This, too, was the opinion of Thackeray's bosom friend, Captain Ironsides, who pronounced it a decided Daggerwood affair: adding that Romeo Coates was a fool to him. Lord Robert Ranter and Sir Hans Dabs Oliphant slunk from their box as though they had been detected in probing the pockets of their neighbours. They made their exit through the Bow-street door, but were stopped on the upper step by a sudden shower. "This is an elegant facade," cried Lord Robert, stepping back to avoid the wet. "Very," answered Sir Hans, imitating the process. "It is modelled from a temple at Athens," continued Lord Robert, with his back by this time in contact with the

outward wall of the building. "So they say,' "resumed the Baronet, clinging to the stucco as perpendicularly as a recruit at the word "Attention." It was all to no purpose: the shower still pattered on their shoes: Scamander did not cling closer to Achilles. "It is a pity," said Lord Robert, "that the architect in conveying over the model, forgot to bring the climate with him." "A great pity," echoed Sir Hans; "but there is a capital fruit-shed in Broad-court, over the way. I always run thither when it rains-that shed and this portico constantly remind me of my wife's drawing-room grate. The polished bars, outside, serve for show, but the black ones, inside, prop the hot coals." "That blockhead George has, no doubt, driven round to the Piazza door," said Lord Robert: "any thing is better than wet feet-lead on to the fruit-shed." When the two friends were safe under deal-board shelter, and both were comfortably seated upon inverted baskets, with a large assortment of pea-shells crackling beneath their feet, like autumnal leaves, they resumed their conversation upon the subject of the recent representation. "I had no notion," said Lord Robert, "that poor Thackeray would have turned out such a decided stick: at one moment I had some hopes of him. Did you observe his 'Frailty, thy name is woman'?" "No, I was busy turning over my leaf." "Well, then, you must have noticed his Be buried quick with her'?" "No," answered Sir Hans, " at that time I had lost my place." "Lost your place? Why you never stirred from the box." "No, I mean the place in my book: my Hamlet is bound up with four other plays; and I got smack into the middle of the Recruiting Officer, before I knew where I was."

The subject of all this criticism, in the mean time, had retreated to his ledgings in Hart-street, Bloomsbury, where he slept soundly, unconscious of his failure. It is the case in all the arts: there is not a humpbacked man, in all London and Westminster, who does not fancy himself an Adonis. Not that Thackeray was unaware of the discord in the house, but he ascribed it to every cau e but the true one. Colds and hoarseness were never more common. Besides, there was evidently a party sent in: probably by Young or Macready: jealousy is proverbially a green-room failing: for his part, he thought the proper reading was not "Beware of jealousy, it is a green-eyed monster." No! Shakspeare evidently wrote it "Green-room monster!" and so he would deliver it, when he should be put up for Iago. With this valiant determination, out sallied Thackeray, and in passing through Newportmarket, saw, skewered upon the back of a dead sheep, a large playbill, upon which "Theatre Royal Covent-garden-Macbeth," was imprinted in legible characters. The poor animal, even in death, seemed

conscious of "the bloody business" of which it was the herald, its nose having marked the pavement below with a sympathetic crimson tint. "Oh! Macbeth!" ejaculated Thackeray, "that is my next part, is it? Well, I have no objection: it is not a bad part; but I wish they would not expect me to play upon opera-nights. Macbeth was a thorough gentleman; it is true, he killed his friend Banquo, and did not behave quite hospitably to King Duncan; but still, he was a thorough gentleman: John Kemble was always too frigid in it, and Garrick wanted height: yes, Garrick was a punchy little fellow, and dressed the character in scarlet breeches: Macbeth is nothing without figure." By this time, the Thespian Captain had entered Portugal-street, where an old mirror, suspended in a broker's shop, "reflected him back to the skies," as the Reverend Bate Dudley has it. Thackeray was well pleased with the ex hibition, and walked on, repeating " Macbeth is nothing without figure." On his return home, he found that the messenger, whose duty it is to distribute the parts of the play next in representation, had been at his residence, and had left a manuscript for his perusal. It lay upon his breakfast-table, and the word "Macbeth" was written in a fair legible hand upon the outside cover. "Oh, here it is," cried he, carelessly. "A happy prologue to the swelling act Of this imperial theme."

