CHAPTER XLII

CONCLUSION 316

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Sir Oran Haut-ton _Frontispiece_

Both Irishmen and clergymen 4

He was always found in the morning comfortably asleep 8

A journey to London 11

Fashionable arrivals 15

Old Harry had become, by long habit, a curious species of

animated mirror 24

Sprang up, flung his night-gown one way, his night-cap

another 27

‘Possibly,’ thought Sir Telegraph, ‘possibly I may have

seen an uglier fellow’ 32

Sir Oran took a flying leap through the window 36

Mr. Fax 57

Anthelia 72

Proceeded very deliberately to pull up a pine 78

Alighted on the doctor’s head as he was crossing the

court 82

‘My dear sir, only take the trouble of sitting a few

hours in my shop’ 98

Sir Oran sat down in the artist’s seat 110

Mr. Feathernest 123

He managed so skilfully that his Lordship became himself

the proposer of the scheme 138

She thought there was something peculiar in his look 141

He caught them both up, one under each arm 145

Their conversation was interrupted by the appearance of

Mr. Hippy 158

‘We shall always be deeply attentive to your interests’ 172

‘Hail, plural unit!’ 176

Began to lay about him with great vigour and effect 179

Perched on the summit of the rock 183

‘My father,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘began what I merely

perpetuate’ 203

The company was sipping, not without many wry faces,

their anti-saccharine tea 213

Mr. Fax was of opinion that he was smitten 221

Mr. Mystic observed that they must go farther 236

Sir Oran Haut-ton ascending the stairs with the great

rain-water tub 240

Mr. Forester made inquiries of him 246

Sir Oran, throwing himself into a chair, began to shed

tears in great abundance 253

A great press of business to dispose of 257

‘Do you know, that in all likelihood, in the course of

six years, you will have as many children?’ 263

Sir Bonus Mac Scrip retreated through the breach, and

concealed himself under the dining-table 279

She immediately ran through the shrubbery 304

He flattered himself that Anthelia would at length come

to a determination 308

Gazing on the changeful aspects of the wintry sea 311

Preparing to administer natural justice by throwing him

out at the window 318

We shall leave them to run _ad libitum_ 320

‘He would confess all’ 322

MELINCOURT

OR

SIR ORAN HAUT-TON

_VOCEM COMOEDIA TOLLIT_[1]

PREFACE

TO THE EDITION PUBLISHED IN 1856[2]

‘Melincourt’ was first published thirty-nine years ago. Many changes

have since occurred, social, mechanical, and political. The boroughs of

Onevote and Threevotes have been extinguished: but there remain boroughs

of Fewvotes, in which Sir Oran Haut-ton might still find a free and

enlightened constituency. Beards disfigure the face, and tobacco poisons

the air, in a degree not then imagined. A boy, with a cigar in his

mouth, was a phenomenon yet unborn. Multitudinous bubbles have been

blown and have burst: sometimes prostrating dupes and impostors

together; sometimes leaving a colossal jobber upright in his triumphal

chariot, which has crushed as many victims as the car of Juggernaut.

Political mountebanks have founded profitable investments on public

gullibility. British colonists have been compelled to emancipate their

slaves; and foreign slave labour, under the pretext of free trade, has

been brought to bear against them by the friends of liberty. The Court

is more moral: therefore, the public is more moral; more decorous, at

least in external semblance, wherever the homage, which Hypocrisy pays

to Virtue, can yield any profit to the professor: but always ready for

the same reaction, with which the profligacy of the Restoration rolled,

like a spring-tide, over the Puritanism of the Commonwealth. The

progress of intellect, with all deference to those who believe in it, is

not quite so obvious as the progress of mechanics. The ‘reading public’

has increased its capacity of swallow, in a proportion far exceeding

that of its digestion. Thirty-nine years ago, steamboats were just

coming into action, and the railway locomotive was not even thought of.

Now everybody goes everywhere: going for the sake of going, and

rejoicing in the rapidity with which they accomplish nothing. _On va,

mais on ne voyage pas._ Strenuous idleness drives us on the wings of

steam in boats and trains, seeking the art of enjoying life, which,

after all, is in the regulation of the mind, and not in the whisking

about of the body.[3] Of the disputants whose opinions and public

characters (for I never trespassed on private life) were shadowed in

some of the persons of the story, almost all have passed from the

diurnal scene. Many of the questions, discussed in the dialogues, have

more of general than of temporary application, and have still their

advocates on both sides: and new questions have arisen, which furnish

abundant argument for similar conversations, and of which I may yet,

perhaps, avail myself on some future occasion.

THE AUTHOR OF ‘HEADLONG HALL.’

_March 1856._

[Illustration: _Both Irishmen and clergymen._]

CHAPTER I

ANTHELIA

Anthelia Melincourt, at the age of twenty-one, was mistress of herself

and of ten thousand a year, and of a very ancient and venerable castle

in one of the wildest valleys in Westmoreland. It follows of course,

without reference to her personal qualifications, that she had a very

numerous list of admirers, and equally of course that there were both

Irishmen and clergymen among them. The young lady nevertheless possessed

sufficient attractions to kindle the flames of disinterested passion;

and accordingly we shall venture to suppose that there was at least one

in the number of her sighing swains with whom her rent-roll and her old

castle were secondary considerations; and if the candid reader should

esteem this supposition too violent for the probabilities of daily

experience in this calculating age, he will at least concede it to that

degree of poetical licence which is invariably accorded to a tale

founded on facts.

Melincourt Castle had been a place of considerable strength in those

golden days of feudal and royal prerogative, when no man was safe in his

own house unless he adopted every possible precaution for shutting out

all his neighbours. It is, therefore, not surprising, that a rock, of

which three sides were perpendicular, and which was only accessible on

the fourth by a narrow ledge, forming a natural bridge over a tremendous

chasm, was considered a very enviable situation for a gentleman to build

on. An impetuous torrent boiled through the depth of the chasm, and

after eddying round the base of the castle-rock, which it almost

insulated, disappeared in the obscurity of a woody glen, whose

mysterious recesses, by popular superstition formerly consecrated to the

devil, are now fearlessly explored by the solitary angler, or laid open

to view by the more profane hand of the picturesque tourist, who

contrives, by the magic of his pencil, to transport their romantic

terrors from the depths of mountain solitude to the gay and crowded,

though not very wholesome, atmosphere of a metropolitan exhibition.

The narrow ledge, which formed the only natural access to the

castle-rock, had been guarded by every impediment which the genius of

fortification could oppose to the progress of the hungry Scot, who might

be disposed, in his neighbourly way, to drop in without invitation and

carouse at the expense of the owner, rewarding him, as usual, for his

extorted hospitality, by cutting his throat and setting fire to his

house. A drawbridge over the chasm, backed by a double portcullis,

presented the only mode of admission. In this secure retreat thus

strongly guarded both by nature and art, and always plentifully

victualled for a siege, lived the lords of Melincourt in all the luxury

of rural seclusion, throwing open their gates on occasional halcyon days

to regale all the peasants and mountaineers of the vicinity with roasted

oxen and vats of October.

When these times of danger and turbulence had passed, Melincourt Castle

was not, as most of its brother edifices were, utterly deserted. The

drawbridge, indeed, became gradually divorced from its chains; the

double portcullis disappeared; the turrets and battlements were

abandoned to the owl and the ivy; and a very spacious wing was left free

to the settlement of a colony of ghosts, which, according to the report

of the peasantry and the domestics, very soon took possession, and

retained it most pertinaciously, notwithstanding the pious incantations

of the neighbouring vicar, the Reverend Mr. Portpipe, who often passed

the night in one of the dreaded apartments over a blazing fire with the

same invariable exorcising apparatus of a large venison pasty, a little

Prayer-book, and three bottles of Madeira: for the reverend gentleman

sagaciously observed, that as he had always found the latter an

infallible charm against blue devils, he had no doubt of its proving

equally efficacious against black, white, and gray. In this opinion

experience seemed to confirm him; for though he always maintained a

becoming silence as to the mysteries of which he was a witness during

his spectral vigils, yet a very correct inference might be drawn from

the fact that he was always found in the morning comfortably asleep in

his large arm-chair, with the dish scraped clean, the three bottles

empty, and the Prayer-book clasped and folded precisely in the same

state and place in which it had lain the preceding night.

[Illustration: _He was always found in the morning comfortably asleep._]

But the larger and more commodious part of the castle continued still to

be inhabited; and while one half of the edifice was fast improving into

a picturesque ruin, the other was as rapidly degenerating, in its

interior at least, into a comfortable modern dwelling.

In this romantic seclusion Anthelia was born. Her mother died in giving

her birth. Her father, Sir Henry Melincourt, a man of great

acquirements, and of a retired disposition, devoted himself in solitude

to the cultivation of his daughter’s understanding; for he was one of

those who maintained the heretical notion that women are, or at least

may be, rational beings; though, from the great pains usually taken in

what is called education to make them otherwise, there are unfortunately

very few examples to warrant the truth of the theory.

The majestic forms and wild energies of Nature that surrounded her from

her infancy impressed their character on her mind, communicating to it

all their own wildness, and more than their own beauty. Far removed from

the pageantry of courts and cities, her infant attention was awakened to

spectacles more interesting and more impressive: the misty mountain-top,

the ash-fringed precipice, the gleaming cataract, the deep and shadowy

glen, and the fantastic magnificence of the mountain clouds. The murmur

of the woods, the rush of the winds, and the tumultuous dashing of the

torrents, were the first music of her childhood. A fearless wanderer

among these romantic solitudes, the spirit of mountain liberty diffused

itself through the whole tenor of her feelings, modelled the symmetry of

her form, and illumined the expressive but feminine brilliancy of her

features: and when she had attained the age at which the mind expands

itself to the fascinations of poetry, the muses of Italy became the

chosen companions of her wanderings, and nourished a naturally

susceptible imagination by conjuring up the splendid visions of chivalry

and enchantment in scenes so congenial to their development.

It was seldom that the presence of a visitor dispelled the solitude of

Melincourt; and the few specimens of the living world with whom its

inmates held occasional intercourse were of the usual character of

country acquaintance, not calculated to leave behind them any very

lively regret, except for the loss of time during the period of their

stay. One of these was the Reverend Mr. Portpipe, whom we have already

celebrated for his proficiency in the art of exorcising goblins by dint

of venison and Madeira. His business in the ghost line had, indeed,

declined with the progress of the human understanding, and no part of

his vocation was in very high favour with Sir Henry, who, though an

unexceptionable moral character, was unhappily not one of the children

of grace, in the theological sense of the word: but the vicar, adopting

St. Paul’s precept of being all things to all men, found it on this

occasion his interest to be liberal; and observing that no man could

coerce his opinions, repeated with great complacency the line of Virgil:

Tros Tyriusve mihi nullo discrimine agetur;

though he took especial care that his heterodox concession should not

reach the ears of his bishop, who would infallibly have unfrocked him

for promulgating a doctrine so subversive of the main pillar of all

orthodox establishments.

When Anthelia had attained her sixteenth year, her father deemed it

necessary to introduce her to that human world of which she had hitherto

seen so little, and for this purpose took a journey to London, where he

was received by the surviving portion of his old acquaintance as a ghost

returned from Acheron. The impression which the gay scenes of the

metropolis made on the mind of Anthelia—to what illustrious characters

she was introduced—‘and all she thought of all she saw,’—it would be

foreign to our present purpose to detail; suffice it to say, that from

this period Sir Henry regularly passed the winter in London and the

summer in Westmoreland, till his daughter attained the age of twenty,

about which period he died.

Anthelia passed twelve months from this time in total seclusion at

Melincourt, notwithstanding many pressing invitations from various

match-making dowagers in London, who were solicitous to dispose of her

according to their views of her advantage; in which how far their own

was lost sight of it may not be difficult to determine.

[Illustration: _A journey to London._]

Among the numerous lovers who had hitherto sighed at her shrine, not one

had succeeded in making the slightest impression on her heart; and

during the twelve months of seclusion which elapsed from the death of

her father to the commencement of this authentic history, they had all

completely vanished from the tablet of her memory. Her knowledge of love

was altogether theoretical; and her theory, being formed by the study of

Italian poetry in the bosom of mountain solitude, naturally and

necessarily pointed to a visionary model of excellence which it was very

little likely the modern world could realise.

