Redan, the Tchernaya, the Mamelon, the Malakhoff came to us, hot and hot, and we were all living in the history of England. And lo! it was very much like the history of any other day in the year—or in the years that had gone before. The movements of the allied forces were discussed at breakfast, over the sipping of coffee, the munching of muffins, and the chipping of eggs. Newspaper-writers, parliament-men, club-orators took official bungling or military mismanagement as their cue for the smart leader of the morrow, the stinging query to Mr. Secretary at the evening sitting, or the bow-window exordium in the afternoon; and then everything went on pretty much as usual. We had plenty of time and interest to spare for the petty police case, the silly scandal, the sniggering joke of the day. The cut of the coat and the roasting of the mutton, the non-adhesiveness of the postage-stamp, or the misdemeanors of the servant-maid, were matters of as relative importance to us as the great and gloomy news of battle and pestilence from beyond sea. At least I lived in actual history, and my envy was cured for ever.
I have often thought that next to Asclepiades, the comic cynic,[1] Buonaparte Smith was the greatest philosopher that ever existed. B. Smith was by some thought to have been the original of Jeremy Diddler. He was an inveterate borrower of small sums. On a certain Wednesday in 1821, un sien-ami accosted him. Says the friend: "Smith, have you heard that Buonaparte is dead?" To which retorts the philosopher: "Buonaparte be!" but I disdain to quote his irreverent expletive—"Buonaparte be somethinged. Can you lend me ninepence?" What was the history of Europe or its eventualities to Buonaparte Smith? The immediate possession of three-fourths of a shilling was of far more importance to him than the death of that tremendous exile in his eyrie in the Atlantic Ocean, thousands of miles away. Thus, too, I daresay it was with a certain small philosopher, who lived through a very exciting epoch of the history of England: I mean Little Boy Hogarth. It was his fortune to see the first famous fifteen years of the eighteenth century, when there were victories as immense as Salamanca or Waterloo; when there was a magnificent parallel to Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, existent, in the person of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. I once knew a man who had lived in Paris, and throughout the Reign of Terror, in a second floor of the Rue St. Honoré.
- ↑ According to Tertullian, Asclepiades, the comic cynic, advocated riding on cow-back as the most healthful, and especially the most independent means of locomotion in the world; for, said he, she goes so slowly that she can never get tired. Wherever there is a field, there is her banquet; and you may live on her milk all the way. But I think that the most economical and the merriest traveller on record was the Giant Hurtali (though the Rabbins will have that it was Og, King of Basan), who sat astride the roof of Noah's ark à la cockhorse, steering that great galleon with his gigantic legs, getting his washing for nothing, and having his victuals handed up to him through the chimney.—See Menage and Le Pelletier; l'Arche de Noé, c. 25.
