be very grateful to the Prince. In him, who has no others left, it is
a very innocent pride, to wish to perpetuate the fading honours of his
family--for as such the good Prince considers these _ruins_. But, my
young friend, there is another and a surer path to the Prince’s heart,
to which I should be most happy to lead you.”
He paused for a moment, and then added:
“You will, I hope, pardon the liberty I am going to take; but as I boast
the merit of having first made your merit known to your worthy host, I
hold myself in some degree (smiling and pressing my hand) accountable
for your confirming the partiality I have awakened in your favour.
“The daughter of the Prince, and my pupil, of whom you can have yet
formed no opinion, is a creature of such rare endowments, that it should
seem Nature, as if foreseeing her isolated destiny, had opposed her
own liberality to the chariness of fortune; and lavished on her such
intuitive talents, that she almost sets the necessity of education
at defiance. To all that is most excellent in the circle of human
intellect, or human science, her versatile genius is constantly
directed; and it is my real opinion, that nothing more is requisite to
perfect her in any liberal or elegant pursuit, but that method or system
which even the strangest native talent, unassisted, can seldom attain
(without a long series of practical experience) and which is unhappily
denied her; while her doating father incessantly mourns that poverty,
which withholds from him the power of cultivating those shining
abilities that would equally enrich the solitude of their possessor, or
render her an ornament to that society she may yet be destined to grace.
Yet the occasional visits of a strolling dancing-master, and a few
musical lessons received in her early childhood from the family bard,
are all the advantages these native talents have received.
“But who that ever beheld her motions in the dance, or listened to
the exquisite sensibility of her song, but would exclaim--‘here is a
creature for whom Art can do nothing--Nature has done all!’
“To these elegant acquirements, she unites a decided talent for drawing,
arising from powers naturally imitative, and a taste early imbibed (from
the contemplation of her native scenes) for all that is most sublime and
beautiful in nature. But this, of all her talents, has been the least
assisted, and yet is the most prized by her father, who, I believe,
laments his inability to detain you here as her preceptor; or rather, to
make it worth your while to forego your professional pursuits, for such
a period as would be necessary to invest her with such rudiments in the
art, as would form a basis for her future improvement. In a word, can
you, consistently with your present plans, make the castle of Inismore
your headquarters for two or three months, from whence you can take
frequent excursions amidst the neighbouring scenery, which will afford
to your pencil subjects rich and various as almost any other part of the
country?”
Now, in the course of my life, I have had more than one occasion to
remark certain desirable events brought about by means diametrically
opposite to the supposition of all human probability;--but that this
worthy man should (as if infected with the intriguing spirit of a French
Abbe reared in the purlieus of the _Louvre_) thus forward my views, and
effect the realization of my wishes, excited so strong an emotion of
pleasurable surprise, that I with difficulty repressed my smiles, or
concealed my triumph.
After, however, a short pause, I replied with great gravity, that I
always conceived with Pliny, that the dignity we possess by the good
offices of a friend, is a kind of sacred trust, wherein we have his
judgment as well as our own character to maintain, and therefore to be
guarded with peculiar attention; that consequently, on his account, I
was as anxious as on my own, to confirm the good opinion conceived in
my favour through the medium of his partiality; and with very great
sincerity I assured him, that I knew of no one event so coincident to
my present views of happiness, as the power of making the Prince some
return for his benevolent attentions, and of becoming his (the priest’s)
coadjutor in the tuition of his highly gifted pupil.
“Add then, my dear Sir,” said I, “to all the obligations you have forced
on me, by presenting my respectful compliments to the Prince, with
the offer of my little services, and an earnest request that he will
condescend to accept of them; and if you think it will add to the
delicacy of the offer, let him suppose that it voluntarily comes from
the heart deeply impressed with a sense of his kindness.”
“That is precisely what I was going to propose,” returned this excellent
and unsuspecting being. “I would even wish him to think you conceive the
obligation all on your own side; for the pride of fallen greatness is of
all others the most sensitive.”
“And God knows so I do,” said I, fervently,--then carelessly added, “do
you think your pupil has a decided talent for the art?”
