v- L THE LAST WORDS OF THOMAS CARLYLE WOTTON REINFRED : A ROMANCE EXCURSION (FUTILE ENOUGH) TO PARIS LETTERS NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1892 COPYRIGHT, 1892, By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED AT THE APPLBTON PRESS, U. S. A. INTRODUCTION. THE two manuscripts included in The Last Words of Thomas Carlyle were left among the author's papers at his death. One of them, Wotton Reinfred, is Carlyle's only essay in fiction, and it therefore possesses so dis- tinctive an interest that its omission from Carlyle's complete works would not be justi- fiable. The other, Excursion (Futile EnougJi) to Paris, offers a vivid picture of Carlyle's personality. By the publication of these two manuscripts, with the accompanying letters, a new and considerable volume is added to the list of Carlyle's works. Wotton Reinfred was probably written soon after Carlyle's marriage, at the time when he and his wife entertained the idea of produc- ing a novel in collaboration. The romance iv INTRODUCTION. may be said to possess a peculiar psychologi- cal interest, inasmuch as it represents the earlier period of Carlyle's literary develop- ment. In the labored but not faulty style, the most familiar characteristics of the writ- er's later work are only occasionally apparent. So far as matter is concerned, the reader will not be slow to discover, in the conversations of Wotton and the Doctor, the first expres- sion of ideas and doctrines afterward set forth with more formality in Sartor Resartus. " It is a poor philosophy which can be taught in words," is the Doctor's proposition. " We talk and talk, and talking without acting, though Socrates were the speaker, does not help our case, but aggravates it. Thou must act, thou must work, thou must do ! Collect thyself, compose thyself, find what is wanting that so tortures thee, do but attempt with all thy strength to attain it, and thou art saved." Here is the doctrine afterward expanded by Teufelsdrockh in Sartor Resartus. Concerning Carlyle's judgment of his con- temporaries, he has often enlightened us with INTRODUCTION. v his wonted frankness, but in Wotton Rein/red alone he appears as the writer of a romance whose characters are drawn from real life. On this point we may quote Mr. James An- thony Froude, who says : " The interest of Wot ton Reinfred to me is considerable from the sketches which it con- tains of particular men and women, most of whom I knew and could, if necessary, identify. The story, too, is taken generally from real life, and perhaps Carlyle did not finish it from the sense that it could not be published while the persons and things could be recognized. That objection to the publication no longer exists. Everybody is dead whose likenesses have been drawn, and the incidents stated have long been forgotten." Mr. Leslie Stephen adds to this testimony in a letter from which we make the following extract : " It is interesting as a historical document. It gives Carlyle before he had adopted his peculiar manner, and yet there are some char- acteristic bits especially at the beginning in vi INTRODUCTION. the Sartor Resartus vein. I take it that these are reminiscences of Irving and of the Thack- eray circle, and there is a curious portrait of Coleridge, not very thinly veiled. There is enough autobiography, too, of interest in its way." The Excursion (Futile EnougJi) to Paris is the unreserved daily record of a journey in company with the Brownings, when Carlyle paid a visit to Lord Ashburton. That this record is characteristic, and that it presents a singularly vivid picture of the writer's per- sonality, is self-evident. It is a picture which adds something to our knowledge of Carlyle the man, and is therefore worth preservation. The world has long since known that even Carlyle's heroic figure may claim the sympa- thy and pity due a great soul fretting against its material environments. WOTTON REINFRED. CHAPTER I. " SURELY," said Wotton, as he sat by the clear evening fire engaged in various talk with his friend, " surely, my good Doctor, the poet is wrong ; and happiness if it be the aim was never meant to be the end of our being." The old Doctor gave a quiet smile. " Hap- piness ! " continued Wotton with increasing vehemence, "happiness! where is it? The foolish can not find it, the wisest have sought for it in vain. Not on the towering heights of royalty, not in the houses of the rich and noble, not down in the thatched hut of the peasant does it dwell. The ambitious, be it in the cabinet, the battle-field, or the counting- room, discovers after a thousand mocking dis- appointments that he is a hapless drudge ; the voluptuary dies despicable and wretched, like Copyright, 1892, by D. Appleton and Company. 2 WOT TON REIN FRED a putrid gourd ; Brutus exclaims, ' O virtue, I have worshipped thee as a substance, and must I find thee a shadow ? ' But Science ! Yes, Science ! And what does Science teach us? The wisdom of living? The nature of our own being, and the art of directing it aright? Alas ! alas ! on these things she speaks not but in enigmas ; for darkness and the shadow of doubt rest over the path of our pilgrimage, and at our journey's end the wisest of us can but exclaim with the old sage : Foede mundum intravi, miser vixi, pertur- batus morior ! " " Do not forget his prayer," said the other, meekly. "Yes! O causa causarum, miserere mei!" cried Reinfred, looking upwards, with tears almost starting to his eyes. "Miserere mei! " repeated he, throwing himself down on the table, and hiding his face in his hands. His cousin looked at him sympathisingly, but spoke not, " And yet," cried the other, starting up, and throwing back his head to conceal the WOTTON REIN FRED. 3 wetness of his eyes, " if He DO NOT hear me ? If there is no ear to hear me ; and the voice of my sorrow peals unreturned through the grim wilderness, and only the echo of the dead rocks replies to me in the gloom ! O heaven and earth, what am I or where am I ? Alone ! Alone ! They are dead, all dead, buried beneath the ground or faithless above it, and for me there is no soul that careth ! Forgive me, my father," continued he, after a moment's pause ; " I do you wrong, but I am very weak; and surely these things will kill me soon." " Dear boy," said his friend, " you are not to blame, you take the matter like a young man as you are ; because hope has hid herself you think she is utterly fled. Tush, I tell you, all this is nonsense, and you will see it yet though you think my words but wind. You were twenty-two last Christmas, and the life of man is three score years and ten. You have much to do, and much to learn in this world ; only nature must have her course, nay, she is teaching you even now, teaching 4 WOTTON RE IN FRED. you with hard but useful stripes, and you will act your part the better and more wisely for it." " It is acted already," said the other, bit- terly, " and the curtain is dropped, and I have nothing more to do but undress, but shuffle off this mortal coil." "Dropped? Aye, but not the green one, it is the painted curtain that has dropped, and the first act truly is done, and we have other four to come to. Pity that our interlude of music were not gayer, but we must even put up with it, sighs and groans though it be. O, Wotton Reinfred, thou art beside thyself ; much learning doth make thee mad. I swear it is even so," continued he, rising into his usual lively tone. " There hast thou sat por- ing over thy Geometries and Stereometries, thy Fluxions direct and inverse, by the New- tonian and the Leibnitzian method, thy Uni- versal History, thy Scotch Philosophy and French Poetics, till thy eyes are dazed with so many lamps, and for very light thou canst not see a glimpse, and so in thy head the world is WOTTON REIN FRED. 5 whirling like a sick man's dream, and for thee it has neither top nor bottom, beginning, mid- dle, nor end ! I care not for thy scepticism, Wotton : I tell thee, it will grow to be belief, and all the sounder for thy once having doubted. I say so because thy froward mind is honest withal, and thou lovest truth sin- cerely. But deuce take it, man ! I would have had thee pleading in the courts like a brave advocate " " Illustrating the case of Stradling versus Styles," cried Reinfred, hastily, for the talk displeased him. "Spending my immortal spirit, in vain jangling, for a piece of bread ? I have bread already." " So much the better ! But the honour, the use to others " "May be strongly doubted," cried the youth, still more sharply. " Well, I grant it would not do," said the Doctor, hastening to quit this rather thorny province. "Thou hadst a heart too, but we could not master it ; six months of the Institute had no whit abated thy aversion, nay, thy hor- 6 WOTTON REINFRED. ror ; and at last, when I saw thee after a reso- lute night as Justice of the Peace absolutely seized with a kind of tetanus or locked-jaw, I myself was obliged to vote that we should give it up." " Heigho ! " ejaculated Wotton. " But now, in Heaven's name," continued the Doctor, " what is it that should so overcloud thee, nay for ever benight thee notwithstand- ing? Are we not here in thy own walled house, amid thy own freehold fields? Hast thou no talent that this world has use for? Young, healthy ; a proper fellow of thy inches ; learned too, though I say it, for thy years ; and independent, if not rich ! Pshaw ! Is thy game lost because the first trick has gone against thee ? Patience, and shuffle the cards ! Is the world all dead because Edmund Walter is a scoundrel jackanapes, and " " Good God ! " cried Wotton, starting from his seat, and pacing hurriedly over the floor, "can you not spare me? What have I to do with Edmund Walter? The tiger-ape ! " cried he, stamping on the ground, " with his body and shoulder knots, his smirks and fleers ! A WOT TON RE IN FRED. j gilt outside, and within a very lazar-house! Gayspeeches, a most frolick sunny thing ; and in its heart the poison of asps ! O the But I will not curse him. No, poor devil! He but follows the current of his own vile nature, like the rest of us. God help him and me ! " added he, pausing, with a deep sigh. " Yet it is strange," said the other, " how this puppy could muster rhetoric for such a thing. Strange that for a cap and feather Jane Montagu should have " " Doctor ! " said Wotton, turning towards him abruptly, with a look striving to be calm. " I shall request of you never to mention that name in my hearing again." " Pooh, think not of her, or think of her as she merits. A selfish minx after all ; brighter talents, but no sounder judgment, or truer heart than the rest of them ; a worthless " " O do not blame her ! Who knows how much or how little she was to blame? The thraldom of her situation, her youth, that cold cozening cruel woman ; all things were against us. No, worthless she was not; and if her g WOTTON REIN FRED, heart was false, it was doubly and trebly false, for she knew the light and yet chose darkness rather than light. But could she love that caitiff? She must have loved him! O there is a dark baleful mystery over it which I shall never pierce through. Would she were gone from my thoughts, gone as if she had not been ; for here the remembrance of her is but a curse. Was it not hard? One only hope, and that to mock me with the Fiend's arch scoff! The world was dead around me, the last heart that loved me in the cold grave ; all efforts baffled, one by one the green places of my universe scathed and blackened into ashes ; my whole life one error, a seeking of light and goodness and a finding of darkness and de- spair. I was to myself as a frightful mistake ; a spectre in the middle of breathing men, an unearthly presence, that ought not to be there. And she O fair and golden as the dawn she rose upon my soul. Night with its ghastly fantasms fled away ; and beautiful and solemn in earnest shade and gay sunshine lay our life before me. And then, and then ! O God, a WOT TON REINFRED. g gleam of hell passed over the face of my an- gel, and the pageant was rolled together like a scroll, and thickest darkness fell over me, and I heard the laughter of a demon ! But what of it?" cried he, suddenly checking himself. " It was a vision, a brief calenture, a thing that belonged not to this earth." He stood gazing out upon the starry night. The old man approached, but knew not what to say. " Do they not look down on us as if with pity from their serene spaces," said Rein- fred, " like eyes glistening with heavenly tears over the poor perplexities of man? ' Herr- liche Gefiihle esttarren in,' etc. Their bright- ness is not bedimmed by any vapour, the mists of our troubled planet do not reach them. Thousands of human generations all as noisy as our own have been engulphed in the abyss of time, and there is no wreck of them seen any more ; and Arcturus and Orion and the Pleiades are still shining in their courses, clear and young as when the shep- herd first noted them on the plain of Shinar. O what is life, or why should we sorrow or joy 10 WOT TON REINFRED. over it when it is but for a moment? What is all the earth and all that have inherited or shall inherit it? Blot it out utterly and it is not missed from the Creation. Blot me out, and shall I be missed ? Shame on me, foolish child, to whine for such a toy!" " Truth, virtue, beauty, are in man," said the other ; " they are older than the stars, and will live when these too have returned to the void night whence they were called forth in the beginning. O Wotton, my son, thou wilt know and feel this at last, though now thou know it not; and affliction will be precious which teaches thee such knowledge." Wot- ton shook his head. " But I am wrong," con- tinued he. " Why do I lead thee to such thoughts ? It is a poor philosophy which can be taught in words : we talk and talk ; and talking without acting, though Socrates were the speaker, does not help our case but aggra- vate it. Thou must act, thou must work, thou must do! Collect thyself, compose thyself, find what is wanting that so tortures thee ; do but WOT TON REIN FRED. II attempt with all thy strength to attain it and thou art saved." "Wanting?" said Wotton. "Wanting? There is nothing wanting but deepest sleep, where there were no dreams to trouble me. Ere long I shall find it in my mother's bosom. But what of this?" added he, impatiently. " Why do we talk, as thou sayest, when there is nothing to be done? O, my old friend, I abuse your goodness, and load you with griefs which I should bear myself. Forgive me, for- give me. I was not always weak. It must alter, for the better or the worse it must." " For the better ! " cried the Doctor, cheer- ily. " It must and will. I tell thee help is on the road : it will arrive when we least think of it. But enough ! Now tell me, to come to business at last, what sayest thou to Mosely's letter?" " That travelling will not recreate me ; that I want no spiritual leech, for spiritual recipes cannot avail ; that Mosely is a good man, but knows nothing of my ' case ' as he calls it ; in brief, that I cannot and must not go." 12 WOT TON RE IN FRED. " Dost thou know I came hither solely to persuade thee ; to offer myself as thy compan- ion?" " My good, kind, only friend ! But why should it be ? Why should I intrude upon happy men : to sit in their circle like a death's- head, marring all pleasure by my sepulchral moods ? Leave me to fight with my own des- picable fate. Here in the mountains I con- sume my griefs in silence, and except when you in your chivalrous benevolence come over to doctor me, I trouble no one with them." " Be my patient then for once," cried the other: "what harm can it do? Your books have ceased to please you, and you are learn- ing nothing from them but to doubt. Your long rides among the moors do but feed your melancholy humour. You can neither shoot, nor hunt, nor dine. You keep no race-horses, and the Commission of Supply does not fire your ambition. What have you to do here ? Arise, let us mingle in the full current of life, or at least survey it for a season. Who knows WOT TON REIN FRED. 13 what fine things we may see and do ? Frank Mosely is a true man, and you will learn to love him ; he already loves you. Your case, too, he understands better than you think. Let me read you this," cried he, taking out a letter and leading Wotton back to the table. "O, I know it already! The old story over again, be not solitary, be not idle. And good heaven ! what am I that people should quacksalver me with their nostrums? Does Mosely keep a private bedlam for afflicted scholars? Or would he dissect me and ex- periment upon me?" " Patience ! patience ! " said the other ; " he is a good man, and my friend. Do but lis- ten." He read as follows : "... reXo9 6, etc. The end of man is an ac- tion, not a thought, says Aristotle ; the wisest thing he ever said. Doubt is natural to a human being, for his conceptions are infinite, his powers are only finite. Nevertheless it must be removed, and this not by negation but by affirmation. From experience springs belief, from speculation doubt, but idleness is !4 WOTTON REIN FRED. the mother of unbelief. Neither is our happi- ness passive, but only active ; few men know this, though all in words admit it, hence their life is a perpetual seeking without finding. " Bring thy friend Reinfred hither ; I have long known him, though he knows not me. So fair a nature will not perish in its own su- perfluity, be its circumstances for the present never so perplexed. His state is painful, but in the end it yields peaceable fruits. It must at some time be the state of all men who are destined to be men. Bring him hither, that he may see what he has yet but heard of. Time will indeed be his physician, be it there or here : but I would gladly do myself a pleas- ure in knowing him. Happy and unhappy two- legged animals about me are many, but hap- py or even unhappy men are very few. . . ." The discussion of this matter between our friends was protracted to a late hour ; Wotton urging his own misanthropic habitudes, his hatred of change, his inacquaintance with Mosely, and the folly and hopelessness of the whole project ; his cousin answering all his WOT TON REINFRED. !j cold noes with as many warm yeas, and plead- ing at last that in this whim of his, if he had ever merited ought, he might for this once be gratified. " It is a thing I have set my heart on," said he ; " and I shall be positively un- happy if thou deny me." Reinfred loved his cousin ; esteemed him as a man of unintelligi- ble or mistaken views indeed, but of the kind- est heart, whose helpful sympathy he had often taken in the hour of need, and who now, sad, lonely, down-pressed and darkened as the young man seemed, might almost be said to form the last link that still in any wise con- nected him with the living and loving world. After long resistance he began to yield, and before parting for the night a faint assent was wrung from him. " Why many words?" said he, " if it really can do anything for thee, mis- taken as thou art ; against me it can do noth- ing." Next morning the cousin took his leave and rode home to make arrangements for the journey, as the third day was fixed upon for their departure. CHAPTER II. RELUCTANTLY as Wotton had consented to this scheme, the good effects of it were already beginning to be felt. The prepara- tions and preliminary settlements produced a wholesome diversion of his thoughts, so many little outward cares constraining him to calcu- lation and exertion, the unusual bustle of his still house, all contributed to draw him from the dark Trophonius' cave of his own imagination into the light and warmth of day. As he rode along through the bright morn- ing to his lawyer, that he might finish, after long loitering, some acts of business relating to his little property, and some acts of benefi- cence to one or two poor peasants dependent on him, he almost felt as if he were in very deed ceasing to be an alien from the common- WOTTON REIN FRED. \j wealth of men, as if he too had some duties to perform in his own sphere, barren and hum- ble though it was. The journey itself, though he viewed it with little pleasure, nay in gen- eral with a sort of captious regret, was yet a prospect if not a hope, and thus the future, if not filled with inviting forms, was no longer absolutely void. Nay in spite of himself some promise of enjoyment rose faintly over his mind ; for the plastic vigour of young fancies which shapes such landscapes in the clouds, though sorely marred in him was not extinct, and where good and evil are both possible, there is no such perverse alchemy as will ex- clusively select the latter. He could not deny that he felt some curiosity to know Mosely and his circle, so enigmatic as it seemed, from all that he had learned ; it may be even that unconsciously some low whisper of his lost Jane Montagu mingled in his fantasies, some unavowed hope of again being cast into her neighbourhood, of seeing and hearing her once more, and though not of recovering her affection, for that he could not even wish, at 1 8 WOT TON REIN FRED. least of understanding how it had been for ever lost. Wotton was one of those natures which it is of most importance to educate rightly, but also of greatest difficulty, and which accord- ingly with a capricious contradiction we often find worse educated than any other. In early boyhood he had lost his father, a man of an equal but stern and indignant temper, soured also by disappointments and treacheries, which had driven him at middle age from the com- merce of the world, to hide his shattered for- tunes, his great talents, and too fiery but hon- est and resolute spirit, in the solitude of his little rustic patrimony. Here in this barren seclusion he had lived, repelling from him by a certain calm but iron cynicism all advances either of courtesy or provocation, an isolated man, busied only with the culture of his land, amused only by studies of philosophy and literature, which no one but himself under- stood or valued. To neighbours he was an object of spleen, of aversion ; yet on the whole of envy rather than of pity, for he WOT TON REIN FRED. \ 9 seemed complete in himself, free of all men, fearless of all men, a very king in his own domain. Even happy he might appear, but it was not so, for the worm of pride was still gnawing at his heart, and his philosophy pre- tended not to root it out but only to con- ceal it. In a few years his deep-shrouded chagrin undermined his health, a slight sickness gath- ered unexpected aggravation, and he sank darkly into the grave with all his ineffectual nobleness, wayward and wilful in himself, mistaken by the world, and broken by it though he could not be bent. Of this parent Wotton recollected nothing, save his strong, earnest, silent figure, and a vague unpleasant impression from him of restraint and awe. The mother, to whose sole guidance he was now committed, had a mother's love for her boy, and was in all respects a true-minded woman ; but for such a spirit as Wotton's no complete though in some points a most pre- cious instructress. She trained his heart to the love of all truth and virtue ; but of his 20 WOTTON REINFRED. other faculties she took little heed, and could take little proper charge. To this good be- ing, intellect, or even activity, except when, directed to the purely useful, was no all-im- portant matter ; for her soul was full of lofti- est religion, and truly regarded the glories of this earth as light chaff ; nay, we may say she daily and almost hourly felt as if the whole material world were but a vision and a show, a shadowy bark bound together only by the Almighty's word, and transporting us as if through a sea of dreams to the solemn shore of Eternity, in whose unutterable light the bark would melt like vapour, and we our- selves awake to endless weal or woe. In her secluded life, for like her husband she was visited by few except the needy and distressed, such feelings gathered strength ; were reduced to principles of action, and came at last to pervade her whole conduct, most of all her conduct to her sole surviving child. She never said to him : " Be great, be learned, be rich ; " but, " Be good and holy, seek God and thou shalt find Him." " What WOT TON REIN FRED. 21 is wealth ? " she would say ; " What are crowns and sceptres? The fashion of them passeth away. Heed not the world, thou hast a better inheritance ; fear it not, sufficient food and raiment our Father will provide thee ; has he not clothed the sparrow against winter, and given it a fenced house to dwell in?" She wished to have her boy instructed in learning, for though little acquainted with it herself, she reverenced it deeply ; but judg- ing his religious and moral habitudes of far more consequence, she would not part with him from her sight, still less trust him among the contaminations of a boarding-school. To read and write she had herself taught him ; the former talent he had acquired so early that it seemed less an art than a faculty, for he could not recollect his ever having wanted it or learned it. So soon as his strength appeared sufficient, she had sent him to a day-school in the nearest town, a distance of six miles, which, with his satchel at his back, the ruddy urchin used to canter over on his little shelty evening and morning. His 22 WOT TON REINFRED. progress was the boast of the teachers ; and the timid still boy, devoted to his tasks and rarely mingling in the pastimes, never in the riots of his fellows, would have been a uni- versal favourite in any community less selfish and tyrannical than one composed of school- boys. It may seem strange to say so ; but among these little men, a curious observer will detect some almost frightful manifesta- tions of our common evil nature. What cru- elty in their treatment of inferiors, whether frogs, vagrant beggars, or weaker boys ! How utterly the hearts of the little wretches seem dead to all voice of mercy or justice. It is the rude, savage, natural man, unchecked by any principle of reflection or even calculation, and obeying, like animals, no precept but that of brute giant power. Poor Wotton had a sorry time of it in this tumultuous, cozening, brawling, club-law com- monwealth : he had not friends among them, or if any elder boy took his part, feeling some touch of pity for his innocence and worth, it was only for a moment, and his usual purga- WOT TON REIN FRED. 23 tory, perhaps aggravated by his late patron, returned upon him with but greater bitter- ness. They flouted him, they beat him, they jeered and tweaked and tortured him by a thousand cunning arts, to all which he could only answer with his tears ; so that his very heart was black within him, and in his sad- ness, of which he would not complain, and which also seemed to him as if eternal, he knew not what to do. For he was a quiet, pensive creature, that loved all things, his shelty, the milk-cow, nay the very cat, un- grateful termageant though she was ; and so shy and soft withal, that he generally passed for cowardly, and his tormentors had named him " weeping Wotton," and marked him down as a proper enough bookworm, but one without a particle of spirit. However, in this latter point they sometimes overshot them- selves, and the boldest and tallest of the house have quailed before the " weeping Wotton," when thoroughly provoked, for his fury while it lasted was boundless, his little face gleamed like a thunderbolt, and no fear of earthly or 24 WOTTON RE IN FRED. unearthly thing could hold him from the heart of his enemy. But the sway of this fire-eyed genius was transient as the spark of the flint; his com- rades soon learned the limits of danger, and adjusting their operations with a curious ac- curacy to the properties of their material, con- tinued to harass him, more cunningly, but not less effectually than before. All these things acted on Wotton with deep and mostly unfavourable influences ; fret- ting into morbid quickness his already exces- sive sensibility, and increasing the develop- ment of his shy secluded nature. His mother and her calm circle, the sole spot in the earth where he could have peace, became doubly dear to him ; and he knew no joy till, mount- ing his pony, and leaving the pavement of the burgh behind him, he could resign himself among shady alleys and green fields to a thousand dreams, which fancy was already building for him in clouds of all gayest hues. In the future he was by turns a hero and a sage, in both provinces the benefactor and WOTTON REIN FRED. 2 $ wonder of the world ; and would weave a his- tory for himself, of dainty texture, resuming it day after day, and sometimes continuing it for months and years. The bleak, monotonous past itself was beautified in his thoughts ; its sorrows were like steep rocks, no longer sharp and stern, rising in the distance amid green sunny fields of joy. All forms of his earlier years rose meeker and kinder in his memory ; especially the figure of a little elder sister, with whom he had played in trustful gladness in infancy, but whom death had snatched away from him before he knew what the King of Terrors was. Since the departure of this little one, the green knolls, the dells of his na- tive brook had been lonelier to him ; indeed, he was almost without companion of his own age, but his mother's bosom was still open to him, and from her he had yet no care which it concerned him to hide. In the evenings, above all on holidays, he was happy, for then the afflictions of life all lay on the other side of the hill ; he wandered over the fields in a thousand gay reveries ; he 2 6 WOT TON RE IN FRED. made crossbows and other implements with his knife, or stood by the peasants at their work and listened eagerly to their words, which, rude as they might be, were the words of grown men, and awoke in him forecastings of a distant world. Old Stephen in particu- lar, the family gardener, steward, ploughman, majordomo and factotum, he could have hearkened to for ever. Stephen had travelled much in his time, and seen the manner of many men ; noting noteworthy things, which his shrewd mind wanted not skill to combine in its own simplicity into a consistent philosophy of life. From Stephen also he had half bor- rowed, half plundered, certain volumes of plays and tales, among these the ever-memora- ble " Arabian Nights," which, not so much read as devoured, formed, with the theologi- cal library of his mother, a strange enough combination. These fictions Wotton almost feared were little better than falsehoods, the reading of which his conscience did all but openly condemn, for he believed, as he had been taught, that beyond the region of material WOT TON REIN FRED: 27 usefulness religion was the only study profit- able to man. Nor was he behindhand in this latter, at least, if entire zeal could suffice. Ever in his great Taskmaster's eye, he watched over his words and actions with even an over- scrupulousness. His little prayer came even- ing and morning from a full heart, and life, in the thought of the innocent boy, seemed little else than a pilgrimage through a sacred alley, with the pinnacles of the Eternal Temple at its close. x With increase of years came new feelings, still farther complicated by change of scene. In his fifteenth winter he was sent to college ; a measure to which his mother had consented by the advice of her ancient pastor, and the still more earnest persuasion of Wotton's teacher, and to the fulfilment of which the boy himself had long looked forward with un- speakable anticipations. The seminary was in a large town at a distance of many miles ; to Wotton, a pure "city of the mind," glorious as the habitation of wisdom, and cloud-capt in his fancy with all earthly splendour. 