Page images
PDF
EPUB

being who had trusted them. They contrived to make the porter believe that he was gone away, and hid him for that night. But each following day matters grew still worse: the royal family were sent to the Temple - domiciliary visits began. The search was nominally for arms, but woe if any aristocrat be found in the house! Poor Madame Meyler and her maid had to wrap their protégé in a blanket, and to hide him in a sink, till the dreaded visits were paid. But on the morning of the 2d September, the proclamation spoke of a search more than ever severe, to be made at different hours of the night. It seemed impossible to shelter Chansenets any longer in the Rue de l'Ancre, and Madame Meyler wrote that appeal to Mrs Elliott's kindness which had brought her into Paris, to the surprise, as we have scen, of the very soldiers at the barrier.

She had no particular friendship for the late governor of the Tuileries; possibly, indeed, she had a different feeling, for he had behaved with some apparent ingratitude to the Duke of Orleans; but his situation deeply affected her, and she at once resolved to do all in her power to save him. To get him out of Paris, seemed obviously the best plan; but it was still too early to venture out in an open cabriolet. As soon as it grew quite dark, they set out to the Barrier of Vaugirard, where Mrs Elliott shewed her passport, expecting to be at once allowed to pass; but no!-no egress that night, she was told, from any of the Paris barriers; and she was advised to go and get a bed as soon as possible, as at two o'clock the domiciliary visits were to begin, and no carriages would then be allowed in the streets. Where were they to go? the driver naturally asked, and poor Mrs Elliott did not well know what to say, fearing to go to her own house, her cook being a Jacobin, and fearing by her hesitation to excite the suspicion of the guard, who were less polite than in the morning. She fixed upon the Barrière de l'Enfer, with a faint hope of being allowed to pass thence to Meudon; but no!-no hope there either. 'Drive, then, to the Allée des Invalides,' said she, with a thought of her friend the ex-porter. When they got out of the cabriolet, Mrs Elliott saw with dismay Chansenets unable to stand, and supported by the driver. With great presence of mind, she flew into a pretended passion, and told the driver her servant was drunk. The man shrugged his sympathy, and drove off. The fugitives sat for two or three minutes at the foot of one of the trees, and the air reviving the unhappy Chansenets, he just contrived to stand. But where to go next? Turning up an avenue leading to her old servant's house, they saw troops at the further end, and patrols coming their way. Mrs Elliott burst into tears, and her companion entreated her to give him up to the first patrol, thus saving her own life at least. The very idea of such a thing, however, nerved her generous heart afresh. Not with the scaffold full in view could she have abandoned him or any one in a similar plight: she would try another way. Turning round, they crossed the Pont Neuf, and reached the Champs Elysées in safety; but when there, they were no better off. It was nearly eleven o'clock, and only soldiers still lingered in the streets. Mrs Elliott was close to her own house, but the dread of her Jacobin cook prevented her entering it. Chansenets, fainting with fatigue, again entreated her to give him up. Again she refused. She had undertaken to save him: she would save him, or else they would die together.

Their next scheme was to reach the Duke of Orleans's house at Monceaux, and there hide in the garden. To do this, it was necessary to pass Mrs Elliott's door. There sat the Jacobin cook! Fortunately, an unfinished building near afforded a

temporary hiding-place to the miserable Chansenets, while his generous protectress went to her own house to see what could be done next.

Her servants were much alarmed at her appearance at so late an hour, but she devised a plausible story; and telling the dreaded cook that she was faint with hunger, and must positively have a roast fowl and salad, if it cost ten louis, she insisted that the woman should at once go out and buy it, hoping thus to get rid of her for a while, and having full confidence in the other servants. The cook made many objections; but being threatened with dismissal on the morrow unless she complied, she was actually leaving the room, when M. de Chansenets, scared out of all presence of mind by the sight of patrols coming down the street, knocked at the gate, and entered the room. All screamed aloud with amazement, and Mrs Elliott, pretending not to have seen him before, asked how he could think of coming to her house at such a time. He took the hint, devised a rather improbable story in reply, was flown at by the Jacobin cook as a 'nasty aristocrat,' and reproached for the danger to which he was exposing them all. However, despite her politics, and the reward offered for Chansenets, she shewed no inclination to denounce him, and set off in quest of the roast fowl, while he remained behind, promising to go off directly. But still the dilemma seemed hopeless. To leave the house was impossible, for the domiciliary visits had begun; the cook was gone, indeed, but might return at any moment; and M. de Chansenets was in a fearful state of exhaustion. And now the brave Mrs Elliott shall tell her own story.

