← catalogue

Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. II, No. X., March 1851

by Various · English · Gutenberg #41401 · 813,593 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. II, No. X., March 1851
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. II, No. X., March 1851

Author: Various


        
Release date: November 18, 2012 [eBook #41401]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41401

Credits: Produced by Judith Wirawan, David Kline, and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE, VOL. II, NO. X., MARCH 1851 ***

  HARPER'S

  NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

  NO. X.--MARCH, 1851.--VOL. II.




SPRING.

BY JAMES THOMSON.


[Illustration: Come gentle Spring]

      Come, gentle SPRING, ethereal mildness, come;
    And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,
    While music wakes around, vail'd in a shower
    Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.
      O Hertford, fitted or to shine in courts
    With unaffected grace, or walk the plain
    With innocence and meditation join'd
    In soft assemblage, listen to my song,
    Which thy own season paints; when Nature all
    Is blooming and benevolent, like thee.
      And see where surly winter passes off
    Far to the north, and calls his ruffian blasts:
    His blasts obey, and quit the howling hill,
    The shatter'd forest, and the ravag'd vale;
    While softer gales succeed, at whose kind touch,
    Dissolving snows in livid torrents lost,
    The mountains lift their green heads to the sky.
      As yet the trembling year is unconfirm'd,
    And Winter oft at eve resumes the breeze,
    Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets
    Deform the day delightless; so that scarce
    The bittern knows his time with bill engulf'd
    To shake the sounding marsh; or, from the shore
    The plovers when to scatter o'er the heath,
    And sing their wild notes to the listening waste.
      At last from Aries rolls the bounteous sun,
    And the bright Bull receives him. Then no more
    The expansive atmosphere is cramp'd with cold;
    But, full of life and vivifying soul,
    Lifts the light clouds sublime, and spreads them thin,
    Fleecy, and white, o'er all surrounding heaven.
      Forth fly the tepid airs; and unconfin'd,
    Unbinding earth, the moving softness strays.
    Joyous, the impatient husbandman perceives
    Relenting nature, and his lusty steers
    Drives from their stalls to where the well-us'd plow
    Lies in the furrow, loosen'd from the frost.
    There, unrefusing, to the harness'd yoke
    They lend their shoulder, and begin their toil,
    Cheer'd by the simple song and soaring lark.
    Meanwhile, incumbent o'er the shining share
    The master leans, removes the obstructing clay,
    Winds the whole work, and sidelong lays the glebe.
      While, through the neighboring fields the sower stalks
    With measur'd step; and, liberal, throws the grain
    Into the faithful bosom of the ground:
    The harrow follows harsh, and shuts the scene.

[Illustration: Lend their shoulder, and begin their toil]

      Be gracious, Heaven! for now laborious man
    Has done his part. Ye fostering breezes, blow!
    Ye softening dews, ye tender showers, descend!
    And temper all, thou world-reviving sun,
    Into the perfect year! Nor ye who live
    In luxury and ease, in pomp and pride,
    Think these lost themes unworthy of your ear:
    Such themes as these the rural Maro sung
    To wide-imperial Rome, in the full height
    Of elegance and taste, by Greece refin'd.
    In ancient times, the sacred plow employ'd
    The kings and awful fathers of mankind;
    And some, with whom compar'd your insect tribes
    Are but the beings of a summer's day,
    Have held the scale of empire, rul'd the storm
    Of mighty war, then with victorious hand,
    Disdaining little delicacies, seiz'd
    The plow, and greatly independent scorn'd
    All the vile stores corruption can bestow.
      Ye generous Britons, venerate the plow!
    And o'er your hills and long withdrawing vales
    Let Autumn spread his treasures to the sun,
    Luxuriant and unbounded! As the sea,
    Far through his azure turbulent domain,
    Your empire owns, and from a thousand shores
    Wafts all the pomp of life into your ports,
    So with superior boon may your rich soil,
    Exuberant, Nature's better blessings pour
    O'er every land, the naked nations clothe,
    And be the exhaustless granary of a world!

[Illustration: Wafts all the pomp of life into your ports]

      Nor only through the lenient air this change,
    Delicious, breathes: the penetrative sun,
    His force deep-darting to the dark retreat
    Of vegetation, sets the steaming power
    At large, to wander o'er the verdant earth,
    In various hues; but chiefly thee, gay green!
    Thou smiling Nature's universal robe!
    United light and shade! where the sight dwells
    With growing strength, and ever-new delight.
      From the moist meadow to the wither'd hill,
    Led by the breeze, the vivid verdure runs;
    And swells, and deepens, to the cherish'd eye.
    The hawthorn whitens; and the juicy groves
    Put forth their buds, unfolding by degrees,
    Till the whole leafy forest stands display'd,
    In full luxuriance, to the sighing gales;
    Where the deer rustle through the twining brake,
    And the birds sing conceal'd. At once, array'd
    In all the colors of the flushing year
    By Nature's swift and secret-working hand,
    The garden glows, and fills the liberal air
    With lavish fragrance; while the promis'd fruit
    Lies yet a little embryo, unperceiv'd,
    Within its crimson folds. Now from the town,
    Buried in smoke, and sleep, and noisome damps,
    Oft let me wander o'er the dewy fields,
    Where freshness breathes, and dash the trembling drops
    From the bent bush, as through the verdant maze
    Of sweetbrier hedges I pursue my walk;
    Or taste the smell of dairy; or ascend
    Some eminence, Augusta, in thy plains,
    And see the country, far diffus'd around,
    One boundless blush, one white-empurpled shower
    Of mingled blossoms: where the raptur'd eye
    Hurries from joy to joy; and, hid beneath
    The fair profusion, yellow Autumn spies.

[Illustration: The deer rustle through the brake]

      If, brush'd from Russian wilds, a cutting gale
    Rise not, and scatter from his humid wings
    The clammy mildew; or, dry-blowing, breathe
    Untimely frost--before whose baleful blast
    The full-blown Spring through all her foliage shrinks,
    Joyless and dead, a wide-dejected waste.
    For oft, engender'd by the hazy north,
    Myriads on myriads, insect armies waft
    Keen in the poison'd breeze; and wasteful eat,
    Through buds and bark, into the blacken'd core
    Their eager way. A feeble race! yet oft
    The sacred sons of vengeance! on whose course
    Corrosive famine waits, and kills the year.
    To check this plague, the skillful farmer chaff
    And blazing straw before his orchard burns--
    Till, all involv'd in smoke, the latent foe
    From every cranny suffocated falls;
    Or scatters o'er the blooms the pungent dust
    Of pepper, fatal to the frosty tribe;
    Or, when the envenom'd leaf begins to curl,
    With sprinkled water drowns them in their nest:
    Nor, while they pick them up with busy bill,
    The little trooping birds unwisely scares.

[Illustration: Blazing straw before his orchard burns]

      Be patient, swains; these cruel-seeming winds
    Blow not in vain. Far hence they keep, repress'd,
    Those deepening clouds on clouds, surcharg'd with rain,
    That o'er the vast Atlantic hither borne,
    In endless train, would quench the summer blaze,
    And, cheerless, drown the crude unripen'd year.
      The northeast spends his rage, and now shut up
    Within his iron caves--the effusive south
    Warms the wide air, and o'er the void of heaven
    Breathes the big clouds with vernal showers distent.
    At first a dusky wreath they seem to rise,
    Scarce staining ether; but by fast degrees,
    In heaps on heaps, the doubling vapor sails
    Along the loaded sky, and mingling deep,
    Sits on the horizon round a settled gloom:
    Not such as wintry storms on mortals shed,
    Oppressing life; but lovely, gentle, kind,
    And full of every hope and every joy,
    The wish of Nature. Gradual sinks the breeze
    Into a perfect calm; that not a breath
    Is heard to quiver through the closing woods,
    Or rustling turn the many-twinkling leaves
    Of aspen tall. The uncurling floods, diffus'd
    In glassy breadth, seem through delusive lapse
    Forgetful of their course. 'Tis silence all,
    And pleasing expectation. Herds and flocks
    Drop the dry sprig, and, mute-imploring, eye
    The falling verdure. Hush'd in short suspense,
    The plumy people streak their wings with oil,
    To throw the lucid moisture trickling off;
    And wait the approaching sign to strike, at once,
    Into the general choir. Even mountains, vales,
    And forests seem, impatient, to demand
    The promis'd sweetness. Man superior walks
    Amid the glad creation, musing praise,
    And looking lively gratitude. At last,
    The clouds consign their treasures to the fields,
    And, softly shaking on the dimpled pool
    Prelusive drops, let all their moisture flow,
    In large effusion, o'er the freshen'd world.
    The stealing shower is scarce to patter heard
    By such as wander through the forest walks,
    Beneath the umbrageous multitude of leaves.
    But who can hold the shade, while Heaven descends
    In universal bounty, shedding herbs,
    And fruits, and flowers, on Nature's ample lap?
    Swift fancy fir'd anticipates their growth;
    And, while the milky nutriment distills,
    Beholds the kindling country color round.

[Illustration: The shower is scarce to patter heard]

      Thus all day long the full-distended clouds
    Indulge their genial stores, and well-shower'd earth
    Is deep-enrich'd with vegetable life;
    Till, in the western sky, the downward sun
    Looks out, effulgent, from amid the flush
    Of broken clouds, gay-shifting to his beam.
    The rapid radiance instantaneous strikes
    The illumin'd mountain; through the forest streams;
    Shakes on the floods; and in a yellow mist,
    Far smoking o'er the interminable plain,
    In twinkling myriads lights the dewy gems.
    Moist, bright, and green, the landscape laughs around
    Full swell the woods; their every music wakes,
    Mix'd in wild concert, with the warbling brooks
    Increas'd, the distant bleatings of the hills,
    The hollow lows responsive from the vales,
    Whence blending all the sweeten'd zephyr springs
    Meantime, refracted from yon eastern cloud,
    Bestriding earth, the grand ethereal bow
    Shoots up immense; and every hue unfolds,
    In fair proportion running from the red
    To where the violet fades into the sky.
    Here, awful Newton, the dissolving clouds
    Form, fronting on the sun, thy showery prism;
    And to the sage-instructed eye unfold
    The various twine of light, by thee disclos'd
    From the white mingling maze. Not so the swain:
    He wondering views the bright enchantment bend,
    Delightful, o'er the radiant fields, and runs
    To catch the falling glory; but amaz'd
    Beholds the amusive arch before him fly,
    Then vanish quite away. Still night succeeds,
    A soften'd shade; and saturated earth
    Awaits the morning beam, to give to light,
    Rais'd through ten thousand different plastic tubes,
    The balmy treasures of the former day.
      Then spring the living herbs, profusely wild,
    O'er all the deep-green earth, beyond the power
    Of botanist to number up their tribes:
    Whether he steals along the lonely dale,
    In silent search; or through the forest, rank
    With what the dull incurious weeds account,
    Bursts his blind way; or climbs the mountain rock,
    Fir'd by the nodding verdure of its brow.
    With such a liberal hand has Nature flung
    Their seeds abroad, blown them about in winds,
    Innumerous mix'd them with the nursing mould
    The moistening current, and prolific rain.
      But who their virtues can declare? who pierce,
    With vision pure, into these secret stores
    Of health, and life, and joy? the food of man,
    While yet he liv'd in innocence, and told
    A length of golden years, unflesh'd in blood;
    A stranger to the savage arts of life,
    Death, rapine, carnage, surfeit, and disease--
    The lord, and not the tyrant, of the world.

[Illustration: While yet man lived in innocence]

      The first fresh dawn then wak'd the gladdened race
    Of uncorrupted man, nor blushed to see
    The sluggard sleep beneath its sacred beam;
    For their light slumbers gently fum'd away,
    And up they rose as vigorous as the sun.
    Or to the culture of the willing glebe,
    Or to the cheerful tendance of the flock.
    Meantime the song went round; and dance and sport,
    Wisdom and friendly talk successive stole
    Their hours away; while in the rosy vale
    Love breath'd his infant sighs, from anguish free,
    And full replete with bliss; save the sweet pain
    That, inly thrilling, but exalts it more
    Nor yet injurious act, nor surly deed,
    Was known among these happy sons of heaven;
    For reason and benevolence were law.
    Harmonious Nature, too, look'd smiling on.
    Clear shone the skies, cool'd with eternal gales,
    And balmy spirit all. The youthful sun
    Shot his best rays, and still the gracious clouds
    Dropp'd fatness down; as, o'er the swelling mead,
    The herds and flocks, commixing, play'd secure.
    This when, emergent from the gloomy wood,
    The glaring lion saw, his horrid heart
    Was meeken'd, and he join'd his sullen joy;
    For music held the whole in perfect peace:
    Soft sigh'd the flute; the tender voice was heard,
    Warbling the varied heart; the woodlands round
    Applied their choir; and winds and waters flow'd
    In consonance. Such were those prime of days.

[Illustration: The song went round, and dance]

      But now those white unblemish'd minutes, whence
    The fabling poets took their golden age,
    Are found no more amid these iron times,
    These dregs of life! Now the distemper'd mind
    Has lost that concord of harmonious powers,
    Which forms the soul of happiness; and all
    Is off the poise within: the passions all
    Have burst their bounds; and reason half-extinct,
    Or impotent, or else approving, sees
    The foul disorder. Senseless and deform'd,
    Convulsive anger storms at large; or, pale
    And silent, settles into fell revenge.
    Base envy withers at another's joy,
    And hates that excellence it can not reach.
    Desponding fear, of feeble fancies full,
    Weak and unmanly, loosens every power.
    Even love itself is bitterness of soul,
    A pensive anguish pining at the heart;
    Or, sunk to sordid interest, feels no more
    That noble wish, that never-cloy'd desire,
    Which, selfish joy disdaining, seeks alone
    To bless the dearer object of its flame.
    Hope sickens with extravagance; and grief,
    Of life impatient, into madness swells,
    Or in dead silence wastes the weeping hours.
    These, and a thousand mix'd emotions more,
    From ever changing views of good and ill,
    Form'd infinitely various, vex the mind
    With endless storm; whence, deeply rankling, grows
    The partial thought, a listless unconcern,
    Cold, and averting from our neighbor's good;
    Then dark disgust, and hatred, winding wiles
    Coward deceit, and ruffian violence.
    At last, extinct each social feeling, fell
    And joyless inhumanity pervades
    And petrifies the heart. Nature disturb'd
    Is deem'd, vindictive, to have chang'd her course.
      Hence, in old dusky time, a deluge came:
    When the deep-cleft disparting orb, that arch'd
    The central waters round, impetuous rush'd,
    With universal burst, into the gulf,
    And o'er the high-pil'd hills of fractur'd earth
    Wide-dash'd the waves, in undulation vast;
    Till, from the centre to the streaming clouds,
    A shoreless ocean tumbled round the globe.
      The Seasons since have, with severer sway,
    Oppress'd a broken world: the Winter keen
    Shook forth his waste of snows; and Summer shot
    His pestilential heats. Great Spring, before,
    Green'd all the year; and fruits and blossoms blush'd,
    In social sweetness, on the self-same bough.
    Pure was the temperate air; an even calm
    Perpetual reign'd, save what the zephyrs bland
    Breath'd o'er the blue expanse: for then nor storms
    Were taught to blow, nor hurricanes to rage;
    Sound slept the waters; no sulphureous glooms
    Swell'd in the sky, and sent the lightning forth;
    While sickly damps, and cold autumnal fogs,
    Hung not, relaxing, on the springs of life.
    But now, of turbid elements the sport,
    From clear to cloudy toss'd, from hot to cold,
    And dry to moist, with inward-eating change,
    Our drooping days are dwindled down to naught,
    Their period finish'd ere 'tis well begun.
      And yet the wholesome herb neglected dies,
    Though with the pure exhilarating soul
    Of nutriment, and health, and vital powers,
    Beyond the search of art, 'tis copious blest.
    For, with hot ravin fir'd, ensanguin'd man
    Is now become the lion of the plain,
    And worse. The wolf, who from the nightly fold
    Fierce drags the bleating prey, ne'er drank her milk,
    Nor wore her warming fleece; nor has the steer,
    At whose strong chest the deadly tiger hangs,
    E'er plow'd for him. They too are temper'd high,
    With hunger stung and wild necessity;
    Nor lodges pity in their shaggy breast.
    But man, whom Nature form'd of milder clay,
    With every kind emotion in his heart,
    And taught alone to weep--while from her lap
    She pours ten thousand delicacies, herbs,
    And fruits, as numerous as the drops of rain
    Or beams that gave them birth--shall he, fair form!
    Who wears sweet smiles, and looks erect on heaven,
    E'er stoop to mingle with the prowling herd,
    And dip his tongue in gore? The beast of prey,
    Blood-stain'd deserves to bleed; but you, ye flocks,
    What have you done? ye peaceful people, what,
    To merit death? you, who have given us milk
    In luscious streams, and lent us your own coat
    Against the Winter's cold? And the plain ox,
    That harmless, honest, guileless animal,
    In what has he offended? he, whose toil,
    Patient and ever ready, clothes the land
    With all the pomp of harvest?--shall he bleed,
    And struggling groan beneath the cruel hands
    Even of the clowns he feeds? and that, perhaps,
    To swell the riot of the autumnal feast,
    Won by his labor? This the feeling heart
    Would tenderly suggest; but 'tis enough,
    In this late age, adventurous, to have touch'd
    Light on the numbers of the Samian sage.
    High Heaven forbids the bold presumptuous strain,
    Whose wisest will has fixed us in a state
    That must not yet to pure perfection rise:
    Beside, who knows, how rais'd to higher life,
    From stage to stage, the vital scale ascends?
      Now, when the first foul torrent of the brooks,
    Swell'd with the vernal rains, is ebb'd away--
    And, whitening, down their mossy-tinctur'd stream
    Descends the billowy foam--now is the time,
    While yet the dark-brown water aids the guile,
    To tempt the trout. The well dissembled fly,
    The rod fine-tapering with elastic spring,
    Snatch'd from the hoary steed the floating line,
    And all thy slender watery stores, prepare.
    But let not on thy hook the tortur'd worm,
    Convulsive, twist in agonizing folds;
    Which, by rapacious hunger swallow'd deep,
    Gives, as you tear it from the bleeding breast
    Of the weak, helpless, uncomplaining wretch,
    Harsh pain and horror to the tender hand.
      When, with his lively ray, the potent sun
    Has pierc'd the streams, and rous'd the finny race
    Then, issuing cheerful, to thy sport repair;
    Chief should the western breezes curling play,
    And light o'er ether bear the shadowy clouds,
    High to their fount, this day, amid the hills,
    And woodlands warbling round, trace up the brooks,
    The next, pursue their rocky-channel'd maze,
    Down to the river, in whose ample wave
    Their little naiads love to sport at large.
    Just in the dubious point where with the pool,
    Is mix'd the trembling stream, or where it boils
    Around the stone, or from the hollow'd bank
    Reverted plays in undulating flow,
    There throw nice-judging, the delusive fly;
    And, as you lead it round in artful curve,
    With eye attentive mark the springing game.
    Straight as above the surface of the flood
    They wanton rise, or urg'd by hunger leap,
    Then fix, with gentle twitch, the barbed hook;
    Some lightly tossing to the grassy bank,
    And to the shelving shore slow-dragging some,
    With various hand proportion'd to their force.
    If yet too young, and easily deceived,
    A worthless prey scarce bends your pliant rod,
    Him, piteous of his youth, and the short space
    He has enjoy'd the vital light of heaven,
    Soft disengage, and back into the stream
    The speckled infant throw. But should you lure
    From his dark haunt, beneath the tangled roots
    Of pendent trees, the monarch of the brook,
    Behooves you then to ply your finest art.
    Long time he, followed cautious, scans the fly,
    And oft attempts to seize it, but as oft
    The dimpled water speaks his jealous fear.
    At last, while haply o'er the shaded sun
    Passes a cloud, he desperate takes the death,
    With sullen plunge. At once he darts along,
    Deep-struck, and runs out all the lengthen'd line
    Then seeks the farthest ooze, the sheltering weed,
    The cavern'd bank, his old secure abode;
    And flies aloft, and flounces round the pool,
    Indignant of the guile. With yielding hand,
    That feels him still, yet to his furious course
    Gives way, you, now retiring, following now
    Across the stream, exhaust his idle rage;
    Till floating broad upon his breathless side,
    And to his fate abandon'd, to the shore
    You gayly drag your unresisting prize.

