Front. Eugene Aram THE RIGHT HON. LORD LYTTON w Out acts our angels are, or good or ill, Our fatal Shadows that walk by us still. ♦ * * * * * * All things that are Made for our general uses, are at war— Ev’n we among ourselves!” John Fletcher, upon An Honest Man's Fortuns* LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS, Limited Broadway, Ludgate Hill MANCHESTER AND NEW YORK LORD LYTTON’S NOVELS. KNEBWORTH EDITION. Eugene Aram. Night and Morning Pelham. Ernest Maltravers. Alice. The Last Days of Pompeii. The Caxtons. Devereux. The Disowned. Godolphin. Harold. Paul Clifford. A Strange Story. The Last of the Barons. Leila, and the Pilgrims on he Rhine. Lucretia. My Novel. Vol. i. My Novel. Vol. 2. Rienzi. What Will He Do With It ? Vol. 1. What Will He Do With It ? Vol. 2. Zanoni. The Coming Race. Kenelm Chillingly. The Parisians. Vol. 1. The Parisians. Vol. 2. Falkland and Zicci. Pausanias the Spartan. Price js. 6d. each volume: Or, the Complete Set, in 26 vols., Crown 8vo, cloth, £4 18s. TO SIR'WALTER SCOTT, Bakt. &a, &c. Sir,—It has long been my ambition to add some hnmble tribute to the offerings laid upon the shrine of your genius. At each succeeding book that I have given to the world, I have paused to consider if it were worthy to be inscribed with your great name, and at each I have played the pro- crastinator, and hoped for that morrow of better desert which never came. But defined amnis, the time runs on— and I am tired of waiting for the ford which the tides refuse. I seize, then, the present opportunity, not as the best, but as the only one I can be sure of commanding, to express that affectionate admiration with which you have inspired me in common with all your contemporaries, and which a French writer has not ungracefully termed “ the happiest prerogative of genius.” As a Poet, and as a Novelist, your fame has attained to that height in which praise has become superfluous; but in the character of the writer there seems to me a yet higher claim to veneration than in that of the writings. The example your genius sets us, who can emulate ?—-the example your moderation bequeaths to us, who shall forget? That nature must indeed be gentle which has conciliated the envy that pur- sues intellectual greatness, and left without an enemy a man who has no living equal in renown You have gone for a while from the scenes yon have VI PREFACE. immortalised, to regain, we trust, tlie health which has been impaired by your noble labours, or by the manly struggles with adverse fortunes, which have not found th the Stage. That design was abandoned when more than half completed :jbut I wished to impart to this Romance lomething of the nature of Tragedy,—something of the more transferable of its qualities."] Enough of this: it is not the Author’s wishes, but the Anthor’s books that the world will judge him by. Perhaps, then (with this I con- clude), in the dull monotony of public affairs, and in these long winter evenings, when we gather round the fire, pre- pared for the gossip’s tale, willing to indulge the fear, and to believe the legend, perhaps, dear Reader, thou mayest turn, not reluctantly, even to these pages, for at least a newer excitement than the Cholera, or for a momentary relief from the everlasting discussions on “ the Bill” * London, December 22, 1831. • year of the Reform Bill. library PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1840, , IjFriE strange history of Eugene Aram liad excited my / interest and wonder long before tbe present work waat composed or conceived. It so happened, that during! Aram’s residence at Lynn, bis reputation for learning had* attracted the notice of my grandfather—a country,.. gentle|.. man living in the same county, and of more intelligence and accomplishments than, at that day, usually charac-\ terised his class. Aram frequently visited at Heydon (my \ grandfather’s house), and gave lessons, probably in no \ very elevated branches of erudition, to the younger mem- \ bers of the family. This I chanced to hear when I was on j a visit in Norfolk, some two years before this novel was j published, and it tended to increase the interest with which I I had previously speculated on the phenomena of a trial j which, take it altogether, is perhaps the most remarkable \ in the register of English crime. I endeavoured to collect | such anecdotes of Aram’s life and manners as tradition and ! hearsay still kept afloat. These anecdotes were so far uni- J form that they all concurred in representing him as a person f who, till the detection of the crime for which he was sen- i 7 i tenced, had appeared of the mildest character and the most tmexceptionabje morals. An invariable gentleness and X PREFACE. patience in his mode of tuition—qualities then very un- common at schools—had made him so beloved by his pupils at Lynn, that, in after life, there was scarcely one of them who did not persist in the belief of his innocence. His. personal and moral peculiarities, as described in these pages, are such as were related to me by persons who had heard him. described by his contemporaries: the calm benign countenance—the delicate health—the thoughtful stoop—the- noiseless step-—the custom, not uncommon with scholars and absent men, of muttering to himself—a sin- gular eloquence in conversation, when once roused from silence—an active tenderness and charity to the poor, with whom he was always ready to share his own scanty means —an apparent disregard to money, except when employed in the purchase of books—an utter indifference to the am- bition usually accompanying self-taught talent, whether to better the condition or to increase the repute;—these, and other traits of the character portrayed in the novel, are, as far as I can rely on my information, faithful to the features of the original. That a man thus described—so benevolent that he would rob his own necessities to administer to those of another, so humane that he would turn aside from the worm in his path—should have been guilty of the foulest of human crimes, viz.