Slike strani
PDF
ePub

understood to be shone upon temporarily by the bright-that Anna had shown her usual acuteness in the estieyes of Miss Clifford. He went first to her mother's, of mate she had formed of his character. course, and during a short call, ascertained from the old lady that her youngest daughter was on a visit to us. The captain was not slow in taking advantage of the information, and he was at our door before Rose had at all made up her mind what should be done in such an emergency.

I was equally embarrassed, since one never knows on what nice point those things called love-affairs may turn. However, I detained the captain, and wrote a note to Miss Clifford. What was my surprise when a verbal answer was returned, inviting Captain Maguire and myself to Mrs Larkins's. There was no alternative, so I shawled forthwith; but I really do not know how I led the young gentleman through the shop into the ragcarpeted sitting-room of Mrs Larkins. The scene upon which the door opened must have been a novel one for fashionable optics.

66

Perhaps the captain thought his pay too trifling to be shared with so exalted a heroine. But we must not complain; for his mistified look and manner at Mrs Larkins's affords us a permanent income of laughter, which is something in these dull times; and I have learned, by means of his visit, that there is one really independent woman in the world.

As levying day had come before it was expected, so selling day, the time so dreaded by the affectionate daughters, came duly on, and no tidings yet of Augustus. Many letters had been forwarded to his address in New York, and no answers arriving, the anxiety of the family had been such as almost to drown all sense of the hopeless, helpless destitution which now seemed to threaten them. Being alone at this time, and wishing that whatever it was possible to do might be done properly for Mrs Clifford, I took the liberty of sending for a neighbour, that is, a country neighbour-one who lived "next door," about four miles off a gentleman well versed in the law, though not practising professionally. Mr Edward Percival, this friend of ours, came into this country-then a land of promise indeed-some seven years since. Having inherited a large tract of wild land, he chose to leave great advantages behind him, for the sake of becoming an improver, a planter, a pioneer

Anna Clifford, with a white apron depending from her taper-waist, stood at the ironing-table, half hidden by a clothes-frame already well-covered with garments of all sizes. Mrs Larkins occupied her own dear creaking rocking-chair, holding a little one in her lap, and jogging another in the cradle, while blued-eyed minims trotted about or sat gravely staring at the strangers. "Get up, young 'uns!" said Mrs Larkins hastily, as Captain Maguire's imposing presence caught her eye, what not? [By the aid of this obliging young perand Miss Clifford came forward to welcome him. son the selling day was staved off, and Mr Percival, unJump up! clear out!" And as she spoke, she tipped known to the family, started off in search of Augustus one of the minims off a chair, offering the vacated seat-found him ill, but contrived to bring him home.] to the gentleman, who, not noticing that it was a nursing chair, some three or four inches lower than usual, plumped into it after a peculiar fashion, a specimen of bathos far less amusing to the young officer than to the infant Larkinses, who burst into a very natural laugh. Miss Clifford meanwhile asked after friends in Montreal and elsewhere, and entertained her dashing beau with all the ease and grace that belonged to the drawing-rooms in which they had last met. It was most amusing to note the air with which Anna ran over the splendid names of her quondam friends, and to contrast it with the puzzled look which would make itself evident, spite of" power of face," in the countenance of her visitor. Never was man more completely mistified.

Mr Larkins now brought in a huge armful of stovewood, which he threw into a corner with a loud crash. "Will there be as much wood as you'll want, Miss Clifford?" said he.

"Yes-quite enough, thank you," said Anna composedly; "I have nearly finished the ironing."

At this the captain, with a look in which was concentrated the essence of a dozen shrugs, took his leave, declaring himself quite delighted to have found Miss Clifford looking so well.

We were no sooner in the open air than he began and I did not wonder

"May I ask-will you tell me, madam, what is the meaning of Miss Clifford's travesty? Is she masquerading for some frolic? or is it a bet?-for I know young ladies do bet, sometimes."

"Neither, sir," I replied. "Miss Clifford is, in sad and sober earnest, filling the place of a servant, that she may procure the necessaries of life for her family. More than one friend would gladly offer aid in an emergency, which we trust will be only temporary; but Miss Clifford, with rare independence, prefers devoting herself as you have seen."