'My porter thought M. de Chansenets might be hid between the mattresses of my bed, which were very large, and in an alcove. We accordingly pulled two of the mattresses out further than the others, and made a space next the wall, and put him in. When he was there, we found that the bed looked tumbled, and, of course, suspicious. I then decided upon getting into bed myself, which prevented any appearance of a person being hid. I had all my curtains festooned up, my chandeliers and candelabra lighted. My cook soon came home, and I made her sit by my bedside the rest of the night. She abused M. de Chansenets, said that he was sure to be guillotined, and hoped I had turned him out directly. My own attendant now came in. She was a good woman, and as faithful as possible; yet, as she had not been there when Chansenets was hid, I thought that it was better not to tell her anything about it till after the domiciliary visit had been made. I had some warm negus by my bedside, and when my maid and the cook went out to see what was going on, I could just get at Chansenets to give him a tea-spoonful of it. Indeed, I was frightened to death, for I heard him breathe hard, and thought that he was dying, and I expected every minute that my cook would hear him. In short, I passed a most miserable night, surrounded by my servants, and almost in fits myself at the horrid visit I was going to receive. I trembled so much that I could hardly stop in bed, and the unfortunate man, who was the cause of my misery, I thought, perhaps, lay dead near me, for I could not hear him breathe at times.

'At a quarter before four o'clock, my cook hurried into my room, telling me that the municipal officers were coming in. No pen or words can give the smallest idea of my feelings at that moment. I felt that I was lost; but a very deep groan from my companion roused me in a moment; and God inspired me with more courage than I had ever felt in my life. Had the guards come into my room at that moment, I might have lost both myself and Chansenets; for I was determined to brave every danger, and to give myself up to them. Fortunately, they visited every

part of my house before they came into my room, and pulled my maid's bed and all the servants' beds to pieces, running their bayonets into the mattresses and feather-beds, swearing that they would not leave the house till they had found Chansenets. My maid and my cook, not knowing that he was in the house, were very bold, and feared nothing; but the men said that he was seen to go into the house, and not go out.

"This long search gave me time to cool. When the ruffians burst with violence and horrid imprecations into my room, I was perfectly calm, full of presence of mind, and indeed inspired with a courage equal to anything earthly. The candles were all a-light;| day was breaking, and my room looked more like a ball-room, than a scene of the horrors that were passing. They came all up to my bed, and asked me to get up. One of them, however, less hard than the others, said that there was no occasion to take me out of bed, as I could not dress before so many men. They were above forty. I said directly that I would get up with pleasure, if they required me to do so, but that I had passed a very cruel night. I had expected them, I said, at an earlier hour, and then had hoped to pass the rest of the night in quiet. I added, that I was sure they must be much fatigued, and proposed wine or liqueurs, or cold pie to them. 'Some of the head men were delighted with me, said nobody they had seen the whole night had been half so civil; that they were sorry they had not come sooner, in order that I might have had a good night when they were gone. They would not now make me get up, but were obliged to go on with their visit, and must search everywhere in my bed and under my bed. They, however, only felt the top of my bed and at its feet, and then under the bed. They also undid all the sofa-cushions, both in my room and in my boudoir and drawing-room, looked in my bathing-room, and, in short, were an hour in and out of my room. I expected every moment that they would again search the bed, as some of them grumbled, and said that I should get up, and that they had information of Chansenets being in my house. I said that they knew my cook, and might ask her in what manner I had received him when he came, and that I made him leave the house directly. She assured them of the truth of this, and that she was certain that I would not have harboured so great a foe of the Duke of Orleans. They said we should have given him up to justice. I replied, though I disliked him, yet I did not like to denounce anybody. They declared that I was then a bad citoyenne, and wished to know where they could find him. I told him that he said he was going home. They replied that they did not believe he would do that; but that if he was in Paris, they would find him in twentyfour hours. They then came back to my bed, and one of them sat down on it.