—murder for the sake of gain; that a crime thus committed should have been so episodical and apart from the rest of his career, that, however it might rankle in his conscience, it should never have hardened his nature; that, through a life of some duration, none of the errors, none of the vices, which would seem essentially to belong to a character capable of a deed so black from motives appa- rently so sordid,# should have been discovered or sus- * For I put wholly out of question the excuse of jealousy, as unsupported by any evidence—never hinted at by Aram himself (at least on any suf- ficient authority)—and at variance with the only fact which the trial PREFACE. xi pected-all this presents an anomaly in human conduct so rare and surprising, that it would he difficult to find any subject more adapted for that metaphysical speculation and analysis, in order to indulge which, Fiction, whether in the drama, or the higher class of romance, seeks its materials and grounds its lessons in the chronicles of passion and crime. The guilt of Eugene Aram is not that of a vulgar ruffian: it leads to views and considerations vitally and wholly dis- tinct from those with which profligate knavery and brutal cruelty revolt and displease us in the literature of Newgate and the Hulks. His crime does, in fact, belong to those startling paradoxes which the poetry of all countries, and especially of our own, has always delighted to contemplate and examine. Whenever crime appears the aberration and monstrous product of a great intellect, or of a nature ordi- narily virtuous, it becomes not only the subject for genius, which deals with passions, to describe ; but a problem for philosophy, which deals with actions, to investigate and solve hence, the Macbeths and Richards, the Iagos and Othellos. My regret, therefore, is not that I chose a sub- ject unworthy of elevated fiction, but that such h subject did not occur to some one capable of treating it as it deserves; and I never felt this more strongly than when the late Mr. G-odwin (in conversing with me after the pub- lication of this romance) observed that “he had. always thought the story of Eugene Aram peculiarly adapted for fiction, and that he had more than once entertained the notion of making it the foundation of a novel.” I can well conceive what depth and power that gloomy record would have taken from the dark and inquiring genius of the author of Caleb Williams. In fact, the crime and trial oi Eugene Aram arrested the attention and engaged the con- establishes, viz., that the robbery was the crime planned, and the caus^ whether accidental or otherwise, of the murder. PEEFACE. xii jectures of many of the most eminent men of his own time,, His guilt or innocence was the matter of strong contest: and so keen and so enduring was the sensation created by an event thus completely distinct from the ordinary annals of human crime, that even History turned aside from the sonorous narrative of the struggles of parties, and the feuds of kings, to commemorate the learning and the guilt of the humble school master of Lynn. Did I want any other' answer to the animadversions of commonplace criticism, it might be sufficient to say that what the historian relates, the novelist has little right to disdain. Before entering on this romance, I examined with some care the probabilities of Aram’s guilt; for I need scarcely perhaps observe, that the legal evidence against him is ex- tremely deficient—furnished almost entirely by one (House* man) confessedly an accomplice of the crime, and a partner in the booty; and that, in the present day, a man tried upon evidence so scanty and suspicious would unquestion- ably escape conviction. Nevertheless, I must frankly own fchat the moral evidence appeared to me more convincing than the legal; and, though not without some doubt, which, in common with many, I still entertain of the real facts of the murder,* I adopted that view which, at all events, was the best suited to the higher purposes of fiction. On the whole, I still think that if the crime were comr mitted by Aram, the motive was not very far removed from one which led recently to a remarkable murder in Spain. A priest in that country, wholly absorbed in learned pursuits, and apparently of spotless life, confessed fchat, being debarred by extreme poverty from prosecuting a study which had become the sole passion of his exist- ence, he had reasoned himself into the belief that it would be admissible to rob a very dissolute, worthless man, if ha * See Preface to the Present Edition, p. xviiL PEERAGE. xiii applied tlie money so obtained to tbe acquisition of a know- ledge which be could not otherwise acquire, and which he held to be profitable to mankind. Unfortunately, the dis- solute rich man was not willing to be robbed for so excel- lent a purpose : he was armed and he resisted—a struggle ensued, and the