← catalogue

The Caxtons: A Family Picture — Complete

by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton · English · Gutenberg #7605 · 1,122,575 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Caxtons: A Family Picture — Complete
    
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: The Caxtons: A Family Picture — Complete

Author: Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton


        
Release date: November 22, 2004 [eBook #7605]
                Most recently updated: December 30, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7605

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAXTONS: A FAMILY PICTURE — COMPLETE ***



Produced by Pat Castevens and David Widger





THE CAXTONS

(Complete)

A FAMILY PICTURE

By Edward Bulwer Lytton

(Lord Lytton)




PREFACE.

If it be the good fortune of this work to possess any interest for the
Novel reader, that interest, perhaps, will be but little derived from
the customary elements of fiction. The plot is extremely slight, the
incidents are few, and with the exception of those which involve the
fate of Vivian, such as may be found in the records of ordinary life.

Regarded as a Novel, this attempt is an experiment somewhat apart from
the previous works of the author. It is the first of his writings in
which Humor has been employed, less for the purpose of satire than in
illustration of amiable characters; it is the first, too, in which man
has been viewed, less in his active relations with the world, than in
his repose at his own hearth,--in a word, the greater part of the canvas
has been devoted to the completion of a simple Family Picture. And thus,
in any appeal to the sympathies of the human heart, the common household
affections occupy the place of those livelier or larger passions
which usually (and not unjustly) arrogate the foreground in Romantic
composition.

In the Hero whose autobiography connects the different characters and
events of the work, it has been the Author’s intention to imply the
influences of Home upon the conduct and career of youth; and in the
ambition which estranges Pisistratus for a time from the sedentary
occupations in which the man of civilized life must usually serve his
apprenticeship to Fortune or to Fame, it is not designed to describe
the fever of Genius conscious of superior powers and aspiring to high
destinies, but the natural tendencies of a fresh and buoyant mind,
rather vigorous than contemplative, and in which the desire of action is
but the symptom of health.

Pisistratus in this respect (as he himself feels and implies) becomes
the specimen or type of a class the numbers of which are daily
increasing in the inevitable progress of modern civilization. He is
one too many in the midst of the crowd; he is the representative of the
exuberant energies of youth, turning, as with the instinct of nature for
space and development, from the Old World to the New. That which may be
called the interior meaning of the whole is sought to be completed by
the inference that, whatever our wanderings, our happiness will
always be found within a narrow compass, and amidst the objects more
immediately within our reach, but that we are seldom sensible of this
truth (hackneyed though it be in the Schools of all Philosophies) till
our researches have spread over a wider area. To insure the blessing of
repose, we require a brisker excitement than a few turns up and down our
room. Content is like that humor in the crystal, on which Claudian has
lavished the wonder of a child and the fancies of a Poet,--

           “Vivis gemma tumescit aquis.”

                         E. B. L.

October, 1849.




THE CAXTONS.




PART I.




CHAPTER I.

“Sir--sir, it is a boy!”

“A boy,” said my father, looking up from his book, and evidently much
puzzled: “what is a boy?”

Now my father did not mean by that interrogatory to challenge
philosophical inquiry, nor to demand of the honest but unenlightened
woman who had just rushed into his study, a solution of that mystery,
physiological and psychological, which has puzzled so many curious
sages, and lies still involved in the question, “What is man?” For as we
need not look further than Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary to know that a boy
is “a male child,”--i.e., the male young of man,--so he who would go to
the depth of things, and know scientifically what is a boy, must be able
to ascertain “what is a man.” But for aught I know, my father may have
been satisfied with Buffon on that score, or he may have sided with
Monboddo. He may have agreed with Bishop Berkeley; he may have
contented himself with Professor Combe; he may have regarded the genus
spiritually, like Zeno, or materially, like Epicurus. Grant that boy is
the male young of man, and he would have had plenty of definitions to
choose from. He might have said, “Man is a stomach,--ergo, boy a male
young stomach. Man is a brain,--boy a male young brain. Man is a bundle
of habits,--boy a male young bundle of habits. Man is a machine,--boy
a male young machine. Man is a tail-less monkey,--boy a male young
tail-less monkey. Man is a combination of gases,--boy a male young
combination of gases. Man is an appearance,--boy a male young
appearance,” etc., etc., and etcetera, ad infinitum! And if none of
these definitions had entirely satisfied my father, I am perfectly
persuaded that he would never have come to Mrs. Primmins for a new one.

But it so happened that my father was at that moment engaged in the
important consideration whether the Iliad was written by one Homer, or
was rather a collection of sundry ballads, done into Greek by divers
hands, and finally selected, compiled, and reduced into a whole by a
Committee of Taste, under that elegant old tyrant Pisistratus; and the
sudden affirmation, “It is a boy,” did not seem to him pertinent to the
thread of the discussion. Therefore he asked, “What is a boy?” vaguely,
and, as it were, taken by surprise.

“Lord, sir!” said Mrs. Primmins, “what is a boy? Why, the baby!”

“The baby!” repeated my father, rising. “What, you don’t mean to say
that Mrs. Caxton is--eh?”

“Yes, I do,” said Mrs. Primmins, dropping a courtesy; “and as fine a
little rogue as ever I set eyes upon.”

“Poor dear woman,” said my father, with great compassion. “So soon,
too--so rapidly,” he resumed, in a tone of musing surprise. “Why, it is
but the other day we were married!”

“Bless my heart, sir,” said Mrs. Primmins, much scandalized, “it is ten
months and more.”

“Ten months!” said my father with a sigh. “Ten months! and I have not
finished fifty pages of my refutation of Wolfe’s monstrous theory! In
ten months a child! and I’ll be bound complete,--hands, feet, eyes,
ears, and nose!--and not like this poor Infant of Mind,” and my father
pathetically placed his hand on the treatise, “of which nothing is
formed and shaped, not even the first joint of the little finger! Why,
my wife is a precious woman! Well, keep her quiet. Heaven preserve her,
and send me strength--to support this blessing!”

“But your honor will look at the baby? Come, sir!” and Mrs. Primmins
laid hold of my father’s sleeve coaxingly.

“Look at it,--to be sure,” said my father, kindly; “look at it,
certainly: it is but fair to poor Mrs. Caxton, after taking so much
trouble, dear soul!”

Therewith my father, drawing his dressing-robe round him in more stately
folds, followed Mrs. Primmins upstairs into a room very carefully
darkened.

“How are you, my dear?” said my father, with compassionate tenderness,
as he groped his way to the bed.

A faint voice muttered: “Better now, and so happy!” And at the same
moment Mrs. Primmins pulled my father away, lifted a coverlid from a
small cradle, and holding a candle within an inch of an undeveloped
nose, cried emphatically, “There--bless it!”

“Of course, ma’am, I bless it,” said my father, rather peevishly. “It is
my duty to bless it--Bless It! And this, then, is the way we come into
the world!--red, very red,--blushing for all the follies we are destined
to commit.”

My father sat down on the nurse’s chair, the women grouped round him.
He continued to gaze on the contents of the cradle, and at length said,
musingly, “And Homer was once like this!”

At this moment--and no wonder, considering the propinquity of the
candle to his visual organs--Homer’s infant likeness commenced the first
untutored melodies of nature.

“Homer improved greatly in singing as he grew older,” observed Mr.
Squills, the accoucheur, who was engaged in some mysteries in a corner
of the room.

My father stopped his ears. “Little things can make a great noise,” said
he, philosophically; “and the smaller the thing; the greater noise it
can make.”

So saying, he crept on tiptoe to the bed, and clasping the pale hand
held out to him, whispered some words that no doubt charmed and soothed
the ear that heard them, for that pale hand was suddenly drawn from his
own and thrown tenderly round his neck. The sound of a gentle kiss was
heard through the stillness.

“Mr. Caxton, sir,” cried Mr. Squills, in rebuke, “you agitate my
patient; you must retire.”

My father raised his mild face, looked round apologetically, brushed his
eyes with the back of his hand, stole to the door, and vanished.

“I think,” said a kind gossip seated at the other side of my mother’s
bed, “I think, my dear, that Mr. Caxton might have shown more joy,--more
natural feeling, I may say,--at the sight of the baby: and Such a baby!
But all men are just the same, my dear,--brutes,--all brutes, depend
upon it!”

“Poor Austin!” sighed my mother, feebly; “how little you understand
him!”

“And now I shall clear the room,” said Mr. Squills. “Go to sleep, Mrs.
Caxton.”

“Mr. Squills,” exclaimed my mother, and the bed-curtains trembled, “pray
see that Mr. Caxton does not set himself on fire. And, Mr. Squills, tell
him not to be vexed and miss me,--I shall be down very soon,--sha’ n’t
I?”

“If you keep yourself easy, you will, ma’am.”

“Pray, say so. And, Primmins--”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Every one, I fear, is neglecting your master. Be sure,” and my mother’s
lips approached close to Mrs. Primmins’ ear, “be sure that you--air his
nightcap yourself.”

“Tender creatures those women,” soliloquized Mr. Squills as, after
clearing the room of all present save Mrs. Primmins and the nurse, he
took his way towards my father’s study. Encountering the footman in the
passage, “John,” said he, “take supper into your master’s room, and make
us some punch, will you,--stiffish!”




CHAPTER II.

“Mr. Caxton, how on earth did you ever come to marry?” asked Mr.
Squills, abruptly, with his feet on the hob, while stirring up his
punch.

That was a home question, which many men might reasonably resent; but my
father scarcely knew what resentment was.

“Squills,” said he, turning round from his books, and laying one finger
on the surgeon’s arm confidentially,--“Squills,” said he, “I myself
should be glad to know how I came to be married.”

Mr. Squills was a jovial, good-hearted man,--stout, fat, and with fine
teeth, that made his laugh pleasant to look at as well as to hear. Mr.
Squills, moreover, was a bit of a philosopher in his way,--studied human
nature in curing its diseases; and was accustomed to say that Mr. Caxton
was a better book in himself than all he had in his library. Mr. Squills
laughed, and rubbed his hands.

My father resumed thoughtfully, and in the tone of one who moralizes:--

“There are three great events in life, sir,--birth, marriage, and death.
None know how they are born, few know how they die; but I suspect that
many can account for the intermediate phenomenon--I cannot.”

“It was not for money, it must have been for love,” observed Mr.
Squills; “and your young wife is as pretty as she is good.”

“Ha!” said my father, “I remember.”

“Do you, sir?” exclaimed Squills, highly amused. “How was it?”

My father, as was often the case with him, protracted his reply, and
then seemed rather to commune with himself than to answer Mr. Squills.

“The kindest, the best of men,” he murmured,--“Abyssus Eruditionis.
And to think that he bestowed on me the only fortune he had to leave,
instead of to his own flesh and blood, Jack and Kitty,--all, at least,
that I could grasp, deficiente manu, of his Latin, his Greek, his
Orientals. What do I not owe to him?”

“To whom?” asked Squills. “Good Lord! what’s the man talking about?”

“Yes, sir,” said my father, rousing himself, “such was Giles Tibbets, M.
A., Sol Scientiarum, tutor to the humble scholar you address, and father
to poor Kitty. He left me his Elzevirs; he left me also his orphan
daughter.”

“Oh! as a wife--”

“No, as a ward. So she came to live in my house. I am sure there was no
harm in it. But my neighbors said there was, and the widow Weltraum
told me the girl’s character would suffer. What could I do?--Oh, yes, I
recollect all now! I married her, that my old friend’s child might have
a roof to her head, and come to no harm. You see I was forced to do her
that injury; for, after all, poor young creature, it was a sad lot
for her. A dull bookworm like me,--cochlea vitam agens, Mr.
Squills,--leading the life of a snail! But my shell was all I could
offer to my poor friend’s orphan.”

“Mr. Caxton, I honor you,” said Squills, emphatically, jumping up, and
spilling half a tumblerful of scalding punch over my father’s legs. “You
have a heart, sir; and I understand why your wife loves you. You seem a
cold man, but you have tears in your eyes at this moment.”

“I dare say I have,” said my father, rubbing his shins; “it was
boiling!”

“And your son will be a comfort to you both,” said Mr. Squills,
reseating himself, and, in his friendly emotion, wholly abstracted from
all consciousness of the suffering he had inflicted; “he will be a dove
of peace to your ark.”

“I don’t doubt it,” said my father, ruefully; “only those doves, when
they are small, are a very noisy sort of birds--non talium avium cantos
somnum reducent. However, it might have been worse. Leda had twins.”

“So had Mrs. Barnabas last week,” rejoined the accoucheur. “Who knows
what may be in store for you yet? Here’s a health to Master Caxton, and
lots of brothers and sisters to him.”

“Brothers and sisters! I am sure Mrs. Caxton will never think of such a
thing, sir,” said my father, almost indignantly; “she’s much too good a
wife to behave so. Once in a way it is all very well; but twice--and as
it is, not a paper in its place, nor a pen mended the last three days:
I, too, who can only write cuspide duriuscula,--and the baker coming
twice to me for his bill, too! The Ilithyiae, are troublesome deities,
Mr. Squills.”

“Who are the Ilithyiae?” asked the accoucheur.

“You ought to know,” answered my father, smiling,--“the female daemons
who presided over the Neogilos, or New-born. They take the name from
Juno. See Homer, Book XI. By the by, will my Neogilos be brought up like
Hector, or Astyanax--videlicet, nourished by its mother, or by a nurse?”

“Which do you prefer, Mr. Caxton?” asked Mr. Squills, breaking the sugar
in his tumbler. “In this I always deem it my duty to consult the wishes
of the gentleman.”

“A nurse by all means, then,” said my father. “And let her carry him upo
kolpo, next to her bosom. I know all that has been said about mothers
nursing their own infants, Mr. Squills; but poor Kitty is so sensitive
that I think a stout, healthy peasant woman will be the best for the
boy’s future nerves, and his mother’s nerves, present and future too.
Heigh-ho! I shall miss the dear woman very much. When will she be up,
Mr. Squills?”

“Oh, in less than a fortnight!”

“And then the Neogilos shall go to school,--upo kolpo,--the nurse with
him, and all will be right again,” said my father, with a look of sly,
mysterious humor which was peculiar to him.

“School! when he’s just born?”

“Can’t begin too soon,” said my father, positively; “that’s Helvetius’
opinion, and it is mine too!”




CHAPTER III.

That I was a very wonderful child, I take for granted; but nevertheless
it was not of my own knowledge that I came into possession of the
circumstances set down in my former chapters. But my father’s conduct
on the occasion of my birth made a notable impression upon all who
witnessed it; and Mr. Squills and Mrs. Primmins have related the facts
to me sufficiently often to make me as well acquainted with them as
those worthy witnesses themselves. I fancy I see my father before me, in
his dark-gray dressing-gown, and with his odd, half-sly, half-innocent
twitch of the mouth, and peculiar puzzling look, from two quiet,
abstracted, indolently handsome eyes, at the moment he agreed with
Helvetius on the propriety of sending me to school as soon as I was
born. Nobody knew exactly what to make of my father,--his wife excepted.
The people of Abdera sent for Hippocrates to cure the supposed insanity
of Democritus, “who at that time,” saith Hippocrates, dryly, “was
seriously engaged in philosophy.” That same people of Abdera would
certainly have found very alarming symptoms of madness in my poor
father; for, like Democritus, “he esteemed as nothing the things, great
or small, in which the rest of the world were employed.” Accordingly,
some set him down as a sage, some as a fool. The neighboring clergy
respected him as a scholar, “breathing libraries;” the ladies despised
him as an absent pedant who had no more gallantry than a stock or a
stone. The poor loved him for his charities, but laughed at him as a
weak sort of man, easily taken in. Yet the squires and farmers found
that, in their own matters of rural business, he had always a fund of
curious information to impart; and whoever, young or old, gentle or
simple, learned or ignorant, asked his advice, it was given with not
more humility than wisdom. In the common affairs of life he seemed
incapable of acting for himself; he left all to my mother; or, if taken
unawares, was pretty sure to be the dupe. But in those very affairs, if
another consulted him, his eye brightened, his brow cleared, the desire
of serving made him a new being,--cautious, profound, practical. Too
lazy or too languid where only his own interests were at stake, touch
his benevolence, and all the wheels of the clock-work felt the impetus
of the master-spring. No wonder that, to others, the nut of such
a character was hard to crack! But in the eyes of my poor mother,
Augustine (familiarly Austin) Caxton was the best and the greatest of
human beings; and she ought to have known him well, for she studied him
with her whole heart, knew every trick of his face, and, nine times out
of ten, divined what he was going to say before he opened his lips. Yet
certainly there were deeps in his nature which the plummet of her tender
woman’s wit had never sounded; and certainly it sometimes happened that,
even in his most domestic colloquialisms, my mother was in doubt whether
he was the simple, straightforward person he was mostly taken for.
There was, indeed, a kind of suppressed, subtle irony about him, too
unsubstantial to be popularly called humor, but dimly implying some sort
of jest, which he kept all to himself; and this was only noticeable when
he said something that sounded very grave, or appeared to the grave very
silly and irrational.

That I did not go to school--at least to what Mr. Squills understood by
the word “school”--quite so soon as intended, I need scarcely observe.
In fact, my mother managed so well--my nursery, by means of double
doors, was so placed out of hearing--that my father, for the most part,
was privileged, if he pleased, to forget my existence. He was once
vaguely recalled to it on the occasion of my christening. Now, my father
was a shy man, and he particularly hated all ceremonies and public
spectacles. He became uneasily aware that a great ceremony, in which he
might be called upon to play a prominent part, was at hand. Abstracted
as he was, and conveniently deaf at times, he had heard such significant
whispers about “taking advantage of the bishop’s being in the
neighborhood,” and “twelve new jelly-glasses being absolutely wanted,”
 as to assure him that some deadly festivity was in the wind. And when
the question of godmother and godfather was fairly put to hire,
coupled with the remark that this was a fine opportunity to return the
civilities of the neighborhood, he felt that a strong effort at
escape was the only thing left. Accordingly, having, seemingly without
listening, heard the day fixed and seen, as they thought, without
observing, the chintz chairs in the best drawing-room uncovered (my
dear mother was the tidiest woman in the world), my father suddenly
discovered that there was to be a great book-sale, twenty miles off,
which would last four days, and attend it he must. My mother sighed;
but she never contradicted my father, even when he was wrong, as he
certainly was in this case. She only dropped a timid intimation that she
feared “it would look odd, and the world might misconstrue my father’s
absence,--had not she better put off the christening?”

“My dear,” answered my father, “it will be my duty, by and by, to
christen the boy,--a duty not done in a day. At present, I have no doubt
that the bishop will do very well without me. Let the day stand, or
if you put it off, upon my word and honor I believe that the wicked
auctioneer will put off the book-sale also. Of one thing I am quite
sure, that the sale and the christening will take place at the same
time.” There was no getting over this; but I am certain my dear mother
had much less heart than before in uncovering the chintz chairs in the
best drawing-room. Five years later this would not have happened. My
mother would have kissed my father and said, “Stay,” and he would have
stayed. But she was then very young and timid; and he, wild man, not of
the woods, but the cloisters, not yet civilized into the tractabilities
of home. In short, the post-chaise was ordered and the carpetbag packed.

“My love,” said my mother, the night before this Hegira, looking up
from her work, “my love, there is one thing you have quite forgot to
settle,--I beg pardon for disturbing you, but it is important!--baby’s
name: sha’ n’t we call him Augustine?”

“Augustine,” said my father, dreamily,--“why that name’s mine.”

“And you would like your boy’s to be the same?”

“No,” said my father, rousing himself. “Nobody would know which was
which. I should catch myself learning the Latin accidence, or playing at
marbles. I should never know my own identity, and Mrs. Primmins would be
giving me pap.”

My mother smiled; and putting her hand, which was a very pretty one, on
my father’s shoulder, and looking at him tenderly, she said: “There’s no
fear of mistaking you for any other, even your son, dearest. Still, if
you prefer another name, what shall it be?”

“Samuel,” said my father. “Dr. Parr’s name is Samuel.”

“La, my love! Samuel is the ugliest name--”

My father did not hear the exclamation; he was again deep in his books.
Presently he started up: “Barnes says Homer is Solomon. Read Omeros
backward, in the Hebrew manner--”

“Yes, my love,” interrupted my mother. “But baby’s Christian name?”

“Omeros--Soremo--Solemo--Solomo!”

“Solomo,--shocking!” said my mother.

“Shocking indeed,” echoed my father; “an outrage to common-sense.” Then,
after glancing again over his books, he broke out musingly: “But, after
all, it is nonsense to suppose that Homer was not settled till his
time.”

“Whose?” asked my mother, mechanically. My father lifted up his finger.

My mother continued, after a short pause., “Arthur is a pretty name.
Then there ‘s William--Henry--Charles--Robert. What shall it be, love?”

“Pisistratus!” said my father (who had hung fire till then), in a tone
of contempt,--“Pisistratus, indeed!”

“Pisistratus! a very fine name,” said my mother, joyfully,--“Pisistratus
Caxton. Thank you, my love: Pisistratus it shall be.”

“Do you contradict me? Do you side with Wolfe and Heyne and that
pragmatical fellow Vico? Do you mean to say that the Rhapsodists--”

“No, indeed,” interrupted my mother. “My dear, you frighten me.”

My father sighed, and threw himself back in his chair. My mother took
courage and resumed.

“Pisistratus is a long name too! Still, one could call him Sisty.”

“Siste, Viator,” muttered my father; “that’s trite!”

“No, Sisty by itself--short. Thank you, my dear.”

