I had just finished my last by the beams of a gloriously setting sun,
when I was startled by a pebble being thrown in at my window. I looked
out, and perceived Father John in the act of flinging up another, which
the hand of Glorvina (who was leaning on his arm) prevented.
“If you are not engaged in writing to your mistress,” said he, “come
down and join us in a ramble.”
“And though I were,” I replied, “I could not resist your challenge.”
And down I flew--Glorvina laughing, sent me back for my hat, and we
proceeded on our walk.
“This is an evening,” said I, looking at Glorvina, “worthy of the
morning of the first of May, and we have seized it in that happy moment
so exquisitly described by Collins:
-“'While now the bright hair’d sun
Sits on yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts
With brede etherial wove,
O’erhang his wavy bed.’” >
“O! that beautiful ode!” exclaimed Glorvina, with all her wildest
enthusiasm--“never can I read--never hear it repeated but with emotion.
The perusal of Ossian’s ‘Song of Other Times,’ the breezy respiration
of my harp at twilight, the last pale rose that outlives its season,
and bears on its faded breast the frozen tears of the wintry dawn, and
Collins’s ‘Ode to Evening,’ awaken in my heart and fancy the same train
of indescribable feeling, of exquisite, yet unspeakable sensation. Alas!
the solitary pleasure of feeling thus alone the utter impossibility of
conveying to the bosom of another those ecstatic emotions by which our
own is sublimed.”
While my very soul followed this brilliant comet to her perihelion of
sentiment and imagination, I fixed my eyes on her “mind-illumin’d face,”
and said, “And is expression then necessary for the conveyance of such
profound, such exquisite feeling? May not the similarity of a refined
organization exist between souls, and produce that mutual intelligence
which sets the necessity of cold, verbal expression at defiance? May not
the sympathy of a kindred sensibility in the bosom of another, meet and
enjoy those delicious feelings by which yours is warmed, and, sinking
beneath the inadequacy of language to give them birth, feel like you, in
silent and sacred emotion?”
“Perhaps,” said the priest, with his usual simplicity, “this sacred
sympathy, between two refined and elevated souls, in the sublime and
beautiful of the moral and natural world, approaches nearest to the
rapturous and pure emotions which uncreated spirits may be supposed to
feel in their heavenly communion, than any other human sentiment with
which we are acquainted.”
For all the looks of blandishment which ever flung their spell from
beauty’s eye, I would not have exchanged the glance which Glorvina
at that moment cast on me. While the priest, who seemed to have
been following up the train of thought awakened by our preceding
observations, abruptly added, after a silence of some minutes--
“There is a species of metaphorical taste, if I may be allowed the
expression, whose admiration for certain objects is not deducible from
the established rules of beauty, order, or even truth; which _should_ be
the basis of our approbation; yet which ever brings with it a sensation
of more lively pleasure; as for instance, a chromatic passion in
music will awaken a thrill of delight which a simple chord could never
effect.”
“Nor would the most self-evident truth,” said I, “awaken so vivid a
sensation, as when we find some sentiment of the soul illustrated by
some law or principle in science. To an axiom we announce our assent,
but we lavish our most enthusiastic approbation when Rosseau tells us
that ‘Les ames humaines veulent etre accomplies pour valoir toute leurs
prix, et la force unie des ames _comme celles des l’armes d’un aimant
artificiel_, est incomparablement plus grands que la somme de leurs
force particulier.’”
As this quotation was meant _all_ for Glorvina, I looked earnestly
at her as I repeated it. A crimson torrent rushed to her cheek, and
convinced me that she felt the full force of a sentiment so applicable
to us both.
“And why,” said I, addressing her in a low voice, “was Rosseau excluded
from the sacred coalition with Ossian, Collins, your twilight harp, and
winter rose?”
Glorvina made no reply; but turned full on me her “eyes of dewy light.”
Mine almost sunk beneath the melting ardour of their soul-beaming o o
glance.
Oh! child of Nature! child of genius and of passion! why was I withheld
from throwing myself at thy feet; from offering thee the homage of that
soul thou hast awakened; from covering thy hands with my kisses, and
bathing them with tears of such delicious emotion, as thou only hast
power to inspire?