While Augustus was gaining strength, his friend made the discovery that he was in pressing want of an assistant in his business. He had great tracts of land in far-away counties, calling for immediate attention; there was a great amount of overcharged taxes, which must be argued down, if possible, at various offices; he had distant and very slippery debtors; in short, just such a partner as Augustus Clifford would make was evidently indispensable; and Augustus got well.

Anna had come home to help to nurse her brother, but with such positive promise of return, that Mr Larkins did not go girl-hunting, but mixed griddle-cakes, and dressed the children unrepiningly during the interregnum. When Augustus recovered, the secret of the weekly dollar was confided to him, and Anna prepared for going back to her "place." The brother was naturally very averse to this, and laboured hard to persuade her that he should now be able to make all comfortable without this terrible sacrifice. But she persisted in fulfilling her engagement, and, moreover, declared that it really was not a sacrifice worth naming.

"Look at your hands, dear Anna!" said Rose. "Oh, I do look at them; but what then? Of what possible use are white satin hands in the country? I should have browned them with gardening, if nothing else; and when once Uncle Hargrave's money comes, a few weeks' gloving will make a lady of me again." "But Mr Percival, I am sureRose tried to whisper, but Anna would not hear her, and only ran away the faster.

Mrs

By and by Uncle Hargrave's legacy did come; and whether by a gloving process or not, it was not long before Anna's hands recovered their beauty. Larkins lost the best "help" she ever had; and Anna at length told all to her mother, who learned more by means of this effort of her daughter, than all her mis

fortunes had been able to teach her.

"Bless my soul, what a noble girl! What uncommon The legacy, like many a golden dream, had been spirit and resolution! I never heard anything like it! tricked out by the capricious wand of Fancy. In its Such a splendid creature to be so sacrificed!" These, real and tangible form, far from enabling Mrs Clifford and a hundred other enthusiastic expressions, broke from to return to city splendour, it proved so moderate in the gay captain, while I recounted some of the circum- amount, that she was obliged to perceive that a comfortstances which had brought Mrs Clifford's family to this able home even in the country would depend, in some delow ebb; but as he pursued his trip to the prairies the gree, on economy and good management. Certainty being next morning, without attempting to procure another thus substituted for the vague and glittering phantom interview with the lady he so warmly admired, I came which had misled her, and helped to benumb her natuto the conclusion-not a very uncharitable one, I hope | rally good understanding, she set herself about the work

of reform with more vigour than could have been anticipated; and an expression of quiet happiness again took possession of faces which had long been saddened by present or dreaded evils.

Strange to say, Mr Edward Percival, by nature the most frank, manly, straightforward person in the world, seems lately to have taken a manoeuvring turn. After showing very unmistakable signs of an especial admiration of Mrs Larkins's "girl," he scarce ventures to offer her the slightest attention. At the same time, his interest in the ponderous mamma is remarkable, to say the least. Hardly a fine day passes that does not see a certain low open carriage at Mrs Clifford's door, and a grave but gallant cavalier, handsome and well-equipped, soliciting the old lady's company for a short drive. This is certainly a very delicate mode of mesmerising a young lady, but it is not without effect. Anna does not go to sleep-far from it; but her eyelids are observed to droop more than usual; and choice flowers, which come almost daily from the mesmeriser's greenhouse, are very apt to find their way from the parlour vase to the soft ringlets of the lovely sleep-waker. What these signs may portend we must leave to the scientific.

Mr Percival came from the very heart's core of Yankeeland, and he has been four years a widower. These disabilities have been duly represented to Miss Clifford; nay-I will not aver that they may not even have been wickedly dwelt upon-thrown in her teeth, as it were, by one who loves to tease such victims; and I have come to the conclusion, which Anna herself suggested to me the other day, hiding at the same time her blushing face on my shoulder, after a confidential chit-chat-"There certainly is a fate in these things."