Four days afterwards, on his return from the book-sale, to my father’s
inexpressible bewilderment, he was informed that Pisistratus was
“growing the very image of him.”

When at length the good man was made thoroughly aware of the fact that
his son and heir boasted a name so memorable in history as that borne by
the enslaver of Athens and the disputed arranger of Homer,--and it was
asserted to be a name that he himself had suggested,--he was as angry as
so mild a man could be. “But it is infamous!” he exclaimed. “Pisistratus
christened! Pisistratus, who lived six hundred years before Christ
was born! Good heavens, madam! you have made me the father of an
Anachronism.”

My mother burst into tears. But the evil was irremediable. An
anachronism I was, and an anachronism I must continue to the end of the
chapter.




CHAPTER IV.

“Of course, sir, you will begin soon to educate your son yourself?” said
Mr. Squills.

“Of course, sir,” said my father, “you have read Martinus Scriblerus?”

“I don’t understand you, Mr. Caxton.”

“Then you have not read Martinus Scriblerus, Mr. Squills!”

“Consider that I have read it; and what then?”

“Why, then, Squills,” said my father, familiarly, “you would know
that though a scholar is often a fool, he is never a fool so supreme,
so superlative, as when he is defacing the first unsullied page of the
human history by entering into it the commonplaces of his own pedantry.
A scholar, sir,--at least one like me,--is of all persons the most
unfit to teach young children. A mother, sir,--a simple, natural, loving
mother,--is the infant’s true guide to knowledge.”

“Egad! Mr. Caxton,--in spite of Helvetius, whom you quoted the night the
boy was born,--egad! I believe you are right.”

“I am sure of it,” said my father,--“at least as sure as a poor mortal
can be of anything. I agree with Helvetius, the child should be educated
from its birth; but how? There is the rub: send him to school forthwith!
Certainly, he is at school already with the two great teachers,--Nature
and Love. Observe, that childhood and genius have the same master-organ
in common,--inquisitiveness. Let childhood have its way, and as it began
where genius begins, it may find what genius finds. A certain Greek
writer tells us of some man who, in order to save his bees a troublesome
flight to Hymettus, cut their wings, and placed before them the finest
flowers he could select. The poor bees made no honey. Now, sir, if I
were to teach my boy, I should be cutting his wings and giving him
the flowers he should find himself. Let us leave Nature alone for the
present, and Nature’s loving proxy, the watchful mother.”

Therewith my father pointed to his heir sprawling on the grass and
plucking daisies on the lawn, while the young mother’s voice rose
merrily, laughing at the child’s glee.

“I shall make but a poor bill out of your nursery, I see,” said Mr.
Squills.

Agreeably to these doctrines, strange in so learned a father, I thrived
and flourished, and learned to spell, and make pot-hooks, under the
joint care of my mother and Dame Primmins. This last was one of an old
race fast dying away,--the race of old, faithful servants; the race of
old, tale-telling nurses. She had reared my mother before me; but
her affection put out new flowers for the new generation. She was a
Devonshire woman; and Devonshire women, especially those who have passed
their youth near the sea-coast, are generally superstitious. She had a
wonderful budget of fables. Before I was six years old, I was erudite in
that primitive literature in which the legends of all nations are traced
to a common fountain,--Puss in Boots, Tom Thumb, Fortunio, Fortunatus,
Jack the Giant-Killer; tales, like proverbs, equally familiar, under
different versions, to the infant worshippers of Budh and the hardier
children of Thor. I may say, without vanity, that in an examination in
those venerable classics I could have taken honors!

My dear mother had some little misgivings as to the solid benefit to be
derived from such fantastic erudition, and timidly consulted my father
thereon.

“My love,” answered my father, in that tone of voice which always
puzzled even my mother to be sure whether he was in jest or earnest,
“in all these fables certain philosophers could easily discover symbolic
significations of the highest morality. I have myself written a treatise
to prove that Puss in Boots is an allegory upon the progress of the
human understanding, having its origin in the mystical schools of the
Egyptian priests, and evidently an illustration of the worship rendered
at Thebes and Memphis to those feline quadrupeds of which they make both
religious symbols and elaborate mummies.”

“My dear Austin,” said my mother, opening her blue eyes, “you don’t
think that Sisty will discover all those fine things in Puss in Boots!”

“My dear Kitty,” answered my father, “you don’t think, when you were
good enough to take up with me, that you found in me all the fine things
I have learned from books. You knew me only as a harmless creature who
was happy enough to please your fancy. By and by you discovered that
I was no worse for all the quartos that have transmigrated into ideas
within me,--ideas that are mysteries even to myself. If Sisty, as you
call the child (plague on that unlucky anachronism! which you do well to
abbreviate into a dissyllable),--if Sisty can’t discover all the wisdom
of Egypt in Puss in Boots, what then? Puss in Boots is harmless, and it
pleases his fancy. All that wakes curiosity is wisdom, if innocent; all
that pleases the fancy now, turns hereafter to love or to knowledge. And
so, my dear, go back to the nursery.”

But I should wrong thee, O best of fathers! if I suffered the reader to
suppose that because thou didst seem so indifferent to my birth, and
so careless as to my early teaching, therefore thou wert, at heart,
indifferent to thy troublesome Neogilos. As I grew older, I became more
sensibly aware that a father’s eye was upon me. I distinctly remember
one incident, that seems to me, in looking back, a crisis in my infant
life, as the first tangible link between my own heart and that calm
great soul.

My father was seated on the lawn before the house, his straw hat over
his eyes (it was summer), and his book on his lap. Suddenly a beautiful
delf blue-and-white flower-pot, which had been set on the window-sill
of an upper story, fell to the ground with a crash, and the fragments
spluttered up round my father’s legs. Sublime in his studies as
Archimedes in the siege, he continued to read,--_Impavidum ferient
ruinae!_

“Dear, dear!” cried my mother, who was at work in the porch, “my poor
flower-pot that I prized so much! Who could have done this? Primmins,
Primmins!”

Mrs. Primmins popped her head out of the fatal window, nodded to the
summons, and came down in a trice, pale and breathless.

“Oh!” said my mother, Mournfully, “I would rather have lost all the
plants in the greenhouse in the great blight last May,--I would rather
the best tea-set were broken! The poor geranium I reared myself, and the
dear, dear flower-pot which Mr. Caxton bought for me my last birthday!
That naughty child must have done this!”

Mrs. Primmins was dreadfully afraid of my father,--why, I know not,
except that very talkative social persons are usually afraid of
very silent shy ones. She cast a hasty glance at her master, who was
beginning to evince signs of attention, and cried promptly, “No, ma’am,
it was not the dear boy, bless his flesh, it was I!”

“You? How could you be so careless? and you knew how I prized them both.
Oh, Primmins!” Primmins began to sob.

“Don’t tell fibs, nursey,” said a small, shrill voice; and Master Sisty,
coming out of the house as bold as brass, continued rapidly--“don’t
scold Primmins, mamma: it was I who pushed out the flower-pot.”

“Hush!” said nurse, more frightened than ever, and looking aghast
towards my father, who had very deliberately taken off his hat, and was
regarding the scene with serious eyes wide awake. “Hush! And if he did
break it, ma’am, it was quite an accident; he was standing so, and he
never meant it. Did you, Master Sisty? Speak!” this in a whisper, “or Pa
will be so angry.”

“Well,” said my mother, “I suppose it was an accident; take care in
future, my child. You are sorry, I see, to have grieved me. There’s a
kiss; don’t fret.”

“No, mamma, you must not kiss me; I don’t deserve it. I pushed out the
flower-pot on purpose.”

“Ha! and why?” said my father, walking up.

Mrs. Primmins trembled like a leaf.

“For fun!” said I, hanging my head,--“just to see how you’d look, papa;
and that’s the truth of it. Now beat me, do beat me!”

My father threw his book fifty yards off, stooped down, and caught me to
his breast. “Boy,” he said, “you have done wrong: you shall repair it by
remembering all your life that your father blessed God for giving him a
son who spoke truth in spite of fear! Oh! Mrs. Primmins, the next fable
of this kind you try to teach him, and we part forever!”

From that time I first date the hour when I felt that I loved my father,
and knew that he loved me; from that time, too, he began to converse
with me. He would no longer, if he met me in the garden, pass by with a
smile and nod; he would stop, put his book in his pocket, and though his
talk was often above my comprehension, still somehow I felt happier
and better, and less of an infant, when I thought over it, and tried
to puzzle out the meaning; for he had a way of suggesting, not teaching,
putting things into my head, and then leaving them to work out their
own problems. I remember a special instance with respect to that same
flower-pot and geranium. Mr. Squills, who was a bachelor, and well-to-do
in the world, often made me little presents. Not long after the event
I have narrated, he gave me one far exceeding in value those usually
bestowed on children,--it was a beautiful large domino-box in cut ivory,
painted and gilt. This domino-box was my delight. I was never weary of
playing, at dominos with Mrs. Primmins, and I slept with the box under
my pillow.

“Ah!” said my father one day, when he found me ranging the ivory
parallelograms in the parlor, “ah! you like that better than all your
playthings, eh?”

“Oh, yes, papa!”

“You would be very sorry if your mamma were to throw that box out of the
window and break it for fun.” I looked beseechingly at my father, and
made no answer.

“But perhaps you would be very glad,” he resumed, “if suddenly one
of those good fairies you read of could change the domino-box into a
beautiful geranium in a beautiful blue-and-white flower-pot, and you
could have the pleasure of putting it on your mamma’s window-sill.”

“Indeed I would!” said I, half-crying.

“My dear boy, I believe you; but good wishes don’t mend bad actions:
good actions mend bad actions.”

So saying, he shut the door and went out. I cannot tell you how puzzled
I was to make out what my father meant by his aphorism. But I know that
I played at dominos no more that day. The next morning my father found
me seated by myself under a tree in the garden; he paused, and looked at
me with his grave bright eyes very steadily.

“My boy,” said he, “I am going to walk to ----,” a town about two miles
off: “will you come? And, by the by, fetch your domino-box. I should
like to show it to a person there.” I ran in for the box, and, not a
little proud of walking with my father upon the high-road, we set out.

“Papa,” said I by the way, “there are no fairies now.”

“What then, my child?”

“Why, how then can my domino-box be changed into a geranium and a
blue-and-white flower-pot?”

“My dear,” said my father, leaning his hand on my shoulder, “everybody
who is in earnest to be good, carries two fairies about with him,--one
here,” and he touched my heart, “and one here,” and he touched my
forehead.

“I don’t understand, papa.”

“I can wait till you do, Pisistratus. What a name!”

My father stopped at a nursery gardener’s, and after looking over the
flowers, paused before a large double geranium. “Ah! this is finer than
that which your mamma was so fond of. What is the cost, sir?”

“Only 7s. 6d.,” said the gardener.

My father buttoned up his pocket. “I can’t afford it to-day,” said he,
gently, and we walked out.

On entering the town, we stopped again at a china warehouse. “Have you
a flower-pot like that I bought some months ago? Ah! here is one, marked
3s. 6d. Yes, that is the price. Well; when your mamma’s birthday comes
again, we must buy her another. That is some months to wait. And we can
wait, Master Sisty. For truth, that blooms all the year round, is better
than a poor geranium; and a word that is never broken, is better than a
piece of delf.”

My head, which had drooped before, rose again; but the rush of joy at my
heart almost stifled me.

“I have called to pay your little bill,” said my father, entering the
shop of one of those fancy stationers common in country towns, and who
sell all kinds of pretty toys and knick-knacks. “And by the way,” he
added, as the smiling shopman looked over his books for the entry,
“I think my little boy here can show you a much handsomer specimen of
French workmanship than that work-box which you enticed Mrs. Caxton into
raffling for, last winter. Show your domino-box, my dear.”

I produced my treasure, and the shopman was liberal in his
commendations. “It is always well, my boy, to know what a thing is
worth, in case one wishes to part with it. If my young gentleman gets
tired of his plaything, what will you give him for it?”

“Why, sir,” said the shopman, “I fear we could not afford to give more
than eighteen shillings for it, unless the young gentleman took some of
these pretty things in exchange.”

“Eighteen shillings!” said my father; “you would give that sum! Well, my
boy, whenever you do grow tired of your box, you have my leave to sell
it.”

My father paid his bill and went out. I lingered behind a few moments,
and joined him at the end of the street.

“Papa, papa,” I cried, clapping my hands, “we can buy the geranium;
we can buy the flower-pot.” And I pulled a handful of silver from my
pockets.

“Did I not say right?” said my father, passing his handkerchief over his
eyes. “You have found the two fairies!”

Oh! how proud, how overjoyed I was when, after placing vase and flower
on the window-sill, I plucked my mother by the gown and made her follow
me to the spot.

“It is his doing and his money!” said my father; “good actions have
mended the bad.”

“What!” cried my mother, when she had learned all; “and your poor
domino-box that you were so fond of! We will go back to-morrow and buy
it back, if it costs us double.”

“Shall we buy it back, Pisistratus?” asked my father.

“Oh, no--no--no! It would spoil all,” I cried, burying my face on my
father’s breast.

“My wife,” said my father, solemnly, “this is my first lesson to our
child,--the sanctity and the happiness of self-sacrifice; undo not what
it should teach to his dying day.”




CHAPTER V.

When I was between my seventh and my eighth year, a change came over me,
which may perhaps be familiar to the notice of those parents who
boast the anxious blessing of an only child. The ordinary vivacity
of childhood forsook me; I became quiet, sedate, and thoughtful. The
absence of play-fellows of my own age, the companionship of mature
minds, alternated only by complete solitude, gave something precocious,
whether to my imagination or my reason. The wild fables muttered to
me by the old nurse in the summer twilight or over the winter’s
hearth,--the effort made by my struggling intellect to comprehend the
grave, sweet wisdom of my father’s suggested lessons,--tended to feed a
passion for revery, in which all my faculties strained and struggled, as
in the dreams that come when sleep is nearest waking. I had learned to
read with ease, and to write with some fluency, and I already began to
imitate, to reproduce. Strange tales akin to those I had gleaned from
fairy-land, rude songs modelled from such verse-books as fell into my
hands, began to mar the contents of marble-covered pages designed for
the less ambitious purposes of round text and multiplication. My mind
was yet more disturbed by the intensity of my home affections. My love
for both my parents had in it something morbid and painful. I often wept
to think how little I could do for those I loved so well. My fondest
fancies built up imaginary difficulties for them, which my arm was to
smooth. These feelings, thus cherished, made my nerves over-susceptible
and acute. Nature began to affect me powerfully; and, from that
affection rose a restless curiosity to analyze the charms that so
mysteriously moved me to joy or awe, to smiles or tears. I got my father
to explain to me the elements of astronomy; I extracted from Squills,
who was an ardent botanist, some of the mysteries in the life of
flowers. But music became my darling passion. My mother (though the
daughter of a great scholar,--a scholar at whose name my father raised
his hat if it happened to be on his head) possessed, I must own it
fairly, less book-learning than many a humble tradesman’s daughter can
boast in this more enlightened generation; but she had some natural
gifts which had ripened, Heaven knows how! into womanly accomplishments.
She drew with some elegance, and painted flowers to exquisite
perfection. She played on more than one instrument with more than
boarding-school skill; and though she sang in no language but her own,
few could hear her sweet voice without being deeply touched. Her music,
her songs, had a wondrous effect on me. Thus, altogether, a kind of
dreamy yet delightful melancholy seized upon my whole being; and this
was the more remarkable because contrary to my early temperament, which
was bold, active, and hilarious. The change in my character began to act
upon my form. From a robust and vigorous infant, I grew into a pale and
slender boy. I began to ail and mope. Mr. Squills was called in.

“Tonics!” said Mr. Squills; “and don’t let him sit over his book. Send
him out in the air; make him play. Come here, my boy: these organs are
growing too large;” and Mr. Squills, who was a phrenologist, placed his
hand on my forehead. “Gad, sir, here’s an ideality for you; and, bless
my soul, what a constructiveness!”

My father pushed aside his papers, and walked to and fro the room with
his hands behind him; but he did not say a word till Mr. Squills was
gone.

“My dear,” then said he to my mother, on whose breast I was leaning
my aching ideality--“my dear, Pisistratus must go to school in good
earnest.”

“Bless me, Austin!--at his age?”

“He is nearly eight years old.”

“But he is so forward.”

“It is for that reason he must go to school.”

“I don’t quite understand you, my love. I know he is getting past me;
but you who are so clever--”

My father took my mother’s hand: “We can teach him nothing now, Kitty.
We send him to school to be taught--”

“By some schoolmaster who knows much less than you do--”

“By little schoolboys, who will make him a boy again,” said my father,
almost sadly. “My dear, you remember that when our Kentish gardener
planted those filbert-trees, and when they were in their third year,
and you began to calculate on what they would bring in, you went out one
morning, and found he had cut them down to the ground. You were vexed,
and asked why. What did the gardener say? ‘To prevent their bearing
too soon.’ There is no want of fruitfulness here: put back the hour of
produce, that the plant may last.”

“Let me go to school,” said I, lifting my languid head and smiling on my
father. I understood him at once, and it was as if the voice of my life
itself answered him.




CHAPTER VI.

A year after the resolution thus come to, I was at home for the
holidays.

“I hope,” said my mother, “that they are doing Sisty justice. I do think
he is not nearly so quick a child as he was before he went to school. I
wish you would examine him, Austin.”

“I have examined him, my dear. It is just as I expected; and I am quite
satisfied.”

“What! you really think he has come on?” said my mother, joyfully.

“He does not care a button for botany now,” said Mr. Squills.

“And he used to be so fond of music, dear boy!” observed my mother, with
a sigh. “Good gracious, what noise is that?”

“Your son’s pop-gun against the window,” said my father. “It is lucky it
is only the window; it would have made a less deafening noise, though,
if it had been Mr. Squills’s head, as it was yesterday morning.”

“The left ear,” observed Squills; “and a very sharp blow it was too. Yet
you are satisfied, Mr. Caxton?”

“Yes; I think the boy is now as great a blockhead as most boys of his
age are,” observed my father with great complacency.

“Dear me, Austin,--a great blockhead?”

“What else did he go to school for?” asked my father.

And observing a certain dismay in the face of his female audience, and
a certain surprise in that of his male, he rose and stood on the
hearth, with one hand in his waistcoat, as was his wont when about to
philosophize in more detail than was usual to him.

“Mr. Squills,” said he, “you have had great experience in families.”

“As good a practice as any in the county,” said Mr. Squills, proudly;
“more than I can manage. I shall advertise for a partner.”

“And,” resumed my father, “you must have observed almost invariably that
in every family there is what father, mother, uncle, and aunt pronounce
to be one wonderful child.”

“One at least,” said Mr. Squills, smiling.

“It is easy,” continued my father, “to say this is parental partiality;
but it is not so. Examine that child as a stranger, and it will
startle yourself. You stand amazed at its eager curiosity, its quick
comprehension, its ready wit, its delicate perception. Often, too, you
will find some faculty strikingly developed. The child will have a turn
for mechanics, perhaps, and make you a model of a steamboat; or it will
have an ear tuned to verse, and will write you a poem like that it
has got by heart from ‘The Speaker;’ or it will take to botany (like
Pisistratus), with the old maid its aunt; or it will play a march on its
sister’s pianoforte. In short, even you, Squills, will declare that it
is really a wonderful child.”

“Upon my word,” said Mr. Squills, thoughtfully, “there’s a great deal
of truth in what you say. Little Tom Dobbs is a wonderful child; so is
Frank Stepington--and as for Johnny Styles, I must bring him here for
you to hear him prattle on Natural History, and see how well he handles
his pretty little microscope.”

“Heaven forbid!” said my father. “And now let me proceed. These
thaumata, or wonders, last till when, Mr. Squills?--last till the boy
goes to school; and then, somehow or other, the thaumata vanish into
thin air, like ghosts at the cockcrow. A year after the prodigy has been
at the academy, father and mother, uncle and aunt, plague you no more
with his doings and sayings: the extraordinary infant has become a very
ordinary little boy. Is it not so, Mr. Squills?”

“Indeed you are right, sir. How did you come to be so observant? You
never seem to--”

“Hush!” interrupted my father; and then, looking fondly at my mother’s
anxious face, he said soothingly: “Be comforted; this is wisely
ordained, and it is for the best.”

“It must be the fault of the school,” said my mother, shaking her head.

“It is the necessity of the school, and its virtue, my Kate. Let any
one of these wonderful children--wonderful as you thought Sisty
himself--stay at home, and you will see its head grow bigger and bigger,
and its body thinner and thinner--eh, Mr. Squills?--till the mind take
all nourishment from the frame, and the frame, in turn, stint or make
sickly the mind. You see that noble oak from the window. If the Chinese
had brought it up, it would have been a tree in miniature at five years
old, and at a hundred, you would have set it in a flowerpot on your
table, no bigger than it was at five,--a curiosity for its maturity at
one age; a show for its diminutiveness at the other. No! the ordeal for
talent is school; restore the stunted mannikin to the growing child, and
then let the child, if it can, healthily, hardily, naturally, work its
slow way up into greatness. If greatness be denied it, it will at least
be a man; and that is better than to be a little Johnny Styles all its
life,--an oak in a pill-box.”

At that moment I rushed into the room, glowing and panting, health on my
cheek, vigor in my limbs, all childhood at my heart. “Oh, mamma, I have
got up the kite--so high! Come and see! Do come, papa!”

“Certainly,” said my father; “only don’t cry so loud,--kites make no
noise in rising; yet, you see how they soar above the world. Come, Kate.
Where is my hat? Ah!--thank you, my boy.”

