Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scans provided by Google Books,
https://books.google.com/books?id=OAQiAAAAMAAJ
(Public Library, Long Island City, N.Y.)
2. "This work was published many years ago anonymously, and received
the name of 'Delaware; or, The ruined family.'"--Introd.,
p. [v], to London, 1848, ed.
3. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
THIRTY YEARS SINCE;
OR,
THE RUINED FAMILY.
A Tale.
BY
G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.,
AUTHOR OF
"A WHIM, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES," "GOWRIE," "SIR THEODORE BROUGHTON,"
"BEAUCHAMP," "LAST OF THE FAIRIES," "MARGARET GRAHAM," ETC., ETC.
NEW-YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
329 & 331 PEARL STREET,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1860.
THIRTY YEARS SINCE:
OR,
THE RUINED FAMILY.
CHAPTER I.
Most cities are hateful; and, without any disposition to "babble about
green fields," it must be owned that each is more or less detestable.
Nevertheless, among them all, there is none to be compared, as a
whole, to London--none which comprehends within itself, from various
causes, so much of the sublime in every sort. Whether we consider its
giant immensity of expanse--the wonderful intricacy of its internal
structure--the miraculous harmony of its discrepant parts--the grand
amalgamation of its different orders, classes, states, pursuits,
professions--the mighty aggregate of hopes, wishes, endeavors, joys,
successes, fears, pangs, disappointments, crimes, and punishments,
that it contains--its relative influence on the world at large--or the
vehement pulse with which that "mighty heart" sends the flood of
circulation through this beautiful land--we shall find that that most
wonderful microcosm well deserves the epithet _sublime_.
To view it rightly--if we wish to view it with the eye of a
philosopher--we should choose, perhaps, the hour which is chosen by
the most magnificent and extraordinary of modern poets, and gaze upon
it when the sun is just beginning to pour his first red beams through
the dim and loaded air, when that vast desert of brick and mortar,
that interminable wilderness of spires and chimneys, looks more wide
and endless, and solemn, than when the eye is distracted by myriads of
mites that creep about it in the risen day.
It may be asked, perhaps, who is there that ever saw it at that hour,
except the red-armed housemaid washing the morning step, and letting
in the industrious thief, to steal the greatcoats from the hall; or
the dull muffin-man, who goes tinkling his early bell through the
misty streets of the wintry morning? Granted, that neither of
these--nor the sellers of early purl--nor the venders of saloop and
cocoa--nor Covent Garden market-women--nor the late returners from the
_finish_--nor he who starts up from the doorway, where he has passed
the wretched night, to recommence the day's career of crime, and
danger, and sorrow--can look upon the vast hive in which they dwell
with over-refined feelings; and, perhaps, to them may come home
unhappy Shelley's forcible line--
"Hell is a city very much like London!"
The valetudinarian, too, who wakes with nervous punctuality to
swallow down the morning draught, prescribed by courtly Henry's
bitter-covering skill, may curse the cats that, perched upon the
tiles, salute their lady-loves with most discordant cries, and keep
him from repose; and with all the virulence of Despréaux, may exclaim
upon the many hateful sounds of a town morning. But, besides all
these, there are sometimes persons who, rising five hours before their
usual time, come forth in all the freshness of the early day,
stimulated by the vast effort that roused them from their beds, proud
of a successful endeavor to get up, and excited by the novelty of the
circumstance and the scene, and who rush on, admiring all the beauties
as they go to take their places in the gay stage-coach.
Fully double the extent of ancient Athens, in its days of greatest
splendor--at least, if the calculation of Aristides be correct--London
lies in circuit more than one day's journey, and many a day's journey
may be taken in the interior, without ever threading the same streets.
It would not matter much, therefore, in what corner of the town was
placed the coach-office whence, at an early hour of every lawful day,
set forth a smart-looking vehicle, drawn by four fiery bays, for a
distant town in ----shire; but nevertheless, as it may be a
satisfaction to the reader's mind, it is but fair to state, that the
aforesaid four-inside light coach took its departure daily from that
wild scene of bustle and confusion, which, within the last century or
two, has usurped the site of what a modern writer of ancient romance
terms "the sweet little village of Charing," and which is now
popularly called the Golden Cross, Charing Cross.
