CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

THE STORY OF THIERS.

In a densely populated street of the quaint sea-port of Marseilles there dwelt a poor locksmith and his family, who were so hard pressed by the dearness of provisions and the general hardness of the times, that the rent and taxes for the wretched tenement which they called a home had been allowed to fall many weeks into arrear. But the good people struggled on against their poverty; and the locksmith (who was the son of a ruined cloth-merchant), though fallen to the humble position of a dock-porter, still managed to wade through life as if he had been born to opulence. This poor labourer’s name was Thiers, and his wife was a descendant of the poet Chenier; the two being destined to become the parents of Louis Adolphe Thiers, one of the most remarkable men that ever lived.

The hero of our story was at his birth mentally consigned to oblivion by his parents, while the neighbours laughed at the ungainly child, and prognosticated for him all kinds of evil in the future. And it is more than probable that these evil auguries would have been fulfilled had it not been for the extraordinary care bestowed upon him by his grandmother. But for her, perhaps our story had never been written.

Under her fostering care the child survived all those diseases which were, according to the gossips, to prove fatal to him; but while his limbs remained almost stationary, his head and chest grew larger, until he became a veritable dwarf. By his mother’s influence with the family of André Chenier, the lad was enabled to enter the Marseilles Lyceum at the age of nine; and here the remarkable head and chest kept the promise they made in his infancy, and soon fulfilled Madame Thiers’ predictions.

Louis Adolphe Thiers was a brilliant though somewhat erratic pupil. He was noted for his practical jokes, his restlessness, and the ready and ingenious manner in which he always extricated himself from any scrapes into which his bold and restless disposition had led him. Thus the child in this case would appear to have been ‘father to the man,’ by the manner in which he afterwards released his beloved country from one of the greatest ‘scrapes’ she ever experienced.

On leaving school Thiers studied for the law, and was eventually called to the bar, though he never practised as a lawyer. He became instead a local politician; and so well did the rôle suit him, that he soon evinced a strong desire to try his fortune in Paris itself. He swayed his auditory, when speaking, in spite of his diminutive stature, Punch-like physiognomy, and shrill piping speech; and shout and yell as his adversaries might, they could not drown his voice, for it arose clear and distinct above all the hubbub around him. While the studious youth was thus making himself a name in his native town, he was ever on the watch for an opportunity to transfer his fortunes to the capital. His almost penniless condition, however, precluded him from carrying out his design without extraneous assistance of some kind or other; but when such a stupendous ambition as that of governing one of the greatest nations of the earth filled the breast of the Marseilles student, it was not likely that the opportunity he was seeking would be long in coming.

The Academy of Aix offered a prize of a few hundred francs for a eulogium on Vauvenargues, and here was the opportunity which Louis Adolphe Thiers required. He determined to compete for the prize, and wrote out two copies of his essay, one of which he sent to the Academy’s Secretary, and the other he submitted to the judgment of his friends. This latter indiscretion, however, would appear to have been the cause of his name being mentioned to the Academicians as a competitor; and as they had a spite against him, and disapproved of his opinions, they decided to reject any essay which he might submit to them.

On the day of the competition they were as good as their word, and Thiers received back his essay with only an ‘honourable mention’ attached to it. The votes, however, had been equally divided, and the principal prize could not be adjudged until the next session. The future statesman and brilliant journalist was not, however, to be cast aside in this contemptuous manner, and he accordingly adopted a ruse de guerre, which was perfectly justifiable under the circumstances. He sent back his first essay for the second competition with his own name attached thereto, and at the same time transmitted another essay, by means of a friend, through the Paris post-office. This paper was signed ‘Louis Duval;’ and as M. Thiers knew that they had resolved to reject his essay and accept the next best on the list, he made it as near as possible equal to the other in point of merit.

The Academicians were thoroughly out-generalled by this clever artifice, and the prize was awarded to the essay signed ‘Louis Duval;’ but the chagrin of the dons when the envelope was opened and the name of Louis Adolphe Thiers was read out, can be better imagined than described. The prize, which amounted to about twenty pounds, was added to another sum of forty pounds gained by his friend Mignet for essay-writing; and with this modest amount, the two friends set out on their journey to Paris. On their arrival there, both of them were at once engaged as writers on the Globe newspaper, and M. Thiers’ articles soon attracted such attention that the highest political destinies were predicted for their author.

Alluding to the small stature of our hero, Prince Talleyrand once said: ‘Il est petit, mais il grandira!’ (He is little, but he will be great!) Meanwhile, the young adventurer, as we may call him, was engaged on general literary work for the press, writing political leaders one day, art-criticisms the next, and so on, until a publisher asked him to write the History of the French Revolution. He accepted; and when published, the work met with so great a success that it placed him in the front rank of literature, and gained for him the proud title of ‘National Historian.’ After this the two friends published the National newspaper, an undertaking which we are told was conceived in Talleyrand’s house, and was largely subscribed to by the Duke of Orleans, afterwards King Louis-Philippe. M. Thiers disliked the Bourbons; and when, in 1829, Charles X. dissolved a liberal parliament, he took the lead in agitating for the reinstating of the people’s rights. The king having determined to reply to the re-election of the ‘221’ by a coup d’état, the nature of which was secretly communicated to M. Thiers, the latter hastened to the office of the National and drew up the celebrated Protest of the Journalists, which before noon was signed by every writer on the liberal side. As M. Thiers was leaving the office, a servant of Prince Talleyrand placed in his hand a note, which simply bore the words, ‘Go and gather cherries.’ This was a hint that danger was near the young patriot, and that he should repair to the house of one of the Prince’s friends at Montmorency—a place famous for its cherries—and there lie hidden until the storm had blown over.

M. Thiers did not immediately accept the hint, but remained in the capital during the day, to watch the course of events and endeavour to prevent his friends from doing anything rash. He energetically sought to dissuade those who were for resisting the king’s decree by force of arms; but did not succeed. When the barricades were raised, he left Paris, because he thought that the people were doing an unwise thing, which would lead to a fearful slaughter, and perhaps result in himself and friends being shot.