[Illustration: Throw nice judging the delusive fly]

[Illustration: You gayly drag your unresisting prize]

      Thus pass the temperate hours: but when the sun
    Shakes from his noonday throne the scattering clouds,
    Even shooting listless languor through the deeps,
    Then seek the bank where flowering elders crowd,
    Where scatter'd wild the lily of the vale
    Its balmy essence breathes, where cowslips hang
    The dewy head, where purple violets lurk,
    With all the lowly children of the shade;
    Or lie reclin'd beneath yon spreading ash
    Hung o'er the steep, whence borne on liquid wing
    The sounding culver shoots; or where the hawk
    High in the beetling cliff his eyry builds.
    There let the classic page thy fancy lead
    Through rural scenes, such as the Mantuan swain
    Paints in the matchless harmony of song;
    Or catch thyself the landscape, gliding swift
    Athwart imagination's vivid eye;
    Or, by the vocal woods and waters lull'd,
    And lost in lonely musing, in a dream,
    Confus'd, of careless solitude, where mix
    Ten thousand wandering images of things,
    Soothe every gust of passion into peace--
    All but the swellings of the soften'd heart,
    That waken, not disturb, the tranquil mind.
      Behold, yon breathing prospect bids the muse
    Throw all her beauty forth. But who can paint
    Like Nature? Can imagination boast,
    Amid its gay creation, hues like hers?
    Or can it mix them with that matchless skill,
    And lose them in each other, as appears
    In every bud that blows? If fancy, then,
    Unequal fails beneath the pleasing task,
    Ah, what shall language do? ah, where find words
    Ting'd with so many colors; and whose power,
    To life approaching, may perfume my lays
    With that fine oil, those aromatic gales,
    That inexhaustive flow continual round?
      Yet, though successless, will the toil delight.
    Come then, ye virgins and ye youths whose hearts
    Have felt the raptures of refining love;
    And thou, Amanda, come, pride of my song!
    Form'd by the Graces, loveliness itself!
    Come with those downcast eyes, sedate and sweet,
    Those looks demure, that deeply pierce the soul--
    Where, with the light of thoughtful reason mix'd.
    Shines lively fancy, and the feeling heart:
    Oh come! and while the rosy-footed May
    Steals blushing on, together let us tread
    The morning dews, and gather in their prime
    Fresh-blooming flowers, to grace thy braided hair
    And thy lov'd bosom that improves their sweets.

[Illustration: Together let us tread the morning dews]

[Illustration: Gather fresh flowers to grace thy hair]

      See, where the winding vale its lavish stores,
    Irriguous, spreads. See, how the lily drinks
    The latent rill, scarce oozing through the grass,
    Of growth luxuriant; or the humid bank,
    In fair profusion, decks. Long let us walk,
    Where the breeze blows from yon extended field,
    Of blossom'd beans. Arabia can not boast
    A fuller gale of joy than, liberal, thence
    Breathes through the sense, and takes the ravish'd soul.
    Nor is the mead unworthy of thy foot,
    Full of fresh verdure, and unnumber'd flowers,
    The negligence of Nature, wide and wild;
    Where, undisguis'd by mimic art, she spreads
    Unbounded beauty to the roving eye.
    Here their delicious task the fervent bees,
    In swarming millions, tend: around, athwart,
    Through the soft air the busy nations fly,
    Cling to the bud, and with inserted tube
    Suck its pure essence, its ethereal soul;
    And oft, with bolder wing, they soaring dare
    The purple heath, or where the wild-thyme grows,
    And yellow load them with the luscious spoil.
      At length the finish'd garden to the view
    Its vistas opens, and its alleys green.
    Snatch'd through the verdant maze, the hurried eye
    Distracted wanders: now the bowery walk
    Of covert close, where scarce a speck of day
    Falls on the lengthen'd gloom, protracted sweeps;
    Now meets the bending sky; the river now
    Dimpling along, the breezy-ruffled lake,
    The forest darkening round, the glittering spire,
    The ethereal mountain, and the distant main.
    But why so far excursive? when at hand,
    Along these blushing borders, bright with dew,
    And in yon mingled wilderness of flowers,
    Fair-handed Spring unbosoms every grace:
    Throws out the snow-drop and the crocus first;
    The daisy, primrose, violet darkly blue,
    And polyanthus of unnumber'd dyes;
    The yellow wallflower, stain'd with iron-brown;
    And lavish stock, that scents the garden round;
    From the soft wing of vernal breezes shed,
    Anemonies; auriculas, enrich'd
    With shining meal o'er all their velvet leaves:
    And full ranunculus, of glowing red.
    Then comes the tulip-race, where beauty plays
    Her idle freaks: from family diffus'd
    To family, as flies the father-dust,
    The varied colors run; and, while they _break_
    On the charm'd eye, the exulting florist marks,
    With secret pride, the wonders of his hand.
    No gradual bloom is wanting; from the bud,
    First-born of Spring, to Summer's musky tribes:
    Nor hyacinths, of purest virgin-white,
    Low-bent, and blushing inward; nor jonquils,
    Of potent fragrance; nor narcissus fair,
    As o'er the fabled fountain hanging still;
    Nor broad carnations; nor gay-spotted pinks;
    Nor, shower'd from every bush, the damask-rose.
    Infinite numbers, delicacies, smells,
    With hues on hues expression can not paint,
    The breath of Nature, and her endless bloom.

[Illustration: The garden to the view its vistas open]

      Hail, Source of Beings! Universal Soul
    Of heaven and earth! Essential Presence, hail!
    To thee I bend the knee; to thee my thoughts,
    Continual, climb; who, with a master-hand,
    Hast the great whole into perfection touch'd.
    By thee the various vegetative tribes,
    Wrapp'd in a filmy net, and clad with leaves,
    Draw the live ether, and imbibe the dew.
    By thee dispos'd into congenial soils,
    Stands each attractive plant, and sucks, and swells
    The juicy tide; a twining mass of tubes.
    At thy command the vernal sun awakes
    The torpid sap, detruded to the root
    By wintry winds, that now in fluent dance,
    And lively fermentation, mounting, spreads.
    All this innumerous-color'd scene of things.
      As rising from the vegetable world
    My theme ascends, with equal wing ascend,
    My panting muse; and hark, how loud the woods
    Invite you forth in all your gayest trim.
    Lend me your song, ye nightingales! oh, pour
    The mazy-running soul of melody
    Into my varied verse! while I deduce,
    From the first note the hollow cuckoo sings,
    The symphony of Spring, and touch a theme
    Unknown to fame--the passion of the groves.
      When first the soul of love is sent abroad,
    Warm through the vital air, and on the heart
    Harmonious seizes, the gay troops begin,
    In gallant thought, to plume the painted wing;
    And try again the long forgotten strain,
    At first faint-warbled. But no sooner grows
    The soft infusion prevalent, and wide,
    Than, all alive, at once their joy o'erflows
    In music unconfin'd. Up springs the lark,
    Shrill-voic'd and loud, the messenger of morn:
    Ere yet the shadows fly, he mounted sings
    Amid the dawning clouds, and from their haunts
    Calls up the tuneful nations. Every copse
    Deep-tangled, tree irregular, and bush
    Bending with dewy moisture, o'er the heads
    Of the coy quiristers that lodge within,
    Are prodigal of harmony. The thrush
    And woodlark, o'er the kind contending throng
    Superior heard, run through the sweetest length
    Of notes; when listening Philomela deigns
    To let them joy, and purposes, in thought
    Elate, to make her night excel their day.
    The blackbird whistles from the thorny brake;
    The mellow bullfinch answers from the grove;
    Nor are the linnets, o'er the flowering furze
    Pour'd out profusely, silent: join'd to these
    Innumerous songsters, in the freshening shade
    Of new-sprung leaves, their modulations mix
    Mellifluous. The jay, the rook, the daw,
    And each harsh pipe, discordant heard alone,
    Aid the full concert; while the stockdove breathes
    A melancholy murmur through the whole.
      'Tis love creates their melody, and all
    This waste of music is the voice of love;
    That even to birds and beasts the tender arts
    Of pleasing teaches. Hence the glossy kind
    Try every winning way inventive love
    Can dictate, and in courtship to their mates
    Pour forth their little souls. First, wide around,
    With distant awe, in airy rings they rove,
    Endeavoring by a thousand tricks to catch
    The cunning, conscious, half-averted glance
    Of their regardless charmer. Should she seem,
    Softening, the least approvance to bestow,
    Their colors burnish, and, by hope inspir'd,
    They brisk advance; then, on a sudden struck,
    Retire disorder'd; then again approach;
    In fond rotation spread the spotted wing,
    And shiver every feather with desire.
      Connubial leagues agreed, to the deep woods
    They haste away, all as their fancy leads,
    Pleasure, or food, or secret safety prompts;
    That Nature's great command may be obey'd:
    Nor all the sweet sensations they perceive
    Indulg'd in vain. Some to the holly-hedge
    Nestling repair, and to the thicket some;
    Some to the rude protection of the thorn
    Commit their feeble offspring. The cleft tree
    Offers its kind concealment to a few,
    Their food its insects, and its moss their nests.
    Others, apart, far in the grassy dale,
    Or roughening waste, their humble texture weave
    But most in woodland solitudes delight,
    In unfrequented glooms, or shaggy banks,
    Steep, and divided by a babbling brook.
    Whose murmurs soothe them all the livelong day,
    When by kind duty fix'd. Among the roots
    Of hazel, pendent o'er the plaintive stream,
    They frame the first foundation of their domes;
    Dry sprigs of trees, in artful fabric laid,
    And bound with clay together. Now 'tis naught
    But restless hurry through the busy air,
    Beat by unnumber'd wings. The swallow sweeps
    The slimy pool, to build his hanging house
    Intent. And often, from the careless back
    Of herds and flocks, a thousand tugging bills
    Pluck hair and wool; and oft, when unobserv'd,
    Steal from the barn a straw: till soft and warm,
    Clean and complete, their habitation grows.

[Illustration: Hazel pendent o'er the plaintive stream]

      As thus the patient dam assiduous sits,
    Not to be tempted from her tender task,
    Or by sharp hunger, or by smooth delight,
    Though the whole loosen'd Spring around her blows
    Her sympathizing lover takes his stand
    High on the opponent bank, and ceaseless sings
    The tedious time away; or else supplies
    Her place a moment, while she sudden flits
    To pick the scanty meal. The appointed time
    With pious toil fulfill'd, the callow young,
    Warm'd and expanded into perfect life,
    Their brittle bondage break, and come to light
    A helpless family, demanding food
    With constant clamor. Oh, what passions then,
    What melting sentiments of kindly care,
    On the new parents seize! Away they fly.
    Affectionate, and undesiring bear
    The most delicious morsel to their young
    Which equally distributed, again
    The search begins. Even so a gentle pair,
    By fortune sunk, but form'd of generous mould,
    And charm'd with cares beyond the vulgar breast,
    In some lone cot amid the distant woods,
    Sustained alone by providential Heaven,
    Oft, as they weeping eye their infant train,
    Check their own appetites and give them all.

[Illustration: A gentle pair, by fortune sunk]

[Illustration: They weeping eye their infant train]

      Nor toil alone they scorn: exalting love,
    By the great Father of the Spring inspir'd
    Gives instant courage to the fearful race,
    And to the simple, art. With stealthy wing,
    Should some rude foot their woody haunts molest,
    Amid a neighboring bush they silent drop,
    And whirring thence, as if alarm'd, deceive
    The unfeeling schoolboy. Hence, around the head
    Of wandering swain, the white-winged plover wheels
    Her sounding flight, and then directly on
    In long excursion skims the level lawn,
    To tempt him from her nest. The wild-duck, hence,
    O'er the rough moss, and o'er the trackless waste
    The heath-hen flutters, pious fraud! to lead
    The hot-pursuing spaniel far astray.
      Be not the muse asham'd here to bemoan
    Her brothers of the grove, by tyrant man
    Inhuman caught, and in the narrow cage
    From liberty confin'd, and boundless air.
    Dull are the pretty slaves, their plumage dull,
    Ragged, and all its brightening lustre lost;
    Nor is that sprightly wildness in their notes,
    Which, clear and vigorous, warbles from the beech.
    Oh, then, ye friends of love and love-taught song,
    Spare the soft tribes, this barbarous art forbear!
    If on your bosom innocence can win,
    Music engage, or piety persuade.
      But let not chief the nightingale lament
    Her ruin'd care, too delicately fram'd
    To brook the harsh confinement of the cage.
    Oft when, returning with her loaded bill,
    The astonish'd mother finds a vacant nest,
    By the hard hand of unrelenting clowns
    Robb'd, to the ground the vain provision falls
    Her pinions ruffle, and, low-drooping, scarce
    Can bear the mourner to the poplar shade.
    Where all abandon'd to despair she sings
    Her sorrows through the night; and, on the bough
    Sole-sitting, still at every dying fall
    Takes up again her lamentable strain
    Of winding woe, till wide around the woods
    Sigh to her song, and with her wail resound.
      But now the feather'd youth their former bounds,
    Ardent, disdain; and, weighing oft their wings,
    Demand the free possession of the sky.
    This one glad office more, and then dissolves
    Parental love at once, now needless grown:
    Unlavish Wisdom never works in vain.
    'Tis on some evening, sunny, grateful, mild,
    When naught but balm is breathing through the woods.
    With yellow lustre bright, that the new tribes
    Visit the spacious heavens, and look abroad
    On Nature's common, far as they can see,
    Or wing their range and pasture. O'er the boughs
    Dancing about, still at the giddy verge
    Their resolution fails--their pinions still,
    In loose liberation stretch'd, to trust the void
    Trembling refuse--till down before them fly
    The parent guides, and chide, exhort, command,
    Or push them off. The surging air receives
    The plumy burden; and their self-taught wings
    Winnow the waving element. On ground
    Alighted, bolder up again they lead,
    Farther and farther on, the lengthening flight,
    Till, vanish'd every fear, and every power
    Rous'd into life and action, light in air
    The acquitted parents see their soaring race,
    And, once rejoicing, never know them more.
      High from the summit of a craggy cliff,
    Hung o'er the deep, such as amazing frowns
    On utmost Kilda's shore, whose lonely race
    Resign the setting sun to Indian worlds,
    The royal eagle draws his vigorous young;
    Strong-pounc'd, and ardent with paternal fire.
    Now fit to raise a kingdom of their own,
    He drives them from his fort, the towering seat,
    For ages, of his empire; which, in peace,
    Unstain'd he holds, while many a league to sea
    He wings his course, and preys in distant isles.
      Should I my steps turn to the rural seat,
    Whose lofty elms and venerable oaks
    Invite the rook, who high amid the boughs,
    In early Spring, his airy city builds,
    And ceaseless caws amusive--there, well pleas'd,
    I might the various polity survey
    Of the mix'd household-kind. The careful hen
    Calls all her chirping family around,
    Fed and defended by the fearless cock;
    Whose breast with ardor flames, as on he walks
    Graceful, and crows defiance. In the pond,
    The finely checker'd duck before her train
    Rows garrulous. The stately-sailing swan
    Gives out his snowy plumage to the gale;
    And, arching proud his neck, with oary feet
    Bears forward fierce, and guards his osier-isle,
    Protective of his young. The turkey nigh,
    Loud-threatening, reddens; while the peacock spreads
    His every-color'd glory to the sun,
    And swims in radiant majesty along.
    O'er the whole homely scene, the cooing dove
    Flies thick in amorous chase, and wanton rolls
    The glancing eye, and turns the changeful neck.
      While thus the gentle tenants of the shade
    Indulge their purer loves, the rougher world
    Of brutes, below, rush furious into flame
    And fierce desire. Through all his lusty veins
    The bull, deep-scorch'd, the raging passion feels.
    Of pasture sick, and negligent of food,
    Scarce seen, he wades among the yellow broom,
    While o'er his ample sides the rambling sprays
    Luxuriant shoot; or through the mazy wood
    Dejected wanders, nor the enticing bud
    Crops, though it presses on his careless sense.
    And oft, in jealous maddening fancy wrapt,
    He seeks the fight; and, idly butting, feigns
    His rival gor'd in every knotty trunk.
    Him should he meet, the bellowing war begins:
    Their eyes flash fury; to the hollow'd earth,
    Whence the sand flies, they mutter bloody deeds,
    And groaning deep the impetuous battle mix;
    While the fair heifer, balmy-breathing, near,
    Stands kindling up their rage. The trembling steed,
    With this hot impulse seiz'd in every nerve,
    Nor heeds the rein, nor hears the sounding thong;
    Blows are not felt; but, tossing high his head,
    And by the well-known joy to distant plains
    Attracted strong, all wild he bursts away;
    O'er rocks, and woods, and craggy mountains flies;
    And, neighing, on the aerial summit takes
    The exciting gale; then, steep-descending, cleaves
    The headlong torrents foaming down the hills,
    Even where the madness of the straiten'd stream
    Turns in black eddies round--such is the force
    With which his frantic heart and sinews swell.

[Illustration: On the aerial summit takes the gale]

      Nor undelighted by the boundless Spring
    Are the broad monsters of the foaming deep:
    From the deep ooze and gelid caverns rous'd,
    They flounce and tumble in unwieldy joy.
    Dire were the strain, and dissonant, to sing
    The cruel raptures of the savage kind;
    How, by this flame their native wrath sublim'd,
    They roam, amid the fury of their heart,
    The far-resounding waste in fiercer bands,
    And growl their horrid loves. But this, the theme
    I sing, enraptur'd, to the British fair,
    Forbids; and leads me to the mountain brow,
    Where sits the shepherd on the grassy turf,
    Inhaling, healthful, the descending sun.
    Around him feeds his many-bleating flock,
    Of various cadence; and his sportive lambs,
    This way and that convolv'd, in friskful glee,
    Their frolics play. And now the sprightly race
    Invites them forth; when swift, the signal given,
    They start away, and sweep the massy mound
    That runs around the hill; the rampart once
    Of iron war, in ancient barbarous times,
    When disunited Britain ever bled,
    Lost in eternal broil: ere yet she grew
    To this deep-laid indissoluble state,
    Where wealth and commerce lift the golden head;
    And, o'er our labors, liberty and law
    Impartial watch--the wonder of a world!
      What is this mighty breath, ye curious, say,
    That, in a powerful language, felt not heard,
    Instructs the fowls of heaven; and through their breast
    These arts of love diffuses? What, but God?
    Inspiring God! who, boundless spirit all,
    And unremitting energy, pervades,
    Adjusts, sustains, and agitates the whole.
    He ceaseless works alone, and yet alone
    Seems not to work; with such perfection fram'd
    Is this complex stupendous scheme of things.
    But, though conceal'd, to every purer eye
    The informing Author in his works appears:
    Chief, lovely Spring, in thee, and thy soft scenes,
    The smiling God is seen; while water, earth,
    And air attest his bounty--which exalts
    The brute creation to this finer thought,
    And annual melts their undesigning hearts
    Profusely thus in tenderness and joy.
      Still let my song a nobler note assume,
    And sing the infusive force of Spring on man,
    When heaven and earth, as if contending, vie
    To raise his being, and serene his soul,
    Can he forbear to join the general smile
    Of Nature? can fierce passions vex his breast,
    While every gale is peace, and every grove
    Is melody? Hence! from the bounteous walks
    Of flowing Spring, ye sordid sons of earth,
    Hard, and unfeeling of another's woe,
    Or only lavish to yourselves; away!
    But come, ye generous minds, in whose wide thought;
    Of all his works, creative bounty burns
    With warmest beam; and on your open front
    And liberal eye sits, from his dark retreat
    Inviting modest want. Nor till invok'd
    Can restless goodness wait: your active search
    Leaves no cold wintry corner unexplor'd;
    Like silent-working Heaven, surprising oft
    The lonely heart with unexpected good.
    For you the roving spirit of the wind
    Blows Spring abroad; for you the teeming clouds
    Descend in gladsome plenty o'er the world;
    And the sun sheds his kindest rays for you.
    Ye flower of human race! In these green days,
    Reviving sickness lifts her languid head;
    Life flows afresh; and young-ey'd health exalts
    The whole creation round. Contentment walks
    The sunny glade, and feels an inward bliss
    Spring o'er his mind, beyond the power of kings
    To purchase. Pure serenity apace
    Induces thought, and contemplation still.
    By swift degrees the love of Nature works,
    And warms the bosom; till at last, sublim'd
    To rapture and enthusiastic heat,
    We feel the present Deity, and taste
    The joy of God to see a happy world!
      These are the sacred feelings of thy heart,
    Thy heart inform'd by reason's purer ray,
    O Lyttelton, the friend! thy passions thus
    And meditations vary, as at large,
    Courting the muse, through Hagley Park you stray;
    Thy British Tempè! There along the dale,
    With woods o'erhung, and shagg'd with mossy rocks,
    Whence on each hand the gushing waters play.
    And down the rough cascade white-dashing fall,
    Or gleam in lengthen'd vista through the trees,
    You silent steal; or sit beneath the shade
    Of solemn oaks, that tuft the swelling mounts
    Thrown graceful round by Nature's careless hand,
    And pensive listen to the various voice
    Of rural peace: the herds, the flocks, the birds,
    The hollow-whispering breeze, the plaint of rills,
    That, purling down amid the twisted roots
    Which creep around, their dewy murmurs shake
    On the sooth'd ear. From these abstracted oft,
    You wander through the philosophic world;
    Where in bright train continual wonders rise,
    Or to the curious or the pious eye.
    And oft, conducted by historic truth,
    You tread the long extent of backward time:
    Planning, with warm benevolence of mind,
    And honest zeal unwarp'd by party rage,
    Britannia's weal; how from the venal gulf
    To raise her virtue, and her arts revive.
    Or, turning thence thy view, these graver thoughts
    The muses charm; while, with sure taste refin'd,
    You draw the inspiring breath of ancient song,
    Till nobly rises, emulous, thy own.
    Perhaps thy lov'd Lucinda shares thy walk,
    With soul to thine attun'd. Then Nature all
    Wears to the lover's eye a look of love;
    And all the tumult of a guilty world,
    Toss'd by ungenerous passions, sinks away.
    The tender heart is animated peace;
    And as it pours its copious treasures forth,
    In varied converse, softening every theme,
    You, frequent-pausing, turn, and from her eyes,
    Where meeken'd sense, and amiable grace,
    And lively sweetness dwell, enraptur'd drink
    That nameless spirit of ethereal joy,
    Inimitable happiness! which love
    Alone bestows, and on a _favor'd few_.
    Meantime you gain the height, from whose fair brow
    The bursting prospect spreads immense around;
    And snatch'd o'er hill and dale, and wood and lawn,
    And verdant field, and darkening heath between,
    And villages embosom'd soft in trees,
    And spiry towns by surging columns mark'd
    Of household smoke, your eye excursive roams;
    Wide-stretching from the hall, in whose kind haunt
    The hospitable genius lingers still,
    To where the broken landscape, by degrees
    Ascending, roughens into rigid hills--
    O'er which the Cambrian mountains, like far clouds
    That skirt the blue horizon, dusky rise.

