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Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 354, April 1845

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Title: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 354, April 1845

Author: Various


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, VOLUME 57, NO. 354, APRIL 1845 ***




Produced by Brendan OConnor, Jonathan Ingram and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
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  BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

  NO. CCCLIV.   APRIL, 1845.   VOL. LVII.




CONTENTS.


  VIRGIL, TASSO, AND RAPHAEL,                                          401

  PING-KEE'S VIEW OF THE STAGE,                                        415

  THE MIDNIGHT WATCH,                                                  424

  VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION,                         448

  MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. PART XVI.,                  461

  BETHAM'S ETRURIA CELTICA,                                            474

  SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS: BEING A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS OF AN
  ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER,                                                 489

  NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS. NO. III.--DRYDEN,          503



  EDINBURGH:
  WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;
  AND 22, PALL-MALL, LONDON.
  _To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._
  SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

  PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH.




  BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

  NO. CCCLIV.   APRIL, 1845.   VOL. LVII.




VIRGIL, TASSO, AND RAPHAEL.


Originality of conception and fidelity of observation in general mark the
efforts of genius in the earlier ages of society; and it is then,
accordingly, that those creative minds appear which stamp their own
impress upon the character of a whole people, and communicate to their
literature, in the most distant periods, a certain train of thought, a
certain class of images, a certain family resemblance. Homer, Phidias, and
AEschylus in ancient times--Dante, Michael Angelo, Ariosto, and Shakspeare
in modern, belong to this exalted class. Each in his own department has
struck out a new range of thought, and created a fresh brood of ideas,
which, on "winged words," have taken their flight to distant regions, and
to the end of the world will never cease to delight and influence mankind.
Subsequent ages may refine their images, expand their sentiments, perhaps
improve their expression; but they add little to the stock of their
conceptions. The very greatness of their predecessors precludes fresh
creations: the furrows of the ancient wheels are so deep that the modern
chariot cannot avoid falling into them. So completely in all persons of
education are the great works of antiquity incorporated with thought, that
they arise involuntarily with every exercise of the faculty of taste, and
insensibly recur to the cultivated mind, with all that it admires, and
loves, and venerates.

But though originality of conception, the creation of imagery, and the
invention of events belong to early ages, delicacy of taste, refinement of
sentiment, perfection of expression, are the growth of a more advanced
period of society. The characters which are delineated by the hand of
Genius in early times, are those bold and original ones in which the
features are distinctly marked, the lines clearly drawn, the peculiarities
strongly brought out. The images which are adopted are those which have
first occurred to the creative mind in forming a world of fancy: the
similes employed, those which convey to the simple and unlettered mind the
clearest or most vivid conception of the idea or event intended to be
illustrated. Valour, pride, resolution, tenderness, patriotism, are the
mental qualities which are there portrayed in imaginary characters, and
called forth by fictitious events: and it is this first and noblest
delineation of mental qualities in an historical gallery which has
rendered the _Iliad_ immortal. The images and similes of Homer are drawn
from a close observation of nature, but they are not very varied in their
range: he paints every incident, every occurrence, every feature, but he
is not much diversified in conception, and surprisingly identical in
expression. His similes of a boar beset by hunters, of a lion prowling
round a fold and repelled by the spear of the shepherd, of a panther
leaping into a herd of cattle, are represented in the same words wherever
he has a close fight of one of his heroes with a multitude of enemies to
recount. So forcibly is the creative mind, in the first instance,
fascinated by the variety and brilliancy of its conceptions, that it
neglects and despises their subordinate details. It is careless of
language, because it is intent on ideas: it is niggardly in language,
because it is prodigal of thought. Homer's expressions or epithets are in
general admirably chosen, and speak at once a graphic eye and an
imaginative mind; but it is extraordinary how often they recur without any
variation. It is the same with Ariosto: he is somewhat more varied in his
expression, but even more identical in his details. Prodigal of invention,
varied in imagination, unbounded in conception, in the incidents and great
features of his story, he has very little diversity in its subordinate
parts. He carries us over the whole earth, through the air, and to the
moon: but giants, castles, knights, and errant damsels occur at every
step, with hardly any alteration. The perpetual jousts of the knights,
charging with the lance and then drawing the sword, are exactly parallel
to the endless throwing of the spear and leaping from the chariot in the
_Iliad_.

No man can read the _AEneid_ without seeing that it has been constructed,
both in its general conception and chief incidents, on the poems of Homer;
and yet so exquisite was the taste, so refined the sentiment, so tender
the heart of VIRGIL, that he has produced upon the world the impression of
a great original author. Dante worshipped him as a species of divinity; he
made him his guide through the infernal regions, to unfold the crimes of
the wicked and the intentions of the Deity in the distribution of future
rewards and punishments. Throughout the middle ages he was regarded as a
sort of necromancer, a mighty magician, to whom the past and the future
are alike known, and whose power even the elements of nature were
constrained to obey. The "Sortes Virgilianae," so well known, and so long
practised in every country of Europe, arose from this belief. The imagery,
mythology and characters of his epic poem are drawn from the _Iliad_: but
in two particulars he is entirely original, and his genius has opened the
two fountains from which the most prolific streams of beauty in modern
poetry have flowed. He is the father of _descriptive_ and _amatory_
poetry. The passion of love, as we understand it, was unknown to Homer, as
much as was the description of nature as a separate and substantive
object. He has made the whole _Iliad_, indeed, turn upon the wrath of
Achilles for the loss of Briseis; and he has painted, with inimitable
tenderness and pathos, the conjugal attachment of Hector and Andromache;
but he had no conception of love as a passion, mingled with sentiment, and
independent of possession. The wrath of Achilles is the fury of an Eastern
sultan whose harem has been violated: the parting of Hector and Andromache
is the rending asunder of the _domestic_ affections, the farewell from the
family hearth, the breaking up of the home circle. But the love of Dido
for AEneas is the refined passion which is the soul of the romances and of
half the poetry of modern times. It was the creature of the imagination,
the offspring of the soul from its own conceptions, kindled only into life
by an external object. It arose from mental admiration; it was inhaled
more by the ear than the eye; it was warmed at his recital of the sack of
Troy, and his subsequent wanderings over the melancholy main. It had no
resemblance to the seducing voluptuousness of Ovid, any more than the
elegant indecencies of Catullus. It resembled the passion of Desdemona for
Othello.

Homer painted with graphic fidelity and incomparable force, often with
extraordinary beauty, the appearances of nature; but it was as
illustrations, or for the purpose of similitude only, that he did so. It
was on human events that his thoughts were fixed: it was the human heart,
in all its various forms and changes, that he sought to depict. But Virgil
was the high-priest of nature, and he worshipped her with all a poet's
fervour. He identifies himself with rural life, he describes with devout
enthusiasm its joys, its occupations, its hardships: the rocks, the woods,
the streams, awaken his ardent admiration; the animals and insects are the
objects of his tender solicitude. When the Mantuan bard wrote,

          ----"Saepe exiguus mus
  Sub terram posuit domos atque horrea fecit,"

he was inspired with the same spirit that afterwards animated Burns when
he contemplated the daisy, Cowper when he sympathized with the hare. The
descriptive poetry of modern times has owed much to his exquisite eye and
sensitive heart. Thomson, in his _Seasons_, has expanded the theme in a
kindred spirit, and with prodigal magnificence. Scott and Byron have
brought that branch of the poetic art to the highest perfection, by
blending it with the moral affections, with the picturesque imagery of the
olden time, with the magic of eastern or classical association. But none
of our poets--how great soever their genius, how varied their
materials--have exceeded, if they have equalled, the exquisite beauty of
his descriptions; and the purest taste in observation, as the utmost
beauty of expression, is still to be best attained by studying night and
day the poems of Virgil.

Modern epic poetry arose in a different age, and was moulded by different
circumstances. The mythology of antiquity was at an end, and with it had
perished the gay and varied worship which had so long amused or excited an
imaginative people. The empire of the Caesars, with its grandeur and its
recollections, had sunk into the dusk; the venerable letters, S. P. Q. R.,
no longer commanded the veneration of mankind. A new faith, enjoining
moral duties, had descended upon the earth: a holier spirit had come to
pervade the breasts of the faithful. An unknown race of fierce barbarians
had broken into the decaying provinces of the Roman empire, and swept away
their government, their laws, their property, and their institutions. But
the Christian faith had proved more powerful than the arms of the legions;
it alone had survived, amidst the general wreck of the civilized world.
Mingling with the ardent feelings and fierce energy of the barbarian
victors, it sat

          ----"a blooming bride
  By valour's arm'd and awful side."

Incorporating itself with the very souls of the conquerors--descending on
their heads with the waters of baptism, never leaving them till the moment
of extreme unction--it moulded between these two extremes their whole
character. A new principle superior to all earthly power was introduced--a
paramount authority established, to which even the arm of victorious
conquest was compelled to submit--ruthless warriors were seen kneeling at
the feet of unarmed pontiffs. The crown of the Caesars had more than once
been lowered before the cross of the head of the faithful.

From the intensity and universality of these religious emotions, and the
circumstance of the Holy Land being in the hands of the Saracens, with
whom Christendom had maintained so long, and at times so doubtful, a
struggle, a new passion had seized upon the people of modern Europe, to
which no parallel is to be found in the previous or subsequent history of
mankind. The desire to recover the Holy Sepulchre, and re-open it to the
pilgrimages of the faithful, had come to inflame the minds of men with
such vehemence, that nothing approaching to it had ever before occurred in
the world. It had pervaded alike the great and the humble, the learned and
the ignorant, the prince and the peasant. It had torn up whole nations
from Europe, and precipitated them on Asia. It had caused myriads of armed
men to cross the Hellespont. In Asia Minor, on the theatre of the contest
of the Greeks and Trojans, it had brought vast armies into collision, far
outnumbering the hosts led by Hector or Agamemnon. It had brought them
together in a holier cause, and on more elevated motives, than prompted
the Greek confederates to range themselves under the king of men. It had
impelled Richard Coeur-de-Lion and Godfrey of Bouillon from Europe. It
had roused Saladin and Solyman the Magnificent in Asia. Unlike other
popular passions, it had continued through successive generations. It had
survived for centuries, and declined at length less from want of ardour in
the cause, than from failure of the physical and material resources to
maintain at so vast a distance so wasting a struggle, and supply the
multitudes of the faithful whose bones whitened the valley of the Danube
or the sands of Asia.

But religious and devout emotions had not alone become all-powerful from
the blending of the ardour of a spiritual faith with the fierce energy of
northern conquests. The northern nations had brought with them from their
woods two principles unknown to the most civilized nations of antiquity.
Tacitus has recorded, that a tribe in Germany maintained its authority
solely by the justice of its decisions; and that in all the tribes, women
were held in the highest respect, and frequently swayed the public
councils on the most momentous occasions. It is in these two principles,
the love of justice and respect for women, that the foundation was laid
for the _manners of chivalry_, which form the grand characteristic and
most ennobling feature of modern times. New elements were thence infused
into the breast of the warriors, into the heart of women, into the songs
of poetry. Chivalry had arisen with its dreams, its imaginations, its
fantasy; but, at the same time, with its elevation, its disinterestedness,
its magnanimity. The songs of the Troubadours had been heard in southern
Europe; the courts of love had been held in Provence; the exploits of
Charlemagne and Richard had resounded throughout the world. The _chevalier
sans peur et sans reproche_, who dedicated himself to the service of God
and of his lady, was a less natural, but he was a far more elevated being,
than either Achilles or AEneas. Knights-errant, who went about in quest of
adventures, redressing wrongs, succouring damsels, combating giants,
defying sorcerers, delivering captives--faithful amidst every temptation
to their lady-love, true amidst every danger to the Polar-star of
duty--formed the leading characters in a species of romance, which is less
likely, in all probability, to be durable in fame than the _Iliad_ or the
_AEneid_; but which is so, in a great degree, from the circumstance that
the characters it portrays had, from an extraordinary combination of
events, been strung upon a higher key than is likely to be sympathized
with by future generations of man.

Ariosto was the great original mind in this extravagant but yet noble
style of poetry; he was the Homer of this romance of modern Europe. He
possessed the same fruitful invention, the same diversified conception,
the same inexhaustible fancy as the Grecian bard; and in melody and
occasional beauty of versification, he is often his superior. But he will
bear no sort of comparison with Homer in knowledge of character or the
delineation of the human heart. His heroes are almost all cast in one of
two models, and bear one of two images and superscriptions. The Christian
paladins are all gentle, true, devoted, magnanimous, unconquerable; the
Saracen soldans haughty, cruel, perfidious, irascible, but desperately
powerful in combat. No shades of difference and infinite diversity in
character demonstrate, as in the _Iliad_, a profound knowledge and
accurate observation of the human heart. No fierce and irascible Achilles
disturbs the sympathy of the reader with the conquerors; no
self-forgetting, but country-devoted Hector enlists our sympathies on the
side of the vanquished. His imagination, like the winged steed of Astolfo,
flies away with his judgment; it bears him to the uttermost parts of the
earth, to the palace of the syren Alcina, to the halls in the moon, but it
destroys all unity or identity of interest in the poem. The famous siege
of Paris by the Saracens in the time of Charlemagne, which was so often
expected during the middle ages, that it at last came to be believed to
have been real, was the main point of his story; but he diverges from it
so often, in search of adventures with particular knights, that we
wellnigh forget the principal object of the poem, and feel no absorbing
interest in the issue of any particular events, or the exploits of any
particular heroes. He had no great moral to unfold, or single interest to
sustain, in his composition. His object was to amuse, not instruct--to
fascinate, not improve. He is often as beautiful as Virgil in his
descriptions, as lofty as Homer in his conceptions; but he as often equals
Ovid in the questionable character of his adventures, or Catullus in the
seducing warmth of his descriptions. There is no more amusing companion
than the _Orlando Furioso_ for the fireside; but there is none less likely
to produce the heroes whom it is his object to portray.

That which Ariosto wants, TASSO has. The _Jerusalem Delivered_ is, beyond
all question, the epic poem of modern Europe. In it, as in the _Iliad_,
unity of interest and of action is entirely preserved. It is one great
struggle between Europe and Asia which is recorded; it is for the attack
and defence of one city that the forces of Christendom and of Mahometanism
are arrayed. But the object of contention, the moral character of the
struggle, is incomparably higher in the modern than the ancient poem. It
is not "another Helen who has fired another Troy;" it is no confederacy of
valour, thirsting for the spoils of opulence, which is contending for
victory. It is the pilgrim, not the host, whose wrongs have now roused
Europe into action; it is not to ravish beauty from its seducer, but the
holy sepulchre from its profaners, that Christendom has risen in arms. The
characters of the chiefs correspond to the superior sanctity of their
cause, and indicate the mighty step in advance which the human mind, under
the influence of Christianity and civilization, had made since the days of
Homer. In Godfrey of Bouillon we perceive enthusiasm guided by wisdom;
difficulties overcome by resolution, self-subdued by devotion. Rinaldo,
like Achilles, is led astray by beauty and the issue of the war is
prolonged from the want of his resistless arm; but the difference between
his passion for Armida, and the Grecian hero's wrath for the loss of
Briseis, marks the influence of the refined gallantry of modern times. The
exquisite episode of the flight of Erminia, the matchless pathos of the
death of Clorinda, can be compared to nothing either in the _Iliad_ or
_AEneid_; they belong to the age of chivalry, and are the efflorescence of
that strange but lofty aspiration of the human mind. Above all, there is a
moral grandeur in the poem, a continued unity of interest, owing to a
sustained elevation of purpose--a forgetfulness of self in the great cause
of rescuing the holy sepulchre, which throws an air of sanctity around its
beauties, and renders it the worthy epic of Europe in its noblest aspect.

Notwithstanding these inimitable beauties, the _Jerusalem Delivered_ never
has, and never will make the impression on the world which the _Iliad_ has
done. The reason is, that it is not equally drawn from nature; the
characters are taken from romantic conception, not real life. The chiefs
who assemble in council with Godfrey, the knights who strive before
Jerusalem with Tancred, have little resemblance either to the greyhaired
senators who direct human councils, or the youthful warriors who head
actual armies. They are poetical abstractions, not living men. We read
their speeches with interest, we contemplate their actions with
admiration; but it never occurs to us that we have seen such men, or that
the imagination of the poet has conceived any thing resembling the
occurrences of real life. The whole is a fairy dream--charming,
interesting, delightful, but still a dream. It bears the same resemblance
to reality which the brilliant gossamer of a snow-clad forest, glittering
in the morning sun, does to the boughs when clothed with the riches and
varied by the hues of summer. It is the perfection of our conceptions of
chivalry, mingled with the picturesque machinery of antiquity and romantic
imagery of the East, told with the exquisite beauty of European
versification. But it is a poetical conception only, not a delineation of
real life. In Homer, again, the marvellous power of the poet consists in
his deep insight into human character, his perfect knowledge of the human
heart, and his inimitable fidelity of drawing every object, animate or
inanimate. Aristotle said that he excelled all poets that ever appeared in
"[Greek: diagnoia]." Aristotle was right; no one can study the _Iliad_
without feeling the justice of the observation. It is the penetration,
the piercing insight of the Greek bard, which constitute his passport to
immortality. Other poets may equal him in variety of imagination; some may
excel him in melody of versification or beauty of language: none will
probably ever approach him in delineation of character, or clothing
abstract conceptions in the flesh and blood of real life.

Considered with reference to unity of action and identity of interest, the
_Jerusalem Delivered_, equal to the _Iliad_, is much superior to the
_AEneid_. Virgil appears, in his admiration of Homer, to have aimed at
uniting in his poem the beauties both of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_,
and thence in a great measure his failure to rival either. While the first
six books, which contain the wanderings of the Trojan exile and the dismal
recital of the sack of Troy, are an evident imitation of the _Odyssey_,
the last six, containing the strife in Italy, the efforts of the Trojans
to gain a footing on the Ausonian shores, and the concluding single combat
of Turnus and AEneas, are as evidently framed upon the model of the
_Iliad_. But it is impossible in this manner to tack together two separate
poems, and form an homogeneous whole from their junction. Patchwork will
appear in spite of all the genius and taste of Virgil. Epic poetry,
indeed, is not confined within the narrow limits of the Grecian stage; the
poem may embrace a longer period than it requires to read it. But in epic
poetry, as in all the fine arts, one unity is indispensable--the unity of
interest or emotion. Unity of time and place is not to be disregarded to
any great degree without manifest danger. The whole period embraced in the
_Iliad_ is only forty-eight days, and the interest of the piece--that
which elapses from Hector lighting his fires before the Greek
intrenchments till his death in front of the Scaean Gate--is only
thirty-six hours. Tasso has the same unity of time, place, and interest in
his poems: the scene is always around Jerusalem; the time not many weeks;
the main object, the centre of the whole action, the capture of the city.
The charming episodes of Erminia's flight and Armida's island are felt to
be episodes only: they vary the narrative without distracting the
interest. But in Virgil the interest is various and complicated, the scene
continually shifting, the episodes usurp the place of the main story. At
one time we are fascinated by the awful recital of the murder of Priam,
the burning of Troy, and the flight of AEneas: at another, we weep with the
sorrows of Dido at Carthage, and the exquisite pathos of his heart-rending
lamentations: at a third, we are charmed by the descent into the infernal
regions on the shores of Avernus, we sympathize with the patriotic effort
of Turnus and the people of Ausonia to expel the invaders from the Italian
shores. Though Virgil did not intend it, he has twice transferred the
reader's sympathy from the hero of his story: once by his inimitable
description of the mourning and death of Dido from the departure and
perfidy of AEneas, and again, from the burst of patriotic feeling which he
has represented as animating the Etruscan tribes at the violent intrusion
of the Trojan invaders.

Virgil's heroes will bear no sort of comparison with those either of the
_Iliad_ or the _Jerusalem Delivered_. AEneas himself is a vain conceited
man, proud of his piety and his wanderings, and destroying our admiration
for either by the ostentation with which he brings them forward on all
occasions. The well-known line,

  "Sum pius AEneas, fama super aethere notus,"

occurs too frequently to render it possible to take any interest in such a
self-applauding character. Compare this with the patriotic devotion, the
heroic courage, the domestic tenderness, the oblivion of self in Hector,
in the _Iliad_, and it will at once appear how far deeper the insight into
the human heart was in the Grecian than the Roman poet. One striking
instance will at once illustrate this. When Hector parts from Andromache
at the Scaean Gate, and after he has taken his infant son from his arms, he
prays to Jupiter that he may become so celebrated that the people in
seeing himself pass, may say only--"He far exceeds his father." What
sentiment on the part of a hero himself, and at the moment the bulwark
and sole stay of Troy! But what does Virgil make AEneas say in similar
circumstances?--"Learn, boy, virtue and true labour from ME, fortune from
others."

