Yet truth is keenly sought for, and the wind
Charged with rich words, poured out in thought’s defence;
Whether the Church inspire that eloquence,
Or a Platonic piety, confined
To the sole temple of the inward mind;
And one there is who builds immortal lays,
Though doomed to tread in solitary ways;
Darkness before, and danger’s voice behind!
Yet not alone--
WORDSWORTH.
London, thou Niobe, who sittest in stone, amidst thy stricken and fated
children; nurse of the desolate, that hidest in thy bosom the shame, the
sorrows, the sins of many sons; in whose arms the fallen and the outcast
shroud their distresses, and shelter from the proud man’s contumely;
Epitome and Focus of the disparities and maddening contrasts of this
wrong world, that assemblest together in one great heap the woes, the
joys, the elevations, the debasements of the various tribes of man;
mightiest of levellers, confounding in thy whirlpool all ranks, all
minds, the graven labours of knowledge, the straws of the maniac, purple
and rags, the regalities and the loathsomeness of earth,--palace and
lazar-house combined! Grave of the living, where, mingled and massed
together, we couch, but rest not,--“for in that sleep of life what
dreams do come,”--each vexed with a separate vision,--“shadows” which
“grieve the heart,” unreal in their substance, but faithful in their
warnings, flitting from the eye, but graving unfleeting memories on
the mind, which reproduce new dreams over and over, until the phantasm
ceases, and the pall of a heavier torpor falls upon the brain, and all
is still and dark and hushed! “From the stir of thy great Babel,”
and the fixed tinsel glare in which sits pleasure like a star, “which
shines, but warms not with its powerless rays,” we turn to thy deeper
and more secret haunts. Thy wilderness is all before us--where to choose
our place of rest; and, to our eyes, thy hidden recesses are revealed.
The clock of St. Paul’s had tolled the second hour of morning. Within
a small and humble apartment in the very heart of the city, there sat
a writer, whose lucubrations, then obscure and unknown, were destined,
years afterwards, to excite the vague admiration of the crowd and the
deeper homage of the wise. They were of that nature which is slow in
winning its way to popular esteem; the result of the hived and hoarded
knowledge of years; the produce of deep thought and sublime aspirations,
influencing, in its bearings, the interests of the many, yet only
capable of analysis by the judgment of the few. But the stream broke
forth at last from the cavern to the daylight, although the source was
never traced; or, to change the image,--albeit none know the hand which
executed and the head which designed, the monument of a mighty intellect
has been at length dug up, as it were, from the envious earth, the
brighter for its past obscurity, and the more certain of immortality
from the temporary neglect it has sustained.
The room was, as we before said, very small, and meanly furnished; yet
were there a few articles of costliness and luxury scattered about,
which told that the tastes of its owner had not been quite humbled to
the level of his fortunes. One side of the narrow chamber was covered
with shelves, which supported books in various languages, and though
chiefly on scientific subjects, not utterly confined to them. Among the
doctrines of the philosopher, and the golden rules of the moralist,
were also seen the pleasant dreams of poets, the legends of Spenser,
the refining moralities of Pope, the lofty errors of Lucretius, and the
sublime relics of our “dead kings of melody.” [Shakspeare and Milton]
And over the hearth was a picture, taken in more prosperous days, of
one who had been and was yet to the tenant of that abode, better than
fretted roofs and glittering banquets, the objects of ambition, or
even the immortality of fame. It was the face of one very young and
beautiful, and the deep, tender eyes looked down, as with a watchful
fondness, upon the lucubrator and his labours. While beneath the window,
which was left unclosed, for it was scarcely June, were simple yet not
inelegant vases, filled with flowers,--
“Those lovely leaves, where we
May read how soon things have
Their end, though ne’er so brave.” [Herrick]
The writer was alone, and had just paused from his employment; he was
leaning his face upon one hand, in a thoughtful and earnest mood, and
the air which came chill, but gentle, from the window, slightly stirred
the locks from the broad and marked brow, over which they fell in thin
but graceful waves. Partly owing perhaps to the waning light of the
single lamp and the lateness of the hour, his cheek seemed very pale,
and the complete though contemplative rest of the features partook
greatly of the quiet of habitual sadness, and a little of the languor
of shaken health; yet the expression, despite the proud cast of the
brow and profile, was rather benevolent than stern or dark in its
pensiveness, and the lines spoke more of the wear and harrow of deep
thought than the inroads of ill-regulated passion.
There was a slight tap at the door; the latch was raised, and the
original of the picture I have described entered the apartment.
Time had not been idle with her since that portrait had been taken: the
round elastic figure had lost much of its youth and freshness; the step,
though light, was languid, and in the centre of the fair, smooth cheek,
which was a little sunken, burned one deep bright spot,--fatal sign to
those who have watched the progress of the most deadly and deceitful of
our national maladies; yet still the form and countenance were eminently
interesting and lovely; and though the bloom was gone forever, the
beauty, which not even death could wholly have despoiled, remained to
triumph over debility, misfortune, and disease.
She approached the student, and laid her hand upon his shoulder.
“Dearest!” said he, tenderly yet reproachfully, “yet up, and the hour so
late and yourself so weak? Fie, I must learn to scold you.”
“And how,” answered the intruder, “how could I sleep or rest while you
are consuming your very life in those thankless labours?”
“By which,” interrupted the writer, with a faint smile, “we glean our
scanty subsistence.”
“Yes,” said the wife (for she held that relation to the student), and
the tears stood in her eyes, “I know well that every morsel of bread,
every drop of water, is wrung from your very heart’s blood, and I--I am
the cause of all; but surely you exert yourself too much, more than can
be requisite? These night damps, this sickly and chilling air, heavy
with the rank vapours of the coming morning, are not suited to thoughts
and toils which are alone sufficient to sear your mind and exhaust your
strength. Come, my own love, to bed; and yet first come and look upon
our child, how sound she sleeps! I have leaned over her for the last
hour, and tried to fancy it was you whom I watched, for she has learned
already your smile and has it even when she sleeps.”
