It was night as Vivian and myself rode slowly home. Night in Australia!
How impossible to describe its beauty! Heaven seems, in that new
world, so much nearer to earth! Every star stands out so bright and
particular, as if fresh from the time when the Maker willed it. And the
moon like a large silvery sun;--the least object on which it shines
so distinct and so still.[2] Now and then a sound breaks the silence,
but a sound so much in harmony with the solitude that it only deepens
its charms. Hark! the low cry of a night-bird, from yonder glen amidst
the small gray gleaming rocks. Hark! as night deepens, the bark of the
distant watch-dog, or the low strange howl of his more savage species,
from which he defends the fold. Hark! the echo catches the sound, and
flings it sportively from hill to hill--farther, and farther, and
farther down, till all again is hushed, and the flowers hang noiseless
over your head, as you ride through a grove of the giant gum-trees.
Now the air is literally charged with the odours, and the sense of
fragrance grows almost painful in its pleasure. You quicken your pace,
and escape again into the open plains, and the full moonlight, and
through the slender tea-trees catch the gleam of the river, and, in the
exquisite fineness of the atmosphere, hear the soothing sound of its
murmur.
PISISTRATUS.--And this land has become the heritage of
our people! Methinks I see, as I gaze around, the scheme of the
All-beneficent Father disentangling itself clear through the troubled
history of mankind. How mysteriously, while Europe rears its
populations, and fulfils its civilising mission, these realms have been
concealed from its eyes--divulged to us just as civilisation needs the
solution to its problems; a vent for feverish energies, baffled in the
crowd; offering bread to the famished, hope to the desperate; in very
truth enabling the "New World to redress the balance of the Old." Here,
what a Latium for the wandering spirits,
"On various seas by various tempests toss'd."
Here, the actual Æneid passes before our eyes. From the huts of the
exiles scattered over this hardier Italy, who cannot see in the future,
"A race from whence new Alban sires shall come,
And the long glories of a future Rome"?
VIVIAN, (_mournfully_.)--Is it from the outcasts of the
workhouse, the prison, and the transport-ship, that a second Rome is to
arise?
PISISTRATUS.--There is something in this new soil--in the
labour it calls forth, in the hope it inspires, in the sense of
property, which I take to be the core of social morals--that expedites
the work of redemption with marvellous rapidity. Take them altogether,
whatever their origin, or whatever brought them hither, they are a
fine, manly, frank-hearted race, these colonists now!--rude, not
mean, especially in the Bush--and, I suspect, will ultimately become
as gallant and honest a population as that now springing up in South
Australia, from which convicts are excluded--and happily excluded--for
the distinction will sharpen emulation. As to the rest, and in direct
answer to your question, I fancy even the emancipist part of our
population every whit as respectable as the mongrel robbers under
Romulus.
VIVIAN.--But were _they_ not soldiers?--I mean the first
Romans?
PISISTRATUS.--My dear cousin, we are in advance of those grim
outcasts, if we can get lands, houses, and wives, (though the last
is difficult, and it is well that we have no white Sabines in the
neighbourhood!) without that same soldiering which was the necessity of
their existence.
VIVIAN, (_after a pause_.)--I have written to my father, and
to yours more fully--stating in the one letter my wish, in the other
trying to explain the feelings from which it springs.
PISISTRATUS.--Are the letters gone?
VIVIAN.--Yes.
PISISTRATUS.--And you would not show them to me!
VIVIAN.--Do not speak so reproachfully. I promised your father
to pour out my whole heart to him, whenever it was troubled and at
strife. I promise you now that I will go by his advice.
PISISTRATUS, (_disconsolately_.)--What is there in this
military life for which you yearn that can yield you more food for
healthful excitement and stirring adventure than your present pursuits
afford?
VIVIAN.--_Distinction!_ You do not see the difference between
us. You have but a fortune to make, I have a name to redeem; you look
calmly on the future, I have a dark blot to erase from the past.
PISISTRATUS, (_soothingly_.)--It is erased. Five years of no
weak bewailings, but of manly reform, steadfast industry, conduct so
blameless, that even Guy (whom I look upon as the incarnation of blunt
English honesty) half doubts whether you are '_cute_ enough for "a
station"--a character already so high, that I long for the hour when
you will again take your father's spotless name, and give me the pride
to own our kinship to the world; all this surely redeems the errors
arising from an uneducated childhood and a wandering youth.
VIVIAN, (_leaning over his horse, and putting his hand on my
shoulder_.)--"My dear friend, what do I owe you?" Then recovering his
emotion, and pushing on at a quicker pace, while he continues to speak,
"But can you not see that, just in proportion as my comprehension of
right would become clear and strong, so my conscience would become also
more sensitive and reproachful; and the better I understand my gallant
father, the more I must desire to be as he would have had his son. Do
you think it would content him, could he see me branding cattle and
bargaining with bullock-drivers? Was it not the strongest wish of his
heart that I should adopt his own career? Have I not heard you say
that he would have had you too a soldier, but for your mother? I have
no mother! If I made thousands, and tens of thousands, by this ignoble
calling, would they give my father half the pleasure that he would
feel at seeing my name honourably mentioned in a despatch? No, no! you
have banished the gipsy blood, and now the soldier's breaks out! Oh
for one glorious day in which I may clear my way into fair repute, as
our fathers before us!--when tears of proud joy may flow from those
eyes that have wept such hot drops at my shame! When _she_, too, in
her high station, beside that sleek lord, may say, 'His heart was not
so vile, after all!' Don't argue with me--it is in vain! Pray, rather,
that I may have leave to work out my own way; for I tell you that, if
condemned to stay here, I may not murmur aloud--I may go through this
round of low duties as the brute turns the wheel of a mill: but my
heart will prey on itself, and you shall soon write on my gravestone
the epitaph of the poor poet you told us of, whose true disease was the
thirst of glory--'Here lies one whose name was written in water.'"
I had no answer; that contagious ambition made my own veins run
more warmly, and my own heart beat with a louder tumult. Amidst the
pastoral scenes, and under the tranquil moonlight, of the New, the
Old World, even in me, rude Bushman, claimed for a while its son. But
as we rode on, the air, so inexpressibly buoyant, yet soothing as an
anodyne, restored me to peaceful Nature. Now the flocks, in their snowy
clusters, were seen sleeping under the stars; hark, the welcome of the
watch-dogs; see the light gleaming far from the chink of the door! And,
pausing, I said aloud, "No, there is more glory in laying these rough
foundations of a mighty state, though no trumpets resound with your
victory--though no laurels shall shadow your tomb--than in forcing the
onward progress of your race over burning cities and hecatombs of men!"
I looked round for Vivian's answer; but, ere I spoke, he had spurred
from my side, and I saw the wild dogs slinking back from the hoofs of
his horse, as he rode at speed, on the sward, through the moonlight.