When, however, the battle between the army and the people had really begun, the indomitable little man returned to Paris, and heedless of the bullets that were flying about, he ran here and there trying to collect adherents for the Duke of Orleans. He also had a proclamation of the Duke, as king, printed, rushed out with it, damp as it was from the press, and distributed copies to the victorious insurgents; but this operation nearly cost him his life, for the crowds on the Place de la Bourse were shouting for a republic, and a cry was immediately raised to lynch M. Thiers. He only escaped by dashing into a pastry-cook’s shop, and taking a header down the open cellar which led to the kitchen.

Nothing daunted by this contretemps, however, he sought out M. Scheffer, an intimate friend of the Duke of Orleans, and started off for Neuilly with him (without consulting anybody else), to offer the crown of France to the Duke. When they found the Duke, he despatched M. Thiers to Prince Talleyrand to ask his advice on the subject; and the latter, who was in bed at the time, said: ‘Let him accept;’ but positively refused to put this advice in writing. Thus the Duke of Orleans became King of the French under the name of Louis-Philippe, and the Marseilles student found himself a step nearer the accomplishment of his aim. The poor locksmith’s son had overthrown one king and established another!

It was M. Thiers who caused the remains of Napoleon to be removed from the gloomy resting-place in St Helena to the church of the Invalides in Paris, where they were re-interred amid great pomp and circumstance. He it was who also invented or gave currency to the now well-known constitutional maxim, ‘The king reigns, but does not govern.’

In this reign M. Thiers commenced his great work on the Consulate and the Empire, in which he so eulogised the First Napoleon and flattered the military fame of France, that he unwittingly paved the way for the advent of the second Empire.

The revolution of 1848, which led to the abdication of Louis-Philippe, found Thiers but a simple soldier in the National Guard, and parading the streets with a musket on his shoulder, despite his diminutive stature. A man of his transcendent ability, however, could not be left long in so humble a position, and we therefore find the newly elected sovereign Louis Napoleon trying hard to win over to his side this unique citizen. But Thiers declined the honour, and remained a thorn in Napoleon’s side during the whole period of his reign. When the coup d’état of 1851 was struck he was one of the leading statesmen whose arrest was ordered and carried out. The patriot was seized and forcibly taken out of his bed at an early hour in the morning, and imprisoned at Mazas for several days. He was then escorted out of the country, and became an exile from the land he loved so well.

While the excitement in Paris, which culminated in the outbreak of the war with Germany, was at its height, and the whole nation was singing the Marseillaise and shouting ‘à Berlin,’ M. Thiers’ voice was the only one raised to protest against France precipitating herself into an unjust and unnecessary war. He was unheeded at the moment; but a few weeks sufficed to prove the soundness of his reasoning; and when the Germans were marching on Paris, it was to the locksmith’s son that the whole nation turned in its distress.

The Napoleonic dynasty was deposed, and at the elections for the National Assembly which afterwards took place, M. Thiers was elected for twenty-six Departments—a splendid national testimony to his patriotism and ability. As soon as the Assembly met he was at once appointed ‘Chief of the Executive Power’ of the French Republic. Thus the poor student of the Marseilles Academy had become, almost without any effort of his own, the governor of his country; and how he acquitted himself of the onerous and self-sacrificing task, let the living grief of Frenchmen for his loss at this moment proudly attest.

Previous to this appointment, however, and while the German army was thundering at the gates of Paris, the brave old statesman had, in his seventy-fourth year, shewn his unalterable devotion to France by the famous journey he made to all the European courts to endeavour to obtain assistance. Failing in this, he came back, and being made President, as above mentioned, he made peace with the Germans on the best terms he could get, turned round and beat the Communists in the streets of Paris; and within three short years he had not only paid the heaviest war indemnity ever known, but had cleared his country of the Germans, consolidated her resources, and reorganised her army.

On the morning of the 4th September last, France was suddenly plunged into the deepest grief and dismay by the announcement that her greatest citizen had been taken from her by death on the previous evening, at a time when the whole nation was looking to him as the one man who could save it from the dangerous crisis through which it was at that moment passing.

The funeral was a magnificent one, and though a wet day, there was not a citizen in Paris that did not join the throng, which lined the whole of the way to the cemetery. As the body of the great patriot was borne along every hat was raised, and many among the crowd shed tears. A riot was expected on the occasion, but the people behaved admirably and with great forbearance; the greatest tribute of respect which they could have shewn to the memory of one who had done so much for his country.

The modesty of this great citizen was in perfect accordance with his republican principles; for while President of the French Republic, his card never bore anything more on it than the simple ‘Monsieur Thiers;’ nor did he wear any uniform or decoration other than that one which is so dear to the heart and eye of every true Frenchman, ‘the Legion of Honour.’ Surely never did a worthier breast bear that famous Cross than that of the man who, despite every obstacle both physical and moral, and despite evil prognostications, bitter taunts, and the crushing hand of poverty, rose by the grand yet simple force of his own indomitable will from the position of a labourer’s son to that of the ruler of a mighty nation. But even greater than all this was the fact, that having attained to this grand position, he was ready, at what he believed to be the call of duty, to lay aside his dignity, to step from his proud position, and once more to assume the humbler rôle of a private citizen. Such a sublime act of self-abnegation was sufficient to assure to him the enthusiastic love and respect of an intelligent people, and the esteem of the whole world, which may be said to have joined with France in weaving a chaplet of immortelles to place upon the tomb of one whose memory will be revered by all who respect indomitable perseverance and true nobility of character.

HELENA, LADY HARROGATE.

CHAPTER III.—THE LETTER.

