CHAPTER XX.

THE SECOND MEETING.

"Miss Eveleth requests the pleasure of Mr. Lindsay's company to meet a

few friends on the evening of the Feast of St. Ambrose, December 7th,

Wednesday.

"THE PARSONAGE, December 6th."

It was the luckiest thing in the world. They always made a little

festival of that evening at the Rev. Ambrose Eveleth's, in honor of his

canonized namesake, and because they liked to have a good time. It came

this year just at the right moment, for here was a distinguished

stranger visiting in the place. Oxbow Village seemed to be running over

with its one extra young man,--as may be seen sometimes in larger

villages, and even in cities of moderate dimensions.

Mr. William Murray Bradshaw had called on Clement the very day of his

arrival. He had already met the Deacon in the street, and asked some

questions about his transient boarder.

A very interesting young man, the Deacon said, much given to the reading

of pious books. Up late at night after he came, reading Scott's

Commentary. Appeared to be as fond of serious works as other young folks

were of their novels and romances and other immoral publications. He,

the Deacon, thought of having a few religious friends to meet the young

gentleman, if he felt so disposed; and should like to have him, Mr.

Bradshaw, come in and take a part in the exercises.--Mr. Bradshaw was

unfortunately engaged. He thought the young gentleman could hardly find

time for such a meeting during his brief visit.

Mr. Bradshaw expected naturally to see a youth of imperfect

constitution, and cachectic or dyspeptic tendencies, who was in training

to furnish one of those biographies beginning with the statement that,

from his infancy, the subject of it showed no inclination for boyish

amusements, and so on, until he dies out, for the simple reason that

there was not enough of him to live. Very interesting, no doubt, Master

Byles Gridley would have said, but had no more to do with good, hearty,

sound life than the history of those very little people to be seen in

museums, preserved in jars of alcohol, like brandy peaches.

When Mr. Clement Lindsay presented himself, Mr. Bradshaw was a good deal

surprised to see a young fellow of such a mould. He pleased himself with

the idea that he knew a man of mark at sight, and he set down Clement in

that category at his first glance. The young man met his penetrating and

questioning look with a frank, ingenuous, open aspect, before which he

felt himself disarmed, as it were, and thrown upon other means of

analysis. He would try him a little in talk.

"I hope you like these people you are with. What sort of a man do you

find my old friend the Deacon?"

Clement laughed. "A very queer old character. Loves his joke as well,

and is as sly in making it, as if he had studied Joe Miller instead of

the Catechism."

Mr. Bradshaw looked at the young man to know what he meant. Mr. Lindsay

talked in a very easy way for a serious young person. He was puzzled. He

did not see to the bottom of this description of the Deacon. With a

lawyer's instinct, he kept his doubts to himself and tried his witness

with a new question.

"Did you talk about books at all with the old man?"

"To be sure I did. Would you believe it, that aged saint is a great

novel-reader. So he tells me. What is more, he brings up his children to

that sort of reading, from the time when they first begin to spell. If

anybody else had told me such a story about an old country deacon, I

wouldn't have believed it; but he said so himself, to me, at breakfast

this morning."

Mr. Bradshaw felt as if either he or Mr. Lindsay must certainly be in

the first stage of mild insanity, and he did not think that he himself

could be out of his wits. He must try one more question. He had become

so mystified that he forgot himself, and began putting his interrogation

in legal form.

"Will you state, if you please--I beg your pardon--may I ask who is your

own favorite author?"

"I think just now I like to read Scott better than almost anybody."

"Do you mean the Rev. Thomas Scott, author of the Commentary?"

Clement stared at Mr. Bradshaw, and wondered whether he was trying to

make a fool of him. The young lawyer hardly looked as if he could be a

fool himself.

"I mean Sir Walter Scott," he said, dryly.

"Oh!" said Mr. Bradshaw. He saw that there had been a slight

misunderstanding between the young man and his worthy host, but it was

none of his business, and there were other subjects of interest to talk

about.

"You know one of our charming young ladies very well, I believe, Mr.

Lindsay. I think you are an old acquaintance of Miss Posey, whom we all

consider so pretty."

Poor Clement! The question pierced to the very marrow of his soul, but

it was put with the utmost suavity and courtesy, and honeyed with a

compliment to the young lady, too, so that there was no avoiding a

direct and pleasant answer to it.

"Yes," he said, "I have known the young lady you speak of for a long

time, and very well,--in fact, as you must have heard, we are something

more than friends. My visit here is principally on her account."

"You must give the rest of us a chance to see something of you during

your visit, Mr. Lindsay. I hope you are invited to Miss Eveleth's this

evening?"

"Yes, I got a note this morning. Tell me, Mr. Bradshaw, who is there

that I shall meet this evening if I go? I have no doubt there are girls

here I should like to see, and perhaps some young fellows that I should

like to talk with. You know all that's prettiest and pleasantest, of

course."'

"O, we're a little place, Mr. Lindsay. A few nice people, the rest

_comme ça_, you know. High-bush blackberries and low-bush

blackberries,--you understand,--just so everywhere,--high-bush here and

there, low-bush plenty. You must see the two parsons' daughters,--Saint

Ambrose's and Saint Joseph's,--and another girl I want particularly to

introduce you to. You shall form your own opinion of her. _I_ call her

handsome and stylish, but you have got spoiled, you know. Our young

poet, too, one we raised in this place, Mr. Lindsay, and a superior

article of poet, as we think,--that is, some of us, for the rest of us

are jealous of him, because the girls are all dying for him and want his

autograph.--And Cyp,--yes, you must talk to Cyp,--he has ideas. But

don't forget to get hold of old Byles--Master Gridley I mean--before you

go. Big head. Brains enough for a cabinet minister, and fit out a

college faculty with what was left over. Be sure you see old Byles. Set

him talking about his book,--'Thoughts on the Universe.' Didn't sell

much, but has got knowing things in it. I'll show you a copy, and then

you can tell him you know it, and he will take to you. Come in and get

your dinner with me to-morrow. We will dine late, as the city folks do,

and after that we will go over to the Rector's. I should like to show

you some of our village people."

Mr. Bradshaw liked the thought of showing the young man to some of his

friends there. As Clement was already "done for," or "bowled out," as

the young lawyer would have expressed the fact of his being pledged in

the matrimonial direction, there was nothing to be apprehended on the

score of rivalry. And although Clement was particularly good-looking,

and would have been called a distinguishable youth anywhere, Mr.

Bradshaw considered himself far more than his match, in all probability,

in social accomplishments. He expected, therefore, a certain amount of

reflex credit for bringing such a fine young fellow in his company, and

a second instalment of reputation from outshining him in conversation.

This was rather nice calculating, but Murray Bradshaw always calculated.

With most men life is like backgammon, half skill and half luck, but

with him it was like chess. He never pushed a pawn without reckoning the

cost, and when his mind was least busy it was sure to be half a dozen

moves ahead of the game as it was standing.

Mr. Bradshaw gave Clement a pretty dinner enough for such a place as

Oxbow Village. He offered him some good wine, and would have made him

talk so as to show his lining, to use one of his own expressions, but

Clement had apparently been through that trifling experience, and could

not be coaxed into saying more than he meant to say. Murray Bradshaw was

very curious to find out how it was that he had become the victim of

such a rudimentary miss as Susan Posey. Could she be an heiress in

disguise? Why no, of course not; had not he made all proper inquiries

about that when Susan came to town? A small inheritance from an aunt or

uncle, or some such relative, enough to make her a desirable party in

the eyes of certain villagers perhaps, but nothing to allure a man like

this, whose face and figure as marketable possessions were worth say a

hundred thousand in the girl's own right, as Mr. Bradshaw put it

roughly, with another hundred thousand if his talent is what some say,

and if his connection is a desirable one, a fancy price,--anything he

would fetch. Of course not. Must have got caught when he was a child.

Why the _diavolo_ didn't he break it off, then?

There was no fault to find with the modest entertainment at the

Parsonage. A splendid banquet in a great house is an admirable thing,

provided always its getting up did not cost the entertainer an inward

conflict, nor its recollection a twinge of economical regret, nor its

bills a cramp of anxiety. A simple evening party in the smallest village

is just as admirable in its degree, when the parlor is cheerfully

lighted, and the board prettily spread, and the guests are made to feel

comfortable without being reminded that anybody is making a painful

effort.

We know several of the young people who were there, and need not trouble

ourselves for the others. Myrtle Hazard had promised to come. She had

her own way of late as never before; in fact, the women were afraid of

her. Miss Silence felt that she could not be responsible for her any

longer. She had hopes for a time that Myrtle would go through the

customary spiritual paroxysm under the influence of the Rev. Mr.