[Illustration: Through Hagley Park, thy British Tempè]

      Flush'd by the spirit of the genial year,
    Now from the virgin's cheek a fresher bloom
    Shoots, less and less, the live carnation round;
    Her lips blush deeper sweets; she breathes of youth:
    The shining moisture swells into her eyes
    In brighter flow; her wishing bosom heaves
    With palpitations wild; kind tumults seize
    Her veins, and all her yielding soul is love.
    From the keen gaze her lover turns away,
    Full of the dear ecstatic power, and sick
    With sighing languishment. Ah, then, ye fair!
    Be greatly cautious of your sliding hearts:
    Dare not the infectious sigh; the pleading look,
    Downcast and low, in meek submission dress'd,
    But full of guile. Let not the fervent tongue,
    Prompt to deceive, with adulation smooth,
    Gain on your purpos'd will. Nor in the bower,
    Where woodbines flaunt and roses shed a couch,
    While evening draws her crimson curtains round,
    Trust your soft minutes with betraying man.
      And let the aspiring youth beware of love,
    Of the smooth glance beware; for 'tis too late,
    When on his heart the torrent-softness pours.
    Then wisdom prostrate lies, and fading fame
    Dissolves in air away; while the fond soul,
    Wrapp'd in gay visions of unreal bliss,
    Still paints the illusive form, the kindling grace,
    The enticing smile, the modest-seeming eye,
    Beneath whose beauteous beams, belying heaven
    Lurk searchless cunning, cruelty, and death;
    And still, false warbling in his cheated ear,
    Her siren voice, enchanting, draws him on
    To guileful shores, and meads of fatal joy.
      Even present, in the very lap of love
    Inglorious laid--while music flows around,
    Perfumes, and oils, and wine, and wanton hours--
    Amid the roses, fierce repentance rears
    Her snaky crest: a quick-returning pang
    Shoots through the conscious heart; where honor still,
    And great design, against the oppressive load
    Of luxury, by fits, impatient heave.
      But absent, what fantastic woes, arous'd,
    Rage in each thought, by restless musing fed,
    Chill the warm cheek, and blast the bloom of life!
    Neglected fortune flies; and, sliding swift,
    Prone into ruin fall his scorn'd affairs
    'Tis naught but gloom around. The darken'd sun
    Loses his light. The rosy-bosom'd Spring
    To weeping fancy pines; and yon bright arch,
    Contracted, bends into a dusky vault.
    All nature fades extinct; and she alone
    Heard, felt, and seen, possesses every thought,
    Fills every sense, and pants in every vein.
    Books are but formal dullness, tedious friends;
    And sad amid the social band he sits,
    Lonely and unattentive. From the tongue
    The unfinish'd period falls: while, borne away
    On swelling thought, his wafted spirit flies
    To the vain bosom of his distant fair;
    And leaves the semblance of a lover, fixed
    In melancholy site, with head declined,
    And love-dejected eyes. Sudden he starts,
    Shook from his tender trance, and restless runs
    To glimmering shades and sympathetic glooms,
    Where the dun umbrage o'er the falling stream,
    Romantic, hangs; there through the pensive dusk
    Strays, in heart-thrilling meditation lost,
    Indulging all to love; or on the bank
    Thrown, amid drooping lilies, swells the breeze
    With sighs unceasing, and the brook with tears.
    Thus in soft anguish he consumes the day;
    Nor quits his deep retirement, till the moon
    Peeps through the chambers of the fleecy east,
    Enlighten'd by degrees, and in her train
    Leads on the gentle hours; then forth he walks,
    Beneath the trembling languish of her beam,
    With softened soul, and woos the bird of eve
    To mingle woes with his; or, while the world
    And all the sons of care lie hush'd in sleep,
    Associates with the midnight shadows drear;
    And, sighing to the lonely taper, pours
    His idly tortur'd heart into the page
    Meant for the moving messenger of love--
    Where rapture burns on rapture, every line
    With rising frenzy fir'd. But if on bed
    Delirious flung, sleep from his pillow flies.
    All night he tosses, nor the balmy power
    In any posture finds; till the gray morn
    Lifts her pale lustre on the paler wretch,
    Exanimate by love: and then perhaps
    Exhausted nature sinks awhile to rest,
    Still interrupted by distracted dreams,
    That o'er the sick imagination rise
    And in black colors paint the mimic scene.
    Oft with the enchantress of his soul he talks;
    Sometimes in crowds distress'd, or if retir'd
    To secret-winding flower-enwoven bowers,
    Far from the dull impertinence of man,
    Just as he, credulous, his endless cares
    Begins to lose in blind oblivious love,
    Snatch'd from her yielded hand, he knows not how,
    Through forests huge, and long untravel'd heaths
    With desolation brown, he wanders waste,
    In night and tempest wrapp'd; or shrinks, aghast,
    Back from the bending precipice; or wades
    The turbid stream below, and strives to reach
    The farther shore, where succorless and sad
    She with extended arms his aid implores,
    But strives in vain: borne by the outrageous flood
    To distance down, he rides the ridgy wave,
    Or whelm'd beneath the boiling eddy sinks.
    These are the charming agonies of love,
    Whose misery delights. But through the heart
    Should jealousy its venom once diffuse,
    'Tis then delightful misery no more,
    But agony unmix'd, incessant gall,
    Corroding every thought, and blasting all
    Love's paradise. Ye fairy prospects, then,
    Ye beds of roses, and ye bowers of joy,
    Farewell. Ye gleamings of departed peace,
    Shine out your last! the yellow-tinging plague
    Internal vision taints, and in a night
    Of livid gloom imagination wraps.
    Ah! then, instead of love-enliven'd cheeks,
    Of sunny features, and of ardent eyes
    With flowing rapture bright, dark looks succeed,
    Suffus'd and glaring with untender fire;
    A clouded aspect, and a burning cheek,
    Where the whole poison'd soul malignant sits,
    And frightens love away. Ten thousand fears
    Invented wild, ten thousand frantic views
    Of horrid rivals, hanging on the charms
    For which he melts in fondness, eat him up
    With fervent anguish, and consuming rage.
    In vain reproaches lend their idle aid,
    Deceitful pride, and resolution frail,
    Giving false peace a moment. Fancy pours,
    Afresh, her beauties on his busy thought;
    Her first endearments, twining round the soul
    With all the witchcraft of ensnaring love.
    Straight the fierce storm involves his mind anew;
    Flames through the nerves, and boils along the veins;
    While anxious doubt distracts the tortur'd heart:
    For even the sad assurance of his fears
    Were peace to what he feels. Thus the warm youth,
    Whom love deludes into his thorny wilds,
    Through flowery-tempting paths, or leads a life
    Of fever'd rapture, or of cruel care;
    His brightest aims extinguish'd all, and all
    His lively moments running down to waste.

[Illustration: On the bank thrown amid drooping lilies]

[Illustration: In soft anguish he consumes the day]

[Illustration: Woos the bird of eve to mingle woes]

[Illustration: Still interrupted by distracted dreams]

      But happy they! the happiest of their kind!
    Whom gentler stars unite, and in one fate
    Their hearts, their fortunes, and their beings blend,
    'Tis not the coarser tie of human laws,
    Unnatural oft, and foreign to the mind,
    That binds their peace, but harmony itself,
    Attuning all their passions into love;
    Where friendship full-exerts her softest power,
    Perfect esteem enliven'd by desire
    Ineffable, and sympathy of soul;
    Thought meeting thought, and will preventing will
    With boundless confidence: for naught but love
    Can answer love, and render bliss secure.
    Let him, ungenerous, who, alone intent
    To bless himself from sordid parents buys
    The loathing virgin, in eternal care,
    Well-merited, consume his nights and days;
    Let barbarous nations whose inhuman love
    Is wild desire, fierce as the suns they feel;
    Let eastern tyrants, from the light of heaven
    Seclude their bosom-slaves, meanly possess'd
    Of a mere lifeless, violated form:
    While those whom love cements in holy faith,
    And equal transport, free as Nature live,
    Disdaining fear. What is the world to them,
    Its pomp, its pleasure, and its nonsense all!
    Who in each other clasp whatever fair
    High fancy forms, and lavish hearts can wish;
    Something than beauty dearer, should they look
    Or on the mind, or mind-illumin'd face--
    Truth, goodness, honor, harmony, and love,
    The richest bounty of indulgent Heaven.
    Meantime a smiling offspring rises round,
    And mingles both their graces. By degrees,
    The human blossom blows; and every day,
    Soft as it rolls along, shows some new charm,
    The father's lustre and the mother's bloom.
    Then infant reason grows apace, and calls
    For the kind hand of an assiduous care.
    Delightful task! to rear the tender thought,
    To teach the young idea how to shoot,
    To pour the fresh instruction o'er the mind,
    To breathe the enlivening spirit, and to fix
    The generous purpose in the glowing breast.

[Illustration: By degrees the human blossom blows]

[Illustration: Delightful task! to rear the tender thought]

    Oh, speak the joy! ye whom the sudden tear
    Surprises often, while you look around,
    And nothing strikes your eye but sights of bliss,
    All various nature pressing on the heart;
    An elegant sufficiency, content,
    Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books,
    Ease and alternate labor, useful life,
    Progressive virtue, and approving Heaven.
    These are the matchless joys of virtuous love;
    And thus their moments fly. The Seasons thus,
    As ceaseless round a jarring world they roll,
    Still find them happy; and consenting Spring
    Sheds her own rosy garland on their heads:
    Till evening comes at last, serene and mild;
    When after the long vernal day of life,
    Enamor'd more, as more remembrance swells
    With many a proof of recollected love,
    Together down they sink in social sleep;
    Together freed, their gentle spirits fly
    To scenes where love and bliss immortal reign.




[From Dickens's Household Words.]

THE HEART OF JOHN MIDDLETON; OR, THE POWER OF LOVE.


I was born at Sawley, where the shadow of Pendle Hill falls at sunrise.
I suppose Sawley sprang up into a village in the time of the monks, who
had an abbey there. Many of the cottages are strange old places; others
again are built of the abbey stones, mixed up with the shale from the
neighboring quarries; and you may see many a quaint bit of carving
worked into the walls, or forming the lintels of the doors. There is a
row of houses, built still more recently, where one Mr. Peel came to
live for the sake of the water-power, and gave the place a fillip into
something like life, though a different kind of life, as I take it, from
the grand slow ways folks had when the monks were about.

Now, it was six o'clock--ring the bell, throng to the factory; sharp
home at twelve; and even at night, when work was done, we hardly knew
how to walk slowly, we had been so bustled all day long. I can't
recollect the time when I did not go to the factory. My father used to
drag me there when I was quite a little fellow, in order to wind reels
for him. I never remember my mother. I should have been a better man
than I have been, if I had only had a notion of the sound of her voice,
or the look on her face.

My father and I lodged in the house of a man, who also worked in the
factory. We were sadly thronged in Sawley, so many people came from
different parts of the country to earn a livelihood at the new work; and
it was some time before the row of cottages I have spoken of could be
built. While they were building, my father was turned out of his
lodgings for drinking and being disorderly, and he and I slept in the
brick-kiln--that is to say, when we did sleep o' nights; but, often and
often we went poaching; and many a hare and pheasant have I rolled up in
clay, and roasted in the embers of the kiln. Then, as followed to
reason, I was drowsy next day over my work; but father had no mercy on
me for sleeping, for all he knew the cause of it, but kicked me where I
lay, a heavy lump on the factory-floor, and cursed and swore at me till
I got up for very fear, and to my winding again. But when his back was
turned I paid him off with heavier curses than he had given me, and
longed to be a man that I might be revenged on him. The words I then
spoke I would not now dare to repeat; and worse than hating words, a
hating heart went with them. I forget the time when I did not know how
to hate. When I first came to read, and learnt about Ishmael, I thought
I must be of his doomed race, for my hand was against every man, and
every man's against me. But I was seventeen or more before I cared for
my book enough to learn to read.

After the row of works was finished, father took one, and set up for
himself, in letting lodgings. I can't say much for the furnishing; but
there was plenty of straw, and we kept up good fires; and there is a
set of people who value warmth above every thing. The worst lot about
the place lodged with us. We used to have a supper in the middle of the
night; there was game enough, or if there was not game, there was
poultry to be had for the stealing. By day we all made a show of working
in the factory; by night we feasted and drank.

Now, this web of my life was black enough and coarse enough; but
by-and-by, a little golden filmy thread began to be woven in; the dawn
of God's mercy was at hand.

One blowy October morning, as I sauntered lazily along to the mill, I
came to the little wooden bridge over a brook that falls into the
Bribble. On the plank there stood a child, balancing the pitcher on her
head, with which she had been to fetch water. She was so light on her
feet that, had it not been for the weight of the pitcher, I almost
believe the wind would have taken her up, and wafted her away, as it
carries off a blow-ball in seed-time; her blue cotton dress was blown
before her, as if she were spreading her wings for a flight; she turned
her face round, as if to ask me for something, but when she saw who it
was, she hesitated, for I had a bad name in the village, and I doubt not
she had been warned against me. But her heart was too innocent to be
distrustful; so she said to me, timidly:

"Please, John Middleton, will you carry me this heavy jug just over the
bridge?"

It was the very first time I had ever been spoken to gently. I was
ordered here and there by my father and his rough companions; I was
abused and cursed by them if I failed in doing what they wished; if I
succeeded, there came no expression of thanks or gratitude. I was
informed of facts necessary for me to know. But the gentle words of
request or entreaty were aforetime unknown to me, and now their tones
fell on my ear soft and sweet as a distant peal of bells. I wished that
I knew how to speak properly in reply; but though we were of the same
standing, as regarded worldly circumstances, there was some mighty
difference between us, which made me unable to speak in her language of
soft words and modest entreaty. There was nothing for me but to take up
the pitcher in a kind of gruff, shy silence, and carry it over the
bridge as she had asked me. When I gave it her back again, she thanked
me, and tripped away, leaving me, wordless, gazing after her, like an
awkward lout, as I was. I knew well enough who she was. She was
grandchild to Eleanor Hadfield, an aged woman, who was reputed as a
witch by my father and his set, for no other reason, that I can make
out, than her scorn, dignity, and fearlessness of rancor. It was true we
often met her in the gray dawn of the morning when we returned from
poaching, and my father used to curse her, under his breath, for a
witch, such as were burnt, long ago, on Pendle Hill top; but I had heard
that Eleanor was a skillful sick-nurse, and ever ready to give her
services to those who were ill; and I believe that she had been sitting
up through the night (the night that we had been spending under the wild
heavens, in deeds as wild), with those who were appointed to die. Nelly
was her orphan grand-daughter; her little hand-maiden; her treasure; her
one ewe-lamb. Many and many a day have I watched by the brook-side,
hoping that some happy gust of wind, coming with opportune bluster down
the hollow of the dale, might make me necessary once more to her. I
longed to hear her speak to me again. I said the words she had used to
myself, trying to catch her tone; but the chance never came again. I do
not know that she ever knew how I watched for her there. I found out
that she went to school, and nothing would serve me but that I must go
too. My father scoffed at me; I did not care. I knew naught of what
reading was, nor that it was likely that I should be laughed at; I, a
great hulking lad of seventeen or upward, for going to learn my A, B, C,
in the midst of a crowd of little ones. I stood just this way in my
mind: Nelly was at school; it was the best place for seeing her, and
hearing her voice again. Therefore I would go too. My father talked, and
swore, and threatened, but I stood to it. He said I should leave school
weary of it in a month. I swore a deeper oath than I like to remember,
that I would stay a year, and come out a reader and a writer. My father
hated the notion of folks learning to read, and said it took all the
spirit out of them; besides, he thought he had a right to every penny of
my wages; and though, when he was in good humor, he might have given me
many a jug of ale, he grudged my two-pence a week for schooling.
However, to school I went. It was a different place to what I had
thought it before I went inside. The girls sat on one side, and the boys
on the other; so I was not near Nelly. She, too, was in the first class;
I was put with the little toddling things that could hardly run alone.
The master sat in the middle, and kept pretty strict watch over us. But
I could see Nelly, and hear her read her chapter; and even when it was
one with a long list of hard names, such as the master was very fond of
giving her, to show how well she could hit them off without spelling, I
thought I had never heard a prettier music. Now and then she read other
things. I did not know what they were, true or false; but I listened
because she read; and, by-and-by, I began to wonder. I remember the
first word I ever spoke to her was to ask her (as we were coming out of
school) who was the father of whom she had been reading; for when she
said the words "Our Father," her voice dropped into a soft, holy kind of
low sound, which struck me more than any loud reading, it seemed so
loving and tender. When I asked her this, she looked at me with her
great blue wondering eyes, at first shocked; and then, as it were,
melted down into pity and sorrow, she said in the same way, below her
breath, in which she read the words "Our Father,"

"Don't you know? It is God."

"God?"

"Yes; the God that grandmother tells me about."

"Tell me what she says, will you?" So we sat down on the hedge-bank, she
a little above me, while I looked up into her face, and she told me all
the holy texts her grandmother had taught her, as explaining all that
could be explained of the Almighty. I listened in silence, for indeed I
was overwhelmed with astonishment. Her knowledge was principally
rote-knowledge; she was too young for much more; but we, in Lancashire,
speak a rough kind of Bible language, and the texts seemed very clear to
me. I rose up, dazed and overpowered. I was going away in silence, when
I bethought me of my manners, and turned back, and said, "Thank you,"
for the first time I ever remember saying it in my life. That was a
great day for me, in more ways than one.

I was always one who could keep very steady to an object when once I had
set it before me. My object was to know Nelly. I was conscious of
nothing more. But it made me regardless of all other things. The master
might scold, the little ones might laugh; I bore it all without giving
it a second thought. I kept to my year, and came out a reader and
writer; more, however, to stand well in Nelly's good opinion, than
because of my oath. About this time, my father committed some bad, cruel
deed, and had to fly the country. I was glad he went; for I had never
loved or cared for him, and wanted to shake myself clear of his set. But
it was no easy matter. Honest folk stood aloof; only bad men held out
their arms to me with a welcome. Even Nelly seemed to have a mixture of
fear now with her kind ways toward me. I was the son of John Middleton,
who, if he were caught, would be hung at Lancaster Castle. I thought she
looked at me sometimes with a sort of sorrowful horror. Others were not
forbearing enough to keep their expression of feeling confined to looks.
The son of the overlooker at the mill never ceased twitting me with my
father's crime; he now brought up his poaching against him, though I
knew very well how many a good supper he himself had made on game which
had been given him to make him and his father wink at late hours in the
morning. And how were such as my father to come honestly by game?

This lad, Dick Jackson, was the bane of my life. He was a year or two
older than I was, and had much power over the men who worked at the
mill, as he could report to his father what he chose. I could not always
hold my peace when he "threaped" me with my father's sins, but gave it
him back sometimes in a storm of passion. It did me no good; only threw
me farther from the company of better men, who looked aghast and shocked
at the oaths I poured out--blasphemous words learned in my childhood,
which I could not forget now that I would fain have purified myself of
them; while all the time Dick Jackson stood by, with a mocking smile of
intelligence; and when I had ended, breathless and weary with spent
passion, he would turn to those whose respect I longed to earn, and ask
if I were not a worthy son of my father, and likely to tread in his
steps. But this smiling indifference of his to my miserable vehemence
was not all, though it was the worst part of his conduct, for it made
the rankling hatred grow up in my heart, and overshadow it like the
great gourd-tree of the Prophet Jonah. But his was a merciful shade,
keeping out the burning sun; mine blighted what it fell upon.

