Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 401, March 1849

How stands the government of the country after the year's republicanism? At its head is the Republican President, elected by the immense majority of the country, but elected upon a deceptive basis – elected neither for his principles, which were doubtful; nor for his qualities, which were unknown or supposed to be null; nor even for his name, (although much error has been founded upon the subject,) which, after all, dazzled only a comparatively small minority – but because he was supposed to represent the principle opposed to republicanism – opposed to the very régime he was elected to support – opposed to that spirit of which the man who had once saved the country from anarchy, and had once received the country's blessings, was considered to be the type – because hopes were founded on his advent of a change in a system of government uncongenial, and even hateful, to the mass of the nation; whether by the prestige of his name he attempted to re-establish an empire, or whether, as another Monk, he formed only a stepping-stone for a new monarch. Elected thus upon false principles, the head of the government stands in an eminently false position. He may have shown himself moderate; inclined to support the republic upon that "honest" basis which the better-thinking republicans demand; firm in the support of a cabinet, the measures of which he approves; and every way sincere and straightforward, although not in all his actions wise: but his position remains the same – placed between the ambitious hope of a party which might almost be said to exist no longer, and which has become that only of a family and a few old adherents and connexions, but which attempts to dazzle a country vain and proud of the word "glory," like France, by the somewhat tarnished glitter of a name, and the prospect of another which calls itself legitimate; – the point de mire of the army, but, at the same time, the stalking-horse of a nation miserably wearied with the present hobby, upon which it has been forced unwillingly to ride, with about as much pleasure and aplomb as the famous tailor of Brentford – and, on the other hand, suspected, accused, and denounced by those who claim to themselves the only true and pure essence of veritable republicanism. It is a position placed upon a "see-saw" – placed in the centre, it is true, but liable, in any convulsive crisis, to be seriously compromised by the violent and abrupt elevation of either of the ends of the plank, as it tosses up and down: for the feet of the president, instead of directing the movements of this perpetually agitated "see-saw," and giving the necessary steadiness, without which the whole present republican balance must be overturned, seem more destined to slip hither and thither in the struggle, at the imminent risk of losing all equilibrium, and slipping off the plank altogether. As yet, the president, whenever he appears in public, is followed by shouting and admiring crowds, who run by his horse, clap their hands, call upon his name, greet him with noisy cries of "vive," grasp his hands, and of course present some hundreds of petitions; but these demonstrations of respect must be attributed far less to personal consideration, or popular affection, or even to the prestige of the name of Napoleon, than to the eagerness of the Parisian public, even of the lowest classes – spite of all that may be said of their sentiments by their would-be leaders, the ultra-democrats – to salute with acclamation the personage who represents a head, a chief, a point d'appui quelconque– a leading staff, a guiding star, a unity, instead of a disorderly body – in one word, a resemblance of royalty. It is the president, and not the man, who is thus greeted. The usual curiosity and love of show and parade of the Parisian badauds, at least as "cockney" as the famed Londoner, may be much mixed up again in all this, but the sentiment remains the same; nor do these demonstrations alter the position of the man who stands at the head of the government of France. The ministry, supported in principle by the country, although not from any personal respect or liking, stands in opposition to an Assembly, elected by that country, but no longer representing it. The army shows itself inclined to protect the government, on the one hand, and is said to be ready, on the other, to follow in the cry of "vive l'Empereur!" should that cry be raised. The garde mobile, although modified by its late reorganisation, is suspected of versatility and unsoundness, if not exactly of disaffection: it stands in instant collision with the dislike and jealousy of the army, and, spite of its courageous part in June, is looked upon askance by the lovers of order. What aspect, then, have the figures which may be supposed to represent all this in the sum-total of the year's republicanism? They bear the forms of instability, suspicion, doubt, collision, want of confidence in the future, and all the evils attendant upon the uncertainty of a state of things which, spite of assurances, and spite of efforts, the greater part of France seems inclined to look upon merely as provisionary.

