according to Mr. Mystic, _shed around it the rays of transcendental
illumination_; and he continued to march before them, walking, and
talking, and pointing out innumerable images of singularly nubilous
beauty, though Mr. Forester and Mr. Fax both declared they could see
nothing but the fog and ‘_la pale lueur du magique flambeau_‘: till Mr.
Mystic observing that they were now in a _Spontaneity free from Time or
Space_, and at the point of _Absolute Limitation_, Mr. Fax said he was
very glad to hear it; for in that case they could go no farther. Mr.
Mystic observed that they must go farther; for they were entangled in a
maze, from which they would never be able to extricate themselves
without his assistance; and he must take the liberty to tell them that
_the categories of modality were connected into the idea of absolute
necessity_. As this was spoken in a high tone, they took it to be meant
for a reprimand; which carried the more weight as it was the less
understood. At length, after floundering on another half-hour, the fog
still thicker and thicker, and the torch still dimmer and dimmer, they
found themselves once more in Cimmerian Lodge.
[Illustration: _Mr. Mystic observed that they must go farther._]
Mr. Mystic asked them how they liked his grounds, and they both repeated
they had seen nothing of them: on which he flew into a rage and called
them _empirical psychologists_, and _slaves of definition, induction,
and analysis_, which he intended for terms of abuse, but which were not
taken for such by the persons to whom he addressed them.
Recovering his temper, he observed that it was nearly the hour of
dinner: and as they did not think it worth while to be angry with him,
they contented themselves with requesting that they might dine in the
kitchen, which seemed to be the only spot on the _Island of Pure
Intelligence_ in which there was a glimmer of light.
Mr. Mystic remarked that he thought this very bad taste, but that he
should have no objection if the cook would consent; who, he observed,
had paramount dominion over that important division of the _Island of
Pure Intelligence_. The cook, with a little murmuring, consented for
once to evacuate her citadel as soon as the dinner was on table;
entering, however, a protest, that this infringement on her privileges
should not be pleaded as a precedent.
Mr. Fax was afraid that Mr. Mystic would treat them as Lord Peter
treated his brothers; that he would put nothing on the table, and regale
them with a dissertation on the _pure idea of absolute substance_; but
in this he was agreeably disappointed; for the _anticipated cognition_
of a good dinner very soon smoked before them, in the _relation of
determinate coexistence_; and the _objective phenomenon_ of some
superexcellent Madeira quickly put the whole party in perfect good
humour. It appeared, indeed, to have a diffusive quality of occult and
mysterious virtue; for, with every glass they drank, the fog grew thin,
till by the time they had taken off four bottles among them, it had
totally disappeared.
Mr. Mystic now prevailed on them to follow him to the library, where
they found a blazing fire and a four-branched gas-lamp, shedding a much
brighter radiance than that of the _synthetical torch_. He said he had
been obliged to light this lamp, as it seemed they could not see by the
usual illumination of Cimmerian Lodge. The brilliancy of the gas-lights
he much disapproved; but he thought it would be very unbecoming in a
transcendental philosopher to employ any other material for a purpose to
which _smoke_ was applicable. Mr. Fax said he should have thought, on
the contrary, that _ex fumo dare lucem_ would have been, of all things,
the most repugnant to his principles; and Mr. Mystic replied that it had
not struck him so before, but that Mr. Fax’s view of the subject ‘was
exquisitely dusky and fuliginous’: this being his usual mode of
expressing approbation, instead of the common phraseology of _bright
thoughts_ and _luminous ideas_, which were equally abhorrent to him both
in theory and practice. However, he said, there the light was, for their
benefit, and not for his: and as other men’s light was his darkness, he
should put on a pair of spectacles of smoked glass, which no one could
see through but himself. Having put on his spectacles, he undrew a black
curtain, discovered a _cylindrical mirror_, and placed a sphere before
it with great solemnity. ‘This sphere,’ said he, ‘is an oblong spheroid
in the perception of the cylindrical mirror: as long as the mirror
thought that the object of his perception was the real external oblong
spheroid, he was a mere _empirical philosopher_; but he has grown wiser
since he has been in my library; and by reflecting very deeply on the
degree in which the manner of his construction might influence the forms
of his perception, has taken a very opaque and tenebricose view of how
much of the spheroidical perception belongs to the _object_, which is
the sphere, and how much to the _subject_, which is himself, in his
quality of _cylindrical mirror_. He has thus discovered the difference
between _objective_ and _subjective reality_: and this point of view is
_transcendentalism_.’
‘A very dusky and fuliginous speculation, indeed,’ said Mr. Fax,
complimenting Mr. Mystic in his own phrase.
Tea and coffee were brought in. ‘I divide my day,’ said Mr. Mystic, ‘_on
a new principle_: I am always poetical at breakfast, moral at luncheon,
metaphysical at dinner, and political at tea. Now you shall know my
opinion of the hopes of the world.—General discontent shall be the basis
of public resignation![83] The materials of political gloom will build
the steadfast frame of hope.[84] The main point is to get rid of
analytical reason, which is experimental and practical, and live only by
faith,[85] which is synthetical and oracular. The contradictory
interests of ten millions may neutralise each other.[86] But the spirit
of Antichrist is abroad:[87]—the people read!—nay, they think!! The
people read and think!!! The public, the public in general, the swinish
multitude, the many-headed monster, actually reads and thinks!!!![88]
Horrible in thought, but in fact most horrible! Science classifies
flowers. Can it make them bloom where it has placed them in its
classification![89] No. Therefore flowers ought not to be classified.
This is transcendental logic. Ha! in that cylindrical mirror I see three
shadowy forms:—dimly I see them through the smoked glass of my
spectacles. Who art thou?—MYSTERY!—I hail thee! Who art thou?—JARGON—I
love thee! Who art thou?—SUPERSTITION!—I worship thee! Hail,
transcendental TRIAD!’
Mr. Fax cut short the thread of his eloquence by saying he would trouble
him for the cream-jug.
[Illustration: _Sir Oran Haut-ton ascending the stairs with the great
rain-water tub._]
Mr. Mystic began again, and talked for three hours without intermission,
except that he paused a moment on the entrance of sandwiches and
Madeira. His visitors sipped his wine in silence till he had fairly
talked himself hoarse. Neither Mr. Fax nor Mr. Forester replied to his
paradoxes; for to what end, they thought, should they attempt to answer
what few would hear and none would understand?
It was now time to retire, and Mr. Mystic showed his guests to the doors
of their respective apartments, in each of which a gas-light was
burning, and ascended another flight of stairs to his own dormitory,
with a little twinkling taper in his hand. Mr. Forester and Mr. Fax
stayed a few minutes on the landing-place, to have a word of
consultation before they parted for the night. Mr. Mystic gained the
door of his apartment—turned the handle of the lock—and had just
advanced one step—when the whole interior of the chamber became suddenly
sheeted with fire: a tremendous explosion followed; and he was
precipitated to the foot of the stairs in _the smallest conceivable
fraction of the infinite divisibility of time_.
Mr. Forester picked him up, and found him not much hurt, only a little
singed, and very much frightened. But the whole interior of the
apartment continued to blaze. Mr. Forester and Sir Oran Haut-ton ran for
water: Mr. Fax rang the nearest bell: Mr. Mystic vociferated ‘Fire!’
with singular energy: the servants ran about half-undressed: pails,
buckets, and pitchers, were in active requisition; till Sir Oran
Haut-ton ascending the stairs with the great rain-water tub, containing
one hundred and eight gallons of water,[90] threw the whole contents on
the flames with one sweep of his powerful arm.
The fire being extinguished, it remained to ascertain its cause. It
appeared that the gas-tube in Mr. Mystic’s chamber had been left
unstopped, and the gas evolving without combustion (the apartment being
perfectly air-tight), had condensed into a mass, which, on the approach
of Mr. Mystic’s taper, instantly ignited, blowing the transcendentalist
downstairs, and setting fire to his curtains and furniture.
Mr. Mystic, as soon as he recovered from his panic, began to bewail the
catastrophe: not so much, he said, for itself, as because such an event
in Cimmerian Lodge was an infallible omen of evil—a type and symbol of
an approaching period of public light—when the smoke of metaphysical
mystery, and the vapours of ancient superstition, which he had done all
that in him lay to consolidate in the spirit of man, would explode at
the touch of analytical reason, leaving nothing but the plain common
sense matter-of-fact of moral and political truth—a day that he
earnestly hoped he might never live to see.
‘Certainly,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘it is a very bad omen for all who make
it their study to darken the human understanding, when one of the
pillars of their party _is blown up by his own smoke_; but the symbol,
as you call it, may operate as a warning to the apostles of
superstitious chimaera and political fraud, that it is very possible
_for smoke to be too thick_; and that, in condensing in the human mind
the vapours of ignorance and delusion, they are only compressing a body
of inflammable gas, of which the explosion will be fatal in precise
proportion to its density.’
CHAPTER XXXII
THE DESERTED MANSION
They rose, as usual, before daylight, that they might pursue their
perlustration; and, on descending, found Mr. Mystic awaiting them at a
table covered with a sumptuous apparatus of tea and coffee, a pyramid of
hot rolls, and a variety of cold provision. Cimmerian Lodge, he said,
was famous for its breed of tame geese, and he could recommend the cold
one on the table as one of his own training. The breakfast being
despatched, he rowed them over the _Ocean of Deceitful Form_ before the
sun rose to disturb his navigation.
After walking some miles, a ruined mansion at the end of an ancient
avenue of elms attracted their attention. As they made a point of
leaving no place unexamined, they walked up to it. There was an air of
melancholy grandeur in its loneliness and desolation which interested
them to know its history. The briers that choked the court, the weeds
that grew from the fissures of the walls and on the ledges of the
windows, the fractured glass, the half-fallen door, the silent and
motionless clock, the steps worn by the tread of other years, the total
silence of the scene of ancient hospitality, broken only by the voices
of the rooks whose nests were in the elms, all carried back the mind to
the years that were gone. There was a sun-dial in the centre of the
court: the sun shone on the brazen plate, and the shadow of the index
fell on the line of noon. ‘Nothing impresses me more,’ said Mr.
Forester, ‘in a ruin of this kind, than the contrast between the
sun-dial and the clock, which I have frequently observed. This contrast
I once made the basis of a little poem, which the similarity of
circumstances induces me to repeat to you though you are no votary of
the spirit of rhyme.’
THE SUN-DIAL
The ivy o’er the mouldering wall
Spreads like a tree, the growth of years:
The wild wind through the doorless hall
A melancholy music rears,
A solitary voice, that sighs,
O’er man’s forgotten pageantries.
Above the central gate, the clock,
Through clustering ivy dimly seen,
Seems, like the ghost of Time, to mock
The wrecks of power that once has been.
The hands are rusted on its face;
Even where they ceased, in years gone by,
To keep the flying moments’ pace:
Fixing, in Fancy’s thoughtful eye,
A point of ages passed away,
A speck of time, that owns no tie
With aught that lives and breathes to-day.
But ‘mid the rank and towering grass,
Where breezes wave, in mournful sport,
The weeds that choke the ruined court,
The careless hours, that circling pass,
Still trace upon the dialled brass
The shade of their unvarying way:
And evermore, with every ray
That breaks the clouds and gilds the air,
Time’s stealthy steps are imaged there:
Even as the long-revolving years
In self-reflecting circles flow,
From the first bud the hedgerow bears,
To wintry nature’s robe of snow.
The changeful forms of mortal things
Decay and pass; and art and power
Oppose in vain the doom that flings
Oblivion on their closing hour;
While still, to every woodland vale,
New blooms, new fruits, the seasons bring,
For other eyes and lips to hail
With looks and sounds of welcoming:
As where some stream light-eddying roves
By sunny meads and shadowy groves,
Wave following wave departs for ever,
But still flows on the eternal river.
[Illustration: _Mr. Forester made inquiries of him._]
An old man approached them, in whom they observed that look of healthy
and cheerful antiquity which showed that time only, and neither pain nor
sickness, had traced wrinkles on his cheek. Mr. Forester made inquiries
of him on the object he had most at heart: but the old man could give no
gleam of light to guide his steps. Mr. Fax then asked some questions
concerning the mansion before them.