THE STAG-HUNT OF CHANTILLY. Partant pour la chasse-What a host of recollections of old pictures are called up by these words-what reminiscences of old chansons no longer sung! The very thought of the bluff knights going forth in a spring morning dressed in antique guise, with attendants holding leashes of hounds, and huntsmen galloping their horses through far-winding glades in the greenwood, is quite refreshing in these painstaking and rightorderly times. The chasse is evidently settling down into the things that were; it is heard of in all its glory only by tradition. The world is too busy for it. The necessity to make, sell, and live, is too urgent to allow of "any such nonsense."

Of late, the royal house of Orleans has made the attempt to revive la chasse, as well as to introduce into France courses des chevaux-in plain English, horseraces. A kind of perception that a people do not "get on" the worse for being now and then amused, and allowed to kick up the heels of their mind, is apparently at the bottom of the movement. Any way, there the thing is. Chantilly, celebrated in its day, and still one of the prettiest places in France, distant about twenty-five miles from the capital, has been constituted the head-quarters of the revelries, which partake of something like the old chasse-horses, hounds, men, dogs, and a great deal of racing and chasing quite to one's heart's content. To see one of these affairs is worth going a great many miles; but there are other inducements. Chantilly was once the seat of the Dukes of Condé, and the splendid stables alone belonging to the domain, somewhere about half as large again as the national gallery, and six times as splendid a monument of architecture, are themselves worth travelling that distance to see. They are at the back of the town, facing the pelouse, or vast turfed plain on which the races take place. Covering an extent of ground almost as great as Buckingham Palace, with their lofty windows, elegant cupolas, vast courts, spacious ridingschools, their poetry of the middle ages, their association with the days when Dukes of Condé were dukes indeed, their long train of chivalric recollections; with

all this, they present rather the appearance of superb mansions than of stables for horses. Enter, however, the great gateway in the façade, and as soon as you have recovered from the feeling of admiration which the grandeur of the interior building excites, look to the right and to the left, and you will soon perceive that you are in a stable, and nothing but a stable, though one of no ordinary kind-racks, mangers, stalls, and all other appliances being on the most splendid scale. The spectacle makes one almost feel that it is a pity to see such marvellously fine accommodations for horses, while the peasantry around are not one-half so comfortably lodged. We are, however, not to moralise, but to recount facts. Of the palace in which the Dukes of Condé lived, the revolution spared but little. Only a fragment exists; but the beautifully laid-out gardens, the forest, and many other things which yet remain, tell what Chantilly once was. Chantilly, as a town, is nothing-it has but one real street, one church, one hospital; its long street runs at a right angle to the high road to Paris. Its hospital is a rare old building; its church is pretty and curious.

I was present at the first race and at the first hunt which took place at Chantilly under the auspices of the present dynasty, and never shall I forget the bustle, the activity, the fuss, which for one good month prevailed, nor the anxiety which pervaded the minds and bodies of the inhabitants. I saw all the preparations, the hopes, the self-importance of the little town, and, as a good Chantillian, I joined in their anxiety; I felt, I appreciated the honour that was about to be done us. First, the maire called meetings, which were attended, as was fit, by all the great people of the town. What was decided on at these meetings, since nothing ever came of them, no one ever knew. Then, rooms were cleaned out, closets were called bed-rooms, and a universal rise in rent took place. Then came the horses and the jockeys, and this flurried our hearts considerably. Hunters and hounds without number next made their appearance; every hour brought some new arrival. Never since the palmy days of the Condés had so much of horse-flesh and of the canine race been seen in these parts. The bourgois were in ecstacies. And then the carpenters; for six weeks they worked most gloriously, most indefatigably, at the grand stand, the little stands, and all the stands, which were of course so called because everybody sat in them. The royal stand was of course the great thing. It was a model of art; about as big as a moderate-sized opera box, with coarse red cloth inside, plenty of paint out, a profusion of Dianas and Nimrods, and nymphs and satyrs-what could be more elegant? The little boys and girls, and many of the big ones too, were lost in admiration.

