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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Last Man, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Last Man
+
+Author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
+
+Release Date: April 24, 2006 [eBook #18247]
+[Most recently updated: October 29, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAST MAN ***
+
+
+
+
+The Last Man
+
+by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
+
+LONDON:
+HENRY COLBURN.
+1826.
+
+
+Contents
+
+ VOL. I.
+ INTRODUCTION.
+ CHAPTER I.
+ CHAPTER II.
+ CHAPTER III.
+ CHAPTER IV.
+ CHAPTER IV.
+ CHAPTER V.
+ CHAPTER VI.
+ CHAPTER VII.
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+ CHAPTER IX.
+ CHAPTER X.
+
+ VOL. II.
+ CHAPTER I.
+ CHAPTER II.
+ CHAPTER III.
+ CHAPTER IV.
+ CHAPTER V.
+ CHAPTER VI.
+ CHAPTER VII.
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+ CHAPTER IX.
+
+ VOL. III.
+ CHAPTER I.
+ CHAPTER II.
+ CHAPTER III.
+ CHAPTER IV.
+ CHAPTER V.
+ CHAPTER VI.
+ CHAPTER VII.
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+ CHAPTER IX.
+ CHAPTER X.
+
+
+
+
+VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+I visited Naples in the year 1818. On the 8th of December of that year,
+my companion and I crossed the Bay, to visit the antiquities which are
+scattered on the shores of Baiæ. The translucent and shining waters of
+the calm sea covered fragments of old Roman villas, which were
+interlaced by sea-weed, and received diamond tints from the chequering
+of the sun-beams; the blue and pellucid element was such as Galatea
+might have skimmed in her car of mother of pearl; or Cleopatra, more
+fitly than the Nile, have chosen as the path of her magic ship. Though
+it was winter, the atmosphere seemed more appropriate to early spring;
+and its genial warmth contributed to inspire those sensations of placid
+delight, which are the portion of every traveller, as he lingers, loath
+to quit the tranquil bays and radiant promontories of Baiæ.
+
+We visited the so called Elysian Fields and Avernus; and wandered
+through various ruined temples, baths, and classic spots; at length we
+entered the gloomy cavern of the Cumæan Sibyl. Our Lazzeroni bore
+flaring torches, which shone red, and almost dusky, in the murky
+subterranean passages, whose darkness thirstily surrounding them,
+seemed eager to imbibe more and more of the element of light. We passed
+by a natural archway, leading to a second gallery, and enquired, if we
+could not enter there also. The guides pointed to the reflection of
+their torches on the water that paved it, leaving us to form our own
+conclusion; but adding it was a pity, for it led to the Sibyl’s Cave.
+Our curiosity and enthusiasm were excited by this circumstance, and we
+insisted upon attempting the passage. As is usually the case in the
+prosecution of such enterprizes, the difficulties decreased on
+examination. We found, on each side of the humid pathway, “dry land for
+the sole of the foot.” At length we arrived at a large, desert, dark
+cavern, which the Lazzeroni assured us was the Sibyl’s Cave. We were
+sufficiently disappointed—Yet we examined it with care, as if its
+blank, rocky walls could still bear trace of celestial visitant. On one
+side was a small opening. Whither does this lead? we asked: can we
+enter here?—“_Questo poi, no,_”—said the wild looking savage, who held
+the torch; “you can advance but a short distance, and nobody visits
+it.”
+
+“Nevertheless, I will try it,” said my companion; “it may lead to the
+real cavern. Shall I go alone, or will you accompany me?”
+
+I signified my readiness to proceed, but our guides protested against
+such a measure. With great volubility, in their native Neapolitan
+dialect, with which we were not very familiar, they told us that there
+were spectres, that the roof would fall in, that it was too narrow to
+admit us, that there was a deep hole within, filled with water, and we
+might be drowned. My friend shortened the harangue, by taking the man’s
+torch from him; and we proceeded alone.
+
+The passage, which at first scarcely admitted us, quickly grew narrower
+and lower; we were almost bent double; yet still we persisted in making
+our way through it. At length we entered a wider space, and the low
+roof heightened; but, as we congratulated ourselves on this change, our
+torch was extinguished by a current of air, and we were left in utter
+darkness. The guides bring with them materials for renewing the light,
+but we had none—our only resource was to return as we came. We groped
+round the widened space to find the entrance, and after a time fancied
+that we had succeeded. This proved however to be a second passage,
+which evidently ascended. It terminated like the former; though
+something approaching to a ray, we could not tell whence, shed a very
+doubtful twilight in the space. By degrees, our eyes grew somewhat
+accustomed to this dimness, and we perceived that there was no direct
+passage leading us further; but that it was possible to climb one side
+of the cavern to a low arch at top, which promised a more easy path,
+from whence we now discovered that this light proceeded. With
+considerable difficulty we scrambled up, and came to another passage
+with still more of illumination, and this led to another ascent like
+the former.
+
+After a succession of these, which our resolution alone permitted us to
+surmount, we arrived at a wide cavern with an arched dome-like roof. An
+aperture in the midst let in the light of heaven; but this was
+overgrown with brambles and underwood, which acted as a veil, obscuring
+the day, and giving a solemn religious hue to the apartment. It was
+spacious, and nearly circular, with a raised seat of stone, about the
+size of a Grecian couch, at one end. The only sign that life had been
+here, was the perfect snow-white skeleton of a goat, which had probably
+not perceived the opening as it grazed on the hill above, and had
+fallen headlong. Ages perhaps had elapsed since this catastrophe; and
+the ruin it had made above, had been repaired by the growth of
+vegetation during many hundred summers.
+
+The rest of the furniture of the cavern consisted of piles of leaves,
+fragments of bark, and a white filmy substance, resembling the inner
+part of the green hood which shelters the grain of the unripe Indian
+corn. We were fatigued by our struggles to attain this point, and
+seated ourselves on the rocky couch, while the sounds of tinkling
+sheep-bells, and shout of shepherd-boy, reached us from above.
+
+At length my friend, who had taken up some of the leaves strewed about,
+exclaimed, “This _is_ the Sibyl’s cave; these are Sibylline leaves.” On
+examination, we found that all the leaves, bark, and other substances,
+were traced with written characters. What appeared to us more
+astonishing, was that these writings were expressed in various
+languages: some unknown to my companion, ancient Chaldee, and Egyptian
+hieroglyphics, old as the Pyramids. Stranger still, some were in modern
+dialects, English and Italian. We could make out little by the dim
+light, but they seemed to contain prophecies, detailed relations of
+events but lately passed; names, now well known, but of modern date;
+and often exclamations of exultation or woe, of victory or defeat, were
+traced on their thin scant pages. This was certainly the Sibyl’s Cave;
+not indeed exactly as Virgil describes it; but the whole of this land
+had been so convulsed by earthquake and volcano, that the change was
+not wonderful, though the traces of ruin were effaced by time; and we
+probably owed the preservation of these leaves, to the accident which
+had closed the mouth of the cavern, and the swift-growing vegetation
+which had rendered its sole opening impervious to the storm. We made a
+hasty selection of such of the leaves, whose writing one at least of us
+could understand; and then, laden with our treasure, we bade adieu to
+the dim hypæthric cavern, and after much difficulty succeeded in
+rejoining our guides.
+
+During our stay at Naples, we often returned to this cave, sometimes
+alone, skimming the sun-lit sea, and each time added to our store.
+Since that period, whenever the world’s circumstance has not
+imperiously called me away, or the temper of my mind impeded such
+study, I have been employed in deciphering these sacred remains. Their
+meaning, wondrous and eloquent, has often repaid my toil, soothing me
+in sorrow, and exciting my imagination to daring flights, through the
+immensity of nature and the mind of man. For awhile my labours were not
+solitary; but that time is gone; and, with the selected and matchless
+companion of my toils, their dearest reward is also lost to me—
+
+Di mie tenere frondi altro lavoro
+Credea mostrarte; e qual fero pianeta
+Ne’ nvidiò insieme, o mio nobil tesoro?
+
+
+I present the public with my latest discoveries in the slight Sibylline
+pages. Scattered and unconnected as they were, I have been obliged to
+add links, and model the work into a consistent form. But the main
+substance rests on the truths contained in these poetic rhapsodies, and
+the divine intuition which the Cumæan damsel obtained from heaven.
+
+I have often wondered at the subject of her verses, and at the English
+dress of the Latin poet. Sometimes I have thought, that, obscure and
+chaotic as they are, they owe their present form to me, their
+decipherer. As if we should give to another artist, the painted
+fragments which form the mosaic copy of Raphael’s Transfiguration in
+St. Peter’s; he would put them together in a form, whose mode would be
+fashioned by his own peculiar mind and talent. Doubtless the leaves of
+the Cumæan Sibyl have suffered distortion and diminution of interest
+and excellence in my hands. My only excuse for thus transforming them,
+is that they were unintelligible in their pristine condition.
+
+My labours have cheered long hours of solitude, and taken me out of a
+world, which has averted its once benignant face from me, to one
+glowing with imagination and power. Will my readers ask how I could
+find solace from the narration of misery and woeful change? This is one
+of the mysteries of our nature, which holds full sway over me, and from
+whose influence I cannot escape. I confess, that I have not been
+unmoved by the development of the tale; and that I have been depressed,
+nay, agonized, at some parts of the recital, which I have faithfully
+transcribed from my materials. Yet such is human nature, that the
+excitement of mind was dear to me, and that the imagination, painter of
+tempest and earthquake, or, worse, the stormy and ruin-fraught passions
+of man, softened my real sorrows and endless regrets, by clothing these
+fictitious ones in that ideality, which takes the mortal sting from
+pain.
+
+I hardly know whether this apology is necessary. For the merits of my
+adaptation and translation must decide how far I have well bestowed my
+time and imperfect powers, in giving form and substance to the frail
+and attenuated Leaves of the Sibyl.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+I am the native of a sea-surrounded nook, a cloud-enshadowed land,
+which, when the surface of the globe, with its shoreless ocean and
+trackless continents, presents itself to my mind, appears only as an
+inconsiderable speck in the immense whole; and yet, when balanced in
+the scale of mental power, far outweighed countries of larger extent
+and more numerous population. So true it is, that man’s mind alone was
+the creator of all that was good or great to man, and that Nature
+herself was only his first minister. England, seated far north in the
+turbid sea, now visits my dreams in the semblance of a vast and
+well-manned ship, which mastered the winds and rode proudly over the
+waves. In my boyish days she was the universe to me. When I stood on my
+native hills, and saw plain and mountain stretch out to the utmost
+limits of my vision, speckled by the dwellings of my countrymen, and
+subdued to fertility by their labours, the earth’s very centre was
+fixed for me in that spot, and the rest of her orb was as a fable, to
+have forgotten which would have cost neither my imagination nor
+understanding an effort.
+
+My fortunes have been, from the beginning, an exemplification of the
+power that mutability may possess over the varied tenor of man’s life.
+With regard to myself, this came almost by inheritance. My father was
+one of those men on whom nature had bestowed to prodigality the envied
+gifts of wit and imagination, and then left his bark of life to be
+impelled by these winds, without adding reason as the rudder, or
+judgment as the pilot for the voyage. His extraction was obscure; but
+circumstances brought him early into public notice, and his small
+paternal property was soon dissipated in the splendid scene of fashion
+and luxury in which he was an actor. During the short years of
+thoughtless youth, he was adored by the high-bred triflers of the day,
+nor least by the youthful sovereign, who escaped from the intrigues of
+party, and the arduous duties of kingly business, to find never-failing
+amusement and exhilaration of spirit in his society. My father’s
+impulses, never under his own controul, perpetually led him into
+difficulties from which his ingenuity alone could extricate him; and
+the accumulating pile of debts of honour and of trade, which would have
+bent to earth any other, was supported by him with a light spirit and
+tameless hilarity; while his company was so necessary at the tables and
+assemblies of the rich, that his derelictions were considered venial,
+and he himself received with intoxicating flattery.
+
+This kind of popularity, like every other, is evanescent: and the
+difficulties of every kind with which he had to contend, increased in a
+frightful ratio compared with his small means of extricating himself.
+At such times the king, in his enthusiasm for him, would come to his
+relief, and then kindly take his friend to task; my father gave the
+best promises for amendment, but his social disposition, his craving
+for the usual diet of admiration, and more than all, the fiend of
+gambling, which fully possessed him, made his good resolutions
+transient, his promises vain. With the quick sensibility peculiar to
+his temperament, he perceived his power in the brilliant circle to be
+on the wane. The king married; and the haughty princess of Austria, who
+became, as queen of England, the head of fashion, looked with harsh
+eyes on his defects, and with contempt on the affection her royal
+husband entertained for him. My father felt that his fall was near; but
+so far from profiting by this last calm before the storm to save
+himself, he sought to forget anticipated evil by making still greater
+sacrifices to the deity of pleasure, deceitful and cruel arbiter of his
+destiny.
+
+The king, who was a man of excellent dispositions, but easily led, had
+now become a willing disciple of his imperious consort. He was induced
+to look with extreme disapprobation, and at last with distaste, on my
+father’s imprudence and follies. It is true that his presence
+dissipated these clouds; his warm-hearted frankness, brilliant sallies,
+and confiding demeanour were irresistible: it was only when at a
+distance, while still renewed tales of his errors were poured into his
+royal friend’s ear, that he lost his influence. The queen’s dextrous
+management was employed to prolong these absences, and gather together
+accusations. At length the king was brought to see in him a source of
+perpetual disquiet, knowing that he should pay for the short-lived
+pleasure of his society by tedious homilies, and more painful
+narrations of excesses, the truth of which he could not disprove. The
+result was, that he would make one more attempt to reclaim him, and in
+case of ill success, cast him off for ever.
+
+Such a scene must have been one of deepest interest and high-wrought
+passion. A powerful king, conspicuous for a goodness which had
+heretofore made him meek, and now lofty in his admonitions, with
+alternate entreaty and reproof, besought his friend to attend to his
+real interests, resolutely to avoid those fascinations which in fact
+were fast deserting him, and to spend his great powers on a worthy
+field, in which he, his sovereign, would be his prop, his stay, and his
+pioneer. My father felt this kindness; for a moment ambitious dreams
+floated before him; and he thought that it would be well to exchange
+his present pursuits for nobler duties. With sincerity and fervour he
+gave the required promise: as a pledge of continued favour, he received
+from his royal master a sum of money to defray pressing debts, and
+enable him to enter under good auspices his new career. That very
+night, while yet full of gratitude and good resolves, this whole sum,
+and its amount doubled, was lost at the gaming-table. In his desire to
+repair his first losses, my father risked double stakes, and thus
+incurred a debt of honour he was wholly unable to pay. Ashamed to apply
+again to the king, he turned his back upon London, its false delights
+and clinging miseries; and, with poverty for his sole companion, buried
+himself in solitude among the hills and lakes of Cumberland. His wit,
+his bon mots, the record of his personal attractions, fascinating
+manners, and social talents, were long remembered and repeated from
+mouth to mouth. Ask where now was this favourite of fashion, this
+companion of the noble, this excelling beam, which gilt with alien
+splendour the assemblies of the courtly and the gay—you heard that he
+was under a cloud, a lost man; not one thought it belonged to him to
+repay pleasure by real services, or that his long reign of brilliant
+wit deserved a pension on retiring. The king lamented his absence; he
+loved to repeat his sayings, relate the adventures they had had
+together, and exalt his talents—but here ended his reminiscence.
+
+Meanwhile my father, forgotten, could not forget. He repined for the
+loss of what was more necessary to him than air or food—the excitements
+of pleasure, the admiration of the noble, the luxurious and polished
+living of the great. A nervous fever was the consequence; during which
+he was nursed by the daughter of a poor cottager, under whose roof he
+lodged. She was lovely, gentle, and, above all, kind to him; nor can it
+afford astonishment, that the late idol of high-bred beauty should,
+even in a fallen state, appear a being of an elevated and wondrous
+nature to the lowly cottage-girl. The attachment between them led to
+the ill-fated marriage, of which I was the offspring. Notwithstanding
+the tenderness and sweetness of my mother, her husband still deplored
+his degraded state. Unaccustomed to industry, he knew not in what way
+to contribute to the support of his increasing family. Sometimes he
+thought of applying to the king; pride and shame for a while withheld
+him; and, before his necessities became so imperious as to compel him
+to some kind of exertion, he died. For one brief interval before this
+catastrophe, he looked forward to the future, and contemplated with
+anguish the desolate situation in which his wife and children would be
+left. His last effort was a letter to the king, full of touching
+eloquence, and of occasional flashes of that brilliant spirit which was
+an integral part of him. He bequeathed his widow and orphans to the
+friendship of his royal master, and felt satisfied that, by this means,
+their prosperity was better assured in his death than in his life. This
+letter was enclosed to the care of a nobleman, who, he did not doubt,
+would perform the last and inexpensive office of placing it in the
+king’s own hand.
+
+He died in debt, and his little property was seized immediately by his
+creditors. My mother, pennyless and burthened with two children, waited
+week after week, and month after month, in sickening expectation of a
+reply, which never came. She had no experience beyond her father’s
+cottage; and the mansion of the lord of the manor was the chiefest type
+of grandeur she could conceive. During my father’s life, she had been
+made familiar with the name of royalty and the courtly circle; but such
+things, ill according with her personal experience, appeared, after the
+loss of him who gave substance and reality to them, vague and
+fantastical. If, under any circumstances, she could have acquired
+sufficient courage to address the noble persons mentioned by her
+husband, the ill success of his own application caused her to banish
+the idea. She saw therefore no escape from dire penury: perpetual care,
+joined to sorrow for the loss of the wondrous being, whom she continued
+to contemplate with ardent admiration, hard labour, and naturally
+delicate health, at length released her from the sad continuity of want
+and misery.
+
+The condition of her orphan children was peculiarly desolate. Her own
+father had been an emigrant from another part of the country, and had
+died long since: they had no one relation to take them by the hand;
+they were outcasts, paupers, unfriended beings, to whom the most scanty
+pittance was a matter of favour, and who were treated merely as
+children of peasants, yet poorer than the poorest, who, dying, had left
+them, a thankless bequest, to the close-handed charity of the land.
+
+I, the elder of the two, was five years old when my mother died. A
+remembrance of the discourses of my parents, and the communications
+which my mother endeavoured to impress upon me concerning my father’s
+friends, in slight hope that I might one day derive benefit from the
+knowledge, floated like an indistinct dream through my brain. I
+conceived that I was different and superior to my protectors and
+companions, but I knew not how or wherefore. The sense of injury,
+associated with the name of king and noble, clung to me; but I could
+draw no conclusions from such feelings, to serve as a guide to action.
+My first real knowledge of myself was as an unprotected orphan among
+the valleys and fells of Cumberland. I was in the service of a farmer;
+and with crook in hand, my dog at my side, I shepherded a numerous
+flock on the near uplands. I cannot say much in praise of such a life;
+and its pains far exceeded its pleasures. There was freedom in it, a
+companionship with nature, and a reckless loneliness; but these,
+romantic as they were, did not accord with the love of action and
+desire of human sympathy, characteristic of youth. Neither the care of
+my flock, nor the change of seasons, were sufficient to tame my eager
+spirit; my out-door life and unemployed time were the temptations that
+led me early into lawless habits. I associated with others friendless
+like myself; I formed them into a band, I was their chief and captain.
+All shepherd-boys alike, while our flocks were spread over the
+pastures, we schemed and executed many a mischievous prank, which drew
+on us the anger and revenge of the rustics. I was the leader and
+protector of my comrades, and as I became distinguished among them,
+their misdeeds were usually visited upon me. But while I endured
+punishment and pain in their defence with the spirit of an hero, I
+claimed as my reward their praise and obedience.
+
+In such a school my disposition became rugged, but firm. The appetite
+for admiration and small capacity for self-controul which I inherited
+from my father, nursed by adversity, made me daring and reckless. I was
+rough as the elements, and unlearned as the animals I tended. I often
+compared myself to them, and finding that my chief superiority
+consisted in power, I soon persuaded myself that it was in power only
+that I was inferior to the chiefest potentates of the earth. Thus
+untaught in refined philosophy, and pursued by a restless feeling of
+degradation from my true station in society, I wandered among the hills
+of civilized England as uncouth a savage as the wolf-bred founder of
+old Rome. I owned but one law, it was that of the strongest, and my
+greatest deed of virtue was never to submit.
+
+Yet let me a little retract from this sentence I have passed on myself.
+My mother, when dying, had, in addition to her other half-forgotten and
+misapplied lessons, committed, with solemn exhortation, her other child
+to my fraternal guardianship; and this one duty I performed to the best
+of my ability, with all the zeal and affection of which my nature was
+capable. My sister was three years younger than myself; I had nursed
+her as an infant, and when the difference of our sexes, by giving us
+various occupations, in a great measure divided us, yet she continued
+to be the object of my careful love. Orphans, in the fullest sense of
+the term, we were poorest among the poor, and despised among the
+unhonoured. If my daring and courage obtained for me a kind of
+respectful aversion, her youth and sex, since they did not excite
+tenderness, by proving her to be weak, were the causes of numberless
+mortifications to her; and her own disposition was not so constituted
+as to diminish the evil effects of her lowly station.
+
+She was a singular being, and, like me, inherited much of the peculiar
+disposition of our father. Her countenance was all expression; her eyes
+were not dark, but impenetrably deep; you seemed to discover space
+after space in their intellectual glance, and to feel that the soul
+which was their soul, comprehended an universe of thought in its ken.
+She was pale and fair, and her golden hair clustered on her temples,
+contrasting its rich hue with the living marble beneath. Her coarse
+peasant-dress, little consonant apparently with the refinement of
+feeling which her face expressed, yet in a strange manner accorded with
+it. She was like one of Guido’s saints, with heaven in her heart and in
+her look, so that when you saw her you only thought of that within, and
+costume and even feature were secondary to the mind that beamed in her
+countenance.
+
+Yet though lovely and full of noble feeling, my poor Perdita (for this
+was the fanciful name my sister had received from her dying parent),
+was not altogether saintly in her disposition. Her manners were cold
+and repulsive. If she had been nurtured by those who had regarded her
+with affection, she might have been different; but unloved and
+neglected, she repaid want of kindness with distrust and silence. She
+was submissive to those who held authority over her, but a perpetual
+cloud dwelt on her brow; she looked as if she expected enmity from
+every one who approached her, and her actions were instigated by the
+same feeling. All the time she could command she spent in solitude. She
+would ramble to the most unfrequented places, and scale dangerous
+heights, that in those unvisited spots she might wrap herself in
+loneliness. Often she passed whole hours walking up and down the paths
+of the woods; she wove garlands of flowers and ivy, or watched the
+flickering of the shadows and glancing of the leaves; sometimes she sat
+beside a stream, and as her thoughts paused, threw flowers or pebbles
+into the waters, watching how those swam and these sank; or she would
+set afloat boats formed of bark of trees or leaves, with a feather for
+a sail, and intensely watch the navigation of her craft among the
+rapids and shallows of the brook. Meanwhile her active fancy wove a
+thousand combinations; she dreamt “of moving accidents by flood and
+field”—she lost herself delightedly in these self-created wanderings,
+and returned with unwilling spirit to the dull detail of common life.
+Poverty was the cloud that veiled her excellencies, and all that was
+good in her seemed about to perish from want of the genial dew of
+affection. She had not even the same advantage as I in the recollection
+of her parents; she clung to me, her brother, as her only friend, but
+her alliance with me completed the distaste that her protectors felt
+for her; and every error was magnified by them into crimes. If she had
+been bred in that sphere of life to which by inheritance the delicate
+framework of her mind and person was adapted, she would have been the
+object almost of adoration, for her virtues were as eminent as her
+defects. All the genius that ennobled the blood of her father
+illustrated hers; a generous tide flowed in her veins; artifice, envy,
+or meanness, were at the antipodes of her nature; her countenance, when
+enlightened by amiable feeling, might have belonged to a queen of
+nations; her eyes were bright; her look fearless.
+
+Although by our situation and dispositions we were almost equally cut
+off from the usual forms of social intercourse, we formed a strong
+contrast to each other. I always required the stimulants of
+companionship and applause. Perdita was all-sufficient to herself.
+Notwithstanding my lawless habits, my disposition was sociable, hers
+recluse. My life was spent among tangible realities, hers was a dream.
+I might be said even to love my enemies, since by exciting me they in a
+sort bestowed happiness upon me; Perdita almost disliked her friends,
+for they interfered with her visionary moods. All my feelings, even of
+exultation and triumph, were changed to bitterness, if unparticipated;
+Perdita, even in joy, fled to loneliness, and could go on from day to
+day, neither expressing her emotions, nor seeking a fellow-feeling in
+another mind. Nay, she could love and dwell with tenderness on the look
+and voice of her friend, while her demeanour expressed the coldest
+reserve. A sensation with her became a sentiment, and she never spoke
+until she had mingled her perceptions of outward objects with others
+which were the native growth of her own mind. She was like a fruitful
+soil that imbibed the airs and dews of heaven, and gave them forth
+again to light in loveliest forms of fruits and flowers; but then she
+was often dark and rugged as that soil, raked up, and new sown with
+unseen seed.
+
+She dwelt in a cottage whose trim grass-plat sloped down to the waters
+of the lake of Ulswater; a beech wood stretched up the hill behind, and
+a purling brook gently falling from the acclivity ran through
+poplar-shaded banks into the lake. I lived with a farmer whose house
+was built higher up among the hills: a dark crag rose behind it, and,
+exposed to the north, the snow lay in its crevices the summer through.
+Before dawn I led my flock to the sheep-walks, and guarded them through
+the day. It was a life of toil; for rain and cold were more frequent
+than sunshine; but it was my pride to contemn the elements. My trusty
+dog watched the sheep as I slipped away to the rendezvous of my
+comrades, and thence to the accomplishment of our schemes. At noon we
+met again, and we threw away in contempt our peasant fare, as we built
+our fire-place and kindled the cheering blaze destined to cook the game
+stolen from the neighbouring preserves. Then came the tale of
+hair-breadth escapes, combats with dogs, ambush and flight, as
+gipsey-like we encompassed our pot. The search after a stray lamb, or
+the devices by which we elude or endeavoured to elude punishment,
+filled up the hours of afternoon; in the evening my flock went to its
+fold, and I to my sister.
+
+It was seldom indeed that we escaped, to use an old-fashioned phrase,
+scot free. Our dainty fare was often exchanged for blows and
+imprisonment. Once, when thirteen years of age, I was sent for a month
+to the county jail. I came out, my morals unimproved, my hatred to my
+oppressors encreased tenfold. Bread and water did not tame my blood,
+nor solitary confinement inspire me with gentle thoughts. I was angry,
+impatient, miserable; my only happy hours were those during which I
+devised schemes of revenge; these were perfected in my forced solitude,
+so that during the whole of the following season, and I was freed early
+in September, I never failed to provide excellent and plenteous fare
+for myself and my comrades. This was a glorious winter. The sharp frost
+and heavy snows tamed the animals, and kept the country gentlemen by
+their firesides; we got more game than we could eat, and my faithful
+dog grew sleek upon our refuse.
+
+Thus years passed on; and years only added fresh love of freedom, and
+contempt for all that was not as wild and rude as myself. At the age of
+sixteen I had shot up in appearance to man’s estate; I was tall and
+athletic; I was practised to feats of strength, and inured to the
+inclemency of the elements. My skin was embrowned by the sun; my step
+was firm with conscious power. I feared no man, and loved none. In
+after life I looked back with wonder to what I then was; how utterly
+worthless I should have become if I had pursued my lawless career. My
+life was like that of an animal, and my mind was in danger of
+degenerating into that which informs brute nature. Until now, my savage
+habits had done me no radical mischief; my physical powers had grown up
+and flourished under their influence, and my mind, undergoing the same
+discipline, was imbued with all the hardy virtues. But now my boasted
+independence was daily instigating me to acts of tyranny, and freedom
+was becoming licentiousness. I stood on the brink of manhood; passions,
+strong as the trees of a forest, had already taken root within me, and
+were about to shadow with their noxious overgrowth, my path of life.
+
+I panted for enterprises beyond my childish exploits, and formed
+distempered dreams of future action. I avoided my ancient comrades, and
+I soon lost them. They arrived at the age when they were sent to fulfil
+their destined situations in life; while I, an outcast, with none to
+lead or drive me forward, paused. The old began to point at me as an
+example, the young to wonder at me as a being distinct from themselves;
+I hated them, and began, last and worst degradation, to hate myself. I
+clung to my ferocious habits, yet half despised them; I continued my
+war against civilization, and yet entertained a wish to belong to it.
+
+I revolved again and again all that I remembered my mother to have told
+me of my father’s former life; I contemplated the few relics I
+possessed belonging to him, which spoke of greater refinement than
+could be found among the mountain cottages; but nothing in all this
+served as a guide to lead me to another and pleasanter way of life. My
+father had been connected with nobles, but all I knew of such
+connection was subsequent neglect. The name of the king,—he to whom my
+dying father had addressed his latest prayers, and who had barbarously
+slighted them, was associated only with the ideas of unkindness,
+injustice, and consequent resentment. I was born for something greater
+than I was—and greater I would become; but greatness, at least to my
+distorted perceptions, was no necessary associate of goodness, and my
+wild thoughts were unchecked by moral considerations when they rioted
+in dreams of distinction. Thus I stood upon a pinnacle, a sea of evil
+rolled at my feet; I was about to precipitate myself into it, and rush
+like a torrent over all obstructions to the object of my wishes— when a
+stranger influence came over the current of my fortunes, and changed
+their boisterous course to what was in comparison like the gentle
+meanderings of a meadow-encircling streamlet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+I lived far from the busy haunts of men, and the rumour of wars or
+political changes came worn to a mere sound, to our mountain abodes.
+England had been the scene of momentous struggles, during my early
+boyhood. In the year 2073, the last of its kings, the ancient friend of
+my father, had abdicated in compliance with the gentle force of the
+remonstrances of his subjects, and a republic was instituted. Large
+estates were secured to the dethroned monarch and his family; he
+received the title of Earl of Windsor, and Windsor Castle, an ancient
+royalty, with its wide demesnes were a part of his allotted wealth. He
+died soon after, leaving two children, a son and a daughter.
+
+The ex-queen, a princess of the house of Austria, had long impelled her
+husband to withstand the necessity of the times. She was haughty and
+fearless; she cherished a love of power, and a bitter contempt for him
+who had despoiled himself of a kingdom. For her children’s sake alone
+she consented to remain, shorn of regality, a member of the English
+republic. When she became a widow, she turned all her thoughts to the
+educating her son Adrian, second Earl of Windsor, so as to accomplish
+her ambitious ends; and with his mother’s milk he imbibed, and was
+intended to grow up in the steady purpose of re-acquiring his lost
+crown. Adrian was now fifteen years of age. He was addicted to study,
+and imbued beyond his years with learning and talent: report said that
+he had already begun to thwart his mother’s views, and to entertain
+republican principles. However this might be, the haughty Countess
+entrusted none with the secrets of her family-tuition. Adrian was bred
+up in solitude, and kept apart from the natural companions of his age
+and rank. Some unknown circumstance now induced his mother to send him
+from under her immediate tutelage; and we heard that he was about to
+visit Cumberland. A thousand tales were rife, explanatory of the
+Countess of Windsor’s conduct; none true probably; but each day it
+became more certain that we should have the noble scion of the late
+regal house of England among us.
+
+There was a large estate with a mansion attached to it, belonging to
+this family, at Ulswater. A large park was one of its appendages, laid
+out with great taste, and plentifully stocked with game. I had often
+made depredations on these preserves; and the neglected state of the
+property facilitated my incursions. When it was decided that the young
+Earl of Windsor should visit Cumberland, workmen arrived to put the
+house and grounds in order for his reception. The apartments were
+restored to their pristine splendour, and the park, all disrepairs
+restored, was guarded with unusual care.
+
+I was beyond measure disturbed by this intelligence. It roused all my
+dormant recollections, my suspended sentiments of injury, and gave rise
+to the new one of revenge. I could no longer attend to my occupations;
+all my plans and devices were forgotten; I seemed about to begin life
+anew, and that under no good auspices. The tug of war, I thought, was
+now to begin. He would come triumphantly to the district to which my
+parent had fled broken-hearted; he would find the ill-fated offspring,
+bequeathed with such vain confidence to his royal father, miserable
+paupers. That he should know of our existence, and treat us, near at
+hand, with the same contumely which his father had practised in
+distance and absence, appeared to me the certain consequence of all
+that had gone before. Thus then I should meet this titled stripling—the
+son of my father’s friend. He would be hedged in by servants; nobles,
+and the sons of nobles, were his companions; all England rang with his
+name; and his coming, like a thunderstorm, was heard from far: while I,
+unlettered and unfashioned, should, if I came in contact with him, in
+the judgment of his courtly followers, bear evidence in my very person
+to the propriety of that ingratitude which had made me the degraded
+being I appeared.
+
+With my mind fully occupied by these ideas, I might be said as if
+fascinated, to haunt the destined abode of the young Earl. I watched
+the progress of the improvements, and stood by the unlading waggons, as
+various articles of luxury, brought from London, were taken forth and
+conveyed into the mansion. It was part of the Ex-Queen’s plan, to
+surround her son with princely magnificence. I beheld rich carpets and
+silken hangings, ornaments of gold, richly embossed metals, emblazoned
+furniture, and all the appendages of high rank arranged, so that
+nothing but what was regal in splendour should reach the eye of one of
+royal descent. I looked on these; I turned my gaze to my own mean
+dress.—Whence sprung this difference? Whence but from ingratitude, from
+falsehood, from a dereliction on the part of the prince’s father, of
+all noble sympathy and generous feeling. Doubtless, he also, whose
+blood received a mingling tide from his proud mother—he, the
+acknowledged focus of the kingdom’s wealth and nobility, had been
+taught to repeat my father’s name with disdain, and to scoff at my just
+claims to protection. I strove to think that all this grandeur was but
+more glaring infamy, and that, by planting his gold-enwoven flag beside
+my tarnished and tattered banner, he proclaimed not his superiority,
+but his debasement. Yet I envied him. His stud of beautiful horses, his
+arms of costly workmanship, the praise that attended him, the
+adoration, ready servitor, high place and high esteem,—I considered
+them as forcibly wrenched from me, and envied them all with novel and
+tormenting bitterness.
+
+To crown my vexation of spirit, Perdita, the visionary Perdita, seemed
+to awake to real life with transport, when she told me that the Earl of
+Windsor was about to arrive.
+
+“And this pleases you?” I observed, moodily.
+
+“Indeed it does, Lionel,” she replied; “I quite long to see him; he is
+the descendant of our kings, the first noble of the land: every one
+admires and loves him, and they say that his rank is his least merit;
+he is generous, brave, and affable.”
+
+“You have learnt a pretty lesson, Perdita,” said I, “and repeat it so
+literally, that you forget the while the proofs we have of the Earl’s
+virtues; his generosity to us is manifest in our plenty, his bravery in
+the protection he affords us, his affability in the notice he takes of
+us. His rank his least merit, do you say? Why, all his virtues are
+derived from his station only; because he is rich, he is called
+generous; because he is powerful, brave; because he is well served, he
+is affable. Let them call him so, let all England believe him to be
+thus—we know him—he is our enemy—our penurious, dastardly, arrogant
+enemy; if he were gifted with one particle of the virtues you call his,
+he would do justly by us, if it were only to shew, that if he must
+strike, it should not be a fallen foe. His father injured my father—his
+father, unassailable on his throne, dared despise him who only stooped
+beneath himself, when he deigned to associate with the royal ingrate.
+We, descendants from the one and the other, must be enemies also. He
+shall find that I can feel my injuries; he shall learn to dread my
+revenge!”
+
+A few days after he arrived. Every inhabitant of the most miserable
+cottage, went to swell the stream of population that poured forth to
+meet him: even Perdita, in spite of my late philippic, crept near the
+highway, to behold this idol of all hearts. I, driven half mad, as I
+met party after party of the country people, in their holiday best,
+descending the hills, escaped to their cloud-veiled summits, and
+looking on the sterile rocks about me, exclaimed—“_They_ do not cry,
+long live the Earl!” Nor, when night came, accompanied by drizzling
+rain and cold, would I return home; for I knew that each cottage rang
+with the praises of Adrian; as I felt my limbs grow numb and chill, my
+pain served as food for my insane aversion; nay, I almost triumphed in
+it, since it seemed to afford me reason and excuse for my hatred of my
+unheeding adversary. All was attributed to him, for I confounded so
+entirely the idea of father and son, that I forgot that the latter
+might be wholly unconscious of his parent’s neglect of us; and as I
+struck my aching head with my hand, I cried: “He shall hear of this! I
+will be revenged! I will not suffer like a spaniel! He shall know,
+beggar and friendless as I am, that I will not tamely submit to
+injury!” Each day, each hour added to these exaggerated wrongs. His
+praises were so many adder’s stings infixed in my vulnerable breast. If
+I saw him at a distance, riding a beautiful horse, my blood boiled with
+rage; the air seemed poisoned by his presence, and my very native
+English was changed to a vile jargon, since every phrase I heard was
+coupled with his name and honour. I panted to relieve this painful
+heart-burning by some misdeed that should rouse him to a sense of my
+antipathy. It was the height of his offending, that he should occasion
+in me such intolerable sensations, and not deign himself to afford any
+demonstration that he was aware that I even lived to feel them.
+
+It soon became known that Adrian took great delight in his park and
+preserves. He never sported, but spent hours in watching the tribes of
+lovely and almost tame animals with which it was stocked, and ordered
+that greater care should be taken of them than ever. Here was an
+opening for my plans of offence, and I made use of it with all the
+brute impetuosity I derived from my active mode of life. I proposed the
+enterprize of poaching on his demesne to my few remaining comrades, who
+were the most determined and lawless of the crew; but they all shrunk
+from the peril; so I was left to achieve my revenge myself. At first my
+exploits were unperceived; I increased in daring; footsteps on the dewy
+grass, torn boughs, and marks of slaughter, at length betrayed me to
+the game-keepers. They kept better watch; I was taken, and sent to
+prison. I entered its gloomy walls in a fit of triumphant extasy: “He
+feels me now,” I cried, “and shall, again and again!”—I passed but one
+day in confinement; in the evening I was liberated, as I was told, by
+the order of the Earl himself. This news precipitated me from my
+self-raised pinnacle of honour. He despises me, I thought; but he shall
+learn that I despise him, and hold in equal contempt his punishments
+and his clemency. On the second night after my release, I was again
+taken by the gamekeepers—again imprisoned, and again released; and
+again, such was my pertinacity, did the fourth night find me in the
+forbidden park. The gamekeepers were more enraged than their lord by my
+obstinacy. They had received orders that if I were again taken, I
+should be brought to the Earl; and his lenity made them expect a
+conclusion which they considered ill befitting my crime. One of them,
+who had been from the first the leader among those who had seized me,
+resolved to satisfy his own resentment, before he made me over to the
+higher powers.
+
+The late setting of the moon, and the extreme caution I was obliged to
+use in this my third expedition, consumed so much time, that something
+like a qualm of fear came over me when I perceived dark night yield to
+twilight. I crept along by the fern, on my hands and knees, seeking the
+shadowy coverts of the underwood, while the birds awoke with unwelcome
+song above, and the fresh morning wind, playing among the boughs, made
+me suspect a footfall at each turn. My heart beat quick as I approached
+the palings; my hand was on one of them, a leap would take me to the
+other side, when two keepers sprang from an ambush upon me: one knocked
+me down, and proceeded to inflict a severe horse-whipping. I started
+up—a knife was in my grasp; I made a plunge at his raised right arm,
+and inflicted a deep, wide wound in his hand. The rage and yells of the
+wounded man, the howling execrations of his comrade, which I answered
+with equal bitterness and fury, echoed through the dell; morning broke
+more and more, ill accordant in its celestial beauty with our brute and
+noisy contest. I and my enemy were still struggling, when the wounded
+man exclaimed, “The Earl!” I sprang out of the herculean hold of the
+keeper, panting from my exertions; I cast furious glances on my
+persecutors, and placing myself with my back to a tree, resolved to
+defend myself to the last. My garments were torn, and they, as well as
+my hands, were stained with the blood of the man I had wounded; one
+hand grasped the dead birds—my hard-earned prey, the other held the
+knife; my hair was matted; my face besmeared with the same guilty signs
+that bore witness against me on the dripping instrument I clenched; my
+whole appearance was haggard and squalid. Tall and muscular as I was in
+form, I must have looked like, what indeed I was, the merest ruffian
+that ever trod the earth.
+
+The name of the Earl startled me, and caused all the indignant blood
+that warmed my heart to rush into my cheeks; I had never seen him
+before; I figured to myself a haughty, assuming youth, who would take
+me to task, if he deigned to speak to me, with all the arrogance of
+superiority. My reply was ready; a reproach I deemed calculated to
+sting his very heart. He came up the while; and his appearance blew
+aside, with gentle western breath, my cloudy wrath: a tall, slim, fair
+boy, with a physiognomy expressive of the excess of sensibility and
+refinement stood before me; the morning sunbeams tinged with gold his
+silken hair, and spread light and glory over his beaming countenance.
+“How is this?” he cried. The men eagerly began their defence; he put
+them aside, saying, “Two of you at once on a mere lad— for shame!” He
+came up to me: “Verney,” he cried, “Lionel Verney, do we meet thus for
+the first time? We were born to be friends to each other; and though
+ill fortune has divided us, will you not acknowledge the hereditary
+bond of friendship which I trust will hereafter unite us?”
+
+As he spoke, his earnest eyes, fixed on me, seemed to read my very
+soul: my heart, my savage revengeful heart, felt the influence of sweet
+benignity sink upon it; while his thrilling voice, like sweetest
+melody, awoke a mute echo within me, stirring to its depths the
+life-blood in my frame. I desired to reply, to acknowledge his
+goodness, accept his proffered friendship; but words, fitting words,
+were not afforded to the rough mountaineer; I would have held out my
+hand, but its guilty stain restrained me. Adrian took pity on my
+faltering mien: “Come with me,” he said, “I have much to say to you;
+come home with me—you know who I am?”
+
+“Yes,” I exclaimed, “I do believe that I now know you, and that you
+will pardon my mistakes—my crime.”
+
+Adrian smiled gently; and after giving his orders to the gamekeepers,
+he came up to me; putting his arm in mine, we walked together to the
+mansion.
+
+It was not his rank—after all that I have said, surely it will not be
+suspected that it was Adrian’s rank, that, from the first, subdued my
+heart of hearts, and laid my entire spirit prostrate before him. Nor
+was it I alone who felt thus intimately his perfections. His
+sensibility and courtesy fascinated every one. His vivacity,
+intelligence, and active spirit of benevolence, completed the conquest.
+Even at this early age, he was deep read and imbued with the spirit of
+high philosophy. This spirit gave a tone of irresistible persuasion to
+his intercourse with others, so that he seemed like an inspired
+musician, who struck, with unerring skill, the “lyre of mind,” and
+produced thence divine harmony. In person, he hardly appeared of this
+world; his slight frame was overinformed by the soul that dwelt within;
+he was all mind; “Man but a rush against” his breast, and it would have
+conquered his strength; but the might of his smile would have tamed an
+hungry lion, or caused a legion of armed men to lay their weapons at
+his feet.
+
+I spent the day with him. At first he did not recur to the past, or
+indeed to any personal occurrences. He wished probably to inspire me
+with confidence, and give me time to gather together my scattered
+thoughts. He talked of general subjects, and gave me ideas I had never
+before conceived. We sat in his library, and he spoke of the old Greek
+sages, and of the power which they had acquired over the minds of men,
+through the force of love and wisdom only. The room was decorated with
+the busts of many of them, and he described their characters to me. As
+he spoke, I felt subject to him; and all my boasted pride and strength
+were subdued by the honeyed accents of this blue-eyed boy. The trim and
+paled demesne of civilization, which I had before regarded from my wild
+jungle as inaccessible, had its wicket opened by him; I stepped within,
+and felt, as I entered, that I trod my native soil.
+
+As evening came on, he reverted to the past. “I have a tale to relate,”
+he said, “and much explanation to give concerning the past; perhaps you
+can assist me to curtail it. Do you remember your father? I had never
+the happiness of seeing him, but his name is one of my earliest
+recollections: he stands written in my mind’s tablets as the type of
+all that was gallant, amiable, and fascinating in man. His wit was not
+more conspicuous than the overflowing goodness of his heart, which he
+poured in such full measure on his friends, as to leave, alas! small
+remnant for himself.”
+
+Encouraged by this encomium, I proceeded, in answer to his inquiries,
+to relate what I remembered of my parent; and he gave an account of
+those circumstances which had brought about a neglect of my father’s
+testamentary letter. When, in after times, Adrian’s father, then king
+of England, felt his situation become more perilous, his line of
+conduct more embarrassed, again and again he wished for his early
+friend, who might stand a mound against the impetuous anger of his
+queen, a mediator between him and the parliament. From the time that he
+had quitted London, on the fatal night of his defeat at the
+gaming-table, the king had received no tidings concerning him; and
+when, after the lapse of years, he exerted himself to discover him,
+every trace was lost. With fonder regret than ever, he clung to his
+memory; and gave it in charge to his son, if ever he should meet this
+valued friend, in his name to bestow every succour, and to assure him
+that, to the last, his attachment survived separation and silence.
+
+A short time before Adrian’s visit to Cumberland, the heir of the
+nobleman to whom my father had confided his last appeal to his royal
+master, put this letter, its seal unbroken, into the young Earl’s
+hands. It had been found cast aside with a mass of papers of old date,
+and accident alone brought it to light. Adrian read it with deep
+interest; and found there that living spirit of genius and wit he had
+so often heard commemorated. He discovered the name of the spot whither
+my father had retreated, and where he died; he learnt the existence of
+his orphan children; and during the short interval between his arrival
+at Ulswater and our meeting in the park, he had been occupied in making
+inquiries concerning us, and arranging a variety of plans for our
+benefit, preliminary to his introducing himself to our notice.
+
+The mode in which he spoke of my father was gratifying to my vanity;
+the veil which he delicately cast over his benevolence, in alledging a
+duteous fulfilment of the king’s latest will, was soothing to my pride.