While we thus “_buvames a longs traits le philtre de l’amour,_” Father
John gradually restored us to commonplace existence, by a commonplace
conversation on the fineness of the weather, promising aspect of the
season, &c., until the moon, as it rose sublimely above the summit of
the mountain, called forth the melting tones of my Glorvina’s syren
voice.
Casting up her eyes to that Heaven whence they seem to have caught their
emanation, she said, “I do not wonder that unenlightened nations should
worship the moon. Our ideas are so intimately connected with our senses,
so ductilely transferable from cause to effect, that the abstract
thought may readily subside in the sensible image which awakens it.
When, in the awful stillness of a calm night, I fix my eyes on the mild
and beautiful orb, the _created_ has become the awakening medium of that
adoration I offered to the _Creator_.”
“Yes,” said the priest, “I remember that even in your childhood, you
used to fix your eyes on the moon, and gaze and wonder. I believe it
would have been no difficult matter to have plunged you back into the
heathenism of your ancestors, and to have made it one of the gods of
your idolatry.”
“And was the chaste Luna in the _album sanctorum_ of your Druidical
mythology?” said I.
“Undoubtedly,” said the priest, “we read in the life of our celebrated
saint, St. Columba, that on the altar-piece of a Druidical temple,
the sun, moon, and stars were curiously depicted; and the form of the
ancient Irish oath of allegiance, was to swear by the sun, moon, and
stars, and other deities, celestial as well as terrestrial.”
“How,” said I, “did your mythology touch so closely on that of the
Greeks? Had you also your Pans and your Daphnes, as well as your Dians
and Apollos?”
“Here is a curious anecdote that evinces it,” returned the priest--“It
is many years since I read it in a black-letter memoir of St. Patrick.
The Saint, says the biographer, attended by three bishops, and some less
dignified of his brethren, being in this very province, arose early one
morning, and with his pious associates, placed himself near a fountain
or well, and began to chant a hymn. In the neighbourhood of this
honoured fountain stood the palace of _Cruachan_, where the two
daughters of the Emperor Laogare were educating in retirement; and as
the saints sung by no means _sotto voce_, * their pious strains caught
the attention of the royal fair ones, who were enjoying an early ramble,
and who immediately sought the sanctified choristers. Full of that
curiosity so natural to the youthful recluses, they were by no means
sparing of interrogations to the Saint, and among other questions
demanded, ‘and who is your God? Where dwells he, in heaven or on the
earth, or beneath the earth, or in the mountain, or in the valley, or
the sea, or the stream?’--And indeed, even to this day, we have Irish
for a river god, which we call _Divona_.--You perceive, therefore, that
our ancient religion was by no means an unpoetical one.”
* A musical voice was an indispensable quality in an Irish
Saint, and “lungs of leather” no trivial requisite towards
obtaining canonization. St. Columbkill, we are told, sung so
loud, that, according to an old Irish poem, called “Amhra
Chioluim chille,” or The Vision of Columbkill, “His hallow’d
voice beyond a mile was heard.”
While we spoke, we observed a figure emerging from a coppice towards a
small well, which issued beneath the roots of a blasted oak. The priest
motioned us to stop, and be silent--the figure (which was that of an
ancient female wrapped in a long cloak,) approached, and having drank
of the well out of a little cup, she went three times round it on her
knees, praying with great fervency over her beads; then rising after
this painful ceremony, she tore a small part of her under garb, and hung
it on the branch of the tree which shaded the well.
“This ceremony, I perceive,” said the priest, “surprises you; but you
have now witnessed the remains of one of our ancient superstitions. The
ancient Irish, like the Greeks, were religiously attached to the
consecrated fountain, the _Vel expiatoria_; and our early missionaries,
discovering the fondness of the natives for these sanctified springs,
artfully diverted the course of their superstitious faith, and dedicated
them to Christian saints.”
“There is really,” said I, “something truly classic in this spot; and
here is this little shrine of Christian superstition hung with the same
votive gifts as Pausanius informs us obscured the statue of Hygeia in
Secyonia.”
