[Illustration: Miss Owenson
Author of the Missionary St Clair &c]
THE
MISSIONARY:
AN
Indian Tale.
BY
MISS OWENSON.
WITH A PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
_FOURTH EDITION._
VOL. I:
_LONDON:_
PRINTED FOR J. J. STOCKDALE,
NO. 41, PALL MALL.
1811.
S. GOSNELL, Printer, Little Queen Street, London.
TO THE MOST NOBLE
ANN JANE,
MARCHIONESS OF ABERCORN,
THE FOLLOWING
TALE
IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED,
BY
THE AUTHOR.
THE
MISSIONARY,
&c.
CHAPTER I.
In the beginning of the seventeenth century, Portugal, bereft of her
natural sovereigns, had become an object of contention, to various
powers in Europe. The houses of Braganza and of Parma, of Savoy and
Medici, alike published their pretensions, and alike submitted to that
decision, which the arms of Spain finally made in its own favour. Under
the goading oppression of Philip the Second, and of his two immediate
successors, the national independence of a brave people faded gradually
away, and Portugal, wholly losing its rank in the scale of nations, sunk
into a Spanish province. From the torpid dream of slavish dependence,
the victims of a mild oppression were suddenly awakened, by the
rapacious cruelties of Olivarez, the gloomy minister of Philip the
Fourth; and the spring of national liberty, receiving its impulse from
the very pressure of the tyranny which crushed it, already recovered
something of that tone of force and elasticity which finally produced
one of the most singular and perfect revolutions, which the history of
nations has recorded. It was at this period, that Portugal became
divided into two powerful factions, and the Spanish partizans, and
Portuguese patriots, openly expressed their mutual abhorrence, and
secretly planned their respective destruction. Even Religion forfeited
her dove-like character of peace, and enrolled herself beneath the
banners of civil discord and factious commotion. The Jesuits governed
with the Spaniards; the Franciscans resisted with the Portuguese; and
each accused the other of promulgating heretical tenets, in support of
that cause, to which each was respectively attached[1].
It was in the midst of these religious and political feuds, that the
Order of St. Francis became distinguished in Portugal, by the sanctity
and genius of one of its members; and the monastery, into which the holy
enthusiast had retired from the splendour of opulence and rank, from the
pleasures of youth and the pursuits of life, became the shrine of
pilgrimage, to many pious votarists, who sought Heaven through the
mediation of him, who, on earth, had already obtained the title of “the
man without a fault.”
The monastery of St. Francis stands at the foot of that mighty chain of
mountains, which partially divides the province of Alentejo from the
sea-beat shores of Algarva. Excavated from a pile of rocks, its cells
are little better than rude caverns; and its heavy portico, and gloomy
chapel, are composed of the fragments of a Moorish castle, whose
mouldering turrets mingle, in the haze of distance, with the lofty
spires of the Christian sanctuary, while both are reflected, by the
bosom of one of those lakes so peculiar to Portugal, whose subterraneous
thunder rolls with an incessant uproar, even when the waves of the ocean
are still, and the air breathes of peace. Celebrated, in the natural
history of the country, for its absorbent and sanative qualities,
Superstition had wrested the phænomenon to her own mystic purposes; and
the roaring lake, which added so fine and awful a feature to the gloomy
scenery of the convent, brought to its altars the grateful tributes of
those, who piously believed that they obtained, from the consecrated
waters, health in this world, and salvation in the world to come.
To the left of the monastery, some traces of a Roman fortress, similar
to that of Coimbra, were still visible: to the north, the mighty hills
of Alentejo terminated the prospect: while to the south, the view seemed
extended to infinitude by the mightier ocean, beyond whose horizon
fancy sought the coast of Carthage; and memory, awakening to her magic,
dwelt on the altar of Hannibal, or hovered round the victor standard of
Scipio Africanus. The mountains; the ocean; the lake of subterraneous
thunder; the ruins of Moorish splendour; the vestiges of Roman prowess;
the pile of monastic gloom:--magnificent assemblage of great and
discordant images! What various epochas in time; what various states of
human power and human intellect, did not ye blend and harmonize, in one
great picture! What a powerful influence were not your wildness and your
solemnity, your grandeur and your gloom, calculated to produce upon the
mind of religious enthusiasm, upon the spirit of genius and melancholy;
upon a character, formed of all the higher elements of human nature,
upon such a mind, upon such a genius, upon such a character as thine,
Hilarion!
Amidst the hanging woods which shaded the southern side of the mountains
of Algarva, rose the turrets of the castle of Acugna; and the moon-beams
which fell upon its ramparts, were reflected back by the glittering
spires of St. Francis.
To this solitary and deserted castle, Hilarion, Count d’Acugna, had been
sent, by his uncle and guardian, the Archbishop of Lisbon, in 1620. The
young Hilarion had scarcely attained his tenth year. His sole companion
was his preceptor, an old brother of the order of St. Francis. History
attests the antiquity and splendour of the House d’Acugna. The royal
blood of Portugal flowed in the veins of Hilarion, for his mother was a
daughter of the House of Braganza. His elder, and only brother, Don
Lewis, Duke d’Acugna, was one of the most powerful grandees in the
state; his uncle, the Archbishop of Lisbon, was considered as the leader
of the disaffected nobles, whom the Spanish tyranny had almost driven to
desperation; and, while the Duke and the Prelate were involved in all
the political commotions of the day, the young Hilarion, impressed by
the grand solemnity of the images by which he was surrounded; inflamed
by the visionary nature of his religious studies; borne away by the
complexional enthusiasm of his character, and influenced by the
eloquence and example of his preceptor, emulated the ascetic life of his
patron saint, sighed to retire to some boundless desert, to live
superior to nature, and to nature’s laws, beyond the power of
temptation, and the possibility of error; to subdue, alike, the human
weakness and the human passion, and, wholly devoted to Heaven, to give
himself up to such spiritual communions and celestial visions, as visit
the souls of the pure in spirit, even during their probation on earth,
until, his unregulated mind becoming the victim of his ardent
imagination, he lost sight of the true object of human existence, a life
acceptable to the Creator by being serviceable to his creatures.
Endowed with that complexional enthusiasm, which disdains the ordinary
business of life, with that profound sensibility which unfits for its
pursuits, wrapt in holy dreams and pious ecstacies, all external
circumstances gradually faded from his view, and, in his eighteenth
year, believing himself, by the sudden death of his preceptor, to be the
“inheritor of his sacred mantle,” he offered up the sacrifice of his
worldly honours, of his human possessions, to Heaven, and became a monk
of the order of St. Francis.
The Archbishop, and the Duke d’Acugna, received the intelligence of his
profession with less emotion than surprise. Absence had loosened the
tie of natural affection. The political state of Portugal rendered an
adequate provision for the younger brother of so illustrious an house,
difficult and precarious; and the Patriarch of Lisbon well knew that, to
enter the portals of the church was not to close, for ever, the gate of
temporal preferment. The uncle and the brother wrote to felicitate the
young monk on his heavenly vocation, presented a considerable donation
to the monastery of St. Francis, and soon lost sight of their
enthusiast-relative in the public commotions and private factions of the
day.