YEAST: 9 ll^r /7^7 EEPEIXTED, WITU CORKECTIOXS AND ADDITIO^sS, FROM FJEIASEE'S MAGAZINE. > » : . ••• : • • • > » J » , J > « • • • > > 3 y i i > 5 >, '^> 3*1 »•)'■>• »• 1 J 3 J J i ■» > ^3 ' ^ , ^^ ^^ ^» ,\^ ^r '^ NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN' SQUARE. • THE DATS TTILL COME, WHEN YE SHALL DESIEH TO BEE OXE OF THE DAYS OF THE SOX OF MAX, AND T« SHALL NOT SEE IT.' , • " • ' f I ; " f € ' ' t C, C c € < « , . ' ' • « c c ',' . . ... .".■•• •...., . .. • • . • • , • • • • ••••. • •it. • • «' • • • • . • • • « • « < . . ••....,; Y33 r< u \ PREFACE. This little tale was written between two and three years ago, in tlie hope that it might help to call the attention of wiser and better men than I am, to the questions which are now agitating the minds of the rising generation, and to the absolute necessity of solving them at once and earnestly, unless we would see the faith of our forefathers crumble away beneath the combined influence of new truths which are fancied to be incompatible with it, and new mistakes as to its real essence. That this can be done, I believe and know : if I had not believed it, I would never have put pen to paper on the subject. I believe that the ancient Creed, the eternal Gospel, will stand, and conquer, and prove its might in this age, as it has in every other for eighteen hundred years, by claiming, and subduing, and organizing those young anarchic forces, which now, unconscious of their parentage, rebel against Him to whom they owe their being. But for the time being, the young men and women of our day are fast parting from their parents and each other ; the more thonglitf il are wandering either to- IV PREFACE. ward Rome, toward sliecr materialism, or to\\ ard an uncliristian and unpliilosopliic spiritualist Epicurism which, in my eyes, is the worst evil spirit of the three, i^reciselj'- because it looks at first sight most like an angel of light. The mass, again, are ftincying that they are still adhering to the old creeds, the old church, to the honored patriarchs of English Protes- tantism. I wish I could agree with them in their be- lief about themselves. To me they seem — with a small sprinkling of those noble and cheering exceptions to popular error which are to be found in every age of Christ's church — to be losing most fearfully and rapidly the living spirit of Christianity, and to be, for that very i-eason, clinging all the more convulsively — and who can blame them ? — to the outward letter of it, whether High Church or Evangelical ; unconscious, all the while, that they are sinking out of real living belief, into that dead self-deceiving belief-in-believing, which has been alwaj^s heretofore, and is becoming in Eng- land now, the parent of the most blind, dishonest, and pitiless bigotry. In the follov/ing pages I have attempted to show what some at least of the young in these days are reall}^ thinkin.g and feeling. I know well that my sketch is inadequate and partial : I have every reason to believe, from the criticisms which I have received since its first publication, that it is, as far as it goes, correct. I put it as a problem. It would be the height of arrogance in me to do more than indicate the direction in which I think a solution maybe found, I fear that my elder readers may complain that I have no right to start doubts, without answering them. I can only answer, — Would that I had started them I PREFACK. would lliat I was not seeing tliem daily around me, under some form or otlier, in just tlie very liearts for ^v•hom one would most wish the peace and strength of a fixed and healthy faith. To the young this book can do no harm ; for it will put into their minds little but what is there already. To the elder it may do good ; for it may teach some of them, as I earnestly hope, something of the real, but too often utterly un- suspected, state of their own children's mindsV some- thing of the reasons of that calamitous estrangement between themselves and those who will succeed them, which is often too painful and oppressive to be con- fessed to their own hearts. Whatever amount of ob- loquy this book may bring upon me, I shall think that a light price to pay, if by it I shall have helped, even in a single case, to ' turn the hearts of the parents to the children, and the hearts of the children to the parents, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come,' — as come it surely will, if we persist much longer in substituting denunciation for sympathy, in- struction for education, and Pharisaism for the Godd News of the Kingdom of God. CONTENTS. CIIAPrER PAGE I. The Philosophy of F ox-Hunting ... ... 9 11. Spring Yearnings .... 23 III. New Actors, and a New Stage SS IV. An Inglorious Milton 64 V. A Sham is "Worse than Nothing 72 VI. Vogue la Galere 81 VII. The Drive Home, and what came of it 98 VIII. Whither? 107 IX. Harry Verney hears his last Shot fibed . . . .122 X. 'Murder will out,' and Love too 133 XI. Thunder-storm the First 155 XII. Thunder-storm the Second 167 XIII. The Village Revel 179 XIV. What's to be done? 208 XV. Deus e Machina 225 XVI. Once in a Way 249 XVII. The Valley of the Shadow of Death .... 259 Epilogue 281 YEAST. a Problem. CHAPTER I. THE PHILOSOPHY OF FOX-HUNTING. As this my story will probably run counter to more than one fashion of the day, literary and other, it is prudent to bow to those fashions wherever I honestly can ; and therefore to begin with a scrap of description. The edge of a great fox-cover ; a flat wilderness of low leaf- less oaks, foitified by a long dreary thorn-capped clay ditch, with sour red water oozing out at every yard ; a broken gate leading into a strait woodride, ragged with dead grasses and black with fallen leaves, the center mashed into a quagmire by innumerable horse-hoofs; some forty red coats, and some four black ; a sprinkling of young farmers, resplendent in gold but- tons and green ; a pair of sleek drab stable-keepers, showing oflf horses for sale ; the surgeon of the union, in Macintosh and anti- gropelos ; two holyday school-boys with trowsers strapped down to bursting point, like a penny steamer's safety-valve ; a mid- shipman, the only merry one in the field, bumping about on a fretting, sweating hack, with its nose a foot above its ears ; and Lancelot Smith, who then kept two good horses, and ' rode forward,' as a fine young fellow of three-and-twenty who can .afford it, and ' has nothing else to do,' has a very sfood rio-ht to ride. A* 10 THE I'HII.O.SOI'IIV OK FOX-HUNTING. But wliat is a doscrijition, without a sketch of the weather? — In these Pantheist days esjiecialh', when a hero or heroine's moral state must entirely depend on the barometer, and authors talk as if Christians were cabbages, and a man's soul as well as his lungs might be sav^d by sea-breezes and sunshine, or his character developed by wearing guano in his shoes, and train- ing himself against a south wall — we must have a weather- description, thougli, as I shall presently show, one in flat con- tradiction of the popular theory. Luckily for our information, Lancelot was very much given to watch both the weather and himself, and had indeed, while in his teens, combined the two in a sort of soul-almanac on the principles just mentioned — • somewhat in this style : — "■Monday, 21s/. — Wind S. W., bright sun, mercury at 30J inches. Felt my heart expanded toward the universe. Organs of veneration and benevolence pleasingly excited ; and gave a shilling to a tramp. An inexpressible joy bounded through every vein, and the soft air breathed purity and self-sacrifico through my soul. As I watched the beetles, those children of the sun, who, as divine Shelley says, ' laden with light and odor, pass over the gleam of the living grass,' I gained an Eden- glimpse of the pleasures of virtue. " N. B. Found the tramp drunk in a ditch. I could not have degraded myself on such a day — ah ! how could he ? " Tuesday, 22d. — Barometer rapidly falling. Heavy clouds in the south-east. My heart sank into gloomy forebodings. Read Manfred, and doubted whether I should live long. The leaden weight of destiny seemed to crush down my aching fore- head, till the thunder-storm burst, and peace was restored to my troubled soul." This was very bad ; but to do justice to Lancelot, he had grown out of it at the time when my story begins. He was now in the fifth act of his ' Werterean' stage, that sentimental measles which all clever men must catch once in their lives, and which, generally, like the physical measles, if taken early, settles THE PHILOSOPHY OF FOXHUNTING. 11 tlieir .onstitution for good or evil ; if taken late, goes far to- ward killing them. Lancelot had found Byron and Shelley pall on his taste, and commenced devouring Bulvver and wor- shiping Ernest Maltmvers. He had left Bulwer for old bal- lads and romances, and Mr. Carlyle's reviews ; was next alter- nately chivalry-mad, and Germany-mad ; was now reading Lard at physical science ; and on the whole trying to become a great man, without any very clear notion of what a great man ought to be. Real education he never had had. Bred up at home under his father, a rich merchant, he had gone to college with a large stock of general information, and a particular mania for dried plants, fossils, butterflies, and sk Aching, and some such creed as this ; — That he was very clever. That he ouofht to make his fortune. That a great many things were very pletuunnt — beautiful things among the rest. That it was a fine thing to be ' superior,' gentlemanlike, gen- erous, and courageous. That a man ought to be religious. And left college with a good smattering of classics and math- ematics, picked up in the intervals of boat-racing and hunting, and, much the same creed as he brought with him, except in regard to the last article. The scenery-and-natural-history mania was now somewhat at a discount, lie had discovered I a new natural object, including in itself all — more than all — yet found beauties and wonders — woman ! I)i-aw, draw the vail and weep, guardian angel ! if such there be. What was to be expected ? Pleasant things were pleasant — there was no doubt of that, whatever else might be doubtful. He had read Byron by stealth ; he had been flogged into read- ing Ovid and Tibullus ; and commanded by his private tutor to read Martial and Juvenal ' for the improvement of his style.' All conversation on the subject of love had been prudishly avoided, as usual, by his parents and teacher. The parts of 12 nilLOSOPIlY OF FOX-HUNTING. the Bible which spoke of it had been always kept out of hia sight. Love had been to him, practically, ground tabooed and ' carnal.' What was to be expected ? Just what happened— if woman's beauty had nothing holy in it, why should his fond- ness for it ? Just what happens every day — that he had to sow his wild oats for himself, and eat the fruit thereof, and tho dirt thereof also. fathers ! fathers ! and you, clergymen, who monopolize education ! either tell boys the truth about love, or do not put into their hands, without note or comment, the foul devil's lies about it, which make up the mass of the Latin poets — and then go, fresh from teaching Juvenal and Ovid, to declaim at Exeter Hall against poor Peter Dens' well-meaning prurience ! Had we not better take the beam out of our own eye before we meddle with the mote in the Jesuit's ? But where is my description of the weather all this time ? 1 cannot, I am sorry to say, give any very cheerful account of the weather that day. But what matter ? Are Englishmen hedge-gnats, who only take their sport when the sun shines ? Is it not, on the contrary, symbolical of our national character, that almost all our field amusements are wintry ones ? Our fowling, our hunting, our punt-shooting (pastime for Ilymer himself and the frost giank) — our golf and skating, — our very ciicket and boat-racing, and jack and grayling fishing, carried on till we are faiily frozen out. We are a stern people, and winter suits us. Nature then retires modestly into the back- ground, and spares us the obtrusive glitter of summer, leaving us to think and work ; and therefore it happens that in England, it may be taken as a general rule, that whenever all the rest of the world is in-doors, we are out and busy, and on the whole, the worse tlie day, the better the deed. The weather that day, the first day Lancelot ever saw his beloved, was truly national. A silent, dim, distanceless, steam- incr, rottinir day in March. The last brown oak-leaf, which had stood out the winter's frost, spun and quivered plump down, riiiLOSoriiY OF fox iicntixg. 