When Sir Sykes, left alone, addressed himself to the perusal of the crumpled letter which he had hitherto crushed in his clenched hand, it was with no light repugnance that he applied himself to the task. Slowly, and with shaking fingers, he unfolded and smoothed the ruffled paper, spread it on the table before him, and not hastily, but with a deliberate care that was evidently painful to him, read as follows: ‘Although a stranger to you, Sir Sykes Denzil, Baronet, I am no stranger to what took place on March 24, 18—. Should you wish this matter to remain, as it has hitherto done, untalked of by the world, I must request that you will meet me this evening at The Traveller’s Rest, by the cross-roads. I shall wait there for you until ten o’clock to-night, and will then name the terms on which alone you can reckon on my future silence.—Inquire for yours respectfully, Dick Hold, staying at The Traveller’s Rest.’

The baronet read and re-read this letter with the patient endurance of a sufferer under the surgeon’s knife. Nothing but his labouring breath and the deepening of the lines around his mouth and the furrows on his high forehead, betrayed the pain that this precious document, indited in a large sprawling hand, occasioned him. When he had gone through it for the second time, he rose, and filling a glass with water from a bottle that stood on a side-table, he drank a deep draught, and then paced to and fro with hasty irregular steps, as some men do when suddenly called upon for earnest thought and prompt decision.

‘I will not go!’ he said authoritatively, but in a low voice—‘I will not go.’

Such a peremptory summons as that which he had received implied more than it stated. It was couched in terms which were sufficiently civil; but the tone was still that of command, not of entreaty or persuasion. Most gentlemen of the degree of Sir Sykes would have treated such a demand either as a piece of insufferable insolence or as the freak of a madman. The baronet knew well enough what sort of reception his neighbours, Lord Wolverhampton, Carew of Carew, or Fulford of Carstennis, would have given to a request so impudent. He was, as they were, a justice of the peace and deputy-lieutenant, owner of a fine estate, one whose name was mentioned with respect wherever men did congregate.

The meekest of us all are apt to rebel against unwarranted dictation. And Sir Sykes was not meek. His friends and his servants—lynx-eyed as we are apt to be to the foibles of others—knew that he was in his unobtrusive way a proud man. The stronger, therefore, must have been the influence that drew him, as the magnet draws iron to itself, towards that unsavoury house of entertainment whence his unknown correspondent had dated his missive. The first dressing-bell clanged out its call unheeded, and it was only when the second bell rang that Sir Sykes recalled his wandering thoughts sufficiently to remember that it was time for him to dress, and that whatever cares might be busy at his heart, he must yet wear his mask decorously before the world. Dinner on that day at Carbery Court was not a peculiarly genial meal. The baronet had taken, with his accustomed regularity, his place at the table; but he was pale, and looked older by some years than he had done a few hours since. Yet he resented Lucy’s half-timid inquiry: ‘You are not ill, papa, I hope?’ and quietly declared that he was perfectly well. The domestic relations differ so much in varying conditions of life, that there are parents whose every thought and deed appear to be the common property of the home circle, and others who sanction no trespass on the inner self, the to auton of the Greeks, which each of us carries in the recesses of his own heart.

Sir Sykes Denzil was one of those men who, as husband and father, never carry their confidences beyond a certain convenient limit. He was no tyrant, and his daughters, who fondly loved him and who believed in his love for them, looked with regret on the cloud that so often rested on his yet handsome features. But he had known how to preserve his jealously guarded individuality from the encroachments of affectionate interference, so that it was but very rarely that his actions were the theme of open comment. Blanche and Lucy, therefore, though with feminine nicety of observation they noted that their father could not eat, but that he emptied his glass again and again, said nothing; while Jasper, as he watched Sir Sykes with a stealthy inquisitiveness, made the mental reflection that ‘the governor must be hard hit, very hard indeed;’ and secretly determined to turn the occasion to his own peculiar profit.

‘Jasper!’ said Lucy anxiously, some time after the dinner had come to an end; ‘what is the matter with papa? Do you know if he is really unwell, or if anything has gone wrong? I waited here for you, in case you might know what is amiss.’

Jasper, who had been intercepted as he was leaving the house for his customary twilight stroll, with a cigar between his lips, turned lazily round. ‘How can I tell, Lucy?’ he returned indifferently. ‘I’m not the keeper of my father’s conscience, as the Lord Chancellor, by a polite fiction, is supposed to be of the king’s.’

‘I only meant, has anything occurred, to your knowledge,’ pleaded Miss Denzil, ‘calculated to annoy or distress him? Anything, for instance, about you?’

‘How about me!’ demanded Jasper with a slight start and a slight frown.

‘Don’t be angry, brother; I only meant, dear, about your—debts,’ answered the girl, laying her hand on Jasper’s arm.

‘Has he been talking to you on that delightful subject?’ retorted the brother, almost roughly. ‘No; I see that he has not; at least not very lately. One would think, to hear that eternal refrain of debts, debts, debts for ever jangling in my ears, that I was the first fellow who ever overran the constable. Surely I’m punished enough, if I did owe a trifle, by being caged up in this wearisome old Bastille of a house, and—— There, there; Lucy, don’t cry. I’ll not say a word more against Carbery, and you may set your mind at rest. If the governor has anything to vex him, be assured that it is not in the least connected with so insignificant a person as myself.’ And, as though weary of the subject, he sauntered off.

It was Sir Sykes’s habit on most evenings to spend a short time, half an hour or so, in the drawing-room. He liked music; and Blanche, his younger daughter, who had been gifted with the sweet voice and delicate sense of harmony which are often found in conjunction with frail health, knew the airs and the songs that best suited him. He never, under any circumstances, remained long in company with his daughters, being one of those men to whom the society of women is in itself uncongenial; but on this particular evening he went straight from the dining-room to the library, and sipped his coffee there, while the twilight deepened into the gloom of night.

