had suffered, and filled with such grief for the virtue and beauty extinguished in Anella, that many of his pathetic expressions surprised me even then by their tenderness. In the alarm which the

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news of the capture inspired, it naturally occurred to me, to represent what had taken place, and to entreat his temporary aid until I should feel myself in a better condition to attend to business. His answer was characteristic; he lamented that such an untoward event, at such a time, should have come to me; reminded me that he had advised me to abridge our transactions, and in a remote manner, but in language which could not be misunderstood, compassionately apprised me that Heaven had been pleased to sever the tie which united our mutual interests. The letter from Sir Neil left me no hope of obtaining the aid which our concern so suddenly required; and the thickening disasters of the time clearly pointed out, that in order to do justice to our creditors and to ourselves, we ought to suspend payments, and seek permission to wind up our affairs. Never shall I forget the weak amazement with which Mr. Possy heard me when I proposed that measure. He had never looked beyond the arithmetical signs in our books for any other proof of our prosperity. These certainly showed that great profits were due to us, and that in our ruin were still riches, but they lay afar off. His lady, at the mere idea of the suspension, became wild; she upbraided me for having led him to destruction, and gave vent to every expression of accusation and distraction, for the poverty I had brought upon them. But neither his infatuated astonishment, nor her frenzy, could supply a remedy. We had no alternative; I resolved to make my unavoidable determination public; but, before doing so, I consulted several gentlemen in whose judgment I had great confidence, and among others, Mr. Pullicate, whom I was desirous to engage in superintending the settlement of our business. It was due also to the sincerity with which Mr. Macindoe had ever interested himself in my affairs, that I should early disclose my situation to him; accordingly, when I had spoken with my other friends, I rode out to Weebeild for that purpose. For some weeks previously he had been slightly unwell; his wonted active exercise was too much for his strength, and he had in consequence been obliged to confine his rambles to the garden. As I approached the house he was sitting on the lawn in front, in an arm-chair brought from the parlour; beside his right shoulder stood a claw-footed table; a daily paper, which had long supplanted the weekly journal, lay on it, carelessly thrown from him, and over the paper lay several letters, and a number of the Edinburgh Review, then in all the plenitude of its original acumen and acrimony, with his spectacles in it, marking the page where he had been reading.

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At the time he was engaged in discussing some horticultural topic with his gardener, an old man with a fustian coat and a blue shalloon apron, who, as he listened to what his master said, leaned with his elbow on the top of his spade-handle, while his right foot was placed on the blade, as if in the act of shoving it into the ground. Whether it was an effect of what had befallen myself, or that there really was something in the appearance of the group which set the current of my fancies in a gloomy direction, is of no consequence to ascertain; but when I opened the gate I felt myself sensibly touched with dejection at the sight. Mr. Macindoe, without being very seriously indisposed, had about him many ensigns of ill health; among others, he wore a white cotton night-cap, and a staff stood between his legs: his complexion was also pale, and at the moment he seemed as if old age had made greater inroads upon him than I had anticipated; while the rustic simplicity of the ancient gardener with his spade, reminded me of the attitude and action of a village sexton opening a grave. Mr. Macindoe himself was not, however, aware of the associations which his appearance had awakened. On seeing me at the gate, he called in a languid, an affected hollow voice, and, without rising from his seat, desired the gardener to fetch another chair from the house.

CHAPTER XXVI. a consultation. When James Sybo, the gardener, had brought out the chair and placed it on the opposite side of the table, I sat down to recount the particulars of my case. In the mean time, while the old servant was fetching it, I had inquired into the indisposition of his master, whom I found depressed in spirit, and who, unable to give any other name to his disease, described it as a sort of “alloverishness.” As I related to him the crisis which had overcome the affairs of Corbet and Possy, he patiently listened. Contrary to his wonted impetuosity, he heard me to the conclusion, and when I had made an end, he was apparently seized with a violent fit of coughing, and not ready with any reply. He was evidently perplexed, but in this taciturnity I could discern a gathering of thought, and I waited quietly till it grew to words. From the time of my becoming a partner with Mr. Possy, he had uniformly styled me Mister, or Mister Bogle Corbet, but on this occasion, stretching his hand to me across the table, he said kindly, “Bogle, my lad, this cannot be called glad tidings; it’s no’ the song of the shepherds of Bethlem watching by night. Man! I’m concerned for you. Well, I never thought that simple Possy was a golden guinea —I had ay a suspicion that he was worth no more than twenty shillings,—made of paper, to the bargain. However, what is ordained will be; and ye are neither to be a Provost nor a Lord Mayor, but only a broken merchant. Have ye seen Dr. Leach anent it? ponder well as ye take the loup—poor man, he will be a grieved commodity. To think after all his care and pains, how I plucked you by his counselling from the miry clay of Mr. Aird’s democratic shop, and how we placed you in poor Archibald Thrum’s warehouse, and finally set you up as a manufacturer, establishing your way. Really, Bogle Corbet, you have brought me bad news, and a gazette of your own for the same. What is to be done?—no advice can I give—demented I am—no, none, Bogle Corbet.”

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He appeared so seriously affected, that, considering his indisposition, I was sorry to have grieved him so much, and in order to lighten his depression a little, I directed his attention to the large balance, the fortune that would remain to the partners when the business was finally closed. “Heh, man Bogle! ye’re speaking of a shelled peas-cod,” was his doubtful reply; “I see nothing in what ye say, but a galravitching Christmas dinner to the Jamaica cockroaches. They’ll eat up a’ ye call your balance of assets; stoop and roop, will they eat it before Christmas comes—and it comes but once a year.” I did not apprehend, certainly, the danger which he did from the cockroaches, and I could not refrain from smiling at the vivacity of his fear. Without, however, noticing that glimpse which brightened for a moment my features, he continued— “And the fashions of your goods will soon become auld, when they lie in a dark damp cellar at Kingston, in the way of Niggers rolling sugar hogsheads, and piling up fustic and logwood. Many a ‘Dam e tings of Massa Bogle what-em-call,’ will be their baptism by the black fellows, and then the remainder to be sold at Vendee! My heart aches at the enormity of your balance; it will sink you to—I must not say where, being a sick man, and troubled with desperate cramps in my legs; but—but—you know if I had the heart what I could say.” I endeavoured to persuade him that his ill health darkened his mind, and caused him to see our prospects too gloomily. “Not a jot, not a jot, as John Cummel the play-actor says, in the Blackamoor’s part. But it’s a feedum, an omen, that in such a jeopardy I can give no advice. It bodes ill for my recovery. Heh, heh! Bogle Corbet—I thought ye were a green bay-tree,   Near planted by a river, Which in its season yields his fruit,   And his leaf fadeth never.

What a blessing it is to have the consolation in the dark hour and season of despair; read, Bogle Corbet, and meditate upon the statutes in the watches of the night.” I expressed my extreme grief at being the cause to him of such affliction, and assured him, that although it was exceedingly humiliating to be obliged to stop payment, yet I considered it but temporary.

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“My man, my man,” he rejoined, “it’s a period—it’s a full stop— and what says that pawkie get of Belzeebub, Eric Pullicate, to all this? I have had my fears that he has long seen what was coming to pass. He is a supple serpent, and they tell me, as he waxes rich, he grows loyal. Shall I live to see him, your foreman! the Lord Provost after all? How little do we know what is ordained! Man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly into their eyes—I mean upwards. This, Bogle Corbet, is a sore calamity—woe, woe, that I can give no advice!” Surely there must be a great mass of ingratitude somewhere about my heart, for the more Mr. Macindoe continued to utter his jeremiad the less did I feel myself obliged by his compassion, and, strangely enough, the less too did my misfortune seem deserving of such excessive condolence. “Then, Sir,” said I, after a brief pause, “you are of opinion that I do wisely in resolving to stop payment.” At these words he started from his chair, and flourishing his night-cap round his head, exclaimed— “And have ye not yet done that?—thanks be and praise; now I can advise. Richard’s himself again! Keep your thumb on all you have been telling me, and never let wot to Robin Carrick, and the likes of him, of your straits as being more than a pinch by the lazy packets. Life in a muscle! carry on, carry on! you know not how the sails will fill, nor what nor how a day may bring forth; and if at last ye must fail, and I misdoubt ye must, what does it signify whether ye pay a crown or a pound,—is it not all in the way of trade?” Teasing and even vexatious as his absurd lamentation had been, this suggestion was still more disagreeable. It had been part of my self-instruction to cherish high sentiments, and the advice troubled my very hearing. But some restraint at the very moment checked my resentment, and I only remarked that once in difficulties, there was no knowing to what they might lead; adding, that I thought that such was the condition of Corbet and Possy’s concern, that they could not go one step farther without—— “Snuffs of tobacco!” cried he; “faint heart never won fair leddy. Ye have only just to slip out from the corner of your mouth into Robin Carrick’s long lug a wee bit innocent white lee anent the packets, and so forth, and he’ll make your bills bank notes by the way of squint.” “But where are the bills?” said I, dryly. “Make them—just go among your friends, tell them that ye have been a thought disappointed, and I warrant they’ll come to you like flakes in a snow-shower.”

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This proposal absolutely passed like a barbed arrow through me, but I was enabled to say sarcastically, “Will you assist me?” “Me!” was his exclamation, “that has been out of trade these twoand-twenty years, and never raised the wind in my life! It would be going far afield to try that now. But ye’re in good credit and rich in many friends.” I could suffer no more, but snatching up my hat, I wished him good morning, and leaving him in astonishment, hastened to the home of my childhood—the dwelling of Mrs. Busby.

CHAPTER XXVII. an old friend. It is not the circumstances in which the incidents of life take place, but the feeling they excite, that makes one occurrence more than another, important. The crisis of fortune at which I had now arrived was destined to influence all my subsequent days, but there appeared no augury in the time to make me sensible that it was fraught with such consequences. The distance from Weebeild to the house of Mrs. Busby in the village, was little more than a mile. It was a road I had often travelled—I will not say with a lighter heart, for the schoolboy-cares of lessons to learn, and the anxieties attendant on fishing or nesting excursions, were not less heavy than the burthen which then weighed upon my spirits. During the major part of the walk I was irritated and resentful. I thought, however, less of the impending ruin than of the manner in which Mr. Macindoe had discussed it; and grieved an immeasurably deal more at the nature of the advice he gave me how to meet my difficulties, than with apprehension of the desolation I must soon encounter; saying, as I thoughtfully plodded along, “Can such be the way, indeed, of the world?” When the flutter had subsided into a gentler vexation, and my thoughts grew calmer, perhaps from some unconscious sympathy with the peacefulness of the day and the repose of the landscape around, I began to reflect more in detail on my conversation with Mr. Macindoe. His composed attention to my recital was surely at variance with the habits of his character. From what cause could it proceed? The strange abruptness too, with which he leaped at once from inability to advise me, into an alacrity to recommend what I thought a dishonest course, was also perplexing. Agitated with these unsettled and veering reflections, I reached the door; but so much had I been absorbed in meditation, that notwithstanding the distance, as I have said, was not above a mile, I had taken nearly an hour to walk it. It could not have been owing to any slowness in my steps,

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for, several times, so rapid were my paces, that I was obliged to halt with breathless haste; at others, however, I found myself standing on the road-side, as if suddenly transported thither in a dream. On entering the parlour, I found Mrs. Busby dressed for the afternoon, with a black lace cap over her snow-white cambric hood, in which, after having finished her household cares for the day, she always appeared before dinner. With the delicacy of her economy, she then usually knitted the net of a purse, or occupied herself in some light labour of the needle or the wires, and laid aside the coarser thrift on which she had been engaged in the morning; but on that occasion she was differently employed, having on the floor at her feet a piece of muslin, which she was dividing into neckcloths. She saw on my entrance that I was disturbed, but she made no remark on it until I had rested myself some time, when laying down the muslin, and taking off her spectacles, she inquired with more than her wonted kindliness how I was, and encouraged me not to be dejected. “Misfortune and disappointment,” said she, “are the followers of all the children of men. But this blight has suddenly overtaken you, and I ought not to be surprised that you feel it severely.” “What blight do you speak of?” cried I, astonished at her remark, yet sensible of its justness; for although I had disclosed only that morning in confidence the brink on which Corbet and Possy stood, I was conscious that their danger had some outward sign upon myself; but how she should so aptly conjecture from what particular cause it arose, seemed discernment beyond the reach of ordinary sagacity. Instead, however, of immediately answering my question, she looked at me anxiously for a short time, and said, “Is it possible, then, that things are not so bad with you? I was told that you and Mr. Possy had stopped payment, and that the creditors intended to send you to Jamaica, to look after the stock of goods on hand there.” I was thunderstruck. It had never once occurred to me that our situation could be so publicly known. I ought, however, to have been aware how much the necessity of prying into the circumstances of their neighbours is a mercantile duty, and that to obtain information, as to the credit and character of their friends, is so often the true object of social feasts among merchants. However, I soon learned from her that our bankruptcy, in consequence of our disappointment in remittances, was so well known, that the stoppage was told

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to Mrs. Busby as an event which had already happened. The news, when communicated, rather allayed than excited me, and saved me from the unhappy task of relating them to her: but my amazement may be imagined, when I heard that Mr. Macindoe had been her informant—he whom I had conceived to be so utterly ignorant of my unavoidable fate. The patience with which he had listened to me was explained, and also the secret motive of his inability to assist me with advice. Why the knowledge of this should have moved in me any feeling of resentment, the reader can best determine; but it came over me, as if unhappiness were wafted as an infected air, and I was seized with a momentary loathing of misanthropy. Mrs. Busby perceiving how much I was disposed to resent the ludicrous cunning, as it seems now, of my quondam curator, but which at the time was felt to be insulting, insisted on my spending the afternoon with her, and partaking once more of her frugal dinner. “From all that I can discern, Bogle Corbet,” said she, “an afternoon can now be neither here nor there to your affairs; nor in the condition in which ye stand, can the advice of a weak old widowwoman, that needs counsel so much herself, be of any effectual service. But ye have a public duty to perform on the morrow, and a little quiet will not mar you in the difficulty; it’s as useful as a sleep before a journey: and moreover, Bogle Corbet, my dear boy, if I may judge not uncharitably of Mr. Macindoe, maybe the principles I instilled when you were but a bairn, will not be the worse of being refreshed, after having been so many years sullied by the world. I cannot advise you as to your affairs more than he, but keep a fast hold of your integrity, and let no glimpse of hope lure you to forget, that, to attempt stepping a wide ditch, in a miry place, is seldom done with clean feet.” As she said this, I could perceive her suppress the sensibility which had brought tears into her eyes, for she suddenly smiled, adding, “Guess what I am about with this muslin; you will see in the work a remnant of that old providence which you sometimes jeered me for, when there was then no cloud in the sky. I am making cravats for your Jamaica voyage; as you told me, when ye came to Glasgow, that you still observed my counsels concerning your clothes. It appears I have been a little too ready in setting about the work, as Mr. Macindoe was not well-informed. But the event is to be, and readiness is not heinous.”

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After dinner, as I had resolved not to return to the city till the moon rose in the evening, I went into the garden alone. It would be wrong to say I was not sorrowful, but it was with a sorrow still and calm in its anguish. I wandered heedlessly, but now and then I noticed a shrub, which I had planted in my boyhood, carefully preserved by Mrs. Busby, and other silent green monuments of the affection she had so uniformly cherished for me. I have often since experienced, that in the æras of grief and care, the heart derives an unspeakable consolation from contemplating former scenes of ease and innocence. It is this which draws the unfortunate back to the haunts of their childhood, as the frightened and afflicted babe clings in fondness to its mother’s bosom.

CHAPTER XXVIII. a scene. On my return in the evening to Glasgow, I went straight to the house of Mr. Possy, to announce my final determination that we should stop payment. It might perhaps have been in some respects more prudent, had I postponed the execution of this resolution till the morning, but there was always so much of incalculable weakness disclosed by him when suddenly thrown into perplexity, that I considered it as well to have this trial over. On reaching the door, I felt myself considerably disturbed; I was the bearer of evil tidings, and I had an unpleasant impression from the appearance of the house, that I was to be witness to some scene of extravagant distress. Unusual lights seemed to shine from the windows, and the curtains being down, they had each, as I thought at the moment, a cast of something that reminded me of a sick chamber. But I rallied my fortitude, and the door was immediately opened by one of the maids, a simple country girl, who, when she saw who was there, raised her hand in a tragedy attitude, and shaking it, said, “Wheest, wheest! speak laigh.” I stepped, in consequence of this mysterious admonition, softly forward, and paused as she gently closed the door: when she turned round she was in tears. “What has happened?” said I; “who is ill? Has Mr. Possy, or your mistress, or any of the children met with an accident?” “Oh, oh, hoch hone!” was all the answer she could make, wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron. I was on the point of retiring, conceiving the family already afflicted by some severe disaster, and that my communication would only increase their distress, when the poor lass turned round, and with an accent of great earnestness inquired, “Hae ye no heard the news?” “News! what news? I have heard no news!” “Oh dear! oh dear! that it should be my lot to tell them!”

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Seeing the vehemence of her grief, I began to imagine the most improbable horrors, and exclaimed, “Has Mr. Possy shot himself?” “It’s waur, it’s far waur.” “In the name of all that is good, tell me!” “Well, if ye will ken, I may put you at once out of pain, Sir. Hoch hone, Sir, he’s a broken merchant, and they say he’s to be ’questered. My mistress is a woful woman.” The news coming from such a quarter, surprised me almost as much as the information of Mrs. Busby. I said, however, nothing in reply, but walked into a dark parlour, the door of which was open, and desired her to tell her master that I was most anxious to see him. Presently he came to me with a candle in the one hand, and a pair of snuffers with the tray in the other. Without speaking, he placed them on the table, and in a ceremonious solemn voice requested me to be seated. I accordingly sat down in a chair opposite, and, wondering what such unaccustomed dignity could portend, waited for his speech in silence. I did not wait long. “Mr. Corbet,” said he in a suitable accent, “you see at last what your wild speculations have brought upon us; my family is ruined, and, saving her marriage articles, Mrs. Possy, who brought me a good fortune, has not a black bawbee left to rub the sides of another. But I’ll no upbraid,—I bow the head of resignation; and yet, when I think of Mrs. Possy and her helpless babies that your mad and wanton schemes have brought to a morsel, human nature will rise. Sir, you ought to be ashamed of yourself to put your foot within the door of this house of mourning that ye have desolated, and to look in the face of him ye have made no better than a beggar man.” It is impossible to describe the emotion with which this address affected me. Sometimes I was on the point of laughing outright at the absurdity of the reproaches; at others I was inflamed with indignation, as if my veins had been filled with kindled gunpowder, and almost at the same time I was touched with inexpressible pity and contempt to hear the unhappy man give vent to such nonsense. Under these conflicting feelings, I said dryly, “Explain yourself, Mr. Possy; I am not come here to recriminate; we have both a manlier part to perform. But what has happened since the morning?” “A pretty-like partner,” he replied, “to be obliged to ask such a question when his house is in ruins. Sir, if you do not know that ought

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to know, I must tell you, that Corbet and Possy are the causeway talk as broken merchants;” and with these words he began to weep and sob—yes, desperately, I can find no other word to describe the ridiculous sorrow of his weakness. I inquired how the state of our affairs had so unexpectedly been divulged, adding with vexation, that we ought ourselves to have been the first to publish the tale. He could give no satisfactory explanation, but that Mrs. Possy had heard of it from several of her intimates, and that they had at first supposed me the author, believing I had shunned the warehouse and kept myself from them. In this crisis Mrs. Possy came into the room, and seated herself in the obscurest corner; having composed her appearance, she searched first in one pocket and then in the other, and having at last pulled out her handkerchief, shook it with both her hands by two corners, and began an audible tune of weeping—roaring and greeting I ought to call it, for the English language, affording no adequate phrase to describe it properly, obliges me to have recourse to the Scottish. I had knit up my firmness for a scene of distress and natural grief, but I was not prepared for such an exhibition as this. The folly of Mr. Possy was in itself trying enough, and it affected me with mingled feelings; but the passion of his lady touched only one cord;—so formal, and yet so energetic was her extravagance, that I could not restrain myself from giving way to the effect it had upon me, by bursting into an immoderate fit of mirthless laughter. Mr. Possy gazed at me with alarm, and his lady taking the handkerchief from her eyes, looked not less amazed. The fit continued with me; and, while he sat in increasing consternation, she bounced from her chair with ungovernable rage, and coming close to where I was sitting, lifted the candle, held it to my face, and stared at me curiously, as if she thought I was indeed delirious. The eager astonishment of this inquisition arrested the convulsion—for that term better describes than laughter, the excess of titillation which seemed, and sounded so like it, that I started up in indignation, and my head accidentally knocking the light from her hand, produced instant darkness.

CHAPTER XXIX. a crisis. I have no distinct recollection of any thing that passed in the mean time between the absurd scene at Mr. Possy’s, and the public meeting of our creditors. I fancy nothing, however, occurred much different from what generally takes place on such occasions. Novelists, and a few writers not ill at penning pretty sentences, say that their heroes and heroines sometimes live an age in a second; but I have never had any experience of such a condensation; on the contrary, I know full well, that in times of agitation, many seconds may be expanded into days, and that a striking fact will so engross the subsequent recollection, that a whole cycle of events will pass from the memory, and only that one fact be remembered. As far, however, as I may trust the testimony of my feelings, I was in the interval actuated by the most resolute determination to prove myself cool and collected; and, if I may judge by the compliments of my friends, I was not altogether unsuccessful. But to talk of the lofty sentiments of heroism in any degree influencing the conduct of a mercantile man, even in the midst of disasters and ruin, is perhaps ridiculous; such magnanimity may be only safely practised by play-actors, and the dealers in life and limb. The knit-up nerve, and the riveted thought, are things that should never be mingled with the accidents of trade. They are of high concernment, and consecrated, forsooth, to the service of those who scorn to adventure with fortune, and batten upon the prodigality of their country! I must, however, make a short tale of the incidents of that time. The conclusion came to pass much as Mrs. Busby had reported it to have taken place. A forerunning judgment had decided for Corbet and Possy what they ought to do. Their affairs were to be closed at once in Glasgow by Mr. Possy, under the direction of Eric Pullicate, and two of the creditors, and I was appointed to proceed to Kingston, Jamaica, to investigate the state of things there—taking my way by London, to put matters in a train in that city also for conclusion. All this was judicious; Mr. Possy, who had not a teaspoonful of brains,

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was generally regarded as an easy and unfortunate man, destroyed by a bold and too speculative partner. A liberal allowance was made for his family, and it was but my duty to do what I could for the interests of our common creditors. To the amazement of all, I had not one word of objection to offer. I might, it is true, have told another tale as to the sources of our ruin, but of what use would it have served? I had only in the core of my bosom an irksome thought at the idea of being probably pennyless, and grudged at being compelled to begin life again as a Bankrupt. However, I said nothing—the path of duty lay open before me, I resolved to walk no other, and to trace it to the end; but I also resolved, when all was done that could be required of me, to cast myself upon a course of my own choosing. Nothing of this intention, however, escaped my lips. I appeared throughout only as a young man possessed of some fortitude, and anxious to evince that the many wise advices he received from those friends who had never tasted adversity—for such are always the most free in giving counsel—did not enter at the one ear and fly out at the other. In one sentence, I felt myself destined to be an adventurer, thrown on my own resources, and that although I had imperative duties to perform before I could be at liberty, the time was not far off that would see me my own master. Accordingly, when the necessary arrangements were made, I left Glasgow, bearing with me only the new cravats, and the regrets of Mrs. Busby. I paid, however, visits to all my former friends; they were leave-takings. But my adieus both to Dr. Leach and Mr. Macindoe might lack something of any other feeling than civility. I am even afraid, that, in parting with the Doctor, I yielded to some impulse of contempt. I recollected too minutely his easy compliance with the headstrong determinations of his colleague, and that if he had possessed the courage to assert his own reflections, concerning the destination of my youth, the humiliation of the result of the connection with Possy might have been averted. But still, I went through the formal scene of homage to him with decency—I dare not call my behaviour by any other name, for at heart I despised him on reflection as a thing inadequate to his trusts. Mr. Macindoe was a little out of countenance, when I called at his house: the sharp manner in which I had parted from him when I rejected his counsel, had left a rankling wound. He felt that he had made an error in his calculations respecting me. But I took no other notice of the advice he offered on that occasion, than merely to say,

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he would see by what had taken place, that I did not think the state of our affairs justified the stratagem he had recommended. I laid particular emphasis on the word stratagem as I pronounced it, for I was human enough to think he deserved a sting, and I showed, as I took my leave, that I could not recollect him with any cordial feelings. To him and to Dr. Leach, the two men to whom all the world believed me to be the most indebted—I certainly acted at that time more meanly than I would do now; for although they had hurried me into circumstances that were far from being congenial to my nature, they were both honest men, and animated with the best intentions to serve me. In the fervour of youth we do not discriminate so accurately as in after-life. What is felt below thirty, as treatment that should be resented; above forty, claims indulgence, and is remembered at most with but a pale cast of thought. The grey-headed angel of Forgiveness applies his sponge to the record of early offences. As, however, I am in this instance on my confession, something more may be said—something that smacks of the infirmity to which human nature will occasionally yield. I bade Mr. Pullicate farewell, with a feeling I can only describe as an ugly aversion, for all in his character was undoubtedly respectable. His manners still remained vulgar, the spirit of the workshop controversies still clung to him, and a carefulness of self, that I can find no other name for than democratic egoism, eclipsed his good qualities. In my heart, to use a familiar term, I cut him; but the nature of our commercial intercourse obliged me to treat him outwardly as a friend. I have sometimes thought in doing so, I acted less in consequence of the prompting of an hypocrisy within myself, than from a reflex effect of his own sinister character. In another instance, I freely confess that I condemn myself for a poor littleness. Possy and his loquacious wife had not slept in their endeavours to represent me as the cause of their misfortunes. I knew too well the truth, and despised these weak inventions; but I left Glasgow without bidding them farewell, expecting that such marked incivility would convince them that their malice was duly appreciated; but I afterwards heard that such was their industry in detraction, that this step of offended dignity was attributed to shame for the wrong I had caused them to suffer, and served to justify the accusation of imprudence in which others indulged against me.

CHAPTER XXX. the way of the world. My first intention on reaching London was to go directly to my own house, but I felt as I proceeded towards it, that I had not fortitude enough remaining. The direful event that had taken place there, was remembered with all its original anguish; I had the recollection also to think, that a great and speedy duty was demanded of me by the living, and that the flattery of fond affection could not soothe the dull cold ear of death. I was in a hackney-coach with my portmanteau, and the time was the humid dawn of a grey October morning. I pulled the check-string, the coach halted, and immediately after the driver opened the door; he held it open, expecting me to alight, but a sudden absence of mind had fallen upon me, and I noticed not his movement until he had roused me by asking my pleasure. Almost unconscious, I bade him set me down at an hotel in the Adelphi. I am not sure of having ever since experienced so chill a pang of desolation as I did when I reached the house; but it was only momentary. Fatigue made the sleep of the morning sound, and I felt, when I awoke, as if I had undergone some transmutation by which my anxieties, griefs, and cares, were removed as dross and alloy, and my nature become of a purer substance. I rose to breakfast more a man of the world than it seemed possible I should ever be, and as my clerks in Cannon-street were apprised of all that had happened, I resolved to make my first visit to Sir Neil Eccles, a visit to my counting-house being no longer so urgent as in other circumstances it might have been. This resolution, entirely the effect of impulse, proved one of the most conclusive events of my life. It chanced when some inconceivable energy had taken possession of my spirit,—an earlier day, and it would have come too soon, on the morrow it should have been too late—let me, however, restrain this rapidity. Strange! that the sudden accidents of that time should, after so many years, still fire, as it were, the wheels of thought with such vehemence!

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It was late in the morning before I reached Harley-street, where Sir Neil Eccles resided; his footman told me, as I was admitted, that he had breakfasted some time, but that he believed he had no intention of going out for that forenoon. “He is an altered man,” said the lad, “since——” He paused, and I guessed at once to what event he alluded; my wife had been always a cherished favourite with his master, a circumstance which all the servants well knew. I took, however, no notice of his embarrassment, but walked with my usual freedom into the library, where, from his habitual custom, I knew Sir Neil would then be. Nor was I mistaken, for there he sat, seated by the table opposite the fire, with the newspaper of the morning lying upon his knee, as if he had been engaged in reading it. It was evident, however, that it was only spread to dry. As I entered the apartment his eyes turned towards me, sparkled for a moment, but in the same instant I observed them turned aside, and when he looked at me again they were dull, abstracted, and altered. In his usual manner he requested me to take a seat, and when I had placed myself in a chair near him, he said, and, I thought, not exactly with the cordiality I had expected, “Well, Mr. Bogle Corbet, your trial is over, I am sorry to hear the result. It is, however, honourable to your own character that you had not raised the loan: you have done well in bringing your affairs to a conclusion. By all accounts your partner Mr. Possy was not at first judiciously chosen; old heads, however, do not grow on young shoulders. What do you propose to do now?” So many topics were touched in this brief speech, and the question was asked in a tone so different from his former manner towards me, that I replied, “Really, Sir Neil, I have thought as yet nothing of the future. My whole intent at present is to wind up the affairs of Corbet and Possy; when that is done, perhaps I may then be able to speak of the future.” Much as I had been previously accustomed to the dry yet disinterested manner of Sir Neil Eccles, it struck me that on this occasion he was more than usually so, and without being able to account for the feeling, I would gladly have avoided any farther conversation at that time relative to my own concerns; but he replied, “The difficulties of business multiply. You will find it a harder matter hereafter to get into business than you did at first, your means diminished, perhaps gone, and with the taint of failure upon you.”

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“I am not certain,” said I a little proudly, “that I ought to be greatly anxious on that subject. No man can complain that he has been in any degree whatsoever led astray by Corbet and Possy; and although I may have suffered something in opinion, yet surely it cannot be alleged that I have forfeited any friendship.” “No doubt,” replied Sir Neil, looking at the newspaper on his knee, and not lifting his eyelids, “your remark is just; but events alter circumstances, and your good sense must have prepared you for a change in your own.” “I am not certain how that should be,” was my answer, wondering to what he specifically alluded. “I never counted on any thing but the prospect in my prosperity—” and I added, not well knowing what to say, “at the time of my marriage. A dreadful event has blasted all that was happy and encouraging there—but it is now of no use either to refer to it, or to the motives by which in it I was actuated.” “Did you then, in your marriage—excuse the plainness of my question—count on acquiring some claim on me?” “None,” said I, perhaps with a sentiment verging towards indignation; “my affection for my wife was sincere: what claim could I have on you? So entire was my esteem for her, that to this hour I remain as ignorant of her family, as when you first made me known to herself. But let us talk no farther at present on this subject; my wound is still green, and a slight touch offends it painfully.” “Am I to understand, by what you have said, that you know nothing of your late wife’s relations?” “I have said it,” was my reply, seriously angry; and I added, with an intenser accent, “Excuse me, Sir Neil, I am not aware, though she was a favourite of yours, that the questions you have been pleased to put to me, are precisely those that you have any privilege to ask.” He reddened as I said this, and rising from his seat, threw the newspaper as it were with an emphasis on the table, and walked to the window. This air and gesture surprised me, but without rising I waited his answer. “Now I think of it,” said he, “you never had many acquaintances with my Indian friends.” “I never had any,” was my self-collected answer; “occasionally I have dined in this house with your friends, but the beat of their business lay in a different direction from mine.” “I thought you had known more of them.” “Had there been any cause for me to cultivate their intimacy, no doubt I should have done it.”

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“I wish you had,” said he; “it might have saved us both from an unpleasant explanation.” “Indeed!” exclaimed I; “indeed! why should there be any explanation at all between us? I seek none—I wish for none.” “Do you not regard me as your particular friend?” I paused before answering:—his manner was estranged towards me—his dialogue had not been particularly marked by courtesy—I was in an inferior condition to that in which I had parted from him, and not unlikely to be thought to have come to him for assistance— all this flew flickeringly across my mind. But the fortitude with which I felt myself animated in the morning came to my immediate assistance, and I replied with great coolness and serenity—there may have even been some tinge of sedate sarcasm in my manner, for I was by this time really fervent— “Upon my word, Sir Neil Eccles, you amaze me. I was pleased with the civilities you paid me—delighted with the attentions shown to my wife—and I did think that you were no common friend; but, if I may judge by the freedom you have thought yourself justified in using towards me this morning, I frankly confess that I have discovered my error.” “Who was your wife?” was his reply, in a low troubled voice. I made no answer, but stood in expectation of hearing more. After waiting a minute or two, during which he was much agitated, he added,— “We have been both mistaken, Mr. Corbet: I thought you had known all, from the confidence you seemed to repose in me; nor was I displeased in thinking so; nor, had she lived, would you have had cause to repent that confidence. Your wife was my daughter.” “Yours!” cried I, in astonishment. “Yes, mine; and had she lived, her offspring should have inherited my fortune. That hope has expired; we are now as strangers, but still I shall be always happy to consider you as a friend.” For some minutes I was unable to speak; an unaccountable resentment took possession of my bosom. Why should it have done so, for my wife had been the most beautiful and amiable of her sex? But my nature was overborne by a feeling of the moment, and I abruptly left the room.

CHAPTER XXXI. reflections. Often and often have I said to myself since the last interview with Sir Neil Eccles, for it was the final one,—what had there been in our intercourse that should have made me so easily offended? and why did I separate from him under a feeling of indignant resentment, as if he had been a party to some deception against me? The reader, perhaps, can solve this mystery more to his own satisfaction than I can; but the sentiment mingled with my mourning, and I could not divest myself of thinking that there had been something sordid in the love which he undoubtedly cherished for his undivulged daughter. However, though the disclosure was a most painful occurrence—there was even a degree of mortification in it—it happened at a fortunate period, and I went straight to the duties of my business, that they might be finished with celerity. The precise effect of the explanation which had taken place with Sir Neil I took no pains to ascertain. In the evening my own servant brought me an invitation to dinner for two or three days afterwards, but I declined it, and added to the apology for so doing, with the decision which I then experienced, that I thought we should not meet. “My feelings,” said I, “are lacerated by unhappy events, and their anguish easily exasperated.” He never afterwards invited me to his house. During my absence from England he died, and, as I understood on my return, left all his fortune to endow a distant relation, to whom he procured a continuation of his title, with the exception of the small annuity which had been settled on the firm, patient, and gentle old Leezy Eglesham. She did not, however, survive him many years, but sank into the grave, an affecting instance of faithful love, and a proud, but a tender heart. Nothing in her life bore outwardly the slightest indication of a romantic spirit; but, in what bosom could exist a purer and a lovelier mind? Sometimes, as I have thought of her solitary fate, it

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has seemed to me that she ought not to have asked for the little pittance; but in moments of higher enthusiasm, I condemned myself for conceiving that an affection so holy as her’s could have had any other origin than a wish not to expose to the profane world, which had forgotten their pledged troth, the necessity of remarking that she had fallen to want, and that he had forgotten his faith. It was a sad, though a beautiful tale of passion, and can never be thought of without sympathy and sorrow. But in adverting to that little story, which so well illustrates the poet’s pathetic remark, that “The course of true love never did run smooth,”

I forget my own history. Did I write for the applause of critics, and to the judgment of the world, I should, perhaps, have avoided it altogether; but, as I am more anxious to record what I have seen, as well as what I have experienced, than to please, I could not pass it in silence. Sometimes, indeed, it has occurred to me, when I have seen the meek aspect of patient maidenhood, pale in the solitude of fading years, that the case of poor Leezy has not been singular, and that the success of many a gorgeous adventurer is an index to where in secret may be found the endearing faithfulness of similar unrequited love— However, to resume my narrative. My rupture with Sir Neil Eccles, after the first inexplicable irritation had subsided, not only became comparatively of little moment, but was remembered almost as a release from an uneasy tie. Affairs of business for some time engaged my attention, and prevented me from falling into that lassitude of mind, which perhaps, in other circumstances, would have increased the oppression of misfortune; when these were arranged, I was ready to proceed to Jamaica. I will not say that the prospect of my departure from England was pleasant, but undoubtedly it was far from painful. I felt as if I had weighed the anchor of my spirit, and was afloat on uncertainty, like the swimmer when he first spurns the ground with his elastic foot: my thoughts were, however fluttered, and my imagination on the wing without aim or goal. One moment the idea of being disentangled from trade was enjoyed with the buoyancy ascribed to liberty; at another, I sank with a leaden burden of anxieties concerning my future prospects, my fortune being in all probability lost, and so many of my best days gone. I must not, however, attempt to

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describe my state of mind at that period. It was a chaos of recollections and fancies, in which there was but little of hope, and much of disquietude and fear. I was glad to escape the affected condolence of those who seem, when we are in misfortune, to haunt the thoroughfares of society, led as it were by an invidious instinct to afflict us with their sympathy; and this sentiment was heightened by a vague feeling, that I was only returning home. For, although not a creole born, and I had been sent back to Scotland in that condition of infancy when existence is but sensation, still I looked towards Jamaica as my native land. And yet I had nothing there of that which makes home dear to the heart. Many years had passed since the decease of my parents, and except the name of Plantagenet estate, where they had resided, I retained scarcely any memorial that they had ever been. Of the country itself I had no distinct idea. Of sugar-canes and negroes, snakes and the yellow fever, I might, perhaps, have possessed knowledge enough to qualify me to understand what was said when they were spoken of; but in all respects beyond the mere terms, I say not too strongly of myself, that I was utterly ignorant. I looked forward in consequence to the packet in which I was to sail from Falmouth, as the shade of an antient to the boat of Charon. It was to convey me to a new world, of which I could only conjecture that it might in some things be like the old. Such was the vagueness, the fluctuation, and the comfortless state in which I bade adieu to London, or rather, such are the terms by which it can only be fitly described, for all I now remember of the event, is a mingled hurry and confusion—many images in agitation, and no one clearly impressed. Disgusted, dejected, my being, as it were, shattered,—would, as the retrospect now affects me, be phrases too impassioned. I doubt, however, if at the time they would have been strong enough. But the advantage of advanced life consists in enabling us to derive an indemnification from past suffering; and doubtless the same inscrutable cause to which we owe that enjoyment, has mitigated my recollection of the disquiet, the passion, and the pain of those unhappy days.

CHAPTER XXXII. an adventure. I left London by one of the early Exeter coaches, and the first free taste of the untainted air, with the contentment which gladdens on the aspect of the country in a fine morning, had soon a sympathetic influence on my spirits. My imagination was filled with pleasing anticipations, in which the anxieties of trade had no place; and all day I enjoyed an inward calm, almost as delightful as the pleasures of earnest activity. In descending, however, a hill in the twilight, this serenity was abruptly disturbed, by the coach coming in contact with a ponderous waggon, which was slowly groaning upward, and disastrously overset—I emphatically say disastrously; for, although no injury was sustained by any of the other passengers, my forehead was so cut by the glass of one of the windows, that I was obliged to be left behind; and this accident coloured the tissue of my subsequent life. The place at which the accident happened was near a respectable house, something in appearance like those of the better order of farms, but not altogether of that character, for the offices betokened a small establishment; no ricks were in the yard, and the little plat of ground between the door and the highway, was rather more trimly dressed and planted than the farmers are in the habit of doing to the environs of their premises. It was genteel but not manorial, and too new and bare of trees, unless a row in front of those greyhounds of the grove, Lombardy poplars, merit the name, and it was too remote from any church to be a parsonage. Not having a sign, it was also plainly neither inn nor academy, but in all respects a wealthy tradesman’s comfortable box—one who had set himself down near the road-side, where stages often pass, to enjoy rural prospects and his retired leisure, with as little inconvenience as a distance from the market-town would admit. In this conception I was not far wrong; for the house had originally been intended for such a character, but at that time it was

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re-occupied by a very different inhabitant. Mr. Ascomy was a philosophical invalid: he had been educated for the bar, but infirm health prevented him from following out his profession, though not from marrying, nor from indulging an eccentric imagination in abstruse pursuits. It will, however, be perhaps better to reserve the description of his character, until I shall have occasion to speak of him in closer connexion with my own circumstances; all, therefore, that need be said at present is, that he then lived a widower at Green-down, as the place was called, with two grown-up daughters, who were not distinguished for any particular grace in their persons and accomplishments; plain, respectable-looking, young women, household in their appearance and manners, evidently seeking no distinction by any extraordinary taste or lady-like discernment in the proprieties of dress, and yet in harmony with their apparent condition. The whole family, on seeing the accident which had happened to the coach, came to the gate, and Mr. Ascomy himself warmly invited me to stop with them for the night, as my wound bled so profusely that I ought not, as he said, to proceed until it was dressed. I gladly availed myself of his hospitality, and taking my trunk from the coach, allowed it to proceed without me. Miss Urseline, one of the young ladies, with the help of linen rags and some domestic balsam, soon appeased the bleeding, and made me in a condition to partake of their tea. The old gentleman did not, however, join us, but after a few sentences of congratulation that my wound, which might have been “cadaverous,” was only a “stimulation,” he resumed his easy-chair, and replacing his nightcap, closed his eyes, and seemed to fall asleep, saying, however, as he composed himself into the posture, “Take no note of me; I was ruminating when the vehicle lost its equilibrium, and must endeavour to overtake the association.” His language surprised me, for when he invited me into the house it was simple and gentlemanly, and the general cast of his manners polite and worldly; but the paleness of his complexion, and the augury of the night-cap, with a huge pile of ancient folios and various books at his side, seemed to bespeak respect for research and eccentricity. My attention was, however, almost immediately drawn from him to the ladies and the tea-table, and I imagine he fell asleep, for he never once spoke until the evening was far advanced, and the servant brought in the supper-tray; but the interval was not idle time with me. Uninformed of Mr. Ascomy’s humour and

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history, I speculated concerning both, and could not avoid noticing how much the equipage of the tea-table, and the style of his daughters, as well as himself, were at variance with the furniture of the apartment, which was neat, new, and had evidently been sent in by one more accustomed to the usages of society. The young ladies, as I have already observed, were not distinguished by their dress. It was perhaps well enough, considering their country residence; but it was not exactly in the fashion, and consisted of too many strong colours, not well assorted to produce the most pleasing effect, a circumstance that never fails to indicate a lack of delicacy; and certainly in the course of the evening they tended to confirm that notion; not, however, in any eminent degree, for they were sensible, and perhaps, on the whole, better informed than most young women, without being interesting. They were indeed otherwise; and I could perceive a latent dogmatism about them more contributory to controversy than conversation. Though the reader smile at the remark on the tea-equipage—and had I been very solicitous to be esteemed a personage eminent for wisdom and decorum, I ought not to have made it,—yet it serves to elucidate that peculiarity of character which has led me so often to important conclusions from trifling things, and may help him to understand me better hereafter. It was a curious heterogeneous assemblage of odd articles. No two cups were of one size or pattern: the ewer was broken in the spout; the sugar-basin was silver, and the tea-pot of red, unvarnished japan-china, ornamented with green, blue, and yellow branches and flowers, but the lid had been broken, and was mended with clasps. A positive demonstration to me, that the young ladies were negligent of those little attentions in manners, on which, with many, so much of domestic happiness depends. To their style of dress, it was an additional proof that they mingled little with the world, learned little from example, either by precept or sympathy, and consulted themselves with too high an opinion of their own understanding, than is consistent with that mutual forbearance and reciprocity which constitute the object and essence of the minor morals. I am the more particular in saying so much, for the reader will hear with some astonishment that Miss Urseline, several years after, was selected for my second wife. It is only, however, necessary, here to apprise him of the fact, for, although I do now very vividly recall all the circumstances of my first acquaintance with the family, many things happened to lessen their impression afterwards, and my

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voyage to Jamaica, with all its adventures, intervened. When Mr. Ascomy awoke from his sleep, or reverie at suppertime, he appeared at first much in the same pedantic humour in which he had composed himself to hunt his association; but gradually he became more natural, and was even a cheerful companion. He had been evidently an extensive reader, but loose and desultory in his reflections on every subject of which I had any knowledge; he could speak amusingly, for, without regard to the utility of what he had learned, he had picked out some fact or anecdote which profounder students would have overlooked, but to which he curiously ascribed an infinitude of consequence, illustrating his opinion with arguments possessed of every ingredient of erudition and ingenuity but common sense. In this respect he was equally singular and interesting, and the deference which he received or exacted from his daughters, confirmed him in the notion he had formed of himself—a philosopher of no ordinary calibre. For the present, however, I need say no more; chance made me known to the family, but at that time my visit was necessarily limited, for I only remained with them until the mail passed in the morning.

CHAPTER XXXIII. a lesson. The accident which brought me acquainted with Mr. Ascomy’s family, was the only influential event that befell me before my embarkation at Falmouth. But during two days that I was obliged to wait there for a fair wind, another interesting incident occurred. Every body who has ever been at Falmouth, knows that it is a long, lane-like, one-streeted town, irregularly built on the western side of a fine natural harbour; and that between it and the promontory, crowned with the Castle of Pen Dennis, which protects the communication with the ocean, there is a pleasant open walk, but which, except on Sunday evening, when the weather happens to be fine, is little frequented by the inhabitants. I was there on a Sunday, and walking by myself, in that sort of lethargy of mind which most people waiting for a fair wind to bear them to a foreign land experience, when I met a private of the garrison, who suddenly halted, and after eying me steadily, drew his hand across his eyes, and hastily passed. Had my mind at the time been more engaged, I should probably not have observed his action, but having nothing particular to think of, it struck me as singular, and turning abruptly round, I requested him to come back, he however only halted. He was a stout man, of a weather-tanned complexion, erect, and of a veteran aspect. His air betokened considerable energy of character, tempered with a sedate and respectful demeanour. “Why,” said I, “did you look so earnestly at me, and pass so hastily, and appear so agitated?” “Because you did not mind me, Sir, but I did you at once;” was his reply, with a strong Scottish accent. This was one Hugh Cairns, who had been a weaver with Mr. Aird, and was a member of the democratic club, from which, according to Mr. Macindoe, I had been snatched as a brand from the burning. He had enlisted early in the preceding war, when the first shock of the declaration so dislocated the manufacturing connections, and

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had from that period seen much service, but, save with the army in Egypt, never met, as he said himself, with “a kent face.” The sudden sight of me had so affected him with the remembrance of days past, that, albeit, unused to the melting mood, seeing that I did not recollect him, he could not command his feelings, nor, indeed, could I discover in him after he had given me this explanation, the same Hugh Cairns whom I had formerly known. In those days of looms and liberty, the recollection of which had so unexpectedly returned upon the poor fellow, he was a gaunt rawboned lad, lank in the features and lathy as a Yankee, with a familiarity not many degrees below insolence, and was one of the most jacobinical democrats in the club. But the army had wrought a great change upon him; his figure was grown manly, his air firm and self-collected; his meagre limbs filled up, and without being handsome, strikingly athletic; the emaciated wanness of his visage, the effect of his sedentary employment, and which had looked so like malady, was become of a camp bronze—so much, indeed, was he in every exterior point altered, that his original lineaments could not be easily discovered. But I was still more struck by the change which had taken place in his modes of thinking. I reminded him of our old deliberations, at which he shook his head, saying, “Every man must be a fool some time or another.” “Then you think, Cairns, that we were all fools then?” “Surely,” he replied, “we could be no better. The world’s like a regiment, we cannot be all officers.” “Then you are content with being a soldier?” “Sometimes not,” said he; “at times I would again be at the weaving, especially when on a cold post by night, and the wind wet and easterly.” “I wonder you have not been promoted.” “Sometimes, too, I wonder myself; but I fancy I’m not fit, or that it is not my lot.” “Is there any thing I can do to serve you?” but at the moment recollecting the state of my own affairs, I added, “there is, however, nothing in my power.” “I want nothing,” said he; “had I been fit to be promoted, I would have been so long before, for I have always been lucky in my officers.” “You make me wonder at hearing you speak so contentedly; is that feeling common in the army?” “Not among young soldiers; they are all for a time lower than

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their merits; but the old ones have a home in their regiments, and after a few years of service, they think of little else but their duty.” He then inquired for some of his old acquaintances, and among others, for Eric Pullicate, at whose success he appeared pleased. “But he could not miss,” said he; “he had always three eyes, two for to-day, and one for to-morrow. He’ll have no regard for me now?” “Why so?” was my answer, surprised at his observation. “The chap was ever looking to number one. He was not a right democrat after all, but was only vexed because he had superiors.” Not, however, to encroach too far on the reader’s time, I have only to say, that this conversation greatly interested me, for it gave me the first clear idea of a professional character, and what habitude discipline is calculated to effect. To my own self-consequence it was humiliating; for, up to that day, I had considered myself as trammelled with a natural inaptitude for trade, and even partly ascribed the disastrous result of my co-partnery with Mr. Possy to that innate cause, never having once reflected how much the habits of business would in time have been ingrained. It is thus that casualties generally teach the best lessons of self-knowledge. Prior to this little accidental incident, I had felt no very painful regret at being released from my commercial pursuits. Like most young men under similar clouds, I had an irksome feeling of mortification when I reflected on what had happened, and sometimes I mistook the feeling for the grief of misfortune. But in parting from Cairns, a more correct sense of the injury I was suffering awakened within me, and for the first time, I became truly alive to the blight I had sustained. I saw that the world was become a desert around me—that the path which might again lead me to its active scenes was obliterated—and that with only a scanty experience, deteriorated in the reception by an education not judiciously conducted, I was to seek my guideless way across the waste. What blind things we are! and how common it is among the young, to imagine themselves better qualified for other pursuits than those in which they are engaged, until this discontent with friends or with destiny is corrected by habit, in which all entirely consists, that the wise regard as practical wisdom! Youth is but the raw material, of which habit makes the man. But I am falling into one of my moralising fits, when I ought to be proceeding with the details of the voyage. The indulgent reader will, however, pardon the digression. The necessary recollection of my departure from England brings back the feelings associated

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with the circumstances in which it took place, and it is the nature of my imagination to make me live over again even the most trivial occurrences, as often as the keys of memory, by chance or effort, happen to be touched. At this moment I am, as it were, standing on the sea shore between Falmouth and Pen Dennis; I see the signal for sailing hoisted in the packet, and all the rush of troubled thought ever connected with that time and place, comes again upon me with undiminished violence.

CHAPTER XXXIV. the passage. Hitherto accustomed to an inland life, I had no previous correct notion of a voyage on the sea. Before my departure from Falmouth, I might truly say that the only idea possessed by me on the subject, consisted of waves and breakers, a hurly-burly of thunder, the noise of many waters, dismal skies, drenched mariners, and a constant sense of danger. I had, it is true, an imperfect remembrance of a wide water, and of fair faces looking over the waves; a mingled and hazy reminiscence, something between a drowsy dream and a waking fancy. But when the packet weighed anchor, I felt myself immersed, as it were, in a soft and solemn harmony, and we passed into the ocean soothingly wafted by an almost insensible tide and breeze; the sky was without a cloud, and all the stars as brightly sparkling as if their wicks had been newly trimmed. The beautiful moon shone as a lamp at the gate of heaven. The other passengers had retired, and the captain had his own affairs to mind. I was thus left to my own meditations, and before break of day—for I remained in calm contemplation all night on deck, I saw the gems of the Lizard light-house beaming in the horizon like stars, and brightening as they neared. In the dim dawning of the morning, they seemed as the eyes of a friend looking out at his window to bid us farewell and good morrow. The liveliest enjoyment of liberty is certainly felt when you feel yourself free at sea; you cast off, as a cumbrous garment, all dry-land anxieties, and with a mind that has composed itself to have no anticipations, you find a sympathetic companionship in the gambols of the waves, and the fickle playfulness of the winds. I am well aware that the sailors but little like that flickering of the breeze, which was to me so delightful, but no matter; the most intense revel of the spirit I ever partook of was during that sunny summer passage. Throughout the whole, no chance came to pass that did not minister to the inhaling of an innocent satisfaction. It was altogether a mild and serene reverie—a dream which left few incidents on the memory,

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but impressed the heart with a wide and deep sensation, as if Happiness herself had put her warm and genial hand into the bosom. The entire voyage was different from all my preconceived notions; the felicity of the weather; an exceedingly gentle but fair wind, and a succession of marine duties, in which amusement was predominant, all united to sweeten the time, even when the sunny air gladdend into a breeze, it was like the effervescence of some delicious wine: the captain smiled when he saw me unbutton my vest to its blandishments. I have now but an imperfect recollection of the little amusements which varied the even tenour of those leisure days, like the dew sparkling on the grass in a May morning. But I watched by day the passing of the purple nautilus, which the sailors call the “Portugee man-of-war;” and at night, the shooting meteors which suggested the pleasing poesy of angel visits, and were emblems of those bright characters who gloriously shine in their career, and shortly pass away. One evening, when the sun had sunk in a bank of fog, and the captain apprehended we might before morning have a change of wind, and perhaps a storm, I perfectly still enjoy the wonder with which I studied a pale phosphoric gleam on every mast-head, and a lambient flame that wandered like a dim fire-fly amidst the rigging; and of others that sat bright, and bodiless, like cherubs, on the yards; but the day, however, dawned, the clouds made themselves thin air, and the omens proved as harmless as the apprehensions that sometimes unaccountably sadden the purest breast. That day, however, was not without its own phenomena; we passed a dead whale, over which a number of sea birds, though far at sea, were collected, fluttering like legatees from a distance at a funeral. And during the afternoon, another came close to the ship, and ogled her with the wantonness of a widower. It is with no fancy, I aver, that I could discern a good-natured playfulness in its target-like eyes as it dived and spouted, and played the lover in the crystalline waves. The sailors prepared to shoot it with one of the cannon, but at my intercession they desisted, and I am sure they had ten times more pleasure in looking at its knowing, leering glances and gallantry, than fifty butts of oil could have procured. Although I had never been at sea before, I happily escaped the malady, but the other passengers were not so fortunate, and it was not until we had passed the longitude of forty, that the last of them was able to come on deck. She was an old lady returning to Kingston,

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where she had long been settled; she had been to England to see her friends, perhaps with the intention of spending the remainder of her days there, but few she found alive, and every thing so changed, that, as she said herself, “It was no longer her native land—Jamaica was more homely.” She had several cages of singing birds, to which, notwithstanding her sickness, she was every morning attentive; and as she believed she never could survive the sickness to look after them, she constantly lamented them as if dead, hoping, however, if it was so ordered that she and they were to die, it would take place before we reached Jamaica, for there the cruel sharks would then have them all; generally concluding her elegies with an imprecation on the black steward, whom she denounced a Nigger of the seed of Cain, that detested race which had skulked into Noah’s Ark among the unclean beasts. However, as we sailed along in the pleasant trade-wind, she gradually recovered, and with the birds, reached her destination in safety. Our other two passengers were gentlemen, but of no particular character. One of them was bound for the Main of Spanish America; but who he was, and why he was going there, was never discovered. The other was a Major going to join his regiment, a well-bred man, with not a little of the haut gôut of the mess-room about him. Neither of the two, however, interested me on board the ship, and I parted from them with as much indifference as if we had been all outsides on a Greenwich stage. But I should describe the remainder of our passage. Having despatches from Government on board, we touched at Barbadoes to land them. It was not deemed necessary that the packet should come to anchor, but while the boat was sent on shore with the captain and the letter-bag, she tacked in Carlisle Bay. I, however, was allowed to go with the boat, and received an ample indemnification, in the novelty of the scene, for the five-and-twenty days and nights of a monotonous passage, if any epithet insinuating dullness can be applied to one of the finest voyages ever made across the Atlantic. We reached Carlisle Bay during the night, but as soon as “The bright morning star, day’s harbinger,”

appeared, I was roused to go on shore. The dark contour of the land—or if I may be allowed to use an appropriate but odd expression—the negro visage of the island, as it then lay in the starlight of

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a brilliant tropical night, did not so much interest me by the beauty of any particular feature, as by that inexpressible sensation which the first sight of land gives to those who have become weary of the ocean. But before we reached the mole, the dawn had brightened over all the east with that rapidity which glows in the torrid climate with the suddenness of a maiden’s blush, and the sun looked over the horizon just as we reached the landing-place. It was at that moment I felt myself in a strange land; and a scene around me, not, however, greatly different from what I expected, though far other than England—a fleet in the bay, men-of-war and merchant-men, boats glancing to and fro, were all British; but the liveliness of the town, the shops and houses without windows, and the feathery green palms, which fringed the shore in many places, with the extraordinary transparency of the air, were vivid with beauty. My attention was, however, chiefly excited by the multitude of negroes who had gathered on the strand, smiling towards us with that blitheness which the ebony countenance can alone express. In the crowd I saw a few white men, with nankeen jackets and broad straw-hats; their appearance reminded me of the argument for the emancipation of the slaves, then raging in England; and when I compared the few Europeans with the throng of Africans, I could not help saying to myself, “If there were not some other tie that binds them mutually together, would the Negroes look so pleased, or submit to be so treated, as they are said to be treated by the philanthropists of England?”

CHAPTER XXXV. carribbean sea. As we had only to deliver the letter-bag, our stay on shore did not occupy many minutes: before we had breakfasted, Barbadoes was far behind and sinking in the horizon, and the heat of the day was excessive; not a flake of cloud stained the azure of the skies, and the universal ocean, like molten sapphire, as it brilliantly sparkled before the favouring breeze, appeared as if sprinkled with strings of the purest pearls. I had no idea that there could have been such a difference in beauty between the West-Indian waters and the sunniest of our British seas. Towards noon the breeze, which had increased from the morning, began to slacken, much to the surprise of the captain, and different from the regularity which we had experienced from the day we entered the current of the trade-wind. I should not, perhaps, have remarked this phenomenon, which is not common, but my attention was drawn to it, and to another circumstance still rarer. The atmosphere, which had all the morning been surprisingly clear, lending additional brightness to the intolerable splendour of the sun, gradually became less transparent, as if a white smoke were insensibly diffused throughout. At last the breeze died away, the sea grew as still as silver, and the air so dim that the bowsprit was hardly visible from the quarter-deck. The sailors were evidently disturbed, and often spoke superstitiously to each other, as they eyed the loose and empty sails hanging idly from the yards. Among them, I noticed a boy, about twelve or fourteen years of age, who stood aloof by himself, with a dejected countenance, and that pale vacuity which generally indicates disease. I inquired if he was ill, and offered him an orange, which I had brought from Bridgetown; but he declined it, and folding his arms, walked away. Some little time after, I observed him seated on the windlass, with his arms still folded, steadily eyeing the deck. I pointed him out to the captain, expressing my fear that he was unwell; but when

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the captain went to inquire, he still refused to acknowledge that any thing was the matter with him, and again shifted his place. There was no sullenness in his manner but rather sadness, the more remarkable, as he seemed in the previous voyage of a cheerful temperament, and fond of pranks and practical jokes on his companions, which the felicity of the weather and the easy fair wind often allowed. It was only after leaving Carlisle Bay that he became so unsocial, and seemed so pensive and depressed. The dullness of the day continued to deepen, until a universal gloom seemed to pervade and overspread every object, and yet the form of no cloud could be seen in the obscurity which filled the welkin. The sun, however, was still visible, but like a globe of red fire: no shadow fell from me as I stood in his ineffectual beams;—such was the aspect around us when we went down to dinner at the usual hour, about three o’clock. The captain spoke to the major, who had made several voyages, as if the phenomenon was ominous of wind; but it was not the hurricane season, the sails were, however, ordered to be taken in, and every preparation made for some dreadful change. We sat a shorter time at table than common; we spoke less, and the old lady remarked that her birds were shivering and sitting with their heads under their wings, and yet they were not sleeping, for their eyes were open. We were all impressed with an apprehension of something extraordinary coming to pass: the gentleman bound for the Spanish Main had a Bible, with which he silently retired to a corner of the cabin to read. When I went on deck the poor boy had again changed his seat, and was standing at the gunwale looking over at the sea, while the ship stood, as Coleridge says in “The Antient Mariner,” “As steady as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.”

I asked kindly how he felt, for his face by this time had assumed an expression almost cadaverous, and he was evidently very unwell; he returned me no answer, but burst into tears and went to another place, and looked at the sea, as if he saw something in it which suddenly roused his attention. “Take that poor fellow below,” cried one of the men, an old rough sailor. “The calenture has come upon him;” but before he could be touched he threw himself overboard; one of the crew instantly plunged after him, and rescued him from self-destruction. Whether

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the freshening influence of the cool water, or the violence of the shock with which his preserver snatched him as he sank, contributed most to recall him to a sense of himself I know not, but when brought again on deck, he wept with an uncommon profusion of tears, and at last became calm and soon after cheerful, even with something like derision at his infirmity. He told us that he had been all the day thinking of home, until he had persuaded himself that he saw his mother’s cottage in the wave, and the trees and green fields all glittering in the sunshine around it, and could not resist the desire to leap to them again. I had often heard of this curious marine malady, and how it sometimes mounts to a melancholy delirium, and with my habitual curiosity, endeavoured to sift the patient, to get some clue to the cause; the fit, however, had passed, and before sunset he was himself; but the old boatswain, who had noticed the passion working, told me that while it is on, there is always a slight fever, and the boy himself acknowledged that he did not that morning relish his breakfast. This was the only effect of that singular day, if to its influence it could be ascribed; for soon after the sun disappeared, the atmosphere began to thin, the stars looked out, and the light of the rising moon glanced along the rippling surface of the ocean, while a gentle breeze again distended all the loosened sails, and softly urged us forward. But the remainder of the voyage to Jamaica from Barbadoes was, I understand, longer than common, with the single exception of that heart-sickening day—it was to me full of satisfaction. We had not, however, any proper view of the other islands as we passed; those to the left and southward were more like dark blue clouds resting in the horizon, and a faint dim outline, discovered on our right one evening, was pointed out to us as Porto Rico. I took, however, no interest in things so distant; they seemed to me like names in chronology, associated with no image in the mind. Jamaica became gradually uppermost in my thoughts; the cares of business, which had slept all the passage, began to rouse and waken, and with them the painful assurance, that when I had fulfilled all the duties which my creditors expected from me, I had again to begin life. In that frame of mind, as I was sitting on a hencoop one afternoon looking westward to the sun, which had nearly fulfilled his daily hest, my attention was suddenly excited by a faint outline of land under his lower limb. “It is Jamaica,” said the captain, in the same moment pointing to it; and the effect on me was electrical.

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Why it should have been so, or wherefore, I should have been agitated more than with the prospect of any other land, is still inconceivable. Had it been the first after the passage from England, I can imagine that it might have so affected me; but Barbadoes had softened my curiosity in some degree, and the sight of the other islands ought to have made me less susceptible of emotion from it. But, perhaps, I only experienced a modification of a constitutional disposition, with which I have been from my earliest recollection ever beset. I never went from home without being obliged to make an effort to drive away the most absurd fears and fancies; and after a short absence, never returned but they forced themselves back upon me like boding birds croaking unutterable things. In despite of all my endeavours to encourage more pleasant ideas, I approached the island with a feeling somewhat allied to that reluctance with which the trembling, fascinated bird drops into the serpent’s mouth.

CHAPTER XXXVI. prudence. I shall neither attempt to describe what I felt nor what I imagined as we approached Kingston from Port Royal: my whole mind was bent on getting away from the place as soon as possible. I had no reason for this impatience, but it belonged to the condition of my feelings, and the courteous reader may, perhaps, guess at the impulses that moved me. An accident as we entered the harbour had nearly been fatal to the packet. It was night, and the breeze blew strong off the land, in a direction by which she was obliged to go so close to the shore that she grounded for a few minutes. Our anxiety occasioned by this accident did not, however, last long, though at the time it was alarming. But I was less interested in the consequences than by the appearance of the land around. I had somehow supposed that the country was widely and richly cultivated. I expected no gentlemanly residences nor pleasant villas, but lively rural scenery filled my imagination. Judge then of my disappointment, when, instead of an open and gay country, I beheld only patches of cultivation, distant mountains, and a rankness of vegetable production every where. I had prepared myself for a luxuriant profusion, and counted on green and tufty trees and shrubs thickly clothed with foliage, but I was not in expectation of seeing that, around the capital, cultivation bore a small proportion to the wild affluence and native vesture of the soil. I do not exaggerate my feelings when I say the disappointment was painful, and when instead of the rich and beautiful land I had been taught to expect, I saw only a savage woody country, and in the habitations of man only the expedients of a temporary possession. The general aspect of the island afforded me no pleasure; still it was picturesque. The far Blue Mountains rose in magnificent pyramids, not, however, so detached from each other as to give the impression of those everlasting buildings; and the luxuriance of the forest scenery displayed a power of vegetation rapidly working every

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where, of which it was impossible I could have formed any adequate notion. From the instant I beheld Kingston from the boat in which I went on shore with the captain, I saw that I had been deceived, either by a misconception of the accounts given to me, or by some phantasy of my own mind; perhaps both were involved in the deception; but deceived I was, and the aspect of the country, which I had believed to present only opulence, splendour, and luxury, was mean in the extreme, and bore in all its features the marks of servitude and inferiority. I am speaking only of the island—the hospitality of the inhabitants was of the most generous description. Nothing that their means could afford was wanting to conciliate the stranger to a region where primeval nature still asserted supreme dominion; and though my experience had for several years taught me the enjoyment of more elegance than was to be found amidst the hasty opulence of Kingston, I could not deny that the will to contribute generously to make up for defects in the detail was certainly not wanting at their tables. But I should prevaricate with truth if I did not acknowledge, that with all the attention with which I was treated, and of which I must ever entertain a grateful remembrance, a coarser tact in manners was obvious than prevailed in England, and society in a lower and less intellectual state. If however this was indisputable, I received a happier impression from another cause; I witnessed nothing of that restless humour of which I had heard so much as characteristic of the planters, nor of that degradation which I was taught to expect in the condition of the slaves. But this is rather a general recollection of the country than of the particular inhabitants of Kingston, for in that city the white community may be described as commercial, and the negroes as domestic servants and mercantile labourers; moreover, my residence there was but of short duration. I soon perceived that my voyage was migratory, and that our correspondents, the highly respectable firm of Crooks, Bullion, and Co., were in every respect, both in means and integrity, capable of doing ample justice to the interests of our creditors. This discovery, if I may use the term, was soon made, and from that moment I determined not to interfere with them, but to return to England and apply myself to some new pursuit; previously, however, to so doing, I was led by natural curiosity to examine how far the European world had formed erroneous conceptions of West Indian society; for that all

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we fancy on this side of the Atlantic respecting it is conceived in error, I had, from the hour I placed my foot on Barbadoes, been thoroughly convinced. Accordingly, I availed myself of the opportunity to correct my own notions, and resolved, in consequence, to visit the principal parts of the island, and particularly the North side, on which Plantagenet estate is situated; for, although that estate was not my home, still it was endeared to me as the residence of my parents, and upon it my little fortune had been originally mortgaged. My father and mother had died there; my affectionate and joyous Baba had belonged to it, and it was the property of a relation; it had, therefore, many claims on my attention and best sensibilities; nor am I sure that there was any desire mingled with the intention to visit it which the world can condemn; but if there were, I felt it not. Of my parents I knew nothing, but they were always spoken of with respect; of Baba, my nurse, I had long heard she was dead, but still a craving to see the spot that was so enriched to my affections merited the pilgrimage. I had not, however, fortitude enough to disclose the true motive of the journey to my friends in Kingston. It seemed sentimental—and I have ever been averse to let it be imagined of me that I was at all disposed to indulge in the foibles of the heart—but after the vessel had sailed in which I ought properly to have gone back to England, I promulgated my intention of proceeding to see my relations on the North side, and, with more address than belongs to my character, resolved to set off on the journey before the next ship could be ready. I have since often reflected on the ingenuity made use of on that occasion, and I begin to think, though it is now late in life, that in the art to which I then had recourse, I acted a wise and discreet part; my acquaintance at least thought I did wisely; and we have no better criterion to measure the imprudence or discretion of our conduct by, than the opinion of those around, when they approve or condemn what we do.

CHAPTER XXXVII. a journey. Instead of adopting the advice of my friends in Kingston, particularly that of Mr. Bullion, whom I oftenest consulted, an accident induced me to prefer crossing the island by a road which had been trodden out by the Maroons, instead of the more frequented tract. The Maroons originally were fugitive slaves,—a bold and savage race, who, except in their occasional insurrections against their masters, lived in the fastnesses of the mountains in indolent tranquillity, satisfied with the fruits of the forest, and the wild prey that chance or artifice occasionally bestowed. In their way of life, and in the paroxysms of passion to which they sometimes abandoned themselves, they afforded afflicting exhibitions to civilized man of the state that awaits the Negroes when the control of their proprietors shall have been withdrawn. To see something of what yet survived of these self-emancipated slaves, was one of the motives which led me by the mountain-road. I was, however, disappointed; for, save a grandmother with three little ebony imps with white eyes, sitting in the shadow of a rock, as I passed with the black boy, who was lent to me as a groom, none of them happened to appear in our path. The old woman was, however, a sight worthy of all the journey; for, had not the children who were playing round her been there, I should have hesitated to believe she was really human. Old age had bent her actually into a hoop, and but for a brief petticoat formed of two handkerchiefs, she was entirely naked, displaying how severely Time can inflict his meagre touch even on the hue of the Negro’s skin; for, instead of being black and sleek, she was rather of a dark dingy bronze colour, withered like a mummy. Round her neck, which resembled a dried alligator’s limb, hung several rows of red beads, made of the crabs-eye peas, and all the bust of womanhood beneath was as shrivelled and shrunk as beggar’s purses; her visage was something horrible, between a toad’s and a baboon’s—her eyes bleared and far sunk, her forehead supernaturally flat, and her lips, which odiously protruded, revealed a

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ghastly grin of four or five long unequal yellow teeth; a deformity even in age, seldom seen among the better sheltered slaves. Her hair was white, and reminded me of a black-faced sheep’s head; and yet this hideous Sycorax was not void of human kindness, for she was amusing the three black marble Cupids that lay laughing on the ground beside her, and could mouth and gibber some wild mockery of language, which, after a few sentences, I discovered, to my inexpressible amusement, was Negro Scotch, learned about three-score years before, when she had been Dulcinea to a Scottish overseer, whom she had assisted an African lover one night to murder and burn with his house. From that time she had lived with the Maroons, but in the last hostilities with them, her “guda man,” as she called him, was worried by one of the bloodhounds imported from Cuba to extirpate the race. This was the only adventure we met with in that journey, but some of the landscapes which opened from time to time, as our path winded through the passes of the mountains, and amidst the most romantic scenery, far surpassed the power of description. Here enormous rocks, piled in toppling cairns by ancient earthquakes, and basketed together by the roots of beautiful trees growing out from among them, fantastically overhung our path—and there streams of the purest water, leaping from the precipices, and glittering in the sunshine as they came rushing from the hills, were heard dashing, as it were, with a musical freshness around. We rode forty odd miles with unexpected facility the first day, and reached before sundown the residence of an aged Lieutenant of the navy, to whom I brought a bundle of old newspapers, with a letter from a friend in Kingston. He had retired from the service, and with the propensities of another Robinson Crusoe, had constructed a cottage for himself on one of the most picturesque points of the central ridge of mountains, where the road from the interior comes out on the lower range of hills that front the north, commanding an extensive view of the island, and a boundless prospect of the ocean. Mr. Cutwater, for that was his name, received me not only with joyful heartiness, but with something like the exultation of one who has found again a precious valuable that he had lost. I staid with him during the night, and as I had but a ride of fifteen miles to the house of another gentleman to whom I had a letter likewise, I agreed not to leave him till the afternoon of next day, and had thus an opportunity of inspecting his improvements, which, considering that every thing was the work of his own hands, were admirable proofs of what the

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industry of an individual may accomplish. The spot he had chosen was, as he said, with respect to its temperature, in the same latitude as Leghorn, and he had cultivated with success many plants and shrubs, similar to those which grow in the south of Europe. He had two antelopes which he had brought from Malta, but, unfortunately, they were both males; one of their gazelles had died on the voyage, and the other was killed by a sailor with a stave, who, as it was standing on the beach at the village of Green Island, where it had been landed, thought it a wild animal of Jamaica. The evening in the Main-top, as he called the place, was so cool, as almost to be chilly; and as we sat together in his little viranda, contemplating the magnificent scene which the rising full-moon disclosed, I may safely say, both as to the altitude and the delight enjoyed, I had never been so near Heaven before. I parted from him with regret, and promised to visit him again; but it was never in my power, nor would it have been wise to have done so, according to those philosophers who are of opinion, that when a man meets with exquisite excellence, he should never seek from it a repetition of the ecstasy, but cherish the memory and beatitude of the first enjoyment. Early next morning, I reached Prospect Coffee Pen, the residence of Mr. Beans, a pleasant rural grange, with more of an air of permanency than is commonly seen in the houses of the Jamaica planters. He was a cheerful old man, with an only daughter, who had recently returned from England, where she had been for her education, accompanied by another young lady, the daughter of a neighbouring Planter. My reception was with the off-handed hospitality of the island, and they were pleased to regard my visit as fortunate, especially as Mr. Canes, the gentleman whose daughter was the companion of Miss Beans, intended in a few nights to give a ball and supper, in honour of her return, and it was not often that they had it in their power to treat a stranger with so gay a doing as it promised to be. “I cannot, however,” said Miss Beans, addressing herself to her father, “imagine what has come of the spirits of Louisa, since we arrived. They have quite fled, and she looks as if she wished she had not come back to Jamaica.” “It is natural,” replied the old gentleman, “that she should be sad. Her mother died soon after she was sent to London, and some of the changes in her father’s house cannot be what she, perhaps, expected.

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Bessy, the Quadroon, whom he has taken to live with him, is said to be a capricious and foolish slut.” My European ideas were a little disturbed at the freedom with which Mr. Beans spoke of this arrangement to his daughter, and I could observe a blush overspread her countenance; but it was evident that he was not aware of any deficiency of delicacy in what he said, perhaps owing to the commonness of such domestic connections. His own house was in every respect regulated with scrupulous decorum; it was the only house that I met with where the females wore the bosom covered; and though the servants were all negroes, they were orderly, and really, in manners, not without a competency of good breeding. It was the likest establishment to that of a plain English gentleman of any I saw in the island; indeed, I have always since thought that the coffee plantations are the only good specimens of rural life which the country affords. The works on the sugar estates are too much like factories, and have a character of trade about them inconsistent, as it seemed to me, with the incomes derived from them, many of which were then lordly. But the more I saw of Jamaica, it appeared only a scene of temporary possession. There was an activity, so like haste, in all affairs, which seemed unconsciously to betray apprehension for the possession. The buildings had an appearance of fragility, as if every thing were prepared for a sudden abandonment: grain was not cultivated. Verily, not only the villages, but Kingston itself, showed how much the proprietors calculated, insensibly, perhaps, to themselves, that in Jamaica they had no continual city.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. a dialogue. Although Mr. Beans, in the habits of his conversation, partook of the coarse morality of the country, he yet possessed both talent and intelligence. He had read a great deal, and having an inclination to the antiquarian literature and manners of the middle ages, would in any society have been regarded as embued with literary taste. He had been in Jamaica from the declaration of the American independence, but he preserved, by importing new books and most of the periodical publications, an intimate acquaintance with the eventful transactions of France and Europe. On the changes in the state of society, his reflections were often ingenious, and if not always profound, were undoubtedly curious. The feudal system was, however, his principal theme, and although sensible that its institutions were no longer suitable to the variety of modern employments, it was with him a constant topic of admiration. During the few days I remained at his house, we had several interesting discussions on the tendency to change in the state of property arising from the growth of commerce and manufactures, and in the evening which I first spent with him, he was particularly eloquent, not only with reference to his favourite subject, but with respect to the effect which the abolition of the Slave Trade would have on West India property. “The earth,” said he, “is divided into so many nations, often at war with each other, that in those barbarous ages, when the feudal system originated, and domestic feuds were household thrift, it became necessary for communities to provide political means of defence, and to be always ready for war. But although no man can more freely admit than I do that the hereditary restraints in the descent of property have now become obsolete, they were yet requisite in those rude times to preserve together the masses of property which the security of kingdoms rendered necessary among each other; nor would it have been easy to devise a more effectual plan for having always ready the soldiery and officers requisite to constitute an army,

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the sole end and object of the feudal distribution of property. The whole system was so perfect for its purposes, that it could not have been the invention of human genius, but must have resulted from the natural exigencies of warlike society; a provision of the same Providence which gives strength and courage to the beasts of the field, and wings and talons to the birds of the air.” I could offer no opinion in answer to this, but observed, that mankind were now acquiring clearer ideas of their natural rights. “Natural rights!” he exclaimed, “where are they? When society was formed, were not they cancelled, and social privileges substituted? From the earliest concentration of society, man has been continually laying aside his inheritance from Nature, and investing himself with the dispositions induced by the wants created by living in community. The more refined and intelligent man becomes, the farther he recedes from a state of nature; but in opposition to this truth, it would seem as if the progress of knowledge should lead us round a circle back to that state; and yet, what are all natural rights but the ramifications of one right? An equal claim to an equal portion of the productions of the earth.” “The economists say no more,” replied I. “True! they say no more; but, forgetting that there is a community of nations as well as of men, they claim more, and see not, that in society, privilege has superseded right. Individuals are endowed with different powers, capacities, and predilections, and the equality of their natural right is modified by the laws of society to protect these inalienable endowments. The weak has the same right to food as the strong, but the strong has the power to wrest his share from him; hence the origin of that institute in which all the other members of society concur, and which says to the strong, if you oppress the weak, we shall punish you. Thus it is, that the sole object of the social state is mutual protection; and to protect individuals in the exercise of their respective endowments, is the end of all government.” “I do not exactly perceive the tendency of your observation,” said I, diffidently, for I had but an imperfect conception of the subject. “No!” replied he; “do you not see that all property rests upon that principle? The natural endowments of individuals, constitute the means by which they are enabled to acquire property. In all respects, but in those which are injurious to the welfare of others, society permits the individual to enjoy the exercise of his faculties, and whatever results to him from that exercise, it acknowledges to

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be his own; to deprive him of it in any way, is a violation of the social compact.” “Then you are opposed to the Moravian system of living in community—the co-operative system?” “I am,” was his calm, but brief answer—“it is incompatible with human nature, for we have all our several endowments, different alike in degree and quality. The individual, who in a state of nature exercises his strength or his cunning to gratify his own desires, has a right in himself to do so, but society requires that he shall abdicate that right before he can receive its protection. In a word, to protect the individual members of society in the several properties which they acquire by the exercise of their respective natural powers, cannot be denied by minds capable of understanding principles. It is consecrated to them by all the most revered expedients that legislative wisdom can invent. Men are armed against their fellows for its security; police and constablery are instituted for its safety; governments, judges, and magistrates are invested with prerogatives that it may be held sacred; and all dogmas, opinions, and actions, which imply that man can be deprived without compensation of his acknowledged property, cannot, however holily, be urged by other means than those of the nature of crime.” “Upon my honour,” said I, smiling at his vehemence, “I did not expect to hear such philosophy in Jamaica.” “I believe you,” he alertly replied: “we don’t here think much of these things, and yet our very existence depends on a right understanding of them: for our property consists of slaves; and if there be one thing more than another which can be described as a natural right, it is surely liberty; and yet nothing is more certain than that it is the very first thing of which society strips man when he becomes a social being. The moment that property is recognised, in the same instant the claim of man over man is acknowledged. In a general view, the labourer for his necessaries confesses his submission to masterdom; but in a stricter sense, what security can the man who has no property give the other from whom he buys it, but a right over his person—all law assents to this—and the man in debt is a slave.” I found myself no match for Mr. Beans; but his opinions have ever remained with me. end of the first volume.

BOGLE CORBET; or,

THE EMIGRANTS. “Truth severe by fairy fiction dressed.”

BY JOHN GALT, Esq. author of “lawrie todd,” “the life of lord byron,” &c. &c.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

LONDON: henry colburn and richard bentley, new burlington street.

