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Title: The Man of Feeling
Author: Mackenzie, Henry
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Man of Feeling" ***
Transcribed from the 1886 Cassell & Company edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
[Picture: Book cover]
CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY
* * * * *
THE
MAN OF FEELING
BY
HENRY MACKENZIE.
[Picture: Decorative graphic]
CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
_LONDON_, _PARIS_, _NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_.
1886.
EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
HENRY MACKENZIE, the son of an Edinburgh physician, was born in August,
1745. After education in the University of Edinburgh he went to London
in 1765, at the age of twenty, for law studies, returned to Edinburgh,
and became Crown Attorney in the Scottish Court of Exchequer. When
Mackenzie was in London, Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy” was in course of
publication. The first two volumes had appeared in 1759, and the ninth
appeared in 1767, followed in 1768, the year of Sterne’s death, by “The
Sentimental Journey.” Young Mackenzie had a strong bent towards
literature, and while studying law in London, he read Sterne, and falling
in with the tone of sentiment which Sterne himself caught from the spirit
of the time and the example of Rousseau, he wrote “The Man of Feeling.”
This book was published, without author’s name, in 1771. It was so
popular that a young clergyman made a copy of it popular with imagined
passages of erasure and correction, on the strength of which he claimed
to be its author, and obliged Henry Mackenzie to declare himself. In
1773 Mackenzie published a second novel, “The Man of the World,” and in
1777 a third, “Julia de Roubigné.” An essay-reading society in
Edinburgh, of which he was a leader, started in January, 1779, a weekly
paper called _The Mirror_, which he edited until May, 1780. Its writers
afterwards joined in producing _The Lounger_, which lasted from February,
1785, to January, 1787. Henry Mackenzie contributed forty-two papers to
_The Mirror_ and fifty-seven to _The Lounger_. When the Royal Society of
Edinburgh was founded Henry Mackenzie was active as one of its first
members. He was also one of the founders of the Highland Society.
Although his “Man of Feeling” was a serious reflection of the false
sentiment of the Revolution, Mackenzie joined afterwards in writing
tracts to dissuade the people from faith in the doctrines of the
Revolutionists. Mackenzie wrote also a tragedy, “The Prince of Tunis,”
which was acted with success at Edinburgh, and a comedy, “The White
Hypocrite,” which was acted once only at Covent garden. He died at the
age of eighty-six, on the 13th June, 1831, having for many years been
regarded as an elder friend of their own craft by the men of letters who
in his days gave dignity to Edinburgh society, and caused the town to be
called the Modern Athens.
A man of refined taste, who caught the tone of the French sentiment of
his time, has, of course, pleased French critics, and has been translated
into French. “The Man of Feeling” begins with imitation of Sterne, and
proceeds in due course through so many tears that it is hardly to be
called a dry book. As guide to persons of a calculating disposition who
may read these pages I append an index to the Tears shed in “The Man of
Feeling.”
INDEX TO TEARS.
(_Chokings_, _&c._, _not counted_.)
PAGE
“Odds but should have wept” xiii
Tear, given, “cordial drop” repeated 17
,, like Cestus of Cytherea 26
,, one on a cheek 30
“I will not weep” 31
Tears add energy to benediction 31
,, tribute of some 52
„ blessings on 52
I would weep too 52
Not an unmoistened eye 53
Do you weep again? 53
Hand bathed with tears 53
Tears, burst into 54
„ sobbing and shedding 74
,, burst into 75
,, virtue in these 75
„ he wept at the recollection of her 80
,, glister of new-washed 81
Sweet girl (here she wept) 94
I could only weep 95
Tears, saw his 97
,, burst into 99
„ wrung from the heart 99
,, feet bathed with 100
,, mingled, _i.e._, his with hers 100
„ voice lost in 108
Eye met with a tear 108
Tear stood in eye 127
Tears, face bathed with 130
Dropped one tear, no more 131
Tears, press-gang could scarce keep from 136
Big drops wetted gray beard 137
Tears, shower of 138
,, scarce forced—blubbered like a boy 139
Moistened eye 141
Tears choked utterance 144
I have wept many a time 144
Girl wept, brother sobbed 145
Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and wept between 145
every kiss
Tears flowing down cheeks 148
,, gushed afresh 148
Beamy moisture 154
A tear dropped 165
Tear in her eye, the sick man kissed it off in its bud, 176
smiling through the dimness of his own
Hand wet by tear just fallen 185
Tears flowing without control 187
Cheek wiped (at the end of the last chapter) 189
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION
MY dog had made a point on a piece of fallow-ground, and led the curate
and me two or three hundred yards over that and some stubble adjoining,
in a breathless state of expectation, on a burning first of September.
It was a false point, and our labour was vain: yet, to do Rover justice
(for he’s an excellent dog, though I have lost his pedigree), the fault
was none of his, the birds were gone: the curate showed me the spot where
they had lain basking, at the root of an old hedge.
I stopped and cried Hem! The curate is fatter than I; he wiped the sweat
from his brow.
There is no state where one is apter to pause and look round one, than
after such a disappointment. It is even so in life. When we have been
hurrying on, impelled by some warm wish or other, looking neither to the
right hand nor to the left—we find of a sudden that all our gay hopes are
flown; and the only slender consolation that some friend can give us, is
to point where they were once to be found. And lo! if we are not of that
combustible race, who will rather beat their heads in spite, than wipe
their brows with the curate, we look round and say, with the nauseated
listlessness of the king of Israel, “All is vanity and vexation of
spirit.”
I looked round with some such grave apophthegm in my mind when I
discovered, for the first time, a venerable pile, to which the enclosure
belonged. An air of melancholy hung about it. There was a languid
stillness in the day, and a single crow, that perched on an old tree by
the side of the gate, seemed to delight in the echo of its own croaking.
I leaned on my gun and looked; but I had not breath enough to ask the
curate a question. I observed carving on the bark of some of the trees:
’twas indeed the only mark of human art about the place, except that some
branches appeared to have been lopped, to give a view of the cascade,
which was formed by a little rill at some distance.
Just at that instant I saw pass between the trees a young lady with a
book in her hand. I stood upon a stone to observe her; but the curate
sat him down on the grass, and leaning his back where I stood, told me,
“That was the daughter of a neighbouring gentleman of the name of WALTON,
whom he had seen walking there more than once.
“Some time ago,” he said, “one HARLEY lived there, a whimsical sort of
man I am told, but I was not then in the cure; though, if I had a turn
for those things, I might know a good deal of his history, for the
greatest part of it is still in my possession.”
“His history!” said I. “Nay, you may call it what you please,” said the
curate; for indeed it is no more a history than it is a sermon. The way
I came by it was this: some time ago, a grave, oddish kind of a man
boarded at a farmer’s in this parish: the country people called him The
Ghost; and he was known by the slouch in his gait, and the length of his
stride. I was but little acquainted with him, for he never frequented
any of the clubs hereabouts. Yet for all he used to walk a-nights, he
was as gentle as a lamb at times; for I have seen him playing at teetotum
with the children, on the great stone at the door of our churchyard.
“Soon after I was made curate, he left the parish, and went nobody knows
whither; and in his room was found a bundle of papers, which was brought
to me by his landlord. I began to read them, but I soon grew weary of
the task; for, besides that the hand is intolerably bad, I could never
find the author in one strain for two chapters together; and I don’t
believe there’s a single syllogism from beginning to end.”
“I should be glad to see this medley,” said I. “You shall see it now,”
answered the curate, “for I always take it along with me a-shooting.”
“How came it so torn?” “’Tis excellent wadding,” said the curate.—This
was a plea of expediency I was not in a condition to answer; for I had
actually in my pocket great part of an edition of one of the German
Illustrissimi, for the very same purpose. We exchanged books; and by
that means (for the curate was a strenuous logician) we probably saved
both.
When I returned to town, I had leisure to peruse the acquisition I had
made: I found it a bundle of little episodes, put together without art,
and of no importance on the whole, with something of nature, and little
else in them. I was a good deal affected with some very trifling
passages in it; and had the name of Marmontel, or a Richardson, been on
the title-page—’tis odds that I should have wept: But
One is ashamed to be pleased with the works of one knows not whom.
CHAPTER XI. {15}
ON BASHFULNESS.—A CHARACTER.—HIS OPINION ON THAT SUBJECT.
THERE is some rust about every man at the beginning; though in some
nations (among the French for instance) the ideas of the inhabitants,
from climate, or what other cause you will, are so vivacious, so
eternally on the wing, that they must, even in small societies, have a
frequent collision; the rust therefore will wear off sooner: but in
Britain it often goes with a man to his grave; nay, he dares not even pen
a _hic jacet_ to speak out for him after his death.
“Let them rub it off by travel,” said the baronet’s brother, who was a
striking instance of excellent metal, shamefully rusted. I had drawn my
chair near his. Let me paint the honest old man: ’tis but one passing
sentence to preserve his image in my mind.
He sat in his usual attitude, with his elbow rested on his knee, and his
fingers pressed on his cheek. His face was shaded by his hand; yet it
was a face that might once have been well accounted handsome; its
features were manly and striking, a dignity resided on his eyebrows,
which were the largest I remember to have seen. His person was tall and
well-made; but the indolence of his nature had now inclined it to
corpulency.
His remarks were few, and made only to his familiar friends; but they
were such as the world might have heard with veneration: and his heart,
uncorrupted by its ways, was ever warm in the cause of virtue and his
friends.
He is now forgotten and gone! The last time I was at Silton Hall, I saw
his chair stand in its corner by the fire-side; there was an additional
cushion on it, and it was occupied by my young lady’s favourite lap dog.
I drew near unperceived, and pinched its ears in the bitterness of my
soul; the creature howled, and ran to its mistress. She did not suspect
the author of its misfortune, but she bewailed it in the most pathetic
terms; and kissing its lips, laid it gently on her lap, and covered it
with a cambric handkerchief. I sat in my old friend’s seat; I heard the
roar of mirth and gaiety around me: poor Ben Silton! I gave thee a tear
then: accept of one cordial drop that falls to thy memory now.
“They should wear it off by travel.”—Why, it is true, said I, that will
go far; but then it will often happen, that in the velocity of a modern
tour, and amidst the materials through which it is commonly made, the
friction is so violent, that not only the rust, but the metal too, is
lost in the progress.
“Give me leave to correct the expression of your metaphor,” said Mr.
Silton: “that is not always rust which is acquired by the inactivity of
the body on which it preys; such, perhaps, is the case with me, though
indeed I was never cleared from my youth; but (taking it in its first
stage) it is rather an encrustation, which nature has given for purposes
of the greatest wisdom.”
“You are right,” I returned; “and sometimes, like certain precious
fossils, there may be hid under it gems of the purest brilliancy.”
“Nay, farther,” continued Mr. Silton, “there are two distinct sorts of
what we call bashfulness; this, the awkwardness of a booby, which a few
steps into the world will convert into the pertness of a coxcomb; that, a
consciousness, which the most delicate feelings produce, and the most
extensive knowledge cannot always remove.”
From the incidents I have already related, I imagine it will be concluded
that Harley was of the latter species of bashful animals; at least, if
Mr. Silton’s principle is just, it may be argued on this side; for the
gradation of the first mentioned sort, it is certain, he never attained.
Some part of his external appearance was modelled from the company of
those gentlemen, whom the antiquity of a family, now possessed of bare
£250 a year, entitled its representative to approach: these indeed were
not many; great part of the property in his neighbourhood being in the
hands of merchants, who had got rich by their lawful calling abroad, and
the sons of stewards, who had got rich by their lawful calling at home:
persons so perfectly versed in the ceremonial of thousands, tens of
thousands, and hundreds of thousands (whose degrees of precedency are
plainly demonstrable from the first page of the Complete Accomptant, or
Young Man’s Best Pocket Companion) that a bow at church from them to such
a man as Harley would have made the parson look back into his sermon for
some precept of Christian humility.
CHAPTER XII.
OF WORLDLY INTERESTS.
THERE are certain interests which the world supposes every man to have,
and which therefore are properly enough termed worldly; but the world is
apt to make an erroneous estimate: ignorant of the dispositions which
constitute our happiness or misery, they bring to an undistinguished
scale the means of the one, as connected with power, wealth, or grandeur,
and of the other with their contraries. Philosophers and poets have
often protested against this decision; but their arguments have been
despised as declamatory, or ridiculed as romantic.
There are never wanting to a young man some grave and prudent friends to
set him right in this particular, if he need it; to watch his ideas as
they arise, and point them to those objects which a wise man should never
forget.
Harley did not want for some monitors of this sort. He was frequently
told of men whose fortunes enabled them to command all the luxuries of
life, whose fortunes were of their own acquirement: his envy was invited
by a description of their happiness, and his emulation by a recital of
the means which had procured it.
Harley was apt to hear those lectures with indifference; nay, sometimes
they got the better of his temper; and as the instances were not always
amiable, provoked, on his part, some reflections, which I am persuaded
his good-nature would else have avoided.
Indeed, I have observed one ingredient, somewhat necessary in a man’s
composition towards happiness, which people of feeling would do well to
acquire; a certain respect for the follies of mankind: for there are so
many fools whom the opinion of the world entitles to regard, whom
accident has placed in heights of which they are unworthy, that he who
cannot restrain his contempt or indignation at the sight will be too
often quarrelling with the disposal of things to relish that share which
is allotted to himself. I do not mean, however, to insinuate this to
have been the case with Harley; on the contrary, if we might rely on his
own testimony, the conceptions he had of pomp and grandeur served to
endear the state which Providence had assigned him.
He lost his father, the last surviving of his parents, as I have already
related, when he was a boy. The good man, from a fear of offending, as
well as a regard to his son, had named him a variety of guardians; one
consequence of which was, that they seldom met at all to consider the
affairs of their ward; and when they did meet, their opinions were so
opposite, that the only possible method of conciliation was the mediatory
power of a dinner and a bottle, which commonly interrupted, not ended,
the dispute; and after that interruption ceased, left the consulting
parties in a condition not very proper for adjusting it. His education
therefore had been but indifferently attended to; and after being taken
from a country school, at which he had been boarded, the young gentleman
was suffered to be his own master in the subsequent branches of
literature, with some assistance from the parson of the parish in
languages and philosophy, and from the exciseman in arithmetic and
book-keeping. One of his guardians, indeed, who, in his youth, had been
an inhabitant of the Temple, set him to read Coke upon Lyttelton: a book
which is very properly put into the hands of beginners in that science,
as its simplicity is accommodated to their understandings, and its size
to their inclination. He profited but little by the perusal; but it was
not without its use in the family: for his maiden aunt applied it
commonly to the laudable purpose of pressing her rebellious linens to the
folds she had allotted them.
There were particularly two ways of increasing his fortune, which might
have occurred to people of less foresight than the counsellors we have
mentioned. One of these was, the prospect of his succeeding to an old
lady, a distant relation, who was known to be possessed of a very large
sum in the stocks: but in this their hopes were disappointed; for the
young man was so untoward in his disposition, that, notwithstanding the
instructions he daily received, his visits rather tended to alienate than
gain the good-will of his kinswoman. He sometimes looked grave when the
old lady told the jokes of her youth; he often refused to eat when she
pressed him, and was seldom or never provided with sugar-candy or
liquorice when she was seized with a fit of coughing: nay, he had once
the rudeness to fall asleep while she was describing the composition and
virtues of her favourite cholic-water. In short, be accommodated himself
so ill to her humour, that she died, and did not leave him a farthing.
The other method pointed out to him was an endeavour to get a lease of
some crown-lands, which lay contiguous to his little paternal estate.
This, it was imagined, might be easily procured, as the crown did not
draw so much rent as Harley could afford to give, with very considerable
profit to himself; and the then lessee had rendered himself so obnoxious
to the ministry, by the disposal of his vote at an election, that he
could not expect a renewal. This, however, needed some interest with the
great, which Harley or his father never possessed.
His neighbour, Mr. Walton, having heard of this affair, generously
offered his assistance to accomplish it. He told him, that though he had
long been a stranger to courtiers, yet he believed there were some of
them who might pay regard to his recommendation; and that, if he thought
it worth the while to take a London journey upon the business, he would
furnish him with a letter of introduction to a baronet of his
acquaintance, who had a great deal to say with the first lord of the
treasury.
When his friends heard of this offer, they pressed him with the utmost
earnestness to accept of it.
They did not fail to enumerate the many advantages which a certain degree
of spirit and assurance gives a man who would make a figure in the world:
they repeated their instances of good fortune in others, ascribed them
all to a happy forwardness of disposition; and made so copious a recital
of the disadvantages which attend the opposite weakness, that a stranger,
who had heard them, would have been led to imagine, that in the British
code there was some disqualifying statute against any citizen who should
be convicted of—modesty.
Harley, though he had no great relish for the attempt, yet could not
resist the torrent of motives that assaulted him; and as he needed but
little preparation for his journey, a day, not very distant, was fixed
for his departure.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE MAN OF FEELING IN LOVE.
THE day before that on which he set out, he went to take leave of Mr.
Walton.—We would conceal nothing;—there was another person of the family
to whom also the visit was intended, on whose account, perhaps, there
were some tenderer feelings in the bosom of Harley than his gratitude for
the friendly notice of that gentleman (though he was seldom deficient in
that virtue) could inspire. Mr. Walton had a daughter; and such a
daughter! we will attempt some description of her by and by.
Harley’s notions of the καλον, or beautiful, were not always to be
defined, nor indeed such as the world would always assent to, though we
could define them. A blush, a phrase of affability to an inferior, a
tear at a moving tale, were to him, like the Cestus of Cytherea,
unequalled in conferring beauty. For all these Miss Walton was
remarkable; but as these, like the above-mentioned Cestus, are perhaps
still more powerful when the wearer is possessed of souse degree of
beauty, commonly so called, it happened, that, from this cause, they had
more than usual power in the person of that young lady.
She was now arrived at that period of life which takes, or is supposed to
take, from the flippancy of girlhood those sprightlinesses with which
some good-natured old maids oblige the world at three-score. She had
been ushered into life (as that word is used in the dialect of St.
James’s) at seventeen, her father being then in parliament, and living in
London: at seventeen, therefore, she had been a universal toast; her
health, now she was four-and-twenty, was only drank by those who knew her
face at least. Her complexion was mellowed into a paleness, which
certainly took from her beauty; but agreed, at least Harley used to say
so, with the pensive softness of her mind. Her eyes were of that gentle
hazel colour which is rather mild than piercing; and, except when they
were lighted up by good-humour, which was frequently the case, were
supposed by the fine gentlemen to want fire. Her air and manner were
elegant in the highest degree, and were as sure of commanding respect as
their mistress was far from demanding it. Her voice was inexpressibly
soft; it was, according to that incomparable simile of Otway’s,
—“like the shepherd’s pipe upon the mountains,
When all his little flock’s at feed before him.”
The effect it had upon Harley, himself used to paint ridiculously enough;
and ascribed it to powers, which few believed, and nobody cared for.
Her conversation was always cheerful, but rarely witty; and without the
smallest affectation of learning, had as much sentiment in it as would
have puzzled a Turk, upon his principles of female materialism, to
account for. Her beneficence was unbounded; indeed the natural
tenderness of her heart might have been argued, by the frigidity of a
casuist, as detracting from her virtue in this respect, for her humanity
was a feeling, not a principle: but minds like Harley’s are not very apt
to make this distinction, and generally give our virtue credit for all
that benevolence which is instinctive in our nature.
As her father had some years retired to the country, Harley had frequent
opportunities of seeing her. He looked on her for some time merely with
that respect and admiration which her appearance seemed to demand, and
the opinion of others conferred upon her from this cause, perhaps, and
from that extreme sensibility of which we have taken frequent notice,
Harley was remarkably silent in her presence. He heard her sentiments
with peculiar attention, sometimes with looks very expressive of
approbation; but seldom declared his opinion on the subject, much less
made compliments to the lady on the justness of her remarks.
From this very reason it was that Miss Walton frequently took more
particular notice of him than of other visitors, who, by the laws of
precedency, were better entitled to it: it was a mode of politeness she
had peculiarly studied, to bring to the line of that equality, which is
ever necessary for the ease of our guests, those whose sensibility had
placed them below it.
Harley saw this; for though he was a child in the drama of the world, yet
was it not altogether owing to a want of knowledge on his part; on the
contrary, the most delicate consciousness of propriety often kindled that
blush which marred the performance of it: this raised his esteem
something above what the most sanguine descriptions of her goodness had
been able to do; for certain it is, that notwithstanding the laboured
definitions which very wise men have given us of the inherent beauty of
virtue, we are always inclined to think her handsomest when she
condescends to smile upon ourselves.
It would be trite to observe the easy gradation from esteem to love: in
the bosom of Harley there scarce needed a transition; for there were
certain seasons when his ideas were flushed to a degree much above their
common complexion. In times not credulous of inspiration, we should
account for this from some natural cause; but we do not mean to account
for it at all; it were sufficient to describe its effects; but they were
sometimes so ludicrous, as might derogate from the dignity of the
sensations which produced them to describe. They were treated indeed as
such by most of Harley’s sober friends, who often laughed very heartily
at the awkward blunders of the real Harley, when the different faculties,
which should have prevented them, were entirely occupied by the ideal.
