‘T is true his nature may with faults abound;
But who will cavil when the heart is sound?--STEPHEN MONTAGUE.
Dum vitant stulti vitia, in contraria currant.-HORACE.
[“The foolish while avoiding vice run into the opposite
extremes.”]
The next day Sir Christopher Findlater called on Clarence. “Let us
lounge in the park,” said he.
“With pleasure,” replied Clarence; and into the park they lounged.
By the way they met a crowd, who were hurrying a man to prison. The
good-hearted Sir Christopher stopped: “Who is that poor fellow?” said
he.
“It is the celebrated” (in England all criminals are celebrated.
Thurtell was a hero, Thistlewood a patriot, and Fauntleroy was
discovered to be exactly like Buonaparte!) “it is the celebrated robber,
John Jefferies, who broke into Mrs. Wilson’s house, and cut the throats
of herself and her husband, wounded the maid-servant, and split the
child’s skull with the poker.” Clarence pressed forward: “I have seen
that man before,” thought he. He looked again, and recognized the face
of the robber who had escaped from Talbot’s house on the eventful night
which had made Clarence’s fortune. It was a strongly-marked and rather
handsome countenance, which would not be easily forgotten; and a single
circumstance of excitement will stamp features on the memory as deeply
as the commonplace intercourse of years.
“John Jefferies!” exclaimed the baronet; “let us come away.”
“Linden,” continued Sir Christopher, “that fellow was my servant once.
He robbed me to some considerable extent. I caught him. He appealed to
my heart; and you know, my dear fellow, that was irresistible, so I let
him off. Who could have thought he would have turned out so?” And the
baronet proceeded to eulogize his own good-nature, by which it is just
necessary to remark that one miscreant had been saved for a few years
from transportation, in order to rob and murder ad libitum, and, having
fulfilled the office of a common pest, to suffer on the gallows at last.
What a fine thing it is to have a good heart! Both our gentlemen now
sank into a revery, from which they were awakened, at the entrance of
the park, by a young man in rags who, with a piteous tone, supplicated
charity. Clarence, who, to his honour be it spoken, spent an allotted
and considerable part of his income in judicious and laborious
benevolence, had read a little of political morals, then beginning to be
understood, and walked on. The good-hearted baronet put his hand in his
pocket, and gave the beggar half a guinea, by which a young, strong man,
who had only just commenced the trade, was confirmed in his imposition
for the rest of his life; and, instead of the useful support, became the
pernicious incumbrance of society.
Sir Christopher had now recovered his spirits. “What’s like a good
action?” said he to Clarence, with a swelling breast.
The park was crowded to excess; our loungers were joined by Lord St.
George. His lordship was a stanch Tory. He could not endure Wilkes,
liberty, or general education. He launched out against the enlightenment
of domestics. [The ancestors of our present footmen, if we may believe
Sir William Temple, seem to have been to the full as intellectual as
their descendants. “I have had,” observes the philosophic statesman,
“several servants far gone in divinity, others in poetry; have known, in
the families of some friends; a keeper deep in the Rosicrucian mysteries
and a laundress firm in those of Epicurus.”]
“What has made you so bitter?” said Sir Christopher.
“My valet,” cried Lord St. George,--“he has invented a new
toasting-fork, is going to take out a patent, make his fortune, and
leave me; that’s what I call ingratitude, Sir Christopher; for I ordered
his wages to be raised five pounds but last year.”
“It was very ungrateful,” said the ironical Clarence.
“Very!” reiterated the good-hearted Sir Christopher.
“You cannot recommend me a valet, Findlater,” renewed his lordship, “a
good, honest, sensible fellow, who can neither read nor write?”
“N-o-o,--that is to say, yes! I can; my old servant Collard is out of
place, and is as ignorant as--as--”
“I--or you are?” said Lord St. George, with a laugh.
“Precisely,” replied the baronet.
“Well, then, I take your recommendation: send him to me to-morrow at
twelve.”
“I will,” said Sir Christopher.
“My dear Findlater,” cried Clarence, when Lord St. George was gone, “did
you not tell me, some time ago, that Collard was a great rascal, and
very intimate with Jefferies? and now you recommend him to Lord St.
George!”
“Hush, hush, hush!” said the baronet; “he was a great rogue to be sure:
but, poor fellow, he came to me yesterday with tears in his eyes, and
said he should starve if I would not give him a character; so what could
I do?”
“At least, tell Lord St. George the truth,” observed Clarence.
“But then Lord St. George would not take him!” rejoined the good-hearted
Sir Christopher, with forcible naivete. “No, no, Linden, we must not be
so hard-hearted; we must forgive and forget;” and so saying, the baronet
threw out his chest, with the conscious exultation of a man who has
uttered a noble sentiment. The moral of this little history is that
Lord St. George, having been pillaged “through thick and thin,” as the
proverb has it, for two years, at last missed a gold watch, and Monsieur
Collard finished his career as his exemplary tutor, Mr. John Jefferies,
had done before him. Ah! what a fine thing it is to have a good heart!
But to return. Just as our wanderers had arrived at the farther end
of the park, Lady Westborough and her daughter passed them. Clarence,
excusing himself to his friend, hastened towards them, and was soon
occupied in saying the prettiest things in the world to the prettiest
person, at least in his eyes; while Sir Christopher, having done as much
mischief as a good heart well can do in a walk of an hour, returned home
to write a long letter to his mother, against “learning and all such
nonsense, which only served to blunt the affections and harden the
heart.”
“Admirable young man!” cried the mother, with tears in her eyes. “A good
heart is better than all the heads in the world.”
Amen!