A PETTY PROTECTOR

PERHAPS there never occurred a smaller
revolution—to be a real revolution—than that
by which Jorgen Jorgenson was elevated to
the Protectorate of Iceland. Jorgenson is the
very least of all the Cromwells.

This remarkably insignificant man was
born at Copenhagen, seventy-seven years ago.
His father was clockmaker to the court
of Denmark. His elder brother wrote a
book upon the measurement of time; his
brother's son, still living, is a famous watch-
maker, and has written books in Danish,
French, German, and English, about watches
and chronometers. These are all honourable
men; but Jorgen was ambitious. Jorgen
may not have been considered a youth likely
to maintain the credit of his family, or he
may have had vagrant propensities of his
own early in life; for, early in life he was
sent to England and bound to apprenticeship
on board a collier. He was—as he
says of himself in the preface to a book of
travels written in English, and adapted
cunningly to the meridian of London—"brought
up in the arms of Neptune, and torn from
the bosom of his friends at the early age of
fourteen." From the collier he passed to the
English navy, where, he says, he served as a
midshipman; but for these facts, as we have
only his own word for them, we are unable
to vouch. At twenty-seven he returned to
Copenhagen; where he published a small
volume in Danish, on the commerce of the
English and Americans in the Pacific.
He had been to the Pacific in an English
ship. Those were war-times, and Jorgen
Jorgenson presently set sail from Copenhagen
as commander of a Danish privateer, intending
to make prizes on the English coast. He
was himself, however, taken near Flamborough
Head, was sent to London as a prisoner of
war, but, being no great prize, left at large on
his parole.

Now should come the account of the
Icelandic revolution; but we skip over that for a
few minutes, to look at a book of Jorgen's
writing—the book of "Travels through France
and Germany in the years eighteen hundred
and fifteen, eighteen hundred and sixteen,
and eighteen hundred and seventeen, by J.
Jorgenson, Esq.," to which allusion has
already been made—and so to get an inkling
of this Cromwell's character. We find, then,
by his book, that Mr. Jorgenson was quite
resolved to derive any advantage that could
accrue to himself from the flattery of those
persons in England who could do him
mischief if they pleased—for he was a prisoner
of war not in the least particular about the
keeping of parole—and from the most
unscrupulous pandering to English prejudice
against the French. He tells in his book,
that a French general, released after the peace,
from "his confinement on board a prison-
ship in England," had informed the Parisians
in a pamphlet that the English ladies retire
from table after dinner on the pouring out of
the second glass; but that they do so not
because of moderation; but because they do
not find the port wine so agreeable as the
drams that they drink in the drawing-room.
The same French general is made by Mr.
Jorgenson to assert, that a certain English
colonel was led one day from curiosity to
visit the prisons in which the French captives
were being starved near Portsmouth; that,
before entering, the said colonel fastened his
horse to one of the iron rails of the main
gate, and that, on his return the horse was
nowhere to be seen; "on looking down,
however, he observed the skin and very clean-
scraped bones of a horse lying close at his
feet. He now learned, that the poor hungry
French prisoners had killed the animal with
their knives through the rails of the gate, and
had used so much despatch and dexterity on
the occasion, that, in less than ten minutes the
bones were scraped clean, and the flesh carried
away, in order to dress it into fricassees and
ragouts." We think we can recognise Jorgenson
his mark upon that whole invention. Let
us test it by comparison with an undoubted
J. J. He happened, he says, to be on a visit one
afternoon to a lady of high rank, when a letter
arrived "which she perused with the utmost
satisfaction, and with the most lively
expression of joy in her countenance." It was
an invitation to her "great black cat" to
partake of an elegant déjeûné to-morrow
morning, precisely at ten o'clock, with two
other cats of a noble household. At once,
and in presence of the visitor, the black cat's
company dresses were tried on, "to see what
things would best suit her to wear on the