In some of these paroxysms of fancy, Miss Walton did not fail to be
introduced; and the picture which had been drawn amidst the surrounding
objects of unnoticed levity was now singled out to be viewed through the
medium of romantic imagination: it was improved of course, and esteem was
a word inexpressive of the feelings which it excited.
CHAPTER XIV.
HE SETS OUT ON HIS JOURNEY—THE BEGGAR AND HIS DOG.
HE had taken leave of his aunt on the eve of his intended departure; but
the good lady’s affection for her nephew interrupted her sleep, and early
as it was next morning when Harley came downstairs to set out, he found
her in the parlour with a tear on her cheek, and her caudle-cup in her
hand. She knew enough of physic to prescribe against going abroad of a
morning with an empty stomach. She gave her blessing with the draught;
her instructions she had delivered the night before. They consisted
mostly of negatives, for London, in her idea, was so replete with
temptations that it needed the whole armour of her friendly cautions to
repel their attacks.
Peter stood at the door. We have mentioned this faithful fellow
formerly: Harley’s father had taken him up an orphan, and saved him from
being cast on the parish; and he had ever since remained in the service
of him and of his son. Harley shook him by the hand as he passed,
smiling, as if he had said, “I will not weep.” He sprung hastily into
the chaise that waited for him; Peter folded up the step. “My dear
master,” said he, shaking the solitary lock that hung on either side of
his head, “I have been told as how London is a sad place.” He was choked
with the thought, and his benediction could not be heard:—but it shall be
heard, honest Peter! where these tears will add to its energy.
In a few hours Harley reached the inn where he proposed breakfasting, but
the fulness of his heart would not suffer him to eat a morsel. He walked
out on the road, and gaining a little height, stood gazing on that
quarter he had left. He looked for his wonted prospect, his fields, his
woods, and his hills: they were lost in the distant clouds! He pencilled
them on the clouds, and bade them farewell with a sigh!
He sat down on a large stone to take out a little pebble from his shoe,
when he saw, at some distance, a beggar approaching him. He had on a
loose sort of coat, mended with different-coloured rags, amongst which
the blue and the russet were the predominant. He had a short knotty
stick in his hand, and on the top of it was stuck a ram’s horn; his knees
(though he was no pilgrim) had worn the stuff of his breeches; he wore no
shoes, and his stockings had entirely lost that part of them which should
have covered his feet and ankles; in his face, however, was the plump
appearance of good humour; he walked a good round pace, and a
crook-legged dog trotted at his heels.
“Our delicacies,” said Harley to himself, “are fantastic; they are not in
nature! that beggar walks over the sharpest of these stones barefooted,
whilst I have lost the most delightful dream in the world, from the
smallest of them happening to get into my shoe.” The beggar had by this
time come up, and, pulling off a piece of hat, asked charity of Harley;
the dog began to beg too:—it was impossible to resist both; and, in
truth, the want of shoes and stockings had made both unnecessary, for
Harley had destined sixpence for him before. The beggar, on receiving
it, poured forth blessings without number; and, with a sort of smile on
his countenance, said to Harley “that if he wanted to have his fortune
told”—Harley turned his eye briskly on the beggar: it was an unpromising
look for the subject of a prediction, and silenced the prophet
immediately. “I would much rather learn,” said Harley, “what it is in
your power to tell me: your trade must be an entertaining one; sit down
on this stone, and let me know something of your profession; I have often
thought of turning fortune-teller for a week or two myself.”
“Master,” replied the beggar, “I like your frankness much; God knows I
had the humour of plain-dealing in me from a child, but there is no doing
with it in this world; we must live as we can, and lying is, as you call
it, my profession, but I was in some sort forced to the trade, for I
dealt once in telling truth.
“I was a labourer, sir, and gained as much as to make me live: I never
laid by indeed: for I was reckoned a piece of a wag, and your wags, I
take it, are seldom rich, Mr. Harley.”
“So,” said Harley, “you seem to know me.”
“Ay, there are few folks in the country that I don’t know something of:
how should I tell fortunes else?”
“True; but to go on with your story: you were a labourer, you say, and a
wag; your industry, I suppose, you left with your old trade, but your
humour you preserve to be of use to you in your new.”
“What signifies sadness, sir? a man grows lean on’t: but I was brought to
my idleness by degrees; first I could not work, and it went against my
stomach to work ever after. I was seized with a jail fever at the time
of the assizes being in the county where I lived; for I was always
curious to get acquainted with the felons, because they are commonly
fellows of much mirth and little thought, qualities I had ever an esteem
for. In the height of this fever, Mr. Harley, the house where I lay took
fire, and burnt to the ground; I was carried out in that condition, and
lay all the rest of my illness in a barn. I got the better of my
disease, however, but I was so weak that I spit blood whenever I
attempted to work. I had no relation living that I knew of, and I never
kept a friend above a week, when I was able to joke; I seldom remained
above six months in a parish, so that I might have died before I had
found a settlement in any: thus I was forced to beg my bread, and a sorry
trade I found it, Mr. Harley. I told all my misfortunes truly, but they
were seldom believed; and the few who gave me a halfpenny as they passed
did it with a shake of the head, and an injunction not to trouble them
with a long story. In short, I found that people don’t care to give alms
without some security for their money; a wooden leg or a withered arm is
a sort of draught upon heaven for those who choose to have their money
placed to account there; so I changed my plan, and, instead of telling my
own misfortunes, began to prophesy happiness to others. This I found by
much the better way: folks will always listen when the tale is their own,
and of many who say they do not believe in fortune-telling, I have known
few on whom it had not a very sensible effect. I pick up the names of
their acquaintance; amours and little squabbles are easily gleaned among
servants and neighbours; and indeed people themselves are the best
intelligencers in the world for our purpose: they dare not puzzle us for
their own sakes, for every one is anxious to hear what they wish to
believe, and they who repeat it, to laugh at it when they have done, are
generally more serious than their hearers are apt to imagine. With a
tolerable good memory, and some share of cunning, with the help of
walking a-nights over heaths and church-yards, with this, and showing the
tricks of that there dog, whom I stole from the serjeant of a marching
regiment (and by the way, he can steal too upon occasion), I make shift
to pick up a livelihood. My trade, indeed, is none of the honestest; yet
people are not much cheated neither who give a few half-pence for a
prospect of happiness, which I have heard some persons say is all a man
can arrive at in this world. But I must bid you good day, sir, for I
have three miles to walk before noon, to inform some boarding-school
young ladies whether their husbands are to be peers of the realm or
captains in the army: a question which I promised to answer them by that
time.”
Harley had drawn a shilling from his pocket; but Virtue bade him consider
on whom he was going to bestow it. Virtue held back his arm; but a
milder form, a younger sister of Virtue’s, not so severe as Virtue, nor
so serious as Pity, smiled upon him; his fingers lost their compression,
nor did Virtue offer to catch the money as it fell. It had no sooner
reached the ground than the watchful cur (a trick he had been taught)
snapped it up, and, contrary to the most approved method of stewardship,
delivered it immediately into the hands of his master.
CHAPTER XIX.
HE MAKES A SECOND EXPEDITION TO THE BARONET’S. THE LAUDABLE AMBITION OF
A YOUNG MAN TO BE THOUGHT SOMETHING BY THE WORLD.
WE have related, in a former chapter, the little success of his first
visit to the great man, for whom he had the introductory letter from Mr.
Walton. To people of equal sensibility, the influence of those trifles
we mentioned on his deportment will not appear surprising, but to his
friends in the country they could not be stated, nor would they have
allowed them any place in the account. In some of their letters,
therefore, which he received soon after, they expressed their surprise at
his not having been more urgent in his application, and again recommended
the blushless assiduity of successful merit.
He resolved to make another attempt at the baronet’s; fortified with
higher notions of his own dignity, and with less apprehension of repulse.
In his way to Grosvenor Square he began to ruminate on the folly of
mankind, who affixed those ideas of superiority to riches, which reduced
the minds of men, by nature equal with the more fortunate, to that sort
of servility which he felt in his own. By the time he had reached the
Square, and was walking along the pavement which led to the baronet’s, he
had brought his reasoning on the subject to such a point, that the
conclusion, by every rule of logic, should have led him to a thorough
indifference in his approaches to a fellow-mortal, whether that
fellow-mortal was possessed of six or six thousand pounds a year. It is
probable, however, that the premises had been improperly formed: for it
is certain, that when he approached the great man’s door he felt his
heart agitated by an unusual pulsation.
He had almost reached it, when he observed among gentleman coming out,
dressed in a white frock and a red laced waistcoat, with a small switch
in his hand, which he seemed to manage with a particular good grace. As
he passed him on the steps, the stranger very politely made him a bow,
which Harley returned, though he could not remember ever having seen him
before. He asked Harley, in the same civil manner, if he was going to
wait on his friend the baronet. “For I was just calling,” said he, “and
am sorry to find that he is gone for some days into the country.”
Harley thanked him for his information, and was turning from the door,
when the other observed that it would be proper to leave his name, and
very obligingly knocked for that purpose.
“Here is a gentleman, Tom, who meant to have waited on your master.”
“Your name, if you please, sir?”
“Harley.”
“You’ll remember, Tom, Harley.”
The door was shut. “Since we are here,” said he, “we shall not lose our
walk if we add a little to it by a turn or two in Hyde Park.”
He accompanied this proposal with a second bow, and Harley accepted of it
by another in return.
The conversation, as they walked, was brilliant on the side of his
companion. The playhouse, the opera, with every occurrence in high life,
he seemed perfectly master of; and talked of some reigning beauties of
quality in a manner the most feeling in the world. Harley admired the
happiness of his vivacity, and, opposite as it was to the reserve of his
own nature, began to be much pleased with its effects.
Though I am not of opinion with some wise men, that the existence of
objects depends on idea, yet I am convinced that their appearance is not
a little influenced by it. The optics of some minds are in so unlucky a
perspective as to throw a certain shade on every picture that is
presented to them, while those of others (of which number was Harley),
like the mirrors of the ladies, have a wonderful effect in bettering
their complexions. Through such a medium perhaps he was looking on his
present companion.
When they had finished their walk, and were returning by the corner of
the Park, they observed a board hung out of a window signifying, “An
excellent ORDINARY on Saturdays and Sundays.” It happened to be
Saturday, and the table was covered for the purpose.
“What if we should go in and dine here, if you happen not to be engaged,
sir?” said the young gentleman. “It is not impossible but we shall meet
with some original or other; it is a sort of humour I like hugely.”
Harley made no objection, and the stranger showed him the way into the
parlour.
He was placed, by the courtesy of his introductor, in an arm-chair that
stood at one side of the fire. Over against him was seated a man of a
grave considering aspect, with that look of sober prudence which
indicates what is commonly called a warm man. He wore a pretty large
wig, which had once been white, but was now of a brownish yellow; his
coat was one of those modest-coloured drabs which mock the injuries of
dust and dirt; two jack-boots concealed, in part, the well-mended knees
of an old pair of buckskin breeches; while the spotted handkerchief round
his neck preserved at once its owner from catching cold and his
neck-cloth from being dirtied. Next him sat another man, with a tankard
in his hand and a quid of tobacco in his cheek, whose eye was rather more
vivacious, and whose dress was something smarter.
The first-mentioned gentleman took notice that the room had been so
lately washed, as not to have had time to dry, and remarked that wet
lodging was unwholesome for man or beast. He looked round at the same
time for a poker to stir the fire with, which, he at last observed to the
company, the people of the house had removed in order to save their
coals. This difficulty, however, he overcame by the help of Harley’s
stick, saying, “that as they should, no doubt, pay for their fire in some
shape or other, he saw no reason why they should not have the use of it
while they sat.”
The door was now opened for the admission of dinner. “I don’t know how
it is with you, gentlemen,” said Harley’s new acquaintance, “but I am
afraid I shall not be able to get down a morsel at this horrid mechanical
hour of dining.” He sat down, however, and did not show any want of
appetite by his eating. He took upon him the carving of the meat, and
criticised on the goodness of the pudding.
When the table-cloth was removed, he proposed calling for some punch,
which was readily agreed to; he seemed at first inclined to make it
himself, but afterwards changed his mind, and left that province to the
waiter, telling him to have it pure West Indian, or he could not taste a
drop of it.
When the punch was brought he undertook to fill the glasses and call the
toasts. “The King.”—The toast naturally produced politics. It is the
privilege of Englishmen to drink the king’s health, and to talk of his
conduct. The man who sat opposite to Harley (and who by this time,
partly from himself, and partly from his acquaintance on his left hand,
was discovered to be a grazier) observed, “That it was a shame for so
many pensioners to be allowed to take the bread out of the mouth of the
poor.”
“Ay, and provisions,” said his friend, “were never so dear in the memory
of man; I wish the king and his counsellors would look to that.”
“As for the matter of provisions, neighbour Wrightson,” he replied, “I am
sure the prices of cattle—”
A dispute would have probably ensued, but it was prevented by the spruce
toastmaster, who gave a sentiment, and turning to the two politicians,
“Pray, gentlemen,” said he, “let us have done with these musty politics:
I would always leave them to the beer-suckers in Butcher Row. Come, let
us have something of the fine arts. That was a damn’d hard match between
Joe the Nailor and Tim Bucket. The knowing ones were cursedly taken in
there! I lost a cool hundred myself, faith.”
At mention of the cool hundred, the grazier threw his eyes aslant, with a
mingled look of doubt and surprise; while the man at his elbow looked
arch, and gave a short emphatical sort of cough.
Both seemed to be silenced, however, by this intelligence; and while the
remainder of the punch lasted the conversation was wholly engrossed by
the gentleman with the fine waistcoat, who told a great many “immense
comical stories” and “confounded smart things,” as he termed them, acted
and spoken by lords, ladies, and young bucks of quality, of his
acquaintance. At last, the grazier, pulling out a watch, of a very
unusual size, and telling the hour, said that he had an appointment. “Is
it so late?” said the young gentleman; “then I am afraid I have missed an
appointment already; but the truth is, I am cursedly given to missing of
appointments.”
When the grazier and he were gone, Harley turned to the remaining
personage, and asked him if he knew that young gentleman. “A gentleman!”
said he; “ay, he is one of your gentlemen at the top of an affidavit. I
knew him, some years ago, in the quality of a footman; and I believe he
had some times the honour to be a pimp. At last, some of the great
folks, to whom he had been serviceable in both capacities, had him made a
gauger; in which station he remains, and has the assurance to pretend an
acquaintance with men of quality. The impudent dog! with a few shillings
in his pocket, he will talk you three times as much as my friend Mundy
there, who is worth nine thousand if he’s worth a farthing. But I know
the rascal, and despise him, as he deserves.”
Harley began to despise him too, and to conceive some indignation at
having sat with patience to hear such a fellow speak nonsense. But he
corrected himself by reflecting that he was perhaps as well entertained,
and instructed too, by this same modest gauger, as he should have been by
such a man as he had thought proper to personate. And surely the fault
may more properly be imputed to that rank where the futility is real than
where it is feigned: to that rank whose opportunities for nobler
accomplishments have only served to rear a fabric of folly which the
untutored hand of affectation, even among the meanest of mankind, can
imitate with success.
CHAPTER XX.
HE VISITS BEDLAM.—THE DISTRESSES OF A DAUGHTER.
OR those things called Sights in London, which every stranger is supposed
desirous to see, Bedlam is one. To that place, therefore, an
acquaintance of Harley’s, after having accompanied him to several other
shows, proposed a visit. Harley objected to it, “because,” said he, “I
think it an inhuman practice to expose the greatest misery with which our
nature is afflicted to every idle visitant who can afford a trifling
perquisite to the keeper; especially as it is a distress which the humane
must see, with the painful reflection, that it is not in their power to
alleviate it.” He was overpowered, however, by the solicitations of his
friend and the other persons of the party (amongst whom were several
ladies); and they went in a body to Moorfields.
Their conductor led them first to the dismal mansions of those who are in
the most horrid state of incurable madness. The clanking of chains, the
wildness of their cries, and the imprecations which some of them uttered,
formed a scene inexpressibly shocking. Harley and his companions,
especially the female part of them, begged their guide to return; he
seemed surprised at their uneasiness, and was with difficulty prevailed
on to leave that part of the house without showing them some others: who,
as he expressed it in the phrase of those that keep wild beasts for show,
were much better worth seeing than any they had passed, being ten times
more fierce and unmanageable.
He led them next to that quarter where those reside who, as they are not
dangerous to themselves or others, enjoy a certain degree of freedom,
according to the state of their distemper.
Harley had fallen behind his companions, looking at a man who was making
pendulums with bits of thread and little balls of clay. He had
delineated a segment of a circle on the wall with chalk, and marked their
different vibrations by intersecting it with cross lines. A
decent-looking man came up, and smiling at the maniac, turned to Harley,
and told him that gentleman had once been a very celebrated
mathematician. “He fell a sacrifice,” said he, “to the theory of comets;
for having, with infinite labour, formed a table on the conjectures of
Sir Isaac Newton, he was disappointed in the return of one of those
luminaries, and was very soon after obliged to be placed here by his
friends. If you please to follow me, sir,” continued the stranger, “I
believe I shall be able to give you a more satisfactory account of the
unfortunate people you see here than the man who attends your
companions.”
Harley bowed, and accepted his offer.
The next person they came up to had scrawled a variety of figures on a
piece of slate. Harley had the curiosity to take a nearer view of them.
They consisted of different columns, on the top of which were marked
South-sea annuities, India-stock, and Three per cent. annuities consol.
“This,” said Harley’s instructor, “was a gentleman well known in Change
Alley. He was once worth fifty thousand pounds, and had actually agreed
for the purchase of an estate in the West, in order to realise his money;
but he quarrelled with the proprietor about the repairs of the garden
wall, and so returned to town, to follow his old trade of stock-jobbing a
little longer; when an unlucky fluctuation of stock, in which he was
engaged to an immense extent, reduced him at once to poverty and to
madness. Poor wretch! he told me t’other day that against the next
payment of differences he should be some hundreds above a plum.”
“It is a spondee, and I will maintain it,” interrupted a voice on his
left hand. This assertion was followed by a very rapid recital of some
verses from Homer. “That figure,” said the gentleman, “whose clothes are
so bedaubed with snuff, was a schoolmaster of some reputation: he came
hither to be resolved of some doubts he entertained concerning the
genuine pronunciation of the Greek vowels. In his highest fits, he makes
frequent mention of one Mr. Bentley.
“But delusive ideas, sir, are the motives of the greatest part of
mankind, and a heated imagination the power by which their actions are
incited: the world, in the eye of a philosopher, may be said to be a
large madhouse.” “It is true,” answered Harley, “the passions of men are
temporary madnesses; and sometimes very fatal in their effects.
From Macedonia’s madman to the Swede.”
“It was, indeed,” said the stranger, “a very mad thing in Charles to
think of adding so vast a country as Russia to his dominions: that would
have been fatal indeed; the balance of the North would then have been
lost; but the Sultan and I would never have allowed it.”—“Sir!” said
Harley, with no small surprise on his countenance.—“Why, yes,” answered
the other, “the Sultan and I; do you know me? I am the Chan of Tartary.”
Harley was a good deal struck by this discovery; he had prudence enough,
however, to conceal his amazement, and bowing as low to the monarch as
his dignity required, left him immediately, and joined his companions.
He found them in a quarter of the house set apart for the insane of the
other sex, several of whom had gathered about the female visitors, and
were examining, with rather more accuracy than might have been expected,
the particulars of their dress.
Separate from the rest stood one whose appearance had something of
superior dignity. Her face, though pale and wasted, was less squalid
than those of the others, and showed a dejection of that decent kind,
which moves our pity unmixed with horror: upon her, therefore, the eyes
of all were immediately turned. The keeper who accompanied them observed
it: “This,” said he, “is a young lady who was born to ride in her coach
and six. She was beloved, if the story I have heard is true, by a young
gentleman, her equal in birth, though by no means her match in fortune:
but love, they say, is blind, and so she fancied him as much as he did
her. Her father, it seems, would not hear of their marriage, and
threatened to turn her out of doors if ever she saw him again. Upon this
the young gentleman took a voyage to the West Indies, in hopes of
bettering his fortune, and obtaining his mistress; but he was scarce
landed, when he was seized with one of the fevers which are common in
those islands, and died in a few days, lamented by every one that knew
him. This news soon reached his mistress, who was at the same time
pressed by her father to marry a rich miserly fellow, who was old enough
to be her grandfather. The death of her lover had no effect on her
inhuman parent: he was only the more earnest for her marriage with the
man he had provided for her; and what between her despair at the death of
the one, and her aversion to the other, the poor young lady was reduced
to the condition you see her in. But God would not prosper such cruelty;
her father’s affairs soon after went to wreck, and he died almost a
beggar.”
Though this story was told in very plain language, it had particularly
attracted Harley’s notice; he had given it the tribute of some tears.