28 WOT TON REINFRED, This new scene might have worked upon him beneficially, but for the present it did not. It was a university in which the great prin- ciple of spiritual liberty was admitted in its broadest sense, and nature was left to all not only without misguidance, but without any guidance at all. Wotton's tasks were easy of performance, or, rather, the performance of them was recommended not enforced ; while for the rest he was left to choose his own so- ciety and form his own habits, and had un- limited command of reading. What a wild world rose before him as he read, and felt, and saw, with as yet unworn avidity ! Young Nature was combining with this strange edu- cation to unfold the universe to him in its most chaotic aspect. What with history and fiction, what with philosophy and feeling, it was a wondrous Nowhere that his spirit dwelt in : all stood before him in indistinct detached gigantic masses ; a country of desire and ter- ror ; baseless, boundless ; overspread with dusky or black shadows, yet glowing here and there in maddening light. To all this, more- WOTTON RE IN FRED. 2 g over, the exasperating influence of solitude was superadded ; in fact, Wotton's manner of existence was little less secluded than ever; for though the persecutions of his school-fel- lows had gradually died away as he grew more able to resist them, his originally back- ward temper had nowise been improved by such treatment. Indeed, a keen and painful feeling of his own weakness, added to a cer- tain gloomy consciousness of his real intrinsic superiority, rendered him at once suspicious and contemptuous of others. Besides, in the conversation of his equals he truly felt little sympathy ; their specula- tions were of far more earthly matters than his ; and in their amusements, too often riot- ous and libertine, his principle forbade him to participate. Only with the little knot of his countrymen, in the narrowest sense of that word, did he stand in any sort of relation ; and even of these he often felt as if their inter- course were injuring him and should be aban- doned, as if their impure influences were con- taminating and seducing him. Contaminate 3Q WOTTON RE IN FRED. him they did, but seduce him they could not. Polished steel may be breathed on without being rusted, but not long or often without being bedimmed. Wotton fought hard with evil ; for fiercely were the depths of his fiery nature assailed ; he was not conquered, yet neither did he conquer, without loss, and these contests added new uproar to the dis- cord within. Of his progress in the learned languages he himself made little account ; nor in meta- physics did he find any light, but, rather, doubt or darkness ; if he talked of the mat- ter it was in words of art, and his own honest nature whispered to him the while that they were only words. Mathematics and the kin- dred sciences, at once occupying and satisfy- ing his logical faculty, took much deeper hold of him ; nay, by degrees, as he felt his own in- dependent progress, almost alienated him for a long season from all other studies. " Is not truth," said he, " the pearl of great price, and where shall we find it but here? " He gloried to track the footsteps of the mighty Newton, WOTTON REINFRED. 3! and in the thought that he could say to him- self : Thou, even thou, art privileged to look from his high eminence, and to behold with thy own eyes the order of that stupendous fabric ; thou seest it in light and mystic har- mony, which, though all living men denied, thou wouldst not even doubt! A proud thought, truly, for little man ; but a sad one if he pursue it unwisely ! The Principia do but enlighten one small forecourt of the mind ; and for the inner shrine, if we seek not purer light and by purer means, it will remain for ever dark and deso- late. So Wotton found to his cost ; for with this cold knowledge, much as he boasted of it, he felt in secret that his spiritual nature was not fed. In time, like other men, he came to need a theory of man ; a system of metaphys- ics, not for talk, but for adoption and belief ; and here his mathematical logic afforded little help, as, indeed, without other rarer concomi- tants, it is in such pursuits a hindrance rather than a help. Great questions, the very great- est, came before his mind ; with shuddering 32 WOT TON REIN FRED. awe he drew aside the veil from all sacred things ; but here, in what he called the light of his reason, which was only a fitful glimmer, there was no clear vision for him. Doubt only, pale doubt, rising like a spectral shadow, was to be seen, distorting or obscuring the good and holy ; nay, sometimes hiding the very Holy of Holies from his eye. Who knows not the agonies of doubt? What heart, not of stone, can endure to abide with them ? Wotton's was a heart of flesh, and of the softest ; it was torn and bleeding, yet he could not pause ; for a voice from the depths of his nature called to him, as he loved truth, to persevere. He studied the sceptical writers of his own country ; above all, the modern literature of France. Here at length a light rose upon him, not the pure sunlight of former days, but a red fierce glare, as by de- grees his doubt settled in utter negation. He felt a mad pleasure mingled with his pangs, and unbelief was laying waste in scornful tri- umph so many fairest things, still dear and ven- erable even as delusions. Alas ! the joy of the WOTTON REIN FRED. 33 Denyer is not of long continuance. He burns the city, and warms himself at the blaze for a day; but on the morrow the fair palaces as well as the noisome alleys are gone, and he stands houseless amid ashes and void silence. Thus also it fared with Reinfred. The philosophy of Epicurus was not made for him ; his understanding was convinced, but his heart in secret denied it. Vice and all baseness, which at first it might have seemed to sanction, he still rejected, nay, ab- horred. But what, then, was virtue ? Another name for happiness, for pleasure ? No longer the eternal life and beauty of the universe, the invisible all-pervading effluence of God ; but a poor earthly theorem, a balance of profit and loss resting on self-interest, and pretending to rest on nothing higher. Nay, was the virtuous always happiest? To Wotton it seemed more than dubious ; for himself, at least, he felt as if truth were too painful, and animal stupidity the surest fount- ain of contentment. By degrees a dreary stag- nancy overspread his soul : he was without fear 34 WOTTON RE IN FRED. and without hope ; in this world isolated, poor, and helpless ; had tasted little satisfaction, and expected little, and in the next he had now no part or lot. Among his fellow-men he felt like a stranger and a pilgrim, a pilgrim jour- neying without rest to a distant nowhere. Pride alone supported him, a deep-hid satanic pride ; and it was a harsh and stern support. Gloomy mockery was in his once kind and gentle heart; mockery of the world, of him- self, of all things; yet bitterest sadness lay within it, and through his scowl there often glistened a tear. In such inward disquietudes it would have been a blessing to communicate in trustful kindness with other men. However, he kept his secret locked up in himself, judging that if spoken it would meet with little sympathy, perhaps even be but imperfectly understood. By light companions he was now and then bantered on his melancholic mood ; but these he dispatched with tart enough replies, and himself only withdrew with his alleged imagi- nary woes still farther from their circle. To WOT TON REINFRED. 35 his mother least of all could he impart these cares. In his occasional visits, the good woman had not failed to notice some unfa- vourable change in his temper ; but as his conduct still seemed strictly regular, she had taken little heed of this, and imputed it to more transitory causes. Besides, she was be- coming more and more immersed in her reli- gious feelings, more divided from the world's cares ; and when she counselled her son, it was her sole earnest injunction that he would study to be right with God, and prepared for the change, which for him as for her and every one would be irrevocable, and lay near at hand. Occasionally she may have sus- pected that all was not right; but, if so, to rectify it was beyond her sphere ; and she trusted that the same good providence, which had led herself through so many thorny and steep paths, would also be the guide and protector of all that was hers. At last, some two years ago, her health declining, she had moved, by the advice of her physician, into a kinder climate ; and was now living far south 36 WOTTON RE IN FRED. in her native county, in the family of a wid- owed sister, where Wotton had never yet seen her. The visit had been unexpectedly pro- tracted from month to month, and seemed at last as if it would not end. Her letters to him were frequent, earnest, and overflowing with sublime affection ; often they brought tears into his eyes ; but he could only in return give her false assurances of his welfare, and in sighs thank Heaven that she knew not what had befallen him. Without associate, however, he was not al- ways to be. In one of his summer rustica- tions, since his mother left him, he had be- come acquainted with Bernard Swane, or, rath- er, Bernard Swane had become acquainted with him ; for hearing much of the wonder- ful talents, the moodiness, and bitter wayward humours of his neighbour, and being himself a man of influence, warm-heartedness, and singular enthusiasm, he had forced his way into the privacy of this youthful misanthrope ; had accosted him with such frank kindliness, and on subsequent occasions so soothed and WOTTON REINFRED. 37 cherished him in sympathising affection, that by degrees he had won his friendship, and Wotton had now no secret, economical or spiritual, which he did not share in. To both parties their intercourse had from the first been peculiarly attractive. There was that contrast, and at the same time similarity, in their natures which gives its highest charm to social converse. Bernard was the elder by several years, a man of talent, education, and restless vigorous activity ; by profession be- longing to the law ; already profitably en- gaged in the public business of his county, and cherishing perhaps, half consciously, hopes of yet rising to some far higher department. For he was a man of a large, if not a pecul- iarly fine spirit ; strong, conscious of his strength ; for ever full of practicable and im- practicable schemes ; and though he flattered himself that the promotion of public good in any sphere was his best or only aim, to all third parties it was clear enough that Bernard had a deep ambition. Nay in his frank and sanguine manner there often appeared the 38 WOT TON REIN FRED, most indubitable outbreakings of vanity ; but at the same time of vanity so kindly, social, and true-hearted, that you were forced to par- don it. The truth is, he was of a happy na- ture ; existence of itself was sweet and joyous to him : he lived for ever in the element of hope ; loving- himself, and loving through him- self all nature and all men. Rarely could you find a person so superior to others, yet so be- loved by them, so calculated to please at once the many and the few. To Wotton in specu- lation, as in conduct, he was a perfect oppo- site. The former never believed, the latter scarcely ever doubted; hence the one acted and concluded, wrong, even absurdly, it might be, but still acted and concluded, while the other painfully hesitated and inquired. Both truly loved goodness ; of the two, Wotton more fervently, yet Bernard with more trust- fulness and effect. In active courage, the lat- ter was superior ; in passive, the former; who, indeed, had long lived with pain, and for the better purpose of his mind had always fronted and defied it. Not so with Bernard : he had WOT TON REINFRED. 39 in secret a deep horror of passive suffering, so deep that scarcely even conscience could drive him to brave it ; and many times, as it seemed to Wotton, he would practise cunning subter- fuges, and underhand, nay, unconsciously, play Jesuitic tricks with his own convictions to escape such dilemmas. That he wished a thing to be true was ever with him a strong persuasion of its truth. He sympathised in Wotton's scepticism ; often he seemed, with a deep sigh, to admit that his objections were unanswerable, yet himself continued to be- lieve. Wotton loved him, for, in spite of draw- backs, he felt all his singular worth ; and Ber- nard was the only human soul that knew him, in whose neighbourhood his own exiled, marred, and exasperated spirit still felt any touch of peace, still saw afar off, though but for a few moments, some glimpses of kind sun- shiny life. To produce such effects, to attract such a spirit, and be loved by it was no less delightful to the other, for if he, as it were, protected Wotton, he also admired, nay, al- most feared, him ; and, feeling his own superi- 4Q WOT TON REIN FRED. ority in strength and good fortune, he often felt that in nobleness and merit the balance might sway on the other side. Thus their friendship rested on the surest basis, that of mutual satisfaction and sym- pathy ; on the one hand and on the other good offices or good wishes, pleasure given and received. In their intellectual discus- sions, widely as they differed, they by no chance quarrelled ; indeed, except in private they almost never argued. In society, where, except in the company and by the persuasion of his friend, Wotton scarcely ever ventured, you generally found them on a side ; Bernard supporting the good and beautiful in vehe- ment, flowing, rhetorical pleadings ; Wotton, in bitter sarcasms and with keenest intellect, demolishing the false and despicable, and this, often in the dialect of his hearers, if no better might be, to whom he justly enough appre- hended his own would many times have been a stone of stumbling. By such half displays of his inward nature, poor Wotton's popu- larity was seldom increased. Bernard was WOTTON REIN FRED. 4! confessedly a man of parts, by whom it might seem less disgraceful to be tutored ; but who was this Wotton, this sharp, scornful stripling, whom no one meddled with unpunished ? By degrees, indeed, he established for himself a character of talent, the more wondered at per- haps that it was little understood ; nay, observ- ant people could not but admit that in his rigorous, secluded, gloomy spirit there dwelt the strictest justice, and even much positive virtue ; but still, these things were conceded rather than asserted. Nay, Wotton was less than ever a favourite, and the first ineffectual effort to despise him too often passed into a sentiment of fear, uneasiness, and aversion. On the young man himself the conscious- ness of this was not without corresponding and hurtful influence ; but one good effect among many bad was that it bound him still more closely to his friend. Bernard was now almost his sole society ; a treasure precious, therefore, both by reason of its rarity and its intrinsic value. Gladly would Bernard have rewarded him for such exclusive trust ; gladly 42 WOT TON REIN FRED. have extracted by reasonable ministrations the bitterness from his spirit; truly had he watched over him in many a sad hour, and much did he long and hope to see his fine gifts occupied in wholesome activity. Hitherto, however, his efforts had been fruitless, or only of transient influence. By his counsel Wotton had meditated various professions ; that of law he had even for a time attempted. But he was too late ; the young enthusiasm had faded from his heart ; there was no longer any infinitude in his hopes. The technicalities of the subject dis- pirited and disgusted his understanding; its rewards were distant and dubious, and to him of small value. What were wealth and pro- fessional fame when the world itself was tar- nished in his thoughts, and all its uses weary, flat, stale, and unprofitable? There had been a time when, like the rest of us, he was wont to impute his misery to outward circum- stances; to think that if this or that were granted to his wishes, it would be well with him. The fallacy which lurked here experi- WOT TON RE IN FRED. 43 ence had soon taught him, but not the truth. He felt that he was wretched, and must ever be so ; he felt as if all men would be so, only that their eyes were blinded. He abandoned law and hurried into the country, not to possess his soul in peace as he hoped, but in truth, like Homer's Bel- lerophon, to eat his own heart. His love of truth, he often passionately said, had ruined him ; yet he would not relinquish the search to whatever abysses it might lead. His rural cares left much of his time unoccupied ; in mad misdirection he read and meditated, enjoying hours of wild pleas- ure, divided by days and nights of pain. It was not tedium that he suffered, he had too deep an interest to weary, but light came not to him no light ; he wandered in endless labyrinths of doubt, or in the void darkness of denial. With other men his conversation was stinted and irksome, for he had to shroud his heart from them in deepest mystery, and to him their doings and forbearings were of no moment. It was only with Bernard that 44 WOT TON RE IN FRED. he could speak from the heart, that he still felt himself a man ; scanty but invaluable solace, which, it may be, saved him from madness or utter despair. Such was his mood when a little incident quite transformed the scene. One fine sum- mer evening he had ridden over to Bernard's, as he was often wont; but, finding him en- gaged with company, was about to retire without seeing him, when Bernard himself hurried out and constrained him to enter. " It is but some one or two young friends," said he, " who have come accidentally to see my sister. There is one among them too," added he with a roguish smile, as they ap- proached the drawing-room ; but Wotton had no time to answer till he found himself in the middle of the circle welcomed by the mistress of it, and introduced by name to a bright young creature, the heroine of the evening, whom in his bashfulness he scarcely dared to look at, for the presence filled him with painful yet sweetest embarrassment Jane Montagu was a name well known to him ; far and wide WOT TON REIN FRED, 45 its fair owner was celebrated for her graces and gifts ; herself also he had seen and noted ; her slim daintiest form, her soft sylph-like movement, her black tresses shading a face so gentle yet so ardent ; but all this he had noted only as a beautiful vision which he himself had scarcely right to look at, for her sphere was far from his ; as yet he had never heard her voice or hoped that he should ever speak with her. Yet surely she was not indifferent to him, else whence his commotion, his astonishment, his agitation now when near her? His spirit was roused from its deepest recesses, a thousand dim im- ages and vague feelings of gladness and pain were clashing in tumultuous vortices within him ; he felt as if he stood on the eve of some momentous incident as if this hour were to decide the welfare or woe of long future years. Strange enough ! There are moments of trial, of peril, of extreme anxiety, when a man whom we reckoned timid becomes the calmest and firmest. Reinfred's whole being was in a 4 46 WOT TON REIN FRED. hurricane ; but it seemed as if himself were above it, ruling- over it, in unwonted strength and clearness. His first movement prospered, and he went on to prosper. Never had his manner been so graceful or free ; never had his sentiments been nobler, his opinions more distinct, emphatic, or correct. A vain sophis- tical young man was afflicting the party with much slender and, indeed, base speculation on the human mind ; this he resumed after the pause and bustle of the new arrival. Wotton, by one or two Socratic questions in his hap- piest style, contrived to silence him for the night. The discomfiture of this logical ma- rauder was felt and even hailed as a benefit by every one ; but sweeter than all applauses was the glad smile, threatening every moment to become a laugh, and the kind, thankful look with which Jane Montagu repaid the victor. He ventured to speak to her; she answered him with attention, nay, it seemed as if there were a tremor in her voice ; and perhaps she thanked the dusk that it half hid her. The conversation took a higher tone, one fine .WOTTON RE1NFRED. 47 -thought called forth another; each, the speak- ers and the hearers alike, felt happy and well at ease. To Wotton the hours seemed mo- ments ; he had never been as now ; the words from those sweetest lips came over him like dew on thirsty grass ; his whole soul was as if -lapped in richest melodies, and all better feel- ings within him seemed to whisper, " It is .good for us to be here." At parting the fair one's hand was in his ; in the balmy twilight with the kind stars above them he spoke some- . thing of meeting again which was not contra- dicted ; he pressed gently those small soft fin- gers, and it seemed as if they were not hastily or angrily withdrawn. Wotton had never known love: brought :up in seclusion from the sex, immersed in soli- dary speculation, he had seen the loveliest half of our species only from afar, and learned in his poeticalstudies to view them with an al- most venerating reverence. Elysian dreams, a fairyland of richest blessedness his young Jancy had indeed shaped for him ; but it lay far apart from the firm earth, with impassable 48 WOTTON RE IN FRED. abysses intervening ; and doubting and disbe- lieving all things, the poor youth had never learned to believe in himself. That he, the obscure, forlorn, and worthless, could ever taste the heaven of being loved ; that for him any fair soul should ever languish in fond longing, seemed a thing impossible. Other men were loved ; but he was not as other men ; did not a curse hang over him ? had not his life been a cup of bitterness from the be- ginning? Thus in timid pride he withdrew within his own fastnesses, where, baited by a thousand dark spectres, he saw himself as if constrained to renounce in unspeakable sad- ness the fairest hopes of existence. And now how sweet, how ravishing the contradiction ! " She has looked on thee ! " cried he ; " she, the fairest, noblest ; she does not despise thee ; her dark eyes smiled on thee ; her hand was in thine ; some figure of thee was in her soul ! " Storms of transport rushed through his heart as he recalled the scene, and sweetest intima- . tions that he also was a man, that for him also unutterable joys had been provided. WOT TON REIN FRED, 49 Day after day he saw and heard his fair Jane ; day after day drank rapture from her words and looks. She sang- to him, she played to him ; they talked together, in gaiety and earnestness, unfolding their several views of human life, and ever as it seemed glancing afar off at a holy though forbidden theme. Never had Wotton such an audience ; never was fine thought or noble sentiment so re- warded as by the glance of those dark eyes, by the gleam which kindled over that soft and spirit-speaking face. In her, hour after hour, a fairer and fairer soul unveiled itself ; a soul of quickest vision and gracefullest expression, so gay yet so enthusiastic, so blandishing yet so severe ; a being all gentleness and fire ; meek, timid, loving as the dove and high and noble as the eagle. To him her presence brought with it airs from heaven. A balmy rest en- circled his spirit while near her; pale doubt fled away to the distance, and life bloomed up with happiness and hope. The young man seemed to awake as from a haggard dream ; he had been in the garden of Eden, then, and go WOT TON REINFRED^ his eyes could not discern it! But now the black walls of his prison melted away, and the captive was alive and free in the sunny spring ! If he loved this benignant disenchantress ? His whole heart and soul and life were hers ; yet he had never thought of love ; for his whole existence was but . a feeling which he had not yet shaped into a thought. But human life were another matter than it is could it grant such things continuance. Jane Montagu had an ancient maiden aunt who was her hostess and protectress, to whom she owed all and looked for all. With the eyes of fifty, one sees not as with the eyes of fifteen. What passed between the good maiden and her aunt we know not; the old lady was proud and poor ; she had high hopes from her niece, and in her meagre, hunger- bitten philosophy, Wotton's visits had from the first been but faintly approved of. One morning he found his fair Jane con- strained and sad ; she was silent, absent ; she seemed to have been weeping. The aunt left the room. He pressed for explanation, first in WOTTON REINFRED. 5! kind solicitude, then with increasing appre- hension ; but none was to be had, save only broken hints that she was grieved for herself, for him, that she had much to suffer, that he must cease to visit her. It was vain that the thunderstruck Wotton demanded, " Why ? Why ? " " One whom she entirely depended on had so ordered it, and for herself she had nothing to do but to obey." She resisted all entreaty ; she denied all explanation : her words were firm and cold ; only by a thrill of anguish that once or twice quivered over her face could a calmer man have divined that she was suffering within. Wotton's pride was stung ; he rose and held out his hand : " Fare- well, then, madam ! " said he, in a low steady voice; "I will not " She put her hand in his; she looked in his face, tears started to her eyes ; but she turned away her head, hasti- ly pressed his hand, and sobbing, whispered, scarcely audibly, " Farewell ! " He approached in frenzy ; his arms were half-raised to encir- cle her ; but starting back she turned on him a weeping face a face of anger, love, and 52 WOT TON RE IN FRED, agony. She sternly motioned to him to with- draw, and Wotton scarce knew where he was till with mad galloping he had reached his own solitudes, and the town, and the fair Jane, and all his blessed dreams were far away. This look of hers he had long time to medi- tate, for it was the last. How many burning thoughts he had to front ; how many wild theories he formed of his misfortunes ; how many wild projects to repair it! But all in vain : his letters were unanswered, or an- swered in cold, brief commonplaces. At last he received a pressing entreaty, or rather, a peremptory injunction, to write no more. Then hope no longer lingered ; thickest night sank over his spirit, and a thousand furies were sent forth to scourge him. They were cruel days that followed. By-and-bye came reports that his Jane was to be wedded wed- ded to Edmund Walter, a gay young man of rank, a soldier, and, as Wotton rated him, a debauchee, but wealthy, well-allied, and in- fluential in the county. The wedding-day, it WOT TON RE IN FRED. 53 was even stated, had been fixed. " What have I to do with it?" said Wotton, as he shud- dered at the thought ; " she is nought to me, I am nought to her." But some secret change had occurred, and the public expectation was baulked. The marriage did not take place, no one knew why ; only Walter had left the neighbourhood in indignant haste ; the aunt, also, and her niece, the latter apparently in deepest sorrow, had closed their house and retired to their friends in London. The talk of gossips was loud and manifold, but no light could be elicit- ed ; a curtain of mystery still enveloped the transaction, and one spiteful hypothesis only gave place to another as spiteful and no bet- ter founded. What effect all this produced on the soli- tary Wotton we need not describe at length. His heart bled inwardly ; in solitude he suf- fered, for his pride and his affection had alike been cruelly wounded ; it was long before even Bernard could penetrate into his confidence, and soothe his darkened and ex- 54 WOTTON REIN FRED. asperated spirit by a touch of human sym- pathy. Six months were now gone ; the whole in- cident had removed into distance, and Wotton could now see clearly how it had been and how it was to be with him. He felt that he had, loved not wisely, yet irrevocably, and in vain. A celestial vision had entranced him, and now it was all fled away, and the grim world lay round him, sicklied over by inef- fectual longing. One little month so fair and heavenly ; such a blissful meeting, such a stern good-night ! He felt with tenfold force that all hope was lies, that man's life was but a mockery and a fever-dream. By degrees he sank into iron quietude. " What is the world," said he, " but a gloomy vision as the poets have called it, and your fair landscapes, so sunshiny, so green, so far-stretching, are but cunning paintings on the walls. We are captives, but it is only for a season. Death is still our birthright; destiny itself cannot doom us not to die. Strong death, the frown- ing but helpful and never-failing friend ! Cow- WOT TON REINFRED. 55 ards have painted him as a spectre ; he is a benignant genius bearing freedom and rest to weary, heavy-laden man ! " To all this Bernard listened with regret, yet also with sympathy and firm hopes of bet- ter things. This dreary stagnancy he knew would not be final ; Wotton's nature was vir- tuous, it would at length become believing, become active, become happy. For malig- nant activity it was too noble and moral, for such icy rest too passionate. Nay, even as it stood, was not a burst of fierce ten- derness, or far-glancing despair every now and then breaking forth as if in spite of him? Bernard had half-foreseen his passion for Jane Montagu, and hoped that it might lead him back to life, and in the end make two worthy and beloved beings happy. Painfully as the issue had deceived him, he did not slacken his efforts or abate his confidence. This journey he had diligently contrived and recommended, in the course of which many things, as he hoped, might occur to solace, to 56 WOT TON RE IN FRED. excite and instruct the marred and afflicted spirit of the young man, and so in the end to recall him from those regions of baleful shadows into the light of truth and living day. CHAPTER III. WELL mounted, wrapped and equipped for travelling, our friends were on horseback at an early hour. The sunbeam was still dewy and level as they reached by a slanting path the brow of the hill-range which bounded in the valley to the left, and Wotton looked back for a moment on the blue streak of smoke which was rising from his own chim- ney far down in the bottom, where all that he possessed or delighted to remember on earth lay clustered together in peaceful brightness. The sound of a distant steeple-clock came faint and saddened through the sunny morn- ing. " How trim the burgh stands among its woods and meadows ! " cried Bernard, looking far across the dale ; " how gay its red steeples rise through the fleece of blue, where many a thrifty mother is cooking breakfast for her 5 8 WOT TON REIN FRED, loved ones ! The place is alive and astir and full of busy mortals though you think here you might cover it all with your hat. It is speaking to us, too, with its metal tongue ! " Wotton moved on, for to him it was speak- ing not in pleasure but in pain. It was the sound which had announced to him in ?chool- boy years the scene of his daily martyrdom ; it was the sound he had often heard beside Jane Montagu; the note of that bell was getting doleful and of evil presage to him. " I know not how it comes," said he, " but to my imagination this journey of ours, simple as it is, seems strangely momentous. It is as if we were leaving our hampered but safe and hospitable ark to venture forth on a world of waters." " A sign that hope is not dead in you," said Bernard, " since you can still fear. We shall return with olive leaves, I prophesy.'' " Or at least fly to and fro upon the waters," answered Wotton. " Well, that is better than pining in the prison. We shall be among the mountains to-morrow," added he cheerily. WOT TON REIN FRED. 59 " Those granite peaks are shining on us as if they were made of sapphire, and near at hand they are but like other rocks. So man was made to be deceived." Wotton as a travelling companion, at least to Bernard, was peculiarly delightful. The excitement of a fine exercise, in which he took pleasure and excelled, seemed to shake the vapours from his spirit and awaken in it all beautiful and healthful feelings. In the glow of motion, under the thousandfold be- nign influences of rural nature, he could many times for a while attain to self-forgetfulness, and pour forth in free and even glad effusion the sensations of the hour. His moody cares retired to the distance and formed as it were a ground of deepest black, on which the bright, lovely, nay, sometimes sportful imagery of his mind looked out with double grace. With Bernard his conversation was at all times, and especially on such occasions, of the most pleasurable sort. There was in them that agreement of feeling and disagreement of opinion, that similarity in dissimilarity, which 60 WOT TON REIN FRED. is justly thought to form the great charm of conversation. Much as they disputed they never quarrelled. The scene and the lovely weather were of a kind to maintain the most genial humour. It was a region as yet unvisited of mail-coaches, traversed only by the solitary horseman, or some wayworn cadger toilsomely collecting for city consumpt the minor produce of the dis- trict ; a region of knoll and hollow, of modest streamlet, and lone-lying tree-shaded farm ; the mower was stooping in the valleys, where as yet the fields were all of the greenest ; and ever, as they mounted any height, our friends saw before them afar off the long narrow Frith winding like silver among its craggy head- lands or grey sands ; beyond which, over many an intervening range, towered up in white light in the extreme distance the world of mountains, with its blue tops and shadowy chasms shutting in like a land of romance a land of so many fair realities. Pleasantly journeying, amid abundant talk, they had reached before sunset the strand of WOT TON REINFRED. 