of its inhabitants--to some too well. He had long enjoyed the office of
collector of the taxes in---- and its neighbourhood, and had contrived
to grow rich, as some whispered not by the most creditable methods.
However that might be, he was rich, and, as the patriarchal simplicity
of the spot declined, many began to look with ill-concealed covetings
upon the possessions of Jeremiah Snaggs. He had built to himself a
mansion by the roadside, with a small garden in front; and there was a
very extraordinary appendage to it, which excited much speculation among
his unsophisticated contemporaries, and which he denominated a veranda.
For some time he remained shut up in his citadel, and seemed to contemn
the courtesies and repel the approaches of the inferior beings who moved
around him. Afterwards, however, he found the solitude of his home (for
he was a bachelor) insupportable; and he emerged gradually from his
retirement, and condescended to join in the social assemblies of his
neighbours. He joined them not as a fellow-citizen, but as a sovereign;
he came among them, not to brighten their festivity, but to chill their
good-humour; his presence was not an assistance, but a restraint.
Nevertheless, he was the great man of the place, and in a short time his
word was law among its inhabitants. Whether the ascendency was owing
rather to the talents which he occasionally displayed, or to the dinners
which he occasionally gave, I cannot say. Thomas the boatbuilder, who
till now had the credit of being a staunch Whig, and the boldness to
avow it, drew in his horns; his patriotism, his oratory, his zeal shrank
into nothing before the fiat of the Tory bashaw. He made indeed a
violent opposition when Jeremiah proposed the introduction of port wine
in lieu of the malt which had hitherto been the inspiration of their
counsels, and he was somewhat refractory when the dictator insisted upon
turning out the seats of the last generation and introducing modern
chairs. But upon both points the boatbuilder was outvoted; and in
obedience to Mr. Snaggs the senators dozed upon nauseous port, and
fidgeted upon cane bottoms, for the space of six years. Look now! You
smile at the disputes of a Thomas and a Snaggs! Yet why? What is there
of greater moment in those of a Londonderry and a Brougham?
A period, however, was soon put to this terrible system of misrule: an
old favourite of the hundred returned from fighting his country’s
battles, in which occupation he had been perseveringly engaged for the
last fourteen years. Sergeant Kerrick was disgusted with the innovations
of the day, and set vigorously to work to drive them before him, as he
expressed himself, at the point of the bayonet. The sergeant was always
a fine man, but he was now a cripple into the bargain; he had always
majestic black eyes, but he had now the additional advantage of having a
cut over both; he had always the two legs of Hercules, but now--glorious
destiny!--he had only one to stand upon. He was irresistible! The
veranda, the roast mutton, the will--all, all was forgotten. In a short
time Snaggs was beat by unheard-of majorities; a week--and the tide of
Whitbread’s best was turned into its proper channel; another--and the
cane-bottoms were kicked ignominiously from the Parliament. Thomas the
boatbuilder, who had seceded in disappointment, was brought back in
triumph; the dictator in vain attempted to check the progress of the
revolution! baffled, defeated, insulted on all sides, he retired from
the field in dismay, and died within a week afterwards from the falling
of his veranda. His death produced no sensation; for it was evident that
the man of war had been already installed in his place.
The Sergeant bore his faculties right meekly, and promoted the
restoration of _l’ancien régime_ to the utmost of his abilities. During
his administration people began to talk with some little degree of
freedom, although at first they were much awed by the laurels and the
scars of their president. They had a wondrous idea of the wisdom he had
attained upon his travels. How could they talk of politics in his
presence? Why, gracious! he had held the Emperor o’ Russia’s stirrup at
Petersburg, and taken off his hat to the Pope o’ Rome--ay! and caught a
glimpse o’ Boney to boot. Then, as to religious matters! why the Vicar
was nothing to him: he had seen some nations that pray cross-legged, and
some that pray in the open air, and some that don’t pray at all; and he
had been to St. Peter’s, and a place they call the Pantheon, and all
among the convents and nunneries, where they shut up young folk to make
clergymen of them. It is not surprising that all this condensation of
knowledge produced much veneration in the neighbourhood; it wore off,
however, rapidly, and his companions began to enjoy the tales of his
hardships, his privations, his battles, and his triumphs, without any
feeling of distance or dissatisfaction. Enchanted by the stories he
told, enchanted still more by the enthusiasm with which he told them,
the _Patres Conscripti_ began to despise their hitherto pacific habits;
they carried their sticks on their shoulders, instead of trailing them
on the ground; they longed
To follow to the field some warlike lord;
all of them began to look big, and one or two made some proficiency in
swearing. By the edict of the dictator, the Biblical prints which were
ranged round the chamber made room for coloured representations of
Cressy and Agincourt; and the table was moved into such a situation as
to give sufficient room for the manual exercise. The women of the
village began to be frightened; Matthew Lock, a fine young man of
eighteen, ran away to be listed; Mark Fender, a fine old man of eighty,
lost an eye in learning parry tierce; two able-bodied artisans caught an
ague by counter-marching in a shower; apprehensions of a military
government began to be pretty general--when suddenly the dictator was
taken off by an apoplexy. _Ibi omnis effusus labor!_ He died when the
organization of the corps was just completed; he was carried to his
final quarters in great state, and three pistols and a blunderbuss were
fired over his grave. Why should we contemn his lowly sepulchre? He
died--and so did Alexander.