The unfortunate young lady had till now seemed entranced in thought, with
her eyes fixed on a little garnet ring she wore on her finger; she turned
them now upon Harley. “My Billy is no more!” said she; “do you weep for
my Billy? Blessings on your tears! I would weep too, but my brain is
dry; and it burns, it burns, it burns!”—She drew nearer to Harley.—“Be
comforted, young lady,” said he, “your Billy is in heaven.”—“Is he,
indeed? and shall we meet again? and shall that frightful man (pointing
to the keeper) not be there!—Alas! I am grown naughty of late; I have
almost forgotten to think of heaven: yet I pray sometimes; when I can, I
pray; and sometimes I sing; when I am saddest, I sing:—You shall hear
me—hush!
“Light be the earth on Billy’s breast,
And green the sod that wraps his grave.”
There was a plaintive wildness in the air not to be withstood; and,
except the keeper’s, there was not an unmoistened eye around her.
“Do you weep again?” said she. “I would not have you weep: you are like
my Billy; you are, believe me; just so he looked when he gave me this
ring; poor Billy! ’twas the last time ever we met!—
“’Twas when the seas were roaring—I love you for resembling my Billy; but
I shall never love any man like him.”—She stretched out her hand to
Harley; he pressed it between both of his, and bathed it with his
tears.—“Nay, that is Billy’s ring,” said she, “you cannot have it,
indeed; but here is another, look here, which I plated to-day of some
gold-thread from this bit of stuff; will you keep it for my sake? I am a
strange girl; but my heart is harmless: my poor heart; it will burst some
day; feel how it beats!” She pressed his hand to her bosom, then holding
her head in the attitude of listening—“Hark! one, two, three! be quiet,
thou little trembler; my Billy is cold!—but I had forgotten the
ring.”—She put it on his finger. “Farewell! I must leave you now.”—She
would have withdrawn her hand; Harley held it to his lips.—“I dare not
stay longer; my head throbs sadly: farewell!”—She walked with a hurried
step to a little apartment at some distance. Harley stood fixed in
astonishment and pity; his friend gave money to the keeper.—Harley looked
on his ring.—He put a couple of guineas into the man’s hand: “Be kind to
that unfortunate.”—He burst into tears, and left them.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE MISANTHROPE.
THE friend who had conducted him to Moorfields called upon him again the
next evening. After some talk on the adventures of the preceding day: “I
carried you yesterday,” said he to Harley, “to visit the mad; let me
introduce you to-night, at supper, to one of the wise: but you must not
look for anything of the Socratic pleasantry about him; on the contrary,
I warn you to expect the spirit of a Diogenes. That you may be a little
prepared for his extraordinary manner, I will let you into some
particulars of his history.
“He is the elder of the two sons of a gentleman of considerable estate in
the country. Their father died when they were young: both were
remarkable at school for quickness of parts and extent of genius; this
had been bred to no profession, because his father’s fortune, which
descended to him, was thought sufficient to set him above it; the other
was put apprentice to an eminent attorney. In this the expectations of
his friends were more consulted than his own inclination; for both his
brother and he had feelings of that warm kind that could ill brook a
study so dry as the law, especially in that department of it which was
allotted to him. But the difference of their tempers made the
characteristical distinction between them. The younger, from the
gentleness of his nature, bore with patience a situation entirely
discordant to his genius and disposition. At times, indeed, his pride
would suggest of how little importance those talents were which the
partiality of his friends had often extolled: they were now incumbrances
in a walk of life where the dull and the ignorant passed him at every
turn; his fancy and his feeling were invincible obstacles to eminence in
a situation where his fancy had no room for exertion, and his feeling
experienced perpetual disgust. But these murmurings he never suffered to
be heard; and that he might not offend the prudence of those who had been
concerned in the choice of his profession, he continued to labour in it
several years, till, by the death of a relation, he succeeded to an
estate of a little better than £100 a year, with which, and the small
patrimony left him, he retired into the country, and made a love-match
with a young lady of a similar temper to his own, with whom the sagacious
world pitied him for finding happiness.
“But his elder brother, whom you are to see at supper, if you will do us
the favour of your company, was naturally impetuous, decisive, and
overbearing. He entered into life with those ardent expectations by
which young men are commonly deluded: in his friendships, warm to excess;
and equally violent in his dislikes. He was on the brink of marriage
with a young lady, when one of those friends, for whose honour he would
have pawned his life, made an elopement with that very goddess, and left
him besides deeply engaged for sums which that good friend’s extravagance
had squandered.
“The dreams he had formerly enjoyed were now changed for ideas of a very
different nature. He abjured all confidence in anything of human form;
sold his lands, which still produced him a very large reversion, came to
town, and immured himself, with a woman who had been his nurse, in little
better than a garret; and has ever since applied his talents to the
vilifying of his species. In one thing I must take the liberty to
instruct you; however different your sentiments may be (and different
they must be), you will suffer him to go on without contradiction;
otherwise, he will be silent immediately, and we shall not get a word
from him all the night after.” Harley promised to remember this
injunction, and accepted the invitation of his friend.
When they arrived at the house, they were informed that the gentleman was
come, and had been shown into the parlour. They found him sitting with a
daughter of his friend’s, about three years old, on his knee, whom he was
teaching the alphabet from a horn book: at a little distance stood a
sister of hers, some years older. “Get you away, miss,” said he to this
last; “you are a pert gossip, and I will have nothing to do with
you.”—“Nay,” answered she, “Nancy is your favourite; you are quite in
love with Nancy.”—“Take away that girl,” said he to her father, whom he
now observed to have entered the room; “she has woman about her already.”
The children were accordingly dismissed.
Betwixt that and supper-time he did not utter a syllable. When supper
came, he quarrelled with every dish at table, but eat of them all; only
exempting from his censures a salad, “which you have not spoiled,” said
he, “because you have not attempted to cook it.”
When the wine was set upon the table, he took from his pocket a
particular smoking apparatus, and filled his pipe, without taking any
more notice of Harley, or his friend, than if no such persons had been in
the room.
Harley could not help stealing a look of surprise at him; but his friend,
who knew his humour, returned it by annihilating his presence in the like
manner, and, leaving him to his own meditations, addressed himself
entirely to Harley.
In their discourse some mention happened to be made of an amiable
character, and the words _honour_ and _politeness_ were applied to it.
Upon this, the gentleman, laying down his pipe, and changing the tone of
his countenance, from an ironical grin to something more intently
contemptuous: “Honour,” said he: “Honour and Politeness! this is the coin
of the world, and passes current with the fools of it. You have
substituted the shadow Honour, instead of the substance Virtue; and have
banished the reality of friendship for the fictitious semblance which you
have termed Politeness: politeness, which consists in a certain
ceremonious jargon, more ridiculous to the ear of reason than the voice
of a puppet. You have invented sounds, which you worship, though they
tyrannize over your peace; and are surrounded with empty forms, which
take from the honest emotions of joy, and add to the poignancy of
misfortune.” “Sir!” said Harley—his friend winked to him, to remind him
of the caution he had received. He was silenced by the thought. The
philosopher turned his eye upon him: he examined him from top to toe,
with a sort of triumphant contempt; Harley’s coat happened to be a new
one; the other’s was as shabby as could possibly be supposed to be on the
back of a gentleman: there was much significance in his look with regard
to this coat; it spoke of the sleekness of folly and the threadbareness
of wisdom.
“Truth,” continued he, “the most amiable, as well as the most natural of
virtues, you are at pains to eradicate. Your very nurseries are
seminaries of falsehood; and what is called Fashion in manhood completes
the system of avowed insincerity. Mankind, in the gross, is a gaping
monster, that loves to be deceived, and has seldom been disappointed: nor
is their vanity less fallacious to your philosophers, who adopt modes of
truth to follow them through the paths of error, and defend paradoxes
merely to be singular in defending them. These are they whom ye term
Ingenious; ’tis a phrase of commendation I detest: it implies an attempt
to impose on my judgment, by flattering my imagination; yet these are
they whose works are read by the old with delight, which the young are
taught to look upon as the codes of knowledge and philosophy.
“Indeed, the education of your youth is every way preposterous; you waste
at school years in improving talents, without having ever spent an hour
in discovering them; one promiscuous line of instruction is followed,
without regard to genius, capacity, or probable situation in the
commonwealth. From this bear-garden of the pedagogue, a raw,
unprincipled boy is turned loose upon the world to travel; without any
ideas but those of improving his dress at Paris, or starting into taste
by gazing on some paintings at Rome. Ask him of the manners of the
people, and he will tell you that the skirt is worn much shorter in
France, and that everybody eats macaroni in Italy. When he returns home,
he buys a seat in parliament, and studies the constitution at Arthur’s.
“Nor are your females trained to any more useful purpose: they are
taught, by the very rewards which their nurses propose for good
behaviour, by the first thing like a jest which they hear from every male
visitor of the family, that a young woman is a creature to be married;
and when they are grown somewhat older, are instructed that it is the
purpose of marriage to have the enjoyment of pin-money, and the
expectation of a jointure.”
“These, {61} indeed, are the effects of luxury, which is, perhaps,
inseparable from a certain degree of power and grandeur in a nation. But
it is not simply of the progress of luxury that we have to complain: did
its votaries keep in their own sphere of thoughtless dissipation, we
might despise them without emotion; but the frivolous pursuits of
pleasure are mingled with the most important concerns of the state; and
public enterprise shall sleep till he who should guide its operation has
decided his bets at Newmarket, or fulfilled his engagement with a
favourite mistress in the country. We want some man of acknowledged
eminence to point our counsels with that firmness which the counsels of a
great people require. We have hundreds of ministers, who press forward
into office without having ever learned that art which is necessary for
every business: the art of thinking; and mistake the petulance, which
could give inspiration to smart sarcasms on an obnoxious measure in a
popular assembly, for the ability which is to balance the interest of
kingdoms, and investigate the latent sources of national superiority.
With the administration of such men the people can never be satisfied;
for besides that their confidence is gained only by the view of superior
talents, there needs that depth of knowledge, which is not only
acquainted with the just extent of power, but can also trace its
connection with the expedient, to preserve its possessors from the
contempt which attends irresolution, or the resentment which follows
temerity.”
* * * * *
[Here a considerable part is wanting.]
* * “In short, man is an animal equally selfish and vain. Vanity,
indeed, is but a modification of selfishness. From the latter, there are
some who pretend to be free: they are generally such as declaim against
the lust of wealth and power, because they have never been able to attain
any high degree in either: they boast of generosity and feeling. They
tell us (perhaps they tell us in rhyme) that the sensations of an honest
heart, of a mind universally benevolent, make up the quiet bliss which
they enjoy; but they will not, by this, be exempted from the charge of
selfishness. Whence the luxurious happiness they describe in their
little family-circles? Whence the pleasure which they feel, when they
trim their evening fires, and listen to the howl of winter’s wind?
Whence, but from the secret reflection of what houseless wretches feel
from it? Or do you administer comfort in affliction—the motive is at
hand; I have had it preached to me in nineteen out of twenty of your
consolatory discourses—the comparative littleness of our own misfortunes.
“With vanity your best virtues are grossly tainted: your benevolence,
which ye deduce immediately from the natural impulse of the heart,
squints to it for its reward. There are some, indeed, who tell us of the
satisfaction which flows from a secret consciousness of good actions:
this secret satisfaction is truly excellent—when we have some friend to
whom we may discover its excellence.”
He now paused a moment to re-light his pipe, when a clock, that stood at
his back, struck eleven; he started up at the sound, took his hat and his
cane, and nodding good night with his head, walked out of the room. The
gentleman of the house called a servant to bring the stranger’s surtout.
“What sort of a night is it, fellow?” said he.—“It rains, sir,” answered
the servant, “with an easterly wind.”—“Easterly for ever!” He made no
other reply; but shrugging up his shoulders till they almost touched his
ears, wrapped himself tight in his great coat, and disappeared.
“This is a strange creature,” said his friend to Harley. “I cannot say,”
answered he, “that his remarks are of the pleasant kind: it is curious to
observe how the nature of truth may be changed by the garb it wears;
softened to the admonition of friendship, or soured into the severity of
reproof: yet this severity may be useful to some tempers; it somewhat
resembles a file: disagreeable in its operation, but hard metals may be
the brighter for it.”
* * * * *
CHAPTER XXV.
HIS SKILL IN PHYSIOGNOMY.
THE company at the baronet’s removed to the playhouse accordingly, and
Harley took his usual route into the Park. He observed, as he entered, a
fresh-looking elderly gentleman in conversation with a beggar, who,
leaning on his crutch, was recounting the hardships he had undergone, and
explaining the wretchedness of his present condition. This was a very
interesting dialogue to Harley; he was rude enough, therefore, to slacken
his pace as he approached, and at last to make a full stop at the
gentleman’s back, who was just then expressing his compassion for the
beggar, and regretting that he had not a farthing of change about him.
At saying this, he looked piteously on the fellow: there was something in
his physiognomy which caught Harley’s notice: indeed, physiognomy was one
of Harley’s foibles, for which he had been often rebuked by his aunt in
the country, who used to tell him that when he was come to her years and
experience he would know that all’s not gold that glitters: and it must
be owned that his aunt was a very sensible, harsh-looking maiden lady of
threescore and upwards. But he was too apt to forget this caution and
now, it seems, it had not occurred to him. Stepping up, therefore, to
the gentleman, who was lamenting the want of silver, “Your intentions,
sir,” said he, “are so good, that I cannot help lending you my assistance
to carry them into execution,” and gave the beggar a shilling. The other
returned a suitable compliment, and extolled the benevolence of Harley.
They kept walking together, and benevolence grew the topic of discourse.
The stranger was fluent on the subject. “There is no use of money,” said
he, “equal to that of beneficence. With the profuse, it is lost; and
even with those who lay it out according to the prudence of the world,
the objects acquired by it pall on the sense, and have scarce become our
own till they lose their value with the power of pleasing; but here the
enjoyment grows on reflection, and our money is most truly ours when it
ceases being in our possession.
“Yet I agree in some measure,” answered Harley, “with those who think
that charity to our common beggars is often misplaced; there are objects
less obtrusive whose title is a better one.”
“We cannot easily distinguish,” said the stranger; “and even of the
worthless, are there not many whose imprudence, or whose vice, may have
been one dreadful consequence of misfortune?”
Harley looked again in his face, and blessed himself for his skill in
physiognomy.
By this time they had reached the end of the walk, the old gentleman
leaning on the rails to take breath, and in the meantime they were joined
by a younger man, whose figure was much above the appearance of his
dress, which was poor and shabby. Harley’s former companion addressed
him as an acquaintance, and they turned on the walk together.
The elder of the strangers complained of the closeness of the evening,
and asked the other if he would go with him into a house hard by, and
take one draught of excellent cyder. “The man who keeps this house,”
said he to Harley, “was once a servant of mine. I could not think of
turning loose upon the world a faithful old fellow, for no other reason
but that his age had incapacitated him; so I gave him an annuity of ten
pounds, with the help of which he has set up this little place here, and
his daughter goes and sells milk in the city, while her father manages
his tap-room, as he calls it, at home. I can’t well ask a gentleman of
your appearance to accompany me to so paltry a place.” “Sir,” replied
Harley, interrupting him, “I would much rather enter it than the most
celebrated tavern in town. To give to the necessitous may sometimes be a
weakness in the man; to encourage industry is a duty in the citizen.”
They entered the house accordingly.
On a table at the corner of the room lay a pack of cards, loosely thrown
together. The old gentleman reproved the man of the house for
encouraging so idle an amusement. Harley attempted to defend him from
the necessity of accommodating himself to the humour of his guests, and
taking up the cards, began to shuffle them backwards and forwards in his
hand. “Nay, I don’t think cards so unpardonable an amusement as some
do,” replied the other; “and now and then, about this time of the
evening, when my eyes begin to fail me for my book, I divert myself with
a game at piquet, without finding my morals a bit relaxed by it. Do you
play piquet, sir?” (to Harley.) Harley answered in the affirmative; upon
which the other proposed playing a pool at a shilling the game, doubling
the stakes; adding, that he never played higher with anybody.
Harley’s good nature could not refuse the benevolent old man; and the
younger stranger, though he at first pleaded prior engagements, yet being
earnestly solicited by his friend, at last yielded to solicitation.
When they began to play, the old gentleman, somewhat to the surprise of
Harley, produced ten shillings to serve for markers of his score. “He
had no change for the beggar,” said Harley to himself; “but I can easily
account for it; it is curious to observe the affection that inanimate
things will create in us by a long acquaintance. If I may judge from my
own feelings, the old man would not part with one of these counters for
ten times its intrinsic value; it even got the better of his benevolence!
I, myself, have a pair of old brass sleeve buttons.” Here he was
interrupted by being told that the old gentleman had beat the younger,
and that it was his turn to take up the conqueror. “Your game has been
short,” said Harley. “I re-piqued him,” answered the old man, with joy
sparkling in his countenance. Harley wished to be re-piqued too, but he
was disappointed; for he had the same good fortune against his opponent.
Indeed, never did fortune, mutable as she is, delight in mutability so
much as at that moment. The victory was so quick, and so constantly
alternate, that the stake, in a short time, amounted to no less a sum
than £12, Harley’s proportion of which was within half-a-guinea of the
money he had in his pocket. He had before proposed a division, but the
old gentleman opposed it with such a pleasant warmth in his manner, that
it was always over-ruled. Now, however, he told them that he had an
appointment with some gentlemen, and it was within a few minutes of his
hour. The young stranger had gained one game, and was engaged in the
second with the other; they agreed, therefore, that the stake should be
divided, if the old gentleman won that: which was more than probable, as
his score was 90 to 35, and he was elder hand; but a momentous re-pique
decided it in favour of his adversary, who seemed to enjoy his victory
mingled with regret, for having won too much, while his friend, with
great ebullience of passion, many praises of his own good play, and many
malediction’s on the power of chance, took up the cards, and threw them
into the fire.
CHAPTER XXVI.
FRUITS OF THE DEAD SEA.
THE company he was engaged to meet were assembled in Fleet Street. He
had walked some time along the Strand, amidst a crowd of those wretches
who wait the uncertain wages of prostitution, with ideas of pity suitable
to the scene around him and the feelings he possessed, and had got as far
as Somerset House, when one of them laid hold of his arm, and, with a
voice tremulous and faint, asked him for a pint of wine, in a manner more
supplicatory than is usual with those whom the infamy of their profession
has deprived of shame. He turned round at the demand, and looked
steadfastly on the person who made it.
She was above the common size, and elegantly formed; her face was thin
and hollow, and showed the remains of tarnished beauty. Her eyes were
black, but had little of their lustre left; her cheeks had some paint
laid on without art, and productive of no advantage to her complexion,
which exhibited a deadly paleness on the other parts of her face.
Harley stood in the attitude of hesitation; which she, interpreting to
her advantage, repeated her request, and endeavoured to force a leer of
invitation into her countenance. He took her arm, and they walked on to
one of those obsequious taverns in the neighbourhood, where the dearness
of the wine is a discharge in full for the character of the house. From
what impulse he did this we do not mean to enquire; as it has ever been
against our nature to search for motives where bad ones are to be found.
They entered, and a waiter showed them a room, and placed a bottle of
claret on the table.
Harley filled the lady’s glass: which she had no sooner tasted, than
dropping it on the floor, and eagerly catching his arm, her eye grew
fixed, her lip assumed a clayey whiteness, and she fell back lifeless in
her chair.
Harley started from his seat, and, catching her in his arms, supported
her from falling to the ground, looking wildly at the door, as if he
wanted to run for assistance, but durst not leave the miserable creature.
It was not till some minutes after that it occurred to him to ring the
bell, which at last, however, he thought of, and rung with repeated
violence even after the waiter appeared. Luckily the waiter had his
senses somewhat more about him; and snatching up a bottle of water, which
stood on a buffet at the end of the room, he sprinkled it over the hands
and face of the dying figure before him. She began to revive, and, with
the assistance of some hartshorn drops, which Harley now for the first
time drew from his pocket, was able to desire the waiter to bring her a
crust of bread, of which she swallowed some mouthfuls with the appearance
of the keenest hunger. The waiter withdrew: when turning to Harley,
sobbing at the same time, and shedding tears, “I am sorry, sir,” said
she, “that I should have given you so much trouble; but you will pity me
when I tell you that till now I have not tasted a morsel these two days
past.”—He fixed his eyes on hers—every circumstance but the last was
forgotten; and he took her hand with as much respect as if she had been a
duchess. It was ever the privilege of misfortune to be revered by
him.—“Two days!” said he; “and I have fared sumptuously every day!”—He
was reaching to the bell; she understood his meaning, and prevented him.
“I beg, sir,” said she, “that you would give yourself no more trouble
about a wretch who does not wish to live; but, at present, I could not
eat a bit; my stomach even rose at the last mouthful of that crust.”—He
offered to call a chair, saying that he hoped a little rest would relieve
her.—He had one half-guinea left. “I am sorry,” he said, “that at
present I should be able to make you an offer of no more than this paltry
sum.”—She burst into tears: “Your generosity, sir, is abused; to bestow
it on me is to take it from the virtuous. I have no title but misery to
plead: misery of my own procuring.” “No more of that,” answered Harley;
“there is virtue in these tears; let the fruit of them be virtue.”—He
rung, and ordered a chair.—“Though I am the vilest of beings,” said she,
“I have not forgotten every virtue; gratitude, I hope, I shall still have
left, did I but know who is my benefactor.”—“My name is Harley.”—“Could I
ever have an opportunity?”—“You shall, and a glorious one too! your
future conduct—but I do not mean to reproach you—if, I say—it will be the
noblest reward—I will do myself the pleasure of seeing you again.”—Here
the waiter entered, and told them the chair was at the door; the lady
informed Harley of her lodgings, and he promised to wait on her at ten
next morning.