What a difference between the thought in the two poets, and the interest
which their words excite in the breast of the reader!

What an historical gallery, or rather what a gallery of imaginary
portraits, does the _Iliad_ contain! It is the embodying so many separate
and well-distinguished characters, in different persons, which forms the
grand characteristic--the unequalled supremacy of the poem. Only think of
what they are. Achilles, vehement alike in anger and in grief, wrathful,
impetuous, overbearing, "the most terrible character ever conceived by
man;" yet not insensible at times to the tender emotions, loving his
country, weeping for his father, devoted to his home, but yet determined
to purchase deathless renown by a short life, ere he met the death he knew
awaited him under the walls of Troy. Hector, calm, resolute, patriotic;
sustaining by his single arm the conflict with a host of heroes; retaining
by his single suavity the confederacy of many jealous and discordant
nations; unconquerable in the field; undaunted in council; ever watching
over his country; ever forgetful of himself; overflowing with domestic
affection, yet prodigal of self-sacrifice; singly awaiting before the
Scaean Gate the approach of Achilles, when his celestial armour shone like
the setting sun, and all Troy in terror had sought refuge within the
walls; deaf to the wailing even of Andromache and Priam, at the call of
patriotic duty; and when betrayed by Minerva in the last conflict, and
deprived of his home, yet drawing his sword to do deeds of which men might
speak thereafter! Diomede, unsubdued even amidst the wreck of Grecian
fortunes during the absence of Achilles, alone sustaining the war, when
all around him quailed before the spear of Hector; and resolute to hold
his ground with a few followers, even though the whole of his Grecian
leaders fled in their ships. Agamemnon, proud, imperious, passionate;
doing injustice in anger, yet willing to repair it on reflection; wresting
the blue-eyed maid from Achilles in the first burst of fury, yet publicly
acknowledging his fault in the council of the chiefs; sending embassies,
and offering his own daughter, to obtain a reconciliation with the son of
Peleus. Ulysses, wary alike in council and in action; provident in forming
designs, intrepid in carrying them into execution; sparing of the blood of
his soldiers, but unconquerable in the resolution with which they were
led; ever counselling prudent measures, but ever ruled by invincible
determination. Ajax, singly resisting the onset of the Trojan multitude;
slowly retreating, covered by his broad shield; midway between the two
armies, when all around him fled; striving with desperate resolution for
the body of Patroclus, and covering the retreat of his followers who
dragged along the lifeless hero, when Hector, clad in the shining panoply
he had wrested from the Myrmidonian chief, was thundering in close
pursuit. What has Virgil to exhibit as a set-off to this band of
heroes--"Fortem Gyan, fortemque Cloanthum"--the boyish eagerness of
Ascanius, the savage wrath of Turnus when bereaved of his bride! We seem,
in passing from the _Iliad_ to the _AEneid_, to have fallen, so far as
character goes, from a race of giants to a brood of pigmies.

Modern partiality cannot claim for Tasso the merit of having conceived a
band of heroes whose characters were as strongly marked, or boldly drawn,
as those of the Grecian bard; yet may it justly claim for the Italian poet
the second honours. Tasso did not draw his characters from nature, like
Homer; he lived at a period when the manners of the heroic age had passed
away, and the recollections of it were preserved only in the stanzas of
poetry and the romances of the Troubadours; yet did the force of his
genius, the elevation of his sentiments, the loftiness of his conceptions,
in a great measure supply the defect, and produce a magnificent, and to
this day unequalled, picture of the chivalry of modern Europe. Godfrey of
Bouillon is the model of a Christian hero whose arm has been devoted to
the sacred lance; antiquity did not, and could not, conceive any such
character. Hector is the nearest approach to it; but the patriotism of
the Trojan chief is mingled with his domestic affections; it is for his
father, his wife, his child, his hearth, his country, that he fights. In
Godfrey, all these affections, warm and ennobling as they are, appear to
be obliterated by the perpetual sense of a sacred duty superior to them
all--by the intensity of the pious fervour which had concentrated all
earthly affections. He is the personification of the Church militant,
combating for its Saviour's cause. The profound feelings, the
self-negation, the martyr-like spirit which had been nursed for centuries
amidst the solitude of the cloister, appears in him brought forth into
action, and producing the most intense enthusiasm, yet regulated by the
caution of Ulysses, combined with the foresight of Agamemnon, sustained by
the constancy of Ajax.

Rinaldo, youthful, vehement, impassioned, is the ideal of a hero not yet
weaned from the passions of the world. Vehement, capricious, and
irascible, he disturbs, like Achilles, the council of the chiefs by his
wrath, and is seduced by the beauty of Armida to abandon the cause of the
cross; yet even in her enchanted gardens, and when surrounded by all that
can fascinate the imagination and allure the senses, the sparks of a noble
nature are not extinct in his breast; he is recalled to his duty by the
sight of her warriors; he flies the arms of the syren; he penetrates with
invincible courage the enchanted forest; and when he descends purified
from the stains of the world from the lofty mountain, on whose summit at
sunrise he had dedicated himself to God, he is the worthy and invincible
champion of the cross. Not less bold than his youthful rival, not less
enthusiastic in his affections, Tancredi is the victim of a romantic
passion. But it is no enchantress for whom he pines; it is no seducing
frail one who allures him from the path of duty. Clorinda appears in the
Saracen ranks; her arms combat with heroic power for the cause of Mahomet;
the glance which has fascinated the Christian knight came from beneath the
plumed helmet. Lofty enthusiasm has unstrung his arm--devoted tenderness
has subdued his heart--the passion of love in its purest form has
fascinated his soul; yet even this high-toned sentiment can yield to the
influences of religion; and when Tancredi, after the fatal nocturnal
conflict in which his sword pierced the bosom of his beloved, is visited
by her in his dreams, and assured that she awaits him in Paradise, the
soul of the Crusader is aroused within him, and he sets forth with ardent
zeal to seek danger and death in the breach of Jerusalem. It cannot be
said that these characters are so natural as those of Homer, at least they
are not so similar to what is elsewhere seen in the world; and therefore
they will never make the general impression which the heroes of the Iliad
have done. But they are more refined--they are more exalted; and if less
like what men are, they are perhaps not the less like what they ought to
be.

How is it, then, if Virgil is so inferior to Homer and Tasso in the unity
of action, the concentration of interest, and the delineation of
character, that he has acquired his prodigious reputation among men? How
is it that generation after generation has ratified the opinion of Dante,
who called him his "Divine Master"--of Petrarch, who spent his life in the
study of his works? How is it that his verses are so engraven in our
recollection that they have become, as it were, a second nature to every
cultivated mind, and insensibly recur whenever the beauty of poetry is
felt, or the charms of nature experienced? Rest assured the judgment of so
many ages is right: successive generations and different nations never
concur in praising any author, unless his works, in some respects at
least, have approached perfection. If we cannot discern the beauties, the
conclusion to be drawn is that our taste is defective, rather than that so
many ages and generations have concurred in lavishing their admiration on
an unworthy object. Nor is it difficult to see in what the excellence of
Virgil consists; we cannot read a page of him without perceiving what has
fascinated the world, without concurring in the fascination. It is the
tenderness of his heart, his exquisite pathos, his eye for the beauty of
nature, the unrivalled beauty of his language, which have given him
immortality, and to the end of time render the study of his works the most
perfect means of refining the taste and inspiring a genuine feeling of
poetic beauty.

So melodious is the versification, so delicate the taste, so exquisite the
feeling, so refined the sentiment of Virgil, that it may truly be said
that he will ever remain the model on which the graces of composition in
every future age must be formed. Of him more truly than any human being it
may be said, "Nihil quod tetegit non ornavit." The _Georgics_ demonstrate
that, in the hands of genius, and under the guidance of taste, the most
ordinary occupations of rural life may be treated with delicacy, and
rendered prolific of beauty. The dressing of vines, the subduing of the
clod by the sturdy heifers, the different manures for the soil, the sowing
of seed, the reaping of harvest, the joys of the vintage, the vehemence of
storms, the snows of winter, the heats of summer, the blossoms of spring,
the riches of autumn, become in his hands prolific of description and
prodigal of beauty. Even the dumb animals are the objects of his tender
solicitude. We hear the heifers lowing for their accustomed meal in
winter; we gaze on the sporting of the lambs in spring; we see the
mountain goat suspended from the shaggy rock in summer; we sympathize with
the provident industry of the bees; we even feel we have a friend in the
little underground nest of the field mouse. The opening lines of the
Eclogues, which every schoolboy knows by heart, give an earnest of the
exquisite taste which pervades his writings:--

  "Tityre, tu patulae, recubans sub tegmine fagi,
  Sylvestrem tenui musam meditaris avena;
  Nos patriae fines et dulcia linquimus arva.
  Nos patriam fugimus: tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra,
  Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida sylvas."

Virgil, it has been said, was so strongly impressed with the inferiority
of the _AEneid_ to what he conceived epic poetry should be, that he desired
that poem to be thrown into the flames after his death; yet though
deficient in the principal requisites of an epic poem, so far as the
structure of the story and the delineation of the characters are
concerned, what exquisite beauties does it contain--what an assemblage of
lovely images has it brought together--what an irreparable loss would its
destruction have been to all future generations of men! Not all the genius
of subsequent ages could have supplied its place. There are beauties in
the _AEneid_, which neither Thomson in descriptive, nor Racine in dramatic
poetry, have been able to rival.

If Homer excels all subsequent writers in conception of character, vigour
of imagination, and graphic delineation, Virgil is not less unrivalled in
delicacy of sentiment, tenderness of feeling, and beauty of expression.
There are many more striking scenes in the _Iliad_, more animating events,
more awful apparitions; but in the _AEneid_, passages of extraordinary
beauty are much more numerous. What is present to the imagination when we
rise from the former, is the extraordinary series of brilliant or majestic
images which it has presented; what is engraven on the memory when we
conclude the latter, is the charming series of beautiful passages which it
contains. There are many more events to recollect in the Grecian, but more
lines to remember in the Roman poet. To the _Iliad_, subsequent ages have
turned with one accord for images of heroism, traits of nature, grandeur
of character. To the _AEneid_, subsequent times will ever have recourse for
touches of pathos, expressions of tenderness, felicity of language.
Flaxman drew his conception of heroic sculpture from the heroes of the
_Iliad_: Racine borrowed his heart-rending pathetic from the sorrows of
Dido. Homer struck out his conceptions with the bold hand, and in the
gigantic proportions, of Michael Angelo's frescoes; Virgil finished his
pictures with the exquisite grace of Raphael's Madonnas.

Virgil has been generally considered as unrivalled in the pathetic; but
this observation requires to be taken with a certain limitation. No man
ever exceeded Homer in the pathetic, so far as he wished to portray it;
but it was one branch only of that emotion that he cared to paint. It was
the _domestic pathetic_ that he delineated with such power: it was in the
distresses of home life, the rending asunder of home affections, that he
was so great a master. The grief of Andromache on the death of Hector, and
the future fate of his son begging his bread from the cold charity of
strangers--the wailings of Priam and Hecuba, when that noble chief awaited
before the Scaean Gate the approach of Achilles--the passionate
lamentations of the Grecian chief over the dead body of Patroclus--never
were surpassed in any language; they abound with traits of nature, which,
to the end of the world, will fascinate and melt the human heart. The
tender melancholy of Evander for the fate of Pallas, who had perished by
the spear of Turnus, is of the same description, and will bear a
comparison with its touching predecessor. But these are all the sorrows of
domestic life. Virgil and Tasso, in the description of the despair
consequent on the severing of the ties of the passion of love, have opened
a new field, unknown in the previous poetry of antiquity. It is to be
found touched on in the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides, and but
touched on. The passion they represent under the name of love was not what
we understand by the word, or what constitutes so important an element in
the poetry and romance of modern Europe. It was not the imaginative flame
feeding on hope, nursed by smiles, transcendent in enjoyment, but a
furious mania, resembling rather, and classed with, the ravings of
insanity. Destiny was the grand ruling power in Greek tragedy: the
distress brought out was the striving of man against the iron chain of
fate. Love as a passion, independent of destiny, detached from sense,
feeding on the imagination, living in the presence of the beloved object,
is glanced at in Catullus; but it is in Virgil that we must look for the
perfect delineation of its suffering, a thorough knowledge of its
nature--in Tasso, that it has been wrought up to the highest conceivable
perfection.

But, for all that, we will not have old Homer defrauded of his dues. The
_Iliad_ cannot, for the reasons already mentioned, produce passages to be
placed beside the pathetic tenderness of Dido's love for AEneas, the
romantic chivalry of Tancredi, or Erminia's passion. But in the earlier
and more natural affections, in the delineation of domestic grief, in the
rending asunder the parental or filial ties, who has ever surpassed the
pathetic simplicity of the Grecian bard? Where can we find such
heart-rending words as Priam addresses to Hector, leaning over the towers
of Troy, when his heroic son was calmly awaiting the approach of the
god-like Achilles, resplendent in the panoply of Vulcan, and shielded by
the AEgis of Minerva?

But we know not whether three lines in the _Odyssey_ do not convey a still
more touching picture of grief--so powerful is the wail of untaught
nature. When Proteus informed Menelaus of the murder of Agamemnon, his
grief is thus described--

  "[Greek: Hos ephat': autar emoige kateklasthe philon etor
  Klaion d' en psamathoisi kathemenos; oude ny moi ker
  Ethel' eti zoein, kai horan phaos heelioio.]"
                                        _Odyssey_, IV. 538.

"Thus he spoke; my soul was crushed within me; I sat weeping on the sand;
nor had I the heart to wish to live, and behold the light of the sun."
Here is the pathos of nature: "Rachel weeping for her children, and would
not be comforted, because they are not."

One peculiar beauty belongs to the epic poems of antiquity, and especially
Homer, from the combination of heroic sentiments and actions with a
simplicity which will be looked for in vain, and in truth would be
unseemly, in the later ages of society. We hear of princes, kings, and the
daughters of kings, and our imagination immediately clothes them with the
pomp and circumstance of modern royalty. But erelong some little
circumstance, let out as it were accidentally, brings us back at once to
the simplicity and habits of early life. Bellerophon met the daughter of a
king amidst the grassy meads, and a race of heroes sprung from this
occasion; but he met her as he was tending his herds, and she her lambs.
The beauteous daughters of the Trojan chiefs repaired to the hot and cold
springs of the Scamander, near the Scaean Gate, but they went there to wash
their clothes in its limpid fountains. The youngest daughter of Nestor,
with the innocence of a child, though the beauty of womanhood, did, by her
father's desire, to Telemachus the duties of the bath. Many a chief is
described as rich; but generally the riches consist in flocks and herds,
in wrought brass or golden ornaments--not unfrequently in meadows and
garden-stuffs. This beauty could not, from the superior age of the world,
belong to Tasso. His soldans are arrayed in all the pomp of Asiatic
magnificence--his princes appear in the pride of feudal power--his
princesses surrounded with the homage of chivalrous devotion. Virgil has
often the same exquisite traits of nature, the same refreshing return to
the young world, in the _AEneid_: He dwells on those peeps into pastoral
simplicity as Tacitus did on the virtue of the Germans in the corrupted
days of Roman society, when "corrumpere et corrumpi seculum vocatur." We
may conceive the enchantment with which the Romans, when the Capitol was
in all its splendour in the time of Augustus, read his charming
description of its shaggy precipices in the days of Evander.

  "Hinc ad Tarpeiam sedem et Capitolia ducit,
  Aurea nunc, olim sylvestribus horrida dumis.
  Jam tum religio pavidos terrebat agrestes
  Dira loci; jam tum sylvam saxumque tremebant.
  'Hoc nemus, hunc,' inquit, 'frondoso vertice collem,
  Quis deus incertum est, habitat deus: Arcades ipsum
  Credunt se vidisse Jovem, cum saepe nigrantem
  AEgida concuteret dextra nimbosque cieret.'

     *       *       *       *       *

  Talibus inter se dictis, ad tecta subibant
  Pauperis Evandri, passimque armenta videbant
  Romanoque foro, et lautis mugire Carinis."--_AEneid_, viii. 347.

What Homer was to Virgil, and Ariosto to Tasso, that Michael Angelo was to
RAPHAEL. Though both these illustrious men lived in the same age, yet the
former was born nine years before the latter,[1] and he had attained to
eminence while his younger rival was yet toiling in the obscurity of
humble life. It was the sight of the magnificent frescoes of Michael
Angelo that first emancipated Raphael from the stiff and formal, though
beautiful style of his master, Pietro Perugino, and showed him of what his
noble art was susceptible. So great was the genius, so ardent the effort,
of the young aspirant, so rapid the progress of art in those days, when
the genius of modern Europe, locked up during the long frost of the middle
ages, burst forth with the vigour and beauty of a Canadian spring, that he
had brought painting, which he had taken up in a state of infancy in the
studio of Pietro Perugino, to absolute perfection when he died, at the age
of thirty-seven. Seventeen years, in Raphael's hands, sufficed to bring an
art as great and difficult as poetry to absolute perfection! Subsequent
ages, vainly as yet attempting to imitate, can never hope to surpass him.
How vast must have been the genius, how capacious the thought, how intense
the labour, of the man who could thus master and bring to perfection this
difficult art, in a period so short as, to men even of superior parts and
unwearied application, barely to gain the command of the pencil!

Modern painting, as it appears in the works of Michael Angelo, Raphael,
and Titian, is an art as elevated in kind as the highest flights of the
epic or tragic muse, and it has been brought to a perfection to be
paralleled only by the greatest conceptions of Grecian statuary. If
called upon to assign the arts which human genius had, since the beginning
of the world, brought to absolute perfection, no one would hesitate to fix
on Grecian sculpture and Italian painting. Imagination can conceive a more
faultless poem than the _Iliad_, a more dignified series of characters
than those of the _AEneid_, a more interesting epic than _Paradise Lost_;
but it can figure nothing more perfect than the friezes of Phidias, or
more heavenly than the _Holy Families_ of Raphael. It is one of the most
extraordinary and inexplicable facts recorded in the history of the human
mind, that these two sister arts should both have been brought to
perfection near each other, on the shores of the Mediterranean, in the
lifetime of a single generation; for the transition from the marbles of
AEgina to those of the Parthenon, made in the lifetime of Pericles, is as
great as from the paintings of Pietro Perugino to those of Raphael, made
in the lifetime of Leo X.

The sculpture of antiquity aimed chiefly, if not entirely, at the
representation of a _single figure_. Even the procession on the frieze of
the Parthenon is not sculpture--it is a series of isolated horsemen or
figures passing. The group of Niobe and her children is the only attempt
extant at telling a story, or representing emotion by a variety of
figures. Within this limited range, the great sculptors carried the art to
the highest imaginable perfection. The Apollo is the most perfect
representation of manly beauty, the Venus of feminine grace and delicacy.
The Laocoon exhibits the most fearful contortions and agonized expressions
of pain and anguish in suffering humanity; the Fighting Gladiator--the
most inimitable representation of war-like energy at its extreme
tension--the Dying Warrior of the Capitol, of valour sinking beneath the
ebbing stream of blood. The Hercules Farnese is the perfection of physical
strength, the Jupiter Tonans of awful majesty, the Venus Calipyge of
alluring beauty. Thus the expression of _character_ was their great
object; emotion was not overlooked, but it was studied only as it brought
out or illustrated the permanent temper of mind. A collection of ancient
statues is a vast imaginary gallery, in which, as in the heroes of the
_Iliad_, every conceivable gradation of the human mind is exhibited, from
the stern vengeance of Achilles, whom not even the massacre of half the
Grecian host could melt, to the tender heart of Andromache, who wept her
husband's valour, and her sad presentiments for her infant son.

In modern painting, as it appeared in the hands of Raphael and Michael
Angelo, a wider range was attempted: more spiritual and touching objects
had come to engross the human mind. The mere contemplation of abstract
character--its delineation by the graphic representation of the human
form, had ceased to be the principal object of genius. The temple of the
unknown God was no longer to be filled with idols made under image of man.
The gospel had been preached to the poor; the words of mercy and peace had
been heard on the earth. Painting had come to be the auxiliary of
religion; it was in the churches of a spiritual and suffering faith that
its impression was to be produced. Calvary was to be presented to the eye;
the feeling of the centurion. "Truly this man was the Son of God,"
engraven on the heart. It was to the faithful who were penetrated with the
glad words of salvation, that the altar-pieces were addressed; it was the
feeling of the song of Simeon that had gone forth on the earth. It was
those divine feelings which painting, as it arose in modern Europe, was
called to embody in the human form; it was to this heavenly mission that
the genius of Italy was called. And if ever there was a mind fitted to
answer such a call--if ever the spirit of the gospel was breathed into the
human breast, that mind and that breast were those of Raphael.

