It was night as Vivian and myself rode slowly home. Night in Australia!
How impossible to describe its beauty Heaven seems, in that new world,
so much nearer to earth! Every star stands out so bright and particular
as if fresh from the time when the Maker willed it. And the moon like a
large silvery sun,--the least object on which it shines so distinct and
so still. (1) Now and then a sound breaks the silence, but a sound so
much in harmony with the solitude that it only deepens its charms.
Hark! the low cry of the night-bird from yonder glen amidst the small
gray gleaming rocks. Hark! as night deepens, the bark of the distant
watch-dog, or the low, strange howl of his more savage species, from
which he de fends the fold. Hark! the echo catches the sound, and
flings it sportively from hill to hill,--farther and farther and farther
down, till all again is hushed, and the flowers hang noiseless over your
head as you ride through a grove of the giant gum-trees. Now the air is
literally charged with the odors, and the sense of fragrance grows
almost painful in its pleasure. You quicken your pace, and escape again
into the open plains and the full moonlight, and through the slender
tea-trees catch the gleam of the river, and in the exquisite fineness of
the atmosphere hear the soothing sound of its murmur.
Pisistratus.--"And this land has become the heritage of our people!
Methinks I see, as I gaze around, the scheme of the All-beneficent
Father disentangling itself clear through the troubled history of
mankind. How mysteriously, while Europe rears its populations and
fulfils its civilizing mission, these realms have been concealed from
its eyes,--divulged to us just as civilization needs the solution to its
problems; a vent for feverish energies, baffled in the crowd; offering
bread to the famished, hope to the desperate; in very truth enabling the
'New World to redress the balance of the Old.' Here, what a Latium for
the wandering spirits,--
"'On various seas by various tempests tossed.'
"Here, the actual AEneid passes before our eyes. From the huts of the
exiles scattered over this hardier Italy, who cannot see in the future
"'A race from whence new Alban sires shall come,
And the long glories of a future Rome'?"
Vivian (mournfully).--"Is it from the outcasts of the work-house, the
prison, and the transport-ship that a second Rome is to arise?"
Pisistratus.--"There is something in this new soil--in the labor it
calls forth, in the hope it inspires, in the sense of property, which I
take to be the core of social morals--that expedites the work of
redemption with marvellous rapidity. Take them altogether, whatever
their origin, or whatever brought them hither, they are a fine, manly,
frank-hearted race, these colonists now!--rude, not mean, especially in
the Bush; and, I suspect, will ultimately become as gallant and honest a
population as that now springing up in South Australia, from which
convicts are excluded,--and happily excluded,--for the distinction will
sharpen emulation. As to the rest, and in direct answer to your
question, I fancy even the emancipist part of our population every whit
as respectable as the mongrel robbers under Romulus."
Vivian.--"But were they not soldiers,--I mean the first Romans?"
Pisistratus.--"My dear cousin, we are in advance of those grim outcasts
if we can get lands, houses, and wives (though the last is difficult,
and it is well that we have no white Sabines in the neighborhood)
without that same soldiering which was the necessity of their
existence."
Vivian (after a pause).--"I have written to my father, and to yours more
fully,--stating in the one letter my wish, in the other trying to
explain the feelings from which it springs."
Pisistratus.--"Are the letters gone?"
Vivian.--"Yes."
Pisistratus.--"And you would not show them to me!"
Vivian.--"Do not speak so reproachfully. I promised your father to pour
out my whole heart to him, whenever it was troubled and at strife. I
promise you now that I will go by his advice."
Pisistratus (disconsolately).--"What is there in this military life for
which you yearn that can yield you more food for healthful excitement
and stirring adventure than your present pursuits afford?"
Vivian.--"Distinction! You do not see the difference between us. You
have but a fortune to make,--I have a name to redeem; you look calmly on
to the future,--I have a dark blot to erase from the past."
Pisistratus (soothingly).--"It is erased. Five years of no weak
bewailings, but of manly reform, steadfast industry, conduct so
blameless that even Guy (whom I look upon as the incarnation of blunt
English honesty) half doubts whether you are 'cute enough for 'a
station;' a character already so high that I long for the hour when you
will again take your father's spotless name, and give me the pride to
own our kinship to the world,--all this surely redeems the errors
arising from an uneducated childhood and a wandering youth."
Vivian (leaning over his horse, and putting his hand on my shoulder).--
"My dear friend, what do I owe you!" Then recovering his emotion, and
pushing on at a quicker pace, while he continues to speak, "But can you
not see that, just in proportion as my comprehension of right would
become clear and strong, so my conscience would become also more
sensitive and reproachful; and the better I understand my gallant
father, the more I must desire to be as he would have had his son. Do
you think it would content him, could he see me branding cattle and
bargaining with bullock drivers? Was it not the strongest wish of his
heart that I should adopt his own career? Have I not heard you say that
he would have had you too a soldier, but for your mother? I have no
mother! If I made thousands, and tens of thousands, by this ignoble
calling, would they give my father half the pleasure that he would feel
at seeing my name honorably mentioned in a despatch? No, no! You have
banished the gypsy blood, and now the soldier's breaks out! Oh, for one
glorious day in which I may clear my way into fair repute, as our
fathers before us!--when tears of proud joy may flow from those eyes
that have wept such hot drops at my shame; when she, too, in her high
station beside that sleek lord, may say, 'His heart was not so vile,
after all!' Don't argue with me,--it is in vain! Pray, rather, that I
may have leave to work out my own way; for I tell you that if condemned
to stay here, I may not murmur aloud,--I may go through this round of
low duties as the brute turns the wheel of a mill; but my heart will
prey on itself, and you shall soon write on my gravestone the epitaph of
the poor poet you told us of whose true disease was the thirst of
glory,--'Here lies one whose name was writ in water."'
I had no answer; that contagious ambition made my own veins run more
warmly, and my own heart beat with a louder tumult. Amidst the pastoral
scenes, and under the tranquil moonlight of the New, the Old World, even
in me, rude Bushman, claimed for a while its son. But as we rode on,
the air, so inexpressibly buoyant, yet soothing as an anodyne, restored
me to peaceful Nature. Now the flocks, in their snowy clusters, were
seen sleeping under the stars; hark! the welcome of the watch-dogs; see
the light gleaming far from the chink of the door! And, pausing, I said
aloud: "No, there is more glory in laying these rough foundations of a
mighty state, though no trumpets resound with your victory, though no
laurels shall shadow your tomb, than in forcing the onward progress of
your race over burning cities and hecatombs of men!" I looked round for
Vivian's answer; but ere I spoke he had spurred from my side, and I saw
the wild dogs slinking back from the hoofs of his horse as he rode at
speed on the sward through the moonlight.
(1) "I have frequently," says Mr. Wilkinson, in his invaluable work upon
South Australia, at once so graphic and so practical, "been out on a
journey in such a night, and whilst allowing the horse his own time to
walk along the road, have solaced myself by reading in the still
moonlight."