13 and then lay ; as if ashamed to have broken for a moment the ghastly stillness, like an awkward guest at a great dumb dinner- party. A cold suck of wind just proved its existence, by tooth- aches on the north side of all faces. The spiders, having been weather-bewitched the night before, had unanimously agreed to cover every brake and brier with gossamer-cradles, and never a fly to be caught in them ; like Manchester cotton-spinners madly glutting the markets in the teeth of ' no demand.' The steam crawled out of the dank turf, and reeked off the flanks and nos- trils of the shivering horses, and clung with clammy pmvs to frosted hats and dripping boughs. — A soulless, skyless, caiarrlud day, as if that bustiins: dowager, old mother Earth — what with match-making in spring, and fetes chafnjictres in summer, and dinner-giving in autumn — was fairly worn out, and put to bed with the influenza, under wet blankets and the cold-water cure. There sat Lancelot by the cover-side, his knees aching with cold and wet, thanking his stars that he was not one of the whippers-in who were lashing about in the diipping cover, lay- ing up for themselves, in catering for the amusement of their betters, a probable old age of bed-ridden torture, in the form of rheumatic gout. Not that he was at all happy — indeed, he had no reason to be so ; for first the hounds would not find ; next, he had left half-finished at home a review article on the Silurian System, which he had solemnly promised an abject and beseeching editor to send to post that night ; next, he was on the windward side of the cover, and dare not light a cigar; and lastly, his mucous membrane in general was not in the happiest condition, seeing that he had been dining the evening before with Mr. Vaurien of Rottenpalings, a young gentleman of a convivial and melodious turn of mind, who sang — and played also — as singing men are wont — in more senses than one, and had ' ladies and gentlemen' down from town to stay with him ; and they sang and played too ; and so somehow between vingt- un and champagne-punch, Lancelot had not arrived at home till seven o'clock that morning, and was in a fit state to appre- 14 PHILOSOPHY OF FOX-HDXTING. ciato the feelings of our grandfathers, when after the third bottle of port, they used to put the black silk tights into their pocket, slip on the leathers and boots, and ride the crop-tailed hack thirty miles on a winter's night, to meet tlie hounds in the next county by ten in the morning. They are 'gone down to Hades, even many stalwart souls of heroes,' with John Warde of Squerrios at their head — the fathers of the men who con- quered at Waterloo ; and we their degenerate grandsons are left instead, with puny arms, and polished leather boots, and a considerable taint of hereditary disease, to sit in club-houses, and celebrate the progress of the species. "Whether Lancelot or his horse, under these depressing cir- cumstances, fell asleep ; or whether thoughts pertaining to such a life, and its fitness for a clever and ardent young fellow in the nineteenth century, became gradually too painful, and had to be peremptorily shaken off, this deponent sayeth not ; but cer tainly, after five-and-thirty minutes of idleness and shivering, Lancelot opened his eyes with a sudden start, and struck spurs into his hunter without due cause shown ; whereat Shiver-tho Timbers, who was no Griselda in temper — (Lancelot had bought him out of the Pytchley for half his value, as unridably vicious, when he had killed a groom, and fallen backward on a rough- rider, the first season after he came up from llorncastle) — re- sponded by a furious kick or two, threw his head up, put his foot into a drain, and sprawled down all but on his nose, pitch- ing Lancelot unawares shamefully on the pommel of his saddle. A certain fatality, by-the by, had lately attended all Lancelot's efforts to shine ; he never bought a new coat without tearing it mysteriously next day, or tried to make a joke without burst- in"' out coufrhinGC in the middle .... and now the whole field were looking on at his mishap ; between disgust and the ftart he turned almost sick, and felt the blood rush into his cheeks and forehead as he heard a shout of coarse jovial laugh- ter burst out close to him, and r>nf. fliri Itnllnws find fbmrr \vitli dewv fingers to cvcry knoll ne bosom of the hills, nature indescribable ? ow much more those ets of spotless turf, wnere luc aizzy eye loses an siuiiiutiu oi size and distance be- fore the awful simplicity, the delicate vastness, of those grand curves and swells, soft as the outlines of a Greek Venus, as if the jrreat goddess mother Ilertha had laid herself down among the hills to sleep, her Titan limbs wrapt in a thin vail of silvery green. Up, into a vast amphitheater of sward, whose walls banked out the narrow sky above. And here, in the focus of the huge ring, an object appeared which stirred strange melancholy in Lancelot, — a littl ) ch'ipel, ivy-grown, girded with a few yews. pniLOSOPnY OF fox-huntin'O. 19 and elders, and grassy graves. A clirabing rose over tlie porcli, and iron railings round the church-yard, told of human care ; and from the grave-yard itself burst up one of those noble springs known as winterbournes ic the chalk-ranges, which, awakened in autumn from. the abysses to which it had shrunk during the summers drought, was hurrying down upon its six months' course, a broad sheet of oily silver, over a temporary channel of smooth green sward. The hounds had checked in the woods behind ; now they poured down the hillside, so close together ' that you might have covered them with a sheet,' straiirht for the little chapel. A saddened tone of feeling spread itself through Lancelot's heart. There were the everlasting hills around, even as they had grown and grown for countless ages, beneath the still depths of the primeval chalk ocean, in the milky youth of this great English land. And here was he, the insect of a day, fox- hunting upon them / He felt ashamed, and more ashamed when the inner voice whispered, — ' Fox-hunting is not the shame — thou art the shame. If thou art the insect of a dav, it is thy sin that thou art one.' And his sadness, foolish as it may seem, grew as he watched a brown speck fleet rapidly up the opposite hill, and heard a gay view-halloo burst from the colonel at his side. The chase lost its charm for him the moment the game was seen. Then vanished that mysterious delight of pursuing an invisible object, which gives to hunting and fishing their unutterable and al- most spiritual charm ; which made Shakspeare a nightly poacher ; Davy and Chantrey the patriarchs of fly-fishing ; by which the twelve-foot rod is transfigured into an enchanter's wand, potent over the unseen wonders of the water-world, to ' call up spirits from the vasty deep,' which will really ' come if you do call for them' — at least if the conjuration be orthodox— and they there. That spell was broken by the sight of poor wearied pug, his once gracefully-floating brush all draggled and 20 PHILOSOPHY OF Foxnvmiso. drooping, as he toiled up tl'o slieep-paths toward the open down above. But Lancelot's sadness reached its crisis, as he met the hounds just outside the church-jard. Another moment — tliey had leapt the rails ; and there they swept round under the gray wall, leaping and yelling, like Berserk fiends, among the frown- ing tombstones, over the cradles of the quiet dead. Lancelot shuddered — the thing was not wrong — ' it was no one's fault,' — but there was a ghastly discord in it. Peace and Btrife, time and eternity — the mad noisy flesh, and the silent immortal spirit — the frivolous game of life's outside show, and the terrible earnest of its inward abysses, jarred together with- out and within him. He pulled his horse up violently, and stood as if rooted to the place, gazing at he knew not what. The hounds cau^'ht sitjht of the fox, burst into one frantic shriek of joy — and then a sudden and ghastly stillness, as, mute and breathless, they toiled up the hillside, gaining on their victim at every stride. The patter of the horsehoofs and the rattle of rolling flints died away above. Lancelot looked up, startled at the silence; laughed aloud, he knew not why, and sat, regardless of his pawing and straining horse, still staring at the chapel and the graves. On a sudden the chapel-door opened, and a figure, timidly yet loftil}'', stepped out without observing him, and, suddenly turning round, met him full, face to face, and stood fixed with surprise as completely as Lancelot himself. That foce and figure, and the spiiit wliieh spoke through them, entered his heart at once, never again to leave it. Her features were aquiline and grand, without a shade of harsh- ness ; her eyes shone out like twin lakes of still azure, beneath ji broad marble cliff of polished forehead ; her rich chestnut hair rippled downward round the towering neck. With her perfect masque, and queenly figure, and earnest upward gaze, she might have been the very model from which Raphael conceived his glorious St. Catherine — the ideal of the highest womanly PHiLosornr of fox-iiuntixo. 21 2;enius, suflened into self-forgetfulness by girlish devotion. She was simply, ahiiost coarsely dressed ; but a glance told him that she was a lady, by the courtesy of man as well as by the will of God. They gazed one moment more at each other — but what is time to spirits ? With them, as with their Father, ' one day is as a thousand years.' But that eye- wedlock was cut short tho next instant by the decided interference of the horse, who, thoroughly disgusted at his master's whole conduct, gave a significant shake of the head, and shamming frightened (as both women and horses will do when only cross), commenced a war-dance, which drove Argemone Lavington into the porch, and gave the bewildered Lancelot an excuse for dashing madly up the hill after his companions. J 'What a horribly ugly face!' said Argemone, to herself; ' but so clever, and so unhappy !' Blest pity ! true mother of that graceless scamp, young Love, who is ashamed of his real pedigree, and swears to this day that he is the child of Venus I — the coxcomb ! ******* [Here, for the sake of the reader, we omit, or rather post- pone, a long dissertation on the famous Erototheogonic chorus of Aristophanes's birds, with illustrations taken from all earth and heaven, from the Vedas and Proclus to Jacob Boehmen and Saint Theresa.] ' The dichotomy of Lancelot's personality,' as the Germans would call it, returned as he dashed on. His understanding was trying to ride, while his spirit was left behind with Arge- mone. Hence loose reins and a looser seat. . lie rolled about like a tipsy man, holding on, in foct, fixr more by his spui-s than l>y his knees, to the utter infuriation of Shiver-the-timbers, who Kicked and snorted over the down like one of Mephistopheles's Demon-steeds. They had mounted the hill — the deer fled be- fore them in terror — they neared the park palings. In the road bevond thcin the hounds were just killin"; their fox, strucc- 22 PHILOSOPHY OF FOX-IIUNTINn, gling and growling in fierce groups fur the red gobbets of fur, a panting, steaming ring of horses round them, llalf-a-dozeu voices hailed him as he came up. ' Where have you been ?' ' He'll tumble off!' ' He's had a fail !' ' No, he hasn't !' ' 'ware hounds, man alive !' * He'll break his neck !' ' lie has broken it, at last !' shouted the colonel, as Shiver- the-timbers rushed at the high pales, out of breath, and blind with rage. Lancelot saw and heard nothing till he was awakened from his dream by the long heave of the huge brute's shoulder, and the maddening sensation of sweeping through the air over the fence. He started, checked the curb, the horse tliraw up his head, fulfilled his name by driving his knees like a battering-ram against the pales — the top-bar bent like a withe, flew out into a hundred splinters, and man and horse rolled over headlong into the hard flint-road. For one long sickening second Lancelot watched the blue sky between his own knees. Then a crash as if a shell had bui-st in his face — a, horrible grind — a sheet of flame — and the blackness of night. Did you ever feel it, reader ? When he awoke, he found himself lying in bed, with Squire Lavington sitting by him. There was real sorrow in the old man's face. ' Come to himself!' and a great joyful oath rolled out. ' The boldest rider of them all ! I wouldn't have lost him for a dozen ready-made spick-and-span Colonel Brace- bridges !' ' Quite right, squire !' answered a laughing voice from be- hind the curtain. ' Smith has a clear two thousand a-year and I live by my wits 1' CHAPTEE n. SPRING YEARNINGS I HEARD a story the other day of our most earnest and genial humorist, who is just now proving himself also our most earnest and genial novelist. * I like your novel exceedingly,' said a lady ; ' the characters are so natural — all but the baronet, and he surely is overdrawn : it is impossible to find such coarseness in his rank of life 1" The artist laughed. ' And that character,' said he, ' is al- most the only exact portrait in the whole book.' So it is. People do not see the strange things which pass them every day. ' The romance of real life' is only one to the romantic spirit. And then they set up for critics, instead of pupils ; as if the artist's business v/as not just to see what they cannot see — to open their eyes to the harmonies and the dis- cords, the miracles and the absurdities, which seem to them one uniform gray fog of commonplaces. Then let the reader believe, that whatsoever is commonplace in my story is my own invention. Whatsoever may seem ex- travagant or startling is most likely to be historic fact, else I should not have dared to write it down, finding God's actual dealings here much too wonderful to dare to invent many fresh ones for myself. Lancelot, who had had a severe concussion of the brain and a broken leg, kept his bed for a few weeks, and his room for a few more. Colonel Bracebridge installed himself at the Priory, 2-1 SPRIXG YEARXIKCS. and nursed Lini with indefatigablo good-bumor and few tliaLks. lie brought Lancelot bis breakfast before bunting, described the run to him wlien be returned, read bira to sleep, told bira stories of grizzly bear and buffalo-bunts, made bira laugb in ppite of himself at extempore comic medleys, kept his tables covered with flowei-s from the conservatory, warmed bis choco- late, and even bis bed. Nothing came amiss to him, and he to nothing. Lancelot longed at first every hour to be rid of bim, and eyed bim about the room as a bull-dog does the monkey who rides bim. Li bis dreams be was Sinbad the Sailor, and Bracebridge the Old Man of the Sea ; but he could not bold out against the colonel's merry bustling kindliness, and the al- most womanish tenderness of bis nursinsx. The ice thawed rapidly ; and one evening it split up altogether, when Brace- bridge, wlio was sitting drawing by Lancelot's sofa, instead of amusing himself with the ladies below, suddenly threw bis pen- cil into the fire, and broke out a propos de rien — * What a strange pair we are, Smith ! I think you just the best fellow I ever met, and you bate me like poison — ^}-ou can't deny it.' There was something in the colonel's tone so utterly different from his usual courtly and measured speech, that Lancelot was taken completely by surprise, and stammered out, — ' I — I — I — no — no. I know I am very foolish — ungrateful. 