Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/294

 286 simple and innocent acceptance of the homage offered to you (I say homage, nothing more), would have served us all; a feather’s weight has often turned the balance in which the destinies of nations have been weighed, a smile from you might have consolidated a line of policy which we statesmen have worked years to initiate.’

“Again that look of irony passed over his face.

“There was something dreadful to me in these cold-blooded allusions to all I held sacred.

‘Then you do not love me, or care for my love?’

‘You have a great deal to learn. This is not a question of love. I leave you at Vienna with my sister, and you make us all ridiculous by this flight to Rome. Your conduct will give rise to all sorts of suspicions and scandalous interpretations. You must return, or we shall be the laughing-stock of the whole world.’

‘The world! Is there nothing else?’ I answered, as I looked in his face, with a last appeal, ‘must the world be always between us? do you aspire to nothing higher than court favour and influence? Is love nothing?’

“His countenance changed.

‘Child!’ he said, sadly, ‘I should have known you twenty years ago. It is too late now.’

‘You must decide,’ interrupted my brother.

‘I have decided.’

“For two hours they combated my resolve; I was firm. At last my husband’s anger rose beyond all bounds.

‘Be it so,’ he said, ‘you will not stay here, you will not return to Vienna—there is only one other alternative. I have an aunt, the Chanoinesse Landsberg, who lives at Schloss-stein, eighty leagues from Vienna. She will receive you gladly. You shall pass the summer there. When you are tired of the retirement, write to me that you are willing to obey my wishes, and all shall be forgotten.’

“My brother approved. Defiance rose within me, but I was silent. In a few hours the carriage came; my husband handed me in, and bade me farewell. I have never seen him since.”

writing of the seedtime and the prospect of the harvest last May, I spoke of the season as a time of trembling. It can now be spoken of only as a season of adversity—it is not too much to say—of calamity. The dislike of trembling, and of confronting calamity, has never been more plainly shown than during the whole course of this summer, in which we have not manifested the cool, clear-sighted courage which is one of the prominent characteristics of the English temper. This must be in no small degree owing to the uncertainty in which we always live in regard to the agricultural produce of the country. If we lived under a system of statistics in agriculture at all comparable to that which regulates our commerce, we should be wiser, braver, and richer than we can ever be without it. As it is, our “agricultural interest” lies under a disadvantage which affects every class of the community, and which the manufacturing and commercial interests would not submit to for a single year, after the remedy had once become apparent. By means of the Board of Trade returns, it is constantly known how the British supply of manufactured commodities and the markets of the world stand related to each other; and the producers regulate their proceedings accordingly, relaxing, stimulating or diversifying their production according to the facts of the time.

The food department, though more important than those of clothing, convenience and luxury, is always in the dark,—voluntarily and needlessly. Our farmers have surmounted many prejudices in their generation, and their art of food-manufacture has advanced most strikingly since the repeal of the Corn Laws: but they have not yet got over the mischievous and unreasonable prejudice which makes them refuse to allow returns to be made of the use and productiveness of their land. To the rest of the world this looks very strange, because their industry is pursued in the open air, and under the broad sky, so that it is not in their power to conceal the state of any one field or any one farm, from end to end of the kingdom. We may all remember how, twenty years ago, the Anti-Corn Law League sent its agents into the agricultural districts, to report of the condition and management of the farms belonging to large landed-proprietors. There was furious wrath among those proprietors, as those reports became more and more numerous, and more systematically produced; but the answer given to their complaints by the League satisfied everybody but themselves. When it was found that certain of these lords and gentry were dismissing labourers who had been interrogated by any stranger, and insisting that all hospitality should be refused in their villages to any traveller who asked questions, the League agents published the fact that they had ceased to speak to any labourer, and to make inquiries of anybody connected with any estate: but they published reports more and more full and precise, from their own observation. No power on earth could prevent their looking over the hedge on each side of the high road, and noting the state of the crops, the disposition of the land, and the condition and arrangement of the farm-buildings. If the manufacturers had had the same repugnance to observation, they could have baffled it, because they could keep their books and their warehouse stocks under lock and key: but they early perceived and valued the advantage of knowing what was doing in their branch of industry, and what was likely to be required. The farmers meanwhile, though their production was going on before all men’s eyes, were incessantly trying to make a secret of their procedure and its results. The consequence, in the days of the Corn Laws, was that the corn-trade was the most gambling business going. It was such a lottery that none but men of large capital were considered justified in engaging in it, because almost every year was one of vast gains or dead losses. And, now that free-trade in corn has removed some of the elements of vicissitude in prices, the corn-merchant still suffers much from