The proudest land of all,
That circling seas admire--
The Land where Power delights to dwell,
And War his mightiest feats can tell,
And Poesy to sweetest swell,
Attunes her voice and lyre.
_Aristophanes_.
The ship in which I had embarked soon fell down the river, and, aided
by a favorable breeze, we quickly shot by the massy and motionless
scenery of the majestic Rappahannock. Changing our course we entered
one of the beautiful and tributary waters of the Chesapeake, and
dropped anchor directly in front of an antique mansion, the stately
residence of a proud and well known name. An extensive garden, which
declared the taste and pedantry of its owner, for its chaste and
beautiful model was drawn from the pages of the Odyssey, stretched
its broad walks to the margin of the river. A throng of merry girls
and romping boys poured down from the porch of the house, welcoming
with glad voices that, happiest of all Virginian visiters, an
importing ship. Disguising myself I leaped into the boat which left
the vessel, and ere its keel had grated on the sand, many negroes had
rushed into the water, and were dragging it to the shore with songs
of triumph and congratulation. An elderly gentleman, grave, dignified
and thoughtful--peace to his fair-top boots and glittering
buckles!--now appeared and commenced the usual ledger conversation
with Captain Z. about the quality and price of his tobacco, and in a
whisper he told him on no account to sacrifice his "new ground sweet
scented." Holding a paper in his hand he called aloud to his family
to enter their wishes on that magic tablet, which he was about to
send _home_. No commercial newspaper ever declared a more incongruous
catalogue of the comforts of life and the luxuries of opulence: lace
and iron, silk and spades, wine and jesuit's bark, all figured in the
same column; and when the negroes were called on to declare what they
wanted, they filled the mystic page with calico, fiddle strings and
bottles. Many a bronzed and ebon colored child was led up to old
massa by its mother, and each lisping petition for a hat or a fishing
hook, was sacredly entered on the list.
I returned to the ship, and dropping a hasty line to my uncle,
informing him of the reasons which compelled me to leave Virginia,
despatched it by the last canoe which quitted our side, and retiring
to sleep I did not awake until the ship was dancing gaily over the
broad waters of the Atlantic. I looked on the furrowed track behind
me--and, far in the amber west, the lessening glory of the Virginian
coast was sinking in the wilderness of waters. With a fixed and
quenchless eye I watched its expiring outline, and when it had sunk
down into a wavy and shadowy mist, I felt as the exile whose
pulseless heart has heard the requiem of hope and the knell of love.
Young, inexperienced, and ignorant of the world, I was launched like
a rotten barque in the tempestuous ocean of man, while home, love,
hope and all the primal sympathies of the human heart, were to me,
sealed, buried, and forever annihilated. I had fled!--leaving a name
associated with the scorn of honor and the vengeance of society. Who
that heard of me would believe me innocent in the duel with Ludwell,
or who would believe that self-defence prompted my attack on the life
of Pilton? God in his goodness gave us tears! I had them not, and
from a tearless eye I became sullen and satisfied, with no human
passion but an increased affection for Ellen Pilton, which streamed
through my heart like phosphoric words on the dark walls of a cavern.
I was proud to be the victim of wayward and adverse circumstances,
and yielding to their mystic control, I found that destiny weaves an
argument which philosophy cannot unravel.
On the second day of our voyage, Scipio presented himself, telling me
that he was sent from Chalgrave with letters for the ship, that he
had discovered me through my disguise, that he had secreted himself
on board of the vessel, and that he was determined to follow me to
the end of the world. I soon settled the manner and purpose of his
appearance with the captain, and found in the priceless fidelity of
my servant, a green spot on which my heart might rest from its storm
of revenge and misanthropy.
Cheered by the balmy spirit of the western gale our gallant ship sped
her onward course, and the glad cry of land which echoed through the
vessel as we approached the beetling coast of England fell on my ear
like words of mercy to the prisoned captive. Standing on the quarter
deck, I saw before me the bustle, hurry and turmoil of commerce. The
surface of the water was chequered with a dense throng of vessels,
while, broadly floating in the breeze, appeared that proud flag on
whose glory the sun rises, and over whose empire he sets. As a
Virginian! as one whom early education and childish associations had
inspired, I gazed with a hallowed enthusiasm on that rugged land,
which looked down from its iron-bound eyre, the eagle of the
deep--that land which my boyish feelings had made the seat of
intellect and the dwelling place of genius. The early colonists had
called it by the tender name of Home; and the mellow tales of its
glory, which had been poured into my infant ear, were now started
into life and freshness. It was the land of Sir Philip Sydney,
Hampden and Pope, and on each spot of its classic earth Poetry had
raised her hallowed memorials, and Patriotism its stirring examples.