The day had been fine enough, but the sun had sunk in a cloud-bank of black and orange, and there were not wanting signs that a change of weather was at hand. The wind had risen, and the clouds gathered as the sun went down, and it seemed as though the proverbial fickleness of our climate would soon be illustrated. But Sir Sykes, as he went forth shortly after the clock on the turret had struck nine, paid no heed to the weather, save that once or twice he glanced upwards with a sort of half-conscious satisfaction at the darkling sky. The night, with its friendly shadows and its threats of a coming storm, suited far better with his purpose than cloudless azure and bright moonlight would have done. The moon, not as yet long risen, was young and wan, and her feeble lustre fell but at rare intervals through the wrack of hurrying clouds. The larches in the plantations quivered and the aspens by the trout-stream trembled as the gusts of wailing wind went by; while the giant trees in the park, each one a citadel of refuge to squirrel and song-bird, sent down a rustling sound, as though every one out of their million leaves had found a tiny voice of its own to give warning of the approaching gale. Sir Sykes skirted the lawn, passed through the shrubbery, and struck into a path seldom trodden except by the feet of his keepers, which led northwards through the park.

There is something ignominious in the very fact that the master of any dwelling, howsoever humble, should steal away from it with as earnest a desire to elude observation as though he had been a robber of hen-roosts or a purloiner of spoons. And perhaps such a proceeding appeared still more so in the case of the owner of so stately a place as Carbery. Sir Sykes felt as he glided, unseen as he hoped, past paling and thicket, at once angry and ashamed. So repugnant to him was the errand on which his mind was bent, that on reaching a private door in the northern wall of the park he came to a halt, and held as it were parley with himself before proceeding on the quest of the writer of the letter.

‘I do not know this fellow,’ he muttered wrathfully: ‘the man’s very name is strange to me. But the twenty-fourth of March—that can be no mistake, no coincidence. That fatal date has burned itself too deeply into my brain for me to disregard or to forget it. Yes, I must go; I suppose that I must go.’

And with a heavy sigh, the master of that fair demesne and of many a broad acre beyond it felt in his pocket for the key that would open the postern before which he stood, unlocked the door, went out, and reclosed and fastened it behind him. Then, without further hesitation, he entered into a lane, the straggling branches of the hazels that grew on the high banks to left and right almost brushing against his person as he walked briskly on. So long as he had been within the limits of Carbery Chase, Sir Sykes had done his best to escape notice, keeping as often as he could tree and bush and rising ground between himself and the grand house of which he was absolute proprietor. But now he ceased to turn his head and look or listen for any sign that he was followed, and pushed on, assured that his clandestine exit from Carbery was unknown to any but himself. Sir Sykes, however, was very much mistaken. He was dogged by the very pursuer whom, perhaps, of all others he would have wished to keep in ignorance as to his conduct. Jasper, whose feline vigilance, once awakened, could not readily be lulled to sleep, had kept watch upon his father’s actions with a quiet patient steadiness which nothing but vengeance or the greed of gain could possibly have inspired. There is a certain sympathy, especially with crooked motives, which enables us to anticipate the stratagems of those with whom we have intercourse, and of this Jasper had his full share.

He was scarcely surprised when from his place of espial he saw his father quit the house and thread his way through the grounds after such a fashion as made it manifest that the baronet desired his excursion to remain a secret to those beneath his roof. That something abnormal should happen as a consequence of the letter which Sir Sykes had received, and the reading of which had so powerfully affected its recipient, the captain had considered as so probable, that he thought it worth his while to lie in wait for the surprisal of the secret. Of two probable hypotheses, Jasper, whose imagination was of a chastened and practical order, had chosen rather to fancy that some stranger would arrive, than that the baronet should himself go forth to meet that stranger. But when he saw his father’s tall figure vanish amidst the shadows of the dense evergreens and leafy lime-trees, he was not in the least astonished.

‘When it was a question of nobbling the Black Prince,’ he said meditatively, ‘I wouldn’t trust myself, nor would Gentleman Pratt, to talking it over anywhere but on Bletchley Downs with the vagabonds who hocussed the horse, and who would for a fiver have sold their own fathers.’

Some recollection that he, Jasper Denzil, late a captain in Her Majesty’s service, was at that moment engaged, so far as in him lay, in the questionable operation of ‘selling’ his own father, here caused a twinge to his callous heart. But we are seldom without some moral anodyne wherewith to lull to sleep that troublesome monitor, conscience; and Jasper had but need to remember his debts, his difficulties, and the fact that men at his club spoke of him as ‘Poor Denzil—played out, sir!’ to assuage the momentary pang which some as yet smouldering sense of honour occasioned to him.

The skill with which he followed Sir Sykes, keeping the object of his pursuit fully in view, yet never for an instant compromising himself by coming into the range of vision, should the baronet, as he often did, turn his head, would have done credit to a Comanche Indian on the war-path. It was by a subtle instinct, not by practice, that he availed himself of the shelter of tree and brake and hollow, until at length, himself unobserved, he made sure that Sir Sykes was heading towards the private door in the northern wall of the park. There was a side-gate kept continually unlocked on account of the right of way, some six hundred yards to the eastward, and from this the captain could issue without difficulty. As for the private door, Sir Sykes had a key to fit its lock; Jasper had none. The latter’s mind was instantly made up.

Idle sybarite though he was, the captain was fleet of foot, an accomplishment perhaps more common among languid men about town than healthy hardy dwellers in the country would readily imagine. He had made money once and again by the lightness of his heels, and they did him good service now, as, after a rapid rush across the elastic turf of the park and a quick traversing of the heathery surface of the rugged common-land beyond, he caught a glimpse of his father’s stately figure as it passed in between the tall hedges of the lane.

‘It’s lucky I can run a bit!’ gasped out Jasper as he paused for an instant to take breath, and then passing his cambric handkerchief across his brow, on which the heat-drops stood thickly, plunged into the dark lane between the steep banks of which the object of his pursuit had disappeared. And now his task was the easier, in that Sir Sykes, intent on what lay before him, and confident that his manner of leaving his home was unknown, never once turned his head to look back.