6 1 the Frith ; where advancing to the end of one among several long- rude piers of wattle-work fronted on the other side by several corre- sponding piers which extended through sand and silt and enabled the ferrymen to ply their trade at all seasons of the tide, their signal was soon answered, and two gnarled weather- beaten rowers, with a helmsman and a huge shapeless boat had in a few minutes landed man and horse on the farther shore. Front- ing and close by stood a rather gay-looking mansion, which it seemed was an inn and bathing establishment, and where our friends proposed continuing for the night. During their short voyage Wotton had remarked that the helmsman eyed him somewhat too curious- ly ; he was still farther struck, indeed offended, when the same personage, who appeared like- wise to be an under- waiter, continued to glance at him, nay, seemed also to have awakened the curiosity of his official supe- rior ; for ever and anon as the two were covering with much bustle a frugal enough table, they kept privily casting looks on our 62 WOTTON REINFRED. hero, who at length determined to end their survey. " My friends." said he," is there anything especially remarkable in my appearance that you so gaze at me? Have I ever had the honour of your acquaintance for good or bad ; or are you apprehensive I may do your estab- lishment here an ill turn ? " " Thousand pardons ! " said they of the apron, ducking very low. " It is nothing, sir," added the head waiter, "but you are so very like a picture we have here. You will excuse our freedom, sir ! " " Picture ? " said Wotton. " A gold locket with a miniature : an hon- est countryman found it among the mount- ains ; thought some of our guests in their pleasure excursions might have lost it, so he brought it hither, but no one claimed it ; and the thing is still here waiting for an owner. You shall see it, sir." The man left the apartment, and soon re- turned with the trinket in question. It was a pretty enough piece of work ; a little oval WOTTON REIN FRED. 63 casket of chased gold or filigrane, on a pink ribbon, which seemed once to have suspended it over some fair bosom. It might have been dropped in riding. But what most surprised our friends was, on opening the lid, for the lock had been broken, to discover in the tiny picture what really seemed a decided resem- blance to Wotton. As a painting it was of little value ; neither the individual tints nor the general finish, though apparently great pains had been taken with it, betrayed the hand of an artist, yet the cast of our hero's features did appear to have been aimed at, nay, in some points accurately seized ; the dark gray eyes under their deep decided brows and high arched forehead, the well-pro- portioned nose, the somewhat too shallow chin, the clustery dark auburn hair were all more or less correctly Wotton's; and about the lips there played a mingled half-painful, half-lofty expression of scorn, which in some passionate moments was still more peculiarly his. Our travellers, it may well be supposed, 64 WOTTON REIN FRED. scarce knew what to make of this adventure. They examined and re-examined the locket, they questioned and re-questioned the waiter, and all to little purpose. Except that it had been found about six weeks ago, on a mount- ain road at some fifteen miles distance, he could tell them nothing. Wotton, in particu- lar, with the vague imagination, which at such an age a smaller circumstance will excite, could not help feeling an unusual interest in the matter, and determined if possible at no rate to part with this copy of himself, which chance had so strangely sent him. " This trinket is not mine," said he to the waiter, " yet I question whether you are like to meet with any one who has a better right to it. I will leave you my address, and money to the full amount for the finder ; if the pict- ure be ever claimed, you will know where it is to be had ; for in the mean time you must let me take it with me." The man made little objection, and in re turn for the deposit of a few guineas the toy was formally, made over. For the rest of the WOT TON REINFRED. 65 evening it formed between our friends the chief topic of conversation which indeed on Wotton's part was kept up with no great spirit. His mind was hunting over all its do- mains for some trace of a solution to the mys- tery, or building on this slender basis all man- ner of castles in the air. He could not recol- lect that he had ever sat to any painter, and who was this that had so daintily limned him in his absence? One sweetest possibility he dared not openly surmise to Bernard, scarcely even to himself ; yet a light dawned upon him as in the dusky remoteness, and the figure of Jane Montagu came forth in new beauty saddened over by inexpressible longing. At an early hour he retired to his apart- ment. His window fronted the sea, over which the moon was peering from her couch of clouds in the far east, while the tide swell- ing forth as if to meet her into every creek was murmuring hoarse and slow through the mellow night. Soft vapours shrouded the other shore ; the sea was shipless, for the fisher barks were at anchor in their coves ; 66 WOTTON RE IN FRED. the moonbeam flickered on a solitude of wa- ters. The thought of life and its mysteries and vicissitudes came over Wotton's troublous but solemn mind. He saw the images of Time as if flitting so fair and transient through the night of Eternity ; yet kind scenes crowd- ed round him, and the earth with its stinted joys and man with his marred destiny, seemed but the lovelier that they were weak and with- out continuance. The picture was in his hand, was already suspended round his neck. " Why dost thou remember her" said he to himself, "when she is for ever hid from thy eyes? She came like a heavenly messenger preach- ing peace to my spirit, and peace was not appointed me. O Jane Montagu ! why was the tinsel of the world precious to thee, and its fine gold of no price ? Surely, surely thy heart said nay, nay at that cruel hour; we might have been so blessed, so rich, so passing rich ! I will see her, at least," cried he, ris- ing ; " something whispers that she thinks of me, that she loves me ; and without her will no power on earth or under it shall part us." CHAPTER IV. IT was in a pleasurable mood, and with hopes vaguely excited, that our friends en- tered the mountain region. Mountains were not new to either of them ; but rarely are mountains seen in such combined majesty and grace as here. The rocks are of that sort called primitive by the mineralogist, which always arrange themselves in masses of a rugged and gigantic character ; but their rug- ged ness is softened by a singular elegance of form ; in a climate favourable to vegetation, the gray shapeless cliff itself covered with lichens rises through a garment of foliage or verdure, and white bright tufted cottages are clustered round the base of the everlasting granite. In fine vicissitude beauty alternates with grandeur : you ride through stony hol- lows, along strait passes traversed by torrents, 68 WOTTON RE IN FRED. and overhung by high walls of rock ; now winding amid broken shaggy chasms, and huge fragments ; now suddenly emerging into some emerald valley, where the streamlet col- lects into a lake, and man has found a fair dwelling, and it seems as if peace had estab- lished herself in the stony bosom of strength. All this is not without effect on thinking minds ; in Wotton it co-operated with much that he already felt ; for the incident of last night, though as if by tacit consent it was not spoken of, still lurked in his thoughts, predis- posing him to vague wondrous imaginations and all high feeling. Bernard was full of eloquence ; praising the beauty of nature, the benignity of Providence, and the happiness of men ; Wotton the while answered him, as a stout sceptic, indeed, but as a sceptic that grieved, not rejoiced to be so, and thus for both parties the conversation was entertain- ing, for with both such topics, and so treated, were chief favourites. They were in the bot- tom of a rude solitary glen, engaged so pleas- antly, when the tramp of a horse was heard WOTTON RE IN FRED. 69 on the left, and presently a rider was observed issuing by a steep side path from a sort of break in the hills, and seemed as if advancing like themselves, though from a different point, toward the head of the valley. The horseman, in fact, soon joined them, and his courteous salutation being as court- eously returned, the common-place introduc- tions to talk ere long gave place to more in- teresting topics, and a pleasant feeling of com- panionship diffused itself over the party. The stranger seemed a man of some fifty years ; of a staid, determinate, yet, at the same time, winning manner ; at once polished, intelligent, and sociably frank : to look at him and listen to him you felt inclined to assign the man a higher rank than his equipment could have challenged, for he was well and sufficiently rather than splendidly mounted and dressed ; and it was only in his clear kind eyes and strong yet calm and gentle look that you read a title to superior deference. Bernard was celebrating the beauty of the scenery ; the stranger spoke of it as one familiar with the 7Q WOTTON REIN FRED. subject and the district, yet briefly and with judgment rather than enthusiasm. " A passing traveller," said Bernard, " might envy your mountaineers their constant abode among so many noble influences, did not one remember the effect of habit how it deadens all our impressions both of beauty and de- formity." " What is grander than the sun ? " added Wotton ; " yet we all see it daily, and few think of the heavenly lamp save as a ripener of corn. The moon, too, and the stars are measured in their courses : but astronomy is praised or tolerated because it helps us in navigating ships, and the divine horologe is rated as a supplement or substitute for Harri- son's timekeeper." The stranger glanced slightly at his ve- hement companion, yet without expression of displeasure, then answered : " True goodness of all sorts must have its life and root within ourselves ; it depends on external appliances far less than we suppose. The great point is to have a healthy mind, or, if I may say so, a WOTTON REINFRED. fi right power of assimilation, for the elements of beauty and truth lie round us on all sides, even in the meanest objects, if we could but extract them. Claude Lorraine, the painter of so many heavenly landscapes, was bred a colour-grinder ; the noble-minded Epictetus was a slave. As to the effect of natural scen- ery," continued he, " I think with you that it is trifling. The mountaineer has a peculiar way of life, and differs from the inhabitant of the plains because of it ; differs by reason of the things he has to do, but scarcely of the things he has to see. No nation has produced fewer artists than the Swiss." " Indeed," said Wotton, " this effect, what- ever be its value, lies in a great measure open to all men, dwell where they may. The bleakest moor I can stand on is visited by the eye of Heaven, and bears on its bosom the traces of innumerable years. The pebble I strike from my path was severed from distant mountains in the primeval convulsions of Na- ture, and has rolled for ages in the depth of waters. This streamlet, nameless except to a 72 WOTTEN RE IN FRED. few herdsmen, was meted out by the hand of the Omnipotent as well as the great ocean ; it is ancient as the Flood, and was murmuring through its solitude when the ships of ^Eneas ascended the Tiber, or Silva's Brook was flow- ing past by the Oracle of God." " Yet surely," said Bernard, " there are de- grees of beauty in external things; beauty more direct, and I will add more pure, than those universal attributes which my friend here paints so vividly. Is it not the essence of all true beauty, of all true greatness, that it makes us forget our own little individuality ? That we mingle for the moment as if in boundless glory, feeling not that we are thus and thus, but only that we are ; remembering nothing of ourselves, least of all that we are weak and needy and of short duration?" " Surely," answered Wotton. " And if mountain or any other scenery could do this," added he, pensively, "it were well worth travelling to see." " One thing, at least, you have many times occasion to observe, no topic sooner or more WOT TON REIN FRED. 73 painfully wearies us than description of scen- ery. Your view-hunter is the most irksome of all articulate-speaking men." " A proof of the little interest we really take in views," answered the stranger. " Besides," added Wotton, " if long-winded he is generally in part insincere : there is cant in his raptures; he is treating us not with his subject, but with his own false vainglori- ous self. At best it is in sensations not in thoughts that he is describing ; and no sensa- tions, except our own, can long fix our atten- tion." " Gentlemen," said the stranger, with a kind smile, " by your accent I take you to be Scotch, yet your philosophy is not what we call Scotch." " Is Scotch philosophy in very bad odour here?" inquired Wotton, somewhat piqued for the honour of his country. " In bad odour I should not say," replied the stranger, " for our little commonwealth is a willing member of the great one; and everywhere, disguise it as we may, in the 74 WOTTON REINFRED. senate, the press, the pulpit, the parlour, and the market, David Hume is ruler of the world." "The pulpit?" cried Bernard. " I have said," answered the stranger ; " but it is a subject too long for present dis- cussion. On the whole, I honour the Scotch, and quarrel not with their philosophy. But see, gentlemen," continued he, " our roads will soon part ; at the corner of that gray cliff I turn to another valley. You are still far from your inn : if a stranger's invitation might prevail, you shall go with me and rest you in the House of the Wold. The path is rough, but the place is tolerable, and good welcome will not fail you. Come with me," added he, " I will show you wonders." To Bernard, fond of adventures and hope- ful of all dubious issues, these were no un- pleasant words. He looked wistfully on Wot- ton, who, rating the speech as little more than a flourish of rhetoric, had no thought of accepting the proposal, no thought that their acceptance of it was desired. But as the WOT TON RE IN FRED. . 75 stranger pulled up at the parting of the roads, and with the kindest frankness in words and looks that could not be mistaken, assured them that their presence would cause not trouble but much enjoyment; and withal, smiling on Wotton, with whom, as he per- ceived, lay the hindrance, told him that it were hard to part till they had talked of Scotch philosophy, the latter yielded ; and so, after some complimentary formalities, our travellers turned their horses to the right along with him. Their road or rather track lay up a winding rocky glen and many times crossed the brook which was gurgling along its bottom to join the larger stream of the main valley. Ascending the pass, after half an hour's incommodious riding, they found the brook, no longer fed by subsidiary springs, dimin- ished to a rill, which also in a little while ending in a boggy delta disappeared from their side. A rough causeway, which seemed to be the work of man, conducted them across the swamp, still overshaded by craggy 76 WOTTON REIN FRED. heights; till as they proceeded, the bog again drew to a point, and another thread of water began to indent with its tiny channel the bot- tom of another glen, descending in the oppo- site direction, but narrow, deep, winding and rocky as the former. " Facilis descensus Averni" said the guide, smiling : " the worst of our road is past." Ere long, in fact, the walls of their chasm be- gan to widen and soften ; copse wood alter- nating with verdure mantled the steep, a shepherd's hut rose cheerful and secure in the hollow, and at the next turn our travellers emerged into a scene which no stranger ap- proaching it by such a road could view with- out astonishment. " It is the Happy Valley of Prince Rasse- las!" cried Wotton. " It is not Avernus, but Elysium ! " cried Bernard. "It is the House of the Wold," said the guide, " where refreshment and rest are wait- ing us." A circular valley of some furlongs in WOT TON RE IN FRED. 77 diameter lay round them, like a huge amphi- theatre, broken only in its contour by the entrance of two oblique chasms like the one they had left ; on its level bottom of the purest green stood a large stately mansion, which seemed to be of granite, for in the sun- beams it glittered from amid its high clusters of foliage like a palace of El Dorado, over- laid with precious metal. Behind it, and on both sides at a distance, the hills sloped up in gentle wavy curvature ; the sward was of the greenest, embossed here and there with low dark- brown frets of crag, or spotted by some spreading solitary tree and its shad- ow ; in front at a corner of the valley lay the small lake, hemmed in by woody cliffs: and beyond and around all this, ridge after ridge, higher and bluer and wilder as they receded were seen the peaks of the mountains watching in severe loveliness, like everlasting guardians, over a scene so calm. Servants hastened out on the lawn to meet our travellers, who a few minutes after found 6 78 WOTTON REIN FRED. themselves in a large parlour before the lady of the mansion. " Dorothy, my love," said the host, " I have made a capture in the east to-day. Here are two strangers, whom we must change into friends." "The beginning of friendship is good offices," replied she, with graceful courtesy : " you must be faint and wearied, as pilgrims are wont; and dinner will not come for an hour." For the present our friends declined any refreshment; and after some little conversa- tion, which could not but be general and formal, they gladly retired to their chambers, under pretext of dressing, a process which, with the scanty wardrobe of travellers, was soon enough performed, but chiefly that they might have time to consider their adventure, and collect their thoughts, which this ren- counter and its unexpected issue had some- what put to rout. The pealing of a gong in a little while sum- moned our friends to the drawing-room, from WOT TON REIN FRED. 79 which in a few minutes a party of some twelve persons moved down in order to a table tastefully and plenteously furnished. Sprightly conversation enlivened the repast; the company seemed singularly varied for its number; each an original in his class; men, as it appeared generally, of intellect and edu- cation, rather than of special rank or breed- ing ; yet all animated by good humour, and in- sensibly participating in the gentle influences of their hosts, whose manners indicated a re- finement in every point corresponding with the highest station. Their fair mistress, for, though elderly, she still bore traces of a sin- gular beauty, a woman of the stateliest yet hu- manest respect, presided over them with the graceful dignity of a queen. To Wotton the sound of her voice was melody; the few words she spoke were of the most polished, yet expressive sort; her little sentences, so meekly and opportunely uttered, stood before the mind like living images, full of loveliness and persuasion. Fain would the poor youth have spoken to her, fain have replied to her gO WOTTON REINFRED. courtesies with a copiousness proportioned to his feeling of them ; but his heart was pressed together by so singular an environment; he felt as if he had no right to be so splendidly welcomed, as if it were by mistake that he was here. Other ladies also there were ; young, beau- tiful, and blooming; visitors, as it might be gathered, from no distant neighbourhood ; and not without fit gallants proud to do them serv- ice: but these fair ones skirmished only in buckram or from afar ; what manner of per- sons they might be you did not learn ; and Virgil could only have described them as pule hr am Annam, pulchramque Elisam. With one of these Bernard entered on a sort of dis- tant flirtation to Wotton's astonishment, who could not comprehend such audacity, or help half-envying the success it appeared to meet with. Though he had loved, he was an utter novice in affairs of love : vain had it been for Chesterfield to tell him and assure him that every woman wishes us to love her ; in his tenfold diffidence and disbelief it never struck WOTTON REIN FRED. gl him that his approbation could be of worth to any one. He was even threatening to become absent, for sad thoughts were gathering on him ; these beauties were blond ; but dark locks clustered round another face far nobler ; and black eyes had told him such things ! Lies they were perhaps not altogether lies ! yet lovelier than any truth : it was pain to re- member them, but to forget them was like a living death. The cloth being removed, conversation, which had hitherto turned chiefly on the vari- ous personal adventures of the morning, be- gan to take a wider range. Public occur- rences and persons, glanced at rather than dis- cussed, led the way to topics more strictly intellectual ; to abstract views of men and things set forth in criticisms, expositions, com- parisons, and the other ever-varying modes by which in social hours our individual Philos- ophy of Life may be so delightfully communi- cated and apprehended. To Wotton, much, indeed passionately as he liked such conversation, the tone of the 82 WOTTON REINFRED. present company was, nevertheless, in some degree alien : the feeling it awoke in him was one of surprise and unrest as well as pleasure. The Attic salt, that air of candour and good- ness, those striking glimpses of man's nature and its sufferings and wants, had his sympathy and hearty approval ; but he sought in vain for the basis on which these people had built their opinions ; their whole form of being seemed different from his. Men equally in- formed and cultivated he had sometimes met with, but seldom or never had he seen such culture of the intellect combined with such moral results, nay, as it appeared, conducing to them. Here were fearless and free think- ers, yet they seemed not unbelievers, but, on the contrary, possessed with charity and zeal : their affirmations and denials would not har- monise in his conception. It is not always that originality, even when true and estima- ble, pleases us at first ; if it go beyond our sphere it is much more likely to unsettle and provoke us. Of much that he heard, Wotton knew not what to determine ; it was a strain WOTTON REIN FRED. 83 of thought which suited not with any of his categories, either of truth or error ; in which, therefore, he could only mingle stintedly and timidly, for he felt as if hovering in the vortex of some strange element, in which as yet he had not learned to move. What, for instance, could he make of such tenets as this, in which, however, several so- ber-minded persons, their host among the number, seemed partially to acquiesce ? " Demonstrability is not the test of truth ; logic is for what the understanding sees, what is truest we do not see, for it has no form, be- ing infinite ; the highest truth cannot be ex- pressed in words." " How is it expressed, then ? " cried the brisk voice of Henry Williams ; a speaker, whom, alone of them all, Wotton had from the first understood. " How is it expressed, then ? " cried Wot- ton and several more, in tones partly of in- quiry, partly of cavil. " It is expressed oftener than it is listened to or comprehended," said the other in reply ; 84 WOTTON REIN FRED. " for our ears are heavy, and the divine har- mony of the spheres is drowned in the gross, harsh dissonance of earthly things. Ex- pressed ? In the expiring smile of martyrs ; in the actions of a Howard and a Cato ; in the still existence of all good men. Echoes of it come to us from the song of the poet ; the sky with its azure and its rainbow and its beautiful vicissitudes of morn and even shows it forth ; the earth also with her floods and everlasting Alps, the ocean in its tempests and its calms. It is an open secret, but we have no clear vision for it : woe to us if we have no vision at all!" " Kantism ! Kantism ! " cried several voices. " German mysticism ! mere human faculties cannot take it in." Wotton looked at this singular exotic speaker; he was a man of sixty, yet still hale and fresh ; thin gray hair lay over a head of striking proportions ; the face was furrowed and overlined with traces of long, deep, and subtle thought, of feeling rather fine than passionate, and this of pain as much as pleasure ; there was especially a look WOT TON REIN FRED. 85 of strange anxiety in the eyes ; a look at once of vehemence and fear : indeed the whole man seemed labouring with some idea, which he longed vainly to impart, for which, while he sought earnestly some outward form, he knew beforehand that none would be found. " My good Dalbrook," said Maurice (such was the landlord's name), " we are hard bested with these gainsayers. Do you mean that the sense of poetic beauty and moral obligation is the highest truth, and to be apprehended not by conviction but by persuasion, not by cult- ure of the head but of the heart ? " " There is a truth of the market place," continued Dalbrook, attending little to the question ; " a truth of the laboratory, and a truth of the soul. The first two are of things seen and their relations, they are practical or physically scientific, and belong to the under- standing ; the last is of things unseen and be- longs exclusively to the reason." " Reason, understanding ? Things unseen.? " cried the sceptics. " Laplace's Mtcanique Celeste, Adam Smith's 86 WOTTON REIN FRED. Wealth of Nations are full of understanding," continued Dalbrook, " but of reason there is hardly any trace in either. Alas ! the hum- blest peasant reverently offering up his poor prayer to God, and in trembling faith draw- ing near to Him as to his Father ; thus recogniz- ing, worshipping, loving, under emblems how- ever rude, the invisible and eternal, has many times more reason, mixed as it is with weakness and delusion, than vainglorious doctors for whose philosophy there is nothing too hard." " Then you think with Hucheson that there is a moral faculty, and that taste and virtue are not the result of association ? " cried a young Oxonian, with a look of glad earnest- ness. Dalbrook looked down, arching his eye- brows very high. " Faculty ! Association ! " repeated he, with an unspeakable accent. The Oxonian fell back. Bernard had listened with no ordinary in- terest. " Then pray, sir," said he, " is not this understanding like what Bacon calls his lumen siccum ; and reason like his lumen madidum, or WOTTON REINFRED. 87 intellect steeped in affection ? " The old man looked up with an air of partial contentment, but slightly shook his head. " Understand- ing perceives and judges of images and meas- ures of things," said he ; " reason perceives and judges of what has no measure or image. The latter only is unchangeable and everlast- ing in its decisions, the results of the former change from age to age ; it is for these that men persecute and destroy each other; yet these comparatively are not worth the name of truth, they are not truth, but only ephem- eral garments of truth." " Then what in heaven's name is truth," said an atrabiliar gentleman, whom, in spite of his politeness, the whole discussion was too evidently wearying. " Truth ! " interrupted Williams in his gay voice, " Home Tooke's is the best of all defi- nitions : truth is simply troweth, or that which is trowed, or believed. In this way we have many troweths, and my troweth is very differ- ent from thy troweth, and the only rule is that the one should let the other live in peace." 88 WOTTON REINFRED. "It is not essential to being happy," ob- served our Oxonian from beside the fair Anna : " the way to happiness is plain before all men if they like to follow it." " Aye ! " said the atrabiliar, who seemed to be his uncle or some relation. " But they miss it," continued the other, "by cowardice and indecision." The clear eyes and buxom sceptic aspect of this youth seemed to vex his relation. " My good sir," replied he, " we have all had pretty views of it ourselves in our time. Fair and softly ! There is an age when to every man life appears the simplest matter. How very manageable ! Every why has its wherefore ; this leads to that, and the whole problem of existence is easy and certain as a question in the Rule of Three. Multiply the sec- ond and third terms together, and divide the prod- uct by the first, and the quotient will be the an- swer ! Trust me, friend, before you come to my time of day, you will find there is a devil- ish fraction always over, do what you will ; and if you try to reduce it, it goes into a re- WOT TON REIN FRED. 89 peating decimal and leads you the Lord knows whither. Life happy ! " continued he : " what thinking mortal ever found it so ? Which of us might not say with Swift: I have had hours that might be tolerated, but none which could be enjoyed, and my life in general has been misery ! Show me a man that is happy, and I will show thee a man that has an excel- lent nervous system. Williams, when you write again, it should be an essay on the Com- forts of Stupidity. " I have sometimes taken that matter into consideration," answered Williams, " but I fear I should vote rather against you. Much, much depends on the nerves ; but something also on prudence and wise management. On the whole, too, I think Nature is kind to us, and it is a blessing to exist: there is more of happiness in life than of misery." " To me the contrary is clear as noon," said the other; "and have not all countries and stations recorded opinions in my favour ? ' Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of evil,' says the Patriarch. ' He is QO WOTTON REINFRED. born to trouble, as the sparks fly upwards.' ' It is better to sit than to walk/ say the In- dians, ' it is better to sleep than to wake ; but to be dead is best of all.' When an infant was presented for consecration to the Mexican priest, his address to it was, ' Remember that thou art come into the world to suffer ; suffer then, and be silent ! ' What more can any of us say ? " " But there is a fairer land on the other side of the dark waters," said Dorothy, meekly ; " where pain and sin are banished. This is but a winter day's journey to a home that is glorious and enduring." " Alas ! " ejaculated he, lifting up his fin- gers from the bottom of his glass, then slowly restoring them, without farther speech, then looking up with a smile. On the whole, this gentleman had no look of death, but rather of jollity and social well-being. At dinner he had done fair duty, his wine he was sipping, moderately, and not without relish, while he talked in this lugubrious dialect, and to what spleen soever might be lurking about his WOT TON RE IN FRED. 91 heart, these speeches were evidently giving comfortable vent. "Surely, sir," said Wotton, who, in spite of similarity in thought, sympathised but ill with him, " if your opinion is correct, there ought to be a change in our social arrange- ments. Nay, what use is there for social ar- rangements, or aught else in this life, since life itself is an evil, and there is nothing be- yond it? Let us pay off our clergy, pull down our parish churches, and on the ruins of each establish simply a bag of arsenic for the good of the parish. It might be kept up by contribution, and would save us tithes. We could have it supended on a pole, with this superscription, ' Ho, every one ! ' " The atrabiliar himself was forced to join in the laugh, which rose on all sides at his ex- pense. " A hit ! A palpable hit ! " cried Will- iams. " The arsenic-bag, the arsenic-bag for ever ! The death of all blue-devil philoso- phy ! " cried the others. " Young gentleman, I must owe you a thrust," said the atrabiliar, 92 WOTTON RE IN FRED. laughing ; " for the present, your arsenic is too strong." " Nay, cousin, you deserve it," said Mau- rice, " for the cause is radically bad ; even if true, you were wrong to urge it. Does not the adage say, ' Speak no evil of your own ? ' This life, be what it may, is all that has been given us, to mend or to mar, to hold and to have for better for worse ; and not by reviling and contemning what is bad in it, but by ar- ranging, furthering, augmenting what is good shall we ever turn it to account. Fie ! would you list under no better flag than the devil's ? Your arch fault-finder is the devil ; it is no one's trade but his to dwell on negations, to impugn the darkness and overlook the light ; and out of the glorious All itself to educe not beauty but deformity." " I believe," added Williams, " there is generally in this very trite topic one of those ambiguities in language, which logicians are so frequently beset with, and this chiefly occa- sions the dilemma. When we speak of happi- ness and being happy, we half unconsciously WOTTON REIN FRED. 93 mean some extra enjoyment, if I may say so, pleasure, some series of agreeable sensation, superadded to the ordinary pleasure of existing, which really, if free from positive pain, is all we have right to pretend to. In place of reckoning ourselves happy when we are not miserable, we reckon ourselves miserable when not happy. A proceeding, if you think of it, quite against rule ! What claim have I to be in raptures? None in the world, except that I have taken such a whim into my own wise head ; and having got so much, I feel as if I could never get my due. It is with man and enjoyment as with the miser and money : the more he gets the more he wants." " It is our vanity," said Maurice ; " our boundless self-conceit. Make us emperors of the earth, nay, of the universe, we should soon feel as if we deserved it, and much more." " Poor fellows ! " added Williams. " And so when the young gentleman goes forth into the world, and finds that it is really and truly not made of wax, but of stone and metal, and will keep its own shape, let the young gentle- 7 94 WOTTON REIN FRED. man fume as he likes ; bless us, what a storm he gets into ! What terrible elegies, and pin- darics, and CJulde Harolds and Sorrows of Wcrter ! O devil take it, Providence is in the wrong ; has used him (sweet, meritorious gen- tleman) unjustly. He will bring his action of damages against Providence ! Trust me, a hopeful lawsuit ! " " We are too apt to forget," said Bernard, " that for creatures formed as we are, all per- manent enjoyment must be active not passive. Without evil there were for us no good ; our condition is militant ; it is only in labour that we rest. Our highest, our only real blessed- ness, lies in this very warfare with evil. Let us conquer it or not ; truly an abundant bless- edness, but which, as you remark, we seldom take into account in our estimates of life. Weighing the attainment, we find it light, and the search must go for nothing. We would have a paradise of spontaneous pleas- ures ; forgetting that in such a paradise the dullest spirit would and must grow wearied, nay, in time unspeakably wretched." WOTTON REINFRED. 