Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 404, June, 1849

"In heaven's name!" exclaimed the Rector, "what have you got there, Mr Swallowlies?"

"It is in heaven's name, indeed," replied Swallowlies, lifting up the large washing-tub which we had seen in Janet's cottage. "These, sir, are holy relies, which I have luckily induced the venerable matron of the hut to part with – partly by prayers and supplications, and partly by payments in money."

The Rector looked astonished, for he had not been of our party; and Swallowlies, allowing the calf to feed on the grass near the spring, explained his sentiments on the subject of the tub, and related the miraculous history of the animals his companions.

"And how much did you give for the tub, sir?" said Smiler.

"Five pounds procured the inestimable treasure," answered Swallowlies in triumph; "eight pounds procured me the sacred tabby, and twelve guineas the calf. A very few pounds more have obtained for me, if possible, still more precious articles. Look here, sir," he continued, pulling from his coat-pocket an old quarter-boot, with the sole nearly off, and two or three flat-headed nails sticking out from the tattered heel – "this is one of the sandals in which the illustrious Toper used to go his annual pilgrimage to the shrine of St Thomas of Canterbury. This instrument of iron – which, I confess, struck me at first to bear a great resemblance to a poker – was his staff. And this, sir," he said, pulling from his bosom a piece of very old corduroy, mended in several places – "this is the left leg of the pantaloons the saint wore for upwards of forty years, without ever taking them off; for he is recorded never to have changed his raiment but twice, and never to have washed either his face or hands, – such a true Christian soldier was he."

"He was a dirty brute, and no soldier," cried Captain Smith, who was a great martinet in his regiment, "and I would have had him flogged every morning till he learned to be more tidy."

"Sacrilege! horror!" exclaimed Swallowlies, crossing himself in the greatest perturbation, and placing the tub once more on his head, and resuming his labours in driving the calf onward with his poker.

"Won't you have some pie?" said Dr Smiler.

"No, sir; I am fasting to-day, and am anxious to place my treasures in security."

"Such faith is highly edifying," said Mount Huxtable, "and unfortunately too uncommon in the present day. Ah! were all men equally pure, and as highly gifted as Swallowlies, the Reformation would soon be blotted out, and our Mother of Rome receive her repentant children."

"How? What did you say, my dear sir?" inquired the Rector. "Are you not a Protestant?"

"Assuredly not, sir. I detest the cold and barren name. It is a mere negation. I want something positive. It is the part of a Christian to believe – certainly not to deny."

"To be sure, Doctor, we are none of us Protestants; we are Anglo-Catholics," said Araminta, answering for the feminine part of his flock.

"I never viewed it in that light before," said Dr Smiler, looking assuringly at Christina, who seemed greatly alarmed at what her father might do. "Certainly religion is not a mere denial of error; it is far more – an embracing of truth."

"There is no truth omitted in the faith of the Catholic Church," said Mount Huxtable solemnly. "Some are more developed than they were at first; and some, more recently planted, are even now in course of growth, and, before many years elapse, will infallibly spread their branches all over this barren land. But I will call on you to-morrow," he added, with a smile, and a bend of his head towards Christina, which entirely barred up all the arguments that our Protestant champion might have been inclined to advance. And in a short time the pic-nic came to an end, and we all returned to Yawnham in the order we had come – always excepting Mr Swallowlies, whom we overtook in the first half-mile, still under his umbrageous sombrero, and still gesticulating with the poker to guide his erratic calf.

LETTER FOURTH

I had not sealed up the letter which I inclose to you herewith, my dear Charles, and fortunately, as it turns out – for I have it now in my power to tell you the conclusion of your machinations in this parish.