33ut I do bate you,' he said, with a sudden impulse, 'and I'll tell you why.' ' Give me your hand,' quoth the colonel : * I like that. Now we shall see our way with each other, at least.' ' Because,' said Lancelot, slowly, ' because you are cleverer than I, readier than I, superior to me in every point.' The colonel laughed, not quite merrily. Lancelot went on, liulding down bis sliaggy brows. ' I am a brute and an ass ! — And yet I do not like to tell you so. For if I am an ass, what are youl' ' Heyday ?' BPRIXG YEARNINGS. 25 'Look here. — I am -wasting my time and brains on ribaldrj-, but I am worth nothing better — at least, I think so at times ; but you, who can do any thing you put your hand to, what business have you, in the devil's name, to be throwing yourself away on gimcracks and fox-hunting foolery? Heavens! if I had your talents, I'd be — I'd make a name for myself before I died, if I died to make it.' The colonel griped his hand hard, rose and looked out of the window for a few minutes. There was a dead, brooding silence, till he turned to Lancelot, — ' Mr. Smith, I thank you for your honesty, but good advice may come too late. I am no saint, and God only knows how much less of one I may become ; but mark my words, — if you are ever tempted by passion, and vanity, and fine ladies, to form liaisons, as the Jezebels call them, snares, and nets, and laby- rinths of blind ditches, to keep you down through life, stum- bling and groveling, hating yourself and hating the chain to which you cling — in that hour pray — pray as if the devil had you by the throat, — to Almighty God, to help you out of that cursed slough ! There is nothing else for it! — pray, I tell you!' There was a terrible earnestness about the guardsman's face which could not be mistaken. Lancelot looked at him for a moment, and then dropped his eyes ashamed, as if he had in- truded on the speaker's confidence by witnessing his emotion. In a moment the colonel had returned to his smile and his polish. 'And now, my dear invalid, I must beg your pardon for ser- monizing. What do you say to a game of ecartc? We must play for love, or we shall excite ourselves, and scandalize Mrs. Lavington's piety.' And the colonel pulled a pack of cards out of his pocket, and, seeing that Lancelot was too thoughtful for play, commenced all manner of juggler's tricks, and chuckled over them like any school-boy. ' Happy man !' thought Lancelot, ' to have the strength of will which can thrust its thoughts away once and for all.' 2 S6 SPRING YEARXIVGS. No, LanceJot ! more happy are they whom God will not al- low to thrust thoir t]ioii!:rht3 from thcin till the bitter drauoht has done its work. From that day, however, there was a cordial understanding between the two. They never alluded to the subject; but they had known the bottom of each other's heart. Lancelot's sick- room was now pleasant enough, and he drank in daily his new friend's perpetual stream of anecdote, till March and hunting were past, and April was half over. The old squire came up after dinner regularly (during March he had hunted every day, and slept every evening) ; and the trio chatted along merrily enough, by the help of whist and backgammon, upon the sur- face of this little island of life, — which is, like Sinbad's, after all only the back of a floating whale, ready to dive at any moment. — And then ? But what was Argcmone doing all this time ? Argeraone was busy in her boudoir (too often a true boudoir to her) among books and statuettes, and dried flowers, fancying herself, and not unfairly, very intellectual. She had four new manias every year : her last winter's one had been that bottle-and-squirt ma- nia, miscalled chemistry ; her spring madness was for the Greek drama. She had devoured Schlegel's lectures, and thought them divine ; and now she was hard at work on Sophocles, with a little help from translations, and thought she understood him every word. Then ^le was somewhat Iligh-Church in her no- tions, and used to go up every "Wednesday and Friday to the chapel in the hills, where Lancelot had met her, for an hour's mystic devotion, set off"by a little graceful asceticism. As for Lan- celot, she never thought of him but as an empty-lieaded fox- liunter, who had met his deserts ; and the brilliant accounts which the all-smoothing colonel gave at dinner of Lancelot's physical well-doing and agreeable conversation only made her sot him down the sooner as a twin clever-do-notlang to the de- ppised Bracebridgo, whom she hated for keo[>ing her father in a roar of lauijliter. BPKING YEARNINGS. 27 But her sister, little Ilonoria, Lad all the while been bu>y messing and cooking with her own hands for the invalic, and almost fell in love with the colonel for his watchful kindness. And here a word about Honoria, to whom Nature, according to her wont with sisters, had given almost every thing which Arge- raone wanted, and denied almost every thing which Argemone had, except beauty. And even in that, the many-sided mother had made her a perfect contrast to her sister, — tiny and luscious, dark-eyed and dark-haired ; as full of wild simple passion as an Italian, thinking little, except where she felt in ijh — which was, \ indeed, everywhere ; for slie lived in a perpetual April-shower of exaggerated sympathy for all suffering, whether in novels or in life ; and daily gave the lie to that sballovv old calumny, that 'fictitious sorrows harden the heart to real ones.' Argemone was almost angry with her sometimes, when she trotted whole days about the village from school to sick-room : perhaps conscience hinted to her that her duty, too, lay rather there than among her luxurious day-dreams. But, alas ! though she would have indignantly repelled the accusation of selfi-h- ness, yet in self and for self alone she lived ; and while she had force of will for any so-called 'self-denial,' and would fast her- self cross and stupified, and quite enjoy kneeling thinly chtd and barefoot on the freezing chapel-floor on a winter's morning, yet her fiistidious delicacy revolted at sitting, like Honoria, be- side the bed of the plowman's consumptive daughter, in a reeking, stifling, lean-to garret, in which had slept the night before, the father, mother, and two grown-up boys, not to men- tion a new-married couple, the sick girl, and, alas ! her baby. And of such bedchambers there were too many in Whitford Priors. The first evening that Lancelot came down stairs, Honoria clapped her hands outright for joy as he entered, and ran up and down for ten minutes, fetching and carrying endless unne- cessary cushions and footstools ; while Argemone greeted him with a cold distant bow, and a fine-lady drawl of carefully com- monplace congratulations. Her heart smote her though, as \^ 28 SPRING YEARNINGS. she saw the wan flxce and the wild, melancholy, moon-struck eyas onx more glaring through and through her ; she found a comfort in thinking his stare impertinent, drew herself up, and turned away ; once, indeed, she could not help listening, as Lancelot thanked Mrs. Lavington for all the pious and edifying books with which the good lady had kept his room rather than liis brain furnished for the last six weeks; he was going to say more, but he saw the colonel's quaint foxy eye peering at him. remembered St. Francis de Sales, and held his tongue. But, as her destiny was, Argemone found herself, in the course of the evening, alone with Lancelot, at the open window. It was a still, hot, heavy night, after long easterly drought ; sheet-lightning glimmered on the far horizon over the dark woodlands ; the coming shower had sent forward as his herald a whispering draught of fragrant air. ' What a delicious shiver is creeping over those limes !' said Lancelot, half to himself The expression struck Argemone : it was the right one, and it seemed to open vistas of feeling and observation in the speaker which she had not suspected. There was a rich melancholy in the voice ; — she turned to look at him. 'Ay,' he went on; 'and the same heat which crisps those thirsty leaves must breed tlie thunder-shower •which cools them ! Lut so it is throughout the universe : every yearning proves the existence of an object meant to satisfy it; the same law creates both the giver and the receiver, the longing and its home.' ' If one could but know sometimes what it is for which one is longing!' said Argemone, without knowing that she was speaking from her inmost heart : but thus does the soul invol- untarily lay bare its most unspoken depths in the presence of its yet unknown mate, and then shudders at its own abandon, as it first tries on the wedding-garment of Paradise. Lancelot was not yet past the era at which young geniuses are apt to ' talk book' a little. SPRING YEARNINGS. 29 ' Fur what V lie answered, flashing up according to his fashion, * To be ; — to be great ; to have done one mighty work before we die, and live, unloved or loved, upon the hps of men. For this all long who are not mere apes and wall-flies.' ' So longed the founders of Babel,' answered Argemohc, care- lessly, to this tirade. She had risen a strange fish, the cunning Vieauty, and now she was trying her foncy flies over him one by one. 'And were they so far wrong?' answered he. 'From that Babel society sprung our architecture, our astronomy, politics, and colonization. No doubt the old Hebrew scheiks thought them impious enough, for daring to build brick walls instead of keeping to the good old-fashioned tents, and gathering them- selves inlo a nation instead of remaining a mere femily horde ; and gave their own account of the myth, just as the antedilu- vian savages gave theirs of that strange Eden scene, by the common interpretation of which the devil is made the first in- ventor of modesty. Men are all conservatives ; every thing new ^ is impious, till we get accustomed to it; and if it fails, ths mob piously discover a divine vengeance in the mischance, from Babel to Catholic Emancipation." Lancelot had stuttered horribly during the latter part of this most heterodox outburst, for he had begun to think about him- self, and try to say a fine thing, suspecting all the while that it niiaht not be true. But Aro-emone did not remark the stam- mering : the new thoughts startled and pained her; but there was a daring grace .nbout them. She tried, as women will, to answer him with arguments, and failed, as women will fail. She was accustomed to lay down the law, a la Madame de Stael, to savants and non-savants, and be heard with rever ence, as a woman should be. But poor truth-seeking Lancelot did not see what sex had to do with logic ; he flew at her as if she had been a very barrister, and hunted her mercilessly un and down through all sorts of charming sophisms, as she begged the question, and shifted her ground, as thoroughly right in 30 SPRING VEARNINGS. hor conclusion as slie was wrong in her reasoning, till she grew quite confused and pettish. — And then Lancelot suddenly shrank into his shell, claws and all, like an aftVighted soldier- crab, hung down his head, and stammered out some incoheren- cies, — ' N-u-not accustomed to talk to women — ladies, I mean. F- forgot myself. — Pray forgive me !' And he looked up, and hiM- eyes, half-arauscd, met his, and she saw that they were lilled with tears. ' What have I to forgive V she said, more gently, wondering on what sort of a strange sportsman she had fallen. ' You treat me like an equal ; you will deign to argue with me. But men in general — oh, they hide their contempt for us, if not their own ignorance, under that mask of chivalrous deference ' And then in the nasal fine-ladies' key, which was her shell, as bitter brusquerie was his, she added, with an Amazon queen's toss of the head, — 'You must come and see us often. We shall suit each other, I see, better than most whom we see here.' A sneer and a blush passed together over Lancelot's ugli- ness. 'What, better than the glib Colonel Bracebridge yonder ?' ' Oil, he is witt}'^ enough, but he lives on the surface of every thing 1 He is altogether shallow and blase. His good-nature is the fruit of want of feeling ; between his gracefulness and his sneering persiflage he is a perfect Mephistopheles-Apollo.' What a snare a decently-good nickname is ! Out it must come, though it carry a lie on its back. But the truth was, Argemone thought herself infinitely superior to the colonel, for which simple reason she could not in the least understand him. [By-the-by, how subtilly Mr. Tennyson has embodied all this m The Princess. How lie shows us the woman, when she takes her stand on the false masculine ground of intellect, work- ing out her own moral punishment, by destroying in herself the tender heart of flesh, which is either woman's highest SrRIXG YEARNINGS. 