din as of earthquakes; their Turnkeys answer | Bread! Bread! Great is the combined voice vaguely. of men; the utterance of their instincts, which are truer than their thoughts: it is the greatest a man encounters, among the sounds and shadows which make up this World of Time. He who can resist that, has his footing somewhere beyond Time. De Launay could not do it. Distracted, he hovers between two; hopes in the middle of despair; surrenders not his Fortress; declares that he will blow it up, seizes torches to blow it up, and does not blow it. Unhappy old De Launay, it is the deathagony of thy Bastille and thee! Jail, Jailoring, and Jailor, all three, such as they may have been, must finish. Wo to thee, De Launay, with thy poor hun dred Invalides! Broglie is distant, and his ears heavy: Besenval hears, but can send no help. One poor troop of Hussars has crept, reconnoitering, cautiously along the Quais, as far as the Pont Neuf.13 "We are come to join you,' said the Captain; for the crowd seems shoreless. A large-headed dwarfish individual of smoke-bleared aspect, shambles forward, opening his blue lips, for there is sense in him; and croaks: "Alight then, and give up your arms!" The Hussar-Captain is too happy to be escorted to the Barriers, and dismissed on parole. Who the squat individual was? Men answer, It is M. Marat, author of the excellent pacific Avis au Peuple!14 Great truly, O thou remarkable Dogleech, is this thy day of emergence and new-birth: and yet this same day come four years- !-But let the curtains of the Future hang.15 For four hours now has the World-Bedlam roared: call it the World-Chimæra, blowing fire! The poor Invalides have sunk under their battlements, or rise only with reversed muskets: they have made a white flag of napkins; go beating the chamade,18 or seeming to beat, for one can hear nothing. The very Swiss at the What shall De Launay do? One thing only Portcullis look weary of firing; disheartened De Launay could have done: what he said he in the fire-deluge: a porthole at the drawbridge would do. Fancy him sitting, from the first, is opened, as by one that would speak. See with lighted taper, within arm's length of the Huissier Maillard, the shifty man! On his Powder-Magazine; motionless, like old Roman plank, swinging over the abyss of that stone Senator, or Bronze Lamp-holder; coldly appris- | Ditch; plank resting on parapet, balanced by ing Thuriot, and all men, by a slight motion of his eye, what his resolution was:-Harmless, he sat there, while unharmed; but the King's Fortress, meanwhile, could, might, would, or should, in nowise be surrendered, save to the King's Messenger: one old man's life is worthless, so it be lost with honour; but think, ye brawling canaille,16 how will it be when a whole Bastille springs skyward!-In such statuesque, taper-holding attitude, one fancies De Launay might have left Thuriot, the red Clerks of the Basoche, Curé of Saint-Stephen and all the tag-rag-and-bobtail of the world, to work their will. And yet, withal, he could not do it. Hast thou considered how each man's heart is so tremulously responsive to the hearts of all men; hast thou noted how omnipotent is the very sound of many men? How their shriek of indignation palsies the strong soul; their howl of contumely withers with unfelt pangs? The Ritter Gluck 17 confessed that the ground-tone of the noblest passage, in one of his noblest Operas, was the voice of the Populace he had heard at Vienna, crying to their Kaiser: 13 "New Bridge." 14 "Advice to the People." 15 He was assassinated by Charlotte Corday, July 13, 1793. 16 rabble 17 Of Germany. A Ritter is a knight. weight of Patriots,―he hovers perilous: such a Dove towards such an Ark! Deftly, thou shifty Usher; one man already fell; and lies smashed, far down there, against the masonry; Usher Maillard falls not; deftly, unerring he walks, with outspread palm. The Swiss holds a paper through his porthole; the shifty Usher snatches it, and returns. Terms of surrender: Pardon, immunity to all! Are they accepted?