Calm?--Never, while this degraded being shall continue, shall such a
moment come!--I calm? Sleeping or waking, I at peace? I pardon
hypocrisy, treachery, blows, bruises, prisons, chains, poison, rape and
murder? Ministers of wrath descend, point here your flaming swords,
annihilate all memory of what manhood and honour were, and fit me for
the society of the damned!
Forbear!--(Never before did I address him in such a voice--The last
dreadful word of his sentence was drowned, by my stern and awful
violence; which reason dictated as the only means of recalling his
maddening thoughts, from the despair and horror into which they were
hurrying--I continued)--Frantic man, forbear! Recall your wild spirits
and command them to order. How long will you suffer this petty slavery?
How long shall the giant rage, and expend his strength, in tearing up
stubble and rending straws?--Stretch forth your hand, and grasp the
oak--Labours worthy of your Herculean mind await and invite you. Away
to the temple of Error; shake its pillars, and make its foundations
totter!--Be yourself--Shall the soaring eagle swoop at reptiles, the
prey of bats and owls?
Do not mock me with impossible hopes--What! Have you not held the
mirror up to me, and shewn me my own hatefulness?
Are you a man? Will you never shake off this bondage? Oh it is base!
it is beneath you! Of what have you been guilty? Why of ignorance,
mistakes of the understanding, false views, which you wanted knowledge
enough, truth enough, to correct. Have not many of the godlike men whom
we admire most been guilty, in their youth, of equal or of greater
errors?--Thus, alas, it happens that minds of the highest hope, and
most divine stamp and coinage, are cut off daily; swept away by
that other grand mistake of man-kind--'Exemplary punishment is
necessary'--So they say--But no--'Tis exemplary reformation! Can the
world be better warned by a body in gibbets, than by the active virtues
of a once misguided but now enlightened understanding? The gibbet will
remain an object of terror to the traveller, who dreads being robbed
and murdered; but an incitement to despair, in the mind of the
murderer!--Banish then these black pictures from your mind, by
which it continues darkened and misled; and in their stead behold a
soul-inspiring prospect, of all that is great and glorious, rising to
your view! Feel yourself a man! Nay you shall feel it, in your own
despite! A man capable of high and noble actions!
Here, Oliver, I at this time left him. His eye remained fixed, and he
was silent; but its wildness was diminished: the frown of his brow
disappeared, and his countenance became more clear. Such associations
as these tokens denoted ought not to meet interruption. However I took
care to return in less than an hour; fearful lest he should decline
into his former gloom, which was little short of phrensy. I had been
fortunate enough to reduce his discordant feelings to something like
harmony; and the moment I entered his room the second time he
exclaimed--
You are a generous fellow! A magnanimous fellow! You can work
miracles!--I know you of old--Can bring the dead to life!--Can almost
persuade me that even I, by living, may now and then effect some
trifling, pitiful good; may snatch some of the remnants, the offals of
honour--But aught eminent, aught worthy of--
Be calm.
No! It cannot be forgotten, or forgiven!--Cruel, malignant, remorseless
wretch!
Can you speak thus of the present?--You know you cannot!--And wherefore
unjustly insist on the past? Be firm! Conquer this pride of heart!
Why, ay--Pride of heart! It is the very damning sin of my soul!
Exorcise the foul fiend then, and in its stead give welcome to firm but
unassuming self-respect. Arise! Shake torpor from you, and feel your
strength! It is Atlean; made to bear a world! Cherish life, and become
worthy of yourself! What! Would you kill a mind so mighty? Do you not
feel it, now; possessing you, emanating, flaming, bursting to spread
itself?
Why, that were something!--Could I but once again get into my own good
liking--! You are a strange fellow!--You will not hate me! Nay, will
not suffer me to hate myself!--Damnation! To be cast at such an immense
distance! Oh it is intolerable! It is contemptible!--But I will have my
revenge!--Some how or another I will yet have my revenge! And, since
hate must not be the word, why--! But no matter--I will have no more
vaunting--Yet, if I do not--! I have had a glimpse, and begin to know
you--The soul of benevolence, of tenderness, of attention, of love, of
all the divine faculties that make men deities, infuses itself and
pervades you--Had I but been wholly fool, I had been but partly
villain--But I!--Oh monstrous!--The fiends with whom I was leagued to
me were angels!
Why, ay; contemplate the picture, but do not forget it is that of a man
you once knew, who is now no more. He has disappeared, and in his stead
an angel of light is come!
Stop!--Go not too fast!--I promise nothing--Mark that!--I promise
nothing--Do not imagine I am now in the feverish repentance of white
wine whey--You would have me stay in a world which I myself have
rendered hateful--I will think of it--I know your arts--You would
realize the fable of Pygmalion, and would infuse soul into marble!
There is no need; you have a soul already; inventive, capacious,
munificent, sublime!
Ay, ay--I know--You have a choice collection of words.
A soul of ten thousand! Nay, an army of souls in one!
And must I submit? Are you determined to make a rascal like me admire,
and love, and give place to all the fine affections of the heart?
Ay, determined!
Oh, sister!--(Louisa at this moment entered.) To you too I have behaved
like a scoundrel! A tyrant! A petulant, ostentatious, imperious
braggart!
You mistake! replied Louisa, eagerly. You mistake! You are talking of a
very different man! A being I could not understand. You are my
brother!--My brother!--I have found the way to your heart! Will make it
all my own! Will twine myself round it! Shake me off if you can!
The energy with which she spoke, and looked, and kissed him, was
irresistible! He was overpowered: the tears gushed to his eyes, but he
repressed them; he thought them unmanly; and, seeing his medical friend
enter, exclaimed--I have surgeons for the body, and surgeons for the
mind, who cut with so deep yet so steady a hand that they take away the
noxious, and leave the wound to suppurate and heal!
Can we do less? said I. Ours is no common task! We are acting in behalf
of society: we have found a treasure, by which it is to be enriched.
Few indeed are those puissant and heavenly endowed spirits, that are
capable of guiding, enlightening, and leading the human race onward to
felicity! What is there precious but mind? And when mind, like a
diamond of uncommon growth, exceeds a certain magnitude, calculation
cannot find its value!
I once more left him; and never did I quit the company of human being,
no not of Anna St. Ives herself, with a more glowing and hoping heart.
But why describe sensations to thee, Oliver, with which thou art so
intimately acquainted? To bid thee rejoice, to invite thee to
participate in felicity, which may and must so widely diffuse itself,
were equally to wrong thy understanding and thy heart.