As the things that were, are now no more, and even three short years
have made sad havoc amidst the brick antiquities of dear Pall Mall, it
may not be amiss more particularly to commemorate the appearance--at
the time our tale commences--of that agglomeration of street-corners,
Charing Cross, from which--on account, I suppose, of its beautiful
vagueness--all rogues and insolvent debtors were wont to date their
letters. But this commemoration had best be given in describing the
effect of the whole upon a young and unsophisticated mind.
From a place that they call a hotel, in Piccadilly--think of a man
taking up his abode at a hotel in Piccadilly!--but he knew no
better--from a hotel, in Piccadilly, at about half-past five o'clock,
on the morning of the last day of August, one thousand eight hundred
and something, set out a hackney coach, containing within its sphere
of rotten wood, and rusty leather, a small portmanteau on the front
seat, and the portmanteau's master on the other. He was a well-made
youth, of about five-and-twenty years of age, with firm, graceful, and
yet powerful limbs, and a fresh, clear complexion--not villainous red
and white, but one general tone of florid health. His eye was blue and
bright, and the clustering curls of fair hair--as pure Saxon as Sharon
Turner's last new book--might have looked somewhat girlish, had it not
been for the manly features and the free, dauntless look that they
overshadowed. At the same time, be it remarked that there was
something of melancholy, if not of gloom, in his aspect; but that did
not prevent him--after the chambermaid had been satisfied, and the
waiter had been paid, and boots had had his fees, and the porter had
claimed more than his due, and, in short, all the exactions of an inn
had been played off upon him in succession--that did not prevent him,
when fairly rolling away toward the top of the Haymarket, from gazing
out upon the scene around him with a sufficient degree of open-eyed
curiosity to make the waterman stick his tongue into his cheek and
mentally denominate him "_a raw_."
It may be necessary to inform the unlearned reader, that the sun
rises, in the end of August, a few minutes after five in the morning,
and at the time I speak of the great luminary was pouring a flood of
radiance through the loaded air of the vast city, filling the long
empty perspective of the streets with the golden mistiness of the
morning light. Closed within the dull boards which defend the precious
wares of many a careful tradesman from the cosmopolite fingers of the
liberal Many, the shops exhibited nothing but the names and
occupations of their various owners; but the wide streets, with all
their irregular buildings, in the broad light and shade, were not
without beauty of their own peculiar kind, distinct from all the
mighty associations connected with their existence.
The coach rolled at the statute pace along Piccadilly, unobstructed by
any thing, and, indeed, unencountered by any thing but two slow market
carts, wending heavily toward Covent Garden, and another fac-simile of
itself, just overcoming--in order to take up some other early
passenger--the _vis inertiæ_ which had held it on the straw-littered
stand for the last hour. In the Haymarket, however, the progression
was more difficult; for there already had congregated many a loaded
cart, the drivers of which, as usual, had, with skillful zeal,
contrived to place them as a regular fortification, obstructing every
step of the way. Gin and purl, too, were reeking up to the sky from
the various temples of the rosy god that line the west side of the
street; and, amidst the bargainings of some early dealers, and the
pæans of the gin-drinkers, no one attended to the objurgations of the
embarrassed coachmen. Nevertheless, all these difficulties were at
length removed by one means or another; and Cockspur-street opened
wide before the traveler, exposing at the end, black with the smoke of
fires innumerable, the famous statue and the girthless horse. On one
side, wide and open, lay Whitehall, with all those offices, whence
many a time has issued the destiny of the world; on the other hand,
dark and dingy, wound away the Strand, with the house of the Percys
maintaining still the last aspect of a feudal dwelling to be found in
London. The King's Mews, on which a violating hand had hardly yet been
laid, occupied all the space to the left; and the flaming ensign of
the Golden Cross, stuck up in front of a tall, narrow-fronted house,
told that the place of many coaches was before the traveler's eyes.
He found, on alighting, that he had arrived at least ten minutes
before the time; and after having been cheated, as usual, by the
hackney-coachman, and gazed about the dull, desolate yard, shut in by
the high houses round, in the far shadows of which stood two or three
red, blue, and yellow vehicles, all unpacked and unhorsed, he once
more sauntered out through the low-browed arch which gave admission to
the court, and amused himself with the wider scene exhibited by the
street.
