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visitor of the Pariah, 10 of the Jew," of the bondsman to the oar in the Mediterranean galleys; of the English criminal in Norfolk Island, 12 blotted out from the books of remembrance in sweet far-off England; of the baffled penitent reverting his eyes forever upon a solitary grave, which to him seems the altar overthrown of some past and bloody sacrifice, on which altar no obligations can now be availing, whether towards pardon that he 10 of tempest from without and tempest from

for ebbing or for flowing tide, may be read from the very ground. She is the defier of God. She also is the mother of lunacies, and the suggestress of suicides. Deep lie the roots of 5 her power; but narrow is the nation that she rules. For she can approach only those in whom a profound nature has been upheaved by central convulsions; in whom the heart trembles and the brain rocks under conspiracies

might implore, or towards reparation that he might attempt. Every slave that at noonday looks up to the tropical sun with timid reproach, as he points with one hand to the earth,

within. Madonna moves with uncertain steps, fast or slow, but still with tragic grace. Our Lady of Sighs creeps timidly and stealthily. But this youngest sister moves with incalculable

She carries no key; for, though coming rarely amongst men, she storms all doors at which she is permitted to enter at all. And her name is Mater Tenebrarum,-Our Lady of Darkness.

our general mother, but for him a stepmother, 15 motions, bounding, and with a tiger's leaps. -as he points with the other hand to the Bible, our general teacher, but against him sealed and sequestered; every woman sitting in darkJess, without love to shelter her head, or hope to illumine her solitude, because the heaven- 20 These were the Semnai Theai,15 or Sublime born instincts kindling in her nature germs of holy affections, which God implanted in her womanly bosom, having been stifled by social necessities, now burn sullenly to waste, like sepulchral lamps amongst the ancients; every 25 hand. Touching my head, she beckoned to

nun defrauded of her unreturning May-time by wicked kinsman, whom God will judge; every captive in every dungeon; all that are betrayed, and all that are rejected; outcasts by traditionary law, and children of hereditary 30 disgrace, all these walk with Our Lady of Sighs. She also carries a key; but she needs it little. For her kingdom is chiefly amongst the tents of Shem,13 and the houseless vagrant of every clime. Yet in the very highest ranks of 35 man she finds chapels of her own; and even in glorious England there are some that, to the world, carry their heads as proudly as the reindeer, yet who secretly have received her mark upon their foreheads.

Goddesses, these were the Eumenides, or Gracious Ladies (so called by antiquity in shuddering propitiation), of my Oxford dreams. Madonna spoke. She spoke by her mysterious

Our Lady of Sighs; and what she spoke, translated out of the signs which (except in dreams) no man reads; was this:

"Lo! here is he, whom in childhood I dedicated to my altars. This is he that once I made my darling. Him I led astray, him I beguiled, and from heaven I stole away his young heart to mine. Through me did he become idolatrous; and through me it was, by languishing desires, that he worshipped the worm and prayed to the wormy grave. Holy was the grave to him; lovely was its darkness; saintly its corruption. Him, this young idolater, I have seasoned for thee, dear gentle Sister of 40 Sighs! Do thou take him now to thy heart, and season him for our dreadful sister. And thou,"-turning to the Mater Tenebrarum, she said, "wicked sister, that temptest and hatest, do thou take him from her. See that thy

But the third sister, who is also the youngest-! Hush! whisper whilst we talk of her! Her kingdom is not large, or else no flesh should five; but within that kingdom all power is hers. Her head, turreted like that of Cybele,1 raises 45 sceptre lie heavy on his head. Suffer not

her almost beyond the reach of sight. She
droops not; and her eyes rising so high might
be hidden by distance. But, being what they
are, they cannot be hidden; through the treble
veil of crape that she wears, the fierce light of 50 curse. So shall he be accomplished
a blazing misery, that rests not for matins or
for vespers, for noon of day or noon of night,

woman and her tenderness to sit near him in
his darkness. Banish the frailties of hope,
wither the relenting of love, scorch the foun-
tains of tears, curse him as only thou canst

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in the

furnace, so shall he see the things that ought not to be seen, sights that are abominable, and secrets that are unutterable. So shall he read elder truths, sad truths, grand truths, fearful 55 truths. So shall he rise again before he dies. And so shall our commission be accomplished 15 Another name for the Furies, called semnai, or sublime, in "shuddering propitiation" by the Athenians, who worshipped them.

16 Perfected, made complete.

which from God we had,-to plague his heart until we had unfolded the capacities of his spirit."