Stoker's assiduous exhortations; but since she had broken off with him,

Miss Silence had looked upon her as little better than a backslider. And

now that the girl was beginning to show the tendencies which seemed to

come straight down to her from the belle of the last century, (whose

rich physical developments seemed to the under-vitalized spinster as in

themselves a kind of offence against propriety,) the forlorn woman

folded her thin hands and looked on hopelessly, hardly venturing a

remonstrance for fear of some new explosion. As for Cynthia, she was

comparatively easy since she had, through Mr. Byles Gridley, upset the

minister's questionable apparatus of religious intimacy. She had, in

fact, in a quiet way, given Mr. Bradshaw to understand that he would

probably meet Myrtle at the Parsonage if he dropped in at their small

gathering.

Clement walked over to Mrs. Hopkins's after his dinner with the young

lawyer, and asked if Susan was ready to go with him. At the sound of his

voice, Gifted Hopkins smote his forehead, and called himself, in subdued

tones, a miserable being. His imagination wavered uncertain for a while

between pictures of various modes of ridding himself of existence, and

fearful deeds involving the life of others. He had no fell purpose of

actually doing either, but there was a gloomy pleasure in contemplating

them as possibilities, and in mentally sketching the "Lines written in

Despair" which would be found in what was but an hour before the pocket

of the youthful bard, G. H., victim of a hopeless passion. All this

emotion was in the nature of a surprise to the young man. He had fully

believed himself desperately in love with Myrtle Hazard; and it was not

until Clement came into the family circle with the right of eminent

domain over the realm of Susan's affections, that this unfortunate

discovered that Susan's pretty ways and morning dress and love of poetry

and liking for his company had been too much for him, and that he was

henceforth to be wretched during the remainder of his natural life,

except so far as he could unburden himself in song.

Mr. William Murray Bradshaw had asked the privilege of waiting upon

Myrtle to the little party at the Eveleths. Myrtle was not insensible to

the attractions of the young lawyer, though she had never thought of

herself except as a child in her relations with any of these older

persons. But she was not the same girl that she had been but a few

months before. She had achieved her independence by her audacious and

most dangerous enterprise. She had gone through strange nervous trials

and spiritual experiences, which had matured her more rapidly than years

of common life would have done. She had got back her health, bringing

with it a riper wealth of womanhood. She had found her destiny in the

consciousness that she inherited the beauty belonging to her blood, and

which, after sleeping for a generation or two as if to rest from the

glare of the pageant that follows beauty through its long career of

triumph, had come to the light again in her life, and was to repeat the

legends of the olden time in her own history.

Myrtle's wardrobe had very little of ornament, such as the _modistes_ of

the town would have thought essential to render a young girl like her

presentable. There were a few heirlooms of old date, however, which she

had kept as curiosities until now, and which she looked over until she

found some lace and other convertible material, with which she enlivened

her costume a little for the evening. As she clasped the antique

bracelet around her wrist, she felt as if it were an amulet that gave

her the power of charming which had been so long obsolete in her

lineage. At the bottom of her heart she cherished a secret longing to

try her fascinations on the young lawyer. Who could blame her? It was

not an inwardly expressed intention,--it was the mere blind instinctive

movement to subjugate the strongest of the other sex who had come in her

way, which, as already said, is as natural to a woman as it is to a man

to be captivated by the loveliest of those to whom he dares to aspire.

Before William Murray Bradshaw and Myrtle Hazard had reached the

Parsonage, the girl's cheeks were flushed and her dark eyes were

flashing with a new excitement. The young man had not made love to her

directly, but he had interested her in herself by a delicate and tender

flattery of manner, and so set her fancies working that she was taken

with him as never before, and wishing that the Parsonage had been a mile

farther from The Poplars. It was impossible for a young girl like Myrtle

to conceal the pleasure she received from listening to her seductive

admirer, who was trying all his trained skill upon his artless

companion. Murray Bradshaw felt sure that the game was in his hands if

he played it with only common prudence. There was no need of hurrying

this child,--it might startle her to make downright love abruptly; and

now that he had an ally in her own household, and was to have access to

her with a freedom he had never before enjoyed, there was a refined

pleasure in playing his fish,--this gamest of golden-scaled

creatures,--which had risen to his fly, and which he wished to hook, but

not to land, until he was sure it would be worth his while.

They entered the little parlor at the Parsonage looking so beaming, that

Olive and Bathsheba exchanged glances which implied so much that it

would take a full page to tell it with all the potentialities involved.

"How magnificent Myrtle is this evening, Bathsheba!" said Cyprian

Eveleth, pensively.

"What a handsome pair they are, Cyprian!" said Bathsheba cheerfully.

Cyprian sighed. "She always fascinates me whenever I look upon her.

Isn't she the very picture of what a poet's love should be,--a poem

herself,--a glorious lyric,--all light and music! See what a smile the

creature has! And her voice! When did you ever hear such tones? And when

was it ever so full of life before?"

Bathsheba sighed. "I do not know any poets but Gifted Hopkins. Does not

Myrtle look more in her place by the side of Murray Bradshaw than she

would with Gifted hitched on her arm?"

Just then the poet made his appearance. He looked depressed, as if it

had cost him an effort to come. He was, however, charged with a message

which he must deliver to the hostess of the evening.

"They're coming presently," he said. "That young man and Susan. Wants

you to introduce him, Mr. Bradshaw."

The bell rang presently, and Murray Bradshaw slipped out into the entry

to meet the two lovers.

"How are you, my fortunate friend?" he said, as he met them at the door.

"Of course you're well and happy as mortal man can be in this vale of

tears. Charming, ravishing, quite delicious, that way of dressing your

hair, Miss Posey! Nice girls here this evening, Mr. Lindsay. Looked

lovely when I came out of the parlor. Can't say how they will show after

this young lady puts in an appearance." In reply to which florid

speeches Susan blushed, not knowing what else to do, and Clement smiled

as naturally as if he had been sitting for his photograph.

He felt, in a vague way, that he and Susan were being patronized, which

is not a pleasant feeling to persons with a certain pride of character.

There was no expression of contempt about Mr. Bradshaw's manner or

language at which he could take offence. Only he had the air of a man

who praises his neighbor without stint, with a calm consciousness that

he himself is out of reach of comparison in the possessions or qualities

which he is admiring in the other. Clement was right in his obscure

perception of Mr. Bradshaw's feeling while he was making his phrases.

That gentleman was, in another moment, to have the tingling delight of

showing the grand creature he had just begun to tame. He was going to

extinguish the pallid light of Susan's prettiness in the brightness of

Myrtle's beauty. He would bring this young man, neutralized and rendered

entirely harmless by his irrevocable pledge to a slight girl, face to

face with a masterpiece of young womanhood, and say to him, not in

words, but as plainly as speech could have told him, "Behold my

captive!"

It was a proud moment for Murray Bradshaw. He had seen, or thought that

he had seen, the assured evidence of a speedy triumph over all the

obstacles of Myrtle's youth and his own present seeming slight excess of

maturity. Unless he were very greatly mistaken, he could now walk the

course; the plate was his, no matter what might be the entries. And this

youth, this handsome, spirited-looking, noble-aired young fellow, whose

artist-eye could not miss a line of Myrtle's proud and almost defiant

beauty, was to be the witness of his power, and to look in admiration

upon his prize! He introduced him to the others, reserving her for the

last. She was at that moment talking with the worthy Rector, and turned

when Mr. Bradshaw spoke to her.

"Miss Hazard, will you allow me to present to you my friend, Mr. Clement

Lindsay?"

They looked full upon each other, and spoke the common words of

salutation. It was a strange meeting; but we who profess to tell the

truth must tell strange things, or we shall be liars.

In poor little Susan's letter there was some allusion to a bust of

Innocence which the young artist had begun, but of which he had said

nothing in his answer to her. He had roughed out a block of marble for

that impersonation; sculpture was a delight to him, though secondary to

his main pursuit. After his memorable adventure, the features and the

forms of the girl he had rescued so haunted him that the pale ideal

which was to work itself out in the bust faded away in its perpetual

presence, and--alas, poor Susan!--in obedience to the impulse that he

could not control, he left Innocence sleeping in the marble, and began

modelling a figure of proud and noble and imperious beauty, to which he

gave the name of Liberty.

The original which had inspired his conception was before him. These

were the lips to which his own had clung when he brought her back from

the land of shadows. The hyacinthine curl of her lengthening locks had

added something to her beauty; but it was the same face which had

haunted him. This was the form he had borne seemingly lifeless in his

arms, and the bosom which heaved so visibly before him was that which

his eyes--. They were the calm eyes of a sculptor, but of a sculptor

hardly twenty years old.

Yes,--her bosom was heaving. She had an unexplained feeling of

suffocation, and drew great breaths,--she could not have said why,--but

she could not help it; and presently she became giddy, and had a great

noise in her ears, and rolled her eyes about, and was on the point of

going into an hysteric spasm. They called Dr. Hurlbut, who was making

himself agreeable to Olive just then, to come and see what was the

matter with Myrtle.