So saying, he opened the fly leaf, and read "Mr. Thackeray-Macbeth -the Bleeding Captain." "What!" exclaimed the astonished débutant, when he was able to resume his breath. "Me-expect me to act the bleeding Captain? expect a perfect gentleman to stagger on with two cuts on his forehead, and one on his cheek, to tell that stupid old fool Duncan what a number of men his two generals had knocked on the head? I won't do it-there must be some mistake."-" Drive to Sohosquare,” cried the new actor, jumping into a hackney cabriolet. The manager received him suaviter in modo: but, as touching the bleeding Captain, fortiter in re: he was cast for the part and must perform it. "Never," ejaculated Thackeray: "when I engaged as an actor, it was under an idea that I should act what I pleased and when I pleased." "Add thereto, and at what salary you pleased," said the manager, " and you would make our profession a bed of roses.' As affairs now stand, however, I am afraid that you are under articles to play what and when the proprietors please, under a penalty of thirty pounds." This reminiscence staggered the tragedian. "Have you any objection to give me up my articles," inquired he. "None, whatever," answered the other, delivering them up to him. "Cancel and tear in pieces this great bond," continued Thackeray, scattering the fragments of the document to the winds;" and as for you, Sir," turning to the proprietor of the mansion, "allow me to say, that if I ever act again upon your boards, and you don't keep your audience in better order, damme if I don't call them out."" Do but contrive to call them in," answered the manager," and. I will undertake to re-engage you, for three years, at a rising salary,”

6

MODERN PILGRIMAGES.-NO. X.

Lausanne.

To visit Lausanne was one of my l'est and most cherished daydreams. To see Rome, or Italy, indeed, was a wish too lofty, too impracticable for my youthful thoughts; but Lausanne, thought I, ten years since, on first perusing Gibbon's Memoirs, might be managed, if but some kind hand would put an end to that fellow Bonaparte. The pleasures which I deemed nearest my grasp at that early period, have ever and for ever irrecoverably fled, while those which seemed beyond my wildest wishes I have enjoyed even to satiety. I have swam and floated on the lovely Leman, climbed over the snowy Alps, and threaded their defiles-shot in a gondola beneath the Rialto, and wandered through the empty palace of the Doges-the galleries of Florence have satiated my curious eyes-my step has a thousand and a thousand times overrun the Capitol, and sunk through the begilt and mouldering vaults of the Palatine Hill Naples has spread forth before me her bay and shores, unrivalled in the interest of name and scenic beauty;-but associations southward, and northward of the Alps, are somehow or other very different sentiments. In Italy or Greece, such sympathy for the by-gone is aggregate, universal-it is for nations, for ages-it is inspired by the memory of a people, and, as it were, by the sum of their greatness: North of the Alps, the associations which pilgrims seek and sing of are individual, excited by a single name, independent of nation or country, they are warm, domestic feelings, and come more home to our egotistic bosoms, than the high-wrought and often factitious sympathies with Roman or with Grecian greatness.

Englishmen, if they have more sentiment in love and private affection than other nations, have undoubtedly much less in politics. The romance of public affairs we do not understand. And after the classic essence, with which we become impregnated at college, evaporates, we generally sink into very matter-of-fact honest politicians. It is owing to this, perhaps, that we seem such Goths in Italy. At Clarens, or Ferney, our countrymen are to be seen sentimental; but I never once met an Englishman at Rome with an air of consciousness at all different from that with which he trod Pall Mall or the Strand. Now the French grow heroic in the immortal city, and the Germans mad. But your Englishman is the same stiff, impassive, well-dressed gentleman on Primrose Hill, or the Capitol. At Tasso's dungeon, 'tis true, he looks with interest and indignation; but chains and prisons would move him any where. And such, as a spot of personal and individual association south of the Alps, forms an exception to our division-'tis, however, but an exception, it is Morat, north of the boundary, where the pilgrim views, with a national and patriotic feeling, the bones of the Burgundian invaders.

Once upon the Italian soil, for any one personage, poet, or hero, to claim our undivided interest is impertinence. I remember, the first sight of a helmet on an Italian, or rather an Austrian soldier, at Milan, striking me with more melancholy than would the tombs of an hundred Etruscan bards. I cannot, with Childe Harold, forget the Latin in the Lombard glories-mourn over Venice and Ferrara, and approach

the Capitol itself with exhausted sympathies. Once at Domo, or at Susa, the big, collective feeling should come over one, which, as Wordsworth says,

"Moveth altogether, if it move at all."

