as for Mrs. Jones, he (Brown) would not have her for all her money ten times over. Robinson declares he was just going to say the very same thing. They both agree that Jones has grown detestably conceited and bumptious, and notice that, with all his riches, he was odiously mean. The wine could be drunk by no man who valued his health, and there was not a horse in the stables fit to be ridden. And the company, too; did any one ever see such a set of pompous, empty-headed dullards? The whole place also, it was found, had an air of ceremony and buckram which was very offensive. When it was hinted that Mrs. Jones-who, however, was very meek, and said nothing about it-preferred that pipes and tobacco should be confined as much as possible to the billiard and smoking-rooms, Brown shrugged his shoulders, and hoped something terrible might befall him before he would be henpecked in that way. served good luck befall their friends-we consider it to be, with proper limitations, indisputably true. We say distinctly "good luck," not honest success in life won by hard meritorious effect. Most men are generous enough not to envy the latter, or wise enough to keep their feelings very quiet if they do. But those rich windfalls which occasionally hoist a rather dull apathetic man several degrees above his hardworking companions are seldom seen without dislike, or mentioned without a sneer. For instance, the inducing an heiress to marry you is always more or less resented -more rather than less. All rivalry and wounded vanity apart, when Jones succeeds in doing this, it is regarded by Smith and Brown and Robinson as a very questionable, not to say shabby, transaction. They may never have seen the girl. She may have been Jones's cousin with whom he played when they were children down in the country. There was never the re- Of course, the forms of luck are as varimotest chance that they could have won ous as the men who get shares of it. Perher. Still, what was there in Jones that haps, in the above instance, we have adshe should go and marry him? He was verted to the most unpopular form of all. plucked at College, and had stuck hopeless- The essence of unpopular luck is that it ly fast at the Bar; and now the fellow is shall be considerable, and apparently all putting up for the county, and is safe, but entirely undeserved. For this reason through the influence of his wife's property, the hymeneal type is exceptionally odious. to get in. It shows what somebody in- Still the popular taste is not any more condeed had remarked before - that Jones sistent in this than it is in a number of other was not the easy good fellow he appeared cases. Some forms of luck are, as it were, to be, but that at bottom there was some- privileged. If you are the son of a bishop thing of the sneak in him. It is true that or the nephew of a Lord Chancellor, it is poor Jones all this time is doing his very considered to be quite in the order of nautmost to conciliate his old friends, and in- ture that several fat things should sooner or duce them to forgive him his good luck. later fall to you. You would be rather But they can only half do it even when pitied than otherwise if they did not. And they try hard, which they do not often do. yet to be a bishop's son, or even to be a He declares there shall be no change in bishop yourself, is not much less a freak of his old relations with them, that they must good fortune than to succeed in carrying all come down in September for the shoot-off an heiress. There is a certain flunkiness ing, and that they will all be jollier than ever. He is a deluded man, and finds it out in time. Shooting, indeed! when Robinson's tailor will not be induced to trust him for another shooting-coat, and Brown would have to appear with his old muzzle-loader among the breech-loading swells he would be sure to meet at Jones's. The latter hinted there were plenty of guns; but that only showed his natural want of delicacy, which wealth had increased. And even if they do manage to get over their sulks, and go down to be introduced to Jones's wife, it is in a grim, defiant humour, and with the set determination not to be pleased. Brown confides to the sympathetic ear of Robinson that, about both. No man by dint of steady industry and self-denial can make himself a bishop's son, and it is by no means certain that those virtues will always make him a bishop. Certain qualities are doubtless necessary to ensure either matrimonial or episcopal luck. It has been said, as regards the first, that three things are needed, namely, opportunity, importunity, and propinquity; these three, but the greatest of these is opportunity. Opportunity - that is the lucky element which nothing will replace, and which men find it so hard to forgive. Yet it cannot be denied that in the captivation of a mitre, as compared with the captivation of an heiress, opportunity is less, and importunity and the persevering virtues are more. Hence, possibly, the less | purse; they ignore the numbers who are objectionable character which the former aspiring to empty it. kind of success generally bears. We by no means wish to maintain that a lucky man's friends are always envious, and that he always bears his honours with due meekness. Such a view would imply ignorance both of the world and of human nature. But we do maintain that the lucky man has very often much harder measure dealt to him than he would have if he were not lucky. His foibles are put under a microscope, and his virtues are ignored or taken for granted without thanks. He must not only come up to, he must exceed, the ordinary standard, to be pardoned at all. If he is inclined to be generous and open-handed, people say " And so he ought to be, he has got plenty." If he is the least bit stingy, he is pronounced to be a Shylock at once. Two things contribute to create this injustice. It is probable that the lucky man, before his luck, was a needy man. His small means had caused his wants to be few, which he prudently and thriftily gratified. A sudden change of circumstances