A ghastly sight it was—had human eye been there to note it—which the wan moon shewed, when at uncertain intervals her white light fell on the pale faces of these two men, father and son, so much and so little alike, who were wending their way thus along the deep Devonshire lane. In front was Sir Sykes, moody indeed and downcast, but a gentleman of a goodly presence; while behind him came with feline footfall his only son, as craftily eager in the chase as even a garrotter, our British Thug, could have been. Once beyond the lane, the baronet and his kindred spy had to traverse a tract of ragged and desolate common, where the horse-road dwindled to a track of cart-wheels in the peaty soil, and where Jasper felt that concealment would have been difficult, had the baronet but looked behind him.

But the rain, long threatened, came on, urged by the strength of the sobbing wind, and Captain Denzil congratulated himself on the friendly darkness that ensued. Nor was it long before Sir Sykes caught sight of the dead tree, on a knotted bough of which was the signboard of The Traveller’s Rest, the dilapidated roof and battered front of which could dimly be seen through the gloom of night.

‘After all, why not?’ ejaculated Jasper, as he saw his father, after a moment’s hesitation, disappear within the ruinous porch of the roadside public-house.

CHAPTER IV.—AT THE TRAVELLER’S REST.

‘Person of the name of Hold? I should think so, rather. Want to see him, do you? Turn to your right, then; get up them stone steps, and just keep straight till you’re past the water-butt, and you’ll twig the tap-room door.’

It was a sharp-eyed sharp-tongued boy who spoke, a boy in a tattered jacket that had once been blue, and had once been garnished with brass anchor buttons; but who retained his Cockney accent and his air of brisk effrontery, like that of a London sparrow.

‘Can’t you make out Her Majesty’s English, Mr Stiffback?’ said this impudent servitor of The Traveller’s Rest, seeing that Sir Sykes hesitated.

‘You keep a civil tongue, Deputy,’ broke in a deeper voice from within the darkling passage. ‘This, I suppose, is the gentleman who received a letter from a party called Hold? Very good. This way, sir, please; and mind you don’t hurt your head against the beam, for the ceiling’s low and light’s scarce. So. Here we are; and this is the tap-room, and my name is Hold. At this end of the room we’ll be quietest.’

And the baronet passively permitted himself to be led up some stone steps and down some brick steps, and finally into a long low room, at one end of which, although the weather was warm and the season summer, there glowed and crackled a large fire of mingled peat and wood, around which were clustered seven or eight persons male and female, two of whom were smoking short discoloured pipes, while the others were conversing in hoarse tones, or sniffing, with somewhat of a wolfish expression of countenance, the savoury fumes that arose from a frying-pan which a gaunt man in frowsy black was carefully holding over the hottest part of the fire.

There was a low wooden screen or partition, about breast-high, which stretched across some three-fourths of this delectable apartment, which was rudely furnished with some wooden settles and rush-bottomed chairs, and a couple of greasy tables, vamped and clamped with sheet-iron to repair the injury which excitable customers had done to the woodwork.

‘My name, Sir Sykes, is Hold,’ said the owner of the name, when the baronet had taken his seat on one of the mean-looking chairs, and his singular correspondent had placed himself on one of the benches opposite.

‘I never heard it before, nor, to the best of my recollection, have we ever met,’ said Sir Sykes dryly.

‘Ah, yes, but we have met, Sir Sykes Denzil, Baronet,’ returned Hold, with a twinkle of satisfaction in his bold black eyes; ‘not that it’s any wonder you do not remember so humble a chap as yours truly. I have the advantage of you.’

These last words were uttered with a malicious emphasis which caused Sir Sykes to look again and keenly in the man’s face, while cudgelling his memory, though in vain, to find some guiding clue. He saw a hard, fierce, swarthy countenance, dark hair partly grizzled, and a powerfully built frame, such as matched well with the face. Had Sir Sykes on the Bench been consulted by his brother magistrates as to the number of calendar months of imprisonment with hard labour to be allotted to such a one as Hold, he would have said at once: ‘Give him the heaviest sentence warranted by law, for, unless Lavater’s science be false, there could scarcely exist a more dangerous scoundrel.’

Sir Sykes, however, was not on the bench, nor Hold in the dock at quarter-sessions. So he merely replied with a steady look: ‘No, Mr Hold, or whatever your name may be. To the best of my belief, I never in my life saw you.’

‘Very good,’ quietly returned the man, taking out a black pocket-book much frayed and battered, and rustling over the dog’s-eared leaves. ‘Let me see; yes, March the twenty-fourth is the first important date.’

‘And may I ask,’ interposed Sir Sykes, with somewhat of the cold haughtiness which had stood him in good stead in many a moral duel, ‘what is the meaning of these perpetual references to a specified day in March?’

Hold’s low inward laugh was one of sincere enjoyment. ‘It’s not only at cards, Sir Sykes,’ he said with a chuckle, ‘that the game of brag can be played. But come, it’s of no use, Sir Sykes Denzil, Baronet. My hand’s too strong—chokeful of court-cards, kings, queens, knaves, and aces—to give you a chance. I have entries here’—slapping the black pocket-book—‘for more days than one. Take one of ’em at random. You have cause to remember the ninth of April in the same year, Sir Sykes. So have I.’ And with a nod and a wink, Hold slid back the book into an inner pocket of his rough coat.

The baronet’s blanched face and anxious eye betrayed how deeply he was agitated by what he had heard.

‘What do you want of me?’ he asked abruptly, but in a tremulous voice.

‘Hark ye, shipmate!’ rejoined the other, leaning his head on his hand, while his elbow rested on the stained and chipped table beside him; ‘all in good time. Business is business, and is not to be disposed of in that sort of hop, skip, and jump way. Take another look at me, if you like; and since you can’t tell who I am, say what I am.’

‘I should say,’ answered Sir Sykes, gazing with undisguised repugnance at the outward man of his dubious acquaintance, ‘that you have been a sailor.’

