Mordecai grew facetious; the feeling that he had made a handsome morning's work of it put him into spirits, and he let me into some of the secrets of high life, with the air of a looker-on who sees the whole game, and intends to pocket the stakes of the fools on both sides. "Money, Mr Marston," said my hook-nosed and keen-eyed enlightener, "is the true business of man. It is philosophy, science, and patriotism in one; or, at least, without it the whole three are of but little service. Your philosopher dies in a garret, your man of science hawks telescopes, and your patriot starves in the streets, or gets himself hanged in honour of the 'Rights of Man.' I have known all these things, for I was born a German, and bred among the illustrissimi of a German university. But I determined not to live a beggar, or at least not to die one. I left Gottingen behind on a May morning, and trudged, fought, and begged, 'borrowed' my way to London. What I am now, you see."
Probably, the glance which I involuntarily gave round the room, did not exhibit much admiration.
"Ha," said he with a half smile, which, on his gigantic and sullen features, looked like a smile on one of the sculptures of a mausoleum, "you are young—you judge by appearances. Let me give you one piece of advice: If the Italian said, 'distrust words, they are fit only to disguise thoughts,' take a Londoner's warning, and distrust your eyes—they are only fit to pretend to see." He paused a moment, and turned over some memorandums. "I find," said he, "by these papers, that I shall have occasion to leave town in the beginning of next week. You shall then see how I live. If I am to be found in this den, it is not for want of a liking for light and air. I am a German. I have seen plains and mountains in my time. If I had been a fool, there I should have remained a bear-shooter; if I were a fool here, I should act like others of the breed, and be a fox-hunter. But I had other game in view, and now I could sell half the estates in England, call half the 'Honourable House' to my levee, brush down an old loan, buy up a new one, and shake the credit of every thing but the Bank of England."
This was bold speaking, and at another time I should have laughed at it; but the times were bold, the language of the streets was bold, the country was bold, and I, too, was bold. There was something singular in the man; even the hovel round him had a look which added to his influence. I listened to the Jew as one might listen to a revealer of those secrets which find an echo in every bosom, when they are once discovered, and on which still deeper secrets seem to depend. My acquiescence, not the less effective for its being expressed more in looks than words, warmed even the stern spirit of the Israelite towards me, and he actually went the length of ordering some refreshments to be put on the table. We eat and drank together; a new source of cordiality. Our conversation continued long. I shall have more to say of him, and must now proceed to other things; but it ended in my acceptance of his invitation to his villa at Brighton, which he termed "a small thing, simply for a week's change of air," and where he promised to give me some curious explanations of his theory—that money was the master of all things, men, manners, and opinions.
On one of the finest mornings of autumn, I was on the box of the Royal Sussex Stage.
I had full leisure to admire the country, for our progress occupied nearly the whole day. We now laugh at our slow-moving forefathers, but is not the time coming when our thirty miles an hour will be laughed at as much as their five? when our passage from Calais to Dover will be made by the turn of a winch, and Paris will be within the penny-post delivery? when the balloon will carry our letters and ourselves; until that still more rapid period, when we shall ride on cannon-shot, and make but a stage from London to Pekin?
On the roof of the coach I found a strong-featured and closely wrapped-up man, who, by degrees, performed the part of my cicerone. His knowledge of the localities was perfect; "every bush and bosky dell," every creek and winding, as the shore came in sight, was so familiar to him, that I should have set him down at once for a smuggler, but for a superiority of tone in his language, and still more from the evident deference to him by the coachman, in those days a leading authority with all the passengers. His occupation is now nearly o'er. Fire and water have swept him away. His broad back, his broad grin, and his broad buttons, are now but recollections.
My new acquaintance exhibited as perfect a knowledge of the country residents as of its map, and nothing could be more unhesitating than his opinions of them all, from the prince and his set, as he termed them, to Mordecai himself. Of my Jew friend, he said, with a laugh, "There is not a better friend to the King's Bench in all England. If you have any thing to lose, he will strip you on the spot. If you have nothing, you may escape, unless he can make something by having you hanged." I begged of him to spare my new friend. "Why," said he, "he is one of my oldest friends, and one of the cleverest fellows alive. I speak tenderly of him, from admiration of his talents. I have a liking for the perfection of a rogue. He is a superb fellow. You will find his 'Hermitage,' as he calls it, a pond of gold fish. But all this you will soon learn for yourself." The coach now stopped on a rising ground, which showed the little fishing village beneath us, basking in the glow of sunset. My cicerone got down, and bade me farewell. On enquiring his name from my fellow-travellers, a group of Sussex farmers, I found a general disinclination to touch on the subject. Even the coachman, the established source of information on all topics, exhibited no wish to discuss the stranger; his official loquacity was almost dumb. "He merely believed that he was something in the navy, or in the army, or in something or other; but he was often in those parts, and generally travelled to London by the Royal Sussex Stage."
No country in Europe has changed its appearance more than the greater part of England during the last fifty years. Sussex was then as wild as the wildest heath of Yorkshire. The population, too, looked as wild as the landscape. This was once the very land of the bold smuggler; the haunt of the dashing defier of the customhouse officer, who in those days generally knew his antagonist too well to interfere with his days or nights, the run between every port of the west of France and the coasts of the Channel, being, in fact, as familiar to both as the lounger in Bond Street to the beau of the day.
We passed groups of men, who, when they had not the sailor's dress, had the sailor's look; some trudging along the road-side, evidently not in idleness; others mounted on the short rough horse of the country, and all knowing and known by our coachman.
On our passing one group, leaning with their backs against one of the low walls which seemed the only enclosure of this rugged region, I, half-laughingly, hinted to one of my neighbours, a giant of a rough-headed farmer, that "perhaps a meeting with such a party, at a late hour, might be inconvenient, especially if the traveller had a full purse." The fellow turned on me a countenance of ridicule. "What?" said he, "do you take them for robbers? Heaven bless you, my lad, they could buy the stage, horses, passengers, and all. I'll warrant you, they will have news from over there," and he pointed towards France, "before it gets into the newspapers, long enough. They are the richest fellows in the county."
"Are they smugglers?" I asked, with sufficient want of tact.
"Why, no," was the answer, with a leer. "We have nothing of that breed among us; we are all honest men. But what if a man has an acquaintance abroad, and gets a commission to sell a cargo of tea or brandy, or perhaps a present from a friend—what shall hinder him from going to bring it? I'm sure, not I."
It was evidently not the "etiquette" on the roof of the Royal Sussex to think much on the subject, and before my curiosity could reach the length of actual imprudence, the coachman pulled up, and informed me that I had reached the nearest turn to "the Hermitage." My valise was lowered down, a peasant was found to carry it, and I plunged into the depth of a lane as primitive as if it had been a path in Siberia.
It was brief, however, and in a few minutes I was within sight of the villa. Here I at once discovered that Mordecai was a man of taste; perhaps the very roughness of the Sussex jungle, through which I had just come, had been suffered to remain for the sake of contrast. A small lodge, covered with late blooming roses, let me into a narrow avenue of all kinds of odorous shrubs; the evening sun was still strong enough to show me glimpses of the grounds on either side, and they had all the dressed smoothness of a parterre. The scene was so different from all that I had been wearied of during the day, that I felt it with double enjoyment;