CHAPTER XXX.

------She sat, and thought

Of what a sailor suffers.

COWPER.

“The intelligence that was the cause of old Sir Roger’s death, who might

be said to be conducted from this world to the next by a blessed

_euthanasia_, (a kind of passing with a light and lofty step from a

narrow entry to a spacious and glorious apartment, without ever feeling

he trod the dark and rugged threshold that lies between), was the signal

and pledge to this ancient family of the restitution of their faded

honours, and fast-declining possessions. Grants, reversals of fines,

restoration of land and chattels, and offers of pensions, and

provisions, and remunerations, and all that royal gratitude, in the

effervescence of its enthusiasm, could bestow, came showering on the

Mortimer family, as fast and faster than fines, confiscations, and

sequestrations, had poured on them in the reign of the usurper. In fact,

the language of King Charles to the Mortimers was like that of the

Eastern monarchs to their favourites,--“Ask what thou wilt, and it shall

be granted to thee, even to the half of my kingdom.” The Mortimers asked

only for their own,--and being thus more reasonable, both in their

expectations and demands, than most other applicants at that period,

they succeeded in obtaining what they required.

“Thus Mrs Margaret Mortimer (so unmarried females were named at the date

of the narrative) was again acknowledged as the wealthy and noble

heiress of the Castle. Numerous invitations were sent to her to visit

the court, which, though recommended by letters from divers of the

court-ladies, who had been acquainted, traditionally at least, with her

family, and enforced by a letter from Catherine of Braganza, written by

her own hand, in which she acknowledged the obligations of the king to

the house of Mortimer, were steadily rejected by the high-minded heiress

of its honours and its spirit.--“From these towers,” said she to Mrs

Ann, “my grandfather led forth his vassals and tenants in aid of his

king,--to these towers he led what was left of them back, when the royal

cause seemed lost for ever. Here he lived and died for his

sovereign,--and here will I live and die. And I feel that I shall do

more effectual service to his Majesty, by residing on my estates, and

protecting my tenants, and repairing,”--she added with a smile,--“even

with my needle, the rents made in the banners of our house by many a

Puritan’s bullet, than if I flaunted it in Hyde-Park in my glass coach,

or masqueraded it all night in that of (6)St James’s, even though I were

sure to encounter the Duchess of Cleveland on one side, and Louise de

Querouaille on the other,--fitter place for them than me.”--And so

saying, Mrs Margaret Mortimer resumed her tapestry work. Mrs Ann looked

at her with an eye that spoke volumes,--and the tear that trembled in it

made the lines more legible.

(6) See a comedy of Wycherly’s, entitled, “Love in a Wood, or St

James’s Park,” where the company are represented going there at night

in masks, and with torches.

“After the decided refusal of Mrs Margaret Mortimer to go to London, the

family resumed their former ancestorial habits of stately regularity,

and decorous grandeur, such as became a magnificent and well-ordered

household, of which a noble maiden was the head and president. But this

regularity was without rigour, and this monotony without apathy--the

minds of these highly fated females were too familiar with trains of

lofty thinking, and images of noble deeds, to sink into vacancy, or feel

depression from solitude. I behold them,” said the stranger, “as I once

saw them, seated in a vast irregularly shaped apartment, wainscotted

with oak richly and quaintly carved, and as black as ebony--Mrs Ann

Mortimer, in a recess which terminated in an ancient casement window,

the upper panes of which were gorgeously emblazoned with the arms of the

Mortimers, and some legendary atchievements of the former heroes of the

family. A book she valued much(7) lay on her knee, on which she fixed

her eyes intently--the light that came through the casement chequering

its dark lettered pages with hues of such glorious and fantastic

colouring, that they resembled the leaves of some splendidly-illuminated

missal, with all its pomp of gold, and azure, and vermilion.

(7) Taylor’s Book of Martyrs.

“At a little distance sat her two grand-nieces, employed in work, and

relieving their attention to it by conversation, for which they had

ample materials. They spoke of the poor whom they had visited and

assisted,--of the rewards they had distributed among the industrious and

orderly,--and of the books which they were studying; and of which the

well-filled shelves of the library furnished them with copious and noble

stores.

“Sir Roger had been a man of letters as well as of arms. He had been

often heard to say, that next to a well-stocked armoury in time of war,

was a well-stocked library in time of peace; and even in the midst of

his latter grievances and privations, he contrived every year to make an

addition to his own.

“His grand-daughters, well instructed by him in the French and Latin

languages, had read Mezeray, Thuanus, and Sully. In English, they had

Froissart in the black-letter translation of Pynson, imprinted 1525.

Their poetry, exclusive of the classics, consisted chiefly of Waller,

Donne, and that constellation of writers that illuminated the drama in

the latter end of the reign of Elizabeth, and the commencement of that

of James,--Marlow, and Massinger, and Shirley, and Ford--_cum multis

aliis_. Fairfax’s translations had made them familiar with the

continental poets; and Sir Roger had consented to admit, among his

modern collection, the Latin poems (the only ones then published) of

Milton, for the sake of that _in Quintum Novembris_,--for Sir Roger,

next to the fanatics, held the Catholics in utter abomination.”

“Then he will be damned to all eternity,” said Aliaga, “and that’s some

satisfaction.”

“Thus their retirement was not inelegant, nor unaccompanied with those

delights at once soothing and elating, which arise from a judicious

mixture of useful occupation and literary tastes.

“On all they read or conversed of, Mrs Ann Mortimer was a living

comment. Her conversation, rich in anecdote, and accurate to minuteness,

sometimes rising to the loftiest strains of eloquence, as she related

“deeds of the days of old,” and often borrowing the sublimity of

inspiration, as the reminiscences of religion softened and solemnized

the spirit with which she spake,--like the influence of time on fine

paintings, that consecrates the tints it mellows, and makes the colours

it has half obscured more precious to the eye of feeling and of taste,

than they were in the glow of their early beauty,--her conversation was

to her grand-nieces at once history and poetry.

“The events of English history then not recorded, had a kind of

traditional history more vivid, if not so faithful as the records of

modern historians, in the memories of those who had been agents and

sufferers (the terms are probably synonimous) in those memorable

periods.

“There was an entertainment then, banished by modern dissipation now,

but alluded to by the great poet of that nation, whom your orthodox and

undeniable creed justly devotes to eternal damnation.

“In winter’s tedious nights sit by the fire,

* * * * * *

----------------and tell the tales

Of woful ages long ago betid;

And send the hearers weeping to their beds.

* * * * * *

We cited up a thousand heavy times.”

* * * * * *

“When memory thus becomes the depository of grief, how faithfully is the

charge kept!--and how much superior are the touches of one who paints

from the life, and the heart, and the senses,--to those of one who dips

his pen in his ink-stand, and casts his eye on a heap of musty

parchments, to glean his facts or his feelings from them! Mrs Ann

Mortimer had much to tell,--and she told it well. If history was the

subject, she could relate the events of the civil wars--events which

resembled indeed those of all civil wars, but which derived a peculiar

strength of character, and brilliancy of colouring, from the hand by

which they were sketched. She told of the time when she rode behind her

brother, Sir Roger, to meet the King at Shrewsbury; and she almost

echoed the shout uttered in the streets of that loyal city, when the

University of Oxford sent in its plate to be coined for the exigences of

the royal cause. She told also, with grave humour, the anecdote of Queen

Henrietta making her escape with some difficulty from a house on

fire,--and, when her life was scarce secure from the flames that

consumed it, rushing back among them--to save her lap-dog!

“But of all her historical anecdotes, Mrs Ann valued most what she had

to relate of her own family. On the virtue and valour of her brother Sir

Roger, she dwelt with an unction whose balm imparted itself to her

hearers; and even Elinor, in spite of the Puritanism of her early

principles, wept as she listened. But when Mrs Ann told of the King

taking shelter for one night in the Castle, under the protection only of

her mother and herself, to whom he intrusted his rank and his

misfortunes, (arriving under a disguise),--(Sir Roger being absent

fighting his battles in Yorkshire)--when she added that her aged mother,

Lady Mortimer, then seventy-four, after spreading her richest velvet

mantle, lined with fur, as a quilt for the bed of her persecuted

sovereign, tottered into the armoury, and, presenting the few servants

that followed her with what arms could be found, adjured them by brand

and blade, by lady’s love, and their hopes of heaven, to defend her

royal guest. When she related that a band of fanatics, after robbing a

church of all its silver-plate, and burning the adjacent vicarage, drunk

with their success, had invested the Castle, and cried aloud for “_the

man_” to be brought unto them, that he might be hewed to pieces before

the Lord in Gilgal--and Lady Mortimer had called on a young French

officer in Prince Rupert’s corps, who, with his men, had been billetted

on the Castle for some days--and that this youth, but seventeen years of

age, had met two desperate attacks of the assailants, and twice retired

covered with his own blood and that of the assailants, whom he had in

vain attempted to repel--and that Lady Mortimer, finding all was lost,

had counselled the royal fugitive to make his escape,--and furnished him

with the best horse left in Sir Roger’s stables to effect his flight,

while she returned to the great hall, whose windows were now shattered

by the balls that hissed and flew round her head, and whose doors were

fast yielding to the crows and other instruments which a Puritan smith,

who was both chaplain and colonel of the band, had lent them, and

instructed them in the use of--and how Lady Mortimer fell on her knees

before the young Frenchman, and adjured him to make good the defence

till King Charles was safe, and free, and far--and how the young

Frenchman had done all that man could do;--and finally, when the Castle,

after an hour’s obstinate resistance, yielded to the assault of the

fanatics, he had staggered, covered with blood, to the foot of the great

chair which that ancient lady had immoveably occupied, (paralyzed by

terror and exhaustion), and dropping his sword, _then for the first

time_, exclaimed, “J’ai fait mon devoir!” and expired at her feet--and

how her mother sat in the same rigour of attitude, while the fanatics

ravaged through the Castle,--drank half the wines in the cellar,--thrust

their bayonets through the family-pictures, which they called the idols

of the high-places,--fired bullets through the wainscot, and converted

half the female servants after their own way,--and on finding their

search after the King fruitless, in mere wantonness of mischief, were

about to discharge a piece of ordnance in the hall that must have

shattered it in pieces, while Lady Mortimer sat torpidly looking

on,--till, perceiving that the piece was accidentally pointed towards

the very door through which King Charles had passed from the hall, her

recollection seemed suddenly to return, and starting up and rushing

before the mouth of the piece, exclaimed, “_Not there!_--you shall not

_there_!”--and as she spoke, dropt dead in the hall. When Mrs Ann told

these and other thrilling tales of the magnanimity, the loyalty, and the

sufferings of her high ancestry, in a voice that alternately swelled

with energy, and trembled with emotion, and as she told them, pointed to

the spot where each had happened,--her young hearers felt a deep

stirring of the heart,--a proud yet mellowed elation that never yet was

felt by the reader of a written history, though its pages were as

legitimate as any sanctioned by the royal licenser at Madrid.