-"Foi d' officier, On the word of an officer, answers half-pay Hulin, or half-pay Elie, for men do not agree on it, "they are!'' Sinks the drawbridge,-Usher Maillard bolting it when down; rushes-in the living deluge: the Bastille is fallen! Victoire! La Bastille est prise!19 We should greatly err if we were to suppose that any of the streets and squares then bore the same aspect as at present. The great majority of the houses, indeed, have, since that time, been wholly, or in great part, rebuilt. If the most fashionable parts of the capital could be placed before us, such as they then were, we should be disgusted by their squalid appearance, and poisoned by their noisome atmosphere. In Covent Garden a filthy and noisy market was held close to the dwellings of the great. Fruit women screamed, carters fought, cabbage stalks and rotten apples accumulated in heaps at the thresholds of the Countess of Berkshire and of the Bishop of Durham. The town did not, as now, fade by imperceptible laid there till two generations had passed withdegrees into the country. No long avenues of out any return of the pestilence, and till the villas, embowered in lilacs and laburnums, ex- ghastly spot had long been surrounded by buildtended from the great centre of wealth and ings. civilization almost to the boundaries of Middlesex and far into the heart of Kent and Surrey. In the east, no part of the immense line of warehouses and artificial lakes which now stretches from the Tower to Blackwall had even been projected. On the west, scarcely one of those stately piles of building which are inhabited by the noble and wealthy was in existence; and Chelsea, which is now peopled by more than forty thousand human beings, was a quiet country village with about a thousand inhabitants. On the north, cattle fed, and sportsmen wandered with dogs and guns, over the site of the borough of Marylebone, and over far the greater part of the space now covered by the boroughs of Finsbury and of The centre of Lincoln's Inn Fields was an the Tower Hamlets. Islington was almost a open space where the rabble congregated every solitude; and poets loved to contrast its silence evening, within a few yards of Cardigan House and repose with the din and turmoil of the and Winchester House, to hear mountebanks monster London.2 On the south the capital is harangue, to see bears dance, and to set dogs now connected with its suburb by several at oxen. Rubbish was shot in every part of the bridges, not inferior in magnificence and solid-area. ity to the noblest works of the Cæsars. In gars were as noisy and importunate as in the 1685, a single line of irregular arches, overhung by piles of mean and crazy houses, and garnished, after a fashion, worthy of the naked barbarians of Dahomy, with scores of mouldering heads, impeded the navigation of the river. Horses were exercised there. The beg worst governed cities of the Continent. A Lincoln's Inn mumper7 was a proverb. The whole fraternity knew the arms and liveries of every charitably disposed grandee in the neighbourhood, and, as soon as his lordship's coach and six appeared, came hopping and crawling in crowds to persecute him. These disorders lasted, in spite of many accidents, and of some legal proceedings, till, in the reign of George the Second, Sir Joseph Jekyll, Master of the Rolls, was knocked down and nearly killed in the middle of the square. Then at length palisades were set up, and a pleasant garden laid out. He who then rambled to what is now the gayest and most crowded part of Regent Street found himself in a solitude, and was sometimes so fortunate as to have a shot at a woodcock. On the north the Oxford road ran between hedges. Three or four hundred yards to the south were the garden walls of a few great houses which were considered as quite out of town. On the west was a meadow renowned for Saint James's Squares was a receptacle for a spring from which, long afterwards, Conduit all the offal and cinders, for all the dead cats Street was named. On the east was a field not and dead dogs of Westminster. At one time to be passed without a shudder by any Lon-a cudgel player10 kept the ring there. At andoner of that age. There, as in a place far from the haunts of men, had been dug, twenty years before, when the great plague was raging, a pit into which the dead-carts had nightly shot corpses by scores. It was popularly believed that the earth was deeply tainted with infection, and could not be disturbed without imminent risk to human life. No foundations were 1 Popularly pronounced Marlibun, or Maribun. 2 Cp. Cowley: Discourse of Solitude. 3 In West Africa. (This is a description of the famous old London Bridge.) 4 A fashionable shopping district in West London. other time an impudent squatter settled himself there, and built a shed for rubbish under the windows of the gilded saloons in which the first magnates of the realm, Norfolk, Ormond, market. 5 A piazza north of the Strand; a fruit and flower 6 The largest of London's squares, surrounded by lawyers' offices and ancient mansions. 7 beggar and impostor 8 The site of the most aristocratic mansions and clubs. 9 The portion of London which was once the city of Westminster; the site of the Government houses. 