BOOKS.
MR. LELAND'S MEMOIRS.* Mn. Louis STEVENSON, perhaps in The Inland Voyage, per- haps in another book, but at any rate somewhere, speaks of that large class of people—natural gipsies and tinkers—in whose ears there is always sounding a certain delightful piece of music, entitled "the invitation to the road," and mho are always in search of, or actually undergoing, strange expe- riences. Wherever there is an adventure going, there are they to share it. Wherever a piece of gipsying, mental or physical, is to be done, they turn up to do it. Mr. Leland, whose capti- vating Memoirs form the subject of the present notice, belongs emphatically to this enviable class. Strange things come to him as naturally as colds in the head to ordinary mortals, and he knows how to find excitement and romance where most men would find nothing but dullness and conventionality. A waiting-room at a country railway-station or a meeting of a charitable committee would, we verily believe, bring him not boredom, but opportunities for knight-errantry. As he says himself, Poe's "Angel of the Odd" must have presided over his cradle. Mr. Leland, in fact, has passed through life as a gipsy caravan passes through England, encamping now on one delightful piece of common, now on another, and always finding something new and strange to stimulate the fancy. Very curious and entertaining is Mr. Leland's account of his life as a boy in Philadelphia, and of how, as naturally as a duck takes to the water, he took to devouring books on magic, mysticism, gipsies, and the Rosierucians. We must, however, pass these over, and choose, in preference, his visit to Europe. Mr. Leland first touched Europe at Marseilles. Here he fell plump into the company of just the very person whom ho ought to have met,—a retired captain of a slaver with a strong love of Wordsworth, and that intense desire for self-cultivation generally associated with the evangelical mechanic of pronounced temperance views. Mr. Leland thus describes this fascinating person:— " He was," he tells us, "a little, modest-looking Englishman, who seemed to me rather to look up to the fast young American captains as types or models of more daring beings. Sometimes he would tell a mildly-naughty tale as if it were a wild thing. He consulted with me as to going to Paris and hearing lectures at the University, his education having been neglected. He had, I was told, experienced a sad loss, having just lost his ship on the Guinea coast." Ultimately, Mr. Leland won the slave-captain's confidence, and heard from him "all the terrific details of a slaver's life, and his strange experiences in buying slaves in the interior." Here are some of the horrors :— " Compared to the awful massacres and cruelties inflicted by the blacks on one another, the white slave-trade seemed to be philan- thropic and humane. He had soon at the grand custom in Dahomey 2600 men killed, and pool made of their blood into which the king's wives threw themselves naked and wallowed. 'Ono day fifteen were to be tortured to death for witchcraft. I bought thorn all for an old dress-coat,' said the captain. 'I didn't want them, for my cargo was made up—it was only to save the poor devils' lives,' If a slaver could not get a full cargo, and met with a weaker vessel which was full, it was at once attacked and plundered. Sometimes there would be desperate resistance, with the aid of the slaves. I have seen the scuppers run with blood,' said the captain. And so on, with much more of the same sort, all of which has since been recorded in the Journal of Captain Canot, from which latter book I really learned nothing new. I might add the Life of Hobart Pacha, whom I met many times in London. A real old-fashioned slaver was fully a hundred times worse than an average pirate, because Ile was the latter whenever he wished to rob, and in his business was the cause of far more suffering and death. The captain was very fond of reading poetry, his favourite being Wordsworth. This formed quite a tie between us. He was always rather mild, quiet, and old-fashioned—in fact, muiRsh. Once only did I see a spark from him which showed what was latent. Captain Jack was describing a most extra- ordinary run which we had made before a gale from Gibraltar to Cape do Cronx, which was, indeed, true enough, he leaving a very fast vessel. But the Guinea captain denied that such time had ever been made by any craft ever built. And I have had to sail sometimes pretty fast in my time,' he added with one sharp glance —no more--but, as Byron says of the look of 0 ulleyaz, 'twat' like Memoirs. By Charles Godfrey Leland (" Ham areltmaan "), 2 vols. London: Heinemann. 1893.
a short glimpse of hell. Pretty fast ! I should think so—now and then from an English cruiser, all sails wetted down, with the gallows in the back-ground. But as I had been on board with Sam, the question was settled. We haul made a run which was beyond all precedent. I fancy that the captain, if he eseaped the halter or the wave, in after years settled down iu some English coast-village, where he read Wordsworth, and uttended church regularly, and was probably regarded as a gentle old duffer by the younger members of society. But take him for all in all, lie was the mildest-mannered man that ever scuttled ship or cut a throat, and he always behaved to me like a perfect gentleman, and never uttered an improper word."