The warlike Tullus was succeeded by the pacific Numa. Kerrick, the
sergeant, was succeeded by Nicholas, the clerk. The six months during
which the progeny of Mars had held the reins of government, had
unsettled everything; the six weeks which saw Nicholas in his stead set
everything in its place again. In the course of a few days it was
discovered that drab was a better colour than red, and that an
oyster-knife was a prettier weapon than a bayonet. In this short reign
the magnates of the place imbibed a strong taste for literature and the
arts. The blunderbuss was exchanged for the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and
one of the pistols for the “Whole Duty of Man.” Nicholas himself was a
man of considerable acquirements; he was the best reader in the place
next to the Vicar, and by dint of much scraping and perseverance he had
managed to fill two shelves with a heterogeneous confusion of ancient
and modern lore. There was an odd volume of the “History of England,”
sundry ditto of sermons, an account of “Anson’s Voyage Round the World,”
and “The righte Pathe toe Welle-Doinge,” by Geoffry Mixon. There was
also a sage treatise on Ghosts, Spectres, Apparitions, &c., which
instigated me to various acts of atrocity, to which I shall presently
allude.
Nicholas had presided over the conclave for four months in uninterrupted
tranquillity, when an incident occurred which put the firmness of his
character to the test. The Parliament had just finished their second jug
one evening, and were beginning to think of an adjournment, when a low
rumbling noise, like the echo of distant thunder, was heard, and in a
moment afterwards the door, as it were spontaneously, flew open, and a
spectre flew in. It is needless for me to describe the spectre: it was,
_selon règle_, above the common height, with pale cheeks, hollow voice,
and staring eyes. It advanced to the dictator’s chair, and moaned, in an
audible murmur, “I am thine evil genius, Nicholas! Thou shalt see me at
church on Sunday.” And then it immediately vanished, nobody knew how or
where. Well indeed it might, for few of the company were qualified to
play the spy on its motions. The clerk, however, is said to have kept
his seat with great firmness; and all avowed that they had followed his
example. Howbeit, unless my memory fails me, there was a whisper that
the saddler contrived to be looking under the table for a sixpence, and
the exciseman’s sooty appearance told dirty tales of the chimney. The
clerk was much importuned not to hazard himself in the church upon the
fated Sabbath; but upon this point he was obstinate: it was finally
agreed to conceal the matter, and in the event of the apparition’s
reappearance to set the minister at him.
On the Sunday (for I suppose the reader is aware that I was intimately
acquainted with the causes of the alarm) it was very amusing to watch
the different faces of terror or expectation which appeared at public
worship, to mark the quivering hue on the sallow cheek of the exciseman,
and listen to the querulous intonation of the clerk’s Amen. When at last
the sermon was concluded, Nicholas gave his final twang in such a manner
that to my ears it resembled an _Io pæan_. He rose from his knees with a
countenance of such unmingled, unrepressed triumph, that I could no
longer restrain myself! I laughed. Alas! dearly did I rue, unhappy
wight, that freak of sacrilegious jocularity.
“And is this all!” See now; you laugh at this deception because a
foolish boy was its instrument, and an honest clerk its victim. Have you
not often pored, with romantic interest, upon tales of impostures
equally gross? Have you not read with horror the celebrated warning of
Dion? Have you not shuddered at, “I am thine evil spirit, Brutus; thou
shalt see me again at Philippi?” and yet
What’s in a name?
“Nicholas” will raise a spirit as well as “Brutus.”