BOGLE CORBET; or,

THE EMIGRANTS. CHAPTER I. doubts. The intelligent conversation of Mr. Beans made the evenings delightful, for Mr. Canes’ approaching ball had somehow the effect of suspending all ordinary visits in the neighbourhood. During the whole time I remained at Prospect Pen, we were not once interrupted by a stranger; even the daughter of my host did not give the social apartment much of her company, being chiefly engaged in her own room writing letters for a ship in the bay that was on the eve of returning to England, and in preparing a dress for the festival of her friend. The depressing heat of the day rendered the exercise of riding too much for me, but in the mornings and evenings I had some agreeable shooting on the skirts of the wood adjoining the plantation. Into the woods themselves I never ventured, having a judicious apprehension of the reptiles by which they were said to be dangerously infested. Nor was the game that offered itself very inviting, for it chiefly consisted of talkative green parrots, which held general meetings in a large tamarind-tree near the house, where they ever appeared to have so many important topics to discuss, that I fancied the assemblage could be nothing less than representatives in Parliament; and sometimes, instead of firing, I became a groundling, and listened uninstructed to their debates. But of all the things I was most averse to injure were the monkeys, a numerous community of which had established themselves among

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the cliffs and loose rocks of a precipice in the vicinity, from which they made thievish incursions to plunder Mr. Bean’s shaddock orchard. One of them, an austere carl, whom I had scared from an orange-tree that he had taken possession of, as soon as he escaped over the rail which surrounded the garden, flung an orange at me with such dexterous aim as to hit me with no inconsiderable vigour right in the face. I had my gun at the time, but to fire at a thrower of stones required the reading of the riot act, and would have been little less than murder. It might have subjected me to the mittimus of no graver-looking justice. But notwithstanding the deliberative assemblies of the parrots, and the judicial monkeys, Jamaica is not the land of field sports; nor though the avarice of man has rendered it interesting both by its importance, and the species of labour with which it is tilled, can it ever become congenial to the student or the artist. I could see no inducement to think of remaining, though the thought once or twice occurred to me; and Mr. Beans, with a happy illustration in himself, more than once pleaded the force of habit in reconciling a man to far less agreeable countries and climates. My repugnance was not, however, altogether the offspring of conceit or dislike, but strengthened by an event which I shall presently have occasion to describe. In the mean time a grateful remembrance of the universal kindness with which I was treated, constrains me, as it were, to speak only of those incidents which contributed to my gratification. Other visitors may foster the prejudices associated with the West Indies, and descant on the oppressions and sorrows which taint their bright and verdant shores; but for me to speak of aught else than of the frankness and friendship which flourishes as vigorously there as the ever vernal vegetation and never failing fruit, would be to incur the guilt of sullenness towards myself, notwithstanding that dismal event which, like the shadow of a cloud on a sunny field, still sullies my recollection. On the day prior to Mr. Canes’ ball, Miss Beans early in the morning rode over to see the preparations in which her friend was engaged: she wished to be alone, and requested that neither her father nor I should accompany her, but invited us to meet her as she returned in the evening. The old gentleman, without any other remark, softly patting her cheek, at once assented for us both, and said she was a kind-hearted girl. I did not exactly understand his expression, but it struck me as something which implied that she had another purpose in making the visit, of a gentler character than

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merely to inspect the preparations. In the evening, agreeably to her appointment, we met on the road, when her melancholy and altered looks showed that she had been affected by some unhappy occurrence. Mr. Beans, in a soft, yet anxious manner, inquired for her friend, but instead of making any reply, she mournfully shook her head. Ever impressed with a wakeful apprehension of the rapid maladies of the country, I asked her rather earnestly as we rode along, whether any accident had happened to Miss Canes. She made me no reply, but turning to her father, said aloud, “Poor Louisa is not happy—she has taken no interest in the preparations, all is the work of that insolent Bessy—alas! her sufferings must not continue—they will kill her if not prevented, and I can give no advice.—Do you think Mr. Canes would allow Louisa to stay with me?—I am sure, if you could imagine what she feels, you would readily let me ask her.” Her father seemed pleased with what she proposed, and said he would take some opportunity of speaking to Mr. Canes on the subject; and coming round from the right-hand side of the road to me, Miss Jemima being between us, he lowered his voice, and with a tone of regret, subjoined, “Here is a sad example of the consequences to which we are exposed, by having no place of proper education in the island. Louisa Canes is a delicate and sensitive girl, qualities which her father does not appreciate as he should—the five years she has spent in England have ruined her for the society of Jamaica. She either ought not to have been sent home or kept there, which Canes can very well afford to do. Poor Louisa! I saw the shock she received on the evening when she first landed. What has she been saying, Jemima, that you look so dejected?” “Little,” replied Miss Beans, “very little;—she sits all day in a desponding state—her sighs and tears come thicker than her words—my heart was like to break for her—her mind is evidently running on some sad thought.” “Perhaps,” said the old gentleman lightly, she may have left a lover behind!” “Oh, no, I should have heard of that—all the passage she was as happy as a kitten, and anticipating a thousand pleasures that she has not found.—Her grief is a Jamaica plant.” “She has been too sanguine, and it may be but a fit of disappointment.”

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“She has been disappointed,” rejoined the young lady, with a deep sigh—“would you believe it?—she has made her will.” “Her will!” cried I; “what does she intend?” The exclamation escaped me unconsciously, but it had the immediate effect of causing both the father and daughter to stop their horses for a moment. Mr. Beans then returned to his former position on the right-hand of Miss Jemima. “We must not, my dear,” said he to her tenderly, “let this matter rest; low spirits make a fatal disease in Jamaica; I will speak to Mr. Canes at the ball to-morrow night, and we will have her at Prospect Pen as soon as possible.” By the time we had in this manner discussed the subject, we reached the house, and Miss Beans, on alighting, retired to her own chamber, and we saw no more of her that night. Her father also had letters to write, and soon after went into his study. I was thus left alone to my own meditations, which the communication from Miss Beans rendered far from comfortable. In a word, my imagination was saddened; all sorts of disastrous images, and apprehensions filled it; and I fell into that mood of mind which has since grown to habitude with me, but which in those days was only occasional. Let me, however, hasten to the sequel, which, even after the lapse of so many years, I still cannot think of without a shudder. At this moment, the hideous circumstances rise before me, with all their original distinctness, singularity, and sorrow.

CHAPTER II. the festival. Prosperity, as the estate of Mr. Canes was called, lay some five or six miles distant, nearer the shore than Prospect Pen. It was a valuable property, with a large mansion, one of the best residences in that part of the island. All the country side had received invitations; the splendour and opulence of the preparations excelled every thing of the kind in the memory of the oldest inhabitants. The whole exterior of the house, jalousies, and piazzas were all on purpose newly painted, and every establishment for many leagues around was laid under contribution for the loan of plate, china, and glasses, London porter, and English preserves, to embellish and enrich the supper. I went in the same carriage, an open car, with Mr. Beans and Miss Jemima; their domestic servants, to assist, all dressed in their gaudiest, had set off some time before. On approaching Prosperity House, every thing indicated festivity. The sun was gloriously setting; the field negroes belonging to the property, with many others from the neighbouring estates, were assembled near the house, joyously talking and laughing all together, every one as black and shining as if freshly come from under the brushes of Day and Martin. It is impossible to conceive a more riant and happy scene. Several of the negro women wore red slippers, which, with their white dresses, made them like magpies with red feet. A long row of little children, piccaninies, fifty at least, were dancing naked, hand in hand, to the sound of a fife, which an old negro, who had evidently belonged to a regimental band, was playing, and a lame negress kept time with one stick on a drum, made of half a large gourd or calabash. A ship’s ensign was displayed from a tall flag-staff in front of the house, and four cannon stood beside it; six or seven carriages like our own were driving to and from the door, others enlivened the more distant road: it seemed as if the revelry of the scene derived some peculiar zest from the black complexion of the crowd, and the

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mirth was undoubtedly increased by the gay loquacity and prattle of their simultaneous tongues. We reached the door just at sunset; a salute from the guns round the flagstaff roused the echoes far and wide, and with the sound of a conch, and the ringing of a bell on the offices, announced that the entertainment was about to begin. The interior of the house was brilliantly lighted; a band of black musicians began to play just as we entered, and the rooms were delightfully refreshed with limes and flowers. But beyond the materiel of the ball and banquet, there was little within the house to exalt enjoyment. The company consisted entirely of whites, collected far and near, and the assemblage afforded but few resemblances to beauty. The matrons were dun and bilious, with wide mouths, cany teeth, hollow eyes, and necks that needed all the beads and jewelry with which they were hooped and garnished. The young ladies, in mitigation, had youth, and some of them a pale pretension to gentility; but the men,—a mingled multitude of all ages, rough talkers and loud laughers,—with plenty of noise, supplied the want of urbanity, while the disposition to be pleased contributed to the happiness of all. But Mr. Canes was not evidently in the best humour; he received us with more of the gravity of an undertaker at a funeral, than the satisfaction of a father rejoicing in the possession of an amiable and accomplished child. I thought him even sullen, and remarked on the unrepressed coldness of his manner to Mr. Beans, who was equally with me disconcerted at a humour so different from the general anticipation of the company. In the course of the evening it was however accounted for: there had been some difference in the morning between his daughter and the quadroon Bessy, in which he had taken a part against Miss Canes. From whatever cause this had arisen, Bessy presumed upon it, and insisted on being of the company, notwithstanding the usage of the country towards people of colour rendered it an insult. This, however, Mr. Canes would not allow, and an altercation had ensued between them, which completely disturbed his temper for the night. Perhaps we might have but slightly regarded the ill-breeding with which he exposed himself to his guests, had there been nothing else to excite attention; but the appearance of Miss Canes, thoughtful and absent as Miss Beans had described her, was a source of deeper solicitude. She plainly shunned her companion, and seemed as if

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the necessary little civilities she had to perform were a burthen. She moved about, absent and repugnant, and occasionally without cause, rushed across the ball-room, and then suddenly halting, looked around as if she had just awakened, with such piteous solicitation in her eyes, as made her dejection exceedingly touching. I was particularly introduced to her by Miss Beans, but she appeared as absent at that moment as if listening to some distant sound. Her friend looked at me mournfully, and shook her head. Soon after we observed her in tears;—such was the lady of the festival! It was manifest that something lay heavy on her mind: I advised Miss Beans to seek her confidence, and she went towards her to entreat her to retire. Miss Canes seeing her approach came forward a step or two, and said calmly but solemnly— “I see your anxiety—but give yourself no trouble—It will soon be over—this night, this night!” Miss Beans was greatly agitated. It was obvious now that her friend had some mysterious cause for sorrow, and when she returned to me we both concluded, from the disturbed appearance of the old gentleman, that they were affected by the same anxiety. I was weak enough at the moment, notwithstanding the jocund enjoyment of the negroes, to fear that they both dreaded an insurrection on the estate; but Miss Beans, with more discernment, was convinced the grief of her friend sprang from a cause, not of terror, but of sadness; nor were we left long to doubt. In the course of a few minutes after, the unhappy young lady was missed—the servants knew not where she was gone—she was not in the house—her father’s sullenness changed into alarm—all the guests were amazed—the dance and the music were interrupted, every one went to the veranda in front of the house, where Mr. Canes, in accents of distraction, called aloud for her by name, and wrung his hands, as if he anticipated some appalling result. There was then a pause to hear if any voice would reply, when the crack of a pistol behind the house, occasioned a universal shout of horror, and all ran to where the sound had come from. I was the first to reach the spot. But the spectacle I beheld, rises, as I then saw it in the moonlight,—I am so shaken as to be incapable of saying more. The weapon, the event, and the occasion, seemed to invest this deplorable catastrophe with a supernatural character. The ladies, without returning to the house, fled weeping to their carriages—the gentlemen followed, with awe and silence. The negroes gathered

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round me with lamentations and tears—some one brought a tablecloth and spread it over the remains—and soon after, lights and torches, with the dumb-struck negroes around, completed a scene of consternation and grief that tongue nor pen shall ever adequately describe.

CHAPTER III. negro children. After having remained with Mr. Beans about ten days, on account of the shock his daughter had received by the extraordinary fate of her friend, and by which he was obliged, in a great measure, to forego her society for that time; I at last left Prospect Pen for the sugar estate of Plantagenet. Among the other friendly peculiarities of those days in the hospitality of Jamaica, was the freedom with which gentlemen allowed their houses to be considered by the friends of their friends. The road was not marked by milestones, or inns, but by good fellows; so that, although the journey was but forty-seven miles, it took me three days to perform it; and I dare say, had it taken months, I should have only increased the warmth with which the shortness of my visits were complained of. I did, however, reach Plantagenet, and on the third day was there received by my relation, with that frank heart-in-hand-kindness which exists no where more gratifying to the stranger than in the West Indies. I had heard of Plantagenet so often, that I had pictured to myself, as I supposed, a tolerably correct idea of it; but instead of beholding that beautiful and romantic scenery which had so often been represented to me, I found it consisted of a small plain, as level as a lake, chiefly covered with sugar-canes, and bounded on the south by a rocky mountain, shaggy with bushes, and plumed with trees of primeval growth and magnitude. The dwelling-house of my cousin, Mr. Buchanan, had recently been renewed; but I was told it was in a style much inferior both in size and elegance to the old mansion. The workhouses were also in a state of being restored, they were, however, declared by every stranger, who came to see them, among the best in the island. This, with the conversations I had held with Mr. Beans on the state of West Indian property, led me to conclude that Plantagenet estate was becoming, like many others around it, more truly only a commercial concern, than that sumptuous residence which it had been

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in the days of earlier possessors. It was evidently regarded no longer as a manorial home, but a station of business; the prudent proprietor having some years before retired to a paternal inheritance he had in England. My kinsman had heard of my misfortune; some of the rumours circulated by the Possies had reached him by the Clyde ships, and it was not until our acquaintance had ripened into friendship, that he would believe I had not been the means of ruining an excellent man, who had unfortunately placed too much confidence in me. However, this bias was overcome, and he not only acted towards me as one kinsman should do to another, but exerted himself among his acquaintance to appoint me their agent in London. In this his endeavours, though he did secure a number of respectable constituents, was not equal to his expectations; for in his different applications, he found many of the more recent planters were obliged, by the terms on which they had borrowed money, to make the consignments of their sugars to particular houses; nevertheless my journey to the North side enabled me, before my departure for England, to console myself with the prospect of a decent, though not a great income. I had not, however, been actuated in my visit to Plantagenet by any hope of such success; I went thither entirely, I may say, from sentimental motives. So capricious is fortune to many of our views, frustrating the best-laid schemes, and creating, as I may say, in the words of the poet, “life under the ribs of death.” In point of feeling, I was, if one might really venture to speak out, disappointed; and yet I had no reason; for as I grew better acquainted with the neighbourhood, and the associates of my cousin, I found myself far more at home than I should have been in Glasgow. All the Negroes of my father’s time, when they heard of my arrival, came in flocks, like cawing crows to a new field, to see me. Their gabble, and the vast things they had to tell of former times, was often exceedingly amusing; the kind-hearted creatures, though, like the rest of mankind, not so satisfied with the present as the former time, were yet more to be indulged for their affection, than to be chided for their familiarity. So much loquacity and mirthful impudence as they uniformly evinced, was totally irreconcilable with all those stern and gloomy ideas that, among the English, who have never inquired into the subject, are associated with slavery. But I must not say more on this point, lest I should be suspected of extenuating the state of a labouring community protected in all the evils incident

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to humanity, far more effectually than the poor of England are by parish officers, and those who regard distress as a crime. I should ill, however, have availed myself of my opportunities, did I not speak of some of the habits of the Negroes. My foster-sister, as I may call the daughter of Baba, although she was several years younger, had, just before my arrival at Plantagenet estate, become a mother. That undecaying affection with which I must ever think of Baba, induced me to visit her, for her recovery was languid: Mr. Buchanan accompanied me to the house appropriated for new mothers and their infants, where she lay still confined. On our entrance there was great joy, and, as usual, much garrulity and infantine cries among the inmates of this lying-in-hospital; poor Rebecca, the name of the slave, was still languid; but when she heard I was coming, she cried out for her ebony baby, and presented it to me instead of to my cousin, and laughed and fondled over it, as if to convince me it was the fairest and loveliest thing in all the world—but every body knows that the crow thinks its own bird the whitest. Mr. Buchanan, as well as myself, was greatly amused with this instance of maternal love, and the innocent simplicity of the pride and joy with which it was accompanied. When we had remained as long as the chief matron deemed it proper in conversation with Rebecca, I then inspected the apartment more particularly—a large room, with a number of couches round the walls, in which nine mothers were reposing in different stages of recovery; their offspring all naked, lying like human tadpoles on their backs in baskets, and some of them in trays beside them. A few were covered for protection from the flies and musquitoes with transparent gauze; twenty-one children were in the room, and according to their respective ages, from the baby of a few days to the little devil of twelve months, were of all hues, from the mahogany of the youngest, to the elder imps of legitimate jet. But although the room presented a diverting scene, it was not without a sight that awakened compassionate emotions. On one of the maternal beds lay a twin, as I was told. The poor mother was not however there, she had died in giving them birth; and, but for the interested arrangements, it may be thought, of Mr. Buchanan, the orphans would probably have perished on the field. The other boy, screaming to the utmost stretch of his lungs, was sprawling on the lap of an old Negress, who was stuffing him with arrow-root as if she had been filling a black-pudding.

CHAPTER IV. the negro. As we were leaving the lying-in hospital, we met at the door a young negro with a basket in his hand. I walked on, not conceiving there was any thing remarkable about him, while Mr. Buchanan stopped to make some inquiries: on rejoining me, he said, “That good creature has interested us all; he is not one of my negroes, he belongs to the neighbouring estate of Perseverance, but his wife belonged to us. She was the mother of the twins you saw, and died in labour.” “In what respects,” said I, “is he interesting? I did not, however, particularly observe him; he only momentarily attracted my attention, as being of a better figure than we commonly meet with.” “He is not only so,” replied my cousin, “but, though black, is a gentleman of Nature’s making. It is, however, by the loss of his wife—she was worth to me a hundred pounds —and by the regular attention he pays to his children, that he has interested all our sympathies. His master, Mr. Logan, allows him to visit them every day, so much has he been pleased with his feeling and conduct. But I must tell you the love-story of poor Scipio. “He is indeed, as you casually noticed, a very handsome negro, and really of a princely mind. He did not originally belong to this parish, but to Lochaber, an estate considerably farther eastward, which was sold by order of the mortgagees about two years ago. Some of the slaves were disposed of apart from the property; Mr. Logan bought him, and Yarico, who afterwards became his wife, was of a lot that luckily fell into my hands. She was absolutely, though no Hottentot, an African Venus, and had as many admirers among the other negroes as a carcase at home has of crows; but Scipio and another sable suitor, Billy, were the favourites. Billy happened to be the companion of Scipio, and except in their suit for the love of Yarico, there had never once arisen the slightest disagreement between them. “When the mortgage on Lochaber was foreclosed and the negroes

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culled for sale, it happened that Scipio, Billy, and Yarico were found to be in separate lots, and that the lot to which Scipio belonged was to go with the estate. They were thus destined to be separated. It is in such circumstances only that the slave’s life—let your philanthropists say what they will—can fairly be regarded as having any hardship so great as those of the labourers in England. But you have worse than it—a man may be dragged among you to prison for only a few pounds of debt—is not that slavery?” As my cousin was thus diverging into his chief topic at all times, the vindication of what he commonly called West Indian servitude, to express the condition more appropriately than he thought was done by the harsher epithet slavery, I recalled him to the history of Scipio, by inquiring how he became the property of Mr. Logan. “In that,” said he, “lies the proof of Scipio’s magnanimity. Billy, in being deprived of the chance of cultivating the favour of Yarico, was desirous of remaining among his comrades on Lochaber. The same feeling affected Scipio differently. No longer likely to be able to continue his addresses, he cared not what became of himself—‘Every ting was noting,’ as he said almost in the words of St. Preux, ‘where Julia was not;’ and in consequence he agreed with his friend Billy that they should exchange lots, since he was so anxious to remain. With some of that shrewd management which the negroes occasionally display, they accomplished the exchange, with difficulty however, for Scipio was worth more than Billy, and it was the object of the attorney of the mortgagee to sell the best negroes separate from the inferior, who were to go with the estate. It thus came to pass that Logan obtained Scipio at the same time when I bought Yarico—you will say a fortunate though unforeseen arrangement for them both. But it was not in consenting to be the sold slave that Scipio emulated the greatness of his namesake. “When Billy found how the chances had turned up, he became frantic—if a negro could despair, I would say he did—and in his grief ran to Scipio, and implored him to pray Mr. Logan to change again the bargain. I was present when they came to him. Scipio stated their case with the most touching and simple eloquence, to the effect that whichever of them Yarico should prefer for her husband should go with Mr. Logan. Logan, as you know, is not a man fit for managing negroes properly; he has been bred at Oxford, and is too romantic; and he was, in consequence, so taken with his part in the drama, that he consented. But Yarico was capricious, for although Scipio was by far the finest fellow of the two, she preferred Billy. Scipio, however,

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like a black gentleman as he is, submitted with firmness to his fate, but also with sadness, for he wept with the bitterest sorrow, and yet made no complaint. “Just in this crisis a very odd accident happened: whether the agitation of the competition had been too great for Billy, or he had been previously unwell, Yarico had scarcely declared her preference, when he dropped down in a fit, from which he never effectually recovered; in less than a week he died, and, like the Ephesian matron, Yarico mourned deliriously for four-and-twenty hours, and then accepted the faith and troth of Scipio. To do, however, the capricious lady justice, she proved the best of wives to her husband, who, ever since her death, has been quite broken-hearted. And Logan, who is as romantic as ever, is indulgent to his grief; he permits him to come daily to the children, and Scipio never comes empty-handed. The piccaninies are yet too young to partake of what he brings, but he has ever something nice for old Sheba the nurse, and sits for about half an hour with her, during the whole time never speaking, but looking steadfastly, perusing, as I may say, his ebony idols.” “What a pity they are not white!” said I inadvertently, for I was really affected by the story, and the picture of Scipio contemplating his motherless babies; at which Mr. Buchanan laughed heartily, saying, “Don’t you think the heart may be as kind under a black skin, as a white?” I felt a little ashamed at this, and by way of softening the absurdity which had escaped me, told him the story of the old lady with her birds, and the terms in which she used to revile the black steward of the packet. “But,” said he, gravely, “do you think the negroes a different and inferior race?” “I only think,” replied I, being by this time pretty well acquainted with his character, “that they are black and we are white. I never said any thing of their inferiority; on the contrary, I think all men are much like dogs,—one breed may be different from another, and each have distinct peculiarities, but it does not follow in that distinction, that there should be any inferiority imputed. The bull-dog is not so obviously made for speed as the greyhound, and yet he is superior in those watch and ward qualities for which the other is so little distinguished.” Mr. Buchanan was puzzled, and I exulted in my logic: several times after, during the remainder of my visit, I was amused with

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the amplification he made of my remark, and the manner in which he applied it in vindication of “West Indian servitude:” a subject on which I have never been able to form a decided opinion; for although, abstractedly, all philanthropists are agreed as to the political rights which ought to belong to the negroes, an insight of their dispositions, and of the condition they so happily enjoy, “must ever give us pause,” and it makes, undoubtedly, “their calamity of so long life,” if calamity it be, compared with the condition of other labourers elsewhere.

CHAPTER V. a homeward voyage. Having made arrangements with the friends of Mr. Buchanan, and received accounts of the state of our affairs from Messrs. Crooks, Bullion and Co. of Kingston, which were far less promising than I had hoped for, I took my passage in a Clyde ship from Montego Bay. Had I yielded to my own prejudices, I should have gone to London at once, as it was there I intended to become West India merchant, but the anxiety to communicate the true state of Corbet and Possy’s assets to their creditors, induced me to go first to Glasgow. This passage was of a different description from the pleasant airing I had enjoyed outwards from Falmouth. The weather was gloomy and boisterous; I was torn to pieces by indisposition for several days, and was only roused from my intolerable subjection to the sickness, by one of the seamen crying, “a bloody sail on the larboard bow,” which I literally believed might be some wreck upon the water, but which, when I went on deck, I saw was only a vessel that had the black look of a privateer; ‘bloody’ was but a metaphorical epithet of the sailor’s own coinage, who belonged to Cork, and was, of course, rich in the figures of Paddy poetry. That innocent alarm, for so it proved, had, however, the good effect of putting an end to my illness, and I have since been of opinion that sea-sickness is more subject to the resolutions of the will than any other malady. Our ship, the Corronade, Captain Crosstrees, was a running letter of Marque, the most disagreeable vehicle for a voyage of all of the ark genus. The slovenly apery of man-of-war exactitude was sometimes laughable, but in general afflicting. The second time I went on deck after my fright, I was so weak as to be under the necessity of sitting down on one of the guns, at which the mate, one of the most pragmatic officers that ever trod on oak, whispered to me that such freedoms were not permitted in the discipline of the ship; and that night I was obliged to allow my cot to be taken down in the cabin, that, in case of an alarm, all might be clear for action. During

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the whole passage, these warlike orders and precautions were unceasing. Had the enemy’s cruisers been as thick as the shipping at Billingsgate, we could not have been more vigilant; but, nevertheless, with all our care, there were occasional moments of relaxation. The redoubtable mate’s watch one night, as we entered the chops of the Channel, offered an instance of this: we were steering close to the Irish coast, the wind being off the land, rather a smart breeze. It was dark, and the weather very hazy, when lo! a rough voice from under the starboard quarter hailed us for a rope. “Hollo!” cried the disciplinarian, in consternation;—it was a man-of-war’s barge, come to impress, and which, with the usual dexterity of these sharks, had reached us unnoticed, by coming up from leeward. Two of our best-looking seamen were taken away, and I moralised on Negro slavery, wondering how, among the bumpkins and philanthropists of England, it should have been so much forgotten that charity begins at home. The same squally weather which had prevailed during our passage, continued still to attend us in St. George’s Channel, accompanied with intervals of foggy calms. We at last reached the Mull of Galloway, where a sudden change took place. The atmosphere, so often thick, cleared into brightness, the boisterous wind grew merciful, and although winter reigned in the air, the crystal transparency which revealed every hill and headland of the most romantic landscape in the world, was to the sight as pure and cool as water to the traveller coming from the desert. All on board rejoiced in the prospect of home; the cocks in the hen-coops crowed with unwonted bravery, and even the ship-dog looked over the rail-way and snuffed the peat-flavoured breeze as it came at easy intervals from Ireland. We expected to reach Greenock, our port, in the course of the evening, but at sunset another change came on. The sun set in a dim and drowsy haze, Goatfield was capped with clouds, and the aspect of the Argyle and Cowal mountains became dark and sullen; soon after, the wind blew strong from the East, not exactly in our faces, but it was gusty and variable. “We shall have wind enough before we get in,” said the Captain; “I wish we had more sea-room.” We soon after saw Plada light, like a red portentous star, low in the horizon; but the same thick weather of which we had so often complained returned, and it soon disappeared, and with it all the features of the land on both sides of the Frith. Captain Crosstrees, without betraying any fear, was evidently troubled: presuming,

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perhaps, that we should early pass the Cumbraes, he had no particular note, nor even the man at the helm, of the direction in which the Plada lighthouse, bore from us at the time when we lost sight of it. This troubled him—it was an oversight in case of accident for which he might be blamed; and it was the more vexatious, as the mate, whose watch it was, ought to have been more observant. Still, as the weather, though obscure, was far from stormy, it was not felt then as an important omission. I was surprised at the professional indifference with which the incident was regarded: to me it seemed a prognostication of evil; for although it is certain that accidents, both by sea and land, often occur without warning, yet it is rare indeed, when they are foreseen by signs, that a blindness to the omens is not one of the most remarkable. I felt that night, and still feel it as often as it recurs to mind, an unaccountable superstitious dread—a fear without warranty. There was no visible danger—the wind was not high—the waves dashed, it is true, darkly, and no star peeped through the universal gloom of the heavens. In this state of things a small vessel passed. It seemed to me as she came towards us, that she had a black and hearse-like appearance: just as I thought so, the dog, which had kept his station at the gunwale, uttered a long, hollow, and sad howl, and ran cowering under the windlass—one of the sailors kicked the appalled brute for its prophecy. I thought to myself he should not have done so; but it is the fate of all seers and admonishers, to be despised or condemned for their foresight by the world. The wind was rising, the land nearing on both sides, and the captain as he walked the deck, frequently inquired if the Cumbrae light could be seen. “It was near this spot,” said he to me, “where the great ship of the Spanish Armada sank, with all her racks and instruments of torture.” “It is then a dangerous place?” was my answer, not in any degree comforted by his information. “It may be so in a gale of wind,” was his equivocal answer, with a command, in the same breath, to take in sail and close-reef the foretopsail. A sailor soon after called out in a voice of alarm, that he saw the Fairlie windows. He was right; we had mistaken the channel, and were on the east side of the Little Cumbrae, steering into the bay, and would in less than ten minutes have been on shore on the Southenan sands.

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“’Bout ship!” was the instant cry, and in the course of few minutes we were in the Mid Channel, which, although narrow, on that side of the island is safe. The wind almost in the same moment blew out more favourably, and the moonlight soon breaking through, we reached Greenock before day-light, without accident.

CHAPTER VI. changes. Leaving my luggage in charge of the captain, to be forwarded after me when it had passed the custom-house, I set off for Glasgow immediately on landing, and on my arrival there, waited at once on Messrs. Mickelwham, Shuttles and Co., the principal creditors of Corbet and Possy, from whom I heard, with inexpressible sympathy, that they too had fallen under the disasters of the time. The devastation, as it may well be described, of which we were among the earliest victims, had continued for some time, and was wide in its range, but its progress was then arrested, and trade had again shown symptoms of revival. The bud and blade had re-appeared, although the winter was still not over and gone. Considerably vexed, I then went to Mr. Pullicate, who had continued to prosper, and heard from him, with no small degree of indignation, that not only Micklewham, Shuttles and Co., but several others, particularly Spindles, Smith and Co. imputed their embarrassments to the stoppage of our concern, while their own overtrading was the very fountain-head and cause of that event. It was of no use to grieve. My resentment, however, against Possy was rekindled, for I could not but ascribe to his plausible folly the aspersions which had been with impudent assurance first propagated against me by him and his gawky wife. I may be pardoned for the severity with which I speak of them, particularly of the lady, when it is considered how much in a commercial community the wives thoughtlessly circulate the shreds and patches of the unfortunate intelligence which they sometimes glean from their weak and talkative husbands. Greatly distressed by what I had heard of the misfortunes, reported to have been caused by ours, I resolved to make my stay in Glasgow as brief as possible; and I also resolved to make the Possys sensible that I was not unacquainted with their calumnies by taking no notice of them whatever. I offered no contradiction to their tales, convinced that time would vindicate the truth; but it was an effort of severe anguish to persist in that forbearance.

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After having explained to our creditors the satisfactory state in which I found every thing at Kingston, in the management of Crooks, Bullion and Co., and how unnecessary it would have been for me to interfere with them, ignorant as I was of the methods of dealing with the Spanish traders, I set myself earnestly to obtain my discharge, that I might be clear to receive the consignments from Jamaica. In this I met with the wonted liberality, but not in every instance, for some of the smaller creditors ascribing, in the old-fashioned style, our failure to riotous living, because we had been a little above their own condition, took the opportunity of lecturing me on frugality; and others would not consent at all, until they saw certain other names at the paper. To do justice to the wary and consistent Eric Pullicate, he was of great use to me in this business, and a sense of gratitude for his endeavours materially allayed the harsh feelings in which I was sometimes disposed to think of him. During my residence in Glasgow at that period, I carefully abstained from making any new friends; but to my old ones I was irresistibly attracted, I may even say impelled. In all this there was undoubtedly some worldly defect, but my heart was erased of its skin by what I suffered, and it is only in this revision of my life, that I am taught the weakness with which at that period I at once hid and cherished my pride and sensibility. My old home with Mrs. Busby, though the distance was inconvenient, became my home again. She knew my disposition, and applied her counsel so judiciously while I remained with her, that the shafts which might have rankled into wounds, were extracted with but slight pain. Dr. Leach, to whom I occasionally paid a forenoon visit, continued the same odd and incapable person:—whether misfortune or a better knowledge of the world had made me sharpersighted, I seek not to ascertain; but I thought him declining into dotage, and often, in spite of reason, I repined that he had not been a man of firmer texture than to yield so easily as he had done during my wardship, to his colleague. Of Mr. Macindoe, the original impression continued unimpaired. I did, as I freely confess, resent the clumsy cunning with which he treated me at the period of our failure, but it abated with time, and I was able again to participate in his cobble with much of my early enjoyment. When I had nearly accomplished my liberation from the claws of the Glasgow creditors, one afternoon, as we were enjoying the punch together, I told him of the business promised to me from Jamaica, and his surprise on the occasion can only be adequately

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described by employing his own words. “Mr. Bogle Corbet,” said he, “this is wonderful news—a gazette extraordinary from the war! Ye surprise me—I am confounded: but we must fill up the cobble again, on the strength of the glad tidings. Well, you’re a broken ——, but ye must excuse me—an auld friend has a licence—You in that desjasket condition—to be a West India sugar, rum, logwood, and pimento merchant. Wonders will never cease! I prophesied that ye would be my Lord Provost; but now I see ye’re ordained for a Lord Mayor. Whittington and his Cat: Job! Job! whose latter end was better than his beginning. Mind when ye’re fairly settled, and tell your correspondents to send me a hoggit of rum—middle runnings—the best and oldest. Don’t you think this would be the better of another spoonful? Well, I’m in a consternation; our gude wife will yet get a grey parrot, the green are all dummies; but this is a confirmation of the old proverb, that the darkest hour is aye before the dawning.” To understand this properly, the reader should be told that the West Indian merchants were still at that time, in Glasgow, regarded as the chief grade of the mercantile community, however much they may have since fallen from their high and palmy state; and the surprise of Mr. Macindoe proceeded from that consideration. Indeed, he was so amazed the whole of the afternoon, that he could not sufficiently express his congratulations, and, as the punch ebbed, his astonishment increased. “Really,” said he, “it shows us what it is to have a good name for business—at bottom—let evil speaking say what it will. But mind when ye write about the hoggit of rum, to say from yourself—that I’ll be none the worse of a barrel of limes—nor Mrs. Macindoe of a firkin of tamarinds—do you think I may tell her the news?—Dear me!—when at the school I was fond of roasting cushoo nuts—Heh, Sirs, that was lang syne! but old age makes us, they say, twice bairns, and may be I’ll soon be at the years of roasting cushoo nuts again— they grow in Jamaica. And Muscovy ducks are queer creatures going about the door of a country-house: they turn up the side of their head wi’ pawkie e’en—like Mary Gray’s in the old ballad of Bessy Bell. You have, Mr. Bogle Corbet, surprised me this day. Here’s may the worst of our days be past!—take off your glass. That’s good punch, and it’s now your natural drink—it’s mother’s milk to you— Bogle Corbet, after all, a Jamaica merchant! This beats print—Well, there’s no telling what’s ordained for us—‘bode of gowden gown and ye’s get the sleeve o’t,’ is an auld saying and a true. Just let me

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squeeze another lime—ye must allow me—it’s no every day we have such a crack of consequence. By the by, talking of limes puts me in mind of the fine green sweetmeats that come from Jamaica— no doubt ye will be getting complements of them—But, after all, the hoggit of rum will be the best—Taste that.”

CHAPTER VII. reminiscences. On my return to London nothing remarkable occurred for some time; but my old acquaintance, Dr. Lembeck, the friend of Sir Neil Eccles, called several times upon me, and always inquired particularly how I was getting my affairs settled. The same inquiry was so often repeated, that at last it struck me as something odd, and not made without design; but I took no other notice of it, than by simply saying my discharge was signed by nearly all the creditors. He was one of Sir Neil’s executors, and it occurred to me that, knowing the relationship in which my wife stood to the Baronet, he was surprised that his old friend had not left me any legacy. I was surprised I must confess too; but so many interesting occurrences were about me at the period of his death, that the omission did not make so deep an impression as it would have done in a period of less inquietude. In the mean time, my Jamaica friends were quite as good as their promise. I received from them several important consignments, from which I derived a respectable income; but the chance of making a fortune, or of even saving to the extent of my original little capital, was not in it. A change however, in consequence, was induced on my condition. My friends, connected with the manufacturers, gradually became strangers—not, however, owing to any alteration in their sentiments towards me, but to the different directions in which our respective pursuits lay. My time was less occupied with business than when I had greater affairs to superintend; and I had more leisure to cultivate the acquaintance of that class of town-men, as they are called, who with small regular incomes and literary tastes, are only to be found in London, the most agreeable ingredients of intelligent society. I had not, however, been above three years in the enjoyment of this state of things, when I began to apprehend that my Jamaica constituents were affected by the exigences of the times. One of them applied to me to negotiate a mortgage for him, which I readily

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effected, but it was taxed with an obligation to consign his sugars to a house in which the party who advanced the money was interested. This was the first instance in which I saw, having no capital myself, that my business would only remain with me so long as assistance was not required. The circumstance, however, did not disturb me at the time, as I was then on the eve of my second marriage, with Urseline Ascomy; and perhaps, after what I have said of her in the account of my journey to Falmouth, when I went to Jamaica, the reader will be curious to hear how it came to pass; as, without doubt, there was nothing in my first accidental introduction to Mr. Ascomy’s family, to lead any one to expect that such a connexion would ever be formed. It was really an affair of destiny, and I can never yet imagine by what otherwise unaccountable influence it was brought about. She was a choice, after long search and consideration, preferred over others in that sort of indifference, which proceeds from having the power of selecting but one, where many are presented. I think it is Lady Delacourt, who says, that she chose her Lord, as a gown, after looking at many patterns, fixing at last on any one, to save herself from farther trouble. Her Ladyship’s case was mine. One day, as I happened to pass along Piccadilly, I met the two Miss Ascomys with a gentleman. An immediate recognition mutually took place: they rejoiced to see me, nor was I less so to see them; and yet there was nothing particularly attractive about them. Their pelisses were of dark brown, lined with green; a contrast of colours, which, by some inscrutable association, always reminds me of a toad; and which to this hour I consider abhorrent to Iris, and to be the most vulgar juxtaposition that millinery or painting can express. Their straw-bonnets were out of fashion, and were adorned with broad pink ribbons and flaunting bows; in a word, they were unlike any thing in dress which the metropolis at that season could afford; but they had been particularly civil to me, and I thought only of their kindness. As they were on their way to Bond-street, I walked with them, and when we entered more into the crowd, Miss Abigail went forward with the gentleman, and Urseline remained with me. We had not proceeded many paces, when, as if I had been an old friend, she informed me that her sister was to be married to the Reverend Mr. Tythe, the gentleman with whom she was walking; and that they had come to town with their father to make some necessary purchases for the wedding. I did not feel myself entitled

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to this confidence, nor did I greatly admire the young lady for being so communicative to a stranger. But this was not the only instance in that promenade which led me to observe that much worth may be blended with little delicacy. Just as we passed the bottom of Conduit-street, although it was then about four o’clock, my fair companion’s garter fell loose, and without remark, she stepped aside and tied it. There is certainly no moral crime in a young lady tying her garter in one of the great thoroughfares of London; but on points of such etiquette, I am particularly nervous. I hold the sight to be rank indecorum out of a dressing-room; judge, then, what were my feelings on that occasion towards Miss Ursey, as her father called her. Gratitude, however, for her surgical aid in dressing my wounded forehead overcame all scruples, and we continued to walk together, — till her sister happened to notice some article in a window which she wished to purchase. The price exceeding her means at the time, she applied for assistance to the purse of Magna Ursa, my companion, but was flatly refused aloud, because it was more than she could afford, and it was covetous to think of buying it at all. Now it happens, that covetous is one of those delinquent remembrancers of the Ten Commandments, which constantly reminds me of the peccable nature of the human race, and I hate to hear it. That, however, was not so much the cause which roused my antipathy at the time, as the exposure of their poverty; a condition in itself sufficiently mortifying without being bared to the contemptuous and pityful gaze of the world. There must indeed always be, in my opinion, an innate predilection to a base estate with those who speak lightly and freely of the greatest evil of life. Neither man nor woman, who has a just respect for the feelings of others, will ever remind them of their poverty, and no delicate mind will disclose its own proximity to beggary; for to tell the world that you are poor, is only a coarse way of bespeaking charity. It is needless, therefore, to say, that Miss Urseline did not carry my heart by storm—indeed so far was she from it, that all my prejudices rose in arms against her; and had the weird sisters themselves, in the shape of a lawyer, clerk, and parson, menaced me with her for a bride at the altar, my repugnance would have been invulnerable. But yet Miss Urseline Ascomy was not a bad creature, although inheriting some of the most disagreeable qualities her sex is subject to. She rarely could give a direct answer—was obstinate and self-willed—and even the more she was in the wrong, the firmer she resisted the right. I have

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known her persist against the evidence of her own senses, rather than retract an opinion; all these qualities undoubtedly predicated that she was not endowed with the sweetest graces for a wife—and yet she is mine!

CHAPTER VIII. a new act. My Jamaica business afforded far more leisure than Corbet and Possy’s, and my acquaintance was, by the means of Dr. Lembeck and Mr. Woodrife, extended among a circle of their friends, from whom I imbibed a more general taste for reading, without acquiring a particular bias for any subject. Thus it happened, that at the time when my acquaintance was renewed with the Ascomys, I was become somewhat of a town man; for I had no desire to embark deeply in business—I saw that the state of society in England prognosticated the coming on of difficulties to young men entering the world, and that although the French disasters in Russia were then thickening by every post, the circumstances of our own country were also becoming day after day more perplexing. It may be thought that in yielding to the inactivity which this opinion of things encouraged, I betrayed my own interests—but it should be recollected that the scheme of my life, though it was not of my own contrivance, had been blighted, and that adversity, whether it come of ourselves or of our neighbours, is mildew on exertion. I could not redeem the past—the state of the times did not encourage me to attempt it, and disappointment had castigated my desires into moderation. But whatever the reader may think of me at that period, I am bound, by what I have herein undertaken, to relate only the truth—the best truth, however. It cannot in reason be expected that I should speak ill of myself. Mr. Ascomy, as I have already mentioned, was a gentleman of rather odd peculiarities; but take him from his philosophy, he had many excellent and amiable qualities. I dare say he had talents too—many of his friends thought so, but his eccentricities always appeared to me so predominant, that I was never able to discover in what his talents consisted. Common civility, after meeting his daughters in the street, required that I should visit him at his lodgings; and hearing from them that he seldom went abroad, especially at night, I resolved to call when it was probable, as strangers in

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London, they might have an evening engagement; so much had my predestined spouse by her foibles displeased me, that I shrunk at the idea of cultivating more of their acquaintance. Accordingly, in the course of a few nights after our rencounter, I went to pay my respects to the old gentleman, in Norfolk Street, Strand, where they had their lodgings. The young ladies, as I had hoped, were not at home, and Mr. Ascomy I found engaged in a serious discussion with a literary acquaintance, one Mr. Moth, whom I had several times met with at Dr. Lembeck’s, a person of great reading and little capacity—a learned man—but it was in all sorts of learning save that which could have been of the slightest use. My appearance, and the kind reception vouchsafed to me by my old acquaintance, interrupted their erudite colloquy for a few seconds, but when the customary reciprocities had been performed it was resumed, and was as void of all interesting knowledge as words grammatically strung together could possibly be; but it excited me, by its very vacuity, as an exhausted cupping-glass raises the muscles, and I was greatly amused to hear how men could talk so much and say so little. It is mortifying to minds of a philosophical bias, as those two worthy gentlemen believed theirs to be, to discern how much, even in argument, the practical man of business is superior to a mere theorician, and how far more ably he jumps to the conclusion, while they are pioneering among the weeds and entangling briers of unimportant preliminary distinctions. The remark, however, is not made with reference to the excellent disputants who have given rise to it, but to all of the two classes alluded to. How much of logic is really useless! After I had sat upwards of an hour, now and then lifting a fallen loup in their argument, the young ladies came in, attended by Mr. Tythe. This made the party too numerous to be entertained by the discourse of one speaker, and in consequence we fell into conversational groups, by which I happened to become associated with Miss Urseline, who, after my heavy travail in the desert sands of her father’s discussion with Mr. Moth, was a fountain gushing from a rock; in plain terms, a young woman possessed of a competent household modicum of good sense. When I retired for the evening, it seemed to me that I had not done justice either to her merits or those of her sister Abigail, when the recollection of them had occasionally risen in my remembrance, as Campbell says, taking the thought first from Lord Bacon and afterwards from Blair’s Grave— “Like angel visits, few and far between.”

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But part of the line is not applicable, for except the “few and far between,” the allusion to angels may be judiciously omitted. However, certainly that evening, whether conjured by the contrast of the nothingness in the previous controversy to the unaffected justness of her observations on some of the sights she had been to see, her genius kithed to me in a very sagacious conversible manner. She evinced far less pertinacity in opinion than the recollection of the first impression of her character had taught me to ascribe to her; showed several purchases she had made, creditable to London liberality, and interspersed her discourse with solid and substantial apothegms of a domestic nature, which sufficiently exculpated her from all the guilt of blue. Not ever having had the good fortune of seeing much of domestic life, save only for one bright moment with Anella, the importance of frugal housewifery to the comfort and happiness of man, never appeared so emphatic before. I had a just enough conception of a pound, and its aliquot parts, of the number of pence in a shilling, as well as the farthings in a penny, but of their relative value, I am almost ashamed to say, I was in a primitive state of princely ignorance; and I felt the full extent of my deficiency, when Miss Urseline, showing me a piece of muslin which, by the mark on the end, I discovered had been manufactured by my old ally, Eric Pullicate, “inquiring if I thought it not dirt-cheap at half-a-crown a yard?” I was only able to answer, that it looked much like what in my time was marked by our foreman, the very maker, at that rate. This the complaisant reader will no doubt allow was exceedingly funny, for Miss Urseline laughed very heartily at my stupidity, telling me that she had bought it for one-and-nine-pence the yard, and, debonairly insinuating a compliment to herself, in order that I should see how dextrously she had managed in the negotiation, she assured me that the shopkeeper, as he himself had told her, had not for many years broken a ticketed piece, and only did it to her, as he perceived she was from the country, and it was the interest of the trade to encourage country customers. I looked at the stuff again—it would have been dear at a shilling. But in these circumstances, and with such topics, my interest in the character and dealings of Miss Urseline commenced, and so much did they engage my attention, that I never once during the evening recollected the public atrocity of the garter—an incident, as I thought at the time, more astounding than Lady Salisbury’s accident at King Edward’s ball, when the Order was founded. But I must be cognisant of the existing powers; Mrs. Corbet is still alive,

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and nothing, if not critical, and to keep peace in the house, must say that I did think a woman who would look twice at the two sides of a shilling before she parted with it, was very much the right sort of wife to make a bright hearth with a narrow income, to which the aspect of the times was not auspicious.

CHAPTER IX. courtship. My courtship with Urseline Ascomy was too important to be cursorily passed over. It is manifest, by what has been stated in the preceding chapter, that the romance of life was then becoming a little flat and stale with me, and that increasing years, and decreasing means, were prompting to economical expedients; but my native candour would not suffer me to equivocate towards the woman whom I thought would make a suitable wife to my circumstances; and accordingly, I honestly told her, when I solicited the favour of paying my addresses, that we had both too many nicks in our horns to be pastoral in our love, without running the risk of being foolish. She quite as frankly assured me that she thought so too. “But, Bogle Corbet,” said she, “for the sake of a family custom, I must tell my father, and when you obtain his consent, which I can encourage you by saying will not be refused, the time and place will be at our own choosing.” I seriously confess that I was not prepared for such plain dealing. I did expect a little more maidenly affectation; but replied, after a sentence or two, “that friends should not stand on ceremony to each other.” “It would be very surprising if they did,” replied the young lady; (she was then on the wrong side of thirty,—verging to forty, between ourselves;) “but at weddings, births, and burials, it is wholesome to observe old customs, that we may not be spoken of.” “True!” was my answer, having at the moment an ugly remembrance of how little she seemed, in what she either did or said, to care how she was spoken of; but before I could add a word, she shut my mouth with the following most satisfactory observation. “Not that I care for what they say of me, for it is exceedingly troublesome to be always looking behind to see how you are noticed, and fumbling with your gown to catch the eyes of the world.” Now that word fumbling I did not like, it was unbecoming, ill chosen, vulgar, and I wonder still, how she could not find another

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more appropriate; it was, however, as dust on the balance, compared to her other sterling qualities, so I passed it over as an inadvertency; but more experienced consideration induces me to say, that I suspect it came from habitude. “But,” said she, resuming the topic, which my dislike of the term a little disturbed; “you must let me speak to papa about the settlements, before you say a word to him on that subject.” I stood aghast; and she continued,— “Nay, I know it is not the custom for young ladies to do so, but we are speaking of a life and death matter, to which the settlements are but secondary; and as you are not a man of a mercenary disposition, and papa’s head is as full of crotchets as a fig is of seeds, leave the business to me.” “Good Heavens!” cried I, aloud, subjoining softly to myself, “Is this woman to be my wife?” “Well,” said she, mistaking the cause of the interjection, “if you do not approve of my interfering, I shall not; but, Bogle Corbet, it is a thing that makes me anxious; I should ill endure to be thought the cause of injuring my sister; I want but my fair share of papa’s fortune. Now I know that he thinks you a man careless of your money, for we have often spoken of that; and he will not be outdone by you in generosity, and it is on that account I fear his warm-hearted folly will lead him to forget that I am not his only child.” I certainly not only forgot the odious word so unfitly applied, but took hold of her hand, and made some stammering solicitation for pardon. “No, no, Bogle Corbet,” was her reply; “you have asked me, and I have, in my plain way, given you a dutiful answer; so no more parle­ vooing, but let us take the course that our consciences will hereafter approve. I would never like you, if for your own sake, or even for mine, you would in the settlements let papa, who never thinks of to-morrow, do injustice to my sister.” “You cannot imagine such a thing of me,” cried I, a little piqued. She looked, and then smiled, adding, “you best know the sordid secrets of your own heart, Bogle Corbet; but I would rescue you from temptation. I know well my father’s head,” and stretching out her hand to me, while a tear glistened in her eye, said, “I do not think you mean, but you will take what he offers, and I am sure his vanity will offer too much. Let us not, Bogle Corbet, begin our connexion by permitting even to be proposed any settlement which my sister or Mr. Tythe may think unfair towards them.”

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The reader, by these slight remembrances of our only conversation as lovers, will perhaps see more of the character of my second and present most worthy wife, than by a more elaborate description, and discern something too of the causes of that regard which began in circumstances so little likely to terminate in a union which has now existed many years, agitated with difficulties, and darkened with anxieties, but without one moment of diminished confidence. In fact, from the day of my marriage with Urseline Ascomy, I became a new man. In recalling the recollections of my youth, something of the original sentiments in which the most important transactions came to pass, necessarily return upon me, and I am again for a time restored, as it were, to the feelings of former years; but that epoch is now over, and I have hereafter to speak of the struggles and transactions of a man fighting with adversity, and tracing, in all the movements of a variegated life, how truly he has ever been but a cog on one of the great wheels of the social system, directed by no effort of his own. I have not, however, yet done with my second courtship. The incidental notice of my wife’s regard for justice, and her sisterly love for Mrs. Tythe, have led me to allude to matters of subsequent occurrence, but the fond interval before the marriage claims to be more circumstantially described. What took place between her and Mr. Ascomy, after I had been formally accepted, when she went to consult him respecting her settlement, Curiosity, though an earnest impulse never prompted me to inquire; but it was satisfactory to her, and I attended the old gentleman’s appointment on the subject, with no other feeling than a passive acquiescence to accede to the result. Judge, however, of my surprise when, on entering his room, I found Mr. Moth there, invited to be a witness, and the town attorney of Mr. Ascomy, with two spacious engrossed parchments before them, sealing wax, red tape, pen, ink and paper, and all the other cobwebs and trumpery of legality suitable to such an occasion before them. I said nothing, but took a seat, expecting the man of law would read the document as usual aloud; instead of this, however, Mr. Ascomy turning towards me, and composing his features as much as possible into an aspect of wisdom, said with grave solemnity— “Mr. Bogle Corbet, in this deed, and in contemplation of the intention on your part towards Urseline Ascomy, my daughter, I have made an assignment of certain monies and properties to trustees for your mutual benefit, and for the benefit of the children which,

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with God’s help, you and the said Urseline propose to beget.” The sly man of documents smiled, and Mr. Moth interposed, saying, “Mr. Ascomy, there is no need to be so particular, Mr. Corbet knows very well the intent of the deed.” “I beg your pardon, Mr. Moth,” replied the philosopher. “There are occasions when not to be particular is to be neglectful; one of the faults in conduct which you know Aristotle ranks next to the vices.” “In that,” said Mr. Moth, “the sage has not displayed his characteristic perspicacity, because, the obvious distinction between negligence, which is the better term, and a vice, consists in——” “True, true,” cried Mr. Ascomy impatiently; “I know what you would say, but for all his acumen, no doubt there is an error in what he says, for negligence may, under certain circumstances, be absolutely a virtue; surely to neglect to perform a vicious action is no approximation to vice.” Mr. Charter the lawyer interposed. “We must leave Aristotle till another day,” said he. “I crave pardon,” rejoined Mr. Ascomy, “we must; but I could not help giving my friend Moth a touch with my switch in passing. Mr. Bogle Corbet, in this deed I have assigned a just share of my worldly possessions for the use of you and yours, but for good and substantial reasons, best known to myself, I do not choose to tell you the amount thereof, so before you know what it is, will you accept and sign the deed?” “Undoubtedly,” was my answer, drawing my chair nearer to the table, and taking up a pen; Mr. Charter seeing the movement spread the parchments which I signed at once, while Mr. Ascomy in unspeakable consternation sat in silence, frustrated of making a speech he had doubtless conned.

CHAPTER X. settlements. My knowledge of Mr. Ascomy, and his amazement at the readiness of my acquiescence, convinced me that I had disappointed him of making a fine speech prepared for the occasion. I had some suspicion it would have that effect, and, perhaps, there was a little prankfulness mingled with the manner in which I acted; malice it could not be called, but the consequence returned upon my own head, with unforeseen astonishment. Urseline had in her conversation with him, the better to gain her end, after duly intimating that Mr. Tythe was not of a disposition, nor possessed of influence enough to raise himself higher in the Church, advised him, as if to outstrip me in generosity, to make the deed of settlement, and to have it prepared without speaking to me at all on the subject; insinuating, that to make his own magnanimity the more apparent, he ought not to inquire what I intended to settle. How she accomplished this I never very clearly understood, but the result was as I have described it. In truth, I possessed nothing to settle; I had only a respectable income, part of which was laid aside for a policy on my life, effected in contemplation of the marriage. It was not a heavy sum; but it served to lessen the amount we had to spend, which was also lessened by a reservation set apart for the prospective contingencies always deemed to be in the rear of a wedding. I beg attention to this, because I am reluctant to take up the time of the reader by enlarging upon the causes that, in combination, hastened on a decision which could not be averted. The apparent indifference with which I consented to the settlement Mr. Ascomy made on his daughter, greatly disconcerted him by exciting another cause, quite as important as the frustration of his eloquence. He had prepared himself to answer some objection, which he anticipated that I, as a man of business, would probably make to sign a paper without knowing its contents; but the abrupt mode which had been adopted to conclude discussion was unexpected,

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and had the effect of greatly molesting his quiet. He was aware of my circumstances, knew that the addition he was providing could not be unimportant, and reasoned upon the seeming carelessness I had shown like—a philosopher. In a word, he concluded upon two most uncomfortable inferences to himself; the first was, that whatever he gave with his daughter, was much more important to me than he or she had imagined; and second, that I was greedy to get it, and that it was the sole object I looked to in the match: nor was this conceit unplausible, for he had noticed my impatience at the occasional inadvertencies of Urseline’s language, and the lectures and admonitions which her disregard of the etiquettes and the observances of society frequently provoked. It is true, a man of the world would have discerned in it only anxiety to see her more worthy: a suitor for wealth would have been none offended with such ripples and surface blemishes; to such a candidate for her fortune, they were too small to be seen. Accordingly, notwithstanding his disposition to overrate my generosity, the true cause of all the misunderstanding, he became, from the moment I had set my hand to the deed, persuaded that in my heart I was mean and mercenary. His second inference was still more erroneous, and had more of the musty “unfanned” air of the library about it than even that. “If Bogle Corbet be not mercenary and mean, he must be a prodigal fool, and my ill-fated daughter will be reduced to beggary by his Timon-like profusion—Poor girl! an arid doom awaits her; methinks I see her falling into want—and perhaps with children— unhappy offspring of pennyless parents; there they go in the cold and humid days of winter, in windowed raggedness, without shoes— their heels red with chilblains—merciful heaven! can I endure this? I must break off the match if the one inference be correct, and if in that inference I be wrong, I must ensure a sufficient separate maintenance for the fated Urseline, to avert the inevitable consequences of the other. What care and anxieties parents must endure! For a time the mother’s love is grievously tried by the passionate baby, yelling to the pitch of its voice, and spurring with its feet like drumsticks, frightening her sleep—to say nothing of the other condiments that make the miseries of a nurse’s lot and lap: such are a mother’s cares in infancy, chiefly nocturnal. But these are light to those of gabbling childhood. If a Miss, she has a doll; it sulks when she sings; and then the poor mother assures her to no purpose that it is but of wood—the termagant demoiselle knows better! If a Master, he has a trumpet, perhaps a drum: the peace of the house is gone; and with

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paper cap and sword,—his elders have but fur—he struts a hero, and fights with Hotspur in the mirror—smash, it lies in fragments; or haply his sister fences with him, and, with a stamp, his foil has made her beauteous right eye as blind as an oyster. These are but the mother’s cares! then comes the sire’s; of which, to guess at but for an imperfection of their variety, read all histories; the wars of kingdoms, battles, elopements, marriages, divorces, duels, bankruptcies, and broken hearts—these make not half the moiety of the disasters that stuff with restless ecstasy a parent’s pillow.” Such was probably the troubled current of Mr. Ascomy’s reflections on that occasion, all flowing from the pure well-head of affection; and it requires no very difficult calculation to determine where, with the guidance of his good nature, it would end. However, nothing more particular occurred at that time, the inference touching my sordid views in seeking the marriage gradually became doubtful, and ultimately the apprehension of prodigality entirely predominated. The precise effect came, however, to no issue till after the wedding-day, when, on the following morning, he came to me with a deed, by which he had settled on my wife, in addition to the fair half of his whole property, secured by the marriage settlement, an annuity, chargeable on the other half until the youngest child, the offspring of the marriage, should be twenty-one years of age. Thus the very event which Mrs. Corbet had, from her knowledge of his humour, been so anxious to avert, came to pass in consequence of the measure she had deemed most likely to avert it. The conduct of Mr. Ascomy in this proceeding sprang from an egg of his own imagination; and, although I have had never any solid reason on the part of my wife to regret the marriage, yet the connexion, owing to his folly, has never ceased to give me pain. When Mr. Tythe and his wife came to hear of the second settlement, they were angry with a just cause; and, regarding the partiality shown to mine as unkind, they ascribed it to some influence I had exercised over the old gentleman. The reader is, however, not more innocent than I was of the instigation ascribed to me, and both my wife and myself endeavoured in vain to induce Mr. Ascomy to alter the second deed. It was, however, speaking to the wind, to ask him to make any change. Every thing I did, became a motive to him to adhere to an opinion which, as he alleged, was framed on the soundest principles, deduced from considerate observation. It must be thus manifest, that without any action of mine calculated to produce perplexity, I was involved in a whirlpool of troubles, arising from the fears and

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eccentricities of others. It did not, however, affect my domestic situation. Both Urseline and myself, finding our income arising from my Jamaica Agency sufficient, never looked at her father’s unworldly deeds, and it so happened that I was not induced to act on them: we contented ourselves with our own legitimate income, and never once attempted to ascertain to what extent the improvident kindness of her father reached. There is, however, one point in the confluence of my circumstances at that period, which ought not to be left unnoticed. The habits and dispositions of Mrs. Corbet were not fitted for London society; she had been accustomed to the unrestrained freedom of a country life, and was teased in the performance of those little indescribable etiquettes which, at least, smooth the wheels of intercourse, where manners are considered as scarcely less important than the more valuable qualities. At first I thought time and observation would amend her in this; but the age of forming new customs was gone by, and I was compelled to bear with her ways as well as I could. It did not, however, require any very strenuous effort, for the shadows of past events were still black and chill upon me, and that disposition to evade society which has since become a second nature with me, was then gradually taking effect.

CHAPTER XI. domestic troubles. I cannot altogether say that my second marriage, during the few years we remained in the metropolis, was a happy one; but whether the fretful annoyance in which it kept me arose from any fault in our own management, or from causes exterior to ourselves, I am not disposed to inquire. Certain it is, that Mr. Ascomy suspected me of a predilection for prodigality, and that Mrs. Tythe complained among her country friends of having suffered unjustly by his partiality to me; although, in fact, she suffered nothing; and Mr. Tythe was in the receipt of all the advantages of a good living, more than adequate to supply the desire of their frugal wishes. Of him I knew comparatively little; I never became anxious for his intimacy; and therefore I can only say, that he was a steady, sober, corpulently-inclined parish priest, a little too dogmatical and pompous; his habits acquired as a teacher in early life never having been counteracted by any natural vivacity. I therefore cannot say that our estrangement from them ever had any material effect upon me: I should have been as well pleased had we remained on good terms, but I was very easy under his unwarranted displeasure. It was different with Mr. Ascomy. In him I did feel a particular interest; his oddity, pertinacity of opinion, and the constantly erroneous conclusions of his understanding, were never-failing subjects of curiosity, heightened to a prodigious degree by his imaginary belief in my extravagance; for the manner in which it was ever peeping through his angular gentleness was indescribably amusing, the effect being always immeasurably beyond the cause. One day as we were coming from the city together—the weather was oppressively warm—I had been much fagged by a sale of sugars, and worn out in spirit by some little unpleasant circumstances which had occurred at the sale; after walking a short way along Cheapside, without consulting him, I called a coach. He instantly expressed the utmost surprise that I should think of doing so on such a fine day, and directed my attention to the beautiful shadyness of the south

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side. He was, however, induced to embark with me, but all the way home he descanted most sapiently on the force of habit, and found that our fare was equivalent to thirty-six pounds ten shillings a year. It was no doubt so, had it been a cost of every day; but as I seldom took a coach, certainly not above once a quarter, his strictures little disturbed me. When we reached the door he went straight into the house. I felt my pocket, and had but a shilling of change remaining; the footman had none at all, and went to borrow from his mistress; she was equally void, and Mr. Ascomy was applied to. Such manifest symptoms of poverty in all the house, and such prodigality, deeply affected him. At first he denied pettishly that he had any change—then he recollected—and finally lent the lad a shilling, on condition that he would repay it. Such an afternoon! It was to me an entertainment worth more than half a guinea paid for the pit of the Opera House to hear Catalani, then in all the blaze of her beauty and the glory of her voice. My wife, not very well, retired in hystericks, believing that the end of all things was at hand. On another occasion he was still more teasing. In now and then giving a dinner to a few friends in our frugal way—for we never could do so otherwise, and were always most absurd, moreover, when we attempted it; sometimes remnants of claret were saved by Mrs. Corbet—the bottom drops, as she called them, being collected, and, when full, corked up. Now I detested this, for of all wine under the sun claret is the least that can bear to be dribbled with. It happened, however, one day when Mr. Ascomy was with us, and the weather being warm, I ordered a cool bottle of claret. This was a notable opportunity for my wife to produce her drops. Accordingly one came. It was vinegar—off it was sent—and I saw Mr. Ascomy fall back in his chair and look towards his daughter dejectedly. The second bottle, for anything I know, was vitriolic acid; the first was the balsam of life to it. I was provoked, and scolded—at the same time I could scarcely keep my gravity at the trepidation of Mr. Ascomy, while my wife, offended at hearing her drops so despised, endeavoured to defend them. I made no other answer, but insisted she should taste the stuff; she did so, and was unable to swallow it, consenting at once that another bottle of fresh should be drawn. But what a storm at that moment burst upon our devoted heads! Mr. Ascomy started from his seat, forbade the servant to obey, and poured forth such a tirade upon his daughter for yielding to my prodigal habits, that really my titillation was almost passing into a

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more prickly humour, when he hastily retired into another room, considering our doom inevitable. Phantasies of these kinds had, without exaggeration, a serious effect on our household comfort. By this time we had several children, and when the old man had retired to ponder on the destruction, one of the most impudent of the urchins went and complained to him, that his brother had broken his drum, which I had given him two shillings to buy ; and the other justified himself by saying, it was done in revenge, because he had accidentally broken the ears off their three-guinea rocking-horse—all comment on such enormities were, however, spared; for in the midst of such world-wasting disasters, in came a friend to tell me—as friends are fond of being messengers of bad tidings—that one of my chief Jamaica correspondents was in treaty with a West India house for a mortgage on his property, by which I should lose my wonted consignment of his sugars. Being aware of the fact, and of the necessities which had brought it on, the news did not surprise me; I had indeed meditated sufficiently on the loss it would occasion to myself before, and accordingly spoke of it with as much indifference as a twelvemonth’s widow of the merits of her deceased lord. The coach, the claret, and this formidable event, all on the same day, constituted, in the opinion of Mr. Ascomy, a phial of wrath, such as had not been poured on any single house since the opening of the Seals; after my friend had croaked his tidings and departed, the old gentleman remained to sympathise and condole with us. All his wrath at the wine was quenched, the shilling enormity was forgotten, and his heart overflowed with compassion and love. He made much of the unfortunate children; caressed the young ones with tears in his eyes, and gave a shilling to reconcile the two antagonists, who, with their hereditary propensities to spend, no sooner received the gift, than forth they sallied, and brought in two stupendous fine tops, which they exhibited with the exulting glee of young hearts gratified, to his unspeakable sorrow. The most ludicrous occurrence of all, however, took place after the brood had been sent to bed—if one may venture to apply such an epithet to an office so holy. He proposed that we should read prayers. This duty, laudable at all times, was almost the last to be expected from Mr. Ascomy, who being a philosopher, entertained of course the most enlightened views respecting the inefficacy of religious rites and ceremonies. The reader will see how our life in London, with an income

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gradually suffering from the decay of the West Indian prosperity, was thus rendered far from felicitous; and in what manner the comforts of the hearth may be embittered even by the kindest and best friends, who without reference to the feelings of those whom they would serve, allow themselves to be overborne by their own unrepressed fancies.

CHAPTER XII. apprehensions. Although the happiness of my own house was frequently disturbed by the whims of Mr. Ascomy as often as he visited us, generally three times a week,—for after my marriage, his daughters being then removed from him, he spent the greater part of his time in London—yet still it could not be said that my life passed without agreeable recreation, and much of it was owing to him. His acquaintances were numerous, chiefly among that set of odd and erudite characters, who constitute the regular audiences of societies and lectures, and the guests at his occasional dinners may be described as selected from the curiosities of human nature. Mr. Moth, his favoured friend, was uniformly invited, and, I believe, was the only individual ever there with whom I could not become acquainted. In many respects that gentleman was unlike every other person— he had read a great deal,—his talk was all from books, but it was about as intelligent and instructive to me as a dictionary. It was dry words, and I never could dove-tail two of his sentences into common sense. His mind, in fact, was like a sportsman’s shot-bag, filled with small, detached ideas, each of little value in itself, but capable of producing a strong effect when applied collectively. Yet, except in the vanity of fancying himself possessed of eminent conversational talent, he well deserved the epithet of worthy, and in their confidential affairs, all his friends had great faith in the strictness of his integrity. To Mr. Ascomy he was the right hand; and although I never sought his intimacy, in consequence of his inherent loquacity, his reputation for respectability in all his conduct, begat in me as much seeming respect as in any of those numbered among his friends. He was in consequence, one also of my visitors, but not so frequent as some others. One day, soon after Mr. Ascomy had been grievously molested by some ruinous symptom that he had discovered in my economy—for it has always been a habit with me to be punctilious in the little etiquettes and equipage of the table—Mr. Moth called. After

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talking some time about nothing, in our usual manner, he suddenly requested to speak with me in private. Mrs. Corbet, who was present, having nursery duties and discipline to perform, immediately retired, casting a marvelling look at me as she passed, concerning the cause of such solemnity on his part. “I hope,” said he, the moment she had disappeared, “that we shall not be liable to interruption; for in the midst of important business, it is really unfortunate to be interrupted; especially too, if that business happens to be, as mine is, interesting, and by its bearings calculated to influence the order and tendency of a man’s affairs. And yet, on such occasions, interruptions are common in my experience, and I have observed that when they do occur, they always fall out in the critical moment, and mar the transaction in the most unaccountable manner; proving, indeed, to a demonstration, that accident is one of the main weapons with which Providence, or Destiny, achieves its greatest results.” To obtain any thing satisfactory from Mr. Moth, it was necessary to humour his peculiar habit; so to bring him to the business, I at once assented to the profound solidity of his remark, and assuring him that I apprehended no interruption at that time, solicited him to proceed. “No doubt,” he resumed, “you are well aware, that since the conclusion of the war, there has been a remarkable revulsion in our domestic affairs. The great excitement produced during the late hostilities, has occasioned that extreme lassitude in all the faculties and functions of the nation from which we now suffer; commercial difficulties are multiplied and agricultural distress has reached an extremity unknown before: the moneyed interest alone flourishes. In this crisis of public circumstances, my friend, your father-in-law, has not the good-fortune to be among the stockholders, but is a member of one of the two depressed classes, namely, the agricultural interest; and his estate, as you well know, lies in Wiltshire. Now it is to that fact that I would solicit your attention.” I assured him that I was all ear, that he had greatly awakened my attention, and that I hoped, without any disparagement to my own firmness, I might add he had roused my feelings. Pleased to hear he had been so successful, he resumed. “I ought not, therefore, to augment your alarm by any prolongation of preliminaries, but proceed at once, as the Puritan divines used to say in the reign of the martyred Charles, to the marrow of the matter—which is to apprise you that Mr. Ascomy has of late

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found his rents so ill-paid, that his income has fallen into arrear, and that he must consent to a reduction. “I fear,” replied I, “that all the landed interest, sooner or later, must come to the same conclusion.” “But,” said he, “are you aware of the consequences to yourself? Mr. Ascomy will, in that case, be no longer able to afford above one half of the income he has settled on you and Mrs. Corbet.” “Let him give himself no uneasiness on our account,” was my answer; “we can do very well without it: for some time we have been speaking of retiring to the country, and it will only hasten on our determination.” “It is to be regretted, Mr. Bogle Corbet,” replied he, “that you consider such an important affair so lightly; it will greatly tend to abridge your enjoyment in many little pleasant expenses.” “No doubt it will, and the news comes at rather an inconvenient season, for my Jamaica correspondents find their embarrassments increasing; the price of produce is falling, and the cost of working their estates increasing. The West Indian character not being distinguished for the prudence of forethought, they have made no provision for their altered means; two of my friends have already been obliged to apply to abler agents for mortgages. But I must bear my share of the general blight of the times.” “You greatly surprise me,” said Mr. Moth, “at the equanimity with which you submit to misfortune: but Mr. Ascomy told me, indeed, that you reflected less on pecuniary vicissitudes than most men. It will, however, allay his anxiety to hear that you and Mrs. Corbet were preparing to retire a little way out of town. I hope you do not intend to go too far, for if you go beyond the short stages, the loss of time spent on the road, and the expense of coach-fares, will consume more than all the saving you can possibly effect. Under the motives that you are so commendably actuated by in this crisis, a convenient distance will no doubt be your study.” “I have thought a good deal on the distance, Mr. Moth. Any thing between five and ten miles will do exceedingly well.” “My good Sir, that will cost you, as Mr. Ascomy justly apprehends, a great deal.” “Not so much as he probably fears; both Mrs. Corbet and myself have made our calculations, and by keeping a chaise we shall at least save fifty pounds a year.” As I made this answer, I could observe a slight shadow of amaze pass over his countenance, and he was obviously disconcerted; for, after a few sentences to no direct purpose,

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he rose and wished me good morning. Perhaps in that conversation I indulged my habitual irreverence too far; but, in truth, the communication from Mr. Ascomy had been long foreseen, and so often expected, that my wife, with characteristic prudence, had been preparing for the event, by never allowing our household disbursements to exceed my own income. Had she acted otherwise, mischief must have immediately ensued; for the deficiency occasioned by the diminution of my sugar consignments, began to affect our savings, and was the suggesting cause of our deliberations respecting the proposed removal from town. It was not, however, the sole cause; for the fears on account of my prodigality of Mr. Ascomy, constantly prompted by his reflections on the reduction of his own income, were really become afflictions to our household comfort; we could not appease them by any explanation, and all that could be done was to render his access to interfere with our domestic proceedings a little more inconvenient to himself.

CHAPTER XIII. a legacy. Our removal to the country took place rather suddenly. One of my acquaintances was induced, on account of the ill health of his lady, to go abroad with her, and having a country house which he had tried to let without success for some time, made me an offer of the use of it during his absence for the amount of the taxes. This was in many respects a Godsend; for it was much less expensive than I expected to find any fit residence, and far superior to the kind of place I was in search of. But Mr. Ascomy looked only at the house itself; and although the rent should have been the main consideration with him, he yet loudly descanted on the style of the place, without noticing that it led to no change in our ordinary establishment. On one occasion he carried his animadversions so far, that we were on the eve of quite quarrelling. It is astonishing how much this sort of friendly interposition often ruffles the comfort of families. On me, however, it frequently failed to produce the effects it ought to have done; for I permitted Mr. Ascomy to indulge himself, amused by the ludicrous arguments with which his remonstrances were generally supported, and the shallow plausibility with which he backed them, by circumstances which had no relation whatever to the case. I remember on one occasion he attempted to demonstrate, and with some ingenuity too, that the decay of the value of Jamaica property was an effect deducible from the invasion of India by Alexander the Great, the sugar-cane, as he said, having been originally brought from that region. We had not, however, been long settled in our rural habitation, when one Sunday forenoon Dr. Lembeck came to me. I was not surprised at the visit, we had always been on terms of agreeable intimacy, but it was perhaps a little sooner than might have been expected. It was not, however, till he apprised me of his having come on business, that I thought of making any observation on his being there at all. Taking from his pocket several papers, he said: “I am now at

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liberty to perform what I hope is a pleasant duty to us both. This sealed letter was left by Sir Neil Eccles—you will see by the direction—not to be opened by his executors during the life of one Mrs. Elizabeth Eglesham, and until they had ascertained that all her debts had been fully paid.” “Alas! is poor Leezy dead?” cried I. “Yes; did you know her? Had I suspected that, I would perhaps have spoken to you of the letter before, for I have never ceased to wonder why you had not been remembered by Sir Neil in his will. She died some time ago, but left no debt; on the contrary, she had some trifle of savings; and I have come to open the letter as directed by the will and superscription.” He then broke the seal, and read special instructions to his executors, from a kind of codicil to his will, to pay over to me the thousand pounds which he had set apart for the use and annuity of Elizabeth Eglesham. I am not sure that there was much cause for any excitement of sensibility in this occurrence, beyond the surprise to me of the legacy; but when I informed the Doctor of poor Leezy’s story, he was more deeply affected than I could have previously imagined from his character, and I suspected that there was something not unlike it in his own history. However, certain it is, that though a calm, intelligent, worldly man, he soon after left London, and going back to his native place, he married there an old widow lady—for he was by this time an aged man himself, and it was said they had been earnest lovers before her first marriage, which had taken place soon after he went to India. To me the legacy was most acceptable, owing to the circumstances already related, of the diminution in my annual income, arising from the falling off in my West India business, and the change in the rents of Mr. Ascomy’s estate. That same night I held a bed of justice on the subject with Mrs. Corbet, and after an elaborate consideration of all the chances in our own prospects, as well as of the auguries in the aspect of the times, we agreed that the thousand pounds, with the interest accruing from it, should be set aside, never to be touched but on the most imperative occasion. It was found money, and was not a sum of such magnitude as to justify any change in our domestic arrangements; accordingly, apart from all we had otherwise, it was regularly invested on satisfactory security. This was one of the most judicious, blind anticipations of my life; for in the course of a few days after, another of my correspondents

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dropped off. Perhaps, had his determination to seek another agent been earlier communicated, I might have been induced to lend the amount of the legacy to him; for a thousand pounds was what he wanted, and occasioned the transfer of his business from me. The reader will however, I fear, be tired of these frequent allusions to the state of my commercial connexions. They are, however, necessary, to explain how it happened, that without any direct error of my own, I have been obliged to adopt the measure I am now pursuing, and that, but for accidents over which I had no control, I might have at this moment been suffering great hardships. But I shall say no more at present on that subject. He will see around him, by the altered condition of many, a sufficient illustration of my inevitable fate as participating in the fortunes of the kingdom—and I have a more various task before me in the personal narrative of the incidents which subsequently ensued. The most remarkable was a visit from Mr. Macindoe, soon after I had received the legacy, with a relation of his, a shrewd gausy carl, a kind of gentleman farmer, whom he had accompanied to London partly in curiosity, but chiefly, as it turned out, to claim my service for his friend Mr. Mashlim. By this time all my recollections, which had been sharp and pungent of Mr. Macindoe’s conduct as a curator and friend, were much mellowed. Experience had spread her softening varnish over the pictures of Memory, and in consequence, although I could no longer receive him with juvenile hilarity, he was yet as one whom I had known in a different state of being—I was unaffectedly pleased to see him. I remembered his social cobbles and desultory speeches, but I could perceive that after our first meeting he was struck with a kind of awe at the change which had taken place in my appearance. I was no longer the spruce young man, his ward, but a sedate, full-grown gentleman, with half a dozen children, and in physiognomy not unspared from the crowfoot marks of anxious thought. At the first moment he addressed me with his wonted jocose familiarity, but I soon saw the grave effect which the change had upon him. He became gradually serious—an awkward ceremonious demeanour was substituted for his natural heartiness, which, however, ever and anon peeped out, like a child’s laughing face from behind the mask of an uncouth old man, and was to me inwardly diverting. After introducing Mr. Mashlim, and explaining how I might materially assist his views, he began to remind me of former affairs, from time to time forgetting the awe he had sympathetically assumed

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on seeing me. I had not for many years seen or heard aught of my Glasgow old acquaintance, and on inquiring for them, especially for Eric Pullicate, he began with a methodical deference to tell me not only of him, but of every thing else in which his skipping and flying fancy could think I retained any interest. “Yes,” said he; “Mr. Pullicate has left many of his betters behind him. He is now possessed of an inordinate substance, a sagacious man; but his wife gets the wyte of a turn for being a wee outing; if it had not been for her—he was na a man to buy a silver-plate tureen, let alone two of them, one for the head and one for the foot. ’Deed, I dinna wonder to see you surprised that he should have such grandeur in his house. Your old foreman, first an inferior, then an equal, and now a superior! It’s very vexatious, Mr. Bogle Corbet, I’ll allow; but then ye have seen more of the world, and for all his outlay he has not the genteel contrivance that you have to make his bigging at Webends such a pleasant house and policy as this. But, man, old Miss Leezy Eglesham—ye’ll mind her—she’s dead, and we had a sough about a gathering she had left, and made you her heir. Gude, and it be so, quo’ I when I heard o’t; but no doubt, it was but the wind of a blown bladder. As for Doctor Leach, honest man, ye owe him a debt of gratitude for the pains he took with you when he was one of your doers; for, Mr. Bogle Corbet, to speak in the language of an old friend, ye were then a real obtrapolous laddie. I’ll never forget the story of your Edinburgh Jenny Flexions—worthy Mrs. Busby never liked to hear of that joke. She has a leil heart to you yet; but she’s now an old leddy, and a sore subject with the sciatica in her hip—but she hears from you whiles, which is most dutiful of you, for she was to you a mother—I may say a grandmother, which is naturally of a more indulgent disposition.” At this juncture the servant announced dinner, and we adjourned, Mr. Macindoe somewhat suppled into his pristine freedom.

