our paper, and chanticleer (the same, we trust, that we heard the other day) seems to crow in a very different style, lord of the ascendant, and as willing to be with his wives abroad as at home. We think we see him, as in Chaucer's homestead: He looketh, as it were, a grim leoùn ; And on his toes he roameth up and down; Will the reader have the rest of the picture, as Chaucer gave it? It is as bright and strong as the day itself, and as suited to it as a falcon to a knight's fist. Hear how the old poet throws forth his strenuous music; as fine, considered as mere music and versification, as the description is pleasant and noble. His comb was redder than the fine corall, Hardly one pause like the other throughout, and yet all flowing and sweet. The pause on the third syllable in the last line but one, and that on the sixth in the last, together with the deep variety of vowels, make a beautiful concluding couplet; and indeed the whole is a study for versification. So little were those old poets unaware of their task, as some are apt to suppose them; and so little have others dreamt, that they surpassed them in their own pretensions. The accent, it is to be observed, in those concluding words, as coral and colour, is to be thrown on the last syllable, as it is in Italian. Color, colòre, and Chaucer's old Anglo-Gallican word, is a much nobler one than our modern one colour. We have injured many such words, by throwing back the accent. We should beg pardon for this digression, if it had not been part of our understood agreement with the reader to be as desultory as we please, and as befits Companions. Our very enjoyment of the day we are describing would not let us be otherwise. It is also an old fancy of ours to associate the ideas of Chaucer with that of any early and vigorous manifestation of light and pleasure. He is not only the "morning-star" of our poetry, as Denham called him, but the morning itself, and a good bit of the noon; and we could as soon help quoting him at the beginning of the year, as we could help wishing to hear the cry of primroses, and thinking of the sweet faces that buy them. [PART 11.] IV. WALKS HOME BY NIGHT IN BAD WEATHER. WATCHMEN.. THE readers of these our lucubrations need not be informed that we keep no carriage. The consequence is, that being visitors of the theatre, and having some inconsiderate friends who grow pleasanter and pleasanter till one in the morning, we are great walkers home by night; and this has made us great acquaintances of watchmen, moon-light, mud-light, and other accompaniments of that interesting hour. Luckily we are fond of a walk by night. It does not always do us good; but that is not the fault of the hour, but our own, who ought to be stouter; and therefore we extract what good we can out of our necessity, with becoming temper. It is a remarkable thing in nature, and one of the good-naturedest things we know of her, that the mere fact of looking about us, and being conscious of what is going on, is its own reward, if we do but notice it in goodhumour. Nature is a great painter (and art and society are among her works), to whose minutest touches the mere fact of becoming alive is to enrich the stock of our enjoyments. We confess there are points liable to cavil in a walk home by night in February. Old umbrellas have their weak sides; and the quantity of mud and rain may surmount the picturesque. Mistaking a soft piece of mud for hard, and so filling your shoe with it, especially at setting out, must be acknowledged to be "aggravating." But then you ought to have boots. There are sights, indeed, in the streets of London, which can be rendered pleasant by no philosophy; things too grave to be talked about in our present paper; but we must premise, that our walk leads us out of town, and through streets and suburbs of by no means the worst description. Even there we may be grieved if we will. The farther the walk into the country, the more tiresome we may choose to find it; and when we take it purely to oblige others, we must allow, as in the case of a friend of ours, that generosity itself on two sick legs may find limits to the notion of virtue being its own reward, and reasonably "curse those comfortable people" who, by the lights in their windows, are getting into their warm beds, and saying to one another, "Bad thing to be out of doors to-night." Supposing, then, that we are in a reasonable state of health and comfort in other respects, if you choose to meet with them. The worst we say that a walk home at night has its merits, part of it is the setting out; the closing of the But their words and looks, on the other hand, door upon the kind faces that part with you. may set you well off. We have known a word last us all the way home, and a look make a dream of it. To a lover for instance no walk can be bad. He sees but one face in the rain and darkness; the same that he saw by the light in the warm room. This ever accompanies him, looking in his eyes; and if the most pitiable and spoilt face in the world should come between them, startling him with the saddest mockery of love, he would treat it kindly for her sake. But this is a begging of the question. A lover does not walk. He is sensible neither to the pleasures nor pains of walking. He treads on air; and in the thick of all that seems inclement, has an avenue of light