CHAPTER III.

Apparebat eidolon _senex_.

PLINY.

The manuscript was discoloured, obliterated, and mutilated beyond any

that had ever before exercised the patience of a reader. Michaelis

himself, scrutinizing into the pretended autograph of St Mark at Venice,

never had a harder time of it.--Melmoth could make out only a sentence

here and there. The writer, it appeared, was an Englishman of the name

of Stanton, who had travelled abroad shortly after the Restoration.

Travelling was not then attended with the facilities which modern

improvement has introduced, and scholars and literati, the intelligent,

the idle, and the curious, wandered over the Continent for years, like

_Tom Coryat_, though they had the modesty, on their return, to entitle

the result of their multiplied observations and labours only

“crudities.”

Stanton, about the year 1676, was in Spain; he was, like most of the

travellers of that age, a man of literature, intelligence, and

curiosity, but ignorant of the language of the country, and fighting his

way at times from convent to convent, in quest of what was called

“Hospitality,” that is, obtaining board and lodging on the condition of

holding a debate in Latin, on some point theological or metaphysical,

with any monk who would become the champion of the strife. Now, as the

theology was Catholic, and the metaphysics Aristotelian, Stanton

sometimes wished himself at the miserable Posada from whose filth and

famine he had been fighting his escape; but though his reverend

antagonists always denounced his creed, and comforted themselves, even

in defeat, with the assurance that he must be damned, on the double

score of his being a heretic and an Englishman, they were obliged to

confess that his Latin was good, and his logic unanswerable; and he was

allowed, in most cases, to sup and sleep in peace. This was not doomed

to be his fate on the night of the 17th August 1677, when he found

himself in the plains of Valencia, deserted by a cowardly guide, who had

been terrified by the sight of a cross erected as a memorial of a

murder, had slipped off his mule unperceived, crossing himself every

step he took on his retreat from the heretic, and left Stanton amid the

terrors of an approaching storm, and the dangers of an unknown country.

The sublime and yet softened beauty of the scenery around, had filled

the soul of Stanton with delight, and he enjoyed that delight as

Englishmen generally do, silently.

The magnificent remains of two dynasties that had passed away, the ruins

of Roman palaces, and of Moorish fortresses, were around and above

him;--the dark and heavy thunder-clouds that advanced slowly, seemed

like the shrouds of these spectres of departed greatness; they

approached, but did not yet overwhelm or conceal them, as if nature

herself was for once awed by the power of man; and far below, the lovely

valley of Valencia blushed and burned in all the glory of sunset, like a

bride receiving the last glowing kiss of the bridegroom before the

approach of night. Stanton gazed around. The difference between the

architecture of the Roman and Moorish ruins struck him. Among the former

are the remains of a theatre, and something like a public place; the

latter present only the remains of fortresses, embattled, castellated,

and fortified from top to bottom,--not a loop-hole for pleasure to get

in by,--the loop-holes were only for arrows; all denoted military power

and despotic subjugation _a l’outrance_. The contrast might have pleased

a philosopher, and he might have indulged in the reflection, that though

the ancient Greeks and Romans were savages, (as Dr Johnson says all

people who want a press must be, and he says truly), yet they were

wonderful savages for their time, for they alone have left _traces of

their taste for pleasure_ in the countries they conquered, in their

superb theatres, temples, (which were also dedicated to pleasure one way

or another), and baths, while other conquering bands of savages never

left any thing behind them but traces of their rage for power. So

thought Stanton, as he still saw strongly defined, though darkened by

the darkening clouds, the huge skeleton of a Roman amphitheatre, its

arched and gigantic colonnades now admitting a gleam of light, and now

commingling with the purple thunder-cloud; and now the solid and heavy

mass of a Moorish fortress, no light playing between its impermeable

walls,--the image of power, dark, isolated, impenetrable. Stanton forgot

his cowardly guide, his loneliness, his danger amid an approaching storm

and an inhospitable country, where his name and country would shut every

door against him, and every peal of thunder would be supposed justified

by the daring intrusion of a heretic in the dwelling of an _old

Christian_, as the Spanish Catholics absurdly term themselves, to mark

the distinction between them and the baptised Moors.--All this was

forgot in contemplating the glorious and awful scenery before

him,--light struggling with darkness,--and darkness menacing a light

still more terrible, and announcing its menace in the blue and livid

mass of cloud that hovered like a destroying angel in the air, its

arrows aimed, but their direction awfully indefinite. But he ceased to

forget these local and petty dangers, as the sublimity of romance would

term them, when he saw the first flash of the lightning, broad and red

as the banners of an insulting army whose motto is _Væ victis_, shatter

to atoms the remains of a Roman tower;--the rifted stones rolled down

the hill, and fell at the feet of Stanton. He stood appalled, and,

awaiting his summons from the Power in whose eye pyramids, palaces, and

the worms whose toil has formed them, and the worms who toil out their

existence under their shadow or their pressure, are perhaps all alike

contemptible, he stood collected, and for a moment felt that defiance of

danger which danger itself excites, and we love to encounter it as a

physical enemy, to bid it “do its worst,” and feel that its worst will

perhaps be ultimately its best for us. He stood and saw another flash

dart its bright, brief, and malignant glance over the ruins of ancient

power, and the luxuriance of recent fertility. Singular contrast! The

relics of art for ever decaying,--the productions of nature for ever

renewed.--(Alas! for what purpose are they renewed, better than to mock

at the perishable monuments which men try in vain to rival them by). The

pyramids themselves must perish, but the grass that grows between their

disjointed stones will be renewed from year to year. Stanton was

thinking thus, when all power of thought was suspended, by seeing two

persons bearing between them the body of a young, and apparently very

lovely girl, who had been struck dead by the lightning. Stanton

approached, and heard the voices of the bearers repeating, “There is

none who will mourn for her!” “There is none who will mourn for her!”

said other voices, as two more bore in their arms the blasted and

blackened figure of what had once been a man, comely and

graceful;--“there is not _one_ to mourn for her now!” They were lovers,

and he had been consumed by the flash that had destroyed her, while in

the act of endeavouring to defend her. As they were about to remove the

bodies, a person approached with a calmness of step and demeanour, as if

he were alone unconscious of danger, and incapable of fear; and after

looking on them for some time, burst into a laugh so loud, wild, and

protracted, that the peasants, starting with as much horror at the sound

as at that of the storm, hurried away, bearing the corse with them. Even

Stanton’s fears were subdued by his astonishment, and, turning to the

stranger, who remained standing on the same spot, he asked the reason of

such an outrage on humanity. The stranger, slowly turning round, and

disclosing a countenance which---- (Here the manuscript was illegible

for a few lines), said in English---- (A long hiatus followed here, and

the next passage that was legible, though it proved to be a continuation

of the narrative, was but a fragment). * * * * * *

The terrors of the night rendered Stanton a sturdy and unappeasable

applicant; and the shrill voice of the old woman, repeating, “no

heretic--no English--Mother of God protect us--avaunt Satan!”--combined

with the clatter of the wooden casement (peculiar to the houses in

Valentia) which she opened to discharge her volley of anathematization,

and shut again as the lightning glanced through the aperture, were

unable to repel his importunate request for admittance, in a night whose

terrors ought to soften all the miserable petty local passions into one

awful feeling of fear for the Power who caused it, and compassion for

those who were exposed to it.--But Stanton felt there was something more

than national bigotry in the exclamations of the old woman; there was a

peculiar and personal horror of the English.--And he was right; but this

did not diminish the eagerness of his * * * * * The house was handsome

and spacious, but the melancholy appearance of desertion * * * * * * * *

* * * --The benches were by the wall, but there were none to sit there;

the tables were spread in what had been the hall, but it seemed as if

none had gathered round them for many years;--the clock struck audibly,

there was no voice of mirth or of occupation to drown its sound; time

told his awful lesson to silence alone;--the hearths were black with

fuel long since consumed;--the family portraits looked as if they were

the only tenants of the mansion; they seemed to say, from their

mouldering frames, “there are none to gaze on us;” and the echo of the

steps of Stanton and his feeble guide, was the only sound audible

between the peals of thunder that rolled still awfully, but more

distantly,--every peal like the exhausted murmurs of a spent heart. As

they passed on, a shriek was heard. Stanton paused, and fearful images

of the dangers to which travellers on the Continent are exposed in

deserted and remote habitations, came into his mind. “Don’t heed it,”