CHAPTER XIV. frugality. I have already given the reader to understand that my wife was not the most particular of the fair sex, and took too little pains sometimes about the matters of the table, to please my fastidious taste. This by ourselves occasionally led to sage lectures from me, on the surprising inattention with which some people regarded as trifles many things that others felt were essentials to happiness. But in the whole course of our union, she had never been so remiss as she was on that day when Mr. Macindoe and his friend Mr. Mashlim came to take “pot luck” with us. In the best regulated families, accident will now and then occasion a wasteful accumulation of cold meat, and it so happened that this was the case with us on that day. I must not, however, disguise my own share of the blame, for the servant had apprised me of the state of the larder; but instead of describing the condition of the articles there, he only told me of their respective names. There was mutton, ham, and turkey, with pastry, and beef to roast. Now, as I loathe a miser’s feast as much as a spendthrift’s last banquet, I thought the roasting of the beef would be superfluous, as there were to be only four of us; so I interdicted it. Mrs. Corbet, without being much surprised at my economical humour, thought likewise that I did not, as she said, intend to be particular, and most notably resolved that it was an opportunity on which she might pass off a bottle of her stale drops with impunity. Being, however, conscious that the matériel of the larder was not in the plumpest condition, she deemed, with her wonted address, to make up for all defects, by ordering the table to be arranged with more than common neatness. It thus happened that I, most innocently, became the victim of her stratagem. The footman, being something still of a bumpkin, and unsophisticated by any knowledge of the town, thought with a knavish simplicity, that the skeletons and well-picked state of the bones he had been directed to set out, showed, even with all the cook’s plentiful garnishing of parsley, rather too much of the charnel-house, and

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accordingly he placed them under covers, though it was midsummer and they were all cold. On entering the dining-room with my friends, I was delighted with the promise in the display, and sat down with them in great good-humour; but imagine my astonishment, when I beheld, as the covers were removed, dish after dish, presenting a spectacle as appalling as a feast in Samaria, when a cab of doves’ dung was sold for five pieces of silver. We were but four, and yet the collective luxuries of the banquet would not have sufficed for a moiety to one. Mr. Macindoe looked with the despair of Tantalus, and gazed around the table, seeing no choice. This disappointment was, however, speedily overcome by ordering steaks to be cooked from the beef, and in the mean time we agreed to console ourselves with a glass of wine. This was leaping out of the frying-pan into the fire—the drops were sour; and to increase the provocation of the moment, Mrs. Corbet, at the discovery, and to anticipate my wrath, burst into an immoderate fit of laughing, and assured Mr. Macindoe, that it was all owing to my letting her suppose that he was only an old friend. The whole English language might have been laid under contribution, and such an offensive combination of words applicable to the occasion could not have been selected. “I see,” was his reply, “that we have taken you at an unawares: but this is excellent bread; the bakers in England are just wonderful at baking good bread.” “Mine is, however, all eaten,” added Mr. Mashlim. By this time the steaks were cooked, and a supply of fresh wine had in some degree mitigated my displeasure; but the effect of the first impression did not so soon quit the imagination of my old curator, who in his own house allowed neither scant nor want, though in the service there might be sometimes a lack of that order to which my sensitive taste had so strong a predilection. But gradually he grew more comfortable, and said to Mrs. Corbet, as he took wine with her, “That’s rational drink.” The bones, however, were not to be forgotten, and as his spirits rose, he perpetrated a most atrocious pun on her making some apology for the dinner. “Never say a word about it, Madam,” was his reply, “for we can all say with truth, that it was a wonderful bony dinner.” What Mrs. Corbet said in reply I was not master enough of my

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chagrin to observe, but it must have been something very brilliant, for they became mightily gracious, and in their own opinion, no doubt, witty; for she ever afterwards spoke of him as “a most funny man,” applying the epithet even when at his death, soon after his return to Scotland, he left her a legacy of five hundred pounds, assigning as a reason in his will for his doing so, that it was as a memento mori, which he begged of her to accept for her good humour at the coming together of the bones. But I should finish my account of the feast. As soon as Mrs. Corbet had retired, he began to explain to me the chief cause of Mr. Mashlim’s business in London. “Ye know, Mr. Bogle Corbet,” said he, “that the farmers are all growing to dribs—straw without ears—and my cousin, Mr. Mashlim here—he’s not just a full cousin, and he’s no so far off as a second, being sib by a degree nearer, his father’s the connection,—for several harvests with the same crop, he cannot make his plack a bawbee, the which is melancholious to all parties; for what will gentlemen do that get no rents, and what will ye do with your sugar and rum?—Man, that was a prime hoggit ye sent me; the gude wife keeps a bottle o’t in a corner for your next visit, when I hope all things will have come into season again, though really I think we’re in the dead of winter at this time, which is the cause of Mr. Mashlim coming to London, to see what can be done better here.” “Here!” cried I, in amazement; “what can he do here?” “You know, Sir,” he replied, with a shrewd sinister smile, “Mr. Macindoe’s way; but I have only come, looking a thought before me. Ye see, the tack of my farm will be out, Martimas twelve month, and so I have just come to try my hand with the Government anent it.” “With the Government!” I exclaimed, my wonder increasing. “Ye should observe,” interposed Mr. Macindoe, “that he’s on the rove; we have had a great clatter among us about emigration to America.” “’Deed, Mr. Corbet,” rejoined his friend, “it is just that; and I have come to see if the Government will be wheedled to give me a farm at the first cost, if I should take it intil my head, when my tack’s out, to roupe all, and push my fortune in a foreign land.” “But ye should tell him how ye have been instigauted to think of this,” said Mr. Macindoe; and adding, “I’ll tell you, Mr. Bogle Corbet,—he sees that the murrain has seized upon trade as well as the country cattle, and so he begins to think—for he’s a long-headed carl, this same Watty Mashlim—there where he sits so doucely drinking

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the bluid red wine—as, according to the auld song, the King did on Dumfermline throne—that it’s full time to set off for another and a better world. My advice, however, is to make himself sure of the Kingdom of Heaven before—— “No, to make an interruption on Mr. Macindoe,” said Mr. Mashlim, “I fancy, like many others, that for a time the farmers have had their day; so having four stout gets of our own, the youngest in his fifteenth, with twa three moully pennies in the foot of a stocking, I have taken a notion that maybe we might do worse than dibbling our potatoe in America.” In this manner the project was broken to me, and my aid requested.

CHAPTER XV. a member of parliament. At this period I did not go often to town. I had no occasion for a counting-house, but used, when necessary, that of Messrs. Bottle Samples, and Co. my brokers in Mincinglane. Being however desirous to serve my old curator in the business which had brought him with his relation to London, I resolved to take lodgings for a week, and at Westminster, as more convenient than in the city. Accordingly they stayed with me for the night at Oakhill, and I accompanied them on the morning. Mr. Mashlim had brought letters to several Members of Parliament, requesting their assistance in promoting his views; but not being determined with respect to the exact direction of his intended emigration, they were premature, and a cause of unnecessary trouble. Had he been fixed in his plans, no doubt the gentlemen would have been useful, and have given him weight with the Government; but he conceiving that they were wise in their generations, and acquainted with all things, made use of the letters to solicit their advice as to where he should go; and for aught I know to the contrary, they talked to him of Ophir, whence Solomon brought gold and peacocks; and the island of Serendib, with which they were as well acquainted as with any of our own colonies. At last, one of his letters, “more lucky than the rest,” introduced him to the celebrated Mr. Bletherington, one of the most constant orators at that time in the House of Commons. This gentleman was distinguished in the opinion of his friends for the universality of his knowledge, and in that of his adversaries, for his disposition to meddle with every thing. The silent members, who make the best impression on the deliberations of the House by their votes, considered his mind as made up of shreds and patches, and many of them dreamt dreams when he waxed most vehement in his oratory. A Scotch friend of mine called him “the wisdom pock,” in allusion to those nursery-bags, in which buttons, rags, and balls of thread, with all kinds of odds and ends are collected for the

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exigencies of a numerous family. He had heard that Government was enticing emigrants to proceed to a region in South Africa, flowing with milk and honey, respecting which the most circumstantial and satisfactory information had been previously obtained by the Colonial department. “Prodigious pains,” said he, “have been taken to ascertain the excellence of the soil, the admirable local conveniences, the crystalline purity of the springs, the abundance of fuel, and the congeniality of the climate to the European constitution, especially to that of Scotchmen in general, and the inhabitants of the Highlands in particular.” He therefore advised Mr. Mashlim to inquire about this new Judea, in Downingstreet, and, the better to insure him the fullest information respecting all the advantages of this land of promise, he gave him a letter to an influential gentleman in the Colonial office, his own multifarious engagements connected with business coming on in the House, rendering it impossible for him to see the Secretary of State on the subject. The gates of Paradise were thus opened to Mr. Mashlim; and even Mr. Macindoe, when his cousin related to him what had passed with Mr. Bletherington, and the felicity that awaited the emigrants to South Africa, for whose welfare and prosperity Government had taken such extraordinary pains, and with such solicitude had formed magazines of all things necessary to the planting of a colony, regretted his advanced life, which alone prevented him from sharing in the blessings so abundantly showered on that delightful land. Knowing something, as I have intimated, of the character of Mr. Bletherington, I had not quite so strong a faith in his eloquent exaggerations as my friends. I, however, threw no cold water on their satisfaction at his account of the new settlement, but with something of an invidious pleasure, took an interest in promoting the hopes which it had kindled, and was to disappoint. I had discerned in the native shrewdness of Mr. Mashlim, that he had ballast enough to enable him to carry all the sails he would set with safety, and that, although he might for a time trust too confidently in the notions of a loquacious Member of Parliament, there was yet a check in his homely good sense, sufficient to correct any error in his purposes before execution. I had, therefore, the less compunction in assenting to the different devices which both he and Mr. Macindoe proposed, in order to effect an advantageous arrangement with Government, preparatory to his emigration, even when I perceived the improbability of their accomplishment. There may have been something blameable nevertheless in doing so at

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all, but I was now growing sharply observant, and had arrived at the important conclusion that it is not judicious to disturb human happiness, although evidently built on folly. How much of all enjoyment is phantasy! But that the delinquency of seeming to sanction the preposterous imaginings of my two friends may not be thought to have been greater than it really was, I ought to afford the reader some means of judging. Mr. Mashlim, in delivering his letters, was regularly accompanied by my curator, and it was evident that at first he relied a good deal on his judgment. This arose from a common and simple mistake. Though near relations, they had not before their journey to London been much acquainted, but an idea somehow prevailed among their mutual connexions, that Mr. Macindoe was a singularlyexperienced and adroit person, and in consequence had been solicited by his cousin, a younger man, only skilled in farming affairs, to be his pilot and adviser. For some time the family belief in the talents of Mr. Macindoe had, no doubt, an influence over the superior understanding of the other, but it must have been obvious to whoever saw them together, that the latter would soon attain his natural ascendancy. In a distinct perception of this inevitable result lay the head and front of my offending, and was the very cause and origin of that acquiescence in their inappropriate notions, which I seemingly yielded, especially to the suggestions of Mr. Macindoe. My guilt as an accessary, as far as respected measures likely to be of serious consequence, was not, however, great; for it was only in minor things, and matters of no pith or moment, that I indulged myself at their expense; and as an instance, I may describe what took place on the evening when Mr. Mashlim received the letter from Mr. Bletherington to the Under Secretary of State. He had called with it himself in going to the House, at the King’s-Arms in Palace-yard, where we lodged; a circumstance which conferred on it immense importance in the eyes of my Scottish friends, who by a natural inflexion of reasoning concluded that such a proceeding implied the vast deference due to such a dignitary, and they were both loud and large in their laud of the kindness of Mr. Bletherington. “But,” said Mr. Macindoe, “it’s an admonishment, Mr. Mashlim, how we should behave on the occasion, for this is not an ordinary upcast of common business. You must put your best foot foremost,

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both to do honour to Mr. Bletherington for making so much of you, as to give you such a recommendation, and to do credit to yourself.” Not in the smallest degree conceiving to what proposition this was the exordium, I seconded the sentiment, and I am sure the reader himself might with a conscience void of offence have done so too; and with all imaginable gravity Mr. Mashlim at once acceded to the propriety of the suggestion, but, not very clearly comprehending in what way he should act, he inquired, with a fascinating naïveté, how he could put his best foot forward. “Nay,” replied Mr. Macindoe, “I jealouse it will cost us both a penny. The new coat ye got for the jaunt will do well enough, though being made at the farm by a travelling tailor, it may not just be in the latest London cut; but ye’ll have to be at an outlay for silk stockings, and to get a barber to weed your hair—how did I forget to tell you of that before, for it’s really in a very kintra-like toosy condition. Ye’ll no’ have black breeks. It was a feedum in our gude wife to put mine in the trunk, but I would not be at such expense; just buy a pair of white silk stockings, and they’ll serve you for an honesty with any sort of breeks.” As this was said with perfect sincerity, I rejoined with a face as much of the same cast as possible. “I do not think white silk stockings are now much worn in the forenoon at interviews with official gentlemen; yellow or red, or some other serious colour, will be more suitable.” “I would rather put on dark grey, if it would do,” replied Mr. Mashlim; “for either red or yellow is overly tulip-like for me.” “I don’t think that would be grand enough,” was my Jesuitical answer; “but you can reflect on it till the morning.” “At any rate,” interposed Mr. Macindoe, “we must both have white gloves.” “Nay,” cried Mr. Mashlim, “I’ll never do that—something more douce will better become me. White gloves! God’s sake, it’s no a wedding; but as ye say, Mr. Bogle Corbet, we’ll consider of it till the morn’s morning.”

CHAPTER XVI. the colonial office. Next morning Mr. Mashlim came early into my bed-room before I was fully dressed: his appearance was sedate and thoughtful. “Well, Sir,” I cried immediately, on seeing him, “have you fixed on the colour of your stockings?” “I have been troubled about it,” was his sober and considerate answer. “Surely you could not be serious when you spoke of red or yellow. I never heard of such a thing: to be sure, our farm’s out of the world. But although I have only a small experience in Parliamenting, I’ll be plain with you, Mr. Bogle Corbet; from all that I have seen of Members of Parliament, I have a notion that Statesmen are the only things that seem greatest at distance; and really I cannot work myself into a proper fear of this Secretary of State. In short, Mr. Bogle Corbet, though in a way Mr. Macindoe may have an experience, I doubt he’s not much more acquaint with Secretaries of State than myself. It has been as far from his line as mine; and so in this matter I would beg your own advice, for I am loth to make a play-actor of myself, even for a gude bargain.” This was as I anticipated, and it is therefore needless to say, that I told him to think nothing about the colour or quality of his hose, but to dress as his own good plain sense directed him, and to expect nothing in the gentleman he was to see, but a common man like himself—perhaps, in some respects, no superior. His mind was instantly relieved, but it was far different with Mr. Macindoe. “When we assembled to breakfast, he came in, equipped as fine as for an evening party, smelling of lavender-water—the most vulgar of scents—with new yellow gloves and a solemn countenance. His address, as Thomson the poet would have said, derived from his finery some “secret sympathetic aid.” His air was formal, and intended to be courteous, but being newly cut, reminded me of the freshly polled head of a bumpkin from under the hands of a village tonsure, and did not seem fitting. He spoke in ponderous well-concocted sentences, made up of all the polysyllabical words in his vocabulary;

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delivered dark and oracular responses to the most common-place questions, and was altogether the most amusing personification of “Much Ado about Nothing,” that could be imagined. By the appearance of Mr. Mashlim, he concluded that it was not his intention to dress until after breakfast; and we both secretly, by anticipation, enjoyed the surprise that awaited him, especially as he studiously avoided all familiarity. He bowed in the most egregious manner at the commonest civilities—spoke of princes and the concerns of nations with elaborate profundity, and alluded to the debate in the House of Lords of the preceding evening, assuring us that the Lord Chancellor spoke with ineffable judgment and sensibility; but that a noble Earl, one of the ever-prominent obstacles to his Majesty’s Government, made use of the most nefarious excrescences in the conglomeration of an opaque argument; at last he reminded Mr. Mashlim that tempus fugit, and looked with solemnity at his watch. The transmutation which he beheld in his cousin, had the effect on Mr. Mashlim of making him more master of himself. He saw the insensible absurdity of adopting new manners, and dissolved all his Spanish castles by telling him he was prepared to go at the time suggested. A stare was practised and a remonstrance attempted, without effect; at last, the glass-coach Mr. Macindoe had ordered for the occasion, drove up to the door, and they set out for the Colonial Office. Much, however, to my surprise, they were a considerable time detained there. I expected that their letter would be but received, and a time appointed for seeing them; but propositions on emigration were at that time acceptable to the Colonial Department, and they were at once admitted to an audience. “When we arrived there,” said Mr. Mashlim, “the gentleman was not come, and we were shown into a parlour to wait.” “Dear me,” interposed Mr. Macindoe, “but yon is a real mean place: the Radicals have something to wonder at, seeing such like rooms for all the taxes we pay.” “We had not, however, been long in that patience chamber—as a pawkie gentleman, a Mr. Solomon, from Quebec, called it, who was there on State business too,” resumed Mr. Mashlim—“when we heard a bustle, and I looked out and saw a tall, blackavis’d, genteel man, in a blue coat, with clean gloves, running up the stair, talking loud in a hurry, and the man in the lobby let us know that our friendto-be-at-court was come; so we sent in the letter, and were most cordially received.”

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“Do you know,” interrupted Mr. Macindoe, “he was a most plain man, and no star on his breast!” “He spoke very discreetly,” said Mr. Mashlim, “though a wee hasty catching my thoughts before they were well cleckit, and inquired in a most particular manner if the labour market in our part of the country was not overstocked? I told him, that at the last market-day, there had been rather a scant of shearers at the Cross of Glasgow, the harvest being nearly over; which puzzled him in an extraordinary manner. But when I told him, how the crop had been earlier, and that the work being over for the season, there was an uncommon number, considering the time o’ year, he was exceedingly pleased. ‘But where does the unhappy superabundance of labour go in quest of employment?’ said he; and quo’ Mr. Macindoe, they turn beggars; which he was evidently delighted to hear; but observed with sobriety, that ‘pauperism is a natural secretion evolved by an inanition of employment.’” “To convince him,” said Mr. Macindoe, “that we understood his remark, I replied it was so—for it was just as certain as the heartburn after a surfeit; and he jocosely replied, that there could not be a better illustration.” “We then,” resumed Mr. Mashlim, “had a solid crack concerning the state of things in general in Lanarkshire, which he spoke of as one of the most important manufacturing districts, and after various outs and ins all about it, he directing his chief discourse to me, who he saw was a practical man, but now and then speaking to Mr. Macindoe, in an explanatory manner, like the marginal notes in a Ha’ Bible,—inquired what I thought would be the consequence, ‘if, in the superabundant state of the labour-market, that superabundance was not drained off.’ Yon man, Mr. Bogle Corbet, has something in him, for I couldna’ off-hand give a free answer. Howsomever, when I had thought awhile, I said that the rich would have to come nearer sidy for sidy with the poor; at which his eyes glowed as if they would have kindled candles with gladness, and he said that was the very thing: and then he asked, if to send the superabundance out of the labour-market by emigration, was not the only way of preventing revolution to the existing circumstances of the country? Really, Mr. Bogle Corbet, the matter was as plain to me as a pike-staff, and I told him so. ’Od, Sir, if he hasna hit the nail on the head, he’s no far frae doing it; for if we have no work for the laborous man, he’ll soon think it his duty to make work for himself—and what will come of all our lords and landlords then?”

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“It’s a new fangled fancy,” said Mr. Macindoe. “Hoot’s, cousin,” replied Mr. Mashlim, “dinna say that, for the stated gentry are now ready to think what they hae is a right, but we all ken it is only a permission, a privilege. I’m of yon man’s thought— we’re no sure that a change among us would be to the better—and it’s wiser to stick to the ill kent, than to seek the gude unkent.” “Then why,” said I, “should you fall into the notion of emigrating?” “Just because I dinna want to be in the straemash, for a straemash there will be, and must be ere long. The labourers will live whether the gentry will let them or no.” “Noo,” subjoined Mr. Macindoe, “I did not like much of yon conversation, for although it’s very well for an officiality to be jocund in order to gather information, it’s no right; no legitimate man of the Government will ever condescend there until, but will make himself respectit by his own natural information. What would either the Duke, or Lord Archibald say, if they heard of laborous men holding up their snouts, and asking them to take less rent, that the farmers may pay more wages? Gude sake! ye might as soon ask the landlords to give their farms for nothing to the farmers. That would be an agricultural distress indeed!” “But what have you done in your own affair?” was my inquiry. “Its a Gude’s truth, we never had time to think o’t, for yon man was so eydent about his emigrations and world-to-come visions, that we could not slip in a word edgeways,” said my worthy curator; “but after pumping our brains—though little he could get from mine—he said he would send for Mr. Mashlim in a day or two; the which might be the way of State contrivances, but it was not overly circumspect to me, who he could not but have the instinct to know was not minded to go to Southern Africa as well. And this, you see, is all we have yet gotten for dressing ourselves so debonair. To be sure, on that head, Mr. Mashlim has nothing to say; but if I had known what I know now, I would have been at no such pains. And if yon’s the way that the jeux d’esprits of Government conduct themselves no better than decent mercantile men, all the world’s grandeur is a gone dick, and Whig and Tory but other words for imposthumes in the State.”

CHAPTER XVII. miscellanies. The man who, by the strength of his purse or principles, can afford to respect the world at its just value, will endure without complaint a great deal of calumny and injustice. I am led to make this remark, by the recollection of an occurrence which happened to the party at the King’s Arms, on the ever-memorable day of Mr. Macindoe’s visit to the Colonial Labyrinth. Among other inducements which had brought him to London in his old age, besides that of friendship to his cousin, was to see sights and taste dainties, and it had so happened, that much as he had heard of turbot, or as he called it, “terbet,” he had never seen that fish; accordingly, being resolved to distinguish the great interview by something extraordinary, in addition to an abundance of good things, he ordered one of the best turbots that could be got, and in the fullness of his generosity said he would treat me, and authorized both Mr. Mashlim and myself to bring a friend, while he proposed to invite a Captain Platoon, of the 150th, with whom he had become acquainted while the regiment lay in Glasgow. Knowing the delight that my old friend Mr. Woodriffe took in odd characters, and how much the extravagant humour of Mr. Macindoe was likely to excite his conversational powers, while the sagacious shrewdness of Mr. Mashlim would, in an equal degree, interest his more serious judgment, I requested him to be my guest. Mr. Mashlim brought the celebrated Mr. Adage, then just come to town to publish one of his books. I believe in my heart, that it was chiefly to see these two distinguished persons that my Curator gave us the dinner, although the visit to the Colonial department had all the credit of it. For in order to match these two gentlemen, he had also a literary guest, whose distinction in the republic of letters arose from being bone and flesh of his wife, a lady who had the reputation of being indigo of the deepest tinge: Captain Platoon himself was a brave, plain, rough soldier, with science and intelligence enough to know that the sun was not a red-hot cannon-ball,

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cast at Carron or Woolwich. Mr. Macindoe being, as I have already mentioned, a little chagrined that, notwithstanding his silk stockings, he had not found himself regarded with all the awe to which such intellectual accomplishments ought in his opinion to have entitled him, was during the dinner rather taciturn, and when he did speak it was in brief sentences, of a disparaging tendency with respect to the Ministry of that time. His habitual Toryism prevented him from inflicting on the King’s Government his thorough opinion, that the British nation were fools to submit to be ruled by what he called the wally dreggles of the Pitt and Dundas clecking;—an erudite Scottish metaphor allusive to the weakest and most helpless of the callow young of that eyrie, whereof Pitt and Dundas had been the parent birds. But as the viands showed marks of the knife, and the wine challenges multiplied, his garrulous good-humour returned, and his political sarcasms were at last sheathed in jocularity. Greatly, however, to my disappointment, Mr. Woodriffe did not appear to relish the desultory extravagance of Mr. Macindoe; perhaps the reader may think that he only showed his ascribed discernment, and my curator afterwards told me, that he was but a man that had obtained by chance a name for being clever;—get the name, said he, of being an early riser, and you may lie-a-bed all day. I assented to the acumen of this remark, and said it might be so; such things were common enough in the world; the only wonder about them was, how the stupid ever acquired such reputations. Mr. Adage during dinner said little, save two or three apposite apophthegms, and the Captain took his wine like a sponge, or an honest fellow who had been three years on the Peninsula, and seen devilish hard service at Badajos, or, as Mr. Macindoe pronounced it, according to the best Trongate authorities, Badadgeos. When the dessert, however, was placed on the table, we naturally fell into conversational groups, and it was my good fortune to draw out Mr. Adage into more familiarity. He was, without question, a man capable of writing very good books, but if what he said be correct, the fates preserve me from ever having any thing to do with such a trade! He had, however, one weakness, common enough among authors; he thought literature the first of professions, and was not a little disconcerted by a dry remark on the subject from Mr. Woodriffe, when descanting on the glory and power of authorship. “Ay,” said Mr. Woodriffe, dryly, “it is, however, but only the

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secondary and inferior of mankind that make it a profession; no great man ever only wrote books, he did something more; and none of the few who have affected the destinies of the world, have written books at all.” There was, probably, something disagreeable in the manner in which this notion was received by the party, and discerned by the quick perception of Mr. Woodriffe, for he soon after left us, and Mr. Macindoe and Mr. Mashlim, with Captain Platoon, formed a group by themselves, and I had then Mr. Adage to myself. I have already more than once intimated, that after my return from Jamaica, my associates were chiefly men of literary habits. It had happened, however, though they were so, that I had never formed any acquaintance with professed authors; I knew the most distinguished as across-the-table friends, but whenever a man has put forth a book on any theoretical subject, all social discussion with him is at an end. He has thrown the gauntlet to the world, and is ever prepared at all points to defend his challenge. The discovery of this necessary and unpleasant truth made me rather shun than seek the companionship of the writing literary. Besides this, I also had discovered that authors were not the best judges of books, and that probably the soundest judgments on the merits of literary works are formed by those who only read. Mr. Adage was not, however, of this opinion; he was only an author, a good and ripe scholar, it is true, but he could see nothing so splendid in man as literary genius; all practical talent was to him as something operative and mechanical; even oratory, that rules law and nations, he considered as inferior; and invention, that adds power to dominion, and multiplies the means and varieties of enjoyment, had in it, according to his way of thinking, an alloy and sediment, compared with the intellectual element embodied in words. It was with reference to what passed with him, that the observation at the beginning of the chapter was made, for although in conversation he was not distinguished, he yet gave me a great many reasons why authorship was the highest of human vocations, all of which tended only to prove that it was one of the meanest. With some it might be pursued from taste, for by a judicious ordinance of Nature, there are men innately qualified for all callings; but where it happens to be taken up as a money-making expedient, he was obliged to admit, that even with the most successful, the best of the earning was but vacant fame. I was the more curious to learn from him the craft and mystery

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of the trade, because at this time, with my waning income and waxing family, it had come two or three times into my head, that having so long eschewed commercial speculations, I might try my hand at something like a work on political economy; an easy inborn science, on which those who understand it least are commonly the most fluent writers. The events which, however, prevented me, will come more regularly forward as I proceed with my narrative; in the mean time I should not dismiss my conversation with Mr. Adage thus lightly, for although it was on his part evidently intended to magnify the dignity of bookmaking, and by corollary himself, it had considerable influence on the resolution I was soon subsequently obliged to adopt.

CHAPTER XVIII. a conversation. “The time,” said Mr. Adage, “has been, when certain established canons of criticism enabled the world to determine the permanent merits of books; but now feeling is the sole rule, and authors are praised and condemned by Like and Dislike. These are the pillars in the pleasure-house of the Philistines, and woe awaits the Samson who attempts to pull them down.” I admitted that there was some truth in the remark, yet, as the canons of criticism had been formed by what had previously been Liked and Disliked, it did not appear very obvious that the mere feeling and taste without principle, by which modern critics are guided, was very erroneous. “We have now more variety, I suppose,” said I, “of new objects of criticism than had our predecessors, and the rules for determining their respective merits have not yet been formed.” “It may be so,” replied Mr. Adage; “but the disadvantage of allowing feeling to come in where only principle should be admitted, is manifest to contemporary authors. Persons of all capacities are allowed to wound the finest minds. ‘Critics,’ said the satirical Byron, ‘are all ready made;’ and certainly there is no reason in Nature why an idiot, or a presumptuous boy, who can just read, should not be allowed to decide on the lucubrations of experience and learning. Moreover, nothing is so easy as to find fault; and hence it is, that the greatest fault-finders are the weakest of men.—The rule applies to critics.” I perceived that Mr. Adage had suffered as well as his Lordship from the reviewers, and soothingly observed, that literature was exposed to the same corrosion from malice, to which merit, in every thing of human origin, is liable. “To more,” he replied, eagerly; “to much more; and it is that which dims the glory of the brightest profession of man. It is not satisfactory to say that the reviewers are young men, who by their years and experience cannot have acquired much actual knowledge,

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however egregiously they may have been applauded at school or college. To say so is invidious, for one ounce of native malignity goes farther in the composition of a right critic, than all the pedant can instil.” “But are critics,” said I with simplicity, “always young? Youth has about it something generous and confiding—a modest diffidence in giving offence, and respectfulness towards elders, are also of the attributes of youth?” “Age,” replied he, with a sarcastic smile, “is, I admit, necessary to render a critic sufficiently acrid; but the petulance of youth is almost as bitter; certainly I have known pert boys write reviews as maliciously as envious old men. But with youth I admit there is hope, as sour green oranges ripen into the sweet and golden. It is not, however, from either youth or age that authors suffer; they are brightened by the refuse of themselves, as diamonds are polished only by their own dust; and it is this consideration that makes the condition of an author unhappy; for critics are authors, although it is not until they have failed in their attempts to be originals, that they become palatable to the public. In proportion as an author has been disappointed, his acrimony as a critic is evolved; but the most vexatious of all the incidents of an author’s life arise from the infirmity of human nature!” “Indeed, Mr. Adage, how may that be? Do not all the friendships, affections, and partialities come in aid of an author, as well as of any other man? Do we not see the young poet taking flight from his cloisters, followed by the songs and gratulations of his companions?” “Rather,” said he, “pursued and pelted with stones. There may be occasional instances when boys become admirers of their companions, but it rarely happens; the invidia of the human heart is generally manifested, and the most difficult obstacles in the path to eminence are raised by early friends.” “You are severe, Mr. Adage; to hear you say so, one would be inclined to conclude that you were a mortified author, and yet all the world knows the reverse.” “You are polite to say so; but nevertheless, what I have said is true. If you have some dear companion of your schooltime, who was apt when you were languid and growing, and then stood above you in the class, only publish, and you shall soon find that you have made an occult enemy for life. He certainly will not openly decry you, regard for himself will save you from that; but he can look queer, and tell in what parts his old friend the author has not showed his

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wonted acumen. For a critic commend me to an early friend, to an old school-fellow.” “You terrify me,” said I; “for the causes of invidiousness in early friends becoming adversaries as critics, apply with peculiar force to professional acquaintance.” “Don’t speak of them,” exclaimed Mr. Adage, “don’t speak of such. Physicians, clergy, and lawyers, are professionally authorised to put forth books; and a merchant may be permitted by his fellows to write a pamphlet; but for a man who has been bred to commerce of any kind to attempt more, is high treason in the republic of letters; all the legitimate host of scribes are at once in arms against him, backed by the whole mass of his fraternity. It is an unfortunate fact, that nothing so stirs the latent envy of a neighbour as the putting forth of a book. A single work, a book of travels may be tolerated— they will buy that; but will they buy a second book? No, no; it is the fulcrum on which they will erect their engines of detraction; a third is an actual crime, and then they lament as if the books were written expressly for their approbation, and not for that of the world. If you look sharply around, you will see how invidiously friendship works; there is really nothing so mysterious to the early associates of some men, as for them to see book following book from their old comrades, although they never buy one, especially when the authors happen to be poor, and yet apply not to them for assistance to pay for books that in their opinion ought not to sell.” “You are satirical,” said I, somewhat disheartened at hearing this: “surely it is not expected that authors, more than any other persons, should be dependant on the charity of friends? If books do not sell, the evil of publication will soon cure itself: muslins will not be made if they cannot be sold, nor will books be printed if they will not sell.” Mr. Adage looked a little disconcerted at this; it was treading on the toes of his vanity, and it escaped from me inadvertently, which I regretted, as it had the effect of making him turn his head, and enter into conversation with Mr. Mashlim. I regretted it the more, as it was evident, notwithstanding his professional conceit of himself, that he possessed both knowledge and shrewdness. Perhaps, however, I ought not to have thought so much of our conversation being interrupted, for the interruption left on me a salutary impression that I could never shake off. It had the effect of deterring me from ever attempting authorship. I had certainly not many early friends of such capacity and acquirement as to make me stand in awe of their strictures, and as to the spite or envy of my former commercial

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acquaintances, it surely constituted no such bugbear as should make me afraid—still, when I reflected on what I had seen in the world, it seemed at least an indiscretion to incur the hazard either of detraction or of injustice, and this decided me. I thought often and often of some of Mr. Adage’s remarks, and the more I thought of them, they seemed the more worthy of being considered; and yet for a time I still adhered to the notion I had formed of trying my hand at authorship. Prudence in the end, however, prevailed. I laid down my pen, and when the diminished state of my income, arising from the reduction in the rental of Mr. Ascomy and the decay in my Jamaica business, again recalled my literary intention, I recollected the occasion and the incident which had given rise to the remarks of Mr. Adage. This recollection became associated with the idea of Mr. Mashlim, and the cause which had brought him to London. The motive which led me to think of writing thus became changed into a thought of emigrating;—the abandonment of the one intention was parent to the other, yet how dissimilar!

CHAPTER XIX. hidden truth. Unaccountable fancies often molest the most prosaic minds. Among others which sometimes sadden me with their visitations, is a persuasion that a pre-ordered arrangement inscrutably exists between the fortunes of individuals who have no apparent connexion. It came upon me for the first time while in London with Mr. Macindoe and his relation; but I was long averse to acknowledge to myself the existence in nature of a fact so mysterious. Every man who enjoys the inclination and leisure to compare his observations, must have discovered, that accidental meetings with particular persons are always followed by good or ill fortune. No possible reason can be assigned for this, nor how an individual without any discernible connexion with the event which affects you, should yet really be the augury and index of its coming. When in business with Mr. Possy, I was disturbed whenever I happened to meet Eric Pullicate unawares, or in places where he was not expected. His appearance on all such occasions never failed to awaken alarms concerning our affairs, sometimes to a preposterous degree; and as often as any apprehension of misfortune darkened my imagination, his image always rose before me. To every influential occurrence of my life he seemed destined to be a witness, and still I am unable at this moment to discover that he ever exercised the slightest predominance; unless the invitation to become a member of the weavers’ nocturnal club may be regarded as such,—an incident, it is true, by which my line of life was cast too hastily into that stream whence I drew only sufferings. It was not, however, till in London with my old curator, that I was startled into the belief that his appearance was the omen of the presence of my evil genius, and even then the conviction was flashed upon me by a casualty of the commonest kind. On the morning subsequent to the entertainment which Mr. Macindoe had given us, I was sitting after breakfast alone in our parlour at the King’s Arms, with the newspaper. It contained an account

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of a trial, which turned on an accident that tended to inculcate an opinion not unlike what I have just stated. Being at the time, both from the aspect of my own affairs and the condition of Mr. Ascomy’s property, disposed to yield, certainly not to dejection, but to anxiety, I laid down the paper, and ruminated, with my forehead on my palm, resting my elbow on the table. In that situation, all the impressive incidents of my past life glided in phantasy over my imagination; with each of them Eric Pullicate was present, and just in proportion as my fortunes seemed to fade, a brighter augury as constantly shone upon his. It was on that great day of his early prosperity when he banqueted the peer, that the irremediable calamity of Anella’s loss was communicated. I was recounting to myself at the moment the various times in which his lot had been ever, as it were, in the opposite scale with mine, and adjusting the reminiscence of many trifling occurrences, in which, in proportion as the circumstance of the occasion dwindled with me, it was augmented with him. I had just said to myself, it is curious that this man, possessed of qualities which I cannot but respect, never comes upon me suddenly, without making me feel a secret inward dread—when the waiter opened the door and showed in Eric Pullicate. Undoubtedly his appearance surprised me; an acute shudder vibrated through my frame, and although, in all my reflection on our intercourse, I could not trace to him one single event by which my happiness had in any degree sustained detriment, I yet felt an involuntary aversion at the sight of him—an antipathy, which reason condemned, and experience could not extenuate. But in the same moment my better feelings revived, and I welcomed him with the outward cordiality due to one whom I had so long known. It was his first journey to London; he was now a man of great opulence, and having fixed on retiring to an estate which he had a short time previously purchased, he had brought his wife to see the metropolis, while their mansion was preparing. “And,” said he, “I could not but seek you out among all my friends and correspondents, for do you know, as Mrs. Pullicate says, we never meet but some good befalls me.” The remark was in accordance with my own thoughts, and the topics of my rumination; but without laying any particular stress on my words, I replied, “Indeed! how does she come to think of that?” and added, with a mental equivocation, “I am glad to hear you say so.”

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“In truth,” replied he, “it’s in a manner a truth, but how it happens is more than I can tell; but no farther gone than ye’streen, when we put up at the hotel, as we were sitting talking in moderation of auld things, says she to me, ‘It’s a most desperate odd thing, Eric, that we never forgather with Mr. Bogle Corbet, in an unbidden way, but our prosperity shoots out a new sprout.’” “I always thought,” said I, “that Mrs. Pullicate was naturally a shrewd lady; but has she not observed also, that I have had a different tale to tell as often?” “No,” he replied; and he looked at me with one of those keen sinister glances for which he was always remarkable, and which, without words, conveyed a suspicion. It was obvious that, although his wife had not made such a comparison of our respective fortunes, he yet suspected I had. It was this incident which effectually led me to conclude that some connecting and occult influence exists between the fortunes of individuals, and that Eric Pullicate’s lot and mine were parts of one machine, in which, with similar movements, we had different offices to perform. Nothing, however, occurred to me immediately on that sudden meeting, and I did my best, during his residence in London, to entertain him as his unimpeachable character justly had a right to receive from an old friend; but about two months after, a most striking coincidence in verification of my mystical persuasion took place. I received letters by the mail from Jamaica, and one of them from Mr. Logan contained an account of the death of my relation on Plantagenet estate—my friend, the patron of my second course of mercantile adventures, and the protector of my interests among his neighbours. The tidings altogether, independently of my regret for his own worth, were painful; and the event, though not the greatest I had met with, was yet calamitous, and was the cause to me of many evenings of sorrowful reflection. One night as I was sitting by myself, Mrs. Corbet being engaged with some of the manifold cares which a growing family necessarily multiplied, the singularity of Mr. Pullicate coming into the room at the very time when I was occupied in comparing the course of our respective fortunes occurred to me, and I went for Mr. Logan’s letter, the date of my cousin’s death having escaped my memory. Let the sceptical reader hear me in what doubtful mood he may;—the event took place on the very day, and, making allowance for the difference of longitude, at the very time when the innocent forerunner of all my misfortune stood before me.

CHAPTER XX. a change. For some time after the death of Mr. Buchanan no particular incident occurred that deserves to be related. But the sinking value of my consignments seriously affected my income, and Mr. Ascomy found himself unable to fulfil the marriage settlement. Perplexity was embarrassing every interest of the country, and I was taxed with my share. Bookmaking again occurred to me, but only to be abandoned; the animadversions which had escaped from Mr. Adage respecting the risks of authorship sufficiently convinced me, as I have already intimated, that I was too sensitive to preserve equanimity under such manifold annoyances. Nor is ambition an element of my mind. I can call myself nothing but a quiet absorbent of easy pleasures—far more addicted to observe the conduct of others than to be alert in my own actions. Perhaps the scenes through which the current of my life has passed have contributed to give my thoughts this habitude; be that, however, as it may, I was roused from the indulgence of reverie to more earnest employment, arising from the pressure of the times upon those with whom I was connected. The increasing distresses of the West Indians, partly arising from their own improvident habits, and the tameness with which they permitted their most important interests to be treated, at last dried up all the income I derived from that quarter. Had I possessed capital enough to make my needy constituents advances on mortgage, doubtless it might have been different with me; but as it was, they dropped off one by one, and the full sense of the misfortune I had suffered by the death of Mr. Buchanan was soon felt. Among the various objects to which I turned my solicitude, was that of emigration; I saw before me the contraction, in this country, of all the means of employment. I had five sons to be sent into business; no opening could be discovered for young men, and the legacy from Sir Neil Eccles, with some small reservations which were daily diminishing, was all I possessed. I recalled to mind the visit and intentions of Mr. Mashlim; I meditated on the condition of

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Society in the Italian States, when commerce retired from Venice and Genoa, and the consequences that would inevitably ensue when the cultivation of the mind tended to diminish the exercise of the hands. My reflections on my own prospects were dismal, and the gloom in them ever increasing. I was haunted with distrust as I thought of my country, and irrepressible penury was gradually insinuating itself, like a slow progressive disease, into every thing connected with my family. Sometimes I became so susceptible to impressions from these causes, that my peace of mind sank under them, and a barren and inert melancholy spread over my reflections, like ice on the water, when the inclemency of winter has come. My only intervals of exertion and hope were when I reflected on the scheme of Mr. Mashlim. It then seemed to have been conceived in prudence, forethought, and wisdom. But though eminently judicious as applied to his case—a practical farmer, accustomed to outdoor duties, bred up in the privations of rural life, and regardless of those innumerable little fancies which were of no inconsiderable moment to me—was it so to mine? I thought of it myself with a doubt which merged in despondency, and my wife was thoroughly convinced that the idea of emigrating was, as she called it, a mad scheme; but as often as I spoke with her on the subject, I was persuaded, from her observations, of the truth of the Irishman’s remark, that women are not men of business. In fact, the female mind foregoes its own nature when it judges of contingencies. Though every difficulty that has to be encountered in emigrating to the solitudes of a distant region and forest was in readiness to be offered as an objection to the undertaking, no expedient was suggested, nor could be devised, to alleviate the increasing pressure that was closing around us. Yet sometimes we had recourse to inventions in our controversy with poverty, that I cannot now recollect without a smile, even while I well remember they were never resorted to without anguish. The lady of the friend whose villa at Oakhill I had been permitted to occupy on such easy terms, died abroad, and he returned to England, when, soon after, marrying again, he required the house. This obliged us to remove, and the state of my finances admonished me to seek an abode of a different description. It may be said, that I ought to have been long prepared for such an occurrence, and undoubtedly I was so, as well as Mrs. Corbet, who, indeed, could

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easily accommodate herself to any change which did not impose restraint. She could sink in circumstances with something not much inferior to dignity, and far more happily than she could rise; but our vexation proceeded not from ourselves. The children, accustomed to spacious apartments, and habitually supplied wants, found every thing amiss;—they did not like this, they complained of that—the young ones clamoured to be taken home, and the older looked sulky, and muttered discontents. I verily think that the first month after our removal was more distracting, owing to these ridiculous causes, than if actual beggary, in her rags and emaciation, had served our daily meals. But the change was otherwise salutary; as the dissatisfaction of the fretful brats mellowed, and usage mitigated their fantastical grievances, my wife became sensible that in fighting with fortune we were waging an unprofitable war. I perceived the change working in her reflections, by the manner in which she occasionally expressed her wonder that we should remain so near London. As often as she made the remark, I, however, somewhat more ingeniously than naturally belonged to my character, attempted to persuade her, that we might as easily translate ourselves to America, as to a more distant part of England. This ever irritated her confidence in her own judgment, and begat bickerings between us, verifying the proverb, “When poverty comes in at the door, love flies out at the window.” The first six months after our removal from Oakhill, were the most irksome in all my experience. I had looked forward steadily and calmly to the decay of my income, but the change from comparative elegance to meanness, was, by its abruptness, harsh, and full of vexatious incidents, for which our modes of life had not prepared us. But when the sharpness of misfortune became blunted, and a milder acquiescence with circumstances appeased the rigour that had overtaken us, our scattered comforts began to return. Fate, however, continued as stern and relentless as ever. My diminished means obliged me to abstain from social enjoyments. Our abridged establishment forced upon my inadequate hands more of our domestic duties. Our footman was dismissed, but we were so weak as to attempt the preservation of the rank— which such an appendage is, by many as foolish people, supposed to indicate—by substituting a mannerless whelp of the parish. But for that get, the second half-year would have passed tolerably enough. I foresaw that emigration awaited us, notwithstanding the seeming obstinacy with which every proposal was resisted by my wife, and

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I imperceptibly laid my plans for that ultimate destiny, persuaded that in time she would see we had no other alternative: Sam, the boy, however, did the work of conviction more effectually, at least in a shorter time, than I could have hoped to effect by the most cogent reasoning, or even appalling Poverty, in a coarser garb than the stinted vestment with which she was so often then our afflicting visitor.

CHAPTER XXI. troubles. From the time we had resided at Oakhill, our intercourse with Mr. Ascomy was in a great measure discontinued. On my part, although I had endured some provocation, there was no quarrel; but he, who had suffered none, was heated with a causeless resentment, the more intensely, as he could find nothing to warrant its injustice. I was therefore at no pains to soften his feelings, and I ought to add, that even while sensible he thought of me injuriously, I studiously avoided every thing likely to increase his animosity. But when he heard of our new retreat, he invited himself to spend a day with us; and my wife, from her knowledge of his character, expected that he was desirous to remove the coldness between us, and to re-establish our former cordiality. On the day he had appointed, I was in readiness to receive him, resolved to do so as if there had never been any dryness between us; but when I met him at the gate, I was struck with an uncommon solemnity in his looks; he spoke scarcely a word to my welcome, but casting a hasty glance on the house, he hastened into the parlour, and seated himself without heeding the children, who rejoiced at seeing him, or taking the slightest notice of Mrs. Corbet. Conduct so singular surprised us both, and it was so totally different from what my wife had anticipated, that she could not repress her emotion. When he had rested himself several minutes, only replying to one question, and at the same time visibly affected by some unknown care, he rose, and without saying a word of his intention, visited the whole house, inspecting it all as if he had been an intending tenant. He then went into the garden, looked eagerly around, and measured it with his stick. This was inexplicable; so indeed were at all times many of his actions, and the bustle of them often prodigiously disproportioned to the occasion. Seeing him in that preposterous humour, I took an opportunity to whisper to my wife, to let him take his own way unmolested; but

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the ungracious manner in which he repulsed the blandishments of the younger children, moved her maternal spleen, and she inquired with, perhaps, a little more accent than the case required, what they had done to offend him? “Nothing, nothing!” was his querulous reply: “they are children— and children are plagues; it would have been a better world had there never been such things!” The oddness of the remark made us both smile, which he observing, cried still more pettishly, “Yes, yes, I see how it is—but take your own way—no regard have you for my opinion—no respect for my judgment. I foresaw what was coming, and it has come—all has come to pass, but I thought it would have shown itself in more dutiful behaviour.” At these words he turned quickly round, and said to me, “So you have abandoned your intended flight to America?” It was of no use to be so indulgent to his humour as I had proposed, and I accordingly answered somewhat particularly, “That I had not given up the intention—on the contrary, the more I reflected on the state of this country, and my diminishing means, I was the more firmly convinced that it was the only alternative in my option.” “Diminished—diminished means?” he re-echoed two or three times, and then severely inquired if I ascribed the diminution to him? “How should I be so unjust? your own means are suffering from the effects of the same causes. When friends see themselves oppressed by unavoidable disappointments, it will not mitigate their sufferings to impute blame to each other, especially when the cause lies so obviously elsewhere.” In this sort of unsatisfactory controversy we continued some time; he was evidently unconscious of his determination to be displeased, and was, as in his grudge against me, the more displeased because he could assign no reason. But without expatiating at greater length it must be obvious to the reader, that so near a relation infected with such a humour was, independent either of riches or poverty, in itself a misfortune. It certainly had a material effect on my wife; and, although she said nothing, I soon saw that her objection to leaving him was materially softened, and that she no longer pleaded her duty to remain near him, as an argument against my project of seeking a refuge in the woods of America. Doubtless, from having comparatively no tie to retain me in

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England, the idea of emigrating was a far lighter subject of consideration to me than to Mrs. Corbet; but the same cause which at last made her to reflect on it with less reluctance, operated otherwise on me. I hated to think that inconvenience arising from the temper of so near a friend as her father, should in any degree influence me; and but for an accident, perhaps the feeling which dictated the dislike might soon have become strong enough to have made me change my intention. Our foot-boy, Sam, was everlastingly causing troubles. He was a smart, sprightly lad, whose greatest fault was an inordinate predilection for whistling, and when he happened to get hold of a new tune he did nothing but whistle it from morning to night. He contrived to adapt it as a fit accompaniment to cleaning knives; his hand went in accordance as he rubbed the table—up and down—here and there—he ever whistled the same melody till his ear caught another; and as he was seldom sent to town, he often at last became intolerable. I wonder yet how we thought of suffering our comfort to be so molested by such a pest, for although with himself and his temper no fault in reason could be found, yet, as he was fresh from the school, he had every thing to learn pertaining to his vocation, and it requires a meeker saint than I am to teach footmanry. Sam, among other habits at variance with a judicious household economy, was ever trying experiments. This ingratiated him with the children, especially with the boys, to the continual annoyance of their parents, till at last he acquired such an ascendency over them, that it became my duty, on their account, to resolve on parting with him; and when the resolution was on the point of being carried into effect it was accelerated by Sam himself. In showing the boys how combustible flax is, he set a candle to a quantity in one of the garrets, which blazed up in such an unextinguishable manner that the house itself was in flames before help could be got, and consumed to the ground. So rapid indeed was the conflagration that very few articles could be saved, and these only of the most miscellaneous and ordinary kind. But considering our meditated voyage, the accident could not be regarded as a very heavy misfortune. The furniture was insured, and the destruction enabled me to get payment without difficulty on the policy. We were thus at liberty to proceed across the Atlantic. It did not, however, seem advisable to do so at once; inquiries were necessary, some preparation in clothing was requisite, and without divination it was foreseen that a residence in the forest required

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a providence of many little family etceteras which in town are obtained from the shops. But without expatiating on the considerations which induced us to defer our voyage, it will be readily conceded by the reflecting reader, that there was at this time a confluence of circumstances which inevitably directed our views to another scene. We could not long, in all appearance, refrain from entrenching on the consecrated legacy of Sir Neil Eccles; domestic aches, as they may be called, had impaired the comfort which we might have enjoyed with our relations. Duty clearly advised us to abridge our social reciprocities, and the fire had loosened us from the soil like a ship when she weighs anchor. Alike the victim of the times, of pecuniary accidents, and of family grievances, no prospect of happier fortune could be discovered, and hope for myself and my offspring existed only in a foreign land. In a word, I felt the strong hand of Fate pushing me on to emigrate; and I am the more anxious that this should be manifest, as some who have pretended to be interested in my proceedings have insinuated that, not necessity, but caprice and fancy instigated a determination in which so much hardship must be encountered, and all the enjoyments of friendly intercourse foregone. They are but shallow observers who think those actuated by light motives who forsake their native land.

CHAPTER XXII. misanthropy. On the evening after the destruction of our house, I removed my family into town. The event, considering our intended emigration, could not be contemplated as a misfortune; it accelerated, however, a course of mortification, which but for that accident would not probably so soon have come to pass. Our intention was scarcely known among our acquaintances, and they deemed the inclemency of adversity in consequence to have fallen more suddenly and with greater severity upon me, than was really the case—it tested their faithfulness. If I wish, however, to retain the good opinion of the reader, I must restrain myself from indulging remarks tinctured with misanthropy; I do not indeed feel any, I am only inclined to express inferences deduced from observation. But poverty begets vile thoughts, which mankind, from a benevolent sentiment, do not like to hear. General flatterers of human nature are as much favoured by the species, as particular sycophants by individuals. It has been made sufficiently obvious, that besides the sear and yellow leaf into which my circumstances had fallen, there were irksome domestic vexations in our lot, which recommended emigration as the only expedient by which my adversity and these vexations could be alleviated. Our temporary removal brought others of a kind not so easily susceptible of remedy, and in some respects as bitter to suffer. Reckoning on quitting England as soon as it could be determined whether we should proceed to Canada or the United States, and disregarding situation in the choice of lodgings, I carried my family to a furnished house in Abingdon Street, Westminster. Parliament not being then in session, we were cheaply accommodated; but it was remote, and far from the beat I had been accustomed to frequent. I know not if any other cause contributed to the effect we were made to feel, but certainly it so happened that we were established there more comfortably for less money than we could have been in any more public part of the town.

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The newspapers having proclaimed the accident which had befallen us, our friends required no intimation from ourselves, so that next day, when I met with several, I had only condolence to receive. In the apparent sincerity with which it was given, there was no cause to put an invidious construction on the sympathy expressed for what all regarded as a misfortune; till one of them, whom, being still alive, a prosperous gentleman, I shall abstain from naming, inquired where we had removed to? When I told him, and that it was my intention to proceed to America as soon as the necessary preparations were arranged, I noticed a slight change in his countenance—or rather a suspicious momentary glance, as he said with some inflexion in his accent, that he was sorry to hear it. We separated, however, much as on another occasion, but in walking along, the recollection of his sudden sinister look returned upon me inquisitively, and the more so, as I could not then divine the cause. This incident, so trivial, made me more observant of the looks and accents of my acquaintance, and I soon perceived that they dreaded something like infection. Intimates were always engaged in some urgent matter when I chanced to fall in with them, and if sometimes they forgot the apprehended difference in our respective situations, and by inadvertency were guilty of their former cordiality, it became a motive afterwards with them to be more guarded. Mrs. Corbet remarked the same thing among her female associates; and one fact could not be concealed from ourselves. Families with whom we had more particularly cultivated the usual reciprocities of society, continued to visit and invite us to their houses, with the freedom of other times, and no doubt thought themselves meritorious in so doing; but we unluckily discerned, with the feelings of Lear in his treatment from his daughters, that we were not considered quite so importantly as formerly, and that when invited to their houses it was only in a private way, and never, even by accident, as principals. All this added to the reasons for my determination to emigrate, for it was evident we never could recover those feelings which were necessary to the comforts of social intercourse. It was asking too much of human infirmity to expect that our friends would ever pardon us for having excited the clandestine embryos of their own bosoms, or that we would forget the insight and knowledge which had in consequence been forced upon us. Independent, therefore, of all pecuniary considerations, our resolution to quit England was ratified by other occurrences, inevitable perhaps in time, but abrupt

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in their advent by the accident which brought us to town, and we became impatient until the Atlantic should wash out remembrances that otherwise would have been dear. In stating these facts, nothing, I hope, in the opinion of the judicious reader appears like a wish to extenuate a decision, which so many things combined to render prudent, I may even add almost necessary. The aspect of the world, as well as the phase of fortune, was changed towards me, and it was surely wiser to fly from rising evils, than to wage with Fate a constant controversy and incessant war. Accordingly we began our preparations by seeking the best information that could be obtained; and upon the maxim which the friend of my helpless years, the good and kind Mrs. Busby had so strenuously impressed, every article not essentially requisite was studiously omitted. In this juncture, I received an account of the sudden death of my old friend Mr. Macindoe, and of his handsome legacy to my wife of five hundred pounds, already mentioned; some incident, however, occurred about his will, by which the money could not be immediately paid, and as the season was fast advancing, it was agreed that we should postpone our voyage until the spring. In that resolution I was not, however, governed so much by any particular regard to the legacy—having placed my pecuniary concerns on a satisfactory footing—as by the advice of a shrewd Scotchman, recently from America: one Mr. Lawrie Todd, to whom I was introduced as an intending emigrant, who had not fixed on his particular destination. He has since published some account of himself, and of his adventures and experience as a settler in the woods of the Genesee Country, and who, although not exactly qualified to instruct an emigrant of habits and wants similar to mine, had yet gleaned so much various information, the result both of what he had seen himself, and gathered from others, that I have no doubt he may have lessened many of our prospective difficulties, and taught me to avoid hardships which the stranger in the forest should be well prepared to encounter.

CHAPTER XXIII. an incubus. It is with no exaggeration that I say an intention to emigrate for ever is, as far as worldly feelings are concerned, more analogous to quitting life than those imagine to whom we must bid adieu. It in many respects bears the same relation to death, that to sleep does to die; and the sentiment with which the emigrant prepares for his departure is far more solemn, at least I feel it so, than in every other crisis of farewell but in the last ceremonies of the deathbed. To me, however, this sombre feeling was lightened by the consideration that I should be accompanied by my family; and I trust, when I confess that, saving a filial reminiscence of Mrs. Busby, then aged and infirm, my regret at the idea of seeking a new life in another world was not of an intense kind, I shall not be deemed insensible to the moral worth and political splendour of my native country. But even the tie in my remembrance of that venerable gentlewoman, the only parent I ever really knew, was destined to forego its hold. Towards the end of the autumn she wrote in her usual manner, for we had always continued frequent occasional correspondents, but in the conclusion of her letter there was something mournful and affecting. She described her own fast decaying strength as a weariness of the mortal world, and a longing in her spirit for repose; and alluding to my proposed departure with my family, expressed, in a remote and delicate manner, the satisfaction it would give her to have seen me once more. To the reader it is unnecessary to remark, that although not superstitious, I cannot yet entirely acquit myself of being inclined to the indulgence of mysterious conceptions. This letter, the last from Mrs. Busby, affected me with a deep impression; it hung, as it were, upon my spirit like a load of cold damp clay; and day after day the weight seemed to increase, insomuch that it interfered with the interesting consultations which I often then held with my new friend Mr. Lawrie Todd. It even acquired a metaphysical influence

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over my sleep, and night after night I suffered a mingled sensation of dream and feeling concerning the amiable author, a forerunner of her impending fate. This haunted state of mind became at last intolerable, and Mrs. Corbet, who had no tenderness for what she called the hypochonderics, at last began to sympathise with my uneasiness—if that could be called uneasiness, which consisted only of a too frequent presence of a distressing image in the mind, unsanctioned by any obvious cause. Two or three weeks elapsed in this inexplicable mood, when one night I was startled with something scarcely less appalling than a vision. I was lying in a drowsy, rather than a sleeping state, in a perfect consciousness of what I am and where I was, when suddenly a light seemed to dawn before me, and I beheld, as it brightened, an open coffin with a body in it, but the body was not in the vestments of the tomb; it seemed rather that of a person in the final aged helplessness of life, dressed in the habiliment of the sick chamber. Of all the fancies to which I had ever yielded any credence, this was the most impressive. I gazed at it as if it had been some natural solemnity; and when it disappeared suddenly, I roused myself, but in a state of awe and perturbation which baffles description. Mrs. Corbet was terrified; she imagined that I was infected with some cause of delirium, and insisted, in her alarm, on sending for a doctor. He came, but the fountain of the malady lay deeper than the reach of his skill. Had it not been soon after followed by an event of a painful kind, doubtless it would have passed away as a phantasy, or been deemed a confirmation of my wife’s apprehension. As it was, the more I think of it, the more I am justified in considering it as one of those mysteries which are sometimes unfolded on the sensorium of the unhappy; for next day the effect was an impulse, which I could not repress, an impassioned wish to see Mrs. Busby before she died. I make no attempt to explain this singular phenomenon. I only know, that presentiments of the same sort have happened to others, and that although the event augured did not appear to the world so extraordinary as that it should have been marshalled by a vision, it had yet a secret efficacy on their reflections. But not to occupy the reader’s time with any disquisition regarding what may be my opinion on the subject, the desire to see Mrs. Busby became so strong, that I prepared to pay her a visit, when, on the third day after the revelation, a letter came from Dr. Leach, informing me that she had been smitten with a severe stroke of palsy, and was not expected to survive. This intelligence, which would at any time have been

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afflicting, received a kind of hallowing from the phantasma; for the calamity had overtaken her in the very hour and crisis of my trance. I was not, however, satisfied, nor in any degree appeased by the Doctor’s letter; on the contrary, it seemed only to give a rational sanctioning to the inscrutable motive by which I was actuated, and I fulfilled my previous intention by going immediately to Scotland. Strange as it may seem, I accomplished the whole journey by the mail without once shutting my eyes, and yet no febrile feeling was upon me, nor did I experience the slightest anxiety in my thoughts. My mind was tranquil; I expected to witness a melancholy sight, and nothing occurred to disturb the sad sobriety which that consideration naturally diffused over all my reflections. I have however been sometimes told by Mrs. Corbet, that a change has been visible upon me since that period; my constitutional alacrity has subsided, and that I am apt to fall into an unaccountable mood of sadness, which, without alarming, disturbs her with melancholy fears. I must not, however, anticipate; but proceed as calmly as possible to describe the result of my visit—a visit which brought back the harmless incidents of my boyhood as vividly as if they had been still in action, and which has so influenced my imagination, as to make, as I proceed with this narrative, all my past life come back again, as if the scenes and transactions that wait on my pen had been the substanceless apocrisia of an idle poet.

CHAPTER XXIV. grief and care. I reached the residence of Mrs. Busby about noon. I saw around me many old familiar objects; at the sight of several, I felt as if the burden of many years had been lifted from my shoulders. The garrulity of Mr. Macindoe, then in the grave, was renewed, and the past returned, as if each particular event was still in the performance. But when I reached the door of my early home, the spell was broken, and the recollection of my disappointments since I first left it grew painful in my spirit, like those gnawing insects and reptiles which are said to fasten themselves in the flesh and will not be shaken away. The house bore the same aspect of trimness which it ever bears in my memory. In one thing alone was it different; the brass knocker, which in the olden time was daily brightened, appeared on this occasion muffled with a piece of green baize, and the parlour shutters had not been that morning opened. I knocked, and by some unconscious accident, though the knocker was tied up, beat with it the same rhythm with which I playfully announced myself in other years. Nanse, the old housemaid, recognized the sound at once, and opened the door, but not with her wonted blithe chiding for the din; on the contrary, she was demure in her aspect, and said, with a tear in her eye, “Oh, but I’m glad ye’re come! the mistress heard your knock, and looked in my face, for she canna speak—she’ll never speak again.” I could make no reply, but walked in, and followed the faithful creature up-stairs into Mrs. Busby’s room, where she sat in her easy-chair, wrapped in flannel; but in all other respects as neatly dressed as ever. On the opposite side of the fire, the nurse, a decent household-looking matron, was sitting with a cup in her hand, from which she had been administering some cordial or ineffectual medicine; she rose as I entered, and immediately left the room. On seeing me, my affectionate old friend gazed for a moment, and attempted to smile; but such a smile! so sad, so shattered, so like anguish! I could not speak, but going towards her, stretched out

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my hand. She looked in my face—her hands were powerless; and dropping her eyes towards them, to bid me see they were so, she burst into tears, and leaning forward on my bosom, could only utter a low and sorrowful moan. The nurse, at rising, had set down the cup on a claw-foot table, and at this moment the cat, conceiving that it might contain something for its solace, jumped up and was on the point of approaching it, which Mrs. Busby observing, uttered a wild, shrill, unearthly cry, that made me shiver from head to foot. It was perhaps the last effort of habitual care. But the irreverent animal, as if conscious of her inability to interpose, only paused in its attempt, and looked round at the ineffectual invalid. It was a scene that only some great limner may venture to hope he can represent; the effect on me was electrical; I struck the plunderer from the table with a cruelty of punishment disproportioned to the offence, and flung myself into the nurse’s seat, trembling with inexpressible emotion, which was increased to agony by a sound, intended for a laugh, at once so strange, silly, and unnatural, that I was struck with horror and dread. But let me escape from this painful remembrance. That night, at exactly the same time when her first stroke so shattered her faculties, Mrs. Busby died. By her will it appeared that though her jointure was small, not amounting to quite two hundred and fifty pounds per annum, frugality during her long widowhood had enabled her to save several hundred pounds, one-half of which she bequeathed to me. In doing this, her characteristic orderliness was evident. The money was not given merely as a legacy, but in trust, expressly to be applied only to the education of my children. As soon as a few little affairs were settled, I prepared to return, to conclude my preparations in London, when the latent malady which had so long distressed my nights with unhappy dreams, suddenly broke out in the form of a smart fever, by which, though my strength was much impaired, the wonted temperament of my thoughts was restored. I was, however, unable to travel for some time, but the interval was not idle leisure. During the disease, I had been confined to the house of Mrs. Busby; but as soon as the doctors conceived I had regained strength enough to bear the fatigue, I caused myself to be removed into Glasgow, where, after I became able to endure society, many of my old acquaintances called. Among others, Eric Pullicate, who, although I am ever affected by a feeling of inconceivable dislike

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when his image is recollected, justice and gratitude compel me to say, evinced towards me particular kindness, and ultimately did me great service. One forenoon, as we happened to be talking of old transactions, I mentioned to him my intention of emigrating with my family, in consequence of the diminished state of my income. Some rumour of it had reached him, but as I had not myself spoken of it, he merely supposed that it was one of those probable guesses which society sometimes makes in its gossiping, respecting the fortunes of individuals. When I consulted him, however, not as to the measure itself—for that, he admitted, afforded the only feasible prospect of bringing forward my children, and passing life in the quietude to which I had become attached; but as to the method according to which I ought to proceed, his counsel and considerations were truly valuable. Native shrewdness had taught him to conceive, if I may say so, much of the practical wisdom which my friend from America, Mr. Lawrie Todd, had derived from experience, and it was in some respects even better adapted to my situation than the notions and facts of that worthy gentleman. “It’s no’ to be contested,” said he, in allusion to some remarks I had been making on Mr. Todd’s suggestions, “that he must have gathered a fund of useful information; but Mr. Bogle Corbet, ye’ll excuse an auld frien’ for counselling you no’ to be overly particular in following his footsteps, for he was naturally of a lower degree in the means of education than you; even by what ye have been telling, he does not yet seem, in a certain sense, to have grown familiar with genteelity, which, without a brag, takes pains and opportunities to learn; I would, therefore, advise you, wherever ye settle, to pick your place, no’ o’er far frae the howffs of civilization. At your time of life, the hardships of the woods are no’ wholesome, nor new ways an easy conquest. A man of his condition and natural talent was very suitable in the Garden-of-Eden-state of a new settlement; but ye’re one of a different order, and I’m thinking that the town of Judiville, or sic like as he left it, would be more to the purpose for a gentleman o’ moderate means, than the awsome solitude of the wild woods, and wanchancy neighbourhood of bears and trees. So Sir, Mr. Bogle Corbet, my counsel in this matter of flitting across the Atlantic, is, that it should be made just as like as possible to a flitting frae Buchanan-street to ayont the Clyde, with a right reverence to the economy of the cause. Folks neglectful o’ such a consideration, fill their life with more miseries than need be, as I have seen by letters

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from some of my friends, that were helped away after the radical Straemach at the time of the battle of Bonny Muir.” His observations were commonly in this general fashion, but the inherent, shrewd good sense of the man governed all he said, even on topics respecting which he could possess no previous knowledge.

CHAPTER XXVI. indisposition. My convalescence was slower than might have been expected, and a weakness which infected my limbs prevented me from taking needful exercise; the weather, indeed, was variable, and but seldom so fair as to allow me to be much abroad. I was, in consequence, without being absolutely confined to the house, rather too much at home. One day, when the morning happened to be exceedingly showery, this was the case, and it so chanced that during the forenoon no one called. Application to any sort of study was at the time oppressive, insomuch that after making several attempts to read a pious book called “Margaret Linsay,” I let down the curtains, and laid myself down on the bed. I must have soon fallen asleep, for I had no consciousness when I awoke of having heard any noise, but on looking up, I beheld, as it were, a vision of Mr. Woodriffe from London at the bedside, lifting the curtain. He was pale, meagre, and death-like, but the glow of the crimson curtain shed a supernatural bloom on his countenance that ill accorded with his emaciated features. In the first moment, thinking it a dream, I turned round, but he spoke, and I instantly started up. “You are surprised to see me here in this plight,” said he; and before I could make any reply, he added, “I have been very unwell since you left town, and the doctors have advised me to try the effect of a change of air. This has led me to think of a tour to the Hebrides, though the season is so far advanced; and when I heard of your being here, and of your plans, I thought perhaps you might be persuaded to come with me, especially as I have understood that a gentleman whom I intend to visit is making arrangements to help a number of his tenants across the Atlantic: perhaps some connexion with their projects may be serviceable to your’s.” While we were thus speaking, Mr. Pullicate came to see me, an incident which gave me pleasure on several accounts. Mr. Woodriffe,

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of all men I have ever seen, possessed instinctively the most accurate perception of real character, and I was glad that he should have an opportunity of observing one whom I believed to be so strongly connected with my fortunes. Besides this superior power, he had also another species of talent, still more extraordinary than even his surprising acuteness. He could, in the course of a few sentences in conversation, discriminate opinions formed on experience, from those which are deduced from theoretic principles, and was in consequence one of the ablest to advise with respecting matters of business, as well as of men: I had, from our earliest acquaintance, ever entertained the utmost respect for his judgment. But not to summer and winter longer on this, the meeting with him, and the coming in of Eric Pullicate at the same time, gave me exceeding pleasure, till the superstition which had taken possession of me respecting Eric’s destiny was recollected with its usual saddening influence. It so happened that Mr. Pullicate’s visit at that particular period was in consequence of some information he had received about emigration, and he had come to advise me respecting it, thinking it might be useful. This, which ought to have cheered me, had at the moment a very different influence. Darkened as my spirit was with the bodement arising from the presence of Mr. Pullicate, I thought, notwithstanding the seeming wisdom and unanimity which appeared between him and Mr. Woodriffe, that their advice betokened some fatality, and in my heart I secretly resolved to withstand it. While they were speaking, I noticed the vivid glances of Mr. Woodriffe’s eager eyes frequently elancing between Mr. Pullicate and me, and that he was suddenly affected by some mental resolution, the nature of which I could not conjecture. After a moment’s pause, the latter turned round, and congratulated me (with significance in the expression of his countenance that I could not but observe,) on my frien’, as he called Mr. Woodriffe, having come so opportunely from London; adding, “For do you know I have had a great disappointment this morning; a house at Manchester has failed that I thought was as good as the Bank, and is more than a bawbee in my reverence.” The news,—such is the waywardness of man, gave me pleasure; but I affected not to notice what Mr. Pullicate evidently alluded to; it did not escape, however, the penetration of Mr. Woodriffe, who said curiously after he had gone away, “That shrewd man thinks he is lord of your ascendant.”

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“How? In what way?” “Nay; you should be best able to tell, but he thinks so;” and proceeding in his desultory manner, Mr. Woodriffe added, “He is not many degrees under a man of genius, but not quite one.” “You amaze me! How have you already discovered him so well?” “Don’t say discovered, say detected.” “How! is there then such art about him?” “Art it cannot well be called; it is endowment. Have you not observed how curiously he fishes for the thoughts of others? He speaks of what he knows will be agreeable, and discovers by that test what is the contrary. He is one of those who find out the weaker side of their neighbours by trying the strength of the stronger. He is a virtuous Iago—a character which Shakspeare has not delineated!” We then fell into a more particular discourse concerning my affairs, and after some farther consultation, I agreed to accompany him to the Isle of Ardghlass, if, in the course of two days, the doctor might think me qualified for the journey. In my early years, such a jaunt would indeed have required the advice of the doctor, but the steam-boat which now plies between Glasgow and the West Highlands, has changed the nature of the voyage, and shortened the distance of those heather regions, converting what would have been formerly an undertaking of hardship and hazard, into a jaunt of pleasure, salutary to invalids. While speaking, somewhat desultory, on different topics connected with my situation, an incident occurred, highly characteristic of the curious singularities of Mr. Woodriffe. He suddenly paused, and looking at me very earnestly, with a cast of solemnity in his countenance, said, “The danger of your disease is in the mind?” “Explain yourself—tell me why you think so?” “I cannot,” replied he, thoughtfully; “but your physical malady, I suspect, is only a sign or symptom: the disease is metaphysical.” I pressed him again to explain why he thought so, but he either could not or would not. He added, however, that when a young man, he had a strange pleasure in visiting Bedlam and other lunatic habitations, and said that he could easily discriminate between the insanity that springs from corporeal maladies, and that which originates in the mind itself; and then abruptly subjoined— “But you shall come with me to the Highlands; I will wait till you are able; for you think too much of one thing—variety of objects and active employment is your best medicine.”

CHAPTER XXVII. auguries. The meeting with Mr. Woodriffe was in many respects agreeable to me, but his own health did not improve, and before we left Glasgow, his disease had evidently made progress. His alacrity of mind, however, suffered no decay; on the contrary, the buoyancy of his spirits—one of his most fatal symptoms—was rather increased, and he enjoyed with zest and eagerness the local peculiarities; but few of the inhabitants afforded him so remarkable a subject of study as Mr. Pullicate. He considered him as a person of talent, and as one possessed of a discerning spirit, such as he had seldom met with even in the metropolis, but the ci-devant democrat was interesting on another account. His controversy between his republican principles and his good fortune furnished Mr. Woodriffe with much amusement; for although Eric himself was quite sensible that his prosperity had outgrown his refinement, yet a judicious sense of the propriety of suiting his manners to his circumstances, constantly prompted him to aim at a genteeler deportment, and his endeavours were not always felicitous. “He has mistaken,” said Mr. Woodriffe, “the show for the substance. Let him be a plain character, and he will become an uncommon gentleman.” Mr. Woodriffe was, however, not aware that the errors which he discovered in the ostentatious Eric, ought properly to have been ascribed to Mrs. Pullicate, now a shrewd and portly matron; ever actuated by an ambitious emulation to be in gorgeous equality with her neighbours, and constant in her endeavours to animate her husband with an energy of the same kind. “I wonder,” said Mr. Woodriffe one day, “how so sensible, demure, and acute a man as Mr. Pullicate, should act in so many respects as if he were inflated with vanity; and yet there is less of it about him, than about almost any man I have ever seen.” He was not left long to wonder—the day following, Mr. Pullicate

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thought a little country air would do me no harm, and the weather being remarkably fine, he came with his carriage, a new one, and invited me, with Mr. Woodriffe, to come with him to Webends, as his country-house was called. “And you must come,” said he, addressing me in particular, “for Mrs. Pullicate will not be content if you do not: you see this is the first day that we have launched our own coach, and she would fain have you to hansel it.” Such an invitation, with the beauty of the weather, could not be resisted, and we agreed to accompany him. Without having been much interested by the peculiarities of Mrs. Pullicate, she was in some degree rather a favourite with me; so extremely prudently did she contrive to render her feminine ambition ever subservient to the promotion of her husband’s consideration in the eyes of the world, veiling her own delight in the gratification with the most unsound, yet plausible reasons. But the hawk’s-eye of Mr. Woodriffe saw more of her in a few minutes, than I had discovered in the course and intervals of a long acquaintance. “I see,” said he, “where the fault lies, that I could never account for in the conduct of our friend. He is much attached to his wife, and though not ruled by her, he does many things from affection to please her, which his own understanding would repress.” The incident by which Mr. Woodriffe so readily comprehended her character, is, however, worthy of being noticed. On our arrival in the new coach at Webends, she naturally enough inquired how we thought the new chaise, as she called it, would do. “For my part,” said she, “it’s a thought overly fine, one of a soberer sort would have been a greater convenience. On Sabbath, when a sense of duty to the Giver of all Good would fain have made me ta’en it to the church, was, you ken, a desperate showery day, so that I was obliged to walk, as if I had na such a commodity in my power.” I was diverted at her suffering such inconvenience on a wet day by possessing a new carriage, but the observation laid the whole mind of the worthy lady open to Mr. Woodriffe. When, on our return to the hotel where we stayed, we were in the evening comparing notes together, he remarked, “You have been mistaken in some degree as to the character of your old friend. The actuating principle by which he has been urged into wealth lies with his wife. He himself can discern what should be done, but it is Mrs. Pullicate, to whom he is evidently much attached, that makes him so ambitious.”

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I have ever since thought that this little observation showed more of the innate insight which Mr. Woodriffe possessed of character, than many of his most philosophical remarks. I must, however, hasten on, for matters were coming to a crisis with me. Mrs. Corbet was anxious for my return—the season was advancing, and although I was deeply interested in the state of my friends’ health, it was yet necessary to avoid every unnecessary delay. I had moreover, except my promise to accompany him to the West Highlands, no inducement to remain in Scotland, after being able to bear the fatigue of travelling. At last, the day was fixed for our departure by the steam-boat, and our luggage was on board, but just as we stepped into the street to walk to the Broomilaw, Eric Pullicate met us at the door and startled me with his presence. “I am glad,” said he, “to have catched you; I have had an upcast, Mr. Bogle Corbet, that I hope may be a benison to you. Five decent douce families frae our gaitend are minded to emigrate in the spring, and as they have na settled on where they will go, they came to me last night, and said, that if ye would let them, they would na be backward in following you. Sir, it’s a real cast of good fortune; for after all the discourse that we have had anent the subject, as ye’re for the wilderness, creditable folk for neighbourhood and hands will be a great comfort. They’ll be mair to the purpose than the naubies ye’ll see in the Highlands, who, though they can fight like rabiators, are no past ordinar I jealouse among trees and farming.” It is a curious fact, that although I am not naturally of a very reverential temperament, the success of Mr. Pullicate inspired me during that visit to Glasgow with great respect for every suggestion of his; and the high opinion which Mr. Woodriffe had formed of his talents and understanding, had deepened the feeling. I stopped, conscious that I could not do wiser than follow his advice. “Do not hesitate,” said Mr. Woodriffe; “say you will assent to their proposition; but come, for our time is up, and the steam-boat will be off.” I stood in need of no farther exhortation, but authorized Mr. Pullicate, as we walked along the street, to act for me, and the suddenness of his appearance was forgotten in the interest of our conversation respecting the sort of arrangement which should be made with the emigrants; but when we had embarked, and the boat was paddling down the river, the recollection of it returned, and I

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am ashamed almost to acknowledge how much it secretly disturbed me. Some misfortune, I was sure, impended; the shadow of the event so sent before darkened my spirit, and I could not shake off the apprehension, even although the wind was favourable, and the sea only rippled before the boat, as if the waters were gladdened by our rattling speed.

CHAPTER XXVIII. one of the hebrides. Our sail down the Clyde was delightful, but I retain no recollection of any particular object. The picturesque shores and scenes have passed from my mind, like the impression from the surface of the calm pool when the ripple of a stone thrown in has subsided. I was, during the voyage, as in a soft and unbroken sleep, and we were landed, as we thought, at our place of destination, without having encountered impediment or adventure. The steamboat, however, had not long left the shore, when a Highlander, with a huge staff, or rather piece of timber, that must have been valuable in the island, came towards us. We inquired our way to Ardghlass, the residence of Mr. Campbell, the friend of Mr. Woodriffe, and heard, with feelings better imagined than described, that we had been put on shore on the wrong island; that Ardghlass was at least seven miles’ distant, and that we had no chance of getting a boat for several days, as the couter, which plied between the island and the mainland, had gone that day to Oban. The situation of two invalids in such circumstances was no doubt enviable! We inquired again what sort of accommodation we were likely to find till a boat could be obtained, but his information was not comfortable; we were, however, surprised at his gentlemanly deportment, so little in accordance with his mean tartan garb; and I was particularly struck by the politeness of his English, especially as I expected to hear only the dislocated Celtic gibberish in use among the lower classes who frequent the Lowlands. He did not allow us to remain long in the dark respecting what he was, but, by way of insuring to himself that deference which he was conscious his garb was not exactly of a sort to bespeak, he told us that he had been a Captain during the late war, and he added, as he conducted us to his house, partly as Mr. Woodriffe suspected to prepare us for its rudeness, that he intended, with many others, to emigrate to America in the spring, and was, in consequence, not “very insisting on the manner” in which he then lived.

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The house, considering what had been his regimental rank, did indeed require some descriptive anticipation; and yet it had been his paternal mansion, and the residence of his ancestors, for aught I know, or he himself knew to the contrary, since before the building of Babel; it being well authenticated in the Highlands that Gaelic was the original language of the world, and that only the descendants of the builders inherited the confusion of tongues. It stood at the foot of a smooth green knoll, near the dry channel of a little occasional torrent, and was a mere thatched hovel, constructed seemingly of undressed stones, picked from the brook or brought from the shore. A chimney at the one end was formed of heather, and, as I thought, of an old hamper, wattled and warped with a straw rope. At the opposite gable the thatch had a hole in it, from which the savoury smoke of peat was rising in a tall and curling column. The door was open, and had a window on each side, under the sills of which a plentiful assemblage of tubs, milk-dishes, iron pots, a brass pan, dishevelled heather besoms, and invalided utensils were sunning themselves in a row. On the one side, three or four paces in front, stood a stately peat stack, the barbican tower of the castle; and on the other side, also in advance, before the cowhouse, a midden, on which a cock with his sultanas was strutting like a chieftain; and several snow-white ducks, which had not evidently then been fattened for the spit, turned up the sides of their heads, and looked at us in a quizzical manner as we approached the portal. The interior of the mansion of Dungowan, as this ancestral residence of the Captain was denominated, could not be said to be unworthy of its exterior. Divided into two apartments, the first entered was the kitchen. Two wooden enclosed bedsteads stood in the corners; an antique oaken wardrobe, with a carved cornice between them. A grate, which was not in the middle of the floor, but with a blazing turf fire, was placed against the wall, under an opening in the roof, and several chairs and stools were placed around, and bundles of yarn and mutton-hams hung from the dingy rafters, assurances of clothing and food. The wooden partition which separated this antechamber from the other, the dormitory for strangers, was adorned with a portrait of the iron-visaged Duke on horseback, so coloured that it might justly be called an obstreperous picture, and near it a glaring view of the battle of Alexandria, with the Pyramids in sight, and crocodiles playing near the spot where “The brave Abercromby received his death-wound.”