95 " Yes," added Maurice, " the lubberland of the old poets in an impossible chimera ; im- possible, even in the region of chimeras." " Yet it is this very lubberland," said Ber- nard, "which so many pilgrims are seeking, and in despair because they cannot find." " Most know not what they are seeking," said Wotton, " but wander with the crowd, picking sloes and brambles by the way ; others run hither and thither, now after this gewgaw, now after that. Pilgrims also we have, walking apart, with their faces set on distant glorious landmarks ; but your sloe- and-bramble men are the happiest." " In spite of your arsenic," said the atra- biliar, " 1 half suspect you agree with me ; in a private corner you would say, there is little happiness in the world, and that little chiefly for fools." " Happiness is not man's object," said Dai- brook, awakening from a muse. " He does not find it, he ought not to seek it, neither is it his highest wish." " Wish ? " cried Williams. " Nay, Dal- 96 WOT TON RE IN FRED. brook, of all your paradoxes this is the most paradoxical." " Pleasure and pain," continued the other, little moved, " are interwoven with every ele- ment of life : to love the one and hate the other is the essence of all sentient natures, nor for a nature merely sentient is there any higher law. But was man made only to feel ? Is there nothing better in him than a passive system of susceptibilities ? Can he move only like a finer piece of clockwork when you touch this spring and stop when you touch that other ? Is his spirit a quality, not a sub- stance ? has it no power, no will ? And is his freedom, that celestial patent of nobility, the crowning gift of God, to mark him for the sovereign of this lower world, a mockery and a lie ? O philosophy ! O heaven-descended wisdom ! what hast thou been made to teach ! In thy name cozeners have beguiled us of our birthright and sold us into bondage, and we are no longer servants of goodness, but slaves of self. My friends ! " continued the old man, with a singular half-natural, half-preaching WOT TON RE IX FRED. 97 tone, " I say to you this is false and poisonous doctrine, and the heart of every good man feels that it is false, and well for him if he pluck it out and cast it away for ever ! If not, farewell to all religion, all true virtue, all true feeling of the beautiful and good, all dignity of life, all grandeur beyond it ! Nature, in- deed, is kind, and from under the basest phi- losophy some gleams of natural goodness will break forth ; nay, thank heaven, righteousness and mercy are everlasting inmates of man's spirit, overcloud them as we may ; but all that any creed can do to banish them, this does." " By day and night ! " cried Williams. " This is wondrous strange. Must a man be- come vicious because he wishes to be happy ? Because he wishes to be happy ? no ; but be- cause he wishes nothing more, yes, doubtless. What is virtue ; tell me ? A task to be per- formed for hire ? This is not virtue, but profit and loss. If ye do these things that good may come, what reward have ye ? Do not even the Pharisees the same ? " gg WOTTON REIN FRED " But is not Heaven promised to the Chris- tian as a recompense ? Of Heaven and the Christian we might have much to say, but this is not the time for it. One thing I am sure of, no Christian man was ever a Christian because he hoped for Heaven, or would cease to be so, though that hope were taken from him. Nay, hear me ; true religion is grounded not on expectation, but on vision ; not on pal- try hopes of pleasure, satisfaction, happiness, whatever you may name it, but on all-pervad- ing, soul-subduing, infinite love of goodness. Self is self, whether its calculations end with the passing day, or stretch to the limits of eternity." " Wire-drawing," murmured the atrabilian " Metaphysical quibbles," said he. " I am afraid," said Williams, " if you push matters so far, there are few of us will stand your scrutiny. To say nothing of Utilitarians, Epicureans, and other tribes of the avowed alien ; it seems to me that many an orthodox devout person, if tried by this electrometer, might find himself in a shockingly negative WOT TON REIN FRED. gg state. Self-seeking, if you so understand it, is certainly the staple of human principle ; for my share, I will confess, I find it difficult to see how any living- creature can act on any other. If you told me, ' This is and will be pleasant, that is and will be painful,' should I not, must I not, reject the latter and cling to the former ? " " But if I told you, ' The pleasant is and will be vicious, the painful is and will be virtuous ' ? " said Maurice, hastening to assist Dalbrook, who seemed to be ill at ease in ar- gument. " 'Tis an impossible case," said the other. " Admit it for a moment ; would you feel no twinge, no compunctious visiting ? Nay, if I offered that you should to all eternity be filled and satisfied with pleasure, on condition that you became a villain and a fool, supposing even that I took your conscience from you, and no trace of repentance or remembrance were ever to afflict you again, would you strike the bargain without scruple ? Would you plunge into the scene as into your native 100 WOT TON REIN FRED. element ? Would you hasten to it as to the bosom of a mother ? Would there be no whisper of gainsaying ? " " Perhaps some whisper ; but " " That little whisper saves us ! " cried Mau- rice. " It was the voice of your better genius ! " cried Dalbrook. " Perhaps only of my vanity," said Will- iams. " I might not like to be degrad- ed." " The voice at least of something which was not love of pleasure ; something which the philosopher and I reckon higher, and which you yourself must admit to be differ- ent," said Maurice. " O good Heavens ! " cried Dalbrook. " Quousque venimus ? Does it require proof that there is something better in man than self-interest, however prudent and clear-sight- ed ; that the divine law of virtue is not a drudge's bargain, and her beauty and omnipo- tent majesty an ' association,' a shadow, the fable of a nurse ? O Prodicus ! Was thy WOT TON REINFRED. JQI 4 Choice of Hercules ' written to shame us ; that after twenty centuries of ' perfectibil- ity ' are here still arguing ? Do you know, sirs," added he, in a lower tone, " this doctrine is the curse of Europe in our gen- eration ; the bane of all true greatness; the root of sensuality, cruelty, and Atheism ? It was the creed of Rome under Nero and Caligula, when the human race seemed lost ; lost, thank God, it was not, and will not be!" " But on what motive do we act then, or can we act virtuously?" said the atrabiliar, with impatience. " Possibly on no motive at all, in that sense of the word motive," answered Dalbrook. " One of the wisest men now living has told us, as applied to art, ' Of what is wrong we are always conscious ; of what is right, never.' The virtue we are conscious of is no right virtue. But, come," added he, " Williams is smiling incredulous, Frank is suspending me naso adunco, our young friends are wearied. I move that we exchange our wine for coffee, IO2 WOTTON REIN FRED. and the thorns of philosophy for the roses of beauty." " One of the wisest things you have said," cried Williams. " Will you lead the way?" CHAPTER V. BEFORE parting for the night it had been settled that our travellers were not to depart the next day, or the next ; an arrangement to which, entreated as they were by such friend- ly hosts, and tempted by so many fair entice- ments, they had consented without difficulty. Bernard in particular was charmed with the valley and its inmates, and eager to penetrate still farther into the secrets and affections of so singular and gifted a household ; of whom, as was his way, he felt ready to believe all good. Wotton, again, with less hope of the adventure, had perhaps still deeper curiosity respecting it. On retiring to his room he could not but wonder in contrasting his pres- ent mood with the mood of yesternight. An unusual, almost painful, excitement had stirred up many latent energies, crowds of confused IO4 WOT TON RE IN FRED. images and all manner of obscure anticipa- tions and ideas were whirling through his mind, the very basis of which had been as- sailed and shaken ; while the gorgeous scenery, as of a new world of thought which he had only beheld in brief dreams, seemed now to advance before him in living reality. The fig- ures of the past, the present, and future were tumultuously mingled in his head till sleep sank over him like an ambrosial cloud, and hid him within dreamy curtains from his cares. Next morning he was on the hills with Williams. The rosy precincts of the House in the Wold were out of sight, and the two were pretending to botanise. We say pre- tending, for neither of them were intent on the matter ; to Wotton, at least, the science of botany was uninteresting, indeed, unknown, or known only as a tedious beadroll of names. Williams, however, was a mineralogist also, and a pleasant, lively man. " The mountain air is pure," said he, " and the brown hill-tops in their solitude are a pleasure to look on. We shall go by cliff and WOTTON RE IN FRED. IO 5 tarn, and ' interrogate Nature ' as well as any of them. Oh," continued he, " does it not do your heart good to think of Nature being interrogated ? To see some innocent little whipster, with a couple of crucibles, and pith- balls, and other like small gear, setting forth in such gaiety of spirit to cross-question Na- ture. By heaven ! I think Nature must be the queen of dolts if she don't bamboozle him ! " " The Book of Nature," said Wotton, " is written in such strange intertwisted charac- ters, that you may spell from among them a few words in any alphabet, but to read the whole is for omniscience alone." " So each walks by his own hornbook," said the other ; " and whatever contradicts the hornbook is no letter but a flourish. As the fool thinks, the bell clinks, our adage says ; and so it is here as well as elsewhere." However, it was not to interrogate Nature that Wotton chiefly wanted ; but, rather, to interrogate his new acquaintance on matters nearer home. 106 WOT TON RE IN FRED. " I may confess to you," said he, " I am in no scientific mood at present. The sudden change of my scene confuses so young a trav- eller; indeed, this House of the Wold is still a riddle to me ; and of much that I saw and heard last night, I knew not and yet know not what to make. Will you give me a little light, for I am wandering in dark labyrinths ? Among all our philosophers there was none whom I so well understood and sympathised with as yourself. Can you explain to me what manner of persons I am got among, that so kindly welcome me, and instruct me in such wondrous doctrine ? " " Willingly," cried his companion, " so far as may be ; but I myself am only a purblind guide, so have a care that we do not both fall into the ditch. You say truly, this House in the Wold is a riddle ; we are altogether a sur- prising household, varying from week to week as visitors arrive and go, yet still differing from all other earthly households. Come when you will, you shall find a circle of origi- nals assembled here ; the strangest mortals WOT TON REIN FRED. with the strangest purposes, attracted as by magnetic virtue to the place ; in figuration still you might think Proteus was returned to the world, and had driven all his flock to visit the lofty mountains, as in the era of Deuca- lion. Artists, poets, sciolists, sages, men of science, men of letters, politicians, statesmen, pedagogues, all find place ; one only condition is required, so far as I can see : that the man be something, and this something with a cer- tain honesty of mind ; for knaves and scoun- drels of the most amusing cast I have known ere now packed off decisively enough. " But to particulars ! And first o' the first. Our noble hosts are persons whom, however we may wonder at, no one that knows them can speak of without reverence. Maurice Her- bert is by possession and descent the sover- eign of this quarter of the mountains ; a man naturally of talent, generosity, and resolution, whom a life of various activity, not unmixed with suffering, has moulded into a character of singular composure and humanity. You will find him well and universally informed ; 108 WOT TON REIN 'FR 'ED. polished by intercourse with court and camp; lor he has seen the world under both these aspects ; indeed, his natural endowments and connections seemed to appoint him as if from birth for public life ; but his philosophic tastes, joined to a certain almost haughty in- flexibility of spirit, and also, I believe, to some cruel domestic afflictions, soon drove him back into retirement. His lady and he have been wedded some twenty years, most part of which they have passed in this valley. They have no children ; at least they are now child- less ; though thereby hangs some secret, for a tale goes of one child having been mysteri- ously stolen from them while abroad ; but on this subject you shall never hear them speak, nor is it safe to question them. For the pres- ent they may be said to live, or, at least, to endeavour to live, in the element of intellect and well-doing ; their hospitable house is open to all good men ; persons of culture, and still more of any worthy purpose or decided ca- pacity, they study to attract and forward by all kind appliances, of which, with such ample WOT TON REIN FRED. means, there are many in their power. With the neighbouring gentry, all this passes for quixotic or even hypocritical ; nor will I deny, such is the imperfection of human things, that a certain spicing of vainglory mingles with so much benevolence ; but who would quarrel with goodness because it is not perfection ? If Maurice Herbert cannot claim the praise of charity and active public spirit, there are few men in England who will deserve it. Far and wide he goes and sends and gives in fur- therance of all improvement and useful enter- prise ; making this, indeed, his occupation, the chosen business of his life. To-day, for in- stance, he is out with your friend Bernard ; if I mistook not, there was something in the wind. It is true, there can no Utopia be real- ised on earth, and many a time the pure ele- ment in which a man like Maurice moves and works, will be polluted by baser admixtures ; but for constancy of generous endeavour, nay, I may add for real importance of result, his manner of existence is to be applauded and prized." HO WOT TON REINFRED. " But does he believe in Dalbrook's mysti- cism?" inquired Wotton. " That he believes I should somewhat doubt, though he constantly defends it. But he has a love for all high things, and no dark- ness or exaggeration can utterly destroy his favour for them. What his own opinions are you will find it difficult to learn, for he sel- dom contradicts and never dogmatises, having boundless tolerance for honest speculation, and being himself singularly uncontrollable in thought as well as purpose. Indeed, the grand feature of his mind and conduct is this same vigour of will ; for meek as you will always see him, Maurice is an auto- crat over himself ; whatever lies within his sphere must be mastered, cost what it may. It is thus that .he has retired from the world of politics and fashion to a world of his own. In morals, also, he is a sort of Stoic, and naturally, for he enjoys little hap- piness and hopes little at least, so in spite of his equanimity, I have many times sus- pected. To such a mind that subtle doc- WOT TON RE IN FRED. ! j r trine of the summum bonum may not be so foreign." " A goodly gentleman," said Wotton, " you have shown me, and one whom it were a pride and pleasure to belong to. But now what of this philosopher, this mystic Dalbrook ? Am I to think him fatuous or inspired ? What with his truth and happiness, what with his understanding and his reason, my wits are al- together muddled." "I cannot wonder," said Williams, "the man does generally pass for mad, and some- times I fear he will infect us all. For really, if you watch him, there is curious method in his madness, and that huge whirlpool of a mind, with its thousand eddies and unfathom- able caverns, is a kind of mahlstrom you were better not to look on lest it swallowed you, unless, indeed, you first cast anchor at a safe distance, which I have now learned to do. Good heavens, how he talks ! The whole day long, if you do not check him, he will pour forth floods of speech, and the richest, noblest speech, only that you find no purpose, tend- 1 1 2 WO TTON REINFRED. ency, or meaning in it ! A universal hubbub, wild it seems to you, with touches of seraphic melody flitting through the boundless, aimless din of anarchy itself. " On the whole, I will confess to you, I can- not rightly understand this Dalbrook. Ab- surdities innumerable I might laugh at in him, but I see not rightly how his folly is related to his wisdom. Such discord may in part be harmony not understood. He is undoubtedly a man of wonderful gifts, acquirements almost universal, of generous feelings, too; on the whole a splendid nature, yet strangely out of union with itself, and so alloyed with incon- sistencies that in action it is good for nothing, and with its vast bulk revolves rather than advances. His very speech displays imbe- cility of will ; he does not talk with you but preaches to you ; his thoughts are master of him, not he of them. Accordingly, with all his fine endowments he has effected little, scarcely even the first problem of philosophy, an -independent living. Maurice loves and honours him, else matters would go hard. In WOT TON REINFRED. nj fact, the man has an unspeakable aversion to pain in all shapes, and among the rest to la- bour ; this, I take it, is the secret of his char- acter. With the loftiest idea of what is to be done, he does and feels that he can do noth- ing ; hence a dreary contradiction in his life, a constant self-reproach, and to help himself he only talks the more. In this way I inter- pret his exaggerated schemes of virtue, his misty generalities in science, the whole dreamy world where his mind so likes to live. Poor Dalbrook! He was made to be a Brahman or a Gnostic, and he found himself an unap- pointed English scholar, and the task of living would not prosper with him. Much he talks of writing and teaching, and day after day he reads all manner of supernatural metaphysics and the like ; but what will it come to ? And yet it is a thousand pities, for there is finest gold in him if it could be parted from the dross." " How does his practice correspond with his stoical theories of virtue and happiness ? " inquired Wotton. 114 WOT TON RE IN FRED. " Indifferently," answered Williams ; " idle- ness is no propitious soil for virtue, and, as we have seen, he cannot work. With all his gen- erous humanity in the gross, you shall often find him spiteful and selfish in detail. Mean men have obtained preferment, and he is un- preferred ; then while he despises them, he cannot help half envying. The world has used him ill, and he has no stronghold of his own where he might abide its shocks in peace, nay, love it, pitiful as it is ; but wages a sort of Bedouin warfare with its arrangements ; an employment in which no one can appear to advantage. Yet certainly he wishes to do well ; and his sins are of omission not commis- sion. Let us pity the good philosopher ! He was made for a better world than ours, and only in the Heaven, where he looks to arrive, can his fine spirit be itself. " But now," continued he, " I must speak of Burridge whom you poisoned last night with arsenic. Frank, in spite of his atrabiliar philosophy, is no bad fellow ; his liver, I be- lieve, is wrong, but his heart is not. A man WOTTON REIN FRED. ng of birth and wealth, with sense enough to see what is wrong, but scarcely what is right, sits in Parliament legislating after the manner of an English squire ; hunts at home or abroad when he is not voting ; believes in Hume ; curses the badness of the weather, the villainy of men, the derangement of the universe at large ; yet, strange enough, feels withal that he must vote with ministers, and Church and State be supported ; both are false, but bad might be worse. A Manichean I might call him, or rather an Arima'sian, for in theory his sole God is the devil, since he worships noth- ing but necessity ; yet such are the contradic- tions of human nature, you shall meet few better men than this same Burridge with the basest creed ; just, frank, true-hearted to a proverb, nay, as occasion offers, generous if not benevolent, his life puts to shame many high-sounding professors, and shows what metal there must be in English character that can resist such calcination, and still be metal. Frank is a contradiction ; he piques you into loving him." Il6 WOT TON REIN FRED. " Maurice called him cousin," said Wotton. " They are related, I believe, but chiefly by old acquaintance, nay, on Frank's side, I might almost say discipleship ; he reverences Maurice, asks his counsel, and in all domestic arrangements walks by his light. Every sum- mer he is here with his household ; his son, the Huchesonian philosopher, you saw last night ; his lady and his nephew are expected to-morrow ; they are on a visit in the neigh- bourhood, whither Frank would not attend them. You will mark his nephew, a fellow of some substance, for good or evil, I know too little of him to say for which." " Is he a scholar too ? " " Oh, nowise," said the other ; " a man of action this, bred among drums, gunpowder, fire, tempest, and warfare ; he is a soldier, every inch a soldier, has fought and stormed across the world, and is now resting with his medals and his laurels and the rank of major, and fair prospects every way. He is heir ap- parent to our landlord, I believe, though Maurice does not seem to like him over much, WOT TON REIN FRED. a thing I hardly blame him for, but you your- self shall judge." "And his aunt?" inquired Wotton. "A faded dame of quality, who will not recol- lect that autumn is no summer. She has been fascinating once, nay, is so still, for she is lively, clever, and by help of the toilette even pretty. She has some real virtues, and many graces ; but if old age overtake her, as is like it must, she will surely go distracted, unless, indeed, she take to saintship or bluism which is worse." " You are no friend to Blues, then ? " " I profess a kind of enmity to cant, wher- ever I may find it, but on the whole I think the poor Blues have hard measure among us." " We forgive the fashionable woman many follies while she courts distinction in the sphere of common vanity ; why should we refuse a similar tolerance to folly in the sphere of literature ? The motive is the same in both cases, self-conceit, and undue love of praise, while the means in the latter case are often the more innocent." " After all," said Williams, " cant is the 1 1 8 WO TTEN RE IN FRED. great cosmetic and enamel of existence, the cheap and sovereign alchemy for making crooked things straight and rough places plain ; why should I quarrel with it, I that need it so much myself, nay, so many times am forced to use it?" " You ? " said Wotton ; " surely of all the men I have ever met with, you seem the most free from cant." " Ah ! how little you know of it," replied the other ; " few can avow distinctly to them- selves what they are aiming at, can weigh in a fair balance the worthlessness of their whole craft and mystery, and see without blinking what pitiful knaves they are. It goes against the grain with one to feel that with incessant bustle, he is doing nothing but digest his victuals ! Many a time when I leave our chancery court, and find three bushels of briefs piled up on my table, I say to myself : ' Well, Jack, thou art a man useful in thy day and generation, here is much gall peaceably evaporated, much wrong prevented ; law is a noble science ! ' instead of saying : ' Well, WOT TON RE IN FRED, Jack, thou art a man lucky in thy day and generation, here is much corn and wine con- verted into ink, much right delayed, law is a sleek milk-cow whence thou hast thy living.' And so it is with most trades that men trade in under the sun. If you viewed them with- out magnifiers you would find that the result was much the same. Life is a huge treadmill, if you don't step forward they trample you to jelly, and if you do step forward for a century, you are exactly where you started. Good Cant ! Now she tells us this is a journey to- wards a noble goal with prospects of this and that on the right and left ; it is a journey as I tell you. Long life to Cant! if it were not she, we might hang and drown ourselves, and with her one can live in surprising com- fort." The conversation of his new acquaintance could not but amuse our hero, however little it might satisfy him. To be spoken to with such attention, and so confidentially treated by a man of influence and talent was in itself gratifying, and still I2O WOTTON REINFRED. more so by its rarity in Wotton's previous experience ; for it was seldom that his hap had led in the way of such people, and much seldomer that he had found them so divested of vanity as to give their minds free play and forget in his presence that he being little and they being great, it behoved them to trample on him, or at least to astonish and overawe him. Williams was none of those painful per- sons ; he cared too little about anything on earth to vex himself or others for it ; the basis of his philosophy was : Live and let live. With a gay kind guileless heart, and the clear- est and sprightliest perceptions, he was the most attractive of all unbelievers. Intelli- gence and courteous pleasantry sparkled in his eyes ; he was of quick sensation, yet not irritable, never deliberately vindictive ; for nature had so blandly tempered him, that he could wish no injury to any living thing. Without effort, he habitually forgot self and the little concerns of self, and mingled with trustful entireness in the feelings of the place and hour, even while his judgment despised WOT TON RE IN FRED. I2 I them. Nothing could be kindlier than his con- tempt, which indeed extended far and wide, embracing with a few momentary exceptions the whole actions and character of man, his own not excluded, nay rather placed in the foremost rank of pettiness. For moral good- ness and poetical beauty, save only as pleasur- able sensations, he had no name ; yet few men had a keener feeling or a better practical re- gard for both ; he was merciful and generous, he knew not why ; and a great character, a fine action, a sublime image or thought struck through his inmost being, and for an instant gleaming in every feature with ethereal light, the gay sceptic had become a worshipper and a rapt enthusiast. These, however, were but momentary glows, reflexes of a strange glory from a world which he had never dwelt in, which he knew not, and soon lost in the ele- ment of quiet kindly derision and denial where he lived and moved. They consorted ill with his philosophy of life, and might have made him doubt it, had he taken time to search it to the bottom ; but time was wanting in his busy 122 WOT TON REIN FRED. sphere; jostling for ever among selfish men and their pursuits, he believed as they be- lieved, and such contradictions pleasant or painful with which his own kinder nature now and then warned him of his error he heeded little, or loosely referred to that unknown infinitude which encircles all human under- standing, mocking it with phantasms and in- scrutable paradoxes which, thought Williams, he is wisest who heeds least. In this way had the man grown up to middle age, the light and not unlovely product of benignant nature striving with perverted culture, professedly a sceptic, unconsciously a believer and bene- factor : all men wished him well, and if more serious critics missed in Williams any earnest- ness and true manliness of purpose, they too were often captivated in his gay fascinations, and forced to prize him as a thing if not as a man, and to like if they could not love him. In manifold narration and discussion the hours passed swiftly on, till without singular advancement to the science either of botany or mineralogy, but with the consciousness of WOTTON REINFRED. 