It proved to be from a limb of the law, signing himself Richard

Ratstail, and purporting to be a notice to Sir Oran to defend himself in

an action brought against him by the said Richard Ratstail, solicitor,

in behalf of his client, Lawrence Litigate, Esquire, lord of the manor

of Muckwormsby, for that he, the said Oran Haut-ton, did, with force and

arms, videlicet, sword, pistols, daggers, bludgeons, and staves, break

into the manor of the said Lawrence Litigate, Esquire, and did then and

there, with malice aforethought, and against the peace of our sovereign

lord the King, his crown and dignity, cut down, root up, hew, hack, and

cut in pieces, sundry and several pine-trees, of various sizes and

dimensions, to the utter ruin, havoc, waste, and devastation of a large

tract of pine-land; and that he had wilfully, maliciously, and with

intent to injure the said Lawrence Litigate, Esquire, carried off with

force and arms, namely, swords, pistols, bludgeons, daggers, and staves,

fifty cartloads of trunks, fifty cartloads of bark, fifty cartloads of

loppings, and fifty cartloads of toppings.

This was a complete enigma to Mr. Forester; and his surprise was

increased when, on reading further, he found that Miss Melincourt, of

Melincourt Castle, was implicated in the affair, as having aided and

abetted Sir Oran in devastating the pine-grove, and carrying it off by

cartloads with force and arms.

It immediately occurred to him that the best mode he could adopt of

elucidating the mystery would be to call on Miss Melincourt, whom,

besides, Sir Telegraph’s enthusiastic description had given him some

curiosity to see; and the present appeared a favourable opportunity to

indulge it.

He therefore asked Mr. Fax if he were disposed for a very long walk. Mr.

Fax expressed a cordial assent to the proposal, and no time was lost in

preparation.

Mr. Forester, though he had built stables for the accommodation of his

occasional visitors, kept no horses himself, for reasons which will

appear hereafter.

They set forth accordingly, accompanied by Sir Oran, who joined them

without waiting for an invitation.

‘We shall see Sir Telegraph Paxarett,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘and, perhaps,

his phoenix, Miss Melincourt.’

_Mr. Fax._ If a woman be the object, and a lover’s eyes the medium, I

should say there is nothing in nature so easily found as a phoenix.

_Mr. Forester._ My eyes have no such magical property. I am not a lover,

it is true, but it is because I have never found a phoenix.

_Mr. Fax._ But you have one in your mind, a _beau ideal_, I doubt not.

_Mr. Forester._ Not too ideal to exclude the possible existence of its

material archetype, though I have never found it yet.

_Mr. Fax._ You will, however, find a female who has some one at least of

the qualities of your imaginary damsel, and that one quality will serve

as a peg on which your imagination will suspend all the others. This is

the usual process of mental hallucination. A little truth forms the

basis, and the whole superstructure is falsehood.

_Mr. Forester._ I shall guard carefully against such self-deception;

though, perhaps, a beautiful chimera is better than either a hideous

reality or a vast and formless void.

_Mr. Fax._ As an instrument of transitory pleasure, probably; but very

far from it as a means of permanent happiness, which is only consistent

with perfect mental tranquillity, which again is only consistent with

the calm and dispassionate contemplation of truth.

_Mr. Forester._ What say you, then, to the sentiment of Voltaire?—

Le raisonneur tristement s’accrédite:

On court, dit-on, après la vérité,

Ah! croyez-moi, l’erreur a son mérite.

_Mr. Fax._ You will scarcely coincide with such a sentiment, when you

consider how much this doctrine of happy errors, and pleasing illusions,

and salutary prejudices, has tended to rivet the chains of superstition

on the necks of the grovelling multitude.

_Mr. Forester._ And yet, if you take the colouring of imagination from

the objects of our mental perception, and pour the full blaze of

daylight into all the dark recesses of selfishness and cunning, I am

afraid a refined and enthusiastic benevolence will find little to

interest or delight in the contemplation of the human world.

_Mr. Fax._ That should rather be considered the consequence of morbid

feelings, and exaggerated expectations of society and human nature. It

is the false colouring in which youthful enthusiasm depicts the scenes

of futurity that throws the gloom of disappointment so deeply on their

actual presence. You have formed to yourself, as you acknowledge, a

visionary model of female perfection, which has rendered you utterly

insensible to the real attractions of every woman you have seen. This

exaggerated imagination loses more than it gains. It has not made a fair

calculation of the mixture of good and evil in every constituent portion

of the world of reality. It has utterly excluded the latter from the

objects of its hope, and has magnified the former into such gigantic

proportions, that the real goodness and beauty, which would be visible

and delightful to simpler optics, vanish into imperceptibility in the

infinity of their diminution.

_Mr. Forester._ I desire no phantasm of abstract perfection—no visionary

creation of a romantic philosophy: I seek no more than I know to have

existed—than, I doubt not, does exist, though in such lamentable rarity

that the calculations of probability make the search little better than

desperate. I would have a woman that can love and feel poetry, not only

in its harmony and decorations, which limit the admiration of ordinary

mortals, but in the deep sources of love, and liberty, and truth, which

are its only legitimate springs, and without which, well-turned periods

and glittering images are nothing more nor less than the vilest and most

mischievous tinsel. She should be musical, but she should have music in

her soul as well as her fingers: her voice and her touch should have no

one point in common with that mechanical squalling and jingling which

are commonly dignified with the insulted name of music: they should be

modes of the harmony of her mind.

_Mr. Fax._ I do not very well understand that; but I think I have a

glimpse of your meaning. Pray proceed.

_Mr. Forester._ She should have charity—not penny charity——

_Mr. Fax._ I hope not.

_Mr. Forester._ But a liberal discriminating practical philanthropy,

that can select with justice the objects of its kindness, and give that

kindness a form of permanence equally delightful and useful to its

object and to society, by increasing the aggregate mass of intelligence

and happiness.

_Mr. Fax._ Go on.

_Mr. Forester._ She should have no taste for what are called public

pleasures. Her pleasures should be bounded in the circle of her family,

and a few, a very few congenial friends, her books, her music, her

flowers—she should delight in flowers—the uninterrupted cheerfulness of

domestic concord, the delightful effusions of unlimited confidence. The

rocks, and woods, and mountains, boundaries of the valley of her

dwelling, she should be content to look on as the boundaries of the

world.

_Mr. Fax._ Anything more?

_Mr. Forester._ She should have a clear perception of the beauty of

truth. Every species of falsehood, even in sportiveness, should be

abhorrent to her. The simplicity of her thoughts should shine through

the ingenuousness of her words. Her testimony should convey as

irresistible conviction as the voice of the personified nature of

things. And this ingenuousness should comprise, in its fullest extent,

that perfect conformity of feelings and opinions which ought to be the

most common, but is unfortunately the most rare, of the qualities of the

female mind.

_Mr. Fax._ You say nothing of beauty.

_Mr. Forester._ As to what is usually called beauty, mere symmetry of

form and features, it would be an object with me in purchasing a statue,

but none whatever in choosing a wife. Let her countenance be the mirror

of such qualities as I have described, and she cannot be otherwise than

beautiful. I think with the Athenians, that beauty and goodness are

inseparable. I need not remind you of the perpetual καλος κἀγαθος.

_Mr. Fax._ You have said nothing of the principal, and, indeed, almost

the only usual consideration in marriage—fortune.

_Mr. Forester._ I am rich enough myself to dispense with such

considerations. Even were I not so, I doubt if worldly wisdom would ever

influence me to bend my knee with the multitude at the shrine of the

omnipotence of money. Nothing is more uncertain, more transient, more

perishable, than riches. How many prudent marriages of interest and

convenience were broken to atoms by the French revolution! Do you think

there was one couple, among all those calculating characters, that acted

in those trying times like Louvet and his Lodoiska?[30] But without

looking to periods of public convulsion, in no state of society is any

individual secure against the changes of fortune. What becomes of those

ill-assorted unions, which have no basis but money, when, as is very

often the case, the money departs, and the persons remain? The qualities

of the heart and of the mind are alone out of the power of accident; and

by these, and these only, shall I be guided in the choice of the

companion of my life.

_Mr. Fax._ Are there no other indispensable qualities that you have

omitted in your enumeration?

_Mr. Forester._ None, I think, but such as are implied in those I have

mentioned, and must necessarily be co-existent with them; an endearing

sensibility, an agreeable cheerfulness, and that serenity of temper

which is truly the balm of being, and the absence of which, in the

intercourse of domestic life, obliterates all the radiance of beauty,

all the splendour of talent, and all the dignity of virtue.

_Mr. Fax._ I presume, then, you seriously purpose to marry, when you can

find such a woman as this you have described?

_Mr. Forester._ Seriously I do.

_Mr. Fax._ And not till then?

_Mr. Forester._ Certainly not.

_Mr. Fax._ Then your present heir presumptive has nothing to fear for

his reversion.

CHAPTER XII

LOVE AND POVERTY

‘We shall presently,’ said Mr. Fax, as they pursued their walk, ‘come in

sight of a cottage, which I remarked two years ago: a deplorable

habitation! A picture of its exterior and interior suspended in some

public place, in every town in the kingdom, with a brief commentary

subjoined, would operate _in terrorem_ in favour of the best interests

of political economy, by placing before the eyes of the rising

generation the lamentable consequences of imprudent marriage, and the

necessary result of attachment, of which romance is the foundation and

marriage the superstructure, without the only cement which will make it

wind and water tight—money.’

_Mr. Forester._ Nothing but money! The resemblance Fluellen found

between Macedon and Monmouth, because both began with an M, holds

equally true of money and marriage: but there seems to be a much

stronger connection in the latter case; for marriage is but a body, of

which money is the soul.

_Mr. Fax._ It is so. It must be so. The constitution of society

imperiously commands it to be so. The world of reality is not the world

of romance. When a lover talks of lips of coral, teeth of pearl, tresses

of gold, and eyes of diamonds, he knows all the while that he is lying

by wholesale; and that no baker in England would give him credit for a

penny roll on all this display of his Utopian treasury. All the aerial

castles that are founded in the contempt of worldly prudence have not

half the solidity of the cloud-built towers that surround the setting of

the autumnal sun.

_Mr. Forester._ I maintain, on the contrary, that, _let all possible

calamities be accumulated on two affectionate and congenial spirits,

they will find more true happiness in weeping together than they would

have found in all the riches of the world, poisoned by the disunion of

hearts_.[31]

_Mr. Fax._ The disunion of hearts is an evil of another kind. It is not

a comparison of evils I wish to institute. That two rich people fettered

by the indissoluble bond of marriage, and hating each other cordially,

are two as miserable animals as any on the face of the earth, is

certain; but that two poor ones, let them love each other ever so

fondly, starving together in a garret, are therefore in a less

positively wretched condition, is an inference which no logic, I think,

can deduce. For the picture you must draw in your mind’s eye is not that

of a neatly-dressed, young, healthy-looking couple, weeping in each

other’s arms in a clean, however homely cottage, in a fit of tender

sympathy; but you must surround them with all the squalid accompaniments

of poverty, rags, and famine, the contempt of the world, the dereliction

of friends, half a dozen hungry squalling children, all clothed perhaps

in the cutting up of an old blanket, duns in presence, bailiffs in

prospect, and the long perspective of hopelessness closed by the

workhouse or the gaol.

_Mr. Forester._ You imagine an extreme case, which something more than

the original want of fortune seems requisite to produce.

_Mr. Fax._ I have heard you declaim very bitterly against those who

maintain the necessary connection between misfortune and imprudence.

_Mr. Forester._ Certainly. To assert that the unfortunate must

necessarily have been imprudent, is to furnish an excuse to the

cold-hearted and illiberal selfishness of a state of society, which

needs no motive superadded to its own miserable narrow-mindedness, to

produce the almost total extinction of benevolence and sympathy. Good

and evil fortune depend so much on the combination of external

circumstances, that the utmost skill and industry cannot command

success; neither is the result of the most imprudent actions always

fatal:

Our indiscretions sometimes serve us well,

When our deep plots do pall.[32]

_Mr. Fax._ Sometimes, no doubt; but not so often as to equalise the

probable results of indiscretion and prudence. ‘Where there is

prudence,’ says Juvenal, ‘fortune is powerless’; and this doctrine,

though liable to exceptions, is replete with general truth. We have a

nice balance to adjust. To check the benevolence of the rich, by

persuading them that all misfortune is the result of imprudence, is a

great evil; but it would be a much greater evil to persuade the poor

that indiscretion may have a happier result than prudence; for where

this appears to be true in one instance, it is manifestly false in a

thousand. It is certainly not enough to possess industry and talent;

there must be means for exerting them; and in a redundant population

these means are often wanting, even to the most skilful and the most

industrious: but though calamity sometimes seizes those who use their

best efforts to avoid her, yet she seldom disappoints the intentions of

those who leap headlong into her arms.