Three weeks have elapsed since the expedition to Holywell Tree. My anger, I confess, with Dr Smiler was so hot that I never called at the parsonage; and after the first Sunday I did not even go to church. The communion-table is now surmounted by a gigantic crucifix – a cover of bright velvet, with a golden star in the centre, hangs down to the ground, while a vase of flowers stands on the middle of the table, flanked at each side by immense candlesticks, with a candle of two or three pounds' weight in each. There is a stone creding table, an eagle at one side of the aisle in bronze, and the old recess in the porch is cleared out, and a basin placed in it; but whether for the reception of holy water or charitable pence I did not stop to inquire. There is daily service at ten in the morning. The girls wear a regular uniform, and call themselves Sisters of the Order of St Cecilia, and have appointed Swallowlies their father confessor; and once or twice a-week, I believe, he, or Rowdy, or Mount Huxtable, attends in the vestry, and takes the young ladies, one by one, to a solitary conversation, with the door locked. And the best of the affair is, that Tom Blazer and his two military friends are as constant in their attendance as the rest. But, with these exceptions, there is not a man to be seen in the church, either on week-days or Sundays; for I am told that even John Simpkins and Peter Bolt have struck for wages, and won't attend prayers under half-a-crown a-week. So we have begun a subscription in the parish for a district chapel; and in the mean time we stream off by the hundred, either to the church or meeting-houses of the nearest parish. Major M'Turk, I am sorry to say, has had many interviews with the Reverend Mr Rowdy, and has become almost an infidel, with a leaning, if anything, to the religion of the Buddhists in India, who fast, he says, fifty times more, and go through a thousand times more painful penances than either Puseyite or Papist.

This morning I was surprised to see Doctor Smiler coming up my garden walk, as he used to do in the days of our friendship. He looked rather downcast as he drew near the window, where I was busy getting my fishing-flies in order, and coughed once or twice, as if to announce his approach. I pretended not to hear him, and continued absorbed in my lines and feathers; and, instead of coming in at the open door as he has done for the last twenty years, he actually rang the bell, and old Thomas had to bustle on his coat, and come out of the back-yard to see who was there, – and I thought the old man's tone was a little sharp when he announced Dr Smiler.

"How do you do, Doctor Smiler?" I said very courteously; "have the kindness to be seated."

The Doctor sat down.

"Are you going to the brook to-day?" he inquired.

"Yes; if the wind holds, I shall try it for an hour or two this evening. I hope Mrs Smiler is well."

"She is not well," he said.

"And Christina – Miss Christina?" I added, correcting myself.

"Dying," said the Doctor.

"Christina dying!" I exclaimed, starting up and taking the Doctor's hand; "my dear Smiler, why didn't you tell us? – why didn't you send for us?"

"I was ashamed, and that's the truth," said the Doctor. "Ah! Buddle, you were wiser than I."

"How? – what? Is it that rascal Mount Huxtable?" I inquired.

"No doubt of it," replied Smiler. "He has ruined the happiness of my daughter, turned away the hearts of my parishioners, and made me a laughing-stock to the whole county."

"Is he not going to marry her, then? – did he not call on you after the pic-nic?"

"No, he didn't call on me; but he consulted Christina's taste in all things – got her to superintend the alterations in the church – the candlesticks and flowers; he even asked her what style of paper she liked for drawing rooms, and the poor girl expected every moment that he would make a formal demand."

"It may come yet," I said, endeavouring to cheer him.

"It can't, my dear friend. I find he is married already."

"The villain!"

"He was an intimate friend of Charles Fustian," continued the Rector, "and by his advice answered my advertisement for an anti-Tractarian curate; by his advice also he concealed the fact of his marriage, and, in the course of less than a month, see what he has done."

"He denied that he knew Charles Fustian."

"I accused him of the duplicity this morning, but he says it was for the good of the flock; and as he is their shepherd for two years, he has a greater interest in them than I."

"And how did he explain his speeches to Christina?"

"General observations," he says; "he wished her opinion on drawing-room papers, and required her assistance in the interior arrangement of his church."

"His church! the puppy! We shall petition the bishop."

"Of no use," said the Rector. "You will perceive, my dear Buddle, that the generality of the bench are either very fond of power, and flattered with Puseyite sycophancy; or anxious to keep pace with the titled aristocracy, and very fond of 'gentility.' Now there is no denying that the Tractarians are more polished men, and, as far as the arts and refinements go, more cultivated men than the labouring clergy generally, and therefore these two things keep them secure from any authoritative condemnation – their truckling to their spiritual superiors, and their standing in society. If Mount Huxtable had been a vulgar fellow, though with the energy and holiness of St Paul, – if he had stood up against his diocesan and vindicated his liberty, either of speech or action, in the slightest degree – we could have hurled him from the parish, probably into gaol, in spite of all the licenses in the world; but I have no hope in this case."