+Other feelings, less ambiguous, were called into play by his
+conciliating manner and the generous warmth of his expressions, respect
+rarely before experienced, admiration, and love—he had touched my rocky
+heart with his magic power, and the stream of affection gushed forth,
+imperishable and pure. In the evening we parted; he pressed my hand:
+“We shall meet again; come to me to-morrow.” I clasped that kind hand;
+I tried to answer; a fervent “God bless you!” was all my ignorance
+could frame of speech, and I darted away, oppressed by my new emotions.
+
+I could not rest. I sought the hills; a west wind swept them, and the
+stars glittered above. I ran on, careless of outward objects, but
+trying to master the struggling spirit within me by means of bodily
+fatigue. “This,” I thought, “is power! Not to be strong of limb, hard
+of heart, ferocious, and daring; but kind, compassionate and
+soft.”—Stopping short, I clasped my hands, and with the fervour of a
+new proselyte, cried, “Doubt me not, Adrian, I also will become wise
+and good!” and then quite overcome, I wept aloud.
+
+As this gust of passion passed from me, I felt more composed. I lay on
+the ground, and giving the reins to my thoughts, repassed in my mind my
+former life; and began, fold by fold, to unwind the many errors of my
+heart, and to discover how brutish, savage, and worthless I had
+hitherto been. I could not however at that time feel remorse, for
+methought I was born anew; my soul threw off the burthen of past sin,
+to commence a new career in innocence and love. Nothing harsh or rough
+remained to jar with the soft feelings which the transactions of the
+day had inspired; I was as a child lisping its devotions after its
+mother, and my plastic soul was remoulded by a master hand, which I
+neither desired nor was able to resist.
+
+This was the first commencement of my friendship with Adrian, and I
+must commemorate this day as the most fortunate of my life. I now began
+to be human. I was admitted within that sacred boundary which divides
+the intellectual and moral nature of man from that which characterizes
+animals. My best feelings were called into play to give fitting
+responses to the generosity, wisdom, and amenity of my new friend. He,
+with a noble goodness all his own, took infinite delight in bestowing
+to prodigality the treasures of his mind and fortune on the
+long-neglected son of his father’s friend, the offspring of that gifted
+being whose excellencies and talents he had heard commemorated from
+infancy.
+
+After his abdication the late king had retreated from the sphere of
+politics, yet his domestic circle afforded him small content. The
+ex-queen had none of the virtues of domestic life, and those of courage
+and daring which she possessed were rendered null by the secession of
+her husband: she despised him, and did not care to conceal her
+sentiments. The king had, in compliance with her exactions, cast off
+his old friends, but he had acquired no new ones under her guidance. In
+this dearth of sympathy, he had recourse to his almost infant son; and
+the early development of talent and sensibility rendered Adrian no
+unfitting depository of his father’s confidence. He was never weary of
+listening to the latter’s often repeated accounts of old times, in
+which my father had played a distinguished part; his keen remarks were
+repeated to the boy, and remembered by him; his wit, his fascinations,
+his very faults were hallowed by the regret of affection; his loss was
+sincerely deplored. Even the queen’s dislike of the favourite was
+ineffectual to deprive him of his son’s admiration: it was bitter,
+sarcastic, contemptuous—but as she bestowed her heavy censure alike on
+his virtues as his errors, on his devoted friendship and his
+ill-bestowed loves, on his disinterestedness and his prodigality, on
+his pre-possessing grace of manner, and the facility with which he
+yielded to temptation, her double shot proved too heavy, and fell short
+of the mark. Nor did her angry dislike prevent Adrian from imaging my
+father, as he had said, the type of all that was gallant, amiable, and
+fascinating in man. It was not strange therefore, that when he heard of
+the existence of the offspring of this celebrated person, he should
+have formed the plan of bestowing on them all the advantages his rank
+made him rich to afford. When he found me a vagabond shepherd of the
+hills, a poacher, an unlettered savage, still his kindness did not
+fail. In addition to the opinion he entertained that his father was to
+a degree culpable of neglect towards us, and that he was bound to every
+possible reparation, he was pleased to say that under all my ruggedness
+there glimmered forth an elevation of spirit, which could be
+distinguished from mere animal courage, and that I inherited a
+similarity of countenance to my father, which gave proof that all his
+virtues and talents had not died with him. Whatever those might be
+which descended to me, my noble young friend resolved should not be
+lost for want of culture.
+
+Acting upon this plan in our subsequent intercourse, he led me to wish
+to participate in that cultivation which graced his own intellect. My
+active mind, when once it seized upon this new idea, fastened on it
+with extreme avidity. At first it was the great object of my ambition
+to rival the merits of my father, and render myself worthy of the
+friendship of Adrian. But curiosity soon awoke, and an earnest love of
+knowledge, which caused me to pass days and nights in reading and
+study. I was already well acquainted with what I may term the panorama
+of nature, the change of seasons, and the various appearances of heaven
+and earth. But I was at once startled and enchanted by my sudden
+extension of vision, when the curtain, which had been drawn before the
+intellectual world, was withdrawn, and I saw the universe, not only as
+it presented itself to my outward senses, but as it had appeared to the
+wisest among men. Poetry and its creations, philosophy and its
+researches and classifications, alike awoke the sleeping ideas in my
+mind, and gave me new ones.
+
+I felt as the sailor, who from the topmast first discovered the shore
+of America; and like him I hastened to tell my companions of my
+discoveries in unknown regions. But I was unable to excite in any
+breast the same craving appetite for knowledge that existed in mine.
+Even Perdita was unable to understand me. I had lived in what is
+generally called the world of reality, and it was awakening to a new
+country to find that there was a deeper meaning in all I saw, besides
+that which my eyes conveyed to me. The visionary Perdita beheld in all
+this only a new gloss upon an old reading, and her own was sufficiently
+inexhaustible to content her. She listened to me as she had done to the
+narration of my adventures, and sometimes took an interest in this
+species of information; but she did not, as I did, look on it as an
+integral part of her being, which having obtained, I could no more put
+off than the universal sense of touch.
+
+We both agreed in loving Adrian: although she not having yet escaped
+from childhood could not appreciate as I did the extent of his merits,
+or feel the same sympathy in his pursuits and opinions. I was for ever
+with him. There was a sensibility and sweetness in his disposition,
+that gave a tender and unearthly tone to our converse. Then he was gay
+as a lark carolling from its skiey tower, soaring in thought as an
+eagle, innocent as the mild-eyed dove. He could dispel the seriousness
+of Perdita, and take the sting from the torturing activity of my
+nature. I looked back to my restless desires and painful struggles with
+my fellow beings as to a troubled dream, and felt myself as much
+changed as if I had transmigrated into another form, whose fresh
+sensorium and mechanism of nerves had altered the reflection of the
+apparent universe in the mirror of mind. But it was not so; I was the
+same in strength, in earnest craving for sympathy, in my yearning for
+active exertion. My manly virtues did not desert me, for the witch
+Urania spared the locks of Sampson, while he reposed at her feet; but
+all was softened and humanized. Nor did Adrian instruct me only in the
+cold truths of history and philosophy. At the same time that he taught
+me by their means to subdue my own reckless and uncultured spirit, he
+opened to my view the living page of his own heart, and gave me to feel
+and understand its wondrous character.
+
+The ex-queen of England had, even during infancy, endeavoured to
+implant daring and ambitious designs in the mind of her son. She saw
+that he was endowed with genius and surpassing talent; these she
+cultivated for the sake of afterwards using them for the furtherance of
+her own views. She encouraged his craving for knowledge and his
+impetuous courage; she even tolerated his tameless love of freedom,
+under the hope that this would, as is too often the case, lead to a
+passion for command. She endeavoured to bring him up in a sense of
+resentment towards, and a desire to revenge himself upon, those who had
+been instrumental in bringing about his father’s abdication. In this
+she did not succeed. The accounts furnished him, however distorted, of
+a great and wise nation asserting its right to govern itself, excited
+his admiration: in early days he became a republican from principle.
+Still his mother did not despair. To the love of rule and haughty pride
+of birth she added determined ambition, patience, and self-control. She
+devoted herself to the study of her son’s disposition. By the
+application of praise, censure, and exhortation, she tried to seek and
+strike the fitting chords; and though the melody that followed her
+touch seemed discord to her, she built her hopes on his talents, and
+felt sure that she would at last win him. The kind of banishment he now
+experienced arose from other causes.
+
+The ex-queen had also a daughter, now twelve years of age; his fairy
+sister, Adrian was wont to call her; a lovely, animated, little thing,
+all sensibility and truth. With these, her children, the noble widow
+constantly resided at Windsor; and admitted no visitors, except her own
+partizans, travellers from her native Germany, and a few of the foreign
+ministers. Among these, and highly distinguished by her, was Prince
+Zaimi, ambassador to England from the free States of Greece; and his
+daughter, the young Princess Evadne, passed much of her time at Windsor
+Castle. In company with this sprightly and clever Greek girl, the
+Countess would relax from her usual state. Her views with regard to her
+own children, placed all her words and actions relative to _them_ under
+restraint: but Evadne was a plaything she could in no way fear; nor
+were her talents and vivacity slight alleviations to the monotony of
+the Countess’s life.
+
+Evadne was eighteen years of age. Although they spent much time
+together at Windsor, the extreme youth of Adrian prevented any
+suspicion as to the nature of their intercourse. But he was ardent and
+tender of heart beyond the common nature of man, and had already learnt
+to love, while the beauteous Greek smiled benignantly on the boy. It
+was strange to me, who, though older than Adrian, had never loved, to
+witness the whole heart’s sacrifice of my friend. There was neither
+jealousy, inquietude, or mistrust in his sentiment; it was devotion and
+faith. His life was swallowed up in the existence of his beloved; and
+his heart beat only in unison with the pulsations that vivified hers.
+This was the secret law of his life—he loved and was beloved. The
+universe was to him a dwelling, to inhabit with his chosen one; and not
+either a scheme of society or an enchainment of events, that could
+impart to him either happiness or misery. What, though life and the
+system of social intercourse were a wilderness, a tiger-haunted jungle!
+Through the midst of its errors, in the depths of its savage recesses,
+there was a disentangled and flowery pathway, through which they might
+journey in safety and delight. Their track would be like the passage of
+the Red Sea, which they might traverse with unwet feet, though a wall
+of destruction were impending on either side.
+
+Alas! why must I record the hapless delusion of this matchless specimen
+of humanity? What is there in our nature that is for ever urging us on
+towards pain and misery? We are not formed for enjoyment; and, however
+we may be attuned to the reception of pleasureable emotion,
+disappointment is the never-failing pilot of our life’s bark, and
+ruthlessly carries us on to the shoals. Who was better framed than this
+highly-gifted youth to love and be beloved, and to reap unalienable joy
+from an unblamed passion? If his heart had slept but a few years
+longer, he might have been saved; but it awoke in its infancy; it had
+power, but no knowledge; and it was ruined, even as a too early-blowing
+bud is nipt by the killing frost.
+
+I did not accuse Evadne of hypocrisy or a wish to deceive her lover;
+but the first letter that I saw of hers convinced me that she did not
+love him; it was written with elegance, and, foreigner as she was, with
+great command of language. The hand-writing itself was exquisitely
+beautiful; there was something in her very paper and its folds, which
+even I, who did not love, and was withal unskilled in such matters,
+could discern as being tasteful. There was much kindness, gratitude,
+and sweetness in her expression, but no love. Evadne was two years
+older than Adrian; and who, at eighteen, ever loved one so much their
+junior? I compared her placid epistles with the burning ones of Adrian.
+His soul seemed to distil itself into the words he wrote; and they
+breathed on the paper, bearing with them a portion of the life of love,
+which was his life. The very writing used to exhaust him; and he would
+weep over them, merely from the excess of emotion they awakened in his
+heart.
+
+Adrian’s soul was painted in his countenance, and concealment or deceit
+were at the antipodes to the dreadless frankness of his nature. Evadne
+made it her earnest request that the tale of their loves should not be
+revealed to his mother; and after for a while contesting the point, he
+yielded it to her. A vain concession; his demeanour quickly betrayed
+his secret to the quick eyes of the ex-queen. With the same wary
+prudence that characterized her whole conduct, she concealed her
+discovery, but hastened to remove her son from the sphere of the
+attractive Greek. He was sent to Cumberland; but the plan of
+correspondence between the lovers, arranged by Evadne, was effectually
+hidden from her. Thus the absence of Adrian, concerted for the purpose
+of separating, united them in firmer bonds than ever. To me he
+discoursed ceaselessly of his beloved Ionian. Her country, its ancient
+annals, its late memorable struggles, were all made to partake in her
+glory and excellence. He submitted to be away from her, because she
+commanded this submission; but for her influence, he would have
+declared his attachment before all England, and resisted, with unshaken
+constancy, his mother’s opposition. Evadne’s feminine prudence
+perceived how useless any assertion of his resolves would be, till
+added years gave weight to his power. Perhaps there was besides a
+lurking dislike to bind herself in the face of the world to one whom
+she did not love—not love, at least, with that passionate enthusiasm
+which her heart told her she might one day feel towards another. He
+obeyed her injunctions, and passed a year in exile in Cumberland.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Happy, thrice happy, were the months, and weeks, and hours of that
+year. Friendship, hand in hand with admiration, tenderness and respect,
+built a bower of delight in my heart, late rough as an untrod wild in
+America, as the homeless wind or herbless sea. Insatiate thirst for
+knowledge, and boundless affection for Adrian, combined to keep both my
+heart and understanding occupied, and I was consequently happy. What
+happiness is so true and unclouded, as the overflowing and talkative
+delight of young people. In our boat, upon my native lake, beside the
+streams and the pale bordering poplars—in valley and over hill, my
+crook thrown aside, a nobler flock to tend than silly sheep, even a
+flock of new-born ideas, I read or listened to Adrian; and his
+discourse, whether it concerned his love or his theories for the
+improvement of man, alike entranced me. Sometimes my lawless mood would
+return, my love of peril, my resistance to authority; but this was in
+his absence; under the mild sway of his dear eyes, I was obedient and
+good as a boy of five years old, who does his mother’s bidding.
+
+After a residence of about a year at Ulswater, Adrian visited London,
+and came back full of plans for our benefit. You must begin life, he
+said: you are seventeen, and longer delay would render the necessary
+apprenticeship more and more irksome. He foresaw that his own life
+would be one of struggle, and I must partake his labours with him. The
+better to fit me for this task, we must now separate. He found my name
+a good passport to preferment, and he had procured for me the situation
+of private secretary to the Ambassador at Vienna, where I should enter
+on my career under the best auspices. In two years, I should return to
+my country, with a name well known and a reputation already founded.
+
+And Perdita?—Perdita was to become the pupil, friend and younger sister
+of Evadne. With his usual thoughtfulness, he had provided for her
+independence in this situation. How refuse the offers of this generous
+friend?—I did not wish to refuse them; but in my heart of hearts, I
+made a vow to devote life, knowledge, and power, all of which, in as
+much as they were of any value, he had bestowed on me—all, all my
+capacities and hopes, to him alone I would devote.
+
+Thus I promised myself, as I journied towards my destination with
+roused and ardent expectation: expectation of the fulfilment of all
+that in boyhood we promise ourselves of power and enjoyment in
+maturity. Methought the time was now arrived, when, childish
+occupations laid aside, I should enter into life. Even in the Elysian
+fields, Virgil describes the souls of the happy as eager to drink of
+the wave which was to restore them to this mortal coil. The young are
+seldom in Elysium, for their desires, outstripping possibility, leave
+them as poor as a moneyless debtor. We are told by the wisest
+philosophers of the dangers of the world, the deceits of men, and the
+treason of our own hearts: but not the less fearlessly does each put
+off his frail bark from the port, spread the sail, and strain his oar,
+to attain the multitudinous streams of the sea of life. How few in
+youth’s prime, moor their vessels on the “golden sands,” and collect
+the painted shells that strew them. But all at close of day, with riven
+planks and rent canvas make for shore, and are either wrecked ere they
+reach it, or find some wave-beaten haven, some desart strand, whereon
+to cast themselves and die unmourned.
+
+A truce to philosophy!—Life is before me, and I rush into possession.
+Hope, glory, love, and blameless ambition are my guides, and my soul
+knows no dread. What has been, though sweet, is gone; the present is
+good only because it is about to change, and the to come is all my own.
+Do I fear, that my heart palpitates? high aspirations cause the flow of
+my blood; my eyes seem to penetrate the cloudy midnight of time, and to
+discern within the depths of its darkness, the fruition of all my soul
+desires.
+
+Now pause!—During my journey I might dream, and with buoyant wings
+reach the summit of life’s high edifice. Now that I am arrived at its
+base, my pinions are furled, the mighty stairs are before me, and step
+by step I must ascend the wondrous fane—
+
+Speak!—What door is opened?
+
+
+Behold me in a new capacity. A diplomatist: one among the
+pleasure-seeking society of a gay city; a youth of promise; favourite
+of the Ambassador. All was strange and admirable to the shepherd of
+Cumberland. With breathless amaze I entered on the gay scene, whose
+actors were
+
+—the lilies glorious as Solomon,
+Who toil not, neither do they spin.
+
+
+Soon, too soon, I entered the giddy whirl; forgetting my studious
+hours, and the companionship of Adrian. Passionate desire of sympathy,
+and ardent pursuit for a wished-for object still characterized me. The
+sight of beauty entranced me, and attractive manners in man or woman
+won my entire confidence. I called it rapture, when a smile made my
+heart beat; and I felt the life’s blood tingle in my frame, when I
+approached the idol which for awhile I worshipped. The mere flow of
+animal spirits was Paradise, and at night’s close I only desired a
+renewal of the intoxicating delusion. The dazzling light of ornamented
+rooms; lovely forms arrayed in splendid dresses; the motions of a
+dance, the voluptuous tones of exquisite music, cradled my senses in
+one delightful dream.
+
+And is not this in its kind happiness? I appeal to moralists and sages.
+I ask if in the calm of their measured reveries, if in the deep
+meditations which fill their hours, they feel the extasy of a youthful
+tyro in the school of pleasure? Can the calm beams of their
+heaven-seeking eyes equal the flashes of mingling passion which blind
+his, or does the influence of cold philosophy steep their soul in a joy
+equal to his, engaged
+
+In this dear work of youthful revelry.
+
+
+But in truth, neither the lonely meditations of the hermit, nor the
+tumultuous raptures of the reveller, are capable of satisfying man’s
+heart. From the one we gather unquiet speculation, from the other
+satiety. The mind flags beneath the weight of thought, and droops in
+the heartless intercourse of those whose sole aim is amusement. There
+is no fruition in their vacant kindness, and sharp rocks lurk beneath
+the smiling ripples of these shallow waters.
+
+Thus I felt, when disappointment, weariness, and solitude drove me back
+upon my heart, to gather thence the joy of which it had become barren.
+My flagging spirits asked for something to speak to the affections; and
+not finding it, I drooped. Thus, notwithstanding the thoughtless
+delight that waited on its commencement, the impression I have of my
+life at Vienna is melancholy. Goethe has said, that in youth we cannot
+be happy unless we love. I did not love; but I was devoured by a
+restless wish to be something to others. I became the victim of
+ingratitude and cold coquetry—then I desponded, and imagined that my
+discontent gave me a right to hate the world. I receded to solitude; I
+had recourse to my books, and my desire again to enjoy the society of
+Adrian became a burning thirst.
+
+Emulation, that in its excess almost assumed the venomous properties of
+envy, gave a sting to these feelings. At this period the name and
+exploits of one of my countrymen filled the world with admiration.
+Relations of what he had done, conjectures concerning his future
+actions, were the never-failing topics of the hour. I was not angry on
+my own account, but I felt as if the praises which this idol received
+were leaves torn from laurels destined for Adrian. But I must enter
+into some account of this darling of fame—this favourite of the
+wonder-loving world.
+
+Lord Raymond was the sole remnant of a noble but impoverished family.
+From early youth he had considered his pedigree with complacency, and
+bitterly lamented his want of wealth. His first wish was
+aggrandisement; and the means that led towards this end were secondary
+considerations. Haughty, yet trembling to every demonstration of
+respect; ambitious, but too proud to shew his ambition; willing to
+achieve honour, yet a votary of pleasure,— he entered upon life. He was
+met on the threshold by some insult, real or imaginary; some repulse,
+where he least expected it; some disappointment, hard for his pride to
+bear. He writhed beneath an injury he was unable to revenge; and he
+quitted England with a vow not to return, till the good time should
+arrive, when she might feel the power of him she now despised.
+
+He became an adventurer in the Greek wars. His reckless courage and
+comprehensive genius brought him into notice. He became the darling
+hero of this rising people. His foreign birth, and he refused to throw
+off his allegiance to his native country, alone prevented him from
+filling the first offices in the state. But, though others might rank
+higher in title and ceremony, Lord Raymond held a station above and
+beyond all this. He led the Greek armies to victory; their triumphs
+were all his own. When he appeared, whole towns poured forth their
+population to meet him; new songs were adapted to their national airs,
+whose themes were his glory, valour, and munificence. A truce was
+concluded between the Greeks and Turks. At the same time, Lord Raymond,
+by some unlooked-for chance, became the possessor of an immense fortune
+in England, whither he returned, crowned with glory, to receive the
+meed of honour and distinction before denied to his pretensions. His
+proud heart rebelled against this change. In what was the despised
+Raymond not the same? If the acquisition of power in the shape of
+wealth caused this alteration, that power should they feel as an iron
+yoke. Power therefore was the aim of all his endeavours; aggrandizement
+the mark at which he for ever shot. In open ambition or close intrigue,
+his end was the same—to attain the first station in his own country.
+
+This account filled me with curiosity. The events that in succession
+followed his return to England, gave me keener feelings. Among his
+other advantages, Lord Raymond was supremely handsome; every one
+admired him; of women he was the idol. He was courteous,
+honey-tongued—an adept in fascinating arts. What could not this man
+achieve in the busy English world? Change succeeded to change; the
+entire history did not reach me; for Adrian had ceased to write, and
+Perdita was a laconic correspondent. The rumour went that Adrian had
+become—how write the fatal word—mad: that Lord Raymond was the
+favourite of the ex-queen, her daughter’s destined husband. Nay, more,
+that this aspiring noble revived the claim of the house of Windsor to
+the crown, and that, on the event of Adrian’s incurable disorder and
+his marriage with the sister, the brow of the ambitious Raymond might
+be encircled with the magic ring of regality.
+
+Such a tale filled the trumpet of many voiced fame; such a tale
+rendered my longer stay at Vienna, away from the friend of my youth,
+intolerable. Now I must fulfil my vow; now range myself at his side,
+and be his ally and support till death. Farewell to courtly pleasure;
+to politic intrigue; to the maze of passion and folly! All hail,
+England! Native England, receive thy child! thou art the scene of all
+my hopes, the mighty theatre on which is acted the only drama that can,
+heart and soul, bear me along with it in its development. A voice most
+irresistible, a power omnipotent, drew me thither. After an absence of
+two years I landed on its shores, not daring to make any inquiries,
+fearful of every remark. My first visit would be to my sister, who
+inhabited a little cottage, a part of Adrian’s gift, on the borders of
+Windsor Forest. From her I should learn the truth concerning our
+protector; I should hear why she had withdrawn from the protection of
+the Princess Evadne, and be instructed as to the influence which this
+overtopping and towering Raymond exercised over the fortunes of my
+friend.
+
+I had never before been in the neighbourhood of Windsor; the fertility
+and beauty of the country around now struck me with admiration, which
+encreased as I approached the antique wood. The ruins of majestic oaks
+which had grown, flourished, and decayed during the progress of
+centuries, marked where the limits of the forest once reached, while
+the shattered palings and neglected underwood shewed that this part was
+deserted for the younger plantations, which owed their birth to the
+beginning of the nineteenth century, and now stood in the pride of
+maturity. Perdita’s humble dwelling was situated on the skirts of the
+most ancient portion; before it was stretched Bishopgate Heath, which
+towards the east appeared interminable, and was bounded to the west by
+Chapel Wood and the grove of Virginia Water. Behind, the cottage was
+shadowed by the venerable fathers of the forest, under which the deer
+came to graze, and which for the most part hollow and decayed, formed
+fantastic groups that contrasted with the regular beauty of the younger
+trees. These, the offspring of a later period, stood erect and seemed
+ready to advance fearlessly into coming time; while those out worn
+stragglers, blasted and broke, clung to each other, their weak boughs
+sighing as the wind buffetted them—a weather-beaten crew.
+
+A light railing surrounded the garden of the cottage, which,
+low-roofed, seemed to submit to the majesty of nature, and cower amidst
+the venerable remains of forgotten time. Flowers, the children of the
+spring, adorned her garden and casements; in the midst of lowliness
+there was an air of elegance which spoke the graceful taste of the
+inmate. With a beating heart I entered the enclosure; as I stood at the
+entrance, I heard her voice, melodious as it had ever been, which
+before I saw her assured me of her welfare.
+
+A moment more and Perdita appeared; she stood before me in the fresh
+bloom of youthful womanhood, different from and yet the same as the
+mountain girl I had left. Her eyes could not be deeper than they were
+in childhood, nor her countenance more expressive; but the expression
+was changed and improved; intelligence sat on her brow; when she smiled
+her face was embellished by the softest sensibility, and her low,
+modulated voice seemed tuned by love. Her person was formed in the most
+feminine proportions; she was not tall, but her mountain life had given
+freedom to her motions, so that her light step scarce made her
+foot-fall heard as she tript across the hall to meet me. When we had
+parted, I had clasped her to my bosom with unrestrained warmth; we met
+again, and new feelings were awakened; when each beheld the other,
+childhood passed, as full grown actors on this changeful scene. The
+pause was but for a moment; the flood of association and natural
+feeling which had been checked, again rushed in full tide upon our
+hearts, and with tenderest emotion we were swiftly locked in each
+other’s embrace.
+
+This burst of passionate feeling over, with calmed thoughts we sat
+together, talking of the past and present. I alluded to the coldness of
+her letters; but the few minutes we had spent together sufficiently
+explained the origin of this. New feelings had arisen within her, which
+she was unable to express in writing to one whom she had only known in
+childhood; but we saw each other again, and our intimacy was renewed as
+if nothing had intervened to check it. I detailed the incidents of my
+sojourn abroad, and then questioned her as to the changes that had
+taken place at home, the causes of Adrian’s absence, and her secluded
+life.
+
+The tears that suffused my sister’s eyes when I mentioned our friend,
+and her heightened colour seemed to vouch for the truth of the reports
+that had reached me. But their import was too terrible for me to give
+instant credit to my suspicion. Was there indeed anarchy in the sublime
+universe of Adrian’s thoughts, did madness scatter the well-appointed
+legions, and was he no longer the lord of his own soul? Beloved friend,
+this ill world was no clime for your gentle spirit; you delivered up
+its governance to false humanity, which stript it of its leaves ere
+winter-time, and laid bare its quivering life to the evil ministration
+of roughest winds. Have those gentle eyes, those “channels of the soul”
+lost their meaning, or do they only in their glare disclose the
+horrible tale of its aberrations? Does that voice no longer “discourse
+excellent music?” Horrible, most horrible! I veil my eyes in terror of
+the change, and gushing tears bear witness to my sympathy for this
+unimaginable ruin.
+
+In obedience to my request Perdita detailed the melancholy
+circumstances that led to this event.
+
+The frank and unsuspicious mind of Adrian, gifted as it was by every
+natural grace, endowed with transcendant powers of intellect,
+unblemished by the shadow of defect (unless his dreadless independence
+of thought was to be construed into one), was devoted, even as a victim
+to sacrifice, to his love for Evadne. He entrusted to her keeping the
+treasures of his soul, his aspirations after excellence, and his plans
+for the improvement of mankind. As manhood dawned upon him, his schemes
+and theories, far from being changed by personal and prudential
+motives, acquired new strength from the powers he felt arise within
+him; and his love for Evadne became deep-rooted, as he each day became
+more certain that the path he pursued was full of difficulty, and that
+he must seek his reward, not in the applause or gratitude of his fellow
+creatures, hardly in the success of his plans, but in the approbation
+of his own heart, and in her love and sympathy, which was to lighten
+every toil and recompence every sacrifice.
+
+In solitude, and through many wanderings afar from the haunts of men,
+he matured his views for the reform of the English government, and the
+improvement of the people. It would have been well if he had concealed
+his sentiments, until he had come into possession of the power which
+would secure their practical development. But he was impatient of the
+years that must intervene, he was frank of heart and fearless. He gave
+not only a brief denial to his mother’s schemes, but published his
+intention of using his influence to diminish the power of the
+aristocracy, to effect a greater equalization of wealth and privilege,
+and to introduce a perfect system of republican government into
+England. At first his mother treated his theories as the wild ravings
+of inexperience. But they were so systematically arranged, and his
+arguments so well supported, that though still in appearance
+incredulous, she began to fear him. She tried to reason with him, and
+finding him inflexible, learned to hate him.
+
+Strange to say, this feeling was infectious. His enthusiasm for good
+which did not exist; his contempt for the sacredness of authority; his
+ardour and imprudence were all at the antipodes of the usual routine of
+life; the worldly feared him; the young and inexperienced did not
+understand the lofty severity of his moral views, and disliked him as a
+being different from themselves. Evadne entered but coldly into his
+systems. She thought he did well to assert his own will, but she wished
+that will to have been more intelligible to the multitude. She had none
+of the spirit of a martyr, and did not incline to share the shame and
+defeat of a fallen patriot. She was aware of the purity of his motives,
+the generosity of his disposition, his true and ardent attachment to
+her; and she entertained a great affection for him. He repaid this
+spirit of kindness with the fondest gratitude, and made her the
+treasure-house of all his hopes.
+
+At this time Lord Raymond returned from Greece. No two persons could be
+more opposite than Adrian and he. With all the incongruities of his
+character, Raymond was emphatically a man of the world. His passions
+were violent; as these often obtained the mastery over him, he could
+not always square his conduct to the obvious line of self-interest, but
+self-gratification at least was the paramount object with him. He
+looked on the structure of society as but a part of the machinery which
+supported the web on which his life was traced. The earth was spread
+out as an highway for him; the heavens built up as a canopy for him.
+
+Adrian felt that he made a part of a great whole. He owned affinity not
+only with mankind, but all nature was akin to him; the mountains and
+sky were his friends; the winds of heaven and the offspring of earth
+his playmates; while he the focus only of this mighty mirror, felt his
+life mingle with the universe of existence. His soul was sympathy, and
+dedicated to the worship of beauty and excellence. Adrian and Raymond
+now came into contact, and a spirit of aversion rose between them.
+Adrian despised the narrow views of the politician, and Raymond held in
+supreme contempt the benevolent visions of the philanthropist.
+
+With the coming of Raymond was formed the storm that laid waste at one
+fell blow the gardens of delight and sheltered paths which Adrian
+fancied that he had secured to himself, as a refuge from defeat and
+contumely. Raymond, the deliverer of Greece, the graceful soldier, who
+bore in his mien a tinge of all that, peculiar to her native clime,
+Evadne cherished as most dear— Raymond was loved by Evadne. Overpowered
+by her new sensations, she did not pause to examine them, or to
+regulate her conduct by any sentiments except the tyrannical one which
+suddenly usurped the empire of her heart. She yielded to its influence,
+and the too natural consequence in a mind unattuned to soft emotions
+was, that the attentions of Adrian became distasteful to her. She grew
+capricious; her gentle conduct towards him was exchanged for asperity
+and repulsive coldness. When she perceived the wild or pathetic appeal
+of his expressive countenance, she would relent, and for a while resume
+her ancient kindness. But these fluctuations shook to its depths the
+soul of the sensitive youth; he no longer deemed the world subject to
+him, because he possessed Evadne’s love; he felt in every nerve that
+the dire storms of the mental universe were about to attack his fragile
+being, which quivered at the expectation of its advent.
+
+Perdita, who then resided with Evadne, saw the torture that Adrian
+endured. She loved him as a kind elder brother; a relation to guide,
+protect, and instruct her, without the too frequent tyranny of parental
+authority. She adored his virtues, and with mixed contempt and
+indignation she saw Evadne pile drear sorrow on his head, for the sake
+of one who hardly marked her. In his solitary despair Adrian would
+often seek my sister, and in covered terms express his misery, while
+fortitude and agony divided the throne of his mind. Soon, alas! was one
+to conquer. Anger made no part of his emotion. With whom should he be
+angry? Not with Raymond, who was unconscious of the misery he
+occasioned; not with Evadne, for her his soul wept tears of blood—poor,
+mistaken girl, slave not tyrant was she, and amidst his own anguish he
+grieved for her future destiny. Once a writing of his fell into
+Perdita’s hands; it was blotted with tears—well might any blot it with
+the like—
+
+“Life”—it began thus—“is not the thing romance writers describe it;
+going through the measures of a dance, and after various evolutions
+arriving at a conclusion, when the dancers may sit down and repose.
+While there is life there is action and change. We go on, each thought
+linked to the one which was its parent, each act to a previous act. No
+joy or sorrow dies barren of progeny, which for ever generated and
+generating, weaves the chain that make our life:
+
+Un dia llama à otro dia
+y asi llama, y encadena
+llanto à llanto, y pena à pena.
+
+
+Truly disappointment is the guardian deity of human life; she sits at
+the threshold of unborn time, and marshals the events as they come
+forth. Once my heart sat lightly in my bosom; all the beauty of the
+world was doubly beautiful, irradiated by the sun-light shed from my
+own soul. O wherefore are love and ruin for ever joined in this our
+mortal dream? So that when we make our hearts a lair for that gently
+seeming beast, its companion enters with it, and pitilessly lays waste
+what might have been an home and a shelter.”
+
+By degrees his health was shaken by his misery, and then his intellect
+yielded to the same tyranny. His manners grew wild; he was sometimes
+ferocious, sometimes absorbed in speechless melancholy. Suddenly Evadne
+quitted London for Paris; he followed, and overtook her when the vessel
+was about to sail; none knew what passed between them, but Perdita had
+never seen him since; he lived in seclusion, no one knew where,
+attended by such persons as his mother selected for that purpose.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+The next day Lord Raymond called at Perdita’s cottage, on his way to
+Windsor Castle. My sister’s heightened colour and sparkling eyes half
+revealed her secret to me. He was perfectly self-possessed; he accosted
+us both with courtesy, seemed immediately to enter into our feelings,
+and to make one with us. I scanned his physiognomy, which varied as he
+spoke, yet was beautiful in every change. The usual expression of his
+eyes was soft, though at times he could make them even glare with
+ferocity; his complexion was colourless; and every trait spoke
+predominate self-will; his smile was pleasing, though disdain too often
+curled his lips—lips which to female eyes were the very throne of
+beauty and love. His voice, usually gentle, often startled you by a
+sharp discordant note, which shewed that his usual low tone was rather
+the work of study than nature. Thus full of contradictions, unbending
+yet haughty, gentle yet fierce, tender and again neglectful, he by some
+strange art found easy entrance to the admiration and affection of
+women; now caressing and now tyrannizing over them according to his
+mood, but in every change a despot.
+
+At the present time Raymond evidently wished to appear amiable. Wit,
+hilarity, and deep observation were mingled in his talk, rendering
+every sentence that he uttered as a flash of light. He soon conquered
+my latent distaste; I endeavoured to watch him and Perdita, and to keep
+in mind every thing I had heard to his disadvantage. But all appeared
+so ingenuous, and all was so fascinating, that I forgot everything
+except the pleasure his society afforded me. Under the idea of
+initiating me in the scene of English politics and society, of which I
+was soon to become a part, he narrated a number of anecdotes, and
+sketched many characters; his discourse, rich and varied, flowed on,
+pervading all my senses with pleasure. But for one thing he would have
+been completely triumphant. He alluded to Adrian, and spoke of him with
+that disparagement that the worldly wise always attach to enthusiasm.
+He perceived the cloud gathering, and tried to dissipate it; but the
+strength of my feelings would not permit me to pass thus lightly over
+this sacred subject; so I said emphatically, “Permit me to remark, that
+I am devotedly attached to the Earl of Windsor; he is my best friend
+and benefactor. I reverence his goodness, I accord with his opinions,
+and bitterly lament his present, and I trust temporary, illness. That
+illness, from its peculiarity, makes it painful to me beyond words to
+hear him mentioned, unless in terms of respect and affection.”
+
+Raymond replied; but there was nothing conciliatory in his reply. I saw
+that in his heart he despised those dedicated to any but worldly idols.
+“Every man,” he said, “dreams about something, love, honour, and
+pleasure; you dream of friendship, and devote yourself to a maniac;
+well, if that be your vocation, doubtless you are in the right to
+follow it.”—
+
+Some reflection seemed to sting him, and the spasm of pain that for a
+moment convulsed his countenance, checked my indignation. “Happy are
+dreamers,” he continued, “so that they be not awakened! Would I could
+dream! but ‘broad and garish day’ is the element in which I live; the
+dazzling glare of reality inverts the scene for me. Even the ghost of
+friendship has departed, and love”——He broke off; nor could I guess
+whether the disdain that curled his lip was directed against the
+passion, or against himself for being its slave.
+
+This account may be taken as a sample of my intercourse with Lord
+Raymond. I became intimate with him, and each day afforded me occasion
+to admire more and more his powerful and versatile talents, that
+together with his eloquence, which was graceful and witty, and his
+wealth now immense, caused him to be feared, loved, and hated beyond
+any other man in England.
+
+My descent, which claimed interest, if not respect, my former
+connection with Adrian, the favour of the ambassador, whose secretary I
+had been, and now my intimacy with Lord Raymond, gave me easy access to
+the fashionable and political circles of England. To my inexperience we
+at first appeared on the eve of a civil war; each party was violent,
+acrimonious, and unyielding. Parliament was divided by three factions,
+aristocrats, democrats, and royalists. After Adrian’s declared
+predeliction to the republican form of government, the latter party had
+nearly died away, chiefless, guideless; but, when Lord Raymond came
+forward as its leader, it revived with redoubled force. Some were
+royalists from prejudice and ancient affection, and there were many
+moderately inclined who feared alike the capricious tyranny of the
+popular party, and the unbending despotism of the aristocrats. More
+than a third of the members ranged themselves under Raymond, and their
+number was perpetually encreasing. The aristocrats built their hopes on
+their preponderant wealth and influence; the reformers on the force of
+the nation itself; the debates were violent, more violent the
+discourses held by each knot of politicians as they assembled to
+arrange their measures. Opprobrious epithets were bandied about,
+resistance even to the death threatened; meetings of the populace
+disturbed the quiet order of the country; except in war, how could all
+this end? Even as the destructive flames were ready to break forth, I
+saw them shrink back; allayed by the absence of the military, by the
+aversion entertained by every one to any violence, save that of speech,
+and by the cordial politeness and even friendship of the hostile
+leaders when they met in private society. I was from a thousand motives
+induced to attend minutely to the course of events, and watch each turn
+with intense anxiety.
+
+I could not but perceive that Perdita loved Raymond; methought also
+that he regarded the fair daughter of Verney with admiration and
+tenderness. Yet I knew that he was urging forward his marriage with the
+presumptive heiress of the Earldom of Windsor, with keen expectation of
+the advantages that would thence accrue to him. All the ex-queen’s
+friends were his friends; no week passed that he did not hold
+consultations with her at Windsor.
+
+I had never seen the sister of Adrian. I had heard that she was lovely,
+amiable, and fascinating. Wherefore should I see her? There are times
+when we have an indefinable sentiment of impending change for better or
+for worse, to arise from an event; and, be it for better or for worse,
+we fear the change, and shun the event. For this reason I avoided this
+high-born damsel. To me she was everything and nothing; her very name
+mentioned by another made me start and tremble; the endless discussion
+concerning her union with Lord Raymond was real agony to me. Methought
+that, Adrian withdrawn from active life, and this beauteous Idris, a
+victim probably to her mother’s ambitious schemes, I ought to come
+forward to protect her from undue influence, guard her from
+unhappiness, and secure to her freedom of choice, the right of every
+human being. Yet how was I to do this? She herself would disdain my
+interference. Since then I must be an object of indifference or
+contempt to her, better, far better avoid her, nor expose myself before
+her and the scornful world to the chance of playing the mad game of a
+fond, foolish Icarus. One day, several months after my return to
+England, I quitted London to visit my sister. Her society was my chief
+solace and delight; and my spirits always rose at the expectation of
+seeing her. Her conversation was full of pointed remark and
+discernment; in her pleasant alcove, redolent with sweetest flowers,
+adorned by magnificent casts, antique vases, and copies of the finest
+pictures of Raphael, Correggio, and Claude, painted by herself, I
+fancied myself in a fairy retreat untainted by and inaccessible to the
+noisy contentions of politicians and the frivolous pursuits of fashion.
+On this occasion, my sister was not alone; nor could I fail to
+recognise her companion: it was Idris, the till now unseen object of my
+mad idolatry.
+
+In what fitting terms of wonder and delight, in what choice expression
+and soft flow of language, can I usher in the loveliest, wisest, best?
+How in poor assemblage of words convey the halo of glory that
+surrounded her, the thousand graces that waited unwearied on her. The
+first thing that struck you on beholding that charming countenance was
+its perfect goodness and frankness; candour sat upon her brow,
+simplicity in her eyes, heavenly benignity in her smile. Her tall slim
+figure bent gracefully as a poplar to the breezy west, and her gait,
+goddess-like, was as that of a winged angel new alit from heaven’s high
+floor; the pearly fairness of her complexion was stained by a pure
+suffusion; her voice resembled the low, subdued tenor of a flute. It is
+easiest perhaps to describe by contrast. I have detailed the
+perfections of my sister; and yet she was utterly unlike Idris.
+Perdita, even where she loved, was reserved and timid; Idris was frank
+and confiding. The one recoiled to solitude, that she might there
+entrench herself from disappointment and injury; the other walked forth
+in open day, believing that none would harm her. Wordsworth has
+compared a beloved female to two fair objects in nature; but his lines
+always appeared to me rather a contrast than a similitude:
+
+A violet by a mossy stone
+    Half hidden from the eye,
+Fair as a star when only one
+    Is shining in the sky.
+
+
+Such a violet was sweet Perdita, trembling to entrust herself to the
+very air, cowering from observation, yet betrayed by her excellences;
+and repaying with a thousand graces the labour of those who sought her
+in her lonely bye-path. Idris was as the star, set in single splendour
+in the dim anadem of balmy evening; ready to enlighten and delight the
+subject world, shielded herself from every taint by her unimagined
+distance from all that was not like herself akin to heaven.
+
+I found this vision of beauty in Perdita’s alcove, in earnest
+conversation with its inmate. When my sister saw me, she rose, and
+taking my hand, said, “He is here, even at our wish; this is Lionel, my
+brother.” Idris arose also, and bent on me her eyes of celestial blue,
+and with grace peculiar said—“You hardly need an introduction; we have
+a picture, highly valued by my father, which declares at once your
+name. Verney, you will acknowledge this tie, and as my brother’s
+friend, I feel that I may trust you.”
+
+Then, with lids humid with a tear and trembling voice, she continued—
+“Dear friends, do not think it strange that now, visiting you for the
+first time, I ask your assistance, and confide my wishes and fears to
+you. To you alone do I dare speak; I have heard you commended by
+impartial spectators; you are my brother’s friends, therefore you must
+be mine. What can I say? if you refuse to aid me, I am lost indeed!”
+She cast up her eyes, while wonder held her auditors mute; then, as if
+carried away by her feelings, she cried—“My brother! beloved, ill-fated
+Adrian! how speak of your misfortunes? Doubtless you have both heard
+the current tale; perhaps believe the slander; but he is not mad! Were
+an angel from the foot of God’s throne to assert it, never, never would
+I believe it. He is wronged, betrayed, imprisoned—save him! Verney, you
+must do this; seek him out in whatever part of the island he is
+immured; find him, rescue him from his persecutors, restore him to
+himself, to me—on the wide earth I have none to love but only him!”
+
+Her earnest appeal, so sweetly and passionately expressed, filled me
+with wonder and sympathy; and, when she added, with thrilling voice and
+look, “Do you consent to undertake this enterprize?” I vowed, with
+energy and truth, to devote myself in life and death to the restoration
+and welfare of Adrian. We then conversed on the plan I should pursue,
+and discussed the probable means of discovering his residence. While we
+were in earnest discourse, Lord Raymond entered unannounced: I saw
+Perdita tremble and grow deadly pale, and the cheeks of Idris glow with
+purest blushes. He must have been astonished at our conclave, disturbed
+by it I should have thought; but nothing of this appeared; he saluted
+my companions, and addressed me with a cordial greeting. Idris appeared
+suspended for a moment, and then with extreme sweetness, she said,
+“Lord Raymond, I confide in your goodness and honour.”
+
+Smiling haughtily, he bent his head, and replied, with emphasis, “Do
+you indeed confide, Lady Idris?”
+
+She endeavoured to read his thought, and then answered with dignity,
+“As you please. It is certainly best not to compromise oneself by any
+concealment.”
+
+“Pardon me,” he replied, “if I have offended. Whether you trust me or
+not, rely on my doing my utmost to further your wishes, whatever they
+may be.”
+
+Idris smiled her thanks, and rose to take leave. Lord Raymond requested
+permission to accompany her to Windsor Castle, to which she consented,
+and they quitted the cottage together. My sister and I were left—truly
+like two fools, who fancied that they had obtained a golden treasure,
+till daylight shewed it to be lead—two silly, luckless flies, who had
+played in sunbeams and were caught in a spider’s web. I leaned against
+the casement, and watched those two glorious creatures, till they
+disappeared in the forest-glades; and then I turned. Perdita had not
+moved; her eyes fixed on the ground, her cheeks pale, her very lips
+white, motionless and rigid, every feature stamped by woe, she sat.
+Half frightened, I would have taken her hand; but she shudderingly
+withdrew it, and strove to collect herself. I entreated her to speak to
+me: “Not now,” she replied, “nor do you speak to me, my dear Lionel;
+you _can_ say nothing, for you know nothing. I will see you to-morrow;
+in the meantime, adieu!” She rose, and walked from the room; but
+pausing at the door, and leaning against it, as if her over-busy
+thoughts had taken from her the power of supporting herself, she said,
+“Lord Raymond will probably return. Will you tell him that he must
+excuse me to-day, for I am not well. I will see him to-morrow if he
+wishes it, and you also. You had better return to London with him; you
+can there make the enquiries agreed upon, concerning the Earl of
+Windsor and visit me again to-morrow, before you proceed on your
+journey—till then, farewell!”