“It may be partiality,” he replied; “but I think she has a decided
talent for every elegant acquirement. If I recollect right, somebody has
defined _genius_ to be ‘the various powers of a strong mind directed to
one point:’ making it the _result_ of combined force, not the vital
source, whence all intellectual powers flow; in which light, the genius
of Glorvina has ever appeared to me as a beam from heaven, an emanation
of divine intelligence, whose nutritive warmth cherishes into existence
that richness and variety of talent which wants only a little care to
rear it to perfection.
“When I first offered to become the preceptor to this charming child,
her father, I believe, never formed an idea that my tuition would have
extended beyond a little reading and writing; but I soon found that
my interesting pupil possessed a genius that bore all before it--that
almost anticipated instruction by force of its tuitive powers, and
prized each task assigned it, only in proportion to the difficulty by
which it was to be accomplished.
“Her young ambitious mind even emulated rivalry with mine, and that
study in which she beheld me engaged seldom failed to become the object
of her desires and her assiduity. Availing myself, therefore, of this
innate spirit of emulation--this boundless thirst of knowledge, I left
her mind free in the election of its studies, while I only threw
within its power of acquisition, that which could tend to render her
a rational, and consequently a benevolent being; for I have always
conceived an informed, intelligent, and enlightened mind, to be the
best security for a good heart; although the many who mistake talent for
intellect, and unfortunately too often find the former united to vice,
and led to suppose that the heart loses in goodness what the mind
acquires in strength, as if (as a certain paradoxical writer has
asserted) there was something in the natural mechanism of the human
frame necessary to constitute a fine genius that is not altogether
favourable to the heart.
“But here comes the unconscious theme of our conversation.”
And at that moment Glorvina appeared, springing lightly forward, like
Gresset’s beautiful personification of health:
“As Hebe swift, as Venus fair,
Youthful, lovely, light as air.”
As soon as she perceived me she stopt abruptly, blushed, and returning
my salutation, advanced to the priest, and twining her arm familiarly in
his, said, with an air of playful tenderness,
“O! I have brought you something you will be glad to see--here is the
spring’s first violet, which the unusual chilliness of the season has
suffered to steal into existence: this morning as I gathered herbs
at the foot of the mountain, I inhaled its odour ere I discovered its
purple head, as solitary and unassociated it was drooping beneath the
heavy foliage of a neighbouring plant.
“It is but just you should have the first violet as my father has
already had the first snowdrop. Receive, then, my offering,” she added
with a smile; and while she fondly placed it in his breast with an air
of exquisite _naivette_, to my astonishment she repeated from B. Tasso,
those lines so consonant to the tender simplicity of the act in which
she was engaged:
“Poiche d’altro honorate
Non dosso, prendi lieta
Queste negre viole
Dall umor rugiadose.”
The priest gazed at her with looks of parental affection, and said,
“Your offering, my dear, is indeed the
‘Incense to the heart;’
and more precious to the receiver, than the richest donation that ever
decked the shrine of Loretto. How fragrant it is!” he added, presenting
it to me.
I took it in silence, but raised it no higher than my lip--the eye of
Glorvina met mine, as my kiss breathed upon her flower: Good God! what
an undefinable, what a delicious emotion thrilled through my heart at
that moment! and the next--yet I know not how it was, or whether
the motion was made by her, or by me, or by the priest--but somehow,
Glorvina had got between us, and while I gazed at her beautiful flower,
I personified the blossom, and addressed to her the happiest lines that
form “_La Guirlande de Julie_” while, as I repeated.
“Mais si sur votre front je peux briller un jour,
La plus humble des fleurs sera la plus superbe
I reposed it for a moment on her brow in passing it over to the priest.
“Oh!” said she, with an arch smile, “I perceive you too will expect
a tributary flower for these charming lines; and the summer’s first
rose”--she paused abruptly; but her eloquent eye continued, “should be
thine, but that thou mayst be far from hence when the summer’s first
rose appears.” I thought too--but it might be only the fancy of my
wishes, that a sigh floated on the lip, when recollection checked the
effusion of the heart.