The dowagers, at length despairing of drawing her from her retirement,

respectively came to various resolutions for the accomplishment of their

ends; some resolving to go in person to Melincourt, and exert all their

powers of oratory to mould her to their wishes, and others instigating

their several _protégés_ to set boldly forward in search of fortune, and

lay siege to the castle and its mistress together.

CHAPTER II

FASHIONABLE ARRIVALS

It was late in the afternoon of an autumnal day, when the elegant

post-chariot of the Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney, a lady of high renown in

the annals of match-making, turned the corner of a stupendous precipice

in the narrow pass which formed the only access to the valley of

Melincourt. This honourable lady was accompanied by her only daughter

Miss Danaretta Contantina; which names, by the bye, appear to be female

diminutives of the Italian words _danaro contante_, signifying _ready

money_, and genteelly hinting to all fashionable Strephons, the only

terms on which the _commodity_ so denominated would be disposed of,

according to the universal practice of this liberal and enlightened

generation, in that most commercial of all bargains, marriage.

[Illustration: _Fashionable arrivals._]

The ivied battlements and frowning towers of Melincourt Castle, as they

burst at once upon the sight, very much astonished the elder and

delighted the younger lady; for the latter had cultivated a great deal

of theoretical romance—in taste, not in feeling—an important

distinction—which enabled her to be most liberally sentimental in words,

without at all influencing her actions; to talk of heroic affection and

selfsacrificing enthusiasm, without incurring the least danger of

forming a disinterested attachment, or of erring in any way whatever on

the score of practical generosity. Indeed, in all respects of practice

the young lady was the true counterpart of her mother, though they

sometimes differed a little in the forms of sentiment: thus, for

instance, when any of their dear friends happened to go, as it is

called, down hill in the world, the old lady was generally very severe

on their _imprudence_, and the young lady very pathetic on their

_misfortune_: but as to holding any further intercourse with, or

rendering any species of assistance to, any dear friend so

circumstanced, neither the one nor the other was ever suspected of

conduct so very unfashionable. In the main point, therefore, of both

their lives, that of making a _good match_ for Miss Danaretta, their

views perfectly coincided; and though Miss Danaretta, in her speculative

conversations on this subject, among her female acquaintance, talked as

young ladies always talk, and laid down very precisely _the only kind of

man she would ever think of marrying_, endowing him, of course, with all

the virtues in our good friend Hookman’s Library; yet it was very well

understood, as it usually is on similar occasions, that no other proof

of the possession of the aforesaid virtues would be required from any

individual who might present himself in the character of _Corydon

sospiroso_ than a satisfactory certificate from the old lady in

Threadneedle Street, that the bearer was a _good man_, and could be

proved so in the _Alley_.

Such were the amiable specimens of worldly wisdom, and affected romance,

that prepared to invade the retirement of the mountain-enthusiast, the

really romantic unworldly Anthelia.

‘What a strange-looking old place!’ said Mrs. Pinmoney; ‘it seems like

anything but the dwelling of a young heiress. I am afraid the rascally

postboys have joined in a plot against us, and intend to deliver us to a

gang of thieves!’

‘Banditti, you should say, mamma,’ said Miss Danaretta; ‘thieves is an

odious word.’

‘Pooh, child!’ said Mrs. Pinmoney. ‘The reality is odious enough, let

the word be what it will. Is not a rogue a rogue, call him by what name

you may?’

‘Oh, certainly not,’ said Miss Danaretta; ‘for in that case a poor rogue

without a title, would not be more a rogue than a rich rogue with one;

but that he is so in a most infinite proportion, the whole experience of

the world demonstrates.’

‘True,’ said the old lady; ‘and as our reverend friend Dr. Bosky

observes, to maintain the contrary would be to sanction a principle

utterly subversive of all social order and aristocratical privilege.’

The carriage now rolled over the narrow ledge which connected the site

of the castle with the neighbouring rocks. A furious peal at the outer

bell brought forth a venerable porter, who opened the gates with

becoming gravity, and the carriage entered a spacious court, of much

more recent architecture than the exterior of the castle, and built in a

style of modern Gothic, that seemed to form a happy medium between the

days of feudality, commonly called the dark ages, and the nineteenth

century, commonly called the enlightened age: _why_ I could never

discover.

The inner gates were opened by another grave and venerable domestic,

who, with all the imperturbable decorum and formality of the old school,

assisted the ladies to alight, and ushered them along an elegant

colonnade into the library, which we shall describe no further than by

saying that the apartment was Gothic, and the furniture Grecian: whether

this be an unpardonable incongruity calculated to disarrange all

legitimate associations, or a judicious combination of solemnity and

elegance, most happily adapted to the purposes of study, we must leave

to the decision, or rather discussion, of picturesque and antiquarian

disputants.

The windows, which were of stained glass, were partly open to a

shrubbery, which admitting the meditative mind into the recesses of

nature, and excluding all view of distant scenes, heightened the deep

seclusion and repose of the apartment. It consisted principally of

evergreens; but the parting beauty of the last flowers of autumn, and

the lighter and now fading tints of a few deciduous shrubs, mingled with

the imperishable verdure of the cedar and the laurel.

The old domestic went in search of his young mistress, and the ladies

threw themselves on a sofa in graceful attitudes. They were shortly

joined by Anthelia, who welcomed them to Melincourt with all the

politeness which the necessity of the case imposed.

The change of dress, the dinner, the dessert, seasoned with the _newest

news_ of the fashionable world, which the visitors thought must be of

all things the most delightful to the mountain recluse, filled up a

portion of the evening. When they returned from the dining-room to the

library, the windows were closed, the curtains drawn, and the tea and

coffee urns bubbling on the table, and sending up their steamy columns:

an old fashion to be sure, and sufficiently rustic, for which we

apologise in due form to the reader, who prefers his tea and coffee

brought in cool by the butler in little cups on a silver salver, and

handed round to the simpering company till it is as cold as an Iceland

spring. There is no disputing about taste, and the taste of Melincourt

Castle on this subject had been always very poetically unfashionable;

for the tea would have satisfied Johnson, and the coffee enchanted

Voltaire.

‘I must confess, my dear,’ said the Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney, ‘there is

a great deal of comfort in your way of living, that is, there would be,

in good company; but you are so solitary——’

‘Here is the best of company,’ said Anthelia, smiling, and pointing to

the shelves of the library.

_The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney._ Very true: books are very good things in their

way; but an hour or two at most is quite enough of them for me; more can

serve no purpose but to muddle one’s head. If I were to live such a life

for a week as you have done for the last twelve months, I should have

more company than I like, in the shape of a whole legion of blue devils.

_Miss Danaretta._ Nay, I think there is something delightfully romantic

in Anthelia’s mode of life; but I confess I should like now and then,

peeping through the ivy of the battlements, to observe a _preux

chevalier_ exerting all his eloquence to persuade the inflexible porter

to open the castle gates, and allow him one opportunity of throwing

himself at the feet of the divine lady of the castle, for whom he had

been seven years dying a lingering death.

_The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney._ And growing fatter all the while. Heaven

defend me from such hypocritical fops! Seven years indeed! It did not

take as many weeks to bring me and poor dear dead Mr. Pinmoney together.

_Anthelia._ I should have been afraid that so short an acquaintance

would scarcely have been sufficient to acquire that mutual knowledge of

each other’s tastes, feelings, and character, which I should think the

only sure basis of matrimonial happiness.

_The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney._ Tastes, feelings, and character! Why, my love,

you really do seem to believe yourself in the age of chivalry, when

those words certainly signified very essential differences. But now the

matter is, very happily, simplified. Tastes,—they depend on the fashion.

There is always a fashionable taste: a taste for driving the mail—a

taste for acting Hamlet—a taste for philosophical lectures—a taste for

the marvellous—a taste for the simple—a taste for the brilliant—a taste

for the sombre—a taste for the tender—a taste for the grim—a taste for

banditti—a taste for ghosts—a taste for the devil—a taste for French

dancers and Italian singers, and German whiskers and tragedies—a taste

for enjoying the country in November, and wintering in London till the

end of the dog-days—a taste for making shoes—a taste for picturesque

tours—a taste for taste itself, or for essays on taste;—but no gentleman

would be so rash as have a taste of his own, or his last winter’s taste,

or any taste, my love, but the fashionable taste. Poor dear Mr. Pinmoney

was reckoned a man of exquisite taste among all his acquaintance; for

the new taste, let it be what it would, always fitted him as well as his

new coat, and he was the very pink and mirror of fashion, as much in the

one as the other.—So much for tastes, my dear.

_Anthelia._ I am afraid I shall always be a very unfashionable creature;

for I do not think I should have sympathised with any one of the tastes

you have just enumerated.

_The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney._ You are so contumacious, such a romantic

heretic from the orthodox supremacy of fashion. Now, as for feelings, my

dear, you know there are no such things in the fashionable world;

therefore that difficulty vanishes even more easily than the first.

_Anthelia._ I am sorry for it.

_The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney._ Sorry! Feelings are very troublesome things,

and always stand in the way of a person’s own interests. Then, as to

character, a gentleman’s character is usually in the keeping of his

banker, or his agent, or his steward, or his solicitor; and if they can

certify and demonstrate that he has the means of keeping a handsome

equipage, and a town and country house, and of giving routs and dinners,

and of making a good settlement on the happy object of his choice—what

more of any gentleman’s character would you desire to know?

_Anthelia._ A great deal more. I would require him to be free in all his

thoughts, true in all his words, generous in all his actions—ardent in

friendship, enthusiastic in love, disinterested in both—prompt in the

conception, and constant in the execution, of benevolent enterprise—the

friend of the friendless, the champion of the feeble, the firm opponent

of the powerful oppressor—not to be enervated by luxury, nor corrupted

by avarice, nor intimidated by tyranny, nor enthralled by

superstition—more desirous to distribute wealth than to possess it, to

disseminate liberty than to appropriate power, to cheer the heart of

sorrow than to dazzle the eyes of folly.

_The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney._ And do you really expect to find such a

knight-errant? The age of chivalry is gone.

_Anthelia._ It is, but its spirit survives. Disinterested benevolence,

the mainspring of all that is really admirable in the days of chivalry,

will never perish for want of some minds calculated to feel its

influence, still less for want of a proper field of exertion. To protect

the feeble, to raise the fallen—to liberate the captive—to be the

persevering foe of tyrants (whether the great tyrant of an overwhelming

empire, the petty tyrant of the fields, or the ‘little tyrant of a

little corporation,’)[4] it is not necessary to wind the bugle before

enchanted castles, or to seek adventures in the depths of mountain

caverns and forests of pine; there is no scene of human life but

presents sufficient scope to energetic generosity; the field of action,

though less splendid in its accompaniments, is not less useful in its

results, nor less attractive to a liberal spirit: and I believe it is

possible to find as true a knight-errant in a brown coat in the

nineteenth century, as in a suit of golden armour in the days of

Charlemagne.

_The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney._ Well! well! my dear, when you have seen a

little more of the world, you will get rid of some of your chivalrous

whimsies; and I think you will then agree with me that there is not, in

the whole sphere of fashion, a more elegant, fine-spirited, dashing,

generous fellow than my nephew Sir Telegraph Paxarett, who, by the bye,

will be driving his barouche this way shortly, and if you do not

absolutely forbid it, will call on me in his route.

These words seemed to portend that the Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney’s visit

would be a visitation, and at the same time threw a clear light on its

motive; but they gave birth in the mind of Anthelia to a train of ideas

which concluded in a somewhat singular determination.