+
+She spoke falteringly, and concluded with a heavy sigh. I gave my
+assent to her request; and she left me. I felt as if, from the order of
+the systematic world, I had plunged into chaos, obscure, contrary,
+unintelligible. That Raymond should marry Idris was more than ever
+intolerable; yet my passion, though a giant from its birth, was too
+strange, wild, and impracticable, for me to feel at once the misery I
+perceived in Perdita. How should I act? She had not confided in me; I
+could not demand an explanation from Raymond without the hazard of
+betraying what was perhaps her most treasured secret. I would obtain
+the truth from her the following day—in the mean time—But, while I was
+occupied by multiplying reflections, Lord Raymond returned. He asked
+for my sister; and I delivered her message. After musing on it for a
+moment, he asked me if I were about to return to London, and if I would
+accompany him: I consented. He was full of thought, and remained silent
+during a considerable part of our ride; at length he said, “I must
+apologize to you for my abstraction; the truth is, Ryland’s motion
+comes on to-night, and I am considering my reply.”
+
+Ryland was the leader of the popular party, a hard-headed man, and in
+his way eloquent; he had obtained leave to bring in a bill making it
+treason to endeavour to change the present state of the English
+government and the standing laws of the republic. This attack was
+directed against Raymond and his machinations for the restoration of
+the monarchy.
+
+Raymond asked me if I would accompany him to the House that evening. I
+remembered my pursuit for intelligence concerning Adrian; and, knowing
+that my time would be fully occupied, I excused myself. “Nay,” said my
+companion, “I can free you from your present impediment. You are going
+to make enquiries concerning the Earl of Windsor. I can answer them at
+once, he is at the Duke of Athol’s seat at Dunkeld. On the first
+approach of his disorder, he travelled about from one place to another;
+until, arriving at that romantic seclusion he refused to quit it, and
+we made arrangements with the Duke for his continuing there.”
+
+I was hurt by the careless tone with which he conveyed this
+information, and replied coldly: “I am obliged to you for your
+intelligence, and will avail myself of it.”
+
+“You shall, Verney,” said he, “and if you continue of the same mind, I
+will facilitate your views. But first witness, I beseech you, the
+result of this night’s contest, and the triumph I am about to achieve,
+if I may so call it, while I fear that victory is to me defeat. What
+can I do? My dearest hopes appear to be near their fulfilment. The
+ex-queen gives me Idris; Adrian is totally unfitted to succeed to the
+earldom, and that earldom in my hands becomes a kingdom. By the
+reigning God it is true; the paltry earldom of Windsor shall no longer
+content him, who will inherit the rights which must for ever appertain
+to the person who possesses it. The Countess can never forget that she
+has been a queen, and she disdains to leave a diminished inheritance to
+her children; her power and my wit will rebuild the throne, and this
+brow will be clasped by a kingly diadem.—I can do this—I can marry
+Idris.”—-
+
+He stopped abruptly, his countenance darkened, and its expression
+changed again and again under the influence of internal passion. I
+asked, “Does Lady Idris love you?”
+
+“What a question,” replied he laughing. “She will of course, as I shall
+her, when we are married.”
+
+“You begin late,” said I, ironically, “marriage is usually considered
+the grave, and not the cradle of love. So you are about to love her,
+but do not already?”
+
+“Do not catechise me, Lionel; I will do my duty by her, be assured.
+Love! I must steel my heart against _that_; expel it from its tower of
+strength, barricade it out: the fountain of love must cease to play,
+its waters be dried up, and all passionate thoughts attendant on it
+die—that is to say, the love which would rule me, not that which I
+rule. Idris is a gentle, pretty, sweet little girl; it is impossible
+not to have an affection for her, and I have a very sincere one; only
+do not speak of love —love, the tyrant and the tyrant-queller; love,
+until now my conqueror, now my slave; the hungry fire, the untameable
+beast, the fanged snake—no—no—I will have nothing to do with that love.
+Tell me, Lionel, do you consent that I should marry this young lady?”
+
+He bent his keen eyes upon me, and my uncontrollable heart swelled in
+my bosom. I replied in a calm voice—but how far from calm was the
+thought imaged by my still words—“Never! I can never consent that Lady
+Idris should be united to one who does not love her.”
+
+“Because you love her yourself.”
+
+“Your Lordship might have spared that taunt; I do not, dare not love
+her.”
+
+“At least,” he continued haughtily, “she does not love you. I would not
+marry a reigning sovereign, were I not sure that her heart was free.
+But, O, Lionel! a kingdom is a word of might, and gently sounding are
+the terms that compose the style of royalty. Were not the mightiest men
+of the olden times kings? Alexander was a king; Solomon, the wisest of
+men, was a king; Napoleon was a king; Cæsar died in his attempt to
+become one, and Cromwell, the puritan and king-killer, aspired to
+regality. The father of Adrian yielded up the already broken sceptre of
+England; but I will rear the fallen plant, join its dismembered frame,
+and exalt it above all the flowers of the field.
+
+“You need not wonder that I freely discover Adrian’s abode. Do not
+suppose that I am wicked or foolish enough to found my purposed
+sovereignty on a fraud, and one so easily discovered as the truth or
+falsehood of the Earl’s insanity. I am just come from him. Before I
+decided on my marriage with Idris, I resolved to see him myself again,
+and to judge of the probability of his recovery.—He is irrecoverably
+mad.”
+
+I gasped for breath—
+
+“I will not detail to you,” continued Raymond, “the melancholy
+particulars. You shall see him, and judge for yourself; although I fear
+this visit, useless to him, will be insufferably painful to you. It has
+weighed on my spirits ever since. Excellent and gentle as he is even in
+the downfall of his reason, I do not worship him as you do, but I would
+give all my hopes of a crown and my right hand to boot, to see him
+restored to himself.”
+
+His voice expressed the deepest compassion: “Thou most unaccountable
+being,” I cried, “whither will thy actions tend, in all this maze of
+purpose in which thou seemest lost?”
+
+“Whither indeed? To a crown, a golden be-gemmed crown, I hope; and yet
+I dare not trust and though I dream of a crown and wake for one, ever
+and anon a busy devil whispers to me, that it is but a fool’s cap that
+I seek, and that were I wise, I should trample on it, and take in its
+stead, that which is worth all the crowns of the east and
+presidentships of the west.”
+
+“And what is that?”
+
+“If I do make it my choice, then you shall know; at present I dare not
+speak, even think of it.”
+
+Again he was silent, and after a pause turned to me laughingly. When
+scorn did not inspire his mirth, when it was genuine gaiety that
+painted his features with a joyous expression, his beauty became
+super-eminent, divine. “Verney,” said he, “my first act when I become
+King of England, will be to unite with the Greeks, take Constantinople,
+and subdue all Asia. I intend to be a warrior, a conqueror; Napoleon’s
+name shall vail to mine; and enthusiasts, instead of visiting his rocky
+grave, and exalting the merits of the fallen, shall adore my majesty,
+and magnify my illustrious achievements.”
+
+I listened to Raymond with intense interest. Could I be other than all
+ear, to one who seemed to govern the whole earth in his grasping
+imagination, and who only quailed when he attempted to rule himself.
+Then on his word and will depended my own happiness—the fate of all
+dear to me. I endeavoured to divine the concealed meaning of his words.
+Perdita’s name was not mentioned; yet I could not doubt that love for
+her caused the vacillation of purpose that he exhibited. And who was so
+worthy of love as my noble-minded sister? Who deserved the hand of this
+self-exalted king more than she whose glance belonged to a queen of
+nations? who loved him, as he did her; notwithstanding that
+disappointment quelled her passion, and ambition held strong combat
+with his.
+
+We went together to the House in the evening. Raymond, while he knew
+that his plans and prospects were to be discussed and decided during
+the expected debate, was gay and careless. An hum, like that of ten
+thousand hives of swarming bees, stunned us as we entered the
+coffee-room. Knots of politicians were assembled with anxious brows and
+loud or deep voices. The aristocratical party, the richest and most
+influential men in England, appeared less agitated than the others, for
+the question was to be discussed without their interference. Near the
+fire was Ryland and his supporters. Ryland was a man of obscure birth
+and of immense wealth, inherited from his father, who had been a
+manufacturer. He had witnessed, when a young man, the abdication of the
+king, and the amalgamation of the two houses of Lords and Commons; he
+had sympathized with these popular encroachments, and it had been the
+business of his life to consolidate and encrease them. Since then, the
+influence of the landed proprietors had augmented; and at first Ryland
+was not sorry to observe the machinations of Lord Raymond, which drew
+off many of his opponent’s partizans. But the thing was now going too
+far. The poorer nobility hailed the return of sovereignty, as an event
+which would restore them to their power and rights, now lost. The half
+extinct spirit of royalty roused itself in the minds of men; and they,
+willing slaves, self-constituted subjects, were ready to bend their
+necks to the yoke. Some erect and manly spirits still remained, pillars
+of state; but the word republic had grown stale to the vulgar ear; and
+many—the event would prove whether it was a majority— pined for the
+tinsel and show of royalty. Ryland was roused to resistance; he
+asserted that his sufferance alone had permitted the encrease of this
+party; but the time for indulgence was passed, and with one motion of
+his arm he would sweep away the cobwebs that blinded his countrymen.
+
+When Raymond entered the coffee-room, his presence was hailed by his
+friends almost with a shout. They gathered round him, counted their
+numbers, and detailed the reasons why they were now to receive an
+addition of such and such members, who had not yet declared themselves.
+Some trifling business of the House having been gone through, the
+leaders took their seats in the chamber; the clamour of voices
+continued, till Ryland arose to speak, and then the slightest whispered
+observation was audible. All eyes were fixed upon him as he
+stood—ponderous of frame, sonorous of voice, and with a manner which,
+though not graceful, was impressive. I turned from his marked, iron
+countenance to Raymond, whose face, veiled by a smile, would not betray
+his care; yet his lips quivered somewhat, and his hand clasped the
+bench on which he sat, with a convulsive strength that made the muscles
+start again.
+
+Ryland began by praising the present state of the British empire. He
+recalled past years to their memory; the miserable contentions which in
+the time of our fathers arose almost to civil war, the abdication of
+the late king, and the foundation of the republic. He described this
+republic; shewed how it gave privilege to each individual in the state,
+to rise to consequence, and even to temporary sovereignty. He compared
+the royal and republican spirit; shewed how the one tended to enslave
+the minds of men; while all the institutions of the other served to
+raise even the meanest among us to something great and good. He shewed
+how England had become powerful, and its inhabitants valiant and wise,
+by means of the freedom they enjoyed. As he spoke, every heart swelled
+with pride, and every cheek glowed with delight to remember, that each
+one there was English, and that each supported and contributed to the
+happy state of things now commemorated. Ryland’s fervour increased—his
+eyes lighted up—his voice assumed the tone of passion. There was one
+man, he continued, who wished to alter all this, and bring us back to
+our days of impotence and contention:—one man, who would dare arrogate
+the honour which was due to all who claimed England as their
+birthplace, and set his name and style above the name and style of his
+country. I saw at this juncture that Raymond changed colour; his eyes
+were withdrawn from the orator, and cast on the ground; the listeners
+turned from one to the other; but in the meantime the speaker’s voice
+filled their ears—the thunder of his denunciations influenced their
+senses. The very boldness of his language gave him weight; each knew
+that he spoke truth—a truth known, but not acknowledged. He tore from
+reality the mask with which she had been clothed; and the purposes of
+Raymond, which before had crept around, ensnaring by stealth, now stood
+a hunted stag—even at bay—as all perceived who watched the
+irrepressible changes of his countenance. Ryland ended by moving, that
+any attempt to re-erect the kingly power should be declared treason,
+and he a traitor who should endeavour to change the present form of
+government. Cheers and loud acclamations followed the close of his
+speech.
+
+After his motion had been seconded, Lord Raymond rose,—his countenance
+bland, his voice softly melodious, his manner soothing, his grace and
+sweetness came like the mild breathing of a flute, after the loud,
+organ-like voice of his adversary. He rose, he said, to speak in favour
+of the honourable member’s motion, with one slight amendment subjoined.
+He was ready to go back to old times, and commemorate the contests of
+our fathers, and the monarch’s abdication. Nobly and greatly, he said,
+had the illustrious and last sovereign of England sacrificed himself to
+the apparent good of his country, and divested himself of a power which
+could only be maintained by the blood of his subjects—these subjects
+named so no more, these, his friends and equals, had in gratitude
+conferred certain favours and distinctions on him and his family for
+ever. An ample estate was allotted to them, and they took the first
+rank among the peers of Great Britain. Yet it might be conjectured that
+they had not forgotten their ancient heritage; and it was hard that his
+heir should suffer alike with any other pretender, if he attempted to
+regain what by ancient right and inheritance belonged to him. He did
+not say that he should favour such an attempt; but he did say that such
+an attempt would be venial; and, if the aspirant did not go so far as
+to declare war, and erect a standard in the kingdom, his fault ought to
+be regarded with an indulgent eye. In his amendment he proposed, that
+an exception should be made in the bill in favour of any person who
+claimed the sovereign power in right of the earls of Windsor. Nor did
+Raymond make an end without drawing in vivid and glowing colours, the
+splendour of a kingdom, in opposition to the commercial spirit of
+republicanism. He asserted, that each individual under the English
+monarchy, was then as now, capable of attaining high rank and
+power—with one only exception, that of the function of chief
+magistrate; higher and nobler rank, than a bartering, timorous
+commonwealth could afford. And for this one exception, to what did it
+amount? The nature of riches and influence forcibly confined the list
+of candidates to a few of the wealthiest; and it was much to be feared,
+that the ill-humour and contention generated by this triennial
+struggle, would counterbalance its advantages in impartial eyes. I can
+ill record the flow of language and graceful turns of expression, the
+wit and easy raillery that gave vigour and influence to his speech. His
+manner, timid at first, became firm—his changeful face was lit up to
+superhuman brilliancy; his voice, various as music, was like that
+enchanting.
+
+It were useless to record the debate that followed this harangue. Party
+speeches were delivered, which clothed the question in cant, and veiled
+its simple meaning in a woven wind of words. The motion was lost;
+Ryland withdrew in rage and despair; and Raymond, gay and exulting,
+retired to dream of his future kingdom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Is there such a feeling as love at first sight? And if there be, in
+what does its nature differ from love founded in long observation and
+slow growth? Perhaps its effects are not so permanent; but they are,
+while they last, as violent and intense. We walk the pathless mazes of
+society, vacant of joy, till we hold this clue, leading us through that
+labyrinth to paradise. Our nature dim, like to an unlighted torch,
+sleeps in formless blank till the fire attain it; this life of life,
+this light to moon, and glory to the sun. What does it matter, whether
+the fire be struck from flint and steel, nourished with care into a
+flame, slowly communicated to the dark wick, or whether swiftly the
+radiant power of light and warmth passes from a kindred power, and
+shines at once the beacon and the hope. In the deepest fountain of my
+heart the pulses were stirred; around, above, beneath, the clinging
+Memory as a cloak enwrapt me. In no one moment of coming time did I
+feel as I had done in time gone by. The spirit of Idris hovered in the
+air I breathed; her eyes were ever and for ever bent on mine; her
+remembered smile blinded my faint gaze, and caused me to walk as one,
+not in eclipse, not in darkness and vacancy—but in a new and brilliant
+light, too novel, too dazzling for my human senses. On every leaf, on
+every small division of the universe, (as on the hyacinth ας is
+engraved) was imprinted the talisman of my existence—SHE LIVES! SHE IS!
+—I had not time yet to analyze my feeling, to take myself to task, and
+leash in the tameless passion; all was one idea, one feeling, one
+knowledge —it was my life!
+
+But the die was cast—Raymond would marry Idris. The merry marriage
+bells rung in my ears; I heard the nation’s gratulation which followed
+the union; the ambitious noble uprose with swift eagle-flight, from the
+lowly ground to regal supremacy—and to the love of Idris. Yet, not so!
+She did not love him; she had called me her friend; she had smiled on
+me; to me she had entrusted her heart’s dearest hope, the welfare of
+Adrian. This reflection thawed my congealing blood, and again the tide
+of life and love flowed impetuously onward, again to ebb as my busy
+thoughts changed.
+
+The debate had ended at three in the morning. My soul was in tumults; I
+traversed the streets with eager rapidity. Truly, I was mad that night—
+love—which I have named a giant from its birth, wrestled with despair!
+My heart, the field of combat, was wounded by the iron heel of the one,
+watered by the gushing tears of the other. Day, hateful to me, dawned;
+I retreated to my lodgings—I threw myself on a couch—I slept—was it
+sleep?—for thought was still alive—love and despair struggled still,
+and I writhed with unendurable pain.
+
+I awoke half stupefied; I felt a heavy oppression on me, but knew not
+wherefore; I entered, as it were, the council-chamber of my brain, and
+questioned the various ministers of thought therein assembled; too soon
+I remembered all; too soon my limbs quivered beneath the tormenting
+power; soon, too soon, I knew myself a slave!
+
+Suddenly, unannounced, Lord Raymond entered my apartment. He came in
+gaily, singing the Tyrolese song of liberty; noticed me with a gracious
+nod, and threw himself on a sopha opposite the copy of a bust of the
+Apollo Belvidere. After one or two trivial remarks, to which I sullenly
+replied, he suddenly cried, looking at the bust, “I am called like that
+victor! Not a bad idea; the head will serve for my new coinage, and be
+an omen to all dutiful subjects of my future success.”
+
+He said this in his most gay, yet benevolent manner, and smiled, not
+disdainfully, but in playful mockery of himself. Then his countenance
+suddenly darkened, and in that shrill tone peculiar to himself, he
+cried, “I fought a good battle last night; higher conquest the plains
+of Greece never saw me achieve. Now I am the first man in the state,
+burthen of every ballad, and object of old women’s mumbled devotions.
+What are your meditations? You, who fancy that you can read the human
+soul, as your native lake reads each crevice and folding of its
+surrounding hills—say what you think of me; king-expectant, angel or
+devil, which?”
+
+This ironical tone was discord to my bursting, over-boiling-heart; I
+was nettled by his insolence, and replied with bitterness; “There is a
+spirit, neither angel or devil, damned to limbo merely.” I saw his
+cheeks become pale, and his lips whiten and quiver; his anger served
+but to enkindle mine, and I answered with a determined look his eyes
+which glared on me; suddenly they were withdrawn, cast down, a tear, I
+thought, wetted the dark lashes; I was softened, and with involuntary
+emotion added, “Not that you are such, my dear lord.”
+
+I paused, even awed by the agitation he evinced; “Yes,” he said at
+length, rising and biting his lip, as he strove to curb his passion;
+“Such am I! You do not know me, Verney; neither you, nor our audience
+of last night, nor does universal England know aught of me. I stand
+here, it would seem, an elected king; this hand is about to grasp a
+sceptre; these brows feel in each nerve the coming diadem. I appear to
+have strength, power, victory; standing as a dome-supporting column
+stands; and I am—a reed! I have ambition, and that attains its aim; my
+nightly dreams are realized, my waking hopes fulfilled; a kingdom
+awaits my acceptance, my enemies are overthrown. But here,” and he
+struck his heart with violence, “here is the rebel, here the
+stumbling-block; this over-ruling heart, which I may drain of its
+living blood; but, while one fluttering pulsation remains, I am its
+slave.”
+
+He spoke with a broken voice, then bowed his head, and, hiding his face
+in his hands, wept. I was still smarting from my own disappointment;
+yet this scene oppressed me even to terror, nor could I interrupt his
+access of passion. It subsided at length; and, throwing himself on the
+couch, he remained silent and motionless, except that his changeful
+features shewed a strong internal conflict. At last he rose, and said
+in his usual tone of voice, “The time grows on us, Verney, I must away.
+Let me not forget my chiefest errand here. Will you accompany me to
+Windsor to-morrow? You will not be dishonoured by my society, and as
+this is probably the last service, or disservice you can do me, will
+you grant my request?”
+
+He held out his hand with almost a bashful air. Swiftly I thought—Yes,
+I will witness the last scene of the drama. Beside which, his mien
+conquered me, and an affectionate sentiment towards him, again filled
+my heart—I bade him command me. “Aye, that I will,” said he gaily,
+“that’s my cue now; be with me to-morrow morning by seven; be secret
+and faithful; and you shall be groom of the stole ere long.”
+
+So saying, he hastened away, vaulted on his horse, and with a gesture
+as if he gave me his hand to kiss, bade me another laughing adieu. Left
+to myself, I strove with painful intensity to divine the motive of his
+request and foresee the events of the coming day. The hours passed on
+unperceived; my head ached with thought, the nerves seemed teeming with
+the over full fraught—I clasped my burning brow, as if my fevered hand
+could medicine its pain. I was punctual to the appointed hour on the
+following day, and found Lord Raymond waiting for me. We got into his
+carriage, and proceeded towards Windsor. I had tutored myself, and was
+resolved by no outward sign to disclose my internal agitation.
+
+“What a mistake Ryland made,” said Raymond, “when he thought to
+overpower me the other night. He spoke well, very well; such an
+harangue would have succeeded better addressed to me singly, than to
+the fools and knaves assembled yonder. Had I been alone, I should have
+listened to him with a wish to hear reason, but when he endeavoured to
+vanquish me in my own territory, with my own weapons, he put me on my
+mettle, and the event was such as all might have expected.”
+
+I smiled incredulously, and replied: “I am of Ryland’s way of thinking,
+and will, if you please, repeat all his arguments; we shall see how far
+you will be induced by them, to change the royal for the patriotic
+style.”
+
+“The repetition would be useless,” said Raymond, “since I well remember
+them, and have many others, self-suggested, which speak with
+unanswerable persuasion.”
+
+He did not explain himself, nor did I make any remark on his reply. Our
+silence endured for some miles, till the country with open fields, or
+shady woods and parks, presented pleasant objects to our view. After
+some observations on the scenery and seats, Raymond said: “Philosophers
+have called man a microcosm of nature, and find a reflection in the
+internal mind for all this machinery visibly at work around us. This
+theory has often been a source of amusement to me; and many an idle
+hour have I spent, exercising my ingenuity in finding resemblances.
+Does not Lord Bacon say that, ‘the falling from a discord to a concord,
+which maketh great sweetness in music, hath an agreement with the
+affections, which are re-integrated to the better after some dislikes?’
+What a sea is the tide of passion, whose fountains are in our own
+nature! Our virtues are the quick-sands, which shew themselves at calm
+and low water; but let the waves arise and the winds buffet them, and
+the poor devil whose hope was in their durability, finds them sink from
+under him. The fashions of the world, its exigencies, educations and
+pursuits, are winds to drive our wills, like clouds all one way; but
+let a thunderstorm arise in the shape of love, hate, or ambition, and
+the rack goes backward, stemming the opposing air in triumph.”
+
+“Yet,” replied I, “nature always presents to our eyes the appearance of
+a patient: while there is an active principle in man which is capable
+of ruling fortune, and at least of tacking against the gale, till it in
+some mode conquers it.”
+
+“There is more of what is specious than true in your distinction,” said
+my companion. “Did we form ourselves, choosing our dispositions, and
+our powers? I find myself, for one, as a stringed instrument with
+chords and stops—but I have no power to turn the pegs, or pitch my
+thoughts to a higher or lower key.”
+
+“Other men,” I observed, “may be better musicians.”
+
+“I talk not of others, but myself,” replied Raymond, “and I am as fair
+an example to go by as another. I cannot set my heart to a particular
+tune, or run voluntary changes on my will. We are born; we choose
+neither our parents, nor our station; we are educated by others, or by
+the world’s circumstance, and this cultivation, mingling with our
+innate disposition, is the soil in which our desires, passions, and
+motives grow.”
+
+“There is much truth in what you say,” said I, “and yet no man ever
+acts upon this theory. Who, when he makes a choice, says, Thus I
+choose, because I am necessitated? Does he not on the contrary feel a
+freedom of will within him, which, though you may call it fallacious,
+still actuates him as he decides?”
+
+“Exactly so,” replied Raymond, “another link of the breakless chain.
+Were I now to commit an act which would annihilate my hopes, and pluck
+the regal garment from my mortal limbs, to clothe them in ordinary
+weeds, would this, think you, be an act of free-will on my part?”
+
+As we talked thus, I perceived that we were not going the ordinary road
+to Windsor, but through Englefield Green, towards Bishopgate Heath. I
+began to divine that Idris was not the object of our journey, but that
+I was brought to witness the scene that was to decide the fate of
+Raymond—and of Perdita. Raymond had evidently vacillated during his
+journey, and irresolution was marked in every gesture as we entered
+Perdita’s cottage. I watched him curiously, determined that, if this
+hesitation should continue, I would assist Perdita to overcome herself,
+and teach her to disdain the wavering love of him, who balanced between
+the possession of a crown, and of her, whose excellence and affection
+transcended the worth of a kingdom.
+
+We found her in her flower-adorned alcove; she was reading the
+newspaper report of the debate in parliament, that apparently doomed
+her to hopelessness. That heart-sinking feeling was painted in her sunk
+eyes and spiritless attitude; a cloud was on her beauty, and frequent
+sighs were tokens of her distress. This sight had an instantaneous
+effect on Raymond; his eyes beamed with tenderness, and remorse clothed
+his manners with earnestness and truth. He sat beside her; and, taking
+the paper from her hand, said, “Not a word more shall my sweet Perdita
+read of this contention of madmen and fools. I must not permit you to
+be acquainted with the extent of my delusion, lest you despise me;
+although, believe me, a wish to appear before you, not vanquished, but
+as a conqueror, inspired me during my wordy war.”
+
+Perdita looked at him like one amazed; her expressive countenance shone
+for a moment with tenderness; to see him only was happiness. But a
+bitter thought swiftly shadowed her joy; she bent her eyes on the
+ground, endeavouring to master the passion of tears that threatened to
+overwhelm her. Raymond continued, “I will not act a part with you, dear
+girl, or appear other than what I am, weak and unworthy, more fit to
+excite your disdain than your love. Yet you do love me; I feel and know
+that you do, and thence I draw my most cherished hopes. If pride guided
+you, or even reason, you might well reject me. Do so; if your high
+heart, incapable of my infirmity of purpose, refuses to bend to the
+lowness of mine. Turn from me, if you will,—if you can. If your whole
+soul does not urge you to forgive me—if your entire heart does not open
+wide its door to admit me to its very centre, forsake me, never speak
+to me again. I, though sinning against you almost beyond remission, I
+also am proud; there must be no reserve in your pardon—no drawback to
+the gift of your affection.”
+
+Perdita looked down, confused, yet pleased. My presence embarrassed
+her; so that she dared not turn to meet her lover’s eye, or trust her
+voice to assure him of her affection; while a blush mantled her cheek,
+and her disconsolate air was exchanged for one expressive of deep-felt
+joy. Raymond encircled her waist with his arm, and continued, “I do not
+deny that I have balanced between you and the highest hope that mortal
+men can entertain; but I do so no longer. Take me—mould me to your
+will, possess my heart and soul to all eternity. If you refuse to
+contribute to my happiness, I quit England to-night, and will never set
+foot in it again.
+
+“Lionel, you hear: witness for me: persuade your sister to forgive the
+injury I have done her; persuade her to be mine.”
+
+“There needs no persuasion,” said the blushing Perdita, “except your
+own dear promises, and my ready heart, which whispers to me that they
+are true.”
+
+That same evening we all three walked together in the forest, and, with
+the garrulity which happiness inspires, they detailed to me the history
+of their loves. It was pleasant to see the haughty Raymond and reserved
+Perdita changed through happy love into prattling, playful children,
+both losing their characteristic dignity in the fulness of mutual
+contentment. A night or two ago Lord Raymond, with a brow of care, and
+a heart oppressed with thought, bent all his energies to silence or
+persuade the legislators of England that a sceptre was not too weighty
+for his hand, while visions of dominion, war, and triumph floated
+before him; now, frolicsome as a lively boy sporting under his mother’s
+approving eye, the hopes of his ambition were complete, when he pressed
+the small fair hand of Perdita to his lips; while she, radiant with
+delight, looked on the still pool, not truly admiring herself, but
+drinking in with rapture the reflection there made of the form of
+herself and her lover, shewn for the first time in dear conjunction.
+
+I rambled away from them. If the rapture of assured sympathy was
+theirs, I enjoyed that of restored hope. I looked on the regal towers
+of Windsor. High is the wall and strong the barrier that separate me
+from my Star of Beauty. But not impassible. She will not be his. A few
+more years dwell in thy native garden, sweet flower, till I by toil and
+time acquire a right to gather thee. Despair not, nor bid me despair!
+What must I do now? First I must seek Adrian, and restore him to her.
+Patience, gentleness, and untired affection, shall recall him, if it be
+true, as Raymond says, that he is mad; energy and courage shall rescue
+him, if he be unjustly imprisoned.
+
+After the lovers again joined me, we supped together in the alcove.
+Truly it was a fairy’s supper; for though the air was perfumed by the
+scent of fruits and wine, we none of us either ate or drank—even the
+beauty of the night was unobserved; their extasy could not be increased
+by outward objects, and I was wrapt in reverie. At about midnight
+Raymond and I took leave of my sister, to return to town. He was all
+gaiety; scraps of songs fell from his lips; every thought of his
+mind—every object about us, gleamed under the sunshine of his mirth. He
+accused me of melancholy, of ill-humour and envy.
+
+“Not so,” said I, “though I confess that my thoughts are not occupied
+as pleasantly as yours are. You promised to facilitate my visit to
+Adrian; I conjure you to perform your promise. I cannot linger here; I
+long to soothe —perhaps to cure the malady of my first and best friend.
+I shall immediately depart for Dunkeld.”
+
+“Thou bird of night,” replied Raymond, “what an eclipse do you throw
+across my bright thoughts, forcing me to call to mind that melancholy
+ruin, which stands in mental desolation, more irreparable than a
+fragment of a carved column in a weed-grown field. You dream that you
+can restore him? Daedalus never wound so inextricable an error round
+Minotaur, as madness has woven about his imprisoned reason. Nor you,
+nor any other Theseus, can thread the labyrinth, to which perhaps some
+unkind Ariadne has the clue.”
+
+“You allude to Evadne Zaimi: but she is not in England.”
+
+“And were she,” said Raymond, “I would not advise her seeing him.
+Better to decay in absolute delirium, than to be the victim of the
+methodical unreason of ill-bestowed love. The long duration of his
+malady has probably erased from his mind all vestige of her; and it
+were well that it should never again be imprinted. You will find him at
+Dunkeld; gentle and tractable he wanders up the hills, and through the
+wood, or sits listening beside the waterfall. You may see him—his hair
+stuck with wild flowers —his eyes full of untraceable meaning—his voice
+broken—his person wasted to a shadow. He plucks flowers and weeds, and
+weaves chaplets of them, or sails yellow leaves and bits of bark on the
+stream, rejoicing in their safety, or weeping at their wreck. The very
+memory half unmans me. By Heaven! the first tears I have shed since
+boyhood rushed scalding into my eyes when I saw him.”
+
+It needed not this last account to spur me on to visit him. I only
+doubted whether or not I should endeavour to see Idris again, before I
+departed. This doubt was decided on the following day. Early in the
+morning Raymond came to me; intelligence had arrived that Adrian was
+dangerously ill, and it appeared impossible that his failing strength
+should surmount the disorder. “To-morrow,” said Raymond, “his mother
+and sister set out for Scotland to see him once again.”
+
+“And I go to-day,” I cried; “this very hour I will engage a sailing
+balloon; I shall be there in forty-eight hours at furthest, perhaps in
+less, if the wind is fair. Farewell, Raymond; be happy in having chosen
+the better part in life. This turn of fortune revives me. I feared
+madness, not sickness—I have a presentiment that Adrian will not die;
+perhaps this illness is a crisis, and he may recover.”
+
+Everything favoured my journey. The balloon rose about half a mile from
+the earth, and with a favourable wind it hurried through the air, its
+feathered vans cleaving the unopposing atmosphere. Notwithstanding the
+melancholy object of my journey, my spirits were exhilarated by
+reviving hope, by the swift motion of the airy pinnace, and the balmy
+visitation of the sunny air. The pilot hardly moved the plumed
+steerage, and the slender mechanism of the wings, wide unfurled, gave
+forth a murmuring noise, soothing to the sense. Plain and hill, stream
+and corn-field, were discernible below, while we unimpeded sped on
+swift and secure, as a wild swan in his spring-tide flight. The machine
+obeyed the slightest motion of the helm; and, the wind blowing
+steadily, there was no let or obstacle to our course. Such was the
+power of man over the elements; a power long sought, and lately won;
+yet foretold in by-gone time by the prince of poets, whose verses I
+quoted much to the astonishment of my pilot, when I told him how many
+hundred years ago they had been written:—
+
+Oh! human wit, thou can’st invent much ill,
+Thou searchest strange arts: who would think by skill,
+An heavy man like a light bird should stray,
+And through the empty heavens find a way?
+
+
+I alighted at Perth; and, though much fatigued by a constant exposure
+to the air for many hours, I would not rest, but merely altering my
+mode of conveyance, I went by land instead of air, to Dunkeld. The sun
+was rising as I entered the opening of the hills. After the revolution
+of ages Birnam hill was again covered with a young forest, while more
+aged pines, planted at the very commencement of the nineteenth century
+by the then Duke of Athol, gave solemnity and beauty to the scene. The
+rising sun first tinged the pine tops; and my mind, rendered through my
+mountain education deeply susceptible of the graces of nature, and now
+on the eve of again beholding my beloved and perhaps dying friend, was
+strangely influenced by the sight of those distant beams: surely they
+were ominous, and as such I regarded them, good omens for Adrian, on
+whose life my happiness depended.
+
+Poor fellow! he lay stretched on a bed of sickness, his cheeks glowing
+with the hues of fever, his eyes half closed, his breath irregular and
+difficult. Yet it was less painful to see him thus, than to find him
+fulfilling the animal functions uninterruptedly, his mind sick the
+while. I established myself at his bedside; I never quitted it day or
+night. Bitter task was it, to behold his spirit waver between death and
+life: to see his warm cheek, and know that the very fire which burned
+too fiercely there, was consuming the vital fuel; to hear his moaning
+voice, which might never again articulate words of love and wisdom; to
+witness the ineffectual motions of his limbs, soon to be wrapt in their
+mortal shroud. Such for three days and nights appeared the consummation
+which fate had decreed for my labours, and I became haggard and
+spectre-like, through anxiety and watching. At length his eyes unclosed
+faintly, yet with a look of returning life; he became pale and weak;
+but the rigidity of his features was softened by approaching
+convalescence. He knew me. What a brimful cup of joyful agony it was,
+when his face first gleamed with the glance of recognition—when he
+pressed my hand, now more fevered than his own, and when he pronounced
+my name! No trace of his past insanity remained, to dash my joy with
+sorrow.
+
+This same evening his mother and sister arrived. The Countess of
+Windsor was by nature full of energetic feeling; but she had very
+seldom in her life permitted the concentrated emotions of her heart to
+shew themselves on her features. The studied immovability of her
+countenance; her slow, equable manner, and soft but unmelodious voice,
+were a mask, hiding her fiery passions, and the impatience of her
+disposition. She did not in the least resemble either of her children;
+her black and sparkling eye, lit up by pride, was totally unlike the
+blue lustre, and frank, benignant expression of either Adrian or Idris.
+There was something grand and majestic in her motions, but nothing
+persuasive, nothing amiable. Tall, thin, and strait, her face still
+handsome, her raven hair hardly tinged with grey, her forehead arched
+and beautiful, had not the eye-brows been somewhat scattered—it was
+impossible not to be struck by her, almost to fear her. Idris appeared
+to be the only being who could resist her mother, notwithstanding the
+extreme mildness of her character. But there was a fearlessness and
+frankness about her, which said that she would not encroach on
+another’s liberty, but held her own sacred and unassailable.
+
+The Countess cast no look of kindness on my worn-out frame, though
+afterwards she thanked me coldly for my attentions. Not so Idris; her
+first glance was for her brother; she took his hand, she kissed his
+eye-lids, and hung over him with looks of compassion and love. Her eyes
+glistened with tears when she thanked me, and the grace of her
+expressions was enhanced, not diminished, by the fervour, which caused
+her almost to falter as she spoke. Her mother, all eyes and ears, soon
+interrupted us; and I saw, that she wished to dismiss me quietly, as
+one whose services, now that his relatives had arrived, were of no use
+to her son. I was harassed and ill, resolved not to give up my post,
+yet doubting in what way I should assert it; when Adrian called me, and
+clasping my hand, bade me not leave him. His mother, apparently
+inattentive, at once understood what was meant, and seeing the hold we
+had upon her, yielded the point to us.
+
+The days that followed were full of pain to me; so that I sometimes
+regretted that I had not yielded at once to the haughty lady, who
+watched all my motions, and turned my beloved task of nursing my friend
+to a work of pain and irritation. Never did any woman appear so
+entirely made of mind, as the Countess of Windsor. Her passions had
+subdued her appetites, even her natural wants; she slept little, and
+hardly ate at all; her body was evidently considered by her as a mere
+machine, whose health was necessary for the accomplishment of her
+schemes, but whose senses formed no part of her enjoyment. There is
+something fearful in one who can thus conquer the animal part of our
+nature, if the victory be not the effect of consummate virtue; nor was
+it without a mixture of this feeling, that I beheld the figure of the
+Countess awake when others slept, fasting when I, abstemious naturally,
+and rendered so by the fever that preyed on me, was forced to recruit
+myself with food. She resolved to prevent or diminish my opportunities
+of acquiring influence over her children, and circumvented my plans by
+a hard, quiet, stubborn resolution, that seemed not to belong to flesh
+and blood. War was at last tacitly acknowledged between us. We had many
+pitched battles, during which no word was spoken, hardly a look was
+interchanged, but in which each resolved not to submit to the other.
+The Countess had the advantage of position; so I was vanquished, though
+I would not yield.
+
+I became sick at heart. My countenance was painted with the hues of ill
+health and vexation. Adrian and Idris saw this; they attributed it to
+my long watching and anxiety; they urged me to rest, and take care of
+myself, while I most truly assured them, that my best medicine was
+their good wishes; those, and the assured convalescence of my friend,
+now daily more apparent. The faint rose again blushed on his cheek; his
+brow and lips lost the ashy paleness of threatened dissolution; such
+was the dear reward of my unremitting attention—and bounteous heaven
+added overflowing recompence, when it gave me also the thanks and
+smiles of Idris.
+
+After the lapse of a few weeks, we left Dunkeld. Idris and her mother
+returned immediately to Windsor, while Adrian and I followed by slow
+journies and frequent stoppages, occasioned by his continued weakness.
+As we traversed the various counties of fertile England, all wore an
+exhilarating appearance to my companion, who had been so long secluded
+by disease from the enjoyments of weather and scenery. We passed
+through busy towns and cultivated plains. The husbandmen were getting
+in their plenteous harvests, and the women and children, occupied by
+light rustic toils, formed groupes of happy, healthful persons, the
+very sight of whom carried cheerfulness to the heart. One evening,
+quitting our inn, we strolled down a shady lane, then up a grassy
+slope, till we came to an eminence, that commanded an extensive view of
+hill and dale, meandering rivers, dark woods, and shining villages. The
+sun was setting; and the clouds, straying, like new-shorn sheep,
+through the vast fields of sky, received the golden colour of his
+parting beams; the distant uplands shone out, and the busy hum of
+evening came, harmonized by distance, on our ear. Adrian, who felt all
+the fresh spirit infused by returning health, clasped his hands in
+delight, and exclaimed with transport:
+
+“O happy earth, and happy inhabitants of earth! A stately palace has
+God built for you, O man! and worthy are you of your dwelling! Behold
+the verdant carpet spread at our feet, and the azure canopy above; the
+fields of earth which generate and nurture all things, and the track of
+heaven, which contains and clasps all things. Now, at this evening
+hour, at the period of repose and refection, methinks all hearts
+breathe one hymn of love and thanksgiving, and we, like priests of old
+on the mountain-tops, give a voice to their sentiment.
+
+“Assuredly a most benignant power built up the majestic fabric we
+inhabit, and framed the laws by which it endures. If mere existence,
+and not happiness, had been the final end of our being, what need of
+the profuse luxuries which we enjoy? Why should our dwelling place be
+so lovely, and why should the instincts of nature minister pleasurable
+sensations? The very sustaining of our animal machine is made
+delightful; and our sustenance, the fruits of the field, is painted
+with transcendant hues, endued with grateful odours, and palatable to
+our taste. Why should this be, if HE were not good? We need houses to
+protect us from the seasons, and behold the materials with which we are
+provided; the growth of trees with their adornment of leaves; while
+rocks of stone piled above the plains variegate the prospect with their
+pleasant irregularity.
+
+“Nor are outward objects alone the receptacles of the Spirit of Good.
+Look into the mind of man, where wisdom reigns enthroned; where
+imagination, the painter, sits, with his pencil dipt in hues lovelier
+than those of sunset, adorning familiar life with glowing tints. What a
+noble boon, worthy the giver, is the imagination! it takes from reality
+its leaden hue: it envelopes all thought and sensation in a radiant
+veil, and with an hand of beauty beckons us from the sterile seas of
+life, to her gardens, and bowers, and glades of bliss. And is not love
+a gift of the divinity? Love, and her child, Hope, which can bestow
+wealth on poverty, strength on the weak, and happiness on the
+sorrowing.
+
+“My lot has not been fortunate. I have consorted long with grief,
+entered the gloomy labyrinth of madness, and emerged, but half alive.
+Yet I thank God that I have lived! I thank God, that I have beheld his
+throne, the heavens, and earth, his footstool. I am glad that I have
+seen the changes of his day; to behold the sun, fountain of light, and
+the gentle pilgrim moon; to have seen the fire bearing flowers of the
+sky, and the flowery stars of earth; to have witnessed the sowing and
+the harvest. I am glad that I have loved, and have experienced
+sympathetic joy and sorrow with my fellow-creatures. I am glad now to
+feel the current of thought flow through my mind, as the blood through
+the articulations of my frame; mere existence is pleasure; and I thank
+God that I live!
+
+“And all ye happy nurslings of mother-earth, do ye not echo my words?
+Ye who are linked by the affectionate ties of nature, companions,
+friends, lovers! fathers, who toil with joy for their offspring; women,
+who while gazing on the living forms of their children, forget the
+pains of maternity; children, who neither toil nor spin, but love and
+are loved!
+
+“Oh, that death and sickness were banished from our earthly home! that
+hatred, tyranny, and fear could no longer make their lair in the human
+heart! that each man might find a brother in his fellow, and a nest of
+repose amid the wide plains of his inheritance! that the source of
+tears were dry, and that lips might no longer form expressions of
+sorrow. Sleeping thus under the beneficent eye of heaven, can evil
+visit thee, O Earth, or grief cradle to their graves thy luckless
+children? Whisper it not, let the demons hear and rejoice! The choice
+is with us; let us will it, and our habitation becomes a paradise. For
+the will of man is omnipotent, blunting the arrows of death, soothing
+the bed of disease, and wiping away the tears of agony. And what is
+each human being worth, if he do not put forth his strength to aid his
+fellow-creatures? My soul is a fading spark, my nature frail as a spent
+wave; but I dedicate all of intellect and strength that remains to me,
+to that one work, and take upon me the task, as far as I am able, of
+bestowing blessings on my fellow-men!”
+
+His voice trembled, his eyes were cast up, his hands clasped, and his
+fragile person was bent, as it were, with excess of emotion. The spirit
+of life seemed to linger in his form, as a dying flame on an altar
+flickers on the embers of an accepted sacrifice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+When we arrived at Windsor, I found that Raymond and Perdita had
+departed for the continent. I took possession of my sister’s cottage,
+and blessed myself that I lived within view of Windsor Castle. It was a
+curious fact, that at this period, when by the marriage of Perdita I
+was allied to one of the richest individuals in England, and was bound
+by the most intimate friendship to its chiefest noble, I experienced
+the greatest excess of poverty that I had ever known. My knowledge of
+the worldly principles of Lord Raymond, would have ever prevented me
+from applying to him, however deep my distress might have been. It was
+in vain that I repeated to myself with regard to Adrian, that his purse
+was open to me; that one in soul, as we were, our fortunes ought also
+to be common. I could never, while with him, think of his bounty as a
+remedy to my poverty; and I even put aside hastily his offers of
+supplies, assuring him of a falsehood, that I needed them not. How
+could I say to this generous being, “Maintain me in idleness. You who
+have dedicated your powers of mind and fortune to the benefit of your
+species, shall you so misdirect your exertions, as to support in
+uselessness the strong, healthy, and capable?”
+
+And yet I dared not request him to use his influence that I might
+obtain an honourable provision for myself—for then I should have been
+obliged to leave Windsor. I hovered for ever around the walls of its
+Castle, beneath its enshadowing thickets; my sole companions were my
+books and my loving thoughts. I studied the wisdom of the ancients, and
+gazed on the happy walls that sheltered the beloved of my soul. My mind
+was nevertheless idle. I pored over the poetry of old times; I studied
+the metaphysics of Plato and Berkeley. I read the histories of Greece
+and Rome, and of England’s former periods, and I watched the movements
+of the lady of my heart. At night I could see her shadow on the walls
+of her apartment; by day I viewed her in her flower-garden, or riding
+in the park with her usual companions. Methought the charm would be
+broken if I were seen, but I heard the music of her voice and was
+happy. I gave to each heroine of whom I read, her beauty and matchless
+excellences—such was Antigone, when she guided the blind Œdipus to the
+grove of the Eumenides, and discharged the funeral rites of Polynices;
+such was Miranda in the unvisited cave of Prospero; such Haidee, on the
+sands of the Ionian island. I was mad with excess of passionate
+devotion; but pride, tameless as fire, invested my nature, and
+prevented me from betraying myself by word or look.