‘No great wit wanted, I reckon,’ retorted Hold roughly, ‘to make out that much. The very mermaid on my arm here, and the crown and the anchor,’ he continued, baring his brawny wrist so as to exhibit the blue tattoo marks which it bore, ‘would tell you that. But I’ve followed more trades than one; tried them all in turn, sir. How does that idle string of words that schoolboys say, come off the tongue? Ay, I have it—Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor. Why, I’ve been everything on the urchin’s roll-call except thief; I never was quite that—or gentleman, which is a cut above me.’

‘You have seen the world evidently,’ said Sir Sykes in a bland tone; ‘but you must remember, Mr Hold, that you have not as yet explained to me with sufficient clearness the nature of your business with me.’

‘Labour lost, if I did,’ rejoined Hold with a cynical smile. ‘A secret is best of course when it belongs to one only. Two may get some good out of it; but once it’s common property, the goose that laid the golden eggs is picked bare to the last bone. Do you see,’ he added, dropping his voice, ‘our good friends yonder, and do you suppose that such as they are not all ears, as it were, to snap up any odds and ends of our talk? He with the frying-pan is as knowing a hand as any in England—a begging-letter writer, as the newspaper paragraphs call it. And the others, well! the others are all on the lay more or less, to scratch up a living by their wits. It’s only the cream of the cadging profession that can afford to patronise the Rest. It’s quite a genteel hotel of its class, I assure you. But now you know why I don’t speak out. Better deal with me singly, than with all these blood-suckers, I should say. And so, as we understand each other, we need not enlighten others.’

‘Is there no more private place?’ the baronet began.

But Hold broke curtly in: ‘None, Sir Sykes, in a crib like this. Up-stairs, we’d double the risk of being overheard. Walls have ears, you know. Now here, where we can see into the garden from this open window at my elbow, we’re pretty safe.—Deputy!’ (this was addressed to the sharp boy in the ragged jacket) ‘two glasses of rum, d’ye hear?’

Sir Sykes had had time to think, and it was in a firm tone that he now spoke.

‘Now, Mr Hold,’ he said, ‘I am a man of the world, and as such will not affect indignation or astonishment in the fact that you wish to bargain with me, for your own advantage, as to certain painful events of my earlier life. Name your terms, but be moderate. The law, as you are aware, is not very indulgent towards those who extort money by means of threats or calumnies.’

Hold’s face, hitherto good-humoured, wore an ugly scowl. ‘Drop that style of argument, if you’re wise, baronet,’ he said resolutely. ‘Dick Hold is not often backward, when folks will fire shotted guns instead of harmless blank cartridge. Come, come, commodore; if you dared to indict me, you’d hardly be here. Try that game, if you choose. It only serves the turn of those who can come into court with clean hands. Yours mayhap would shew a stain or so.—Here is Deputy with the rum. Let us drink, sir, to our better acquaintance, and be friends.’

Sir Sykes, however, pushed back the glass which Hold proffered him. Sunk in his own estimation though he might be, he could not stoop to pledge a ruffian of the stamp of this one.

‘Your very good health, Sir Sykes Denzil, Baronet,’ said Hold unconcernedly, as he tossed off his liquor. ‘We wear well, both of us; though many a year has gone over our heads since that ninth of April that you know of.’

‘Were you at Sandston, then, on that day?’ asked the baronet, thrown off his guard, and a slight quivering of Hold’s eyelid told that a point had been scored against his incautious opponent.

‘Not so. At Tunbridge Wells rather,’ returned Hold slowly. ‘I remember seeing the funeral—that of the poor little girl of yours who died, Sir Sykes.’

Sir Sykes grew almost as white as he had done when first he began the reading of the letter which had drawn him to such a rendezvous.

‘You will oblige me, sir,’ he said in a voice that he vainly tried to render firm and calm, ‘by being silent in future as to—as to’——

‘So that we understand one another, I agree to anything,’ was Hold’s half-sullen rejoinder.

‘And now to come to terms. You want money, no doubt?’ said Sir Sykes more composedly.

‘All people, to the best of my belief, want money,’ replied Hold with a grin. ‘I am no cormorant, no shearer and skinner of such as come under my handling. Just now, Sir Sykes, I will only ask you for five hundred—a fleabite!’

The demand, considering the baronet’s rank and means, was unexpectedly moderate. Sir Sykes in turn produced his pocket-book. ‘Few men,’ he said, ‘keep such a sum in ready cash. But it so happens’—laying down a roll of bank-notes upon the squalid table—‘that I have money, two hundred and thirty pounds, with me; and here’—pencilling a few words on a leaf which he tore out of the book—‘is my written promise for two seventy. I will send you a cheque to-morrow.’

‘Nothing,’ observed Hold, ‘could be more satisfactory. Don’t send a groom; grooms chatter; the post is safer. You won’t drink the rum, Sir Sykes? I will.’ And he swallowed the alcohol at a gulp, and then swept notes and paper into his pocket. ‘One thing more, Sir Sykes. I did not come here for hush-money and nothing else. I want you to take into your house and as a member of your family a person—of my recommending, Sir Sykes.’

‘I fail to comprehend you, Mr Hold,’ said the baronet stiffly.

The other laughed. ‘Her name,’ he said, ‘is Ruth.’

‘Ruth!’ exclaimed Sir Sykes, starting from his seat, and speaking so unguardedly that the unwashed crew at the firelit end of the room turned to peer at him.

‘Yes, Ruth. Don’t you like the name?’ asked the fellow coarsely. ‘My sister, Ruth Hold.’

‘Ruth—your sister—yours—at Carbery?’ gasped out the bewildered baronet.

‘You need not be afraid,’ was the rough reply: ‘she won’t disgrace your fine house or your dainty ways. I doubt if your misses at home are more thoroughly the lady than Ruth Hold—my—sister.’

‘You must see, your own good sense must shew you,’ stammered out Sir Sykes, looking the picture of abject terror, as the smoky glare of the lamp fell on his pale face, ‘that even were I willing to consent to so extraordinary—— In short it cannot be.’