CHAPTER III

HYPOCON HOUSE

Anthelia had received intimations from various quarters of similar

intentions on the part of various individuals, not less valuable than

Sir Telegraph Paxarett in the scale of moral utility; and though there

was not one among them for whom she felt the slightest interest, she

thought it would be too uncourteous in a pupil of chivalry, and too

inhospitable in the mistress of an old English castle, to bar her gates

against them. At the same time she felt the want of a lord seneschal to

receive and entertain visitors so little congenial to her habits and

inclinations: and it immediately occurred to her that no one would be

more fit for this honourable office, if he could be prevailed on to

undertake it, than an old relation—a medium, as it were, between cousin

and great-uncle; who had occasionally passed a week or a month with her

father at Melincourt. The name of this old gentleman was Hippy—Humphrey

Hippy, Esquire, of Hypocon House, in the county of Durham. He was a

bachelor, and his character exhibited a singular compound of

kind-heartedness, spleen, and melancholy, which governed him by turns,

and sometimes in such rapid succession that they seemed almost

co-existent. To him Anthelia determined on sending an express, with a

letter entreating him to take on himself, for a short time, the

superintendence of Melincourt Castle, and giving as briefly as possible

her reasons for the request. In pursuance of this determination, old

Peter Gray, a favourite domestic of Sir Henry, and, I believe, a distant

relation of little Lucy,[5] was despatched the following morning to

Hypocon House, where the gate was opened to him by old Harry Fell, a

distant relation of little Alice, who, as the reader well knows,

‘belonged to Durham.’ Old Harry had become, by long habit, a curious

species of animated mirror, and reflected all the humours of his master

with wonderful nicety. When Mr. Hippy was in a rage, old Harry looked

fierce; when Mr. Hippy was in a good humour, old Harry was the picture

of human kindness; when Mr. Hippy was blue-devilled, old Harry was

vapourish; when Mr. Hippy was as melancholy as a gib-cat, old Harry was

as dismal as a screech-owl. The latter happened to be the case when old

Peter presented himself at the gate, and old Harry accordingly opened it

with a most rueful elongation of visage. Peter Gray was ready with a

warm salutation for his old acquaintance Harry Fell; but the lamentable

cast of expression in the physiognomy of the latter froze it on his

lips, and he contented himself with asking in a hesitating tone, ‘Is Mr.

Hippy at home?’

[Illustration: _Old Harry had become, by long habit, a curious species

of animated mirror._]

‘He is,’ slowly and sadly articulated Harry Fell, shaking his head.

‘I have a letter for him,’ said Peter Gray.

‘Ah!’ said Harry Fell, taking the letter, and stalking off with it as

solemnly as if he had been following a funeral.

‘A pleasant reception,’ thought Peter Gray, ‘instead of the old ale and

cold sirloin I dreamed of.’

Old Harry tapped three times at the door of his master’s chamber,

observing the same interval between each tap as is usual between the

sounds of a muffled drum: then, after a due pause, he entered the

apartment. Mr. Hippy was in his night-gown and slippers, with one leg on

a cushion, suffering under an imaginary attack of the gout, and in the

last stage of despondency. Old Harry walked forward in the same slow

pace till he found himself at the proper distance from his master’s

chair. Then putting forth his hand as deliberately as if it had been the

hour-hand of the kitchen clock, he presented the letter. Mr. Hippy took

it in the same manner, sank back in his chair as if exhausted with the

effort, and cast his eyes languidly on the seal. Immediately his eyes

brightened, he tore open the letter, read it in an instant, sprang up,

flung his night-gown one way, his night-cap another, kicked off his

slippers, kicked away his cushion, kicked over his chair, and bounced

downstairs, roaring for his coat and boots, and his travelling chariot,

with old Harry capering at his heels, and re-echoing all his

requisitions. Harry Fell was now a new man. Peter Gray was seized by the

hand and dragged into the buttery, where a cold goose and a flagon of

ale were placed before him, to which he immediately proceeded to do

ample justice; while old Harry rushed off with a cold fowl and ham for

the refection of Mr. Hippy, who had been too seriously indisposed in the

morning to touch a morsel of breakfast. Having placed these and a bottle

of Madeira in due form and order before his master, he flew back to the

buttery, to assist old Peter in the demolition of the goose and ale, his

own appetite in the morning having sympathised with his master’s, and

being now equally disposed to make up for lost time.

Mr. Hippy’s travelling chariot was rattled up to the door by four

high-mettled posters from the nearest inn. Mr. Hippy sprang into the

carriage, old Harry vaulted into the dicky, the postilions cracked their

whips, and away they went,

Over the hills and the plains,

Over the rivers and rocks,

leaving old Peter gaping after them at the gate, in profound

astonishment at their sudden metamorphosis, and in utter despair of

being able, by any exertions of his own, to be their forerunner and

announcer at Melincourt. Considering, therefore, that when the necessity

of being too late is inevitable, hurry is manifestly superfluous, he

mounted his galloway with great gravity and deliberation, and trotted

slowly off towards the mountains, philosophising all the way in the

usual poetical style of a Cumberland peasant. Our readers will of course

feel much obliged to us for not presenting them with his meditations.

But instead of jogging back with old Peter Gray, or travelling post with

Humphrey Hippy, Esquire, we shall avail ourselves of the four-in-hand

barouche which is just coming in view, to take a seat on the box by the

side of Sir Telegraph Paxarett, and proceed in his company to

Melincourt.

[Illustration: _Sprang up, flung his night-gown one way, his night-cap

another._]

CHAPTER IV

REDROSE ABBEY

Sir Telegraph Paxarett had entered the precincts of the mountains of

Westmoreland, and was bowling his barouche along a romantic valley,

looking out very anxiously for an inn, as he had now driven his regular

diurnal allowance of miles, and was becoming very impatient for his

equally regular diurnal allowance of fish, fowl, and Madeira. A wreath

of smoke ascending from a thick tuft of trees at a distance, and in a

straight direction before him, cheered up his spirits, and induced him

to cheer up those of his horses with two or three of those technical

terms of the road, which we presume to have formed part of the genuine

language of the ancient Houyhnhnms, since they seem not only much better

adapted to equine than human organs of sound, but are certainly much

more generally intelligible to four-footed than to two-footed animals.

Sir Telegraph was doomed to a temporary disappointment; for when he had

attained the desired point, the smoke proved to issue from the chimneys

of an ancient abbey which appeared to have been recently converted from

a pile of ruins into the habitation of some variety of the human

species, with very singular veneration for the relics of antiquity,

which, in their exterior aspect, had suffered little from the

alteration. There was something so analogous between the state of this

building and what he had heard of Melincourt, that if it had not been

impossible to mistake an abbey for a castle, he might almost have

fancied himself arrived at the dwelling of the divine Anthelia. Under a

detached piece of ruins near the road, which appeared to have been part

of a chapel, several workmen were busily breaking the ground with spade

and pickaxe: a gentleman was superintending their operations, and seemed

very eager to arrive at the object of his search. Sir Telegraph stopped

his barouche to inquire the distance to the nearest inn: the gentleman

replied, ‘Six miles.’ ‘That is just five miles and a half too far,’ said

Sir Telegraph, and was proceeding to drive on, when, on turning round to

make his parting bow to the stranger, he suddenly recognised him for an

old acquaintance and fellow-collegian.

‘Sylvan Forester!’ exclaimed Sir Telegraph; ‘who should have dreamed of

meeting you in this uncivilised part of the world?’

‘I am afraid,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘this part of the world does not

deserve the compliment implied in the epithet you have bestowed on it.

Within no very great distance from this spot are divers towns, villages,

and hamlets, in any one of which, if you have money, you may make pretty

sure of being cheated, and if you have none, quite sure of being

starved—strong evidences of a state of civilisation.’

‘Aha!’ said Sir Telegraph, ‘your old way, now I recollect—always fond of

railing at civilised life, and holding forth in praise of savages and

what you called original men. But what, in truth, make you in

Westmoreland?’

‘I have purchased this old abbey,’ said Mr. Forester ‘(anciently called

the abbey of Rednose, which I have altered to Redrose, as being more

analogous to my notions of beauty, whatever the reverend Fellows of our

old college might have thought of it), and have fitted it up for my

habitation, with the view of carrying on in peace and seclusion some

peculiar experiments on the nature and progress of man. Will you dine

with me, and pass the night here? and I will introduce you to an

original character.’

‘With all my heart,’ said Sir Telegraph; ‘I can assure you,

independently of the pleasure of meeting an old acquaintance, it is a

great comfort to dine in a gentleman’s house, after living from inn to

inn and being poisoned with bad wine for a month.’

Sir Telegraph descended from his box, and directed one of his grooms to

open the carriage-door and emancipate the coachman, who was fast asleep

inside. Sir Telegraph gave him the reins, and Mr. Forester sent one of

his workmen to show him the way to the stables.

[Illustration: ‘_Possibly_,’ _thought Sir Telegraph_, ‘_possibly I may

have seen an uglier fellow_.’]

‘And pray,’ said Sir Telegraph, as the barouche disappeared among the

trees, ‘what may be the object of your researches in this spot?’

‘You know,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘it is a part of my tenets that the human

species is gradually decreasing in size and strength, and I am digging

in the old cemetery for bones and skulls to establish the truth of my

theory.’

‘Have you found any?’ said Sir Telegraph.

‘Many,’ said Mr. Forester. ‘About three weeks ago we dug up a very fine

skeleton, no doubt of some venerable father, who must have been, in more

senses than one, a pillar of the Church. I have had the skull polished

and set in silver. You shall drink your wine out of it, if you please,

to-day.’

‘I thank you,’ said Sir Telegraph, ‘but I am not particular; a glass

will suit me as well as the best skull in Europe. Besides, I am a

moderate man: one bottle of Madeira and another of claret are enough for

me at any time; so that the quantity of wine a reverend sconce can carry

would be just treble my usual allowance.’

They walked together towards the abbey. Sir Telegraph earnestly

requested, that, before they entered, he might be favoured with a peep

at the stable. Mr. Forester of course complied. Sir Telegraph found this

important part of the buildings capacious and well adapted to its

purpose, but did not altogether approve its being totally masked by an

old ivied wall, which had served in former times to prevent the braw and

bonny Scot from making too free with the beeves of the pious fraternity.

The new dwelling-house was so well planned, and fitted in so well

between the ancient walls, that very few vestiges of the modern

architect were discernible; and it was obvious that the growth of the

ivy, and of numerous trailing and twining plants, would soon overrun all

vestiges of the innovation, and blend the whole exterior into one

venerable character of antiquity.

‘I do not think,’ said Mr. Forester, as they proceeded through part of

the grounds, ‘that the most determined zealot of the picturesque would

quarrel with me here. I found the woods around the abbey matured by time

and neglect into a fine state of wildness and intricacy, and I think I

have left enough of them to gratify their most ardent admirer.’

‘Quite enough, in all conscience,’ said Sir Telegraph, who was in white

jean trousers, with very thin silk stockings and pumps. ‘I do not

generally calculate on being, as an old song I have somewhere heard

expresses it,

Forced to scramble,

When I ramble,

Through a copse of furze and bramble;

which would be all very pleasant perhaps, if the fine effect of

picturesque roughness were not unfortunately, as Macbeth says of his

dagger, “sensible to feeling as to sight.” But who is that gentleman,

sitting under the great oak yonder in the green coat and nankins? He

seems very thoughtful.’

‘He is of a contemplative disposition,’ said Mr. Forester: ‘you must not

be surprised if he should not speak a word during the whole time you are

here. The politeness of his manner makes amends for his habitual

taciturnity. I will introduce you.’

The gentleman under the oak had by this time discovered them, and came

forward with great alacrity to meet Mr. Forester, who cordially shook

hands with him, and introduced him to Sir Telegraph as Sir Oran

Haut-ton, Baronet.

Sir Telegraph looked earnestly at the stranger, but was too polite to

laugh, though he could not help thinking there was something very

ludicrous in Sir Oran’s physiognomy, notwithstanding the air of high

fashion which characterised his whole deportment, and which was

heightened by a pair of enormous whiskers, and the folds of a vast

cravat. He therefore bowed to Sir Oran with becoming gravity, and Sir

Oran returned the bow with very striking politeness.

‘Possibly,’ thought Sir Telegraph, ‘possibly I may have seen an uglier

fellow.’

The trio entered the abbey, and shortly after sat down to dinner.

Mr. Forester and Sir Oran Haut-ton took the head and foot of the table.

Sir Telegraph sat between them. ‘Some soup, Sir Telegraph?’ said Mr.

