The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
by Washington Irving · English · Gutenberg #2048 · 764,429 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
Author: Washington Irving
Release date: January 1, 2000 [eBook #2048]
Most recently updated: May 17, 2025
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2048
Credits: Produced by Nelson Nieves and David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SKETCH-BOOK OF GEOFFREY CRAYON ***
THE SKETCH BOOK OF GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT.
By Washington Irving
CONTENTS:
Preface
The Author’s Account of Himself
The Voyage
Roscoe
The Wife
Rip Van Winkle
English Writers on America
Rural Life in England
The Broken Heart
The Art of Book-making
A Royal Poet
The Country Church
The Widow and her Son
A Sunday in London
The Boar’s Head Tavern
The Mutability of Literature
Rural Funerals
The Inn Kitchen
The Spectre Bridegroom
Westminster Abbey
Christmas
The Stage-Coach
Christmas Eve
Christmas Day
The Christmas Dinner
London Antiques
Little Britain
Statford-on-Avon
Traits of Indian Character
Philip of Pokanoket
John Bull
The Pride of the Village
The Angler
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
L’Envoy
THE SKETCH-BOOK OF GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT.
“I have no wife nor children, good or bad, to provide for. A mere
spectator of other men’s fortunes and adventures, and how they play
their parts; which, methinks, are diversely presented unto me, as from a
common theatre or scene.”--BURTON.
PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION.
THE following papers, with two exceptions, were written in England, and
formed but part of an intended series for which I had made notes and
memorandums. Before I could mature a plan, however, circumstances
compelled me to send them piecemeal to the United States, where they
were published from time to time in portions or numbers. It was not my
intention to publish them in England, being conscious that much of their
contents could be interesting only to American readers, and, in truth,
being deterred by the severity with which American productions had been
treated by the British press.
By the time the contents of the first volume had appeared in this
occasional manner, they began to find their way across the Atlantic,
and to be inserted, with many kind encomiums, in the London Literary
Gazette. It was said, also, that a London bookseller intended to publish
them in a collective form. I determined, therefore, to bring them
forward myself, that they might at least have the benefit of my
superintendence and revision. I accordingly took the printed numbers
which I had received from the United States, to Mr. John Murray, the
eminent publisher, from whom I had already received friendly attentions,
and left them with him for examination, informing him that should he be
inclined to bring them before the public, I had materials enough on
hand for a second volume. Several days having elapsed without any
communication from Mr. Murray, I addressed a note to him, in which I
construed his silence into a tacit rejection of my work, and begged that
the numbers I had left with him might be returned to me. The following
was his reply:
MY DEAR SIR: I entreat you to believe that I feel truly obliged by your
kind intentions towards me, and that I entertain the most unfeigned
respect for your most tasteful talents. My house is completely filled
with workpeople at this time, and I have only an office to transact
business in; and yesterday I was wholly occupied, or I should have done
myself the pleasure of seeing you.
If it would not suit me to engage in the publication of your present
work, it is only because I do not see that scope in the nature of it
which would enable me to make those satisfactory accounts between us,
without which I really feel no satisfaction in engaging--but I will
do all I can to promote their circulation, and shall be most ready to
attend to any future plan of yours.
With much regard, I remain, dear sir,
Your faithful servant,
JOHN MURRAY.
This was disheartening, and might have deterred me from any further
prosecution of the matter, had the question of republication in Great
Britain rested entirely with me; but I apprehended the appearance of a
spurious edition. I now thought of Mr. Archibald Constable as publisher,
having been treated by him with much hospitality during a visit to
Edinburgh; but first I determined to submit my work to Sir-Walter (then
Mr.) Scott, being encouraged to do so by the cordial reception I had
experienced from him at Abbotsford a few years previously, and by the
favorable opinion he had expressed to others of my earlier writings. I
accordingly sent him the printed numbers of the Sketch-Book in a parcel
by coach, and at the same time wrote to him, hinting that since I had
had the pleasure of partaking of his hospitality, a reverse had taken
place in my affairs which made the successful exercise of my pen
all-important to me; I begged him, therefore, to look over the literary
articles I had forwarded to him, and, if he thought they would bear
European republication, to ascertain whether Mr. Constable would be
inclined to be the publisher.
The parcel containing my work went by coach to Scott’s address in
Edinburgh; the letter went by mail to his residence in the country. By
the very first post I received a reply, before he had seen my work.
“I was down at Kelso,” said he, “when your letter reached Abbotsford. I
am now on my way to town, and will converse with Constable, and do all
in my power to forward your views--I assure you nothing will give me
more pleasure.”
The hint, however, about a reverse of fortune had struck the quick
apprehension of Scott, and, with that practical and efficient good-will
which belonged to his nature, he had already devised a way of aiding me.
A weekly periodical, he went on to inform me, was about to be set up
in Edinburgh, supported by the most respectable talents, and amply
furnished with all the necessary information. The appointment of the
editor, for which ample funds were provided, would be five hundred
pounds sterling a year, with the reasonable prospect of further
advantages. This situation, being apparently at his disposal, he frankly
offered to me. The work, however, he intimated, was to have somewhat of
a political bearing, and he expressed an apprehension that the tone it
was desired to adopt might not suit me. “Yet I risk the question,” added
he, “because I know no man so well qualified for this important task,
and perhaps because it will necessarily bring you to Edinburgh. If my
proposal does not suit, you need only keep the matter secret and there
is no harm done. ‘And for my love I pray you wrong me not.’ If on the
contrary you think it could be made to suit you, let me know as soon as
possible, addressing Castle Street, Edinburgh.”
In a postscript, written from Edinburgh, he adds, “I am just come here,
and have glanced over the Sketch-Book. It is positively beautiful, and
increases my desire to crimp you, if it be possible. Some difficulties
there always are in managing such a matter, especially at the outset;
but we will obviate them as much as we possibly can.”
The following is from an imperfect draught of my reply, which underwent
some modifications in the copy sent:
“I cannot express how much I am gratified by your letter. I had begun to
feel as if I had taken an unwarrantable liberty; but, somehow or other,
there is a genial sunshine about you that warms every creeping thing
into heart and confidence. Your literary proposal both surprises and
flatters me, as it evinces a much higher opinion of my talents than I
have myself.”
I then went on to explain that I found myself peculiarly unfitted for
the situation offered to me, not merely by my political opinions, but by
the very constitution and habits of my mind. “My whole course of life,”
I observed, “has been desultory, and I am unfitted for any periodically
recurring task, or any stipulated labor of body or mind. I have no
command of my talents, such as they are, and have to watch the varyings
of my mind as I would those of a weathercock. Practice and training
may bring me more into rule; but at present I am as useless for regular
service as one of my own country Indians or a Don Cossack.
“I must, therefore, keep on pretty much as I have begun; writing when I
can, not when I would. I shall occasionally shift my residence and write
whatever is suggested by objects before me, or whatever rises in my
imagination; and hope to write better and more copiously by and by.
“I am playing the egotist, but I know no better way of answering your
proposal than by showing what a very good-for-nothing kind of being I
am. Should Mr. Constable feel inclined to make a bargain for the wares I
have on hand, he will encourage me to further enterprise; and it will be
something like trading with a gypsy for the fruits of his prowlings, who
may at one time have nothing but a wooden bowl to offer, and at another
time a silver tankard.”
In reply, Scott expressed regret, but not surprise, at my declining what
might have proved a troublesome duty. He then recurred to the original
subject of our correspondence; entered into a detail of the various
terms upon which arrangements were made between authors and booksellers,
that I might take my choice; expressing the most encouraging confidence
of the success of my work, and of previous works which I had produced
in America. “I did no more,” added he, “than open the trenches with
Constable; but I am sure if you will take the trouble to write to him,
you will find him disposed to treat your overtures with every degree of
attention. Or, if you think it of consequence in the first place to
see me, I shall be in London in the course of a month, and whatever my
experience can command is most heartily at your command. But I can add
little to what I have said above, except my earnest recommendation to
Constable to enter into the negotiation.” *
* I cannot avoid subjoining in a note a succeeding paragraph
of Scott’s letter, which, though it does not relate to the
main subject of our correspondence, was too characteristic
to be omitted. Some time previously I had sent Miss Sophia
Scott small duodecimo American editions of her father’s
poems published in Edinburgh in quarto volumes; showing the
“nigromancy” of the American press, by which a quart of wine
is conjured into a pint bottle. Scott observes: “In my
hurry, I have not thanked you in Sophia’s name for the kind
attention which furnished her with the American volumes. I
am not quite sure I can add my own, since you have made her
acquainted with much more of papa’s folly than she would
ever otherwise have learned; for I had taken special care
they should never see any of those things during their
earlier years. I think I have told you that Walter is
sweeping the firmament with a feather like a maypole and
indenting the pavement with a sword like a scythe--in other
words, he has become a whiskered hussar in the 18th
Dragoons.”
Before the receipt of this most obliging letter, however, I had
determined to look to no leading bookseller for a launch, but to throw
my work before the public at my own risk, and let it sink or swim
according to its merits. I wrote to that effect to Scott, and soon
received a reply:
“I observe with pleasure that you are going to come forth in Britain. It
is certainly not the very best way to publish on one’s own accompt; for
the booksellers set their face against the circulation of such works as
do not pay an amazing toll to themselves. But they have lost the art of
altogether damming up the road in such cases between the author and the
public, which they were once able to do as effectually as Diabolus in
John Bunyan’s Holy War closed up the windows of my Lord Understanding’s
mansion. I am sure of one thing, that you have only to be known to the
British public to be admired by them, and I would not say so unless I
really was of that opinion.
“If you ever see a witty but rather local publication called Blackwood’s
Edinburgh Magazine, you will find some notice of your works in the last
number: the author is a friend of mine, to whom I have introduced you
in your literary capacity. His name is Lockhart, a young man of very
considerable talent, and who will soon be intimately connected with
my family. My faithful friend Knickerbocker is to be next examined and
illustrated. Constable was extremely willing to enter into consideration
of a treaty for your works, but I foresee will be still more so when
Your name is up, and may go
From Toledo to Madrid.
“----And that will soon be the case. I trust to be in London about the
middle of the month, and promise myself great pleasure in once again
shaking you by the hand.”
The first volume of the Sketch-Book was put to press in London, as I had
resolved, at my own risk, by a bookseller unknown to fame, and without
any of the usual arts by which a work is trumpeted into notice.
Still some attention had been called to it by the extracts which had
previously appeared in the Literary Gazette, and by the kind word
spoken by the editor of that periodical, and it was getting into fair
circulation, when my worthy bookseller failed before the first month was
over, and the sale was interrupted.
At this juncture Scott arrived in London. I called to him for help, as I
was sticking in the mire, and, more propitious than Hercules, he put his
own shoulder to the wheel. Through his favorable representations, Murray
was quickly induced to undertake the future publication of the work
which he had previously declined. A further edition of the first volume
was struck off and the second volume was put to press, and from that
time Murray became my publisher, conducting himself in all his dealings
with that fair, open, and liberal spirit which had obtained for him the
well-merited appellation of the Prince of Booksellers.
Thus, under the kind and cordial auspices of Sir Walter Scott, I began
my literary career in Europe; and I feel that I am but discharging, in
a trifling degree, my debt of gratitude to the memory of that
golden-hearted man in acknowledging my obligations to him. But who of
his literary contemporaries ever applied to him for aid or counsel that
did not experience the most prompt, generous, and effectual assistance?
W. I.
SUNNYSIDE, 1848.
THE SKETCH BOOK.
THE AUTHOR’S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF
I am of this mind with Homer, that as the snaile that crept out of her
shel was turned eftsoones into a toad, and thereby was forced to make a
stoole to sit on; so the traveller that stragleth from his owne country
is in a short time transformed into so monstrous a shape, that he is
faine to alter his mansion with his manners, and to live where he can,
not where he would.--LYLY’S EUPHUES.
I was always fond of visiting new scenes, and observing strange
characters and manners. Even when a mere child I began my travels, and
made many tours of discovery into foreign parts and unknown regions of
my native city, to the frequent alarm of my parents, and the emolument
of the town crier. As I grew into boyhood, I extended the range of my
observations. My holiday afternoons were spent in rambles about the
surrounding country. I made myself familiar with all its places famous
in history or fable. I knew every spot where a murder or robbery had
been committed, or a ghost seen. I visited the neighboring villages,
and added greatly to my stock of knowledge, by noting their habits and
customs, and conversing with their sages and great men. I even journeyed
one long summer’s day to the summit of the most distant hill, whence I
stretched my eye over many a mile of terra incognita, and was astonished
to find how vast a globe I inhabited.
This rambling propensity strengthened with my years. Books of voyages
and travels became my passion, and in devouring their contents, I
neglected the regular exercises of the school. How wistfully would
I wander about the pier-heads in fine weather, and watch the parting
ships, bound to distant climes; with what longing eyes would I gaze
after their lessening sails, and waft myself in imagination to the ends
of the earth!
Further reading and thinking, though they brought this vague inclination
into more reasonable bounds, only served to make it more decided. I
visited various parts of my own country; and had I been merely a lover
of fine scenery, I should have felt little desire to seek elsewhere
its gratification, for on no country had the charms of nature been more
prodigally lavished. Her mighty lakes, her oceans of liquid silver; her
mountains, with their bright aerial tints; her valleys, teeming with
wild fertility; her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their solitudes;
her boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; her broad, deep
rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her trackless forests,
where vegetation puts forth all its magnificence; her skies, kindling
with the magic of summer clouds and glorious sunshine;--no, never need
an American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of
natural scenery.
But Europe held forth all the charms of storied and poetical
association. There were to be seen the masterpieces of art, the
refinements of highly cultivated society, the quaint peculiarities
of ancient and local custom. My native country was full of youthful
promise; Europe was rich in the accumulated treasures of age. Her very
ruins told the history of the times gone by, and every mouldering
stone was a chronicle. I longed to wander over the scenes of renowned
achievement--to tread, as it were, in the footsteps of antiquity--to
loiter about the ruined castle--to meditate on the falling tower--to
escape, in short, from the commonplace realities of the present, and
lose myself among the shadowy grandeurs of the past.
I had, besides all this, an earnest desire to see the great men of the
earth. We have, it is true, our great men in America: not a city but has
an ample share of them. I have mingled among them in my time, and been
almost withered by the shade into which they cast me; for there
is nothing so baleful to a small man as the shade of a great one,
particularly the great man of a city. But I was anxious to see the great
men of Europe; for I had read in the works of various philosophers, that
all animals degenerated in America, and man among the number. A great
man of Europe, thought I, must therefore be as superior to a great man
of America, as a peak of the Alps to a highland of the Hudson; and in
this idea I was confirmed by observing the comparative importance and
swelling magnitude of many English travellers among us, who, I was
assured, were very little people in their own country. I will visit this
land of wonders, thought I, and see the gigantic race from which I am
degenerated.
It has been either my good or evil lot to have my roving passion
gratified. I have wandered through different countries and witnessed
many of the shifting scenes of life. I cannot say that I have studied
them with the eye of a philosopher, but rather with the sauntering gaze
with which humble lovers of the picturesque stroll from the window
of one print-shop to another; caught sometimes by the delineations of
beauty, sometimes by the distortions of caricature, and sometimes by
the loveliness of landscape. As it is the fashion for modern tourists
to travel pencil in hand, and bring home their portfolios filled with
sketches, I am disposed to get up a few for the entertainment of my
friends. When, however, I look over the hints and memorandums I have
taken down for the purpose, my heart almost fails me, at finding how
my idle humor has led me astray from the great object studied by every
regular traveller who would make a book. I fear I shall give equal
disappointment with an unlucky landscape-painter, who had travelled on
the Continent, but following the bent of his vagrant inclination, had
sketched in nooks, and corners, and by-places. His sketch-book was
accordingly crowded with cottages, and landscapes, and obscure ruins;
but he had neglected to paint St. Peter’s, or the Coliseum, the cascade
of Terni, or the bay of Naples, and had not a single glacier or volcano
in his whole collection.
THE VOYAGE.
Ships, ships, I will descrie you
Amidst the main,
I will come and try you,
What you are protecting,
And projecting,
What’s your end and aim.
One goes abroad for merchandise and trading,
Another stays to keep his country from invading,
A third is coming home with rich and wealthy lading.
Hallo! my fancie, whither wilt thou go?
OLD POEM.
To an American visiting Europe, the long voyage he has to make is an
excellent preparative. The temporary absence of worldly scenes and
employments produces a state of mind peculiarly fitted to receive
new and vivid impressions. The vast space of waters that separate the
hemispheres is like a blank page in existence. There is no gradual
transition by which, as in Europe, the features and population of one
country blend almost imperceptibly with those of another. From the
moment you lose sight of the land you have left, all is vacancy, until
you step on the opposite shore, and are launched at once into the bustle
and novelties of another world.
In travelling by land there is a continuity of scene, and a connected
succession of persons and incidents, that carry on the story of life,
and lessen the effect of absence and separation. We drag, it is true,
“a lengthening chain” at each remove of our pilgrimage; but the chain is
unbroken; we can trace it back link by link; and we feel that the last
still grapples us to home. But a wide sea voyage severs us at once.
It makes us conscious of being cast loose from the secure anchorage of
settled life, and sent adrift upon a doubtful world. It interposes a
gulf, not merely imaginary, but real, between us and our homes--a
gulf, subject to tempest, and fear, and uncertainty, rendering distance
palpable, and return precarious.
Such, at least, was the case with myself. As I saw the last blue lines
of my native land fade away like a cloud in the horizon, it seemed as if
I had closed one volume of the world and its concerns, and had time for
meditation, before I opened another. That land, too, now vanishing from
my view, which contained all most dear to me in life; what vicissitudes
might occur in it--what changes might take place in me, before I should
visit it again! Who can tell, when he sets forth to wander, whither he
may be driven by the uncertain currents of existence; or when he may
return; or whether it may be ever his lot to revisit the scenes of his
childhood?
I said, that at sea all is vacancy; I should correct the impression. To
one given to day-dreaming, and fond of losing himself in reveries, a sea
voyage is full of subjects for meditation; but then they are the wonders
of the deep and of the air, and rather tend to abstract the mind from
worldly themes. I delighted to loll over the quarter-railing or climb to
the main-top, of a calm day, and muse for hours together on the tranquil
bosom of a summer’s sea; to gaze upon the piles of golden clouds just
peering above the horizon, fancy them some fairy realms, and people
them with a creation of my own;--to watch the gently undulating billows
rolling their silver volumes, as if to die away on those happy shores.
There was a delicious sensation of mingled security and awe with which I
looked down, from my giddy height, on the monsters of the deep at their
uncouth gambols: shoals of porpoises tumbling about the bow of the ship;
the grampus, slowly heaving his huge form above the surface; or the
ravenous shark, darting, like a spectre, through the blue waters. My
imagination would conjure up all that I had heard or read of the watery
world beneath me; of the finny herds that roam its fathomless valleys;
of the shapeless monsters that lurk among the very foundations of the
earth; and of those wild phantasms that swell the tales of fishermen and
sailors.
Sometimes a distant sail, gliding along the edge of the ocean, would be
another theme of idle speculation. How interesting this fragment of a
world, hastening to rejoin the great mass of existence! What a glorious
monument of human invention; which has in a manner triumphed over
wind and wave; has brought the ends of the world into communion; has
established an interchange of blessings, pouring into the sterile
regions of the north all the luxuries of the south; has diffused the
light of knowledge, and the charities of cultivated life; and has thus
bound together those scattered portions of the human race, between which
nature seemed to have thrown an insurmountable barrier.