The day at length came, but not the king. There were, however, the late Duke of Orleans, the Dukes of Nemours and Aumale, but papa didn't come; and we had Fieschi to thank for that. A profusion of English, of Italian, of Spanish, presented themselves; and also a Russian nobleman, who, taking a whole stand to himself, enlivened the race. But the people came in thousands and tens of thousands. From Paris, and from every town, village, and hamlet, within fifteen or twenty miles, came men, women, children, on horseback, on assback, in carts, on foot-never had Chantilly seen such things before. A race-course three miles round was densely crowded with people in dresses of every character and colour; a mile of carriages-of course more than half English-drew up in front of the stands. Then there were the soldiers: true, they seemed to have borrowed all our cab-hacks for the occasion-but never mind; they were soldiers in earnest, and they knocked the people about, and trod on their heels with so good-natured an air, one hardly thought them the body-guard of the first king in Europe. The races were, in themselves, ridiculous to one who had seen Epsom or Newmarket. English horses were excluded, though English jockeys were not. We shall, however, spare the details. Suffice it to say, the day passed over

gloriously; the people were delighted, and returned | was, the crowds of people crossing, recrossing, treading, home, doubtless to talk over the event for months.

[ocr errors]

throwing up the dust with their heels, quite broke the On the morning of the next day I rose at six, mounted scent. The dogs were running hither and thither. my gray nag, and started for the meeting. I was not "La! voila." Non! la voila !" In a word, every one the first in the field. The street was already crowded; had seen the deer every way, and noboby could find it. horsemen, pedestrians, carriages, hunters, hounds, ladies | Meanwhile the princes, who, it seemed by their appearyoung and old, ugly and pretty, English and French, in ance, had not over-heated themselves, took it very satin shoes and in sabots, were hurrying along. The coolly, and, with the whole multitude, went to lunch. scene was admirable. When I reached the pelouse, It was evident that the chasseurs, racers, or whatever which lies between the town and the forest, it was they may be called, did not care a sous about the game. dotted over with anxious sight-seers. Here and there It was only the pleasure of the excitement, the gaiety, a red coat and white shorts, or a black or a chocolate the hilarity of the thing. In this view of the case they coat and white shorts, proclaimed one of the élite-some were real philosophers. If roistering, and laughing, and Parisian exquisite, or St James's lounger, moving faster exercise do one good, then they deserve all praise, for than ever he did in his life before: the royal hunters, in they had them to their heart's content. Nor was the their superb liveries of red, and blue, and gold, with light-hearted run-a-foot part of the concern a particle their enormous French horns and hungry hounds, were less benefited. Yes, there is often much good in a good trotting across the plain. A barouche-then a britska, stirring laugh and a run on the green sward. Having followed. After them, perhaps, came an old woman on a at all events procured a famous appetite in their gammule, a pretty girl upon an ass, a boy and a pony, I on | bols, all, from the royal duke to the humblest garçon my Rozinante; carts and carriages, horses and asses, there being no distinction in the matter of stomachs horsemen and horsewomen, all tended one way, and I sought to appease it. But the Reine Blanche had not was not singular. It was to the Place de la Table Ronde. anticipated so much custom. In a quarter of an hour This spot is a central opening in the forest of Chantilly, everything eatable, everything drinkable, had disapto which some dozen roads tend. The Place is exten- peared, and yet half the mass had tasted nothing. I sive, and in the middle is a large round stone table, of had been wiser than the generality, and fortunately one solitary slab, quite Egyptian in size, and quite possessed a few sandwiches and a small bottle of wine a curiosity in its way. Round the open glade were and water, with which I solaced myself, and was happy ranged hundreds of carriages; fresh ones were every in affording a few mouthfuls to a lady who seemed moment arriving from every avenue, each of which, almost ready to expire with exhaustion. The general as the eye fell upon it, appeared a living stream. It want of provisions damped the ardour of the sportsmen. was a lovely beginning; a stag-hunt extraordinary. The people, the dukes, the dogs, the hunters, having Horsemen caracoled, hounds growled, the hunters used nothing to do, returned to their chase, but in vain; and their long whips, the round table-at least the dense about six o'clock gave up and returned to Chantilly to crowd on it-hallooed, while others, more prudent, sat enjoy a grand banquet, where, doubtless, they were down and devoured their breakfasts. more at home than with the stag-hounds. The Russian A loud shout rent the air. It was the royal dukes prince, however, as soon as the forest was clear-deterarriving with a gay cavalcade. They were fine young mined not to be defeated-started with his fresh pack men, and particularly the late Duke of Orleans; and and a few friends, and at nine brought the head of the when they came up to where I was standing, were deer in triumph into the banquet hall. Thus ended the chatting in most excellent English with a titled repre- first stag-hunt at Chantilly, which no one remembered sentative of our aristocracy and sporting men. I for- better than I, and the fair and hungry lady. Good get his name. The crowd shouted again; the ladies reason why; she is no longer a spinster, and I stood up in the carriages and waved their white hand-reader will guess the remainder. kerchiefs and equally white hands-the princes bowed, smiled, and then - went off at a full gallop, followed by the whole multitude-carriages, carts, mules, horses, asses, footmen! After what? The deer had been Knowing well, by the official programme, started. where the deer was to be driven to, I did not follow the motley multitude; but, striking a line through a narrow path of the forest, made for the fish-ponds. A few minutes, however, brought me once more in contact with the crowd. It happened that two deer had been started; one set of hounds took after one, and one after another. The hunters too, of course, also separated, and so did the carriages, the mules, the satin, the sabots, the asses: not relishing the kind of sport, I followed neither. A leisure ride of half an hour brought me to the fish-ponds, and here again were the people. | The ponds are situated in a deep and picturesque valley, surrounded on all sides by the thick forest. Along every slope, on every side of the valley, were parties of men, women, and children, eating, drinking, laughing, talking, chatting, and wondering when the deer would be driven to the water, and who would have the honour of putting his couteau de chasse into him. Such a stag-hunt had never been seen before. The forest resounded with cries, hallooing, shrieking, laughing-every shade and variety of the human voice. I rode round the valley, crossed one of the many dams which separate the ponds, and passed the time examining the several features of the scene.