Under what form, then, does the public spirit exhibit itself in circumstances of so much doubt and instability? The attitude of the working classes in general, of the very great majority, in fact – for those still swayed by the delusive arguments, and still more delusive and destructive promises of the Socialists and Republicans are comparatively few, although formidable in the ferocity of their doctrines and their plans, and in the active restlessness of their feverish and excited energies, which resemble the reckless, sleepless, activity of the madman – the attitude of the working classes in Paris is calm, and even expectant; but calm from utter weariness – calm from the convictions, founded on the saddest experience, in the wretched results of further revolutions – calm from a sort of prostrate resignation, and almost despair, in the midst of the miseries and privations which the last fatal year has increased instead of diminishing, and written with a twofold scourge upon their backs: an attitude reassuring, inasmuch as it implies hatred and opposition to the subversive doctrines of the anarchists, but not without its dangers, and, to say the least, heartrending and afflicting – and expectant in the hope and conviction of change in the cause of stability and order. The feeling which, after a few months of the rule of a reckless provisionary government, was the prevailing one among the majority of the working classes – the feeling, which has been already noted, that king Log, or even king Stork, or any other concentrated power that would represent stability and order, would be preferable to the uncertainties of a vacillating republican rule – has ever gained ground among them since those hopes of re-established confidence, and a consequent amelioration of their wretched position, which they first founded upon the meeting of the National Assembly, and then upon the election of a president, have twice deceived them, and left them almost as wretched as ever in the stagnation of trade and commercial affairs. The feeling thus prevalent among the working classes in the capital, is, at the same time, the feeling of the country at large, but to an even far wider extent, and more openly expressed. The hatred of the departments to Paris, as the chief seat of revolution and disorder, has also increased rather than diminished; and everywhere the sentiments of utter weariness, disaffection to the Republic, and impatience under a system of government of which they are no longer inclined to await the promised blessings, are displayed upon all possible occasions, and by every possible organ. The upper classes among moneyed men, and landed proprietors, remain quiet and hold their tongue. They may be expectant and desirous of change also, but they show no open impatience, for they can afford to wait. It is they, on the contrary, who more generally express their opinions in the possibility of the establishment of a prosperous republic – a possibility which the working classes in their impatience deny. In spite of all that ultra-democratic journals may say, in their raving denunciations, borrowed of the language of another Republic, some of the most eager and decided of those they term "reactionary," and denounce as "aristocrats," are thus to be found among the lower working classes. To do justice to the truth of the accusations brought by the Red republican party, in another respect, it is in the bourgeois spirit that is to be found the strongest and most openly avowed reactionary feeling. It is impossible to enter any shop of the better order in Paris, and speak upon the position of affairs, without hearing not only the hope, but the expectation openly expressed, of a monarchic restoration, and that restoration in favour of the elder branch of the Bourbons. The feeling is universal in this class: the name of "Henri V.," scarce mentioned at all, and never under this title, during the reign of Louis Philippe, except in the exclusive circles of the Faubourg St Germain, is now in every shopkeeper's mouth. Louis Philippe, the Regency, all the members of the Orleans family, the Empire, a Bonapartist rule – all are set aside in the minds of these classes for the now-desired idol of their fickle choice, the Duke of Bordeaux. In these classes a restoration in favour of Henri V. is no longer a question of possibility; it is a mere question of time: it is not "L'aurons-nous?" that they ask; it is "Quand l'aurons-nous?" In this respect the real and true republicans, in the "honest" designation of the term, have certainly every reason to raise an angry clamour; if sedition to the existing régime of the country is not openly practised, it is, at all events, openly and generally expressed. Nor are their accusations brought against the government entirely without justice; for while, on the one hand, a measure of a nature altogether arbitrary, under the freedom of a republican rule, is exercised against a well-known artist, by seizing in his atelier the portraits of the Duke of Bordeaux, or, as he is called, the Count of Chambord, and of the Countess, as seditiously exhibited, lithographed likenesses of the Bourbon heir are to be seen on all sides at print-shop windows, and in popular temporary print-stalls; in galleries, arcades, and upon street walls; in vignettes, upon ballads, with such titles, as "Dieu le veut," or "La France le veut," or in busts of all dimensions. Again, the Henri-quinquiste feeling, as it is called, is universal among the fickle bourgeoisie of Paris – the rock upon which Louis Philippe founded his throne, and which sank under him in his hour of need: and the bourgeois, eager and confident in their hopes, wilfully shut their eyes to the fact that, were their detested republic overthrown, there might arise future convulsions, and future civil strife, between a Bonapartist faction – which necessarily grows, and increases, and flourishes more and more under the rule, however temporary, of a chief of the name – and the legitimist party: for the Orleanists, whether fused by a compromise of their hopes with the Legitimists, as has been said, or fallen into the obscurity of forgetfulness or indifference in the majority of the nation, hold forth no decided banner at the present moment. In regarding, then, the public spirit among the majority of all classes in Paris, without consulting the still more reactionary feeling of the departments, the figures to be added to the sum-total of the year's republican account will be again found similar to those already enumerated, in the shape of disaffection, abhorrence of the republican government, want of confidence in its stability, expectation and hope of a change, however it may come, and although it may be brought about by a convulsion.