‘Ah, zur!’ said the old man, ‘this be the zeat o’ Squire Openhand: but
he doan’t live here now; the house be growed too large vor’n, as one may
zay. I remember un playing about here on the grass-plot, when he was
half as high as the sun-dial poast, as if it was but yesterday. The days
that I ha’ zeed here! Rare doings there used to be wi’ the house vull o’
gentlevolks zometimes to be zure: but what he loiked best was, to zee a
merry-making of all his tenants, round the great oak that stands there
in the large vield by himzelf. He used to zay if there was anything he
could not abide it was the zight of a zorrowful feace; and he was always
prying about to voind one: and if he did voind one, Lord bless you! it
was not a zorrowful feace long, if it was anything that he could mend.
Zo he lived to the length of his line, as the zaying is; and when times
grew worse, it was a hard matter to draw in; howsomdever he did; and
when the tax-gatherers came every year vor more and more, and the
peaper-money flew about, buying up everything in the neighbourhood; and
every vifty pounds he got in peaper wasn’t worth, as he toald me, vorty
pounds o’ real money, why there was every year fewer horses in his
steable, and less wine on his board: and every now and then came a queer
zort o’ chap dropped out o’ the sky like—a vundholder he called un—and
bought a bit of ground vor a handvul o’ peaper, and built a cottage
horny, as they call it—there be one there on the hill-zide—and had
nothing to do wi’ the country people, nor the country people wi’ he:
nothing in the world to do, as we could zee, but to eat and drink, and
make little bits o’ shrubberies, o’ quashies, and brutuses, and zelies,
and cubies, and filigrees, and ruddydunderums, instead o’ the oak
plantations the old landlords used to plant; and the Squire could never
abide the zight o’ one o’ they gimcrack boxes; and all the while he was
nailing up a window or two every year, and his horses were going one
way, and his dogs another, and his old zervants were zent away, one by
one, wi’ heavy hearts, poor souls, and at last it came that he could not
get half his rents, and zome o’ his tenants went to the workhouse, and
others ran away, because o’ the poor-rates, and everything went to zixes
and zevens, and I used to meet the Squire in his walks, and think to
myzelf it was very hard that he who could not bear to zee a zorrowful
feace should have zuch a zorrowful one of his own; and he used to zay to
me whenever I met un: “All this comes o’ peaper-money, Measter
Hawthorn.” Zo the upshot was, he could not afford any longer to live in
his own great house, where his vorevathers had lived out o’ memory of
man, and went to zome outlandish place wi’ his vamily to live, as he
said, in much zuch a box as that gimcrack thing on the hill.’
‘You have told us a very melancholy story,’ said Mr. Forester; ‘but at
present, I fear, a very common one, and one of which, if the present
system continue, every succeeding year will multiply examples.’
‘Ah, zur!’ said the old man, ‘there was them as vorezeed it long ago,
and voretold it too, up in the great house in Lunnon, where they zettles
the affairs o’ the nation: a pretty of zettling it be, to my thinking,
to vill the country wi’ tax-gatherers and vundholders, and peaper-money
men, that turns all the old families out o’ the country, and zends their
tenants to the workhouse: but there was them as vorezeed and voretold it
too, but nobody minded ’em then: they begins to mind ’em now.’
‘But how do you manage in these times?’ said Mr. Forester.
‘I lives, measter,’ said the old man, ‘and pretty well too, vor myself.
I had a little vreehold varm o’ my own, that has been in my vamily zeven
hundred year, and we woan’t part wi’ it, I promise you, vor all the
tax-collectors and vundholders in England. But my zon was never none o’
your gentleman varmers, none a’ your reacing and hunting bucks, that
it’s a shame vor a honest varmer to be: he always zet his shoulder to
the wheel—alway a-vield by peep o’ day: zo now I be old, I’ve given up
the varm to him; and that I wouldn’t ha’ done to the best man in all the
county bezide: but he’s my son, and I loves un. Zo I walks about the
vields all day, and sits all the evening in the chimney-corner wi’ an
old neighbour or zo, and a jug o’ ale, and talks over old times, when
the Openhands, and zuch as they, could afford to live in the homes o’
their vorevathers. It be a bad state o’ things, my measters, and must
come to a bad end, zooner or later; but it’ll last my time.’
‘You are not in the last stage of a consumption, are you, honest
friend?’ said Mr. Fax.
‘Lord love you, no, measter,’ said the old farmer, rather frightened;
‘do I look zo?’
‘No,’ said Mr. Fax; ‘but you talked so.’
‘Ah! thee beest a wag, I zee,’ said the farmer. ‘Things be in a
conzumption zure enough, but they’ll last my time vor all that; and if
they doan’t it’s no fault o’ mine; and I’se no money in the vunds, nor
no sinecure pleace, zo I eats my beefsteak and drinks my ale, and lets
the world slide.’
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE PHANTASM
The course of their perambulations brought them into the vicinity of
Melincourt, and they stopped at the Castle to inquire if any
intelligence had been obtained of Anthelia. The gate was opened to them
by old Peter Gray, who informed them that himself and the female
domestics were at that time the only inmates of the Castle, as the other
male domestics had gone off at the same time with Mr. Hippy in search of
their young mistress; and the Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney and Miss
Danaretta were gone to London, because of the opera being open.
Mr. Forester inquired of the manner of Anthelia’s disappearance. Old
Peter informed him that she had gone into her library as usual after
breakfast, and when the hour of dinner arrived she was missing. The
central window was open, as well as the little postern door of the
shrubbery that led into the dingle, the whole vicinity of which they had
examined, and had found the recent print of horses’ feet on a narrow
green road that skirted the other side of the glen; these traces they
had followed till they had totally lost them in a place where the road
became hard and rocky, and divided into several branches: the pursuers
had then separated into parties of two and three, and each party had
followed a different branch of the road, but they had found no clue to
guide them, and had hitherto been unsuccessful. He should not himself,
he said, have remained inactive, but Mr. Hippy had insisted on his
staying to take care of the Castle. He then observed that, as it was
growing late, he should humbly advise their continuing where they were
till morning. To this they assented, and he led the way to the library.
Everything in the library remained precisely in the place in which
Anthelia left it. Her chair was near the table, and the materials of
drawing were before it. The gloom of the winter evening, which was now
closing in, was deepened through the stained glass of the windows. The
moment the door was thrown open, Mr. Forester started, and threw himself
forward into the apartment towards Anthelia’s chair; but before he
reached it, he stopped, placed his hand before his eyes, and, turning
round, leaned for support on the arm of Mr. Fax. He recovered himself in
a few minutes, and sate down by the table. Peter Gray, after kindling
the fire, and lighting the Argand lamp that hung from the centre of the
apartment, went to give directions on the subject of dinner.
Mr. Forester observed, from the appearance of the drawing materials,
that they had been hastily left, and he saw that the last subject on
which Anthelia had been employed was a sketch of Redrose Abbey. He sate
with his head leaning on his hand, and his eyes fixed on the drawing in
perfect silence. Mr. Fax thought it best not to disturb his meditations,
and took up a volume that was lying open on the table, the last that
Anthelia had been reading. It was a posthumous work of the virtuous and
unfortunate Condorcet, in which that most amiable and sublime
enthusiast, contemplating human nature in the light of his own exalted
spirit, had delineated a beautiful vision of the future destinies of
mankind.[91]
Sir Oran Haut-ton kept his eyes fixed on the door with looks of anxious
impatience, and showed manifest and increasing disappointment at every
re-entrance of Old Peter, who at length summoned them to dinner.
Mr. Fax was not surprised that Mr. Forester had no appetite, but that
Sir Oran had lost his appeared to him extremely curious. The latter grew
more and more uneasy, rose from table, took a candle in his hand, and
wandered from room to room, searching every closet and corner in the
Castle, to the infinite amazement of Old Peter Gray, who followed him
everywhere, and became convinced that the poor gentleman was crazed for
love of his young mistress, who, he made no doubt, was the object of his
search; and the conviction was strengthened by the perfect inattention
of Sir Oran to all his assurances that his dear young lady was not in
any of those places which he searched so scrupulously. Sir Oran at
length, having left no corner of the habitable part of the Castle
unexamined, returned to the dining-room, and throwing himself into a
chair began to shed tears in great abundance.
Mr. Fax made his two disconsolate friends drink several glasses of
Madeira, by way of raising their spirits, and then asked Mr. Forester
what it was that had so affected him on their first entering the
library.
_Mr. Forester._ It was the form of Anthelia, in the place where I first
saw her, in that chair by the table. The vision was momentary, but,
while it lasted, had all the distinctness of reality.
_Mr. Fax._ This is no uncommon effect of the association of ideas when
external objects present themselves to us after an interval of absence,
in their remembered arrangement, with only one form wanting, and that
the dearest among them, to perfect the resemblance between the present
sensation and the recollected idea. A vivid imagination, more especially
when the nerves are weakened by anxiety and fatigue, will, under such
circumstances, complete the imperfect scene, by replacing for a moment
the one deficient form among those accustomed objects which had long
formed its accompaniments in the contemplation of memory. This single
mental principle will explain the greater number of _credible_ tales of
apparitions, and at the same time give a very satisfactory reason why a
particular spirit is usually found haunting a particular place.
_Mr. Forester._ Thus Petrarch’s beautiful pictures of the Spirit of
Laura on the banks of the Sorga are assuredly something more than the
mere fancies of the closet, and must have originated in that system of
mental connection, which, under peculiar circumstances, gives ideas the
force of sensations. Anxiety and fatigue are certainly great promoters
of the state of mind most favourable to such impressions.
[Illustration: _Sir Oran, throwing himself into a chair, began to shed
tears in great abundance._]
_Mr. Fax._ It was under the influence of such excitements that Brutus
saw the spirit of Caesar; and in similar states of feeling the phantoms
of poetry are usually supposed to be visible: the ghost of Banquo, for
example, and that of Patroclus. But this only holds true of the poets
who paint from nature; for their artificial imitators, when they wish to
call a spirit from the vasty deep, are not always so attentive to the
mental circumstances of the persons to whom they present it. In the
early periods of society, when apparitions form a portion of the general
creed; when the life of man is wandering, precarious, and turbulent;
when the uncultured wildness of the heath and the forest harmonises with
the chimaeras of superstition; and when there is not, as in later times,
a rooted principle of reason and knowledge, to weaken such perceptions
in their origin, and destroy the seeming reality of their subsequent
recollection, impressions of this nature will be more frequent, and will
be as much invested with the character of external existence, as the
scenes to which they are attached by the connecting power of the mind.
They will always be found with their own appropriate character of time,
and place, and circumstance. The ghost of the warrior will be seen on
the eve of battle by him who keeps his lonely watch near the blaze of
the nightly fire, and the spirit of the huntress maid will appear to her
lover when he pauses on the sunny heath, or rests in the moonlit cave.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE CHURCHYARD
The next morning Mr. Forester determined on following the mountain road
on the other side of the dingle, of which Peter Gray had spoken: but
wishing first to make some inquiries of the Reverend Mr. Portpipe, they
walked to his vicarage, which was in a village at some distance. Just as
they reached it, the reverend gentleman emerged in haste, and seeing Mr.
Forester and his friends, said he was very sorry that he could not
attend to them just then, as he had a great press of business to dispose
of; namely, a christening, a marriage, and a funeral; but he would knock
them off as fast as he could, after which he should be perfectly at
their service, hoped they would wait in the vicarage till his return,
and observed he had good ale and a few bottles of London Particular. He
then left them to despatch his affairs in the church.
They preferred waiting in the churchyard. ‘A christening, a marriage,
and a funeral!’ said Mr. Forester. ‘With what indifference he runs
through the whole drama of human life, raises the curtain on its
commencement, superintends the most important and eventful action of its
progress, and drops the curtain on its close!’