Forester. ‘I rather think,’ said Sir Telegraph, ‘I shall trouble Sir

Oran for a slice of fish.’ Sir Oran helped him with great dexterity, and

then performed the same office for himself. ‘I think you will like this

Madeira?’ said Mr. Forester. ‘Capital!’ said Sir Telegraph: ‘Sir Oran,

shall I have the pleasure of taking wine with you?’ Sir Oran Haut-ton

bowed gracefully to Sir Telegraph Paxarett, and the glasses were tossed

off with the usual ceremonies. Sir Oran preserved an inflexible silence

during the whole duration of dinner, but showed great proficiency in the

dissection of game.

[Illustration: _Sir Oran took a flying leap through the window._]

When the cloth was removed, the wine circulated freely, and Sir

Telegraph, as usual, filled a numerous succession of glasses. Mr.

Forester, not as usual, did the same; for he was generally very

abstemious in this respect; but, on the present occasion, he relaxed

from his severity, quoting the _Placari genius festis impune diebus_,

and the _Dulce est desipere in loco_, of Horace. Sir Oran likewise

approved, by his practice, that he thought the wine particularly

excellent, and _Beviamo tutti tre_ appeared to be the motto of the

party. Mr. Forester inquired into the motives which had brought Sir

Telegraph to Westmoreland; and Sir Telegraph entered into a rapturous

encomium of the heiress of Melincourt which was suddenly cut short by

Sir Oran, who, having taken a glass too much, rose suddenly from table,

took a flying leap through the window, and went dancing along the woods

like a harlequin.

‘Upon my word,’ said Sir Telegraph, ‘a devilish lively, pleasant fellow!

Curse me if I know what to make of him.’

‘I will tell you his history,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘by and by. In the

meantime I must look after him, that he may neither do nor receive

mischief. Pray take care of yourself till I return.’ Saying this, he

sprang through the window after Sir Oran, and disappeared by the same

track among the trees.

‘Curious enough!’ soliloquised Sir Telegraph; ‘however, not much to

complain of, as the best part of the company is left behind: videlicet,

the bottle.’

CHAPTER V

SUGAR

Sir Telegraph was tossing off the last heeltap of his regular diurnal

allowance of wine, when Mr. Forester and Sir Oran Haut-ton reappeared,

walking past the window arm in arm; Sir Oran’s mode of progression being

very vacillating, indirect, and titubant; enough so, at least, to show

that he had not completely danced off the effects of the Madeira. Mr.

Forester shortly after entered; and Sir Telegraph inquiring concerning

Sir Oran, ‘I have persuaded him to go to bed,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘and I

doubt not he is already fast asleep.’ A servant now entered with tea.

Sir Telegraph proceeded to help himself, when he perceived there was no

sugar, and reminded his host of the omission.

_Mr. Forester._ If I had anticipated the honour of your company, Sir

Telegraph, I would have provided myself with a small quantity of that

nefarious ingredient: but in this solitary situation, these things are

not to be had at a moment’s notice. As it is, seeing little company, and

regulating my domestic arrangements on philosophical principles, I never

suffer an atom of West Indian produce to pass my threshold. I have no

wish to resemble those pseudo-philanthropists, those miserable

declaimers against slavery, who are very liberal of words which cost

them nothing, but are not capable of advancing the object they profess

to have at heart, by submitting to the smallest personal privation. If I

wish seriously to exterminate an evil, I begin by examining how far I am

myself, in any way whatever, an accomplice in the extension of its

baleful influence. My reform commences at home. How can I unblushingly

declaim against thieves, while I am a receiver of stolen goods? How can

I seriously call myself an enemy to slavery, while I indulge in the

luxuries that slavery acquires? How can the consumer of sugar pretend to

throw on the grower of it the exclusive burden of their participated

criminality? How can he wash his hands, and say with Pilate, “_I am

innocent of this blood, see ye to it_”?

Sir Telegraph poured some cream into his unsweetened tea, drank it, and

said nothing. Mr. Forester proceeded:

If every individual in this kingdom, who is truly and conscientiously an

enemy to the slave-trade, would subject himself to so very trivial a

privation as abstinence from colonial produce, I consider that a mortal

blow would be immediately struck at the roots of that iniquitous system.

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ If every individual enemy to the slave-trade

would follow your example, the object would no doubt be much advanced;

but the practice of one individual more or less has little or no

influence on general society: most of us go on with the tide, and the

dread of the single word _quiz_ has more influence in keeping the

greater part of us within the pale of custom, fashion, and precedent,

than all the moral reasonings and declamations in the world will ever

have in persuading us to break through it. As to the diffusion of

liberty, and the general happiness of mankind, which used to be your

favourite topics when we were at college together, I should have thought

your subsequent experience would have shown you that there is not one

person in ten thousand who knows what liberty means, or cares a single

straw for any happiness but his own——

_Mr. Forester._ Which his own miserable selfishness must estrange from

him for ever. He whose heart has never glowed with a generous

resolution, who has never felt the conscious triumph of a disinterested

sacrifice, who has never sympathised with human joys or sorrows, but

when they have had a direct and palpable reference to himself, can never

be acquainted with even the semblance of happiness. His utmost enjoyment

must be many degrees inferior to that of a pig, inasmuch as the sordid

mire of selfish and brutal stupidity is more defiling to the soul, than

any coacervation of mere material mud can possibly be to the body. The

latter may be cleared away with two or three ablutions, but the former

cleaves and accumulates into a mass of impenetrable corruption, that

bids defiance to the united powers of Hercules and Alpheus.

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ Be that as it may, every man will continue to

follow his own fancy. The world is bad enough, I daresay; but it is not

for you or me to mend it.

_Mr. Forester._ There is the keystone of the evil—mistrust of the

influence of individual example. ‘We are bad ourselves, because we

despair of the goodness of others.’[6] Yet the history of the world

abounds with sudden and extraordinary revolutions in the opinions of

mankind, which have been effected by single enthusiasts.

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ Speculative opinions have been sometimes

changed by the efforts of roaring fanatics. Men have been found very

easily permutable into _ites_ and _onians_, _avians_, and _arians_,

Wesleyites or Whitfieldites, Huntingdonians or Muggletonians, Moravians,

Trinitarians, Unitarians, Anythingarians: but the metamorphosis only

affects a few obscure notions concerning types, symbols, and mysteries,

which have scarcely any effect on moral theory, and of course, _a

fortiori_, none whatever on moral practice: the latter is for the most

part governed by the general habits and manners of the society we live

in. One man may twang responses in concert with the parish clerk;

another may sit silent in a Quakers’ meeting, waiting for the

inspiration of the Spirit; a third may groan and howl in a tabernacle; a

fourth may breakfast, dine, and sup in a Sandemanian chapel: but meet

any of the four in the common intercourse of society, you will scarcely

know one from another. The single adage, _Charity begins at home_, will

furnish a complete key to the souls of all four; for I have found, as

far as my observation has extended, that men carry their religion[7] in

other men’s heads, and their morality in their own pockets.

_Mr. Forester._ I think it will be found that individual example has in

many instances produced great moral effects on the practice of society.

Even if it were otherwise, is it not better to be Abdiel among the

fiends, than to be lost and confounded in the legion of imps grovelling

in the train of the evil power?

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ There is something in that.

_Mr. Forester._ To borrow an allegory from Homer: I would say society is

composed of two urns, one of good, and one of evil. I will suppose that

every individual of the human species receives from his natal genius a

little phial, containing one drop of a fluid, which shall be evil, if

poured into the urn of evil, and good if into that of good. If you were

proceeding to the station of the urns with ten thousand persons, every

one of them predetermined to empty his phial into the urn of evil, which

I fear is too true a picture of the practice of society, should you

consider their example, if you were hemmed in in the centre of them, a

sufficient excuse for not breaking from them, and approaching the

neglected urn? Would you say, “The urn of good will derive little

increase from my solitary drop, and one more or less will make very

little difference in the urn of ill; I will spare myself trouble, do as

the world does, and let the urn of good take its chance, from those who

can approach it with less difficulty”? No: you would rather say, “That

neglected urn contains the hopes of the human species: little, indeed,

is the addition I can make to it, but it will be good as far as it

goes”; and if, on approaching the urn, you should find it not so empty

as you had anticipated, if the genius appointed to guard it should say

to you, “There is enough in this urn already to allow a reasonable

expectation that it will one day be full, and yet it has only

accumulated drop by drop through the efforts of individuals, who broke

through the pale and pressure of the multitude, and did not despair of

human virtue”; would you not feel ten thousand times repaid for the

difficulties you had overcome, and the scoffs of the fools and slaves

you had abandoned, by the single reflection that would then rush upon

your mind, _I am one of these_?

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ Gad, very likely: I never considered the

subject in that light. You have made no allowance for the mixture of

good and evil, which I think the fairest state of the case. It seems to

me, that the world always goes on pretty much in one way. People eat,

drink, and sleep, make merry with their friends, get as much money as

they can, marry when they can afford it, take care of their children

because they are their own, are thought well of while they live in

proportion to the depth of their purse, and when they die, are sure of

as good a character on their tombstones as the bellman and stonemason

can afford for their money.

_Mr. Forester._ Such is the multitude; but there are noble exceptions to

this general littleness.

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ Now and then an original genius strikes out of

the common track; but there are two ways of doing that—into a worse as

well as a better.

_Mr. Forester._ There are some assuredly who strike into a better, and

these are the ornaments of their age, and the lights of the world. You

must admit too, that there are many, who, though without energy or

capacity to lead, have yet virtue enough to follow an illustrious

example.

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ One or two.

_Mr. Forester._ In every mode of human action there are two ways to be

pursued—a good and a bad one. It is the duty of every man to ascertain

the former, as clearly as his capacity will admit, by an accurate

examination of general relations; and to act upon it rigidly, without

regard to his own previous habits, or the common practice of the world.

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ And you infer from all this that it is my duty

to drink my tea without sugar.

_Mr. Forester._ I infer that it is the duty of every one, thoroughly

penetrated with the iniquity of the slave-trade, to abstain entirely

from the use of colonial produce.

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ I may do that, without any great effort of

virtue. I find the difference, in this instance, more trivial than I

could have supposed. In fact, I never thought of it before.

_Mr. Forester._ I hope I shall before long have the pleasure of

enrolling you a member of the Anti-saccharine Society, which I have had

the happiness to organise, and which is daily extending its numbers.

Some of its principal members will shortly pay a visit to Redrose Abbey;

and I purpose giving a festival, to which I shall invite all that is

respectable and intelligent in this part of the country, and in which I

intend to demonstrate practically, that a very elegant and luxurious

entertainment may be prepared without employing a single particle of

that abominable ingredient, and theoretically, that the use of sugar is

economically superfluous, physically pernicious, morally atrocious, and

politically abominable.

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ I shall be happy to join the party, and I may

possibly bring with me one or two inside passengers, who will prove both

ornamental and attractive to your festival. But you promised me an

account of Sir Oran.

CHAPTER VI

SIR ORAN HAUT-TON

_Mr. Forester._ Sir Oran Haut-ton was caught very young in the woods of

Angola.

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ Caught!

_Mr. Forester._ Very young. He is a specimen of the natural and original

man—the wild man of the woods; called in the language of the more

civilised and sophisticated natives of Angola, _Pongo_, and in that of

the Indians of South America, _Oran Outang_.

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ The devil he is!

_Mr. Forester._ Positively. Some presumptuous naturalists have refused

his species the honours of humanity; but the most enlightened and

illustrious philosophers agree in considering him in his true light as

the natural and original man.[8] One French philosopher, indeed, has

been guilty of an inaccuracy, in considering him as a degenerated

man;[9] degenerated he cannot be; as his prodigious physical strength,

his uninterrupted health, and his amiable simplicity of manners

demonstrate. He is, as I have said, a specimen of the natural and

original man—a genuine facsimile of the philosophical Adam.

He was caught by an intelligent negro very young, in the woods of

Angola; and his gentleness and sweet temper[10] winning the hearts of

the negro and negress, they brought him up in their cottage as the

playfellow of their little boys and girls, where, with the exception of

speech, he acquired the practice of such of the simpler arts of life as

the degree of civilisation in that part of Africa admits. In this way he

lived till he was about seventeen years of age——

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ By his own reckoning?