Meanwhile the uncertainty and anxiety are increased by the continued expectation of some approaching crisis, which the explosion of the insurrection, destined for the 29th of January, would have hastened, and which the precautions taken for the suppression of the outbreak have evidently averted for the time. But what confidence can be expressed in the stability of this temporary state of order in a country so full of excitement and love of change, and in a state of continual revolution, in which such conspiracy ceases not to work in darkness, with the hope of attaining despotic power, and in which disaffection to the state of things is openly expressed? Events have run their course with such fearful rapidity, and the unexpected has been so greatly the "order of the day," in the last year's history of France, that who can answer for the future of the next months, or even weeks? Political prophets have long since thrown up the trade of oracle-giving in despair; and the tripod of the oracle has been left to the occupation of the chances of the imprévu. In spite, then, of the temporary reassurance of peace given by the last measures of the government, which have been denounced by the ultra-democrats as arbitrary, subversive, and unconstitutional, the underground agitation still continues. Paris dances once more, repeating to itself, however, the often-repeated words, "Nous dansons sur un volcan." The carnival pursues its noisy pleasures, under the protection of the forests of bayonets that are continually glittering along the gay sunlit streets, and to the sound of the drum of the marching military, who still give Paris the aspect of a garrison in time of war. Gay salons are opened, and carriages again rattle along the streets on moonlit nights; but the spirit of Parisian gaiety reposes not upon confidence, and is but the practical application of the epicurean philosophy that takes for its maxim, "Carpe diem."

Whatever may be the reality of an approaching crisis, which, however feeble the symptoms at present, the Parisians insist upon regarding as near at hand, – whatever may be the hopes of some that the crisis, however convulsive, must produce a desired change, and the fears of others of the civil strife, – whatever thus the desires of the sanguine, the expectations of the hopeful, the apprehensions of the peaceful, and the terrors of the timorous, the result is still the same – the uncertainty, the want of confidence, the evils attendant upon this feeling of instability, so often already enumerated. The violence and struggling rage of the ultra-democratic and socialist journals, increasing in denunciation to the death, and positively convulsive in their rage, as the anti-republican reactionary spirit grows, and spreads wider, and every day takes firmer root, and even dares to blossom openly in the expression of public opinion, are looked upon as the throes of dying agony by the bold, but are regarded with dread by the less courageous, who know the force of the party's exaggerated violence, and have already felt the miseries of their fanatic subversive attempts. Meanwhile, the moderate or honest republic, which vainly attempts a juste milieu of republicanism, between extravagance and disaffection, limps sadly forwards; or, as one of the late satirical pieces, which openly attack the republic on the stage, expresses it – amidst the applause and shouts of deriding laughter, which hail it nightly in crowded houses, not so much from the boxes as from the galleries thronged with types of the "people" – "Elle boîte! elle boîte!" Republicans may thus clamour against the culpable laxity of a government, which permits these much-applauded attacks upon the Republic, in accordance with the principle of freedom of opinion, and in pursuance of the abolition of a theatrical censorship which they themselves condemned: but so it is; and therein may be sought and found one of the strongest popular evidences of popular disaffection. And satires too, and caricatures, abound, in which the unhappy Republic is still more soundly scourged – demonstrations not less lively, although they call not forth the evident approbation of a congregated multitude. Now, then, that the revolutionary year has almost closed there – now that the anniversary of the days of February is at hand – let people take the figures enumerated, and justly enumerated, as they will, and place them as they fancy in the sum-total, and cast them up as they please, or deduce what value they may from the amount of the first year of new republicanism in France. Another question. What fêtes are to greet the anniversaries of the "glorious" days of the "glorious" revolution which established a "glorious" Republic? Assuredly the fête will not be in the people's hearts: no, not even in the hearts of those whom their mis-named, self-appointed friends choose to call, par excellence, "the people."

