CHAPTER VI--On Scotch Gentility-Nonsense--Charlie o'er the Waterism.

Of the literature just alluded to Scott was the inventor. It is founded

on the fortunes and misfortunes of the Stuart family, of which Scott was

the zealous defender and apologist, doing all that in his power lay to

represent the members of it as noble, chivalrous, high-minded,

unfortunate princes; though, perhaps, of all the royal families that ever

existed upon the earth, this family was the worst. It was unfortunate

enough, it is true; but it owed its misfortunes entirely to its crimes,

viciousness, bad faith, and cowardice. Nothing will be said of it here

until it made its appearance in England to occupy the English throne.

The first of the family which we have to do with, James, was a dirty,

cowardly miscreant, of whom the less said the better. His son, Charles

the First, was a tyrant--exceedingly cruel and revengeful, but weak and

dastardly; he caused a poor fellow to be hanged in London, who was not

his subject, because he had heard that the unfortunate creature had once

bitten his own glove at Cadiz, in Spain, at the mention of his name; and

he permitted his own bull-dog, Strafford, to be executed by his own

enemies, though the only crime of Strafford was, that he had barked

furiously at those enemies, and had worried two or three of them, when

Charles shouted, "Fetch 'em." He was a bitter, but yet a despicable

enemy, and the coldest and most worthless of friends; for though he

always hoped to be able, some time or other, to hang his enemies, he was

always ready to curry favour with them, more especially if he could do so

at the expense of his friends. He was the haughtiest, yet meanest of

mankind. He once caned a young nobleman for appearing before him in the

drawing-room not dressed exactly according to the court etiquette; yet he

condescended to flatter and compliment him who, from principle, was his

bitterest enemy, namely, Harrison, when the republican colonel was

conducting him as a prisoner to London. His bad faith was notorious; it

was from abhorrence of the first public instance which he gave of his bad

faith, his breaking his word to the Infanta of Spain, that the poor

Hiberno-Spaniard bit his glove at Cadiz; and it was his notorious bad

faith which eventually cost him his head; for the Republicans would

gladly have spared him, provided they could put the slightest confidence

in any promise, however solemn, which he might have made to them. Of

them, it would be difficult to say whether they most hated or despised

him. Religion he had none. One day he favoured Popery; the next, on

hearing certain clamours of the people, he sent his wife's domestics back

packing to France, because they were Papists. Papists, however, should

make him a saint, for he was certainly the cause of the taking of

Rochelle.

His son, Charles the Second, though he passed his youth in the school of

adversity, learned no other lesson from it than the following one--take

care of yourself, and never do an action, either good or bad, which is

likely to bring you into any great difficulty; and this maxim he acted up

to as soon as he came to the throne. He was a Papist, but took especial

care not to acknowledge his religion, at which he frequently scoffed,

till just before his last gasp, when he knew that he could lose nothing,

and hoped to gain everything by it. He was always in want of money, but

took care not to tax the country beyond all endurable bounds; preferring

to such a bold and dangerous course, to become the pensioner of Louis, to

whom, in return for his gold, he sacrificed the honour and interests of

Britain. He was too lazy and sensual to delight in playing the part of a

tyrant himself; but he never checked tyranny in others save in one

instance. He permitted beastly butchers to commit unmentionable horrors

on the feeble, unarmed, and disunited Covenanters of Scotland, but

checked them when they would fain have endeavoured to play the same game

on the numerous united, dogged, and warlike Independents of England. To

show his filial piety, he bade the hangman dishonour the corpses of some

of his father's judges, before whom, when alive, he ran like a screaming

hare; but permitted those who had lost their all in supporting his

father's cause, to pine in misery and want. He would give to a painted

harlot a thousand pounds for a loathsome embrace, and to a player or

buffoon a hundred for a trumpery pun, but would refuse a penny to the

widow or orphan of an old Royalist soldier. He was the personification

of selfishness; and as he loved and cared for no one, so did no one love

or care for him. So little had he gained the respect or affection of

those who surrounded him, that after his body had undergone an

after-death examination, parts of it were thrown down the sinks of the

palace, to become eventually the prey of the swine and ducks of

Westminster.

His brother, who succeeded him, James the Second, was a Papist, but

sufficiently honest to acknowledge his Popery, but upon the whole, he was

a poor creature; though a tyrant, he was cowardly, had he not been a

coward he would never have lost his throne. There were plenty of lovers

of tyranny in England who would have stood by him, provided he would have

stood by them, and would, though not Papists, have encouraged him in his

attempt to bring back England beneath the sway of Rome, and perhaps would

eventually have become Papists themselves; but the nation raising a cry

against him, and his son-in-law, the Prince of Orange, invading the

country, he forsook his friends, of whom he had a host, but for whom he

cared little--left his throne, for which he cared a great deal--and

Popery in England, for which he cared yet more, to their fate, and

escaped to France, from whence, after taking a little heart, he repaired

to Ireland, where he was speedily joined by a gallant army of Papists

whom he basely abandoned at the Boyne, running away in a most lamentable

condition, at the time when by showing a little courage he might have

enabled them to conquer. This worthy, in his last will, bequeathed his

heart to England--his right arm to Scotland--and his bowels to Ireland.