123 having spent a pleasant day, our two friends found themselves again descending into their hospitable valley, under some fear of being stayed for by their company. Burridge had caught several wonder-worthy fishes ; his son had been listening to Dalbrook lecturing un- der the elm-rows and shady garden-walks, as in the groves of a new Academe ; Bernard and Maurice were returned from a visit in some neighbouring valley. All seemed con- tented with their morning's work ; the Lady Dorothy with her two fair secretaries, studi- ous like her of household good, found that they had laboured for no unthankful guests. On this occasion, it was moved and agreed that the party should withdraw with their wine and coffee to the garden-house, not quit- ting the dames, whose harps and melodious voices were to heighten and as it were vivify with music the other charms of a scene and evening so lovely. Embowered in the richest foliage, in front of them the fair alternation of lawn and thicket, of bush and fruit-tree, and many-coloured flower-bed, stretching far and 124 WOT TON REIN FRED. wide, cut with long winding walks, in mellow light, and silent, save when from his green spray the thrush or blackbird was pouring his gushes of harmony in many a linked bout, around them towering clusters of roses, and the hues and odours of a thousand flowers, and beyond all, in the remote distance, the slopes and peaks of the mountains sparkling in the glow of evening, our friends were soon socia- bly seated in their little garden-house, the front of which had been thrown open to admit so many kindly influences. In such hours, when all is invitation to peace and gladness, the soul expands with full freedom, man feels himself brought nearer to man, and the narrowest hypochondriac is charmed from his selfish seclusion and sur- prised by the pleasure of unwonted sympathy with nature and his brethren. Gaily in light graceful abandonment and touches of careless felicity, the friendly talk played round the table ; each said what he liked without fear that others might dislike it, for the burden was rolled from every heart ; the barriers of WOT TON REIN FRED. I2 5 ceremony, which are indeed the laws of polite living, melted into vapour, and the poor claims of me and thee, no longer parted and enclosed by rigid lines, flowed softly into each other ; and life lay like some fair unappropriated champaign, variegated indeed with many tints, but all these mingling by gentle undulations, by imperceptible shadings, and all combining into one harmonious whole. Such virtue has a kind environment of circumstances over cultivated hearts. And yet as the light grew yellower and purer on the mountain tops, and the shadows of these stately scattered trees fell longer over the valley, some faint tone of sadness may have breathed through the heart, and in whispers more or less audible reminded every one by natural similitude, that as this bright day was coming towards its close, so also must the day of man's existence decline into dusk and darkness, and the night come, wherein all image of its joy and woe would pass away and be forgotten. In the fair Anna at least, we cannot but suspect the presence of some such intrusive 9 126 WOTTON REIN FRED. thought, for by degrees she had withdrawn her contribution, nay her interest from the conversation ; her look, still and pensive, was lost in the remote landscape ; it seemed as if in the long eyelashes a tear were trembling. It was her turn to sing ; she started from her reverie, flung her hand hastily over the harp- strings, and after short preluding in a melody half longing and plaintive, half sad and con- temptuous, thus began : What is Hope ? A golden rainbow, etc. All listened with attention, and still for a few instants after the music ceased there was silence, while the fair singer, glancing rapidly between tears and smiles over the company, then hung down her head, and seemed busy rectifying some error with her strings. " Surely, my good Anne," said Williams, " you mean not as you sing ; these dismal quatrains are fitter for a lykewake than to greet so fair a banquet, amid sunshine and roses, and plenty of brave young gallants to boot ! " WOTTON RE IN FRED. " Women go by the rule of contraries," answered the lady, with a smile, but rather of concealment than of gladness. " Do you know," added she, " I have work within doors, and must beg the fair banquet's pardon, sun- shine and roses and brave gallants, young or old, notwithstanding. My blessing with you all ! " cried she, tripping through the bushes towards the house, and making signs that she was not to be followed. " A strange young lady," said Burridge, " and more full of crotchets than ever." " But did you like her song ? " inquired Dorothy. " Was it not in the spirit of your own bitter creed, cousin ? Why the rhymer may have meant not ill ; the spirit as you say was willing but the flesh was weak. There is no pith in this balladmonger ; his wires are slack and have a husky jingle. Besides, I doubt he is an imitator." " Neither is the spirit of his verse unex- ceptionable," said Williams. " His is a con- clusion in which nothing emphatically is con- cluded, save perhaps our old friend the bag I2 8 WOT TON REIN FRED. of arsenic, Frank ! Really one tires of your death's head when it grins at one too long. This sweet singer, as you hint, is but a faint echo of Lord Byron." " Say rather of the general tone of our time," observed Maurice. " Lord Byron was the loudest harper, but not the first or the best of this arsenical school. The keynote was struck in Goethe's Werther, and Europe has rung ever since with the tune and its vari- ations." " It is the want of the age," said Wotton. " Thousands on thousands feel as Byron felt ; and his passionate voicing of emotions hitherto shapeless and crushing with a force vague and invisible was a relief to the heart that could not speak them. He was a spirit of Heaven, though cast down into the abyss ; and his song, like that singing of the fallen seraphs, 1 was partial, but the harmony (What could it less when Spirits immortal sing ?) Suspended Hell, and took with ravishment The thronging audience.' " WOT TON REIN FRED. "An apt enough allusion," said Maurice, " for the unbelief of men, their sickly sensi- tiveness and vociferous craving for enjoyment, have made the world a sort of hell for every noble nature that is not delivered from the baleful greed of the day. Our longing is to- wards the Infinite and Invisible : but for these our time has no symbol ; nay, rather it denies their existence ; substituting in their stead the shadows and reflections of a merely sensual and mechanic philosophy ; and thus the high- est faculties of the spirit are shut up in pain- ful durance, or directed into false activity; thought cannot be converted into deed ; what should have been worship and blessing be- comes idolatry and malediction; for Self is a false God, and his rites are cruel, and end in the destruction of his votaries." " Moloch and Juggernaut," said Dalbrook, " could but kill the body ; but this, with long doleful agonies, or worse, with craftier opiate poisons, kills the soul." " But surely," said Dorothy, " there is a truer poetry possible even for us than this WOTTON REIN FRED. frightful sort, which is built not on love but on hatred, and for all the wounds of humanity acknowledges no balm but pride." " Which is a caustic, and no balm ; may corrode but cannot cure," added Bernard. " O call not by the name of poetry," cried Dalbrook, " such fierce disharmony, which is but infuriated not inspired ! The essence of poetry is love and peace, but here is only rage and disdain. Is the poet gifted with a finer sense only to feel with double anguish the stings of pain? Was his creative faculty be- stowed on him to image forth and falsely ornament deformity and contradiction ? Is it he that should mistake the discords of the poor imperfect part for the diapason of the glorious all, and hear no fairer music in this symphony of the creation than the echoes of his own complaining ? must he hover through existence, not like a bird of paradise, feeding on flowers, nay sleeping with outstretched wings in middle air, but like a hungry vulture, searching for the carrion of selfish pleasure, and shrieking with baleful cry when he does WOTTON REINFRED. 131 not find it? Shame on us! When the very high priests in this solemn temple of the uni- verse have become blasphemers, when they deny their God, and love not the worship but the incense ! " " Bravely said, philosopher ! " cried Bur- ridge. " With your rhetoric you might per- suade one that black was white ; but we must not let your figures of speech mislead us. If people do feel in pain, and vexed with these same discords, how can they help it, and help complaining of it ? What is your glorious all which lies far enough away, when a man has got a scurvy fraction for his own whole allot- ment, and can draw from it neither sense nor profit, but only trouble and grief for his life long ? Was it the poor soul's own blame that he came no better off ; or must he be denied the small privilege of complaining ? And is he not obliged to the poet, who utters for him in soul-subduing melodies, a feeling which in his own mouth would have sounded harsh and trivial ? " " If untrue, it could not sound too harsh 1^2 WOT TON RE IN FRED. or be too little heeded," observed Mau- rice. " Nay, but true or untrue," cried Williams, " it is the general feeling of mankind at pres- ent, and will express itself in spite of us. Now the poet is a citizen of his age as well as of his country. It is his proper nature to feel with double force all that other men feel, as to give this back with double force, ennobled and transfigured into beauty, is his proper business." " There are many things men feel," said Maurice, " which he should suppress and war against, for he has no alchemy which can so transfigure them. If his age is worthless and sunk, he must make for himself another; let him strive to change his degraded brethren into his noble likeness, not deface himself into theirs." " But the means," said Williams. " By deep worship of truth and a generous scorn of falsehood, however popular and pat- ronised. Let no momentary show of things divert him from their essence. Let him not WOT TON REIN FRED. ^3 look to the idols of the time, but to the pure ideal of his own spirit ; let him listen not to the clamours and contradictions from with- out, but to the harmonious unison from within." " And how will the time relish this ? " said Burridge. " Badly, it may be," answered Maurice, " but all hope is not therefore lost. Fit au- dience he will find though few, let him speak where he will ; and if his words are sure and well-ordered they will last from age to age, and the hearing ear and the understanding heart will not be wanting. Cast thy bread upon the waters, thou shalt find it after many days ! So it is with true poetry and all good and noble things. The wheat is sown amid au- tumnal vapours, and lies long buried under snow, yet the field waves yellow in summer, and the reaper goes down to it rejoicing." "Then it is not the poet's chief end to please ? " said Wotton. " His means not his end," replied Maurice ; " on the whole, in art as in morals, it seems to WOTTON REIN FRED. me, we must guard ourselves against the love of pleasure, which admitted as a first principle may lead us in both cases far astray (at all events please man not the man. Popularity, etc.) The first poets were teachers and seers ; the gifted soul, instinct with music, discerned the true and beautiful in nature, and poured its bursting fulness in floods of harmony, en- trancing the rude sense of men ; and song was a heavenly voice bearing wisdom irresistibly with chaste blandishments into every heart." " But what of Homer, or Shakespeare ? " cried Burridge. " Methinks their science was of the meagrest ; what did they teach us ? " " Much, much," answered Maurice, " that we have not yet rightly learned. They taught us to know this world, cousin, and yet to love it; a harder science, cousin, and a more precious than any chemistry or physics or political economy that we have studied since. Look with their eyes on man and life ! All its hollowness, and insufficiency, and sin and woe are there; but with them, nay by them, do beauty and mercy and a solemn WOT TON REINFRED. i^ grandeur shine forth, and man with his stinted and painful existence is no longer little or poor, but lovely and venerable ; for a glory of Infinitude is round him ; and it is by his very poverty that he is rich, and by his littleness that he is great." " I have heard the poet's spirit likened to an Eolian harp," said Dorothy, " over which the common winds of this world cannot pass but they are modulated into music, and even their anger and their moaning become kindly and melodious." "Yes," cried Dalbrook, "there dwells in him a divine harmony, which needs but to be struck that it be awakened. His spirit is a spirit of goodness and brotherhood ; anger, hatred, malignity may not abide with him, will not consort with his purer nature. Where- fore should he envy ; where shall he find one richer than he? While the vulgar soul, iso- lated in self, stinted and ignoble alike in its joy and woe, must build its narrow home on the sand of accident, and taste no good but what the winds and waves of accident may WOTTON REIN FRED. bring it, the poet's home is on the everlasting rock of necessity, the law which was before the universe, and will endure after the uni- verse has passed away ; and his eye and his mind range free and fearless through the world as through his own possession, his own fruitful field ; for he is reconciled with destiny, and in his benignant fellow-feeling all men are his brethren. Nay, are not time and space his heritage, and the beauty that is in them do they not disclose it to him and pay it as their tribute? What do I say? The beauty that is in them ! The beauty that shines through them ! For time and space are modes not things ; forms of our mind, not existences without us ; the shapes in which the un- seen bodies itself forth to our mortal sense ; if we were not, they also would cease to be." " God help us ! whither are we going now?" cried Burridge. " It is in this unseen," hastily continued Dalbrook, " that the poet lives and has his be- ing. Yes, he is a seer, for to him the invisible WOT TON REIN FRED. i^ glory has been revealed. Life with its prizes and its failures, its tumult and its jarring din, were a poor matter in itself ; to him it is base- less, transient and hollow, an infant's dream ; but beautiful also, and solemn and of myste- rious significance. Why should he not love it and reverence it? Is not all visible nature, all sensible existence the symbol and vesture of the Invisible and Infinite ? Is it not in these material shows of things that God, virtue, im- mortality are shadowed forth and made mani- fest to man? Material nature is as a Fata-mor- gana, hanging in the air ; a cloud-picture, but painted by the heavenly light; in itself it is air and nothingness, but behind it is the glory of the sun. Blind men ! they think the cloud- city a continuing habitation, and the sun but a picture because their eyes do not behold him. It is only the invisible that really is, but only the gifted sense that can of itself discern this reality ! " " Now, in Heaven's name," cried Burridge, " what is all this ? Must a poet become a mys- tic, and study Kant before he can write verses? !^8 WOT TON REIN FRED. I declare, philosopher, you are like to turn one's brain." Dalbrook only smiled and shook his head, but Maurice answered : " Nay, cousin, let us abide by things, and beware of names, above all of nicknames, which are mint-stamps, not metal, and should make brass and pewter pass for gold and silver not among the wise few but among the simple many. Much of this which you call Kantism seems but the more scientific expression of what all true poets and thinkers, nay, all good men, have felt more or less distinctly, and acted on the faith of, in all ages. Depend on it, there are many things in heaven and earth which you believe in, though you can neither see them, nor make a picture of them in your head. What is all religion, but a worship of the Unseen, nay, the Invisible ? Superstition gives its God a shape, sometimes in marble or on canvas, oftener in the imagination ; but re- ligion tells us that with Him, form and du- ration are not ; for He is the same yester- day, to-day, and for ever. Time is an eter- WOT TON REIN FRED. nal now, and no eye hath seen Him nor can see." Burridge shook his head. " Ah, Frank, you are a heretic in understanding, and if your heart did not know better, I really think we should have you burnt by the first Auto da Fe. But tell me why do you fight duels ? No, it is not out of disgrace or fear, for you would let yourself be shot equally in the Island of Juan Fernandez, nay, in another planet, if need were, and though you were never more to see a human face ; but it is because you also wor- ship the spirit of honour, which is your invisi- ble deity, before which all other feelings, all earthly joy and pain fly away like light dust before the whirlwind. Thus you too believe in the reality of the invisible, nay, in its chief or sole reality ; yes, you and all of us, else were we machines not men ; more cunningly devised steam-engines, to manufacture and to be impelled ; not reasonable souls, to make and to will." "But what has this to do with poetry?" said Williams. 140 WOT TON REINFRED. " In our view it has much to do with moral goodness," answered Maurice, " and therefore with the poet who is the interpreter and shad- ower forth of goodness. Except on some such principle, consciously or, it may be, uncon- sciously adopted, I see not how he is to find firm footing ; for it is only by a sense of the invisible that we can clearly understand the visible, that we learn to tolerate it, nay, to love it and see its worth amid its worthlessness." " These are hard sayings," rejoined the other, archly : " Who can understand them ? I question but that blackbird that sits on the hawthorn-tree, singing its carol in the red sun- light, is a better poet in its way than any of us." " The perfection of poets," answered Mau- rice, " would be a man as harmonious and complete in his reasonable being as that bird in its instinctive being." " The blackbird, at least, is born, not made," said Williams ; " is it not so also of the poet?" " Born and made were perhaps truer of the poet," answered Maurice. " Nature in her WOT TON RE IN FRED. I4I bounty gives him much, but her most pre- cious gift is the wish and aptitude to cultivate himself to become what he was capable of being." " Are not all men, while under strong ex- citement, poets ? " said the Oxonian. " Scarcely," answered Burridge ; " the hen does but cackle when you excite her, she will not sing." " A false simile ! " cried the other. " The hen's cackling may be musical to hens ; for it is the law of nature that all living beings sym- pathise with beings organised like themselves. Human passion is poetical to men, and makes men poets. The rude Indian defies his fellow savage in gorgeous tropes, the peasant is a poet when he first sees the wonders of the city, a poet when he trembles at the moon- shiny churchyard, a poet when he goes to church in sunlight with his wedding company and his bride." " Umph ! " inarticulated Dalbrook. " Now the poet is simply always what these are only now and then," continued the IO 142 WOT TON REIN FRED. other, " and his fine frenzy, when he utters it, is poetry." " Yet this frenzy, you observe, must be fine," said Wotton, " and therein lies the puz- zle of the problem. The poet is an artist and does not sing from any Delphic tripod ; he has need of forethought as well as fury, and many times, I doubt, finds it no such smooth matter." " True, he is an artist," said the other ; " his mind is stored with imagery and beauti- ful remembrances ; these he unites, omitting what was trivial or repulsive in them, and thus is formed by degrees an ideal whole in his mind. When the painter would create his Venus, does he not borrow the eyes from this fair woman, the nose from that, the lips from another ; and uniting so many separate beau- ties, form them into one beauty, which is in- deed all taken from nature, yet to which na- ture has and can have no parallel ? " " When the mantua-maker would create a kettle-quilt," cried Williams, gaily, " does she not borrow the patch of taffeta from this WOT TON REIN FRED. 143 bright remnant, the lustring from that, the sarcenet from another, and so produce a kettle- quilt, which is indeed all taken from Spital- fields, yet to which all Spitalfields can show no parallel ? I declare to you, my friend, I could never for an hour believe in this theory, though Akenside himself took it under his wing, nay, for aught I know first hatched it." " Why do we not in good earnest set up Gulliver's poetical turning-loom," said Wot- ton, " and produce our poetry in Birmingham by steam ?" " It is surely a false theory," said Dai- brook, " but of a piece with other false me- chanical philosophy. All things must be ren- dered visible or they are not conceivable : poetry is an internal joiner-work, but what of that? Virtue itself is an association or per- haps a fluid in the nerves ; thought is some vibration, or at best some camera-obscura pict- uring in the brain ; volition is the mounting of a scale or the pressing of a spring ; and the mind is some balance, or engine, motionless of itself, till it be swayed this way and that by 144 WOT TON RE IN FRED. external things. Good Heavens ! Surely if we have any soul there must be a kind of life in it ? Surely it does not hang passive and in- ert within us, but acts and works ; and if so, acts and works like an immaterial spirit on spiritual things, not like an artisan on matter. Surely it were good, then, even in our loosest contemplations, to admit some little mystery in the operating of a power by its nature so inscrutable. With our similitudes, we make the mind a passive engine, set in motion by the senses : as it were a sort of thought-mill to grind sensations into ideas, by which fig- ures also we conceive this grinding process to be very prettily explained. Nay, it is the same in our material physiology as in our mental ; animal life, like spiritual, you find is tacitly regarded as a quality, a susceptibility, the relation and result of other powers, not it- self the origin and fountain-head of all other powers ; but its force comes from without by palpable transmission, does not dwell mys- teriously within, and emanate mysteriously in wonder-working influences from within ; and WOTTON REINFRED. 145 man himself is but a more cunning chemico- mechanical combination, such as in the prog- ress of discovery we may hope to see manu- factured at Soho. Nay, smile not incredu- lously, John Williams ! It is even as I say ; and thus runs the high-road to Atheism in religion, materialism in philosophy, utility in morals, and flaring, effect-seeking mannerism in Art. Art do I call it ? Let me not profane the name ! Poetry is a making, a creation," added he, " and the first rising up of a poem in the head of a poet is as inexplicable, by ma- terial formulas, as the first rising up of nature out of chaos." " I have often recollected the story of Phidias," said Wotton, " when in his exile he had retired to Elis, and, to punish his country- men, had resolved to make a Jupiter still grander than their Minerva. The thought he meant to express was present to him, all the strength and the repose, the kingly omnipo- tence of the Olympian ; but no visible form would it assume, no feature to body itself forth ; and the statuary wandered for days 146 WOT TON REIN FRED. and weeks in the pain of an inward idea which would cast itself out in no external symbol. Once he was loitering at sunset among the groves, his heart sick in its baffled vehemence his head full, yet dark and formless ; when, at the opening of some avenue, a procession of maidens, returning from the fountain with their pitchers on their heads, suddenly uplift- ed the evening hymn to Jove ; and, in a mo- ment, the artist's head was overflowed with light, and the figure of his Jupiter started forth in all its lineaments before his mind, and stood there visible and admirable to himself, as afterwards, transferred to marble, it was for many ages to the world." " Yes," said Dalbrook, " a strange wind will sometimes rend asunder the cloud-cur- tains from the soul, and the fair creation, perfected in secret, lies unexpectedly be- fore us like the gift of some higher gen- ius." " Some such process," said Maurice, " some such influence as this of Phidias's, in one man- ner or another, most poets seem to have felt. WOTTON REIN FRED. i^j What else is it that they call their' inspira- tion ? " " Well ! " cried Elizabeth, " the sun is going down here also ; our groves on such a night are little worse than those of Elis. If I should sing you some song to my harp, we might have the scene of this same Phidias moderately realised ; and then," added she archly, " if any of you geniuses had a heart, who knows but you might make somewhat yourselves by winds of inspiration?" " Do let us try, Elizabeth ! " cried several voices. Elizabeth complying, sang handsomely enough, with sweet accompanying harp-tones, a not ungraceful song to evening ; but none of our friends, as would appear, played Phid- ias to it, but retired to the house, and by de- grees to their rooms, without creation of any sort; nay, rather, with destruction, for cer- tain of them consumed some supper. CHAPTER VI. THE inmates of the House in the Wold were a fluctuating brotherhood ; now coming, now departing ; so that week after week, often day after day, a new assortment of char- acters appeared upon the scene. Bernard had not yet returned ; and Wotton was spend- ing the morning in a richly-furnished picture- gallery, under the conduct of his fair hostess, who had herself proposed this indoors occu- pation, less with a view of instructing her new friend in pictorial art, for which, however, she was well qualified, than of gradually dispell- ing his reserve, and winning her way into more free communication with him. For such an object, which besides she carefully kept out of sight, this place was not ill chosen. Wotton knew little of art, but his suscepti- bility for it was deep and keen ; these noble WOT TON REIN FRED. pictures could not but pleasantly engage him ; and while under the clear and graceful com- mentary of one speaking from the heart and to the heart, many a figure rose with fresh loveliness before his eyes, and revealed to him in glimpses the secret of its beauty, he felt as if acquiring some new sense, and distant an- ticipations of unknown glories finally predis- posed him for giving and receiving, at inter- vals, some friendlier expression of personal feeling, with which the pictorial lesson might be intermingled. He began to be at home with his fair critic, and had the satisfaction to perceive that here and there an observation which he hazarded was partially approved of, and given back to him by new examples, and in new elucidation and expansion. The thought of being interrupted could not have been welcome to either, when the rolling of a carriage rapidly approached the house, and terminated in as loud an explosion of sound as the gravel would admit of before the main door. " It is Isabella and her nephew," said the 150 WOTTON REIN FRED. lady. " We shall by and bye resume our lect- ure. Meanwhile let us go and meet them." The gallery extended from the drawing- room, which they had reached by a side en- trance, when the door flew open, and a ser- vant ushered in the new guests. The airy lady and her gay voluble compliments, as she floated in with her silken travelling attire, ob- tained little notice from Wotton, for his whole being was fascinated in strange pain, at another name and aspect. Figure his mood when he found himself introduced in form to Captain Edmund Walter ! For one suffocat- ing moment no force of ceremonial principle could hide the fierce alarm which pealed through his soul; but he stood motionless, and with wild dilated eye, the quiverings or quick stormful flushes of the face must have betokened mystery to the least heedful wit- ness. Over Walter's darker countenance there also passed, but with inconceivable rapidity, a twinge of sternest recognition ; but it van- ished as it rose ; and with courteous compos- ure, he approached his new acquaintance, WOT TON REIN FRED. 151 affably expressing- his happiness in meeting with a countryman, of whom he had often heard ; and subjoined this and that compli- mentary remark, passing by easy transition to more general topics, and this with a frankness, nay, a kindness, which irresistibly rolled back the tempest into Wotton's heart, and with gentle influence smoothed him into calmness. Thus was serenity restored almost before it had been missed ; the company were at their ease, and Wotton wondered to find himself so- cially exchanging indifferent thoughts with this man, both hearts meanwhile, it is like, shut up in enmity , as soldiers from two hostile camps may for a time mingle in some common mar- ket, and traffic peaceably, though their artil- lery is not destroyed, but only slumbering within the trenches, and to-morrow they must join in battle. Some such thought was lurking in the background of Wotton's mind ; but Walter's thoughts seemed not of war, for nothing could be friendlier and gayer than the temper he showed. Dorothy alone glanced at him now WOT TON RE IN FRED. and then, as if she had observed the effect of his entrance, and not forgotten it ; as if she suspected somewhat. To Wotton, again, deeply as he reckoned himself entitled to de- test and dread this Walter, there was a singu- lar dominion in his presence ; a power which, whether it were benignant or the contrary, you could not but in part respect. He seemed a man of thirty, military in his air rather than his dress ; his compact, sinewy frame im- pressed you in its soldier-like repose with an idea of strength beyond his stature, which, however, was tall and portly ; while the thick black locks clustering in careless profusion round that face, so still and massive, burnt by many suns ; the broad brow ; the calm, quick eyes, fearless, not defiant ; the lips, firm with- out effort, and curved in manifold yet scarce perceptible expression ; all bespoke a charac- ter of singular vehemence and vigour, a strik- ing union of passionate force with the strict- est self-control. Yet this self-control did not invite you, but rather silently beckoned you away ; for this, too, seemed passionate, the re- WOT TON REIN FRED. ^3 suit not of love, but of pride ; not of principle, but of calculation ; its very strength seemed dangerous. You would have said, the man had lived in wild perils and wild pleasures ; min- gling stormfully in both, but surrendering him- self to neither ; acting among multitudes, nay, ruling over them, yet apart and alone when in the midst of them ; it was as if no difficulty could discompose him, no danger make him tremble, but, also, no pity make him weep. To Wotton there was something alienating and oppressive in this look of quietude, of sufficiency, and unsuffering isolation ; he gazed on the man, sitting there, thrown negli- gently backwards, speaking with such vivid- ness and penetration, yet so cool, so indiffer- ent; and there were moments when, had it not been for a softer gleam, perhaps of sor- row, now and then blending in the steady fire of those dark eyes, he could almost have fan- cied him a man molten out of bronze. In a little while, the gay Isabella had re- tired to her room, and Walter, who professed an unabated love for art, volunteered to attend 154 WOTTON REIN FRED our two students in a farther survey of the gallery. Wotton was again among his pict- ures ; his eye still followed that of his fair in- structress ; but the pleasure of the lesson was now in great part gone. His late growing frankness, checked rudely enough by this ren- counter, had given place to a certain irksome estrangement, which, indeed, Walter himself by many little attentions, the more artful that they seemed involuntary, was the readiest to attempt removing. Walter's feeling of art ap- peared much more distinct, but also much coarser and narrower than Wotton's ; you would have said he admired in the picture lit- tle more than some reflex of himself. For the still beauty, and meek, graceful significance of Raphael he expressed no love ; he lingered rather over the scenes of Caspar, Poussin, and Salvator, as if enjoying their savage strength, as if in art in general the superiority of beauty to force had not been revealed to him. But what he chiefly dwelt on were portraits, by eminent masters of eminent men. For the merit of these his taste seemed true ; yet his WOT TON RE IN FRED. !