31 blessing or her bitterest curse ; Low she loses all feminine sen- sibility to the under-current of feeling in us poor world-worn, case-hardened men, and falls from pride to sternness, from stern- ness to sheer inhumanity. I should have honored myself by pleading guilty to stealing much of Argemone's character from The Princess, had not the idea been conceived, and fairly worked out, long before the appearance of that noble poem.] They said no more to each other that evening. Argemone was called to the piano ; and Lancelot took up the Sporting Magazine, and read himself to sleep, till the party separated for the night. Argemone went up thoughtfully to her own room. The shower had fallen, and the moon was shining bright, while every budding leaf and knot of mold steamed up cool perfume, bor- rowed from the treasures of the thunder-cloud. All around was working the infinite mystery of birth and growth, of giving and taking, of beauty and use. All things were harmonious- — all things reciprocal without. Argemone felt herself needless, lonely, and out of tune with herself and nature. She sat in the window, and listlessly read over to herself a fragment of her own poetry : — SAPPHO. She lay among the myrtles on the cliff; Above her glared the noon ; beneath, the sea. Upon the white horizon Athos' peak Weltered in burning haze ; all airs were dead ; The cicale slept among the tamarisk's hair ; The birds sat dumb and drooping. Far below The lazy sea-weed glistened in the sun ; The lazy sea-fowl dried their steaming wings ; The lazj' swell crept whispering up the ledge, And sank again. Great Pan was laid to rest; And Mother Earth watched by him as he slept. And hushed her myriad children for awhile. 52 SPRING YEARKIXGS. Slie lay amoni^ the myrtles on the cliff; And sighed fur sleep, for sleep that would not hear. But left her tossing still ; for night and day A mighty hunger yearned within her heart, Till all her veins ran fever, and her check. Her long thin liands, and ivory-channel'd feet, Were wasted with the wasting of her souL Tlicn peevishly she flung her on her face, And hid her eyeballs from the blinding glare. And fingered at the grass, and tried to cool Her crisp hot lips against the crisp hot sward : And then she raised her liead, and upward cast Wild looks from homeless eyes, whose liquid light Gleamed out between deep folds of blue-blaok hair, As gleam twin lakes between the purple peaks Of deep Parnassus, at tlie mournful moon. Beside her lay her lyre. She snatched the shell, And waked wild music from its silver strings ; Then tossed it sadly by. — ' Ah, hush 1' she cries, ' Dead offspring of the tortoise and the mine 1 Why mock my discords with thine harmonies? Although a thrice-Olympian lot be thine, Only to echo back in every tone, Tlie moods of nobler natures than thine ov»-n.' 'No!' she said. 'That soft and rounded rliynie suits ill with Sappho's fitful and wayward agonies. She should burst out at once into wild passionate life-weariness, and disgust at that universe, with whose beauty she has filled her eyes in vain, to find it always a dead picture, unsatisfying, unloving — as I have found it.' Sweet self-deceiver ! had you no other reason for choosing as your heroine Sappho, the victim of the idolatry of intellect — trying in vain to fill her heart with the friendship of her own sex, and then sinking into mere passion for a handsome boy, and so down into self-contempt and suicide ? She was conscious, I do believe, of no other reason than that she gave ; but consciousness is a dim candle — over a deep mine. 'After all,' she said pettishly, ' people will cill it a nvre SPRING VEARNINGS. 33 imitation of Shelley's Alastor. And wliat harm if it is? I3 tliere to be no feraale Ahistor ? Has not the woman as good a right as the man to long after ideal beauty — to pine and die if she can not find it : and regenerate herself in its lio-ht V ' Yo-h 00-00-00 ! Yoiip-yoiip I Oh-hooo !' arose doleful through the echoing shrubbery. Ai-gemone started and looked out. It was not a banshee, but a forgotten foxhound puppy, sitting muurnfully on the gravel-walk beneath, staring at the clear ghastly moon. She laughed, and blushed — there was a rebuke in it. She turned to go to rest ; and as she knelt and prayed at her vel- j vet faldstool, among all the knicknacks which nowadays make j a luxury of devotion, was it strange if, after she had prayed for 'the fate of nations and churches, and for those who, as she , thought, were fighting at Oxford the cause of universal truth and reverend antiquity, she remembered in her petitions the poor godless youth, with his troubled and troubling eloquence ? But it was strange that she blushed when she mentioned his name — why should she not pray for him as she prayed for others ? Perhaps she felt that she did not pray for him as she prayed for others. She left the ^olian harp in the window, as a luxury if she should wake, and coiled herself up among lace pillows and eider blemos ; and the hound coiled himself up on the gravel- walk, after a solemn vesper-ceremony of three turns round in his own length, looking vainly for ' a soft stone.' The finest of us are animals after all, and live by eating and sleeping : ! and, taken as animals, not so badly off either — unless we hap- ■ pen to be Dorsetshire laborers — or Spitalfields weavers — or colliery children — or marching soldiers — or, I am afraid, one half of English souls this day. And Argemone dreamed ; — that she was a fox, flying for her life through a church-yard — and Lancelot was a hound, yelling and leaping, in a red coat and white buckskins, closa 34 SPRING VKAKMNGS. upon licr-— and she felt liis hot breath, and saw his white tcetU glare .... And then her father was there ; and he was an Italian boy, and played the organ — and Lancelot was a dancing dog, and stood up and danced to the tune of ' Cest Vamour, Vamour, rumour^ pitifully enough, in his red coat — and she stood up and danced too ; but she found her fox-fur dross in- suflicient, and begged hard for a paper frill — which was denied her : whereat she cried bitterly, and woke ; and saw the Night peeping in with her bright diamond eyes, and blushed, and hid her beautiful face in the pillows, and fell asleep again. What the little imp, who managed this puppet-show on Argemone's brain-stage, may have intended to symbolize thereby, and whence he stole his actors and stage-properties, and whether he got up the interlude for his own private fun, or for that of a choir of brother Eulcnspiegels, or, finally, for the edification of Argemone as to her own history, past, present, or future, are questions which we must leave unanswered, till physicians have become a little more of metaphysicians, and have given up their present plan of ignoring.{for nine hundred and ninety-nine pages that most awful and significant custom of dreaming, and then in the thousandth page talking the boldest materialist twaddle about it. In the mean time, Lancelot, contrary to the colonel's express commands, was sitting up to indite the following letter to his cousin the Tractarian curate : — 'You complain that I waste my time in field-sports: how do you know that I waste my time ? I find within myself certain appetites ; and I suppose that the God whom you say made me, made those appetites as a part of me. AVhy are they to be crushed any more than any other j)art of me ? I am the whole of what I find in myself — am I to pick and choose myself out of myself? And besides, I feel that the ex- orcise of freedom, activity, foresight, daring, independent self- determination, even in a few minutes' burst across country, strengthens me in mind as well as in body. It might not do SPRING YEARNINGS. S5 SO to you ; but 3-00 are of a clifFercnt constitution, and, from all I see, the power of a man's muscles, the excitability of his nerves, the shape and balance of his brain, make him what he is. Else what is the meaning of physiognomy ? Every man's destiny, as the Turks say, stands written on his forehead. One does not need two glances at your face to know that you would not enjoy fox-hunting, that you would enjoy book-learn- ing, and 'refined repose,' as they are pleased to call it. Every man carries his character in his brain. You all know that, and act upon it when you have to deal with a man for sixpence ; but your religious dogmas, which make out that every man comes into the world equally brutish and fiendish, make you afraid to confess it. I don't quarrel with a ' douce' man like you, with a large organ of veneration, for following your bent. But if I am fiery, with a huge cerebellum, why am I not to follow mine ? — For that is what you do, after all — what you like best. It is all very easy for a man to talk of conquering his appetites, when he has none to conquer. Try and conquer your organ of veneration, or of benevolence, or of calculation — then I will call you an ascetic. Why not ? — The same Power which made the front of one's head made the back, I suppose ? ' And, I tell you, hunting does me good. It awakens me out of my dreary mill-round of metaphysics. It sweeps away that infernal web of self consciousness, and absorbs me in outward objects ; and my red-hot Perillus' bull cools in proportion as my horse warms. I tell you, I never saw a man who could cut out his way acocs country who could not cut his way through bet- ter thino-s wlien his turn came. The cleverest and noblest fel- lows are sure to be the best riders in the long run. And as for bad company and ' the world,' when you take to going in the first-class carriaQ;es for fear of meeting a swearing sailor in a sec- ond-class — when those who have ' renounced the world.' give up buying and selling in the funds — when my uncle, the pious banker, who will only ' associate ' with the truly religious, gives up dealing with any scoundrel or heathen who can ' do busi- 36 SnUXG VEAFIXINGS. ness' with him, — tlien you may quote pious people's opinions to me. In God's name, if the Stock Exchange, and railway f^taggiiig;, and the advertisements in the Protestant Ilue-and- Cry, and the frantic Mammon-hunting which has been for the last fifty years the peculiar pursuit of the majority of Quakers, ; Dissenters, and Religious Churchmen, are not The World, what ^ , /s ? I don't complain of them, though ; Puritanism has inter- dicted to them all art, all excitement, all amusement — except money-making. It is their dernier ressort, poor souls ! ' But you must explain to us naughty fox-hunters how all this agrees with the good book. AVe see plainly enough, in the mean time, how it agrees with ' poor human nature.' We see that the ' religious world,' like the ' great world,' and the ' sport- ing world,' and the ' literary world,' I Compounds for sins she is inclined to, 1 By damning those she has no mind to ; and that because England is a money-making country, and money-making is an effeminate pursuit, therefore all sedentary and spoony sins, like covetousness, slander, bigotry, and self- conceit, are to be cockered and plastered over, while the more masculine vices, and no-viccs also, are mercilessly hunted down by your cold-blooded, soft-handed religionists., 'This is a more quiet letter than usual from me, my dear coz., for many of your reproofs cut me home : they angered me at the time; but I deserve them. I am miserable, self-disgust- l ed, self-helpless, craving for freedom, and yet crying aloud for j some one to guide me, and teach me; and whs is therein these days who could teach a fast man, even if he 'could try? Pe sure, that as long as you and yours make piety a synonym for unmanlincss, you will never convert either me or any other good portsmau. ' By-the-by, my d.;ar fellow, was I asleep or awake when 1 seemed to read in the postscri])t of your last letter, something about ' being driven to Itome after all?' AVhy thither,. of all {)laces in heaven or earth ? You know, I have no party SPKIXG YEARXIXGS. 37 interest in the question. All creeds are very much ahke to me just now. But allow me to ask, in a spirit of the most tolerant curiosity, what possible celestial bait, either of the useful or the agreeable kind, can the present excellent Pope, or his adherents, hold out to you in compensation for the solid earthly pudding whith you would have to desert? .... I dare say, though, that I shall not comprehend your answer when it comes. I am, you know, utterly deficient in that sixth sense of the angehc or supra-lunar beautiful, which fills your soul with ecstasy. You, I know, expect and long to become an angel after death : I am under the strange hallucination that my body is part of me, and in spite of old Plotinus, look with horror at a disembodied immortality — or even a few thousand years of disembodiment till the giving of that new body, the great perfection of which, in your eyes, and those of every one else, seems to be, that it w ill be less, and not more of a body, than our present one. . . . Is this hope, to me at once inconceivable and contradictory, pal- pable and valuable enough to you to send you to that Italian Avernus, to get it made a little more certain ? If so, I despair of your making your meaning intelligible to a poor fellow wal- lowing, like me, in the Hylic Borboros — or whatever else you may choose to call the unfortunate fact of being flesh ani blood , , Still, write.' CHAPTER III. NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. When Arrtemone rose in the mornin,E\V STAGE. ' An odd fellow that, Tregarva,' said Lancelot. 