“Kitty,” said my father, looking at the kite, which, attached by its
string to the peg I had stuck into the ground, rested calm in the sky,
“never fear but what our kite shall fly as high; only, the human soul
has stronger instincts to mount upward than a few sheets of paper on
a framework of lath. But observe that to prevent its being lost in
the freedom of space,--we must attach it lightly to earth; and observe
again, my dear, that the higher it soars, the more string we must give
it.”




PART II.




CHAPTER I.

When I had reached the age of twelve, I had got to the head of the
preparatory school to which I had been sent. And having thus exhausted
all the oxygen of learning in that little receiver, my parents looked
out for a wider range for my inspirations. During the last two years in
which I had been at school, my love for study had returned; but it was
a vigorous, wakeful, undreamy love, stimulated by competition, and
animated by the practical desire to excel.

My father no longer sought to curb my intellectual aspirings. He had too
great a reverence for scholarship not to wish me to become a scholar if
possible; though he more than once said to me somewhat sadly, “Master
books, but do not let them master you. Read to live, not live to read.
One slave of the lamp is enough for a household; my servitude must not
be a hereditary bondage.”

My father looked round for a suitable academy; and the fame of Dr.
Herman’s “Philhellenic Institute” came to his ears.

Now, this Dr. Herman was the son of a German music-master who had
settled in England. He had completed his own education at the University
of Bonn; but finding learning too common a drug in that market to bring
the high price at which he valued his own, and having some theories as
to political freedom which attached him to England, he resolved upon
setting up a school, which he designed as an “Era in the History of the
Human Mind.” Dr. Herman was one of the earliest of those new-fashioned
authorities in education who have, more lately, spread pretty numerously
amongst us, and would have given, perhaps, a dangerous shake to the
foundations of our great classical seminaries, if those last had not
very wisely, though very cautiously, borrowed some of the more sensible
principles which lay mixed and adulterated amongst the crotchets and
chimeras of their innovating rivals and assailants.

Dr. Herman had written a great many learned works against every
pre-existing method of instruction; that which had made the greatest
noise was upon the infamous fiction of Spelling-Books: “A more lying,
roundabout, puzzle-headed delusion than that by which we confuse the
clear instincts of truth in our accursed systems of spelling, was never
concocted by the father of falsehood.” Such was the exordium of this
famous treatise. For instance, take the monosyllable Cat. What a brazen
forehead you must have when you say to an infant, c, a, t,--spell Cat:
that is, three sounds, forming a totally opposite compound,--opposite in
every detail, opposite in the whole,--compose a poor little monosyllable
which, if you would but say the simple truth, the child will learn to
spell merely by looking at it! How can three sounds, which run thus to
the ear, see-eh-tee, compose the sound cat? Don’t they rather compose
the sound see-eh-te, or ceaty? How can a system of education flourish
that begins by so monstrous a falsehood, which the sense of hearing
suffices to contradict? No wonder that the horn-book is the despair of
mothers! From this instance the reader will perceive that Dr. Herman,
in his theory of education, began at the beginning,--he took the
bull fairly by the horns. As for the rest, upon a broad principle of
eclecticism, he had combined together every new patent invention for
youthful idea-shooting. He had taken his trigger from Hofwyl; he had
bought his wadding from Hamilton; he had got his copper-caps from Bell
and Lancaster. The youthful idea,--he had rammed it tight! he had rammed
it loose! he had rammed it with pictorial illustrations! he had rammed
it with the monitorial system! he had rammed it in every conceivable
way, and with every imaginable ramrod! but I have mournful doubts
whether he shot the youthful idea an inch farther than it did under the
old mechanism of flint and steel! Nevertheless, as Dr. Herman really
did teach a great many things too much neglected at schools; as,
besides Latin and Greek, he taught a vast variety in that vague
infinite nowadays called “useful knowledge;” as he engaged lecturers
on chemistry, engineering, and natural history; as arithmetic and the
elements of physical science were enforced with zeal and care; as
all sorts of gymnastics were intermingled with the sports of the
playground,--so the youthful idea, if it did not go farther, spread its
shots in a wider direction, and a boy could not stay there five years
without learning something: which is more than can be said of all
schools! He learned at least to use his eyes and his ears and his limbs;
order, cleanliness, exercise, grew into habits; and the school pleased
the ladies and satisfied the gentlemen,--in a word, it thrived; and Dr.
Herman, at the time I speak of, numbered more than one hundred pupils.
Now, when the worthy man first commenced the task of tuition, he had
proclaimed the humanest abhorrence to the barbarous system of corporal
punishment. But alas! as his school increased in numbers, he had
proportionately recanted these honorable and anti-birchen ideas.
He had--reluctantly, perhaps, honestly, no doubt; but with full
determination--come to the conclusion that there are secret springs
which can only be detected by the twigs of the divining-rod; and having
discovered with what comparative ease the whole mechanism of his little
government could be carried on by the admission of the birch-regulator,
so, as he grew richer and lazier and fatter, the Philhellenic Institute
spun along as glibly as a top kept in vivacious movement by the
perpetual application of the lash.

I believe that the school did not suffer in reputation from this sad
apostasy on the part of the head-master; on the contrary, it seemed more
natural and English,--less outlandish and heretical. And it was at
the zenith of its renown when, one bright morning, with all my clothes
nicely mended, and a large plum-cake in my box, I was deposited at its
hospitable gates.

Amongst Dr. Herman’s various whimsicalities there was one to which he
had adhered with more fidelity than to the anti-corporal punishment
articles of his creed; and, in fact, it was upon this that he had
caused those imposing words, “Philhellenic Institute,” to blaze in gilt
capitals in front of his academy. He belonged to that illustrious class
of scholars who are now waging war on our popular mythologies, and
upsetting all the associations which the Etonians and Harrovians connect
with the household names of ancient history. In a word, he sought
to restore to scholastic purity the mutilated orthography of Greek
appellatives. He was extremely indignant that little boys should be
brought up to confound Zeus with Jupiter, Ares with Mars, Artemis
with Diana,--the Greek deities with the Roman; and so rigidly did he
inculcate the doctrine that these two sets of personages were to be
kept constantly contradistinguished from each other, that his
cross-examinations kept us in eternal confusion.

“Vat,” he would exclaim to some new boy fresh from some grammar-school
on the Etonian system--“Vat do you mean by dranslating Zeus Jupiter? Is
dat amatory, irascible, cloud-compelling god of Olympus, vid his eagle
and his aegis, in the smallest degree resembling de grave, formal, moral
Jupiter Optimus Maximus of the Roman Capitol?--a god, Master Simpkins,
who would have been perfectly shocked at the idea of running after
innocent Fraulein dressed up as a swan or a bull! I put dat question to
you vonce for all, Master Simpkins.” Master Simpkins took care to agree
with the Doctor. “And how could you,” resumed Dr. Herman majestically,
turning to some other criminal alumnus,--“how could you presume to
dranslate de Ares of Homer, sir, by the audacious vulgarism Mars?--Ares,
Master Jones, who roared as loud as ten thousand men when he was hurt;
or as you vill roar if I catch you calling him Mars again?--Ares, who
covered seven plectra of ground? Confound Ares, the manslayer, with the
Mars or Mavors whom de Romans stole from de Sabines!--Mars, de solemn
and calm protector of Rome! Master Jones, Master Jones, you ought to be
ashamed of yourself!” And then waxing enthusiastic, and warming more and
more into German gutturals and pronunciation, the good Doctor would lift
up his hands, with two great rings on his thumbs, and exclaim: “Und Du!
and dou, Aphrodite,--dou, whose bert de seasons velcomed! dou, who
didst put Atonis into a coffer, and den tid durn him into an
anemone! dou to be called Venus by dat snivel-nosed little Master
Budderfield!--Venus, who presided over Baumgartens and funerals and
nasty tinking sewers!--Venus Cloacina, O mein Gott! Come here, Master
Budderfield: I must flog you for dat; I must indeed, liddle boy!” As our
Philhellenic preceptor carried his archaeological purism into all Greek
proper names, it was not likely that my unhappy baptismal would escape.
The first time I signed my exercise I wrote “Pisistratus Caxton” in my
best round-hand. “And dey call your baba a scholar!” said the Doctor,
contemptuously. “Your name, sir, is Greek; and, as Greek, you vill
be dood enough to write it, vith vat you call an e and an
o,--P,e,i,s,i,s,t,r,a,t,o,s. Vat can you expect for to come to,
Master Caxton, if you don’t pay de care dat is proper to your own dood
name,--de e, and de o? Ach? let me see no more of your vile corruptions!
Mein Gott! Pi! ven de name is Pei!”

The next time I wrote home to my father, modestly implying that I
was short of cash, that a trap-bat would be acceptable, and that the
favorite goddess amongst the boys (whether Greek or Roman was very
immaterial) was Diva Moneta, I felt a glow of classical pride in signing
myself “your affectionate Peisistratos.” The next post brought a sad
damper to my scholastic exultation. The letter ran thus:--

   My Dear Son,--I prefer my old acquaintances Thucydides and
   Pisistratus to Thoukudides and Peisistratos. Horace is familiar to
   me, but Horatius is only known to me as Cocles. Pisistratus can
   play at trap-ball; but I find no authority in pure Greek to allow
   me to suppose that that game was known to Peisistratos. I should
   be too happy to send you a drachma or so, but I have no coins in my
   possession current at Athens at the time when Pisistratus was spelt
   Peisistratos.--Your affectionate father,
                         A. CAXTON.

Verily, here indeed was the first practical embarrassment produced
by that melancholy anachronism which my father had so prophetically
deplored. However, nothing like experience to prove the value of
compromise in this world. Peisistratos continued to write exercises, and
a second letter from Pisistratus was followed by the trap-bat.




CHAPTER II.

I was somewhere about sixteen when, on going home for the holidays, I
found my mother’s brother settled among the household Lares. Uncle
Jack, as he was familiarly called, was a light-hearted, plausible,
enthusiastic, talkative fellow, who had spent three small fortunes in
trying to make a large one.

Uncle Jack was a great speculator; but in all his speculations he
never affected to think of himself,--it was always the good of his
fellow-creatures that he had at heart, and in this ungrateful world
fellow-creatures are not to be relied upon! On coming of age, he
inherited L6,000, from his maternal grandfather. It seemed to him then
that his fellow-creatures were sadly imposed upon by their tailors.
Those ninth parts of humanity notoriously eked out their fractional
existence by asking nine times too much for the clothing which
civilization, and perhaps a change of climate, render more necessary to
us than to our predecessors, the Picts. Out of pure philanthropy, Uncle
Jack started a “Grand National Benevolent Clothing Company,” which
undertook to supply the public with inexpressibles of the best Saxon
cloth at 7s. 6d. a pair; coats, superfine, L1 18s.; and waistcoats at
so much per dozen,--they were all to be worked off by steam. Thus
the rascally tailors were to be put down, humanity clad, and the
philanthropists rewarded (but that was a secondary consideration) with a
clear return of thirty per cent. In spite of the evident charitableness
of this Christian design, and the irrefragable calculations upon
which it was based, this company died a victim to the ignorance and
unthankfulness of our fellow-creatures; and all that remained of Jack’s
L6,000, was a fifty-fourth share in a small steam-engine, a large
assortment of ready-made pantaloons, and the liabilities of the
directors.

Uncle Jack disappeared, and went on his travels. The same spirit of
philanthropy which characterized the speculations of his purse attended
the risks of his person. Uncle Jack had a natural leaning towards all
distressed communities: if any tribe, race, or nation was down in the
world, Uncle Jack threw himself plump into the scale to redress
the balance. Poles, Greeks (the last were then fighting the Turks),
Mexicans, Spaniards,--Uncle Jack thrust his nose into all their
squabbles! Heaven forbid I should mock thee, poor Uncle Jack, for those
generous predilections towards the unfortunate; only, whenever a nation
is in a misfortune, there is always a job going on! The Polish
cause, the Greek cause, the Mexican cause, and the Spanish cause are
necessarily mixed up with loans and subscriptions. These Continental
patriots, when they take up the sword with one hand, generally contrive
to thrust their other hand deep into their neighbor’s breeches’ pockets.
Uncle Jack went to Greece, thence he went to Spain, thence to Mexico.
No doubt he was of great service to those afflicted populations, for
he came back with unanswerable proof of their gratitude in the shape
of L3,000. Shortly after this appeared a prospectus of the “New, Grand,
National, Benevolent Insurance Company, for the Industrial Classes.”
 This invaluable document, after setting forth the immense benefits
to society arising from habits of providence and the introduction of
insurance companies,--proving the infamous rate of premiums exacted
by the existent offices, and their inapplicability to the wants of the
honest artisan, and declaring that nothing but the purest intentions
of benefiting their fellow-creatures, and raising the moral tone of
society, had led the directors to institute a new society, founded on
the noblest principles and the most moderate calculations,--proceeded
to demonstrate that twenty-four and a half per cent was the smallest
possible return the shareholders could anticipate. The company began
under the fairest auspices; an archbishop was caught as president, on
the condition always that he should give nothing but his name to the
society. Uncle Jack--more euphoniously designated as “the celebrated
philanthropist, John Jones Tibbets, Esquire”--was honorary secretary,
and the capital stated at two millions. But such was the obtuseness
of the industrial classes, so little did they perceive the benefits
of subscribing one-and-ninepence a-week from the age of twenty-one to
fifty, in order to secure at the latter age the annuity of L18, that the
company dissolved into thin air, and with it dissolved also Uncle Jack’s
L3,000. Nothing more was then seen or heard of him for three years. So
obscure was his existence that on the death of an aunt, who left him
a small farm in Cornwall, it was necessary to advertise that “If John
Jones Tibbets, Esq., would apply to Messrs. Blunt & Tin, Lothbury,
between the hours of ten and four, he would hear of something to his
advantage.” But even as a conjurer declares that he will call the ace
of spades, and the ace of spades, that you thought you had safely under
your foot, turns up on the table,--so with this advertisement suddenly
turned up Uncle Jack. With inconceivable satisfaction did the new
landowner settle himself in his comfortable homestead. The farm, which
was about two hundred acres, was in the best possible condition, and
saving one or two chemical preparations, which cost Uncle Jack, upon the
most scientific principles, thirty acres of buckwheat, the ears of
which came up, poor things, all spotted and speckled as if they had been
inoculated with the small-pox, Uncle Jack for the first two years was
a thriving man. Unluckily, however, one day Uncle Jack discovered a
coal-mine in a beautiful field of Swedish turnips; in another week
the house was full of engineers and naturalists, and in another month
appeared; in my uncle’s best style, much improved by practice, a
prospectus of the “Grand National Anti-Monopoly Coal Company, instituted
on behalf of the poor householders of London, and against the Monster
Monopoly of the London Coal Wharves.

“A vein of the finest coal has been discovered on the estates of the
celebrated philanthropist, John Jones Tibbets, Esq. This new mine, the
Molly Wheel, having been satisfactorily tested by that eminent engineer,
Giles Compass, Esq., promises an inexhaustible field to the energies of
the benevolent and the wealth of the capitalist. It is calculated that
the best coals may be delivered, screened, at the mouth of the Thames
for 18s. per load, yielding a profit of not less than forty-eight per
cent to the shareholders. Shares L50, to be paid in five instalments.
Capital to be subscribed, one million. For shares, early application
must be made to Messrs. Blunt & Tin, solicitors, Lothbury.”

Here, then, was something tangible for fellow-creatures to go on: there
was land, there was a mine, there was coal, and there actually came
shareholders and capital. Uncle Jack was so persuaded that his fortune
was now to be made, and had, moreover, so great a desire to share the
glory of ruining the monster monopoly of the London wharves, that
he refused a very large offer to dispose of the property altogether,
remained chief shareholder, and removed to London, where he set up his
carriage and gave dinners to his fellow-directors. For no less than
three years did this company flourish, having submitted the entire
direction and working of the mines to that eminent engineer, Giles
Compass. Twenty per cent was paid regularly by that gentleman to the
shareholders, and the shares were at more than cent per cent, when one
bright morning Giles Compass, Esq., unexpectedly removed himself to
that wider field for genius like his, the United States; and it was
discovered that the mine had for more than a year run itself into
a great pit of water, and that Mr. Compass had been paying the
shareholders out of their own capital. My uncle had the satisfaction
this time of being ruined in very good company; three doctors of
divinity, two county members, a Scotch lord, and an East India director
were all in the same boat,--that boat which went down with the coal-mine
into the great water-pit!

It was just after this event that Uncle Jack, sanguine and light-hearted
as ever, suddenly recollected his sister, Mrs. Caxton, and not knowing
where else to dine, thought he would repose his limbs under my father’s
trabes citrea, which the ingenious W. S. Landor opines should be
translated “mahogany.” You never saw a more charming man than Uncle
Jack.

All plump people are more popular than thin people. There is something
jovial and pleasant in the sight of a round face! What conspiracy
could succeed when its head was a lean and hungry-looking fellow, like
Cassius? If the Roman patriots had had Uncle Jack amongst them, perhaps
they would never have furnished a tragedy to Shakspeare. Uncle Jack was
as plump as a partridge,--not unwieldy, not corpulent, not obese,
not vastus, which Cicero objects to in an orator, but every crevice
comfortably filled up. Like the ocean, “time wrote no wrinkles on his
glassy [or brassy] brow.” His natural lines were all upward curves, his
smile most ingratiating, his eye so frank, even his trick of rubbing his
clean, well-fed, English-looking hands, had something about it coaxing
and debonnaire, something that actually decoyed you into trusting your
money into hands so prepossessing. Indeed, to him might be fully applied
the expression--Sedem animce in extremis digitis habet,--“He had his
soul’s seat in his finger-ends.” The critics observe that few men have
ever united in equal perfection the imaginative with the scientific
faculties. “Happy he,” exclaims Schiller, “who combines the enthusiast’s
warmth with the worldly man’s light:” light and warmth, Uncle Jack
had them both. He was a perfect symphony of bewitching enthusiasm and
convincing calculation. Dicaeopolis in the “Aeharnenses,” in presenting
a gentleman called Nicharchus to the audience, observes: “He is small,
I confess, but, there is nothing lost in him: all is knave that is not
fool.” Parodying the equivocal compliment, I may say that though Uncle
Jack was no giant, there was nothing lost in him. Whatever was not
philanthropy was arithmetic, and whatever was not arithmetic was
philanthropy. He would have been equally dear to Howard and to Cocker.
Uncle Jack was comely too,--clear-skinned and florid, had a little
mouth, with good teeth, wore no whiskers, shaved his beard as close as
if it were one of his grand national companies; his hair, once somewhat
sandy, was now rather grayish, which increased the respectability of his
appearance; and he wore it flat at the sides and raised in a peak at the
top; his organs of constructiveness and ideality were pronounced by Mr.
Squills to be prodigious, and those freely developed bumps gave great
breadth to his forehead. Well-shaped, too, was Uncle Jack, about five
feet eight,--the proper height for an active man of business. He wore
a black coat; but to make the nap look the fresher, he had given it the
relief of gilt buttons, on--which were wrought a small crown and anchor;
at a distance this button looked like the king’s button, and gave him
the air of one who has a place about Court. He always wore a white
neckcloth without starch, a frill, and a diamond pin, which last
furnished him with observations upon certain mines of Mexico, which
he had a great, but hitherto unsatisfied, desire of seeing worked by a
grand National United Britons Company. His waistcoat of a morning was
pale buff--of an evening, embroidered velvet; wherewith were connected
sundry schemes of an “association for the improvement of native
manufactures.” His trousers, matutinally, were of the color vulgarly
called “blotting-paper;” and he never wore boots,--which, he said,
unfitted a man for exercise,--but short drab gaiters and square-toed
shoes. His watch-chain was garnished with a vast number of seals; each
seal, indeed, represented the device of some defunct company, and they
might be said to resemble the scalps of the slain worn by the
aboriginal Iroquois,--concerning whom, indeed, he had once entertained
philanthropic designs, compounded of conversion to Christianity on
the principles of the English Episcopal Church, and of an advantageous
exchange of beaver-skins for Bibles, brandy, and gunpowder.

That Uncle Jack should win my heart was no wonder; my mother’s he had
always won, from her earliest recollection of his having persuaded her
to let her great doll (a present from her godmother) be put up to a
raffle for the benefit of the chimney-sweepers. “So like him,--so
good!” she would often say pensively. “They paid sixpence apiece for the
raffle,--twenty tickets,--and the doll cost L2. Nobody was taken in, and
the doll, poor thing (it had such blue eyes!) went for a quarter of its
value. But Jack said nobody could guess what good the ten shillings did
to the chimney-sweepers.” Naturally enough, I say, my mother liked Uncle
Jack; but my father liked him quite as well,--and that was a strong
proof of my uncle’s powers of captivation. However, it is noticeable
that when some retired scholar is once interested in an active man of
the world, he is more inclined to admire him than others are. Sympathy
with such a companion gratifies at once his curiosity and his indolence;
he can travel with him, scheme with him, fight with him, go with him
through all the adventures of which his own books speak so eloquently,
and all the time never stir from his easy-chair. My father said “that it
was like listening to Ulysses to hear Uncle Jack!” Uncle Jack, too, had
been in Greece and Asia Minor, gone over the site of the siege of Troy,
eaten figs at Marathon, shot hares in the Peloponnesus, and drunk three
pints of brown stout at the top of the Great Pyramid.