"Then I have," I said, "for, from what you told me of the fellow's hypocrisy, I have no doubt he was the very man who was received, as they call it, into the Romish Church by Bishop Cunningham, three months since."

"It is surely impossible, my dear Buddle; how could he officiate in our church after being a professed papist?"

"Easily, my dear Smiler; it has very often been done, and is frequently done at this moment. Take that account of the ceremony with you, and tax him with it at once."

The Doctor folded up the paper, and went on, —

"But this is not all. How am I to atone to poor Mrs Blazer, and poor Mrs Swainlove, for what has happened?"

"Why? – what has happened to the old ladies?"

"Jones has eloped with Araminta Blazer; and, in the same post-chaise, Smith has carried off Tinderella Swainlove!"

"Why, they were almost professed unbelievers, – at least not at all Tractarian."

"That doesn't matter. They are off, and what we have now to hope for is – that they will go to Gretna Green. Young Pulser also has kicked Mr Rowdy into the mill-pond, where he was nearly drowned, for something or other he said or did to Priscilla Pulser at confession; and, to complete the catalogue of woes, Mr Swallowlies has been arrested for theft; for it appears that the calf which Janet Wheedler sold him was not her own, but belonged to farmer Ruffhead."

What could I say to comfort the poor old rector under such a tremendous cloud of calamity? The solitary glimpse of satisfaction, I confess, which I individually caught from his narrative was, that Araminta had shown the good taste to leave a friend of mine in the lurch. I will add nothing to this letter, for I am hurrying off to assist the Doctor in comforting his household, and recovering possession of his parish. How we succeed in this, and what steps we take to regain the confidence and affection of the flock, I shall not fail to inform you. Meanwhile, reflect on all that has arisen from your introduction of these foreign mummeries and superstitions into this quiet parish, and "how great effects from little causes spring." —

Yours, &c.

T. Buddle.

AUSTRIA AND HUNGARY

When Jellachich, on the 9th September 1848, passed the Drave, the boundary of Croatia and of Hungary Proper, the war between Austria and Hungary may be said to have commenced. Up to that time the hostilities directed against Hungary had been confined to the attacks of her revolted Sclavonic subjects in some parts of Croatia, and in the counties on the Lower Danube. These revolts had been instigated, and the attacks conducted, by officers in the Austrian service, who were countenanced and aided by a party at the court, and who asserted that they acted with the authority and in the interests of the Imperial family. Still the emperor, on the demand of the Hungarian ministry, had disavowed their proceedings. In May, he had publicly degraded Jellachich from all his offices, as a rebel against the Hungarian government. In July, he had formally announced to the diet, through his representative the Archduke Palatine, his determination to maintain the integrity of Hungary, and the laws he had sanctioned in April, and repudiated, as a calumny, the assertion of Jellachich and the other leaders of the revolt, that the emperor, or any other member of the Imperial family, countenanced their proceedings. It is true that Jellachich and another of these leaders had subsequently been received by the emperor-king, and by several members of the Imperial family, in a manner hardly consistent with their position as rebels; yet it was possible that his majesty might still listen to other counsels – might still resolve to pursue a constitutional course, and to preserve his own faith inviolate. Even so late as the 9th September – the day on which Jellachich passed the Drave – he solemnly renewed his promise to maintain the integrity of Hungary and the laws of April. But upon the 4th September he had reinstated Jellachich in all his offices, civil and military, knowing that he was then at the head of an army on the frontiers of Hungary, preparing to invade that kingdom, and to force the Hungarians to renounce the concessions made to them in April by their king. It appeared that the Ban had been supplied with money and with arms from Vienna while he was still nominally in disgrace, and he was joined by Austrian regiments, which had marched from Southern Hungary to put themselves under his orders. His advance, therefore, at the head of an army composed of Austrian regiments and Croat forces, was truly an invasion of Hungary by Austria.