crime of homicide was added to that of robbery. The robbery was premeditated : the murder was accidental. But he who would accept some similar inter pretation of Aram’s crime, must, to comprehend fully the lessons which belong to so terrible a picture of frenzy and guilt, consider also the physical circumstances and condi- tion of the criminal at the time: severe illness—intense labour of the brain—poverty bordering upon famine—the mind preternaturally at work, devising schemes and ex- cuses to arrive at the means for ends ardently desired. And all this duly considered, the reader may see the crime bodying itself out from the shades and chimeras of a horri- ble hallucination—the awful dream of a brief but delirious and convulsed disease. It is thus only that we can account for the contradiction of one deed at war with a whole life —blasting, indeed, for ever the happiness; but making little revolution in the pursuits and disposition of the character. Ho one who has examined with care and thoughtfulness the aspects of Life and Hature, but must allow that, in the contemplation of such a spectacle, great and most moral truths must force themselves on the notice and sink deep into the heart. The entanglements of human reasoning; the influence of circumstance upon deeds ; the perversion that may be made, by one self- palter with the Fiend, of elements the most glorious; the secret effect of conscience in frustrating all for which the crime was done—leaving genius without hope, knowledge without fruit—deadening benevolence into mechanism—■ tainting love itself with terror and suspicion;—such reflec- tions—leading, with subtler minds, to many more vast and PREFACE XIV complicated theorems in the consideration of our nature* social and individual—arise out of the tragic moral which the story of Eugene Aram (were it but adequately treated) could not fail to convey. Bbusse^s, AugmU 1840 PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION. —«— If none of my prose works Rave been so attacked as Eugene Aram, none Rave so completely triumpRed over attack. It is true tkat, wketker from real or affected ignorance of tke true morality of fiction, a few critics may still reiterate tke old commonplace charges of “ selecting Reroes from Newgate,” or “investing murderers witk in- terest;” but tke firm Rold wkick tke work Ras establisked in tke opinion of tke general public, and tke favour it Ras received in every country where English literature is known, suffice to prove tkat, whatever its faults, it belongs to tkat legitimate class of fiction wkick illustrates life and truth, and only deals witk crime as tke recognised agency of pity and terror, in tke conduct of tragic narrative. All that I would say farther on this score has been said in tke general defence of my writings wkick I put forth two years ago; and I ask the indulgence of the reader if I repeat myself “ Here, unlike the milder guilt of Paul Clifford, the author was not to imply reform to society, nor open in this world atonement and pardon to the criminal. As it would Rave been wholly in vain to disguise, by mean tamperings with art and truth, tke ordinary habits of life and attributes xvi PREFACE. of character, which all record and remembrance ascribed to Engene Aram, as it would have defeated every end of the moral inculcated by his guilt, to portray in the caricature of the murderer of melodrame, a man immersed in study, of whom it was noted that he turned aside from the worm in his path, so I have allowed to him whatever contrasts with his inexpiable crime have been recorded on sufficient authority. But I have invariably taken care that the crime itself should stand stripped of every sophistry, and hideous to the perpetrator as well as to the world. Allow- ing all by which attention to his biography may explain the tremendous paradox of fearful guilt in a man aspiring after knowledge, and not generally inhumane—allowing that the crime came upon him in the partial insanity, produced by the combining circumstances of a brain overwrought by intense study, disturbed by an excited imagination, and the fumes of a momentary disease of the reasoning faculty, consumed by the desire of knowledge, unwholesome and morbid, because coveted as an end, not a means, added to the other physical causes of mental aberration—to be found in loneliness, and want verging upon famine;—all these, which a biographer may suppose to have conspired to his crime, have never been used by the novelist as excuses for its enormity, nor indeed, lest they should seem as excuses, have they ever been clearly presented to the view. The moral consisted in showing more than the mere legal punish- ment at the close. It was to show how the consciousness of the deed was to exclude whatever humanity of character preceded and belied it from all active exercise—all social confidence; how the knowledge of the bar between the minds of others and his own deprived the criminal of all motive to ambition, and blighted knowledge of all fruit r Miserable in his affections, barren in his intellect—clinging to solitude, yet accursed in it—dreading as a danger the fame he had once coveted—obscure in spite of learning, PREFACE. XY11 hopeless in spite of loye, fruitless and joyless in Ms life, calamitous and shameful in his end;—surely such is no palliative of crime, no dalliance and toying with the grim- ness of evil! And surely to any ordinary comprehension, any candid mind, such is the moral