Therefore, Uncle Jack was like a book of reference to my father. Verily
at times he looked on him as a book, and took him down after dinner
as he would a volume of Dodwell or Pausanias. In fact, I believe that
scholars who never move from their cells are not the less an eminently
curious, bustling, active race, rightly understood. Even as old Burton
saith of himself--“Though I live a collegiate student, and lead a
monastic life, sequestered from those tumults and troubles of the world,
I hear and see what is done abroad, how others run, ride, turmoil, and
macerate themselves in town and country,”--which citation sufficeth to
show that scholars are naturally the most active men of the world; only
that while their heads plot with Augustus, fight with Julius, sail with
Columbus, and change the face of the globe with Alexander, Attila, or
Mahomet, there is a certain mysterious attraction, which our improved
knowledge of mesmerism will doubtless soon explain to the satisfaction
of science, between that extremer and antipodal part of the human frame,
called in the vulgate “the seat of honor,” and the stuffed leather of
an armed chair. Learning somehow or other sinks down to that part into
which it was first driven, and produces therein a leaden heaviness and
weight, which counteract those lively emotions of the brain that might
otherwise render students too mercurial and agile for the safety of
established order. I leave this conjecture to the consideration of
experimentalists in the physics.

I was still more delighted than my father with Uncle Jack. He was full
of amusing tricks, could conjure wonderfully, make a bunch of keys dance
a hornpipe, and if ever you gave him half-a-crown, he was sure to turn
it into a halfpenny.

He was only unsuccessful in turning my halfpennies into half-crowns.

We took long walks together, and in the midst of his most diverting
conversation my uncle was always an observer. He would stop to examine
the nature of the soil, fill my pockets (not his own) with great lumps
of clay, stones, and rubbish, to analyze when he got home, by the help
of some chemical apparatus he had borrowed from Mr. Squills. He would
stand an hour at a cottage door, admiring the little girls who were
straw-platting, and then walk into the nearest farmhouses, to suggest
the feasibility of “a national straw-plat association.” All this
fertility of intellect was, alas! wasted in that ingrata terra into
which Uncle Jack had fallen. No squire could be persuaded into the
belief that his mother-stone was pregnant with minerals; no farmer
talked into weaving straw-plat into a proprietary association. So, even
as an ogre, having devastated the surrounding country, begins to cast a
hungry eye on his own little ones, Uncle Jack’s mouth, long defrauded
of juicier and more legitimate morsels, began to water for a bite of my
innocent father.




CHAPTER III.

At this time we were living in what may be called a very respectable
style for people who made no pretence to ostentation. On the skirts of
a large village stood a square red-brick house, about the date of Queen
Anne. Upon the top of the house was a balustrade,--why, Heaven knows,
for nobody, except our great tom-cat, Ralph, ever walked upon the leads;
but so it was, and so it often is in houses from the time of Elizabeth,
yea, even to that of Victoria. This balustrade was divided by low piers,
on each of which was placed a round ball. The centre of the house was
distinguishable by an architrave in the shape of a triangle, under
which was a niche,--probably meant for a figure; but the figure was not
forthcoming. Below this was the window (encased with carved pilasters)
of my dear mother’s little sitting-room; and lower still, raised on a
flight of six steps, was a very handsome-looking door, with a projecting
porch. All the windows, with smallish panes and largish frames, were
relieved with stone copings; so that the house had an air of solidity
and well-to-do-ness about it,--nothing tricky on the one hand, nothing
decayed on the other. The house stood a little back from the garden
gates, which were large, and set between two piers surmounted with
vases. Many might object that in wet weather you had to walk some way to
your carriage; but we obviated that objection by not keeping a carriage.
To the right of the house the enclosure contained a little lawn, a
laurel hermitage, a square pond, a modest greenhouse, and half-a-dozen
plots of mignonette, heliotrope, roses, pinks, sweet-William, etc. To
the left spread the kitchen-garden, lying screened by espaliers yielding
the finest apples in the neighborhood, and divided by three winding
gravel-walks, of which the extremest was backed by a wall, whereon,
as it lay full south, peaches, pears, and nectarines sunned themselves
early into well-remembered flavor. This walk was appropriated to my
father. Book in hand, he would, on fine days, pace to and fro,
often stopping, dear man, to jot down a pencil-note, gesticulate, or
soliloquize. And there, when not in his study, my mother would be sure
to find him. In these deambulations, as he called them, he had generally
a companion so extraordinary that I expect to be met with a hillalu of
incredulous contempt when I specify it. Nevertheless I vow and protest
that it is strictly true, and no invention of an exaggerating romancer.
It happened one day that my mother had coaxed Mr. Caxton to walk with
her to market. By the way they passed a sward of green, on which sundry
little boys were engaged upon the lapidation of a lame duck. It seemed
that the duck was to have been taken to market, when it was discovered
not only to be lame, but dyspeptic,--perhaps some weed had disagreed
with its ganglionic apparatus, poor thing. However that be, the
good-wife had declared that the duck was good for nothing; and upon the
petition of her children, it had been consigned to them for a little
innocent amusement, and to keep them out of harm’s way. My mother
declared that she never before saw her lord and master roused to such
animation. He dispersed the urchins, released the duck, carried it
home, kept it in a basket by the fire, fed it and physicked it till it
recovered; and then it was consigned to the square pond. But lo! the
duck knew its benefactor; and whenever my father appeared outside his
door, it would catch sight of him, flap from the pond, gain the lawn,
and hobble after him (for it never quite recovered the use of its left
leg) till it reached the walk by the peaches; and there sometimes it
would sit, gravely watching its master’s deambulations, sometimes stroll
by his side, and, at all events, never leave him till, at his return
home, he fed it with his own hands; and, quacking her peaceful adieus,
the nymph then retired to her natural element.

With the exception of my mother’s favorite morning-room, the principal
sitting-rooms--that is, the study, the diningroom, and what was
emphatically called “the best drawing-room,” which was only occupied on
great occasions--looked south. Tall beeches, firs, poplars, and a few
oaks backed the house, and indeed surrounded it on all sides but the
south; so that it was well sheltered from the winter cold and the summer
heat. Our principal domestic, in dignity and station, was Mrs. Primmins,
who was waiting gentlewoman, housekeeper, and tyrannical dictatrix of
the whole establishment. Two other maids, a gardener, and a footman,
composed the rest of the serving household. Save a few pasture-fields,
which he let, my father was not troubled with land. His income was
derived from the interest of about L15,000, partly in the Three per
Cents, partly on mortgage; and what with my mother and Mrs. Primmins,
this income always yielded enough to satisfy my father’s single hobby
for books, pay for my education, and entertain our neighbors, rarely
indeed at dinner, but very often at tea. My dear mother boasted that our
society was very select. It consisted chiefly of the clergyman and his
family; two old maids who gave themselves great airs; a gentleman who
had been in the East India service, and who lived in a large white house
at the top of the hill; some half-a-dozen squires and their wives and
children; Mr. Squills, still a bachelor; and once a year cards were
exchanged--and dinners too--with certain aristocrats who inspired my
mother with a great deal of unnecessary awe, since she declared they
were the most good-natured, easy people in the world, and always stuck
their cards in the most conspicuous part of the looking-glass frame over
the chimney-piece of the best drawing-room. Thus you perceive that our
natural position was one highly creditable to us, proving the soundness
of our finances and the gentility of our pedigree,--of which last more
hereafter. At present I content myself with saying on that head that
even the proudest of the neighboring squirearchs always spoke of us as
a very ancient family. But all my father ever said, to evince pride of
ancestry, was in honor of William Caxton, citizen and printer in the
reign of Edward IV.,--Clarum et venerabile nomen! an ancestor a man of
letters might be justly vain of.

“Heus,” said my father, stopping short, and lifting his eyes from the
Colloquies of Erasmus, “salve multum, jucundissime.”

Uncle Jack was not much of a scholar, but he knew enough Latin to
answer, “Salve tantundem, mi frater.”

My father smiled approvingly. “I see you comprehend true urbanity, or
politeness, as we phrase it. There is an elegance in addressing the
husband of your sister as brother. Erasmus commends it in his opening
chapter, under the head of Salutandi formuloe. And indeed,” added my
father, thoughtfully, “there is no great difference between politeness
and affection. My author here observes that it is polite to express
salutation in certain minor distresses of nature. One should salute a
gentleman in yawning, salute him in hiccuping, salute him in sneezing,
salute him in coughing,--and that evidently because of your interest in
his health; for he may dislocate his jaw in yawning, and the hiccup is
often a symptom of grave disorder, and sneezing is perilous to the small
blood-vessels of the head, and coughing is either a tracheal, bronchial,
pulmonary, or ganglionic affection.”

“Very true. The Turks always salute in sneezing, and they are a
remarkably polite people,” said Uncle Jack. “But, my dear brother, I was
just looking with admiration at these apple-trees of yours. I never saw
finer. I am a great judge of apples. I find, in talking with my sister,
that you make very little profit by them. That’s a pity. One might
establish a cider orchard in this county. You can take your own fields
in hand; you can hire more, so as to make the whole, say a hundred
acres. You can plant a very extensive apple-orchard on a grand scale. I
have just run through the calculations; they are quite startling. Take
40 trees per acre--that’s the proper average--at 1s. 6d. per tree;
4,000 trees for 100 acres, L300; labor of digging, trenching, say L10
an acre,--total for 100 acres, L1,000. Pave the bottoms of the holes
to prevent the tap-root striking down into the bad soil,--oh! I am very
close and careful you see, in all minutiae; always was,--pave ‘em with
rubbish and stones, 6d. a hole; that for 4,000 trees the 100 acres is
L100. Add the rent of the land, at 30s. an acre,--L150. And how stands
the total?” Here Uncle Jack proceeded rapidly ticking off the items with
his fingers:--

       “Trees...........   300
        Labor........... 1,000
        Paving holes....   100
        Rent............   150
                  ____
          Total.......  L1,550

“That’s your expense. Mark! Now to the profit. Orchards in Kent realize
L100 an acre, some even L150; but let’s be moderate, say only L50 an
acre, and your gross profit per year, from a capital of L1,550, will
be L5,000,--L5,000 a-year. Think of that, brother Caxton! Deduct 10 per
cent, or L500 a-year, for gardeners’ wages, manure, etc., and the net
product is L4,500. Your fortune’s made, man,--it is made; I wish you
joy!” And Uncle Jack rubbed his hands.

“Bless me, father,” said eagerly the young Pisistratus, who had
swallowed with ravished ears every syllable and figure of this inviting
calculation, “why, we should be as rich as Squire Rollick; and then, you
know, sir, you could keep a pack of fox-hounds.”

“And buy a large library,” added Uncle Jack, with more subtle knowledge
of human nature as to its appropriate temptations. “There’s my friend
the archbishop’s collection to be sold.”

Slowly recovering his breath, my father gently turned his eyes from one
to the other; and then, laying his left hand on my head, while with the
right he held up Erasmus rebukingly to Uncle Jack, said,--

“See how easily you can sow covetousness and avidity in the youthful
mind. Ah, brother!”

“You are too severe, sir. See how the dear boy hangs his head! Fie!
natural enthusiasm of his years,--‘gay hope by fancy fed,’ as the poet
says. Why, for that fine boy’s sake you ought not to lose so certain
an occasion of wealth, I may say, untold. For observe, you will form
a nursery of crabs; each year you go on grafting and enlarging your
plantation, renting,--nay, why not buying, more land? Gad, sir! in
twenty years you might cover half the county; but say you stop short at
2,000 acres, why the net profit is L90,000 a-year. A duke’s income,--a
duke’s; and going a-begging, as I may say.”

“But stop,” said I, modestly; “the trees don’t grow in a year. I know
when our last apple-tree was planted--it is five years ago--it was then
three years old, and it only bore one half-bushel last autumn.”

“What an intelligent lad it is! Good head there. Oh, he’ll do credit
to his great fortune, brother,” said Uncle Jack, approvingly. “True, my
boy. But in the mean while we could fill the ground, as they do in Kent,
with gooseberries and currants, or onions and cabbages. Nevertheless,
considering we are not great capitalists, I am afraid we must give up
a share of our profits to diminish our outlay. So harkye,
Pisistratus--look at him, brother, simple as he stands there, I think he
is born with a silver spoon in his mouth--harkye, now to the mysteries
of speculation. Your father shall quietly buy the land, and then,
presto! we will issue a prospectus and start a company. Associations can
wait five years for a return. Every year, meanwhile, increases the value
of the shares. Your father takes, we say, fifty shares at L50 each,
paying only an instalment of L2 a share. He sells 35 shares at cent per
cent. He keeps the remaining 15, and his fortune’s made all the same;
only it is not quite so large as if he had kept the whole concern in his
own hands. What say you now, brother Caxton? Visne edere pomum? as we
used to say at school.”

“I don’t want a shilling more than I have got,” said my father,
resolutely. “My wife would not love me better; my food would not nourish
me more; my boy would not, in all probability, be half so hardy, or a
tenth part so industrious; and--”

“But,” interrupted Uncle Jack, pertinaciously, and reserving his grand
argument for the last, “the good you would confer on the community; the
progress given to the natural productions of your country; the wholesome
beverage of cider brought within cheap reach of the laboring classes. If
it was only for your sake, should I have urged this question? Should I
now? Is it in my character? But for the sake of the public! mankind! of
our fellow-creatures! Why, sir, England could not get on if gentlemen
like you had not a little philanthropy and speculation.”

“Papae!” exclaimed my father; “to think that England can’t get on
without turning Austin Caxton into an apple-merchant! My dear Jack,
listen. You remind me of a colloquy in this book,--wait a bit, here it
is, ‘Pamphagus and Cocles.’ Cocles recognizes his friend, who had been
absent for many years, by his eminent and remarkable nose. Pamphagus
says, rather irritably, that he is not ashamed of his nose. ‘Ashamed of
it! no, indeed,’ says Cocles; ‘I never saw a nose that could be put to
so many uses!’ ‘Ha!’ says Pamphagus (whose curiosity is aroused), ‘uses!
what uses?’ Whereon (lepidissime frater!) Cocles, with eloquence as
rapid as yours, runs on with a countless list of the uses to which so
vast a development of the organ can be applied. ‘If the cellar was deep,
it could sniff up the wine like an elephant’s trunk; if the bellows were
missing, it could blow the fire; if the lamp was too glaring, it could
suffice for a shade; it would serve as a speaking-trumpet to a herald;
it could sound a signal of battle in the field; it would do for a wedge
in wood-cutting, a spade for digging, a scythe for mowing, an anchor in
sailing,’--till Painphagus cries out, ‘Lucky dog that I am! and I never
knew before what a useful piece of furniture I carried about with me.’”
 My father paused and strove to whistle; but that effort of harmony
failed him, and he added, smiling, “So much for my apple-trees, brother
John. Leave them to their natural destination of filling tarts and
dumplings.”

Uncle Jack looked a little discomposed for a moment; but he then
laughed with his usual heartiness, and saw that he had not yet got to
my father’s blind side. I confess that my revered parent rose in my
estimation after that conference; and I began to see that a man may not
be quite without common sense, though he is a scholar. Indeed, whether
it was that Uncle Jack’s visit acted as a gentle stimulant to his
relaxed faculties, or that I, now grown older and wiser, began to
see his character more clearly, I date from those summer holidays the
commencement of that familiar and endearing intimacy which ever
after existed between my father and myself. Often I deserted the
more extensive rambles of Uncle Jack, or the greater allurements of a
cricket-match in the village, or a day’s fishing in Squire Rollick’s
preserves, for a quiet stroll with my father by the old peach
wall,--sometimes silent, indeed, and already musing over the future,
while he was busy with the past, but amply rewarded when, suspending his
lecture, he would pour forth hoards of varied learning, rendered amusing
by his quaint comments, and that Socratic satire which only fell short
of wit because it never passed into malice. At some moments, indeed, the
vein ran into eloquence; and with some fine heroic sentiment in his old
books, his stooping form rose erect, his eye flashed, and you saw that
he had not been originally formed and wholly meant for the obscure
seclusion in which his harmless days now wore contentedly away.




CHAPTER IV.

“Egad, sir, the county is going to the dogs! Our sentiments are not
represented in parliament or out of it. The ‘County Mercury’ has ratted,
and be hanged to it! and now we have not one newspaper in the whole
shire to express the sentiments of the respectable part of the
community!”

This speech was made on the occasion of one of the rare dinners given by
Mr. and Mrs. Caxton to the grandees of the neighborhood, and uttered by
no less a person than Squire Rollick, of Rollick Hall, chairman of the
quarter-sessions.

I confess that I (for I was permitted on that first occasion not only to
dine with the guests, but to outstay the ladies, in virtue of my growing
years and my promise to abstain from the decanters),--I confess, I say,
that I, poor innocent, was puzzled to conjecture what sudden interest in
the county newspaper could cause Uncle Jack to prick up his ears like a
warhorse at the sound of the drum and rush so incontinently across the
interval between Squire Rollick and himself. But the mind of that deep
and truly knowing man was not to be plumbed by a chit of my age. You
could not fish for the shy salmon in that pool with a crooked pin and
a bobbin, as you would for minnows; or, to indulge in a more worthy
illustration, you could not say of him, as Saint Gregory saith of the
streams of Jordan, “A lamb could wade easily through that ford.”

“Not a county newspaper to advocate the rights of--” here my uncle
stopped, as if at a loss, and whispered in my ear; “What are his
politics?” “Don’t know,” answered I. Uncle Jack intuitively took down
from his memory the phrase most readily at hand, and added, with a nasal
intonation, “the rights of our distressed fellow-creatures!”

My father scratched his eyebrow with his fore-finger, as he was apt to
do when doubtful; the rest of the company--a silent set--looked up.

“Fellow-creatures!” said Mr. Rollick,--“fellow-fiddlesticks!”

Uncle Jack was clearly in the wrong box. He drew out of it
cautiously,--“I mean,” said he, “our respectable fellow-creatures;” and
then suddenly it occurred to him that a “County Mercury” would naturally
represent the agricultural interest, and that if Mr. Rollick said
that the “‘County Mercury’ ought to be hanged,” he was one of those
politicians who had already begun to call the agricultural interest “a
Vampire.” Flushed with that fancied discovery, Uncle Jack rushed on,
intending to bear along with the stream, thus fortunately directed,
all the “rubbish” (1) subsequently shot into Covent Garden and Hall of
Commerce.

“Yes, respectable fellow-creatures, men of capital and enterprise! For
what are these country squires compared to our wealthy merchants? What
is this agricultural interest that professes to be the prop of the
land?”

“Professes!” cried Squire Rollick,--“it is the prop of the land; and as
for those manufacturing fellows who have bought up the ‘Mercury’--”

“Bought up the ‘Mercury,’ have they, the villains?” cried Uncle Jack,
interrupting the Squire, and now bursting into full scent. “Depend upon
it, sir, it is a part of a diabolical system of buying up,--which must
be exposed manfully. Yes, as I was saying, what is that agricultural
interest which they desire to ruin; which they declare to be so bloated;
which they call ‘a Vampire!’--they the true blood-suckers, the
venomous millocrats? Fellow-creatures, Sir! I may well call distressed
fellow-creatures the members of that much-suffering class of which you
yourself are an ornament. What can be more deserving of our best efforts
for relief than a country gentleman like yourself, we’ll say,--of a
nominal L5,000 a-year,--compelled to keep up an establishment, pay for
his fox-hounds, support the whole population by contributions to the
poor-rates, support the whole church by tithes; all justice, jails,
and prosecutions of the county-rates; all thoroughfares by the
highway-rates; ground down by mortgages, Jews, or jointures; having to
provide for younger children; enormous expenses for cutting his woods,
manuring his model farm, and fattening huge oxen till every pound of
flesh costs him five pounds sterling in oil-cake; and then the lawsuits
necessary to protect his rights,--plundered on all hands by poachers,
sheep-stealers, dog-stealers, churchwardens, overseers, gardeners,
gamekeepers, and that necessary rascal, his steward. If ever there was a
distressed fellow-creature in the world, it is a country gentleman with
a great estate.”

My father evidently thought this an exquisite piece of banter, for by
the corner of his mouth I saw that he chuckled inly.

Squire Rollick, who had interrupted the speech by sundry approving
exclamations, particularly at the mention of poor-rates, tithes,
county-rates, mortgages, and poachers, here pushed the bottle to Uncle
Jack, and said, civilly: “There’s a great deal of truth in what you say,
Mr. Tibbets. The agricultural interest is going to ruin; and when it
does, I would not give that for Old England!” and Mr. Rollick snapped
his finger and thumb. “But what is to be done,--done for the county?
There’s the rub.”

“I was just coming to that,” quoth Uncle Jack. “You say that you have
not a county paper that upholds your cause and denounces your enemies.”

“Not since the Whigs bought the ‘--shire Mercury.’”

“Why, good heavens! Mr. Rollick, how can you suppose that you will
have justice done you if at this time of day you neglect the Press?
The Press, sir--there it is--air we breathe! What you want is a great
national--no, not a national--A Provincial proprietary weekly journal,
supported liberally and steadily by that mighty party whose very
existence is at stake. Without such a paper you are gone, you are
dead,--extinct, defunct, buried alive; with such a paper,--well
conducted, well edited by a man of the world, of education, of practical
experience in agriculture and human nature, mines, corn, manure,
insurances, Acts of Parliament, cattle-shows, the state of parties, and
the best interests of society,--with such a man and such a paper, you
will carry all before you. But it must be done by subscription,
by association, by co-operation,--by a Grand Provincial Benevolent
Agricultural Anti-innovating Society.”

“Egad, sir, you are right!” said Mr. Rollick, slapping his thigh; “and
I’ll ride over to our Lord-Lieutenant to-morrow. His eldest son ought to
carry the county.”