What Dick Jackson did besides, was this, his father was a skillful
overlooker, and a good man; Mr. Peel valued him so much, that he was
kept on, although his health was failing; and when he was unable,
through illness, to come to the mill, he deputed his son to watch over
and report the men. It was too much power for one so young--I speak it
calmly now. Whatever Dick Jackson became, he had strong temptations when
he was young, which will be allowed for hereafter. But at the time of
which I am telling, my hate raged like a fire. I believed that he was
the one sole obstacle to my being received as fit to mix with good and
honest men. I was sick of crime and disorder, and would fain have come
over to a different kind of life, and have been industrious, sober,
honest, and right-spoken (I had no idea of higher virtue then), and at
every turn Dick Jackson met me with his sneers. I have walked the night
through, in the old abbey field, planning how I could out-wit him, and
win men's respect in spite of him. The first time I ever prayed, was
underneath the silent stars, kneeling by the old abbey walls, throwing
up my arms, and asking God for the power of revenge upon him.

I had heard that if I prayed earnestly, God would give me what I asked
for, and I looked upon it as a kind of chance for the fulfillment of my
wishes. If earnestness would have won the boon for me, never were wicked
words so earnestly spoken. And oh, later on, my prayer was heard, and my
wish granted! All this time I saw little of Nelly. Her grandmother was
failing, and she had much to do in-doors. Besides, I believed I had read
her looks aright, when I took them to speak of aversion; and I planned
to hide myself from her sight, as it were, until I could stand upright
before men, with fearless eyes, dreading no face of accusation. It was
possible to acquire a good character; I would do it--I did it: but no
one brought up among respectable, untempted people, can tell the
unspeakable hardness of the task. In the evenings I would not go forth
among the village throng; for the acquaintances that claimed me were my
father's old associates, who would have been glad enough to enlist a
strong young man like me in their projects; and the men who would have
shunned me and kept me aloof, were the steady and orderly. So I staid
in-doors, and practiced myself in reading. You will say, I should have
found it easier to earn a good character away from Sawley, at some
place where neither I nor my father was known. So I should; but it would
not have been the same thing to my mind. Besides, representing all good
men, all goodness to me, in Sawley Nelly lived. In her sight I would
work out my life, and fight my way upward to men's respect. Two years
passed on. Every day I strove fiercely; every day my struggles were made
fruitless by the son of the overlooker; and I seemed but where I
was--but where I must ever be esteemed by all who knew me--but as the
son of the criminal--wild, reckless, ripe for crime myself. Where was
the use of my reading and writing. These acquirements were disregarded
and scouted by those among whom I was thrust back to take my portion. I
could have read any chapter in the Bible now; and Nelly seemed as though
she would never know it. I was driven in upon my books; and few enough
of them I had. The peddlers brought them round in their packs, and I
bought what I could. I had the "Seven Champions," and the "Pilgrim's
Progress;" and both seemed to me equally wonderful, and equally founded
on fact. I got Byron's "Narrative," and Milton's "Paradise Lost;" but I
lacked the knowledge which would give a clew to all. Still they afforded
me pleasure, because they took me out of myself, and made me forget my
miserable position, and made me unconscious (for the time at least) of
my one great passion of hatred against Dick Jackson.

When Nelly was about seventeen her grandmother died. I stood aloof in
the church-yard, behind the great yew tree, and watched the funeral. It
was the first religious service that ever I heard; and, to my shame, as
I thought, it affected me to tears. The words seemed so peaceful and
holy that I longed to go to church, but I durst not, because I had never
been. The parish church was at Bolton, far enough away to serve as an
excuse for all who did not care to go. I heard Nelly's sobs filling up
every pause in the clergyman's voice; and every sob of hers went to my
heart. She passed me on her way out of the church-yard; she was so near
I might have touched her; but her head was hanging down, and I durst not
speak to her. Then the question arose, what was to become of her? She
must earn her living; was it to be as a farm-servant, or by working at
the mill? I knew enough of both kinds of life to make me tremble for
her. My wages were such as to enable me to marry, if I chose; and I
never thought of woman, for my wife, but Nelly. Still, I would not have
married her now, if I could; for, as yet, I had not risen up to the
character which I had determined it was fit that Nelly's husband should
have. When I was rich in good report, I would come forward, and take my
chance; but until then, I would hold my peace. I had faith in the power
of my long-continued, dogged, breasting of opinion. Sooner or later it
must, it should yield, and I be received among the ranks of good men.
But, meanwhile, what was to become of Nelly? I reckoned up my wages; I
went to inquire what the board of a girl would be, who should help her
in her household work, and live with her as her daughter, at the house
of one of the most decent women of the place; she looked at me
suspiciously. I kept down my temper, and told her I would never come
near the place; that I would keep away from that end of the village; and
that the girl for whom I made the inquiry should never know but what the
parish paid for her keep. It would not do; she suspected me; but I know
I had power over myself to have kept to my word; and besides, I would
not for worlds have had Nelly put under any obligation to me, which
should speck the purity of her love, or dim it by a mixture of
gratitude--the love that I craved to earn, not for my money, not for my
kindness, but for myself. I heard that Nelly had met with a place in
Bolland; and I could see no reason why I might not speak to her once
before she left our neighborhood. I meant it to be a quiet, friendly
telling her of my sympathy in her sorrow. I felt I could command myself.
So, on the Sunday before she was to leave Sawley, I waited near the
wood-path, by which I knew that she would return from afternoon church.
The birds made such a melodious warble, such a busy sound among the
leaves, that I did not hear approaching footsteps, till they were close
at hand; and then there were sounds of two persons' voices. The wood was
near that part of Sawley where Nelly was staying with friends; the path
through it led to their house, and theirs only, so I knew it must be
she, for I had watched her setting out to church alone.

But who was the other?

The blood went to my heart and head, as if I were shot, when I saw that
it was Dick Jackson. Was this the end of it all? In the steps of sin
which my father had trode, I would rush to my death and to my doom. Even
where I stood I longed for a weapon to slay him. How dared he come near
my Nelly? She too--I thought her faithless, and forgot how little I had
ever been to her in outward action; how few words, and those how
uncouth, I had ever spoken to her; and I hated her for a traitoress.
These feelings passed through me before I could see, my eyes and head
were so dizzy and blind. When I looked I saw Dick Jackson holding her
hand, and speaking quick, and low, and thick, as a man speaks in great
vehemence. She seemed white and dismayed; but all at once, at some word
of his (and what it was she never would tell me), she looked as though
she defied a fiend, and wrenched herself out of his grasp. He caught
hold of her again, and began once more the thick whisper that I loathed.
I could bear it no longer, nor did I see why I should. I stepped out
from behind the tree where I had been lying. When she saw me, she lost
her look of one strung up to desperation, and came and clung to me; and
I felt like a giant in strength and might. I held her with one arm, but
I did not take my eyes off him; I felt as if they blazed down into his
soul, and scorched him up. He never spoke, but tried to look as though
he defied me; at last his eyes fell before mine. I dared not speak; for
the old horrid oaths thronged up to my mouth; and I dreaded giving them
way, and terrifying my poor trembling Nelly.

At last he made to go past me; I drew her out of the pathway. By
instinct she wrapped her garments round her, as if to avoid his
accidental touch; and he was stung by this I suppose--I believe--to the
mad, miserable revenge he took. As my back was turned to him, in an
endeavor to speak some words to Nelly that might soothe her into
calmness, she, who was looking after him, like one fascinated with
terror, saw him take a sharp shaley stone, and aim it at me. Poor
darling! she clung round me as a shield, making her sweet body into a
defense for mine. It hit her, and she spoke no word, kept back her cry
of pain, but fell at my feet in a swoon. He--the coward! ran off as soon
as he saw what he had done. I was with Nelly alone in the green gloom of
the wood. The quivering and leaf-tinted light made her look as if she
were dead. I carried her, not knowing if I bore a corpse or not, to her
friend's house. I did not stay to explain, but ran madly for the doctor.

Well! I can not bear to recur to that time again. Five weeks I lived in
the agony of suspense; from which my only relief was in laying savage
plans for revenge. If I hated him before, what think ye I did now? It
seemed as if earth could not hold us twain, but that one of us must go
down to Gehenna. I could have killed him; and would have done it without
a scruple, but that seemed too poor and bold a revenge. At length--oh!
the weary waiting oh! the sickening of my heart--Nelly grew better--as
well as she was ever to grow. The bright color had left her cheek; the
mouth quivered with repressed pain, the eyes were dim with tears that
agony had forced into them, and I loved her a thousand times better and
more than when she was bright and blooming! What was best of all, I
began to perceive that she cared for me. I know her grandmother's
friends warned her against me, and told her I came of a bad stock; but
she had passed the point where remonstrance from bystanders can take
effect--she loved me as I was, a strange mixture of bad and good, all
unworthy of her. We spoke together now, as those do whose lives are
bound up in each other. I told her I would marry her as soon as she had
recovered her health. Her friends shook their heads; but they saw she
would be unfit for farm-service or heavy work, and they perhaps thought,
as many a one does, that a bad husband was better than none at all.
Anyhow we were married; and I learned to bless God for my happiness, so
far I beyond my deserts. I kept her like a lady. I was a skillful
workman, and earned good wages; and every want she had I tried to
gratify. Her wishes were few and simple enough, poor Nelly! If they had
been ever so fanciful, I should have had my reward in the new feeling of
the holiness of home. She could lead me as a little child, with the
charm of her gentle voice, and her ever-kind words. She would plead for
all when I was full of anger and passion; only Dick Jackson's name
passed never between our lips during all that time. In the evenings she
lay back in her bee-hive chair, and read to me. I think I see her now,
pale and weak, with her sweet young face, lighted by her holy, earnest
eyes, telling me of the Saviour's life and death, till they were filled
with tears. I longed to have been there, to have avenged him on the
wicked Jews. I liked Peter the best of all the disciples. But I got the
Bible myself, and read the mighty acts of God's vengeance in the Old
Testament, with a kind of triumphant faith, that, sooner or later, He
would take my cause in hand, and revenge me on mine enemy.

In a year or so, Nelly had a baby--a little girl, with eyes just like
hers, that looked with a grave openness right into yours. Nelly
recovered but slowly. It was just before winter, the cotton-crop had
failed, and master had to turn off many hands. I thought I was sure of
being kept on, for I had earned a steady character, and did my work
well; but once again it was permitted that Dick Jackson should do me
wrong. He induced his father to dismiss me among the first in my branch
of the business; and there was I, just before winter set in, with a wife
and new-born child, and a small enough store of money to keep body and
soul together, till I could get to work again. All my savings had gone
by Christmas Eve, and we sat in the house foodless for the morrow's
festival. Nelly looked pinched and worn; the baby cried for a larger
supply of milk than its poor starving mother could give it. My right
hand had not forgot its cunning; and I went out once more to my
poaching. I knew where the gang met; and I knew what a welcome back I
should have--a far warmer and more hearty welcome than good men had
given me when I tried to enter their ranks. On the road to the
meeting-place I fell in with an old man--one who had been a companion to
my father in his early days.

"What, lad!" said he, "art thou turning back to the old trade? It's the
better business now, that cotton has failed."

"Ay," said I, "cotton is starving us outright. A man may bear a deal
himself, but he'll do aught bad and sinful to save his wife and child."

"Nay, lad," said he, "poaching is not sinful; it goes against man's
laws, but not against God's."

I was too weak to argue or talk much. I had not tasted food for two
days. But I murmured, "At any rate, I trusted to have been clear of it
for the rest of my days. It led my father wrong at first. I have tried
and I have striven. Now I give all up. Right or wrong shall be the same
to me. Some are fore-doomed; and so am I." And as I spoke, some notion
of the futurity that would separate Nelly, the pure and holy, from me,
the reckless and desperate one, came over me with an irrepressible burst
of anguish. Just then the bells of Bolton-in-Bolland struck up a glad
peal, which came over the woods, in the solemn midnight air, like the
sons of the morning shouting for joy--they seemed so clear and jubilant.
It was Christmas Day; and I felt like an outcast from the gladness and
the salvation. Old Jonah spoke out:

"Yon's the Christmas bells. I say, Johnny, my lad, I've no notion of
taking such a spiritless chap as thou into the thick of it, with thy
rights and thy wrongs. We don't trouble ourselves with such fine
lawyer's stuff, and we bring down the 'varmint' all the better. Now,
I'll not have thee in our gang, for thou art not up to the fun, and
thou'd hang fire when the time came to be doing. But I've a shrewd guess
that plaguy wife and child of thine are at the bottom of thy
half-and-half joining. Now, I was thy father's friend afore he took to
them helter-skelter ways; and I've five shillings and a neck of mutton
at thy service. I'll not list a fasting man; but if thou'lt come to us
with a full stomach, and say, 'I like your life, my lads, and I'll make
one of you with pleasure, the first shiny night,' why, we'll give you a
welcome and a half; but to-night, make no more ado but turn back with me
for the mutton and the money."

I was not proud; nay, I was most thankful. I took the meat, and boiled
some broth for my poor Nelly. She was in a sleep, or a faint, I know not
which; but I roused her, and held her up in bed, and fed her with a
teaspoon, and the light came back to her eyes, and the faint moonlight
smile to her lips; and when she had ended, she said her innocent grace,
and fell asleep with her baby on her breast. I sat over the fire, and
listened to the bells, as they swept past my cottage on the gusts of the
wind. I longed and yearned for the second coming of Christ, of which
Nelly had told me. The world seemed cruel, and hard, and strong, too
strong for me; and I prayed to cling to the hem of his garment, and be
borne over the rough places when I fainted and bled, and found no man to
pity or help me, but poor old Jonah the publican and sinner. All this
time my own woes and my own self were uppermost in my mind, as they are
in the minds of most who have been hardly used. As I thought of my
wrongs and my sufferings, my heart burned against Dick Jackson; and as
the bells rose and fell, so my hopes waxed and waned, that in those
mysterious days of which they were both the remembrance and the
prophecy, he would be purged from off the earth. I took Nelly's Bible,
and turned, not to the gracious story of the Saviour's birth, but to the
records of the former days when the Jews took such wild revenge upon
all their opponents. I was a Jew--a leader among the people. Dick
Jackson was as Pharaoh, as the King Agag, who walked delicately,
thinking the bitterness of death was past--in short, he was the
conquered enemy over whom I gloated, with my Bible in my hand--that
Bible which contained our Saviour's words on the Cross. As yet, those
words seemed faint and meaningless to me, like a tract of country seen
in the starlight haze; while the histories of the Old Testament were
grand and distinct in the blood-red color of sunset. By-and-by that
night passed into day; and little piping voices came round,
carol-singing. They wakened Nelly. I went to her as soon as I heard her
stirring.

"Nelly," said I, "there's money and food in the house; I will be off to
Padiham seeking work, while thou hast something to go upon."

"Not to-day," said she; "stay to-day with me. If thou wouldst only go to
church with me this once"--for you see I had never been inside a church
but when we were married, and she was often praying me to go; and now
she looked at me, with a sigh just creeping forth from her lips, as she
expected a refusal. But I did not refuse. I had been kept away from
church before because I dared not go; and now I was desperate and dared
do any thing. If I did look like a heathen in the face of all men, why,
I was a heathen in my heart; for I was falling back into all my evil
ways. I had resolved, if my search of work at Padiham should fail, I
would follow my father's footsteps, and take with my own right hand and
by my strength of arm, what it was denied me to obtain honestly. I had
resolved to leave Sawley, where a curse seemed to hang over me; so what
did it matter if I went to church, all unbeknowing what strange
ceremonies were there performed? I walked thither as a sinful
man--sinful in my heart. Nelly hung on my arm, but even she could not
get me to speak. I went in; she found my places, and pointed to the
words, and looked up into my eyes with hers, so full of faith and joy.
But I saw nothing but Richard Jackson--I heard nothing but his loud
nasal voice, making response, and desecrating all the holy words. He was
in broadcloth of the best--I in my fustian jacket. He was prosperous and
glad--I was starving and desperate. Nelly grew pale as she saw the
expression in my eyes; and she prayed ever and ever more fervently as
the thought of me tempted by the Devil, even at that very moment, came
more fully before her.

By-and-by she forgot even me, and laid her soul bare before God, in a
long silent weeping prayer, before we left the church. Nearly all had
gone--and I stood by her, unwilling to disturb her, unable to join her.
At last she rose up, heavenly calm. She took my arm, and we went home
through the woods, where all the birds seemed tame and familiar. Nelly
said she thought all living creatures knew it was Christmas Day, and
rejoiced, and were loving together. I believed it was the frost that had
tamed them; and I felt the hatred that was in me, and knew that whatever
else was loving, I was full of malice and uncharitableness, nor did I
wish to be otherwise. That afternoon I bade Nelly and our child
farewell, and tramped to Padiham. I got work--how I hardly know; for
stronger and stronger came the force of the temptation to lead a wild,
free life of sin; legions seemed whispering evil thoughts to me, and
only my gentle, pleading Nelly to pull me back from the great gulf.
However, as I said before, I got work, and set off homeward to move my
wife and child to that neighborhood. I hated Sawley, and yet I was
fiercely indignant to leave it; with my purposes unaccomplished. I was
still an outcast from the more respectable, who stood afar off from such
as I; and mine enemy lived and flourished in their regard. Padiham,
however, was not so far away, for me to despair--to relinquish my fixed
determination. It was on the eastern side of the great Pendle Hill; ten
miles away, maybe. Hate will overleap a greater obstacle.

I took a cottage on the Fell, high up on the side of the hill. We saw a
long bleak moorland slope before us, and then the gray stone houses of
Padiham, over which a black cloud hung; different from the blue wood or
turf smoke about Sawley. The wild winds came down, and whistled round
our house many a day when all was still below. But I was happy then. I
rose in men's esteem. I had work in plenty. Our child lived and throve.
But I forgot not our country proverb: "Keep a stone in thy pocket for
seven years: turn it, and keep it seven years more; but have it ever
ready to cast at thine enemy when the time comes."

One day a fellow workman asked me to go to a hill-side preaching. Now I
never cared to go to church; but there was something newer and freer in
the notion of praying to God right under His great dome; and the open
air had had a charm to me ever since my wild boyhood. Besides, they said
these ranters had strange ways with them, and I thought it would be fun
to see their way of setting about it; and this ranter of all others had
made himself a name in our parts. Accordingly we went; it was a fine
summer's evening, after work was done. When we got to the place we saw
such a crowd as I never saw before, men, women, and children; all ages
were gathered together, and sat on the hill-side. They were care-worn,
diseased, sorrowful, criminal; all that was told on their faces, which
were hard, and strongly marked. In the midst, standing in a cart, was
the ranter. When I first saw him, I said to my companion, "Lord! What a
little man to make all this pother! I could trip him up with one of my
fingers;" and then I sat down, and looked about me a bit. All eyes were
fixed on the preacher; and I turned mine upon him too. He began to
speak; it was in no fine-drawn language, but in words such as we heard
every day of our lives, and about things we did every day of our lives.
He did not call our short-comings, pride or worldliness or
pleasure-seeking, which would have given us no clear notion of what he
meant, but he just told us outright what we did, and then he gave it a
name, and said that it was accursed--and that we were lost if we went on
so doing.

By this time the tears and sweat were running down his face; he was
wrestling for our souls. We wondered how he knew our innermost lives as
he did, for each one of us saw his sin set before him in plain-spoken
words. Then he cried out to us to repent; and spoke first to us, and
then to God, in a way that would have shocked many--but it did not shock
me. I liked strong things; and I liked the bare full truth: and I felt
brought nearer to God in that hour--the summer darkness creeping over
us, and one after one the stars coming out above us, like the eyes of
the angels watching us--than I had ever done in my life before. When he
had brought us to our tears and sighs, he stopped his loud voice of
upbraiding, and there was a hush, only broken by sobs and quivering
moans, in which I heard through the gloom the voices of strong men in
anguish and supplication, as well as the shriller tones of women.
Suddenly he was heard again; by this time we could not see him; but his
voice was now tender as the voice of an angel, and he told us of Christ,
and implored us to come to Him. I never heard such passionate entreaty.
He spoke as if he saw Satan hovering near us in the dark dense night,
and as if our only safety lay in a very present coming to the Cross; I
believe he did see Satan; we know he haunts the desolate old hills,
awaiting his time, and now or never it was, with many a soul. At length
there was a sudden silence; and by the cries of those nearest to the
preacher, we heard that he had fainted. We had all crowded round him, as
if he were our safety and our guide; and he was overcome by the heat and
the fatigue, for we were the fifth set of people whom he had addressed
that day. I left the crowd who were leading him down, and took a lonely
path myself.

Here was the earnestness I needed. To this weak and weary, fainting man,
religion was a life and a passion. I look back now, and wonder at my
blindness as to what was the root of all my Nelly's patience and
long-suffering; for I thought, now I had found out what religion was,
and that hitherto, it had been all an unknown thing to me.