Michael Angelo was the personification of the genius of Dante. The bold
conceptions, the awful agonies, the enduring suffering which are brought
forth in that immortal poet, had penetrated his kindred spirit, and
realized the _Inferno_ in the representation of the _Last Judgment_. But
it was the Spirit of Christ which had been breathed into the heart of
Raphael. The divine words, "Suffer the little children to come unto me,
and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven," had inspired
his immortal conceptions. It is neither physical beauty nor mental
character, as in the Greek sculpture, which is represented in his
paintings. It is the Divine spirit breathed into the human heart; it is
the incarnation of deity in the human form that formed the object of his
pencil. He has succeeded in the attempt beyond any other human being that
ever existed. If any works of man ever deserved the name of divine, they
are the _Holy Families_ of Raphael.

Superficial writers will ask, what has Raphael to do with Virgil? mere
artists will enquire, how they are to be benefited by the study of Tasso?
Those, again, who have reflected on the means by which the higher stages
in any art are attained, will acknowledge that, at a certain elevation,
their principles are the same.

To move the heart, whether by painting, poetry, or eloquence, requires the
same mind. The means by which the effect is to be produced are not
different. The one works, indeed, with the pencil, the other with the pen;
the one composes in verse, the other in prose--but what then? These are
the means to the end, they are not the end itself. There are many avenues
to the human heart, but the inner doors in them all are to be opened only
by one key, and that key is never denied to the suit of genius.

It is in his lesser pieces that the exquisite taste and divine conceptions
of Raphael are chiefly to be seen. His greater paintings, the
_Transfiguration_, the frescoes in the Vatican, the cartoons, are
invaluable to the artist as studies, and specimens of the utmost power of
drawing and energy of conception; but it is not there that the divine
Raphael appears. In the larger ones his object was to cover space and
display talent; and in the prosecution of these objects he never has been
exceeded; but it is in his groups of two or three figures that his
exquisite conceptions appear. It is there that he has given free scope to
his exquisite conception, intended to represent in the maternal, and
therefore universally felt affection, the divine spirit and parental
tenderness of the gospel. "My son, give me thy heart," was what he always
aimed at. "God is love," the idea which he ever strove to represent, as
embodying the essence of the Christian faith. The Madonna della Seggiola
at Florence, the Assumption of the Virgin at Dresden, the Madonna di
Foligno in the Vatican, the Holy Family at Naples, St John in the Desert
in the Tribune at Florence, the small Holy Family in the Louvre, the large
Holy Family, with the flowers, brought from Fontainbleau, also in the
Louvre, St Mark at Munich, and several of the lesser pieces of Raphael in
the same rich collection in that city, are so many gems of art, embodying
this conception, which to the end of the world, even when preserved only
in the shadowy imitation of engraving, will improve the heart and refine
the mind, as well as fascinate the imagination. It may be doubted if they
ever will be equalled: excelled they can never be.

Whoever will study those inimitable productions, even when standing to
gaze at the engravings from them in a print-shop window, will have no
difficulty in feeling the justice of Cicero's remark, that all the arts
which relate to humanity have a certain common bond, a species of
consanguinity between them. The emotion produced by the highest excellence
in them all is the same. So intense is this emotion, so burning the
delight which it occasions, that it cannot be borne for any length of
time: the mind's eye is averted from it as the eyeball is from the line of
"insufferable brightness," as Gray calls it, which often precedes the
setting of the sun. It is difficult to say in which this burning charm
consists. Like genius or beauty, its presence is felt by all, but can be
described by none. It would seem to be an emanation of Heaven--a chink, as
it were, opened, which lets us feel for a few seconds the ethereal joys of
a superior state of existence. But it is needless to seek to define what,
all who have felt it must acknowledge, passes all understanding.

It is a common saying, even among persons of cultivated taste, that it is
hopeless to attempt to advance any thing new on the beauties of ancient
authors; that every thing that can be said on the subject has already
been exhausted, and that it is in the more recent fields of modern
literature that it is alone possible to avoid repetition. We are decidedly
of opinion that this idea is erroneous, and that its diffusion has done
more than any thing else to degrade criticism to the low station which,
with some honourable exceptions, it has so long held in the world of
letters. But when ancient excellence is contemplated with a generous eye,
even when the mind that sees is but slenderly gifted, who will say that
nothing new will occur? When it meets kindred genius, when it is elevated
by a congenial spirit, what a noble art does criticism become? What has it
proved in the hands of Dryden and Pope, of Wilson and Macaulay? It is in
the contemplation of ancient greatness, and its comparison with the
parallel efforts of modern genius, that the highest flights of these
gifted spirits have been attained, and the native generosity of real
intellectual power most strikingly evinced. Criticism of words will soon
come to an end; the notes of scholiasts and annotators are easily made, as
apothecaries make drugs by pouring from one phial into another. But
criticism of things, of ideas, of characters, of conceptions, can never
come to an end; for every successive age is bringing forth fresh
comparisons to make, and fresh combinations to exhibit. It is the
outpouring of a heart overburdened with admiration which must be
delivered, and will ever discover a new mode of deliverance.

How many subjects of critical comparison in this view, hitherto nearly
untouched upon, has the literature of Europe, and even of this age,
afforded! AEschylus, Shakspeare, and Schiller--Euripides, Alfieri, and
Corneille--Sophocles, Metastasio, and Racine--Pindar, Horace, and
Gray--Ovid, Ariosto, and Wieland--Lucretius, Darwin, and
Campbell--Demosthenes, Cicero, and Burke--Thucydides, Tacitus, and
Gibbon--Thomson, Cowper, and Claude Lorraine: such are a few which suggest
themselves at first sight to every one who reflects on the rich retrospect
of departed genius. It is like looking back to the Alps through the long
and rich vista of Italian landscape; the scene continually varies, the
features are ever new, the impression is constantly fresh, from the
variety of intervening objects, though the glittering pinnacles of the
inaccessible mountains ever shine from afar on the azure vault of heaven.
Human genius is ever furnishing new proofs of departed excellence. Human
magnanimity is ever exhibiting fresh examples of the fidelity of former
descriptions, or the grandeur of former conception. What said Hector,
drawing his sword, when, betrayed by Minerva in his last conflict with
Achilles, he found himself without his lance in presence of his
fully-armed and heaven-shielded antagonist? "Not at least inglorious shall
I perish, but after doing some great thing that men may be spoken of in
ages to come."[2]




PING-KEE'S VIEW OF THE STAGE.


This is not, O Cho-Ling-Kyang! a barbarian land, as in our foolish
childhood we were taught; but, contrariwise, great is the wisdom of the
English, and great their skill. Yea, I will not conceal the fact, that in
some things they are worthy to be imitated by the best and most learned in
the flowery land. Three moons have I resided in London, and devoted
myself, with all the powers of my mind and body, to fulfil the task which
you and the ever-venerated Chang-Feu have laid upon me. Convey to his
benignant ear the words of my respect, and tell him that my brow is ever
on the outer edge of his footstool. As I understand my office--having
pondered over the same ever since the ship left the shore of my beloved
country--it is, to give you a report of the manners and customs of the
inhabitants of this extraordinary land, and smooth the way for the sending
forth of an ambassador from the immaculate emperor to the governor of this
nation. I have completely executed your commission, O excellent
Cho-Ling-Kyang! and this was the manner of the doing thereof. When I
embarked on board of the large ship with the three masts, which had for
name the Walter Scott--after a great general who conquered a province
called Scotland, and was presented with a blue button as a reward for his
magnanimity--I was entirely ignorant of the language spoken by the
mariners, with the exception of the short form of prayer which they
constantly use when speaking of each others' eyes, and a few phrases not
easily translatable into our refined tongue; and I accordingly experienced
great difficulty in making myself understood. Notwithstanding, I soon got
friendly with the captain, and also with the men--who pulled my back hair
whenever I passed them, in the most warm and affectionate manner possible.
I took greatly to study when I had overcome the sea-sickness; and although
I could not master the pronunciation of their words, I soon arrived at a
degree of skill, which enabled me to read their printed books. There was a
large library on board of the ship, and all day long--with the aid of
Morrison's wonderful dictionary--I toiled in the delightful task of making
myself acquainted with the masterpieces of English literature. And this I
considered the best preparation for the duty set before me; for without
books, how could I furnish my mind with a knowledge of the past?--and
without mastering the language, how could I understand the characters and
modes of thought of the men who now are? I therefore studied history; but
their historians write so much, and differ so greatly from each other,
that it was perplexing to know if what they told was true--and I was
utterly confused. But, fortunately, there was in the ship a young person,
who had been sent out by his friends to a merchant's office in Canton; but
had discovered that he was a great poet, and very clever man, and was
going back to tell his father he would not hide his talents any more, but
be a wonder to all men for his genius and abilities; and this young person
was very kind to me. He advised me what to read--which was principally his
own writings; and on my telling him I wished to study history, he said
nobody cared for it now, and that all the history he knew was in
Shakspeare's plays. This Shakspeare was a great writer long ago, who
turned all the histories of his country into dramatic scenes; and they are
acted on grand occasions before the Queen and her court at this very day.
When I enquired of the young person how his countrymen preserved the
memory of events which had happened since the death of the great
Shakspeare, he said there were other people as clever perhaps as
Shakspeare, who embalmed important incidents in immortal verse, but whom a
brutal public did not sufficiently appreciate; and he offered to read to
me a poem of his own called the Napoleonad, giving an account of a great
war that happened some time ago--and which had been published, he said,
week after week, in the Bath and Bristol Literary Purveyor. He read it to
me, and it was very fine; but I did not gain much information. I read
various parts of English history in Shakspeare; but from the specimens he
gives of the kings that reigned long ago in England, I fear they were a
very cruel and barbarous race of men. One of the name of Lear gave up the
kingdom to his three daughters, and two of them treated him very cruelly,
turned him out of doors on a stormy night, put out his followers' eyes,
and behaved very ill indeed. Another was called John--a bad man. Three
Henries--the first two great fighters, and one of them a common highway
robber in conjunction with a fat old gentleman who was a great coward, but
boasted he killed the chief warrior of the enemy--and the other Henry, a
weak old man, who was murdered by another very bad king called Richard.
There was another Henry who sent away his wife--a fat, bloated, villanous
kind of man; and after that no mention is made of any of the English kings
in Shakspeare's history. And when I asked the young person if there had
been any kings since, he said he had never heard of any except George the
Third, grandfather of the present Queen. I demanded of him if all the
plays in England were forced to be histories? and he said, no. And when I
further enquired what they represented, and of what use they were, he said
they were to hold a mirror up to nature, and to be the abstract and brief
chronicle of the time; by which he afterwards explained to me he meant
this--that although tragedies and the loftier portions of the drama
treated generally of great events, yet that, in England, there were many
men of extraordinary talent, who taught great moral lessons by means of
the stage, and, above all things, never overstepped the modesty of nature,
but in every scene gave a vivid and true imitation of the actual events of
life. In short, that the best way of seeing English character was to study
the English stage; for all classes of men were more fully, truly, and
fairly represented there, than even in the House of Commons itself. The
young person, to prove the truth of this, read me a comedy, which he was
going to have acted at Covent-Garden Theatre; and it was very amusing, for
he laughed excessively at every speech. You will easily believe, O
Cho-Ling-Kyang! that I rejoiced greatly at hearing this account of the
stage; and unbounded was my satisfaction in finding among the books in the
library a large collection of English plays, which I studied deeply and
took notes from, for my future guidance in mingling with society. What a
blessing it is for a nation to be in possession of so useful an
institution, where the actual manners of the time are brought exactly
forward, and the people can see the different classes of society with all
their different feelings and peculiarities--their modes of thought--their
faults and weaknesses--their wishes and vices--as vividly produced as if
the performers were in reality the very beings they represent! How it must
instruct the boorish in the gracefulness of polished life--how it must
reprove the bad by the contemplation of honest simplicity--and what an
insight must it give to the foreigners, into all the secrets of the
domestic existence of this great and extraordinary people! O
Cho-Ling-Kyang! when the young person told me this, I said to my
heart--"Be still--beat no more with the pulses of uncertainty--I shall
only buy a perpetual ticket to the pit of the theatre, and write home a
minute account of all I see and hear." On my arrival in London I took down
the names of the theatres, and for three months I have studied character
every night. Yet, though I devoted my nights to the stage, I pored all the
morning over the many volumes I have collected of the printed dramas; and
as they all agree in their descriptions, I think I cannot be deceived, and
that you may safely present the subjoined result of my enquiries to the
very sparkling eyes of the ever-venerated Chang-Feu. There are many ranks
of men in this land, and he of the highest rank is called a lord. When
young, a lord is always rich and gay, and a great admirer of the ladies;
and it is also the case that many ladies are devotedly attached to him,
and make no scruple to confess it to their chambermaids, before they have
been acquainted with him half an hour. When the lord is old, he is a
stiff stupid man, who generally talks politics, and boasts how eloquent he
is in the great national assembly. He is also always very harsh to his
children, till they marry against his will, and then he forgives them, and
prays for their happiness. The title bestowed on the wife, and sometimes
on the daughter of a lord, is lady or ladyship; but this dignity is also
possessed by the wives of a class of men very numerous in this country,
who are called sirs.

The "ladies," almost without exception, are very disagreeable people, and
highly immoral, as they are always in love with some one else besides
their husbands,--and are great gamblers at cards, and very malicious in
their observations on their friends. The "sirs" are divided into two
classes--sometimes they are fat rich old men who have made large fortunes
by trade, and have handsome girls either of their own, or left to their
charge by deceased relations,--and sometimes they are gay fascinating
young men, running away with rich people's daughters, or stupid people's
wives; but luckily they always take names that give fair warning of their
character, so that they are generally foiled in their infamous attempts.
And this is a fine illustration of the openness of the English
disposition. A man here seldom conceals his propensities, but assumes a
name which reveals all his character at once. Sir Brilliant Fashion, and
Sir Bashful Constant, and Sir Harry Lovewit, show at once their respective
peculiarities--as do Colonel Tornado, Tempest, Hurricane, Absolute, Rapid,
and a thousand others that I have met with in my reading. But the thing
which astonished me most of all was, that in this great mercantile nation,
a merchant is very little appreciated unless he is in debt or a cheat; but
the hero of most of the histories, if he is of a mercantile family, is
over head and ears in the books of Jew usurers, and has left the
respectable circle of his equals in rank, and spends his time and
constitution in the gaieties of the lords and ladies. And that this has
long been the case, is proved by old plays and new ones. There is a play
in the oldest-looking of the volumes I possess, called, "How to grow
Rich," which shows the style of manners in this respect forty or fifty
years ago; and I will translate the beginning of it, that you may see a
real picture of English society with your own eyes.

Mr Warford, the nephew of Mr Smalltrade, a banker, is in conversation with
Mr Plainly, the head clerk:--

     "_Plainly._--Nay, do not think me curious or impertinent, Mr Warford.
     I have lived so long with you and your uncle, that I cannot see you
     unhappy without enquiring the cause.

     "_Warford._--My uncle is himself the cause. His weakness and
     credulity will undo us all.

     "_Plainly._--Excuse me, sir; but I'm afraid the young lady now on a
     visit at our banking-house, the charming Lady Henrietta, has she not
     made a very deep impression?

     "_Warford._--To confess the truth she has; and though, from my
     inferior situation in life, I can never aspire to the gaining of her
     affections, she may still have to thank me for saving her from ruin.

     "_Plainly._--From ruin, sir?

     "_Warford._--Ay; she is now on the very brink of it. When her father,
     Lord Orville, went abroad for his health, he gave her a fortune of
     eight thousand pounds, and left her to the care of her uncle, Sir
     Thomas Roundhead. At his country seat Mr Smalltrade met with her,
     and, being banker to her father, he thought it his duty to invite her
     to his house.

     "_Plainly._--And she had no sooner entered it than she became
     acquainted with Sir Charles and Miss Dazzle? I suspect their infamous
     designs.

     "_Warford._--Yes, Plainly, when Miss Dazzle has robbed her of her
     fortune at the gaming-table, Sir Charles is to attempt to deprive her
     of her honour; but if I don't shame and expose them! Oh, think of the
     heartfelt satisfaction in saving such a woman as Lady Henrietta! 'Tis
     true most of her fortune is already lost, and Sir Thomas is so
     offended at her conduct, that, wanting an heir to his estate, he has
     adopted his god-daughter Rosa."

In the next page we are shown the mode in which banking was carried on in
country towns by persons who had the daughters of lords visiting them--who
have gone abroad for their health, and left then such uncountable heaps of
sycee silver.

     "_Smalltrade._--There is nothing like a snug country bank.

     [_Enter a servant._

     "_Servant._--I want change for this draft of Sir Harry Hockley's.

     "_Smalltrade._--Very well, how much is it for?

     "_Servant._--A hundred pounds.

     "_Smalltrade._--What?

     "_Servant._--A hundred pounds.

     "_Smalltrade._--Mercy on me! you've set me all in a tremble. Draw on
     a country bank for a hundred pounds!--why, does your master suppose
     himself drawing on the bank of Amsterdam?

     "_Plainly._--True, sir; and, if you recollect, we had a large run
     upon us yesterday.

     "_Smalltrade._--So we had--a very large run! Sir Thomas Roundhead
     drew in one draft for the enormous sum of twenty-five pounds, and
     here's your master draws for a hundred. Talk of a country bank! the
     Bank of England couldn't stand this.

     "_Servant._--I can't tell, sir; Sir Harry said he had ten times the
     money in your hands.

     "_Smalltrade._--So he has, and what then? Doesn't he place money in
     my hands that it may be safe; and if he is to draw it out in large
     sums, that is, if he is to get it out when he wants it, where would
     be the use of a banker?"

In a succeeding scene, Miss Dazzle meets her brother Sir Charles, and
says,--

     "Welcome from London, brother! I have just left the idol of your
     heart, the charming Henrietta. As usual, the banker's nephew was
     attending her.

     "_Sir Charles._--Ay, ay, it's all pretty plain, but I won't be
     scandalous.

     "_Miss Dazzle._--Well, if she's his to-day she'll be yours to-morrow.
     I have seen Mr Smalltrade; he talks of becoming a partner; and, if
     you play your cards well, Lady Henrietta will be completely in your
     power.

     "_Sir Charles._--Yes, for when I've won all her money I can be
     generous enough to become her protector. Well, sister, we shall ruin
     them all."

It will be seen from this, O Cho-Ling-Kyang! that sirs and their sisters
unite with country bankers in setting up a gaming-house--and that the
method of treating a lord's daughter, is to ruin her first at cards, and
in character afterwards. The picture of private life which I have quoted,
is from the works of one Frederick Reynolds; the play was acted with the
greatest applause, and has passed through a great many editions. So there
can be no doubt of its presenting a true image of the usual course of
events in this great and wonderful nation.

In another volume I find a similar representation. It is called, "The Way
to get Married," and is written by one Thomas Morton. I will translate
some passages for you, and you will see that the English are very
different people in their own country from what they are in their
counting-houses at Hong-Kong.

There was a gentleman of the name of Toby Allspice, a grocer, who was
sheriff of his county, and expected by the death of an old maid, Miss
Sarah Sapless, to succeed to thirty thousand pounds. He has a daughter who
is very anxious to be "stylish," and marry a "lord" or a "sir," if she
can.

To Mr Allspice's town goes a London merchant of the name of Dashall, who
receives a letter on his arrival, and reads it to the whole of the
audience:--

     "_Dashall_, (_reads_).--'Dear Dashall, all's up. Transfer swears if
     you don't settle your beer account in a week, he'll blackboard you.
     Affectionate enquiries are making after you at Lloyd's; and to crown
     all, hops were so lively last market, that there is already a loss of
     thousands on that scheme. Nothing can save you but the ready. Yours,

     "'TIM TICK.