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We were not permitted to seat ourselves in this apartment, but were shown into the other, which had a deal floor, partly covered with a carpet;—the floor of the antechamber was of clay. In this room were two four-post beds, with curtains—one with printed calico, and the other with blue and white domestic-made check; a mahogany chest of drawers, covered on the top with a bright towel, on which stood an oval, swing looking-glass, and near it a clothesbrush, with combs, and a pocket-Bible were lying;—a clawfoot table was also there, and the fire-place was filled with green boughs; but the most interesting object in the room, besides a fowling-piece, a regimental sword, and a pair of handsome pistols, which hung over the mantel-piece, was an old glazed portrait, on which the name was obliterated, but which the Captain told us was Prince Charley, and was thought a good likeness by his grandfather, who, however, “was not out in the Forty-five.” Being seated, as a matter of course—for the hospitality of our host did not conceive any invitation necessary, he himself drew out the clawfoot table to the middle of the room, and presently it was replenished with a square gardevine of whiskey, glasses, and a loaf, on which the damp of the climate had painted the blue and yellow livery of the Edinburgh Review. The glasses were then filled. While engaged in these initiatory rites, an aged crone, uncorrupted by English, came in, and set forth another table, which I had not observed, and covering it with a clean damask table-cloth, placed on it a mahogany tray, a tea equipage, and a japanned canister, with a rose on its side—consolatory symptoms in a misty morning on an Æbudæ. Presently, when all the apparatus for breakfast was prepared, a mountain of wheaten toast, and valleys of oaten cake, were brought in, together with a hecatomb of broiled ham, fried fishes, like whales, a cairn of eggs, and butter in a lordly dish, with a punch-bowl full of honey, and a plate, like a battle-field, of bloody jam. But the appetite with which I surveyed the feast returns, and I long again to partake.

CHAPTER XXIX. the second sight. We found Dungowan, as our host Captain Campbell was commonly called by the Celts of the island, not only hospitable, but really, notwithstanding his mean appearance, a gentleman of good manners, and possessed of humour and information. “The Highlands,” said he, “have seen their best days; the chieftains are gone, and the glory of the claymore is departed for ever. I speak to you, gentlemen, who cannot but compare the lonely, comfortless condition which I am obliged to put up with here, with the active, bustling, and gay nine-and-thirty years that I have spent in the King’s service, and in other lands;—but I must not say so, for although the olden time has long been dead, its spirit walks the mountains, and scowls upon me when I dare to repine. After an absence of many years, I came back to this old spot, which often was remembered in distant scenes as the pleasantest that the earth could contain; but on my return, all that had endeared it in recollection existed no more. That poor old woman, my housekeeper, alone remains of all those to whom I was attached: it is only by missing early friends that we discover how little the aspect of our native land contributes to the sentiment with which it is pictured on the memory. In truth, I am weary of this empty place, and although past the season of adventure, I have resolved to seek another scene. Here I am idle. What does it avail to sit on a rock looking at yon shipless ocean, or to lounge on the hill side listening to the humming-bee? This country is now but for sheep—Men have no business here; and one like me, who has lived in activity, makes misery for himself when he imagines that the stirring spirit of the world can be brought home to the glen, the island, or the moor. It is not that feeling, however, which has urged so many of my neighbours to emigrate, nor am I a solitary example of its influence. We are all swayed by different motives, though our actions are so similar.” It seemed to me, while he was thus speaking, that there was something congenial in his sentiments to my own, and that in the

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woods he would not be an unpleasant associate; in consequence, I inquired if he had fixed on any destination. “No; all countries are alike to me: it is one of the advantages of a military life that we lose local attachments. Before my return, every place had something about it inferior to my own home, but the delusion is gone. I think, however, that Canada will probably have my bones; for several officers whom I knew in the army, have settled with their families there. I have no comrades here, and it sweetens death to fall among companions.” During this conversation, Mr. Woodriffe uttered not a word, and before we had finished breakfast, he complained of unusual lassitude. The Captain regretted the absence of his servant, an old soldier, who was gone with the couter to Oban, and advised my friend to lie down on one of the beds, proposing to me that we should leave him to rest himself, and take a stroll on the hills. The day was by this time far advanced towards noon. The gentle breeze of the morning had subsided, and a lulled and quiet air slumbered, as it were, on the landscape. The hazy mist had disappeared, the ocean lay in glassy calmness before us, and behind and around the islands and the mountains extended in boundless perspective. As we stood together on a promontory, admiring the silent and romantic scene, I discovered the white sail of a boat glittering in the sunshine, but it was far beyond all hail and signal, and seemed like one of those unattainable wishes that so interest and disappoint us in life. The Captain also saw it, and pointing it out to me, said with a playful pensiveness, “How like to a Colonel’s commission in an old Captain’s hope.” The expression was in unison with the thought in my own mind, and it led to some remarks on the inconclusive expectations which all men cherish, even when reason clearly forbids them. In this frame, moralizing, half unconscious of our own reflections, I observed an aged woman coming towards us. She was not so old as the Captain’s housekeeper, and considerably taller, but she leaned upon a staff, and her steps were more feeble. “God be with you, Dungowan!” said she; “it was not me that expected to find you here well and hearty—but I could not abide the wearying, and came myself to see.” The Captain turned to me with a smile, and said, “She has the reputation of having the second sight;” and then addressing himself, with assumed solemnity, he said to her, “And why have you been so wearying?” “It’s no’ a question that I can answer,” was her serious reply, as

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she stood before us, bending over her staff; “But a cold hand from Ardenhulish kirkyard has heavily touched my heart.” “Save us!” replied the Captain; “and to what effect—” “It was not him,” said the Sibyl, looking earnestly at me; “I saw him there—I saw him well—” “Where and when?” cried I eagerly; but without noticing my question, she subjoined, turning towards the Captain:— “And you were there, in your regimentals; and the boat was at the shore, and Mr. M‘Groan, the minister. Och hone! and was all yon, do ye think, but a vision? It could be no more, for the sadness is not of this world that lies so cold in my breast.” “Tell us all,” cried Dungowan, sincerely serious, for he had become affected by her mystical manner. “I saw the sun setting, and the hills’ black shadow on the ploughed land, and the horse at the door, and your soldier-man Hector, and one, that to me is nameless, brought out the coffin.” I started, and thought of Mr. Woodriffe, whom we had left so unwell. The Captain was evidently not less disturbed, and bidding the old woman call for some refreshment at the house, put his arm into mine, and drawing me aside, said, “This daunts me: I have often heard of her dismal faculty, but deemed it a phantasy of her ignorant neighbours.” Although not an actual believer in the second sight myself, yet sometimes a kind of hankering to credit the doctrine of foresigns has infected me, and made me ready to believe in presages of sympathy—but at such a time and in such a place, with such an avouch of authenticity, could I longer doubt? We hastened to the house, and were gladly surprised to find our friend seated on a chair in front of it, his spirits gay, and his lassitude gone; but our joy was only for a moment; our appearance, for we came hastily upon him, brought on a violent cough, and before I could assist him, he tumbled from the chair dead in my arms! But let me fly from the painful details that ensued—the boat I had observed with the Captain from the hill reached the island that night, and on board of her, passing from Mull to Morven, was the Reverend Mr. M‘Groan, who kindly consented to stop until the body was prepared for interment. The funeral, when the couter returned on the second day after from Oban, was performed in all circumstances as it had been described by the old woman; and with a throbbing heart and an awed spirit, I laid the head of Mr. Woodriffe in the Ardenhulish churchyard.

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I returned immediately afterwards overland to Glasgow, where, on my arrival, I had the satisfaction to learn from Mr. Pullicate, that he had made, with his wonted foresight and discretion, an arrangement with the emigrants, by which they were to follow me by a ship from Greenock for Quebec; he judiciously considering that it would best serve the purposes of all, were I to be there some short time before them, to make the necessary preparation for proceeding to that part of the province where I might be advised to settle.

CHAPTER XXX. causes of emigration. The celerity of the journey to London completed the restoration both of my mental and corporeal health. I felt renewed energy; the aimless reveries, the drifting wrack of the mind, had cleared away, and I could again think and act with something not unlike the decision characteristic of my youth. The disease, as that vague and hazy intellectual lassitude may be justly called, is perhaps not uncommon, especially among those who feel adversity closing like a smithy-vice upon them; but the moody shyness with which it is ever accompanied, has the effect of making the subjects averse to disclose their consciousness of the malady; and yet, when we look around us in society, how visible and numerous are its victims! It must indeed, be allowed, that the inward and outward state of man sympathise with each other; and that the judgment and fortunes partake of some secret reciprocal influence, that makes them fade and wither in companionship. The apothegm is Shakspeare’s, but I do not recollect his exact words. I think, however, it has not been so curiously observed, that when the wheel happens to relapse, the mind also experiences a corresponding revivification. It was certainly so with me. The business of preparing for the voyage, and of gathering information that might be useful, made me again in earnest with the world, and emulous to accomplish what I had undertaken; but the details are not interesting, farther than that the change was visible to my former associates, and had the effect, even from only my outward appearance, of making them more cordial.— It was too late! Having exerted myself with all my wonted assiduity, every thing was prepared for our departure before winter was over; and thus, although we intended to take our passage in one of the earliest ships for Quebec, I found myself in possession of several months of prospective leisure. My intention to emigrate with my family being generally known among our acquaintances, I had, in consequence, many visitors

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disposed to follow my example, with whom I was often much amused. The address with which, I may say, they managed themselves, interested me in no common degree; for it was evident that in the various subterfuges under which their consultations were conducted, the ostrich which hides its head in the grass, and believes it cannot be seen, is not more cunning. It was not, however, so much to escape the scrutiny of others, as to conceal themselves from their own thoughts, that their address was exerted. Pecuniary embarrassment was at the bottom of their intention, and yet, with only one exception—and such he was indeed—they ever ascribed it to taste, fancy, and all that. This was not so much to excuse their enterprise to the world as to themselves. But the remark requires no illustration; for we all know that as much self-delusion is practised on ourselves, as in our endeavours to deceive others. The only one, the exception alluded to, who acknowledged that he was actuated by considerations drawn from the state of his own circumstances, and the cloud which lowered upon the prospects of the Country, was also the only one, à priori, the least likely of them all to have entertained the idea of quitting Great Britain. He was a set-in-bachelor; for although at that period of life when many men do not think themselves too old to marry, and still remote from the epoch of imbecility, when fondling old age with a blushing bride, mistakes chronical cramps for youthful animation, he was yet obviously, at the first glance, one of those whom Fate and Nature predestinate to celibacy. He was dressed in a sober suit of gray, made quaker-fashion; wore a broad-brimmed, low-crowned white hat, trimly brushed, his neckcloth tied with ecclesiastical precision, and his hair cut and smoothly combed in the most ostentatious style of the preachers of the Gospel, according to St. Self. There was, indeed, all about him the strongest impress of comfort, and sleeky snugness, a man, in fact, who ate one nice egg to breakfast—his shoes toasting within the fender, and had his solitary tea and single muffin at six o’clock precisely. He seemed the very antithesis to change, and the impersonation of permanency; but he was minded to emigrate—to cross the roaring billow, to wrestle with the primitive forests, and dare the shelterless hardships of its labyrinths. I could scarcely preserve my gravity when he first mentioned the subject, the notion appeared so preposterous, and, with his dovetailed habitudes, so impracticable. It was probably owing to the surprise I expressed when he spoke of his intention, that he was

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induced to mention his reasons. “In truth, Mr. Bogle Corbet,” said Mr. Hoard, “I see you are surprised; but were you as sensible of the difficulty of managing your funds to any satisfactory account in this country, you would discern that prudence could suggest no better course than to try America.” “The woods and wildernesses of Canada, Mr. Hoard,” I replied, “are, however, not exactly like Bartholomew-lane; and my inquiries have chiefly been directed to obtain information concerning them. But considering the nature of your income, derived, I understand, entirely from a judicious management of your money-matters, I could not have imagined, that the idea of emigrating would ever have occurred to you.” “Ah, Sir, the times are treading close on my corns; perhaps I may not yet have suffered any coarse tramp, but really to live upon a competency is no longer an easy obligation in this country, oppressed as we are with taxes, and the means for a profitable investment of money becoming every day more contracted.” “In some respects, what you say, Mr. Hoard, cannot be disputed; but I should think you are not much likely to feel these perplexities?” “But I may feel them—nay, I have great reason to fear that I shall feel them, and that early; and a wise discretion should teach us to anticipate by preparation inevitable evil.” “Very judicious; we cannot act more wisely,” replied I, laughingly, “than to be prepared for a cold, lest we take it. But I am not aware that any information which I may have obtained can be applicable to your case. Poverty causes me to seek a new country, and wealth makes you not quite at home in this. Our circumstances are very different.” “Then you do not think that America opens a much better field for an advantageous investment than London? For unless I were well assured that it did—and I have been strongly assured, I should never have entertained any idea of moving. Every body tells me that capital is much wanted in America, and yet your words would imply that it may be as profitably employed here.” This is enough to show the reader what sort of exceptions occur among those who contemplate emigration. Money, the want of it, or to get it, is the actuating spring, whatever may be the pretexts of intending emigrants of the middle ranks. No doubt, with a few, there may be other causes, taste or caprice, but I have never met with men actuated only by them. All who consulted me were individuals in impaired, or desperate circumstances, unable to preserve their caste

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in the social system of this country, wrecked and catching at emigration as the last plank. The lower classes are governed by motives sufficiently manifest; agricultural changes, and the introduction of new machinery, is constantly throwing off swarms of operatives who have no other resource; as their vocation is labour, a shifting of the scene is comparatively of little consequence to them. But it is only amidst the better class of emigrants that the mingled and combined feelings of necessity, interest, and sorrow are found. The cares and fears, the anxieties of enterprise, the wound of the heart, that pains like amputation, and the solitude that waits in the wilderness, are keenest and cruelest among them. But this is digressing from my own narrative, and trenching upon the unavailing truisms of the political economists, as well as of those who have a juster conception of man.

CHAPTER XXXI. the mother. Independent of the peculiar feelings by which I observed the intending emigrants so generally actuated, there were among my visitors several characters of the most interesting description, even without reference to their immediate circumstances. To have attended only to their tales, one might have thought they could show cause enough, apart from all pecuniary considerations, to seek another world. One of these was no less than a grandmother, upwards of sixty years of age, the mother of the landlady of the public-house where the stages stopped when we lived at Oakhill, and where I had sometimes noticed her, interested by the general neatness of her appearance, and a pensive cast of countenance, which may be described as the complexion of a beautiful old age. One morning she called, attended by two of her grandsons, stout, good-looking striplings, older than boys and yet not old enough for men. I was astonished when she told me, that the object of her visit was to consult me about going to Canada. A little embarrassment in her air increased the interest which her explanation of the motive of her visit excited, and I perceived her look once or twice at the lads, as if she wished they had not been present; at last she told them to go to their brother in the street, and she would join them in a few minutes. When they were gone, I saw the tear start, and after a short pause, she said: “No wonder, Sir, that you are surprised at my errand here; you could not, indeed, but have a light notion of my prudence, when I spoke of going, at my years, to that far-off land. But I have many reasons, and some of them sad enough. These boys are two of five left by an unfortunate—a lovely—and my heart would say, my ever dearest daughter; I had but two—Mrs. Purl of the Horse and Groom, whom you know, was one of them. The eldest boy, though of a gallant and proud spirit, would not come in, for it molests him to think—poor tender lad!—of what is no fault of his, and yet the thought of hiding

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ourselves in Canada is the invention of his modesty.” “Hiding yourselves! Mrs. Paddock? what has happened, that you should ever think of that?” She wept profusely, and after a little space of time replied— “I am sorry, Sir, to be so troublesome, but it will not make you think less of us, to tell you all. I thought, however, you had heard of our dishonour. Alas! it is not the bluntest pang of such afflictions to fancy all the world sees the stain, as well as we ourselves feel it. Mrs. Purl, as you well know, is a good and kind wife and mother; I could never have had a more dutiful child; she was my second daughter. The mother of these children, was Eliza, my eldest: she was the flower of our village, but she fell, and I have never seen her again. Vain words, I see her ever still, blossoming in her beauty and innocence!” The tone of exquisite grief in which the old woman uttered this pathetic remembrance, I can never forget; she paused, and then proceeded. “He was a gentleman, and woe to me! she lived with him in shame many years, and was the mother of the five orphans. When he died, she was not forgotten by his brother the heir, but she lived not long after. What could I do? the children were Eliza’s, whom though I would never see while she was happy in her error, I could not but gather them—alas! Sir, it was under a widow’s wing. “I have brought them up; I have done all I could for them, and the eldest is now ready to go into the world; but in his father’s house he had grown familiar with gentility, and servitude—he has no other lot—he cannot abide, so we are thinking of going to America, for we have friends already in Ohio, that write enticing accounts of their prosperity, and Canada is understood to be a neighbour town.” I must let the reader imagine for himself the effect of this simple story upon me, for without well knowing what escaped from me, I said: “It was a wild thought at her time of life; could the lad not be better persuaded.” “Ah, Sir, I cannot urge him, and he has infected all his brothers with his pride; but if they had it not, good servitude is growing scarce in England, and Mr. Purl has his own sons to provide for.” It seemed to me that the simple expression “servitude is growing scarce,” was fearfully ominous of something fatal in the State. It accorded with what had been the tenor of my own reflections, when my spirits were languid, but I had recovered, and in my cooler

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moments it would have been considered as a morbid sentiment; at the time, however, its import was serious, and might have become solemn, had not my wife entered the room. “What’s this I hear, Mrs. Paddock?” said she; “and so ye’re thinking of crossing the seas too!—they are too well at home who think of that for a diversion.” “It may be so, Madam,” replied the old woman, “you know best your own feelings.” I was not ill-pleased at the retort, for Mrs. Corbet should have seen her distress; however, none daunted at the reproof, she rejoined, “They are indeed fond of an ado that seek to make one. And so those three boys at the door are your grandsons, are they?” “It is my misfortune and my pleasure to call them so.” I perceived my wife was in the wrong, but I knew that she would, as soon as convinced of it, make a liberal atonement, and therefore did not interfere. “But how was it,” inquired Mrs. Corbet, “that all the time we lived at Oakhill we never heard of this family?” Mrs. Paddock looked at me, as if to ascertain what I suffered, and then said respectfully, but with a slight inflexion of resentment in her voice, “Madam, I believe that in most families there is always something unfit to be made a boast of. You are a happy lady who have not yet known this—if you do not?” “Do you know, Mr. Corbet,” said my wife, a little bamboozled, and looking sedately at me, in evident confusion, “they say these obstreperous boys, and the three others, are the grandsons of Mrs. Paddock?” “I have been told so,” was my reply, affecting the most excessive meekness, but ready to bite off her head, as if she had been Mr. Macindoe’s gingerbread lady; and I gathered my brows at the same moment into a most appalling scowl. Mrs. Corbet saw at once her mistake, and turning towards the old woman, was greatly shocked to see her weeping grievously. To make, therefore, short work of the equivoque in our situation, I related gently the heads of Mrs. Paddock’s account of her grandchildren, and it immediately had the effect intended; my wife instantly forgot her apparent heartlessness, and sympathized with the poor old woman with more than her wonted benevolence. “But,” said she, “would it not be as much to the purpose, were Mrs. Paddock, instead of this Canadian adventure, to represent the

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condition of the poor boys to their uncle. He could do something, surely, for them?” “He never shall!” was the spirited answer; “if need be, I would go into the workhouse first. I am old and infirm, but not so old that I may not help their householdry. I will cross the waves with them—I’ll dive into the woods with them,—we’ll go together where we never have been known, and God’s blessing will go with us; for our purpose is honest, and the blessing will not be withheld if there be charity in Heaven. No, Madam, we are poor, but proud, and not more proud than just. I will not injure these boys, were their uncle to befriend them; but never will I ask the blood of their father for any favour, so help me thou living Lord!” And at these words, uttered with an indescribable energy, she fell upon her knees, and spread her arms, as if in imprecation, then paused, and rising, said calmly, “It would be to curse my Eliza’s children.” My wife stood petrified with consternation at her eloquence and energy, nor was I capable for some time to utter a word—the scene, the feeling, and the impassioned grief, surpassed all description. Its vehemence was the more impressive by the powerful contrast which it afforded to the pale thoughtfulness of the old woman’s calm habitual look. “You know not, lady,” she affectingly exclaimed, “the resolution of a mother’s heart, when she thinks of the dishonour of her child. Nineteen years have I passed in hidden sorrow, but nineteen hundred years will not heal the wound that ever rankles here!” and she smote her bosom at the same time with such an upward look of anguish, that Mrs. Corbet burst into tears and fell upon my shoulder. “I beseech you, Mrs. Paddock,” I exclaimed, “to repress these violent feelings; they are not seemly at your age.” “I know, I know it!” was her impassioned answer; “it is the outbreaking of nineteen years of secretly collected sorrow. I little thought to utter it in this world. Oh, Eliza! her fault will make the everlasting skies a mournful place to me!”

CHAPTER XXXII. the embarkation. The case of Mrs. Paddock and her grandsons is undoubtedly not common, either in the circumstances, or in such energy of character as that of the old woman. Of all those who have hitherto consulted me—no very wise proceeding on their part, when it is considered that I can have had no practical experience whatever on the subject—she has interested me the most. We have agreed that she and her family shall take their passage in the same ship. Perhaps I ought to add, that her resolution and feeling make her enterprise to me almost sublime. Her old age, her saintly countenance, the sentiment by which she is actuated, the youthful pride of the boys, the hazards to be encountered, and the object in view, are each and all affecting topics; and when I say so, the sympathy which they have excited in my wife shows how strongly they are calculated to awaken the benevolence of the heart; for Mrs. Corbet is not a person much disposed to enthusiastic sensibility; domestic and practical in all her ways, she yet feels not less excited, I verily believe, than I do myself. I have engaged for the voyage the cabin of the Mirimachi, Captain Binnacle, and Mrs. Corbet finds that besides our own family, Mrs Paddock may be accommodated also in the cabin. Her grandsons must rough it in the steerage—no great hardship to them, for since their mother’s death they have lived with the old woman, and their lot has been severe enough, but they are already prepared with a gallant stock of young cheerfulness for the voyage. It augurs well of their destiny. In my own family all is bustle and activity; the greater part of our luggage is embarked. We have not much; we trust on being able to supply ourselves in the country, and have only laid in those articles which our habits may require, but which are not to be found easily, as we are told, there. I have been a good deal surprised to learn from the Captain that we are not likely to have many passengers, notwithstanding the

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universally acknowledged distress of the times. But London is always the last part in the kingdom that suffers. It has so many resources of employment peculiar to itself, that visible distress is not observed in it until they are touched. Hitherto I have written these reminiscences of accident and feeling retrospectively, and although my stock of materials is far from being exhausted, I have now only detached notes to make, merely to keep up a connexion in the narrative, until I shall have been settled on our land. Perhaps it might be as well were I to suspend the story until that be accomplished; but we are in a crisis, and doubtless hereafter the record of the incidents of our adieu to London may amuse us in the forest. Mr. Ascomy has taken his farewell; I was not present. He submits, my wife says, with great tranquillity to the separation, confident that we shall soon tire of America. To the children he has given toys and good advices, in the most affectionate style of a grandfather expecting to see them at the next holidays. Alas! they part for ever! Captain Binnacle proposes to drop the ship to Gravesend the day after to-morrow. Mrs. Paddock and her grandsons go on board at Greenwich. I shall not therefore embark until the Mirimachi has reached Gravesend, as the old woman will, no doubt, be accompanied by her daughter, and it makes me melancholy to witness farewells. We are all ready—One of the Gravesend coaches takes us this afternoon. I think, as we have no baggage, that it is proper we should be there before the ship, in case something requisite for the voyage may have been forgotten: for our adventures after reaching America, I am assured by Mr. Lawrie Todd, we are amply provided. Why should a voyage of this kind fill me with more anxiety than when I sailed for Jamaica? Are we not going to our home? “Yes, to our long home,” says Mrs. Corbet. I could have wished she had employed a fitter phrase. I remember, when a boy at school, that a family of three generations emigrated from our village, a grandmother, the husband and wife, with several children. On the Sunday before their departure, they requested the prayers of the congregation, and were all in church; when the precentor read their request, they stood up. It was the day before I was sent to Glasgow, and Mrs. Busby, who was in the pew beside me, caused me also to rise. The prayers were ineffectual; the ship with all on board perished, and all the hope and expectancy of my youth are gone!

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We reached Gravesend last night, and when the tide serves we shall then embark. The day is lowering, and but for Mrs. Corbet, who visibly suppresses her own natural regret, I should not be in good spirits. The children are exulting with delight at the prospect of the voyage, and the young ones are courageously anticipating many a combat with the bears and lions, that are to be encountered in the American woods. We are now on board, and I should not have again opened my portfolio, but with all our care, Rory, our little dog, has been left behind; I trusted that one of the boys would have seen it safely on board, but it has been forgotten. We have, however, forsaken other things that ought to be lamented more, and yet I cannot describe how much this incident has molested us all. It gives, as it were, a form and body to our departure, and the children are sorrowfully wondering to each other what it will do, and where it may be pining. The tide is full, and the anchor is weighing. It mortifies me, I know not why, that I am thus sad, for in vain I seek to discover in all the corners of my recollection for one single object in the island that should make me wish I had not taken this decisive step; surely it can be no presentiment of disaster! It is felt by no one else on board; even Mrs. Corbet, who has left her father and sister, shares not to such a depressing degree this phantastical grief. To me, indeed, phantastical, for I have no cause. The evening is closed, and we see the Foreland Light on our starboard quarter. I have just left the deck. The stars are out, the wind is fair, and the land looms darkly—why should I be thus bodingly troubled?—Farewell, my native land!—England, good night—alas!

CHAPTER XXXIII. the iceberg. The voyage to Quebec was far different from that to Jamaica. We were among the earliest vessels of the season, but not so early as to expect so wintry a passage, as, according to Captain Binnacle’s opinion, we experienced. What increased our discomfort was the condition of the Mirimachi. She was called a “good ship” in the bills of lading, but as she proved very leaky, my wife most cogently observed, it was a shame and deception that deserved serious punishment—enticing honest people by false pretences to put their precious lives in danger. However, we reached Quebec, and certainly not without sufferings, both actual and imaginary. While in the Channel, and, indeed, until we had doubled Cape Clear, we met with no great cause of annoyance. The weather was bright and breezy, but much colder than I expected. The women and some of the children were of course sea-sick, and, had I not made exertions, I might have had a relapse of the “hypochonderics;” but sensible of the folly of giving way to aimless reflections, I struggled to find objects of interest in the occurrences of the voyage. I kept a log-book, more minute than that of the ship; took observations as often as the Captain, and found a strange pleasure in discovering that my schoolboy astronomy was at last of some seeming use. But the winds and waves were not disposed to encourage my studies in the nautical sciences; on the contrary, they were much too often in a state of turbulence, and we had a plentiful experience of squalls and storms, rattling hail and dumbfalling snow. As we approached the coast of Newfoundland the cold increased, though the year advanced; and what added to our chagrin, the wind was often so inclement, that when a fire was most needed, we could not venture, on account of the ship’s violent motion, to kindle one, and were in consequence obliged to sit all day chittering round the cabin-table, wrapped in the coverlets of our beds, like Capulets in their winding-sheets, gnashing their teeth at one another in the family vault.

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One evening it suddenly fell quite calm, as if we had turned a corner. We were still far from land. During the night the gloom increased, and, when the dawn of the morning should have appeared, it continued dark. The whole atmosphere was so thickened with the fog, that even at noon we were embarrassed as we walked the steady deck, such was the opaque and palpable obscure; and when the candles were lighted in the evening they burned dim and furry. Mrs. Corbet deserves credit for the ingenious simile by which she described their ineffectual lustre. “They are no better,” said she, “than fish heads in the dark.” During the day, in apprehension of falling in with other ships, we kept tolling the bell—sometimes the boys hailed with the trumpets, as if a sail were in sight, and although the sailors had work enough to do, so preternatural was the thickness of the air, they could do nothing. At sunrise in the morning, we had sailed out of the fog-bank, which then appeared like a stupendous chalky cliff, stretching across the ocean; but as the day brightened, a light breeze blew out, and it thinned without disappearing, till all the transparent East became as if it had been ground like the moon-shade of a lamp, preserving its outline as distinctly as real glass. When the sun at last shone over its edge, the glory was as dazzling as when he looks from the unclouded horizon of the ocean. Captain Binnacle, in thirty-nine passages across the Atlantic, had never seen such a phenomenon. That evening we had light airs and clear weather; but when the first watch was set, the wind came so sharply from the north, a fresh breeze, and so intensely cold, that the sailors said it must be blowing from an iceberg. Our chief comfort in this apprehension was that our course enabled us to bear away with the wind several points free. We saw, however, nothing, although the moon was high; but at midnight one of the men descried a brightening along the northern horizon, which left no doubt of the fact. An island of ice inflamed the imaginations of the passengers, and we all assembled with straining eyes on deck, and stood there shivering, without satisfaction, several hours; at last the brightness began to assume outline and features, and the wind rose as piercingly and rude as December, while the enormous mountainous mass was evidently nearing. By its apparent extent, the Captain conjectured we should pass to the windward of it without difficulty; but as it came nearer and nearer, the feeling of danger mingled with the chillness of the wind, and we beheld with awe and astonishment many streams of beautiful water leaping and tumbling from the cliffs and peaks, as it drifted in the sunshine towards us.

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The wind, as the iceberg approached, slackened, and we saw with the telescope, on a point that projected from the side, a huge white bear couchant, which the sailors said was watching for fish. No sight could be more solemnly impressive than the evidently advancing mass; at last it came so near, that we feared it would be impossible to escape. Our dread made every one on board silent: Mrs. Paddock, with two of her younger grandsons, seated herself behind the companion, and clasped them under her cloak in her arms. The vast peaks, cliffs, and pinnacles, were like a gorgeous city with all its temples and palaces, shuddering, as if shaken by an earthquake. The waters dashed from terrace to terrace, and every point and spire was glittering and gleaming with countless flames kindled by the sunshine. But it cannot be described. Terror confounded every one on board. A huge mass which projected far aloft, and almost already overhung the ship, was seen to tremble, and with a crash louder than thunder, it fell into the sea. The whole dreadful continent, for such it seemed, visibly shook. The peaks and mountains were shattered with indescribable crashing, and with a sound so mighty that it cannot be named, it sundered, as if several islands had separated, and we saw through the dreadful chasm a ship under full sail beyond, coasting the weather-side. Our danger was increased by the breaking up of that iceberg, which only multiplied itself; but the sight of the distant sail cheered our despair, and a slight change in the wind soon carried us again to a considerable distance; still the different masses floated in view, and all day long we had our eyes fixed upon them as they appeared to recede, fearful that another variation of the wind would bring them again around us. Afterwards we saw several other icebergs, but were not in danger from any again. Appalling as the fear of being crushed to atoms by the iceberg had been, we encountered in entering the Gulf of St. Lawrence an equal peril of as dread a kind. Several other vessels entered it along with the Mirimachi. The wind was easterly, and of course fair, but the weather was foul and sleety, and I observed a change in the colour of the sea, which, when the immense inland waters that flow into it at that place are considered, ought not to have surprised me. It lost its azure purity, and instead of becoming green, as in the British Channel, grew dingy and muddy. There was nothing in this which a very little reflection might not have explained; but my mind, naturally, perhaps, too apt to ponder

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on mysterious causes, regarded the phenomenon, so common where rivers diffuse themselves in the ocean, as a consequence of some great internal turbulence—an earthquake, or a deluge proceeding from the snows being suddenly melted by a volcano! In vain the Captain assured me it only exhibited the permanent local complexion of the sea. I was persuaded myself, however, that it arose from something portentous, and confident that it indicated some extraordinary event which had either taken place or was about to come to pass. My wife ended our controversy, by advising me to take a dose of physic; and yet that night a dreadful tempest gave credibility to my apprehension, and seemed to verify the omen.

CHAPTER XXXIV. a shipwreck. Six or seven sail entered the Gulf together. The wind was blowing a strong and steady breeze, and the Mirimachi, though certainly not a comfortable ship, and very leaky, was yet swift, and carried her canvass gallantly. A speedy arrival was, in consequence, cheerfully anticipated. Towards evening the wind shifted more to the North, and came in sudden violent squalls from off the coast of Labrador, accompanied with lavish showers of hail, while the sea dashed abruptly, and the heavens assumed a threatening aspect. We, however, had a rapid run, until we had passed the Magdalen Islands, and were beginning to congratulate each other that the dangers of the voyage were nearly over, when the mate announced that the Island of Anticosta was on the weather-bow, and lay black in the evening horizon, like a corse covered with a mortcloth. This dismal island was an object of dread amongst us. An old newspaper, which we found on board, contained an account of a shipwreck which had happened there the preceding year, attended with circumstances of horror that I shall not attempt to transcribe, and which rendered it, in consequence, a topic of apprehension among the children, in our conversations during the passage. An incident, at the moment when the mate announced the news, awakened all the anxieties which the story had inspired; for scarcely had he spoken, when a sudden crash of thunder, resounding with a long, vast, hollow roll, unlike the loudest peals we had ever heard, burst over our heads. In any place, and at any time, such a tumultuous congregation of dreadful sounds would have been appalling; but off Anticosta, which we regarded as a forbidden isle, and respecting which our imaginations were filled with terrific images, the effect was indescribable: we looked at one another as if the hazards of the voyage were only beginning. Conceiving ourselves safe in the American waters, we had all the afternoon been in uncommon good spirits, and, although the

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evening was rough and the skies sullen, undisturbed by any fear. But the name of Anticosta was portentous, and the deep, long rolling, sudden thunder, roused as an alarum, and we became instinctively silent. Some time after, another peal rattled, but in its noise less solemn, and to this succeeded tremendous rain, with a gust of wind, that blew several of our sails fortunately into pieces. “Had it not done so,” Captain Binnacle, when he saw them in rags, said, “God only knows what the consequence might have been!” Although the evening was wild and gloomy, the night was not so dark as we had feared it would be. The moon was at the full, and though not visible, her light, dim and ghastly, showed the outline and white manes of the waves, but the ominous island still darkened along the horizon. We, however, were proceeding at a dashing rate, and several of the ships which had entered the Gulf with us, were seen by the sailors through the intervals of the showers, close at hand. There was something like companionship in this, and though it would be difficult to assign any solid reason why it should have been so, we felt a kind of satisfaction in the thought. But the feeling was soon checked; for all at once—in a moment, the wind shifted into the South-west, and blew out a furious gale—and one of the ships to leeward fired a gun. I knew not what the signal intended, and there was such a bustle on our own deck, that it would only have troubled the Captain had I enquired. During the hazard we were in from the iceberg, old Mrs. Paddock was surprisingly calm, but manifestly in great anxiety. In this storm she was no less so, and collected her grandsons around her in the cabin, to which they had been invited by my wife. She leant on the shoulder of one of the elder boys, with the two youngest on her lap, as they all sat on the floor, and maintained the most serene tranquillity, while the ship was wildly plunging, and every thing not lashed fast was careering, as if instigated with life and rage. Mrs. Corbet, with my own children, had early retired to their berths, and were less alarmed than might have been expected; we had several times as rough nights before, but we had then also searoom, the value of which they were not sailors enough to appreciate. For myself, I am not ashamed to say that my courage, if I had any left, was rather a-kin to curiosity than to bravery. That dismal Anticosta, and the cannibalism of necessity by which its unblest shores had been rendered so frightful to the imagination, acted like sorcery

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upon me, warranting fancies wilder than the roaring tempest. In this crisis, the mizen-topmast was carried away, it was blown sheer overboard, but the rigging fell upon the deck, immediately over the cabin, with a shattered crash, as if the ship herself had been crushed. Mrs. Corbet and all her flock screamed from their cabins; the young Evelyns also cried in terror, and clasped their Grandmother, who, however, appeared self-possessed, and only said piously— “It is the will of Heaven.” Another signal gun was at the same moment heard, but farther off, and from the black shore of Anticosta. I ran on deck. “It is one of our companions on shore, or near it,” said Captain Binnacle; “The Benson of Liverpool. I thought, when I saw her last, she was too near that cursed island when the wind changed.” I could see nothing, and a third signal left us no longer in doubt of her doom; but there was no time then for reflection; a man on the forecastle cried “Land a-head!” I ran, not knowing what I did, towards him, and beheld a steep dismal promontory within a short distance. Captain Binnacle had followed me, and leaning over my shoulder, said, “I think we shall weather it.” “And if we do not?” cried I. “We are on Anticosta,” was his answer; “God help us!” In the same instant the blast came rushing along, the waves rose before it, and hurled us, as it were, to the rocks. I ran towards the cabin to share the fate of my family. The frightful tale in the newspaper flashed upon my recollection, and transfixed me to the spot before I could descend. “Better,” I exclaimed, “to perish, than survive to share that!” Forgetful I was holding by a rope, I clasped my hands in despair, and losing my hold, was flung by a lurch of the ship with such violence against a hen-coop, that I was stunned by the fall, and lay for some time senseless on the deck. When recalled to myself, which was not till some time after, I found the ship had weathered the precipitous rocks, and was anchored safe in their lee in smooth water. The day also was beginning to dawn; our comrade the Benson, which had been driven on shore, was wrecked and broken to pieces; the crew and passengers however were saved, and we carried them with us to Quebec.

CHAPTER XXXV. quebec. The morning after the storm was cloudless and tranquil. The wind came gently again from the north-east, slightly rippling the surface of the flowing tide, which carried us with an easy current towards Quebec. Next day we passed the Saugenay, a vast and comparatively unknown stream. We saw it at ebb-tide pouring its mighty waters into the St. Lawrence, and which are supposed in volume to be scarcely inferior, issuing from a region of hills and valleys, destined to become the home of many an outcast from Europe. As we approached the Isle of Orleans, the St. Lawrence contracted his banks, and the features of the country gradually became more distinct, surprising me with the appearance of a denser population than I had previously conceived any part of the continent of America yet exhibited. It was, however, but in a stripe of villages. The cultivation did not reach to any considerable extent on either side, and the northern mountains were still hoary with winter, save where here and there, to use the words of sabbath Graham, the Glasgow poet, a sweep in the hills opened “Some distant vista of her bright domain,”

and disclosed the remote and loftier summits which, instead of being capped with snow like those of Europe, were still dark with their original pines, as if none had fallen. When we came in sight of Quebec, we saw the celebrated Falls of Montmorency on our right; but I was more interested in the warlike and glittering aspect of the city, than with the magnificence of Nature. The hazards of a tempestuous passage had amply satisfied all on board that the crystalline peaks and mountains of even an iceberg afford but a cold prospect of pleasure, compared to the silvery spires and shining roofs of an hospitable town. The approach to this promontory-seated fortress in the evening, when the sun pauses in the horizon, exhausts description. The roofs

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and steeples, covered with tin, are then all gloriously kindled. The precipitous shores of Point Levi, and the upland country above them, calm in the sunshine, and thickly sparkling with the starry windows of scattered houses and churches, present a bright contrast to the opposite side, where the Chateau of St. Lewis, dark in shadow, and resembling the western view of Edinburgh Castle, stands in stern sublimity over the obscure masses of the lower town. I traced the wavy outline of the fortifications, enclosing the city, like a warrior’s belt, till it is knotted, as it were, at the citadel of Cape Diamond; and on the topmost corner I could discern the sentinel’s arms glancing as he moved to and fro in the setting sun. But from the great objects of this most picturesque of landscapes, my attention was drawn to the river below by the passing of a canoe, rapidly shooting across like a shuttle in the loom, the water-men singing in chorus; presently a steam-boat from Montreal came round a headland, joyously paddling, and the music of her fife and drum seemed to bid us welcome. Few of the ships of the season had arrived, but still the river had a gay appearance; numerous boats were flying to and fro; several surrounded us with Englishmen in quest of news, but the boatmen were in general Canadians—the simple, contented progeny of Jean-Baptiste, the best-disposed and best-bred commonalty in the world. Altogether, the evening of our arrival was delightful, and Mrs. Paddock, as she thanked Heaven for anchoring us after all our perils in safety, acknowledged that her lines had fallen in pleasant places. By the advice of Captain Binnacle, we did not disembark on the Quebec side, but went on shore to a comfortable hotel, near the landing-place at Point Levi; where the appearance of the house, and the obliging dispositions of the servants would have soothed us, even had the gratification of finding ourselves again on land been less vivid. But I ought to mention an incident which a little disconcerted my romantic mood at the time, and which certainly was in as perfect antithesis to an excited fancy, as one thing could well be to another. My wife, Mrs. Corbet, is, as I have already intimated, not distinguished for a poetical temperament. On looking at the glittering roofs and steeples of the city, she remarked that they were as beautiful as the pinnacles of the white of an egg dropped in a glass of water on Hallow e’en; alluding to the Hymeneal mystery practised on that anniversary, the holding of which, with all due ancient ceremony, I have taught to be a custom among my children. This was, to say the

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least of it, a bad enough comparison of great things with small; but when I explained to her that the brightness of the steeples and roofs proceeded from the tin with which they were covered, “Dear me,” said she, “they must just be like common coffee-pots and dish-covers!” I could make no reply to such disparagement; yet, nevertheless, we spent a cheerful evening, and enjoyed our entrance to the new world, as enlivened with happy auspices. Next day, our luggage, and Mrs. Paddock, with the young Evelyns her grandsons, were put on board the steam-boat, and I went to Quebec to arrange with an agent to receive and forward to Montreal the emigrants that Mr. Pullicate was to send to me from Glasgow. But with feelings of no considerable distaste, I found, notwithstanding the thousands of British emigrants that arrive yearly there, Government had no officer to assist them. It is surely deplorable, that all the prodigal expenditure which our Colonies occasion, should be exclusively applied to mere military uses, and settlers left in ignorance to search out their way to their intended location. Many thousands came out that season as helpless as wrecks cast on the coast;—had they been military recruits, instead of the ancestors of a future nation—Mercy on us!—could Joseph Hume count the cost of their attendants! Before leaving London, it had been determined that I should settle in Upper Canada, it was therefore unnecessary to visit the Surveyor-General’s office in Quebec; so that as soon as the little matter of business I had to transact was dispatched, I rejoined with my family our fellow-passengers in the steam-boat, and the same evening proceeded up the river. Considering the embarrassment which inexperience causes in new circumstances, it was an invariable rule with me to employ qualified persons on the spot to execute whatever was requisite, and in consequence, probably, my family and our protegés suffered less hardship in going up the country than other emigrants. It is true, that we brought more means with us to procure assistance than they commonly do, and perhaps I had been more minute in my previous inquiries; but still, nothing can excuse either the Supreme or the Provincial Governments for not having regular establishments to guide and aid those who, to the natural depression arising from their friendless condition, ever stand so much in want of counsel and assistance. It is not, however, my purpose to animadvert; but only, in faithfully reciting the progress of my own course, to afford to

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those who may follow, something like the instruction furnished by example. The poor emigrant must, I fear, still struggle with neglect; but those, the few and rare, who happen to possess some means, and who are competent to render information available—which is not always in the power of the best-educated to do—may possibly derive hints from this narrative that will not be useless. But I must resume the sequence and series of our adventures.

CHAPTER XXXVI. the boys’ tale. Soon after we had sailed past a kind of ordnance-wharf, a passenger pointed out to me the precipitous bank where General Wolfe led his army to the plains of Abraham above. While looking at this celebrated spot, two schoolboys, the eldest about fifteen, passengers going to Montreal, stood beside us, and listened with avidity to our conversation, so much so that their intense curiosity attracted my particular attention. But judge of my surprise, when, after questioning them on the subject, I found they were no less than the historians of the achievement. They had, it seems, gathered some traditionary circumstances concerning the conquest of the country, the impression of which had so excited their imaginations, that they were induced to weave them into a tale; and though the narrative be somewhat loose and desultory, the incidents are told with picturesque effect. Their notices of savage habits and fortitude are very striking, and have an originality about them, which could only have been derived from the Indians themselves. I made the youths not a little proud, by soliciting a copy of their joint production; and I have the greater pleasure in laying it before the reader, as we met with nothing in the voyage to Montreal equally interesting, nor observed any object on the banks of the river, (which are generally tame and European-like,) that in description would supply more entertainment, or better illustrate the character of the scene.

a tale of quebec. During the time when Quebec was invested by the English, a solitary canoe was seen softly gliding along the placid waters of the Uttawas, near its confluence with the St. Lawrence, containing three persons, an Indian and two Whites. The Indian, whose name was Yazoo, sat at the stern, and all were plying their paddles with unceasing rapidity. His companions alternately cast a look at the

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setting sun, and over the wide expanse of water they had crossed, but nothing seemed to disturb the gravity of Yazoo. The European seated at the prow, inquired of him in a tone which betokened anxiety, how long it might be before they would be out of danger. The Indian shook his head. They then pursued their course in silence, and entered opposite to Beauharnois the St. Lawrence, as the sun sunk in the horizon, burying the surrounding objects in the gloom of twilight. All appeared to increase their efforts, though without speaking; when suddenly Yazoo showed signs of uneasiness, though no sounds as yet broke on the ears of his companions save the mournful cry of the Whip-poor-Will, along with the roar of the far-distant rapids. A short time after a slight noise was heard from the bank, and Yazoo said in a low tone, “We must try the middle current of the river, as, from sure signs, I perceive that enemies lurk in the opposite woods, and that others are behind us.” On saying this, he turned the head of his vessel down the river; presently cries were heard from the shore, accompanied with the sound of the paddling of canoes in pursuit: the time was, however, in their favour, as the night was darkening every moment. The only guide their pursuers could have was the noise occasioned by their progress; and as each stroke carried them nearer the rapids, even that small guide was lessening quickly. Their adversaries, nevertheless, gained on them, and the only hope of escape lay in passing the rapids in safety. The roar was now so increased that they could hardly hear each other speak. Yazoo, however, made them understand that they might suspend their efforts and leave the management of the canoe to him. He now threw off all his former apathy, and assuming a more watchful attitude, rolled his eyes from side to side, and then fixed them steadfastly on the head of the bark he had undertaken to conduct. The other canoes had so far gained on them, that they were within range of their fire-arms, and after firing a few shots, Yazoo, to the surprise of his companions, uttered the war-whoop of his nation, which his enemies hearing, lost their wonted caution in eagerness to secure him; and continuing to pursue, soon came within the distance which excluded all possibility of escaping the rapids, when they too late endeavoured to rectify their error.

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Yazoo’s canoe, in the mean time, under the guidance of his skilful hand, kept on its way in safety; and when near the middle of the current, he said, “We are approaching a place which will quickly decide our fate;” and taking the paddle out of the water, ceased from farther exertions. The bark being left to itself, was borne on like a piece of cork, in an opposite current, which carried them in sight of the rising spray that marks “the split rock,” from whence these rapids take their name. He then seized an oar, and exerting all his strength, shoved the vessel into an eddy, and soon reached the shore in safety, where, after lighting a fire, they composed themselves to sleep. The other party not being so fortunate, were soon upset, and all drowned except one, who escaped by clinging to the canoe. After some time, Yazoo having arisen to mend his fire, and not having any fuel beside him, went a short distance to gather some, but perceiving an immense bear making up to him, he hurried back to his companions, and told them to make ready their rifles: saying this, he ran to the nearest tree, where the animal seeing him, tried to enclose him in his dreadful clasp, but he drawing his knife, plunged it into its breast. The bear feeling itself wounded, rushed to him with violence, and tearing him down, was on the point of killing him, when Williams, one of the whites, fired, and turned its rage upon himself, but, before reaching him, it fell from loss of blood, and was soon despatched. After this they were no more disturbed, but thought it advisable to be on their guard. Early next day they commenced paddling down the river; at length, Yazoo turned his canoe to land, and they continued their journey on foot. When they had proceeded several miles, they arrived at a spring, where Yazoo told them to refresh themselves, as he did not know how long it might be before another opportunity might occur in which it would be safe to indulge. In a short time they again commenced their march, but had not proceeded far, when he told them to stop, and having laid his ear to the ground, listened attentively some time, then starting up, made a sign to them to follow, and darted into the surrounding thickets. His companions found some difficulty in keeping up with him; but he seemed as if intimately acquainted with the neighbouring woods, which he threaded with amazing facility. Williams and Barkly, the two whites, were soon after alarmed by the sound of the cracking of dried twigs, some distance behind. Yazoo sprang into a small stream which was meandering amongst

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the brushwood near them, and motioned them to follow; but to their astonishment, he, instead of crossing it, commenced walking down its current, taking great care not to discompose any of the many branches which overhung their way. In this manner they proceeded some distance, where again leaving the stream, they continued their course on dry ground. As yet, Williams and Barkly had heard nothing of their enemies, who were led by the person that had escaped from the canoe, and who, when he reached the shore, went without delay to an encampment of his tribe, and informed them of what had happened, and of his own escape. Whereon it was determined, by an assembly of their chiefs, to send a party to intercept Yazoo and his friends on their route; a reward having been offered by the French for the scalp of every enemy, whether European or native. This was the party which was now in pursuit; but having arrived at the spot where Yazoo had entered into the water, they uttered a terrific shout on losing the trail, and at this moment it reached the ears of the terrified fugitives, who thought themselves discovered. But the Indian explained to them that the cry was not because they were discovered, but because their enemies were uncertain which way they had gone, and which might allow them to proceed some distance undisturbed; so saying, he continued his route with unabated speed, and the sounds of pursuit were soon lost behind. The other party was in the mean time engaged in endeavouring to find the way they had taken; till, after some consideration, it was resolved that they should divide, and that those who first found the track should give as a signal a loud cry, and then continue the pursuit: upon this, five went down the margin of the stream, and having come to the place where the pursued had left the water, soon perceived the marks of their footsteps, and giving the signal, followed on their track. Yazoo now informed his companions, that if they could reach a place where two of his tribe awaited their arrival, they would no longer fly, but turn upon their pursuers. It was then that they heard the cry which betokened the discovery of their path, and Yazoo told them, that they must not delay a moment, for their trail was disclosed, and that it would be madness to think of resisting with their inferior numbers. Sounds from behind were now heard, and the Indian urged them forward, by saying, that their lives depended on their speed, and that in a few minutes they would be in a state of comparative security.

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Their enemies, on the other hand, pressed on with great eagerness, encouraged by the knowledge that their prey was almost in their power; and the sounds increased so much, that the others were in doubt whether they should be able, eventually, to reach their friends; but just as their pursuers came in sight, they were joined by Yazoo’s companions, armed like himself, and the others retreated. Yazoo conversed apart with his Indians, in a language which neither Williams nor Barkly understood; during which he appeared to be vehemently urging something which his companions did not seem to like much, but in which, after some time, they appeared to acquiesce. He then addressed Williams, and told him that their enemies, who had just retreated, would most likely bring more of their companions to assist in destroying them; but that they, viz. himself and the other two, had resolved to retrace their steps part of the way, and lie in ambush. Upon which, they both expressed their wish to be of the party, and the place where they had left the stream should be the spot for the attack. After this, they returned as quickly as they could, and having hid themselves in the bushes, Yazoo told them to lay without moving a leaf, and to shut their eyes, as the eye was the thing first discovered. All being now prepared, they awaited in suspense the arrival of their foes, whom they heard advancing, by the splashing of the water. Yazoo slowly rising, crept behind a tree, and lifted his tomahawk to strike the first who should attempt to land, and who having now reached the landing, placed his foot upon the ground, and received a fatal blow on the back of the head. Two were killed by the firearms of the Whites; who, together with the Indians, sprang from the bushes, and made their numbers equal. The two parties now opposed to each other were inflamed with animosity, doubly heightened by their own private quarrels, and their having embraced different sides, the one the British and the other the French; neither, however, delayed the contest, but prepared to engage. Yazoo, casting away his bloody tomahawk, drew his knife, and closed with the one opposite to himself; his companions did the same with another. The Europeans, not well accustomed to Indian weapons and encounters, were not quite so quick, but they still showed not the least fear; on the contrary, they endeavoured to repair that disadvantage, by exerting themselves to the utmost. Yazoo’s antagonist, now thinking to finish the combat by a single

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stroke, stabbed at him, and missing, fell exhausted. Instantly, the knife of Yazoo was through his heart. Then, disengaging himself from the dead body, he went to the place where Williams was pushed to the last extremity by his opponent, but who with his assistance, soon ended the contest. At this time, a cry arose from one side, and on their turning to see the occasion of it, they perceived Barkly extended, apparently lifeless, on the ground, and one of the Indians running away, but pursued by the two others, who had overcome their own antagonists. On seeing this, Yazoo started in pursuit, leaving Williams to take care of his friend, who, upon examination, proved to be only stunned, and after a short time came to himself. Both then employed themselves in listening for sounds, which might betoken in which direction the chase had gone; but as no sound reached them, they began loading their rifles, and had just finished, when they heard a noise, and perceived an Indian rushing between the trees, but as he leaped over a large one, which lay across his path, Barkly fired, and shot him dead. The day was now on the decline, but still they purposed to continue their journey with the utmost haste. We must now pass over a week, during which nothing befell them, and they reached the point at Jaques Cartier in security. Proceeding from thence in a canoe to within a few miles of General Wolfe’s transports, they landed, intending to walk the remainder, as Yazoo informed them that he had some observations to make. It is time now to relate how these English happened to be with an Indian chief. It is well known how the English, having conquered all Canada, except Quebec, had besieged that city, the strongest fortress in America. General Wolfe being in need of Indian guides, and likewise hearing of the fame of Yazoo, who was on the side of the British, had despatched Captain Williams and Lieutenant Barkly to beg his assistance in his knowledge of the country; and as it might have excited some suspicion if he had sent an escort with them, they therefore volunteered to go unattended. But the French having found out this, and likewise the rank of the messengers, had despatched a party of Indians to intercept their course, which they endeavoured to do at the rapids, as described. After having arrived at the transports, Captain Williams took Yazoo to his own ship, while he went to apprise the General of his arrival; who sent an officer immediately to conduct him to his presence, where he addressed him thus: “Can you conduct a body of troops,” said General Wolfe, “up the

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cliffs, which now prevent our being on a more equal footing with Montcalm? if so, your reward shall be in proportion to your services. I know that the difficulties which will attend the enterprise are great, but it is necessary, and must therefore be attempted. But should you prove false, there is no medium: you must die the instant you are discovered.” At these words, the brow of the Indian chief grew dark, and his eyes seemed to flash fire, as he replied, “Do you think me a dog, to say one thing and do another? Such may be the custom of your people; but should an Indian be found guilty of a lie, his name would be quenched from his tribe. I am able to conduct brave men.” “I trust you,” was the answer; “and should you fall, your reward shall be to your nation.” All now was preparation for the landing, as soon as the result of the conference was known; and at the appointed hour, Yazoo having placed himself at the head of the party, they disembarked, and marched up with the utmost silence to the heights. Having led them some distance, he then told them to halt, and crept away from them: turning to the right, he disappeared for some time. When he returned, he informed them that they might proceed without danger of discovery, but that they must climb on their hands and knees; saying which, he led them in the same direction that he had gone before. After going up with difficulty what they supposed might be half the height of the bank, he paused, and raising his hand, armed with a gleaming axe, hurled it with great force into a thicket a few yards in their front, which seemed to be vacant; but a slight groan followed the noise of the tomahawk, as it cleft the air, and then all was still. Yazoo now motioned to advance; and to their amazement, they found themselves in front of a picket of the enemy, whom they took quite unawares, and thus possessed themselves of a narrow passage which led to the plains above. It was about day-break when they reached the level ground. General Wolfe now put his army into the order of battle to oppose Montcalm, (who was rapidly advancing to meet him,) and having placed himself at the head of his grenadiers, the battle commenced by Montcalm’s ordering his advanced-guard to fire, which was returned by Wolfe’s Highlanders. The battle now became general; and the English commander, as he rushed on, received a shot in his wrist, which, however, nothing deterred him, for he immediately wrapped his handkerchief round it, and remained at the head of his troops, and continued the battle, until he received another and more

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fatal wound in the breast, by which he soon after expired, but not till he had had the pleasure of seeing the French give way. At this moment Captain Williams came up to Yazoo and said, “I have lost my friend, your companion, who was killed by the first discharge.” As he was saying this, the French rallied a little, and fired two or three volleys: one of the straggling shot coming in their direction, struck Captain Williams on the left breast, who falling mortally wounded, said: “Yazoo, I feel I am dying, and it is but right that I should follow my noble General.” He then ceased speaking, and in a few moments expired. Yazoo returned to his tribe to brood over the fallen state of his nation; and as the war was ended, he became a father of his people, and died by the decay of Nature.

CHAPTER XXXVII. montreal. We disembarked from the steam-boat at Montreal, and after conveying my family, with old Mrs. Paddock and her two younger grandsons, to an hotel, I went in quest of a gentleman to whom I had letters of introduction, and by his advice applied to a forwarding-agent, to whom I consigned our luggage, and gave the same instructions as at Quebec, respecting the followers from Glasgow. By this arrangement, which was all effected in less than an hour, we were in a condition to proceed. The three elder Evelyns were to be sent on with the baggage, and their grandmother, with the two younger ones, I invited to accompany us in a stage-coach, which I hired for the purpose, to the village of Lachine, where the steamboat plies across the mouth of the Ottowa to Upper Canada. As it was early still in the day, and we were tired of sailing, it was agreed that we should dine at Montreal, and not proceed to Lachine till the evening. This afforded us an opportunity of seeing the city, and of supplying ourselves with several articles necessary to our woodland operations, particularly axes, which are said to be obtained better at Montreal than in any other town in the two provinces. At my wife’s suggestion, I also purchased a piece of the country-made cloth, which, though not commendable for the hue, was, as she observed, stout and well made, and would make comfortable forest-dresses, as trees were not censorious about colours or fashions. I mention these purchases, because I subsequently found we had been well advised in making them. And I also ordered to be sent along with our luggage, a variety of little household articles and groceries; we paid, however, their price, in so much, that I would advise the emigrants to whom such things are necessary, to bring them from England, for the carriage as far as Montreal is attended with no difficulty, and the transportation of them up the country is as easy as of the goods purchased in that city. But I did not greatly

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repine at this discovery; on the contrary, I regarded it as an initiatory fee—a just tax on my own ignorance, conceiving that my inquiries had comprehended every possible point of information and detail. The drive from Montreal to Lachine is by a well-made road. It would not have been thirty years ago accounted a bad one in England, and the stage-coaches are, for the length of the journey, really far better than I had been taught to expect; so that we reached the village, situated at the end of the Lachine canal, without detriment or danger. It is, however, at this village, that the emigrant bound to Upper Canada first begins to encounter the reputed difficulties. But these only materially affect the poor, for the modes and means of travelling, as I have experienced, though not comparable to those of England, certainly furnish no cause of complaint. To emigrants whose circumstances oblige them to ascend the river and rapids in batteaux, the hardships are often both serious and oppressive; but by those who can afford to avail themselves of the established conveyances for the mercantile travellers of the country, danger and hardship may be easily avoided. The inn at which we put up for the night, exceeded my expectations. It was in every respect not inferior to the generality of similar houses in the vicinity of London; certainly better than any tavern in the celebrated village of Brentford, or Greenwich, or Woolwich. Doubtless, it was not so well furnished in luxurious wines, but in all that a travelling family only halting requires, it deserves every reasonable commendation. We stopped at Lachine until the middle of the following day, by which time the batteau with our luggage, and the three Evelyns, arrived, and then we crossed the Ottowa by the steam-boat, where I engaged an extra stage-coach to carry us on to Coteau du Lac; at which place, we found another steam-boat in waiting, on board of which we instantly embarked for Cornwall. The weather, from our adventures off Anticosta, had been bright and genial. The aspect of the country appeared less wild, and more inviting than my information had led me to hope. The land began to assume a coarse resemblance to some of the woody parts of England; but in the passage from Quebec to Montreal, while it had much more the appearance of an old country, there was still some indescribable foreign look about every thing, constantly reminding us that we were in another than our native land. On the bank of the river, at the cheerful village of Cornwall, we found several stage-coaches ready to receive the passengers; but

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as we advanced, our anxieties increased, and the turbulence of the waters at the rapids, which we had seen in coming to this place, made us so fearful for the Evelyns and our luggage, that I began to think it would be judicious to wait until they came to Cornwall, though informed they would probably be several days. This intention, which I may say was accidental, proved fortunate; for on going to the tavern, I heard of a ready-furnished house, in which all my family and train could be accommodated for some time, and had almost determined to carry it into effect. Considering the apprehensions with which we were all still impressed, the information seemed, indeed, like a God-send, and I would have taken the house for a month, and fixed my family there, until I had determined the spot of our ultimate location; but on speaking on the subject with a gentleman of the country, whom I fell in with at the inn, he advised me to proceed to Prescot, at the head of the navigation, where I could be equally well accommodated, and from which I could with more facility regulate my future course. I am particular in mentioning this accidental intention, because the cheerful appearance of Cornwall is apt to allure emigrants to halt there, to which, after the voyage, they are naturally much inclined; and because I am disposed to attach considerable importance to the friendly disposition of the inhabitants to give strangers the assistance of their local knowledge and advice; especially as I began to discern, that although the information I had gathered previous to our departure from England, was not entirely erroneous, it was yet more applicable to a lower class of emigrants than we conceived ourselves to be. It corrected, too, the misconceptions of imagination, and by dissipating fallacious ideas of the sufferings we were to incur, stripped our undertaking of many fears. In all the course of our progress, I therefore, afterwards, made it a rule to throw myself in the way of the inhabitants, who, from their professions and vocations, were the most likely to have acquired some knowledge of the country; and I am persuaded, that from a systematic adherence to this simple rule, the journey to our destination was performed with comparative ease and comfort.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. canadian travelling. But although the road from Cornwall to Prescot is certainly inferior to the Bath and Brighton roads in England, we met, in the course of the journey, with no other accidents than such as might have happened on the best-made. Being light in luggage, one of the extras as they call them—that is a stage-coach hired for ourselves, easily took us all; and we were driven along in it as joyously as if we had been witches riding on broomsticks in a hurricane. The coaches in this country merit, however, a more particular description. They are vast curved-headed caravans, loosely suspended by enormous leathern straps, and seem to have been invented about the same era as the French jackboots. Capable of containing at least nine full-grown persons, Virgil’s white sow with young was not such a miracle as they are when crammed with children. They rattle along like a visible and embodied peal of thunder, involved with all sorts of violence in sound and motion. The boldest bang-up coachman from the White-horse Cellar or the Angel at Islington, would stand a statue of astonishment at the sight of their oscillations and balancing, with   “—Each particular hair on end

Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.”

Indeed no creature, lion, tiger, or bull-dog, equals in courage a Yankey driver; and the coachmen in Canada are all from New England. They flourish their carriages along through the dubs and pools and over the dry roads, like the directing genii of water-spouts and whirlwinds, themselves all the time as sedate as the stumps and roots amidst which they navigate. With the customary peril of neck and limb, we got underway, the children titillated beyond the power of complaining by the jolting. For some time all went well though not smoothly; the country was pleasant, and the houses, as we passed along, had something of an

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English air; but the universal snake-fences, formed of balks of cleft timber, have not yet conciliated my taste. On the one side rolled the majestic St. Lawrence, and from time to time its mighty rapids, tumbling, roaring, and tumultuous—horizontal cataracts—were objects of attractive admiration; and on the other the primeval forest, with a narrow strip of cleared land between, stood like the arborous wall of Paradise, with, here and there at long intervals, a narrow vista into the green Eden of new settlements beyond. The landscape is, however, solitary, and, to say the truth, is to the emigrant a little saddening. It lacks the social cheerfulness of villages; “The taper spire that points to Heaven;”

the gorgeous castle, the manorial hall, and the mouldering monastic piles of the olden time, which make the landscape of England, in the variety of its imagery, so like the associations of the English mind. In our raging vehicle we were driven like a tempest, and for at least thirty miles of the journey were so occupied with feet and fang in counteracting the jumbling, that I had but little time to be, as the Cockneys say in Scotland, “a-looking at waterfalls,” until we reached an inundation of low marshy land through which the road lay. The year being still young, the brooks and streams were overflowing with the melting of the inland snows, and the rains with which they had been succeeded. In consequence, the highways were in many places flooded, and in those corduroy passages, where causeways had been formed of trunks of trees, and were then covered with water, it required good pilotage to conduct the coach. In one place this was particularly the case, for we had considerably advanced through one of these temporary lakes, when, happening to look out at the window, I beheld the bottom deep beyond us, and the rim of the coach-wheel within a few inches of the end of the logs which formed the road, and which lay as deep as the axletrees under water. The slightest deviation would certainly have ended all our anxieties, and I confess that my fears of it, at the moment, had such an effect that I durst not turn my head, but called aloud in consternation for every one to sit still. We passed the Styx, [sticks,] however, in safety, and when we reached this side, I disclosed the peril we had been in, and exulted in our escape. But there was not much time for rejoicing; we had not come more than three or four miles farther, when we reached a broken bridge. It

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had been constructed with trunks of trees, like the corduroy-roads, resting on cross-beams. One of these had given way, and in consequence, the end of the others, the waft, as weavers would call them, had fallen down, and presented a fearful diagonal, the ends resting on the beams pointing aloft, and the others being sunk in the stream. The coach halted, and the driver coolly requested us to alight. To pass over seemed impossible, and we rejoiced that it was not night; but without heeding our remarks, the lad coolly begged me to get the ladies and the children over as well as I could, saying he would steer the coach. I looked at the place, then at the sedate driver, and anon at the hulk of a coach. The proposal seemed ridiculous, and I made no reply. Without more words, however, he went to the road-side fence and took off several of the rails, and laid them across the hollow over which the bridge had been; his passengers looking on, marvelling what would come to pass. In the course of a few minutes having thus formed a new bridge, he again mounted his box and drove over, to our applauding admiration, with the heroism of a warrior crossing a beleaguered ditch. Had he been an engineer, and the coach a cannon, he would have deserved mention in a Gazette-extraordinary, both for his courage and dexterity. Being again embarked, we proceeded to Prescot, which, saving these two great alarms, and an infinitude of smaller terrors, we reached in that evening soon after sun-set. At this town we considered the hazards of our journey and voyages from England to Upper Canada over. Before us, to Niagara, the navigation of the river and of lake Ontario lay open, either by schooners or by steam-boats; and we had only to pause for the arrival of our luggage and the Evelyns, before determining our ultimate destination. It was thus so far fortunate that we had come on instead of waiting at Cornwall, as I had proposed; for I found Prescot a much more eligible resting-place, and the proper point from which we could best start towards our location; moreover, I met there with several gentlemen interested in the commerce of the country, which centres there, as the chief landing-place, both for exports and imports, and learned from them a variety of information which tended to allay many apprehensions, and to give me still more correct ideas of the country, and of the course I should pursue.

CHAPTER XXXIX. colonial reflections. During the time we stopped at Prescot, I had different opportunities of correcting my hearsay information respecting the country, by the practical knowledge of the different gentlemen with whom I happened to enter into conversation. It seemed to me, although it is alleged that political dissatisfaction is indigenous to all colonies, that the Canadians, especially the inhabitants of this upper province, have less cause of complaint against the mother country, than she has with them. I speak of their respective people; for Canada, and indeed all colonies, are a burden on the British people greater than need be. I do, not, however, ascribe the fault to them but to the negligent colonial system of the mother country—if system it can be called, which is literally no more than the sending of troops to keep possession, and of making a few civil appointments for the sake of patronage. I heard many complaints made against the Provincial Government, but facts of misrule were not often adduced. From the scattered state of the population, magistrates—men dressed in a little brief authority—are necessarily numerous, and necessarily, from its kind, selected from a class sufficiently prone to play fantastic tricks. It must therefore probably be allowed that something of a meddling spirit is abroad; for few, either high or low, can imagine that there is any difference between the possession and the exercise of power. Justices of the peace may be said to be as numerous here as the constablery of an ancient kingdom, and the irksome evil of excessive surveillance cannot fail to be the natural consequence. But what chiefly interested me was the imperfect management exercised by the Imperial Government over this fine province. Yearly, thousands on thousands of emigrants arrive at Quebec; but such is the void of all arrangement, that these helpless shoals of British subjects are left to shift for themselves, and to wander up and down, as if the very apparatus of the state had been instituted only for the behoof of those who fill official situations.

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The blame which attaches to this condition of things cannot, however, be fairly imputed to the subordinate public servants. They execute their appointed duties, I doubt not, with diligence and honour, whatever may be occasionally said of them. The fault lies with their superiors. Why, for example, should there be such a total absence of all arrangement at home, that in the Colonial Office itself there is no department which can furnish the slightest information respecting the colonial lands open for settlement? And yet emigration, so long as we have colonies, ought ever to obtain no inconsiderable degree of attention from Government. The formation of an institution to supply this desideratum might be accomplished for little more expense to the nation than the cost of a single Master in Chancery. Let but diagrams and maps of the townships and colonies be lodged in every Custom-house of the United Kingdom, to be from time to time amended as the lots are successively taken up; the emigrant, by consulting them, would be enabled to make a contingent selection of his location before his departure, and much of that uncertainty would be obviated which hangs so gloomily before him as he quits his native land. Why, also, should not the colonial lands have a specific value set upon them?—but, instead of money-price, a labour-rate? Nothing can be more erroneous in principle, or jejune in conception, than the system in practice. For example, occasionally great public works are undertaken in the colonies,—such as the Rideau Canal in this province,—vast sums are drawn from the United Kingdom to pay for them; why, instead of offering them to be executed by contract, like the works in an old country, are the public lands not valued to those who receive grants, and so many days’ labour on such works required in lieu of payment? The main expense might be thus defrayed without touching the pocket of John Bull at all. But I may as well suspend these observations, particularly as it is not in Canada they could be rendered productive of any good effect. They apply to the management in Downing-street and the Ordnance Office; where, if things be conducted with promptitude and regularity in the old way, every thing is supposed to be done that can be required; as if the departments of Government were exonerated from all obligation to introduce new methods into their routine, or to render their system more efficacious. end of the second volume.

BOGLE CORBET; or,

THE EMIGRANTS. “Truth severe by fairy fiction dressed.”

BY JOHN GALT, Esq. author of “lawrie todd,” “the life of lord byron,” &c. &c.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. III.

LONDON: henry colburn and richard bentley, new burlington street.

BOGLE CORBET; or,

THE EMIGRANTS. CHAPTER I. proceedings. Being informed that several days would probably elapse before our luggage could reach Prescot, I was induced to make a temporary arrangement for my family remaining there, while I proceeded to York by the steam-boat, to determine my future location, as the inhabitants of the country call the spot on which a settler fixes himself. Now that the country has been surveyed, the necessity of this journey to the Surveyor-general’s office was not very apparent. It would be more convenient to the public were there District Offices, to which strangers, as they proceeded, could apply for locations: but as I have said, I came not to Canada to turn politician, and should therefore avoid observations for the public good, lest they be regarded as seditious offences. Previous to parting from Eric Pullicate in Glasgow, I had in some measure arranged to settle in the township of Nox, but I could gain no other intelligence respecting it at Prescot, than that it lay somewhere in the rear of the Home District. My reason for preferring Nox, was partly because some of Mr. Pullicate’s radical friends had written to him favourably of the soil and climate, and that they only wanted a gentleman with capital to come among them, who would take a magisterial interest in their general affairs. But in ascending the St. Lawrence, as the steamer passed the lake of a Thousand Islands, I was a good deal shattered in my original purpose by the beauty of the scenery, which, as the vessel in her course meandered

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among the islets, opened innumerable vistas of pleasing nooks and sylvan bowers, beautiful as if they had been the artificial ornaments of some Blenheim or Stowe, adorned by a Capability Brown, and not the unpremeditated graces of Nature in her playfulness. My reverie, however, and all the towers and temples I was busy building on the rocky capes and piny promontories, were suddenly blown into the air, by a Yankey passenger saying to me, guessing the visionary tenour of my thoughts, “Well, dang me if that ben’t the most ridiculous cast-iron land ever I seed with bush on’t!” And the truth was so; for, except in a few places, the picturesque in that romantic wilderness of cliffs, and trees, and glassy waters, is certainly obtained in contempt of all profitable beauty. But still, to the way-faring voyager, in the calm of a bright morning, it is a delicious landscape, and the cheerfulness is often enhanced by the appearance of a deer swimming from one island to another. At Kingston we stopped two or three hours; a pleasant, thriving, market-looking town, with, however, something not altogether of an English aspect, arising from the naval-yard, and the fortifications which overlook them. Here again I grudged in a malcontent humour that the Land Office at York was so far off; making, as my Yankey friend said, “the immigrant prejudice himself whether or no.” But my spleen was alleviated by a gentleman whom we took on board here pointing out to me, soon after the steamer was again under weigh, a small tree on the shore, under which, tradition says, Moore composed his song of “The Woodpecker.” Objects of this kind give an indescribable charm to the landscape, and especially in America, where the scenery as yet cannot furnish many such talismans to command the genii of memory and fancy. We had from Kingston to Little York several passengers, but few of them bore the impress of any character. They were of a sedate and ruminating habit, much like Englishmen in appearance, but more languid in manners, and less decisive in conversation; not discriminating with so much accuracy the difference between a credible notion and a fact. This, however, is my opinion of the Upper Canadians in general, and perhaps, though it then struck me as peculiar, it may have come more from a wish to discover some national characteristic in them, than from the thing itself being remarkable. When we describe in retrospect our first impressions, we are little aware how much they have been insensibly modified by intervening circumstances.

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We reached York the day after leaving Kingston, and having received the address of a land-agent, I immediately proceeded to his place of business, and got him to accompany me to the Surveyorgeneral’s office. In a short time I made my selection of six lots, or twelve hundred acres, in a block, in the ninth concession of Nox. There were several other detached lots of two hundred acres each, in the same township, which Mr. Rampart, the surveyor-general, a white-haired, corpulently-inclined old gentleman, of mild and obliging manners, kindly agreed to reserve for my Glasgow followers until I could let the agent know of their arrival. It is but an act of justice to speak of that respectable officer with sentiments of great esteem. His suavity and willingness to oblige, made indeed a lasting impression upon me, and which was the more emphatic, as I heard in coming along, that the emigrants often complained of their treatment in his department; whereas I could see that they were themselves the cause of all the inconvenience they suffered. Emigrants being chiefly persons little accustomed to official business, like all such, do not sufficiently respect the indispensable forms of office, and those observances of routine which regularity requires, imagining themselves not regarded with sufficient consideration, when it is their own importunity and want of knowledge that constitute the fault. They should always avail themselves of local aid and advice, and ever consider that the business they have to transact, although an exception in the tenour of their lives, is the daily and constant trade of those with whom they have to deal. Were they sufficiently impressed with this, much heartburning would be avoided; and instead of seeing any grievance in the strict enforcement of official rule, they would discover that the temporary inconvenience which it sometimes may occasion to an individual, is amply compensated by the general good effects that flow to the public. When I had finished my business with the Surveyor-general, the agent conducted me to an inn, called the Steam-boat Hotel, the first I visited on the western side of the Atlantic, apart from my family. As it afforded me a view of habits and manners considerably dissimilar to those of England, I shall describe it for the benefit of my friends in the old country; and should any of them have the good fortune to fall in with this book, I beg them to recollect that the accommodations of a Canadian hotel should be as interesting to Englishmen as a Turkish khan, or a Persian caravansari.

CHAPTER II. an inn. The Steam boat Hotel, a raw, plank-built house, with a double veranda, fronts the harbour. The guests consisted of certain permanent boarders and accidental travellers, who, with visitors, their friends, all mess at one common table. On this occasion the dinner-party consisted of seventeen, the majority of whom, being inhabitants of the province, had generally that peculiar lassitude of manner about them, which I had remarked in the passengers by the steam-boat. They consumed the viands in silence, with an earnestness that betokened the sincerity of their appetites. But although taciturnity was the prevalent characteristic of the company, I observed two conspicuous exceptions: one of them, an old shrewd Scotchman, by his accent from Renfrewshire. Like all his countrymen of the same grade in station, he garnished his dry remarks with humour; liable at first to lead his auditors to undervalue their justness. I gathered, from a jocular conversation he was holding with the other gentleman, that he had been something of a radical in the old country, but that in coming to this, he had been converted, as he said himself, into more “rationality;”—a natural effect of Colonial circumstances, where persons in authority, being more on a par with the other inhabitants than those at home, are, in consequence, regarded with less respect, and their “phantastic tricks” spoken of with keener resentment, even when their conduct deserves more indulgent consideration. His heart was evidently in the old country; and from the feeling alluded to, he described the ascendant influences of the colony as of a far inferior kind to those which affected the condition of the people at home. His friend was still more distinguished; one not easily described, without employing terms and tropes of exaggeration. He had manifestly inherited from Nature some excess of drollery, and conscious of this, had himself a vivid enjoyment in overcharging even to caricature his own eccentricities, in order to witness their effect on others. In sooth, one of those—rare and few—whose

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companionship is always in request, and who contrive under rough, I would say shaggy manners, to have the gentle feelings, sometimes wanting where there is more apparent delicacy of behaviour. His appearance was grotesque in the extreme; large and inclined to corpulency, his ruby visage, speckled with musquito bites, bore plentiful signs of a predilection for snuff; and when doing his part, though the innate man would sometime more mildly kithe, ludicrously emphatic. To describe him picturesquely, he was a burning volcano, red-headed and roaring. While the ordinary guests remained at table, he was visibly acting; and even when they withdrew, which was immediately after the tablecloth, he still continued to indulge his diverting extravagance; but when, at last, only his Scotch friend and myself remained, on learning that I was a new-come emigrant, he appeared a different individual, possessed of sagacious discernment and good practical knowledge; better acquainted with the country than any person I had yet met with, and fostering in himself absurd antipathies against the Celtic settlers. “’Deed, Doctor,” said his Renfrewshire neighbour, “I’ll no’ alloo that; the bodies are weel enough for Highlanders; among folks that wear kelts, ye canna expect to get breeks for the borrowing. Their wants were but few before they came to Canada, and if they get as good here as what they were used to among the hills and the heather—and they get far better—ye should no’ be so unreasonable as to expec’ the’ll be overly industrious anent improvement.” “Yes, but I would not,” replied the Doctor, “let emigrants of the same sort of splendid propensities for dirt and indolence settle in clouds and blots; I would scatter and mix them. Card the Irish, and your own Paisley bodies, with the Highlanders, and ye’ll have a prosperous settlement; but if ye set a squad of either down by themselves, ye may as soon expect water per se to make itself grog, as them to do any good:—no; society never betters itself without new ingredients;” and turning to me added, “I would advise you, Sir, to look well to this, and not locate yourself where the settlers are all kith, kin, and kind.” I then told him where I had pitched upon my land, and inquired if he knew the spot; but the Deacon, as he called his friend interrupted him, saying— “Od, Doctor, that’s where Robin Sneddan’s gane; they’re a’ douce and weel doing there.” “But they are all cotton,” cried the Doctor; “they are all of a sort;

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they just know that they need something to help them forward, but they cannot tell what it is. Had they but a boat’s crew of sailors among them, weavers as they are, they would thrive like a house on fire.” The Doctor was obviously of opinion that friends and neighbours should not settle in community, but should mix themselves with strangers; a notion so much at variance with my preconceived notions, and so different from the common idea in England, that I begged he would explain himself more particularly. “I jealouse,” replied the Deacon, rather a little intrusively, “that it’s an effec’ of their being a’ alike, Joke-fellows in ignorance, or, as a body may say—” “He’s a Paisley body,” said the Doctor aside to me; but his friend, without being disconcerted, added, “The sleights needful to earn a living in the wood require different hands.” “None of your words of course, Deacon,” interrupted the Doctor; “it is not so easily explained as described. I only know, that where emigrants of different degrees and trades mingle, they do well, and every thing about them becomes promising; but go to the Eastern district, there you shall see the Celtic savages as elegantly in the husk, as if they were still doing St. John Long on themselves among their native rocks. They sit all day in the sun, groaning to each other, “Thank Got we are true clansmen, though we pe in Canada, och hon, umph!” and he subjoined, I can endure to look at the old people sticking fast in their prejudices, but the young sons of guns are abominations; Ben Nevis and Ben Cruachan are as likely to grow up among them, to a moral certainty, as any good while they continue to do exclusive, as they have hitherto done. We continued in this desultory conversation during the whole of the evening, and gleaned a number of hints, which convinced me, that I had underrated the privations to which I was about to expose my family; on the whole, however, I collected, as it were, fresh motives to encourage my exertions, and yet I returned to Prescot perplexed and dismayed. Habit and education had, as Eric Pullicate alleged, unfitted me to contend successfully with the difficulties of a woodland life; difficulties which the emigrant must resolutely nerve his spirit to encounter; and thus, though I could discern no reason to regret the step I had taken in coming to the colony, I was quickened into anguish by reflecting on the sacrifice I had made—a sacrifice for my children, an elevating duty! The advantages would be

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theirs, and this prospect was consoling; but the strong impression I had received of the toils to be endured, ever and anon reminded me that I had undertaken a laborious task late in life. In a word, when I rejoined Mrs. Corbet, she saw that I was troubled, and had the good sense, when I recounted my anxieties, to make light of them; she was only however, in her ridicule, disguising her own fears. But to proceed.