“Nor was Mrs Ann Mortimer less qualified to take an interesting share in

their lighter studies. When Waller’s poetry was its subject, she could

tell of the charms of his Sacharissa, whom she knew well,--the Lady

Dorothea Sidney, daughter of the Earl of Leicester,--and compare, with

those of his Amoret, the Lady Sophia Murray. And in balancing the claims

of these poetical heroines, she gave so accurate an account of their

opposite styles of beauty,--entered so minutely into the details of

their dress and deportment,--and so affectingly hinted, with a

mysterious sigh, that there was _one_ then at court whom Lucius, Lord

Falkland, the gallant, the learned, and the polished, had whispered was

far superior to both,----that her auditors more than suspected she had

herself been one of the most brilliant stars in that galaxy whose faded

glories were still reflected in her memory,--and that Mrs Ann, amid her

piety and patriotism, still blended a fond reminiscence of the

gallantries of that court where her youth had been spent,--and over

which the beauty, the magnificent taste, and national _gaiete_ of the

ill-fated Henrietta, had once thrown a light as dazzling as it was

transient. She was listened to by Margaret and Elinor with equal

interest, but with far different feelings. Margaret, beautiful,

vivacious, haughty, and generous, and resembling her grandfather and his

sister alike in character and person, could have listened for ever to

narrations that, while they confirmed her principles, gave a kind of

holiness to the governing feelings of her heart, and made her enthusiasm

a kind of virtue in her eyes. An aristocrat in politics, she could not

conceive that public virtue could soar to a higher pitch than a devoted

attachment to the house of Stuart afforded for its flight; and her

religion had never given her any disturbance.----Strictly attached to

the Church of England, as her forefathers had been from its first

establishment, she included in an adherence to this not only all the

graces of religion, but all the virtues of morality; and she could

hardly conceive how there could be majesty in the sovereign, or loyalty

in the subject, or valour in man, or virtue in woman, unless they were

comprised within the pale of the Church of England. These qualities,

with their adjuncts, had been always represented to her as co-existent

with an attachment to monarchy and Episcopacy, and vested solely in

those heroic characters of her ancestry, whose lives, and even deaths,

it was a proud delight to their young descendant to listen to,--while

all the opposite qualities,--all that man can hate, or woman

despise,--had been represented to her as instinctively resident in the

partizans of republicanism and the Presbytery. Thus her feelings and her

principles,--her reasoning powers and the habits of her life, all took

one way; and she was not only unable to make the least allowance for a

divergence from this way, but utterly unable to conceive that another

existed for those who believed in a God, or acknowledged human power at

all. She was as much at a loss to conceive how any good could come out

of that Nazareth of her abhorrence, as an ancient geographer would have

been to have pointed out America in a classical map.--Such was Margaret.

“Elinor, on the other hand, bred up amid a clamour of perpetual

contention,--for the house of her mother’s family, in which her first

years had been passed, was, in the language of the profane of those

times, a scruple-shop, where the godly of all denominations held their

conferences of contradiction,--had her mind early awakened to

differences of opinion, and opposition of principle. Accustomed to hear

these differences and oppositions often expressed with the most unruly

vehemence, she had never, like Margaret, indulged in a splendid

aristocracy of imagination, that bore every thing before it, and made

prosperity and adversity alike pay tribute to the pride of its triumph.

Since her admission into the house of her grandfather, the mind of

Elinor had become still more humble and patient,--more subdued and

self-denied. Compelled to hear the opinions she was attached to decried,

and the characters she reverenced vilified, she sat in reflective

silence; and, balancing the opposite extremes which she was destined to

witness, she came to the right conclusion,--that there must be good on

both sides, however obscured or defaced by passion and by interest, and

that great and noble qualities must exist in either party, where so much

intellectual power, and so much physical energy, had been displayed by

both. Nor could she believe that these clear and mighty spirits would be

for ever opposed to each other in their future destinations,--she loved

to view them as children who had “fallen out by the way,” from mistaking

the path that led to their father’s house, but who would yet rejoice

together in the light of his presence, and smile at the differences that

divided them on their journey.

“In spite of the influence of her early education, Elinor had learned to

appreciate the advantages of her residence in her grandfather’s castle.

She was fond of literature and of poetry. She possessed imagination and

enthusiasm,--and these qualities met with their loveliest indulgence

amid the picturesque and historical scenery that surrounded the

Castle,--the lofty tales told within its walls, and to which every stone

in them seemed to cry out in attestation,--and the heroic and chivalrous

characters of its inmates, with whom the portraits of their high

descended ancestry seemed starting from their gorgeous frames to

converse, as the tale of their virtues and their valour was told in

their presence. This was a different scene from that in which she had

passed her childhood. The gloomy and narrow apartments, divested of all

ornament, and awaking no associations but those of an awful

futurity--the uncouth habits, austere visages, denunciatory language,

and polemical fury of its inmates or guests, struck her with a feeling

for which she reproached herself, but did not suppress; and though she

continued a rigid Calvinist in her creed, and listened whenever she

could to the preaching of the non-conformist ministers, she had adopted

in her pursuits the literary tastes, and in her manners the dignified

courtesy, that became the descendant of the Mortimers.

“Elinor’s beauty, though of a style quite different from that of her

cousin, was yet beauty of the first and finest character. Margaret’s was

luxuriant, lavish, and triumphant,--every movement displayed a conscious

grace,--every look demanded homage, and obtained it the moment it was

demanded. Elinor’s was pale, contemplative, and touching;--her hair was

as black as jet, and the thousand small curls into which, according to

the fashion of the day, it was woven, seemed as if every one of them had

been twined by the hand of nature,--they hung so softly and shadowingly,

that they appeared like a veil dropping over the features of a nun, till

she shook them back, and there beamed among them an eye of dark and

brilliant light, like a star amid the deepening shades of twilight. She

wore the rich dress prescribed by the taste and habits of Mrs Ann, who

had never, even in the hour of extreme adversity, relaxed in what may be

called the rigour of her aristocratical costume, and would have thought

it little less than a desecration of the solemnity, had she appeared at

prayers, even though celebrated (as she loved to term it) in the

Castle-hall, unless arrayed in satins and velvets, that, like ancient

suits of armour, could have stood alone and erect without the aid of

human inhabitant. There was a soft and yielding tone in the gently

modulated harmony of Elinor’s form and movements,--a gracious melancholy

in her smile,--a tremulous sweetness in her voice,--an appeal in her

look, which the heart that refused to answer could not have living pulse

within its region. No head of Rembrandt’s, amid its contrasted luxuries

of light and shade,--no form of Guido’s, hovering in exquisite and

speechful undulation between earth and heaven, could vie with the tint

and character of Elinor’s countenance and form. There was but one touch

to be added to the picture of her beauty, and that touch was given by no

physical grace,--no exterior charm. It was borrowed from a feeling as

pure as it was intense,--as unconscious as it was profound. The secret

fire that lit her eyes with that lambent glory, while it caused the

paleness of her young cheek,--that preyed on her heart, while it seemed

to her imagination that she clasped a young cherub in her arms, like the

unfortunate queen of Virgil,--that fire was a secret even to

herself.--She knew she felt, but knew not what she felt.

“When first admitted into the Castle, and treated with sufficient

_hauteur_ by her grandfather and his sister, who could not forget the

mean descent and fanatic principles of her father’s family, she

remembered, that, amid the appalling grandeur and austere reserve of her

reception, her cousin, John Sandal, was the only one who spoke to her in

accents of tenderness, or turned on her an eye that beamed consolation.

She remembered him as the beautiful and gentle boy who had lightened all

her tasks, and partaken in all her recreations.

“At an early age John Sandal, at his own request, had been sent to sea,

and had never since visited the Castle. On the Restoration, the

remembered services of the Mortimer family, and the high fame of the

youth’s courage and ability, had procured him a distinguished situation

in the navy. John Sandal’s consequence now rose in the eyes of the

family, of whom he was at first an inmate on toleration only; and even

Mrs Ann Mortimer began to express some anxiety to hear tidings of her

valiant cousin John. When she spoke thus, the light of Elinor’s eye fell

on her aunt with as rich a glow as ever summer sun on an evening

landscape; but she felt, at the same moment, an oppression,--an

indefinable suspension of thought, of speech, almost of breath, which

was only relieved by the tears which, when retired from her aunt’s

presence, she indulged in. Soon this feeling was exchanged for one of

deeper and more agitating interest. The war with the Dutch broke out,

and Captain John Sandal’s name, in spite of his youth, appeared

conspicuous among those of the officers appointed to that memorable

service.