     "'N.B.--Green peas were yesterday sold at Leadenhall market at
     ninepence a-peck, so your bet of three thousand pounds on that event
     is lost.'--So! Lurched every way; stocks, insurance, hops, hazard,
     and green peas, all over the left shoulder; and then, like a flat, I
     must get pigeoned at Faro by ladies of quality, for the swagger of
     saying, 'The Duchess and I were curst jolly last night.' But
     confusion to despair! I'm no flincher. If I can but humbug Allspice
     out of a few thousands, and marry his daughter, I shall cut a gay
     figure, and make a splash yet.

     "_Waiter_, (_without._)--A room for Lady Sorrel.

     "_Dashall._--What the devil brings her here? Old and ugly as she is,
     I'll take decent odds that 'tis an intrigue.

     [_Enter Lady Sorrel._

     "_Lady Sorrel._--Inform my cousin Caustic I'm here. Ah, Dashall! I
     suppose the warm weather has driven you from town?

     "_Dashall._--True, London was certainly too hot for me, but how could
     your ladyship leave the fascination of play?

     "_Lady Sorrel._--Hush! that's not my rural character. I always
     assimilate. The fact is, Dick, I have here a strange, plain-spoken,
     worthy, and wealthy relation; he gives me considerable sums to
     distribute in London to the needy, which I lose in play to people of
     fashion; and you'll allow that is giving them to the needy, and
     fulfilling the worthy donor's intentions.--Ha! ha!

     "_Dashall._--Then you are not here because your favourite, young
     Tangent, is arrived?--Eh?

     "_Lady Sorrel._--What, Dick, have you found out my attachment there?
     Well, I confess it; and if my regard be not, I'll take care my
     revenge shall be, gratified; and 'tis a great consolation that one is
     nearly as sweet as the other."

And when the above-named cousin of Lady Sorrel has a palaver with the same
merchant Dashall, he is instructed in the inner secrets of the commercial
world after the following guise:--

     "_Dashall._--Capital!--an old bugbear--never thought of now. No!
     paper, discount, does it all.

     "_Caustic._--Paper!

     "_Dashall._--Ay. Suppose I owe a tradesman--my tailor, for
     instance--two thousand pounds--

     "_Caustic._--A merchant owe his tailor two thousand pounds!--Mercy on
     me!

     "_Dashall._--I give him my note for double the sum--he discounts
     it--I touch half in the ready--note comes due--double the sum
     again--touch half again--and so on to the tune of fifty thousand
     pounds. If monopolies answer, make all straight; if not; smash into
     the Gazette. Brother merchants say, 'D----d fine fellow; lived in
     style--only traded beyond his capital.' So certificate's signed, ruin
     a hundred or two reptiles of retailers, and so begin the war again.
     That's the way to make a splash--devilish neat, isn't it? How you
     stare! you don't know nothing of life, old boy.

     "_Caustic._--Vulgar scoundrel!

     "_Dashall._--We are the boys in the city. Why, there's Sweetwort the
     brewer--don't you know Sweetwort? Dines an hour later than any duke
     in the kingdom--imports his own turtle--dresses turbot by a stop
     watch--has house-lamb fed on cream, and pigs on pine apples--gave a
     jollification t'other day--stokehole in the brew-house--asked a dozen
     peers--all glad to come--can't live as we do. Who make the splash in
     Hyde Park?--who fill the pit at the opera?--who inhabit the squares
     in the West? Why, the knowing ones from the East to be sure.

     "_Caustic._--Not the wise ones from the East, I'm sure.

     "_Dashall._--Who support the fashionable Faro tables? Oh, how the
     duchesses chuckle and rub their hands, when they see one of us!

     "_Caustic._--Duchesses keep gaming-tables!

     "_Dashall._--To be sure! How the devil should they live?"

Such, O learned Cho-Ling-Kyang! is the real life of those extraordinary
beings who are so steady and plodding to outward appearance. Little would
you suspect that, when one of the merchants of the factory got home, he
would aid duchesses in the setting up of Faro tables, and mix with all the
brilliant and dissolute society of a great city. To us, such thoughts
would seem unnatural, and scarcely would the president of the Hong
consider himself qualified to hold a chopstick in the presence of a yellow
button. And I fear greatly; that in the extremity of your unbelief you
say, Tush, tush--Ping-Kee is deceiving us by inventing foolish deceits! An
English merchant would not make open profession of his bankruptcy; an
English lady of rank would not exult in the number of people she had
ruined by false play at cards; an English gentleman would not concert
plans with his sister for the seduction of a lord's daughter; an English
sheriff would not throw off his grocer's apron to go and receive the
judges, while an English barrister put it on, and sold figs to the
beautiful daughter of a British captain. But consider, O Cho-Ling-Kyang!
that I am a man of veracity from my youth, and that if I make so bold as
to invent, or even to misquote, there may be many beside you who can
convict me at once. And if you persist in your doubts, and say, verily the
writers of those plays give no true account of their countrymen, but write
false things which have no existence in reality, what shall we think of
the countless numbers who go to see those representations, and take no
steps to punish the authors for libels and defamations--but, contrariwise,
applaud and clap their hands, and say "good, good"--would they do this if
the picture had no resemblance? But they hold up the stage as a school of
morals, and a copy of things that are. And another argument, O
Cho-Ling-Kyang! that these dramas are drawn from experience and
observation is, that they do not contradict each other, as they would
assuredly do if they proceeded from any source but reality. No, no--great
sir--believe me, that the scenes I have quoted are excellent descriptions
of the characters introduced, and that their originals are to be met with
every day. Again, perhaps you will say--not so; O Ping-Kee, the writers of
those plays are stupid men--with shaved heads--that have no understanding,
and receive no greater reward than the conjurers who catch balls on their
foreheads, and balance long poles in the market-place! But the case is far
different, as I will prove to you from the preface to one of those works,
written by a lady called Inchbald, who herself wrote many comedies, and
received much money for the same.

"It is well known that the English theatres never flourished as they do at
present, (1807.) When it is enquired, why painting, poetry, and sculpture,
decline in England? want of encouragment is the sure reply; but this reply
cannot be given to the question, why dramatic literature fails? for never
was there such high remuneration conferred upon every person, and every
work belonging to the drama. A new play which, from a reputed wit of
former times, would not with success bring him a hundred pounds, a manager
will now purchase from a reputed blockhead at the price of near a
thousand, and sustain all risk of whether it be condemned or not. Great
must be the attraction of modern plays to repay such speculation. It is a
consolation to the dramatist of the present age, that while his plays are
more attractive than ever those of former writers were, those authors had
their contemporary critics as well as he, though less acute and less
severe indeed than the present race."

I have not time to reduce into celestial money the English sum of a
thousand pounds; but it is great, yea, more than the value in three years
of the longest peacock's feather in Pekin, and the value of a play is not
diminished since then. Not many moons ago, there was a reward offered by
one of the managers, of five hundred gold coins called guineas, to the
person who should send to him the best comedy illustrative of present
manners. O Cho-Ling-Kyang, the power of five hundred guineas in awakening
the poetic powers of mankind! The great majority of the English nation for
a whole year wrote nothing but plays; all the world was a stage, and all
the men and women merely writers; and when the time came, all had broken
down in the attempt, except ninety-six. But through these fourscore and
sixteen dramas, all painting the habits and characteristics of the present
time, the judges appointed by the manager had to read. And they read--and
read; and when they came to a decision, lo! it was in favour of a
lady--one of the cleverest authors, in other styles, that England has ever
seen--bright, polished, witty; and although not in a dramatic form, more
dramatic and lively than any professed play-writer since one called
Sherry, from his fondness for drinking wine. 'Midst the applause of all
the rest of the world, and the hatred and jealousy of her ninety-five
competitors, she was presented with the money; and the manager, on looking
through a hole in the curtain on the first night of the performance, saw
the whole house crowded from the floor to the roof, and thought he had
never so wisely laid out five hundred guineas in his life. "Oho!" said
wise men to each other in the boxes, "we shall see ourselves as we are--no
farcical exaggeration, no vulgar grievances; the woman is an observing
woman, and has mixed in great society; moreover, it is the best play out
of nearly a hundred; let us wait, it will be as good as the _School for
Scandal_." And they stamped loud with their feet. The play was called the
_Day of Dupes_; and wise men in the boxes were not exempt from the general
fate. All were dupes together. For the authoress was a wise woman, and
jingled the five hundred guineas in a purse, and kept all her own clever
observation of life and manners to be used on some other occasion, and
took the same view and no other of English customs and character that
Reynolds, and Morton, and O'Keefe, and Colman, had done before her. So her
heroes and heroines flew about the stage, and talked funny things, and
swore a little, and conversed in a provincial dialect called slang, and
behaved exactly as Dashall, and Miss Dazzle, and Lord Sparkle had behaved
before. Oh! was not this a triumph to the great authors of former days,
and did it not prove that wise men in the boxes are foolish men when
judging of the stage? It did, O Cho-Ling-Kyang! but a greater triumph was
at hand. The manager having read and studied the preface by the female
Inchbald, which I have translated for your instruction, and having given a
small sum--so they consider five hundred guineas in this land of
ingots--to a reputed wit, thought he would gain much silver if he obtained
a drama from a reputed blockhead. And he was right in his calculation; for
he applied to an author who had written farces in five acts, where various
impossible things were done, and persons talked in great jokes invented
long ago by a nobleman of the name of Miller, and behaved like the clown
in a pantomime, without the advantage of being dressed in his
parti-coloured garments; and in a short time this author furnished the
manager with a comedy called _Old Heads and Young Hearts_. Oh! he knew so
much of life, this famous author; he would show what the real state of
society was; and, said I to myself, I will go and judge for myself. I will
see whether the books I have been studying are filled with lies. I will
see how gentlemen speak, and how ladies look and act. Oho! I will put
Reynolds and Morton to the proof. I will put on my European dress. I will
ask the way to the theatre. I will sit in the pit. So shall I be able to
send to Cho-Ling-Kyang, and to the venerated Chang-Feu, an account from my
personal experience of English fashionable life. And so the first person I
saw on the stage was a young gentleman greatly in debt, a studier of the
law, who lives in a building called the Temple, in a room meagrely
furnished, and talks about his intimacy with duchesses, exactly as Dashall
and Tangent had done before. Oh! said I, this is complete proof that the
great Reynolds and great Morton drew from life, and also the great author
of this beautiful play. His name, not the author's name, but the young
gentleman's name, is Littleton Coke, after two sages of the law called
Coke and Littleton; but he makes no money by his profession, and has found
all his great friends desert him when he made application to them for a
loan. Their names are Lord St James and Mister Deuceace. His brother also
writes him a letter, enclosing the blessing of the Reverend Mr Rural, but
no cash. But suddenly comes in Lord Charles Roebuck, the younger son of
the Earl of Pompion, (for in this country all the younger sons of Earls
take the title of "Lord,") and tells Mr Littleton Coke that he is in love
with a lady he lifted out of a carriage that had been upset.

     "_Littleton._--Is that all?

     "_Roebuck._--Forbid it, Venus! No, with incredible trouble I traced
     them. The father, the dragon who guards this Hesperian fruit, is an
     old East Indian colonel, as proud as Lucifer, and as hot as his
     dominions. I hovered round the house for a week.

     "_Littleton._--Successfully?

     "_Roebuck._--I saw her once for a second at the back garden-gate.

     "_Littleton._--To speak to her?

     "_Roebuck._--I hadn't time.

     "_Littleton._--No? Oh!

     "_Roebuck._--No. So I gave her a kiss.

     "_Littleton._--Excellent economy; and her name--

     "_Roebuck._--Is Rocket--her father, an eccentric old bully, turns his
     house into a barrack, mounts guard at the hall door; the poor girl
     can't move without a sentry, and I believe her lady's-maid is an old
     one-eyed corporal of artillery."

From this you will perceive, O Cho-Ling-Kyang! that the English are
different from the Chinese in many respects; but that Colonel Rocket so
far differs from his countrymen as to keep a strict guard over his
daughter. There was a gentleman of the name of Thunder in one of the
volumes I read on board of the ship, who was very like this
Rocket--probably his uncle; and he again was the son or grandson of an old
admiral I read of in a book, called _Trunnion_--all evidently excellent
men, and frequently met with in English society. The Earl of Pompion is
prime minister of England, and of course a very clever man, and he has
determined that his son shall marry his cousin Lady Alice, the widow of
another lord--Lord George Hawthorn. She is called Lady Alice, though her
husband's name was George; for it is usual for a lady to retain her
Christian name in spite of her marriage, although instances, I am told,
are known where a lady--even a duke's daughter--marrying a marquis's son,
takes the Christian name of her husband along with his title, and calls
herself Lady Thomas or Lady William; but the author of this drama, of
course, knows best. Lord Charles Roebuck tries to avoid a marriage with
Lady Alice, and begs Mr Littleton Coke to propose for her himself, which
he of course agrees to do; and in preparation for which he would probably
have found the large sum of twenty pounds he wished to borrow from Lord St
James, very useful. In addition to the hand of the widow, who has a
fortune of L5000 a-year, Lord Charles insures him a seat in Parliament;
and the two friends go out in a great hurry on hearing a knock at the
door, to take up their residence in the house of the Earl of Pompion.

The knock at the door is given by the brother of the young barrister, who
speaks in a language which they told me was the vernacular of a foreign
kingdom called York; he is accompanied by a priest of one of the religions
tolerated in this country, called the Christian, which was once universal,
but has now fallen into disrepute. They come in search of the spendthrift,
and are taken for a money-lender and a bailiff by the young lawyer's
clerk; and this makes a great laugh, it is so natural a mistake.

Lady Alice Hawthorn is a delightful lady. She has invited Colonel Rocket
and his daughter to dine with Lord Pompion, (whom she calls Pompey, after
a great philosopher in ancient Rome,) and who, she says, although he is
her uncle, "talked impudence" to her when he was half tipsy at a ball at a
place called Almacks. She tells the Earl that Colonel Rocket is rich and
powerful; but in this she tells a non-verity--for she looked at me--even
me--where I was sitting in the pit, and said he is "a half-pay colonel,
with less interest than a treasury clerk, but a glorious old fellow; I'll
bet he'll kiss the countess in a week. What fun!" I, even I, Ping-Kee, was
so astonished, that I could say nothing, but sat and blushed very much at
the communication; and still redder did my cheek become when I saw what
followed. For when Lord Charles and the barrister came in, the young lord
recognises Lady Alice's tones. "Blest voice," he says, surely it is--

     "_Lady Alice._--Your cousin Alice; how are you, Charley?--(he
     hesitates)--all right go on, I'm human nature, (he kisses her.)
     What's your friend's name?"

And then Mr Littleton Coke is presented to Lord and Lady Pompion, who
receive him very kindly; for they mistake him for the foreign gentleman
who does not speak English, his brother from the kingdom of York. And Lady
Alice, besides asking her cousin to kiss her, lets the young barrister
make love to her, and kiss her hand before they are acquainted ten
minutes, and altogether gives a very fascinating idea of widows of high
rank. Colonel Rocket always gives his commands in military language, as if
he were at the head of his regiment, and Lord Charles Roebuck frightens
the common people with his haughty looks. There is a very elegant
gentleman, who is called a butler, and comes in to inform Lord Charles
that dinner is on the table; and the second act ends in the following
dignified manner:--

     "_Butler._--Ahem--dinner, my lord"--(a pause--he goes behind their
     causeuse)--"Dinner, my ------" (They start up confused.) Roebuck
     looks sternly at the butler, and they _exeunt_ followed by Butler,
     bowing.

In the next act there is a great deal of kissing and talking, for which I
could see no reason; and people ran out and in, and up and down so much,
that I became rather confused. But the old Bonze is very stupid, and makes
a number of mistakes; and the young barrister is very gay, and treats Lady
Alice as if she was no better than a dancer at a festival; and they all
treat each other in such extraordinary ways, that I could only perceive
that English young ladies and English young gentlemen, if they behaved in
Canton as they do at home, would speedily be consigned to the
lockup-house. But at last I was glad to recognise Lord Charles, disguised
in top-boots and knee-breeches as a groom, and I was very proud of my
cleverness in recognizing him; for his own father speaks to him for a long
time, and never makes the discovery; and shortly after, Mr Littleton Coke
appears, also disguised as a groom, but for what purpose I could not find
out. And there was a long time employed in love-making again, and
quarrelling and mistaking, till at last all things seemed to go right, and
the old Bonze united the hands of the lovers on the stage, and we all
laughed and clapped our hands. Of a truth, O Cho-Ling-Kyang! the persons
who find fault with the drama are foolish. It is not with the drama such
critics should find fault, but with the people who believe in real life in
such a curious manner. No--it will not do to throw the blame of such
representations on the author. He does nothing but paint what he sees. And
therefore you will be wise if you send over to this people an ambassador
who is not of the sect of the moral Con-fu-tse; for as he will have to mix
in the society of Lady Alices and Countesses of Pompions, he might be
shocked and degraded by meeting them, if he had any regard for female
delicacy or manly feeling. It will not require a man of the abilities of
the venerated Chang-Feu to twist round his thumb so very stupid a mortal
as the Earl of Pompion, who is secretary of state; and, therefore, you may
save much silver by engaging a common Button to conduct the negotiations
with the English crown. I could see no one on the stage, or meet with any
one in the books, bearing any resemblance to Pottinger or Davis; and,
therefore, I suppose all the clever men are banished by this curious
people, and all the silly ones kept at home. You will therefore be wise to
make your treaties with the Pompions, who reside in Whitehall, rather than
with the Goughs and Parkers, who are transported to Hong-Kong. In the mean
time I will continue my researches, and I will also make personal
experiments as to the veracity of the stage representations. I will go at
once to one of the great men's houses, and will kiss his wife in a week,
and disguise myself like a postilion, and run away with one of his
daughters. And of the result I will make you aware. Such is the view of
your servant Ping-Kee, who touches the ground you stand on with his
forehead nine times--and one time more.




THE MIDNIGHT WATCH.


CHAPTER I.

      "For the watch to babble and talk,
  Is most tolerable, and not to be endured."

                                _Much Ado about Nothing._

About the period when the civil wars between the Republican and Royalist
parties in England had terminated, after the execution of the unfortunate
Charles I., in the utter defeat of his son at the battle of Worcester, and
the dispersion of all the adherents to the royal cause, a small
castellated mansion, not far from the eastern coast of England, was
garrisoned by a party of the Parliamentary troops.

This mansion, which had belonged to a Royalist family who had fled the
land, having been seized upon and confiscated by the Parliamentary
commissioners employed in sequestrating the property of confirmed enemies
of the commonwealth, had been converted into a sort of fortress or
stronghold, the natural defences and isolated position of which, rendered
it peculiarly adapted as a place of confinement for prisoners of war. Its
situation, at the same time, so near the coast, gave it an additional
advantage as a post of observation, whence measures might be taken for the
interception of such Royalists, who, proscribed as obstinate malignants,
might be led to this part of the country in their attempts to seek the
means of escape.

Flanked on one side by the waters of the river, this isolated house was
cut off on the other three by a broad ditch or moat, being thus entirely
surrounded by water, except at one point the most remote from the river,
where it communicated by a wooden bridge with a causeway, lined by an
avenue of trees, which served as an approach, and traversed at some length
a low level tract of land before it reached the higher and more hilly
country. A similar tract of level, but of a more marshy and swampy
description, stretched along the opposite bank of the river, terminating
at some distance by a line of low well-wooded hills. Not far from the
house, which stood thus alone, like a solitary bittern in a Dutch
landscape, the river widened suddenly into a large expanse of water,
called in this part of England a "broad," which was itself only separated
from the sea by a narrow strip of low sand-banks, and sandy downs or
deanes, as they are there termed, and extended thus along the shore to
some distance, when again assuming the form of a river, it poured its
waters into the German Ocean.

Of the more ancient part of this mansion, which boasted (it was never well
known upon what authority) a Roman origin, only a large circular tower was
left, which was attached somewhat awkwardly, like an ill-adjusted
headpiece, on to the more modern building. Although constructed in the
comparatively peaceful times of Henry VII.'s reign, the more modern house
had been evidently built with some ideas of strength and defence, and in a
demi-castellated form, various smaller additions having been made to it at
subsequent and different periods, without any great observance of order or
style.