An hour or two passed by. The whole hunting cavalcade, carriages, horses, asses, mules, footmen, men, women, and children, dogs and hunters, all came to the fish-pond to lunch at the chateau de la Reine Blanche. But not a deer was to be seen or heard of. The fact

BIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.

JOHN PARISH ROBERTSON.

the

PARTICULAR circumstances enable us to give a sketch of the life of a man extraordinary in many respectsJohn Parish Robertson-who died on the 1st of November last at Calais, whither he had gone for the benefit of a mild climate. This individual, it will be recollected, returned to England a few years ago as ambassador for some of the South American republics, a function to which he was chosen on account of the remarkable talents and energy which he had shown in that part of the world in his capacity as a merchant: singular to tell, he had left his native country, only a few years before, as a boy, without either money or friends. A career distinguished by so extraordinary a circumstance cannot, we may well suppose, be without some interest.

The father of the subject of our memoir was at one time assistant-secretary to the Bank of Scotland in Edinburgh: we remember him in the decline of his days, a clever, lively, quaint old man, with a strong spice of the good breeding of the old school, which gave at once limitation and point to his many humorous sallies, and made him the delight of listening youth. The mother of Mr Robertson was Juliet Parish, daughter of an eminent Hamburgh merchant of Scottish extraction. John Parish Robertson was born either in Kelso or Edinburgh, and educated at the grammar school of Dalkeith. While he was still a boy, his father was obliged, on account of bad health, to resign his situation in the bank, and enter a mercantile house

at Glasgow. Commissioned to visit the river Plate for business objects, he took his clever boy along with him, partly for the sake of his company, and partly with a view to introduce him to a mercantile career. They were together in Monte Video when it was occupied by the British under General Whitelock in 1806; and Mr Robertson used to say that his first appearance in public life was as a powder-monkey, having been put to the business of handing out cartridges during some of the military operations of the place. On the cession of this city, Mr Robertson senior sailed for the Cape of Good Hope, but sent his son home by the shortest road. The boy had now, however, imbibed a taste for foreign mercantile adventure; and before he had been long at home, and while still in his fourteenth year, he resolved to start anew on his own account, by a vessel bound from Greenock for Rio Janeiro. When he had paid his passage in this bark, he found himself in possession of two guineas, and one of these he thought it as well to send back to his mother, who he thought might need it more than he, as his father was still absent.