CHAPTER III. a mutiny. On the second day after my return to Prescot, the boat with our luggage and the three Evelyns arrived; and by the post of that day, I heard that the Glasgow emigrants had, after an uncommonly short passage, reached Quebec. Thus all my concerns were brought quickly to an agreeable issue. I had provided a suitable location in good time, and every thing promised so well, that I then chartered a schooner, belonging to the town of Dundas, at the head of Lake Ontario, to take my own family and the whole of the party, to the mouth of the Debit river, from which I was informed, that transportation to Nox, where our lots lay, would easily be effected. But this arrangement, which with our means was the most eligible, had nearly been defeated by the emigrants from Glasgow; who, when they reached Cornwall, were enticed by some Americans to think of preferring the United States, and I was obliged myself to go to them; for Mr. Pullicate having informed me that they were all unexceptionable characters, and that several among them were young men possessed of more than a common share of talent, I was loth to let them pass from me. I reached them just in time, for those who had yielded themselves to the persuasion of the Americans, and they were the very men to whom Mr. Pullicate had directed my chiefest attention, were assembled on the margin of the river, and waiting for a boat expected to ferry them across. The others were standing around, and their baggage, consisting of a miscellaneous collection of all sorts of household furniture, lay on the grass in readiness beside them. The party, with their wives and children, consisted of thirty-one souls. The men, with only one exception, were in the vigour of life; and the old man, who had two sons, was still a hale, sagacious carl, and, as one of the Americans said on observing me looking at him, “had ten years of a young man’s might in him.” One of the emigrants having seen me in Glasgow, informed the others who I was; and James Peddie, the old man, whom they called

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captain, after speaking with a group of three or four apart, came towards me. “We’re thinking, Sir,” said he, “that maybe ye’ll no objec’ to our going o’er the reever, although we took upon oursels wi’ Mr. Pullicate a sort of an obligation, by word of mouth, to put our concerns in your hands.” I informed him that I could not possibly consider them as bound to me, longer than they found it their own interest to be so; but that before changing their original intention, they should make themselves better acquainted with the state of the two countries than they had yet an opportunity of doing. “Your observe,” replied Peddie, “is no far from being judicious; but these American gentlemen have behaved to us in the most civileezed manner; and we have a notion that we’ll make a better o’t in their free country, than by living in the hot-water of a constant controversy here, like the other misgoverned inhabitants of Canada.” “You are very right,” was my answer, “to go where you will be happiest; but you, a man come to years of discretion, should not hastily cast away one good chance before you are sure of another. I have fixed on locations for you all in the neighbourhood of my own, and I have received the best assurances that the township is pleasant, and well-watered; moreover, I have a vessel hired at Prescot that will take us all within a day’s easy journey of our land.” “Weel, that’s just as Mr. Pullicate assured us ye would to a certainty do. But we have left our native land, and ye canna but think that we hae a right to choose a better—and this gentleman has been telling us that every residenter in the States has the privilege of a hand in the Government, which, considering what we have suffered from the want of that at home, ye will alloo is a fine thing, and well worthy of a consideration in an o’er-sea flitting, like what we’re come upon; over and above all, they tell us that work is rife among them, so that as we are but laborous men, our prospects are better in the States than we are well convinced they can be in this country.” I perceived it was of no use to argue with him, though he was regarded as the orator of the party. I saw, indeed, that he was leavened with the radical leaven, and like all those who are so, though not unplausible, self-willed and witless at bottom; so I turned round to his companions and said, “I am sorry, men, to hear you have become unsettled in your purpose; and that although the road be clear before you, and as good accommodation provided at the end of it as you could expect, better

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indeed than you had any reason to hope for, you will hazard yourselves in seeking for an unknown good. But permit me to say, as your friend, that you have it at all times in your power to go over to the United States; and it would be more consonant to what I have heard of your general prudence, were you to make a trial of your original intention in coming to Canada, before going to the States; for if you go there first, and then come back here—” “We’ll have gone a gouk’s errand,” said one of the young men, a smart decisive fellow, about twenty-five years of age; and taking his child from his wife, who was sitting on the grass with the baby in her lap, he added, “Go who may to the American side, I have come to try this country, and Mr. Bogle Corbet speaks common sense.” His example produced an immediate effect on the others. Those who had resolved to go with the Americans divided themselves presently into two parties, and some altercation took place between them. James Peddie urged the political advantages of preferring the States; but Andrew Gimlet, the brisk carpenter, derided his argument, and finally succeeded in convincing all but the old radical that their first project was the wisest, especially as I had taken the trouble to look after them. During the altercation, the American boat arrived, and the two young Peddies embarked their own and their father’s luggage, while he, somewhat sullenly, bade his companions adieu. “We’ll hear of you in the newspapers,” cried Gimlet, as the boat pushed off: “yon will be a prime speech that ye’ll make in Congress some day!” Afterwards, I had no farther difficulty; I returned by the stage to Prescot, appointing Gimlet the leader, on account of his native decisive shrewdness, and from a feeling of obligation to him for the manner in which he had ended what might have proved a vexatious business. They soon followed in the batteaux, and by the time that the schooner was ready to carry us to the Debit, they had all safely reached Prescot. But it is proper to be remarked, that although the pause and hesitation at Cornwall occasioned vexation at the time, it did not surprise me. I had been well warned to expect something of the sort, as a common occurrence among emigrants; altogether in consequence of there being no properly accredited officer to direct them when they reach those points and places where, by the previous effects of the voyage, and that undetermined state of mind common to all men on entering upon new scenes, they are most easily seduced to believe a fair tale.

CHAPTER IV. canadian salmon-fishing. We reached the mouth of the river Debit in the schooner without much difficulty. In our passage, the wind being off the Canada shore, we were enabled to keep close to the land, and it was interesting to observe with what avidity the eyes of all the emigrants were turned towards it. The general feeling was undoubtedly tinctured with anxiety, but there was a willingness to encourage hope in every bosom, that on several occasions was even affecting. The few-andfar-between cultivated spots, seemed at times to have the effect of deepening the monotony of the woods; but whenever a column of smoke was discovered, the intensest watchfulness was directed towards it, and if it ascended from a habitation, the children shouted with joy. It is unnecessary to describe the conduct of my companions more particularly; I do them only justice when I say it was marked by patience and good sense. But the women, forgetful that I was as ignorant of the country as themselves, annoyed me now and then with idle questions; and Mrs. Corbet was molested in her reflections by the loss of a box of thread and needles, which she had brought on board in her own hand, but where she had laid it could not be discovered. However, it was found at last just as we came to anchor. It was in the evening, so late that I considered it unwise to think of landing that night, our lodgings in the schooner being probably as good as we could expect to meet with on shore. In other respects we were in extreme good luck. It was then the salmon season, and vast numbers of fishermen and Indians, with boats and canoes, were assembled waiting till night-fall. As they had carts in attendance, I easily engaged several of these to take our luggage in the morning, to a tavern described to me as situated on the border of Nox, and not more than seven miles distant from our main location. The night proved exceedingly serene and beautiful, and when the fishermen lighted their torches and began to spear the salmon, it is

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impossible to conceive a livelier scene. The plunging of the spears into the water had something musical in the regularity with which it was performed, and the silent, animated attitudes in which the men stood, as they prepared to throw the spear, strongly illuminated by the glare of the torches, suggested fanciful ideas of bronze statues in a gallery, and magical transmutations into stone, of warriors in the action of battle. The banks of the river were also picturesquely brightened, and the different lights and shadows on the rugged land, ever changing as the torches moved, was often surprisingly curious in the different forms they evolved. At one time, by some accidental combination of the lights, the outline of a stupendous black cow was seen by all on board, to the infinite delight of the children; but while all were gazing, it seemed in an instant to fall on its back, and its four legs took the shape of towers, and its body the masses of a feudal castle. The remoter coast was studded here and there with fires of a broader brightness than the flickering of the fishers’ torches; and an occasional voice, rising in shout or signal, with now and then the barking of a dog, combined to produce an excitement of pleasure, the more vivid as the circumstances were not only new, but heightened in their effect by the previous languor and longing experienced in the voyage. I need not add that we all fared sumptuously at supper; the slaughter of the salmon was that night miraculous, amounting to many thousands, which in the morning enhanced the value of the carts and waggons, insomuch that I was compelled to pay double for those I had hired; we were, however, all in good spirits, and the emigrants, following the teams towards Nox, went on their way rejoicing. I did not, however, immediately proceed with them, but allowed the main body to advance before my detachment, which consisted of my own family, with Mrs. Paddock and two of her younger grandsons. One of the waggons was appropriated for their conveyance; and it was proposed to me by one of the fishermen, that as we were too numerous to be comfortable in the tavern, I ought to stop short of it, at a house and store which he described to me as likely to afford more eligible accommodation. Suggestions and hints of this kind are always deserving of attention, and in this case I was amply repaid; for we were not only hospitably received by Mr. Peabody, an American, but I found him disposed to sell his farm, which, although distant at least ten miles from my own land, was partly cleared and

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fenced, and the house was capable, by a little addition, of being rendered a suitable residence. I was the more inclined to listen to his terms, as I felt at the time a strong reluctance to entering the wild forest. Accordingly, without fatiguing the reader with the details of our bargain, the farm was mine next day, and my family settled at once, far more happily than we had any reason to anticipate. I thought myself singularly fortunate in the purchase, and certainly I had not much reason afterwards to repent of the haste with which it had been effected; but I found that, perhaps, I might otherwise have done better, and therefore I would advise other emigrants not to be quite so precipitate; for in this country local attachments scarcely exist, and there is not a farm that by a little judicious negotiation may not be obtained. Land in Canada is a commodity as vendible as any other merchandise; but we bring with us Old-World notions, and require to be some time in the country before we become properly sensible of the fact. In one respect, also, I suffered some molestation in the purchase, which would have been avoided had I been less anxious to fix my home. Mr. Peabody had not been very prosperous as a store-keeper; he had incurred debts for which he was often annoyed, and had for some time meditated to shun them by retiring back to the States. Of this I was not, of course, aware, but on the contrary conceived that the alacrity with which he got the title-deeds prepared was altogether owing, as he professed, to his wish that I should feel myself settled. But when the deeds were signed, and the money paid, he suddenly—as the people in the country say—“cleared out,” and left the store unheeded behind him, which led me into some embarrassment with his creditors. In the end, however, after some little expense, I got free from the perplexity; and, indeed, I was told by a neighbour, that I might have had no perplexity at all, if I had only maintained, which he said I easily could have done, that the goods in the store were part of the purchase. But I was not then aware of the true nature of occidental morality, and it was but fair that I should suffer for my ignorance.

CHAPTER V. the bundle of sticks. In the mean time, while I was engaged with the transactions in which my purchase from Mr. Peabody had involved me, the Glasgow emigrants had proceeded to the tavern, and as a preliminary to determining the course of their future proceedings, I had authorized Andrew Gimlet to send out with country guides two or three of the men to explore a proper situation within my twelve hundred acres for a village. Reflection on the effect and situation of towns in the old country, as well as the best information to be obtained respecting the system adopted by the Americans in settling their wild lands, has persuaded me, that the first effectual step in colonization is to plant a village. The determination to commence by doing so had been fixed before my departure from England, and was known to the friends of Eric Pullicate, as my intention. Indeed, the plan is so obviously judicious, that two opinions cannot be entertained on the subject; for we see it is from towns in all countries that cultivation proceeds; and history, in describing the colonies of antiquity, distinctly shows that the first object was ever the choice of a proper site for a fortress or a city. On the third day after our arrival at Sylvany, as the farm I had bought from Mr. Peabody was named, Andrew Gimlet with two companions came with an inviting description of a situation they had discovered on the banks of a considerable stream which crossed my property, but also with a representation on behalf of some of their associates, that they did not think the beginning with a village was so good as the practice of the country, where every man worked for himself on his own farm. The vexation which this latter intelligence occasioned, counterbalanced all the satisfaction which the former was calculated to inspire; for I saw, if the party broke up, the prospect of general success would be darkened. Accordingly, after reflecting on the communication, I resolved at once to remonstrate with the malcontents.

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We had only three miles to walk, but it was so late in the afternoon before I could set out, that I resolved not to return that evening, but to proceed next day on to the spot determined for the town. On reaching the tavern, I found the mutiny in a worse state than I could have imagined. The society, on quitting Scotland, had agreed to live in community; but the difference in opinion which had arisen as to the mode of settlement, had dissolved their connexion, so that before I reached the tavern they were already parcelling out their means. On seeing me, however, they suspended the task. In front of the tavern a considerable space was cleared; a few of the roots and stumps still deformed it, and the sign swinging on a mast stood in the centre of the space. After a few civil inquiries respecting their different families, I collected the whole association, young and old, wives and mothers, around me, and told them of what I had been informed. “Many of you,” said I, “must have heard the story of the old man and his sons with the bundle of sticks—apply it to your own case. If you separate in the wilderness, you will soon find yourselves as weak as each of the several sticks when the bundle was loosened—but if you adhere to each other, your united strength will effect far more with less effort than your utmost separate endeavours. In sickness, and in accident, you will have friends and helpmates at hand. You will be spared, while you continue together, from that sense of forlornness to which the solitary tenant of the forest is necessarily exposed, and which, as you must all have heard, is so dismal. Besides, by beginning with a town, you follow the course of Nature, but in scattering yourselves abroad in the forest, you become, as it were, banished men. You will take upon yourselves a penalty and suffering, such as only rejected culprits should endure. I beseech you to think well of this—a single family, the most numerous and strongest among you, will be several days in constructing a permanent habitation. If the ague fall among you, what is to be done to provide the needful shelter for the sick? whereas, if you continue together, your united exertions will serve in a short time for the construction of an asylum for all, and your toil will be enlivened by society.” I soon perceived that in this short address, some effect was produced. The division of the goods was not renewed, and several of the gravest and most influential characters of the party consulted together, but no communication was made to me. The axes, nails, and spades, which I had purchased and brought from Montreal, laid

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aside from among their own things, lay undisturbed on the ground, and it was manifest that their minds were unsettled. I kept myself aloof, both because I was vexed and angry with them, and because it would evidently have been imprudent, in the wavering temper of their inclinations, to have attempted to bias them farther. Andrew Gimlet, with his friends, who had been of the exploring-party, were decidedly for my plan. When about an hour had elapsed, the women separated themselves with their young children in their arms, and others at their feet, and held a convention of their own, in which, from the vehemence of their gestures, it was evident that their feelings were deeply interested. After they had deliberated some time, two of the most matronly came to me and inquired, on behoof of the others, in what way, if they scattered themselves, they would be supplied with provisions for their families. My answer was very brief. “A plan was formed, by which, if you continued together, it would have been my duty to have seen that provisions and all necessaries were regularly supplied; but if each take his own way, and will do nothing for the common good, he must take also that duty for his family on himself.” The two women looked at one another, and instead of making any answer to me, went back to the others, and immediately the meeting dispersed, and each wife went in quest of her husband. “The wives have carried the day!” cried Gimlet; “the husbands have thought only of making property, the mothers of feeding their young.” This simple and primitive scene, with the shrewd remark of the carpenter, laid open, if I may use the expression, the whole art of colonization—the planting of mankind—before me—and in the end, it proved that Gimlet had conjectured with sagacity, for the women convinced the men of the wisdom of keeping together, and working, as they said, under a head and government. During the night, however, no apparent change was visible, but at day-break in the morning, when I had fixed on going with Gimlet to inspect the site of the proposed town, I was met by all the emigrants assembled, with axes on their shoulders, and several of the bigger boys with spades, ready to accompany me. The intention of separating interests was abandoned, and I had the satisfaction to hear them declare that, with their scanty means, the original plan was still the best.

CHAPTER VI. the founding of stockwell. After we had felled the first tree, I proceeded pretty much according to the plan in which Mr. Lawrie Todd and his friend Mr. Hoskins did with Judeville; but our location was not so fortunate. Our stream less considerable, was more a continued rapid, and was no where broken by such cataracts as have so essentially contributed, by their favourable situation, to the prosperity of that town. But still there was enough of similarity between the two places, to enable me to profit by the hints I had received from that gentleman. In fixing the site of the town, a curious omission seemed accidentally to take place; it was, however, on my part, predetermined. I gave the town no name, although perfectly convinced that nothing conduces so much to the establishment of permanent ideas as that apparently trivial circumstance. I left the name to be given by the settlers themselves, and in the course of the day heard that they had fixed on one; both appropriate, as it referred to themselves, and agreeable to me, as applied to a new place. In Glasgow there is an old well-known street called “The Stockwell,” and after various discussions among the emigrants, Andrew Gimlet came to me, and said, as the town had not been named, they would be gratified if I would let them call it “Stockwell,” and thus it came to be so denominated; and so may be seen on the maps since published, especially on those of that intelligent body, to whom names have been among the most important topics of their wisest deliberations. The location determined for the town of Stockwell was judiciously chosen. The stream, or river Slant, as it was named, encompassed three sides of the spot, and the opposite bank along which it flowed, without being so steep as to impede cultivation, rose with a pleasant acclivity, that in some points was almost picturesque: I was greatly pleased with the choice. Having given instructions to Gimlet to proceed immediately with the construction of a temporary house, in which all the emigrants could be accommodated, until proper dwellings were erected

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for themselves, I prepared to return to Sylvany, in the hope of reaching it at a convenient hour in the evening; but while taking some refreshment before my departure, the skies became suddenly overcast, thick clouds obscured the sun, through which, and the gloom of the branches, he could at last hardly penetrate the embowered ailes of the woods. The wind had fallen calm, but the few birds that appeared in the forest, screamed and fluttered with alarm. A thunderstorm impended; and to confess the truth, I was not displeased at its lowering, for it came at the most fortunate moment, to convince the malcontents of the helplessness of an individual when left to his own exertions, and how incalculable his power and ingenuity when combined with those of others. The sullen gloom of the Heavens was so obvious in its intent, that I required but little argument to induce me to defer my journey, and at the suggestion of Gimlet, I directed all hands to unite their exertions in constructing a shanty to shelter themselves for the night; but before we had half accomplished the work, the lightning began to glance, and from time to time at intervals, a long low moan, almost without any sensible wind, sounded through the forest. But every man persevered in the task of piling bark and branches so as to make a shed, which might protect us from the inevitable rain that the guides warned us would speedily descend as a deluge. Our endeavours were not fruitless, while the lightning glanced through the trees, and far-off peals of thunder were heard only loud enough to be distinguished from the moan and rustle of the trees. The formation of the shanty went briskly on, but before it was completed, the rain in broad black blots began to fall, where the earth had been removed, and to smite upon the leaves with the sound of a solidity which indicated the descent, as it were, of a heavier substance than the shower. The rain fell faster, the lightnings darted with increasing javelins through the woods, and the thunder-claps neared closer and louder; while the wind, with abrupt blasts, blew out from time to time with violence and disorder. The trees roared as if in agony— their enormous arms and branches were torn off; a fire which the boys had kindled in front of the shanty intended for our shelter, was scattered as dust in March—and a sudden squall, plashy and raging, tossed in indignation, like withered leaves, all the boughs we had collected. Wet to the skin, terrified for the trees falling that tossed their tops and tufts in something like distraction above us, every one stood

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shivering without speaking. At last I said to three of the malcontents who were standing near me, “This would be pleasant to a single man with his family.” They made no reply, but shook their heads, nor, indeed, had they much time, for at the very moment a distant noise was heard in the forest, hoarse, dreadful, and mighty; some cried out a hurricane, others that the woods were on fire, while those of quicker ear exclaimed, a torrent. For a moment there was a movement as if every one intended to fly from the coming destruction, but the sound rose wilder and stronger around; all stood still,—where could they fly? It was coming with a vehemence that could not be outrun, and it sounded so universal, that it seemed to be rushing upon us everywhere. From whatever cause arising, fire, water, or storm, I considered our destruction inevitable, and stood awaiting my doom, when suddenly it seemed to pause for a moment, and then gradually rolled its energies and fury from us, and was soon heard afar off. If a torrent, it had changed its course, and if a conflagration, it had been whelmed upon its own fires; as a tempest we thought it could not have spent its wrath so suddenly, but it was a mysterious and Almighty sound.

CHAPTER VII. emigrants. The turbulent argument of the tempest effectually convinced the settlers, that the original design of keeping them in community until they had fixed a local habitation, was the best expedient that in their circumstances could be adopted. But the fault lay in their own nature, and could only be changed in its direction, not expunged. A constant yearning for something new in scene or occupation is peculiar to emigrants, whether industrious or dilatory. The same spur in the side which impels them from their native land, goads them wherever they go, and is the main cause of that restless irritation characteristic more or less of them all. While the association were busy under Andrew Gimlet in erecting the house of general shelter, all went on smoothly. The storm had silenced their crave for independence, they saw that without co-operation for some time they must incur hardships that might be lessened, and their patience and activity were commendable; but when it was finished, and their families had removed into it, new objects began to attract their attention aside from their duty, and the management of them became a task of delicacy and address. Several of the Glasgow men being artisans and crafts’ men, Stockwell was intended chiefly for them, and those who might come after of the same kind. The town plot was divided into half acres, a moderate price set upon each, with the privilege of living in the shelter-house until their own should be finished, for which three months were allowed; no money was expected to be paid for these lots, but they were to give me three days’ labour in the week, computed at a certain rate of wages, the other three days was for their own purposes. Except in respect to the town, no part of the land was to be sold, but cross roads were to be made through it, and it was to form them that I stipulated for their labour. The first undertaking, after having provided shelter, was the opening of these roads, and the construction of separate houses for the emigrants themselves; but they had not proceeded far in

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accomplishing either, when they proposed to work for me only two days. I represented to them the injury they would incur, as it would prolong the payment of their debt, and tend to increase it, by obliging them to provide for the additional day’s living from their own means. But it was not until after some free altercation, that they again consented to adhere to the original plan. Indeed, no sooner was one proposal silenced, than another was ready at the back of it. When their respective cottages in the village were about finished, which the irksomeness of living in community urged them to use the utmost diligence in doing, and when the roads were shaped out, the majority came in a body with a signed request to me, praying me to take the lots that had been chosen for them in other parts of the township, and give them farms along my roads for them. To this I gave a decided negative; but it was evident, that although they submitted to the refusal, they considered themselves ill-used, and one of them had the modest absurdity to say, that after having so worked on the roads, they had surely a right to a preference. “It may be so,” said I; “but the land is not for sale, and you have been paid for your labour.” “We’re no’ contesting that, Mr. Bogle Corbet,” replied one Angus M’Questein; “but ye see it would be a convenience, and make us more obligated to you, if ye would just in a way consent.” “Angus, I thought you not wanting in common sense; when a weaver in the Gorbals, had you any right to the webs you were employed to work?” “But there’s a wide difference, Sir, between the Gorbals and this wild country, which was all ta’en from the Indians, who have the best right to the land, if any body has a right; and I am sure you would na go far ajee frae justice, if ye would think of our request.” “Depend upon’t, Angus, I shall think of it, and the reasons ye have stated to make me comply; for the King’s law is here as well as in the old country; and I can assure you that I am as little disposed to indulge covetousness in Canada as I would have been in Glasgow, had you pretended such a right to any property of mine there.” Altercations of this sort, as the work of the summer proceeded, and individual character became more prominent, were vexatiously frequent. At first, when it was necessary to bring supplies from a distance, the sheltering-house was furnished in kind with whatever was requisite, and even after several families had retired to their own houses, the practice was continued to them. But as the place prospered, a

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store-keeper settled at Stockwell, and provided the different articles that he saw would be required; in consequence it became the practice to give orders on his store, instead of the articles, and he from time to time rendered his accounts. These orders, however, the settlers soon cunningly discovered were as good as bank notes, and it was ascertained that they were in the habit of exchanging them for articles different from those for which they were obtained. Beef was easily convertible into tea, and flour into spirits and sugar, till the increase of consumption in the necessaries led to an investigation. In a word, there is something in the emigrant’s condition that makes his honesty flexible, and this, among their other ever-germinating wants and fancies, constitutes the difficulty of regulating them, even when they see it is for their own benefit. When the roads were completed, I caused the men to be assembled, and inquired what they proposed to do next; but strange as it may seem, they had formed no plan. Accustomed to the superintendence of a master, it had never entered their heads to think of the future at all. Dependents of chance, they would probably have remained without reflection so long as their wants were supplied, and then they would have scattered themselves, as thoughtless of to-morrow as beasts and birds of prey when they have devoured the carcase. I was grieved at the discovery of their helplessness; it explained how so many emigrants fall into misery; and it also demonstrated how imperative it has become, that Government should establish some law for their regulation. Thousands on thousands annually reach Canada, undirected and unprotected, with only their own separate small means; for those who undertake to conduct them across the Atlantic are, in all that relates to settlement, as ignorant as themselves. When they reach their intended locations in the wood, many of them, in consequence, like the innocent babes, wander for a time up and down, and then die or stray away, they know not whither, and are heard of no more.

CHAPTER VIII. mutation of manners among emigrants. During the bright summer days our settlement prospered cheerily; for although the emigrants were continually hatching new projects which they imagined would be more advantageous than those they were engaged in executing, and certainly never allowed one entire week to pass without afflicting discussion, still, by firmly adhering to the predetermined plan, all went steadily forward. As the year, however, began to decline, and the weather became occasionally wet and broken, new sources of molestation began to open, and some of the men who had behaved with uniform propriety grew less tractable; nor were the women always such amiable and enduring creatures as I could have wished. The restraint which new scenes, new friends, and new vocations had imposed, began to wear off, and natural tempers and evil habitudes gradually resumed their former ascendancy. With the single exception of Andrew Gimlet the carpenter, not one of all Eric Pullicate’s party improved upon acquaintance; none of them, undoubtedly, deserved the name of bad characters, but the emigrant fyke,—if I may use a Scottish word which has no synonyme in English nearer than fidget,—was upon them, and every hour, if it could have admitted of representation, was with them only a time for complaint. It is the nature of all vulgar people to undervalue those little etiquettes which persons of a better station draw around them as a fence from intrusion, and it is, among other usages of the old country, one of the earliest disregarded by the emigrant in the new. Of this fact I had a very distinct perception, and was in consequence obliged to draw myself into a reserve, that to them was no doubt equally disagreeable; but I have no idea that all toleration of familiarity is to be conceded to inferiority of condition, and that they are to make no equivalent concession to good manners. Things of that sort are little respected by the low, because such things are in themselves trifling; but it should be ever borne in mind, that the vulgar alone make them of importance. Indeed in all

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situations the mean and the ignorant are ever the most difficult to deal with. They rightly enough, perhaps, consider themselves as highly as those who are above them, but they do not sufficiently recollect that equality of condition does not, even in fashion, make equality of consideration. Distinction is in a great measure personal, and neither pretence nor artifice can establish the indescribable differences which constitute the essential grades of society. I dwell the more emphatically on this point, as I could perceive an unquestionable, perhaps unconscious endeavour, in all the emigrants, that we should be all alike, although every hour ought to have convinced them of the impossibility. The first thing, however, which brought it to a close, was an instance that reflected credit on the decision of Gimlet. He had contracted to complete a house for an incomer of some property, and made his arrangements for doing so with some of his companions; but scarcely had the work been commenced, when they began to interfere with him, and to claim as equal participators in the job. It was not an advantageous job, and the sacrifice cost him little. He knew, however, that they could not complete it very well without him. “I agree,” said he, “since you think yourselves bothered by my will in it; we shall soon settle that; I will not drive another nail, and the work is your own. I wash my hands of it.” Not thinking he was serious, and presuming a little on their own skill, they took him at his word, and were in consequence reduced to great trouble, and obliged to apply to me for assistance, for he refused to have any thing farther to do with them. It thus happened, that in the fall of the year I had ample assurance of the business of emigration and settlement not being in the wild forest so easy, even with all appliances of skill and talent, as I had supposed. Nothing however of a decisive description took place. Angus M‘Questein only became a little more frequent in his visits, especially during the wet days, with offers of hints and suggestions; and just in proportion as he became troublesome, Andrew Gimlet rose in my estimation. No one at last ventured to take the slightest liberty with him; he cut short the most plausible stories at once, and drew around him all the most intelligent young men of his own degree in the settlement. From contracting along with others for the construction of houses, he contracted only by himself, and before the end of September he had really become a person of some weight. Nothing could indeed

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be more interesting in the history of society than the rapidity with which that young man achieved his ascendancy, by decision alone; for in general capacity he was undoubtedly not superior, and others were far more ingenious. He was, however, a complete example of the distinction between the art of knowing how to do, and the art of knowing how to live. But towards the end of September a great sickliness fell amongst us. Gimlet, as well as several others of our briskest men, were felled with the ague. I was myself, though not seized with so marked a malady, infected by some slow consuming disease, which, for at least two weeks, prostrated my strength, and took alike from my mind and muscles the energy of exertion. Every sort of effort became distasteful. I sought to be alone. I ruminated of the past, and with an imbecility that I often wondered at and despised, pondered as to the utility of all that we were so busily doing. One thing only in that lassitude interested me: a house had been prepared in Stockwell for Mrs. Paddock, to which she had removed with her grandsons. It was, at my particular request, fitted up under the eye of Gimlet with particular neatness, and she was soon settled in it, more comfortably, as she said to myself, than she had ever hoped to be in this world; and yet the poor old woman was not happy. Of the conduct of the boys she had nothing to complain. Those of them who were able, proved active and cheerful, and the little ones were docile to her instructions; but from time to time, under a well-disciplined resolution, she allowed little complaints to escape. Regrets of affection, and longings concerning the family of her second daughter, with her melancholy story, had the effect of greatly interesting Mrs. Corbet in her welfare; my wife, in fact, became not only much attached to her, but on account of the vigour of character, and the proud and pure motives which had induced her to emigrate, formed a great esteem for her sentiments.

CHAPTER IX. depression. The year had not long entered October, when I was convinced that a residence in the forest should be established at an early period of life; and I soon ceased to wonder at the cause wherefore, in old antiquity, men worshipped on the solitude of the mountain-tops, and in the solemnity of the groves, for I felt the admonition speak to my own heart. No language, nor the phrases of speech, can convey a just apprehension of what I would express; but when in the morning I wandered forth alone, or in the noontide sat in the shadow of the trees, or in the evening watched the subsidence of sounds, and during the midnight contemplated the stars as faces in a great theatre; I felt the true insignificance of man, and scorned myself for the importance I attached to my own being. I am no misanthropist, as the foregoing passages of my biography avouch, nor am I what I esteem worse, an adversary; for to be a misanthropist argues an unknown antipathy towards individuals, those who should have been your friends; but in the loneness of the silent woods, a feeling has often been infused into me, at morning, noon, and evening, and at night, which has made me think myself hateful to my species, while I could only recall the remembrance of incidents that ought to have made them hateful to me. I would rather think ill of myself, as an exception, than suspect universal mankind. But why should I thus speak of the world, wherein I have received so much indulgence, and merely because, perhaps, I may have been justified in feeling sentiments of resentment against individuals? To the general world I can have no antipathy; it has been always my generous and disinterested friend; when those particular persons, on whom I might have better accounted, showed themselves wanting, the general world towards me has been ever kind. I rejoice that I have uniformly been towards it of that mind; but I regret to have discerned, that individuals to whom I have surrendered confidence, have repaid me with ingratitude.

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Somewhat cherishing sentiments of this kind, soft, but not acrimonious, I walked, while still indisposed, to visit Mrs. Paddock. The afternoon was calm, and the woods were glorious; peacefulness and kindness breathed around; not a casualty of air stirred a leaf—the springs seemed to rest in their pools; the flowers stood, as it were, in expectancy, and the woodpecker, only at long intervals, tapped, to ascertain and to accelerate the doom of the predestined tree; all around me suggested the gentlest topics of reflection—the yellow leaf and the fading flower warned me that the year was declining; the southward doves were passing from the northern cold winds; the colour of the foliage of the ungathered blackberries was changed; the pines were tinted with an ominous freshness, indicative of the declining season; and a few scattered blossoms on the shrubs, greeted the kindliness of the autumn, as a breathing of the spring. The grass under foot was green, but its verdure was of a fresher hue than tinges the blade of the early year; and the moss on the trunks of the fallen trees was as the reminiscence of something that had in its proper season been delightful. The very clouds in the blue firmament, as they were seen through the openings in the branches, had a sharp edge, as if opposed to acute winds; and the sunshine on the coloured leaves had not its wonted brilliancy, but glittered like a temporary splendour that would soon pass away. I saw a snake cross the path, but it moved slowly and languidly. All around betokened the crisis of the year—the pools of water had over-lapsed many a stone which had been in summer dry. I remarked also, across the road, the impression of the feet of quadrupeds that were not domestic animals, but the aloof and fierce denizens of Nature, which the coming blasts of winter were driving towards the social folds and habitations. A distinctness of outline, also, was impressed on every object, as if nature were willing that man should see her harshest contour, and look on her condition as the leanness of age. The wind, as I proceeded, grew witheringly cold in its breathing, and lost that mildness which was like its vernal temperature when the bud is bursting. There was, moreover, an ungenial dampness in its influences, that felt, as it were, averse to the growth, and life, and the possession of energy; the chill of evening, and decay of winter and desolation, was in it, and the humid lustre on the leaf was as the sheen of an ineffectual tear. The very gossamer that hung on the wing of the breeze hesitated; the acorn, as it dropped on the earth, fell with a boding sound; and the pine of the fir-tree rustled

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through the branches in its falling, suggesting ideas of an emigrant that knows not where his lot is to be. The contemplation of so many images, to which feeling lent sentiment and sadness, overpowered me as I walked along, and sitting down on the trunk of a fallen tree, I gave indulgence again to those depressing reveries with which I had been visited about the time of Mrs. Busby’s death. All the events of my past life rose as visions actually before me; characters became, as it were, unclosed, and the secrets of their hearts laid bare. After indulging for some time in this unprofitable pensiveness, I proceeded to the old woman’s little cottage. Four of the boys were sitting thoughtfully on the outside. The eldest was within, attending their grandmother, who, as they told me, was very unwell; and I felt an extreme and painful sense at the moment, as if some impending sorrow were at hand. The sight of the children, with the apprehension I entertained of the grandmother’s state, was unspeakably distressing. They were, with the exception of the two elder boys, too young to be useful even in our new world; and it seemed to me as if they were themselves all affected by this mournful notion, for the older leant towards the younger with a pensive cheek. Only the youngest of all could be said to be insensible to the helplessness of his lot, for he was playing with a little dog they had brought with them from England. The dog itself had almost a charitable conception of their desolate condition, for it was eager to attract the child’s attention, and to play pranks with a straw, that it might not have time to reflect on its orphan condition.

CHAPTER X. last wishes. The group of the young and forlorn Evelyns rose when they saw me approaching, and one of them went softly and apprehensively to the door. I was struck with the caution which appeared in the manner of the boy. Before touching the latch he applied his ear to the key-hole, and then put his hand to the string, but did not pull it, for at that moment a voice, a few paces behind, hallooed. On turning round I beheld my hospitable Highland landlord, Captain Campbell Dungowan, hastening towards me. He had recently come from Scotland, and being on his way to the Western district, where some of his old friends had settled, hearing, as he passed along Dundass road, of what was doing at Stockwell, he had come to see me. He had not heard that I had fixed my own residence at Sylvany, but understood that my home was at the new village. I need not say that our meeting was cordial, and no accident could have happened at a better time. My own house was rather inconveniently distant, in the state of the paths through the woods, to allow me to watch with that constant and strict vigilance over the settlement, which every day rendered more necessary. Accordingly, our mutual greetings were scarcely over, when I said he had come at a fortunate moment, and hoped it was his intention to settle with us; adding, that we greatly stood in need of a magistrate, and a person accustomed to discipline, and the exercise of authority. He was pleased that I should speak of him in that manner, from the slight knowledge I had of his character; but before I could say much more, Rupert Evelyn came out of the house towards me, and without speaking, looked at me so sadly and entreatingly, that I could not but ask what had happened. “Our grandmother,” said the lad, “is very ill; had you not come we would have sent for you—we fear she is dying.” I was rather shocked than surprised at this, for I had observed her declining for some weeks, but so slowly that I had not apprehended such a sudden change; I told the boy, however, that I would

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immediately see her, and requesting Captain Campbell to look at our improvements for a few minutes, followed him into the cottage. The humble dwelling was in its accustomed orderliness; a cheerful fire was burning, but the light of the afternoon was mitigated in the window by an apron hung before it, and on a bed opposite lay the old woman, startlingly emaciated. In health she was naturally pale and thin, but the disease had made her much more so; and there was a glitter in her eyes, and a ghastliness about her mouth, that distressingly altered her appearance. On seeing me she slowly lifted her hand, which lay listlessly on the coverlet, as if to hold it out, but its weight was too great for her feebleness, and she dropped it before I could reach the bed-side. The boy placed her own chair for me near the couch; she had, indeed, but one; luxuries of that kind were not then common in Stockwell; stools made of blocks of wood were the ordinary seats. I sat down without speaking. The glitter in her eyes dissolved into tears, and after a short time she appeared somewhat revived. “I am glad you have come,” said she, “for my time, I fear, is drawing to a close, and I only wished to have the satisfaction to hear from yourself that you would be God’s agent to my helpless children. I have bespoken his grace for them, and have received an assurance in my spirit that He will not desert them when I am gone, though his displeasure against sin burns to the third and fourth generation.” There was something which struck me as peculiarly Presbyterian in the expression, and, indeed, on more than one occasion I had previously observed that her piety was essentially so. I made, however, no remark, as she had plainly something of importance to communicate. “I have only in this charge to let you know a little more than you have yet heard of who we are. Of Mr. Purl I need say little; you will, I am sure, not take it a trouble to write him when the Lord’s will is done, and commend me to his wife and family, with my love and blessing.” She paused and seemed slightly agitated, but her serenity soon returned, and she continued— “You know our pride, and what has brought us to Canada, but, perhaps, you know not—I wonder why I am always loth to tell you?—that my mother was a Highland lady, of high blood and ancient pedigree. She married my father, a young officer, when he was quartered at Inverary about the time when the old King came to the crown, and as he was poor—for he was one of several sons

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of a Yorkshire clergyman—her grand friends were displeased with the match, and cast her off. Soon after my father’s regiment was disbanded; he had then only his small half-pay, and they soon fell into deep poverty, by which his heart was broken. It is the mystery of Providence, ‘that I was born in grief and nursed with tears.’ But bear with me a little longer, I will not keep you long.” I was too seriously interested in her melancholy story to be impatient. “Yes,” said she, “it is all of sorrows. How my mother was able, unassisted, to bring me up for nine years, she lived not long enough to relate; but after her death at that age, the parish officers of Therlstone, the village where we resided, procured a situation for me with a sickly lady, with whom I lived upwards of ten years, when I was married to Henry Paddock, the son of a neighbouring farmer. Of his worth I cannot speak; we were happy for five years, and I was left a widow with my two daughters. Perhaps, Sir, if you could find out my mother’s relations, they might help these blameless boys. It is an old tale, but so long a time may have softened their hearts.” I readily promised to do what I could, but with such slight materials I could not hope to accomplish much. She could give me no clue—they were far off in another land, and all she recollected concerning them, was a faint reminiscence of her mother’s, about a fine castle in the Highlands, and that her kinsman was a clansman of the Duke of Argyle. Pity for her situation restrained me from explaining the wide meaning of the word, and I assured her that no endeavour on my part would be wanting to render her orphan boys all the service in my power to give. Her exertion in telling her little tale impaired her strength, but it had relieved her mind, and she felt that her last duty in life was done. “I am weary,” said she, “but satisfied. I can do no more now, and would fain that I was asleep.” After a short pause, she closed her eyes, and fell into a slumber. One of the wives of the settlers, a quiet, managing person, was then procured to attend her, and the necessary instructions being given, I left the cottage, and rejoined Captain Campbell, scarcely expecting that next day she would be alive; indeed, I was so persuaded that she would not, that I spoke to Andrew Gimlet respecting her funeral. The helplessness of her grandsons, especially of the little ones, seemed to impose upon me a duty for which I was none prepared, and I felt almost in a humour to repine that I had not considered

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the hazard of her death before, and the forlorn condition into which the event would plunge them. But the more I reflected on this melancholy circumstance, I derived renewed strength of mind, for it seemed so like a pre-ordered dispensation, that I prepared myself to encounter it with equanimity, whatever the troubles might be that it was calculated to entail.

CHAPTER XI. miscellanies. As I returned from Stockwell to Sylvany with Dungowan, our conversation was chiefly regarding the progress of the settlement. I said but little to him on the condition of Mrs. Paddock; I did not even mention her name, but simply that I had been detained by the sick woman, and that I did not expect she would survive the night. In reverting again to what I had mentioned to him jocularly, of my wish that he would fix near me, and that there was still a large space of Nox not yet located, he observed, that being a bachelor, he was not much inclined to embark in any business, and that, in fact, his coming to Canada was because his little income would not only go farther, he was told, than in Scotland, but also because several of his old regimental friends were settled in the province. He had, in fact, merely come as a visitor to see me, and had no particular object in view; but still the concerns of the settlement furnished topics for conversation as we rode on together, and I was indebted to him for a judicious suggestion, that I afterwards carried into effect. It was accidental and unpremeditated; but the state of my mind at the time seized with avidity every hint that seemed likely to be useful. “Your plan,” said he, “of giving the young man Gimlet a superintending authority, is right and proper; but you will find that a quieter order of society can only be secured by making a greater number of officers. You must not only have a captain, but subalterns, serjeants, and corporals; and if you will give me leave, I shall so organize them. The advantage of an arrangement of this kind can only be appreciated by those who have seen it in the army, and compared its effects with the misrule and confusion which arise among the same men, when relieved by the accidents of war from the restraints of discipline.” “But,” I replied, “we cannot enforce our orders with the same precision that may be done in a regiment.” “No, certainly not; nor does the case require it; but make your people sensible that degrees are beneficial, and that trusts are honourable, and you will soon see that they will of their own accord fall

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into the system, and become ambitious of honours.” From this conversation, I was induced to try the experiment which I soon after adopted, and by which a stricter morality was established among the settlers than they were disposed of themselves to practise; for those intrusted with authority felt a responsibility that made them more observant both of their own conduct and that of their neighbours; and it produced an effect on them all; not perhaps so strong as the reciprocal obligations of the original terms of the association which they had formed before leaving Glasgow, though similar in effect. But I am anticipating the result of following his advice, in alluding to this; my narrative the reader will, perhaps, think more interesting. On reaching Sylvany, before alighting from our horses, I remarked to him that we were somewhat like the inhabitants of the Highlands, more hospitably inclined than well accommodated. In an instant I perceived that I had said too much, for he reddened; but to do him justice, not as if he had been offended—he was only a little out of countenance, and I regretted inwardly, my remark. Captain Campbell was, however, too much a man of the world not immediately to see his own weakness, for he almost instantly laughed. “I believe, on my conscience,” said he, “that a vain pride is as indigenous among the Highlanders as pepper in Ceylon. Here am I blushing like a girl on recollecting that I could not entertain you at Dungowan as I wished, the very cause which has sent myself here; but an old campaigner should have more of the even veteran mind.” “In truth, Dungowan, the troubles of the emigrant chiefly proceed from his habitual feelings. If with our native country we could throw off former habits, there is no such difference, I suspect, between countries, as to make the change from one to another a matter of much importance—at least, it is not equal to a change of condition among our friends.” “Very true, for more of my old friends reside in Edinburgh than in Canada, and it is only a narrow income that has driven me over the sea. The general body of emigrants may come in quest of employment; but it is always some contest with fortune, that forces elderly gentlemen into the bush: pride is the spur to emigration among all such.” “You speak as a man of the world,” said I, “who has not inspected the motives of mankind with a heedless eye. That poor old dying woman, who detained me so long from you, is upwards of sixty years

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of age—a grandmother—and her story illustrates the justness of your observation. But let us come into the house, and we shall have a better opportunity for discussing the subject after supper; we are somewhat later than usual, and my wife will be impatient.” After supper, as we were chatting over our troubles, I related to him something of the proud spirit and strong affections of Mrs. Paddock, with which he seemed to be singularly interested, but made no remark. A sentiment of delicacy prevented me from saying any thing particular of her story; indeed, I had determined with Mrs. Corbet that we should never mention it at all, although we both thought that she was paying too great a price in her emigration, to escape what could only be described as the effect of an innocent misfortune. “Don’t you think, Captain,” said Mrs. Corbet to our guest, observing the impression which the story had made upon him, “that it was a hasty submission to a feeling that reason and prudence ought to have controlled?” “No!” replied Dungowan, gathering his brows and pursing his mouth, “No!—Do you know her history? though I don’t think many Englishwomen would show such resolution, yet it would not surprise me in a Scotch or Irish woman, above all, in a Highlander.” Mrs. Corbet was on the point of disclosing all, but seeing me knit my brows, desisted, adding, however, “We live in a queer world; for my part I never could understand the use of such feelings; or why a brave man puts his head in the cannon’s mouth, which I think is a very imprudent thing; ’tis making a brag of bravery to do so. As for poor Mrs. Paddock, no person that ever saw her would think she had the strength of a windlestraw; and I have seen men as pliant as grass compared with her—Mr. Bogle Corbet, for example.” “I beg,” exclaimed I, “that you will not make an example of me.” “Poo, poo!” was the answer, “I was only going to say that you think the old woman a nonesuch, and that if you cannot persuade Captain Campbell she is so, without disclosing her story, it is not far from being revealed.” “Then it is something extraordinary?” said the Captain. “I’m a sworn deceiver, as every woman is, that dare not speak what she is forbidden,” exclaimed Mrs. Corbet, laughing; “but, Captain, we shall see what a day will bring forth;” so, with aimless talk of that kind, we closed the evening.

CHAPTER XII. anxieties. At a premature hour in the morning the family were disturbed by a clamorous knocking at the door; Mrs. Corbet, who was always on the alert, and had a constant fear of a wooden house on fire before her eyes, was the first who heard the summons. She sprang from bed; up went the window, out went her head, and, with a shrill and eager voice, she inquired who was there? The voice of Horace Evelyn, the eldest grandson of Mrs. Paddock, replied— The afflicted old woman, in the course of the night, had, in the opinion of the nurse, rallied her strength, and required only cordials to be soon afoot again. The intelligence gave the whole of my household great joy. Every one was soon astir; the lad was admitted—bottles of port wine and of brandy, together with various sorts of condiments and medicines, were put in requisition. Every one, young and old, was in as much activity as if a lord had broken his leg, and we were all country surgeons summoned to attend him. After the required medicaments were provided, Mrs. Corbet recollected, and she was the first to do so, that the lad had ridden on what she called an uneasy lame horse from Stockwell, nearly ten miles, that morning, and ought not to be allowed to return so far without his breakfast. Accordingly all the needfuls were immediately gathered together, breakfast ordered, and the whole of my domestic economy thrown into hurry and jeopardy. Dungowan hearing the noise in the house, dressed himself, and coming down stairs, when informed of the cause, greatly commended the alacrity of my wife, who with a just discretion doubled her activity, and consequently did half as little effectual business as she was doing before he had flattered or fluttered her with his compliments. However, breakfast was in time most untimeously prepared, and before allowing Horace to return to Stockwell, we insisted that he should take care of number one.

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I am not sure, however, that in all the bustle he occasioned we were quite so debonair as I am at this moment; but Captain Campbell said he never had seen a house in greater friendliness and confusion in his life, which my wife told me was one of the handsomest compliments ever paid to her. “It may be so, Urseline,” said I, “but I do not discern its applicability.” This afforded her an opportunity to make some remarks on my particularity, which I do assure the reader did not apply to the matter in hand. However, after the hubbub, all things were placed in order, and Dungowan, with Horace Evelyn, were seated to partake. The meal was dispatched in the usual manner; Mrs. Corbet had many things to say, the Captain none—on the contrary, he was sad and silent. I imagined he was disturbed by the accident, but my wife, of course, was of a different opinion. He looked, however, with compassion often at poor Horace, and Mrs. Corbet surprised my ear by whispering that she thought he would do something for the poor boy. I whispered back that I hoped it might be so, but I had never heard of such freaks among Highland gentlemen, who, in proportion to their affection for their own kith and kin, have but little kindness to spare for the common offspring of Adam. Nevertheless, certain it is that Dungowan evinced a thoughtful regard for Horace, and when the breakfast equipage was removed, and the boy was on the road again with the cordials to Stockwell, he said to my wife, that the sight of the lad greatly disturbed him. “He is the very portrait, the living effigy,” said he, “of my brother Haimesh, who was drowned in going to the Largs fair, in the year I joined the 42nd Regiment.” “That is,” rejoined Mrs. Corbet, “to be sure, most extraordinary: and your brother was then going to the Largs Fair?—monstrous! Why did your brother drown himself?” “He was drowned by the boat upsetting,” replied the Captain dryly; and turning round to me, added, “there never was such a likeness.” “He may be your relation?” cried Mrs. Corbet, forgetting herself the injunction she had laid me under, not to mention the story of poor Mrs. Paddock;—I scowled, but it was too late. Dungowan looked for a moment aghast, and then said, “I beg, Madam, if you know any thing of the old lady’s story, that you will inform me,—strange! that you should say he may be my relation!”

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“Oh, never mind what I say,” was her answer, “they were only words of course. How is it possible that he can be related to you?” “I know not,” replied the Captain sedately; “but I have some cause that justifies me in asking the information.” “Then, Sir, I can give you no satisfaction,” was her answer, “but if Bogle Corbet chooses, he may say something. It would, however, be as well if he kept his promise.” “The fancy,” replied the Captain, “that the boy’s resemblance has inspired is very wonderful. It may be accidental, but we do not think lightly of such things in the Highlands; ancestral likenesses are often renewed after the third and fourth generation: I would give something to know the history of that boy?” Mrs. Corbet was in the act of lifting some of the tea-things when he said this, but she shook her head at me, and even made a show of screwing her mouth, as if I had made the disclosure—a most unjust gesture, for, if any one was to blame in the business, the reader can well discern who. At last the Captain exclaimed, “This is very extraordinary; I am exceedingly excited, I have never in my life been more so. The boy is my brother, and yet it is forty years since he was drowned on the Largs shore.” “Then he cannot be your brother,” replied Mrs. Corbet, “for he is not much above seventeen. That’s a fact poz.” “It is so,” cried the Captain; “it is so; and yet I have a reason for thinking as I do. Mr. Bogle Corbet, with your leave, and my own horse’s, I shall ride back to Stockwell.” I at once consented to accompany him, and we prepared for the journey.

CHAPTER XIII. evasions. While the horses were getting ready, we remained chatting in the parlour together, Mrs. Corbet doing all in her power, unconsciously, to stimulate the Captain’s mind, believing that she was employing the most dexterous means to turn his curiosity aside. Fortunately I had not told her of the disclosure which the old woman had made of her family the day before, or it would, by the address she was so knowingly exercising, have been brought out by a side wind, while the wish not to say more respecting the Evelyns than was absolutely necessary, made me shy of taking a part in their conversation. “It was, indeed,” said my wife, “a most unaccountable thing for a woman like Mrs. Paddock, who ought at her time of life to have been prudent and sensible, to think of coming to such a place as Canada. I have, however, my suspicions that Mr. Bogle Corbet was himself partly to blame, for there, where he sits, he is a fanciful man; but, to be sure, there was something in her story most romantic.” “Indeed!” replied Dungowan thoughtfully, “I greatly thirst to know it—what was her husband?” “That’s a judicious question, Captain,” replied Mrs. Corbet, “but we have never yet heard; we were all so interested about the boys that we never thought of inquiring.” “Was their case so extraordinary?” Mrs. Corbet, sensible that she was heedlessly going too far, hedged off with considerable ingenuity, saying, “Every case you know, Sir, is extraordinary of its own kind; and perhaps if you knew all, you would not think this one a miracle. It troubles us in the most pitiful manner, and was the cause of our inviting Mrs. Paddock to come over in our ship. She is, I can assure you, a most respectable woman, and has a principle of pride and piety about her that places her high above every one of her condition that I have ever seen. Poor woman—to endure such anguish for nineteen years!”

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“Why, the youngest boy, I should think, is not yet four?” replied the Captain. “Alas! their misfortune happened before they were born.” “You speak mystically, Madam; is there any reason why it should be concealed?” “None whatever; it was no fault of either her’s or the boys, who are all delicious creatures.” “Delicious, my dear!” said I, glancing critically at her. “Well, well, what signifies a word? but Bogle Corbet you are a particular man.—I was saying, Captain Campbell, that though there was no reason for their coming to Canada, yet they had a cause.” “What could it be, Madam? you cannot imagine how every word you have uttered has been a bullet in my bosom.” “I am grieved, Sir, to hear that, but I do not wonder, for the tale of the Evelyns is like a novel, especially concerning their motive for coming here, and I like the boys for their pride.” “You surprise me; why are they so proud? Their father and mother, I presume, are both dead.” “You may divine that, else why would they be here with their grandmother only?” “I guessed as much; but yon boy is so like my brother—it is a miracle.” “I hope in the Highlands you believe in miracles?” said Mrs. Corbet, a little nonplused, for at this predicament of her discourse I threw all my energies into a frown, to induce her to desist from her idle talk, and she certainly did it in a way I was not exactly prepared. “For you know,” said she, “if there were no miracles, how could the world have been created? and as my father used to tell his old friend Mr. Moth, if the world had not been created, man would have been an inert embryon, which I understand is a thing next to nothing at all.” I looked at her again fervently, and scowled. “Mrs. Corbet, Captain Campbell neither knew your father nor Mr. Moth.” “That is no reason,” said she with a complacent self-sufficient smile, “why he should not believe in miracles; but I saw one myself, being an agate-stone that bore the very picture, as natural as life, of Cleopatra, with an adder at her breast.” “I have no doubt,” cried I, “you were well acquainted with her Egyptian Majesty, and thereby able to verify the truth of the miracle.” “But,” said Dungowan, interposing abruptly, “the misfortune you allude to, my dear Madam, happened to the father of the Evelyns?”

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“The father was no better than he ought to have been,” replied Mrs. Corbet. “It was the mother that was to be pitied; and yet she deserved none; poor Mrs. Paddock had to pay for all.” “Failures are very common,” said the Captain coolly, “and often fall heaviest on friends.” “But this failure was in breaking the Ten Commandments, Sir.” “Did he steal?” said Dungowan, lowering his voice, and looking warily around; adding emphatically, “A mean crime! but that boy’s look—it has brought to mind old recollections and older stories.” At this juncture notice was brought in that the horses were ready, and the Captain, with an air of perplexity, followed the servant. I was on the point of doing the same, when my wife, touching me on the arm, said in a whisper, “Stop, now, Bogle Corbet; have respect to poor Mrs. Paddock’s feelings, and tell him nothing about the Evelyns. I was really terrified several times that you were coming out with it all.” To an admonition so just I could make no answer, but rejoining Dungowan, we proceeded to Stockwell. Scarcely, however, had we left the house, when he observed to me, still retaining that anxiety of countenance which the effect of his conversation with Mrs. Corbet had produced, “I have, as it were, been startled at the appearance of the boy; my curiosity is exceedingly excited by what your lady has been telling me.” “My wife,” said I, “talks loosely, and makes more of a simple matter, by affecting mystery, than is quite correct.” I then told him so much of what Mrs. Paddock had mentioned of her own story as she had herself related, but I explained nothing concerning the Evelyns. He listened attentively, never once opened his lips, and when I had ended, it surprised me that for some time after he should still continue silent: at last he remarked, “I cannot trace the connexion.” The words inadvertently escaped him, but they immediately suggested to me that he was thinking, possibly, of some relationship between Mrs. Paddock and himself, as her mother had been of his clan; but the conjecture seemed wild; so many years had passed since her marriage, and he was himself well advanced in life, though of a later generation. With his rumination and taciturnity, our ride was necessarily dull, but occasionally a brief interjection escaped from him by which I inferred the current of his reflections.

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“I would give a good deal that it were true,” said he. As the expression was uttered in soliloquy, I took no notice of it; but he soon after added, “And to meet in Canada!” “Of whom do you speak, Dungowan?” He started on his saddle as if he had been suddenly awakened, and cried abruptly— “What is the story of these Evelyns?” There was a gentlemanly deportment about the Captain, with a strong natural marking of Celtic pride, and therefore, though it was contrary to my wife’s injunction, I yet, after explaining the motives by which we were actuated in suppressing the condition of their birth, told him their history. Judge, however, of my astonishment, when I perceived it produced a very different effect from what I had expected; for my thoughts anticipated some agreeable . He looked eagerly and anxious at me for a moment, and then slackening his bridle, rode briskly forward till stopped by the trunk of a tree lying across the path: when he had passed it, I observed his countenance had lost its earnest expression, and we began to talk of various topics—the result of an obvious endeavour, on his part, to avoid reverting to Mrs. Paddock and her grandsons.

CHAPTER XIV. embarrassment. During the remainder of our ride to Stockwell his silence plainly proceeded from thoughtfulness; but he so managed himself as to appear easy in mind, and not exploring any vein of thought. He passed from subject to subject, seemingly in no humour to investigate any; and yet it soon became apparent that Mrs. Paddock and her flock occupied his imagination. I cannot give a livelier picture of his manner, than by sketching the tenour of his conversation, and the way in which he insensibly threw out, as it were in passing, a casual remark; like the saunterer on the roadside, who, in heedless rumination, snatches a leaf or a flower. “I don’t know,” said he, “how I shall like this country; the green hills of Dungowan were more agreeable, after all, to my taste, than these wild and interminable woods.” “I trust you do not begin to weary already.” “No; but there is little to interest one here; the eventless histories of settler and every day alike. By the bye, that old lady you were telling me of, must be something like a new army-list or an almanack to you.” Contrasted with the interest he had previously taken in her story, this jangled on my hearing like affectation; it struck me, indeed, as much more so than the manner in which he disclosed himself on his own island, when our acquaintanceship commenced; but he pursued the thought no farther, adding, however, as if in sequence to the sense, “Land is still here so much of a commodity, that no one seems to buy for an income, but only to sell again.” “Yes, and that is what will make the province one day less Britishlike than even the United States; the country is laid out into so many small and detached parcels.” “I know not how it happens,” he resumed, after a short pause, “that I sometimes grudge to see the sheep where kilted warriors were of old—my long sojourn in the world should have quenched

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my clannish romance, but there are follies in the blood, as well as diseases—I think you said, Mrs. Paddock was related to the Duke of Argyle.” “She told me so; but you know better than I do, the limitless degrees of kin reckoned in the Highlands. My long residence in England has made me callous to connexions of that sort; and according to tradition, all the clan Campbell are related to each other.” “It was an excellent adjunct to military subordination,” said he; “kinsmen standing in battle, shoulder to shoulder, they could not but be brave—these long reaches of cousinships, however, have their inconveniences too. Blood disgraced, is not easily cleansed.” I happened to glance at him accidentally, as he uttered the last clause of the sentence, and on my eye catching his, he looked away as if to shun it. A little disconcerted, I drew back; for there was an air of general good sense about him, as well as a gentlemanly demeanour, that naturally repelled scrutiny. In this the Highlanders are all remarkable, especially those who have earned a knowledge of the world by their eyes and ears in the military profession. I only wondered why Dungowan should have been only a captain; for he had both the talent and tact befitting a higher officer. When we had proceeded in silence about a furlong, he looked round and said, “It is to be regretted that their uncle will do nothing for them.” Though I knew to whom he alluded, by his other incidental observations, I affected not to understand him. “The Evelyns,” replied he; “that boy has really greatly interested my attention. Had I met him in the forest alone, I would have sworn that I had seen my brother’s ghost.” “Was there any thing particular in the history of your brother that has caused this deep impression?” “It was not him, but young Evelyn who has impressed me—What would I give to have such trees as these at Dungowan! I remember when the growing timber on the Duke’s estates was valued at a million sterling.—Did Mrs. Paddock never say where her mother came from?” “I did not ask: indeed I scarcely at the time expected she would survive the disclosure; but I hope when we see her, as she is now better, you will be able to satisfy yourself.” “Oh I don’t know, poor thing, that I shall trouble her; why should I?” “You best know—I thought you were come on purpose to see her.”

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“True, but you had not then told me of the bastardy: I imagine she must, though a Campbell, have been but lowly connected. It is curious how we should all in the Highlands have such an inclination for heirs of our own blood.” “Did you think her grandchildren were your kinsmen?” He smiled, but with an address mingled in it that struck me, saying, “They are, you know, come of the same clan.” With this dislocated kind of conversation, the greater part of the way, however, in silence, we reached the half dozen houses called Stockwell, when the younger Evelyns, on seeing me approach, came joyfully forward, to tell me that their grandmother was again better. During the two or three minutes I stood speaking to them, I observed Dungowan eyeing them inquisitively, and when I touched my horse, to move to the shelter-house where we intended to put up, I asked if he had discovered any more of the boys resembling his brother. “No,” was his abrupt reply; and then recollecting himself, he added, “they are smart boys,” and he relapsed again into his taciturnity: we had not however alighted many minutes, when he remarked: “Certainly, there is some resemblance among them all, but as the old woman does not wish their stain to be known, it will be as well not to trouble her with any questions; it is a blot which cannot be effaced.” “But it cannot,” was my answer, somewhat chagrined, I know not wherefore, “detract from their own merits. The old woman is no common-place character, and the children deserve more than all the care she can bestow on them.” “They think less of these things in England, than in the Highlands,” was his dry reply. “And less perhaps here than there,” I rejoined. A pause again ensued, and I moved towards Mrs. Paddock’s house. “I shall walk about,” said he with affected indifference, “till you have seen how she is.” This decision surprised me, for it was given in so firm a tone as to render remonstrance needless. It seemed indeed odd that he should have requested me to come with him so hastily from home, and then after our arrival to falter so in his purpose. However, I made no remark, but seeing Andrew Gimlet coming up, I requested him to show the Captain what we had been about, and to explain the schemes projected until I could return.

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On passing towards Mrs. Paddock’s, I chanced to look behind, and saw that he had not proceeded far with Gimlet. They had separated, and were walking in opposite directions; the carpenter in his usual disengaged manner, but Dungowan’s air was thoughtful, and he carried his whip over his right shoulder, in the style of an officer bearing his sword. He was passing on towards the uncleared forest, his pace was slow and heavy, and it was impossible, even at the distance of a hundred yards, to avoid being impressed with his absent appearance, and yet at all times there was a cast of abstraction about him, although in conversation no man could be more self-possessed, or occasionally look more intelligent.

CHAPTER XV. confusion. Mystery is infectious. I felt myself curiously perplexed. I knew not what to make of Dungowan’s behaviour, and when I reached the cottage door, absolutely paused before pulling the latch, so much had I been put out of sorts. When I entered, the nurse had raised the invalid in the bed, and though evidently greatly better, there was a worn and cadaverous appearance in her countenance strikingly ghastly. I took a seat immediately beside her, and she turned her head saying, though still with a trembling and feeble voice, “I am better, and able once more to express my obligations to you, and it will give you pleasure to hear, that in the woman who assists me, I have found one who will look to the boys, if it be the will of Providence to remove me.” The woman in the mean time was busy about some domestic concern at the fire-side, and it struck me that she was altered in her appearance. I apprehended at first that she was ill, but was not long left to conjecture with what malady. The cordials my wife had sent were doing their duty. In a word, without being grossly intoxicated, her senses were disconcerted, a circumstance which gave me inexpressible pain; I said, however, nothing, but Mrs. Paddock observing her, began to weep at the ruin which she feared would inevitably scatter and injure her flock. I consoled her, however, with the strongest assurances that they should not be neglected, and that another nurse would be obtained before I left the settlement, desiring, at the same time, the unfortunate person to retire. But no sooner had she passed the threshold, than seeing Captain Campbell, whom she had known in Scotland, she gave a shrill joyful yell, and ran towards him. The humour he had been in all the morning was not calculated to acknowledge her gratulations acceptable, and he pushed her from him. “’Deed, Captain Cammel,” she exclaimed, “I tak this ill off your hands, me that has been sitting up a night, and doing a duty to your

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dying cousin that’s taking her departal in the house to Abraham’s bosom.” I was within the door, though not observed by Dungowan, and he stood full before me. Never did I witness such an instantaneous flash of consternation overspread the human countenance, as the blood darted into his face at that moment. He looked vacantly around, and in a hurried voice demanded what she meant. “She’s just your ain cousin—she’s been telling me wha she is, Captain Cammell, and I hae promised to tak gude care of the bairns when her auld head’s aneath the ground. Her mother was full sister to your father Major Cammell of Dungowan, as I have often afor heard the story. ’Deed it’s as sure’s death, so gang ye in and comfort her; for I doot, I doot her time’s at hand, poor frail creature; heh, Sirs, and to think she’s no’ ordained to be in a Kirkyard, like a Christian. Oh, Captain Cammell, ye’ll hae muckle to answer for, if ye alloo her to be laid aneath a tree, your own flesh and blood, like a malefactor.” “Peace, fool!” cried Dungowan, his cheeks as pale as his shirt, his limbs trembling, and his lips quivering; “can this be true?” “True,” yelled the woman, “true! wha says it’s no’ true? wasn’t it told me in the confidentials of a dying saint? I would like to ken wha dare say it’s no’ true? They hae a stock o’impiddence. But gang in, Captain Cammel, for she’s a wee recruited with the port o’port, and ye’ll hear a’ the outs and inns o’t from her own blessed lips, that but for my guidance would now hae been cold in the clay.” The appearance of Dungowan was beyond description; and the effect on myself was such, that I durst not venture to appear in the daylight; while the unhappy old woman cried aloud, “Stop her!” which the other no sooner heard, than turning suddenly round, she came rushing to the door, crying, “Oh, Mrs. Paddock, for the sake of men and brethren, dinna exert yoursel’—I ha’e just been preparing your frien’, Captain Cammell, in a far-off jenty way, for your paternoster, anent his aunty, that was sib, my word! to the Duke of Argyle. Compose yoursel’, sweet Mrs. Paddock—Oh dear! oh dear! but I am a weak woman!—and this agitation! who could have thought that Captain Cammell would drop out of the lift here in the very nick of time. But it’s an almous frae the hand o’ Providence, that giveth and spareth not. Oh, Sir, Mr. Bogle Corbet, would ye take down from the shelf a-hint the door that brandy-bottle, and gie me a glass? Oh dear, oh dear, but I’m a flustered woman, and if I winna tak’ it, gar my tak’ it.” I could suffer no more; but pulling the absurd and offensive

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person, who by this time had sat down, from the seat on which I had been previously myself sitting, drew her out of the house. “In the name of all that’s good,” cried Dungowan, when he saw me; “what tale has this wretched creature been telling me?” “I can only partly conjecture; but Mrs. Paddock appears so much better, that I hope she will be able to tell you all herself. It is an extraordinary meeting, and at such a crisis; had she died last night, the discovery might never have been made.” “I knew,” said he, “the moment I saw the boy, that there must be some relationship between us, but I had not anticipated exactly this.” “Say not, however,” was my answer, “any thing respecting the children, unless their grandmother tells you herself.” “I need no injunction; but I trust she has not disclosed to that odious woman, the secret of their bastardy.” At this we were about entering the door, when Mrs. Clavering, the nurse, whose intoxication had increased, following us softly, put her head between our shoulders, and burst into a most obstreperous laugh, crying, “Nae secrets, Captain Cammell—nae secrets, Mr. Bogle Corbet—I’ll no’ alloo’t—I’ll ne’er consent—tell the truth, and shame the evil one,”—and changing her tone, she began to weep, crying, “Oh, this is an altered house!—this is the house of mourning, sackcloth, and ashes!—Mrs. Paddock, how are ye noo, how are ye noo? Oh, dear! and are ye no’ dead yet?” At these words, Horace Evelyn came behind her, and drew her back with great vehemence; and her husband, one of the Glasgow emigrants, hearing her cries, came forward, and took her away. He was a sedate, well-conducted man, and treated her, as he led her off, with great gentleness; making, in a restrained voice, only a brief observation to me, to the effect that it was an old failing, and little did the mischief; but he had hoped in this country she would be far from temptation, and might overcome her infirmity in time. It was a wise dispensation, thought I, that such a person has been placed in your custody; for he was the most quiet and patient of all the emigrants, and, in these respects, an example beyond praise. But his virtue was only constitutional; for of activity, industry, and well-directed endeavour, he was, to a proverb, totally destitute; and only tolerated in the settlement on account of his wife, who notwithstanding her occasional failing, was one of the most motherly luckies we had, and a howdie besides.

CHAPTER XVI. a wet day. During the hubbub described in the preceding chapter, Dungowan went into the house and shut the door; no one followed, and he remained with his cousin Mrs. Paddock some time, in the course of which she fully explained to him her own situation, and those of the boys. I was apprehensive that the inconvenience occasioned by the ludicrous interference of Mrs. Clavering, would have had an injurious effect on her weakness, but it proved otherwise; she felt renovated strength. The truth is, that from the period of her removal from our house to her own cottage in Stockwell, she had become gradually depressed in mind, and there was more of intellectual despondency in her malady, than of physical disease. The disturbance had in consequence the effect of rousing her, and when I saw her after her explanations with Dungowan, she surprised me by the healthy tone of her spirits. Partaking in some degree of her resolution of character, it was determined between her and the Captain, that the blemish in the birth of the children should be concealed. Nothing required its disclosure, and she had not alluded to it fortunately to the nurse. In so far therefore, an incident that would have materially affected the comfort of both, might be considered suppressed; and it was in the course of the day arranged, that the Captain should fix his location near Sylvany, and that she should take the management of his house, and superintend the Evelyns, who were also to live with them. With the exception of this little affair, which took place late in the autumn while I was arranging for closing the summer work, and sending the emigrants on to the chopping of their own land as it is called, meaning the felling of the trees, and the clearing of the soil for cultivation, no occurrence of any remarkable kind happened; but the weather was then broken, and interspersed with such deadly wet days, that all out-door labour was necessarily suspended. Whether my old habits of reverie and rumination were coming back, I know

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not; I was not conscious of it—but my wife thought she discerned symptoms, and exerted herself, as she said, “to scare away the vapours.” Some of the expedients to which she had recourse, were exceedingly simple, often absurd; but the end and drift of all was to keep me in motion, and the house was accordingly bravely thrown into what I felt a state of the most vexatious distraction. The courteous reader may smile at hearing this, but he should recall to mind that a deluge is pouring out-of-doors, that our habitation is framed of thin deals, and that the slightest noise in it is heard throughout. No moving object is visible from the windows, save the boughs and branches of the forest occasionally shaken by the wind; even the wind itself is as it were cowering from the rain, and like the poultry spreading yawningly its idle wing. The smoke from the chimney-top of the wash-house hangs like a wreath of mist lazily on the roof. The pools overflow before the door, and are trenching the path into channels like the ruts of waggon wheels: ducks and geese, each standing single-legged, eye the unceasing shower, and the turkeys melancholy in the shed, utter now and then brief sentences of sound, the apophthegms of dripping dejection. Our view, not extensive, is circumscribed by the woods; not another dwelling is in sight, nor for several miles accessible; no post brings even an afflicting letter. The newspaper of last week has been already read all over, advertisements and all, a score of times. The faculties of the mind are relaxed; not a book is worth reading. It requires fine weather, a frosty night, and a bright fire, to discover the genius of Shakspeare. Our hearth is piled with splintering pine, and it would be cruel to make the servant look for better in the wood-shed on such a night as this. The children quarrel, they know not wherefore; Mrs. Corbet has a box not opened till to-day since we left London; moths may have got into the clothes, its contents are spread abroad, and sure enough a mouse has made a nest in the corner, and has three young ones—all is deplorable. I sit by the fire thinking unutterable things, and saying to myself, this is life, and the pleasure of mine for all my days,—heigh ho! But it is in vain to attempt any adequate description of the drouze that falls upon the senses of an emigrant during the soaking days of the decline of the first year’s residence in the woods. The contrast between London and the country would at any time, in dull weather, have tried my equanimity, but the low spirits to which I have for so many years been occasionally subject, make me sensitive to all the dismal influences of the wilderness.

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On such a day, about ten days or a fortnight after the affair which brought Dungowan and his venerable cousin into a proper understanding in so accidental a manner, I was sitting in the afternoon quietly by myself, having beseeched Mrs. Corbet to spare me from the din and turmoil in which she was keeping all the house astir. For some time, the prospect before me, both to the eye and the mind, was equally disconsolate, but at last the rain began to abate, and although I had no raven to send forth, I yet opened the window, and, stretching out my hand like another Noah, found the waters assuaged. The skies, which had all the time of the deluge been of one uniform grey, began to curdle into clouds, and lo! at last, the blue welkin was seen in two or three places, and at last a gleam of sunshine sprinkled itself over the topmost boughs of the neighbouring woods. This long desired change gave a new impulse to my spirits, and I ordered my horse to ride out before night; but the ground was so saturated with wet, that the newly trodden out road was impassable. The horse plunged and struggled with me for two or three hundred yards from the house, and at last stood still. It would have been a moral sin to have urged him to proceed farther, so I alighted and led him with some difficulty back to the stable; where having given him to our hewer of wood, the man we were obliged to employ to cut up our fuel, I picked my steps into the house, and resumed my seat at the window, where I had been previously sitting, thinking of nothing at all, save only an observation which my wife made on seeing me return. “I fear, Bogle Corbet,” said she, “that you do not feel comfortable?” Such a question after what I had suffered, surely was quite needless; and to confess the truth, I answered her tartly, expressing my astonishment at her making it. But she only laughed at me, and bade me amuse myself with my own sulks till she disturbed me. This was intolerable, and although it was but an example of her careless dialect, it certainly did not tend to soothe my humour, so I sat down at the window and looked out, closing, as I may thus describe it, a wet day in the woods, alike incapable of exercising the faculties of imagination, memory, or reflection.

CHAPTER XVII. visitors. It may be thought that the dulness of a wet day, considering how many such happen in life, especially in Great Britain, is not so extraordinary as to require any particular description. It may be so, but I, who can describe it correctly, especially a wet day in a hollow clearing, amidst the aborigines of a primeval forest, well know, feel, and understand that it is an occurrence near akin to a calamity. However, the particular dreary day to which I have alluded, was not in the evening unmarked by an event. I was looking out at the prospect before me, displayed by the chequered twilight, when on the road, coming towards the house, I beheld an elderly man and a stripling. Judging by the time that I had observed the rain suspend its violence, I conjectured they had come from some habitation in which they had taken shelter. But wherefore they should come to my house, puzzled me not a little, especially as it was apart from the direct road which led by the tavern to Stockwell. As years deserve honour, my attention was chiefly attracted to the senior of the two. He appeared to be about my own age, stooped a little in his gait, was rather better dressed than emigrants or settlers are in general, and had, in a word, the guise and bearing of a gentleman, and yet was not gentlemanly. I saw him from a distance, I noted this peculiarity, and it occurred to me that in his style, mien, and carriage he was not unsimilar to some one that I had known before. His companion was a mere lad, smart and of the character of an attendant. They walked parallel, but yet the lad kept aloof, as it seemed to me, and in his deportment there was an obvious deference, but from the familiarity of the equality in which they came together, it was obvious that the deference did not greatly affect his mind. “Who are these,” said I to my wife, “coming after such a day to seek lodging for the night here? They must have been storm-steaded somewhere on the road, and no doubt hope to find our house a

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stage.—Can they be accommodated?” “You think too quickly, Bogle,” said she; “let us hear first what they want: to lodge them for the night may not be impossible; but to lodge every one is—Let us see what they are?” She then approached the window, and leaning her arm on my shoulder, looked out. “For the gentleman,” she soon after observed, “I’ll make no guess—he’s a stranger to me—but as far as a decent appearance goes, he’s, um, em—well, we have done worse in our day than lodge the like. But his servant is a curiosity.” “How do you know he is his servant?” “He touches his hat when he speaks to him; and by that sign I’m sure he’s an English lad—Goodness me! are my eyes fellows? it is that affliction, our old boy Sam!” True enough it was he; but scarcely had I recovered from the surprise, when I perceived in his apparent master, my old partner, Mr. Possy, from Glasgow. “I’ll be terrified out of my senses,” exclaimed Mrs. Corbet, “if Sam comes here, for assuredly he’ll set the house on fire.” “I know not in what manner to receive the fool,” cried I, alluding to Possy, all my old and painful recollections reviving. By this time they had come so near to the house, that we had no question on the subject; but we at the same time, without retiring from the window, saw Dungowan a little behind in their wake, and Rupert Evelyn, the second of Mrs. Paddock’s grandsons. “We can help but two,” said Mrs. Corbet; “the others must ride on to the tavern.” In perplexity I made no reply, but turning from the window to the fireside, said, with more indifference than I felt, “I leave the whole affair to yourself, Ursey,—you know best how to manage it.” “There it is!” was the thankless exclamation for the compliment; “whenever you are confounded, you make a cat’s-paw of me. I’ll away to my own room, and take the headache; but we cannot send poor Sam into the woods; and as for Rupy Evelyn, he’s a discreet boy, and can make his bed with the dog, were it necessary. But for Possy, that I have heard you talk so ill of, if it was not all scandal that you said, the moon should be his bed-room light before I would—” A great shout in the house from the children, at this juncture, announced the arrival of Sam, and before Mrs. Corbet could finish her sentence, he was ushered into the parlour by them all with

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joy and gratulation. Mr. Possy followed by himself, looking a little shamefaced. Many years had passed since I had seen him, and many vicissitudes had happened to myself, but I forgot them all, and starting up, received him with welcome and cordiality. My wife, though at the time engaged with the children, and with their favourite Sam, gazed at me over her shoulder; and afterwards she took occasion to tell me, that I was a silly Nathaniel for my civility, but nevertheless she received him kindly. Scarcely was this reception well over when the Captain and his cousin came in. But his Celtic consternation was smitten with paralysis when the children announced to Rupert the arrival of Sam, to whom the history of all the Evelyns was well known, as the Captain instantly perceived. I saw the cloud that fell on his countenance, and instantly suspected the cause; Mrs. Corbet was seized also with the same suspicion, and for a minute or two it is impossible to describe the embarrassed air of the four elders; I induced, however, the children to retire, and my own gets, exulting in having got back the ingenious Sam, immediately obeyed, but Rupert Evelyn stood back and comported himself in the scene with reserve, as if resolved that he should know Sam no more.

CHAPTER XVIII. a discovery. By this time I was sensible of a curious change incrusting, if I may say, my mind; no doubt an effect of our sequestration in the forest. Every little occurrence, which in other circumstances would have passed unheeded, became important; the very accidents which occasionally moved our domestic economy took the character of events, and often drew deeper on the resources of our reason and ingenuity, than things which in other days were truly important. In the same manner, remote transactions lost their interest: in proportion to their distance they became indistinct, and seemed to occupy no larger space in the mind, however consequential, than nearer trifles. Thus it happened, that the arrival in one night of so many persons appeared a confluence of events in our fortune, and perhaps, all things considered, the apparition, as it may be called, of Mr. Possy, partook of the extraordinary. From the dissolution of our co-partnery he had suffered, as he said, a great variety of ups and downs. “But,” said he, “I have nevertheless still adhered to my natural line of business, and therefore, though I have realized nothing, yet ye see by this continuance I am in the way to do so, whenever a chance casts up.” “A just remark, Mr. Possy, but you were always distinguished for foresight and prudence,” replied I, with a slight mental sneer. “To the best of my capacity I have ever been so, and no man can do more than the power of his nature allows. Ah, Mr. Bogle Corbet, had you but followed my sober courses, we would both have been topping men; but the will of Providence cannot be withstood—and so here we are.” “And what has brought you here, Mr. Possy?” “A three-masted ship from Greenock to Quebec, a real prime sailer—we had nine and ten knots a-day out of her; a most pleasant passage we had, and her name was the Bailie Jarvie.”