_Mr. Forester._ By analogical computation. At this period, my old friend

Captain Hawltaught of the Tornado frigate, being driven by stress of

weather to the coast of Angola, was so much struck with the

contemplative cast of Sir Oran’s countenance,[11] that he offered the

negro an irresistible bribe to surrender him to his possession. The

negro brought him on board, and took an opportunity to leave him slily,

but with infinite reluctance and sympathetic grief. When the ship

weighed anchor, and Sir Oran found himself separated from the friends of

his youth, and surrounded with strange faces, he wept bitterly,[12] and

fell into such deep grief that his life was despaired of.[13] The

surgeon of the ship did what he could for him; and a much better doctor,

Time, completed his cure. By degrees a very warm friendship for my

friend Captain Hawltaught extinguished his recollection of his negro

friends. Three years they cruised together in the Tornado, when a

dangerous wound compelled the old captain to renounce his darling

element, and lay himself up in ordinary for the rest of his days. He

retired on his half-pay and the produce of his prize-money to a little

village in the West of England, where he employed himself very

assiduously in planting cabbages and watching the changes of the wind.

Mr. Oran, as he was then called, was his inseparable companion, and

became a very expert practical gardener. The old captain used to

observe, he could always say he had an honest man in his house, which

was more than could be said of many honourable houses where there was

much vapouring about honour.

Mr. Oran had long before shown a taste for music, and with some little

instruction from a marine officer in the Tornado, had become a

proficient on the flute and French horn.[14] He could never be brought

to understand the notes; but, from hearing any simple tune played or

sung two or three times, he never failed to perform it with great

exactness and brilliancy of execution. I shall merely observe, _en

passant_, that music appears, from this and several similar

circumstances, to be more natural to man than speech. The old captain

was fond of his bottle of wine after dinner, and his glass of grog at

night. Mr. Oran was easily brought to sympathise in this taste;[15] and

they have many times sat up together half the night over a flowing bowl,

the old captain singing Rule Britannia, True Courage, or Tom Tough, and

Sir Oran accompanying him on the French horn.

During a summer tour in Devonshire, I called on my old friend Captain

Hawltaught, and was introduced to Mr. Oran. You, who have not forgotten

my old speculations on the origin and progress of man, may judge of my

delight at this happy _rencontre_. I exerted all the eloquence I was

master of to persuade Captain Hawltaught to resign him to me, that I

might give him a philosophical education.[16] Finding this point

unattainable, I took a house in the neighbourhood, and the intercourse

which ensued was equally beneficial and agreeable to all three.

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ And what part did you take in their nocturnal

concerts, with Tom Tough and the French horn?

_Mr. Forester._ I was seldom present at them, and often remonstrated,

but ineffectually, with the captain, on his corrupting the amiable

simplicity of the natural man by this pernicious celebration of vinous

and spirituous orgies; but the only answer I could ever get from him was

a hearty damn against all water-drinkers, accompanied with a reflection

that he was sure every enemy to wine and grog must have clapped down the

hatches of his conscience on some secret villainy, which he feared good

liquor would pipe ahoy; and he usually concluded by striking up _Nothing

like Grog_, _Saturday Night_, or _Swing the flowing Bowl_, his friend

Oran’s horn ringing in sympathetic symphony.

The old captain used to say that grog was the elixir of life: but it did

not prove so to him; for one night he tossed off his last bumper, sang

his last stave, and heard the last flourish of his Oran’s horn. I

thought poor Oran would have broken his heart; and, had he not been

familiarised to me, and conceived a very lively friendship for me before

the death of his old friend, I fear the consequences would have been

fatal.

Considering that change of scene would divert his melancholy, I took him

with me to London. The theatres delighted him, particularly the opera,

which not only accorded admirably with his taste for music, but where,

as he looked round on the ornaments of the fashionable world, he seemed

to be particularly comfortable, and to feel himself completely at home.

There is, to a stranger, something ludicrous in a first view of his

countenance, which led me to introduce him only into the best society,

where politeness would act as a preventive to the propensity to laugh;

for he has so nice a sense of honour (which I shall observe, by the way,

is peculiar to man), that if he were to be treated with any kind of

contumely, he would infallibly die of a broken heart, as has been seen

in some of his species.[17] With a view of ensuring him the respect of

society which always attends on rank and fortune, I have purchased him a

baronetcy, and made over to him an estate. I have also purchased of the

Duke of Rottenburgh one half of the elective franchise vested in the

body of Mr. Christopher Corporate, the free, fat, and dependent burgess

of the ancient and honourable borough of Onevote, who returns two

members to Parliament, one of whom will shortly be Sir Oran. (_Sir

Telegraph gave a long whistle._) But before taking this important step,

I am desirous that he should _finish his education_. (_Sir Telegraph

whistled again._) I mean to say that I wish, if possible, to put a few

words into his mouth, which I have hitherto found impracticable, though

I do not entirely despair of ultimate success. But this circumstance,

for reasons which I will give you by and by, does not at all militate

against the proofs of his being a man.

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ If he be but half a man, he will be the fitter

representative of half an elector; for as that ‘large body corporate of

one,’ the free, fat, and dependent burgess of Onevote, returns two

members to the honourable house, Sir Oran can only be considered as the

representative of half of him. But, seriously, is not your principal

object an irresistible exposure of the universality and omnipotence of

corruption by purchasing for an oran outang one of those seats, the sale

of which is unblushingly acknowledged to be _as notorious as the sun at

noonday_? or do you really think him _one of us_?

_Mr. Forester._ I really think him a variety of the human species; and

this is a point which I have it much at heart to establish in the

acknowledgment of the civilised world.

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ Buffon, whom I dip into now and then in the

winter, ranks him, with Linnaeus, in the class of _Simiae_.

_Mr. Forester._ Linnaeus has given him the curious denominations of

_Troglodytes_, _Homo nocturnus_, and _Homo silvestris_: but he evidently

thought him a man; he describes him as having a hissing speech,

thinking, reasoning, believing that the earth was made for him, and that

he will one day be its sovereign.[18]

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ God save King Oran! By the bye, you put me

very much in mind of Valentine and Orson. This wild man of yours will

turn out some day to be the son of a king, lost in the woods, and

suckled by a lioness:—‘No waiter, but a knight templar’:—no Oran, but a

true prince.

_Mr. Forester._ As to Buffon, it is astonishing how that great

naturalist could have placed him among the _singes_, when the very words

of his description give him all the characteristics of human nature.[19]

It is still more curious to think that modern travellers should have

made beasts, under the names of Pongos, Mandrills, and Oran Outangs, of

the very same beings whom the ancients worshipped as divinities under

the names of Fauns and Satyrs, Silenus and Pan.[20]

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ Your Oran rises rapidly in the scale of

being:—from a baronet and M.P. to a king of the world, and now to a god

of the woods.

_Mr. Forester._ When I was in London last winter, I became acquainted

with a learned mythologist, who has long laboured to rebuild the fallen

temple of Jupiter. I introduced him to Sir Oran, for whom he immediately

conceived a high veneration, and would never call him by any name but

Pan. His usual salutation to him was in the following words:

ἐλθε, μακαρ, σκιρτητα, φιλενθεος, ἀντροδιαιτε,

ἁρμονιην κοσμοιο κρεκων φιλοπαιγμονι μολπῃ,

κοσμοκρατωρ, βακχευτα![21]

Which he thus translated:

King of the world! enthusiast free,

Who dwell’st in caves of liberty!

And on thy wild pipe’s notes of glee

Respondent Nature’s harmony!

Leading beneath the spreading tree

The Bacchanalian revelry!

‘This,’ said he, ‘is part of the Orphic invocation of Pan. It alludes to

the happy existence of the dancing Pans, Fauns, Orans, _et id genus

omne_, whose dwellings are the caves of rocks and the hollows of trees,

such as undoubtedly was, or would have been, the natural mode of life of

our friend Pan among the woods of Angola. It alludes, too, to their

musical powers, which in our friend Pan it gives me indescribable

pleasure to find so happily exemplified. The epithet _Bacchic_, our

friend Pan’s attachment to the bottle demonstrates to be very

appropriate; and the epithet κοσμοκρατωρ, king of the world, points out

a striking similarity between the Orphic Pan and the Troglodyte of

Linnaeus, _who believes that the earth was made for him, and that he

will again be its sovereign_.’ He laid great stress on the word AGAIN,

and observed, if he were to develop all the ideas to which this word

gave rise in his mind, he should find ample matter for a volume. Then

repeating several times, Παν κοσμοκρατωρ, and _iterum fore telluris

imperantem_, he concluded by saying he had known many profound

philosophical and mythological systems founded on much slighter

analogies.

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ Your learned mythologist appears to be non

compos.

_Mr. Forester._ By no means. He has a system of his own, which only

appears in the present day more absurd than other systems, because it

has fewer followers. The manner in which the spirit of system twists

everything to its own views is truly wonderful. I believe that in every

nation of the earth the system which has most followers will be found

the most absurd in the eye of an enlightened philosophy.

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ But if your Oran be a man, how is it that his

long intercourse with other varieties of the human species has not

taught him to speak?

_Mr. Forester._ Speech is a highly artificial faculty. Civilised man is

a highly artificial animal. The change from the wild to the civilised

state affects not only his moral, but his physical nature, and this not

rapidly and instantly, but in a long process of generations. The same

change is obvious in domestic animals, and in cultivated plants. You

know not where to look for the origin of the common dog, or the common

fowl. The wild and tame hog, and the wild and tame cat, are marked by

more essential differences than the oran and the civilised man. The

origin of corn is as much a mystery to us as the source of the Nile was

to the ancients. Innumerable flowers have been so changed from their

original simplicity, that the art of horticulture may almost lay claim

to the magic of a new creation. Is it then wonderful that the civilised

man should have acquired some physical faculties which the natural man

has not? It is demonstrable that speech is one. I do not, however,

despair of seeing him make some progress in this art. Comparative

anatomy shows that he has all the organs of articulation. Indeed he has,

in every essential particular, the human form, and the human anatomy.

_Now I will only observe that if an animal who walks upright—is of the

human form, both outside and inside—uses a weapon for defence and

attack—associates with his kind—makes huts to defend himself from the

weather, better I believe than those of the New Hollanders—is tame and

gentle—and instead of killing men and women, as he could easily do,

takes them prisoners and makes servants of them—who has, what I think

essential to the human kind, a sense of honour_; which is shown by

breaking his heart, if laughed at, or made a show, or treated with any

kind of contumely—_who, when he is brought into the company of civilised

men, behaves_ (as you have seen) _with dignity and composure, altogether

unlike a monkey; from whom he differs likewise in this material respect,

that he is capable of great attachment to particular persons, of which

the monkey is altogether incapable; and also in this respect, that a

monkey never can be so tamed that we may depend on his not doing

mischief when left alone, by breaking glasses or china within his reach;

whereas the oran outang is altogether harmless;—who has so much of the

docility of a man that he learns not only to do the common offices of

life, but also to play on the flute_ and French horn; _which shows that

he must have an idea of melody and concord of sounds, which no brute

animal has;—and lastly, if joined to all these qualities he has the

organ of pronunciation, and consequently the capacity of speech, though

not the actual use of it; if, I say, such an animal be not a man, I

should desire to know in what the essence of a man consists, and what it

is that distinguishes a natural man from the man of art_.[22] That he

understands many words, though he does not yet speak any, I think you

may have observed, when you asked him to take wine, and applied to him

for fish and partridge.[23]

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ The gestures, however slight, that accompany

the expression of the ordinary forms of intercourse, may possibly

explain that.

_Mr. Forester._ You will find that he understands many things addressed

to him on occasions of very unfrequent occurrence. _With regard to his

moral character, he is undoubtedly a man, and a much better man than

many that are to be found in civilised countries_,[24] as, when you are

better acquainted with him, I feel very confident you will readily

acknowledge.[25]

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ I shall be very happy, when his election comes

on for Onevote, to drive him down in my barouche to the honourable and

ancient borough.

Mr. Forester promised to avail himself of this proposal; when the iron

tongue of midnight tolling twelve induced them to separate for the

night.