He led her to the chair, and returned to clear with the waiter, without
ever once reflecting that he had no money in his pocket. He was ashamed
to make an excuse; yet an excuse must be made: he was beginning to frame
one, when the waiter cut him short by telling him that he could not run
scores; but that, if he would leave his watch, or any other pledge, it
would be as safe as if it lay in his pocket. Harley jumped at the
proposal, and pulling out his watch, delivered it into his hands
immediately, and having, for once, had the precaution to take a note of
the lodging he intended to visit next morning, sallied forth with a blush
of triumph on his face, without taking notice of the sneer of the waiter,
who, twirling the watch in his hand, made him a profound bow at the door,
and whispered to a girl, who stood in the passage, something, in which
the word CULLY was honoured with a particular emphasis.
CHAPTER XXVII.
HIS SKILL IN PHYSIOGNOMY IS DOUBTED.
AFTER he had been some time with the company he had appointed to meet,
and the last bottle was called for, he first recollected that he would be
again at a loss how to discharge his share of the reckoning. He applied,
therefore, to one of them, with whom he was most intimate, acknowledging
that he had not a farthing of money about him; and, upon being jocularly
asked the reason, acquainted them with the two adventures we have just
now related. One of the company asked him if the old man in Hyde Park
did not wear a brownish coat, with a narrow gold edging, and his
companion an old green frock, with a buff-coloured waistcoat. Upon
Harley’s recollecting that they did, “Then,” said he, “you may be
thankful you have come off so well; they are two as noted sharpers, in
their way, as any in town, and but t’other night took me in for a much
larger sum. I had some thoughts of applying to a justice, but one does
not like to be seen in those matters.”
Harley answered, “That he could not but fancy the gentleman was mistaken,
as he never saw a face promise more honesty than that of the old man he
had met with.”—“His face!” said a grave-looking man, when sat opposite to
him, squirting the juice of his tobacco obliquely into the grate. There
was something very emphatical in the action, for it was followed by a
burst of laughter round the table. “Gentlemen,” said Harley, “you are
disposed to be merry; it may be as you imagine, for I confess myself
ignorant of the town; but there is one thing which makes me hear the loss
of my money with temper: the young fellow who won it must have been
miserably poor; I observed him borrow money for the stake from his
friend: he had distress and hunger in his countenance: be his character
what it may, his necessities at least plead for him.” At this there was
a louder laugh than before. “Gentlemen,” said the lawyer, one of whose
conversations with Harley we have already recorded, “here’s a pretty
fellow for you! to have heard him talk some nights ago, as I did, you
might have sworn he was a saint; yet now he games with sharpers, and
loses his money, and is bubbled by a fine tale of the Dead Sea, and pawns
his watch; here are sanctified doings with a witness!”
“Young gentleman,” said his friend on the other side of the table, “let
me advise you to be a little more cautious for the future; and as for
faces—you may look into them to know whether a man’s nose be a long or a
short one.”
CHAPTER XXVIII.
HE KEEPS HIS APPOINTMENT.
THE last night’s raillery of his companions was recalled to his
remembrance when he awoke, and the colder homilies of prudence began to
suggest some things which were nowise favourable for a performance of his
promise to the unfortunate female he had met with before. He rose,
uncertain of his purpose; but the torpor of such considerations was
seldom prevalent over the warmth of his nature. He walked some turns
backwards and forwards in his room; he recalled the languid form of the
fainting wretch to his mind; he wept at the recollection of her tears.
“Though I am the vilest of beings, I have not forgotten every virtue;
gratitude, I hope, I shall still have left.”—He took a larger
stride—“Powers of mercy that surround me!” cried he, “do ye not smile
upon deeds like these? to calculate the chances of deception is too
tedious a business for the life of man!”—The clock struck ten.—When he
was got down-stairs, he found that he had forgot the note of her
lodgings; he gnawed his lips at the delay: he was fairly on the pavement,
when he recollected having left his purse; he did but just prevent
himself from articulating an imprecation. He rushed a second time up
into his chamber. “What a wretch I am!” said he; “ere this time,
perhaps—” ’Twas a perhaps not to be borne;—two vibrations of a pendulum
would have served him to lock his bureau; but they could not be spared.
When he reached the house, and inquired for Miss Atkins (for that was the
lady’s name), he was shown up three pair of stairs, into a small room
lighted by one narrow lattice, and patched round with shreds of
different-coloured paper. In the darkest corner stood something like a
bed, before which a tattered coverlet hung by way of curtain. He had not
waited long when she appeared. Her face had the glister of new-washed
tears on it. “I am ashamed, sir,” said she, “that you should have taken
this fresh piece of trouble about one so little worthy of it; but, to the
humane, I know there is a pleasure in goodness for its own sake: if you
have patience for the recital of my story, it may palliate, though it
cannot excuse, my faults.” Harley bowed, as a sign of assent; and she
began as follows:—
“I am the daughter of an officer, whom a service of forty years had
advanced no higher than the rank of captain. I have had hints from
himself, and been informed by others, that it was in some measure owing
to those principles of rigid honour, which it was his boast to possess,
and which he early inculcated on me, that he had been able to arrive at
no better station. My mother died when I was a child: old enough to
grieve for her death, but incapable of remembering her precepts. Though
my father was doatingly fond of her, yet there were some sentiments in
which they materially differed: she had been bred from her infancy in the
strictest principles of religion, and took the morality of her conduct
from the motives which an adherence to those principles suggested. My
father, who had been in the army from his youth, affixed an idea of
pusillanimity to that virtue, which was formed by the doctrines, excited
by the rewards, or guarded by the terrors of revelation; his dashing idol
was the honour of a soldier: a term which he held in such reverence, that
he used it for his most sacred asseveration. When my mother died, I was
some time suffered to continue in those sentiments which her instructions
had produced; but soon after, though, from respect to her memory, my
father did not absolutely ridicule them, yet he showed, in his discourse
to others, so little regard to them, and at times suggested to me motives
of action so different, that I was soon weaned from opinions which I
began to consider as the dreams of superstition, or the artful inventions
of designing hypocrisy. My mother’s books were left behind at the
different quarters we removed to, and my reading was principally confined
to plays, novels, and those poetical descriptions of the beauty of virtue
and honour, which the circulating libraries easily afforded.
“As I was generally reckoned handsome, and the quickness of my parts
extolled by all our visitors, my father had a pride in allowing me to the
world. I was young, giddy, open to adulation, and vain of those talents
which acquired it.
“After the last war, my father was reduced to half-pay; with which we
retired to a village in the country, which the acquaintance of some
genteel families who resided in it, and the cheapness of living,
particularly recommended. My father rented a small house, with a piece
of ground sufficient to keep a horse for him, and a cow for the benefit
of his family. An old man servant managed his ground; while a maid, who
had formerly been my mother’s, and had since been mine, undertook the
care of our little dairy: they were assisted in each of their provinces
by my father and me: and we passed our time in a state of tranquillity,
which he had always talked of with delight, and my train of reading had
taught me to admire.
“Though I had never seen the polite circles of the metropolis, the
company my father had introduced me into had given me a degree of good
breeding, which soon discovered a superiority over the young ladies of
our village. I was quoted as an example of politeness, and my company
courted by most of the considerable families in the neighbourhood.
“Amongst the houses where I was frequently invited was Sir George
Winbrooke’s. He had two daughters nearly of my age, with whom, though
they had been bred up in those maxims of vulgar doctrine which my
superior understanding could not but despise, yet as their good nature
led them to an imitation of my manners in everything else, I cultivated a
particular friendship.
“Some months after our first acquaintance, Sir George’s eldest son came
home from his travels. His figure, his address, and conversation, were
not unlike those warm ideas of an accomplished man which my favourite
novels had taught me to form; and his sentiments on the article of
religion were as liberal as my own: when any of these happened to be the
topic of our discourse, I, who before had been silent, from a fear of
being single in opposition, now kindled at the fire he raised, and
defended our mutual opinions with all the eloquence I was mistress of.
He would be respectfully attentive all the while; and when I had ended,
would raise his eyes from the ground, look at me with a gaze of
admiration, and express his applause in the highest strain of encomium.
This was an incense the more pleasing, as I seldom or never had met with
it before; for the young gentlemen who visited Sir George were for the
most part of that athletic order, the pleasure of whose lives is derived
from fox-hunting: these are seldom solicitous to please the women at all;
or if they were, would never think of applying their flattery to the
mind.
“Mr. Winbrooke observed the weakness of my soul, and took every occasion
of improving the esteem he had gained. He asked my opinion of every
author, of every sentiment, with that submissive diffidence, which showed
an unlimited confidence in my understanding. I saw myself revered, as a
superior being, by one whose judgment my vanity told me was not likely to
err: preferred by him to all the other visitors of my sex, whose fortunes
and rank should have entitled them to a much higher degree of notice: I
saw their little jealousies at the distinguished attention he paid me; it
was gratitude, it was pride, it was love! Love which had made too fatal
a progress in my heart, before any declaration on his part should have
warranted a return: but I interpreted every look of attention, every
expression of compliment, to the passion I imagined him inspired with,
and imputed to his sensibility that silence which was the effect of art
and design. At length, however, he took an opportunity of declaring his
love: he now expressed himself in such ardent terms, that prudence might
have suspected their sincerity: but prudence is rarely found in the
situation I had been unguardedly led into; besides, that the course of
reading to which I had been accustomed, did not lead me to conclude, that
his expressions could be too warm to be sincere: nor was I even alarmed
at the manner in which he talked of marriage, a subjection, he often
hinted, to which genuine love should scorn to be confined. The woman, he
would often say, who had merit like mine to fix his affection, could
easily command it for ever. That honour too which I revered, was often
called in to enforce his sentiments. I did not, however, absolutely
assent to them; but I found my regard for their opposites diminish by
degrees. If it is dangerous to be convinced, it is dangerous to listen;
for our reason is so much of a machine, that it will not always be able
to resist, when the ear is perpetually assailed.
“In short, Mr. Harley (for I tire you with a relation, the catastrophe of
which you will already have imagined), I fell a prey to his artifices.
He had not been able so thoroughly to convert me, that my conscience was
silent on the subject; but he was so assiduous to give repeated proofs of
unabated affection, that I hushed its suggestions as they rose. The
world, however, I knew, was not to be silenced; and therefore I took
occasion to express my uneasiness to my seducer, and entreat him, as he
valued the peace of one to whom he professed such attachment, to remove
it by a marriage. He made excuse from his dependence on the will of his
father, but quieted my fears by the promise of endeavouring to win his
assent.
“My father had been some days absent on a visit to a dying relation, from
whom he had considerable expectations. I was left at home, with no other
company than my books: my books I found were not now such companions as
they used to be; I was restless, melancholy, unsatisfied with myself.
But judge my situation when I received a billet from Mr. Winbrooke
informing me, that he had sounded Sir George on the subject we had talked
of, and found him so averse to any match so unequal to his own rank and
fortune, that he was obliged, with whatever reluctance, to bid adieu to a
place, the remembrance of which should ever be dear to him.
“I read this letter a hundred times over. Alone, helpless, conscious of
guilt, and abandoned by every better thought, my mind was one motley
scene of terror, confusion, and remorse. A thousand expedients suggested
themselves, and a thousand fears told me they would be vain: at last, in
an agony of despair, I packed up a few clothes, took what money and
trinkets were in the house, and set out for London, whither I understood
he was gone; pretending to my maid, that I had received letters from my
father requiring my immediate attendance. I had no other companion than
a boy, a servant to the man from whom I hired my horses. I arrived in
London within an hour of Mr. Winbrooke, and accidentally alighted at the
very inn where he was.
“He started and turned pale when he saw me; but recovered himself in time
enough to make many new protestations of regard, and beg me to make
myself easy under a disappointment which was equally afflicting to him.
He procured me lodgings, where I slept, or rather endeavoured to sleep,
for that night. Next morning I saw him again, he then mildly observed on
the imprudence of my precipitate flight from the country, and proposed my
removing to lodgings at another end of the town, to elude the search of
my father, till he should fall upon some method of excusing my conduct to
him, and reconciling him to my return. We took a hackney-coach, and
drove to the house he mentioned.
“It was situated in a dirty lane, furnished with a tawdry affectation of
finery, with some old family pictures hanging on walls which their own
cobwebs would better have suited. I was struck with a secret dread at
entering, nor was it lessened by the appearance of the landlady, who had
that look of selfish shrewdness, which, of all others, is the most
hateful to those whose feelings are untinctured with the world. A girl,
who she told us was her niece, sat by her, playing on a guitar, while
herself was at work, with the assistance of spectacles, and had a
prayer-book with the leaves folded down in several places, lying on the
table before her. Perhaps, sir, I tire you with my minuteness, but the
place, and every circumstance about it, is so impressed on my mind, that
I shall never forget it.
“I dined that day with Mr. Winbrooke alone. He lost by degrees that
restraint which I perceived too well to hang about him before, and, with
his former gaiety and good humour, repeated the flattering things which,
though they had once been fatal, I durst not now distrust. At last,
taking my hand and kissing it, ‘It is thus,’ said he, ‘that love will
last, while freedom is preserved; thus let us ever be blessed, without
the galling thought that we are tied to a condition where we may cease to
be so.’
“I answered, ‘That the world thought otherwise: that it had certain ideas
of good fame, which it was impossible not to wish to maintain.’
“‘The world,’ said he, ‘is a tyrant, they are slaves who obey it; let us
be happy without the pale of the world. To-morrow I shall leave this
quarter of it, for one where the talkers of the world shall be foiled,
and lose us. Could not my Emily accompany me? my friend, my companion,
the mistress of my soul! Nay, do not look so, Emily! Your father may
grieve for a while, but your father shall be taken care of; this
bank-bill I intend as the comfort for his daughter.’
“I could contain myself no longer: ‘Wretch,’ I exclaimed, ‘dost thou
imagine that my father’s heart could brook dependence on the destroyer of
his child, and tamely accept of a base equivalent for her honour and his
own?’
“‘Honour, my Emily,’ said he, ‘is the word of fools, or of those wiser
men who cheat them. ’Tis a fantastic bauble that does not suit the
gravity of your father’s age; but, whatever it is, I am afraid it can
never be perfectly restored to you: exchange the word then, and let
pleasure be your object now.’
“At these words he clasped me in his arms, and pressed his lips rudely to
my bosom. I started from my seat. ‘Perfidious villain!’ said I, ‘who
dar’st insult the weakness thou hast undone; were that father here, thy
coward soul would shrink from the vengeance of his honour! Cursed be
that wretch who has deprived him of it! oh doubly cursed, who has dragged
on his hoary head the infamy which should have crushed her own!’ I
snatched a knife which lay beside me, and would have plunged it in my
breast, but the monster prevented my purpose, and smiling with a grin of
barbarous insult—
“‘Madam,’ said he, ‘I confess you are rather too much in heroics for me;
I am sorry we should differ about trifles; but as I seem somehow to have
offended you, I would willingly remedy it by taking my leave. You have
been put to some foolish expense in this journey on my account; allow me
to reimburse you.’
“So saying he laid a bank-bill, of what amount I had no patience to see,
upon the table. Shame, grief, and indignation choked my utterance;
unable to speak my wrongs, and unable to bear them in silence, I fell in
a swoon at his feet.
“What happened in the interval I cannot tell, but when I came to myself I
was in the arms of the landlady, with her niece chafing my temples, and
doing all in her power for my recovery. She had much compassion in her
countenance; the old woman assumed the softest look she was capable of,
and both endeavoured to bring me comfort. They continued to show me many
civilities, and even the aunt began to be less disagreeable in my sight.
To the wretched, to the forlorn, as I was, small offices of kindness are
endearing.
“Meantime my money was far spent, nor did I attempt to conceal my wants
from their knowledge. I had frequent thoughts of returning to my father;
but the dread of a life of scorn is insurmountable. I avoided,
therefore, going abroad when I had a chance of being seen by any former
acquaintance, nor indeed did my health for a great while permit it; and
suffered the old woman, at her own suggestion, to call me niece at home,
where we now and then saw (when they could prevail on me to leave my
room) one or two other elderly women, and sometimes a grave business-like
man, who showed great compassion for my indisposition, and made me very
obligingly an offer of a room at his country-house for the recovery of my
health. This offer I did not chose to accept, but told my landlady,
‘that I should be glad to be employed in any way of business which my
skill in needlework could recommend me to, confessing, at the same time,
that I was afraid I should scarce be able to pay her what I already owed
for board and lodging, and that for her other good offices, I had nothing
but thanks to give her.’
“‘My dear child,’ said she, ‘do not talk of paying; since I lost my own
sweet girl’ (here she wept), ‘your very picture she was, Miss Emily, I
have nobody, except my niece, to whom I should leave any little thing I
have been able to save; you shall live with me, my dear; and I have
sometimes a little millinery work, in which, when you are inclined to it,
you may assist us. By the way, here are a pair of ruffles we have just
finished for that gentleman you saw here at tea; a distant relation of
mine, and a worthy man he is. ’Twas pity you refused the offer of an
apartment at his country house; my niece, you know, was to have
accompanied you, and you might have fancied yourself at home; a most
sweet place it is, and but a short mile beyond Hampstead. Who knows,
Miss Emily, what effect such a visit might have had! If I had half your
beauty I should not waste it pining after e’er a worthless fellow of them
all.’
“I felt my heart swell at her words; I would have been angry if I could,
but I was in that stupid state which is not easily awakened to anger:
when I would have chid her the reproof stuck in my throat; I could only
weep!
“Her want of respect increased, as I had not spirit to assert it. My
work was now rather imposed than offered, and I became a drudge for the
bread I eat: but my dependence and servility grew in proportion, and I
was now in a situation which could not make any extraordinary exertions
to disengage itself from either—I found myself with child.
“At last the wretch, who had thus trained me to destruction, hinted the
purpose for which those means had been used. I discovered her to be an
artful procuress for the pleasures of those who are men of decency to the
world in the midst of debauchery.
“I roused every spark of courage within me at the horrid proposal. She
treated my passion at first somewhat mildly, but when I continued to
exert it she resented it with insult, and told me plainly that if I did
not soon comply with her desires I should pay her every farthing I owed,
or rot in a jail for life. I trembled at the thought; still, however, I
resisted her importunities, and she put her threats in execution. I was
conveyed to prison, weak from my condition, weaker from that struggle of
grief and misery which for some time I had suffered. A miscarriage was
the consequence.
“Amidst all the horrors of such a state, surrounded with wretches totally
callous, lost alike to humanity and to shame, think, Mr. Harley, think
what I endured; nor wonder that I at last yielded to the solicitations of
that miscreant I had seen at her house, and sunk to the prostitution
which he tempted. But that was happiness compared to what I have
suffered since. He soon abandoned me to the common use of the town, and
I was cast among those miserable beings in whose society I have since
remained.
“Oh! did the daughters of virtue know our sufferings; did they see our
hearts torn with anguish amidst the affectation of gaiety which our faces
are obliged to assume! our bodies tortured by disease, our minds with
that consciousness which they cannot lose! Did they know, did they think
of this, Mr. Harley! Their censures are just, but their pity perhaps
might spare the wretches whom their justice should condemn.
“Last night, but for an exertion of benevolence which the infection of
our infamy prevents even in the humane, had I been thrust out from this
miserable place which misfortune has yet left me; exposed to the brutal
insults of drunkenness, or dragged by that justice which I could not
bribe, to the punishment which may correct, but, alas! can never amend
the abandoned objects of its terrors. From that, Mr. Harley, your
goodness has relieved me.”
He beckoned with his hand: he would have stopped the mention of his
favours; but he could not speak, had it been to beg a diadem.
She saw his tears; her fortitude began to fail at the sight, when the
voice of some stranger on the stairs awakened her attention. She
listened for a moment, then starting up, exclaimed, “Merciful God! my
father’s voice!”
She had scarce uttered the word, when the door burst open, and a man
entered in the garb of an officer. When he discovered his daughter and
Harley, he started back a few paces; his look assumed a furious wildness!
he laid his hand on his sword. The two objects of his wrath did not
utter a syllable.
“Villain,” he cried, “thou seest a father who had once a daughter’s
honour to preserve; blasted as it now is, behold him ready to avenge its
loss!”
Harley had by this time some power of utterance. “Sir,” said he, “if you
will be a moment calm—”
“Infamous coward!” interrupted the other, “dost thou preach calmness to
wrongs like mine!”
He drew his sword.
“Sir,” said Harley, “let me tell you”—the blood ran quicker to his cheek,
his pulse beat one, no more, and regained the temperament of
humanity—“you are deceived, sir,” said he, “you are much deceived; but I
forgive suspicions which your misfortunes have justified: I would not
wrong you, upon my soul I would not, for the dearest gratification of a
thousand worlds; my heart bleeds for you!”