+
+In the mean time, while I thus pampered myself with rich mental
+repasts, a peasant would have disdained my scanty fare, which I
+sometimes robbed from the squirrels of the forest. I was, I own, often
+tempted to recur to the lawless feats of my boy-hood, and knock down
+the almost tame pheasants that perched upon the trees, and bent their
+bright eyes on me. But they were the property of Adrian, the nurslings
+of Idris; and so, although my imagination rendered sensual by
+privation, made me think that they would better become the spit in my
+kitchen, than the green leaves of the forest,
+
+    Nathelesse,
+I checked my haughty will, and did not eat;
+
+
+but supped upon sentiment, and dreamt vainly of “such morsels sweet,”
+as I might not waking attain.
+
+But, at this period, the whole scheme of my existence was about to
+change. The orphan and neglected son of Verney, was on the eve of being
+linked to the mechanism of society by a golden chain, and to enter into
+all the duties and affections of life. Miracles were to be wrought in
+my favour, the machine of social life pushed with vast effort backward.
+Attend, O reader! while I narrate this tale of wonders!
+
+One day as Adrian and Idris were riding through the forest, with their
+mother and accustomed companions, Idris, drawing her brother aside from
+the rest of the cavalcade, suddenly asked him, “What had become of his
+friend, Lionel Verney?”
+
+“Even from this spot,” replied Adrian, pointing to my sister’s cottage,
+“you can see his dwelling.”
+
+“Indeed!” said Idris, “and why, if he be so near, does he not come to
+see us, and make one of our society?”
+
+“I often visit him,” replied Adrian; “but you may easily guess the
+motives, which prevent him from coming where his presence may annoy any
+one among us.”
+
+“I do guess them,” said Idris, “and such as they are, I would not
+venture to combat them. Tell me, however, in what way he passes his
+time; what he is doing and thinking in his cottage retreat?”
+
+“Nay, my sweet sister,” replied Adrian, “you ask me more than I can
+well answer; but if you feel interest in him, why not visit him? He
+will feel highly honoured, and thus you may repay a part of the
+obligation I owe him, and compensate for the injuries fortune has done
+him.”
+
+“I will most readily accompany you to his abode,” said the lady, “not
+that I wish that either of us should unburthen ourselves of our debt,
+which, being no less than your life, must remain unpayable ever. But
+let us go; to-morrow we will arrange to ride out together, and
+proceeding towards that part of the forest, call upon him.”
+
+The next evening therefore, though the autumnal change had brought on
+cold and rain, Adrian and Idris entered my cottage. They found me
+Curius-like, feasting on sorry fruits for supper; but they brought
+gifts richer than the golden bribes of the Sabines, nor could I refuse
+the invaluable store of friendship and delight which they bestowed.
+Surely the glorious twins of Latona were not more welcome, when, in the
+infancy of the world, they were brought forth to beautify and enlighten
+this “sterile promontory,” than were this angelic pair to my lowly
+dwelling and grateful heart. We sat like one family round my hearth.
+Our talk was on subjects, unconnected with the emotions that evidently
+occupied each; but we each divined the other’s thought, and as our
+voices spoke of indifferent matters, our eyes, in mute language, told a
+thousand things no tongue could have uttered.
+
+They left me in an hour’s time. They left me happy—how unspeakably
+happy. It did not require the measured sounds of human language to
+syllable the story of my extasy. Idris had visited me; Idris I should
+again and again see—my imagination did not wander beyond the
+completeness of this knowledge. I trod air; no doubt, no fear, no hope
+even, disturbed me; I clasped with my soul the fulness of contentment,
+satisfied, undesiring, beatified.
+
+For many days Adrian and Idris continued to visit me thus. In this dear
+intercourse, love, in the guise of enthusiastic friendship, infused
+more and more of his omnipotent spirit. Idris felt it. Yes, divinity of
+the world, I read your characters in her looks and gesture; I heard
+your melodious voice echoed by her—you prepared for us a soft and
+flowery path, all gentle thoughts adorned it—your name, O Love, was not
+spoken, but you stood the Genius of the Hour, veiled, and time, but no
+mortal hand, might raise the curtain. Organs of articulate sound did
+not proclaim the union of our hearts; for untoward circumstance allowed
+no opportunity for the expression that hovered on our lips. Oh my pen!
+haste thou to write what was, before the thought of what is, arrests
+the hand that guides thee. If I lift up my eyes and see the desart
+earth, and feel that those dear eyes have spent their mortal lustre,
+and that those beauteous lips are silent, their “crimson leaves” faded,
+for ever I am mute!
+
+But you live, my Idris, even now you move before me! There was a glade,
+O reader! a grassy opening in the wood; the retiring trees left its
+velvet expanse as a temple for love; the silver Thames bounded it on
+one side, and a willow bending down dipt in the water its Naiad hair,
+dishevelled by the wind’s viewless hand. The oaks around were the home
+of a tribe of nightingales—there am I now; Idris, in youth’s dear
+prime, is by my side —remember, I am just twenty-two, and seventeen
+summers have scarcely passed over the beloved of my heart. The river
+swollen by autumnal rains, deluged the low lands, and Adrian in his
+favourite boat is employed in the dangerous pastime of plucking the
+topmost bough from a submerged oak. Are you weary of life, O Adrian,
+that you thus play with danger?—
+
+He has obtained his prize, and he pilots his boat through the flood;
+our eyes were fixed on him fearfully, but the stream carried him away
+from us; he was forced to land far lower down, and to make a
+considerable circuit before he could join us. “He is safe!” said Idris,
+as he leapt on shore, and waved the bough over his head in token of
+success; “we will wait for him here.”
+
+We were alone together; the sun had set; the song of the nightingales
+began; the evening star shone distinct in the flood of light, which was
+yet unfaded in the west. The blue eyes of my angelic girl were fixed on
+this sweet emblem of herself: “How the light palpitates,” she said,
+“which is that star’s life. Its vacillating effulgence seems to say
+that its state, even like ours upon earth, is wavering and inconstant;
+it fears, methinks, and it loves.”
+
+“Gaze not on the star, dear, generous friend,” I cried, “read not love
+in _its_ trembling rays; look not upon distant worlds; speak not of the
+mere imagination of a sentiment. I have long been silent; long even to
+sickness have I desired to speak to you, and submit my soul, my life,
+my entire being to you. Look not on the star, dear love, or do, and let
+that eternal spark plead for me; let it be my witness and my advocate,
+silent as it shines—love is to me as light to the star; even so long as
+that is uneclipsed by annihilation, so long shall I love you.”
+
+Veiled for ever to the world’s callous eye must be the transport of
+that moment. Still do I feel her graceful form press against my
+full-fraught heart—still does sight, and pulse, and breath sicken and
+fail, at the remembrance of that first kiss. Slowly and silently we
+went to meet Adrian, whom we heard approaching.
+
+I entreated Adrian to return to me after he had conducted his sister
+home. And that same evening, walking among the moon-lit forest paths, I
+poured forth my whole heart, its transport and its hope, to my friend.
+For a moment he looked disturbed—“I might have foreseen this,” he said,
+“what strife will now ensue! Pardon me, Lionel, nor wonder that the
+expectation of contest with my mother should jar me, when else I should
+delightedly confess that my best hopes are fulfilled, in confiding my
+sister to your protection. If you do not already know it, you will soon
+learn the deep hate my mother bears to the name Verney. I will converse
+with Idris; then all that a friend can do, I will do; to her it must
+belong to play the lover’s part, if she be capable of it.”
+
+While the brother and sister were still hesitating in what manner they
+could best attempt to bring their mother over to their party, she,
+suspecting our meetings, taxed her children with them; taxed her fair
+daughter with deceit, and an unbecoming attachment for one whose only
+merit was being the son of the profligate favourite of her imprudent
+father; and who was doubtless as worthless as he from whom he boasted
+his descent. The eyes of Idris flashed at this accusation; she replied,
+“I do not deny that I love Verney; prove to me that he is worthless;
+and I will never see him more.”
+
+“Dear Madam,” said Adrian, “let me entreat you to see him, to cultivate
+his friendship. You will wonder then, as I do, at the extent of his
+accomplishments, and the brilliancy of his talents.” (Pardon me, gentle
+reader, this is not futile vanity;—not futile, since to know that
+Adrian felt thus, brings joy even now to my lone heart).
+
+“Mad and foolish boy!” exclaimed the angry lady, “you have chosen with
+dreams and theories to overthrow my schemes for your own
+aggrandizement; but you shall not do the same by those I have formed
+for your sister. I but too well understand the fascination you both
+labour under; since I had the same struggle with your father, to make
+him cast off the parent of this youth, who hid his evil propensities
+with the smoothness and subtlety of a viper. In those days how often
+did I hear of his attractions, his wide spread conquests, his wit, his
+refined manners. It is well when flies only are caught by such spiders’
+webs; but is it for the high-born and powerful to bow their necks to
+the flimsy yoke of these unmeaning pretensions? Were your sister indeed
+the insignificant person she deserves to be, I would willingly leave
+her to the fate, the wretched fate, of the wife of a man, whose very
+person, resembling as it does his wretched father, ought to remind you
+of the folly and vice it typifies—but remember, Lady Idris, it is not
+alone the once royal blood of England that colours your veins, you are
+a Princess of Austria, and every life-drop is akin to emperors and
+kings. Are you then a fit mate for an uneducated shepherd-boy, whose
+only inheritance is his father’s tarnished name?”
+
+“I can make but one defence,” replied Idris, “the same offered by my
+brother; see Lionel, converse with my shepherd-boy”—-The Countess
+interrupted her indignantly—“Yours!”—she cried: and then, smoothing her
+impassioned features to a disdainful smile, she continued—“We will talk
+of this another time. All I now ask, all your mother, Idris, requests
+is, that you will not see this upstart during the interval of one
+month.”
+
+“I dare not comply,” said Idris, “it would pain him too much. I have no
+right to play with his feelings, to accept his proffered love, and then
+sting him with neglect.”
+
+“This is going too far,” her mother answered, with quivering lips, and
+eyes again instinct by anger.
+
+“Nay, Madam,” said Adrian, “unless my sister consent never to see him
+again, it is surely an useless torment to separate them for a month.”
+
+“Certainly,” replied the ex-queen, with bitter scorn, “his love, and
+her love, and both their childish flutterings, are to be put in fit
+comparison with my years of hope and anxiety, with the duties of the
+offspring of kings, with the high and dignified conduct which one of
+her descent ought to pursue. But it is unworthy of me to argue and
+complain. Perhaps you will have the goodness to promise me not to marry
+during that interval?”
+
+This was asked only half ironically; and Idris wondered why her mother
+should extort from her a solemn vow not to do, what she had never
+dreamed of doing—but the promise was required and given.
+
+All went on cheerfully now; we met as usual, and talked without dread
+of our future plans. The Countess was so gentle, and even beyond her
+wont, amiable with her children, that they began to entertain hopes of
+her ultimate consent. She was too unlike them, too utterly alien to
+their tastes, for them to find delight in her society, or in the
+prospect of its continuance, but it gave them pleasure to see her
+conciliating and kind. Once even, Adrian ventured to propose her
+receiving me. She refused with a smile, reminding him that for the
+present his sister had promised to be patient.
+
+One day, after the lapse of nearly a month, Adrian received a letter
+from a friend in London, requesting his immediate presence for the
+furtherance of some important object. Guileless himself, Adrian feared
+no deceit. I rode with him as far as Staines: he was in high spirits;
+and, since I could not see Idris during his absence, he promised a
+speedy return. His gaiety, which was extreme, had the strange effect of
+awakening in me contrary feelings; a presentiment of evil hung over me;
+I loitered on my return; I counted the hours that must elapse before I
+saw Idris again. Wherefore should this be? What evil might not happen
+in the mean time? Might not her mother take advantage of Adrian’s
+absence to urge her beyond her sufferance, perhaps to entrap her? I
+resolved, let what would befall, to see and converse with her the
+following day. This determination soothed me. To-morrow, loveliest and
+best, hope and joy of my life, to-morrow I will see thee—Fool, to dream
+of a moment’s delay!
+
+I went to rest. At past midnight I was awaked by a violent knocking. It
+was now deep winter; it had snowed, and was still snowing; the wind
+whistled in the leafless trees, despoiling them of the white flakes as
+they fell; its drear moaning, and the continued knocking, mingled
+wildly with my dreams— at length I was wide awake; hastily dressing
+myself, I hurried to discover the cause of this disturbance, and to
+open my door to the unexpected visitor. Pale as the snow that showered
+about her, with clasped hands, Idris stood before me. “Save me!” she
+exclaimed, and would have sunk to the ground had I not supported her.
+In a moment however she revived, and, with energy, almost with
+violence, entreated me to saddle horses, to take her away, away to
+London—to her brother—at least to save her. I had no horses—she wrung
+her hands. “What can I do?” she cried, “I am lost—we are both for ever
+lost! But come—come with me, Lionel; here I must not stay,—we can get a
+chaise at the nearest post-house; yet perhaps we have time! come, O
+come with me to save and protect me!”
+
+When I heard her piteous demands, while with disordered dress,
+dishevelled hair, and aghast looks, she wrung her hands—the idea shot
+across me is she also mad?—“Sweet one,” and I folded her to my heart,
+“better repose than wander further;—rest—my beloved, I will make a
+fire—you are chill.”
+
+“Rest!” she cried, “repose! you rave, Lionel! If you delay we are lost;
+come, I pray you, unless you would cast me off for ever.”
+
+That Idris, the princely born, nursling of wealth and luxury, should
+have come through the tempestuous winter-night from her regal abode,
+and standing at my lowly door, conjure me to fly with her through
+darkness and storm—was surely a dream—again her plaintive tones, the
+sight of her loveliness assured me that it was no vision. Looking
+timidly around, as if she feared to be overheard, she whispered: “I
+have discovered—to-morrow —that is, to-day—already the to-morrow is
+come—before dawn, foreigners, Austrians, my mother’s hirelings, are to
+carry me off to Germany, to prison, to marriage—to anything, except you
+and my brother —take me away, or soon they will be here!”
+
+I was frightened by her vehemence, and imagined some mistake in her
+incoherent tale; but I no longer hesitated to obey her. She had come by
+herself from the Castle, three long miles, at midnight, through the
+heavy snow; we must reach Englefield Green, a mile and a half further,
+before we could obtain a chaise. She told me, that she had kept up her
+strength and courage till her arrival at my cottage, and then both
+failed. Now she could hardly walk. Supporting her as I did, still she
+lagged: and at the distance of half a mile, after many stoppages,
+shivering fits, and half faintings, she slipt from my supporting arm on
+the snow, and with a torrent of tears averred that she must be taken,
+for that she could not proceed. I lifted her up in my arms; her light
+form rested on my breast.—I felt no burthen, except the internal one of
+contrary and contending emotions. Brimming delight now invested me.
+Again her chill limbs touched me as a torpedo; and I shuddered in
+sympathy with her pain and fright. Her head lay on my shoulder, her
+breath waved my hair, her heart beat near mine, transport made me
+tremble, blinded me, annihilated me—till a suppressed groan, bursting
+from her lips, the chattering of her teeth, which she strove vainly to
+subdue, and all the signs of suffering she evinced, recalled me to the
+necessity of speed and succour. At last I said to her, “There is
+Englefield Green; there the inn. But, if you are seen thus strangely
+circumstanced, dear Idris, even now your enemies may learn your flight
+too soon: were it not better that I hired the chaise alone? I will put
+you in safety meanwhile, and return to you immediately.”
+
+She answered that I was right, and might do with her as I pleased. I
+observed the door of a small out-house a-jar. I pushed it open; and,
+with some hay strewed about, I formed a couch for her, placing her
+exhausted frame on it, and covering her with my cloak. I feared to
+leave her, she looked so wan and faint—but in a moment she re-acquired
+animation, and, with that, fear; and again she implored me not to
+delay. To call up the people of the inn, and obtain a conveyance and
+horses, even though I harnessed them myself, was the work of many
+minutes; minutes, each freighted with the weight of ages. I caused the
+chaise to advance a little, waited till the people of the inn had
+retired, and then made the post-boy draw up the carriage to the spot
+where Idris, impatient, and now somewhat recovered, stood waiting for
+me. I lifted her into the chaise; I assured her that with our four
+horses we should arrive in London before five o’clock, the hour when
+she would be sought and missed. I besought her to calm herself; a
+kindly shower of tears relieved her, and by degrees she related her
+tale of fear and peril.
+
+That same night after Adrian’s departure, her mother had warmly
+expostulated with her on the subject of her attachment to me. Every
+motive, every threat, every angry taunt was urged in vain. She seemed
+to consider that through me she had lost Raymond; I was the evil
+influence of her life; I was even accused of encreasing and confirming
+the mad and base apostacy of Adrian from all views of advancement and
+grandeur; and now this miserable mountaineer was to steal her daughter.
+Never, Idris related, did the angry lady deign to recur to gentleness
+and persuasion; if she had, the task of resistance would have been
+exquisitely painful. As it was, the sweet girl’s generous nature was
+roused to defend, and ally herself with, my despised cause. Her mother
+ended with a look of contempt and covert triumph, which for a moment
+awakened the suspicions of Idris. When they parted for the night, the
+Countess said, “To-morrow I trust your tone will be changed: be
+composed; I have agitated you; go to rest; and I will send you a
+medicine I always take when unduly restless—it will give you a quiet
+night.”
+
+By the time that she had with uneasy thoughts laid her fair cheek upon
+her pillow, her mother’s servant brought a draught; a suspicion again
+crossed her at this novel proceeding, sufficiently alarming to
+determine her not to take the potion; but dislike of contention, and a
+wish to discover whether there was any just foundation for her
+conjectures, made her, she said, almost instinctively, and in
+contradiction to her usual frankness, pretend to swallow the medicine.
+Then, agitated as she had been by her mother’s violence, and now by
+unaccustomed fears, she lay unable to sleep, starting at every sound.
+Soon her door opened softly, and on her springing up, she heard a
+whisper, “Not asleep yet,” and the door again closed. With a beating
+heart she expected another visit, and when after an interval her
+chamber was again invaded, having first assured herself that the
+intruders were her mother and an attendant, she composed herself to
+feigned sleep. A step approached her bed, she dared not move, she
+strove to calm her palpitations, which became more violent, when she
+heard her mother say mutteringly, “Pretty simpleton, little do you
+think that your game is already at an end for ever.”
+
+For a moment the poor girl fancied that her mother believed that she
+had drank poison: she was on the point of springing up; when the
+Countess, already at a distance from the bed, spoke in a low voice to
+her companion, and again Idris listened: “Hasten,” said she, “there is
+no time to lose— it is long past eleven; they will be here at five;
+take merely the clothes necessary for her journey, and her
+jewel-casket.” The servant obeyed; few words were spoken on either
+side; but those were caught at with avidity by the intended victim. She
+heard the name of her own maid mentioned;—“No, no,” replied her mother,
+“she does not go with us; Lady Idris must forget England, and all
+belonging to it.” And again she heard, “She will not wake till late
+to-morrow, and we shall then be at sea.”——“All is ready,” at length the
+woman announced. The Countess again came to her daughter’s bedside: “In
+Austria at least,” she said, “you will obey. In Austria, where
+obedience can be enforced, and no choice left but between an honourable
+prison and a fitting marriage.”
+
+Both then withdrew; though, as she went, the Countess said, “Softly;
+all sleep; though all have not been prepared for sleep, like her. I
+would not have any one suspect, or she might be roused to resistance,
+and perhaps escape. Come with me to my room; we will remain there till
+the hour agreed upon.” They went. Idris, panic-struck, but animated and
+strengthened even by her excessive fear, dressed herself hurriedly, and
+going down a flight of back-stairs, avoiding the vicinity of her
+mother’s apartment, she contrived to escape from the castle by a low
+window, and came through snow, wind, and obscurity to my cottage; nor
+lost her courage, until she arrived, and, depositing her fate in my
+hands, gave herself up to the desperation and weariness that
+overwhelmed her.
+
+I comforted her as well as I might. Joy and exultation, were mine, to
+possess, and to save her. Yet not to excite fresh agitation in her,
+“_per non turbar quel bel viso sereno_,” I curbed my delight. I strove
+to quiet the eager dancing of my heart; I turned from her my eyes,
+beaming with too much tenderness, and proudly, to dark night, and the
+inclement atmosphere, murmured the expressions of my transport. We
+reached London, methought, all too soon; and yet I could not regret our
+speedy arrival, when I witnessed the extasy with which my beloved girl
+found herself in her brother’s arms, safe from every evil, under his
+unblamed protection.
+
+Adrian wrote a brief note to his mother, informing her that Idris was
+under his care and guardianship. Several days elapsed, and at last an
+answer came, dated from Cologne. “It was useless,” the haughty and
+disappointed lady wrote, “for the Earl of Windsor and his sister to
+address again the injured parent, whose only expectation of
+tranquillity must be derived from oblivion of their existence. Her
+desires had been blasted, her schemes overthrown. She did not complain;
+in her brother’s court she would find, not compensation for their
+disobedience (filial unkindness admitted of none), but such a state of
+things and mode of life, as might best reconcile her to her fate. Under
+such circumstances, she positively declined any communication with
+them.”
+
+Such were the strange and incredible events, that finally brought about
+my union with the sister of my best friend, with my adored Idris. With
+simplicity and courage she set aside the prejudices and opposition
+which were obstacles to my happiness, nor scrupled to give her hand,
+where she had given her heart. To be worthy of her, to raise myself to
+her height through the exertion of talents and virtue, to repay her
+love with devoted, unwearied tenderness, were the only thanks I could
+offer for the matchless gift.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+And now let the reader, passing over some short period of time, be
+introduced to our happy circle. Adrian, Idris and I, were established
+in Windsor Castle; Lord Raymond and my sister, inhabited a house which
+the former had built on the borders of the Great Park, near Perdita’s
+cottage, as was still named the low-roofed abode, where we two, poor
+even in hope, had each received the assurance of our felicity. We had
+our separate occupations and our common amusements. Sometimes we passed
+whole days under the leafy covert of the forest with our books and
+music. This occurred during those rare days in this country, when the
+sun mounts his etherial throne in unclouded majesty, and the windless
+atmosphere is as a bath of pellucid and grateful water, wrapping the
+senses in tranquillity. When the clouds veiled the sky, and the wind
+scattered them there and here, rending their woof, and strewing its
+fragments through the aerial plains—then we rode out, and sought new
+spots of beauty and repose. When the frequent rains shut us within
+doors, evening recreation followed morning study, ushered in by music
+and song. Idris had a natural musical talent; and her voice, which had
+been carefully cultivated, was full and sweet. Raymond and I made a
+part of the concert, and Adrian and Perdita were devout listeners. Then
+we were as gay as summer insects, playful as children; we ever met one
+another with smiles, and read content and joy in each other’s
+countenances. Our prime festivals were held in Perdita’s cottage; nor
+were we ever weary of talking of the past or dreaming of the future.
+Jealousy and disquiet were unknown among us; nor did a fear or hope of
+change ever disturb our tranquillity. Others said, We might be happy—we
+said—We are.
+
+When any separation took place between us, it generally so happened,
+that Idris and Perdita would ramble away together, and we remained to
+discuss the affairs of nations, and the philosophy of life. The very
+difference of our dispositions gave zest to these conversations. Adrian
+had the superiority in learning and eloquence; but Raymond possessed a
+quick penetration, and a practical knowledge of life, which usually
+displayed itself in opposition to Adrian, and thus kept up the ball of
+discussion. At other times we made excursions of many days’ duration,
+and crossed the country to visit any spot noted for beauty or
+historical association. Sometimes we went up to London, and entered
+into the amusements of the busy throng; sometimes our retreat was
+invaded by visitors from among them. This change made us only the more
+sensible to the delights of the intimate intercourse of our own circle,
+the tranquillity of our divine forest, and our happy evenings in the
+halls of our beloved Castle.
+
+The disposition of Idris was peculiarly frank, soft, and affectionate.
+Her temper was unalterably sweet; and although firm and resolute on any
+point that touched her heart, she was yielding to those she loved. The
+nature of Perdita was less perfect; but tenderness and happiness
+improved her temper, and softened her natural reserve. Her
+understanding was clear and comprehensive, her imagination vivid; she
+was sincere, generous, and reasonable. Adrian, the matchless brother of
+my soul, the sensitive and excellent Adrian, loving all, and beloved by
+all, yet seemed destined not to find the half of himself, which was to
+complete his happiness. He often left us, and wandered by himself in
+the woods, or sailed in his little skiff, his books his only
+companions. He was often the gayest of our party, at the same time that
+he was the only one visited by fits of despondency; his slender frame
+seemed overcharged with the weight of life, and his soul appeared
+rather to inhabit his body than unite with it. I was hardly more
+devoted to my Idris than to her brother, and she loved him as her
+teacher, her friend, the benefactor who had secured to her the
+fulfilment of her dearest wishes. Raymond, the ambitious, restless
+Raymond, reposed midway on the great high-road of life, and was content
+to give up all his schemes of sovereignty and fame, to make one of us,
+the flowers of the field. His kingdom was the heart of Perdita, his
+subjects her thoughts; by her he was loved, respected as a superior
+being, obeyed, waited on. No office, no devotion, no watching was
+irksome to her, as it regarded him. She would sit apart from us and
+watch him; she would weep for joy to think that he was hers. She
+erected a temple for him in the depth of her being, and each faculty
+was a priestess vowed to his service. Sometimes she might be wayward
+and capricious; but her repentance was bitter, her return entire, and
+even this inequality of temper suited him who was not formed by nature
+to float idly down the stream of life.
+
+During the first year of their marriage, Perdita presented Raymond with
+a lovely girl. It was curious to trace in this miniature model the very
+traits of its father. The same half-disdainful lips and smile of
+triumph, the same intelligent eyes, the same brow and chestnut hair;
+her very hands and taper fingers resembled his. How very dear she was
+to Perdita! In progress of time, I also became a father, and our little
+darlings, our playthings and delights, called forth a thousand new and
+delicious feelings.
+
+Years passed thus,—even years. Each month brought forth its successor,
+each year one like to that gone by; truly, our lives were a living
+comment on that beautiful sentiment of Plutarch, that “our souls have a
+natural inclination to love, being born as much to love, as to feel, to
+reason, to understand and remember.” We talked of change and active
+pursuits, but still remained at Windsor, incapable of violating the
+charm that attached us to our secluded life.
+
+Pareamo aver qui tutto il ben raccolto
+Che fra mortali in più parte si rimembra.
+
+
+Now also that our children gave us occupation, we found excuses for our
+idleness, in the idea of bringing them up to a more splendid career. At
+length our tranquillity was disturbed, and the course of events, which
+for five years had flowed on in hushing tranquillity, was broken by
+breakers and obstacles, that woke us from our pleasant dream.
+
+A new Lord Protector of England was to be chosen; and, at Raymond’s
+request, we removed to London, to witness, and even take a part in the
+election. If Raymond had been united to Idris, this post had been his
+stepping-stone to higher dignity; and his desire for power and fame had
+been crowned with fullest measure. He had exchanged a sceptre for a
+lute, a kingdom for Perdita.
+
+Did he think of this as we journeyed up to town? I watched him, but
+could make but little of him. He was particularly gay, playing with his
+child, and turning to sport every word that was uttered. Perhaps he did
+this because he saw a cloud upon Perdita’s brow. She tried to rouse
+herself, but her eyes every now and then filled with tears, and she
+looked wistfully on Raymond and her girl, as if fearful that some evil
+would betide them. And so she felt. A presentiment of ill hung over
+her. She leaned from the window looking on the forest, and the turrets
+of the Castle, and as these became hid by intervening objects, she
+passionately exclaimed—“Scenes of happiness! scenes sacred to devoted
+love, when shall I see you again! and when I see ye, shall I be still
+the beloved and joyous Perdita, or shall I, heart-broken and lost,
+wander among your groves, the ghost of what I am!”
+
+“Why, silly one,” cried Raymond, “what is your little head pondering
+upon, that of a sudden you have become so sublimely dismal? Cheer up,
+or I shall make you over to Idris, and call Adrian into the carriage,
+who, I see by his gesture, sympathizes with my good spirits.”
+
+Adrian was on horseback; he rode up to the carriage, and his gaiety, in
+addition to that of Raymond, dispelled my sister’s melancholy. We
+entered London in the evening, and went to our several abodes near Hyde
+Park.
+
+The following morning Lord Raymond visited me early. “I come to you,”
+he said, “only half assured that you will assist me in my project, but
+resolved to go through with it, whether you concur with me or not.
+Promise me secrecy however; for if you will not contribute to my
+success, at least you must not baffle me.”
+
+“Well, I promise. And now—-”
+
+“And now, my dear fellow, for what are we come to London? To be present
+at the election of a Protector, and to give our yea or nay for his
+shuffling Grace of——? or for that noisy Ryland? Do you believe, Verney,
+that I brought you to town for that? No, we will have a Protector of
+our own. We will set up a candidate, and ensure his success. We will
+nominate Adrian, and do our best to bestow on him the power to which he
+is entitled by his birth, and which he merits through his virtues.
+
+“Do not answer; I know all your objections, and will reply to them in
+order. First, Whether he will or will not consent to become a great
+man? Leave the task of persuasion on that point to me; I do not ask you
+to assist me there. Secondly, Whether he ought to exchange his
+employment of plucking blackberries, and nursing wounded partridges in
+the forest, for the command of a nation? My dear Lionel, we are married
+men, and find employment sufficient in amusing our wives, and dancing
+our children. But Adrian is alone, wifeless, childless, unoccupied. I
+have long observed him. He pines for want of some interest in life. His
+heart, exhausted by his early sufferings, reposes like a new-healed
+limb, and shrinks from all excitement. But his understanding, his
+charity, his virtues, want a field for exercise and display; and we
+will procure it for him. Besides, is it not a shame, that the genius of
+Adrian should fade from the earth like a flower in an untrod
+mountain-path, fruitless? Do you think Nature composed his surpassing
+machine for no purpose? Believe me, he was destined to be the author of
+infinite good to his native England. Has she not bestowed on him every
+gift in prodigality?—birth, wealth, talent, goodness? Does not every
+one love and admire him? and does he not delight singly in such efforts
+as manifest his love to all? Come, I see that you are already
+persuaded, and will second me when I propose him to-night in
+parliament.”
+
+“You have got up all your arguments in excellent order,” I replied;
+“and, if Adrian consent, they are unanswerable. One only condition I
+would make, —that you do nothing without his concurrence.”
+
+“I believe you are in the right,” said Raymond; “although I had thought
+at first to arrange the affair differently. Be it so. I will go
+instantly to Adrian; and, if he inclines to consent, you will not
+destroy my labour by persuading him to return, and turn squirrel again
+in Windsor Forest. Idris, you will not act the traitor towards me?”
+
+“Trust me,” replied she, “I will preserve a strict neutrality.”
+
+“For my part,” said I, “I am too well convinced of the worth of our
+friend, and the rich harvest of benefits that all England would reap
+from his Protectorship, to deprive my countrymen of such a blessing, if
+he consent to bestow it on them.”
+
+In the evening Adrian visited us.—“Do you cabal also against me,” said
+he, laughing; “and will you make common cause with Raymond, in dragging
+a poor visionary from the clouds to surround him with the fire-works
+and blasts of earthly grandeur, instead of heavenly rays and airs? I
+thought you knew me better.”
+
+“I do know you better,” I replied “than to think that you would be
+happy in such a situation; but the good you would do to others may be
+an inducement, since the time is probably arrived when you can put your
+theories into practice, and you may bring about such reformation and
+change, as will conduce to that perfect system of government which you
+delight to portray.”
+
+“You speak of an almost-forgotten dream,” said Adrian, his countenance
+slightly clouding as he spoke; “the visions of my boyhood have long
+since faded in the light of reality; I know now that I am not a man
+fitted to govern nations; sufficient for me, if I keep in wholesome
+rule the little kingdom of my own mortality.
+
+“But do not you see, Lionel, the drift of our noble friend; a drift,
+perhaps, unknown to himself, but apparent to me. Lord Raymond was never
+born to be a drone in the hive, and to find content in our pastoral
+life. He thinks, that he ought to be satisfied; he imagines, that his
+present situation precludes the possibility of aggrandisement; he does
+not therefore, even in his own heart, plan change for himself. But do
+you not see, that, under the idea of exalting me, he is chalking out a
+new path for himself; a path of action from which he has long wandered?
+
+“Let us assist him. He, the noble, the warlike, the great in every
+quality that can adorn the mind and person of man; he is fitted to be
+the Protector of England. If _I_—that is, if _we_ propose him, he will
+assuredly be elected, and will find, in the functions of that high
+office, scope for the towering powers of his mind. Even Perdita will
+rejoice. Perdita, in whom ambition was a covered fire until she married
+Raymond, which event was for a time the fulfilment of her hopes;
+Perdita will rejoice in the glory and advancement of her lord—and,
+coyly and prettily, not be discontented with her share. In the mean
+time, we, the wise of the land, will return to our Castle, and,
+Cincinnatus-like, take to our usual labours, until our friend shall
+require our presence and assistance here.”
+
+The more Adrian reasoned upon this scheme, the more feasible it
+appeared. His own determination never to enter into public life was
+insurmountable, and the delicacy of his health was a sufficient
+argument against it. The next step was to induce Raymond to confess his
+secret wishes for dignity and fame. He entered while we were speaking.
+The way in which Adrian had received his project for setting him up as
+a candidate for the Protectorship, and his replies, had already
+awakened in his mind, the view of the subject which we were now
+discussing. His countenance and manner betrayed irresolution and
+anxiety; but the anxiety arose from a fear that we should not
+prosecute, or not succeed in our idea; and his irresolution, from a
+doubt whether we should risk a defeat. A few words from us decided him,
+and hope and joy sparkled in his eyes; the idea of embarking in a
+career, so congenial to his early habits and cherished wishes, made him
+as before energetic and bold. We discussed his chances, the merits of
+the other candidates, and the dispositions of the voters.
+
+After all we miscalculated. Raymond had lost much of his popularity,
+and was deserted by his peculiar partizans. Absence from the busy stage
+had caused him to be forgotten by the people; his former parliamentary
+supporters were principally composed of royalists, who had been willing
+to make an idol of him when he appeared as the heir of the Earldom of
+Windsor; but who were indifferent to him, when he came forward with no
+other attributes and distinctions than they conceived to be common to
+many among themselves. Still he had many friends, admirers of his
+transcendent talents; his presence in the house, his eloquence, address
+and imposing beauty, were calculated to produce an electric effect.
+Adrian also, notwithstanding his recluse habits and theories, so
+adverse to the spirit of party, had many friends, and they were easily
+induced to vote for a candidate of his selection.
+
+The Duke of——, and Mr. Ryland, Lord Raymond’s old antagonist, were the
+other candidates. The Duke was supported by all the aristocrats of the
+republic, who considered him their proper representative. Ryland was
+the popular candidate; when Lord Raymond was first added to the list,
+his chance of success appeared small. We retired from the debate which
+had followed on his nomination: we, his nominators, mortified; he
+dispirited to excess. Perdita reproached us bitterly. Her expectations
+had been strongly excited; she had urged nothing against our project,
+on the contrary, she was evidently pleased by it; but its evident ill
+success changed the current of her ideas. She felt, that, once
+awakened, Raymond would never return unrepining to Windsor. His habits
+were unhinged; his restless mind roused from its sleep, ambition must
+now be his companion through life; and if he did not succeed in his
+present attempt, she foresaw that unhappiness and cureless discontent
+would follow. Perhaps her own disappointment added a sting to her
+thoughts and words; she did not spare us, and our own reflections added
+to our disquietude.
+
+It was necessary to follow up our nomination, and to persuade Raymond
+to present himself to the electors on the following evening. For a long
+time he was obstinate. He would embark in a balloon; he would sail for
+a distant quarter of the world, where his name and humiliation were
+unknown. But this was useless; his attempt was registered; his purpose
+published to the world; his shame could never be erased from the
+memories of men. It was as well to fail at last after a struggle, as to
+fly now at the beginning of his enterprise.
+
+From the moment that he adopted this idea, he was changed. His
+depression and anxiety fled; he became all life and activity. The smile
+of triumph shone on his countenance; determined to pursue his object to
+the uttermost, his manner and expression seem ominous of the
+accomplishment of his wishes. Not so Perdita. She was frightened by his
+gaiety, for she dreaded a greater revulsion at the end. If his
+appearance even inspired us with hope, it only rendered the state of
+her mind more painful. She feared to lose sight of him; yet she dreaded
+to remark any change in the temper of his mind. She listened eagerly to
+him, yet tantalized herself by giving to his words a meaning foreign to
+their true interpretation, and adverse to her hopes. She dared not be
+present at the contest; yet she remained at home a prey to double
+solicitude. She wept over her little girl; she looked, she spoke, as if
+she dreaded the occurrence of some frightful calamity. She was half mad
+from the effects of uncontrollable agitation.
+
+Lord Raymond presented himself to the house with fearless confidence
+and insinuating address. After the Duke of——and Mr. Ryland had finished
+their speeches, he commenced. Assuredly he had not conned his lesson;
+and at first he hesitated, pausing in his ideas, and in the choice of
+his expressions. By degrees he warmed; his words flowed with ease, his
+language was full of vigour, and his voice of persuasion. He reverted
+to his past life, his successes in Greece, his favour at home. Why
+should he lose this, now that added years, prudence, and the pledge
+which his marriage gave to his country, ought to encrease, rather than
+diminish his claims to confidence? He spoke of the state of England;
+the necessary measures to be taken to ensure its security, and confirm
+its prosperity. He drew a glowing picture of its present situation. As
+he spoke, every sound was hushed, every thought suspended by intense
+attention. His graceful elocution enchained the senses of his hearers.
+In some degree also he was fitted to reconcile all parties. His birth
+pleased the aristocracy; his being the candidate recommended by Adrian,
+a man intimately allied to the popular party, caused a number, who had
+no great reliance either on the Duke or Mr. Ryland, to range on his
+side.
+
+The contest was keen and doubtful. Neither Adrian nor myself would have
+been so anxious, if our own success had depended on our exertions; but
+we had egged our friend on to the enterprise, and it became us to
+ensure his triumph. Idris, who entertained the highest opinion of his
+abilities, was warmly interested in the event: and my poor sister, who
+dared not hope, and to whom fear was misery, was plunged into a fever
+of disquietude.
+
+Day after day passed while we discussed our projects for the evening,
+and each night was occupied by debates which offered no conclusion. At
+last the crisis came: the night when parliament, which had so long
+delayed its choice, must decide: as the hour of twelve passed, and the
+new day began, it was by virtue of the constitution dissolved, its
+power extinct.
+
+We assembled at Raymond’s house, we and our partizans. At half past
+five o’clock we proceeded to the House. Idris endeavoured to calm
+Perdita; but the poor girl’s agitation deprived her of all power of
+self-command. She walked up and down the room,—gazed wildly when any
+one entered, fancying that they might be the announcers of her doom. I
+must do justice to my sweet sister: it was not for herself that she was
+thus agonized. She alone knew the weight which Raymond attached to his
+success. Even to us he assumed gaiety and hope, and assumed them so
+well, that we did not divine the secret workings of his mind. Sometimes
+a nervous trembling, a sharp dissonance of voice, and momentary fits of
+absence revealed to Perdita the violence he did himself; but we, intent
+on our plans, observed only his ready laugh, his joke intruded on all
+occasions, the flow of his spirits which seemed incapable of ebb.
+Besides, Perdita was with him in his retirement; she saw the moodiness
+that succeeded to this forced hilarity; she marked his disturbed sleep,
+his painful irritability—once she had seen his tears—hers had scarce
+ceased to flow, since she had beheld the big drops which disappointed
+pride had caused to gather in his eye, but which pride was unable to
+dispel. What wonder then, that her feelings were wrought to this pitch!
+I thus accounted to myself for her agitation; but this was not all, and
+the sequel revealed another excuse.
+
+One moment we seized before our departure, to take leave of our beloved
+girls. I had small hope of success, and entreated Idris to watch over
+my sister. As I approached the latter, she seized my hand, and drew me
+into another apartment; she threw herself into my arms, and wept and
+sobbed bitterly and long. I tried to soothe her; I bade her hope; I
+asked what tremendous consequences would ensue even on our failure. “My
+brother,” she cried, “protector of my childhood, dear, most dear
+Lionel, my fate hangs by a thread. I have you all about me now—you, the
+companion of my infancy; Adrian, as dear to me as if bound by the ties
+of blood; Idris, the sister of my heart, and her lovely offspring.
+This, O this may be the last time that you will surround me thus!”
+
+Abruptly she stopped, and then cried: “What have I said?—foolish false
+girl that I am!” She looked wildly on me, and then suddenly calming
+herself, apologized for what she called her unmeaning words, saying
+that she must indeed be insane, for, while Raymond lived, she must be
+happy; and then, though she still wept, she suffered me tranquilly to
+depart. Raymond only took her hand when he went, and looked on her
+expressively; she answered by a look of intelligence and assent.
+
+Poor girl! what she then suffered! I could never entirely forgive
+Raymond for the trials he imposed on her, occasioned as they were by a
+selfish feeling on his part. He had schemed, if he failed in his
+present attempt, without taking leave of any of us, to embark for
+Greece, and never again to revisit England. Perdita acceded to his
+wishes; for his contentment was the chief object of her life, the crown
+of her enjoyment; but to leave us all, her companions, the beloved
+partners of her happiest years, and in the interim to conceal this
+frightful determination, was a task that almost conquered her strength
+of mind. She had been employed in arranging for their departure; she
+had promised Raymond during this decisive evening, to take advantage of
+our absence, to go one stage of the journey, and he, after his defeat
+was ascertained, would slip away from us, and join her.
+
+Although, when I was informed of this scheme, I was bitterly offended
+by the small attention which Raymond paid to my sister’s feelings, I
+was led by reflection to consider, that he acted under the force of
+such strong excitement, as to take from him the consciousness, and,
+consequently, the guilt of a fault. If he had permitted us to witness
+his agitation, he would have been more under the guidance of reason;
+but his struggles for the shew of composure, acted with such violence
+on his nerves, as to destroy his power of self-command. I am convinced
+that, at the worst, he would have returned from the seashore to take
+leave of us, and to make us the partners of his council. But the task
+imposed on Perdita was not the less painful. He had extorted from her a
+vow of secrecy; and her part of the drama, since it was to be performed
+alone, was the most agonizing that could be devised. But to return to
+my narrative.
+
+The debates had hitherto been long and loud; they had often been
+protracted merely for the sake of delay. But now each seemed fearful
+lest the fatal moment should pass, while the choice was yet undecided.
+Unwonted silence reigned in the house, the members spoke in whispers,
+and the ordinary business was transacted with celerity and quietness.
+During the first stage of the election, the Duke of——had been thrown
+out; the question therefore lay between Lord Raymond and Mr. Ryland.
+The latter had felt secure of victory, until the appearance of Raymond;
+and, since his name had been inserted as a candidate, he had canvassed
+with eagerness. He had appeared each evening, impatience and anger
+marked in his looks, scowling on us from the opposite side of St.
+Stephen’s, as if his mere frown would cast eclipse on our hopes.
+
+Every thing in the English constitution had been regulated for the
+better preservation of peace. On the last day, two candidates only were
+allowed to remain; and to obviate, if possible, the last struggle
+between these, a bribe was offered to him who should voluntarily resign
+his pretensions; a place of great emolument and honour was given him,
+and his success facilitated at a future election. Strange to say
+however, no instance had yet occurred, where either candidate had had
+recourse to this expedient; in consequence the law had become obsolete,
+nor had been referred to by any of us in our discussions. To our
+extreme surprise, when it was moved that we should resolve ourselves
+into a committee for the election of the Lord Protector, the member who
+had nominated Ryland, rose and informed us that this candidate had
+resigned his pretensions. His information was at first received with
+silence; a confused murmur succeeded; and, when the chairman declared
+Lord Raymond duly chosen, it amounted to a shout of applause and
+victory. It seemed as if, far from any dread of defeat even if Mr.
+Ryland had not resigned, every voice would have been united in favour
+of our candidate. In fact, now that the idea of contest was dismissed,
+all hearts returned to their former respect and admiration of our
+accomplished friend. Each felt, that England had never seen a Protector
+so capable of fulfilling the arduous duties of that high office. One
+voice made of many voices, resounded through the chamber; it syllabled
+the name of Raymond.
+
+He entered. I was on one of the highest seats, and saw him walk up the
+passage to the table of the speaker. The native modesty of his
+disposition conquered the joy of his triumph. He looked round timidly;
+a mist seemed before his eyes. Adrian, who was beside me, hastened to
+him, and jumping down the benches, was at his side in a moment. His
+appearance re-animated our friend; and, when he came to speak and act,
+his hesitation vanished, and he shone out supreme in majesty and
+victory. The former Protector tendered him the oaths, and presented him
+with the insignia of office, performing the ceremonies of installation.
+The house then dissolved. The chief members of the state crowded round
+the new magistrate, and conducted him to the palace of government.
+Adrian suddenly vanished; and, by the time that Raymond’s supporters
+were reduced to our intimate friends merely, returned leading Idris to
+congratulate her friend on his success.
+
+But where was Perdita? In securing solicitously an unobserved retreat
+in case of failure, Raymond had forgotten to arrange the mode by which
+she was to hear of his success; and she had been too much agitated to
+revert to this circumstance. When Idris entered, so far had Raymond
+forgotten himself, that he asked for my sister; one word, which told of
+her mysterious disappearance, recalled him. Adrian it is true had
+already gone to seek the fugitive, imagining that her tameless anxiety
+had led her to the purlieus of the House, and that some sinister event
+detained her. But Raymond, without explaining himself, suddenly quitted
+us, and in another moment we heard him gallop down the street, in spite
+of the wind and rain that scattered tempest over the earth. We did not
+know how far he had to go, and soon separated, supposing that in a
+short time he would return to the palace with Perdita, and that they
+would not be sorry to find themselves alone.