said the old woman, lighting him on with a miserable lamp;--“it is only

he * * * * * * * * * * * The old woman having now satisfied herself, by

ocular demonstration, that her English guest, even if he was the devil,

had neither horn, hoof, or tail, that he could bear the sign of the

cross without changing his form, and that, when he spoke, not a puff of

sulphur came out of his mouth, began to take courage, and at length

commenced her story, which, weary and comfortless as Stanton was, * * *

* *

“Every obstacle was now removed; parents and relations at last gave up

all opposition, and the young pair were united. Never was there a

lovelier,--they seemed like angels who had only anticipated by a few

years their celestial and eternal union. The marriage was solemnized

with much pomp, and a few days after there was a feast in that very

wainscotted chamber which you paused to remark was so gloomy. It was

that night hung with rich tapestry, representing the exploits of the

Cid, particularly that of his burning a few Moors who refused to

renounce their accursed religion. They were represented beautifully

tortured, writhing and howling, and “Mahomet! Mahomet!” issuing out of

their mouths, as they called on him in their burning agonies;--you could

almost hear them scream. At the upper end of the room, under a splendid

estrade, over which was an image of the blessed Virgin, sat Donna

Isabella de Cardoza, mother to the bride, and near her Donna Ines, the

bride, on rich almohadas; the bridegroom sat opposite to her; and though

they never spoke to each other, their eyes, slowly raised, but suddenly

withdrawn, (those eyes that blushed), told to each other the delicious

secret of their happiness. Don Pedro de Cardoza had assembled a large

party in honour of his daughter’s nuptials; among them was an Englishman

of the name of _Melmoth_, a traveller; no one knew who had brought him

there. He sat silent like the rest, while the iced waters and the

sugared wafers were presented to the company. The night was intensely

hot, and the moon glowed like a sun over the ruins of Saguntum; the

embroidered blinds flapped heavily, as if the wind made an effort to

raise them in vain, and then desisted.

(Another defect in the manuscript occurred here, but it was soon

supplied).

* * * *

“The company were dispersed through various alleys of the garden; the

bridegroom and bride wandered through one where the delicious perfume of

the orange trees mingled itself with that of the myrtles in blow. On

their return to the hall, both of them asked, Had the company heard the

exquisite sounds that floated through the garden just before they

quitted it? No one had heard them. They expressed their surprise. The

Englishman had never quitted the hall; it was said he smiled with a most

particular and extraordinary expression as the remark was made. His

silence had been noticed before, but it was ascribed to his ignorance of

the Spanish language, an ignorance that Spaniards are not anxious either

to expose or remove by speaking to a stranger. The subject of the music

was not again reverted to till the guests were seated at supper, when

Donna Ines and her young husband, exchanging a smile of delighted

surprise, exclaimed they heard the same delicious sounds floating round

them. The guests listened, but no one else could hear it;--every one

felt there was something extraordinary in this. Hush! was uttered by

every voice almost at the same moment. A dead silence followed,--you

would think, from their intent looks, that they listened with their very

eyes. This deep silence, contrasted with the splendour of the feast, and

the light effused from torches held by the domestics, produced a

singular effect,--it seemed for some moments like an assembly of the

dead. The silence was interrupted, though the cause of wonder had not

ceased, by the entrance of Father Olavida, the Confessor of Donna

Isabella, who had been called away previous to the feast, to administer

extreme unction to a dying man in the neighbourhood. He was a priest of

uncommon sanctity, beloved in the family, and respected in the

neighbourhood, where he had displayed uncommon taste and talents for

exorcism;--in fact, this was the good Father’s _forte_, and he piqued

himself on it accordingly. The devil never fell into worse hands than

Father Olavida’s, for when he was so contumacious as to resist Latin,

and even the first verses of the Gospel of St John in Greek, which the

good Father never had recourse to but in cases of extreme stubbornness

and difficulty,--(here Stanton recollected the English story of the _Boy

of Bilson_, and blushed even in Spain for his countrymen),--then he

always applied to the Inquisition; and if the devils were ever so

obstinate before, they were always seen to fly out of the possessed,

just as, in the midst of their cries, (no doubt of blasphemy), they were

tied to the stake. Some held out even till the flames surrounded them;

but even the most stubborn must have been dislodged when the operation

was over, for the devil himself could no longer tenant a crisp and

glutinous lump of cinders. Thus Father Olavida’s fame spread far and

wide, and the Cardoza family had made uncommon interest to procure him

for a Confessor, and happily succeeded. The ceremony he had just been

performing, had cast a shade over the good Father’s countenance, but it

dispersed as he mingled among the guests, and was introduced to them.

Room was soon made for him, and he happened accidentally to be seated

opposite the Englishman. As the wine was presented to him, Father

Olavida, (who, as I observed, was a man of singular sanctity), prepared

to utter a short internal prayer. He hesitated,--trembled,--desisted;

and, putting down the wine, wiped the drops from his forehead with the

sleeve of his habit. Donna Isabella gave a sign to a domestic, and other

wine of a higher quality was offered to him. His lips moved, as if in

the effort to pronounce a benediction on it and the company, but the

effort again failed; and the change in his countenance was so

extraordinary, that it was perceived by all the guests. He felt the

sensation that his extraordinary appearance excited, and attempted to

remove it by again endeavouring to lift the cup to his lips. So strong

was the anxiety with which the company watched him, that the only sound

heard in that spacious and crowded hall, was the rustling of his habit,

as he attempted to lift the cup to his lips once more--in vain. The

guests sat in astonished silence. Father Olavida alone remained

standing; but at that moment the Englishman rose, and appeared

determined to fix Olavida’s regards by a gaze like that of fascination.

Olavida rocked, reeled, grasped the arm of a page, and at last, closing

his eyes for a moment, as if to escape the horrible fascination of that

unearthly glare, (the Englishman’s eyes were observed by all the guests,

from the moment of his entrance, to effuse a most fearful and

preternatural lustre), exclaimed, “Who is among us?--Who?--I cannot

utter a blessing while he is here. I cannot feel one. Where he treads,

the earth is parched!--Where he breathes, the air is fire!--Where he

feeds, the food is poison!--Where he turns, his glance is

lightning!--_Who is among us?_--_Who?_” repeated the priest in the agony

of adjuration, while his cowl fallen back, his few thin hairs around the

scalp instinct and alive with terrible emotion, his outspread arms

protruded from the sleeves of his habit, and extended towards the awful

stranger, suggested the idea of an inspired being in the dreadful

rapture of prophetic denunciation. He stood--still stood, and the

Englishman stood calmly opposite to him. There was an agitated

irregularity in the attitudes of those around them, which contrasted

strongly the fixed and stern postures of those two, who remained gazing

silently at each other. “Who knows him?” exclaimed Olavida, starting

apparently from a trance; “who knows him? who brought him here?”

The guests severally disclaimed all knowledge of the Englishman, and

each asked the other in whispers, “who _had_ brought him there?” Father

Olavida then pointed his arm to each of the company, and asked each

individually, “Do you know him?” “No! no! no!” was uttered with vehement

emphasis by every individual. “But I know him,” said Olavida, “by these

cold drops!” and he wiped them off;--“by these convulsed joints!” and he

attempted to sign the cross, but could not. He raised his voice, and

evidently speaking with increased difficulty,--“By this bread and wine,

which the faithful receive as the body and blood of Christ, but which

_his_ presence converts into matter as viperous as the suicide foam of

the dying Judas,--by all these--I know him, and command him to be

gone!--He is--he is----” and he bent forwards as he spoke, and gazed on

the Englishman with an expression which the mixture of rage, hatred, and

fear, rendered terrible. All the guests rose at these words,--the whole

company now presented two singular groupes, that of the amazed guests

all collected together, and repeating, “Who, what is he?” and that of

the Englishman, who stood unmoved, and Olavida, who dropped dead in the

attitude of pointing to him. * * * * * * * * * * * *

The body was removed into another room, and the departure of the

Englishman was not noticed till the company returned to the hall. They

sat late together, conversing on this extraordinary circumstance, and

finally agreed to remain in the house, lest the evil spirit (for they

believed the Englishman no better) should take certain liberties with

the corse by no means agreeable to a Catholic, particularly as he had

manifestly died without the benefit of the last sacraments. Just as this

laudable resolution was formed, they were roused by cries of horror and

agony from the bridal-chamber, where the young pair had retired.

They hurried to the door, but the father was first. They burst it open,

and found the bride a corse in the arms of her husband. * * * * * * * He

never recovered his reason; the family deserted the mansion rendered

terrible by so many misfortunes. One apartment is still tenanted by the

unhappy maniac; his were the cries you heard as you traversed the

deserted rooms. He is for the most part silent during the day, but at

midnight he always exclaims, in a voice frightfully piercing, and hardly

human, “They are coming! they are coming!” and relapses into profound

silence.