We one day descried some shapeless object drifting at a distance. At
sea, every thing that breaks the monotony of the surrounding expanse
attracts attention. It proved to be the mast of a ship that must have
been completely wrecked; for there were the remains of handkerchiefs, by
which some of the crew had fastened themselves to this spar, to prevent
their being washed off by the waves. There was no trace by which the
name of the ship could be ascertained. The wreck had evidently drifted
about for many months; clusters of shell-fish had fastened about it, and
long sea-weeds flaunted at its sides. But where, thought I, is the crew?
Their struggle has long been over--they have gone down amidst the roar
of the tempest--their bones lie whitening among the caverns of the deep.
Silence, oblivion, like the waves, have closed over them, and no one
can tell the story of their end. What sighs have been wafted after that
ship! what prayers offered up at the deserted fireside of home! How
often has the mistress, the wife, the mother, pored over the daily news,
to catch some casual intelligence of this rover of the deep! How has
expectation darkened into anxiety--anxiety into dread--and dread into
despair! Alas! not one memento may ever return for love to cherish. All
that may ever be known, is that she sailed from her port, “and was never
heard of more!”
The sight of this wreck, as usual, gave rise to many dismal anecdotes.
This was particularly the case in the evening, when the weather, which
had hitherto been fair, began to look wild and threatening, and gave
indications of one of those sudden storms that will sometimes break in
upon the serenity of a summer voyage. As we sat round the dull light of
a lamp, in the cabin, that made the gloom more ghastly, everyone had his
tale of shipwreck and disaster. I was particularly struck with a short
one related by the captain:
“As I was once sailing,” said he, “in a fine, stout ship, across the
banks of Newfoundland, one of those heavy fogs that prevail in those
parts rendered it impossible for us to see far ahead, even in the
daytime; but at night the weather was so thick that we could not
distinguish any object at twice the length of the ship. I kept lights
at the mast-head, and a constant watch forward to look out for fishing
smacks, which are accustomed to lie at anchor on the banks. The wind was
blowing a smacking breeze, and we were going at a great rate through
the water. Suddenly the watch gave the alarm of ‘a sail ahead!’--it was
scarcely uttered before we were upon her. She was a small schooner, at
anchor, with her broadside toward us. The crew were all asleep, and had
neglected to hoist a light. We struck her just amidships. The force, the
size, and weight of our vessel, bore her down below the waves; we passed
over her and were hurried on our course. As the crashing wreck was
sinking beneath us, I had a glimpse of two or three half-naked wretches,
rushing from her cabin; they just started from their beds to be
swallowed shrieking by the waves. I heard their drowning cry mingling
with the wind. The blast that bore it to our ears, swept us out of all
further hearing. I shall never forget that cry! It was some time before
we could put the ship about, she was under such headway. We returned, as
nearly as we could guess, to the place where the smack had anchored. We
cruised about for several hours in the dense fog. We fired signal-guns,
and listened if we might hear the halloo of any survivors: but all was
silent--we never saw or heard any thing of them more.”
I confess these stories, for a time, put an end to all my fine fancies.
The storm increased with the night. The sea was lashed into tremendous
confusion. There was a fearful, sullen sound of rushing waves and broken
surges. Deep called unto deep. At times the black volume of clouds
overhead seemed rent asunder by flashes of lightning which quivered
along the foaming billows, and made the succeeding darkness doubly
terrible. The thunders bellowed over the wild waste of waters, and were
echoed and prolonged by the mountain waves. As I saw the ship staggering
and plunging among these roaring caverns, it seemed miraculous that she
regained her balance, or preserved her buoyancy. Her yards would dip
into the water; her bow was almost buried beneath the waves. Sometimes
an impending surge appeared ready to overwhelm her, and nothing but a
dexterous movement of the helm preserved her from the shock.
When I retired to my cabin, the awful scene still followed me. The
whistling of the wind through the rigging sounded like funereal
wailings. The creaking of the masts; the straining and groaning of
bulkheads, as the ship labored in the weltering sea, were frightful. As
I heard the waves rushing along the side of the ship, and roaring in my
very ear, it seemed as if Death were raging around this floating prison,
seeking for his prey: the mere starting of a nail, the yawning of a
seam, might give him entrance.
A fine day, however, with a tranquil sea and favoring breeze, soon put
all these dismal reflections to flight. It is impossible to resist the
gladdening influence of fine weather and fair wind at sea. When the ship
is decked out in all her canvas, every sail swelled, and careering gayly
over the curling waves, how lofty, how gallant, she appears--how she
seems to lord it over the deep!
I might fill a volume with the reveries of a sea voyage; for with me it
is almost a continual reverie--but it is time to get to shore.
It was a fine sunny morning when the thrilling cry of “land!” was given
from the mast-head. None but those who have experienced it can form an
idea of the delicious throng of sensations which rush into an American’s
bosom, when he first comes in sight of Europe. There is a volume of
associations with the very name. It is the land of promise, teeming with
everything of which his childhood has heard, or on which his studious
years have pondered.
From that time, until the moment of arrival, it was all feverish
excitement. The ships of war, that prowled like guardian giants along
the coast; the headlands of Ireland, stretching out into the channel;
the Welsh mountains towering into the clouds;--all were objects of
intense interest. As we sailed up the Mersey, I reconnoitred the shores
with a telescope. My eye dwelt with delight on neat cottages, with their
trim shrubberies and green grass-plots. I saw the mouldering ruin of an
abbey overrun with ivy, and the taper spire of a village church rising
from the brow of a neighboring hill;--all were characteristic of
England.
The tide and wind were so favorable, that the ship was enabled to come
at once to her pier. It was thronged with people; some idle lookers-on;
others, eager expectants of friends or relations. I could distinguish
the merchant to whom the ship was consigned. I knew him by his
calculating brow and restless air. His hands were thrust into his
pockets; he was whistling thoughtfully, and walking to and fro, a
small space having been accorded him by the crowd, in deference to his
temporary importance. There were repeated cheerings and salutations
interchanged between the shore and the ship, as friends happened to
recognize each other. I particularly noticed one young woman of humble
dress, but interesting demeanor. She was leaning forward from among the
crowd; her eye hurried over the ship as it neared the shore, to catch
some wished-for countenance. She seemed disappointed and sad; when I
heard a faint voice call her name.--It was from a poor sailor who had
been ill all the voyage, and had excited the sympathy of every one on
board. When the weather was fine, his messmates had spread a mattress
for him on deck in the shade, but of late his illness had so increased
that he had taken to his hammock, and only breathed a wish that he might
see his wife before he died. He had been helped on deck as we came up
the river, and was now leaning against the shrouds, with a countenance
so wasted, so pale, so ghastly, that it was no wonder even the eye of
affection did not recognize him. But at the sound of his voice, her eye
darted on his features: it read, at once, a whole volume of sorrow; she
clasped her hands, uttered a faint shriek, and stood wringing them in
silent agony.
All now was hurry and bustle. The meetings of acquaintances--the
greetings of friends--the consultations of men of business. I alone was
solitary and idle. I had no friend to meet, no cheering to receive. I
stepped upon the land of my forefathers--but felt that I was a stranger
in the land.
ROSCOE.
----In the service of mankind to be
A guardian god below; still to employ
The mind’s brave ardor in heroic aims,
Such as may raise us o’er the grovelling herd,
And make us shine for ever--that is life.
THOMSON.
ONE of the first places to which a stranger is taken in Liverpool is
the Athenaeum. It is established on a liberal and judicious plan; it
contains a good library, and spacious reading-room, and is the great
literary resort of the place. Go there at what hour you may, you are
sure to find it filled with grave-looking personages, deeply absorbed in
the study of newspapers.
As I was once visiting this haunt of the learned, my attention was
attracted to a person just entering the room. He was advanced in life,
tall, and of a form that might once have been commanding, but it was
a little bowed by time--perhaps by care. He had a noble Roman style of
countenance; a a head that would have pleased a painter; and though some
slight furrows on his brow showed that wasting thought had been busy
there, yet his eye beamed with the fire of a poetic soul. There was
something in his whole appearance that indicated a being of a different
order from the bustling race round him.
I inquired his name, and was informed that it was ROSCOE. I drew back
with an involuntary feeling of veneration. This, then, was an author of
celebrity; this was one of those men whose voices have gone forth to
the ends of the earth; with whose minds I have communed even in the
solitudes of America. Accustomed, as we are in our country, to know
European writers only by their works, we cannot conceive of them, as of
other men, engrossed by trivial or sordid pursuits, and jostling with
the crowd of common minds in the dusty paths of life. They pass before
our imaginations like superior beings, radiant with the emanations of
their genius, and surrounded by a halo of literary glory.
To find, therefore, the elegant historian of the Medici mingling among
the busy sons of traffic, at first shocked my poetical ideas; but it is
from the very circumstances and situation in which he has been placed,
that Mr. Roscoe derives his highest claims to admiration. It is
interesting to notice how some minds seem almost to create themselves,
springing up under every disadvantage, and working their solitary but
irresistible way through a thousand obstacles. Nature seems to delight
in disappointing the assiduities of art, with which it would rear
legitimate dulness to maturity; and to glory in the vigor and luxuriance
of her chance productions. She scatters the seeds of genius to the
winds, and though some may perish among the stony places of the world,
and some be choked, by the thorns and brambles of early adversity, yet
others will now and then strike root even in the clefts of the rock,
struggle bravely up into sunshine, and spread over their sterile
birthplace all the beauties of vegetation.
Such has been the case with Mr. Roscoe. Born in a place apparently
ungenial to the growth of literary talent--in the very market-place of
trade; without fortune, family connections, or patronage; self-prompted,
self-sustained, and almost self-taught, he has conquered every obstacle,
achieved his way to eminence, and, having become one of the ornaments of
the nation, has turned the whole force of his talents and influence to
advance and embellish his native town.
Indeed, it is this last trait in his character which has given him the
greatest interest in my eyes, and induced me particularly to point him
out to my countrymen. Eminent as are his literary merits, he is but one
among the many distinguished authors of this intellectual nation.
They, however, in general, live but for their own fame, or their own
pleasures. Their private history presents no lesson to the world, or,
perhaps, a humiliating one of human frailty or inconsistency. At best,
they are prone to steal away from the bustle and commonplace of busy
existence; to indulge in the selfishness of lettered eas; and to revel
in scenes of mental, but exclusive enjoyment.
Mr. Roscoe, on the contrary, has claimed none of the accorded privileges
of talent. He has shut himself up in no garden of thought, nor elysium
of fancy; but has gone forth into the highways and thoroughfares of
life, he has planted bowers by the wayside, for the refreshment of the
pilgrim and the sojourner, and has opened pure fountains, where the
laboring man may turn aside from the dust and heat of the day, and drink
of the living streams of knowledge. There is a “daily beauty in his
life,” on which mankind may meditate, and grow better. It exhibits no
lofty and almost useless, because inimitable, example of excellence; but
presents a picture of active, yet simple and imitable virtues, which are
within every man’s reach, but which, unfortunately, are not exercised by
many, or this world would be a paradise.
But his private life is peculiarly worthy the attention of the citizens
of our young and busy country, where literature and the elegant arts
must grow up side by side with the coarser plants of daily necessity;
and must depend for their culture, not on the exclusive devotion of time
and wealth; nor the quickening rays of titled patronage; but on
hours and seasons snatched from the purest of worldly interests, by
intelligent and public-spirited individuals.
He has shown how much may be done for a place in hours of leisure by
one master-spirit, and how completely it can give its own impress to
surrounding objects. Like his own Lorenzo de’ Medici, on whom he
seems to have fixed his eye, as on a pure model of antiquity, he has
interwoven the history of his life with the history of his native town,
and has made the foundations of his fame the monuments of his virtues.
Wherever you go, in Liverpool, you perceive traces of his footsteps in
all that is elegant and liberal. He found the tide of wealth flowing
merely in the channels of traffic; he has diverted from it invigorating
rills to refresh the garden of literature. By his own example and
constant exertions, he has effected that union of commerce and the
intellectual pursuits, so eloquently recommended in one of his latest
writings;* and has practically proved how beautifully they may be
brought to harmonize, and to benefit each other. The noble institutions
for literary and scientific purposes, which reflect such credit on
Liverpool, and are giving such an impulse to the public mind, have
mostly been originated, and have all been effectively promoted, by
Mr. Roscoe; and when we consider the rapidly increasing opulence and
magnitude of that town, which promises to vie in commercial importance
with the metropolis, it will be perceived that in awakening an ambition
of mental improvement among its inhabitants, he has effected a great
benefit to the cause of British literature.
* Address on the opening of the Liverpool Institution.
In America, we know Mr. Roscoe only as the author; in Liverpool he is
spoken of as the banker; and I was told of his having been unfortunate
in business. I could not pity him, as I heard some rich men do. I
considered him far above the reach of pity. Those who live only for the
world, and in the world, may be cast down by the frowns of adversity;
but a man like Roscoe is not to be overcome by the reverses of fortune.
They do but drive him in upon the resources of his own mind, to the
superior society of his own thoughts; which the best of men are apt
sometimes to neglect, and to roam abroad in search of less worthy
associates. He is independent of the world around him. He lives with
antiquity, and with posterity: with antiquity, in the sweet communion of
studious retirement; and with posterity, in the generous aspirings
after future renown. The solitude of such a mind is its state of highest
enjoyment. It is then visited by those elevated meditations which
are the proper aliment of noble souls, and are, like manna, sent from
heaven, in the wilderness of this world.
While my feelings were yet alive on the subject, it was my fortune
to light on further traces of Mr. Roscoe. I was riding out with a
gentleman, to view the environs of Liverpool, when he turned off,
through a gate, into some ornamented grounds. After riding a short
distance, we came to a spacious mansion of freestone, built in the
Grecian style. It was not in the purest style, yet it had an air of
elegance, and the situation was delightful. A fine lawn sloped away from
it, studded with clumps of trees, so disposed as to break a soft fertile
country into a variety of landscapes. The Mersey was seen winding a
broad quiet sheet of water through an expanse of green meadow land,
while the Welsh mountains, blended with clouds, and melting into
distance, bordered the horizon.
This was Roscoe’s favorite residence during the days of his prosperity.
It had been the seat of elegant hospitality and literary retirement. The
house was now silent and deserted. I saw the windows of the study, which
looked out upon the soft scenery I have mentioned. The windows were
closed--the library was gone. Two or three ill-favored beings were
loitering about the place, whom my fancy pictured into retainers of the
law. It was like visiting some classic fountain, that had once welled
its pure waters in a sacred shade, but finding it dry and dusty, with
the lizard and the toad brooding over the shattered marbles.
I inquired after the fate of Mr. Roscoe’s library, which had consisted
of scarce and foreign books, from many of which he had drawn the
materials for his Italian histories. It had passed under the hammer of
the auctioneer, and was dispersed about the country. The good people
of the vicinity thronged liked wreckers to get some part of the
noble vessel that had been driven on shore. Did such a scene admit of
ludicrous associations, we might imagine something whimsical in this
strange irruption in the regions of learning. Pigmies rummaging the
armory of a giant, and contending for the possession of weapons which
they could not wield. We might picture to ourselves some knot of
speculators, debating with calculating brow over the quaint binding and
illuminated margin of an obsolete author; of the air of intense, but
baffled sagacity, with which some successful purchaser attempted to dive
into the black-letter bargain he had secured.
It is a beautiful incident in the story of Mr. Roscoe’s misfortunes, and
one which cannot fail to interest the studious mind, that the parting
with his books seems to have touched upon his tenderest feelings, and
to have been the only circumstance that could provoke the notice of
his muse. The scholar only knows how dear these silent, yet eloquent,
companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become in the season of
adversity. When all that is worldly turns to dross around us, these only
retain their steady value. When friends grow cold, and the converse of
intimates languishes into vapid civility and commonplace, these only
continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with
that true friendship which never deceived hope, nor deserted sorrow.
I do not wish to censure; but, surely, if the people of Liverpool had
been properly sensible of what was due to Mr. Roscoe and themselves, his
library would never have been sold. Good worldly reasons may, doubtless,
be given for the circumstance, which it would be difficult to combat
with others that might seem merely fanciful; but it certainly appears
to me such an opportunity as seldom occurs, of cheering a noble mind
struggling under misfortunes by one of the most delicate, but most
expressive tokens of public sympathy. It is difficult, however, to
estimate a man of genius properly who is daily before our eyes. He
becomes mingled and confounded with other men. His great qualities lose
their novelty; we become too familiar with the common materials which
form the basis even of the loftiest character. Some of Mr. Roscoe’s
townsmen may regard him merely as a man of business; others, as
a politician; all find him engaged like themselves in ordinary
occupations, and surpassed, perhaps, by themselves on some points of
worldly wisdom. Even that amiable and unostentatious simplicity of
character, which gives the nameless grace to real excellence, may cause
him to be undervalued by some coarse minds, who do not know that true
worth is always void of glare and pretension. But the man of letters,
who speaks of Liverpool, speaks of it as the residence of Roscoe.--The
intelligent traveller who visits it inquires where Roscoe is to be seen.
He is the literary landmark of the place, indicating its existence to
the distant scholar.--He is like Pompey’s column at Alexandria, towering
alone in classic dignity.
The following sonnet, addressed by Mr. Roscoe to his books, on parting
with them, has already been alluded to. If anything can add effect
to the pure feeling and elevated thought here displayed, it is the
conviction, that the who leis no effusion of fancy, but a faithful
transcript from the writer’s heart.
TO MY BOOKS.
As one who, destined from his friends to part,
Regrets his loss, but hopes again erewhile
To share their converse and enjoy their smile,
And tempers as he may affliction’s dart;
Thus, loved associates, chiefs of elder art,
Teachers of wisdom, who could once beguile
My tedious hours, and lighten every toil,
I now resign you; nor with fainting heart;
For pass a few short years, or days, or hours,
And happier seasons may their dawn unfold,
And all your sacred fellowship restore:
When, freed from earth, unlimited its powers.
Mind shall with mind direct communion hold,
And kindred spirits meet to part no more.
THE WIFE.
The treasures of the deep are not so precious
As are the concealed comforts of a man
Lock’d up in woman’s love. I scent the air
Of blessings, when I came but near the house,
What a delicious breath marriage sends forth--
The violet bed’s no sweeter!
MIDDLETON.
I HAVE often had occasion to remark the fortitude with which women
sustain the most overwhelming reverses of fortune. Those disasters which
break down the spirit of a man, and prostrate him in the dust, seem to
call forth all the energies of the softer sex, and give such intrepidity
and elevation to their character, that at times it approaches to
sublimity. Nothing can be more touching, than to behold a soft and
tender female, who had been all weakness and dependence, and alive to
every trivial roughness, while threading the prosperous paths of life,
suddenly rising in mental force to be the comforter and support of her
husband under misfortune, and abiding with unshrinking firmness the
bitterest blasts of adversity.
As the vine, which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak,
and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is
rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils,
and bind up its shattered boughs, so is it beautifully ordered by
Providence, that woman, who is the mere dependent and ornament of man
in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with
sudden calamity; winding herself into the rugged recesses of his nature,
tenderly supporting the drooping head, and binding up the broken heart.
I was once congratulating a friend, who had around him a blooming
family, knit together in the strongest affection. “I can wish you
no better lot,” said he, with enthusiasm, “than to have a wife
and children. If you are prosperous, there they are to share your
prosperity; if otherwise, there they are to comfort you.” And, indeed, I
have observed that a married man falling into misfortune, is more apt to
retrieve his situation in the world than a single one; partly, because
he is more stimulated to exertion by the necessities of the helpless and
beloved beings who depend upon him for subsistence, but chiefly because
his spirits are soothed and relieved by domestic endearments, and his
self-respect kept alive by finding, that, though all abroad is darkness
and humiliation, yet there is still a little world of love at home, of
which he is the monarch. Whereas, a single man is apt to run to waste
and self-neglect; to fancy himself lonely and abandoned, and his heart
to fall to ruin, like some deserted mansion, for want of an inhabitant.