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“I don’t mean the conveyance, but the business.” “Oh, did you mean the business! well, what a mis-apropos that was of me. Ye see things have been slack some time, and as I had debts in Quebec, and not being very consolidate in my health, I was advised to take a trip, and try to make a collection; so in doing this, I could not but come and see the Falls of Niagara; and hearing of you, I thought that I could do no less, for old friendship, than pay you a visit.” “I am sure, Mr. Possy, I could not have expected so much from your regard. Then you have no intention of settling in Canada?” “None in the world; this is not a right country for all sorts of talents; mine, as you well know, are of the warehouse kind: my turn is to manufactures, and ye have had some experience, that though I may have marrows at that, it’s nae brag to say I’ll pit myself with any superior in the trade.” “Game-cocks, Mr. Possy, have always a good opinion of themselves—I see you are still the old man.” “And so I intend to live and die; for, Mr. Bogle Corbet, when a man has gotten a character like me, it would reflect but little credit on his understanding, were he to shift with every wind of doctrine. To be sure, you could not help it, and far am I for hinting a blame.” To interrupt this meaningless jargon, I turned the discourse to the condition of our old friends, and among others to Eric Pullicate. “He is, indeed,” replied Mr. Possy, “a miracle of a man; for my part I never could see any thing but good-luck about him, to which all fools are liable. But he’s now a most rich man, and, in our Glasgow talk, a wise one, so that his notions are looked up to by many. But really, Mr. Bogle Corbet, I have little commerce with him, for, with all her grandeur, as Mrs. Possy judiciously says of his wife, every body knows what she was, and she’s ay ettling at genteelity, but a leddy she’ll never be; she’s as incurable in that as a clubby-foot, which is made by the hand of God.” In this random manner Mr. Possy continued to chatter till he had sickened me. In the mean time Dungowan was holding a confidential conversation apart with Mrs. Corbet, the burthen of which, as she afterwards told me, was a doubt he had about acknowledging his relationship to the Evelyns. During the wet days I had discussed this over and over again with her, until we had both convinced ourselves that there was only a vain phantasy in the whole affair, and that it should be allowed to pass with as little notice as possible; but at this moment a shout and scream arose from the children in another room.

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“What can these bastards be about?” exclaimed Mrs. Corbet rising, meaning her own sons as well as the others; but the word was paralysing to Dungowan, who threw himself back in his chair, having just at that moment told her that he was disposed to leave the Evelyns to themselves, rather than incur the mortification of their birth being discovered. It was, however, too late, the discovery was already made. Sam, with his usual quickness, having discerned something of the cause of Rupert Evelyn’s reserve, and knowing how sensitive the family were on the subject, had accused him of assuming a sullenness towards him that he had no right to do. Out of this an altercation arose, in which Sam proclaimed the bastardy. Rupert struck him, a fight ensued, and the whole house was in consequence informed of the secret, to the insupportable humiliation of Dungowan. The servants told the other settlers, and in the course of four-and-twenty hours, the cause and motive of Mrs. Paddock and her grandsons’ coming from England, was blazed all over the settlement, as if it had been something momentous. Such was about the mightiest affair and busiest night we had in the whole course of the first autumn, and the result was commensurate to the cause. Mr. Possy next morning pursued his route to the Falls of Niagara, and Dungowan, with Rupert Evelyn, returned to Stockwell, bearing his misfortune with more meekness than I expected. His only observation respecting it to me, was the hardship of having our feelings grated by the misconduct of friends. It is thus that evils in prospect ever loom larger than when encountered and examined. As for Sam, he domiciled himself at once amongst us—he had, indeed, come on purpose from England to do so; but his account of the business, both as characteristic of the boy himself, and the easy state into which every thing about my household was gradually settling, deserves a more particular rehearsal. It was not, however, till after the departure of Mr. Possy, that I thought of speaking to him on the subject; for somehow Mrs. Corbet as well as myself, from seeing them come together, had imagined that Sam was his servant, and the oddness of that circumstance had attracted our attention after we had retired to our bed-room, as even a still more surprising coincidence than the accident which had brought Dungowan and Mrs. Paddock together. No doubt, in any circumstances, two such events were calculated to surprise, and, in the rumourless solitudes of the woods, where every thing has space and time to make the

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fullest impression, they could not but engage our imaginations as miracles of more than nine days’ wonder. Yet our situation, where such things are of inconceivable magnitude, is not without events, which would elsewhere beggar them into insignificance, as I shall hereafter have occasion to notice; but in the mean time the adventures of Sam claim consideration.

CHAPTER XIX. experiments. When Mr. Possy left us, Sam happened to come into the parlour, and on observing him, I said, “How is it that you have not gone with your master?” “He was not my master, Sir.” “Not your’s!” exclaimed Mrs. Corbet; “and what brought you over the sea?” “I came in a ship.” “No doubt: but with whom did you come?” “There were sixteen of us, besides passengers, six pigs, two sheep, a cow, and other creatures, with lots of rats.” Perceiving something like evasion in this answer, I reprimanded him, and requested the whole truth. “Well then, Sir,—I thought one day, that I would come, and so I spoke to the ship’s captain at the London Docks, and he consented to bring me, if I would help in the cabin, which I could not refuse; so I got to Quebec, and I have come hither by an unaccountable chance.” “And what do you intend to do?” “Whatever you please, Sir.” “Will you set fire to our house again?” cried my wife. “It was not me that did it.” “No! who then?” “It was the flax, Ma’am.” “But you kindled it?” “I had only the light in my hand,—a candle’s a game thing with flax.” “Well; but why have you come to this country, and what do you propose to do for yourself?” “I don’t know. I’ll be guided by you, Sir.” “Then, am I to understand you have sought us out?” “I could not help it.” “But, Sam, we have no occasion for you in the house—we require

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a man—our work is heavy.” “I am growing every day stronger. I am stronger than Rupert Evelyn, and he has three younger brothers. If they can work in the woods, why should not I; I am as willing as any of them.” “If you can find employment.” “And, Sir, will you not employ me?” “Had you remained a year or two longer among your friends, it would have been better.” “I have no friends.” “But though you have lost your parents, you had still your grandmother.” “She cannot help herself, Sir.” “What said she to this wildgoose chase?” “Nothing, Sir; what could an old woman say but be angry?” I need describe, however, our conversation no farther. The boy, after being discharged by me, had been in several places, where, according to his own account, he was restless, ever thinking of us, till he determined to seek us out in America. As he was naturally sharp and sagacious, although design had little to do with his adventure, I could not but acknowledge to myself that he had accidentally chosen wisely; instead, however, of being a mere domestic, it would have been greatly better for him, had he been acquainted with some slight knowledge of a useful trade. And I beg the attention of the courteous reader to the remark, for although obvious, it is one not apt to occur to the mind, till suggested on the spot, by taking an interest in the concerns of those to whose case it may apply. I do not mean that all young persons who come to the Colonies should be fully instructed in any trade; but were emigration conducted on proper principles, instead of encouraging the helpless to come abroad, and then leaving them to shift for themselves, I would have them prospectively prepared by some instruction in handicrafts. It is the want of it, as I had by this time seen, that makes the privations of the woods greater than they would otherwise be. The severity of wet and wintry weather obliges labour to be from time to time suspended; on such occasions, were the settler possessed of any faculty of trade, he would employ himself better than in the way the mere labourer commonly passes his time. Our Colonies are peopled on too lax a system—a system indeed so bad, that it might almost justify the supposition that Government, in permitting it to remain unaltered, practised some occult policy to

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repress the progress of improvement. Certain it is, that in the course of my early observations, I saw an obvious tendency in the state of things in Canada to favour a relapse into barbarity. And nothing is less disputable than that the backwoods-men of the United States have declined from the civilization of their progenitors.—However, to return. Had Sam come earlier he would probably have perplexed me; but arriving in the fall of the year, and when I had somewhat ripened in my conceptions of systematic colonization, the incident was agreeable. The attachment of the boy to the family pleased us all, and his alacrity of mind and experimental disposition strengthened his claim to our regard; but it would neither have benefited himself nor my own sons to have made him again a domestic inmate,—I therefore resolved to make him the subject of a course of education, such as I thought most likely to prove advantageous to himself. Accordingly, having investigated the different vocations of the Glasgow emigrants who were settled at and around Stockwell, I arranged that Sam should attend a blacksmith, a carpenter, and a tailor, alternately, twice in each week during the winter, to acquire some knowledge of their respective trades. When the labour in the spring recommenced on my farm, he was employed on it. Sunday was regularly set apart for intellectual instruction. Were a course of instruction similar to this instituted for intending emigrants before leaving England, the benefits would materially mitigate their situation afterwards in the forest. In this case the experiment has had the most beneficial consequences, and, indeed, to such a degree, that Dungowan, although not particularly susceptible of impressions from civil affairs, saw them so clearly, that he has placed the three elder Evelyns in the same course of practical tuition; next year I propose to do as much with my eldest son, who will then be old enough; as for Sam, his natural ability has made him already in many respects so expert, that we begin to wonder what we should have done without him. It may be observed on this plan, that it differs little from teaching an apprentice at home, but I conceive the distinction is widely different. Apprenticeship in England instructs the novice to acquire a trade for a livelihood, but this system only furnishes aids to other pursuits; dexterity or refinement is not the main object of the study, so much as a competency of practical knowledge which may be brought into use when requisite. It is to the settler in the woods, what the art of the accountant is to the borough artisan, auxiliary to his business.

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But in thus deviating into the palpable mysteries of political economy, I am forgetting the more immediate subject of my task. For although the regular tone of my mind may be said to have been renewed before the middle of the first winter, by the excitement of various occupations, still occurrences now and then took place in the little society of Stockwell, which, however, ordinary in themselves, were of vast importance to those who had so few topics otherwise to engage their attention.

CHAPTER XX. the first winter. The winter during our first season was extremely mild: we had, it is true, several days of intense cold, and paroxysms of wind and hail, that merited, for their violence, the epithet of storms and tempests; but when the autumnal broken weather was again knit-up, we were surprised at the softness and tranquillity of the winter. It was certainly more temperate than the climate of England; even when the cold in the shadow of the trees and buildings was severest, the dryness of the air made it much less sensible than we had prepared ourselves to experience. Agreeably to my predetermined plan, on the first of November I suspended for the winter all the outdoor labour on my own lands, and sent the emigrants to their’s; but the system, from the inattention of some, the self-opiniatedness of others, and a general disposition to postpone their work from day to day, convinced me that my troubles were only commencing. Novelty, no doubt, was an influential ingredient in preserving the sobriety with which our first tasks were executed; something was also due to the feeling of strangeness that existed for a considerable time; but as familiarity increased, discipline became flexible, so that long before the winter was over, it was found that the advantages of reciprocal civility were not enough to restrain the heats and spurts of individual peculiarity. But, on the whole, the plan worked onward, and I had the satisfaction to perceive, that although the progress was not regular, the forthcoming would not be disappointment. I met, however, with an occurrence that vexed me more than other important things. As soon as the work on my lands was suspended, Andrew Gimlet, whom I have mentioned as a clever and decisive person for his education and station in life, and whom I had from the first employed as a sort of foreman, applied for a few days’ leave of absence, to visit other parts of the province, and to make an excursion to Buffalo, in the State of New York. He did not disguise the object of his journey, but told me that the

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work at Stockwell was not exactly of the kind for which he could be best rewarded, and that instead of becoming, according to his first intention, an agricultural settler, he was led, from many accounts, to believe that he should do better by resuming his own business as a house-carpenter—and the result was as might have been foreseen. He came back, but it was only to remove his wife and child into the State of New York. He found there more constancy of employment than he saw any chance of obtaining in the province, and with the promptitude of his character he resolved to quit the woods, and risk his fortune in some of the New American villages. The loss of this able and intelligent young man was a misfortune to us all, for it comprehended not only himself, but had the effect of drawing others to follow him, insomuch that, by the middle of February, every one of Mr. Pullicate’s association, conscious of being able to do any effectual good for himself, had quitted the settlement, so that although not deserted, I yet felt myself less in power than I had any cause to apprehend. The vexation which this occasioned was soon, however, alleviated; a better class of settlers began to come around me—persons capable of purchasing the lands and improvements of those, who, with the restlessness inherent in the emigrant’s mind, had become uneasy in their locations. Altogether the first winter was far from passing happily. It was chequered with daily small occurrences, not singly in themselves deserving of consideration, but, collectively, serious inroads on comfort. My wife called them flies and musquitoes; they were at once so numerous and incessant in their annoyance. Much, doubtless, of what we suffered, should have been regarded as incidental to our new situation, and might have been obviated by more minute inquiries; but they were of a kind respecting which inquiry is seldom instituted, and without a hint never made. For example, as early as the spring appeared to biggen in the bud, the milk of our cows began to have both the disagreeable odour and taste of onions; at last it became so strong that we found ourselves compelled to abstain from the use of it in disgust. This, it may be thought, was only a trifling molestation; but milk, both simply and in its various preparations, is so essential an article in rural economy, that trifling as it may seem, it greatly deteriorated our enjoyments, and furnished to us, who were so sterile in topics, a wearisome subject of complaint at every meal. Town-bred people are certainly, of all others, the least fitted to endure with complacency the vicissitudes and privations of a

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forest-life; and this we experienced to an acute degree. Our stores, from the habit of trusting for easy supplies to the shops, sometimes were allowed to become exhausted; once, I recollect, we were a fortnight without tea, while the milk was in that polluted state—a positive calamity, and the more afflicting, as it was the effect of unpardonable negligence. But it is not easy to convey a correct notion of the plague of such things, and yet it is from them that the least remarkable, but the greatest annoyances, in the forest-wilderness, arise. Usage may reconcile us to bear them, and experience render our town habits more conformable to their occurrence; but still they belong to misfortune, and partake of its corrosive qualities, and sometimes they even amount to the minor miseries. Not being competent judges of the rapid consumption of wood fuel, our stock became exhausted. This ought to have been foreseen, but the evil was disclosed suddenly. It was then winter, and the weather piercingly cold. A supply of seasoned wood was sent express for—we expected it before night, and contrived to glean sticks and splinters to keep out starvation; but towards evening the biting wind relented, the skies lowered, and the rain fell in torrents; no team could be brought along, and our fire went out. We cowered for a time over the parlour-hearth, but the embers were ashes. We betook ourselves to cloaks and great coats, but they were ineffectual. We adjourned in a body to the kitchen, where a spark was still cherished. With outspread hands we bent over it, till the flame vanished, and the fiery remnant was only just enough to light a candle. None, by accident, was at hand; a cry from all arose for a candle, but when it was brought the brand had so faded, that lips and lungs were exercised in vain: at last a rag was screamed for, but before one could be got, the fire perished, and we were obliged to go to bed, where, owing to the thinness of the frame of the house, and the stove being unlighted, sleep would not come; and towards daylight in the morning the wind changed again to the north, and fell ten degrees below zero. These sort of hardships, though almost ludicrous in the recital, were yet grievous in the experience. They did not, it is true, frequently occur, but often enough to do more than molest our comfort; and the worst of them consisted in making the younger children querulous and importunate to be taken home; which, though a childish longing, became sometimes exceedingly distressing; for the poor creatures, after fretting and complaining, would subside into sadness, and sit apart and moan to themselves with so much of the

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accent of desertion, that their mother often said it was more pitiful to hear them than if they were Babes in the Wood, and she herself a tender-hearted Robin Redbreast. But as the winter wore away, custom, with its wonted conciliation, mitigated our sufferings, and many things which at their first occurrence were severe evils, came to be sustained without a murmur, and sometimes even allowed to pass without observation.

CHAPTER XXI. forest scenes. Our adventures partook of the quiet, household nature of our disasters, sometimes teasing in their occurrence, at others facetious, but rarely of influential effect. Amusement we had none, for the scarcity of game in the forest renders it too troublesome to find, ever to make shooting here a pleasure; now and then, however, a glimpse of native character glimmers out among the settlers, and affords something to talk of for nine days. Those who were the most eminent for thus supplying topics, the one by his actions, and the other by his talk, were Sam and James Foddie, the worthy, patient husband of the nurse who distinguished herself with the wine my wife sent to Mrs. Paddock. Sam is never out of mischief. There is no sort of experiment which he does not attempt, from tapping the maple trees, of course, at improper times, for juice, to make sugar, even to dyeing the towels in chemical investigations of the plants and substances that he supposes contain colouring matter. Were his discernment equal to his assiduity, he would undoubtedly be, even now, no mean experimental philosopher; but Sam has only an incessant desire to do, and never draws an inference. James Foddie is a very different personage; he cannot be said to have acquired any renown for industry, and he will rather talk with you for a day about sedate nothings, than work for an hour. In his demeanour he is calm and methodical; no one has ever seen him in a passion, and his words flow in an even, mellow tenour, without emphasis, almost without accent. On one occasion, however, he was a little shaken from his propriety, and the event is still told among us as something almost as miraculous as the water tapped from the rock. Instead of buying land, for he was very poor, he leased fifty acres of mine on the side of a hill, and during the winter made a small clearing on the summit, where, in time, he proposed to erect a log-house. As the spring advanced, he gathered the brush-wood

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together, as usual, to burn it; and one day, though the season was not far enough advanced, he gave Sam a penny to set it on fire, and to attend the blaze till it was consumed, he having himself some other task at Stockwell. Nothing could be more acceptable to the ignipotent Sam than an occupation of this kind, and accordingly the brushwood was kindled, but, the time being rather premature, it burned slowly, and Sam wearied at looking on. Still the spot presented to him favourable materials for other pastime—in several hollow trunks of aged trees. Sam happened to discover, that, when set on fire in the inside from the roots, they blazed up like foul chimneys. This was mightily interesting. The brushwood was neglected, and the flames soon expired; but to make amends, every hollow tree that could be found was soon roaring like a furnace. The smoke ascended in stupendous volumes, and filled all the air. James Foddie, who knew the purpose he had engaged Sam to perform, was alarmed at the sight, and justly dreading that the woods were on fire, went about among his neighbours, in a composed manner however, to solicit their assistance to extinguish the conflagration. “Do you see yon smoke?” said he, to each; “I hae a notion that it’s the laddie Sam’s doing, for I gied him a penny to burn my brush, but surely he’s made owre muckle a fire, and I dinna misdoot the woods are bleezing; will ye ha’e the civility to come and help me to put them out?” With such impassioned appeals he roused the posse comitatus of Stockwell, who all hurried to the spot, himself leisurely following; and on reaching it they beheld the brushwood singed only on a few branches, and Sam running about like an evil spirit with a blazing brand, glancing among the burning trees seeking for hollow trunks. On observing the crowd, Sam threw down his torch, and came towards them with a demure countenance. “Man Sammy,” said James, “what made you kin’le siccan an owre muckle a fire? Odsake! how will we ever get it put under, dost thou think, Sammy?” “It does,” replied Sam, “look very terrible and dreadful; who would have thought that the rightful fire would have gone out, and these old doddard trees have taken it into their heads to burn?” “But ye should na, Sammy, my man, have made siccan an owre muckle a fire. That’s an unco fire, and my brush no burnt: what for ha’e you no burnt my brush, Sammy, and what are a’ the trees lowing

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and roaring for like mad? Od-sake, am very angry, Sammy. Siccan an owre muckle a fire! and no in the right place, Sammy!” In the mean time, while he was thus expostulating with the boy, the other settlers were busy looking at the conflagration, for they could do little more; but the season gave effectual assistance, for the wet weather which had prevailed some days prior, and the rising sap of the green wood, counteracted the flames, so that before he had half finished his remonstrance the burning had ceased; but “siccan an owre muckle a fire” has become a proverbial expression among us for a towering passion. And yet, though the forest was thus inane of amusement, and the events which for the moment interested us, such vacuum interspersum, I imagined the dulness might be brightened and the monotony varied merely by a regular appropriation of my time to different objects. But a brief experience soon convinced me how difficult it is to carry such a purpose into effect. Incidents unexpectedly occur, as well as occasional visits, that disorder all systematic arrangement. Besides, the mind tires of exerting itself in leisure, and like a dwarf in a giant’s robe, struggles in constant motion, but accomplishes nothing. To do much one must have much to do. In a word, although I cannot say that any thing has occurred to render my residence in the wild materially different from what I was led to anticipate, yet I am inclined to think, that however advisable emigration may have been to my circumstances, the step was taken too late in life for my own happiness. I would, therefore, urge the courteous reader to think well of this. New habits and tastes are not easily acquired; and though resolute hardihood may induce a manly resistance to spleen, and longing, and dismay, and the loathing that grows in solitude, like the mantling vegetation on the stagnant pool, there is no relish in life without variety of occupation; and that exists not in the bush, where every day is but a part of a monotony, and every night but a suspension of the same “dull round:” idem, eadem, idem. It is not however for himself, nor for recreation, that a man quits the flesh-pots of Egypt for the manna of the wilderness. A sacrifice is required of him, and, having made it, he should not repine at the consequences. For myself, I speak truly when I say, that here I feel no regrets; but my constitutional infirmity, which makes me at times prone to indulge in aimless reveries, occasionally interrupts the even tenour of my way. All emigrants are not, however, subject to this vapour; and with more of the might of a younger man, they

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need meet with nothing to lessen their rational happiness. In my case, there is a liability to suffer from a weakness within myself, and many things from which others would sustain no annoyance, are disheartening to me; but that would now, I fear, be my portion in any circumstances; and therefore, when discontent escapes me, it ought to be ascribed to that cause alone, and deducted from the effect of those mischances which are really incident to the lot of emigrants in the forest.

CHAPTER XXII. the lone man. With the annual shoal of emigrants during the second spring, came several families from the West of Scotland. Only two of them, however, settled in Nox, the others scattered themselves over the province. Among them was an association, in some respects similar to that of the party which Eric Pullicate sent to me. They were desirous of locating themselves on my land; but, although not in circumstances to purchase, they refused to accept of leases, and in consequence, as it was not consistent with my views to dispose of the property otherwise than to tenants, we made no agreement. The negotiation was not in itself remarkable, such things are probably not of rare occurrence, but it brought me acquainted with one of the most mysterious characters I have ever met with. His name was Archibald Jocelyn, but more generally known, however, among his neighbours, as the Gentleman. He was an elderly man, without being so old in appearance as to merit the epithet of aged; but his forehead was high and bald, and what remained of his hair seemed to have been bleached by the influence of a torrid climate, flowing in venerable affluence on his shoulders, suggesting recollections of saints and patriarchs seen in pictures, Abraham and St. Peter, or Joseph of Arimathea. He spoke little, but whatever he uttered was distinguished for the fitness of the phrase, and the elegant conciseness in which it was couched. His accent was Scottish, but his language, for purity and propriety, was such as the author of Junius may have spoken. His air and manners were benignly calm; in a word, one that could not be seen without inspiring confidence in his benedictions. And yet this serene and gracious person belonged to the lowliest condition. He was poor, he laboured with his bodily strength, but he had a mind that towered into the welkin of genius. His companions knew nothing of his history, farther than that he was a native of the same parish, where he had been early left an unrelated orphan; all trace of his kindred was lost, for he was a posthumous child, and his

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mother died in giving him birth—a widow and a stranger. The country people, though in humble circumstances themselves, had among them charitably contrived to gather the means of bringing him up, till at an examination of the parish school, an English gentleman, present on the occasion, was so struck with the composed and beautiful aspect of the child, its proficiency, and the story of its helplessness, that he undertook to educate him for the church, under the direction of the minister. While at college his patron died, and being then destitute, he wandered away and was never heard of for more than thirty years; nor, indeed, when he came back, was he again known to his old friends, so much had time, and the sun of foreign lands, changed the gentleness of his countenance into that saintly solemnity. He never told them where he had been; but from accidental words, they guessed far in the world, and amidst the engines and mysteries of courts and kings. Yet he was as poor as when he left them, and he sought employment to earn his daily bread. Saving the dignity of his religious physiognomy, for it deserved no lighter name, and his simple elegance of speech, he was seemingly in all other respects an ordinary yeoman, for his hands were embrowned by hard labour, and his garb rustic and homely. The man from whom I received my information, added, on my observing the contrast between the coarseness of his hands, and the rank, as I happened to call it, of his looks, “They were not aye so, for when he came back among us, they were as fair and fine as a leddy madam’s, that does a’ her darg on the spinnet.” I should, perhaps, have passed the negotiation, like others of the kind, unnoticed, but his image took possession of my mind, and induced me to follow him to the door, where I received from one of his companions this information. The others were sitting on the stumps and trunks of the felled trees, and some of them having spread their little stock of provisions beside them, were quietly eating their frugal meal. The day was grey and calm, and only the axe of the chopper was heard in the woodland. As the venerable man met his associates, the whole scene seemed to change, and every object around became invested with inconceivable solemnity. It was plain that they had been accustomed to treat him with reverence, for they listened to what he reported of our conversation with grave attention, and when he concluded, they

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divided themselves into several groups, which went apart to consult, leaving him alone. He did not, however, long stand there, but walked to some distance, and leaned against a fence, which had been recently raised round a potato patch, waiting apparently till the deliberations of the others were determined. His pensive posture, and the interest he had excited, would have made me go towards him; but at that moment Dungowan, leading the youngest of the Evelyns by his finger, appeared from behind a clump of trees, by a path which obliged them to pass near the undivulged stranger in coming towards me. As they approached him, I noticed that he slightly altered his position, then erected himself as it were in surprise, and suddenly turning, walked to some distance. The whole of this scene scarcely occupied the space of a minute, but it was sufficient to show that he recognised in Dungowan a person whom he had known before, and was anxious to avoid. The Captain himself had not particularly observed him, but I was instantaneously moved to wish he should, and accordingly went forward to lead him towards the stranger, whom we might join without evincing any unbecoming curiosity. He saw us coming, and again moved away, which left no doubt that I had conjectured correctly, and that it would be an obtrusion to go forward. Dungowan, who was an acute worldly observer, partly detecting, as it were, the motive by which I was actuated, said, “Who is that?—you seem to be interested in him. Dear! I should know the air of that man! Who is he?—Certainly I do know him, or it is a resemblance as wonderful as that of Horace Evelyn to my long dead brother. But he shuns us—can he know me?” I then told him that the stranger was the leader of several families from the West of Scotland, who had come to Stockwell with an intention of settling under me, but that we could not agree; subjoining, that I was indeed highly interested in him, both on account of his appearance, and the singular elegance and propriety of his discourse. “He is, seemingly,” said I, “a person in very common life, but, undoubtedly, a man of education, and his companions evidently consider him as their superior; and yet he is one of the same condition as themselves.” While speaking, I observed that Dungowan grew thoughtful, and with a habit peculiar to him when affected either with reflection or

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emotion, pressed his under lip with the tips of his left fingers. “I will leave the child with you,” said he, “and go to him. If I am not mistaken, Stockwell will be again the scene of another discovery.” So saying, he shook the child from its hold of his hand, and walked towards the fallen tree, upon which the stranger had by this time seated himself. But he had not advanced half a dozen paces, when the other emigrants, who had in the mean time mingled again together, passed us in a desultory train, some with bundles suspended from sticks over their shoulders, and joined him before the Captain had time to approach. Jocelyn did not, however, go with them; he observed Dungowan coming towards him, and evidently waited for him. They then moved apart, and I could see by their manner that they were not only acquainted, but that there was some restraint in the demeanour of the Captain. To watch the gestures of gentlemen at a distance, I have ever thought a species of unworthy evesdropping; and in consequence, to avoid the imputation from myself, of being guilty of that meanness, I turned, and came towards the village, walking leisurely, in the expectation that the Captain would speedily rejoin me. But he was much longer than I expected, a circumstance which at the time made me wonder; which, however, it ought not to have done, as the stranger had but just arrived from the old country, and had perhaps something interesting to communicate.

CHAPTER XXIII. a mystery. Some time after, I saw the associated emigrants pass along the road which led from the township, but Jocelyn was not with them; he was then with Dungowan, and they had gone together by a more sequestered path, which led through the forest in a parallel direction. In consequence of this information, I conducted the boy Evelyn to his grandmother, for I made a point of seeing her regularly every time I had occasion to be at Stockwell. She was in a great measure recovered from her indisposition, but her health was far from being re-established. On this occasion I found her uncommonly cheerful, greatly so beyond her custom, insomuch that I inquired the cause. “I begin,” said she, “to think we have done wisely in coming here; the Captain has been telling me to-day, that till recently he had felt as a plant which had been removed, but now he begins to fasten in the soil, all things around are so visibly improving.” Some other general conversation relative to different topics, of no very important character, then arose, and after a short time I moved to come away, when Dungowan entered. It was evident, at the first glance, that he was disturbed; and it may be conceived with what surprise both his kinswoman and I heard him say, before he was well seated, that he repented so much of having come to Canada, that he thought it would be as well to return, and spend the remainder of his days at home, adding— “We live in a world difficult to understand. We fall in with individuals whom we would choose for friends, but they pass, they disappear, and we know them no more. There is more, and also less, of a dramatic construction in the fable of life then we willingly allow. I really fancied we were again at the ripening of a plot, but it has been a vapour.” “Then the stranger,” said I, “is not the person you expected?” “He is the same,” replied the Captain; “I was not mistaken in his appearance. But you must ask me no questions; not because I know

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any thing to reveal concerning him, but simply because he wishes to remain unknown, and I have promised not to discover him. He has indeed been ever an enigma; with talents fit to rule an empire, and wisdom that qualifies him to be the sagest among the wise, he has reduced himself to a humble level.” “And why?” replied I. “You ask what I cannot answer. But question me no farther, for he has made me very sorrowful.” “I wish,” said I, “he had not been in such haste to depart. I have never seen one that I wished so much to become acquainted with.” “That you never could have become. He is a stranger to all who know him, and the greatest to himself: but let us speak no more of him.” “Has he determined to what part of the province he will accompany his associates?” “Not exactly—or rather, I should say, he has not yet fixed.” “When we hear he has, we shall visit him; I long to know something of his history.” “So do I,” replied the Captain gravely, “so do I.” “And yet you have found in him an old friend.” “An acquaintance; one worthy of the utmost esteem: what can he intend by his disguise?” “What, indeed! there is nothing in this country to cause him to put it on: moreover, one of his companions spoke of him as having used it in Scotland.” “Really—but let us change the subject. He has very solemnly begged that I should not speak of him as if I ever knew him before: I have promised.” A little pause then took place, and I afterwards added, “No doubt, odd characters sometimes come in with the emigrants, and he is doubtless one. I have already noticed, in my different rides, persons, who, in spite of a humble garb, showed a polish inconsistent with their condition—stars not in their proper sphere, or fallen from it.” The manner of Dungowan during this conversation was calculated to inflame my curiosity; for although he declared the greatest regard, even admiration for the mysterious stranger, he evaded all my most ingenious attempts to ascertain what he knew of him, and more than once remarked that the strongest regrets in life often spring from not having time to become intimate with interesting characters.

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I then told him what I had learnt of the stranger’s history, for an irresistible impulse would not allow me to recede, notwithstanding the repeated requests of Dungowan that we should avoid the subject. For some time he made no reply, but sat thoughtful, and then raising his eyes and looking severely at me, said, “Don’t tell that again—no one ever heard him mention the place of his birth, nor the rank of his kindred, and yet he always seemed above his station. He has vexed me, but no matter, let it be forgotten for a time.” “It is our best course; he is but an emigrant who has let himself down to the level of his fortunes—we shall probably soon hear of him again,” “I doubt it,” said the Captain; “but come, Mr. Bogle Corbet, if you intend to return to Sylvany this evening, it begins to be time to get your horse, we can talk of him when we shall have more leisure.” And so saying the Captain led the way, and I followed him, after bidding Mrs. Paddock good night;—but, in passing from her house to the hut where my horse was stabled, he never uttered a word, his thoughts were intent on inward reflections; had he heard distressing news, he could not have appeared more rapt and absent—perhaps he had. His abstract air infected me; I mounted and shook hands with him, scarcely conscious of what I did, and was more than a mile on the path from Stockwell before I was again master of myself, nor, indeed, might I have so soon recovered the necessary wakefulness which the Canadian roads so require, had not my horse stumbled and nearly fallen with me. That little accident dispersed my thick-coming fancies, and in consequence, without yielding to the mood of marvelling and reminiscence into which I am too apt to sink, I roused myself to a more animated contemplation of the scene, for the twilight had faded to a feeble glow, the stars were all out, and the moon was shining with a latticed disk through the boughs. Here and there lights from the cottage-windows of the settlers were peering and sparkling, and the pleasing tinkle of the cow-bells was heard from the woods: it was an hour when no rude thought could intrude. The incident of the afternoon became only a kedge-anchor, as it were, which held my imagination in a current of soothing reveries; I rode along the solitary path in a state of enjoyment such as I had not felt so distinctly for many years. So much is it congenial to my disposition to be in unison with the seasonable harmonies of Nature. But the delightful sobriety of that evening ride was not destined

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to be of long duration. The demon that haunts the new settler in the forest, had none abated in its native malignity, but at the very moment when I was in the calm felicity of gentle thoughts and softened cares, was busy mingling the disastrous ingredients of a manifold molestation.

CHAPTER XXIV. disasters. My wife, Mrs. Corbet, by her country education, suffered less change in her feelings and habits by coming to this country than I had apprehended. Being entirely domestic in her dispositions, she often, indeed, acknowledged that she felt more at home in Canada than in the neighbourhood of London. Unfortunately, however, as I must say it was, she conceived it to be her duty not only to know the usages of other settlers, but to practise them, without sufficiently considering whether in our case it was requisite or not; and in consequence we had always, to me, a most afflicting to-do in our householdry. To say nothing of pigs and sheep to kill, and joints to send to obliging neighbours who had remembered us in similar operations, sausages to stuff and yarn to bleach, and worsted to dye; we had quilting beds, upholstery jobs, and, in short, more various manufactures in hand than would have served for the supply of any ten decent families in the old country. This bustle often interfered with our comfort; and yet, though it was the evident heart’s delight of Mrs. Corbet to be stirring in hot water of her own boiling, the more she had to do the less was she content, and gave vent to the most pathetic complaints concerning her turmoils, telling me that her “bit and her drop were dearly bought,” adding with a sigh, “it would come to an end;” and whenever I responded amen, which I did on every occasion with perfect sincerity, she would accuse me of being destitute of sympathy. It thus happened that, on the night I returned from Stockwell to Sylvany, as described in the preceding chapter, overflowing with the milk of human kindness, and relishing long untasted tranquillity, I saw as I approached the door lights in several windows, a vast fire in front of the offices with a cauldron on it, as if it had been the pit of Acheron; several persons passing to and fro between it and the kitchen-door, with all the signs, sounds, and symptoms, of an occasion of no ordinary kind.

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I was rather dismayed at the sight of such nocturnal doings, knowing from old experience that they would not be found essentially contributory to the enjoyments of a quiet parlour and a snug supper, to which my day’s hard journey rather eagerly invited, and perhaps I might not be in consequence prone to indulge the most mellifluous humour; my consternation accordingly was not excessive, when Mrs. Corbet seeing me enter, said in a hurry, having ten times more in hand than she could well manage, that I might order what I wanted, for she had a boiling of linen cloth, besides a general washing, to superintend, and every body in the house was busy. I therefore put on a mask of sober gravity, and desired the servant to fetch me a boiled peacock, with oyster sauce, for supper. The handmaid, a newly-imported Irish girl, looked at me, and, without answer, hied to her mistress, who at the moment was inspecting the contents of the cauldron—hot work! The strange request so astonished her, that she let the cloth which she had lifted by the stirring-stick fall back into the cauldron with a plunge; the boiling water leaped up, and the spray fell on one of the attendant maidens and scalded her legs. She was holding a candle, which the sudden pain caused her to drop, and in stooping she pushed inadvertently against the cauldron. It was upset; the fire was extinguished, and although there was the greatest cause for hymns of thankfulness that no person was scalded, only the most discordant shrieks and yells ascended in the darkness that ensued. Every soul within the house ran to the spot of jeopardy. The tumult was as of horsemen horseing on their horses, and the confusion surpassed all description. Scarcely, however, was the disaster ascertained, and comparative quiet restored, when we returned into the house only to encounter new troubles. In my haste at the yells of agony, I had, with the tail of my coat, whisked off one of the candles from the table, and it fell into a basket where Mrs. Corbet had the main stock of her best laces and head-gear lying in a damp state. Instantaneous combustion did not take place, but the candle most unaccountably did not go out, on the contrary, it continued to burn on its side, in the most extraordinary manner for a candle to do, and, though it did not consume the precious commodities with a blaze, it burnt seven-and-twenty great holes in them, through as many successive folds, down to the bottom of the basket. This, every one must allow, was a domestic calamity of its degree; Mrs. Corbet wrung her hands with sorrow, and with just displeasure reprimanded me for bursting into a most irreverent laugh. But it was

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suddenly checked by another direful yell from the kitchen, occasioned by an old woman, who in bringing in the web capsized from the cauldron, staggered against a skreen of clothes drying before the fire, and they were instantly blazing, to the imminent hazard of the building. However, that misfortune was also overcome; but I received a very poor supper, had it not been garnished with hunger, besides the consolation of being cogently admonished, that times of business are not times for joking. But to be serious, the abrupt extinction of the cauldron fire, which shone far and wide, attracted attention at a distance, and brought a party to the house to see what had happened. They proved to be the Scottish emigrants who had been with me in the course of the day at Stockwell, and among them their singular leader, whom I have already described. They had stopped at the tavern, and were then going to the public road by the moonlight when the accident happened, and the wild cries that had succeeded attracted them to the spot. Although this visit was purely accidental, it gave me great pleasure, chiefly on account of affording me another opportunity of again meeting with a man in whom I was so much interested. But when he found it was my house, and that I was at home, he urged his companions to resume their journey, and shrunk from me. This was so obvious, that it again awakened my curiosity, and stimulated me to make some exertion to detain them all. I accordingly insisted on their acceptance of some refreshment, and in a particular manner pressed the unknown to partake, inviting them into the parlour. He did not altogether decline my offer, for he saw a willingness on the part of the others to accept it, but he seated himself aloof, and near the door, as awkward people generally do in the presence of their superiors; and yet there was nothing in his manner unbecoming the ease and self-possession of one accustomed to good company. He never voluntarily spoke, but he replied to my questions with that elegant conciseness which surprised me so much in the course of the day; and in consequence, while he whetted my curiosity to know something of what he had been, his studied reserve repressed my endeavours to draw him into freer conversation. I gathered from him, however, that he had been in Spain with the army of the Duke of Wellington; that he had also been in Egypt and in Sicily, but in what capacity I could not discover. As a private soldier it was impossible, in looking at the man, to suppose, and, indeed, when I inquired to what regiment he had belonged, he said that he was not,

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on the latter occasions, a military man; implying, that either before or since, he had been of the profession. Interested as I had been in him, I was now doubly so; but he went off with his companions when they had taken their refreshment, leaving me in the most irksome and unsatisfied state imaginable.

CHAPTER XXV. a suggestion. The stranger attracted the attention of my wife to an equal degree with mine. I observed her, as she had occasion, on household cares intent, to pass in and out of the parlour, frequently look at him, as one may suppose Eve did at the affable angel with Adam; indeed it was impossible to see him without feeling the excitement of some sentiment allied to reverence, or to hear him speak, and not be affected by admiration at the gentleness of his voice, and the beautiful brevity of his expressions: even Mrs. Corbet, who in language was nothing critical, remarked to me, after he had departed, that he spoke like a play-actor in a tragedy, and completed her description by one of the most original similes extant. “What can he be?” said she; “for my part, I think if he is not a Centaur, he’s something very like one on my father’s Etruscan vase, half a heathen god, and half a horse. You cannot look at his countenance without awe, and his hands are as grim and hard as hoofs;” and she continued, “Men of that kind, I have heard my father say, were good schoolmasters of old. I thought you had some design of hiring him for our boys, when I noticed you so waylaying him with your curiosity.” The idea was more to the purpose than any thing that had occurred to me concerning him; but he was gone, and the night considerably advanced; however, on her suggestion, I sent after him, to request he would either return, or not proceed beyond the tavern on the main road till I could come to him in the morning. When the man came back, the answer was not satisfactory. He declined to return, and only consented to remain till noon at the tavern, if his friends would allow him. In the mean time, after we had sent the message, as we were sitting waiting the return of the messenger, we both became silent, and for a moment looked at one another. My wife was the first to speak. “This,” said she, “is not a very wise course. What do we know about the man that we should think of inviting him to complete the

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education of our children? What proof have we of his capacity, for you know that neither of us are judges of learning.? And then his morals,—where are the testimonials?” The exact reflex of the same thoughts had passed through my own mind, but I could not help saying,— “By his language I have no doubt he is well qualified, and there must be something about him which indicates as much, otherwise the idea would not at once have appeared so judicious to us both. But Dungowan has known him heretofore, and if he consent to take the office, we shall obtain a character from him.” “It would be wiser to have the character beforehand,” replied Mrs. Corbet; “but it is always your way, to make the bargain first, and think of the consequences when you suffer from them.” We were thus discoursing in our wonted domestic manner, when, to our surprise, Dungowan himself was announced. “You had not well quitted Stockwell,” said he, “when I resolved to follow you—for we have now an opportunity of providing ourselves with a teacher, which your sons, as well as the Evelyns, equally stand in need of.” “We have just been considering of that very thing,” was my answer; “and thinking of your unknown friend.” “Mr. Bogle Corbet,” added my wife, “has a notion that he would make a capital tutor, but I have my apprehensions—for who have we in this woody wilderness to test his qualifications? It is no dishonour to you, Captain, who have been all your days a soldierofficer, learning your lessons by beat of drum, that you are in a state of ignorance concerning the right matters of education; and as for him there, Bogle Corbet, although he makes his books idols, we all know what to think of idolaters. Don’t we run a risk, Captain?” The logical arrangement of Mrs. Corbet’s ideas was never of the strictest sort, though her meaning was always sufficiently obvious; but at this time I thought she spoke more disparagingly than there was any reason for, even had her insinuations been correct, and I could see that Dungowan was rather inclined to be of the same opinion, when he replied— “With regard to my education, Madam, I certainly have no great pretension. It was plain, but it has served me. However, Jocelyn is, I believe, well qualified, for I perceive it is to him you allude. But he is not my man.” “Then we are better furnished with persons qualified for the office,” said I, “than I had imagined.”

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“Have I not always told you so?” interposed Mrs. Corbet. “If people will only have patience they are sure to get what they need at last. But of whom were you speaking, Captain?” “A very sober, quiet, well-conducted man; in some points, not exactly the equal of Jocelyn, I must confess that; but you know, Madam, it is not necessary for schoolmasters to be field-officers; and in the forest we must not look for Edinburgh colleges, nor Woolwich academies.” “I see you have a right understanding of our forlorn condition, Captain,” she replied; “but what can you say to the advantage of Mr. Jocelyn?” Dungowan turned towards me, and with an emphatic look said, without replying to Mrs. Corbet, “He will not do.” “No!” Instead of taking up the thread of our conversation, he added, “The person respecting whom I have thus so untimely broken in upon you, proposes to leave the settlement to-morrow, to establish himself elsewhere as a teacher; and considering how much one is wanted among us, I thought it right to consult you about inducing him to remain.” “Which of the emigrants is it?” “That sedate, meek man whom the others so tease and molest for his patience, since the boy Sam set the woods on fire. He can endure their jibes no longer, and the clearing of his land is harder work than he can well do.” This intelligence ought not to have amazed me, for several times the silly, doless creature had intimated to me that he wished he could find some other employment than “the couping,” as he called it, of “siccan big trees;” but the idea of his turning dominie never once entered my head, nor could my imagination have conceived that a gentleman like Dungowan would have ever deemed him capable of undertaking the education of my children. But somehow the unworldly genius of the forest inspires strange fancies, and we consent to adopt expedients even in the most influential affairs, as if they were temporary transactions. This indifference and apathy of mind, effects of coarse toil and the negligent spirit of solitude, require a constant effort to withstand it. Perhaps, had the proposal related to any other of the emigrants, it would not have seemed so preposterous, but his name was linked with ridiculous associations, and my wife, on hearing it, exclaimed, “Goodness! can he read Greek?”

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Nor indeed could he; for like Claud, in the Gentle Shepherd, “half read, half spell,” was the extent of his accomplishments. This little incident happened much in the manner described: but Dungowan persisted in his opinion that Jocelyn would refuse; he nevertheless consented to go with me to him in the morning, and add his entreaties to mine.

CHAPTER XXVI. a canadian dawn. Some engagement of business, the particular nature of which it is not necessary to describe, induced me to fix with Dungowan that we should set off by break of day for the tavern where Jocelyn was to wait for me. From the time of my arrival in the province, I had only once been so early a-foot, and that was in coming with my family from Cornwall to Prescot. The aspect of the morning was at once delightful, and fresh, and new, for during the former journey, my mind was so occupied with various matters, that the landscape attracted only cursory glances as we passed; on this occasion, being on horseback and more at leisure, I loosened the reins of my imagination, and allowed it to range at freedom; my companion, probably in some similar mood, was also disposed to ride without much talk. To the general reader, it may now and then appear that I am too prone to describe the sympathy which the scenes of Nature awaken in my feelings; perhaps it is an innate predilection; but in doing so, especially since I came to Canada, I have certainly been actuated more by a desire to convey correct ideas of the country and climate, than by the pleasure derived from recalling the forms and colours of the images that ministered to the first enjoyment. I shall, therefore, make no other apology for describing this little matin excursion, than by simply assuring my urbane friends that, with all my most earnest endeavours to furnish lively sketches of the dawning morning, and the sylvan circumstances gradually brightening around, I must fail to impress them with an adequate conception of its tranquillity and beauty. When we mounted, the stars were all shining, and the paling sapphire of the East scarcely indicated the coming of the grey-eyed Aurora—for the moon was sinking in the West, and from behind the forest still spread, though herself unseen, a glow that was more effectual. The air was calm, and the profoundest silence slept on the landscape, save where the hermit water-fall was heard afar off,

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singing to solitude his ceaseless hymn. As we advanced, the features of every object became more distinguishable; and the wakeful eyelids of the stars were one by one wearily and softly closed—a watch-dog, as we passed a settler’s log-hut, challenged our approach, but no inmate of the dwelling was a-foot; though, as Chatterton quaintly says, “The feathered songster, chanticleer,   Had blown his bugle-horn, And told the early villagers   The coming of the morn.”

Whether from the inequality of the surface of the country, or of the forest boughs, or the clearings here and there, the morning seemed to advance with sudden and unequal steps;—sometimes lingering without any visible increase of light, and then abruptly shedding a distincter influence, as if climbing and raising herself to surmount the masses that intervened between us; at last she attained her full predominance, and seemed to pause, as it were, to give possession of the scene to the day. The tall forest stood like a wall on our left hand, but the moment that the sun beyond it rose above the natural horizon, we had instant signals of his presence, by the reflection of his beams on the topmost leaves and boughs on our right, though he was himself still concealed; and soon after we saw in different glades, long, pale, horizontal streaks of vapour, stretching about half-way up the trees. But “the song of earliest bird” was still unheard, for our way lay through a new clearing, and the birds had not come, or were not yet there in such numbers as to disturb the sylvan silence, which had been from primeval antiquity the solemn inmate of the recent wood. When we had passed through one of those absentee properties which remain in their original state, and have been so long complained of as impediments to the progress of cultivation in the province, we entered a more open tract of country, and soon arrived at the tavern. The emigrants were sitting on different trunks and roots of trees, which still encumbered an open space in front of the house; some had their bundles and walking-sticks lying near them, others were less prepared; the appearance, however, of the whole evinced that they were ready for the road; but Jocelyn was not among them, he was sitting at some distance by himself. Giving our horses to the landlord, who, on observing our

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approach, had come out to meet us, we went towards Jocelyn, and I was on the point of speaking, when I noticed the interchange of an expressive look between him and Dungowan, and with no common sensation of surprise, that the Captain seemed to regard him with the deference due to a superior. This was, perhaps, the chief cause of the emotion which their reciprocal behaviour produced; for Dungowan, both from habit and disposition, was constantly, like every other Highland military gentleman, awake to the respect due to himself, and punctilious in the practice of a becoming politeness to others. It thus happened that it fell to his lot to explain our business—which, indeed, was soon done;—Jocelyn, however, made no immediate answer, but seemed to peruse the ground, so that I was led to add— “The few of our settlement cannot afford you very alluring emoluments, but still we shall endeavour to make the situation comfortable, and I can say, both for my own and the Evelyns, that they are tractable boys; and that although teaching be sometimes vexatious enough, still it is an easier and a higher employment than the common tasks of an ordinary settler.” He continued ruminating for about a minute, and then said that he sought no advancement in coming to Canada; and with that elegant brevity which had made me so much observe him, expressed his obligations to Captain Campbell, to whom he conceived himself to be indebted for the good opinion I had formed of him. Dungowan assured him that it proceeded spontaneously from myself, and that I had formed the idea before he had seen me on the subject. At this he again became silent, and touching the Captain on the arm, drew him aside; what passed between them was never explained, and it would have been impertinent to have inquired, but leaving Jocelyn, who walked a few paces farther off, Dungowan came back to me, and shaking his head, said,— “It is in vain; he has tried an upward course in the world, he says, so long without success, that he has foregone his perseverance, and has resolved to be so humble for the future that he cannot with health fall lower.” “Has he then resigned some trust in disgust?” My question embarrassed the Captain, who was not quite sensible of the effect of his own words, nor aware how much they imported; but soon perceiving the extent of his inadvertency, he said alertly, “We must either end our negotiation, or he must give me leave to

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be a little more explicit with you, for I see that I am but a sieve with a secret.” Then turning round quickly he again walked towards him, and presently they were in eager conversation, in the course of which I saw Dungowan respectfully bow several times, but they were too distant for me to overhear them had I been inclined to listen; so I went to where the other settlers were seated, and addressed myself to the same man who had given me the account of the birth and story of Jocelyn, as it was known in their native parish. But all he could tell me was of no importance, nor calculated, in any degree, to appease my curiosity. He again, however, reverted to the original delicacy of his hands, saying, “I’m sure, though he may not be a gentleman born, he’s ane that has been bred to the trade. Fine hands are no gotten by hard work; and his fingers were limber, and better fitted to pook a needle through a seam, than to grip axe hefts or spade shafts. And ye see he has na the looks of a millendery man; mair than that, when he’s no observed, I have seen him hold up his head, and look as crouse as a soldier-officer, the which every man will no contradict is a sign of something that stands in need of explanation. I would na need to stress my wonder if I heard that he was one that had been found falsely of a coomy character by a court-martial—for he’s really of such a gospel spirit, that he could never be made guilty of an ill deed, but by false witnesses, which no man is safe from in this world. We jealouse he intends to show us his back when he has seen us settled, but that’s only a suspec, as yet, among us.”

CHAPTER XXVII. the sealed book. I could gain nothing more from the emigrants concerning “the gentleman” than I had already acquired, but only that, at the request of my messenger the preceding evening, they had consented to defer their journey till I came. “He’s a real queer man,” said my informant,—“what is he, or can he have been! In the whole tot of the voyage he never opened his mouth to old or young, but when by chance we had occasion to speak to him. I must say that no man could be more genteel than he was, the which is a sign that he’s no void of discretion. In short, Sir, we begin to jealouse that he has been something in the diplomatics, or some other dainty trade, where the head works for the hands.” “What does he intend?” said I, “have you never heard him speak even of that?” “The Gude and himsel’ only ken; but I would guess that it canna be pleasant to be so kentspecle as he has made himself amongst us; we have a suspec that when he has gotten us landed on our ain mailings, he’ll be for making a leg bail job o’ ’t; and, Sir, we canna afford to part with him sooner, for he has mair wit in his wee finger, than we ha’e in a’ our bouks. Sir, had ye complied with his offer it would ha’e been very profitable.” “To you, no doubt,” said I. But at that moment Dungowan made a sign for me to draw near, and his mysterious friend parted from him, evidently intent on shunning me. “Well, Captain,” I exclaimed, approaching, “have you been successful?” “No, and I give it up, he will not be moved from his purpose, nor will he in the slightest degree consent to release me from my promise; you must just let him go, and submit to consider him as one of those characters, occasionally met with in the world, whose intimacy it would be agreeable to cultivate, but who pass like a shadow away, and cannot be recalled.”

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“Know you,” said I, “how far he intends to proceed with his companions?” “He is bound by promise to go with them till they have reached their destination, and then”— “What then?” “The devil ding a dirk through my tongue, as our serjeant from Lochmaban used to say, but words trintle from it that should be better guided; however, ’tis letting out nothing of his secret to say, he then intends to quit Canada, because he has met with me, and to lose himself in the western parts of the United States.” “Has he such cause to shun you?” “He has none; but only because I knew him in a better sphere.” “What was he then?” “A gentleman; and one who sometimes told us, when he dined at our mess, that he had never been indebted for any solicited favour. By Jove, Mr. Bogle Corbet, if you interrogate me at this rate, I shall be tempted to forget my trust, and the promise I have made. Question me no farther, he will not come with us. Be you satisfied with that—I am.” The tone at once of impatience and firmness, with which the Captain expressed himself, apprised me that it would be equally vain and improper to attempt to sift him farther. But as I could not in civility go away without speaking a few more words to his friend, who had remained at my request, I turned from him, and beckoned to the stranger, who was by this time at a considerable distance, to come back. He immediately obeyed, and on coming near, addressed himself to me with a degree of sternness for which I was unprepared. “Has Captain Campbell told you my story?” “Think you that I would, having pledged my word?” replied Dungowan, with something like irascibility. “Nor do I think so,” rejoined the stranger; “but why am I again recalled?” “I beg your pardon,” cried Dungowan, “I have not yet had time to tell Mr. Bogle Corbet all you had requested me to communicate.” “Oh, very well;” and in the same instant he left us, and walked again to a distance. “This, Dungowan,” I immediately subjoined, “is the most singular transaction I have ever been engaged in. What did he bid you tell me?” “Nothing, literally nothing, but that he declined our joint solicitation. We had best say nothing more about it;” and with these words

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he moved towards the tavern, where we found breakfast prepared, and without exchanging a syllable, began to partake. From the window we saw the emigrants take the road; and in a short time, followed by their undivulged leader, they were soon out of sight. Sometimes since have I met with individuals plainly as much out of their proper place as that hidden person, but never one whose appearance had so magnificent a stamp of greatness about it. It is now many months since the interview took place, and we have heard nothing more about him, but that he conducted his company to an advantageous location in the London District, where he left them, and has been heard of no more. Once only have I alluded to the mystery with Dungowan, but he made me no answer: and Mrs. Corbet says that he replies to her so sharply, whenever she happens to speak of it, that she is resolved never to mention it again; but merely, next time, to ask how long they had been acquainted—and what sort of man he was then? and I as regularly admonish her to be more prudent. In a romance, a mystic tale of this kind would seem curiously improbable; but when I consider it in connexion with that sterile desert of events, in which our destiny has been thrown, I imagine in my cooler moments that it has been no very wonderful occurrence, and that it is the absence of other interesting incidents which have given to it all its importance. I fancy, then, that this is the true cause of the mystery; for, as the Captain has several times observed to me, How often we meet with extraordinary things in our course of life, that deeply affect us as they pass, and yet their origin, purpose, and accomplishment, remain for ever unknown! Still, with all these seeming worldly exhortations, with which Dungowan at times endeavours to soothe my curiosity, and to which I can oppose no reasonable answer, the crave to learn the history of Jocelyn continues. “It must have been extraordinary,” I find myself sometimes involuntarily saying; “and the distinction with which a Highland gentleman regards him is no ordinary sign. Perhaps he has been a gamester; and yet he does not appear a man at all subject to the heated blood of those who yield to that vice.” I at last came to be of opinion that he was an unfortunate duellist, and under hiding. But my narrative halts.

CHAPTER XXVIII. the repentant prodigal. When we had finished our repast, and the horses were ordered out, I happened to take a short walk in front of the house to a sudden turn, where the road that leads to the Debit joins Dundas-Street. As I was looking along it, I perceived at some distance two persons coming towards me. Their appearance indicated that they were strangers who had been landed at the mouth of the river, for they had on great coats, and were carrying between them, by handkerchiefs drawn through the handles, a considerable chest. Had they belonged to the country they would have used a waggon, and it was evident they were poor, or they would have hired one. The weight of the chest, and their cumbrous clothing, made their progress slow, and their steps heavy. They often rested, sitting down on the lid of their burden, and were evidently greatly fatigued. By the direction in which they were going, I conjectured that Stockwell was their destination, and in consequence went towards them to ascertain the fact, and to advise them to remain at the tavern where I had breakfasted; as in the course of the day a waggon was expected, by which they might be assisted on with their load. When they observed me approaching, the elder of the two came forward, and before I had distinctly recollected him, though his figure was in my memory, he addressed me by name. “We’re thinking, Mr. Bogle Corbet,” said he, “that ye’ll no be overly civil at seeing us again.” It was the radical James Peddie, and one of his sons, who had declared their independence at Cornwall, and went over to the United States, as I have already mentioned. “Peddie,” I exclaimed, scarcely less astonished than if he had been a ghost, “where have you come from?” He lifted his hat with one hand, and scratched his head awkwardly with the other, “’Deed, Mr. Bogle, I dinna misdoot that I hae been a prodigal son.”

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“We have no fatted calves to kill for your return,” was my answer: “but what has sent you here?” “I would fain think, Sir,” replied he, looking slyly from under his eyebrows, “that maybe it was a waff of common sense.” “Indeed, James! and so they have not made you a member of Congress.” He shook his head, and rubbing his left elbow with his right hand, again peered from under his eyebrows, and replied, “I’m no thinking it’s a vera commodious thing for a laborous man to be overly political, and yon cackhouses wi’ their domineering, for they are desperate at that, take as meikle pains before ye can rule them rightfully, as if they were borough corporations—but dogs are blate in unco bields. In sooth, Mr. Bogle Corbet, I did na find myself in my element yonder, and so I just thought, that although repentance was a humiliation, I would come back to you.” “And what has become of your other son?” “Oh, him! he’s, ye ken, a souter; so hearing that trade was brisk at a place they ca’ Syracuse, he put his heel in his neck ae morning, and whirled himself to that part, where, according to a letter, he is doing bravely.” “And the other—I see ye have brought him back with you; could not he find employment also?” “There’s, to be sure, no scant of work among the Yankies, if a man’s heart lie that way; but Robin, poor lad, did na just gree wi the air of the country, and was ay making adversaries by threeping that Glasgow was a brawer town than Rochester; which among friends will no be denied, although an allowance should be made for the difference of eild. But the Yankies are a real upsetting folk, and have no a right restraint of moderation anent their own ferlies.” “I see, Peddie, by what you say, that the short and the long of it is, you did not find yourself quite so great a personage among them as you had expected to be.” “’Od! It’s weel kent, Mr. Bogle Corbet, that I’m no of an audacious disposition; but homesever, I hae a fancy that a man may be more comfortable among his auld friends than worried to death by clishmaclavering new ones, that are aye argol-bargoling; and so, upon a full meditation concerning the same, me and Robin packet up our ends and our awls, and hae come back to the King’s dominions, which is the next thing to a native land.” Our conversation continued some time longer, but I could get no better reason out of him, than that he did not like the United

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States, and that he judged of the whole Union by the experience he had obtained in the State of New York. Many of the emigrants, who follow the same course, show, on their return to the British colonies, the same kind of vague animosity. Others are occasionally actuated by more reasonable motives, no doubt—and some are often plucked of all their feathers before they think of returning. But it is not from their stories and reports that a correct idea is to be formed as to the respective advantages of emigrating to Canada or the neighbouring country; to the tradesman, the man of skill, the State of New York is, without question, far preferable, simply because it is more populous, enterprising, and more thickly settled with manufacturers and merchants. The artisan has indeed but slender means of bettering his condition in Canada; to the agricultural labourer, however, it is indeed a land of promise, and will be so for many years, before it can become of equal importance to the indoor operative. But to spare the reader from the tediousness of reflections so obvious, and which he can better make for himself, I was not ill pleased at the repentance of Peddie; for, as I have already intimated, the defection of Andrew Gimlet had been infectious, and some of my best settlers among the Glasgow emigrants had followed his example. Peddie had not, however, for some time, much cause to exult at his own return. Besides the inward sense of mortification which he suffered, and which he more than once said was an intolerable penalty, his former friends, though glad to welcome him again among them, gave him the nickname of the Dove, and Robin that of the Olive Branch, while they never spoke of Gimlet but as the Raven that returned no more. The young man was indeed a loss to the settlement ever to be regretted; but it is some consolation to think he has himself no cause to be dissatisfied with the change, for I understand he is, what an American traveller, who knew him at Buffalo, called “a progressing man,” and was a competitor for the contract to erect a fine steeple, with which the inhabitants of that flourishing town propose to adorn their last new church. It is, however, this disposition to be shifting and roving, which does more harm to the emigrants, than all the hardships which they need encounter in making their settlement. Every new location that they hear of is always better than their own; and although a few soon make up their minds to remain where they are, exceptions of that kind do not impair the truth of the general rule. The worst of it also is, that their successors being often entire strangers, some

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time must always elapse before they can be treated with conciliatory confidence; and when, as sometimes will be the case, delinquency breaks out among them, it never fails to be infectious. It is greatly to be lamented, that our Solons in Downing-street have never attempted to institute a code of laws to regulate colonists, after they shall have reached their locations. But it is not consistent with the due administration of statesmen that regulate themselves by file and precedent, to oppose the colonization of vices as well as persons.

CHAPTER XXIX. fatherland. For some time after the return of the Dove with the Olive Branch, we had no occurrence of any moment either at Stockwell or Sylvany. Every thing proceeded quietly, and I felt that we began to grow. My domestic expenses during the first twelve months were all outlay; nothing was returned upon the capital employed on the twelve hundred acres; but as the clearings advanced, I was satisfied with the ultimate prospect. In the family, however, I began to have some foretaste of the good effects of our emigration. The live stock became productive; it not only supplied all we required for domestic purposes, but afforded a surplus for the new farm. We had even luxuries, and our melons, reared in the open air, would, both in size and flavour, have been ornaments in Covent Garden Market. But my cares also increased. My agricultural concerns required so much time, that I had but little to spare for the education of my children; and a schoolmaster was the nightly theme of discourse, mingled with regret that we had been so unfortunate as not to obtain the undivulged stranger—for we always spoke of him by that appellation, his name of Jocelyn furnishing no clue to the curiosity which the secrets of his previous life had excited. Altogether the second summer was, though full of anxieties, much less vexatious than the first. The work was the same, but experience had oiled the wheels, and undertakings which I hesitated at first to engage in were no longer contemplated as formidable. No doubt, example contributed, as well as experience, to produce this equanimity; and I deemed the hours which I occasionally devoted to relaxation well employed in visiting the locations of my neighbours; for although they were not on a scale equal in extent to mine, I perceived that many little useful manipulations might be learned from them. It had thus happened, that from the time of our arrival at Sylvany, I had indulged in nothing foreign to my duties; nor indeed is there much temptation in the province, for, except the Falls of

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Niagara, the country affords no sight or spectacle which can well be called attractive. The Falls, however, are of themselves generally considered among the wonders of the world; and to have it long in your power without visiting them, is supposed to argue no inconsiderable lack of sensibility to the grandeur of Nature. In consequence, although my waterfall-days are pretty well over, I resolved with Mrs. Corbet that we should, in the course of the summer, perform the pilgrimage. To live within about seventy miles of them, and not to fulfil the obligation, would, I suspect, be regarded by many as something not less culpable than the omission of a moral duty. Accordingly, when the season arrived, and it was time to make a projected addition to our house, which the sudden colds of the winter had suggested, we undertook the journey on horseback, and, proceeding to Dundas-Street, went round the head of the Lake, by the road leading to the town of Hamilton. In the course of this ride we were delighted with the picturesque appearance of the country. The scene, without being mountainous, was cliffy and sylvan, wanting only ruins to be romantic. Few passages, if I may use the expression, in all Old England are so beautiful; for, with bolder alpine features than the landscape there, it has still a British look, and, although not so well cultivated, is populous and fertile. Between the highway on the left, a level low plain reaches to the shores of Lake Ontario, and on the right the table-land rises suddenly, in many places precipitous, and often, from the very side of the road, to the height of several hundred feet, clothed with the primeval forest, in clumps or continued masses, here and there enlivened with little streams, inviting repose in pleasant nooks and Boscobel recesses. Along this road, on the sides of the rising ground, the elderly emigrant from the Old Country, who brings with him fresh recollections of its comforts and scenery, should pitch his tent. The woods and the wilderness are for those who, with younger years, have the enterprise that makes hardship, adventure, and labour, pastime. Mrs. Corbet, equally with myself, during the whole of our ride, regretted that we had so hastily closed our bargain for Sylvany; not that in the price we had any thing to grudge, but we enjoyed in the far more improved circumstances of this country livelier glimpses of home. And we more than once expressed to each other, that considering the youth of our children, and that our aims were all directed to procure for them a remote advantage, it would have been wiser to have spent a year in freedom before

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finally determining the location of our land. This, however, is not always within the means of emigrants to do, and we resolved to be content with our accidental selection, rejoicing that we had it in our power, as often as the solitude of the forest and the woodland toils in Nox annoyed, for they often did, to come on such easy terms to Fatherland,—as we named this rural and alluring region. At St. Katherine’s we halted for the night. In anticipation of the advantages expected to spring from the Wellend Canal which rises there, a considerable town has already sprung up: perhaps, however, there may have been a little too much haste in the speculation, for as yet there is no trade to support the canal; the undertaking, however, is characteristic of the enterprise of the American mind. In the Old Country canals and railways are formed for the convenience of an existing commerce, but on this continent they constitute the most efficacious means for spreading colonization. By extending communications through the forest, and multiplying the means of conveyance, we make atonement for our usurpation of the wide and wild domains of the aborigines. In the morning after leaving St. Katherine’s, we took the road which leads inland, and though the general character of a broken surface continued, the views were, as Mrs. Corbet said, certainly less “engaging;” still the same beautiful resemblance, in outline, to England prevailed, and when we reached the Queenstown Heights, the domesticated aspect of the country became even more similarly British. After passing a simple rustic church with a rude steeple, which stands on the road-side, as it were on the edge of a common, although we had no view of the river Niagara, which there runs in a deep chasm, and is not visible from the highway, we heard the distant roar of the Falls, but the sound was less impressive than I expected; mighty and dread it was however, growling upon the ear as we advanced, and more continuous than the breaking of the ocean in a storm on a shoally, far-off shore. We had soon, through an opening in the trees, a view of the spray which ascends from the cataract, like the steam from the cauldron of a volcano; but the sun was then high and on our shoulders, and we could not discover the iris which ever floats in it, and which travellers delight to describe as among the purest developements of colours that Nature exhibits. But such is the unreasonable expectations of man, even though Cybele here put forth her might to

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please, we suffered something like disappointment; and to such a degree, that when we reached the hotel which overlooks the cataract itself, after giving our horses to the hostler, we sedately entered the house and considerately resolved not to look at it till we had taken some refreshment: a slight breeze at this moment moved the spray towards us, and the giant, as if he had for a moment turned his head, bellowed at us with wrath and everlasting roaring. Forsyth’s hotel, where we stopped, has some just pretensions to be considered magnificent. It has in front a huge colonnade, every pillar like the mast of a first-rate man-of-war, and almost as much out of proportion, and as large as those architectural monsters—the columns in front of the British Admiralty in Whitehall. The building is lofty, white painted, and with green Venetian blinds to the windows. Nothing of the sort can be more sumptuously imposing when seen from a distance; and although the interior does not come quite up to the expectation which the exterior inspires, still it is really a commendable house. There had been, some time before, another similar hotel near the same spot, but it was burnt down. At the period of our arrival, several stage-coaches were driving to the door, and an air of life and activity was visible around, highly delighting, as contrasted with the dull solitude we had left. It was indeed, as the Londoners say, so town-like and refreshing, you can’t think! “Dear me!” said Mrs. Corbet, “this is a cordial of comfort, after having lived so long out of the world. The very coaches are wagging their tails with gladness as they come along the road.”

CHAPTER XXX. the falls of niagara. We had come between fifty and sixty miles the preceding day to St. Katherine’s, and I was a little fatigued by my ride, so that while our repast was preparing, and it was a late one, I felt no inclination to move. I was content to have reached the Falls, and satisfied with hearing their sound, and in being so near them. When we had finished our refreshment, I was disposed to take a few glasses of wine, but the evening began to set in, and twilight grey had in her sober livery all things clad. “If ye’re disposed to look at the waterfall to-night, Bogle, you had as well go before it be quite dark,” said my wife. “Are not you going?” said I, somewhat surprised at the manner in which the suggestion was offered. “Oh, there is no need; I have seen them already.” “You have seen them?—when? how?” “The house have given us the best bed-room, and when I was up before dinner, putting my head in order, I looked out at the window.” “Gracious! you have seen them, and calmly eating your dinner afterwards?” “They were just under me, leaping, rolling, roaring, and jumping, like mad.” “Mrs. Bogle Corbet, what do you say?” “But,” she replied, “for all that, I think them, upon the whole, very neat, and ’tis a pleasant prospect from the window.” “Neat! what do you say, Mrs. Corbet?—are my ears fellows?— Neat!” “To be sure, but there is certainly an unaccountable and extravagant waste of water about them!” “Neat! waste of water!—Neat! extravagant waste of water? Did you speak of the cataracts of Niagara, Urseline?” “What need you echo my words in that nonsensical manner?” said she; “if you will not take my report, go, and satisfy yourself, Bogle. What’s about a foolish river tumbling headlong over a rock? Is not

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one waterfall like another, though some are big and some are small? Go, Bogle, and be pacified; but of all the waterfalls that I have seen, the best is from the tea-kettle into the tea-pot:—by the time you come back I shall have an excellent cup ready for you.” “Are you serious?” “What would you have me do? we came here to see the Falls; I have seen them, you have not,—that’s all the difference between us: I thought you a man of more curiosity.” Often have I had occasion to lament in my hidden heart the deficiency of poetical feeling in my spouse; but—but—and I then subjoined, “And so, Urseline, you really have seen the Falls of Niagara?” “Look at them, yourself, Bogle,” was her reply, “for they are so directly under the windows of the bed-room, that I’m sure neither of us will this night shut an eye.” “Oh, Mrs. Bogle Corbet!” “Ay, Mr. Bogle Corbet; and I have a great mind to ask for a quieter room to the front of the house.” “Wonders, miracles, and prophecies! What have you seen?” “Seen! just a great river tumbling a somerset over a rock. Didn’t I know well that nothing more was to be seen before I came? Surely, Bogle Corbet, you never expected a waterfall was a river running up a rock? my notions were more rational.” “I have never met with any thing like this!” was my amazed reply. “And to speak composedly,” was the answer, “nor did I either, but the cascade from the Serpentine, in Hyde Park, London——” “For the love of Nature, hush! how could that Cockney Niagara enter your imagination here!” “Well, well, take it all your own way; but, Bogle Corbet, you are a maggoty-minded man; and I will say that no waterfall should be too big. Goodness! Bogle Corbet, what would be the consequence, were either you or I to take our mortal malady in this house, with that calamity roaring at our pillow. ’Tis as loud, I declare, as the half-tide at London Bridge.” I gave a deep sigh, and subjoined pensively, “I did think, Urseline, that you sometimes admired the beauties of Nature?” “Surely, Bogle, you cannot mean to impose the Falls of Niagara upon me as a beauty of Nature?—a pretty like beauty!” “Oh, Urseline, Urseline!” “Oh, Bogle Corbet, Bogle Corbet, Oh!” “But I ought to have known that you had no taste.”

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“I have seen the Falls, and that’s more than you can say yet.” “And what did you think of them? Now tell me truly; for surely you have been making game of me all this time.” “Well, then, to end all debates, I think that they are—um—assuredly, they are not very comical; but don’t you think now, Bogle, seriously, that they are noisy neighbours?” “What did you think of them?” “Nay, if you ask in the imperative mood, I’ll not answer. You have your taste and I have mine.” “Well, but, Urseline, let us not quarrel on the subject; tell me how they did strike you?” “Just as a great falling of water, that’s my idea of them: can you give any better?” “You must be purposely provoking me, woman!—a great falling of water!” “What else are they? Had they been beer or brandy they would have been more wonderful!” “I am astonished, and beginning to be confounded,” was my dejected ejaculation, at hearing such absurdities coming from a woman really not senseless, and I said with a smile of the utmost serenity, “And so, Urseline, you think the Falls of Niagara consist but of falling waters?” “In sober truth, Bogle, and to make no more ado about the matter, I really think so.” “And you are satisfied with what you have seen?” “I am.” “And you will not go with me to look at them?” “I’ll not refuse to go with you, but I have seen them already.” “Under our bed-room window?” “Under our bed-room window.” “What would you say were the moon made of green cheese?” “That it was not like the Falls of Niagara.” “Angels and ministers of grace defend us!—Urseline!” “Come, come,” was her mollifying answer; “here, Bogle, take your hat, that’s a well-disposed creature; and by the time the tea’s made you shall have quenched your curiosity.” I snatched the hat half in anger, saying, “Woman, woman!” and walked into the field behind the hotel, where I did behold the mighty spectacle, and was back in excellent time for tea, after tasting which Mrs. Corbet judiciously observed, that the tea in Canada is of a well-flavoured sort, but she did not think the water at the Falls of

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Niagara was so good as our own spring at Sylvany. I must, however, indulge in no reflections; but when one considers how much it is the custom to be enthusiastic about the grandeur of all fashionable lions, perhaps there was more of simple nature in Mrs. Corbet’s feelings at the Falls than in those of many of the other visitors, were we to judge by their far-fetched and inflated phraseology.

CHAPTER XXXI. strangers at the falls. Next morning was moist and grey; the vapour from the cataract rose in vast volumes, and the damp grass along the precipice rendered walking uncomfortable; the sun hid himself till noon, and the lowering air affected the spirits, not however to such a degree as to check travelling, but we kept at home and sat in the front balcony, (the Falls are behind the house,) and, as Mrs. Corbet says, diverted ourselves by looking at the stage-coaches, and the lean and longtailed Yankey oddities that they brought and carried away. Among other passengers who came to the house was a tall, meagre young man, of a pale, parson-like physiognomy. As he stepped out of the coach, he had a book in the one hand, and a small hair-covered trunk in the other; which, however, was not all his baggage, for the driver brought out at the same time, from the hind boot, another considerable trunk, with a cloak, a pair of boots, and an umbrella strapped upon it. Before he came into the house, he gave the coachman a gratuity, which convinced us he was a newcomer, as it is not the practice in this province, nor in the United States, to give any gift of the kind. “What can he be?” said my wife; “he must surely be one of the missionary cattle, or a schoolmaster.” “We shall probably soon learn,” I replied, “for he evidently intends to stop at the hotel for the night.” “As you are always, Bogle, repining that the undivulged stranger escaped from you, perhaps this dungeon of wit will accept your offer for the boys.” “I have been thinking so too, and if he should, I shall not regret our journey.” “Nor I; for in truth. Bogle Corbet, it is a foolish thing for people to ride so many miles for nothing: I wish we could fall in with something to do, since we are here, were it only to retrieve our discretion.” “But how shall we proceed with the stranger? he seems to be a shy and dry young man.”

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“He has, indeed,” replied Mrs. Corbet, “all the natural awkwardness of college learning; but as that is a sign of simplicity, you may throw yourself in his way—and in the way of a by the by, invite him to take tea with us.” Glad to have something to do, being heartily tired of the unceasing noise of the cataract, and the business being in unison with my wishes, which had been gradually growing more anxious and irksome on account of my children, I went down from the balcony, but the stranger had disappeared. I looked about for him in vain; so, concluding he had gone to his own room, I returned to the house and rejoined my wife, who was then in our parlour, and seeing me enter, she said, “I hope you have not seen him, he will never do.” “How! what reason have you to think so?” “I doubt he’s not in his right mind, for I saw him from the bedroom window, down at the edge of the Falls, making adorations with his hands and arms, as if the waters were something monstrous. He’ll never do for our boys, for I suspect he’s a genie.” “Let us not, Urseline, decide too quickly; every one cannot contemplate this unparalleled scene with such indifference as you.” “Now that, Bogle, comes well to me—who saw the Falls first and so long before you—for, if you will be poetical about them, still let that matter-of-fact be remembered.” It was impossible to reply to such a rigid dogma, so without saying a word, I went immediately down to the table-rock, where the enthusiast was still standing, rapt like Penseroso commercing with the skies. The noise of the cataract prevented him from hearing my approach till I was at his elbow—and said, “This is, indeed, a stupendous scene!” He glanced at me for a moment, and then replied, turning his eyes again towards the steaming turbulence of the horse-shoe fall, “The sublime of energy!—till this sight is seen, we can form no just conception of the power that may be in Nature. The rage of the ocean, with its countless waves, is but a passion in detail. This is the immense of simplicity; could we stand on the outside of a planet’s orbit, and see the vast globe rolling along, at the velocity of thousands of miles an hour, it would not furnish a livelier, visible image of Omnipotence!” “Don’t you think,” said Mrs. Corbet, who had followed me unheard, “that it would be nicely improved were a tasteful Chinese summer-house erected on the corner of the island yonder?”

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The student looked at her—such a look! I burst into a fit of laughter, while he, with a sidelong flash of indignation, walked away. Mrs. Corbet significantly touched her forehead, and linking me by the arm, drew me towards the hotel, out of the showering spray. We had not, however, advanced many paces, when we met two travellers, who were intending to cross by the ferry, below the Falls. They were evidently strangers, and by their garb and language New Englanders. The one was a person of about my own age, the other considerably younger. The oldest was dressed in the usual fashion of his countrymen, with loose trowsers, a long olive-coloured great coat, a straw-hat, turned up like a clergyman’s behind, with a piece of faded crape round it. The younger was more spruce. He wore a short coat, a striped-waistcoat, of a pattern as glowing as the national ensign, his neck bare, the shirt-collar being tied by a slender black neckcloth, or ribbon, and he had a hat with a crown that emulated the tower of Babel, covered with a furry nap, blown by the breath into so many swirls or roses. They paused as they approached us on the path, and after looking at the deafening cataracts for about the space of a minute, the younger said,— “Well, if this ben’t an almighty particular riot, I a’n’t Reuben Roddice!” “Such water privilege!” cried the old man. “I guess it suckles the ocean-sea considerable,” rejoined Reuben. “Such an everlasting head of water surelye it does leak from,” exclaimed his more arithmetical friend; “I calculate there ben’t no such other uncontestable privilege nowhere.” Reuben did not at once reply, but looking again at the Falls, said: “Cousin Lishy, he does speak of a dreadful privilege in the ocean’s tide, which makes Malachi Bran’s saw-mill at the shore to hop twice a-day backwards; but it aint such a godhead as this; though all the summer he has an anarchy of water, when the creek is as dry as a chimney.” Just at this juncture Mrs. Corbet tugged at my arm, saying, “How could I stand listening to such blasphemy?” and she drew me towards the house, whither I went with the less reluctance, as the Yankees, having satisfied their admiration, turned their back on the Falls, and went towards Clarke’s road, which slants down the precipice to the ferry. The sunshine next morning being bright and calm, and the Iris in

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the spray a brilliant goddess, we made a party to cross to the American side. It is an expedition that the nervous should not venture on; but the cataract cannot be seen to such advantage as from about the middle of the river. Mrs. Corbet, in stepping into the boat, stumbled, and falling, seat foremost, sat in the bottom, inmovable, till we had reached the other bank, for she fancied that in her fall she had started a plank, and if she moved we should all be drowned.