What the English and Scotch said to their respective bequests is not

known, but it is certain that an old Irish priest, supposed to have been

a great-grand-uncle of the present Reverend Father Murtagh, on hearing of

the bequest to Ireland, fell into a great passion, and having been

brought up at "Paris and Salamanca," expressed his indignation in the

following strain:--"Malditas sean tus tripas! teniamos bastante del olor

de tus tripas al tiempo de tu nuida dela batalla del Boyne!"

His son, generally called the Old Pretender, though born in England, was

carried in his infancy to France, where he was brought up in the

strictest principles of Popery, which principles, however, did not

prevent him becoming (when did they ever prevent any one?) a worthless

and profligate scoundrel; there are some doubts as to the reality of his

being a son of James, which doubts are probably unfounded, the grand

proof of his legitimacy being the thorough baseness of his character. It

was said of his father that he could speak well, and it may be said of

him that he could write well, the only thing he could do which was worth

doing, always supposing that there is any merit in being able to write.

He was of a mean appearance, and, like his father, pusillanimous to a

degree. The meanness of his appearance disgusted, and his pusillanimity

discouraged the Scotch when he made his appearance amongst them in the

year 1715, some time after the standard of rebellion had been hoisted by

Mar. He only stayed a short time in Scotland, and then, seized with

panic, retreated to France, leaving his friends to shift for themselves

as they best could. He died a pensioner of the Pope.

The son of this man, Charles Edward, of whom so much in later years has

been said and written, was a worthless ignorant youth, and a profligate

and illiterate old man. When young, the best that can be said of him is,

that he had occasionally springs of courage, invariably at the wrong time

and place, which merely served to lead his friends into inextricable

difficulties. When old, he was loathsome and contemptible to both friend

and foe. His wife loathed him, and for the most terrible of reasons; she

did not pollute his couch, for to do that was impossible--he had made it

so vile; but she betrayed it, inviting to it not only Alfieri the Filthy,

but the coarsest grooms. Doctor King, the warmest and almost last

adherent of his family, said, that there was not a vice or crime of which

he was not guilty; as for his foes, they scorned to harm him even when in

their power. In the year 1745 he came down from the Highlands of

Scotland, which had long been a focus of rebellion. He was attended by

certain clans of the Highlands, desperadoes used to free-bootery from

their infancy, and, consequently, to the use of arms, and possessed of a

certain species of discipline; with these he defeated at Prestonpans a

body of men called soldiers, but who were in reality peasants and

artizans, levied about a month before, without discipline or confidence

in each other, and who were miserably massacred by the Highland army; he

subsequently invaded England, nearly destitute of regular soldiers, and

penetrated as far as Derby, from which place he retreated on learning

that regular forces which had been hastily recalled from Flanders were

coming against him, with the Duke of Cumberland at their head; he was

pursued, and his rearguard overtaken and defeated by the dragoons of the

duke at Clifton, from which place the rebels retreated in great confusion

across the Eden into Scotland, where they commenced dancing Highland

reels and strathspeys on the bank of the river, for joy at their escape,

whilst a number of wretched girls, paramours of some of them, were

perishing in the waters of the swollen river in an attempt to follow

them; they themselves passed over by eighties and by hundreds, arm in

arm, for mutual safety, without the loss of a man, but they left the poor

paramours to shift for themselves, nor did any of these canny people

after passing the stream dash back to rescue a single female life,--no,

they were too well employed upon the bank in dancing strathspeys to the

tune of "Charlie o'er the water." It was, indeed, Charlie o'er the

water, and canny Highlanders o'er the water, but where were the poor

prostitutes meantime? _In the water_.

The Jacobite farce, or tragedy, was speedily brought to a close by the

battle of Culloden; there did Charlie wish himself back again o'er the

water, exhibiting the most unmistakable signs of pusillanimity; there

were the clans cut to pieces, at least those who could be brought to the

charge, and there fell Giles Mac Bean, or as he was called in Gaelic,

Giliosa Mac Beathan, a kind of giant, six feet four inches and a quarter

high, "than whom," as his wife said in a coronach she made upon him, "no

man who stood at Cuiloitr was taller"--Giles Mac Bean the Major of the

clan Cattan--a great drinker--a great fisher--a great shooter, and the

champion of the Highland host.

The last of the Stuarts was a cardinal.