'It may easily be supposed in what a state of alarm poor Chansenets was during this long visit. I had heard nothing of him, had not even heard him breathe. At length the monsters advised me to take some rest, and wished me good-night. They stayed some time longer in my house, during which I was afraid of moving. At last I heard the gates shut, and my servants came in and told me that they were all gone. I went into violent hysterics. When I recovered a little, I desired my cook and other servants to leave the room, and go to bed, saying that I would take something, and go to rest myself. I directed my maid to bolt my room-door, and then I disclosed to her what I had done, and who was in the bed. She screamed with dread when she heard it, and said that she never could have gone through the visit, had she known it.

'We now got our prisoner out of the bed with

great difficulty, for when he heard the guards come into the room, he had tried to keep in his breath as much as possible, and having been so smothered, he was as wet as if he had been in a bath, and speechless. We laid him on the ground, opened the windows, and my maid made him drink a large glass of brandy. At last he came to himself, was full of gratitude to me, had been both frightened and surprised at my courage when the men were in the room, and the more so when I offered to get out of bed.'

No wonder that, after this terrible tension of all her energies, Mrs Elliott should herself feel very ill. A bed was made up in her boudoir for her unfortunate guest, and the faithful maid locked him in. The following day the Duke of Orleans paid a visit to Mrs Elliott, who felt inclined to trust him with her secret, but would not take so important a step without consulting Chansenets, who well knew himself to be obnoxious to the duke. He, however, was strong in the conviction that he could clear himself of all charge of ingratitude, and thought that his best chance of deliverance would be to throw himself upon the duke's compassion. Accordingly, when the latter paid his visit on the morrow on the way to the Convention, Mrs Elliott startled him by disclosing the truth. He heard it with dismay, as probably involving her safety, but was unable to devise any means of getting Chansenets removed. Mrs Elliott, therefore, had to conceal him till the barriers were opened, when she took him to her house at Meudon, and finally, had the satisfaction of seeing him set off in a mail-cart, the driver of which had agreed with the duke to take Chansenets to Boulogne, from whence he got safely into England.

Mrs Elliott's horror of the duke's conduct in voting for the death of his king and near relative was intense, nor did she shrink from openly expressing it to him. Her sufferings were extreme; and their last interview was a very painful one. He found himself unable to procure her a passport, and could but advise her not to talk of England at that time, but to bear her misfortunes like other people, and to keep very quiet. Soon afterwards, she was herself arrested; and after examinations and re-examinations, and a short space of liberty, she was sent to the prison of St Pelagie in the May of 1793. She did not stay there long; but she cannot say exactly how long, the change of name of the months having, she said, so perplexed her as to the date of events. At St Pelagie she made the acquaintance of the wretched Dubarry, and describes her as a very good-natured creature, telling anecdotes of Louis XV. and his court by the hour together. It is well known that this in every way pitiable woman went to the scaffold in an agony of abject terror. Mrs Elliott believes that this was not without good effect upon the public mind. mob had been accustomed to a calm and lofty bearing on the part of the victims, but these wild shrieks and frantic, impotent struggles horrified and alarmed.

The

The next prison to which Mrs Elliott was doomed was that of the Recollets at Versailles. Here her hardships were great indeed; but suffering seems to have brought out all the noble and tender feelings of her nature. Shut up with an old Dr Gun, an English physician and a philosophe, she tended him as a daughter might have done, begging him, however, not to discuss his favourite themes with her, nor disturb the faith which made her strong, while he was overwhelmed with despair. He was released from confinement before her, but wept to leave her behind. It is painful to read of the privations to which she and her companions in misery were subjected; but it is a ray of light to find that when she was ill, the others were all kindness, would even deprive themselves of the little water they

could spare for her use, and that common misfortune had made them all 'sincere, nay, romantic friends, always ready to die for one another.'

Mrs Elliott's imprisonment was latterly shared with Madame Beauharnais, afterwards the Empress Josephine, and Madame de Fontenai, afterwards Madame Tallien. All three were ordered for execution, and had undergone the preparatory cutting of their hair on the very day that Robespierre's fall ended the Terror. Mrs Elliott returned to England for several years, but finally settled in France: at the restoration of the Bourbons, had the satisfaction of seeing the Marquis de Chansenets, whose life she had so bravely saved, reinstated as governor of the Tuileries; and

died before the revolution of 1830.

WATER.