'Very, sir, considering who made him,' answered the Cor nishman, touching his hat, and then thrusting his nose dee])er than ever into the eel-basket. ' Beautiful stream this,' said Lancelot, who had a continual lonijiiig — rio-ht or wrong — to chat with liis inferiors; and waa proportionately sulky and reserved to his superiors. ' Beautiful enough, sir,' said the keeper, with an empliasis on the first word. ' Why, has it any other fault ? ' Not so wholesome as pretty, sir.' ' What harm does it do V ' Fever, and ague, and rheumatism, sir.' ' Where ?' asked Lancelot, a little amused hy the man's la- conic answers. ' Wherever the white fog spreads, sir.' ' Where's that V ' Everywhere, sir.' ' And when V ' Always, sir.' Lancelot burst out laughing. The man looked up at him slowly and seriously. ' You wouldn't laugh, sir, if you'd seen much of the inside of these cottages round.' ' Really,' said Lancelot, ' I was only laughing at our making- such very short work of such a long and serious story. Do you mean that the unhealthiness of this country is wholly caused by the river ?' ' No, sir. The river-damps are God's sending ; and so they are not too bad to bear. But there's more of man's sending. Iha; is too bad to bear.' ' What do you mean V * Are men likely to be healthy when they are worse lioused than a pig ?' 'No.' NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE, 45 'And worse fed than a liound ?' ' Good heavens ! No !' 'Or packed together to sleep, hke pilchards in a barrel V 'But, my good fellow, dc you mean that the laborers here are in that state V ' It isn't far to walk, sir. Perhaps, some day, when the may- fly is gone off, and the fish won't rise awhile, you covild walk down and see. I beg your pardon, sir, though, for thinking of such a thing. They are not places fit for gentlemen, that's certain.' There was a.staid irony in his tone, which Lancelot felt. ' But the clergyman goes ?' ' Yes, sir.' ' And Miss Honoria goes V 'Yes, God Almighty bless her!' 'And do not they see that all goes right?' The giant twisted his huge limbs, as if trying to avoid an answer, and yet not daring to do so. ' Do clergymen go about among the poor much, sir, at col- lego, before they are ordained V Lancelot smiled, and shook his head. ' I thought so, sir. Our good vicar is like the rest here- abouts. God knows, he stints neither time nor money — the souls of the poor are well looked after, and their bodies, too — as far as bis purse will go ; but that's not far.' ' Is he ill-off, then V ' The living's worth some forty pounds a-year. The great tithes, they say, are worth better than twelve hundred ; but Squire Lavington has them.' ' Oh, I see !' said Lancelot. * I'm glad you do, sir, for I don't,' meekly answered Tregarva. But the vicar, sir, he is a kind man, and a good ; but the poor don't understand hiin, nor he them. lie is too learned, sir, and, saving your presence, too fond of his prayer-bock.' 'One can't be too fond of a good thing!' 40 KEW ACTOaS, AND A NEW STAGE. ' Not unless jou in.'ike an i Jul ot" it, sir, and fancy that men's souls were made for the prayer-book, and not the prayer-book for them.' *But can not he expose and redress these evils, if tbey exist?' Treorarva twisted about aQ;ain. ' I do not say that I think it, sir ; but this I know, that every poor man in the vale thinks it — that the parsons are afraid of the landlords. Thoy must see these things, for thoy are not blind ; and thoy try to plaster thera up out of their own pockets.' 'But wh}', in God's name, don't they strike at the root of the matter, and go straight to the landlords and tell them the truth V asked Lancelot. 'So people say, sir. I see no reason for it, except the one which I gave you. I>osidos, sir, you must remember that a man can't quarrel with his own kin ; and so many of them are their squire's brothers, or sons, or nephews.' 'Or good friends with him, at least.' 'Ay, sir, and, to do them justice, thoy had need, fur the poor's sake, to keep good friends with the squire. How else are they to get a farthing for schools, or coal-subscriptions, or lying-in societies, or lending-libraries, or penny-clubs? If they spoke their minds to the great ones, sir, how could thoy keep .the parish together V ' You seem to see both sides of a question, certainly. But what a miserable state of things, that the laboring man should require all these societies, and charities, and helps from the rich ! — that an industrious freeman can not live without alms !' ' So I have thought this long time,' quietly answered Tre- garva. 'But Miss ilonoria, — she is not afraid to toll hor father the truth V 'Suppose, sir, when Adam and Eve were in the garden, that all the devils had come up and played their fiends' tricks before them, — do you think they'd have seen any shame in it?' NEW ACTORS, A XL A KEW STAGE. dT • I really can not toll,' said Lancelot, smiling. 'Then I can, sir. They'd have seen no more harm in it than there was harm already in themselves; and that was none. A man's eyes can only see what they're learnt to see.' Lancelot started : it was a favorite dictum of his in Cariyle's works. ' Where did you get that thought, my friend '^' ' By seeing, sir.' 'But what has that to do with Miss Honoria ?' ' She is an angel of holiness herself, sir ; and, therefore, she goes on without blushing or suspecting, where our blood would boil again. She sees people in want, and thinks it must be so, and pities them and relieves them. But she don't know want herself; and, therefore, she don't know that it makes men beasts and devils. She's as pure as God's light herself; and, therefore, slie fancies every one is as spotless as she is. And there's another mistake in your charitable great people, sir. AVhen they see poor folk sick or hungry before their eyes, they pull out their purses fust enough, God bless them ; for they wouldn't like to be so themselves. But the oppression that goes on all the year round, and the want that goes on all the year round, and the filth, and the lying, and the swearing, and the profligacy, that go on all the year round, and the sickening weight of debt, and the miserable grinding anxiety from rent- day to rent-day, and Saturday night to Saturday night, that crushes a man's soul down, and drives every thought out of his bead but how^ he is to fill his stomach and warm his back, and keep a house over his head, till he daren't for his life take his thoughts one moment off the meat that perisheth — oh, sir, they never felt this ; and, therefore, they never dream that there are thousands who pass them in their daily walks who feel this, and feel nothing else I' This outburst was uttered with an earnestness and majesty which astonished Lancelot. He forgot the subject in the speaker. 48 NEW ACT01>S, AND A NEW STAGE. •You are a very extraordinary gamekeeper!' said lie. 'When the Lord sliows a man a thing, he can't well help seeing it,' answered Tregarva, in his usual staid tone. There was a pause. The keeper looked at him with a glance, before which Lancelot's eyes felL 'Hell is paved with hearsays, sir, and as all this talk of mino is hearsay, if you are in earnest, sir, go and see for yourself. 1 know you have a kind heart, and they tell me you are a great scholar, which would to God I was I so you ought not to con- descend to take ray word for any thing which you can look into yourself;' with which sound piece of common-sense Tregarva returned busily to his eel-lines. ' Hand me the rod and can, and help me out along the buck- stage,' said Lancelot; ' I must have some more talk with you, my fine fellow.' ' Amen,' answered Tregarva, as he assisted our lame hero along a huge beam which stretched out into the pool : and having settled him there, returned mechanically to his Avork, liumming a Wesleyan hymn-tune. Lancelot sat and tried to catch pei'ch, but Tregarva's words haunted him. He lighted his cigar, and tried to think earnestly over the matter, but he had got into the wrong place for think- ing. All his thoughts, all his sympathies, were drowned in the rush and the whirl of the water. He forgot every thing else in the mere animal enjoyment of sight and sound. Like many young men at his crisis of life, he had given himself up to the mere contemplation of Nature till he had become her slave; and now a luscious scene, a singing-bird, were enough to allure his mind away from the most earnest and awful thoughts. He tried to think, but the river would not let him. It thundered and spouted out behind him from the hatches, and leapt madly pa.^t him, and caught his eyes in spite of him, and swept them ;iway down its dancing waves, and then let them go again only to sweep them down again and again, till his brain felt a deli- cious dizziness from the everlasting rush and the everlasting KEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 49 roar. And then below, how it spread, and writhed, and whiil- ed, into transparent fans, hissing and twining snakes, poHslicd glass-wreaths, huge crj-stal bells, which boiled up from the but- tom, and dived again beneath long threads of creamy foam, and swung round posts and roots, and rushed blackening under dark vreed-fringed boughs, and gnawed at the marly banks, and shook the ever-restless bulrushes, till it was swept away and down over the white pebbles and olive weeds, in one broad rip- pling sheet of molten silver, toward the distant sea,\ Down- ward it fleeted ever, and bore his thoughts f. >:iting on its oily stream ; and the great trout, with their yellow sides and pea- cock backs, lunged among the eddies, and the silver grayling dimpled and wandered upon the shallows, and the may-flies flickered and rustled round him like water fairies, with their greea gauzy wings ; the coot clanked musically among the reeds ; the frogs hummed their ceaseless vesper-monotone ; the king-fisher darted from his hole in the bank like a blue spark of electric light; the swallows' bills snapped as they twined and hawked above the pool; the swifts' wings whirred like ' musket-balls, as they rushed screaming past his head ; and ever the river fleeted by, bearing his eyes away down the current, till its wild eddies beo^an to How with crimson beneath the set- ting sun. The complex harmony of sights and sounds slid softly over his soul, and he sank away into a still day-dream, too passive fur imagination, too deep for meditation, and Beauty boru of murmuring sound, Did pass into his face. Blame him not. There are more things in a man's heart than ever get in through his thoughts. On a sudden, a soft voice behind him startled him. ' Can a poor Cockney artist venture himself along this timber without falling in V Lancelot turned. 'Come out to me, and if you stumble, the naiads will rise C 60 KEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. out of their depths, and ' hold up their pearled wrists' to save their flvvorite.' The artist walked tiniidlv out alonsr the beams, and sat down beside Lancelot, who shook him \Yarmly by the hand. ' Welcome, Claude Mellot, and all lovely enthusiasms and symbolisms! Expound to me, now, the meaning of that wator- lily leaf and its grand simple curve, as it lies sleeping there in the back eddy.' ' Oh, I am too amused to philosophize. The fair Argemone has been just treating me to her three hundred and sixty-fifth jiliilippic against my unoffending beard.' ' Why, what fault can she find with such a graceful and nat- ural ornament V ' Just this, my dear fellow, that it is natural. As it is, she considers me only 'intellectual-looking.' If the beard were away, my fiice, she says, would be ' so refined !' And, I sup- pose if I was just a little more effeminate and pale, with a nice retreating under-jaw and a drooping lip, and a meek peaking simper, like your starved Romish saints, I should be 'so spirit- ual !' And if again, to complete the climax, I did but shave my liead like a Chinese, I should be a model for St. Francis himself !' ' But really, after all, why make yourself so singular by this said l^eard ?' ' I wear it for a testimony and a sign that a man has no right to be ashamed of the mark of manhood. Oh, that one or two of your Protestant clergymen, who ought to be perfect ideal men, would have the courage to get up into the pulpit in a long board, and testify that the very essential idea of Protestantism is the dignity and divinity of man as God made him ! Our forefathers were not ashamed of their beards ; but now even the soldier is only allowed to keep his mustache, while our quill-driving masses shave themselves as close as they can ; and in proportion to a man's piety he wears less hair, from tho young curate who shaves off his whiskers, to the Popish priest who shaves his crown.' NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. ^t* ' What do jou say, then, to cutting off nuns' hair V ' I say, that extremes meet, and prudish Manichaeism a^ /rays end in sheer indecency. Those Papists have forgotten what woman was made for, and therefore, they have forgotten that a Avoman's hair is her glory, for it was given to her for a covering ; as says your friend Paul the Hebrew, who, by-the-by, had as fine theories of art as he had of society, if he had only lived fif- teen hundred years later, and had a chance of working them out.' ' How remarkably orthodox you are !' said Lancelot, smiling. ' How do you know that I am not ? You never heard me deny the old creed. But what if an artist ought to be of all creeds at once ? ^ly business is to represent the beautiful, and therefore to accept it wherever I find it. Yours is to be a philos- opher, and find the true.' ' But the beautiful must be truly beautiful to be worth any thing; and so you, too, must search for the true.' ' Yes ; truth of form, color, chiaroscuro. They are worthy to occupy me a life ; for they are eternal — or at least that which they express : and if I am to get at the symbolized unseen, it must be through the beauty of the symbolizing phenomenon. If I, who live by art, for art, in art, or you either, who seem as much a born artist as myself, am to have a religion, it must bo a worship of the fountain of art — of the Spirit of beauty, who doth consecrate With his own hues whate'er he shines upon.' ' As poor Shelley has it ; and much peace of mind it gave him !' answered Lancelot. ' I have grown sick lately of such dreary tinsel abstractions. When you look through the glitter of the words, your ' spirit of beauty' simply means certain shapes and colors which please you in beautiful things and in beautiful people.' ' Vile nominalist ! renegade from the ideal and all lis glories I' §aid Claude, laughing. 