_Mr. Forester._ It seems, nevertheless, peculiarly hard that all the

blessings of life should be confined to the rich. If you banish the

smiles of love from the cottage of poverty, what remains to cheer its

dreariness? The poor man has no friends, no amusements, no means of

exercising benevolence, nothing to fill up the gloomy and desolate

vacancy of his heart, if you banish love from his dwelling. ‘There is

one alone, and there is not a second,’ says one of the greatest poets

and philosophers of antiquity: ‘there is one alone, and there is not a

second: yea, he hath neither child nor brother; yet is there no end of

all his labour: ... neither saith he, For whom do I labour and bereave

my soul of good?... Two are better than one ... for if they fall, the

one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he

falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.’[33] Society in poverty

is better than solitude in wealth: but solitude and poverty together it

is scarcely in human nature to tolerate.

_Mr. Fax._ This, if I remember rightly, is the cottage of which I was

speaking.

The cottage was ruined and uninhabited. The roof had fallen in. The

garden was choked with weeds. ‘What,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘can have become of

its unfortunate inhabitants?’

_Mr. Forester._ What were they?

_Mr. Fax._ A couple for whom nature had done much, and fortune nothing.

I took shelter in their cottage from a passing storm. The picture which

you called the imagination of an extreme case falls short of the reality

of what I witnessed here. It was the utmost degree of misery and

destitution compatible with the preservation of life. A casual observer

might have passed them by, as the most abject of the human race. But

their physiognomy showed better things. It was with the utmost

difficulty I could extract a word from either of them: but when I at

last succeeded I was astonished, in garments so mean and a dwelling so

deplorable, to discover feelings so generous and minds so enlightened.

The semblance of human sympathy seemed strange to them; little of it as

you may suppose could be discovered through my saturnine complexion, and

the habitual language of what you call my frosty philosophy. By degrees

I engaged their confidence, and he related to me his history, which I

will tell you, as nearly as I can remember, in his own words.

CHAPTER XIII

DESMOND

My name is Desmond. My father was a naval officer, who in the prime of

life was compelled by wounds to retire from the service on his half-pay

and a small additional pension. I was his only son, and he submitted to

the greatest personal privations to procure me a liberal education, in

the hope that by these means he should live to see me making my way in

the world: but he always accompanied his wishes for this consummation

with a hope that I should consider money as a means, and not as an end,

and that I should remember the only real treasures of human existence

were truth, health, and liberty. You will not wonder that, with such

principles, the father had been twenty years a lieutenant, and that the

son was looked on at College as a fellow that would come to nothing.

I profited little at the University, as you will easily suppose. The

system of education pursued there appeared to me the result of a

deep-laid conspiracy against the human understanding, a mighty effort of

political and ecclesiastical machiavelism, to turn the energies of

inquiring minds into channels, where they will either stagnate in

disgust, or waste themselves in nugatory labour. To discover or even to

illustrate a single moral truth, to shake the empire of a single

prejudice, to apply a single blow of the axe of philosophy to the

wide-spreading roots of superstition and political imposture, is to

render a real service to the best hopes of mankind; but all this is

diametrically opposed to the selfish interests of the hired misleaders

of society, the chosen few, as they are called, before whom the wretched

multitude grovel in the dust as before

The children of a race,

Mightier than they, and wiser, and by heaven

Beloved and favoured more.

Moral science, therefore, moral improvement, the doctrines of

benevolence, the amelioration of the general condition of mankind, will

not only never form a part of any public institution for the performance

of that ridiculous and mischievous farce called the _Finishing of

Education_; but every art of clerical chicanery and fraudulent

misrepresentation will be practised, to render odious the very names of

philosophy and philanthropy, and to extinguish, by ridicule and

persecution, that enthusiastic love of truth, which never fails to

conduct its votaries to conclusions very little compatible with the

views of those who have built, or intend to build, their own worldly

prosperity on the foundation of hypocrisy and servility in themselves,

and ignorance and credulity in others.

The study of morals and of mind occupied my exclusive attention. I had

little taste for the science of lines and numbers, and still less for

verbal criticism, the pinnacle of academical glory.

I delighted in the poets of Greece and Rome, but I thought that the

_igneus vigor et coelestis origo_ of their conceptions and expressions

was often utterly lost sight of in the microscopic inspection of

philological minutiae. I studied Greek, as the means of understanding

Homer and Aeschylus: I did not look on them as mere secondary

instruments to the attainment of a knowledge of their language. I had no

conception of the taste that could prefer Lycophron to Sophocles because

he had the singular advantage of being obscure; and should have been

utterly at a loss to account for such a phenomenon, if I had not seen

that the whole system of public education was purposely calculated to

make inferior minds recoil in disgust and terror from the vestibule of

knowledge, and superior minds consume their dangerous energies in the

_difficiles nugae_ and _labor ineptiarum_ of its adytum.

I did not _finish_, as it is called, my college _education_. My father’s

death compelled me to leave it before the expiration of the usual

period, at the end of which the same distinction is conferred on all

capacities, by the academical noometry, not of merit but of time. I

found myself almost destitute; but I felt the consciousness of talents,

that I doubted not would amply provide for me in that great centre of

intellect and energy, London. To London I accordingly went, and became a

boarder in the humble dwelling of a widow, who maintained herself and an

only daughter by the perilous and precarious income derived from

lodgers.

[Illustration: ‘_My dear sir, only take the trouble of sitting a few

hours in my shop._’]

My first application was to a bookseller in Bond Street, to whom I

offered the copyright of a treatise on the Elements of Morals. ‘My dear

sir,’ said he, with an air of supercilious politeness, ‘only take the

trouble of sitting a few hours in my shop, and if you detect any one of

my customers in the act of pronouncing the word _morals_, I will give

any price you please to name for your copyright.’ But, glancing over the

manuscript, ‘I perceive,’ said he, ‘there are some smart things here;

and though they are good for nothing where they are, they would cut a

pretty figure in a Review. My friend Mr. Vamp, the editor, is in want of

a hand for the moral department of his Review: I will give you a note to

him.’ I thanked him for his kindness, and, furnished with the note,

proceeded to the lodgings of Mr. Vamp, whom I found in an elegant first

floor, lounging over a large quarto, which he was marking with a pencil.

A number of books and pamphlets, and fragments of both curiously cut up,

were scattered on the table before him, together with a large pot of

paste and an enormous pair of scissors.

He received me with great hauteur, read the note, and said, ‘Mr.

Foolscap has told you we are in want of a hand, and he thinks you have a

turn in the moral line: I shall not be sorry if it prove so, for we have

been very ill provided in that way a long while; and though morals are

not much in demand among our patrons and customers, and will not do, by

any means, for a standing dish, they make, nevertheless, a very pretty

seasoning for our politics, in cases where they might otherwise be

rather unpalatable and hard of digestion. You see this pile of

pamphlets, these volumes of poetry, and this rascally quarto: all these,

though under very different titles, and the productions of very

different orders of mind, have, either openly or covertly, only one

object; and a most impertinent one it is. This object is twofold: first,

to prove the existence, to an immense extent, of what these writers

think proper to denominate political corruption; secondly, to convince

the public that this corruption ought to be extinguished. Now, we are

anxious to do away the effect of all these incendiary clamours. As to

the existence of corruption (it is a villainous word, by the bye—we call

it _persuasion in a tangible shape_): as to the existence, then, of

_persuasion in a tangible shape_, we do not wish to deny it; on the

contrary, we have no hesitation in affirming that it is _as notorious as

the sun at noonday_: but as to the inference that it ought to be

extinguished—that is the point against which we direct the full fire of

our critical artillery; we maintain that it ought to exist; and here is

the leading article of our next number, in which we confound in one mass

all these obnoxious publications, putting the weakest at the head of the

list, that if any of our readers should feel inclined to judge for

themselves (I must do them the credit to say I do not suspect many of

them of such a democratical propensity), they may be stopped _in

limine_, by finding very little temptation to proceed. The political

composition of this article is beautiful; it is the production of a

gentleman high in office, who is indebted to _persuasion in a tangible

shape_ for his present income of several thousands per annum; but it

wants, as I have hinted, a little moral seasoning; and there, as

ill-luck will have it, we are all thrown out. We have several reverend

gentlemen in our corps, but morals are unluckily quite out of their way.

We have, on some occasions, with their assistance, substituted theology

for morals; they manage this very cleverly, but I am sorry to say it

only takes among the old women; and though the latter are our best and

most numerous customers, yet we have some very obstinate and hard-headed

readers who will not, as I have observed, swallow our politics without a

little moral seasoning; and, as I told Mr. Foolscap, if we did not

contrive to pick up a spice of morals somewhere or other, all the

eloquence of _persuasion in a tangible shape_ would soon become of

little avail. Now, if you will undertake the seasoning of this article

in such a manner as to satisfy my employers, I will satisfy you: you

understand me.’

I observed that I hoped he would allow me the free exercise of my own

opinion; and that I should wish to season his article in such a manner

as to satisfy myself, which I candidly told him would not be in such a

manner as seemed likely to satisfy him.

On this he flew into a rage, and vowed vengeance against Mr. Foolscap

for having sent him a Jacobin. I strenuously disclaimed this

appellation; and being then quite a novice in the world, I actually

endeavoured to reason with him, as if the conviction of general right

and wrong could have any influence upon him; but he stopped me short, by

saying that till I could reason him out of his pension I might spare

myself the trouble of interfering with his opinions; as the logic from

which they were deduced had presented itself to him in a much more

_tangible shape_ than any abstract notions of truth and liberty. He had

thought, from Mr. Foolscap’s letter, that I had a talent for moral

theory, and that I was inclined to turn it to account; as for moral

practice, he had nothing to do with it, desired to know nothing about

it, and wished me a good-morning.

I was not yet discouraged, and made similar applications to the editors

and proprietors of several daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly

publications, but I found everywhere the same indifference or aversion

to general principles, the same partial and perverted views: every one

was the organ of some division or subdivision of a faction; and had

entrenched himself in a narrow circle, within the pale of which all was

honour, consistency, integrity, generosity, and justice; while all

without it was villainy, hypocrisy, selfishness, corruption, and lies.

Not being inclined to imprison myself in any one of these magical rings,

I found all my interviews terminate like that with Mr. Vamp.

By the advice and introduction of a college acquaintance, I accepted the

situation of tutor in the family of Mr. Dross, a wealthy citizen, who

had acquired a large fortune by contracts with Government, in the

execution of which he had not forgotten to charge for his vote and

interest. His conscience, indeed, of all the commodities he dealt in,

was that which he had brought to the best market; though, among his more

fair-dealing, and consequently poorer neighbours, it was thought he had

made the ministry pay too dearly for so very rotten an article. They

seemed not to be aware that a corrupt administration estimates

conscience and Stilton cheese by the same criterion, and that its

rottenness was its recommendation.

Mr. Dross was a tun of man, with the soul of a hazel-nut: his wife was a

tun of woman, without any soul whatever. The principle that animated her

bulk was composed of three ingredients—arrogance, ignorance, and the

pride of money. They were, in every sense of the word, what the world

calls respectable people.

Mrs. Dross aspired to be _somebody_, aped the nobility, and gave

magnificent routs, which were attended by many noble personages, and by

all that portion of the fashionable world that will go anywhere for a

crowd and a supper.