These observations call to mind a little domestic story, of which I was
once a witness. My intimate friend, Leslie, had married a beautiful and
accomplished girl, who had been brought up in the midst of fashionable
life. She had, it is true, no fortune, but that of my friend was ample;
and he delighted in the anticipation of indulging her in every elegant
pursuit, and administering to those delicate tastes and fancies that
spread a kind of witchery about the sex.--“Her life,” said he, “shall be
like a fairy tale.”
The very difference in their characters produced a harmonious
combination; he was of a romantic, and somewhat serious cast; she was
all life and gladness. I have often noticed the mute rapture with which
he would gaze upon her in company, of which her sprightly powers made
her the delight: and how, in the midst of applause, her eye would still
turn to him, as if there alone she sought favor and acceptance. When
leaning on his arm, her slender form contrasted finely with his tall,
manly person. The fond, confiding air with which she looked up to
him seemed to call forth a flush of triumphant pride and cherishing
tenderness, as if he doated on his lovely burden from its very
helplessness. Never did a couple set forward on the flowery path of
early and well-suited marriage with a fairer prospect of felicity.
It was the misfortune of my friend, however, to have embarked his
property in large speculations; and he had not been married many months,
when, by a succession of sudden disasters, it was swept from him, and he
found himself reduced to almost penury. For a time he kept his situation
to himself, and went about with a haggard countenance, and a breaking
heart. His life was but a protracted agony; and what rendered it more
insupportable was the necessity of keeping up a smile in the presence of
his wife; for he could not bring himself to overwhelm her with the news.
She saw, however, with the quick eyes of affection, that all was not
well with him. She marked his altered looks and stifled sighs, and was
not to be deceived by his sickly and vapid attempts at cheerfulness. She
tasked all her sprightly powers and tender blandishments to win him back
to happiness; but she only drove the arrow deeper into his soul. The
more he saw cause to love her, the more torturing was the thought that
he was soon to make her wretched. A little while, thought he, and the
smile will vanish from that cheek--the song will die away from those
lips--the lustre of those eyes will be quenched with sorrow and the
happy heart which now beats lightly in that bosom, will be weighed down,
like mine, by the cares and miseries of the world.
At length he came to me one day, and related his whole situation in a
tone of the deepest despair. When I had heard him through, I inquired:
“Does your wife know all this?”--At the question he burst into an agony
of tears. “For God’s sake!” cried he, “if you have any pity on me don’t
mention my wife; it is the thought of her that drives me almost to
madness!”
“And why not?” said I. “She must know it sooner or later: you cannot
keep it long from her, and the intelligence may break upon her in a more
startling manner than if imparted by yourself; for the accents of those
we love soften the harshest tidings. Besides, you are depriving
yourself of the comforts of her sympathy; and not merely that, but also
endangering the only bond that can keep hearts together--an unreserved
community of thought and feeling. She will soon perceive that something
is secretly preying upon your mind; and true love will not brook
reserve; it feels undervalued and outraged, when even the sorrows of
those it loves are concealed from it.”
“Oh, but my friend! to think what a blow I am to give to all her future
prospects,--how I am to strike her very soul to the earth, by telling
her that her husband is a beggar! that she is to forego all the
elegancies of life--all the pleasures of society--to shrink with me into
indigence and obscurity! To tell her that I have dragged her down
from the sphere in which she might have continued to move in constant
brightness--the light of every eye--the admiration of every heart!--How
can she bear poverty? She has been brought up in all the refinements of
opulence. How can she bear neglect? She has been the idol of society.
Oh, it will break her heart--it will break her heart!”
I saw his grief was eloquent, and I let it have its flow; for sorrow
relieves itself by words. When his paroxysm had subsided, and he had
relapsed into moody silence, I resumed the subject gently, and urged
him to break his situation at once to his wife. He shook his head
mournfully, but positively.
“But how are you to keep it from her? It is necessary she should
know it, that you may take the steps proper to the alteration of your
circumstances. You must change your style of living--nay,” observing a
pang to pass across his countenance, “don’t let that afflict you. I am
sure you have never placed your happiness in outward show--you have yet
friends, warm friends, who will not think the worse of you for being
less splendidly lodged: and surely it does not require a palace to be
happy with Mary--”
“I could be happy with her,” cried he, convulsively, “in a hovel!--I
could go down with her into poverty and the dust!--I could--I could--God
bless her!--God bless her!” cried he, bursting into a transport of grief
and tenderness.
“And believe me, my friend,” said I, stepping up, and grasping him
warmly by the hand, “believe me, she can be the same with you. Ay, more;
it will be a source of pride and triumph to her--it will call forth all
the latent energies and fervent sympathies of her nature; for she will
rejoice to prove that she loves you for yourself. There is in every true
woman’s heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad
daylight of prosperity; but which kindles up, and beams, and blazes
in the dark hour of adversity. No man knows what the wife of his bosom
is--no man knows what a ministering angel she is--until he has gone with
her through the fiery trials of this world.”
There was something in the earnestness of my manner, and the figurative
style of my language, that caught the excited imagination of Leslie. I
knew the auditor I had to deal with; and following up the impression I
had made, I finished by persuading him to go home and unburden his sad
heart to his wife.
I must confess, notwithstanding all I had said, I felt some little
solicitude for the result. Who can calculate on the fortitude of one
whose life has been a round of pleasures? Her gay spirits might revolt
at the dark, downward path of low humility suddenly pointed out before
her, and might cling to the sunny regions in which they had hitherto
revelled. Besides, ruin in fashionable life is accompanied by so many
galling mortifications, to which, in other ranks, it is a stranger. In
short, I could not meet Leslie, the next morning, without trepidation.
He had made the disclosure.
“And how did she bear it?”
“Like an angel! It seemed rather to be a relief to her mind, for she
threw her arms around my neck, and asked if this was all that had lately
made me unhappy.--But, poor girl,” added he, “she cannot realize the
change we must undergo. She has no idea of poverty but in the abstract;
she has only read of it in poetry, where it is allied to love. She feels
as yet no privation; she suffers no loss of accustomed conveniences nor
elegancies. When we come practically to experience its sordid cares, its
paltry wants, its petty humiliations--then will be the real trial.”
“But,” said I, “now that you have got over the severest task, that of
breaking it to her, the sooner you let the world into the secret the
better. The disclosure may be mortifying; but then it is a single
misery, and soon over: whereas you otherwise suffer it, in anticipation,
every hour in the day. It is not poverty, so much as pretence, that
harasses a ruined man--the struggle between a proud mind and an empty
purse-the keeping up a hollow show that must soon come to an end. Have
the courage to appear poor, and you disarm poverty of its sharpest
sting.” On this point I found Leslie perfectly prepared. He had no false
pride himself, and as to his wife, she was only anxious to conform to
their altered fortunes.
Some days afterwards, he called upon me in the evening. He had disposed
of his dwelling-house, and taken a small cottage in the country, a few
miles from town. He had been busied all day in sending out furniture.
The new establishment required few articles, and those of the simplest
kind. All the splendid furniture of his late residence had been sold,
excepting his wife’s harp. That, he said, was too closely associated
with the idea of herself it belonged to the little story of their loves;
for some of the sweetest moments of their courtship were those when he
had leaned over that instrument, and listened to the melting tones of
her voice.--I could not but smile at this instance of romantic gallantry
in a doating husband.
He was now going out to the cottage, where his wife had been all
day superintending its arrangement. My feelings had become strongly
interested in the progress of his family story, and, as it was a fine
evening, I offered to accompany him.
He was wearied with the fatigues of the day, and, as we walked out, fell
into a fit of gloomy musing.
“Poor Mary!” at length broke, with a heavy sigh, from his lips.
“And what of her,” asked I, “has anything happened to her?”
“What,” said he, darting an impatient glance, “is it nothing to be
reduced to this paltry situation--to be caged in a miserable cottage--to
be obliged to toil almost in the menial concerns of her wretched
habitation?”
Has she then repined at the change?
“Repined! she has been nothing but sweetness and good-humor. Indeed, she
seems in better spirits than I have ever known her; she has been to me
all love, and tenderness, and comfort!”
“Admirable girl!” exclaimed I. “You call yourself poor, my friend;
you never were so rich,--you never knew the boundless treasures of
excellence you possessed in that woman.”
“Oh! but, my friend, if this first meeting at the cottage were over,
I think I could then be comfortable. But this is her first day of real
experience; she has been introduced into a humble dwelling,--she has
been employed all day in arranging its miserable equipments,--she has,
for the first time, known the fatigues of domestic employment,--she has,
for the first time, looked around her on a home destitute of every thing
elegant--almost of every thing convenient; and may now be sitting down,
exhausted and spiritless, brooding over a prospect of future poverty.”
There was a degree of probability in this picture that I could not
gainsay, so we walked on in silence.
After turning from the main road up a narrow lane, so thickly shaded
with forest-trees as to give it a complete air of seclusion, we came
in sight of the cottage. It was humble enough in its appearance for the
most pastoral poet; and yet it had a pleasing rural look. A wild vine
had overrun one end with a profusion of foliage; a few trees threw their
branches gracefully over it; and I observed several pots of flowers
tastefully disposed about the door, and on the grass-plot in front.
A small wicket-gate opened upon a footpath that wound through some
shrubbery to the door. Just as we approached, we heard the sound of
music--Leslie grasped my arm; we paused and listened. It was Mary’s
voice singing, in a style of the most touching simplicity, a little air
of which her husband was peculiarly fond.
I felt Leslie’s hand tremble on my arm. He stepped forward, to hear more
distinctly. His step made a noise on the gravel-walk. A bright beautiful
face glanced out at the window, and vanished--a light footstep-was
heard--and Mary came tripping forth to meet us. She was in a pretty
rural dress of white; a few wild flowers were twisted in her fine
hair; a fresh bloom was on her cheek; her whole countenance beamed with
smiles--I had never seen her look so lovely.
“My dear George,” cried she, “I am so glad you are come; I have been
watching and watching for you; and running down the lane, and looking
out for you. I’ve set out a table under a beautiful tree behind
the cottage; and I’ve been gathering some of the most delicious
strawberries, for I know you are fond of them--and we have such
excellent cream--and everything is so sweet and still here-Oh!”--said
she, putting her arm within his, and looking up brightly in his face,
“Oh, we shall be so happy!”
Poor Leslie was overcome.--He caught her to his bosom--he folded his
arms round her--he kissed her again and again--he could not speak, but
the tears gushed into his eyes; and he has often assured me, that
though the world has since gone prosperously with him, and his life has,
indeed, been a happy one, yet never has he experienced a moment of more
exquisite felicity.
RIP VAN WINKLE.
A POSTHUMOUS WRITING OF DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER.
By Woden, God of Saxons,
From whence comes Wensday, that is Wodensday,
Truth is a thing that ever I will keep
Unto thylke day in which I creep into
My sepulchre--
CARTWRIGHT.
[The following Tale was found among the papers of the late Diedrich
Knickerbocker, an old gentleman of New York, who was very curious in the
Dutch History of the province and the manners of the descendants from
its primitive settlers. His historical researches, however, did not lie
so much among books as among men; for the former are lamentably scanty
on his favorite topics; whereas he found the old burghers, and still
more, their wives, rich in that legendary lore, so invaluable to true
history. Whenever, therefore, he happened upon a genuine Dutch family,
snugly shut up in its low-roofed farm-house, under a spreading sycamore,
he looked upon it as a little clasped volume of black-letter, and
studied it with the zeal of a bookworm.
The result of all these researches was a history of the province, during
the reign of the Dutch governors, which he published some years since.
There have been various opinions as to the literary character of his
work, and, to tell the truth, it is not a whit better than it should be.
Its chief merit is its scrupulous accuracy, which indeed was a little
questioned on its first appearance, but has since been completely
established; and it is now admitted into all historical collections, as
a book of unquestionable authority.
The old gentleman died shortly after the publication of his work; and
now that he is dead and gone, it cannot do much harm to his memory to
say that his time might have been much better employed in weightier
labors. He, however, was apt to ride his hobby his own way; and though
it did now and then kick up the dust a little in the eyes of his
neighbors, and grieve the spirit of some friends, for whom he felt
the truest deference and affection, yet his errors and follies
are remembered “more in sorrow than in anger,” and it begins to be
suspected, that he never intended to injure or offend. But however his
memory may be appreciated by critics, it is still held dear among many
folks, whose good opinion is well worth having; particularly by certain
biscuit-bakers, who have gone so far as to imprint his likeness on their
new-year cakes, and have thus given him a chance for immortality,
almost equal to the being stamped on a Waterloo medal, or a Queen Anne’s
farthing.]
WHOEVER has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Kaatskill
mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian
family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a
noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country. Every change
of season, every change of weather, indeed, every hour of the day
produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains;
and they are regarded by all the good wives, far and near, as perfect
barometers. When the weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in
blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear evening sky;
but sometimes, when the rest of the landscape is cloudless, they will
gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits, which, in the last
rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown of glory.
At the foot of these fairy mountains, the voyager may have descried the
light smoke curling up from a Village, whose shingle roofs gleam among
the trees, just where the blue tints of the upland melt away into the
fresh green of the nearer landscape. It is a little village of great
antiquity, having been founded by some of the Dutch colonists, in the
early times of the province, just about the beginning of the government
of the good Peter Stuyvesant (may he rest in peace!), and there were
some of the houses of the original settlers standing within a few years,
built of small yellow bricks, brought from Holland, having latticed
windows and gable fronts, surmounted with weathercocks.
In that same village, and in one of these very houses (which, to tell
the precise truth, was sadly time-worn and weather-beaten), there lived,
many years since, while the country was yet a province of Great Britain,
a simple, good-natured fellow, of the name of Rip Van Winkle. He was a
descendant of the Van Winkles who figured so gallantly in the chivalrous
days of Peter Stuyvesant, and accompanied him to the siege of Fort
Christina. He inherited, however, but little of the martial character of
his ancestors. I have observed that he was a simple, good-natured man;
he was, moreover, a kind neighbor, and an obedient henpecked husband.
Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of
spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are apt
to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline
of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant
and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation, and a
curtain-lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the
virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant wife may, therefore,
in some respects, be considered a tolerable blessing, and if so, Rip Van
Winkle was thrice blessed.
Certain it is, that he was a great favorite among all the good wives of
the village, who, as usual with the amiable sex, took his part in all
family squabbles, and never failed, whenever they talked those matters
over in their evening gossipings, to lay all the blame on Dame Van
Winkle. The children of the village, too, would shout with joy whenever
he approached. He assisted at their sports, made their playthings,
taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and told them long stories
of ghosts, witches, and Indians. Whenever he went dodging about the
village, he was surrounded by a troop of them hanging on his skirts,
clambering on his back, and playing a thousand tricks on him with
impunity; and not a dog would bark at him throughout the neighborhood.
The great error in Rip’s composition was an insuperable aversion to
all kinds of profitable labor. It could not be for want of assiduity
or perseverance; for he would sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long
and heavy as a Tartar’s lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even
though he should not be encouraged by a single nibble. He would carry
a fowling-piece on his shoulder, for hours together, trudging through
woods and swamps, and up hill and down dale, to shoot a few squirrels
or wild pigeons. He would never refuse to assist a neighbor even in the
roughest toil, and was a foremost man in all country frolics for husking
Indian corn, or building stone fences; the women of the village, too,
used to employ him to run their errands, and to do such little odd jobs
as their less obliging husbands would not do for them. In a word, Rip
was ready to attend to anybody’s business but his own; but as to doing
family duty, and keeping his farm in order, he found it impossible.
In fact, he declared it was of no use to work on his farm; it was the
most pestilent little piece of ground in the whole country; everything
about it went wrong, in spite of him. His fences were continually
falling to pieces; his cow would either go astray, or get among the
cabbages; weeds were sure to grow quicker in his fields than anywhere
else; the rain always made a point of setting in just as he had some
out-door work to do; so that though his patrimonial estate had dwindled
away under his management, acre by acre, until there was little more
left than a mere patch of Indian corn and potatoes, yet it was the
worst-conditioned farm in the neighborhood.
His children, too, were as ragged and wild as if they belonged to
nobody. His son Rip, an urchin begotten in his own likeness, promised
to inherit the habits, with the old clothes, of his father. He was
generally seen trooping like a colt at his mother’s heels, equipped in
a pair of his father’s cast-off galligaskins, which he had much ado to
hold up with one hand, as a fine lady does her train in bad weather.
Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mortals, of foolish,
well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat white bread or
brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble, and would
rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If left to himself, he
would have whistled life away, in perfect contentment; but his wife kept
continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness,
and the ruin he was bringing on his family. Morning, noon, and night,
her tongue was incessantly going, and every thing he said or did was
sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence. Rip had but one way
of replying to all lectures of the kind, and that, by frequent use, had
grown into a habit. He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, cast
up his eyes, but said nothing. This, however, always provoked a fresh
volley from his wife, so that he was fain to draw off his forces, and
take to the outside of the house--the only side which, in truth, belongs
to a henpecked husband.
Rip’s sole domestic adherent was his dog Wolf, who was as much henpecked
as his master; for Dame Van Winkle regarded them as companions in
idleness, and even looked upon Wolf with an evil eye, as the cause of
his master’s going so often astray. True it is, in all points of spirit
befitting in honorable dog, he was as courageous an animal as ever
scoured the woods--but what courage can withstand the evil-doing and
all-besetting terrors of a woman’s tongue? The moment Wolf entered the
house his crest fell, his tail drooped to the ground or curled between
his legs, he sneaked about with a gallows air, casting many a sidelong
glance at Dame Van Winkle, and at the least flourish of a broomstick or
ladle, he would fly to the door with yelping precipitation.
Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years of matrimony
rolled on; a tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue
is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use. For a long
while he used to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting
a kind of perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and other idle
personages of the village, which held its sessions on a bench before a
small inn, designated by a rubicund portrait of his Majesty George the
Third. Here they used to sit in the shade through a long, lazy summer’s
day, talking listlessly over village gossip, or telling endless, sleepy
stories about nothing. But it would have been worth any statesman’s
money to have heard the profound discussions which sometimes took place,
when by chance an old newspaper fell into their hands from some passing
traveller. How solemnly they would listen to the contents, as drawled
out by Derrick Van Bummel, the school-master, a dapper learned little
man, who was not to be daunted by the most gigantic word in the
dictionary; and how sagely they would deliberate upon public events some
months after they had taken place.
The opinions of this junto were completely controlled by Nicholas
Vedder, a patriarch of the village, and landlord of the inn, at the
door of which he took his seat from morning till night, just moving
sufficiently to avoid the sun, and keep in the shade of a large tree; so
that the neighbors could tell the hour by his movements as accurately as
by a sun-dial. It is true, he was rarely heard to speak, but smoked his
pipe incessantly. His adherents, however (for every great man has
his adherents), perfectly understood him, and knew how to gather his
opinions. When any thing that was read or related displeased him, he was
observed to smoke his pipe vehemently, and to send forth frequent, and
angry puffs; but when pleased, he would inhale the smoke slowly and
tranquilly, and emit it in light and placid clouds, and sometimes,
taking the pipe from his mouth, and letting the fragrant vapor curl
about his nose, would gravely nod his head in token of perfect
approbation.
From even this stronghold the unlucky Rip was at length routed by his
termagant wife, who would suddenly break in upon the tranquillity of
the assemblage, and call the members all to nought; nor was that august
personage, Nicholas Vedder himself, sacred from the daring tongue of
this terrible virago, who charged him outright with encouraging her
husband in habits of idleness.
Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair; and his only
alternative, to escape from the labor of the farm and the clamor of his
wife, was to take gun in hand, and stroll away into the woods. Here
he would sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree, and share
the contents of his wallet with Wolf, with whom he sympathized as a
fellow-sufferer in persecution. “Poor Wolf,” he would say, “thy mistress
leads thee a dog’s life of it; but never mind, my lad, whilst I live
thou shalt never want a friend to stand by thee!” Wolf would wag his
tail, look wistfully in his master’s face, and if dogs can feel pity, I
verily believe he reciprocated the sentiment with all his heart.
In a long ramble of the kind, on a fine autumnal day, Rip had
unconsciously scrambled to one of the highest parts of the Kaatskill
mountains. He was after his favorite sport of squirrel-shooting, and the
still solitudes had echoed and re-echoed with the reports of his gun.
Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on a
green knoll, covered with mountain herbage, that crowned the brow of a
precipice. From an opening between the trees, he could overlook all the
lower country for many a mile of rich woodland. He saw at a distance
the lordly Hudson, far, far below him, moving on its silent but majestic
course, with the reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lagging
bark, here and there sleeping on its glassy bosom and at last losing
itself in the blue highlands.
On the other side he looked down into a deep mountain glen, wild,
lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled with fragments from the impending
cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the reflected rays of the setting
sun. For some time Rip lay musing on this scene; evening was gradually
advancing; the mountains began to throw their long blue shadows over
the valleys; he saw that it would be dark long before he could reach the
village; and he heaved a heavy sigh when he thought of encountering the
terrors of Dame Van Winkle.
As he was about to descend, he heard a voice from a distance hallooing:
“Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!” He looked around, but could see
nothing but a crow winging its solitary flight across the mountain. He
thought his fancy must have deceived him, and turned again to descend,
when he heard the same cry ring through the still evening air, “Rip Van
Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!”--at the same time Wolf bristled up his back,
and giving a low growl, skulked to his master’s side, looking fearfully
down into the glen. Rip now felt a vague apprehension stealing over
him; he looked anxiously in the same direction, and perceived a strange
figure slowly toiling up the rocks, and bending under the weight of
something he carried on his back. He was surprised to see any human
being in this lonely and unfrequented place, but supposing it to be some
one of the neighborhood in need of his assistance, he hastened down to
yield it.
On nearer approach, he was still more surprised at the singularity of
the stranger’s appearance. He was a short, square-built old fellow, with
thick bushy hair, and a grizzled beard. His dress was of the antique
Dutch fashion--a cloth jerkin strapped round the waist--several pairs of
breeches, the outer one of ample volume, decorated with rows of buttons
down the sides, and bunches at the knees. He bore on his shoulders
a stout keg, that seemed full of liquor, and made signs for Rip to
approach and assist him with the load. Though rather shy and distrustful
of this new acquaintance, Rip complied with his usual alacrity; and
mutually relieving each other, they clambered up a narrow gully,
apparently the dry bed of a mountain torrent. As they ascended, Rip
every now and then heard long rolling peals, like distant thunder, that
seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or rather cleft between lofty
rocks, toward which their rugged path conducted. He paused for an
instant, but supposing it to be the muttering of one of those transient
thunder-showers which often take place in the mountain heights, he
proceeded. Passing through the ravine, they came to a hollow, like a
small amphitheatre, surrounded by perpendicular precipices, over the
brinks of which impending trees shot their branches, so that you only
caught glimpses of the azure sky, and the bright evening cloud. During
the whole time Rip and his companion had labored on in silence; for
though the former marvelled greatly what could be the object of carrying
a keg of liquor up this wild mountain, yet there was something strange
and incomprehensible about the unknown, that inspired awe, and checked
familiarity.
On entering the amphitheatre, new objects of wonder presented
themselves. On a level spot in the centre was a company of odd-looking
personages playing at ninepins. They were dressed in quaint outlandish
fashion; some wore short doublets, others jerkins, with long knives in
their belts, and most of them had enormous breeches, of similar style
with that of the guide’s. Their visages, too, were peculiar; one had
a large head, broad face, and small piggish eyes; the face of another
seemed to consist entirely of nose, and was surmounted by a white
sugar-loaf hat, set off with a little red cock’s tail. They all had
beards, of various shapes and colors. There was one who seemed to be
the commander. He was a stout old gentleman, with a weather-beaten
countenance; he wore a laced doublet, broad belt and hanger,
high-crowned hat and feather, red stockings, and high-heeled shoes, with
roses in them. The whole group reminded Rip of the figures in an old
Flemish painting, in the parlor of Dominie Van Schaick, the village
parson, and which had been brought over from Holland at the time of the
settlement.
What seemed particularly odd to Rip was, that though these folks were
evidently amusing themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces, the
most mysterious silence, and were, withal, the most melancholy party of
pleasure he had ever witnessed. Nothing interrupted the stillness of
the scene but the noise of the balls, which, whenever they were rolled,
echoed along the mountains like rumbling peals of thunder.
As Rip and his companion approached them, they suddenly desisted from
their play, and stared at him with such a fixed statue-like gaze, and
such strange uncouth, lack-lustre countenances, that his heart turned
within him, and his knees smote together. His companion now emptied the
contents of the keg into large flagons, and made signs to him to wait
upon the company. He obeyed with fear and trembling; they quaffed the
liquor in profound silence, and then returned to their game.
By degrees, Rip’s awe and apprehension subsided. He even ventured, when
no eye was fixed upon him, to taste the beverage which he found had much
of the flavor of excellent Hollands. He was naturally a thirsty soul,
and was soon tempted to repeat the draught. One taste provoked another;
and he reiterated his visits to the flagon so often, that at length his
senses were overpowered, his eyes swam in his head, his head gradually
declined, and he fell into a deep sleep.
On waking, he found himself on the green knoll whence he had first
seen the old man of the glen. He rubbed his eyes--it was a bright sunny
morning. The birds were hopping and twittering among the bushes, and
the eagle was wheeling aloft, and breasting the pure mountain breeze.
“Surely,” thought Rip, “I have not slept here all night.” He recalled
the occurrences before he fell asleep. The strange man with the keg
of liquor--the mountain ravine--the wild retreat among the rocks--the
woe-begone party at ninepins--the flagon--“Oh! that flagon! that wicked
flagon!” thought Rip--“what excuse shall I make to Dame Van Winkle?”
He looked round for his gun, but in place of the clean well-oiled
fowling-piece, he found an old firelock lying by him, the barrel
encrusted with rust, the lock falling off, and the stock worm-eaten. He
now suspected that the grave roysterers of the mountains had put a trick
upon him, and, having dosed him with liquor, had robbed him of his
gun. Wolf, too, had disappeared, but he might have strayed away after a
squirrel or partridge. He whistled after him and shouted his name, but
all in vain; the echoes repeated his whistle and shout, but no dog was
to be seen.
He determined to revisit the scene of the last evening’s gambol, and if
he met with any of the party, to demand his dog and gun. As he rose to
walk, he found himself stiff in the joints, and wanting in his usual
activity. “These mountain beds do not agree with me,” thought Rip, “and
if this frolic should lay me up with a fit of the rheumatism, I shall
have a blessed time with Dame Van Winkle.” With some difficulty he got
down into the glen: he found the gully up which he and his companion
had ascended the preceding evening; but to his astonishment a mountain
stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling
the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble
up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch,
sassafras, and witch-hazel; and sometimes tripped up or entangled by
the wild grape vines that twisted their coils and tendrils from tree to
tree, and spread a kind of network in his path.
At length he reached to where the ravine had opened through the cliffs
to the amphitheatre; but no traces of such opening remained. The rocks
presented a high impenetrable wall, over which the torrent came tumbling
in a sheet of feathery foam, and fell into a broad deep basin, black
from the shadows of the surrounding forest. Here, then, poor Rip was
brought to a stand. He again called and whistled after his dog; he was
only answered by the cawing of a flock of idle crows, sporting high
in the air about a dry tree that overhung a sunny precipice; and who,
secure in their elevation, seemed to look down and scoff at the poor
man’s perplexities. What was to be done? The morning was passing away,
and Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast. He grieved to give up
his dog and gun; he dreaded to meet his wife; but it would not do to
starve among the mountains. He shook his head, shouldered the rusty
firelock, and, with a heart full of trouble and anxiety, turned his
steps homeward.
As he approached the village, he met a number of people, but none
whom he new, which somewhat surprised him, for he had thought himself
acquainted with every one in the country round. Their dress, too, was
of a different fashion from that to which he was accustomed. They all
stared at him with equal marks of surprise, and whenever they cast eyes
upon him, invariably stroked their chins. The constant recurrence of
this gesture induced Rip, involuntarily, to do the same, when, to his
astonishment, he found his beard had grown a foot long!
He had now entered the skirts of the village. A troop of strange
children ran at his heels, hooting after him, and pointing at his
gray beard. The dogs, too, not one of which he recognized for an old
acquaintance, barked at him as he passed. The very village was altered:
it was larger and more populous. There were rows of houses which he
had never seen before, and those which had been his familiar haunts had
disappeared. Strange names were over the doors--strange faces at the
windows--everything was strange. His mind now misgave him; he began
to doubt whether both he and the world around him were not bewitched.
Surely this was his native village, which he had left but a day before.
There stood the Kaatskill mountains--there ran the silver Hudson at
a distance--there was every hill and dale precisely as it had always
been--Rip was sorely perplexed--“That flagon last night,” thought he,
“has addled my poor head sadly!”
It was with some difficulty that he found the way to his own house,
which he approached with silent awe, expecting every moment to hear the
shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle. He found the house gone to decay--the
roof had fallen in, the windows shattered, and the doors off the hinges.
A half-starved dog, that looked like Wolf, was skulking about it. Rip
called him by name, but the cur snarled, showed his teeth, and passed
on. This was an unkind cut indeed--“My very dog,” sighed poor Rip, “has
forgotten me!”
He entered the house, which, to tell the truth, Dame Van Winkle had
always kept in neat order. It was empty, forlorn, and apparently
abandoned. This desolateness overcame all his connubial fears--he called
loudly for his wife and children--the lonely chambers rang for a moment
with his voice, and then all again was silence.
He now hurried forth, and hastened to his old resort, the village
inn--but it too was gone. A large rickety wooden building stood in its
place, with great gaping windows, some of them broken, and mended with
old hats and petticoats, and over the door was painted, “The Union
Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle.” Instead of the great tree that used to
shelter the quiet little Dutch inn of yore, there now was reared a tall
naked pole, with something on the top that looked like a red nightcap,
and from it was fluttering a flag, on which was a singular assemblage
of stars and stripes--all this was strange and incomprehensible. He
recognized on the sign, however, the ruby face of King George,
under which he had smoked so many a peaceful pipe, but even this was
singularly metamorphosed. The red coat was changed for one of blue and
buff, a sword was held in the hand instead of a sceptre, the head
was decorated with a cocked hat, and underneath was painted in large
characters, “GENERAL WASHINGTON.”
There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the door, but none that Rip
recollected. The very character of the people seemed changed. There was
a busy, bustling, disputatious tone about it, instead of the accustomed
phlegm and drowsy tranquillity. He looked in vain for the sage Nicholas
Vedder, with his broad face, double chin, and fair long pipe, uttering
clouds of tobacco-smoke, instead of idle speeches; or Van Bummel, the
schoolmaster, doling forth the contents of an ancient newspaper. In
place of these, a lean, bilious-looking fellow, with his pockets full
of handbills, was haranguing, vehemently about rights of
citizens-elections--members of Congress--liberty--Bunker’s hill--heroes
of seventy-six-and other words, which were a perfect Babylonish jargon
to the bewildered Van Winkle.
The appearance of Rip, with his long, grizzled beard, his rusty
fowling-piece, his uncouth dress, and the army of women and children at
his heels, soon attracted the attention of the tavern politicians. They
crowded round him, eying him from head to foot, with great curiosity.
The orator bustled up to him, and, drawing him partly aside, inquired,
“on which side he voted?” Rip stared in vacant stupidity. Another short
but busy little fellow pulled him by the arm, and rising on tiptoe,
inquired in his ear, “whether he was Federal or Democrat.” Rip
was equally at a loss to comprehend the question; when a knowing,
self-important old gentleman, in a sharp cocked hat, made his way
through the crowd, putting them to the right and left with his elbows as
he passed, and planting himself before Van Winkle, with one arm akimbo,
the other resting on his cane, his keen eyes and sharp hat penetrating,
as it were, into his very soul, demanded in an austere tone, “What
brought him to the election with a gun on his shoulder, and a mob at his
heels; and whether he meant to breed a riot in the village?”
“Alas! gentlemen,” cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, “I am a poor, quiet
man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the King, God bless
him!”
Here a general shout burst from the bystanders-“a tory! a tory! a spy!
a refugee! hustle him! away with him!” It was with great difficulty
that the self-important man in the cocked hat restored order; and having
assumed a tenfold austerity of brow, demanded again of the unknown
culprit, what he came there for, and whom he was seeking. The poor
man humbly assured him that he meant no harm, but merely came there in
search of some of his neighbors, who used to keep about the tavern.
“Well--who are they?--name them.”
Rip bethought himself a moment, and inquired, Where’s Nicholas Vedder?
There was a silence for a little while, when an old man replied, in a
thin, piping voice, “Nicholas Vedder? why, he is dead and gone these
eighteen years! There was a wooden tombstone in the churchyard that used
to tell all about him, but that’s rotten and gone too.”
“Where’s Brom Dutcher?”
“Oh, he went off to the army in the beginning of the war; some say he
was killed at the storming of Stony-Point--others say he was drowned in
a squall at the foot of Antony’s Nose. I don’t know--he never came back
again.”
“Where’s Van Bummel, the schoolmaster?”
“He went off to the wars, too; was a great militia general, and is now
in Congress.”
Rip’s heart died away, at hearing of these sad changes in his home
and friends, and finding himself thus alone in the world. Every answer
puzzled him too, by treating of such enormous lapses of time, and of
matters which he could not understand: war--Congress-Stony-Point;--he
had no courage to ask after any more friends, but cried out in despair,
“Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?”
“Oh, Rip Van Winkle!” exclaimed two or three. “Oh, to be sure! that’s
Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against the tree.”
Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself as he went up
the mountain; apparently as lazy, and certainly as ragged. The poor
fellow was now completely confounded. He doubted his own identity, and
whether he was himself or another man. In the midst of his bewilderment,
the man in the cocked hat demanded who he was, and what was his name?
“God knows!” exclaimed he at his wit’s end; “I’m not myself--I’m
somebody else--that’s me yonder-no--that’s somebody else, got into my
shoes--I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and
they’ve changed my gun, and everything’s changed, and I’m changed, and I
can’t tell what’s my name, or who I am!”
The by-standers began now to look at each other, nod, wink
significantly, and tap their fingers against their foreheads. There was
a whisper, also, about securing the gun, and keeping the old fellow from
doing mischief; at the very suggestion of which, the self-important man
with the cocked hat retired with some precipitation. At this critical
moment a fresh, comely woman pressed through the throng to get a peep
at the gray-bearded man. She had a chubby child in her arms, which,
frightened at his looks, began to cry. “Hush, Rip,” cried she, “hush,
you little fool; the old man won’t hurt you.” The name of the child,
the air of the mother, the tone of her voice, all awakened a train of
recollections in his mind.
“What is your name, my good woman?” asked he.
“Judith Cardenier.”
“And your father’s name?”
“Ah, poor man, Rip Van Winkle was his name, but it’s twenty years
since he went away from home with his gun, and never has been heard of
since,--his dog came home without him; but whether he shot himself,
or was carried away by the Indians, nobody can tell. I was then but a
little girl.”
Rip had but one more question to ask; but he put it with a faltering
voice:
“Where’s your mother?”
Oh, she too had died but a short time since; she broke a blood-vessel in
a fit of passion at a New-England pedler.
There was a drop of comfort, at least, in this intelligence. The honest
man could contain himself no longer. He caught his daughter and her
child in his arms. “I am your father!” cried he-“Young Rip Van Winkle
once-old Rip Van Winkle now--Does nobody know poor Rip Van Winkle!”
All stood amazed, until an old woman, tottering out from among the
crowd, put her hand to her brow, and peering under it in his face for
a moment exclaimed, “sure enough! it is Rip Van Winkle--it is himself.
Welcome home again, old neighbor. Why, where have you been these twenty
long years?”
Rip’s story was soon told, for the whole twenty years had been to him
but as one night. The neighbors stared when they heard it; some were
seen to wink at each other, and put their tongues in their cheeks; and
the self-important man in the cocked hat, who, when the alarm was over,
had returned to the field, screwed down the corners of his mouth, and
shook his head--upon which there was a general shaking of the head
throughout the assemblage.
It was determined, however, to take the opinion of old Peter Vanderdonk,
who was seen slowly advancing up the road. He was a descendant of the
historian of that name, who wrote one of the earliest accounts of the
province. Peter was the most ancient inhabitant of the village, and well
versed in all the wonderful events and traditions of the neighborhood.
He recollected Rip at once, and corroborated his story in the most
satisfactory manner. He assured the company that it was a fact, handed
down from his ancestor, the historian, that the Kaatskill mountains had
always been haunted by strange beings. That it was affirmed that the
great Hendrick Hudson, the first discoverer of the river and country,
kept a kind of vigil there every twenty years, with his crew of the
Half-moon; being permitted in this way to revisit the scenes of his
enterprise, and keep a guardian eye upon the river and the great city
called by his name. That his father had once seen them in their old
Dutch dresses playing at ninepins in the hollow of the mountain; and
that he himself had heard, one summer afternoon, the sound of their
balls, like distant peals of thunder.
To make a long story short, the company broke up, and returned to the
more important concerns of the election. Rip’s daughter took him home to
live with her; she had a snug, well-furnished house, and a stout cheery
farmer for a husband, whom Rip recollected for one of the urchins that
used to climb upon his back. As to Rip’s son and heir, who was the ditto
of himself, seen leaning against the tree, he was employed to work on
the farm; but evinced an hereditary disposition to attend to any thing
else but his business.
Rip now resumed his old walks and habits; he soon found many of his
former cronies, though all rather the worse for the wear and tear of
time; and preferred making friends among the rising generation, with
whom he soon grew into great favor.
Having nothing to do at home, and being arrived at that happy age when a
man can be idle with impunity, he took his place once more on the bench,
at the inn door, and was reverenced as one of the patriarchs of the
village, and a chronicle of the old times “before the war.” It was some
time before he could get into the regular track of gossip, or could be
made to comprehend the strange events that had taken place during his
torpor. How that there had been a revolutionary war--that the country
had thrown off the yoke of old England--and that, instead of being a
subject to his Majesty George the Third, he was now a free citizen
of the United States. Rip, in fact, was no politician; the changes of
states and empires made but little impression on him; but there was
one species of despotism under which he had long groaned, and that
was--petticoat government. Happily, that was at an end; he had got his
neck out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go in and out whenever he
pleased, without dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle. Whenever her
name was mentioned, however, he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders,
and cast up his eyes; which might pass either for an expression of
resignation to his fate, or joy at his deliverance.
He used to tell his story to every stranger that arrived at Mr.
Doolittle’s hotel. He was observed, at first, to vary on some points
every time he told it, which was, doubtless, owing to his having so
recently awaked. It at last settled down precisely to the tale I have
related, and not a man, woman, or child in the neighborhood, but knew it
by heart. Some always pretended to doubt the reality of it, and insisted
that Rip had been out of his head, and that this was one point on which
he always remained flighty. The old Dutch inhabitants, however, almost
universally gave it full credit. Even to this day, they never hear a
thunder-storm of a summer afternoon about the Kaatskill, but they say
Hendrick Hudson and his crew are at their game of ninepins; and it is
a common wish of all henpecked husbands in the neighborhood, when life
hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught out
of Rip Van Winkle’s flagon.
NOTE.
The foregoing tale, one would suspect, had been suggested to Mr.