“The _rose_,” (said the priest, with simplicity, and more engaged with
the classicality of the idea, than the inference to be drawn from it,)
“the rose is the flower of Love.”
I stole a look at Glorvina, whose cheek now emulated the tint of the
theme of our conversation; and plucking a thistle that sprung from a
broken pediment, she blew away its down with her balmy breath, merely to
hide her confusion.
Surely she is the most sentient of all created beings!
“I remember,” continued the priest, “being severely censured by a rigid
old priest, at my college in St. Omer’s, who found me reading the
Idylium of Ausonius, in which he so beautifully celebrates the rose,
when the good father believed me deep in St. Augustin.”
“The rose,” said I, “has always been the poet’s darling theme. The
impassioned lyre of Sappho has breathed upon its leaves. Anacreon has
wooed it in the happiest effusions of his genius; and poesy seems
to have exhausted her powers in celebrating the charms of the most
beautiful and transient of flowers.
“Among its modern panegyrists, few have been more happily successful
than Monsieur de Barnard, in that charming little ode beginning:
“Tendre fruits des pleurs d’aurore,
Objets des baisers du zephyrs,
Reine de l’empire de Flore,
Hate toi d’epanoir.”
“O! I beseech you go on,” exclaimed Glor-vina; and at her request, I
finished the poem.
“Beautiful, beautiful!” said she, with enthusiasm. “O! there is a
certain delicacy of genius in elegant trifles of this description, which
I think the French possess almost exclusively: it is a language formed
almost by its very construction _a’eterniser la bagatelle_, and to
clothe the fairy effusions of fancy in the most appropriate drapery.
“I thank you for this beautiful ode; the rose was always my idol flower;
in all its different stages of existence, it speaks a language my heart
understands; from its young bud’s first crimson glow, to the last sickly
blush of its faded blossom. It is the flower of sentiment in all
its sweet transitions; it breathes a moral, and seems to preserve an
undecaying soul in that fragrant essence which still survives the bloom
and symmetry of the fragile form which every beam too ardent, every gale
too chill, injures and destroys.”
“And is there,” said I, “no parallel in the moral world for this lovely
offspring of the natural?”----
Glorvina raised her humid eyes to mine, and I read the parallel there.
“I vow,” said the priest, with affected pettishness, “I am half tempted
to fling away my violet, since this _idol_ flower has been decreed to
Mr. Mortimer; and to revenge myself, I will show him your ode on the
rose.”
At these words, he took out his pocket-book, laughing at his gratified
vengeance, while Glorvina coaxed, blushed, and threatened; until
snatching the book out of his hand, as he was endeavouring to put
it into mine, away she flew like lightning, laughing heartily at her
triumph, in all the exility and playfulness of a youthful spirit.
“What a _Hebe!_” said I, as she kissed her hand to us in her airy
flight.
“Yes,” said he, “she at least illustrates the possibility of a woman
uniting in her character the extremes of intelligence and simplicity:
you see, with all her information and talent, she is a mere child.”
When we reached the castle, we found her waiting for us at the breakfast
table, flushed with her race--all animation, all spirits! her reserve
seemed gradually to vanish, and nothing could be more interesting, yet
more _enjouee_, than her manner and conversation. While the fertility
of her imagination supplied incessant topic of conversation, always new,
always original, I could not help reverting in idea to those languid
_tete-a-tetes_, even in the hey-dey of our intercourse, when Lady
C.------ and I have sat yawning at each other, or biting our fingers,
merely for want of something to say, in those intervals of passion,
which every connexion even of the tenderest nature, must sustain--she in
the native dearth of her mind, and I in the habitual apathy of mine.
But here is a creature who talks of a violet or a rose with the artless
air of infancy, and yet fascinates you in the simple discussion, as
though the whole force of intellect was roused to support it.