From the frozen sea to the burning tropics her name is respected, her
influence felt, her example imitated, her kindness cherished, her
resentment dreaded, while a radiant wake of glory streams behind the
path of her march. Far in the forests of the western world, the names
of her gifted sons who have asserted the triumphs of virtue or the
dignity of man, are heard, and are re-echoed back from the Thames to
the Ganges, and from the Volga to the Mississippi. In the solitude of
power she stands alone, {255} a massy trunk, resisting anarchy and
bending to every storm of revolution, yet rising from each assault in
more verdant and luxuriant foliage. Philosophy may claim the gigantic
birth of Printing--Religion the Reformation, and Science the
discovery of Gunpowder, as the great engines which opened the path of
civilization. The mind of England seized these mighty levers, her
hand perfected them, and achieved for herself that towering fame
which pours its lustre from the table-land of the world. This picture
was the dream of ignorance. Alas! how soon was its frost-work melted
before the light of truth! Unconscious of the hideous vice which
lurked beneath the gorgeous fabric, I saw only its glowing outline--I
was ignorant of its rapine, fraud and avarice--its selfishness of
motive and act--its singleness of empire and power, and of that
universal corruption which yields power to wealth, and honors to
knavery. The demon of gain is abroad throughout England--a pestilence
which walketh in the darkness of the human heart, expanding its
ravenous arms in her cities, or secretly hugging its penny in her
lowliest cottages. Her metropolis is the shamble of the universe--a
capacious reservoir, where vice elbows virtue, and where selfishness
festers itself into the loathsome obesity of the toad. Every thing is
on sale, and in the "mixed assortment" of her merchandise, even
learning, genius and wit, succumb to the secret spirit of her ledger.
"E'en the learned pate
Ducks to the golden fool."
Without her Christianity, which often blooms in guileless and
untainted simplicity, her blood-stained empire would tumble to the
earth. It is the influence of this holy faith which neutralizes the
excess of profligacy, and stimulates her expanded philanthropy.
Excited by its spirit, benevolence becomes religion, patriotism
springs into virtue, and in the remotest corners of the earth we see
the charity of the Christian opening the purse and heart of the
Englishman.
I leave the narrative of sights and curiosities to the guide book.
Born in the wilderness, my mind was as rugged as the grandeur of the
forest, and like the native Indian I had naught to admire but the
still and noiseless majesty of my own beautiful land. The stately
palaces--the lofty towers and all the fantastic pageantry which
opulence engenders, were but the moral to the fine sarcasm which
antiquity has fabled in the bridge of Salmoneus. Man's "brief
authority" decorates folly with a pyramid or a cathedral, and
succeeding ages call it glory. What son of Virginia would barter her
broad rivers--her sunny sky--her fertile plains, and her snow-capped
mountains, for the crumbling monuments of tyranny and superstition,
or the fœtid marts of gain? Who would exchange the infant purity of
the western world for the hoary vice and aged rottenness of Europe?
Uncontaminated by the example of England, we have yet seized from her
the sacred flame of freedom--her _habeas corpus_ without the act of
impressment--her _bill of rights_ without a borough representation,
and the rose of civil liberty transplanted to the west has bloomed
without a thorn.
I was soon in London, and received many marks of attention and
kindness from the representatives of an old commercial house, which
for years had sold every hogshead of tobacco from the Granby
plantations. My bills were honored, and at the instance of Scipio I
took a suite of rooms in the most fashionable street of the city.
Without letters of introduction, and too proud to search for my many
noble relatives, (my uncle had drugged me with their amors, duels and
honors!) I succumbed in silence to that cheerless solitude which
flaps its funeral wing around the indurated selfishness of a crowded
city. At the Virginia Coffee House, I frequently found many of my own
countrymen, who were making the tour of Europe only because their
fathers had done it. An utter contempt of money--a carelessness of
air and manner--a generous and open hearted confidence in every
one--a familiarity with the Doncaster and Epsom turf--an anxious zeal
in attending the courts of Westminster, and the gallery of the House
of Commons, with a thorough knowledge of the literary history of
England, and the places hallowed by Shakspeare and the Spectator,
were their striking and changeless characteristics.