Henceforward, my life was changed. I was zealous and fanatical. Beyond
the set to whom I had affiliated myself I had no sympathy. I would have
persecuted all who differed from me, if I had only had the power. I
became an ascetic in all bodily enjoyments. And, strange and
inexplicable mystery, I had some thoughts that by every act of
self-denial I was attaining to my unholy end, and that, when I had
fasted and prayed long enough, God would place my vengeance in my
hands. I have knelt by Nelly's bedside, and vowed to live a self-denying
life, as regarded all outward things, if so that God would grant my
prayer. I left it in His hands. I felt sure He would trace out the token
and the word; and Nelly would listen to my passionate words, and lie
awake sorrowful and heart-sore through the night; and I would get up and
make her tea, and re-arrange her pillows, with a strange and willful
blindness that my bitter words and blasphemous prayers had cost her
miserable, sleepless nights. My Nelly was suffering yet from that blow.
How or where the stone had hurt her I never understood; but in
consequence of that one moment's action, her limbs became numb and dead,
and, by slow degrees, she took to her bed, from whence she was never
carried alive. There she lay, propped up by pillows, her meek face ever
bright, and smiling forth a greeting; her white pale hands ever busy
with some kind of work; and our little Grace was as the power of motion
to her. Fierce as I was away from her, I never could speak to her but in
my gentlest tones. She seemed to me as if she had never wrestled for
salvation as I had; and when away from her, I resolved, many a time and
oft, that I would rouse her up to her state of danger when I returned
home that evening--even if strong reproach were required I would rouse
her up to her soul's need. But I came in and heard her voice singing
softly some holy word of patience, some psalm which, maybe, had
comforted the martyrs, and when I saw her face, like the face of an
angel, full of patience and happy faith, I put off my awakening speeches
till another time.

One night, long ago, when I was yet young and strong, although my years
were past forty, I sat alone in my house-place. Nelly was always in bed,
as I have told you, and Grace lay in a cot by her side. I believed them
to be both asleep; though how they could sleep I could not conceive, so
wild and terrible was the night. The wind came sweeping down from the
hill-top in great beats, like the pulses of Heaven; and, during the
pauses, while I listened for the coming roar, I felt the earth shiver
beneath me. The rain beat against windows and doors, and sobbed for
entrance. I thought the Prince of the Air was abroad; and I heard, or
fancied I heard, shrieks come on the blast, like the cries of sinful
souls given over to his power.

The sounds came nearer and nearer. I got up and saw to the fastenings of
the door, for though I cared not for mortal man, I did care for what I
believed was surrounding the house, in evil might and power. But the
door shook as though it, too, were in deadly terror, and I thought the
fastenings would give way. I stood facing the entrance, lashing my heart
up to defy the spiritual enemy that I looked to see, every instant, in
bodily presence; and the door did burst open; and before me stood--what
was it? man or demon? a gray-haired man, with poor worn clothes all
wringing wet, and he himself battered and piteous to look upon, from the
storm he had passed through.

"Let me in!" he said. "Give me shelter. I am poor, or I would reward
you. And I am friendless too," he said, looking up in my face, like one
seeking what he can not find. In that look, strangely changed, I knew
that God had heard me; for it was the old cowardly look of my life's
enemy. Had he been a stranger I might not have welcomed him, but as he
was mine enemy, I gave him welcome in a lordly dish. I sat opposite to
him. "Whence do you come?" said I. "It is a strange night to be out on
the fells."

He looked up at me sharp: but in general he held his head down like a
beast or hound.

"You won't betray me. I'll not trouble you long. As soon as the storm
abates, I'll go."

"Friend!" said I, "what have I to betray?" and I trembled lest he should
keep himself out of my power and not tell me. "You come for shelter, and
I give you of my best. Why do you suspect me?"

"Because," said he, in his abject bitterness, "all the world is against
me. I never met with goodness or kindness; and now I am hunted like a
wild beast. I'll tell you--I am a convict returned before my time. I was
a Sawley man," (as if I, of all men did not know it!) "and I went back
like a fool to the old place. They've hunted me out where I would fain
have lived rightly and quietly, and they'll send me back to that hell
upon earth, if they catch me. I did not know it would be such a night.
Only let me rest and get warm once more, and I'll go away. Good kind
man! have pity upon me." I smiled all his doubts away; I promised him a
bed on the floor, and I thought of Jael and Sisera. My heart leaped up
like a war-horse at the sound of the trumpet, and said, "Ha, ha, the
Lord hath heard my prayer and supplication; I shall have vengeance at
last!"

He did not dream who I was. He was changed; so that I, who had learned
his features with all the diligence of hatred, did not at first
recognize him; and he thought not of me, only of his own woe and
affright. He looked into the fire with the dreamy gaze of one whose
strength of character, if he had any, is beaten out of him; and can not
return at any emergency whatsoever. He sighed and pitied himself, yet
could not decide on what to do. I went softly about my business, which
was to make him up a bed on the floor; and, when he was lulled to sleep
and security, to make the best of my way to Padiham, and summon the
constable, into whose hands I would give him up to be taken back to his
"hell upon earth." I went into Nelly's room. She was awake and anxious.
I saw she had been listening to the voices.

"Who is there?" said she. "John, tell me--it sounded like a voice I
knew. For God's sake, speak."

I smiled a quiet smile. "It is a poor man who has lost his way. Go to
sleep my dear--I shall make him up on the floor. I may not come for some
time. Go to sleep;" and I kissed her. I thought she was soothed, but not
fully satisfied. However, I hastened away before there was any further
time for questioning. I made up the bed; and Richard Jackson, tired out,
lay down and fell asleep. My contempt for him almost equaled my hate. If
I were avoiding return to a place which I thought to be a hell upon
earth, think you I would have taken a quiet sleep under any man's roof,
till somehow or another I was secure? Now comes this man, and with
incontinence of tongue, blabs out the very thing he most should conceal,
and then lies down to a good, quiet, snoring sleep. I looked again. His
face was old, and worn, and miserable. So should mine enemy look. And
yet it was sad to gaze upon him, poor hunted creature!

I would gaze no more, lest I grew weak and pitiful. Thus I took my hat
and softly opened the door. The wind blew in, but did not disturb him,
he was so utterly weary. I was out in the open air of night. The storm
was ceasing, and instead of the black sky of doom, that I had seen when
I last looked forth, the moon was come out, wan and pale, as if wearied
with the fight in the heavens; and her white light fell ghostly and calm
on many a well-known object. Now and then a dark torn cloud was blown
across her home in the sky, but they grew fewer and fewer, and at last
she shone out steady and clear, I could see Padiham down before me. I
heard the noise of the water-courses down the hill-side. My mind was
full of one thought, and strained upon that one thought, and yet my
senses were most acute and observant. When I came to the brook, it was
swollen to a rapid, tossing river; and the little bridge, with its
hand-rail was utterly swept away. It was like the bridge at Sawley,
where I had first seen Nelly; and I remembered that day even then in the
midst of my vexation at having to go round. I turned away from the
brook, and there stood a little figure facing me. No spirit from the
dead could have affrighted me as it did; for I saw it was Grace, whom I
had left in bed by her mother's side.

She came to me, and took my hand. Her bare feet glittered white in the
moonshine; and sprinkled the light upward, as they plashed through the
pool.

"Father," said she, "Mother bade me say this." Then pausing to gather
breath and memory, she repeated these words, like a lesson of which she
feared to forget a syllable.

"Mother says, 'There is a God in Heaven; and in His house are many
mansions. If you hope to meet her there, you will come back and speak to
her; if you are to be separate forever and ever, you will go on; and may
God have mercy on her and on you!' Father, I have said it right--every
word."

I was silent. At last I said,

"What made mother say this? How came she to send you out?"

"I was asleep, Father, and I heard her cry. I wakened up, and I think
you had but just left the house, and that she was calling for you. Then
she prayed, with the tears rolling down her cheeks, and kept
saying--'Oh, that I could walk!--Oh, that for one hour I could run and
walk!' So I said, 'Mother, I can run and walk. Where must I go?' And she
clutched at my arm; and bade God bless me; and told me not to fear, for
that he would compass me about; and taught me my message; and now,
Father, dear Father, you will meet mother in Heaven, won't you--and not
be separate forever and ever?" She clung to my knees and pleaded once
more in her mother's words. I took her up in my arms and turned
homeward.

"Is yon man there, on the kitchen floor?" asked I.

"Yes!" she answered. At any rate, my vengeance was not out of my power
yet.

When we got home I passed him, dead asleep!

In our room, to which my child guided me, was Nelly. She sat up in bed,
a most unusual attitude for her, and one of which I thought she had been
incapable of attaining to without help. She had her hands clasped, and
her face wrapt as if in prayer; and when she saw me, she lay back with a
sweet, ineffable smile. She could not speak at first; but when I came
near, she took my hand and kissed it, and then she called Grace to her,
and made her take off her cloak and her wet things, and, dressed in her
short scanty night-gown, she slipped into her mother's warm side, and
all this time my Nelly never told me why she summoned me; it seemed
enough that she should hold my hand, and feel that I was there. I
believed she had read my heart; and yet I durst not speak to ask her. At
last she looked up. "My husband," said she, "God has saved you and me
from a great sorrow this night." I would not understand, and I felt her
look die away into disappointment.

"That poor wanderer in the house-place is Richard Jackson, is it not?"

I made no answer. Her face grew white and wan.

"Oh," said she, "this is hard to bear. Speak what is in your mind, I beg
of you. I will not thwart you harshly; dearest John, only speak to me."

"Why need I speak? You seem to know all."

"I do know that his is a voice I can never forget; and I do know the
awful prayers you have prayed; and I know how I have lain awake, to pray
that your words might never be heard; and I am a powerless cripple. I
put my cause in God's hands. You shall not do the man any harm. What you
have it in your thoughts to do I can not tell. But I know that you can
not do it. My eyes are dim with a strange mist, but some voice tells me
that you will forgive even Richard Jackson. Dear husband--dearest John,
it is so dark I can not see you; but speak once to me."

I moved the candle--but when I saw her face, I saw what was drawing the
mist over those loving eyes--how strange and woeful that she could die!
Her little girl lying by her side looked in my face, and then at her;
and the wild knowledge of death shot through her young heart and she
screamed aloud.

Nelly opened her eyes once more. They fell upon the gaunt, sorrow-worn
man who was the cause of all. He roused him from his sleep, at that
child's piercing cry, and stood at the doorway looking in. He knew Nelly
and understood where the storm had driven him to shelter. He came toward
her:

"Oh, woman--dying woman--you have haunted me in the loneliness of the
Bush far away--you have been in my dreams forever--the hunting of men
has not been so terrible as the hunting of your spirit--that stone--that
stone!" he fell down by her bedside in an agony--above which her
saint-like face looked on us all, for the last time, glorious with the
coming light of heaven. She spoke once again:

"It was a moment of passion--I never bore you malice for it. I forgive
you--and so does John, I trust."

Could I keep my purpose there? It faded into nothing. But above my
choking tears, I strove to speak clear and distinct, for her dying ear
to hear, and her sinking heart to be gladdened.

"I forgive you, Richard; I will befriend you in your trouble."

She could not see; but instead of the dim shadow of death stealing over
her face, a quiet light came over it, which we knew was the look of a
soul at rest.

That night I listened to his tale for her sake; and I learnt that it is
better to be sinned against than to sin. In the storm of the night mine
enemy came to me; in the calm of the gray morning, I let him forth, and
bade him "God speed." And a woe had come upon me, but the burning burden
of a sinful, angry heart was taken off. I am old now, and my daughter is
married. I try to go about preaching and teaching in my rough, rude way;
and what I teach is how Christ lived and died, and what was Nelly's
faith of love.




[From Fraser's Magazine.]

PHANTOMS AND REALITIES.--AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.


PART THE FIRST--MORNING.


I.

The sapling, green and tender, yields readily to wind and sun and the
hand of the trainer; the grown tree resists the storm, and 'tis well
with it if it be not torn up by the roots; the aged trunk, dried to the
core, spreads out its branches and perishes. This is human life.

At first, all wonder and curiosity, we are moulded by surrounding
circumstances, which often affect our after lives, as colors laid at the
root of bulbous plants are said to transmit their tints to the blossom;
next comes the age of knowledge, when reason struggles with passion,
and is not always the victor; lastly, the decay, when passion is
extinct, and we live on a little longer on our memories, and then drop
into dust.

When I formed the resolution to set down the events that have agitated
my life, and marked it out with a strange difference from the lives of
other men, I did not see the difficulties that beset my confession on
the very threshold. They grew upon me by degrees. The more I reflected
on it, the more reluctance I felt at the thought of writing about things
which no man would believe. Looking back upon them from the verge of the
grave, which can not now be long untenanted, they seem, even to me, more
like fantastic dreams or wild allegories than real occurrences. How then
can I expect others to accept as true a narration which contradicts
their experience and convictions, and which I can not elucidate myself?
I can explain nothing; I can only relate what has happened to me,
careful not to deviate a hair's breadth into exaggeration. It would be
little to the purpose to say that truth is stranger than fiction, an
axiom which every body admits as a loose generality, but which nobody
will consent to apply in the instances by which it is illustrated. I can
attest, out of my own knowledge, that truth often presents inexplicable
phenomena, and is sometimes irreconcilable with the laws of nature. But
who will credit me, I said, when I narrate such things?

Again and again I approached the subject, and as often recoiled from the
execution of my design. It was only by repeated efforts that I summoned
up sufficient moral courage to overcome the fear and shame that
overwhelmed me, from the apprehension that I should be regarded as one
who had been himself deceived, or who was practicing a deception on
others. A patient examination of the motives upon which my resolution
was founded, determined me, however, to brave all such risks, in the
assurance that they who, exercising their literal judgment, as they have
a right to do, might see reason for doubting my veracity, could not
fail, upon the whole, to draw a practical moral from my revelations. For
the rest, I must appease my own scruples by declaring that I have herein
written nothing that is not strictly true, and related exactly as it
occurred.


II.

My earliest recollections of my father do not extend to his form or
lineaments. I remember nothing of him except his voice, the tone of
which lingers as distinctly in my ear to this hour as if I had heard it
yesterday. It was low and tremulous, and seemed to have a thrill in it
of suffering, or anger, I know not which. The only parent I knew was my
mother, with whom I lived in a solitude that I can not contemplate at
this distance of time without shuddering.

Our house was situated on a lonely moor in the north of England, close
upon the bleak border--a dismal neighborhood, savage, cold, and
desolate. It was built so far back as the reign of Richard II., and
with its flanking walls, crumbling on all sides into ruin, and its paved
court-yards, covered a considerable area. Most of the apartments were
large and gloomy, and hung with arras of so great an age, that the
colors had grown dim, and the thread in many places appeared to be
dropping into powder. Long corridors and smaller rooms ran round the
quadrangle; and as the uses for which this huge pile was designed by its
founders had long since passed away with the bands of retainers and
extravagant pomp that distinguished the days of feudal hospitality and
royal progresses, only a small part of it was kept up in an inhabitable
condition by my mother. Unfortunately for my after life, the part so
preserved lay in the very centre of the mansion, approachable only by
dark passages, utterly obscure at night, and barely lighted in the
day-time by narrow latticed windows, such as we see indented in the
thick walls of old cloisters. To reach the inhabited rooms it was
necessary to make many windings, to twine up a short spiral stair that
led from the outer court, and to traverse two sides of the quadrangle.

This was always a fearful thing to me, which use by no means deprived of
its terrors. There were many legends whispered from one to another in
the winter nights of revolting crimes which had taken place there in
former times, and which rose re-embodied before me as I cowered past the
spots where they were said to have been enacted. The aspect of the
dreary building, within and without, by day and night, made it all real.
If the moon shone brightly into the passages, strange shadows were
discernible flitting across the floor or creeping up the walls; and as I
involuntarily glanced through shattered doors and inner casements,
remnants of armor hanging about, and fragments of tapestry fluttering
against the windows, and other relics of a 'sheeted ancestry,' would
seem to glide out of the darkness, and fill the open spaces with forms
swaying and undulating before my eyes. I remember how my limbs used to
totter under me as I tried not to see these sights, and crept on,
stifling the fear that was distilling drops of agony over my body by the
greater fear of uttering a cry, lest the slightest noise might bring
worse horrors round me. I am speaking of my childhood--and children will
understand me.

Let no man scoff at these terrors. The wisest and bravest have quailed
under them. Skepticism may laugh, but it would be more profitably
employed in endeavoring to solve the problems which concern the
connection between the material and the spiritual universe. Why is it
that adults, as well as children, are impressed with a certain
uneasiness in the dark? Not a fear of ghosts, or robbers, or accidents,
or of any thing upon which the mind can reason, or of which the senses
are cognizant; but a vague consciousness of invisible influences. In the
daylight we have no such sensations; they belong exclusively to silence
and darkness.

As a child, I grew up in the awe of these influences, fostered by
loneliness and the moody companionship of a wayward woman, who held
little intercourse with the outer world, and shut herself up in dreams
and superstitions. An incident which occurred at this period helped to
give a supernatural turn to many circumstances that were, no doubt,
capable of a simple solution.

Toward the extremity of a court to the south of the old pile, there was
a chasm in the ground, partly filled up with loose stones and brambles.
The whole place was over-run with grass and weeds, and the walls and
outbuildings that surrounded it were in ruins. I had heard that this
spot, which gaped so grimly through the tall, lank bushes and
accumulated rubbish, was formerly the entrance to a series of
subterranean galleries, that had been excavated below the foundations
for the purpose of concealing troops, or stowing away prisoners, in
times of trouble; and that they had been used in that way during the
Civil War, when the mansion stood out a long siege against some of
Fairfax's generals. An irresistible curiosity to explore these galleries
seized upon me. I was fascinated by the very fear with which the stories
related about them had inspired me. I never could pass that yawning
chasm, which, now nearly choked up, was hardly wide enough to admit of
the descent of a grown person, without longing to plunge into its
depths. I often lingered there in the twilight, when the shadows were
falling about, enhancing the terror and the temptation; and one evening
in the autumn I took courage, and, clearing away the brambles with
trembling hands, I forced myself down, bringing with me a torrent of
stones and earth.

Finding my feet at the bottom, and rubbing my eyes, I tried to grope my
way onward. At first there was a dim light at a great distance above me,
in a slanting direction, but in an instant afterward I was in total
darkness. My first impulse was to laugh at the exploit I had achieved;
but as I pattered along, plashing sometimes in pools of water, and
sometimes knocking my head against the rough stones that jutted out on
each side, my mirth deserted me. When I became accustomed to the
darkness, I fancied I could discern shapeless figures rising up and
vanishing in the gloom--the walls seemed to move out of their places,
and heave to and fro like wrecks in a storm--then they would open, and
collapse, and disappear: all was in motion, black and tumultuous, and a
surging sound, as of winds and waters lashing and wailing in a confined
space, moaned dismally in my ears. Even when I closed my eyes, and
pressed my fingers upon them to shut out these sights, they were still
before me. This was, of course, the work of mere fright; but what
followed can not be so easily accounted for.

While I stood hesitating how I should proceed, for I had lost my track,
and knew not whether I ought to go backward or forward, I heard a
distinct rushing sound, quite close to me. It swept past, and all was
silent again. It was like a rush of silk or satin, or some fabric that,
suddenly crushed, gives out a crackling noise. All the blood in my body
gathered into my head; my eyes emitted fire, as if they had been struck
by a cord. A stifling sensation bubbled up to my throat, and I
involuntarily uttered a cry, which was echoed from a hundred recesses,
and continued at intervals, reverberating like a succession of shots in
the distance. I panted with horror, as I grasped the wall and listened.
My fear was too great to suffer me to cry out for help. The apprehension
of again invoking these dreadful echoes appalled me; I hardly breathed,
and stood still to listen, I know not how long. A death-like silence
pervaded the darkness. The soughing of the winds had ceased, or I
fancied so, the stillness was so heavy. It may be that my faculties were
intent upon that palpable sound I had heard, and could distinguish
nothing else.

At last I began to move, treading softly, and stopping at intervals to
watch and listen. I had scarcely proceeded in this way a dozen paces,
when I felt as plainly as if I saw the object in the broad glare of the
sun, a quick motion at my side in a nook or crevice of the wall. It was
like the effort of a person to shrink down and escape from me. In an
excess of fright and desperation I clutched at it with my hands, and
caught it--I say caught it, for a substance resembling a thick silk
filled the palms of both my hands. I held it with the grasp of one who
was struggling for life, and tried to speak, but my tongue was dry; and
I could not articulate a word: and while I held it, I was conscious that
the object was moving away--it moved away, and still I thought I held
it. I had not the power to loosen my fingers, which I had a strong
impulse to do--and then the silk glided out of them, although they were
coiled in it--and the next moment a grasp of muscles, cold and sharp,
was on my neck, and pressed into my flesh. I was distraught with terror,
and my senses forsook me.

When I recovered, I found myself lying on a couch in the great room, my
mother sitting at a distance, and an ancient female servant watching
over me.