The humble duties of a clerk at Rio and on the river Plate brought Robertson on to near his twenty-first year, by which time his abilities and good conduct had gained him the confidence of several influential persons. He was now enabled to proceed in the capacity of a mercantile agent to Assumption, the chief city of Paraguay, a country of great resources, but at that time, and for many years after, prostrated under the eccentric tyrant Francia. Of his residence there, and all that fell under his notice, including an interview with the tyrant himself, he afterwards presented a faithful account to the world, in two works entitled Letters on Paraguay, and Francia's Reign of Terror. Being compelled by Francia to leave the country in 1815, along with a younger brother who had joined him, he sailed with the remainder of his property for Buenos Ayres, but was stopped by accident at Corrientes, and induced to remain there for some time. This part of South America was now under the control of a mere master of brigands, by name Artigas, who plundered the poor estancieros, or farmers, at his pleasure, and was indeed rapidly reducing the province to a desert. The circumstances which detained Mr Robertson were as follow.

with your money, carried by Eduardo (his follower); and I promise you, that in a year the hides of 50,000 bullocks, and 100,000 horses, shall be sent here or to Goya" [a port about 150 miles nearer Buenos Ayres]. "I don't want much salary," he continued; "I like the occupation. Give me 1200 dollars a-year [about L.250] for myself and Eduardo, and I am your man. I want nothing for my expenditure either in food or horses; my friends are ever too happy to see me, to admit of reinuneration for either."

In conclusion, this bargain was struck; money to a large amount was from time to time intrusted to this man, and he always faithfully accounted for it. He made many large purchases, and as honestly paid for them. The Messrs Robertson found the business so profitable, that they at last invested L.5000 even in the wagons and bullocks necessary to transport their merchandise. As the people came to their abandoned and miserable-looking establishments, Campbell and his men would set about helping them to put their farm-houses into repair, to get their corrales, or pens for cattle, made good, to collect some milchcows and horses, and to gather together a flock of sheep from the peon's huts scattered about. He would here procure from some village a carpenter to mend doors and set up wagons; and there he would engage to send carts of our own to take away produce. He aroused the small towns and villages, as well as the estancieros, from their dormant state into an active pursuit of business; and, in short, under the protection, as it may be said, of this admirable fellow, and the enterprise of these liberal and adventurous men, the country, as if by magic, started into new life and prosperity. Messrs Robertson, however, were induced by prudential considerations to wind up the business after a year, and retire to Buenos Ayres. Campbell soon after sunk into some obscure situation.

In 1817 Mr Robertson returned to Scotland, at once to revisit home and establish more extensive and intimate relations with it, having left his brother and a friend in charge of matters in Buenos Ayres. He was now received by his grandfather (by this time in splendid retirement at Bath) as a worthy scion of the house. He in due time settled at Liverpool, for the purpose of He was one evening sitting under the corridor of his establishing connections there and at Manchester; and house, revolving what slight accidents among these he added Glasgow, Paisley, and London. In the end of marauders might give his body to the dogs, and his 1820 he sailed again for Buenos Ayres, but destined for property to the winds, when he was accosted by a tall Chili and Peru. He effected settlements in those quarraw-boned ferocious looking man in gaucho attire (that ters also; and thus, as he states in the last of his "Letis, the attire of the shepherd chiefs of these plains), with ters on South America," their connection extended two cavalry pistols stuck in his girdle, a sabre in a rusty" from Paraguay to Corrientes, from Corrientes to steel scabbard, &c.; unkempt, unwashed, and blistered to the eyes; and who, with a page or follower entirely worthy of himself, rode up to his very chair. Mr Robertson expected that these would speedily be followed by others, and, in short, that the period he had expected was come. This, however, proved a friend; an Irishman of the name of Campbell, originally bred as a tanner, afterwards a soldier, who, having remained in the country when it was evacuated by the British, was at this time in possession of a command under Artigas, and for his desperate courage much esteemed by him. To Mr Robertson's astonishment, this man, who had previously seen him in a very critical period of his history, a prisoner in the camp of Artigas, but who was now his friend, the moment he had heard of his arrival from Paraguay, under circumstances of misfortune which were perfectly known to him, had conceived a plan of operations for their mutual interest. "There is not an estanciero," he said, "that has the courage to go to his own estate, or to peep out of his own window, unless he knows I am out to protect him; nor is there a gaucho among them dares to interfere with them, knowing I am out. I know you have the control of large property here, and that you are endeavouring to convert it into produce to take to Buenos Ayres; but you will never get all you want, till you command my humble abilities. Therefore let me go out and scour the country