The funeral of Father Olavida was attended by an extraordinary

circumstance. He was interred in a neighbouring convent; and the

reputation of his sanctity, joined to the interest caused by his

extraordinary death, collected vast numbers at the ceremony. His funeral

sermon was preached by a monk of distinguished eloquence, appointed for

the purpose. To render the effect of his discourse more powerful, the

corse, extended on a bier, with its face uncovered, was placed in the

aisle. The monk took his text from one of the prophets,--“Death is gone

up into our palaces.” He expatiated on mortality, whose approach,

whether abrupt or lingering, is alike awful to man.--He spoke of the

vicissitudes of empires with much eloquence and learning, but his

audience were not observed to be much affected.--He cited various

passages from the lives of the saints, descriptive of the glories of

martyrdom, and the heroism of those who had bled and blazed for Christ

and his blessed mother, but they appeared still waiting for something to

touch them more deeply. When he inveighed against the tyrants under

whose bloody persecutions those holy men suffered, his hearers were

roused for a moment, for it is always easier to excite a passion than a

moral feeling. But when he spoke of the dead, and pointed with emphatic

gesture to the corse, as it lay before them cold and motionless, every

eye was fixed, and every ear became attentive. Even the lovers, who,

under pretence of dipping their fingers into the holy water, were

contriving to exchange amorous billets, forbore for one moment this

interesting intercourse, to listen to the preacher. He dwelt with much

energy on the virtues of the deceased, whom he declared to be a

particular favourite of the Virgin; and enumerating the various losses

that would be caused by his departure to the community to which he

belonged, to society, and to religion at large; he at last worked up

himself to a vehement expostulation with the Deity on the occasion. “Why

hast thou,” he exclaimed, “why hast thou, Oh God! thus dealt with us?

Why hast thou snatched from our sight this glorious saint, whose merits,

if properly applied, doubtless would have been sufficient to atone for

the apostacy of St Peter, the opposition of St Paul, (previous to his

conversion), and even the treachery of Judas himself? Why hast thou, Oh

God! snatched him from us?”--and a deep and hollow voice from among the

congregation answered,--“Because he deserved his fate.” The murmurs of

approbation with which the congregation honoured this apostrophe,

half-drowned this extraordinary interruption; and though there was some

little commotion in the immediate vicinity of the speaker, the rest of

the audience continued to listen intently. “What,” proceeded the

preacher, pointing to the corse, “what hath laid thee there, servant of

God?”--“Pride, ignorance, and fear,” answered the same voice, in accents

still more thrilling. The disturbance now became universal. The preacher

paused, and a circle opening, disclosed the figure of a monk belonging

to the convent, who stood among them. * * * * * * *

After all the usual modes of admonition, exhortation, and discipline

had been employed, and the bishop of the diocese, who, under the report

of these extraordinary circumstances, had visited the convent in person

to obtain some explanation from the contumacious monk in vain, it was

agreed, in a chapter extraordinary, to surrender him to the power of

the Inquisition. He testified great horror when this determination

was made known to him,--and offered to tell over and over again all

that he _could_ relate of the cause of Father Olavida’s death. His

humiliation, and repeated offers of confession, came too late. He was

conveyed to the Inquisition. The proceedings of that tribunal are

rarely disclosed, but there is a secret report (I cannot answer for its

truth) of what he said and suffered there. On his first examination, he

said he would relate all he _could_. He was told that was not enough,

he must relate all he knew. * * * * * * * * * “Why did you testify such

horror at the funeral of Father Olavida?”--“Every one testified horror

and grief at the death of that venerable ecclesiastic, who died in the

odour of sanctity. Had I done otherwise, it might have been reckoned

a proof of my guilt.” “Why did you interrupt the preacher with such

extraordinary exclamations?”--To this no answer. “Why do you refuse

to explain the meaning of those exclamations?”--No answer. “Why do

you persist in this obstinate and dangerous silence? Look, I beseech

you, brother, at the cross that is suspended against this wall,” and

the Inquisitor pointed to the large black crucifix at the back of the

chair where he sat; “one drop of the blood shed there can purify you

from all the sin you have ever committed; but all that blood, combined

with the intercession of the Queen of Heaven, and the merits of all

its martyrs, nay, even the absolution of the Pope, cannot deliver you

from the curse of dying in unrepented sin.”--“What sin, then, have I

committed?” “The greatest of all possible sins; you refuse answering

the questions put to you at the tribunal of the most holy and merciful

Inquisition;--you will not tell us what you know concerning the death

of Father Olavida.”--“I have told you that I believe he perished in

consequence of his ignorance and presumption.” “What proof can you

produce of that?”--“He sought the knowledge of a secret withheld from

man.” “What was that?”--“The secret of discovering the presence or

agency of the evil power.” “Do you possess that secret?”--After much

agitation on the part of the prisoner, he said distinctly, but very

faintly, “My master forbids me to disclose it.” “If your master were

Jesus Christ, he would not forbid you to obey the commands, or answer

the questions of the Inquisition.”--“I am not sure of that.” There was

a general outcry of horror at these words. The examination then went

on. “If you believed Olavida to be guilty of any pursuits or studies

condemned by our mother the church, why did you not denounce him to

the Inquisition?”--“Because I believed him not likely to be injured

by such pursuits; his mind was too weak,--he died in the struggle,”

said the prisoner with great emphasis. “You believe, then, it requires

strength of mind to keep those abominable secrets, when examined as to

their nature and tendency?”--“No, I rather imagine strength of body.”

“We shall try that presently,” said an Inquisitor, giving a signal for

the torture. * * * * * * * * * * * The prisoner underwent the first and

second applications with unshrinking courage, but on the infliction of

the water-torture, which is indeed insupportable to humanity, either

to suffer or relate, he exclaimed in the gasping interval, he would

disclose every thing. He was released, refreshed, restored, and the

following day uttered the following remarkable confession * * * * * * *

* * * *

The old Spanish woman further confessed to Stanton, that * * * * * * * *

* and that the Englishman certainly had been seen in the neighbourhood

since;--seen, as she had heard, that very night. “Great G--d!” exclaimed

Stanton, as he recollected the stranger whose demoniac laugh had so

appalled him, while gazing on the lifeless bodies of the lovers, whom

the lightning had struck and blasted.

* * * * *

As the manuscript, after a few blotted and illegible pages, became more

distinct, Melmoth read on, perplexed and unsatisfied, not knowing what

connexion this Spanish story could have with his ancestor, whom,

however, he recognised under the title of _the Englishman_; and

wondering how Stanton could have thought it worth his while to follow

him to Ireland, write a long manuscript about an event that occurred in

Spain, and leave it in the hands of his family, to “verify untrue

things,” in the language of Dogberry,--his wonder was diminished, though

his curiosity was still more inflamed, by the perusal of the next lines,

which he made out with some difficulty. It seems Stanton was now in

England. * * * * * * * * * * *

About the year 1677, Stanton was in London, his mind still full of his

mysterious countryman. This constant subject of his contemplations had

produced a visible change in his exterior,--his walk was what Sallust

tells us of Catiline’s,--his were, too, the “_fœdi oculi_.” He said to

himself every moment, “If I could but trace that being, I will not call

him man,”--and the next moment he said, “and what if I could?” In this

state of mind, it is singular enough that he mixed constantly in public

amusements, but it is true. When one fierce passion is devouring the

soul, we feel more than ever the necessity of external excitement; and

our dependence on the world for temporary relief increases in direct

proportion to our contempt of the world and all its works. He went

frequently to the theatres, _then_ fashionable, when

“The fair sat panting at a courtier’s play,

And not a mask went unimproved away.”

The London theatres then presented a spectacle which ought for ever to

put to silence the foolish outcry against progressive deterioration of

morals,--foolish even from the pen of Juvenal, and still more so from

the lips of a modern Puritan. Vice is always nearly on an average: The

only difference in life worth tracing, is that of manners, and there we

have manifestly the advantage of our ancestors. Hypocrisy is said to be

the homage that vice pays to virtue,--decorum is the outward expression

of that homage; and if this be so, we must acknowledge that vice has

latterly grown very humble indeed. There was, however, something

splendid, ostentatious, and obtrusive, in the vices of Charles the

Second’s reign.--A view of the theatres alone proved it, when Stanton

was in the habit of visiting them. At the doors stood on one side the

footmen of a fashionable nobleman, (with arms concealed under their

liveries), surrounding the sedan of a popular actress(1), whom they were

to carry off _vi et armis_, as she entered it at the end of the play. At

the other side waited the _glass coach_ of a woman of fashion, who

waited to take Kynaston (the Adonis of the day), in his female dress, to

the park after the play was over, and exhibit him in all the luxurious

splendour of effeminate beauty, (heightened by theatrical dress), for

which he was so distinguished.

(1) Mrs Marshall, the original Roxana in Lee’s Alexander, and the only

virtuous woman then on the stage. She was carried off in the manner

described, by Lord Orrery, who, finding all his solicitations

repelled, had recourse to a sham marriage performed by a servant in

the habit of a clergyman.