By Heaven! if I know my own heart, I would not love this being for a
thousand worlds; at least as I have hitherto loved. As it is, I feel a
certain commerce of the soul--a mutual intelligence of mind and feeling
with her, which a look, a sigh, a word is sufficient to betray--a sacred
communion of spirit, which raises me in the scale of existence almost
above mortality; and though we had been known to each other by
looks only, still would this amalgamation of soul (if I may use the
expression) have existed.
What a nausea of every sense does the turbulent agitation of gross
commonplace passion bring with it. But the sentiment which this seraph
awakens, “brings with it no satiety.” There is something so pure, so
refreshing about her, that in the present state of my heart, feelings,
and constitution, she produces the same effect on me as does the
health-giving breeze of returning spring to the drooping spirit of slow
convalescence!
After breakfast she left us, and I was permitted to kiss his Highness’s
hand, on my instalment in my new and enviable office. He did not speak
much on the subject, but with his usual energy. However, I understood I
was not to waste my time, as he termed it, for nothing.
When I endeavoured to argue the point (as if the whole business was not
a _farce,_) the Prince would not hear me; so behold to all intents
and purposes a hireling tutor. Faith, to confess the truth, I know not
whether to be pleased or angry with this wild romance: this too, in a
man whose whole life has been a laugh at romancers of every description.
What if my father learns the extent of my folly, in the first era too
of my probation! Oh! what a spirit of _bizarte_ ever drives me from the
central point of common sense, and common prudence! With what tyranny
does impulse rule my wayward fate! and how imperiously my heart still
takes the lead of my head! yet if I could ever consider the “meteor ray”
that has hitherto mis led my wanderings, as a “light from heaven,” it
is now, when virtue leads me to the shrine of innocent pleasure; and the
mind becomes the better for the wanderings of the heart.
“But what,” you will say, with your usual foreseeing prudence--“what is
the aim, the object of your present romantic pursuit?”
Faith, none; save the simple enjoyment of present felicity, after an age
of cold, morbid apathy; and a self resignation to an agreeable illusion,
after having sustained the actual burthen of real sufferings (sufferings
the more acute as they were self created,) succeeded by that dearth of
feeling and sensation which in permitting my heart to lie _fallow_ for
an interval, only rendered it the more genial to those exotic seeds of
happiness which the vagrant gale of chance has flung on its surface.
But whether they will take deep root, or only wear “the perfume and
suppliance of a moment,” is an unthought of “circumstance still hanging
in the stars,” to whose decision I commit it.
Would you know my plans of meditated operation, they run thus:--In a
few days I shall avail myself of my professional vocation, and fly
home, merely to obviate suspicion in Mr. Clendinning, receive and answer
letters, and get my books and wardrobe sent to the Lodge, previous to my
own removal there, which I shall effect under the plausible plea of the
dissipated neighbourhood of M-------- house being equally inimical to
the present state of my constitution and my studious pursuits; and, in
fact, I must either associate with, or offend these hospitable
Milesians--an alternative by no means consonant to my inclinations.
From Inismore to the Lodge, I can make constant sallies, and be in the
way to receive my father, whose arrival I think I may still date at some
weeks’ distance; besides, should it be necessary, I think I should find
no difficulty in bribing the old steward of the Lodge to my interest.
His evident aversion to Clendinning, and attachment to the Prince,
renders him ripe for any scheme by which the latter could be served,
or the former outwitted: and I hope in the end to effect both: for, to
unite this old chieftain in bonds of amity with my father, and to punish
the rascality of the worthy Mr. Clendinning, is a double “consummation
devoutly to be wished.” In short, when the heart is interested in
a project, the stratagems of the imagination to forward it are
inexhaustible.
It should seem that the name of M-------- is interdicted at Inismore: I
have more than once endeavoured (though remotely) to make the residence
of our family in this country a topic of conversation; but every one
seemed to shrink from the subject, as though some fatality was connected
with its discussion. To avoid speaking ill of those of whom we have but
little reason, speak well, is the temperance of aversion, and seldom
found but in great minds.