“Mrs Ann, long accustomed to hear the names of her family uttered always

in the same breath with the stirring report of high heroic deeds, felt

the elation of spirit she had experienced in by-gone days, combined with

happier associations, and more prosperous auguries. Though far advanced

in life, and much declined in strength, it was observed, that during the

reports of the war, and while she listened to the accounts of her

kinsman’s valour and fast-advancing eminence, her step became firm and

elastic, her lofty figure dilated to its youthful height, and a colour

at times visited her cheek, with as rich and brilliant a tinge as when

the first sighs of love murmured over its young roses. The high minded

Margaret, partaking that enthusiasm which merged all personal feeling in

the glory of her family and of her country, heard of the perils to which

her cousin (whom she hardly remembered) was exposed, only with a haughty

confidence that he would meet them as she felt she would have met them

herself, had she been, like him, the last male descendant of the family

of Mortimer. Elinor trembled and wept,--and when alone she prayed

fervently.

“It was observable, however, that the respectful interest with which she

had hitherto listened to the family legends so eloquently told by Mrs

Ann, was now exchanged for a restless and unappeaseable anxiety for

tales of the naval heroes who had dignified the family history. Happily

she found a willing narrator in Mrs Ann, who had little need to search

her memory, and no occasion to consult her invention, for splendid

stories of those whose home was the deep, and whose battle-field was the

wild waste ocean. Amid the gallery richly hung with family portraits,

she pointed out the likeness of many a bold adventurer, whom the report

of the riches and felicities of the new discovered world had tempted on

speculations sometimes wild and disastrous, sometimes prosperous beyond

the golden dreams of cupidity. “How precarious!--how perilous!” murmured

Elinor, shuddering. But when Mrs Ann told the tale of her uncle, the

literary speculator, the polished scholar, the brave and gentle of the

family, who had accompanied Sir Walter Raleigh on his calamitous

expedition, and years after died of grief for his calamitous death,

Elinor, with a start of horror, caught her aunt’s arm, emphatically

extended towards the portrait, and implored her to desist. The decorum

of the family was so great, that this liberty could not be taken without

an apology for indisposition;--it was duly though faintly made, and

Elinor retired to her apartment.

“From February 1665,--from the first intelligence of De Ruyter’s

enterprises, till the animating period when the Duke of York was

appointed to the command of the Royal fleet,--all was eager and

anticipative excitement, and eloquent expatiations on ancient

achievements, and presageful hopes of new honours, on the part of the

heiress of Mortimer and Mrs Ann, and profound and speechless emotion on

that of Elinor.

“The hour arrived, and an express was dispatched from London to Mortimer

Castle with intelligence, in which King Charles, with that splendid

courtesy which half redeemed his vices, announced himself most deeply

interested, inasmuch as it added to the honours of the loyal family,

whose services he appreciated so highly. The victory was complete,--and

Captain John Sandal, in the phrase which the King’s attachment to French

manners and language was beginning to render popular, had “covered

himself with glory.” Amid the thickest of the fight, in an open boat, he

had carried a message from Lord Sandwich to the Duke of York, under a

shower of balls, and when older officers had stoutly declined the

perilous errand; and when, on his return, Opdam the Dutch Admiral’s ship

blew up, amid the crater of the explosion John Sandal plunged into the

sea, to save the half-drowning, half-burning wretches who clung to the

fragments that scorched them, or sunk in the boiling waves; and

then,--dismissed on another fearful errand, flung himself between the

Duke of York and the ball that struck at one blow the Earl of Falmouth,

Lord Muskerry, and Mr Boyle, and when they all fell at the same moment,

wiped, with unfaultering hand, and on bended knee, their brains and

gore, with which the Duke of York was covered from head to foot. When

this was read by Mrs Ann Mortimer, with many pauses, caused by sight dim

with age, and diffused with tears,--and when at length, finishing the

long and laborious read detail, Mrs Ann exclaimed--“He is a hero!”

Elinor tremblingly whispered to herself--“He is a Christian.”

“The details of such an event forming a kind of era in a family so

sequestered, imaginative, and heroic, as that of the Mortimers, the

contents of the letter signed by the King’s own hand were read over and

over again. They formed the theme of converse at their meals, and the

subject of their study and comment when alone. Margaret dwelt much on

the gallantry of the action, and half-imagined she saw the tremendous

explosion of Opdam’s ship. Elinor repeated to herself, “And he plunged

amid the burning wave to save the lives of the men he had conquered!”

And some months elapsed before the brilliant vision of glory, and of

grateful royalty, faded from their imagination; and when it did, like

that of Micyllus, it left honey on the eye-lids of the dreamer.

“From the date of the arrival of this intelligence, a change had taken

place in the habits and manners of Elinor, so striking as to become the

object of notice to all but herself. Her health, her rest, and her

imagination, became the prey of indefinable fantasies. The cherished

images of the past,--the lovely visions of her golden childhood,--seemed

fearfully and insanely contrasted in her imagination with the ideas of

slaughter and blood,--of decks strewed with corses,--and of a young and

terrible conqueror bestriding them amid showers of ball and clouds of

fire. Her very senses reeled between these opposite impressions. Her

reason could not brook the sudden transition from the smiling and

Cupid-like companion of her childhood, to the hero of the embattled

deep, and of nations and navies on fire,--garments rolled in blood,--the

thunder of the battle and the shouting.

“She sat and tried, as well as her wandering fancy would allow her, to

reconcile the images of that remembered eye, whose beam rested on her

like the dark blue of a summer heaven swimming in dewy light,--with the

flash that darted from the burning eye of the conqueror, whose light was

as fatal where it fell as his sword. She saw him, as he had once sat

beside her, smiling like the first morning in spring,--and smiled in

return. The slender form, the soft and springy movements, the kiss of

childhood that felt like velvet, and scented like balm,--was suddenly

exchanged in her dream (for all her thoughts were dreams) for a fearful

figure of one drenched in blood, and spattered with brains and gore. And

Elinor, half-screaming, exclaimed, “Is this he whom I loved?” Thus her

mind, vacillating between contrasts so strongly opposed, began to feel

its moorings give way. She drifted from rock to rock, and on every rock

she struck a wreck.

“Elinor relinquished her usual meetings with the family--she sat in her

own apartment all the day, and most of the evening. It was a lonely

turret projecting so far from the walls of the Castle, that there were

windows, or rather casements, on three sides. There Elinor sat to catch

the blast, let it blow as it would, and imagined she heard in its

moanings the cries of drowning seamen. No music that her lute, or that

which Margaret touched with a more powerful and brilliant finger, could

wean her from this melancholy indulgence.

“Hush!” she would say to the females who attended her--“Hush! let me

listen to the blast!--It waves many a banner spread for victory,--it

sighs over many a head that has been laid low!”

“Her amazement that a being could be at once so gentle and so

ferocious--her dread that the habits of his life must have converted the

_angel of her wilderness_ into a brave but brutal seaman, estranged from

the feelings that had rendered the beautiful boy so indulgent to her

errors,--so propitiatory between her and her proud relatives,--so aidant

in all her amusements,--so necessary to her very existence.--The tones

of this dreamy life harmonized, awfully for Elinor, with the sound of

the blast as it shook the turrets of the Castle, or swept the woods that

groaned and bowed beneath its awful visitings. And this secluded life,

intense feeling, and profound and heart-rooted secret of her silent

passion, held perhaps fearful and indescribable alliance with that

aberration of mind, that prostration at once of the heart and the

intellect, that have been found to bring forth, according as the agents

were impelled, “the savour of life unto life, or of death unto death.”

She had all the intensity of passion, combined with all the devotedness

of religion; but she knew not which way to steer, or what gale to

follow. She trembled and shrunk from her doubtful pilotage, and the

rudder was left to the mercy of the winds and waves. Slender mercy do

those experience who commit themselves to the tempests of the mental

world--better if they had sunk at once amid the strife of the dark

waters in their wild and wintry rage; there they would soon have arrived

at the haven where they would be secure.

“Such was the state of Elinor, when the arrival of one who had been long

a stranger in the vicinity of the Castle caused a strong sensation in

its inhabitants.

“The widow Sandal, the mother of the young seaman, who had hitherto

lived in obscurity on the interest of the small fortune bequeathed her

by Sir Roger, (under the rigid injunction of never visiting the Castle),

suddenly arrived in Shrewsbury, which was scarce a mile from it, and

declared her intention of fixing her residence there.

“The affection of her son had showered on her, with the profusion of a

sailor, and the fondness of a child, all the rewards of his

services--but their glory;--and in comparative affluence, and honoured

and pointed to as the mother of the young hero who stood high in royal

favour, the widow of many sorrows took up her abode once more near the

seat of her ancestors.

“At this period, every step taken by the member of a family was a

subject of anxious and solemn consultation to those who considered

themselves its heads, and there was a kind of chapter held in Mortimer

Castle on this singular movement of the widow Sandal. Elinor’s heart

beat hard during the debate--it subsided, however, at the determination,

that the severe sentence of Sir Roger was not to be extended beyond his

death, and that a descendant of the house of Mortimer should never live

neglected while almost under the shadow of its walls.

“The visit was accordingly solemnly paid, and gratefully

received,--there was much stately courtesy on the part of Mrs Ann

towards her niece, (whom she called cousin after the old English

fashion), and a due degree of retrospective humility and decorous

dejection on that of the widow. They parted mutually softened towards,

if not pleased with each other, and the intercourse thus opened was

unremittingly sustained by Elinor, whose weekly visits of ceremony soon

became the daily visits of interest and of habit. The object of the

thoughts of both was the theme of the tongue of but one; and, as is not

uncommon, she who said nothing felt the most. The details of his

exploits, the description of his person, the fond enumeration of the

promises of his childhood, and the graces and goodliness of his youth,

were dangerous topics for the listener, to whom the bare mention of his

name caused an intoxication of the heart, from which it scarce recovered

for hours.

“The frequency of these visits was not observed to be diminished by a

faint rumour, which the widow seemed to believe, rather from hope than

probability, that Captain Sandal was about to visit the neighbourhood of

the Castle. It was one evening in autumn, that Elinor, who had been

prevented during the day from visiting her aunt, set out attended only

by her maid and her usher. There was a private path through the park,

that opened by a small door on the verge of the suburbs where the widow

lived. Elinor, on her arrival, found her aunt from home, and was

informed she had gone to pass the evening with a friend in Shrewsbury.