Plays being then performed at four o’clock, allowed ample time for the

evening drive, and the midnight assignation, when the parties met by

torch-light, masked, in St James’s park, and verified the title of

Wycherly’s play, “Love in a Wood.” The boxes, as Stanton looked round

him, were filled with females, whose naked shoulders and bosoms, well

testified in the paintings of Lely, and the pages of Grammont, might

save modern puritanism many a vituperative groan and affected

reminiscence. They had all taken the precaution to send some male

relative, on the first night of a new play, to report whether it was fit

for persons of “honour and reputation” to appear at; but in spite of

this precaution, at certain passages (which occurred about every second

sentence) they were compelled to spread out their fans, or play with the

still cherished love-lock, which Prynne himself had not been able to

write down.

The men in the boxes were composed of two distinct classes, the “men of

wit and pleasure about town,” distinguished by their Flanders lace

cravats, soiled with snuff, their diamond rings, the pretended gift of a

royal mistress, (_n’importe_ whether the Duchess of Portsmouth or Nell

Gwynne); their uncombed wigs, whose curls descended to their waists, and

the loud and careless tone in which they abused Dryden, Lee, and Otway,

and quoted Sedley and Rochester;--the other class were the lovers, the

gentle “squires of dames,” equally conspicuous for their white fringed

gloves, their obsequious bows, and their commencing every sentence

addressed to a lady, with the profane exclamation of (2) “Oh Jesu!” or

the softer, but equally unmeaning one of “I beseech you, Madam,” or,

“Madam, I burn(3).” One circumstance sufficiently extraordinary marked

the manners of the day; females had not then found their proper level in

life; they were alternately adored as goddesses, and assailed as

prostitutes; and the man who, this moment, addressed his mistress in

language borrowed from Orondates worshipping Cassandra, in the next

accosted her with ribaldry that might put to the blush the piazzas of

Covent Garden(4).

(2) Vide Pope, (copying from Donne).

“Peace, fools, or Gonson will for Papists seize you,

If once he catch you at your Jesu, Jesu.”

(3) Vide the Old Bachelor, whose Araminta, wearied by the repetition

of these phrases, forbids her lover to address her in any sentence

commencing with them.

(4) Vide any old play you may have the patience to peruse; or, _instar

omnium_, read the courtly loves of Rodolphil and Melantha, Palamede

and Doratice, in Dryden’s Marriage a la Mode.

The pit presented a more various spectacle. There were the critics armed

cap-a-pee from Aristotle and Bossu; these men dined at twelve, dictated

at a coffee-house till four, then called to the boy to brush their

shoes, and strode to the theatre, where, till the curtain rose, they sat

hushed in grim repose, and expecting their evening prey. There were the

templars, spruce, pert, and loquacious; and here and there a sober

citizen, doffing his steeple-crowned hat, and hiding his little band

under the folds of his huge puritanic cloke, while his eyes, declined

with an expression half leering, half ejaculatory, towards a masked

female, muffled in a hood and scarf, testified what had seduced him into

these “tents of Kedar.” There were females, too, but all in vizard

masks, which, though worn as well as aunt Dinah’s in Tristram Shandy,

served to conceal them from the “young bubbles” they were in quest of,

and from all but the orange-women, who hailed them loudly as they passed

the doors(5). In the galleries were the happy souls who waited for the

fulfilment of Dryden’s promise in one of his prologues(6); no matter to

them whether it were the ghost of Almanzor’s mother in her dripping

shroud, or that of Laius, who, according to the stage directions, rises

in his chariot, armed with the ghosts of his three murdered attendants

behind him;--a joke that did not escape l’Abbe le Blanc(7), in his

recipe for writing an English tragedy. Some, indeed, from time to time

called out for the “burning of the Pope;” but though

“Space was obedient to the boundless piece,

Which oped in Mexico and closed in Greece,”

it was not always possible to indulge them in this laudable amusement,

as the scene of the popular plays was generally laid in Africa or Spain;

Sir Robert Howard, Elkanah Settle, and John Dryden, all agreeing in

their choice of Spanish and Moorish subjects for their principal plays.

Among this joyous groupe were seated several women of fashion masked,

enjoying in secrecy the licentiousness which they dared not openly

patronise, and verifying Gay’s characteristic description, though it was

written many years later,

“Mobbed in the gallery Laura sits secure,

And laughs at jests that turn the box demure.”

Stanton gazed on all this with the look of one who “could not be moved

to smile at any thing.” He turned to the stage, the play was Alexander,

then acted as written by Lee, and the principal character was performed

by Hart, whose god-like ardour in making love, is said almost to have

compelled the audience to believe that they beheld the “son of Ammon.”

(5) Vide Southern’s Oroonoko,--I mean the comic part.

(6) “A charm, a song, a murder, and a ghost.”

_Prologue to Œdipus._

(7) Vide Le Blanc’s Letters.

There were absurdities enough to offend a classical, or even a rational

spectator. There were Grecian heroes with roses in their shoes, feathers

in their hats, and wigs down to their waists; and Persian princesses in

stiff stays and powdered hair. But the illusion of the scene was well

sustained, for the heroines were rivals in real as well as theatrical

life. It was that memorable night, when, according to the history of the

veteran Betterton(8), Mrs Barry, who personated Roxana, had a green-room

squabble with Mrs Bowtell, the representative of Statira, about a veil,

which the partiality of the property-man adjudged to the latter. Roxana

suppressed her rage till the fifth act, when, stabbing Statira, she

aimed the blow with such force as to pierce through her stays, and

inflict a severe though not dangerous wound. Mrs Bowtell fainted, the

performance was suspended, and, in the commotion which this incident

caused in the house, many of the audience rose, and Stanton among them.

It was at this moment that, in a seat opposite to him, he discovered the

object of his search for four years,--the Englishman whom he had met in

the plains of Valentia, and whom he believed the same with the subject

of the extraordinary narrative he had heard there.

(8) Vide Betterton’s History of the Stage.

He was standing up. There was nothing particular or remarkable in his

appearance, but the expression of his eyes could never be mistaken or

forgotten. The heart of Stanton palpitated with violence,--a mist

overspread his eyes,--a nameless and deadly sickness, accompanied with a

creeping sensation in every pore, from which cold drops were gushing,

announced the * * * * * * * * * * Before he had well recovered, a strain

of music, soft, solemn, and delicious, breathed round him, audibly

ascending from the ground, and increasing in sweetness and power till it

seemed to fill the whole building. Under the sudden impulse of amazement

and pleasure, he inquired of some around him from whence those exquisite

sounds arose. But, by the manner in which he was answered, it was plain

that those he addressed considered him insane; and, indeed, the

remarkable change in his expression might well justify the suspicion. He

then remembered that night in Spain, when the same sweet and mysterious

sounds were heard only by the young bridegroom and bride, of whom the

latter perished on that very night. “And am I then to be the next

victim?” thought Stanton; “and are those celestial sounds, that seem to

prepare us for heaven, only intended to announce the presence of an

incarnate fiend, who mocks the devoted with ‘airs from heaven,’ while he

prepares to surround them with ‘blasts from hell’?” It is very singular

that at this moment, when his imagination had reached its highest pitch

of elevation,--when the object he had pursued so long and fruitlessly,

had in one moment become as it were tangible to the grasp both of mind

and body,--when this spirit, with whom he had wrestled in darkness, was

at last about to declare its name, that Stanton began to feel a kind of

disappointment at the futility of his pursuits, like Bruce at

discovering the source of the Nile, or Gibbon on concluding his History.

The feeling which he had dwelt on so long, that he had actually

converted it into a duty, was after all mere curiosity; but what passion

is more insatiable, or more capable of giving a kind of romantic

grandeur to all its wanderings and eccentricities? Curiosity is in one

respect like love, it always compromises between the object and the

feeling; and provided the latter possesses sufficient energy, no matter

how contemptible the former may be. A child might have smiled at the

agitation of Stanton, caused as it was by the accidental appearance of a

stranger; but no man, in the full energy of his passions, was there, but

must have trembled at the horrible agony of emotion with which he felt

approaching, with sudden and irresistible velocity, the crisis of his

destiny.

When the play was over, he stood for some moments in the deserted

streets. It was a beautiful moonlight night, and he saw near him a

figure, whose shadow, projected half across the street, (there were no

flagged ways then, chains and posts were the only defence of the

foot-passenger), appeared to him of gigantic magnitude. He had been so

long accustomed to contend with these phantoms of the imagination, that

he took a kind of stubborn delight in subduing them. He walked up to the

object, and observing the shadow only was magnified, and the figure was

the ordinary height of man, he approached it, and discovered the very

object of his search,--the man whom he had seen for a moment in

Valentia, and, after a search of four years, recognised at the theatre.