_Mr. Fax._ Custom has rendered them all alike indifferent to him. In
every human pursuit and profession the routine of ordinary business
renders the mind indifferent to all the forms and objects of which that
routine is composed. The sexton ‘sings at grave-making’; the undertaker
walks with a solemn face before the coffin, because a solemn face is
part of his trade; but his heart is as light as if there were no funeral
at his heels: he is quietly conning over the items of his bill, or
thinking of the party in which he is to pass his evening; and the
reverend gentleman who concludes the process, and consigns to its last
receptacle the shell of extinguished intelligence, has his thoughts on
the wing of the sports of the field or the jovial board of the Squire.
[Illustration: _A great press of business to dispose of._]
_Mr. Forester._ Your observation is just. It is this hardening power of
custom that gives steadiness to the hand of the surgeon, firmness to the
voice of the criminal judge, coolness to the soldier ‘in the imminent
deadly breach,’ self-possession to the sailor in the rage of the
equinoctial storm. It is under this influence that the lawyer deals out
writs and executions as carelessly as he deals out cards at his evening
whist; that the gaoler turns the key with the same stern indifference on
unfortunate innocence as on hardened villainy; that the venal senator
votes away by piecemeal the liberties of his country; and that the
statesman sketches over the bottle his series of deliberate schemes for
the extinction of human freedom, the enchaining of human reason, and the
waste of human life.
_Mr. Fax._ Contemplate any of these men only in the sphere of their
routine, and you will think them utterly destitute of all human
sympathy. Make them change places with each other, and you will see
symptoms of natural feelings. Custom cannot kill the better feelings of
human nature: it merely lays them asleep.
_Mr. Forester._ You must acknowledge, then, at least, that their sleep
is very sound.
_Mr. Fax._ In most cases certainly as sound as that of Epimenides, or of
the seven sleepers of Ephesus. But these did wake at last, and,
therefore, according to Aristotle, they had always the capacity of
waking.
_Mr. Forester._ You must allow me to wait for a similar proof before I
admit such a capacity in respect to the feelings of some of the
characters we have mentioned. Yet I am no sceptic in human virtue.
_Mr. Fax._ You have no reason to be, with so much evidence before your
eyes of the excellence of the past generation, and I do not suppose the
present is much worse than its predecessors. Read the epitaphs around
you, and see what models and mirrors of all the social virtues have left
the examples of their shining light to guide the steps of their
posterity.
_Mr. Forester._ I observe the usual profusion of dutiful sons,
affectionate husbands, faithful friends, kind neighbours, and honest
men. These are the luxuriant harvest of every churchyard. But is it not
strange that even the fertility of fiction should be so circumscribed in
the variety of monumental panegyric? Yet a few words comprehend the
summary of all the moral duties of ordinary life. Their degrees and
diversities are like the shades of colour, that shun for the most part
the power of language: at all events, the nice distinctions and
combinations that give individuality to historical character scarcely
come within the limits of sepulchral inscription, which merely serves to
testify the regret of the survivors for one whose society was dear, and
whose faults are forgotten. For there is a feeling in the human mind,
that, in looking back on former scenes of intercourse with those who are
passed for ever beyond the limits of injury and resentment, gradually
destroys all the bitterness and heightens all the pleasures of the
remembrance; as, when we revert in fancy to the days of our childhood,
we scarcely find a vestige of their tears, pains, and disappointments,
and perceive only their fields, their flowers, and their sunshine, and
the smiles of our little associates.
_Mr. Fax._ The history of common life seems as circumscribed as its
moral attributes: for the most extensive information I can collect from
these gravestones is, that the parties married, lived in trouble, and
died of a conflict between a disease and a physician. I observe a last
request, which I suppose was very speedily complied with—that of a
tender husband to his loving wife not to weep for him long. If it be as
you say, that the faults of the dead are soon forgotten, yet the memory
of their virtues is not much longer lived; and I have often thought that
these words of Rabelais would furnish an appropriate inscription for
ninety-nine gravestones out of every hundred:—_Sa mémoire expira avecque
le son des cloches qui carillonèrent à son enterrement._
CHAPTER XXXV
THE RUSTIC WEDDING
The bride and bridegroom, with half a dozen of their friends, now
entered the churchyard. The bride, a strong, healthy-looking country
girl, was clinging to the arm of her lover, not with the light and
scarcely perceptible touch with which Miss Simper complies with the
request of Mr. Giggle, ‘that she will do him the honour to take his
arm,’ but with a cordial and unsophisticated pressure that would have
made such an arm as Mr. Giggle’s black and blue. The bridegroom, with a
pair of chubby cheeks, which in colour precisely rivalled his new
scarlet waistcoat, and his mouth expanded into a broad grin that
exhibited the total range of his teeth, advanced in a sort of step that
was half a walk and half a dance, as if the preconceived notion of the
requisite solemnity of demeanour were struggling with the natural
impulses of the overflowing joy of his heart.
Mr. Fax looked with great commiseration on this bridal pair, and
determined to ascertain if they had a clear notion of the evils that
awaited them in consequence of the rash step they were about to take. He
therefore accosted them with an observation that the Reverend Mr.
Portpipe was not at leisure, but would be in a few minutes. ‘In the
meantime,’ said he, ‘I stand here as the representative of general
reason, to ask if you have duly weighed the consequences of your present
proceeding.’
_The Bridegroom._ General Reason! I be’s no soger man, and bean’t
countable to no General whatzomecomedever. We bean’t under martial law,
be we? Voine times indeed if General Reason be to interpose between a
poor man and his sweetheart.
_Mr. Fax._ That is precisely the case which calls most loudly for such
an interposition.
_The Bridegroom._ If General Reason waits till I or Zukey calls loudly
vor’n, he’ll wait long enough. Woan’t he, Zukey?
_The Bride._ Ees, zure, Robin.
_Mr. Fax._ General reason, my friend, I assure you, has nothing to do
with martial law, nor with any other mode of arbitrary power, but with
authority that has truth for its foundation, benevolence for its end,
and the whole universe for its sphere of action.
_The Bridegroom_ (_scratching his head_). There be a mort o’ voine
words, but I zuppose you means to zay as how this General Reason be a
Methody preacher; but I be’s true earthy-ducks church, and zo be Zukey:
bean’t you, Zukey?
_The Bride._ Ees, zure, Robin.
_The Bridegroom._ And we has nothing to do wi’ General Reason neither on
us. Has we, Zukey?
_The Bride._ No, zure, Robin.
_Mr. Fax._ Well, my friend, be that as it may, you are going to be
married?
_The Bridegroom._ Why, I think zo, zur, wi’ General Reason’s leave.
Bean’t we, Zukey?
_The Bride._ Ees, zure, Robin.
_Mr. Fax._ And are you fully aware, my honest friend, what marriage is?
_The Bridegroom._ Vor zartin I be: Zukey and I ha’ got it by heart out
o’ t’ Book o’ Common Prayer. Ha’n’t we, Zukey? (_This time Susan did not
think proper to answer._) It be ordained that zuch persons as hav’n’t
the gift of——(_Susan gave him such a sudden and violent pinch on the
arm, that his speech ended in a roar_). Od rabbit me! that wur a
twinger! I’ll have my revenge, howzomecomedever. (_And he imprinted a
very emphatical kiss on the lips of his blushing bride that greatly
scandalised Mr. Fax._)
_Mr. Fax._ Do you know, that in all likelihood, in the course of six
years, you will have as many children?
_The Bridegroom._ The more the merrier, zur. Bean’t it, Zukey? (_Susan
was mute again._)
_Mr. Fax._ I hope it may prove so, my friend; but I fear you will find
the more the sadder. What are your occupations?
_The Bridegroom._ Anan, zur?
[Illustration: ‘_Do you know, that in all likelihood, in the course of
six years, you will have as many children?_’]
_Mr. Fax._ What do you do to get your living?
_The Bridegroom._ Works vor Varmer Brownstout: zows and reaps, threshes,
and goes to market wi’ corn and cattle, turns to plough-tail when hap
chances, cleans and feeds horses, hedges and ditches, fells timber,
gathers in t’ orchard, brews ale, and drinks it, and gets vourteen
shill’n’s a week for my trouble. And Zukey here ha’ laid up a mint o’
money: she wur dairymaid at Varmer Cheesecurd’s, and ha’ gotten vour
pounds zeventeen shill’n’s and ninepence in t’ old chest wi’ three vlat
locks and a padlock. Ha’n’t you, Zukey?
_The Bride._ Ees, zure, Robin.
_Mr. Fax._ It does not appear to me, my worthy friend, that your
fourteen shillings a week, even with Mrs. Susan’s consolidated fund of
four pounds seventeen shillings and ninepence, will be altogether
adequate to the maintenance of such a family as you seem likely to have.
_The Bridegroom._ Why, sir, in t’ virst pleace I doan’t know what be
Zukey’s intentions in that respect——Od rabbit it, Zukey! doan’t pinch
zo——and in t’ next pleace, wi’ all due submission to you and General
Reason the Methody preacher, I takes it to be our look-out, and none o’
nobody’s else.
_Mr. Fax._ But it is somebody’s else, for this reason; that if you
cannot maintain your own children, the parish must do it for you.
_The Bridegroom._ Vor zartin—in a zort o’ way; and bad enough at best.
But I wants no more to do wi’ t’ parish than parish wi’ me.
_Mr. Fax._ I dare say you do not, at present. But, my good friend, when
the cares of a family come upon you, your independence of spirit will
give way to necessity; and if, by any accident, you are thrown out of
work, as in the present times many honest fellows are, what will you do
then?
_The Bridegroom._ Do the best I can, measter, az I always does, and
nobody can’t do no better.
_Mr. Fax._ Do you suppose, then, you are doing the best you can now, in
marrying, with such a doubtful prospect before you? How will you bring
up your children?
_The Bridegroom._ Why, in the vear o’ the Lord, to be zure.
_Mr. Fax._ Of course: but how will you bring them up to get their
living?
_The Bridegroom._ That’s as thereafter may happen. They woan’t starve,
I’se warrant ’em, if they teakes after their veyther. But I zees now who
General Reason be. He be one o’ your sinecure vundholder peaper-money
taxing men, as isn’t satisfied wi’ takin’ t’ bread out o’ t’ poor man’s
mouth, and zending his chilern to army and navy, and vactories, and
suchlike, but wants to take away his wife into t’ bargain.
_Mr. Fax._ There, my honest friend, you have fallen into a radical
mistake, which I shall try to elucidate for your benefit. It is owing to
poor people having more children than they can maintain, that those
children are obliged to go to the army and navy, and consequently that
statesmen and conquerors find so many ready instruments for the
oppression and destruction of the human species: it follows, therefore,
that if people would not marry till they could be certain of maintaining
all their children comfortably at home——
_The Bridegroom._ Lord love you, that be all mighty voine rigmarole; but
the short and the long be this: I can’t live without Zukey, nor Zukey
without I, can you, Zukey?
_The Bride._ No, zure, Robin.
_The Bridegroom._ Now there be a plain downright honest-hearted old
English girl; none o’ your quality madams, as zays one thing and means
another; and zo you may tell General Reason he may teake away chair and
teable, salt-box and trencher, bed and bedding, pig and pig-stye, but
neither he nor all his peaper-men together shall take away his own Zukey
vrom Robin Ruddyfeace; if they shall I’m doomed.
‘What profane wretch,’ said the Reverend Mr. Portpipe, emerging from the
church, ‘what profane wretch is swearing in the very gate of the
temple?’ and seeing by the bridegroom’s confusion that he was the
culprit, he reprimanded him severely, and declared he would not marry
him that day. The very thought of such a disappointment was too much for
poor Robin to bear, and, after one or two ineffectual efforts to speak,
he distorted his face into a most rueful expression, and struck up such
a roar of crying as completely electrified the Rev. Mr. Portpipe, whose
wrath, nevertheless, was not to be mollified by Robin’s grief and
contrition, but yielded at length to the intercessions of Mr. Forester.
Robin’s face cleared up in an instant, and the natural broad grin of his
ruddy countenance shone forth through his tears like the sun through a
shower. ‘You are such an honest and warm-hearted fellow,’ said Mr.
Forester, putting a bank-note into Robin’s hand, ‘that you must not
refuse me the pleasure of making this little addition to Mistress
Susan’s consolidated fund.’—‘Od rabbit me!’ said the bridegroom,
overcome with joy and surprise, ‘I doan’t know who thee beest, but thee
beesn’t General Reason, that’s vor zartin.’