and velvet spread for him, like a sovereign prince. To resume, then, like men of this world. The advantage of a late hour, is that everything is silent and the people fast in their beds. This gives the whole world a tranquil appearance. Inanimate objects are no calmer than passions and cares now seem to be, all laid asleep. The human being is motionless as the house or the tree; sorrow is suspended; and you endeavour to think that love only is awake. Let not readers of true delicacy be alarmed, for we mean to touch profanely upon nothing that ought to be sacred; and as we are for thinking the best on these occasions, it is of the best love we think; love of no heartless order, and such only as ought to be awake with the. stars. As to cares and curtain-lectures, and suchlike abuses of the tranquillity of night, we call to mind, for their sakes, all the sayings of the poets and others about "balmy sleep," and the soothing of hurt minds, and the weariness of sorrow, which drops into forgetfulness. The great majority are certainly "fast as a church" by the time we speak of; and for the rest, we are among the workers who have been sleepless for their advantage; so we take out our licence to forget them for the time being. The only thing that shall remind us of them is the red lamp, shining afar over the apothecary's door; which, while it does so, reminds us also that there is help for them to be had. I see him now, the pale blinker suppressing the conscious injustice of his anger at being roused by the apprentice, and fumbling himself out of the house, in hoarseness and great-coat, resolved to make the sweetness of the Christmas bill indemnify him for the bitterness of the moment. But we shall be getting too much into the interior of the houses. By this time the hackney-coaches have all left the stands a good symptom of their having got their day's money. Crickets are heard, here and there, amidst the embers of some kitchen. A dog follows us. Will nothing make him "go along?" We dodge him in vain; we run; we stand and "hish!" at him, accompanying the prohibition with dehortatory gestures, and an imaginary picking up of a stone. We turn again, and there he is vexing our skirts. He even forces us into an angry doubt whether he will not starve, if we do not let him go home with us. Now if we could but lame him without being " cruel; or if we were only an overseer, or a beadle, or a dealer in dog-skin; or a political economist, to think dogs unnecessary. Oh! come, he has turned a corner, he is gone; we think we see him trotting off at a distance, thin and muddy; and our heart misgives us. But it was not our fault; we were not "hishing" at the time. His departure was lucky, for he had got our enjoyments into a dilemma; our "article" would not have known what to do with him. These are the perplexities to which your sympathizers are liable. We resume our way, independent and alone; for we have no companion this time, except our never-to-beforgotten and ethereal companion, the reader. A real arm within another's puts us out of the pale of walking that is to be made good. It is good already. A fellow-pedestrian is company; is the party you have left; you talk and laugh, and there is no longer anything to be contended with. But alone, and in bad weather, and with a long way to go, here is something for the temper and spirits to grapple with and turn to account; and accordingly we are booted and buttoned up, an umbrella over our heads, the rain pelting upon it, and the lamp-light shining in the gutters; "mud-shine," as an artist of our acquaintance used to call it, with a gusto of reprobation. Now, walk cannot well be worse; and yet it shall be nothing if you meet it heartily. There is a pleasure in overcoming obstacles; mere action is something; imagination is more; and the spinning of the blood, and vivacity of the mental endeavour, act well upon one another, and gradually put you in a state of robust consciousness and triumph. Every time you set down your leg, you have a respect for it. The umbrella is held in the hand like a roaring trophy. We are now reaching the country: the fog and rain are over; and we meet our old friends the watchmen, staid, heavy, indifferent, more coat than man, pondering, yet not pondering, old but not reverend, immensely useless. No; useless they are not; for the inmates of the houses think them otherwise, and in that imagination they do good. We do not pity the watchmen as we used. Old age often cares little for regular sleep. They could not be sleeping perhaps if they were in their beds; and certainly they would not be earning. What sleep they get is perhaps sweeter in the watch-box, a forbidden sweet; and they have a sense of importance, and a claim on the persons in-doors, which, together with the amplitude of their coating, and the possession of the box itself, make them feel themselves, not without reason, to be "somebody." They are peculiar and official. Tomkins is a cobbler as well as they; but then he is no watchman. He cannot speak to "things of night;" nor bid "any man stand in the king's name." He does not get fees and gratitude from the old, the infirm, and the drunken; nor "let gentle men go;" nor is he "a parish-man." The church wardens don't speak to him. If he put himself ever so much in the way of " the great plumber," he would not say, “How do you find yourself, Tomkins?"