Knickerbocker by a little German superstition about the Emperor
Frederick der Rothbart and the Kypphauser mountain; the subjoined note,
however, which had appended to the tale, shows that it is an absolute
fact, narrated with his usual fidelity.
“The story of Rip Van Winkle may seem incredible to many, but
nevertheless I give it my full belief, for I know the vicinity of our
old Dutch settlements to have been very subject to marvellous events and
appearances. Indeed, I have heard many stranger stories than this, in
the villages along the Hudson; all of which were too well authenticated
to admit of a doubt. I have even talked with Rip Van Winkle myself,
who, when last I saw him, was a very venerable old man, and so
perfectly rational and consistent on every other point, that I think no
conscientious person could refuse to take this into the bargain; nay, I
have seen a certificate on the subject taken before a country justice,
and signed with cross, in the justice’s own handwriting. The story,
therefore, is beyond the possibility of doubt.
“D. K.”
POSTSCRIPT.
The following are travelling notes from a memorandum-book of Mr.
Knickerbocker:
The Kaatsberg or Catskill mountains have always been a region full of
fable. The Indians considered them the abode of spirits, who influenced
the weather, spreading sunshine or clouds over the landscape, and
sending good or bad hunting seasons. They were ruled by an old squaw
spirit, said to be their mother. She dwelt on the highest peak of the
Catskills, and had charge of the doors of day and night to open and shut
them at the proper hour. She hung up the new moons in the skies, and
cut up the old ones into stars. In times of drought, if properly
propitiated, she would spin light summer clouds out of cobwebs and
morning dew, and send them off from the crest of the mountain, flake
after flake, like flakes of carded cotton, to float in the air; until,
dissolved by the heat of the sun, they would fall in gentle showers,
causing the grass to spring, the fruits to ripen, and the corn to grow
an inch an hour. If displeased, however, she would brew up clouds black
as ink, sitting in the midst of them like a bottle-bellied spider in the
midst of its web; and when these clouds broke, woe betide the valleys!
In old times, say the Indian traditions, there was a kind of Manitou or
Spirit, who kept about the wildest recesses of the Catskill mountains,
and took a mischievous pleasure in wreaking all kind of evils and
vexations upon the red men. Sometimes he would assume the form of a
bear, a panther, or a deer, lead the bewildered hunter a weary chase
through tangled forests and among ragged rocks, and then spring off with
a loud ho! ho! leaving him aghast on the brink of a beetling precipice
or raging torrent.
The favorite abode of this Manitou is still shown. It is a rock or cliff
on the loneliest port of the mountains, and, from the flowering vines
which clamber about it, and the wild flowers which abound in its
neighborhood, is known by the name of the Garden Rock. Near the foot of
it is a small lake, the haunt of the solitary bittern, with water-snakes
basking in the sun on the leaves of the pond-lilies which lie on the
surface. This place was held in great awe by the Indians, insomuch that
the boldest hunter would not pursue his game within its precincts. Once
upon a time, however, a hunter who had lost his way penetrated to the
Garden Rock, where he beheld a number of gourds placed in the crotches
of trees. One of these he seized and made off with it, but in the hurry
of his retreat he let it fall among the rocks, when a great stream
gushed forth, which washed him away and swept him down precipices, where
he was dished to pieces, and the stream made its way to the Hudson, and
continues to flow to the present day, being the identical stream known
by the name of the Kaaterskill.
ENGLISH WRITERS ON AMERICA.
Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation, rousting herself
like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks;
methinks I see her as an eagle, mewing her mighty youth, and kindling
her endazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam.--MILTON ON THE LIBERTY OF
THE PRESS.
IT is with feelings of deep regret that I observe the literary animosity
daily growing up between England and America. Great curiosity has been
awakened of late with respect to the United States, and the London press
has teemed with volumes of travels through the Republic; but they seem
intended to diffuse error rather than knowledge; and so successful have
they been, that, notwithstanding the constant intercourse between
the nations, there is no people concerning whom the great mass of the
British public have less pure information, or entertain more numerous
prejudices.
English travellers are the best and the worst in the world. Where no
motives of pride or interest intervene, none can equal them for
profound and philosophical views of society, or faithful and graphical
description of external objects; but when either the interest or
reputation of their own country comes in collision with that of another,
they go to the opposite extreme, and forget their usual probity and
candor, in the indulgence of splenetic remark, and an illiberal spirit
of ridicule.
Hence, their travels are more honest and accurate, the more remote the
country described. I would place implicit confidence in an Englishman’s
description of the regions beyond the cataracts of the Nile; of unknown
islands in the Yellow Sea; of the interior of India; or of any other
tract which other travellers might be apt to picture out with the
illusions of their fancies. But I would cautiously receive his account
of his immediate neighbors, and of those nations with which he is in
habits of most frequent intercourse. However I might be disposed to
trust his probity, I dare not trust his prejudices.
It has also been the peculiar lot of our country to be visited by the
worst kind of English travellers. While men of philosophical spirit and
cultivated minds have been sent from England to ransack the poles, to
penetrate the deserts, and to study the manners and customs of barbarous
nations, with which she can have no permanent intercourse of profit or
pleasure; it has been left to the broken-down tradesman, the scheming
adventurer, the wandering mechanic, the Manchester and Birmingham agent,
to be her oracles respecting America. From such sources she is content
to receive her information respecting a country in a singular state of
moral and physical development; a country in which one of the greatest
political experiments in the history of the world is now performing; and
which presents the most profound and momentous studies to the statesman
and the philosopher.
That such men should give prejudicial accounts of America, is not a
matter of surprise. The themes it offers for contemplation, are too vast
and elevated for their capacities. The national character is yet in a
state of fermentation: it may have its frothiness and sediment, but
its ingredients are sound and wholesome; it has already given proofs of
powerful and generous qualities; and the whole promises to settle
down into something substantially excellent. But the causes which are
operating to strengthen and ennoble it, and its daily indications of
admirable properties, are all lost upon these purblind observers; who
are only affected by the little asperities incident to its present
situation. They are capable of judging only of the surface of things;
of those matters which come in contact with their private interests and
personal gratifications. They miss some of the snug conveniences
and petty comforts which belong to an old, highly-finished, and
over-populous state of society; where the ranks of useful labor are
crowded, and many earn a painful and servile subsistence, by studying
the very caprices of appetite and self-indulgence. These minor comforts,
however, are all-important in the estimation of narrow minds; which
either do not perceive, or will not acknowledge, that they are more than
counterbalanced among us, by great and generally diffused blessings.
They may, perhaps, have been disappointed in some unreasonable
expectation of sudden gain. They may have pictured America to themselves
an El Dorado, where gold and silver abounded, and the natives were
lacking in sagacity, and where they were to become strangely and
suddenly rich, in some unforeseen but easy manner. The same weakness
of mind that indulges absurd expectations, produces petulance in
disappointment. Such persons become embittered against the country on
finding that there, as everywhere else, a man must sow before he can
reap; must win wealth by industry and talent; and must contend with the
common difficulties of nature, and the shrewdness of an intelligent and
enterprising people.
Perhaps, through mistaken or ill-directed hospitality, or from the
prompt disposition to cheer and countenance the stranger, prevalent
among my countrymen, they may have been treated with unwonted respect
in America; and, having been accustomed all their lives to consider
themselves below the surface of good society, and brought up in a
servile feeling of inferiority, they become arrogant, on the common
boon of civility; they attribute to the lowliness of others their
own elevation; and underrate a society where there are no artificial
distinctions, and where, by any chance, such individuals as themselves
can rise to consequence.
One would suppose, however, that information coming from such sources,
on a subject where the truth is so desirable, would be received with
caution by the censors of the press; that the motives of these men,
their veracity, their opportunities of inquiry and observation, and
their capacities for judging correctly, would be rigorously scrutinized,
before their evidence was admitted, in such sweeping extent, against a
kindred nation. The very reverse, however, is the case, and it furnishes
a striking instance of human inconsistency. Nothing can surpass the
vigilance with which English critics will examine the credibility of
the traveller who publishes an account of some distant and comparatively
unimportant country. How warily will they compare the measurements of a
pyramid, or the description of a ruin; and how sternly will they censure
any inaccuracy in these contributions of merely curious knowledge, while
they will receive, with eagerness and unhesitating faith, the gross
misrepresentations of coarse and obscure writers, concerning a country
with which their own is placed in the most important and delicate
relations. Nay, they will even make these apocryphal volumes text-books,
on which to enlarge, with a zeal and an ability worthy of a more
generous cause.
I shall not, however, dwell on this irksome and hackneyed topic; nor
should I have adverted to it, but for the undue interest apparently
taken in it by my countrymen, and certain injurious effects which I
apprehend it might produce upon the national feeling. We attach too much
consequence to these attacks. They cannot do us any essential injury.
The tissue of misrepresentations attempted to be woven round us, are
like cobwebs woven round the limbs of an infant giant. Our country
continually outgrows them. One falsehood after another falls off of
itself. We have but to live on, and every day we live a whole volume of
refutation.
All the writers of England united, if we could for a moment suppose
their great minds stooping to so unworthy a combination, could not
conceal our rapidly growing importance and matchless prosperity. They
could not conceal that these are owing, not merely to physical and
local, but also to moral causes--to the political liberty, the general
diffusion of knowledge, the prevalence of sound, moral, and religious
principles, which give force and sustained energy to the character of
a people, and which in fact, have been the acknowledged and wonderful
supporters of their own national power and glory.
But why are we so exquisitely alive to the aspersions of England? Why
do we suffer ourselves to be so affected by the contumely she has
endeavored to cast upon us? It is not in the opinion of England alone
that honor lives, and reputation has its being. The world at large is
the arbiter of a nation’s fame: with its thousand eyes it witnesses a
nation’s deeds, and from their collective testimony is national glory or
national disgrace established.
For ourselves, therefore, it is comparatively of but little importance
whether England does us justice or not; it is, perhaps, of far more
importance to herself. She is instilling anger and resentment into the
bosom of a youthful nation, to grow with its growth, and strengthen
with its strength. If in America, as some of her writers are laboring
to convince her, she is hereafter to find an invidious rival, and a
gigantic foe, she may thank those very writers for having provoked
rivalship, and irritated hostility. Every one knows the all-pervading
influence of literature at the present day, and how much the opinions
and passions of mankind are under its control. The mere contests of the
sword are temporary; their wounds are but in the flesh, and it is the
pride of the generous to forgive and forget them; but the slanders of
the pen pierce to the heart; they rankle longest in the noblest spirits;
they dwell ever present in the mind, and render it morbidly sensitive
to the most trifling collision. It is but seldom that any one overt act
produces hostilities between two nations; there exists, most commonly, a
previous jealousy and ill-will, a predisposition to take offence. Trace
these to their cause, and how often will they be found to originate in
the mischievous effusions of mercenary writers, who, secure in their
closets, and for ignominious bread, concoct and circulate the venom that
is to inflame the generous and the brave.
I am not laying too much stress upon this point; for it applies most
emphatically to our particular case. Over no nation does the press
hold a more absolute control than over the people of America; for the
universal education of the poorest classes makes every individual a
reader. There is nothing published in England on the subject of our
country, that does not circulate through every part of it. There is not
a calumny dropt from an English pen, nor an unworthy sarcasm uttered by
an English statesman, that does not go to blight good-will, and add to
the mass of latent resentment. Possessing, then, as England does,
the fountain-head whence the literature of the language flows, how
completely is it in her power, and how truly is it her duty, to make it
the medium of amiable and magnanimous feeling--a stream where the two
nations might meet together and drink in peace and kindness. Should she,
however, persist in turning it to waters of bitterness, the time may
come when she may repent her folly. The present friendship of America
may be of but little moment to her; but the future destinies of that
country do not admit of a doubt; over those of England, there lower
some shadows of uncertainty. Should, then, a day of gloom arrive--should
those reverses overtake her, from which the proudest empires have
not been exempt--she may look back with regret at her infatuation, in
repulsing from her side a nation she might have grappled to her bosom,
and thus destroying her only chance for real friendship beyond the
boundaries of her own dominions.
There is a general impression in England, that the people of the United
States are inimical to the parent country. It is one of the errors
which have been diligently propagated by designing writers. There is,
doubtless, considerable political hostility, and a general soreness at
the illiberality of the English press; but, collectively speaking, the
prepossessions of the people are strongly in favor of England. Indeed,
at one time they amounted, in many parts of the Union, to an absurd
degree of bigotry. The bare name of Englishman was a passport to
the confidence and hospitality of every family, and too often gave a
transient currency to the worthless and the ungrateful. Throughout the
country, there was something of enthusiasm connected with the idea
of England. We looked to it with a hallowed feeling of tenderness and
veneration, as the land of our forefathers--the august repository of the
monuments and antiquities of our race--the birthplace and mausoleum of
the sages and heroes of our paternal history. After our own country,
there was none in whose glory we more delighted--none whose good opinion
we were more anxious to possess--none toward which our hearts yearned
with such throbbings of warm consanguinity. Even during the late war,
whenever there was the least opportunity for kind feelings to spring
forth, it was the delight of the generous spirits of our country to show
that, in the midst of hostilities, they still kept alive the sparks of
future friendship.
Is all this to be at an end? Is this golden band of kindred sympathies,
so rare between nations, to be broken forever?--Perhaps it is for the
best--it may dispel an allusion which might have kept us in mental
vassalage; which might have interfered occasionally with our true
interests, and prevented the growth of proper national pride. But it
is hard to give up the kindred tie! and there are feelings dearer than
interest--closer to the heart than pride--that will still make us cast
back a look of regret as we wander farther and farther from the paternal
roof, and lament the waywardness of the parent that would repel the
affections of the child.
Short-sighted and injudicious, however, as the conduct or England may be
in this system of aspersion, recrimination on our part would be equally
ill-judged. I speak not of a prompt and spirited vindication of our
country, or the keenest castigation of her slanderers--but I allude to
a disposition to retaliate in kind, to retort sarcasm and inspire
prejudice, which seems to be spreading widely among our writers. Let us
guard particularly against such a temper; for it would double the evil,
instead of redressing the wrong. Nothing is so easy and inviting as
the retort of abuse and sarcasm; but it is a paltry and an unprofitable
contest. It is the alternative of a morbid mind, fretted into petulance,
rather than warmed into indignation. If England is willing to permit the
mean jealousies of trade, or the rancorous animosities of politics, to
deprave the integrity of her press, and poison the fountain of public
opinion, let us beware of her example. She may deem it her interest
to diffuse error, and engender antipathy, for the purpose of checking
emigration: we have no purpose of the kind to serve. Neither have we
any spirit of national jealousy to gratify; for as yet, in all our
rivalships with England, we are the rising and the gaining party.
There can be no end to answer, therefore, but the gratification of
resentment--a mere spirit of retaliation--and even that is impotent. Our
retorts are never republished in England; they fall short, therefore,
of their aim; but they foster a querulous and peevish temper among
our writers; they sour the sweet flow of our early literature, and
sow thorns and brambles among its blossoms. What is still worse, they
circulate through our own country, and, as far as they have effect,
excite virulent national prejudices. This last is the evil most
especially to be deprecated. Governed, as we are, entirely by public
opinion, the utmost care should be taken to preserve the purity of
the public mind. Knowledge is power, and truth is knowledge; whoever,
therefore, knowingly propagates a prejudice, wilfully saps the
foundation of his country’s strength.
The members of a republic, above all other men, should be candid and
dispassionate. They are, individually, portions of the sovereign mind
and sovereign will, and should be enabled to come to all questions of
national concern with calm and unbiassed judgments. From the peculiar
nature of our relations with England, we must have more frequent
questions of a difficult and delicate character with her, than with
any other nation,--questions that affect the most acute and excitable
feelings: and as, in the adjustment of these, our national measures
must ultimately be determined by popular sentiment, we cannot be
too anxiously attentive to purify it from all latent passion or
prepossession.
Opening, too, as we do, an asylum for strangers every portion of the
earth, we should receive all with impartiality. It should be our pride
to exhibit an example of one nation, at least, destitute of national
antipathies, and exercising, not merely the overt acts of hospitality,
but those more rare and noble courtesies which spring from liberality of
opinion.
What have we to do with national prejudices? They are the inveterate
diseases of old countries, contracted in rude and ignorant ages, when
nations knew but little of each other, and looked beyond their own
boundaries with distrust and hostility. We, on the contrary, have sprung
into national existence in an enlightened and philosophic age, when the
different parts of the habitable world, and the various branches of the
human family, have been indefatigably studied and made known to each
other; and we forego the advantages of our birth, if we do not shake off
the national prejudices, as we would the local superstitions, of the old
world.
But above all let us not be influenced by any angry feelings, so far
as to shut our eyes to the perception of what is really excellent and
amiable in the English character. We are a young people, necessarily an
imitative one, and must take our examples and models, in a great degree,
from the existing nations of Europe. There is no country more worthy of
our study than England. The spirit of her constitution is most analogous
to ours. The manners of her people--their intellectual activity--their
freedom of opinion--their habits of thinking on those subjects which
concern the dearest interests and most sacred charities of private
life, are all congenial to the American character; and, in fact, are all
intrinsically excellent: for it is in the moral feeling of the people
that the deep foundations of British prosperity are laid; and however
the superstructure may be timeworn, or overrun by abuses, there must be
something solid in the basis, admirable in the materials, and stable in
the structure of an edifice that so long has towered unshaken amidst the
tempests of the world.
Let it be the pride of our writers, therefore, discarding all feelings
of irritation, and disdaining to retaliate the illiberality of British
authors, to speak of the English nation without prejudice, and with
determined candor. While they rebuke the indiscriminating bigotry with
which some of our countrymen admire and imitate every thing English,
merely because it is English, let them frankly point out what is
really worthy of approbation. We may thus place England before us as
a perpetual volume of reference, wherein are recorded sound deductions
from ages of experience; and while we avoid the errors and absurdities
which may have crept into the page, we may draw thence golden maxims of
practical wisdom, wherewith to strengthen and to embellish our national
character.
RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND.
Oh! friendly to the best pursuits of man,
Friendly to thought, to virtue and to peace,
Domestic life in rural pleasures past!
COWPER.
THE stranger who would form a correct opinion of the English character,
must not confine his observations to the metropolis. He must go forth
into the country; he must sojourn in villages and hamlets; he must visit
castles, villas, farm-houses, cottages; he must wander through parks
and gardens; along hedges and green lanes; he must loiter about country
churches; attend wakes and fairs, and other rural festivals; and cope
with the people in all their conditions, and all their habits and
humors.
In some countries, the large cities absorb the wealth and fashion of
the nation; they are the only fixed abodes of elegant and intelligent
society, and the country is inhabited almost entirely by boorish
peasantry. In England, on the contrary, the metropolis is a mere
gathering-place, or general rendezvous, of the polite classes, where
they devote a small portion of the year to a hurry of gayety and
dissipation, and, having indulged this kind of carnival, return again to
the apparently more congenial habits of rural life. The various orders
of society are therefore diffused over the whole surface of the kingdom,
and the more retired neighborhoods afford specimens of the different
ranks.
The English, in fact, are strongly gifted with the rural feeling. They
possess a quick sensibility to the beauties of nature, and a keen relish
for the pleasures and employments of the country. This passion seems
inherent in them. Even the inhabitants of cities, born and brought up
among brick walls and bustling streets, enter with facility into rural
habits, and evince a tact for rural occupation. The merchant has his
snug retreat in the vicinity of the metropolis, where he often displays
as much pride and zeal in the cultivation of his flower-garden, and the
maturing of his fruits, as he does in the conduct of his business,
and the success of a commercial enterprise. Even those less fortunate
individuals, who are doomed to pass their lives in the midst of din and
traffic, contrive to have something that shall remind them of the green
aspect of nature. In the most dark and dingy quarters of the city, the
drawing-room window resembles frequently a bank of flowers; every spot
capable of vegetation has its grass-plot and flower-bed; and every
square its mimic park, laid out with picturesque taste, and gleaming
with refreshing verdure.