“This is nothing extraordinary here,” said the priest; “these
consecrated wells are to be found in every part of the kingdom. But of
all our _Acquo Sanctificato_, Lough Derg is the most celebrated. It is
the _Loretto_ of Ireland, and votarists from every part of the kingdom
resort to it. So great, indeed, is the still-existing veneration among
the lower orders for these holy wells, that those who live at too
great a distance to make a pilgrimage to one, are content to purchase
a species of amulet made of a sliver of the tree which shades the well,
(and imbued with its waters,) which they wear round their necks. These
curious amulets are sold at fairs, by a species of sturdy beggar, called
a _Bacagh_, who stands with a long pole, with a box fixed at the top
of it, for the reception of alms; while he alternately extols the
miraculous property of the amulet, and details his own miseries; thus
at once endeavouring to interest the faith and charity of the always
benevolent, always credulous multitude.”
“Strange,” said I, “that religion in all ages and in all countries
should depend so much on the impositions of one half of mankind, and the
credulity and indolence of the other. Thus the Egyptians (to whom even
Greece herself stood indebted for the principles of those arts and
sciences by which she became the most illustrious country in the world)
resigned themselves so entirely to the impositions of their priests, as
to believe that the safety and happiness of life itself depended on the
motions of an ox, or the tameness of a crocodile.”
“Stop, stop,” interrupted Father John, smiling; “you forget, that though
you wear the _San-Benito_, or robe of heresy yourself, you are in the
company of those who----”
“Exactly think on _certain points_,” interrupted I, “even as my
heretical self.”
This observation led to a little controversial dialogue, which, as it
would stand a very poor chance of being read by you, will stand none at
all of being transcribed by me.
When we returned home we found the Prince impatiently watching for us
at the window, fearful lest the dews of heaven should have fallen
too heavily on the head of his heart’s idol, who finished her walk in
silence; either, I believe, not much pleased with the turn given to the
conversation by the priest, or not sufficiently interested in it.
*****
I know not how it is, but since the morning of the first of May, I feel
as though my soul had entered into a covenant with hers; as though our
very beings were indissolubly interwoven with each other. And yet the
freedom which once existed in our intercourse is fled. I approach her
trembling; and she repels the most distant advances with such dignified
softness, such chastely modest reserve, that the restraint I sometimes
labour under in her presence, is almost concomitant to the bliss it
bestows.
This morning, when she came to her drawing-desk, she held a volume of
_De Moustier_ in her hand--“I have brought this,” said she, “for ou _bon
Pere Directeur_ to read out to us.”
“He has commissioned me,” said I, “to make his excuses; he is gone to
visit a sick man on the other side of the mountain.”
At this intelligence she blushed to the eyes; but suddenly recovering
herself, she put the book into my hands, and said with a smile, “then
you must officiate for him.”
As soon as she was seated at the drawing-desk, I opened the book, and by
chance at the beautiful description of the _Boudoir_:
“J’amie une boudoir étroite qu’un demi jour eclaire,
La mon cour est chez lui, le premier demi jour
Fruit par la volupté, menage pour l’amour,
La discrete amitié, veut aussi du mystère,
Cluand de nos bons amis dans un lieu limitie,
Le cercle peu nombreux près de nous rassemble
Le sentiment, la paix, la franche liberté
Preside en commun,” &c.
I wish you could see this creature, when anything is said or read
that comes home to her heart, or strikes in immediate unison with the
exquisite tone of her feelings. Never sure was there a finer commentary
than her looks and gestures passed on any work of interest which engages
her attention. Before I had finished the perusal of this charming little
fragment, the pencil had dropped from her fingers; and often she waved
her beautiful head and smiled, and breathed a faint exclamation of
delight; and when I laid down the book, she said, while she leaned her
face on her clasped hands----
“And I too have a boudoir!--but even a _bou-doir_ may become a dreary
solitude, except”----she paused; and I added, from the poem I had just
read, “except that within its social little limits
“La confidence ingénu rapproche deux amis.”
Her eyes, half raised to mine, suddenly cast down, beamed a tender
acquiescence to the sentiment.
“But,” said I, “if the being worthy of sharing the bliss such an
intercourse in such a place must confer, is yet to be found, is its
hallowed circle inviolable to the intrusive footstep of an inferior,
though perhaps not less ardent votarist?”
“Since you have been here,” said she, “I have scarcely ever visited this
once favourite retreat myself.”
“Am I to take that as a compliment or otherwise?” said I.