Santa Fe, from Santa Fe to Buenos Ayres, and round
Cape Horn, and across the Andes, to Chili and Peru."
In fine, in the autumn of 1824 or 1825, this still young
man landed at the port of Greenock, which he had left
about eighteen years before with a single guinea in his
pocket, with claims and assets to the value of L.100,000;
in a ship chartered for his sole use, and with the cha-
racter of political agent and representative in this coun-
try of several of the South American republics.
It is truly painful to think that this well-gained
wealth and distinction was to be of brief duration. He
had established himself in London in connection with
some of the first merchants there, and was prepared to
carry on South American business with new spirit and
new means, when the wide-spread ruin of 1826 involved
him, and he was compelled to return to that country to
attempt the recovery of some part of his fortune. Baffled
in this object, he returned in 1830 comparatively an
impoverished man, and finding that he must wait in
the hope of better days, he quietly entered himself a
student in Corpus Christi college, Cambridge, in order
to effect an object he had long contemplated, that of
making himself a scholar. It was an odd resolution in
one approaching forty, but not unworthy of an enthu-
siasm which had already in another walk led him to
such brilliant results. He did acquire, in three years,
much scholarship, but it was at a cost somewhat

too great, as afterwards appeared.

Mr Robertson, it may be remarked, though under the middle size, was originally of a robust frame of body; but he had undergone, in the course of his adventurous career in South America, much fatigue and hardship, and some flesh and spirit-shaking trials of no ordinary kind. While still a youth, he had had many long journeys on horseback across the Pampas and the Cordilleras, and in various other directions, in pursuit of business objects. On one occasion, in ascending the Parana by navigation, he had had his ship and cargo seized, and himself carried before the brutal Artigas, who was about to shoot him, when his brother arrived, and successfully interceded for him. The writer of this has seen a small prayer-book belonging to him, in the fly-leaf of which he had written a prayer in contemplation of immediate death on this occasion. Then he had seen the fruits of all his toils reft from him in one moment, and himself reduced from something like greatness to penury: few pass altogether unaffected in health through such calamities. The addition of severe study was little needed to endanger the constitutional health of this remarkable man. So it was, however, that he found it necessary to retire from college sooner than he intended, and seek for new vigour in a beautifully placed cottage in the Isle of Wight.

Here, for about a year, he was chiefly occupied with his endeavours to obtain an arrangement of his business affairs. The necessity of seeking for bread then (1834) brought him to London, where for some years more his pursuits were almost solely of a literary kind. Besides publishing the two works on South America which have been named, he contributed many papers on similar subjects to the magazines, and thus contrived to realise some moderate gains. More recently, he gave the world a work entitled Letters on South America. Another comparatively recent event of his life was his marriage to a young lady who loved him solely for his own sake and "for the dangers he had passed." He contemplated, we believe, a third series of South American Letters, but death has stepped in to baulk the intention.

Such is, we fear, a very imperfect outline of the life of one of those men-the guiltless Napoleons of common life who occasionally start from obscurity under impulses given to them by Providence for no mean purposes. Robertson was, we think, altogether a remarkable man-a merchant while yet a boy-a political figure of considerable importance while little above thirtyafterwards an accomplished scholar and litterateur, and all this without anything like the basis of patrimony or education-all the product of his own innate energy and genius. His first independent act in life stamps, we think, the moral nature of the man as pure and genuine. It never was belied by any subsequent act. His courage and coolness in the most trying situations could not be exceeded; and as his means increased, so did his liberality to his family, and to all having claims upon him.