$5 partialities were regulated by the former prin- ciple, and appeared to depend as much on the subject as on the painter. " Cousin," said Dorothy, with a smile, " I grieve to see you are still an idolater and no true worshipper in art ; with the clearest sense of what is good you do not prefer the best ; it is not the pure ideal, but the exciting real that you look for ; you want devoutness, cousin ; you reverence only power." " I am without critical taste," said Walter ; " but I tell you honestly what I enjoy and what I do not. Here, for instance," continued he, " here is my old friend again ; can I help it if I like him ? " " It is Cromwell's portrait," said Wotton. " Truly a striking picture ; and, if I mistake not, physiognomically expressive of the man." " Old Noll, as he looked and lived ! " said Walter. " The armed genius of Puritanism ; dark in his inward light ; negligent, awkward, in his strength ; meanly apparelled in his pride ; base-born, and yet more than kingly Those bushy grizzled locks, flowing over his WOT TON REIN FRED. shoulders ; that high, care-worn brow ; the gleam of those eyes, cold and stern as the sheen of a winter moon ; that rude, rough- hewn, battered face, so furrowed over with mad inexplicable traces, the very wart on the cheek, are full of meaning. This is the man whose words no one could interpret, but whose thoughts were clearest wisdom, who spoke in laborious folly, in voluntary or in- voluntary enigmas, but saw and acted uner- ringly as fate. Confusion, ineptitude, dishon- esty are pictured on his countenance, but through these shines a fiery strength, nay, a grandeur, as of a true hero. You see that he was fearless, resolute as a Scanderbeg, yet cunning and double withal, like some paltry pettyfogger. He is your true enthusiastic hypocrite ; at once crackbrained and inspired ; a knave and a demigod ; in brief, old Noll as he looked and lived ! Confront him in contest with that mild melancholy Stuart, who eyes him in regal grace and order from the other wall, and you see that royalty is lost, that it is but withered stubble to devouring fire." WOT TON REIN FRED. ^7 " Yet the gray discrowned head" said Doro- thy, " has something of a martyr halo round it in feeling minds ; and our thoughts dwell rather with the ringdove in his nest, than with the falcon who made it desolate." " I confess I am for the falcon," said Wot- ton, " only he should fly at other game than ringdoves. And for this martyr of ours, we love him chiefly, I believe, because he was unfortunate ; otherwise in his history there is much to pity, but little to admire. Surely, indeed, to quit our figure, it is wrong to rev- erence the spirit of power, considered simply as such ; yet power is the sense of all sublim- ity, and does not this of necessity captivate the mi'nd; nay, is it not the chief element of religion itself ? " " Scarcely of the highest religion, our phi- losophers would tell us," answered she. " Per- fect love casteth out fear. To a true worship- per, the omnipotence of God is lost in His holiness ; in other words, sublimity is swal- lowed up in all-comprehending beaut)'. You will observe, too, how much easier it is to ii Ijjg WOT TON REIN FRED. homage the former than the latter attribute. In every thunderstorm we see the very beasts fall prostrate with a sort of terror-struck, slav- ish worship, and dumb cry for mercy ; such, likewise, has been, and in great part still is, the devotion of most men ; but for the pure soul that, without thought of self, worships the beauty of holiness, fears not and yet rever- ences, we still look as for a jewel in the com- mon sand ; and in ourselves we are glad if we can trace any vestiges of what in its complete sovereignty should form the crowning glory of our culture. For is it not our chief glory that the strong can be made obedient to the weak ; that we yield not to force but to good- ness ; that we walk under heavenly influences, which are mild and still, not under earthly de- sires, which are fierce and tumultuous ? Nay, that while these incessantly assault us, those alone should quicken us, alone be felt and re- garded. Of you, my friend, I shall one day make a convert; but for our cousin here," added she, with a grave smile, " he is wedded to his errors." WOT TON REIN FRED. 159 " And a stormy matrimony we have had of it," said Walter, " before the household could be brought to peace. But positively, cousin, you do me wrong ; I have my lucid intervals as well as another ; only in a life of storm and battle our philosophy will sometimes step aside, and many things must be left as they can be, not as they should." Dorothy, with a faint smile, shook her head. On the whole it seemed to be an object with the soldier to stand well with her ; an object which, under a show of candour and in- difference, he was not imperceptibly pursuing with unusual eagerness, and in which with all his mastery in such arts, he appeared by no means completely prospering. In the pierc- ing eye of such a woman, the craftiest dissimu- lation brings no perfect concealment ; in pure souls there is an instinct which, in the absence of vision, warns them away from the bad, and as if in obscure beckonings declares : " There cannot be communion between us." Much more when this instinct, the product of the heart, has been allied to quickness of intellect- l6o WOTTON REIN FRED. ual perception, and its dim intimations be- come clear in the light of long observation and experience of men and their ways. Wal- ter's secret might be hidden, but the hiding of it was not hidden ; under this smooth smiling expanse his fair cousin felt that there were rocks and cruel abysses ; that whoso trusted to its calmness might find it a treacherous element, and in its strength make shipwreck. But in a little while the Lady Isabella flitted in, new and glittering like a pheasant after moultmg-time ; in whose gay, graceful discursiveness all sober study, all serious pur- pose, whether of aversion or affection, neces- sarily found its turn. She was one of those souls to whom Heaven has denied the power of any perseverance. Sharp, rapid in her un- derstanding, keen and many times correct in her tastes, she had, indeed, the elements of much worth within her, but these so loosely combined, and intermixed with such a quan- tity of light alloy, that generally their influ- ence was ineffectual, nay, often their existence altogether invisible. She looked upon the WOT TON RE IN FRED. r 6 r world as a vain show, for such to her it really was ; without serious interest in it, without hope, or, indeed, wish of any abiding" good, she flickered through it gracefully and care- lessly as through the mazes of a masquerade, neither loving any of her brother figures nor hating any, content if this or that individual among them could transiently amuse her with his talent, and all would gratify her with due admiration. Nor was it men only that she viewed as masks, but, indeed, all things ; in her conceptions no object was, properly speak- ing, of more than two dimensions, length and breadth, without thickness ; so she dwelt not among, things, but among hollow shells of things, mere superficies, of more or less brill- iancy in truth, but without solidity or value, and which thus deserved no care from her, thus obtained none. For with all her suscep- tibility it was nearly impossible to fix her mind on aught ; greatness, goodness of any sort, would bring a tear into her bright eyes, but next moment she was thinking how very singular this greatness or this goodness looked. WOTTON REIN FRED. She believed in Heaven and Hell ; yet always after the first thrill of wonder or terror, she insensibly figured them like more extended meetings at Almack's ; the first, a bright as- semblage, gas-lit, harmonious, fantastic, and unspeakably amusing ; the last, some obscure chaotic medley, horrid, it is true, but chiefly by its dulness and vulgarity, an intensation merely of the horror suffered in a maladroit " At Home." Thus all things in her were like Sybil's leaves ; her opinions, purposes, moods, at the breath of every accident, were in con- tinual flux and reflux, and if with her gaiety and grace she was delightful for an hour, her dominion for a day was well-nigh insupport- able. To Wotton, in his present humour, such entertainment was peculiarly unsolacing : this sparkling, fitful levity, which he could neither rule nor obey, distressed him ; but if Walter's presence had been like a nightmare, which he thought not to withstand, this was a continual dropping, which in its annoyance reminded him of escape. He seized the first fit oppor- WOT TON REINFRED. ^3 tunity ; said something of his customary morn- ing ride ; and with hasty compliments took leave. His morning ride was a ceremony of no binding nature ; but a new light rose on him while his horse was a-saddling. " Would I were with Bernard ! " thought he ; for his heart was weighed down with a crushing load, and he felt as if free speech would be an inexpressible relief to him. Leaving a proper message with the groom, he accordingly in- quired his way across the hills ; learned that in two hours of good riding he might reach his friend ; and so at a brisk pace, which soon became a gallop, he left the happy valley. Such furious speed seemed at once to ex- press and in some degree assuage the internal uproar; but in his mind there was neither peace nor clearness, all was yet imagination and sensation ; its forms had not given birth to thoughts, but in their greater stillness were only growing more complicated, more gigan- tic; and ever as he pulled up, in ascending some rough steep, or from his ledge of road 164 WOTTON REIN FRED. looked down into the shaggy chasm, it seemed amid the sound of waterfalls and moaning woods and hoarse choughs, as if deep were speaking of him to deep in prophetic words full of mystery, sadness, and awe. The jour- ney itself was soon and safely accomplished, but it proved ineffectual.. Bernard was from home, he had gone with the nobleman, his landlord, to attend some meeting in the mar- ket town of the district, and was not expected till the morrow. With difficulty, Wotton, bent on continu- ing his quest, yielded to friendly entreaty and alighted, that so clearer direction and brief rest and refreshment might enable man and horse to pursue their route with more conven- ience. The town was at some twelve miles distance, and two roads led to it ; of which our traveller preferred the horseway through the mountains, as shorter and more solitary ; for in this mood the waste stillness of such regions was friendly to him. For the rest, the mansion being empty, save of servants, no un- essential delay was called for : in a little while WOTTON REIN FRED. ^5 Radbury Park with its groves and lawns had disappeared, and Wotton was again mounting the uplands in vain eagerness to reach what he half knew could little avail him. The de- clining sun shone softly on him through the foliage of the glens ; the brooks gushed loud and cheerful by his side ; and often from some open eminence his eye rested on stern blue ranges, or caught here and there the glitter of a lake or streamlet in the distance. But his heart was heavy and alone as in old days ; the dreamy hope which had mingled with so much inquietude in the morning, seemed to die away and retire into littleness, as the scene of it re- tired ; and he asked himself : " What art thou to this man Walter, or what is he to thee, that thou shouldst either shrink from him or seek him ? Dost thou still love, still look for bless- edness, outcast as thou art ? Art not thou poor and helpless ; are not the gates of human ac- tivity inexorably shut against thee ? Have I an aim that is not mad, a hope of peace but in the chambers of death ! O thou bright form, why lingerest thou still in the desert of my !66 WOTTON REIN FRED. life? Vanish, fair treacherous vision, vanish and mock me not. If I have been unwise I bear it, and darkness and desolation are my lot for ever." In this humour, little would have tempted him to turn his horse suddenly ; to snap asun- der these new-formed ties, and, without leave- taking-, hurry back to his native solitudes with blank despondency for his guide. But shame and a little remnant of hope still urged him forward : " After all," said he, " what have I to lose ? My integrity is mine, and nothing more. Who fears not death, him no shadow can make tremble ; " and reciting this latter sentence with a strong low tone in the original words of Euripides, its author ; he rode along as if composing his soul by this antique spell into forced and painful rest. In a short while his attention was called outwards from these meditations, for the val- ley he had been ascending closed in abruptly on a broad, rugged mountain, stretching like a wall across the whole breadth of the hollow, the high sides of which it irregularly inter- WOTTON REIN FRED. seated, forming on both hands a rude course for the winter torrents, and on the right a path, which suddenly became so steep and stony that Wotton judged it prudent to dis- mount while climbing it. Arrived with some labour at the top, he again found himself in the western sunlight, which had been hid be- low, and he paused with the bridle in his hand to wonder over a scene which, whether by its natural character, or from the present temper of his own mind, surpassed in impressiveness all that he had ever looked on. It was an upland wavy expanse of heath or rough broken downs, where valleys in com- plex branching were, openly or impercepti- bly, arranging their declivity towards every quarter of the sky. The hilltops were beneath his feet ; the cottages, the groves, and mead- ows lapped up in the folds of these lower ranges and hid from sight ; but the loftiest summits of the region towered up here and there as from their base ; gray cliffs also were scattered over the waste, and tarns lay clear and earnest in their solitude. Close on the left 1 68 WOT TON REINFRED. was a deep chasm, the beginning of another valley, on the farther side of which abruptly rose a world of fells, as it were, the crown and centre of the whole mountain country ; a hun- dred and a hundred savage peaks attracting eye and heart by their form, for all was glow- ing like molten gold in the last light of the sun now setting behind them, and in this majestic silence to the wanderer, pensive and lonely in this wilderness, the scene was not only beauti- ful but solemn. Wotton was affected to his inmost soul ; he gazed over these stupendous masses in their strange light, and it seemed to him as if till now he had never known Nature ; never felt that she had, indeed, a fairy and un- speakable loveliness ; nay, that she was his mother and divine. And as the ruddy glow faded into clearness in the sky, and the sheen of the peaks grew purple and sparkling, and the day was now to depart, a murmur of eter- nity and immensity, a voice from other worlds, stole through his soul, and he almost felt as if the earth were not dead : as if the spirit of the earth might have its throne in this glory, and WOT TON REIN FRED. 169 his own spirit might commune with it as with a kindred thing. " 'tlpec-repa Trd/j,{3oTi Fa ! " internally exclaimed he in Doric words ; " 'npea-repa ira^oTi Fa, thou rugged all-sup- porting earth ! " But what words can express our feeling in such hours ? It is as if the spirit for a mo- ment were delivered from the clay ; as if in Pis- gah vision it descried the gates of its celestial home, and tones of a diviner melody wafted from beyond this world, led captive our puri- fied sense. And the thought of death, as in all scenes of grandeur, steals over us, and of our lost ones that are already hid in the nar- row house, and of all the innumerable nations of the dead that are there before them, the great and famous that have gone thither since the beginning of time. Their multitude af- frights us ; the living are but a handful ; one wave in the boundless tide of ages. Who would grieve for his own light afflictions in this universal doom ? Who could envy, who could hate or injure any fellow-man? Frail transitory man! we weep over him in fondest 170 WOT TON REIN FRED. pity, for the shadows of Death bound in our brightest visions, and mingling in the jubilee of Nature is heard a voice of lamentation ! Wotton was aroused from his strange rev- eries by the tramp of approaching riders. Starting round, he observed a cavalcade emerging from the dwarf thickets that skirted the base of a neighbouring cliff, and advancing towards him at a brisk pace ; or, rather, per- haps, towards his track which winded for- ward through the wolds obliquely to their present one. The evening light shone full on the group, which consisted of two men gaily mounted and a lady between them, managing a light Arab with the skill and elegance of a complete equestrian. Long folds of a dark riding-dress flowed over her feet and the side of her horse ; black locks waved in graceful clusters beneath her gold-banded fur barrette ; but, as she approached, the first glimpse of her features struck our hero with a nameless feeling. His presence also in these solitudes at such an hour seemed to give surprise in its turn, for the whole party simultaneously WOTTON REIN FRED. iji pulled in as they noticed him ; and the lady drew back and hastily dropped her veil. " A good evening, fair sir ! " said one of the riders, advancing near him. " You lin- ger late on the moors. Has anything be- fallen ? " Wotton was instinctively clinging to his horse, which this new arrival had disturbed : but in his confusion he scarcely knew what the stranger had said, much less how to an- swer him with courtesy ; he answered merely with a slight bow and an inquiring, " Sir?" " Nay, Jack, you are wrong, 'tis another ! " cried the second horseman also coming up. " Pardon us, sir ! " continued he, addressing Wotton. " The sight of a traveller at sunset on these wolds and not in motion but at rest surprised us, and we have forgotten good manners in interfering with your privacy. We crave your pardon." " The wilderness has privileges of its own," said Wotton, who had now recovered him- self. " In such solitudes every human face is friendly. No pardon, for there is no offence, 1^2 WOTTON RE IN FRED. but a favour. I am a stranger among the mountains, a passing pilgrim ; the wild light of these fells detained me in spite of haste. If our roads go together, I shall be proud of such company, I am riding northwards." " We ride alone," said the first horseman, in a somewhat surly voice. Wotton looked in his face ; the man, natu- rally nowise truculent, had an aspect of elab- orate resolve, almost of menace. " You have leave, sirs," answered Wotton coldly, and bending his eyes towards the path they had quitted. " And we go armed," said the other, glanc- ing at his holsters, and evidently piqued by this indifference. " ZVfensively, I may presume," said Wot- ton, in a still chiller tone. " But for the love of God, madame," cried he with utmost earnest- ness, and advancing a step towards the lady, whose horse had now joined the rest, " tell me, are not you ?" " Ah, yes ! " faintly interrupted the sweet silver voice of Jane Montagu. " But " WOTTON REINFRED. 173 " Gracious God ! " exclaimed he, almost sinking in the unspeakable conflict of his feel- ings. " Oh, my friend ! my friend ! " " Wotton Reinfred," said she, in a livelier tone, as he grasped her hand, " if you are in- deed my friend, you will not quarrel with my guardians, nay, my blood relations. Here is no time for ceremonies and the point of hon- our. This is no recreant, but a true knight* and loyal to me. Of caitiffs we have enow besides ; there, give him your hand ; and for you, sir, mount, if you will, and come along with us." The surly rider brightened up into frank- ness as she spoke in this tone ; readily apolo- gising for his over-hastiness, he proffered cor- dial reconcilement ; and thus, in the singular vicissitudes of a few moments, was Wotlon riding forward through the desert, at the side of one whom he had long bitterly mourned as lost, and yet could scarcely in his tumultuous bewilderment believe that he had found. The rapid pace at which they rode was unfavorable to talk or explanation, which, at 12 174 WOTTON RE IN FRED. any rate, the lady seemed desirous to avoid ; she did not lift her veil ; she answered briefly, and in a voice from which its first liveliness, perhaps only a transient gleam constrained for the occasion, had disappeared. She was evidently thoughtful, earnest, and it might be, her thoughts were of sorrow rather than of joy. As for Wotton, his mind was as in a maze ; the past would not join with the pres- ent or the future ; and at times, as he dashed along in silence with the rest, the dusk sink- ing deeper and stiller over the mountains in their horizon, and the crags near at hand growing whiter, huger, and almost spectral, and the quick footsteps of the horses alone sounding through the waste, or mingling in echoes with the rush of distant waters, he could have fancied that his senses were deceiv- ing him ; that he should awake and find this vision, so full of sadness and of rapture, only a dream-picture, a pageant of the mind. " But is it really you ? " whispered he, with melting heart in the ear of his loved one, as he approached her for a moment. " Is it WOT TON REIN FRED. jprjj really you, the Jane whom I have sat with and talked with of old ? For here in the wiz- ard solitude, I begin to doubt it, and feel that I were too happy." " God knows," said she, " times are altered, and we with them ; but surely I was once Jane Montagu, and had a friend called Rein- fred. That you may believe." The two horsemen were silent also, or spoke only at intervals, and of their distance from the town, the qualities of the road, or the rare performance of their horses. In an- other hour the foreground of the scene grew darker, and the track began to slope. At last, far down, rose the light of the burgh, gleam- ing peacefully in hospitable sheen against the sky, like a beacon to the wayfarer. Our party descended into the valley, and soon a smooth shady road conducted them to paved streets and their inn. CHAPTER VII. JANE MONTAGU had with brief good- night retired directly to her apartment, an example which her two attendants, wearied by a hard day's journey, seemed not disin- clined to follow. Their supper with our friend was short, and in regard to table-talk, laborious rather than exhilarating ; they yet knew not rightly on what footing he was to stand, or how far he might safely be admitted to their secrets, so that cheerfulness and trust- ful communing gave place on all hands to po- liteness and cautious generalities. From their conversation, which he could but watch, not lead, he had gathered only that they were naval officers, that Jaspar the elder and blunter of the two, was in fact the cousin of Jane, with whose character and late history, how- ever, he appeared nowise personally familiar, WOTTON REIN FRED. i*jy nor did either he or Elton his comrade seem to be her lover, though in her fortunes both testified a true interest. For the rest, the party was evidently in a state resembling flight, though whence or whither was not so much as hinted, only a pressing entreaty for silence and concealment taught Wotton that they still reckoned themselves within the sphere of pursuit, and dreaded being over- taken as a great evil. To their request he gave a strict and prompt assent, and so with expressions of good will, and of hopes that what was dark would to the happiness of all become light, the company broke up, and Wotton like the strangers withdrew to his room. From the servants he had learned that Bernard was in the town, nay at that very hour in the inn, but to speak to him, much as he had longed for it, he now carefully avoided. What could he speak of, when all concerns were swallowed up in one, of which he could not yet divine the mystery, or thou- sandfold importance, and must not even whis- 178 WOTTON RE IN FRED. per his surmises ? But what, now in his seclu- sion, was he to think of this strange day ? What had befallen Jane Montagu, that she was crossing the mountains, a fugitive, encom- passed with anxieties, and under such dubious escort? The men seemed honourable men, and of the friendliest feelings to her ; but whither was she hastening with them, what was she flying or in search of ? Was it in fear or hope ; was she driven or allured ? To all which questions, with the utmost strain of his invention, he could answer nothing, but he only in baffled efforts at conjecture increased the weariness which was already stealing over him like the advance of night. Did she love another, then ; did she trust another more than him ? Her manner had been kind, confiding, nay for moments almost tender. No ! She did not love another ! Gracious Heaven ! She still loved him ! And was she unfortunate ? Did she need his help ? Could he assist her; could his heart, his life have value to her ? And this thought, like a little point of splendour, by degrees tinged in WOT TON REINFRED. 179 wild hues of beauty the whole chaos of his mind ; the cruel became meek, the impossible easy ; all harsh discordant shapes, expanding into infinitude, coalesced in friendly union and his spirit sank into sleep as into a sea of many-coloured lights. At an early hour he awoke from vague gorgeous dreams, but depressed and heavy- laden, and with the feeling of a man who has much to do and suffer. Looking forth from his window across the wide courtyard with its grooms in their miscellaneous occupation, he observed in the alleys of the garden, two men walking to and fro and earnestly conversing, one of whom he directly recognised for Ber- nard. The air of his friend seemed anxious and busy ; he was bent forward and moving his hand as in the endeavour to persuade, while his companion, apparently a man of rank, seemed listening kindly rather than re- plying. Wotton drew back, for at present he dreaded interruptions even from Bernard. He was scarcely dressed, when a servant whom he had summoned for some other pur- 180 WOTTON REIN FRED. pose delivered him a note. The handwriting Wotton knew of old, it was Jane Montagu's ! " To Wotton Reinfred, Esquire." He opened and read : " A new day has risen, and like the Wan- dering Jew I must again set forth with the morning. Come and wish me good speed ere I go ! A strange chance restored me a friend, and in two hours I must part with him, per- haps for ever." Wotton made no loitering ; in a few min- utes, with proper guidance and announcement, he found himself in a trim, quiet, little parlour, where Jane Montagu, already in her travel- ling attire, received him with smiles, beautiful in their sadness as a cloudy summer morn. Both parties looked embarrassed, as they nat- urally felt, while there was so much demand- ing utterance, and no words in which it could be uttered. What change since these two had last met face to face ! What a chasm now separated them, over which in the pale dusk of memory, hovered past joys, mourn- fully beckoning them from afar, and as if WOT TON REIN FRED. igl weeping that there was no return ! Those times were now gone, that blissful community of life had been all rent asunder, and yet still her right hand was in his, and they again stood near in space, though in relation so widely divided ! A tear was gathering in the bright eyes of Jane, which she fixed on the ground, and through Wotton's heart were quivering wild tones of remembrance and hope, wailing as of infinite grief, and touches of rapture rising almost to pain. He gazed silently on that loved form ; there was no mo- tion in her hand, but she timidly raised her face, where over soft, quick blushes tears were stealing and next moment, neither knew how it was, but his arms were round her, and her bosom was on his, and in the first pure heav- enly kiss of love two souls were melted into one. It was but for a moment. She sharply, al- most angrily withdrew herself and cried, hid- ing her face : " Forbear, sir ! If you hope to see me another minute, no more of this ! " Wotton stood confounded at his rashness, yet !82 WOTTON RE IN FRED. glorying in its celestial fruit : he attempted in broken words to apologise. " Beware, sir ! " said she. " It was not to hear love declarations, which I must not lis- ten to, that I sent for you hither. My life is made for sterner stuff; they are far other tasks that await me. Alas ! " continued she, " I have no friend in this world, if you be my lover. I am an unhappy girl, an orphan wan- derer ! " she burst into weeping. " Jane Montagu ! " said Wotton, in a voice striving to be calm, " I have hoped, I have wished for no other happiness, but to be your friend and brother through all time. If there was ever any vestige of goodness in me, be- lieve that I am yours, to live and die for you as you shall desire. Weak, unworthy I am, but not wicked ; trust in me, O trust in me ! Can I betray your trust? Can I give it in ex- change as a thing less precious ? O what else could my life have in it worth keeping ! " " My wish and purpose is to trust you," said she, giving him her hand, which he mod- estly pressed to his lips. " I am parting from WOT TON REINFRED. 183 you, but I would not part from your good wishes, from your estimation. But come, why all this tragedy ? " continued she, in a lighter tone, and summoning a smile through her tears. " Sit down, and speak to me, for I have much to inquire and say, and it will be long before we meet again." " In Heaven's name," cried he, " whither are you going? Why did I lose you, and in what strange scenes have I found you after long waiting ? " " You have a right to ask," said she ; " but I cannot answer in a word. Have patience with me ; I have longed to tell you all ; longed to unfold the sad perplexities which encompass me, to give them voice and shape to any mortal that was not false-hearted, who if he could not offer me help, would faith- fully offer me pity, the solace of all the wretched. I have been alone in my grief, alone ! Perhaps it were wiser to continue so, but it is otherwise determined ; listen to me, you shall hear all." Wotton sat in breathless attention, and the 1 84 WOTTON REIN FRED. fair Jane with a resolute effort at indifference and composure, thus proceeded : " I might well say with Macbeth : My May of life is fallen into the sear and yellow leaf, were it not that little sunshine visits one at any time, and as for my life, I think it has been cast in some Nova Zembla climate, where however it might be May by the cal- endar, by the sky it was December. Bright blue hours I have had too, and one always hopes the weather will mend ! " Of my childhood I can say little. Some- thing whispers me that in the earlier part of it I was happier, for I have faint recollections of a pleasant home and kind nurses, and one that used to weep over me and kiss me, per- haps she was my mother. But an obscure, confused period succeeds ; of which I have no remembrance, except a certain vague impres- sion of tumult and distress ; and this first scene stands like some fair little island, di- vided by wild seas from my whole after life. I had lost my parents, how I have never known ; some baleful mystery hangs over their fate, a WOT TON REIN FRED. 185 gloomy secret, which when I have inquired into, I have been answered only in hints and dark warnings to forbear inquiring. Unhappy father ! It seems he must have died miser- ably, sometimes I have feared by his own hand. And she too, the good mother, she that fondled me and laid me on her bosom, was for ever hid from my eyes. Alas ! was she my mother? or is this also but a dream which I mistake for a reminiscence ? Father or mother in truth I have never known. " You have seen my aunt, and something of her character, which therefore I need not describe at large. Surely I owe her much, she was my sole benefactress ; herself a widow, she found me a helpless orphan, for with their ill-starred life the fortune of my par- ents had also gone to wreck, and had it not been for her affection I was destitute as well as orphaned. Affection I may call it, though of a strange sort, and made up of mere contra- dictions. She has shared her all with me; though poor she has shunned no cost in pro- curing me instruction and improvement, in- 1 86 WOTTON REIN FRED. deed day after day she has watched over me with the solicitude of a mother, yet scarcely a day has passed but I have had to doubt whether her feeling towards me was love or hatred. In my childhood often she would hold me in her arms, and gaze over me till her heart seemed melting with saddest tender- ness, then all at once I have seen those swim- ming eyes flash into fury, and she would spurn me from her as an accursed thing. A tempestuous life we had of it, and sore many times was my little heart oppressed and vexed. I had none to trust in, I wept in secret, and were it not that childhood is naturally forget- ful and inclined to joy, I must have been often quite wretched. " My aunt is certainly no common person ; she has the most decisive opinions, a firm and speedy resolve, high feelings also, indeed a certain taste for all excellence. Yet these fine elements of goodness have in her come to no good ; she is proud, vindictive, jealous, she does even kindness unkindly, and her temper is changeful as winter winds. It seems as if WOTTON REIN FRED. some malign influence had passed over her na- ture, and thwarted into perverse direction so many possibilities of virtue. Poor lady ! For if she makes others suffer, she herself suffers still more. It is long since I discovered that she had no happiness, no peace, but rather the gnawing of an inward discontent, which never dies, and often I have thought its source lay deeper than mere worldly disappointment. Perhaps her marriage was unfortunate, she will not speak of it, she sternly avoids it, and to Jaspar her son she shows less affection than even to me. Perhaps But alas ! Do not mystery and mischance environ me and gird me round ? My whole history is a riddle, which he were a cunning seer that could read me ! Disquietude of conscience my unhappy relative may have or not, disquietude of some kind she too evidently has. No system of cir- cumstances, no scene, no circle of society can long please her, nowhere can she take up her permanent abode, but she wanders from place to place seeking that rest which she knows be- forehand is not to be found. Of late years her !88 WOTTON REINFRED. misery seems increasing, there are times when she shrinks from human presence ; for days she will sit secluded in her room, refusing all sym- pathy or trustful communication, and her look when it falls on you is cruel and cold. Poor lady ! Her heart will break one day, for she is too strong-willed to end in madness. " My native place and hers is this North of England, but directly on the death of my par- ents she retired with me to Vevey in Switz- erland, where she had before resided. Thus French became a second mother-tongue to me, and the Leman Lake and the wild mount- ains of Savoy are the earliest scenes of my memory. Our way of life here was sombre enough ; except with certain clergy of the place, and one or two sedate persons chiefly of literary habits, my aunt had no society ; the English travellers of whom many passed, she carefully avoided, nay repelled if they sought her. Jaspar was not with us but in England at a boarding-school ; one grave old woman was our only servant. Yet this solitude was not lonesome to me, nor with all my little WOTTON REINFRED. 