RALPH REGENERATETH HIMSELF AND BECOMETH GOOD, FOR HALF-AN-HOUR--SINGETH
ONE VERSE OF A HYMN, ESCHEWETH TELLING ONE LIE, AND GETTETH HIS REWARD
IN BEING ASKED TO BREAKFAST.
What a nice, varied, sentimental, joyous, lachrymose, objurgatory,
laudatory, reflective volume might be made, entitled, "Meditations at
the Mast-head!"
When I found myself comfortably established in my aery domicile, I first
looked down on the vessel below with a feeling nearly akin to pity, then
around me with a positive feeling of rapture, and at length above me
with a heart-warming glow of adoration. Perched up at a height so
great, the decks of the frigate looked extremely long and narrow; and
the foreshortened view one has of those upon it makes them look but
little bigger or more important than so many puppets. Beneath me I saw
the discontented author of my elevation, and of "A Tour up and down the
Rio de la Plate," skipping actively here and there to avoid the
splashing necessary in washing the decks. I could not help comparing
the annoyance of this involuntary dance with the after-guard, this
_croissez_ with clattering buckets, and _dos a dos_ing with wet swabs,
with my comfortable and commanding recumbency upon the cross-trees. I
looked down upon Lieutenant Silva, and pitied him. I looked around me,
and my heart was exceeding glad. The upper rim of the sun was dallying
with a crimson cloud, whilst the greater part of his disc was still
below the well-defined deep-blue horizon. All above him to the zenith
was chequered with small vapours, layer over layer, like the scales of a
breastplate of burnished gold. The little waves were mantling,
dimpling, and seemed playfully striving to emulate the intenser glories
of the heavens above. They now flashed into living light, now assumed
the blushing hue of a rosebud, and here and there wreathed up into a
diminutive foam, mocking the smile of youth when she shows her white
teeth between her beauty-breathing lips. As I swung aloft, with a
motion gentle as that of the cradled infant, and looked out upon the
splendours beneath and around me, my bosom swelled with the most
rapturous emotions. Everywhere, as far as my eye could reach, the
transparent and beryl-dyed waters were speckled with white sails,
actually "blushing rosy red" with the morning beams. Far, far astern,
hull down, were the huge dull sailers, spreading all their
studding-sails to the wind, reminding me of frightened swans with
expanded wings. Conspicuous among these were the two men-of-war brigs,
obliquely sailing now here and then there, and ever and anon firing a
gun, whose mimic thunder came with melodious resonance over the waters,
whilst the many-coloured signals were continually flying and shifting.
They were the hawks among the covey of the larger white-plumed birds.
At this moment our gallant frigate, like a youthful and a regal giant,
more majestic from the lightness of her dress, walked in conscious
superiority in the midst of all. She had, as I before mentioned, just
set her top-gallant sails, in order to take her proud station in the
van. We now passed vessel after vessel, each with a different quantity
of canvas set, according to her powers of sailing. It was altogether a
glorious sight, and to my feelings, excelled in quiet and cheerful
sublimity any review, however splendid might be the troops, or imposing
their numbers. Then the breeze came so freshly and kissingly on my
cheek, whispering such pleasant things to my excited fancy, and
invigorating so joyously the fibres of my heart--I looked around me, and
was glad.
When the soul is big with all good and pure feelings, gratitude will be
there; and, at her smiling invitation, piety will come cheerfully and
clasp her hand. Surely not that sectarian piety, which metes out wrath
instead of mercy to an erring world; not that piety, dealing "damnation
round the land," daily making the pale, within which the only few to be
saved are folded, more and more circumscribed; nor even that bigotted,
sensuous piety, which floats on the frankincense that eddies round the
marble altar, and which, if unassisted by the vista of the dark aisle,
the dimly-seen procession, the choral hymn, the banner, and the relic,
faints, and sees no God: no, none of these will be the piety of a heart
exulting in the beneficence of the All-Good. Then and there, why should
I have wished to have crept and grovelled under piled and sordid stone?
Since first the aspiring architect spanned the arch at Thebes, which is
_not_ everlasting, and lifted the column at Rome, which is _not_
immortal, was there ever dome like that which glowed over my head
imagined by the brain of man? "Fretted with golden fires," and studded
with such glorious clouds, that it were almost sinful not to believe
that each veiled an angel; the vast concave, based all around upon the
sapphire horizon, sprang upwards, terminating above me in that deep,
deep, immeasurable blue, the best type of eternity;--was not this a
fitting temple for worship? What frankincense was ever equal to that
which nature then spread over the wave and through the air? All this I
saw--all this I felt. I looked upwards, and I was at once enraptured
and humbled. Perhaps then, for the first time since I had left my
schoolboy's haunts, I bethought me that there was a God. Too, too often
I had heard his awful presence wantonly invoked, his sacred name taken
in vain. Lately, I had not shuddered at this habitual profanation. The
work of demoralisation had commenced. I knew it then, and with this
knowledge, the first pang of guilty shame entered my bosom. I stood up
with reverence upon the cross-trees. I took off my hat, and though I
did not even whisper the prayers we had used at school, mentally I went
through the whole of them. When I said to myself, "I have done those
things that I ought not to have done, and have _left undone_ those
things that I _ought_ to have done," I was startled at the measure of
sin that I had confessed. I think that I was contrite. I resolved to
amend. I gradually flung off the hardness that my late life of
recklessness had been encrusting upon my heart. I softened towards all
who had ever shown me kindness; and, in my mind, I faithfully retraced
the last time that I had ever walked to church with her whom I had been
fond to deem my mother. These silent devotions, and these
home-harmonised thoughts, first chastened, and then made me very, very
happy. At last, I felt the spirit of blissful serenity so strong upon
me, that, forgetting for a moment to what ridicule I might subject
myself; I began to sing aloud that morning hymn that I had never
omitted, for so many years, until I had joined the service--
"Awake, my soul, and with the sun."
And I confess that I sang the whole of the first verse.
I am sure that no one will sneer at all this. The good will not--the
wicked dare not. The worst of us, even if his sin have put on the
armour of infidelity, must remember the time when he believed in a God
of love, and loved to believe it. For the sake of that period of
happiness, he will not, cannot condemn the expression of feelings, and
the manifestation of a bliss that he has himself voluntarily, and, if he
would ask his own heart, and record the answer, miserably, cast away.
However, it will be long before I again trouble the reader with anything
so _outre_ as that which I have just written. Many were the days of
error, and the nights of sin, that passed before I again even looked
into my own heart. The feelings with which I made my mast-head orisons
are gone and for ever. How often, and with what bitterness of spirit,
have I said, "Would that I had then died!" If there is mercy in
heaven--I say it with reverence--I feel assured that then to have passed
away, would have been but the closing of the eyes on earth to awaken
immediately in the lap of a blissful immortality. Since then the
world's foot has been upon my breast, and I have writhed under the
opprobrious weight; and, with sinful pride and self-trust, have, though
grovelling in the dust, returned scorn for scorn, and injury for
injury--even wrong for wrong.