CHAPTER VII

THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION

The next morning, while Sir Telegraph, Sir Oran, and Mr. Forester were

sitting down to their breakfast, a post-chaise rattled up to the door;

the glass was let down, and a tall, thin, pale, grave-looking personage

peeped from the aperture. ‘This is Mr. Fax,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘the

champion of calm reason, the indefatigable explorer of the cold clear

springs of knowledge, the bearer of the torch of dispassionate truth,

that gives more light than warmth. He looks on the human world, the

world of mind, the conflict of interests, the collision of feelings, the

infinitely diversified developments of energy and intelligence, as a

mathematician looks on his diagrams, or a mechanist on his wheels and

pulleys, as if they were foreign to his own nature, and were nothing

more than subjects of curious speculation.’

Mr. Forester had not time to say more; for Mr. Fax entered, and shook

hands with him, was introduced in due form to Sir Telegraph, and sat

down to assist in the demolition of the _matériel_ of breakfast.

_Mr. Fax._ Your Redrose Abbey is a beautiful metamorphosis.—I can

scarcely believe that these are the mouldering walls of the pious

fraternity of Rednose, which I contemplated two years ago.

_Mr. Forester._ The picturesque tourists will owe me no goodwill for the

metamorphosis, though I have endeavoured to leave them as much mould,

mildew, and weather-stain as possible.

_Mr. Fax._ The exterior has suffered little; it still retains a truly

venerable monastic character.

[Illustration: _Mr. Fax._]

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ Something monastic in the interior too.—Very

orthodox old wine in the cellar, I can tell you. And the Reverend Father

Abbot there, as determined a bachelor as the Pope.

_Mr. Forester._ If I am so, it is because, like the Squire of Dames, I

seek and cannot find. I see in my mind’s eye the woman I would choose,

but I very much fear that is the only mode of optics in which she will

ever be visible.

_Mr. Fax._ No matter. Bachelors and spinsters I decidedly venerate. The

world is overstocked with featherless bipeds. More men than corn is a

fearful pre-eminence, the sole and fruitful cause of penury, disease,

and war, plague, pestilence, and famine.

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ I hope you will not long have cause to

venerate me. What is life without love? A rosebush in winter, all

thorns, and no flowers.

_Mr. Fax._ And what is it with love? A double-blossomed cherry, flowers

without fruit; if the blossoms last a month, it is as much as can be

expected: they fall, and what comes in their place? Vanity, and vexation

of spirit.

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ Better vexation than stagnation: marriage may

often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horsepond.

_Mr. Fax._ Rather a calm clear river——

_Mr. Forester._ Flowing through a desert, where it moves in loneliness,

and reflects no forms of beauty.

_Mr. Fax._ That is not the way to consider the case. Feelings and

poetical images are equally out of place in a calm philosophical view of

human society. Some must marry, that the world may be peopled: many must

abstain, that it may not be overstocked. _Little and good_ is very

applicable in this case. It is better that the world should have a

smaller number of peaceable and rational inhabitants, living in

universal harmony and social intercourse, than the disproportionate mass

of fools, slaves, coxcombs, thieves, rascals, liars, and cutthroats,

with which its surface is at present encumbered. It is in vain to

declaim about the preponderance of physical and moral evil, and

attribute it, with the Manicheans, to a mythological principle, or, with

some modern philosophers, to the physical constitution of the globe. The

cause of all the evils of human society is single, obvious, reducible to

the most exact mathematical calculation; and of course susceptible not

only of remedy but even of utter annihilation. The cause is the tendency

of population to increase beyond the means of subsistence. The remedy is

an universal social compact, binding both sexes to equally rigid

celibacy, till the prospect of maintaining the average number of six

children be as clear as the arithmetic of futurity can make it.

_Mr. Forester._ The arithmetic of futurity has been found in a more than

equal number of instances to baffle human skill. The rapid and sudden

mutations of fortune are the inexhaustible theme of history, poetry, and

romance; and they are found in forms as various and surprising, in the

scenes of daily life, as on the stage of Drury Lane.

_Mr. Fax._ That the best prospects are often overshadowed, is most

certainly true; but there are degrees and modes of well-grounded

reliance on futurity, sufficient to justify the enterprises of prudence,

and equally well-grounded prospiciences of hopelessness and

helplessness, that should check the steps of rashness and passion, in

their headlong progress to perdition.

_Mr. Forester._ You have little cause to complain of the present age. It

is calculating enough to gratify the most determined votary of moral and

political arithmetic. This certainly is not the time

When unrevenged stalks Cocker’s injured ghost.

What is friendship—except in some most rare and miraculous instances—but

the fictitious bond of interest, or the heartless intercourse of

idleness and vanity? What is love, but the most venal of all venal

commodities? What is marriage, but the most sordid of bargains, the most

cold and slavish of all the forms of commerce? We want no philosophical

ice-rock, towed into the Dead Sea of modern society, to freeze that

which is too cold already. We want rather the torch of Prometheus to

revivify our frozen spirits. We are a degenerate race, half-reasoning

developments of the principle of infinite littleness, ‘with hearts in

our bodies no bigger than pins’ heads.’ We are in no danger of

forgetting that two and two make four. There is no fear that the warm

impulses of feeling will ever overpower, with us, the tangible eloquence

of the pocket.

_Mr. Fax._ With relation to the middle and higher classes, you are right

in a great measure as to fact, but wrong, as I think, in the asperity of

your censure. But among the lower orders the case is quite different.

The baleful influence of the poor laws has utterly destroyed the

principle of calculation in them. They marry by wholesale, without

scruple or compunction, and commit the future care of their family to

Providence and the overseer. They marry even in the workhouse, and

convert the intended asylum of age and infirmity into a flourishing

manufactory of young beggars and vagabonds.

Sir Telegraph’s barouche rolled up gracefully to the door. Mr. Forester

pressed him to stay another day, but Sir Telegraph’s plea of urgency was

not to be overcome. He promised very shortly to revisit Redrose Abbey,

shook hands with Mr. Forester and Sir Oran, bowed politely to Mr. Fax,

mounted his box, and disappeared among the trees.

‘Those four horses,’ said Mr. Fax, as the carriage rolled away, ‘consume

the subsistence of eight human beings, for the foolish amusement of one.

As Solomon observes: “This is vanity, and a great evil.”’

‘Sir Telegraph is thoughtless,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘but he has a good

heart and a good natural capacity. I have great hopes of him. He had

some learning, when he went to college; but he was cured of it before he

came away. Great, indeed, must be the zeal for improvement which an

academical education cannot extinguish.’

CHAPTER VIII

THE SPIRIT OF CHIVALRY

Sir Telegraph was welcomed to Melincourt in due form by Mr. Hippy, and

in a private interview with the Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney, was exhorted

to persevere in his suit to Anthelia, though she could not flatter him

with very strong hopes of immediate success, the young lady’s notions

being, as she observed, extremely outré and fantastical, but such as she

had no doubt time and experience would cure. She informed him at the

same time, that he would shortly meet a formidable rival, no less a

personage than Lord Anophel Achthar,[26] son and heir of the Marquis of

Agaric[27] who was somewhat in favour with Mr. Hippy, and seemed

determined at all hazards to carry his point; ‘and with any other girl

than Anthelia,’ said Mrs. Pinmoney, ‘considering his title and fortune,

I should pronounce his success infallible, unless a duke were to make

his appearance.’ She added, ‘The young lord would be accompanied by his

tutor, the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub, and by a celebrated poet, Mr.

Feathernest, to whom the Marquis had recently given a place in exchange

for his conscience. It was thought by Mr. Feathernest’s friends that he

had made a very good bargain. The poet had, in consequence, burned his

old _Odes to Truth and Liberty_, and had published a volume of

Panegyrical Addresses “to all the crowned heads in Europe,” with the

motto, “Whatever is at court, is right.”’

The dinner-party that day at Melincourt Castle consisted of Mr. Hippy,

in the character of lord of the mansion; Anthelia, in that of his

inmate; Mrs. and Miss Pinmoney, as her visitors; and Sir Telegraph, as

the visitor of Mrs. Pinmoney, seconded by Mr. Hippy’s invitation to

stay. Nothing very luminous passed on this occasion.

The fame of Mr. Hippy, and his hospitable office, was rapidly diffused

by Dr. Killquick, the physician of the district; who thought a draught

or pill could not possibly be efficacious, unless administered with an

anecdote, and who was called in, in a very few hours after Mr. Hippy’s

arrival, to cure the hypochondriacal old gentleman of an imaginary

swelling in his elbow. The learned doctor, who had studied with peculiar

care the symptoms, diagnostics, prognostics, sedatives, lenitives, and

sanatives of hypochondriasis, had arrived at the sagacious conclusion

that the most effectual method of curing an imaginary disease was to

give the patient a real one; and he accordingly sent Mr. Hippy a pint

bottle of mixture, to be taken by a tablespoonful every two hours, which

would have infallibly accomplished the purpose, but that the bottle was

cracked over the head of Harry Fell, for treading on his master’s toe,

as he presented the composing potion, which would perhaps have composed

him in the Roman sense.

The fashionable attractions of Low-Wood and Keswick afforded facilities

to some of Anthelia’s lovers to effect a _logement_ in her

neighbourhood, from whence occasionally riding over to Melincourt

Castle, they were hospitably received by the lord seneschal, Humphrey

Hippy, Esquire, who often made them fixed stars in the circumference of

that jovial system, of which the bottle and glasses are the sun and

planets, till it was too late to dislodge for the night; by which means

they sometimes contrived to pass several days together at the Castle.

The gentlemen in question were Lord Anophel Achthar, with his two

parasites, Mr. Feathernest and the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub; Harum

O’Scarum, Esquire, the sole proprietor of a vast tract of undrained bog

in the county of Kerry; and Mr. Derrydown, the only son of an old lady

in London, who having in vain solicited a visit from Anthelia, had sent

off her hopeful progeny to try his fortune in Westmoreland. Mr.

Derrydown had received a laborious education, and had consumed a great

quantity of midnight oil over ponderous tomes of ancient and modern

learning, particularly of moral, political, and metaphysical philosophy,

ancient and modern. His lucubrations in the latter branch of science

having conducted him, as he conceived, into the central opacity of utter

darkness, he formed a hasty conclusion ‘that all human learning is

vanity’; and one day, in a listless mood, taking down a volume of the

_Reliques of Ancient Poetry_, he found, or fancied he found, in the

plain language of the old English ballad, glimpses of the truth of

things, which he had vainly sought in the vast volumes of philosophical

disquisition. In consequence of this luminous discovery, he locked up

his library, purchased a travelling chariot, with a shelf in the back,

which he filled with collections of ballads and popular songs; and

passed the greater part of every year in posting about the country, for

the purpose, as he expressed it, of studying together poetry and the

peasantry, unsophisticated nature and the truth of things.

Mr. Hippy introduced Lord Anophel, and his two learned friends, to Sir

Telegraph and Mrs. and Miss Pinmoney. Mr. Feathernest whispered to the

Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub, ‘This Sir Telegraph Paxarett has some good

livings in his gift’; which bent the plump figure of the reverend

gentleman into a very orthodox right angle.

Anthelia, who felt no inclination to show particular favour to any one

of her Strephons, was not sorry to escape the evil of a solitary

persecutor, more especially as they so far resembled the suitors of

Penelope, as to eat and drink together with great cordiality. She could

have wished, when she left them to the congenial society of Bacchus, to

have retired to company more congenial to her than that of Mrs. Pinmoney

and Miss Danaretta; but she submitted to the course of necessity with

the best possible grace.

She explicitly made known to all her suitors her ideas on the subject of

marriage. She had never perverted the simplicity of her mind by

indulging in the usual cant of young ladies, that she should prefer a

single life: but she assured them that the spirit of the age of

chivalry, manifested in the forms of modern life, would constitute the

only character on which she could fix her affections.

Lord Anophel was puzzled, and applied for information to his tutor.

‘Grovelgrub,’ said he, ‘what is the spirit of the age of chivalry?’

‘Really, my lord,’ said the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub, ‘my studies never

lay that way.’