The Hungarian forces collected to resist this invasion were still without a commander-in-chief or a staff – without sufficient arms or ammunition, and for the most part without military discipline or organisation. We have already mentioned that, on the restoration of the Ban to his offices and command, the Hungarian ministry resigned; but Mazaros, minister of the war department, Kossuth, minister of finance, and Szemere, minister of the interior, continued provisionally to perform the duties of their offices. Their measures were so energetic, that the Palatine called upon Count Louis Bathyanyi, the head of the late ministry, to form another government. This step was approved at Vienna; and Bathyanyi undertook the duty on the condition that Jellachich should be ordered to retire, and, if he refused, should be proclaimed a traitor. The king required a list of the proposed ministry, which was immediately presented; but a week or more elapsed, during which no answer was received, and during which Jellachich continued to advance towards the capital of Hungary. The Palatine, at the request of the diet, and after the measure had been approved by the king, took command of the Hungarian troops opposed to the Ban, which were then retiring upon Buda. Both parties, the invaders and the invaded, appeared at this time to be countenanced by the Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary; and the diet, while preparing for defence, seems not to have relinquished all hope of a peaceful arrangement. The Archduke Stephen, after joining the army, and hastily organising it, opened communications with the Ban, and arranged a meeting in boats on the Lake Balaton: but Jellachich did not keep his appointment; and the Archduke Palatine, summoned to Vienna by the emperor, left the army, passed through Pesth on his way to Vienna, and on his arrival there, as we formerly stated, resigned the office of palatine. Shortly afterwards he retired to his private residence on the Rhine.

Count Louis Bathyanyi, whose conditions had not yet been either accepted or rejected, was thus left alone to carry on the whole government; and the diet, for the purposes both of aiding and controlling the administration of the minister, named a committee of their number, called the "Committee of Defence," to assist in conducting the government.

Jellachich had now established himself at Stuhlweissenberg, four or five marches from Pesth; and the government at Vienna appears to have anticipated that Hungary, left without a government, must fall into confusion. But she preserved her loyal and constitutional attitude; and while she was prepared to repel force by force, gave no pretext for employing it. Count L. Bathyanyi was at length informed that his list of the new ministry was not approved; and by an ordinance dated 25th September, General Count Francis Lamberg was appointed to the command of all the troops in Hungary, with power to restore order and to close the diet. The time had arrived which the Hungarians had been most desirous to avert, when they must either surrender their constitutional rights or resist their king.

The murder of Count Lamberg by a frantic mob threw the diet into a state of consternation. The regiment on which it most relied was the regiment of Lamberg, and the Ban was at the gates of Buda. The diet passed resolutions expressing its profound grief at the unhappy fate of the count, and ordered criminal proceedings to be immediately instituted against his murderers. The patriotism of the soldiers was not shaken by the horrible event that had occurred; and they displayed their wonted gallantry on the 29th, when the Ban was repulsed. Immediately after the murder of General Lamberg, Count Louis Bathyanyi resigned. There was now neither palatine nor minister in the kingdom, and the enemy was about to attack the capital. In this emergency the Committee of Defence, at the head of which was Louis Kossuth, took upon itself the direction of affairs; and since that time it has governed Hungary.

After the defeat of Jellachich, while he was on the frontiers of Austria, followed by the Hungarian army, the king named Count Adam Ricsay prime-minister, and by a new ordinance, countersigned Ricsay, the diet was dissolved, its decrees annulled, and Jellachich appointed commander-in-chief of all the troops in Hungary. The civil authorities were suspended, and the country declared in a state of siege. At the same time Jellachich was named royal commissioner, and invested with executive power over the whole kingdom.

