and pray with prayer of earnest heart That he would all his pilgrimage dilate which he did-and this only was the witchcraft he had used-or she on him. He told his life-history with soldier-like effect; and she listened, and loved too well. 66 Young Pendennises think they have a Desdemona listener in every Fotheringay. And indeed the illusion is not confined, in its general effect, to juvenile lovers. Every proser, almost, accepts the mere fact of listening as ipso facto evidence of the listener's intelligence, sensibility, and worth. Mrs. Nickleby finds poor Smike all that could be wished, after his patient session to hear her bald disjointed chat. Nicholas comes home one night two hours behind his time, and kept them up waiting for him, but the night has glided away pleasantly, for Mrs. Nickleby has been entertaining Smike with a genealogical account of her family by the mother's side, comprising biographical sketches of the principal members, and Smike has sat wondering what it was all about, and whether it was learnt from a book, or said out of Mrs. Nickleby's own head; "so they had got on together," she reports, "very pleasantly." Indeed, from this first coming together, we find that, there being no doubt as to Smike's capacity as an excellent listener," this circumstance "had considerable influence in placing them on the very best terms, and in inducing Mrs. Nickleby to express the highest opinion of his general deportment and disposition."+ Wiser heads than Mrs. Nickleby's are liable to similar misconceptions. Mr. Payne Collier's notes on the conversation of the author of "Christabel," during their intercourse in 1811-12, include this rather doubtful-looking story: "As Coleridge is a man of genius and knowledge, he seems glad of opportunities of display: being a good talker, he likes to get hold of a good listener; he admits it, and told us the anecdote of some very talkative Frenchman, introduced to a dumb lady, who, however, politely appeared to hear all her loquacious visitor said. When this visitor afterwards met the friend who had introduced him, he expressed his obligation to that friend for bringing him acquainted with so very agreeable and intelligent a woman, and was astonished and chagrined when told that she was dumb!" The story wears a (not in Hamlet's sense) too questionable shape, as it stands. Equally pertinent, and preferable in verisimilitude, is the well-known story about Coleridge himself, and the Silent Guest, whom an entrée of apple-dumplings reduced from the sublime to the ridiculous. Till those accursed cates came in, the taciturn one was such a good listener, and, on that showing, such a sensible man! The result of all this goes to show, that no very heavy capital of intellect is required to carry on a smart business in the good-listener line. The business is mainly conducted on principles of credit. Good-nature is more in demand for it than acute judgment. A very little νους will go a great way. Still, the cleverer a general man is, the better listener he will make-such as Sir Walter Scott, for instance. On the other hand, the cleverest of men will make a bad listener, if the disposition be lacking -if natural reserve, or pride, or irritability, or indigestion (especially chronic), be his portion. Says Byron of himself, "I don't talk-I can't * Nicholas Nickleby, ch. xxxvii. † Ibid., ch. xxxv. Mr. Collier's Preface to Coleridge's "Seven Lectures," p. xvi. flatter, and won't listen, except to a pretty or a foolish woman"*-hence his failure with the De Staël, about whom he is here journalising. Some years later his lordship asks, in a letter to Moore, "What did Parr mean by haughtiness and coldness ?' I listened to him with admiring ignorance, and respectful silence. What more could a talker for fame have?-they don't like to be answered. It was at Payne Knight's I met him, where he gave me more Greek than I could carry away. But I certainly meant to (and did) treat him with the most respectful deference.”† What a different impression the style of Scott's "respectful deference" would have left on pedagogue Parr! In him the habit of patient attention-whosoever the speaker-was native, and to the manner born. Lockhart tells us with what perfect placidity he submitted to be bored even by bores of the first magnitude. "I have heard a spruce Senior Wrangler lecture him for half an evening on the niceties of the Greek epigram [should it not have been the differential calculus ?]; I have heard the poorest of all parliamentary blunderers try to detail to him the pros and cons of what he called the Truck system; and in either case the same bland eye watched the lips of the tormentor." It is not always easy to predicate of this or that person that here you are sure of a good listener, or the reverse. In Madame de Sévigné one might have felt safe of as excellent an auditor as the Récamier who écoutait avec séduction. But madame owns, in one instance at least, in a letter to her daughter (who is hereby implicated in the charge), that she pays no kind of attention to a certain admiring gossip, and pretty considerable bore. "Elle parle toujours, et Dieu me fait la grâce d'être pour elle comme vous êtes pour beaucoup d'autres; je ne l'écoute point du tout."