This woman was the oldest domestic in the house. She had lived all her
life in the family, and had seen two generations into the grave. It was
from her lips I had learned most of the traditions that filled my head
with such alarm and curiosity; it was from her I had acquired a
knowledge of those subterranean passages in which I had encountered this
singular adventure; and as soon as my mother left the room I related the
whole story to her. She heard it to the end with a dark expression of
anger on her face, which I interpreted into a reproof on my willfulness
and folly in venturing into such places; and then she questioned me
severely as to what I heard and saw, and what I thought it could have
been. Finding that I could give her no satisfactory answers to these
questions, she enjoined me to hold my tongue about it, and above all
things not to speak of it to my mother. She rated me soundly for saying
that I firmly believed I had caught something like a woman's dress in my
hands; and she made me feel her old stuff gown, that I might assure
myself it was no such texture as that. "How could I be so silly as to
suppose that a woman, or even a man, would hide in vaults and passages
that had not been opened for hundreds of years? What could I imagine
they were doing there? It was more likely that rats, and toads, and bats
were to be found there than human beings." And a great deal more to the
like effect, as if she wanted to impress upon me that it was altogether
the fancy of a distempered brain, and no reality.

Yet, in spite of every thing she said, my conviction remained unaltered.
I could not be deceived in a fact so clearly attested by my own
sensations. But the mystery was never cleared up; and I brooded over it
in secret so perversely, that it exercised a blighting influence for a
long time upon my imagination.

Many years afterward a suspicion crossed my mind, that this woman knew
more about the matter than she cared to acknowledge. It was she who
carried me into the house, having discovered me, as she stated, lying
insensible in the court-yard; but I had no recollection of having found
my way out into the air--a circumstance which at the time did not
present itself to me in the light in which I am disposed to regard it
now. Nor should I, perhaps, have been led to suspect her of duplicity,
had she not acted with ingratitude at a time when sorrow and misfortune
had fallen upon the house that had nurtured her from infancy.


III.

My mother had no companion. Even the servants lived apart, and performed
their allotted offices at hours when she was not present; so that our
table was laid and our wants supplied, for the most part by unseen
hands. Such was my mother's way of life. Solitude and early griefs had
fallen heavily upon her spirits, and fretted her temper. She rarely
exchanged words with the servants, and never except upon unavoidable
occasions. A spoken language was almost interdicted among us, and in its
place the language of books was substituted. We dwelt in a world of our
own, in which the unreal was invested with a living interest.
Conversation wearied her; she had no sympathy with the actual life
around her, and had long closed her heart against it. But the charm of
books was ever fresh and inexhaustible. She possessed in a higher degree
than any person I ever knew the power of realizing their contents.
Portraits stepped out of them, and became as familiar to her as if they
had moved about her bodily in the flesh. This daily intercourse with the
creations of the brain fed her morbid desire for seclusion, and was
cultivated with an earnestness that proved fatal at last.

Her taste lay entirely in one direction; the marvelous and extravagant
alone interested her. She prohibited all works that treated of real
life, and sought for the excitement she loved in the region of wonder
and romance. Her library (a room of which I will speak more particularly
presently) was filled with histories of sorcery and enchantment--of
miraculous escapes and perils--providential interpositions--dreams,
omens, and spectral appearances--astrology and witchcraft--church-yard
legends, and the superstitions which ascribe a mysterious power to
spells, charms, and incantations--traditions of giants and
monsters--feats of the genii and evil spirits, and narratives that
embraced the whole round of that curious lore which relates to the
alchemists and diviners.

These books were the delight and occupation of her life; and when her
eyes latterly began to grow dim with age, it was my task to read them
aloud to her. At first, I revolted from this labor; it hung drearily
upon me, and sickened me. Youth is naturally mutinous under confinement,
and yearns for activity and freedom. But it was surprising how soon I
fell into her tastes, and found myself kindling, as she used to do, over
the horrors these terrible books unfolded. And now they took possession
of me, I began to believe in them as she did; and with belief, or the
awe which is so closely allied to it, my eagerness to penetrate further
and further grew into an irresistible passion. Many a time in the bleak
autumn nights, when the sharp winds snapped the leaves from the trees,
and drifted their crisp spoils against the windows, have I sat gasping
over some hideous tale, to which, by an involuntary association of
ideas, the desolation of the season imparted additional terrors. I was
wrought upon by that sort of fascination which resides in the eyes of
the snake, when it fixes its gaze upon the face of a child.

Children who have been brought up in a healthy collision with the world
know nothing of the state of fear and mental slavery I am describing. A
little judicious counsel would have dispelled these delusions; a little
timely explanation would have shown me their absurdity. But where was I
to seek it? In my isolation I had not a single adviser. I took all I
read for granted. The book could not dissipate the chaos of doubts and
importunities of struggling reason it generated; it was dumb, and could
not answer my questions. If I appealed to my mother, she was chafed at
the interruption and the heresy, and commanded me to read on. At last I
doubted no longer. Wonder after wonder swept away my feeble judgment. I
believed in a spiritual kingdom--in the return of the dead to the
earth--in the power of prophecy and the agency of demons--in second
sight and the elixir vitæ--in amulets and miraculous invocations; the
crystal mirror of Cornelius Agrippa, the witches of the Brocken, the
Flying Dutchman, the Wandering Jew, were all realities to me. The
ignorant alone believe in such things; but in this ignorance consisted
all the knowledge that was thrown open to me.

The library was at some distance from the inhabited part of the house.
It was an oblong room, with deep recesses, in which stood the old oak
book-cases. If we had had the power of selecting a theatre for the
performance of the legends which were read aloud here every night, we
could not have found one better adapted to the purpose. The apartment
was large and gloomy; and the tapestried walls, the ponderous draperies,
the polished floor, the painted ceiling, the high-backed chairs, and the
vast fire-place, with its carved mantle-shelf, supplied the very style
of scene and furniture best adapted to give a striking effect to tales
of crime and enchantment. Except close to the fire, and round the table
on which we placed our lights, the library, from its height and extent,
was buried in deep shadow; so that there was nothing wanted to help the
imagination to a fitting locality for all kinds of mysteries.

I shall never forget my mother's sensations on one occasion when I read
to her in this room an account of some man who kept watch through a
whole night in a haunted chamber, and was never heard of afterward. She
fancied that the tapestry moved, and called upon me to observe it. I did
so, and fancied I saw it too. Twice she grasped my arm, and bade me
cease; and looking shudderingly round, she twice desired me to listen,
and tell her if I did not hear a foot-fall passing the extremity of the
apartment in the dark with solemn regularity. I heard something--it was
like the slow tread of a sentinel.

It was in that room, which cast its gloom over every page, blotting out
its lines of sunshine wherever any happened to fall, that I read the
_Decameron_. The groups in the garden--radiant, joyous, and in rapt
attitudes of expectation and attention--were distinctly present to me,
but darkened by immediate associations. Sorrow and anguish seemed to sit
in their faces; there was no flush of emotion, no lightening in the
eyes, no intensity in the cleft lips, no streaming hair, or burning
cheeks, or startled gestures. All was cold, as if it were cut in marble.
That pallid circle of listeners, disposed in such picturesque forms,
seemed to me to be lying in a trance, so completely did the miserable
influence of that room kill the gayety of all objects, and leave nothing
but the skeleton behind.

We were never at a loss for excitement of this kind, which appeared,
indeed, the only thing for which we lived. Our pursuits were interrupted
for a time by the serious illness of my mother; but her irritable
temperament rendered her impatient of sickness, and before the signs of
the malady had passed out from her stricken frame she insisted upon
returning to her nightly vigils.

Night after night she continued at her dangerous indulgence, while her
eyes were visibly contracting a dull film, her cheeks wasting and
falling in, and her pulse growing fainter and fainter. It was not a
sight for a son to look upon, and tend with idle fancies and the
levities of fable. I felt this and remonstrated, and the agonizing
reality before me awakened me for a moment to the vanities of books. But
she persisted in her demand and still preserved her listening posture,
although the sense of hearing and the faculty of attention were sinking
rapidly.

Some weeks had been consumed in this way, when one winter night she
desired me to read a certain history from a favorite volume of old
legends. The history she selected was that of a supernatural appearance
that was alleged to have followed a gentleman of Verona with the
fidelity of a shadow. The history set forth the arts and devices by
which he endeavored to perplex and evade it--how he went into dark and
lonely places, and how still his spectral companion stood at his
side--how he rushed into crowded scenes, forcing his way violently
through the mass, in the hope that he would thus escape; but no matter
how dense the multitude, or by what stratagems and confederacy the
gentleman sought to bury himself out of sight, the apparition in its
human shape was ever standing or moving close beside him. The strangest
thing was that it bore an unnatural likeness to him, not only in its
face and form, but in its actions, which were always so faithfully and
so instantaneously copied after him, that they resembled a reflection in
a mirror. He tried the most painful and unexpected contortions, only to
see them reproduced with a rapidity that mocked his despair.

The history went on to say how he invented various schemes, and
underwent many fearful trials of sorcery, in the hope of banishing or
subduing his horrid familiar, but all in vain, for the fiend baffled all
his efforts, and was still found at his side, day and night, whether he
rode or walked, or threw himself on his couch for repose--how he
summoned courage to speak to it at last, and was answered by the echoes
of his own voice--how he swam floods with the ghastly thing floating
along with him on the surge--how he climbed the highest hills and fled
into savage caverns, the familiar still toiling or groveling beside
him--how, in a fit of madness, he tried to grapple it on the edge of a
precipice with the desperate intent of dragging it down with him into
the abyss below, and how the shape wrought in the struggle, impalpable
to the touch, but visible to the sight, like painted air--how, after
enduring horrible tortures, the man wasted away, and became a mere
shadow, the spirit waning and fading in like manner--and how the priests
of a holy order, in the solitudes of the Apennines, hearing of these
strange events, bethought them of shriving the man, and expelling the
incarnate devil that had worked such inexplicable misery upon him.

The history next went on to relate how the monks found the man so weak
and emaciated that he could scarcely take food or answer their
questions--and how they had him conveyed to their chapel at midnight,
amid the glare of torches and the chants of the holy brotherhood, the
imperishable fiend lying stretched by his side in the litter, in open
spite of the holy water with which they had sprinkled it, and of the
care with which they had caused it to be made so small that it was
thought impossible for him to find room upon it--and how, when the
wretched man was brought to the altar, they placed him upright before
it, and began to pray, the fiend all the while being in his usual place
next to his mortal fellow--and how, as the prayers proceeded and the
voices of the assembled priests, of whom numbers had collected from
distant places to witness the scene, ascended to the roof, filling the
sanctuary with solemn and blessed music, the man turned a look of
deathly fear, and gazed into the eyes of the spirit, the spirit giving
back the look with the same thrilling and awful expression--and how the
sufferer, when the venerable abbot came to the benediction, and offered
to place his hands upon his head, sank gradually down, the fiend sinking
with him--and how, as the last word was uttered, they vanished together
into the earth, and on the instant the torches were extinguished, as by
a sudden gust of wind.

When I came to this point of the story, I lifted my eyes to look upon my
mother. She sat upon her great chair opposite to me, looking straight at
me with a glassy and vacant stare. Her limbs were rigid, and a spasm sat
upon her features.

"Mother!" I exclaimed; "mother!" I could not speak more. I was choking
for utterance, my hair coiled out like living fibres, the room seemed to
swim round and round. I stretched out my arms and seized her hands--they
were cold, cold and clammy. Let me not dwell on it--in that spectral
chamber I was alone with the dead!


IV.

For many days afterward the house was like a tomb. My mother was laid
out in the state-room, which, never having been used in our time, had a
dank, earthy smell, and was wretchedly bleak and naked. She lay upon the
old square bed, whose hangings, swept up into a ring over head, were
once a bright orange damask, but now an undistinguishable tawny mass,
from which tracery and color had long disappeared. There was no other
article of furniture in the apartment, which bore dreary evidence of the
neglect into which it had fallen. The fire-place was closed up with a
screen; and the fragments of arras that hung from the walls were eaten
into shreds by the damp. Desolate was the pomp of the poor corpse that
lay freezing under its stately coverlid, in the icy air of that room.

The old woman, of whom I have already spoken, undertook the melancholy
office of watching the dead. She suffered nobody else to approach the
body. The house felt as if it were empty. Wherever a foot trod in the
passage it gave out a hollow sound; and the servants, scared by
undefined terror, immured themselves in their rooms, where they remained
cooped and huddled together till the last rites were over.

Then went forth a scanty procession of ashy faces, winding down the
black hills to the church-yard; and when she was laid in the grave, a
shudder passed among them, and they whispered one to another, and then
their eyes rested upon me. The action was significant of the feeling
with which they regarded my situation. I was the last of my race, and my
inheritance was little more than the mausoleum of my ancestors.

The old woman had done well to monopolize the tending of the dead, and
the management of the funeral. She knew my unfitness, from grief and
ignorance of the world, to enter upon such details; and she took them
all off my hands, with a most careful watchfulness of my ease--and her
own interest. During that brief interval of sorrow--when the whole
household had withdrawn into retirement--she collected all the plate,
valuables, and moneys, she could find in the house; and when the grave
was closed, and the servants had returned home, she was nowhere to be
found. She had, in short, made ample provision for the rest of her life
out of such spoils as she could secure; for which, I afterward
discovered, she had been making industrious preparations long before.
Some attempts were made to trace her, but they were fruitless.

This was my first experience of the heartlessness of the world; and,
although it is an incident of every-day occurrence in all civilized
communities, it was new to me at that time, and stung me to the soul.

After months of seclusion through the biting winter and spring, summer
came round again, and I thought I would venture abroad, in hope that the
air and a little activity and change of scene would recruit my health;
for I was shattered and nervous, and conscious of a prostration of mind
almost amounting to disease. The country round about was abrupt and
wild, covered with heather for the most part, broken up and picturesque,
and studded here and there with patches of bright verdure, invaded by
clumps of forest trees. In some places it took a mountainous character,
and brawling streams rushing through deep gorges and rocky glens
assimilated the scenery to the general tone of the region that lies
still farther to the north. The neighborhood was lonely and
unfrequented; it resembled the hilly solitudes of Arran and Bute; there
were few homesteads in the distant landscape to send up cheerful volumes
of smoke among the trees: and you might ride a whole morning without
meeting a wayfarer.

I was on horseback one day, passing leisurely in an idle mood out of the
mouth of a ravine that led to an open valley, when I saw a lady, in a
riding-habit, mounted at no great distance from me. Her horse was
apparently picking his way slowly through the hillocks that dotted the
surface of the sward. The appearance of a lady alone loitering in so
unfrequented a spot surprised me. Had I seen an apparition I could not
have been more astonished.

As she moved past toward the opposite side she turned her head, and her
clear, pensive eyes, fell full upon my face with an expression of
ineffable sweetness.

Where had I seen those features before? They seemed quite familiar to
me. The dress, the action of her arm as she reined up her horse, and,
above all, the sad beauty of her eyes, I could have protested I had seen
a hundred times. Yet an instant's reflection would have sufficed to
convince me that I was under a mistake, for visitors or friends like her
there were none in our lonely house.

Her brief, quiet glance, had something in it of a look of recognition. I
felt as if there was a recognition on both sides. I felt, too, or
imagined, that she was slightly agitated by it. I knew that my own heart
fluttered wildly. My solitary life had rendered me nervous, and the
dangerous lore with which my head was filled gave to the incident an
immediate coloring of romance. A new sensation had taken possession of
me, a new world was opening to me; the solitude and remoteness of the
place, and the unexpectedness of that vision rising up among the wild
flowers and the dark green heather, acted like a charm upon me, and
awakened me to a sense of bewildering delight I had never experienced
before.

There is always an awkwardness in country places at rencounters between
people who are unaccustomed to strangers. I hardly knew whether I should
advance or retreat, and suffering my horse to take his own course, he
carried me a little circuit behind a patch of trees that intervened
between us. When I looked again she was gone. Scarcely a moment had
elapsed, and she had vanished like a sunbow. I could hardly believe in a
disappearance so miraculous, and rubbed my eyes, and gazed again and
again over the vacant space before me. But she was nowhere to be seen.
My curiosity was highly excited, and, dashing at full speed over the
very spot she had so recently occupied, I traversed every outlet, but
without success. It was broad noon. I knew all the bridle-tracks in and
out of the valley, and it was impossible she could have taken any of
them, and escaped my vigilant search in so short a time. What, then, was
this form I had beheld? I had heard of Second Sight, and other visual
deceptions--was this one of them? Had she melted into air? Had she come
there only to mock me? Was I the victim of a self-delusion? The tortures
of Tantalus were slight in comparison with the misery I felt as I rode
round and round that sequestered dell, hoping in vain that she would
return. But it was unlike any misery that had ever preyed upon me
before. There was a strange thrill of expectation and uncertainty in
it, and it pointed to an object in the future which, from that hour,
gave me a novel interest in life. A total change had passed over me, and
any change was welcome.

Every day I renewed my visit to the same place, but the nymph of my
pilgrimage never returned to the spot where I had first beheld her.
Under this disappointment fancy liberally supplied a picture which
sustained and heightened my desire to gaze once more on the reality. By
a mental process, of which I can give no further account than that it is
very well known to all readers of romance who are endowed with faith and
imagination, I culled the most lovable and fascinating qualities of a
hundred heroines--the tenderness and devotion, gentleness and grace, of
all the Amandas, Isidoras, and Ethelindas, my brain had become
intimately acquainted with--and compiled out of them a suitable Ideal
for the worship of my perturbed affections. Nor was I satisfied with
creating this imaginary enchantress by a sweeping contribution from the
special charms of all the fine heroines I had read of, but I must needs
put her into every possible emergency that could show off her beauty and
her virtues to advantage. I believe I made her run the gauntlet of more
perilous adventures and extraordinary trials than ever befell any single
heroine in the whole library of fiction.

I could not for an instant dismiss her from my thoughts; and that one
look that had enthralled me was ever present to me. Even in sleep I was
haunted by its disturbing influence, and the tantalizing scene in the
valley was re-enacted, with sundry alterations and additions, over and
over again in my dreams. As it had then become the sole occupation of my
life to think of her, and to explore the country every day in search of
her, it was not very wonderful that her image should have resolved
itself into a settled illusion, possessing me so entirely that, in the
image conjured up by my distempered imagination, I should at last
believe that I actually saw before me that which I so cordially desired
to see, and the seeing which was the object that engrossed me to the
exclusion of all other pursuits. When one idea thus tyrannically absorbs
the mind, the very monotony of its pressure is apt to overlay the
reasoning faculties and coerce them into delusions. People mourning to
excess over the dead have sometimes supposed that they saw them again
"in their habit as they lived." Under the influence of great excitement,
profound grief has done the work of fever; and assuredly there is a
fever of the mind as well as of the body.

Thus it was that, laboring under this constant agony of desire, I saw
that abstraction of all conceivable loveliness once more. She was seated
in the library--in the very chair in which my mother died. I then little
suspected that I was entranced by a phantom of my own making, and that
the exquisite appearance that sat in my presence was of no more
substance than a beam of light, into which outlines and colors of
immortal beauty were infused by my heated fancy. I spoke to her--she
turned aside, and raised her hand with a motion, as I thought, of
surprise. Again I addressed her, and she rose, and passed noiselessly
toward the door. I confess that, anxious as I was to detain her, and
procure some explanation from her, my courage gave way at this movement,
and I spoke no more; but I followed her with my eyes, trying to read the
feeling that seemed to flit in hers. It was clear to me, ambiguous as
its expression was, and difficult as it is to explain it. The melancholy
smile that played over her features contained a history. There was love
(of course, having created her, it was natural I should make her return
my passion), intense love, darkened by some great sorrow, as if
insuperable obstacles stood in its way, and turned it to despair. She
retired to the door-way, and stood there for a moment in the attitude of
leave-taking. She was not, I thought, to be lost thus, and perhaps
forever--one effort, and I might yet preserve her. I advanced hastily to
grasp her hand, but as I stretched out mine to touch it, a chill, not of
fear, but awe, came upon me, and I stood looking helplessly upon the
inexplicable magic of her departure. She did not leave me in the manner
of one who fled from my approach, but rather as if she left me
reluctantly and by constraint, slowly and lingeringly dissolving from my
sight--like a bright cloud fainting from twilight into darkness.

A long illness followed this visitation. During the fever that
supervened, I was reunited in a delicious rapture to her who had so
mysteriously fascinated me. Alone with her in weird solitudes, I gazed
into the deep light of her eyes, fearing to speak lest at the sound of
my voice she might again vanish from me. Silence appeared to be
understood between us as the condition of our intercourse, so
unconsciously did my imagination adapt itself to the spiritual nature of
the delusion. At length the fever passed away, but although the body was
delivered from the raging fires that had consumed its strength, the mind
was still devoured by the same insatiable longing to discover the object
of my inextinguishable passion. I was shattered in health and spirits;
incapable of much exertion; and harassed by disappointments. I tried to
shake off the despair that was rapidly gaining an ascendency over me;
but the bleakness and loneliness of my life only helped to encourage it;
and I finally resolved to leave the country, and seek relief and
oblivion in new scenes and excitements. And so I forsook the old mansion
with a heavy heart, and directed my course to London.


