University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.

About the humility of professional saints, a succession of tails,
a bride and bridegroom, and other heavenly matters,—diplomacy
included.

Perceiving that Brigadier Downright had an
observant mind, and that he was altogether superior

to the clannish feeling which is so apt to render
a particular species inimical to all others, I
asked permission to cultivate his acquaintance;
begging, at the same time, that he would kindly
favor me with such remarks as might be suggested
by his superior wisdom and extensive travels,
on any of those customs or opinions that would
naturally present themselves in our actual situation.
The Brigadier took the request in good part,
and we began to promenade the rooms in company.
As the Archbishop of Aggregation, who was
to perform the marriage ceremony, was shortly
expected, the conversation very naturally turned
on the general state of religion in the monikin
region.

I was delighted to find that the clerical dogmas
of this insulated portion of the world were based
on principles absolutely identical with those of all
Christendom. The monikins believe that they are
a miserable lost set of wretches, who are so debased
by nature, so eaten up by envy, uncharitableness
and all other evil passions, that it is quite
impossible they can do anything that is good of
themselves; that their sole dependence is on the
moral interference of the great superior power of
creation; and that the very first, and the one needful
step of their own, is to cast themselves entirely
on this power for support, in a proper spirit of
dependence and humility. As collateral to, and
consequent on this condition of the mind, they lay
the utmost stress on a disregard of all the vanities
of life, a proper subjection of the lusts of the flesh,
and an abstaining from the pomp and vain-glory
of ambition, riches, power and the faculties. In
short, the one thing needful was humility—humility—humility.
Once thoroughly humbled to a
degree that put them above the danger of backsliding,

they obtained glimpses of security, and
were gradually elevated to the hopes and the condition
of the just.

The Brigadier was still eloquently discoursing
on this interesting topic, when a distant door
opened, and a gold stick, or some other sort of
stick, announced the Right Reverend Father in
God, his Grace the most eminent and most serene
Prelate, the very puissant and thrice gracious and
glorified saint, the Primate of all Leaphigh!

The reader will anticipate the eager curiosity
with which I advanced to get a glimpse of a saint
under a system as sublimated as that of the great
monikin family. Civilization having made such
progress as to strip all the people, even to the
King and Queen, entirely of every thing in the
shape of clothes, I did not well see under what
new mantle of simplicity the heads of the church
could take refuge! Perhaps they shaved off all
the hair from their bodies in sign of supereminent
self-abasement, leaving themselves naked to the
cuticle, that they might prove, by ocular evidence,
what a poor ungainly set of wretches they really
were, carnally considered; or perhaps they went
on all-fours to heaven, in sign of their unfitness to
enter into the presence of the pure of mind, in an
attitude more erect and confident. Well, these
fancies of mine only went to prove how erroneous
and false are the conclusions of one whose capacity
has not been amplified and concatenated by
the ingenuities of a very refined civilization! His
Grace, the most gracious Father in God, wore a
mantle of extraordinary fineness and beauty, the
material of which was composed of every tenth
hair taken from all the citizens of Leaphigh, who
most cheerfully submitted to be shaved, in order
that the wants of his most eminent humility might
be decently supplied. The mantle, wove from such

a warp and such a woof, was necessarily very
large; and it really appeared to me that the prelate
did not very well know what to do with so
much of it, more especially as the contributions
include a new robe annually. I was now desirous
of getting a sight of his tail; for, knowing
that the Leaphighers take great pride in the length
and beauty of that appurtenance, I very naturally
supposed that a saint who wore so fine and glorious
a robe, by way of humility, must have
recourse to some novel expedient to mortify himself
on this sensitive subject, at least. I found that
the ample proportions of the mantle concealed,
not only the person, but most of the movements
of the Archbishop; and it was with many doubts
of my success, that I led the Brigadier behind the
episcopal train to reconnoitre. The result disappointed
expectation again. Instead of being destitute
of a tail, or of concealing that with which
Nature had supplied him beneath his mantle, the
most gracious dignitary wore no less than six
caudœ, viz. his own, and five others added to it, by
some subtle process of clerical ingenuity that I
shall not attempt to explain; one “bent on to the
other,” as the Captain described them, in a subsequent
conversation. This extraordinary train was
allowed to sweep the floor; the only sign of humility,
according to my uninstructed faculties, I could
discern about the person and appearance of this
illustrious model of clerical self-mortification and
humility.