CHAPTER XXXII. opinions of the falls. In returning to the hotel, I observed the parson-like stranger in the public room with several ladies and gentlemen, and being still persuaded that he might prove a suitable tutor for our boys, I suggested to Mrs. Corbet, that instead of going to our own parlour we should join them, and that I would take some opportunity of sounding him on the subject. On seating ourselves, we found all the talk was of the wonders of the Falls, and the inability of man to describe their grandeur, or to give adequate expression to the sentiments with which the sight inspires every beholder. I said nothing of their effect on Mrs. Corbet, but, in perfect sincerity with allusion to my own feelings, that they did not always answer the expectations of visitors, chiefly however, I believed, in consequence of the nakedness of the scenery. “Yes,” said one of the ladies, “they would certainly have been more striking had they come from between two great mountains, with the lake seen beyond, and ships sailing on its surface.” I thought of the Chinese temple suggested by Mrs. Corbet for Goat Island; and the student turning suddenly upon the gentlewoman, said sternly, “Madam, can you improve Nature?” “I don’t,” she replied, with something of satire in her accent; “but some ladies do attempt it, both with white and red.” His visage was for a moment flushed with scorn, and he said, “People who can blend ridiculous ideas with such solemnities, are not fit pilgrims to this stupendous shrine.” By an arch cast of the lady’s eyes as he uttered this rebuke, I saw she was not very worshipfully inclined, particularly when he added, “To me every thing around is animated with poesy. Sublimity is here as it should be where Nature is so majestic;—simple—vast— only water and a great noise.” The lady resolutely prevented her lips from laughing, but her eyes could not be controlled, as an elderly, grave-looking American,

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to whose party she belonged, said, with a wink to me, “Young gentleman, you have odd ideas.” Mr. Clavis, as the clerical-looking stranger was called, however, paid no attention, but continued, “This is no scene for the drudging mind; but hallowed ground, where sacred thoughts and unseen entities, combined with ancient rocks and streams of measureless predominance, have set their seals to give us the assurance of a cataract.” “What a fine style of language!” whispered Mrs. Corbet, and the waggish lady opposite looked as she were sick. But Mr. Clavis, heedless of her condition, proceeded, “I shall never cease to remember what I have this day enjoyed. It seemed, as I gazed on the matchless spectacle, as if all the energies of creation were at work. I felt the muse descend, and uttered these unpremeditated verses. “Come, ye nymphs, whose eyes, like dew, Twinkle these green branches through; Whose timid steps are only heard, When rustling wind, or hopping bird, Stirs the fallen leaves so sear; Come, ye wood nymphs, softly here; Softly come, and with you bring Flowers and fragancies of Spring— With the ripen’d apple’s blushes, Peeping forth the bowery bushes, Bashful, whisp’ring, they appear— Lo! the wood nymphs, nigh and near!— To the thund’ring waterfall.—”

“That’s, surely, lovely poetry,’” said Mrs. Corbet to me, “but I don’t understand it.” The dry old gentleman, who had before spoken, overhearing her, interpreted, “He probably invites the settlers’ wives to rinse their linen in the Falls.” “I never would permit a rag of mine to be in such jeopardy,” replied Mrs. Corbet: “But don’t you think him a most learned man?” and lowering her voice, she added, “We are in great want of a tutor.” “He will not do,” cried I, fearful of what might follow; and as if some secret sympathy had at the same time touched all present, we

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began to talk in separate groups, and Mr. Clavis found no opportunity of rehearsing more of his verses, nor even of resuming the thread of his discourse, for, when he attempted, the merry-minded lady turned towards a quiet, unobtrusive young man, and inquired what he thought of the Falls? “You sit silent, Mr. Pomfret; do tell us what you think of them?” “Really, Miss Fanny, what can I say,” replied the gentleman, “but that they are vastly greater than any thing of the kind I have ever seen?” “He’s a sensible gentleman,” whispered my wife. “No doubt of it,” replied Mr. Clavis, “they are the greatest Falls you have ever seen.” The lady turned round tartly, and said, “And where, Sir, have you seen any greater?” The interrogation again set the company adrift; and at this moment the waiter announcing dinner, I proposed to Mrs. Corbet that we should go to the public table, and countermand the dinner we had ordered later in our own parlour. Nor have I had cause to repent that I did so; for, on taking our places at the table, I had the good fortune to sit beside Mr. Pomfret, whom, in the course of conversation, I found a plain, well-educated young man, and I afterwards engaged him to reside with us as a tutor; an engagement which has proved beneficial to my own boys, as well as to the three younger Evelyns, whom, on account of their grandmother’s infirm health, we have taken to live with us,—but not altogether from such a charitable motive. For Dungowan pays the half of his salary, and, as he has become attached to the children, I have more of his society than I could have by any other arrangement. The visits of a well-bred man of the gentlemanly world, let me tell the courteous reader, are not in the woods so plentiful as blackberries. But I should not thus abruptly conclude the account of our visit to the Falls; for, after I had ascertained the qualifications of Mr. Pomfret, and his willingness to accept my offer, I was induced to wait a few days till he could obtain his testimonials from Canandagua. The time, as the weather was fine, and the company in the hotel disposed to be social and agreeable, passed cheerfully. But after the first day, the Falls, though within little more than a hundred and fifty yards of us, were never spoken of with reference to their character. Indeed, as Mrs. Corbet said, they were no longer troublesome neighbours, for she did not mind their roaring more than the singing of the teaurn. A comparison which hugely provoked the indignation of the

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classical Mr. Clavis, who proved to be a travelling Fellow of Cambridge, in England, and who, with all his Greek and Latin, as my wife told him, was scarcely fit to be a heathen god. However, saving his enthusiastic affectations, follies which it is the end and business of college cloisters to cure, he was, in other respects, a pleasant gentleman, and endured the raillery of the witty-minded lady with the greatest good-humour for two days on every topic but the Falls; on the third he was less sensitive, and Mrs. Corbet remarked to me that on the fourth he was become rational.

CHAPTER XXXIII. the mill. When we returned to Sylvany, and Mr. Pomfret was installed in his trust, our second harvest was ripened. The crop was considerable, and I disposed of it to such advantage, that there was a fair prospect of the proceeds being next year likely to do more than indemnify me for the disbursements. This is not, however, the case with the labouring emigrants, who are indebted only to the exertions of their own strength; but it is an advantage on which those who are in better circumstances may safely calculate. In the fifth year, I am assured, an industrious man of the poorer class may be in a condition to commence paying something towards the cost of his land; but I fear the exceptions are more numerous than the rule, so much depends on the aid his own family may be able to render. Seven years would be a more judicious period to estimate. I saw, however, that an emigrant with money may count with certainty on being able, by judicious outlay, to derive an income from the second harvest. I did not, however, see this so plainly until taught by experience. But as the product of the clearings increased, we felt the inconvenience arising from the want of mills. None had been erected within twenty miles of Nox, and the settlers who had their little packets of wheat to grind, were often exposed to much inconvenience. It was not to me of so much importance as to the others, for I had brought from England a hand-mill with which we supplied ourselves with ordinary household flour, and a barrel of fine now and then from the store, prevented the family from ever having any just cause of complaint. Still the hardship which the want of a mill occasioned to my tenants and neighbours, induced me to entertain a project for erecting one. In this affair the speculative spirit of the American mind was, as I conceive, strongly manifested. Before finally deciding on the undertaking, I consulted many of my neighbours, whom, from the time they had resided in the province, I deemed the most likely to advise me correctly, but I found all their notions preposterous.

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What I proposed was a mill to serve the settlement; and yet I could not divest them of the idea, that if I undertook to raise one at all it should be also for commercial purposes, and in consequence every estimate and calculation of the expense was far beyond my means to attempt. However, without being quite sure that my own notions were wiser than their’s, I determined that our mill should be simple and small, such as the existing population only required. I had not, however, fairly begun the work, when I observed, by confabulations among the inhabitants at Stockwell and in other parts of the township, that some project was hatching, and I conjectured it related to the mill. Nor was I long left in doubt, for a number of the settlers came to me in a body one morning with a proposal, that instead of the homely machinery which it was known to them I intended to construct, a subscription should be raised among them, and that a mill on a larger scale should be built and become the property of the subscribers. The scheme was feasible—no possible objection could be made to it, but then—there was not as much money among all the squad who proposed to unite, as would pay a tenth part of the probable cost of the edifice, and had I not by that time been in possession of some practical knowledge of the customs of the country, prudence would have directed me at once to reject the proposal. But having learnt that there is much more of the co-operative spirit abroad on this continent than can well be conceived by those who have never witnessed the energy with which improvements are conducted by the Americans, I entertained the project with patience and a favourable ear. I found the scheme had been concerted with thought and care, and had originated with a settler from the United States. In England no just notion prevails of what may be accomplished by the poor man who has only his strength to contribute; but here it is otherwise, and the fair value of a contribution of labour is perfectly understood. The party desirous of having the prospective plan of the mill adopted, had subscribed a paper, declaring the number of days’ labour which they respectively would give, valuing each day’s at the current rate. In so far it may, therefore, be supposed that the main difficulty to the undertaking was overcome, and undoubtedly it was so on paper; but I had no work to do that required so much assistance, so that another unforeseen difficulty arose from that cause. The subscribers accordingly left me a good deal down in the

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mouth when they heard this, and went away with their American leader, churming to each other of the disappointment. This interview took place at Stockwell, and I observed during the remainder of the day an obvious restlessness among the settlers. Their work was suspended; they assembled in threes and fours, and Angus M‘Quistein was a busy man among them. The American, Zebede L. Bacon, who had been the leader of the subscription, was, with fewer words, no less active; in short, I saw they were brewing something, but could not imagine what. When my horse was brought out, and I was on the point of mounting to return in the evening to Sylvany, Bacon came to me alone. He was a plain and demure-looking elderly person, less remarkable in his dress than his countrymen in general; I had not seen him before that day, but I had heard his shrewdness often commended, and always with some expression of wonder that a man so intelligent should not have been more prosperous, though it could not be said he had ever been either imprudent or unfortunate. He was not, however, naturally of an alert character,—on the contrary, of a thoughtful, ruminating kind; no man could give sounder counsel to his neighbours, nor discern more clearly the tendency of present events. With so much of the common impress of his countrymen about him as to leave no doubt of his nativity, he was yet singular without exhibiting the slightest attribute of eccentricity, or any humour foreign to good common sense, and a sober conduct studious to avoid remark: I am, however, describing him rather as I afterwards found him, than as he appeared on the occasion alluded to. For as he appeared then, there was nothing otherwise more remarkable about him than his intelligence and sagacity. He was not exactly what in Scotland is called a gash man—one who talks much, a little arrogantly, but still to the purpose—for he was slow in speech, even to tediousness, with not the slightest tincture of self-sufficiency; still what he said was judicious, and plainly the result of well-considered thought. One of his observations at the time struck me as a curious specimen of the nature of his reflections. He was speaking of the progress of the country. “The gentleman should make it his consideration,” said he, “that this is a new country, and is progressing from other than natural roots. We have not only children born among us as fast as they can be made, but flocks of immigrants every year, all fathers and mothers, with their small children—over and above. So the gentleman, I guess, should make his calculations for the spec of that there mill,

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not on what the settlement is, but by that, with the nourishmentality of God’s blessing, it may be. Therefore I swear he is no Solomon, not at all, who would go for to ’rect a mill, and let the futures live as egg-creetres, what eat corn ungrinded, like horses.”

CHAPTER XXXIV. winter works. He explained to me his views in proposing the labour-subscription. “Though thee hast not,” said he, “no call for the ’scription, there is Ivor Dingwall who has. Put on paper what Quistein he has ’scribed, and swap it for what the gentleman wants, that Ivor Dingwall will sell, and done’s the bargain.” In short he suggested with, what I deemed, considerable ingenuity, that the subscribers should give me each what is called a bon for the respective number of days’ labour they were willing to contribute to the erection of the mill, and that purchasers would be found for these bons among those who had work to do. This new species of paper currency pleased me excessively, and I consented at once to suspend my own work, and to commence a mill on a larger scale, so soon as two-thirds of the bons should be disposed of; with, however, some fear in my own mind that it probably would be a tedious work. To my surprise, however, it proved far otherwise: before the end of November, the stipulated number of the bons was sold, and, although the amount in money received for them was not important, a supply of necessary merchandise, and other articles always in demand, both in the settlement, and in the general township, was obtained, and we were thus, in the course of the winter, in good condition to construct the mill-dam. The construction of a mill-dam, in Canada, during the winter, had never occurred to me as practicable; but, by the instructions of this shrewd American, it was commenced with great vigour. As soon as the first snow fell, he selected in the forest the fittest trees for his purpose, the trunks of which, by the assistance of the snow, he easily drew to the spot. Across the river Slant he laid a row for his first layers, and upon these he placed a range of short pieces, with the one end in the stream and the other resting on the layers. On these again he placed two parallel lines of others also across the stream, and likewise, on them another tier of beams. When thus, with alternate layers across the river, with tiers of others upon them,

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dipping into the water, he had built the embankment of the dam, he laid planks upon it, and made it tight and serviceable. The millhouse was undertaken with equal simplicity and effect. With this work, in the water during winter, I found myself greatly interested. The means were at once with so much simplicity and effect adapted to the end, that it was impossible to contemplate the proceedings without pleasure, or sufficiently to admire the fortitude with which Bacon partook himself of the labour, encouraging by his example the others to persevere. And yet with all this skill in discerning the easiest means of accomplishing his purposes, and with a steadiness in the pursuit of his object that merited no small measure of praise, when it was done, he fell back into his wonted listlessness, giving his time seemingly to inconclusive reveries and indolence. But the lesson he had taught the Scotchmen in the subscription, was not lost after the mill was finished. It was resorted to for another object in the summer—the building of a kirk. I was, however, obliged to check their readiness to issue bons for labour, as I soon foresaw that, like other paper-coiners, they would grant orders for more than they could pay or perform. It must, however, be allowed, that the contrivance of such a plan of subscription, in a country where money is scarce and labour in request, deserved the praise of being the invention of a clear head. When the mill was completed, which was before the reaping of our third harvest, and before more than the foundations were allowed to be laid of the house of worship, we had frequent clerical visitors, of various denominations, who came to spy the Christian capabilities of the inhabitants. The first was a Catholic priest, a calm, respectable young man; but as all the settlers at Stockwell, and generally throughout the township, were Presbyterians, he judiciously abstained on his first visit from attempting to celebrate the mass; a forbearance the more commendable, as there has never been any legal impediment to that worship in the province. Here, indeed, the administration of the Roman rites is conducted with great discretion, and, I may safely say, with no other arts of conversion than those which have the recommendation of blamelessness and charity. We had also several visits from members of the Presbyterian ministry, and, indeed, were beginning to gravitate into a congregation. Their conduct was also exemplary, as well as that of an occasional visitor of the Episcopalian Church Missionary Society;

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so that upon the whole the most rigid of the righteous amongst us had no cause to moan for lack of Gospel fodder. The largest lapfuls were, however, brought by the Methodists, who, in addition to the impulse of the spirit, are stimulated by the ordinary sordid motives of human industry, being entirely dependent on the benefactions of their hearers. I should fail, however, to give a fair account of our religious aliment, were I to dismiss the subject with such a general notice. The emigrant must prepare himself not always to meet with reverential pastors—if they may be called pastors, whose visits, like those of the angels, are few and far between—but to lay his account occasionally to meet with strange examples not altogether apostolical. One Sunday, in consequence of some previously concerted arrangement, several children of Catholic parents were brought in from the neighbouring settlements to be baptized by the Catholic priest, who was to pass by Stockwell; and, in consequence, the shelter-house was lent for the ceremony, and a very considerable assembly of all the differing Christians took place—some for worship and some for curiosity. One was actuated by less innocent motives, and he was a Methodist preacher. As soon as the priest had dressed and consecrated the altar for the ceremony of the baptism, this Mr. Fagotter was observed to come in and sit down without uncovering, when, to the amazement not only of me but of all present, James Peddie, the Dove, rose and soberly took it off, and placing it on the knees of him who would not bow in the house of Rimmon, returned with the utmost coolness to his seat. The rebuke, however, was but of momentary effect, for with the spirit of the godly Janet Geddes at the reading of the liturgy in St. Giles’s, Edinburgh, he spread his fingers before his eyes and peered through them to his friends in such a manner of mockery as to disturb their gravity. Encouraged by the example that the Dove had set of the propriety of enforcing the decorum due to the ceremonies which he might have shunned by staying away, two young men, indignant at his irreverence, went to where he was sitting and with the most sedate silence took him under the arms and carried him to the door, where one of them convinced him of his error by a most effectual application of his foot to a sensitive part. But similar annoyances to good feelings are not frequent, and it would deserve great reprobation were it for an instant supposed that this case is adduced as a custom, or at all a practice among the

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Methodist preachers towards their brethren of either of the older priesthoods; indeed, I should have omitted to mention it but for an incident to which it gave rise. Intolerance towards the opinion of others is no proof of rectitude or purity in ourselves.

CHAPTER XXXV. penitence and penance. Mr. Fagotter being thus coercively excommunicated, went to and fro among the cottages, and in his roaming came to Peter Foddie’s house, the door of which being open he entered. Foddie himself, the most patient of the human race, was not in—he, though a rigid Antiburgher, was led by curiosity to the idolatrous baptism, that he might obtain some insight into the devices of the Scarlet Madam, and learn how to fortify himself to eschew her wiles and devices; but his wife, whose occasional exploits I have already delicately alluded to, was sitting by the fire-side, somewhat dishevelled in her wits, vehemently sobbing and shedding many tears, on account of the abomination of the baptism. On seeing the worthy Saint enter, she addressed him in the most pathetic terms concerning the service of Satan that was then performing, and the affliction of her poor sinful soul for the slack fortitude of her husband, who had not the strength wherewithal to withstand the allurements of the Papistical Dalilah. Mr. Fagotter, moved at the sight of her loneliness, shut the door behind him, and taking a seat beside her, entered into a consolatory discourse concerning the sin that doth most easily beset us. In this pleasant dalliance of the spirit, they had continued some time, when the whole congregation assembled at the baptism, were terrified by the loudest and shrillest shrieks of woe and desperation. They were heard approaching—every one rose—every dog barked, and the doors and windows were instantly replete with faces. The cause of the alarm could not be imagined; but, to the astonishment of all, there was Lucky Foddie, with her hair flying in the wind, her kerchief gone, and her bosom bare, one hand aloof, frequently descending in blows, and the other clutching the black, oily, and pious locks of Mr. Fagotter, who, with the meekness of a martyr, seemed incapable of withstanding the energy of her furor. The priest and the parents of the infants, on seeing this sight, returned back to the altar; but the rest of the congregation, and I

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among them, went towards Susannah and the Elder. Foddie himself went with us, and when near the raging lioness and her prey, said, “Hoot toot, hoot toot, my woman, what for are ye making siccan a rippet in this gait on the Sabbath day? Let the man a bee, I beseech you, Janet, for it’s really, my woman, no just in the spirit of Christianity, to be raising a hobleshaw like this on the Lord’s Day.” She relaxed the talons with which she held her victim, and turning her fury on her husband, gave him three of the most emphatic benedictions of her nerves between the shoulders, insomuch that I was obliged to interpose, or I verily believed she would have executed the threat with which she accompanied her blows, namely, “That she would ding the breath of life out o’ his body.” “Hold,” said I, “hold your hand—what has your unoffending husband done?—and what is all this about?” “Aboot!” replied the virago, “did na he leave me like the woman in the wilderness, to fa’ into the clutches of this red dragon?” At this juncture, the poor disjasket Mr. Fagotter seeing an opening in the crowd by which he might escape, rushed to do so, but the women, one and all, shouted in one breath, “Keep him—haud him—ride the stang on him!” Now considering the evidence against him, this appeared to me rather hasty justice, so I again interposed to protect him, until the extent of his guilt should be ascertained. “There can be no doubt of it!” cried several of the women at once—“Punish him—hanging’s o’er good.” “But Janet, my woman,” said Foddie, “what for are ye in siccan a terrible pawshion? What, has Mr. Fagotter been meddling wi’ you, my woman?” “Out of my way, ye snuff of a creusy,” cried the indignant matron, pushing her lord aside, and coming towards the other women. “Judge what I suffered! ‘first with the stockings and syne with the shoon;’ as the song of Logan water sings. But I trow he’s got the glaiks for his fee.” “Tell us how it happened?” said the wife of M‘Quistein. “Happened!” exclaimed Mrs. Foddie, and in the same moment bursting into violent tears, cried aloud with sobs intermingled with yells, “I’m a ruined-woman, my character’s gone! Oh that a living soul should say ‘happened to me!’” “But,” said I, a little displeased at the protraction of the tumult, “what is all this about: what has been done?” “It is all owing to the bringing in of Papistry into the land,” replied

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the afflicted lady: “if it had not been the papistical sin o’ this day, would nae the Never-do-well hae been preaching the words of peace and holiness, instead of meddling with me, with his cloven foot, in the lown time of public worship?” Her rage was by this abated, and she had recovered in some degree her scattered senses. “Tell us what has been done?” I repeated. “Nothing has been done,” cried she, “I took good care of that; but he came slipping like a gradowa doctor intill a sick room, and he took a stool beside me, and he spoke compassionately of the error of their ways at the christening, and I sympathized with him; and we were in a godly comfortableness, and he laid his hand on my knee. But I had no fear—and—but I trow he soon got his fairing.” “What gart you meddle wi’ my wife, ye”—said the husband, waxing into “siccan an o’er muckle a’ fire”, and going up to the culprit, who with a sanctimonious voice said aloud, “Can truth come from the lips of intemperance? Is it not true that she was wanton with strong drink?—Heed her not, she talks like one of the foolish women.” At this audacity all the other women gave a shout, and Mrs. M‘Quistein ran towards him with her hands stretched out like eagle’s claws, crying, “He ought to be torn from limb to limb, for to deny the fact was worse than all.” “I’m thinking, Janet,” said meek Mr. Foddie, “that he’s but a black sheep.” “An ye’re a black ram,” was her answer, lifting at the same moment her hand to strike him; but as if her returning sense of propriety came by fits, she suddenly paused, and giving a wild intelligent glance around, covered her face with her hands, and wept with tones of affecting contrition. Hitherto the scene had been for some time rather comic, but it was instantly changed, and all present turned their eyes towards her, regarding her with silence and compassion. Her husband, after a few minutes, took her gently by the hand to lead her away, but she withdrew it, and looking about, cried out with accents of the most piercing grief, “Let no rightful creature touch me, for I am a shame to womankind. Oh! why am I so forsaken of the mercy of Heaven, as to be allowed to put myself in such a state!” And again, almost choked with agitation, she moved homeward, her husband following at some distance.

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No sooner was she in her own house and the door shut, than one of the two young fellows who had still hold of the delinquent by the collar said, “Mess John, you must come with us,”—all the crowd gave a loud huzza, and they dragged him to the mill-dam. But what they did with him there would not become a justice of the peace to relate that he had witnessed without displeasure. Events of this kind become important, from the general tranquil current of our time, but they have also a curiously infectious tendency, and never to the advantage of a settlement. On the Sunday following, another Methodistical preacher paid us a visit, but such had been the effect of Fagotter’s conduct that he was not treated with common civility, and yet he was a far different kind of man. Generally these self-constituted teachers are low-bred and illiterate, but this one merited to be regarded as an exception. He was mild in his manners, modest and retiring, and had much of the air and gentleness of a good shepherd. However, he could not muster a congregation, which was the more to be regretted, as no other came to us for several weeks, and there seemed to be some risk that the institution of the day of rest, the poor man’s day, would be forgotten. That it was in more than one instance neglected, I grieve to say. But to proceed with the narrative.

CHAPTER XXXVI. an event. Although we have not yet had our township decorated with a gibbet, the philosophical reader will have discerned by the foregoing chapter that we are advancing with considerable celerity in the way of refinement. The consequences of the ducking did not, however, end with the drying of Mr. Fagotter’s clothes, for he has gone to law with the two young men who were busiest in the fray, and expects a satisfactory solatium. I have not, however, had leisure to interfere farther in the business, in consequence of an occurrence still more extraordinary than the discovery of the relationship between Mrs. Paddock and Dungowan. In the course of the following afternoon Dungowan came to Sylvany; and the moment he entered, I perceived by his countenance that something extraordinary had happened, but without making any remark, I only inquired, with some slight inflexion of emphasis, how all things were proceeding at Stockwell. He made me, however, no answer, his whole mind being evidently absorbed in the matter of his own thoughts. “There’s something in the wind,” whispered Mrs. Corbet aside to me, with her usual sagacity; “what can it be? has Sam done a mischief to any of the Evelyns—that boy’s a perfect provocative.” I made no reply, but I knotted my brows, and signified to her by a frown to say nothing. After some few awkward minutes had elapsed, he requested me to walk out with him, and when we had moved a few paces from the house, towards a by-path through the forest, which considerably abridges the road to Stockwell, he turned, and said with a significant smile, “There is surely some animal magnetism about this place, which attracts to it the widest dispersed of the living. Would you believe that Jocelyn has returned?” “Has he given you permission,” replied I, “to tell me his——?” “He has, and that is not the least of the wonder.” “Who is he? what is he?—you indeed astonish me.”

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“The brother-in-law of my cousin Mrs. Paddock.” “Not possible!” “It is only probably true.” “But how has the discovery been made?” “Been revealed, say rather. It has come to light like a hidden murder.” “You amaze me. The story that one of his companions told me of his being almost a foundling, seemed to preclude every chance of discovering his friends. How has it been made? why has he come back?” “Be less eager in your questions, Mr. Corbet, and I shall the sooner satisfy you.” “But we have now a teacher.” “No matter, for he will still not accept the office, so let that pass.” “Well, then, do tell me about him, I never was so interested in the look and manner of any other man in my life.” “You will not let me begin, you are so impatient that I should—” “I am dumb, proceed.” “Having conducted his companions to the head of the lake, he fell in with the gentleman you call the Doctor, who enticed them to the Company’s lands. Being thus freed of his charge, he then proceeded towards Lake Erie, where, at the mouth of the Grand river, he found a vessel in which he embarked for Buffalo, determined to shun Canada in consequence of meeting with me here, for he had resolved to hide the remainder of his days in the humblest obscurity.” “Who is he?” “Oh, you can speak, I thought you were dumb. But to go on with my story.” “Almost immediately on reaching Buffalo he was seized with the lake-fever, and brought to death’s door. However, he got at last round the corner, but remained for several months in a helpless state. While in this condition, your old factotum Gimlet, who is there, become a prosperous gentleman, hearing of his distress, and that he was a countryman, sought him out, and did the part of a true raven to him, as if he had been Elijah in the wilderness.” “This is most extraordinary!” “What! speaking again. Gimlet treated him as a brother, took him to his house, and made as much of him as if he had been a very Caliban. He gradually grew stout and well, but Gimlet’s kindness did not end with his care. Finding him a clever penman and arithmetician, accomplishments in which, though so right-handed a fellow, Gimlet

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is not perfect, he persuaded him to become his clerk, and gratitude made him more assenting to the proposal than our offer to take him for a dominie.” “I am all ear, Dungowan.” “I’m glad of it, Mr. Bogle Corbet, you can have no such unruly member as a tongue. But I am coming to the marrow of the matter; when he had been some time with Gimlet, they gradually became more and more intimate. They talked of old campaigns, and among other things, and with many injunctions of the most sacred secrecy, he mentioned that he had been here; Gimlet did the same, and after some talk about you—nothing good, you may be sure—” “What ill could they say of me?” “There now!—but perhaps it was good, I never asked; but from less to more, they spoke of Mrs. Paddock and the Evelyns, whose unhappy birth that dog Sam so incontinently disclosed, to molest us all.” “What then?” “What then?—Paddock, Paddock!” says the lone gentleman, “I have a letter signed by one Paddock—it was all the session clerk preserved of the little my poor mother left—and when I went to college, he gave it me as a lottery-ticket, or something to that effect; for forty years I have treasured it in oil skin, and worn it in my bosom.— Don’t interrupt me, I see you are ready, but let me go on. The letter was brought out, it was written from Therlestone, telling his mother that one named Henry had that morning died, and prayed Heaven to send them all consolation under the affliction. Short, and to the point, it contained no more; but, as the session clerk told Jocelyn when he gave this precious relic, it had such an effect on his mother, that she was seized with her agonies that same day, and died in giving him birth. On hearing this, Gimlet, with his wonted promptitude, put money in his purse, and bade him hasten back to Stockwell, and compare notes with Mrs. Paddock.” “This is indeed a miracle, Dungowan.” “It is so,” replied he, “but not what I have told you—patience, the wonder is to come. Jocelyn allowed not the grass to grow beneath his tread till he came to Stockwell, fought all the battle o’er again, produced the letter, and read the date. It was the very day on which Mrs. Paddock’s husband died! The Henry was he! It was written by his father, and the mother of our mysterious friend was his sister-in-law.” “But what has been his subsequent career, that occultation of which you durst not speak?”

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The Captain, who had related this singular story in his usual brisk conversational tone, and with a cheerful aspect, a little overcast at this, replied, “By Jupiter! you must ask himself, for although he gave me leave to tell you what I have told, he said nothing about that; I dare say, however, he will tell you himself.” “Commend me to a Highlander,” said I, “for the custodier of a secret.” By this time, we had reached a piny part of the forest, and the darkness of the overhanging boughs warned us to go home, where the Captain agreed to remain for the night, and where, as if to complete the drama, we found the Undivulged awaiting our return. It could not be said that in any respect his appearance was changed, but it was at once obvious, to use a familiar phrase, that he was no longer the same man. The benevolent serenity of his countenance was not altered; neither the sweetness of his voice, nor the beauty of his language in any degree diminished, but the shyness which he had so evidently assumed was thrown off, and save in the humility of his garb, he was with all things else possessed of the ease and grace of a superior gentleman. As we entered the room he was sitting in conversation with Mrs. Corbet, but by her manner I could see he had said nothing of what Dungowan had told me. On the contrary to what might have been expected, all was ordinary, and no particular wonderment expressed at his sudden return; and yet Mrs. Corbet was evidently burning with her sex’s curiosity.

CHAPTER XXXVII. raising the curtain. I saw by the eager looks of my wife that she was panting to hear the secret which she suspected Dungowan had been telling; and as there appeared no reason why her curiosity should not be gratified, I mentioned to Jocelyn himself that it had much interested me, and that I could not sufficiently admire the providential accident by which he had discovered his relations, requesting him to tell the story to Mrs. Corbet himself. I did this for two reasons; first, because I was sure he would relate it in the briefest terms and the most beautiful manner; and secondly, because I was half persuaded in my own mind, that Dungowan had told it to me alone under an apprehension of the irrelevant interruptions he would have otherwise been obliged to endure, had Mrs. Corbet been present. Nor was I disappointed in Jocelyn’s narration; it was perfect—every word in its proper place, and each sentence, for elegant completeness, a pearl. “The pure and precious pearls of splendid thought.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Corbet, when he had concluded, “I do think we shall soon have matter for a novel in three volumes of our own;” and laughingly added, “Who ever thought that I would be a heroine, and live in a midnight turret in America?” “Upon my word, Urseline,” said I, scarcely perceiving the link of association which connected her ideas together, “I do not see very clearly how this so tends to exalt your character; and besides, there are no turrets in America.” “But it is easier, Bogle, to invent them, than to make such a nice, delightful, natural romance—and surely I’ll be taken into the plot?” Here Jocelyn interposed, by saying to Dungowan that he had been in too great a haste to tell me; for that after he had left Stockwell, Mrs. Paddock, in answer to some inquiries concerning the situation of his kindred in England, had described his father as well

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connected, and that he had a relation with a fine estate, to which she should not be surprised were he to prove the heir; adding, “And can you conjecture his name?” “No,” replied Dungowan; and suddenly he added, “Surely you will not say Sir Harvey Pevetson?” “The same.” “The self-same man with whom—” Jocelyn alarmedly exclaimed, “Hush!” and looked grave. Dungowan checked himself; and then subjoined respectfully, that he had hoped there would have been an end of all mystery. “There will be soon,” replied Jocelyn; and smiling significantly, informed us that he was writing his life, and would tell all. Mrs. Corbet, delighted to hear this, said, “How I shall weary for the book! Bogle Corbet there is busy too writing his life, but yours will be worth seeing; for his, I do assure you, is whey and water: he never met with a right novel-like adventure in all his days—what he has read to me of it, is as common as an old newspaper. I wonder what some people think of themselves, when they expect others to read paternosters about their whims and nothings.” The courteous reader must acknowledge that this was an extraordinary speech for a wife to make; but I took not the least notice of it—cool and collected I heard it all, recollecting in how many instances her judgment was not the correctest. It was, however, mortifying to perceive that both Dungowan and Mr. Jocelyn eyed me as if they thought me disturbed. By way of changing the conversation, Jocelyn said rather abruptly, that he thought, from what had been ascertained respecting himself, he ought to return at once to England. “That, Bogle,” rejoined Mrs. Corbet, turning round to me, “will be capital for you—for ye have been telling me that you think your book big enough, (for my part, I think it too big,) and that you would send it for publication as soon as you met with a careful private hand. Mr. Jocelyn will be a prime opportunity; but mind, you are to score out all your trash about me. Gentlemen, were you to see what he has said, you would think me a born idiot. Not that it greatly troubles me, for I well know that courteous readers will discern that gentility is not in the power of his pen, which is only remarkable for a scandalous veracity concerning the most respectable private characters.” But, except herself, none of the party were at the time disposed to be garrulous; indeed the discovery had been too serious in its

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bearings, not only to Jocelyn, but even to Dungowan, on account of Mrs. Paddock and her grandsons, to allow them to be disposed to badinage; nor was I myself much inclined to be less grave. We therefore turned the subject of our conversation to the course that Jocelyn should pursue, and no other seemed to be so judicious as that he should follow out his own suggestion, and proceed home as soon as a narrative of facts could be compiled, and properly certified, to verify his identity as the same person whom the emigrants that came with him into the province had known in Scotland. Whether, on his arrival in England, he should institute farther inquiries, we agreed would depend on what he might learn there respecting Sir Harvey Pevetson, with whom, as I happened to say, it would appear he had been already mysteriously connected. “Not mysteriously,” replied Dungowan; “the mystery is not in their connexion, they have only been formerly acquainted. It is your own resolution—pardon me, Colonel Jocelyn,—that makes the cloud—What have I said?” This inadvertent disclosure of the rank of the Undivulged probably affected me much less, notwithstanding the exquisite tension to which my curiosity had been drawn, than it did him; but for several minutes a perplexing silence embarrassed us all—I mean the three,—for Mrs. Corbet having, as usual, a world of household thrift to superintend, had left the room some time. Dungowan was the first that spoke, entreating pardon for his negligence, and pleading, in excuse, how difficult it is to overcome the force of habit by resolution, backed even by the sincerest pledges and promises. “Say no more,” replied his friend; “perhaps I should now release you. This morning’s discovery has made it no longer necessary to adhere to my plan. You are free, Captain Campbell,” and on saying these few words he rose in visible agitation, and took several turns across the room. By this time, the evening being advanced, supper, which was served in another apartment, was announced; but he declined to join us, giving as a reason that he had been so much agitated by what had taken place during the day, that he felt not perfectly well, adding, he would, however, join us presently, and that Dungowan might, in the mean time, relate what he had known of him. We accordingly adjourned, and mutually exchanged interjections of wonder at this new catastrophe, as Mrs. Corbet called it. Her meaning was, however, so obvious, that I did not think it stood

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in need of any explanation. Dungowan, however, who had fits of fun, as she said, like the falling sickness, being in one of his playful humours, affected not to understand her, but she silenced him with a remark, that he had not fortitude enough to withstand: “Dear me, Captain,” said she, “I am none surprised that you are not yet acquainted with the English language, considering you have been so shortly since from the Highlands, where the inhabitants, as I have heard you say yourself, speak a mother tongue.” “Umph!” replied the Captain.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. the disclosure. The story Dungowan had to tell was not long, and only interesting as a curious display of feeling—morbid, perhaps, it should be called. “When Jocelyn left the University, finding himself without friends or fortune, he proceeded by a Leith smack to London, and had the good luck during the passage to attract attention by the benignity of his looks—for even while a young man he had that remarkable air and serene countenance for which he has been so distinguished in after-life. His dress and manners also indicated one of a higher sphere than he seemed to be in, and implied some eclipse of fortune. He was a steerage-passenger, and yet held himself aloof from those who belonged to that part of the vessel. “Among the other passengers whom his pensive appearance interested, was an elderly gentleman, then proceeding to London to take charge of some confidential mission for Government in the Levant. This person was a singularly acute and penetrating character; he had raised himself by the force of his good sense to consideration, but his education had not been worthy of his talents. Finding in Jocelyn, combined with uncommon mildness of manners, considerable attainments, he inquired into his circumstances, and was so pleased with the modesty of his account of himself, that he engaged him to accompany him. During the course of the mission, they visited several of the most important maritime towns on the shores of the Mediterranean; and when it was completed, Jocelyn had conducted himself with so much propriety, that his patron procured for him a commission in a regiment then in garrison at Gibraltar, with which he afterwards accompanied the expedition to Egypt. It was then that Dungowan, himself a subaltern, first knew him. “His talents and classical education rendered him at the time a great favourite with all the other officers with whom he became acquainted; and by his calm courage in battle, he soon acquired the reputation of a good soldier, and his promotion was accordingly rapid.

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“During the short peace,” continued Dungowan, “he continued to make, by his own merits, a slow, but undeviating progress. As an officer, no man could better do his duty; and the gentle manners and placid air which first recommended him to his patron, continued to attract new friends—but it was to them a constant theme of wonder that he never once mentioned kindred, home, or early associates. It was known, however, somehow, among them, that he had been educated at Glasgow College, but “From whom descended, or by whom begot,”

remained a sealed mystery. “During a few months that we were once quartered together in Ireland, he gave me an outline of his adventures, which were not otherwise remarkable than for the famous places he had visited; he also told me that he was entirely dependent on his pay. “It was soon after this, that, on his regiment being recalled to England, he was sent to Riggleswold to recruit, near to which is situated the estate of Sir Harvey Pevetson, and he was entertained by the Baronet, as well as the neighbouring gentry, with particular hospitality. Few young men were, indeed, better entitled to kindness; for, independently of being uncommonly handsome, he possessed with his winning mildness, accomplishments which he had taught himself in music of no ordinary degree, and had seen so many celebrated cities, that his conversation was always delightful. “Sir Harvey had an only child, Miss Juliana, and an attachment grew up between her and Jocelyn. Her father, never suspecting, in consequence of his elegance, that he could be less than respectably born, saw their growing affection without displeasure; but when Jocelyn proposed marriage, the old gentleman, with becoming prudence, requested to know his connexions. Not the slightest sentiment of objection to Jocelyn himself was intimated, nor is it believed that any such was felt. It was the question of a tender father, solicitous for the honour and happiness of his only child. “The conduct of Jocelyn was suitable to the correctness of his general behaviour: he related his whole story to Sir Harvey, and was listened to, as he said to myself, with compassionate attention; but when he had ended the narration, he saw that his hopes were withered. The Baronet appealed with kindness and delicacy to himself, and simply inquired, if he could expect him to consent to the marriage. “Every thing I have ever known of Colonel Jocelyn has been

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distinguished by good sense, but his resolution to bury himself in obscurity. “The refusal of Sir Harvey naturally induced Jocelyn, as a man of honour, to separate himself from the lady, and he did so without delay, exchanging for an appointment abroad. Before leaving the kingdom, he wrote to me an account of the whole affair, and in that letter for the first time, at least to me, a querulous expression escaped him, adverting to his friendlessness and orphan birth. For a long time I heard nothing more of him than the Gazette and the army list furnished in his several promotions, till I found him a Colonel in the army, on half pay, some four or five years ago at Cheltenham. Miss Pevetson, he then told me, was still unmarried, and had resisted all her father’s entreaties that she would change her name. “But,” said the Colonel, “while she acknowledges that it is on my account she remains single, she has promised her father never to marry until I shall have ascertained the respectability of my family; and lo! it proves that Colonel Jocelyn is not only her equal, but probably the heir to her father’s title and property.” “Surprising, Dungowan,” said I, “very surprising! But still all that says nothing of the mystery. Why is he here, and come in the capacity of a mere labourer?” “The tale is all of a piece,” replied the Captain. “Soon after I had seen him at Cheltenham, partly at my suggestion, he went to the village where his mother died, hoping that some glimmering tradition might still exist there concerning her connexions. But his resolution to conceal himself had been previously formed. He went back in disguise; he appeared among his native scenes and early friends a baffled adventurer, but still fondly hoping that some chance might repay his search. None ever occurred; so, abandoning all hope, and giving up the world, he has come here to die unknown, and would have done so, but for the extraordinary Providence that brought him to Stockwell and disclosed him to me.” “But why need he have sunk himself to a condition so humble? his half-pay would have supported him as a gentleman.” “So I have said to himself; and all the satisfaction he gave me in his answer was, that to retain his rank longer was not consistent with the oblivion he desired. Something in this case must be conceded to feeling. Had he been a Catholic, instead of seeking the woods he would probably have found his way to the cloister.” During the whole of this impressive narrative, much to my surprise, Mrs. Corbet, who was present, never once opened her lips;

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even after it was finished, she sat with her cheek upon her palm, till I said, “Well, Urseline, what’s your opinion?” “Finish your book, Bogle, outright.” “Good Heavens! were you thinking of that all this time?” “If I did not know,” replied she, “that sometimes there is a likelihood of a want about you, I would not urge you; but every hour the poor man is detained here defrauds true love—though, between ourselves, I wonder, when he was a gallanting young recruiting officer, he did not gallop away to Gretna Green with the young lady, instead of parleyvooing with her father.”

CHAPTER XXXIX. the conclusion. The preparations for Colonel Jocelyn’s departure are now nearly completed, and therefore, although it cannot be said that my life will be finished while I remain in the land of the living, this work must be brought to a point. I cannot say, however, that in doing so I am at all gratifying myself. I should have been better pleased could I have made it more useful to those whom wounded feeling or disabled fortune may prompt to prove the habits and the custom of these woods. But since fate and expediency wills it otherwise, the reader will permit me to remark, in the way of general reflection, that when I recall to mind the experience of those in the forest, it would seem that the toil, the cares, and the anxieties which await the emigrant during his first season, result from a wise arrangement, which prevents him from suffering too keenly the privations incident to the wildness of his situation. If the first year be his busiest, his most diversified and most anxious for the future, it is also that in which the natural consequences of separating himself from urbane society, occasions the least melancholy. Experience makes him in the next more adroit at the business of his toils, and, pleased with his own proficiency, he practises the lessons of his tasks with invigorated hope; but he begins to suffer pangs of leisure. The third season begets other cares; he then sees the course and scope of the labour and career he has undertaken, and his attention, scarcely occupied with prospective considerations, finds many wants and deficiencies curiously increasing around him. The fourth season is the first in which the gentleman emigrant must appeal against the genius of the solitude to his own resources, and with the spells of earnest thought, seek relief from the craving voids which then begin their peevish aching in his bosom. In committing my children to the charge of another, I made a great sacrifice, paradoxical as it may seem, by divesting myself of much diverting solicitude. My rural improvements, no doubt, required my attention, but not the whole of it. And when no longer

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obliged to superintend the studies of my children, I became sensible that the man who does not labour with his own hands in the forest, should have some pursuit that will draw his mind away from the eventless solitude which he will too soon discover around him. Unfortunately, my juvenile predilections for the contemplation of the starry heavens, have here no scope. The skies are only seen in patches, environed with the rough and narrow periphery of the forest horizon, and the evenings which were devoted to the duties of a teacher soon became waste on my hands. Ornithology, after astronomy, would have been the most congenial study to my taste; but it can only be effectually pursued by travelling, for the scarcity of birds in the woods renders it soon exhausted. Botany, in consequence, may be adopted; but the science, as it stands, having reference chiefly to the palpable characteristics of plants, and their classification, seems arid, and not more instructive than catalogue reading.—I have for some time studied Botany, with resolution rather than with pleasure, and I think in the end it would have mastered my patience. But a happy fancy of Mrs. Corbet has given it new life and variety. Seeing me assorting a collection of flowers that I had one day gathered in my walk, she expressed her surprise that I should trifle my precious time with such useless particularity. “Were I you,” said she, “I would have nothing to do with the this and the that of herbs, which nobody knows the Christian names of. I would see what they are good for, and assort them rather by their qualities.” The hint gave me a new impulse, and leaf, blossom, root, and fibre, have, from that night, been subjected to all the varieties of chemical torture and analysis. Our parlour is often filled with the vapour, fume, and fragance, of these vegetable investigations; and a pastime having an object, has tended to diminish the tediousness of that time to which the epithet of precious ought to be applied. But although no discovery has rewarded the pursuit, something is in view, and in that unknown entity lies the charm that counteracts the ennui of idleness. Let no one, therefore, enter the wilderness, with the intention of abiding there for life, who does not bring with him a habit of study with some object, or that may be interminable, and yet not of such fascination as to seduce him from his serious business. How many appliances are required in great cities to arouse the plodding progeny of commerce! Can it be thought that recreation is not as essential to vary the monotony of the lonely woods?

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Perhaps I am too apt to give way to peevish complaints of the unalleviated sameness of the Settler’s pursuits; and I have already more than once caught myself sliding into a querulous humour;— but the tale of it may not be unprofitable to those who may glance at these pages for amusement, and find them in many respects as much devoted to information. But though so many days are here blank leaves in the book of life, let me not be misunderstood; I have no cause to regret my emigration; I have only been too late. The man must indeed be strangely constituted, who above fifty emigrates for life, with the habits and notions of the old country rivetted upon him, and yet expects to meet with aught much better than discomfort. Emigration should be undertaken at that period when youths are commonly sent to trades and professions: the hardships are too heavy an apprenticeship for manhood, and to riper years penalty and privation.

APPENDIX. Having abandoned an intention which I had at one time formed of publishing, for the benefit of Emigrants, a Statistical Account of Upper Canada, for which I had collected materials, I think, in addition to the general information contained in the body of the fore­ going fiction, it will be useful to subjoin a description of the different townships in eight of the eleven districts into which the province is divided, drawn up from the best authorities. J. G.

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EASTERN DISTRICT. Nature of the Soil, and Advantages and Disadvantages of Situation. Matilda.—Soil—Black loam, clay, and sand; generally productive.—Advan.—Watered by the St. Lawrence in front; one branch of the River Petite Nation runs through the rear of it. Two grist-mills on the St. Lawrence. Williamsburgh.—Soil—Much the same; some part stony.— Advan.—Watered in the interior by creeks. Grist and saw-mills. Osnabruck.—Soil—Front part sandy; in the rear a good soil of loam and clay.—Advan.—Watered in front by the St. Lawrence, River aux Raisins, Hoople’s Creek, Crysler’s Mill, and Louck’s Mill. Cornwall.—Soil—Red loam, clay, and stony.—Advan.—Dixson’s, Chisholm’s, Cline’s, Fraser’s, and Link’s Mills, different branches of the River aux Raisins. Dundas-Street runs through the centre of this township. Charlottenburgh.—Soil—Much the same as Cornwall.— Advan.—Well watered; several grist and saw-mills. DundasStreet passes through it. Lancaster.—Soil—Clay and loam: generally low land, but productive.—Advan.—Saw and grist-mills. Dundas-Street passes through it. Lochiel.—Soil—Rear part of this township rich; front part, low land and stony.—Advan.—Watered by the River de Lisle and River de Grass. Grist and saw-mills. Kenyon.—Soil—Loam and clay; fine soil.—Advan.—Well watered; but few mill-sites; not valuable. Roxborough.—Soil—Generally black loam and clay; some part to the West is stony.—Advan.—Watered by the North branch of the River aux Raisins, and several creeks. Finch.—Soil—Good; the front part black loam; the rear sandy.— Advan.—A branch of the Petite Nation River runs through it. Several Mill-sites.

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Winchester.—Soil—Loam mixed with sand.—Advan.—Petite Nation River, and branch of the Castor River runs through it. One mill-site. Mountain.—Soil—Mixed loam and clay.—Advan.—Branches of the Petite Nation River runs through it. One saw-mill.

OTTAWA DISTRICT. Nature of the Soil, and Advantages and Disadvantages of Situation. Gloucester.—Soil—On the front of the Ottawa River, and in the rear of the township, the land is clayey; on the front of the Rideau the soil is gravelly.—Advan.—This township has two fronts, one on the Ottawa, and one on the Rideau. Osgoode.—Soil—Rich, black, and gravelly.—Advan.—It fronts on the East side of the Rideau River. Cumberland.—Soil—Light, or sandy.—Advan.—Well watered, and has two saw-mills. Russell.—Soil—Light sandy.—Advan.—Well watered, and has good mill-sites. Clarence.—Soil—Light sandy.—Advan.—Fronts on the Ottawa River, and has two small mill-sites. Cambridge.—Soil—Very light sandy.—Advan.—Very well wa­tered. Plantagenet.—Soil—Sandy, with some clayey land.—Advan.— Fronts on the Ottawa, and is well situated, having the River Petite Nation running through it. Alfred.—Soil—Poor; alternate sand and clay.—Advan.—Fronts on the Ottawa River. Caledonia.—Soil—One quarter of this Township consists of good land; the rest is low and marshy.—Disadvantageously situated. Hawkesbury, East, and Gore.—Soil—Rough, stony, and gravelly.—Advan.—Fronts on the Ottawa. Hawkesbury, West.—Soil—Stony and gravelly.—Advan.—Well situated, and pretty well settled.

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JOHNSTONE DISTRICT. Nature of the Soil, and Advantages and Disadvantages of Situation. Leeds.—Soil—Indifferent.—Advantage of a stream of water. Lansdown.—Soil—Indifferent.—Indifferently situated. Yonge.—Soil—Good.—Advantageously situated. Elizabeth Town.—Soil—Good.—Advantageously situated. Augusta.—Soil—Good.—Advantageously situated. Edwardsburgh.—Soil—Good.—Advantageously situated. North Gower.—Soil—Good.—Advan.—Middling. South Gower.—Soil—Good.—Advan.—Middling. Oxford.—Soil—Good.—Advantageously situated. Marlborough.—Soil—Good.—Advantageously situated. Wolford.—Soil—Good.—Advantageously situated. Montague.—Soil—Middling.—Advantageously situated. Elmsley.—Soil—Indifferent.—Advantageously situated. Kitley.—Soil—Indifferent.—Advan.—Indifferent. Bastard.—Soil—Good.—Advantageously situated. Burgess.—Soil—Indifferent.—Advantages—Indifferent. North Crosby.—Soil—Good.—Advantages—Indifferent. South Crosby.—Soil—Good.—Advantages—Indifferent.

MIDLAND DISTRICT. Nature of the Soil, and Advantages and Disadvantages of Situation. Ameliasburgh.—Soil—Generally good, with the exception of some swamps.—Advan.—Well situated on the waters of the Bay of Quinté. Hillier.—Soil—Generally good, with the exception of some swamps.—Advan.—Well situated on the waters of Lake Ontario.

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Sophiasburgh.—Soil—Generally good, with the exception of some swamps.—Advan.—Well situated on the waters of the Bay of Quinté. Marysburgh.—Soil—Generally good, with the exception of some swamps.—Advan.—Well situated on the waters of the Bay of Quinté and Lake Ontario. Pittsburgh.—Soil—Some very good land, but the greater part indifferent.—Advan.—Well situated on the waters of the St. Lawrence. Kingston.—Soil—Generally good, but some parts rocky.— Advan.—Well situated on the waters of the St. Lawrence. Ernest Town.—Soil—Generally good.—Advan.—Well situated on the waters of the Bay of Quinté. Fredericksburgh.—Soil—Generally good.—Advan.—Well situated on the waters of the Bay of Quinté. Adolphus Town.—Soil—Generally good.—Advan.—Well situated on the waters of the Bay of Quinté. Richmond.—Soil—Front five concessions generally good; the rear bad.—Advan.—Well situated on the Nappanee River. Tyendinaga.—Soil—Generally poor.—Disadvan.—Not well situated. Thurlow.—Soil—Generally good.—Advan.—Well situated on the waters of the Bay of Quinté. Sidney.—Soil—Generally good.—Advan.—Well situated on the waters of the Bay of Quinté. Rawdon.—Soil—Front six concessions generally good; rear part bad.—Advan.—Marmora road runs through the township. Second range of townships. Huntingdon.—Soil—Front six concessions generally good; rear part bad.—Second range of townships. Hungerford.—Soil—Generally reputed bad.—Second range of townships. Camden, East.—Soil—Generally good.—Advan.—Second range of townships; situated on the Nappanee River. Portland.—Soil—Middling, containing swamps and lakes.—Second range of townships. Loughborough.—Soil—Better than Portland.—Second range of townships.

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Bedford.—Soil—Not very good.—Third range of townships. Hinchinbroke.—Soil—Not very good.—Third range of townships. Sheffield.—Soil—Not very good.—Third range of townships. Marmora.—Soil—Not very good.—Third range of townships. Lake.—Soil and value unknown. Madoc.—Soil—Generally good.—Third range of townships. Ebzevir.—Soil—Bad.—Third range of townships. Kaladar.—Soil—Bad.—Third range of townships. Kenebec.—Soil—Bad.—Third range of townships. Palmerston.—Soil and situation unknown. Hallowell.—Soil—Generally good.—Advan.—Well situated on the Bay of Quinté, partly.

NEWCASTLE DISTRICT. Nature of the Soil, and Advantages and Disadvantages of Situation. Darlington.—Soil—Generally good.—Taken up by absentees; lying on Lake Ontario. Clarke.—Soil—Generally good.—Taken up by absentees; lying on Lake Ontario. Hope.—Soil—Generally good.—Advan.—Well watered; contains a village, with good mills. The adjoining townships are well settled. It lies on Lake Ontario. Hamilton.—Soil—Nearly one half of this township is bad land, the rest good.—Advan.—Centre of the district; a county-town; a village; good mills; well watered, and lies on Lake Ontario. Haldimand.—Soil—More than half bad land.—Advan.—Well watered; but no good flour-mills; lies on Lake Ontario. Cramahe.—Soil—More than half bad land.—Advan.—Well watered; but no good flour-mills; lies on Lake Ontario. Murray.—Soil—Generally good.—Advan.—Lies on Lake Ontario, and head of Bay of Quinté; River Trent in the rear: few mill advantages.

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Seymour.—Soil—Good.—Advan.—Second range of townships from Lake Ontario; the river Trent runs through it, with great mill advantages; not settled. Percy.—Soil—Good.—Few mill advantages; second range of townships; partly settled. Alnwick.—Soil—Bad.—Rear township on Rice Lake; not settled. Monaghan.—Soil—Generally good.—Advan.—Thinly settled; navigable waters on the East side. Asphodel.—Soil—Generally good.—Advan.—North of Rice Lake and river Trent; well watered; tolerably well settled. Otanabee.—Soil—Generally good.—Advan.—North of Rice Lake; well watered; tolerably well settled. Caran.—Soil—Good.—Advan.—Well settled; well watered; with mill advantages. Manvers.—Soil—Very bad.—Disadvan.—Not settled; large grants; not well watered. Cartwright.—Soil—Better.—Not settled, in large grants; better watered. Maripoda.—Soil—Generally good.—Advan.—Not settled; but well watered. Smith.—Soil—Generally good.—Advan.—Great water. Fenelon.—Soil—Little known.—Disadvan.—Very remote; not settled. Ops.—Soil—Good.—Advan.—Not settled; but well watered. Emily.—Soil—Generally good.—Advan.—Well settled; well watered. Verulam.—Soil—Not very good.—Advan.—Well watered; but not settled; remote. Harvey.—Soil—Not good.—Disadvan.—Not well watered; not settled; remote. Burleigh.—Soil—Not good.—Disadvan.—Not well watered; not settled; remote. Douro.—Soil—Good.—Advan.—Well watered; but thinly settled. Dummer.—Soil—Not very good.—Disadvan.—Badly watered; not settled; remote. Methven.—Soil—Bad.—Disadvan.—Cut up with lakes and rivers; rocky; remote.

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Belmont.—Soil—Not very good.—Advan.—Well watered; near the iron-works; not settled.

DISTRICT OF GORE. Nature of the Soil, and Advantages and Disadvantages of Situation. Trafalgar.—Soil—Clay and loam.—Advan.—This township fronts Lake Ontario; mill-streams, and highways, &c. Esquesing.—Soil—Principally sand; clay in some parts.—Disadvan.—Lying in rear of Trafalgar; and want of highways, mills, &c. Erin.—Soil—Principally black sand.—Disadvan.—Lying in rear of Esquesing; want of roads, mills, &c. Garrafraxa.—Soil—Black sand.—Disadvan.—Similar to Erin. Eramosa.—Soil—Black sand.—Disadvan.—Similar to Garrafraxa. Nassagiweya.—Soil—Black sand.—Disadvan.—Similar to Eramosa. Nelson.—Soil—Clay and sand.—Advan.—Fronting on the Lake, similar to Trafalgar. Flamboro’, East.—Soil—Clay and sand.—Advan.—Fronting on Lake Ontario and Burlington Bay. Flamboro’, West.—Soil—Clay and sand.—Advan.—Fronts on Dundas-Street and Coote’s Paradise; mills, highways, &c. Beverley.—Soil—Clay and sand.—Disadvan.—Want of mills, roads, &c. Ancaster.—Soil—Principally sand; clay in places.—Advan.— Highways, mills, &c. Barton.—Soil—Clay and sand.—Advan.—Fronting Burlington Bay; roads, mills, &c. Glanford.—Soil—Principally clay; sand in places.—Disadvan.— Lying in rear of Barton; want of roads, &c. Binbrook.—Soil—Clay.—Disadvan.—Lying in rear of Saltfleet; want of roads, mills, &c. Saltfleet.—Soil—Clay and sand.—Advan.—Fronting Lake Ontario; highways, mills, &c.

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NIAGARA DISTRICT. Nature of the Soil, and Advantages and Disadvantages of Situation. Grimsby.—Soil—Clay and yellow loam.—Advan.—Fronts on Lake Ontario, and the front all settled; a small village at the Forty Mile Creek, with two grist-mills, and three saw-mills. The southern part has the Twenty Mile Creek running through a small part of it, where there are mills, and a small village.—Disadvan.—Most of the unsettled lands wet, and a great deal of swamp. Caistor.—Soil—Principally hard clay.—Advan.—The Chippewa Creek, or Welland, runs through it.—Disadvan.—Badly watered; a great deal of bad land; flat, wet, and swampy; thinly settled, and far back. Clinton.—Soil—Clay, yellow and black loam.—Advan.—Fronts on Lake Ontario; has several saw-mills, and one grist-mill.—Disadvan.—Badly watered; deficient in mill-streams. Gainsborough.—Soil—Principally clay.—Advan.—Fronts on Chippewa Creek; Twenty Mile Creek runs through a part of it: has two grist-mills and five saw-mills.—Disadvan.—Badly watered between the Chippewa and Twenty Mile Creeks; the lands wet and swampy, with some marsh. Louth.—Soil—Clay, and yellow loam.—Advan.—Fronts on Lake Ontario; Twenty Mile Creek runs through it; Falls of the Twenty Mile Creek afford valuable situations for mills; has two gristmills and five saw-mills, and contains a considerable quantity of pine timber.—Disadvan.—A deficiency of water in dry seasons. Pelham.—Soil—Sand, yellow loam, and clay.—Advan.—Fronts on the Chippewa; is well watered with springs; has one durable mill-stream, with two grist-mills, one fulling-mill, and three sawmills.—Disadvan.—A part of the land much broken with short hills, and some of it light and sandy. Grantham.—Soil—Clay, black and yellow loam.—Advan.— Fronts on Lake Ontario; Welland Canal, and Twelve Mile Creek pass through it; has three grist-mills, four saw-mills, one fulling-mill, one carding-machine, salt works, and a flourishing village, St. Catherine’s.—Disadvan.—A great deficiency of water in dry seasons, except what is afforded by the Twelve Mile Creek.

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Thorold.—Soil—Strong clay.—Advan.—Fronts on the Chippewa; is well settled, and the Welland Canal winds through it.—Disadvan.—Under none in particular. Niagara.—Soil—Sand, clay, and yellow and black loam.— Advan.—Fronts on Lake Ontario and the Niagara River; navigable for ships to the extremity of the township. The county town, Queenston and St. David’s, head-quarters of the military; has one steam-mill, one wind-mill, four grist water-mills, and two saw-mills.—Disadvan.—Want of water for hydraulic purposes. Stamford.—Soil—Clay, sand, and yellow loam.—Advan.— Bounded by the Niagara River and Chippewa Creek. The Falls of Niagara afford valuable sites for mills, and are a great resort for strangers during the summer months.—Disadvan.—Under none in particular. Willoughby.—Soil—Hard clay in general.—Advan.—None but being situated on the Niagara River and Chippewa Creek, and contiguous to a good market.—Disadvan.—Low, flat, and cold soil; in general badly watered; the water of a bad quality, and pure water cannot be got by digging. Crowland.—Soil—Hard clay generally.—Advan.—Being situated on the Chippewa, and Lyon’s Creek running through it; the latter affording one mill site, on which a grist-mill is erected.— Disadvan.—A great deficiency of water, except what the Chippewa affords; pure water not to be got by digging, except in the upper part of the township. Bertie.—Soil—Clay, black loam, and limestone.—Advan.—Fronts on the Niagara River and Lake Erie. The roads generally good throughout the township; is well settled, and advantageously situated for market.—Disadvan.—Want of water for hydraulic purposes. Humberstone.—Soil—Clay and black mould.—Advan.—Bounded on Lake Erie, and the dry parts of the township well settled.— Disadvan.—A great part of the township is Tamerack and Cranberry Marsh; the land generally low and flat, the front of the township thinly settled, and no mill-streams. Wainfleet.—Soil—Clay and yellow loam.—Advan.—Bounded by Lake Erie and Chippewa Creek. The Welland Canal laid out to pass through it.—Disadvan.—A great part Cranberry Marsh, and a want of mill-streams.

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DISTRICT OF LONDON. Nature of the Soil, and Advantages and Disadvantages of Situation. Rainham.—Soil—Generally clay, rich and fertile; well timbered.— Advan.—Bounding on the front Lake Erie, and affords advantages of navigation. Stoney Creek runs through it, with some mill sites. Walpole.—Soil—The rear part generally clay; the front rich and fertile.—Advan.—Bounding on the front Lake Erie, and affords advantages of navigation. St. Gus and Nautikoke Creeks run through it, with some mill sites; well timbered; some pine. Woodhouse.—Soil—The West part sandy loam; the East rich loam, inclining to clay.—Advan.—Bounded on the front by Lake Erie, and affords advantages of navigation; well watered, and good timber, with several mill sites; Patterson and Black Creeks running through it. Good roads in the settlement. Charlotteville.—Soil—The front generally sandy loam, and some light clay; the rear light sandy soil.—Advan.—Bounding on the front, Lake Erie affords advantages of navigation; well watered with creeks and springs, abounding with bog ore of the best quality; much plains, and not well timbered; Big Creek running through part of it. Walsingham.—Soil—The front rich loam, the rear hungry sand.— Advan.—Bounding on the front, Lake Erie affords advantages of navigation, and well timbered, with some mill sites; the rear most generally poor pine. Big Creek runs through the West part of it. Townsend.—Soil—Sandy loam.—Advan.—Well watered, and well timbered; the West part generally oak, and the East mostly good pine; some mill sites. Nautikoke runs through part of it. Windham.—Soil—Sandy; some parts loamy.—Disadvan.—Several swamps; not well timbered in some part; principally pine, not good for building; but better timbered in the West part of it. Middleton.—Soil—Sandy.—Advan.—Several swamps; but affords some good pine, and good iron ore. Big Creek runs through it. Oakland.—Soil—Sandy loam.—Disadvan.—Not well watered or well timbered; principally white oak, of small growth.—Advan.— Good roads.

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Burford.—Soil—The East part sandy loam; the West rich loam.— Advan.—The West part well watered, with good timber; the East well watered, not well timbered. Some poor pine. Blenheim.—Soil—Loamy.—Advan.—Well watered, and generally well timbered, with oak and pine. Blandford.—Soil—Loam and clay.—Advan.—Well timbered. Inland. Wilmot.—In the Gore District. Zorra.—Soil—Loamy.—Advan.—Well watered, and well timbered: good maple, beach, and oak. Inland. Nissouri.—Soil—Rich loam.—Advan.—Well watered, and well timbered. Inland. London.—Soil—Rich loam.—Advan.—Well watered, and well timbered; bounding in front on the Thames. Inland. Westminster.—Soil—Rich and loamy.—Advan.—Well timbered; much good maple, beach, and oak. Some part bounded on the River Thames. Inland. Dorchester, North.—Soil—Loam.—Advan.—Well watered, and well timbered with pine. Inland. Dorchester, South.—Soil—Sandy.—Advan.—Swampy; and timbered in the front with scrubby pine. Inland. Dereham.—Soil—Loam and clay.—Advan.—Well timbered; Otter Creek runs through it, with mill sites. Inland. Norwich.—Soil—Rich loam.—Advan.—Well timbered; Big Creek running through it; some mill sites. Inland. Oxford, East.—Soil—Loam and clay.—Advan.—Well timbered. Inland. Oxford, West.—Soil—Loam and clay.—Advan.—Well watered and timbered. Inland. Oxford, North.—Soil—Loam and Clay.—Advan.—Well timbered. Inland. Houghton.—Soil—Sandy loam.—Advan.—Bounding on the front, Lake Erie affords advantages of navigation; well timbered and well watered. Bayham.—Soil—Loam, and some clay in part of it.—Advan.— Bounded on the front by Lake Erie, affords advantages of navigation; the Otter Creeks run through it; well timbered with good pine.

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Malahide.—Soil—Loam and clay.—Advan.—Bounded on the front by Lake Erie, affords advantages of navigation; well watered and well timbered. Yarmouth.—Soil—Sandy loam, rich and fertile.—Advan.— Bounded on the front by Lake Erie, affords advantages of navigation; is well watered and well timbered; good oak. Southwold.—Soil—Loamy.—Advan.—Bounded on the front by Lake Erie, affords advantages of navigation; well timbered; Kettle Creek running through part of it. Delaware.—Soil—Loam and clay; rich flats.—Advan.—The River Thames bordering on the West side; some part well timbered with oak. Lobo.—Soil—Loam and clay in the front.—Advan.—The River Thames borders the East side; well timbered in the front concessions, oak and maple; well watered with small streams. Carradoc.—Soil—Loamy.—Advan.—The River Thames on the East side; well timbered with oak. Ekfrid.—Soil—Loamy.—Advan.—The River Thames borders on the East side; is well timbered with maple and oak. Mosa.—Soil—Loam and clay.—Advan.—The River Thames borders on the East side; is well timbered with maple and oak. Aldborough.—Soil—Loam and clay.—Advan.—Bounded on the South by Lake Erie, and North by the River Thames; affords many advantages of navigation, and is well timbered. Dunwich.—Soil—Loam and clay.—Advan.—Bounded on the front by Lake Erie; affords advantages of navigation, and is well timbered.

END-OF-LINE HYPHENS Listed below are “hard” end-of-line hyphens, not produced accidentally by typesetting, but intended to be retained whatever the format in which the text is typeset and therefore to be retained also in making quotations. The entries are listed by page and line number. 18.15 tea-saucer 67.30 New-road 86.7 maid-of-all-work 100.1 drawing-room 100.16 bald-headed 103.9 mort-cloth 103.14 bed-chamber 109.4 two-and-twenty 112.19 widow-woman 130.2 supper-time 164.1 table-cloth 177.29 sharper-sighted 186.30 shop-keeper 214.14 singularly-experienced 217.39 friend-to-be-at-court 258.7 clothes-brush 279.36 sea-room 289.28 fire-arms 293.14 steam-boat 307.3 Surveyor-general’s 315.9 few-and-far-between 322.7 thunder-storm 347.29 British-like 389.25 soldier-officer 411.9 long-tailed 411.18 new-comer 412.15 bed-room 417.40 tea-urn

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end-of-line hyphens 424.2 mill-house 447.18 Dundas-Street 454.23 grist-mills 454.28 saw-mills

APPENDIX 1: EXCERPTS FROM REVIEWS AND RECEPTION (a) From The Edinburgh Literary Journal; or, Weekly Register of Criticism and Belles Lettres 5.131 (14 May 1831), pp. 305–7. [In Galt’s] novels—from the Ayrshire Legatees down to Bogle Corbet—you find the most unequivocal traces of original and nervous genius. His range is narrow—it is almost exclusively confined to the manufacturing districts of the west of Scotland, and to the present century. His characters are parish ministers, weavers, and master-manufacturers, bonnet-lairds, provosts of small burghs, and maiden ladies living upon small annuities. He narrates the history of these individuals with quiet sly humour. Like the Dutch painters, he represents the whole by painfully and minutely finishing each detail; and, like the same meritorious class of artists, he not infrequently emits flashes of intensest energy. His language is akin to his subjects; it is a strange mixture of burlesque and impressive earnestness. It is quaint, sometimes ludicrous, always powerful. It is amazing what Galt has contrived to elicit out of the seemingly barren field which he has selected for the scene of his own especial labours. By close and anxious scrutiny, he has enabled himself to trace the currents of human passion, where they run, like the waters of Styria, in subterraneous channels, beneath a barren and stony surface. He shows us the desolating workings of ambition, self-will, and malignity—not in the deeds of arms, and dark excesses of feudal chiefs, or warlike monarchs, but in the even, pertinacious, onward course of the law-conforming, money-making merchant. […] But Galt’s chief mastery lies, after all, in his perspicacity to discern those transient and evanescent feelings of attraction and repulsion which bind and dissever men—the fantastic suspicions and jealousies which bring, as old Middleton calls it, “a scurf over life.” In painting men’s mutual misapprehensions of each other—in showing how each puts his own construction upon, and draws such differing inferences from the same event, he is unrivalled. It is impossible for one who has not read his works to conceive his naive portraitures

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of a knot of friends, each, in his own esteem, the wisest, mutually looking down with a graceful and condescending patronage and forbearance upon each other. […] Bogle Corbet, Mr Galt’s last publication, is the history of an individual of a refined, contemplative, and rather hypochondriacal turn of mind, who has been forced by his guardians into the mercantile profession. His heart is not wholly in his business, but neither is he much averse to it. He is a good, easy man, who, in quiet times, or in a safe and narrow range of business, or with a more active and far-seeing partner, might have discharged irreproachably the routine duties of his profession, and indulged himself in the cultivation of his elegant taste. But he is thrown into a hazardous line of business, in a day of over-speculation, and linked to a fool. As might be anticipated, he fails—recovers himself, and again commences business with fair promises, which sink away from beneath him, leaving him, at an advanced period of his life, to seek a settlement and provision for his family in the back woods of Canada. The portion of the narrative, at which we have thus slightly glanced, occupies the first and second volumes; the third is dedicated to the adventures of our hero and his fellow-settlers in Canada. The great beauty of this work consists in the minute, elegant, and faithful touches, by means of which the author succeeds in embodying all the little occurrences which, however trifling in themselves, formed, when united, the mighty stream which bore down his hero. They are all justly conceived, and made to arise in the most beautiful manner out of each other. The story is evolved simply and naturally. There are interspersed frequent touches of alternating pathos and humour, which serve to allure us onward. Many of the characters are felicitous and original conceptions. We may instance Eric Pullicate—the Radical Grub transmuted into a Bailie Butterfly—the keen, sagacious, honest, piece of selfishness—the virtuous Iago, as Galt happily terms him. [The review ends by quoting two excerpts: “The Iceberg” ( from volume 2, chapter 33) and “The Second Sight” ( from volume 2, chapter 29).]

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(b) From The Spectator (London) 4.150 (14 May 1831), pp. 474– 5; partially reprinted in The Caledonian Mercury (Edinburgh), 30 May 1831, p. 3 and The London and Paris Observer; or, Chronicle of Literature, Science, and the Fine Arts (Paris) 7.317 (12 June 1831), pp. 369–71. Bogle Corbet is the Emigrant’s Guide to Upper Canada; and if ever a didactic work was made to arrest the attention and excite the sympathies, it is this novel. No one ever thought of learning to farm from the Georgics, or to practise the art of making cider from Phillips’s poem on that subject; but persons of a certain class may take up Bogle Corbet as a romance, and lay it down as a practical book of hints. Indeed, the works for the guidance of emigrants have been so loosely got up, and written with such confined views and limited experience, that it would be difficult to point out any books on which the emigrant, whose purposes were not settled, could have relied, until the appearance of Lawrie Todd and Bogle Corbet. The whole business of emigration has all along been so shamefully neglected or mismanaged, that it is only one more extraordinary fact added to the rest, that the best instruction concerning it is to be picked up in a novel. Bogle Corbet, when compared to Lawrie Todd, is inferior in the number and force of its graphic scenes, as well as in the richness and strength of its characters: but the incidents are somewhat more striking, as they relate to a person of much more sensibility, greater reach of thought, and of a higher grade in society. Bogle Corbet, taken by itself, is a work of great and extraordinary merit; it is only as compared with Lawrie Todd that we should stand higgling about its inferiority. As a fictitious autobiographer—in the power or at least in the facility, of first conceiving a character, and then throwing himself into it totis viribus, and by ten thousand strokes of humour, sense, and observation, laying himself or his assumed self bare, as it were unconsciously, to the world—Mr. Galt surpasses every writer certainly of this day, and perhaps of any time. From such a writer, every thing, therefore, in the kind wherein he excels, must be valuable. Bogle Corbet is so in a very high degree. The subject of this history is a dreamy youth, of unsettled purposes, possessing some fortune, whom his doers or guardians (for he is an orphan), from an idea of the growing prosperity of the cotton trade, most absurdly put to business, first in a weaving manufactory, and next in a warehouse of Glasgow goods, at Glasgow

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itself. The inconsistency of the youth’s habits and feelings with the abilities and qualities demanded for this line of life, ultimately end, after numerous stages, incidents, and important changes, in the loss of his capital, the ruin of his house, and in the melancholy fact of Bogle Corbet being a broken merchant. The settlement of his affairs occasions a visit to Jamaica; after which he starts again in London as a West India agent or consignee. In this case, he loses his business through the decline of that branch of trade, and not through any fault of his own or his partners; and, after a second marriage, he resolves upon the great step of emigration. We wish he had done so sooner; for, although his London experience introduces us to many extraordinary characters, drawn with a profound knowledge of human nature, we could have spared them for the more novel and interesting scenes of an emigrant’s life; but we perceive that, having spun out the earlier part of the history at too great a length (without intention—for a man of genius cannot write to order, and make a book as a carpenter makes a box, so many inches cubic), he has been compelled to compress the scenes in Canada into a smaller space, and contract them from their fair and beautiful proportions. The characteristic of Mr. Galt’s mind is subtlety, combined with a keen sense of humour and a considerable play of fancy. When he fails, it is only failure to the coarse observer and to the ruder sympathies: his web is sometimes spun too fine for vulgar eyes: it is then said his good qualities are not brought to bear upon the work,—while the fault is, that a microscope and a patient eye and some science are required for their examination. In a practical point of view, Bogle Corbet will be more useful than Lawrie Todd. Such men as the latter are sure in all situations to fall upon their feet, and whether they remain in one rank or rise to another, it does not much matter: but for the intellectual, benevolent, but somewhat whimsical and imaginative man, who, like Bogle Corbet, is always somewhat “feckless” as far as action is concerned,— and of this class there are thousands,—there is great danger. Good guidance is to him all-important: every thing depends upon the road he takes,—to the left, there may be success, usefulness, and happiness; to the right, failure and wretchedness. Bogle Corbet, with his busy thoughts, his amiable propensities, and limited capital—“with a waning income and a waxing family,” as he says—is not a man openly demanded in any colony or settlement, but who may be extremely useful or prosperous in many. If he wishes to know how to

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proceed, and what he will have to suffer, and what he may look to, let him lose no time in procuring the three volumes of Bogle Corbet. We wish New South Wales had now such a book as Canada can boast. [The review ends by quoting the entirety of volume 2, chapter 31 (“The Mother”) and volume 3, chapter 16 (“A Wet Day”).]

(c) From The Examiner no. 1218 (29 May 1831), p. 341. [Under the heading “The Literary Examiner,” Bogle Corbet is reviewed together with Atherton: by the Author of “Rank and Talent.”] [...] Bogle Corbet we must rank among the best of Mr. Galt’s productions after the “Provost” and the “Annals of the Parish.” It is a capital picture of ordinary life: the circumstances of which interest by their truth and fitness of relation to the tenor of the story. They are as the notes of a song—separately, simple sounds, but beautiful in their combination. The author never thrusts himself upon us: nor do we ever feel that he is writing unnecessarily. Just as much is said as seems proper to the narrative, and no more. Like a good actor, he has the skill to dispense with redundant action, and can trust himself in repose. He has not fallen into the track of the imitators of Scott (Smith, Cooper, and Co.), who give descriptions of thirty pages to the most common appearances and operations. Mr. Galt’s power is truth—but can there be a greater? It works on homely themes, and ordinary incidents: and it is thence the more readily recognized, and apt for the excitement of the common sympathies. The first and second volumes of Bogle Corbet contain the history of a mercantile man’s ups-and-downs in the world, which bring under view characters and scenes such may have occurred to any one’s observation; and the pleasantry of which depends upon the exactness of the point of humour in which they are seen, and the vividness of the description. The last volume treats of Bogle Corbet’s settlement in Upper Canada; and may be read as a book of information, respecting colonization in that province. Though the author never puts himself forward, and lets the course of the story run without interruption, as if it were telling itself, we have seldom read a book more copious in matter for extract amusing and instructing. We have but one quarrel with him, indeed, of any magnitude—which is, for an unfair support he has attempted to give to the advocates of Negro Slavery. Because

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the slaves in the West Indies are seen animated and mirthful at a festival, is it to be supposed that their condition is one of happiness? He knows less of human nature than Mr. Galt who so judges from such an appearance. [...]

(d) From The Englishman’s Magazine 1 (April–August 1831), pp. 381–3. [Under the heading “Journal of Literature,” the review of Bogle Corbet follows one of Atherton: A Tale of the Last Century, and precedes reviews of Daniel Lizars’s Indigenous Plants of Lanarkshire and Rev. W. Wright’s Slavery at the Cape of Good Hope.] If it were the fashion to judge of an author’s pretensions by the number of books he writes, John Galt would rank, we believe, second only to one even in this productive age. Notwithstanding his frequent appearance, however, we should hold ourselves ungrateful did we not ever welcome him with unaffected sincerity, as the author of many lively and popular works, which have contributed, in no small degree, to our amusement. We can well remember with what exquisite delight we enjoyed the rich and racy humour, interspersed with traits of sly and sarcastic sagacity, so abundant in the “Annals of the Parish,” and the “Ayrshire Legatees:” nor should we do Mr. Galt justice, did we not affirm, that it was from the admirable sketches of his pen, we first acquired an intimate knowledge of the middling and lower orders of Scotland, and of those homely and pathetic touches in their character, which he has, in his earlier works, so beautifully harmonized, by truth to nature, and an acute sense of national peculiarity. The chronicle of “Parish Annals,” recorded by the humble, contented, and sincere minister of Ayrshire; the characteristic proceedings of the family club in the “Ayrshire Legatees;” and the peculiarities of the worthy “Provost;” are the products of a mind full of striking originality, and exquisite discrimination of character, and conversant with much worldly knowledge of the modes and manners of life. It may be said, indeed, without disparagement to Sir Walter Scott, that these works fully equalled the humorous and less dignified passages of his own novels; and that they supplied a vacancy in Scottish literature, which even that great novelist had not attempted to fill, by sketching in the principal characters, that peculiar vein of humour which, some northern critic remarked, depends on the

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combination of great naiveté, indolence, and occasional absurdity, with natural good sense, and taste, and kind feeling; by delineating such characters, in fact, as my Uncle Toby and Sir Roger de Coverley, have made familiar to English readers: but of which there had not been any good Scottish representation. With a high opinion of Mr. Galt’s earlier works, shall we confess that we have not been satisfied with Bogle Corbet. It is professedly intended to convey a distinct moral; and it is written with a unity of didactic purpose, not aimed at in any of his writings just alluded to: and yet we are bound to say, that it is inferior to them all in this very respect. We notice, it is true, the same features, the same bodily peculiarities, that we have admired so often—“even in his ashes live their wonted fires”—but the interest created by them is more transitory and vulgar. That the book has been written, nevertheless, in a spirit of sincerity, is easily perceivable; and perhaps it would not be difficult to explain the cause from which its chief faults proceed, and that they belong to the age, rather than to himself. This is par excellence, the age of Authorship, ——venerable name! How few deserve it, yet what numbers claim——

and the commendable brevity which, some years ago, contributed to the popularity of the “Annals of the Parish,” “The Provost,” and “The Ayrshire Legatees,” would not have been congenial to the atmosphere of Burlington-street. Fewer than three goodly tomes would not have sufficed, and the ill effects are before us. Why will men of genius submit to the servitude imposed upon them? “Oh, reform it all together!” This novel, we are informed, was written to give expression to the probable feelings of a character upon whom the commercial circumstances of the age have had their natural effect, and to show what a person of ordinarily genteel habits has really to expect in emigrating to Canada. We cannot think the execution of the first part of this plan successful. Bogle Corbet, in whose autobiography we are to look for this delineation of character, is a man of no “mark or likelihood,” who seems, through life, to have no decided aim; who is placed in situations where one of ordinary capacity might work his way to fame and fortune; but who seems to have a disease in his mind which rivets him irresistibly to impressions by which he is unwillingly governed; and which, by fixing his attention on the

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imaginary and abstracted, deprives his mind of energy and fortitude. He appears, throughout the first two volumes, a mark for every “shot of accident and dart of chance;” sometimes sullen, sometimes active; at one moment roused to exertion, in the next sunk into apathy; now struck with novelty, and anon brooding over deep-rooted impressions;—we can never deduce a moral from his view of life or of society. We are not implicated, by habit or sympathy, in his welfare; nor can we, in the personal experience or observation of such a character, hope to acquire an intimate or deep knowledge of the things which affect ourselves. Herein, therefore, the work is deficient; and yet there are many passages which display much knowledge of the world; evidently extracted by active observations of men and things. Byron once said of Galt, before he had acquired his present fame, that, “with all his eccentricities, he has much strong sense, experience of the world, and is, as far as I have seen, a goodnatured philosophical fellow.” This good-natured philosophy may be traced in many places through “Bogle Corbet;” and the reader who has fortitude enough to master the three volumes, will certainly be rewarded by many striking views and beautiful thoughts, which develope treasures of long observation. We do not attempt to give any idea of the story—plot, there is none. It is an account of the life of a character such as we have described, and endeavours to please, chiefly by the exhibition of the phases of the human mind, though it is mixed up with some incidents and situations, in the last degree flimsy and improbable. The only well-drawn characters in the book are those of Mr. Macindoe, a good-humoured and well-intentioned, though vain and self-sufficient old Glasgow merchant, and Eric Pullicate, a powerfully-drawn sketch of a very peculiar character—a sort of “virtuous Iago.” These two remind us of Galt’s best days. But all the remaining characters are indifferently managed. They are very numerous, and brought on the stage like the characters in a puppet-show—only to be withdrawn as speedily as seen. We are introduced to an interesting old maiden lady, and a very mysterious old bachelor—to a sweet young creature who honours Bogle Corbet with her heart and hand,—to a melancholy young West Indian maiden, for whom our sympathies are strongly excited—and to a singularly clever literary rambler. But all these personages, whom we foolishly expect are about to play an important part to the end of our hero’s fortunes, are snatched from the world in a violent and unexpected way, before he has travelled through a volume and a half of his reminiscences. Scenes are described, and characters are intro-

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duced, merely for the purpose of swelling out the volumes,—and circumstances are heaped together that have nothing whatever to do with the story, or with a development of the characters of those on whom they are designed to act. In one point of view, however, this work is valuable; for the author, in “shewing what a person of ordinarily genteel habits has really to expect in emigrating to Canada,” has illustrated this subject with many admirable arguments and sound opinions, which come with peculiar force and usefulness from him, in as much as they are derived from his own practical knowledge. His remarks on the vexatious restrictions which prevent emigration from being carried on freely, deserve particular attention:—and to those whose prejudices and affections are fixed to no particular point of the compass, and who, weary of their native land and its disadvantages, seek to improve their condition by endeavouring to rise in a new world,—the third volume of “Bogle Corbet” will afford information, which, if attended to in time, may chance to prevent much misery and disappointment. We confess, however, that the prospect held out by Mr. Galt, is by no means pleasing; and that it would never induce us to separate ourselves from the companions of our former years; or to break asunder the ties which bind us to the home of our fathers. We would “Rather tamely bear the ills we have, Than fly to others that we know not of.”