conveyed by the fiction of Eugene Aram.” * In point of composition Eugene Aram is, I think, en- titled to rank amongst the best of my fictions. It some- what humiliates me to acknowledge, that neither practice nor study has enabled me to surpass a work written at a very early age, in the skilful construction and patient de- velopment of plot; and though I have since sought to call forth Mgher and more subtle passions, I doubt if I have ever excited the two elementary passions of tragedy, viz., pity and terror, to the same degree. In mere style, too, Eugene Aram, in spite of certain verbal oversights, and defects in youthful taste (some of which I have endeavoured to remove from the present edition), appears to me unex- celled by any of my later writings, at least in what I have always studied as the main essential of style in narrative, viz., its harmony with the subject selected, and the passions to be moved;—while it exceeds them all in the minuteness and fidelity of its1 descriptions of external nature. This indeed it ought to do, since the study of external nature is made a peculiar attribute of the principal character whose fate colours the narrative. I do not know whether it has been observed that the time occupied by the events of the story is conveyed through the medium of such descriptions. Each description is introduced, not for its own sake, but to serve as a calendar marking the gradual changes of the seasons as they bear on to his doom the guilty worshipper of Hature. And in this conception, and in the care with which it has been followed out, I recognise one of my e&r- * A Word to the Public, 1847. h yREFACE. rviii liest but most successful attempts at the subtler principles of narrative art. In this edition I have made one alteration, somewhat more important than mere verbal correction. On going, with maturer judgment, over all the evidences on which Aram was condemned, I have convinced myself, that though an accomplice in the robbery of Clarke, he was free both from the premeditated design and the actual deed of mur- der. The crime, indeed, would still rest on his conscience, and insure his punishment, as necessarily incidental to the robbery in which he was an accomplice, with Houseman; but finding my convictions, that in the murder itself he had no share, borne out by the opinion of many eminent law- yers, by whom I have heard the subject discussed, I have accordingly so shaped his confession to Walter. f Perhaps it will not be without interest to the reader, if I append to this preface an authentic specimen of Eugene Aram’s composition, for which I am indebted to the cour- tesy of a gentleman by whose grandfather it was received, with other papers (especially a remarkable ‘ Outline of a New Lexicon’), during Aram’s confinement in York Prison. The essay I select is, indeed, not without value in itself as a very curious and learned-illustration of Popular Antiquities, and it serves also to show not only the comprehensive nature of Aram’s studies, and the inquisitive eagerness of his mind, but also the fact that he was completely self-taught; for in contrast to much philological erudition, and to pas- sages that evince considerable mastery in the higher re- sources of language, we may occasionally notice those lessef inaccuracies from which the writings of men solely self- educated are rarely free ; indeed, Aram himself, in sending to a gentleman an elegy on Sir John Armitage, which shows much but undisciplined power of versification, says, “ I send this elegy, which, indeed, if you had not had the curiosity desirej I could not have had the assurance to ©ffe| ESSAY, BY EUGENE ARAM. SIX scarce believing I, who was hardly taaght to read, have any abilities to write.” THE MELSUPPER AND SHOUTING THE CHURN. These mrai entertainments formerly more general all over England tban they are at present; being become by time, necessity, or avarice, complex, con- fined, and altered. They are commonly insisted upon by the reapers as cnstomary things, and a part of their due for the toils of the harvest, and complied with by their mas- ters perhaps more through regards of interest, than incli- nation. Eor should they refuse them the pleasures of this much expected time, this festal night, the youth especially, of both sexes, would decline serving them for the future, and employ their labours for others, who would promise them the rustic joys of the harvest supper, mirth and music, dance and song. These feasts appear to be the relics of Pagan ceremonies, or of Judaism, it is hard to say which, and carry in them more meaning and are of far higher antiquity than is generally apprehended. It is true the subject is more curious than important, and I believe altogether untouched; and as it seems to be little under- stood, has been as little adverted to. I do not remember it to have been so much as the subject of a conversation. Let us make then a little excursion into this field, for the same reason men sometimes take a walk. Its traces are discoverable at a very great distance of time from ours, nay, seem as old as a sense of joy for the benefit of plentiful har* rests and human gratitude to the eternal Creator for his muni licence to men. We hear it under various names in different counties, and often in the same county ; as, mdsupper, chunk supper* harvest supper, harvest home, feast of in-gathering^ ESSAY, AX fyc. And perhaps this feast had heen long observed, and by different tribes of people, before it became perceptive with the Jews, However, let that be as it will, the cnstom very lucidly appears from the following passages of S. S*, 1food, xxiii. 