-" An ancient and quiet watchman." Such he was in the time of Shakspeare, and such he is now. Ancient, because he cannot help it; and quiet, because he will not help it, if possible; his object being to procure quiet on all sides, his own included. For this reason he does not make too much noise in crying the hour, nor is offensively particular in his articulation. No man shall sleep the worse for him, out of a horrid sense of the word "three." The sound shall be three, four, or one, as suits their mutual convenience. Yet characters are to be found even among watchmen. They are not all mere coat, and lump, and indifference. By the way, what do they think of in general? How do they vary the monotony of their ruminations from one to two, and from two to three, and so on? Are they comparing themselves with the unofficial cobbler; thinking of what they shall have for dinner to-morrow; or what they were about six years ago; or that their lot is the hardest in the world, as insipid old people are apt to think, for the pleasure of grumbling; or that it has some advantages nevertheless, besides fees; and that if they are not in bed, their wife is ! Of characters, or rather varieties among watchmen, we remember several. One was a Dandy Watchman, who used to ply at the top of Oxford-street, next the park. We called him the dandy, on account of his utterance. He had a mincing way with it, pronouncing the a in the word "past" as it is in hat, making a little preparatory hem before he spoke, and then bringing out his "past ten" in a style of genteel indifference; as if, upon the whole, he was of that opinion. Another was the Metallic Watchman, who paced the same street towards Hanover-square, and had a clang in his voice like a trumpet. He was a voice and nothing else; but any difference is something in a watchman. A third who cried the hour in Bedfordsquare, was remarkable in his calling for being abrupt and loud. There was a fashion among his tribe just come up at that time, of omitting the words "past" and "o'clock," and crying only the number of the hour. I know not whether a recollection I have of his performance one night is entire matter of fact, or whether any subsequent fancies of what might have taken place are mixed up with it; but my impression is, that as I was turning the corner into the square with a friend, and was in the midst of a discussion in which numbers were concerned, we were suddenly startled, as if in solution of it, by a brief and tremendous outcry of-ONE. This paragraph ought to have been at the bottom of the page, and the word printed abruptly round the corner. A fourth watchman was a very singular phenomenon, a Reading Watchman. He had a book, which he read by the light of his lantern; and instead of a pleasant, gave you a very uncomfortable idea of him. It seemed cruel to pitch amidst so many discomforts and privations one who had imagination enough to wish to be relieved from them. Nothing but a sluggish vacuity befits a watchman. But the oddest of all was the Sliding Watchman. Think of walking up a street in the depth of a frosty winter, with long ice in the gutters, and sleet over head, and then figure to yourself a sort of bale of a man in white coming sliding towards you with a lantern in one hand, and an umbrella over his head. It was the oddest mixture of luxury and hardship, of juvenility and old age! But this looked agreeable. Animal spirits carry everything before them; and our invincible friend seemed a watchman for Rabelais. Time was run at and butted by him like a goat. The slide seemed to bear him half through the night at once; he slipped from out of his box and his common-places at one rush of a merry thought, and seemed to say, "Everything's in imagination;-here goes the whole weight of my office." But we approach our home. How still the trees! How deliciously asleep the country! How beautifully grim and nocturnal this wooded avenue of ascent, against the cold white sky! The watchmen and patroles, which the careful citizens have planted in abundance within a mile of their doors, salute us with their "good mornings ;"-not so welcome as we pretend; for we ought not to be out so late; and it is one of the assumptions of these fatherly old fellows to remind us of it. Some fowls, who have made a strange roost in a tree, flutter as we pass them ;-another pull up the hill, unyielding; a few strides on a level; and there is the light in the window, the eye of the warm soul of the house,-one's home. How particular, and yet how universal, is that word; and how surely does it deposit every one for himself in his own nest! V.