"A little nervous turn,--that is all," he said. "Open the window. Loose

the ribbon round her neck. Rub her hands. Sprinkle some water on her

forehead. A few drops of cologne. Room too warm for her,--that's all, I

think."

Myrtle came to herself after a time without anything like a regular

paroxysm. But she was excitable, and whatever the cause of the

disturbance may have been, it seemed prudent that she should go home

early; and the excellent Rector insisted on caring for her, much to the

discontent of Mr. William Murray Bradshaw.

"Demonish odd," said this gentleman, "wasn't it, Mr. Lindsay, that Miss

Hazard should go off in that way? Did you ever see her before?"

"I--I--have seen that young lady before," Clement answered.

"Where did you meet her?" Mr. Bradshaw asked, with eager interest.

"I met her in the Valley of the Shadow of Death," Clement answered, very

solemnly.--"I leave this place to-morrow morning. Have you any commands

for the city?"

("Knows how to shut a fellow up pretty well for a young one, doesn't

he?" Mr. Bradshaw thought to himself.)

"Thank you, no," he answered, recovering himself. "Rather a melancholy

place to make acquaintance in, I should think, that Valley you spoke of.

I should like to know about it."

Mr. Clement had the power of looking steadily into another person's eyes

in a way that was by no means encouraging to curiosity or favorable to

the process of cross-examination. Mr. Bradshaw was not disposed to press

his question in the face of the calm, repressive look the young man gave

him.

"If he wasn't bagged, I shouldn't like the shape of things any too

well," he said to himself.

The conversation between Mr. Clement Lindsay and Miss Susan Posey, as

they walked home together, was not very brilliant. "I am going

to-morrow morning," he said, "and I must bid you good by to-night."

Perhaps it is as well to leave two lovers to themselves, under these

circumstances.

Before he went he spoke to his worthy host, whose moderate demands he

had to satisfy, and with whom he wished to exchange a few words.

"And by the way, Deacon, I have no use for this book, and as it is in a

good type, perhaps you would like it. Your favorite, Scott, and one of

his greatest works. I have another edition of it at home, and don't care

for this volume."

"Thank you, thank you, Mr. Lindsay, much obleeged. I shall read that

copy for your sake,--the best of books next to the Bible itself."

After Mr. Lindsay had gone, the Deacon looked at the back of the book.

"Scott's Works, Vol. IX." He opened it at hazard, and happened to fall

on a well-known page, from which he began reading aloud, slowly,

"When Izrul, of the Lord beloved,

Out of the land of bondage came."

The whole hymn pleased the grave Deacon. He had never seen this work of

the author of the Commentary. No matter; anything that such a good man

wrote must be good reading, and he would save it up for Sunday. The

consequence of this was, that, when the Rev. Mr. Stoker stopped in on

his way to meeting on the "Sabbath," he turned white with horror at the

spectacle of the senior Deacon of his church sitting, open-mouthed and

wide-eyed, absorbed in the pages of "Ivanhoe," which he found enormously

interesting; but, so far as he had yet read, not occupied with religious

matters so much as he had expected.

Myrtle had no explanation to give of her nervous attack. Mr. Bradshaw

called the day after the party, but did not see her. He met her walking,

and thought she seemed a little more distant than common. That would

never do. He called again at The Poplars a few days afterwards, and was

met in the entry by Miss Cynthia, with whom he had a long conversation

on matters involving Myrtle's interests and their own.

A PASSAGE FROM HAWTHORNE'S ENGLISH NOTEBOOKS.

Our road to Rydal lay through Ambleside, which is certainly a very

pretty town, and looks cheerfully on a sunny day. We saw Miss

Martineau's residence, called the Knoll, standing high up on a hillock,

and having at its foot a Methodist chapel, for which, or whatever place

of Christian worship, this good lady can have no occasion. We stopped a

moment in the street below her house, and deliberated a little whether

to call on her, but concluded otherwise.

After leaving Ambleside, the road winds in and out among the hills, and

soon brings us to a sheet (or napkin, rather, than a sheet) of water,

which the driver tells us is Rydal Lake! We had already heard that it

was but three quarters of a mile long, and one quarter broad; still, it

being an idea of considerable size in our minds, we had inevitably drawn

its ideal physical proportions on a somewhat corresponding scale. It

certainly did look very small; and I said, in my American scorn, that I

could carry it away easily in a porringer; for it is nothing more than a

grassy-bordered pool among the surrounding hills, which ascend directly

from its margin; so that one might fancy it not a permanent body of

water, but a rather extensive accumulation of recent rain. Moreover, it

was rippled with a breeze, and so, as I remember it, though the sun

shone, it looked dull and sulky, like a child out of humor. Now the best

thing these small ponds can do is to keep perfectly calm and smooth, and

not to attempt to show off any airs of their own, but content themselves

with serving as a mirror for whatever of beautiful or picturesque there

may be in the scenery around them. The hills about Rydal water are not

very lofty, but are sufficiently so as objects of every-day

view,--objects to live with,--and they are craggier than those we have

hitherto seen, and bare of wood, which indeed would hardly grow on some

of their precipitous sides.

On the roadside, as we reach the foot of the lake, stands a spruce and

rather large house of modern aspect, but with several gables, and much

overgrown with ivy,--a very pretty and comfortable house, built,

adorned, and cared for with commendable taste. We inquired whose it was,

and the coachman said it was "Mr. Wordsworth's," and that Mrs.

Wordsworth was still residing there. So we were much delighted to have

seen his abode; and as we were to stay the night at Grasmere, about two

miles farther on, we determined to come back and inspect it as

particularly as should be allowable. Accordingly, after taking rooms at

Brown's Hotel, we drove back in our return car, and, reaching the head

of Rydal water, alighted to walk through this familiar scene of so many

years of Wordsworth's life. We ought to have seen De Quincey's former

residence, and Hartley Coleridge's cottage, I believe, on our way, but

were not aware of it at the time. Near the lake there is a stone quarry,

and a cavern of some extent, artificially formed, probably, by taking

out the stone. Above the shore of the lake, not a great way from

Wordsworth's residence, there is a flight of steps hewn in a rock, and

ascending to a seat, where a good view of the lake may be attained; and

as Wordsworth has doubtless sat there hundreds of times, so did we

ascend and sit down and look at the hills and at the flags on the

lake's shore.

Reaching the house that had been pointed out to us as Wordsworth's

residence, we began to peer about at its front and gables, and over the

garden-wall on both sides of the road, quickening our enthusiasm as much

as we could, and meditating to pilfer some flower or ivy-leaf from the

house or its vicinity, to be kept as sacred memorials. At this juncture

a man approached, who announced himself as the gardener of the place,

and said, too, that this was not Wordsworth's house at all, but the

residence of Mr. Ball, a Quaker gentleman; but that his ground adjoined

Wordsworth's, and that he had liberty to take visitors through the

latter. How absurd it would have been if we had carried away ivy-leaves

and tender recollections from this domicile of a respectable Quaker! The

gardener was an intelligent young man, of pleasant, sociable, and

respectful address; and as we went along, he talked about the poet, whom

he had known, and who, he said, was very familiar with the country

people. He led us through Mr. Ball's grounds, up a steep hillside, by

winding, gravelled walks, with summer-houses at points favorable for

them. It was a very shady and pleasant spot, containing about an acre of

ground, and all turned to good account by the manner of laying it out;

so that it seemed more than it really was. In one place, on a small,

smooth slab of slate let into a rock, there is an inscription by

Wordsworth, which I think I have read in his works, claiming kindly

regards from those who visit the spot, after his departure, because many

trees had been spared at his intercession. His own grounds, or rather

his ornamental garden, is separated from Mr. Ball's only by a wire

fence, or some such barrier, and the gates have no fastening, so that

the whole appears like one possession, and doubtless was so as regarded

the poet's walks and enjoyments. We approached by paths so winding, that

I hardly know how the house stands in relation to the road; but, after

much circuity, we really did see Wordsworth's residence,--an old house,

with an uneven ridge-pole, built of stone, no doubt, but plastered over

with some neutral tint,--a house that would not have been remarkably

pretty in itself, but so delightfully situated, so secluded, so hedged

about with shrubbery and adorned with flowers, so ivy-grown on one side,

so beautified with the personal care of him who lived in it and loved

it, that it seemed the very place for a poet's residence; and as if,

while he lived so long in it, his poetry had manifested itself in

flowers, shrubbery, and ivy. I never smelt such a delightful fragrance

of flowers as there was all through the garden. In front of the house,

there is a circular terrace, of two ascents, in raising which Wordsworth

had himself performed much of the labor; and here there are seats, from

which we obtained a fine view down the valley of the Rothay, with

Windermere in the distance,--a view of several miles, and which we did

not suppose could be seen, after winding among the hills so far from the

lake. It is very beautiful and picture-like. While we sat here, mamma

happened to refer to the ballad of little Barbara Lewthwaite, and Julian

began to repeat the poem concerning her; and the gardener said that

little Barbara had died not a great while ago, an elderly woman, leaving

grown-up children behind her. Her marriage-name was Thompson, and the

gardener believed there was nothing remarkable in her character.