At that hour, one-half of Murillo's pictures find living
representatives in the streets of London; and when the young traveler
had moralized for a minute or two on some groups of beggar-boys
playing round the statue--had marked the sage and solemn pace with
which an elderly waterman brought forth his breakfast to a coachman on
the stand--and had listened to the Solon-like sayings of each upon the
weather and the state of the nation--he was looking back to see
whether the coming of the coach was hopeless, when the rushing noise
of rapid wheels caught his ear, and he turned his eyes in the
direction of the sound.
If people would but remark, they would find that they have
presentiments of little events a thousand times more often than they
have presentiments of great ones; and the feeling of the gallant
Nelson was not more strong, that the sun of Trafalgar was the last
that was destined to shine upon his glory, than was at that moment the
conviction of the young traveler that those rolling wheels were about
to bring him a companion for the stage-coach. Nor, let me tell you,
gentle reader, is it a matter of small importance, who is to be
brought in such close contact with one for the next ten hours. What is
life but a chain of those brief portions of eternity which man calls
hours, so inseparably linked together that the first and the last, and
every link throughout the series, have a mutual dependence and
connection with each other! Oh, let no one despise an hour! It is
fully enough to change dynasties, and overthrow empires--to make or
mar a fortune--to win high renown, or stain a noble name--to end our
being, or to fix our destiny here and hereafter, in time and through
eternity. So awful a thing is one hour--ay, one moment of active
being!
The companion of the three hundred and sixty-fifth part of one out of
seventy years, is a person to whom we may well attach some importance;
and the young traveler looked with no small eagerness to see who was
about to fill that station in relation to himself. The first thing
that his eyes fell upon, as he turned round, was a dark-brown
cabriolet, whirled along with the speed of lightning, by a tall bay
horse, full of blood and action, and covered with harness, which,
though somewhat elaborate and evidently costly, was guarded by
scrupulous good taste from being gaudy. Behind the vehicle appeared a
smart, active boy in groom's apparel, but with no distinctive livery
to designate him as the tiger of Colonel this, or the Earl of that,
though a cockade in his hat told that his master pretended either to
military or naval rank. Where the young traveler stood, the appearance
of the driver was not to be discerned; but, from the style of the
whole turn-out, he began to doubt that his anticipations in regard to
their approaching companionship were fallacious, when, dashing up to
the pavement, the horse was suddenly drawn up, the groom sprang to the
head, and the person within at length made his appearance.
He was a young man of about seven-and-twenty, tall, and rather
gracefully than strongly made; but still with a breadth of chest, and
a sort of firm setting on his feet, which spoke a greater degree of
personal strength than appeared at a casual glance. His clothes were
all of that peculiar cut which combines the most decided adherence to
the prevailing fashion, with a very slight touch of its extravagance.
Every thing, however, in the whole of his apparel, was in good
keeping, as the painters call it; and though the colors that appeared
therein were such as no one but a man of rank and station in society
would have dared to wear, the general hue of the whole was dark.
"He's a dandy!" thought the young traveler, with a somewhat
contemptuous curl of the lip, as the other descended from the
cabriolet; but the moment after, hearing him bid the boy tell Swainson
not to forget to give Brutus a ball on Wednesday night--and to walk
Miss Liddy for an hour twice every day in the park, he concluded that
he was a gentleman horse-jockey--a thing, in his unsophisticated
ideas, equally detestable with a dandy. Scarcely had he come to this
conclusion--and his conclusions, be it remarked, were formed very
quickly--when the stranger strode rapidly past him. The cabriolet
drove away, and its owner, with a quantity of glossy black hair
escaping from under his hat, and mingling with whiskers more glossy
still--entered the inn-yard, and proceeded to the coach-office.
The other traveler followed, in hopes of seeing some signs of
approaching departure; and, as he did so, he heard the reply of the
book-keeper to something which the owner of the cabriolet had asked.
"No room outside, sir;--very sorry, indeed--got our full number,"--he
had got three more, by the way--"plenty of room inside. That 'ere
gentleman's going inside, 'cause he can't get room out."
"Well, inside be it then," replied the other.
The book-keeper began to write. "What name, sir?"
"Burrel!" replied the stranger.
"Any luggage?"
"None," answered Burrel.
"One pound, ten shillings, and sixpence, sir, if you please!" said the
book-keeper; and, as Burrel paid the money, the coachman's cry of
"Now, gentlemen, if you please!" sounded through the yard.