-SECRET OF SOME EXISTING FASHIONS have a short life or a long one, according as it suits the makers to startle us with a variety, or save themselves observation of a defect. Hence fashions set by young or handsome people are fugitive, and such are, for the most part, those that bring custom to the milliner. If we keep watch on an older one, we shall generally trace it, unless of general convenience, to some pertinacity on the part of Mr. the aged. Even fashions, otherwise convenient, as the trousers that have so long taken place of smallclothes, often perhaps owe their continuance to some general defect, which they help to screen. The old are glad to retain them, and so be confounded with the young; and among the latter, there are more limbs perhaps to which loose clothing is acceptable, than tight. More legs and knees, we suspect, rejoice in those cloaks, than would be proud to acknowledge themselves in a shoe and stocking. The pertinacity of certain male fashions during the last twenty years, we think we can trace to a particular source. If it be objected, that the French partook of them, and that our modes have generally come from that country, we suspect that the old court in France had more to do with them, than Napoleon's, which was confessedly masculine and military. The old French in this country, and the old noblesse in the other, wore bibs and trousers, when the Emperor went in a plain stock and delighted to show his good leg. For this period, if for this only, we are of opinion, that whether the male fashions did or did not originate in France, other circumstances have conspired to retain them in both countries, for which the revolutionary government cannot account. Hazlitt informs us in his Life of Napoleon, that during the consulate, all the courtiers were watching the head of the state to know whether mankind were to wear their own hair or powder; and that Bonaparte luckily settled the matter, by deciding in favour of nature and cleanliness. But here the revolutionary authority stopped; nor in this instance did it begin: for it is understood, that it was the plain head of Dr. Franklin, when he was ambassador at Paris, that first amused, and afterwards interested, the giddy polls of his new acquaintances; who went and did likewise. Luckily, this was a fashion that suited all ages, and on that account it has survived. But the bibs, and the trousers, and the huge neckcloths, whence come they? How is it, at least, that they have been so long retained? Observe that polished old gentleman, who bows so well, and is conversing with the most agreeable of physicians. He made a great impression in his youth, and was naturally loath to give it up. On a sudden he finds his throat not so juvenile as he could wish it. Up goes his stock, and enlarges. He rests both his cheeks upon it, the chin settling comfortably upon a bend in the middle, as becomes its delicacy. By and bye, he thinks the cheeks themselves do not present as good an aspect as with so young a heart might in reason be expected; and forth issue the points of his shirtcollar, and give them an investment at once cherishing and spirited. Thirdly, he suspects his waist to have played him a trick of good living, and surpassed the bounds of youth and elegance before he was well aware of it. † Sir William K. The late King. * Therefore, to keep it seemingly, if not actually within limits, forth he sends a frill in the first instance, and a padded set of lapels afterwards. He happens to look on the hand that does all this, and discerns with a sigh that it is not quite the same hand to look at, which the women have been transported to kiss; though for that matter they will kiss it still, and be transported too. The wrist-band looks forth, and says, "Shall I help to cover it?" and it is allowed to do so, being a gentlemanly finish, and impossible to the mechanical. But finally the legs they were amongst the handsomest in the world; and how did they not dance! What conquests did they not achieve in the time of hoop-petticoats and toupees! long afterwards, were not Apollo and Hercules found in them together, to the delight of the dowagers? And shall the gods be treated with disrespect, when the heaviness of change comes upon them? No. Round comes the kindly trouserian veil (as Dyer of" The Fleece" would have had it); the legs retreat, like other conquerors, into retirement; and only the lustre of their glory remains, such as Bonaparte might have envied. And VI.-RAIN OUT OF A CLEAR SKY. In a work, De Varia Historia, written after the manner of Ælian, by Leonico Tomeo, an elegant scholar of the fifteenth century, we meet with the following pretty story:-When Phalantus led his colony out of Sparta into the south of Italy, he consulted the oracle of Apollo, and was informed that he should know the region he was to inhabit, by the fall of a plentiful shower out of a clear sky. Full of doubt and anxiety at this answer, and unable to meet with any one who could interpret it for him, he took his departure, arrived in Italy, but could succeed in occupying no region,-in capturing no city. This made him fall to considering the oracle more particularly; upon which he came to the conclusion, that he had undertaken a foolish project, and that the gods meant to tell him so; for that a sky should be clear, and yet the rain out of it plentiful, now seemed to him a manifest impossibility. Tired out with the anxious thoughts arising from this conclusion, he laid his head on the lap of his wife, who had come with him, and took such a draught of sleep as the fatigue of sorrow is indulged with, like other toil. His wife loved him; and as he lay thus tenderly in her lap, she kept looking upon his face; till thinking of the disappointments he had met with, and the perils he had still to undergo, she began to weep bitterly, so that the tears fell plentifully upon him, and awoke him. He looked up, and seeing those showers out of her eyes, hailed at last the oracle with joy, for his wife's name was thra, which signifies clear sky;" and thus he knew