The rustic party then followed the Reverend Mr. Portpipe into the
church. Robin, when he reached the porch, looked round over his shoulder
to Mr. Fax, and said with a very arch look, ‘My dutiful sarvice to
General Reason.’ And looking round a second time before he entered the
door, added: ‘and Zukey’s too.’
CHAPTER XXXVI
THE VICARAGE
When the Rev. Mr. Portpipe had despatched his ‘press of business,’ he
set before his guests in the old oak parlour of the vicarage a cold
turkey and ham, a capacious jug of ‘incomparable ale,’ and a bottle of
his London Particular; all which, on trial, were approved to be
excellent, and a second bottle of the latter was very soon required, and
produced with great alacrity. The reverend gentleman expressed much
anxiety in relation to the mysterious circumstance of the disappearance
of Anthelia, on whom he pronounced a very warm eulogium, saying she was
the flower of the mountains, the type of ideal beauty, the daughter of
music, the rosebud of sweetness, and the handmaid of charity. He
professed himself unable to throw the least light on the transaction,
but supposed she had been spirited away for some nefarious purpose. He
said that the mountain road had been explored without success in all its
ramifications, not only by Mr. Hippy and the visitors and domestics of
Melincourt, but by all the peasants and mountaineers of the
vicinity—that it led through a most desolate and inhospitable tract of
country, and he would advise them, if they persisted in their intention
of following it themselves, to partake of his poor hospitality till
morning, and set forward with the first dawn of daylight. Mr. Fax
seconded this proposal, and Mr. Forester complied.
They spent the evening in the old oak parlour, and conversed on various
subjects, during which a knotty point opposing itself to the solution of
an historical question, Mr. Forester expressed a wish to be allowed
access to the reverend gentleman’s library. The reverend gentleman
hummed awhile with great gravity and deliberation: then slowly rising
from his large arm-chair, he walked across the room to the farther
corner, where throwing open the door of a little closet, he said with
extreme complacency, ‘There is my library: Homer, Virgil, and Horace,
for old acquaintance sake, and the credit of my cloth: Tillotson,
Atterbury, and Jeremy Taylor, for materials of exhortation and
ingredients of sound doctrine: and for my own private amusement in an
occasional half-hour between my dinner and my nap, a translation of
Rabelais and _The Tale of a Tub_.’
_Mr. Fax._ A well-chosen collection.
_The Rev. Mr. Portpipe._—_Multum in parvo._ But there is something that
may amuse you: a little drawer of mineral specimens that have been
picked up in this vicinity, and a fossil or two. Among the latter is a
curious bone that was found in a hill just by, invested with stalactite.
_Mr. Forester._ The bone of a human thumb, unquestionably.
_The Rev. Mr. Portpipe._ Very probably.
_Mr. Forester._ Which, by its comparative proportion, must have belonged
to an individual about eleven feet six or seven inches in height: there
are no such men now.
_Mr. Fax._ Except, perhaps, among the Patagonians, whose existence is,
however, disputed.
_Mr. Forester._ It is disputed on no tenable ground, but that of the
narrow and bigoted vanity of civilised men, who, pent in the unhealthy
limits of towns and cities, where they dwindle from generation to
generation in a fearful rapidity of declension towards the abyss of the
infinitely little, in which they will finally vanish from the system of
nature, will not admit that there ever were, or are, or can be, better,
stronger, and healthier men than themselves. The Patagonians are a
vagrant nation, without house or home, and are, therefore, only
occasionally seen on the coast: but because some voyagers have not seen
them, I know not why we should impeach the evidence of those who have.
The testimony of a man of honour, like Mr. Byron, would alone have been
sufficient: but all his officers and men gave the same account. And
there are other testimonies: that, for instance, of M. de Guyot, who
brought from the coast of Patagonia a skeleton of one of these great
men, which measured between twelve and thirteen feet. This skeleton he
was bringing to Europe, but happening to be caught in a great storm, and
having on board a Spanish Bishop (the Archbishop of Lima), who was of
opinion that the storm was caused by the bones of this Pagan which they
had on board; and having persuaded the crew that this was the case, the
captain was obliged to throw the skeleton overboard. The Bishop died
soon after, and was thrown overboard in his turn. I could have wished
that he had been thrown overboard sooner, and then the bones of the
Patagonian would have arrived in Europe.[92]
_The Rev. Mr. Portpipe._ Your wish is orthodox, inasmuch as the Bishop
was himself a Pagan, and moreover an Inquisitor. And your doctrine of
large men is also orthodox, for the sons of Anak and the family of
Goliath did once exist, though now their race is extinct.
_Mr. Forester._ The multiplication of diseases, the diminution of
strength, and the contraction of the term of existence, keep pace with
the diminution of the stature of men. The mortality of a manufacturing
town, compared with that of a mountain village, is more than three to
one, which clearly shows the evil effects of the departure from natural
life, and of the coacervation of multitudes within the narrow precincts
of cities, where the breath of so many animals, and the exhalations from
the dead, the dying, and corrupted things of all kinds, make the air
little better than a slow poison, and so offensive as to be perceptible
to the sense of those who are not accustomed to it; for the wandering
Arabs will smell a town at the distance of several leagues. And in this
country the cottagers who are driven by the avarice of landlords and
great tenants to seek a subsistence in towns, are very soon destroyed by
the change.[93] And this hiving of human beings is not the only evil
effect of commerce, which tends also to keep up a constant circulation
of the elements of destruction, and to make the vices and diseases of
one country the vices and diseases of all.[94] Thus, with every
extension of our intercourse with distant lands, we bring home some new
seed of death; and how many we leave as vestiges of our visitation, let
the South Sea Islanders testify. Consider, too, the frightful
consequences of the consumption of spirituous liquors: a practice so
destructive, that if all the devils were again to be assembled in
Pandemonium to contrive the ruin of the human species, nothing so
mischievous could be devised by them;[95] but which it is considered
politic to encourage, according to our method of raising money on the
vices of the people.[96] When these and many other causes of destruction
are considered, it would be wonderful indeed if every new generation
were not, as all experience proves that it is, smaller, weaker, more
diseased, and more miserable than the preceding.
_Mr. Fax._ Do you find, in the progress of science and the rapid
diffusion of intellectual light, no counterpoise to this mass of
physical calamity, even admitting it to exist in the extent you suppose?
_Mr. Forester._ Without such a counterpoise the condition of human
nature would be desperate indeed. The intellectual, as I have often
observed to you, are nourished at the expense of the animal faculties.
_Mr. Fax._ You cannot, then, conceive the existence of _mens sana in
corpore sano_?
_Mr. Forester._ Scarcely in the present state of human degeneracy: at
best in a very limited sense.
_Mr. Fax._ Nevertheless you do, nay, you must acknowledge that the
intellectual, which is the better part of human nature, is in a progress
of rapid improvement, continually enlarging its views and multiplying
its acquisitions.
_Mr. Forester._ The collective stock of knowledge which is the common
property of scientific men necessarily increases, and will increase from
the circumstance of admitting the cooperation of numbers: but collective
knowledge is as distinct from individual mental power as it is
confessedly unconnected with wisdom and moral virtue, and independent of
political liberty. A man of modern times, with machines of complicated
powers, will lift a heavier mass than that which Hector hurled from his
unassisted arm against the Grecian gates; but take away his mechanism,
and what comparison is there between him and Hector? In the same way a
modern man of science _knows_ more than Pythagoras knew: but consider
them with relation only to _mental power_, and what comparison remains
between them? No more than between a modern poet and Homer—a comparison
which the most strenuous partisan of modern improvement will scarcely
venture to institute.
_Mr. Fax._ I will venture to oppose Shakespeare to him nevertheless.
_Mr. Forester._ That is, however, going back two centuries, to a state
of society very peculiar, and very fertile in genius. Shakespeare is the
great phenomenon of the modern world, but his men and women are beings
like ourselves; whereas those of Homer are of a nobler and mightier
race; and his poetry is worthy of his characters: it is the language of
the gods.
Mr. Forester rose, and approached the little closet, with the avowed
intention of taking down Homer. ‘Take care how you touch him,’ said the
Reverend Mr. Portpipe: ‘he is in a very dusty condition, for he has not
been disturbed these thirty years.’
CHAPTER XXXVI
THE MOUNTAINS
They followed the mountain road till they arrived at the spot where it
divided into several branches, one of which they selected on some
principle of preference, which we are not sagacious enough to penetrate.
They now proceeded by a gradual ascent of several miles along a rugged
passage of the hills, where the now flowerless heath was the only
vestige of vegetation; and the sound of the little streams that
everywhere gleamed beside their way, the only manifestation of the life
and motion of nature.
‘It is a subject worthy of consideration,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘how far scenes
like these are connected with the genius of liberty: how far the dweller
of the mountains, who is certainly surrounded by more sublime
excitements, has more loftiness of thought, and more freedom of spirit,
than the cultivator of the plains.’
_Mr. Forester._ A modern poet has observed, that the voices of the sea
and the mountains are the two voices of liberty: the words mountain
liberty have, indeed, become so intimately associated, that I never yet
found any one who even thought of questioning their necessary and
natural connection.
_Mr. Fax._ And yet I question it much; and in the present state of human
society I hold the universal inculcation of such a sentiment, in poetry
and romance, to be not only a most gross delusion, but an error replete
with the most pernicious practical consequences. For I have often seen a
young man of high and aspiring genius, full of noble enthusiasm for the
diffusion of truth and the general happiness of mankind, withdrawn from
all intercourse with polished and intellectual society, by the
distempered idea that he would nowhere find fit aliment for his high
cogitations, but among heaths, and rocks, and torrents.
_Mr. Forester._ In a state of society so corrupted as that in which we
live, the best instructors and companions are ancient books; and these
are best studied in those congenial solitudes, where the energies of
nature are most pure and uncontrolled, and the aspect of external things
recalls in some measure the departed glory of the world.
_Mr. Fax._ Holding, as I do, that no branch of knowledge is valuable,
but such as in its ultimate results has a plain and practical tendency
to the general diffusion of moral and political truth, you must allow me
to doubt the efficacy of solitary intercourse with stocks and stones,
however rugged and fantastic in their shapes, towards the production of
this effect.
_Mr. Forester._ It is matter of historical testimony that occasional
retirement into the recesses of nature has produced the most salutary
effects of the very kind you require, in the instance of some of the
most illustrious minds that have adorned the name of man.
_Mr. Fax._ That the health and purity of the country, its verdure and
its sunshine, have the most beneficial influence on the mental and
corporeal faculties, I am very far from being inclined to deny: but this
is a different consideration from that of the connection between the
scenery of the mountains and the genius of liberty. Look into the
records of the world. What have the mountains done for freedom and
mankind? When have the mountains, to speak in the cant of the new school
of poetry, ‘sent forth a voice of power’ to awe the oppressors of the
world? Mountaineers are for the most part a stupid and ignorant race:
and where there are stupidity and ignorance, there will be superstition;
and where there is superstition, there will be slavery.
_Mr. Forester._ To a certain extent I cannot but agree with you. The
names of Hampden and Milton are associated with the level plains and
flat pastures of Buckinghamshire; but I cannot now remember what names
of true greatness and unshaken devotion to general liberty are
associated with these heathy rocks and cloud-capped mountains of
Cumberland. We have seen a little horde of poets, who brought hither
from the vales of the south the harps which they had consecrated to
Truth and Liberty, to acquire new energy in the mountain winds: and now
those harps are attuned to the praise of luxurious power, to the strains
of courtly sycophancy, and to the hymns of exploded superstition. But
let not the innocent mountains bear the burden of their transgressions.
_Mr. Fax._ All I mean to say is, that there is nothing in the nature of
mountain scenery either to make men free or to keep them so. The only
source of freedom is intellectual light. The ignorant are always slaves,
though they dwell among the Andes. The wise are always free, though they
cultivate a savannah. Who is so stupid and so servile as a Swiss, whom
you find, like a piece of living furniture, the human latch of every
great man’s door?