There is a summer-house at one extremity of the grounds, in deepest

shadow, but with glimpses of mountain-views through trees which shut it

in, and which have spread intercepting boughs since Wordsworth died. It

is lined with pine-cones, in a pretty way enough, but of doubtful taste.

I rather wonder that people of real taste should help Nature out, and

beautify her, or perhaps rather _prettify_ her so much as they

do,--opening vistas, showing one thing, hiding another, making a scene

picturesque whether or no. I cannot rid myself of the feeling that there

is something false, a kind of humbug, in all this. At any rate, the

traces of it do not contribute to my enjoyment, and, indeed, it ought to

be done so exquisitely as to leave no trace. But I ought not to

criticise in any way a spot which gave me so much pleasure, and where it

is good to think of Wordsworth in quiet, past days, walking in his

home-shadow of trees which he knew, and training flowers, and trimming

shrubs, and chanting in an undertone his own verses, up and down the

winding walks.

The gardener gave Julian a cone from the summer-house, which had fallen

on the seat, and mamma got some mignonette, and leaves of laurel and

ivy, and we wended our way back to the hotel.

Wordsworth was not the owner of this house, it being the property of

Lady Fleming. Mrs. Wordsworth still lives there, and is now at home.

_Five o'clock._--All day it has been cloudy and showery, with thunder

now and then; the mists hang low on the surrounding hills, adown which,

at various points, we can see the snow-white fall of little

streamlets--forces they call them here--swollen by the rain. An overcast

day is not so gloomy in the hill-country as in the lowlands; there are

more breaks, more transfusion of sky-light through the gloom, as has

been the case to-day; and, as I found in Lenox, we get better acquainted

with clouds by seeing at what height they lie on the hillsides, and find

that the difference betwixt a fair day and a cloudy and rainy one is

very superficial, after all. Nevertheless, rain is rain, and wets a man

just as much among the mountains as anywhere else; so we have been kept

within doors all day, till an hour or so ago, when Julian and I went

down to the village in quest of the post-office.

We took a path that leads from the hotel across the fields, and, coming

into a wood, crosses the Rothay by a one-arched bridge, and passes the

village church. The Rothay is very swift and turbulent to-day, and

hurries along with foam-specks on its surface, filling its banks from

brim to brim, a stream perhaps twenty feet wide, perhaps more; for I am

willing that the good little river should have all it can fairly claim.

It is the St. Lawrence of several of these English lakes, through which

it flows, and carries off their superfluous waters. In its haste, and

with its rushing sound, it was pleasant both to see and hear; and it

sweeps by one side of the old churchyard where Wordsworth lies

buried,--the side where his grave is made. The church of Grasmere is a

very plain structure, with a low body, on one side of which is a low

porch with a pointed arch. The tower is square, and looks ancient; but

the whole is overlaid with plaster of a buff or pale-yellow hue. It was

originally built, I suppose, of rough, shingly stones, as many of the

houses hereabouts are now, and the plaster is used to give a finish. We

found the gate of the churchyard wide open; and the grass was lying on

the graves, having probably been mowed yesterday. It is but a small

churchyard, and with few monuments of any pretension in it, most of them

being slate headstones, standing erect. From the gate at which we

entered a distinct foot-track leads to the corner nearest the

river-side, and I turned into it by a sort of instinct, the more readily

as I saw a tourist-looking man approaching from that point, and a woman

looking among the gravestones. Both of these persons had gone by the

time I came up, so that Julian and I were left to find Wordsworth's

grave all by ourselves.

At this corner of the churchyard there is a hawthorn bush or tree, the

extremest branches of which stretch as far as where Wordsworth lies.

This whole corner seems to be devoted to himself and his family and

friends; and they all lie very closely together, side by side, and head

to foot, as room could conveniently be found. Hartley Coleridge lies a

little behind, in the direction of the church, his feet being towards

Wordsworth's head, who lies in the row of those of his own blood. I

found out Hartley Coleridge's grave sooner than Wordsworth's; for it is

of marble, and, though simple enough, has more of sculptured device

about it, having been erected, as I think the inscription states, by his

brother and sister. Wordsworth's has only the very simplest slab of

slate, with "William Wordsworth" and nothing else upon it. As I

recollect it, it is the midmost grave of the row. It is, or has been,

well grass-grown, but the grass is quite worn away from the top, though

sufficiently luxuriant at the sides. It looks as if people had stood

upon it, and so does the grave next to it, which, I believe, is of one

of his children. I plucked some grass and weeds from it; and as he was

buried within so few years, they may fairly be supposed to have drawn

their nutriment from his mortal remains, and I gathered them from just

above his head. There is no fault to be found with his grave,--within

view of the hills, within sound of the river, murmuring near by,--no

fault, except that he is crowded so closely with his kindred; and,

moreover, that, being so old a churchyard, the earth over him must all

have been human once. He might have had fresh earth to himself, but he

chose this grave deliberately. No very stately and broad-based monument

can ever be erected over it, without infringing upon, covering, and

overshadowing the graves, not only of his family, but of individuals who

probably were quite disconnected with him. But it is pleasant to think

and know--were it but on the evidence of this choice of a

resting-place--that he did not care for a stately monument. After

leaving the churchyard, we wandered about in quest of the post-office,

and for a long time without success. This little town of Grasmere seems

to me as pretty a place as ever I met with in my life. It is quite shut

in by hills that rise up immediately around it, like a neighborhood of

kindly giants. These hills descend steeply to the verge of the level on

which the village stands, and there they terminate at once, the whole

site of the little town being as even as a floor. I call it a village;

but it is no village at all, all the dwellings standing apart, each in

its own little domain, and each, I believe, with its own little lane

leading to it, independently of the rest. Most of these are old

cottages, plastered white, with antique porches, and roses and other

vines trained against them, and shrubbery growing about them; and some

are covered with ivy. There are a few edifices of more pretension and of

modern build, but not so strikingly as to put the rest out of

countenance. The post-office, when we found it, proved to be an ivied

cottage, with a good deal of shrubbery round it, having its own pathway,

like the other cottages. The whole looks like a real seclusion, shut out

from the great world by these encircling hills, on the sides of which,

whenever they are not too steep, you see the division-lines of property,

and tokens of cultivation,--taking from them their pretensions to savage

majesty, but bringing them nearer to the heart of man.

Since writing the above, I have been again with S---- to see

Wordsworth's grave, and, finding the door of the church open, we went

in. A woman and little girl were sweeping at the farther end, and the

woman came towards us out of the cloud of dust which she had raised. We

were surprised at the extremely antique appearance of the church. It is

paved with bluish-gray flagstones, over which uncounted generations have

trodden, leaving the floor as well laid as ever. The walls are very

thick, and the arched windows open through them at a considerable

distance above the floor. And down through the centre of the church runs

a row of five arches, very rude and round-headed, all of rough stone,

supported by rough and massive pillars, or rather square stone blocks,

which stand in the pews, and stood in the same places, probably, long

before the wood of those pews began to grow. Above this row of arches is

another row, built upon the same mass of stone, and almost as broad, but

lower; and on this upper row rests the framework, the oaken beams, the

black skeleton of the roof. It is a very clumsy contrivance for

supporting the roof, and if it were modern we certainly should condemn

it as very ugly; but being the relic of a simple age, it comes in well

with the antique simplicity of the whole structure. The roof goes up,

barn-like, into its natural angle, and all the rafters and cross-beams

are visible. There is an old font; and in the chancel is a niche, where,

judging from a similar one in Furness Abbey, the holy water used to be

placed for the priest's use while celebrating mass. Around the inside of

the porch is a stone bench, placed against the wall, narrow and uneasy,

but where a great many people had sat who now have found quieter

resting-places.

The woman was a very intelligent-looking person, not of the usual

English ruddiness, but rather thin and somewhat pale, though bright of

aspect. Her way of talking was very agreeable. She inquired if we wished

to see Wordsworth's monument, and at once showed it to us,--a slab of

white marble fixed against the upper end of the central row of stone

arches, with a pretty long inscription, and a profile bust, in

bas-relief, of his aged countenance. The monument is placed directly

over Wordsworth's pew, and could best be seen and read from the very

corner-seat where he used to sit. The pew is one of those occupying the

centre of the church, and is just across the aisle from the pulpit, and

is the best of all for the purpose of seeing and hearing the clergyman,

and likewise as convenient as any, from its neighborhood to the altar.