‘True,’ said Lord Anophel; ‘it was not necessary to your degree.’

His lordship’s next recourse was to Mr. Feathernest. ‘Feathernest, what

is the spirit of the age of chivalry?’

Mr. Feathernest was taken by surprise. Since his profitable

metamorphosis into an _ami du prince_, he had never dreamed of such a

question. It burst upon him like the spectre of his youthful integrity,

and he mumbled a half-intelligible reply about truth and

liberty—disinterested benevolence—self-oblivion—heroic devotion to love

and honour—protection of the feeble, and subversion of tyranny.

‘All the ingredients of a rank Jacobin, Feathernest, ‘pon honour!’

exclaimed his lordship.

There was something in the word Jacobin very grating to the ears of Mr.

Feathernest, and he feared he had thrown himself between the horns of a

dilemma; but from all such predicament he was happily provided with an

infallible means of extrication. His friend Mr. Mystic, of Cimmerian

Lodge, had initiated him in some of the mysteries of the transcendental

philosophy, which on this, as all similar occasions, he called in to his

assistance; and overwhelmed his lordship with a volley of ponderous

jargon, which left him in profound astonishment at the depth of Mr.

Feathernest’s knowledge.

‘The spirit of the age of chivalry!’ soliloquised Mr. O’Scarum; ‘I think

I know what that is: I’ll shoot all my rivals, one after another, as

fast as I can find a decent pretext for picking a quarrel. I’ll write to

my friend Major O’Dogskin to come to Low-Wood Inn, and hold himself in

readiness. He is the neatest hand in Ireland at delivering a challenge.’

‘The spirit of the age of chivalry!’ soliloquised Mr. Derrydown; ‘I

think I am at home there. I will be a knight of the round table. I will

be Sir Lancelot, or Sir Gawaine, or Sir Tristram. No: I will be a

troubadour—a love-lorn minstrel. I will write the most irresistible

ballads in praise of the beautiful Anthelia. She shall be my lady of the

lake. We will sail about Ulleswater in our pinnace, and sing duets about

Merlin, and King Arthur, and Fairyland. I will develop the idea to her

in a ballad; it cannot fail to fascinate her romantic spirit.’ And he

sat down to put his scheme in execution.

Sir Telegraph’s head ran on tilts and tournaments, and trials of skill

and courage. How could they be resolved into the forms of modern life? A

four-in-hand race he thought would be a pretty substitute; Anthelia to

be arbitress of the contest, and place the Olympic wreath on the head of

the victor, which he had no doubt would be himself, though Harum

O’Scarum, Esquire, would dash through neck or nothing, and Lord Anophel

Achthar was reckoned one of the best coachmen in England.

CHAPTER IX

THE PHILOSOPHY OF BALLADS

The very indifferent success of Lord Anophel did not escape the eye of

his abject slave, the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub, whose vanity led him to

misinterpret Anthelia’s general sweetness of manner into the

manifestation of something like a predilection for himself. Having made

this notable discovery, he sat down to calculate the probability of his

chance of Miss Melincourt’s fortune on the one hand, and the certainty

of church-preferment, through the patronage of the Marquis of Agaric, on

the other. The sagacious reflection, that a bird in the hand was worth

two in the bush, determined him not to risk the loss of the Marquis’s

favour for the open pursuit of a doubtful success; but he resolved to

carry on a secret attack on the affections of Anthelia, and not to throw

off the mask to Lord Anophel till he could make sure of his prize.

It would have totally disconcerted the schemes of the Honourable Mrs.

Pinmoney, if Lord Anophel had made any progress in the favour of

Anthelia—not only because she had made up her mind that her young friend

should be her niece and Lady Paxarett, but because, from the moment of

Lord Anophel’s appearance, she determined on drawing lines of

circumvallation round him, to compel him to surrender at discretion to

her dear Danaretta, who was very willing to second her views. That Lord

Anophel was both a fool and a coxcomb, did not strike her at all as an

objection; on the contrary, she considered them as very favourable

circumstances for the facilitation of her design.

As Anthelia usually passed the morning in the seclusion of her library

Lord Anophel and the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub killed the time in

shooting; Sir Telegraph, in driving Mrs. and Miss Pinmoney in his

barouche, to astonish the natives of the mountain-villages; Harum

O’Scarum, Esquire, in riding full gallop along the best roads, looking

every now and then at his watch, to see how time went; Mr. Derrydown, in

composing his troubadour ballad; Mr. Feathernest, in writing odes to all

the crowned heads in Europe; and Mr. Hippy, in getting very ill after

breakfast every day of a new disease, which came to its climax at the

intermediate point of time between breakfast and dinner, showed symptoms

of great amendment at the ringing of the first dinner-bell, was very

much alleviated at the butler’s summons, vanished entirely at the sight

of Anthelia, and was consigned to utter oblivion after the ladies

retired from table, when the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub lent his clerical

assistance to lay its ghost in the Red Sea of a copious libation of

claret.

Music and conversation consumed the evenings. Mr. Feathernest and Mr.

Derrydown were both zealous admirers of old English literature; but the

former was chiefly enraptured with the ecclesiastical writers and the

translation of the Bible; the latter admired nothing but ballads, which

he maintained to be, whether ancient or modern, the only manifestations

of feeling and thought containing any vestige of truth and nature.

‘Surely,’ said Mr. Feathernest one evening, ‘you will not maintain that

Chevy Chase is a finer poem than Paradise Lost?’

_Mr. Derrydown._ I do not know what you mean by a fine poem; but I will

maintain that it gives a much deeper insight into the truth of things.

_Mr. Feathernest._ I do not know what you mean by the truth of things.

_The Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub._ Define, gentlemen, define; let the one

explain what he means by a fine poem, and the other what he means by the

truth of things.

_Mr. Feathernest._ A fine poem is a luminous development of the

complicated machinery of action and passion, exalted by sublimity,

softened by pathos, irradiated with scenes of magnificence, figures of

loveliness, and characters of energy, and harmonised with infinite

variety of melodious combination.

_Lord Anophel Achthar._ Admirable!

_Miss Danaretta Contantina Pinmoney._ Admirable, indeed, my lord! (_With

a sweet smile at his Lordship, which unluckily missed fire._)

_The Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub._ Now, sir, for the truth of things.

_Mr. O’Scarum._ Troth, sir, that is the last point about which I should

expect a gentleman of your cloth to be very solicitous.

_The Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub._ I must say, sir, that is a very uncalled-for

and very illiberal observation.

_Mr. O’Scarum._ Your coat is your protection, sir.

_The Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub._ I will appeal to his lordship if——

_Mr. O’Scarum._ I shall be glad to know his lordship’s opinion.

_Lord Anophel Achthar._ Really, sir, I have no opinion on the subject.

_Mr. O’Scarum._ I am sorry for it, my lord.

_Mr. Derrydown._ The truth of things is nothing more than an exact view

of the necessary relations between object and subject, in all the modes

of reflection and sentiment which constitute the reciprocities of human

association.

_The Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub._ I must confess I do not exactly comprehend——

_Mr. Derrydown._ I will illustrate. You all know the ballad of Old Robin

Gray.

Young Jamie loved me well, and ask’d me for his bride;

But saving a crown, he had nothing else beside.

To make the crown a pound my Jamie went to sea,

And the crown and the pound they were both for me.

He had not been gone a twelvemonth and a day,

When my father broke his arm, and our cow was stolen away;

My mother she fell sick, and Jamie at the sea,

And old Robin Gray came a-courting to me.

In consequence whereof, as you all very well know, old Robin being rich,

the damsel married the aforesaid old Robin.

_The Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub._ In the heterodox kirk of the north?

_Mr. Derrydown._ Precisely. Now, in this short space, you have a more

profound view than the deepest metaphysical treatise or the most

elaborate history can give you of the counteracting power of opposite

affections, the conflict of duties and inclinations, the omnipotence of

interest, tried by the test of extremity, and the supreme and

irresistible dominion of universal moral necessity.

Young Jamie loved me well, and ask’d me for his bride;

and would have had her, it is clear, though she does not explicitly say

so, if there had not been a necessary moral motive counteracting what

would have been otherwise the plain free will of both. ‘Young Jamie

loved me well.’ She does not say that she loved young Jamie; and here is

a striking illustration of that female decorum which forbids young

ladies to speak as they think on any subject whatever: an admirable

political institution, which has been found by experience to be most

happily conducive to that ingenuousness of mind and simplicity of manner

which constitute so striking a charm in the generality of the fair sex.

But saving a crown, he had nothing else beside.

Here is the quintessence of all that has been said and written on the

subject of love and prudence, a decisive refutation of the stoical

doctrine that poverty is no evil, a very clear and deep insight into the

nature of the preventive or prudential check to population, and a

particularly luminous view of the respective conduct of the two sexes on

similar occasions. The poor love-stricken swain, it seems, is ready to

sacrifice all for love. He comes with a crown in his pocket, and asks

for his bride. The damsel is a better arithmetician. She is fully

impressed with the truth of the old proverb about poverty coming in at

the door, and immediately stops him short with ‘What can you settle on

me, Master Jamie?’ or, as Captain Bobadil would express it, ‘How much

money ha’ you about you, Master Matthew?’ Poor Jamie looks very

foolish—fumbles in his pocket—produces his crown-piece—and answers like

Master Matthew with a remarkable elongation of visage, ‘’Faith, I ha’n’t

past a five shillings or so.’ ‘Then,’ says the young lady, in the words

of another very admirable ballad—where you will observe it is also the

damsel who asks the question:

Will the love that you’re so rich in,

Make a fire in the kitchen?

[Illustration: _Anthelia._]

On which the poor lover shakes his head, and the lady gives him leave of

absence. Hereupon Jamie falls into a train of reflections.

_Mr. O’Scarum._ Never mind his reflections.

_Mr. Derrydown._ The result of which is, that he goes to seek his

fortune at sea; intending, with the most perfect and disinterested

affection, to give all he can get to his mistress, who seems much

pleased with the idea of having it. But when he comes back, as you will

see in the sequel, he finds his mistress married to a rich old man. The

detail of the circumstances abounds with vast and luminous views of

human nature and society, and striking illustrations of the truth of

things.

_Mr. Feathernest._ I do not yet see that the illustration throws any

light on the definition, or that we are at all advanced in the answer to

the question concerning Chevy Chase and Paradise Lost.

_Mr. Derrydown._ We will examine Chevy Chase, then, with a view to the

truth of things, instead of Old Robin Gray:

God prosper long our noble king,

Our lives and safeties all.

_Mr. O’Scarum._ God prosper us all, indeed! if you are going through

Chevy Chase at the same rate as you were through Old Robin Gray, there

is an end of us all for a month. The truth of things, now!—is it that

you’re looking for? Ask Miss Melincourt to touch the harp. The harp is

the great key to the truth of things: and in the hand of Miss Melincourt

it will teach you the music of the spheres, the concord of creation, and

the harmony of the universe.

_Anthelia._ You are a libeller of our sex, Mr. Derrydown, if you think

the truth of things consists in showing it to be more governed by the

meanest species of self-interest than yours. Few, indeed, are the

individuals of either in whom the spirit of the age of chivalry

survives.

_Mr. Derrydown._ And yet, a man distinguished by that spirit would not

be in society what Miss Melincourt is—a phoenix. Many knights can wield

the sword of Orlando, but only one nymph can wear the girdle of

Florimel.

_The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney._ That would be a very pretty compliment, Mr.

Derrydown, if there were no other ladies in the room.

Poor Mr. Derrydown looked a little disconcerted: he felt conscious that

he had on this occasion lost sight of his usual politeness by too close

an adherence to the truth of things.

_Anthelia._ Both sexes, I am afraid, are too much influenced by the

spirit of mercenary calculation. The desire of competence is prudence;

but the desire of more than competence is avarice: it is against the

latter only that moral censure should be directed: but I fear that in

ninety-nine cases out of a hundred in which the course of true love is

thwarted by considerations of fortune, it will be found that avarice

rather than prudence is to be considered as the cause. Love in the age

of chivalry, and love in the age of commerce, are certainly two very

different deities; so much so, that the former may almost be regarded as

a departed power; and, perhaps, the little ballad I am about to sing

does not contain too severe an allegory in placing the tomb of chivalric

love among the ruins of the castles of romance.