16, “And the feast of harvest, the first fruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field.” And its institutioi^s a sacred rite is commanded in Lev it. xxiii 39 : “ When ye have gathered in the fruit of the land, ye shall keep a feast to the Lord.” The Jews then, as is evident from hence, celebrated the feast of harvest, and that by precept; and though no vestiges of any such feast either are or can be produced before these, yet the oblation of the Primitise, of which this feast was < consequence, is met with prior to this, for we find that, “ Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering to the Lord.”—Gen. iv. 3. Yet this offering of the first-fruits, it may well be sup- posed, was not peculiar to the Jews, either at the time of, or after, its establishment by their legislator; neither the feast in consequence of it. Many other nations, either in imitation of the Jews, or rather by tradition from their several patriarchs, observed the right of offering their Primitive, and of solemnising a festival after it, in religious acknowledgment for the blessing of harvest, though that acknowledgment was ignorantly misapplied in being directed to a secondary, not the primary, fountain of this benefit;— namely, to Apollo or the Sun. For Callimachus affirms that these Primitise were sent by the people of every nation to the temple of Apollo in Delos, the most distant that enjoyed the happiness of corn and harvest, even by the Hyperboreans in particular, Hymn to Apol., Oi jxevTOL KaXafirjv re Kai Upa dpaypa TTparoi aaraKvcoy, “Bring the sacred sheafs, and the mystic offerings.” Herodotus also mentions this annual custom of the Hyperboreans, remarking Ihat those of Delos talk of BY EUGENE ARAM. xxi *I(zpa €2ftt^€fX€va ev KaXajxrj Trvpcoy 'YTrepjSopeo)?;, “Holy tilings tied up in sheaf of wheat conveyed from the Hyperbo- reans.” And the Jews, by the command of their law, offered also a sheaf : “ And shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf of the first fruits of the harvest nnto the priest.” This is not introduced in proof of any feast observed by the people who had harvests, but to show the universality of the custom of offering the Primitise, which preceded this feast. But yet it may be looked upon as equivalent to a proof ; for as the offering and the feast appear to have been always and intimately connected in countries affording records, so it is more than probable they were connected too in countries which had none, or none that ever survived to our times. An entertainment and gaiety were still the concomitants of these rites, which with the vulgar, one may pretty truly suppose, were esteemed the most ac- ceptable and material part of them, and a great reason of their having subsisted through such a length of ages, when both the populace and many of the learned too, have lost sight of the object to which they had been originally directed. This, among many other ceremonies of the heathen worship, became disused in some places and re- tained in others, but still continued declining after the promulgation of the G-ospel. In short, there seems great reason to conclude, that this feast, which was once sacred to Apollo, was constantly maintained, when a far less valuable circumstance, i. e., shouting the churny is ob- served to this day by the reapers, and from so old an era; for we read of this acclamation, Isa. xvi. 9. “ For the shouting for thy summer fruits and for thy harvest is fallen; ” and again, ver. 10: “And in the vineyards there shall be no singing, their shouting shall be no shouting.” Hence then, or from some of the Phoenician colonies, is out traditionary “ shouting the churn.” But it seems these XXII ESSAY, Orientals shouted Tbotli for joy of tlieir harvest of grapes, and of corn. We have no quantity of the first to occasion so much joy as does onr plenty of the last; and I do not remember to have heard whether their vintages abroad are attended with this custom. Bread or cakes compose part of the Hebrew offering ([Levit. xxiii. 18), and a cake thrown upon the head of the victim was also part of the Greek offering to Apollo (see Horn. II. a), whose worship was formerly celebrated in Britain, where the May-pole yet continues one remain of it. This they adorned with gar- lands on May-day, to welcome the approach of Apollo, or the sun, towards the north, and to signify that those flowers were the product of his presence and influence. But, upon the progress of Christianity, as was observed above, Apollo lost his divinity again, and the adoration of his deity sub- sided by degrees. Yet so permanent is custom, that this rite of the harvest supper, together with that of the May-pole (of which last see Voss, de Orig. and Frag. Idolatr. 