Elinor hesitated for a moment, and then recollecting that this friend

was a grave staid widow of one of Oliver’s knights, wealthy, however,

and well respected, and a common acquaintance, she resolved to follow

her thither. As she entered the room, which was spacious, but dimly lit

by an old-fashioned casement window, she was surprised to see it filled

with an unusual number of persons, some of whom were seated, but the

greater number were collected in the ample recess of the window, and

among them Elinor saw a figure, remarkable rather for its height, than

its attitude or pretension,--it was that of a tall slender boy, about

eighteen, with a beautiful infant in his arms, whom he was caressing

with a tenderness that seemed rather associated with the retrospective

fondness of brotherhood, than the anticipated hope of paternity. The

mother of the infant, proud of the notice bestowed on her child, made,

however, the usual incredulous apology for its troubling him.

“Troubling me!” said the boy, in tones that made Elinor think it was the

first time she had heard music. “Oh, no--if you knew how fond I am of

children,--how long it is since I had the delight of pressing one to my

breast--how long it may be again before”---- and averting his head, he

bowed it over the babe. The room was very dark, from the increasing

shades of evening, deepened by the effect of the heavy wainscotting of

its walls; but at this moment, the last bright light of an autumnal

evening, in all its rich and fading glory, burst on the casement,

powering on every object a golden and purpureal light. That end of the

apartment in which Elinor sat remained in the deepest shade. She then

distinctly beheld the figure which her heart seemed to recognize before

her senses. His luxuriant hair, of the richest brown, (its feathery

summits tinged by the light resembling the halo round some glorified

head), hung, according to the fashion of the day, in clusters on his

bosom, and half-concealed the face of the infant, as it lay like a

nestling among them.

“His dress was that of a naval officer,--it was splendidly adorned with

lace, and the superb insignia of a foreign order, the guerdon of some

daring deed; and as the infant played with these, and then looked

upward, as if to repose its dazzled sight on the smile of its young

protector, Elinor thought she had never beheld association and contrast

so touchingly united,--it was like a finely coloured painting, where the

tints are so mellowed and mingled into each other, that the eye feels no

transition in passing from one brilliant hue to another, with such

exquisite imperceptibility are they graduated,--it was like a fine piece

of music, where the art of the modulator prevents your knowing that you

pass from one key to another; so softly are the intermediate tones of

harmony touched, that the ear knows not where it wanders, but wherever

it wanders, feels its path is pleasant. The young loveliness of the

infant, almost assimilated to the beauty of the youthful caresser, and

yet contrasted with the high and heroic air of his figure, and the

adornments of his dress, (splendid as they were), all emblematic of

deeds of peril and of death, seemed to the imagination of Elinor like

the cherub-angel of peace reposing on the breast of valour, and

whispering that his toils were done. She was awoke from her vision by

the voice of the widow.--“Niece, this is your cousin John Sandal.”

Elinor started, and received the salute of her kinsman, thus abruptly

introduced, with an emotion, which, if it deprived her of those courtly

graces which ought to have embellished her reception of the

distinguished stranger, gave her, at least, the more touching ones of

diffidence.

“The forms of the day admitted of, and even sanctioned, a mode of

salutation since exploded; and as Elinor felt the pressure of a lip as

vermeil as her own, she trembled to think that that lip had often given

the war-word to beings athirst for human blood, and that the arm that

enfolded her so tenderly had pointed the weapons of death with

resistless and terrible aim against bosoms that beat with all the cords

of human affection. She loved her young kinsman, but she trembled in the

arms of the hero.

“John Sandal sat down by her, and in a few moments the melody of his

tones, the gentle facility of his manner, the eyes that smiled when the

lips were closed, and the lips whose smile was more eloquent in silence

than the language of the brightest eyes, made her gradually feel at ease

with herself--she attempted to converse, but paused to listen--she tried

to look up, but felt like the worshippers of the sun, sickening under

the blaze she gazed on,--and _averted her eyes that she might see_.

There was a mild, inoppressive, but most seductive light in the

dark-blue eyes that fell so softly on hers, like moon-light floating

over a fine landscape. And there was a young and eloquent tenderness in

the tones of that voice, which she expected to have spoken in thunder,

that disarmed and dulcified speech almost to luxury. Elinor sat, and

imbibed poison at every inlet of the senses, ear, and eye, and touch,

for her kinsman, with a venial, and to her imperceptible licence, had

taken her hand as he spoke. And he spoke much, but not of war and blood,

of the scenes where he had been so eminent, and of the events to which

his simple allusion would have given interest and dignity,--but of his

return to his family, of the delight he felt at again beholding his

mother, and of the hopes that he indulged of being not an unwelcome

visitor at the Castle. He inquired after Margaret with affectionate

earnestness, and after Mrs Ann with reverential regard; and in

mentioning the names of these relatives, he spoke like one whose heart

was at home before his steps, and whose heart could make every spot

where it rested a home to itself and to others. Elinor could have

listened for ever. The names of the relatives she loved and revered

sounded in her ears like music, but the advancing night warned her of

the necessity of returning to the Castle, where the hours were

scrupulously observed; and when John Sandal offered to attend her home,

she had no longer a motive to delay her departure.

“It had appeared dark in the room where they were sitting, but it was

still rich and purple twilight in the sky, when they set out for the

Castle.

“Elinor took the path through the park, and, absorbed in new feelings,

was for the first time insensible of its woodland beauty, at once gloomy

and resplendent, mellowed by the tints of autumnal colouring, and

glorious with the light of an autumnal evening,--till she was roused to

attention by the exclamations of her companion, who appeared rapt into

delight at what he beheld. This sensibility of nature, this fresh and

unworn feeling, in one whom she had believed hardened by scenes of toil

and terror against the perception of beauty,--whom her imagination had

painted to her as _fitter to cross the Alps, than to luxuriate in

Campania_,--touched her deeply. She attempted to reply, but was

unable,--she remembered how her quick susceptibility of nature had

enabled her to sympathize with and improve on the admiration expressed

by others, and she wondered at her silence, for she knew not its cause.

“As they approached the Castle, the scene became glorious beyond the

imagination of a painter, whose eye has dreamed of sun-set in foreign

climes. The vast edifice lay buried in shade,--all its varied and

strongly charactered features of tower and pinnacle, bartizan and

battlement, were melted into one dense and sombrous mass. The distant

hills, with their conical summits, were still clearly defined in the

dark-blue heaven, and their peaks still retained a hue of purple so

brilliant and lovely, that it seemed as if the light had loved to linger

there, and, parting, had left that tint as the promise of a glorious

morning. The woods that surrounded the Castle stood as dark, and

apparently as solid as itself. Sometimes a gleam like gold trembled over

the tufted foliage of their summits, and at length, through a glade

which opened among the dark and massive boles of the ancient trees, one

last rich and gorgeous flood of light burst in, turned every blade of

grass it touched into emerald for a moment,--paused on its lovely

work--and parted. The effect was so instantaneous, brilliant, and

evanishing, that Elinor had scarce time for a half uttered exclamation,

as she extended her arm in the direction where the light had fallen so

brightly and so briefly. She raised her eyes to her companion, in that

full consciousness of perfect sympathy that make words seem like

counters, compared to the sterling gold of a heart-minted look. Her

companion had turned towards it too. He neither uttered exclamation, nor

pointed with finger,--he smiled, and his countenance was as that of an

angel. It seemed to reflect and answer the last bright farewell of day,

as if friends had parted smiling at each other. It was not alone the

lips that smiled,--the eyes, the cheeks, every feature had its share in

that effulgent light that was diffused over his aspect, and all combined

to make that harmony to the eye, which is often as deliciously

perceptible, as the combination of the most exquisite voices with the

most perfect modulation, is to the ear. To the last hour of her mortal

existence, that smile, and the scene where it was _uttered_, were

engraved on the heart of Elinor. It announced at once a spirit, that,

like the ancient statue, answered every ray of light that fell on it

with a voice of melody, and blended the triumph of the glories of nature

with the profound and tender felicities of the heart. They spoke no more

during the remainder of their walk, but there was more eloquence in

their silence than in many words. * * * * * *

“It was almost night before they arrived at the Castle. Mrs Ann received

her distinguished kinsman with stately cordiality, and affection mingled

with pride. Margaret welcomed him rather as the hero than the relative;

and John, after the ceremonies of introduction, turned to repose himself

on the smile of Elinor. They had arrived just at the time when the

chaplain was about to read the evening prayers,--a form so strictly

adhered to at the Castle, that not even the arrival of a stranger was

permitted to interfere with its observance. Elinor watched this moment

with peculiar solicitude;--her religious feelings were profound, and

amid all the young hero’s vivid display of the gentlest affections, and

purest sensibilities by which our wretched existence can be enhanced or

beautified, she still dreaded that religion, the companion of deep

thought and solemn habits, might wander far for an abode before it

settled in the heart of a sailor. The last doubt passed from her mind,

as she beheld the intense but silent devotion with which John mingled in

the family rite. There is something very ennobling in the sight of male

piety. To see that lofty form, that never bowed to man, bowed to the

earth to God,--to behold the knee, whose joints would be as adamant

under the influence of mortal force or threat, as flexible as those of

infancy in the presence of the Almighty,--to see the locked and lifted

hands, to hear the fervent aspiration, to feel the sound of the mortal

weapon as it drags on the floor beside the kneeling warrior,--these are

things that touch the senses and the heart at once, and suggest the

awful and affecting image of all physical energy prostrate before the

power of the Divinity. Elinor watched him even to the forgetfulness of

her own devotions;--and when his white hands, that seemed never formed

to grasp a weapon of destruction, were clasped in devotion, and one of

them slightly and occasionally raised to part the redundant curls that

shaded his face as he knelt, she thought that she beheld at once angelic

strength and angelic purity.

