was is yes, I can read now-it is the "Heart of think rightly, that we have some cause to be Mid Lothian," by the author of "Waverley" indignant. The great cause why modern -or, no, it is "Life in London, or the Adven- humour and modern sentimentalism repel us, tures of Corinthian Tom, Jeremiah Hawthorn, is that they are unwarrantably familiar. Now, and their friend Bob Logic," by Pierce Egan; Mr. Sterne, the Superfine Review thinks, and it has pictures-oh! such funny pictures! a true sentimentalist, because he was above As he reads, there comes behind the boy, a man, all things a true gentleman." The flattering a dervish, in a black gown, like a woman, and inference is obvious; let us be thankful for an a black square cap, and he has a book in each elegant moralist watching over us, and learn, hand, and he seizes the boy who is reading the if not too old, to imitate his high-bred politepicture-book, and lays his head upon one of his ness and catch his unobtrusive grace. If we books, and smacks it with the other. The boy are unwarrantably familiar, we know who is makes faces, and so that picture disappears. not. If we repel by pertness, we know who never does. If our language offends, we know whose is always modest. O pity! The vision has disappeared off the silver, the images of youth and the past are vanishing away! We who have lived before railways were made belong to another world. In how many hours could the Prince of Wales drive from Brighton to London, with a light carriage built ex Now the boy has grown bigger. He has got on a black gown and cap, something like the dervish. He is at a table, with ever so many bottles on it, and fruit, and tobacco; and other young dervishes come in. They seem as if they were singing. To them enters an old moollah; he takes down their names, and orders them all to go to bed. What is this? A carriage, with four beautiful horses all galloping-a man pressly, and relays of horses longing to gallop in red is blowing a trumpet. Many young men the next stage? Do you remember Sir Someare on the carriage-one of them is driving the body, the coachman of the Age, who took our horses. Surely they won't drive into that? half-crown so affably? It was only yesterday; -ah! they have all disappeared. And now I but what a gulf between now and then! Then see one of the young men alone. He is walk- was the old world. Stage-coaches, more or less ing in a street- -a dark street-presently a swift, riding-horses, pack-horses, highwaymen, light comes to a window. There is the shadow knights in armour, Norman invaders, Roman of a lady who passes. He stands there till the legions, Druids, Ancient Britons painted blue, light goes out. Now he is in a room scribbling and so forth-all these belong to the old period. on a piece of paper, and kissing a miniature I will concede a halt in the midst of it, and every now and then. There seem to be lines allow that gunpowder and printing tended to each pretty much of a length. I can read modernize the world. But your railroad starts heart, smart, dart; Mary, fairy; Cupid, stupid; the new era, and we of a certain age belong true, you; and never mind what more. Bah! to the new time and the old one. We are of the it is bosh. Now see, he has got a gown on time of chivalry as well as the Black Prince1 again, and a wig of white hair on his head, and or Sir Walter Manny.2 We are of the age of he is sitting with other dervishes in a great steam. We have stepped out of the old world room full of them, and on a throne in the on to "Brunel's" vast deck,3 and across the middle is an old Sultan in scarlet, sitting be- waters ingens patet tellus.4 Towards what new fore a desk, and he wears a wig too-and the continent are we wending? to what new laws, young man gets up and speaks to him. And new manners, new politics, vast new expanses now what is here? He is in a room with ever of liberties unknown as yet, or only surmised? so many children, and the miniature hanging I used to know a man who had invented a up. Can it be a likeness of that woman who flying-machine. "Sir," he would say, "give is sitting before that copper urn with a silver vase in her hand, from which she is pouring hot liquor into cups? Was she ever a fairy? She is as fat as a hippopotamus now. He is sitting on a divan by the fire. He has a paper on his knees. Read the name. It is the Superfine Review. It inclines to think that Mr. Dickens is not a true gentleman, that Mr. Thackeray is not a true gentleman, and that when the one is pert and the other arch, we, the gentlemen of the Superfine Review, think, and me but five hundred pounds, and I will make 2 A soldier of Edward 8 The steamship "Great Eastern," designed by I. K. Brunel, 1858. 