that he had arrived at the region where he was to settle. The next night he took Tarentum, which was the greatest city in those parts; and he and his posterity reigned in that quarter of Italy, as you may see in Virgil. VIL-THE MOUNTAIN OF THE TWO WE forget in what book it was, many years ago, that we read the story of a lover who was to win his mistress by carrying her to the top of a mountain, and how he did win her, and how they ended their days on the same spot. We think the scene was in Switzerland; but the mountain, though high enough to tax his stout heart to the uttermost, must have been among the lowest. Let us fancy it a good lofty bill in the summer-time. It was, at any rate, so high, that the father of the lady, a proud noble, thought it impossible for a young man so burdened to scale it. For this reason alone, in scorn, he bade him do it, and his daughter should be his. The peasantry assembled in the valley to witness so extraordinary a sight. They measured the mountain with their eyes; they communed with one another, and shook their heads; but all admired the young man; and some of his fellows, looking at their mistresses, thought they could do as much. The father was on horseback, apart and sullen, repenting that he had subjected his daughter even to the show of such a hazard; but he thought it would teach his inferiors a lesson. The young man (the son of a small land-proprietor, who had some pretensions to wealth, though none to nobility) stood, respectful-looking, but confident, rejoicing in his heart that he should win his mistress, though at the cost of a noble pain, which he could hardly think of as a pain, considering who it was that he was to carry. If he died for it, he should at least have had her in his arms, and have looked her in the face. To clasp her person in that manner was a pleasure which he contemplated with such transport as is known only to real lovers; for none others know how respect heightens the joy of dispensing with formality, and how the dispensing with the formality ennobles and makes grateful the respect. The lady stood by the side of her father, pale, desirous, and dreading. She thought her lover would succeed, but only because she thought him in every respect the noblest of his sex, and that nothing was too much for his strength and valour. Great fears came over her nevertheless. She knew not what might happen, in the chances common to all. She felt the bitterness of being herself the burden to him and the task; and dared neither to look at her father nor the mountain. She fixed her eyes, now on the crowd (which nevertheless she beheld not) and now on her hand and her fingers' ends, which she doubled up towards her with a pretty pretence, the only deception she had ever used. Once or twice a daughter or a mother slipped out of the crowd, and coming up to her, notwithstanding their fears of the lord baron, kissed that hand which she knew not what to do with. The father said, "Now, sir, to put an end to this mummery ;" and the lover, turning pale for the first time, took up the lady. The spectators rejoice to see the manner in which he moves off, slow but secure, and as if encouraging his mistress. They mount the hill; they proceed well; he halts an instant before he gets midway, and seems refusing something; then ascends at a quicker rate; and now being at the midway point, shifts the lady from one side to the other. The spectators give a great shout. The baron, with an air of indifference, bites the tip of his gauntlet, and then casts on them an eye of rebuke. At the shout the lover resumes his way. Slow but not feeble is his step, yet it gets slower. He stops again, and they think they see the lady kiss him on the forehead. The women begin to tremble, but the men say he will be victorious. He resumes again; he is half-way between the middle and the top; he rushes, he stops, he staggers; but he does not fall. Another shout from the men, and he resumes once more; two-thirds of the remaining part of the way are conquered. They are certain the lady kisses him on the forehead and on the eyes. The women burst into tears, and the stoutest men look pale. He ascends slowlier than ever, but seeming to be more sure. He halts, but it is only to plant his foot to go on again; and thus he picks his way, planting his foot at every step, and then gaining ground with an effort. The lady lifts up her arms, as if to lighten him. See! he is almost at the top; he stops, he struggles, he moves sideways, taking very little steps, and bringing one foot every time close to the other. Now -he is all but on the top; he halts again; he is fixed; he staggers. A groan goes through the multitude. Suddenly, he turns full front towards the top; it is luckily almost a level; he staggers, but it is forward:-Yes :-every limb in the multitude makes a movement as if it would assist him :-see at last! he is on the top; and down he falls flat with his burden. An enormous shout! He has won he has Now he has a right to caress his mistress, and she is caressing him, for neither of them gets up. If he has fainted, it is with joy, and it is in her arms. won. The baron put spurs to his horse, the crowd following him. Half-way he is obliged to dismount; they ascend the rest of the hill together, the crowd silent and happy, the baron ready to burst with shame and impatience. |