Behind the main body of the house thus irregularly constructed, was a
species of small inner-court or garden, enclosed between the old tower and
the walls that connected it with the mansion on one side, and a wing of
the building which extended to the side of the stream on the other; whilst
opposite to the back of the house, which was now wholly unoccupied, and
almost in a ruinous state, a strong and thick parapet skirted the river,
and completed the parallelogram.--Formerly an opening in the centre of
this parapet had evidently conducted by several steps to the water's edge,
in order to facilitate the communications with boats on the river; but it
had now been blocked up by a fresh mass of heavy brickwork and masonry,
as if for the purpose of adding security to the place; and at the time we
write, two culverins, mounted so as to be on a level with the top of the
parapet, contributed to give to the spot the look of a fortified
stronghold. The forms of flower-beds of prim shapes, the former
decorations of the spot, might still be traced here and there in the now
almost level and sandy surface of the coast, giving evidence that some
pains had probably been originally bestowed upon this interior enclosure.
But beyond these faint traces of flower-beds, nothing now remained of its
better days but a few evergreens and other bushes, which, growing close by
the parapet wall, had equally escaped the rude trampling of the unheeding
soldiers, or the wanton devastations of some of the over-zealous of the
day; men who looked upon all adornment of whatever kind, all appearance of
gratification of a refined taste, however innocent, as sinful and
condemnable. A vaulted passage traversed the wing of the building
mentioned as stretching to the water's edge, and formed the usual and more
direct communication between this sort of court and other parts of the
establishment.

Late on a fine autumn afternoon of the year 1652, some little time after
the battle of Worcester, a young man, musket on arm, paced up and down
this inner court as sentinel. His dress, which partook of the military
uniform of the times, without precisely belonging to any particular
regiment, and the finer cloth of some parts of his attire, which was of a
far finer texture than was customary upon the person of a common soldier,
proved that he was one of the many volunteers who had enrolled themselves
among the troops of the Parliamentary army, and probably of gentler birth
than might be generally found employed in such humble military functions.
Loose boots of so great a size towards their upper part, that each might
have been imagined to contain, at least, half a calf-skin, mounted towards
his large hose of plain but good material. A tuck or rapier of some length
was girded round his loins; a corselet, with bandoleer slung around it,
covered the front of his buff-coat; and a morion, destitute of all feather
or ornament, concealed for the greater part his hair, closely clipped in
compliance with the puritanical fashions of the times, the colour of
which, however, might be divined by the fairness of the young mustache
that curled lovingly about his upper lip.

Sometimes, as he paced backwards and forwards upon his lonesome watch, the
eye of the young man rested for a while upon the dull swampy landscape,
the chief beauty of which, at the moment, was a slight haze that hovered
over stream and marsh, and stunted willow and distant hill, tinged with a
golden hue from the slanting rays of the sun; the only living sights and
sounds of which, were busy flights of gnats whirling up and down with
drowsy hum; an occasional frog, that splashed from the opposite shore into
the water with an uneasy croak; and one solitary fisherman, who, after
having drawn up his boat among the rushes on the river's bank, near the
opening upon the "broad," and left his line to float along the lazy
stream, seemed to have lain down in his broad flat-bottomed punt, to sleep
at his ease. Sometimes he paused to scrutinize more earnestly the heavy
pile of the old tower, to guard all egress from which might be supposed,
from his periodical examinations of its walls, to be the peculiar duty of
his post. Sometimes again he gazed listlessly upon the marks of
devastation, where the carved armorial bearings of the family to whom the
mansion had belonged, had been hacked away from the walls of the building,
and other symbols of nobility or religion had been wantonly mutilated or
destroyed; and at such moments, an almost unconscious sigh would escape
him, ill according with the tenets of the party which he evidently served.
But most generally his attention was directed towards a low window in the
first floor of the projecting wing, not very many feet above the level of
the ground, in front of which a small wooden balcony, filled with flowers,
showed that the occupant of the chamber to which it belonged was probably
of the gentler sex, and of an age when such matters are still objects of
tender and careful solicitude. At these times, evidences of impatience,
almost amounting to pettishness, would appear in his uneasy gestures; and
after a scrutiny of some duration, he would again turn away to resume his
pacing, with a look of trouble and annoyance upon his brow. The handsome
features of that fine face, however, were not formed to express grief, nor
that clear bright eye sorrowful thought; yet, such were the circumstances
of the times, that whenever disengaging them from associations connected
with the balconied window, as his reflections reverted to himself and his
own position, his countenance would fall, and his eye cloud over with an
expression of sadness.

Gerald Clynton was of old family and noble birth. His father, Lord
Clynton, had doated upon his wife with the fondest and most exclusive
affection; and the birth of Gerald, his second son, having been the
occasion of her death in childbed, the agonized husband, who was
inconsolable for her loss, had never been able to look upon the child,
and, in its infant years, had banished it altogether from his sight. The
time arrived, however, when it became necessary to remove the little boy
from the sole care of menials, and to commence the rudiments of his
education; and at that period Mr Lyle, the brother of the deceased Lady
Clynton, finding the aversion of the father towards the poor innocent
cause of the mother's death still more strongly rooted by time, and his
whole paternal affections centred and lavished upon his eldest born, had
taken the child to his home, and, being himself childless, had treated,
and as it were adopted, the boy as his own son.

Time crept on. The boy grew into the youth; the youth approached to the
man; but still Lord Clynton evinced no interest in his young son--gave no
demonstration of awakening affection. With time also crept on the angry
and troubled clouds that arose upon the political horizon of the land. The
storm at length burst forth. The fatal struggle commenced between the
unfortunate Charles and his Parliament; and the civil wars broke out. A
stanch Royalist, Lord Clynton joined with enthusiasm the cause of the
monarch; while Mr Lyle, whose tenets were of the Presbyterian persuasion,
and whose political opinions were entirely of that party, found himself
enrolled in the ranks of the Parliamentary army, in which his name and
fortune and his active, but stern, cold courage, gave him much influence.

Entirely deprived of the affections of a father, whom he never remembered
to have seen, and on whom, with the usual levity of boyhood, he seldom or
never bestowed a passing thought, Gerald Clynton, or Gerald Lyle, as he
was constantly called after his uncle--and most people knew not that he
bore any other name--naturally imbibed the opinions and sentiments of his
protector; and, when the civil war was openly declared, followed him to
the camp. The reflection never crossed him, that the unknown author of his
being might be engaged in the ranks of the enemy; that his uncle and his
father might chance to meet face to face upon the battle-field; that
either his real parent, or the parent of his affections, might fall by the
hand of the other. To do justice to the feelings of the youth, no idea of
the kind had ever been suggested to him by his uncle, not a word mentioned
of the political sentiments of his father. Colonel Lyle--for such became
his rank in the Parliamentary army--was a man of firm adherence to his
principles; and although a cold, hard man, in all things but his affection
for his adopted son, too earnest and eager a supporter of the party for
which he battled, to allow such a proselyte to what he considered the just
and upright cause--such a follower in his own footsteps as his nephew--to
escape him on account of any family considerations, which he stigmatized
as "prejudices to be despised and set at nought in so holy a matter."

Enrolled as a volunteer in his uncle's regiment, Gerald had, in some of
the scanty moments of peace and repose snatched between the quickly
following phases of the struggle, found opportunities to cultivate the
acquaintance of an old friend of his uncle's--an officer in the same
regiment--or rather, it ought to be owned without reserve, the
acquaintance of the fair daughter of that friend. In these troubled but
precious moments it was, that Gerald's young heart first awakened to love;
and when, upon the death of his uncle Colonel Lyle, who never recovered
the wounds he had received upon the field of Naseby, old Lazarus Seaman
received the command of the regiment, it was again the bright eyes of
pretty Mistress Mildred that served as a loadstone to attach him to it,
and to attract him to follow the troop which garrisoned the lone mansion
upon the eastern coast of England; for Colonel Lazarus Seaman was the
governor or commander of this impromptu sort of fortress; and Colonel
Lazarus Seaman's daughter, his only and motherless child, quitted her
father's side as little as possible. She it was who was the tenant of the
room appertaining to that balconied window, and those bright and
carefully-tended flowers, to which the eyes of Gerald now so often
strayed, as he paced up and down the dull court, to perform the duties of
sentinel.

Gerald's thoughts, however, as already intimated, were not placid, nor
were they exclusively occupied by the object of his affections. They
dwelt, from time to time, with grief upon his uncle, whose death had
excited in him so many bitter regrets; and those sad recollections, in
their turn, called forth in him other reflections of a new and painful
nature. He recalled to mind how, in his dying moments, the self-elected
father of his youth had summoned him to his side, and talked to him of
that other father whom he had never known; how he had spoken, in broken
accents, and with much remorse, of the possible hatred engendered between
father and son; of his own regrets, now first clearly awakened in him,
that he himself might have been the cause of such a consummation; and how
then, with his last breath, he in vain endeavoured to murmur expressions
of bitter repentance for some cruel wrong done, the nature of which no
longer met the ear of the anxious listener, and was soon left for ever
unexplained in the silence of death. These sad remembrances led to a train
of thought of a most painful and harassing description. His position as a
voluntary supporter of a cause repugnant to the principles of a father,
whom, although unknown to him, it was his duty to honour and obey, and as
affianced to the daughter of a man whose Republican principles were so
decided, appeared to him involved with the most perplexing difficulties.
New and conflicting feelings had arisen in the young man's breast. There
was already within him a bitter struggle between love and duty--between
long inculcated opinions and newly awakened emotions. As the one or the
other feeling predominated, Gerald walked backwards and forwards with
gloomy face, or turned to gaze upon the window, the closed casement of
which seemed then to call forth from him gestures and words of a somewhat
testy impatience.

"She knows that this is my hour for mounting guard, and yet she comes not
to the window. She shows no sign of the least thought or care for me," he
muttered angrily to himself, stamping more firmly and sharply as he
recommenced his pacing, after a pause, in which he had eyed the window
with bent brow and bitten lip. "But she does not love me," he added
bitterly. "She has never loved me. She has never done otherwise than
trifle with my affections--seeking for demonstrations of my love to feed
her vanity, and then flinging them aside with the sick stomach of an
over-pampered child. I am a fool to let myself be thus dragged at her
skirts, in such tinselled leading-strings. No; I will loose myself from
this thraldom. But what if she love another? More than once I have thought
she looked with much complacency upon that young recruit--the new
volunteer--that Maywood, I think they call him. Were it true, 'sdeath! I
would slit his ears for him. God forgive me the oath!" Gerald asked no
forgiveness for the revengeful thought.

He was still continuing his half-muttered soliloquy of jealousy and spite,
when the click of a casement-hasp caught his lover's ear. In a moment,
the angry expression of his brow was cleared away like a mist before the
sun--a bright gleam of satisfaction illumed his countenance, as he looked
eagerly and hastily towards the window of Mistress Mildred's chamber. The
casement opened, and first appeared a fair hand, which, with a long
tapering jug of blue and white Dutch porcelain, was bestrewing water upon
the flowers in the little wooden balcony. Then there stood at the open
window a youthful female form; but the head was bent down so low over the
flowers--the damsel was so absorbed in her gentle occupation--she was of
course so completely unaware of the presence of any person in the court
below who might expect a greeting from her, that it was difficult at first
to distinguish the features. A pure white, pinched, and plaited cap
covered the bended head, but not, however, so entirely, as fully to
contain or hide a profusion of dark brown hair, which perhaps, according
to the fashion of the times, it should have done. Through the flowers,
also, that partially obscured the long low window, might be distinguished
part of a sad-coloured gown, the simplicity of which, in its make, could
not conceal, as perhaps it ought to have done, the rounded outlines of a
full but graceful form; while, at the same time, its dull hue was
charmingly relieved--of course without any intention of coquetry--by a
ruff and gorget of the most glittering purity, and, at the end of the long
sleeves, by two small, delicate, white cuffs, which seemed to be playing a
game of rivalry with the little hands for the palm of fairness.

As Gerald hemmed, and coughed, and shuffled with his feet impatiently, he
imagined, for a moment, that one hasty glance of the eyes which bent over
the flowers was directed into the court, and then averted with the
quickness of lightning, but he was no doubt mistaken; for when the task of
watering the plants was at an end, the head was only raised to watch the
clouds for a very short space of time--sufficient time, however, to show
two dark pencilled eyebrows placed over a pair of bright dark eyes, in
that peculiar arch which gives a look of tormenting _espieglerie_ to the
expression, and in the blooming cheeks, full, but not too full for grace,
two laughter-loving dimples, which imparted to a lovely countenance a
joyous and fascinating character--and then was again withdrawn. The fair
white hand again already rested upon the hasp of the casement, as if to
close it, when Gerald, who had waited with renewed feelings of vexation
the greeting of his lady-love, called in a low, but almost angry tone of
voice, "Mildred!--Mistress Mildred!"

"Master Gerald Lyle, is it you? Who would have thought that you were
there?" said pretty Mistress Mildred, again showing at the window her arch
countenance, the expression of which seemed to be at most wicked variance
with her prim attire.

"Methinks a friendly greeting were not ill bestowed upon an old
acquaintance," muttered the young man in the same tone of testy
impatience.

"Know you not," responded the damsel, with something of the canting whine
adopted at the time, and in a semi-serious tone, to the genuineness of
which her dimples very naughtily gave a direct lie--whatever their
mistress might have intended--"Know you not, that such bowings of the
head, and kissings of the hand, are but vain and worldly symbols and
delusions."

"Trifle not with me, I beseech you, Mildred," said the vexed lover, "for
my heart is sad and my mind is harassed. During the weary hours of my
watch, I have longed for a smile from that sweet face--a glance from those
bright eyes, as my only solace; and yet the hours passed by and you came
not to your window, although I had let you know that it was my duty to
keep this watch; and when you did come, you would have left again without
a single word to me. This was unkind. And now you are there, you bend your
brow upon me with an angry look. What have I done to offend you, Mildred?
You cannot doubt my love, my truth."

"And what is there in my conduct or in my words that can justify Master
Lyle in thus treating me as a trifler?" answered Mildred with a pouting
air, avoiding any direct answer to all his other remarks. "Methinks I have
every right to be offended at so unjust an accusation." But in spite of
the gross offence, Mistress Mildred now seemed to have no thought of
punishing it, by withdrawing from the window.

"I offend you! you know I would give the whole world, were it mine, to
spare you one painful feeling," cried the young man. "It is you who wrong
me, it is you who are unjust, and even now you seek to quarrel with me.
But perhaps you wish to break the troth you have given me--perhaps your
light heart has already offered its affections to another!"

"As you will, sir. Perhaps my light heart, as you are pleased to call it,
would do well to seek some less morose and tetchy guardian," said the
young lady, tossing up her head, and preparing again to close the windows.

But as her eye fell upon the despairing look and gestures of her lover,
the arched eyebrow was unknit, and raised with an expression of comic
vexation; a smile lurked for a moment in the dimples and corners of the
pouting mouth; and then at last broke out into a fit of decided laughter.

After indulging a moment in her mirth, Mildred looked at the young man
fondly and said, "Go to, Gerald! you show not the patient spirit of a
Christian man; and even now your face wears such a frown, as methinks must
have wrinkled the brow of the jealous blackamoor in those wicked
stage-plays, of which my poor mother told me, before my father chid her
for it, and bid her cease to speak of such vanities--fie now! out upon
you! shall I throw you down my little mirror that you may see that face?
Well! I am a naughty froward child. See there! I am sitting on the stool
of penance, and I ask thee pardon."

"Forgive me also," cried Gerald, springing forward, his heart melting
before the arch look of fondness that beamed down upon him. "Forgive me my
pettish impatience with you, Mildred."

"Forgiveness of injuries is ordained unto us as our first of duties,"
rejoined Mildred with another demure look--which was all the wickeder for
its demureness.

"But why came you not before, my Mildred?" said the lover, with a slight
lingering tone of expostulation; "you know not the bitterness of those
countless minutes of anxiety, and doubt, and eager waiting."

"I could not leave my father," replied Mildred more seriously; "although
he knows and approves our attachment; he would have chid me had he been
aware that I come to have speech of you from my window; and as it is, I
have done wrong to come. Besides, he was weary, and bade me read to him,
and I sat by his side, and read to him the Bible, until, in the midst of
an exhortation to watch and pray, I heard a sound that he himself might
have called an uplifting of the horn of Sion, and behold he was snoring in
his chair; and then, in the naughtiness of my heart, I stole from his
presence to come to my room--and--and--tend my flowers," she added with an
arch smile.

"You thought of me then, and came, though late, to see me?" said Gerald
eagerly.

"You? Did I not say my flowers, Master Gerald?" asked Mildred still
laughing.

"Oh! mock me no longer, cruel girl! You know not all I have suffered
during this tedious watch--all the doubts and fears with which my poor
mind has been tortured. Did you know, you would console, not mock me, and
one word would console all. Tell me you love me still."

"One word, you say--what shall it be?" said Mildred, raising her eyebrows
as if to seek the word; and then, looking down upon him kindly, she added,
"Ever."

"And you love none but me? you have no thought for any other?" continued
the lover with an evident spice of jealousy still lurking in his mind.

"What! two words now?" said the laughing girl. "Are all lovers such arrant
beggars? give them a penny and they ask a groat. Well! well! but one
other, and that shall be the last. None"--and as Mildred spoke, she bent
herself over the balcony to smile on Gerald, and rested one tiny hand, of
course unconsciously, on the outer framework.

"Thanks, thanks, my dear, my pretty, my darling Mildred!" exclaimed the
young man, and as he spoke, he sprang, musket on arm, upon a stone bench,
which stood out from the wall immediately under Mistress Mildred's window,
and endeavoured to snatch the white hand that just peeped so invitingly
over the edge of the low wooden balcony.

"Out upon you, Master Sentinel," said the young lady, putting back her
hand. "Is it thus you keep your watch? Another such step and I shall sound
the alarm, and denounce you as a deserter to your post. Look ye! your
prisoner will escape."

Gerald instinctively turned his head to the old tower behind him, as he
stepped down again from the stone bench, with somewhat of that
tail-between-the-legs look, which a spaniel wears when repulsed from his
mistress's lap. But there was no one stirring. He shook his head
reproachfully at the laughing girl.

"Nay! I did but remind you of your duty," said Mildred; "and you know my
father sets much store by the capture of this prisoner, whom he supposes
to be some one of rank and note; a fugitive from the dispersed army of the
malignants; perhaps a friend of the young King of Scots, and, as such,
aware of his retreat."

"I saw him as they brought him hither, after capturing him in an attempt
to gain the coast," replied the young soldier. "He is an old cavalier, of
a stately and goodly presence, although cast down by his ill fortune. But
enough of this. Tell me, Mildred"--But here the ears of the young couple
caught the sound of a distant bell as it came booming over the water of
the broad.

"Hush! It is the curfew from the town," said Mildred. "The watch will now
be changed. Back! back! They will be here directly. I must away."

"Already," cried Gerald with vexation. "But another word, Mildred--but
one--some token of your love until we meet again."

"Impossible!" replied the fair girl. "How can you ask me for a token? It
were very wrong in me to give you such. You ask too much." Then, as she
was about to close the window, she exclaimed again, "This poor rose wants
trimming sadly. Alack! these early frosts destroy all my poor plants;" and
taking up her scissors, which hung from her girdle, she snipped at a
withered leaf. Perhaps Mildred's pretty little hand trembled, for of
course it was an accident--the unfortunate scissors, instead of cutting
the withered leaf; closed upon the very prettiest rose upon the little
tree--that rose happened to hang over the edge of the balcony, and so it
came to pass that it fell at Gerald's feet.

Gerald seized it and pressed it, like all true lovers from time
immemorial, to his lips.

"Thanks! darling girl," he cried.

"Thanks! for what?" rejoined Mistress Mildred, putting on a very
lamentable air. "Now, don't suppose I have done this purposely. My poor
rose! how you crush it and tumble it in your hand. How could I be so
awkward!" and with these words the window was wholly closed.

Gerald still stood with his eyes fixed upon the window, when a noise, as
if a sharp rustling among leaves, startled him. Immediately upon the
alert, he looked cautiously around; but there was no one in the court. He
walked hastily to the parapet wall and bent over it--all was still except
the boat of the fisherman, which he had before observed. It had apparently
been rowed to another part of the river about the mansion, as a better
place for fishing, without having been observed by the inattentive
sentinel, for it was now floating down the stream towards the opening into
the broad. The fisherman again lay motionless at the bottom of the boat.
Suddenly a thought seemed to cross the young soldier's brain, for he
sprang to the bushes still left growing near the parapet wall, and
searched hastily among the leaves. From the ground beneath their thick
shelter he raised a small packet. His musket was already jerked into his
right arm to fire an alarm, in order that the fisherman might be pursued,
as suspected of attempting to establish a communication with the prisoner,
when his eye fell upon the superscription of the packet. He stared for one
moment with surprise; and then his colour changed, and he grew deadly
pale. His eye hurried rapidly to the tower--an exclamation of bitter grief
burst from his lips--and he stood aghast. At this moment the steps of the
soldiers coming to relieve guard resounded along the vaulted passage
communicating between the court and other parts of the mansion. At the
sound the blood rushed back into Gerald's face, until it covered forehead
and temples. He hastily replaced the packet in the hiding-place where he
had discovered it, and stood with musket in arm, and in a state of
ill-repressed agitation, awaiting the corporal and guard.