1, 2), have been preserved in Britain; and what had been anciently offered to the god, the reapers as pru- dently eat up themselves. At last the use of the meal of the new com was neglected, and. the supper, so far as meal was concerned, was made indifferently of old or new corn, as was most agreeable to the founder. And here the usage itself accounts for the name of Melswpjper (where mel signifies meal, or else the instrument called with us a Mell, wherewith antiquity reduced their com to meal in a mortar, which still amounts to the same thing) for provisions of meal, or of corn in furmity, &c., composed by far the greatest part in these elder and country entertainments, perfectly conformable to the simplicity of those times, places, and persons, however meanly they may now be looked upon. And as the harvest was last concluded with several preparations of meal, or brought to be ready for the mell, this term became, in a BY EUGENE ABAM. xxiii translated signification, to mean the last of other tilings as, when a horse comes last in the race, they often say in the north, “he has got the mell ” All the other names in this country festivity sufficiently explain themselves, except Churn-supper, and this is en- tirely different from Melsupper; but they generally happen so near together, that they are frequently confounded. The Churn-supper was always provided when all was shorn, but the Melsupper after all was got in. And it was called the Churn-supper, because, from immemorial times, it was customary to produce in a chum a great quantity of cream, and to circulate it by dishfuls to each of the rustic com- pany, to be eaten with bread. And here sometimes very extraordinary execution has been done upon cream. And though this custom has been disused in many places, and agreeably commuted for by ale, yet it survives still, and that about Whitby and Scarborough in the east, and round about Grisburn, &c., in Craven, in the west. But, perhaps, a century or two more will put an end to it, and both the thing and name shall die. Vicarious ale is now more approved, and the tanhard almost everywhere politely preferred to the Churn. This Churn (in our provincial pronunciation Kern) is the Hebrew Kern, pp or Keren, from its being circular like most horns: and it is the Latin corona, named so either from radii, resembling horns, as on some very antient coins, or from its encircling the head ; so a ring of people is called corona. Also the Celtic Koren, Keren, or corn, which continues according to its old pronunciation in Cornwall, &c., and our modern word horn is no more than this- the antient hard soimd of Jc in com being softened into the aspirate h, as has been done in numberless in- stances, The Irish Celt© also call a round stone, dogh orene, where the variation is merely dialectic, too, our XXIV ESSAY* BY EUGENE ARAM. crane-berries, i. e. round berries, from this Celtic adjective erme, round. H.B. The quotations from Scripture in Aram’s original MS. were both in the Hebrew character, and their value in English sounds. EUGENE ARAM. BOOK I. Te*. $€i», (f)€v‘ hearth that the wife and child of his brother £ame for shelter. Rowland was a man of an affectionate and warm h ?art: if the blow did not crush, at least it changed Mm. Naturally of a cheerful and ardent disposi- fcion, his mood now became more sober and sedate. He shrank from tl e rural gaieties and companionship he had before courted and enlivened, and, for the first time in his life, the mo nner felt the holiness of solitude. As Ms nephew and hr motherless daughters grew up, they gave an object to his seclusion aiid a relief to his reflections. He found a pun? and unfailing delight in watching the growth of their ^ oung minds, and guiding their differing dispositions ; and as time at length enabled them to return his affection, and i ppreciatc his cares, he became once more sensible that he ha 1 a home. The elder of hit daughters, Madeline, at the time ous story opens, had a;tained the age of eighteen. She was the beauty and the 1 'oast of the whole country. Above the ordinary height, he? figure was richly and exquisitely formed. So transit.cently pure and soft was her com* 8 EUGENE ARAM. plexion, tliat it might have seemed the token of delicate health, but for the dewy redness of her lips, and the fresh- ness of teeth whiter than pearls. Her eyes, of a deep bine, wore a thoughtful and serene expression; and her fore- head, higher and broader than it usually is in women, gave promise of a certain nobleness of intellect, and added dignity, but a feminine dignity, to the more tender cha- racteristics of her beauty. And, indeed, the peculiar tone of Madeline’s mind fulfilled the indication of her features, and was eminently thoughtful and high-wrought. She had early testified a remarkable love for study, and not only a desire for knowledge, but a veneration for those who possessed it. The remote corner of the county in which they lived, and the rarely broken seclusion which Lester habitually preserved from the intercourse of their few and scattered neighbours, had naturally cast each member of the little circle upon his or her own resources. An acci- dent, some five years ago, had confined Madeline for several weeks, or rather months, to the house ; and as the old Hall possessed a very respectable share of books, she had then matured and confirmed that love for reading and reflection which she had at a yet earlier period prematurely evinced. The woman’s tendency to romance naturally tinctured her meditations, and thus, while they dignified, they also softened her mind. Her sister Ellinor, younger by two years, was of a .character equally gentle, but less elevated. She looked up to her sister as a superior being. She felt pride, without a shadow of envy, for Madeline’s superior and surpassing beauty; and was unconsciously guided in her pursuits and predilections by a mind which she cheerfully acknowledged to be loftier than her own. And yet Ellinor had also her pretensions to personal love- liness, and