The Brigadier, however, was not tardy in setting
me right. In the first place, he gave me to
understand that the hierarchy of Leaphigh was
illustrated by the order of their tails. Thus, a
deacon wore one and a half; a curate, if a minister,
one and three quarters, and a rector, two; a dean,
two and a half; an archdeacon, three; a bishop,

four; the Primate of Leaphigh, five, and the Primate
of all Leaphigh, six. The origin of the custom,
which was very ancient, and of course very
much respected, was imputed to the doctrine of a
saint of great celebrity, who had satisfactorily
proved that as the tail was the intellectual, or the
spiritual part of a monikin, the farther it was
removed from the mass of matter, or the body,
the more likely it was to be independent, consecutive,
logical and spiritualized. The idea had succeeded
astonishingly at first; but time, which will
wear out even a cauda, had given birth to schisms
in the church on this interesting subject; one party
contending that two more joints ought to be added
to the Archbishop's embellishment, by way of sustaining
the church, and the other that two joints
ought to be incontinently abstracted, in the way
of reform.

These explanations were interrupted by the appearance
of the bride and bridegroom, at different
doors. The charming Chatterissa advanced with
a most prepossessing modesty, followed by a glorious
train of noble maidens, all keeping their eyes,
by a rigid ordinance of hymeneal etiquette, dropped
to the level of the Queen's feet. On the other
hand, my Lord Chatterino, attended by that coxcomb
Hightail, and others of his kidney, stepped
towards the altar with a lofty confidence, which the
same etiquette exacted of the bridegroom. The
parties were no sooner in their places, than the
prelate commenced.

The marriage ceremony, according to the formula
of the established church of Leaphigh, is a
very solemn and imposing ceremony. The bridegroom
is required to swear that he loves the bride
and none but the bride; that he has made his
choice solely on account of her merits, uninfluenced
even by her beauty; and that he will so far

command his inclinations as, on no account, ever to
love another a jot. The bride, on her part, calls
heaven and earth to witness, that she will do just
what the bridegroom shall ask of her; that she will
be his bondwoman, his slave, his solace and his
delight; that she is quite certain no other monikin
could make her happy, but, on the other hand, she
is absolutely sure that any other monikin would
be certain to make her miserable. When these
pledges, oaths and asseverations were duly made
and recorded, the Archbishop caused the happy
pair to be wreathed together, by encircling them
with his episcopal tail, and they were then pronounced
monikin and monikina. I pass over the
congratulations, which were quite in rule, to relate
a short conversation I held with the Brigadier.

“Sir,” said I, addressing that person, as soon as
the prelate said `amen,' “how is this? I have
seen a certificate, myself, which showed that
there was a just admeasurement of the fitness of
this union, on the score of other considerations
than those mentioned in the ceremony!”

“That certificate has no connexion with this
ceremony.”

“And yet this ceremony repudiates all the considerations
enumerated in the certificate!”

“This ceremony has no connexion with that
certificate.”

“So it would seem; and yet both refer to the
same solemn engagement!”

“Why, to tell you the truth, Sir John Goldencalf,
we monikins (for in these particulars Leaphigh
is Leaplow) have two distinct governing principles
in all that we say or do, which may be divided
into the theoretical and the practical—moral
and immoral would not be inapposite—but, by the
first we control all our interests, down as far as

facts, when we immediately submit to the latter.
There may possibly be something inconsistent in
appearance in such an arrangement; but then our
most knowing ones say that it works well. No
doubt among men, you get along without the embarrassment
of so much contradiction.”