THERE is no material substance whose transformations are more marvellous, and whose relations are more complex and extensive, than those of water. You take in your hand a hailstone, and it rapidly changes into a transparent fluid, which gradually vanishes, only to reappear, during frosty weather, in dew-drops upon your window, where it resumes, in delicate ramifications, its former crystalline solidity. You place another under a bell-glass with thrice its weight of lime, and it soon melts and disappears, leaving behind it four parts, instead of three, of perfectly dry earth. You subject an opal to chemical analysis, and find it but a combination of flint and water, the latter being to the former as one to nine. Of the alum, the carbonate of soda, and the soap which you purchase of your grocer, the first contains forty-five, the second, sixty-four, and the third, from seventy to seventy-three and a half parts of solidified water. The clay-field which you plough contains a ton of water to every three tons of soil; nay, the very air which you inhale in ordinary weather holds diffused throughout every cubic foot of its bulk fully five grains of rarefied water, which no more wets the air than the solidified water wets the lime or the alum in which it is absorbed.

Profoundly wonderful, too, is the solvent power of water on solids and gases. Few of our readers, we

are sure, would be inclined to think the glass they

no less than six hundred and fifty-six thousandth parts of the watery menstruum; while chalk, which is the carbonate of lime, is not soluble in water at all, and only becomes so when converted into a bicarbonate by the infusion of a little additional

acid.

As regards gases, again, a hundred measures of water will, at an ordinary temperature and pressure, absorb a measure and a half of nitrogen, and nearly four measures of oxygen; while of the gases which arise from the decomposition of animal and vegetable matters, the same quantity will dissolve, of carburetted hydrogen, or common coal-gas, twelve measures and a half; of sulphuretted hydrogen, or drain-gas, and carbonic acid gas respectively, a hundred measures, or its own bulk; and of ammonia-the gas exhaled by spirits of hartshorn-no less than six hundred and seventy measures. To this absorptive power of water is owing the frequent contamination of London water by the coal-gas, which, leaking from the mains into the soil, is drawn into the servicepipes, sometimes to such an extent as to ignite at the water-taps.

We have hitherto treated of water in its relation to inorganic solids and gases: it is also, during life, a large constituent of organic bodies, whether animal or vegetable, and a powerful solvent of them after death. If a beefsteak be strongly pressed between two sheets of blotting-paper, it will yield nearly four-fifths of its own weight of water; while the experiments of Berzelius and Dalton prove that of the human frame, not excepting the bones, one-fourth only is solid matter, the rest being water. If a man, therefore,' says the former, in his Lehrbuch der Chimie, whose weight is ten stones, were squeezed flat under a hydraulic-press, seven stones and a half of water would be expressed, and only two stones of a dry residue, composed chiefly of carbon and nitrogen, would remain. The living organism,' he continues, is thus to be regarded as a solid mass diffused in water.' And Dalton found, by experiments on his own person, that five-sixths of the food taken day by day to repair the human fabric is also water. Of potatoes, again, no less than seventy

five per cent. is water, and of turnips, at least ninety

-a fact which, as has been remarked,' explains the small inclination of turnip-fed cattle and sheep for

drink.'

drink from soluble; yet the stained glass-windows of Westminster Abbey have all been honey-combed, and in many places nearly eaten through by the rain; The influence of water on the dead organism is and Lavoisier found that the glass retorts which he employed in distilling water from its constituent worthy of a far more extended notice than we can at gases lost much of their weight, while that of the that there are three changes-in all of which water is present bestow upon it. We shall only here remark, water was correspondingly increased by an impreg- the indispensable agent-through which organised nation of the elemental flint and alkali of the glass. bodies pass in their gradual relapse to the inorganic Nor is granite itself exempt from the mastery of this condition-namely, fermentation, putrefaction, and marvellous menstruum. An object dipped in the decay. In fermentation,'* we are told, the molesilicious waters thrown up by the hot springs of Ice- cules of a body are merely transposed and recomland from the depths of the plutonic strata, becomes bined in simpler groups; in decay, oxygen is absorbed coated with a flinty deposit identical with the silicate precisely as in combustion.' Liebig, indeed, calls decay slow combustion. Now, an aqueous solution of glass. Nay, there are some acids which are of fermenting organic matter, when the latter is actually soluble in the water contained in their own diffused through the water in the proportion of crystals. If you separate the thirty-six parts of dry from eight to ten grains to the gallon, so acts upon salt from the sixty-four parts of water which combine, the blood, the muscles, and all the more putrefias we have seen, to form carbonate of soda, you may able organs and tissues of the body, that the frame alternately solidify the water in the salt, and liquefy of the patient shrinks to the condition of a mummy, the salt in the water, according as you mix the and is found to contain, after death, only fat, tendons, bones, and a few other substances incapable of ingredients cold or mix them warm. But lime, which, as we have also seen, can solidify a third Fermentation takes the name of putrefaction when a part of its weight of water, requires for its own solution of the gaseous resultants evolved have a disagreeable smell.