* * * * * * * * * * *

“You were in quest of me?”--“I was.” “Have you any thing to inquire of

me?”--“Much.” “Speak, then.”--“This is no place.” “No place! poor

wretch, I am independent of time and place. Speak, if you have any thing

to ask or to learn?”--“I have many things to ask, but nothing to learn,

I hope, from you.” “You deceive yourself, but you will be undeceived

when next we meet.”--“And when shall that be?” said Stanton, grasping

his arm; “name your hour and your place.” “The hour shall be mid-day,”

answered the stranger, with a horrid and unintelligible smile; “and the

place shall be the bare walls of a mad-house, where you shall rise

rattling in your chains, and rustling from your straw, to greet me,--yet

still you shall have _the curse of sanity_, and of memory. My voice

shall ring in your ears till then, and the glance of these eyes shall be

reflected from every object, animate or inanimate, till you behold them

again.”--“Is it under circumstances so horrible we are to meet again?”

said Stanton, shrinking under the full-lighted blaze of those demon

eyes. “I never,” said the stranger, in an emphatic tone,--“I _never

desert my friends in misfortune_. When they are plunged in the lowest

abyss of human calamity, _they are sure to be visited by me_.” * * * * *

The narrative, when Melmoth was again able to trace its continuation,

described Stanton, some years after, plunged in a state the most

deplorable.

He had been always reckoned of a singular turn of mind, and the belief

of this, aggravated by his constant talk of Melmoth, his wild pursuit of

him, his strange behaviour at the theatre, and his dwelling on the

various particulars of their extraordinary meetings, with all the

intensity of the deepest conviction, (while he never could impress them

on any one’s conviction but his own), suggested to some prudent people

the idea that he was deranged. Their malignity probably took part with

their prudence. The selfish Frenchman(9) says, we feel a pleasure even

in the misfortunes of our friends,--_a plus forte_ in those of our

enemies; and as every one is an enemy to a man of genius of course, the

report of Stanton’s malady was propagated with infernal and successful

industry. Stanton’s next relative, a needy unprincipled man, watched the

report in its circulation, and saw the snares closing round his victim.

He waited on him one morning, accompanied by a person of a grave, though

somewhat repulsive appearance. Stanton was as usual abstracted and

restless, and, after a few moments conversation, he proposed a drive a

few miles out of London, which he said would revive and refresh him.

Stanton objected, on account of the difficulty of getting a hackney

coach, (for it is singular that at this period the number of private

equipages, though infinitely fewer than they are now, exceeded the

number of hired ones), and proposed going by water. This, however, did

not suit the kinsman’s views; and, after pretending to send for a

carriage, (which was in waiting at the end of the street), Stanton and

his companions entered it, and drove about two miles out of London.

(9) Rochefoucault.

The carriage then stopped. “Come, Cousin,” said the younger

Stanton,--“come and view a purchase I have made.” Stanton absently

alighted, and followed him across a small paved court; the other person

followed. “In troth, Cousin,” said Stanton, “your choice appears not to

have been discreetly made; your house has something of a gloomy

aspect.”--“Hold you content, Cousin,” replied the other; “I shall take

order that you like it better, when you have been some time a dweller

therein.” Some attendants of a mean appearance, and with most suspicious

visages, awaited them on their entrance, and they ascended a narrow

staircase, which led to a room meanly furnished. “Wait here,” said the

kinsman, to the man who accompanied them, “till I go for company to

divertise my cousin in his loneliness.” They were left alone. Stanton

took no notice of his companion, but as usual seized the first book near

him, and began to read. It was a volume in manuscript,--they were then

much more common than now.

The first lines struck him as indicating insanity in the writer. It was

a wild proposal (written apparently after the great fire of London) to

rebuild it with stone, and attempting to prove, on a calculation wild,

false, and yet sometimes plausible, that this could be done out of the

colossal fragments of Stonehenge, which the writer proposed to remove

for that purpose. Subjoined were several grotesque drawings of engines

designed to remove those massive blocks, and in a corner of the page was

a note,--“I would have drawn these more accurately, but was not allowed

_a knife_ to mend my pen.”

The next was entitled, “A modest proposal for the spreading of

Christianity in foreign parts, whereby it is hoped its entertainment

will become general all over the world.”--This modest proposal was, to

convert the Turkish ambassadors, (who had been in London a few years

before), by offering them their choice of being strangled on the spot,

or becoming Christians. Of course the writer reckoned on their embracing

the easier alternative, but even this was to be clogged with a heavy

condition,--namely, that they must be bound before a magistrate to

convert twenty mussulmans a day, on their return to Turkey. The rest of

the pamphlet was reasoned very much in the conclusive style of Captain

Bobadil,--these twenty will convert twenty more a piece, and these two

hundred converts, converting their due number in the same time, all

Turkey would be converted before the Grand Signior knew where he was.

Then comes the _coup d’eclat_,--one fine morning, every minaret in

Constantinople was to ring out with bells, instead of the cry of the

Muezzins; and the Imaum, coming out to see what was the matter, was to

be encountered by the Archbishop of Canterbury, _in pontificalibus_,

performing Cathedral service in the church of St Sophia, which was to

finish the business. Here an objection appeared to arise, which the

ingenuity of the writer had anticipated.--“It may be redargued,” saith

he, “by those who have more spleen than brain, that forasmuch as the

Archbishop preacheth in English, he will not thereby much edify the

Turkish folk, who do altogether hold in a vain gabble of their own.” But

this (to use his own language) he “evites,” by judiciously observing,

that where service was performed in an unknown tongue, the devotion of

the people was always observed to be much increased thereby; as, for

instance, in the church of Rome,--that St Augustine, with his monks,

advanced to meet King Ethelbert singing litanies, (in a language his

majesty could not possibly have understood), and converted him and his

whole court on the spot;--that the sybilline books * * * * * * * * _Cum

multis aliis._

Between the pages were cut most exquisitely in paper the likenesses of

some of these Turkish ambassadors; the hair of the beards, in

particular, was feathered with a delicacy of touch that seemed the work

of fairy fingers,--but the pages ended with a complaint of the operator,

that his _scissars had been taken from him_. However, he consoled

himself and the reader with the assurance, that he would that night

catch a moon-beam as it entered through the grating, and, when he had

whetted it on the iron knobs of his door, would do wonders with it. In

the next page was found a melancholy proof of powerful but prostrated

intellect. It contained some insane lines, ascribed to Lee the dramatic

poet, commencing,

“O that my lungs could bleat like buttered pease,” &c.

There is no proof whatever that these miserable lines were really

written by Lee, except that the measure is the fashionable quatrain of

the period. It is singular that Stanton read on without suspicion of his

own danger, quite absorbed in _the album of a mad-house_, without ever

reflecting on the place where he was, and which such compositions too

manifestly designated.

It was after a long interval that he looked round, and perceived that

his companion was gone. Bells were unusual then. He proceeded to the

door,--it was fastened. He called aloud,--his voice was echoed in a

moment by many others, but in tones so wild and discordant, that he

desisted in involuntary terror. As the day advanced, and no one

approached, he tried the window, and then perceived for the first time

it was grated. It looked out on the narrow flagged yard, in which no

human being was; and if there had, from such a being no human feeling

could have been extracted.

Sickening with unspeakable horror, he sunk rather than sat down beside

the miserable window, and “wished for day.”

* * * *

At midnight he started from a doze, half a swoon, half a sleep, which

probably the hardness of his seat, and of the deal table on which he

leaned, had not contributed to prolong.

He was in complete darkness; the horror of his situation struck him at

once, and for a moment he was indeed almost qualified for an inmate of

that dreadful mansion. He felt his way to the door, shook it with

desperate strength, and uttered the most frightful cries, mixed with

expostulations and commands. His cries were in a moment echoed by a

hundred voices. In maniacs there is a peculiar malignity, accompanied by

an extraordinary acuteness of some of the senses, particularly in

distinguishing the voice of a stranger. The cries that he heard on every

side seemed like a wild and infernal yell of joy, that their mansion of

misery had obtained another tenant.

He paused, exhausted,--a quick and thundering step was heard in the

passage. The door was opened, and a man of savage appearance stood at

the entrance,--two more were seen indistinctly in the passage.--“Release

me, villain!” “Stop, my fine fellow, what’s all this noise for?” “Where

am I?” “Where you ought to be.” “Will you dare to detain me?” “Yes, and

a little more than that,” answered the ruffian, applying a loaded

horse-whip to his back and shoulders, till the patient soon fell to the

ground convulsed with rage and pain. “Now you see you are where you

ought to be,” repeated the ruffian, brandishing the horse-whip over him,

“and now take the advice of a friend, and make no more noise. The lads

are ready for you with the darbies, and they’ll clink them on in the

crack of this whip, unless you prefer another touch of it first.” They

then were advancing into the room as he spoke, with fetters in their

hands, (strait waistcoats being then little known or used), and shewed,

by their frightful countenances and gestures, no unwillingness to apply

them. Their harsh rattle on the stone pavement made Stanton’s blood run

cold; the effect, however, was useful. He had the presence of mind to

acknowledge his (supposed) miserable condition, to supplicate the

forbearance of the ruthless keeper, and promise complete submission to

his orders. This pacified the ruffian, and he retired.