THE TOMB OF LOVE

By the mossy weed-flower’d column,

Where the setting moonbeam’s glance

Streams a radiance cold and solemn

On the haunts of old romance:

Know’st thou what those shafts betoken,

Scatter’d on that tablet lone,

Where the ivory bow lies broken

By the monumental stone!

When true knighthood’s shield, neglected,

Moulder’d in the empty hall;

When the charms that shield protected

Slept in death’s eternal thrall;

When chivalric glory perish’d

Like the pageant of a dream,

Love in vain its memory cherish’d,

Fired in vain the minstrel’s theme.

Falsehood to an elfish minion

Did the form of Love impart;

Cunning plumed its vampire pinion;

Avarice tipp’d its golden dart.

Love, the hideous phantom flying,

Hither came, no more to rove:

There his broken bow is lying

On that stone—the tomb of Love!

CHAPTER X

THE TORRENT

Anthelia did not wish to condemn herself to celibacy, but in none of her

present suitors could she discover any trace of the character she had

drawn in her mind for the companion of her life: yet she was aware of

the rashness of precipitate judgments, and willing to avail herself of

this opportunity of studying the kind of beings that constitute modern

society. She was happy in the long interval between breakfast and

dinner, to retire to the seclusion of her favourite apartment; whence

she sometimes wandered into the shades of her shrubbery: sometimes

passing onward through a little postern door, she descended a flight of

rugged steps, which had been cut in the solid stone, into the gloomy

glen of the torrent that dashed round the base of the castle-rock; and

following a lonely path through the woods that fringed its sides,

wandered into the deepest recesses of mountain solitude. The sunshine of

a fine autumnal day, the solemn beauty of the fading woods, the thin

gray mist, that spread waveless over the mountains, the silence of the

air, the deep stillness of nature, broken only by the sound of the

eternal streams, tempted her on one occasion beyond her usual limits.

Passing over the steep and wood-fringed hills of rock that formed the

boundary of the valley of Melincourt, she descended through a grove of

pines into a romantic chasm, where a foaming stream was crossed by a

rude and ancient bridge, consisting of two distinct parts, each of which

rested against a columnar rock, that formed an island in the roaring

waters. An ash had fixed its roots in the fissures of the rock, and the

knotted base of its aged trunk offered to the passenger a natural seat,

over-canopied with its beautiful branches and leaves, now tinged with

their autumnal yellow. Anthelia rested awhile in this delightful

solitude. There was no breath of wind, no song of birds, no humming of

insects, only the dashing of the waters beneath. She felt the presence

of the genius of the scene. She sat absorbed in a train of

contemplations, dimly defined, but infinitely delightful: emotions

rather than thoughts, which attention would have utterly dissipated, if

it had paused to seize their images.

She was roused from her reverie by sounds of music, issuing from the

grove of pines through which she had just passed, and which skirted the

hollow. The notes were wild and irregular, but their effect was singular

and pleasing. They ceased. Anthelia looked to the spot from whence they

had proceeded, and saw, or thought she saw, a face peeping at her

through the trees; but the glimpse was momentary. There was in the

expression of the countenance something so extraordinary, that she

almost felt convinced her imagination had created it; yet her

imagination was not in the habit of creating such physiognomies. She

could not, however, apprehend that this remarkable vision portended any

evil to her; for, if so, alone and defenceless as she was, why should it

be deferred? She rose, therefore, to pursue her walk, and ascended, by a

narrow winding path, the brow of a lofty hill, which sank precipitously

on the other side, to the margin of a lake, that seemed to slumber in

the same eternal stillness as the rocks that bordered it. The murmur of

the torrent was inaudible at that elevation. There was an almost

oppressive silence in the air. The motion and life of nature seemed

suspended. The gray mist that hung on the mountains, spreading its thin

transparent uniform veil over the whole surrounding scene, gave a deeper

impression to the mystery of loneliness, the predominant feeling that

pressed on the mind of Anthelia, to seem the only thing that lived and

moved in all that wide and awful scene of beauty.

[Illustration: _Proceeded very deliberately to pull up a pine._]

Suddenly the gray mist fled before the rising wind, and a deep black

line of clouds appeared in the west, that, rising rapidly, volume on

volume, obscured in a few minutes the whole face of the heavens. There

was no interval of preparation, no notice for retreat. The rain burst

down in a sheeted cataract, comparable only to the bursting of a

waterspout. The sides of the mountains gleamed at once with a thousand

torrents. Every little hollow and rain-worn channel, which but a few

minutes before was dry, became instantaneously the bed of a foaming

stream. Every half-visible rivulet swelled to a powerful and turbid

river. Anthelia glided down the hill like an Oread, but the wet and

slippery footing of the steep descent necessarily retarded her progress.

When she regained the bridge, the swollen torrent had filled the chasm

beneath, and was still rising like a rapid and impetuous tide, rushing

and roaring along with boiling tumult and inconceivable swiftness. She

had passed one half of the bridge—she had gained the insular rock—a few

steps would have placed her on the other side of the chasm—when a large

trunk of an oak, which months, perhaps years, before had baffled the

woodman’s skill, and fallen into the dingle above, now disengaged by the

flood, and hurled onward with irresistible strength, with large and

projecting boughs towering high above the surface, struck the arch she

had yet to pass, which, shattered into instant ruin, seemed to melt like

snow into the torrent, leaving scarcely a vestige of its place.

Anthelia followed the trunk with her eyes till it disappeared among the

rocks, and stood gazing on the torrent with feelings of awful delight.

The contemplation of the mighty energies of nature, energies of liberty

and power which nothing could resist or impede, absorbed, for a time,

all considerations of the difficulty of regaining her home. The water

continued to rise, but still she stood riveted to the spot, watching

with breathless interest its tumultuous revolutions. She dreamed not

that its increasing pressure was mining the foundation of the arch she

had passed. She was roused from her reverie only by the sound of its

dissolution. She looked back, and found herself on the solitary rock

insulated by the swelling flood.

Would the flood rise above the level of the rock? The ash must in that

case be her refuge. Could the force of the torrent rend its massy roots

from the rocky fissures which grasped them with giant strength? Nothing

could seem less likely: yet it was not impossible. But she had always

looked with calmness on the course of necessity: she felt that she was

always in the order of nature. Though her life had been a series of

uniform prosperity, she had considered deeply the changes of things, and

_the nearness of the paths of night and day_[28] in every pursuit and

circumstance of human life. She sat on the stem of the ash. The torrent

rolled almost at her feet. Could this be the calm sweet scene of the

morning, the ivied bridges, the romantic chasm, the stream far below,

bright in its bed of rocks, chequered by the pale sunbeams through the

leaves of the ash?

She looked towards the pine-grove, through which she had descended in

the morning; she thought of the wild music she had heard, and of the

strange face that had appeared among the trees. Suddenly it appeared

again: and shortly after a stranger issuing from the wood ran with

surprising speed to the edge of the chasm.

Anthelia had never seen so singular a physiognomy; but there was nothing

in it to cause alarm. The stranger seemed interested for her situation,

and made gestures expressive of a design to assist her. He paused a

moment, as if measuring with his eyes the breadth of the chasm, and

then, returning to the grove, proceeded very deliberately to pull up a

pine.[29] Anthelia thought him mad; but infinite was her astonishment to

see the tree sway and bend beneath the efforts of his incredible

strength, till at length he tore it from the soil, and bore it on his

shoulders to the chasm: where placing one end on a high point of the

bank, and lowering the other on the insulated rock, he ran like a flash

of lightning along the stem, caught Anthelia in his arms, and carried

her safely over in an instant: not that we should wish the reader to

suppose our heroine, a mountaineer from her infancy, could not have

crossed a pine-bridge without such assistance; but the stranger gave her

no time to try the experiment.

The remarkable physiognomy and unparalleled strength of the stranger

caused much of surprise, and something of apprehension to mingle with

Anthelia’s gratitude: but the air of high fashion which characterised

his whole deportment diminished her apprehension, while it increased her

surprise at the exploit he had performed.

[Illustration: _Alighted on the doctor’s head as he was crossing the

court._]

Shouts were now heard in the wood, from which shortly emerged Mr. Hippy,

Lord Anophel Achthar, and the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub. Anthelia had been

missed at Melincourt at the commencement of the storm, and Mr. Hippy had

been half distracted on the occasion. The whole party had in consequence

dispersed in various directions in search of her, and accident had

directed these three gentlemen to the spot where Anthelia was just set

down by her polite deliverer, Sir Oran Haut-ton, Baronet.

Mr. Hippy ran up with great alacrity to Anthelia, assuring her that at

the time when Miss Danaretta Contantina Pinmoney informed him his dear

niece was missing, he was suffering under a complete paralysis of his

right leg, and was on the point of swallowing a potion sent to him by

Dr. Killquick, which, on receiving the alarming intelligence, he had

thrown out of the window, and he believed it had alighted on the

doctor’s head as he was crossing the court. Anthelia communicated to him

the particulars of the signal service she had received from the

stranger, whom Mr. Hippy stared at heartily, and shook hands with

cordially.

Lord Anophel now came up, and surveyed Sir Oran through his

quizzing-glass, who, making him a polite bow, took his quizzing-glass

from him, and examined him through it in the same manner. Lord Anophel

flew into a furious passion; but receiving a gentle hint from Mr. Hippy,

that the gentleman to whom he was talking had just pulled up a pine, he

deemed it prudent to restrain his anger within due bounds.

The Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub now rolled up to the party, muffled in a

ponderous greatcoat, and surmounted with an enormous umbrella, humbly

soliciting Miss Melincourt to take shelter. Anthelia assured him that

she was so completely wet through, as to render all shelter superfluous,

till she could change her clothes. On this, Mr. Hippy, who was wet

through himself, but had not till that moment been aware that he was so,

voted for returning to Melincourt with all possible expedition; adding

that he feared it would be necessary, immediately on their arrival, to

send off an express for Dr. Killquick, for his dear Anthelia’s sake, as

well as his own. Anthelia disclaimed any intention or necessity on her

part of calling in the services of the learned doctor, and, turning to

Sir Oran, requested the favour of his company to dinner at Melincourt.

This invitation was warmly seconded by Mr. Hippy, with gestures as well

as words. Sir Oran bowed acknowledgment, but pointing in a direction

different from that of Melincourt, shook his head, and took a respectful

farewell.

‘I wonder who he is,’ said Mr. Hippy, as they walked rapidly homewards:

‘manifestly dumb, poor fellow! a man of consequence, no doubt: no great

beauty, by the bye; but as strong as Hercules—quite an Orlando Furioso.

He pulled up a pine, my lord, as you would do a mushroom.’

‘Sir,’ said Lord Anophel, ‘I have nothing to do with mushrooms; and as

to this gentleman, whoever he is, I must say, notwithstanding his

fashionable air, his taking my quizzing-glass was a piece of

impertinence, for which I shall feel necessitated to require gentlemanly

satisfaction.’

A long, toilsome, and slippery walk brought the party to the castle

gate.

CHAPTER XI

LOVE AND MARRIAGE

Sir Oran Haut-ton, as we conjecture, had taken a very long ramble beyond

the limits of Redrose Abbey, and had sat down in the pine-grove to

solace himself with his flute, when Anthelia, bursting upon him like a

beautiful vision, riveted him in silent admiration to the spot whence

she departed, about which he lingered in hopes of her reappearance, till

the accident which occurred on her return enabled him to exert his

extraordinary physical strength in a manner so remarkably advantageous

to her. On parting from her and her companions, he ran back all the way

to the Abbey, a formidable distance, and relieved the anxious

apprehensions which his friend Mr. Forester entertained respecting him.

A few mornings after this occurrence, as Mr. Forester, Mr. Fax, and Sir

Oran were sitting at breakfast, a letter was brought in, addressed to

_Sir Oran Haut-ton, Baronet, Redrose Abbey_; a circumstance which very

much surprised Mr. Forester, as he could not imagine how Sir Oran had

obtained a correspondent, seeing that he could neither write nor read.

He accordingly took the liberty of opening the letter himself.