His daughter was now prostrate at his feet.
“Strike,” said she, “strike here a wretch, whose misery cannot end but
with that death she deserves.”
Her hair had fallen on her shoulders! her look had the horrid calmness of
out-breathed despair! Her father would have spoken; his lip quivered,
his cheek grew pale, his eyes lost the lightning of their fury! there was
a reproach in them, but with a mingling of pity. He turned them up to
heaven, then on his daughter. He laid his left hand on his heart, the
sword dropped from his right, he burst into tears.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE DISTRESSES OF A FATHER.
HARLEY kneeled also at the side of the unfortunate daughter.
“Allow me, sir,” said he, “to entreat your pardon for one whose offences
have been already so signally punished. I know, I feel, that those
tears, wrung from the heart of a father, are more dreadful to her than
all the punishments your sword could have inflicted: accept the
contrition of a child whom heaven has restored to you.”
“Is she not lost,” answered he, “irrecoverably lost? Damnation! a common
prostitute to the meanest ruffian!”
“Calmly, my dear sir,” said Harley, “did you know by what complicated
misfortunes she had fallen to that miserable state in which you now
behold her, I should have no need of words to excite your compassion.
Think, sir, of what once she was. Would you abandon her to the insults
of an unfeeling world, deny her opportunity of penitence, and cut off the
little comfort that still remains for your afflictions and her own!”
“Speak,” said he, addressing himself to his daughter; “speak; I will hear
thee.”
The desperation that supported her was lost; she fell to the ground, and
bathed his feet with her tears.
Harley undertook her cause: he related the treacheries to which she had
fallen a sacrifice, and again solicited the forgiveness of her father.
He looked on her for some time in silence; the pride of a soldier’s
honour checked for a while the yearnings of his heart; but nature at last
prevailed, he fell on her neck and mingled his tears with hers.
Harley, who discovered from the dress of the stranger that he was just
arrived from a journey, begged that they would both remove to his
lodgings, till he could procure others for them. Atkins looked at him
with some marks of surprise. His daughter now first recovered the power
of speech.
“Wretch as I am,” said she, “yet there is some gratitude due to the
preserver of your child. See him now before you. To him I owe my life,
or at least the comfort of imploring your forgiveness before I die.”
“Pardon me, young gentleman,” said Atkins, “I fear my passion wronged
you.”
“Never, never, sir,” said Harley “if it had, your reconciliation to your
daughter were an atonement a thousand fold.” He then repeated his
request that he might be allowed to conduct them to his lodgings, to
which Mr. Atkins at last consented. He took his daughter’s arm.
“Come, my Emily,” said he, “we can never, never recover that happiness we
have lost! but time may teach us to remember our misfortunes with
patience.”
When they arrived at the house where Harley lodged, he was informed that
the first floor was then vacant, and that the gentleman and his daughter
might be accommodated there. While he was upon his enquiry, Miss Atkins
informed her father more particularly what she owed to his benevolence.
When he turned into the room where they were Atkins ran and embraced
him;—begged him again to forgive the offence he had given him, and made
the warmest protestations of gratitude for his favours. We would attempt
to describe the joy which Harley felt on this occasion, did it not occur
to us that one half of the world could not understand it though we did,
and the other half will, by this time, have understood it without any
description at all.
Miss Atkins now retired to her chamber, to take some rest from the
violence of the emotions she had suffered. When she was gone, her
father, addressing himself to Harley, said, “You have a right, sir, to be
informed of the present situation of one who owes so much to your
compassion for his misfortunes. My daughter I find has informed you what
that was at the fatal juncture when they began. Her distresses you have
heard, you have pitied as they deserved; with mine, perhaps, I cannot so
easily make you acquainted. You have a feeling heart, Mr. Harley; I
bless it that it has saved my child; but you never were a father, a
father torn by that most dreadful of calamities, the dishonour of a child
he doated on! You have been already informed of some of the
circumstances of her elopement: I was then from home, called by the death
of a relation, who, though he would never advance me a shilling on the
utmost exigency in his life-time, left me all the gleanings of his
frugality at his death. I would not write this intelligence to my
daughter, because I intended to be the bearer myself; and as soon as my
business would allow me, I set out on my return, winged with all the
haste of paternal affection. I fondly built those schemes of future
happiness, which present prosperity is ever busy to suggest: my Emily was
concerned in them all. As I approached our little dwelling my heart
throbbed with the anticipation of joy and welcome. I imagined the
cheering fire, the blissful contentment of a frugal meal, made luxurious
by a daughter’s smile, I painted to myself her surprise at the tidings of
our new-acquired riches, our fond disputes about the disposal of them.
“The road was shortened by the dreams of happiness I enjoyed, and it
began to be dark as I reached the house: I alighted from my horse, and
walked softly upstairs to the room we commonly sat in. I was somewhat
disappointed at not finding my daughter there. I rung the bell; her maid
appeared, and shewed no small signs of wonder at the summons. She
blessed herself as she entered the room: I smiled at her surprise.
‘Where is Miss Emily, sir?’ said she.
“‘Emily!’
“‘Yes, sir; she has been gone hence some days, upon receipt of those
letters you sent her.’
“‘Letters!’ said I.
“‘Yes, sir, so she told me, and went off in all haste that very night.’
“I stood aghast as she spoke, but was able so far to recollect myself, as
to put on the affectation of calmness, and telling her there was
certainly some mistake in the affair, desired her to leave me.
“When she was gone, I threw myself into a chair, in that state of
uncertainty which is, of all others, the most dreadful. The gay visions
with which I had delighted myself, vanished in an instant. I was
tortured with tracing back the same circle of doubt and disappointment.
My head grew dizzy as I thought. I called the servant again, and asked
her a hundred questions, to no purpose; there was not room even for
conjecture.
“Something at last arose in my mind, which we call Hope, without knowing
what it is. I wished myself deluded by it; but it could not prevail over
my returning fears. I rose and walked through the room. My Emily’s
spinnet stood at the end of it, open, with a book of music folded down at
some of my favourite lessons. I touched the keys; there was a vibration
in the sound that froze my blood; I looked around, and methought the
family pictures on the walls gazed on me with compassion in their faces.
I sat down again with an attempt at more composure; I started at every
creaking of the door, and my ears rung with imaginary noises!
“I had not remained long in this situation, when the arrival of a friend,
who had accidentally heard of my return, put an end to my doubts, by the
recital of my daughter’s dishonour. He told me he had his information
from a young gentleman, to whom Winbrooke had boasted of having seduced
her.
“I started from my seat, with broken curses on my lips, and without
knowing whither I should pursue them, ordered my servant to load my
pistols and saddle my horses. My friend, however, with great difficulty,
persuaded me to compose myself for that night, promising to accompany me
on the morrow, to Sir George Winbrooke’s in quest of his son.
“The morrow came, after a night spent in a state little distant from
madness. We went as early as decency would allow to Sir George’s. He
received me with politeness, and indeed compassion, protested his
abhorrence of his son’s conduct, and told me that he had set out some
days before for London, on which place he had procured a draft for a
large sum, on pretence of finishing his travels, but that he had not
heard from him since his departure.
“I did not wait for any more, either of information or comfort, but,
against the united remonstrances of Sir George and my friend, set out
instantly for London, with a frantic uncertainty of purpose; but there,
all manner of search was in vain. I could trace neither of them any
farther than the inn where they first put up on their arrival; and after
some days fruitless inquiry, returned home destitute of every little hope
that had hitherto supported me. The journeys I had made, the restless
nights I had spent, above all, the perturbation of my mind, had the
effect which naturally might be expected—a very dangerous fever was the
consequence. From this, however, contrary to the expectation of my
physicians, I recovered. It was now that I first felt something like
calmness of mind: probably from being reduced to a state which could not
produce the exertions of anguish or despair. A stupid melancholy settled
on my soul; I could endure to live with an apathy of life; at times I
forgot my resentment, and wept at the remembrance of my child.
“Such has been the tenor of my days since that fatal moment when these
misfortunes began, till yesterday, that I received a letter from a friend
in town, acquainting me of her present situation. Could such tales as
mine, Mr. Harley, be sometimes suggested to the daughters of levity, did
they but know with what anxiety the heart of a parent flutters round the
child he loves, they would be less apt to construe into harshness that
delicate concern for their conduct, which they often complain of as
laying restraint upon things, to the young, the gay, and the thoughtless,
seemingly harmless and indifferent. Alas! I fondly imagined that I
needed not even these common cautions! my Emily was the joy of my age,
and the pride of my soul! Those things are now no more, they are lost
for ever! Her death I could have born, but the death of her honour has
added obloquy and shame to that sorrow which bends my grey hairs to the
dust!”
As he spoke these last words, his voice trembled in his throat; it was
now lost in his tears. He sat with his face half turned from Harley, as
if he would have hid the sorrow which he felt. Harley was in the same
attitude himself; he durst not meet his eye with a tear, but gathering
his stifled breath, “Let me entreat you, sir,” said he, “to hope better
things. The world is ever tyrannical; it warps our sorrows to edge them
with keener affliction. Let us not be slaves to the names it affixes to
motive or to action. I know an ingenuous mind cannot help feeling when
they sting. But there are considerations by which it may be overcome.
Its fantastic ideas vanish as they rise; they teach us to look beyond
it.”
* * * * *
A FRAGMENT.
SHOWING HIS SUCCESS WITH THE BARONET.
* * THE card he received was in the politest style in which
disappointment could be communicated. The baronet “was under a necessity
of giving up his application for Mr. Harley, as he was informed that the
lease was engaged for a gentleman who had long served His Majesty in
another capacity, and whose merit had entitled him to the first lucrative
thing that should be vacant.” Even Harley could not murmur at such a
disposal. “Perhaps,” said he to himself, “some war-worn officer, who,
like poor Atkins, had been neglected from reasons which merited the
highest advancement; whose honour could not stoop to solicit the
preferment he deserved; perhaps, with a family, taught the principles of
delicacy, without the means of supporting it; a wife and
children—gracious heaven! whom my wishes would have deprived of bread—”
He was interrupted in his reverie by some one tapping him on the
shoulder, and, on turning round, he discovered it to be the very man who
had explained to him the condition of his gay companion at Hyde Park
Corner. “I am glad to see you, sir,” said he; “I believe we are fellows
in disappointment.” Harley started, and said that he was at a loss to
understand him. “Pooh! you need not be so shy,” answered the other;
“every one for himself is but fair, and I had much rather you had got it
than the rascally gauger.” Harley still protested his ignorance of what
he meant. “Why, the lease of Bancroft Manor; had not you been applying
for it?” “I confess I was,” replied Harley; “but I cannot conceive how
you should be interested in the matter.” “Why, I was making interest for
it myself,” said he, “and I think I had some title. I voted for this
same baronet at the last election, and made some of my friends do so too;
though I would not have you imagine that I sold my vote. No, I scorn it,
let me tell you I scorn it; but I thought as how this man was staunch and
true, and I find he’s but a double-faced fellow after all, and
speechifies in the House for any side he hopes to make most by. Oh, how
many fine speeches and squeezings by the hand we had of him on the
canvas! ‘And if ever I shall be so happy as to have an opportunity of
serving you.’ A murrain on the smooth-tongued knave, and after all to
get it for this pimp of a gauger.” “The gauger! there must be some
mistake,” said Harley. “He writes me, that it was engaged for one whose
long services—” “Services!” interrupted the other; “you shall hear.
Services! Yes, his sister arrived in town a few days ago, and is now
sempstress to the baronet. A plague on all rogues, says honest Sam
Wrightson. I shall but just drink damnation to them to-night, in a
crown’s worth of Ashley’s, and leave London to-morrow by sun-rise.” “I
shall leave it too,” said Harley; and so he accordingly did.
In passing through Piccadilly, he had observed, on the window of an inn,
a notification of the departure of a stage-coach for a place in his road
homewards; in the way back to his lodgings, he took a seat in it for his
return.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
HE LEAVES LONDON—CHARACTERS IN A STAGE-COACH.
THE company in the stage-coach consisted of a grocer and his wife, who
were going to pay a visit to some of their country friends; a young
officer, who took this way of marching to quarters; a middle-aged
gentlewoman, who had been hired as housekeeper to some family in the
country; and an elderly, well-looking man, with a remarkable
old-fashioned periwig.
Harley, upon entering, discovered but one vacant seat, next the grocer’s
wife, which, from his natural shyness of temper, he made no scruple to
occupy, however aware that riding backwards always disagreed with him.
Though his inclination to physiognomy had met with some rubs in the
metropolis, he had not yet lost his attachment to that science. He set
himself, therefore, to examine, as usual, the countenances of his
companions. Here, indeed, he was not long in doubt as to the preference;
for besides that the elderly gentleman, who sat opposite to him, had
features by nature more expressive of good dispositions, there was
something in that periwig we mentioned, peculiarly attractive of Harley’s
regard.
He had not been long employed in these speculations, when he found
himself attacked with that faintish sickness, which was the natural
consequence of his situation in the coach. The paleness of his
countenance was first observed by the housekeeper, who immediately made
offer of her smelling bottle, which Harley, however, declined, telling at
the same time the cause of his uneasiness. The gentleman, on the
opposite side of the coach, now first turned his eye from the side
direction in which it had been fixed, and begged Harley to exchange
places with him, expressing his regret that he had not made the proposal
before. Harley thanked him, and, upon being assured that both seats were
alike to him, was about to accept of his offer, when the young gentleman
of the sword, putting on an arch look, laid hold of the other’s arm.
“So, my old boy,” said he, “I find you have still some youthful blood
about you, but, with your leave, I will do myself the honour of sitting
by this lady;” and took his place accordingly. The grocer stared him as
full in the face as his own short neck would allow, and his wife, who was
a little, round-faced woman, with a great deal of colour in her cheeks,
drew up at the compliment that was paid her, looking first at the
officer, and then at the housekeeper.
This incident was productive of some discourse; for before, though there
was sometimes a cough or a hem from the grocer, and the officer now and
then humm’d a few notes of a song, there had not a single word passed the
lips of any of the company.
Mrs. Grocer observed, how ill-convenient it was for people, who could not
be drove backwards, to travel in a stage. This brought on a dissertation
on stage-coaches in general, and the pleasure of keeping a chay of one’s
own; which led to another, on the great riches of Mr. Deputy Bearskin,
who, according to her, had once been of that industrious order of youths
who sweep the crossings of the streets for the conveniency of passengers,
but, by various fortunate accidents, had now acquired an immense fortune,
and kept his coach and a dozen livery servants. All this afforded ample
fund for conversation, if conversation it might be called, that was
carried on solely by the before-mentioned lady, nobody offering to
interrupt her, except that the officer sometimes signified his
approbation by a variety of oaths, a sort of phraseology in which he
seemed extremely versant. She appealed indeed, frequently, to her
husband for the authenticity of certain facts, of which the good man as
often protested his total ignorance; but as he was always called fool, or
something very like it, for his pains, he at last contrived to support
the credit of his wife without prejudice to his conscience, and signified
his assent by a noise not unlike the grunting of that animal which in
shape and fatness he somewhat resembled.
The housekeeper, and the old gentleman who sat next to Harley, were now
observed to be fast asleep, at which the lady, who had been at such pains
to entertain them, muttered some words of displeasure, and, upon the
officer’s whispering to smoke the old put, both she and her husband
purs’d up their mouths into a contemptuous smile. Harley looked sternly
on the grocer. “You are come, sir,” said he, “to those years when you
might have learned some reverence for age. As for this young man, who
has so lately escaped from the nursery, he may be allowed to divert
himself.” “Dam’me, sir!” said the officer, “do you call me young?”
striking up the front of his hat, and stretching forward on his seat,
till his face almost touched Harley’s. It is probable, however, that he
discovered something there which tended to pacify him, for, on the ladies
entreating them not to quarrel, he very soon resumed his posture and
calmness together, and was rather less profuse of his oaths during the
rest of the journey.
It is possible the old gentleman had waked time enough to hear the last
part of this discourse; at least (whether from that cause, or that he too
was a physiognomist) he wore a look remarkably complacent to Harley, who,
on his part, shewed a particular observance of him. Indeed, they had
soon a better opportunity of making their acquaintance, as the coach
arrived that night at the town where the officer’s regiment lay, and the
places of destination of their other fellow-travellers, it seems, were at
no great distance, for, next morning, the old gentleman and Harley were
the only passengers remaining.
When they left the inn in the morning, Harley, pulling out a little
pocket-book, began to examine the contents, and make some corrections
with a pencil. “This,” said he, turning to his companion, “is an
amusement with which I sometimes pass idle hours at an inn. These are
quotations from those humble poets, who trust their fame to the brittle
tenure of windows and drinking-glasses.” “From our inn,” returned the
gentleman, “a stranger might imagine that we were a nation of poets;
machines, at least, containing poetry, which the motion of a journey
emptied of their contents. Is it from the vanity of being thought
geniuses, or a mere mechanical imitation of the custom of others, that we
are tempted to scrawl rhyme upon such places?”
“Whether vanity is the cause of our becoming rhymesters or not,” answered
Harley, “it is a pretty certain effect of it. An old man of my
acquaintance, who deals in apothegms, used to say that he had known few
men without envy, few wits without ill-nature, and no poet without
vanity; and I believe his remark is a pretty just one. Vanity has been
immemorially the charter of poets. In this, the ancients were more
honest than we are. The old poets frequently make boastful predictions
of the immortality their works shall acquire them; ours, in their
dedications and prefatory discourses, employ much eloquence to praise
their patrons, and much seeming modesty to condemn themselves, or at
least to apologise for their productions to the world. But this, in my
opinion, is the more assuming manner of the two; for of all the garbs I
ever saw Pride put on, that of her humility is to me the most
disgusting.”
“It is natural enough for a poet to be vain,” said the stranger. “The
little worlds which he raises, the inspiration which he claims, may
easily be productive of self-importance; though that inspiration is
fabulous, it brings on egotism, which is always the parent of vanity.”
“It may be supposed,” answered Harley, “that inspiration of old was an
article of religious faith; in modern times it may be translated a
propensity to compose; and I believe it is not always most readily found
where the poets have fixed its residence, amidst groves and plains, and
the scenes of pastoral retirement. The mind may be there unbent from the
cares of the world, but it will frequently, at the same time, be unnerved
from any great exertion. It will feel imperfect, and wander without
effort over the regions of reflection.”
“There is at least,” said the stranger, “one advantage in the poetical
inclination, that it is an incentive to philanthropy. There is a certain
poetic ground, on which a man cannot tread without feelings that enlarge
the heart: the causes of human depravity vanish before the romantic
enthusiasm he professes, and many who are not able to reach the
Parnassian heights, may yet approach so near as to be bettered by the air
of the climate.”
“I have always thought so,” replied Harley; “but this is an argument with
the prudent against it: they urge the danger of unfitness for the world.”
“I allow it,” returned the other; “but I believe it is not always
rightfully imputed to the bent for poetry: that is only one effect of the
common cause.—Jack, says his father, is indeed no scholar; nor could all
the drubbings from his master ever bring him one step forward in his
accidence or syntax: but I intend him for a merchant.—Allow the same
indulgence to Tom.—Tom reads Virgil and Horace when he should be casting
accounts; and but t’other day he pawned his great-coat for an edition of
Shakespeare.—But Tom would have been as he is, though Virgil and Horace
had never been born, though Shakespeare had died a link-boy; for his
nurse will tell you, that when he was a child, he broke his rattle, to
discover what it was that sounded within it; and burnt the sticks of his
go-cart, because he liked to see the sparkling of timber in the
fire.—’Tis a sad case; but what is to be done?—Why, Jack shall make a
fortune, dine on venison, and drink claret.—Ay, but Tom—Tom shall dine
with his brother, when his pride will let him; at other times, he shall
bless God over a half-pint of ale and a Welsh-rabbit; and both shall go
to heaven as they may.—That’s a poor prospect for Tom, says the
father.—To go to heaven! I cannot agree with him.”
“Perhaps,” said Harley, “we now-a-days discourage the romantic turn a
little too much. Our boys are prudent too soon. Mistake me not, I do
not mean to blame them for want of levity or dissipation; but their
pleasures are those of hackneyed vice, blunted to every finer emotion by
the repetition of debauch; and their desire of pleasure is warped to the
desire of wealth, as the means of procuring it. The immense riches
acquired by individuals have erected a standard of ambition, destructive
of private morals, and of public virtue. The weaknesses of vice are left
us; but the most allowable of our failings we are taught to despise.
Love, the passion most natural to the sensibility of youth, has lost the
plaintive dignity he once possessed, for the unmeaning simper of a
dangling coxcomb; and the only serious concern, that of a dowry, is
settled, even amongst the beardless leaders of the dancing-school. The
Frivolous and the Interested (might a satirist say) are the
characteristical features of the age; they are visible even in the essays
of our philosophers. They laugh at the pedantry of our fathers, who
complained of the times in which they lived; they are at pains to
persuade us how much those were deceived; they pride themselves in
defending things as they find them, and in exploding the barren sounds
which had been reared into motives for action. To this their style is
suited; and the manly tone of reason is exchanged for perpetual efforts
at sneer and ridicule. This I hold to be an alarming crisis in the
corruption of a state; when not only is virtue declined, and vice
prevailing, but when the praises of virtue are forgotten, and the infamy
of vice unfelt.”