will not always induce a corresponding change of habits. He had been careful and saving all his life, and he finds it hard, even undesirable, to become lavish and careless in a moment. It is true he can now throw away a guinea with less privation than he could before spend a shilling; and his friends know this rather better than he does, and probably, in their own minds, substitute for his disposable guinea a five-pound note. Still, his long Intimacy with the value of shillings has made him loth to part with them, not necessarily from niggardliness, but from habit and old association. All this is set down to unmitigated meanness and poverty of soul. The history of commercial success is full of instances of men who found no difficulty in giving thousands to any good and worthy object, and who yet looked after small expenses with the assiduity of a spinster living on an annuity. Again, the needy friends of a rich man are very apt to come to most erroneous and preposterous conclusions respecting the extent of his wealth. Contrasting their few hundreds with the many thousands he is supposed to have, comparing their solitary general servant with his staff of domestics, they regard his pocket as practically bottomless. They forget, or they do not know, that a rise in station very generally brings with it a more than corresponding rise in the demands made upon one. They look only at the big Our moral is very high-toned and stoical, just suited to the cold weather. It is, that what is commonly called luck is very often not lucky or desirable at all, and that many a man has had occasion to rue the day (whether he did rue it, or not, is another matter) when an unexpected windfall made him the object of more or less envy. The loss of simplicity and quiet joys and tender unostentatious friendships is ill-replaced by buckram and state and hollow acquaintanceships. Of course these beautiful moral reflections will never make any man refuse a fortune when it comes in his way. But they may perhaps induce him to bear his lot more cheerfully when, as is the general case, a fortune is altogether out of his way. This is partly due to the fact globe, is being gradually spoilt. It has lost that the East, like other quarters of the much of the gloss and freshness which it still retained when Mr. Curzon first travelled there in 1833. Pashas, and drago mans, and chiaouses, and the other dramatis persona of the Eastern traveller have somehow become vulgarized, whether from actual degeneration on their part, or from the charms of novelty to Europeans. They circumstance that they no longer have the have fallen off as the Red Indian has done, though we cannot say whether the deterioration is due, in his case, to an acquired taste for whiskey, or to a growing familiarity which destroys romance, or simply to earlier the subject-matter of much of Mr. Curzon's historians having lied enormously. But book was tolerably hackneyed, even at the time of his writing. Its success was due much more to the style of the writer than to the out-of-the-way places which he de Visits to the Monasteries of the Levant. By the Hon. Robert Curzon, Junior. Fifth Edition. London: John Murray. 1865. This [he says] was a dismal spectacle for a devout lover of old books-a sort of biblical knight-errant as I then considered myself, who had entered on the perilous adventure of Mount Athos, to rescue from the thraldom of ignorant monks those fair vellum volumes, with their bright illuminations and velvet dresses, and jewelled clasps, which for so many centuries had lain imprisoned in their dark monastic dungeons. scribed. The secret of this success is worth high. Mr. Curzon rode a more intelligible notice. Very few travellers have the pow- hobby than this, and one with which most er of giving dramatic unity to their works. educated men to some degree sympathize. They fancy that mere geographical con- The search for old books is known to have tinuity supplies a sufficient thread upon a specific power over some minds; and the which to string their remarks. A traveller chase of MSS. is a specially exciting branch not unfrequently has the audacity to pub- of this most absorbing employment. Some lish his diary, and expect the public to cynics might possibly allege that there are swallow it raw. The only connecting link already books enough in the world, and between his pages is the fact that he was that if one had been apparently overeach morning at the place where he left whelmed in oblivion it was a pity to try to off the evening before. And when the in- resuscitate it. Without troubling ourselves cidents are extremely similar, without be- to discover new MSS. we have, they would ing absolutely identical, the work becomes urge, various readings enough already.. about as entertaining as a cruiser's log. For the purposes of this book, however, There is more than one book descriptive we may take for granted that it was right of very important travels in Africa which that the treasures of the Levantine monascomes under this head. One day, perhaps, teries should be ransacked; and, at any you are introduced to a black greasy chief rate, we are carried away by Mr. Curzon's with a pat of butter on his head, and the enthusiasm. Thus, in the monastery of next to a blacker and greasier chief with- Pantocratoras, he finds "the melancholy out a pat of butter; but under the shape remains of a once celebrated library": of a book there really lurks a mere directory to a particular series of savage tribes. The great art of writing a good book of travels consists in finding such a principle of coherence as may counteract its tendency to run to mere diary. Sometimes the nature of the adventures described is sufficient to do this spontaneously. At others it may be found in the light thrown upon some scientific theory, or upon the manners and customs of the natives, or the natural histo- The library in question, including above ry of the country; or, as in the case of a hundred ancient manuscripts, was lying Eothen, in a study of the effect of the