+
+Perdita had arrived with her child at Dartford, weeping and
+inconsolable. She directed everything to be prepared for the
+continuance of their journey, and placing her lovely sleeping charge on
+a bed, passed several hours in acute suffering. Sometimes she observed
+the war of elements, thinking that they also declared against her, and
+listened to the pattering of the rain in gloomy despair. Sometimes she
+hung over her child, tracing her resemblance to the father, and fearful
+lest in after life she should display the same passions and
+uncontrollable impulses, that rendered him unhappy. Again, with a gush
+of pride and delight, she marked in the features of her little girl,
+the same smile of beauty that often irradiated Raymond’s countenance.
+The sight of it soothed her. She thought of the treasure she possessed
+in the affections of her lord; of his accomplishments, surpassing those
+of his contemporaries, his genius, his devotion to her.—Soon she
+thought, that all she possessed in the world, except him, might well be
+spared, nay, given with delight, a propitiatory offering, to secure the
+supreme good she retained in him. Soon she imagined, that fate demanded
+this sacrifice from her, as a mark she was devoted to Raymond, and that
+it must be made with cheerfulness. She figured to herself their life in
+the Greek isle he had selected for their retreat; her task of soothing
+him; her cares for the beauteous Clara, her rides in his company, her
+dedication of herself to his consolation. The picture then presented
+itself to her in such glowing colours, that she feared the reverse, and
+a life of magnificence and power in London; where Raymond would no
+longer be hers only, nor she the sole source of happiness to him. So
+far as she merely was concerned, she began to hope for defeat; and it
+was only on his account that her feelings vacillated, as she heard him
+gallop into the court-yard of the inn. That he should come to her
+alone, wetted by the storm, careless of every thing except speed, what
+else could it mean, than that, vanquished and solitary, they were to
+take their way from native England, the scene of shame, and hide
+themselves in the myrtle groves of the Grecian isles?
+
+In a moment she was in his arms. The knowledge of his success had
+become so much a part of himself, that he forgot that it was necessary
+to impart it to his companion. She only felt in his embrace a dear
+assurance that while he possessed her, he would not despair. “This is
+kind,” she cried; “this is noble, my own beloved! O fear not disgrace
+or lowly fortune, while you have your Perdita; fear not sorrow, while
+our child lives and smiles. Let us go even where you will; the love
+that accompanies us will prevent our regrets.”
+
+Locked in his embrace, she spoke thus, and cast back her head, seeking
+an assent to her words in his eyes—they were sparkling with ineffable
+delight. “Why, my little Lady Protectress,” said he, playfully, “what
+is this you say? And what pretty scheme have you woven of exile and
+obscurity, while a brighter web, a gold-enwoven tissue, is that which,
+in truth, you ought to contemplate?”
+
+He kissed her brow—but the wayward girl, half sorry at his triumph,
+agitated by swift change of thought, hid her face in his bosom and
+wept. He comforted her; he instilled into her his own hopes and
+desires; and soon her countenance beamed with sympathy. How very happy
+were they that night! How full even to bursting was their sense of joy!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Having seen our friend properly installed in his new office, we turned
+our eyes towards Windsor. The nearness of this place to London was
+such, as to take away the idea of painful separation, when we quitted
+Raymond and Perdita. We took leave of them in the Protectoral Palace.
+It was pretty enough to see my sister enter as it were into the spirit
+of the drama, and endeavour to fill her station with becoming dignity.
+Her internal pride and humility of manner were now more than ever at
+war. Her timidity was not artificial, but arose from that fear of not
+being properly appreciated, that slight estimation of the neglect of
+the world, which also characterized Raymond. But then Perdita thought
+more constantly of others than he; and part of her bashfulness arose
+from a wish to take from those around her a sense of inferiority; a
+feeling which never crossed her mind. From the circumstances of her
+birth and education, Idris would have been better fitted for the
+formulae of ceremony; but the very ease which accompanied such actions
+with her, arising from habit, rendered them tedious; while, with every
+drawback, Perdita evidently enjoyed her situation. She was too full of
+new ideas to feel much pain when we departed; she took an affectionate
+leave of us, and promised to visit us soon; but she did not regret the
+circumstances that caused our separation. The spirits of Raymond were
+unbounded; he did not know what to do with his new got power; his head
+was full of plans; he had as yet decided on none— but he promised
+himself, his friends, and the world, that the aera of his Protectorship
+should be signalized by some act of surpassing glory. Thus, we talked
+of them, and moralized, as with diminished numbers we returned to
+Windsor Castle. We felt extreme delight at our escape from political
+turmoil, and sought our solitude with redoubled zest. We did not want
+for occupation; but my eager disposition was now turned to the field of
+intellectual exertion only; and hard study I found to be an excellent
+medicine to allay a fever of spirit with which in indolence, I should
+doubtless have been assailed. Perdita had permitted us to take Clara
+back with us to Windsor; and she and my two lovely infants were
+perpetual sources of interest and amusement.
+
+The only circumstance that disturbed our peace, was the health of
+Adrian. It evidently declined, without any symptom which could lead us
+to suspect his disease, unless indeed his brightened eyes, animated
+look, and flustering cheeks, made us dread consumption; but he was
+without pain or fear. He betook himself to books with ardour, and
+reposed from study in the society he best loved, that of his sister and
+myself. Sometimes he went up to London to visit Raymond, and watch the
+progress of events. Clara often accompanied him in these excursions;
+partly that she might see her parents, partly because Adrian delighted
+in the prattle, and intelligent looks of this lovely child.
+
+Meanwhile all went on well in London. The new elections were finished;
+parliament met, and Raymond was occupied in a thousand beneficial
+schemes. Canals, aqueducts, bridges, stately buildings, and various
+edifices for public utility, were entered upon; he was continually
+surrounded by projectors and projects, which were to render England one
+scene of fertility and magnificence; the state of poverty was to be
+abolished; men were to be transported from place to place almost with
+the same facility as the Princes Houssain, Ali, and Ahmed, in the
+Arabian Nights. The physical state of man would soon not yield to the
+beatitude of angels; disease was to be banished; labour lightened of
+its heaviest burden. Nor did this seem extravagant. The arts of life,
+and the discoveries of science had augmented in a ratio which left all
+calculation behind; food sprung up, so to say, spontaneously—machines
+existed to supply with facility every want of the population. An evil
+direction still survived; and men were not happy, not because they
+could not, but because they would not rouse themselves to vanquish
+self-raised obstacles. Raymond was to inspire them with his beneficial
+will, and the mechanism of society, once systematised according to
+faultless rules, would never again swerve into disorder. For these
+hopes he abandoned his long-cherished ambition of being enregistered in
+the annals of nations as a successful warrior; laying aside his sword,
+peace and its enduring glories became his aim—the title he coveted was
+that of the benefactor of his country.
+
+Among other works of art in which he was engaged, he had projected the
+erection of a national gallery for statues and pictures. He possessed
+many himself, which he designed to present to the Republic; and, as the
+edifice was to be the great ornament of his Protectorship, he was very
+fastidious in his choice of the plan on which it would be built.
+Hundreds were brought to him and rejected. He sent even to Italy and
+Greece for drawings; but, as the design was to be characterized by
+originality as well as by perfect beauty, his endeavours were for a
+time without avail. At length a drawing came, with an address where
+communications might be sent, and no artist’s name affixed. The design
+was new and elegant, but faulty; so faulty, that although drawn with
+the hand and eye of taste, it was evidently the work of one who was not
+an architect. Raymond contemplated it with delight; the more he gazed,
+the more pleased he was; and yet the errors multiplied under
+inspection. He wrote to the address given, desiring to see the
+draughtsman, that such alterations might be made, as should be
+suggested in a consultation between him and the original conceiver.
+
+A Greek came. A middle-aged man, with some intelligence of manner, but
+with so common-place a physiognomy, that Raymond could scarcely believe
+that he was the designer. He acknowledged that he was not an architect;
+but the idea of the building had struck him, though he had sent it
+without the smallest hope of its being accepted. He was a man of few
+words. Raymond questioned him; but his reserved answers soon made him
+turn from the man to the drawing. He pointed out the errors, and the
+alterations that he wished to be made; he offered the Greek a pencil
+that he might correct the sketch on the spot; this was refused by his
+visitor, who said that he perfectly understood, and would work at it at
+home. At length Raymond suffered him to depart.
+
+The next day he returned. The design had been re-drawn; but many
+defects still remained, and several of the instructions given had been
+misunderstood. “Come,” said Raymond, “I yielded to you yesterday, now
+comply with my request—take the pencil.”
+
+The Greek took it, but he handled it in no artist-like way; at length
+he said: “I must confess to you, my Lord, that I did not make this
+drawing. It is impossible for you to see the real designer; your
+instructions must pass through me. Condescend therefore to have
+patience with my ignorance, and to explain your wishes to me; in time I
+am certain that you will be satisfied.”
+
+Raymond questioned vainly; the mysterious Greek would say no more.
+Would an architect be permitted to see the artist? This also was
+refused. Raymond repeated his instructions, and the visitor retired.
+Our friend resolved however not to be foiled in his wish. He suspected,
+that unaccustomed poverty was the cause of the mystery, and that the
+artist was unwilling to be seen in the garb and abode of want. Raymond
+was only the more excited by this consideration to discover him;
+impelled by the interest he took in obscure talent, he therefore
+ordered a person skilled in such matters, to follow the Greek the next
+time he came, and observe the house in which he should enter. His
+emissary obeyed, and brought the desired intelligence. He had traced
+the man to one of the most penurious streets in the metropolis. Raymond
+did not wonder, that, thus situated, the artist had shrunk from notice,
+but he did not for this alter his resolve.
+
+On the same evening, he went alone to the house named to him. Poverty,
+dirt, and squalid misery characterized its appearance. Alas! thought
+Raymond, I have much to do before England becomes a Paradise. He
+knocked; the door was opened by a string from above—the broken,
+wretched staircase was immediately before him, but no person appeared;
+he knocked again, vainly—and then, impatient of further delay, he
+ascended the dark, creaking stairs. His main wish, more particularly
+now that he witnessed the abject dwelling of the artist, was to relieve
+one, possessed of talent, but depressed by want. He pictured to himself
+a youth, whose eyes sparkled with genius, whose person was attenuated
+by famine. He half feared to displease him; but he trusted that his
+generous kindness would be administered so delicately, as not to excite
+repulse. What human heart is shut to kindness? and though poverty, in
+its excess, might render the sufferer unapt to submit to the supposed
+degradation of a benefit, the zeal of the benefactor must at last relax
+him into thankfulness. These thoughts encouraged Raymond, as he stood
+at the door of the highest room of the house. After trying vainly to
+enter the other apartments, he perceived just within the threshold of
+this one, a pair of small Turkish slippers; the door was ajar, but all
+was silent within. It was probable that the inmate was absent, but
+secure that he had found the right person, our adventurous Protector
+was tempted to enter, to leave a purse on the table, and silently
+depart. In pursuance of this idea, he pushed open the door gently—but
+the room was inhabited.
+
+Raymond had never visited the dwellings of want, and the scene that now
+presented itself struck him to the heart. The floor was sunk in many
+places; the walls ragged and bare—the ceiling weather-stained—a
+tattered bed stood in the corner; there were but two chairs in the
+room, and a rough broken table, on which was a light in a tin
+candlestick;—yet in the midst of such drear and heart sickening
+poverty, there was an air of order and cleanliness that surprised him.
+The thought was fleeting; for his attention was instantly drawn towards
+the inhabitant of this wretched abode. It was a female. She sat at the
+table; one small hand shaded her eyes from the candle; the other held a
+pencil; her looks were fixed on a drawing before her, which Raymond
+recognized as the design presented to him. Her whole appearance
+awakened his deepest interest. Her dark hair was braided and twined in
+thick knots like the head-dress of a Grecian statue; her garb was mean,
+but her attitude might have been selected as a model of grace. Raymond
+had a confused remembrance that he had seen such a form before; he
+walked across the room; she did not raise her eyes, merely asking in
+Romaic, who is there? “A friend,” replied Raymond in the same dialect.
+She looked up wondering, and he saw that it was Evadne Zaimi. Evadne,
+once the idol of Adrian’s affections; and who, for the sake of her
+present visitor, had disdained the noble youth, and then, neglected by
+him she loved, with crushed hopes and a stinging sense of misery, had
+returned to her native Greece. What revolution of fortune could have
+brought her to England, and housed her thus?
+
+Raymond recognized her; and his manner changed from polite beneficence
+to the warmest protestations of kindness and sympathy. The sight of
+her, in her present situation, passed like an arrow into his soul. He
+sat by her, he took her hand, and said a thousand things which breathed
+the deepest spirit of compassion and affection. Evadne did not answer;
+her large dark eyes were cast down, at length a tear glimmered on the
+lashes. “Thus,” she cried, “kindness can do, what no want, no misery
+ever effected; I weep.” She shed indeed many tears; her head sunk
+unconsciously on the shoulder of Raymond; he held her hand: he kissed
+her sunken tear-stained cheek. He told her, that her sufferings were
+now over: no one possessed the art of consoling like Raymond; he did
+not reason or declaim, but his look shone with sympathy; he brought
+pleasant images before the sufferer; his caresses excited no distrust,
+for they arose purely from the feeling which leads a mother to kiss her
+wounded child; a desire to demonstrate in every possible way the truth
+of his feelings, and the keenness of his wish to pour balm into the
+lacerated mind of the unfortunate. As Evadne regained her composure,
+his manner became even gay; he sported with the idea of her poverty.
+Something told him that it was not its real evils that lay heavily at
+her heart, but the debasement and disgrace attendant on it; as he
+talked, he divested it of these; sometimes speaking of her fortitude
+with energetic praise; then, alluding to her past state, he called her
+his Princess in disguise. He made her warm offers of service; she was
+too much occupied by more engrossing thoughts, either to accept or
+reject them; at length he left her, making a promise to repeat his
+visit the next day. He returned home, full of mingled feelings, of pain
+excited by Evadne’s wretchedness, and pleasure at the prospect of
+relieving it. Some motive for which he did not account, even to
+himself, prevented him from relating his adventure to Perdita.
+
+The next day he threw such disguise over his person as a cloak
+afforded, and revisited Evadne. As he went, he bought a basket of
+costly fruits, such as were natives of her own country, and throwing
+over these various beautiful flowers, bore it himself to the miserable
+garret of his friend. “Behold,” cried he, as he entered, “what bird’s
+food I have brought for my sparrow on the house-top.”
+
+Evadne now related the tale of her misfortunes. Her father, though of
+high rank, had in the end dissipated his fortune, and even destroyed
+his reputation and influence through a course of dissolute indulgence.
+His health was impaired beyond hope of cure; and it became his earnest
+wish, before he died, to preserve his daughter from the poverty which
+would be the portion of her orphan state. He therefore accepted for
+her, and persuaded her to accede to, a proposal of marriage, from a
+wealthy Greek merchant settled at Constantinople. She quitted her
+native Greece; her father died; by degrees she was cut off from all the
+companions and ties of her youth.
+
+The war, which about a year before the present time had broken out
+between Greece and Turkey, brought about many reverses of fortune. Her
+husband became bankrupt, and then in a tumult and threatened massacre
+on the part of the Turks, they were obliged to fly at midnight, and
+reached in an open boat an English vessel under sail, which brought
+them immediately to this island. The few jewels they had saved,
+supported them awhile. The whole strength of Evadne’s mind was exerted
+to support the failing spirits of her husband. Loss of property,
+hopelessness as to his future prospects, the inoccupation to which
+poverty condemned him, combined to reduce him to a state bordering on
+insanity. Five months after their arrival in England, he committed
+suicide.
+
+“You will ask me,” continued Evadne, “what I have done since; why I
+have not applied for succour to the rich Greeks resident here; why I
+have not returned to my native country? My answer to these questions
+must needs appear to you unsatisfactory, yet they have sufficed to lead
+me on, day after day, enduring every wretchedness, rather than by such
+means to seek relief. Shall the daughter of the noble, though prodigal
+Zaimi, appear a beggar before her compeers or inferiors—superiors she
+had none. Shall I bow my head before them, and with servile gesture
+sell my nobility for life? Had I a child, or any tie to bind me to
+existence, I might descend to this—but, as it is—the world has been to
+me a harsh step-mother; fain would I leave the abode she seems to
+grudge, and in the grave forget my pride, my struggles, my despair. The
+time will soon come; grief and famine have already sapped the
+foundations of my being; a very short time, and I shall have passed
+away; unstained by the crime of self-destruction, unstung by the memory
+of degradation, my spirit will throw aside the miserable coil, and find
+such recompense as fortitude and resignation may deserve. This may seem
+madness to you, yet you also have pride and resolution; do not then
+wonder that my pride is tameless, my resolution unalterable.”
+
+Having thus finished her tale, and given such an account as she deemed
+fit, of the motives of her abstaining from all endeavour to obtain aid
+from her countrymen, Evadne paused; yet she seemed to have more to say,
+to which she was unable to give words. In the mean time Raymond was
+eloquent. His desire of restoring his lovely friend to her rank in
+society, and to her lost prosperity, animated him, and he poured forth
+with energy, all his wishes and intentions on that subject. But he was
+checked; Evadne exacted a promise, that he should conceal from all her
+friends her existence in England. “The relatives of the Earl of
+Windsor,” said she haughtily, “doubtless think that I injured him;
+perhaps the Earl himself would be the first to acquit me, but probably
+I do not deserve acquittal. I acted then, as I ever must, from impulse.
+This abode of penury may at least prove the disinterestedness of my
+conduct. No matter: I do not wish to plead my cause before any of them,
+not even before your Lordship, had you not first discovered me. The
+tenor of my actions will prove that I had rather die, than be a mark
+for scorn—behold the proud Evadne in her tatters! look on the
+beggar-princess! There is aspic venom in the thought—promise me that my
+secret shall not be violated by you.”
+
+Raymond promised; but then a new discussion ensued. Evadne required
+another engagement on his part, that he would not without her
+concurrence enter into any project for her benefit, nor himself offer
+relief. “Do not degrade me in my own eyes,” she said; “poverty has long
+been my nurse; hard-visaged she is, but honest. If dishonour, or what I
+conceive to be dishonour, come near me, I am lost.” Raymond adduced
+many arguments and fervent persuasions to overcome her feeling, but she
+remained unconvinced; and, agitated by the discussion, she wildly and
+passionately made a solemn vow, to fly and hide herself where he never
+could discover her, where famine would soon bring death to conclude her
+woes, if he persisted in his to her disgracing offers. She could
+support herself, she said. And then she shewed him how, by executing
+various designs and paintings, she earned a pittance for her support.
+Raymond yielded for the present. He felt assured, after he had for
+awhile humoured her self-will, that in the end friendship and reason
+would gain the day.
+
+But the feelings that actuated Evadne were rooted in the depths of her
+being, and were such in their growth as he had no means of
+understanding. Evadne loved Raymond. He was the hero of her
+imagination, the image carved by love in the unchanged texture of her
+heart. Seven years ago, in her youthful prime, she had become attached
+to him; he had served her country against the Turks; he had in her own
+land acquired that military glory peculiarly dear to the Greeks, since
+they were still obliged inch by inch to fight for their security. Yet
+when he returned thence, and first appeared in public life in England,
+her love did not purchase his, which then vacillated between Perdita
+and a crown. While he was yet undecided, she had quitted England; the
+news of his marriage reached her, and her hopes, poorly nurtured
+blossoms, withered and fell. The glory of life was gone for her; the
+roseate halo of love, which had imbued every object with its own
+colour, faded;—she was content to take life as it was, and to make the
+best of leaden-coloured reality. She married; and, carrying her
+restless energy of character with her into new scenes, she turned her
+thoughts to ambition, and aimed at the title and power of Princess of
+Wallachia; while her patriotic feelings were soothed by the idea of the
+good she might do her country, when her husband should be chief of this
+principality. She lived to find ambition, as unreal a delusion as love.
+Her intrigues with Russia for the furtherance of her object, excited
+the jealousy of the Porte, and the animosity of the Greek government.
+She was considered a traitor by both, the ruin of her husband followed;
+they avoided death by a timely flight, and she fell from the height of
+her desires to penury in England. Much of this tale she concealed from
+Raymond; nor did she confess, that repulse and denial, as to a criminal
+convicted of the worst of crimes, that of bringing the scythe of
+foreign despotism to cut away the new springing liberties of her
+country, would have followed her application to any among the Greeks.
+
+She knew that she was the cause of her husband’s utter ruin; and she
+strung herself to bear the consequences. The reproaches which agony
+extorted; or worse, cureless, uncomplaining depression, when his mind
+was sunk in a torpor, not the less painful because it was silent and
+moveless. She reproached herself with the crime of his death; guilt and
+its punishments appeared to surround her; in vain she endeavoured to
+allay remorse by the memory of her real integrity; the rest of the
+world, and she among them, judged of her actions, by their
+consequences. She prayed for her husband’s soul; she conjured the
+Supreme to place on her head the crime of his self-destruction—she
+vowed to live to expiate his fault.
+
+In the midst of such wretchedness as must soon have destroyed her, one
+thought only was matter of consolation. She lived in the same country,
+breathed the same air as Raymond. His name as Protector was the burthen
+of every tongue; his achievements, projects, and magnificence, the
+argument of every story. Nothing is so precious to a woman’s heart as
+the glory and excellence of him she loves; thus in every horror Evadne
+revelled in his fame and prosperity. While her husband lived, this
+feeling was regarded by her as a crime, repressed, repented of. When he
+died, the tide of love resumed its ancient flow, it deluged her soul
+with its tumultuous waves, and she gave herself up a prey to its
+uncontrollable power.
+
+But never, O, never, should he see her in her degraded state. Never
+should he behold her fallen, as she deemed, from her pride of beauty,
+the poverty-stricken inhabitant of a garret, with a name which had
+become a reproach, and a weight of guilt on her soul. But though
+impenetrably veiled from him, his public office permitted her to become
+acquainted with all his actions, his daily course of life, even his
+conversation. She allowed herself one luxury, she saw the newspapers
+every day, and feasted on the praise and actions of the Protector. Not
+that this indulgence was devoid of accompanying grief. Perdita’s name
+was for ever joined with his; their conjugal felicity was celebrated
+even by the authentic testimony of facts. They were continually
+together, nor could the unfortunate Evadne read the monosyllable that
+designated his name, without, at the same time, being presented with
+the image of her who was the faithful companion of all his labours and
+pleasures. _They_, _their Excellencies_, met her eyes in each line,
+mingling an evil potion that poisoned her very blood.
+
+It was in the newspaper that she saw the advertisement for the design
+for a national gallery. Combining with taste her remembrance of the
+edifices which she had seen in the east, and by an effort of genius
+enduing them with unity of design, she executed the plan which had been
+sent to the Protector. She triumphed in the idea of bestowing, unknown
+and forgotten as she was, a benefit upon him she loved; and with
+enthusiastic pride looked forward to the accomplishment of a work of
+hers, which, immortalized in stone, would go down to posterity stamped
+with the name of Raymond. She awaited with eagerness the return of her
+messenger from the palace; she listened insatiate to his account of
+each word, each look of the Protector; she felt bliss in this
+communication with her beloved, although he knew not to whom he
+addressed his instructions. The drawing itself became ineffably dear to
+her. He had seen it, and praised it; it was again retouched by her,
+each stroke of her pencil was as a chord of thrilling music, and bore
+to her the idea of a temple raised to celebrate the deepest and most
+unutterable emotions of her soul. These contemplations engaged her,
+when the voice of Raymond first struck her ear, a voice, once heard,
+never to be forgotten; she mastered her gush of feelings, and welcomed
+him with quiet gentleness.
+
+Pride and tenderness now struggled, and at length made a compromise
+together. She would see Raymond, since destiny had led him to her, and
+her constancy and devotion must merit his friendship. But her rights
+with regard to him, and her cherished independence, should not be
+injured by the idea of interest, or the intervention of the complicated
+feelings attendant on pecuniary obligation, and the relative situations
+of the benefactor, and benefited. Her mind was of uncommon strength;
+she could subdue her sensible wants to her mental wishes, and suffer
+cold, hunger and misery, rather than concede to fortune a contested
+point. Alas! that in human nature such a pitch of mental discipline,
+and disdainful negligence of nature itself, should not have been allied
+to the extreme of moral excellence! But the resolution that permitted
+her to resist the pains of privation, sprung from the too great energy
+of her passions; and the concentrated self-will of which this was a
+sign, was destined to destroy even the very idol, to preserve whose
+respect she submitted to this detail of wretchedness.
+
+Their intercourse continued. By degrees Evadne related to her friend
+the whole of her story, the stain her name had received in Greece, the
+weight of sin which had accrued to her from the death of her husband.
+When Raymond offered to clear her reputation, and demonstrate to the
+world her real patriotism, she declared that it was only through her
+present sufferings that she hoped for any relief to the stings of
+conscience; that, in her state of mind, diseased as he might think it,
+the necessity of occupation was salutary medicine; she ended by
+extorting a promise that for the space of one month he would refrain
+from the discussion of her interests, engaging after that time to yield
+in part to his wishes. She could not disguise to herself that any
+change would separate her from him; now she saw him each day. His
+connection with Adrian and Perdita was never mentioned; he was to her a
+meteor, a companionless star, which at its appointed hour rose in her
+hemisphere, whose appearance brought felicity, and which, although it
+set, was never eclipsed. He came each day to her abode of penury, and
+his presence transformed it to a temple redolent with sweets, radiant
+with heaven’s own light; he partook of her delirium. “They built a wall
+between them and the world”—Without, a thousand harpies raved, remorse
+and misery, expecting the destined moment for their invasion. Within,
+was the peace as of innocence, reckless blindless, deluding joy, hope,
+whose still anchor rested on placid but unconstant water.
+
+Thus, while Raymond had been wrapt in visions of power and fame, while
+he looked forward to entire dominion over the elements and the mind of
+man, the territory of his own heart escaped his notice; and from that
+unthought of source arose the mighty torrent that overwhelmed his will,
+and carried to the oblivious sea, fame, hope, and happiness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+In the mean time what did Perdita?
+
+During the first months of his Protectorate, Raymond and she had been
+inseparable; each project was discussed with her, each plan approved by
+her. I never beheld any one so perfectly happy as my sweet sister. Her
+expressive eyes were two stars whose beams were love; hope and
+light-heartedness sat on her cloudless brow. She fed even to tears of
+joy on the praise and glory of her Lord; her whole existence was one
+sacrifice to him, and if in the humility of her heart she felt
+self-complacency, it arose from the reflection that she had won the
+distinguished hero of the age, and had for years preserved him, even
+after time had taken from love its usual nourishment. Her own feeling
+was as entire as at its birth. Five years had failed to destroy the
+dazzling unreality of passion. Most men ruthlessly destroy the sacred
+veil, with which the female heart is wont to adorn the idol of its
+affections. Not so Raymond; he was an enchanter, whose reign was for
+ever undiminished; a king whose power never was suspended: follow him
+through the details of common life, still the same charm of grace and
+majesty adorned him; nor could he be despoiled of the innate
+deification with which nature had invested him. Perdita grew in beauty
+and excellence under his eye; I no longer recognised my reserved
+abstracted sister in the fascinating and open-hearted wife of Raymond.
+The genius that enlightened her countenance, was now united to an
+expression of benevolence, which gave divine perfection to her beauty.
+
+Happiness is in its highest degree the sister of goodness. Suffering
+and amiability may exist together, and writers have loved to depict
+their conjunction; there is a human and touching harmony in the
+picture. But perfect happiness is an attribute of angels; and those who
+possess it, appear angelic. Fear has been said to be the parent of
+religion: even of that religion is it the generator, which leads its
+votaries to sacrifice human victims at its altars; but the religion
+which springs from happiness is a lovelier growth; the religion which
+makes the heart breathe forth fervent thanksgiving, and causes us to
+pour out the overflowings of the soul before the author of our being;
+that which is the parent of the imagination and the nurse of poetry;
+that which bestows benevolent intelligence on the visible mechanism of
+the world, and makes earth a temple with heaven for its cope. Such
+happiness, goodness, and religion inhabited the mind of Perdita.
+
+During the five years we had spent together, a knot of happy human
+beings at Windsor Castle, her blissful lot had been the frequent theme
+of my sister’s conversation. From early habit, and natural affection,
+she selected me in preference to Adrian or Idris, to be the partner in
+her overflowings of delight; perhaps, though apparently much unlike,
+some secret point of resemblance, the offspring of consanguinity,
+induced this preference. Often at sunset, I have walked with her, in
+the sober, enshadowed forest paths, and listened with joyful sympathy.
+Security gave dignity to her passion; the certainty of a full return,
+left her with no wish unfulfilled. The birth of her daughter, embryo
+copy of her Raymond, filled up the measure of her content, and produced
+a sacred and indissoluble tie between them. Sometimes she felt proud
+that he had preferred her to the hopes of a crown. Sometimes she
+remembered that she had suffered keen anguish, when he hesitated in his
+choice. But this memory of past discontent only served to enhance her
+present joy. What had been hardly won, was now, entirely possessed,
+doubly dear. She would look at him at a distance with the same rapture,
+(O, far more exuberant rapture!) that one might feel, who after the
+perils of a tempest, should find himself in the desired port; she would
+hasten towards him, to feel more certain in his arms, the reality of
+her bliss. This warmth of affection, added to the depth of her
+understanding, and the brilliancy of her imagination, made her beyond
+words dear to Raymond.
+
+If a feeling of dissatisfaction ever crossed her, it arose from the
+idea that he was not perfectly happy. Desire of renown, and
+presumptuous ambition, had characterized his youth. The one he had
+acquired in Greece; the other he had sacrificed to love. His intellect
+found sufficient field for exercise in his domestic circle, whose
+members, all adorned by refinement and literature, were many of them,
+like himself, distinguished by genius. Yet active life was the genuine
+soil for his virtues; and he sometimes suffered tedium from the
+monotonous succession of events in our retirement. Pride made him
+recoil from complaint; and gratitude and affection to Perdita,
+generally acted as an opiate to all desire, save that of meriting her
+love. We all observed the visitation of these feelings, and none
+regretted them so much as Perdita. Her life consecrated to him, was a
+slight sacrifice to reward his choice, but was not that sufficient—Did
+he need any gratification that she was unable to bestow? This was the
+only cloud in the azure of her happiness.
+
+His passage to power had been full of pain to both. He however attained
+his wish; he filled the situation for which nature seemed to have
+moulded him. His activity was fed in wholesome measure, without either
+exhaustion or satiety; his taste and genius found worthy expression in
+each of the modes human beings have invented to encage and manifest the
+spirit of beauty; the goodness of his heart made him never weary of
+conducing to the well-being of his fellow-creatures; his magnificent
+spirit, and aspirations for the respect and love of mankind, now
+received fruition; true, his exaltation was temporary; perhaps it were
+better that it should be so. Habit would not dull his sense of the
+enjoyment of power; nor struggles, disappointment and defeat await the
+end of that which would expire at its maturity. He determined to
+extract and condense all of glory, power, and achievement, which might
+have resulted from a long reign, into the three years of his
+Protectorate.
+
+Raymond was eminently social. All that he now enjoyed would have been
+devoid of pleasure to him, had it been unparticipated. But in Perdita
+he possessed all that his heart could desire. Her love gave birth to
+sympathy; her intelligence made her understand him at a word; her
+powers of intellect enabled her to assist and guide him. He felt her
+worth. During the early years of their union, the inequality of her
+temper, and yet unsubdued self-will which tarnished her character, had
+been a slight drawback to the fulness of his sentiment. Now that
+unchanged serenity, and gentle compliance were added to her other
+qualifications, his respect equalled his love. Years added to the
+strictness of their union. They did not now guess at, and totter on the
+pathway, divining the mode to please, hoping, yet fearing the
+continuance of bliss. Five years gave a sober certainty to their
+emotions, though it did not rob them of their etherial nature. It had
+given them a child; but it had not detracted from the personal
+attractions of my sister. Timidity, which in her had almost amounted to
+awkwardness, was exchanged for a graceful decision of manner;
+frankness, instead of reserve, characterized her physiognomy; and her
+voice was attuned to thrilling softness. She was now three and twenty,
+in the pride of womanhood, fulfilling the precious duties of wife and
+mother, possessed of all her heart had ever coveted. Raymond was ten
+years older; to his previous beauty, noble mien, and commanding aspect,
+he now added gentlest benevolence, winning tenderness, graceful and
+unwearied attention to the wishes of another.
+
+The first secret that had existed between them was the visits of
+Raymond to Evadne. He had been struck by the fortitude and beauty of
+the ill-fated Greek; and, when her constant tenderness towards him
+unfolded itself, he asked with astonishment, by what act of his he had
+merited this passionate and unrequited love. She was for a while the
+sole object of his reveries; and Perdita became aware that his thoughts
+and time were bestowed on a subject unparticipated by her. My sister
+was by nature destitute of the common feelings of anxious, petulant
+jealousy. The treasure which she possessed in the affections of
+Raymond, was more necessary to her being, than the life-blood that
+animated her veins—more truly than Othello she might say,
+
+    To be once in doubt,
+Is—once to be resolved.
+
+
+On the present occasion she did not suspect any alienation of
+affection; but she conjectured that some circumstance connected with
+his high place, had occasioned this mystery. She was startled and
+pained. She began to count the long days, and months, and years which
+must elapse, before he would be restored to a private station, and
+unreservedly to her. She was not content that, even for a time, he
+should practice concealment with her. She often repined; but her trust
+in the singleness of his affection was undisturbed; and, when they were
+together, unchecked by fear, she opened her heart to the fullest
+delight.
+
+Time went on. Raymond, stopping mid-way in his wild career, paused
+suddenly to think of consequences. Two results presented themselves in
+the view he took of the future. That his intercourse with Evadne should
+continue a secret to, or that finally it should be discovered by
+Perdita. The destitute condition, and highly wrought feelings of his
+friend prevented him from adverting to the possibility of exiling
+himself from her. In the first event he had bidden an eternal farewell
+to open-hearted converse, and entire sympathy with the companion of his
+life. The veil must be thicker than that invented by Turkish jealousy;
+the wall higher than the unscaleable tower of Vathek, which should
+conceal from her the workings of his heart, and hide from her view the
+secret of his actions. This idea was intolerably painful to him.
+Frankness and social feelings were the essence of Raymond’s nature;
+without them his qualities became common-place; without these to spread
+glory over his intercourse with Perdita, his vaunted exchange of a
+throne for her love, was as weak and empty as the rainbow hues which
+vanish when the sun is down. But there was no remedy. Genius, devotion,
+and courage; the adornments of his mind, and the energies of his soul,
+all exerted to their uttermost stretch, could not roll back one hair’s
+breadth the wheel of time’s chariot; that which had been was written
+with the adamantine pen of reality, on the everlasting volume of the
+past; nor could agony and tears suffice to wash out one iota from the
+act fulfilled.
+
+But this was the best side of the question. What, if circumstance
+should lead Perdita to suspect, and suspecting to be resolved? The
+fibres of his frame became relaxed, and cold dew stood on his forehead,
+at this idea. Many men may scoff at his dread; but he read the future;
+and the peace of Perdita was too dear to him, her speechless agony too
+certain, and too fearful, not to unman him. His course was speedily
+decided upon. If the worst befell; if she learnt the truth, he would
+neither stand her reproaches, or the anguish of her altered looks. He
+would forsake her, England, his friends, the scenes of his youth, the
+hopes of coming time, he would seek another country, and in other
+scenes begin life again. Having resolved on this, he became calmer. He
+endeavoured to guide with prudence the steeds of destiny through the
+devious road which he had chosen, and bent all his efforts the better
+to conceal what he could not alter.
+
+The perfect confidence that subsisted between Perdita and him, rendered
+every communication common between them. They opened each other’s
+letters, even as, until now, the inmost fold of the heart of each was
+disclosed to the other. A letter came unawares, Perdita read it. Had it
+contained confirmation, she must have been annihilated. As it was,
+trembling, cold, and pale, she sought Raymond. He was alone, examining
+some petitions lately presented. She entered silently, sat on a sofa
+opposite to him, and gazed on him with a look of such despair, that
+wildest shrieks and dire moans would have been tame exhibitions of
+misery, compared to the living incarnation of the thing itself
+exhibited by her.
+
+At first he did not take his eyes from the papers; when he raised them,
+he was struck by the wretchedness manifest on her altered cheek; for a
+moment he forgot his own acts and fears, and asked with
+consternation—“Dearest girl, what is the matter; what has happened?”
+
+“Nothing,” she replied at first; “and yet not so,” she continued,
+hurrying on in her speech; “you have secrets, Raymond; where have you
+been lately, whom have you seen, what do you conceal from me?—why am I
+banished from your confidence? Yet this is not it—I do not intend to
+entrap you with questions—one will suffice—am I completely a wretch?”
+
+With trembling hand she gave him the paper, and sat white and
+motionless looking at him while he read it. He recognised the
+hand-writing of Evadne, and the colour mounted in his cheeks. With
+lightning-speed he conceived the contents of the letter; all was now
+cast on one die; falsehood and artifice were trifles in comparison with
+the impending ruin. He would either entirely dispel Perdita’s
+suspicions, or quit her for ever. “My dear girl,” he said, “I have been
+to blame; but you must pardon me. I was in the wrong to commence a
+system of concealment; but I did it for the sake of sparing you pain;
+and each day has rendered it more difficult for me to alter my plan.
+Besides, I was instigated by delicacy towards the unhappy writer of
+these few lines.”
+
+Perdita gasped: “Well,” she cried, “well, go on!”
+
+“That is all—this paper tells all. I am placed in the most difficult
+circumstances. I have done my best, though perhaps I have done wrong.
+My love for you is inviolate.”
+
+Perdita shook her head doubtingly: “It cannot be,” she cried, “I know
+that it is not. You would deceive me, but I will not be deceived. I
+have lost you, myself, my life!”
+
+“Do you not believe me?” said Raymond haughtily.
+
+“To believe you,” she exclaimed, “I would give up all, and expire with
+joy, so that in death I could feel that you were true—but that cannot
+be!”
+
+“Perdita,” continued Raymond, “you do not see the precipice on which
+you stand. You may believe that I did not enter on my present line of
+conduct without reluctance and pain. I knew that it was possible that
+your suspicions might be excited; but I trusted that my simple word
+would cause them to disappear. I built my hope on your confidence. Do
+you think that I will be questioned, and my replies disdainfully set
+aside? Do you think that I will be suspected, perhaps watched,
+cross-questioned, and disbelieved? I am not yet fallen so low; my
+honour is not yet so tarnished. You have loved me; I adored you. But
+all human sentiments come to an end. Let our affection expire—but let
+it not be exchanged for distrust and recrimination. Heretofore we have
+been friends—lovers—let us not become enemies, mutual spies. I cannot
+live the object of suspicion—you cannot believe me—let us part!”
+
+“Exactly so,” cried Perdita, “I knew that it would come to this! Are we
+not already parted? Does not a stream, boundless as ocean, deep as
+vacuum, yawn between us?”
+
+Raymond rose, his voice was broken, his features convulsed, his manner
+calm as the earthquake-cradling atmosphere, he replied: “I am rejoiced
+that you take my decision so philosophically. Doubtless you will play
+the part of the injured wife to admiration. Sometimes you may be stung
+with the feeling that you have wronged me, but the condolence of your
+relatives, the pity of the world, the complacency which the
+consciousness of your own immaculate innocence will bestow, will be
+excellent balm;—me you will never see more!”
+
+Raymond moved towards the door. He forgot that each word he spoke was
+false. He personated his assumption of innocence even to
+self-deception. Have not actors wept, as they pourtrayed imagined
+passion? A more intense feeling of the reality of fiction possessed
+Raymond. He spoke with pride; he felt injured. Perdita looked up; she
+saw his angry glance; his hand was on the lock of the door. She started
+up, she threw herself on his neck, she gasped and sobbed; he took her
+hand, and leading her to the sofa, sat down near her. Her head fell on
+his shoulder, she trembled, alternate changes of fire and ice ran
+through her limbs: observing her emotion he spoke with softened
+accents:
+
+“The blow is given. I will not part from you in anger;—I owe you too
+much. I owe you six years of unalloyed happiness. But they are passed.
+I will not live the mark of suspicion, the object of jealousy. I love
+you too well. In an eternal separation only can either of us hope for
+dignity and propriety of action. We shall not then be degraded from our
+true characters. Faith and devotion have hitherto been the essence of
+our intercourse;—these lost, let us not cling to the seedless husk of
+life, the unkernelled shell. You have your child, your brother, Idris,
+Adrian”—
+
+“And you,” cried Perdita, “the writer of that letter.”
+
+Uncontrollable indignation flashed from the eyes of Raymond. He knew
+that this accusation at least was false. “Entertain this belief,” he
+cried, “hug it to your heart—make it a pillow to your head, an opiate
+for your eyes —I am content. But, by the God that made me, hell is not
+more false than the word you have spoken!”
+
+Perdita was struck by the impassioned seriousness of his asseverations.
+She replied with earnestness, “I do not refuse to believe you, Raymond;
+on the contrary I promise to put implicit faith in your simple word.
+Only assure me that your love and faith towards me have never been
+violated; and suspicion, and doubt, and jealousy will at once be
+dispersed. We shall continue as we have ever done, one heart, one hope,
+one life.”
+
+“I have already assured you of my fidelity,” said Raymond with
+disdainful coldness, “triple assertions will avail nothing where one is
+despised. I will say no more; for I can add nothing to what I have
+already said, to what you before contemptuously set aside. This
+contention is unworthy of both of us; and I confess that I am weary of
+replying to charges at once unfounded and unkind.”
+
+Perdita tried to read his countenance, which he angrily averted. There
+was so much of truth and nature in his resentment, that her doubts were
+dispelled. Her countenance, which for years had not expressed a feeling
+unallied to affection, became again radiant and satisfied. She found it
+however no easy task to soften and reconcile Raymond. At first he
+refused to stay to hear her. But she would not be put off; secure of
+his unaltered love, she was willing to undertake any labour, use any
+entreaty, to dispel his anger. She obtained an hearing, he sat in
+haughty silence, but he listened. She first assured him of her
+boundless confidence; of this he must be conscious, since but for that
+she would not seek to detain him. She enumerated their years of
+happiness; she brought before him past scenes of intimacy and
+happiness; she pictured their future life, she mentioned their
+child—tears unbidden now filled her eyes. She tried to disperse them,
+but they refused to be checked—her utterance was choaked. She had not
+wept before. Raymond could not resist these signs of distress: he felt
+perhaps somewhat ashamed of the part he acted of the injured man, he
+who was in truth the injurer. And then he devoutly loved Perdita; the
+bend of her head, her glossy ringlets, the turn of her form were to him
+subjects of deep tenderness and admiration; as she spoke, her melodious
+tones entered his soul; he soon softened towards her, comforting and
+caressing her, and endeavouring to cheat himself into the belief that
+he had never wronged her.
+
+Raymond staggered forth from this scene, as a man might do, who had
+been just put to the torture, and looked forward to when it would be
+again inflicted. He had sinned against his own honour, by affirming,
+swearing to, a direct falsehood; true this he had palmed on a woman,
+and it might therefore be deemed less base—by others—not by him;—for
+whom had he deceived?—his own trusting, devoted, affectionate Perdita,
+whose generous belief galled him doubly, when he remembered the parade
+of innocence with which it had been exacted. The mind of Raymond was
+not so rough cast, nor had been so rudely handled, in the circumstance
+of life, as to make him proof to these considerations—on the contrary,
+he was all nerve; his spirit was as a pure fire, which fades and
+shrinks from every contagion of foul atmosphere: but now the contagion
+had become incorporated with its essence, and the change was the more
+painful. Truth and falsehood, love and hate lost their eternal
+boundaries, heaven rushed in to mingle with hell; while his sensitive
+mind, turned to a field for such battle, was stung to madness. He
+heartily despised himself, he was angry with Perdita, and the idea of
+Evadne was attended by all that was hideous and cruel. His passions,
+always his masters, acquired fresh strength, from the long sleep in
+which love had cradled them, the clinging weight of destiny bent him
+down; he was goaded, tortured, fiercely impatient of that worst of
+miseries, the sense of remorse. This troubled state yielded by degrees,
+to sullen animosity, and depression of spirits. His dependants, even
+his equals, if in his present post he had any, were startled to find
+anger, derision, and bitterness in one, before distinguished for
+suavity and benevolence of manner. He transacted public business with
+distaste, and hastened from it to the solitude which was at once his
+bane and relief. He mounted a fiery horse, that which had borne him
+forward to victory in Greece; he fatigued himself with deadening
+exercise, losing the pangs of a troubled mind in animal sensation.
+
+He slowly recovered himself; yet, at last, as one might from the
+effects of poison, he lifted his head from above the vapours of fever
+and passion into the still atmosphere of calm reflection. He meditated
+on what was best to be done. He was first struck by the space of time
+that had elapsed, since madness, rather than any reasonable impulse,
+had regulated his actions. A month had gone by, and during that time he
+had not seen Evadne. Her power, which was linked to few of the enduring
+emotions of his heart, had greatly decayed. He was no longer her
+slave—no longer her lover: he would never see her more, and by the
+completeness of his return, deserve the confidence of Perdita.
+
+Yet, as he thus determined, fancy conjured up the miserable abode of
+the Greek girl. An abode, which from noble and lofty principle, she had
+refused to exchange for one of greater luxury. He thought of the
+splendour of her situation and appearance when he first knew her; he
+thought of her life at Constantinople, attended by every circumstance
+of oriental magnificence; of her present penury, her daily task of
+industry, her lorn state, her faded, famine-struck cheek. Compassion
+swelled his breast; he would see her once again; he would devise some
+plan for restoring her to society, and the enjoyment of her rank; their
+separation would then follow, as a matter of course.
+
+Again he thought, how during this long month, he had avoided Perdita,
+flying from her as from the stings of his own conscience. But he was
+awake now; all this should be remedied; and future devotion erase the
+memory of this only blot on the serenity of their life. He became
+cheerful, as he thought of this, and soberly and resolutely marked out
+the line of conduct he would adopt. He remembered that he had promised
+Perdita to be present this very evening (the 19th of October,
+anniversary of his election as Protector) at a festival given in his
+honour. Good augury should this festival be of the happiness of future
+years. First, he would look in on Evadne; he would not stay; but he
+owed her some account, some compensation for his long and unannounced
+absence; and then to Perdita, to the forgotten world, to the duties of
+society, the splendour of rank, the enjoyment of power.