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH

1849

(Abridged)

SECTION THE FIRST

THE GLORY OF MOTION

of discord, yet all obedient as slaves to the supreme bâton of some great leader, terminate in a perfection of harmony like that of heart, brain, and lungs, in a healthy animal organisa5 tion. But, finally, that particular element in this whole combination which most impressed myself, and through which it is that to this hour Mr. Palmer's mail-coach system tyrannises over my dreams by terror and 10 terrific beauty, lay in the awful political mission which at that time it fulfilled. The mailcoach it was that distributed over the face of the land, like the opening of apocalyptic vials, the heart-shaking news of Trafalgar, of Salamanca, of Vittoria, of Waterloo. These were the harvests that, in the grandeur of their reaping, redeemed the tears and blood in which they had been sown. Neither was the meanest peasant so much below the grandeur and the sorrow of the times as to confound battles such as these, which were gradually moulding the destinies of Christendom, with the vulgar conflicts of ordinary warfare, so often no more than gladiatorial trials of national prowess. The victories of England in this stupendous contest rose of themselves as natural Te Deums to heaven; and it was felt by the thoughtful that such victories, at such a crisis of general prostration, were not more

Some twenty or more years before I matriculated at Oxford, Mr. Palmer,1 at that time M.P. for Bath, had accomplished two things, 15 very hard to do on our little planet, the Earth, however cheap they may be held by eccentric people in comets-he had invented mailcoaches, and he had married the daughter of a duke. He was, therefore, just twice as great 20 a man as Galileo, who did certainly invent (or, which is the same thing, discover) the satellites of Jupiter, those very next things extant to mail-coaches in the two capital pretensions of speed and keeping time, but, on 25 the other hand, who did not marry the daughter of a duke.

our enemy, and to the nations of all western or central Europe, through whose pusillanimity it was that the French domination had prospered. . . .

The

No dignity is perfect which does not at some point ally itself with the mysterious. connection of the mail with the state and the executive government-a connection obvious, but yet not strictly defined-gave to the whole

These mail-coaches, as organised by Mr. Palmer, are entitled to a circumstantial notice from myself, having had so large a share in 30 beneficial to ourselves than finally to France, developing the anarchies of my subsequent dreams; an agency which they accomplished, 1st, through velocity, at that time unprecedented-for they first revealed the glory of motion; 2ndly, through grand effects for the 35 eye between lamp-light and the darkness upon solitary roads; 3rdly, through animal beauty and power so often displayed in the class of horses selected for this mail service; 4thly, through the conscious presence of a central 40 mail establishment an official grandeur which intellect, that, in the midst of vast distancesof storms, of darkness, of danger-overruled all obstacles into one steady co-operation to a national result. For my own feeling, this postoffice service spoke as by some mighty or- 45 those turnpike gates; with what deferential chestra, where a thousand instruments, all disregarding each other, and so far in danger

1 John Palmer (1742-1818), a public-spirited citizen of Bath, observing "that the state-post was the slowest mode of conveyance in the country" and that it took 50 letters three days to pass between Bristol and Lon don, while he could cover the distance in one day, laid before Pitt a plan for conveying the mail in govern ment coaches, which were to maintain a uniform speed of 8 to 10 miles an hour. After much discussion, in which Palmer was supported by Pitt, but opposed by the postal authorities, a service between Bristol and London was inaugurated, and Palmer himself despatched the first mail- 55 coach from Bristol, Aug. 2, 1784. By the autumn of 1785 mail-coaches were running to most of the important English cities and towns, and in the following year the service was extended to Edinburgh. Palmer was rewarded by Pitt with an appointment as comptroller-general of the Post Office.

did us service on the roads, and invested us with seasonable terrors. Not the less impressive were those terrors, because their legal limits were imperfectly ascertained. Look at

hurry, with what an obedient start, they fly
open at our approach! Look at that long line
of carts and carters ahead, audaciously usurp-
ing the very crest of the road. Ah! traitors,
they do not hear us as yet; but as soon as the
dreadful blast of our horn reaches them with
proclamation of our approach, see with what
frenzy of trepidation they fly to their horses'
heads, and deprecate our wrath by the precipi-
tation of their crane-neck quarterings.
son they feel to be their crime; each individual

Trea

All battles in the Napoleonic wars.
Crossing the road from side to side so as to avoid

ruts, etc.