§ Probably, however, Madame had the grace to look as if she heard, and appreciated, every syllable. On the other hand, who would not have anticipated in a man of Hazlitt's temperament, one of the most impatient and recalcitrant of listeners? Yet we are assured that he was a most exemplary and tolerant one. He used to remark that the being accustomed to associate with men of genius renders the conversation of others tiresome, as consisting of a parcel of things that have been heard a thousand times, and from which no stimulus is to be obtained: this he lamented, as an effect unbecoming a reflecting man and a fellow-creature-for, in Leigh Hunt's esteem, "though irritable, and sometimes resentful, his heart was large and full of humanity;"-and the consequence was, according to the same genial reporter, that nobody paid greater attention than Hazlitt to common conversation, or showed greater respect towards any endeavour to interest him, however trite. "Youths of his acquaintance are fond of calling to mind the footing of equality on which he treated them, even when children, gravely interchanging remarks with them, as he sat side by side, like one grown person with another, and giving them now and then (though without the pomp) a Johnsonian 'Sir.' The seriousness of his 'Indeed, m'um!' with lifted eyebrows, and protruded lips, while listening to the surprising things told him by good housewives about their preserves, is now sounding in our ears." This must have been the result † Ibid., Sept. 1818. *Moore's Life of Byron, Journal, 1813. of not a little self-restraint and discipline, on the part of the "splenetic" philosopher," for nobody would hazard the assertion that Hazlitt was born to be a good listener. Some people are so born-the elect of Nature for that purpose. We do not mean such poor foredoomed creatures as Job Caudle, who is expressly designated "one of the few men whom Nature, in her casual bounty to women, sends into the world as patient listeners. He was, perhaps, in more respects than one, all ears. And these ears, Mrs. Caudle took whole and sole possession of. They were her entire property; as expressly made to convey to Caudle's brain the stream of wisdom that continually flowed from the lips of his wife, as was the tin funnel through which Mrs. Caudle in vintage time bottled her elder wine."* But there are people in numbers of happier destiny, in whom the faculty of listening well is innate, connate, congenital. It is found amply developed in a large proportion of what are called common-place people. Indeed, in an essay on these very people, published by Leigh Hunt in "The Round Table," a glowing summary of their aggregate merits and recommendations is wound up with this climax: "Above all,-which ought to recommend them to the very hardest of their antagonists,-they are uninquiring laughers at jokes, and most exemplary listeners."+ But what comes to common-place people by nature and temperament, may be attained by their intellectual superiors as a habit, a moral acquirement, a thing studied for kindness' sake, and out of the will to please. Where there's the will, there's a way,-frequently more ways than one. A steady resolve to check the selfishness of social impatience, so far as it is selfish, and to condescend to men of low estate, will eventually make of a haughty scorner a courteous listener. The most supercilious may come in time, if only he think it worth his while, to be as pronounced an adept in the art as the stolidest hear-all on record, or the urbanest of placid companions. He may come to rank on a level, say with Colley Cibber in his youth, who tells us, of his intercourse with Mr. Brett, that, "as he had wit enough for any two people, and I had attention enough for any four, there could not well be wanting a sociable delight on either side."‡ Or with six-foot-six Bennet Langton (Johnson's dear delight), a man notably of ready intellect, perfect manners, and great love of literature,of whom we read that "his manner endeared him to men from whom he differed most; he listened even better than he talked."§ Or with the William Fitzherbert mentioned towards the opening of this paper-a steadfast friend of Burke's-recognised by Johnson as having a grand talent for attentive silence-and of whom Burke's latest and largest biographer says, that "his house was open to all the distinguished writers and speakers of his time; and, as he said little himself, and listened attentively to the colloquial displays of others, he was regarded by them as one of the most delightful of companions." Or with amiable and enlightened Sir Alexander Ball-in whose praise Coleridge grew so enthusiastic whenever he recalled "the tender patience, the sweet gentleness, with which he was wont to tolerate the tediousness of well-meaning *Introduction to Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures. † The Round Table, No. V.: “On Common-place People." || Macknight's Life and Times of Edmund Burke, vol. i. ch. x. 'men;" as well as the "inexhaustible attention, the unfeigned interest with which he would listen for hours where the conversation appealed to reason, and like the bee made honey while it murmured."