In another minute the horses were dashing through that antique and
abominable arch, which, in days of yore, gave egress and regress to
the Golden Cross, while Burrel and the other traveler, seated side by
side, held their breath as the rough vehicle clattered over the London
stones. It has often been remarked, that it is wonderful how much
shaking together two Englishmen require before they speak to each
other; and, in setting out from a town like London, there is scarcely
an individual who has not too much to think of--either in parting from
well-loved friends--in quitting scenes of pleasure or of pain--in
self-congratulations on escaping from smoke and noise--in anticipation
of quiet and repose, of joyful meetings, and smiles of welcome--not to
court a few minutes' calm reflection, as they leave behind them that
great misty den of feelings and events. Our two travelers then leaned
back in their respective corners, without the interchange of a
word--the one, Burrel, apparently buried in deep thought; and the
other too proud, if not too shy, to begin any conversation himself,
even had he not had memories enough in his bosom to furnish him, also,
with food for meditation. Such, however, he had; and--seeing that his
companion appeared wrapped up in that sort of gentlemanly reserve
which so often covers over a man's eyes, ears, and understanding, as
he goes through life, and leaves him, like the Grand Lama, with
nothing to speculate upon but his own perfections--the younger
traveler gave way also to his thoughts, and, ere they had reached
Brentford, had forgotten that there was any being in the coach but
himself.
His reflections did not seem very pleasant; for at Hounslow, what
appeared to be the first act thereof, ended in a sigh so long and
deep, that it attracted the notice of his fellow-traveler, who turned
his head, and, for the first time, examined him somewhat attentively,
as he sat looking out of the windows, with the objects as they passed,
skimming hardly noted before his eyes. The second act of the young
man's thoughts did not seem quite so abstracted as the first; for when
the coach stopped for a few minutes at Staines, he put his head forth
from the window, and demanded the name of the place, addressing
Mynheer Boots, who gazed in his face, and answered nothing.
"This is Staines," replied his hitherto silent companion, in a mild
and gentlemanly tone, in which there was not the slightest touch of
_coxcombry_ or affectation; "perhaps you have never traveled this road
before?"
"I have, indeed," replied the other; "but the first time was many
years ago; and when last I passed, I had various things to think of,
which prevented my noting particularly the places through which I
traveled."
"Oh, any thing on earth to think of," replied Burrel, "of course
renders traveling out of the question. It is no longer traveling, it
is locomotion. It becomes the act of a stage-coach, a steam-engine, or
any other machine, as soon as a person has one thought occupied by
either business or memory, or any one of the troublesome things of the
world. Before one sets out on a journey, one should shake out one's
mind, as the ancient pilgrims did their wallets, and leave no trace of
friends, or relations, or feelings, or prejudices, or remembrances of
any kind, in short, to hang about it; but make all void and clear for
the new stock of ideas that are to be placed in it."
"Yours is a strange doctrine," replied his companion, "though I
believe it might be as well to practice it."
"Why, if a man carries about in his mind," continued Burrel, "his
uncles and aunts, and sisters and brothers, and all the luggage of
associations that they bring along with them, he might as well jog on
in the old family coach at the rate of forty mortal miles per day,
from the town house in Berkeley-square to the country house in
Staffordshire. But let a man resolve to forget every thing on earth
but the scenes through which he is passing, and he will find as much
to interest, and amuse, and excite him--ay, and as much to the purpose
of real information, too--between London and Dorchester, as between
Paris and the Dardanelles."
His companion smiled, perhaps as much from surprise at the very
unexpected tone of his fellow-traveler's tirade, as from any
acquiescence in the tirade itself. "Nay, nay," he said, "surely you
won't deny that--putting all other advantages out of the question
between the two journeys you mention--there is still much more
picturesque beauty to be found between Paris and the Dardanelles than
between London and Dorchester?"