[ocr errors]

putrefying in the ordinary conditions of the body.'* .* But it is to be remarked that the solvent power of water on organic matter, and the fermentability of the diluted organic matter itself, depend entirely on the temperature. At a temperature of 30° Fahrenheit, neither solution nor fermentation takes place; at 40° Fahrenheit, solution proceeds at the rate of a grain or two per gallon in the twelve hours, but without any appreciable fermentation; at 60° Fahrenheit, the solvent power is greatly increased, and the fermentation accelerated; at 67° Fahrenheit, the solution has reached a state of putrescence, and is calculated to produce in the animal economy that series of remarkable changes which we have noticed above. Water thus plays a double part in the process we have been describing: as a solvent, it permits free action to that chemical movement or transposition of the organic molecules which is necessary to fermentation; as a conductor of oxygen, it yields the element essential to complete decay. It ceases to be noxious, however, as soon as fermentation abates, whether this depends, as in water old in tank, on the completion of the elemental transposition, or on the addition of a substance, such as alcohol, or of a force, such as boiling water, capable of arresting the process.

Turning, now, from the consideration of water as an indispensable administrant to the final predominance of chemical over vital forces, to that of its properties and functions as it operates in producing the vital transformations themselves, we find in the case of plants, as observed by Lindley in the Ficus elastica, the water rushing upwards through their stipules like a swift stream, bearing along with it in solution the various saline and organic matters necessary for their nutrition. 'A pailful of water, suitably impregnated with salts, is speedily sucked up by the root of a growing tree immersed in it; the salts are assimilated, as also is part of the water, the remainder being evaporated by the leaves.' In France, in this way, timber is not only hardened, but even stained, while living, of divers brilliant hues. On the important subject of evaporation, much interesting light has been lately thrown by Mr Lawes of Rothampstead in his Experimental Investigations on the Amount of Water given off by Plants during their Growth,' published in the fifth volume of the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society of London. From these experiments, it appears that, taking the period of the growth of a wheat-plant at a hundred and seventy-two days, the ultimate weight of the mature plant at a hundred grains, and its mean weight at fifty grains, its mean daily transpiration is actually greater than its own mean weight, the evaporation of the plant, during the full period of growth, having been found to average about a hundred thousand grains of water! In like manner, it has been ascertained that the sunflower gives off daily a pint and a quarter of water, and a cabbage nearly as much-facts which, as has been well remarked, fully 'justify us in attributing to living plants a pumping-power far more rapid and considerable than they have heretofore been supposed to possess.'

What has been said of the sap of plants, applies with equal force to the blood of animals. We have already had occasion to notice the experiments of Dalton on the living subject. A gallon and a half of circulating water, holding in suspension or solution the materials of which the body is built up, gives warmth, suppleness, and nutriment to every fibre of the frame, accomplishes the vital transformations,

The poisonous properties of putrescent water seem to be nearly, if not altogether identical with those of the singular poison known to chemists as sausage-poison, for an extremely interesting account of which see Liebig's Chemistry in its Application to Agriculture and Physiology, English translation, pp. 383 et seq.

[ocr errors]

and prepares the effete residua for extrusion through appropriate channels. Of ninety-one ounces of solid and fluid aliment taken daily during the progress of his experiments, Dalton found that, while forty-eight and a half were excreted in the fluid form, and thirtyseven and a half in the shape of vapour from the lungs and skin, five ounces only were ejected in the comparatively solid form; while, even of these, three ounces and three-quarters were water, and a quarter of an ounce soluble in water, leaving only one ounce as the total daily insoluble ejectum of an adult man.'