10 One skilled in contests with cudgels or staves. Kent, and Pembroke, gave banquets and balls. It was not till these nuisances had lasted through a whole generation, and till much had been written about them, that the inhabitants applied to Parliament for permission to put up rails, and to plant trees. profound darkness. Thieves and robbers plied their trade with impunity: yet they were hardly so terrible to peaceable citizens as another class of ruffians. It was a favourite amusement of dissolute young gentlemen to swagger by night about the town, breaking windows, upsetWhen such was the state of the region in- ting sedans, beating quiet men, and offering habited by the most luxurious portion of so- rude caresses to pretty women. Several dynasciety, we may easily believe that the great body ties of these tyrants had, since the Restoration, of the population suffered what would now be domineered over the streets. The Muns and considered as insupportable grievances. The Tityre Tus had given place to the Hectors, and pavement was detestable; all foreigners cried the Hectors had been recently succeeded by the shame upon it. The drainage was so bad that Scourers. At a later period rose the Nicker, in rainy weather the gutters soon became tor- the Hawcubite, and the yet more dreaded name rents. Several facetious poets have commemo- of Mohawk. The machinery for keeping the rated the fury with which these black rivulets peace was utterly contemptible. There was an roared down Snow Hill and Ludgate Hill, bear-act of Common Council which provided that ing to Fleet Ditch a vast tribute of animal and more than a thousand watchmen should be convegetable filth from the stalls of butchers and stantly on the alert in the city, from sunset to greengrocers. This flood was profusely thrown sunrise, and that every inhabitant should take to right and left by coaches and carts. To keep his turn of duty. But this Act was negligently as far from the carriage road as possible was executed. Few of those who were summoned therefore the wish of every pedestrian. The left their homes; and those few generally found mild and timid gave the wall. The bold and it more agreeable to tipple in alehouses than to athletic took it. If two roisterers met, they pace the streets. cocked their hats in each other's faces, and pushed each other about till the weaker was THE LONDON COFFEE HOUSES. shoved towards the kennel.11 If he was a mere bully he sneaked off, muttering that he should find a time. If he was pugnacious, the encounter probably ended in a duel behind Montague House.12 The houses were not numbered. There would indeed have been little advantage in number ing them; for of the coachmen, chairmen,13 porters, and errand boys of London, a very small proportion could read. It was necessary to use marks which the most ignorant could under stand. The shops were therefore distinguished by painted or sculptured signs, which gave a gay and grotesque aspect to the streets. The walk from Charing Cross to Whitechapel lay through an endless succession of Saracens' Heads, Royal Oaks, Blue Bears, and Golden Lambs, which disappeared when they were no longer required for the direction of the common people. When the evening closed in, the difficulty and danger of walking about London became serious indeed. The garret windows were opened, and pails were emptied, with little regard to those who were passing below. Falls, bruises, and broken bones were of constant occurrence. For, till the last year of the reign of Charles the Second, most of the streets were left in 11 gutter TER III FROM CHAP The coffee house must not be dismissed with a cursory mention. It might indeed at that time have been not improperly called a most important political institution. No Parliament had sat for years. The municipal council of the City had ceased to speak the sense of the citizens. Public meetings, harangues, resolutions, and the rest of the modern machinery of agitation had not yet come into fashion. Nothing resembling the modern newspaper existed. In such circumstances the coffee houses were the chief organs through which the public opinion of the metropolis vented itself. The first of these establishments had been set up, in the time of the Commonwealth, by a Turkey merchant, who had acquired among the Mahometans a taste for their favourite beverage. The convenience of being able to make appointments in any part of the town, and of being able to pass evenings socially at a very small charge, was so great that the fashion spread fast. Every man of the upper or middle class went daily to his coffee house to learn the news and to discuss it. Every coffee house had one or more orators to whose eloquence the crowd listened with admiration, and who soon became, what the journalists of our own time 12 In Whitehall, the region of the Government have been called, a fourth Estate of the realm. offices. 