The dictator’s seat was soon after vacated. Ellen, the Vicar’s daughter,
had died some years before; and her father, finding himself unable to
reconcile himself to the residence which she had so long endeared to
him, prepared to quit the village. It was supposed that poor Nicholas
was overpowered by the misfortune of his patron: certain it is that he
died very quietly one fine summer’s evening, quite prepared for his end,
and in the fullest possession of his faculties. He was followed to his
grave by as sincere a crowd of mourners as ever wept at a poor man’s
obsequies. There is no urn, no column, no monumental splendour where he
sleeps! But what of this? Nicholas is dust--and so is Cheops.
One more name lives in my recollection. The old clerk bequeathed his
library and his authority to his favourite, Arthur. Arthur!--he had no
other name. That of his father was unknown to him, and he was taken from
life before his merits had earned one. He was a foundling. He had been
left at the old clerk’s door some years before I was born; and Nicholas
had relieved the parish of the expense, and had educated him with all
the attention of a father. I will not relate the whisper which went
about at the time, nor the whispers which succeeded afterwards. Arthur
grew in health and beauty, and was quite the pet of the neighbourhood;
he had talents too, which seemed designed for brighter days; and
patience, which made even his bitter lot endurable. He used to write
verses which were the admiration of the synod; and sang his hearers to
sleep occasionally with all the good-nature imaginable. At last a critic
of distinguished note, who was spending a few months near the hamlet,
happened to get a sight of the boy’s poetry, and took a fancy to him. He
taught him to read and recite with feeling; pointed out to him the
beauties and the errors of the models which he put into his hands; and,
on his departure, gave him the works of several of our modern worthies,
and promised that he would not forget him. However he did forget him, or
gave no symptoms of his remembrance.
The old clerk died, and Arthur felt alone in the world. Still he had
many friends; and when the first burst of his regret was over,
comfortable prospects again began to dawn upon him. He again mingled in
the society of the village; and the dictator’s chair in the
chimney-corner, which had been vacated during this short interregnum,
was given up to him cheerfully. He was beloved, esteemed, looked up to,
by every one. Another circumstance, too, seemed likely to add to his
happiness: he fixed his affections on a young woman, the daughter of an
inhabitant of the place; his passion was returned with interest, and
the latter opposed no obstacle to its gratification.
On a sudden his whole appearance and behaviour was altered. He seemed as
if awaking from a delightful dream; nothing which he had loved or
pursued appeared to have charms for him any longer. When he was
questioned as to the cause of his depression, he hinted obscurely that
“it was no matter; the infamy which his parents had heaped upon him he
would bear alone; he would entangle no one else in the misery which was
and must be his own portion.” This was all the explanation he gave; but
it was enough to show that he had given himself up to the dominion of a
morbid sensibility, which must finally be his destruction.
He ceased to lead, as he formerly was wont to do, the opinions and
pursuits of his neighbours. They had always bowed to his criticisms, his
logic, his lectures; but criticism, logic, and lectures were now silent.
He would sit in the chair of dignity hour after hour, and utter no word:
sometimes, however, he would appear to shake off, with a painful
struggle, the feelings which oppressed him, and would break out suddenly
into flashes of a broad but irresistible humour, which Burns, in his
brightest moments, could not have surpassed; and then he would relapse
again into gloom and taciturnity. But his mind, thus kept in a state of
continual agitation and excitement, was sinking fast beneath it. The
girl, too, whom he loved, was wretched through his refinement of
passion. She believed herself slighted, and her coldness aggravated his
torments. This could not last! It did not.
One day he did not make his appearance in the village. One of his
friends, going to his cottage, found the door fastened; and, upon
calling, received no answer. The neighbourhood became alarmed; and
several of his acquaintance searched in vain for him. He was not by the
stream, where he often sat in solitude till the noxious dew fell round
him; nor in the grove, where he used to listen to the nightingales till
fancy filled up the pauses in their songs; nor by the window, where he
would stand and gaze unconsciously till the sight of that dear face
drove him from the scene of enchantment. At last they forced open his
door; I entered with them. The poor youth was sitting at his
writing-table, in his old patron’s armchair; the pen seemed to have just
fallen from his hand; the ink on its nib was hardly dry; but he was
quite still, quite silent, quite cold.
His last thoughts seemed to have been spent upon the stanzas which were
on the table before him. I will transcribe them, rather as an
illustration of his story than as a specimen of his talents. Some of the
lines gave rise to a conjecture that he had been the author of his own
death, but nothing appeared to warrant the suspicion.
