Walter Thornbury

“ How the dear creatures enjoy the quiet retirement of the huge hotel after Red Sea and shipboard. They have revived as the rose of Jericho does when it is dipped in water. The thought of dear England has restored them at once to youth. The long home-sickness at the lonely station is forgotten. The whirlwind of the mutiny seems now they are among old friends, and looking towards England, but as a dream when one awakens. Even old rivals on board ship greet each other with good nature. ”

“ About an hundred and fifty people are dining in one room; there are three long tables full of English people either going to India or returning with livers injured or to be injured; with rupees or without rupees; browned and to be browned; roasted and to be roasted, until further orders.
The dragomen in the gay turbans stand behind their masters’ chairs, securing the food by dexterous dashes at dishes, and subtle swift conveyings, to the infinite wrath of Blaireau, and the other servantless. ”

“ Indeed, if you happen to be in the bazaars the day the Suez mail arrives, you soon become acquainted with the fact. You are perhaps cheapening an old sword-blade, or buying some striped bornouse, or a leopard’s skin fresh from Nubia, or some rare perfume, or some gold embroidery, when the English appear. The crowd is tremendous under the awning-roof of the narrow bazaar, there is one vast tossing sea of parti-coloured turbans. The grave dealer is imperturbably fraudulent. Every moment you are in danger ”

“ The waiters sleep about on benches. The dragomans are all up the Nile, I suppose, fleecing and worrying travellers. There is nothing doing at the bar. No one ascends or descends the great stone staircase. The papers in the reading-room are not being read, and every sofa has an outward-bound dreaming and snoring of home upon it. The donkey-boys rest under the sycamore trees in gipsy-like groups, sleeping or gambling. ”

“ Of the syrens and satyrs, and dryads and nymphs
That in sea and in forest play,
And, last of all, of that maid so fair,
Who wore no crown but her golden hair.
Syrinx, whom Jove, in his anger, changed
To those tall, green, wavering, trembling reeds,
That, down where yon tide flows broad and deep,
Are watching their shadows, till steers and steeds,
Coming to drink at the ford hard by,
Tread them to death so heedlessly. ”

“ At eve Pan rose, and that little blue flower,
The Forget-me-not, he pluck'd with care,
And placed on his bosom, in memory
Of Syrinx, and love that she would not share;
Then into the depth of the forest strode,
Careless of path and heedless of road.
Whither he went no Greek can tell;
But, in April evenings and autumn eves
We sometimes hear, or think we hear,
His feeble song ooze through the leaves,
For the old, old Pan, still brooding, stays,
Lamenting these lingering latter days. ”

“ Every morning before breakfast, the flock of donkey-boys have yelled at our approach, and fought for us. We have seen the moon rise four times above the trees of the Usbeekeyeh garden, as we sat smoking our gurgling water-pipes on the stone platform outside the hotel-door. ”

“ Let us not rate Lincoln too high: a President has really not much motive power. He is not an originator; conscience and party keep him down; Abe will probably do nothing. If troubles run high, every one knows a popular war with Mexico, or with Spain for Cuba, would quiet them directly. Every sensible American feels that the north cannot do without the south, or the south without the north. One has money, the other cotton. The one is afraid to rebel, the other afraid to strike. ”

“ How glad the Englishman is to throw off the officer! I see no epaulettes, no sword, no orders, no medals; yet every second man is a soldier and a hero.
If there is one thing at Shepherd’s that delights the homeward-bound and the outward-bound, it is the old-fashioned bar. ”

“ Instantly the donkey-boys leap on their donkeys and disappear in a whirl of dust. Then four or five waiters, looking like indigent and rather disreputable curates, regardless of expense, rush into open carriages and tear off also to the station.
The mail has arrived. At once the hotel wakes to life; it swarms suddenly with dragomen—dragomen in shining sable shoes, dazzling scarves and gay turbans; dragomen with turquoise rings for sale on their chapped dirty fingers; dragomen with heavy pocket-books, of greasy testimonials and brass-headed staves ”

“ Where the water-courses jangle.
Now it seems a Pæan holy
Keeping cadence to the beating
Of the wild Fauns' golden cymbals,
When their blood the wine is heating,
When the lambs burn on the turf,
And the worshippers are meeting. ”