“When the service concluded, Mrs Ann, after repeating her solemn welcome

to her nephew, could not help expressing her satisfaction at the

devotion he had showed; but she mingled with that expression a kind of

incredulity, that men accustomed to toil and peril could ever have

devotional feelings. John Sandal bowed to the congratulatory part of Mrs

Ann’s speech, and, resting one hand on his short sword, and with the

other removing the thick ringlets of his luxuriant hair, he stood before

them a hero in deed, and a boy in form. A blush overspread his young

features, as he said, in accents at once emphatic and tremulous, “Dear

Aunt, why should you accuse those of neglecting the protection of the

Almighty who need it most. They who “go down to the sea in ships, and

occupy their business in the great waters,” have the best right to feel,

in their hour of peril, “it is but the wind and the storm fulfilling his

word.” A seaman without a belief and hope in God, is worse off than a

seaman without chart or pilot.”

“As he spoke with that trembling eloquence that makes conviction be felt

almost before it is heard, Mrs Ann held out to him her withered but

still snow-white hand to kiss. Margaret presented hers also, like a

heroine to a feudal knight; and Elinor turned aside, and wept in

delicious agony. * * * * * * * *

“When we set ourselves resolutely to discover perfection in a character,

we are always sure to find it. But Elinor needed little aid from the

pencil of imagination to colour the object that had been stamped by an

ineffaceable touch upon her heart. Her kinsman’s character and temper

developed themselves slowly, or rather were developed by external and

accidental causes; for a diffidence almost feminine prevented his ever

saying much,--and when he did, himself was the last theme he touched on.

He unfolded himself like a blowing flower,--the soft and silken leaves

expanded imperceptibly to the eye, and every day the tints were

deepening, and the scent becoming richer, till Elinor was dazzled by

their lustre, and inebriated with the fragrance.

“This wish to discover excellencies in the object we love, and to

identify esteem and passion by seeking the union of moral beauty and

physical grace, is a proof that love is of a very ennobling

character,--that, however the stream may be troubled by many things, the

source at least is pure,--and that the heart capable of feeling it

intensely, proves it possesses an energy that may one day be rewarded by

a brighter object, and a holier flame, than earth ever afforded, or

nature ever could kindle. * * * * * * * * *

“Since her son’s arrival, the widow Sandal had betrayed a marked degree

of anxiety, and a kind of restless precaution against some invisible

evil. She was now frequently at the Castle. She could not be blind to

the increasing attachment of John and Elinor,--and her only thought was

how to prevent the possibility of their union, by which the interest of

the former and her own importance would be materially affected.

“She had obtained, by indirect means, a knowledge of the contents of Sir

Roger’s will; and the whole force of a mind which possessed more of art

than of power, and of a temper which had more passion than energy, was

strained to realize the hopes it suggested. Sir Roger’s will was

singular. Alienated as he was from his daughter Sandal, and his younger

son the father of Elinor, by the connexions they had adopted, it seemed

to be the strongest object of his wishes to unite their descendants, and

invest the wealth and rank of the house of Mortimer in the last of its

representatives. He had therefore bequeathed his immense estates to his

grand-daughter Margaret, in the event of her marrying her kinsman John

Sandal;--in the case of his marrying Elinor, he was entitled to no more

than her fortune of £.5000;--and the bequest of the greater part of the

property to a distant relative who bore the name of Mortimer, was to be

the consequence of the non-intermarriage of Sandal with either of his

cousins.

“Mrs Ann Mortimer, anticipating the effect that this opposition of

interest to affection might produce in the family, had kept the contents

of the will a secret,--but Mrs Sandal had discovered it by means of the

domestics at the Castle, and her mind wrought intensely on the

discovery. She was a woman too long familiar with want and privation to

dread any evil but their continuance, and too ambitious of the

remembered distinctions of her early life, not to risk any thing that

might enable her to recover them. She felt a personal feminine jealousy

of the high-minded Mrs Ann, and the noble-hearted beautiful Margaret,

which was unappeasable; and she hovered round the walls of the Castle

like a departed spirit groaning for its re-admission to the place from

which it had been driven, and feeling and giving no peace till its

restoration was accomplished.

“When with these feelings was united the anxiety of maternal ambition

for her son, who might be raised to a noble inheritance, or sunk to

comparative mediocrity by his choice, the result may be easily guessed;

and the widow Sandal, once determined on the end, felt little scruple

about the means. Want and envy had given her an unslakeable appetite

for the restored splendours of her former state; and false religion

had taught her every shade and penumbra of hypocrisy, every meanness

of artifice, every obliquity of insinuation. In her varied life she

had known the good, and chosen the evil. The widow Sandal was now

determined to interpose an insurmountable obstruction to their union.

* * * * * * * *

“Mrs Ann still flattered herself that the secret of Sir Roger’s will was

suppressed. She saw the intense and disruptable feeling that seemed to

mark John and Elinor for each other; and, with a feeling half-borrowed

from magnanimity, half from romance, (for Mrs Ann had been fond of the

high-toned romances of her day), she looked forward to the felicity of

their union as being little disturbed by the loss of land and

lordship,--of the immense revenues,--and the far-descended titles of the

Mortimer family.

“Highly as she prized these distinctions, dear to every noble mind, she

prized still more highly the union of devoted hearts and congenial

spirits, who, trampling on the golden apples that were flung in their

path, pressed forward with unremitting ardour for the prize of felicity.

“The wedding-day of John and Elinor was fixed,--the bridal clothes were

made,--the noble and numerous friends summoned,--the Castle hall

decorated, the bells of the parish church ringing out a loud and merry

peal, and the blue-coated serving men adorned with favours, and employed

in garnishing the wassail bowl, which was doomed by many a thirsty eye

to be often drained and often replenished. Mrs Ann herself took with her

own hands, from an ample chest of ebony, a robe of velvet and satin,

which she had worn at the court of James the First, on the marriage of

the princess Elizabeth with the prince palatine, of whom the former, to

borrow the language of a contemporary writer, had “brided and bridled it

so well, and indeed became herself so handsomely,” that Mrs Ann, as she

arrayed herself, thought she saw the splendid vision of the royal bridal

float before her faded eyes in dim but gorgeous pageantry once more. The

heiress, too, attired herself splendidly, but it was observed, that her

beautiful cheek was paler than even that of the bride, and the smile

which held a fixed unjoyous station on her features all that morning,

seemed more like the effort of resolution than the expression of

felicity. The widow Sandal had betrayed considerable agitation, and

quitted the Castle at an early hour. The bridegroom had not yet

appeared, and the company, after having in vain for some time awaited

his arrival, set out for the church, where they supposed he was

impatiently expecting them.

“The cavalcade was magnificent and numerous--the dignity and consequence

of the Mortimer family had assembled all who had aspired to the

distinction of their acquaintance, and such was then the feudal grandeur

attendant on the nuptials of a high-descended family, that relatives,

however remote in blood or in local distance, collected for sixty miles

in every direction around the Castle, and presented a “host of friends,

gorgeously arrayed and attended on that eventful morning.”

“Most of the company, even including the females, were mounted on

horseback, and this, by apparently increasing the number of the

procession, added to its tumultuous magnificence. There were some

cumbrous vehicles, misnomed carriages, of a fashion indescribably

inconvenient, but gorgeously gilded and painted,--and the Cupids on the

pannels had been re-touched for the occasion. The bride was lifted on

her palfrey by two peers,--Margaret rode beside her gallantly

attended,--and Mrs Ann, who once more saw nobles contending for her

withered hand, and adjusting her silken rein, felt the long-faded

glories of her family revive, and led the van of the pompous procession

with as much dignity of demeanour, and as much glow of faded beauty,

once eminent and resistless, as if she still followed the gorgeous

nuptial progress of the princess palatine. They arrived at the

church,--the bride, the relatives, the splendid company, the

minister--all but the bridegroom, were there. There was a long painful

silence. Several gentlemen of the bridal party rode rapidly out in every

direction in which it was thought probable to meet him,--the clergyman

stood at the altar, till, weary of standing, he retired. The crowd from

the neighbouring villages, combined with the numerous attendants, filled

the church-yard. Their acclamations were incessant,--the heat and

distraction became intolerable, and Elinor begged for a few moments to

be allowed to retire to the vestry.

“There was a casement window which opened on the road, and Mrs Ann

supported the bride as she tottered towards it, attempting to loose her

wimple, and veil of costly lace. As Elinor approached the casement, the

thundering hoofs of a horse at full speed shook the road. Elinor looked

up mechanically,--the rider was John Sandal,--he cast a look of horror

at the pale bride, and plunging his desperate spurs deeper, disappeared

in a moment. * * * * *

“A year after this event, two figures were seen to walk, or rather

wander, almost every evening, in the neighbourhood of a small hamlet in

a remote part of Yorkshire. The vicinage was picturesque and attractive,

but these figures seemed to move amid the scenery like beings, who, if

they still retained eyes for nature, had lost all heart for it. That wan

and attenuated form, so young, yet so withered, whose dark eyes emit a

fearful light amid features chill and white as those of a statue, and

the young graces of whose form seem to have been nipt like those of a

lily that bloomed too soon in spring, and was destroyed by the frost of

the treacherous season, whose whispers had first invited it to

bud,--that is Elinor Mortimer,--and that figure that walks beside her,

so stiff and rectangular, that it seems as its motion was regulated by

mechanism, whose sharp eyes are directed so straight forward, that they

see neither tree on the right hand, or glade on the left, or heaven

above, or earth beneath, or any thing but a dim vision of mystic

theology for ever before them, which is aptly reflected in their cold

contemplative light, that is the Puritan maiden sister of her mother,

with whom Elinor had fixed her residence. Her dress is arranged with as

much precision as if a mathematician had calculated the angles of every

fold,--every pin’s point knows its place, and does its duty--the plaits

of her round-eared cap do not permit one hair to appear on her narrow

forehead, and her large hood, adjusted after the fashion in which it was

worn by the godly sisters, who rode out to meet Prynne on his return

from the pillory, lends a deeper shade to her rigid features,--a

wretched-looking lacquey is carrying a huge clasped bible after her, in

the mode in which she remembered to have seen Lady Lambert and Lady

Desborough march to prayer, attended by their pages, while she proudly

followed in their train, distinguished as the sister of that godly man

and powerful preacher of the word, Sandal. From the day of her

disappointed nuptials, Elinor, with that insulted feeling of maiden

pride, which not even the anguish of her broken heart could suppress,

had felt an unappeaseable anxiety to quit the scene of her disgrace and

her misfortune. It was vainly opposed by her aunt and Margaret, who,

horror-struck at the event of those disastrous nuptials, and wholly

unconscious of the cause, had implored her, with all the energy of

affection, to fix her residence at the Castle, within whose walls they

pledged themselves he who had abandoned her should never be permitted to

place his foot. Elinor answered the impassioned importunities, only by

eager and clinging pressures of her cold hands, and by tears which

trembled on her eye-lids, without the power to fall.--“Nay, stay with

us,” said the kind and noble-hearted Margaret, “you shall not leave us!”