From the moment of Jellachich's nomination to the office of Ban of Croatia, without the consent of the responsible Hungarian ministry, his concert with a party hostile to Hungary at the imperial court had not been doubtful; and that party had now prevailed upon the emperor-king to adopt their views. The influence of the Ban was not shaken by his defeat. The court had previously identified itself with his proceedings, and he had faithfully, though not hitherto successfully, espoused its cause. He had declared against the laws of April and the separate ministry in Hungary, which these laws had established, and in favour of a central government at Vienna for the whole dominions of the emperor, which he proposed to force the Hungarians to accept. He was no longer a Croat chief, asserting the national pretensions of his countrymen, but an Austrian general, assailing the constitution and the independence of Hungary. From the position at Raab, on the road to Vienna, to which he had retreated after his reverse, he applied for reinforcements to enable him again to advance towards Pesth. It was the refusal of these reinforcements to march that led to the second revolution at Vienna, which has been attributed to Hungarian agency. It is probable that the Hungarians would employ all the influence they could command to prevent or impede the march of troops to attack them; but it is remarkable that the prosecutions of persons engaged in that revolution do not appear to have elicited anything that would justify us in attributing the revolt of the Viennese to the Hungarians. Attempts have also been made to implicate the Hungarians in the atrocious murder of Latour, the minister of war, by the insurgents of Vienna, but we have not been able to trace any foundation for such a charge. The Hungarians were formidable enemies, and to them every atrocity was attributed.

The Emperor of Austria was now at war with Hungary, and his enemies, therefore, became her allies. The revolutionary party at Vienna for a time regained the ascendency, and signalised it by the crime to which we have referred. After Windischgratz and Jellachich had invested the city, the Viennese applied to the Hungarians for aid; but their levies and national guards had returned in great numbers to their homes, and their army was not in a condition to make any impression upon that of the emperor. It advanced, and was repulsed. The Austrian government, by allying itself with rebellion and anarchy to subvert the established constitution of Hungary, had driven the Hungarians, in self-defence, into an alliance with the revolutionary party in Vienna against the government.

The error into which it had been led ought now to have been manifest to the Austrian cabinet; and it was not yet too late to remedy the evil. By returning to the course of legality and good faith, the Imperial government might have disarmed and regained Hungary. If there was in that country, as there no doubt was, a party which was disposed to sympathise with the republicans, and even with the worst of the anarchists in Austria, they were without power or influence, and their evil designs would at once have been frustrated, their opinions repudiated, and the loyalty of the nation confirmed; but the court had unfortunately placed itself in a position that left it but the choice of abandoning and breaking faith with the rebels to Hungary, whose eminent services at Vienna it was bound to acknowledge, or of persevering in the breach of faith with Hungary, which his advisers had forced upon the emperor-king. That the Hungarians had been ready to support the cause of monarchy and order, so long as faith had been kept with them, was put beyond all question by the vote of the diet, which, on the motion of the responsible Hungarian ministry formed in April, had placed forty thousand Hungarian troops at the disposal of the emperor, for service in Italy, "to preserve the honour of the Austrian arms," then endangered by the first reverses of Marshal Radetski. The Wessemberg ministry appears to have contemplated restoring the king of Hungary and his subjects to their legal and constitutional relations, for it issued a circular declaring that the king intended to fulfil the engagements he had entered into in April. But the power of the minister was subordinate to that of a party at the court, whose views were opposed to his own; and the acts of the government were not such as to restore confidence in its sincerity, at all times a difficult task for a government that has justly forfeited the confidence of a whole nation. Hungary did not dare to suspend her preparations for resistance; and the second revolution at Vienna, by occupying the troops destined to attack her, gave her time to improve her means of defence.

Had there been at Vienna a government capable of inspiring confidence in its sincerity – a government possessing power or influence enough to carry out conciliatory measures, to fulfil the engagements it might contract – the differences between Austria and Hungary might still have been amicably adjusted, by restoring the constitutional government established in April. All the bloodshed and misery that has ensued, and all the evils that may yet follow from the war, would thus have been averted. But irresponsible advisers had more influence at the court than the ostensible cabinet, and were blindly bent on returning to the irretrievable past. They founded their hopes upon the devotion of that noble army which had re-established order in Austria, and which, if employed only to maintain order and the just rights of the monarchy, would have encountered no opposition that it could not overcome. Hungary, cordially reunited to Austria under the same sovereign, would again have become, what the Emperor Francis declared it to be, "the chief bulwark of the monarchy;" and the empire would have resumed its position as the guardian of peace and order in Eastern Europe, and a powerful support to the cause of constitutional monarchy and rational liberty everywhere.