If, still pursuing our chain of illustration, we finally consider the series of stupendous changes which have not improperly been called the life of the material world itself, we shall also find how conspicuous is the part which water plays in them. Upon the great tidal ocean, with its mighty currents, arctic and equatorial, constantly intermingling the concentrated brine of the tropics with the cooler and fresher waters of the poles, and with its vast evaporating surface of nearly one hundred and fifty millions of square miles, rests another mighty sea, having also its tides and currents

the liquid air. Where these two seas meet, they interfuse. For 2 per cent. by measure of air absorbed by the former, the latter holds in suspension 1 per cent. by weight, or nearly one million cubic miles of water, expanded-as each cubic foot of air contains at ordinary temperature rather more than five grains of water-to nearly eighty thousand times its fluid bulk. This fresh-water ocean steams up from the salt-water ocean at the rate of about sixteen tons per acre per day; and its mean bulk remaining unchanged, the supply of water by evaporation from below must necessarily equal its withdrawal by concentration from above.

Let us now attend to the process by which the distillation, transport, and condensation of this ambient vapour is effected. The air,' says a distinguished writer, to whom we have been already indebted for many curious facts in connection with our subject, 'expands so rapidly in ascending, that at three miles high, each cubic foot occupies the space of two; and this expansion increases its capacity for heat, of which it can absorb and render latent an extra degree of Fahrenheit for every 350 feet of elevation, or fourteen degrees and a half per mile. Such is the amount of heat stolen by air, as it ascends, from intermingled vapour; which, along with its heat, loses a corresponding proportion of its elasticity; whose reduction, again, brings about an equivalent diminution in the amount of cohesive force counterpoised; so that, at every successive elevation, a number of aqueous molecules, previously held apart as steam, collapse into visible vapour.' Thus, the six and a quarter grains of vapour held in suspension by each foot of fully saturated air at 60 degrees Fahrenheit, dwindle to three grains and a half at 40 degrees; and to two and a quarter at 32 degrees; the difference being the quantity that collapses in the process of ascending. This collapsed mist, however, would fall directly back into the ocean in a continuous drizzle, but for a very curious and beautiful provision of nature. When examined through a microscope, the clouds are found to consist of a congeries of little bubbles, resembling soap-bubbles (Saussure mentions his having once been caught in an Alpine fog in which these bubbles floated past him as large as peas), which, drifting along under the influence of the wind, finally collapse into compact drops, to be drawn down, by the earth's attraction, in showers to the ground, whence, after having discharged their important functions, they are again raised into the fresh-water ocean overhead. But true to its character as a vehicle, water not only carries up with it, in its evaporation, those more

volatile particles of organic matter with which the earth and ocean teem, and which furnish subsistence to myriads of atmospheric animalculæ and fungi, but brings down with it in its descent millions of tons of life-sustaining matter, to repair the abrasion and decay of the terrestrial organism.

THE HEAD OF MY PROFESSION. IN TWO CHAPTERS.

CHAPTER I.

I was born in the city of Bath, in the beginning of the present century. My earliest recollections of the hot-water capital are recollections of an era of prosperity, which, though then approaching its decline, was yet vigorous and boastful. At the period of my childhood, Bath was the winter focus of fashion, and to fashion and fashionable people it was devoted more thoroughly, perhaps, than any other city or town in the realm. Nothing that could by any possibility offend the visitors was allowed to exist; while every attraction, whatever its moral aspect, which had charms to lure them thither, was unreservedly displayed. I distinctly remember that while gaminghouses and worse places were encouraged, it was a high crime and misdemeanour for a little urchin to trundle a hoop on the pavement, lest he should damage the farthingale of some lady of quality; and school-boys were lugged off to prison in the town-hall for playing at 'cherry' in Orange Grove, to the supposed disturbance of the rheumatic tabbies. In those days, there were no hireable cabs, carriages, or omnibuses; and the only available locomotives were the sedan-chairs, for which there were regular stands at various places throughout the city, the principal ones being those near the Pump-room, and in front of the Assembly-rooms. The chairmen were a peculiar race, long since passed away-stout, brawny, broad-shouldered fellows, clad in light-blue frock surtouts, plush breeches, white stockings, and shoes with broad shining buckles. Originally, they had worn cocked-hats; but these, in my boyhood, began to give place to the customary cylinder, and disappeared altogether in the first years of my apprenticeship. These chairmen were the tyrants of the foot-pavements, along which they ambled at a six-mile-an-hour pace, ruthlessly sweeping into the kennel all who were not sufficiently active in getting out of their way. The walls of the old Abbey at that day bristled with chimneys and chimney-pots; close files of shops, chiefly occupied by small traders, clung like barnacles all round the surface of the ancient structure, save at the grand western entrance flanking the Pump-room; and a thriving trade was done in them, because here was one nucleus of the fashionable throng. Orange Grove then was a grove, crowded with ancient elms fungous with age. The Parades, North and South, were the Corso of worn-out roués and courtly convalescents, who promenaded them in wheel-chairs within the shadow of the New Assembly-rooms, and at an easy distance from the restoring waters. Dull, dreamy, and voiceless in summer-time, no sooner were the chills of autumn felt, than Bath was rapidly converted into a huge caravansary. Strange faces and new equipages flocked in by hundreds daily. Everybody then began to let lodgings, from the hucksters in the by-streets, to the speculators in the Circus and the Royal Crescent, and the price of apartments rose suddenly from shillings to pounds. Ten guineas a week was nothing for a tradesman's upper floors, which became the habitat of the landed gentry, whose retinue of servants had to take post in the tradesman's kitchen, along with his family, and to stow themselves at night