And she pressed the hands of her kinswoman, with that cordial touch that

gives a welcome as much to the heart as to the home of the

inviter.--“Dearest cousin,” said Elinor, answering, for the first time,

this affectionate appeal with a faint and ghastly smile--“I have so many

enemies within these walls, that I can no longer encounter them with

safety to my life.”--“Enemies!” repeated Margaret.--“Yes, dearest

cousin--there is not a spot where _he_ trod--not a prospect on which he

has gazed--not an echo which has repeated the sound of his voice,--that

does not send daggers through my heart, which those who wish me to live

would not willingly see infixed any longer.” To the emphatic agony with

which these words were uttered, Margaret had nothing to reply but with

tears; and Elinor set out on her journey to the relative of her mother,

a rigid Puritan, who resided in Yorkshire.

“As the carriage was ordered for her departure, Mrs Ann, supported by

her female attendants, stood on the draw-bridge to take leave of her

niece, with solemn and affectionate courtesy. Margaret wept bitterly,

and aloud, as she stood at a casement, and waved her hand to Elinor. Her

aunt never shed a tear, till out of the presence of the domestics,--but

when all was over,--“she entered into her chamber, and wept there.”

“When her carriage had driven some miles from the Castle, a servant on a

fleet horse followed it at full speed with Elinor’s lute, which had been

forgotten,--it was offered to her, and after viewing it for some moments

with a look in which memory struggled with grief, she ordered its

strings to be broken on the spot, and proceeded on her journey.

“The retreat to which Elinor had retired, did not afford her the

tranquillity she expected. Thus, change of place always deceives us with

the tantalizing hope of relief, as we toss on the feverish bed of life.

“She went in a faint expectation of the revival of her religious

feelings--she went to wed, amid the solitude and desert where she had

first known him, the immortal bridegroom, who would never desert her as

the mortal one had done,--but she did not find him there--the voice of

God was no longer heard in the garden--either her religious sensibility

had abated, or those from whom she first received the impression, had no

longer power to renew it, or perhaps the heart which has exhausted

itself on a mortal object, does not find its powers soon recruited to

meet the image of celestial beneficence, and exchange at once the

visible for the invisible,--the felt and present, for the future and the

unknown.

“Elinor returned to the residence of her mother’s family in the hope of

renewing former images, but she found only the words that had conveyed

those ideas, and she looked around in vain for the impressions they had

once suggested. When we thus come to feel that _all_ has been illusion,

even on the most solemn subjects,--that the future world seems to be

deserting us along with the present, and that our own hearts, with all

their treachery, have done us no more wrong than the false impressions

which we have received from our religious instructors, we are like the

deity in the painting of the great Italian artist, extending one hand to

the sun, and the other to the moon, but touching neither. Elinor had

imagined or hoped, that the language of her aunt would have revived her

habitual associations--she was disappointed. It is true no pains were

spared--when Elinor wished to read, she was furnished amply with the

Westminster Confession, or Prynne’s Histriomastrix; or if she wished for

lighter pages, for the Belles Lettres of Puritanism, there were John

Bunyan’s Holy War, or the life of Mr Badman. If she closed the book in

despair at the insensibility of her untouched heart, she was invited to

a godly conference, where the non-conformist ministers, who had been, in

the language of the day, extinguished under the Bartholomew bushel(8),

met to give the precious word in season to the scattered fold of the

Lord. Elinor knelt and wept too at these meetings; but, while her form

was prostrated before the Deity, her tears fell for one whom she dared

not name. When, in incontroulable agony, she sought, like Joseph, where

she might weep unobserved and unrestrained, and rushed into the narrow

garden that skirted the cottage of her aunt, and wept there, she was

followed by the quiet, sedate figure, moving at the rate of an inch in a

minute, who offered her for her consolation, the newly published and

difficultly obtained work of Marshall on Sanctification.

(8) Anachronism--n’importe.

“Elinor, accustomed too much to that fatal excitement of the heart,

which renders all other excitement as faint and feeble as the air of

heaven to one who has been inhaling the potent inebriation of the

strongest perfumes, wondered how this being, so abstracted, cold, and

unearthly, could tolerate her motionless existence. She rose at a fixed

hour,--at a fixed hour she prayed,--at a fixed hour received the godly

friends who visited her, and whose existence was as monotonous and

apathetic as her own,--at a fixed hour she dined,--and at a fixed hour

she prayed again, and then retired,--yet she prayed without unction, and

fed without appetite, and retired to rest without the least inclination

to sleep. Her life was mere mechanism, but the machine was so well wound

up, that it appeared to have some quiet consciousness and sullen

satisfaction in its movements.

“Elinor struggled in vain for the renewal of this life of cold

mediocrity,--she thirsted for it as one who, in the deserts of Afric,

expiring for want of water, would wish for the moment to be an inmate of

Lapland, to drink of their eternal snows,--yet at that moment wonders

how its inhabitants can live among SNOW. She saw a being far inferior to

herself in mental power,--of feelings that hardly deserved the

name--_tranquil_, and wondered that she herself was wretched.--Alas! she

did not know, that the heartless and unimaginative are those alone who

entitle themselves to the comforts of life, and who can alone enjoy

them. A cold and sluggish mediocrity in their occupations or their

amusements, is all they require--pleasure has with them no meaning but

the exemption from actual suffering, nor do they annex any idea to pain

but the immediate infliction of corporeal suffering, or of external

calamity--the source of pain or pleasure is never found in their

_hearts_--while those who have profound feelings scarce ever look

elsewhere for either. So much the worse for them,--the being reduced to

providing for the necessities of human life, and being satisfied when

that provision is made, is perhaps the best condition of human

life--beyond that, all is the dream of insanity, or the agony of

disappointment. Far better the dull and dusky winter’s day, whose gloom,

if it never abates, never increases,--(and to which we lift up an eye of

listlessness, in which there is no apprehension of future and added

terrors),--to the glorious fierceness of the summer’s day, whose sun

sets amid purple and gold,--while, panting under its parting beams, we

see the clouds collecting in the darkening East, and view the armies of

heaven on their march, whose thunders are to break our rest, and whose

lightnings may crumble us to ashes. * * * * *

“Elinor strove hard with her fate,--the strength of her intellect had

been much developed since her residence at Mortimer Castle, and there

also the energies of her heart had been developed fatally. How dreadful

is the conflict of superior intellect and a burning heart, with the

perfect mediocrity of the characters and circumstances they are

generally doomed to live with! The battering-rams play against

wool-bags,--the lightnings glance on ice, hiss, and are extinguished.

The greater strength we exhibit, we feel we are more and more paralyzed

by the weakness of our enemies,--our very energy becomes our bitterest

enemy, as it fights in vain against the impregnable fortress of total

vacuity! It is in vain we assail a foe who neither knows our language or

uses our weapons. Elinor gave it up,--yet still she struggled with her

own feelings; and perhaps the conflict which she now undertook was the

hardest of all. She had received her first religious impressions under

the roof of her Puritanic aunt, and, true or false, they had been so

vivid, that she was anxious to revive them. When the heart is robbed of

its first-born, there is nothing it will not try to adopt. Elinor

remembered a very affecting scene that had occurred in her childhood,

beneath the roof where she now resided.

“An old non-conformist minister, a very Saint John for sanctity of life,

and simplicity of manners, had been seized by a magistrate while giving

the word of consolation to a few of his flock who had met at the cottage

of her aunt.

“The old man had supplicated for a moment’s delay on the part of the

civil power, and its officers, by an unusual effort of toleration or of

humanity, complied. Turning to his congregation, who, amid the tumult of

the arrest, had never risen from their knees, and only changed the voice

of supplication from praying with their pastor, to praying for him,--he

quoted to them that beautiful passage from the prophet Malachi, which

appears to give such delightful encouragement to the spiritual

intercourse of Christians,--“Then they that feared the Lord, spoke often

to one another, and the Lord heard it,” &c. As he spoke, the old man was

dragged away by some rougher hands, and died soon after in confinement.

“On the young imagination of Elinor, this scene was indelibly written.

Amid the magnificence of Mortimer Castle, it had never been effaced or

obscured, and now she tried to make herself in love with the sounds and

the scene that had so deeply touched her infant heart.

“Resolute in her purposes, she spared no pains to excite this

reminiscence of religion,--it was her last resource. Like the wife of

Phineas, she struggled to bear an heir of the soul, even while she named

him _Ichabod_,--and felt the glory was departed. She went to the narrow

apartment,--she seated herself in the very chair that venerable man

occupied when he was torn from it, and his departure appeared to her

like that of an ascending prophet. She would _then_ have caught the

folds of his mantle, and mounted with him, even though his flight had

led to prison and to death. She tried, by repeating his last words, to

produce the same effect they had once had on her heart, and wept in

indescribable agony at feeling those words had no meaning now for her.