Those who see the Englishman only in town, are apt to form an
unfavorable opinion of his social character. He is either absorbed in
business, or distracted by the thousand engagements that dissipate time,
thought, and feeling, in this huge metropolis. He has, therefore, too
commonly, a look of hurry and abstraction. Wherever he happens to be, he
is on the point of going somewhere else; at the moment he is talking
on one subject, his mind is wandering to another; and while paying a
friendly visit, he is calculating how he shall economize time so as to
pay the other visits allotted to the morning. An immense metropolis,
like London, is calculated to make men selfish and uninteresting.
In their casual and transient meetings, they can but deal briefly in
commonplaces. They present but the cold superfices of character--its
rich and genial qualities have no time to be warmed into a flow.
It is in the country that the Englishman gives scope to his natural
feelings. He breaks loose gladly from the cold formalities and negative
civilities of town; throws off his habits of shy reserve, and becomes
joyous and free-hearted. He manages to collect round him all the
conveniences and elegancies of polite life, and to banish its
restraints. His country-seat abounds with every requisite, either for
studious retirement, tasteful gratification, or rural exercise. Books,
paintings, music, horses, dogs, and sporting implements of all kinds,
are at hand. He puts no constraint, either upon his guests or himself,
but, in the true spirit of hospitality, provides the means of enjoyment,
and leaves every one to partake according to his inclination.
The taste of the English in the cultivation of land, and in what is
called landscape gardening, is unrivalled. They have studied Nature
intently, and discovered an exquisite sense of her beautiful forms and
harmonious combinations. Those charms which, in other countries, she
lavishes in wild solitudes, are here assembled round the haunts of
domestic life. They seem to have caught her coy and furtive graces, and
spread them, like witchery, about their rural abodes.
Nothing can be more imposing than the magnificence of English park
scenery. Vast lawns that extend like sheets of vivid green, with here
and there clumps of gigantic trees, heaping up rich piles of foliage.
The solemn pomp of groves and woodland glades, with the deer trooping in
silent herds across them; the hare, bounding away to the covert; or the
pheasant, suddenly bursting upon the wing. The brook, taught to wind in
natural meanderings, or expand into a glassy lake--the sequestered pool,
reflecting the quivering trees, with the yellow leaf sleeping on its
bosom, and the trout roaming fearlessly about its limpid waters; while
some rustic temple, or sylvan statue, grown green and dank with age,
gives an air of classic sanctity to the seclusion.
These are but a few of the features of park scenery; but what most
delights me, is the creative talent with which the English decorate the
unostentatious abodes of middle life. The rudest habitation, the most
unpromising and scanty portion of land, in the hands of an Englishman of
taste, becomes a little paradise. With a nicely discriminating eye,
he seizes at once upon its capabilities, and pictures in his mind the
future landscape. The sterile spot grows into loveliness under his hand;
and yet the operations of art which produce the effect are scarcely to
be perceived. The cherishing and training of some trees; the cautious
pruning of others; the nice distribution of flowers and plants of tender
and graceful foliage; the introduction of a green slope of velvet turf;
the partial opening to a peep of blue distance, or silver gleam of
water;-all these are managed with a delicate tact, a pervading yet quiet
assiduity, like the magic touchings with which a painter finishes up a
favorite picture.
The residence of people of fortune and refinement in the country, has
diffused a degree of taste and elegance in rural economy that descends
to the lowest class. The very laborer, with his thatched cottage and
narrow slip of ground, attends to their embellishment. The trim hedge,
the grass-plot before the door, the little flower-bed bordered with snug
box, the woodbine trained up against the wall, and hanging its blossoms
about the lattice; the pot of flowers in the window; the holly,
providently planted about the house, to cheat winter of its dreariness,
and to throw in a semblance of green summer to cheer the fireside; all
these bespeak the influence of taste, flowing down from high sources,
and pervading the lowest levels of the public mind. If ever Love, as
poets sing, delights to visit a cottage, it must be the cottage of an
English peasant.
The fondness for rural life among the higher classes of the English has
had a great and salutary effect upon the national character. I do not
know a finer race of men than the English gentlemen. Instead of the
softness and effeminacy which characterize the men of rank in most
countries, they exhibit a union of elegance and strength, a robustness
of frame and freshness of complexion, which I am inclined to attribute
to their living so much in the open air, and pursuing so eagerly the
invigorating recreations of the country. The hardy exercises produce
also a healthful tone of mind and spirits, and a manliness and
simplicity of manners, which even the follies and dissipations of the
town cannot easily pervert, and can never entirely destroy. In the
country, too, the different orders of society seem to approach more
freely, to be more disposed to blend and operate favorably upon each
other. The distinctions between them do not appear to be so marked
and impassable as in the cities. The manner in which property has been
distributed into small estates and farms has established a regular
gradation from the noblemen, through the classes of gentry, small landed
proprietors, and substantial farmers, down to the laboring peasantry;
and while it has thus banded the extremes of society together, has
infused into each intermediate rank a spirit of independence. This, it
must be confessed, is not so universally the case at present as it was
formerly; the larger estates having, in late years of distress, absorbed
the smaller, and, in some parts of the country, almost annihilated the
sturdy race of small farmers. These, however, I believe, are but casual
breaks in the general system I have mentioned.
In rural occupation, there is nothing mean and debasing. It leads a man
forth among scenes of natural grandeur and beauty; it leaves him to the
workings of his own mind, operated upon by the purest and most elevating
of external influences. Such a man may be simple and rough, but he
cannot be vulgar. The man of refinement, therefore, finds nothing
revolting in an intercourse with the lower orders in rural life, as he
does when he casually mingles with the lower orders of cities. He lays
aside his distance and reserve, and is glad to waive the distinctions of
rank, and to enter into the honest, heartfelt enjoyments of common life.
Indeed, the very amusements of the country bring, men more and more
together; and the sound hound and horn blend all feelings into harmony.
I believe this is one great reason why the nobility and gentry are more
popular among the inferior orders in England than they are in any other
country; and why the latter have endured so many excessive pressures and
extremities, without repining more generally at the unequal distribution
of fortune and privilege.
To this mingling of cultivated and rustic society may also be attributed
the rural feeling that runs through British literature; the frequent
use of illustrations from rural life; those incomparable descriptions of
Nature, that abound in the British poets--that have continued down from
“The Flower and the Leaf,” of Chaucer, and have brought into our closets
all the freshness and fragrance of the dewy landscape. The pastoral
writers of other countries appear as if they had paid Nature an
occasional visit, and become acquainted with her general charms; but the
British poets have lived and revelled with her--they have wooed her in
her most secret haunts--they have watched her minutest caprices. A
spray could not tremble in the breeze--a leaf could not rustle to the
ground--a diamond drop could not patter in the stream--a fragrance could
not exhale from the humble violet, nor a daisy unfold its crimson
tints to the morning, but it has been noticed by these impassioned and
delicate observers, and wrought up into some beautiful morality.
The effect of this devotion of elegant minds to rural occupations has
been wonderful on the face of the country. A great part of the island
is rather level, and would be monotonous, were it not for the charms
of culture; but it is studded and gemmed, as it were, with castles and
palaces, and embroidered with parks and gardens. It does not abound in
grand and sublime prospects, but rather in little home scenes of rural
repose and sheltered quiet. Every antique farm-house and moss-grown
cottage is a picture; and as the roads are continually winding, and
the view is shut in by groves and hedges, the eye is delighted by a
continual succession of small landscapes of captivating loveliness.
The great charm, however, of English scenery, is the moral feeling that
seems to pervade it. It is associated in the mind with ideas of order,
of quiet, of sober well-established principles, of hoary usage and
reverend custom. Every thing seems to be the growth of ages of regular
and peaceful existence. The old church of remote architecture, with its
low, massive portal; its Gothic tower; its windows rich with tracery
and painted glass, in scrupulous preservation; its stately monuments of
warriors and worthies of the olden time, ancestors of the present lords
of the soil; its tombstones, recording successive generations of sturdy
yeomanry, whose progeny still plough the same fields, and kneel at the
same altar;--the parsonage, a quaint irregular pile, partly
antiquated, but repaired and altered in the tastes of various ages and
occupants;--the stile and foot-path leading from the churchyard, across
pleasant fields, and along shady hedgerows, according to an immemorial
right of way;--the neighboring village, with its venerable cottages,
its public green sheltered by trees, under which the forefathers of the
present race have sported;--the antique family mansion, standing apart
in some little rural domain, but looking down with a protecting air on
the surrounding scene; all these common features of English landscape
evince a calm and settled security, a hereditary transmission of
homebred virtues and local attachments, that speak deeply and touchingly
for the moral character of the nation.
It is a pleasing sight, of a Sunday morning, when the bell is sending
its sober melody across the quiet fields, to behold the peasantry in
their best finery, with ruddy faces, and modest cheerfulness, thronging
tranquilly along the green lanes to church; but it is still more
pleasing to see them in the evenings, gathering about their cottage
doors, and appearing to exult in the humble comforts and embellishments
which their own hands have spread around them.
It is this sweet home-feeling, this settled repose of affection in the
domestic scene, that is, after all, the parent of the steadiest virtues
and purest enjoyments; and I cannot close these desultory remarks
better, than by quoting the words of a modern English poet, who has
depicted it with remarkable felicity:
Through each gradation, from the castled hall,
The city dome, the villa crowned with shade,
But chief from modest mansions numberless,
In town or hamlet, shelt’ring middle life,
Down to the cottaged vale, and straw-roof’d shed;
This western isle has long been famed for scenes
Where bliss domestic finds a dwelling-place;
Domestic bliss, that, like a harmless dove,
(Honor and sweet endearment keeping guard,)
Can centre in a little quiet nest
All that desire would fly for through the earth;
That can, the world eluding, be itself
A world enjoyed; that wants no witnesses
But its own sharers, and approving Heaven;
That, like a flower deep hid in rock cleft,
Smiles, though ‘t is looking only at the sky.*
* From a poem on the death of the Princess Charlotte, by the
Reverend Rann Kennedy, A.M.
THE BROKEN HEART.
I never heard
Of any true affection, but ‘t was nipt
With care, that, like the caterpillar, eats
The leaves of the spring’s sweetest book, the rose.
MIDDLETON.
IT is a common practice with those who have outlived the susceptibility
of early feeling, or have been brought up in the gay heartlessness of
dissipated life, to laugh at all love stories, and to treat the tales
of romantic passion as mere fictions of novelists and poets. My
observations on human nature have induced me to think otherwise. They
have convinced me that, however the surface of the character may be
chilled and frozen by the cares of the world, or cultivated into mere
smiles by the arts of society, still there are dormant fires lurking
in the depths of the coldest bosom, which, when once enkindled, become
impetuous, and are sometimes desolating in their effects. Indeed, I am
a true believer in the blind deity, and go to the full extent of his
doctrines. Shall I confess it?--I believe in broken hearts, and the
possibility of dying of disappointed love! I do not, however, consider
it a malady often fatal to my own sex; but I firmly believe that it
withers down many a lovely woman into an early grave.
Man is the creature of interest and ambition. His nature leads him forth
into the struggle and bustle of the world. Love is but the embellishment
of his early life, or a song piped in the intervals of the acts. He
seeks for fame, for fortune for space in the world’s thought, and
dominion over his fellow-men. But a woman’s whole life is a history of
the affections. The heart is her world; it is there her ambition strives
for empire--it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She
sends forth her sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole soul in
the traffic of affection; and if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless--for
it is a bankruptcy of the heart.
To a man, the disappointment of love may occasion some bitter pangs;
it wounds some feelings of tenderness--it blasts some prospects of
felicity; but he is an active being--he may dissipate his thoughts in
the whirl of varied occupation, or may plunge into the tide of pleasure;
or, if the scene of disappointment be too full of painful associations,
he can shift his abode at will, and taking, as it were, the wings of the
morning, can “fly to the uttermost parts of the earth, and be at rest.”
But woman’s is comparatively a fixed, a secluded, and meditative life.
She is more the companion of her own thoughts and feelings; and if they
are turned to ministers of sorrow, where shall she look for consolation?
Her lot is to be wooed and won; and if unhappy in her love, her heart
is like some fortress that has been captured, and sacked, and abandoned,
and left desolate.
How many bright eyes grow dim--how many soft cheeks grow pale--how many
lovely forms fade away into the tomb, and none can tell the cause that
blighted their loveliness! As the dove will clasp its wings to its side,
and cover and conceal the arrow that is preying on its vitals--so is
it the nature of woman, to hide from the world the pangs of wounded
affection. The love of a delicate female is always shy and silent. Even
when fortunate, she scarcely breathes it to herself; but when otherwise,
she buries it in the recesses of her bosom, and there lets it cower and
brood among the ruins of her peace. With her, the desire of her heart
has failed--the great charm of existence is at an end. She neglects all
the cheerful exercises which gladden the spirits, quicken the pulses,
and send the tide of life in healthful currents through the veins. Her
rest is broken--the sweet refreshment of sleep is poisoned by melancholy
dreams--“dry sorrow drinks her blood,” until her enfeebled frame sinks
under the slightest external injury. Look for her, after a little while,
and you find friendship weeping over her untimely grave, and wondering
that one, who but lately glowed with all the radiance of health and
beauty, should so speedily be brought down to “darkness and the worm.”
You will be told of some wintry chill, some casual indisposition, that
laid her low;--but no one knows of the mental malady which previously
sapped her strength, and made her so easy a prey to the spoiler.
She is like some tender tree, the pride and beauty of the grove;
graceful in its form, bright in its foliage, but with the worm preying
at its heart. We find it suddenly withering, when it should be most
fresh and luxuriant. We see it drooping its branches to the earth, and
shedding leaf by leaf, until, wasted and perished away, it falls even in
the stillness of the forest; and as we muse over the beautiful ruin,
we strive in vain to recollect the blast or thunderbolt that could have
smitten it with decay.
I have seen many instances of women running to waste and self-neglect,
and disappearing gradually from the earth, almost as if they had been
exhaled to heaven; and have repeatedly fancied that I could trace their
deaths through the various declensions of consumption, cold, debility,
languor, melancholy, until I reached the first symptom of disappointed
love. But an instance of the kind was lately told to me; the
circumstances are well known in the country where they happened, and I
shall but give them in the manner in which they were related.
Every one must recollect the tragical story of young E----, the Irish
patriot; it was too touching to be soon forgotten. During the troubles
in Ireland, he was tried, condemned, and executed, on a charge of
treason. His fate made a deep impression on public sympathy. He was so
young--so intelligent--so generous--so brave--so every thing that we are
apt to like in a young man. His conduct under trial, too, was so lofty
and intrepid. The noble indignation with which he repelled the charge of
treason against his country--the eloquent vindication of his
name--and his pathetic appeal to posterity, in the hopeless hour of
condemnation,--all these entered deeply into every generous bosom, and
even his enemies lamented the stern policy that dictated his execution.
But there was one heart whose anguish it would be impossible to
describe. In happier days and fairer fortunes, he had won the affections
of a beautiful and interesting girl, the daughter of a late celebrated
Irish barrister. She loved him with the disinterested fervor of a
woman’s first and early love. When every worldly maxim arrayed itself
against him; when blasted in fortune, and disgrace and danger
darkened around his name, she loved him the more ardently for his very
sufferings. If, then, his fate could awaken the sympathy even of
his foes, what must have been the agony of her, whose whole soul was
occupied by his image? Let those tell who have had the portals of the
tomb suddenly closed between them and the being they most loved on
earth--who have sat at its threshold, as one shut out in a cold and
lonely world, whence all that was most lovely and loving had departed.
But then the horrors of such a grave!--so frightful, so dishonored!
There was nothing for memory to dwell on that could soothe the pang of
separation--none of those tender, though melancholy circumstances which
endear the parting scene--nothing to melt sorrow into those blessed
tears, sent like the dews of heaven, to revive the heart in the parting
hour of anguish.
To render her widowed situation more desolate, she had incurred her
father’s displeasure by her unfortunate attachment, and was an exile
from the parental roof. But could the sympathy and kind offices of
friends have reached a spirit so shocked and driven in by horror, she
would have experienced no want of consolation, for the Irish are a
people of quick and generous sensibilities. The most delicate
and cherishing attentions were paid her by families of wealth and
distinction. She was led into society, and they tried by all kinds of
occupation and amusement to dissipate her grief, and wean her from the
tragical story of her loves. But it was all in vain. There are some
strokes of calamity that scathe and scorch the soul--which penetrate to
the vital seat of happiness--and blast it, never again to put forth bud
or blossom. She never objected to frequent the haunts of pleasure, but
was as much alone there as in the depths of solitude; walking about in a
sad revery, apparently unconscious of the world around her. She
carried with her an inward woe that mocked at all the blandishments of
friendship, and “heeded not the song of the charmer, charm he never so
wisely.”
The person who told me her story had seen her at a masquerade. There can
be no exhibition of far-gone wretchedness more striking and painful than
to meet it in such a scene. To find it wandering like a spectre, lonely
and joyless, where all around is gay--to see it dressed out in the
trappings of mirth, and looking so wan and woe-begone, as if it had
tried in vain to cheat the poor heart into momentary forgetfulness of
sorrow. After strolling through the splendid rooms and giddy crowd with
an air of utter abstraction, she sat herself down on the steps of an
orchestra, and, looking about for some time with a vacant air, that
showed her insensibility to the garish scene, she began, with the
capriciousness of a sickly heart, to warble a little plaintive air.
She had an exquisite, voice; but on this occasion it was so simple, so
touching, it breathed forth such a soul of wretchedness--that she drew a
crowd, mute and silent, around her and melted every one into tears.
The story of one so true and tender could not but excite great interest
in a country remarkable for enthusiasm. It completely won the heart of
a brave officer, who paid his addresses to her, and thought that one so
true to the dead, could not but prove affectionate to the living. She
declined his attentions, for her thoughts were irrevocably engrossed by
the memory of her former lover. He, however, persisted in his suit. He
solicited not her tenderness, but her esteem. He was assisted by
her conviction of his worth, and her sense of her own destitute and
dependent situation, for she was existing on the kindness of friends.
In a word, he at length succeeded in gaining her hand, though with the
solemn assurance, that her heart was unalterably another’s.
He took her with him to Sicily, hoping that a change of scene might
wear out the remembrance of early woes. She was an amiable and exemplary
wife, and made an effort to be a happy one; but nothing could cure the
silent and devouring melancholy that had entered into her very soul. She
wasted away in a slow, but hopeless decline, and at length sunk into the
grave, the victim of a broken heart.
It was on her that Moore, the distinguished Irish poet, composed the
following lines:
She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps,
And lovers around her are sighing:
But coldly she turns from their gaze, and weeps,
For her heart in his grave is lying.
She sings the wild song of her dear native plains,
Every note which he loved awaking--
Ah! little they think, who delight in her strains,
How the heart of the minstrel is breaking!
He had lived for his love--for his country he died,
They were all that to life had entwined him--
Nor soon shall the tears of his country be dried,
Nor long will his love stay behind him!
Oh! make her a grave where the sunbeams rest,
When they promise a glorious morrow;
They’ll shine o’er her sleep, like a smile from the west,
From her own loved island of sorrow!
THE ART OF BOOK-MAKING.
If that severe doom of Synesius be true,--“It is a greater offence to
steal dead men’s labor, than their clothes,”--what shall become of most
writers? BURTON’S ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY.