on the floor of a room amongst the rubbish external circumstances upon the traveller's that had fallen from the upper story. own mind. This amounts to saying that it Some of the books were "fine large folios." is an excellent thing for a traveller to have Unluckily, the monks told Mr. Curzon that a hobby. It does not matter what his the beams which supported the floor had special enthusiasm is; so long at least as it become quite rotten and unsafe; so that, as is one which may be gratified in the coun- he says, a complete trap was laid for a try, and he is not mad about medieval bookish enthusiast. He tried in vain to architecture in America, or a theorist on creep along close to the wall, with the glaciers in the Arabian desert. If, how-beams cracking audibly beneath his feet. ever, the journey is, as it should be, undertaken in pursuit of the hobby, there is no danger of this curious infelicity; and a man has only to give himself up to his enthusiasm unreservedly to be pretty sure of infecting his readers for the time. A paper was contributed to one of the numbers of Vacation Tourists by a gentleman whose one passion was for seeing big trees, irrespectively of any ulterior considerations. Probably very few of his readers would sympathise with him at the outset; but it was impossible to avoid falling in with his humour after a few pages, anxiously accompanying an expedition after a reported giant, and being temporarily disappointed when it turned out to be only 300 feet At length he got a long rod, and proceeded to fish for the desired prey. With some toil, he got hold of a fine double-columned folio" of most venerable antiquity." But alas! the rains had washed the outer leaves quite clean, and the pages were consolidated into a concrete, which, on an attempt to open them, broke off short like biscuit. It was merely the mummy of a manuscript. We feel for Mr. Curzon when, as he tells us, he arose and vented his sorrow and indignation in a long oration, the effect of which was weakened by the circumstance that none of his audience understood his language. Still more irritating were his adventures in the great monastery of Meteara. Albania being at this time in a disturbed state, he had no little difficulty in arriving there at all. He got a mandate from a Turkish vizir, ordering him an escort of soldiers, addressed to the commander of troops at a place called Mezzovo. Arrived at Mezzovo, he delivered the document to the most prominent inhabitant he could find, who happened to be the chief of the robbers instead of the soldiers. This gentleman, however, luckily saw the joke, and gave Mr. Curzon a letter to his subordinate robbers, which turned out to be more useful than the other, as robbers were considerably more plentiful than soldiers in those parts. Accompanied by half a dozen thieves, or perhaps it would be fairer to call them guerillas, he reached the monastery, which is situated upon a lofty rock, and which he entered by being made up into a parcel and wound up by a windlass and a long rope. And here he found two manuscripts of the Gospels, the bare recollection of which makes his mouth water. He speaks of them with the raptures which only the assiduous book-hunter can appreciate. They were gorgeous within and without; one was full of miniatures in excellent preservation, with the exception of an initial, which “ some ancient slaver" had smeared with a wet finger; the other was bound in silver filigree, which showed that it must have belonged to some royal personage. The head of the monastery agreed to sell them, and Mr. Curzon cheerfully paid down a sum of money which left him just enough to return to Corfu. But the cup was destined to be dashed from his lips. He was just ready to be lowered again to the earth, when a discussion arose as to the distribution of the plunder. The "villain of a librarian swore that he would have half." And the upshot of a long discussion was that, as the monks could not agree how the price was to be shared, they resolved not to sell the volumes. After sadly turning over the leaves for the last time, he was let down by the rope to "his affectionate thieves." So touching was the expression of Mr. Curzon's despair, that the thieves immediately set about storming the monastery, with a view to recovering the MSS.; and Mr. Curzon, with great difficulty, and with "a great exercise of forbearance," managed to call them off. We do not decide the point raised, as to whether the refusal of a set of monks to sell their treasures at a fair price would have justified him in storming the monastery and throwing the librarian over the rocks. Probably it would have been allowable from a high moral point of view, but it might have raised difficulties in negotiating with the next monastery. Against these failures there are to be set a sufficient number of successes to give the impression that Mr. Curzon had, on the whole, very good sport among the books. Later explorers, and especially Tischendorf, have since followed upon Mr. Curzon's traces; and there is probably little left for discovery. There is, however, something curious and interesting about the lives of the monks whom he describes; and, were it not that travellers in general seem to follow in each other's footsteps, with a scrupulosity almost amounting to religious observance, more people would have made acquaintance with these singular living relics of distant epochs. In Mr. Curzon's pages they form a pleasant and appropriate background to the picture of the enthusiastic book-hunter. They are, amongst men, much what their ancient manuscripts are amongst books. They are dozing quietly in their queer Sleepy Hollow of a Mount Athos, with their manuscripts quietly decaying beside them. One of the most characteristic figures in Mr. Curzon's book is the monk he met at Xeropotamo, whom he describes as a magnificent-looking man of thirty or thirty-five, with large eyes and long black hair and beard. He had been brought to Mount Athos in his infancy, his parents having been massacred in some