189 griefs did I feel myself unhappy. What wealth is in childhood, how that morning sun makes a very desert beautiful ! One has yet no con- sciousness of self, one is a thought, an action, not a thinker or an actor. They praised me for diligence at school, the whole world was indeed a school to me, where day after day I was learning new wonders, and forming new ties of love. What joy when I could escape to bound over the meadows with my little sis- ter maidens ! But still deeper joy I felt when in solitary castle-building I shaped out the fu- ture, and saw myself not a princess with kneel- ing knights no, no ! but a Corinna, a poet- ess, an intellectual woman ! For towards this goal, whether by natural temper, or the influ- ence of our literary visitors, my whole soul was already bent. Blame not my mad whim ! I cannot blame it, though I know its empti- ness ; this poor vision has come before me in its brightness, and been a city of refuge to my soul in all troublous seasons. Vevey is still dear to me, and the great Mont Blanc with his throne of glacier-rubies still visits me in 13 1 00 WOT TON REIN FRED. sleep and shines in the background of many a dream. " It was not without bitter tears that I left this first home and all that I had ever loved or known in life. But I was now in my twelfth summer, and my tears soon dried, for England and London were before me. What a world of hopes ! England the land of my nativity, where in some lone churchyard, which I often figured, were the graves of my parents, over which I should indeed weep, but tears so soft and blessed ! London, the city of wonders, where I was to see and learn so much ! My heart leapt at the thought ; in spite of all per- versities, caprices, nay cruelties, I was the hap- piest little soul alive. Not so my aunt ; her gloom seemed to deepen as she approached the English shore, and I was more than once reminded that but for me and my interests she would not have set foot on it again, but in kinder hours she told me I might now be hap- pier, if I were good ; I was to complete my learning, by and by I should meet friends, be introduced to society, of which, however, I WOT TON RE I ALFRED. ig\ ought rather to beware than expect much good. I was too young to understand her fully, but my images of danger and enjoyment were alike gorgeous and almost alike attract- ive, and her ideas I still rocked to and fro on the wildest waves. " London fulfilled neither my expectations nor hers. The deafening, never-ceasing tu- mult of that monstrous city, its aspect of power and splendour for a while intoxicated me, but the charm of novelty wore off, and I looked back to my little room at Vevey, and its book-shelves and rose-festoons and studious quiet seemed doubly precious. Of masters I had abundance, but they taught me only fe- male accomplishments, and what I most want- ed was knowledge. In public our relations, gay, grand people, saw me and caressed me, but I soon found that their kindness was from the lips only, while in secret at home I had more to suffer than ever. My aunt had be- come a stranger among her kindred, in every circle her place had long ago been filled up, or rather in so many years of absence the cir- 192 WOTTON RE IN FRED. cle itself had disappeared, and now she saw herself superfluous, nay it may be regarded with distrust, for her way of life had long been involved in a certain mystery, from which it was not difficult for many to draw spiteful in- ferences. She felt all this and smarted under it in her proud spirit. I too was unhappy. Alas ! I was now awakening to life, I was now looking on the world with my own eyes, and sad enough were my surveys and forecastings ! I saw myself alone ; I saw my aunt, as she was, desolate, gloomy, if not malignant ; sometimes I secretly accused her, sometimes I almost hated her, this aunt that had been a mother to me. I was still gay, sportful, but no longer from the heart, which, when I thought of it, was often full of fear and sorrow. The future lay before me, so vast, so solemn, and often all gloomy ; except in my darling vision, my old dream of intellectual greatness, I had no strength or stay, and this was but a trembling hope which I hid from every one almost as a guilty thought. The fate of literary women, the ridicule I saw cast on them had grieved WOT TON RE IN FRED. 193 me deeply, yet in the end nowise effaced my first project ; nay perhaps, for there is a spirit of contradiction in us, rather added strength to it. Foolish girl! But soon I had more pressing matters to reflect on. "We left London finally after a residence of three years ; my aunt mortified and dis- dainful ; I neither glad nor sorry at the change which, indeed, I foresaw would not be lasting, for dissatisfaction and unrest had now taken firm hold of my unhappy relative ; she had ceased to be devout, she was at once vio- lent and aimless, and bad days seemed to await me beside her wherever we might live. It was in the south of Wales, whither a pleas- ant situation and some distant connections in the neighbourhood had invited her, that we next settled. Our way of life here you can figure : why should I trouble you with the poor repetition of frivolity and spleen which with only superficial varieties now this now that new abode has witnessed ? One circum- stance there is, however, which makes these scenes for ever memorable to me. It was 194 WOT TON RE IN FRED. here that I first saw the being whom I may justly call my evil genius ; for since that hour his influence has pursued me only to my hurt, and still hangs like a baleful shadow over my whole life. Oh, my friend ! This man, this demon ! Why did he ever behold me ? Why must the black, wasting whirlwind of his life snatch him into its course ? But I will be calm. " Edmund Walter, the first time I saw him, thought right to treat me with a distinction which could not but be visible to everyone. It was a rather numerous assembly : Walter was among the cynosures of the night, and perhaps the poor bashful girl was somewhat envied such attention. In my own mind, God knows, it caused little joy : on the contrary, this man with all his pomp and plausibility of aspect was positively distressing to me, or if I had for the moment some touch of female vanity in his flatteries, I received them but as fairy-money and with a half-criminal feeling, for dread and aversion, as to a wicked soul, were my impressions of him from the first. WOT TON RE IN FRED. 195 My impressions, however, it appeared, were not to regulate our intercourse ; nay, perhaps this indifference, this repulsion, accustomed as he was to prevail over all hearts, rather piqued him into new assiduity. He followed me, at least followed me from that hour with continual civilities, the more questionable as they could not be rejected, for so dextrously did he go to work that his conduct expressed at once everything and nothing, wavered like a changing colour ; seen on this side, all soft- ness and beguilement ; on that, mere acquaint- anceship and common social courtesy. With such craft was he studying to spin his nets about me, but it profited him little. If for moments I might trust to the voice of his charming, and feel only that a person of such talents and commanding energy was profit- able as a transient companion, especially to one who had so few that could instruct her in aught, I failed not with all my inexperience to see habitually what and how dangerous was our true relation, nay, the more his conver- sation pleased, instructed, fascinated me, the 196 WOT TON RE IN FRED. stronger in my mind grew a dim persuasion that he was selfish and worthless, that it be- hoved me to break off from him, once for all to be open and decided and, with whatever violation of ceremony, for ever forbid him my presence. This, indeed, had I been mistress of my own actions, I should have done. " But my aunt said nay, and my part was submission. Her conduct in regard to this man had all along been a puzzle to me. At first she vehemently objected to him, received his visits with coldness, sometimes scarcely even with a polished coldness; it was plain that she watched for opportunities of hurting him that she strove, by all means short of open incivility, to harass him into retreat. Nevertheless, he was not to be so baffled : with a strange patience he submitted to her injuries, or by cunning turns of courtesy evaded them, and so persevered with a thou- sand wiles in paying court to her, that by de- grees he insinuated himself into tolerance, nay, ere long into highest favour. By what new arts he had effected this I knew not, but WOTTON RE IN FRED. igf so it was, for the two were evidently on the most trustful footing ; they had private inter- views, the purport of which I did not learn ; only I could see by abundant symptoms that secrets were between them secrets of what they reckoned weighty import, and from which it seemed I was to be carefully shut out. " This mystery surprised and sometimes alarmed me ; I hate mystery at all times, and in the present case I had signs that it con- cerned myself. My aunt had now changed her dialect with regard to Walter ; she no longer spoke of him with bitterness, but zeal- ously, with affection, nay, with admiration. She daily introduced the topic ; asked my opinion of this and that feature in his char- acter ; defended him where I disliked, and warmly confirmed my judgment when it was favourable. She descanted at large on his looks, his talent, his manliness of mind ; the polished strength, the elegance, the perfect nobleness of his whole bearing in short, whatever quality she knew me to approve of, with that in full measure she strove to invest I9 8 WOT TON REINFRED. him. I had much to object ; I failed not to point out in contrast her own prior view of him. She owned that she had been mistaken ; a fair outside was not always a false one ; she understood this man better than I and could answer for his integrity, nay, more, for his in- tentions towards myself, which she had at first doubted, but now knew to be generous. As she saw me shrink from such applications, she did not pursue them, but talked in general of the charms of wealth and high station, and how precious it was to be loved for one's own sake. The drift of all this I could not but di- vine ; in fact, her whole being seemed pos- sessed with the project ; a glad animation sparkled in her looks when she spoke of it, a hope and ardour such as I had never seen there before. " Of my own feelings on the matter I could give little account. By such influence, with which his own treatment of me skilfully co- operated, a sort of false glory had been thrown round this man ; yet surely, thought I, this is not love ? For I felt, or might have WOTTON REINFRED. igg felt, that I feared and did not trust him, that we were still divided, must for ever be di- vided. The thought of wedding him was frightful to me, but his asking me to wed him seemed a thing, with all the hints I had heard of it, so utterly unlikely that it gave me little trouble. On the whole I was mazed, dazzled, and knew only that in this bewilderment I knew nothing. " Walter disappointed my calculations ; in a letter full of cunning rhetoric he declared himself my lover, and offered me his hand ; my aunt had already given her consent, and he waited only for mine to be the happiest of living mortals ! What could I do ? what could I say ? I wept and sobbed, for there was a fearful contradiction within me. On the one side lay a life of dependence and chagrin, now threatening to become more galling than ever, without sympathy, without a friend, but one relative whom by my refusal I should bit- terly afflict, nay, as it seemed, I should rob of her last earthly hope ; and here, on the other side, stood the tempter, bright and joyful, 200 WOTTON REIN FRED. stretching forth his hand and beckoning me with smiles to a scene so different ! A man who loved me, of so many graces, too, and really splendid endowments ! For some in- stants I could have yielded, but a secret voice, in tones faint, yet inexpressibly earnest, warned me that he was false and cruel, that it should not and must not be. This warning I at last resolved, come what come might, to obey. " After two sleepless nights, and days ex- posed to a thousand influences of intreaty, menace, and persuasion, I rose with a decid- edness of purpose such as I had never before felt ; briefly, in words as distinct as were con- sistent with politeness, I penned my refusal, and, without speaking a word, laid the note before my aunt. Contrary to expectation she showed no anger, but only sorrow ; she wept and kissed me ; said that my happiness was hers ; that if I so wished it, so it should be. Such tenderness melted me ; I burst into tears and expressed in passionate language my un- happiness at distressing her. She renewed WOTTON RE IN FRED. 2O i her caresses and encouragement, only at the same time hinting as a question ; if perhaps my note was not too vigorously worded ? Why should we offend a man so powerful, so friendly to us? Were it not better if I ex- cused myself on simply the score of youth, and, without peremptory denial, left the mat- ter to die away of itself and Walter to change imperceptibly by force of time from a lover into a friend ? Eager for conciliation, glad by any means to purchase peace for the present, I consented ; in an unlucky hour the new let- ter was written and despatched ; and so the evil which I should have fronted when it came, postponed into vague distance, where it gathered fresh wrath against me for a future day. " Walter renewed his visits almost as if nothing had happened, only glancing once and from afar at the occurrence, to which he adroitly contrived to give a light turn, so that matters soon settled on their old footing, and I blessed myself that the storm was blown over. Of love for me he had never spoken and did 202 WOT TON RE IN FRED. not now speak, but strove rather with all his resources, which were nowise inconsiderable, to make our conversation generally interesting and profitable in particular for my intellectual culture, which he saw well was the object I had most at heart. By such means my suspi- cions were certainly quieted if not dispersed ; I again began to look on him with some degree of satisfaction, at least, with thankful- ness for what he taught me ; nor could I hide from myself that dubious, nay, repulsive as his inward nature might appear to me, I had seen few men of such endowments, few who had so quickened my faculties, and though with somewhat alien influence, given me so many new ideas and so much incitement to improve. " In this favourable mood he left us, his regiment being ordered to the North, where it was to be reduced, perhaps broken. He took his leave quietly, with friendliness, but no show of tenderness, and in the manner of a man who hoped yet without anxiety to meet us again. War, he observed, was a trade for the present as good as ruined, and of which at WOTTON REIN FRED. 203 any rate one would in time grow tired ; he had thoughts of slackening his connection with the army and settling on his own soil ; who knew but the Cincinnatus, when his sword had become a ploughshare, might tempt his fair hostesses to a long journey, or at least meet them in their wayfarings and re- new the memory of so many happy days ? In this fashion we parted ; with my aunt he was in dearer esteem than ever; even I could not but wish him good speed, and sometimes afterwards not without regret contrast his sprightly sense with the laborious, often mali- cious, inanity of most that remained in my sphere behind him. " A brisk correspondence had commenced between my aunt and Walter, in which she seemed to find her chief, or rather, sole pleas- ure, for ever since his departure a double dis- content had settled over her. About this time Jaspar, her son, paid us his first visit ; a gay, rather boisterous, but on the whole true- hearted young man; with him, as with the only one of my relations who had ever shown 204 WOTTEN RE IN FRED. me much affection, I by degrees established a pleasant friendship, which has remained un- broken through various vicissitudes, and now, indeed, forms my last confidence in the fu- ture. His regiment had returned from India, where he had fought and wandered, of all which he had much to tell us, or rather, to tell me, for his mother manifested little interest in this or aught that concerned him, and, strange as it may seem, her own only child had now come to see her, for the second time since in- fancy, not by her solicitation, but by her con- sent, and that unwillingly bestowed. Of these things he sometimes complained to me, yet with pity towards his mother rather than with anger ; indeed, my cousin is of so jocund, buoy- ant a temper that nothing painful abides with him. "Walter he knew by old acquaintance; they had been fellow-students at the military college, but as Jaspar spoke of him with dis- like, the mother, to avoid quarrels, rarely mentioned this subject, and to me it was now become well-nigh indifferent. Jaspar and I WOTTON REIN FRED, 20$ had family concerns and much that interested both to talk of. On the history of my par- ents he could throw no light, but he won- dered with me at my aunt's mysterious si- lence ; encouraged me under so many pain- ful circumstances, and often with unusual warmth declared that he would be a friend and brother to me always, befal what might. I had never had a brother, but I felt towards this man something like what a sister may feel. Undistinguished by any great quality, nay, with many faults and a certain coarse- ness of nature, he was good and kind to me, and in his company I felt so glad and safe, so affectionate yet so calm ! These five weeks flew away too quickly ; my new brother left us and I again remained alone, my aunt by some unaccountable perversity refusing even to let me correspond with him. "Her days were indeed become days of darkness ; she was wasting in unexplained sorrows ; her soul wrapt up in mystery and often also in the terrors and mortifications of superstition ; she felt no hope in life, no sym- 14 2O6 WOTTON REIN FRED. pathy with the living. With the social circle of our neighbourhood she was displeased, her- self likewise displeasing, and had almost ceased to correspond ; except when she heard of this stranger, her face was seldom bright- ened with any smile. What I suffered from her why should I describe to you? But I foresaw that sme change of place would soon follow, and with it perhaps some allevia- tion. Meanwhile I kept retired within my old fortress, where, quiet and diligent, I felt as if for the sake of knowledge I could suffer all this and much more. " What I had anticipated failed not to hap- pen. Early next spring we moved north- wards, and after a short residence among these fells, still farther northwards into Scot- land to the spot you know so well ! Dear land ! " EXCURSION (FUTILE ENOUGH) TO PARIS; AUTUMN 1851: THROWN ON PAPER, WHEN GALLOPING, FROM SATURDAY TO TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4-7, 1851. Chelsea, Oct. 4, 1851. The day before yes- terday, near midnight (Thursday, Oct. 2) I re- turned from a very short and insignificant ex- cursion to Paris ; which, after a month at Malvern Water-cure and then a ten days at Scotsbrig, concludes my travel for this year. Miserable puddle and tumult all my travels are, of no use to me, except to bring agitation, sleeplessness, horrors and distress ! Better not to travel at all unless when I am bound to it. But this tour to Paris was a promised one ; I had engaged to meet the Ashburtons (Lord and Lady) there on their return from Switzerland and Homburg, before either party left London : the times at last suited ; all was Copyright, 1891, by D. Appleton and Company. 2O8 EXCURSION TO PARIS. ready except will on my part ; so, after hesi- tation and painful indecision enough, I did re- solve, packed my baggage again, and did the little tour I stood engaged for. Nothing otherwise could well be more ineffectual, more void of entertainment to me ; but, in fine, it is done, and I am safe at home again. Being utterly weary, broken-down, and unfit for any kind of work, I will throw down my recollections of that sorry piece of travel, then fold the sheet or sheets together, and dismiss the business. Allans done. I will date, and be precise, so far as I am able. Monday, Sept. 21. Brother John still here ; he and I went to Chorley to consult about passports, routes, conditions, the journey be- ing now, and not till now, resolved upon. John was to set out for Yorkshire and Annan- dale on the morrow, and so had special busi- ness of his own to attend to. For me Chor- ley recommended the route by Dieppe and Rouen ; got me at the Reform Club a note of the packet and railway times (the former of which proved to be in error somewhat) ; could EXCURSION TO PARIS. 209 say nothing definite of passports. We are consulting Elliott at the Colonial Office. I was instantly taken across to the Foreign Of- fice, close by in Downing Street, and there for 7-y. 6d. got a passport, which, in spite of ru- mours and surmises, proved abundantly suffi- cient. Did no more that day that I can re- member. Next morning early John awoke me, shook hands, and rapidly went, leaving me to my own reflections and opposite of the sky. How we come and go in this world ! A rumour had arisen that my passport would require to be visaed (if that is the word) ; that I must go to the City for this end ; that, etc. : I called on Chorley to consult ; Chorley, his old mother having fallen suddenly ill, could not get away to see me even for a minute : laziness said, however, " Not to the City, don't ! " At Chapman's shop, I learned that Robert Browning (poet) and his wife were just about setting out for Paris : I walked to their place had during that day and the fol- lowing, consultations with these fellow pil- grims ; and decided to go with them, by 2io EXCURSION TO PARIS. Dieppe, on Thursday ; Wednesday had been my original day, but I postponed it for the sake of company who knew the way. Such rumours, such surmises ; the air was thick with suppositions, guesses, cautions ; each pub- lic office (Regent's Circus, Consul's House, or elsewhere), proclaimed its own plans, denying^ much more ignoring, that there was any other plan. For very multitude of guide-posts you could not find your way ! The Brownings, and their experience and friendly qualities, were worth waiting for during one day. Thursday, September 24., at 10 A. M., I was to be at London Bridge Railway Station ; there in person with portmanteau, and some English sovereigns : das Weiter wiirde sich geben. Up accordingly on Thursday morning, in unutterable flurry and tumult of humour, phenomena on the Thames, all dreamlike, one spectralism chasing another ; to the station in good time ; found the Brownings just arriving which seemed a good omen. Fare to Paris, 22s., wonderful ; thither and back " by return ticket" was but 1 125. according to this EXCURSION TO PARIS. 2 II route such had been the effect on prices of this " Glass Palace," and the crowds attracted towards it. Browning with wife and child and maid, then I, then an empty seat for cloaks and baskets, lastly at the opposite end from me a hard-faced, honest Englishman or Scotchman, all in grey and with a grey cap, who looked rather ostrich-like, but proved very harmless and quiet : this was the load- ing of our carriage, and so away we went, Browning talking very loud and with vi- vacity, I silent rather, tending towards many thoughts. To Reigate the county was more or less known to me. Beautiful enough, still green, the grey, cool light resting on it, oc- casionally broken by bursts of autumn sun. Some half-score miles from Brighton our road diverges to the left ; we make for " New- haven," the mouth of a small sea-canal, divided from Brighton by a pretty range of chalk hills. Chalk everywhere showing itself, grass very fine and green ; fringings of wood not in too great quantity ; all neat, all trim, a pretty enough bit of English country, all English in 212 EXCURSION TO PARIS. character. Newhaven, a new place, rising 1 fast as "haven" to the railways: our big soli- tary inn, the main building in it ; other dwell- ing-houses, coal- w liar ves, etc., chiefly on the opposite side of the channel, a channel of green, clear sea-water, hardly wider than a river : everything in a state of English trim- ness, and pleasant to look upon in the grey wind while we had nothing to do but smoke. Browning managed everything for me ; in- deed there was as yet nothing to manage. Our company numerous, but not quite a crowd ; mostly French : operations (as to lug- gage, steamer, etc.) all orderly and quiet. At length perhaps about half-past one, P. M., we got fairly under way. I should have said, a man with religious tracts, French, German, English, came on board ; I took from him in all the three kinds (which served me well as waste paper) ; many refused, some (chiefly of the English) with anger and contempt. On the deck were benches each with a back and hood covered with well-painted canvas, im- penetrable to rain or wind ; these proved EXCURSION TO PARIS. 213 very useful by-and-by. Stewards' assistants enough ; especially one little French boy, in fine blue clothes and cap, who was most in- dustrious among his countrywomen ; bigger French gawky (very stupid-looking fellow this) tried to be useful too, but couldn't much. Our friends, especially our French friends, were full of bustle, full of noise at starting ; but so soon as we had cleared the little chan- nel of Newhaven, and got into the sea or British Channel, all this abated, sank into the general sordid torpor of sea-sickness, with its miserable noises, " Hoahah hohh ! " and hardly any other amid the rattling of the wind and sea. A sorry phasis of humanity. Browning was sick, lay in one of the bench- tents horizontal, his wife, etc., below ; I was not absolutely sick, but had to lie quite quiet, and without comfort, save in one cigar for seven or eight hours of blustering, spraying, and occasional rain. Amused myself with French faces, and the successive prostration of the same prostration into doleful silence, then evanition into utter darkness under some 214 EXCURSION TO PARIS. bench-tent whence was heard only the " Hoah- hah-hohh ! " of vanquished despair. Pretty enough were several of them, not perfectly like gentlemen any one of them : indeed that character of face I found of the utmost rarity in France generally. " Bourgeois," in clean clothes, if civil, rather noisy manner. One handsome man of forty, olive complexion, black big eyes and beard, velvet cap without brim, stood long wrapped in copious blue cloak, and talked near me ; at length sank silent and vanished. Other, of brown hair and beard, head wrapt in shawl, rather silent from the first, protruded his under lip in sick disgust, and vanished a little sooner. Third, of big figure, blind and with specta- cles, strikingly reminded me of Jeffrey of Cierthon (" Robin Jeffrey," long since dead) : he sat by the gunwale, spoke little, in prepara- tion for the worst, and staid there. Inside the tent-benches all was " Hoahoh hohh ! " and more sordid groaning and vomiting. Blankets were procurable if you made interest. Many once elegant Frenchmen lay wrapt in EXCURSION TO PARIS. 215 blankets, huddled into any corner with their heads hid. We had some sharp brief showers ; darkness fell ; nothing but the clank of the paddles, raving of the sea, and " Hoah-oh-ho- ahh ! " Our Scotch ostrich friend stood long afoot, hard as stick ; at length he too disap- peared in the darkness, and we heard him ask- ing about " Dipe " (Dieppe) whether it was not yet near. Hard black elderly man came to smoke on the gunwale seat, near me ; Cap- tain forbade, stopped him, long foolish con- troversy in consequence; this was in day- light, and the ostrich had assisted : now it was only " Dipe ? " in the /th or 8th hour from starting. At length lighthouses appeared, and soon the lighthouse at the end of Dieppe pier; and we bounded into smooth water, into a broad basin, and saw houses and lamps all round it. Towards nine P. M. by English time: put your watch forward a quarter of an hour, for that is French time which you have to do with now. Hdtel de 1'Europe, near the landing place, proved to be a second-rate hotel ; but we got 2i6 EXCURSION TO PARIS. beds, a sitting-room, and towards 10 P. M. some very bad cold tea, and colder coffee. Brown- ing was out in the Douane : we had all passed our persons through it, guided in by a rope- barrier, and shown our passports ; now Browning was passing our luggage ; brought it all in safe about half-past ten ; and we could address ourselves to desired repose. Walked through some streets with my cigar: high gaunt stone streets with little light but the uncertain moon's; sunk now in the pro- foundest sleep at half-past ten. To bed in my upper room, bemoaned by the sea, and small incidental noises of the harbour ; slept till four; smoked from the window, grey cool morning, chalk cliff with caves be- yond the harbour France there and no mistake. If France were of much moment to me ! Slept gradually again, a little while ; woke dreaming, confused things about my mother : ah, me ! At eight was on the street, in the clear sun, with my portmanteau lying packed behind me ; to be back for breakfast at nine. Dieppe harbour is the mouth of a EXCURSION TO PARIS. river, broad gap in the general chalk cliffs (bounded to east by the chalk of " caves " aforesaid ; westward it stretches into a level doivn of some extent beyond Hotel de 1'Eu- rope and the other houses) ; basin big, I know not how deep, has fine stout quays, draw- bridges, few, very few ships ; range of high quaint old houses border it on two sides, the west (ours) and south where is a market of fish, etc., and then the main part of the town ; eastward is innocent fringed undulating green country (cliff of " caves " goes but a short way inland), northward is the sea. Walked south, with early cigar, into the interior of the town. Good broad street with trottoirs, with fair shops, and decent-looking population ; very poor several of them, but none ragged, their old clothes all accurately patched a thrifty people. Ragpickers ; a sprinkling of dandies too ; London dandy of ten years ago, with hands in coat pockets, and a small stick rising out from one of them ! Bakers, naked from the waist, all but a flannel waistcoat and cotton nightcap ; horse-collar loaves and of 2i8 EXCURSION TO PARIS. other straighter cable shapes, all crust and levity. Streets of fair cleanness, water flow- ing in the gutters. Beards abundant. Rue d Ecosse : thought of old Knox, how he was driven to " Deap " and from it. A chdteau, with soldiers, is in the place, the down is forti- fied, and shows big cannon. Several big old churches ; many fountains, at one of which I drank by help of a little girl and her caraffe. Besides the chief street (continuation of our H6tel de 1'Europe), there break off at least two others from the southern part of the harbour, and join with chief street in the interior ; one of these is Rue d'Ecosse, very poor and dead, which I did not far survey. Near the har- bour, between chief street and next, is a square, and general market-place (fruit, her- rings, etc.) ; big old church, new statue of Duquesnoy (?"ancien marin de cette ville," said a snuffy, rusty kind of citoyen to me on my inquiry): a quaint old town of 10 or 15,- ooo: fairly as good as Dumfries: immense roofs, two or sometimes three stories in them : many houses built as courts with a street door ; EXCURSION TO PARIS. 