* Or with Sir James Mackintosh, of whom Sydney Smitht bears witness, that while "very fond of talking, he heard patiently;" and that, while "not averse to intellectual display," he did not forget that others might have the same inclination as himself. "J'aimais à l'écouter," says a distinguished French essayist, in allusion to Ugo Foscolo, "parce que j'aimais à connaître; j'ai toujours volontiers laissé parler les autres." And a distinguished English one, of quite another school, says-though not in propriâ persona,—" I can add little, or nothing, to the pleasure of any company; I like to listen rather than to talk; and when anything apposite does occur to me, it is generally the day after the conversation has taken place. I do not, however, love good talk the less for these defects of mine; and I console myself with thinking that I sustain the part of a judicious listener, not always an easy one."§ So professes one who is meant to be regarded as Serenely good, if not profoundly wise. AN ISLAND IN THE NORTH SEA. BY MRS. BUSHBY. THE west coast of Jutland, that portion of the Danish dominions so lately brought before the public by the interesting tales of the celebrated northern author, Hans Christian Andersen,|| and more especially the islands off that dangerous coast, have long been a terra incognita to the inhabitants of the more favoured portions of Denmark; latterly, however, many circumstances have tended to attract attention to these outof-the-way regions. The islands in the North Sea, meanwhile, with their isolated position, have preserved so many national peculiarities which have remained unaltered, whilst the rest of the world-even the world around them-has undergone such changes, and their whole nature is so different from what is found in other parts of the country, that they will surely repay the trouble of becoming better acquainted with them. The number of tourists who now annually migrate from place to place, in search of health, novelty, or amusement; the rapid, easy, and extensive modes of transition, by railroads and steam-boats, have rendered almost every habitable part of the globe familiar to the world in general-every * The Friend, by S. T. Coleridge, vol. iii. Appendix G. Philarète Chasles, Etudes sur les Hommes au XIX Siècle, p. 375. "The Sandhills of Jutland." By Hans Christian Andersen. Richard Bent ley. 1860. country in Europe, especially, and almost every city, village, mountain, vale, and river in these countries have become, as it were, the property, as far as knowledge of them goes, of the reading public. What region has not its historiographer, and its delineator? In the far-away North, Iceland, Greenland, Lapland, have been visited and described; navigators have steered to the very verge of the North Pole, where eternal snows and dim desolation ever reign around-for credit cannot be given by sober-minded people to the existence of the El Dorado beyond the belt of everlasting ice, which a few years ago seized upon the vivid imagination of some members of a learned society, and was put forward as the possible shelter of a missing Arctic expedition. In passing and repassing the North Sea, the little islands to which we have alluded have generally been overlooked; in fact, they do not find a place in common maps, and yet they are not mere rocks, like the guano islands, inhabited only by the feathered tribes. According to the received opinions of society, it would be a dreadful fate to be condemned to pass one's life in a little island in the German Ocean, but received opinions would be mistaken in this, as they often are in so many things, and we will take the little island of Fano to disprove them. Fanö* lying then on the west coast of Jutland, stretches in a slanting direction from Strandbye ferry to Ribe, at a distance of about half a mile from the first, and three miles from the last named place. The island is between eight and nine English miles long, and upwards of two miles broad, with a population of about three thousand souls. How and when the island first became peopled is not known with certainty; but it appears probable that the earliest inhabitants had located themselves in the centre of the island, where the then existing church was But as situated, some few traces of the ruins of which may be found. the population increased, and they began to engage more in fishing and seafaring, the inhabitants removed nearer to the seaboard, wherever there were tolerable harbours; and thus it happened that by degrees two towns were built; some having established themselves on the south part of the island, where Sönderhoe now stands, others in the north, where they founded Nordbye, which parish includes two-thirds of the island. The island formerly belonged to the Kings of Denmark, and the laws were administered by a chief magistrate, and other officials appointed by the government; but in the year 1741, King Christian the Sixth caused the whole island to be sold by auction, and it so happened that its own inhabitants were the highest bidders. The entire island is now owned by them, and there is not a single spot-not a bleak sand-hill-that has not its proprietor. A portion of the land, however, was set aside as a sort of division or boundary line between the two districts. Within this space no human dwelling is to be found, only barren heaths, bounded by sandhills, the dreary landscape only enlivened by sheep that wander here at will, and crop the thin, scant herbage, until the snow covers even that slender pasturage. This portion of the island, though wild and desolate, is also very picturesque, and, to a certain extent, may be called fine scenery. The lofty sand-hills that, formed like gigantic billows, spread Fano-Folke Kalender for Danmark. |