‘Sorry for you, then!’ returned Hold with a shrug; ‘for on your acceptance of these terms alone is my silence to be bought. Come, come, shipmate! hear reason. Ruth shall bear any surname you like, and it can’t be hard to account for her coming to Carbery. You knew her father—an old friend—military—died in India—left you her guardian, Ruth’s guardian; eh, Sir Sykes?’

‘I—I will take time to think of it,’ said the baronet confusedly. ‘You shall hear from me to-morrow. And now, I had better go.’

And he rose. Hold re-conducted him, civilly enough, as far as the outer door, and watched him depart through the howling wind and driving rain towards Carbery. But what neither Hold nor Sir Sykes could have conjectured was that Jasper Denzil, hidden in a crazy arbour among the sunflowers and pot-herbs of the inn garden, hard by the open window, had during the greater portion of the interview played the part of an unsuspected eavesdropper, and was now on his way by another route to Carbery Chase.

ANALOGIES OF ANIMAL AND PLANT LIFE.

The boundary-line between the lowest forms of animal and vegetable life is of a most indefinite character. Nature would seem to have been guilty of many inconsistencies in her arrangement of these organisms; for a being which at one period of its existence exhibits the common characteristics of a plant, may at another period possess the attributes of an animal. Such an organism is found in the form of a fungus which grows on the surface of tan-pits. Under slightly altered conditions it becomes a locomotive creature capable of feeding upon solid matter. Naturalists have therefore always felt a difficulty in deciding which of these doubtful organisms should be classed with the one kingdom and which with the other. Indeed it has been seriously proposed to form a separate class for their reception, a kind of ‘no-man’s land’ to which they might by general consent be relegated.

It would at first appear that a sufficient distinction would be made if such organisms as possess the power of spontaneous movement were at once called animals. But this classification would prove to be most erroneous, for many plants possess the power of movement in a very high degree. The swarm-spores of such algæ as seaweeds, for instance, swim actively about by means of minute filaments or cilia. They were on this account long supposed to be animalcules, and it was not until they were found to ultimately develop into the plants from which they sprung, that their real place in nature was determined. These swarm-spores, common enough in the sea and in pools and ditches all the world over, are particles of matter which detach themselves from their parent cells, and after a longer or shorter time of activity, come to rest and form new algæ. They are provided with two or more vibratile cilia—minute processes which we more fully alluded to in a recent paper on ‘Bell Animalcules.’

The suggestion that animals should be distinguished by their motor powers is also fallacious, for the reason that many animals do not possess this power. Sponges, for instance, are organised bodies which remain stationary attached to rocks. But their system of pores and vents, through which a constant circulation is maintained, and by means of which they are supplied with particles of solid matter as food, most certainly entitle them to be ranked as animals.

The similarity between the lowest organisms of the two kingdoms does not seem so extraordinary after all, when by the help of the microscope we examine their structural details. In both we find a similar semi-fluid matter called protoplasm, which has been defined as ‘the physical basis of life.’ In the cellular tissues of many plants this fluid may, with a sufficiently high magnifying power, be seen in a state of ceaseless activity. It is composed of four elements, namely carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. An analogous substance is found in white of egg, and protoplasm itself is one of the constituents of blood. Many of our readers will know that the colour of blood is due to innumerable red bodies called corpuscles, so minute, that myriads will be contained in one drop of the vital fluid. But there are also other corpuscles quite devoid of colour. These are minute particles of protoplasm, and like the same matter in plants, they exhibit peculiar phenomena of motion, allied to those seen in the Amœba or ‘Proteus-animalcule.’ We may therefore conclude that the vital principle in both animals and plants is the same, and that the tissues of both are built up of this protoplasm; the point of difference being that, whereas animals obtain it ready-made from plants, the latter are the manufacturers of it from mineral or inorganic sources.

There are of course, besides the mere chemical constituents of protoplasm, other conditions necessary to vitality. A certain range of temperature would seem to be the most important, if we except perhaps the presence of water, without which life can hardly exist. But even here a curious exception is presented to us in the Rotifera or wheel-animalcules—formerly alluded to in this Journal in an article on ‘Suspended Animation’—which may be kept in a state of dried dust for many years, and which, on the addition of a drop of water, will resume their original vigour and rapid movement. The so-called mummy-wheat which is said to germinate after a burial of some thousands of years, is an instance of this retention of the life-principle in plants. Light as well as heat also plays an important part in the mystery of vitality, although it is a curious but well-authenticated fact that the mere growth of plants is most rapid in darkness. We may see an instance of this in the stems of a growing plant which is placed near a window. They will all be bent towards the glass. Hence it is a common saying that they are attracted by the light. But the real reason for this bent form is, that their darker side grows more rapidly than the rest of the plant, forcing it to assume a curved form.

It is in the nature of their food that plants and animals shew the most marked points of difference. We may state as a broad rule that all living things have the power of taking in foreign matter, wherewith to supply and replenish their various parts. This process, in which the many units which make up the structure are constantly dying away and being reproduced, constitutes what we call growth. In carrying out this function, animals convert organic into inorganic matter, whilst plants do precisely the reverse. They may both be described as digesting their food—if we accept as a definition of the term digestion, that process by which insoluble food is reduced to a soluble form fitted for absorption. In the animal this process is performed by means of glands or their analogues in lower animals, which open upon the internal surface of the stomach, and which secrete an acid fluid called the gastric juice. This fluid contains pepsine—a dried preparation of which, obtained from the stomach of the pig, forms a valuable remedy in the treatment of indigestion. Its power of dissolving organic matter is so subtle, that even after death it may act upon the stomach itself, as well as upon any of the other organs with which it may come in contact. The problem as to why the stomach is during life preserved from destruction by its own secretion, was long a puzzle to physiologists; but it has been decided according to one opinion, that the alkalinity of the blood, which constantly circulates through the tissues, protects them from injury by its neutralising influence.

