*

channels. The reconciliation scene between Sebastian and Dorax, in Dryden's tragedy, ends, on the part of the latter, with the choking exclamation :

Let my tears thank you; for I cannot speak;

And if I could,

Words were not made to vent such thoughts as mine.†

The moments when the spirit within us is most deeply stirred, are almost invariably, says Mr. Wilkie Collins, the moments also when its outward manifestations are hardest to detect. How seldom, he exclaims, words can help us, when their help is most wanted! "Was there ever a strong emotion in this world that could adequately express its own strength? ... How many moments there are in this mortal life, when, with all our boasted powers of speech, the words of our vocabulary treacherously fade out, and the page presents nothing to us but the sight of a perfect blank!" Douglas, in the tragedy, after Percy's death, watching the effect of that calamity upon the mind of Elwina, exclaims, She sheds no tears, her grief's too highly-wrought; "Tis speechless agony.

And Elwina herself (by the stage direction, "in a low broken voice”) presently utters an assenting

-No.

The sorrow's weak that wastes itself in words,
Mine is substantial anguish-deep, not loud;
I do not rave. .

Rage is for little wrongs-Despair is dumb.§

Gerard Eliassoen, in Mr. Charles Reade's fine story of Cloister and Hearth, saves from shipwreck a Roman matron and her child, at the risk of his own life. Himself safe ashore, he is greeted by her with dumb eloquence of womanly gratitude. Laying her hand lightly on his shoulder, Teresa then, with face all beaming and moist eyes, holds her child up and makes him kiss his preserver. And this is what ensued. "Gerard kissed the child: more than once. He was fond of children. But he said nothing. He was much moved; for she did not speak at all, except with her eyes, and glowing cheeks, and noble antique gesture, so large and stately. Perhaps she was right. Gratitude is not a thing of words. It was an ancient Roman matron thanking a modern from her heart of hearts."|| As Ethel says to Violenzia, in Mr. Roscoe's tragedy,

It is my love that will not let me speak,
And passion puts a silence on my tongue.
I have no gift of speech; and when I strive
To model that which beats so deeply here,
The dull air gives no echo, but deceives
With faintest semblance.

Take, again, the parting of Nymph and Shepherd in one of our old
Caroline poets:

Neither could say farewell, but through their eyes
Grief interrupted speech with tears' supplies.**

* "So sat the lovers [Kavanagh and Cecilia], hand in hand; but for a long time neither spake, neither had need of speech."-Kavanagh, ch. xxvi.

† Dryden's Don Sebastian.

Percy, Act V. Sc. 1.

Violenzia, Act I. Sc. 1.

The Dead Secret, book iv, ch. ii.

The Cloister and the Hearth, vol. iii. ch. vi.

**Thos. Carew, A Pastoral Dialogue.

And the parting of Leonard from the priest, in one of Wordsworth's idylls-to adopt a phrase now in vogue:

-The Priest here ended

The Stranger would have thanked him, but he felt

A gushing from his heart, that took away

The power of speech.*

Or, in burlesque strain, take the ecclesiastical dignitary in Boileau's satire,

A force de douleur, il demeura tranquille,-

although, after a while, " sa voix s'échappant au travers des sanglots, dans sa bouche à la fin fit passage à ces mots," which, however, are nothing to the purpose.

Lord Cockburn describes the effect upon the Scottish bar of the news of President Blair's death as "overwhelming." Next day the Court was silent, and adjourned. The Faculty of Advocates, hastily called together, resolved to attend him to his grave. Henry Erskine, we are then told, "tried to say something, and because he could only try it, it was as good a speech as he ever made. The emotion, and the few and broken sentences, made this artless tribute, by the greatest surviving member of the profession to the greatest dead one, striking and beautiful."+

Eloquently Mr. Carlyle speaks of brave old Malesherbes (in 1793) pleading, with Louis's other two advocates, for Delay in execution of the sentence,- "pleads for it with eloquent want of eloquence, in broken sentences, in embarrassment and sobs; that brave time-honoured face, with its grey strength, its broad sagacity and honesty, is mastered with emotion, melts into dumb tears."§

Turner's biographer relates of that great painter that, on the day of Chantrey's very sudden death, he called at the sculptor's house, expecting to find a brother artist and R.A. in the room where the dead man lay. "He did so; but he [Turner] could not speak; he wrung his hand only with affectionate and almost passionate vehemence, and rushed out of the house without uttering a word." Grief of the Homeric stampas exemplified in the "youthful warrior" who

-heard with silent woe,

From whose fair eyes the tears began to flow;
Big with the mighty grief, he strove to say

What sorrow dictates, but no word found way.