V.

It was my first experiment in the world. I had no friends or
acquaintances in the great metropolis. I was a stranger in its thronged
thoroughfares, which are more desolate to a stranger than a howling
wilderness.

At first I was distracted out of myself by the whirl of the vortex in
which I found myself engulfed. The eternal din, the countless
multitudes, the occupation that was legibly written in every man's face,
gave me something to think of, and forced me into a sort of blind
activity. But the novelty of this uproar and bustle, in which my own
sympathies or interests were in no way engaged, soon palled upon me, and
threw me back upon the morbid humors which the sudden change had only
temporarily lulled. I panted again for quiet, and sought it in the depth
of the town.

At that time the church, of St. Martin-in-the-Fields was buried in a
mass of dingy buildings, which, clustering up about it on all sides,
blotted it out from the sun. These buildings were intersected by
numerous dark courts and passages, and in one of them there was a
retired tavern frequented by a few persons, mostly of an intellectual
caste--artists, musicians, authors; men of high aspirations, but whom
fortune never seemed weary of persecuting, and who met here of an
evening to compare notes, and vent their complaints against the world.
This was exactly the sort of company that fell in with my tastes. It was
a satisfaction to me to herd with disappointed men, and hear them rail
at the prosperity which refused to crown their merits. Their failures in
life had given a peculiar turn to their minds, and tinged their
conversation with a spirit of fatalism. They were one and all clearly
convinced that it was in vain to struggle against destiny--that no
genius, however original or lofty, could secure its legitimate rewards
by legitimate means--and that, in short, the only individuals really
deserving of success were those who, by a perverse dispensation of
laurels, never could attain it. This view of the wrongs and injustice
they suffered from society stirred up much pride and bitterness among
them, and led them into many abstract disquisitions, which were rendered
attractive to me, no less by the nature of the topics they selected,
than by the piquancy and boldness with which they dissected them.

The most remarkable person in this little knot was a young man of the
name of Forrester. Like myself, he was of no profession, and appeared to
be drawn into the circle by much the same motives. He was tall and pale,
and generally reserved in speech; but subject to singular
fluctuations--sometimes all sunshine, breaking out into fits of wild
enthusiasm, and sometimes overwhelmed with despondency. These
vicissitudes of mood and temperament, which indicated a troubled
experience beyond his years, interested my sympathies. The more intimate
I became with him, the more reason I had to suspect that his life, like
my own, was the depository of some heavy secret; but I did not venture
to question him on this point, from an apprehension which his bearing
toward me led me to entertain that a similar suspicion lurked in his
mind respecting me. I confess that I dreaded any allusion to my own
history, and carefully avoided all subjects likely to lead to it; for I
should have been ashamed to acknowledge the sufferings I underwent from
a cause which most men would have treated with ridicule and skepticism.
I was quite aware that it was vulnerable to attacks of that sort, and
the terror of having the deception, if it were one, which I had
cherished with such fervor, rudely assailed and beaten down by common
sense, made me preserve a strict silence in every thing relating to
myself--a precaution that probably gave a keener zest to the curiosity I
desired to baffle.

A strong friendship grew up between me and Forrester. We were both
idlers, and we discovered that, by a happy coincidence, our literary
tastes--if an industrious prosecution of desultory and unprofitable
reading may be dignified by such a term--lay in the same channels. He
was as deeply learned in the literature of the marvelous as I was
myself; and during the summer evenings we used to take long walks into
the country, beguiling the way by discussions upon a variety of
wonderful matters which we turned up out of our old stores. The exercise
at least was healthy, and the very disputations upon the evidence and
likelihood of these things strengthened my faculties, and cleared off
some clouds of credulity. This collision with another mind was a novelty
to me, and, for a time, diverted me from other thoughts.

At our tavern Forrester and I enjoyed distinguished popularity. Every
body listened to our opinions with attention, not so much because they
were remarkable for their soundness, as because they were generally
opposed to established notions, and were urged with earnestness. We
always spoke like men who speak out of their convictions, while most of
the others argued merely for argument's sake, and were ready to take any
side of a question for the pleasure of getting up a controversy, and
showing off their ingenuity.

One evening the conversation turned upon the possibility of the dead
revisiting the earth, and the theory of manifest warnings before
dissolution. The debate, which began in levity, soon took a more serious
tone, and we had been arguing a full hour before I discovered that
Forrester and I had engrossed the discussion to ourselves, the rest of
the company maintaining a profound silence, and listening to our
observations with undisguised wonder and astonishment. This discovery
abashed me a little, for I never meant to make such a display, and I
looked across at Forrester for the purpose of drawing his attention to
the circumstance. I perceived, then, for the first time, that his face
had undergone an extraordinary change. The natural pallor had taken an
almost livid hue. The ordinary placidity of his features had given place
to an expression of severe pain and alarm.

"What is the matter?" I inquired. "Are you ill?"

"No. Why do you ask?"

"You look dreadfully pale." He only smiled at this remark--but it was a
ghastly smile.

"I know that something is the matter," I cried. "What is it, Forrester?"

"Nothing. What can be the matter? Are we not all living men talking upon
equal terms, and in the best possible humor, about the dead? Why should
that affect me more than any body else?"

"I know not why it should," I replied, "but I feel it does."

"Are you quite sure," he returned, in a low voice, "that it does not
affect you as deeply?" He looked at me as if he knew my whole life,
which he could not have known; and, in spite of a violent effort to
suppress my feelings, I was conscious that I betrayed the agitation into
which I was thrown by that searching look.

"Come, come," he exclaimed, rallying wildly, "we have both looked death
in the face before now; and although use can not make it familiar, still
a sight often repeated must lose some of its horrors."

"No, you are wrong. I have not seen death often."

"Once--only once," he replied, in the same hollow voice; "but you have
seen many deaths in one."

"How do you know that?" I demanded; "or assume to know it?"

"One day you shall learn," he answered, calmly.

"You amaze me. Speak openly to me, Forrester, and not in these dark
enigmas. I can bear to hear."

"Can you bear to suffer?" he asked.

"I can--I think I can," I replied, shrinking at my heart from the ordeal
I invited. "I have suffered that which I should once have thought
utterly fabulous, and beyond human endurance."

"I know it. But endurance has its limits. The earthly can bear only that
which is of the earth--test them with sufferings that look out beyond
this world into the darkness of eternity, and they perish. The trial is
not in those things that are dated, bounded, and finite: it is where
speculation can not reach nor reason avail us, where human knowledge and
human strength are blind and idle, that the trial of that suffering
begins, which is akin to the penalties of immortal spirits--a beginning
without an end."

"I do not understand you," I answered.

"You _will_ understand me, however, when the hour arrives." Then
stopping short, he whispered, "they are observing us; this is not the
place for such a theme. We shall meet again, when you shall be
satisfied."

"When?"

"Soon--I fear too soon. No matter--we shall meet, and you shall be
satisfied."

He rose and left the room.

I was restrained from following him only by the consideration that I
should expose myself to the criticisms of our companions, who, I had
observed, were fond of making merry at the expense of their absent
friends; and as I was beginning to feel very sensitive to ridicule, I
determined not to give them an opportunity of exercising their wit upon
me.

When Forrester was gone, they immediately took him to pieces. His
character, habits, life, and opinions, furnished them with abundant
materials for commentary, which they were all the less scrupulous in
dealing freely with because they really knew little or nothing about
him. One said that there was a mysterious something about Forrester that
he couldn't make out--it might be all right, but, for his part, he liked
people to be candid with you and above-board; another remarked, that a
man who lived nobody knew exactly how, and who disappeared every night
at pretty much the same hour, and was so very incommunicative about his
pursuits, laid himself open to suspicion, at all events; a third
suggested that, probably, he had experienced some blight, which had
spoiled him for company--perhaps he had been crossed in love (here there
was a general laugh, and a rapid succession of puns); while a fourth,
who made it a rule never to form a judgment on any man's character
without knowing him thoroughly, could not help observing that Mr.
Forrester certainly held some rather extraordinary doctrines about
ghosts and other nonsense of that sort, which, to be sure, was no
imputation on his character, but--here the speaker stopped short, and
shook his head in a very significant manner.

These opinions, delivered off-hand, puzzled me exceedingly, for I could
not arrive at their meaning. It was evident that Forrester was an object
of mystery to our friends--and so he was to me. But neither they nor I
could get any farther in the matter. They, however, dismissed him from
their minds with the drain of their glasses, while I lay restlessly all
night ruminating on what had occurred.

I was passing through a state of transition from the seclusion in which
my faculties had been kept dormant into a section of society which was
eminently calculated to awaken and sharpen them for use. I was already
getting into a habit of reasoning with myself, of trying to trace
effects to causes, and examining with suspicion many things which I had
hitherto taken upon trust. At first I committed numerous blunders, and
fell into all sorts of mistakes, in my eagerness to emulate the
cleverness of the experienced individuals with whom I was in the habit
of associating. And I could not have dropped upon a clique better
qualified or disposed to ride roughshod over the whole region of
romance. They were generally practical men and some of them were worldly
men; for although not one of them was able to do any thing for himself,
they were all adepts in the knowledge of what other people ought to do.
They looked with supreme contempt upon sentimental people, and took
infinite pleasure in running them down. They were not the sort of men to
be tricked by appearances or clap-trap. They despised finery, and
ostentation, and outside manners. They loved to look at things as they
were, and to call them by their proper names; never, by any accident,
over-rating an excellence, but very frequently exaggerating a defect,
which they considered as an error on the right side. In this severe
school I acquired a few harsh practical views of life, and was beginning
to feel its realities growing up about me; but in the progress from the
visionary to the real there were many shapes of darkness yet to be
struggled with.

A few nights afterward I met Forrester on his way to the rendezvous.
There was the same unaccountable reserve in his manner which he betrayed
at our last abrupt parting; but my anxiety, awakened more by his looks
than his words, would not brook delay. I resolved to get an explanation
on the spot.

"Forrester," I said, "you have inflicted a pain upon me which no man has
a right to inflict upon another, without giving him at the same time his
full confidence. You have made use of strange allusions and hints, which
you are bound to explain. You seem to know more about me than I have
myself ever confided to you, or than you could have known through any
channels with which I am acquainted. I ask you to satisfy me at once
whether it is so, or not?"

"It is so," he replied. "You see I am as frank as you are curious."

"But that does not satisfy me. You say you know more about me than I
have thought it necessary or desirable to impart to you. What is it that
you know?"

"Little," he returned with a singularly disagreeable smile.

"Then it will be the sooner told. What is that little?" and I uttered
the last word with rather a bitter and satirical emphasis.

Forrester drew up gravely at this, and replied to me slowly,

"That little is all. All that has ever happened to you, and the whole
may be expressed in a single word. Your life has scarcely had enough of
action in it to stir the surface; it has been a life of inward strife."

"You have described it truly. My world has not been like that of other
men."

"Nor mine; but I have come out of the mist, and you are in it still."

"You speak riddles, and involve me in deeper obscurity than ever. But I
am resolved to be satisfied, and will be trifled with no longer. What is
that which you said, nay, pledged yourself I should soon learn?"

"You must not be impatient. Do not fear that I will not keep my pledge.
If you knew all, you would understand that I dare not break it.
To-morrow night, at this hour precisely, meet me on this spot, and you
shall be made wiser; happier, I will not promise. Better it should never
be, than that it should be too late. This is dark to you now, it will
soon be clear enough."

We shook hands after the promise of meeting on the following night, and
so parted. Neither of us was in a condition to join the cynics at the
tavern.

After a night of feverish suspense I rose early the next morning, my
brain full of the prospect, clouded as it was, of the interview with
Forrester. The day was passed in a ferment of agitation; I could not
remain at home; I wandered abroad, forgot to dine, and was racked with a
presentiment that my fate, for good or evil, hung upon the issue of the
night.


VI.

At last the appointed hour arrived. Forrester was punctual to the
moment. He was evidently affected by some strong emotion, which he made
fearful efforts to control. I was too much touched by his condition, and
had too much dread about what was coming, to venture upon any questions,
particularly as he seemed to desire silence. He locked his arm in mine
violently, and, without uttering a word, we traversed several streets
till we reached a part of the town with which I was unacquainted. As we
went forward Forrester's agitation sensibly increased; and when we
entered a small square, in the centre of which there was a stunted
plantation, with a mutilated fountain in the midst, he suddenly stopped,
and turning, looked me full in the face.

"Have you courage?" he demanded.

"Mortal courage," I replied, "no more."

"Well, well, we are fools," he continued; "very worms, to think that we
can cope with that which even to endure in ignorance is a task that
sublimes our nature. Suffering is retributive and purifying. This is my
last agony."

He then advanced hastily to a house, the door of which was screened by a
low porch, tastefully covered with creepers. In his attitude at this
instant there was a grandeur that made a deep impression upon me; it was
derived from the triumph of his manly spirit over the anguish that was
laboring at his heart. He knocked, and the door was hurriedly opened by
a servant in mourning.

I should here remark that I had never been at his house before, although
I had known him many months; nor was I even then aware that the house we
were entering was his.

Motioning me to follow him up the stairs, which he ascended stealthily,
I crept up after him with a very uneasy mind. When he reached the
drawing-room door he paused for a moment, then turning the handle slowly
and noiselessly, he entered the room. One glance at the apartment gave
me a general idea of its character. It was small and fashionably
furnished, but had an air of neglect and disorder which indicated that
its tenant had been long confined by illness. At the opposite side was a
sofa, which, for convenience, had been moved near the fire. A lady,
apparently in a very delicate state of health (I could only judge by the
languor of her position, for I could not see her face), lay resting upon
it. Forrester stole quietly to her side, and took her hand.

"Gertrude, how do you feel this evening?"

A sigh, from the depths of her heart, answered him.

"Don't be alarmed; I am not alone; we have come to--"

"Who?" she demanded, suddenly raising herself from the sofa. "Who is
come? Come!--come!--you!--Henry--and--"

She looked at me; I stood in the full light of the fire; our eyes met;
every vein and artery in my body seemed to beat audibly; she uttered an
hysterical cry, and fell back upon the sofa. I rushed to catch her,
sobbed, gasped, tried to speak, flung myself upon my knees before her,
and madly clasped the drooping hand, the living hand, of her who had so
long enthralled my soul, and who, until this hour, had appeared to me
more like a spirit of another world than a being of the earth like
myself.

During this short and agitated scene, Forrester stood looking at us with
a mixed expression of grief and satisfaction. His mind was evidently
relieved of some weight that had oppressed it, but there still remained
a heavy pang behind. His fortitude was admirable.

"It is accomplished!" he exclaimed, flinging himself into a chair; "and
if there be a hope of repose left, perhaps I may live to look back upon
this night with tranquillity."

The excitement of the moment affected the invalid so much that her
strength sank under it, and she fainted in my arms. I did not perceive
this until Forrester, whose watchfulness respecting her was unceasing,
gently directed my attention to it, at the same time moving her to an
easier position. I was too much bewildered to have sufficient
self-possession to know what to do, but, trivial as this accident was,
it instantly awoke me to the full consciousness that she lived and
breathed before me; she who had hitherto been to me like the invisible
spirit that accompanied the knight of old, uttering sweet sounds in the
air, until his heart was consumed by the love of that Voice which poured
its faithful music into his ears. It was a new life to know that she
lived, and that the happiness I had so hopelessly yearned for was now
within my reach.

"Enough," cried Forrester, "for the present. Let us leave her. She will
be tended by more skillful leeches than we should prove."

A servant entered the room just as we retired, and after one long gaze,
in which all past delusions seemed to expire, I followed him hastily
into the street.

I stopped at the first retired place we reached. The explanation could
no longer be delayed, but my impatience was so great that I interrupted
it by a flood of questions. My mind was full of wonder, and I broke
forth into a series of interrogatories, for the purpose of getting the
information I wanted in the order of my own thoughts.

"Resolve me, Forrester," I concluded,--"resolve me on all these points,
for I begin to fear that my life has hithertofore been but a dream, and
that even the reality which I have just looked upon will perish like the
rest."

"Patience, patience!" he returned; "my thoughts are as confused as
yours. I have as many scattered recollections to gather up as you have
questions to put, and I know not if either of us can be satisfied in the
end. But I am worn out. This new demand on my spirits has exhausted me.
Let us go forward to a seat."

We advanced into the shrubbery, and in one of the recesses we found a
seat. After a pause, Forrester began his revelations.


  (_To be continued._)




MAURICE TIERNAY, THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE.

(_Continued from Page 372._)


CHAPTER XXIII. "THE TOWN-MAJOR OF CASTLEBAR."

I am at a loss to know whether or not I owe an apology to my reader for
turning away from the more immediate object of this memoir of a life, to
speak of events which have assumed an historical reputation. It may be
thought ill-becoming in one who occupied the subordinate station that I
did, to express himself on subjects so very far above both his
experience and acquaintance; but I would premise, that in the opinions I
may have formed, and the words of praise or censure dropped, I have been
but retailing the sentiments of those older and wiser than myself, and
by whose guidance I was mainly led to entertain not only the
convictions, but the prejudices, of my early years.

Let the reader bear in mind, too, that I was very early in life thrown
into the society of men--left self-dependent, in a great measure, and
obliged to decide for myself on subjects which usually are determined by
older and more mature heads. So much of excuse, then, if I seem
presumptuous in saying that I began to conceive a very low opinion
generally of popular attempts at independence, and a very high one of
the powers of military skill and discipline. A mob, in my estimation,
was the very lowest, and an army about the very highest, object I could
well conceive. My short residence at Castlebar did not tend to
controvert these impressions. The safety of the town and its inhabitants
was entirely owing to the handful of French who held it, and who,
wearied with guards, pickets, and outpost duty, were a mere fraction of
the small force that had landed a few days before.

Our "allies" were now our most difficult charge. Abandoning the hopeless
task of drilling and disciplining them, we confined ourselves to the
more practical office of restraining pillage and repressing violence--a
measure, be it said, that was not without peril, and of a very serious
kind. I remember one incident, which, if not followed by grave
consequences, yet appeared at the time of a very serious character.

By the accidental mis-spelling of a name, a man named Dowall, a
notorious ruffian and demagogue, was appointed "Commandant-de-Place," or
Town-Major, instead of a most respectable shopkeeper named Downes, and
who, although soon made aware of the mistake, from natural timidity,
took no steps to undeceive the General. Dowall was haranguing a mob of
half-drunken vagabonds, when his commission was put into his hands; and
accepting the post as an evidence of the fears the French entertained of
his personal influence, became more overbearing and insolent than ever.
We had a very gallant officer, the second major of the 12th Regiment of
the Line, killed in the attack on Castlebar, and this Dowall at once
took possession of poor Delactre's horse, arms, and equipment. His coat
and chako, his very boots and gloves, the scoundrel appropriated; and,
as if in mockery of us and our poor friend, assumed a habit that he had,
when riding fast, to place his sabre between his leg and the saddle, to
prevent its striking the horse on the flanks.

I need scarcely say that thoroughly disgusted by the unsightly
exhibition, our incessant cares, and the endless round of duty we were
engaged in, as well as the critical position we occupied, left us no
time to notice the fellow's conduct by any other than a passing sign of
anger or contempt--provocations that he certainly gave us back as
insolently as we offered them. I do not believe that the General ever
saw him, but I know that incessant complaints were daily made to him
about the man's rapacity and tyranny, and scarcely a morning passed
without a dozen remonstrances being preferred against his overbearing
conduct.

Determined to have his own countrymen on his side, he issued the most
absurd orders for the billeting of the rabble, the rations and
allowances of all kinds. He seized upon one of the best houses for his
own quarters, and three fine saddle-horses for his personal use, besides
a number of inferior ones for the ruffian following he called his staff!

It was, indeed, enough to excite laughter, had not indignation been the
more powerful emotion, to see this fellow ride forth of a morning--a
tawdry scarf of green, with deep gold fringe, thrown over his shoulder,
and a saddle-cloth of the same color, profusely studded with gold
shamrocks, on his horse; a drawn sword in his hand, and his head erect,
followed by an indiscriminate rabble on foot or horseback--some with
muskets, some pikes, some with sword-blades, bayonets, or even knives
fastened on sticks, but all alike ferocious-looking and savage.

They affected to march in order, and, with a rude imitation of soldiery,
carried something like a knapsack on their shoulders, surmounted by a
kettle, or tin-cup, or sometimes an iron-pot--a grotesque parody on the
trim-cooking equipment of the French soldier. It was evident, from their
step and bearing, that they thought themselves in the very height of
discipline; and this very assumption was far more insulting to the real
soldier than all the licentious irregularity of the marauder. If to us
they were objects of ridicule and derision, to the townspeople they were
images of terror and dismay. The miserable shopkeeper who housed one of
them lived in continual fear; he knew nothing to be his own, and felt
that his property and family were every moment at the dictate of a
ruffian gang, who acknowledged no law, nor any rule save their own will
and convenience. Dowall's squad were indeed as great a terror in that
little town as I had seen the great name of Robespierre in the proud
city of Paris.