Unhappily for the Austrian empire, for Europe, and for "the good cause," evil counsels prevailed, and Hungary was again invaded. Many of the leading magnates adhered to the court, at which they had spent their lives, and which was in fact their home. But there was hardly a great family of which some wealthy and influential members did not declare for their native country. A great majority of the resident aristocracy – the numerous class of resident country gentlemen, almost without exception – the body of inferior nobles or freeholders – the peasant-proprietors and the labouring population, espoused the cause of Hungary. The Protestant clergy in the Majjar country, to a man, and the Roman Catholic clergy of Hungary in a body, urged their flocks to be patient and orderly, to obey the government charged with the defence of the country, and to be faithful and valiant in defending it.

The attacks of Jellachich, and of that portion of the Croats and Serbes which had declared against Hungary, had failed to bring about the submission of the diet, and had produced an alliance, dangerous to the court, between its enemies in the Hereditary States and the Hungarians, with whom it was now at war. The national assembly or congress that met at Vienna was tainted with republican notions, and divided into factions, influenced for the most part by feelings of race. German unity, Sclave ascendency, and Polish regeneration, were the ultimate objects of many of those who talked of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The discussion of the constitution revealed the discord in their opinions, and they seemed to agree in nothing but the determination to overturn the ancient system of the empire.

Wearied by contentions, in which his character and feelings unfitted him to take a part; distracted by diverse counsels; involved by a series of intrigues, from which he could not escape, in conflicting engagements; dreading the new order of things, and diffident of his own ability to perform the duties it demanded of him, the Emperor Ferdinand abdicated; and by a family arrangement the crown of Austria was transferred, not to the next heir, but to the second in succession. The crown of Hungary, as we formerly stated, had been settled by statute on the heirs of the House of Hapsburg; but no provision had been made for the case which had now arisen. The Hungarians held that their king had no power to abdicate; that so long as he lived he must continue to be their king; that if he became incapable of performing the regal functions, the laws had reserved to the diet the power to provide for their due performance; that the crown of Hungary was settled by statute on the heirs of the House of Hapsburg, and the Emperor Francis Joseph was not the heir. The laws of Hungary required that her king should be legitimately crowned according to the ancient customs of the kingdom, and should take the coronation oath before he could exercise his rights or authority as sovereign. If he claimed the crown of Hungary as his legal right, he was bound to abide by the laws on which that right was founded. But these laws required that he should be crowned according to the customs of Hungary, and that he should bind himself by a solemn oath to maintain the constitution and the laws, including those passed in March, sanctioned and put into operation in April 1848. In short, that he should concede what Hungary was contending for.

The abdication of the Emperor Ferdinand, and the accession to the Imperial throne of his youthful successor, presented another opportunity of which the Austrian government might have gracefully availed itself, to terminate the differences with Hungary. The young emperor was fettered by no engagements, involved in none of the intrigues that entangled his unwary predecessor, and entailed so great evils upon the country. He was free to take a constitutional course in Hungary, to confirm the concessions which had been voluntarily made, and which could not now be recalled – to restore to the Imperial government a character for good faith; and thus to have won the hearts of the Hungarians. Supported by their loyal attachment to their king, he might have peacefully worked out the reforms in the government of his empire which the times and the circumstances demanded or justified. But Count Stadion, the real head of the new ministry, though possessed of many eminent qualities as a statesman, was deeply imbued with the old longing after unity in the system of government: he hoped to effect, by means of a constitution devised and framed for that purpose, the amalgamation of the different parts of the empire, which abler men had failed to accomplish under an absolute monarchy, in circumstances more favourable to success. The opposition that was inevitable in Hungary he proposed to overcome by force of arms; and, at a moment when a desire for separate nationality was the predominant feeling in the minds of all the different races in the empire, he had the hardihood to imagine that he could frame a constitution capable of overcoming this desire, and of fusing them all into one. It was considered an advantage that the emperor, unfettered by personal engagements to Hungary, was free to prosecute its subjugation, to subvert its constitution, and to force the Hungarians to accept in its place the constitution of Count Stadion, with seats in the Assembly at Vienna for their representatives, under one central government for the united empire. This may have been a desirable result to obtain; it might, if attainable, have been ultimately conducive to the strength of the empire and the welfare of all classes; but it was not to claim the hereditary succession to a throne secured and guarded by statutes – it was rather to undertake the conquest of a kingdom.