I now advanced to pay my respects to the
Countess of Chatterino, who stood supported by
the Countess-dowager, a lady of great dignity and
elegance of demeanor. The moment I appeared,
the elaborate air of modesty vanished from the
charming countenance of the bride, in a look of
natural pleasure; and, turning to her new mother,
she pointed me out as a man! The courteous old
dowager gave me a very kind reception, inquiring
if I had enough good things to eat, whether I was
not much astonished at the multitude of strange
sights I beheld in Leaphigh, said I ought to be
much obliged to her son for consenting to bring
me over, and invited me to come and see her,
some fine morning.

I bowed my thanks, and then returned to join
the Brigadier, with a view to seek an introduction
to the Archbishop. Before I relate the particulars
of my interview with that pious prelate, however,
it may be well to say that this was the last I ever
saw of any of the Chatterino set, as they retired
from the presence immediately after the congratulations
were ended. I heard, however, previously
to leaving the region, which was within a month
of the marriage, that the noble pair kept separate
establishments, on account of some disagreement
about an incompatibility of temper—or a young
officer of the guards—I never knew exactly which;
but as the estates suited each other so well, there
is little doubt that, on the whole, the match was
as happy as could be expected.

The Archbishop received me with a great deal
of professional benevolence, the conversation dropping
very naturally into a comparison of the respective
religious systems of Great Britain and
Leaphigh. He was delighted when he found we
had an establishment; and I believe I was indebted
to his knowledge of this fact, for his treating me
more as an equal than he might otherwise have
done, considering the difference in species. I was
much relieved by this; for, at the commencement
of the conversation, he had sounded me a little on
doctrine, at which I am far from being expert,
never having taken an interest in the church, and
I thought he looked frowning at some of my
answers; but, when he heard that we really had
a national religion, he seemed to think all safe, nor
did he once, after that, inquire whether we were
pagans or presbyterians. But when I told him we
had actually a hierarchy, I thought the good old
prelate would have shaken my hand off, and beatified
me on the spot!

“We shall meet in heaven some day!” he exclaimed,
with holy delight; “men or monikins, it
can make no great difference, after all. We shall
meet in heaven; and that, too, in the upper mansions!”

The reader will suppose that, an alien, and
otherwise unknown, I was much elated by this
distinction. To go to heaven in company with the
Archbishop of Leaphigh was in itself no small
favor; but to be thus noticed by him at court was
really enough to upset the philosophy of a stranger.
I was sorely afraid, all the while, he would descend
to particulars, and that he might have found some
essential points of difference to nip his new-born
admiration. Had he asked me, for instance, how
many caudœ our bishops wear, I should have been

badgered; for, as near as I could recollect, their
personal illustration was of another character.
The venerable prelate, however, soon gave me
his blessing, pressed me warmly to come to his
palace before I sailed, promised to send some
tracts by me to England, and then hurried away,
as he said,'to sign a sentence of excommunication
against an unruly presbyter, who had much disturbed
the harmony of the church, of late, by an
attempt to introduce a schism that he called
“piety.”

The Brigadier and myself discussed the subject
of religion at some length, when the illustrious
prelate had taken his leave. I was told that the
monikin world was pretty nearly equally divided
into two parts, the old and the new. The latter
had remained uninhabited, until within a few generations,
when certain monikins, who were too
good to live in the old world, emigrated in a
body, and set up for themselves in the new. This,
the Brigadier admitted, was the Leaplow account
of the matter; the inhabitants of the old countries,
on the other hand, invariably maintaining that they
had peopled the new countries by sending all those
of their own communities there, who were not fit to
stay at home. This little obscurity in the history
of the new world, he considers of no great moment,
as such trifling discrepancies must always depend
on the character of the historian. Leaphigh was
by no means the only country in the elder monikin
region. There were among others, for instance,
Leapup and Leapdown; Leapover and Leapthrough;
Leaplong and Leapshort; Leapround
and Leapunder. Each of these countries had a
religious establishment, though Leaplow, being
founded on a new social principle, had none. The
Brigadier thought, himself, on the whole, that the

chief consequences of the two systems were, that
the countries which had establishments had a great
reputation for possessing religion, and those that
had no establishments were well enough off in the
article itself, though but indifferently supplied on
the score of reputation.