+
+After the scene sketched in the preceding pages, Perdita had
+contemplated an entire change in the manners and conduct of Raymond.
+She expected freedom of communication, and a return to those habits of
+affectionate intercourse which had formed the delight of her life. But
+Raymond did not join her in any of her avocations. He transacted the
+business of the day apart from her; he went out, she knew not whither.
+The pain inflicted by this disappointment was tormenting and keen. She
+looked on it as a deceitful dream, and tried to throw off the
+consciousness of it; but like the shirt of Nessus, it clung to her very
+flesh, and ate with sharp agony into her vital principle. She possessed
+that (though such an assertion may appear a paradox) which belongs to
+few, a capacity of happiness. Her delicate organization and creative
+imagination rendered her peculiarly susceptible of pleasurable emotion.
+The overflowing warmth of her heart, by making love a plant of deep
+root and stately growth, had attuned her whole soul to the reception of
+happiness, when she found in Raymond all that could adorn love and
+satisfy her imagination. But if the sentiment on which the fabric of
+her existence was founded, became common place through participation,
+the endless succession of attentions and graceful action snapt by
+transfer, his universe of love wrested from her, happiness must depart,
+and then be exchanged for its opposite. The same peculiarities of
+character rendered her sorrows agonies; her fancy magnified them, her
+sensibility made her for ever open to their renewed impression; love
+envenomed the heart-piercing sting. There was neither submission,
+patience, nor self-abandonment in her grief; she fought with it,
+struggled beneath it, and rendered every pang more sharp by resistance.
+Again and again the idea recurred, that he loved another. She did him
+justice; she believed that he felt a tender affection for her; but give
+a paltry prize to him who in some life-pending lottery has calculated
+on the possession of tens of thousands, and it will disappoint him more
+than a blank. The affection and amity of a Raymond might be
+inestimable; but, beyond that affection, embosomed deeper than
+friendship, was the indivisible treasure of love. Take the sum in its
+completeness, and no arithmetic can calculate its price; take from it
+the smallest portion, give it but the name of parts, separate it into
+degrees and sections, and like the magician’s coin, the valueless gold
+of the mine, is turned to vilest substance. There is a meaning in the
+eye of love; a cadence in its voice, an irradiation in its smile, the
+talisman of whose enchantments one only can possess; its spirit is
+elemental, its essence single, its divinity an unit. The very heart and
+soul of Raymond and Perdita had mingled, even as two mountain brooks
+that join in their descent, and murmuring and sparkling flow over
+shining pebbles, beside starry flowers; but let one desert its primal
+course, or be dammed up by choaking obstruction, and the other shrinks
+in its altered banks. Perdita was sensible of the failing of the tide
+that fed her life. Unable to support the slow withering of her hopes,
+she suddenly formed a plan, resolving to terminate at once the period
+of misery, and to bring to an happy conclusion the late disastrous
+events.
+
+The anniversary was at hand of the exaltation of Raymond to the office
+of Protector; and it was customary to celebrate this day by a splendid
+festival. A variety of feelings urged Perdita to shed double
+magnificence over the scene; yet, as she arrayed herself for the
+evening gala, she wondered herself at the pains she took, to render
+sumptuous the celebration of an event which appeared to her the
+beginning of her sufferings. Woe befall the day, she thought, woe,
+tears, and mourning betide the hour, that gave Raymond another hope
+than love, another wish than my devotion; and thrice joyful the moment
+when he shall be restored to me! God knows, I put my trust in his vows,
+and believe his asserted faith—but for that, I would not seek what I am
+now resolved to attain. Shall two years more be thus passed, each day
+adding to our alienation, each act being another stone piled on the
+barrier which separates us? No, my Raymond, my only beloved, sole
+possession of Perdita! This night, this splendid assembly, these
+sumptuous apartments, and this adornment of your tearful girl, are all
+united to celebrate your abdication. Once for me, you relinquished the
+prospect of a crown. That was in days of early love, when I could only
+hold out the hope, not the assurance of happiness. Now you have the
+experience of all that I can give, the heart’s devotion, taintless
+love, and unhesitating subjection to you. You must choose between these
+and your protectorate. This, proud noble, is your last night! Perdita
+has bestowed on it all of magnificent and dazzling that your heart best
+loves—but, from these gorgeous rooms, from this princely attendance,
+from power and elevation, you must return with to-morrow’s sun to our
+rural abode; for I would not buy an immortality of joy, by the
+endurance of one more week sister to the last.
+
+Brooding over this plan, resolved when the hour should come, to
+propose, and insist upon its accomplishment, secure of his consent, the
+heart of Perdita was lightened, or rather exalted. Her cheek was
+flushed by the expectation of struggle; her eyes sparkled with the hope
+of triumph. Having cast her fate upon a die, and feeling secure of
+winning, she, whom I have named as bearing the stamp of queen of
+nations on her noble brow, now rose superior to humanity, and seemed in
+calm power, to arrest with her finger, the wheel of destiny. She had
+never before looked so supremely lovely.
+
+We, the Arcadian shepherds of the tale, had intended to be present at
+this festivity, but Perdita wrote to entreat us not to come, or to
+absent ourselves from Windsor; for she (though she did not reveal her
+scheme to us) resolved the next morning to return with Raymond to our
+dear circle, there to renew a course of life in which she had found
+entire felicity. Late in the evening she entered the apartments
+appropriated to the festival. Raymond had quitted the palace the night
+before; he had promised to grace the assembly, but he had not yet
+returned. Still she felt sure that he would come at last; and the wider
+the breach might appear at this crisis, the more secure she was of
+closing it for ever.
+
+It was as I said, the nineteenth of October; the autumn was far
+advanced and dreary. The wind howled; the half bare trees were
+despoiled of the remainder of their summer ornament; the state of the
+air which induced the decay of vegetation, was hostile to cheerfulness
+or hope. Raymond had been exalted by the determination he had made; but
+with the declining day his spirits declined. First he was to visit
+Evadne, and then to hasten to the palace of the Protectorate. As he
+walked through the wretched streets in the neighbourhood of the
+luckless Greek’s abode, his heart smote him for the whole course of his
+conduct towards her. First, his having entered into any engagement that
+should permit her to remain in such a state of degradation; and then,
+after a short wild dream, having left her to drear solitude, anxious
+conjecture, and bitter, still—disappointed expectation. What had she
+done the while, how supported his absence and neglect? Light grew dim
+in these close streets, and when the well known door was opened, the
+staircase was shrouded in perfect night. He groped his way up, he
+entered the garret, he found Evadne stretched speechless, almost
+lifeless on her wretched bed. He called for the people of the house,
+but could learn nothing from them, except that they knew nothing. Her
+story was plain to him, plain and distinct as the remorse and horror
+that darted their fangs into him. When she found herself forsaken by
+him, she lost the heart to pursue her usual avocations; pride forbade
+every application to him; famine was welcomed as the kind porter to the
+gates of death, within whose opening folds she should now, without sin,
+quickly repose. No creature came near her, as her strength failed.
+
+If she died, where could there be found on record a murderer, whose
+cruel act might compare with his? What fiend more wanton in his
+mischief, what damned soul more worthy of perdition! But he was not
+reserved for this agony of self-reproach. He sent for medical
+assistance; the hours passed, spun by suspense into ages; the darkness
+of the long autumnal night yielded to day, before her life was secure.
+He had her then removed to a more commodious dwelling, and hovered
+about her, again and again to assure himself that she was safe.
+
+In the midst of his greatest suspense and fear as to the event, he
+remembered the festival given in his honour, by Perdita; in his honour
+then, when misery and death were affixing indelible disgrace to his
+name, honour to him whose crimes deserved a scaffold; this was the
+worst mockery. Still Perdita would expect him; he wrote a few
+incoherent words on a scrap of paper, testifying that he was well, and
+bade the woman of the house take it to the palace, and deliver it into
+the hands of the wife of the Lord Protector. The woman, who did not
+know him, contemptuously asked, how he thought she should gain
+admittance, particularly on a festal night, to that lady’s presence?
+Raymond gave her his ring to ensure the respect of the menials. Thus,
+while Perdita was entertaining her guests, and anxiously awaiting the
+arrival of her lord, his ring was brought her; and she was told that a
+poor woman had a note to deliver to her from its wearer.
+
+The vanity of the old gossip was raised by her commission, which, after
+all, she did not understand, since she had no suspicion, even now that
+Evadne’s visitor was Lord Raymond. Perdita dreaded a fall from his
+horse, or some similar accident—till the woman’s answers woke other
+fears. From a feeling of cunning blindly exercised, the officious, if
+not malignant messenger, did not speak of Evadne’s illness; but she
+garrulously gave an account of Raymond’s frequent visits, adding to her
+narration such circumstances, as, while they convinced Perdita of its
+truth, exaggerated the unkindness and perfidy of Raymond. Worst of all,
+his absence now from the festival, his message wholly unaccounted for,
+except by the disgraceful hints of the woman, appeared the deadliest
+insult. Again she looked at the ring, it was a small ruby, almost
+heart-shaped, which she had herself given him. She looked at the
+hand-writing, which she could not mistake, and repeated to herself the
+words—“Do not, I charge you, I entreat you, permit your guests to
+wonder at my absence:” the while the old crone going on with her talk,
+filled her ear with a strange medley of truth and falsehood. At length
+Perdita dismissed her.
+
+The poor girl returned to the assembly, where her presence had not been
+missed. She glided into a recess somewhat obscured, and leaning against
+an ornamental column there placed, tried to recover herself. Her
+faculties were palsied. She gazed on some flowers that stood near in a
+carved vase: that morning she had arranged them, they were rare and
+lovely plants; even now all aghast as she was, she observed their
+brilliant colours and starry shapes.—“Divine infoliations of the spirit
+of beauty,” she exclaimed, “Ye droop not, neither do ye mourn; the
+despair that clasps my heart, has not spread contagion over you!—Why am
+I not a partner of your insensibility, a sharer in your calm!”
+
+She paused. “To my task,” she continued mentally, “my guests must not
+perceive the reality, either as it regards him or me. I obey; they
+shall not, though I die the moment they are gone. They shall behold the
+antipodes of what is real—for I will appear to live—while I am—dead.”
+It required all her self-command, to suppress the gush of tears
+self-pity caused at this idea. After many struggles, she succeeded, and
+turned to join the company.
+
+All her efforts were now directed to the dissembling her internal
+conflict. She had to play the part of a courteous hostess; to attend to
+all; to shine the focus of enjoyment and grace. She had to do this,
+while in deep woe she sighed for loneliness, and would gladly have
+exchanged her crowded rooms for dark forest depths, or a drear,
+night-enshadowed heath. But she became gay. She could not keep in the
+medium, nor be, as was usual with her, placidly content. Every one
+remarked her exhilaration of spirits; as all actions appear graceful in
+the eye of rank, her guests surrounded her applaudingly, although there
+was a sharpness in her laugh, and an abruptness in her sallies, which
+might have betrayed her secret to an attentive observer. She went on,
+feeling that, if she had paused for a moment, the checked waters of
+misery would have deluged her soul, that her wrecked hopes would raise
+their wailing voices, and that those who now echoed her mirth, and
+provoked her repartees, would have shrunk in fear from her convulsive
+despair. Her only consolation during the violence which she did
+herself, was to watch the motions of an illuminated clock, and
+internally count the moments which must elapse before she could be
+alone.
+
+At length the rooms began to thin. Mocking her own desires, she rallied
+her guests on their early departure. One by one they left her—at length
+she pressed the hand of her last visitor. “How cold and damp your hand
+is,” said her friend; “you are over fatigued, pray hasten to rest.”
+Perdita smiled faintly—her guest left her; the carriage rolling down
+the street assured the final departure. Then, as if pursued by an
+enemy, as if wings had been at her feet, she flew to her own apartment,
+she dismissed her attendants, she locked the doors, she threw herself
+wildly on the floor, she bit her lips even to blood to suppress her
+shrieks, and lay long a prey to the vulture of despair, striving not to
+think, while multitudinous ideas made a home of her heart; and ideas,
+horrid as furies, cruel as vipers, and poured in with such swift
+succession, that they seemed to jostle and wound each other, while they
+worked her up to madness.
+
+At length she rose, more composed, not less miserable. She stood before
+a large mirror—she gazed on her reflected image; her light and graceful
+dress, the jewels that studded her hair, and encircled her beauteous
+arms and neck, her small feet shod in satin, her profuse and glossy
+tresses, all were to her clouded brow and woe-begone countenance like a
+gorgeous frame to a dark tempest-pourtraying picture. “Vase am I,” she
+thought, “vase brimful of despair’s direst essence. Farewell, Perdita!
+farewell, poor girl! never again will you see yourself thus; luxury and
+wealth are no longer yours; in the excess of your poverty you may envy
+the homeless beggar; most truly am I without a home! I live on a barren
+desart, which, wide and interminable, brings forth neither fruit or
+flower; in the midst is a solitary rock, to which thou, Perdita, art
+chained, and thou seest the dreary level stretch far away.”
+
+She threw open her window, which looked on the palace-garden. Light and
+darkness were struggling together, and the orient was streaked by
+roseate and golden rays. One star only trembled in the depth of the
+kindling atmosphere. The morning air blowing freshly over the dewy
+plants, rushed into the heated room. “All things go on,” thought
+Perdita, “all things proceed, decay, and perish! When noontide has
+passed, and the weary day has driven her team to their western stalls,
+the fires of heaven rise from the East, moving in their accustomed
+path, they ascend and descend the skiey hill. When their course is
+fulfilled, the dial begins to cast westward an uncertain shadow; the
+eye-lids of day are opened, and birds and flowers, the startled
+vegetation, and fresh breeze awaken; the sun at length appears, and in
+majestic procession climbs the capitol of heaven. All proceeds, changes
+and dies, except the sense of misery in my bursting heart.
+
+“Ay, all proceeds and changes: what wonder then, that love has journied
+on to its setting, and that the lord of my life has changed? We call
+the supernal lights fixed, yet they wander about yonder plain, and if I
+look again where I looked an hour ago, the face of the eternal heavens
+is altered. The silly moon and inconstant planets vary nightly their
+erratic dance; the sun itself, sovereign of the sky, ever and anon
+deserts his throne, and leaves his dominion to night and winter. Nature
+grows old, and shakes in her decaying limbs,—creation has become
+bankrupt! What wonder then, that eclipse and death have led to
+destruction the light of thy life, O Perdita!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+Thus sad and disarranged were the thoughts of my poor sister, when she
+became assured of the infidelity of Raymond. All her virtues and all
+her defects tended to make the blow incurable. Her affection for me,
+her brother, for Adrian and Idris, was subject as it were to the
+reigning passion of her heart; even her maternal tenderness borrowed
+half its force from the delight she had in tracing Raymond’s features
+and expression in the infant’s countenance. She had been reserved and
+even stern in childhood; but love had softened the asperities of her
+character, and her union with Raymond had caused her talents and
+affections to unfold themselves; the one betrayed, and the other lost,
+she in some degree returned to her ancient disposition. The
+concentrated pride of her nature, forgotten during her blissful dream,
+awoke, and with its adder’s sting pierced her heart; her humility of
+spirit augmented the power of the venom; she had been exalted in her
+own estimation, while distinguished by his love: of what worth was she,
+now that he thrust her from this preferment? She had been proud of
+having won and preserved him—but another had won him from her, and her
+exultation was as cold as a water quenched ember.
+
+We, in our retirement, remained long in ignorance of her misfortune.
+Soon after the festival she had sent for her child, and then she seemed
+to have forgotten us. Adrian observed a change during a visit that he
+afterward paid them; but he could not tell its extent, or divine the
+cause. They still appeared in public together, and lived under the same
+roof. Raymond was as usual courteous, though there was, on occasions,
+an unbidden haughtiness, or painful abruptness in his manners, which
+startled his gentle friend; his brow was not clouded but disdain sat on
+his lips, and his voice was harsh. Perdita was all kindness and
+attention to her lord; but she was silent, and beyond words sad. She
+had grown thin and pale; and her eyes often filled with tears.
+Sometimes she looked at Raymond, as if to say—That it should be so! At
+others her countenance expressed—I will still do all I can to make you
+happy. But Adrian read with uncertain aim the charactery of her face,
+and might mistake.—Clara was always with her, and she seemed most at
+ease, when, in an obscure corner, she could sit holding her child’s
+hand, silent and lonely. Still Adrian was unable to guess the truth; he
+entreated them to visit us at Windsor, and they promised to come during
+the following month.
+
+It was May before they arrived: the season had decked the forest trees
+with leaves, and its paths with a thousand flowers. We had notice of
+their intention the day before; and, early in the morning, Perdita
+arrived with her daughter. Raymond would follow soon, she said; he had
+been detained by business. According to Adrian’s account, I had
+expected to find her sad; but, on the contrary, she appeared in the
+highest spirits: true, she had grown thin, her eyes were somewhat
+hollow, and her cheeks sunk, though tinged by a bright glow. She was
+delighted to see us; caressed our children, praised their growth and
+improvement; Clara also was pleased to meet again her young friend
+Alfred; all kinds of childish games were entered into, in which Perdita
+joined. She communicated her gaiety to us, and as we amused ourselves
+on the Castle Terrace, it appeared that a happier, less care-worn party
+could not have been assembled. “This is better, Mamma,” said Clara,
+“than being in that dismal London, where you often cry, and never laugh
+as you do now.”—“Silence, little foolish thing,” replied her mother,
+“and remember any one that mentions London is sent to Coventry for an
+hour.”
+
+Soon after, Raymond arrived. He did not join as usual in the playful
+spirit of the rest; but, entering into conversation with Adrian and
+myself, by degrees we seceded from our companions, and Idris and
+Perdita only remained with the children. Raymond talked of his new
+buildings; of his plan for an establishment for the better education of
+the poor; as usual Adrian and he entered into argument, and the time
+slipped away unperceived.
+
+We assembled again towards evening, and Perdita insisted on our having
+recourse to music. She wanted, she said, to give us a specimen of her
+new accomplishment; for since she had been in London, she had applied
+herself to music, and sang, without much power, but with a great deal
+of sweetness. We were not permitted by her to select any but
+light-hearted melodies; and all the Operas of Mozart were called into
+service, that we might choose the most exhilarating of his airs. Among
+the other transcendant attributes of Mozart’s music, it possesses more
+than any other that of appearing to come from the heart; you enter into
+the passions expressed by him, and are transported with grief, joy,
+anger, or confusion, as he, our soul’s master, chooses to inspire. For
+some time, the spirit of hilarity was kept up; but, at length, Perdita
+receded from the piano, for Raymond had joined in the trio of “_Taci
+ingiusto core_,” in Don Giovanni, whose arch entreaty was softened by
+him into tenderness, and thrilled her heart with memories of the
+changed past; it was the same voice, the same tone, the self-same
+sounds and words, which often before she had received, as the homage of
+love to her—no longer was it that; and this concord of sound with its
+dissonance of expression penetrated her with regret and despair. Soon
+after Idris, who was at the harp, turned to that passionate and
+sorrowful air in Figaro, “_Porgi, amor, qualche ristoro_,” in which the
+deserted Countess laments the change of the faithless Almaviva. The
+soul of tender sorrow is breathed forth in this strain; and the sweet
+voice of Idris, sustained by the mournful chords of her instrument,
+added to the expression of the words. During the pathetic appeal with
+which it concludes, a stifled sob attracted our attention to Perdita,
+the cessation of the music recalled her to herself, she hastened out of
+the hall—I followed her. At first, she seemed to wish to shun me; and
+then, yielding to my earnest questioning, she threw herself on my neck,
+and wept aloud:—“Once more,” she cried, “once more on your friendly
+breast, my beloved brother, can the lost Perdita pour forth her
+sorrows. I had imposed a law of silence on myself; and for months I
+have kept it. I do wrong in weeping now, and greater wrong in giving
+words to my grief. I will not speak! Be it enough for you to know that
+I am miserable—be it enough for you to know, that the painted veil of
+life is rent, that I sit for ever shrouded in darkness and gloom, that
+grief is my sister, everlasting lamentation my mate!”
+
+I endeavoured to console her; I did not question her! but I caressed
+her, assured her of my deepest affection and my intense interest in the
+changes of her fortune:—“Dear words,” she cried, “expressions of love
+come upon my ear, like the remembered sounds of forgotten music, that
+had been dear to me. They are vain, I know; how very vain in their
+attempt to soothe or comfort me. Dearest Lionel, you cannot guess what
+I have suffered during these long months. I have read of mourners in
+ancient days, who clothed themselves in sackcloth, scattered dust upon
+their heads, ate their bread mingled with ashes, and took up their
+abode on the bleak mountain tops, reproaching heaven and earth aloud
+with their misfortunes. Why this is the very luxury of sorrow! thus one
+might go on from day to day contriving new extravagances, revelling in
+the paraphernalia of woe, wedded to all the appurtenances of despair.
+Alas! I must for ever conceal the wretchedness that consumes me. I must
+weave a veil of dazzling falsehood to hide my grief from vulgar eyes,
+smoothe my brow, and paint my lips in deceitful smiles—even in solitude
+I dare not think how lost I am, lest I become insane and rave.”
+
+The tears and agitation of my poor sister had rendered her unfit to
+return to the circle we had left—so I persuaded her to let me drive her
+through the park; and, during the ride, I induced her to confide the
+tale of her unhappiness to me, fancying that talking of it would
+lighten the burthen, and certain that, if there were a remedy, it
+should be found and secured to her.
+
+Several weeks had elapsed since the festival of the anniversary, and
+she had been unable to calm her mind, or to subdue her thoughts to any
+regular train. Sometimes she reproached herself for taking too bitterly
+to heart, that which many would esteem an imaginary evil; but this was
+no subject for reason; and, ignorant as she was of the motives and true
+conduct of Raymond, things assumed for her even a worse appearance,
+than the reality warranted. He was seldom at the palace; never, but
+when he was assured that his public duties would prevent his remaining
+alone with Perdita. They seldom addressed each other, shunning
+explanation, each fearing any communication the other might make.
+Suddenly, however, the manners of Raymond changed; he appeared to
+desire to find opportunities of bringing about a return to kindness and
+intimacy with my sister. The tide of love towards her appeared to flow
+again; he could never forget, how once he had been devoted to her,
+making her the shrine and storehouse wherein to place every thought and
+every sentiment. Shame seemed to hold him back; yet he evidently wished
+to establish a renewal of confidence and affection. From the moment
+Perdita had sufficiently recovered herself to form any plan of action,
+she had laid one down, which now she prepared to follow. She received
+these tokens of returning love with gentleness; she did not shun his
+company; but she endeavoured to place a barrier in the way of familiar
+intercourse or painful discussion, which mingled pride and shame
+prevented Raymond from surmounting. He began at last to shew signs of
+angry impatience, and Perdita became aware that the system she had
+adopted could not continue; she must explain herself to him; she could
+not summon courage to speak—she wrote thus:—
+
+“Read this letter with patience, I entreat you. It will contain no
+reproaches. Reproach is indeed an idle word: for what should I reproach
+you?
+
+“Allow me in some degree to explain my feeling; without that, we shall
+both grope in the dark, mistaking one another; erring from the path
+which may conduct, one of us at least, to a more eligible mode of life
+than that led by either during the last few weeks.
+
+“I loved you—I love you—neither anger nor pride dictates these lines;
+but a feeling beyond, deeper, and more unalterable than either. My
+affections are wounded; it is impossible to heal them:—cease then the
+vain endeavour, if indeed that way your endeavours tend. Forgiveness!
+Return! Idle words are these! I forgive the pain I endure; but the
+trodden path cannot be retraced.
+
+“Common affection might have been satisfied with common usages. I
+believed that you read my heart, and knew its devotion, its unalienable
+fidelity towards you. I never loved any but you. You came the embodied
+image of my fondest dreams. The praise of men, power and high
+aspirations attended your career. Love for you invested the world for
+me in enchanted light; it was no longer the earth I trod—the earth,
+common mother, yielding only trite and stale repetition of objects and
+circumstances old and worn out. I lived in a temple glorified by
+intensest sense of devotion and rapture; I walked, a consecrated being,
+contemplating only your power, your excellence;
+
+For O, you stood beside me, like my youth,
+Transformed for me the real to a dream,
+Cloathing the palpable and familiar
+With golden exhalations of the dawn.
+
+
+‘The bloom has vanished from my life’—there is no morning to this all
+investing night; no rising to the set-sun of love. In those days the
+rest of the world was nothing to me: all other men—I never considered
+nor felt what they were; nor did I look on you as one of them.
+Separated from them; exalted in my heart; sole possessor of my
+affections; single object of my hopes, the best half of myself.
+
+“Ah, Raymond, were we not happy? Did the sun shine on any, who could
+enjoy its light with purer and more intense bliss? It was not—it is not
+a common infidelity at which I repine. It is the disunion of an whole
+which may not have parts; it is the carelessness with which you have
+shaken off the mantle of election with which to me you were invested,
+and have become one among the many. Dream not to alter this. Is not
+love a divinity, because it is immortal? Did not I appear sanctified,
+even to myself, because this love had for its temple my heart? I have
+gazed on you as you slept, melted even to tears, as the idea filled my
+mind, that all I possessed lay cradled in those idolized, but mortal
+lineaments before me. Yet, even then, I have checked thick-coming fears
+with one thought; I would not fear death, for the emotions that linked
+us must be immortal.
+
+“And now I do not fear death. I should be well pleased to close my
+eyes, never more to open them again. And yet I fear it; even as I fear
+all things; for in any state of being linked by the chain of memory
+with this, happiness would not return—even in Paradise, I must feel
+that your love was less enduring than the mortal beatings of my fragile
+heart, every pulse of which knells audibly,
+
+    The funeral note
+Of love, deep buried, without resurrection.
+
+
+No—no—me miserable; for love extinct there is no resurrection!
+
+“Yet I love you. Yet, and for ever, would I contribute all I possess to
+your welfare. On account of a tattling world; for the sake of my—of our
+child, I would remain by you, Raymond, share your fortunes, partake
+your counsel. Shall it be thus? We are no longer lovers; nor can I call
+myself a friend to any; since, lost as I am, I have no thought to spare
+from my own wretched, engrossing self. But it will please me to see you
+each day! to listen to the public voice praising you; to keep up your
+paternal love for our girl; to hear your voice; to know that I am near
+you, though you are no longer mine.
+
+“If you wish to break the chains that bind us, say the word, and it
+shall be done—I will take all the blame on myself, of harshness or
+unkindness, in the world’s eye.
+
+“Yet, as I have said, I should be best pleased, at least for the
+present, to live under the same roof with you. When the fever of my
+young life is spent; when placid age shall tame the vulture that
+devours me, friendship may come, love and hope being dead. May this be
+true? Can my soul, inextricably linked to this perishable frame, become
+lethargic and cold, even as this sensitive mechanism shall lose its
+youthful elasticity? Then, with lack-lustre eyes, grey hairs, and
+wrinkled brow, though now the words sound hollow and meaningless, then,
+tottering on the grave’s extreme edge, I may be—your affectionate and
+true friend,
+
+“PERDITA.”
+
+
+Raymond’s answer was brief. What indeed could he reply to her
+complaints, to her griefs which she jealously paled round, keeping out
+all thought of remedy. “Notwithstanding your bitter letter,” he wrote,
+“for bitter I must call it, you are the chief person in my estimation,
+and it is your happiness that I would principally consult. Do that
+which seems best to you: and if you can receive gratification from one
+mode of life in preference to another, do not let me be any obstacle. I
+foresee that the plan which you mark out in your letter will not endure
+long; but you are mistress of yourself, and it is my sincere wish to
+contribute as far as you will permit me to your happiness.”
+
+“Raymond has prophesied well,” said Perdita, “alas, that it should be
+so! our present mode of life cannot continue long, yet I will not be
+the first to propose alteration. He beholds in me one whom he has
+injured even unto death; and I derive no hope from his kindness; no
+change can possibly be brought about even by his best intentions. As
+well might Cleopatra have worn as an ornament the vinegar which
+contained her dissolved pearl, as I be content with the love that
+Raymond can now offer me.”
+
+I own that I did not see her misfortune with the same eyes as Perdita.
+At all events methought that the wound could be healed; and, if they
+remained together, it would be so. I endeavoured therefore to sooth and
+soften her mind; and it was not until after many endeavours that I gave
+up the task as impracticable. Perdita listened to me impatiently, and
+answered with some asperity:—“Do you think that any of your arguments
+are new to me? or that my own burning wishes and intense anguish have
+not suggested them all a thousand times, with far more eagerness and
+subtlety than you can put into them? Lionel, you cannot understand what
+woman’s love is. In days of happiness I have often repeated to myself,
+with a grateful heart and exulting spirit, all that Raymond sacrificed
+for me. I was a poor, uneducated, unbefriended, mountain girl, raised
+from nothingness by him. All that I possessed of the luxuries of life
+came from him. He gave me an illustrious name and noble station; the
+world’s respect reflected from his own glory: all this joined to his
+own undying love, inspired me with sensations towards him, akin to
+those with which we regard the Giver of life. I gave him love only. I
+devoted myself to him: imperfect creature that I was, I took myself to
+task, that I might become worthy of him. I watched over my hasty
+temper, subdued my burning impatience of character, schooled my
+self-engrossing thoughts, educating myself to the best perfection I
+might attain, that the fruit of my exertions might be his happiness. I
+took no merit to myself for this. He deserved it all—all labour, all
+devotion, all sacrifice; I would have toiled up a scaleless Alp, to
+pluck a flower that would please him. I was ready to quit you all, my
+beloved and gifted companions, and to live only with him, for him. I
+could not do otherwise, even if I had wished; for if we are said to
+have two souls, he was my better soul, to which the other was a
+perpetual slave. One only return did he owe me, even fidelity. I earned
+that; I deserved it. Because I was mountain bred, unallied to the noble
+and wealthy, shall he think to repay me by an empty name and station?
+Let him take them back; without his love they are nothing to me. Their
+only merit in my eyes was that they were his.”
+
+Thus passionately Perdita ran on. When I adverted to the question of
+their entire separation, she replied: “Be it so! One day the period
+will arrive; I know it, and feel it. But in this I am a coward. This
+imperfect companionship, and our masquerade of union, are strangely
+dear to me. It is painful, I allow, destructive, impracticable. It
+keeps up a perpetual fever in my veins; it frets my immedicable wound;
+it is instinct with poison. Yet I must cling to it; perhaps it will
+kill me soon, and thus perform a thankful office.”
+
+In the mean time, Raymond had remained with Adrian and Idris. He was
+naturally frank; the continued absence of Perdita and myself became
+remarkable; and Raymond soon found relief from the constraint of
+months, by an unreserved confidence with his two friends. He related to
+them the situation in which he had found Evadne. At first, from
+delicacy to Adrian he concealed her name; but it was divulged in the
+course of his narrative, and her former lover heard with the most acute
+agitation the history of her sufferings. Idris had shared Perdita’s ill
+opinion of the Greek; but Raymond’s account softened and interested
+her. Evadne’s constancy, fortitude, even her ill-fated and
+ill-regulated love, were matter of admiration and pity; especially
+when, from the detail of the events of the nineteenth of October, it
+was apparent that she preferred suffering and death to any in her eyes
+degrading application for the pity and assistance of her lover. Her
+subsequent conduct did not diminish this interest. At first, relieved
+from famine and the grave, watched over by Raymond with the tenderest
+assiduity, with that feeling of repose peculiar to convalescence,
+Evadne gave herself up to rapturous gratitude and love. But reflection
+returned with health. She questioned him with regard to the motives
+which had occasioned his critical absence. She framed her enquiries
+with Greek subtlety; she formed her conclusions with the decision and
+firmness peculiar to her disposition. She could not divine, that the
+breach which she had occasioned between Raymond and Perdita was already
+irreparable: but she knew, that under the present system it would be
+widened each day, and that its result must be to destroy her lover’s
+happiness, and to implant the fangs of remorse in his heart. From the
+moment that she perceived the right line of conduct, she resolved to
+adopt it, and to part from Raymond for ever. Conflicting passions,
+long-cherished love, and self-inflicted disappointment, made her regard
+death alone as sufficient refuge for her woe. But the same feelings and
+opinions which had before restrained her, acted with redoubled force;
+for she knew that the reflection that he had occasioned her death,
+would pursue Raymond through life, poisoning every enjoyment, clouding
+every prospect. Besides, though the violence of her anguish made life
+hateful, it had not yet produced that monotonous, lethargic sense of
+changeless misery which for the most part produces suicide. Her energy
+of character induced her still to combat with the ills of life; even
+those attendant on hopeless love presented themselves, rather in the
+shape of an adversary to be overcome, than of a victor to whom she must
+submit. Besides, she had memories of past tenderness to cherish,
+smiles, words, and even tears, to con over, which, though remembered in
+desertion and sorrow, were to be preferred to the forgetfulness of the
+grave. It was impossible to guess at the whole of her plan. Her letter
+to Raymond gave no clue for discovery; it assured him, that she was in
+no danger of wanting the means of life; she promised in it to preserve
+herself, and some future day perhaps to present herself to him in a
+station not unworthy of her. She then bade him, with the eloquence of
+despair and of unalterable love, a last farewell.
+
+All these circumstances were now related to Adrian and Idris. Raymond
+then lamented the cureless evil of his situation with Perdita. He
+declared, notwithstanding her harshness, he even called it coldness,
+that he loved her. He had been ready once with the humility of a
+penitent, and the duty of a vassal, to surrender himself to her; giving
+up his very soul to her tutelage, to become her pupil, her slave, her
+bondsman. She had rejected these advances; and the time for such
+exuberant submission, which must be founded on love and nourished by
+it, was now passed. Still all his wishes and endeavours were directed
+towards her peace, and his chief discomfort arose from the perception
+that he exerted himself in vain. If she were to continue inflexible in
+the line of conduct she now pursued, they must part. The combinations
+and occurrences of this senseless mode of intercourse were maddening to
+him. Yet he would not propose the separation. He was haunted by the
+fear of causing the death of one or other of the beings implicated in
+these events; and he could not persuade himself to undertake to direct
+the course of events, lest, ignorant of the land he traversed, he
+should lead those attached to the car into irremediable ruin.
+
+After a discussion on this subject, which lasted for several hours, he
+took leave of his friends, and returned to town, unwilling to meet
+Perdita before us, conscious, as we all must be, of the thoughts
+uppermost in the minds of both. Perdita prepared to follow him with her
+child. Idris endeavoured to persuade her to remain. My poor sister
+looked at the counsellor with affright. She knew that Raymond had
+conversed with her; had he instigated this request?—was this to be the
+prelude to their eternal separation?—I have said, that the defects of
+her character awoke and acquired vigour from her unnatural position.
+She regarded with suspicion the invitation of Idris; she embraced me,
+as if she were about to be deprived of my affection also: calling me
+her more than brother, her only friend, her last hope, she pathetically
+conjured me not to cease to love her; and with encreased anxiety she
+departed for London, the scene and cause of all her misery.
+
+The scenes that followed, convinced her that she had not yet fathomed
+the obscure gulph into which she had plunged. Her unhappiness assumed
+every day a new shape; every day some unexpected event seemed to close,
+while in fact it led onward, the train of calamities which now befell
+her.
+
+The selected passion of the soul of Raymond was ambition. Readiness of
+talent, a capacity of entering into, and leading the dispositions of
+men; earnest desire of distinction were the awakeners and nurses of his
+ambition. But other ingredients mingled with these, and prevented him
+from becoming the calculating, determined character, which alone forms
+a successful hero. He was obstinate, but not firm; benevolent in his
+first movements; harsh and reckless when provoked. Above all, he was
+remorseless and unyielding in the pursuit of any object of desire,
+however lawless. Love of pleasure, and the softer sensibilities of our
+nature, made a prominent part of his character, conquering the
+conqueror; holding him in at the moment of acquisition; sweeping away
+ambition’s web; making him forget the toil of weeks, for the sake of
+one moment’s indulgence of the new and actual object of his wishes.
+Obeying these impulses, he had become the husband of Perdita: egged on
+by them, he found himself the lover of Evadne. He had now lost both. He
+had neither the ennobling self-gratulation, which constancy inspires,
+to console him, nor the voluptuous sense of abandonment to a forbidden,
+but intoxicating passion. His heart was exhausted by the recent events;
+his enjoyment of life was destroyed by the resentment of Perdita, and
+the flight of Evadne; and the inflexibility of the former, set the last
+seal upon the annihilation of his hopes. As long as their disunion
+remained a secret, he cherished an expectation of re-awakening past
+tenderness in her bosom; now that we were all made acquainted with
+these occurrences, and that Perdita, by declaring her resolves to
+others, in a manner pledged herself to their accomplishment, he gave up
+the idea of re-union as futile, and sought only, since he was unable to
+influence her to change, to reconcile himself to the present state of
+things. He made a vow against love and its train of struggles,
+disappointment and remorse, and sought in mere sensual enjoyment, a
+remedy for the injurious inroads of passion.
+
+Debasement of character is the certain follower of such pursuits. Yet
+this consequence would not have been immediately remarkable, if Raymond
+had continued to apply himself to the execution of his plans for the
+public benefit, and the fulfilling his duties as Protector. But,
+extreme in all things, given up to immediate impressions, he entered
+with ardour into this new pursuit of pleasure, and followed up the
+incongruous intimacies occasioned by it without reflection or
+foresight. The council-chamber was deserted; the crowds which attended
+on him as agents to his various projects were neglected. Festivity, and
+even libertinism, became the order of the day.
+
+Perdita beheld with affright the encreasing disorder. For a moment she
+thought that she could stem the torrent, and that Raymond could be
+induced to hear reason from her.—Vain hope! The moment of her influence
+was passed. He listened with haughtiness, replied disdainfully; and, if
+in truth, she succeeded in awakening his conscience, the sole effect
+was that he sought an opiate for the pang in oblivious riot. With the
+energy natural to her, Perdita then endeavoured to supply his place.
+Their still apparent union permitted her to do much; but no woman
+could, in the end, present a remedy to the encreasing negligence of the
+Protector; who, as if seized with a paroxysm of insanity, trampled on
+all ceremony, all order, all duty, and gave himself up to license.
+
+Reports of these strange proceedings reached us, and we were undecided
+what method to adopt to restore our friend to himself and his country,
+when Perdita suddenly appeared among us. She detailed the progress of
+the mournful change, and entreated Adrian and myself to go up to
+London, and endeavour to remedy the encreasing evil:—“Tell him,” she
+cried, “tell Lord Raymond, that my presence shall no longer annoy him.
+That he need not plunge into this destructive dissipation for the sake
+of disgusting me, and causing me to fly. This purpose is now
+accomplished; he will never see me more. But let me, it is my last
+entreaty, let me in the praises of his countrymen and the prosperity of
+England, find the choice of my youth justified.”
+
+During our ride up to town, Adrian and I discussed and argued upon
+Raymond’s conduct, and his falling off from the hopes of permanent
+excellence on his part, which he had before given us cause to
+entertain. My friend and I had both been educated in one school, or
+rather I was his pupil in the opinion, that steady adherence to
+principle was the only road to honour; a ceaseless observance of the
+laws of general utility, the only conscientious aim of human ambition.
+But though we both entertained these ideas, we differed in their
+application. Resentment added also a sting to my censure; and I
+reprobated Raymond’s conduct in severe terms. Adrian was more benign,
+more considerate. He admitted that the principles that I laid down were
+the best; but he denied that they were the only ones. Quoting the text,
+_there are many mansions in my father’s house_, he insisted that the
+modes of becoming good or great, varied as much as the dispositions of
+men, of whom it might be said, as of the leaves of the forest, there
+were no two alike.
+
+We arrived in London at about eleven at night. We conjectured,
+notwithstanding what we had heard, that we should find Raymond in St.
+Stephen’s: thither we sped. The chamber was full—but there was no
+Protector; and there was an austere discontent manifest on the
+countenances of the leaders, and a whispering and busy tattle among the
+underlings, not less ominous. We hastened to the palace of the
+Protectorate. We found Raymond in his dining room with six others: the
+bottle was being pushed about merrily, and had made considerable
+inroads on the understanding of one or two. He who sat near Raymond was
+telling a story, which convulsed the rest with laughter.
+
+Raymond sat among them, though while he entered into the spirit of the
+hour, his natural dignity never forsook him. He was gay, playful,
+fascinating—but never did he overstep the modesty of nature, or the
+respect due to himself, in his wildest sallies. Yet I own, that
+considering the task which Raymond had taken on himself as Protector of
+England, and the cares to which it became him to attend, I was
+exceedingly provoked to observe the worthless fellows on whom his time
+was wasted, and the jovial if not drunken spirit which seemed on the
+point of robbing him of his better self. I stood watching the scene,
+while Adrian flitted like a shadow in among them, and, by a word and
+look of sobriety, endeavoured to restore order in the assembly. Raymond
+expressed himself delighted to see him, declaring that he should make
+one in the festivity of the night.
+
+This action of Adrian provoked me. I was indignant that he should sit
+at the same table with the companions of Raymond—men of abandoned
+characters, or rather without any, the refuse of high-bred luxury, the
+disgrace of their country. “Let me entreat Adrian,” I cried, “not to
+comply: rather join with me in endeavouring to withdraw Lord Raymond
+from this scene, and restore him to other society.”
+
+“My good fellow,” said Raymond, “this is neither the time nor place for
+the delivery of a moral lecture: take my word for it that my amusements
+and society are not so bad as you imagine. We are neither hypocrites or
+fools —for the rest, ‘Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there
+shall be no more cakes and ale?’”
+
+I turned angrily away: “Verney,” said Adrian, “you are very cynical:
+sit down; or if you will not, perhaps, as you are not a frequent
+visitor, Lord Raymond will humour you, and accompany us, as we had
+previously agreed upon, to parliament.”
+
+Raymond looked keenly at him; he could read benignity only in his
+gentle lineaments; he turned to me, observing with scorn my moody and
+stern demeanour. “Come,” said Adrian, “I have promised for you, enable
+me to keep my engagement. Come with us.”—Raymond made an uneasy
+movement, and laconically replied—“I won’t!”
+
+The party in the mean time had broken up. They looked at the pictures,
+strolled into the other apartments, talked of billiards, and one by one
+vanished. Raymond strode angrily up and down the room. I stood ready to
+receive and reply to his reproaches. Adrian leaned against the wall.
+“This is infinitely ridiculous,” he cried, “if you were school-boys,
+you could not conduct yourselves more unreasonably.”
+
+“You do not understand,” said Raymond. “This is only part of a
+system:—a scheme of tyranny to which I will never submit. Because I am
+Protector of England, am I to be the only slave in its empire? My
+privacy invaded, my actions censured, my friends insulted? But I will
+get rid of the whole together.—Be you witnesses,” and he took the star,
+insignia of office, from his breast, and threw it on the table. “I
+renounce my office, I abdicate my power—assume it who will!”—-
+
+“Let him assume it,” exclaimed Adrian, “who can pronounce himself, or
+whom the world will pronounce to be your superior. There does not exist
+the man in England with adequate presumption. Know yourself, Raymond,
+and your indignation will cease; your complacency return. A few months
+ago, whenever we prayed for the prosperity of our country, or our own,
+we at the same time prayed for the life and welfare of the Protector,
+as indissolubly linked to it. Your hours were devoted to our benefit,
+your ambition was to obtain our commendation. You decorated our towns
+with edifices, you bestowed on us useful establishments, you gifted the
+soil with abundant fertility. The powerful and unjust cowered at the
+steps of your judgment-seat, and the poor and oppressed arose like
+morn-awakened flowers under the sunshine of your protection.
+
+“Can you wonder that we are all aghast and mourn, when this appears
+changed? But, come, this splenetic fit is already passed; resume your
+functions; your partizans will hail you; your enemies be silenced; our
+love, honour, and duty will again be manifested towards you. Master
+yourself, Raymond, and the world is subject to you.”
+
+“All this would be very good sense, if addressed to another,” replied
+Raymond, moodily, “con the lesson yourself, and you, the first peer of
+the land, may become its sovereign. You the good, the wise, the just,
+may rule all hearts. But I perceive, too soon for my own happiness, too
+late for England’s good, that I undertook a task to which I am unequal.
+I cannot rule myself. My passions are my masters; my smallest impulse
+my tyrant. Do you think that I renounced the Protectorate (and I have
+renounced it) in a fit of spleen? By the God that lives, I swear never
+to take up that bauble again; never again to burthen myself with the
+weight of care and misery, of which that is the visible sign.
+
+“Once I desired to be a king. It was in the hey-day of youth, in the
+pride of boyish folly. I knew myself when I renounced it. I renounced
+it to gain —no matter what—for that also I have lost. For many months I
+have submitted to this mock majesty—this solemn jest. I am its dupe no
+longer. I will be free.
+
+“I have lost that which adorned and dignified my life; that which
+linked me to other men. Again I am a solitary man; and I will become
+again, as in my early years, a wanderer, a soldier of fortune. My
+friends, for Verney, I feel that you are my friend, do not endeavour to
+shake my resolve. Perdita, wedded to an imagination, careless of what
+is behind the veil, whose charactery is in truth faulty and vile,
+Perdita has renounced me. With her it was pretty enough to play a
+sovereign’s part; and, as in the recesses of your beloved forest we
+acted masques, and imagined ourselves Arcadian shepherds, to please the
+fancy of the moment—so was I content, more for Perdita’s sake than my
+own, to take on me the character of one of the great ones of the earth;
+to lead her behind the scenes of grandeur, to vary her life with a
+short act of magnificence and power. This was to be the colour; love
+and confidence the substance of our existence. But we must live, and
+not act our lives; pursuing the shadow, I lost the reality—now I
+renounce both.
+
+“Adrian, I am about to return to Greece, to become again a soldier,
+perhaps a conqueror. Will you accompany me? You will behold new scenes;
+see a new people; witness the mighty struggle there going forward
+between civilization and barbarism; behold, and perhaps direct the
+efforts of a young and vigorous population, for liberty and order. Come
+with me. I have expected you. I waited for this moment; all is
+prepared;—will you accompany me?”
+
+“I will,” replied Adrian. “Immediately?”
+
+“To-morrow if you will.”
+
+“Reflect!” I cried.