“And he will, if you encourage the Press and set up a journal,” said
Uncle Jack, rubbing his hands, and then gently stretching them out and
drawing them gradually together, as if he were already enclosing in that
airy circle the unsuspecting guineas of the unborn association.

All happiness dwells more in the hope than the possession; and at that
moment I dare be sworn that Uncle Jack felt a livelier rapture circum
proecordia, warming his entrails, and diffusing throughout his whole
frame of five feet eight the prophetic glow of the Magna Diva Moneta,
than if he had enjoyed for ten years the actual possession of King
Croesus’s privy purse.

“I thought Uncle Jack was not a Tory,” said I to my father the next day.

My father, who cared nothing for politics, opened his eyes. “Are you a
Tory or a Whig, papa?”

“Um!” said my father, “there’s a great deal to be said on both sides
of the question. You see, my boy, that Mrs. Primmins has a great many
moulds for our butter-pats: sometimes they come up with a crown on them,
sometimes with the more popular impress of a cow. It is all very well
for those who dish up the butter to print it according to their taste
or in proof of their abilities; it is enough for us to butter our bread,
say grace, and pay for the dairy. Do you understand?”

“Not a bit, sir.”

“Your namesake Pisistratus was wiser than you, then,” said my father.
“And now let us feed the duck. Where’s your uncle?”

“He has borrowed Mr. Squills’s mare, sir, and gone with Squire Rollick
to the great lord they were talking of.”

“Oho!” said my father; “brother Jack is going to print his butter!”

And indeed Uncle Jack played his cards so well on this occasion, and set
before the Lord-Lieutenant, with whom he had a personal interview, so
fine a prospectus and so nice a calculation that before my holidays were
over, he was installed in a very handsome office in the county town,
with private apartments over it, and a salary of L500 a-year, for
advocating the cause of his distressed fellow-creatures, including
noblemen, squires, yeomanry, farmers, and all yearly subscribers in the
New Proprietary Agricultural Anti-Innovating--Shire Weekly Gazette. At
the head of his newspaper Uncle Jack caused to be engraved a crown,
supported by a flail and a crook, with the motto, “Pro rege et grege.”
 And that was the way in which Uncle Jack printed his pats of butter.

(1) “We talked sad rubbish when we first began,” says Mr. Cobden, in one
of his speeches.




CHAPTER V.

I seemed to myself to have made a leap in life when I returned to
school. I no longer felt as a boy. Uncle Jack, out of his own purse, had
presented me with my first pair of Wellington boots; my mother had been
coaxed into allowing me a small tail to jackets hitherto tail-less; my
collars, which had been wont, spaniel-like, to flap and fall about my
neck, now, terrier-wise, stood erect and rampant, encompassed with a
circumvallation of whalebone, buckram, and black silk. I was, in truth,
nearly seventeen, and I gave myself the airs of a man. Now, be it
observed that that crisis in adolescent existence wherein we first pass
from Master Sisty into Mr. Pisistratus, or Pisistratus Caxton, Esq.;
wherein we arrogate, and with tacit concession from our elders, the
long-envied title of young man,--always seems a sudden and imprompt
upshooting and elevation. We do not mark the gradual preparations
thereto; we remember only one distinct period, in which all the
signs and symptoms burst and effloresced together,--Wellington boots,
coat-tail, cravat, down on the upper lip, thoughts on razors, reveries
on young ladies, and a new kind of sense of poetry.

I began now to read steadily, to understand what I did read, and to cast
some anxious looks towards the future, with vague notions that I had
a place to win in the world, and that nothing is to be won without
perseverance and labor; and so I went on till I was seventeen and at the
head of the school, when I received the two letters I subjoin.

1.--FROM AUGUSTINE CAXTON, Esq.

   My Dear Son,--I have informed Dr. Herman that you will not return
   to him after the approaching holidays. You are old enough now to
   look forward to the embraces of our beloved Alma Mater, and I think
   studious enough to hope for the honors she bestows on her worthier
   sons. You are already entered at Trinity,--and in fancy I see my
   youth return to me in your image. I see you wandering where the
   Cam steals its way through those noble gardens; and, confusing you
   with myself, I recall the old dreams that haunted me when the
   chiming bells swung over the placid waters. Verum secretumque
   Mouseion, quam multa dictatis, quam multa invenitis! There at that
   illustrious college, unless the race has indeed degenerated, you
   will measure yourself with young giants. You will see those who,
   in the Law, the Church, the State, or the still cloisters of
   Learning, are destined to become the eminent leaders of your age.
   To rank amongst them you are not forbidden to aspire; he who in
   youth “can scorn delights, and love laborious days,” should pitch
   high his ambition.

   Your Uncle Jack says he has done wonders with his newspaper; though
   Mr. Rollick grumbles, and declares that it is full of theories, and
   that it puzzles the farmers. Uncle Jack, in reply, contends that
   he creates an audience, not addresses one, and sighs that his
   genius is thrown away in a provincial town. In fact, he really is
   a very clever man, and might do much in London, I dare say. He
   often comes over to dine and sleep, returning the next morning.
   His energy is wonderful--and contagious. Can you imagine that he
   has actually stirred up the flame of my vanity, by constantly
   poking at the bars? Metaphor apart, I find myself collecting all
   my notes and commonplaces, and wondering to see how easily they
   fall into method, and take shape in chapters and books. I cannot
   help smiling when I add, that I fancy I am going to become an
   author; and smiling more when I think that your Uncle Jack should
   have provoked me into so egregious an ambition. However, I have
   read some passages of my book to your mother, and she says, “it is
   vastly fine,” which is encouraging. Your mother has great good
   sense, though I don’t mean to say that she has much learning,--
   which is a wonder, considering that Pic de la Mirandola was nothing
   to her father. Yet he died, dear great man, and never printed a
   line; while I--positively I blush to think of my temerity! Adieu,
   my son; make the best of the time that remains with you at the
   Philhellenic. A full mind is the true Pantheism, plena Jovis. It
   is only in some corner of the brain which we leave empty that Vice
   can obtain a lodging. When she knocks at your door, my son, be
   able to say, “No room for your ladyship; pass on.” Your
   affectionate father,
                  A. CAXTON.

2.--FROM Mrs. CAXTON.

   My Dearest Sisty,--You are coming home! My heart is so full of
   that thought that it seems to me as if I could not write anything
   else. Dear child, you are coming home; you have done with school,
   you have done with strangers,--you are our own, all our own son
   again! You are mine again, as you were in the cradle, the nursery,
   and the garden, Sisty, when we used to throw daisies at each other!
   You will laugh at me so when I tell you that as soon as I heard you
   were coming home for good, I crept away from the room, and went to
   my drawer where I keep, you know, all my treasures. There was your
   little cap that I worked myself, and your poor little nankeen
   jacket that you were so proud to throw off--oh! and many other
   relies of you when you were little Sisty, and I was not the cold,
   formal “Mother” you call me now, but dear “Mamma.” I kissed them,
   Sisty, and said, “My little child is coming back to me again!” So
   foolish was I, I forgot all the long years that have passed, and
   fancied I could carry you again in my arms, and that I should again
   coax you to say “God bless papa.” Well, well! I write now between
   laughing and crying. You cannot be what you were, but you are
   still my own dear son,--your father’s son; dearer to me than all
   the world,--except that father.

   I am so glad, too, that you will come so soon,--come while your
   father is really warm with his book, and while you can encourage
   and keep him to it. For why should he not be great and famous?
   Why should not all admire him as we do? You know how proud of him
   I always was; but I do so long to let the world know why I was so
   proud. And yet, after all, it is not only because he is so wise
   and learned, but because he is so good, and has such a large, noble
   heart. But the heart must appear in the book too, as well as the
   learning. For though it is full of things I don’t understand,
   every now and then there is something I do understand,--that seems
   as if that heart spoke out to all the world.

   Your uncle has undertaken to get it published, and your father is
   going up to town with him about it, as soon as the first volume is
   finished.

   All are quite well except poor Mrs. Jones, who has the ague very
   bad indeed; Primmins has made her wear a charm for it, and Mrs.
   Jones actually declares she is already much better. One can’t deny
   that there may be a great deal in such things, though it seems
   quite against the reason. Indeed your father says, “Why not? A
   charm must be accompanied by a strong wish on the part of the
   charmer that it may succeed,--and what is magnetism but a wish?” I
   don’t quite comprehend this; but, like all your father says, it has
   more than meets the eye, I am quite sure.

   Only three weeks to the holidays, and then no more school, Sisty,--
   no more school! I shall have your room all done, freshly, and made
   so pretty; they are coming about it to-morrow.

   The duck is quite well, and I really don’t think it is quite as
   lame as it was.

   God bless you, dear, dear child. Your affectionate happy mother.
             K.C.

The interval between these letters and the morning on which I was
to return home seemed to me like one of those long, restless, yet
half-dreamy days which in some infant malady I had passed in a sick-bed.
I went through my task-work mechanically, composed a Greek ode in
farewell to the Philhellenic, which Dr. Herman pronounced a chef
d’oeuvre, and my father, to whom I sent it in triumph, returned a letter
of false English with it, that parodied all my Hellenic barbarisms by
imitating them in my mother-tongue. However, I swallowed the leek, and
consoled myself with the pleasing recollection that, after spending six
years in learning to write bad Greek, I should never have any further
occasion to avail myself of so precious an accomplishment.

And so came the last day. Then alone, and in a kind of delighted
melancholy, I revisited each of the old haunts,--the robbers’ cave we
had dug one winter, and maintained, six of us, against all the police of
the little kingdom; the place near the pales where I had fought my first
battle; the old beech-stump on which I sat to read letters from home!
With my knife, rich in six blades (besides a cork-screw, a pen-picker,
and a button-hook), I carved my name in large capitals over my desk.
Then night came, and the bell rang, and we went to our rooms. And I
opened the window and looked out. I saw all the stars, and wondered
which was mine,--which should light to fame and fortune the manhood
about to commence. Hope and Ambition were high within me; and yet,
behind them stood Melancholy. Ah! who amongst you, readers, can now
summon back all those thoughts, sweet and sad,--all that untold,
half-conscious regret for the past,--all those vague longings for
the future, which made a poet of the dullest on the last night before
leaving boyhood and school forever?




PART III.




CHAPTER I.

It was a beautiful summer afternoon when the coach set me down at my
father’s gate. Mrs. Primmins herself ran out to welcome me; and I had
scarcely escaped from the warm clasp of her friendly hand before I was
in the arms of my mother.

As soon as that tenderest of parents was convinced that I was not
famished, seeing that I had dined two hours ago at Dr. Herman’s, she
led me gently across the garden towards the arbor. “You will find your
father so cheerful,” said she, wiping away a tear. “His brother is with
him.”

I stopped. His brother! Will the reader believe it? I had never heard
that he had a brother, so little were family affairs ever discussed in
my hearing.

“His brother!” said I. “Have I then an Uncle Caxton as well as an Uncle
Jack?”

“Yes, my love,” said my mother. And then she added, “Your father and he
were not such good friends as they ought to have been, and the Captain
has been abroad. However, thank Heaven! they are now quite reconciled.”

We had time for no more,--we were in the arbor. There, a table was
spread with wine and fruit,--the gentlemen were at their dessert; and
those gentlemen were my father, Uncle Jack, Mr. Squills, and--tall,
lean, buttoned-to-the-chin--an erect, martial, majestic, and imposing
personage, who seemed worthy of a place in my great ancestor’s “Boke of
Chivalrie.”

All rose as I entered; but my poor father, who was always slow in his
movements, had the last of me. Uncle Jack had left the very powerful
impression of his great seal-ring on my fingers; Mr. Squills had patted
me on the shoulder and pronounced me “wonderfully grown;” my new-found
relative had with great dignity said, “Nephew, your hand, sir,--I am
Captain de Caxton;” and even the tame duck had taken her beak from her
wing and rubbed it gently between my legs, which was her usual mode of
salutation, before my father placed his pale hand on my forehead, and
looking at me for a moment with unutterable sweetness, said, “More and
more like your mother,--God bless you!”

A chair had been kept vacant for me between my father and his brother.
I sat down in haste, and with a tingling color on my cheeks and a rising
at my throat, so much had the unusual kindness of my father’s greeting
affected me; and then there came over me a sense of my new position. I
was no longer a schoolboy at home for his brief holiday: I had returned
to the shelter of the roof-tree to become myself one of its supports. I
was at last a man, privileged to aid or solace those dear ones who had
ministered, as yet without return, to me. That is a very strange crisis
in our life when we come home for good. Home seems a different thing;
before, one has been but a sort of guest after all, only welcomed and
indulged, and little festivities held in honor of the released and
happy child. But to come home for good,--to have done with school and
boyhood,--is to be a guest, a child no more. It is to share the everyday
life of cares and duties; it is to enter into the confidences of home.
Is it not so? I could have buried my face in my hands and wept!

My father, with all his abstraction and all his simplicity, had a knack
now and then of penetrating at once to the heart. I verily believe he
read all that was passing in mine as easily as if it had been Greek. He
stole his arm gently round my waist and whispered, “Hush!” Then, lifting
his voice, he cried aloud, “Brother Roland, you must not let Jack have
the best of the argument.”

“Brother Austin,” replied the Captain, very formally, “Mr. Jack, if I
may take the liberty so to call him--”

“You may indeed,” cried Uncle Jack.

“Sir,” said the Captain, bowing, “it is a familiarity that does me
honor. I was about to say that Mr. Jack has retired from the field.”

“Far from it,” said Squills, dropping an effervescing powder into a
chemical mixture which he had been preparing with great attention,
composed of sherry and lemon-juice--“far from it. Mr. Tibbets--whose
organ of combativeness is finely developed, by the by--was saying--”

“That it is a rank sin and shame in the nineteenth century,” quoth Uncle
Jack, “that a man like my friend Captain Caxton--”

“De Caxton, sir--Mr. Jack.”

“De Caxton,--of the highest military talents, of the most illustrious
descent,--a hero sprung from heroes,--should have served so many years,
and with such distinction, in his Majesty’s service, and should now be
only a captain on half-pay. This, I say, comes of the infamous system of
purchase, which sets up the highest honors for sale, as they did in the
Roman empire--”

My father pricked up his ears; but Uncle jack pushed on before my father
could get ready the forces of his meditated interruption.

“A system which a little effort, a little union, can so easily
terminate. Yes, sir,” and Uncle Jack thumped the table, and two cherries
bobbed up and smote Captain de Caxton on the nose, “yes, sir, I will
undertake to say that I could put the army upon a very different
footing. If the poorer and more meritorious gentlemen, like Captain
de Caxton, would, as I was just observing, but unite in a grand
anti-aristocratic association, each paying a small sum quarterly, we
could realize a capital sufficient to out-purchase all these undeserving
individuals, and every man of merit should have his fair chance of
promotion.”

“Egad! sir,” said Squills, “there is something grand in that, eh,
Captain?”

“No, sir,” replied the Captain, quite seriously; “there is in monarchies
but one fountain of honor. It would be an interference with a soldier’s
first duty,--his respect for his sovereign.”

“On the contrary,” said Mr. Squills, “it would still be to the
sovereigns that one would owe the promotion.”

“Honor,” pursued the Captain, coloring up, and unheeding this witty
interruption, “is the reward of a soldier. What do I care that a young
jackanapes buys his colonelcy over my head? Sir, he does not buy from me
my wounds and my services. Sir, he does not buy from me the medal I
won at Waterloo. He is a rich man, and I am a poor man; he is
called--colonel, because he paid money for the name. That pleases him;
well and good. It would not please me; I had rather remain a captain,
and feel my dignity, not in my title, but in the services by which it
has been won. A beggarly, rascally association of stock-brokers, for
aught I know, buy me a company! I don’t want to be uncivil, or I would
say damn ‘em--Mr.--sir--Jack!”

A sort of thrill ran through the Captain’s audience; even Uncle Jack
seemed touched, for he stared very hard at the grim veteran, and said
nothing. The pause was awkward; Mr. Squills broke it. “I should like,”
 quoth he, “to see your Waterloo medal,--you have it not about you?”

“Mr. Squills,” answered the Captain, “it lies next to my heart while I
live. It shall be buried in my coffin, and I shall rise with it, at the
word of command, on the day of the Grand Review!” So saying, the Captain
leisurely unbuttoned his coat, and detaching from a piece of striped
ribbon as ugly a specimen of the art of the silversmith (begging its
pardon) as ever rewarded merit at the expense of taste, placed the medal
on the table.

The medal passed round, without a word, from hand to hand.

“It is strange,” at last said my father, “how such trifles can be made
of such value,--how in one age a man sells his life for what in the
next age he would not give a button! A Greek esteemed beyond price a few
leaves of olive twisted into a circular shape and set upon his head,--a
very ridiculous head-gear we should now call it. An American Indian
prefers a decoration of human scalps, which, I apprehend, we should all
agree (save and except Mr. Squills, who is accustomed to such things)
to be a very disgusting addition to one’s personal attractions; and
my brother values this piece of silver, which may be worth about five
shillings, more than Jack does a gold mine, or I do the library of the
London Museum. A time will come when people will think that as idle a
decoration as leaves and scalps.”

“Brother,” said the Captain, “there is nothing strange in the matter. It
is as plain as a pike-staff to a man who understands the principles of
honor.”

“Possibly,” said my father, mildly. “I should like to hear what you have
to say upon honor. I am sure it would very much edify us all.”




CHAPTER II.

“Gentlemen,” began the Captain, at the distinct appeal thus made to
him,--“Gentlemen, God made the earth, but man made the garden. God made
man, but man re-creates himself.”

“True, by knowledge,” said my father.

“By industry,” said Uncle Jack.

“By the physical conditions of his body,” said Mr. Squills. “He could
not have made himself other than he was at first in the woods and wilds
if he had fins like a fish, or could only chatter gibberish like
a monkey. Hands and a tongue, sir,--these are the instruments of
progress.”

“Mr. Squills,” said my father, nodding, “Anaxagoras said very much the
same thing before you, touching the hands.”

“I cannot help that,” answered Mr. Squills; “one could not open one’s
lips, if one were bound to say what nobody else had said. But after all,
our superiority is less in our hands than the greatness, of our thumbs.”

“Albinus, ‘De Sceleto,’ and our own learned William Lawrence, have made
a similar remark,” again put in my father. “Hang it, sir!” exclaimed
Squills, “what business have you to know everything?”

“Everything! No; but thumbs furnish subjects of investigation to the
simplest understanding,” said my father, modestly.

“Gentlemen,” re-commenced my Uncle Roland, “thumbs and hands are given
to an Esquimaux, as well as to scholars and surgeons,--and what the
deuce are they the wiser for them? Sirs, you cannot reduce us thus into
mechanism. Look within. Man, I say, re-creates himself. How? By The
Principle Of Honor. His first desire is to excel some one else; his
first impulse is distinction above his fellows. Heaven places in his
soul, as if it were a compass, a needle that always points to one end;
namely, to honor in that which those around him consider honorable.
Therefore, as man at first is exposed to all dangers from wild beasts,
and from men as savage as himself, Courage becomes the first quality
mankind must honor: therefore the savage is courageous; therefore he
covets the praise for courage; therefore he decorates himself with the
skins of the beasts he has subdued, or the the scalps of the foes he has
slain. Sirs, don’t tell me that the skins and the scalps are only hide
and leather: they are trophies of honor. Don’t tell me that they are
ridiculous and disgusting: they become glorious as proofs that the
savage has emerged out of the first brute-like egotism, and attached
price to the praise which men never give except for works that secure or
advance their welfare. By and by, sirs, our savages discover that they
cannot live in safety amongst themselves unless they agree to speak the
truth to each other: therefore Truth becomes valued, and grows into a
principle of honor; so brother Austin will tell us that in the primitive
times truth was always the attribute of a hero.”

“Right,” said my father; “Homer emphatically assigns it to Achilles.”

“Out of truth comes the necessity for some kind of rude justice and law.
Therefore men, after courage in the warrior, and truth in all, begin
to attach honor to the elder, whom they intrust with preserving justice
amongst them. So, sirs, Law is born--”

“But the first lawgivers were priests,” quoth my father.

“Sirs, I am coming to that. Whence arises the desire of honor, but
from man’s necessity of excelling,--in other words, of improving
his faculties for the benefit of others; though, unconscious of that
consequence, man only strives for their praise? But that desire for
honor is unextinguishable, and man is naturally anxious to carry its
rewards beyond the grave. Therefore he who has slain most lions or
enemies, is naturally prone to believe that he shall have the best
hunting fields in the country beyond, and take the best place at the
banquet. Nature, in all its operations, impresses man with the idea of
an invisible Power; and the principle of honor that is, the desire of
praise and reward--makes him anxious for the approval which that Power
can bestow. Thence comes the first rude idea of Religion; and in the
death-hymn at the stake, the savage chants songs prophetic of the
distinctions he is about to receive. Society goes on; hamlets are built;
property is established. He who has more than another has more power
than another. Power is honored. Man covets the honor attached to the
power which is attached to possession. Thus the soil is cultivated; thus
the rafts are constructed; thus tribe trades with tribe; thus Commerce
is founded, and Civilization commenced. Sirs, all that seems least
connected with honor, as we approach the vulgar days of the present,
has its origin in honor, and is but an abuse of its principles. If
men nowadays are hucksters and traders, if even military honors are
purchased, and a rogue buys his way to a peerage, still all arises
from the desire for honor, which society, as it grows old, gives to the
outward signs of titles and gold, instead of, as once, to its inward
essentials,--courage, truth, justice, enterprise. Therefore I say, sirs,
that honor is the foundation of all improvement in mankind.”