of fifty minutes for eleven miles, could the royal mail pretend to undertake the offices of sympathy and condolence? Could it be expected to provide tears for the accidents of 5 the road? If even it seemed to trample on humanity, it did so, I felt, in discharge of its own more peremptory duties.

carter feels himself under the ban of confiscation and attainder; his blood is attainted through six generations; and nothing is wanting but the headsman and his axe, the block and the saw-dust, to close up the vista of his horrors. What! shall it be within benefit of clergy to delay the king's message on the high road?—to interrupt the great respirations, ebb and flood, systole and diastole," of the national intercourse?-to endanger the safety 10 I stretched to the uttermost its privilege of

Upholding the morality of the mail, à fortiori I upheld its rights; as a matter of duty

imperial precedency, and astonished weak minds by the feudal powers which I hinted to be lurking constructively in the charters of this proud establishment. Once I remember

of tidings, running day and night between all nations and languages? Or can it be fancied amongst the weakest of men, that the bodies of the criminals will be given up to their widows for Christian burial? Now the doubts which 15 being on the box of the Holyhead mail, between were raised as to our powers did more to wrap them in terror, by wrapping them in uncertainty, than could have been effected by the sharpest definitions of the law from the Quarter Sessions. We, on our parts (we, the collective 20 mail, I mean), did our utmost to exalt the idea of our privileges by the insolence with which we wielded them. Whether this insolence rested upon law that gave it a sanction, or upon conscious power that haughtily dispensed with 25 that sanction, equally it spoke from a potential station, and the agent, in each particular insolence of the moment, was viewed reverentially, as one having authority.

Shrewsbury and Oswestry, when a tawdry thing from Birmingham, some "Tallyho" or "Highflyer," all flaunting with green and gold, came up alongside of us. What a contrast to our royal simplicity of form and colour in this plebeian wretch! The single ornament on our dark ground of chocolate colour was the mighty shield of the imperial arms, but emblazoned in proportions as modest as a signetring bears to a seal of office. Even this was displayed only on a single panel, whispering, rather than proclaiming, our relations to the mighty state; whilst the beast from Birmingham, our green-and-gold friend from false,

writing and painting on its sprawling flanks as would have puzzled a decipherer from the tombs of Luxor.11 For some time this Birmingham machine ran along by our side-a

Sometimes after breakfast his majesty's 3c fleeting, perjured Brummagem, 10 had as much mail would become frisky; and in its difficult wheelings amongst the intricacies of early markets, it would upset an apple-cart, a cart loaded with eggs, &c. Huge was the affliction and dismay, awful was the smash. I, as far 35 piece of familiarity that already of itself seemed as possible, endeavoured in such a case to represent the conscience and moral sensibilities of the mail; and, when wildernesses of eggs were lying poached under our horses' hoofs, then would I stretch forth my hands in sorrow, 40 see," was his short answer. He was wide

saying (in words too celebrated at that time, from the false echoes of Marengo), "Ah! wherefore have we not time to weep over you?" which was evidently impossible, since,

to me sufficiently jacobinical. But all at once a movement of the horses announced a desperate intention of leaving us behind. "Do you see that?" I said to the coachman.-"I

awake, yet he waited longer than seemed prudent; for the horses of our audacious opponent had a disagreeable air of freshness and power. But his motive was loyal; his wish

in fact, we had not time to laugh over them. 45 was, that the Birmingham conceit should be Tied to post-office allowance, in some cases

4 Attainder, deprived the attainted of all the civil rights of a free citizen. He was "dead in the eyes of the law,' and could neither inherit nor transmit property.

A technical phrase in Old English Law, signifying the exemption of the clergy from criminal proceedings in the King's courts.

In physiology the alternate contraction and expansion of the heart by which the circulation of the blood is effected.

A Court originally so called from the fact that its sessions were held quarterly. The administration of the highway laws was one of its functions.

At the battle of Marengo, June 14, 1800, the French General Desaix, by his timely arrival, saved Napoleon from defeat, but was himself killed. The story that Napoleon on hearing of his death said: Ah, wherefore have we not time to weep over you!" is called by De Quincey a "theatrical fiction."