_Mr. Forester._ Let us look back to former days, to the mountains of the
North:
Wild the Runic faith,
And wild the realms where Scandinavian chiefs
And Scalds arose, and hence the Scald’s strong verse
Partook the savage wildness. And methinks,
Amid such scenes as these the poet’s soul
Might best attain full growth.
_Mr. Fax._ As to the ‘Scald’s strong verse,’ I must say I have never
seen any specimens of it that I did not think mere trash. It is little
more than a rhapsody of rejoicing in carnage, a ringing of changes on
the biting sword and the flowing of blood and the feast of the raven and
the vulture, and fulsome flattery of the chieftain, of whom the said
Scald was the abject slave, vassal, parasite, and laureate, interspersed
with continual hints that he ought to be well paid for his lying
panegyrics.
_Mr. Forester._ There is some justice in your observations:
nevertheless, I must still contend that those who seek the mountains in
a proper frame of feeling will find in them images of energy and
liberty, harmonising most aptly with the loftiness of an unprejudiced
mind, and nerving the arm of resistance to every variety of oppression
and imposture that winds the chains of power round the free-born spirit
of man.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE FRACAS
After a long ramble among heath and rock, and over moss and moor, they
began to fear the probability of being benighted among those desolate
wilds, when fortunately they found that their track crossed one of the
principal roads, which they followed for a short time, and entered a
small town, where they stopped for the night at an inn. They were shown
upstairs into an apartment separated from another only by a movable
partition, which allowed the two rooms to be occasionally laid into one.
They were just sitting down to dinner when they heard the voices of some
newly-arrived company in the adjoining apartment, and distinguished the
tones of a female voice indicative of alarm and anxiety, and the
masculine accents of one who seemed to be alternately comforting the
afflicted fair one, and swearing at the obsequious waiter, with
reiterated orders, as it appeared, for another chaise immediately. Mr.
Fax was not long in divining that the new-comers were two runaway lovers
in momentary apprehension of being overtaken; and this conjecture was
confirmed, when, after a furious rattle of wheels in the yard, the door
of the next apartment was burst open, and a violent scream from the lady
was followed by a gruff shout of—‘So ho, miss, here you are. Gretna, eh?
Your journey’s marred for this time; and if you get off again, say you
have my consent—that’s all.’ Low soft tones of supplication ensued, but
in undistinguishable words, and continued to be repeated in the
intervals of the following harangue: ‘Love indeed! don’t tell me. Aren’t
you my daughter? Answer me that. And haven’t I a right over you till you
are twenty-one? You may marry then; but not a rap of the ready: my
money’s my own all my life. Haven’t I chosen you a proper husband—a nice
rich young fellow not above forty-five?—Sixty, you minx! no such thing.
Rolling in riches: member for Threevotes: two places, three pensions,
and a sinecure: famous borough interest to make all your children
generals and archbishops. And here a miserable vagabond with only five
hundred a year in landed property.—Pish! love indeed!—own age—congenial
minds—pshaw! all a farce. Money—money—money—that’s the matter: money is
the first thing—money is the second thing—money is the third thing—money
is the only thing—money is everything and all things.’—‘Vagabond, sir,’
said a third voice: ‘I am a gentleman, and have money sufficient to
maintain your daughter in comfort.’—‘Comfort!’ said the gruff voice
again; ‘comfort with five hundred a year, ha! ha! ha! eh, Sir
Bonus?’—‘Hooh! hooh! hooh! very droll indeed,’ said a fourth voice, in a
sound that seemed a mixture of a cough and a laugh.—‘Very well, sir,’
said the third voice; ‘I shall not part with my treasure quietly, I
assure you.’—‘Rebellion! flat rebellion against parental authority,’
exclaimed the second. ‘But I’m too much for you, youngster. Where are
all my varlets and rascals?’
A violent trampling of feet, and various sounds of tumult ensued, as if
the old gentleman and his party were tearing the lovers asunder by main
force; and at length an agonising scream from the young lady seemed to
announce that their purpose was accomplished. Mr. Forester started up
with a view of doing all in his power to assist the injured damsel; and
Sir Oran Haut-ton, who, as the reader has seen, had very strong feelings
of natural justice, and a most chivalrous sympathy with females in
distress, rushed with a desperate impulse against the partition, and
hurled a great portion of it, with a violent crash, into the adjoining
apartment. This unexpected event had the effect of fixing the whole
group within for a few moments in motionless surprise in their
respective places.
The fat and portly father, who was no other than our old acquaintance
Sir Gregory Greenmould, and the old valetudinarian he had chosen for his
daughter, Sir Bonus Mac Scrip, were directing the efforts of their
myrmidons to separate the youthful pair. The young lady was clinging to
her lover with the tenacity of the tendrils of a vine: the young
gentleman’s right arm was at liberty, and he was keeping the assailants
at bay with the poker, which he had seized on the first irruption of the
foe, and which had left vestiges of its impression, to speak in ancient
phraseology, in various green wounds and bloody coxcombs.
As Sir Oran was not habituated to allow any very long process of
syllogistic reasoning to interfere between his conception and execution
of the dictates of natural justice, he commenced operations by throwing
the assailants one by one downstairs, who, as fast as they could rise
from the ground, ran or limped away into sundry holes and coverts. Sir
Bonus Mac Scrip retreated through the breach, and concealed himself
under the dining-table in Mr. Forester’s apartment. Mr. Forester
succeeded in preventing Sir Gregory from being thrown after his
myrmidons: but Sir Oran kept the fat baronet a close prisoner in the
corner of the room, while the lovers slipped away into the inn-yard,
where the chaise they had ordered was in readiness; and the cracking of
whips, the trampling of horses, and the rattling of wheels announced the
final discomfiture of the schemes of Sir Gregory Greenmould and the
hopes of Sir Bonus Mac Scrip.
[Illustration: _Sir Bonus Mac Scrip retreated through the breach, and
concealed himself under the dining-table._]
CHAPTER XXXIX
MAINCHANCE VILLA
The next day they resumed their perquisitions, still without any clue to
guide them in their search. They had hitherto had the advantage of those
halcyon days which often make the middle of winter a season of serenity
and sunshine; but, on this day, towards the evening, the sky grew black
with clouds, the snow fell rapidly in massy flakes, and the mountains
and valleys were covered with one uniform veil of whiteness. All
vestiges of roads and paths were obliterated. They were winding round
the side of a mountain, and their situation began to wear a very
unpromising aspect, when, on a sudden turn of the road, the trees and
chimneys of a villa burst upon their view in the valley below. To this
they bent their way, and on ringing at the gate-bell, and making the
requisite inquiries, they found it to be Mainchance Villa, the new
residence of Peter Paypaul Paperstamp, Esquire, whom we introduced to
our readers in the twenty-eighth chapter. They sent in their names, and
received a polite invitation to walk in. They were shown into a parlour,
where they found their old acquaintance Mr. Derrydown tête-à-tête at the
piano with Miss Celandina, with whom he was singing a duet. Miss
Celandina said, ‘her papa was just then engaged, but would soon have the
pleasure of waiting on them: in the meantime Mr. Derrydown would do the
honours of the house.’ Miss Celandina left the room; and they learned in
conversation with Mr. Derrydown, that the latter, finding his case
hopeless with Anthelia, had discovered some good reasons in an old
ballad for placing his affections where they would be more welcome; he
had therefore thrown himself at the feet of Miss Celandina Paperstamp;
the young lady’s father, having inquired into Mr. Derrydown’s fortune,
had concluded, from the answer he received, that it would be a very
_good match_ for his daughter; and the day was already definitely
arranged on which Miss Celandina Paperstamp was to be metamorphosed into
Mrs. Derrydown.
Mr. Derrydown informed them that they would not see Mr. Paperstamp till
dinner, as he was closeted in close conference with Mr. Feathernest, Mr.
Vamp, Mr. Killthedead, and Mr. Anyside Antijack, a very important
personage just arrived from abroad on the occasion of a letter from Mr.
Mystic of Cimmerian Lodge, denouncing an approaching period of public
light, which had filled Messieurs Paperstamp, Feathernest, Vamp,
Killthedead, and Antijack with the deepest dismay; and they were now
holding a consultation on the best means to be adopted for totally and
finally extinguishing the light of the human understanding. ‘I am
excluded from the council,’ proceeded Mr. Derrydown, ‘and it is their
intention to keep me altogether in the dark on the subject; but I shall
wait very patiently for the operation of the second bottle, when the wit
will be out of the brain, and the cat will be out of the bag.’
‘Is that picture a family piece?’ said Mr. Fax.
‘I hardly know,’ said Mr. Derrydown, ‘whether there is any relationship
between Mr. Paperstamp and the persons there represented; but there is
at least a very intimate connection. The old woman in the scarlet cloak
is the illustrious Mother Goose;—the two children playing at see-saw are
Margery Daw and Tommy with his Banbury cake;—the little boy and girl,
the one with a broken pitcher, and the other with a broken head, are
little Jack and Jill: the house, at the door of which the whole party is
grouped, is the famous house that Jack built; you see the clock through
the window and the mouse running up it, as in that sublime strain of
immortal genius, entitled Dickery Dock: and the boy in the corner is
little Jack Horner eating his Christmas pie. The latter is one of the
most splendid examples on record of the admirable practical doctrine of
“taking care of number one,” and he is therefore in double favour with
Mr. Paperstamp, for his excellence as a pattern of moral and political
wisdom, and for the beauty of the poetry in which his great achievement
of extracting a plum from the Christmas pie is celebrated. Mr.
Paperstamp, Mr. Feathernest, Mr. Vamp, Mr. Killthedead, and Mr. Anyside
Antijack are unanimously agreed that the Christmas pie in question is a
type and symbol of the public purse; and as that is a pie in which every
one of them has a finger, they look with great envy and admiration on
little Jack Horner, who extracted a _plum_ from it, and who, I believe,
haunts their dreams with his pie and his plum, saying, “Go, and do thou
likewise!”’
The secret council broke up, and Mr. Paperstamp entering with his four
compeers, bade the new-comers welcome to Mainchance Villa, and
introduced to them Mr. Anyside Antijack. Mr. Paperstamp did not much
like Mr. Forester’s modes of thinking; indeed he disliked them the more,
from their having once been his own; but a man of large landed property
was well worth a little civility, as there was no knowing what turn
affairs might take, what party might come into place, and who might have
the cutting up of the Christmas pie.
They now adjourned to dinner, during which, as usual, little was said,
and much was done. When the wine began to circulate, Mr. Feathernest
held forth for some time in praise of himself; and by the assistance of
a little smattering in Mr. Mystic’s synthetical logic, proved himself to
be a model of taste, genius, consistency, and public virtue. This was
too good an example to be thrown away; and Mr. Paperstamp followed it up
with a very lofty encomium on his own virtues and talents, declaring he
did not believe so great a genius, or so amiable a man as himself, Peter
Paypaul Paperstamp, Esquire, of Mainchance Villa, had appeared in the
world since the days of Jack the Giantkiller, whose _coat of darkness_
he hoped would become the costume of all the rising generation, whenever
adequate provision should be made for the whole people to be taught and
trained.
Mr. Vamp, Mr. Killthedead, and Mr. Anyside Antijack were all very loud
in their encomiums of the wine, which Mr. Paperstamp observed had been
tasted for him by his friend Mr. Feathernest, who was a great
connoisseur in ‘Sherris sack.’
Mr. Derrydown was very intent on keeping the bottle in motion, in the
hope of bringing the members of the critico-poetical council into that
state of blind self-love, when the great vacuum of the head, in which
brain was, like Mr. Harris’s indefinite article, _supplied by negation_,
would be inflated with oenogen gas, or, in other words, with the fumes
of wine, the effect of which, according to psychological chemistry, is,
after filling up every chink and crevice of the cranial void, to evolve
through the labial valve, bringing with it all the secrets both of
memory and anticipation which had been carefully laid up in the said
chinks and crevices. This state at length arrived; and Mr. Derrydown, to
quicken its operation, contrived to pick a quarrel with Mr. Vamp, who
being naturally very testy and waspish, poured out upon him a torrent of
invectives, to the infinite amusement of Mr. Derrydown, who, however,
affecting to be angry, said to him in a tragical tone,
Thus in dregs of folly sunk,
Art thou, miscreant, mad or drunk?
