My master, Mr. Milverton, delighted in frequent excursions of a very humble kind. He used to say that we did not make half use enough of our opportunities while living in the country: that there was always much to be seen within a circle of fifteen miles’ radius--all manner of beautiful and interesting things. His idea of a tour was not rushing off to Spain or Italy at the rate of thirty miles an hour, but going up a canal in a little boat, or travelling along rustic roads in a pony carriage at the rate of five miles an hour, and taking everything very coolly. “Look,” he would say, “at the charming uncertainty you have about your dinner in these excursions. Then, again, how amused you always are at a country inn. The pictures alone are quite a treat, and convey to you something of the history of the last seventy years.”

Ellesmere, of course, opposed and ridiculed Mr. Milverton’s views. He maintained there was nothing like sitting in a comfortable room where there were nice, sleep-provoking arm-chairs; not that, as he used to observe, Milverton’s arm-chairs were comfortable, but that they were well-intended. It used to amuse me, this praise of sitting at home, coming from one of the most restless mortals ever born; for he never could keep quiet for a quarter of an hour together, but would walk round the room while the others were talking; and a favourite mode of motion of his was to place the chairs so that he could step from one to the other, and thus expend his terrible restlessness. However, though invariably opposing Milverton’s excursions, he was always ready to join in them.

On the present occasion Mr. Milverton suggested that we should go to a little inn about eight miles distant, which overlooked a small arm of the sea, where it is proposed to construct a harbour. We set off on a beautiful day, and soon reached our inn. The tide was out, and there was a huge expanse of mud visible.

_Ellesmere._ What a delicious odour of mud! How gratifying it is to have exchanged our own poor atmosphere for this invigorating air!

_Milverton._ I always think when I see this place at the time of the receding tide, which gives somewhat of an ungracious aspect to the landscape, how like it is to a person of a fitful temper. The present state represents a sullen mood; but soon you will see the pleasant tide come up again, and all the scenery about you will become most beautiful--as the human being does, when he has thrown off his sullenness.

_Ellesmere._ I think I have heard you indulge in this simile before. I should be very sorry to show that it does not walk on four legs; but I cannot help observing that the tide ebbs and flows with regularity, whereas the temper, if I may judge from Lady Ellesmere’s, is apt to be a little uncertain in its movements.

_Lady Ellesmere._ It cannot be said, my love, that your temper partakes of uncertainty.

_Ellesmere._ A truly conjugal remark, and as true as it is conjugal.

We then separated until dinner-time, rambling about amongst the rocks and the mud, active as any children in picking up sea-weed and shells, and catching crabs: one of which gave a severe bite to Ellesmere, who, with his accustomed good-nature, did not avenge the bite upon the crab, but merely observed, as he put it into its little pool again, “that he was sure it was a female, and did not understand when any kindness was meant for it.”

We had a very pleasant dinner, and were somewhat scolded by the landlady of the inn for our sad deficiency of appetite; though I thought we all ate like ploughboys.

After dinner Mr. Cranmer talked in a most official manner about all the things which he foresaw would happen in foreign and domestic politics; not without sundry sneers and sniffs from Sir John Ellesmere, whom Mr. Cranmer’s talk always provokes to all kinds of sarcastic opposition. The conversation proceeded thus, as well as I can recollect it.

_Milverton._ All political prophecy is so difficult. Ellesmere owns that he cannot foresee what will happen in the course of a three-volume novel. Now, I do not feel such difficulty in that. No: I do not feel that difficulty about novels. There you have only to watch the mind of one man, the author; but, as regards political prophecy, it is a very different thing. Now I wish, for the sake of making a curious experiment, that any one of you, at the outset of any political movement, would write down (it must be in writing) what you really think will happen. You will, I believe, be astonished to find how mistaken your prophecy will be. Where men are so deluded, and think that they foresee far more than they do, is in this way--that they keep on modifying, from day to day, their prophecy, in correspondence with the daily changes of events. I have watched this matter for years--at least, as regards my own mind--and have often found how wrong my prophetic anticipations have been. I remember hearing one of the shrewdest ministers of our time say that he joined a ministry, thinking it would only last seven weeks. “You see,” he said, “they were old friends of mine, and they had asked me to join them. And I felt that, being old friends, I was quite willing to partake their downfall; and here I have been years in office with them.”

No one can see how a ministry will fall, or how a war will end, or how any series of political events will come to a conclusion.

I declare I never knew a ministry go out upon the exact questions they were expected to go out upon.

_Sir Arthur._ We are thrown back to the old French proverb, “Nothing is certain but the unforeseen.”

_Ellesmere._ I hate proverbs; they are such bumptious things: they are like boys of sixteen; they all want taking down, not one peg, but many pegs.

_Sir Arthur._ I must say I delight in French proverbs. Now, what can be better than the celebrated proverb, “Nothing succeeds like success?”