“You have argued like a schoolman, brother,” said Mr. Caxton,
admiringly; “but still, as to this round piece of silver, don’t we go
back to the most barbarous ages in estimating so highly such things as
have no real value in themselves,--as could not give us one opportunity
for instructing our minds?”

“Could not pay for a pair of boots,” added Uncle Jack.

“Or,” said Mr. Squills, “save you one twinge of the cursed rheumatism
you have got for life from that night’s bivouac in the Portuguese
marshes,--to say nothing of the bullet in your cranium, and that
cork-leg, which must much diminish the salutary effects of your
constitutional walk.”

“Gentlemen,” resumed the Captain, nothing abashed, “in going back to
those barbarous ages, I go back to the true principles of honor. It is
precisely because this round piece of silver has no value in the market
that it is priceless, for thus it is only a proof of desert. Where would
be the sense of service in this medal, if it could buy back my leg,
or if I could bargain it away for forty thousand a year? No, sirs, its
value is this,--that when I wear it on my breast, men shall say, ‘That
formal old fellow is not so useless as he seems. He was one of those who
saved England and freed Europe.’ And even when I conceal it here,” and,
devoutly kissing the medal, Uncle Roland restored it to its ribbon and
its resting-place, “and no eye sees it, its value is yet greater in the
thought that my country has not degraded the old and true principles of
honor, by paying the soldier who fought for her in the same coin as
that in which you, Mr. Jack, sir, pay your bootmaker’s bill. No, no,
gentlemen. As courage was the first virtue that honor called forth, the
first virtue from which all safety and civilization proceed, so we do
right to keep that one virtue at least clear and unsullied from all
the money-making, mercenary, pay-me-in-cash abominations which are the
vices, not the virtues, of the civilization it has produced.”

My Uncle Roland here came to a full stop; and, filling his glass, rose
and said solemnly: “A last bumper, gentlemen,--‘To the dead who died for
England!’”




CHAPTER III.

“Indeed, my dear, you must take it. You certainly have caught cold; you
sneezed three times together.”

“Yes, ma’am, because I would take a pinch of Uncle Roland’s snuff, just
to say that I had taken a pinch out of his box,--the honor of the thing,
you know.”

“Ah, my dear! what was that very clever remark you made at the same
time, which so pleased your father,--something about Jews and the
college?”

“Jews and--oh! pulverem Olympicum collegisse juvat, my dear
mother,--which means that it is a pleasure to take a pinch out of a
brave man’s snuff-box. I say, mother, put down the posset. Yes, I’ll
take it; I will, indeed. Now, then, sit here,--that’s right,--and tell
me all you know about this famous old Captain. Imprimis, he is older
than my father?”

“To be sure!” exclaimed my mother, indignantly. “He looks twenty years
older; but there is only five years’ real difference. Your father must
always look young.”

“And why does Uncle Roland put that absurd French de before his name;
and why were my father and he not good friends; and is he married; and
has he any children?”

Scene of this conference: my own little room, new papered on purpose for
my return for good,--trellis-work paper, flowers and birds, all so
fresh and so new and so clean and so gay, with my books ranged in neat
shelves, and a writing-table by the window; and, without the window,
shines the still summer moon. The window is a little open: you scent
the flowers and the new-mown hay. Past eleven; and the boy and his dear
mother are all alone.

“My dear, my dear, you ask so many questions at once!”

“Don’t answer them, then. Begin at the beginning, as Nurse Primmins does
with her fairy tales, ‘Once on a time.’

“Once on a time, then,” said my mother, kissing me between the
eyes,--“once on a time, my love, there was a certain clergyman in
Cumberland who had two sons; he had but a small living, and the boys
were to make their own way in the world. But close to the parsonage, on
the brow of a hill, rose an old ruin with one tower left, and this, with
half the country round it, had once belonged to the clergyman’s family;
but all had been sold,--all gone piece by piece, you see, my dear,
except the presentation to the living (what they call the advowson was
sold too), which had been secured to the last of the family. The elder
of these sons was your Uncle Roland; the younger was your father. Now
I believe the first quarrel arose from the absurdist thing possible,
as your father says; but Roland was exceedingly touchy on all things
connected with his ancestors. He was always poring over the old
pedigree, or wandering amongst the ruins, or reading books of
knight-errantry. Well, where this pedigree began, I know not, but it
seems that King Henry II. gave some lands in Cumberland to one Sir Adam
de Caxton; and from that time, you see, the pedigree went regularly
from father to son till Henry V. Then, apparently from the disorders
produced, as your father says, by the Wars of the Roses, there was a sad
blank left,--only one or two names, without dates or marriages, till the
time of Henry VII, except that in the reign of Edward IV. there was
one insertion of a William Caxton (named in a deed). Now in the village
church there was a beautiful brass monument to one Sir William de
Caxton, who had been killed at the battle of Bosworth, fighting for that
wicked king Richard III. And about the same time there lived, as you
know, the great printer, William Caxton. Well, your father, happening to
be in town on a visit to his aunt, took great trouble in hunting up all
the old papers he could find at the Heralds’ College; and, sure enough,
he was overjoyed to satisfy himself that he was descended, not from that
poor Sir William who had been killed in so bad a cause, but from the
great printer, who was from a younger branch of the same family, and
to whose descendants the estate came in the reign of Henry VIII. It was
upon this that your Uncle Roland quarrelled with him,--and, indeed, I
tremble to think that they may touch on that matter again.”

“Then, my dear mother, I must say my uncle was wrong there so far as
common-sense is concerned; but still, somehow or other, I can understand
it. Surely, this was not the only cause of estrangement?”

My mother looked down, and moved one hand gently over the other, which
was her way when embarrassed. “What was it, my own mother?” said I,
coaxingly.

“I believe--that is, I--I think that they were both attached to the same
young lady.”

“How! you don’t mean to say that my father was ever in love with any one
but you?”

“Yes, Sisty,--yes, and deeply! And,” added my mother, after a slight
pause, and with a very low sigh, “he never was in love with me; and what
is more, he had the frankness to tell me so!”

“And yet you--”

“Married him--yes!” said my mother, raising the softest and purest eyes
that ever lover could have wished to read his fate in; “yes, for the old
love was hopeless. I knew that I could make him happy. I knew that he
would love me at last, and he does so! My son, your father loves me!”

As she spoke, there came a blush, as innocent as virgin ever knew, to
my mother’s smooth cheek; and she looked so fair, so good, and still
so young all the while that you would have said that either Dusius, the
Teuton fiend, or Nock, the Scandinavian sea-imp, from whom the learned
assure us we derive our modern Daimones, “The Deuce,” and Old Nick, had
possessed my father, if he had not learned to love such a creature.

I pressed her hand to my lips; but my heart was too full tot speak for a
moment or so, and then I partially changed the subject.

“Well, and this rivalry estranged them more? And who was the lady?”

“Your father never told me, and I never asked,” said my mother, simply.
“But she was very different from me, I know. Very accomplished, very
beautiful, very highborn.”

“For all that, my father was a lucky man to escape her. Pass on. What
did the Captain do?”

“Why, about that time your grandfather died; and shortly after an aunt,
on the mother’s side, who was rich and saving, died, and unexpectedly
left each sixteen thousand pounds. Your uncle, with his share, bought
back, at an enormous price, the old castle and some land round it, which
they say does not bring him in three hundred a year. With the little
that remained, he purchased a commission in the army; and the brothers
met no more till last week, when Roland suddenly arrived.”

“He did not marry this accomplished young lady?”

“No! but he married another, and is a widower.”

“Why, he was as inconstant as my father, and I am sure without so good
an excuse. How was that?”

“I don’t know. He says nothing about it.”

“Has he any children?”

“Two, a son--By the by, you must never speak about him. Your uncle
briefly said, when I asked him what was his family, ‘A girl, ma’am. I
had a son, but--’

“‘He is dead,’ cried your father, in his kind, pitying voice.”

“‘Dead to me, brother; and you will never mention his name!’ You should
have seen how stern your uncle looked. I was terrified.”

“But the girl,--why did not he bring her here?”

“She is still in France, but he talks of going over for her; and we have
half promised to visit them both in Cumberland. But, bless me! is that
twelve? and the posset quite cold!”

“One word more, dearest mother,--one word. My father’s book,--is he
still going on with it?”

“Oh yes, indeed!” cried my mother, clasping her hands; “and he must read
it to you, as he does to me,--you will understand it so well. I have
always been so anxious that the world should know him, and be proud of
him as we are,--so--so anxious! For perhaps, Sisty, if he had married
that great lady, he would have roused himself, been more ambitious,--and
I could only make him happy, I could not make him great!”

“So he has listened to you at last?”

“To me?” said my mother, shaking her head and smiling gently. “No,
rather to your Uncle Jack, who, I am happy to say, has at length got a
proper hold over him.”

“A proper hold, my dear mother! Pray beware of Uncle Jack, or we shall
all be swept into a coal-mine, or explode with a grand national company
for making gunpowder out of tea-leaves!”

“Wicked child!” said my mother, laughing; and then, as she took up her
candle and lingered a moment while I wound my watch, she said, musingly:
“Yet Jack is very, very clever; and if for your sake we could make a
fortune, Sisty!”

“You frighten me out of my wits, mother! You are not in earnest?”

“And if my brother could be the means of raising him in the world--”

“Your brother would be enough to sink all the ships in the Channel,
ma’am,” said I, quite irreverently. I was shocked before the words were
well out of my mouth; and throwing my arms round my mother’s neck, I
kissed away the pain I had inflicted.

When I was left alone and in my own little crib, in which my slumber
had ever been so soft and easy, I might as well have been lying upon
cut straw. I tossed to and fro; I could not sleep. I rose, threw on my
dressing-gown, lighted my candle, and sat down by the table near the
window. First I thought of the unfinished outline of my father’s youth,
so suddenly sketched before me. I filled up the missing colors,
and fancied the picture explained all that had often perplexed my
conjectures. I comprehended, I suppose by some secret sympathy in my own
nature (for experience in mankind could have taught me little enough),
how an ardent, serious, inquiring mind, struggling into passion under
the load of knowledge, had, with that stimulus sadly and abruptly
withdrawn, sunk into the quiet of passive, aimless study. I comprehended
how, in the indolence of a happy but unimpassioned marriage, with a
companion so gentle, so provident and watchful, yet so little formed
to rouse and task and fire an intellect naturally calm and meditative,
years upon years had crept away in the learned idleness of a solitary
scholar. I comprehended, too, how gradually and slowly, as my father
entered that stage of middle life when all men are most prone to
ambition, the long-silenced whispers were heard again, and the mind, at
last escaping from the listless weight which a baffled and disappointed
heart had laid upon it, saw once more, fair as in youth, the only true
mistress of Genius,--Fame.

Oh! how I sympathized, too, in my mother’s gentle triumph. Looking over
the past, I could see, year after year, how she had stolen more and more
into my father’s heart of hearts; how what had been kindness had grown
into love; how custom and habit, and the countless links in the sweet
charities of home, had supplied that sympathy with the genial man which
had been missed at first by the lonely scholar.

Next I thought of the gray, eagle-eyed old soldier, with his ruined
tower and barren acres, and saw before me his proud, prejudiced,
chivalrous boyhood, gliding through the ruins or poring over the mouldy
pedigree. And this son, so disowned,--for what dark offence? An awe
crept over me. And this girl,--his ewe-lamb, his all,--was she fair? had
she blue eyes like my mother, or a high Roman nose and beetle brows like
Captain Roland? I mused and mused and mused; and the candle went out,
and the moonlight grew broader and stiller; till at last I was sailing
in a balloon with Uncle Jack, and had just tumbled into the Red Sea,
when the well-known voice of Nurse Primmins restored me to life with
a “God bless my heart! the boy has not been in bed all this ‘varsal
night!”




CHAPTER IV.

As soon as I was dressed I hastened downstairs, for I longed to revisit
my old haunts,--the little plot of garden I had sown with anemones and
cresses; the walk by the peach wall; the pond wherein I had angled for
roach and perch.

Entering the hall, I discovered my Uncle Roland in a great state
of embarrassment. The maid-servant was scrubbing the stones at the
hall-door; she was naturally plump,--and it is astonishing how much more
plump a female becomes when she is on all-fours! The maid-servant, then,
was scrubbing the stones, her face turned from the Captain; and the
Captain, evidently meditating a sortie, stood ruefully gazing at the
obstacle before him and hemming aloud. Alas, the maidservant was deaf!
I stopped, curious to see how Uncle Roland would extricate himself from
the dilemma.

Finding that his hems were in vain, my uncle made himself as small as
he could, and glided close to the left of the wall; at that instant the
maid turned abruptly round towards the right, and completely obstructed,
by this manoeuvre, the slight crevice through which hope had dawned
on her captive. My uncle stood stock-still,--and, to say the truth, he
could not have stirred an inch without coming into personal contact with
the rounded charms which blockaded his movements. My uncle took off
his hat and scratched his forehead in great perplexity. Presently, by
a slight turn of the flanks, the opposing party, while leaving him an
opportunity of return, entirely precluded all chance of egress in that
quarter. My uncle retreated in haste, and now presented himself to the
right wing of the enemy. He had scarcely done so, when, without looking
behind her, the blockading party shoved aside the pail that crippled the
range of her operations, and so placed it that it formed a formidable
barricade, which my uncle’s cork leg had no chance of surmounting.
Therewith Captain Roland lifted his eyes appealingly to Heaven, and I
heard him distinctly ejaculate--

“Would to Heaven she were a creature in breeches!”

But happily at this moment the maid-servant turned her head sharply
round, and seeing the Captain, rose in an instant, moved away the pail,
and dropped a frightened courtesy.

My uncle Roland touched his hat. “I beg you a thousand pardons, my good
girl,” said he; and, with a half bow, he slid into the open air.

“You have a soldier’s politeness, uncle,” said I, tucking my arm into
Captain Roland’s.

“Tush, my boy,” said he, smiling seriously, and coloring up to the
temples; “tush, say a gentleman’s! To us, sir, every woman is a lady, in
right of her sex.”

Now, I had often occasion later to recall that aphorism of my uncle’s;
and it served to explain to me how a man, so prejudiced on the score
of family pride, never seemed to consider it an offence in my father to
have married a woman whose pedigree was as brief as my dear mother’s.
Had she been a Montmorenci, my uncle could not have been more respectful
and gallant than he was to that meek descendant of the Tibbetses. He
held, indeed, which I never knew any other man, vain of family, approve
or support,--a doctrine deduced from the following syllogisms: First,
that birth was not valuable in itself, but as a transmission of certain
qualities which descent from a race of warriors should perpetuate;
namely, truth, courage, honor; secondly, that whereas from the woman’s
side we derive our more intellectual faculties, from the man’s we derive
our moral: a clever and witty man generally has a clever and witty
mother; a brave and honorable man, a brave and honorable father.
Therefore all the qualities which attention to race should perpetuate
are the manly qualities, traceable only from the father’s side. Again,
he held that while the aristocracy have higher and more chivalrous
notions, the people generally have shrewder and livelier ideas.
Therefore, to prevent gentlemen from degenerating into complete
dunderheads, an admixture with the people, provided always it was on
the female side, was not only excusable, but expedient; and, finally,
my uncle held that whereas a man is a rude, coarse, sensual animal, and
requires all manner of associations to dignify and refine him, women
are so naturally susceptible of everything beautiful in sentiment and
generous in purpose that she who is a true woman is a fit peer for
a king. Odd and preposterous notions, no doubt, and capable of much
controversy, so far as the doctrine of race (if that be any way tenable)
is concerned; but then the plain fact is that my Uncle Roland was as
eccentric and contradictory a gentleman--as--as--why, as you and I are,
if we once venture to think for ourselves.

“Well, sir, and what profession are you meant for?” asked my uncle. “Not
the army, I fear?”

“I have never thought of the subject, uncle.”

“Thank Heaven,” said Captain Roland, “we have never yet had a lawyer in
the family, nor a stockbroker, nor a tradesman--ahem!”

I saw that my great ancestor the printer suddenly rose up in that hem.

“Why, uncle, there are honorable men in all callings.”

“Certainly, sir. But in all callings honor is not the first principle of
action.”

“But it may be, sir, if a man of honor pursue it! There are some
soldiers who have been great rascals!”

My uncle looked posed, and his black brows met thoughtfully. “You are
right, boy, I dare say,” he answered, somewhat mildly. “But do you think
that it ought to give me as much pleasure to look on my old ruined tower
if I knew it had been bought by some herring-dealer, like the first
ancestor of the Poles, as I do now, when I know it was given to a knight
and gentleman (who traced his descent from an Anglo-Dane in the time of
King Alfred) for services done in Aquitaine and Gascony, by Henry the
Plantagenet? And do you mean to tell me that I should have been the same
man if I had not from a boy associated that old tower with all ideas of
what its owners were, and should be, as knights and gentlemen? Sir, you
would have made a different being of me if at the head of my
pedigree you had clapped a herring-dealer,--though, I dare say, the
herring-dealer might have been as good a man as ever the Anglo-Dane was,
God rest him!”

“And for the same reason I suppose, sir, that you think my father never
would have been quite the same being he is if he had not made that
notable discovery touching our descent from the great William Caxton,
the printer.”

My uncle bounded as if he had been shot,--bounded so incautiously,
considering the materials of which one leg was composed, that he would
have fallen into a strawberry-bed if I had not caught him by the arm.

“Why, you--you--you young jackanapes!” cried the Captain, shaking me off
as soon as he had regained his equilibrium. “You do not mean to inherit
that infamous crotchet my brother has got into his head? You do not mean
to exchange Sir William de Caxton, who fought and fell at Bosworth,
for the mechanic who sold black-letter pamphlets in the Sanctuary at
Westminster?”

“That depends on the evidence, uncle!”

“No, sir; like all noble truths, it depends upon faith. Men, nowadays,”
 continued my uncle, with a look of ineffable disgust, “actually require
that truths should be proved.”

“It is a sad conceit on their part, no doubt, my dear uncle; but till a
truth is proved, how can we know that it is a truth?”

I thought that in that very sagacious question I had effectually caught
my uncle. Not I. He slipped through it like an eel.

“Sir,” said he, “whatever in Truth makes a man’s heart warmer and his
soul purer, is a belief, not a knowledge. Proof, sir, is a handcuff;
belief is a wing! Want proof as to an ancestor in the reign of King
Richard? Sir, you cannot even prove to the satisfaction of a logician
that you are the son of your own father. Sir, a religious man does not
want to reason about his religion; religion is not mathematics. Religion
is to be felt, not proved. There are a great many things in the religion
of a good man which are not in the catechism. Proof!” continued my
uncle, growing violent--“Proof, sir, is a low, vulgar, levelling,
rascally Jacobin; Belief is a loyal, generous, chivalrous gentleman! No,
no; prove what you please, you shall never rob me of one belief that has
made me--”

“The finest-hearted creature that ever talked nonsense,” said my father,
who came up, like Horace’s deity, at the right moment. “What is it you
must believe in, brother, no matter what the proof against you?”

My uncle was silent, and with great energy dug the point of his cane
into the gravel.

“He will not believe in our great ancestor the printer,” said I,
maliciously.

My father’s calm brow was overcast in a moment. “Brother,” said the
Captain, loftily, “you have a right to your own ideas; but you should
take care how they contaminate your child.”

“Contaminate!” said my father, and for the first time I saw an angry
sparkle flash from his eyes; but he checked himself on the instant.
“Change the word, my dear brother.”

“No, sir, I will not change it! To belie the records of the family!”

“Records! A brass plate in a village church against all the books of the
College of Arms!”

“To renounce your ancestor, a knight who died in the field!”

“For the worst cause that man ever fought for!”

“On behalf of his king!”

“Who had murdered his nephews!”

“A knight! with our crest on his helmet.”

“And no brains underneath it, or he would never have had them knocked
out for so bloody a villain!”

“A rascally, drudging, money-making printer!”

“The wise and glorious introducer of the art that has enlightened a
world. Prefer for an ancestor, to one whom scholar and sage never name
but in homage, a worthless, obscure, jolter-headed booby in mail, whose
only record to men is a brass plate in a church in a village!”

My uncle turned round perfectly livid. “Enough, sir! enough! I am
insulted sufficiently. I ought to have expected it. I wish you and your
son a very good day.”

My father stood aghast. The Captain was hobbling off to the iron gate;
in another moment he would have been out of our precincts. I ran up
and hung upon him. “Uncle, it is all my fault. Between you and me, I
am quite of your side; pray forgive us both. What could I have been
thinking of, to vex you so? And my father, whom your visit has made so
happy!” My uncle paused, feeling for the latch of the gate. My father
had now come up, and caught his hand. “What are all the printers that
ever lived, and all the books they ever printed, to one wrong to thy
fine heart, brother Roland? Shame on me! A bookman’s weak point, you
know! It is very true, I should never have taught the boy one thing to
give you pain, brother Roland,--though I don’t remember,” continued my
father, with a perplexed look, “that I ever did teach it him, either!
Pisistratus, as you value my blessing, respect as your ancestor Sir
William de Caxton, the hero of Bosworth. Come, come, brother!”

“I am an old fool,” said Uncle Roland, “whichever way we look at it. Ah,
you young dog, you are laughing at us both!”

“I have ordered breakfast on the lawn,” said my mother, coming out from
the porch, with her cheerful smile on her lips; “and I think the devil
will be done to your liking to-day, brother Roland.”

“We have had enough of the devil already, my love,” said my father,
wiping his forehead.