The young soldier who was now brought to relieve him from his post, was
the same Mark Maywood of whom he had expressed his jealous doubts.

The usual ceremony of relieving guard was gone through; but although the
words of order were few, these few words were communicated by Gerald in a
brief angry tone, and received by the other young soldier with a cold
frowning air. Between the two young men there appeared to exist feelings
of an instinctive repulsion.

As he turned to leave the court, Gerald gave another anxious, eager look
at the old tower, and glanced askance at the leafy hiding-place of the
packet. Another troubled sigh burst from his heart; but whatever thoughts
occupied him before passing under the vaulted passage, he raised his eyes
to the well-known chamber casement, which was close by. He could evidently
perceive Mildred's graceful form partly ensconced behind a hanging to her
window. Was she watching his departure? No. It seemed to him as if her
eyes were turned in the direction of the handsome young recruit--that
detested Maywood. And he? Gerald looked round once more. He felt convinced
that the young sentinel's eyes were fixed upon pretty Mistress Mildred's
window. It was in a high state of agitation--a new fit of raging jealousy
mingling with other painful and harassing emotions, that Gerald followed
the corporal and soldiers from the court.


CHAPTER II.

              "O, 'tis your son!
  I know him not.
  I'll be no father to so vile a son."

                                ROWLEY, (_Woman Never Vexed._)

  "Yet I have comfort, if by any means
  I get a blessing from my father's hands."

                                _Idem._

Gerald sat with a troubled and moody air upon one of the stone benches of
the low hall, which, formerly intended, perhaps, as a sort of waiting-room
for the domestics of the establishment, was now used as the guard-room.
Although his thoughts were not upon the objects around him, he seemed to
be assiduously employed in cleaning and arranging his accoutrements--for
in spite of his birth and the fortune bequeathed to him by his uncle, he
was still left to fulfil the very humblest and most irksome duties of a
military life.

It had been part of the severe Colonel Lyle's system of education to inure
his adopted son to every toil and privation that might give health and
hardihood to mind as well as body; and upon the same principle, when he
had enrolled the boy as a volunteer in his own troop, he had compelled him
to serve as a common soldier. The colonel's strict and somewhat
overwrought sense of justice, as well as his peculiar political opinions,
had led him, moreover, to declare, that whatever the artificial position
of his adopted son in the supposed scale of society, it should be by merit
only that the young volunteer should rise from the ranks through the
various grades of military distinction; and upon his deathbed he had
urged his friend Seaman to pursue the same system, as long as Gerald
should feel disposed to follow under him the career of arms. Although
received, therefore, with certain reservations, upon an equality of
footing into the family of Colonel Seaman, and in some measure looked upon
as the accepted lover and future husband of the colonel's fair daughter,
young Gerald found himself condemned to go through all the inferior duties
and occupations of a common soldier.

Long accustomed, however, by his uncle's strict and unbending system of
training, to hardships little regarded by a roughly-nurtured youth of his
years, he never thought of murmuring against this harsh probation; and if,
now, he pursued his occupation with a troubled brow, it was far other
thoughts that caused that look of doubt and uneasiness.

The vaguest suspicions of his mistress's fickleness were sufficient to
excite the jealous temperament of a youth like Gerald, whose naturally
ardent and passionate disposition, whose hot Clynton blood had been only
subdued, not quenched, by the strict education of his severe, cold uncle
Lyle. But there were thoughts and feelings of a far more momentous and
harassing nature which now assailed him. The packet which he had
discovered among the bushes growing close upon the parapet wall, and which
had evidently been conveyed by stealth within the precincts of the
fortress, had borne the following superscription:--"For the Lord
Clynton--these."

It was Lord Clynton, then--it was his own father, who was a prisoner
within those walls.

Under sad auspices were his filial affections now first awakened. He was
aware of the danger that must attend his unhappy parent should he be
discovered to be, as was probably the case, one of those obstinate
malignants, as they were termed, who, after having made reluctant
submission when the fate of arms proved fatal to Charles I., had again
joined the royalist troops when the standard was raised for the young
prince, and fought in his cause, until the final overthrow at Worcester
forced them into flight from the country. It was in an attempt of this
kind that the prisoner had been taken. Gerald knew how almost certain
would be the old cavalier's condemnation under such circumstances. But
there were evidently hopes of saving him. Communications, it was clear,
had been established with the prisoner by persons outside the walls of the
fortress. It was known probably, that, by permission of the commander, the
prisoner was allowed to take the air for a certain time daily, in the
small court beneath the walls of the tower in which he was confined; and
this opportunity was watched, it would seem, for the conveyance of the
communication into the hand of the prisoner.

The conflicting struggle which had arisen in Gerald's mind, now gave place
to one overpowering feeling. He was determined at all risks, and at
whatever sacrifice to himself, to save his father. The breach of
trust--the dereliction from his honour--the probability of being obliged
to renounce the hand of the girl he loved, if detected in assisting in a
plot to favour the evasion of the old cavalier--all faded away before his
sight, and appeared as naught when compared with the hope of rescuing his
father from his cruel situation. What the nature of the scheme was which
Lord Clynton's friends seemed to be devising, in order to effect his
escape, or how far he could assist in such a project, he was unable to
divine. But the one thought was there, and mastered all--the thought that,
on opening the way of escape before his father, he should be able to say,
"Father, bless thy long-estranged son; it is he who saves thee." The rest
was doubt, confusion, and darkness.

Again and again did he turn over in his mind a thousand projects by which
to aid in the evasion of the prisoner. Again and again did he endeavour to
conjecture what might have been already purposed. All appeared to him to
be impracticable on the one hand, and a mystery on the other. Already the
consciousness of his secret induced him to look upon every one with
suspicious eyes, as an enemy or a spy upon his conduct. But most of all,
with that prejudice which pointed him out his supposed rival as the
object of peculiar hatred, did he look upon Mark Maywood as his enemy in
this matter--that Mark Maywood, whose violent party feelings, and fierce
Republican abhorrence of royalty and the adherents of the fallen royalty
of England, had already manifested themselves in such frequent outbreaks
since his arrival as a fresh recruit in the troop--that Mark Maywood, who,
in case of the evasion of one of the detested cavaliers, would be foremost
to hunt him to the death--that Mark Maywood, who, even now, kept watch
over his father's prison, and might, if he discovered the packet which was
intended for the old man's hand, thwart for ever the only means of the
unfortunate prisoner's escape. And as this thought came across him, Gerald
counted, in an agony of mind, all the possibilities by which the packet
might meet the sentinel's eye. With beating heart he reviewed, in
imagination, every leaf which hid it, every overhanging branch which might
add to its concealment. Bitterly did he reproach himself in his heart,
that he had thrown it back to its hiding-place so hastily and carelessly
upon hearing the approach of the guard. It seemed to him that if the
packet were discovered, it would have been he who had delivered up his
father, who had betrayed the secret on which depended his father's safety.
The thought, however, that the evening was closing in, somewhat consoled
him. Eternally long seemed the time spent in this mute agony of doubt. At
length the hour sounded for the relief of the guard, and Gerald's heart
beat painfully. Now he might learn whether Maywood had made the dreaded
discovery. He placed himself as if by chance in the passage through which
the guard had to pass with the report to the governor, and gazed with
scrutinizing look into the face of the young soldier as he went by, as if
he could read an answer to his dreaded doubts in those dark eyes. Mark
Maywood's face, to which, in spite of its beauty, the closely clipped dark
hair in Roundhead fashion, contrasting with the thick mustache, gave a
harsh and hard look, was stern, frowning, and expressive of that sullen
severity which was usually put on by the enthusiasts of the day. In such a
face Gerald could read nothing to dissipate his doubts, but every thing to
strengthen them. Anxiously did he await the return of the relieved
sentinel to the guard-room. But when Mark Maywood came at last, he
interchanged but a few sentences with the older and sterner of his
comrades, said not a word to Gerald, and, taking a well worn Bible in his
hand, flung himself on a bench, and soon seemed lost in serious devotion.
Once, in truth, Gerald fancied that he raised his eye to scan him, as if
with scorn, and then indeed he first remarked that Maywood twisted between
his fingers a rose. For a moment his aversion to the young soldier as an
enemy to be dreaded for his father's sake, was absorbed in his hatred to
him as a suspected rival. That rose? how had he obtained it? Could Mildred
be so base as to encourage the handsome young enthusiast, who, in spite of
his gloomy character, had evidently, to Gerald's jealous eye, shown
himself feelingly alive to the attraction of pretty Mistress Mildred's
charms? For a moment the feelings of jealousy so completely overpowered
all others, that he started forward to challenge the young man to account
for the possession of that rose. But again the thoughts of his father came
across him. Such a challenge must necessarily involve him in a quarrel--a
quarrel would be followed by an arrest for breach of discipline--a
confinement of some hours, during which, he, who might have aided his
father's escape, might perhaps have left him to perish; and swallowing
with an effort all the bitter feelings that almost choked him--he again
turned away and sought his hard couch.

Sleep he could not; or if he dozed, the conflicting feelings of doubt,
apprehension for his father, and burning jealousy, still flitted through
his mind like a troubled and tormenting nightmare; and the next day Gerald
arose with the earliest dawn, in a state of mind the uneasiness of which
seemed intolerable.

The morning broke--the day advanced--and as no new measures seemed to be
taken with respect to the prisoner, Gerald's mind began by degrees to be
relieved from its trembling apprehensions as to the discovery of the
packet; eagerly did he await the hour of his own guard, which, in the
course of the morning, was announced to him to be at noon, and as usual in
the small inner court. His heart beat with impatience to see whether the
secret communication still remained in its hiding-place, and to
facilitate, if possible, the means of its falling into his father's hands.

At length the hour arrived--Accompanied by the corporal and the other
soldiers of the guard, he was taken to relieve his predecessor on the
post, and after an interchange of the usual formalities, was left alone.
His first impulse was to examine the bush into which, on the previous
evening, had been flung the packet. After looking carefully around him,
and, in spite of the absorbing thought which now occupied his attention,
casting one glance, accompanied by a troubled sigh, upon Mildred's window,
he approached the wall. Before, however, he could put aside the leaves,
several heavy steps resounded through the vaulted passage, and Gerald drew
back from the wall with all the seeming unconcern he could assume.

The persons who entered the court were the commander, Lazarus Seaman
himself, and three soldiers. With a grave salute, and a few words to
Gerald, the colonel gave directions that the heavy gate of the prison
tower should be opened, and motioning to one of the soldiers who
accompanied him to remain behind, he entered the tower with the two
others, and was immediately heard mounting the winding stair leading to
the room above, in which the prisoner was confined.

Again did Gerald's heart beat thick with apprehension. What could be the
purpose of this visit of the governor to his prisoner? Had a report of the
previous evening been the cause of this fresh examination? Did it result
from the discovery of the secret packet? Gerald trembled--a moment's
search among those bushes would convince him of the reality or vanity of
his agonizing fears, and yet he did not dare to stir a step to solve his
doubts. The eye of the other soldier was upon him. He listened with
straining ears to catch the faintest sound that came from the tower, as if
it had been possible for him to hear what passed in the chamber of the
prisoner; striving, at the same time, to master all expression of his
feelings, lest his secret should be read upon his brow by the very anxiety
to conceal it. Useless effort; for the soldier who remained behind paid
little heed to him, and would have been totally unable to comprehend his
motives for uneasiness, had even its expression been visible.

At length the steps of the governor and his party were heard descending
the stairs of the tower. As they emerged into the court, Gerald started
with a fresh burst of uncontrollable agitation. The old cavalier followed
the Roundhead colonel. With a few more words to signify to his prisoner
that the time allotted to him to take the air in that court was but short,
Lazarus Seaman again retired.

The soldier, already mentioned, remained behind as a sort of extra
sentinel, or watch, to prevent all possibility of escape, during the time
the prisoner was permitted to promenade the open space.

Gerald was in the presence of his father!

With what overpowering emotion did he now long to throw himself into those
arms, and be pressed to his father's heart! And yet the utmost caution was
necessary. A word might deprive him of all power to assist the prisoner in
his projected escape. It was with the utmost difficulty that he restrained
his feelings, and watched the noble form of the old cavalier as he paced
slowly and sadly up and down the court.

That, then, was his father!

The dark mourning habit which Lord Clynton wore in imitation of many of
the Royalist party, after the execution of their unfortunate master,
although soiled and torn, gave him an air of dignity in spite of its look
of sadness; and the long grizzled beard, which had evidently remained
untrimmed, having been left probably to grow uncultured as a sign of
sorrow, bestowed upon him an imposing expression, in spite of its
neglected state.

Although cast down and worn out by disappointment and vexation, there was
evidently a feverish and testy impatience in the old man's manner, which
was perhaps a symptom of the family temperament; and Gerald observed that
from time to time he looked sharply at both the sentinels, and then cast a
furtive glance at the clump of bushes near the wall. The packet then was
supposed by the prisoner to be still there; but yet uneasiness and doubt
were visible in his hasty looks. In reflecting upon the position of the
barred window of the prisoner's chamber, Gerald remembered that its tenant
might have witnessed the approach of the supposed fisherman, and divined
his motive, without being able to see what had passed near the bushes
themselves.

The old man was consequently still doubtful as to the safety of the
communication which was to be the key to his escape, and even more anxious
as to the means by which he might reach it. Gerald watched with
palpitating heart, how, in his promenade, the old cavalier approached
nearer and nearer, as if unconsciously, the parapet wall. Had he been
alone, all, he said to himself, would have been well; but there was
another witness to observe the prisoner's actions. Gerald in his turn also
scrutinized the comrade of his watch, and turned over in his mind schemes
to elude his vigilance.

The man employed upon the extra duty of this watch was well known to him
by sight and reputation. He was said to have been originally of Dutch
extraction; and certainly there was much in his heavy features, sleepy
eyes, and phlegmatic temperament, which seemed to attest the truth of such
a supposition--a supposition which was still more borne out by the report
that he owned the euphonious appellation of Gideon Van Guse. This,
however, was but vague hearsay; for, in imitation of the fantastic habit
of some of the fanatics of the time, Gideon had adopted a pious cognomen,
the softness of which he perhaps fancied to accord well with his own
placable and quiet disposition. He went by the name of Godlamb Gideon,
except upon those occasions when some of the more wicked of his comrades
took advantage of certain drowsy and somniferous points in his indolent
character, to bestow upon him the nickname of Go-to-bed Godlamb.

As Gerald cast his scrutinizing look upon him, Master Go-to-bed Godlamb
was standing planted against a wall, in the full warmth of an autumnal
sun, perched upon one leg, according to a habit which he seemed to have
inherited, by a sort of instinct, from the cranes of the country of his
fathers, and which he was generally observed to adopt when in a more than
usually drowsy disposition. His other leg was twisted round its brother,
in somewhat incomprehensible fashion. But in spite of this supposed
indication of drowsiness, Gideon's light eyes stared out from under his
preposterously high steeple hat with unusual wakefulness and rotundity,
and gave to his not very expressive physiognomy the appearance of that of
an owl.

Gerald thanked the good fortune that had sent him, at such a moment, a
comrade of so drowsy and phlegmatic a nature. But it was in vain that he
watched for some further indications of the usual results of Go-to-bed
Godlamb's pious meditations. The eyes _would_ still preserve a most
provoking rotundity; nay, more, they appeared determined, out of the most
obstinate spirit of opposition, to assume at that moment a liveliness they
never had been known to assume before, since they had opened on the light
of day.

The old cavalier still paced the court, but nearer to the bushes than
before. Impatient, also, at the loss of the precious moments as they
hurried by, Gerald approached his comrade.

"You seem weary, friend," he said.

"Yea, verily," answered Godlamb Gideon through his nose. "My soul is weary
with long watching; but if the flesh be weak, the spirit is still strong."

"Give way, comrade, give way," insinuated Gerald; "I will keep watch for
both, and none shall be the wiser."

"Nay, but the labourer is worthy of his hire," snorted Gideon with much
unction. "Odds pittikins, man," he blurted out immediately afterwards, in
another and more natural tone, "would you have me in arrest again for
sleeping on my post? That is to say," continued the Puritan soldier,
casting up his eyes, and again resuming his canting whine, "verily and of
a truth the hand of the scourger has been heavy upon me; the unjust have
prevailed against me; but I will watch, that I fall not again into their
toils."

Gerald turned away with impatient vexation. At that moment the old
cavalier, who had taken advantage of the few words passing between the two
sentinels, to approach the bushes unobserved, was bending down to possess
himself of the packet. As Gerald turned he again drew back, his purpose
unfulfilled.

Standing with his back to the other sentinel, Gerald now made a sign to
the old man, with his finger placed upon his lips, to say not a word, but
to repose his confidence in him. The prisoner started with surprise, and
looked at the young soldier with a mixture of hope and doubt. Before
making any further demonstration, Gerald again turned in his walk, to
assure himself that Gideon observed nothing of this interchange of looks
with the prisoner, and then again turning his back to him, placed his hand
upon his heart with a look of fervour and truth, which would have been
alone sufficient to inspire confidence in the old cavalier, and passing as
near him as he could with prudence, murmured in a low tone, "Trust to me!"
The old man again started; but there was more of pleasurable surprise, and
less of doubt, in his expression. Gerald's heart beat wildly, as his
father's eye beamed upon him for the first time with kindly and grateful
feeling.

The young soldier again looked at his comrade. Gideon's eyes were now
beginning to close, in the excess of his fervour over the pious page.
Walking quietly to the protecting bushes, Gerald bent over the parapet as
if to look into the stream, and plunging his arm at the same time into the
leaves, felt for the packet. After a moment's fear and doubt, he touched
it--he drew it forth. By a movement of his head, he saw the old man
watching him with increasing agitation; but, giving him another look to
re-assure him, Gerald rose from his posture, and was about to conceal the
packet in his bandoleer, when it slipped from his fingers and fell to the
ground. At the noise of the fall, Gideon's eyes again opened, and were
lifted up with owl-like sagacity of expression. Gerald's foot was already
upon the packet. Neither he nor the old cavalier dared to interchange a
look. Gideon's eyes said, as plainly as eyes could speak, that they were
not asleep, and had not _been_ asleep, and never intended to go to
sleep--in fact, were wonderfully wakeful. Aware that he could not remain
motionless upon the spot where he stood, under the full stare of Gideon's
eyes, Gerald let fall his musket, as if by accident, and then kneeling
with his back to his fellow-sentinel, contrived adroitly to raise the
packet at the same time with his musket, and to conceal it upon his
person. The prisoner was following his movements with anxious eagerness.

Possessed of the precious document, Gerald now felt the impossibility of
giving it into his father's hands, as long as the eyes of Godlamb Gideon
were upon them. There appeared to him to be but one practicable manner of
conveying the desired intelligence contained within it to the
prisoner--namely, by examining himself the contents, in such a manner as
not to excite the suspicions of his comrade, and then communicating them
in low and broken sentences to his father.

Placed in such a position as not to be observed by Gideon, he took the
packet from his bosom, and making the movement of breaking the fastening,
looked imploringly at the old cavalier. The old man comprehended the
glance, hesitated for a moment with a look of doubt, and then, clearing
his brow with an expression of resolution, as if there were no other
means, nodded his head stealthily to the young soldier, and moving to one
of the stone benches fixed against the walls of the court, the furthest
removed from the spot where Gideon stood, flung himself down upon it, and
with his face buried between his hands, seemed absorbed in thought.

From one of the capacious pockets of his full hose, Gerald now produced a
book--it was the Bible; for it was the fashion of the times among the
Puritanical party to carry the holy book about the person. With a short
humble prayer that he might not be thought to desecrate the sacred volume
by applying it to a purpose of concealment for his father's sake, he
placed upon its open pages the letter, which formed the only contents of
the packet, after having first torn away and concealed, unobserved, the
envelope, and then resumed his monotonous pacing up and down the court.

Gideon observed his comrade's seeming devotion, and appearing determined
to outrival him in excess of zeal, applied himself more sedulously than
ever to his book.

"Your friends are on the alert--a lugger lies off the coast ready for your
escape," said Gerald in a low tone to the old cavalier, as he passed as
near to him in his walk as discretion would permit.