"I do not know that," replied Burrel. "There may be newer scenery, and
perhaps more sublime scenery; but whether the more sublime be
calculated to produce a finer or sweeter effect upon a man's heart and
mind than softer and gentler pictures, I much doubt, There is
something in an English landscape to be found nowhere else--an air of
rich, sweet, happy repose--of safe tranquillity and successful
industry, that is in itself almost sublime. Let your eye now run over
that view as the coach climbs the hill. Where did you ever behold a
scene on which sight can so pleasantly repose? The rich scattered wood
in front, full of old England's grand primeval oaks. Then look how,
bending over a thousand slopes, in the true lines of beauty, the
hedgerows wind along, dividing wealthy field from field--now giving
skips and glances of fair towns and uplands, and now massing together,
till the eye believes them to be deep groves; then that catch of the
river, glistening under the hill, while the sunshine streams through
the valley, and that broad shadow of some cloud we do not see, passes
slowly on--at every change that it effects in the light and shade of
the landscape, bringing out some new beauty, as if it itself delighted
in the loveliness it produces. Then again cast your eyes up yonder to
the village church hanging half way down the hill, with its neat
parsonage embowered in tall elms; and looking, as it is, the abode of
peace and virtue. As good a man dwells there as the whole world can
produce, and a true representative of the great majority of the
much-belied English clergy. But say, did you ever see a fairer scene?"
"Seldom, indeed," replied his companion, whose attention, called to
the principal points of a purely English picture, found more beauties
in it than custom suffered him to see before. "But still," he added,
"I am fond of mountain scenery."
"And so am I," replied Burrel. "I am fond of every kind of scenery,
from the bold blue mountain, with its purple heath, as bare, as naked,
and as wild as the banks of Loch Awe itself can show, to the rich and
undulating plains of Champagne, where soft line beyond line of faint
and fainter shadows, vanishing away in Claude-like sunshine, are all
that mark the wide extent over which the eye can roam. There is such a
thing as the economy of admiration; and by husbanding that faculty
properly, you will not find a scene in all the world on which you can
not afford to bestow some small portion thereof."
The other traveler replied, not a little pleased to find that all the
fine sketches which he had been making of his companion's character,
during the earlier part of their journey, were as empty as a protocol;
and, with the very natural jump which man's heart takes when it finds
itself agreeably disappointed in the estimation it had formed of
another, perhaps the stranger now felt as much inclined to over-admire
his companion, as he had before been disposed to undervalue him. A
growing remembrance of his features, too, for some time made him fancy
that he had met with an old friend, whose face, like a worn piece of
money, though half obliterated by time, was still sufficiently plain
to tease memory--one of those provoking recollections, as tenacious as
remorse, and intactible as a soufflet. After some further
conversation, and one or two thoughtful pauses--in which memory was so
busy in digging among the ruins of the past, to see if she could find
the name of Burrel, that she would not even let the young traveler's
loquacious powers go on, for fear of disturbing her search--he
suddenly exclaimed, with that degree of frank simplicity which at once
spoke him but little a child of the great world, "Oh! now I remember
where it was I saw you before!"
"Where?" demanded Burrel, with a slight smile, which he instantly
repressed, lest he should give pain.
But the young stranger was not of a nature to think there could be any
thing wrong or absurd in acknowledging whatever he felt, if what he
felt were pure and natural. "It was at the door of Lord Ashborough, in
Grosvenor-square," he replied, at once. "You were coming out as I was
going in to call for his lordship. It was but yesterday; and yet I
have been searching through many long years to find out where it was I
had seen you before."
"Memory is like the philosophers," replied Burrel, "and often sends
out far to seek what she might stumble over at her own door. I now
remember your face also, and think I heard you give your name as
Captain Delaware."
"The same," answered his companion, with somewhat of a sigh. "Do you
know Lord Ashborough well?"
"I have known him long," replied Burrel; "but to know a man well is a
very different thing: for I am afraid that all men have learned
nowadays what Sallust regrets in the decline of the Romans--_magis
vultum quam ingenium, bonum habere_. Not that I mean to say it is so
with Lord Ashborough; far from it. He bears a high character in the
world, and is esteemed upright, honorable, and talented, though
somewhat stern and haughty."
A grave and rather melancholy expression came over the countenance of
the other; and he replied, changing the subject abruptly, "You were
speaking of the Dardanelles. Were you ever there?"
"Never," answered Barrel, "though once within little more than a
hundred leagues. I should have been well pleased to have gone on, but
circumstances called me back to England."
"I have been there," replied the other; "and there is nothing more
delightful than the sail from Corfu to Constantinople--except, indeed,
some parts of the coast of Sicily."