His enterprise, and the soundness of his judgment in that enterprise, were equally conspicuous, though ultimately baffled by misconduct, not so much in individuals, as in states. He was the first to open up and to establish a considerable intercourse with Paraguay; and though himself extruded from that country, the intercourse he had established he still kept up. The extent of his transactions at Corrientes, and the consequences to himself and the country, have been in some degree indicated. Upwards of one thousand bullocks were at last daily occupied on land, and several ships on water, in carrying on the business of which he was the head. He and his brother not only repeatedly rode along great part of the distance from Corrientes to Buenos Ayres in the course of that business, with the rapidity of couriers, but they established a regular courier, perhaps the first and only one ever established on the banks of the Parana. As the voyage up the Plate and Parana, by the usual mode of tracking the vessels, was in the last degree tedious and expensive,

Mr Robertson, at his own expense and risk, introduced steam, having sent a steam-vessel from this country under the command of a friend. Agriculture on a proper principle being almost unknown in those countries, Mr Robertson purchased an estate of many thousand acres within twenty miles of Buenos Ayres, and introduced on it a colony of Scottish agriculturists, with all their implements and habits, including the schoolmaster and clergyman. The moment he could calculate that the republics of Chili and Peru, or even their principal cities, would be open to British commerce, he followed in the wake of the conquerors, who were his particular friends, and established a trade on the most respectable scale; and finally, though he left a trade established, and warehouses stocked with every requisite for its continuance, he was himself so prudent in his selection of customers, that on leaving those establishments to come and serve the republics in which they had been set up in this country, he did not leave three thousand dollars due to them in any direction. Wherever he saw an opening for industry, thither he went; and wherever he went, he organised a trade; and not merely with a view to the present, but also to future times. All his plans will yet pay, though not to him; and they would have paid him, but for a perversity in the states which he sought to benefit, that astonished and disappointed every one taking an interest in their affairs, as well as himself. Even his estate of Monte-Grande, which, as a model introduced for the benefit of the republic, much more than of the individual, should have been held sacred, was profaned and almost devastated by the barbarous followers of the wretches contending for political power; the trees on it being broken down for fire-wood in some of their senseless contests, and the walls of the gardens and houses used as fortifications. Yet notwithstanding all these injuries, personal, and, it may be said, public, and although he has related traits in the persons who have successively risen to power in those states, which seem to stigmatise the people, yet he has never written of them in any other than a spirit of the greatest impartiality and even tenderness.

Mr Robertson's features were not fine, but they were manly and pleasing. In business he was grave and decided, but business over, he was all cheerfulness. Being imprisoned with his brother at Corrientes by some worthies who had mistaken their power, he turned their prison into a ball-room, as is related by his brother, not in the way of bravado, but to make his more unfortunate companions temporarily happy. Being stripped of everything, even his linen, by the soldiers of Artigas, and an old soldier's coat thrown to him in lieu of all, he was still cheerful; and whenever, on his visits to this country, he could strike up a dance instead of indulging at table, he was ever ready to do it. His wish to diffuse more lasting happiness was not less. A friend in Liverpool having lost his all, Mr Robertson, without being solicited, but asking what would assist him, gave him L.2000. A friend of his father in Edinburgh (when he required a friend) having expressed a wish to carry out some improvements on his estate, which required a similar amount, Mr Robertson gave it. His liberality in encouraging useful enterprise has been already mentioned; and, in short, what he acquired by skill as a merchant, he used with munificence as a man. Of all the sums so bestowed, it is believed he lost little; his losses proceeded from the faults of states, and not of individuals.

As a writer, we think Mr Robertson's style is singularly clear and strong; and as he wrote mostly of what he had seen, his descriptions are in the last degree graphic, as well as entertaining and useful. He sometimes fails in humour-in serious matters never. His conversational style was good; and having travelled far, and read and thought much, and mingled in almost every variety of life, his opinions were always ready and sound. Had he lived to write more variously, he would have attained a higher place, because in that

« PrejšnjaNaprej »