I have a devil in my brain!--
He haunts me when I sleep,
And points his finger at my ρain,
And will not let me weep:
And ever, as he hears me groan,
He says the cause is all my own.
I shall be calm anon!--I had
A pleasant dream of bliss;
And now they tell me I am mad--
Why should I mourn for this?
My good, kind parents! Answer ye,
For what I am, and am to be.
Alas! I have forgotten, dear,
The pledging and the vow;
There is a falsehood in my tear,
I do not love thee now:
Or how could I endure to go,
And look, and laugh, and leave thee so?
Thou shall not come to my caress,
Thou shalt not bear my name;
Nor sorrow in my wretchedness,
Nor wither in my shame;
Mine is the misery and the moan,
And I will die--but die alone!
Him too I saw carried to his narrow dwelling-place. In his latter days
he had been regarded by his companions with a kind of superstitious awe;
and, as his coffin fell with its solemn, reverberating sound, into its
allotted space, the bearers looked upon each other with an expression of
conscious mystery, and many shook their heads in silence. I lingered
round the spot when they departed, and planted a rose upon his humble
mound.
I was to leave the village the next day in order to fix my abode among
the haunts of busy men. In the evening, feeling a melancholy which I
could not shake off, I took up my hat and wandered towards the
churchyard. From a distance I perceived a bright and delicate figure
hastily retiring from my approach. I leaned over the remains of the
kind, the enthusiastic, the affectionate! The rose which I had planted
there glistened beneath the moon. It was not the dew: it was something
more clear, more precious--it was one beautiful tear! I had rather have
such a tear on my grave than a pyramid of marble.
ON TRUE FRIENDSHIP.
“Infido scurræ distabit amicus.”--HORACE.
How very seldom do we find any one who has a relish for real
friendship--who can set a due value upon its approbation, and pay a due
regard to its censures! Adulation lives, and pleases; truth dies, and is
forgotten. The flattery of the fool is always pungent and delicious; the
rebuke of the wise is ever irksome and hateful. Wherefore, then, do we
accuse the Fates when they withhold from us the blessings of friendship,
if we ourselves have not the capacity for enjoying them?
Schah Sultan Hossein, says an old Persian fable, had two favourites.
Mahamood was very designing and smooth-tongued; Selim was very open and
plain-spoken. After a space, the intrigues of Mahamood had the upper
hand, and Selim was banished from the court. Then Zobeide, the mother of
the Sultan’s mother, a wise woman, and one learned in all the learning
of the Persians, stood before the throne, and spoke thus:--
“When I was young I was said to be beautiful. Upon one occasion a great
_fête_ was to be given. The handmaids dressed my hair in an inner
apartment. ‘Look,’ said one, ‘how bright are her eyes!’ ‘What a
complexion,’ said another, ‘is upon her cheeks!’ ‘What sweetness,’ cried
a third, ‘in her voice!’ I grew sick of all this adulation. I sent my
woman from me, and complained to myself bitterly. ‘Why have I not,’ I
cried, ‘some friend on whom I can rely; who will tell me with sincerity
when the roses on my cheeks begin to fade and the darkness of my
eyebrows to want colouring? But alas! this is impossible.’
“As I spoke, a beneficent Genius rose from the ground before me. ‘I have
brought thee,’ he said, ‘what thou didst require: thou shalt no longer
have occasion to reproach the Prophet for denying thee that which, if
granted, thou wouldst thyself destroy.’ So saying, he held forth to me a
small locket, and disappeared.
“I opened it impatiently. It contained a small plate, in shape like a
horseman’s shield, but so bright that the brightness of twenty shields
would be dim before it: I looked, and beheld every charm upon which I
valued myself reflected upon its surface. ‘Delightful monitor!’ I
exclaimed, ‘thou shalt ever be my companion; in thee I may safely
confide; thou art not mercenary, nor changeable; thou wilt always speak
to me the truth--as thou dost now!’ and I kissed its polish exultingly,
and hastened to the _fête_.
“Something happened to ruffle my temper, and I returned to the palace
out of humour with myself and the world. I took up my treasure. Heavens!
what a change was there! My eyes were red with weeping--my lips
distorted with vexation; my beauty was changed into deformity--my
dimples were converted into frowns. ‘Liar!’ I cried, in a frenzy of
passion, ‘what meanest thou by this insolence? Art thou not in my power,
and dost thou provoke me to wrath?’ I dashed my monitor to the earth,
and went in search of the consolation of my flatterers!”
Zobeide here ceased. I know not whether the reader will comprehend the
application of her narrative. The Sultan did--and Selim was recalled.