Stanton collected all his resolution to encounter the horrible night; he

saw all that was before him, and summoned himself to meet it. After much

agitated deliberation, he conceived it best to continue the same

appearance of submission and tranquillity, hoping that thus he might in

time either propitiate the wretches in whose hands he was, or, by his

apparent inoffensiveness, procure such opportunities of indulgence, as

might perhaps ultimately facilitate his escape. He therefore determined

to conduct himself with the utmost tranquillity, and never to let his

voice be heard in the house; and he laid down several other resolutions

with a degree of prudence which he already shuddered to think might be

the cunning of incipient madness, or the beginning result of the horrid

habits of the place.

These resolutions were put to desperate trial that very night. Just next

to Stanton’s apartment were lodged two most uncongenial neighbours. One

of them was a puritanical weaver, who had been driven mad by a single

sermon from the celebrated Hugh Peters, and was sent to the mad-house as

full of election and reprobation as he could hold,--and fuller. He

regularly repeated over the _five points_ while day-light lasted, and

imagined himself preaching in a conventicle with distinguished success;

towards twilight his visions were more gloomy, and at midnight his

blasphemies became horrible. In the opposite cell was lodged a loyalist

tailor, who had been ruined by giving credit to the cavaliers and their

ladies,--(for at this time, and much later, down to the reign of Anne,

tailors were employed by females even _to make_ and _fit on their

stays_),--who had run mad with drink and loyalty on the burning of the

Rump, and ever since had made the cells of the mad-house echo with

fragments of the ill-fated Colonel Lovelace’s songs, scraps from

Cowley’s “Cutter of Coleman street,” and some curious specimens from Mrs

Aphra Behn’s plays, where the cavaliers are denominated the _heroicks_,

and Lady Lambert and Lady Desborough represented as going to meeting,

their large Bibles carried before them by their pages, and falling in

love with two banished cavaliers by the way.--“Tabitha, Tabitha,” cried

a voice half in exultation and half in derision; “thou shalt go with thy

hair curled, and thy breasts naked;”--and then added in an affected

voice,--“I could dance the Canaries once, spouse.” This never failed to

rouse the feelings, or rather operate on the instincts of the puritanic

weaver, who immediately answered, “Colonel Harrison shall come out of

the west, riding on a sky-coloured mule, which signifies

instruction(10).” “Ye lie, ye round-head son of a b----h,” roared the

cavalier tailor, “Colonel Harrison will be damned before he ever mounts

a sky-coloured mule;” and he concluded this pithy sentence with

fragments of anti-Oliverian songs.

“And may I live to see

Old Noll upon a tree,

And many such as he;

Confound him, confound him,

Diseases all around him.”

(10) Vide Cutter of Coleman street.

“Ye are honest gentlemen, I can play many tunes,” squeaked a poor mad

loyalist fiddler, who had been accustomed to play in the taverns to the

cavalier party, and just remembered the words of a similar minstrel

playing for Colonel Blunt in the committee. “Then play me the air to

“Rebellion is breaking up house,” exclaimed the tailor, dancing wildly

about his cell (as far as his chains allowed him) to an imaginary

measure. The weaver could contain no longer. “How long, Lord, how long,”

he exclaimed, “shall thine enemies insult thy sanctuary, in which I have

been placed an anointed teacher? even here, where I am placed to preach

to the souls in prison?--Open the flood-gates of thy power, and though

thy waves and storms go over me, let me testify in the midst of them,

even as he who spreadeth forth his hands to swim may raise one of them

to warn his companion that he is about to sink.--Sister Ruth, why dost

thou uncover thy bosom to discover my frailty?--Lord, let thine arm of

power be with us as it was when thou brakest the shield, the sword, and

the battle,--when thy foot was dipped in the blood of thine enemies, and

the tongue of thy dogs was red through the same.--Dip all thy garments

in blood, and let me weave thee fresh when thou art stained.--When shall

thy saints tread the wine-press of thy wrath? Blood! blood! the saints

call for it, earth gapes to swallow it, hell thirsts for it!--Sister

Ruth, I pray thee, conceal thy bosom, and be not as the vain women of

this generation.--Oh for a day like that, a day of the Lord of hosts,

when the towers fell!--Spare me in the battle, for I am not a mighty man

of war; leave me in the rear of the host, to curse, with the curse of

Meroz, those who come not to the help of the Lord against the

mighty,--even to curse this malignant tailor,--yea, curse him

bitterly.--Lord, I am in the tents of Kedar, my feet stumble on the dark

mountains,--I fall,--I fall!”--And the poor wretch, exhausted by his

delirious agonies, fell, and grovelled for some time in his straw. “Oh!

I have had a grievous fall,--Sister Ruth,--Oh Sister Ruth!--Rejoice not

against me, Oh mine enemy! though I fall, I shall rise again.” Whatever

satisfaction Sister Ruth might have derived from this assurance, if she

could have heard it, was enjoyed tenfold by the weaver, whose amorous

reminiscences were in a moment exchanged for war-like ones, borrowed

from a wretched and disarranged mass of intellectual rubbish. “The Lord

is a man of war,” he shouted.--“Look to Marston Moor!--Look to the city,

the proud city, full of pride and sin!--Look to the waves of the Severn,

as red with blood as the waves of the Red Sea!--There were the hoofs

broken by means of the prancings, the prancings of the mighty

ones.--Then, Lord, was thy triumph, and the triumph of thy saints, to

bind their kings in chains, and their nobles in links of iron.” The

malignant tailor burst out in his turn: “Thank the false Scots, and

their solemn league and covenant, and Carisbrook Castle, for that, ye

crop-eared Puritan,” he yelled. “If it had not been for them, I would

have taken measure of the king for a velvet cloak as high as the Tower

of London, and one flirt of its folds would have knocked the “copper

nose” into the Thames, and sent it a-drift to Hell.” “Ye lie, in your

teeth,” echoed the weaver; “and I will prove it unarmed, with my shuttle

against your needle, and smite you to the earth thereafter, as David

smote Goliath. It was _the man’s_ (such was the indecent language in

which Charles the First was spoken of by the Puritans)--it was the man’s

carnal, self-seeking, world-loving, prelatical hierarchy, that drove the

godly to seek the sweet word in season from their own pastors, who

righteously abominated the Popish garniture of lawn-sleeves, lewd

organs, and steeple houses. Sister Ruth, tempt me not with that calf’s

head, it is all streaming with blood;--drop it, I beseech thee, sister,

it is unmeet in a woman’s hand, though the brethren drink of it.--Woe be

unto thee, gainsayer, dost thou not see how flames envelope the accursed

city under his Arminian and Popish son?--London is on fire!--on fire!”

he yelled; “and the brands are lit by the half-papist, whole-arminian,

all-damned people thereof.--Fire!--fire!” The voice in which he shrieked

out the last words was powerfully horrible, but it was like the moan of

an infant, compared to the voice which took up and re-echoed the cry, in

a tone that made the building shake. It was the voice of a maniac, who

had lost her husband, children, subsistence, and finally her reason, in

the dreadful fire of London. The cry of fire never failed to operate

with terrible punctuality on her associations. She had been in a

disturbed sleep, and now started from it as suddenly as on that dreadful

night. It was Saturday night, too, and she was always observed to be

particularly violent on that night,--it was the terrible weekly festival

of insanity with her. She was awake, and busy in a moment escaping from

the flames; and she dramatized the whole scene with such hideous

fidelity, that Stanton’s resolution was far more in danger from her than

from the battle between his neighbours _Testimony_ and _Hothead_. She

began exclaiming she was suffocated by the smoke; then she sprung from

her bed, calling for a light, and appeared to be struck by the sudden

glare that burst through her casement.--“The last day,” she shrieked,

“The last day! The very heavens are on fire!”--“That will not come till

the Man of Sin be first destroyed,” cried the weaver; “thou ravest of

light and fire, and yet thou art in utter darkness.--I pity thee, poor

mad soul, I pity thee!” The maniac never heeded him; she appeared to be

scrambling up a stair-case to her children’s room. She exclaimed she was

scorched, singed, suffocated; her courage appeared to fail, and she

retreated. “But my children are there!” she cried in a voice of

unspeakable agony, as she seemed to make another effort; “here I

am--here I am come to save you.--Oh God! They are all blazing!--Take

this arm--no, not that, it is scorched and disabled--well, any arm--take

hold of my clothes--no, they are blazing too!--Well, take me all on fire

as I am!--And their hair, how it hisses!--Water, one drop of water for

my youngest--he is but an infant--for my youngest, and let me burn!” She

paused in horrid silence, to watch the fall of a blazing rafter that was

about to shatter the stair-case on which she stood.--“The roof has

fallen on my head!” she exclaimed. “The earth is weak, and all the

inhabitants thereof,” chaunted the weaver; “I bear up the pillars of

it.”