52 KEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. ' I don't care sixpence now for the ideal ! I want not beauty, but some beautiful thing — a woman, perhaps,' and he sighed. ' But at least a person — a living, loving person — all lovely itself, and giving loveliness to all things! If I must have an ideal, let it be, for mercy's sake, a realized one.' Claude opened his sketch-book. ' We shall get swamped in these metaphysical oceans, my dear dreamer. But lo, here come a couple, as near ideals as any in these degenerate days — the two poles of beauty ; the milieu of which would be Venus with us Pagans, or the \'irgin Mary with the Catholics. Look at them ! Ilonoria the dark — symbolic of passionate depth ; Argemone the fair, type of in- tellectual light ! Oh, that I were a Zeuxis to unite them in- stead of having to paint them in two separate pictures, and split perfection in half, as every thing is split in this piecemeal world !' ' You will have the honor of a sitting this afternoon, I sup- pose, from both beauties V ' I hope so, for my own sake. There is no path left to im- mortality, or bread either, now for us poor artists but portrait- painting.' ' I envy you your path when it leads through such Elysiums,' fiaid Lancelot. ' Come here, gentlemen both !' cried Argemone from tho bridge. 'Fairly caught!' grumbled Lancelot. 'You must go, at least; my lameness will excuse me, I hope.' The two ladies were accompanied by Bi'acebiidge, a gazelle which he had given Argemone, and a certain miserable cur of Ilonoria's adopting, who plays an important part in this story, and, therefore, deserves a little notice. Ilonoria had rescued him from a watery death in the village pond, by means of tho colonel, who had revenged himself for a pair of wet feet by utterly corrupting the dog's morals, and teaching him every week to answer to some fre-h scandalous name. \ KEVr ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 63 But Lancelot was not to escape. Instead of moving on, as he had hoped, the party stood looking over the bridge, and talking — he took for granted, poor thin-skinned fellow — of him. And for once his suspicions were right ; for he overheard Arge- nione say — ' I wonder how Mr. Smith can be so rude as to sit there in my presence over his stupid perch ! Smoking those horrid cigars, too ! How selfish those field-sports do make men !' ' Thank you !' said the colonel, with a low bow. Lancelot rose. 'If a country girl, now, had spoken in that tone,' said he to himself, 'it would have been called at least 'saucy' but ^laramon's elect ones may do any thing. "Well — here I come, limping to my new tyrant's feet, like Goethe's bear to Lili's.' She drew him away, as women only know how, from the rest of the party, who were chatting and laughing with Claude. She had shown off her fancied indifference to Lancelot beforo them, and now began in a softer voice, — ' Why will you be so shy and lonely, Mr. Smith ?' ' Because I am not fit for your society.' ' AYho tells you so ? Why will you not become so ?' Lancelot huno: down his head. ' As long as fish and game are your only society, you will become more and more morne and self-absorbed.' 'Beally, fish were the last things of which I was thinking when you came. My whole heart was filled with the beauty of nature, and nothing else.' There was an opening for one of Argemone's preconcerted orations. ' Had you no better occupation,' she said, gently, ' than nature, the first day of returning to the open air after so fright- ful and dangerous an accident? Were there no thanks due to One above ?' Lancelot understood her. ' How do you know that I was not even then showing my thankfulness V 64 NEW ACTOnS, AND A NEW STAGE. ' What ! with a ciirar and a fisbinic-rod V ' Certainly. Why not V Argemone really could not tell at the moment. The answer upset her schemes entirely. 'Might not that very admiration of nature have been an act of worship V continued our hero. ' How can we better glorify the worker, than by delighting in his work ?' 'Ah!' sighed the. lad}^, 'why trust to these self-willed methods, and neglect the noble and exquisite forms which the Church has prepared for us as embodiments for every feeling of our hearts V ' Evenj feeling, Miss Lavington ?' Artremone hesitated She had made the gcx)d old stock as- sertion, as in duty bound ; but she could not help recollecting that there were several Popish books of devotion at that mo- ment on her table, which seemed to her to patch a gap or two in the Prayer-book. * My temple as yet,' said Lancelot, ' is only the heaven and the earth ; my church-music I can hear all day long, whenever I have the sense to be silent, and ' hear my mother sing ;' my priests and preachers are every bird and bee, every flower and cloud. Am I not well furnished ? Do you want to reduce my circular infinite chapel to an oblong hundred-foot one ? My sphere-harmonies to the Gregorian tones in four parts ? My world-wide priesthood, with their endless variety of costume, to one not over-educated gentleman in a white sheet ? And my dreams of naiads and flower-fairies, and the blue-bells ringing God's praises, as they do in The Story ivilhout an End, for the gross reality of naughty charity children, with their pockets full of apples, bawling out IL-brew psalms of which they neither feel nor understand a word V ' Argemone tried to look very much shocked at this piece of bombast. Lancelot evidently meant it as such, but he eyed her all the while as if there was solemn earnest under the surface. NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 55 * Oh, Mr. Smith !' she said, ' how can you dare talk so of a litur^v compiled by the wisest and holiest of all countries and ages ? You revile that of whose beauty you are not qualrfieci to judge !' ' There must be a beauty in it all, or such as you are would not love it.' ' Oh,' she said hopefully, ' that you would but try the Church system ! How you would find it harmonize and methodize every day, every thought, for you ! But I can not explain my- self. Why not go to our vicar, and open your doubts to him V ' Pardon, but you must excuse me.' ' Why ? He is one of the saintliest of men !' ' To ttll the truth, I have been to him already.' ' You do not mean it ! And what did he tell you V * What the rest of the world does— hearsays.' ' But did you not find him most kind V 'I went to him to be comforted and guided. He received me as a criminal. He told me that my first duty was peni- tence ; that, as long as I lived the life I did, he could not dare to cast his pearls before swine by answering my doubts ; that I was in a state incapable of appreciating spiritual truths ; and, therefore, he had no right to tell me any.' ' And what did he tell you V 'Several spiritual lies instead, I thought. He told me, liearing me quote Schiller, to beware of the Germans, for they were all Pantheists at heart. I asked him whether he included Lange and Bunsen, and it appeared that he had never read a (German book in his life. He then flew furiously at Mr. Car- lylo, and I found that all he knew of him was from a certain review in the Quarterly. He called Boehmen a theosophic Atheist. I should have burst out at that, had I not read the very words in a High Church review the day before, and hoped that he was not aware of the impudent falsehood he was retailing. Whenever T feebly interposed an objection to 50 NEW ACTORS. AND A NKW STACK. any thing lie said (for, -M'tvY all, lie talked on), lie tokl me to liear the Catholic CIuiicli. 1 asked liini which Catholic Chinch ? lie said the Eno-lish. I asked him whether it was to be the Church of the sixth century, or the thirteenth, or tho seventeenth, or the eighteenth ? lie told me the one and eter- nal Church, which belonged as much to the nineteenth century i^i to the first. I begged to know whether, then, I was to hear the Church according to Simeon, or according to Newman, or according to St. Paul ; for they seemed to me a little at va- riance ? lie told me, austerely enough, that the mind of the Church was embodied in her Liturgy and Articles. To which I answered, that the mind of the episcopal clergy might, per- haps, be ; but, then, how happened it that they were always auarrelinii" and callintj hard names about the sense of those very documents ? And so I left him, a>suring him that, living in the nineteenth century, I wanted to hear the Church of the nineteenth century, and no other ; and should be most happy ^ to listen to her, as soon as she had made up her mind what to 'say.' Argemone was angry and disappointed. She felt she could not cope with Lancelot's quaint logic, which, however unsound, cut deeper into questions than she had yet looked for herself. Somehow, too, she was tongue-tied before him just when she wanted to be most eloquent in behalf of her principles ; and that fretted her still more. But his manner puzzled her most of all. First he would run on with his face turned away, as if soliloquizing out into the air, and then suddenly look round at licr with most fascinating humihty ; and then, in a moment, a dark shade would pass over his countenance, and he would look like one possessed, and his lips wreathe in a sinister arti- ficial smile, and his wild eyes glare through and through her with such cunning understanding of himself and her, that, for the first time in her life, she quailed and felt frightened, as if in the power of a madman. She turned hastily away to shake off the sjiell. KEVr ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 57 He sprung after lier, almost on his knees, and looked up into her beautiful face with an imploring cry. ' What, do you too, throw me oft'? AVill you, too, treat the poor wild uneducated sportsman as a Pariah and an outcast because he is not ashamed to be a man ? — because he can not stuff" his souFs hunger with cut-and-dried hearsays, but dares to fhiuk for himself? — because he wants to believe things, and dare not be satisfied with only believing that he ought to be- lieve them V She paused, astonished. ' Ah, yes,' he went on, ' I hoped too much ! What right had I to expect that you would understand me ? What right, still more, to expect that you would stoop, any more than the rest of the world, to speak to me, as if I could become any thing better than the wild hog I seem ? Oh, yes ! — the chrysalis has no butterfly in it, of course ! — Stamp on the ugly, motionless thing! And yet — you look so beautiful and good! — are all my dreams to perish, about the Alrunen and prophet-maidens, how they charmed our old fighting, hunting forefathers into purity and sweet obedience among their Saxon forests? Has woman forgotten her mission — to look at the heart and have mercy, while cold man looks at the act and condemns ? Do you, too, like the rest of mankind, think no-belief better than misbelief; and smile on hypocrisy, lip-assent, practical Atheism, sooner than on the unpardonable sin of making a mistake ? Will you, like the rest of this wise world, let a man's spirit rot asleep into the pit, if he will only lie quiet and not disturb your smooth respectabilities; but if he dares, in waking, to yawn in an unorthodox manner, knock him on the head at once, aiid ' break the bruised reed,' and 'quench the smoking-flax ?' And yet you church-goers have ' renounced the world !' ' ' What do you want, in Heaven's name ?' asked Argemone, half terrified. 'I want 7/ou to tell me that. Here I am, with youth, health, strength, money, every blessing of life — but one ; and 68 NjCW actors, and a new stage. 1 am utterly miserable. I want some one to tell me what I want.' ' Is it not that you want — religion ?' 'I see hundreds who have what vou call relifrion, with whom I should scorn to change my irreligion.' *But, Mr. Smith, are you not — are you not very wicked? They tell me so,' said Argemone, with an effort. ' And is not that the cause of your disease V Lancelot laughed. * No, fairest prophetess, it is the disease itself. ' Why am I what I am, when I know more and more daily what I could be ?' — That is the mystery ; and my sins are the fruit, and not the root of it. Who will explain that V Argemone began, — ' The Church ' 'Oh, Miss Lavington,' cried he, impatiently, ' will you, too, Bend me back to that abstraction ? I came to you, however presumptuous, for living, human advice to a living, human heart; and will you pass off on me that Proteus-dream the Church, which in every man's mouth has a different meaning? In one book, meaning a method of education, only it has never been carried out ; in another, a system of polity, — only it has never been realized ; — now a set of words written in books, on whose meaning all are divided ; now a body of men, who are daily excommunicating each other as lieretics and apostates; now a universal idea ; now the narrowest and most exclusive of all parties. Keally, before you ask me to hear the Church, I have a right to ask you to define what the Church is.' 'Our Articles define it,' said Argemone, dryly. 