THE COUNTRY CURATE.
“Tenui censu, sine crimine notum,
Et properare loco, et cessare, et quærere, et uti.”--HOR.
It was with feelings of the most unmixed delight that on my way to the
north I contemplated spending one evening with my old friend Charles
Torrens. I call him my friend, although he is six or seven years my
senior; because his manners and his habits have always nearly resembled
those of a boy, and have seemed more suitable to my age than to his.
Some years ago, partly in consequence of his own imprudence, the poor
fellow was in very low circumstances; but he has now, by one of those
sudden freaks of fortune which nobody knows how to account for, become
sleek and fat, and well-to-do in the world; with a noble patron, a
pretty wife, and the next presentation to a living of a thousand a year.
I arrived at the village of---- about sunset, and inquired for the house
of Mr. Torrens. Of the children to whom I applied no one seemed to
understand me at all; at last one of them, a ’cuter lad than his
companions, scratched his head for half a minute, and exclaimed, “Oh!
why, sure, you mean Master Charles, our curate! Gracious! to think of
calling him Mr. Torrens!” I afterwards learned that this hopeful
disciple had the office of looking to the curate’s night-lines. However,
he led me to the house, giggling all the way at the formality of “Mr.
Torrens.” I was prepared by this to find my old acquaintance as warm,
and as wild, and as childish as ever.
His residence was a red brick dwelling-house, which you would call a
house by right and a cottage by courtesy: it seemed to possess, like the
owner, all requisites for hospitality and kindness, and to want, like
him, all pretensions to decoration and show. “This is as it should be,”
I said to myself; “I shall sleep soundly beneath such a roof as this;”
and so I threw up the latch of the garden-gate, and went in. Charles was
in the kitchen garden behind the house, looking at his strawberry beds.
I walked round to meet him. I will not describe the pleasure with which
we shook hands: my readers well know what it is to meet a dear and
cherished friend after a long absence. I know not which was the happier
of the two.
“Well,” he said, “here I am, you see, settled in a snug competency, with
a dry roof over my head, and a little bit of turf around me. I have had
some knowledge of Fortune’s slippery ways, and I thank my stars that I
have pretty well got out of her reach. Charles Torrens can never be
miserable while there’s good fishing every hour in the day in his
lordship’s ponds, and good venison every Sunday in the year in his
lordship’s dining-room. Here you see me settled, as it were, in my
_otium cum dignitate_, without a wish beyond the welfare of my wife and
the ripening of my melons; and what gives my enjoyments their greatest
zest, Peregrine, is, that though the road to them was rather a hilly
one, I kept out of the gutters as well as I could. What is it Horace
says, Peregrine?
Neque majorem feci ratione malâ rem,
Nec sum facturus vitio culpâve minorem;--
that is, I did not grow rich like a rascal, and I sha’n’t grow poor like
a fool; though (thanks to my uncle, the Nabob) I can afford to give a
young friend a bed and a breakfast, without pinching myself and my
servants the next week! But, bless me! how I am letting my tongue run
on. I haven’t introduced you to Margaret yet;” and so saying, he took my
arm, and hurried me into his drawing-room. His bride was a very pleasing
woman--a lover might well call her a beautiful one; she seemed about
one-and-twenty, and possessed every requisite to confer happiness upon a
husband of my friend’s wandering habits. She had sufficient good-nature
to let him wander abroad, but she had, at the same time, sufficient
attractions to keep him at home; her forbearance never scolded him for
his stay at another’s hearth, but her good sense always took care to
make his own agreeable to him. A clever wife would have piqued him, a
silly wife would have bored him: Margaret was the _aurea mediocritas_,
and I could see that he was sincerely attached to her.
The next morning I walked into his library, and was not a little amused
by the heterogeneous treasures which it presented. Paley seemed somewhat
surprised to find himself on the same shelf with “The Complete Angler,”
and Blair, in his decent vestment of calf-skin, was looking with
consummate contempt upon the morocco coat of his next neighbour, Colonel
Thornton. A fowling-piece, fishing-rod, and powder-horn were the
principal decorations of the room.
On the table was a portfolio containing a variety of manuscripts,
unfinished sermons, stanzas, complete in all but the rhymes; bills,
receipts, and recipes for the diseases of horses. Among them I found a
little memorandum-book for 1818: it contained a sketch of his way of
life previous to his accession of fortune. I transcribed four days of
it, and hope he will thank me for putting them in print.