The maniac marked the destruction of the spot where she thought

she stood by one desperate bound, accompanied by a wild shriek, and

then calmly gazed on her infants as they rolled over the scorching

fragments, and sunk into the abyss of fire below. “There they

go,--one--two--three--all!” and her voice sunk into low mutterings, and

her convulsions into faint, cold shudderings, like the sobbings of a

spent storm, as she imagined herself to “stand in safety and despair,”

amid the thousand houseless wretches assembled in the suburbs of London

on the dreadful nights after the fire, without food, roof, or raiment,

all gazing on the burning ruins of their dwellings and their property.

She seemed to listen to their complaints, and even repeated some of them

very affectingly, but invariably answered them with the same words, “But

I have lost all my children--_all_!” It was remarkable, that when this

sufferer began to rave, all the others became silent. The cry of nature

hushed every other cry,--she was the only patient in the house who was

not mad from politics, religion, ebriety, or some perverted passion; and

terrifying as the out-break of her frenzy always was, Stanton used to

await it as a kind of relief from the dissonant, melancholy, and

ludicrous ravings of the others.

But the utmost efforts of his resolution began to sink under the

continued horrors of the place. The impression on his senses began to

defy the power of reason to resist them. He could not shut out these

frightful cries nightly repeated, nor the frightful sound of the whip

employed to still them. Hope began to fail him, as he observed, that the

submissive tranquillity (which he had imagined, by obtaining increased

indulgence, might contribute to his escape, or perhaps convince the

keeper of his sanity) was interpreted by the callous ruffian, who was

acquainted only with the varieties of _madness_, as a more refined

species of that cunning which he was well accustomed to watch and

baffle.

On his first discovery of his situation, he had determined to take the

utmost care of his health and intellect that the place allowed, as the

sole basis of his hope of deliverance. But as that hope declined, he

neglected the means of realizing it. He had at first risen early, walked

incessantly about his cell, and availed himself of every opportunity of

being in the open air. He took the strictest care of his person in point

of cleanliness, and with or without appetite, regularly forced down his

miserable meals; and all these efforts were even pleasant, as long as

hope prompted them. But now he began to relax them all. He passed half

the day in his wretched bed, in which he frequently took his meals,

declined shaving or changing his linen, and, when the sun shone into his

cell, turned from it on his straw with a sigh of heart-broken

despondency. Formerly, when the air breathed through his grating, he

used to say, “Blessed air of heaven, I shall breathe you once more in

freedom!--Reserve all your freshness for that delicious evening when I

shall inhale you, and be as free as you myself.” Now when he felt it, he

sighed and said nothing. The twitter of the sparrows, the pattering of

rain, or the moan of the wind, sounds that he used to sit up in his bed

to catch with delight, as reminding him of nature, were now unheeded.

He began at times to listen with sullen and horrible pleasure to the

cries of his miserable companions. He became squalid, listless, torpid,

and disgusting in his appearance. * * * * * * *

It was one of those dismal nights, that, as he tossed on his loathsome

bed,--more loathsome from the impossibility to quit it without feeling

more “unrest,”--he perceived the miserable light that burned in the

hearth was obscured by the intervention of some dark object. He turned

feebly towards the light, without curiosity, without excitement, but

with a wish to diversify the monotony of his misery, by observing the

slightest change made even accidentally in the dusky atmosphere of his

cell. Between him and the light stood the figure of Melmoth, just as he

had seen him from the first; the figure was the same; the expression of

the face was the same,--cold, stony, and rigid; the eyes, with their

infernal and dazzling lustre, were still the same.

Stanton’s ruling passion rushed on his soul; he felt this apparition

like a summons to a high and fearful encounter. He heard his heart beat

audibly, and could have exclaimed with Lee’s unfortunate heroine,--“It

pants as cowards do before a battle; Oh the great march has sounded!”

Melmoth approached him with that frightful calmness that mocks the

terror it excites. “My prophecy has been fulfilled;--you rise to meet me

rattling from your chains, and rustling from your straw--am I not a true

prophet?” Stanton was silent. “Is not your situation very

miserable?”--Still Stanton was silent; for he was beginning to believe

this an illusion of madness. He thought to himself, “How could he have

gained entrance here?”--“Would you not wish to be delivered from it?”

Stanton tossed on his straw, and its rustling seemed to answer the

question. “I have the power to deliver you from it.” Melmoth spoke very

slowly and very softly, and the melodious smoothness of his voice made a

frightful contrast to the stony rigour of his features, and the

fiend-like brilliancy of his eyes. “Who are you, and whence come you?”

said Stanton, in a tone that was meant to be interrogatory and

imperative, but which, from his habits of squalid debility, was at once

feeble and querulous. His intellects had become affected by the gloom of

his miserable habitation, as the wretched inmate of a similar mansion,

when produced before a medical examiner, was reported to be a complete

Albinos.--“His skin was bleached, his eyes turned white; he could not

bear the light; and, when exposed to it, he turned away with a mixture

of weakness and restlessness, more like the writhings of a sick infant

than the struggles of a man.”

Such was Stanton’s situation; he was enfeebled now, and the power of the

enemy seemed without a possibility of opposition from either his

intellectual or corporeal powers. * * * * * * * *

Of all their horrible dialogue, only these words were legible in the

manuscript, “You know me now.”--“I always knew you.”--“That is false;

you imagined you did, and that has been the cause of all the wild * * *

* * * * * * of the * * * * * of your finally being lodged in this

mansion of misery, where only I would seek, where only I can succour

you.” “You, demon!”--“Demon!--Harsh words!--Was it a demon or a human

being placed you here?--Listen to me, Stanton; nay, wrap not yourself in

that miserable blanket,--that cannot shut out my words. Believe me, were

you folded in thunder-clouds, you must hear _me_! Stanton, think of your

misery. These bare walls--what do they present to the intellect or to

the senses?--White-wash, diversified with the scrawls of charcoal or red

chalk, that your happy predecessors have left for you to trace over. You

have a taste for drawing,--I trust it will improve. And here’s a

grating, through which the sun squints on you like a step-dame, and the

breeze blows, as if it meant to tantalize you with a sigh from that

sweet mouth, whose kiss you must never enjoy. And where’s your

library,--intellectual man,--travelled man?” he repeated in a tone of

bitter derision; “where be your companions, your peaked men of

countries, as your favourite Shakespeare has it? You must be content

with the spider and the rat, to crawl and scratch round your flock-bed!

I have known prisoners in the Bastile to feed them for companions,--why

don’t you begin your task? I have known a spider to descend at the tap

of a finger, and a rat to come forth when the daily meal was brought, to

share it with his fellow-prisoner!--How delightful to have vermin for

your guests! Aye, and when the feast fails them, they make a meal of

their entertainer!--You shudder--Are you, then, the first prisoner who

has been devoured alive by the vermin that infested his

cell?--Delightful banquet, not “where you eat, but where you are eaten!”

Your guests, however, will give you one token of repentance while they

feed; there will be _gnashing of teeth_, and you shall hear it, and feel

it too perchance!--And then for meals--Oh you are daintily off!--The

soup that the cat has lapped; and (as her progeny has probably

contributed to the hell-broth) why not?---- Then your hours of solitude,

deliciously diversified by the yell of famine, the howl of madness, the

crash of whips, and the broken-hearted sob of those who, like you, are

supposed, or _driven_ mad by the crimes of others!--Stanton, do you

imagine your reason can possibly hold out amid such scenes?--Supposing

your reason was unimpaired, your health not destroyed,--suppose all

this, which is, after all, more than fair supposition can grant, guess

the effect of the continuance of these scenes on your senses alone. A

time will come, and soon, when, from mere habit, you will echo the

scream of every delirious wretch that harbours near you; then you will

pause, clasp your hands on your throbbing head, and listen with horrible

anxiety whether the scream proceeded from _you_ or _them_. The time will

come, when, from the want of occupation, the listless and horrible

vacancy of your hours, you will feel as anxious to hear those shrieks,

as you were at first terrified to hear them,--when you will watch for

the ravings of your next neighbour, as you would for a scene on the

stage. All humanity will be extinguished in you. The ravings of these

wretches will become at once your sport and your torture. You will watch

for the sounds, to mock them with the grimaces and bellowings of a

fiend. The mind has a power of accommodating itself to its situation,

that you will experience in its most frightful and deplorable efficacy.

Then comes the dreadful doubt of one’s own sanity, the terrible

announcer that _that_ doubt will soon become fear, and _that_ fear

certainty. Perhaps (still more dreadful) the _fear_ will at last become

a _hope_,--shut out from society, watched by a brutal keeper, writhing

with all the impotent agony of an incarcerated mind, without

communication and without sympathy, unable to exchange ideas but with

those whose ideas are only the hideous spectres of departed intellect,

or even to hear the welcome sound of the human voice, except to mistake

it for the howl of a fiend, and stop the ear desecrated by its

intrusion,--then at last your fear will become a more fearful hope; you

will wish to become one of them, to escape the agony of consciousness.