'The ' Visil^le Cliurcli,' at least, it defines as a company of faithful men, in which,' Arc. I'ut how does it define the ' Invis- ible' one? And what does faithful mean? Wliat if I thought Cromwell and Pierre Leroux infinitely more faithful men in their way, and better members of the ' Invisible Church,' than KEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 59 the torturer-pedant Laud, or the facing-both-ways Protestaut- Manichee Taylor ?' It Avas lucky for the life of young Love that the discussion went no further : Argemone was becoming scandalized beyond all measure. But, happily, the colonel interposed, — ' Look here, tell me if you know for whom this sketch is meant?' ' Tregarva, the keeper : who can doubt ?' answered they Doth at once. ' Has not Mellot succeeded perfectly V ' Yes,' said Lancelot. ' But what wonder, with such a noble subject ! "What a grand benevolence is enthroned on that lofty forehead !' 'Oh, you would say so, indged,' interposed Honoria, " if you knew him ! The stories that I could tell you about him ! How he will go into cottnges, read to sick people by the hour, dress the children, cook their food for them, as tenderly as any woman ! I found out last winter, if you will believe it, that he lived on bread and water, to give out of his own wages — which are barely twelve shillings a-week — five shillings a week for mora than two months to a poor laboring man, to prevent his going to the workhouse, and being parted from his wife and children. ' Noble, indeed !' said Lancelot. ' I do not wonder now at the effect his conversation just now had on me.' ' Has he been talking to you V said Ilonoria, eagerly, ' He seldom speaks to any one.' ' He has to me ; and so well, that were I sure that the poor were as ill oft' as he says, and that I had the power of alter- ing the system a hair, I could find it in my heart to excuse all political grievance-mongers, and turn one myself.' Claude Mellot clapped his white woman-like hands. ' Bravo ! bravo ! Oh wonderful conversion ! Lancelot has at last discovered that, beside the ' glorious Past,' there is a Present worthy of his sublime notice ! We may now hope, in time, that he will discover the existence of a Future !' 60 ■NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. ' But, Mr Mellot,' said lloiiuiia, ' why have you been so uufailhtul to your original ? why have you, like all artists, been trying to soften and refine on your model V ' Because, my dear lady, we are bound to see every thing in its ideal, — not as it is, but as it ought to be, and will bo, when the vices of this jtitiful civilized world are exploded, and sanitary reform, and a variety of occupation, and harmonious education, let each man fulfill in body and soul the idea which God embodied in him.' ' Fourierist !' cried Lancelot, laughing. ' But surely you never saw a face which had lost by wear less of the divine image ? How thoroughly it exemplifies your great law of Protestant art, that 'the Ideal is best manifested in the Peculiar.' llow classic, how independent of clime or race, is its bland, ma- jestic self-possession ! how thoroughly Norse its massive square- ness !' ' And yet, as a Cornishman, be should be no Norseman.' ' I beg your pardon ! Like all noble races, the Cornish owe their nobleness to the impurity of their blood — to its perpetual loans from foreign veins. See how the serpentine curve of his nose, his long nostril, and protruding, sharp-cut lips, mark his share of Phoenician or Jewish blood ! how Norse again, that dome-shaped forehead ! how Celtic those dark curls, that rest- less gray eye, with its 'swindcn blicken,' like Von Troneg Ua- gen's in the N'tehelungen Lied P He turned : llonoria was devouring his words. lie saw it, for he was in love, and young love makes man's senses as keen as woman's, ' Look ! look at him now !' said Claude, in a low voice. ' How he sits, with his hands on his knees, the enormous size >f his limbs quite concealed by the careless grace, with his Egyptian face, like some dumb granite Memnon !' ' Only waiting,' said Lancelot, ' for the day-star to ariSe on liim and wake him into voice.' He looked at Honoria as he spoke. She blushed angrily ; KEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 61 and yet a sort of sympathy arose from that moment between Lancelot and herself. Our hero feared he had gone too for, and tried to turn the subject off. The smooth mill-head was alive with risino; trout. 'What a huge fish leapt then!' said Lancelot, carelessly; ' and close to the bridge, too !' Ilonoria looked round, and uttered a piercing scream. 'Oh, my dog! my dog! Mops is in the river! That horrid gazelle has butted him in, and he'll be drowned !' Alas ! it was too true. There, a yard above the one open hatchway, through which the whole force of the stream was rushing, was the unhappy Mops, alias Scratch, alias Dirty Dick, alias Jack Sheppard, paddling, and sneezing, and wink- ing, his little bald muzzle turned piteously .upward to the sky, ' lie will be drowned !' quoth the colonel. There was no doubt of it ; and so Mops thought, as shiver- ing and whining, he plied every leg, while the glassy current dragged him back and back, and Honoria sobbed like a child. The colonel lay down on the bridge, and caught at him : his arm was a foot too short. In a moment the huge form of Tre- garva plunged solemnly into the water, with a splash like ^even salmon, and Mops was jerked out over the colonel's bead high and diy on to the bridge. ' You'll be drowned, at least !' shouted the colonel, with an oath of Uncle Toby's own. Tregarva saw his danger, made one desperate bound vpward, and missed the bridge. The colonel caught at him, tore off a piece of his collar — the calm, solemn hce of the keeper flashed I)ast beneath him, and disappeared through the roaring gate. Tliey rushed to the other side of the bridge — caught one glimpse of a dark body fleeting and rolling down the foam-way. — The colonel leapt the bridge-rail like a deer, rushed out r.long the buck-stage, tore oft' his coat, and sprung headlong into the boiling pool, 'rejoicing in his might, as old Homer mouM say 62 KEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. Lancelot, forgetting liis crutclies, was dashing after him, wLeii he felt a soft hand clutching at his arm. ' Lancelot ! Mr. Smith 1' cried Argemone. ' You shall not go ! You are too ill — weak ' ' A fellow-creature's life !' ' ^Vhat is his life to yours ?' she cried, in a tone of deep pas- ^sion. And then, imperiously, ' Stay hero, I command you !' The magnetic touch of her hand thrilled through his whole frame. She had called him Lancelot ! lie shrunk down, and stood spell-bound. ' Good heavens !' she cried ; ' look at ray sister !' Out on the extremity of the buck-stage) how she got there neither they nor she ever knew (crouched Ilonoria, her face .idiotic with terror, while she stared with bursting eyes into the foam. A shriek of disappointment rose from her lips, as in a moment the colonel's weather-worn head reappeared above, looking for all the world like an old gray shiny-painted seal, Toof! tally-ho! Poof! poof! Heave me a piece of wood, Lancelot, my boy !' And he disaj>peared again. They looked round, there was not a loose bit near. Claude ran off toward the house. Lancelot, desperate, seized the bridge-rail, tore it off by sheer strength, and hurled it far into the pool. Argemone saw it, and remembered it, like a true woman. Ay, be as Manichaean-sentimental as you will, fair ladies, physical prowess, that Eden-right of manhood, is sure to tell upon your hearts ! Again the colonel's grizzled head reappeared, — and, oh, joy ! beneath it a draggled knot of black curls. In another instant he had hold of the rail, and, quietly floating down to the shal- low, dragged the lifeless giant high and dry on a patch of gravel. Ilonoria never spoke. She rose, walked quickly back along the beam, passed Argemone and Lancelot without seeing them, and firmly but hurriedly led the way round the pool-side. Before they arrived at the bank, the colonel had carried Tre- 63 garva to it. Lancelot and two or three workmen, wliom his cries had attracted, hfted tlie body on to the meadow. Honoria knelt quietly down on the grass, and watched, silent and motionless, the dead face with her wide awe-struck eyes. ' God bless her for a kind soul !' whispered the wan weather^ beaten field-drudges, as they crowded over the body. ' Get out of the way, my men 1' quoth the colonel. ' Too many cooks spoil the broth.' And he packed off one here and another there for necessaries, and commenced trying every re- storative means with the ready coolness of a practiced surj;eon ; ^vhile Lancelot, whom he ordered about like a baby, gulped down a great choking lump of envy, and then tasted the rich delight of forgetting himself in admiring obedience to a real superior. ' But there Tregarva lay lifeless, with folded hands, and a quiet satisfied smile, while Honoria watched and watched with parted lips, unconscious of the presence of every one. Five minutes ! — ten ! ' Carry him to the house,' said the colonel, in a despairing tone, after another attempt. ' He moves !' ' No 1' ' He does !' ' He breathes !' ' Look at his eyelids !' Slowly his eyes opened. ' Where am I ? All gone ? Sweet dreams — blessed dreams !' His eyes met Honoria's. One big deep sigh swelled to his lips and burst. She seemed to recollect herself, rose, passed her arm through Argemone's, and walked slowly awaj. CHAPTER IV AN" 'inglorious MILTON.' Argemoxe, sweet prude, thouglit herself bound to read Ilonoria a lecture that night, on her reckless exhibition of feeling ; but it profited little. The most consummate cunning could not have baffled Argemone's suspicions more completely than her sister's utter simplicity. She cried just as bitterly about Moj)s' danger as about the keeper's, and then laughed lieartily at Argemone's solemnity ; till at last, when pushed a little too hard, she broke out into something very like a passion, and told her sister, bitterly enough, that ' she was not accus- tomed to see men drowned every day, and begged to hear no more about the subject.' AVhereat Argemone prudently held her tongue, knowing that under all Uonoria's tenderness lay a volcano of passionate determination, which was generally kept down by her affections, but was just as likely to be maddened by them. And so this conversation only went to increase the unconscious estrangement between them, though they continued, as sisters will do, to lavish upon each other the most e.xtrava- gant protestations of affection — vowing to live and die only for each other — and believing honestly, sweet souls, that they felt all they said ; till real imperious Love came in, in one case of the two at least, shouldering all other affections right and left; and then the two beauties discovered, as others do, that it is not so possible or reasonable as they thought for a woman to sac- rifice herself and her lover fui the sake of her sister or her friend. AN 'inglorious miltox.' 65 Next rnorninsr Lancelot and the colonel started out to Tre- garva's cottage, on a mission of inquiry. They found the giant propped up in bed with pillows, his magnificent features looking m their paleness more than ever like a granite Memnon. Be- fore him lay an open ' Pilgrim's Progress,' and a drawer filled with feathers and furs, which he was busily manufacturing into trout flies, reading as he worked. The room was filled witli nets, guns, and keepers' tackle, while a well-filled shelf of books hung by the wall. ' Excuse my rising, gentlemen,' he said, in his slow, staid voice, ' but I am very weak, in spite of the Lord's goodness to me. You are very kind to think of coming to my poor cottage.' ' Well, my man,' said the colonel, ' and how are you after your cold-bath ? You are the heaviest fish I ever landed !' ' Pretty well, thank God, and you, sir. I am in your debt, sir, for the dear life. How shall I ever repay you ?' ' Repay ? my good fellow ? You would have done as much for me.' ' May be ; but you did not think of that when you jumped in ; and no more must I in thanking: tou. God knows how a poor miner's son will ever reward you ; but the mouse repaid the lion, says the story, and, at all events, I can pray for you. By-the-by, gentlemen, I hope you have brought up some trolling-tackle V ' We came up to see you, and not to fish,' said Lancelot, charmed with the stately courtesy of the man. ' Many thanks, gentlemen ; but old Harry Verney was in here just now, and had seen a great jack strike, at the tail of the lower reeds. With this fresh wind he will run till noon ; and you are sure of him with a dace. After that, he will not be up again on the shadows till sunset. lie works the works of darkness, and comes not to the light, because his deeds are evil' Lancelot laughed. ' He does but follow his kind, poor fellow.' 06 AN * INGLORIOUS MIUOX.' 'No doubt, sir, IK) doubt; all the Lord's works are good: but it is a wonder wliy he should have made wasps, now, and blights, and veiiniii, and jack, and sucli evil-featured things, that carry spite and cruelty in their very faces — a great won- der. Do you think, sir, all those creatures were in the garden of Eden ?' ' Yon are getting too deep for me,' said Lancelot. * But why trouble your head about fishing V ' 1 beg your pardon for preaching to you, sir. I'm sure I forgot myself. If you will let me, I'll get up, and get you a couple of bait from the stew. You'll do us keepers a kindness, and prevent sin, sir, if you 11 catch him. The squire will swear sadlv — the Lord foro'ive him — if he hears of a pike in the trout runs. I'll get up, if I may trouble you to go into the next room a minute.' ' Lie still, for Heaven's sake. Why bother your head about pike now V ' It is my business, sir, and I am paid fur it, and I must do it thorouL-hlv ; — and abide in the calling wherein I am called,' he added, in a sadder tone. ' You seem to be fond enough of it, and to know enough about it, at all events,' said the colonel, 'tying tiies here on a sick-bed.' ' As for being fund of it, sir — those creatures of the water teach a man many lessons ; and when I tie flies, I earn books.' ' IIow then ?' ' I send my flies all over tlie county, sir, to Salisbury and Ilungerford, and up to Winchester, even ; and the money buys me many a wise book — all mv delight is in reading ; perhaps so much the worse for me.' ' So much the better, say,' answered Lancelot, warmly. ' I'll give you an order for a couple of pounds' worth of flieo at once.' 