disturbance, he did not exactly know where. He had never seen a woman, and was particularly anxious to learn what they looked like. He seems to have imagined that they all exactly resembled the stiff, hard-featured pictures of the Holy Virgin which hang in every Greek church, and which were his only available source of information. He was greatly interested to hear that women were not only different from these pictures, but that they even differed considerably from one another in appearance, manners, and understanding. The country where it is possible still to find a specimen of such a singular phase of human nature must be worth visiting; and, although Mr. Curzon's accounts of the monasteries of the Holy Land, of Egypt, and Albania are all interesting, his most finished picture is that of this little backwater which as yet has been undisturbed by any eddies from the main current of the world. Perhaps, however, we may anticipate that before long Mr. Cook's tourists will be taken in trips to Mount Athos, when we fear that the monks will be in danger of sophistication, and, if they don't learn to value manuscripts more highly, will possibly be unable to keep out the obtrusive female sex, which at Mr. Curzon's visit was represented by one cat. From the Quarterly Review. 1. Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and its Tributaries, and of the Discovery of the Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa, 18581864. By David and Charles Livingstone. London, 1865. 2. Despatches of Dr. David Livingstone to H. 3. Missionary Travels and Researches in 5. Journals of the Royal Geographical Socie- edge. Africa was first crossed by him from Mozambique, on the Indian Ocean, to Loanda, a Portuguese settlement on the shores of the Atlantic, in 1855, an achievement which was soon afterwards followed, we might even say surpassed, by the unparalleled march of Captains Speke and Grant, with a small armed escort, from the shores of the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. The discoveries of Dr. Livingstone have made known to us an extensive portion of Africa, and their effect may ultimately be to open up to commerce and civilization a country which has few superiors in fertility on the African continent. Dr. Livingstone was the first European who crossed the African Continent from its eastern to its western shore. He found the great river Zambesi far in the interior, where its existence was not known even to the Portuguese, and he was the first who visited its stupendous cataracts, to which he gave the name of the Victoria Falls. He is also the dis THE nineteenth century will be for ever memorable in the annals of African discovery. The mystery which for ages had hung over the interior of the great continent has been in a great measure dispelled. Equatorial Africa especially no longer ap-coverer of the great Nyassa Lake and the pears as a blank in our maps. Many of its countries and political divisions have been laid down with tolerable certainty, and the positions of some of its rivers and mountains partially defined; but the great lake discoveries more than any other have excited the wonder and admiration of Europe. All our preconceived ideas of the interior of the great continent have been reversed; for regions which were supposed to be a scene of everlasting drought, under the perpetual, unclouded blaze of a vertical sun, have been found to be refreshed with constant showers, irrigated by perennial streams, and teeming with inhabitants. The further discovery of stupendous mountains crowned with eternal snow, within a short distance of the equator, added greatly to the surprise of geographers; and as a climax to an unexampled series of brilliant discoveries, the Nile was confidently said to have at last revealed its mysterious fountains, and the secret of ages to be disclosed. These important geographical discoveries have chiefly been made from the eastern coast. The missionaries Krapf and Rebmann, whose station was at Mombas, a few leagues to the east of Zanzibar, although they did not greatly enlarge our knowledge of the interior, yet were the precursors of Burton and Speke in those more extensive explorations, the results of which have so honourably distinguished their names. Dr. Livingstone, operating in a different region, but on the same side of the continent, has contributed in a very considerable degree to increase our geographical knowl Shirwa, in the sense at least of having been the first European to visit them and to fix their geographical positions. He collected an immense amount of information respecting the manners, character and habits of the people of this part of the African continent, formed lasting friendships with several of their chiefs, acquired a knowledge of the languages of the country, and laid the foundation of a more regular intercourse for which it was one of the principal objects of his mission to prepare the way. Having been deputed by the London Missionary Society to seek for a suitable place for the location of a permanent establishment, he ascertained that the highlands on the borders of the great basin of the Zambesi were comparatively healthy, and that it was desirable to open a regular and speedy communication with them, in order that the Europeans might pass as quickly as possible through the pestilential regions of the coast. The character of the population appeared to be eminently favourable for an experiment being made for the improvement of their social state by means of commerce, and for their ultimate conversion to Christianity. These views received the cordial support of all classes on Dr. Livingstone's return to England; and on the publication of his 'Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, his peculiar aptitude for enduring the hardships and perils incidental to African exploration, his tact in dealing with obstructive chiefs, and the heroism of his character, were so clearly but unobtrusively revealed that the Government, THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXXII. 1474. |