When life and passion have thus rejected us, the backward steps we are

compelled to tread towards the path we have wandered from, are ten

thousand times more torturing and arduous than those we have exhausted

in their pursuit. Hope then supported our hands every step we took.

Remorse and disappointment scourge us back, and every step is tinged

with tears or with blood; and well it is for the pilgrim if that blood

is drained from his heart, for then--his pilgrimage will be sooner

terminated. * * * * * *

“At times Elinor, who had forgotten neither the language or habits of

her former existence, would speak in a manner that gave her Puritanic

relative hopes that, according to the language of the times, “the root

of the matter was in her,”--and when the old lady, in confidence of her

returning orthodoxy, discussed long and learnedly on the election and

perseverance of the saints, the listener would startle her by a burst of

feeling, that seemed to her aunt more like the ravings of a demoniac,

than the language of a human being,--especially one who had from her

youth known the Scriptures. She would say, “Dearest aunt, I am not

insensible of what you say; from a child, (thanks to your care), I have

known the holy scriptures. I _have_ felt the power of religion. At a

latter period I have experienced all the enjoyments of an intellectual

existence. Surrounded by splendour, I have conversed with enlarged

minds,--I have seen all that life can shew me,--I have lived with the

mean and the rich,--the spiritual in their poverty, and the

worldly-minded in their grandeur,--I have deeply drank of the cup which

both modes of existence held to my lip,--and at this moment I swear to

you,--_one moment of heart_,--one dream such as once I dreamed, (and

thought I should never awake from), is worth all the existence that the

earthly-minded lavish on this world, and those who mystify expend on the

next!”--“Unfortunate wretch! and undone for everlasting!” cried the

terrified Calvinist, lifting up her hands,--“Cease, cease,” said Elinor

with that dignity which grief alone can give,--“If I have indeed devoted

to an earthly love that which is due to God alone, is not my punishment

certain in a future state? Has it not already commenced here? May not

then all reproaches be spared when we are suffering more than human

enmity can wish us,--when our very existence is a bitterer reproach to

us than malignity can utter?”--As she spoke, she added, wiping a cold

tear from her wasted cheek, “My stroke is heavier than my groaning!”

“At other times she appeared to listen to the language of the Puritan

preachers (for all were preachers who frequented the house) with some

appearance of attention, and then, rushing from them without any

conviction but that of despair, exclaimed in her haste, “All men are

liars!” Thus it fares with those who wish to make an instant transition

from one world to another,--it is impossible,--the cold wave

interposes--for ever interposes, between the wilderness and the land of

promise--and we may as soon expect to tread the threshold which parts

life and death without pain, as to cross the interval which separates

two modes of existence so distinct as those of passion and religion,

without struggles of the soul inexpressible--without groanings which

cannot be uttered.

“To these struggles there was soon to be an addition. Letters at this

period circulated very slowly, and were written only on important

occasions. Within a very short period, Elinor received two letters

by express from Mortimer Castle, written by her cousin Margaret.

The first announced the arrival of John Sandal at the Castle,--the

second, the death of Mrs Ann,--the postscriptums of both contained

certain mysterious hints relative to the interruption of the

marriage,--intimations that the cause was known only to the writer,

to Sandal and to his mother,--and entreaties that Elinor would return

to the Castle, and partake of the _sisterly_ love with which Margaret

and John Sandal would be glad to receive her. The letters dropt from

her hand as she received them,--of John Sandal she had never ceased to

think, but she had never ceased to wish not to think,--and his name

even now gave her a pang which she could neither utter or suppress, and

which burst forth in an involuntary shriek, that seemed like the last

string that breaks in the exquisite and too-highly strung instrument of

the human heart.

“Over the account of Mrs Ann’s death, she lingered with that fearful

feeling that a young adventurer experiences, who sees a noble vessel set

out before him on a voyage of discovery, and wishes, while lingering in

harbour himself, that he was already at the shore where _it_ has

arrived, and tasted of its repose, and participated in its treasures.

“Mrs Ann’s death had not been unworthy of that life of magnanimity and

high heroic feeling which had marked every hour of her mortal

existence--she had espoused the cause of the rejected Elinor, and sworn

in the chapel of Mortimer Castle, while Margaret knelt beside, never to

admit within its walls the deserter of his betrothed bride.

“On a dim autumnal evening, when Mrs Ann, with fading sight but

undiminished feeling, was poring over some of Lady Russel’s letters in

manuscript, and, to relieve her eyes, sometimes glanced on the

manuscript of Nelson’s Fasts and Festivals of the Church of England,--it

was announced to her that a Cavalier (the servants well knew the charm

of that name to the ear of the ancient loyalist) had crossed the

draw-bridge, entered the hall, and was advancing to the apartment where

she sat. “Let him be admitted,” was her answer, and rising from her

chair, which was so lofty and so spacious, that as she lifted herself

from it to greet the stranger with a courtly reception, her form

appeared like a spectre rising from an ancient monument,--she stood

facing the entrance--at that entrance appeared John Sandal. She bent

forwards for a moment, but her eyes, bright and piercing, still

recognized him in a moment.

“Back!--back!”--exclaimed the stately ancestress, waving him

off with her withered hand--“Back!--profane not this floor with

another step!”--“Hear me, madam, for one moment--suffer me to

address you, even on my knees--I pay the homage to your rank and

relationship--misunderstand it not as an acknowledgement of guilt on my

part!”

“Mrs Ann’s features at this action underwent a slight contraction--a

short spasmodic affection. “Rise, Sir--rise,” she said--“and say what

you have to say--but utter it, Sir, at the door whose threshold you are

unworthy to tread.”

“John Sandal rose from his knees, and pointed instinctively as he rose

to the portrait of Sir Roger Mortimer, to whom he bore a striking

resemblance. Mrs Ann acknowledged the appeal--she advanced a few steps

on the oaken floor--she stood erect for a moment, and then, pointing

with a dignity of action which no pencil could embody to the portrait,

seemed to consider her attitude as a valid and eloquent answer--it

said--he to whose resemblance you point, and claim protection from,

never like you dishonoured these walls by an act of baseness--of

heartless treachery! Betrayer!--look to his portrait! Her expression had

in it something of the sublime--the next moment a strong spasm

contracted her features--she attempted to speak, but her lips no longer

obeyed her--she seemed to speak, but was not heard even by herself. She

stood for a moment before John Sandal in that rigid immoveable attitude

that says, “Advance not another step at your peril--insult not the

portraits of your ancestors--insult not their living representative, by

another step of intrusion!” As she spoke thus, (for her attitude spoke),

a stronger spasm contracted her features. She attempted to move--the

same rigid constriction extended to her limbs; and, waving her

prohibitory arm still, as if in defiance at once of the approach of

death and of her rejected kinsman, she dropt at his feet. * * * * * *

“She did not long survive the interview, nor did she ever recover the

use of speech. Her powerful intellect was, however, unimpaired; and to

the last she expressed herself most intelligibly by action, as

determined not to hear a word explanatory of Sandal’s conduct. This

explanation was therefore made to Margaret, who, though much shocked and

agitated at the first disclosure, seemed afterwards perfectly reconciled

to it. * * * * * * * *

“Shortly after the receipt of these letters, Elinor took a sudden, but

perhaps not singular resolution,--she determined to set out immediately

for Mortimer Castle. It was not her weariness of the withering life, the

αβιωτος βιος she lived at her Puritanic aunt’s--it was not the wish

to enjoy again the stately and splendid ceremonial of Mortimer Castle,

contrasted with the frugal fare and monastic rigour of the cottage in

Yorkshire--it was not even the wish for that change of place that

always flatters us with change of circumstance, as if we did not carry

our own hearts with us wherever we go, and might not therefore be sure

that an innate and eroding ulcer must be our companion from the Pole to

the Equator--it was not this, but a whisper half unheard, yet believed,

(just in proportion as it was inaudible and incredible), that murmured

from the bottom of her credulous heart, ‘Go--and _perhaps_’--

“Elinor set out on her journey, and after having performed it with fewer

difficulties than can be imagined, considering the state of the roads,

and the modes of travelling in the year 1667 or thereabouts, she arrived

in the vicinity of Mortimer Castle. It was a scene of reminiscence to

her,--her heart throbbed audibly as the carriage stopped at a Gothic

gate, through which there was a walk between two rows of lofty elms. She

alighted, and to the request of the servant who followed her, that he

might be permitted to shew her the way through a path entangled by the

intersecting roots of the trees, and dim with twilight, she answered

only by her tears. She waved him off, and advanced on foot and alone.

She remembered, from the bottom of her soul, how she had once wandered

amid that very grove with John Sandal--how his smile had shed a richer

light on the landscape, than even the purple smile of the dying

day-light. She thought of that smile, and lingered to catch it amid the

rich and burning hues flung by the fading light on the many-tinted boles

of the ancient trees. The trees were there--and the light was there--but

his smile, that once eclipsed the sun-light, was there no longer!

“She advanced alone--the lofty avenue of trees still retained its

magnificent depth of shade, and gorgeous colouring of trunk and leaf.

She sought among them for that which she had once felt--and God and

nature alone are conscious of the agony with which we demand from them

the object which we are conscious was once consecrated to our hearts,

and which we now require of both in vain! God withholds,--and Nature

denies them!

“As Elinor with trembling steps advanced towards the Castle, she saw the

funeral scutcheon which Mrs Margaret, in honour of her grand-aunt, had

caused to be affixed over the principal tower since her decease, with

the same heraldric decorum as if the last male of the Mortimer family

were extinct. Elinor looked up, and many thoughts rushed on her

heart.--“There is one departed,” she thought, “whose mind was always

fixed on glorious thoughts--the most exalted actions of humanity, or the

sublime associations of eternity! Her noble heart had room but for two

illustrious guests--the love of God, and the love of her country. They

tarried with her to the last, for they found the abode worthy of them;

and when they parted, the inmate found the mansion untenantable any

longer--the soul fled with its glorious visitors to heaven! My

treacherous heart welcomed another inmate, and how has he repaid its

hospitality?--By leaving the mansion in ruins!” As she spoke thus, she

approached the entrance of the Castle.