pretensions perhaps that would be less reluc- tantly acknowledged by her own sex than those of her sister. The sunlight of a happy and innocent heart sparkled on her face, and gave a beam it gladdened you to behold to her quick hazel eye, and a smile that broke out from a thousand dimples. She did not possess the height of Madeline, and though not so slender as to be curtailed of the roundness and feminine luxuriance of beauty, her shape was slighter, feebler, and less rich in its symmetry than her sister’s. And this the tendency of the physical from EUGENE ARAM. 9 to require elsewhere support, nor to feel secure of strength, perhaps influenced her mind, and made loye, and the depen- dence of love, more necessary to her than to the thoughtful and lofty Madeline. The latter might pass through life, and never see the one to whom her heart could give itself away. But every village might possess a hero whom the imagination of Ellinor could clothe with unreal graces, and towards whom the lovingness of her disposition might bias her affections. Both, however, eminently possessed that earnestness and purity of heart which would have made them, perhaps in an equal degree, constant and devoted to the object of an attachment once formed, in defiance of change, and to the brink of death. Their cousin Walter, G-eoffrey Lester’s son, was now in his twenty-first year; tall and strong of person, and with a face, if not regularly handsome, striking enough to be generally deemed so. High-spirited, bold, fiery, impatient; jealous of the affections of those he loved ; cheerful to out- ward seeming, but restless, fond of change and subject to the melancholy and pining mood common to young and ardent minds : such was the character of Walter Lester. The estates of Lester were settled in the male line, and devolved therefore upon him. Yet there were moments when he keenly felt his orphan and deserted situation: and sighed to think that, while his father perhaps yet lived, he was a dependent for affection, if not for maintenance, on the kindness of others. This reflection sometimes gave an air of * sullenness or petulance to his character, that did not really belong to it. For what in the world makes a man of just pride appear so unamiable as the sense of dependence ? CHAPTER II. A PUBLICAN, A SINNER, AND A STRANGER. “Ah, Don Alplionso, is it you? Agreeable accident! Chance presents you to my eyes where jou were least expected.’’—Gil Blas. It was an evening in the beginning of summer, and Peter Dealtry and the ci-devant corporal sat beneath the sign of The Spotted Bog (as it hung motionless from the bough of a friendly elm), quaffing a cup of boon companion- ship. The render will imagine the two men very different 10 EUGENE ARAM. from each other in form and aspect; the one short, dry, fragile, and betraying a love of ease in his unbuttoned vest, and a certain lolling, see-sawing method of balancing his body upon his chair ; the other, erect and solemn, and as steady on his seat as if he were nailed to it. It was a fine, tranquil, balmy evening; the sun had just set, and the clouds still retained the rosy tints which they had caught from its parting ray. Here and there, at scattered intervals, you might see the cottages peeping from the trees around them; or mark the smoke that rose from Iheir roofs—roofs green wifch mosses and house-leek,—in graceful and spiral curls against the clear soft air. It was an English scene, and the two men, the dog at their feet (for Peter Dealtry favoured a wiry stone-coloured cur, which he called a terrier), and just at the door of the little inn, two old gossips, loitering on the threshold, in familiar chat with the landlady in cap and kerchief,—all together made a group equally English, and somewhat picturesque, though homely enough, in effect. “ Well, now,” said Peber Dealtry, as he pushed the brown jug towards the corporal, “ this is what I call pleasant; its puts me in mind--------” “ Of what ? ” quoth the corporal. “ Of those nice lines in the hymn, Master Bunting:—• ‘ How fair ye are, ye little hills : Ye little fields also : Ye murmuring1 streams that sweetly run, Ye willows in a row 1’ There is something very comfortable in sacred verses, Master Bunting : but you he a scoffer.” “ Psha, man ! ” said the corporal, throwing out his right leg and leaning back, with his eyes half shut, and his chin protruded, as he took an unusually long inhalation from his pipe. “ Psha, man !—send verses to the right-about—• fib for girls going to school of a Sunday ; full-grown men more up to snuff. I’ve seen the world, Master Dealtry ;— the world, and be d------d to you!—augh ! ” “ Pie, neighbour, fie ! What’s the good of profaneness, evil speaking, and slandering p— ‘ Oaths are the debts your spendthrift soul must pay; All scores are chalk'd against the reckoning day/ Just wait a bit, neighbour; wait till I light my pipe.” EUGENE AEAM. 11 “ Tell you what,” said the corporal, after he had com- municated from his own pipe the friendly flame to hig comrade’s ; “ tell you what—talk nonsense ; the com- mander-in-chief ’s no martinet—if we’re oil right in action, he’ll wink at a slip word or two. Come, no humbug— hold jaw. D’ye think God would sooner have a snivelling fellow like you in his regiment, than a man like me, clean- limbed, straight as a dart, six feet one without his shoes ? •—Baugh! ” This notion of the corporal’s, by which he would have likened the dominion of heaven to the King of Prussia’s body-guard, and only admitted the elect on account of their inches, so tickled mine host’s fancy, that he leaned back in his chair and indulged in a long, dry, obstreperous cachinnation. This irreverence mightily displeased the corporal. He looked at the little man very sourly, and said in his least smooth accentuation,—• “What—devil-—cackling at?