THE CAXTONS – PART XI

CHAPTER LII

The next day, on the outside of the Cambridge Telegraph, there was one passenger who ought to have impressed his fellow-travellers with a very respectful idea of his lore in the dead languages; for not a single syllable, in a live one, did he vouchsafe to utter from the moment he ascended that "bad eminence," to the moment in which he regained his mother earth. "Sleep," says honest Sancho, "covers a man better than a cloak." I am ashamed of thee, honest Sancho! thou art a sad plagiarist; for Tibullus said pretty nearly the same thing before thee, —

"Te somnus fusco velavit amictu."⁴

But is not silence as good a cloak as sleep? – does it not wrap a man round with as offusc and impervious a fold? Silence – what a world it covers! – what busy schemes – what bright hopes and dark fears – what ambition, or what despair! Do you ever see a man in any society sitting mute for hours, and not feel an uneasy curiosity to penetrate the wall he thus builds up between others and himself? Does he not interest you far more than the brilliant talker at your left – the airy wit at your right, whose shafts fall in vain on the sullen barrier of the silent man! Silence, dark sister of Nox and Erebus, how, layer upon layer, shadow upon shadow, blackness upon blackness, thou stretchest thyself from hell to heaven, over thy two chosen haunts – man's heart and the grave!

So, then, wrapped in my greatcoat and my silence, I performed my journey; and on the evening of the second day I reached the old-fashioned brick house. How shrill on my ears sounded the bell! How strange and ominous to my impatience seemed the light gleaming across the windows of the hall! How my heart beat as I watched the face of the servant who opened the gate to my summons!

"All well?" cried I.

"All well, sir," answered the servant, cheerfully. "Mr Squills, indeed, is with master, but I don't think there is anything the matter."

But now my mother appeared at the threshold, and I was in her arms.

"Sisty, Sisty! – my dear, dear son! – beggared, perhaps – and my fault, – mine."

"Yours! – come into this room, out of hearing – your fault?"

"Yes, yes! – for if I had had no brother, or if I had not been led away, – if I had, as I ought, entreated poor Austin not to – "

"My dear, dearest mother, you accuse yourself for what, it seems, was my uncle's misfortune – I am sure not even his fault! (I made a gulp there.) No, lay the fault on the right shoulders – the defunct shoulders of that horrible progenitor, William Caxton the printer; for, though I don't yet know the particulars of what has happened, I will lay a wager it is connected with that fatal invention of printing. Come, come, – my father is well, is he not?"

"Yes, thank Heaven."

"And you too, and I, and Roland, and little Blanche! Why then, you are right to thank Heaven, for your true treasures are untouched. But sit down and explain, pray."

"I cannot explain. I do not understand anything more than that he, my brother, – mine! – has involved Austin in – in – " (a fresh burst of tears.)

I comforted, scolded, laughed, preached, and adjured in a breath; and then, drawing my mother gently on, entered my father's study.

At the table was seated Mr Squills, pen in hand, and a glass of his favourite punch by his side. My father was standing on the hearth, a shade more pale; but with a resolute expression on his countenance, which was new to its indolent thoughtful mildness! He lifted his eyes as the door opened, and then, putting his finger to his lips, as he glanced towards my mother, he said gaily, "No great harm done. Don't believe her! Women always exaggerate, and make realities of their own bugbears: it is the vice of their lively imaginations, as Wierus has clearly shown in accounting for the marks, moles, and hare-lips which they inflict upon their innocent infants before they are even born. My dear boy," added my father, as I here kissed him and smiled in his face, "I thank you for that smile! God bless you!" He wrung my hand, and turned a little aside.

"It is a great comfort," renewed my father, after a short pause, "to know, when a misfortune happens, that it could not be helped. Squills has just discovered that I have no bump of cautiveness; so that, craniologically speaking, if I had escaped one imprudence, I should certainly have run my head against another."

"A man with your development is made to be taken in," said Mr Squills, consolingly.