“ Then the god turn’d and struck the boor a fierce and crushing blow,—
A buffet that would split an oak. Into the rolling flow
Headlong he fell, and headlong sank; then, with swift strides the god
Forded the whirling torrent, and once more dry land trod. ”

“ We, the outward bound, are longing for the hour that will bring the homeward bound to Egypt, and the hour is now all but come.
We are already tired of Cairo, and want to push on to our torrid destination. We feel quite at home by this time at Shepherd’s. We call the waiters George and Tom, and Ali and Hassan. We know all the ways of the place, and all the odd English and knavish tricks of the dragomans. ”

“ With sword, and mace, and partisan, that struck, and stabbed, and crushed;
Their banners beaten to the earth and all their best men slain,
The Austrians threw away their shields and fled across the plain. ”

“ The icebergs are around us now, below us the quicksand.
“The Midgard Serpent the nine world girdless as with a chain,
The All-Father threw him there to roam the unfathomable main;
That serpent, sprung from Loki’s race, rules in the ocean gloom.
Turn, boy, and draw not down on us the inevitable doom.”
Thor answer’d not, but stood erect, frowning at earth and sky,
And Hymir trembled when he saw the red light of his eye.
Far, far the ice-cliffs glittering shone, far the white cliffs stretch’d forth,
Until the blue mist rose and hid the boundaries of the North. ”

“ The potter’s slave disdains to mould the rich man’s funeral urn,
The poor serf of the Pontifex the bull to slay and burn;
The Emperor’s charioteer neglects to tend his steeds to-day;
Even Poppæa’s handmaid stays to loiter and to play.
To-morrow, at the cruel dawn, the wheel will roll again,
The actors change, the swift scenes shift, and end King Saturn’s reign ”

“ Not with those vintage streams that through
⁠The green leaves gush and shine:
’Twas blood that from the Lombard ranks
⁠Rushed down into the Rhine.
’Twas here the German soldiers flocked,
⁠Burning with love and pride,
And threw their muskets down to kiss
⁠The soil with French blood dyed.
“The Rhine—dear Rhine,” ten thousand men,
⁠Kneeling together, cried. ”

“ The great steamer looms out larger and larger, and slowly grows to a stupendous reality. Hearty English faces smile over the bulwarks, and from the pendent steps and the grated platform on to which the homeward-bound, tawny and of a curry powder colour, will contrive to leap, with again something of the old vigour. ”

“ Young ladies going out to India to marry, look with approval on the young married lady returning with her prize to England. Old majors, with leather faces, are preposterously gallant. Blooming striplings blush more even than they were wont to blush; but as for the old residents of the hotel (Rev. Mr. Blaireau, for instance, from Aden) , they alone, jostled and disregarded, look forlorn, fallen, and glum; they don’t like this inroad of barbarians into the “caravanserai,” as they rudely call the hotel that has so long been their pleasant retreat. ”

“ In the meanwhile a reserve train will bear off the happier homeward-bound in fire and vapour of smoke towards Alexandria, through cotton-fields downy-white, and roods of Indian corn, and bunchy sesame, and past myriads of mud huts, and plumed palm-trees. ”

“ Surely those yellow men, with the sickly smile and low voices, taking a languid interest in the new place as being a relief after shipboard, and, at all events, one step nearer England, cannot be kinsmen of us outward-bound men, with the strong limbs, pleasant red and white faces, and roaring laugh—men who could actually pinch a Bengalee to death between their arms and their sides. ”

“ With pursed-up mouths and hands to their ears,
To catch and question the breeze:
They heard the pipe, like a wild bird singing,
Pour out its pure and silvery ringing,
As they stealthily couched on their knees. ”

“ The eyes were full of tender grief,
⁠The full-lipp’d mouth was witching scornful.
The room was dark where Phædon knelt,
⁠But as he prayed the moonbeams entered,
And, like a crown of glory pure,
⁠Upon the brow of Clytè centred;
Then down her face they gently stole,
⁠With silver all her raiment sheathing.
His prayer was answered; Phædon cried,
⁠“She lives! she lives! I hear her breathing!” ”