I inquired of the Brigadier if he did not think an
establishment had the beneficial effect of sustaining
truth, by suppressing heresies, limiting and curtailing
prurient theological fancies, and otherwise
setting limits to innovations. My friend did not
absolutely agree with me in all these particulars;
though he very frankly allowed that it had the effect
of keeping two truths from falling out, by separating
them. Thus, Leapup maintained one set of religious
dogmas under its establishment, and Leapdown
maintained their converse. By keeping
these truths apart, no doubt, religious harmony
was promoted, and the several ministers of the
gospel were enabled to turn all their attention to
the sins of the community, instead of allowing it
to be diverted to the sins of each other, as was
very apt to be the case when there was an antagonist
interest to oppose.

Shortly after, the King and Queen gave us all
our congés. Noah and myself got through the
crowd without injury to our trains, and we separated
in the court of the palace; he to go to his
bed and dream of his trial on the morrow, and I
to go home with Judge People's Friend and the
Brigadier, who had invited me to finish the evening
with a supper. I was left chatting with the
last, while the first went into his closet to indite a
dispatch to his government, relating to the events
of the evening.

The Brigadier was rather caustic in his comments

on the incidents of the drawing-room. A
republican himself, he certainly did love to give
royalty and nobility some occasional rubs; though
I must do this worthy, upright monikin the justice
to say, he was quite superior to that vulgar hostility
which is apt to distinguish many of his caste,
and which is founded on a principle as simple as
the fact that they cannot be kings and nobles
themselves.

While we were chatting very pleasantly, quite
at our ease, and in undress, as it were, the Brigadier
in his bob, and I with my tail laid aside, Judge
People's Friend rejoined us, with his dispatch open
in his hand. He read aloud what he had written,
to my great astonishment, for I had been accustomed
to think diplomatic communications sacred.
But the Judge observed, that in this case it was
useless to affect secresy, for two very good reasons;
firstly, because he had been obliged to employ
a common Leaphigh scrivener to copy what he had
written,—his government depending on a noble
republican economy, which taught it that, if it
did get into difficulties by the betrayal of its correspondence,
it would still have the money that a
clerk would cost, to help it out of the embarrassment;
and, secondly, because he knew the government
itself would print it, as soon as it arrived. For
his part, he liked to have the publishing of his own
works. Under these circumstances, I was even
allowed to take a copy of the letter, of which I
now furnish a fac-simile.

When this letter was read, the conversation reverted
to religion. The Brigadier explained that
the law of Leaphigh had various peculiarities on
this subject, that I do not remember to have heard
of before. Thus, a monikin could not be born,
without paying something to the church, a practice
which early initiated him into his duties towards
that important branch of the public welfare;
and, even when he died, he left a fee behind him,
for the parson, as an admonition to those who still
existed in the flesh, not to forget their obligations.
He added that this sacred interest was, in short, so
rigidly protected, that, whenever a monikin refused
to be plucked for a new clerical or episcopal mantle,
there was a method of fleecing him, by the
application of red-hot iron rods, which generally
singed so much of his skin, that he was commonly
willing, in the end, to let the hair-proctors pick and
choose, at pleasure.

I confess I was indignant at this picture, and did
not hesitate to stigmatize the practice as barbarous.

“Your indignation is very natural, Sir John, and
is just what a stranger would be likely to feel,
when he found mercy, and charity, and brotherly
love, and virtue, and, above all, humility, made the
stalking-horses of pride, selfishness, and avarice.
But this is the way with us monikins; no doubt,
men manage better.”