"Do you hear that, my own Kitty! and have you the heart to blame Jack any longer – a poor creature cursed with a bump that would take in the Stock Exchange? And can any one resist his bump, Squills?"

"Impossible!" said the surgeon authoritatively.

"Sooner or later it must involve him in its airy meshes – eh, Squills? entrap him into its fatal cerebral cell. There his fate waits him, like the ant-lion in its pit."

"Too true," quoth Squills. "What a phrenological lecturer you would have made!"

"Go, then, my love," said my father, "and lay no blame but on this melancholy cavity of mine, where cautiveness – is not! Go, and let Sisty have some supper; for Squills says that he has a fine development of the mathematical organs, and we want his help. We are hard at work on figures, Pisistratus."

My mother looked broken-hearted, and, obeying submissively, stole to the door without a word. But as she reached the threshold she turned round, and beckoned to me to follow her.

I whispered to my father, and went out. My mother was standing in the hall, and I saw by the lamp that she had dried her tears; and that her face, though very sad, was more composed.

"Sisty," she said, in a low voice which struggled to be firm, "promise me that you will tell me all, – the worst, Sisty. They keep it from me, and that is my hardest punishment; for when I don't know all that he – that Austin suffers, it seems to me as if I had lost his heart. Oh, Sisty! My child, my child, don't fear me! I shall be happy whatever befalls us, if I once get back my privilege – my privilege, Sisty, to comfort, to share! – do you understand me?"

"Yes, indeed, my mother! And with your good sense, and clear woman's wit, if you will but feel how much we want them, you will be the best counsellor we could have. So never fear, you and I will have no secrets."

My mother kissed me, and went away with a less heavy step.

As I re-entered, my father came across the room and embraced me.

"My son," he said in a faltering voice, "if your modest prospects in life are ruined – "

"Father, father, can you think of me at such a moment! Me! – Is it possible to ruin the young, and strong, and healthy! Ruin me, with these thews and sinews! – ruin me, with the education you have given me – thews and sinews of the mind! Oh no! there, Fortune is harmless! And you forget, sir, – the saffron bag!"

Squills leapt up, and, wiping his eyes with one hand, gave me a sounding slap on the shoulder with the other.

"I am proud of the care I took of your infancy, Master Caxton. That comes of strengthening the digestive organs in early childhood. Such sentiments are a proof of magnificent ganglions in a perfect state of order. When a man's tongue is as smooth as I am sure yours is, he slips through misfortune like an eel."

I laughed outright, my father smiled faintly; and seating myself, I drew towards me a paper filled with Squills' memoranda, and said, "Now to find the unknown quantity. What on earth is this? 'Supposed value of books, £750.' Oh, father! this is impossible. I was prepared for anything but that. Your books – they are your life!"

"Nay," said my father; "after all, they are the offending party in this case, and so ought to be the principal victims. Besides, I believe I know most of them by heart. But, in truth, we are only entering all our effects, to be sure (added my father proudly) that, come what may, we are not dishonoured."

"Humour him," whispered Squills; "we will save the Books." Then he added aloud, as he laid finger and thumb on my pulse, "One, two, three, about seventy – capital pulse – soft and full – he can bear the whole: let us administer it."

My father nodded – "Certainly. But, Pisistratus, we must manage your dear mother. Why she should think of blaming herself, because poor Jack took wrong ways to enrich us, I cannot understand. But, as I have had occasion before to remark, Sphinx and Enigma are nouns feminine."

My poor father! that was a vain struggle for thy wonted innocent humour. The lips quivered.

Then the story came out. It seems that, when it was resolved to undertake the publication of the Literary Times, a certain number of shareholders had been got together by the indefatigable energies of Uncle Jack; and, in the deed of association and partnership, my father's name figured conspicuously as the holder of a fourth of this joint property. If in this my father had committed some imprudence, he had at least done nothing that, according to the ordinary calculations of a secluded student, could become ruinous. But, just at the time when we were in the hurry of leaving town, Jack had represented to my father that it might be necessary to alter a little the plan of the paper; and, in order to allure a larger circle of readers, touch somewhat on the more vulgar news and interests of the day. A change of plan might involve a change of title; and he suggested to my father the expediency of leaving the smooth hands of Mr Tibbets altogether unfettered, as to the technical name and precise form of the publication. To this my father had unwittingly assented, on hearing that the other shareholders would do the same. Mr Peck, a printer of considerable opulence, and highly respectable name, had been found to advance the sum necessary for the publication of the earlier numbers, upon the guarantee of the said act of partnership, and the additional security of my father's signature to a document, authorising Mr Tibbets to make any change in the form or title of the periodical that might be judged advisable, concurrent with the consent of the other shareholders.