Their idea of virtue consisted in having no debts, going regularly to

church, and feeding the parson; their idea of charity, in paying the

poor-rates, and putting down their names to public subscriptions: and

they had a profound contempt for every species of learning, which they

associated indissolubly with rags and famine, and with that neglect of

the main chance, which they regarded as the most deadly of all deadly

sins. But as they had several hopeful children, and as Mrs. Dross found

it was fashionable to have a governess and a _tutorer_, they had looked

out for two pieces of human furniture under these denominations, and my

capricious destiny led me to their splendid dwelling in the latter

capacity.

I found the governess, Miss Pliant, very admirably adapted to her

situation. She did not presume to have a will of her own. Suspended like

Mahomet’s coffin between the mistress and the housekeeper, despising the

one, and despised by the other, her mind seemed unconscious of its

vacancy, and her heart of its loneliness. She had neither feelings nor

principles, either of good or ill: perfectly selfish, perfectly

cold-hearted, and perfectly obsequious, she was contented with her

situation, because it seemed likely to lead to an advantageous

establishment; for if ever she thought of marriage, it was only in the

light of a system of bargain, in which youth and beauty were very well

disposed of when bartered for age and money. She was highly

accomplished: a very scientific musician, without any soul in her

performance; a most skilful copier of landscapes, without the least

taste for the beauties of nature; and a proficient in French grammar,

though she had read no book in that language but _Telemaque_, and hated

the names of Rousseau and Voltaire, because she had heard them called

rascals by her father, who had taken his opinion on trust from the

Reverend Mr. Simony, who had never read a page of either of them.

I very soon found that I was regarded as an upper servant—as a person of

more pretension, but less utility, than the footman. I was expected to

be really more servile, in mind especially. If I presumed to differ in

opinion from Mr. or Mrs. Dross, they looked at each other and at me with

the most profound astonishment, wondering at so much audacity in one of

their movables. I really envied the footman, living as he did among his

equals, where he might have his own opinion, as far as he was capable of

forming one, and express it without reserve or fear; while all my

thoughts were to be those of a mirror, and my motions those of an

automaton. I soon saw that I had but the choice of alternatives: either

to mould myself into a slave, liar, and hypocrite, or to take my leave

of Mr. Dross. I therefore embraced the latter, and determined from that

moment never again to live under the roof of a superior, if my own

dwelling were to be the most humble and abject of human habitations.

I returned to my old lodgings, and, after a short time, procured some

employment in the way of copying for a lawyer. My labour was assiduous,

and my remuneration scanty; but my habits were simple, my evenings were

free, and in the daughter of the widow with whom I lodged I found a

congenial mind: a desire for knowledge, an ardent love of truth, and a

capacity that made my voluntary office of instruction at once easy and

delightful.

The widow died embarrassed: her creditors seized her effects, and her

daughter was left destitute. I was her only friend: to every other human

being, not only her welfare, but even her existence, were matters of

total indifference. The course of necessity seemed to have thrown her on

my protection, and if I before loved her, I now regarded her as a

precious trust, confided to me by her evil fate. Call it what you

may—imprudence, madness, frenzy—we were married.

The lawyer who employed me had chosen his profession very injudiciously,

for he was an honest and benevolent man. He interested himself for me,

acquainted himself with my circumstances, and without informing me of

his motives, increased my remuneration; though, as I afterwards found,

he could very ill afford to do so. By this means we lived twelve months

in comfort, I may say, considering the simplicity of our habits, in

prosperity. The birth of our first child was an accession to our

domestic happiness. We had no pleasures beyond the limits of our humble

dwelling. Our circumstances and situation were much below the ordinary

level of those of well-educated people: we had, therefore, no society,

but we were happy in each other: our evenings were consecrated to our

favourite authors; and the din of the streets, the tumult of crowds and

carriages thronging to parties of pleasure and scenes of public

amusement, came to us like the roar of a stormy ocean on which we had

neither wish nor power to embark.

One evening we were surprised by an unexpected visitor; it was the

lawyer, my employer. ‘Desmond!’ said he, ‘I am a ruined man. For having

been too scrupulous to make beggars of others, I have a fair prospect of

becoming one myself. You are shocked and astonished. Do not grieve on my

account. I have neither wife nor children. Very trivial and very

remediable is the evil that can happen to me. “The valiant by himself,

what can he suffer?” You will think a lawyer has as little business with

poetry as he has with justice. Perhaps so. I have been too partial to

both.’

I was glad to see him so cheerful, and expressed a hope that his affairs

would take a better turn than he seemed to expect. ‘You shall know

more,’ said he, ‘in a few days; in the meantime, here are the arrears I

owe you.’

When he came again, he said: ‘My creditors are neither numerous nor

cruel. I have made over to them all my property, but they allow me to

retain possession of a small house in Westmoreland, with an annuity for

my life, sufficient to maintain me in competence. I could propose a wild

scheme to you if I thought you would not be offended.’

‘That,’ said I, ‘I certainly will not, propose what you may.’

‘Tell me,’ said he, ‘which do you think the most useful and

uncontaminating implement, the quill or the spade?’

‘The spade,’ said I, ‘generally speaking, unquestionably: the quill in

some most rare and solitary instances.’

‘In the hand of Homer and Plutarch, of Seneca and Tacitus, of

Shakespeare and Rousseau? I am not speaking of them, or of those who,

however humbly, reflect their excellencies. But in the hands of the

slaves of commerce, the minions of law, the venal advocates of

superstition, the sycophants of corruption, the turnspits of literature,

the paragraph-mongers of prostituted journals, the hireling compounders

of party-praise and censure, under the name of periodical criticism,

what say you to it?’

‘What can I say,’ said I, ‘but that it is the curse of society, and the

bane of the human mind?’

‘And yet,’ said he, ‘in some of these ways must you employ it, if you

wish to live by it. Literature is not the soil in which truth and

liberty can flourish, unless their cultivators be independent of the

world. Those who are not so, whatever be the promise of their beginning,

will end either in sycophants or beggars. As mere mechanical

instruments, in pursuits unconnected with literature, what say you to

the comparison?’

‘What Cincinnatus would have said,’ I answered.

‘I am glad,’ said he, ‘to hear it. You are not one of the multitude,

neither, I believe, am I. I embraced my profession, I assure you, from

very disinterested motives. I considered that, the greater the powers of

mischief with which that profession is armed, and, I am sorry to add,

the practice of mischief in the generality of its professors, the

greater might be the scope of philanthropy, in protecting weakness and

counteracting oppression. Thus I have passed my life in an attempt to

reconcile philanthropy and law. I had property sufficient to enable me

to try the experiment. The natural consequence is, my property has

vanished. I do not regret it, for I have done some good. But I can do no

more. My power is annulled. I must retire from the stage of life. If I

retire alone, I must have servants; I had much rather have friends. If

you will accompany me to Westmoreland, we will organise a little

republic of our own. Your wife shall be our housekeeper. We will

cultivate our garden. We shall want little more, and that my annuity

will amply supply. We will select a few books, and we will pronounce

eternal banishment on pen and ink.’

I could not help smiling at the earnestness with which he pronounced the

last clause. The change of a lawyer into a Roman republican appeared to

me as miraculous as any metamorphosis in Ovid. Not to weary you with

details, we carried this scheme into effect, and passed three years of

natural and healthy occupation, with perfect simplicity and perfect

content. They were the happiest of our lives. But at the end of this

period our old friend died. His annuity died with him. He left me his

heir, but his habitation and its furniture were all he had to leave. I

procured a tenant for the house, and we removed to this even yet more

humble dwelling. The difference of the rent, a very trifling sum indeed,

constituted our only income. The increase of our family, and the

consequent pressure of necessity, compelled us to sell the house. From

the same necessity we have become strict Pythagoreans. I do not complain

that we live hardly: it is almost wonderful that we live at all. The

produce of our little garden preserves us from famine: but this is all

it does. I consider myself a mere rustic, and very willingly engage in

agricultural labour, when the neighbouring farmers think proper to

employ me: but they feel no deficiency of abler hands. There are more

labourers than means of labour. In the cities it is the same. If all the

modes of human occupation in this kingdom, from the highest to the

lowest, were to require at once a double number of persons, there would

not remain one of them twelve hours unfilled.

With what views could I return to London? Of the throng continually

pressing onward, to spring into the vacancies of employment, the

foremost ranks are unfortunately composed of the selfish, the servile,

the intriguing; of those to whose ideas general justice is a chimaera,

liberty an empty name, and truth at best a verbal veil for the

sycophantic falsehood of a mercenary spirit. To what end could a pupil

of the ancient Romans mingle with such a multitude? To cringe, to lie,

to flatter? To bow to the insolence of wealth, the superciliousness of

rank, the contumely of patronage, that, while it exacts the most abject

mental prostration, in return for promises never meant to be performed,

despises the servility it fosters, and laughs at the credulity it

betrays?

The wheel of fortune is like a water-wheel, and human beings are like

the waters it disturbs. Many are thrown into the channels of action,

many are thrown back to be lost for ever in the stream. I am one of the

latter: but I shall not consider it disgraceful to me that I am so, till

I see that candour, simplicity, integrity, and intellectual power,

directed by benevolence and liberty, have a better claim to worldly

estimation, than either venal talent prostituted to the wages of

corruption, or ignorance, meanness, and imbecility, exalted by influence

and interest.

CHAPTER XIV

THE COTTAGE

_Mr. Fax (in continuation)._ ‘I cannot help thinking,’ said I, when

Desmond had done speaking, ‘that you have formed too hasty an estimate

of the world. Mr. Vamp and Mr. Dross are bad specimens of human nature:

but there are many good specimens of it in both those classes of men.

The world is, indeed, full of prejudices and superstitions, which

produce ample profit to their venal advocates, who consequently want

neither the will nor the power to calumniate and persecute the

enlightened and the virtuous. The rich, too, are usually arrogant and

exacting, and those feelings will never perish for want of sycophants to

nourish them. An ardent love of truth and liberty will, therefore,

always prove an almost insuperable barrier to any great degree of

worldly advancement. A celebrated divine, who turned his theological

morality to very excellent account, and died _en bonne odeur_, used to

say, _he could not afford to have a conscience, for it was the most

expensive luxury a man could indulge in_. So it certainly is: but,

though a conscientious man who has his own way to make in the world,

will very seldom flourish in the sunshine of prosperity, it is not,

therefore, necessary that he should sit quietly down and starve.’ He

said he would think of it, and if he could find any loophole in the

great feudal fortress of society, at which poverty and honesty could

creep in together, he would try to effect an entrance. I made more

particular inquiry into their circumstances, and they at length

communicated to me, but with manifest reluctance, that they were in

imminent danger of being deprived of their miserable furniture, and

turned out of their wretched habitation, by Lawrence Litigate, Esquire,

their landlord, for arrears of rent amounting to five pounds.

_Mr. Forester._ Which, of course, you paid?

_Mr. Fax._ I did so; but I do not see that it is of course.

Mr. Forester, Mr. Fax, and Sir Oran were still leaning over the gate of

the cottage, when a peasant came whistling along the road. ‘Pray, my

honest friend,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘can you inform me what has become of the

family which inhabited this cottage two years ago?’—‘Ye’ll voind them,’

said the peasant, ‘about a mile vurther an, just by the lake’s edge

like, wi’ two large elms by the door, and a vir tree.’ He resumed his

tune and his way.

The philosophical trio proceeded on their walk.

_Mr. Forester._ You have said little of his wife.

_Mr. Fax._ She was an interesting creature. With her the feelings of

misfortune had subsided into melancholy silence, while with him they

broke forth in misanthropical satire.

_Mr. Forester._ And their children?

_Mr. Fax._ They would have been fine children, if they had been better

clothed and fed.

_Mr. Forester._ Did they seem to repent their marriage?

_Mr. Fax._ Not for themselves. They appeared to have no wish but to live

and die together. For their children, indeed, I could easily perceive

they felt more grief than they expressed.

_Mr. Forester._ You have scarcely made out your case. Poverty had

certainly come in at the door, but Love does not seem to have flown out

at the window. You would not have prevailed on them to separate at the

price of living in palaces. The energy of intellect was not deadened;

the independence of spirit was not broken. The participation of love

communicates a luxury to sorrow, that all the splendour of selfishness

can never bestow. If, as has been said, a friend is more valuable than

the elements of fire and water, how much more valuable must be the one

only associate, the more than friend, to him whom in affliction and in

poverty all other friends have abandoned! If the sun shines equally on

the palace and the cottage, why should not love, the sun of the

intellectual world, shine equally on both? More needful, indeed, is its

genial light to the latter, where there is no worldly splendour to

diminish or divide its radiance.