Cups intemperate always teach
Virulent abusive speech.[97]
This produced a general cry of ‘Chair! chair!’ Mr. Paperstamp called Mr.
Derrydown to order. The latter apologised with as much gravity as he
could assume, and said, to make amends for his warmth, he would give
them a toast, and pronounced accordingly: ‘Your scheme for extinguishing
the light of the human understanding: may it meet the success it
merits.’
_Mr. Anyside Antijack._ Nothing can be in a more hopeful train. We must
set the alarmists at work, as in the Antijacobin war: when, to be sure,
we had one or two honest men among our opposers[98]—(_Mr. Feathernest
and Mr. Paperstamp smiled and bowed_)—though they were for the most part
ill-read in history, and ignorant of human nature.[99]
_Mr. Feathernest and Mr. Paperstamp._ How, sir?
_Mr. Anyside Antijack._ For the most part, observe me. Of course I do
not include my quondam antagonists, and now very dear friends, Mr.
Paperstamp and Mr. Feathernest, who have altered their minds, as the
sublime Burke altered his mind,[100] from the most disinterested
motives.
_Mr. Forester._ Yet there are some persons, and those not the lowest in
the scale of moral philosophy, who have called the sublime Burke a
pensioned apostate.
_Mr. Vamp._ Moral philosophy! Every man who talks of moral philosophy is
a thief and a rascal, and will never make any scruple of seducing his
neighbour’s wife, or stealing his neighbour’s property.[101]
_Mr. Forester._ You can prove that assertion of course.
_Mr. Vamp._ Prove it! The editor of the Legitimate Review required to
prove an assertion!
_Mr. Anyside Antijack._ The church is in danger!
_Mr. Forester._ I confess I do not see how the church is endangered by a
simple request to prove the asserted necessary connection between the
profession of moral philosophy and the practice of robbery.
_Mr. Anyside Antijack._ For your satisfaction, sir, and from my
disposition to oblige you, as you are a gentleman of family and fortune,
I will prove it. Every moral philosopher discards the creed and
commandments:[102] the sixth commandment says, Thou shalt not steal;
therefore, every moral philosopher is a thief.
_Mr. Feathernest, Mr. Killthedead, and Mr. Paperstamp._ Nothing can be
more logical. The church is in danger! The church is in danger!
_Mr. Vamp._ Keep up that. It is an infallible tocsin for rallying all
the old women about us when everything else fails.
_Mr. Vamp, Mr. Feathernest, Mr. Paperstamp, Mr. Killthedead, and Mr.
Anyside Antijack._ The church is in danger! the church is in danger!
_Mr. Forester._ I am very well aware that the time has been when the
voice of reason could be drowned by clamour, and by rallying round the
banners of corruption and delusion a mass of blind and bigoted
prejudices, that had no real connection with the political question
which it was the object to cry down: but I see with pleasure that those
days are gone. The people read and think: their eyes are opened; they
know that all their grievances arise from the pressure of taxation far
beyond their means, from the fictitious circulation of paper-money, and
from the corrupt and venal state of popular representation. These facts
lie in a very small compass; and till you can reason them out of this
knowledge, you may vociferate ‘The church is in danger’ for ever,
without a single unpaid voice to join in the outcry.
_Mr. Feathernest._ My friend Mr. Mystic holds that it is a very bad
thing for the people to read: so it certainly is. Oh for the happy
ignorance of former ages! when the people were dolts, and knew
themselves to be so.[103] An ignorant man, judging from instinct, judges
much better than a man who reads, and is consequently misinformed.[104]
_Mr. Vamp._ Unless he reads the Legitimate Review.
_Mr. Paperstamp._ Darkness! darkness! Jack the Giantkiller’s coat of
darkness! That is your only wear.
_Mr. Anyside Antijack._ There was a time when we could lead the people
any way, and make them join with all their lungs in the yell of war:
then they were people of sound judgment, and of honest and honourable
feelings:[105] but when they pretend to feel the pressure of personal
suffering, and to read and think about its causes and remedies—such
impudence is intolerable.
_Mr. Fax._ Are they not the same people still? If they were capable of
judging then, are they not capable of judging now?
_Mr. Anyside Antijack._ By no means: they are only capable of judging
when they see with our eyes; then they see straight forward; when they
pretend to use their own, they squint.[106] They saw with our eyes in
the beginning of the Antijacobin war. They would have determined on that
war, if it had been decided by universal suffrage.[107]
_Mr. Fax._ Why was not the experiment tried?
_Mr. Anyside Antijack._ It was not convenient. But they were in a most
amiable ferment of intolerant loyalty.[108]
_Mr. Forester._ Of which the proof is to be found in the immortal
Gagging Bills, by which that intolerant loyalty was coerced.
_Mr. Anyside Antijack._ The Gagging Bills? Hem! ha! What shall we say to
that? (_To Mr. Vamp._)
_Mr. Vamp._ Say? The church is in danger!
_Mr. Feathernest, Mr. Paperstamp, Mr. Killthedead, and Mr. Anyside
Antijack._ The church is in danger! the church is in danger!
_Mr. Forester._ Why was a war undertaken to prevent revolution, if all
the people of this country were so well fortified in loyalty? Did they
go to war for the purpose of forcibly preventing themselves from
following a bad example against their own will? For this is what your
argument seems to imply?
_Mr. Fax._ That the people were in a certain degree of ferment is true:
but it required a great deal of management and delusion to turn that
ferment into the channel of foreign war.
_Mr. Anyside Antijack._ Well, sir, and there was no other way to avoid
domestic reform, which every man who desires is a ruffian, a scoundrel,
and an incendiary,[109] as much so as those two rascals Rousseau and
Voltaire, who were the trumpeters of Hebert and Marat.[110] Reform, sir,
is not to be thought of; we have been at war twenty-five years to
prevent it; and to have it, after all, would be very hard. We have got
the national debt instead of it: in my opinion a very pretty substitute.
_Mr. Derrydown_ sings—
And I’ll hang on thy neck, my love, my love,
And I’ll hang on thy neck for aye!
And closer and closer I’ll press thee, my love,
Until my _dying day_.
_Mr. Anyside Antijack._ I am happy to reflect that the silly question of
reform will have very few supporters in the Honourable House: but few as
they are, the number would be lessened if all who come into Parliament
by means which that question attempts to stigmatise would abstain from
voting upon it. Undoubtedly such practices are scandalous, as being
legally, and therefore morally wrong: but it is false that any evil to
the legislature arises from them.[111]
_Mr. Forester._ Perhaps not, sir; but very great evil arises through
them from the legislature to the people. Your admission, that they are
legally, and _therefore_ morally wrong, implies a very curious method of
deriving morality from law; but I suspect there is much immorality that
is perfectly legal, and much legality that is supremely immoral. But
these practices, you admit, are both legally and morally wrong; yet you
call it a silly question to propose their cessation; and you assert that
all who wish to abolish them, all who wish to abolish illegal and
immoral practices, are ruffians, scoundrels, and incendiaries.
_Mr. Killthedead._ Yes, and madmen moreover, and villains.[112] We are
all upon gunpowder! The insane and the desperate are scattering
firebrands![113] We shall all be blown up in a body: sinecures, rotten
boroughs, secret-service-men, and the whole _honourable band of
gentlemen pensioners_, will all be blown up in a body! _A stand! a
stand! it is time to make a stand against popular encroachment!_
_Mr. Vamp, Mr. Feathernest, and Mr. Paperstamp._ The church is in
danger!
_Mr. Anyside Antijack._ Here is the great blunderbuss that is to blow
the whole nation to atoms! the Spencean blunderbuss! (_Saying these
words he produced a popgun from his pocket_,[114] _and shot off a paper
pellet in the ear of Mr. Paperstamp_,
_Who in a kind of study sate
Denominated brown_;
_which made the latter spring up in sudden fright, to the irremediable
perdition of a decanter of ‘Sherris sack,’ over which Mr. Feathernest
lamented bitterly._)
_Mr. Forester._ I do not see what connection the Spencean theory, the
impracticable chimaera of an obscure herd of fanatics, has with the
great national question of parliamentary reform.
_Mr. Anyside Antijack._ Sir, you may laugh at this popgun, but you will
find it the mallet of Thor.[115] The Spenceans are far more respectable
than the parliamentary reformers, and have a more distinct and
intelligible system!!![116]
_Mr. Vamp._ Bravo! bravo! bravo! There is not another man in our corps
with brass enough to make such an assertion, but Mr. Anyside Antijack.
(_Reiterated shouts of Bravo! from Mr. Vamp, Mr. Feathernest, Mr.
Paperstamp, and Mr. Killthedead._)
_Mr. Killthedead._ Make out that, and our job is done.
_Mr. Anyside Antijack._ Make it out! Nonsense! I shall take it for
granted: I shall set up the Spencean plan as a more sensible plan than
that of the parliamentary reformers: then knock down the former, and
argue against the latter, _a fortiori_. (_The shouts of Bravo! here
became perfectly deafening, the critico-poetical corps being by this
time much more than half-seas-over._)
_Mr. Killthedead._—The members for rotten boroughs are the most
independent members in the Honourable House, and the representatives of
most constituents least so.[117]
_Mr. Fax._ How will you prove that?
_Mr. Killthedead._ By calling the former gentlemen, and the latter mob
representatives.[118]
_Mr. Vamp._ Nothing can be more logical.
_Mr. Fax._ Do you call that logic?
_Mr. Vamp._ Excellent logic. At least it will pass for such with our
readers.
_Mr. Anyside Antijack._ We, and those who think with us, are the only
wise and good men.[119]
_Mr. Forester._ May I take the liberty to inquire what you mean by a
wise and a good man?
_Mr. Anyside Antijack._ A wise man is he who looks after the one thing
needful; and a good man is he who has it. The acme of wisdom and
goodness in conjunction consists in appropriating as much as possible of
the public money; and saying to those from whose pockets it is taken, ‘I
am perfectly satisfied with things as they are. Let _well_ alone!’
_Mr. Paperstamp._ We shall make out a very good case; but you must not
forget to call the present public distress an awful dispensation:[120] a
little pious cant goes a great way towards turning the thoughts of men
from the dangerous and jacobinical propensity of looking into moral and
political causes for moral and political effects.
_Mr. Fax._ But the moral and political causes are now too obvious, and
too universally known, to be obscured by any such means. All the arts
and eloquence of corruption may be overthrown by the enumeration of
these simple words: boroughs, taxes, and paper-money.
_Mr. Anyside Antijack._ Paper-money! What, is the ghost of bullion
abroad?[121]
_Mr. Forester._ Yes! and till you can make the buried substance burst
the paper cerements of its sepulchre, its ghost will continue to walk
like the ghost of Caesar, saying to the desolated nation: ‘I am thy evil
spirit!’
_Mr. Anyside Antijack._ I must say, I am very sorry to find a gentleman
like you taking the part of the swinish multitude, who are only fit for
beasts of burden, to raise subsistence for their betters, pay taxes for
placemen, and recruit the army and navy for the benefit of legitimacy,
divine right, the Jesuits, the Pope, the Inquisition, and the Virgin
Mary’s petticoat.
_Mr. Paperstamp._ Hear! hear! hear! Hear the voice which the stream of
Tendency is uttering for elevation of our thought!
_Mr. Forester._ It was once said by a poet, whose fallen state none can
more bitterly lament than I do:
We shall exult if they who rule the land
Be men who hold its many blessings dear,
Wise, upright, valiant; not a venal band,
Who are to judge of danger which they fear,
And honour which they do not understand.
_Mr. Feathernest._ Poets, sir, are not amenable to censure, however
frequently their political opinions may exhibit marks of
inconsistency.[122] The Muse, as a French author says, is a mere
_étourdie_, a _folâtre_ who may play at her option on heath or on turf,
and transfer her song at pleasure from Hampden to Ferdinand, and from
Washington to Louis.
_Mr. Forester._ If a poet be contented to consider himself in the light
of a merry-andrew, be it so. But if he assume the garb of moral
austerity, and pour forth against corruption and oppression the language
of moral indignation, there would at least be some decency, if, when he
changes sides, he would let the world see that conversion and promotion
have not gone hand in hand.