They soon after arrived at the next inn upon the route of the
stage-coach, when the stranger told Harley, that his brother’s house, to
which he was returning, lay at no great distance, and he must therefore
unwillingly bid him adieu.
“I should like,” said Harley, taking his hand, “to have some word to
remember so much seeming worth by: my name is Harley.”
“I shall remember it,” answered the old gentleman, “in my prayers; mine
is Silton.”
And Silton indeed it was! Ben Silton himself! Once more, my honoured
friend, farewell!—Born to be happy without the world, to that peaceful
happiness which the world has not to bestow! Envy never scowled on thy
life, nor hatred smiled on thy grave.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
HE MEETS AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE.
WHEN the stage-coach arrived at the place of its destination, Harley
began to consider how he should proceed the remaining part of his
journey. He was very civilly accosted by the master of the inn, who
offered to accommodate him either with a post-chaise or horses, to any
distance he had a mind: but as he did things frequently in a way
different from what other people call natural, he refused these offers,
and set out immediately a-foot, having first put a spare shirt in his
pocket, and given directions for the forwarding of his portmanteau. This
was a method of travelling which he was accustomed to take: it saved the
trouble of provision for any animal but himself, and left him at liberty
to chose his quarters, either at an inn, or at the first cottage in which
he saw a face he liked: nay, when he was not peculiarly attracted by the
reasonable creation, he would sometimes consort with a species of
inferior rank, and lay himself down to sleep by the side of a rock, or on
the banks of a rivulet. He did few things without a motive, but his
motives were rather eccentric: and the useful and expedient were terms
which he held to be very indefinite, and which therefore he did not
always apply to the sense in which they are commonly understood.
The sun was now in his decline, and the evening remarkably serene, when
he entered a hollow part of the road, which winded between the
surrounding banks, and seamed the sward in different lines, as the choice
of travellers had directed them to tread it. It seemed to be little
frequented now, for some of those had partly recovered their former
verdure. The scene was such as induced Harley to stand and enjoy it;
when, turning round, his notice was attracted by an object, which the
fixture of his eye on the spot he walked had before prevented him from
observing.
An old man, who from his dress seemed to have been a soldier, lay fast
asleep on the ground; a knapsack rested on a stone at his right hand,
while his staff and brass-hilted sword were crossed at his left.
Harley looked on him with the most earnest attention. He was one of
those figures which Salvator would have drawn; nor was the surrounding
scenery unlike the wildness of that painter’s back-grounds. The banks on
each side were covered with fantastic shrub-wood, and at a little
distance, on the top of one of them, stood a finger-post, to mark the
directions of two roads which diverged from the point where it was
placed. A rock, with some dangling wild flowers, jutted out above where
the soldier lay; on which grew the stump of a large tree, white with age,
and a single twisted branch shaded his face as he slept. His face had
the marks of manly comeliness impaired by time; his forehead was not
altogether bald, but its hairs might have been numbered; while a few
white locks behind crossed the brown of his neck with a contrast the most
venerable to a mind like Harley’s. “Thou art old,” said he to himself;
“but age has not brought thee rest for its infirmities; I fear those
silver hairs have not found shelter from thy country, though that neck
has been bronzed in its service.” The stranger waked. He looked at
Harley with the appearance of some confusion: it was a pain the latter
knew too well to think of causing in another; he turned and went on. The
old man re-adjusted his knapsack, and followed in one of the tracks on
the opposite side of the road.
When Harley heard the tread of his feet behind him, he could not help
stealing back a glance at his fellow-traveller. He seemed to bend under
the weight of his knapsack; he halted on his walk, and one of his arms
was supported by a sling, and lay motionless across his breast. He had
that steady look of sorrow, which indicates that its owner has gazed upon
his griefs till he has forgotten to lament them; yet not without those
streaks of complacency which a good mind will sometimes throw into the
countenance, through all the incumbent load of its depression.
He had now advanced nearer to Harley, and, with an uncertain sort of
voice, begged to know what it was o’clock; “I fear,” said he, “sleep has
beguiled me of my time, and I shall hardly have light enough left to
carry me to the end of my journey.”
“Father!” said Harley (who by this time found the romantic enthusiasm
rising within him) “how far do you mean to go?”
“But a little way, sir,” returned the other; “and indeed it is but a
little way I can manage now: ’tis just four miles from the height to the
village, thither I am going.”
“I am going there too,” said Harley; “we may make the road shorter to
each other. You seem to have served your country, sir, to have served it
hardly too; ’tis a character I have the highest esteem for.—I would not
be impertinently inquisitive; but there is that in your appearance which
excites my curiosity to know something more of you; in the meantime,
suffer me to carry that knapsack.”
The old man gazed on him; a tear stood in his eye! “Young gentleman,”
said he, “you are too good; may Heaven bless you for an old man’s sake,
who has nothing but his blessing to give! but my knapsack is so familiar
to my shoulders, that I should walk the worse for wanting it; and it
would be troublesome to you, who have not been used to its weight.”
“Far from it,” answered Harley, “I should tread the lighter; it would be
the most honourable badge I ever wore.”
“Sir,” said the stranger, who had looked earnestly in Harley’s face
during the last part of his discourse, “is act your name Harley?”
“It is,” replied he; “I am ashamed to say I have forgotten yours.”
“You may well have forgotten my face,” said the stranger;—“’tis a long
time since you saw it; but possibly you may remember something of old
Edwards.”
“Edwards!” cried Harley, “oh! heavens!” and sprung to embrace him; “let
me clasp those knees on which I have sat so often: Edwards!—I shall never
forget that fire-side, round which I have been so happy! But where,
where have you been? where is Jack? where is your daughter? How has it
fared with them, when fortune, I fear, has been so unkind to you?”
“’Tis a long tale,” replied Edwards; “but I will try to tell it you as we
walk.
“When you were at school in the neighbourhood, you remember me at
South-hill: that farm had been possessed by my father, grandfather, and
great-grandfather, which last was a younger brother of that very man’s
ancestor, who is now lord of the manor. I thought I managed it, as they
had done, with prudence; I paid my rent regularly as it became due, and
had always as much behind as gave bread to me and my children. But my
last lease was out soon after you left that part of the country; and the
squire, who had lately got a London-attorney for his steward, would not
renew it, because, he said, he did not chuse to have any farm under £300
a year value on his estate; but offered to give me the preference on the
same terms with another, if I chose to take the one he had marked out, of
which mine was a part.
“What could I do, Mr. Harley? I feared the undertaking was too great for
me; yet to leave, at my age, the house I had lived in from my cradle! I
could not, Mr. Harley, I could not; there was not a tree about it that I
did not look on as my father, my brother, or my child: so I even ran the
risk, and took the squire’s offer of the whole. But had soon reason to
repent of my bargain; the steward had taken care that my former farm
should be the best land of the division: I was obliged to hire more
servants, and I could not have my eye over them all; some unfavourable
seasons followed one another, and I found my affairs entangling on my
hands. To add to my distress, a considerable corn-factor turned bankrupt
with a sum of mine in his possession: I failed paying my rent so
punctually as I was wont to do, and the same steward had my stock taken
in execution in a few days after. So, Mr. Harley, there was an end of my
prosperity. However, there was as much produced from the sale of my
effects as paid my debts and saved me from a jail: I thank God I wronged
no man, and the world could never charge me with dishonesty.
“Had you seen us, Mr. Harley, when we were turned out of South-hill, I am
sure you would have wept at the sight. You remember old Trusty, my shag
house-dog; I shall never forget it while I live; the poor creature was
blind with age, and could scarce crawl after us to the door; he went
however as far as the gooseberry-bush that you may remember stood on the
left side of the yard; he was wont to bask in the sun there; when he had
reached that spot, he stopped; we went on: I called to him; he wagged his
tail, but did not stir: I called again; he lay down: I whistled, and
cried Trusty; he gave a short howl, and died! I could have lain down and
died too; but God gave me strength to live for my children.”
The old man now paused a moment to take breath. He eyed Harley’s face;
it was bathed with tears: the story was grown familiar to himself; he
dropped one tear, and no more.
“Though I was poor,” continued he, “I was not altogether without credit.
A gentleman in the neighbourhood, who had a small farm unoccupied at the
time, offered to let me have it, on giving security for the rent; which I
made shift to procure. It was a piece of ground which required
management to make anything of; but it was nearly within the compass of
my son’s labour and my own. We exerted all our industry to bring it into
some heart. We began to succeed tolerably and lived contented on its
produce, when an unlucky accident brought us under the displeasure of a
neighbouring justice of the peace, and broke all our family-happiness
again.
“My son was a remarkable good shooter; he-had always kept a pointer on
our former farm, and thought no harm in doing so now; when one day,
having sprung a covey in our own ground, the dog, of his own accord,
followed them into the justice’s. My son laid down his gun, and went
after his dog to bring him back: the game-keeper, who had marked the
birds, came up, and seeing the pointer, shot him just as my son
approached. The creature fell; my son ran up to him: he died with a
complaining sort of cry at his master’s feet. Jack could bear it no
longer; but, flying at the game-keeper, wrenched his gun out of his hand,
and with the butt end of it, felled him to the ground.
“He had scarce got home, when a constable came with a warrant, and
dragged him to prison; there he lay, for the justices would not take
bail, till he was tried at the quarter-sessions for the assault and
battery. His fine was hard upon us to pay: we contrived however to live
the worse for it, and make up the loss by our frugality: but the justice
was not content with that punishment, and soon after had an opportunity
of punishing us indeed.
“An officer with press-orders came down to our county, and having met
with the justices, agreed that they should pitch on a certain number, who
could most easily be spared from the county, of whom he would take care
to clear it: my son’s name was in the justices’ list.
“’Twas on a Christmas eve, and the birth-day too of my son’s little boy.
The night was piercing cold, and it blew a storm, with showers of hail
and snow. We had made up a cheering fire in an inner room; I sat before
it in my wicker-chair; blessing providence, that had still left a shelter
for me and my children. My son’s two little ones were holding their
gambols around us; my heart warmed at the sight: I brought a bottle of my
best ale, and all our misfortunes were forgotten.
“It had long been our custom to play a game at blind man’s buff on that
night, and it was not omitted now; so to it we fell, I, and my son, and
his wife, the daughter of a neighbouring farmer, who happened to be with
us at the time, the two children, and an old maid servant, who had lived
with me from a child. The lot fell on my son to be blindfolded: we had
continued some time in our game, when he groped his way into an outer
room in pursuit of some of us, who, he imagined, had taken shelter there;
we kept snug in our places, and enjoyed his mistake. He had not been
long there, when he was suddenly seized from behind; ‘I shall have you
now,’ said he, and turned about. ‘Shall you so, master?’ answered the
ruffian, who had laid hold of him; ‘we shall make you play at another
sort of game by and by.’”—At these words Harley started with a convulsive
sort of motion, and grasping Edwards’s sword, drew it half out of the
scabbard, with a look of the most frantic wildness. Edwards gently
replaced it in its sheath, and went on with his relation.
“On hearing these words in a strange voice, we all rushed out to discover
the cause; the room by this time was almost full of the gang. My
daughter-in-law fainted at the sight; the maid and I ran to assist her,
while my poor son remained motionless, gazing by turns on his children
and their mother. We soon recovered her to life, and begged her to
retire and wait the issue of the affair; but she flew to her husband, and
clung round him in an agony of terror and grief.
“In the gang was one of a smoother aspect, whom, by his dress, we
discovered to be a serjeant of foot: he came up to me, and told me, that
my son had his choice of the sea or land service, whispering at the same
time that, if he chose the land, he might get off, on procuring him
another man, and paying a certain sum for his freedom. The money we
could just muster up in the house, by the assistance of the maid, who
produced, in a green bag, all the little savings of her service; but the
man we could not expect to find. My daughter-in-law gazed upon her
children with a look of the wildest despair: ‘My poor infants!’ said she,
‘your father is forced from you; who shall now labour for your bread? or
must your mother beg for herself and you?’ I prayed her to be patient;
but comfort I had none to give her. At last, calling the serjeant aside,
I asked him, ‘If I was too old to be accepted in place of my son?’
“‘Why, I don’t know,’ said he; ‘you are rather old to be sure, but yet
the money may do much.’
“I put the money in his hand, and coming back to my children, ‘Jack,’
said I, ‘you are free; live to give your wife and these little ones
bread; I will go, my child, in your stead; I have but little life to
lose, and if I staid, I should add one to the wretches you left behind.’
“‘No,’ replied my son, ‘I am not that coward you imagine me; heaven
forbid that my father’s grey hairs should be so exposed, while I sat idle
at home; I am young and able to endure much, and God will take care of
you and my family.’
“‘Jack,’ said I, ‘I will put an end to this matter, you have never
hitherto disobeyed me; I will not be contradicted in this; stay at home,
I charge you, and, for my sake, be kind to my children.’
“Our parting, Mr. Harley, I cannot describe to you; it was the first time
we ever had parted: the very press-gang could scarce keep from tears; but
the serjeant, who had seemed the softest before, was now the least moved
of them all. He conducted me to a party of new-raised recruits, who lay
at a village in the neighbourhood; and we soon after joined the regiment.
I had not been long with it when we were ordered to the East Indies,
where I was soon made a serjeant, and might have picked up some money, if
my heart had been as hard as some others were; but my nature was never of
that kind, that could think of getting rich at the expense of my
conscience.
“Amongst our prisoners was an old Indian, whom some of our officers
supposed to have a treasure hidden somewhere; which is no uncommon
practice in that country. They pressed him to discover it. He declared
he had none, but that would not satisfy them, so they ordered him to be
tied to a stake, and suffer fifty lashes every morning till he should
learn to speak out, as they said. Oh! Mr. Harley, had you seen him, as I
did, with his hands bound behind him, suffering in silence, while the big
drops trickled down his shrivelled cheeks and wet his grey beard, which
some of the inhuman soldiers plucked in scorn! I could not bear it, I
could not for my soul, and one morning, when the rest of the guard were
out of the way, I found means to let him escape. I was tried by a
court-martial for negligence of my post, and ordered, in compassion of my
age, and having got this wound in my arm and that in my leg in the
service, only to suffer three hundred lashes and be turned out of the
regiment; but my sentence was mitigated as to the lashes, and I had only
two hundred. When I had suffered these I was turned out of the camp, and
had betwixt three and four hundred miles to travel before I could reach a
sea-port, without guide to conduct me, or money to buy me provisions by
the way. I set out, however, resolved to walk as far as I could, and
then to lay myself down and die. But I had scarce gone a mile when I was
met by the Indian whom I had delivered. He pressed me in his arms, and
kissed the marks of the lashes on my back a thousand times; he led me to
a little hut, where some friend of his dwelt, and after I was recovered
of my wounds conducted me so far on my journey himself, and sent another
Indian to guide me through the rest. When we parted he pulled out a
purse with two hundred pieces of gold in it. ‘Take this,’ said he, ‘my
dear preserver, it is all I have been able to procure.’
“I begged him not to bring himself to poverty for my sake, who should
probably have no need of it long, but he insisted on my accepting it. He
embraced me. ‘You are an Englishman,’ said he, ‘but the Great Spirit has
given you an Indian heart, may He bear up the weight of your old age, and
blunt the arrow that brings it rest!’
“We parted, and not long after I made shift to get my passage to England.
’Tis but about a week since I landed, and I am going to end my days in
the arms of my son. This sum may be of use to him and his children, ’tis
all the value I put upon it. I thank Heaven I never was covetous of
wealth; I never had much, but was always so happy as to be content with
my little.”
When Edwards had ended his relation, Harley stood a while looking at him
in silence; at last he pressed him in his arms, and when he had given
vent to the fulness of his heart by a shower of tears, “Edwards,” said
he, “let me hold thee to my bosom, let me imprint the virtue of thy
sufferings on my soul. Come, my honoured veteran! let me endeavour to
soften the last days of a life, worn out in the service of humanity; call
me also thy son, and let me cherish thee as a father.”’
Edwards, from whom the recollection of his own suffering had scarced
forced a tear, now blubbered like a boy; he could not speak his
gratitude, but by some short exclamations of blessings upon Harley.
CHAPTER XXXV.
HE MISSES AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE.—AN ADVENTURE CONSEQUENT UPON IT.
WHEN they had arrived within a little way of the village they journeyed
to, Harley stopped short, and looked steadfastly on the mouldering walls
of a ruined house that stood on the road side. “Oh, heavens!” he cried,
“what do I see: silent, unroofed, and desolate! Are all thy gay tenants
gone? do I hear their hum no more Edwards, look there, look there? the
scene of my infant joys, my earliest friendships, laid waste and ruinous!
That was the very school where I was boarded when you were at South-hill;
’tis but a twelve-month since I saw it standing, and its benches filled
with cherubs: that opposite side of the road was the green on which they
sported; see it now ploughed up! I would have given fifty times its
value to have saved it from the sacrilege of that plough.”
“Dear sir,” replied Edwards, “perhaps they have left it from choice, and
may have got another spot as good.”
“They cannot,” said Harley, “they cannot; I shall never see the sward
covered with its daisies, nor pressed by the dance of the dear innocents:
I shall never see that stump decked with the garlands which their little
hands had gathered. These two long stones, which now lie at the foot of
it, were once the supports of a hut I myself assisted to rear: I have sat
on the sods within it, when we had spread our banquet of apples before
us, and been more blessed—Oh! Edwards, infinitely more blessed, than
ever I shall be again.”
Just then a woman passed them on the road, and discovered some signs of
wonder at the attitude of Harley, who stood, with his hands folded
together, looking with a moistened eye on the fallen pillars of the hut.
He was too much entranced in thought to observe her at all, but Edwards,
civilly accosting her, desired to know if that had not been the
school-house, and how it came into the condition in which they now saw
it.
“Alack a day!” said she, “it was the school-house indeed; but to be sure,
sir, the squire has pulled it down because it stood in the way of his
prospects.”
“What! how! prospects! pulled down!” cried Harley.
“Yes, to be sure, sir; and the green, where the children used to play, he
has ploughed up, because, he said, they hurt his fence on the other side
of it.”
“Curses on his narrow heart,” cried Harley, “that could violate a right
so sacred! Heaven blast the wretch!
“And from his derogate body never spring
A babe to honour him!”—
But I need not, Edwards, I need not” (recovering himself a little), “he
is cursed enough already: to him the noblest source of happiness is
denied, and the cares of his sordid soul shall gnaw it, while thou
sittest over a brown crust, smiling on those mangled limbs that have
saved thy son and his children!”
“If you want anything with the school-mistress, sir,” said the woman, “I
can show you the way to her house.”
He followed her without knowing whither he went.
They stopped at the door of a snug habitation, where sat an elderly woman
with a boy and a girl before her, each of whom held a supper of bread and
milk in their hands.
“There, sir, is the school-mistress.”
“Madam,” said Harley, “was not an old venerable man school-master here
some time ago?”
“Yes, sir, he was, poor man; the loss of his former school-house, I
believe, broke his heart, for he died soon after it was taken down, and
as another has not yet been found, I have that charge in the meantime.”
“And this boy and girl, I presume, are your pupils?”
“Ay, sir; they are poor orphans, put under my care by the parish, and
more promising children I never saw.”
“Orphans?” said Harley.
“Yes, sir, of honest creditable parents as any in the parish, and it is a
shame for some folks to forget their relations at a time when they have
most need to remember them.”
“Madam,” said Harley, “let us never forget that we are all relations.”
He kissed the children.
“Their father, sir,” continued she, “was a farmer here in the
neighbourhood, and a sober industrious man he was; but nobody can help
misfortunes: what with bad crops, and bad debts, which are worse, his
affairs went to wreck, and both he and his wife died of broken hearts.
And a sweet couple they were, sir; there was not a properer man to look
on in the county than John Edwards, and so indeed were all the
Edwardses.”
“What Edwardses?” cried the old soldier hastily.
“The Edwardses of South-hill, and a worthy family they were.”
“South-hill!” said he, in a languid voice, and fell back into the arms of
the astonished Harley. The school-mistress ran for some water—and a
smelling-bottle, with the assistance of which they soon recovered the
unfortunate Edwards. He stared wildly for some time, then folding his
orphan grandchildren in his arms,
“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones”—his tears choked
his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve them;
it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying, bade
God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send him to
support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many a
time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.
“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had only
sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he stifled his
sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
HE RETURNS HOME.—A DESCRIPTION OF HIS RETINUE.
IT was with some difficulty that Harley prevailed on the old man to leave
the spot where the remains of his son were laid. At last, with the
assistance of the school-mistress, he prevailed; and she accommodated
Edwards and him with beds in her house, there being nothing like an inn
nearer than the distance of some miles.
In the morning Harley persuaded Edwards to come with the children to his
house, which was distant but a short day’s journey. The boy walked in
his grandfather’s hand; and the name of Edwards procured him a
neighbouring farmer’s horse, on which a servant mounted, with the girl on
a pillow before him.