"You are a naval man, then, I presume!" said Burrel. The other
answered in the affirmative, and his companion proceeded:--"For
nothing on earth could be more disagreeable to me, and I suppose to
most landsmen, than a sail from any one given point of the globe's
surface to another. When you speak of Sicily, however, you speak of a
land that I, too, know well; and in regard to which I can enter into
your enthusiasm. There are few lands more fertile in beauties of
nature and association than Sicily, and epicurean Calabria, and the
old Etruscan groves! You have of course visited Italy, if you so well
know Sicily."
"I have done little more than cruise along the coast," replied Captain
Delaware; "but in Sicily I was landed, and remained some months for
the recovery of my health."
"Oh, the sweet coasts of the Mediterranean Sea!" said Burrel, "where
at every league there is some beauty and some memory--some pleasant
dream of the present or the past--from the Imperial City and its
wolf-suckled founder, to the gray majesty of Pæstum and the Calabrese
peasant with his long gun and his Mother Goose hat, caroling his gay
ditty as cheerfully as a pickpocket. In every other corner of the
world I feel earth stuffed with stern realities; but in Italy I can
fully enter into the feeling of Metastasio, and exclaim, '_Sogno della
mia vita e il corso intero?_"
"You are an enthusiast, I see," replied the other, with a smile.
"When I am in company with one," answered Burrel, laughing. His
companion colored slightly, but good-humoredly, and the conversation
went on in the same easy manner in which it had commenced, through the
rest of their journey. It is unnecessary to give any farther details
thereof; for such light nothings, though very pleasant to while away
the hours in a stage-coach, are most excessively tiresome in the small
pages of an octavo. Let it suffice that Captain Delaware, surprised
and pleased with his companion, found the journey far shorter than he
had expected. Indeed, so captivated was he, that in the whole of
Burrel's deportment there was but one thing which he thought might
have been altered to advantage, which was a certain air of taking
every thing as a matter of course--a tone of indifference which men of
the world acquire they know not well how, and which, in the present
instance, blended in an extraordinary manner with the high feeling of
the beautiful and the excellent, which his conversation breathed
throughout.
That tone, however, is not without its advantages also; and the young
sailor found that it might be serviceable, when, at Hartford Bridge, a
person of a very different description was intruded upon them. He was
a short, broad-made man, with long, baboonish arms, and a face on
which nature had so plainly written the class to which it was to
belong, that, had fortune, in some of her freaks, covered it either
with the coronet of a peer, or a peasant's straw hat, his mother, or
fortune, or nature, would have had much to answer for. Some of the
features were good, however--the eyes were very tolerable, for
instance; and the nose was not bad. But then the cheek-bones! good
heavens, such cheek-bones! From Crim Tartary to Banff there is nothing
to be seen like them. The mouth, too, was worse--one of those fearful
mouths, whose broad, fat, wide-parted, irregular lips seem to
vaticinate the fate of the owner with such distinctness, that no
person of common foresight can see them without at once picturing the
person who possesses them--not as about to be hanged, but as actually
hanging. The skin that was over all was of that reddish, coarse,
mottled kind, which puts one in mind of a gross strawberry; and
although, as before said, the eyes in themselves were _goodish_, blue,
meaningless eyes enough, yet the place where there should have grown
eyelashes, being alone furnished with a red, knotty line in their
room, gave them a ferret-like sharpness, without which they would have
signified nothing at all.
This worthy, "_passant à joints pieds_," as Madame de Sevigné calls
it, over all ceremonies, was inclined to make himself so much at his
ease, that Captain Delaware, disgusted and offended, yet without any
absolute pretext for anger, felt strongly inclined to quarrel with,
and eject from the window, a person who interrupted a pleasant
conversation to substitute vulgar impertinence in its place. Burrel,
on the contrary, with cool indifference, amused himself for a moment
or two with the other's vulgarity, and then trode him into silence by
contempt. He then calmly resumed the conversation with his first
companion, from which there was something in his tone and manner that
irresistibly excluded the other, who, to revenge himself, looked out
of the window, and like my Uncle Toby, whistled _lillebullero_.