219 each house in its own style : all very well to look upon, and good for a morning stroll. Breakfast was not much to brag of ; tea cold, coffee colder, as before ; butter good, bread eatable though of crusty-sponge contexture. Browning and I strolled out along the quay we were upon, very windy towards the sea ; sheer chalk cliffs some mile or two off, downs and scraggly edifices close by. House given by " Napoleon le grand " to somebody there named : we inquired of three persons in vain for explanation of the inscription legible there ; at length an old fisherman told us. The M. somebody had saved many persons from the sea: a distinguished member (or per- haps servant) of the Humane Society, which had its offices there within sight. Trh bien. An immense flaring crucifix stood aloft near the end of this quay : sentries enough, in red trousers, walked everywhere ; a country ship, with fresh fish, came bounding in : we strolled back to pay our bill, and get ready for our start to Paris. Browning, as before, did every- thing ; I sat out of doors on some logs at my 220 EXCURSION TO PARIS. ease, and smoked, looking over the popula- tion and their ways. Before eleven we were in the omnibus ; facing towards the Debarca- d'ere (rail Terminus], which is at the south-east corner of the harbour, a very smart, airy, but most noisy and confused place. Maximum of fuss ! The railway people, in- stead of running to get your luggage and self stowed away quhm primum and out of their road, keep you and it in hall after hall, weigh- ing it, haggling over it, marching you hither, then thither ; making an infinite hubbub. You cannot get to your carriages till the very last minute, and then you must plunge in head foremost. " They order these matters worse in France ! " Browning fought for us, and we, that is the women, the child, and I, had only to wait and be silent. We got into a good carriage at last : we four, a calm young Frenchman in glazed hat, who was kind enough not to speak one word, and a rather pretty young lady of French type, who smiled at the child sometimes, but sat thoughtful for the rest and did not speak either. There was EXCURSION TO PARIS. 221 air enough, both my window and the other down ; the air was fine ; the country beautiful ; and so away we rolled under good auspices again. This rail, all but the Terminus department, is managed in the English fashion, and carried us excellently along. Country of bright wav- ing green character, undulating, our course often along brooks, by pleasant old coun- try hamlets; many manufactures (spinning, I guessed), but of most pleasant, clean, rustic character ; wood enough on the hill sides, far too thick-planted ; stations not named, you can only guess where you are. "Junction" by and by from Havre probably an open space without buildings as yet : an altogether beau- tiful, long, manufacturing village town to the left near by ; without smoke or dirt visible, trees enough might really be a model in Lancashire ; the Glostershire railway scenes offer nothing much superior. Country all made of chalk, as in England (to near Paris, I think) ; fine velvet grass, meadow culture main- ly ; fine old humble parish churches ; wood 15 222 EXCURSION TO PARIS. enough still, but twice or even thrice as thick as we allow it to be. Rouen in two hours : long tunnel, still stronger signs of cotton, bleaching, spinning, etc., then the big black steeples, thick heavy towers of cathedral and the rest and here is Joan of Arc's last resting place and the scene of many singular things. Distinguished still by the clearness of its air, the trees and gardens and pleasant meadow- looking places, which extended to the very entrance. No smoke to speak of ; a lovely place compared with Manchester or the others of that region ! It is true the press of business seemed a great deal more moderate. Our railway station, roofed with glass, was equal to the Carlisle one ; " buffet " (refreshment room), etc., all in order ; and they let us smoke under conditions. In twenty minutes some other train got in to join us ; and we took our flight again through space. Country still chalk : we cross and again cross the Seine river, swift but not bigger- looking than the Thames at Chelsea : fine hills, fine villages, with due fringing of wood ; a EXCURSION TO PARIS. 223 really pleasant landscape for many a mile. Pass "Vernon," battle-scene of Convention with Charlotte Corday's people: not notable farther. Another town visible, all in white stone, and rural purity on my right. At Mantes we stop ten minutes ; fine houses with their French windows and blinds hung over our station : " Mantes, je crois, Monsieur ! " and away we go again. A "swift" method of travelling ; swift and nothing more ! The land, I observe, is all divided into ribbons ; pe- tite culture with a vengeance. Beans and le- gumes probably the chief growth. Ploughing shallow and ill-done : certainly the Seine val- ley, which ought to be one of the richest in the world, was not well cultivated, nor by this plan could it be. Copses are pretty frequent ; at length we get into vineyards. But still the ribbon subdivision lasts; pleasant to the eye only, not to the mind. Towards four P. M. see symptoms of approach to Paris : blunt height with something like a castle on it guess to be St. Cloud: big arch of hard masonry to left of that guess to be I Arc de lEtoile : right 224 EXCURSION TO PARIS. in both cases. At length Paris itself (4 P. M.), and we are safe in the terminus at our set hour. Alas, it was still a long battle before our luggage could be got out; and a crowding, jingling, vociferous tumult, in which the brave Browning fought for us, leaving me to sit be- side the women. It is so they manage in France ; there are droits de 1'octroi ; there are in fine, there is maximum of fuss, and much ado about almost nothing ! Some other train was in the act of departing, as our poor women sat patiently waiting on their bench ; and all was very fidgetting and very noisy. I walked out to smoke ; one official permitted me, another forbade ; I at length went into the street and sat down upon a borne to smoke; touters of hotels came round me : I am for the Hdtel Meurice, inflexibly fixed ; de grdce, Mes- sieurs, laissez-moi en paix ; which at last they did. Cigar ended, I went in again, Browning still fighting (in the invisible distance) about nothing at all. Our luggage visible at last upon a distant counter, then Browning visible EXCURSION TO PARIS. 2 2$ with report of a hackney coach : we think it is now over ; rash souls, there is yet endless up- roar among the porters, wishing to carry our luggage on a truck ; we won't, they will : even Browning had at last grown heated ; at length I do get a cab for myself and little trunk, cer- tain French coins hastily from Browning, and roll away. Halt! Browning has my key; I have to turn back, and get it; happily this proves the last remover, and now I do get along and reach Meurice's at five instead of four P. M. : Friday, the 25th September, 1851. And here, it being now two o'clock, and the sun inviting, I will draw bridle, and stop for the present day. A brisk, bright autumn evening as I rolled through the streets of Paris; recognise my route first on the Boulevard, still better in the Rue de la Paix and Place Vendome ; cigar nearly done, we are at the door of Meurice's in the Rue de Rivoii, a crowd of cabs and other such miscellanies loitering there. Con- cierge, old good-humoured woman with black eyes and clean cap, knows the number of the 226 EXCURSION TO PARIS. Ashburtons, knows not whether they are at home : my cabman, an old, poor, good-hu- moured knave of the whip, is defective in pe- tite monnaie, at length by aid of the concierge we settle handsomely ; Mason, too, Lord Ash- burton's servant, appears, and I get aloft into my appointed bedroom, " No. 22," a bare fan- tastic place, looking out into the street bad prospects of sleep though I am at the very top of the house for that object. Both Lady and Lord have gone out, not finding me at four as covenanted ; dinner is to be " at six precisely." Walk on the streets, finishing my cigar; dress, have melancholy survey of my bedroom ; dinner in the dim salle ft manger, seasoned with English news ; after dinner to the The'dtre Franks, where Lord Normanby has been pleased to furnish us his box. Very bad box, " stage box," close to the actors ; full of wind-drafts, where we all took cold more or less. A clever energetic set of faces visible in stalls (far superior to such as go to Drury Lane) ; among them, pointed out by Lady Ashburton, who had met him, the figure EXCURSION TO PARIS. 22/ of Changarnier. Strange to see such a man sitting sad and solitary there to pass his even- ing. A man of placid baggy face, towards sixty; in black wig, and black clothes; high brow, low crown, head longish ; small hook nose, long upper lip (all shaved), corners of which, and mouth generally, and indeed face generally, express obstinacy, sulkiness, and silent long-continued labour and chagrin. I could have likened him to a retired shop- keeper of thoughtful habits, much of whose savings had unexpectedly gone in railways. Thomas Wilson of Eccleston-street resembles him in nose and mouth ; but there was more intellect in Changarnier, though in a smoke- bleared condition. A man probably of con- siderable talent; rather a dangerous-looking man. I hear he is from Dijon, come of repu- table parliamentary people. Play was called La Gageure Imprevu, or some such name ; worthless racket and cackle (of mistaken jeal- ousy, etc., in a country chateau of the old re- gime) ; actors rather good; to me a very wea- risome affair. Lady Ashburton went to her 228 EXCURSION TO PARIS. mother's at the end of this ; Lord Ashburton and I staid out a trial of the next piece, Maison de St. Cyr : actors very good here again, play wretched, and to my taste sadder and sadder two routfs of Louis XIV. time, engaged in se- ducing two Maintenon boarding-school girls, find the door of St. Cyr locked as they attempt to get out ; find at the window an Exempt " de parle rot" are carried to the Bastille, and obliged to marry the girls: their wretched mockeries upon marriage, their canine liber- tinage and soulless grinning over all that is beautiful and pious in human relations were profoundly saddening to me ; and I proposed emphatically an adjournment for tea ; which was acceded to, and ended my concern with the French theatre for this bout. Pfaugh ! the history of the day was done ; but upstairs, in my naked, noisy room, began a history of the night, which was much more frightful to me. Eheu ! I have not had such a night these many years, hardly in my life before. My room had commodes, cheffoniers, easy chairs, and a huge gilt pendule (half an hour wrong) EXCURSION TO PARIS. 229 was busy on the mantelpiece ; but on the bed was not a rag of curtain, the pillow of it looked directly to the window, which had bateaus (leaves, not sashes), no shutters, nor with all its screens the possibility of keeping out the light. Noises from the street abounded, nor were wanting from within. Brief, I got no wink of sleep all night ; rose many times to make readjustments of my wretched furniture, turned the pillow to the foot, etc. ; stept out to the balcony four or five times, and in my dressing-gown and red night-cap smoked a short Irish pipe there (lately my poor moth- er's), and had thoughts enough, looking over the Tuileries garden there, and the gleam of Paris city during the night watches. I could have laughed at myself, but indeed was more disposed to cry. Very strange : I looked down on armed patrols stealthily scouring the streets, saw the gleam of their arms ; saw sentries with their lanterns inside the garden ; felt as if I could have leapt down among them preferred turning in again to my disconsolate truckle bed. Towards two o'clock the street noises 230 EXCURSION TO PARIS. died away ; but I was roused just at the point of sleep by some sharp noise in my own room, which set all my nerves astir ; I could not try to sleep again till half-past four, when again a sharp noise smote me all asunder, which I dis- covered now to be my superfluous friend the heterodox pendule striking (all wrong, but on a sharp loud bell, doubly and trebly loud to my poor distracted nerves just on the act of clos- ing into rest) the tiatf-hour ! This in waking time I had not noticed ; this, and the pendule in toto, I now stopt : but sleep was away ; the outer and the inner noises were awake again ; sleep was now none for me perhaps some hour of half stupor between six and seven, at which latter hour I gave it up ; and deter- mined, first, to have a tub to wash myself in ; secondly, not for any consideration to try again the feat of " sleeping " in that apartment for one. My controversies about the tub (paquet as I happily remembered to call it) were long and resolute, with several success- ive lackeys to whom I jargoned in emphatic mixed lingo ; very ludicrous if they had not EXCURSION TO PARIS. 231 been very lamentable : at length I victoriously got my paquet (a feat Lord Ash burton himself had failed in, and which I did not try again while there) : huge tub, five feet in diameter, with two big cans of water, into which with soap and sponges I victoriously stept, and made myself thoroughly clean. Then out out, thank heaven to walk and smoke; an hour yet to breakfast time. Rue de Rivoli had been mainly built since my former visit to Paris ; a very fine-looking straight street, of five or six storey houses, with piazza ; French aspect everywhere, other- wise reminding me of Edinburgh New Town, and only perhaps three furlongs in length. Streets straight as a line have long ceased to seem the beautifullest to me. Population rather scanty for a metropolitan street ; street- sweeper, " cantonniers" a few omnibuses with Passy, Versailles, etc., legible, a few strag- gling cabriolets and insignificant vehicles, it reminded you of Dublin with its car-driving, not of London anywhere with its huge traffic and its groaning wains. Walkers any whither 232 EXCURSION TO PARIS. were few. Tuileries Garden (close on my left) seemed to have grown bushier since my visit ; the trees, I thought, were far larger ; but nobody would confirm this to me when I applied to neighbours' experience. I did not enter Tuileries Garden yet : sentries in abun- dance ; uncertain whether smoking was per- mitted -within; judged it safest to keep the street, westward, westward. Place de la Rtv- olution (Place Louis Quinze) altogether altered : Obelisk of Luxor, asphalt spaces and stone pavements, lamps all on big gilt columns, big fountain (its Nereids all silent) : a smart place, and very French in its smartness ; but truly an open airy quarter, Champs Elys6es woods (or brushwoods), broad roads, river, quais, all very smart indeed. Cross the bridge (Pont de la Concorde, I think, a new- looking bridge), Palais Bourbon or National Assembly House on the south side of it, No, I did not now cross these, I crossed by the next bridge eastward (Pont Royal), that was my route, so important to myself and man- kind ! Quais rather rusty and idle-looking ; EXCURSION TO PARIS. 233 river itself no great things either for size or quality, bathing-barges mainly, and nothing very clean, or busy at all. Re-cross by the Pont des Arts ; Louvre getting itself new-faced, its old face new hewn, complicated scaffold- ings and masons hanging over it, rather coburbbish in its effect. Much of the interior is getting pulled down ; Carrousel, Tuileries, Jardin des Tuileries, Palais Royal, etc., all looked dirty, unswept, or insufficiently swept, the humble besom is not perhaps the chosen implement of France. Home at nine : all our party ill of cold, Lady invisible ; my room to be next night a much better, curtained and quite elegant, but still not quiet one, on this same floor (the third I think ; directly above the pillars and the first entresol), looking out into the interior court : there I will try again, one night at least. Lord Ashburton to see " Museums " or some such thing with two French " gentlemen of distinction ; " I decline to go ; lie down on a sofa, covering my face with a newspaper, address two stamped Gali- gnani's Journals to Chelsea, to Scotsbrig, and 234 EXCURSION TO PARIS. decide to do nothing whatever all day but lie still and solicit rest. Si fait ; but very little rest may prove discoverable? I lay in one place at least, having first made a call on the Brownings whom I found all brisk and well- rested in the Rue Michodiere (queer old quiet inn, Aux armes de la Ville de Paris], and very sorry for my mischances. After noon, Lord Ashburton returned, out to make calls, etc. ; I with him in the carriage, into the Pay slat in and other quarters ; lazily looking at Paris, the only thing I care to do with it in present cir- cumstances. Did me good, that kind of " ex- ercise," the hardest I was fit for. Nimm Dick in Acht. At 4 o'clock home, when two things were to be done : M. Thiers to be received, and a ride to be executed, of which only the former took fulfilment A little after 4 Thiers came. I had seen the man before in London, and cared not to see him again ; but it seemed to be expected I should stay in the room, so after deciphering this from the hieroglyphs of the scene, I staid. Lord and Lady Ashburton, Thiers and I : a EXCURSION TO PARIS. 235 sumptuous enough drawing-room, yellow silk sofas, pendules, vases, mirrors, turkish carpet, good wood fires ; dim windy afternoon ; voila. Royer-Collard, we heard, once said : " Thiers est un polisson ; mais Guizot, c'est un drole?" Heigho, this was Prosper Me'rime'e's account afterwards, heigho ! M. Thiers is a little brisk man towards sixty, with a round, white head, close-cropt and of solid business form and size ; round fat body tapering like a ninepin into small fat feet, and ditto hands ; the eyes hazel and of quick, comfortable, kindly aspect, small Roman nose; placidly sharp fat face, puckered eyeward (as if all gravitating to- wards the eyes) ; voice of thin treble, pecul- iarly musical ; gives you the notion of a frank social kind of creature, whose cunning must lie deeper than words, and who with whatever polissonnerie may be in him has absolutely no malignity towards anyone, and is not the least troubled with self-seekings. He speaks in a good-humuored treble croak which hustles it- self on in continuous copiousness, and but for his remarkably fine voice would be indistinct, 236 EXCURSION TO PARIS. which it is not even to a stranger. " Oh bah ! eh b'en lui disais-j " etc. in a monot- onous low gurgling key, with occasional sharp yelping warbles (very musical all, and inviting to cordiality and laissez-aller), it is so that he speaks, and with such a copiousness as even Macaulay cannot rival. "Oh, bah, eh b'en!" I have not heard such a mild broad river of discourse ; rising anywhere, tending any- whither. His little figure sits motionless in its chair ; the hazel eyes looking with face puckered round them looking placidly ani- mated ; and the lips, presided over by the little hook-nose, going, going ! But he is willing to stop too if you address him ; and can give you clear and dainty response about anything you ask. Not the least offi- ciality is in his manner; everywhere rather the air of a bon enfant, which I think really (with the addition of coquiri) must partly be his character! Starting from a fine Sevres vase which Lady Ashburton had been pur- chasing, he flowed like a tide into pottery in general ; into his achievements when minister EXCURSION TO PARIS. 237 and encourager of Sevres; half-an-hour of this, truly wearisome, though interspersed with remarks and questions of our own. Then suddenly drawing bridle, he struck into Association (Lord Ashburton had the day be- fore been looking at some ot the Associated Workmen) ; gave his deliverance upon that affair, with anecdotes of interviews, with po- litical and moral criticisms, etc. For me wenig zu bedcnten, but was good too of its kind. One master of Assocdes, perhaps a hat- ter, " ruled like a Cromwell," though by votes only ; and had banished and purged out the opposition party, not to say all drunkards and other unfit hands : tel regime de fer was the indispensable requisite; for which, and for other reasons, Association could never suc- ceed or become general among workmen. Besides, it forbade excellence: no rising from the ranks there, to be a great captain of work- ers, as many, six or seven of whom he named, had done by the common method. Then ap- plicable only to hatters, chair-makers, and tradesmen whose market was constant. Try 16 238 EXCURSION TO PARIS. it in iron-working, cotton-spinning, or the like, there arrive periods when no market can be found, and without immense capital you must stop. Good thing however for keeping men from chdtnage, for " educating " them in several respects. Thing to be left to try itself, is not, and never can be, the true way of men's work- ing together. To all this I could well assent ; but wished rather it would all end, there being little new or important in it to me ! At length, on inquiry about Michelet (for whom I had a letter) we got into a kind of literary strain for a little. Michelet stood low in T.'s esteem as a historian ; lower even than in mine. Good- humoured contempt for Michelet and his airy syllabubs of hypothetic songerie instead of nar- rative of facts. " Can stand le Poete in his place; but not in the domain of truths": a sentence, commented on and expanded ; which indicated to me no great aesthic sovereignty on the part of M. Thiers, leave him alone then ! Our conclusion was, M. Michelet was perhaps a bit of a sot ; M. Lamartine, who had meanwhile come in course too, being de- EXCURSION TO PARIS. 239 finable rather as a. fat (a hard saying of mine, which T. with a grin of laughter adopted) : and so we left Parnassus a la Franchise ; and M. Thiers, who could not stay to dinner, took himself away. Our horses, in the meanwhile, had roved about saddled for two hours, and were now also gone. Nothing remained but to "dress for dinner," when at seven the two French gentlemen of distinction were ex- pected. Our two Distinguds were literary, one Meri- mee already mentioned, a kind of critic, his- torian, linguistically and otherwise of worth, a hard, logical, smooth but utterly barren man (whom I had seen before in London, with lit- tle wish for a second course of him) ; the other a M. Laborde, Syrian traveller ; a freer-going, jollier, but equally unproductive human soul. Our dinner, without Lady, was dullish, the talk confused, about Papal aggression, etc., supported by me in very bad French (unwill- ingly), and in Protestant sentiments, which seemed very strange to my sceptical friends. Joan of Arc too came in course, about whom 240 EXCURSION TO PARIS. a big book had just come out : of De VAverdy, neither of our friends had ever heard ! In the drawing-room with coffee it was a little bet- ter : a little better : a little, not much ; at last they went away ; and I, after some precau- tions and preparations into bed, where, in few minutes, in spite of noises, there fell on me (thank heaven) the gratefullest deep sleep ; and I heard or thought of nothing more for six hours following ! so ends the history of Saturday, 26th September. Ay de mi! Sunday morning, short walk again ; glance into the Champs Elystcs and their broad avenue with omnibuses ; I had to return soon for breakfast. My good sleep, though it ended at 5 A. M. and would not recommence, had made me very happy in comparison. Break- fast, badish always, tea and coffee cold, etc., the Hotel Meurice, spoiled by English and suc- cess, in general bad, though the most expensive to be found in Paris. Lord Ashburton's bill (I incidentally learned) was about ^45 a week, self, Lady Ashburton, and two servants, maid and man ! After breakfast, came Lord Gran- EXCURSION TO PARIS. 241 ville, talked intelligently about the methods of " Glass Palace " (bless the mark !), graphic account of Fox the builder thereof; once a medical student, ran off with master's daugh- ter, lived by his wits in Liverpool, lecturing on mechanics, etc., got into the railway ; be- came a railway contractor, ever a bigger and bigger one (though without funds or probably almost without), is now very great, " ready to undertake the railway to Calcutta" at a day's notice, if you asked him : he built the glass soap bubble, on uncertain terms : very well described indeed. A cleverer man, this Lord Granville than I had quite perceived before. After his departure, wrote to Chel- sea, to Scotsbrig ; towards 2 went to walk with Herrschaft in the Tuileries Gardens ; Garden very dirty, fallen leaves, dust, etc. ; many people out : to Place de la Concorde, op- posite Lady Sandwich's windows (2, Rue Saint Florentin) where Talleyrand once dwelt. Lady Ashburton still suffering from cold, couldn't go to see her mother, went driving by herself, the last time she was out at all 242 EXCURSION TO PARIS. during my stay : after a call by Lord Ash- burton and me at Lady S.'s we went, about 3 P. M., to ride ; the Champ de Mars our first whitherward. Paris, Sunday : All rather rusty ; crowds not very great ; cleanness, neatness, neither in locality nor population, a conspicuous feature. Ch. de Mars all hung round with ugly blankets on Pont-du-Jean side ; a balloon getting filled ; no sight except for payment. Against my will, we dismounted at another entrance, and went in. Horse-holder with brass badge, ve- hement against another without : " Serjent de Ville ! " at length he got possession of the horses, and proved a very bad " holder." Dirty chaos of cabriolets, etc., about this gate : four or five thousand people in at half-a-franc, or to the still more inner mysteries, a franc each. Clean shopkeeper people, or better, un- expectedly intelligent come to see this ! A sorry spectacle ; dusty, disordered Champ de Mars, and what it now held. Wooden bar- riers were up; seats on the oJd height raised for Feast of Pikes, which is terribly sunk now, EXCURSION TO PARIS. 243 instead of " thirty feet " hardly eight or ten, without grass, and much of it torn away alto- gether. Grassless, graceless, untrim and sor- did, everything was ! An Arab razzia, with sad gurrous, and blanketed scarecrows of per- formers (perhaps 15 or 20 in all) was going on ; then a horse race ditto ; noisy music, plenty of soldiers guarding and operating. I moved to come away ; but just then they in- flated a hydrogen mannequin of silk ; his foot quivered and shook, he was soon of full size, then they let him off, and he soared majesti- cally like a human tumbler of the first grace and audacity, right over the top of the inflated balloon (I know not by what mechanism), per- haps 500 feet into the air, and then majesti- cally descended on the other side : none laughed, or hardly any except we. Off again ; find our horses with effort, man wants two francs not one : (a modest horse-holder) ! We ascend the river side; dirty lumber on all sides of path : guingctte (coarse dirty old house, dirty wooden balcony, and mortals miserably drinking) : across by Pont de Gre- 244 EXCURSION TO PARIS.. noble, into Passy, by most dusty roads, omni- buses, cabs, etc., meeting us in clouds pretty often, on each side to Auteuil, finally into Bois de Boulogne, which also is a dirty scrubby place (one long road mainly of two miles or so, with paltry bits of trees on each hand, and dust in abundance) ; there we careered along, at a sharp trot, and had almost all to ourselves, for nobody else ex- cept a walker or two, a cab-party or two at long intervals were seen. Ugly unkept grass on each side ; cross-roads, one or two, turn- ing off into one knew not what ; I found it an extremely sober " Park ! " One of the " Forts " with great ugly chasms round it, on our left. At length we emerge again into Passy ; see the balloon high overhead, people in it wav- ing their hats, mannequin (shrunk to a monk- ey) hanging on below : a sudden wind then blew it away, for ever one was glad to think. Arc de 1'Etoile, some Hippodrome just coming out, and such a bewildered gulf-stream of peo- ple and cabs on the big road townwards as I never saw before ! Lord Ashburton cautioned EXCURSION TO PARIS. 245 me to ride vigilantly, the people being reck- less and half-drunk : crack, crack, gare ! gare & vous ! it was abundantly unpleasant ; at length I proposed setting off with velocity in the aggressive manner, and that soon brought us through it. Dirty theatre tea-gardens (where are singers, drink, etc.), with other more pleasant suburb houses, were nestled among the ill-grown trees, why is this wood so ill-grown ? At the corner of Place de la Concorde, " Secour aux Blesses " stood painted on a signboard of a small house (police or other public house) ; a significant announcement ; rain was now falling. Many carriages ; al- most all shabby. One dignitary had two ser- vants in livery, and their coat skirts were hung over the rear of the carriage, to be rightly con- spicuous ; the genus gent leman (if taken strictly) seemed to me extremely rare on the streets of Paris, or rather not discoverable at all. Per- haps owing to the season, all being in the country ? Plenty of well-dressed men were on the streets daily ; but their air was seldom or never " gentle ' in our sense : a thing I re- 246 EXCURSION TO PARIS. marked. Dinner of two was brief and dim ; dpure'es, what they are. After coffee, English talk ; winded up with (obligate) readings of Burns, which were not very successful in my own surmise. To bed, and alas ! no sleep, but tossing, fluctuating, and confusion till 4 A. M. ; a bad preparation for next day. Monday morning was dim, and at 7 I was again awake ; an unslept man. Walk through the old streets, eastward and north- ward. Rue Neuve des Petit s August ins, to Place des Victoires ; places known to me of old : contrast of feelings seven and twenty years apart : eheu, eheu ! The streets had all got trottoirs, the old houses seemed older and more dilapidated : crowds of poor-looking people, here and there a well-dressed man, going as if to his " office " (bourgeois, in clean linen and coat) ; very small percentage of such, and all smoking. Louis XIV. in PL des Victoires: "Comment?" said I to two little dumpy men in white wide-awakes : " Est-ce qu' on a laisse cela, pendant la r6publique ? " They grinned a good-humoured affirmation. EXCURSION TO PARIS. 24? Homewards by the Palais Royal ; said Palais Royal very dirty, very dim ; hardly anybody in it : new in the southern part ; Louis Phi- lippe's Palace made into an exhibition place for Arts et Metiers. Emerge then, after some wind- ings and returnings, into the Rue St. Honore" ; heart of the old Louvre and Carrousel almost gutted out, block of half-demolished build- ings still standing ; very dusty, very dim, all things. In the narrow streets and poor dark shops, etc., such figures, poor old women, lit- tle children, the forlorn of the earth. " How do they live?" one asked oneself with sorrow and amazement. Catarrh general still in our party, catarrh or other illness universal in it. Better get home as soon as possible ? After breakfast, with Lord Ashburton to call on General Cavaignac, whom we under- stood to be in town, of all Frenchmen the one I cared a straw to see. Rue Houssaie 1 where it joins as continuation to Rue Taitbout, north from Boulevard des Italiens ; there in a mod- est-enough locality was the General's house. " Gone to the country (aux Dfyartements)" un- 248 EXCURSION TO PARIS. certain whither, uncertain when ; clearly no Cavaignac for us ! We drove away, disap- pointed in mind, tant soit pen. " Lift the top from the carnage, let me drive through the streets with you, and sit warm and smoke while you do business : " that was my pro- posal to Lord Ashburton, who gladly as- sented : agreed to wait at his " club " (Club of Frenchmen chiefly, and of some Strangers, near the Boulevards, quite " empty " at this time) ; home for a warmer coat, coachman and lackey to doff the carriage-roof : and after some wait- ing we all duly rally (at Rue de la Paix I, at said club Lord Ashburton) and roll away eastward and into the heart of the city. Pleasant drive, and the best thing I could do to-day. Boulevards very stirring, airy, loco- motive to a fair degree, but the -vehiculation very light. Looked at the exotic old high houses ; the exotic rolling crowd. Barriere St. Mar- tin ; turn soon after Into the rightward streets, shops, lapidary or other, Lord Ashburton has to call at ; I remain seated ; learn we are near the Temple ; decide to go thither. Old, EXCURSION TO PARIS. 249 pale-dingy edifice, shorn of all its towers ; only a gate and dead wall to the street. Policeman issues on us as we enter ; stony eyes, villainous look, has never heard of Louis XVI., or his imprisonment here. " Non, mon- sieur!" but from the other side of the gate comes an old female concierge who is fully familiar with it ; she, brandishing her keys, will gladly show us all. Building seems totally empty: a police station in some corner of it, that is all. Garde Mobile lived in it in 1848, be- fore that it was a convent (under the Bour- bons) ; Napoleon had already much altered it ; filled up (comble") one storey of it, in order to make a piece