in cupboard, closet, or garret, wherever a shake-down could be extemporised.

All those vices which were fashionable, winked at by the sober citizens, who made a profit out of them, walked the streets at noonday, if not without notice, without rebuke. Scenes which were common to all eyes at Bath during the era of the Napoleonic wars, could not now be described in these columns, because the present generation of readers would not tolerate the description. Among the least obvious of the vices which fashion had made popular was that of gambling: the gentry gamed in their houses nightly, without pretermitting the Sunday; gaming establishments flourished in all parts of the town; some select, and only accessible to the subscribers; others common to all who could assume the appearance of gentlemen. Of all the modes of gambling, perhaps billiards was most esteemed. The game had been pronounced healthful by a distinguished member of the faculty, and a rage sprang up for it, which prevailed for years. What the nobility and gentry delighted in, the middle classes and the lower classes would of course feel a longing for; and as a result, there were billiard establishments open to all ranks, from the subscription-tables at the Upper Rooms, where the members played for thousands, down to the rickety board of Old Spraggs in Union Passage, where the balls trundled over a field of green baize into pockets as wide as a church-door, and the apprentice-boys of the town gambled for twopences.

At ten years of age my uncle sent me to school at Old Carpenter's in George Street, one of the most vigorous floggers of the day, who, aware of his strength of arm, would considerately allow a culprit to indue an extra jacket, or even two, if he could borrow them, before submitting to punishment. Here I made the acquaintance of Ned B-, who soon became my bosom-friend, and through him it was that I became a billiard-player. Ned's father was the proprietor of a large billiard establishment in Milson Street, where, in several rooms built over the garden in the rear of the house, billiards were played during the season at all hours of the day and night. One or other of these tables was generally unoccupied, and at Ned's command. Here he taught me the game, for which I immediately conceived a passion, and practised it without intermission at every pos sible opportunity. It is a fact that in my eleventh year I sometimes played for seven hours a day, without absenting myself from school, without fatigue, and without surfeit. Ned's father had no objection to our practice, as it was his object to make a finished player of his son. The boy, however, was nearsighted, and I soon outstripped him in knowledge of the game. Sometimes, Mr B would watch our play, and give us instruction, which I was but too apt in receiving. This state of things continued until I was fourteen years of age, by which time I could beat, and had beaten, every amateur player that frequented the rooms-not unfrequently to the considerable profit of the proprietor, who was always ready to back my play.

At fourteen, my uncle bound me as outdoor apprentice to Mr C- in George Street. I had now but a little time in the evening for billiards. At first, I did not care for this, thinking I had had enough of it; but after an interval of a few months, the old passion for the game returned stronger than ever. I had recourse to my old schoolfellow once more; but now there was an objection to my appearance at the subscription-rooms, his father not wishing his subscribers to identify me as Mr C's apprentice. In consequence, it was only by stealth and on rare occasions that we could resume our play. In this dilemma, I was driven to the cheaper tables free

« PreviousContinue »