So, while the birds sang overhead or hopped familiarly across the sward
for the crumbs thrown forth to them, while the sun was still cool in the
east, and the leaves yet rustled with the sweet air of morning, we all
sat down to our table, with hearts as reconciled to each other, and as
peaceably disposed to thank God for the fair world around us, as if
the river had never run red through the field of Bosworth, and that
excellent Mr. Caxton had never set all mankind by the ears with an
irritating invention a thousand times more provocative of our combative
tendencies than the blast of the trumpet and the gleam of the banner!




CHAPTER V.

“Brother,” said Mr. Caxton, “I will walk with you to the Roman
encampment.”

The Captain felt that this proposal was meant as the greatest
peace-offering my father could think of; for, first, it was a very long
walk, and my father detested long walks; secondly, it was the sacrifice
of a whole day’s labor at the Great Work. And yet, with that quick
sensibility which only the generous possess, Uncle Roland accepted at
once the proposal. If he had not done so, my father would have had a
heavier heart for a month to come. And how could the Great Work have
got on while the author was every now and then disturbed by a twinge of
remorse?

Half an hour after breakfast, the brothers set off arm-in-arm; and I
followed, a little apart, admiring how sturdily the old soldier got over
the ground, in spite of the cork leg. It was pleasant enough to listen
to their conversation, and notice the contrasts between these two
eccentric stamps from Dame Nature’s ever-variable mould,--Nature, who
casts nothing in stereotype; for I do believe that not even two fleas
can be found identically the same.

My father was not a quick or minute observer of rural beauties. He had
so little of the organ of locality that I suspect he could have lost his
way in his own garden. But the Captain was exquisitely alive to external
impressions,--not a feature in the landscape escaped him. At every
fantastic gnarled pollard he halted to gaze; his eye followed the lark
soaring up from his feet; when a fresher air came from the hill-top his
nostrils dilated, as if voluptuously to inhale its delight. My father,
with all his learning, and though his study had been in the stores of
all language, was very rarely eloquent. The Captain had a glow and a
passion in his words which, what with his deep, tremulous voice and
animated gestures, gave something poetic to half of what he uttered. In
every sentence of Roland’s, in every tone of his voice and every play
of his face, there was some outbreak of pride; but unless you set him on
his hobby of that great ancestor the printer, my father had not as much
pride as a homeopathist could have put into a globule. He was not proud
even of not being proud. Chafe all his feathers, and still you could
rouse but the dove. My father was slow and mild, my uncle quick and
fiery; my father reasoned, my uncle imagined; my father was very seldom
wrong, my uncle never quite in the right; but, as my father once said of
him, “Roland beats about the bush till he sends out the very bird that
we went to search for. He is never in the wrong without suggesting to us
what is the right.” All in my uncle was stern, rough, and angular; all
in my father was sweet, polished, and rounded into a natural grace. My
uncle’s character cast out a multiplicity of shadows, like a Gothic pile
in a northern sky. My father stood serene in the light, like a Greek
temple at mid-day in a southern clime. Their persons corresponded with
their natures. My uncle’s high, aquiline features, bronzed hue, rapid
fire of eye, and upper lip that always quivered, were a notable contrast
to my father’s delicate profile, quiet, abstracted gaze, and the
steady sweetness that rested on his musing smile. Roland’s forehead was
singularly high, and rose to a peak in the summit where phrenologists
place the organ of veneration; but it was narrow, and deeply furrowed.
Augustine’s might be as high, but then soft, silky hair waved carelessly
over it, concealing its height, but not its vast breadth, on which not a
wrinkle was visible. And yet, withal, there was a great family likeness
between the two brothers. When some softer sentiment subdued him, Roland
caught the very look of Augustine; when some high emotion animated my
father, you might have taken him for Roland. I have often thought since,
in the greater experience of mankind which life has afforded me, that
if, in early years, their destinies had been exchanged,--if Roland had
taken to literature, and my father had been forced into action,--each
would have had greater worldly success. For Roland’s passion and energy
would have given immediate and forcible effect to study; he might
have been a historian or a poet. It is not study alone that produces a
writer, it is intensity. In the mind, as in yonder chimney, to make the
fire burn hot and quick, you must narrow the draught. Whereas, had
my father been forced into the practical world, his calm depth of
comprehension, his clearness of reason, his general accuracy in such
notions as he once entertained and pondered over, joined to a temper
that crosses and losses could never ruffle, and utter freedom from
vanity and self-love, from prejudice and passion, might have made him
a very wise and enlightened counsellor in the great affairs of life,--a
lawyer, a diplomatist, a statesman, for what I know, even a great
general, if his tender humanity had not stood in the way of his military
mathematics.

But as it was,--with his slow pulse never stimulated by action, and too
little stirred by even scholarly ambition,--my father’s mind went on
widening and widening till the circle was lost in the great ocean of
contemplation; and Roland’s passionate energy, fretted into fever by
every let and hindrance in the struggle with his kind, and narrowed more
and more as it was curbed within the channels of active discipline and
duty, missed its due career altogether, and what might have been the
poet, contracted into the humorist.

Yet who that had ever known ye, could have wished you other than ye
were, ye guileless, affectionate, honest, simple creatures?--simple
both, in spite of all the learning of the one, all the prejudices,
whims, irritabilities, and crotchets of the other. There you are, seated
on the height of the old Roman camp, with a volume of the Stratagems
of Polyaenus (or is it Frontinus?) open on my father’s lap; the sheep
grazing in the furrows of the circumvallations; the curious steer gazing
at you where it halts in the space whence the Roman cohorts glittered
forth; and your boy-biographer standing behind you with folded arms,
and--as the scholar read, or the soldier pointed his cane to each
fancied post in the war--filling up the pastoral landscape with the
eagles of Agricola and the scythed cars of Boadicea!




CHAPTER VI.

“It is never the same two hours together in this country,” said my Uncle
Roland, as, after dinner, or rather after dessert, we joined my mother
in the drawing-room.

Indeed, a cold, drizzling rain had come on within the last two hours,
and though it was July, it was as chilly as if it had been October. My
mother whispered to me, and I went out; in ten minutes more, the logs
(for we live in a wooded country) blazed merrily in the grate. Why could
not my mother have rung the bell and ordered the servant to light a
fire? My dear reader, Captain Roland was poor, and he made a capital
virtue of economy!

The two brothers drew their chairs near to the hearth, my father at the
left, my uncle at the right; and I and my mother sat down to “Fox and
Geese.”

Coffee came in,--one cup for the Captain, for the rest of the party
avoided that exciting beverage. And on that cup was a picture of--His
Grace the Duke of Wellington!

During our visit to the Roman camp my mother had borrowed Mr. Squills’s
chaise and driven over to our market-town, for the express purpose of
greeting the Captain’s eyes with the face of his old chief.

My uncle changed color, rose, lifted my mother’s hand to his lips, and
sat himself down again in silence.

“I have heard,” said the Captain after a pause, “that the Marquis of
Hastings, who is every inch a soldier and a gentleman,--and that is
saying not a little, for he measures seventy-five inches from the
crown to the sole,--when he received Louis XVIII. (then an exile) at
Donnington, fitted up his apartments exactly like those his Majesty had
occupied at the Tuileries. It was a kingly attention (my Lord Hastings,
you know, is sprung from the Plantagenets),--a kingly attention to a
king. It cost some money and made some noise. A woman can show the same
royal delicacy of heart in this bit of porcelain, and so quietly that we
men all think it a matter of course, brother Austin.”

“You are such a worshipper of women, Roland, that it is melancholy to
see you single. You must marry again!”

My uncle first smiled, then frowned, and lastly sighed somewhat heavily.

“Your time will pass slowly in your old tower, poor brother,” continued
my father, “with only your little girl for a companion.”

“And the past!” said my uncle; “the past, that mighty world--”

“Do you still read your old books of chivalry,--Froissart and the
Chronicles, Palmerin of England, and Amadis of Gaul?”

“Why,” said my uncle, reddening, “I have tried to improve myself with
studies a little more substantial. And,” he added with a sly smile,
“there will be your great book for many a long winter to come.”

“Um!” said my father, bashfully.

“Do you know,” quoth my uncle, “that Dame Primmins is a very intelligent
woman,--full of fancy, and a capital story-teller?”

“Is not she, uncle?” cried I, leaving my fox in the corner. “Oh, if you
could hear her tell the tale of King Arthur and the Enchanted Lake, or
the Grim White Woman!”

“I have already heard her tell both,” said my uncle.

“The deuce you have, brother! My dear, we must look to this. These
captains are dangerous gentlemen in an orderly household. Pray, where
could you have had the opportunity of such private communications with
Mrs. Primmins?”

“Once,” said my uncle, readily, “when I went into her room, while she
mended my stock; and once--” He stopped short, and looked down.

“Once when? Out with it.”

“When she was warming my bed,” said my uncle, in a half-whisper.

“Dear!” said my mother, innocently, “that’s how the sheets came by that
bad hole in the middle. I thought it was the warming-pan.”

“I am quite shocked!” faltered my uncle.

“You well may be,” said my father. “A woman who has been heretofore
above all suspicion! But come,” he said, seeing that my uncle looked
sad, and was no doubt casting up the probable price of twice six
yards of holland, “but come, you were always a famous rhapsodist or
tale-teller yourself. Come, Roland, let us have some story of
your own,--something which your experience has left strong in your
impressions.”

“Let us first have the candles,” said my mother.

The candles were brought, the curtains let down; we all drew our chairs
to the hearth. But in the interval my uncle had sunk into a gloomy
revery; and when we called upon him to begin, he seemed to shake off
with effort some recollections of pain.

“You ask me,” he said, “to tell you some tale which my own experience
has left deeply marked in my impressions,--I will tell you one, apart
from my own life, but which has often haunted me. It is sad and strange,
ma’am.”

“Ma’am, brother?” said my mother, reproachfully, letting her small hand
drop upon that which, large and sunburnt, the Captain waved towards her
as he spoke.

“Austin, you have married an angel!” said my uncle; and he was,
I believe, the only brother-in-law who ever made so hazardous an
assertion.




CHAPTER VII. MY UNCLE ROLAND’S TALE.

“It was in Spain--no matter where or how--that it was my fortune to
take prisoner a French officer of the same rank that I then held,--a
lieutenant; and there was so much similarity in our sentiments that we
became intimate friends,--the most intimate friend I ever had, sister,
out of this dear circle. He was a rough soldier, whom the world had not
well treated; but he never railed at the world, and maintained that he
had had his deserts. Honor was his idol, and the sense of honor paid him
for the loss of all else.

“We were both at that time volunteers in a foreign service,--in that
worst of service, civil war,--he on one side, I the other, both,
perhaps, disappointed in the cause we had severally espoused. There was
something similar, too, in our domestic relationships. He had a son--a
boy--who was all in life to him, next to his country and his duty. I
too had then such a son, though of fewer years.” (The Captain paused
an instant; we exchanged glances, and a stifling sensation of pain and
suspense was felt by all his listeners.) “We were accustomed, brother,
to talk of these children, to picture their future, to compare our
hopes and dreams. We hoped and dreamed alike. A short time sufficed to
establish this confidence. My prisoner was sent to head-quarters, and
soon afterwards exchanged.

“We met no more till last year. Being then at Paris, I inquired for my
old friend, and learned that he was living at R--, a few miles from the
capital. I went to visit him. I found his house empty and deserted. That
very day he had been led to prison, charged with a terrible crime. I saw
him in that prison, and from his own lips learned his story. His son had
been brought up, as he fondly believed, in the habits and principles of
honorable men, and having finished his education, came to reside with
him at R--. The young man was accustomed to go frequently to Paris. A
young Frenchman loves pleasure, sister; and pleasure is found at Paris.
The father thought it natural, and stripped his age of some comforts to
supply luxuries to the son’s youth.

“Shortly after the young man’s arrival, my friend perceived that he was
robbed. Moneys kept in his bureau were abstracted, he knew not how, nor
could guess by whom. It must be done in the night. He concealed himself
and watched. He saw a stealthy figure glide in, he saw a false
key applied to the lock; he started forward, seized the felon, and
recognized his son. What should the father have done? I do not ask you,
sister! I ask these men: son and father, I ask you.”

“Expelled him the house,” cried I.

“Done his duty, and reformed the unhappy wretch,” said my father. “Nemo
repente turpissinus semper fait,--No man is wholly bad all at once.”

“The father did as you would have advised, brother. He kept the youth;
he remonstrated with him: he did more,--he gave him the key of the
bureau. ‘Take what I have to give,’ said he; ‘I would rather be a beggar
than know my son a thief.’”

“Right! And the youth repented, and became a good man?” exclaimed my
father.

Captain Roland shook his head. “The youth promised amendment, and seemed
penitent. He spoke of the temptations of Paris, the gaming-table, and
what not. He gave up his daily visits to the capital. He seemed to apply
to study. Shortly after this, the neighborhood was alarmed by reports
of night robberies on the road. Men, masked and armed, plundered
travellers, and even broke into houses.

“The police were on the alert. One night an old brother officer knocked
at my friend’s door. It was late; the veteran (he was a cripple, by the
way, like myself,--strange coincidence!) was in bed. He came down in
haste, when his servant woke, and told him that his old friend, wounded
and bleeding, sought an asylum under his roof. The wound, however, was
slight. The guest had been attacked and robbed on the road. The next
morning the proper authority of the town was sent for. The plundered
man described his loss,--some billets of five hundred francs in a
pocketbook, on which was embroidered his name and coronet (he was a
vicomte). The guest stayed to dinner. Late in the forenoon, the son
looked in. The guest started to see him; my friend noticed his paleness.
Shortly after, on pretence of faintness, the guest retired to his room,
and sent for his host. ‘My friend,’ said he, ‘can you do me a favor? Go
to the magistrate and recall the evidence I have given.’

“‘Impossible,’ said the host. ‘What crotchet is this?’

“The guest shuddered. ‘Peste!’ said he, ‘I do not wish in my old age to
be hard on others. Who knows how the robber may have been tempted, and
who knows what relations he may have,--honest men, whom his crime would
degrade forever! Good heavens! if detected, it is the galleys, the
galleys!’

“And what then? The robber knew what he braved. ‘But did his father know
it?’ cried the guest.

“A light broke upon my unhappy comrade in arms; he caught his friend by
the hand: ‘You turned pale at my son’s sight,--where did you ever see
him before? Speak!’

“‘Last night on the road to Paris. The mask slipped aside. Call back my
evidence!’

“‘You are mistaken,’ said my friend, calmly. ‘I saw my son in his bed,
and blessed him, before I went to my own.’

“‘I will believe you,’ said the guest; ‘and never shall my hasty
suspicion pass my lips,--but call back the evidence.’

“The guest returned to Paris before dusk. The father conversed with his
son on the subject of his studies; he followed him to his room, waited
till he was in bed, and was then about to retire, when the youth said,
‘Father, you have forgotten your blessing.’

“The father went back, laid his hand on the boy’s head and prayed. He
was credulous--fathers are so! He was persuaded that his friend had been
deceived. He retired to rest, and fell asleep. He woke suddenly in the
middle of the night, and felt (I here quote his words)--‘I felt,’
said he, ‘as if a voice had awakened me,--a voice that said, “Rise and
search.” I rose at once, struck a light, and went to my son’s room. The
door was locked. I knocked once, twice, thrice no answer. I dared not
call aloud, lest I should rouse the servants. I went down the stairs, I
opened the back-door, I passed to the stables. My own horse was there,
not my son’s. My horse neighed; it was old, like myself,--my old charger
at Mont St. Jean. I stole back, I crept into the shadow of the wall by
my son’s door, and extinguished my light. I felt as if I were a thief
myself.’”

“Brother,” interrupted my mother, under her breath; “speak in your own
words, not in this wretched father’s. I know not why, but it would shock
me less.”

The Captain nodded.

“Before daybreak, my friend heard the back-door open gently; a foot
ascended the stair, a key grated in the door of the room close at hand:
the father glided through the dark into that chamber behind his unseen
son.

“He heard the clink of the tinder-box; a light was struck; it
spread over the room, but he had time to place himself behind the
window-curtain which was close at hand. The figure before him stood
a moment or so motionless, and seemed to listen, for it turned to the
right, to the left, its visage covered with the black, hideous mask
which is worn in carnivals. Slowly the mask was removed. Could that be
his son’s face,--the son of a brave man? It was pale and ghastly with
scoundrel fears; the base drops stood on the brow; the eye was haggard
and bloodshot. He looked as a coward looks when death stands before him.

“The youth walked, or rather skulked, to the secretaire, unlocked it,
opened a secret drawer, placed within it the contents of his pockets
and his frightful mask; the father approached softly, looked over his
shoulder, and saw in the drawer the pocketbook embroidered with his
friend’s name. Meanwhile, the son took out his pistols, uncocked them
cautiously, and was about also to secrete them, when his father arrested
his arm. ‘Robber, the use of these is yet to come!’

“The son’s knees knocked together, an exclamation for mercy burst from
his lips; but when, recovering the mere shock of his dastard nerves,
he perceived it was not the gripe of some hireling of the law, but a
father’s hand that had clutched his arm, the vile audacity which knows
fear only from a bodily cause, none from the awe of shame, returned to
him.

“Tush, sir!’ he said, ‘waste not time in reproaches, for, I fear, the
gendarmes are on my track. It is well that you are here; you can swear
that I have spent the night at home. Unhand me, old man; I have these
witnesses still to secrete,’ and he pointed to the garments wet and
dabbled with the mud of the roads. He had scarcely spoken when the walls
shook; there was the heavy clatter of hoofs on the ringing pavement
without.

“‘They come!’ cried the son. ‘Off, dotard! save your son from the
galleys.’

“‘The galleys, the galleys!’ said the father, staggering back; ‘it is
true; he said--“the galleys!”’

“There was a loud knocking at the gate. The gendarmes surrounded the
house. ‘Open, in the name of the law!’ No answer came, no door was
opened. Some of the gendarmes rode to the rear of the house, in which
was placed the stable yard. From the window of the son’s room the father
saw the sudden blaze of torches, the shadowy forms of the men-hunters.
He heard the clatter of arms as they swung themselves from their horses.
He heard a voice cry, ‘Yes, this is the robber’s gray horse,--see, it
still reeks with sweat!’ And behind and in front, at either door, again
came the knocking, and again the shout, ‘Open, in the name of the law!’

“Then lights began to gleam from the casements of the neighboring
houses; then the space filled rapidly with curious wonderers startled
from their sleep: the world was astir, and the crowd came round to know
what crime or what shame had entered the old soldier’s home.

“Suddenly, within, there was heard the report of a fire-arm; and a
minute or so afterwards the front door was opened, and the soldier
appeared.

“‘Enter,’ he said to the gendarmes: ‘what would you?’

“‘We seek a robber who is within your walls.’

“I know it; mount and find him: I will lead the way.’

“He ascended the stairs; he threw open his son’s room: the officers of
justice poured in, and on the floor lay the robber’s corpse.

“They looked at each other in amazement. ‘Take what is left you,’ said
the father. ‘Take the dead man rescued from the galleys; take the living
man on whose hands rests the dead man’s blood!’

“I was present at my friend’s trial. The facts had become known
beforehand. He stood there with his gray hair, and his mutilated limbs,
and the deep scar on his visage, and the Cross of the Legion of Honor on
his breast; and when he had told his tale, he ended with these words: ‘I
have saved the son whom I reared for France from a doom that would have
spared the life to brand it with disgrace. Is this a crime? I give
you my life in exchange for my son’s disgrace. Does my country need a
victim? I have lived for my country’s glory, and I can die contented to
satisfy its laws, sure that, if you blame me, you will not despise; sure
that the hands that give me to the headsman will scatter flowers over my
grave. Thus I confess all. I, a soldier, look round amongst a nation of
soldiers; and in the name of the star which glitters on my breast I dare
the fathers of France to condemn me!’

“They acquitted the soldier,--at least they gave a verdict answering to
what in our courts is called ‘justifiable homicide.’ A shout rose in the
court which no ceremonial voice could still; the crowd would have borne
him in triumph to his house, but his look repelled such vanities. To his
house he returned indeed; and the day afterwards they found him dead,
beside the cradle in which his first prayer had been breathed over his
sinless child. Now, father and son, I ask you, do you condemn that man?”




CHAPTER VIII.

My father took three strides up and down the room, and then, halting on
his hearth, and facing his brother, he thus spoke: “I condemn his deed,
Roland! At best he was but a haughty egotist. I understand why Brutus
should slay his sons. By that sacrifice he saved his country! What did
this poor dupe of an exaggeration save? Nothing but his own name. He
could not lift the crime from his son’s soul, nor the dishonor from his
son’s memory. He could but gratify his own vain pride; and insensibly to
himself, his act was whispered to him by the fiend that ever whispers
to the heart of man, ‘Dread men’s opinions more than God’s law!’ Oh, my
dear brother! what minds like yours should guard against the most is
not the meanness of evil,--it is the evil that takes false nobility, by
garbing itself in the royal magnificence of good.” My uncle walked to
the window, opened it, looked out a moment, as if to draw in fresh air,
closed it gently, and came back again to his seat; but during the short
time the window had been left open, a moth flew in.

“Tales like these,” renewed my father, pityingly,--“whether told by some
great tragedian, or in thy simple style, my brother,--tales like these
have their uses: they penetrate the heart to make it wiser; but all
wisdom is meek, my Roland. They invite us to put the question to
ourselves that thou hast asked, ‘Can we condemn this man?’ and reason
answers as I have answered, ‘We pity the man, we condemn the deed.’
We--take care, my love! that moth will be in the candle. We--whisk!
whisk!” and my father stopped to drive away the moth. My uncle turned,
and taking his handkerchief from the lower part of his face, of which
he had wished to conceal the workings, he flapped away the moth from the
flame. My mother moved the candles from the moth.