But for lovely little spots of circumscribed association, wedded, as it were, to a single name, Switzerland is the country. And the traveller need not diverge from the high Simplon road, in order to visit and enjoy the greater number. Ferney, Coppet, Lausanne, Clarens, will each furnish their supply of pensive food to the sentimentalist. The first I reserve for some gay, satirical mood, so ill according with the scene.-Strange! that a being, that had chosen its resting-place on the banks of the Leman, between the Jura and the Savoy Alps, and with the monarch of mountains ever towering in his view, should there have so dwarfed his powers, so concentrated and narrowed them in the microscope of satire, merely to destroy some petty insect of a rival. To be at Ferney, to look round, and say, here wrote the author of the "Pucelle," is one of those most unpleasant contradictions that the fact so often gives to the probability.

If nature ever imitated a picture, it was in forming the Leman : beauty and sublimity in all the gradations and variety of each are crowded upon and around it. You drive along the Swiss side of the lake, through meadows and hedges of English luxuriance, trimly kept and divided too, after our country fashion, while the vine, the Swiss cottage, and Swiss costume, add foreign charms to what reminds us so strongly of home. The Jura rises above, the lake spreads beneath, with many a "quiet sail" upon its surface, that look as nothing while they glide over the reflection of the towering Alp upon the lake. The eye, on one side, follows up the curve of the sandy margin to Vevay and Chillon, and on the other side marks the huge masses of Alp that overhang the lake, with a town here and there upon the brink, which, from their comparative size might be almost taken for so many napkins spread out to dry. The approach to the modern republic of Lausanne is worthy of forming the avenue to the most ancient and feudal of castles: it rises and winds in the midst of majestic chesnut-groves, through whose waving foliage is seen at every step, here the bright surface of the lake and its opposite mountain border, and there the subtile spires and lofty brick buildings of the city. Lausanne itself, when entered, does not answer the promise of such an approach; the traveller is annoyed at its steepness and its straightness, but one glance from almost any window of the town is sufficient to drive away his spleen.

The house of Gibbon was the first object of my search at Lausanne. It belonged to the banker, I was told. The lower part and garden, however, seem to appertain to another tenant, an old lady, into whose apartments I descended from the street, and was straight ushered into the garden to behold what the maiden called "La Gibbon"—an old shattered tool-house.

"It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787," says Gibbon, "between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the

Vor. VI. No. 32.-1823.

15

mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatever might be the future date of my history, the life of the historian must be short and precarious."

The acacias still flourish, as does the weeping willow which he planted, and I need not add, that the scene remains the same. It had changed, however, more than once for Gibbon. When he first visited, or rather was exiled to Lausanne, "he exchanged his elegant apartment in Magdalen College for a narrow, gloomy street, the most unfrequented of an unhandsome town, for an old, inconvenient house, and for a small chamber ill-contrived and ill-furnished, which, on the approach of winter, instead of a companionable fire, must be warmed by the dull, invisible heat of a stove." When he returned again from London, the contrast was quite in favour of this "unhandsome town." "Instead of a small house between a street and a stable-yard, I began to occupy a spacious and convenient mansion, connected on the north side with the city, and open on the south to a beautiful and boundless horizon. A garden of four acres had been laid out by the taste of M. Deyverdun : from the garden a rich scenery of meadows and vineyards descends to the Leman Lake, and the prospect far beyond the lake is crowned by the stupendous mountains of Savoy."

The French revolution, and the occupation of Savoy by the republican troops under General Montesquiou, once more changed the aspect of the scene for Gibbon: what he admired as the kingdom of Savoy, he did not relish as the department of Mont Blanc.-" My noble scenery," writes he, "is clouded by the democratical aspect of twelve leagues of the opposite coast, which every morning obtrude themselves on my view."

The biography of those days, or the history of men's private opinions during this time, forms a most humiliating study to observe how idly formed, how stubbornly held and perniciously advanced were the principles of men of the first intellect, yet how easily the political half was overturned by alarm, and, as it were, by very bodily fear, while they kept the religious half firm, merely to preserve some show of consistency. I remember being much pleased with a paragraph in the Edinburgh Review, which sought to prove the necessary union of Toryism and infidelity. The argument, though weak in reasoning, was strong in example; and I wondered at not seeing the name of Gibbon adduced by the side of those of Bolingbroke and Hume. The fact is, that we were imitators of France in those days, and that our historians took their tone servilely from the imposing cant of Parisian society. That the beaux esprits of that circle were deists, we are aware; and that they were, with the exception of Rousseau, (the only man amongst them who possessed intellectual honesty,) aristocrats, is not clear, but equally true. There is no despotic act, that will not find itself abetted in the writings of the liberal Voltaire;-see for example, how the ultras of late quoted his History in support of the invasion of Spain.