On the other side of the aisle, beneath the pulpit, is Lady Fleming's

pew. This and one or two others are curtained; Wordsworth's was not. I

think I can bring up his image in that corner seat of his pew--a

white-headed, tall, spare man, plain in aspect--better than in any other

situation. The woman said that she had known him very well, and that he

had made some verses on a sister of hers. She repeated the first lines,

something about a lamb; but neither S---- nor I remembered them.

On the walls of the chancel there are monuments to the Flemings, and

painted escutcheons of their arms; and along the side walls also, and on

the square pillars of the row of arches, there are other monuments,

generally of white marble, with the letters of the inscription

blackened. On these pillars, likewise, and in many places in the walls,

were hung verses from Scripture, painted on boards. At one of the doors

was a poor-box, an elaborately carved little box of oak, with the date

1648, and the name of the church--St. Oswald's--upon it. The whole

interior of the edifice was plain, simple, almost to grimness,--or would

have been so, only that the foolish church-wardens, or other authority,

have washed it over with the same buff color with which they have

overlaid the exterior. It is a pity; it lightens it up, and desecrates

it horribly, especially as the woman says that there were formerly

paintings on the walls, now obliterated forever. I could have stayed in

the old church much longer, and could write much more about it, but

there must be an end to everything. Pacing it from the farther end to

the elevation before the altar, I found that it was twenty-five paces

long.

On looking again at the Rothay, I find I did it some injustice; for at

the bridge, in its present swollen state, it is nearer twenty yards than

twenty feet across. Its waters are very clear, and it rushes along with

a speed which is delightful to see, after an acquaintance with the muddy

and sluggish Avon and Leam.

Since tea, I have taken a stroll from the hotel in a different direction

from usual, and passed the Swan Inn, where Scott used to go daily to get

a draught of liquor when he was visiting Wordsworth, who had no wine nor

other inspiriting fluid in his house. It stands directly on the wayside,

a small, whitewashed house, with an addition in the rear that seems to

have been built since Scott's time. On the door is the painted sign of

a swan,--and the name "Scott's Swan Hotel." I walked a considerable

distance beyond it; but a shower coming up, I turned back, entered the

inn, and, following the mistress into a snug little room, was served

with a glass of bitter ale. It is a very plain and homely inn, and

certainly could not have satisfied Scott's wants, if he had required

anything very farfetched or delicate in his potations. I found two

Westmoreland peasants in the room with ale before them. One went away

almost immediately; but the other remained, and, entering into

conversation with him, he told me that he was going to New Zealand, and

expected to sail in September. I announced myself as an American, and he

said that a large party had lately gone from hereabouts to America; but

he seemed not to understand that there was any distinction between

Canada and the States. These people had gone to Quebec. He was a very

civil, well-behaved, kindly sort of person, of a simple character, which

I took to belong to the class and locality, rather than to himself

individually. I could not very well understand all that he said, owing

to his provincial dialect; and when he spoke to his own countrymen, or

to the women of the house, I really could but just catch a word here and

there. How long it takes to melt English down into a homogeneous mass!

He told me that there was a public library in Grasmere, to which he has

access in common with the other inhabitants, and a reading-room

connected with it, where he reads the "Times" in the evening. There was

no American smartness in his mind. When I left the house, it was

showering briskly; but the drops quite ceased, and the clouds began to

break away, before I reached my hotel, and I saw the new moon over my

right shoulder.

* * * * *

_July 21._--We left Grasmere yesterday, after breakfast, it being a

delightful morning, with some clouds, but the cheerfullest sunshine on

great part of the mountain-sides and on ourselves. We returned, in the

first place, to Ambleside, along the border of Grasmere Lake, which

would be a pretty little piece of water, with its steep and

high-surrounding hills, were it not that a stubborn and straight-lined

stone fence, running along the eastern shore, by the roadside, quite

spoils its appearance. Rydal water, though nothing can make a lake of

it, looked prettier and less diminutive than at the first view; and, in

fact, I find that it is impossible to know accurately how any prospect

or other thing looks until after at least a second view, which always

essentially corrects the first. This, I think, is especially true in

regard to objects which we have heard much about, and exercised our

imagination upon; the first view being a vain attempt to reconcile our

idea with the reality, and at the second we begin to accept the thing

for what it really is. Wordsworth's situation is really a beautiful one;

and Nab Scaur behind his house rises with a grand, protecting air. We

passed Nab's cottage, in which De Quincey formerly lived, and where

Hartley Coleridge lived and died. It is a small, buff-tinted, plastered,

stone cottage, immediately on the roadside, and originally, I should

think, of a very humble class; but it now looks as if persons of taste

might some time or other have sat down in it, and caused flowers to

spring up about it. It is very agreeably situated, under the great,

precipitous hill, and with Rydal water close at hand, on the other side

of the road. An advertisement of lodgings to let was put up on this

cottage.

I question whether any part of the world looks so beautiful as

England--this part of England, at least--on a fine summer morning. It

makes one think the more cheerfully of human life to see such a bright,

universal verdure; such sweet, rural, peaceful, flower-bordered

cottages,--not cottages of gentility, but dwellings of the laboring

poor; such nice villas along the roadside, so tastefully contrived for

comfort and beauty, and adorned more and more, year after year, with the

care and afterthought of people who mean to live in them a great while,

and feel as if their children might live in them also. And so they plant

trees to overshadow their walks, and train ivy and all beautiful vines

up against their walls,--and thus live for the future in another sense

than we Americans do. And the climate helps them out, and makes

everything moist and green, and full of tender life, instead of dry and

arid, as human life and vegetable life are so apt to be with us.

Certainly, England can present a more attractive face than we can, even

in its humbler modes of life,--to say nothing of the beautiful lives

that might be led, one would think, by the higher classes, whose

gateways, with broad, smooth gravelled drives leading through them, one

sees every mile or two along the road, winding into some proud

seclusion. All this is passing away, and society must assume new

relations; but there is no harm in believing that there has been

something very good in English life,--good for all classes, while the

world was in a state out of which these forms naturally grew.

MONA'S MOTHER.

In the porch that brier-vines smother,

At her wheel, sits Mona's mother.

O, the day is dying bright!

Roseate shadows, silver dimming,

Ruby lights through amber swimming,

Bring the still and starry night.

Sudden she is 'ware of shadows

Going out across the meadows

From the slowly sinking sun,--

Going through the misty spaces

That the rippling ruby laces,

Shadows, like the violets tangled,

Like the soft light, softly mingled,

Till the two seem just as one!

Every tell-tale wind doth waft her

Little breaths of maiden laughter.

O, divinely dies the day!

And the swallow, on the rafter,

In her nest of sticks and clay,--

On the rafter, up above her,

With her patience doth reprove her,

Twittering soft the time away;

Never stopping, never stopping,

With her wings so warmly dropping

Round her nest of sticks and clay.

"Take, my bird, O take some other

Eve than this to twitter gay!"

Sayeth, prayeth Mona's mother,

To the slender-throated swallow

On her nest of sticks and clay;

For her sad eyes needs must follow

Down the misty, mint-sweet hollow,

Where the ruby colors play

With the gold, and with the gray.

"Yet, my little Lady-feather,

You do well to sit and sing,"

Crieth, sigheth Mona's mother.

"If you would, you could no other.

Can the leaf fail with the spring?

Can the tendril stay from twining

When the sap begins to run?

Or the dew-drop keep from shining

With her body full o' the sun?

Nor can you, from gladness, either;

Therefore, you do well to sing.

Up and o'er the downy lining

Of your bird-bed I can see

Two round little heads together,

Pushed out softly through your wing.

But alas! my bird, for me!"

In the porch with roses burning

All across, she sitteth lonely.

O, her soul is dark with dread!

Round and round her slow wheel turning,

Lady brow down-dropped serenely,

Lady hand uplifted queenly,

Pausing in the spinning only

To rejoin the broken thread,--

Pausing only for the winding,

With the carded silken binding

Of the flax, the distaff-head.

All along the branches creeping,

To their leafy beds of sleeping

Go the blue-birds and the brown;

Blackbird stoppeth now his clamor,

And the little yellowhammer

Droppeth head in winglet down.

Now the rocks rise bleak and barren

Through the twilight, gray and still;

In the marsh-land now the heron

Clappeth close his horny bill.

Death-watch now begins his drumming

And the fire-fly, going, coming,

Weaveth zigzag lines of light,--

Lines of zigzag, golden-threaded,

Up the marshy valley, shaded

O'er and o'er with vapors white.

Now the lily, open-hearted,

Of her dragon-fly deserted,

Swinging on the wind so low,

Gives herself, with trust audacious,

To the wild warm wave that washes

Through her fingers, soft and slow.