As those who have long leaned over a precipice, have at last felt a

desire to plunge below, to relieve the intolerable temptation of their

giddiness(11), you will hear them laugh amid their wildest paroxysms;

you will say, ‘Doubtless those wretches have some consolation, but I

have none; my sanity is my greatest curse in this abode of horrors. They

greedily devour their miserable meals, while I loathe mine. They sleep

sometimes soundly, while my sleep is--worse than their waking. They are

revived every morning by some delicious illusion of cunning madness,

soothing them with the hope of escaping, baffling or tormenting their

keeper; my sanity precludes all such hope. _I know I never can escape_,

and the preservation of my faculties is only an aggravation of my

sufferings. I have all their miseries,--I have none of their

consolations. They laugh,--I hear them; would I could laugh like them.’

You will try, and the very effort will be an invocation to the demon of

insanity to come and take full possession of you from that moment for

ever.

(11) A fact, related to me by a person who was near committing suicide

in a similar situation, to escape what he called “the excruciating

torture of giddiness.”

(There were other details, both of the menaces and temptations employed

by Melmoth, which are too horrible for insertion. One of them may serve

for an instance).

“You think that the intellectual power is something distinct from the

vitality of the soul, or, in other words, that if even your reason

should be destroyed, (which it nearly is), your soul might yet enjoy

beatitude in the full exercise of its enlarged and exalted faculties,

and all the clouds which obscured them be dispelled by the Sun of

Righteousness, in whose beams you hope to bask for ever and ever. Now,

without going into any metaphysical subtleties about the distinction

between mind and soul, experience must teach you, that there can be no

crime into which madmen would not, and do not precipitate themselves;

mischief is their occupation, malice their habit, murder their sport,

and blasphemy their delight. Whether a soul in this state can be in a

hopeful one, it is for you to judge; but it seems to me, that with the

loss of reason, (and reason cannot long be retained in this place), you

lose also the hope of immortality.--Listen,” said the tempter, pausing,

“listen to the wretch who is raving near you, and whose blasphemies

might make a demon start.--He was once an eminent puritanical preacher.

Half the day he imagines himself in a pulpit, denouncing damnation

against Papists, Arminians, and even Sub-lapsarians, (he being a

Supra-lapsarian himself). He foams, he writhes, he gnashes his teeth;

you would imagine him in the hell he was painting, and that the fire and

brimstone he is so lavish of, were actually exhaling from his jaws. At

night his _creed retaliates on him_; he believes himself one of the

reprobates he has been all day denouncing, and curses God for the very

decree he has all day been glorifying Him for.

“He, whom he has for twelve hours been vociferating “is the loveliest

among ten thousand,” becomes the object of demoniac hostility and

execration. He grapples with the iron posts of his bed, and says he is

rooting out the cross from the very foundations of Calvary; and it is

remarkable, that in proportion as his morning exercises are intense,

vivid, and eloquent, his nightly blasphemies are outrageous and

horrible.--Hark! Now he believes himself a demon; listen to his

diabolical eloquence of horror!”

Stanton listened, and shuddered * * * * * * “Escape--escape for your

life,” cried the tempter; “break forth into life, liberty, and sanity.

Your social happiness, your intellectual powers, your immortal

interests, perhaps, depend on the choice of this moment.--There is the

door, and the key is my hand. Choose--choose!”--“And how comes the key

in your hand? and what is the condition of my liberation?” said Stanton.

* * * * * * *

The explanation occupied several pages, which, to the torture of young

Melmoth, were wholly illegible. It seemed, however, to have been

rejected by Stanton with the utmost rage and horror, for Melmoth at last

made out,--“Begone, monster, demon!--begone to your native place. Even

this mansion of horror trembles to contain you; its walls sweat, and its

floors quiver, while you tread them.” * * * * * * * *

The conclusion of this extraordinary manuscript was in such a state,

that, in fifteen mouldy and crumbling pages, Melmoth could hardly make

out that number of lines. No antiquarian, unfolding with trembling hand

the calcined leaves of an Herculaneum manuscript, and hoping to discover

some lost lines of the Æneis in Virgil’s own autograph, or at least some

unutterable abomination of Petronius or Martial, happily elucidatory of

the mysteries of the Spintriæ, or the orgies of the Phallic worshippers,

ever pored with more luckless diligence, or shook a head of more

hopeless despondency over his task. He could but just make out what

tended rather to excite than assuage that feverish thirst of curiosity

which was consuming his inmost soul. The manuscript told no more of

Melmoth, but mentioned that Stanton was finally liberated from his

confinement,--that his pursuit of Melmoth was incessant and

indefatigable,--that he himself allowed it to be a species of

insanity,--that while he acknowledged it to be the master-passion, he

also felt it the master-torment of his life. He again visited the

Continent, returned to England,--pursued, inquired, traced, bribed, but

in vain. The being whom he had met thrice, under circumstances so

extraordinary, he was fated never to encounter again _in his life-time_.

At length, discovering that he had been born in Ireland, he resolved to

go there,--went, and found his pursuit again fruitless, and his

inquiries unanswered. The family knew nothing of him, or at least what

they knew or imagined, they prudently refused to disclose to a stranger,

and Stanton departed unsatisfied. It is remarkable, that he too, as

appeared from many half-obliterated pages of the manuscript, never

disclosed to mortal the particulars of their conversation in the

mad-house; and the slightest allusion to it threw him into fits of rage

and gloom equally singular and alarming. He left the manuscript,

however, in the hands of the family, possibly deeming, from their

incuriosity, their apparent indifference to their relative, or their

obvious inacquaintance with reading of any kind, manuscript or books,

his deposit would be safe. He seems, in fact, to have acted like men,

who, in distress at sea, intrust their letters and dispatches to a

bottle sealed, and commit it to the waves. The last lines of the

manuscript that were legible, were sufficiently extraordinary. * * * * *

*

“I have sought him every where.--The desire of meeting him once more, is

become as a burning fire within me,--it is the necessary condition of my

existence. I have vainly sought him at last in Ireland, of which I find

he is a native.--Perhaps our final meeting will be in * * * * * *

Such was the conclusion of the manuscript which Melmoth found in his

uncle’s closet. When he had finished it, he sunk down on the table near

which he had been reading it, his face hid in his folded arms, his

senses reeling, his mind in a mingled state of stupor and excitement.

After a few moments, he raised himself with an involuntary start, and

saw the picture gazing at him from its canvas. He was within ten inches

of it as he sat, and the proximity appeared increased by the strong

light that was accidentally thrown on it, and its being the only

representation of a human figure in the room. Melmoth felt for a moment

as if he were about to receive an explanation from its lips.

He gazed on it in return,--all was silent in the house,--they were alone

together. The illusion subsided at length; and as the mind rapidly

passes to opposite extremes, he remembered the injunction of his uncle

to destroy the portrait. He seized it;--his hand shook at first, but the

mouldering canvas appeared to assist him in the effort. He tore it from

the frame with a cry half terrific, half triumphant;--it fell at his

feet, and he shuddered as it fell. He expected to hear some fearful

sounds, some unimaginable breathings of prophetic horror, follow this

act of sacrilege, for such he felt it, to tear the portrait of his

ancestor from his native walls. He paused and listened:--“There was no

voice, nor any that answered;”--but as the wrinkled and torn canvas fell

to the floor, its undulations gave the portrait the appearance of

smiling. Melmoth felt horror indescribable at this transient and

imaginary resuscitation of the figure. He caught it up, rushed into the

next room, tore, cut, and hacked it in every direction, and eagerly

watched the fragments that burned like tinder in the turf-fire which had

been lit in his room. As Melmoth saw the last blaze, he threw himself

into bed, in hope of a deep and intense sleep. He had done what was

required of him, and felt exhausted both in mind and body; but his

slumber was not so sound as he had hoped for. The sullen light of the

turf-fire, burning but never blazing, disturbed him every moment. He

turned and turned, but still there was the same red light glaring on,

but not illuminating, the dusky furniture of the apartment. The wind was

high that night, and as the creaking door swung on its hinges, every

noise seemed like the sound of a hand struggling with the lock, or of a

foot pausing on the threshold. But (for Melmoth never could decide) was

it in a dream or not, that he saw the figure of his ancestor appear at

the door?--hesitatingly as he saw him at first on the night of his

uncle’s death,--saw him enter the room, approach his bed, and heard him

whisper, “You have burned me, then; but those are flames I can

survive.--I am alive,--I am beside you.” Melmoth started, sprung from

his bed,--it was broad day-light. He looked round,--there was no human

being in the room but himself. He felt a slight pain in the wrist of his

right arm. He looked at it, it was black and blue, as from the recent

gripe of a strong hand.