Such were the Stuarts, such their miserable history. They were dead and

buried in every sense of the word until Scott resuscitated them--how? by

the power of fine writing and by calling to his aid that strange

divinity, gentility. He wrote splendid novels about the Stuarts, in

which he represents them as unlike what they really were as the graceful

and beautiful papillon is unlike the hideous and filthy worm. In a word,

he made them genteel, and that was enough to give them paramount sway

over the minds of the British people. The public became Stuart-mad, and

everybody, specially the women, said, "What a pity it was that we hadn't

a Stuart to govern." All parties, Whig, Tory, or Radical, became

Jacobite at heart, and admirers of absolute power. The Whigs talked

about the liberty of the subject, and the Radicals about the rights of

man still, but neither party cared a straw for what it talked about, and

mentally swore that, as soon as by means of such stuff they could get

places, and fill their pockets, they would be as Jacobite as the Jacobs

themselves. As for Tories, no great change in them was necessary;

everything favouring absolutism and slavery being congenial to them. So

the whole nation, that is, the reading part of the nation, with some

exceptions, for thank God there has always been some salt in England,

went over the water to Charlie. But going over to Charlie was not

enough, they must, or at least a considerable part of them, go over to

Rome too, or have a hankering to do so. As the Priest sarcastically

observes in the text, "As all the Jacobs were Papists, so the good folks

who through Scott's novels admire the Jacobs must be Papists too." An

idea got about that the religion of such genteel people as the Stuarts

must be the climax of gentility, and that idea was quite sufficient. Only

let a thing, whether temporal or spiritual, be considered genteel in

England, and if it be not followed it is strange indeed; so Scott's

writings not only made the greater part of the nation Jacobite, but

Popish.

Here some people will exclaim--whose opinions remain sound and

uncontaminated--what you say is perhaps true with respect to the Jacobite

nonsense at present so prevalent being derived from Scott's novels, but

the Popish nonsense, which people of the genteeler classes are so fond

of, is derived from Oxford. We sent our sons to Oxford nice honest lads,

educated in the principles of the Church of England, and at the end of

the first term they came home puppies, talking Popish nonsense, which

they had learned from the pedants to whose care we had entrusted them;

ay, not only Popery but Jacobitism, which they hardly carried with them

from home, for we never heard them talking Jacobitism before they had

been at Oxford; but now their conversation is a farrago of Popish and

Jacobite stuff--"Complines and Claverse." Now, what these honest folks

say is, to a certain extent, founded on fact; the Popery which has

overflowed the land during the last fourteen or fifteen years, has come

immediately from Oxford, and likewise some of the Jacobitism, Popish and

Jacobite nonsense, and little or nothing else, having been taught at

Oxford for about that number of years. But whence did the pedants get

the Popish nonsense with which they have corrupted youth? Why, from the

same quarter from which they got the Jacobite nonsense with which they

have inoculated those lads who were not inoculated with it before--Scott's

novels. Jacobitism and Laudism, a kind of half Popery, had at one time

been very prevalent at Oxford, but both had been long consigned to

oblivion there, and people at Oxford cared as little about Laud as they

did about the Pretender. Both were dead and buried there, as everywhere

else, till Scott called them out of their graves, when the pedants of

Oxford hailed both--ay, and the Pope, too, as soon as Scott had made the

old fellow fascinating, through particular novels, more especially the

"Monastery" and "Abbot." Then the quiet, respectable, honourable Church

of England would no longer do for the pedants of Oxford; they must belong

to a more genteel church--they were ashamed at first to be downright

Romans--so they would be Lauds. The pale-looking, but exceedingly

genteel non-juring clergyman in Waverley was a Laud; but they soon became

tired of being Lauds, for Laud's Church, gew-gawish and idolatrous as it

was, was not sufficiently tinselly and idolatrous for them, so they must

be Popes, but in a sneaking way, still calling themselves

Church-of-England men, in order to batten on the bounty of the church

which they were betraying, and likewise have opportunities of corrupting

such lads as might still resort to Oxford with principles uncontaminated.

So the respectable people, whose opinions are still sound, are, to a

certain extent, right when they say that the tide of Popery, which has

flowed over the land, has come from Oxford. It did come immediately from

Oxford, but how did it get to Oxford? Why, from Scott's novels. Oh!

that sermon which was the first manifestation of Oxford feeling, preached

at Oxford some time in the year '38 by a divine of a weak and confused

intellect, in which Popery was mixed up with Jacobitism! The present

writer remembers perfectly well, on reading some extracts from it at the

time in a newspaper, on the top of a coach, exclaiming--"Why, the

simpleton has been pilfering from Walter Scott's novels!"

O Oxford pedants! Oxford pedants! ye whose politics and religion are

both derived from Scott's novels! what a pity it is that some lad of

honest parents, whose mind ye are endeavouring to stultify with your

nonsense about "Complines and Claverse," has not the spirit to start up

and cry, "Confound your gibberish! I'll have none of it. Hurrah for the

Church, and the principles of my _father_!"