Shortly after my permanent and fixed residence had been made, I was
lounging, as was my wont, in the crowded walks of the Exchange--the
only idle being in that heated and feverish walk of gain, when a loud
cry broke through the multitude and a horse dashed near me, the foot
of his rider hanging in the stirrup. I instantly sprang forward,
caught the bridle, leaped on his back, and leaning down I rescued the
unfortunate rider from his perilous situation. From this event an
intimacy commenced between Col. R---- and myself. His history was
brief. High birth and fortune smiled on his cradle. Entering into
manhood he had purchased a commission in the army, and had lived out
Swift's spirited description of the man of fashion, "in dancing,
fighting, gaming, making the circle of Italy, riding the great horse
and speaking French." Satiated with the world, he had left it without
being either a churl or a misanthrope. He resided in a costly villa
near London, which his taste had decorated with elegance and
refinement. The massy richness of an aged grove, soothed, without
chilling the fancy, and through its broad vista the glimmering light
lent itself to diversify uniformity without diminishing grandeur.
Consistency towered above vanity, for there were no glades rolled
into gravelled plains, nor trees sheared into fantastic foliage--that
sickly taste which finds honor in the sacrifice of simplicity, and
pride in its outrage on nature. The walls of his house were hung with
rare and deeply mellowed paintings, and his capacious library was
stocked with the heavy tomes of ancient lore. Gone are those good old
books!--their spirit has been turned into a tincture!--their life and
soul have been abridged--the stern Clitus has been disgraced by a
Persian dress--the march of mind cannot brook a folio! The education
of Col. R---- was deeply tainted with the forgotten glory of his
library--a wild flower blooming amid the silence of a neglected ruin.
He had literature without pedantry, learning without arrogance; and
being neither author nor compiler, he yet mingled on equal terms of
compliment and civility with the gifted names of his land. Proud
pre-eminence of genius! respected even in its slumbers. Though its
possessor be unknown to print, though his pen sleep in idleness, like
the prophet, the sacred flame plays around his brow and lightens up
his onward course.
In his society I drank from a deep stream of {256} intellect pure and
unalloyed happiness--yet dashed into bitterness by the remembrance
that under his protection I had first visited a gaming table--though
he had carried me thither more for the purpose of portraying human
character than of making me either the proselyte or victim of its
insidious vice.
Come Lionel! said he, gently touching my shoulder, as I was deeply
absorbed in the unhallowed rites of the blind goddess--leave this
dangerous place! Your warm blood and ardent temperament cannot
withstand its harlotry. Crush in its infancy that juggling fiend,
which martyrs the pride of mind--the dignities of virtue, the
immunities of education, and the consolations of religion.
His warning voice fell on a sodden ear. Seated at a long table, in a
magnificent saloon blazing with lights and ornamented with costly
curtains of damask, whose billowy drapery dropped over grotesque and
luxurious furniture, I bowed with prostrate devotion to the idol of
Chance. I was in the temple of suicide--the hell of earth; and
inebriated with its deadly vapor, I saw not the thronging crowd,
whose passion-stricken countenances alternately displayed the rapid
transitions from joy to sadness, from successful cupidity to luckless
despair. I went through the usual vicissitudes of the game. I won.
Success made me bold, failure excited me to more and more dangerous
enterprise. I had drawn on our tobacco merchant until my bills were
protested, nor could I ask from Col. R---- the wages of humanity. I
paid a heavy premium to one of the loungers of the table, to teach me
a system by which I might always win. Duped by its deceitful
sophistry, I risked my all--my watch, breast-pin, and all the jewelry
of my dress were successively staked and lost. My hand was on the
golden locket consecrated as the gift of Isa Gordon. With a painful
struggle I preserved it from the gripe of despair, and quitted the
accursed table a bankrupt and a beggar!
When I reached my lodgings, Scipio met me with his usual kindness,
which I repelled with a severity and harshness that called a tear to
his eye. Go! cried I, leave me, I am a broken man and a friendless
beggar, I give you your freedom. Go! and for God's sake do not longer
tempt my avarice! An unusual cheerfulness spread itself over his
countenance--the convincing indication of my fallen fortune. The idea
was no sooner conceived, than my despair gave it certainty, and
rising I drove my servant from the room with a blow and a curse.
I sold all the furniture with which I had supplied my rooms, and
again rushed to the gaming table. The fickle goddess had forever
deserted me, and, lost to all sense of shame, I hung around the
table, a silent spectator of the deep, passionate, and thrilling
drama.
About a week after Scipio's departure, a gentleman accosted me at the
table, and delivered a letter which he informed me he had brought
from Liverpool. It was written in the sententious style of a
merchant, and enclosed a draft in my favor on an eminent banker for
fifty pounds.
The writer informed me that Scipio had sold himself for this sum to a
Liverpool trader--that he had requested that the money should be sent
to me, and that on the day after the purchase he had shipped the
servant, with his own free consent, to the West Indies.
I waited on the banker, received the sacrifice of my slave's
short-lived freedom; and as I looked on the tear-stained money, I
learned from that generous and affectionate fidelity, a lesson which
made me loathe with horror the moral prostitution of the gaming
table.