_Mr. Feathernest._ What decency might be in that, I know not: but of
this I am very certain, that there would be no wisdom in it.
_Mr. Anyside Antijack._ No! no! there would be no wisdom in it.
_Mr. Feathernest._ Sir, I am a wise and a good man: mark that, sir; ay,
and an honourable man.
_Mr. Vamp._ ‘So are we all, all honourable men!’
_Mr. Anyside Antijack._ And we will stick by one another with heart and
hand——
_Mr. Killthedead._ To make a stand against popular encroachment——
_Mr. Feathernest._ To bring back the glorious ignorance of the feudal
ages——
_Mr. Paperstamp._ To rebuild the mystic temples of venerable
superstition——
_Mr. Vamp._ To extinguish, totally and finally, the light of the human
understanding——
_Mr. Anyside Antijack._ And to get all we can for our trouble!
_Mr. Feathernest._ So we will all say.
_Mr. Paperstamp._ And so we will all sing.
QUINTETTO
MR. FEATHERNEST, MR. VAMP, MR. KILLTHEDEAD, MR. PAPERSTAMP, AND MR.
ANYSIDE ANTIJACK
To the tune of ‘_Turning, turning, turning, as the wheel goes round_.’
RECITATIVE—MR. PAPERSTAMP
Jack Horner’s CHRISTMAS PIE my learned nurse
Interpreted to mean the _public purse_.
From thence a _plum_ he drew. O happy Horner!
Who would not be ensconced in thy snug corner?
THE FIVE
While round the public board all eagerly we linger,
For what we can get we will try, try, try:
And we’ll all have a finger, a finger, a finger,
We’ll all have a finger in the CHRISTMAS PIE.
MR. FEATHERNEST
By my own poetic laws, I’m a dealer in applause
For those who don’t deserve it, but will buy, buy, buy:
So round the court I linger, and thus I get a finger,
A finger, finger, finger in the CHRISTMAS PIE.
THE FIVE
And we’ll all have a finger, a finger, a finger,
We’ll all have a finger in the CHRISTMAS PIE.
MR. VAMP
My share of pie to win, I will dash through thick and thin,
And philosophy and liberty shall fly, fly, fly:
And truth and taste shall know, that their everlasting foe
Has a finger, finger, finger in the CHRISTMAS PIE.
THE FIVE
And we’ll all have a finger, a finger, a finger,
We’ll all have a finger in the CHRISTMAS PIE.
MR. KILLTHEDEAD
I’ll make my verses rattle with the din of war and battle,
For war doth increase sa-la-ry, ry, ry:
And I’ll shake the public ears with the triumph of Algiers,
And thus I’ll get a finger in the CHRISTMAS PIE.
THE FIVE
And we’ll all have a finger, a finger, a finger,
We’ll all have a finger in the CHRISTMAS PIE.
MR. PAPERSTAMP
And while you thrive by ranting, I’ll try my luck at canting,
And scribble verse and prose all so dry, dry, dry:
And Mystic’s patent smoke public intellect shall choke,
And we’ll all have a finger in the CHRISTMAS PIE.
THE FIVE
We’ll all have a finger, a finger, a finger,
We’ll all have a finger in the CHRISTMAS PIE.
MR. ANYSIDE ANTIJACK
My tailor is so clever, that my coat will turn for ever
And take any colour you can dye, dye, dye:
For my earthly wishes are among the loaves and fishes,
And to have my little finger in the CHRISTMAS PIE.
THE FIVE
And we’ll all have a finger, a finger, a finger,
We’ll all have a finger in the CHRISTMAS PIE.
CHAPTER XL
THE HOPES OF THE WORLD
The mountain-roads being now buried in snow, they were compelled, on
leaving Mainchance Villa, to follow the most broad and beaten track, and
they entered on a turnpike road which led in the direction of the sea.
‘I no longer wonder,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘that men in general are so much
disposed as I have found them to look with supreme contempt on the
literary character, seeing the abject servility and venality by which it
is so commonly debased.’[123]
_Mr. Forester._ What then becomes of the hopes of the world, which you
have admitted to consist entirely in the progress of the mind, allowing,
as you must allow, the incontrovertible fact of the physical
deterioration of the human race?
_Mr. Fax._ When I speak of the mind, I do not allude either to poetry or
to periodical criticism, nor, in any great degree, to physical science;
but I rest my hopes on the very same basis with Mr. Mystic’s fear—the
general diffusion of moral and political truth.
_Mr. Forester._ For poetry, its best days are gone. Homer, Shakspeare,
and Milton will return no more.
_Mr. Fax._ Lucretius we yet may hope for.
_Mr. Forester._ Not till superstition and prejudice have been shorn of a
much larger portion of their power. If Lucretius should arise among us
in the present day, exile or imprisonment would be his infallible
portion. We have yet many steps to make before we shall arrive at the
liberality and toleration of Tiberius![124] And as to physical science,
though it does in some measure weaken the dominion of mental error, yet
I fear, where it proves itself in one instance the friend of human
liberty, it will be found in ninety-nine the slave of corruption and
luxury.
_Mr. Fax._ In many cases science is both morally and politically
neutral, and its speculations have no connection whatever with the
business of life.
_Mr. Forester._ It is true; and such speculations are often called
sublime: though the sublimity of uselessness passes my comprehension.
But the neutrality is only apparent: for it has in these cases the real
practical effect, and a most pernicious one it is, of withdrawing some
of the highest and most valuable minds from the only path of real
utility, which I agree with you to be that of moral and political
knowledge, to pursuits of no more real importance than that of keeping a
dozen eggs at a time dancing one after another in the air.
_Mr. Fax._ If it be admitted, on the one hand, that the progress of
luxury has kept pace with that of physical science, it must be
acknowledged, on the other, that superstition has decayed in at least an
equal proportion; and I think it cannot be denied that the world is a
gainer by the exchange.
_Mr. Forester._ The decay of superstition is immeasurably beneficial;
but the growth of luxury is not, therefore, the less pernicious. It is
lamentable to reflect that _there is most indigence in the richest
countries_;[125] and that the increase of superfluous enjoyment in the
few is counterbalanced by the proportionate diminution of comfort in the
many. Splendid equipages and sumptuous dwellings are far from being
symbols of general prosperity. The palace of luxurious indolence is much
rather the symbol of a thousand hovels, by the labours and privations of
whose wretched inhabitants that baleful splendour is maintained.
Civilisation, vice, and folly grow old together. Corruption begins among
the higher orders, and from them descends to the people; so that in
every nation the ancient nobility is the first to exhibit symptoms of
corporeal and mental degeneracy, and to show themselves unfit both for
council and war. If you recapitulate the few titled names that will
adorn the history of the present times, you will find that almost all of
them are new creations. The corporeal decay of mankind I hold to be
undeniable: the increase of general knowledge I allow: but reason is of
slow growth; and if men in general only become more corrupt as they
become more learned, the progress of literature will oppose no adequate
counterpoise to that of avarice, luxury, and disease.
_Mr. Fax._ Certainly, the progress of reason is slow, but the ground
which it has once gained it never abandons. The interest of rulers, and
the prejudices of the people, are equally hostile to everything that
comes in the shape of innovation; but all that now wears the strongest
sanction of antiquity was once received with reluctance under the
semblance of novelty: and that reason, which in the present day can
scarcely obtain a footing from the want of precedents, will grow with
the growth of years, and become a precedent in its turn.[126]
_Mr. Forester._ Reason may be diffused in society, but it is only in
minds which _have courage enough to despise prejudice and virtue enough
to love truth only for itself_,[127] that its seeds will germinate into
wholesome and vigorous life. The love of truth is the most noble quality
of human intellect, the most delightful in the interchange of private
confidence, the most important in the direction of those speculations
which have public happiness for their aim. Yet of all qualities this is
the most rare: it is the Phoenix of the intellectual world. In private
intercourse, how very very few are they whose assertions carry
conviction! How much petty deception, paltry equivocation, hollow
profession, smiling malevolence, and polished hypocrisy combine to make
a desert and a solitude of what is called society! How much empty
pretence and simulated patriotism, and shameless venality, and
unblushing dereliction of principle, and clamorous recrimination, and
daring imposture, and secret cabal, and mutual undermining of
‘Honourable Friends,’ render utterly loathsome and disgusting the
theatre of public life! How much timid deference to vulgar prejudice,
how much misrepresentation of the motives of conscientious opponents,
how many appeals to unreflecting passion, how much assumption of
groundless hypothesis, how many attempts to darken the clearest light
and entangle the simplest clue, render not only nugatory, but
pernicious, the speculations of moral and political reason! Pernicious,
inasmuch as it is better for the benighted traveller to remain
stationary in darkness, than to follow an _ignis fatuus_ through the
fen! Falsehood is the great vice of the age: falsehood of heart,
falsehood of mind, falsehood of every form and mode of intellect and
intercourse: so that it is hardly possible _to find a man of worth and
goodness of whom to make a friend: but he who does find such an one will
have more enjoyment of friendship than in a better age; for he will be
doubly fond of him, and will love him as Hamlet does Horatio, and with
him retiring and getting, as it were, under the shelter of a wall, will
let the storm of life blow over him_.[128]
_Mr. Fax._ But that retirement must be consecrated to philosophical
labour, or, however delightful to the individuals, it will be treason to
the public cause. Be the world as bad as it may, it would necessarily be
much worse if the votaries of truth and the children of virtue were all
to withdraw from its vortex, and leave it to itself. If reason be
progressive, however slowly, the wise and good have sufficient
encouragement to persevere; and even if the doctrine of deterioration be
true, it is no less their duty to contribute all in their power to
retard its progress, by investigating its causes and remedies.
_Mr. Forester._ Undoubtedly. But the progress of theoretical knowledge
has a most fearful counterpoise in the accelerated depravation of
practical morality. The frantic love of money, which seems to govern our
contemporaries to a degree unprecedented in the history of man,
paralyses the energy of independence, darkens the light of reason, and
blights the blossoms of love.
_Mr. Fax._ The _amor sceleratus habendi_ is not peculiar either to our
times or to civilised life. _Money you must have, no matter from
whence_, is a sentence, if we may believe Euripides, as old as the
heroic age: and _the monk Rubruquis says of the Tartars, that, as
parents keep all their daughters till they can sell them, their maids
are sometimes very stale before they are married_.[129]
_Mr. Forester._ In that respect, then, I must acknowledge the Tartars
and we are much on a par. It is a collateral question well worth
considering, how far the security of property, which contributes so much
to the diffusion of knowledge and the permanence of happiness, is
favourable to the growth of individual virtue.
_Mr. Fax._ Security of property tranquillises the minds of men, and fits
them to shine rather in speculation than in action. In turbulent and
insecure states of society, when the fluctuations of power, or the
incursions of predatory neighbours, hang like the sword of Damocles over
the most flourishing possessions, friends are more dear to each other,
mutual services and sacrifices are more useful and more necessary, the
energies of heart and hand are continually called forth, and shining
examples of the self-oblivious virtues are produced in the same
proportion as mental speculation is unknown or disregarded: but our
admiration of these virtues must be tempered by the remark, that they
arise more from impulsive feeling than from reflective principle; and
that where life and fortune hold by such a precarious tenure, the first
may be risked, and the second abandoned, with much less effort than
would be required for inferior sacrifices in more secure and tranquil
times.