13 sedan-chair bearers The court had long seen with uneasiness the was a faction for Perrault and the moderns, a faction for Boileau and the ancients.3 One group debated whether Paradise Lost ought not to have been in rhyme. To another an envious poetaster demonstrated that Venice Preserved1 ought to have been hooted from the stage. Under no roof was a greater variety of figures to be seen. There were Earls in stars and garters, clergymen in cassocks and bands, pert Templars, sheepish lads from the Universities, translators and index makers in ragged coats of frieze. The great press was to get near the chair where John Dryden sat. In winter that chair was always in the warmest nook by the fire; in summer it stood in the balcony. To growth of this new power in the state. An attempt had been made, during Danby 's1 administration, to close the coffee houses. But men of all parties missed their usual places of resort so much that there was an universal outcry. The government did not venture, in opposition to a feeling so strong and general, to enforce a regulation of which the legality might well be questioned. Since that time ten years had elapsed, and during those years the number and influence of the coffee houses had been constantly increasing. Foreigners remarked that the coffee house was that which especially distinguished London from all other cities; that the coffee house was the Londoner's home, and that those who wished to find a gentleman | bow to the Laureate, and to hear his opinion commonly asked, not whether he lived in Fleet of Racine's last tragedy or of Bossu's treatise Street or Chancery Lane, but whether he fre- on epic poetry, was thought a privilege. A quented the Grecian or the Rainbow. Nobody pinch from his snuff-box was an honour suffiwas excluded from these places who laid down cient to turn the head of a young enthusiast. his penny at the bar. Yet every rank and pro- There were coffee houses where the first medical fession, and every shade of religious and polit-men might be consulted. Doctor John Radcliffe, ical opinion, had its own headquarters. There who, in the year 1685, rose to the largest pracwere houses near Saint James's Park where fops congregated, their heads and shoulders covered with black or flaxen wigs, not less ample than those which are now worn by the Chancellor and by the Speaker of the House of Commons. The wig came from Paris; and so did the rest of the fine gentleman's ornaments, his embroidered coat, his fringed gloves, and the tassel which upheld his pantaloons. The conversation was in that dialect which, long after it had ceased to be spoken in fashionable circles, continued, in the mouth of Lord Foppington, to excite the mirth of theatres. The atmosphere was like that of a perfumer's shop. Tobacco in any other form than that of richly scented snuff was held in abomination. If any clown, ignorant of the usages of the house, called for a pipe, the sneers of the whole as sembly and the short answers of the waiters soon convinced him that he had better go somewhere else. Nor, indeed, would he have had far to go. For, in general, the coffee rooms reeked with tobacco like a guard-room; and strangers sometimes expressed their surprise that so many people should leave their own firesides to sit in the midst of eternal fog and stench. Nowhere was the smoking more constant than at Will's. That celebrated house, situated between Covent Garden and Bow Street, was sacred to polite letters. There the talk was about poetical justice and the unities of place and time. There 1 Thomas Osborn, Lord Treasurer under Charles II. ? A character in Vanbrugh's The Relapse. As an example of the dialect Macaulay gives the word Lord, pronounced Lard. tice in London, came daily, at the hour wnen the Exchange was full, from his house in Bow Street, then a fashionable part of the capital to Garraway's, and was to be found, sur rounded by surgeons and apothecaries, at a particular table. There were Puritan coffee houses where no oath was heard, and where lank-haired men discussed election and reprobation through their noses; Jew coffee houses where dark eyed money changers from Venice and from Amsterdam greeted each other; and Popish coffee houses where, as good Protestants believed, Jesuits planned, over their cups, another great fire, and cast silver bullets to shoot the King. These gregarious habits had no small share in forming the character of the Londoner of that age. He was, indeed, a different being from the rustic Englishman. There was not then the intercourse which now exists between the two classes. Only very great men were in the habit of dividing the year between town and country. Few esquires came to the capital thrice in their lives. Nor was it yet the prac tice of all citizens in easy circumstances to breathe the fresh air of the fields and woods during some weeks of every summer. A cockney, in a rural village, was stared at as much as if he had intruded into a Kraal of Hotten 3 Between Perrault and Boileau, two members of the French Academy, arose about 1687 a famous quarrel over the respective merits of modern and ancient literature. 