O the eyes of Mona's mother!

Dim they grow with tears unshed;

For no longer may they follow

Down the misty mint-sweet hollow,

Down along the yellow mosses

That the brook with silver crosses.

Ah! the day is dead, is dead;

And the cold and curdling shadows,

Stretching from the long, low meadows,

Darker, deeper, nearer spread,

Till she cannot see the twining

Of the briers, nor see the lining

Round the porch of roses red,--

Till she cannot see the hollow,

Nor the little steel-winged swallow,

On her clay-built nest o'erhead.

Mona's mother falleth mourning:

O, 't is hard, so hard, to see

Prattling child to woman turning,

As to grander company!

Little heart she lulled with hushes

Beating, burning up with blushes,

All with meditative dreaming

On the dear delicious gleaming

Of the bridal veil and ring;

Finding in the sweet ovations

Of its new, untried relations

Better joys than she can bring.

In her hand her wheel she keepeth,

And her heart within her leapeth,

With a burdened, bashful yearning,

For the babe's weight on her knee,

For the loving lisp of glee,

Sweet as larks' throats in the morning,

Sweet as hum of honey-bee.

"O my child!" cries Mona's mother,

"Will you, can you take another

Name ere mine upon your lips?

Can you, only for the asking,

Give to other hands the clasping

Of your rosy finger-tips?"

Fear on fear her sad soul borrows,--

O the dews are falling fair!

But no fair thing now can move her;

Vainly walks the moon above her,

Turning out her golden furrows

On the cloudy fields of air.

Sudden she is 'ware of shadows,

Coming in across the meadows,

And of murmurs, low as love,--

Murmurs mingled like the meeting

Of the winds, or like the beating

Of the wings of dove with dove.

In her hand the slow wheel stoppeth,

Silken flax from distaff droppeth,

And a cruel, killing pain

Striketh up from heart to brain;

And she knoweth by that token

That the spinning all is vain,

That the troth-plight has been spoken,

And the thread of life thus broken

Never can be joined again.

AT PADUA.

I.

Those of my readers who have frequented the garden of Doctor Rappaccini

no doubt recall with perfect distinctness the quaint old city of Padua.

They remember its miles and miles of dim arcade over-roofing the

sidewalks everywhere, affording excellent opportunity for the flirtation

of lovers by day and the vengeance of rivals by night. They have seen

the now vacant streets thronged with maskers, and the Venetian Podestà

going in gorgeous state to and from the vast Palazzo della Ragione. They

have witnessed ringing tournaments in those sad, empty squares, and

races in the Prato della Valle, and many other wonders of different

epochs, and their pleasure makes me half sorry that I should have lived

for several years within an hour by rail from Padua, and should know

little or nothing of these great sights from actual observation. I take

shame to myself for having visited Padua so often and so familiarly as I

used to do,--for having been bored and hungry there,--for having had

toothache there, upon one occasion,--for having rejoiced more in a cup

of coffee at Pedrocchi's than in the whole history of Padua,--for having

slept repeatedly in the bad-bedded hotels of Padua and never once dreamt

of Portia,--for having been more taken by the _salti mortali_[A] of a

waiter who summed up my account at a Paduan restaurant, than by all the

strategies with which the city has been many times captured and

recaptured. Had I viewed Padua only over the wall of Doctor Rappaccini's

garden, how different my impressions of the city would now be! This is

one of the drawbacks of actual knowledge.

"Ah! how can you write about Spain when once you have been there?" asked

Heine of Théophile Gautier setting out on a journey thither.

Nevertheless it seems to me that I remember something about Padua with a

sort of romantic pleasure. There was a certain charm which I can dimly

recall, in sauntering along the top of the old wall of the city, and

looking down upon the plumy crests of the Indian-corn that nourished up

so mightily from the dry bed of the moat. At such times I could not help

figuring to myself the many sieges that the wall had known, with the

fierce assault by day, the secret attack by night, the swarming foe upon

the plains below, the bristling arms of the besieged upon the wall, the

boom of the great mortars made of ropes and leather and throwing mighty

balls of stone, the stormy flight of arrows, the ladders planted against

the defences and staggering headlong into the moat, enriched for future

agriculture not only by its sluggish waters, but by the blood of many

men. I suppose that most of these visions were old stage spectacles

furbished up anew, and that my armies were chiefly equipped with their

obsolete implements of warfare from museums of armor and from cabinets

of antiquities; but they were very vivid, for all that.

I was never able, in passing a certain one of the city gates, to divest

myself of an historic interest in the great loads of hay waiting

admission on the outside. For an instant they masked again the Venetian

troops that, in the war of the League of Cambray, entered the city in

the hay-carts, shot down the landsknechts at the gates, and, uniting

with the citizens, cut the German garrison to pieces. But it was a thing

long past. The German garrison was here again; and the heirs of the

landsknechts went clanking through the gate to the parade-ground, with

that fierce clamor of their kettle-drums which is so much fiercer

because unmingled with the noise of fifes. Once more now the Germans are

gone, and, let us trust, forever; but when I saw them, there seemed

little hope of their going. They had a great Biergarten on the top of

the wall, and they had set up the altars of their heavy Bacchus in many

parts of the city.

I please myself with thinking that, if I walked on such a spring day as

this in the arcaded Paduan streets, I should catch glimpses, through the

gateways of the palaces, of gardens full of vivid bloom, and of

fountains that tinkle there forever. If it were autumn, and I were in

the great market-place before the Palazzo della Ragione, I should hear

the baskets of amber-hued and honeyed grapes humming with the murmur of

multitudinous bees, and making a music as if the wine itself were

already singing in their gentle hearts. It is a great field of succulent

verdure, that wide old market-place; and fancy loves to browse about

among its gay stores of fruits and vegetables, brought thither by the

world-old peasant-women who have been bringing fruits and vegetables to

the Paduan market for so many centuries. They sit upon the ground before

their great panniers, and knit and doze, and wake up with a drowsy

"_Comandala?_" as you linger to look at their grapes. They have each a

pair of scales,--the emblem of Injustice,--and will weigh you out a

scant measure of the fruit, if you like. Their faces are yellow as

parchment, and Time has written them so full of wrinkles that there is

not room for another line. Doubtless these old parchment visages are

palimpsests, and would tell the whole history of Padua if you could get

at each successive inscription. Among their primal records there must be

some account of the Roman city, as each little contadinella, remembered

it on market-days; and one might read of the terror of Attila's sack, a

little later, with the peasant-maid's personal recollections of the bold

Hunnish trooper who ate up the grapes in her basket, and kissed her

hard, round red cheeks,--for in that time she was a blooming girl,--and

paid nothing for either privilege. What wild and confused reminiscences

on the wrinkled visage we should find thereafter of the fierce

republican times, of Ecelino, of the Carraras, of the Venetian rule! And

is it not sad to think of systems and peoples all passing away, and

these ancient women lasting still, and still selling grapes in front of

the Palazzo della Ragione? What a long mortality!

The youngest of their number is a thousand years older than the palace,

which was begun in the twelfth century, and which is much the same now

as it was when first completed. I know that, if I entered it, I should

be sure of finding the great hall of the palace--the vastest hall in the

world--dim and dull and dusty and delightful, with nothing in it except

at one end Donatello's colossal marble-headed wooden horse of Troy,

stared at from the other end by the two dog-faced Egyptian women in

basalt placed there by Belzoni.

Late in the drowsy summer afternoons I should have the Court of the

University all to myself, and might study unmolested the blazons of the

noble youth who have attended the school in different centuries ever

since 1200, and have left their escutcheons on the walls to commemorate

them. At the foot of the stairway ascending to the schools from the

court is the statue of the learned lady who was once a professor in the

University, and who, if her likeness belie not her looks, must have

given a great charm to student life in other times. At present there are

no lady professors at Padua, any more than at Harvard; and during late

years the schools have suffered greatly from the interference of the

Austrian government, which frequently closed them for months, on account

of political demonstrations among the students. But now there is an end

of this and many other stupid oppressions; and the time-honored

University will doubtless regain its ancient importance. Even in 1864 it

had nearly fifteen hundred students, and one met them everywhere under

the arcades, and could not well mistake them, with that blended air of

pirate and dandy which these studious young men loved to assume. They

were to be seen a good deal on the promenades outside the walls, where

the Paduan ladies are driven in their carriages in the afternoon, and

where one sees the blood-horses and fine equipages for which Padua is

famous. There used once to be races in the Prato della Valle, after the

Italian notion of horse-races; but these are now discontinued, and there

is nothing to be found there but the statues of scholars and soldiers

and statesmen, posted in a circle around the old race-course. If you

strolled thither about dusk on such a day as this, you might see the

statues unbend a little from their stony rigidity, and in the failing

light nod to each other very pleasantly through the trees. And if you

stayed in Padua over night, what could be better to-morrow morning than

a stroll through the great Botanical Garden,--the oldest botanical

garden in the world,--the garden which first received in Europe the

strange and splendid growths of our hemisphere,--the garden where Doctor

Rappaccini doubtless found the germ of his mortal plant?