_Milverton._ The opposite is quite as true, “Nothing succeeds like the want of success;” or, to put it in another way, “None are so successful as the unsuccessful.” It all depends upon the meaning you give to the word success. Do you remember how the late Lord Carlisle, good man, used to delight in a saying (where it originally came from I do not know) which ran thus, “Heaven is a place made for the unsuccessful?” You may depend upon it there is, even in this world, nothing in the world so dangerous for a man as to be for a long time supremely successful. I think on this head that the First Napoleon’s career is one of the most instructive that the world has ever seen. If he had had but a little less success before he made that fatal blunder of invading Russia, he might have acted with something like wisdom, and an uninterrupted dynasty of his might still have been upon the throne of France.

By the way, I was reading the other day another account of that invasion of Russia (a portion of history which I am never tired of reading), and I observed that one division of the army--I think it was Murat’s--had been reduced before it returned to Wilna to 400 infantry and 500 dismounted cavalry, without any guns, or any materials of war of any kind. Now, that division probably started with 60,000 or 70,000 men. But the most instructive thing of that campaign is to observe the wonderful pedantry and perverse obstinacy, in ignoring the most obvious facts, which that great man Napoleon manifested to the end of the campaign. He would draw up the most admirable orders of the day, but unfortunately facts were against him; and it was no good ordering that 20,000 men should go here, and 30,000 men go there, when the division in question was almost annihilated. From the first opening of the campaign, however, there was the same want of skill manifested, and the same abjuration of facts. Now, it was thought a wonderfully clever thing throughout Europe, that the Emperor should have arranged his 5,000 wagons in military fashion; but any man, who knows anything about wagons, carters, and oxen--Wren Hoskyns or Mr. Mechi, for instance--could have told him that a transport of this kind could not be arranged in a purely military fashion.

_Ellesmere._ For goodness’ sake do not let Milverton get upon the subject of war. At all hazards he should be stopped in talking about it.

Let me see, what were we talking about before? Oh! proverbs: well, I say a proverb is like a rule in grammar. I remember there was a detestable Greek grammar, which was the torment of my early days, and which used to lay down some rule, and then there used to come pages of exceptions. In my perverse way, I used to make one of the exceptions the rule, and throw the rule into one of the exceptions. I hate grammar!

But to return to proverbs: as I said before, they are such bumptious things. It may be said of them what the late Lord Melbourne said of dear Macaulay, “They are so cock-sure about everything.”

_Cranmer._ I wonder to hear you say “dear Macaulay;” I should have thought that, being such a great talker, he would have interfered with you, Sir John.

_Ellesmere._ Do you? you are quite mistaken then. Who was it said of Matt Lewis--

“I would give many a sugar-cane, Matt Lewis were alive again”?

so I being by nature a poet, say--

“I would bear a load of pain, So Macaulay were alive again.”

Whenever I was invited to meet him, I always went. It is true he was a great talker, but who talked so well? There was no vanity in his talk. There was simply an exuberant knowledge and an exquisite enjoyment of the subject he was discoursing about. I can tell you, I did not interrupt _him_. I was always too glad to hear him talk. He would lay hold of a particular author, and in a short time (say twenty minutes) give you the whole pith and marrow of that author. I remember his doing so once with Cobbett, and one had, I believe, in this brief twenty minutes all the best things ever said by that most vigorous writer.

Then if any of the less prominent characters in history were mentioned, he had anecdotes about them which were known to no one else.

I remember his once describing to us the character and sayings of Lord Thurlow; and he told a story of that large-eye-browed personage which I never heard before, and each of you ought to give me half-a-crown at least, if I agree to tell you. Are the half-crowns forthcoming? (We nodded assent.)

Well, those were days when we had not the infliction of railways, and when barristers, even on the Northern circuit, travelled in post-chaises. It fell to the lot of a very saintly, good man, to have to travel with Thurlow, who was then Attorney-General. A journey to the North was a serious thing in those times, and my saintly friend dreaded the long journey, with the blustering Attorney-General, who he was sure would utter many naughty words before they arrived at York.

They had hardly left London before the good man remarked, “We shall have a long journey, Mr. Attorney, and so I thought I would bring some books to amuse us. I daresay it is a long time since you have read Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost.’ Shall I read some of it to you? It will remind us of our younger days.” (In those days men read great works; for there were not so many books of rubbishing fiction, to which the reading energies of the present day are directed.) “Oh, by all means!” said Thurlow; “I have not read a word of Milton for years.”

The good man began to read out his Milton: presently he came to the passage where Satan exclaims, “Better to reign in hell than serve in Heaven.” Upon which Thurlow exclaimed, “A d----d fine fellow, and I hope he may win.” My saintly friend in horror shut up his “Paradise Lost,” and felt that it would be no good reading to the Attorney-General, if he was to be interrupted by such wicked expressions of sentiment.

_Milverton._ Did you ever read Macaulay’s poem on his defeat at Edinburgh? It is a most noble production. I am ashamed to say I cannot recollect it correctly; but the next time we meet I will read it out to you.