I must mention to you another instance of liberality in the sentiments
of these isolated beings:--I have only once attended the celebration of
divine service here since my arrival; but my absence seemed not to be
observed, or my attendance noticed; and though, as an Englishman, I may
be naturally supposed to be of the most popular faith, yet, for all they
know to the contrary, I may be Jew, Mussulman, or Infidel; for, before
me at least, religion is a topic never discussed.
Adieu,
H. M
LETTER IX.
TO J. D. ESQ., M. P.
I have already given two lessons to my pupil, in an art in which, with
all due deference to the judgment of her quondam tutor, she was never
destined to excel.
Not, however, that she is deficient in talent--very far from it; but it
is too progressive, too tame a pursuit for the vivacity of her genius.
It is not sufficiently connected with those lively and vehement emotions
of the soul she is so calculated to feel and to awaken. She was created
for a musician--there she is borne away by the magic of the art in which
she excels, and the natural enthusiasm of her impassioned character: she
can sigh, she can weep, she can smile over her harp. The sensibility
of her soul trembles in her song, and the expression of her rapt
countenance harmonizes with her voice. But at her drawing-desk, her
features lose their animated character--the smile of rapture ceases
to play, and the glance of inspiration to beam. And with the transient
extinction of those feelings from which each touching charm is derived,
fades that all pervading interest, that energy of admiration which she
usually excites.
Notwithstanding, however, the pencil is never out of her hand; her
harp lies silent, and her drawing-book is scarcely ever closed. Yet
she limits my attendance to the first hour after breakfast, and then
I generally lose sight of her the whole day, until we all meet
_en-famille_ in the evening. Her improvement is rapid--her father
delighted, and she quite fascinated by the novelty of her avocation; the
priest congratulates me, and I alone am dissatisfied.
But from the natural impatience and volatility of her character, (both
very obvious,) this, thank Heaven! will soon be over. Besides, even
in the hour of tuition, from which I promised myself so much, I do not
enjoy her society--the priest always devotes that time to reading out to
her; and this too at her own request:--not that I think her innocent and
unsuspicious nature cherishes the least reserve at her being left
_tete-a-tete_ with her less venerable preceptor; but that her ever
active mind requires incessant exercise; and in fact, while I am hanging
over her in uncontrolled emotion, she is drawing, as if her livelihood
depended on the exertions of her pencil, or commenting on the subjects
of the priest’s perusal, with as much ease as judgment; while she minds
me no more than if I were a well organized piece of mechanism, by whose
motions her pencil was to be guided.
What if, with all her mind, all her genius, this creature had no
heart!--And what were it to me, though she had?------
The Prince fancies his domestic government to be purely patriarchal,
and that he is at once the “Law and the Prophet” to his family; never
suspecting that he is all the time governed by a girl of nineteen, whose
soul, notwithstanding the playful softness of her manner, contains
a latent ambition, which sometimes breathing in the grandeur of her
sentiment, and sometimes sparkling in the haughtiness of her eye, seems
to say, “I was born for empire!”
It is evident that the tone of her mind is naturally stronger than her
father’s, though to a common observe, _he_ would appeal a man of
nervous and masculine understanding; but the difference between them is
this--his energies are the energies of the passions--hers of the mind!
Like most other Princes, _mine_ is governed much by _favoritism_; and it
is evident I already rank high on the list of partiality.
I perceive, however, that much of his predilection in my favour,
arises from the coincidence of my present curiosity and taste with his
favourite pursuits and national prejudices. Newly awakened, (perhaps
by mere force of novelty,) to a lively interest for every thing that
concerns a country I once thought so little worthy of consideration;
in short, convinced by the analogy of existing habits, with recorded
customs, of the truth of those circumstances so generally ranked in
the apocryphal tales of the history of this vilified country; I have
determined to resort to the witness of time, the light of truth, and the
corroboration of living testimony, in the study of a country which I am
beginning to think would afford to the mind of philosophy a rich subject
of analysis, and to the powers of poetic fancy a splendid series of
romantic detail.
“Sir William Temple,” says Dr. Johnson, “complains that Ireland is
less known than any other country, as to its ancient state, because the
natives have little leisure, and less encouragement for enquiry; and
that a stranger, not knowing its language, has no ability.”