On the whole, I believe I would rather go this moment to Padua than to

Lowell or Lawrence, or even to Worcester; and as to the disadvantage of

having seen Padua, I begin to think the whole place has now assumed so

fantastic a character in my mind that I am almost as well qualified to

write of it as if I had merely dreamed it.

The day that we first visited the city was very rainy, and we spent most

of the time in viewing the churches. These, even after the churches of

Venice, one finds rich in art and historic interest, and they in no

instance fall into the maniacal excesses of the Renaissance to which

some of the temples of the latter city abandon themselves. Their

architecture forms a sort of border-land between the Byzantine of Venice

and the Lombardic of Verona. The superb domes of St. Anthony's emulate

those of St. Mark's, and the porticos of other Paduan churches rest

upon the backs of bird-headed lions and leopards that fascinate with

their mystery and beauty.

It was the wish to see the attributive Giottos in the Chapter which drew

us first to St. Anthony's, and we saw them with the satisfaction

naturally attending the contemplation of frescos discovered only since

1858, after having been hidden under plaster and whitewash for many

centuries; but we could not believe that Giotto's fame was destined to

gain much by their rescue from oblivion. They are in no wise to be

compared with this master's frescos in the Chapel of the

Annunziata,--which, indeed, is in every way a place of wonder and

delight. You reach it by passing through a garden lane bordered with

roses, and a taciturn gardener comes out with clinking keys, and lets

you into the chapel, where there is nobody but Giotto and Dante, nor

seems to have been for ages. Cool it is, and of a pulverous smell, as a

sacred place should be; a blessed benching goes round the wall, and you

sit down and take unlimited comfort in the frescos. The gardener leaves

you alone to the solitude and the silence, in which the talk of the

painter and the exile is plain enough. Their contemporaries and yours

are cordial in their gay companionship; through the half-open door

falls, in a pause of the rain, the same sunshine that they saw lie

there; the deathless birds that they heard sing out in the garden trees;

it is the fresh sweetness of the grass mown six hundred years ago that

breathes through all the lovely garden grounds.

How mistaken was Ponce de Leon, to seek the fountain of youth in the New

World! It is there,--in the Old World,--far back in the past. We are all

old men and decrepit together in the present; the future is full of

death; in the past we are light and glad as boys turned barefoot in the

spring. The work of the heroes is play to us; the pang of the martyr is

a thrill of rapture; the exile's longing is a strain of plaintive music

touching and delighting us. We are not only young again, we are

immortal. It is this divine sense of superiority to fate which is the

supreme good won from travel in historic lands, and from the presence of

memorable things, and which no sublimity of natural aspects can bestow.

It is this which forms the wide difference between Europe and

America,--a gulf that it will take a thousand years to bridge.

It is a shame that the immortals should be limited in their pleasures by

the fact that they have hired their brougham by the hour; yet we early

quit the Chapel of Giotto on this account. We had chosen our driver from

among many other drivers of broughams in the vicinity of Pedrocchi's,

because he had such an honest look, and was not likely, we thought, to

deal unfairly with us.

"But first," said the signor who had selected him, "how much is your

brougham an hour?"

So and so.

"Show me the tariff of fares."

"There is no tariff."

"There is. Show it to me."

"It is lost, signor."

"I think not. It is here in this pocket Get it out."

The tariff appears, and with it the fact that he had demanded just what

the boatman of the ballad received in gift,--thrice his fee.

The driver mounted his seat, and served us so faithfully that day in

Padua that we took him the next day for Arquà. At the end, when he had

received his due, and a handsome _mancia_ besides, he was still

unsatisfied, and referred to the tariff in proof that he had been

under-paid. On that confronted and defeated, he thanked us very

cordially, gave us the number of his brougham, and begged us to ask for

him when we came next to Padua and needed a carriage.

From the Chapel of the Annunziata he drove us to the Church of Santa

Giustina, where is a very famous and noble picture by Romanino. But as

this paper has nothing in the world to do with art, I here dismiss that

subject, and with a gross and idle delight follow the sacristan down

under this church to the prison of Santa Giustina.

Of all the faculties of the mind there is none so little fatiguing to

exercise as mere wonder; and, for my own sake, I try always to wonder at

things without the least critical reservation. I therefore, in the sense

of deglutition, bolted this prison at once, though subsequent

experiences led me to look with grave indigestion upon the whole idea of

prisons, their authenticity, and even their existence.

As far as mere dimensions are concerned, the prison of Santa Giustina

was not a hard one to swallow, being only three feet wide by about ten

feet in length. In this limited space, Santa Giustina passed five years

of the paternal reign of Nero (a virtuous and a long-suffering prince,

whom, singularly enough, no historic artist has yet arisen to

whitewash), and was then brought out into the larger cell adjoining, to

suffer a blessed martyrdom. I am not sure now whether the sacristan said

she was dashed to death on the stones, or cut to pieces with knives; but

whatever the form of martyrdom, an iron ring in the ceiling was employed

in it, as I know from seeing the ring,--a curiously well-preserved piece

of ironmongery. Within the narrow prison of the saint, and just under

the grating, through which the sacristan thrust his candle to illuminate

it, was a mountain of candle-drippings,--a monument to the fact that

faith still largely exists in this doubting world. My own credulity, not

only with regard to this prison, but also touching the coffin of St.

Luke, which I saw in the church, had so wrought upon the esteem of the

sacristan, that he now took me to a well, into which, he said, had been

cast the bones of three thousand Christian martyrs. He lowered a lantern

into the well, and assured me that, if I looked through a certain

screenwork there, I could see the bones. On experiment I could not see

the bones, but this circumstance did not cause me to doubt their

presence, particularly as I did see upon the screen a great number of

coins offered for the repose of the martyrs' souls. I threw down some

_soldi_, and thus enthralled the sacristan.

If the signor cared to see prisons, he said, the driver must take him to

those of Ecelino, at present the property of a private gentleman near

by. As I had just bought a history of Ecelino, at a great bargain, from

a second-hand bookstall, and had a lively interest in all the enormities

of that nobleman, I sped the driver instantly to the villa of the Signor

Pacchiarotti.

It depends here altogether upon the freshness or mustiness of the

reader's historical reading whether he cares to be reminded more

particularly who Ecelino was. He flourished balefully in the early half

of the thirteenth century as lord of Vicenza, Verona, Padua, and

Brescia, and was defeated and hurt to death in an attempt to possess

himself of Milan. He was in every respect a remarkable man for that

time,--fearless, abstemious, continent, avaricious, hardy, and

unspeakably ambitious and cruel. He survived and suppressed innumerable

conspiracies, escaping even the thrust of the assassin whom the fame of

his enormous wickedness had caused the Old Man of the Mountain to send

against him. As lord of Padua he was more incredibly severe and bloody

in his rule than as lord of the other cities, for the Paduans had been

latest free, and conspired most frequently against him. He extirpated

whole families on suspicion that a single member had been concerned in a

meditated revolt. Little children and helpless women suffered hideous

mutilation and shame at his hands. Six prisons in Padua were constantly

filled by his arrests. The whole country was traversed by witnesses of

his cruelties,--men and women deprived of an arm or leg, and begging

from door to door. He had long been excommunicated; at last the Church

proclaimed a crusade against him, and his lieutenant and nephew--more

demoniacal, if possible, than himself--was driven out of Padua while he

was operating against Mantua. Ecelino retired to Verona, and maintained

a struggle against the crusade for nearly two years longer, with a

courage which never failed him. Wounded and taken prisoner, the soldiers

of the victorious army gathered about him, and heaped insult and

reproach upon him; and one furious peasant, whose brother's feet had

been cut off by Ecelino's command, dealt the helpless monster four blows

upon the head with a scythe. By some, Ecelino is said to have died of

these wounds alone; but by others it is related that his death was a

kind of suicide, inasmuch as he himself put the case past surgery by

tearing off the bandages from his hurts, and refusing all medicines.

II.

Entering at the enchanted portal of the Villa P----, we found ourselves

in a realm of wonder. It was our misfortune not to see the magician who

compelled all the marvels on which we looked, but for that very reason,

perhaps, we have the clearest sense of his greatness. Everywhere we

beheld the evidences of his ingenious but lugubrious fancy, which

everywhere tended to a monumental and mortuary effect. A sort of

vestibule first received us, and beyond this dripped and glimmered the

garden. The walls of the vestibule were covered with inscriptions

setting forth the sentiments of the philosophy and piety of all ages

concerning life and death; we began with Confucius, and we ended with

Benjamino Franklino. But as if these ideas of mortality were not

sufficiently depressing, the funereal Signor P----had collected into

earthern _amphoræ_ the ashes of the most famous men of ancient and

modern times, and arranged them so that a sense of their number and

variety should at once strike his visitor. Each jar was conspicuously

labelled with the name its illustrious dust had borne in life; and if

one escaped with comparative cheerfulness from the thought that Seneca

had died, there were in the very next pot the cinders of Napoleon to

bully him back to a sense of his mortality.