Thus passed the remaining hours of their journey--Burrel every moment
increasing upon the esteem of his traveling companion, till at length
they approached, about six o'clock, a little village, which, though it
may bear a different name in the county map, we shall take the liberty
of calling Emberton. The sun had so far declined from the meridian,
that the shadows were getting long and blue; but still the sheeny
splendor of the summer's day was not at all decreased, though the
approach of evening had cleared away the hazy brightness which hangs
ever about a very hot and sunny noon. The coach wound along the road,
every now and then passing various objects which gave notice that it
was approaching some place where the busy and improving emmets that
lord it over this ant-hill world had congregated together, and adorned
their place of sojourn. Now came a neat gate and a detached cottage,
too miniature in all its proportions, from the little Turkey-carpet
garden to the rustic porch, to be the country mansion of any man of
large property; and yet too neat, and one might, perhaps, say too
elegant, to be the dwelling of the poor. It was evidently the house of
the doctor or the lawyer, or the retired maiden lady of some village
near at hand, and it, again, was succeeded by a long, clean,
whitewashed wall, belonging to garden, or shrubbery, or semi-park,
between which and the coach road ran a fair gravel footpath, defended
by green posts and iron chains. The manifold paths and roads branching
to the right and left, clean and well kept, told the same tale of
man's habitation; and in a moment after, winding over a slight rise,
the coach reached the brow of the hill, from which the whole village
or little town of Emberton was visible.
It lay in a country slightly undulating, but backed by some high hills
at the distance of about fifteen miles, and between them and the
elevation which the coach had reached, the expanse might rather be
called a plain than a valley. The village was close beneath the slope,
and had little to distinguish it from any other English country town,
having all that peculiar air of cleanliness, of regularity, and of the
spirit of industry and cultivation, which is only to be seen in
England. Its greatest ornament was the river, which, clear, smooth,
and tranquil, ran through the town very nearly at the middle, and was
itself spanned over by a neat stone bridge of about fifty yards in
length. That bridge, however, was to be remarked for something more
than its light and elegant construction: its balustrade formed the
continuation of a low stone wall which separated the village from a
wide park on the right hand side, full of majestic trees, scattered,
in groups of four or five, over a fine undulating piece of ground.
Through the midst, the river flowed gently on, reflecting the evening
sky and two or three swans that floated on its bosom, the clear light
of which was only broken here and there by a fall of a few feet, which
scarcely increased the flow of the current. As one looked up the park
from the bridge--at the distance of about a third of a mile on either
hand--might be seen a grove of tall, graceful trees, sufficiently
extensive to take the appearance of a forest, in some of the glades of
which the eye caught occasionally the remains of old summer-houses, in
the Charles the Second taste; and in the central point was seen the
mansion itself, built of mingled gray stone and red brick, with small
innumerable windows. It bore the aspect of what it really had been--a
monastery erected early in the reign of Henry VIII. by a wealthy
community of friars. From them it was afterward wrested by that pink
of reforming monarchs, tyrants, and plunderers, and bestowed upon some
minion of the day. The buttery of their time had become the lodge now,
and was a detached, building in the same fashion as the house,
projecting into the high road, and flanked by two large iron gates,
which, to say sooth, were somewhat rusty for the want of paint. In
what state of repair the dwelling-house itself was kept, could hardly
be discerned at that distance; but no kinds of deer were seen sporting
in the park, and sheep had evidently taken their place, as affording,
probably, a more profitable manner of employing the land.
"That seems a splendid park!" said Burrel, as his eye first lighted on
it. "Do you know what it is called?"
"Emberton Park," replied the young sailor, briefly.
"And belongs to--?" said Burrel.
"Sir Sidney Delaware--my father," answered the young man, with so deep
a sigh that Burrel asked no further questions.
After dragging the wheel, the coach ran rapidly down the descent, and
then rolling on, stopped at a neat, clean house, with a small garden
in the front. At the little white gate were four fine setters, with a
servant out of livery, who instantly touched his hat to Burrel, and,
approaching the door, said, "This is the house, sir."
"Very well," answered Burrel; "and now farewell, Captain Delaware," he
said, turning to his companion, and giving hint his hand with as much
frank good humor as if he had addressed an old acquaintance; "I doubt
not we shall meet again."
Delaware grasped his hand without reply, and the other alighted. All
his dogs sprang up to greet him with evident joy, much to the
detriment of his clothes, but little to that of his good humor, and
after gazing up and down the road for a moment, as one does in a
strange place, he walked through the little gate, and entered the
house, at the door of which stood a tidy old lady, evidently
courtesying to a new lodger.
The coach drove on, and then again stopped at the lodge of the park,
where Captain Delaware alighted also. His portmanteau was given to the
woman at the lodge; and he himself, with a quick step, walked up the
path which led to the mansion.