[Illustration: _Sir Oran sat down in the artist’s seat._]

With a sudden turn of the road, a scene of magnificent beauty burst upon

their view: the still expanse of a lake, bordered with dark precipices

and fading woods, and mountains rising above them, height on height,

till the clouds rested on their summits. A picturesque tourist had

planted his travelling-chair under the corner of a rock, and was

intently occupied in sketching the scene. The process attracted Sir

Oran’s curiosity; he walked up to the tourist, who was too deeply

engaged to notice his approach, and peeped over his shoulder. Sir Oran,

after looking at the picture, then at the landscape, then at the

picture, then at the landscape again, at length suddenly expressed his

delight in a very loud and very singular shout, close in the painter’s

ear, that re-echoed from rock to rock. The tourist sprang up in violent

alarm, and seeing the extraordinary physiognomy of the personage at his

elbow, drew a sudden conclusion of evil intentions, and ran off with

great rapidity, leaving all his apparatus behind him. Sir Oran sat down

in the artist’s seat, took up the drawing utensils, placed the

unfinished drawing on his knee, and sat in an attitude of deep

contemplation, as if meditating on the means to be pursued for doing the

same thing himself.

The flying tourist encountered Messieurs Fax and Forester, who had

observed the transaction, and were laughing at it as heartily as

Democritus himself could have done. They tranquillised his

apprehensions, and led him back to the spot. Sir Oran, on a hint from

his friend Mr. Forester, rose, made the tourist a polite bow, and

restored to him his beloved portfolio. They then wished him a

good-morning, and left him in a state of nervous trepidation, which made

it very obvious that he would draw no more that day.

_Mr. Fax._ Can Sir Oran draw?

_Mr. Forester._ No; but I think he would easily acquire the art. It is

very probable that in the nation of the Orans, which I take to be _a

barbarous nation that has not yet learned the use of speech_,[34]

drawing, as a means of communicating ideas, may be in no contemptible

state of forwardness.[35]

_Mr. Fax._ He has, of course, seen many drawings since he has been among

civilised men; what so peculiarly delighted and surprised him in this?

_Mr. Forester._ I suspect this is the first opportunity he has had of

comparing the natural original with the artificial copy; and his delight

was excited by seeing the vast scene before him transferred so

accurately into so small a compass, and growing, as it were, into a

distinct identity under the hand of the artist.

They now arrived at the elms and the fir-tree, which the peasant had

pointed out as the landmarks of the dwelling of Desmond. They were

surprised to see a very pretty cottage, standing in the midst of a

luxuriant garden, one part of which sloped down to the edge of the lake.

Everything bore the air of comfort and competence. They almost doubted

if the peasant had been correct in his information. Three rosy children,

plainly but neatly dressed, were sitting on the edge of the shallow

water, watching with intense delight and interest the manœuvres of a

paper flotilla, which they had committed to the mercy of the waves.

_Mr. Fax._ What is the difference between these children and Xerxes on

the shores of Salamis?

_Mr. Forester._ None, but that where they have pure and unmingled

pleasure, his feelings began in selfish pride, and ended in slavish

fear; their amusement is natural and innocent; his was unnatural, cruel,

and destructive, and therefore more unworthy of a rational being.

_Better is a poor and wise child than a foolish king that will not be

admonished._

A female came from the cottage. Mr. Fax recognised Mrs. Desmond. He was

surprised at the change in her appearance. Health and content animated

her countenance. The simple neatness of her dress derived an appearance

of elegance from its interesting wearer; contrary to the fashionable

process, in which dress neither neat nor simple, but a heterogeneous

mixture of all the fripperies of Europe, gives what the world calls

elegance, where less partial nature has denied it. There are, in this

respect, two classes of human beings: Nature makes the first herself,

for the beauty of her own creation; her journeymen cut out the second

for tailors and mantua-makers to finish. The first, when apparelled, may

be called dressed people—the second, peopled dresses; the first bear the

same relation to their clothes as an oak bears to its foliage—the

second, the same as a wig-block bears to a wig; the first may be

compared to cocoa-nuts, in which the kernel is more valuable than the

shell—the second, to some varieties of the _Testaceous Mollusca_, where

a shell of infinite value covers a stupid fish that is good for nothing.

Mrs. Desmond recognised Mr. Fax. ‘O sir!’ said she, ‘I rejoice to see

you.’—‘And I rejoice,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘to see you as you now are; Fortune

has befriended you.’—‘You rendered us great service, sir, in our

wretched condition; but the benefit, of course, was transient. With the

next quarter-day Mr. Litigate, our landlord, resumed his persecutions;

and we should have been turned out of our wretched dwelling to perish in

the roads, had not some happy incident made Miss Melincourt acquainted

with our situation. To know what it was, and to make it what it is, were

the same thing to her. So suddenly, when the extremity of evil was

impending over us, to be placed in this little Paradise in

competence—nay, to our simple habits, in affluence, and in such a

manner, as if we were bestowing, not receiving favours——O sir, there

cannot be two Miss Melincourts! But will you not walk in and take some

refreshment?—we can offer you refreshment now. My husband is absent at

present, but he will very soon return.’

While she was speaking he arrived. Mr. Fax congratulated him. At his

earnest solicitation they entered the cottage, and were delighted with

the beautiful neatness that predominated in every part of it. The three

children ran in to see the strangers. Mr. Forester took up the little

girl, Mr. Fax a boy, and Sir Oran Haut-ton another. The latter took

alarm at the physiognomy of his new friend, and cried and kicked, and

struggled for release; but Sir Oran, producing a flute from his pocket,

struck up a lively air, which reconciled the child, who then sat very

quietly on his knee.

Some refreshment was placed before them, and Sir Oran testified, by a

copious draught, that he found much virtue in home-brewed ale.

‘There is a farm attached to this cottage,’ said Mr. Desmond; ‘and Miss

Melincourt, by having placed me in it, enabled me to maintain my family

in comfort and independence, and to educate them in a free, healthy, and

natural occupation. I have ever thought agriculture the noblest of human

pursuits; to the theory and practice of it I now devote my whole

attention, and I am not without hopes that the improvement of this part

of my benefactress’s estate will justify her generous confidence in a

friendless stranger; but what can repay her benevolence?’

‘I will answer for her,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘though she is as yet

personally unknown to me, that she loves benevolence for its own sake,

and is satisfied with its consummation.’

After a short conversation, and a promise soon to revisit the now happy

family, Mr. Forester, Mr. Fax, and Sir Oran Haut-ton resumed their walk.

Mr. Forester, at parting, put, unobserved, into the hand of the little

boy, a folded paper, telling him to give it to his father. It was a leaf

which he had torn from his pocket-book; he had enclosed in it a

bank-note, and had written on it with a pencil, ‘Do not refuse to a

stranger the happiness of reflecting that he has, however tardily and

slightly, co-operated with Miss Melincourt in a work of justice.’

CHAPTER XV

THE LIBRARY

Mr. Forester, Mr. Fax, and Sir Oran Haut-ton arrived at Melincourt

Castle. They were shown into a parlour, where they were left alone a few

minutes; when Mr. Hippy made his appearance, and recognising Sir Oran,

shook hands with him very cordially. Mr. Forester produced the letter he

had received from Mr. Ratstail, which Mr. Hippy having read, vented a

string of invectives against the impudent rascal, and explained the

mystery of the adventure, though he seemed to think it strange that Sir

Oran could not have explained it himself. Mr. Forester shook his head

significantly; and Mr. Hippy, affecting to understand the gesture,

exclaimed, ‘Ah! poor gentleman!’ He then invited them to stay to dinner.

‘I won’t be refused,’ said he; ‘I am lord and master of this castle at

present, and here you shall stay till to-morrow. Anthy will be delighted

to see her friend here’ (bowing to Sir Oran, who returned it with great

politeness), ‘and we will hold a council of war, how to deal with this

pair of puppies, Lawrence Litigate, Esquire, and Richard Ratstail,

Solicitor. I have several visitors here already: lords, baronets, and

squires, all Corydons, sighing for Anthy; but it seems _Love’s Labour

Lost_ with all of them. However, love and wine, you know! Anthy won’t

give them the first, so I drench them with the second: there will be

more bottles than hearts cracked in the business, for all Anthy’s

beauty. _Men die and worms eat them_, as usual, _but not for love_.

Mr. Forester inquired for Sir Telegraph Paxarett. ‘An excellent fellow

after dinner!’ exclaimed Mr. Hippy. ‘I never see him in the morning; nor

any one else, but my rascal, Harry Fell, and now and then Harry

Killquick. The moment breakfast is over, one goes one way, and another

another. Anthy locks herself up in the library.’

‘Locks herself up in the library!’ said Mr. Fax: ‘a young lady, a

beauty, and an heiress, in the nineteenth century, think of cultivating

her understanding!’

‘Strange, but true,’ said Mr. Hippy; ‘and here am I, a poor invalid,

left alone all the morning to prowl about the castle like a ghost; that

is, when I am well enough to move, which is not always the case. But the

library is opened at four, and the party assembles there before dinner;

and as it is now about the time, come with me, and I will introduce

you.’

They followed Mr. Hippy to the library, where they found Anthelia alone.

‘Anthy,’ said Mr. Hippy, after the forms of introduction, ‘do you know

you are accused of laying waste a pine-grove, and carrying it off by

cartloads, with force and arms?’

Anthelia read Mr. Ratstail’s letter. ‘This is a very strange piece of

folly,’ she said; ‘I hope it will not be a mischievous one.’ She then

renewed the expressions of her gratitude to Sir Oran, and bade him

welcome to Melincourt. Sir Oran bowed in silence.

‘Folly and mischief,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘are very nearly allied; and nowhere

more conspicuously than in the forms of the law.’

_Mr. Forester._ You have an admirable library, Miss Melincourt: and I

judge from the great number of Italian books, you are justly partial to

the poets of that exquisite language. The apartment itself seems

singularly adapted to the genius of their poetry, which combines the

magnificent simplicity of ancient Greece with the mysterious grandeur of

the feudal ages. Those windows of stained glass would recall to an

enthusiastic mind the attendant spirit of Tasso; and the waving of the

cedars beyond, when the wind makes music in their boughs, with the birds

singing in their shades and the softened dash of the torrent from the

dingle below, might with little aid from fancy be modulated into that

exquisite combination of melody which flowed from the enchanted wood at

the entrance of Rinaldo, and which Tasso has painted with a degree of

harmony not less magical than the music he describes. Italian poetry is

all fairyland: I know not any description of literature so congenial to

the tenderness and delicacy of the female mind, which, however opposite

may be the tendency of modern education, Nature has most pre-eminently

adapted to be ‘a mansion for all lovely forms: a dwelling-place for all

sweet sounds and harmonies.’[36] Of these, Italian poetry is a most

inexhaustible fountain; and for that reason I could wish it to be

generally acknowledged a point of the very first importance in female

education.

_Anthelia._ You have a better opinion of the understandings of women,

sir, than the generality of your lordly sex seems disposed to entertain.

_Mr. Forester._ The conduct of men, in this respect, is much like that

of a gardener who should plant a plot of ground with merely ornamental

flowers, and then pass sentence on the soil for not bearing substantial

fruit. If women are treated only as pretty dolls, and dressed in all the

fripperies of irrational education; if the vanity of personal adornment

and superficial accomplishments be made from their very earliest years

to suppress all mental aspirations, and to supersede all thoughts of

intellectual beauty, is it to be inferred that they are incapable of

better things? But such is the usual logic of tyranny, which first

places its extinguisher on the flame, and then argues that it cannot

burn.

_Mr. Fax._ Your remark is not totally just: for though custom, how

justly I will not say, banishes women from the fields of classical

literature, yet the study of Italian poetry, of which you think so

highly, is very much encouraged among them.

_Mr. Forester._ You should rather say it is not discouraged. They are

permitted to know it: but in very few instances is the permission

accompanied by any practical aid. The only points practically enforced

in female education are sound, colour, and form,—music, dress, drawing,

and dancing. The mind is left to take care of itself.