4 By Thomas Otway, a contemporary dramatist. 5 Students or lawyers residing in the Temple. tots. On the other hand, when the Lord of a| broke forth again more violently than before. Lincolnshire or Shropshire manor appeared in Since the splendour of the House of Argyle1 Fleet Street, he was as easily distinguished from the resident population as a Turk or a Lascar. His dress, his gait, his accent, the manner in which he stared at the shops, stumbled into the gutters, ran against the porters, and stood under the water spouts, marked him out as an excellent subject for the operations of swindlers and banterers. Bullies jostled him into the kennel. Hackney coachmen splashed him from head to foot. Thieves explored with perfect security the huge pockets of his horseman's coat, while he stood entranced by the splendour of the Lord Mayor's show. Moneydroppers, sore from the cart's tail, introduced themselves to him, and appeared to him the most honest, friendly gentlemen that he had ever seen. Painted women, the refuse of Lewkner Lane and Whetstone Park, passed themselves on him for countesses and maids of honour. If he asked his way to Saint James's,8 his informants sent him to Mile End. went into a shop, he was instantly discerned to be a fit purchaser of everything that nobody else would buy, of secondhand embroidery, copper rings, and watches that would not go. If he rambled into any fashionable coffee house, he became a mark for the insolent derision of fops and the grave waggery of Templars. Enraged and mortified, he soon returned to his mansion, and there, in the homage of his tenants, and the conversation of his boon companions, found consolation for the vexations and humiliations which he had undergone. There he was once more a great man, and saw nothing above himself except when at the assizes he took his seat on the bench near the Judge, or when at the muster of the militia he saluted the Lord Lieutenant. If he had been eclipsed, no Gaelic chief could vie in power with the Marquess of Athol. The district from which he took his title, and of which he might almost be called the sovereign, was in extent larger than an ordinary county, and was more fertile, more diligently cultivated, and more thickly peopled than the greater part of the Highlands. The men who followed his banner were supposed to be not less numerous than all the Macdonalds and Macleans united, and were, in strength and courage, inferior to no tribe in the mountains. But the clan had been made insignificant by the insignificance of the chief. The Marquess was the falsest, the most fickle, the most pusillanimous, of mankind. Already, in the short space of six months, he had been several times a Jacobite, and several times a Williamite. Both Jacobites and Williamites regarded him with contempt and distrust, which respect for his immense power prevented them from fully expressing. After repeatedly vowing fidelity to both parties, and repeatedly betraying both, he began to think that he should best provide for his safety by abdicating the functions both of a peer and of a chieftain, by absenting himself both from the Parliament House at Edinburgh and from his castle in the mountains, and by quitting the country to which he was bound by every tie of duty and honour at the very crisis of her fate. While all Scotland was waiting with impatience and anxiety to see in which army his numerous retainers would be arrayed, he stole away to England, settled himself at Bath, and pretended to drink the waters. His principality, left without a head, was divided against itself. The general leaning of the Athol men was towards King James. For they had been employed by him, only four years before, as the ministers of his vengeance against THE BATTLE OF KILLIECRANKIE. FROM CHAP- the House of Argyle. They had garrisoned Inverary: they had ravaged Lorn: they had demolished houses, cut down fruit trees, burned fishing boats, broken millstones, hanged Campbells, and were therefore not likely to be pleased by the prospect of MacCallum More's2 restoration. One word from the Marquess 1 The Campbells. The last Earl of Argyle had been executed for participating in Monmouth's rising against James. 2 A name given to the Dukes and Earls of Argyle. 3 broadswords house, Viscount Dundee, had gathered about him his own Lowland adherents and a considerable force of Highland clansmen who supported James. Compare Scott's poem, Bonny Dundee, p. 448. |