Such was the sense of the commencement of the communication. The old man
made a gentle inclination of his head, to show that he understood him,
without raising it from between his hands. The young soldier looked at
Gideon; Gideon had shifted his legs, and perched himself in an attitude
bearing a more direct resemblance to that of a reposing crane than ever.
Gerald again cast his eyes upon his open book--

"All is prepared for to-night," he continued to mutter, as he again slowly
passed the seat of the prisoner. "Have the bars of your window been cut by
the file already conveyed to you?"

The old man again bowed his head with an affirmative movement.

As Gerald turned once more, Go-to-bed Godlamb was nodding his head over
his book, as if in very enthusiastic approval of its contents, but
unfortunately with so much energy--that he jerked it up again into an
upright posture--and immediately began staring straight before him with
great vehemence.

Gerald bit his lips with vexation, and continued his walk. His eyes were
seemingly employed upon the page before him--

"A boat will be brought without noise under the walls at twelve this
night," continued the anxious son, repassing his father, where he sat.
"You must descend from your window by your bed-clothes."

Gerald resumed his walk. Gideon was winking and blinking with much
energy--

"The only difficulty is to elude the vigilance of the sentinel who shall
have the _midnight watch_"--muttered Gerald, as he again came back past
the prisoner.

The old man raised his head, and looked at him anxiously.

Gideon was again nodding, but with a lesser degree of enthusiasm, as
Gerald turned himself that way. The young man quickened his step, and was
soon once more by his father's side--

"Every means that lie in _my_ power shall be employed to favour your
escape," whispered Gerald, with much emotion.

The prisoner gave him an enquiring glance, as if to ask his
meaning--Gerald looked round--Godlamb was now snoring, after the fashion
of a well-known farm-yard animal--not the one whose name he bore.

"God grant," continued the young man in much agitation, "that the lot fall
to me to be the sentry on that watch--then all were well!"

"And who are you, young man," said the cavalier, "who thus interest
yourself so warmly in my fate?"

Gerald could no longer command his feelings. He flung himself at the old
man's feet.

"Father!" he exclaimed in smothered accents, "give me thy blessing."

"Your father! I!" cried the old cavalier; "you my son! you Gerald Clynton!
no--no--Gerald Lyle, I should have said. Tell me not so."

"I am your son Gerald--Gerald Clynton--Oh, call me by that name!"
exclaimed the kneeling young man in a choked voice; for the tears were
starting into his eyes.

"Thou art no son of mine. I know thee not! Leave me!" said Lord Clynton,
springing from his seat in bitter anger.

Go-to-bed Godlamb stirred uneasily upon his post. Gerald rose quickly
from his knees, trembling with agitation; for in spite of the violence of
his emotion, he had sufficient presence of mind to look cautiously round
at his sleeping comrade. Gideon's eyes were still closed over his book, in
that profound mystery of devotion which was one of his most remarkable
traits.

"My father!" cried Gerald imploringly to the old man, who now stood
looking towards him with a harsh and stubborn expression of countenance,
although the workings of emotion were faintly perceptible in the
lineaments of his face.

Lord Clynton waved him impatiently away, and turned aside his head.

"Oh, repulse me not, my father!" cried Gerald with imploring looks. "Why
am I still the proscribed son of your affections? What have I done, to be
thus driven from your arms? Am I still--though innocent of all wrong--to
pay so cruel a penalty for my unhappy birth?"

"Allude not to your mother!" exclaimed the old man passionately. "Defile
not her memory even by a thought, base boy! Were she living still, she
also would refuse to acknowledge her degenerate son."

"Great God! what have I done to merit this?" said the unhappy son,
forgetting, in the agitation of his mind, the strict principles of the
Puritanical party, which forbade as sinful this adjuration of the
Deity--"I thought to save you, my father, from your cruel situation--I
thought to aid your flight."

"Say rather," said the excited cavalier, giving way to his hot
unreasonable temper, "to trample on the prisoner--to scoff at him, and
triumph over him--to deliver him up to his enemies. What have I else to
expect from the degenerate rebel to the religion of his fathers, his
country, and his king. Go, boy--go, play the patriot at thy ease--reverse
the tale of the Roman Brutus--and denounce thy father to the block!"

"Unjust! unkind!" said the young man, struggling with his tears, which now
began to give place to feelings of indignation in him also. "But you have
ever been so. You have driven me, an innocent babe, from your affections
and your sight; and when now, first after long years, I beg a father's
blessing--stretch forth my arm to earn a father's thanks--you spurn me
from your feet, and heap unmerited obloquy upon my head."

"Unmerited!" echoed Lord Clynton. "Do you forget your disobedience? or do
the convenient tenets of your hypocritical party permit you to erase the
fifth commandment from the decalogue, and teach you that the honouring of
your father is an idle observance, not to be weighed in the balance
against the cause of the God of Israel and his people--so goes the
phrase--does it not?"

"I understand you not," said Gerald. "In what have I refused to honour my
father? whose face I see for the first time to-day--at least since I have
thought and memory."

"In what?" exclaimed his father, with a bitter laugh, "said I not so?
Honour and dishonour are in your new-fangled vocabulary but vain words,
that you understand no longer. In what? If I, thy father--since to my
shame I must be so--if I have been led by my overwhelming grief for that
angel, who has long been at rest, to treat thee with wrong in thy
childhood, my conscience has no longer a reproach to offer me; for my son
has in return treated me with the bitterest scorn, and refused to come to
those loving arms, which at last opened to receive him. In what? I have
appealed to thee with the strongest appeal of a father's heart to join me
in the true and joint cause of murdered royalty, and I find thee even now
before me, with arms in thy hands, to aid the sacrilegious traitors to
their king--may be to turn them with parricidal arm against thy father."

"Again I understand you not," repeated Gerald, gazing wistfully in his
face. "Oh speak, explain--my father--this is a mystery to me!"

"Not understand me!" echoed Lord Clynton with scorn--"convenient phrase!
convenient memory! You understood not perhaps those letters I addressed
you, those letters in which I implored you to forget the past, and offered
you a loving welcome to my heart. But you could dictate a letter to your
uncle, in which you could upbraid me for my past unkindness, and refuse
to return. You understood not my urgent appeal to you to join the cause of
truth and loyalty, and fight by your father's side. But you could dictate
a second answer, worded with cold contempt, in which you could assert your
rebellious right--degenerate boy!--to follow those principles you dared to
my face to qualify as those of justice and religion."

"Letters!" repeated Gerald, astounded. "An appeal! I know of none--until
my uncle's death I scarcely was aware I had a father to whom I owed a
duty--I never heard that he followed another cause, but that which I was
taught to believe the right."

"No letters! No appeal!" said his father, half in scornful mistrust, half
in doubt.

"None--I protest to you, my father," replied the agitated youth. "Now--but
only now--can I construe rightly the words my uncle uttered on his
deathbed, which spoke of wrong he had done me and you."

"Can I believe all this?" said the passionate old cavalier, now evidently
wavering in his wrath.

"As God lives," said Gerald; "that God whom I perhaps offend, that I thus
call upon his name--that God who has said, 'Swear not at all.'" The old
cavalier shrugged his shoulders at this evidence of the Puritanical
education of his son. "I swear to you, that I know nothing of those
matters."

Lord Clynton was evidently moved, although the rebellious spirit within
still resisted the more affectionate promptings of his heart--

"Father, prove me," cried Gerald imploringly. "Let me live henceforth to
serve you--let me die for you, if needs must be--let me save you from this
prison--let me earn thy blessing--that blessing, which is my dearest
treasure upon earth."

Gerald again bent down at the old man's feet. Lord Clynton still struggled
with his feelings. There was still a contest in his heart between
long-cherished anger, and newly-awakened confidence. Before either could
again speak, the trampling of feet was once more heard along the vaulted
passage. The agitated son rose quickly to his feet, and strove to repress
his emotion. His father gave him one look; and that look he fondly
construed into a look of kindness. In another moment the colonel entered
the court, followed by two soldiers.

Gideon's poised leg fell to the ground; his eyes opened and stared out
wonderfully. That troubled stare told, as if the eyes had had a tongue,
that Go-to-bed Godlamb had been sleeping soundly on his post. Fortunately
for the somnolent soldier, the sharp looks of Lazarus Seaman were not bent
in his direction.

With a formal bow to his prisoner, Colonel Seaman informed him that the
time allotted to him for exercise in the open air was past. With another
formal inclination of the head, the old cavalier bowed to his jailer, and
turned to mount the tower stair. He exchanged not another look with his
son: but as he turned away, Gerald tried to read in his face a milder
feeling.

"I will save him, or will die!" muttered Gerald to himself, as the party
disappeared under the tower gateway. "I will force him to grant me that
blessing he has refused me--I will earn it well;" and he determined in his
mind that, come what might, he would find means to be appointed to the
midnight watch.


CHAPTER III.

                "Trifles light as air
  Are, to the jealous, confirmation strong,
  As proofs of holy writ."

                                _Othello._

              "Honest soldier,
  Who hath relieved you?--
        Bernardo hath my place."

                                _Hamlet._

Left alone upon his post in the inner court, Gerald resolved in his mind
what could best be done for his father. Every thing was already in
preparation for the prisoner's escape, but the success or failure of the
whole enterprise turned solely upon the connivance or opposition of the
sentinel upon duty at the hour when the escape was to be effected. Gerald
did not doubt, however, that should he himself not have the good fortune
to be chosen for the midnight watch, he would not find much difficulty in
persuading the comrade to whom it should fall, to exchange it with him for
a more commodious hour. He felt that there could be none who would not
gladly accept his offer, and thus be left to enjoy their night's rest,
instead of enduring the fatigues of a tedious night watch. Of his own
safety, of the dishonour, the punishment that awaited him for abetting in
the escape of a prisoner of such importance, he thought not a moment. All
such considerations were lost in his hopes of rescuing his father. But
still, in the vague uncertainty that hung over the events of that
important night, in the impatience of his mind to arrive quickly at that
awful hour--that hour which was to decide so much joy or misery for
him--Gerald scarcely knew how to conceal his feverish agitation. He was
aware, however, how necessary it was to avoid betraying any feelings that
might excite the least suspicion; and he determined to appear as cold and
as unconcerned as possible.

There was another also, although at this moment a secondary torment, which
added to his trouble of mind. He was unable to disengage his thoughts
entirely from those feelings of bitter and scorching jealousy, which
various little indications of coquetry, displayed by the evidently
coquettish little Puritan damsel, and certain marks of desire to seek her
presence, and parade under her window, evinced by the hated Maywood, had
planted in his heart--and in a jealous and impatient temperament like
Gerald's, such seed, once sown, quickly grew up with rank luxuriance, and
spread on every side, imbibing sustenance from every element that
approached it, living, in want of better nourishment, upon the very air
itself. Perhaps the sight of Mistress Mildred for a moment at her window,
a passing word, or merely a kind smile, might have poured balm upon the
ulcer of jealousy, soothed the pain and closed the wound--at least for the
time. But during his long watch Gerald looked at that well-known window in
vain. There was not a symptom of the fair girl's presence in her chamber,
and Gerald's fertile imagination--the true imagination of the jealous
lover--suggested to him a thousand doubts and fears of Mildred's truth,
ingeniously invented self-tortures, weapons forged to be turned against
himself--all mere vague conjectures, but assuming in his eyes all the
solidity and reality of truth. If she were not in her chamber, he argued,
where could she be? Perhaps with her father: and her father was dictating
a despatch to that Mark Maywood, who served him sometimes as secretary;
and Mildred was gazing on him with pleasure; and he was raising his eyes
from time to time to hers--or perhaps she was in the other gardens or
alleys about the house, and that Maywood was following her at a distance,
not unobserved; or perhaps she passed close by him, and he muttered words
of admiration or even of love, and she then listened with complacency; or
perhaps the handsome young recruit whispered in her ear to ask her when he
could see her pretty face again; and she smiled on him and said, that when
his watch should be beneath her window she would come. Madness! Gerald
would pursue his vision no further. But although the clouds of the vision
rolled away, they left a dark chilling mist of suspicion upon his mind
that he could not, perhaps did not strive to, shake off.

Relieved from his guard, Gerald returned to the guard-room--his mind in
that agony of suspense and dread respecting his father, the disquietudes
of which his jealous doubts scarcely diverted for a moment, and only
rendered more hard to bear. On his way he again passed the detested
Maywood. As he approached he evidently saw the young soldier crumple in
his hand a paper he was reading, and hide it hastily about him. This was
no fancy, he repeated to himself; this was reality. He had seen the look
of confusion and trouble upon Maywood's face, the haste with which he hid
that paper at his approach. There was no longer any doubt. His hated
rival was in correspondence already with his faithless mistress; and the
contents of that written paper, what could they be, if not an acquiescence
in some demand, a rendezvous granted, a meeting at her window? With rage
in his heart, Gerald again longed to spring upon his rival and tear that
paper from his bosom. But again prudence prevailed over passion. He felt
that the life of his father depended upon his caution--his father--his
father, whom he alone perhaps could save, whose blessing was to be his
recompense. Swearing to tear for ever from his heart the vain, coquettish,
heartless girl upon whom his affections had been so ill disposed--for
thus, in his passion, he qualified his lady-love--he crushed down within
him the violence of his angry feelings, and determined to defer his
revenge, defer it only, until those few hours should be passed, those
hours which should witness his father's escape and ensure his father's
safety--and then die willingly, if such should chance to be his fate, in
securing his vengeance. Strange mixture of noble feelings and base
passions! Where were now the stern, strictly religious principles of his
uncle and instructor? The fierce nature of his hot blood prevailed for the
time over the better culture of his education.

At length the hour arrived when the soldiers were mustered in the outer
court, before the front of the mansion, and the names of those called over
who were appointed to the different watches of the night. How anxiously
and eagerly did Gerald's heart beat as the midnight watch in the
tower-court was named! Was it by a gracious and happy chance upon himself
that the lot would fall? The name was pronounced. It was _not_ his own.
The sentinel appointed to this post, the man upon whom depended the
destiny of his father, was another. But still, in spite of the first pang
of disappointment--for disappointment would arise within him, although the
chances had been so greatly against him--hope again revived in his heart.
The sentinel whose post he coveted, whom he had to seduce into an
exchange, whose watch he was to contrive to take from him as a favour, was
one of the most easy of the whole troop to deal with, the lazy,
phlegmatic, somnolent Godlamb Gideon, he whose very nickname was an augury
and a warrant of success, the wight yclept Go-to-bed Godlamb.

After waiting till the assembled soldiers had dispersed, and a proper time
had elapsed before seeking Gideon, Gerald again returned to the outer
court before the house, where he knew it was the habit of the indolent
soldier to bask and doze upon a certain sheltered bench, in the last rays
of the setting sun, absorbed, he himself would declare, in his devotions.
And there, in truth, he found the man he sought. But, confusion! there was
another by his side, and that other was the man who, among all, he would
have the most avoided. It was Mark Maywood. He stood by the side of
Gideon's reclining form, and was speaking with much earnestness to the
phlegmatic soldier, whose widely-opened eyes seemed to express more
animation than of wont. No time, however, was to be lost. The night was
approaching, and it was necessary to come at once to an arrangement with
the allotted sentinel of the midnight watch.

Overcoming his repugnance, and fully determined to act with caution,
Gerald assumed an air of unconcern, and sauntered to the spot where sat
Godlamb Gideon. After greeting sulkily the handsome young recruit, to whom
Gerald's presence seemed in nowise pleasing, he commenced with affected
indifference his attack upon the heavy soldier.

"You are ever zealous, friend, in the good work," he said.

"Yea, and of a truth these crumbs of comfort have a blessed and pleasant
savour in my nostrils," replied Godlamb Gideon, pressing his book between
his hands, turning up the whites of his eyes, and snuffing through his
nose, as though that member were stuffed up by the pleasant savour of
which he spoke.

"But have a care that your zeal be not overmuch," continued Gerald, "and
that you faint not by the way from the heaviness of your burden. Methinks
your cheek is already pale from exceeding watching and prayer."

"Verily I have fought the good fight, and I have run the good race, and
peradventure the flesh faileth me," snorted the Puritan soldier.

"Your allotted post, then, falls heavy upon you" said Gerald, with an air
of kind concern, "for you have the midnight watch, methinks. Indeed, I
pity you, my good friend. Hear me. I will perform the duties of your part,
and you shall rest this night from your labours; my mind is troubled, and
I heed not the watching through the night. You will rise from your couch
ready for new outpourings of spiritual thought, and refreshed"----

"As a giant refreshed with wine," interrupted Gideon with another snort:
"yea, and so shall it be." Gerald's heart beat at what he considered an
acceptance of his proposal; but Godlamb Gideon continued--"Thou art kind,
and I thank thee no less that I refuse thy offer. Verily it would seem to
be a gracious and an especial vouchsafing in my favour. For, behold,
another hath released me from my task."

"Another!" cried Gerald with a tone of consternation that overcame his
caution.

"Yea, this good youth hath proffered to relieve me of my heavy burden."
Gideon pointed to Mark Maywood.

Gerald started with angry surprise. Maywood bit his lip, and turned his
head aside.

"He has taken thy post!" said Gerald choking with rage.

Gideon nodded his heavy head.

The blood boiled in Gerald's veins and rushed into his cheek. He felt for
a moment nearly suffocated with the violence of his passion. Since the
young recruit had been anxious to obtain Gideon's weary post, there could
be no doubt what was his purpose. There, and in the silence of the night,
he would be able, under Mildred's window, to pour into her ear those words
of love which he dared not openly profess. It was true, then, that Mildred
had bid him try to obtain the post of sentinel in the inner court. That
was their hour of rendezvous. Furious jealousy, joined to rage at losing
that post, on which his father's whole fate depended, contributed to
torture his mind. Not only would his detested rival find a favourable
opportunity of holding converse with that faithless girl, but he would be
there to prevent his father's escape--he, of all others--he, that fierce
and violent Republican, that determined enemy of all adherents to the
royal cause. If the vision of Maywood interchanging soft words with
Mildred at her window tormented the unhappy lover, far more agonizing were
the feelings that represented to him the stern young sentinel raising his
musket upon his shoulder to arrest the escape of the old man--shooting
him, perhaps, in his descent from the tower-window--bringing him bleeding
to the earth. Horror! Convulsed with these accumulated feelings, he stood
for a time speechless, struggling with his passions. When he looked again
upon Maywood's face, that hated individual's eyes were bent on him with a
stern but enquiring glance, and in evident discomposure. This very look
was sufficient to confirm all the young lover's suspicions, and it was
with the greatest difficulty that he could control his passion. He
mastered himself, however, sufficiently to meet the glance of Maywood
without giving vent to his wrath, and, turning to Gideon, he called him
aside.

The indolent soldier evidently rose unwillingly, but he followed Gerald to
a little distance, grumbling something about an "interruption to the
inward outpourings of the spirit."

"Hark ye, Master Gideon," said Gerald, when they had got to some distance
from Mark, "you must not do me wrong in this. I own that my request is not
wholly disinterested. You know that I love our colonel's daughter, that I
am affianced to her. Her chamber looks into that court, and at
midnight"----

"Now, out on thee, Master Lyle," drawled Godlamb, with an hypocritical
upturning of his eyes. "Wouldst thou make my watch a pretext for ungodly
chambering and profane love passages?"

"How now, fellow!" exclaimed the young man in wrath. "What mean you by
this insolence?" and he grasped Gideon's collar with violence. But
immediately afterwards repenting of his excitement, he continued with a
calm tone although still in some irritation, "This is mere fooling,
Gideon. I know you as you are--I know you to be a thorough hypocrite."

"Nay, but of a truth"--exclaimed the pacific Godlamb very sulkily.

"Hear me," interrupted Gerald. "It is not as you think--that Maywood loves
her too. He also would keep the watch at midnight, in the hope to see her
at the window--by chance, man, by chance--no otherwise; but I would hinder
this, and"----

"Nay, but Master Maywood hath my word," again began Gideon.

"Nay, but Master Gideon slept whilom upon his post," continued Gerald,
mimicking him. "And if Master Gideon be reported to his colonel, Master
Gideon will have a week's arrest upon bread and water; but Master Gideon
may do what he listeth."

"For the love of heaven," exclaimed Gideon, forgetting his Puritanical
mask in his alarm; "you would not report me, comrade? S'wounds, you would
not serve a poor fellow so scurvy a trick?"

"Upon one condition, then," replied Gerald. "Retract your word to that
man; give me up your post at midnight; and I will be as silent as the
grave."