4 "A great world looms." forward on the journey already begun since we quitted the old world. There it lies on the other side of yonder embankments. You young folks have never seen it; and Waterloo is to you no more than Agincourt, and George IV. than Sardanapalus. We elderly people have lived in that pre-railroad world, which has passed into limbo and vanished from under us. I tell you it was firm under our feet once, and not long ago. They have raised those railroad embankments up, and shut off the old world that was behind them. Climb up that bank on which the irons are laid, and look to the other side-it is gone. There is no other side. Try and catch yesterday. Where is it? Here is a Times newspaper, dated Monday 26th, and this is Tuesday 27th. Suppose you deny there was such a day as yesterday. We who lived before railways, and survive out of the ancient world, are like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark. The children will gather round and say to us patriarchs, "Tell us, grandpapa, about the old world." And we shall mumble our old stories; and we shall drop off one by one; and there will be fewer and fewer of us, and these very old and feeble. There will be but ten pre-railroadites left; then three-then two-then one-then O! If the hippopotamus had the least sensibility (of which I cannot trace any signs either in his hide or his face), I think he would go down to the bottom of his tank, and never come up again. Does he not see that he belongs to bygone ages, and that his great hulking barrel of a body is out of place in these times? What has he in common with the brisk young life surrounding him? In the watches of the night, when the keepers are asleep, when the birds are on one leg, when even the little armadillo is quiet, and the monkeys have ceased their chatter, he, I mean the hippopotamus, and the elephant, and the long-necked giraffe, perhaps may lay their heads together and have a colloquy about the great silent antediluvian world which they remember, where mighty monsters floundered through the ooze, crocodiles basked on the banks, and dragons darted out of the caves and waters before men were made to slay them. We who lived before railroads are ante diluvians—we must pass away. We are grow. ing scarcer every day; and old-old-very old relics of the times when George was still fighting the Dragon. 1 The place of Arthur's court. *This is, with some variations, essentially the story of Elaine, "the lily maid of Astolat,' which is told at greater length and with more fidelity in the Idylls of the King. It is Tennyson's earliest venture into the Arthurian field. Thro' the noises of the night She floated down to Camelot; And as the boat-head wound along The willowy hills and fields among, They heard her singing her last song, The Lady of Shalott. Heard a carol, mournful, holy, For ere she reach'd upon the tide Under tower and balcony, A gleaming shape she floated by, Out upon the wharfs they came, Who is this? and what is here? CENONE* Hither came at noon 140 Mournful Enone, wandering forlorn Of Paris, once her playmate on the hills. "O mother Ida, many fountain'd Ida, The lizard, with his shadow on the stone, Is lily-cradled: I alone awake. My eyes are full of tears, my heart of love, 30 "O mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida, 170 There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand 10 "O mother Ida, harken ere I die. Far off the torrent call'd me from the cleft; Far up the solitary morning smote The streaks of virgin snow. With down-dropt Stands up and takes the morning; but in front I sat alone; white-breasted like a star Fronting the dawn he moved; a leopard skin 60 * Enone, a nymph of Mt. Ida in the Troad, early the beloved of the shepherd Paris, mourns his desertion of her, and relates the story of the famous "Judgment of Paris" which led to the † According to a legend in Ovid, the walls of Troy Trojan war. rose to the music of Apollo's lyre. When the wind blows the foam, and all my And o'er him flow'd a golden cloud, and lean'd "Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. He prest the blossom of his lips to mine, And added, "This was cast upon the board, When all the full-faced presence of the Gods Ranged in the halls of Peleus; 2 whereupon Rose feud, with question unto whom 'twere due; But light-foot Iris brought it yester-eve, This meed of fairest. Thou, within the cave 80 Only, are likest Gods, who have attain'd Rest in a happy place and quiet seats Above the thunder, with undying bliss In knowledge of their own supremacy.' "Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. 130 "Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. It was the deep midnoon; one silvery cloud 90 She ceased, and Paris held the costly fruit Had lost his way between the piny sides Out at arm's-length, so much the thought of Of this long glen. Then to the bower they came, Naked they came to that smooth-swarded bower, "O mother Ida, harken ere I die. On the tree-tops a crested peacock lit, 1 Mountain nymph. 2 The husband of the sea-nymph Thetis. and the father of Achilles. and 100 3 The messenger of the gods. 4 Juno, Minerva, and Venus. 5 Sacred to Juno. power Flatter'd his spirit; but Pallas where she stood *Paris was the son of Priam of Troy; he had been left exposed on the mountain-side because of the prophecy that he would bring ruin to Troy. |