_Mr. Fax._ And has as much chance of doing so as a horse in a pound,

circumscribed in the narrowest limits, and studiously deprived of

nourishment.

_Anthelia._ The simile is, I fear, too just. To think is one of the most

unpardonable errors a woman can commit in the eyes of society. In our

sex a taste for intellectual pleasures is almost equivalent to taking

the veil; and though not absolutely a vow of perpetual celibacy, it has

almost always the same practical tendency. In that universal system of

superficial education which so studiously depresses the mind of women, a

female who aspires to mental improvement will scarcely find in her own

sex a congenial associate; and the other will regard her as an intruder

on its prescriptive authority, its legitimate and divine right over the

dominion of thought and reason: and the general consequence is, that she

remains insulated between both, in more than cloistered loneliness. Even

in its effect on herself, the ideal beauty which she studies will make

her fastidious, too fastidious, perhaps, to the world of realities, and

deprive her of the happiness that might be her portion, by fixing her

imagination on chimaeras of unattainable excellence.

_Mr. Forester._ I can answer for men, Miss Melincourt, that there are

some, many I hope, who can appreciate justly that most heavenly of

earthly things, an enlightened female mind; whatever may be thought by

the pedantry that envies, the foppery that fears, the folly that

ridicules, or the wilful blindness that will not see its loveliness. I

am afraid your last observation approaches most nearly to the truth, and

that it is owing more to their own fastidiousness than to the want of

friends and admirers, that intelligent women are so often alone in the

world. But were it otherwise, the objection will not apply to Italian

poetry, a field of luxuriant beauty, from which women are not

interdicted even by the most intolerant prejudice of masculine

usurpation.

_Anthelia._ They are not interdicted, certainly; but they are seldom

encouraged to enter it. Perhaps it is feared, that, having gone thus

far, they might be tempted to go farther: that the friend of Tasso might

aspire to the acquaintance of Virgil, or even to an introduction to

Homer and Sophocles.

_Mr. Forester._ And why should she not? Far from desiring to suppress

such a noble ambition, how delightful should I think the task of

conducting the lovely aspirant through the treasures of Grecian

genius!—to wander hand in hand with such a companion among the valleys

and fountains of Ida, and by the banks of the eddying Scamander;[37]

through the island of Calypso, and the gardens of Alcinous;[38] to the

rocks of the Scythian desert;[39] to the caverned shores of the solitary

Lemnos;[40] and to the fatal sands of Troezene[41] to kindle in such

scenes the enthusiasm of such a mind, and to see the eyes of love and

beauty beaming with their reflected inspiration! Miserably perverted,

indeed, must be the selfishness of him who, having such happiness in his

power, would,

Like the base Indian, throw a pearl away,

Richer than all his tribe.

_Mr. Fax._ My friend’s enthusiasm, Miss Melincourt, usually runs away

with him when any allusion is made to ancient Greece.

Mr. Forester had spoken with ardour and animation; for the scenes of

which he spoke rose upon his mind and depicted in the incomparable

poetry to which he had alluded; the figurative idea of wandering among

them with a young and beautiful female aspirant assumed for a moment a

visionary reality; and when he subsequently reflected on it it appeared

to him very singular that the female figure in the mental picture had

assumed the form and features of Anthelia Melincourt.

Anthelia, too, saw in the animated countenance of Sylvan Forester traces

of more than common feeling, generosity, and intelligence: his imaginary

wanderings through the classic scenes of antiquity assumed in her

congenial mind the brightest colours of intellectual beauty; and she

could not help thinking that if he were what he appeared, such

wanderings, with such a guide, would not be the most unenviable of

earthly destinies.

The other guests dropped in by ones and twos. Sir Telegraph was

agreeably surprised to see Mr. Forester. ‘By the bye,’ said he, ‘have

you heard that a general election is to take place immediately?’

‘I have,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘and was thinking of putting you and your

barouche in requisition very shortly.’

‘As soon as you please,’ said Sir Telegraph.

The Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney took Sir Telegraph aside, to make inquiry

concerning the new-comers.

_The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney._ Who is that very bright-eyed, wild-looking

young man?

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ That is my old acquaintance and

fellow-collegian, Sylvan Forester, now of Redrose Abbey, in this county.

_The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney._ Is he respectable?

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ He has a good estate, if you mean that.

_The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney._ To be sure I mean that. And who is that tall

thin saturnine personage?

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ I know nothing of him but that his name is

Fax, and that he is now on a visit to Mr. Forester at Redrose Abbey.

_The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney._ And who is that _very_ tall and remarkably

ugly gentleman?

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ That is Sir Oran Haut-ton, Baronet; to which

designation you may shortly add M.P. for the ancient and honourable

borough of Onevote.

_The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney._ A Baronet! and M.P.! Well, now I look at him

again, I certainly do not think him so very plain: he has a very

fashionable air. Haut-ton! French extraction, no doubt. And now I think

of it, there is something very French in his physiognomy.

Dinner was announced, and the party adjourned to the dining-room. Mr.

Forester offered his hand to Anthelia; and Sir Oran Haut-ton, following

the example, presented his to the Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney.[42]

CHAPTER XVI

THE SYMPOSIUM

The dinner passed off with great harmony. The ladies withdrew. The

bottle revolved with celerity, under the presidency of Mr. Hippy, and

the vice-presidency of Sir Telegraph Paxarett. The Reverend Mr.

Portpipe, who was that day of the party, pronounced an eulogium on the

wine, which was echoed by the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub, Mr. O’Scarum,

Lord Anophel Achthar, Mr. Feathernest, and Mr. Derrydown. Mr. Forester

and Mr. Fax showed no disposition to destroy the unanimity of opinion on

this interesting subject. Sir Oran Haut-ton maintained a grave and

dignified silence, but demonstrated by his practice that his taste was

orthodox. Mr. O’Scarum sat between Sir Oran and the Reverend Mr.

Portpipe, and kept a sharp look-out on both sides of him; but did not,

during the whole course of the sitting, detect either of his supporters

in the heinous fact of a heeltap.

_Mr. Hippy._ Dr. Killquick may say what he pleases

Of mithridate, cordials, and elixirs;

But from my youth this was my only physic.—

Here’s a colour! what lady’s cheek comes near it?

It sparkles, hangs out diamonds! O my sweet heart!

Mistress of merry hearts! they are not worth thy favours

Who number thy moist kisses in these crystals![43]

_The Rev. Mr. Portpipe._ An excellent text!—sound doctrine, plain and

practical. When I open the bottle, I shut the book of Numbers. There are

two reasons for drinking: one is, when you are thirsty, to cure it; the

other, when you are not thirsty, to prevent it. The first is obvious,

mechanical, and plebeian; the second is most refined, abstract,

prospicient, and canonical. I drink by anticipation of thirst that may

be. Prevention is better than cure. Wine is the elixir of life. ‘The

soul,’ says St. Augustine, ‘cannot live in drought.’[44] What is death?

Dust and ashes. There is nothing so dry. What is life? Spirit. What is

Spirit? Wine.

_Mr. O’Scarum._ And whisky.

_The Rev. Mr. Portpipe._ Whisky is hepatic, phlogistic, and

exanthematous. Wine is the hierarchical and archiepiscopal fluid.

Bacchus is said to have conquered the East, and to have returned loaded

with its spoils. ‘Marry how? tropically.’ The conquests of Bacchus are

the victories of imagination, which, sublimated by wine, puts to rout

care, fear, and poverty, and revels in the treasures of Utopia.

_Mr. Feathernest._ The juice of the grape is the liquid quintessence of

concentrated sunbeams. Man is an exotic, in this northern climate, and

must be nourished like a hot-house plant, by the perpetual adhibition of

artificial heat.

_Lord Anophel Achthar._ You were not always so fond of wine,

Feathernest?

_Mr. Feathernest._ Oh, my lord! no allusion, I beseech you, to my

youthful errors. Demosthenes, being asked what wine he liked best,

answered, that which he drank at the expense of others.

_The Rev. Mr. Portpipe._ Demosthenes was right. His circumstance, or

qualification, is an accompaniment of better relish than a devilled

biscuit or an anchovy toast.

_Mr. Feathernest._ In former days, my lord, I had no experience that

way; therefore I drank water against my will.

_Lord Anophel Achthar._ And wrote Odes upon it, to Truth and Liberty.

_Mr. Feathernest._ ‘Ah, no more of that, an’ thou lovest me.’ Now that I

can get it for a song, I take my pipe of wine a year: and what is the

effect? Not cold phlegmatic lamentations over the sufferings of the

poor, but high-flown, jovial, reeling dithyrambics ‘to all the crowned

heads in Europe.’ I had then a vague notion that all was wrong.

Persuasion has since appeared to me in a tangible shape, and convinced

me that all is right, especially at court. Then I saw darkly through a

glass—of water. Now I see clearly through a glass of wine.

[Illustration: _Mr. Feathernest._]

_The Rev. Mr. Portpipe_ (_looking through his glass at the light_). An

infallible telescope!

_Mr. Forester._ I am unfortunately one of those, sir, who very much

admired your Odes to Truth and Liberty, and read your royal lyrics with

very different sensations.

_Mr. Feathernest._ I presume, sir, every man has a right to change his

opinions.

_Mr. Forester._ From disinterested conviction undoubtedly: but when it

is obviously from mercenary motives, the apostasy of a public man is a

public calamity. It is not his single loss to the cause he supported,

that is alone to be lamented: the deep shade of mistrust which his

conduct throws on that of all others who embark in the same career tends

to destroy all sympathy with the enthusiasm of genius, all admiration

for the intrepidity of truth, all belief in the sincerity of zeal for

public liberty: if their advocates drop one by one into the vortex of

courtly patronage, every new one that arises will be more and more

regarded as a hollow-hearted hypocrite, a false and venal angler for

pension and place; for there is in these cases no criterion by which the

world can distinguish the baying of a noble dog that will defend his

trust till death, from the yelping of a political cur, that only infests

the heels of power to be silenced with the offals of corruption.

_Lord Anophel Achthar._ Cursed severe, Feathernest, ‘pon honour.

_Mr. Fax._ _The gradual falling off of prudent men from unprofitable

virtues is perhaps too common an occurrence to deserve much notice, or

justify much reprobation._[45]

_Mr. Forester._ If it were not common, it would not need reprobation.

Vices of unfrequent occurrence stand sufficiently self-exposed in the

insulation of their own deformity. The vices that call for the scourge

of satire are those which pervade the whole frame of society, and which,

under some specious pretence of private duty, or the sanction of custom

and precedent, are almost permitted to assume the semblance of virtue,

or at least to pass unstigmatised in the crowd of congenial

transgressions.

_Mr. Feathernest._ You may say what you please, sir. I am accustomed to

this language, and am quite callous to it, I assure you. I am in good

odour at court, sir; and you know, _Non cuivis homini contingit adire

Corinthum_. While I was out, sir, I made a great noise till I was let

in. There was a pack of us, sir, to keep up your canine metaphor: two or

three others got in at the same time: we knew very well that those who

were shut out would raise a hue and cry after us: it was perfectly

natural: we should have done the same in their place: mere envy and

malice, nothing more. Let them bark on: when they are either wanted or

troublesome, they will be let in, in their turn. If there be any man who

prefers a crust and water to venison and sack, I am not of his mind. It

is pretty and politic to make a virtue of necessity: but when there is

an end of the necessity I am very willing that there should be an end of

the virtue. _If you could live on roots_, said Diogenes to Aristippus,

_you would have nothing to do with kings_.—_If you could live on kings_,

replied Aristippus, _you would have nothing to do with roots_.—Every man

for himself, sir, and God for us all.

_Mr. Derrydown._ The truth of things on this subject is contained in the

following stave:

This world is a well-furnish’d table,

Where guests are promiscuously set:

We all fare as well as we’re able,

And scramble for what we can get.

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ Buz the bottle.

_Mr. O’Scarum._ Over, by Jupiter!

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ No.

_Mr. O’Scarum._ Yes.

_The Rev. Mr. Portpipe._ No. The baronet has a most mathematical eye.

Buzzed to a drop!