“ Now, as you seldom meet an American who has tried less than four professions, Abe began next to study law, and his excellent head aiding him, he became an advocate, and practised with great success at Springfield.
The old stanchness, the “duty-feeling,” as the Germans call moral principle, was helping on old Abe, now in the court-room at Springfield, as it had done in the Indiana woods, and on the cotton-landings at Baton Range. Already an active politician, Lincoln now declared himself a Whig, and supported Henry Clay. ”

“ Watchmen by the gate's barred portal
Woke and heard the spirit calling,
As the chill night dew was falling.
“Lo!” they said, “’tis an Immortal
Come to bless our new-built temple—
Now the moonbeam strikes its portal.” ”

“ The crowd divides, there is a lane quickly made, and through that dashes an open carriage full of Englishmen, all in sun-helmets, all lean, dry, and yellow, and in the thinnest of nankeen-coloured envelopes. ”

“ But enough of such ill-timed and mischievous speeches; and, though we have purposely quoted only the words of influential men, let us remember that these harangues were uttered, and these books written, during a time of feverish excitement, and that they were peppered highly to rouse the appetite of the populace.
But one thing is remarkable during all the violence of this paper war, that not even the most venomous democratic tongue dared revile Lincoln. Men called him “rail splitter,” and there was an end. ”

“ Our own special boys are gone, I suppose, to their cafés to spend their earnings. Only now and then a poor Arab woman, clad in her lank dark-blue garment, passes, carrying a flapping bundle of long damp sugar-canes upon her head, or a sturdy Nubian groom, arrayed in robes white as sea-froth, struts by on his way to some pacha’s stables. ”

“ Churches should in my valleys hide,
⁠Old towers rise on each hill:
The forge, the farm-house, and the inn,
⁠Should cluster round the mill,
And past them all, the river broad,
⁠Should flow at its own sweet will. ”

“ Lincoln will not, we must remember, become working President till some time in March next, so there is time to consider our verdict.
The other defeated candidates are soon dismissed. Douglas is a brilliant and not very high principled demagogue. In many ways, talent excepted, he resembles Webster. He will doubtless run again as President. Bell, of Tennessee, is an old man, for quiet and union at all risks. Breckenridge is a young Kentucky gentleman of great promise, but too young for president. Lane is a nobody from outlying Oregon. ”

“ ABRAHAM LINCOLN, PRESIDENT ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES.
“Honest Old Abe,” as the Americans call Lincoln, was originally a farm-labourer in Illinois. Frederick Douglas, “the little giant,” his defeated antagonist, was a cabinet-maker.
We can in our own country, I know, point to instances of great judges, who have swept out offices; great generals, who have risen (socially) from the ranks; great poets, who have been ploughmen, or the sons of simple yeomen; and great college professors, who have been the sons of carpenters ”

“ As, like a living thing, the ball
⁠O’er beds of flowers went gaily bounding.
“To-morrow,” thought the Huguenot,
⁠“I gain my suit and win that title.”
“To-morrow,” thought the lady fair—
⁠“And yet those dreams,—I spent the night ill.” ”

“ Fierce plied our halberds at the spears, that thicker seemed to grow:
The more we struck, more boastfully the banners seemed to blow.
The Austrians, square and close locked up, stood firm with threatening spears,
Only the sterner when our bolts flew thick about their ears ”

“ Yes, there his life’s work stately stood,
⁠With its shining acres of beaten lead,
Its glittering windows, row on row,
⁠That centuries hence, when he was dead,
Should shine as they were shining then:
A landmark unto other men. ”

“ The fire will smoke out; the prudent will spit and wait for Lincoln’s first overt act. This may have large consequences. At present the cotton crop is just ready for selling, but I do think, as do wiser and more far seeing men than myself, that in the case of a second abolitionist President being elected, the South will lose all hope, get mad and desperate, and risk all in a blow at Northern Freedom. ”

“ From what we can gather about them, from stray passages in the “Spectator” and elsewhere, it would appear that the Mohawks were in the habit of slitting the noses of poor servant maids, and enclosing bewildered old citizens, on their way home from their tavern clubs, in prickly circles of sword points, besides breaking windows with showers of halfpence, ill-treating old watchmen, and pulling down shop signs, and doing other wanton and selfish mischief. In the following ballad I have confronted them with Swift. ”