“In the spacious hall she was received by Margaret Mortimer with the

embrace of rooted affection, and by John Sandal, who advanced after the

first enthusiasm of meeting was over, with that calm and brother-like

good-will, from which there was--nothing to be hoped. There was the same

heavenly smile, the same clasp of the hand, the same tender and almost

feminine expression of anxiety for her safety--even Margaret herself,

who must have felt, and who did feel the perils of the long journey, did

not enter into them with that circumstantiality, or appear to sympathize

with them so vividly, or, when the tale of toil and travel was told,

appear to urge the necessity of speedy retirement, with such solicitude

as did John Sandal. Elinor, faint and gasping, grasped the hands of

both, and by an involuntary motion locked both together. The widow

Sandal was present--she shewed much agitation at the appearance of

Elinor; but when she saw this extraordinary and spontaneous movement, it

was observed she smiled.

“Soon after, Elinor retired to the apartment she had formerly occupied.

By the affectionate and delicate prevoyance of Margaret, the furniture

had all been changed--there was nothing to remind her of former days,

except her heart. She sat for some time reflecting on her reception, and

hope died within her heart as she thought of it. The strongest

expression of aversion or disdain would not have been so withering.

“It is certain that the fiercest passions may be exchanged for their

widest extremes in a time incredibly short, and by means the most

incalculable. Within the narrow circle of a day, enemies may embrace,

and lovers may hate,--but, in the course of centuries, pure complacency

and cordial good-will never can be exalted into passion. The wretched

Elinor felt this,--and feeling it, knew that all was lost.

“She had now, for many days, to undergo the torture of complacent and

fraternal affection from the man she loved,--and perhaps a keener

torture was never endured. To feel hands that we long to press to our

burning hearts, touch ours with cool and pulseless tranquillity--to see

eyes in whose light we live, throw on us a cold but smiling beam, that

gives light, but not fertility, to the parched and thirsting soil of the

heart--to hear the ordinary language of affectionate civility addressed

to us in tones of the most delicious suavity--to seek in these

expressions an ulterior meaning, and to find it not---- This--this is an

agony which only those who have felt can conceive!

“Elinor, with an effort that cost her heart many a pang, mingled in the

habits of the house, which had been greatly changed since the death of

Mrs Ann. The numerous suitors of the wealthy and noble heiress, now

crowded to the Castle; and, according to the custom of the times, they

were sumptuously entertained, and invited to prolong their stay by

numerous banquets.

“On these occasions, John Sandal was the first to pay distinguished

attention to Elinor. They danced together; and though her Puritanic

education had taught her an abhorrence of those “devil’s measures,” as

her family was accustomed to term them, she tried to adapt herself to

the gay steps of the Canaries(9), and the stately movements of the

Measures--(for the newer dances had not, even in report, reached

Mortimer Castle)--and her slender and graceful form needed no other

inspiration than the support of John Sandal’s arms, (who was himself an

exquisite dancer), to assume all the graces of that delightful exercise.

Even the practised courtiers applauded her. But, when it was over,

Elinor felt, that had John Sandal been dancing with a being the most

indifferent to him on earth, his manner would have been exactly the

same. No one could point with more smiling grace to her slight

deviations from the figure,--no one could attend her to her seat with

more tender and anxious politeness, and wave the vast fan of those days

over her with more graceful and assiduous courtesy. But Elinor felt that

these attentions, however flattering, were offered not by a lover. * * *

* * * * * *

(9) In Cowley’s “Cutter of Coleman Street,” Mrs Tabitha, a rigid

Puritan, tells her husband she had danced the Canaries in her youth.

And in Rushworth’s Collections, if I remember right, Prynne vindicates

himself from the charge of a general denunciation against dancing, and

even speaks of the “Measures,” a stately, solemn dance, with some

approbation.

“Sandal was absent on a visit to some neighbouring nobleman, and

Margaret and Elinor were one evening completely alone. Each seemed

equally anxious for an explanation, which neither appeared willing to

begin. Elinor had lingered till twilight at the casement, from which she

had seen him ride, and lingered still when to see him was no longer

possible. Her sight was strained to catch a glimpse of him through the

gathering clouds, as her imagination still toiled to catch a gleam of

that light of the heart, which now struggled dimly amid clouds of gloomy

and unpierceable mystery. “Elinor,” said Margaret emphatically, “look

for him no longer,--he never can be yours!”

“The sudden address, and the imperative tone of conviction, had upon

Elinor the effect of being addressed by a supernatural monitor. She was

unable even to ask how the terrible intelligence that burst on her so

decisively, was obtained.

“There is a state of mind in which we listen thus to a human voice as if

it were an oracle,--and instead of asking an explanation of the destiny

it announces, we wait submissively for what yet remains to be told. In

this mood, Elinor slowly advanced from the casement, and asked in a

voice of fearful calmness, “Has he explained himself perfectly to

you?”--“Perfectly.”--“And there is nothing to expect?”--“Nothing.”--“And

you have heard this from himself--his very self?”--“I have; and, dear

Elinor, let us never again speak on the subject.”--“Never!” answered

Elinor,--“Never!”

“The veracity and dignity of Margaret’s character, were inviolable

securities for the truth of what she uttered; and perhaps that was the

very reason why Elinor tried to shrink most from the conviction. In a

morbid state of heart, we cannot bear truth--the falsehood that

intoxicates us for a moment, is worth more than the truth that would

disenchant us for life.--_I hate him because he tells me the truth_, is

the language natural to the human mind, from the slave of power to the

slave of passion. * * * * * * * *

“Other symptoms that could not escape the notice of the most shallow,

struck her every hour. That devotion of the eye and heart,--of the

language and the look, that cannot be mistaken,--were all obviously

directed to Margaret. Still Elinor lingered in the Castle, and said to

herself, while every day she saw and felt what was passing, “Perhaps.”

That is the last word that quits the lips of those who love. * * * * * *

“She saw with all her eyes,--she felt to the bottom of her soul,--the

obviously increasing attachment of John Sandal and Margaret; yet still

she dreamed of interposing obstacles,--of _an explanation_. When passion

is deprived of its proper aliment, there is no telling the food on which

it will prey,--the impossibilities to which, like a famished garrison,

it will look for its wretched sustenance.

“Elinor had ceased to demand the heart of the being she was devoted to.

She now lived on his looks. She said to herself, Let him smile, though

not on me, and I am happy still--wherever the sun-light falls, the earth

must be blessed. Then she sunk to lower claims. She said, Let me but be

in his presence, and that is enough--let his smiles and his soul be

devoted to another, one wandering ray may reach me, and that will be

enough!

“Love is a very noble and exalting sentiment in its first germ and

principle. We never loved without arraying the object in all the glories

of moral as well as physical perfection, and deriving a kind of dignity

to ourselves from our capacity of admiring a creature so excellent and

dignified; but this lavish and magnificent prodigality of the

imagination often leaves the heart a bankrupt. Love in its iron age of

disappointment, becomes very degraded--it submits to be satisfied with

merely exterior indulgences--a look, a touch of the hand, though

occurring by accident--a kind word, though uttered almost unconsciously,

suffices for its humble existence. In its first state, it is like man

before the fall, inhaling the odours of paradise, and enjoying the

communion of the Deity; in the latter, it is like the same being toiling

amid the briar and the thistle, barely to maintain a squalid existence

without enjoyment, utility, or loveliness. * * * * * *

“About this time, her Puritan aunt made a strong effort to recover

Elinor out of the snare of the enemy. She wrote a long letter (a great

exertion for a woman far advanced in years, and never in the habits of

epistolary composition) adjuring her apostate niece to return to the

guide of her youth, and the covenant of her God,--to take shelter in the

everlasting arms while they were still held out to her,--and to flee to

the city of refuge while its gates were yet open to receive her. She

urged on her the truth, power, and blessedness of the system of Calvin,

which she termed the gospel.--She supported and defended it with all the

metaphysical skill, and all the scriptural knowledge she possessed,--and

the latter was not scanty.--And she affectingly reminded her, that the

hand that traced these lines, would be unable ever to repeat the

admonition, and would probably be mouldering into dust while she was

employed in their perusal.

“Elinor wept while she read, but that was all. She wept from physical

emotion, not from mental conviction; nor is there such an induration of

heart caused by any other power, as by that of the passion which seems

to soften it most. She answered the letter, however, and the effort

scarce cost her less than it did her decrepid and dying relative. She

acknowledged her dereliction of all religious feeling, and bewailed

it--the more, she added with painful sincerity, because I _feel my grief

is not sincere_. “Oh, my God!” she continued, “you who have clothed my

heart with such burning energies--you who have given to it a power of

loving so intense, so devoted, so concentrated--you have not given it in

vain;--no, in some happier world, or perhaps even in this, when this

“tyranny is overpast,” you will fill my heart with an image worthier

than him whom I once believed your image on earth. The stars, though

their light appears so dim and distant to us, were not lit by the

Almighty hand in vain. Their glorious light burns for remote and happier

worlds; and the beam of religion that glows so feebly to eyes almost

blind with earthly tears, may be rekindled when a broken heart has been

my passport to a place of rest. * * * * * * * *

“Do not think me, dear aunt, deserted by all hope of religion, even

though I have lost the sense of it. Was it not said by unerring lips to

a sinner, that her transgressions were forgiven because she _loved

much_? And does not this capacity of love prove that it will one day be

more worthily filled, and more happily employed. * * * * * *

“Miserable wretch that I am! At this moment, a voice from the bottom of

my heart asks me “_Whom_ hast thou loved so much? Was it man or God,

that thou darest to compare thyself with her who knelt and wept--not

before a mortal idol, but at the feet of an incarnate divinity?” * * * *

* *

“It may yet befall, that the ark which has floated through the waste of

waters may find its resting-place, and the trembling inmate debark on

the shores of an unknown but purer world.” * * * * * * * *