In my temporary position on General Serazin's staff, I came to hear much
of this fellow's conduct. The most grievous stories were told me every
day of his rapacity and cruelty; but harassed and overworked, as the
General was, with duties that would have been over-much for three or
four men, I forbore to trouble him with recitals, which could only fret
and distress _him_, without affording the slightest chance of relief to
_others_. Perhaps this impunity had rendered him more daring; or,
perhaps, the immense number of armed Irish, in comparison with the small
force of disciplined soldiers, emboldened the fellow; but certainly he
grew, day by day, more presumptuous and insolent, and at last so far
forgot himself as to countermand one of General Serazin's orders, by
which a guard was stationed at the Protestant church to prevent its
being molested or injured by the populace.

General Humbert had already refused the Roman Catholic priest his
permission to celebrate mass in that building; but Dowall had determined
otherwise, and that, too, by a written order under his own hand. The
French sergeant who commanded the guard of course paid little attention
to this warrant; and when Father Hennisy wanted to carry the matter with
a high hand, he coolly tore up the paper, and threw the fragments at
him. Dowall was soon informed of the slight offered to his mandate. He
was at supper at the time, entertaining a party of his friends, who all
heard the priest's story, and of course, loudly sympathized with his
sorrows, and invoked the powerful leader's aid and protection. Affecting
to believe that the sergeant had merely acted in ignorance, and from not
being able to read English, Dowall dispatched a fellow, whom he called
his aid-de-camp, a schoolmaster named Lowrie, and who spoke a little bad
French, to interpret his command, and to desire the sergeant to withdraw
his men, and give up the guard to a party of "the squad."

Great was the surprise of the supper party, when, after the lapse of
half an hour, a country fellow came in to say that he had seen Lowrie
led off to prison between two French soldiers. By this time Dowall had
drunk himself into a state of utter recklessness; while encouraged by
his friend's praises, and the arguments of his own passions, he fancied
that he might dispute ascendency with General Humbert himself. He at
once ordered out his horse, and gave a command to assemble the "squad."
As they were all billeted in his immediate vicinity, this was speedily
effected, and their numbers swelled by a vast mass of idle and curious,
who were eager to see how the matter would end; the whole street was
crowded, and when Dowall mounted, his followers amounted to above a
thousand people.

If our sergeant, an old soldier of the "Sambre et Meuse," had not
already enjoyed some experience of our allies, it is more than likely
that, seeing their hostile advance, he would have fallen back upon the
main guard, then stationed in the market-square. As it was, he simply
retired his party within the church, the door of which had already been
pierced for the use of musketry. This done, and one of his men being
dispatched to head-quarters for advice and orders, he waited patiently
for the attack.

I happened that night to make one of General Serazin's dinner party, and
we were sitting over our wine, when the officer of the guard entered
hastily with the tidings of what was going on in the town.

"Is it the Commandant-de-Place himself is at the head?" exclaimed
Serazin, in amazement, such a thought being a direct shock to all his
ideas of military discipline.

"Yes, sir," said the officer; "the soldier knows his appearance well,
and can vouch for its being him."

"As I know something of him, General," said I, "I may as well mention
that nothing is more likely."

"Who is he--what is he?" asked Serazin hastily.

A very brief account--I need not say not a flattering one--told all that
I knew or had ever heard of our worthy "Town Major." Many of the
officers around corroborating, as I went on, all that I said, and
interpolating little details of their own about his robberies and
exactions.

"And yet I have heard nothing of all this before," said the General,
looking sternly around him on every side.

None ventured on a reply, and what might have followed there is no
guessing, when the sharp rattle of musketry cut short all discussion.

"That fire was not given by soldiers," said Serazin. "Go, Tiernay, and
bring this fellow before me at once."

I bowed, and was leaving the room, when an officer, having whispered a
few words in Serazin's ear, the General called me back, saying,

"You are not to incur any risk, Tiernay; I want no struggle, still less
a rescue. You understand me."

"Perfectly, General; the matter will, I trust, be easy enough!"

And so I left the room, my heart, shall I avow it, bumping and throbbing
in a fashion that gave a very poor corroboration to my words. There
were always three or four horses ready saddled for duty at each
general's quarters, and taking one of them, I ordered a corporal of
dragoons to follow me, and set out. It was a fine night of autumn; the
last faint sunlight was yet struggling with the coming darkness, as I
rode at a brisk trot down the main street toward the scene of action.

I had not proceeded far when the crowds compelled me to slacken my pace
to a walk, and finding that the people pressed in upon me in such a way
as to prevent any thing like a defense if attacked, still more, any
chance of an escape by flight, I sent the corporal forward to clear a
passage, and announce my coming to the redoubted "Commandant." It was
curious to see how the old dragoon's tactics effected his object, and
with what speed the crowd opened and fell back, as with a flank movement
of his horse he "passaged" up the street, prancing, bounding, and
back-leaping, yet all the while perfectly obedient to the hand, and
never deviating from the straight line in the very middle of the
thoroughfare.

I could catch from the voices around me that the mob had fired a volley
at the church-door, but that our men had never returned the fire, and
now a great commotion of the crowd, and that swaying, surging motion of
the mass, which is so peculiarly indicative of a coming event, told that
something more was in preparation; and such was it; for already numbers
were hurrying forward with straw-fagots, broken furniture, and other
combustible material, which, in the midst of the wildest cries and
shouts of triumph, were now being heaped up against the door. Another
moment, and I should have been too late--as it was, my loud summons to
"halt," and a bold command for the mob to fall back, only came at the
very last minute.

"Where's the Commandant?" said I, in an imperious tone. "Who wants him?"
responded a deep husky voice, which I well knew to be Dowall's.

"The general in command of the town," said I, firmly; "General Serazin."

"Maybe I'm as good a general as himself," was the answer. "I never
called him my superior yet! Did I, boys?"

"Never--devil a bit--why would you?" and such like, were shouted by the
mob around us, in every accent of drunken defiance.

"You'll not refuse General Serazin's invitation to confer with your
Commandant, I hope?" said I, affecting a tone of respectful civility,
while I gradually drew nearer and nearer to him, contriving, at the
same, by a dexterous plunging of my horse, to force back the bystanders,
and thus isolate my friend Dowall.

"Tell him I've work to do here," said he, "and can't come; but if he's
fond of a bonfire he may as well step down this far and see one."

By this time, at a gesture of command from me, the corporal had placed
himself on the opposite side of Dowall's horse, and by a movement
similar to my own, completely drove back the dense mob, so that we had
him completely in our power, and could have sabred or shot him at any
moment.

"General Serazin only wishes to see you on duty, Commandant," said I,
speaking in a voice that could be heard over the entire assemblage; and
then, dropping it to a whisper, only audible to himself, I added,

"Come along, quietly, sir, and without a word. If you speak, if you
mutter, or if you lift a finger, I'll run my sabre through your body."

"Forward, way, there," shouted I aloud, and the corporal, holding
Dowall's bridle, pricked the horse with the point of his sword, and
right through the crowd we went at a pace that defied following, had any
the daring to think of it.

So sudden was the act and so imminent the peril, for I held the point of
my weapon within a few inches of his back, and would have kept my word
most assuredly too, that the fellow never spoke a syllable as we went,
nor ventured on even a word of remonstrance till we descended at the
General's door. Then, with a voice tremulous with restrained passion, he
said,

"If ye think I'll forgive ye this thrick, my fine boy, may the flames
and fire be my portion! and if I hav'n't my revenge on ye yet, my name
isn't Mick Dowall."

With a dogged, sulky resolution he mounted the stairs, but as he neared
the room where the General was, and from which his voice could even now
be heard, his courage seemed to fail him, and he looked back as though
to see if no chance of escape remained. The attempt would have been
hopeless, and he saw it.

"This is the man, General," said I, half pushing him forward into the
middle of the room, where he stood with his hat on, and in attitude of
mingled defiance and terror.

"Tell him to uncover," said Serazin; but one of the aids-de-camp, more
zealous than courteous, stepped forward and knocked the hat off with his
hand. Dowall never budged an inch, nor moved a muscle, at this insult;
to look at him you could not have said that he was conscious of it.

"Ask him if it was by his orders that the guard was assailed?" said the
General.

I put the question in about as many words but he made no reply.

"Does the man know where _he_ is? Does he know who _I_ am?" repeated
Serazin, passionately.

"He knows both well enough, sir," said I; "this silence is a mere
defiance of us."

"Parbleu!" cried an officer, "that is the 'coquin' took poor Delactre's
equipments; the very uniform he has on was his."

"The fellow was never a soldier," said another.

"I know him well," interposed a third, "he is the very terror of the
townsfolk."

"Who gave him his commission?--who appointed him?" asked Serazin.

Apparently the fellow could follow some words of French, for as the
General asked this he drew from his pocket a crumpled and soiled paper,
which he threw heedlessly upon the table before us.

"Why this is not his name, sir," said I: "this appointment is made out
in the name of Nicholas Downes, and our friend here is called Dowall."

"Who knows him? who can identify him?" asked Serazin.

"I can say that his name is Dowall, and that he worked as a porter on
the quay in this town when I was a boy," said a young Irishman who was
copying letters and papers at a side-table. "Yes, Dowall," said the
youth, confronting the look which the other gave him, "I am neither
afraid nor ashamed to tell you to your face that I know you well, and
who you are, and what you are."

"I'm an officer in the Irish Independent Army now," said Dowall,
resolutely. "To the divil I fling the French commission and all that
belongs to it. 'Tisn't troops that run and guns that burst we want. Let
them go back again the way they came, we're able for the work
ourselves."

Before I could translate this rude speech an officer broke into the
room, with tidings that the streets had been cleared, and the rioters
dispersed; a few prisoners of the squad, too, were taken, whose muskets
bore trace of being recently discharged.

"They fired upon our pickets, General," said the officer, whose excited
look and voice betrayed how deeply he felt the outrage.

The men were introduced; three ragged, ill-looking wretches, apparently
only roused from intoxication by the terror of their situation, for each
was guarded by a soldier with a drawn bayonet in his hand.

"We only obeyed ordhers my lord; we only did what the Captain tould us;"
cried they in a miserable, whining tone, for the sight of their leader
in captivity had sapped all their courage.

"What am I here for? Who has any business with _me_?" said Dowall,
assuming before his followers, an attempt at his former tone of bully.

"Tell him," said Serazin, "that wherever a French general stands in full
command he will neither brook insolence nor insubordination. Let those
fellows be turned out of the town, and warned never to approach the
quarters of the army under any pretense whatever. As for this scoundrel
we'll make an example of him. Order a peloton into the yard and shoot
him."

I rendered this speech into English as the General spoke it, and never
shall I forget the wild scream of the wretch as he heard the sentence.

"I'm an officer in the army of Ireland. I don't belong to ye at all.
You've no power over me. Oh, Captain, darlin'; oh, gentlemen, speak for
me! General, dear; General, honey, don't sintince me! don't for the love
of God!" and in groveling terror the miserable creature threw himself
on his knees to beg for mercy.

"Tear off his epaulettes," cried Serazin, "never let a French uniform be
so disgraced."

The soldiers wrenched off the epaulettes at the command, and not
satisfied with this they even tore away the lace from the cuffs of the
uniform, which now hung in ragged fragments over his trembling hands.

"Oh, sir, oh, General! oh, gentlemen, have marcy!"

"Away with him," said Serazin contemptuously; "it is only the cruel can
be such cowards. Give the fellow his fusillade with blank cartridge, and
the chances are fear will kill outright."

The scene that ensued is too shocking, too full of abasement to record;
there was nothing that fear of death, nothing that abject terror could
suggest, that this miserable wretch did not attempt to save his life; he
wept--he begged in accents that were unworthy of all manhood--he kissed
the very ground at the General's feet in his abject sorrow; and when at
last he was dragged from the room his screams were the most terrific and
piercing.

Although all my compassion was changed into contempt, I felt that I
could never have given the word to fire upon him, had such been my
orders; his fears had placed him below all manhood, but they still
formed a barrier of defense around him. I accordingly whispered a few
words to the sergeant as we passed down the stairs, and then affecting
to have forgotten something, I stepped back toward the room, where the
General and his staff were sitting. The scuffling sound of feet, mingled
with the crash of fire-arms, almost drowned the cries of the still
struggling wretch; his voice, however, burst forth into a wild cry, and
then there came a pause--a pause that at last became insupportable to my
anxiety, and I was about to rush down stairs, when a loud yell, a savage
howl of derision and hate burst forth from the street; and on looking
out I saw a vast crowd before the door, who were shouting after a man,
whose speed soon carried him out of reach. This was Dowall, who thus
suffered to escape, was told to fly from the town, and never to return
to it.

"Thank heaven," muttered I, "we've seen the last of him."

The rejoicing, was, however, premature.


CHAPTER XXIV. "THE MISSION TO THE NORTH."

I have never yet been able to discover whether General Humbert really
did feel the confidence that he assumed at this period, or that he
merely affected it, the better to sustain the spirits of those around
him. If our success at Castlebar was undeniable, our loss was also
great, and far more than proportionate to all the advantages we had
acquired. Six officers and two hundred and forty men were either killed
or badly wounded, and as our small force had really acquired no
reinforcement worth the name, it was evident that another such costly
victory would be our ruin.

Not one gentleman of rank or influence had yet joined us, few of the
priesthood, and, even among the farmers and peasantry, it was easy to
see that our recruits comprised those whose accession could never have
conferred honor or profit on any cause.

Our situation was any thing but promising. The rumors that reached us,
and we had no other or more accurate information than rumors, told that
an army of thirty thousand men under the command of Lord Cornwallis, was
in march against us; that all the insurrectionary movements of the south
were completely repressed; that the spirit of the rebels was crushed,
and their confidence broken, either by defeat or internal treachery. In
a word that the expedition had already failed, and the sooner we had the
means of leaving the land of our disasters the better.

Such were the universal feelings of all my comrades; but Humbert, who
often had told us that we were only here to "éclairer la route" for
another and more formidable mission, now pretended to think that we were
progressing most favorably toward a perfect success. Perhaps he firmly
believed all this, or perhaps he thought that the pretense would give
more dignity to the finale of an exploit, which he already saw was
nearly played out! I know not which is the true explanation, and am half
disposed to think that he was actuated as much by one impulse as the
other.

"The army of the North" was the talisman, which we now heard of for the
first time, to repair all our disasters, and insure complete victory.
"The Army of the North," whose strength varied from twenty to
twenty-five, and sometimes reached even thirty thousand men, and was
commanded by a distinguished Irish general, was now the centre to which
all our hopes turned. Whether it had already landed, and where, of what
it consisted, and how officered, not one of us knew any thing; but by
dint of daily repetition and discussion we had come to believe in its
existence as certainly as though we had seen it under arms.

The credulous lent their convictions without any trouble to themselves
whatever; the more skeptical studied the map, and fancied twenty
different places in which they might have disembarked; and thus the
"Army of the North" grew to be a substance and reality, as undoubted as
the scenes before our eyes.

Never was such a ready solution of all difficulties discovered as this
same "Army of the North." Were we to be beaten by Cornwallis it was only
a momentary check, for the Army of the North would come up within a few
days and turn the whole tide of war. If our Irish allies grew
insubordinate or disorderly, a little patience, and the Army of the
North would settle all that. Every movement projected was fancied to be
in concert with this redoubted corps, and at last every trooper that
rode in from Killala or Ballina was questioned as to whether his
dispatches did not come from the Army of the North.

Frenchmen will believe any thing you like for twenty-four hours. They
can be flattered into a credulity of two days, and, by dint of great
artifice and much persuasion, will occasionally reach a third; but
there, faith has its limit; and if nothing palpable, tangible, and real
intervene, skepticism ensues; and what with native sarcasm, ridicule,
and irony, they will demolish the card edifice of credit far more
rapidly than ever they raised it. For two whole days the "Army of the
North" occupied every man among us. We toasted it over our wine; we
discussed it at our quarters; we debated upon its whereabouts, its
strength, and its probable destination; but on the third morning a
terrible shock was given to our feelings by a volatile young Lieutenant
of Hussars exclaiming--

"_Ma foi!_ I wish I could see this same 'Army of the North!'"

Now, although nothing was more reasonable than this wish, nor was there
any one of us who had not felt a similar desire, this sudden expression
of it struck us all most forcibly, and a shrinking sense of doubt spread
over every face, and men looked at each other, as though to say, "Is the
fellow capable of supposing that such an army does not exist?" It was a
very dreadful moment--a terrible interval of struggle between the broad
day-light of belief and the black darkness of incredulity; and we turned
glances of actual dislike at the man who had so unwarrantably shaken our
settled convictions.

"I only said I should like to see them under arms," stammered he, in the
confusion of one who saw himself exposed to public obloquy.

This half apology came too late, the mischief was done! and we shunned
each other like men who were afraid to read the accusation of even a
shrewd glance. As for myself, I can compare my feelings only to those of
the worthy alderman, who broke out into a paroxysm of grief on hearing
that "Robinson Crusoe" was a fiction. I believe, on that sudden
revulsion of feeling, I could have discredited any and every thing. If
there was no Army of the North, was I quite sure that there was any
expedition at all? Were the generals mere freebooters, the chiefs of a
marauding venture? Were the patriots any thing but a disorderly rabble,
eager for robbery and bloodshed? Was Irish Independence a mere phantom?
Such were among the shocking terrors that came across my mind as I sat
in my quarters, far too dispirited and depressed to mix among my
comrades.

It had been a day of fatiguing duty, and I was not sorry, as night fell,
that I might betake myself to bed, to forget, if it might be, the
torturing doubts that troubled me. Suddenly I heard a heavy foot upon
the stair, and an orderly entered with a command for me to repair to the
head-quarters of the General at once. Never did the call of duty summon
me less willing, never found me so totally disinclined to obey. I was
weary and fatigued; but worse than this, I was out of temper with
myself, the service, and the whole world. Had I heard that the Royal
forces were approaching, I was exactly in the humor to have dashed into
the thick of them, and sold my life as dearly as I could, out of
desperation.

Discipline is a powerful antagonist to a man's caprices, for with all my
irritability and discontent, I arose, and resuming my uniform, set out
for General Humbert's quarters. I followed "the orderly," as he led the
way through many a dark street and crooked alley, till we reached the
square. There, too, all was in darkness, save at the mainguard, where,
as usual, the five windows of the first story were a blaze of light, and
the sounds of mirth and revelry, the nightly orgies of our officers,
were ringing out in the stillness of the quiet hour. The wild chorus of
a soldier-song, with its "ran-tan-plan" accompaniment of knuckles on the
table, echoed through the square, and smote upon my ear with any thing
but a congenial sense of pleasure.

In my heart I thought them a senseless, soulless crew, that could give
themselves to dissipation and excess on the very eve, as it were, of our
defeat, and with hasty steps I turned away into the side street, where a
large lamp, the only light to be seen, proclaimed General Humbert's
quarters.

A bustle and stir, very unusual at this late hour, pervaded the passages
and the stairs, and it was some time before I could find one of the
staff to announce my arrival, which at last was done somewhat
unceremoniously, as an officer hurried me through a large chamber
crowded with the staff, into an inner room, where, on a small field-bed,
lay General Humbert, without coat or boots, a much-worn scarlet cloak
thrown half over him, and a black handkerchief tied round his head. I
had scarcely seen him since our landing, and I could with difficulty
recognize the burly high-complexioned soldier of a few days back in the
worn and haggard features of the sick man before me. An attack of ague,
which he had originally contracted in Holland, had relapsed upon him,
and he was now suffering all the lassitude and sickness of that most
depressing of all maladies.

Maps, books, plans, and sketches of various kinds scattered the bed, the
table, and even the floor around him; but his attitude as I entered
betrayed the exhaustion of one who could labor no longer, and whose
worn-out faculties demanded rest. He lay flat on his back, his arms
straight down beside him, and, with half closed eyes, seemed as though
falling off to sleep.

His first aid-de-camp, Merochamp, was standing with his back to a small
turf fire, and made a sign to us to be still, and make no noise as we
came in.

"He's sleeping," said he, "it's the first time he has closed his eyes
for ten days."

We stood for a moment uncertain, and were about to retrace our steps,
when Humbert said, in a low, weak voice,

"No! I'm not asleep, come in."

The officer who presented me now retired, and I advanced toward the
bed-side.

"This is Tiernay, General," said Merochamp, stooping down and speaking
low, "you wished to see him."

"Yes, I wanted him. Ha! Tiernay, you see me a good deal altered since we
parted last; however, I shall be all right in a day or two; it's a mere
attack of ague, and will leave when the good weather comes. I wished to
ask you about your family, Tiernay; was not your father Irish?"

"No, sir; we were I

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/41401