_Mr. Forester._ Fortunately, sir, for the hopes of mankind, every man

does not bring his honour and conscience to market, though I admit the

majority do: there are some who dare be honest in the worst of times.

_Mr. Feathernest._ Perhaps, sir, you are one of those who can _afford to

have a conscience_, and are therefore under no necessity of bringing it

to market. If so, you should ‘give God thanks, and make no boast of it.’

It is a great luxury certainly, and well worth keeping, _caeteris

paribus_. But it is neither meat, clothes, nor fire. It becomes a good

coat well; but it will never make one. Poets are verbal musicians, and,

like other musicians, they have a right to sing and play, where they can

be best paid for their music.

_Mr. Forester._ There could be no objection to that, if they would be

content to announce themselves as dealers and chapmen: but the poetical

character is too frequently a combination of the most arrogant and

exclusive assumption of freedom and independence in theory, with the

most abject and unqualified venality, servility, and sycophancy in

practice.

_Mr. Feathernest._ It is _as notorious_, sir, _as the sun at noonday_,

that theory and practice are never expected to coincide. If a West

Indian planter declaims against the Algerines, do you expect him to lose

any favourable opportunity of increasing the number of his own slaves?

If an invaded country cries out against spoliation, do you suppose, if

the tables were turned, it would show its weaker neighbours the

forbearance it required? If an Opposition orator clamours for a reform

in Parliament, does any one dream that, if he gets into office, he will

ever say another word about it? If one of your reverend friends should

display his touching eloquence on the subject of temperance, would you

therefore have the barbarity to curtail him of one drop of his three

bottles? Truth and liberty, sir, are pretty words, very pretty words—a

few years ago they were the gods of the day—they superseded in poetry

the agency of mythology and magic: they were the only passports into the

poetical market: I acted accordingly the part of a prudent man: I took

my station, became my own crier, and vociferated Truth and Liberty, till

the noise I made brought people about me, to bid for me: and to the

highest bidder I knocked myself down, at less than I am worth certainly;

but when an article is not likely to keep, it is by no means prudent to

postpone the sale.

What makes all doctrines plain and clear?

About two hundred pounds a year.—

And that which was proved true before,

Prove false again?—Two hundred more.

_Mr. Hippy._ A dry discussion! Pass the bottle, and moisten it.

_Mr. O’Scarum._ Here’s half of us fast asleep. Let us make a little

noise to wake us. A glee now: I’ll be one: who’ll join?

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ I.

_The Rev. Mr. Portpipe._ And I.

_Mr. Hippy._ Strike up then. Silence!

GLEE—THE GHOSTS

In life three ghostly friars were we,

And now three friarly ghosts we be.

Around our shadowy table placed,

The spectral bowl before us floats:

With wine that none but ghosts can taste

We wash our unsubstantial throats.

Three merry ghosts—three merry ghosts—three merry ghosts are we:

Let the ocean be Port, and we’ll think it good sport

To be laid in that Red Sea.

With songs that jovial spectres chaunt,

Our old refectory still we haunt.

The traveller hears our midnight mirth:

‘O list!’ he cries, ‘the haunted choir!

The merriest ghost that walks the earth

Is sure the ghost of a ghostly friar.’

Three merry ghosts—three merry ghosts—three merry ghosts are we:

Let the ocean be Port, and we’ll think it good sport

To be laid in that Red Sea.

_Mr. Hippy._ Bravo! I should like to have my house so haunted. The deuce

is in it, if three such ghosts would not keep the blue devils at bay.

Come, we’ll lay them in a bumper of claret.

(_Sir Oran Haut-ton took his flute from his pocket, and played over the

air of the glee. The company was at first extremely surprised, and then

joined in applauding his performance. Sir Oran bowed acknowledgment, and

returned his flute to his pocket._)

_Mr. Forester._ It is, perhaps, happy for yourself, Mr. Feathernest,

that you can treat with so much levity a subject that fills me with the

deepest grief. Man under the influence of civilisation has fearfully

diminished in size and deteriorated in strength. The intellectual are

confessedly nourished at the expense of the physical faculties. Air, the

great source and fountain of health and life, can scarcely find access

to civilised man, muffled as he is in clothes, pent in houses,

smoke-dried in cities, half-roasted by artificial fire, and parboiled in

the hydrogen of crowded apartments. Diseases multiply upon him in

compound proportion. Even if the prosperous among us enjoy some comforts

unknown to the natural man, yet what is the poverty of the savage,

compared with that of the lowest classes of civilised nations? The

specious aspect of luxury and abundance in one is counterbalanced by the

abject penury and circumscription of hundreds. Commercial prosperity is

a golden surface, but all beneath it is rags and wretchedness. It is not

in the splendid bustle of our principal streets—in the villas and

mansions that sprinkle our valleys—for those who enjoy these things

(even if they did enjoy them—even if they had health and happiness—and

the rich have seldom either) bear but a small proportion to the whole

population:—but it is in the mud hovel of the labourer—in the cellar of

the artisan—in our crowded prisons—our swarming hospitals—our

overcharged workhouses—in those narrow districts of our overgrown cities

which the affluent never see—where thousands and thousands of families

are compressed within limits not sufficient for the pleasure-ground of a

simple squire,—that we must study the true mechanism of political

society. When the philosopher turns away in despair from this dreadful

accumulation of moral and physical evil, where is he to look for

consolation, if not in the progress of science, in the enlargement of

mind, in the diffusion of philosophical truth? But if truth is a

chimaera—if virtue is a name—if science is not the handmaid of moral

improvement, but the obsequious minister of recondite luxury, the

specious appendage of vanity and power—then indeed, _that man has fallen

never to rise again_,[46] is as much the cry of nature as the dream of

superstition.

_The Rev. Mr. Portpipe._ Man has fallen, certainly, by the fruit of the

tree of knowledge: which shows that human learning is vanity and a great

evil, and therefore very properly discountenanced by all bishops,

priests, and deacons.

_Mr. Fax._ The picture which you have drawn of poverty is not very

tempting; and you must acknowledge that it is most galling to the most

refined feelings. You must not, therefore, wonder that it is peculiarly

obnoxious to the practical notions of poets. If the radiance of gold and

silver gleam not through the foliage of the Pierian laurel, there is

something to be said in their excuse if they carry their chaplet to

those who will gild its leaves; and in that case they will find their

best customers and patrons among those who are ambitious of acquiring

panegyric by a more compendious method than the troublesome practice of

the virtues that deserve it.

_Mr. Forester._ You have quoted Juvenal, but you should have completed

the sentence: ‘If you see no glimpse of coin in the Pierian shade, you

will prefer the name and occupation of a barber or an auctioneer.’[47]

This is most just: if the pursuits of literature, conscientiously

conducted, condemn their votary to famine, let him live by more humble,

but at least by honest, and therefore honourable occupations: he may

still devote his leisure to his favourite pursuits. If he produce but a

single volume consecrated to moral truth, its effect must be good as far

as it goes; but if he purchase leisure and luxury by the prostitution of

talent to the cause of superstition and tyranny, every new exertion of

his powers is a new outrage to reason and virtue, and in precise

proportion to those powers is he a curse to his country and a traitor to

mankind.

_Mr. Feathernest._ A barber, sir!—a man of genius turn barber!

_Mr. O’Scarum._ Troth, sir, and I think it is better he should be in the

suds himself, than help to bring his country into that situation.

_Mr. Forester._ I can perceive, sir, in your exclamation the principle

that has caused so enormous a superabundance in the number of bad books

over that of good ones. The objects of the majority of men of talent

seem to be exclusively two: the first, to convince the world of their

transcendent abilities; the second, to convert that conviction into a

source of the greatest possible pecuniary benefit to themselves. But

there is no class of men more resolutely indifferent to the moral

tendency of the means by which their ends are accomplished. Yet this is

the most extensively pernicious of all modes of dishonesty; for that of

a private man can only injure the pockets of a few individuals (a great

evil, certainly, but light in comparison); while that of a public

writer, who has previously taught the multitude to respect his talents,

perverts what is much more valuable, the mental progress of thousands;

misleading, on the one hand, the shallow believers in his sincerity; and

on the other, stigmatising the whole literary character in the opinions

of all who see through the veil of his venality.

_Mr. Feathernest._ All this is no reason, sir, why a man of genius

should condescend to be a barber.

_Mr. Forester._ He condescends much more in being a sycophant. The

poorest barber in the poorest borough in England, who will not sell his

vote, is a much more honourable character in the estimate of moral

comparison than the most self-satisfied dealer in courtly poetry, whose

well-paid eulogiums of licentiousness and corruption were ever re-echoed

by the ‘most sweet voices’ of hireling gazetteers and pensioned

reviewers.

The summons to tea and coffee put a stop to the conversation.

CHAPTER XVII

MUSIC AND DISCORD

The evenings were beginning to give symptoms of winter, and a large fire

was blazing in the library. Mr. Forester took the opportunity of

stigmatising the use of sugar, and had the pleasure of observing that

the practice of Anthelia in this respect was the same as his own. He

mentioned his intention of giving an anti-saccharine festival at Redrose

Abbey, and invited all the party at Melincourt to attend it. He observed

that his aunt, Miss Evergreen, who would be there at the time, would

send an invitation in due form to the ladies, to remove all scruples on

the score of propriety; and added, that if he could hope for the

attendance of half as much moral feeling as he was sure there would be

of beauty and fashion, he should be satisfied that a great step would be

made towards accomplishing the object of the Anti-saccharine Society.

The Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub felt extremely indignant at Mr. Forester’s

notion ‘of every real enemy to slavery being bound by the strictest

moral duty to practical abstinence from the luxury which slavery

acquires’; but when he found that the notion was to be developed in the

shape of a festival, he determined to suspend his judgment till he had

digested the solid arguments that were to be brought forward on the

occasion.

Mr. O’Scarum was, as usual, very clamorous for music, and was seconded

by the unanimous wish of the company, with which Anthelia readily

complied, and sang as follows:

THE FLOWER OF LOVE

’Tis said the rose is Love’s own flower,

Its blush so bright, its thorns so many;

And winter on its bloom has power,

But has not on its sweetness any.

For though young Love’s ethereal rose

Will droop on Age’s wintry bosom,

Yet still its faded leaves disclose

The fragrance of their earliest blossom.

But ah! the fragrance lingering there

Is like the sweets that mournful duty

Bestows with sadly-soothing care,

To deck the grave of bloom and beauty.

For when its leaves are shrunk and dry,

Its blush extinct, to kindle never,

That fragrance is but Memory’s sigh,

That breathes of pleasures past for ever.

Why did not Love the amaranth choose,

That bears no thorns, and cannot perish?

Alas! no sweets its flowers diffuse,

And only sweets Love’s life can cherish.

But be the rose and amaranth twined,

And Love, their mingled powers assuming,

Shall round his brows a chaplet bind,

For ever sweet, for ever blooming.

‘I am afraid,’ said Mr. Derrydown, ‘the flower of modern love is neither

the rose nor the amaranth, but the _chrysanthemum_, or _gold-flower_. If

Miss Danaretta and Mr. O’Scarum will accompany me, we will sing a little

harmonised ballad, something in point, and rather more conformable to

the truth of things.’ Mr. O’Scarum and Miss Danaretta consented, and

they accordingly sang the following:—

BALLAD TERZETTO—THE LADY, THE KNIGHT, AND THE FRIAR

THE LADY

O cavalier! what dost thou here,

Thy tuneful vigils keeping;

While the northern star looks cold from far,

And half the world is sleeping?

THE KNIGHT

O lady! here, for seven long year,

Have I been nightly sighing,

Without the hope of a single tear

To pity me were I dying.

THE LADY

Should I take thee to have and to hold,

Who hast nor lands nor money?

Alas! ’tis only in flowers of gold

That married bees find honey.

THE KNIGHT

O lady fair! to my constant prayer

Fate proves at last propitious:

And bags of gold in my hand I bear,

And parchment scrolls delicious.

THE LADY

My maid the door shall open throw,

For we too long have tarried:

The friar keeps watch in the cellar below,

And we will at once be married.

THE FRIAR

My children! great is Fortune’s power;

And plain this truth appears,

That gold thrives more in a single hour

Than love in seven long years.