“Just as it is meant,” said she--“as a fact;” and she added, with an
inadvertent simplicity, into which the ardour of her temper often
betrays her--“I never can devote myself partially to anything--I am
either all enthusiasm or all indifference.”
Not for the world would I have made her _feel_ the full force of this
avowal; but requested permission to visit this now deserted boudoir.
“Certainly,” she replied--“it is a little closet in that ruined tower,
which terminates the corridor in which your apartment lies.”
“Then, I am privileged?” said I.
“Undoubtedly,” she returned; and the Prince who had risen unusually
early, entered the room at that moment, and joined us at the
drawing-desk.
*****
The absence of the good priest left me to a solitary dinner. Glorvina
(as is usual with her) spent the first part of the evening in her
father’s room; and thus denied her society, I endeavoured to supply its
want--its soul-felt want, by a visit to her boudoir.
There is a certain tone of feeling when fancy is in its acme, when
sentiment holds the senses in subordination, and the visionary joys
which float in the imagination shed a livelier bliss on the soul, than
the best pleasures cold reality ever conferred. Then, even the presence
of a beloved object is not more precious to the heart than the spot
consecrated to her memory; where we fancy the very air is impregnated
with her respiration; every object is hallowed by her recent touch, and
that all around breathes of her.
In such a mood of mind, I ascended to Glor-vina’s boudoir; and I really
believe, that had she accompanied, I should have felt less than when
alone and unseen I stole to the asylum of her pensive thoughts. It
lay as she had described; and almost as I passed its threshold, I was
sensibly struck by the incongruity of its appearance--it seemed to me as
though it had been partly furnished in the beginning of one century, and
finished in the conclusion of another. The walls were rudely wainscotted
with oak, black with age; yet the floor was covered with a Turkey
carpet, rich, new, and beautiful--better adapted to cover a Parisian
dressing-room than the closet of a ruined tower. The casements were high
and narrow, but partly veiled with a rich drapery of scarlet silk: a few
old chairs, heavy and cumbrous, were interspersed with stools of an
antique form; one of which lay folded upon the ground, so as to be
portable in a travelling trunk. On a ponderous Gothic table (which
seemed a fixture coeval with the building) was placed a silver
_escritoire_, of curious and elegant workmanship, and two small, but
beautiful antique vases (filled with flowers) of Etrurian elegance. Two
little book-shelves, elegantly designed, but most clumsily executed,
(probably by some hedge-carpenter) were filled with the best French,
English, and Italian poets; and, to my utter astonishment, not only some
new publications scarce six months old, but two London newspapers of no
distant date, lay scattered on the table, with some MS. music, and some
unfinished drawings.
Having gratified my curiosity, by examining the singular incongruities
of this paradoxical boudoir, I leaned for some time against one of the
windows, endeavouring to make out some defaced lines cut on its panes
with a diamond, when Glorvina herself entered the room.
As I stood concealed by the silken drapery, she did not perceive me. A
basket of flowers hung on her arm, from which she replenished the vases,
having first flung away their faded treasures. As she stood thus engaged
and cheering her sweet employment with a murmured song, I stole softly
behind her, and my breath disturbing the ringlets which had escaped
from the bondage of her bodkin, and seemed to cling to her neck for
protection, she turned quickly round, and with a start, a blush, and a
smile, said, “Ah! _so soon_ here!”
“You perceive,” said I, “your immunity was not lost on me! I have been
here this half hour!”
“Indeed!” she replied, and casting round a quick inquiring glance,
hastily collected the scattered papers, and threw them into a drawer;
adding, “I intended to have made some arrangements in this deserted
little place, that you might see it in its best garb; but had scarcely
begun the necessary reform this morning, when I was suddenly called
to my father, and could not till this moment find leisure to return
hither.”
While she spoke I gazed earnestly at her. It struck me there was a
something of mystery over this apartment, yet wherefore should mystery
dwell where all breathes the ingenuous simplicity of the golden age?
Glorvina moved towards the casement, threw open the sash, and laid her
fresh gathered flowers on the seat. Their perfume scented the room; and
a new fallen shower still glittered on the honeysuckle which she was
endeavouring to entice through the window round which it crept.
The sun was setting with rather a mild than a dazzling splendour, and
the landscape was richly impurpled with its departing beams, which, as
they darted through the scarlet drapery of the curtain, shed warmly over
the countenance and figure of Glorvina “_Love’s proper hue_.”