We were glad to have the gloomy fascination of these objects broken by

the custodian, who approached to ask if we wished to see the prisons of

Ecelino, and we willingly followed him into the rain out of our

sepulchral shelter.

Between the vestibule and the towers of the tyrant lay that garden

already mentioned, and our guide led us through ranks of weeping

statuary, and rainy bowers, and showery lanes of shrubbery, until we

reached the door of his cottage. While he entered to fetch the key to

the prisons, we noted that the towers were freshly painted and in

perfect repair; and indeed the custodian said frankly enough, on

reappearing, that they were merely built over the prisons on the site of

the original towers. The storied stream of the Bacchiglione sweeps

through the grounds, and now, swollen by the rainfall, it roared, a

yellow torrent, under a corner of the prisons. The towers rise from

masses of foliage, and form no unpleasing feature of what must be, in

spite of Signor P----, a delightful Italian garden in sunny weather. The

ground is not so flat as elsewhere in Padua, and this inequality gives

an additional picturesqueness to the place. But as we were come in

search of horrors, we scorned these merely lovely things, and hastened

to immure ourselves in the dungeons below. The custodian, lighting a

candle, (which ought, we felt, to have been a torch,) went before.

We found the cells, though narrow and dark, not uncomfortable, and the

guide conceded that they had undergone some repairs since Ecelino's

time. But all the horrors for which we had come were there in perfect

grisliness, and labelled by the ingenious Signor P---- with Latin

inscriptions.

In the first cell was a shrine of the Virgin, set in the wall. Beneath

this, while the wretched prisoner knelt in prayer, a trap-door opened

and precipitated him down upon the points of knives, from which his body

fell into the Bacchiglione below. In the next cell, held by some rusty

iron rings to the wall, was a skeleton, hanging by the wrists.

"This," said the guide, "was another punishment of which Ecelino was

very fond."

A dreadful doubt seized my mind. "Was this skeleton found here?" I

demanded.

Without faltering an instant, without so much as winking an eye, the

custodian replied, "_Appunto_."

It was a great relief, and restored me to confidence in the

establishment. I am at a loss to explain how my faith should have been

confirmed afterwards by coming upon a guillotine--an awful instrument in

the likeness of a straw-cutter, with a decapitated wooden figure under

its blade--which the custodian confessed to be a modern improvement

placed there by Signor P----. Yet my credulity was so strengthened by

his candor, that I accepted without hesitation the torture of the

water-drop when we came to it. The water-jar was as well preserved as if

placed there but yesterday, and the skeleton beneath it--found as we saw

it--was entire and perfect.

In the adjoining cell sat a skeleton--found as we saw it--with its neck

in the clutch of the garrote, which was one of Ecelino's more merciful

punishments; while in still another cell the ferocity of the tyrant

appeared in the penalty inflicted upon the wretch whose skeleton had

been hanging for ages--as we saw it--head downwards from the ceiling.

Beyond these, in a yet darker and drearier dungeon, stood a heavy oblong

wooden box, with two apertures near the top, peering through which we

found that we were looking into the eyeless sockets of a skull. Within

this box Ecelino had immured the victim we beheld there, and left him to

perish in view of the platters of food and goblets of drink placed just

beyond the reach of his hands. The food we saw was of course not the

original food.

At last we came to the crowning horror of Villa P----, the supreme

excess of Ecelino's cruelty. The guide entered the cell before us, and,

as we gained the threshold, threw the light of his taper vividly upon a

block that stood in the middle of the floor. Fixed to the block by an

immense spike driven through from the back was the little slender hand

of a woman, which lay there just as it had been struck from the living

arm, and which, after the lapse of so many centuries, was still as

perfectly preserved as if it had been embalmed. The sight had a most

cruel fascination; and while one of the horror-seekers stood helplessly

conjuring to his vision that scene of unknown dread,--the shrinking,

shrieking woman dragged to the block, the wild, shrill, horrible screech

following the blow that drove in the spike, the merciful swoon after the

mutilation,--his companion, with a sudden pallor, demanded to be taken

instantly away.

In their swift withdrawal, they only glanced at a few detached

instruments of torture,--all original Ecelinos, but intended for the

infliction of minor and comparatively unimportant torments,--and then

they passed from that place of fear.

III.

In the evening we sat talking at the Caffè Pedrocchi with an abbate, an

acquaintance of ours, who was a Professor in the University of Padua.

Pedrocchi's is the great caffè of Padua, a granite edifice of Egyptian

architecture, which is the mausoleum of the proprietor's fortune. The

pecuniary skeleton at the feast, however, does not much trouble the

guests. They begin early in the evening to gather into the elegant

saloons of the caffè,--somewhat too large for so small a city as

Padua,--and they sit there late in the night over their cheerful cups

and their ices with their newspaper and their talk. Not so many ladies

are to be seen as at the caffè in Venice, for it is only in the greater

cities that they go much to these public places. There are few students

at Pedrocchi's, for they frequent the cheaper caffè; but you may nearly

always find there some Professor of the University, and on the evening

of which I speak, there were two present besides our abbate. Our

friend's great passion was the English language, which he understood too

well to venture to speak a great deal. He had been translating from that

tongue into Italian certain American poems, and our talk was of these at

first. Then we began to talk of distinguished American writers, of whom

intelligent Italians always know at least four, in this

succession,--Cooper, Mrs. Stowe, Longfellow, and Irving. Mrs. Stowe's

_Capanna di Zio Tom_ is, of course, universally read; and my friend had

also read _Il Fiore di Maggio_,--"The Mayflower." Of Longfellow, the

"Evangeline" is familiar to Italians, through a translation of the poem;

but our abbate knew all the poet's works, and one of the other

Professors present that evening had made such faithful study of them as

to have produced some translations rendering the original with

remarkable fidelity and spirit. I have before me here his _brochure_,

printed last year at Padua, and containing versions of "Enceladus,"

"Excelsior," "A Psalm of Life," "The Old Clock on the Stairs," "Sand of

the Desert in an Hour-Glass," "Twilight," "Daybreak," "The Quadroon

Girl," and "Torquemada,"--pieces which give the Italians a fair notion

of our poet's lyrical range, and which bear witness to Professor

Messadaglia's sympathetic and familiar knowledge of his works. A young

and gifted lady of Parma, now unhappily no more, published only a few

months since a translation of "The Golden Legend"; and Professor

Messadaglia, in his Preface, mentions a version of another of our poet's

longer works on which the translator of the "Evangeline" is now engaged.

At last, turning from literature, we spoke with the gentle abbate of

our day's adventures, and eagerly related that of the Ecelino prisons.

To have seen them was the most terrific pleasure of our lives.

"Eh!" said our friend, "I believe you."

"We mean those under the Villa P----."

"Exactly."

There was a tone of politely suppressed amusement in the abbate's voice;

and after a moment's pause, in which we felt our awful experience

slipping and sliding away from us, we ventured to say, "You don't mean

that those are _not_ the veritable Ecelino prisons?"

"Certainly they are nothing of the kind. The Ecelino prisons were

destroyed when the Crusaders took Padua, with the exception of the tower

which the Venetian Republic converted into an observatory."

"But at least these prisons are on the site of Ecelino's castle?"

"Nothing of the sort. His castle in that case would have been outside of

the old city walls."

"And those tortures and the prisons are all--"

"Things got up for show. No doubt, Ecelino used such things, and many

worse, of which even the ingenuity of Signor P---- cannot conceive. But

he is an eccentric man, loving the horrors of history, and what he can

do to realize them he has done in his prisons."

"But the custodian, how could he lie so?"

Our friend shrugged his shoulders. "Eh! easily. And perhaps he even

believed what he said."

The world began to assume an aspect of bewildering ungenuineness, and

there seemed to be a treacherous quality of fiction in the ground under

our feet. Even the play at the pretty little Teatro Sociale, where we

went to pass the rest of the evening, appeared hollow and improbable. We

thought the hero something of a bore, with his patience and goodness;

and as for the heroine, pursued by the attentions of the rich

profligate, we doubted if she were any better than she should be.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: _Salti mortali_ are those prodigious efforts of mental

arithmetic by which Italian waiters, in verbally presenting your

account, arrive at six as the product of two and two.]

POOR RICHARD.

A STORY IN THREE PARTS.