For, as Mr. Pope has remarked in his annotations, Homer ever represents an excess of grief by a deep horror, silence, weeping, and not inquiring into the manner of the friend's death. Nor could Antilochus, he asserts-in reference to the above lines-have expressed his sorrow in any manner so moving as silence.

The Brothers.

† Le Lutrin, chant quatrième.

Memorials of his Time, by Henry Cockburn, p. 256. § History of the French Revolution, part iii. book ii. ch. vii.

A special reason on his biographer's part for relating the anecdote is, evidently, to counteract a prevailing impression as to Turner's selfishly sordid disposition; and to give point to the query: "Was this a man without heart and without affections, the mere money-grubber and sordid Harpagon?"-Life of J. M. W. Turner, ii. 258.

Iliad, bk. xvii.

LULE-LAPPMARK.-A SKETCH OF LAPLAND TRAVEL.

PART I.

I HAVEN'T much of a tale to tell, but it is, at all events, of scenes and places new-of lakes wild and solitary, traversed by few keels-of rivers wide and rapid, where fly was never before thrown-of trackless gloomy forests, the home of the capercailzie and tree-grouse-of skies strange and beautiful-of a people curious and primitive—and of a life, in fact, so fresh, vigorous, and health-giving, that I doubt not to find some readers, and probably a few followers, on the track I chose in the autumn of 1865.

A voyage from Hull to Gothenburg in a screw specimen of a rather seedy line of steamers, with a pompous captain, a surly steward, and extremely bad cookery, does not present for the reader many features of interest, or give much to describe. The usual resources adopted by the unhappy passengers under such circumstances, such as looking for shoals of porpoises, who never appear; playing pitch and toss on the deck (for pursuing which impious recreation on a Sunday, in that oblivion of days which travelling begets, we were very promptly pulled up by the captain); or endeavouring to pot sea-anemones with a saloon pistol; though available for the great purpose of killing the common enemy, Time, can scarcely be said to present the necessary elements for example of life or instruction of manners. So the passage in question may be very fitly dismissed as an unmitigated and continuous nuisance. I found, however, some pleasant fellows on board, as I believe one always may in any mixed company of Englishmen, if a man will only take the trouble to draw them out. Two young fellows going on a visit in Sweden-a tourist about to join some friends previously gone to do the south of the country, the Gotha Canal, Upsala, and that sort of thing-a business-man from Newcastle, who turned out a first-rate fellow-a trader in horse and cattle-flesh from Yorkshire-a Scotch gentleman with his mother and sister, going over to a wedding of some relation on the Norway coast, and some lady-friends of the captain's, made up the list. The first meal on board broke down the inevitable Anglo-Saxon stiffness, and by the time we reached Gothenburg we were all great friends.

The quantity of the aforesaid anemones in the North Sea was the only thing worth noticing on the whole passage. As we neared Gothenburg they swarmed in the shallow waters. Floating lazily along, cup-shaped, with long fibrous streamers, orange-yellow, crimson, and the intensest mazarine-blue, unheeding and unconscious, they seemed to realise that absolutism of mere existence desired of the Brahmins, and which poets have endeavoured to describe; but which one of us more prosaically put in the words, "Look at those happy devils! What a life! They don't know whether they are alive or dead, those fellows!"

On entering the harbour of Gothenburg, which in the native tongue

is pronounced "Jitteborg," one of the party, who had evinced much dissatisfaction during the latter part of the passage at not meeting with "porpoises, and seals, and whales, and things," which he declared had been promised him in the North Sea, appeared to derive much content from seeing women pulling the hay or timber laden boats while the men steered; he being of opinion that they had "a precious deal too easy a time of it in England"- -a remark which, it is needless to say, brought a storm of invective about his ears from which he was glad to take refuge in the saloon and some bitter beer. Soon we slackened speed; and, after some shunting and a great din of tongues, sidled up about one P.M. on Monday, August 14th, to the steam-boat pier of the fair seaport of Gothenburg.