With this train Harley returned to the abode of his fathers: and we
cannot but think, that his enjoyment was as great as if he had arrived
from the tour of Europe with a Swiss valet for his companion, and half a
dozen snuff-boxes, with invisible hinges, in his pocket. But we take our
ideas from sounds which folly has invented; Fashion, Bon ton, and Vertù,
are the names of certain idols, to which we sacrifice the genuine
pleasures of the soul: in this world of semblance, we are contented with
personating happiness; to feel it is an art beyond us.
It was otherwise with Harley; he ran upstairs to his aunt with the
history of his fellow-travellers glowing on his lips. His aunt was an
economist; but she knew the pleasure of doing charitable things, and
withal was fond of her nephew, and solicitous to oblige him. She
received old Edwards therefore with a look of more complacency than is
perhaps natural to maiden ladies of three-score, and was remarkably
attentive to his grandchildren: she roasted apples with her own hands for
their supper, and made up a little bed beside her own for the girl.
Edwards made some attempts towards an acknowledgment for these favours;
but his young friend stopped them in their beginnings.
“Whosoever receiveth any of these children,” said his aunt; for her
acquaintance with her Bible was habitual.
Early next morning Harley stole into the room where Edwards lay: he
expected to have found him a-bed, but in this he was mistaken: the old
man had risen, and was leaning over his sleeping grandson, with the tears
flowing down his cheeks. At first he did not perceive Harley; when he
did, he endeavoured to hide his grief, and crossing his eyes with his
hand expressed his surprise at seeing him so early astir.
“I was thinking of you,” said Harley, “and your children: I learned last
night that a small farm of mine in the neighbourhood is now vacant: if
you will occupy it I shall gain a good neighbour and be able in some
measure to repay the notice you took of me when a boy, and as the
furniture of the house is mine, it will be so much trouble saved.”
Edwards’s tears gushed afresh, and Harley led him to see the place he
intended for him.
The house upon this farm was indeed little better than a hut; its
situation, however, was pleasant, and Edwards, assisted by the
beneficence of Harley, set about improving its neatness and convenience.
He staked out a piece of the green before for a garden, and Peter, who
acted in Harley’s family as valet, butler, and gardener, had orders to
furnish him with parcels of the different seeds he chose to sow in it. I
have seen his master at work in this little spot with his coat off, and
his dibble in his hand: it was a scene of tranquil virtue to have stopped
an angel on his errands of mercy! Harley had contrived to lead a little
bubbling brook through a green walk in the middle of the ground, upon
which he had erected a mill in miniature for the diversion of Edwards’s
infant grandson, and made shift in its construction to introduce a pliant
bit of wood that answered with its fairy clack to the murmuring of the
rill that turned it. I have seen him stand, listening to these mingled
sounds, with his eye fixed on the boy, and the smile of conscious
satisfaction on his cheek, while the old man, with a look half turned to
Harley and half to heaven, breathed an ejaculation of gratitude and
piety.
Father of mercies! I also would thank thee that not only hast thou
assigned eternal rewards to virtue, but that, even in this bad world, the
lines of our duty and our happiness are so frequently woven together.
A FRAGMENT.
THE MAN OF FEELING TALKS OF WHAT HE DOES NOT UNDERSTAND.—AN INCIDENT.
* * * * “EDWARDS,” said he, “I have a proper regard for the prosperity of
my country: every native of it appropriates to himself some share of the
power, or the fame, which, as a nation, it acquires, but I cannot throw
off the man so much as to rejoice at our conquests in India. You tell me
of immense territories subject to the English: I cannot think of their
possessions without being led to inquire by what right they possess them.
They came there as traders, bartering the commodities they brought for
others which their purchasers could spare; and however great their
profits were, they were then equitable. But what title have the subjects
of another kingdom to establish an empire in India? to give laws to a
country where the inhabitants received them on the terms of friendly
commerce? You say they are happier under our regulations than the
tyranny of their own petty princes. I must doubt it, from the conduct of
those by whom these regulations have been made. They have drained the
treasuries of Nabobs, who must fill them by oppressing the industry of
their subjects. Nor is this to be wondered at, when we consider the
motive upon which those gentlemen do not deny their going to India. The
fame of conquest, barbarous as that motive is, is but a secondary
consideration: there are certain stations in wealth to which the warriors
of the East aspire. It is there, indeed, where the wishes of their
friends assign them eminence, where the question of their country is
pointed at their return. When shall I see a commander return from India
in the pride of honourable poverty? You describe the victories they have
gained; they are sullied by the cause in which they fought: you enumerate
the spoils of those victories; they are covered with the blood of the
vanquished.
“Could you tell me of some conqueror giving peace and happiness to the
conquered? did he accept the gifts of their princes to use them for the
comfort of those whose fathers, sons, or husbands, fell in battle? did he
use his power to gain security and freedom to the regions of oppression
and slavery? did he endear the British name by examples of generosity,
which the most barbarous or most depraved are rarely able to resist? did
he return with the consciousness of duty discharged to his country, and
humanity to his fellow-creatures? did he return with no lace on his coat,
no slaves in his retinue, no chariot at his door, and no burgundy at his
table?—these were laurels which princes might envy—which an honest man
would not condemn!”
“Your maxims, Mr. Harley, are certainly right,” said Edwards. “I am not
capable of arguing with you; but I imagine there are great temptations in
a great degree of riches, which it is no easy matter to resist: those a
poor man like me cannot describe, because he never knew them; and perhaps
I have reason to bless God that I never did; for then, it is likely, I
should have withstood them no better than my neighbours. For you know,
sir, that it is not the fashion now, as it was in former times, that I
have read of in books, when your great generals died so poor, that they
did not leave wherewithal to buy them a coffin; and people thought the
better of their memories for it: if they did so now-a-days, I question if
any body, except yourself, and some few like you, would thank them.”
“I am sorry,” replied Harley, “that there is so much truth in what you
say; but however the general current of opinion may point, the feelings
are not yet lost that applaud benevolence, and censure inhumanity. Let
us endeavour to strengthen them in ourselves; and we, who live
sequestered from the noise of the multitude, have better opportunities of
listening undisturbed to their voice.”
They now approached the little dwelling of Edwards. A maid-servant, whom
he had hired to assist him in the care of his grandchildren met them a
little way from the house: “There is a young lady within with the
children,” said she. Edwards expressed his surprise at the visit: it was
however not the less true; and we mean to account for it.
This young lady then was no other than Miss Walton. She had heard the
old man’s history from Harley, as we have already related it. Curiosity,
or some other motive, made her desirous to see his grandchildren; this
she had an opportunity of gratifying soon, the children, in some of their
walks, having strolled as far as her father’s avenue. She put several
questions to both; she was delighted with the simplicity of their
answers, and promised, that if they continued to be good children, and do
as their grandfather bid them, she would soon see them again, and bring
some present or other for their reward. This promise she had performed
now: she came attended only by her maid, and brought with her a complete
suit of green for the boy, and a chintz gown, a cap, and a suit of
ribbons, for his sister. She had time enough, with her maid’s
assistance, to equip them in their new habiliments before Harley and
Edwards returned. The boy heard his grandfather’s voice, and, with that
silent joy which his present finery inspired, ran to the door to meet
him: putting one hand in his, with the other pointed to his sister,
“See,” said he, “what Miss Walton has brought us!”—Edwards gazed on them.
Harley fixed his eyes on Miss Walton; her’s were turned to the ground;—in
Edwards’s was a beamy moisture.—He folded his hands together—“I cannot
speak, young lady,” said he, “to thank you.” Neither could Harley.
There were a thousand sentiments; but they gushed so impetuously on his
heart, that he could not utter a syllable. * * * *
CHAPTER XL.
THE MAN OF FEELING JEALOUS.
THE desire of communicating knowledge or intelligence, is an argument
with those who hold that man is naturally a social animal. It is indeed
one of the earliest propensities we discover; but it may be doubted
whether the pleasure (for pleasure there certainly is) arising from it be
not often more selfish than social: for we frequently observe the tidings
of Ill communicated as eagerly as the annunciation of Good. Is it that
we delight in observing the effects of the stronger passions? for we are
all philosophers in this respect; and it is perhaps amongst the
spectators at Tyburn that the most genuine are to be found.
Was it from this motive that Peter came one morning into his master’s
room with a meaning face of recital? His master indeed did not at first
observe it; for he was sitting with one shoe buckled, delineating
portraits in the fire. “I have brushed those clothes, sir, as you
ordered me.”—Harley nodded his head but Peter observed that his hat
wanted brushing too: his master nodded again. At last Peter bethought
him that the fire needed stirring; and taking up the poker, demolished
the turban’d head of a Saracen, while his master was seeking out a body
for it. “The morning is main cold, sir,” said Peter. “Is it?” said
Harley. “Yes, sir; I have been as far as Tom Dowson’s to fetch some
barberries he had picked for Mrs. Margery. There was a rare junketting
last night at Thomas’s among Sir Harry Benson’s servants; he lay at
Squire Walton’s, but he would not suffer his servants to trouble the
family: so, to be sure, they were all at Tom’s, and had a fiddle, and a
hot supper in the big room where the justices meet about the destroying
of hares and partridges, and them things; and Tom’s eyes looked so red
and so bleared when I called him to get the barberries:—And I hear as how
Sir Harry is going to be married to Miss Walton.”—“How! Miss Walton
married!” said Harley. “Why, it mayn’t be true, sir, for all that; but
Tom’s wife told it me, and to be sure the servants told her, and their
master told them, as I guess, sir; but it mayn’t be true for all that, as
I said before.”—“Have done with your idle information,” said Harley:—“Is
my aunt come down into the parlour to breakfast?”—“Yes, sir.”—“Tell her
I’ll be with her immediately.”
When Peter was gone, he stood with his eyes fixed on the ground, and the
last words of his intelligence vibrating in his ears. “Miss Walton
married!” he sighed—and walked down stairs, with his shoe as it was, and
the buckle in his hand. His aunt, however, was pretty well accustomed to
those appearances of absence; besides, that the natural gravity of her
temper, which was commonly called into exertion by the care of her
household concerns, was such as not easily to be discomposed by any
circumstance of accidental impropriety. She too had been informed of the
intended match between Sir Harry Benson and Miss Walton. “I have been
thinking,” said she, “that they are distant relations: for the
great-grandfather of this Sir Harry Benson, who was knight of the shire
in the reign of Charles the First, and one of the cavaliers of those
times, was married to a daughter of the Walton family.” Harley answered
drily, that it might be so; but that he never troubled himself about
those matters. “Indeed,” said she, “you are to blame, nephew, for not
knowing a little more of them: before I was near your age I had sewed the
pedigree of our family in a set of chair-bottoms, that were made a
present of to my grandmother, who was a very notable woman, and had a
proper regard for gentility, I’ll assure you; but now-a-days it is money,
not birth, that makes people respected; the more shame for the times.”
Harley was in no very good humour for entering into a discussion of this
question; but he always entertained so much filial respect for his aunt,
as to attend to her discourse.
“We blame the pride of the rich,” said he, “but are not we ashamed of our
poverty?”
“Why, one would not choose,” replied his aunt, “to make a much worse
figure than one’s neighbours; but, as I was saying before, the times (as
my friend, Mrs. Dorothy Walton, observes) are shamefully degenerated in
this respect. There was but t’other day at Mr. Walton’s, that fat
fellow’s daughter, the London merchant, as he calls himself, though I
have heard that he was little better than the keeper of a chandler’s
shop. We were leaving the gentlemen to go to tea. She had a hoop,
forsooth, as large and as stiff—and it showed a pair of bandy legs, as
thick as two—I was nearer the door by an apron’s length, and the pert
hussy brushed by me, as who should say, Make way for your betters, and
with one of her London bobs—but Mrs. Dorothy did not let her pass with
it; for all the time of drinking tea, she spoke of the precedency of
family, and the disparity there is between people who are come of
something and your mushroom gentry who wear their coats of arms in their
purses.”
Her indignation was interrupted by the arrival of her maid with a damask
table-cloth, and a set of napkins, from the loom, which had been spun by
her mistress’s own hand. There was the family crest in each corner, and
in the middle a view of the battle of Worcester, where one of her
ancestors had been a captain in the king’s forces; and with a sort of
poetical licence in perspective, there was seen the Royal Oak, with more
wig than leaves upon it.
On all this the good lady was very copious, and took up the remaining
intervals of filling tea, to describe its excellencies to Harley; adding,
that she intended this as a present for his wife, when he should get one.
He sighed and looked foolish, and commending the serenity of the day,
walked out into the garden.
He sat down on a little seat which commanded an extensive prospect round
the house. He leaned on his hand, and scored the ground with his stick:
“Miss Walton married!” said he; “but what is that to me? May she be
happy! her virtues deserve it; to me her marriage is otherwise
indifferent: I had romantic dreams? they are fled?—it is perfectly
indifferent.”
Just at that moment he saw a servant with a knot of ribbons in his hat go
into the house. His cheeks grew flushed at the sight! He kept his eye
fixed for some time on the door by which he had entered, then starting to
his feet, hastily followed him.
When he approached the door of the kitchen where he supposed the man had
entered, his heart throbbed so violently, that when he would have called
Peter, his voice failed in the attempt. He stood a moment listening in
this breathless state of palpitation: Peter came out by chance. “Did
your honour want any thing?”—“Where is the servant that came just now
from Mr. Walton’s?”—“From Mr. Walton’s, sir! there is none of his
servants here that I know of.”—“Nor of Sir Harry Benson’s?”—He did not
wait for an answer; but having by this time observed the hat with its
parti-coloured ornament hanging on a peg near the door, he pressed
forwards into the kitchen, and addressing himself to a stranger whom he
saw there, asked him, with no small tremor in his voice, “If he had any
commands for him?” The man looked silly, and said, “That he had nothing
to trouble his honour with.”—“Are not you a servant of Sir Harry
Benson’s?”—“No, sir.”—“You’ll pardon me, young man; I judged by the
favour in your hat.”—“Sir, I’m his majesty’s servant, God bless him! and
these favours we always wear when we are recruiting.”—“Recruiting!” his
eyes glistened at the word: he seized the soldier’s hand, and shaking it
violently, ordered Peter to fetch a bottle of his aunt’s best dram. The
bottle was brought: “You shall drink the king’s health,” said Harley, “in
a bumper.”—“The king and your honour.”—“Nay, you shall drink the king’s
health by itself; you may drink mine in another.” Peter looked in his
master’s face, and filled with some little reluctance. “Now to your
mistress,” said Harley; “every soldier has a mistress.” The man excused
himself—“To your mistress! you cannot refuse it.” ’Twas Mrs. Margery’s
best dram! Peter stood with the bottle a little inclined, but not so as
to discharge a drop of its contents: “Fill it, Peter,” said his master,
“fill it to the brim.” Peter filled it; and the soldier having named
Suky Simpson, dispatched it in a twinkling. “Thou art an honest fellow,”
said Harley, “and I love thee;” and shaking his hand again, desired Peter
to make him his guest at dinner, and walked up into his room with a pace
much quicker and more springy than usual.
This agreeable disappointment, however, he was not long suffered to
enjoy. The curate happened that day to dine with him: his visits,
indeed, were more properly to the aunt than the nephew; and many of the
intelligent ladies in the parish, who, like some very great philosophers,
have the happy knack at accounting for everything, gave out that there
was a particular attachment between them, which wanted only to be matured
by some more years of courtship to end in the tenderest connection. In
this conclusion, indeed, supposing the premises to have been true, they
were somewhat justified by the known opinion of the lady, who frequently
declared herself a friend to the ceremonial of former times, when a lover
might have sighed seven years at his mistress’s feet before he was
allowed the liberty of kissing her hand. ’Tis true Mrs. Margery was now
about her grand climacteric; no matter: that is just the age when we
expect to grow younger. But I verily believe there was nothing in the
report; the curate’s connection was only that of a genealogist; for in
that character he was no way inferior to Mrs. Margery herself. He dealt
also in the present times; for he was a politician and a news-monger.
He had hardly said grace after dinner, when he told Mrs. Margery that she
might soon expect a pair of white gloves, as Sir Harry Benson, he was
very well informed, was just going to be married to Miss Walton. Harley
spilt the wine he was carrying to his mouth: he had time, however, to
recollect himself before the curate had finished the different
particulars of his intelligence, and summing up all the heroism he was
master of, filled a bumper, and drank to Miss Walton. “With all my
heart,” said the curate, “the bride that is to be.” Harley would have
said bride too; but the word bride stuck in his throat. His confusion,
indeed, was manifest; but the curate began to enter on some point of
descent with Mrs. Margery, and Harley had very soon after an opportunity
of leaving them, while they were deeply engaged in a question, whether
the name of some great man in the time of Henry the Seventh was Richard
or Humphrey.
He did not see his aunt again till supper; the time between he spent in
walking, like some troubled ghost, round the place where his treasure
lay. He went as far as a little gate, that led into a copse near Mr.
Walton’s house, to which that gentleman had been so obliging as to let
him have a key. He had just begun to open it when he saw, on a terrace
below, Miss Walton walking with a gentleman in a riding-dress, whom he
immediately guessed to be Sir Harry Benson. He stopped of a sudden; his
hand shook so much that he could hardly turn the key; he opened the gate,
however, and advanced a few paces. The lady’s lap-dog pricked up its
ears, and barked; he stopped again—
—“The little dogs and all,
Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart, see they bark at me!”
His resolution failed; he slunk back, and, locking the gate as softly as
he could, stood on tiptoe looking over the wall till they were gone. At
that instant a shepherd blew his horn: the romantic melancholy of the
sound quite overcame him!—it was the very note that wanted to be
touched—he sighed! he dropped a tear!—and returned.
At supper his aunt observed that he was graver than usual; but she did
not suspect the cause: indeed, it may seem odd that she was the only
person in the family who had no suspicion of his attachment to Miss
Walton. It was frequently matter of discourse amongst the servants:
perhaps her maiden coldness—but for those things we need not account.
In a day or two he was so much master of himself as to be able to rhyme
upon the subject. The following pastoral he left, some time after, on
the handle of a tea-kettle, at a neighbouring house where we were
visiting; and as I filled the tea-pot after him, I happened to put it in
my pocket by a similar act of forgetfulness. It is such as might be
expected from a man who makes verses for amusement. I am pleased with
somewhat of good nature that runs through it, because I have commonly
observed the writers of those complaints to bestow epithets on their lost
mistresses rather too harsh for the mere liberty of choice, which led
them to prefer another to the poet himself: I do not doubt the vehemence
of their passion; but, alas! the sensations of love are something more
than the returns of gratitude.
LAVINIA.
A PASTORAL.
Why steals from my bosom the sigh?
Why fixed is my gaze on the ground?
Come, give me my pipe, and I’ll try
To banish my cares with the sound.
Erewhile were its notes of accord
With the smile of the flow’r-footed Muse;
Ah! why by its master implored
Shou’d it now the gay carrol refuse?
’Twas taught by LAVINIA’S sweet smile,
In the mirth-loving chorus to join:
Ah, me! how unweeting the while!
LAVINIA—can never be mine!
Another, more happy, the maid
By fortune is destin’d to bless—
’Tho’ the hope has forsook that betray’d,
Yet why should I love her the less?
Her beauties are bright as the morn,
With rapture I counted them o’er;
Such virtues these beauties adorn,
I knew her, and prais’d them no more.
I term’d her no goddess of love,
I call’d not her beauty divine:
These far other passions may prove,
But they could not be figures of mine.
It ne’er was apparel’d with art,
On words it could never rely;
It reign’d in the throb of my heart,
It gleam’d in the glance of my eye.
Oh fool! in the circle to shine
That Fashion’s gay daughters approve,
You must speak as the fashions incline;
Alas! are there fashions in love?
Yet sure they are simple who prize
The tongue that is smooth to deceive;
Yet sure she had sense to despise,
The tinsel that folly may weave.
When I talk’d, I have seen her recline,
With an aspect so pensively sweet,—
Tho’ I spoke what the shepherds opine,
A fop were ashamed to repeat.
She is soft as the dew-drops that fall
From the lip of the sweet-scented pea;
Perhaps when she smil’d upon all,
I have thought that she smil’d upon me.
But why of her charms should I tell?
Ah me! whom her charms have undone
Yet I love the reflection too well,
The painful reflection to shun.
Ye souls of more delicate kind,
Who feast not on pleasure alone,
Who wear the soft sense of the mind,
To the sons of the world still unknown.
Ye know, tho’ I cannot express,
Why I foolishly doat on my pain;
Nor will ye believe it the less,
That I have not the skill to complain.
I lean on my hand with a sigh,
My friends the soft sadness condemn;
Yet, methinks, tho’ I cannot tell why,
I should hate to be merry like them.
When I walk’d in the pride of the dawn,
Methought all the region look’d bright:
Has sweetness forsaken the lawn?
For, methinks, I grow sad at the sight.
When I stood by the stream, I have thought
There was mirth in the gurgling soft sound;
But now ’tis a sorrowful note,
And the banks are all gloomy around!
I have laugh’d at the jest of a friend;
Now they laugh, and I know not the cause,
Tho’ I seem with my looks to attend,
How silly! I ask what it was.