We both remained silent, until her eye accidentally meeting mine, a
more “celestial rosy red” invested her cheek. She seated herself in the
window, and I drew a chair and sat near her. All within was the softest
gloom--all without the most solemn stillness. The gray vapours of
twilight were already stealing amidst the illumined clouds that floated
in the atmosphere--the sun’s golden beams no longer scattered round
their rich suffusion; and the glow of retreating day was fading even
from the horizon where its parting glories faintly lingered.
“It is a sweet hour,” said Glorvina, softly sighing.
“It is a _boudoirizing_ hour,” said I.
“It is a golden one for a poetic heart,” she added.
“Or an enamoured one,” I returned. “It is the hour in which the soul
best knows itself; when every low-thoughted care is excluded, and the
pensive pleasures take possession of the dis solving heart.
“Ces douces lumières
Ces sombre certes
Sont les jours de la volupté.”
And what was the _voluptas_ of Epicurus, but those refined and elegant
enjoyments which must derive their spirit from virtue and from health;
from a vivid fancy, susceptible feelings, and a cultivated mind; and
which are never so fully tasted as in this sweet season of the day; then
the influence of sentiment is buoyant over passion; the soul, alive to
the sublimest impression, expands in the region of pure and elevated
meditation: the passions, slumbering in the soft repose of Nature,
leave the heart free to the reception of the purest, warmest, tenderest
sentiments--when all is delicious melancholy, or pensive softness; when
every vulgar wish is hushed, and a rapture, an indefinable rapture,
thrills with sweet vibration on every nerve.”
“It is thus I have felt,” said the all-impassioned Glorvina, clasping
her hands and fixing her humid eyes on mine--“thus, in the dearth of all
_kindred_ feeling, have I felt. But never, oh! till _now--never!_”--and
she abruptly paused, and drooped her head on the back of my chair, over
which my hand rested, and felt the soft pressure of her glowing cheek,
while her balmy sigh breathed its odour on my lip.
Oh had not her celestial confidence, her angelic purity, sublimed every
thought, restrained every wish; at that moment; that too fortunate; too
dangerous moment!!!--Yet even as it was, in the delicious agony of my
soul, I secretly exclaimed with the legislator of Lesbos--“_It is too
difficult to be always virtuous!_” while I half audibly breathed on the
ear of Glorvina--
“Nor I, O first of all created beings! never, never till I beheld thee,
did I know the pure rapture which the intercourse of a kindred soul
awakens--of that sacred communion with a superior intelligence, which,
while it raises me in my own estimation, tempts me to emulate that
excellence I adore.”
Glorvina raised her head--her melting eyes met mine, and her cheek
rivalled the snow of that hand which was pressed with passionate ardour
on my lips. Then her eyes were bashfully withdrawn; she again drooped
her head--not on the chair, but on my shoulder. What followed, angels
might have attested--but the eloquence of bliss is silence.
Suffice it to say, that I am now certain of at least being understood;
and that in awakening her comprehension, I have roused my own. In a
word, I _now_ feel I love!!--for the first time I feel it. For the first
time my heart is alive to the most profound, the most delicate, the most
ardent, and most refined of all human passions. I am now conscious that
I have hitherto mistaken the senses for the heart, and the blandishments
of a vitiated imagination for the pleasures of the soul. In short, I
now feel myself in that state of beatitude, when the fruition of all the
heart’s purest wishes leaves me nothing to desire, and the innocence of
those wishes nothing to fear. You know but little of the sentiment which
now pervades my whole being, and blends with every atom of my frame, if
you suppose I have formally told Glorvina I loved her, or that I appear
even to suspect that I am (rapturous thought!) beloved in return. On
the contrary, the same mysterious delicacy, the same delicious reserve
still exist. It is a sigh, a glance, a broken sentence, an imperceptible
motion, (imperceptible to all eyes but our own) that betrays us to each
other. Once I used to fall at the feet of the “_Cynthia of the moment_,”
avow my passion, and swear eternal truth. Now I make no genuflection,
offer no vows, and swear no oaths; and yet feel more than
ever.--More!--dare I then place in the scale of comparison what I now
feel with what I ever felt before? The thought is sacrilege!