(e) From Carl F. Klinck, “John Galt’s Canadian Novels,” Ontario History: Papers & Records 49 (1957), pp. 187–94. [Based on a paper given at the Annual Meeting of the Ontario Historical Society in Guelph on 20 June 1957. Footnotes, unless otherwise shown, are from the original. Reproduction courtesy of the Ontario Historical Society.] [...] In the preface to his [Practical] Notes [Made During a Tour in Canada] in 1833, [Adam] Fergusson drew attention to the host of books on Canada: Well may the Reader exclaim, whose eye shall glance upon my title-page, What! Canada again! Another and another yet! No doubt some catchpenny for failing farmers or webless weavers.

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William Blackwood, the Edinburgh publisher, and his magazine, Blackwood’s, encouraged this flood of literature about Canada; he brought out Fergusson’s Notes as well as the earlier novels of John Galt. The latter, indeed, regarded Blackwood as the discoverer of “any originality in [his] Scottish class of compositions;”1 and Blackwood’s Magazine in many ways had discovered Upper Canada. Lawrie Todd (1830) and Bogle Corbet (1831), however, were published by Colburn and Bentley in London. These two “Canadian” novels were written after Galt’s return to Britain, when his experiences as a colonizer for the Canada Company were fresh in his mind. Rounding out the decade of his greatest success in literature, they followed The Ayrshire Legatees (1821), Annals of the Parish (1821), The Provost (1822), Sir Andrew Wylie (1822), The Entail (1823), The Last of the Lairds (1826), and other works of fiction. Galt was then mature as a novelist, and he was writing for readers encouraged by a host of books and periodical articles—especially in Blackwood’s—to keep their eyes on the new country. The temper of Galt’s audience was reflected in a long and excellent review of Lawrie Todd in the new Fraser’s Magazine (March 1830). “We partook,” said the writer, “in the curiosity of many to know what so shrewd an observer as Mr. Galt would say upon so beaten and yet so interesting a subject.” Galt’s exceptional gifts in portraying West Country (Lowland) Scots characters had been recognized by everyone who had read Annals of the Parish and The Ayrshire Legatees. It was now a question whether he could bring to life Canadian or American scenes and people while he satisfied a demand for first-hand information about emigration. He warned the reader of Lawrie Todd not to expect a description of the author’s “own undertaking,” “a Colonial experiment of great magnitude” […] Todd’s story, it may be said, carries him from Scotland to New York, where he fails in business, and then into pioneer village life between Utica and Buffalo, in places called Babelmandel, Olympus, and Judiville. A notable interlude shows him finding a third wife in Scotland. The setting never shifts to Canada, although the descriptions do apply to Canadian scenes which the author had known. […] Bogle Corbet was also dedicated to a purpose, “to show what a person of ordinarily genteel habits has really to expect in emigrating to Canada”: 1

Galt’s Autobiography, II, 235.

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The author had proposed to offer the results of his observations in a regularly didactic form, but upon reflection, a theoretic biography seemed better calculated to ensure the effect desired. We disguise medicine, and he but mixes truth with fiction.2 This mixture contains a greater proportion of instruction than does that of Lawrie Todd. Through a volume and a half of his story, Mr. Bogle Corbet has successes and failures as a business man in Glasgow, London and Jamaica. When he emigrates, he comes to Canada, buys a farm near the Credit river (between York and Dundas), and shares the fortunes of the settlers to the very end. […] What we know about emigrant life in Canada and about the emigrants, many of whom came to the Huron Tract from the Lowlands, would suggest that Galt’s talent was wonderfully suited to effect characterizations of middle and lower class people in the clear light of Canada. If this promise of illuminated facts appears to be rarely fulfilled in Lawrie Todd or Bogle Corbet, explanations must be found. […] Most of the problems confronting realistic fiction in Canada since the beginning may be found in John Galt, our first realistic novelist. Unlike Major John Richardson, he had no flair for the contemporary alternatives, melodrama or historical romance. He never roved far from the data of observation. Emigrants as he knew them were courageous, but prosaic, folks, whose adventures in the new world seemed chiefly a succession of hard domestic realities. No one could have been better equipped than he to reflect in close-to-fact fiction these close-to-fact people and scenes. He came to Canada an acknowledged master of what Mrs. Oliphant called a record “of facts scarcely modified at all save by the machinery of story-telling.”3 The time, the place, and the man were right. Lawrie Todd and Bogle Corbet should have been mature works, each one a “great Canadian novel” at the very inception of such writing in our country. Yet neither maintained its interest for more than one generation. Moralizing and sentimentalizing were obvious pitfalls for a writer approaching the Victorian age. Galt was rather smug in his Literary Life when he announced a new “disposition to be didactic” in Lawrie 2

Preface to Bogle Corbet. Mrs. [Margaret] Oliphant, The Literary History of England in the End of the Eighteenth and Beginning of the Nineteenth Century, 3 vols (London: Macmillan, 1882), III, p. 195. [Editor’s note.]

3

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Todd. Exploitation of pathos tempted him toward easy effects owing nothing to the linguistic precision and deliberate irony which he could command in his Lowlands sketches. […] His art might have yielded a completely successful assimilation of his materials if it had not always been so precariously balanced between fact and fiction. Documentation cannot fail to disturb the equilibrium, especially in Canada, where self-conscious explanation of ourselves appears to be a disease. Galt wrote as if North American life needed justification before British readers. In Annals of the Parish local pride had enabled him to write of Dalmailing as if all the world had ready knowledge of the Lowlands of Scotland. The settings were made credible by a few keen strokes—touches of familiarity; and the people were—what would one expect?—people. For the new world, apparently, this is not enough. Things Canadian are seized upon for lengthy description, and fiction may be strangled while the author explains how people can live here. Realists know—Galt certainly knew—that the mind can make a truer picture by suggestion than by what in those days were called “statistics,” the lumber of encyclopedic data, the material of many an essay before the short story came into its own. It is a great pity that Galt did not rely wholly upon writing in the way which had made him famous—the pointed economical use of minutiae to open the reader’s eyes to what he must have known all along about living people. It is worth inquiring whether Galt took too little or too much for granted. Lawrie Todd and Bogle Corbet contain scenes on both sides of the Atlantic. Mr. Todd’s life in New York State is relieved by a visit to Scotland; Mr. Corbet lives through the first half of his book in Scotland or England. In both novels interest in the Old Country sections focuses upon characterization, and in the “American” sections upon environment. Galt may have assumed that his characters came to life sufficiently on the far side of the water to survive through extended descriptions of pioneer existence. The reader in Galt’s day may then have suspected that the spark went out when one left the old shores, that domestic activity, pathetic or odd situations, and even making American dollars were poor substitutes for the charm of British society on any level. Galt could have made more consistent use of the reader’s fancy, suggesting the meaning of the environment, in America or in Scotland, through the play and interplay of character. His audience was more familiar with the bare facts about pioneering in Canada than we might now suppose, and just as easily disturbed by a flat treatment of those facts as we are.

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The human response, realized in characters in action, is what counts. Yet the values we seek may be hidden from us by time. Galt may have expected his contemporaries and posterity to supply a far richer understanding of the Briton of 1830, a product of the social and economic conditions of that era, than we are able to bring to him now; we cannot cross the Atlantic imaginatively as his early readers could. Ironically, even the American and Canadian pioneers were closer to these readers, than these pioneers are to us—closer in origin, manners and customs, social outlook, thought and work. We concern ourselves with the fortunes of Bogle Corbet by a kind of historical reconstruction—one of the severe limitations upon realism devoted to the past. And we find it difficult to reconstruct to the point of personal familiarity. Yet we might be able to do so if we knew as much as Galt expected us to know, if we could invest his details with the glow they once had naturally—if our research could happily provide “extraneous” supplementary information which was not extraneous then. The extent of this buried treasure may be tested if one begins to picture Galt’s Judiville as Guelph, the “river Debit” as the Credit, and the doctor at the “Steam-boat Hotel”—”a burning volcano, redheaded and roaring”—as Galt’s friend, the “Tiger”, William Dunlop, whose name at that time needed no footnote. Most of the characters and places, one suspects, were derived from what was “real” for Galt, and were indeed “realized” by him in the sense of fiction for the world of readers whom he knew. The novelist may have had too much confidence in our understanding. We, who inhabit the places, do not recall the times. We shall have to look for inspired editing of these novels if we are to enlarge, not only our historical, but also our literary, vision.

(f) From Zena Cherry, “After A Fashion: Farm at the Top,” The Globe and Mail, 26 July 1977, p. 10. “Before Duddy Kravitz, before Ginger Coffey, there was Bogle Corbet, first in a long line of Canadian anti-heroes,”4 according to Prof. Malcolm Ross of Dalhousie University, who is currently visiting 4

Duddy Kravitz and Ginger Coffey are the eponymous heroes of Mordecai Richler’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959; rpt 1969 as New Canadian Library no. 66) and Brian Moore’s The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1960; rpt 1972 as New Canadian Library no. 80). [Editor’s note.]

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professor of English at the University of Guelph. He is general editor of books for the New Canadian Library Series, begun 20 years ago by McClelland and Stewart, and Bogle Corbet is number 153 in the series. It was written by John Galt, the Scottish novelist who founded Guelph and Goderich in 1827, and has been brought out now to coincide with the cities’ 150-year celebrations. The editor was Prof. Elizabeth Waterston, chairman of the English department at the University of Guelph. Prof. Waterston’s husband, Douglas, is the university’s director of information and to launch Bogle Corbet they had a dinner party in their beautiful 1859 stone farmhouse. Guests included the following professors with their spouses—Michael Hornyansky of Brock University; Carl Klinck, University of Western Ontario; Douglas LePan, University of Toronto; Stanley McMullin, University of Waterloo; Norman Shrive, McMaster; and Clara Thomas, York University. Also Prof. Murdo MacKinnon, president of the Guelph Festival; Alderman Margaret MacKinnon (no relation) with her husband, Dr. Archibald MacKinnon; and Howard Clark, academic vice-president at the University of Guelph.

APPENDIX 2: MAPS OF SIGNIFICANT LOCATIONS (a) Jamaica In volumes 1–2, Bogle Corbet arrives by boat in Kingston (triangle), traverses the interior (route not specified), and sails back to Britain from Montego Bay (diamond), here labelled Nantica Bay.

Herman Moll, The Island of Jamaica, divided into its principal parishes, with the roads &. London, 1732(?). Courtesy of the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center Collection, Boston Public Library, 06_01_006342.

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(b) Upper Canada In volume 3, Bogle Corbet’s immigrant party travels via Kingston (circle) westward around the rim of Lake Ontario, to settle along the Credit River (rectangle). Later, Corbet’s family makes an expedition to Niagara Falls (circle). Historical note: Guelph (pentagon), the town founded by John Galt, is nearby, to the west.

James G. Chewett, Map of the province of Upper Canada shewing the organized part thereof and the adjacent country. 1820–29(?). Courtesy of the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center Collection, Boston Public Library, 06_02_011716.

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(c) Bogle Corbet’s Travels

Volume 1 (shown by ________):



1 2 3 4 5



Volume 2 (shown by …………):



6 Montego Bay, Jamaica 7 Inner Hebrides, Scotland 8 Quebec City, Lower Canada 9 Montreal, Lower Canada 10 Cornwall, Lower Canada 11 Prescott, Upper Canada



Volume 3 (shown by - - - - - - - - -):



12 Kingston, Upper Canada 13 Hamilton, Upper Canada 14 Niagara Falls, Upper Canada

Kingston, Jamaica Glasgow, Scotland London, England Falmouth, England Carlisle Bay, Barbados

Map design by Alexander Maxwell

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EXPLANATORY NOTES These notes identify Galt’s sources, quotations, proverbial phrases, and biblical, biographical, geographical, historical, literary, and mythological allusions. Individual Scots words and terms are defined in the Glossary. In the case of quotations, references are to standard editions or to editions Galt would have known and used. When Galt’s quotations reproduce their sources accurately, the reference is given without comment; when there are differences, references include “see” or “compare.” Biblical references are to the King James Version. Plays by Shakespeare are cited without authorial ascription and references are to The Norton Shakespeare, edited by S. Greenblatt et al., 3rd edn (New York: Norton, 2016). The notes are indebted to standard works such as the online Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and the online Dictionary of the Scots Language (DSL). 1.4 “Truth severe by fairy fiction dressed.”] Thomas Gray, “The Bard. A Pindaric Ode” (1757), III.3, line 127, in The Complete Poems of Thomas Gray, ed. H. W. Starr and J. R. Hendrickson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 23. 5.23–5 my curators—those worthies … title of doers] Scottish law authorised fatherless adolescents, at puberty, to choose their own “curators” (legal guardians) to guide their legal affairs and property until they were twenty-one. Such adolescents could manage their estates themselves, or designate curators (usually to include two closely-related family members from the father’s side, and two from the mother’s) who would inventory the minor’s estate, providing an overview to paternal and maternal kin (William Bell, A Dictionary and Digest of the Law of Scotland [Edinburgh: Anderson, 1838], pp. 243–4). 6.20 musical glasses] Popular in the eighteenth century, this was also known as a “glass harp”: a set of glasses filled with water to different heights, played by running a wet finger around their rims. 6.24 Plantagenet estate, in Jamaica] the first of many allegorical names throughout the novel. The Plantagenet dynasty held the British throne from 1154 until 1485, losing it after defeat in the Hundred Years’ War, popular revolts, and internecine “War of the Roses” struggle

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between the cadet houses of Lancaster and York. Their successors laid the ground for the modern British state. A colonial estate named after the Plantagenets alternately evokes a heroic era in British history, or anticipates the estate’s eventual demise and loss of power in the face of shifting political and economic conditions. 6.27–8 my dear, my dark, but comely Baba!] In Song of Solomon 1:5–6, the Bride explains of herself: “I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem … . Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me.” The Bridegroom replies by extolling the Bride’s beauty. 9.15–16 King Solomon, comforting me with apples] see Song of Solomon 2:5: “comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love” (that is, lovesick). 10.9–10 This King William is a statue of his Orange Majesty] William of Orange (William III, 1650–1702), grandson of Charles I. Born and raised in Holland, he was (especially in his fight against Louis XIV) a champion of Protestantism. In what became known as “the Glorious Revolution” (1688), he deposed England’s King James II (lest James foster Catholic revival in Britain), ascended to the British throne in 1689, and won the “Williamite War” in Ireland against James’s forces; his 1691 Battle of the Boyne victory consolidated British Ascendancy rule in Ireland. Glasgow’s equestrian King William statue was erected in Trongate in 1735, donated by James MacCrae, an ardently Protestant Ayrshireman who made a fortune as governor of Madras. 10.12 London Prices Current] Beginning in the late eighteenth century, several private London agencies began issuing weekly “Price Current” lists containing the week’s high and low wholesale quotations for a wide range of commodities and raw materials. These lists, mainly used by businessmen, were available by subscription and later bound into volumes. 10.26–7 an old horse as pale as the Courser of Death in the Revelation] In Revelation 6:8, the four horsemen of the apocalypse include Death, riding a pale horse. 10.36 an economic philosopher] In the late eighteenth century, lowland Scotland became an important centre for the emerging human sciences. In 1751, for instance, moral philosopher and political economist Adam Smith was appointed Professor of Logic at the University of Glasgow. A broad-based Scottish Enlightenment (consisting of professional men and intellectuals alongside professors) debated theories

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of social life as well as practical proposals for “improvements” in land usage, public health, and so on. 11.3–4 mint and other sweet herbs … of his study] Early modern images of doctor’s studies often featured racks of drying herbs, just as cabinets of curiosities sometimes featured exotic animals like stuffed alligators suspended from the ceiling. Corbet’s description evokes both. 11.5–6 the discernment of the Queen of Sheba] a further reference to biblical stories about (and poetry attributed to) King Solomon. A southern (perhaps dark-skinned) queen, the Queen of Sheba visited King Solomon, who was famed for his wisdom and able to answer all of the difficult riddles she posed. In mutual admiration, they exchanged gifts of precious metals, stones, and spices. 11.7–8 he could probably talk of the hyssop which grew on the wall] This echoes the range of Solomon’s wisdom as described in 1 Kings 4:33: “he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall.” 11.35–6 things in France were in a crisis … state of perfectability] Key philosophers (including Descartes, Spinoza, and Bayle) postulated the potential perfectibility of man. In the late eighteenth century, this idea was taken up by Richard Price, Joseph Priestley, and Mary Wollstonecraft in England, by Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson in Scotland, and by Kant, Montesquieu, and Voltaire (who satirised it in his 1758 novel Candide). See Jonathan Israel, A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), chapter 1. 12.5 Tambouring] chain-stitch embroidery (often sewn on fine Indian muslin), using adjustable embroidery hoops; late-eighteenth-century ladies often engaged in this fashionable pastime (for instance to embroider waistcoats). 13.25 like Jack Cade of old] Jack Cade, probably himself low-born, led a popular 1450 revolt against the English government, intending to remove royal advisors whom Cade’s supporters considered corrupt. His revolt turned violent, and Cade was beheaded and dismembered the same year. 14.15 James Aird] Like many of Galt’s names, this seems allegorical. Place names with the Gaelic element àirde refer to a high place. The Aird, for instance, is part of the county of Inverness, north of Loch Ness.

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14.17 Monsieur Necker] Jacques Necker (1732–1804), Swiss-French banker who directed the French East India Company (defending its autonomy vis-à-vis the French government), and became Louis XVI’s reformist finance minister; after the French Revolution, he advocated constitutional monarchy and helped introduce paper currency. His daughter, Germaine de Staël, was an influential novelist and pioneering literary critic. 14.34–5 King David himself, was at first but a herd laddie] In 1 Samuel, David appears as a young shepherd and harp-player. His slaying of Goliath brings him to the attention of King Saul, whom he eventually succeeds on the throne of Israel. 14.35–6 does not the Scriptures talk of a weaver’s beam] see 1 Samuel 17:7, which says of the giant Goliath, “the staff of his spear was like a weaver’s beam.” 14.38–40 ‘If it was not … for the honourable weavers.’] an adaptation of “The Wark o’ the Weavers,” a Scots song by handloom weaver David Shaw of Forfar (1776–1856). 15.18–19 ye’ll be my Lord Provost!] The Lord Provost—in four major Scottish cities (Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dundee) —was the leading civil authority, with power exceeding that of an English Lord Mayor. 16.10–11 in my sear and yellow leaf] see Macbeth, V.iii.23–4: “I have lived long enough. My way of life / Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf.” 17.29 Florentine pie] In Scotland, a pie of any kind might be called a “flories.” In Margaret Dods’s [Christian Isabel Johnstone’s] The Cook and Housewife’s Manual, 4th edn (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1829), p. 367, a Florentine Pie is a Scottish veal pie. In the present context, however, it is more likely a pie topped with a “Florentine,” a mixture of roasted nuts and candied fruits, coated with honey and sugar and baked until bubbly. Alternatively, William Hone’s Year Book of Daily Recreation and Information (London: Tegg, 1832) describes a traditional Bedfordshire Christmas “Apples Florentine”: apples baked with a pastry top, which once cooked is lifted off for hot mulled ale to be added beneath (pp. 1595–7). 18.10 according to the Psalms of David] see Psalms 104:14–15: “He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth; And wine that maketh glad the heart of man.”

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18.22–3 to enable all the world to understand the works of the Border Minstrel] The huge popularity of the works of Walter Scott (sometimes known as “The Border Minstrel” after his 1802 traditional ballad collection, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border) produced a Europe-​wide fad for all things Scottish. 18.28–9 His speech was genuine Trongate] The Trongate was one of Glasgow’s oldest streets, and the site of an equestrian statue of William of Orange (see note to 10.9–10). 19.21 take off your heel-tops] Heel-taps are dregs still left in a glass; the ladies are asked to finish off their current drinks to enable a new round. 19.26–7 topping merchant … in all the Virginia trade, before the war] presumably the 1775–83 American revolutionary war, fought partly over trade and taxation in Britain’s American colonies. Governor Francis Fauquier’s 1763 report on Virginia’s economy stressed linen and cloth imports from Britain; the local planter class dressed almost exclusively in British-made clothing. In 1774, Virginia’s House of Burgesses supported the Boston Tea Party. The colonial governor dissolved the body, but the Burgesses continued to meet at a local tavern. Their so-called First Convention approved a boycott of British goods. On the verge of assigning Corbet a mercantile path, Macindoe inadvertently remembers a mercantile career which failed or declined due to such external factors, leaving Wadset’s widow impoverished and needing to take in lodgers. 20.10–11 ‘Let Glasgow flourish by the weaving of cotton.’] “Let Glasgow Flourish” appeared on the city’s coat of arms in 1699 and would become Glasgow’s official motto in 1866. Dr Leach suggests that it contains the implicit injunction, “success to the cotton trade.” 20.29 capling] a fish in the smelt family. 20.30–1 A cobble is but a small boat] “Cobble” can mean a small flat-bottomed rowboat (DSL) as well as a particular kind of punchbowl (see 18.1), which is clearly the main meaning here. 22.5 operative] a skilled manufacturing worker. 23.1 pirns] A pirn is a rod or reel (often a pin inside a shuttle) onto which the weft thread is wound. 23.13 destined like myself] “Destined” is a word with particular theological resonances in the Presbyterian Lowlands, given the doctrine by which God preordains (or predestines) an elite for salvation. See also the note to 42.7.

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explanatory notes

24.29 jacobine club] Founded in Paris in 1789 by anti-royalist deputies to the National Convention, the Society of the Friends of the Constitution (later known as the Society of the Jacobins, Friends of Liberty and Equality, or Jacobin Club) grew into a national movement with half a million subscription-paying members, largely professional men. The group initially rented space near the Convention in the monastery of the Jacobins—hence the name “Jacobin.” Their motto became “Live Free or Die” (“Vivre libre ou mourir”); prominent members included Maximilien Robespierre and Jacques Pierre Brissot (abolitionist founder of the Society of the Friends of the Blacks). Similar radical societies formed across Britain, including the London Revolution Society (1788–92). 27.1–4 I do not like thee … Doctor Fell.] satirical verse traditionally ascribed to seventeenth-century Oxford student Tom Brown, threatened with expulsion for mischief. The Dean of Christ Church College, John Fell (1625–86), offered to take Brown back if he could spontaneously translate Martial’s famous “Epigram 32” from Latin (roughly translated: “I do not like you, Sabidius, without being able to say why. But I can say this: I do not like you”). Brown’s topical translation purportedly earned him a reprieve. 27.23 Mr. Thrums’ warehouse; or to Pirns, Treadle’s, and Co.] allegorical names. “Thrum” is the end of a loom’s warp-thread, or a waste bit of thread or yarn. “Pirn” is a weaving bobbin (see 23.1). “Treadle” is a foot-operated lever on a loom that moves the frames back and forth. 27.33 black-nebbit notions] democratic notions (from black-neb, “black-nose” or “democrat”). 31.19 Black-bull Inn] Founded by the Highland Gaelic Society in 1759, the Black-bull Inn in Glasgow’s Trongate became an important stagecoach post. Robert Burns stayed there in 1787 and 1788. It also hosted the meetings of a Literary and Commercial Society whose members included David Hume, Adam Smith, and Edmund Burke. 31.29 catched them in the fact] caught them in the criminal act. 31.31 this great Mirabeau of the convention] Honoré Riqueti, Count Mirabeau (1749–91), was during the early French Revolution a leading advocate for establishing a constitutional monarchy, modelled on Britain. 31.33 but yon is a gunpowder-plot] The Gunpowder (Treason) Plot (1605) was a failed Catholic conspiracy to assassinate James I and blow up the House of Lords; Guy Fawkes guarded the explosives.

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31.37 bloody caps of liberty] Red Phrygian caps (“bonnets rouges”) were worn by French revolutionaries as an emblem of liberty, mocking aristocrats’ wigs and clergymen’s berettas. The caps were made of soft felt; hence they resembled night-caps. 31.40 red kilmarnock] here, “a knitted woollen conical skull-cap, worn as a night-cap, or by indoor workers such as weavers and shoemakers” (DSL). 32.3–4 the night when the King’s statue was destroyed at New York] In July 1776, after the Declaration of Independence was read aloud in Manhattan, Sons of Liberty marched to Bowling Green and pulled down a 1770 statue of George III. The statue, made of lead and modelled on Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius, was to be melted down for bullets for the coming war. Its head was detached—to be displayed, like that of a beheaded criminal, above Fort Washington—but loyalists purloined it and smuggled it back to England. To memorialise the colonists’ freedom struggles, the statue’s pedestal stood empty until 1812. 32.10–11 Lord Braxfield in the Court of Session] In 1788, Robert Macqueen, Lord Braxfield (1722–99) was named Lord Justice Clerk. The second most senior judge in Scotland, the Lord Justice Clerk helps preside over Scotland’s supreme civil court, the Court of Session. A specialist in legislation arising from the 1745 Jacobite uprising, Lord Braxfield become known as a “hanging judge” for his prosecution of radicals. Believing that only landowners had the right to be represented in government, he helped suppress Edinburgh’s radical reform organisation, the Friends of the People Society, sentencing one of their leaders, a Glasgow lawyer, to fourteen years’ transportation to the convict colony in Botany Bay. 32.11–12 ‘A tousy tyke, black grim and large,’ as Robin Burns has said of auld Nick] from Robert Burns, “Tam o’ Shanter” (1791). On his ride home after drinking in Ayr, Tam o’ Shanter sees witches dancing to bagpipe music played by the devil (Old Nick) in the guise of a big, shaggy, grim black dog. 32.31 solacium] refreshment. 32.33 jobicine] that is, Jacobin. 32.33 blackaviced] swarthy, black-faced. 32.34 parley voo doings] French-style goings-on, from parlez-vous (French) “do you speak.”

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35.9–10 Greenock, savory with shipping, herrings, and tar] In 1789, at the age of ten, Galt himself moved with his family to Greenock, a coastal town on the Firth of Clyde (at the mouth of the Clyde estuary), forty-five miles from Glasgow. Galt finished school there, then worked until 1804 as a clerk in the Greenock Customs House and in a Greenock mercantile firm. 36.8–11 the Catechism … Fox’s Book of Martyrs] pious and polemical texts including John Bunyan’s Christian allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World, to That Which is to Come (1678); John Fox’s polemical Protestant history Actes and Monuments (1563), recounting Catholic persecutors’ martyrdom of Protestants; and Robert Wodrow’s The History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland from the Restoration to the Revolution (1721–22), chronicling the 1660s “Killing Time” persecution of the Covenanters. 37.29–30 Luchenbooths of auld reeky] Edinburgh’s first permanent shops were lockable stalls or workshops near St Giles’ Cathedral. Built in the fifteenth century and demolished in 1817, they housed mostly goldsmiths and silversmiths. Edinburgh was nicknamed “Auld Reekie” (Old Smoky) because of the chimney smoke hanging over its Old Town. A 1776 edition of Poems of Allan Ramsay (Aberdeen: J. Boyle) glosses Ramsay’s opening evocation of “Auld Reeky” in his (1712?) “Elegy on Maggy Johnston, who died Anno 1711” in a footnote: “Auld Reeky: A name the country people give Edinburgh from the cloud of smoke or reek that is always impending over it” (p. 11). Robert Ferguson’s 1773 poem “Auld Reikie” likewise references Edinburgh’s “stinking air.” 39.7 Tontine coffee-room] an important gathering place for Glasgow’s rich textile and tobacco merchants, opened in 1784 by the Glasgow Tontine Society. It also housed a hotel and a reading room where subscribers could read local, national, and French newspapers. 40.25–6 Mr. Possy] like many of Galt’s names, likely allegorical. In Scots, a “possie” person is fat, heavy, corpulent (DSL). 40.33 Air] that is, Ayr. 40.39–40 brought up at the foot of Gamaliel] In Acts 22:3, the apostle Paul describes himself as “a Jew, born in Tarsus,” yet brought up in Jerusalem “at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers.” Grandson of the famous sage Hillel, Gamaliel is described by the Mishnah as one of Judaism’s greatest teachers, and in the Book of Acts as arguing, as a Pharisee scholar of

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Jewish law, against condemning the apostles to death. 42.7 election] a culturally and theologically fraught word, meaning not just choice, but also, in Calvinist and Presbyterian doctrine, preordination by God. Before creating the world, God predestined some people, “the elect,” to receive salvation, while others would remain doomed. See note to 23.13. 42.18 factotum] an employee who does all kinds of work. 43.19 below the Broomilaw ... from a gaubart on the quay] The Broomilaw was a Glasgow river road leading to quays used for international trade, for Scottish soldiers departing to fight imperial wars, and as an embarkation point for Scottish emigrants. At this point, ocean-going ships still could not reach Glasgow itself because the Clyde estuary was too shallow. This problem started to be addressed in the 1770s (see the note to 166.6) but was not fully fixed for a century. Meanwhile, goods were unloaded at Greenock and Port Glasgow from ocean-going ships onto vessels (here a gaubart, or sailing barge) used for inland navigation, to be taken upriver to Glasgow. 44.24 a piece of tamboured muslin of a tasteful pattern] fine openweave muslin embroidered with chain stitch (“tambour work”). The technique probably originated from India, like muslin itself, a very fine, almost transparent handwoven cotton imported from the seventeenth century onward from India to Britain, mainly by the British East India Company. In the late eighteenth century, Britain and western Europe began to manufacture muslin. The 1810s fashion for flowered “Ayrshire whitework” eventually spread to Europe and the British Empire. Glasgow cotton manufacturers pre-stamped patterns on muslin, then sent it to be satin-stitched and bead-stitched by needleworkers in Ayrshire (southwest Scotland) or northern Ireland. 50.11 jointure] the estate settled on a wife for the period she survives her husband. 51.20–1 portmantua] archaic form of portmanteau, a carrying case or large trunk suitcase. 51.33–4 Deputy of the Common Council] In the City of London, the Common Council (or Court of Common Council) was the elected body of the mayor, aldermen (elected for life), and common councilmen (elected for four-year terms). The council met nine times yearly. 54.8 drysalter] dealer in chemical products, including dye, glue, and varnish.

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54.14 Calf of Man] an island of 618 square acres off the Isle of Man. 54.21 paper with comfits] bag full of candy made by sugar-coating dry fruit or nuts. 55.6 Gallowgate] a Glasgow neighbourhood. 55.16 Cuchullin’s car] In Irish mythology the demi-god Cuchullin fought from his chariot, driven by his loyal charioteer Láeg, and drawn by his horses Liath Macha and Dub Sainglend. 55.22 logwood] a flowering tree, native to Central America, whose logging and export to make textile and paper dyes spawned major early modern trade and industry, pirate raids, and the development of modern-day Belize. 56.5–6 the celebrated appeal case concerning the firkin of butter] A firkin is a small cask containing a quarter of a barrel (about eleven gallons). The appeal may be Hodgson v. Loy (1797), a case involving the seller’s right to stop goods (here firkins of butter), even if partly paid for, while still in transit to the buyer (George Ross, Leading Cases in the Commercial Law of England and Scotland, 3 vols [London: Benning, 1855], III, pp. 224–31). 56.13 Mrs. Peerie] allegorical name: in Scots, a peerie is a spinning top. 56.16 leaving a mortification] In Scottish law, a mortification, similar to “mortmain,” is a disposal of property for religious or charitable purposes. 57.6–7 how a defunct is precognition to an heir] In Scottish law, precognition is the examination of witnesses of a criminal act, to determine grounds for a possible trial—here, presumably, how an investigation of a death must precede the appointment of an heir. However, Galt’s point may be that Mr Gledde’s explanation is more abstruse than substantial. 58.17–18 misty Morven … farther than Inverary] Morven is a remote peninsula in the western Highlands. Inveraray was considerably less remote and recently modernised (rebuilt in the mid-eighteenth century in Georgian style by the Duke of Argyll). 60.35–6 how much a man, by the influence of society, was now rendered unfit for a state of nature] As an Edinburgh intellectual, the advocate takes the etiquette dilemma of the (perhaps uncouth or anachronistic) Highland laird as an occasion for Scottish Enlightenment-style disquisitions on the origins and development of society. Even as it traced the evolution of manners, Adam Ferguson’s

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Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), for instance, remained sympathetic to traditional societies. (Ferguson had been raised on the edge of the Highlands.) 61.5 Bull and Mouth Inn] a City of London coaching inn, established before the Great Fire of 1666. 61.14–20 The Edinburgh limb of the law … No. 120, King-street] Their hotel locations match their rank and worldview: as a “limb of the law,” the Lowland lawyer stays in Whitehall, surrounded by government offices and ministries, while the Highland chieftain stays in St James, surrounded by the houses of British aristocrats. King Street was named for King Charles I (born in Scotland, but beheaded by order of Parliament in 1649, hence the epitome of Britain’s ancien régime). 61.26 glad of being so near her journey’s end] As a newcomer to London, Mrs Peerie does not realise her Wapping destination is still more than two miles away. From 1800 onward, Wapping saw the building of major new docks, specialised in imperial commodities (ivory, spices, coffee, and cocoa). 62.31–2 convenient but dark lodgings in Budge Row] Budge Row is named for “Boge,” lambskin fur. In late medieval and Renaissance London, all furriers or “skinners” were required to live in this area. This apparently random place-name thus extends earlier chapters’ interest in weaving, the cotton trade, and muslin manufacture. Mr Patterns’s name likewise encourages such connections. 63.3 the shipping and foreign trade that go to ’Change] presumably the Royal Exchange, founded as a trading centre in 1565 by Tudor financier Sir Thomas Gresham, and instrumental in London’s emergence as a financial capital. 63.13 a very eligible warehouse in Cannon-street] Located at the heart of London’s financial district, Cannon Street in the nineteenth century housed large wholesale warehouses, especially cotton and other fabrics. 64.7–8 a spectacle equivalent to King Crispianus] St Crispin’s Day, 25 October, is the feast day of Christian saints Crispin and Crispian, twins martyred c. 286 ad. 68.6 India Director] a Director of the East India Company. Every year, stockholders elected twenty-four men to serve as Directors during the year to come. The Court of Directors met at least once a week in the City, at East India House, to deal with company business; a quorum of thirteen was required to transact business.

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68.7–9 as Dr. Johnson said … beyond the dreams of Avarice] see James Boswell, Boswell’s Life of Johnson, vol. 4: The Life (1780-1784), ed. G. B. N. Hill and L. F. Powell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934), p. 87: in 1781, “when the sale of [Dr Johnson’s deceased friend Henry] Thrale’s brewery was going forward, Johnson appeared bustling about, with an ink-horn and pen in his button-hole, like an excise-man; and on being asked what he really considered to be the value of the property which was to be disposed of, answered, ‘We are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich, beyond the dreams of avarice.’ ” 68.34–5 politics of the Peishwa] Peshwas were subordinates of the Maratha king during the Maratha Empire or Confederacy (1674–1818, at its peak stretching from Afghanistan to Tamil Nadu to Bengal). During the Third Anglo-Marathi War (1817–18), the East India Company defeated the last peshwa, annexing his lands and pensioning him off. 72.5 For all things was able, for nothing was fit] Edward Ward, A Journey to Hell, or A Visit Paid to the Devil: a poem (London, 1700), part 1, canto 6, lines 100–2: “The lewd Great Man, that banter’d Holy Writ, / And ridicul’d Religion, was a Wit; / For all things render’d able, tho’ for nothing fit.” 72.6–7 which yields no fragrance until dried] When dried, the herb of sweet woodruff smells sweetly of honey and vanilla; it was used traditionally to fill mattresses, curdle milk, and treat headaches and intestinal pain. 84.24–5 Constantinople is supplied with Circassian slaves] During the Ottoman empire, female slaves from the Caucasus were proverbially prized, for their beauty, as harem girls. 84.30–1 we were then at war with Hyder Ali] Hyder Ali (1720–82), Sultan of the Kingdom of Mysore in southern India, resisted the British East India Company during the First (1767–69) and Second (1780–84) Anglo-Mysore Wars. 87.33 paddling on a spinnet] that is, idling; a spinnet (usually spinet) is a harpsichord-like instrument. 91.8 the Flying Dutchman] The ghost ship in a famous legend (likely arising during the seventeenth-century heyday of the Dutch East India Company). After cursing God, the ship’s captain is doomed to sail for all eternity. 95.34 the West India Islands, neutral as well as British] Several islands in the West Indies changed hands repeatedly after the French

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Revolution and during the Napoleonic Wars. 100.13 the Principal, in his cocket hat] A Principal, in Scotland, was the academic head of a university; a cocked hat is a hat whose wide brim is permanently turned up towards the crown. 100.13–14 a long cork will be drawn] “Long cork” is obsolete slang for claret wine, for which long corks were used (OED “long” C4.a). 101.11 flam] a variant of “flan,” a custard- or fruit-filled pastry shell (DSL). 104.31 Weebeild] In Scots, the name of this house means “little nest,” but given Macindoe’s India-derived fortune, his “handsome house” may be more imposing than cosy. 104.39 a number of the Edinburgh Review] The Edinburgh Review, or The Critical Journal (1802–1929) was a Scottish literary and political review, hugely influential across Britain and the English-speaking world, and famous for its liberal politics and intellectual acuity. 105.2 fustian] heavy woven cotton cloth, often worn by nineteenthcentury workers. 105.3 shalloon] tightly woven twill fabric, often used for linings. 107.9 stoop and roop] completely; “lock, stock and barrel” (DSL). 107.17 fustic] like logwood (see note to 55.22), a tropical tree native to Central and South America, used to produce dyes. 107.26–7 “Not a jot, not a jot,” as John Cummel the play-actor says, in the Blackamoor’s part.] When Iago raises Othello’s suspicions about Cassio and Desdemona, then asks him if he is bothered, Othello (the “Blackamoor”) replies “Not a jot, not a jot” (Othello, III.iii.213). Macindoe’s “John Cummel the play-actor” seems to conflate rival Othello portrayers John Kemble (1757–1823) and Edmund Kean (1787–1833), both discussed in Galt’s Lives of the Players (1831). Period reviewers detailed Kean’s use of sudden voice changes and exaggerated facial expressions when playing Othello, especially during the “not a jot” line. In a chapter about Kemble’s farewell Dublin performance, William Charles Macready’s 1816 Reminiscences thus bemoans Kemble’s delivery of “not a jot” for not living up to Kean’s interpretation (Macready’s Reminiscences, ed. F. Pollock [New York: Macmillan, 1875], p. 88). 107.27 feedum] Galt’s variant spelling of feydom or fedam, unusual behaviour presaging death (DSL). 107.30–2 Near planted by a river … his leaf fadeth never] Psalm 1:3.

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107.35 watches of the night] Psalm 63:6. 108.19 let wot] let on. 108.36 by the way of squint] dishonestly. 111.9 light labour of the needle or the wires] that is, sewing or knitting needles. 115.7 ’questered] have his assets seized. 115.23 black bawbee] Scottish halfpenny. 125.11 The course of true love never did run smooth] A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I.i.136. 126.20–1 as the shade of an antient to the boat of Charon] like the ghost of an ancient Greek, anticipating the boat in which the ferryman Charon rowed souls across the river Styx to the domain of Hades. 129.25 unvarnished japan-china] colourful Kakiemon-​style Japanese porcelain, produced in seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century Japan, was much prized and collected by British elites. 135.20 the Lizard light-house] a lighthouse built in 1619 on Lizard Point, Cornwall, to guide vessels through the English Channel. 137.21 the haut gôut of the mess-room] The associations of haut-goût can be either positive (a strong, piquant flavour) or negative (having a slight undertone of decay). A mess-room is a military canteen or dining hall. 137.36 The bright morning star, day’s harbinger] John Milton, “Song on May Morning” (1632), line 1, in The Complete Works of John Milton, vol. 3: The Shorter Poems, ed. B. K. Lewalski and E. Haan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 24. 138.18 nankeen] yellowish cotton cloth originally made in Nanjing, China. 140.28–30 as Coleridge says … painted ocean] see “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1798), in The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912), I, p. 191: “As idle as a painted ship / Upon a painted ocean.” 140.37 calenture] feverish delirium supposedly caused by tropical heat. 141.30 Porto Rico] Puerto Rico. 147.4 Sycorax] a witch, mother of Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Banished from Algiers, she gives birth on the island to a human son. But after her death, the magician Prospero occupies the island, forces Caliban into slavery, and treats him as savage and monstrous. See the note to 432.38–9.

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147.9 Dulcinea] in Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote (1605), the protagonist’s idealised beloved. 147.12 guda man] presumably a variant of Scots gudeman “husband.” 147.29 Robinson Crusoe] the resourceful castaway protagonist of Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe (1719). 148.3 Leghorn] the English name for Livorno, Italy. 148.9 Green Island] a small coastal town in northwestern Jamaica. 149.1 Quadroon] in the slave societies of the Americas, a designation for those of one-quarter African descent. 152.3–4 the Moravian system of living in community—the co-operative system] The Moravians, a Hussite Protestant religious community, was founded in 1457 in Czech lands, and persecuted there during the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century the Moravians underwent a Pietist revival, and in the 1730s established religious communities in the Caribbean and (following a community in Georgia that failed due to internal strife), in Pennsylvania. These communities lived communally, without private property. 157.25 groundling] a theatre spectator of inferior rank, who stands in the pit below the stage. 158.2 shaddock] a large citrus fruit, now usually called a pomelo or grapefruit. 158.7–8 to fire at a thrower of stones required the reading of the riot act] By English law, authorities were required to read the Riot Act aloud to an unruly crowd before enforcing the Act’s punitive measures. 158.9 mittimus] arrest warrant. 161.9 jalousies, and piazzas] Jalousies are slatted blinds or shutters; piazzas, in this context, are shaded verandas. 161.21–2 the brushes of Day and Martin] Day and Martin’s boot-blacking factory was a well-known London business founded by Charles Day and Benjamin Martin in 1801. “All the world has heard of ‘Day and Martin’,” claimed an article in the Penny Magazine in 1842 (vol. 11, p. 510). 161.22 riant] (French) smiling. 166.6 Clyde ships] Ships that have sailed to Jamaica from Scottish ports. The 1770s de-silting of the Clyde River allowed larger ships to pass further upriver; late-eighteenth-century Glasgow became a hub for the West Indian sugar trade.

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166.25 “life under the ribs of death”] see John Milton, Comus (1634), lines 561–3: “I was all ear, / And took in strains that might create a soul / Under the ribs of death,” in The Complete Works of John Milton, vol. 3: The Shorter Poems, ed. B. K. Lewalski and E. Haan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 85. 168.26 Yarico] another allegorical name, based on the supposedly true story of Inkle and Yarico, appearing first in Richard Ligon’s Exact and True History of the Island of Barbadoes (1657) and elaborated in Richard Steele’s The Spectator (13 March 1711). Thomas Inkle, a young Englishman shipwrecked on American shores, is rescued and protected by an indigenous woman, Yarico, whom he promises to take back to England; instead, he sells her into slavery in Barbados, along with her unborn child. In Samuel Arnold and George Colman’s influential 1767 comic opera, however, Yarico is not pregnant and Inkle marries rather than sells her. 168.27–8 though no Hottentot, an African Venus] From 1810 to 1814, Sara (Saartije) Bartmann, a young woman from the Cape Colony in South Africa, was exhibited in London as “The Hottentot Venus,” a tight-fitting garment accentuating her buttocks. In the wake of the 1807 Slave Act (abolishing the slave trade), her exhibition was controversial. An abolitionist benevolent society, the African Association, conducted a newspaper campaign for her release, and took her exhibitor to court; Bartmann testified she was not under restraint, had come to London of her own free will, and netted half the show’s profits. In Paris, her body remained on public exhibit long after her death. She remains a controversial figure—but also a much-eulogised icon. 169.19 St. Preux] the tragic lover in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s epistolary novel Julie, or La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761). 169.29–30 Scipio emulated the greatness of his namesake] Scipio Africanus was the Roman general who led the invasion of Africa during the Second Punic War. 170.8 the Ephesian matron] In Petronius’s Satyricon (first century ad), a despairing young widow from Ephesus mourns at her husband’s grave, refusing water and food, in the hope of following him in death. A soldier, however, comforts and then seduces her. To save him from punishment, the widow offers to substitute her husband’s corpse for one that was stolen under his watch, and she quickly marries the soldier. The story was frequently retold from antiquity onwards, featuring

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in medieval school books, a Jacobean drama, and a La Fontaine fable. 171.6–8 “must ever give us pause,” and it makes, undoubtedly, “their calamity of so long life”] see Hamlet, III.i.67–9: “what dreams may come / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, / Must give us pause. There’s the respect / That makes calamity of so long life.” 172.16 larboard] an archaic term for port, the left side of a ship. 172.25–6 a running letter of Marque] In times of war, the government issued letters of marque and reprisal, legal authorisations enabling a private person (known as a privateer or corsair) to attack and capture ships belonging to an enemy nation. 172.27 apery] aping, imitation. 173.11 impress] that is, forcibly conscript men into naval service. 173.18–20 St. George’s Channel … Mull of Galloway] The St George’s Channel is a sea channel between the southeast coast of Ireland and the western coast of Wales, connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Irish Sea. The Mull of Galloway is the southernmost point in Scotland, at the tip of the Rhins of Galloway peninsula in the Irish Sea. 173.31–2 Goatfield was capped with clouds] Corbet is looking at Goatfell, the highest peak on the island of Arran, off the port bow of a ship heading north, up the outer Firth of Clyde. 173.37 Plada light] the eighteenth-century lighthouse (still operative today) on the island of Pladda. 174.1 the Cumbraes] an island group in the Firth of Clyde, Scotland. 174.30–1 the great ship of the Spanish Armada sank] In 1588, during the attempted Spanish invasion of England, a galleon from the Spanish Armada (Philip II’s fleet) is believed to have been wrecked on the Scottish coast near Portencross, Ayrshire. 174.38 Fairlie] a coastal village in North Argyllshire, near the Firth of Clyde. 178.9 Whittington and his Cat] a folk legend, in print from the early 1600s. The real-life Richard Whittington (1354–1425), a younger son from a well-to-do Gloucestershire family, became a wealthy London merchant, and later Lord Mayor. In the legend, by contrast, naïve and poverty-stricken young Dick Whittington comes to London to make his fortune, successfully renting out his cat (his only possession) as a ratter. 178.30 cushoo] cashew.

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178.35–6 Mary Gray’s in the old ballad of Bessy Bell] see “Bessy Bell and Mary Gray,” ballad 201 in The Singing Tradition of Child’s Popular Ballads, ed. B. H. Bronson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), pp. 356–7: the “twa bonnie lassies” built a hut outside Perth in the vain attempt to avoid the plague (which killed them both). 178.40–1 ‘bode of gowden gown and ye’s get the sleeve o’t’] “expect a golden gown and you’ll only get the sleeve of it.” As Galt explains in his novel Stanley Buxton; or, the Schoolfellows (London: Colburn and Bentley, 1832), III, p. 75, the “Scotch proverb” means “that high aims, though they may not attain their whole great object, will, nevertheless, reach a portion.” 182.35 the weird sisters] the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. 184.12 the French disasters in Russia] presumably a reference to Napoleon’s disastrous 1812 French invasion of Russia; within six weeks, half the Grande Armée were dead of cold, hunger, and disease. A further quarter would later die during the disorganised winter retreat. 185.38–40 as Campbell says, taking the thought first from Lord Bacon and afterwards from Blair’s Grave—“Like angel visits, few and far between.”] Thomas Campbell, The Pleasures of Hope (1799), line 224, which vaguely echoes Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1626) and, more distinctly, lines 588–9 of Robert Blair’s The Grave (1743): “its visits, / Like those of angels, short and far between.” 186.16 aliquot parts] portion taken from a whole, especially in chemical analysis. 186.38–9 Lady Salisbury’s accident at King Edward’s ball, when the Order was founded] At a ball held around 1348, according to John Froissart’s Chronicles of England, France, Spain, and the Adjoining Countries (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808), the “Countess of Salisbury” (probably Catherine Grandison) dropped a garter and King Edward III picked it up. Thereafter he founded the Order of the Garter in her honour. 189.1 as dust on the balance] like dust on the scales: that is, trivial. 191.7–8 one of the faults … Aristotle ranks next to the vices] Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics (book 3, chapter 5) argues that negligence is a choice, at least initially, hence can be rightly punished; men who allow themselves to be negligent find it becoming an unchanging part of their character. 191.30 conned] attentively studied; memorised.

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193.24 Timon-like profusion] In Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens, Timon spends his fortune on worthless hangers-on. 194.2 Hotspur] Sir Henry Percy (1364–1403), an English knight nicknamed “Hotspur” for his readiness to attack. In Shakespeare’s history play Henry IV, Part I, Prince Hal slays him in single combat. 197.16 Catalani] Angelica Catalani (1780–1849), bravura Italian opera singer. 198.22–4 a phial of wrath … since the opening of the Seals] In the apocalyptic Book of Revelation, St John of Patmos sees a vision of a scroll secured by seven seals. As each seal is opened, a further calamity strikes the earth. The first four unleash the four horsemen of the apocalypse; the sixth, vast natural disaster. See also the note to 10.26–7. 207.23 obtrapolous] that is, obstreperous: rowdy, unruly, argumentative. 209.7–8 a feast in Samaria, when a cab of doves’ dung was sold for five pieces of silver] see 2 Kings 6:25: “And there was a great famine in Samaria: and, behold, they besieged it, until an ass’s head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of dove’s dung for five pieces of silver.” 209.10 the despair of Tantalus] In Greek mythology, Tantalus cooked his son and attempted to serve him to a feast of the gods. In punishment, he was to go forever hungry and thirsty, standing in a pool of water that receded as soon he tried to drink from it, and beneath a full fruit tree whose branches forever eluded his grasp. 210.7 memento mori] (Latin) “remember that you will die.” 210.16–17 cannot make his plack a bawbee] cannot make any money at all, cannot make money from nothing. A “plack” was an obsolete small coin; a “bawbee” was a halfpenny. 210.30–1 on the rove] rambling in speech. 210.41–211.2 drinking the bluid red wine … the King did on Dumfermline throne] the opening stanza of the traditional Scottish ballad “Sir Patrick Spens”: “The King sat in Dunfermline town, / Drinkin’ the blude reid wine; / O quher sall I get a sailor bold, / To sail this schip o’ mine?,” ballad 58 in The Singing Tradition of Child’s Popular Ballads, ed. B. H. Bronson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), p. 159. 211.8 twa three] two or three. 212.20–1 Ophir, whence Solomon brought gold and peacocks] Among the trading activities of King Solomon described in 1 Kings 9:28–10:22, he obtains gold from Ophir and peacocks from Tharshish.

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This is also the passage that describes the Queen of Sheba’s visit to Solomon, alluded to elsewhere in the novel (see note to 11.5–6). 212.21 the island of Serendib] Old Persian name for Sri Lanka (Ceylon). 213.25–7 Mr. Bletherington … his eloquent exaggerations] To “blether” means to talk long-windedly, without much point. 215.16 feedum] unusual behaviour: see note to 107.26. 216.30 “secret sympathetic aid”] James Thomson, The Seasons (1730), “Summer,” lines 1266–7: “Even from the body’s purity the mind / Receives a secret sympathetic aid” (The Poetical Works of James Thomson [London: Pickering, 1830], p. 106). 217.2–3 the most amusing personification of “Much Ado about Nothing”] Dogberry, the police watchman and comic buffoon in Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado About Nothing, is famous for his self-satisfied malapropisms. 217.15 tempus fugit] (Latin) “time flies.” 218.7 Cross of Glasgow] the oldest crossroads at the heart of Glasgow, an intersection where four streets meet. Before the Reformation, it was known as Mercat (Market) Cross, hosting cloth and salt markets. 218.32 sidy for sidy] side by side. 219.33 jeux d’esprits] (French) witticisms. 219.35 imposthumes] boils, wens, excrescences. 221.1 cast at Carron or Woolwich] Carron Company, near Falkirk, Scotland, one of Europe’s biggest ironworks, was central in the industrial revolution. It prospered by developing the cannonade, a new short-range, short-barrelled cannon. In 1820 it became a target for radical raiders (see note to 248.1–2). London’s Woolwich district was home to the Royal Arsenal, which manufactured armaments and ammunition. 221.10–11 the wally dreggles of the Pitt and Dundas clecking] that is, the worthless people (Scots wallydrag) of the brood of Pitt and Dundas. William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806) was the first prime minister of the newly amalgamated Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Pitt’s trusted lieutenant, Henry Dundas, first Viscount Melville (1742–1811), was the most powerful man in late-eighteenth-century Scotland. 224.6–8 the pillars … pull them down] According to Judges 13–16, the Israelite leader Samson was a righteous strongman who was captured by the Philistines, blinded, and tied to a pillar in one of their

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temples. He pulled the pillar down, causing the temple to collapse and killing the Philistines and himself. 239.18–19 sear and yellow leaf] see note to 16.10–11. 240.29–30 the feelings of Lear in his treatment from his daughters] In Shakespeare’s King Lear, Lear divides his estate among his oldest two daughters, who then begin to mistreat him. 241.23 Mr. Lawrie Todd] the protagonist of Galt’s Lawrie Todd; or, The Settlers in the Woods, 3 vols (London: Colburn and Bentley, 1830); Bogle Corbet was conceived as a loose sequel and parallel text. See the Introduction. 241.27 Genesee Country] Genesee County was created in 1803; it initially encompassed all the land in western New York, although it was subsequently subdivided to create further counties. 246.12 limner] painter, often of portraits or miniatures. 248.1–2 the radical Straemach at the time of the battle of Bonny Muir] The Radical War (or Scottish Insurrection) was a week (1–8 April 1820) of radical strikes and unrest in Scotland. On 5 April, about thirty men marched from Glasgow towards Falkirk to seize weapons from Carron ironworks (see note to 221.1). At Bonnymuir (outside Bonnybridge), Hussars attacked them, wounding four radicals and taking nineteen prisoners to Stirling Castle. Later in April, hundreds of Scottish radicals fled to Canada, sailing from Greenock. These radicals included William Lyon Mackenzie, whom Galt knew in Upper Canada, and who later led the 1837 Upper Canada Rebellion. 249.12–13 a pious book called “Margaret Linsay”] John Wilson’s novel The Trials of Margaret Lyndsay, an Orphan (1823). 251.13 virtuous Iago—a character which Shakspeare has not delineated] Iago is the villain of Shakespeare’s Othello. 251.16 Isle of Ardghlass] perhaps a place invented by Galt. There is a hamlet named Ard Glass on the island of Ulva; an Ardglass Point on the Isle of Mull; and a fishing village named Ardglass in County Down (present-day Northern Ireland). 252.13 ci-devant] (French) from an earlier time, former. 256.17 couter] usually cutter, a small-masted boat. 256.18 Oban] a coastal town on the Firth of Lorn. 257.40 “The brave Abercromby received his death-wound.”] Thomas Dibdin, epitaph for Sir Ralph Abercromby, in St Paul’s Cathedral, London. Abercromby was a Scottish soldier and member of

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parliament, governor of Trinidad (which he had helped secure for Britain), and commander-in-chief in Ireland and in Scotland. Appointed to head an expedition to win Egypt from France, he won the 1801 Battle of Alexandria but died of a musket wound sustained during the battle. 258.15 the Forty-five] the failed 1745 Jacobite uprising in Scotland, headed by the Pretender Charles Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie). Many defeated Jacobite Highlanders subsequently emigrated to Nova Scotia. 258.27 Æbudæ] one of the Hebrides or western islands of Scotland. “Aebudae” is the Latin version of the Greek name (“Ebuda”) used by Ptolemy for the islands north of Ireland. Scribal error turned it into “Hebrides.” 264.18 à priori] a deduction that derives from reasoning or knowledge rather than observation or experience. 265.7 Bartholomew-lane] a street in the City of London. 272.30–1 to our long home] that is, to eternal rest; see Ecclesiastes 12:5: “man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets.” 273.24 Foreland Light] a lighthouse in St Margaret’s Bay, Dover. 274.13–14 Cape Clear] Cape Clear Island, off the southwest coast of Ireland’s County Cork. 274.32–4 Capulets in their winding-sheets … in the family vault] In act 5 of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet meet—and die—at the family vault of the Capulets. 278.18–20 a shipwreck … attended with circumstances of horror] In 1828, the ship Granicus foundered on the shores of Anticosti Island; its thirty passengers reached shore, and overwintered. In May 1829, however, a whaling schooner found all the passengers dead, murdered, and cannibalised. Over the island’s long history, at least four hundred ships have been wrecked there. 281.11 Isle of Orleans] a large island in the St Lawrence River just east of Quebec City. 281.15 a stripe of villages] New France was settled according to the feudal seigneurial system established in 1627 by Cardinal Richelieu, with narrow strips of land (seigneuries or fiefs) running along the banks of the St Lawrence River. These ribbon farms were worked by habitants, granted title deed to a lot in exchange for rent, produce, or labour.

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281.20 “Some distant vista of her bright domain”] actually “some distant vista of her rich demesnes,” act 1, scene 2, line 48 of James Grahame, Mary Stewart, Queen of Scots: An Historical Drama (Edinburgh: Mundell & Son and Longman & Rees, 1801). This Glasgow-born poet (1765–1811) became most famous for his 1804 poem “The Sabbath,” which included descriptions of Scottish scenery. 281.24–5 Falls of Montmorency] waterfalls in Quebec City. 282.2 Point Levi] Pointe-Lévy or Lévis, Quebec, is a town on the south shore of the St Lawrence, across from Quebec City. 282.5 Chateau of St. Lewis] Chateau St Louis, in Quebec City, was the official residence of the French governor of New France, and later the British governor of Quebec. 282.9–10 citadel of Cape Diamond] the Citadelle (military fortress) in Quebec City, atop Cape Diamond (Cap Diamant), adjoining the Plains of Abraham. 282.21–2 the simple, contented progeny of Jean-Baptiste] Since the founding of New France, French settlers there had celebrated the feast day of St John the Baptist; Saint-Jean-Baptiste became the patron saint of Lower Canada (Quebec). 282.39 Hymeneal mystery] from Hymen, god of marriage ceremonies in Greek mythology. 283.21 Joseph Hume] Hume (1777–1855) was a radical Scottish member of parliament, known for his efforts to check undue public expenditures. 285.4–5 where General Wolfe led his army to the plains of Abraham above] In 1759, during the Seven Years’ War, General James Wolfe and his troops surreptitiously scaled the steep St Lawrence cliff face to invade Quebec City. On the Plains of Abraham atop the cliff, his army defeated the Marquis de Montcalm’s French troops; henceforth New France became a British colony. Wolfe himself was killed during the battle. In 1745, he had helped to suppress the Jacobite Rebellion, and presided over post-Rebellion reprisals. 285.6 two schoolboys, the eldest about fifteen] In a letter to D. M. Moir of 16 May 1831, Galt ascribed Bogle Corbet’s interpolated “A Tale of Quebec” to his sons Tom and Alexander, for whom these two teenage passengers are stand-ins of a sort. 285.28 the Uttawas] now known as the Ottawa River; it flows into the St Lawrence at Montreal.

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explanatory notes

294.15 batteaux] flat-bottomed boats, with sharply pointed bows and sterns; common in North America in the fur trade and during the colonial period. 296.13 French jackboots] heavy military boots extending above the knee, worn especially during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 296.14–15 Virgil’s white sow with young] In book 8, lines 45–9 of Virgil’s Aeneid, the god of the Tiber River appears to Aeneas in a dream and tells him he will find a white sow and thirty piglets on the shore, to mark the thirty years until the city of Alba Longa will be founded. Aeneas indeed finds the pigs, and sacrifices them to the goddess Juno. 296.18–19 the White-horse Cellar or the Angel at Islington] The White Horse Cellar was a well-known London coaching inn, starting point for all westbound mail coaches to Bath and Bristol. The Angel, a large coaching house in Islington (Greater London), was the subject of William Hogarth’s 1747 drawing “The Stage-Coach.” 296.21–2 “Each particular hair on end / Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.”] spoken by the Ghost in Shakespeare’s Hamlet I.v.19–20, describing the effects were he to tell of life beyond the grave. 297.12 “The taper spire that points to Heaven” ] actually, “And point with taper spire to heav’n”: the closing line of the pastoral poem “A Wish” by Samuel Rogers, in Poems (London: Cadell and Davies, 1820), p. 152. 297.35 We passed the Styx [sticks,] however, in safety] Styx is a river in Hades, the Greek underworld, but Galt’s explicit pun on “sticks” associates it with the hazardous “corduroy passages” mentioned in 297.24—that is, roads formed by laying logs side by side over swampy areas. 298.3 the waft] that is, the weft, the crosswise threads on the loom. 300.25 Rideau Canal] The 125-mile long Rideau Canal (constructed 1826–32) stretched from Ottawa to Lake Ontario and the St Lawrence River at Kingston. 306.3 Blenheim or Stowe, adorned by a Capability Brown] Lancelot (“Capability”) Brown (1716–83) was an influential English landscape architect who created over 170 new landscape gardens, including at Stowe (Buckinghamshire) and Blenheim Palace (Oxfordshire), among other famous English estates. 306.25–6 Moore composed his song of “The Woodpecker”] Irish poet Thomas Moore (1779–1852) took a position in Bermuda in 1803

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but left after a few months, travelling in the eastern United States and Upper Canada in 1804 before returning to Britain. Moore was the only major Romantic poet to visit Canada. His lyrical poem “Ballad Stanzas” evoked the pastoral idyll of a forest cottage on Lake Ontario and “the woodpecker tapping at the hollow beech-tree” (Quebec Weekly Mercury 2.44 [1806], p. 2); it remained a lasting influence on nineteenth-century literary depictions of Upper Canada (see D. M. R. Bentley, “Thomas Moore’s Construction of Upper Canada in ‘Ballad Stanzas,’” Canadian Poetry: Studies, Documents, Reviews 35 [1994], pp. 1–10). 307.39 a Turkish khan, or a Persian caravansari] A khan or caravanserai was a roadside travellers’ inn, found for instance along the Silk Road and other trade routes and royal roads in Asia and North Africa. Typically, they were built around an interior square, where beasts of burden, such as camels, could be fed and housed, along with human travellers. Galt’s own Letters from the Levant (1813) repeatedly describes the accommodations afforded in a khan. 308.3 Steam boat Hotel] an early hotel formerly located on what is now Front Street in Toronto, and frequented by Galt during his visits to the city. The hotel was designed to resemble a moored steamboat. 308.14 Renfrewshire] Scottish Lowland county just west of Glasgow. Galt grew up in neighbouring, coastal Ayrshire. 310.22 St. John Long] John St John Long (1798–1834), an Irish-born quack doctor who claimed to be able to cure tuberculosis. He was tried twice for manslaughter in 1830, after his “cures” killed patients. 310.27 Ben Nevis and Ben Cruachan] Ben Nevis (at the west end of the Grampian range in the Scottish Highlands, elevation 4,413 feet) is the highest mountain in Scotland and the United Kingdom. Ben Cruachan (elevation 3,694 feet) is another high mountain in the Grampians. 314.17 Andrew Gimlet] an allegorical name: a gimlet is a hand tool used to drill small holes, especially in wood. 321.2 Stockwell] The episode of the founding of Stockwell is based on Galt’s real-life founding of the Upper Canada town of Guelph. 321.27 river Slant] a fictionalised version of the Speed River, which runs through Guelph. 335.24 Duke of Argyle] The Dukes of Argyle were among the most powerful nobles in Scotland. 339.27 windlestraw] a tall, withered stalk of grass.

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339.32 nonesuch] a person without equal. 341.28 Largs fair] Largs is a coastal town on the Firth of Clyde in North Ayrshire. 344.37 Cleopatra, with an adder at her breast] Cleopatra VII, last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, is said to have killed herself in 10 bc by allowing a poisonous asp to bite her. 346.15 dénouement] (French) resolution: a finale in which all plot points become clear. 352.16 to be laid aneath a tree … like a malefactor] that is, to be buried like a criminal instead of in a sanctified burial plot. 353.15 Mrs. Clavering] an allegorical name: “claver” means gossip. 371.2–3 Babes in the Wood … Robin Redbreast] refers to a traditional English tale in which two children die, abandoned, in the woods, and robins cover them with leaves. It was first published as a 1595 Thomas Millington broadside ballad and thereafter much reworked in tale and song. 374.12–13 vacuum interspersum] (Latin) interspersed void space. In late seventeenth-century scientific debates about the corpuscular (atomic) make-up of the universe, some natural philosophers argued that these small bodies were packed together without any spaces between them. In contrast, works like Joseph Jackson’s An Essay Concerning a Vacuum: Wherein is Demonstrated, that a vacuum interspersum runs thro’ the world (1697) argued that there are always gaps separating the corpuscles, and that smaller gaps cause objects to have greater density, larger gaps to have less density. 374.32–3 idem, eadem, idem] (Latin) the same, the same, the same (masculine, feminine, neuter). 374.34–5 quits the flesh-pots of Egypt for the manna of the wilderness] In Exodus 16, Moses leads the Israelites from Egypt back towards the Promised Land; although they run out of food in the desert, manna falls daily from heaven to be their bread. 376.22 Joseph of Arimathea] according to all four gospel narratives of the crucifixion, a rich man who took responsibility for burying the body of Jesus. 376.26 author of Junius] anonymous author of the sixty-nine “Junius letters” (published 1769–72 in a London newspaper), critical of King George III’s government. The letters’ editor Henry Sampson Woodfall was tried and later cleared of seditious libel. Galt often speculated

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about their authorship; such speculation still continues. 384.31–2 the pit of Acheron] In ancient Greek mythology, Acheron is one of the rivers of the Underworld; it sometimes came to refer more generally to the Underworld itself. 386.37–8 in Spain with the army of the Duke of Wellington … in Egypt and in Sicily] campaigns during the Napoleonic wars. The Peninsular War (1807–14) was fought in Spain and Portugal against Napoleon’s forces; British military leader Arthur Wellesley gained such acclaim that he was named the Duke of Wellington. British troops were briefly in Sicily in 1806, and in 1807 briefly occupied Alexandria (the so-called Alexandria Expedition, itself part of the Anglo-Turkish War of 1807–09 fought between Britain and the Ottoman empire). 390.7–8 Edinburgh colleges, nor Woolwich academies] The University of Edinburgh (established in 1583), one of Scotland’s four ancient universities and arguably its most eminent, was particularly famous during the Scottish Enlightenment, as the institutional home of philosophers Adam Ferguson, David Hume, and Dugald Stewart. The Royal Military Academy at Woolwich in southeast London was founded in 1741 to train commissioned officers in the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers. 391.1 like Claud, in the Gentle Shepherd, “half read, half spell,” was the extent of his accomplishments] see the 1725 pastoral comedy “The Gentle Shepherd” (act 3, scene 1) by Scottish writer Allan Ramsay, set in the Scottish Lowlands. 393.7–10 “The feathered songster … coming of the morn.”] see “The Bristowe Tragedie or The Dethe of Sir Charles Bawdin” (written in 1768 by Thomas Chatterton as a fifteen-year-old schoolboy, published posthumously in 1772), lines 1–4: “The feathered songster chanticleer / Han wounde hys bugle horne, / And told the earlier villager / The commynge of the morne” (The Works of Thomas Chatterton, 3 vols [London: Longman and Rees, 1803], II, p. 87). 396.20 making a leg bail job o’ ’t] that is, escaping. 400.10 cackhouses] a scatalogical malapropism for “caucuses.” 400.37–8 packet up our ends and our awls] packed up our belongings. DSL points out that this antiquated expression is uncommon and cites Galt (in The Entail) as one of the few writers to use it. 402.4 our Solons in Downing-street] Solon (c. 640–560 bc) was an Athenian statesman and lawmaker who tried to legislate against

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Athens’ political, economic, and moral decline. Downing Street is the street in Westminster (London) that contains the residences and offices of the British Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer. 404.28 Boscobel] an English shrub rose. 405.8–9 At St. Katherine’s … from the Wellend Canal] Present-day St Catharines, Ontario, was settled at the end of the eighteenth century by 3,000 United Empire Loyalists who had moved to British North America after the American Revolution. The building (in 1824–29 and 1831–33) of the first stretch of the Welland Canal, connecting Lakes Erie and Ontario, transformed the village of St Catharines into the most important industrial centre in the Niagara area; in 1845, it was incorporated as a town. 405.24 Queenstown Heights] Part of the Niagara escarpment overlooking the village of Queenston. During the War of 1812, at the Battle of Queenstown Heights, the British forces, Canadian militia, and First Nations allies defeated the invading American Army, in the war’s first British victory. 405.41 Cybele] Anatolian mother-goddess, in ancient Greece partly assimilated to aspects of the earth-goddess Gaia and the harvestgoddess Demeter; here used more generally for “Mother Earth.” 406.8 Forsyth’s hotel] Enterprising Niagara hotelier William Forsyth built a covered stairway from his property down to the Table Rock and Horseshoe Falls, began ferry and stagecoach services leading to Niagara. In 1822, to best his competition, he tore down his existing hotel to construct the Pavilion Hotel, a larger, three-story clapboard structure whose balconies offered the best Falls views. 408.20 somerset] somersault. 411.14 hair-covered trunk] a trunk covered with hide from which the hair has not been removed. 412.26 Penseroso] “Il Penseroso”—literally, the brooding one—is depicted in a 1632 poem of the same name by John Milton. 416.16–28 “Come, ye nymphs, whose eyes, like dew … To the thund’ring waterfall.—”] see Galt’s “The Star of Destiny: A Dramatic Spectacle,” act 1, scene 3, in The Autobiography of John Galt, 2 vols (London: Cochrane and McCrone, 1833), II, pp. 383–4. Galt adopts the entire speech from his drama, altering only the last line so as to refer to the waterfall. 425.26 bow in the house of Rimmon] Rimmon or Baal is a Syrian

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cult image mentioned in 2 Kings 5:18, where the Syrian captain Naaman admits that he bows in the house of Rimmon because his master, the king of Syria, worships there. 427.7 Antiburgher] In 1747 the Church of Scotland split over the issue of the Burgher Oath (in which holders of public office swore their approval of the Church). Anti-Burghers argued for the separation of church and state. Both factions split further in the late eighteenth century. 427.8 Scarlet Madam] in this context, presumably the Whore of Babylon, “the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth,” a symbolic figure of evil in Revelation 17:5. 427.18 Papistical Dalilah] In Judges 16, Delilah betrays Samson, the final Judge of Israel and a man of great strength. While he sleeps, she cuts his hair (the secret source of his strength) and delivers him over to the Philistines. Here the treacherous Delilah is equated with Catholicism and the papistry. See also the note to 224.6–8. 428.20 ride the stang] In early modern Yorkshire, riding the stang was a punishment for breaking community laws or conventions (including adultery); the offender would be carried on a rough pole or tree-trunk, to public derision. In other places, it was used more generally to describe charivaris, or rough crowd hazings. 428.31–3 ‘first with the stockings and syne with the shoon;’ ... got the glaiks for his fee] an echo of the traditional bawdy song “Logan Water,” included in Allan Cunningham’s The Songs of Scotland, Ancient and Modern, 4 vols (London: Taylor, 1825), IV, pp. 125–6: “Ae simmer night, on Logan braes, / I helped a bonnie lassie on wi’ her claes; / First wi’ her stockings, and syne wi’ her shoon; / But she gied me the glaiks when a’ was done.” Mrs Foddie adapts the phrase “got the glaiks” to mean roughly “he got a lot of trouble” or “he got what he deserved.” 431.9 solatium] a legal term: something given as compensation or consolation. 432.22 Grand river] formerly known as the River Ouse: Upper Canada’s largest self-contained river, stretching 170 miles from present-day Wareham, Ontario, to Lake Erie. 432.30 lake-fever] fever produced by exposure to malaria near northern lakes. 432.34–5 a true raven … Elijah in the wilderness] In 1 Kings 17:2–16 the Lord has ravens feed the prophet Elijah during his time in the wilderness.

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432.38–9 Caliban] In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Caliban, son of the witch Sycorax, is the only real native of the island, but is enslaved by the sorcerer Prospero and generally treated like a monster. See note to 147.4. 435.18 “The pure and precious pearls of splendid thought.”] line 341 of William Hayley, An Essay on History (London: Dodsley, 1780), p. 47. 439.7 a Leith smack to London] A smack, a traditional coastal fishing-boat, was by this time part of a regular passenger service offered among other places between Edinburgh’s port of Leith and London. 440.9 “From whom descended, or by whom begot”] an allusion to Alexander Pope’s “Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady” (1717), lines 72–4, in which a young lady has died, perhaps by her own hand. Yet she is imagined resting peacefully, even in the absence of an engraved headstone. It is now of no consequence “To whom related, or by whom begot; / A heap of dust alone remains of thee; / ’Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be!” (The Major Works, ed. Pat Rogers [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006], p. 149).

GLOSSARY The glossary follows the online Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL), comprising The Scottish National Dictionary (SND) and A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (DOST). Spellings and wordforms follow usage in the novel, and when multiple forms appear, only the root form is given unless additional forms are helpful for clarity. Not included are words with slight spelling variations from modern standard English. Parts of speech are only noted in cases of ambiguity. a’ all aboon above ado fuss, stir ae one afor before, at an earlier point ajee to one side, aside, awry alloo allow, permit almous act of charity, alms aneath beneath anent about, concerning argol-bargoling arguing, bandying words, disputing auld old, eldest awls belongings awsome fear-inspiring ay, aye always ayont beyond bairn child balks rough, squared wooden beams benison blessing bide stay (with), room (with), dwell, remain bield shelter big build; bigget: built; bigging: cottage

bizzing fizzing blackavis’d dark-complexioned blate stupid, bashful body, bodie person bogle scarecrow bonny, bony handsome, considerable bouk whole person, carcass, bulk braw beautiful, fine breeks breeches brewst brew canna cannot carking anxiety, trouble or worry carl peasant, rustic man, (old) man cleck hatch; cleckit: hatched, conceived; clecking: brood, litter clishmaclavering gossiping, telling a garrulous story closs enclosure, courtyard, passageway commodious convenient, serviceable coomy blackened, stained, dirty coup overturn; fell (a tree)

514

glossary

crack (n.) talk, gossip, free and easy conversation crave (n.) desire, hankering creusy iron oil-lamp with a wick made of rush crouse pleased with oneself, arrogant, bold, valiant custodier keeper, custodian darg day’s work ’deed indeed dibbling planting ding (v.) drive, knock, hit dinna do not dirgie funeral feast, consisting mostly of drinking dirk short dagger disjasket, desjasket untidy, dilapidated doddard dotard, foolish old man doer agent, factor, guardian, one entrusted with business affairs doless lacking in energy, improvident dominie schoolmaster doot fear, expect douce sedate, quiet, cautious drib small amount dub (muddy) pool of freshwater or spring water eild age ettling aiming, ambitious fee wages; deserts ferlies marvels firkin small cask flitting moving house frae from freaks capricious changes fyke restlessness, fidget

gait way gaitend, gate-end immediate neighborhood galravitching intemperate overeating, feasting, guzzling gang go, walk; gane: gone gar, gart force, make, compel, cause gash wise, shrewd; chatty gausy fresh-complexioned, jolly-looking gawky ungainly, stupid, foolish genie genius get offspring, child gie give gouk fool gree become reconciled to, be in harmony with, agree with greeting whimpering, lamenting, weeping gude good; Gude: God hae have haud hold herd laddie shepherd, cowherd hobleshaw 1. uproar, tumult; 2. mob, unruly crowd, riot hoch hone (interj.) “oh woe” hoggit hogshead, large cask holms flat meadow land between a river bend and higher ground hooly steady, slowly hoot (interj.) an exclamation used to express annoyance howdie midwife howff (n.) haunt; snug place for meeting and drinking; shelter incommoded with inconvenienced by intil, intill into

glossary jealouse, jalouse suspect jenty genteel jocund cheerful, merry kelt kilt ken know; kent: familiar, known; kenspeckle, kentspecle: noticeable, conspicuous kingrik kingdom kin’le kindle kintra country kirkyard churchyard kithe appear, reveal itself, show, prove laigh softly, low lang syne, langsyne long ago lank lean, emaciated leddy lady lee (n.) 1. lie; 2. sheltered side or position leetle little leg bail flight, retreat leil, leal loyal loup, loop leap lown peaceful, calm, sheltered luchenbooth lockable stalls or workshops luckie, lucky married woman, elderly woman, dame lug ear maggoty-minded capricious, crochety, perverse mailing leased land, a tenant farm mair more miry swampy misdoot distrust, fear, doubt moully mouldy; mean, stingy muckle much murrain plague, infectious disease

515

naebody nobody naubies chieftains, people of importance or prestige (sometimes ironic) neb nose, beak; pen nib never let wot never let on no, no’ not o’ of och (interj.) exclamation of exasperation or dismissiveness ordinar ordinary; no past ordinar: not out of the ordinary owre over, too pawkie, pawky cunning, sly, wily pibroach bagpipe music plashy splashing pock pouch, bag poll (v.) to cut hair short pook pluck, pull sharply prime filled propine gift or tribute in the form of a toast or pledge quaiking quaking rabiators bullies, plunderers, scoundrels regimentals formal dress, military uniform rippet uproar roaring crying expressing displeasure roupe, roup auction rove (n.) ramble; on the rove: rambling scowther (n.) 1. scorch, singe; 2. slight shower of rain shoon shoes

516

glossary

sib related by blood, kin siccan such sidy for sidy side by side, in step silly hapless, foolish, pitiable, frail, feeble-minded sleights cunning, skills souter cobbler stirks heifers, yearling steers stot bullock, young castrated ox straemash uproar, commotion; disaster suspec suspicion syne next, afterwards tack lease, tenancy, tenure threep argue toosy, tousy, tousie dishevelled, unkempt, shaggy tot total trintle flow trow believe twa three two or three, a few

unco unusual, out of the ordinary, strange upcast (n.) upset; chance or accident upsides level waff draught, flutter, blast, glimmer, ghost wanchancy unfortunate, ill-fated waur worse; the waur of: the worse for wearying becoming tired or dejected weel well, good welkin sky, heaven wheest hush whiles sometimes, at times whirl trundle wyte (n.) blame, fault ye’streen yesterday evening, last night