I HAVE often wondered at the extreme fecundity of the press, and how
it comes to pass that so many heads, on which Nature seems to have
inflicted the curse of barrenness, should teem with voluminous
productions. As a man travels on, however, in the journey of life, his
objects of wonder daily diminish, and he is continually finding out some
very simple cause for some great matter of marvel. Thus have I chanced,
in my peregrinations about this great metropolis, to blunder upon a
scene which unfolded to me some of the mysteries of the book-making
craft, and at once put an end to my astonishment.
I was one summer’s day loitering through the great saloons of the
British Museum, with that listlessness with which one is apt to saunter
about a museum in warm weather; sometimes lolling over the glass cases
of minerals, sometimes studying the hieroglyphics on an Egyptian mummy,
and some times trying, with nearly equal success, to comprehend the
allegorical paintings on the lofty ceilings. Whilst I was gazing about
in this idle way, my attention was attracted to a distant door, at the
end of a suite of apartments. It was closed, but every now and then it
would open, and some strange-favored being, generally clothed in black,
would steal forth, and glide through the rooms, without noticing any
of the surrounding objects. There was an air of mystery about this that
piqued my languid curiosity, and I determined to attempt the passage of
that strait, and to explore the unknown regions beyond. The door yielded
to my hand, with all that facility with which the portals of enchanted
castles yield to the adventurous knight-errant. I found myself in a
spacious chamber, surrounded with great cases of venerable books. Above
the cases, and just under the cornice, were arranged a great number of
black-looking portraits of ancient authors. About the room were placed
long tables, with stands for reading and writing, at which sat many
pale, studious personages, poring intently over dusty volumes, rummaging
among mouldy manuscripts, and taking copious notes of their contents.
A hushed stillness reigned through this mysterious apartment, excepting
that you might hear the racing of pens over sheets of paper, and
occasionally the deep sigh of one of these sages, as he shifted his
position to turn over the page of an old folio; doubtless arising from
that hollowness and flatulency incident to learned research.
Now and then one of these personages would write something on a small
slip of paper, and ring a bell, whereupon a familiar would appear, take
the paper in profound silence, glide out of the room, and return shortly
loaded with ponderous tomes, upon which the other would fall, tooth
and nail, with famished voracity. I had no longer a doubt that I had
happened upon a body of magi, deeply engaged in the study of occult
sciences. The scene reminded me of an old Arabian tale, of a philosopher
shut up in an enchanted library, in the bosom of a mountain, which
opened only once a year; where he made the spirits of the place bring
him books of all kinds of dark knowledge, so that at the end of the
year, when the magic portal once more swung open on its hinges, he
issued forth so versed in forbidden lore, as to be able to soar above
the heads of the multitude, and to control the powers of Nature.
My curiosity being now fully aroused, I whispered to one of
the familiars, as he was about to leave the room, and begged an
interpretation of the strange scene before me. A few words were
sufficient for the purpose. I found that these mysterious personages,
whom I had mistaken for magi, were principally authors, and were in the
very act of manufacturing books. I was, in fact, in the reading-room of
the great British Library, an immense collection of volumes of all ages
and languages, many of which are now forgotten, and most of which are
seldom read: one of these sequestered pools of obsolete literature to
which modern authors repair, and draw buckets full of classic lore, or
“pure English, undefiled,” wherewith to swell their own scanty rills of
thought.
Being now in possession of the secret, I sat down in a corner, and
watched the process of this book manufactory. I noticed one lean,
bilious-looking wight, who sought none but the most worm-eaten volumes,
printed in black letter. He was evidently constructing some work of
profound erudition, that would be purchased by every man who wished to
be thought learned, placed upon a conspicuous shelf of his library, or
laid open upon his table--but never read. I observed him, now and then,
draw a large fragment of biscuit out of his pocket, and gnaw; whether
it was his dinner, or whether he was endeavoring to keep off that
exhaustion of the stomach, produced by much pondering over dry works, I
leave to harder students than myself to determine.
There was one dapper little gentleman in bright-colored clothes, with a
chirping gossiping expression of countenance, who had all the appearance
of an author on good terms with his bookseller. After considering him
attentively, I recognized in him a diligent getter-up of miscellaneous
works, which bustled off well with the trade. I was curious to see how
he manufactured his wares. He made more stir and show of business than
any of the others; dipping into various books, fluttering over the
leaves of manuscripts, taking a morsel out of one, a morsel out of
another, “line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there
a little.” The contents of his book seemed to be as heterogeneous as
those of the witches’ cauldron in Macbeth. It was here a finger and
there a thumb, toe of frog and blind worm’s sting, with his own gossip
poured in like “baboon’s blood,” to make the medley “slab and good.”
After all, thought I, may not this pilfering disposition be implanted in
authors for wise purposes? may it not be the way in which Providence
has taken care that the seeds of knowledge and wisdom shall be preserved
from age to age, in spite of the inevitable decay of the works in
which they were first produced? We see that Nature has wisely, though
whimsically provided for the conveyance of seeds from clime to clime,
in the maws of certain birds; so that animals, which, in themselves, are
little better than carrion, and apparently the lawless plunderers of the
orchard and the corn-field, are, in fact, Nature’s carriers to disperse
and perpetuate her blessings. In like manner, the beauties and fine
thoughts of ancient and obsolete authors are caught up by these flights
of predatory writers, and cast forth, again to flourish and bear fruit
in a remote and distant tract of time. Many of their works, also,
undergo a kind of metempsychosis, and spring up under new forms. What
was formerly a ponderous history, revives in the shape of a romance--an
old legend changes into a modern play--and a sober philosophical
treatise furnishes the body for a whole series of bouncing and sparkling
essays. Thus it is in the clearing of our American woodlands; where we
burn down a forest of stately pines, a progeny of dwarf oaks start up in
their place; and we never see the prostrate trunk of a tree mouldering
into soil, but it gives birth to a whole tribe of fungi.
Let us not then, lament over the decay and oblivion into which ancient
writers descend; they do but submit to the great law of Nature, which
declares that all sublunary shapes of matter shall be limited in their
duration, but which decrees, also, that their element shall never
perish. Generation after generation, both in animal and vegetable life,
passes away, but the vital principle is transmitted to posterity, and
the species continue to flourish. Thus, also, do authors beget authors,
and having produced a numerous progeny, in a good old age they sleep
with their fathers, that is to say, with the authors who preceded
them--and from whom they had stolen.
Whilst I was indulging in these rambling fancies I had leaned my head
against a pile of reverend folios. Whether it was owing to the soporific
emanations for these works; or to the profound quiet of the room; or
to the lassitude arising from much wandering; or to an unlucky habit
of napping at improper times and places, with which I am grievously
afflicted, so it was, that I fell into a doze. Still, however, my
imagination continued busy, and indeed the same scene continued before
my mind’s eye, only a little changed in some of the details. I dreamt
that the chamber was still decorated with the portraits of ancient
authors, but that the number was increased. The long tables had
disappeared, and, in place of the sage magi, I beheld a ragged,
threadbare throng, such as may be seen plying about the great repository
of cast-off clothes, Monmouth Street. Whenever they seized upon a book,
by one of those incongruities common to dreams, methought it turned into
a garment of foreign or antique fashion, with which they proceeded to
equip themselves. I noticed, however, that no one pretended to clothe
himself from any particular suit, but took a sleeve from one, a cape
from another, a skirt from a third, thus decking himself out piecemeal,
while some of his original rags would peep out from among his borrowed
finery.
There was a portly, rosy, well-fed parson, whom I observed ogling
several mouldy polemical writers through an eyeglass. He soon contrived
to slip on the voluminous mantle of one of the old fathers, and having
purloined the gray beard of another, endeavored to look exceedingly
wise; but the smirking commonplace of his countenance set at naught
all the trappings of wisdom. One sickly-looking gentleman was busied
embroidering a very flimsy garment with gold thread drawn out of several
old court-dresses of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Another had trimmed
himself magnificently from an illuminated manuscript, had stuck a
nosegay in his bosom, culled from “The Paradise of Dainty Devices,” and
having put Sir Philip Sidney’s hat on one side of his head, strutted off
with an exquisite air of vulgar elegance. A third, who was but of puny
dimensions, had bolstered himself out bravely with the spoils from
several obscure tracts of philosophy, so that he had a very imposing
front, but he was lamentably tattered in rear, and I perceived that
he had patched his small-clothes with scraps of parchment from a Latin
author.
There were some well-dressed gentlemen, it is true, who only helped
themselves to a gem or so, which sparkled among their own ornaments,
without eclipsing them. Some, too, seemed to contemplate the costumes
of the old writers, merely to imbibe their principles of taste, and to
catch their air and spirit; but I grieve to say, that too many were apt
to array themselves, from top to toe, in the patchwork manner I have
mentioned. I shall not omit to speak of one genius, in drab breeches
and gaiters, and an Arcadian hat, who had a violent propensity to the
pastoral, but whose rural wanderings had been confined to the classic
haunts of Primrose Hill, and the solitudes of the Regent’s Park. He had
decked himself in wreaths and ribbons from all the old pastoral poets,
and, hanging his head on one side, went about with a fantastical,
lackadaisical air, “babbling about green field.” But the personage that
most struck my attention was a pragmatical old gentleman in clerical
robes, with a remarkably large and square but bald head. He entered the
room wheezing and puffing, elbowed his way through the throng with a
look of sturdy self-confidence, and, having laid hands upon a thick
Greek quarto, clapped it upon his head, and swept majestically away in a
formidable frizzled wig.
In the height of this literary masquerade, a cry suddenly resounded from
every side, of “Thieves! thieves!” I looked, and lo! the portraits about
the walls became animated! The old authors thrust out, first a head,
then a shoulder, from the canvas, looked down curiously for an instant
upon the motley throng, and then descended, with fury in their eyes,
to claim their rifled property. The scene of scampering and hubbub that
ensued baffles all description. The unhappy culprits endeavored in vain
to escape with their plunder. On one side might be seen half a dozen
old monks, stripping a modern professor; on another, there was sad
devastation carried into the ranks of modern dramatic writers. Beaumont
and Fletcher, side by side, raged round the field like Castor and
Pollux, and sturdy Ben Jonson enacted more wonders than when a volunteer
with the army in Flanders. As to the dapper little compiler of farragos
mentioned some time since, he had arrayed himself in as many patches and
colors as harlequin, and there was as fierce a contention of claimants
about him, as about the dead body of Patroclus. I was grieved to
see many men, to whom I had been accustomed to look up with awe and
reverence, fain to steal off with scarce a rag to cover their nakedness.
Just then my eye was caught by the pragmatical old gentleman in the
Greek grizzled wig, who was scrambling away in sore affright with half
a score of authors in full cry after him. They were close upon his
haunches; in a twinkling off went his wig; at every turn some strip of
raiment was peeled away, until in a few moments, from his domineering
pomp, he shrunk into a little, pursy, “chopp’d bald shot,” and made his
exit with only a few tags and rags fluttering at his back.
There was something so ludicrous in the catastrophe of this learned
Theban that I burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, which broke the
whole illusion. The tumult and the scuffle were at an end. The chamber
resumed its usual appearance. The old authors shrunk back into their
picture-frames, and hung in shadowy solemnity along the walls. In short,
I found myself wide awake in my corner, with the whole assemblage of
hookworms gazing at me with astonishment. Nothing of the dream had been
real but my burst of laughter, a sound never before heard in that grave
sanctuary, and so abhorrent to the ears of wisdom, as to electrify the
fraternity.
The librarian now stepped up to me, and demanded whether I had a card of
admission. At first I did not comprehend him, but I soon found that the
library was a kind of literary “preserve,” subject to game-laws, and
that no one must presume to hunt there without special license and
permission. In a word, I stood convicted of being an arrant poacher, and
was glad to make a precipitate retreat, lest I should have a whole pack
of authors let loose upon me.
A ROYAL POET.
Though your body be confined
And soft love a prisoner bound,
Yet the beauty of your mind
Neither check nor chain hath found.
Look out nobly, then, and dare
Even the fetters that you wear.
FLETCHER.
ON a soft sunny morning in the genial month of May I made an excursion
to Windsor Castle. It is a place full of storied and poetical
associations. The very external aspect of the proud old pile is enough
to inspire high thought. It rears its irregular walls and massive
towers, like a mural crown around the brow of a lofty ridge, waves its
royal banner in the clouds, and looks down with a lordly air upon the
surrounding world.
On this morning, the weather was of that voluptuous vernal kind which
calls forth all the latent romance of a man’s temperament, filling his
mind with music, and disposing him to quote poetry and dream of beauty.
In wandering through the magnificent saloons and long echoing galleries
of the castle I passed with indifference by whole rows of portraits
of warriors and statesmen, but lingered in the chamber where hang the
likenesses of the beauties which graced the gay court of Charles
the Second; and as I gazed upon them, depicted with amorous,
half-dishevelled tresses, and the sleepy eye of love, I blessed the
pencil of Sir Peter Lely, which had thus enabled me to bask in the
reflected rays of beauty. In traversing also the “large green courts,”
with sunshine beaming on the gray walls and glancing along the velvet
turf, my mind was engrossed with the image of the tender, the gallant,
but hapless Surrey, and his account of his loiterings about them in his
stripling days, when enamoured of the Lady Geraldine--
“With eyes cast up unto the maiden’s tower,
With easie sighs, such as men draw in love.”
In this mood of mere poetical susceptibility, I visited the ancient keep
of the castle, where James the First of Scotland, the pride and theme of
Scottish poets and historians, was for many years of his youth detained
a prisoner of state. It is a large gray tower, that has stood the brunt
of ages, and is still in good preservation. It stands on a mound which
elevates it above the other parts of the castle, and a great flight of
steps leads to the interior. In the armory, a Gothic hall furnished with
weapons of various kinds and ages, I was shown a coat of armor hanging
against the wall, which had once belonged to James. Hence I
was conducted up a staircase to a suite of apartments, of faded
magnificence, hung with storied tapestry, which formed his prison, and
the scene of that passionate and fanciful amour, which has woven into
the web of his story the magical hues of poetry and fiction.
The whole history of this amiable but unfortunate prince is highly
romantic. At the tender age of eleven, he was sent from home by his
father, Robert III., and destined for the French court, to be reared
under the eye of the French monarch, secure from the treachery and
danger that surrounded the royal house of Scotland. It was his mishap,
in the course of his voyage, to fall into the hands of the English,
and he was detained prisoner by Henry IV., notwithstanding that a truce
existed between the two countries.
The intelligence of his capture, coming in the train of many sorrows and
disasters, proved fatal to his unhappy father. “The news,” we are told,
“was brought to him while at supper, and did so overwhelm him with grief
that he was almost ready to give up the ghost into the hands of the
servants that attended him. But being carried to his bedchamber, he
abstained from all food, and in three days died of hunger and grief at
Rothesay.” *
* Buchanan.
James was detained in captivity above eighteen years; but, though
deprived of personal liberty, he was treated with the respect due to
his rank. Care was taken to instruct him in all the branches of useful
knowledge cultivated at that period, and to give him those mental and
personal accomplishments deemed proper for a prince. Perhaps in this
respect his imprisonment was an advantage, as it enabled him to apply
himself the more exclusively to his improvement, and quietly to imbibe
that rich fund of knowledge and to cherish those elegant tastes which
have given such a lustre to his memory. The picture drawn of him in
early life by the Scottish historians is highly captivating, and seems
rather the description of a hero of romance than of a character in real
history. He was well learnt, we are told, “to fight with the sword,
to joust, to tourney, to wrestle, to sing and dance; he was an expert
mediciner, right crafty in playing both of lute and harp, and sundry
other instruments of music, and was expert in grammar, oratory, and
poetry.” *
* Ballenden’s translation of Hector Boyce.
With this combination of manly and delicate accomplishments, fitting him
to shine both in active and elegant life, and calculated to give him an
intense relish for joyous existence, it must have been a severe trial,
in an age of bustle and chivalry, to pass the spring-time of his years
in monotonous captivity. It was the good fortune of James, however, to
be gifted with a powerful poetic fancy, and to be visited in his prison
by the choicest inspirations of the muse. Some minds corrode, and grow
inactive, under the loss of personal liberty; others grow morbid
and irritable; but it is the nature of the poet to become tender and
imaginative in the loneliness of confinement. He banquets upon the honey
of his own thoughts, and, like the captive bird, pours forth his soul in
melody.
Have you not seen the nightingale,
A pilgrim coop’d into a cage,
How doth she chant her wonted tale,
In that her lonely hermitage!
Even there her charming melody doth prove
That all her boughs are trees, her cage a grove.+
+ Roger L’Estrange.
Indeed, it is the divine attribute of the imagination, that it is
irrepressible, unconfinable--that when the real world is shut out,
it can create a world for itself, and, with a necromantic power, can
conjure up glorious shapes and forms and brilliant visions, to make
solitude populous, and irradiate the gloom of the dungeon. Such was the
world of pomp and pageant that lived round Tasso in his dismal cell at
Ferrara, when he conceived the splendid scenes of his Jerusalem; and we
may consider The King’s Quair,* composed by James during his captivity
at Windsor, as another of those beautiful breakings forth of the soul
from the restraint and gloom of the prison-house.
The subject of the poem is his love for the lady Jane Beaufort, daughter
of the Earl of Somerset, and a princess of the blood-royal of England,
of whom he became enamoured in the course of his captivity. What gives
it a peculiar value, is, that it may be considered a transcript of
the royal bard’s true feelings, and the story of his real loves and
fortunes. It is not often that sovereigns write poetry or that poets
deal in fact. It is gratifying to the pride of a common man, to find
a monarch thus suing, as it were, for admission into his closet, and
seeking to win his favor by administering to his pleasures. It is a
proof of the honest equality of intellectual competition, which strips
off all the trappings of factitious dignity, brings the candidate down
to a level with his fellow-men, and obliges him to depend on his own
native powers for distinction. It is curious, too, to get at the history
of a monarch’s heart, and to find the simple affections of human nature
throbbing under the ermine. But James had learnt to be a poet before he
was a king; he was schooled in adversity, and reared in the company of
his own thoughts. Monarchs have seldom time to parley with their hearts
or to meditate their minds into poetry; and had James been brought up
amidst the adulation and gayety of a court, we should never, in all
probability, have had such a poem as the Quair.
* Quair, an old term for book.
I have been particularly interested by those parts of the poem which
breathe his immediate thoughts concerning his situation, or which are
connected with the apartment in the Tower. They have thus a personal and
local charm, and are given with such circumstantial truth as to make the
reader present with the captive in his prison and the companion of his
meditations.
Such is the account which he gives of his weariness of spirit, and of
the incident which first suggested the idea of writing the poem. It was
the still mid-watch of a clear moonlight night; the stars, he says, were
twinkling as fire in the high vault of heaven, and “Cynthia rinsing her
golden locks in Aquarius.” He lay in bed wakeful and restless, and took
a book to beguile the tedious hours. The book he chose was Boetius’
Consolations of Philosophy, a work popular among the writers of that
day, and which had been translated by his great prototype, Chaucer. From
the high eulogium in which he indulges, it is evident this was one of
his favorite volumes while in prison; and indeed it is an admirable
text-book for meditation under adversity. It is the legacy of a noble
and enduring spirit, purified by sorrow and suffering, bequeathing to
its successors in calamity the maxims of sweet morality, and the trains
of eloquent but simple reasoning, by which it was enabled to bear
up against the various ills of life. It is a talisman, which the
unfortunate may treasure up in his bosom, or, like the good King James,
lay upon his nightly pillow.
After closing the volume he turns its contents over in his mind, and
gradually falls into a fit of musing on the fickleness of fortune, the
vicissitudes of his own life, and the evils that had overtaken him even
in his tender youth. Suddenly he hears the bell ringing to matins, but
its sound, chiming in with his melancholy fancies, seems to him like a
voice exhorting him to write his story. In the spirit of poetic errantry
he determines to comply with this intimation; he therefore takes pen in
hand, makes with it a sign of the cross to implore a benediction,
and sallies forth into the fairy-land of poetry. There is something
extremely fanciful in all this, and it is interesting as furnishing
a striking and beautiful instance of the simple manner in which
whole trains of poetical thought are sometimes awakened and literary
enterprises suggested to the mind.