Now it seems that Mr Peck had, in his previous conferences with Mr Tibbets, thrown much cold water on the idea of the Literary Times, and had suggested something that should "catch the moneyed public," – the fact being, as was afterwards discovered, that the printer, whose spirit of enterprise was congenial to Uncle Jack's, had shares in three or four speculations, to which he was naturally glad of an opportunity to invite the attention of the public. In a word, no sooner was my poor father's back turned than the Literary Times was dropped incontinently, and Mr Peck and Mr Tibbets began to concentre their luminous notions into that brilliant and comet-like apparition which ultimately blazed forth under the title of The Capitalist.

From this change of enterprise the more prudent and responsible of the original shareholders had altogether withdrawn. A majority, indeed, were left; but the greater part of those were shareholders of that kind most amenable to the influences of Uncle Jack, and willing to be shareholders in anything, since as yet they were possessors of nothing.

Assured of my father's responsibility, the adventurous Peck put plenty of spirit into the first launch of The Capitalist. All the walls were placarded with its announcements; circular advertisements ran from one end of of the kingdom to the other. Agents were engaged, correspondents levied en masse. The invasion of Xerxes on the Greeks was not more munificently provided for than that of The Capitalist upon the credulity and avarice of mankind.

But as Providence bestows upon fishes the instrument of fins, whereby they balance and direct their movements, however rapid and erratic, through the pathless deeps, so to the cold-blooded creatures of our own species – that may be classed under the genus MONEY-MAKERS – the same protective power accords the fin-like properties of prudence and caution, wherewith your true money-getter buoys and guides himself majestically through the great seas of speculation. In short, the fishes the net was cast for were all scared from the surface at the first splash. They came round and smelt at the mesh with their shark bottle-noses, and then, plying those invaluable fins, made off as fast as they could – plunging into the mud – hiding themselves under rocks and coral banks. Metaphor apart, the capitalists buttoned up their pockets, and would have nothing to say to their namesake.

Not a word of this change, so abhorrent to all the notions of poor Augustine Caxton, had been breathed to him by Peck or Tibbets. He ate, and slept, and worked at the great Book, occasionally wondering why he had not heard of the advent of the Literary Times, unconscious of all the awful responsibilities which The Capitalist was entailing on him; – knowing no more of The Capitalist than he did of the last loan of the Rothschilds.

Difficult was it for all other human nature, save my father's, not to breathe an indignant anathema on the scheming head of the brother-in-law who had thus violated the most sacred obligations of trust and kindred, and so entangled an unsuspecting recluse. But, to give even Jack Tibbets his due, he had firmly convinced himself that The Capitalist would make my father's fortune; and if he did not announce to him the strange and anomalous development into which the original sleeping chrysalis of the Literary Times had taken portentous wing, it was purely and wholly in the knowledge that my father's "prejudices," as he termed them, would stand in the way of his becoming a Crœsus. And, in fact, Uncle Jack had believed so heartily in his own project, that he had put himself thoroughly into Mr Peck's power, signed bills in his own name to some fabulous amount, and was actually now in the Fleet, whence his penitential and despairing confession was dated, arriving simultaneously with a short letter from Mr Peck, wherein that respectable printer apprised my father that he had continued, at his own risk, the publication of The Capitalist, as far as a prudent care for his family would permit; that he need not say that a new daily journal was a very vast experiment; that the expense of such a paper as The Capitalist was immeasurably greater than that of a mere literary periodical, as originally suggested; and that now, being constrained to come upon the shareholders for the sums he had advanced, amounting to several thousands, he requested my father to settle with him immediately – delicately implying that he himself might settle as he could with the other shareholders, most of whom, he grieved to add, he had been misled by Mr Tibbets into believing to be men of substance, when in reality they were men of straw!