I tried to catch the moth in my father’s straw-hat. The deuce was in the
moth! it baffled us all, now circling against the ceiling, now sweeping
down at the fatal lights. As if by a simultaneous impulse, my father
approached one candle, my uncle approached the other; and just as the
moth was wheeling round and round, irresolute which to choose for its
funeral pyre, both candles were put out. The fire had burned down low in
the grate, and in the sudden dimness my father’s soft, sweet voice came
forth, as if from an invisible being: “We leave ourselves in the dark
to save a moth from the flame, brother! Shall we do less for our
fellow-men? Extinguish, oh! humanely extinguish, the light of our reason
when the darkness more favors our mercy.” Before the lights were relit,
my uncle had left the room; his brother followed him. My mother and I
drew near to each other and talked in whispers.




PART IV.




CHAPTER I.

I was always an early riser. Happy the man who is! Every morning,
day comes to him with a virgin’s love, full of bloom and purity and
freshness. The youth of Nature is contagious, like the gladness of a
happy child. I doubt if any man can be called “old” so long as he is
an early riser and an early walker. And oh, youth!--take my word of
it--youth in dressing-gown and slippers, dawdling over breakfast at
noon, is a very decrepit, ghastly image of that youth which sees the
sun blush over the mountains, and the dews sparkle upon blossoming
hedgerows.

Passing by my father’s study, I was surprised to see the windows
unclosed; surprised more, on looking in, to see him bending over his
books,--for I had never before known him study till after the morning
meal. Students are not usually early risers, for students, alas!
whatever their age, are rarely young. Yes, the Great Book must be
getting on in serious earnest. It was no longer dalliance with learning;
this was work.

I passed through the gates into the road. A few of the cottages were
giving signs of returning life, but it was not yet the hour for labor,
and no “Good morning, sir,” greeted me on the road. Suddenly at a turn,
which an over-hanging beech-tree had before concealed, I came full upon
my Uncle Roland.

“What! you, sir? So early? Hark, the clock is striking five!”

“Not later! I have walked well for a lame man. It must be more than four
miles to--and back.”

“You have been to--? Not on business? No soul would be up.”

“Yes, at inns there is always some one up. Hostlers never sleep! I have
been to order my humble chaise and pair. I leave you today, nephew.”

“Ah, uncle, we have offended you! It was my folly, that cursed print--”

“Pooh!” said my uncle, quickly. “Offended me, boy? I defy you!” and he
pressed my hand roughly.

“Yet this sudden determination! It was but yesterday, at the Roman Camp,
that you planned an excursion with my father, to C------ Castle.”

“Never depend upon a whimsical man. I must be in London tonight.”

“And return to-morrow?”

“I know not when,” said my uncle, gloomily; and he was silent for some
moments. At length, leaning less lightly on my arm, he continued: “Young
man, you have pleased me. I love that open, saucy brow of yours, on
which Nature has written ‘Trust me.’ I love those clear eyes, that look
one manfully in the face. I must know more of you--much of you. You must
come and see me some day or other in your ancestors’ ruined keep.”

“Come! that I will. And you shall show me the old tower--”

“And the traces of the outworks!” cried my uncle, flourishing his stick.

“And the pedigree--”

“Ay, and your great-great-grandfather’s armor, which he wore at Marston
Moor--”

“Yes, and the brass plate in the church, uncle.”

“The deuce is in the boy! Come here, come here: I’ve three minds to
break your head, sir!”

“It is a pity somebody had not broken the rascally printer’s, before he
had the impudence to disgrace us by having a family, uncle.”

Captain Roland tried hard to frown, but he could not. “Pshaw!” said he,
stopping, and taking snuff. “The world of the dead is wide; why should
the ghosts jostle us?”

“We can never escape the ghosts, uncle. They haunt us always. We cannot
think or act, but the soul of some man, who has lived before, points the
way. The dead never die, especially since--”

“Since what, boy? You speak well.”

“Since our great ancestor introduced printing,” said I, majestically.

My uncle whistled “Malbrouk s’en va-t-en guerre.”

I had not the heart to plague him further.

“Peace!” said I, creeping cautiously within the circle of the stick.

“No! I forewarn you--”

“Peace! and describe to me my little cousin, your pretty daughter,--for
pretty I am sure she is.”

“Peace,” said my uncle, smiling. “But you must come and judge for
yourself.”




CHAPTER II.

Uncle Roland was gone. Before he went, he was closeted for an hour with
my father, who then accompanied him to the gate; and we all crowded
round him as he stepped into his chaise. When the Captain was gone, I
tried to sound my father as to the cause of so sudden a departure. But
my father was impenetrable in all that related to his brother’s secrets.
Whether or not the Captain had ever confided to him the cause of his
displeasure with his son,--a mystery which much haunted me,--my father
was mute on that score both to my mother and myself. For two or three
days, however, Mr. Caxton was evidently unsettled. He did not even take
to his Great Work, but walked much alone, or accompanied only by the
duck, and without even a book in his hand. But by degrees the scholarly
habits returned to him; my mother mended his pens, and the work went on.

For my part, left much to myself, especially in the mornings, I began to
muse restlessly over the future. Ungrateful that I was, the happiness of
home ceased to content me. I heard afar the roar of the great world, and
roved impatient by the shore.

At length, one evening, my father, with some modest hums and ha’s, and
an unaffected blush on his fair forehead, gratified a prayer frequently
urged on him, and read me some portions of the Great Work. I cannot
express the feelings this lecture created,--they were something akin
to awe. For the design of this book was so immense, and towards its
execution a learning so vast and various had administered, that it
seemed to me as if a spirit had opened to me a new world, which had
always been before my feet, but which my own human blindness had
hitherto concealed from me. The unspeakable patience with which all
these materials had been collected, year after year; the ease with which
now, by the calm power of genius, they seemed of themselves to fall
into harmony and system; the unconscious humility with which the scholar
exposed the stores of a laborious life,--all combined to rebuke my
own restlessness and ambition, while they filled me with a pride in my
father which saved my wounded egotism from a pang. Here, indeed, was one
of those books which embrace an existence; like the Dictionary of Bayle,
or the History of Gibbon, or the “Fasti Hellenici” of Clinton, it was
a book to which thousands of books had contributed, only to make the
originality of the single mind more bold and clear. Into the furnace all
vessels of gold, of all ages, had been cast; but from the mould came the
new coin, with its single stamp. And, happily, the subject of the work
did not forbid to the writer the indulgence of his naive, peculiar irony
of humor, so quiet, yet so profound. My father’s book was the “History
of Human Error.” It was, therefore, the moral history of mankind,
told with truth and earnestness, yet with an arch, unmalignant smile.
Sometimes, indeed, the smile drew tears. But in all true humor lies its
germ, pathos. Oh! by the goddess Moria, or Folly, but he was at home in
his theme. He viewed man first in the savage state, preferring in this
the positive accounts of voyagers and travellers to the vague myths
of antiquity and the dreams of speculators on our pristine state. From
Australia and Abyssinia he drew pictures of mortality unadorned, as
lively as if he had lived amongst Bushmen and savages all his life.
Then he crossed over the Atlantic, and brought before you the American
Indian, with his noble nature, struggling into the dawn of civilization,
when Friend Penn cheated him out of his birthright, and the Anglo-Saxon
drove him back into darkness. He showed both analogy and contrast
between this specimen of our kind and others equally apart from the
extremes of the savage state and the cultured,--the Arab in his tent,
the Teuton in his forests, the Greenlander in his boat, the Finn in his
reindeer car. Up sprang the rude gods of the North and the resuscitated
Druidism, passing from its earliest templeless belief into the later
corruptions of crommell and idol. Up sprang, by their side, the Saturn
of the Phoenicians, the mystic Budh of India, the elementary deities of
the Pelasgian, the Naith and Serapis of Egypt, the Ormuzd of Persia, the
Bel of Babylon, the winged genii of the graceful Etruria. How nature and
life shaped the religion; how the religion shaped the manners; how, and
by what influences, some tribes were formed for progress; how others
were destined to remain stationary, or be swallowed up in war and
slavery by their brethren,--was told with a precision clear and strong
as the voice of Fate. Not only an antiquarian and philologist, but an
anatomist and philosopher, my father brought to bear on all these grave
points the various speculations involved in the distinction of races.
He showed how race in perfection is produced, up to a certain point, by
admixture; how all mixed races have been the most intelligent; how, in
proportion as local circumstance and religious faith permitted the
early fusion of different tribes, races improved and quickened into the
refinements of civilization. He tracked the progress and dispersion
of the Hellenes from their mythical cradle in Thessaly, and showed how
those who settled near the sea-shores, and were compelled into
commerce and intercourse with strangers, gave to Greece her marvellous
accomplishments in arts and letters,--the flowers of the ancient world.
How others, like the Spartans; dwelling evermore in a camp, on guard
against their neighbors, and rigidly preserving their Dorian purity of
extraction, contributed neither artists, nor poets, nor philosophers to
the golden treasure-house of mind. He took the old race of the Celts,
Cimry, or Cimmerians. He compared the Celt who, as in Wales, the Scotch
Highlands, in Bretagne, and in uncomprehended Ireland, retains his old
characteristics and purity of breed, with the Celt whose blood, mixed by
a thousand channels, dictates from Paris the manners and revolutions
of the world. He compared the Norman, in his ancient Scandinavian home,
with that wonder of intelligence and chivalry into which he grew, fused
imperceptibly with the Frank, the Goth, and the Anglo-Saxon. He compared
the Saxon, stationary in the land of Horsa, with the colonist and
civilizers of the globe as he becomes when he knows not through what
channels--French, Flemish, Danish, Welsh, Scotch, and Irish--he draws
his sanguine blood. And out from all these speculations, to which I do
such hurried and scanty justice, he drew the blessed truth, that carries
hope to the land of the Caffre, the but of the Bushman,--that there is
nothing in the flattened skull and the ebon aspect that rejects God’s
law, improvement; that by the same principle which raises the dog,
the lowest of the animals in its savage state, to the highest after
man--viz., admixture of race--you can elevate into nations of majesty
and power the outcasts of humanity, now your compassion or your scorn.
But when my father got into the marrow of his theme; when, quitting
these preliminary discussions, he fell pounce amongst the would-be
wisdom of the wise; when he dealt with civilization itself, its schools,
and porticos, and academies; when he bared the absurdities couched
beneath the colleges of the Egyptians and the Symposia of the Greeks;
when he showed that, even in their own favorite pursuit of metaphysics,
the Greeks were children, and in their own more practical region of
politics, the Romans were visionaries and bunglers; when, following the
stream of error through the Middle Ages, he quoted the puerilities of
Agrippa, the crudities of Cardan, and passed, with his calm smile,
into the salons of the chattering wits of Paris in the eighteenth
century,--oh! then his irony was that of Lucian, sweetened by the gentle
spirit of Erasmus. For not even here was my father’s satire of the
cheerless and Mephistophelian school. From this record of error he drew
forth the grandeurs of truth. He showed how earnest men never think
in vain, though their thoughts may be errors. He proved how, in vast
cycles, age after age, the human mind marches on, like the ocean,
receding here, but there advancing; how from the speculations of the
Greek sprang all true philosophy; how from the institutions of the Roman
rose all durable systems of government; how from the robust follies
of the North came the glory of chivalry, and the modern delicacies of
honor, and the sweet, harmonizing influences of woman. He tracked the
ancestry of our Sidneys and Bayards from the Hengists, Genserics,
and Attilas. Full of all curious and quaint anecdote, of original
illustration, of those niceties of learning which spring from a taste
cultivated to the last exquisite polish, the book amused and allured
and charmed; and erudition lost its pedantry, now in the simplicity of
Montaigne, now in the penetration of La Bruyere. He lived in each time
of which he wrote, and the time lived again in him. Ah! what a writer
of romances he would have been if--if what? If he had had as sad an
experience of men’s passions as he had the happy intuition into their
humors. But he who would see the mirror of the shore must look where
it is cast on the river, not the ocean. The narrow stream reflects the
gnarled tree and the pausing herd and the village spire and the romance
of the landscape. But the sea reflects only the vast outline of the
headland and the lights of the eternal heaven.




CHAPTER III.

“It is Lombard Street to a China orange,” quoth Uncle Jack.

“Are the odds in favor of fame against failure so great? You do not
speak, I fear, from experience, brother Jack,” answered my father, as he
stooped down to tickle the duck under the left ear.

“But Jack Tibbets is not Augustine Caxton. Jack Tibbets is not a
scholar, a genius, a wond--”

“Stop!” cried my father.

“After all,” said Mr. Squills, “though I am no flatterer, Mr. Tibbets
is not so far out. That part of your book which compares the crania or
skulls of the different races is superb. Lawrence or Dr. Prichard could
not have done the thing more neatly. Such a book must not be lost to the
world; and I agree with Mr. Tibbets that you should publish as soon as
possible.”

“It is one thing to write, and another to publish,” said my father,
irresolutely. “When one considers all the great men who have published;
when one thinks one is going to intrude one’s self audaciously into the
company of Aristotle and Bacon, of Locke, of Herder, of all the grave
philosophers who bend over Nature with brows weighty with thought,--one
may well pause and--”

“Pooh!” interrupted Uncle Jack, “science is not a club, it is an ocean;
it is open to the cock-boat as the frigate. One man carries across it
a freightage of ingots, another may fish there for herrings. Who can
exhaust the sea, who say to Intellect, ‘The deeps of philosophy are
preoccupied’?”

“Admirable!” cried Squills.

“So it is really your advice, my friends,” said my father, who seemed
struck by Uncle Jack’s eloquent illustrations, “that I should desert my
household gods, remove to London, since my own library ceases to supply
my wants, take lodgings near the British Museum, and finish off one
volume, at least, incontinently.”

“It is a duty you owe to your country,” said Uncle Jack, solemnly.

“And to yourself,” urged Squills. “One must attend to the natural
evacuations of the brain. Ah! you may smile, sir, but I have observed
that if a man has much in his head, he must give it vent, or it
oppresses him; the whole system goes wrong. From being abstracted, he
grows stupefied. The weight of the pressure affects the nerves. I would
not even guarantee you from a stroke of paralysis.”

“Oh, Austin!” cried my mother tenderly, and throwing her arms round my
father’s neck.

“Come, sir, you are conquered,” said I.

“And what is to become of you, Sisty?” asked my father. “Do you go with
us, and unsettle your mind for the university?”

“My uncle has invited me to his castle; and in the mean while I will
stay here, fag hard, and take care of the duck.”

“All alone?” said my mother.

“No. All alone! Why, Uncle Jack will come here as often as ever, I
hope.”

Uncle Jack shook his head.

“No, my boy, I must go to town with your father. You don’t understand
these things. I shall see the booksellers for him. I know how these
gentlemen are to be dealt with. I shall prepare the literary circles for
the appearance of the book. In short, it is a sacrifice of interest,
I know; my Journal will suffer. But friendship and my country’s good
before all things.”

“Dear Jack!” said my mother, affectionately.

“I cannot suffer it,” cried my father. “You are making a good
income. You are doing well where you are, and as to seeing the
booksellers,--why, when the work is ready, you can come to town for a
week, and settle that affair.”

“Poor dear Austin,” said Uncle Jack, with an air of superiority and
compassion. “A week! Sir, the advent of a book that is to succeed
requires the preparation of months. Pshaw! I am no genius, but I am a
practical man. I know what’s what. Leave me alone.”

But my father continued obstinate, and Uncle Jack at last ceased to
urge the matter. The journey to fame and London was now settled, but my
father would not hear of my staying behind.

No, Pisistratus must needs go also to town and see the world; the duck
would take care of itself.




CHAPTER IV.

We had taken the precaution to send, the day before, to secure our due
complement of places--four in all, including one for Mrs. Primmins--in,
or upon, the fast family coach called the “Sun,” which had lately been
set up for the special convenience of the neighborhood.

This luminary, rising in a town about seven miles distant from us,
described at first a very erratic orbit amidst the contiguous villages
before it finally struck into the high-road of enlightenment, and thence
performed its journey, in the full eyes of man, at the majestic pace of
six miles and a half an hour. My father with his pockets full of books,
and a quarto of “Gebelin on the Primitive World,” for light reading,
under his arm; my mother with a little basket containing sandwiches, and
biscuits of her own baking; Mrs. Primmins, with a new umbrella purchased
for the occasion, and a bird-cage containing a canary endeared to
her not more by song than age and a severe pip through which she had
successfully nursed it; and I myself,--waited at the gates to welcome
the celestial visitor. The gardener, with a wheel-barrow full of boxes
and portmanteaus, stood a little in the van; and the footman, who was
to follow when lodgings had been found, had gone to a rising eminence to
watch the dawning of the expected “Sun,” and apprise us of its approach
by the concerted signal of a handkerchief fixed to a stick.

The quaint old house looked at us mournfully from all its deserted
windows. The litter before its threshold and in its open hall; wisps of
straw or hay that had been used for packing; baskets and boxes that had
been examined and rejected; others, corded and piled, reserved to follow
with the footman; and the two heated and hurried serving-women left
behind, standing halfway between house and garden-gate, whispering to
each other, and looking as if they had not slept for weeks,--gave to a
scene, usually so trim and orderly, an aspect of pathetic abandonment
and desolation. The Genius of the place seemed to reproach us. I felt
the omens were against us, and turned my earnest gaze from the haunts
behind with a sigh, as the coach now drew up with all its grandeur. An
important personage, who, despite the heat of the day, was enveloped
in a vast superfluity of belcher, in the midst of which galloped a gilt
fox, and who rejoiced in the name of “guard,” descended to inform us
politely that only three places, two inside and one out, were at our
disposal, the rest having been pre-engaged a fortnight before our orders
were received.

Now, as I knew that Mrs. Primmins was indispensable to the comforts of
my honored parents (the more so as she had once lived in London, and
knew all its ways), I suggested that she should take the outside seat,
and that I should perform the journey on foot,--a primitive mode of
transport which has its charms to a young man with stout limbs and gay
spirits. The guard’s outstretched arm left my mother little time to
oppose this proposition, to which my father assented with a silent
squeeze of the hand. And having promised to join them at a family hotel
near the Strand, to which Mr. Squills had recommended them as peculiarly
genteel and quiet, and waved my last farewell to my poor mother, who
continued to stretch her meek face out of the window till the coach was
whirled off in a cloud like one of the Homeric heroes, I turned
within, to put up a few necessary articles in a small knapsack which I
remembered to have seen in the lumber-room, and which had appertained
to my maternal grandfather; and with that on my shoulder, and a strong
staff in my hand, I set off towards the great city at as brisk a pace as
if I were only bound to the next village. Accordingly, about noon I was
both tired and hungry; and seeing by the wayside one of those pretty
inns yet peculiar to England, but which, thanks to the railways, will
soon be amongst the things before the Flood, I sat down at a table under
some clipped limes, unbuckled my knapsack, and ordered my simple fare
with the dignity of one who, for the first time in his life, bespeaks
his own dinner and pays for it out of his own pocket.

While engaged on a rasher of bacon and a tankard of what the landlord
called “No mistake,” two pedestrians, passing the same road which I
had traversed, paused, cast a simultaneous look at my occupation, and
induced no doubt by its allurements, seated themselves under the same
lime-trees, though at the farther end of the table. I surveyed the
new-comers with the curiosity natural to my years.

The elder of the two might have attained the age of thirty, though
sundry deep lines, and hues formerly florid and now faded, speaking of
fatigue, care, or dissipation, might have made him look somewhat older
than he was. There was nothing very prepossessing in his appearance. He
was dressed with a pretension ill suited to the costume appropriate to
a foot-traveller. His coat was pinched and padded; two enormous pins,
connected by a chain, decorated a very stiff stock of blue satin dotted
with yellow stars; his hands were cased in very dingy gloves which had
once been straw-colored, and the said hands played with a whalebone
cane surmounted by a formidable knob, which gave it the appearance of
a “life-preserver.” As he took off a white napless hat, which he
wiped with great care and affection with the sleeve of his right arm,
a profusion of stiff curls instantly betrayed the art of man. Like
my landlord’s ale, in that wig there was “no mistake;” it was brought
(after the fashion of the wigs we see in the popular effigies of George
IV. in his youth), low over his fore-head, and was raised at the top.
The wig had been oiled, and the oil had imbibed no small quantity of
dust; oil and dust had alike left their impression on the forehead and
cheeks of the wig’s proprietor. For the rest, the expression of his face
was somewhat impudent and reckless, but not without a certain drollery
in the corners of his eyes.

The younger man was apparently about my own age,--a year or two older,
perhaps, judging rather from his set and sinewy frame than his boyish
countenance. And this last, boyish as it was, could not fail to command
the attention even of the most careless observer. It had not only the
darkness, but the character of the gipsy face, with large, brilliant
eyes, raven hair, long and wavy, but not curling; the features were
aquiline, but delicate, and when he spoke he showed teeth dazzling
as pearls. It was impossible not to admire the singular beauty of
the countenance; and yet it had that expression, at once stealthy and
fierce, which war with society has stamped upon the lineaments of the
race of which it reminded me. But, withal, there was somewhat of the air
of a gentleman in this young wayfarer. His dress consisted of a black
velveteen shooting-jacket, or rather short frock, with a broad leathern
strap at the waist, loose white trousers, and a foraging cap, which
he threw carelessly on the table a

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/7605