In the course of his poem, he more than once bewails the peculiar
hardness of his fate, thus doomed to lonely and inactive life, and
shut up from the freedom and pleasure of the world in which the meanest
animal indulges unrestrained. There is a sweetness, however, in his very
complaints; they are the lamentations of an amiable and social spirit at
being denied the indulgence of its kind and generous propensities; there
is nothing in them harsh nor exaggerated; they flow with a natural and
touching pathos, and are perhaps rendered more touching by their
simple brevity. They contrast finely with those elaborate and iterated
repinings which we sometimes meet with in poetry, the effusions of
morbid minds sickening under miseries of their own creating, and
venting their bitterness upon an unoffending world. James speaks of his
privations with acute sensibility, but having mentioned them passes on,
as if his manly mind disdained to brood over unavoidable calamities.
When such a spirit breaks forth into complaint, however brief, we
are aware how great must be the suffering that extorts the murmur. We
sympathize with James, a romantic, active, and accomplished prince, cut
off in the lustihood of youth from all the enterprise, the noble uses,
and vigorous delights of life, as we do with Milton, alive to all the
beauties of nature and glories of art, when he breathes forth brief but
deep-toned lamentations over his perpetual blindness.
Had not James evinced a deficiency of poetic artifice, we might almost
have suspected that these lowerings of gloomy reflection were meant as
preparative to the brightest scene of his story, and to contrast with
that refulgence of light and loveliness, that exhilarating accompaniment
of bird and song, and foliage and flower, and all the revel of, the
year, with which he ushers in the lady of his heart. It is this scene,
in particular, which throws all the magic of romance about the old
castle keep. He had risen, he says, at daybreak, according to custom, to
escape from the dreary meditations of a sleepless pillow. “Bewailing in
his chamber thus alone,” despairing of all joy and remedy, “for, tired
of thought, and woe-begone,” he had wandered to the window to indulge
the captive’s miserable solace, of gazing wistfully upon the world from
which he is excluded. The window looked forth upon a small garden which
lay at the foot of the tower. It was a quiet, sheltered spot, adorned
with arbors and green alleys, and protected from the passing gaze by
trees and hawthorn hedges.
Now was there made fast by the tower’s wall,
A garden faire, and in the corners set
An arbour green with wandis long and small
Railed about, and so with leaves beset
Was all the place and hawthorn hedges knet,
That lyf* was none, walkyng there forbye,
That might within scarce any wight espye.
So thick the branches and the leves grene,
Beshaded all the alleys that there were,
And midst of every arbour might be seen,
The sharpe, grene, swete juniper,
Growing so fair with branches here and there,
That as it seemed to a lyf without,
The boughs did spread the arbour all about.
And on the small grene twistis+ set
The lytel swete nightingales, and sung
So loud and clear, the hymnis consecrate
Of lovis use, now soft, now loud among,
That all the garden and the wallis rung
Right of their song----
* Lyf, Person.
+ Twistis, small boughs or twigs. NOTE--The language of the
quotations is generally modernized.
It was the month of May, when every thing was in bloom, and he
interprets the song of the nightingale into the language of his
enamoured feeling:
Worship, all ye that lovers be, this May;
For of your bliss the kalends are begun,
And sing with us, Away, winter, away.
Come, summer, come, the sweet season and sun.
As he gazes on the scene, and listens to the notes of the birds, he
gradually relapses into one of those tender and undefinable reveries,
which fill the youthful bosom in this delicious season. He wonders what
this love may be of which he has so often read, and which thus seems
breathed forth in the quickening breath of May, and melting all nature
into ecstasy and song. If it really be so great a felicity, and if it be
a boon thus generally dispensed to the most insignificant beings, why is
he alone cut off from its enjoyments?
Oft would I think, O Lord, what may this be,
That love is of such noble myght and kynde?
Loving his folke, and such prosperitee,
Is it of him, as we in books do find;
May he oure hertes setten* and unbynd:
Hath he upon oure hertes such maistrye?
Or is all this but feynit fantasye?
For giff he be of so grete excellence
That he of every wight hath care and charge,
What have I gilt+ to him, or done offense,
That I am thral’d, and birdis go at large?
* Setten, incline.
+ Gilt, what injury have I done, etc.
In the midst of his musing, as he casts his eye downward, he beholds
“the fairest and the freshest young floure” that ever he had seen. It is
the lovely Lady Jane, walking in the garden to enjoy the beauty of that
“fresh May morrowe.” Breaking thus suddenly upon his sight in a moment
of loneliness and excited susceptibility, she at once captivates the
fancy of the romantic prince, and becomes the object of his wandering
wishes, the sovereign of his ideal world.
There is, in this charming scene, an evident resemblance to the early
part of Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, where Palamon and Arcite fall in
love with Emilia, whom they see walking in the garden of their prison.
Perhaps the similarity of the actual fact to the incident which he had
read in Chaucer may have induced James to dwell on it in his poem. His
description of the Lady Jane is given in the picturesque and minute
manner of his master, and, being doubtless taken from the life, is a
perfect portrait of a beauty of that day. He dwells with the fondness
of a lover on every article of her apparel, from the net of pearl,
splendent with emeralds and sapphires, that confined her golden hair,
even to the “goodly chaine of small orfeverye” * about her neck, whereby
there hung a ruby in shape of a heart, that seemed, he says, like a
spark of fire burning upon her white bosom. Her dress of white
tissue was looped up to enable her to walk with more freedom. She was
accompanied by two female attendants, and about her sported a little
hound decorated with bells, probably the small Italian hound of
exquisite symmetry which was a parlor favorite and pet among the
fashionable dames of ancient times. James closes his description by a
burst of general eulogium:
In her was youth, beauty, with humble port,
Bounty, richesse, and womanly feature:
God better knows than my pen can report,
Wisdom, largesse,+ estate,++ and cunning& sure.
In every point so guided her measure,
In word, in deed, in shape, in countenance,
That nature might no more her child advance.
* Wrought gold.
+ Largesse, bounty.
++ Estate, dignity.
& Cunning, discretion.
The departure of the Lady Jane from the garden puts an end to this
transient riot of the heart. With her departs the amorous illusion
that had shed a temporary charm over the scene of his captivity, and he
relapses into loneliness, now rendered tenfold more intolerable by this
passing beam of unattainable beauty. Through the long and weary day he
repines at his unhappy lot, and when evening approaches, and Phoebus,
as he beautifully expresses it, had “bade farewell to every leaf and
flower,” he still lingers at the window, and, laying his head upon the
cold stone, gives vent to a mingled flow of love and sorrow, until,
gradually lulled by the mute melancholy of the twilight hour, he lapses,
“half-sleeping, half swoon,” into a vision, which occupies the remainder
of the poem, and in which is allegorically shadowed out the history of
his passion.
When he wakes from his trance, he rises from his stony pillow, and,
pacing his apartment, full of dreary reflections, questions his spirit,
whither it has been wandering; whether, indeed, all that has
passed before his dreaming fancy has been conjured up by preceding
circumstances, or whether it is a vision intended to comfort and assure
him in his despondency. If the latter, he prays that some token may be
sent to confirm the promise of happier days, given him in his slumbers.
Suddenly, a turtledove of the purest whiteness comes flying in at the
window, and alights upon his hand, bearing in her bill a branch of red
gilliflower, on the leaves of which is written, in letters of gold, the
following sentence:
Awake! Awake! I bring, lover, I bring
The newis glad, that blissful is and sure
Of thy comfort; now laugh, and play, and sing,
For in the heaven decretit is thy cure.
He receives the branch with mingled hope and dread; reads it with
rapture; and this he says was the first token of his succeeding
happiness. Whether this is a mere poetic fiction, or whether the Lady
Jane did actually send him a token of her favor in this romantic way,
remains to be determined according to the fate or fancy of the reader.
He concludes his poem by intimating that the promise conveyed in the
vision and by the flower, is fulfilled by his being restored to liberty,
and made happy in the possession of the sovereign of his heart.
Such is the poetical account given by James of his love adventures
in Windsor Castle. How much of it is absolute fact, and how much the
embellishment of fancy, it is fruitless to conjecture; let us not,
however, reject every romantic incident as incompatible with real life,
but let us sometimes take a poet at his word. I have noticed merely
those parts of the poem immediately connected with the tower, and have
passed over a large part which was in the allegorical vein, so
much cultivated at that day. The language, of course, is quaint and
antiquated, so that the beauty of many of its golden phrases will
scarcely be perceived at the present day, but it is impossible not to
be charmed with the genuine sentiment, the delightful artlessness and
urbanity, which prevail throughout it. The descriptions of Nature too,
with which it is embellished, are given with a truth, a discrimination,
and a freshness, worthy of the most cultivated periods of the art.
As an amatory poem, it is edifying, in these days of coarser thinking,
to notice the nature, refinement, and exquisite delicacy which
pervade it; banishing every gross thought, or immodest expression, and
presenting female loveliness, clothed in all its chivalrous attributes
of almost supernatural purity and grace.
James flourished nearly about the time of Chaucer and Gower, and was
evidently an admirer and studier of their writings. Indeed, in one of
his stanzas he acknowledges them as his masters; and in some parts
of his poem we find traces of similarity to their productions, more
especially to those of Chaucer. There are always, however, general
features of resemblance in the works of contemporary authors, which are
not so much borrowed from each other as from the times. Writers, like
bees, toll their sweets in the wide world; they incorporate with their
own conceptions, the anecdotes and thoughts current in society; and thus
each generation has some features in common, characteristic of the age
in which it lives.
James belongs to one of the most brilliant eras of our literary history,
and establishes the claims of his country to a participation in
its primitive honors. Whilst a small cluster of English writers are
constantly cited as the fathers of our verse, the name of their
great Scottish compeer is apt to be passed over in silence; but he
is evidently worthy of being enrolled in that little constellation of
remote but never-failing luminaries who shine in the highest firmament
of literature, and who, like morning stars, sang together at the bright
dawning of British poesy.
Such of my readers as may not be familiar with Scottish history (though
the manner in which it has of late been woven with captivating fiction
has made it a universal study) may be curious to learn something of the
subsequent history of James and the fortunes of his love. His passion
for the Lady Jane, as it was the solace of his captivity, so it
facilitated his release, it being imagined by the Court that a
connection with the blood-royal of England would attach him to its own
interests. He was ultimately restored to his liberty and crown, having
previously espoused the Lady Jane, who accompanied him to Scotland, and
made him a most tender and devoted wife.
He found his kingdom in great confusion, the feudal chieftains
having taken advantage of the troubles and irregularities of a long
interregnum, to strengthen themselves in their possessions, and place
themselves above the power of the laws. James sought to found the basis
of his power in the affections of his people. He attached the lower
orders to him by the reformation of abuses, the temperate and equable
administration of justice, the encouragement of the arts of peace, and
the promotion of every thing that could diffuse comfort, competency,
and innocent enjoyment through the humblest ranks of society. He
mingled occasionally among the common people in disguise; visited
their firesides; entered into their cares, their pursuits, and their
amusements; informed himself of the mechanical arts, and how they could
best be patronized and improved; and was thus an all-pervading spirit,
watching with a benevolent eye over the meanest of his subjects. Having
in this generous manner made himself strong in the hearts of the common
people, he turned himself to curb the power of the factious nobility;
to strip them of those dangerous immunities which they had usurped; to
punish such as had been guilty of flagrant offences; and to bring the
whole into proper obedience to the Crown. For some time they bore
this with outward submission, but with secret impatience and brooding
resentment. A conspiracy was at length formed against his life, at the
head of which was his own uncle, Robert Stewart, Earl of Athol, who,
being too old himself for the perpetration of the deed of blood,
instigated his grandson, Sir Robert Stewart, together with Sir Robert
Graham, and others of less note, to commit the deed. They broke into his
bedchamber at the Dominican convent near Perth, where he was residing,
and barbarously murdered him by oft-repeated wounds. His faithful queen,
rushing to throw her tender body between him and the sword, was twice
wounded in the ineffectual attempt to shield him from the assassin; and
it was not until she had been forcibly torn from his person, that the
murder was accomplished.
It was the recollection of this romantic tale of former times, and of
the golden little poem, which had its birthplace in this tower, that
made me visit the old pile with more than common interest. The suit
of armor hanging up in the hall, richly gilt and embellished, as if to
figure in the tourney, brought the image of the gallant and romantic
prince vividly before my imagination. I paced the deserted chambers
where he had composed his poem; I leaned upon the window, and endeavored
to persuade myself it was the very one where he had been visited by
his vision; I looked out upon the spot where he had first seen the Lady
Jane. It was the same genial and joyous month; the birds were again
vying with each other in strains of liquid melody; every thing was
bursting into vegetation, and budding forth the tender promise of the
year. Time, which delights to obliterate the sterner memorials of human
pride, seems to have passed lightly over this little scene of poetry and
love, and to have withheld his desolating hand. Several centuries have
gone by, yet the garden still flourishes at the foot of the tower. It
occupies what was once the moat of the keep; and, though some parts have
been separated by dividing walls, yet others have still their arbors
and shaded walks, as in the days of James, and the whole is sheltered,
blooming, and retired. There is a charm about the spot that has been
printed by the footsteps of departed beauty, and consecrated by the
inspirations of the poet, which is heightened, rather than impaired, by
the lapse of ages. It is, indeed, the gift of poetry, to hallow every
place in which it moves; to breathe around nature an odor more exquisite
than the perfume of the rose, and to shed over it a tint more magical
than the blush of morning.
Others may dwell on the illustrious deeds of James as a warrior and a
legislator; but I have delighted to view him merely as the companion
of his fellow-men, the benefactor of the human heart, stooping from his
high estate to sow the sweet flowers of poetry and song in the paths of
common life. He was the first to cultivate the vigorous and hardy plant
of Scottish genius, which has since become so prolific of the most
wholesome and highly flavored fruit. He carried with him into the
sterner regions of the north, all the fertilizing arts of southern
refinement. He did every thing in his power to win his countrymen to the
gay, the elegant, and gentle arts, which soften and refine the character
of a people, and wreathe a grace round the loftiness of a proud and
warlike spirit. He wrote many poems, which, unfortunately for the
fulness of his fame, are now lost to the world; one, which is still
preserved, called “Christ’s Kirk of the Green,” shows how diligently he
had made himself acquainted with the rustic sports and pastimes, which
constitute such a source of kind and social feeling among the Scottish
peasantry; and with what simple and happy humor he could enter into
their enjoyments. He contributed greatly to improve the national music;
and traces of his tender sentiment and elegant taste are said to exist
in those witching airs, still piped among the wild mountains and lonely
glens of Scotland. He has thus connected his image with whatever is most
gracious and endearing in the national character; he has embalmed his
memory in song, and floated his name to after-ages in the rich streams
of Scottish melody. The recollection of these things was kindling at my
heart, as I paced the silent scene of his imprisonment. I have visited
Vaucluse with as much enthusiasm as a pilgrim would visit the shrine
at Loretto; but I have never felt more poetical devotion than when
contemplating the old tower and the little garden at Windsor, and
musing over the romantic loves of the Lady Jane, and the Royal Poet of
Scotland.
THE COUNTRY CHURCH.
A gentleman!
What o’ the woolpack? or the sugar-chest?
Or lists of velvet? which is ‘t, pound, or yard,
You vend your gentry by?
BEGGAR’S BUSH.
THERE are few places more favorable to the study of character than an
English country church. I was once passing a few weeks at the seat of
a friend who resided in, the vicinity of one the appearance of which
particularly struck my fancy. It was one of those rich morsels of quaint
antiquity, which gives such a peculiar charm to English landscape.
It stood in the midst of a country filled with ancient families, and
contained within its cold and silent aisles the congregated dust of many
noble generations. The interior walls were encrusted with monuments
of every age and style. The light streamed through windows dimmed with
armorial bearings, richly emblazoned in stained glass. In various parts
of the church were tombs of knights, and highborn dames, of gorgeous
workmanship, with their effigies in colored marble. On every side, the
eye was struck with some instance of aspiring mortality, some haughty
memorial which human pride had erected over its kindred dust in this
temple of the most humble of all religions.
The congregation was composed of the neighboring people of rank, who sat
in pews sumptuously lined and cushioned, furnished with richly-gilded
prayer-books, and decorated with their arms upon the pew doors; of the
villagers and peasantry, who filled the back seats and a small gallery
beside the organ; and of the poor of the parish, who were ranged on
benches in the aisles.
The service was performed by a snuffling, well-fed vicar, who had a snug
dwelling near the church. He was a privileged guest at all the tables
of the neighborhood, and had been the keenest fox-hunter in the country,
until age and good living had disabled him from doing anything more than
ride to see the hounds throw off, and make one at the hunting dinner.
Under the ministry of such a pastor, I found it impossible to get into
the train of thought suitable to the time and place; so, having, like
many other feeble Christians, compromised with my conscience, by laying
the sin of my own delinquency at another person’s threshold, I occupied
myself by making observations on my neighbors.
I was as yet a stranger in England, and curious to notice the manners
of its fashionable classes. I found, as usual, that there was the least
pretension where there was the most acknowledged title to respect. I was
particularly struck, for instance, with the family of a nobleman of high
rank, consisting of several sons and daughters. Nothing could be more
simple and unassuming than their appearance. They generally came to
church in the plainest equipage, and often on foot. The young ladies
would stop and converse in the kindest manner with the peasantry, caress
the children, and listen to the stories of the humble cottagers. Their
countenances were open and beautifully fair, with an expression of
high refinement, but at the same time a frank cheerfulness and engaging
affability. Their brothers were tall, and elegantly formed. They were
dressed fashionably, but simply--with strict neatness and propriety, but
without any mannerism or foppishness. Their whole demeanor was easy
and natural, with that lofty grace and noble frankness which bespeak
free-born souls that have never been checked in their growth by feelings
of inferiority. There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity, that
never dreads contact and communion with others, however humble. It is
only spurious pride that is morbid and sensitive, and shrinks from every
touch. I was pleased to see the manner in which they would converse with
the peasantry about those rural concerns and field-sports in which the
gentlemen of the country so much delight. In these conversations there
was neither haughtiness on the one part, nor servility on the other, and
you were only reminded of the difference of rank by the habitual respect
of the peasant.
In contrast to these was the family of a wealthy citizen, who had
amassed a vast fortune, and, having purchased the estate and mansion of
a ruined nobleman in the neighborhood, was endeavoring to assume all the
style and dignity of an hereditary lord of the soil. The family always
came to church en prince. They were rolled majestically along in a
carriage emblazoned with arms. The crest glittered in silver radiance
from every part of the harness where a crest could possibly be placed.
A fat coachman, in a three-cornered hat richly laced and a flaxen wig,
curling close round his rosy face, was seated on the box, with a sleek
Danish dog beside him. Two footmen in gorgeous liveries, with huge
bouquets, and gold-headed canes, lolled behind. The carriage rose and
sunk on its long springs with a peculiar stateliness of motion. The very
horses champed their bits, arched their necks, and glanced their eyes
more proudly than common horses; either because they had caught a little
of the family feeling, or were reined up more tightly than ordinary.
I could not but admire the style with which this splendid pageant
was brought up to the gate of the churchyard. There was a vast effect
produced at the turning of an angle of the wall--a great smacking of the
whip, straining and scrambling of the horses, glistening of harness, and
flashing of wheels through gravel. This was the moment of triumph and
vainglory to the coachman. The horses were urged and checked, until they
were fretted into a foam. They threw out their feet in a prancing trot,
dashing about pebbles at every
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