“She has cause to smile,” said the husband, bitterly.
“She has, for she is yours! and even in poetry and humble hopes, that is
an inheritance which may well teach her pride and joy. Come, love, the
air is keen, and the damp rises to your forehead,--yet stay, till I have
kissed it away.”
“Mine own love,” said the student, as he rose and wound his arm round
the slender waist of his wife, “wrap your shawl closer over your bosom,
and let us look for one instant upon the night. I cannot sleep till I
have slaked the fever of my blood: the air has nothing of coldness in
its breath for me.”
And they walked to the window and looked forth. All was hushed and still
in the narrow street; the cold gray clouds were hurrying fast along the
sky; and the stars, weak and waning in their light, gleamed forth at
rare intervals upon the mute city, like expiring watch-lamps of the
dead.
They leaned out and spoke not; but when they looked above upon the
melancholy heavens, they drew nearer to each other, as if it were their
natural instinct to do so whenever the world without seemed discouraging
and sad.
At length the student broke the silence; but his thoughts, which were
wandering and disjointed, were breathed less to her than vaguely and
unconsciously to himself. “Morn breaks,--another and another!--day upon
day!--while we drag on our load like the blind beast which knows not
when the burden shall be cast off and the hour of rest be come.”
The woman pressed her hand to her bosom, but made no rejoinder--she knew
his mood--and the student continued,--“And so life frets itself away!
Four years have passed over our seclusion--four years! a great segment
in the little circle of our mortality; and of those years what day has
pleasure won from labour, or what night has sleep snatched wholly
from the lamp? Weaker than the miser, the insatiable and restless
mind traverses from east to west; and from the nooks, and corners, and
crevices of earth collects, fragment by fragment, grain by grain, atom
by atom, the riches which it gathers to its coffers--for what?--to
starve amidst the plenty! The fantasies of the imagination bring a ready
and substantial return: not so the treasures of thought. Better that I
had renounced the soul’s labour for that of its hardier frame--better
that I had ‘sweated in the eye of Phoebus,’ than ‘eat my heart with
crosses and with cares,’--seeking truth and wanting bread--adding to the
indigence of poverty its humiliation; wroth with the arrogance of men,
who weigh in the shallow scales of their meagre knowledge the product of
lavish thought, and of the hard hours for which health, and sleep, and
spirit have been exchanged;--sharing the lot of those who would
enchant the old serpent of evil, which refuses the voice of the
charmer!--struggling against the prejudice and bigoted delusion of the
bandaged and fettered herd to whom, in our fond hopes and aspirations,
we trusted to give light and freedom; seeing the slavish judgments we
would have redeemed from error clashing their chains at us in ire;--made
criminal by our very benevolence;--the martyrs whose zeal is rewarded
with persecution, whose prophecies are crowned with contempt!--Better,
oh, better that I had not listened to the vanity of a heated
brain--better that I had made my home with the lark and the wild bee,
among the fields and the quiet hills, where life, if obscurer, is
less debased, and hope, if less eagerly indulged, is less bitterly
disappointed. The frame, it is true, might have been bowed to a harsher
labour, but the heart would at least have had its rest from anxiety, and
the mind its relaxation from thought.”
The wife’s tears fell upon the hand she clasped. The student turned, and
his heart smote him for the selfishness of his complaint. He drew her
closer and closer to his bosom; and gazing fondly upon those eyes which
years of indigence and care might have robbed of their young lustre, but
not of their undying tenderness, he kissed away her tears, and addressed
her in a voice which never failed to charm her grief into forgetfulness.
“Dearest and kindest,” he said, “was I not to blame for accusing those
privations or regrets which have only made us love each other the more?
Trust me, mine own treasure, that it is only in the peevishness of an
inconstant and fretful humour that I have murmured against my fortune.
For, in the midst of all, I look upon you, my angel, my comforter,
my young dream of love, which God, in His mercy, breathed into waking
life--I look upon you, and am blessed and grateful. Nor in my juster
moments do I accuse even the nature of these studies, though they
bring us so scanty a reward. Have I not hours of secret and overflowing
delight, the triumphs of gratified research--flashes of sudden light,
which reward the darkness of thought, and light up my solitude as a
revel?--These feelings of rapture, which nought but Science can afford,
amply repay her disciples for worse evils and severer handships than
it has been my destiny to endure. Look along the sky, how the vapours
struggle with the still yet feeble stars: even so have the mists of
error been pierced, though not scattered, by the dim but holy lights of
past wisdom, and now the morning is at hand, and in that hope we journey
on, doubtful, but not utterly in darkness. Nor is this all my hope;
there is a loftier and more steady comfort than that which mere
philosophy can bestow. If the certainty of future fame bore Milton
rejoicing through his blindness, or cheered Galileo in his dungeon,
what stronger and holier support shall not be given to him who has loved
mankind as his brothers, and devoted his labours to their cause?--who
has not sought, but relinquished, his own renown?---who has braved the
present censures of men for their future benefit, and trampled upon
glory in the energy of benevolence? Will there not be for him something
more powerful than fame to comfort his sufferings and to sustain his
hopes? If the wish of mere posthumous honour be a feeling rather vain
than exalted, the love of our race affords us a more rational and noble
desire of remembrance. Come what will, that love, if it animates our
toils and directs our studies, shall when we are dust make our relics
of value, our efforts of avail, and consecrate the desire of fame,
which were else a passion selfish and impure, by connecting it with the
welfare of ages and the eternal interests of the world and its Creator!
Come, we will to bed.”