but from Gerard Dow—! O beware, reader! of No. 244 in the catalogue!
I left Bridgewater House that morning (escorted of course by a double Gerard Dow, before and behind) with a new “taste.“ I met a friend in the Burlington Arcade, and ravenously inquired if he had, or if he knew of, any specimen of the high Dutch school? My friend piques himself rather on being philosophical and facetious, and he suggested Mynheer Van Dunk, expressing at the same time his entire approval of that venerable Bourgemestre’s spirited performance in “brandy and water daily.” I turned from the man in disgust, and Gerard Dow took me along Oxford Street, on the south, or fishy, side, looking at everything and everybody with an eyeglass that seemed to say, fiercely: “Why the deuce are you not of the high Dutch school?“
I was getting desperate, I felt all over Gerard Dow, and Heaven only knows what would not have happened, had not a very small picture in a very large frame attracted my notice. I rushed into the shop: “Is that of the Dutch school?” Seller couldn’t say; might be; didn’t know anything at all about it. “What’s the price?” Well, the price was twenty guineas, and cheap too, but I might have it for eighteen. No; I didn’t care about it at that price, but (Gerard Dow was pinching me all over) but if he could state the lowest figure, &c., &c. Well, I might take it for fifteen guineas. I was going to decline this offer also, but Gerard Dow within and without me multiplied himself infinitely, choked me, and—I bought it!
The picture came home, and I was brought with it. Large blue-mouldy stains covered the principal figures. I got on my knees and washed it with — no matter. The stock of silk and saliva I exhausted on that picture might form an item in Mr. Gladstone’s revised budget next year. I rubbed, and breathed, and oil’d, and polish’d, like a machine, for two days and two nights without intermission, save for food (consisting of Gerard Dow and a mutton chop). With the early dawn of the third day I perceived on the collar of one of the secondary personages (a female) something like a delicate fret-work of lace. Machinery in motion again;—more rubbing, more oil, more breathing, more silk, more saliva, and the lace-work became clearer and more distinct. A thought—an awful thought—struck me. I rushed to the British Museum reading-room (conveyed by at least a quadruple Gerard Dow) and ransacked the catalogues for works on painting; attendants in obedience to my call came,—all books from the pit of the stomach up to the eyebrows; and I peered into them — those books, from Dr. Waagen’s downwards, in hopes of a description of my little painting with the big frame. And I and Gerard Dow within me found it, moreover. And then home again; but, oh! with what speed and apprehension. What, if—during my absence—the house had caught fire, and the whole fire-brigade had failed to save my painting? What if my little nephew, with that new box of tools, had removed all doubts and difficulties by planing away the surface? What if, through the influence of the main-drainage works, the walls had fallen in? I breathed freely only on again beholding my treasure and feeling it all over. And then I rubbed at the lace collar again, and felt my knees giving way, and my whole body assuming a position of religious awe, as the lace-work grew by degrees into — letters of fantastic shape, ’tis true: but still letters—and such letters—good Heavens! a G and an E and an R, and then an A, another R and a D; then a blank (just under the chin), and then a larger D and an O and Yes it was! I fell back shrieking the name—Gerard Dow!
I have the picture now. I have put it into a small portable joss-house, and I worship it daily, and sometimes nightly. When I have venerated it till my eyes are tired, I put on lemon-kid gloves, shut my eyes, and gently knuckle it behind, so that my ears may drink in the sounds proceeding from the wondrous panel. In a word I have Taste Number Three, and I have laid the foundation of my picture-gallery.
S. O. M.
INSURRECTION AT HARPER’S FERRY.
FROM MOM BET TO OLD BROWN.
Instead of moralising on the old truth of the small beginnings of great revolutions, the insignificance of the movers of mighty changes, let us look at perhaps the most striking illustration of the fact that modern society presents. The story has not yet got into history; but we may feel sure that it will, as soon as the revolution is complete, if not before.
Just a hundred years ago, when colonial society in America was at that stage so pleasantly described by the late Mrs. Grant of Laggan, in her “Memoirs of an American Lady,” the wealthier class of northern citizens lived somewhat more like the planters of the South than they do now. They all held slaves, and talked of the patriarchal character of the institution with more reason than the cotton and sugar producers of a brisk commercial age. They farmed, in a manner; and they took life very easily, and let their negroes take it easily too. There was nowhere the same pressure on the labourers that there has been since our cotton manufacture arose and spread; and in the northern states especially the driving activity of modern American life was not dreamed of. The negroes were rarely over-worked: they had often too little to do; and the great evil of their condition (after the mighty evil inherent in all slavery, of the forfeiture of manhood itself) was, that they were subject to the humours of their owners.
A hundred years ago, then, when Mrs. Grant’s relative was leading the remarkable country-life exhibited in the memoir, the gentry of the State of New York were always finding that their negroes increased upon their hands when they had not sufficient employment for them; and, in order not to be eaten out of house and home, they sold or gave away the superfluous children born on their estates. Two young sisters were sold in this
way into the State of Massachusetts, being bought by Colonel Ashley of Sheffield, a small country settlement. Their parents had been brought from Africa, and the children had derived no education