_Cranmer._ I really cannot understand how Sir John could have endured the enforced silence which Lord Macaulay’s talk must have imposed upon him.

_Ellesmere._ I am a misunderstood man, not only by Secretaries of the Treasury, but by all people who come near me. I am _un homme incompris_. Now, I ask you all, did I interrupt Milverton when he was going on with his “Realmah” story? If a talk or reading is good, I am the last man in the world to interrupt it. I only interrupt folly, irrelevancy, inaccuracy, and incomplete logic. I am the best listener in the United Kingdom when there is anything worth listening to; but I am, I repeat, a misunderstood man. Poor dear Charles Lamb complains that he was in the same plight. Nine-tenths of the world do not understand a joke; and no official man, Mr. Cranmer, ever does. Why even my wife does not understand me.

_Lady Ellesmere._ No, my dear, it would take nine of the cleverest women in England to understand you, and they must pass the chief part of their time in interchanging notes about your character.

_Ellesmere._ Let us enumerate the nine--only, for goodness’ sake, do not let them be nine Muses.

Let me see, what should be their functions?--

1. The arch-concoctor of salads.

2. The sewer-on of buttons.

3. The intelligent maker of bread-sauce.

4. The player of Beethoven’s music.

5. The player of common tunes,--“Old Dog Tray,” “Early in the Morning,” “Pop goes the Weasel,” and “Paddle your own Canoe,”

all of which tunes I think beautiful; but, of course, because the populace approves of them, which populace is the best judge of such things, my Lady Ellesmere must needs turn up her nose (and a very pretty one it is) against any one who admires these tunes, and she declines to play them to me.

_Lady Ellesmere_. I can well imagine you do admire these “tunes,” as you call them. It is certainly worth my while to get up Beethoven for you, when “Early in the Morning” satisfies you quite as well.

But pray go on with your list of wives, Sir John.

_Ellesmere._

6. The consoler under difficulties.

7. The good reader.

8. The one beloved wife (dear deluded creature) who always believes in her husband, and takes him to be the discreetest, most virtuous, and most ill-used of mortal men. I do love _her_!

9. The manager of the other wives.

By the way, has there not been some talk of a tenth Muse? Well, if I am to have a tenth wife, she shall be the noble and rare creature who can cook a potato. My list is now complete. My polygamic nature is satisfied with these ten adorable beings.

_Sir Arthur._ Which will you be, Lady Ellesmere?

_Lady Ellesmere._ The sewer-on of buttons. I do not feel equal to the bread-sauce, though that would be the lighter work of the two if one’s mind could master it.

_Ellesmere._ But, come, let us go on with Realmah, _alias_ Milverton--the Milverton who existed when that ground which is now at the bottom of the Swiss lakes was at the surface. I do like a story!

_Mrs. Milverton._ Is it not somewhat of a confession of weakness on the part of Sir John Ellesmere, that he likes a story? And was he not a few minutes ago abusing fiction?

_Ellesmere._ No, it is not a confession of weakness, Mrs. Milverton. And as for inconsistency--to be consistent, one must be dull; and nobody can accuse me of that.

From the earliest ages of the world, when men dwelt in tents, and looked out upon the stars at midnight, delighting in them more than in any other created thing, men and women would gather round a fire, and listen entranced, through the dark hours of night, to any one who would tell them a story; however absurd, however inconsistent, however improbable, that story might be. Not that I mean for a moment to say, Mrs. Milverton, that your husband invents absurd, inconsistent, and improbable stories. Doubtless all that he says is absolutely true, and must, as he assures us, have happened. Did not his nymph tell him?--By the way, I wonder you are not jealous of that same nymph: women can contrive to be jealous of any thing, or person, or animal, or even insect--and you see how she inspires him with a higher degree of inspiration than can be gained from yourself, or any other person who exists upon this solid earth.

_Mrs. Milverton._ I do not know what jealousy is, Sir John.

_Ellesmere._ Happy woman! I observe that Milverton is silent: he knows very well what jealousy is, at least on your part. Why, if I were to poke the fire in his study, you would be jealous that you had not done it: you are all alike, and jealousy is nine-tenths of your love. Whereas, with us men, jealousy is almost a thing unknown.

By the way, which of the three young savage ladies, that we are introduced to in Realmah, do you think you most resemble? Is it the prudent Varnah, the beautiful Talora, or the incomparable Ainah (with large hands and feet), that you are willing to be classed with?

_Milverton._ Mrs. Milverton possesses the merits of all the three in her own person--the beauty of Talora, the prudence of the Varnah, and the sympathetic nature of the Ainah.

_Ellesmere._ You have not a few shillings about you, have you, Mrs. Milverton, that you could give your husband for that speech? for I am sure it is one that requires to be paid for.

Now, Milverton, do go on: I declare seriously I am thoroughly interested in your story, and will not make a single interruption, until those shining waters desert their charming mud, and the stars come out, and we order our horses, and return to the solid comforts and second-rate arm-chairs in Milverton’s smoke-dried study.

The Story of Realmah.