_Mr. Forester._ Alas, my friend! I would willingly see such virtues as
do honour to human nature, without being very solicitous as to the
comparative quantities of impulse and reflection in which they
originate. If the security of property and the diffusion of general
knowledge were attended with a corresponding increase of benevolence and
_individual mental power_, no philanthropist could look with despondency
on the prospects of the world: but I can discover no symptoms of either
the one or the other. Insatiable accumulators, overgrown capitalists,
fatteners on public spoil, I cannot but consider as excrescences on the
body politic, typical of disease and prophetic of decay: yet it is to
these and such as these that the poet tunes his harp, and the man of
science consecrates his labours: it is for them that an enormous portion
of the population is condemned to unhealthy manufactories, not less
deadly but more lingering than the pestilence: it is for them that the
world rings with lamentations, if the most trivial accident, the most
transient sickness, the most frivolous disappointment befall them: but
when the prisons swarm, when the workhouses overflow, when whole
parishes declare themselves bankrupt, when thousands perish by famine in
the wintry streets, where then is the poet, where is the man of science,
where is the _elegant_ philosopher? The poet is singing hymns to the
great ones of the world, the man of science is making discoveries for
the adornment of their dwellings or the enhancement of their culinary
luxuries, and the _elegant_ philosopher is much too refined a personage
to allow such vulgar subjects as the sufferings of the poor to interfere
with his sublime speculations. _They are married and cannot come!_
_Mr. Fax._ Ἐψαυσας ἀλγεινοτατας ἐμοι μεριμνας![130] Those _elegant_
philosophers are among the most fatal enemies to the advancement of
moral and political knowledge; laborious triflers, profound
investigators of nothing, everlasting talkers about taste and beauty,
who see in the starving beggar only the picturesqueness of his rags, and
in the ruined cottage only the harmonising tints of moss, mildew, and
stonecrop.
_Mr. Forester._ We talk of public feeling and national sympathy. Our
dictionaries may define those words and our lips may echo them, but we
must look for the realities among less enlightened nations. The Canadian
savages cannot imagine the possibility of any individual in a community
having a full meal while another has but half an one:[131] still less
could they imagine that one should have too much, while another had
nothing. Theirs is that bond of brotherhood which nature weaves and
civilisation breaks, and from which the older nations grow the farther
they recede.
_Mr. Fax._ It cannot be otherwise. The state you have described is
adapted only to a small community, and to the infancy of human society.
I shall make a very liberal concession to your views, if I admit it to
be possible that the middle stage of the progress of man is worse than
either the point from which he started or that at which he will arrive.
But it is my decided opinion that we have passed that middle stage, and
that every evil incident to the present condition of human society will
be removed by the diffusion of moral and political knowledge, and the
general increase of moral and political liberty. I contemplate with
great satisfaction the rapid decay of many hoary absurdities, which a
few transcendental hierophants of the venerable and the mysterious are
labouring in vain to revive. I look with well-grounded confidence to a
period when there will be neither slaves among the northern, nor monks
among the southern Americans. The sun of freedom has risen over that
great continent, with the certain promise of a glorious day. I form the
best hopes for my own country, in the mental improvement of the people,
whenever she shall breathe from the pressure of that preposterous system
of finance which sooner or later must fall by its own weight.
_Mr. Forester._ I apply to our system of finance a fiction of the
northern mythology. The ash of Yggdrasil overshadows the world:
Ratatosk, the squirrel, sports in the branches: Nidhogger, the serpent,
gnaws at the root.[132] The ash of Yggdrasil is the tree of national
prosperity: Ratatosk the squirrel is the careless and unreflecting
fundholder: Nidhogger the serpent is POLITICAL CORRUPTION, which will in
time consume the root, and spread the branches on the dust. What will
then become of the squirrel?
_Mr. Fax._ Ratatosk must look to himself: Nidhogger must be killed, and
the ash of Yggdrasil will rise like a vegetable Phoenix to flourish
again for ages.
Thus conversing, they arrived on the sea-shore, where we shall leave
them to pursue their way, while we investigate the fate of Anthelia.
[Illustration: _She immediately ran through the shrubbery._]
CHAPTER XLI
ALGA CASTLE
Anthelia had not ventured to resume her solitary rambles after her
return from Onevote; more especially as she anticipated the period when
she should revisit her favourite haunts in the society of one congenial
companion whose presence would heighten the magic of their interest, and
restore to them that feeling of security which her late adventure had
destroyed. But as she was sitting in her library on the morning of her
disappearance, she suddenly heard a faint and mournful cry, like the
voice of a child in distress. She rose, opened the window, and listened.
She heard the sounds more distinctly. They seemed to ascend from that
part of the dingle immediately beneath the shrubbery that fringed her
windows. It was certainly the cry of a child. She immediately ran
through the shrubbery and descended the rocky steps into the dingle,
where she found a little boy tied to the stem of a tree, crying and
sobbing as if his heart would break. Anthelia easily set him at liberty,
and his grief passed away like an April shower. She asked who had the
barbarity to treat him in such a manner. He said he could not tell—four
strange men on horseback had taken him up on the common where his father
lived, and brought him there and tied him to the tree, he could not tell
why. Anthelia took his hand and was leading him from the dingle,
intending to send him home by Peter Gray, when the men who had made the
little child their unconscious decoy broke from their ambush, seized
Anthelia, and taking effectual precautions to stifle her cries, placed
her on one of their horses, and travelled with great rapidity along
narrow and unfrequented ways, till they arrived at a solitary castle on
the sea-shore, where they conveyed her to a splendid suite of
apartments, and left her in solitude, locking, as they retired, the door
of the outer room.
She was utterly unable to comprehend the motive of so extraordinary a
proceeding, or to form any conjecture as to its probable result. An old
woman of a very unmeaning physiognomy shortly after entered, to tender
her services; but to all Anthelia’s questions she only replied with a
shake of the head, and a smile which she meant to be very consolatory.
The old woman retired, and shortly after reappeared with an elegant
dinner, which Anthelia dismissed untouched. ‘There is no harm intended
you, my sweet lady,’ said the old woman; ‘so pray don’t starve
yourself.’ Anthelia assured her she had no such intention, but had no
appetite at that time; but she drank a glass of wine at the old woman’s
earnest entreaty.
In the evening the mystery was elucidated by a visit from Lord Anophel
Achthar; who, falling on his knees before her, entreated her to allow
the violence of his passion to plead his pardon for a proceeding which
nothing but the imminent peril of seeing her in the arms of a rival
could have induced him to adopt. Anthelia replied that, if his object
were to obtain her affections, he had taken the most effectual method to
frustrate his own views; that if he thought by constraint and cruelty to
obtain her hand without her affections, he might be assured that he
would never succeed. Her heart, however, she candidly told him, was no
longer in her power to dispose of; and she hoped, after this frank
avowal, he would see the folly, if not the wickedness, of protracting
his persecution.
He now, still on his knees, broke out into a rhapsody about love, and
hope, and death, and despair, in which he developed the whole treasury
of his exuberant and overflowing folly. He then expatiated on his
expectations, and pointed out all the advantages of wealth and
consequence attached to the title of Marchioness of Agaric, and
concluded by saying that she must be aware so important and decisive a
measure had not been taken without the most grave and profound
deliberation, and that he never could suffer her to make her exit from
Alga Castle in any other character than that of Lady Achthar. He then
left her to meditate on his heroic resolution.
[Illustration: _He flattered himself that Anthelia would at length come
to a determination._]
The next day he repeated his visit—resumed his supplications—reiterated
his determination to persevere—and received from Anthelia the same
reply. She endeavoured to reason with him on the injustice and absurdity
of his proceedings; but he told her the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub and Mr.
Feathernest the poet had taught him that all reasonings pretending to
point out absurdity and injustice were manifestly jacobinical, which he,
as one of the pillars of the state, was bound not to listen to.
He renewed his visits every day for a week, becoming with every new
visit less humble and more menacing, and consequently more disagreeable
to Anthelia, as the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub, by whose instructions he
acted, secretly foresaw and designed. The latter now undertook to plead
his Lordship’s cause, and set in a clear point of view to Anthelia the
inflexibility of his Lordship’s resolutions, which, properly expounded,
could not fail to have due weight against the alternatives of protracted
solitude and hopeless resistance.
The reverend gentleman, however, had other views than those he held out
to Lord Anophel, and presented himself to Anthelia with an aspect of
great commiseration. He said he was an unwilling witness of his
Lordship’s unjust proceedings, which he had done all in his power to
prevent, and which had been carried into effect against his will. It was
his firm intention to set her at liberty as soon as he could devise the
means of doing so; but all the outlets of Alga Castle were so guarded
that he had not yet been able to devise any feasible scheme for her
escape; but it should be his sole study night and day to effect it.
Anthelia thanked him for his sympathy, and asked why he could not give
notice to her friends of her situation, which would accomplish the
purpose at once. He replied that Lord Anophel already mistrusted him,
and that if anything of the kind were done, however secretly he might
proceed, the suspicion would certainly fall upon him, and that he should
then be a ruined man, as all his worldly hopes rested on the Marquis of
Agaric. Anthelia offered to make him the utmost compensation for the
loss of the Marquis of Agaric’s favour; but he said that was impossible,
unless she could make him a bishop, as the Marquis of Agaric would do.
His plan, he said, must be to effect her liberation, without seeming to
be himself in any way whatever concerned in it; and though he would
willingly lose everything for her sake, yet he trusted she would not
think ill of him for wishing to wait a few days, that he might try to
devise the means of serving her without ruining himself.
He continued his daily visits of sympathy, sometimes amusing her with a
hopeful scheme, at others detailing with a rueful face the formidable
nature of some unexpected obstacle, hinting continually at his readiness
to sacrifice everything for her sake, lamenting the necessity of delay,
and assuring her that in the meanwhile no evil should happen to her. He
flattered himself that Anthelia, wearied out with the irksomeness of
confinement, and the continual alternations of hope and disappointment,
and contrasting the respectful tenderness of his manner with the
disagreeable system of behaviour to which he had fashioned Lord Anophel,
would at length come to a determination of removing all his difficulties
by offering him her hand and fortune as a compensation for his
anticipated bishopric. It was not, however, very long before Anthelia
penetrated his design; but as she did not deem it prudent to come to a
rupture with him at that time, she continued to listen to his daily
details of plans and impediments, and allowed him to take to himself all
the merit he seemed to assume for supplying her with music and books;
though he expressed himself very much shocked at her asking him for
Gibbon and Rousseau, whose works, he said, ought to be burned _in foro_
by the hands of _Carnifex_.
The windows of her apartment were at an immense elevation from the
beach, as that part of the castle-wall formed a continued line with the
black and precipitous side of the rock on which it stood. During the
greater portion of the hours of daylight she sate near the window with
her harp, gazing on the changeful aspects of the wintry sea, now
slumbering like a summer lake in the sunshine of a halcyon day—now
raging beneath the sway of the tempest, while the dancing snow-flakes
seemed to accumulate on the foam of the billows, and the spray was
hurled back like snow-dust from the rocks. The feelings these scenes
suggested she developed in the following stanzas, to which she adapted a
wild and impassioned air, and they became the favourite song of her
captivity.
[Illustration: _Gazing on the changeful aspects of the wintry sea._]
THE MAGIC BARK
I
O Freedom! power of life and light!
Sole nurse of truth and glory!
Bright dweller on the rocky cliff!
Lone wanderer on the sea!
Where’er the sunbeam slumbers bright
On snow-clad mountains hoary;
Wherever flies the veering skiff,
O’er waves that breathe of thee!
Be thou the guide of all my thought—
The source of all my being—
The genius of my waking mind—
The spirit of my dreams!
To me thy magic spell be taught,
The captive spirit freeing,
To wander with the ocean-wind
Where’er thy beacon beams.
II
O sweet it were, in magic bark,
On one loved breast reclining,
To sail around the varied world,
To every blooming shore;
And oft the gathering storm to mark
Its lurid folds combining;
And safely ride, with sails unfurled,
Amid the tempest’s roar;
And see the mighty breakers rave
On cliff and sand and shingle,
And hear, with long re-echoing shock,
The caverned steeps reply;
And while the storm-cloud and the wave
In darkness seemed to mingle,
To skim beside the surf-swept rock,
And glide uninjured by.
III
And when the summer seas were calm,
And summer skies were smiling,
And evening came, with clouds of gold,
To gild the western wave;
And gentle airs and dews of balm,
The pensive mind beguiling,
Should call the Ocean Swain to fold
His sea-flocks in the cave,
Unearthly music’s tenderest spell,
With gentlest breezes blending
And waters softly rippling near
The prow’s light course along,
Should flow from Triton’s winding shell,
Through ocean’s depths ascending
From where it charmed the Nereid’s ear,
Her coral bowers among.
IV