Here began the separations, which even to so brief a mutual acquaintance as a two days' sea-passage have their touch of regret. The two young Englishmen departed, after severe hand-shaking and exchange of addresses, with their friend who met them on the quay, and each man went his way; I clinging to myNewcastle friend, who, like a good fellow, undertook to steer me through the custom-house, and launch me on my way to Stockholm. And at the said douane I had a curious experience of the ingenuity of customs' officials in exacting the pence due to Cæsar. In a great long box I had stowed away my gun, salmon and other rods, pots of preserved meats, and no end of cartridges, some loaded and some unloaded. Having duly charged me for the loaded "patròns," as they call them, the imposing swell who presided over the operation appeared to be in some difficulty as to the empty ones; but he at length got over it, much to his satisfaction and the advantage of King Carl's revenue, by mulcting their entry into Sweden as "manufactured paper" at more than double the rate of the full ones! However, the whole thing only amounted to about 1s. 5d., and the joke was worth that.

From the custom-house we went to the Göthe-Källäre (pron. Chellary) Hotel, the most satisfactory one in Gothenburg; where presently some of our fellow-passengers turned up, and there was a great fight for beds. This being adjusted, we turned out for a walk, and ordered dinner at the swell restaurant of the place, the Phoenix.

Gothenburg is undoubtedly a good town, and will be a very fine place. The streets are spacious and straight, with wide canals traversing the principal ones, the houses large, and the pavement even and clean. There is a pretty little park, which is uncommonly well kept in the floricultural department, and I never saw such splendid tree-fuchsias in my life. Just outside the park is the theatre, a big building, which stands conceitedly by itself on an eminence over one of the canals. The wording of one of the playbills, which I got my friend to translate for me, was very funny; and I subjoin an extract of the tit-bit for the night, which will show the taste of the natives:

In the Strand

(I wish I wa's with Nancy) Amerikansk schåaresång med dans Uföres af

Hr. Ullberg samt hela personalen.

The Swedes, I may say here, are decidedly a musical nation. They pride themselves upon their bands, and are immense admirers of their own and the German schools. Part-singing is a very favourite amusement of theirs; and the young men form themselves into clubs with this object, and patrol the streets at night, singing "the plaintive airs of their native land;" and a much better amusement for them than frequenting casinos and drinking-shops, it must be admitted.

Having ended our stroll, we adjourned to the Phoenix to feed; and as this was my first Swedish dinner, I must be allowed to describe one peculiarity of it. Every correctly conducted Swedish meal is preceded by what is called a smörgös (or butter goose, the origin of which nonsensical title I never could learn). This addition to the regular menu consists of a number of small plates or saucers of sardines, caviar, anchovies, olives, slices of German sausage, slices of reindeer meat, of smoked salmon, of smoked herring, of powerful cheese, of cucumber and beetroot, a tray of bread and cakes, and a plate of butter, and is spread upon a side-table. It is, in fact, the hors d'oeuvre of the dinner, only given beforehand, and en masse. You eat this standing invariably, and moisten it with a glass of raw spirits-one of two or three kinds of vodki (they are all pretty much alike, the difference consisting in more or less aniseed or caraway in them)-and this it is the correct thing to toss off at a gulp, and put the glass down empty. I can only say that one very soon begins to think the smörgös a highly desirable institution; and the stimulating effect of the glass of raw spirits on the digestive organs for the time quite eclipses the memory of sherry-andbitters at home. But I am bound to confess that, like many similar institutions, it wants the association of the general habits of the country. I should not relish it a bit here, and I don't believe even a Swede would. This custom of drinking raw spirits at every meal is supposed to be a necessity of the climate, and so it may be in the winter and the cold damp weather of autumn and spring; but of course it is no less religiously observed in the summer, when it is, to say the least of it, needless in that light. The great drink of the Swedes is, however, a kind of essence of punch, made of arrack, and extremely sweet and luscious, which is drunk neat. Uncommonly seductive stuff it is, but it serves one out horribly in head and stomach afterwards; and the confiding way in which the untutored stranger laps it is always a source of amusement to the case-hardened natives, who invariably make him drink as much as possible of it. In fact, I should advise every fellow to shun svenska ponsch entirely, and call for brandy-and-water instead when challenged; only he must do it with a duly apologetic oration on behalf of his liver and digestion, as the Swedes, excessively good fellows, are, as a rule, rather sensitive on national points; and, if you decline the proffered courtesy of a drink, are apt to ascribe your refusal to pride or dislike. Our dinner was simple, but good-the usual soup, fish, entrées, solids, and sweets, only served up in an odd kind of order, stewed chicken after the sweets, and that kind of thing; and the cheese one has had with the smörgös before dinner, so it does not usually appear again. The soups are, as a rule, distinctly flavoured and good; what they call green bouillon," a veal broth with herbs and great flaps of cabbage