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full-blown before he froze it. When that seemed right, he unloosed, or, to speak by a stronger word, he sprang, his known resources: he slipped our royal horses like cheetahs, or huntingleopards, after the affrighted game. How they could retain such a reserve of fiery power after the work they had accomplished, seemed hard

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to explain. But on our side, besides the physical superiority, was a tower of moral strength, namely, the king's name, "which they upon the adverse faction wanted." Passing them without an effort, as it seemed, we threw them into the rear with so lengthening an interval between us, as proved in itself the bitterest mockery of their presumption; whilst our guard blew back a shattering blast of triumph, that was really too painfully full of derision.

with Birmingham tinsel, with paste diamonds, and Roman pearls, 13 and then led off to instant execution." The Welshman doubted if that could be warranted by law. And when I 5 hinted at the 6th of Edward Longshanks, chap. 18,14 for regulating the precedency of coaches as being probably the statute relied on for the capital punishment of such offences, he replied drily, that "if the attempt to pass 10 a mail really were treasonable, it was a pity that the 'Tallyho' appeared to have so imperfect an acquaintance with law."

The modern modes of travelling cannot compare with the old mail-coach system in grandeur and power. They boast of more velocity, not, however, as a consciousness, but as a fact of our lifeless knowledge, resting upon alien evidence; as, for instance, because somebody says that we have gone fifty miles in the hour, though we are far from feeling it as a personal experience, or upon the evidence of a result, as that actually we find ourselves in York four hours after leaving London. Apart from such an assertion, or such a result, I myself am little aware of the pace. But, seated on the old mail-coach, we needed no evidence out of ourselves to indicate the velocity. On this system the word was, Non magna loquimur, as upon railways, but vivimus.15 Yes, "magna

I mention this little incident for its connection with what followed. A Welsh rustic sitting behind me, asked if I had not felt my heart burn within me during the progress of the race? I said, with philosophic calmness, 15 No; because we were not racing with a mail, so that no glory could be gained. In fact, it was sufficiently mortifying that such a Birmingham thing should dare to challenge us. The Welshman replied, that he didn't see that; 20 for that a cat might look at a king, and a Brummagem coach might lawfully race the Holyhead mail. "Race us, if you like," I replied, "though even that has an air of sedition, but not beat us. This would have been treason; 25 for its own sake I am glad that the 'Tallyho' was disappointed." So dissatisfied did the Welshman seem with this opinion, that at last I was obliged to tell him a very fine story from one of our elder dramatists-viz., that 30 vivimus;" we do not make verbal ostentation once, in some far oriental kingdom, when the sultan of all the land, with his princes, ladies, and chief omrahs, 12 were flying their falcons, a hawk suddenly flew at a majestic eagle; and in defiance of the eagle's natural advantages, 35 in contempt also of the eagle's traditional royalty, and before the whole assembled field of astonished spectators from Agra and Lahore, killed the eagle on the spot. Amazement seized the sultan at the unequal contest, and 40 burning admiration for its unparalleled result. He commanded that the hawk should be brought before him; he caressed the bird with enthusiasm; and he ordered that, for the commemoration of his matchless courage, a diadem 45 the first. But the intervening links that con

of gold and rubies should be solemnly placed
on the hawk's head; but then that, immediately
after this solemn coronation, the bird should
be led off to execution, as the most valiant in-
deed of traitors, but not the less a traitor, as 50
having dared to rise rebelliously against his
liege lord and anointed sovereign, the eagle.
"Now," said I to the Welshman, "to you and
me, as men of refined sensibilities, how painful
it would have been that this poor Brummagem 55
brute, the 'Tallyho,' in the impossible case of
a victory over us, should have been crowned

12 A plural of the Arabic amir, a commander, a noble

man.

of our grandeurs, we realise our grandeurs in act, and in the very experience of life. The vital experience of the glad animal sensibilities made doubts impossible on the question of our speed; we heard our speed, we saw it, we felt it as a thrilling; and this speed was not the product of blind insensate agencies, that had no sympathy to give, but was incarnated in the fiery eyeballs of the noblest amongst brutes, in his dilated nostril, spasmodic muscles, and thunder-beating hoofs. The sensibility of the horse, uttering itself in the maniac light of his eye, might be the last vibration of such a movement; the glory of Salamanca might be

nected them, that spread the earthquake of battle into the eyeball of the horse, were the heart of man and its electric thrillings-kindling in the rapture of the fiery strife, and then propagating its own tumults by contagious shouts and gestures to the heart of his servant the horse.

But now, on the new system of travelling, iron tubes and boilers have disconnected man's heart from the ministers of his locomotion.

13 i. e. imitation pearls.

14 A humorous invention of De Quincey's. The 6th of Edward Longshanks would be a statute passed in 1278. Coaches were not known in England until much later. 15"We do not talk great things, we live them."