They sing the sweet song of the May,
They sing it with mirth and with glee;
Sure I once thought the sonnet was gay,
But now ’tis all sadness to me.
Oh! give me the dubious light
That gleams thro’ the quivering shade;
Oh! give me the horrors of night,
By gloom and by silence array’d!
Let me walk where the soft-rising wave,
Has pictur’d the moon on its breast;
Let me walk where the new cover’d grave
Allows the pale lover to rest!
When shall I in its peaceable womb,
Be laid with my sorrows asleep?
Should LAVINIA but chance on my tomb—
I could die if I thought she would weep.
Perhaps, if the souls of the just
Revisit these mansions of care,
It may be my favourite trust
To watch o’er the fate of the fair.
Perhaps the soft thought of her breast,
With rapture more favour’d to warm;
Perhaps, if with sorrow oppress’d,
Her sorrow with patience to arm.
Then, then, in the tenderest part
May I whisper, “Poor COLIN was true,”
And mark if a heave of her heart
The thought of her COLIN pursue.
THE PUPIL.
A FRAGMENT.
* * * “BUT as to the higher part of education, Mr. Harley, the culture of
the mind—let the feelings be awakened, let the heart be brought forth to
its object, placed in the light in which nature would have it stand, and
its decisions will ever be just. The world
Will smile, and smile, and be a villain;
and the youth, who does not suspect its deceit, will be content to smile
with it. Men will put on the most forbidding aspect in nature, and tell
him of the beauty of virtue.
“I have not, under these grey hairs, forgotten that I was once a young
man, warm in the pursuit of pleasure, but meaning to be honest as well as
happy. I had ideas of virtue, of honour, of benevolence, which I had
never been at the pains to define; but I felt my bosom heave at the
thoughts of them, and I made the most delightful soliloquies. It is
impossible, said I, that there can be half so many rogues as are
imagined.
“I travelled, because it is the fashion for young men of my fortune to
travel. I had a travelling tutor, which is the fashion too; but my tutor
was a gentleman, which it is not always the fashion for tutors to be.
His gentility, indeed, was all he had from his father, whose prodigality
had not left him a shilling to support it.
“‘I have a favour to ask of you, my dear Mountford,’ said my father,
‘which I will not be refused. You have travelled as became a man;
neither France nor Italy have made anything of Mountford, which
Mountford, before he left England, would have been ashamed of. My son
Edward goes abroad, would you take him under your protection?’
“He blushed; my father’s face was scarlet. He pressed his hand to his
bosom, as if he had said, my heart does not mean to offend you.
Mountford sighed twice.
“‘I am a proud fool,’ said he, ‘and you will pardon it. There! (he
sighed again) I can hear of dependance, since it is dependance on my
Sedley.’
“‘Dependance!’ answered my father; ‘there can be no such word between us.
What is there in £9,000 a year that should make me unworthy of
Mountford’s friendship?’
“They embraced; and soon after I set out on my travels, with Mountford
for my guardian.
“We were at Milan, where my father happened to have an Italian friend, to
whom he had been of some service in England. The count, for he was of
quality, was solicitous to return the obligation by a particular
attention to his son. We lived in his palace, visited with his family,
were caressed by his friends, and I began to be so well pleased with my
entertainment, that I thought of England as of some foreign country.
“The count had a son not much older than myself. At that age a friend is
an easy acquisition; we were friends the first night of our acquaintance.
“He introduced me into the company of a set of young gentlemen, whose
fortunes gave them the command of pleasure, and whose inclinations
incited them to the purchase. After having spent some joyous evenings in
their society, it became a sort of habit which I could not miss without
uneasiness, and our meetings, which before were frequent, were now stated
and regular.
“Sometimes, in the pauses of our mirth, gaming was introduced as an
amusement. It was an art in which I was a novice. I received
instruction, as other novices do, by losing pretty largely to my
teachers. Nor was this the only evil which Mountford foresaw would arise
from the connection I had formed; but a lecture of sour injunctions was
not his method of reclaiming. He sometimes asked me questions about the
company, but they were such as the curiosity of any indifferent man might
have prompted. I told him of their wit, their eloquence, their warmth of
friendship, and their sensibility of heart. ‘And their honour,’ said I,
laying my hand on my breast, ‘is unquestionable.’ Mountford seemed to
rejoice at my good fortune, and begged that I would introduce him to
their acquaintance. At the next meeting I introduced him accordingly.
“The conversation was as animated as usual. They displayed all that
sprightliness and good-humour which my praises had led Mountford to
expect; subjects, too, of sentiment occurred, and their speeches,
particularly those of our friend the son of Count Respino, glowed with
the warmth of honour, and softened into the tenderness of feeling.
Mountford was charmed with his companions. When we parted, he made the
highest eulogiums upon them. ‘When shall we see them again?’ said he. I
was delighted with the demand, and promised to reconduct him on the
morrow.
“In going to their place of rendezvous, he took me a little out of the
road, to see, as he told me, the performances of a young statuary. When
we were near the house in which Mountford said he lived, a boy of about
seven years old crossed us in the street. At sight of Mountford he
stopped, and grasping his hand,
“‘My dearest sir,’ said he, ‘my father is likely to do well. He will
live to pray for you, and to bless you. Yes, he will bless you, though
you are an Englishman, and some other hard word that the monk talked of
this morning, which I have forgot, but it meant that you should not go to
heaven; but he shall go to heaven, said I, for he has saved my father.
Come and see him, sir, that we may be happy.’
“‘My dear, I am engaged at present with this gentleman.’
“‘But he shall come along with you; he is an Englishman, too, I fancy.
He shall come and learn how an Englishman may go to heaven.’
“Mountford smiled, and we followed the boy together.
“After crossing the next street, we arrived at the gate of a prison. I
seemed surprised at the sight; our little conductor observed it.
“‘Are you afraid, sir?’ said he. ‘I was afraid once too, but my father
and mother are here, and I am never afraid when I am with them.’
“He took my hand, and led me through a dark passage that fronted the
gate. When we came to a little door at the end, he tapped. A boy, still
younger than himself, opened it to receive us. Mountford entered with a
look in which was pictured the benign assurance of a superior being. I
followed in silence and amazement.
“On something like a bed, lay a man, with a face seemingly emaciated with
sickness, and a look of patient dejection. A bundle of dirty shreds
served him for a pillow, but he had a better support—the arm of a female
who kneeled beside him, beautiful as an angel, but with a fading languor
in her countenance, the still life of melancholy, that seemed to borrow
its shade from the object on which she gazed. There was a tear in her
eye—the sick man kissed it off in its bud, smiling through the dimness of
his own—when she saw Mountford, she crawled forward on the ground, and
clasped his knees. He raised her from the floor; she threw her arms
round his neck, and sobbed out a speech of thankfulness, eloquent beyond
the power of language.
“‘Compose yourself, my love,’ said the man on the bed; ‘but he, whose
goodness has caused that emotion, will pardon its effects.’
“‘How is this, Mountford?’ said I; ‘what do I see? What must I do?’
“‘You see,’ replied the stranger, ‘a wretch, sunk in poverty, starving in
prison, stretched on a sick bed. But that is little. There are his wife
and children wanting the bread which he has not to give them! Yet you
cannot easily imagine the conscious serenity of his mind. In the gripe
of affliction, his heart swells with the pride of virtue; it can even
look down with pity on the man whose cruelty has wrung it almost to
bursting. You are, I fancy, a friend of Mr. Mountford’s. Come nearer,
and I’ll tell you, for, short as my story is, I can hardly command breath
enough for a recital. The son of Count Respino (I started, as if I had
trod on a viper) has long had a criminal passion for my wife. This her
prudence had concealed from me; but he had lately the boldness to declare
it to myself. He promised me affluence in exchange for honour, and
threatened misery as its attendant if I kept it. I treated him with the
contempt he deserved; the consequence was, that he hired a couple of
bravoes (for I am persuaded they acted under his direction), who
attempted to assassinate me in the street; but I made such a defence as
obliged them to fly, after having given me two or three stabs, none of
which, however, were mortal. But his revenge was not thus to be
disappointed. In the little dealings of my trade I had contracted some
debts, of which he had made himself master for my ruin. I was confined
here at his suit, when not yet recovered from the wounds I had received;
the dear woman, and these two boys, followed me, that we might starve
together; but Providence interposed, and sent Mr. Mountford to our
support. He has relieved my family from the gnawings of hunger, and
rescued me from death, to which a fever, consequent on my wounds and
increased by the want of every necessary, had almost reduced me.’
“‘Inhuman villain!’ I exclaimed, lifting up my eyes to heaven.
“‘Inhuman indeed!’ said the lovely woman who stood at my side. ‘Alas!
sir, what had we done to offend him? what had these little ones done,
that they should perish in the toils of his vengeance?’
“I reached a pen which stood in the inkstand dish at the bed-side.
“‘May I ask what is the amount of the sum for which you are imprisoned?’
“‘I was able,’ he replied, ‘to pay all but five hundred crowns.’
“I wrote a draft on the banker with whom I had a credit from my father
for 2,500, and presenting it to the stranger’s wife,
“‘You will receive, madam, on presenting this note, a sum more than
sufficient for your husband’s discharge; the remainder I leave for his
industry to improve.’
“I would have left the room. Each of them laid hold of one of my hands,
the children clung to my coat. Oh! Mr. Harley, methinks I feel their
gentle violence at this moment; it beats here with delight inexpressible.
“‘Stay, sir,’ said he, ‘I do not mean attempting to thank you’ (he took a
pocket-book from under his pillow), ‘let me but know what name I shall
place here next to Mr. Mountford!’
“‘Sedley.’
“He writ it down.
“‘An Englishman too, I presume.’
“‘He shall go to heaven, notwithstanding;’ said the boy who had been our
guide.
“It began to be too much for me. I squeezed his hand that was clasped in
mine, his wife’s I pressed to my lips, and burst from the place, to give
vent to the feelings that laboured within me.
“‘Oh, Mountford!’ said I, when he had overtaken me at the door.
“‘It is time,’ replied he, ‘that we should think of our appointment;
young Respino and his friends are waiting us.’
“‘Damn him, damn him!’ said I. ‘Let us leave Milan instantly; but soft—I
will be calm; Mountford, your pencil.’ I wrote on a slip of paper,
“‘To Signor RESPINO.
“‘When you receive this, I am at a distance from Milan. Accept of my
thanks for the civilities I have received from you and your family.
As to the friendship with which you were pleased to honour me, the
prison, which I have just left, has exhibited a scene to cancel it
for ever. You may possibly be merry with your companions at my
weakness, as I suppose you will term it. I give you leave for
derision. You may affect a triumph, I shall feel it.
“EDWARD SEDLEY.”
“‘You may send this if you will,’ said Mountford, coolly, ‘but still
Respino is a _man of honour_; the world will continue to call him so.’
“‘It is probable,’ I answered, ‘they may; I envy not the appellation. If
this is the world’s honour, if these men are the guides of its manners—’
“‘Tut!’ said Mountford, ‘do you eat macaroni—’”
* * * * *
[At this place had the greatest depredations of the curate begun. There
were so very few connected passages of the subsequent chapters remaining,
that even the partiality of an editor could not offer them to the public.
I discovered, from some scattered sentences, that they were of much the
same tenor with the preceding; recitals of little adventures, in which
the dispositions of a man, sensible to judge, and still more warm to
feel, had room to unfold themselves. Some instruction, and some example,
I make no doubt they contained; but it is likely that many of those, whom
chance has led to a perusal of what I have already presented, may have
read it with little pleasure, and will feel no disappointment from the
want of those parts which I have been unable to procure. To such as may
have expected the intricacies of a novel, a few incidents in a life
undistinguished, except by some features of the heart, cannot have
afforded much entertainment.
Harley’s own story, from the mutilated passages I have mentioned, as well
as from some inquiries I was at the trouble of making in the country, I
found to have been simple to excess. His mistress, I could perceive, was
not married to Sir Harry Benson; but it would seem, by one of the
following chapters, which is still entire, that Harley had not profited
on the occasion by making any declaration of his own passion, after those
of the other had been unsuccessful. The state of his health, for some
part of this period, appears to have been such as to forbid any thoughts
of that kind: he had been seized with a very dangerous fever, caught by
attending old Edwards in one of an infectious kind. From this he had
recovered but imperfectly, and though he had no formed complaint, his
health was manifestly on the decline.
It appears that the sagacity of some friend had at length pointed out to
his aunt a cause from which this might be supposed to proceed, to wit,
his hopeless love for Miss Walton; for, according to the conceptions of
the world, the love of a man of Harley’s fortune for the heiress of
£4,000 a year is indeed desperate. Whether it was so in this case may be
gathered from the next chapter, which, with the two subsequent,
concluding the performance, have escaped those accidents that proved
fatal to the rest.]
CHAPTER LV.
HE SEES MISS WALTON, AND IS HAPPY.
HARLEY was one of those few friends whom the malevolence of fortune had
yet left me; I could not therefore but be sensibly concerned for his
present indisposition; there seldom passed a day on which I did not make
inquiry about him.
The physician who attended him had informed me the evening before, that
he thought him considerably better than he had been for some time past.
I called next morning to be confirmed in a piece of intelligence so
welcome to me.
When I entered his apartment, I found him sitting on a couch, leaning on
his hand, with his eye turned upwards in the attitude of thoughtful
inspiration. His look had always an open benignity, which commanded
esteem; there was now something more—a gentle triumph in it.
He rose, and met me with his usual kindness. When I gave him the good
accounts I had had from his physician, “I am foolish enough,” said he,
“to rely but little, in this instance, upon physic: my presentiment may
be false; but I think I feel myself approaching to my end, by steps so
easy, that they woo me to approach it.
“There is a certain dignity in retiring from life at a time, when the
infirmities of age have not sapped our faculties. This world, my dear
Charles, was a scene in which I never much delighted. I was not formed
for the bustle of the busy, nor the dissipation of the gay; a thousand
things occurred, where I blushed for the impropriety of my conduct when I
thought on the world, though my reason told me I should have blushed to
have done otherwise.—It was a scene of dissimulation, of restraint, of
disappointment. I leave it to enter on that state which I have learned
to believe is replete with the genuine happiness attendant upon virtue.
I look back on the tenor of my life, with the consciousness of few great
offences to account for. There are blemishes, I confess, which deform in
some degree the picture. But I know the benignity of the Supreme Being,
and rejoice at the thoughts of its exertion in my favour. My mind
expands at the thought I shall enter into the society of the blessed,
wise as angels, with the simplicity of children.” He had by this time
clasped my hand, and found it wet by a tear which had just fallen upon
it.—His eye began to moisten too—we sat for some time silent.—At last,
with an attempt to a look of more composure, “There are some
remembrances,” said Harley, “which rise involuntary on my heart, and make
me almost wish to live. I have been blessed with a few friends, who
redeem my opinion of mankind. I recollect, with the tenderest emotion,
the scenes of pleasure I have passed among them; but we shall meet again,
my friend, never to be separated. There are some feelings which perhaps
are too tender to be suffered by the world.—The world is in general
selfish, interested, and unthinking, and throws the imputation of romance
or melancholy on every temper more susceptible than its own. I cannot
think but in those regions which I contemplate, if there is any thing of
mortality left about us, that these feelings will subsist;—they are
called,—perhaps they are—weaknesses here;—but there may be some better
modifications of them in heaven, which may deserve the name of virtues.”
He sighed as he spoke these last words. He had scarcely finished them,
when the door opened, and his aunt appeared, leading in Miss Walton. “My
dear,” said she, “here is Miss Walton, who has been so kind as to come
and inquire for you herself.” I could observe a transient glow upon his
face. He rose from his seat—“If to know Miss Walton’s goodness,” said
he, “be a title to deserve it, I have some claim.” She begged him to
resume his seat, and placed herself on the sofa beside him. I took my
leave. Mrs. Margery accompanied me to the door. He was left with Miss
Walton alone. She inquired anxiously about his health. “I believe,”
said he, “from the accounts which my physicians unwillingly give me, that
they have no great hopes of my recovery.”—She started as he spoke; but
recollecting herself immediately, endeavoured to flatter him into a
belief that his apprehensions were groundless. “I know,” said he, “that
it is usual with persons at my time of life to have these hopes, which
your kindness suggests; but I would not wish to be deceived. To meet
death as becomes a man, is a privilege bestowed on few.—I would endeavour
to make it mine;—nor do I think that I can ever be better prepared for it
than now:—It is that chiefly which determines the fitness of its
approach.” “Those sentiments,” answered Miss Walton, “are just; but your
good sense, Mr. Harley, will own, that life has its proper value.—As the
province of virtue, life is ennobled; as such, it is to be desired.—To
virtue has the Supreme Director of all things assigned rewards enough
even here to fix its attachment.”
The subject began to overpower her.—Harley lifted his eyes from the
ground—“There are,” said he, in a very low voice, “there are attachments,
Miss Walton”—His glance met hers.—They both betrayed a confusion, and
were both instantly withdrawn.—He paused some moments—“I am such a state
as calls for sincerity, let that also excuse it—It is perhaps the last
time we shall ever meet. I feel something particularly solemn in the
acknowledgment, yet my heart swells to make it, awed as it is by a sense
of my presumption, by a sense of your perfections”—He paused again—“Let
it not offend you, to know their power over one so unworthy—It will, I
believe, soon cease to beat, even with that feeling which it shall lose
the latest.—To love Miss Walton could not be a crime;—if to declare it is
one—the expiation will be made.”—Her tears were now flowing without
control.—“Let me intreat you,” said she, “to have better hopes—Let not
life be so indifferent to you; if my wishes can put any value on it—I
will not pretend to misunderstand you—I know your worth—I have known it
long—I have esteemed it—What would you have me say?—I have loved it as it
deserved.”—He seized her hand—a languid colour reddened his cheek—a smile
brightened faintly in his eye. As he gazed on her, it grew dim, it
fixed, it closed—He sighed and fell back on his seat—Miss Walton screamed
at the sight—His aunt and the servants rushed into the room—They found
them lying motionless together.—His physician happened to call at that
instant. Every art was tried to recover them—With Miss Walton they
succeeded—But Harley was gone for ever.
CHAPTER LVI.
THE EMOTIONS OF THE HEART.
I entered the room where his body lay; I approached it with reverence,
not fear: I looked; the recollection of the past crowded upon me. I saw
that form which, but a little before, was animated with a soul which did
honour to humanity, stretched without sense or feeling before me. ’Tis a
connection we cannot easily forget:—I took his hand in mine; I repeated
his name involuntary;—I felt a pulse in every vein at the sound. I
looked earnestly in his face; his eye was closed, his lip pale and
motionless. There is an enthusiasm in sorrow that forgets impossibility;
I wondered that it was so. The sight drew a prayer from my heart: it was
the voice of frailty and of man! the confusion of my mind began to
subside into thought; I had time to meet!
I turned with the last farewell upon my lips, when I observed old Edwards
standing behind me. I looked him full in the face; but his eye was fixed
on another object: he pressed between me and the bed, and stood gazing on
the breathless remains of his benefactor. I spoke to him I know not
what; but he took no notice of what I said, and remained in the same
attitude as before. He stood some minutes in that posture, then turned
and walked towards the door. He paused as he went;—he returned a second
time: I could observe his lips move as he looked: but the voice they
would have uttered was lost. He attempted going again; and a third time
he returned as before.—I saw him wipe his cheek: then covering his face
with his hands, his breast heaving with the most convulsive throbs, he
flung out of the room.
THE CONCLUSION.
HE had hinted that he should like to be buried in a certain spot near the
grave of his mother. This is a weakness; but it is universally incident
to humanity: ’tis at least a memorial for those who survive: for some
indeed a slender memorial will serve;—and the soft affections, when they
are busy that way, will build their structures, were it but on the paring
of a nail.
He was buried in the place he had desired. It was shaded by an old tree,
the only one in the church-yard, in which was a cavity worn by time. I
have sat with him in it, and counted the tombs. The last time we passed
there, methought he looked wistfully on the tree: there was a branch of
it that bent towards us waving in the wind; he waved his hand as if he
mimicked its motion. There was something predictive in his look! perhaps
it is foolish to remark it; but there are times and places when I am a
child at those things.
I sometimes visit his grave; I sit in the hollow of the tree. It is
worth a thousand homilies; every noble feeling rises within me! every
beat of my heart awakens a virtue!—but it will make you hate the
world—No: there is such an air of gentleness around, that I can hate
nothing; but, as to the world—I pity the men of it.
FOOTNOTES
{15} The reader will remember that the Editor is accountable only for
scattered chapters and fragments of chapters; the curate must answer for
the rest. The number at the top, when the chapter was entire, he has
given as it originally stood, with the title which its author had affixed
to it.
{61} Though the Curate could not remember having shown this chapter to
anybody, I strongly suspect that these political observations are the
work of a later pen than the rest of this performance. There seems to
have been, by some accident, a gap in the manuscript, from the words,
“Expectation at a jointure,” to these, “In short, man is an animal,”
where the present blank ends; and some other person (for the hand is
different, and the ink whiter) has filled part of it with sentiments of
his own. Whoever he was, he seems to have caught some portion of the
spirit of the man he personates.
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