In plants the function of digestion is the same in principle, although the absence of a mouth and special digestive organs renders it different in detail. Plants require inorganic matters for support. Potatoes and turnips will, for instance, withdraw immense quantities of alkaline matter from the soil. Beans and peas will rob the ground in like manner of its lime, while the various kinds of grasses will choose silica for their nourishment. It is this selective property of plants which renders necessary the rotation of crops. A succession of alkaline plants would in time render the ground quite unproductive of vegetation of that kind; but if a proper rotation of crops be observed—the soil, whilst giving up one of its constituents, is gradually regaining those which it has previously lost. A consideration of these conditions of agriculture forms the very groundwork of scientific farming.

Exceptions to the rule that plants consume inorganic matter are furnished by certain fungi and also by the insectivorous plants. One of these latter, the Dionæa muscipula, or Venus’s flytrap, we fully described some months ago; but the subject is so replete with interest that we shall not hesitate to recur to it and to refer to some of the other members of the same family.

Without reproducing our description of the Dionæa, we may assist our readers’ memory by shortly stating that the leaf of the plant is formed of two lobes joined by a midrib, and that each half of the leaf is furnished with three sensitive hairs. On a fly or other insect settling on the leaf and so irritating these hairs, the two lobes gradually close and imprison the intruder. The most remarkable property of the plant is that it not only kills insects in this way, but that it actually digests them in a manner exceedingly similar to that by which animals are nourished; for after the prey is secured, a liquid secreted in the upper part of the leaf is exuded, and this liquid is analogous with that furnished in the case of animals by the glands of the digestive mucous membrane. The closeness of the analogy will be better understood by referring to an experiment which was made with a view to testing the solvent powers of this secretion. A slice chipped from a dog’s tooth was placed between the lobes of a Dionæa leaf. After some days the lobes were separated, and the piece of tooth was found to be in such a soft fibrous condition that it was torn to shreds by the slight force employed in removing it. This energetic power of the secretion will remind the reader of what we have already said regarding the action of the gastric juice upon the animal tissues after death. Another curious point of similarity between the two fluids is observed in the fact that in both cases the secretion is stimulated by the presence of food.

It seems almost incredible to think how such a peculiarity in a plant should have, until very recent years, remained in obscurity. It is true that more than a century ago an English naturalist described it, and submitted his observations to Linnæus. But since that time the matter had aroused very little interest, until some few years ago when Darwin published his wonderful book on Insectivorous Plants. This want of attention is evidently due to the fact that Linnæus himself merely looked upon the plant as one, like the sensitive plant, having an excitable structure. He regarded the imprisoned insects as merely an accidental occurrence, stating it as his opinion that they were probably released when the leaf re-opened. The matter was thus quietly set at rest by a great authority, and no more was heard of the Dionæa until an able naturalist of North Carolina, where the plant is indigenous, again called attention to it.

Another plant belonging to this group has several peculiarities which are worthy of notice. We allude to the Sarracenia, which is found in the eastern states of North America. This plant grows in bogs and similar moist neighbourhoods. The leaf consists of a trumpet-shaped tube half covered with an arched lid. This tube exhibits a smooth and slippery surface for some distance down its interior; but lower still it is studded with bristles, its lowest depths being filled with a fluid of intoxicating properties. Round the mouth of the pitcher thus formed exude drops of a sweet viscid fluid. The Nepenthes form another branch of the family of Pitcher-plants, including many different species. Indigenous to the Asiatic Archipelago, their appearance is that of a half-shrubby climbing plant, the leaf of which terminates in a long stem, to which is attached a hanging pitcher. These pitchers vary in length from an inch to a foot, or even more; indeed some are large enough to entrap a bird or small quadruped. Their structure is not so complicated as those of the Sarracenia, although in other respects they greatly resemble them; while in both cases the digestive functions are closely allied with those of the Dionæa. But the most seductive of all these traps for unwary insects is certainly the Darlingtonia. Its victim is first of all attracted by the bright colour of its petals, and after it has settled upon the plant, and helped to fertilise it by the movement of its body against the pollen, it slips into a treacherous pitcher, to be first intoxicated, and then totally annihilated. Surely there will be no difficulty in finding an analogy here to certain social institutions belonging to the higher order of animals!

The electrical phenomena common to both plants and animals must next claim our attention. The celebrated Galvani was the first to direct attention to the existence of an electrical current in the muscle of a frog’s leg. Volta disputed this, and insisted that the current produced by Galvani was due to certain metallic connections which he employed, and not to any inherent electricity in the muscle itself. Since Galvani’s time, however, numerous investigators have followed up his researches; and it is now an accepted fact that every exertion of muscular force is accompanied by a current analogous to electricity, the strength of which is in exact proportion to the mechanical power called into play. It is a curious fact that this peculiar force remains in the muscle for a certain time after death, but it is totally lost so soon as rigidity sets in, and no earthly power can recall it. It may therefore be considered as essentially a vital phenomenon. It is moreover greater in mammals than in birds, and is least noticeable in reptiles and fishes. But we must not omit to mention that among the latter are found several which have a powerful electric battery as their chief defensive power. The Mediterranean torpedo—one of the Ray or Skate family of fishes—after which our most modern engines of war are named, is the chief of these.

Although it has long been known that currents of electricity existed in plants, such currents were attributed to chemical reaction between the external moisture and the internal juices of the plants themselves, and also to atmospheric disturbance. They have therefore hitherto borne very little analogy to the muscular electricity of animals. But very recently the subject has received great attention; in fact the electrical disturbance consequent on the excitation of the leaf of our old acquaintance the Dionæa, formed part of the subject of a paper lately read before the Royal Society. The authors of this contribution to our knowledge of a very obscure subject, proved by numerous delicate experiments that the current which accompanied the closure of the leaf in question was in every respect similar to that obtained from the muscles of animals.