During this terzetto the Reverend Mr. Portpipe fell asleep, and

accompanied the performance with rather a deeper bass than was generally

deemed harmonious.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett took Mr. Forester aside, to consult him on the

subject of the journey to Onevote.

‘I have asked,’ said he, ‘my aunt and cousin, Mrs. and Miss Pinmoney, to

join the party, and have requested them to exert their influence with

Miss Melincourt to induce her to accompany them.’

‘That would make it a delightful expedition, indeed,’ said Mr. Forester,

‘if Miss Melincourt could be prevailed on to comply.’

‘_Nil desperandum_,’ said Sir Telegraph.

The Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney drew Anthelia into a corner, and developed

all her eloquence in enforcing the proposition. Miss Danaretta joined in

it with great earnestness; and they kept up the fire of their

importunity till they extorted from Anthelia a promise that she would

consider of it.

Mr. Forester took down a splendid edition of Tasso, printed by Bodoni at

Parma, and found it ornamented with Anthelia’s drawings. In the magic of

her pencil the wild and wonderful scenes of Tasso seemed to live under

his eyes: he could not forbear expressing to her the delight he

experienced from these new proofs of her sensibility and genius, and

entered into a conversation with her concerning her favourite poet, in

which the congeniality of their tastes and feelings became more and more

manifest to each other.

Mr. Feathernest and Mr. Derrydown got into a hot dispute over Chapman’s

_Homer_ and Jeremy Taylor’s _Holy Living_: Mr. Derrydown maintaining

that the ballad metre which Chapman had so judiciously chosen rendered

his volume the most divine poem in the world; Mr. Feathernest asserting

that Chapman’s verses were mere doggerel: which vile aspersion Mr.

Derrydown revenged by depreciating Mr. Feathernest’s favourite Jeremy.

Mr. Feathernest said he could expect no better judgment from a man who

was mad enough to prefer _Chevy Chase_ to _Paradise Lost_; and Mr.

Derrydown retorted, that it was idle to expect either taste or justice

from one who had thought fit to unite in himself two characters so

anomalous as those of a poet and a critic, in which duplex capacity he

had first deluged the world with torrents of execrable verses, and then

written anonymous criticisms to prove them divine. ‘Do you think, sir,’

he continued, ‘that it is possible for the same man to be both Homer and

Aristotle? No, sir; but it is very possible to be both Dennis and Colley

Cibber, as in the melancholy example before me.’

At this all the blood of the _genus irritabile_ boiled in Mr.

Feathernest’s veins, and uplifting the ponderous folio, he seemed

inclined to bury his antagonist under Jeremy’s _weight of words_, by

applying them in a _tangible shape_; but wisely recollecting that this

was not the time and place

To prove his doctrine orthodox

By apostolic blows and knocks,

he contented himself with a point-blank denial of the charge that he

wrote critiques on his own works, protesting that all the articles on

his poems were written either by his friend Mr. Mystic, of Cimmerian

Lodge, or by Mr. Vamp, the amiable editor of the _Legitimate Review_.

‘Yes,’ said Mr. Derrydown, ‘on the “_Tickle me, Mr. Hayley_” principle;

by which a miserable cabal of doggerel rhymesters and worn-out

paragraph-mongers of bankrupt gazettes ring the eternal changes of

panegyric on each other, and on everything else that is either rich

enough to buy their praise, or vile enough to deserve it: like a gang in

a country steeple, paid for being a public nuisance, and maintaining

that noise is melody.’

Mr. Feathernest on this became perfectly outrageous; and waving Jeremy

Taylor in the air, exclaimed, ‘_Oh that mine enemy had written a book!_

Horrible should be the vengeance of the _Legitimate Review_!’

Mr. Hippy now deemed it expedient to interpose for the restoration of

order, and entreated Anthelia to throw in a little musical harmony as a

sedative to the ebullitions of a poetical discord. At the sound of the

harp the antagonists turned away, the one flourishing his Chapman and

the other his Jeremy with looks of lofty defiance.

[Illustration: _He managed so skilfully that his Lordship became himself

the proposer of the scheme._]

CHAPTER XVIII

THE STRATAGEM

The Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub, who had acquired a great proficiency in the

art of hearing without seeming to listen, had overheard Mrs. Pinmoney’s

request to Anthelia; and, notwithstanding the young lady’s hesitation,

he very much feared she would ultimately comply. He had seen, much

against his will, a great congeniality in feelings and opinions between

her and Mr. Forester, and had noticed some unconscious external

manifestations of the interior mind on both sides, some outward and

visible signs of the inward and spiritual sentiment, which convinced him

that a more intimate acquaintance with each other would lead them to a

conclusion, which, for the reasons we have given in the ninth chapter,

he had no wish to see established. After long and mature deliberation,

he determined to rouse Lord Anophel to a sense of his danger, and spirit

him up to an immediate _coup-de-main_. He calculated that, as the young

Lord was a spoiled child, immoderately vain, passably foolish, and

totally unused to contradiction, he should have little difficulty in

moulding him to his views. His plan was, that Lord Anophel, with two or

three confidential fellows, should lie in ambush for Anthelia in one of

her solitary rambles, and convey her to a lonely castle of his

Lordship’s on the seacoast, with a view of keeping her in close custody,

till fair means or foul should induce her to regain her liberty in the

character of Lady Achthar. This was to be Lord Anophel’s view of the

subject; but the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub had in the inner cave of his

perceptions a very promising image of a different result. As he would

have free access to Anthelia in her confinement, he intended to worm

himself into her favour, under the cover of friendship and sympathy,

with the most ardent professions of devotion to her cause and promises

of endeavours to effect her emancipation, involving the accomplishment

of this object in a multitude of imaginary difficulties, which it should

be his professed study to vanquish. He deemed it very probable that, by

a skilful adoperation of these means, and by moulding Lord Anophel, at

the same time, into a system of conduct as disagreeable as possible to

Anthelia, he might himself become the lord and master of the lands and

castle of Melincourt, when he would edify the country with the example

of his truly orthodox life, faring sumptuously every day, raising the

rents of his tenants, turning out all who were in arrear, and

occasionally treating the rest with discourses on temperance and

charity.

With these ideas in his head, he went in search of Lord Anophel, and

proceeding _pedetentim_, and opening the subject _peirastically_, he

managed so skilfully that his Lordship became himself the proposer of

the scheme, with which the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub seemed unwillingly to

acquiesce.

Mr. Forester, Mr. Fax, and Sir Oran Haut-ton took leave of the party at

Melincourt Castle; the former having arranged with Sir Telegraph

Paxarett that he was to call for them at Redrose Abbey in the course of

three days, and reiterated his earnest hopes that Anthelia would be

persuaded to accompany Mrs. Pinmoney and her beautiful daughter in the

expedition to Onevote.

Lord Anophel Achthar and the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub also took leave, as

a matter of policy, that their disappearance at the same time with

Anthelia might not excite surprise. They pretended a pressing temporary

engagement in a distant part of the country, and carried off with them

Mr. Feathernest the poet, whom, nevertheless, they did not deem it

prudent to let into the secret of their scheme.

[Illustration: _She thought there was something peculiar in his look._]

The next day Anthelia, still undecided on this subject, wandered alone

to the ruined bridge, to contemplate the scene of her former

misadventure. As she ascended the hill that bounded the valley of

Melincourt, a countryman crossed her path, and touching his hat passed

on. She thought there was something peculiar in his look, but had quite

forgotten him, when, on looking back as she descended on the other side,

she observed him making signs, as if to some one at a distance: she

could not, however, consider that they had any relation to her. The day

was clear and sunny; and when she entered the pine-grove, the gloom of

its tufted foliage, with the sunbeams chequering the dark-red soil,

formed a grateful contrast to the naked rocks and heathy mountains that

lay around it, in the full blaze of daylight. In many parts of the grove

was a luxuriant laurel underwood, glittering like silver in the partial

sunbeams that penetrated the interstices of the pines. Few scenes in

nature have a more mysterious solemnity than such a scene as this.

Anthelia paused a moment. She thought she heard a rustling in the

laurels, but all was again still. She proceeded; the rustling was

renewed. She felt alarmed, yet she knew not why, and reproached herself

for such idle and unaccustomed apprehensions. She paused again to

listen; the soft tones of a flute sounded from a distance: these gave

her confidence, and she again proceeded. She passed by the tuft of

laurels in which she had heard the rustling. Suddenly a mantle was

thrown over her. She was wrapped in darkness, and felt that she was

forcibly seized by several persons, who carried her rapidly along. She

screamed, but the mantle was immediately pressed on her mouth, and she

was hurried onward. After a time the party stopped: a tumult ensued: she

found herself at liberty, and threw the mantle from her head. She was on

a road at the verge of the pine-grove: a chaise-and-four was waiting.

Two men were running away in the distance: two others, muffled and

masked, were rolling on the ground, and roaring for mercy, while Sir

Oran Haut-ton was standing over them with a stick,[48] and treating them

as if he were a thresher and they were sheaves of corn. By her side was

Mr. Forester, who, taking her hand, assured her that she was in safety,

while at the same time he endeavoured to assuage Sir Oran’s wrath, that

he might raise and unmask the fallen foes. Sir Oran, however, proceeded

in his summary administration of natural justice till he had dispensed

what was to his notion a _quantum sufficit_ of the application: then

throwing his stick aside, he caught them both up, one under each arm,

and climbing with great dexterity a high and precipitous rock, left them

perched upon its summit, bringing away their masks in his hand, and

making them a profound bow at taking leave.[49]

Mr. Forester was anxious to follow them to their aerial seat, that he

might ascertain who they were, which Sir Oran’s precipitation had put it

out of his power to do; but Anthelia begged him to return with her

immediately to the Castle, assuring him that she thought them already

sufficiently punished, and had no apprehension that they would feel

tempted again to molest her.

Sir Oran now opened the chaise-door, and drew out the postboys by the

leg, who, at the beginning of the fray, had concealed themselves from

his fury under the seat. Mr. Forester succeeded in rescuing them from

Sir Oran, and endeavoured to extract from them information as to their

employers: but the boys declared that they knew nothing of them, the

chaise having been ordered by a strange man to be in waiting at that

place, and the hire paid in advance.

Anthelia, as she walked homeward, leaning on Mr. Forester’s arm,

inquired to what happy accident she was indebted for the timely

intervention of himself and Sir Oran Haut-ton. Mr. Forester informed

her, that having a great wish to visit the scene which had been the

means of introducing him to her acquaintance, he had made Sir Oran

understand his desire, and they had accordingly set out together,

leaving Mr. Fax at Redrose Abbey, deeply engaged in the solution of a

problem in political arithmetic.

[Illustration: _He caught them both up, one under each arm._]

CHAPTER XIX

THE EXCURSION

Anthelia found, from what Mr. Forester had said, that she had excited a

much greater interest in his mind than she had previously supposed; and

she did not dissemble to herself that the interest was reciprocal. The

occurrence of the morning, by taking the feeling of safety from her

solitary walks, and unhinging her long associations with the freedom and

security of her native mountains, gave her an inclination to depart for

a time at least from Melincourt Castle; and this inclination, combining

with the wish to see more of one who appeared to possess so much

intellectual superiority to the generality of mankind, rendered her very

flexible to Mrs. Pinmoney’s wishes, when that honourable lady renewed

her solicitations to her to join the expedition to Onevote. Anthelia,

however, desired that Mr. Hippy might be of the party, and that her

going in Sir Telegraph’s carriage should not be construed in any degree

into a reception of his addresses. The Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney,

delighted to carry her point, readily complied with the condition,

trusting to the influence of time and intimacy to promote her own wishes

and the happiness of her dear nephew.

Mr. Hippy was so overjoyed at the project, that, in the first

ebullitions of his transport, meeting Harry Fell on the landing-place,

with a packet of medicine from Dr. Killquick, he seized him by the arm,

and made him dance a _pas de deux_: the packet fell to the earth, and

Mr. Hippy, as he whirled old Harry round to the tune of _La Belle

Laitière_, danced over that which, but for this timely demolition, might

have given his heir an opportunity of dancing over him.

It was accordingly arranged that Sir Telegraph Paxarett, with the ladies

and Mr. Hippy, should call on the appointed day at Redrose Abbey for Mr.