+
+“Wherefore?” asked Raymond—“My dear fellow, I have done nothing else
+than reflect on this step the live-long summer; and be assured that
+Adrian has condensed an age of reflection into this little moment. Do
+not talk of reflection; from this moment I abjure it; this is my only
+happy moment during a long interval of time. I must go, Lionel—the Gods
+will it; and I must. Do not endeavour to deprive me of my companion,
+the out-cast’s friend.
+
+“One word more concerning unkind, unjust Perdita. For a time, I thought
+that, by watching a complying moment, fostering the still warm ashes, I
+might relume in her the flame of love. It is more cold within her, than
+a fire left by gypsies in winter-time, the spent embers crowned by a
+pyramid of snow. Then, in endeavouring to do violence to my own
+disposition, I made all worse than before. Still I think, that time,
+and even absence, may restore her to me. Remember, that I love her
+still, that my dearest hope is that she will again be mine. I know,
+though she does not, how false the veil is which she has spread over
+the reality—do not endeavour to rend this deceptive covering, but by
+degrees withdraw it. Present her with a mirror, in which she may know
+herself; and, when she is an adept in that necessary but difficult
+science, she will wonder at her present mistake, and hasten to restore
+to me, what is by right mine, her forgiveness, her kind thoughts, her
+love.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+After these events, it was long before we were able to attain any
+degree of composure. A moral tempest had wrecked our richly freighted
+vessel, and we, remnants of the diminished crew, were aghast at the
+losses and changes which we had undergone. Idris passionately loved her
+brother, and could ill brook an absence whose duration was uncertain;
+his society was dear and necessary to me—I had followed up my chosen
+literary occupations with delight under his tutorship and assistance;
+his mild philosophy, unerring reason, and enthusiastic friendship were
+the best ingredient, the exalted spirit of our circle; even the
+children bitterly regretted the loss of their kind playfellow. Deeper
+grief oppressed Perdita. In spite of resentment, by day and night she
+figured to herself the toils and dangers of the wanderers. Raymond
+absent, struggling with difficulties, lost to the power and rank of the
+Protectorate, exposed to the perils of war, became an object of anxious
+interest; not that she felt any inclination to recall him, if recall
+must imply a return to their former union. Such return she felt to be
+impossible; and while she believed it to be thus, and with anguish
+regretted that so it should be, she continued angry and impatient with
+him, who occasioned her misery. These perplexities and regrets caused
+her to bathe her pillow with nightly tears, and to reduce her in person
+and in mind to the shadow of what she had been. She sought solitude,
+and avoided us when in gaiety and unrestrained affection we met in a
+family circle. Lonely musings, interminable wanderings, and solemn
+music were her only pastimes. She neglected even her child; shutting
+her heart against all tenderness, she grew reserved towards me, her
+first and fast friend.
+
+I could not see her thus lost, without exerting myself to remedy the
+evil —remediless I knew, if I could not in the end bring her to
+reconcile herself to Raymond. Before he went I used every argument,
+every persuasion to induce her to stop his journey. She answered the
+one with a gush of tears—telling me that to be persuaded—life and the
+goods of life were a cheap exchange. It was not will that she wanted,
+but the capacity; again and again she declared, it were as easy to
+enchain the sea, to put reins on the wind’s viewless courses, as for
+her to take truth for falsehood, deceit for honesty, heartless
+communion for sincere, confiding love. She answered my reasonings more
+briefly, declaring with disdain, that the reason was hers; and, until I
+could persuade her that the past could be unacted, that maturity could
+go back to the cradle, and that all that was could become as though it
+had never been, it was useless to assure her that no real change had
+taken place in her fate. And thus with stern pride she suffered him to
+go, though her very heart-strings cracked at the fulfilling of the act,
+which rent from her all that made life valuable.
+
+To change the scene for her, and even for ourselves, all unhinged by
+the cloud that had come over us, I persuaded my two remaining
+companions that it were better that we should absent ourselves for a
+time from Windsor. We visited the north of England, my native Ulswater,
+and lingered in scenes dear from a thousand associations. We lengthened
+our tour into Scotland, that we might see Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond;
+thence we crossed to Ireland, and passed several weeks in the
+neighbourhood of Killarney. The change of scene operated to a great
+degree as I expected; after a year’s absence, Perdita returned in
+gentler and more docile mood to Windsor. The first sight of this place
+for a time unhinged her. Here every spot was distinct with associations
+now grown bitter. The forest glades, the ferny dells, and lawny
+uplands, the cultivated and cheerful country spread around the silver
+pathway of ancient Thames, all earth, air, and wave, took up one choral
+voice, inspired by memory, instinct with plaintive regret.
+
+But my essay towards bringing her to a saner view of her own situation,
+did not end here. Perdita was still to a great degree uneducated. When
+first she left her peasant life, and resided with the elegant and
+cultivated Evadne, the only accomplishment she brought to any
+perfection was that of painting, for which she had a taste almost
+amounting to genius. This had occupied her in her lonely cottage, when
+she quitted her Greek friend’s protection. Her pallet and easel were
+now thrown aside; did she try to paint, thronging recollections made
+her hand tremble, her eyes fill with tears. With this occupation she
+gave up almost every other; and her mind preyed upon itself almost to
+madness.
+
+For my own part, since Adrian had first withdrawn me from my selvatic
+wilderness to his own paradise of order and beauty, I had been wedded
+to literature. I felt convinced that however it might have been in
+former times, in the present stage of the world, no man’s faculties
+could be developed, no man’s moral principle be enlarged and liberal,
+without an extensive acquaintance with books. To me they stood in the
+place of an active career, of ambition, and those palpable excitements
+necessary to the multitude. The collation of philosophical opinions,
+the study of historical facts, the acquirement of languages, were at
+once my recreation, and the serious aim of my life. I turned author
+myself. My productions however were sufficiently unpretending; they
+were confined to the biography of favourite historical characters,
+especially those whom I believed to have been traduced, or about whom
+clung obscurity and doubt.
+
+As my authorship increased, I acquired new sympathies and pleasures. I
+found another and a valuable link to enchain me to my fellow-creatures;
+my point of sight was extended, and the inclinations and capacities of
+all human beings became deeply interesting to me. Kings have been
+called the fathers of their people. Suddenly I became as it were the
+father of all mankind. Posterity became my heirs. My thoughts were gems
+to enrich the treasure house of man’s intellectual possessions; each
+sentiment was a precious gift I bestowed on them. Let not these
+aspirations be attributed to vanity. They were not expressed in words,
+nor even reduced to form in my own mind; but they filled my soul,
+exalting my thoughts, raising a glow of enthusiasm, and led me out of
+the obscure path in which I before walked, into the bright
+noon-enlightened highway of mankind, making me, citizen of the world, a
+candidate for immortal honors, an eager aspirant to the praise and
+sympathy of my fellow men.
+
+No one certainly ever enjoyed the pleasures of composition more
+intensely than I. If I left the woods, the solemn music of the waving
+branches, and the majestic temple of nature, I sought the vast halls of
+the Castle, and looked over wide, fertile England, spread beneath our
+regal mount, and listened the while to inspiring strains of music. At
+such times solemn harmonies or spirit-stirring airs gave wings to my
+lagging thoughts, permitting them, methought, to penetrate the last
+veil of nature and her God, and to display the highest beauty in
+visible expression to the understandings of men. As the music went on,
+my ideas seemed to quit their mortal dwelling house; they shook their
+pinions and began a flight, sailing on the placid current of thought,
+filling the creation with new glory, and rousing sublime imagery that
+else had slept voiceless. Then I would hasten to my desk, weave the
+new-found web of mind in firm texture and brilliant colours, leaving
+the fashioning of the material to a calmer moment.
+
+But this account, which might as properly belong to a former period of
+my life as to the present moment, leads me far afield. It was the
+pleasure I took in literature, the discipline of mind I found arise
+from it, that made me eager to lead Perdita to the same pursuits. I
+began with light hand and gentle allurement; first exciting her
+curiosity, and then satisfying it in such a way as might occasion her,
+at the same time that she half forgot her sorrows in occupation, to
+find in the hours that succeeded a reaction of benevolence and
+toleration.
+
+Intellectual activity, though not directed towards books, had always
+been my sister’s characteristic. It had been displayed early in life,
+leading her out to solitary musing among her native mountains, causing
+her to form innumerous combinations from common objects, giving
+strength to her perceptions, and swiftness to their arrangement. Love
+had come, as the rod of the master-prophet, to swallow up every minor
+propensity. Love had doubled all her excellencies, and placed a diadem
+on her genius. Was she to cease to love? Take the colours and odour
+from the rose, change the sweet nutriment of mother’s milk to gall and
+poison; as easily might you wean Perdita from love. She grieved for the
+loss of Raymond with an anguish, that exiled all smile from her lips,
+and trenched sad lines on her brow of beauty. But each day seemed to
+change the nature of her suffering, and every succeeding hour forced
+her to alter (if so I may style it) the fashion of her soul’s mourning
+garb. For a time music was able to satisfy the cravings of her mental
+hunger, and her melancholy thoughts renewed themselves in each change
+of key, and varied with every alteration in the strain. My schooling
+first impelled her towards books; and, if music had been the food of
+sorrow, the productions of the wise became its medicine. The
+acquisition of unknown languages was too tedious an occupation, for one
+who referred every expression to the universe within, and read not, as
+many do, for the mere sake of filling up time; but who was still
+questioning herself and her author, moulding every idea in a thousand
+ways, ardently desirous for the discovery of truth in every sentence.
+She sought to improve her understanding; mechanically her heart and
+dispositions became soft and gentle under this benign discipline. After
+awhile she discovered, that amidst all her newly acquired knowledge,
+her own character, which formerly she fancied that she thoroughly
+understood, became the first in rank among the terrae incognitae, the
+pathless wilds of a country that had no chart. Erringly and strangely
+she began the task of self-examination with self-condemnation. And then
+again she became aware of her own excellencies, and began to balance
+with juster scales the shades of good and evil. I, who longed beyond
+words, to restore her to the happiness it was still in her power to
+enjoy, watched with anxiety the result of these internal proceedings.
+
+But man is a strange animal. We cannot calculate on his forces like
+that of an engine; and, though an impulse draw with a forty-horse power
+at what appears willing to yield to one, yet in contempt of calculation
+the movement is not effected. Neither grief, philosophy, nor love could
+make Perdita think with mildness of the dereliction of Raymond. She now
+took pleasure in my society; towards Idris she felt and displayed a
+full and affectionate sense of her worth—she restored to her child in
+abundant measure her tenderness and care. But I could discover, amidst
+all her repinings, deep resentment towards Raymond, and an unfading
+sense of injury, that plucked from me my hope, when I appeared nearest
+to its fulfilment. Among other painful restrictions, she has occasioned
+it to become a law among us, never to mention Raymond’s name before
+her. She refused to read any communications from Greece, desiring me
+only to mention when any arrived, and whether the wanderers were well.
+It was curious that even little Clara observed this law towards her
+mother. This lovely child was nearly eight years of age. Formerly she
+had been a light-hearted infant, fanciful, but gay and childish. After
+the departure of her father, thought became impressed on her young
+brow. Children, unadepts in language, seldom find words to express
+their thoughts, nor could we tell in what manner the late events had
+impressed themselves on her mind. But certainly she had made deep
+observations while she noted in silence the changes that passed around
+her. She never mentioned her father to Perdita, she appeared half
+afraid when she spoke of him to me, and though I tried to draw her out
+on the subject, and to dispel the gloom that hung about her ideas
+concerning him, I could not succeed. Yet each foreign post-day she
+watched for the arrival of letters—knew the post mark, and watched me
+as I read. I found her often poring over the article of Greek
+intelligence in the newspaper.
+
+There is no more painful sight than that of untimely care in children,
+and it was particularly observable in one whose disposition had
+heretofore been mirthful. Yet there was so much sweetness and docility
+about Clara, that your admiration was excited; and if the moods of mind
+are calculated to paint the cheek with beauty, and endow motions with
+grace, surely her contemplations must have been celestial; since every
+lineament was moulded into loveliness, and her motions were more
+harmonious than the elegant boundings of the fawns of her native
+forest. I sometimes expostulated with Perdita on the subject of her
+reserve; but she rejected my counsels, while her daughter’s sensibility
+excited in her a tenderness still more passionate.
+
+After the lapse of more than a year, Adrian returned from Greece.
+
+When our exiles had first arrived, a truce was in existence between the
+Turks and Greeks; a truce that was as sleep to the mortal frame, signal
+of renewed activity on waking. With the numerous soldiers of Asia, with
+all of warlike stores, ships, and military engines, that wealth and
+power could command, the Turks at once resolved to crush an enemy,
+which creeping on by degrees, had from their stronghold in the Morea,
+acquired Thrace and Macedonia, and had led their armies even to the
+gates of Constantinople, while their extensive commercial relations
+gave every European nation an interest in their success. Greece
+prepared for a vigorous resistance; it rose to a man; and the women,
+sacrificing their costly ornaments, accoutred their sons for the war,
+and bade them conquer or die with the spirit of the Spartan mother. The
+talents and courage of Raymond were highly esteemed among the Greeks.
+Born at Athens, that city claimed him for her own, and by giving him
+the command of her peculiar division in the army, the
+commander-in-chief only possessed superior power. He was numbered among
+her citizens, his name was added to the list of Grecian heroes. His
+judgment, activity, and consummate bravery, justified their choice. The
+Earl of Windsor became a volunteer under his friend.
+
+“It is well,” said Adrian, “to prate of war in these pleasant shades,
+and with much ill-spent oil make a show of joy, because many thousand
+of our fellow-creatures leave with pain this sweet air and natal earth.
+I shall not be suspected of being averse to the Greek cause; I know and
+feel its necessity; it is beyond every other a good cause. I have
+defended it with my sword, and was willing that my spirit should be
+breathed out in its defence; freedom is of more worth than life, and
+the Greeks do well to defend their privilege unto death. But let us not
+deceive ourselves. The Turks are men; each fibre, each limb is as
+feeling as our own, and every spasm, be it mental or bodily, is as
+truly felt in a Turk’s heart or brain, as in a Greek’s. The last action
+at which I was present was the taking of ——. The Turks resisted to the
+last, the garrison perished on the ramparts, and we entered by assault.
+Every breathing creature within the walls was massacred. Think you,
+amidst the shrieks of violated innocence and helpless infancy, I did
+not feel in every nerve the cry of a fellow being? They were men and
+women, the sufferers, before they were Mahometans, and when they rise
+turbanless from the grave, in what except their good or evil actions
+will they be the better or worse than we? Two soldiers contended for a
+girl, whose rich dress and extreme beauty excited the brutal appetites
+of these wretches, who, perhaps good men among their families, were
+changed by the fury of the moment into incarnated evils. An old man,
+with a silver beard, decrepid and bald, he might be her grandfather,
+interposed to save her; the battle axe of one of them clove his skull.
+I rushed to her defence, but rage made them blind and deaf; they did
+not distinguish my Christian garb or heed my words—words were blunt
+weapons then, for while war cried “havoc,” and murder gave fit echo,
+how could I—
+
+Turn back the tide of ills, relieving wrong
+With mild accost of soothing eloquence?
+
+
+One of the fellows, enraged at my interference, struck me with his
+bayonet in the side, and I fell senseless.
+
+“This wound will probably shorten my life, having shattered a frame,
+weak of itself. But I am content to die. I have learnt in Greece that
+one man, more or less, is of small import, while human bodies remain to
+fill up the thinned ranks of the soldiery; and that the identity of an
+individual may be overlooked, so that the muster roll contain its full
+numbers. All this has a different effect upon Raymond. He is able to
+contemplate the ideal of war, while I am sensible only to its
+realities. He is a soldier, a general. He can influence the
+blood-thirsty war-dogs, while I resist their propensities vainly. The
+cause is simple. Burke has said that, ‘in all bodies those who would
+lead, must also, in a considerable degree, follow.’ —I cannot follow;
+for I do not sympathize in their dreams of massacre and glory—to follow
+and to lead in such a career, is the natural bent of Raymond’s mind. He
+is always successful, and bids fair, at the same time that he acquires
+high name and station for himself, to secure liberty, probably extended
+empire, to the Greeks.”
+
+Perdita’s mind was not softened by this account. He, she thought, can
+be great and happy without me. Would that I also had a career! Would
+that I could freight some untried bark with all my hopes, energies, and
+desires, and launch it forth into the ocean of life—bound for some
+attainable point, with ambition or pleasure at the helm! But adverse
+winds detain me on shore; like Ulysses, I sit at the water’s edge and
+weep. But my nerveless hands can neither fell the trees, nor smooth the
+planks. Under the influence of these melancholy thoughts, she became
+more than ever in love with sorrow. Yet Adrian’s presence did some
+good; he at once broke through the law of silence observed concerning
+Raymond. At first she started from the unaccustomed sound; soon she got
+used to it and to love it, and she listened with avidity to the account
+of his achievements. Clara got rid also of her restraint; Adrian and
+she had been old playfellows; and now, as they walked or rode together,
+he yielded to her earnest entreaty, and repeated, for the hundredth
+time, some tale of her father’s bravery, munificence, or justice.
+
+Each vessel in the mean time brought exhilarating tidings from Greece.
+The presence of a friend in its armies and councils made us enter into
+the details with enthusiasm; and a short letter now and then from
+Raymond told us how he was engrossed by the interests of his adopted
+country. The Greeks were strongly attached to their commercial
+pursuits, and would have been satisfied with their present
+acquisitions, had not the Turks roused them by invasion. The patriots
+were victorious; a spirit of conquest was instilled; and already they
+looked on Constantinople as their own. Raymond rose perpetually in
+their estimation; but one man held a superior command to him in their
+armies. He was conspicuous for his conduct and choice of position in a
+battle fought in the plains of Thrace, on the banks of the Hebrus,
+which was to decide the fate of Islam. The Mahometans were defeated,
+and driven entirely from the country west of this river. The battle was
+sanguinary, the loss of the Turks apparently irreparable; the Greeks,
+in losing one man, forgot the nameless crowd strewed upon the bloody
+field, and they ceased to value themselves on a victory, which cost
+them— Raymond.
+
+At the battle of Makri he had led the charge of cavalry, and pursued
+the fugitives even to the banks of the Hebrus. His favourite horse was
+found grazing by the margin of the tranquil river. It became a question
+whether he had fallen among the unrecognized; but no broken ornament or
+stained trapping betrayed his fate. It was suspected that the Turks,
+finding themselves possessed of so illustrious a captive, resolved to
+satisfy their cruelty rather than their avarice, and fearful of the
+interference of England, had come to the determination of concealing
+for ever the cold-blooded murder of the soldier they most hated and
+feared in the squadrons of their enemy.
+
+Raymond was not forgotten in England. His abdication of the
+Protectorate had caused an unexampled sensation; and, when his
+magnificent and manly system was contrasted with the narrow views of
+succeeding politicians, the period of his elevation was referred to
+with sorrow. The perpetual recurrence of his name, joined to most
+honourable testimonials, in the Greek gazettes, kept up the interest he
+had excited. He seemed the favourite child of fortune, and his untimely
+loss eclipsed the world, and shewed forth the remnant of mankind with
+diminished lustre. They clung with eagerness to the hope held out that
+he might yet be alive. Their minister at Constantinople was urged to
+make the necessary perquisitions, and should his existence be
+ascertained, to demand his release. It was to be hoped that their
+efforts would succeed, and that though now a prisoner, the sport of
+cruelty and the mark of hate, he would be rescued from danger and
+restored to the happiness, power, and honour which he deserved.
+
+The effect of this intelligence upon my sister was striking. She never
+for a moment credited the story of his death; she resolved instantly to
+go to Greece. Reasoning and persuasion were thrown away upon her; she
+would endure no hindrance, no delay. It may be advanced for a truth,
+that, if argument or entreaty can turn any one from a desperate
+purpose, whose motive and end depends on the strength of the affections
+only, then it is right so to turn them, since their docility shews,
+that neither the motive nor the end were of sufficient force to bear
+them through the obstacles attendant on their undertaking. If, on the
+contrary, they are proof against expostulation, this very steadiness is
+an omen of success; and it becomes the duty of those who love them, to
+assist in smoothing the obstructions in their path. Such sentiments
+actuated our little circle. Finding Perdita immoveable, we consulted as
+to the best means of furthering her purpose. She could not go alone to
+a country where she had no friends, where she might arrive only to hear
+the dreadful news, which must overwhelm her with grief and remorse.
+Adrian, whose health had always been weak, now suffered considerable
+aggravation of suffering from the effects of his wound. Idris could not
+endure to leave him in this state; nor was it right either to quit or
+take with us a young family for a journey of this description. I
+resolved at length to accompany Perdita. The separation from my Idris
+was painful—but necessity reconciled us to it in some degree: necessity
+and the hope of saving Raymond, and restoring him again to happiness
+and Perdita. No delay was to ensue. Two days after we came to our
+determination, we set out for Portsmouth, and embarked. The season was
+May, the weather stormless; we were promised a prosperous voyage.
+Cherishing the most fervent hopes, embarked on the waste ocean, we saw
+with delight the receding shore of Britain, and on the wings of desire
+outspeeded our well filled sails towards the South. The light curling
+waves bore us onward, and old ocean smiled at the freight of love and
+hope committed to his charge; it stroked gently its tempestuous plains,
+and the path was smoothed for us. Day and night the wind right aft,
+gave steady impulse to our keel—nor did rough gale, or treacherous
+sand, or destructive rock interpose an obstacle between my sister and
+the land which was to restore her to her first beloved,
+
+Her dear heart’s confessor—a heart within that heart.
+
+
+
+
+VOL. II.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+During this voyage, when on calm evenings we conversed on deck,
+watching the glancing of the waves and the changeful appearances of the
+sky, I discovered the total revolution that the disasters of Raymond
+had wrought in the mind of my sister. Were they the same waters of
+love, which, lately cold and cutting as ice, repelling as that, now
+loosened from their frozen chains, flowed through the regions of her
+soul in gushing and grateful exuberance? She did not believe that he
+was dead, but she knew that he was in danger, and the hope of assisting
+in his liberation, and the idea of soothing by tenderness the ills that
+he might have undergone, elevated and harmonized the late jarring
+element of her being. I was not so sanguine as she as to the result of
+our voyage. She was not sanguine, but secure; and the expectation of
+seeing the lover she had banished, the husband, friend, heart’s
+companion from whom she had long been alienated, wrapt her senses in
+delight, her mind in placidity. It was beginning life again; it was
+leaving barren sands for an abode of fertile beauty; it was a harbour
+after a tempest, an opiate after sleepless nights, a happy waking from
+a terrible dream.
+
+Little Clara accompanied us; the poor child did not well understand
+what was going forward. She heard that we were bound for Greece, that
+she would see her father, and now, for the first time, she prattled of
+him to her mother.
+
+On landing at Athens we found difficulties encrease upon us: nor could
+the storied earth or balmy atmosphere inspire us with enthusiasm or
+pleasure, while the fate of Raymond was in jeopardy. No man had ever
+excited so strong an interest in the public mind; this was apparent
+even among the phlegmatic English, from whom he had long been absent.
+The Athenians had expected their hero to return in triumph; the women
+had taught their children to lisp his name joined to thanksgiving; his
+manly beauty, his courage, his devotion to their cause, made him appear
+in their eyes almost as one of the ancient deities of the soil
+descended from their native Olympus to defend them. When they spoke of
+his probable death and certain captivity, tears streamed from their
+eyes; even as the women of Syria sorrowed for Adonis, did the wives and
+mothers of Greece lament our English Raymond—Athens was a city of
+mourning.
+
+All these shews of despair struck Perdita with affright. With that
+sanguine but confused expectation, which desire engendered while she
+was at a distance from reality, she had formed an image in her mind of
+instantaneous change, when she should set her foot on Grecian shores.
+She fancied that Raymond would already be free, and that her tender
+attentions would come to entirely obliterate even the memory of his
+mischance. But his fate was still uncertain; she began to fear the
+worst, and to feel that her soul’s hope was cast on a chance that might
+prove a blank. The wife and lovely child of Lord Raymond became objects
+of intense interest in Athens. The gates of their abode were besieged,
+audible prayers were breathed for his restoration; all these
+circumstances added to the dismay and fears of Perdita.
+
+My exertions were unremitted: after a time I left Athens, and joined
+the army stationed at Kishan in Thrace. Bribery, threats, and intrigue,
+soon discovered the secret that Raymond was alive, a prisoner,
+suffering the most rigorous confinement and wanton cruelties. We put in
+movement every impulse of policy and money to redeem him from their
+hands.
+
+The impatience of my sister’s disposition now returned on her, awakened
+by repentance, sharpened by remorse. The very beauty of the Grecian
+climate, during the season of spring, added torture to her sensations.
+The unexampled loveliness of the flower-clad earth—the genial sunshine
+and grateful shade—the melody of the birds—the majesty of the woods—
+the splendour of the marble ruins—the clear effulgence of the stars by
+night—the combination of all that was exciting and voluptuous in this
+transcending land, by inspiring a quicker spirit of life and an added
+sensitiveness to every articulation of her frame, only gave edge to the
+poignancy of her grief. Each long hour was counted, and “_He suffers_”
+was the burthen of all her thoughts. She abstained from food; she lay
+on the bare earth, and, by such mimickry of his enforced torments,
+endeavoured to hold communion with his distant pain. I remembered in
+one of her harshest moments a quotation of mine had roused her to anger
+and disdain. “Perdita,” I had said, “some day you will discover that
+you have done wrong in again casting Raymond on the thorns of life.
+When disappointment has sullied his beauty, when a soldier’s hardships
+have bent his manly form, and loneliness made even triumph bitter to
+him, then you will repent; and regret for the irreparable change
+
+“will move
+        In hearts all rocky now, the late remorse of love.”[1]
+
+
+The stinging “remorse of love” now pierced her heart. She accused
+herself of his journey to Greece—his dangers—his imprisonment. She
+pictured to herself the anguish of his solitude; she remembered with
+what eager delight he had in former days made her the partner of his
+joyful hopes— with what grateful affection he received her sympathy in
+his cares. She called to mind how often he had declared that solitude
+was to him the greatest of all evils, and how death itself was to him
+more full of fear and pain when he pictured to himself a lonely grave.
+“My best girl,” he had said, “relieves me from these phantasies. United
+to her, cherished in her dear heart, never again shall I know the
+misery of finding myself alone. Even if I die before you, my Perdita,
+treasure up my ashes till yours may mingle with mine. It is a foolish
+sentiment for one who is not a materialist, yet, methinks, even in that
+dark cell, I may feel that my inanimate dust mingles with yours, and
+thus have a companion in decay.” In her resentful mood, these
+expressions had been remembered with acrimony and disdain; they visited
+her in her softened hour, taking sleep from her eyes, all hope of rest
+from her uneasy mind.
+
+Two months passed thus, when at last we obtained a promise of Raymond’s
+release. Confinement and hardship had undermined his health; the Turks
+feared an accomplishment of the threats of the English government, if
+he died under their hands; they looked upon his recovery as impossible;
+they delivered him up as a dying man, willingly making over to us the
+rites of burial.
+
+He came by sea from Constantinople to Athens. The wind, favourable to
+him, blew so strongly in shore, that we were unable, as we had at first
+intended, to meet him on his watery road. The watchtower of Athens was
+besieged by inquirers, each sail eagerly looked out for; till on the
+first of May the gallant frigate bore in sight, freighted with treasure
+more invaluable than the wealth which, piloted from Mexico, the vexed
+Pacific swallowed, or that was conveyed over its tranquil bosom to
+enrich the crown of Spain. At early dawn the vessel was discovered
+bearing in shore; it was conjectured that it would cast anchor about
+five miles from land. The news spread through Athens, and the whole
+city poured out at the gate of the Piraeus, down the roads, through the
+vineyards, the olive woods and plantations of fig-trees, towards the
+harbour. The noisy joy of the populace, the gaudy colours of their
+dress, the tumult of carriages and horses, the march of soldiers
+intermixed, the waving of banners and sound of martial music added to
+the high excitement of the scene; while round us reposed in solemn
+majesty the relics of antient time. To our right the Acropolis rose
+high, spectatress of a thousand changes, of ancient glory, Turkish
+slavery, and the restoration of dear-bought liberty; tombs and
+cenotaphs were strewed thick around, adorned by ever renewing
+vegetation; the mighty dead hovered over their monuments, and beheld in
+our enthusiasm and congregated numbers a renewal of the scenes in which
+they had been the actors. Perdita and Clara rode in a close carriage; I
+attended them on horseback. At length we arrived at the harbour; it was
+agitated by the outward swell of the sea; the beach, as far could be
+discerned, was covered by a moving multitude, which, urged by those
+behind toward the sea, again rushed back as the heavy waves with sullen
+roar burst close to them. I applied my glass, and could discern that
+the frigate had already cast anchor, fearful of the danger of
+approaching nearer to a lee shore: a boat was lowered; with a pang I
+saw that Raymond was unable to descend the vessel’s side; he was let
+down in a chair, and lay wrapt in cloaks at the bottom of the boat.
+
+I dismounted, and called to some sailors who were rowing about the
+harbour to pull up, and take me into their skiff; Perdita at the same
+moment alighted from her carriage—she seized my arm—“Take me with you,”
+she cried; she was trembling and pale; Clara clung to her—“You must
+not,” I said, “the sea is rough—he will soon be here—do you not see his
+boat?” The little bark to which I had beckoned had now pulled up;
+before I could stop her, Perdita, assisted by the sailors was in
+it—Clara followed her mother—a loud shout echoed from the crowd as we
+pulled out of the inner harbour; while my sister at the prow, had
+caught hold of one of the men who was using a glass, asking a thousand
+questions, careless of the spray that broke over her, deaf, sightless
+to all, except the little speck that, just visible on the top of the
+waves, evidently neared. We approached with all the speed six rowers
+could give; the orderly and picturesque dress of the soldiers on the
+beach, the sounds of exulting music, the stirring breeze and waving
+flags, the unchecked exclamations of the eager crowd, whose dark looks
+and foreign garb were purely eastern; the sight of temple-crowned rock,
+the white marble of the buildings glittering in the sun, and standing
+in bright relief against the dark ridge of lofty mountains beyond; the
+near roar of the sea, the splash of oars, and dash of spray, all
+steeped my soul in a delirium, unfelt, unimagined in the common course
+of common life. Trembling, I was unable to continue to look through the
+glass with which I had watched the motion of the crew, when the
+frigate’s boat had first been launched. We rapidly drew near, so that
+at length the number and forms of those within could be discerned; its
+dark sides grew big, and the splash of its oars became audible: I could
+distinguish the languid form of my friend, as he half raised himself at
+our approach.
+
+Perdita’s questions had ceased; she leaned on my arm, panting with
+emotions too acute for tears—our men pulled alongside the other boat.
+As a last effort, my sister mustered her strength, her firmness; she
+stepped from one boat to the other, and then with a shriek she sprang
+towards Raymond, knelt at his side, and glueing her lips to the hand
+she seized, her face shrouded by her long hair, gave herself up to
+tears.
+
+Raymond had somewhat raised himself at our approach, but it was with
+difficulty that he exerted himself even thus much. With sunken cheek
+and hollow eyes, pale and gaunt, how could I recognize the beloved of
+Perdita? I continued awe-struck and mute—he looked smilingly on the
+poor girl; the smile was his. A day of sun-shine falling on a dark
+valley, displays its before hidden characteristics; and now this smile,
+the same with which he first spoke love to Perdita, with which he had
+welcomed the protectorate, playing on his altered countenance, made me
+in my heart’s core feel that this was Raymond.
+
+He stretched out to me his other hand; I discerned the trace of
+manacles on his bared wrist. I heard my sister’s sobs, and thought,
+happy are women who can weep, and in a passionate caress disburthen the
+oppression of their feelings; shame and habitual restraint hold back a
+man. I would have given worlds to have acted as in days of boyhood,
+have strained him to my breast, pressed his hand to my lips, and wept
+over him; my swelling heart choked me; the natural current would not be
+checked; the big rebellious tears gathered in my eyes; I turned aside,
+and they dropped in the sea—they came fast and faster;—yet I could
+hardly be ashamed, for I saw that the rough sailors were not unmoved,
+and Raymond’s eyes alone were dry from among our crew. He lay in that
+blessed calm which convalescence always induces, enjoying in secure
+tranquillity his liberty and re-union with her whom he adored. Perdita
+at length subdued her burst of passion, and rose, —she looked round for
+Clara; the child frightened, not recognizing her father, and neglected
+by us, had crept to the other end of the boat; she came at her mother’s
+call. Perdita presented her to Raymond; her first words were: “Beloved,
+embrace our child!”
+
+“Come hither, sweet one,” said her father, “do you not know me?” she
+knew his voice, and cast herself in his arms with half bashful but
+uncontrollable emotion.
+
+Perceiving the weakness of Raymond, I was afraid of ill consequences
+from the pressure of the crowd on his landing. But they were awed as I
+had been, at the change of his appearance. The music died away, the
+shouts abruptly ended; the soldiers had cleared a space in which a
+carriage was drawn up. He was placed in it; Perdita and Clara entered
+with him, and his escort closed round it; a hollow murmur, akin to the
+roaring of the near waves, went through the multitude; they fell back
+as the carriage advanced, and fearful of injuring him they had come to
+welcome, by loud testimonies of joy, they satisfied themselves with
+bending in a low salaam as the carriage passed; it went slowly along
+the road of the Piraeus; passed by antique temple and heroic tomb,
+beneath the craggy rock of the citadel. The sound of the waves was left
+behind; that of the multitude continued at intervals, supressed and
+hoarse; and though, in the city, the houses, churches, and public
+buildings were decorated with tapestry and banners—though the soldiery
+lined the streets, and the inhabitants in thousands were assembled to
+give him hail, the same solemn silence prevailed, the soldiery
+presented arms, the banners vailed, many a white hand waved a streamer,
+and vainly sought to discern the hero in the vehicle, which, closed and
+encompassed by the city guards, drew him to the palace allotted for his
+abode.
+
+Raymond was weak and exhausted, yet the interest he perceived to be
+excited on his account, filled him with proud pleasure. He was nearly
+killed with kindness. It is true, the populace retained themselves; but
+there arose a perpetual hum and bustle from the throng round the
+palace, which added to the noise of fireworks, the frequent explosion
+of arms, the tramp to and fro of horsemen and carriages, to which
+effervescence he was the focus, retarded his recovery. So we retired
+awhile to Eleusis, and here rest and tender care added each day to the
+strength of our invalid. The zealous attention of Perdita claimed the
+first rank in the causes which induced his rapid recovery; but the
+second was surely the delight he felt in the affection and good will of
+the Greeks. We are said to love much those whom we greatly benefit.
+Raymond had fought and conquered for the Athenians; he had suffered, on
+their account, peril, imprisonment, and hardship; their gratitude
+affected him deeply, and he inly vowed to unite his fate for ever to
+that of a people so enthusiastically devoted to him.
+
+Social feeling and sympathy constituted a marked feature in my
+disposition. In early youth, the living drama acted around me, drew me
+heart and soul into its vortex. I was now conscious of a change. I
+loved, I hoped, I enjoyed; but there was something besides this. I was
+inquisitive as to the internal principles of action of those around me:
+anxious to read their thoughts justly, and for ever occupied in
+divining their inmost mind. All events, at the same time that they
+deeply interested me, arranged themselves in pictures before me. I gave
+the right place to every personage in the groupe, the just balance to
+every sentiment. This undercurrent of thought, often soothed me amidst
+distress, and even agony. It gave ideality to that, from which, taken
+in naked truth, the soul would have revolted: it bestowed pictorial
+colours on misery and disease, and not unfrequently relieved me from
+despair in deplorable changes. This faculty, or instinct, was now
+rouzed. I watched the re-awakened devotion of my sister; Clara’s timid,
+but concentrated admiration of her father, and Raymond’s appetite for
+renown, and sensitiveness to the demonstrations of affection of the
+Athenians. Attentively perusing this animated volume, I was the less
+surprised at the tale I read on the new-turned page.
+
+The Turkish army were at this time besieging Rodosto; and the Greeks,
+hastening their preparations, and sending each day reinforcements, were
+on the eve of forcing the enemy to battle. Each people looked on the
+coming struggle as that which would be to a great degree decisive; as,
+in case of victory, the next step would be the siege of Constantinople
+by the Greeks. Raymond, being somewhat recovered, prepared to re-assume
+his command in the army.
+
+Perdita did not oppose herself to his determination. She only
+stipulated to be permitted to accompany him. She had set down no rule
+of conduct for herself; but for her life she could not have opposed his
+slightest wish, or do other than acquiesce cheerfully in all his
+projects. One word, in truth, had alarmed her more than battles or
+sieges, during which she trusted Raymond’s high command would exempt
+him from danger. That word, as yet it was not more to her, was PLAGUE.
+This enemy to the human race had begun early in June to raise its
+serpent-head on the shores of the Nile; parts of Asia, not usually
+subject to this evil, were infected. It was in Constantinople; but as
+each year that city experienced a like visitation, small attention was
+paid to those accounts which declared more people to have died there
+already, than usually made up the accustomed prey of the whole of the
+hotter months. However it might be, neither plague nor war could
+prevent Perdita from following her lord, or induce her to utter one
+objection to the plans which he proposed. To be near him, to be loved
+by him, to feel him again her own, was the limit of her desires. The
+object of her life was to do him pleasure: it had been so before, but
+with a difference. In past times, without thought or foresight she had
+made him happy, being so herself, and in any question of choice,
+consulted her own wishes, as being one with his. Now she sedulously put
+herself out of the question, sacrificing even her anxiety for his
+health and welfare to her resolve not to oppose any of his desires.
+Love of the Greek people, appetite for glory, and hatred of the
+barbarian government under which he had suffered even to the approach
+of death, stimulated him. He wished to repay the kindness of the
+Athenians, to keep alive the splendid associations connected with his
+name, and to eradicate from Europe a power which, while every other
+nation advanced in civilization, stood still, a monument of antique
+barbarism. Having effected the reunion of Raymond and Perdita, I was
+eager to return to England; but his earnest request, added to awakening
+curiosity, and an indefinable anxiety to behold the catastrophe, now
+apparently at hand, in the long drawn history of Grecian and Turkish
+warfare, induced me to consent to prolong until the autumn, the period
+of my residence in Greece.
+
+As soon as the health of Raymond was sufficiently re-established, he
+prepared to join the Grecian camp, near Kishan, a town of some
+importance, situated to the east of the Hebrus; in which Perdita and
+Clara were to remain until the event of the expected battle. We quitted
+Athens on the 2nd of June. Raymond had recovered from the gaunt and
+pallid looks of fever. If I no longer saw the fresh glow of youth on
+his matured countenance, if care had besieged his brow,
+
+“And dug deep trenches in his beauty’s field,”[2]
+
+
+if his hair, slightly mingled with grey, and his look, considerate even
+in its eagerness, gave signs of added years and past sufferings, yet
+there was something irresistibly affecting in the sight of one, lately
+snatched from the grave, renewing his career, untamed by sickness or
+disaster. The Athenians saw in him, not as heretofore, the heroic boy
+or desperate man, who was ready to die for them; but the prudent
+commander, who for their sakes was careful of his life, and could make
+his own warrior-propensities second to the scheme of conduct policy
+might point out.
+
+All Athens accompanied us for several miles. When he had landed a month
+ago, the noisy populace had been hushed by sorrow and fear; but this
+was a festival day to all. The air resounded with their shouts; their
+picturesque costume, and the gay colours of which it was composed,
+flaunted in the sunshine; their eager gestures and rapid utterance
+accorded with their wild appearance. Raymond was the theme of every
+tongue, the hope of each wife, mother or betrothed bride, whose
+husband, child, or lover, making a part of the Greek army, were to be
+conducted to victory by him.
+
+Notwithstanding the hazardous object of our journey, it was full of
+romantic interest, as we passed through the vallies, and over the
+hills, of this divine country. Raymond was inspirited by the intense
+sensations of recovered health; he felt that in being general of the
+Athenians, he filled a post worthy of his ambition; and, in his hope of
+the conquest of Constantinople, he counted on an event which would be
+as a landmark in the waste of ages, an exploit unequalled in the annals
+of man; when a city of grand historic association, the beauty of whose
+site was the wonder of the world, which for many hundred years had been
+the strong hold of the Moslems, should be rescued from slavery and
+barbarism, and restored to a people illustrious for genius,
+civilization, and a spirit of liberty. Perdita rested on his restored
+society, on his love, his hopes and fame, even as a Sybarite on a
+luxurious couch; every thought was transport, each emotion bathed as it
+were in a congenial and balmy element.
+
+We arrived at Kishan on the 7th of July. The weather during our journey
+had been serene. Each day, before dawn, we left our night’s encampment,
+and watched the shadows as they retreated from hill and valley, and the
+golden splendour of the sun’s approach. The accompanying soldiers
+received, with national vivacity, enthusiastic pleasure from the sight
+of beautiful nature. The uprising of the star of day was hailed by
+triumphant strains, while the birds, heard by snatches, filled up the
+intervals of the music. At noon, we pitched our tents in some shady
+valley, or embowering wood among the mountains, while a stream
+prattling over pebbles induced grateful sleep. Our evening march, more
+calm, was yet more delightful than the morning restlessness of spirit.
+If the band played, involuntarily they chose airs of moderated passion;
+the farewell of love, or lament at absence, was followed and closed by
+some solemn hymn, which harmonized with the tranquil loveliness of
+evening, and elevated the soul to grand and religious thought. Often
+all sounds were suspended, that we might listen to the nightingale,
+while the fire-flies danced in bright measure, and the soft cooing of
+the aziolo spoke of fair weather to the travellers. Did we pass a
+valley? Soft shades encompassed us, and rocks tinged with beauteous
+hues. If we traversed a mountain, Greece, a living map, was spread
+beneath, her renowned pinnacles cleaving the ether; her rivers
+threading in silver line the fertile land. Afraid almost to breathe, we
+English travellers surveyed with extasy this splendid landscape, so
+different from the sober hues and melancholy graces of our native
+scenery. When we quitted Macedonia, the fertile but low plains of
+Thrace afforded fewer beauties; yet our journey continued to be
+interesting. An advanced guard gave information of our approach, and
+the country people were quickly in motion to do honour to Lord Raymond.
+The villages were decorated by triumphal arches of greenery by day, and
+lamps by night; tapestry waved from the windows, the ground was strewed
+with flowers, and the name of Raymond, joined to that of Greece, was
+echoed in the _Evive_ of the peasant crowd.
+
+When we arrived at Kishan, we learnt, that on hearing of the advance of
+Lord Raymond and his detachment, the Turkish army had retreated from
+Rodosto; but meeting with a reinforcement, they had re-trod their
+steps. In the meantime, Argyropylo, the Greek commander-in-chief, had
+advanced, so as to be between the Turks and Rodosto; a battle, it was
+said, was inevitable. Perdita and her child were to remain at Kishan.
+Raymond asked me, if I would not continue with them. “Now by the fells
+of Cumberland,” I cried, “by all of the vagabond and poacher that
+appertains to me, I will stand at your side, draw my sword in the Greek
+cause, and be hailed as a victor along with you!”
+
+All the plain, from Kishan to Rodosto, a distance of sixteen leagues,
+was alive with troops, or with the camp-followers, all in motion at the
+approach of a battle. The small garrisons were drawn from the various
+towns and fortresses, and went to swell the main army. We met baggage
+waggons, and many females of high and low rank returning to Fairy or
+Kishan, there to wait the issue of the expected day. When we arrived at
+Rodosto, we found that the field had been taken, and the scheme of the
+battle arranged. The sound of firing, early on the following morning,
+informed us that advanced posts of the armies were engaged. Regiment
+after regiment advanced, their colours flying and bands playing. They
+planted the cannon on the tumuli, sole elevations in this level
+country, and formed themselves into column and hollow square; while the
+pioneers threw up small mounds for their protection.
+
+These then were the preparations for a battle, nay, the battle itself;
+far different from any thing the imagination had pictured. We read of
+centre and wing in Greek and Roman history; we fancy a spot, plain as a
+table, and soldiers small as chessmen; and drawn forth, so that the
+most ignorant of the game can discover science and order in the
+disposition of the forces. When I came to the reality, and saw
+regiments file off to the left far out of sight, fields intervening
+between the battalions, but a few troops sufficiently near me to
+observe their motions, I gave up all idea of understanding, even of
+seeing a battle, but attaching myself to Raymond attended with intense
+interest to his actions. He shewed himself collected, gallant and
+imperial; his commands were prompt, his intuition of the events of the
+day to me miraculous. In the mean time the cannon roared; the music
+lifted up its enlivening voice at intervals; and we on the highest of
+the mounds I mentioned, too far off to observe the fallen sheaves which
+death gathered into his storehouse, beheld the regiments, now lost in
+smoke, now banners and staves peering above the cloud, while shout and
+clamour drowned every sound.
+
+Early in the day, Argyropylo was wounded dangerously, and Raymond
+assumed the command of the whole army. He made few remarks, till, on
+observing through his glass the sequel of an order he had given, his
+face, clouded for awhile with doubt, became radiant. “The day is ours,”
+he cried, “the Turks fly from the bayonet.” And then swiftly he
+dispatched his aides-de-camp to command the horse to fall on the routed
+enemy. The defeat became total; the cannon ceased to roar; the infantry
+rallied, and horse pursued the flying Turks along the dreary plain; the
+staff of Raymond was dispersed in various directions, to make
+observations, and bear commands. Even I was dispatched to a distant
+part of the field.
+
+The ground on which the battle was fought, was a level plain—so level,
+that from the tumuli you saw the waving line of mountains on the
+wide-stretched horizon; yet the intervening space was unvaried by the
+least irregularity, save such undulations as resembled the waves of the
+sea. The whole of this part of Thrace had been so long a scene of
+contest, that it had remained uncultivated, and presented a dreary,
+barren appearance. The order I had received, was to make an observation
+of the direction which a detachment of the enemy might have taken, from
+a northern tumulus; the whole Turkish army, followed by the Greek, had
+poured eastward; none but the dead remained in the direction of my
+side. From the top of the mound, I looked far round—all was silent and
+deserted.