"Lord have mercy upon us! Thou art as the cruel taskmasters of the
children of Israel; and thy heart is hardened even as was Pharaoh's,"
whined Godlamb, again resuming his canting tone. "But be it even as thou
wilt."

Gerald triumphed; the midnight watch was his; and with it his father's
safety and his father's blessing.

They returned to the spot where Maywood still stood observing them, Gideon
following in the rear, muttering something about "the hand of the ungodly
being upon him."

"Speak, Gideon," said Gerald as they approached, "and thank your comrade
here for his kindly proffered barter of hours; since it is I who take your
post, you will not need his well-meant and disinterested civilities."

There was something of a sneer on Gerald's lip as he pronounced these
words, which probably augmented the feelings of anger that now evidently
flushed the usually cold face of Maywood and darkened his brow; for the
latter appeared to tremble with suppressed passion as he advanced upon his
rival with the words--

"How now, you, Master what's-your-name? What warrants you to interfere
thus ill advisedly in my concerns? If this man has given up to me, at the
midnight hour, the watch over that offshoot of a rotten and corrupted stem
of tyranny, is it for you to stand between me and my purpose?"

"Your purpose is doubtless of the best, and truest, and worthiest,"
replied Gerald, with another flickering sneer upon his lip. "But this
watch is mine now, by Master Gideon's consent, and these hours of the
night I intend to devote to the watching of those whose security may need
my care."

Mark Maywood bit his lip, and clenched his hands together in a vain effort
to suppress his violent irritation.

"Hoity toity! Here's a coil about an old inveterate Amalekite!" said
Gideon, in a mixture of his natural and assumed phraseology, prudently
withdrawing at the same time to some distance from the angry young men, as
if afraid lest an appeal to himself should involve him in the quarrel.

"Hark ye, sirrah," cried Maywood angrily, "I am not about to resign the
right this man has yielded to me at the caprice of the first foolish
fellow who chooses to cross my path, without making him repent his
uncalled-for interference. What is it to me, this post? but browbeaten by
a bullying boy, I never will be."

"Nor will I yield to a base and treacherous hypocrite like thee, Mark
Maywood," exclaimed his angry antagonist.

The hands of both the young men were instantly upon their rapiers.

"By the mass, what are ye about?" exclaimed Gideon in alarm. "Trifle not
with the carnal weapon! Would ye have us all in arrest before we can look
about us? Forbear, men of wrath!"

But the phlegmatic Gideon kept at a prudent distance.

At these words other considerations appeared suddenly to strike both the
young men. In spite of their passion, both paused irresolute.

Gerald reflected that were he involved in a quarrel he would necessarily
be prevented in any case, whether victorious over his adversary and then
consigned to prison, or himself disabled, from forwarding his father's
escape. His rival appeared actuated also by prudential motives, perhaps by
the conscientious scruples of the party to which he belonged, perhaps by
the thought of Mildred.

"This is truly ruffling and bawling like tavern hunters and drunkards,"
stammered Gerald, as if seeking an excuse for withdrawing from the fray.
"But the time will come, Mark Maywood, when you shall not escape me."

"So be it, comrade," replied the other, again sheathing his half-drawn
rapier. "I know you not; and can but barely divine your cause of enmity.
But I will not fail you at the night-time. Till then let this suffice. The
midnight watch is mine--mine by the first assent of yonder soldier to my
proposal of exchange."

"No! Mine," again urged Gerald, "mine by his retractation of his prior
consent, if such he gave."

"Come hither, comrade," cried Maywood to Gideon, who was suddenly absorbed
once more in his devotions.

"Hear ye, Master Godlamb," said the other. But Go-to-bed Godlamb stirred
not. He shrank from the appeal to himself.

"It is to me your post has been consigned, is it not so?" enquired the
one.

"It is I who take it off your hands--speak," cried Gerald. "Remember,
Gideon," he added with upraised finger.

"Speak, who is it?" said both at once. Gideon shuffled with his feet, and
looked heavier and more embarrassed than ever; but as he caught sight of
the warning finger, he absolutely shut his eyes in utter despair, and
pointing at Gerald, with the words, "Verily, and of a truth, thou art the
man," he hastened away as fast as his indolent nature would permit,
"before he should fall into the toils of the angry Philistines," as he
expressed it.

Gerald could not suppress a look of triumph. Whatever were Mark Maywood's
feelings, he only expressed them by a dark scowl of disappointment, and
then turned away without another word.


CHAPTER IV.

  "'What hour now?'
          'I think it lacks of twelve,'
  'No, it is struck--'
          'Indeed I heard it not.'"

                                _Hamlet._

The night had closed in--that night of so vital importance to his father's
destiny--and Gerald sat alone in a small lower room, his heart beating
high with hope, that he should contribute to his father's rescue.

He was lost in thought, when a firm hand laid on his shoulder roused him
from his abstracted state. He turned his head, and saw, to his surprise,
Mark Maywood by his side. The young man wore a calmer, clearer brow,
although his usual cold, stern, almost determined expression still
pervaded it.

"Comrade," said Maywood with much appearance of frankness in his manner,
"I have spoken roughly without cause; I crave your pardon."

Gerald heard this unexpected address with great astonishment; and, before
he answered, paused in much embarrassment.

"Let us be frank," continued Mark. "Had we been so before, much ill will
and evil blood might have been spared. I have only divined your feelings
from my own. You have not seen the pretty daughter of our colonel with
admiration. Nor have I."

Gerald started with again rising wrath, but his rival interrupted him.

"Bear with me for a while," he continued, "and hear me out. You have been
here long. I am but a new-comer. You have the prior claim. Perhaps she
returns your love. Had I known of this before--and as it is I have but
guessed it, on witnessing your anxiety to hold this watch in the court,
beneath her window--I had withdrawn, as is my duty. And now, comrade, I
return to offer you the sacrifice of my newborn admiration, and at the
same time my friendship."

"What you say seems fair and straightforward, Master Maywood," said
Gerald, overcome by the frank manner of the young soldier, "and I thank
you for this generosity and truth. My suspicions, then, did not deceive
me? You love her, and you sought to see her to-night?"

"I did," said Maywood.

"And she, did she return your love? Did she herself accede to this
meeting?"

Mark shook his head with a faint, doubtful smile, but gave no answer.
Gerald's brow again grew gloomy, and he sank his head between his hands.

"Come! come! no more of this," pursued the other young soldier, with a
cordiality of manner which Gerald had never before witnessed in his dark,
stern aspect. "Let all be forgiven and forgotten. Come, pledge me in this
one cup. These drinkings of toasts, as it is called, these pledgings over
liquor are considered unseemly, and even ungodly by many; I know it well,
but you cannot refuse to drink one cup with me, as earnest of our kindly
feeling for the future."

For the first time Gerald now observed that Maywood bore under his arm a
flagon of ale, and held in his left hand two cups of horn.

"I reject not your kindly feeling," answered Gerald; "but I am not wont to
drink,"--and he repelled the cup which Maywood now filled for him.

"Nay! nay!" said Mark, sitting down by the table on which Gerald leant.
"You wrong me by refusing this first offer of reconciliation. Come,
comrade, this one."

Gerald took the cup of ale unwillingly, and only raised it to his lips.
But Maywood shook his head at him--and Gerald, in compliance with his
newly made friend's request, at last swallowed the contents.

"I am not used to these strong drinks," said Gerald, setting down the horn
with evident distaste. "I like them not; but I have done this to show my
willingness to meet you on friendly ground."

Maywood raised, in turn, his cup, but at the same moment calling to a dog
that had followed him into the room, he said, "Down, Roger, down," and
stooped to repulse it; immediately afterwards he raised the horn, and
seemed to drain the ale to the last drop.

"One more, and then I will not urge you again," said Mark to Gerald,
eyeing him with a sharp, enquiring look.

"No, no, not one," replied the young man with disgust. "Already this
unusual drink has confused my head. I am accustomed to water only--such
was my uncle's mode of educating me. It is strange how my brain turns with
this fermented liquor. I have done wrong to drink it," and Gerald rubbed
his heavy forehead, and strained his eyes. His powers of vision became
more and more confused, and it was with difficulty that he could now see
before him the face of Maywood, which to his intellect, disordered by the
liquor, seemed to wear a strange expression of cunning, and triumphant
contempt. He made an effort, however, to shake off this feeling and raise
his sinking head, but in vain. A sensation of overpowering drowsiness
crept over him more and more. The thought of his watch, however, was still
uppermost in his mind, and he had yet power sufficient to reflect that
there was still some time to midnight, and that a little slumber might
restore him; and giving way to the oppressive sleep which came over him,
he laid his head on the table, and was immediately lost to all sense of
what was passing around him.

At first Gerald's sleep was heavy and complete. How long it remained so,
he had no power to tell. At length, however, it became lighter, and grew
more troubled and confused. Wild dreams began to course each other
through his brain--at first of an undefinable and fantastic nature--then
they assumed a more definite shape. He dreamed of his father--that old,
greyheaded cavalier, with his long white beard--and before him stood
Lazarus Seaman, who accused him of absurd and imaginary crimes. And now
they brought him into that open court--a file of soldiers were drawn
up--their muskets were levelled at that old man's heart--Gerald struggled,
and sought to spring between those deadly instruments and his doomed
father, but his feet clove to the ground--he struggled in vain--the
muskets were discharged, and his father fell weltering in his blood. With
the last struggle of a convulsive nightmare, he started up, uttering a
loud scream. It was but a frightful dream. And yet the noise of those
fearful muskets--that discharge of artillery--still rang in his ears. As
he opened his eyes, all was dark around him--the darkness of deep night.
It was long before he could sufficiently recover his senses to remember
what had passed; and when slowly the events of the day forced themselves
upon his mind, his intellects seemed still confused and troubled. How
strangely real now appeared the impression of that dream! It was with
difficulty he could persuade himself that the firing had been imaginary;
and even now there seemed a strange confusion of noise and voices around
him; but that, surely, was the ringing in his head from the unusual
draught he had taken.

Slowly his whole memory returned to him, and he recalled to himself that
it was necessary for him to be ready to answer for Godlamb Gideon when
that worthy's name was to be called over for the midnight watch. He
staggered up unto his feet, and with difficulty found his way into the
open air. As he gazed, with somewhat troubled brain, on the bright starlit
sky, two or three soldiers hurried past them.

"Hark ye, comrade," he said to one, "how long is it yet to midnight?"

"Midnight! where have you been hiding yourself, comrade?" answered the
man. "Midnight is long since past."

"Long since past!" screamed Gerald with frantic violence. "No! no! it is
impossible--my post was at midnight in the tower court."

"Then you have escaped by wonderful interposition, friend, from the
consequences of your absence; for I was there when the names were called,
and 'present' was answered for the sentinel at the tower court."

"Father of mercy!" cried Gerald in despair. "What, then, has happened?"

"Happened!" echoed the soldier; "why, the prisoner has tried to escape!
But didn't you hear the shots? They brought the old reprobate to the
earth, of a surety."

Gerald uttered a loud groan and fell against the wall of the house; but in
another moment he recovered himself by a desperate effort from a feeling
of sickness and death, and repulsing violently the soldier who had come to
his assistance, he rushed round the mansion with whirling brain and
clenched teeth towards the tower court. His father had been killed--killed
by his own folly. Rage, despair, contrition, self-horror, at having been
so weak as to accept Maywood's proposal to drink that fatal drink which
caused his deadly sleep, all tortured his heart, and drove him almost to
madness. He could not doubt that it was that hated Maywood who had
deceived him, drugged his liquour, cheated him into a sleep, in order to
be present undisturbed at his rendezvous with Mildred; and now it was by
his hand, by the hand of that villain, that his father had fallen.

All was commotion in the fortress. Gerald, as he rushed forward, heard the
noise of voices and boats upon the water--the voice of Lazarus Seaman--now
the men calling to each other. Horror-stricken, overwhelmed with despair,
convulsed with rage, he bounded through the vaulted passage. In the
moonlit court stood now but one figure alone--the sentinel, who was
bending over the parapet, and seemed to be watching with interest the
movement of the boats upon the water. With the rage of a tiger Gerald
sprang upon him, and seized him by the collar with frenzied gripe. It
was, indeed, Maywood--pale, agitated, and excited.

"Villain! traitor! assassin!" screamed Gerald madly, frantic with passion
and despair, "you have betrayed that greyheaded old man; you have murdered
him; but I will have revenge! He was my father, and it is you have killed
him."

"_Your_ father!" exclaimed the young sentinel in a voice choked by
emotion. "He was _mine_, and I have saved him."

Gerald released his hold and staggered back.

For a moment the young men stared at each other in bewildered surprise.
Then all at once the truth flashed across them.

"Brother! brother!" burst simultaneously from their lips. "Gerald!
Everard!" they exclaimed again; and Everard Clynton, flinging himself into
his brother's arms, gave way to his suppressed agitation, and burst into a
flood of tears. At this moment a distant sound of a gun came across the
water; Everard sprang up and grasped his brother's arm.

"Hush!" he said, "three shots from the sea are the signal to me that he
has escaped in safety to the vessel that awaits him."

Another boomed faintly across the broad. A pause of fearful interest
followed, and then another. Once more the brothers fell into each others'
arms.

In a few words Everard Clynton explained to his brother, how, after his
father's capture, he had enlisted in the troop quartered in the fortress,
in order to save him. How he had known from their friends without the
means provided to effect his father's escape; how he, too, had sought,
with desperation, the midnight watch upon which depended his father's
delivery; and, finding himself overcome by his supposed rival, he had
administered to him a sleeping draught in order to secure the post; how
his pretended admiration for Mistress Mildred had been assumed in order to
forward his views and colour his designs, by giving a pretext to his
desire to obtain the post of sentry in the court; how Mildred had never
given him any encouragement, Gerald's unreasonable jealousy having
supplied the rest.

He had assisted his father to escape, and only long after his flight had
given the alarm, and fired upon the water, pretending to call for a sudden
pursuit.

Mark Maywood, however, was tried by a court-martial for negligence upon
duty on the night of the prisoner's escape; but the constantly exhibited
violence of the Republican principles which he had affected, as well as
his zeal and exemplary good conduct since he had joined the troop, saved
him in the colonel's eyes. He was acquitted. Shortly afterwards he
disappeared altogether from the fortress, after an affectionate farewell
to Gerald Clynton, who had the good fortune to receive, in due time, the
assurance of his brother's safe escape to join his father in Flanders.

Not long afterwards, the death of Colonel Lazarus Seaman leaving his
daughter an orphan, Gerald Clynton married pretty little Mistress Mildred,
and, quitting the service, retired to Lyle-Court, the estate bequeathed to
him by his uncle.

There is no doubt that pretty little Mistress Mildred's eyes were given to
be coquettish in spite of themselves; but yet, notwithstanding sundry
little symptoms of jealousy exhibited by Gerald, there is every reason to
believe that he was as absurd and misled in his jealousy after as he was
before his marriage, and that she made him a most excellent wife.

During the more peaceful times of the Protectorate, Gerald received news
from time to time of the welfare of his father and his brother; and, upon
the Restoration, he had the happiness of welcoming them to the English
shores once more.

Although Lord Clynton always preserved a predilection for his elder son,
yet he had somehow found out that Gerald bore an extraordinary resemblance
to his deceased mother, and always treated him with the utmost love. He
never forgot, also, the deep affection Gerald had displayed in his efforts
to save him during that never-to-be-forgotten _Midnight Watch_.




VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION.


We should take but a limited view of science if we supposed, that the laws
of nature of which it is cognizant have for their object the continuance
only and preservation of the several parts of the universe; they provide
also for change, improvement, development, progression. By these laws not
only are the same phenomena, the same things, perpetually reproduced, but
new phenomena, new arrangements, new objects are being successively
developed. In short, we are able to perceive, to a certain extent, that
not only the world is preserved and renewed, but grows and is created
according to great general laws, which are indeed no other than the great
ideas of the Divine Mind.

The modern science of geology has more especially led us to extend our
view of science in this direction. The discovery of those mute records of
past changes which lay buried in the earth, has induced us to investigate
with awakened curiosity those changes which are actually taking place
before us in the broad day, and in our own generation; and the result has
been a conviction, that in the activity of nature there was a provision
made, not only for restoration from decay, and a perpetual renewal of the
individuals of each species, but for successive transformations in the
surface of the globe, fitting it for successive forms of vegetable and
animal life. The plant that lives, and sows its seed, and dies, has not
only provided for its own progeny; under many circumstances it prepares
the soil for successors of a superior rank of vegetation--"Pioneers of
vegetation," as Dr Macculloch calls them, "the lichens, and other
analogous plants, seek their place where no others could exist; demanding
no water, requiring no soil, careless alike of cold and heat, of the sun
and of the storm; rootless, leafless, flowerless; clothing the naked rock,
and forming additional soil for their successors." The whole tribe of
corals, whose lives are sufficiently brief and sufficiently simple, are
yet not permitted to die away from the scene, and leave it, as so many of
us do, just as they found it; they build up such a mausoleum of their
bones--(for what used to be considered as the shell of the animal, is now
pronounced to be a sort of bony nucleus or skeleton)--that large islands
are formed, and a corresponding displacement of the sea is occasioned. The
little creatures heave up the ocean on us. The river that to the poet's
eye flows on for ever in the same channel, "giving a kiss," and kisses
only, to every pebble and every sedge "it overtaketh in its pilgrimage,"
is detected to be secretly scraping, abrading, cutting out the earth like
a knife, and washing it away into the sea. On the other hand, the
earthquake and the volcano, which were looked on as paroxysms and agonies
of nature, are transformed in our imagination into the constant ministers
of beneficent change, and of creative purposes; and the momentary violence
they commit, is to be excused on the plea of the great and permanent good
they effect. For it is they who build the hills and the mountains, whence
flow the streams of abundance upon the earth, and which, instead of being
the gigantic, melancholy ruins Bishop Burnet took them to be, are the
palaces and storehouses of nature, which it is given in charge to these
sons of Vulcan to construct and to repair from the ravages which the soft
rains of heaven incessantly commit upon them.

Astronomy, too, notwithstanding the severe discipline she has undergone,
has in these later times resumed all the boldness of her youth, and
brought her stores of science to the construction of the most splendid
cosmogony that ever attracted the faith of the learned. She has girt her
long robe around her, and entered the lists with, and far outstripped,
whatever is boldest in the speculations of the youngest of the sciences.
The nebular hypothesis, though not yet entitled, as we think, to be
considered other than an hypothesis, has assumed a shape and consistency
which forbids an entire rejection of it, which enforces our respect, and
which, at all events, habituates the imagination to regard our planetary
system as having probably been evolved, under the will of Providence, by
the long operation of the established laws of matter.

It is quite a legitimate object of science, therefore, to view the laws of
the physical world--whether they regard its mechanic movement, its
chemistry, or its zoology--in their creative as well as reproductive
functions; and it is the purpose of a work lately published, entitled
"Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," and which has drawn to
itself considerable attention, to collect and arrange whatever hints or
fragments of knowledge science affords, enabling us to bring the
successive phenomena of creation under the formula of general laws. In
this purpose it is impossible to find a shadow of blame, and the work will
probably answer one good end, that of directing the studies of scientific
men into paths but little or timidly explored. But unfortunately, what the
author has collected as the results of science, are, in some instances,
little else than the wild guess-work of speculation. He has no scruple
whatever in imitating those early geographers, who, disliking the blank
spaces of undiscovered regions, were in the habit in their charts

  "Of placing elephants instead of towns."

Indeed, his book is an assemblage of all that is most venturous and most
fanciful in modern speculation, in which the most conspicuous place is
allotted to a modification of Lamarck's theory on the development of
animal life.

The charge of an atheistic tendency, as it is the heaviest which can be
made against a work, so it is the last which ought to be hazarded without
sufficient cause. In general, owing to the very sacredness of the subject,
we feel disposed, in all suspicious cases, to pass over in silence both
accusation and defence; and if in the present instance we depart, for a
moment, from this line of conduct, it is only to give expression to a
conviction--which we share, we believe, with all who have both the
interest of science and the interest of theology at heart--that the fair
efforts of the scientific enquirer should never be impeded by needless
objections of a theological character. What we mean is this: though a
suspicion may cross the mind, that a writer does not hold the religious
tenets which we should desire to see every where advocated; yet if we are
persuaded, at the same time, that this laxity of faith has no real logical
connexion with the scientific results with which he is occupied, we ought
not to inflict on _them_ any portion of our suspicion or distrust. We
shall always protest against confounding the legitimate attempts of
science with the erroneous principles of certain schools of meta

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