Forester, Mr. Fax, and Sir Oran Haut-ton.

Mr. Derrydown and Mr. O’Scarum were inconsolable on the occasion,

notwithstanding Mr. Hippy’s assurance that they should very soon return,

and that the hospitality of Melincourt Castle should then be resumed

under his supreme jurisdiction. Mr. Derrydown determined to consume the

interval at Keswick, in the composition of dismal ballads; and Mr.

O’Scarum to proceed to Low-wood Inn, and drown his cares in claret with

Major O’Dogskin.

We shall pass over the interval till the arrival of the eventful day on

which Mr. Forester, from the windows of Redrose Abbey, watched the

approach of Sir Telegraph’s barouche. The party from Melincourt arrived,

as had been concerted, to breakfast; after which, they surveyed the

Abbey, and perambulated the grounds. Mr. Forester produced the Abbot’s

skull,[50] and took occasion to expatiate very largely on the diminution

of the size of mankind; illustrating his theory by quotations and

anecdotes from Homer,[51] Herodotus[52] Arrian, Plutarch, Philostratus,

Pausanias, and Solinus Polyhistor. He asked if it were possible that men

of such a stature as they have dwindled to in the present age could have

erected that stupendous monument of human strength, Stonehenge? in the

vicinity of which, he said, a body had been dug up, measuring fourteen

feet ten inches in length.[53]

The barouche bowled off from the Abbey gates, carrying four inside, and

eight out; videlicet, the Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney, Miss Danaretta, Mr.

Hippy, and Anthelia, inside; Sir Telegraph Paxarett and Sir Oran

Haut-ton on the box, the former with his whip, and the latter with his

French horn, in the characters of coachman and guard; Mr. Forester and

Mr. Fax in the front of the roof; and Sir Telegraph’s two grooms, with

Peter Gray and Harry Fell, behind. Sir Telegraph’s coachman, as the

inside of the carriage was occupied, had been left at Melincourt.

In addition to Sir Telegraph’s travelling library—(which consisted

of a single quarto volume, magnificently bound: videlicet, a Greek

Pindar, which Sir Telegraph always carried with him; not that he

ever read a page of it, but that he thought such a classical

inside passenger would be a perpetual vindication of his

tethrippharmatelasipedioploctypophilous pursuits), Anthelia and

Mr. Forester had taken with them a few of their favourite authors;

for, as the ancient and honourable borough of Onevote was situated

almost at the extremity of the kingdom, and as Sir Telegraph’s

diurnal stages were necessarily limited, they had both conjectured

that

the poet’s page, by one

Made vocal for the amusement of the rest,

might furnish an agreeable evening employment in the dearth of

conversation. Anthelia also, in compliance with the general desire, had

taken her lyre, by which the reader may understand, if he pleases, the

_harp-lute-guitar_; which, whatever be its merit as an instrument, has

so unfortunate an appellation, that we cannot think of dislocating our

pages with such a cacophonous compound.

They made but a short stage from Redrose Abbey, and stopped for the

first evening at Low-wood Inn, to the great joy of Mr. O’Scarum and

Major O’Dogskin. Mr. O’Scarum introduced the Major; and both offered

their services to assist Mr. Hippy and Sir Telegraph Paxarett in the

council they were holding with the landlady on the eventful subject of

dinner. This being arranged, and the hour and minute punctually

specified, it was proposed to employ the interval in a little excursion

on the lake. The party was distributed in two boats: Sir Telegraph’s

grooms rowing the one, and Peter Gray and Harry Fell the other. They

rowed to the middle of the lake, and rested on their oars. The sun sank

behind the summits of the western mountains: the clouds that, like other

mountains, rested motionless above them, crested with the towers and

battlements of aerial castles, changed by degrees from fleecy whiteness

to the deepest hues of crimson. A solitary cloud, resting on an eastern

pinnacle, became tinged with the reflected splendour of the west: the

clouds overhead spreading, like a uniform veil of network, through the

interstices of which the sky was visible, caught in their turn the

radiance, and reflected it on the lake, that lay in its calm expanse

like a mirror, imaging with such stillness and accuracy the forms and

colours of all around and above it, that it seemed as if the waters were

withdrawn by magic, and the boats floated in crimson light between the

mountains and the sky.

The whole party was silent, even the Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney, till Mr.

O’Scarum entreated Anthelia to sing ‘something neat and characteristic;

or a harmony now for three voices, would be the killing thing; eh!

Major?’—‘Indeed and it would,’ said Major O’Dogskin; ‘there’s something

very soft and pathetic in a cool evening on the water, to sit still

doing nothing at all but listening to pretty words and tender melodies.’

And lest the sincerity of his opinion should be questioned, he

accompanied it with an emphatical oath, to show that he was in earnest;

for which the Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney called him to order.

Major O’Dogskin explained.

Anthelia, accompanied by Miss Danaretta and Mr. O’Scarum, sang the

following

TERZETTO

1. Hark! o’er the silent waters stealing,

The dash of oars sounds soft and clear:

Through night’s deep veil, all forms concealing,

Nearer it comes, and yet more near.

2. See! where the long reflection glistens,

In yon lone tower her watch-light burns:

3. To hear our distant oars she listens,

And, listening, strikes the harp by turns.

1. The stars are bright, the skies unclouded;

No moonbeam shines; no breezes wake.

Is it my love, in darkness shrouded,

Whose dashing oar disturbs the lake?

2. O haste, sweet maid, the cords unrolling;

1. The holy hermit chides our stay!

2. 3. Hark! from his lonely islet tolling,

His midnight bell shall guide our way.

Sir Oran Haut-ton now produced his flute, and treated the company with a

solo. Another pause succeeded. The contemplative silence was broken by

Major O’Dogskin, who began to fidget about in the boat, and drawing his

watch from his fob held it up to Mr. Hippy, and asked him if he did not

think the partridges would be spoiled? ‘To be sure they will,’ said Mr.

Hippy, ‘unless we make the best of our way. Cold comfort this, after

all: sharp air and water;—give me a roaring fire and a six-bottle cooper

of claret.’

The oars were dashed into the water, and the fairy reflections of

clouds, rocks, woods, and mountains were mingled in the confusion of

chaos. The reader will naturally expect that, having two lovers on a

lake, we shall not lose the opportunity of throwing the lady into the

water, and making the gentleman fish her out; but whether that our

Thalia is too veridicous to permit this distortion of facts, or that we

think it the more original incident to return them to the shore as dry

as they left it, the reader must submit to the disappointment, and be

content to see the whole party comfortably seated, without let,

hindrance, or molestation, at a very excellent dinner, served up under

the judicious inspection of mine hostess of Low-wood.

The heroes and heroines of Homer used to eat and drink all day till the

setting sun;[54] and by dint of industry, contrived to finish that

important business by the usual period at which modern beaux and belles

begin it—who are, therefore, necessitated, like Penelope, to sit up all

night; not, indeed, to destroy the works of the day, for how can nothing

be annihilated? This does not apply to all our party, and we hope not to

many of our readers.

CHAPTER XX

THE SEA-SHORE

They stopped the next evening at a village on the sea-shore. The wind

rose in the night, but without rain. Mr. Forester was up before the sun,

and descending to the beach, found Anthelia there before him, sitting on

a rock, and listening to the dash of the waves, like a Nereid to

Triton’s shell.

_Mr. Forester._ You are an early riser, Miss Melincourt.

_Anthelia._ I always was so. The morning is the infancy of the day, and,

like the infancy of life, has health and bloom, and cheerfulness and

purity, in a degree unknown to the busy noon, which is the season of

care, or the languid evening, which is the harbinger of repose. Perhaps

the song of the nightingale is not in itself less cheerful than that of

the lark: it is the season of her song that invests it with the

character of melancholy.[55] It is the same with the associations of

infancy: it is all cheerfulness, all hope: its path is on the flowers of

an untried world. The daisy has more beauty in the eye of childhood than

the rose in that of maturer life. The spring is the infancy of the year:

its flowers are the flowers of promise and the darlings of poetry. The

autumn, too, has its flowers; but they are little loved, and little

praised: for the associations of autumn are not with ideas of

cheerfulness, but with yellow leaves and hollow winds, heralds of winter

and emblems of dissolution.

_Mr. Forester._ These reflections have more in them of the autumn than

of the morning. But the mornings of autumn participate in the character

of the season.

_Anthelia._ They do so; yet even in mists and storms the opening must be

always more cheerful than the closing day.

_Mr. Forester._ But this morning is fine and clear, and the wind blows

over the sea. Yet this, to me at least, is not a cheerful scene.

_Anthelia._ Nor to me. But our long habits of association with the sound

of the winds and the waters have given them to us a voice of melancholy

majesty: a voice not audible by those little children who are playing

yonder on the shore. To them all scenes are cheerful. It is the morning

of life: it is infancy that makes them so.

_Mr. Forester._ Fresh air and liberty are all that is necessary to the

happiness of children. In that blissful age ‘when nature’s self is new,’

the bloom of interest and beauty is found alike in every object of

perception—in the grass of the meadow, the moss on the rock, and the

seaweed on the sand. They find gems and treasures in shells and pebbles;

and the gardens of fairyland in the simplest flowers. They have no

melancholy associations with autumn or with evening. The falling leaves

are their playthings; and the setting sun only tells them that they must

go to rest as he does, and that he will light them to their sports in

the morning. It is this bloom of novelty, and the pure, unclouded,

unvitiated feelings with which it is contemplated, that throw such an

unearthly radiance on the scenes of our infancy, however humble in

themselves, and give a charm to their recollections which not even Tempe

can compensate. It is the force of first impressions. The first meadow

in which we gather cowslips, the first stream on which we sail, the

first home in which we awake to the sense of human sympathy, have all a

peculiar and exclusive charm, which we shall never find again in richer

meadows, mightier rivers, and more magnificent dwellings; nor even in

themselves, when we revisit them after the lapse of years, and the sad

realities of noon have dissipated the illusions of sunrise. It is the

same, too, with first love, whatever be the causes that render it

unsuccessful: the second choice may have just preponderance in the

balance of moral estimation; but the object of first affection, of all

the perceptions of our being, will be most divested of the attributes of

mortality. The magical associations of infancy are revived with double

power in the feelings of first love; but when they too have departed,

then, indeed, the light of the morning is gone.

[Illustration: _Their conversation was interrupted by the appearance of

Mr. Hippy._]

Pensa che questo di mai non raggiorna!

_Anthelia._ If this be so, let me never be the object of a second

choice: let me never love, or love but once.

_Mr. Forester._ The object of a second choice you cannot be with any one

who will deserve your love; for to have loved any other woman, would

show a heart too lightly captivated to be worthy of yours. The only mind

that can deserve to love you is one that would never have known love if

it never had known you.

Anthelia and Mr. Forester were both so unfashionably sincere, that they

would probably, in a very few minutes, have confessed to each other more

than they had till that morning, perhaps, confessed to themselves, but

that their conversation was interrupted by the appearance of Mr. Hippy

fuming for his breakfast, accompanied by Sir Telegraph cracking his

whip, and Sir Oran blowing the réveillée on his French horn.

‘So ho!’ exclaimed Sir Telegraph; ‘Achilles and Thetis, I protest,

consulting on the sea-shore.’

_Anthelia._ Do you mean to say, Sir Telegraph, that I am old enough to

be Mr. Forester’s mother?

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ No, no; that is no part of the comparison; but

we are the ambassadors of Agamemnon (videlicet, Mr. Fax, whom we left

very busily arranging the urns, not of lots by the bye, but of tea and

coffee); here is old Phoenix on one side of me, and Ajax on the other.

_Mr. Forester._ And you of course are the wise Ulysses.

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ There the simile fails again. _Comparatio non

urgenda_, as I think Heyne used to say, before I was laughed out of

reading at College.

_Mr. Forester._ You should have found me too, if you call me Achilles,

solacing my mind with music, φρενα τερπομενον φορμιγγι λιγειῃ; but, to

make amends for the deficiency, you have brought me a musical Ajax.

_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ You have no reason to wish even for the golden

lyre of my old friend Pindar himself: you have been listening to the

music of the winds and the waters, and to what is more than music, the

voice of Miss Melincourt.