Nile nor Trafalgar 16 has power to raise an extra bubble in a steam-kettle. The galvanic cycle is broken up for ever; man's imperial nature no longer sends itself forward through the electric sensibility of the horse; the interagencies are gone in the mode of communication between the horse and his master, out of which grew so many aspects of sublimity under accidents of mists that hid, or sudden blazes that revealed, of mobs that agitated, or midnight soli- 10 for the rapid transmission of intelligence,

much more loudly must this proclamation have spoken in the audacity of having bearded the élite of their troops, and having beaten them in pitched battles! Five years of life it was 5 worth paying down for the privilege of an outside place on a mail-coach, when carrying down the first tidings of any such event. And it is to be noted that, from our insular situation, and the multitude of our frigates disposable

tudes that awed. Tidings, fitted to convulse
all nations, must henceforwards travel by
culinary process; and the trumpet that once
announced from afar the laurelled mail, heart-
shaking, when heard screaming on the wind, 15
and proclaiming itself through the darkness
to every village or solitary house on its route,
has now given way for ever to the pot-
wallopings1 of the boiler.

rarely did an unauthorised rumour steal away a prelibation1o from the first aroma of the regular despatches. The government news was generally the earliest news.

From eight p. m. to fifteen or twenty minutes later, imagine the mails assembled on parade in Lombard Street,20 where, at that time, and not in St. Martin's-le-Grand, was seated the General Post-office. In what exact strength we

length of each separate attelage, we filled the street, though a long one, and though we were drawn up in double file. On any night the spectacle was beautiful. The absolute perfection of all the appointments about the carriages and the harness, their strength, their brilliant cleanliness, their beautiful simplicitybut, more than all, the royal magnificence of the horses were what might first have fixed

Thus have perished multiform openings for 20 mustered I do not remember; but, from the public expressions of interest, scenical yet natural, in great national tidings; for revelations of faces and groups that could not offer themselves amongst the fluctuating mobs of a railway station. The gatherings of gazers about 25 a laurelled mail had one centre, and acknowledged one sole interest. But the crowds attending at a railway station have as little unity as running water, and own as many centres as there are separate carriages in the train. . . . 30 the attention. Every carriage, on every morn

GOING DOWN WITH VICTORY

ing in the year, was taken down to an official inspector for examination-wheels, axles, linchpins, pole, glasses, lamps, were all critically probed and tested. Every part of every car

But the grandest chapter of our experience, within the whole mail coach service, was on those occasions when we went down from 35 riage had been cleaned, every horse had been

groomed, with as much rigour as if they belonged to a private gentleman; and that part of the spectacle offered itself always. But the night before us is a night of victory; and, behold

London with the news of victory. A period of about ten years stretched from Trafalgar to Waterloo; the second and third years of which period (1806 and 1807) were comparatively sterile; but the other nine (from 1805 to 1815 40 to the ordinary display, what a heart-shaking

addition!-horses, men, carriages, all are dressed in laurels and flowers, oak-leaves and ribbons. The guards, as being officially his Majesty's servants, and of the coachmen such

inclusively) furnished a long succession of victories; the least of which, in such a contest of Titans, had an inappreciable value of position-partly for its absolute interference with the plans of our enemy, but still more from its 45 as are within the privilege of the post-office, keeping alive through central Europe the sense of a deep-seated vulnerability in France. Even to tease the coasts of our enemy, to mortify them by continual blockades, to insult them by capturing if it were but a baubling 18 schooner 50 under the eyes of their arrogant armies, repeated from time to time a sullen proclamation of power lodged in one quarter to which the hopes of Christendom turned in secret. How 18 Nelson destroyed the French fleet in the battle of the 55 Nile, fought in Aboukir Bay, Aug. 1, 1798. For Trafalgar see Southey's account, p. 548, supra.

17 The sound made as a pot in boiling. The design of the whole passage is to belittle the steam engine by comparing it to a tea-kettle.

18 Petty, trifling.

Such a

wear the royal liveries of course; and as it is
summer (for all the land victories were natur-
ally won in summer), they wear, on this fine
evening, these liveries exposed to view, with-
out any covering of upper coats.
costume, and the elaborate arrangement of
the laurels in their hats, dilate their hearts,
by giving to them openly a personal connection
with the great news, in which already they
have the general interest of patriotism. That
great national sentiment surmounts and quells

19 Foretaste.

20 Near the Bank of England. The General Post Of in St. Martin le Grand, was built in 1825-29.

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