'The Lord reward you, sir,' answered the giant. ' And you shall make me the same quantity,' said the colonel. 'You can make salmon-flies?' AN 'inglorious MILTON.' 07 * I made a lot by pattern for an Irish gent, sir.' ' Well, then, Ave"ll send you some Norway patterns, and soma golden pheasant and parrot feathers. We're going to Norway this summer you know, Lancelot ' Tregarva looked up with a quaint, solemn hesitation. 'If you please, gentlemen, you'll forgive a man's conscience.' >Well?' ' But I'd not like to be a party to the making of Norway flies.' ' Here's a Protectionist, with a vengeance !' laughed the colo- nel. 'Do you want to keep all us fishermen in England ? eh? to fee English keepers V ' No, sir. There's pretty fishing in Norway, I hear, and poor folk that want money more than we keepers. God knows we get too much — we that hang about great houses and serve great folks' pleasure — you toss the money down our throats, without our deserving it ; and we spend it as we get it — a deal too fast — while hard-working laborers are starving.' ' And yet you would keep us in England V ' Would God I could :' ' Why then, my good fellow ?' asked Lancelot, who was get- ting intensely interested with the calm, self-possessed earnest- ness of the man, and longed to draw him out. The colonel yawned. ' Well, I'll go and get myself a couple of bait. Don't you stir, my good parson-keeper. Down charge, I say ! Odd if I don't find a bait-net, and a rod for myself, under the verandah.' ' You will, colonel. I remember, now, I set it there last morning ; but the water washed many things out of my brains, and some things into them — and I forgot it, like a goose.' ' Well, good-by, and lie still. I know what a drowning is, and more than one, A day and a night have I been in the deep, like the man in the good book ; and bed is the best of medicine for a ducking ;' and the colonel shook him kindly by the hand and disappeared. C8 AN TNGLORIOUS MILTOX. Lancelot sat down by the keeper's bed. ' You'll get those fish-hooks into your trovvsers_. sir ; and this is a poor place to sit down in.' ' I want you to say your say out, friend, fish-hooks or none.' The keeper looked warily at the door, and when the colonel had passed the window, balancing the trolling-rod on liis chin, and whistling merrilv, be beiian, — ' ' A day and a night have I been in the deep !' — and brought back no more from it ! And yet tlie Psalms say how they that go down to the sea in ships see the works of the Lord ! — If the Lord has opened their eyes to see them, that must mean.' Lancelot waited. ' What a gallant gentleman that is, and a valiant man of war, I'll warrant, — and to have seen all the wonders be has, and yet to be wasting bis span of life like that !' Lancelot's heart smote him. ' One would think, sir You'll pardon me for speaking out.' And the noble face worked, as he murmured to himself, ' When ye are brought before kings and princes for my name's sake. — I dare not hold my tongue, sir. I am as one risen from the dead,' and his face flashed up into sudden enthusiasm — f ' and woe to me if I speak not. Oh, why, why are you gentle- men running off to Norway, and foreign parts, whither God has ■ not called you ? Are there no graves in Egypt, that you must go out to die in the wilderness V Lancelot, quite unaccustomed to the language of the Dissent- ing poor, felt keenly the bad taste of the allusion. ' What can you mean V he asked. ' Pardon me, sir, if I can not speak plainly ; but are there not temptations enough here in England that you must go to waste all your gifts, your scholarship, and your rank, far away there out of the sound of a church-going bell ? I don't deny it's a great temptation. I have read of Norway wonders in a book of one Miss Martineau, with a strange name.' ' Feats on the Fiord V AK 'inglorious miltos.' 69 ' That's it, sir. Her books are grand books to set one a-tliink- ing ; but she don't seem to see the Lord in all things, does she, sir V Lancelot parried the question. ' You are ^^•andering a little from the point.' ' So I am, and I thank you for the rebuke. There's where I Ond you scholars have the advantage of us poor fellows, who pick up knowledge as we can. Your book-learning makes you stick to the point so much better. You are, taught how to think. After all — God forgive me if I'm wrong ! — but I some- times think there must be more good in that human wisdom, and philosophy falsely so called, than^we Wesleyans hold. Oh, sir, what a blessing is a good education ! "What you gentle- n^.eu might do with it, if you did but see your own power ! Are there no fish in England, sir, to be caught ? precious fish, with immortal souls? And is there not One "^lo has said, ' Come with me, and I will make you fishers of men ?' ' ' Would you have us all turn parsons V ' Is no one to do God's work except the parson, sir ? Oh, the game that you rich folks have in your hands, if you would but play it ! Such a man as Colonel Bracebridge, now, with the tongue of the serpent, who can charm any living soul he likes to his will, as a stoat charms a rabbit. Or you, sir, with your tongue ; — you ha\e charmed one precious creature already. I can see it: though neither of you know it, yet I know it.' Lancelot started, and blushed crimson. ' Oh, that I had your tongue, sir !' And the keeper blushed crimson too, an^ went on hastily, — ' But why could you not charm all alike ? Do not the poor want you as well as the rich V ' What can I do for the poor, my good fellow ? And what do they want ? Have they not houses, work, a church, and Echools, — and poor-rates to fall back on V The keeper smiled sadly. 'To fall back on, indeed ! and d>wn on, too. At all events, 70 AN 'iXGLOUIOfS MILTON.' you rich might liolp to make Cliristians of them, and men of them. For I'm beginning to fancy strangely, in spite of all tha j)reachers say, that, before ever you can make them Christiar^s, you must make them men and women.' ' Are they not so already ?' ' Oh, sir, go and see ! llow can a man be a man in those crowded styes, sleeping and packed together like Irish pigs in a steamer, never out of the fear of want, never knowing any higher amusement than the beer-shop ? Those old Greeks and Romans, as I read, were more like men than half our English laborers. Go and see ! Ask that sweet heavenly angel, Miss llonoria,' — and the keeper again blushed, — 'and she, too, will tell you. I think sometimes, if she had been born and bred like her father's tenants' daughters, to sleep where they sleep, and hear the talk they hear, and see the things they see, what would she have been now ? We mustn't think of it.' And the keeper turned his head away and fairly burst into tears. Lancelot was moved. ' Are the poor very immoral, then V 'You ask the rector, sir, how many children hereabouts are born within six months of the wedding-day. None of them marrv, sir, till the devil forces them. There's no sadder sight than a laborer's wedding nowadays. You never see the pa- rents come with them. They just get another couple, that are keeping compan}', like themselves, and come sneaking into church, looking all over as if they were ashamed of it — and ^Yell they may be !' ' Is it possible V ' I say, sir, that God makes you gentlemen, gentlemen, that you may see into these things. You give away your charities kindly L'liough, but you don't know the folks you give to. If a few of you would but be like the blessed Lord, and stoop to go out of the raad, ju^t behind the hedge, for once, among the publicans and oarlots I "Were you ever at a country fair, sir? Though I sup- AN ' INGLORIOUS MILTOX.' 71 pose I am rude for fancying that you could demean youi-self to such company.' 'I should not think it demeaning myself,' said Lancelot, smi- ing ; ' but I never was at one, and I should like for once to see the real manners of the poor.' ' I'm no haunter of such places myself, God knows ; but — I see you're in earnest now — will you come with me, sir, — for once ? for God's sake, and the poor's sake ?' ' I shall be delighted.' ' Xot after vou've been there, I am afraid.' 'Well, it's a bargain when you are recovered. And, in the mean time, the squire's orders are, that you lie by for a few days to rest ; and Miss Ilonoria's too ; and she has sent you down some wine.' ' She thought of me, did she ?' And the still sad face blazed out radiant with pleasure, and then collapsed as suddenly into deep melancholy. Lancelot saw it, but said nothing ; and shaking him heartily by the hand, had his shake returned by an iron grasji, and slip- ped quietly out of the cottage. The keeper lay still, gazing on vacancy. Once he murmured to himself, — ' Through strange ways — strange ways — and though he let them wander out of the road in the wilderness ; — we know how that goes on And then he fell into a fi.xed meditation — perhaps into a prayer. CHAPTER V, A SUAM 13 WORSE THAN KOXniNO. At last, after Lancelot liad waited long in vain, came liia cousin's answer to the letter v.liicli I gave in my second chapter. 'You are not fair to me, good cousin but I have given up expecting fliirness from Protestants. I do not say that the front and the back of my head have different makers, any more than that doves and vipers have and yet I kill the viper when I meet him and so do you And yet, are we not taught that our animal nature is through- out equally viperous? The Catholic Church, at least, so teaches She believes in the corruption of human na- ture. She believes in the literal meaning of Scripture. She has no wish to paraphrase away St. Paul's awful words, tliat ' in his flesh dwelleth no good thing,' by the unscientific euphem- isms of 'fallen nature' or 'corrupt humanity.' The boasted discovery of phrenologists, that thought, feeling, and passion reside in this material brain and nerves of ours, has ages ago been anticipated by her simple faith in the letter of Scripture; !i faith which i)uts to shame the irreverent vagueness and fan tastic private interpretations of those who make an idol of that very letter which they dare not take literally, because it makes asainst their self-willed theories .... * And so you call me douce and meek ? You should remember what T once was, Lancelot I, at least, have A SHAM IS WORSE THAN NOTHING, 73 not forgotten, , . . I have not forgotten how that very animal nature, on the possession of which you seem to pride yourself, was in me only the parent of remorse. ... I know it too well not to hate and fear it. Why do you reproach me, if I try to abjure it, and cast away the burden which I am too weak to bear ? I am weak — Would you have me say that I am strong ? Would you have me try to be a Prometheus, while I am long- ing to be once more an infant on a mother's breast? Let me alone I am a weary child, who knows nothing, can do nothing, except lose its way in arguings and reasonings, and ' find no end, in wandering mazes lost,' Will you reproach me, because when I see a soft cradle lying open for me with a Virgin Mother's face smilino; down all woman's love above it I long to crawl into it, and sleep awhile ? I want loving, indulgent sympathy I want detailed, explicit guidance Have you, then, found so much of them ill our former creed, that you forbid me to go to seek (hem elsewhere, in the Church which not only professes them as an organized system, but practices them .... as you would find in your first half-hour's talk with one of Her priests .... true priests .... who know the heart of man, and pity, and console, and bear for their flock the burdens which they can not bear themselves. You ask me who will teach a fast young man? . . , , I answer, the Jesuit, Ay, start and sneer, at that delicate womanlike tenderness, that subtile instinctive sympathy, which you have never felt .... which is as new to me, alas, as it would be to you ! For if there be none nowadays to teach such as you, who is there who will teach such as me? Do not fancy that I have not craved and seai'ched for teachers .... I went to one party long ago, and they commanded me, as the price of their sympathy, even of any thing but their de- nunciations, to ignore, if not to abjure, all the very points on which I came for light — my love for the Beautiful and the Symbolic — my desire to consecrate and christianize it — my longing for a human voice to till me with authority that I was D 74 A SHAM IS WORSE THAX NOTIIIS-O. furgivoii — my desire to find some practical and ])alj)ablc com niunion between inj-self and the saints of old. Tlu'y told me to cast away, as an accursed chaos, a thousand years of Chris- tian liistor\', and believe that the devil had been for ages .... just the ages I thought noblest, most faithful, most interpene- trated with the thought of God .... trluinj)hant over that church wilh which He had promised to be till the end of the world. No . . . by-the-by, they made two exceptions — of their own choosing. One in favor of the Albitrenses .... who seemed to me, from the original documents, to have been \ery profligate Infidels, of whom the world was well n