—Always grin, grin, grin —giggle, giggle, giggle—psha ! ” “Why really, neighbour,” said Peter, composing him- self, “you must let a man laugh now and then.” “Man!” said the corporal; “man’s a noble animal’: Man’s a musket, primed, loaded, ready to save a friend or kill a foe—charge not to be wasted on every tom-tit. But you! not a musket, but a cracker! noisy, harmless, can’t touch you, but olf you go, whizz, pop, bang in one’s face ! —baugh! ” “Well!*’ said the good-humoured landlord, “I should think Masher Aram, the great scholar who lives down the vale yonder, a man quite after your own heart. He is grave enough to suit you. He does not laugh very easily, I fancy.” “ After my heart P Stoops like a bow! ” “Indeed he does look on the ground as he walks; when I think, I do the same. But what a marvellous man it is ! I hear that he reads the Psalms in Hebrew. He’s very affable and meek-like for such a scholarcl.” “ Tell you what. Seen the world, Master Deal try, and know a thing or two. Your shy dog is always a deep one. Give me a man who looks me in the face as he would a cannon! ” “ Or a lass,” said Peter, knowingly. 12 EUGENE AIUM. The grim corporal smiled, “ Talking of lasses,” said the soldier, re-filling his pipe, “ what creature Miss Lester is ! Such eyes !—such nose i Fit for a colonel, by Gad! ay, or a major-general! ” “ For my part, I think Miss Ellinor almost as handsome; not so grand-like, but more lovesome.” “ Hice little thing! ” said the corporal, condescendingly. “ But zooks ! whom have we here ? ” This last question was applied to a man who was slowly turning from the road towards the inn. The stranger, for such he was, was stout, thick-set, and of middle height. His dress'was not without pretension to a rank higher than the lowest; but it was threadbare and worn, and soiled with dust and travel. His appearance was by no means prepossessing: small sunken eyes of a light hazel, and a restless and rather fierce expression; a thick flat nose, high cheek-bones, a large bony jaw from which the flesh receded, and a bull throat indicative of great strength, constituted his claims to personal attraction. The stately corporal, without moving, kept a vigilant and suspicious eye upon the new comer, muttering to Peter,—“ Customer for you; rum customer too—by Gad ! ” The stranger now reached the little table, and halting short took up the brown jug, without ceremony or preface, and emptied it at a draught. The corporal stared—the corporal frowned ; but before —for he was somewhat slow of speech—he had time to vent his displeasure, 'the stranger, wiping his mouth with his sleeve, said, in rather a civil and apologetic tone,— “ I beg pardon, gentlemen. I have had a long march of it, and very tired I am.” “ Humph ! march ! ” said the corporal a little appeased. “ not in his Majesty’s service—eh P ” “ Hot now,” answered the traveller; then, turning round to Dealtry, he said,—“Are you landlord here ? ” “ At your service,” said Peter, with the indifference of a nan well to do, and not ambitious of halfpence. “ Come, then, quick—budge,” said the traveller, tapping {dm on the back : “ bring more glasses—another jug of the October ; and anything or everything your birder is able to produce—d’ye hoar P99 EUGENE ARAM. 13 Peter, by no means pleased with tlie briskness of this address, eyed tlie dusty and way-worn pedestrian from bead to foot; then, looking oyer his shoulder towards the door, he said, as he ensconced himself yet more firmly on his seat— “ There ’s my wife by the door, friend ; go, tell her what yon want.” “ Do you know,” said the traveller, in a slow and mea- sured accent—“ Do you know, master Shrivel-face, that 1 have more than half a mind to break your head for imperti- nence P You a landlord !—you keep an inn, indeed ! Come, Air, make off, or---” “ Corporal!—corporal! ” cried Peter, retreating hastily from his seat as the brawny traveller approached mena- cingly towards him—“ You won’t see the peace broken. Have a care, friend—ha ve a care I’m clerk to the parish —clerk to the parish, sir—and I ’ll indict you for sacrilege.” The wooden features of Bunting relaxed into a sort of grin at the alarm of his friend. He puffed away, without making any reply ; meanwhile the traveller, taking advan- tage of Peter’s hasty abandonment of his cathedrarian accommodation, seized the vacant chair, and, drawing it yet closer to the table, flung himself upon it, and placing his hat on the table, wiped his brows with the air of a man about to make himself thoroughly at home. Peter Dealtry was assuredly a personage of peaceable disposition; but then he had the proper pride of a host and a clerk. His feelings were exceedingly wounded at this cavalier treatment: before the very eyes of his wife, too ! —what an example! He thrust his hands deep into his breeches’ pockets, and strutting with a ferocious swagger towards the traveller, he said,—- “ Harkye, sirrah ! This is not the way folks are treated in this country: and I’d have you to know, that Pmaman what has a brother a constable.” “Well, sir!” “Well, sir, indeed! Well!—Sir, it Ts not well, by n