One can imagine Mr. Leland's friend, when in retirement, composing a poem on the model of Wordsworth's " Happy Warrior," entitled " The Happy Slaver," and asking,— " 'Who is the happy Slaver P who is he
That every pirate chief would wish to be P "
From Marseilles Mr. Leland went to Germany, and from Ger- many to Paris ; and there came in for the Revolution of 1848. Mr. Leland was a student, and the students were making the Revolution. What more natural, then, than that he should bear a band in pulling down the Government of Louis Philippe P He does not appear to have cherished any par- ticular ill-will to the existing rewinte, but- he could not be expected to resist such tempting adventures as the barricades offered, for so commonplace a reason. Very graphic, however, are his accounts of the barricades, the charges, and the en- thusiasms and "the great storm-bell of Notre Dame" ringing all night long. On the second day Mr. Leland resolved to take a band in the game himself. Accordingly, he tied a sash round his waist en, rgeolutimnaire, loaded a pair of duel. hug-pistols, and started forth on his adventures :— "I sallied forth, and found in the line do he Harpc a gang of fifty insurgents, who had arms and a crowbar, but who wanted a leader. Seeing that I was one of them, ono said to ine, 'Sir, where shall we make a barricade ' I replied that there was one already to the right and another farther down, but that a third close at hand was open. Without a word they handed me the crowbar, and I prized up the stones out of the pavement, while they undertook the harder work of piling them up. In a few minutes we had a solid wall eight feet high Then renemu-
boring that there was a defenceless spot somewhere marched my troop thither, and built another barricade—all in grim earnest without talking."
Here is another Revolution picture :— "In the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, by the market-house, there was an immense barricade, made of literally everything, old beds, waggons, stones, and rubbish, guarded by a dense crowd of in- surgents, armed or unarmed, of whom I was one. All around were at least three thousand people singing the Ararseillaise and the Chant des Ofrondins. There was a charge of infantry, a dis- charge of muskets, and fifteen fell dead, some almost touching me, while the mob around never ceased their singing, and the sounds of that tremendous and terrible chorus mingled with the dying "(norms and cries of the victims, and the great roar of the boll of Noire Dame. It was like a scene in the opera. This very barricade has been described by Victor Hugo in detail, brit not all which took place there, the whole ti Mlle being, in fact, far more dramatic or picturesque than he supposed it to have been."
We might quote, had we room to (to so, a dozen or so more pages from the stirring narrative of the barricades to be found in Mr. Leland's book. Before, however, we leave the subject, we must note that the general effect of his account is to do away with the notion of "the young Christs upon the Barricades," and to show that the Revolution was to a great extent an affair of rowdy Uudicents, Zarenes, and. hare-brained litterateurs, and that the spirit of seriousness which alone can justify an appeal to arms was in most cases altogether absent. Note in this context Mr. Leland's account of the drive of thc lareite Maria through Paris on the Day of the Barricades, the day on which the Tuileries was sacked. Here, too, is another example of the levity with which the Revolution was conducted :— " That afternoon I strolled about with Field. We came to a barricade. A. very pretty girl guarded it with a sword. She sternly demanded the parole or countersign. I caught hold of her and kissed her, and showed my pistols. She laughed. As I was armed with dirk and pistols, wore a sash, and was unmis- takably a Latin Quarter audiant, as shown by long hair, rakish cap on one side, rod necktie, and single eye.gin.ss, I was every. where treated as a man and brother, friend and equal, warrior, and—by the girls—almost like a first-eousin. Field shared the glory, of course. And we made ri groat deal out of it, end were thought all the more of in consequence. .1-ire he jeunesse We have left ourselves little space to devote to the rest of Mr. Leland's book. We must note, however, that he recounta a series of most exciting adventures during the Civil War.
Mr. Leland was sincerely on the side of the North ; and not only did he fight for a short time in a battery of Volunteer Artillery, but he did very valuable political work for the cause of Emancipation. He also travelled up and down the oil region on business towards the end of the war, and was a party to many strange accidents by flood and field. We will end our account of a most fascinating book by noting Mr. Leland's promise to write some day a second series of Re- miniscences, including an account of his researches among the Gipsies and Algonkin Indians, his discovery of Shelta- the Tinkers' secret tongue—and "the very strangely adven- turous discoveries, continued for five years, among witches in Italy." Here, indeed, is the promise of a rich repast. If Mr. Leland does not redeem it, and that right soon, he will have an indignant and hungry public thundering at his doors. He has whetted our appetites, and must take the consequences.
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