+
+The last beams of the nearly sunken sun shot up from behind the far
+summit of Mount Athos; the sea of Marmora still glittered beneath its
+rays, while the Asiatic coast beyond was half hid in a haze of low
+cloud. Many a casque, and bayonet, and sword, fallen from unnerved
+arms, reflected the departing ray; they lay scattered far and near.
+From the east, a band of ravens, old inhabitants of the Turkish
+cemeteries, came sailing along towards their harvest; the sun
+disappeared. This hour, melancholy yet sweet, has always seemed to me
+the time when we are most naturally led to commune with higher powers;
+our mortal sternness departs, and gentle complacency invests the soul.
+But now, in the midst of the dying and the dead, how could a thought of
+heaven or a sensation of tranquillity possess one of the murderers?
+During the busy day, my mind had yielded itself a willing slave to the
+state of things presented to it by its fellow-beings; historical
+association, hatred of the foe, and military enthusiasm had held
+dominion over me. Now, I looked on the evening star, as softly and
+calmly it hung pendulous in the orange hues of sunset. I turned to the
+corse-strewn earth; and felt ashamed of my species. So perhaps were the
+placid skies; for they quickly veiled themselves in mist, and in this
+change assisted the swift disappearance of twilight usual in the south;
+heavy masses of cloud floated up from the south east, and red and
+turbid lightning shot from their dark edges; the rushing wind disturbed
+the garments of the dead, and was chilled as it passed over their icy
+forms. Darkness gathered round; the objects about me became indistinct,
+I descended from my station, and with difficulty guided my horse, so as
+to avoid the slain.
+
+Suddenly I heard a piercing shriek; a form seemed to rise from the
+earth; it flew swiftly towards me, sinking to the ground again as it
+drew near. All this passed so suddenly, that I with difficulty reined
+in my horse, so that it should not trample on the prostrate being. The
+dress of this person was that of a soldier, but the bared neck and
+arms, and the continued shrieks discovered a female thus disguised. I
+dismounted to her aid, while she, with heavy groans, and her hand
+placed on her side, resisted my attempt to lead her on. In the hurry of
+the moment I forgot that I was in Greece, and in my native accents
+endeavoured to soothe the sufferer. With wild and terrific exclamations
+did the lost, dying Evadne (for it was she) recognize the language of
+her lover; pain and fever from her wound had deranged her intellects,
+while her piteous cries and feeble efforts to escape, penetrated me
+with compassion. In wild delirium she called upon the name of Raymond;
+she exclaimed that I was keeping him from her, while the Turks with
+fearful instruments of torture were about to take his life. Then again
+she sadly lamented her hard fate; that a woman, with a woman’s heart
+and sensibility, should be driven by hopeless love and vacant hopes to
+take up the trade of arms, and suffer beyond the endurance of man
+privation, labour, and pain—the while her dry, hot hand pressed mine,
+and her brow and lips burned with consuming fire.
+
+As her strength grew less, I lifted her from the ground; her emaciated
+form hung over my arm, her sunken cheek rested on my breast; in a
+sepulchral voice she murmured:—“This is the end of love!—Yet not the
+end!”— and frenzy lent her strength as she cast her arm up to heaven:
+“there is the end! there we meet again. Many living deaths have I borne
+for thee, O Raymond, and now I expire, thy victim!—By my death I
+purchase thee— lo! the instruments of war, fire, the plague are my
+servitors. I dared, I conquered them all, till now! I have sold myself
+to death, with the sole condition that thou shouldst follow me—Fire,
+and war, and plague, unite for thy destruction—O my Raymond, there is
+no safety for thee!”
+
+With an heavy heart I listened to the changes of her delirium; I made
+her a bed of cloaks; her violence decreased and a clammy dew stood on
+her brow as the paleness of death succeeded to the crimson of fever, I
+placed her on the cloaks. She continued to rave of her speedy meeting
+with her beloved in the grave, of his death nigh at hand; sometimes she
+solemnly declared that he was summoned; sometimes she bewailed his hard
+destiny. Her voice grew feebler, her speech interrupted; a few
+convulsive movements, and her muscles relaxed, the limbs fell, no more
+to be sustained, one deep sigh, and life was gone.
+
+I bore her from the near neighbourhood of the dead; wrapt in cloaks, I
+placed her beneath a tree. Once more I looked on her altered face; the
+last time I saw her she was eighteen; beautiful as poet’s vision,
+splendid as a Sultana of the East—Twelve years had past; twelve years
+of change, sorrow and hardship; her brilliant complexion had become
+worn and dark, her limbs had lost the roundness of youth and womanhood;
+her eyes had sunk deep,
+
+        Crushed and o’erworn,
+The hours had drained her blood, and filled her brow
+With lines and wrinkles.
+
+
+With shuddering horror I veiled this monument of human passion and
+human misery; I heaped over her all of flags and heavy accoutrements I
+could find, to guard her from birds and beasts of prey, until I could
+bestow on her a fitting grave. Sadly and slowly I stemmed my course
+from among the heaps of slain, and, guided by the twinkling lights of
+the town, at length reached Rodosto.
+
+ [1] Lord Byron’s Fourth Canto of Childe Harolde.
+
+
+ [2] Shakspeare’s Sonnets.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+On my arrival, I found that an order had already gone forth for the
+army to proceed immediately towards Constantinople; and the troops
+which had suffered least in the battle were already on their way. The
+town was full of tumult. The wound, and consequent inability of
+Argyropylo, caused Raymond to be the first in command. He rode through
+the town, visiting the wounded, and giving such orders as were
+necessary for the siege he meditated. Early in the morning the whole
+army was in motion. In the hurry I could hardly find an opportunity to
+bestow the last offices on Evadne. Attended only by my servant, I dug a
+deep grave for her at the foot of the tree, and without disturbing her
+warrior shroud, I placed her in it, heaping stones upon the grave. The
+dazzling sun and glare of daylight, deprived the scene of solemnity;
+from Evadne’s low tomb, I joined Raymond and his staff, now on their
+way to the Golden City.
+
+Constantinople was invested, trenches dug, and advances made. The whole
+Greek fleet blockaded it by sea; on land from the river Kyat Kbanah,
+near the Sweet Waters, to the Tower of Marmora, on the shores of the
+Propontis, along the whole line of the ancient walls, the trenches of
+the siege were drawn. We already possessed Pera; the Golden Horn
+itself, the city, bastioned by the sea, and the ivy-mantled walls of
+the Greek emperors was all of Europe that the Mahometans could call
+theirs. Our army looked on her as certain prey. They counted the
+garrison; it was impossible that it should be relieved; each sally was
+a victory; for, even when the Turks were triumphant, the loss of men
+they sustained was an irreparable injury. I rode one morning with
+Raymond to the lofty mound, not far from the Top Kapou, (Cannon-gate),
+on which Mahmoud planted his standard, and first saw the city. Still
+the same lofty domes and minarets towered above the verdurous walls,
+where Constantine had died, and the Turk had entered the city. The
+plain around was interspersed with cemeteries, Turk, Greek, and
+Armenian, with their growth of cypress trees; and other woods of more
+cheerful aspect, diversified the scene. Among them the Greek army was
+encamped, and their squadrons moved to and fro—now in regular march,
+now in swift career.
+
+Raymond’s eyes were fixed on the city. “I have counted the hours of her
+life,” said he; “one month, and she falls. Remain with me till then;
+wait till you see the cross on St. Sophia; and then return to your
+peaceful glades.”
+
+“You then,” I asked, “still remain in Greece?”
+
+“Assuredly,” replied Raymond. “Yet Lionel, when I say this, believe me
+I look back with regret to our tranquil life at Windsor. I am but half
+a soldier; I love the renown, but not the trade of war. Before the
+battle of Rodosto I was full of hope and spirit; to conquer there, and
+afterwards to take Constantinople, was the hope, the bourne, the
+fulfilment of my ambition. This enthusiasm is now spent, I know not
+why; I seem to myself to be entering a darksome gulph; the ardent
+spirit of the army is irksome to me, the rapture of triumph null.”
+
+He paused, and was lost in thought. His serious mien recalled, by some
+association, the half-forgotten Evadne to my mind, and I seized this
+opportunity to make enquiries from him concerning her strange lot. I
+asked him, if he had ever seen among the troops any one resembling her;
+if since he had returned to Greece he had heard of her?
+
+He started at her name,—he looked uneasily on me. “Even so,” he cried,
+“I knew you would speak of her. Long, long I had forgotten her. Since
+our encampment here, she daily, hourly visits my thoughts. When I am
+addressed, her name is the sound I expect: in every communication, I
+imagine that she will form a part. At length you have broken the spell;
+tell me what you know of her.”
+
+I related my meeting with her; the story of her death was told and
+re-told. With painful earnestness he questioned me concerning her
+prophecies with regard to him. I treated them as the ravings of a
+maniac. “No, no,” he said, “do not deceive yourself,—me you cannot. She
+has said nothing but what I knew before—though this is confirmation.
+Fire, the sword, and plague! They may all be found in yonder city; on
+my head alone may they fall!”
+
+From this day Raymond’s melancholy increased. He secluded himself as
+much as the duties of his station permitted. When in company, sadness
+would in spite of every effort steal over his features, and he sat
+absent and mute among the busy crowd that thronged about him. Perdita
+rejoined him, and before her he forced himself to appear cheerful, for
+she, even as a mirror, changed as he changed, and if he were silent and
+anxious, she solicitously inquired concerning, and endeavoured to
+remove the cause of his seriousness. She resided at the palace of Sweet
+Waters, a summer seraglio of the Sultan; the beauty of the surrounding
+scenery, undefiled by war, and the freshness of the river, made this
+spot doubly delightful. Raymond felt no relief, received no pleasure
+from any show of heaven or earth. He often left Perdita, to wander in
+the grounds alone; or in a light shallop he floated idly on the pure
+waters, musing deeply. Sometimes I joined him; at such times his
+countenance was invariably solemn, his air dejected. He seemed relieved
+on seeing me, and would talk with some degree of interest on the
+affairs of the day. There was evidently something behind all this; yet,
+when he appeared about to speak of that which was nearest his heart, he
+would abruptly turn away, and with a sigh endeavour to deliver the
+painful idea to the winds.
+
+It had often occurred, that, when, as I said, Raymond quitted Perdita’s
+drawing-room, Clara came up to me, and gently drawing me aside, said,
+“Papa is gone; shall we go to him? I dare say he will be glad to see
+you.” And, as accident permitted, I complied with or refused her
+request. One evening a numerous assembly of Greek chieftains were
+gathered together in the palace. The intriguing Palli, the accomplished
+Karazza, the warlike Ypsilanti, were among the principal. They talked
+of the events of the day; the skirmish at noon; the diminished numbers
+of the Infidels; their defeat and flight: they contemplated, after a
+short interval of time, the capture of the Golden City. They
+endeavoured to picture forth what would then happen, and spoke in lofty
+terms of the prosperity of Greece, when Constantinople should become
+its capital. The conversation then reverted to Asiatic intelligence,
+and the ravages the plague made in its chief cities; conjectures were
+hazarded as to the progress that disease might have made in the
+besieged city.
+
+Raymond had joined in the former part of the discussion. In lively
+terms he demonstrated the extremities to which Constantinople was
+reduced; the wasted and haggard, though ferocious appearance of the
+troops; famine and pestilence was at work for them, he observed, and
+the infidels would soon be obliged to take refuge in their only
+hope—submission. Suddenly in the midst of his harangue he broke off, as
+if stung by some painful thought; he rose uneasily, and I perceived him
+at length quit the hall, and through the long corridor seek the open
+air. He did not return; and soon Clara crept round to me, making the
+accustomed invitation. I consented to her request, and taking her
+little hand, followed Raymond. We found him just about to embark in his
+boat, and he readily agreed to receive us as companions. After the
+heats of the day, the cooling land-breeze ruffled the river, and filled
+our little sail. The city looked dark to the south, while numerous
+lights along the near shores, and the beautiful aspect of the banks
+reposing in placid night, the waters keenly reflecting the heavenly
+lights, gave to this beauteous river a dower of loveliness that might
+have characterized a retreat in Paradise. Our single boatman attended
+to the sail; Raymond steered; Clara sat at his feet, clasping his knees
+with her arms, and laying her head on them. Raymond began the
+conversation somewhat abruptly.
+
+“This, my friend, is probably the last time we shall have an
+opportunity of conversing freely; my plans are now in full operation,
+and my time will become more and more occupied. Besides, I wish at once
+to tell you my wishes and expectations, and then never again to revert
+to so painful a subject. First, I must thank you, Lionel, for having
+remained here at my request. Vanity first prompted me to ask you:
+vanity, I call it; yet even in this I see the hand of fate—your
+presence will soon be necessary; you will become the last resource of
+Perdita, her protector and consoler. You will take her back to
+Windsor.”—
+
+“Not without you,” I said. “You do not mean to separate again?”
+
+“Do not deceive yourself,” replied Raymond, “the separation at hand is
+one over which I have no control; most near at hand is it; the days are
+already counted. May I trust you? For many days I have longed to
+disclose the mysterious presentiments that weigh on me, although I fear
+that you will ridicule them. Yet do not, my gentle friend; for, all
+childish and unwise as they are, they have become a part of me, and I
+dare not expect to shake them off.
+
+“Yet how can I expect you to sympathize with me? You are of this world;
+I am not. You hold forth your hand; it is even as a part of yourself;
+and you do not yet divide the feeling of identity from the mortal form
+that shapes forth Lionel. How then can you understand me? Earth is to
+me a tomb, the firmament a vault, shrouding mere corruption. Time is no
+more, for I have stepped within the threshold of eternity; each man I
+meet appears a corse, which will soon be deserted of its animating
+spark, on the eve of decay and corruption.
+
+Cada piedra un piramide levanta,
+y cada flor costruye un monumento,
+cada edificio es un sepulcro altivo,
+cada soldado un esqueleto vivo.”[3]
+
+
+His accent was mournful,—he sighed deeply. “A few months ago,” he
+continued, “I was thought to be dying; but life was strong within me.
+My affections were human; hope and love were the day-stars of my life.
+Now— they dream that the brows of the conqueror of the infidel faith
+are about to be encircled by triumphant laurel; they talk of honourable
+reward, of title, power, and wealth—all I ask of Greece is a grave. Let
+them raise a mound above my lifeless body, which may stand even when
+the dome of St. Sophia has fallen.
+
+“Wherefore do I feel thus? At Rodosto I was full of hope; but when
+first I saw Constantinople, that feeling, with every other joyful one,
+departed. The last words of Evadne were the seal upon the warrant of my
+death. Yet I do not pretend to account for my mood by any particular
+event. All I can say is, that it is so. The plague I am told is in
+Constantinople, perhaps I have imbibed its effluvia—perhaps disease is
+the real cause of my prognostications. It matters little why or
+wherefore I am affected, no power can avert the stroke, and the shadow
+of Fate’s uplifted hand already darkens me.
+
+“To you, Lionel, I entrust your sister and her child. Never mention to
+her the fatal name of Evadne. She would doubly sorrow over the strange
+link that enchains me to her, making my spirit obey her dying voice,
+following her, as it is about to do, to the unknown country.”
+
+I listened to him with wonder; but that his sad demeanour and solemn
+utterance assured me of the truth and intensity of his feelings, I
+should with light derision have attempted to dissipate his fears.
+Whatever I was about to reply, was interrupted by the powerful emotions
+of Clara. Raymond had spoken, thoughtless of her presence, and she,
+poor child, heard with terror and faith the prophecy of his death. Her
+father was moved by her violent grief; he took her in his arms and
+soothed her, but his very soothings were solemn and fearful. “Weep not,
+sweet child,” said he, “the coming death of one you have hardly known.
+I may die, but in death I can never forget or desert my own Clara. In
+after sorrow or joy, believe that you father’s spirit is near, to save
+or sympathize with you. Be proud of me, and cherish your infant
+remembrance of me. Thus, sweetest, I shall not appear to die. One thing
+you must promise,—not to speak to any one but your uncle, of the
+conversation you have just overheard. When I am gone, you will console
+your mother, and tell her that death was only bitter because it divided
+me from her; that my last thoughts will be spent on her. But while I
+live, promise not to betray me; promise, my child.”
+
+With faltering accents Clara promised, while she still clung to her
+father in a transport of sorrow. Soon we returned to shore, and I
+endeavoured to obviate the impression made on the child’s mind, by
+treating Raymond’s fears lightly. We heard no more of them; for, as he
+had said, the siege, now drawing to a conclusion, became paramount in
+interest, engaging all his time and attention.
+
+The empire of the Mahometans in Europe was at its close. The Greek
+fleet blockading every port of Stamboul, prevented the arrival of
+succour from Asia; all egress on the side towards land had become
+impracticable, except to such desperate sallies, as reduced the numbers
+of the enemy without making any impression on our lines. The garrison
+was now so much diminished, that it was evident that the city could
+easily have been carried by storm; but both humanity and policy
+dictated a slower mode of proceeding. We could hardly doubt that, if
+pursued to the utmost, its palaces, its temples and store of wealth
+would be destroyed in the fury of contending triumph and defeat.
+Already the defenceless citizens had suffered through the barbarity of
+the Janisaries; and, in time of storm, tumult and massacre, beauty,
+infancy and decrepitude, would have alike been sacrificed to the brutal
+ferocity of the soldiers. Famine and blockade were certain means of
+conquest; and on these we founded our hopes of victory.
+
+Each day the soldiers of the garrison assaulted our advanced posts, and
+impeded the accomplishment of our works. Fire-boats were launched from
+the various ports, while our troops sometimes recoiled from the devoted
+courage of men who did not seek to live, but to sell their lives
+dearly. These contests were aggravated by the season: they took place
+during summer, when the southern Asiatic wind came laden with
+intolerable heat, when the streams were dried up in their shallow beds,
+and the vast basin of the sea appeared to glow under the unmitigated
+rays of the solsticial sun. Nor did night refresh the earth. Dew was
+denied; herbage and flowers there were none; the very trees drooped;
+and summer assumed the blighted appearance of winter, as it went forth
+in silence and flame to abridge the means of sustenance to man. In vain
+did the eye strive to find the wreck of some northern cloud in the
+stainless empyrean, which might bring hope of change and moisture to
+the oppressive and windless atmosphere. All was serene, burning,
+annihilating. We the besiegers were in the comparison little affected
+by these evils. The woods around afforded us shade,—the river secured
+to us a constant supply of water; nay, detachments were employed in
+furnishing the army with ice, which had been laid up on Haemus, and
+Athos, and the mountains of Macedonia, while cooling fruits and
+wholesome food renovated the strength of the labourers, and made us
+bear with less impatience the weight of the unrefreshing air. But in
+the city things wore a different face. The sun’s rays were refracted
+from the pavement and buildings—the stoppage of the public
+fountains—the bad quality of the food, and scarcity even of that,
+produced a state of suffering, which was aggravated by the scourge of
+disease; while the garrison arrogated every superfluity to themselves,
+adding by waste and riot to the necessary evils of the time. Still they
+would not capitulate.
+
+Suddenly the system of warfare was changed. We experienced no more
+assaults; and by night and day we continued our labours unimpeded.
+Stranger still, when the troops advanced near the city, the walls were
+vacant, and no cannon was pointed against the intruders. When these
+circumstances were reported to Raymond, he caused minute observations
+to be made as to what was doing within the walls, and when his scouts
+returned, reporting only the continued silence and desolation of the
+city, he commanded the army to be drawn out before the gates. No one
+appeared on the walls; the very portals, though locked and barred,
+seemed unguarded; above, the many domes and glittering crescents
+pierced heaven; while the old walls, survivors of ages, with
+ivy-crowned tower and weed-tangled buttress, stood as rocks in an
+uninhabited waste. From within the city neither shout nor cry, nor
+aught except the casual howling of a dog, broke the noon-day stillness.
+Even our soldiers were awed to silence; the music paused; the clang of
+arms was hushed. Each man asked his fellow in whispers, the meaning of
+this sudden peace; while Raymond from an height endeavoured, by means
+of glasses, to discover and observe the stratagem of the enemy. No form
+could be discerned on the terraces of the houses; in the higher parts
+of the town no moving shadow bespoke the presence of any living being:
+the very trees waved not, and mocked the stability of architecture with
+like immovability.
+
+The tramp of horses, distinctly heard in the silence, was at length
+discerned. It was a troop sent by Karazza, the Admiral; they bore
+dispatches to the Lord General. The contents of these papers were
+important. The night before, the watch, on board one of the smaller
+vessels anchored near the seraglio wall, was roused by a slight
+splashing as of muffled oars; the alarm was given: twelve small boats,
+each containing three Janizaries, were descried endeavouring to make
+their way through the fleet to the opposite shore of Scutari. When they
+found themselves discovered they discharged their muskets, and some
+came to the front to cover the others, whose crews, exerting all their
+strength, endeavoured to escape with their light barks from among the
+dark hulls that environed them. They were in the end all sunk, and,
+with the exception of two or three prisoners, the crews drowned. Little
+could be got from the survivors; but their cautious answers caused it
+to be surmised that several expeditions had preceded this last, and
+that several Turks of rank and importance had been conveyed to Asia.
+The men disdainfully repelled the idea of having deserted the defence
+of their city; and one, the youngest among them, in answer to the taunt
+of a sailor, exclaimed, “Take it, Christian dogs! take the palaces, the
+gardens, the mosques, the abode of our fathers—take plague with them;
+pestilence is the enemy we fly; if she be your friend, hug her to your
+bosoms. The curse of Allah is on Stamboul, share ye her fate.”
+
+Such was the account sent by Karazza to Raymond: but a tale full of
+monstrous exaggerations, though founded on this, was spread by the
+accompanying troop among our soldiers. A murmur arose, the city was the
+prey of pestilence; already had a mighty power subjugated the
+inhabitants; Death had become lord of Constantinople.
+
+I have heard a picture described, wherein all the inhabitants of earth
+were drawn out in fear to stand the encounter of Death. The feeble and
+decrepid fled; the warriors retreated, though they threatened even in
+flight. Wolves and lions, and various monsters of the desert roared
+against him; while the grim Unreality hovered shaking his spectral
+dart, a solitary but invincible assailant. Even so was it with the army
+of Greece. I am convinced, that had the myriad troops of Asia come from
+over the Propontis, and stood defenders of the Golden City, each and
+every Greek would have marched against the overwhelming numbers, and
+have devoted himself with patriotic fury for his country. But here no
+hedge of bayonets opposed itself, no death-dealing artillery, no
+formidable array of brave soldiers—the unguarded walls afforded easy
+entrance—the vacant palaces luxurious dwellings; but above the dome of
+St. Sophia the superstitious Greek saw Pestilence, and shrunk in
+trepidation from her influence.
+
+Raymond was actuated by far other feelings. He descended the hill with
+a face beaming with triumph, and pointing with his sword to the gates,
+commanded his troops to—down with those barricades—the only obstacles
+now to completest victory. The soldiers answered his cheerful words
+with aghast and awe-struck looks; instinctively they drew back, and
+Raymond rode in the front of the lines:—“By my sword I swear,” he
+cried, “that no ambush or stratagem endangers you. The enemy is already
+vanquished; the pleasant places, the noble dwellings and spoil of the
+city are already yours; force the gate; enter and possess the seats of
+your ancestors, your own inheritance!”
+
+An universal shudder and fearful whispering passed through the lines;
+not a soldier moved. “Cowards!” exclaimed their general, exasperated,
+“give me an hatchet! I alone will enter! I will plant your standard;
+and when you see it wave from yon highest minaret, you may gain
+courage, and rally round it!”
+
+One of the officers now came forward: “General,” he said, “we neither
+fear the courage, nor arms, the open attack, nor secret ambush of the
+Moslems. We are ready to expose our breasts, exposed ten thousand times
+before, to the balls and scymetars of the infidels, and to fall
+gloriously for Greece. But we will not die in heaps, like dogs poisoned
+in summer-time, by the pestilential air of that city—we dare not go
+against the plague!”
+
+A multitude of men are feeble and inert, without a voice, a leader;
+give them that, and they regain the strength belonging to their
+numbers. Shouts from a thousand voices now rent the air—the cry of
+applause became universal. Raymond saw the danger; he was willing to
+save his troops from the crime of disobedience; for he knew, that
+contention once begun between the commander and his army, each act and
+word added to the weakness of the former, and bestowed power on the
+latter. He gave orders for the retreat to be sounded, and the regiments
+repaired in good order to the camp.
+
+I hastened to carry the intelligence of these strange proceedings to
+Perdita; and we were soon joined by Raymond. He looked gloomy and
+perturbed. My sister was struck by my narrative: “How beyond the
+imagination of man,” she exclaimed, “are the decrees of heaven,
+wondrous and inexplicable!”
+
+“Foolish girl,” cried Raymond angrily, “are you like my valiant
+soldiers, panic-struck? What is there inexplicable, pray, tell me, in
+so very natural an occurrence? Does not the plague rage each year in
+Stamboul? What wonder, that this year, when as we are told, its
+virulence is unexampled in Asia, that it should have occasioned double
+havoc in that city? What wonder then, in time of siege, want, extreme
+heat, and drought, that it should make unaccustomed ravages? Less
+wonder far is it, that the garrison, despairing of being able to hold
+out longer, should take advantage of the negligence of our fleet to
+escape at once from siege and capture. It is not pestilence —by the God
+that lives! it is not either plague or impending danger that makes us,
+like birds in harvest-time, terrified by a scarecrow, abstain from the
+ready prey—it is base superstition—And thus the aim of the valiant is
+made the shuttlecock of fools; the worthy ambition of the high-souled,
+the plaything of these tamed hares! But yet Stamboul shall be ours! By
+my past labours, by torture and imprisonment suffered for them, by my
+victories, by my sword, I swear—by my hopes of fame, by my former
+deserts now awaiting their reward, I deeply vow, with these hands to
+plant the cross on yonder mosque!”
+
+“Dearest Raymond!” interrupted Perdita, in a supplicating accent.
+
+He had been walking to and fro in the marble hall of the seraglio; his
+very lips were pale with rage, while, quivering, they shaped his angry
+words— his eyes shot fire—his gestures seemed restrained by their very
+vehemence. “Perdita,” he continued, impatiently, “I know what you would
+say; I know that you love me, that you are good and gentle; but this is
+no woman’s work—nor can a female heart guess at the hurricane which
+tears me!”
+
+He seemed half afraid of his own violence, and suddenly quitted the
+hall: a look from Perdita shewed me her distress, and I followed him.
+He was pacing the garden: his passions were in a state of inconceivable
+turbulence. “Am I for ever,” he cried, “to be the sport of fortune!
+Must man, the heaven-climber, be for ever the victim of the crawling
+reptiles of his species! Were I as you, Lionel, looking forward to many
+years of life, to a succession of love-enlightened days, to refined
+enjoyments and fresh-springing hopes, I might yield, and breaking my
+General’s staff, seek repose in the glades of Windsor. But I am about
+to die!—nay, interrupt me not—soon I shall die. From the many-peopled
+earth, from the sympathies of man, from the loved resorts of my youth,
+from the kindness of my friends, from the affection of my only beloved
+Perdita, I am about to be removed. Such is the will of fate! Such the
+decree of the High Ruler from whom there is no appeal: to whom I
+submit. But to lose all—to lose with life and love, glory also! It
+shall not be!
+
+“I, and in a few brief years, all you,—this panic-struck army, and all
+the population of fair Greece, will no longer be. But other generations
+will arise, and ever and for ever will continue, to be made happier by
+our present acts, to be glorified by our valour. The prayer of my youth
+was to be one among those who render the pages of earth’s history
+splendid; who exalt the race of man, and make this little globe a
+dwelling of the mighty. Alas, for Raymond! the prayer of his youth is
+wasted—the hopes of his manhood are null!
+
+“From my dungeon in yonder city I cried, soon I will be thy lord! When
+Evadne pronounced my death, I thought that the title of Victor of
+Constantinople would be written on my tomb, and I subdued all mortal
+fear. I stand before its vanquished walls, and dare not call myself a
+conqueror. So shall it not be! Did not Alexander leap from the walls of
+the city of the Oxydracae, to shew his coward troops the way to
+victory, encountering alone the swords of its defenders? Even so will I
+brave the plague—and though no man follow, I will plant the Grecian
+standard on the height of St. Sophia.”
+
+Reason came unavailing to such high-wrought feelings. In vain I shewed
+him, that when winter came, the cold would dissipate the pestilential
+air, and restore courage to the Greeks. “Talk not of other season than
+this!” he cried. “I have lived my last winter, and the date of this
+year, 2092, will be carved upon my tomb. Already do I see,” he
+continued, looking up mournfully, “the bourne and precipitate edge of
+my existence, over which I plunge into the gloomy mystery of the life
+to come. I am prepared, so that I leave behind a trail of light so
+radiant, that my worst enemies cannot cloud it. I owe this to Greece,
+to you, to my surviving Perdita, and to myself, the victim of
+ambition.”
+
+We were interrupted by an attendant, who announced, that the staff of
+Raymond was assembled in the council-chamber. He requested me in the
+meantime to ride through the camp, and to observe and report to him the
+dispositions of the soldiers; he then left me. I had been excited to
+the utmost by the proceedings of the day, and now more than ever by the
+passionate language of Raymond. Alas! for human reason! He accused the
+Greeks of superstition: what name did he give to the faith he lent to
+the predictions of Evadne? I passed from the palace of Sweet Waters to
+the plain on which the encampment lay, and found its inhabitants in
+commotion. The arrival of several with fresh stories of marvels, from
+the fleet; the exaggerations bestowed on what was already known; tales
+of old prophecies, of fearful histories of whole regions which had been
+laid waste during the present year by pestilence, alarmed and occupied
+the troops. Discipline was lost; the army disbanded itself. Each
+individual, before a part of a great whole moving only in unison with
+others, now became resolved into the unit nature had made him, and
+thought of himself only. They stole off at first by ones and twos, then
+in larger companies, until, unimpeded by the officers, whole battalions
+sought the road that led to Macedonia.
+
+About midnight I returned to the palace and sought Raymond; he was
+alone, and apparently composed; such composure, at least, was his as is
+inspired by a resolve to adhere to a certain line of conduct. He heard
+my account of the self-dissolution of the army with calmness, and then
+said, “You know, Verney, my fixed determination not to quit this place,
+until in the light of day Stamboul is confessedly ours. If the men I
+have about me shrink from following me, others, more courageous, are to
+be found. Go you before break of day, bear these dispatches to Karazza,
+add to them your own entreaties that he send me his marines and naval
+force; if I can get but one regiment to second me, the rest would
+follow of course. Let him send me this regiment. I shall expect your
+return by to-morrow noon.”
+
+Methought this was but a poor expedient; but I assured him of my
+obedience and zeal. I quitted him to take a few hours rest. With the
+breaking of morning I was accoutred for my ride. I lingered awhile,
+desirous of taking leave of Perdita, and from my window observed the
+approach of the sun. The golden splendour arose, and weary nature awoke
+to suffer yet another day of heat and thirsty decay. No flowers lifted
+up their dew-laden cups to meet the dawn; the dry grass had withered on
+the plains; the burning fields of air were vacant of birds; the cicale
+alone, children of the sun, began their shrill and deafening song among
+the cypresses and olives. I saw Raymond’s coal-black charger brought to
+the palace gate; a small company of officers arrived soon after; care
+and fear was painted on each cheek, and in each eye, unrefreshed by
+sleep. I found Raymond and Perdita together. He was watching the rising
+sun, while with one arm he encircled his beloved’s waist; she looked on
+him, the sun of her life, with earnest gaze of mingled anxiety and
+tenderness. Raymond started angrily when he saw me. “Here still?” he
+cried. “Is this your promised zeal?”
+
+“Pardon me,” I said, “but even as you speak, I am gone.”
+
+“Nay, pardon me,” he replied; “I have no right to command or reproach;
+but my life hangs on your departure and speedy return. Farewell!”
+
+His voice had recovered its bland tone, but a dark cloud still hung on
+his features. I would have delayed; I wished to recommend watchfulness
+to Perdita, but his presence restrained me. I had no pretence for my
+hesitation; and on his repeating his farewell, I clasped his
+outstretched hand; it was cold and clammy. “Take care of yourself, my
+dear Lord,” I said.
+
+“Nay,” said Perdita, “that task shall be mine. Return speedily,
+Lionel.” With an air of absence he was playing with her auburn locks,
+while she leaned on him; twice I turned back, only to look again on
+this matchless pair. At last, with slow and heavy steps, I had paced
+out of the hall, and sprung upon my horse. At that moment Clara flew
+towards me; clasping my knee she cried, “Make haste back, uncle! Dear
+uncle, I have such fearful dreams; I dare not tell my mother. Do not be
+long away!” I assured her of my impatience to return, and then, with a
+small escort rode along the plain towards the tower of Marmora.
+
+I fulfilled my commission; I saw Karazza. He was somewhat surprised; he
+would see, he said, what could be done; but it required time; and
+Raymond had ordered me to return by noon. It was impossible to effect
+any thing in so short a time. I must stay till the next day; or come
+back, after having reported the present state of things to the general.
+My choice was easily made. A restlessness, a fear of what was about to
+betide, a doubt as to Raymond’s purposes, urged me to return without
+delay to his quarters. Quitting the Seven Towers, I rode eastward
+towards the Sweet Waters. I took a circuitous path, principally for the
+sake of going to the top of the mount before mentioned, which commanded
+a view of the city. I had my glass with me. The city basked under the
+noon-day sun, and the venerable walls formed its picturesque boundary.
+Immediately before me was the Top Kapou, the gate near which Mahomet
+had made the breach by which he entered the city. Trees gigantic and
+aged grew near; before the gate I discerned a crowd of moving human
+figures—with intense curiosity I lifted my glass to my eye. I saw Lord
+Raymond on his charger; a small company of officers had gathered about
+him; and behind was a promiscuous concourse of soldiers and subalterns,
+their discipline lost, their arms thrown aside; no music sounded, no
+banners streamed. The only flag among them was one which Raymond
+carried; he pointed with it to the gate of the city. The circle round
+him fell back. With angry gestures he leapt from his horse, and seizing
+a hatchet that hung from his saddle-bow, went with the apparent
+intention of battering down the opposing gate. A few men came to aid
+him; their numbers increased; under their united blows the obstacle was
+vanquished, gate, portcullis, and fence were demolished; and the wide
+sun-lit way, leading to the heart of the city, now lay open before
+them. The men shrank back; they seemed afraid of what they had already
+done, and stood as if they expected some Mighty Phantom to stalk in
+offended majesty from the opening. Raymond sprung lightly on his horse,
+grasped the standard, and with words which I could not hear (but his
+gestures, being their fit accompaniment, were marked by passionate
+energy,) he seemed to adjure their assistance and companionship; even
+as he spoke, the crowd receded from him. Indignation now transported
+him; his words I guessed were fraught with disdain—then turning from
+his coward followers, he addressed himself to enter the city alone. His
+very horse seemed to back from the fatal entrance; his dog, his
+faithful dog, lay moaning and supplicating in his path—in a moment
+more, he had plunged the rowels into the sides of the stung animal, who
+bounded forward, and he, the gateway passed, was galloping up the broad
+and desart street.
+
+Until this moment my soul had been in my eyes only. I had gazed with
+wonder, mixed with fear and enthusiasm. The latter feeling now
+predominated. I forgot the distance between us: “I will go with thee,
+Raymond!” I cried; but, my eye removed from the glass, I could scarce
+discern the pigmy forms of the crowd, which about a mile from me
+surrounded the gate; the form of Raymond was lost. Stung with
+impatience, I urged my horse with force of spur and loosened reins down
+the acclivity, that, before danger could arrive, I might be at the side
+of my noble, godlike friend. A number of buildings and trees
+intervened, when I had reached the plain, hiding the city from my view.
+But at that moment a crash was heard. Thunderlike it reverberated
+through the sky, while the air was darkened. A moment more and the old
+walls again met my sight, while over them hovered a murky cloud;
+fragments of buildings whirled above, half seen in smoke, while flames
+burst out beneath, and continued explosions filled the air with
+terrific thunders. Flying from the mass of falling ruin which leapt
+over the high walls, and shook the ivy towers, a crowd of soldiers made
+for the road by which I came; I was surrounded, hemmed in by them,
+unable to get forward. My impatience rose to its utmost; I stretched
+out my hands to the men; I conjured them to turn back and save their
+General, the conqueror of Stamboul, the liberator of Greece; tears, aye
+tears, in warm flow gushed from my eyes—I would not believe in his
+destruction; yet every mass that darkened the air seemed to bear with
+it a portion of the martyred Raymond. Horrible sights were shaped to me
+in the turbid cloud that hovered over the city; and my only relief was
+derived from the struggles I made to approach the gate. Yet when I
+effected my purpose, all I could discern within the precincts of the
+massive walls was a city of fire: the open way through which Raymond
+had ridden was enveloped in smoke and flame. After an interval the
+explosions ceased, but the flames still shot up from various quarters;
+the dome of St. Sophia had disappeared. Strange to say (the result
+perhaps of the concussion of air occasioned by the blowing up of the
+city) huge, white thunder clouds lifted themselves up from the southern
+horizon, and gathered over-head; they were the first blots on the blue
+expanse that I had seen for months, and amidst this havoc and despair
+they inspired pleasure. The vault above became obscured, lightning
+flashed from the heavy masses, followed instantaneously by crashing
+thunder; then the big rain fell. The flames of the city bent beneath
+it; and the smoke and dust arising from the ruins was dissipated.
+
+I no sooner perceived an abatement of the flames than, hurried on by an
+irresistible impulse, I endeavoured to penetrate the town. I could only
+do this on foot, as the mass of ruin was impracticable for a horse. I
+had never entered the city before, and its ways were unknown to me. The
+streets were blocked up, the ruins smoking; I climbed up one heap, only
+to view others in succession; and nothing told me where the centre of
+the town might be, or towards what point Raymond might have directed
+his course. The rain ceased; the clouds sunk behind the horizon; it was
+now evening, and the sun descended swiftly the western sky. I scrambled
+on, until I came to a street, whose wooden houses, half-burnt, had been
+cooled by the rain, and were fortunately uninjured by the gunpowder. Up
+this I hurried—until now I had not seen a vestige of man. Yet none of
+the defaced human forms which I distinguished, could be Raymond; so I
+turned my eyes away, while my heart sickened within me. I came to an
+open space—a mountain of ruin in the midst, announced that some large
+mosque had occupied the space—and here, scattered about, I saw various
+articles of luxury and wealth, singed, destroyed—but shewing what they
+had been in their ruin—jewels, strings of pearls, embroidered robes,
+rich furs, glittering tapestries, and oriental ornaments, seemed to
+have been collected here in a pile destined for destruction; but the
+rain had stopped the havoc midway.
+
+Hours passed, while in this scene of ruin I sought for Raymond.
+Insurmountable heaps sometimes opposed themselves; the still burning
+fires scorched me. The sun set; the atmosphere grew dim—and the evening
+star no longer shone companionless. The glare of flames attested the
+progress of destruction, while, during mingled light and obscurity, the
+piles around me took gigantic proportions and weird shapes. For a
+moment I could yield to the creative power of the imagination, and for
+a moment was soothed by the sublime fictions it presented to me. The
+beatings of my human heart drew me back to blank reality. Where, in
+this wilderness of death, art thou, O Raymond—ornament of England,
+deliverer of Greece, “hero of unwritten story,” where in this burning
+chaos are thy dear relics strewed? I called aloud for him—through the
+darkness of night, over the scorching ruins of fallen Constantinople,
+his name was heard; no voice replied—echo even was mute.
+
+I was overcome by weariness; the solitude depressed my spirits. The
+sultry air impregnated with dust, the heat and smoke of burning
+palaces, palsied my limbs. Hunger suddenly came acutely upon me. The
+excitement which had hitherto sustained me was lost; as a building,
+whose props are loosened, and whose foundations rock, totters and
+falls, so when enthusiasm and hope deserted me, did my strength fail. I
+sat on the sole remaining step of an edifice, which even in its
+downfall, was huge and magnificent; a few broken walls, not dislodged
+by gunpowder, stood in fantastic groupes, and a flame glimmered at
+intervals on the summit of the pile. For a time hunger and sleep
+contended, till the constellations reeled before my eyes and then were
+lost. I strove to rise, but my heavy lids closed, my limbs
+over-wearied, claimed repose—I rested my head on the stone, I yielded
+to the grateful sensation of utter forgetfulness; and in that scene of
+desolation, on that night of despair—I slept.
+
+ [3] Calderon de la Barca.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+The stars still shone brightly when I awoke, and Taurus high in the
+southern heaven shewed that it was midnight. I awoke from disturbed
+dreams. Methought I had been invited to Timon’s last feast; I came with
+keen appetite, the covers were removed, the hot water sent up its
+unsatisfying steams, while I fled before the anger of the host, who
+assumed the form of Raymond; while to my diseased fancy, the vessels
+hurled by him after me, were surcharged with fetid vapour, and my
+friend’s shape, altered by a thousand distortions, expanded into a
+gigantic phantom, bearing on its brow the sign of pestilence. The
+growing shadow rose and rose, filling, and then seeming to endeavour to
+burst beyond, the adamantine vault that bent over, sustaining and
+enclosing the world. The night-mare became torture; with a strong
+effort I threw off sleep, and recalled reason to her wonted functions.
+My first thought was Perdita; to her I must return; her I must support,
+drawing such food from despair as might best sustain her wounded heart;
+recalling her from the wild excesses of grief, by the austere laws of
+duty, and the soft tenderness of regret.
+
+The position of the stars was my only guide. I turned from the awful
+ruin of the Golden City, and, after great exertion, succeeded in
+extricating myself from its enclosure. I met a company of soldiers
+outside the walls; I borrowed a horse from one of them, and hastened to
+my sister. The appearance of the plain was changed during this short
+interval; the encampment was broken up; the relics of the disbanded
+army met in small companies here and there; each face was clouded;
+every gesture spoke astonishment and dismay.
+
+With an heavy heart I entered the palace, and stood fearful to advance,
+to speak, to look. In the midst of the hall was Perdita; she sat on the
+marble pavement, her head fallen on her bosom, her hair dishevelled,
+her fingers twined busily one within the other; she was pale as marble,
+and every feature was contracted by agony. She perceived me, and looked
+up enquiringly; her half glance of hope was misery; the words died
+before I could articulate them; I felt a ghastly smile wrinkle my lips.
+She understood my gesture; again her head fell; again her fingers
+worked restlessly. At last I recovered speech, but my voice terrified
+her; the hapless girl had understood my look, and for worlds she would
+not that the tale of her heavy misery should have been shaped out and
+confirmed by hard, irrevocable words. Nay, she seemed to wish to
+distract my thoughts from the subject: she rose from the floor: “Hush!”
+she said, whisperingly; “after much weeping, Clara sleeps; we must not
+disturb her.” She seated herself then on the same ottoman where I had
+left her in the morning resting on the beating heart of her Raymond; I
+dared not approach her, but sat at a distant corner, watching her
+starting and nervous gestures. At length, in an abrupt manner she
+asked, “Where is he?”
+
+“O, fear not,” she continued, “fear not that I should entertain hope!
+Yet tell me, have you found him? To have him once more in my arms, to
+see him, however changed, is all I desire. Though Constantinople be
+heaped above him as a tomb, yet I must find him—then cover us with the
+city’s weight, with a mountain piled above—I care not, so that one
+grave hold Raymond and his Perdita.” Then weeping, she clung to me:
+“Take me to him,” she cried, “unkind Lionel, why do you keep me here?
+Of myself I cannot find him —but you know where he lies—lead me
+thither.”
+
+At first these agonizing plaints filled me with intolerable compassion.
+But soon I endeavoured to extract patience for her from the ideas she
+suggested. I related my adventures of the night, my endeavours to find
+our lost one, and my disappointment. Turning her thoughts this way, I
+gave them an object which rescued them from insanity. With apparent
+calmness she discussed with me the probable spot where he might be
+found, and planned the means we should use for that purpose. Then
+hearing of my fatigue and abstinence, she herself brought me food. I
+seized the favourable moment, and endeavoured to awaken in her
+something beyond the killing torpor of grief. As I spoke, my subject
+carried me away; deep admiration; grief, the offspring of truest
+affection, the overflowing of a heart bursting with sympathy for all
+that had been great and sublime in the career of my friend, inspired me
+as I poured forth the praises of Raymond.
+
+“Alas, for us,” I cried, “who have lost this latest honour of the
+world! Beloved Raymond! He is gone to the nations of the dead; he has
+become one of those, who render the dark abode of the obscure grave
+illustrious by dwelling there. He has journied on the road that leads
+to it, and joined the mighty of soul who went before him. When the
+world was in its infancy death must have been terrible, and man left
+his friends and kindred to dwell, a solitary stranger, in an unknown
+country. But now, he who dies finds many companions gone before to
+prepare for his reception. The great of past ages people it, the
+exalted hero of our own days is counted among its inhabitants, while
+life becomes doubly ‘the desart and the solitude.’
+
+“What a noble creature was Raymond, the first among the men of our
+time. By the grandeur of his conceptions, the graceful daring of his
+actions, by his wit and beauty, he won and ruled the minds of all. Of
+one only fault he might have been accused; but his death has cancelled
+that. I have heard him called inconstant of purpose—when he deserted,
+for the sake of love, the hope of sovereignty, and when he abdicated
+the protectorship of England, men blamed his infirmity of purpose. Now
+his death has crowned his life, and to the end of time it will be
+remembered, that he devoted himself, a willing victim, to the glory of
+Greece. Such was his choice: he expected to die. He foresaw that he
+should leave this cheerful earth, the lightsome sky, and thy love,
+Perdita; yet he neither hesitated or turned back, going right onward to
+his mark of fame. While the earth lasts, his actions will be recorded
+with praise. Grecian maidens will in devotion strew flowers on his
+tomb, and make the air around it resonant with patriotic hymns, in
+which his name will find high record.”
+
+I saw the features of Perdita soften; the sternness of grief yielded to
+tenderness—I continued:—“Thus to honour him, is the sacred duty of his
+survivors. To make his name even as an holy spot of ground, enclosing
+it from all hostile attacks by our praise, shedding on it the blossoms
+of love and regret, guarding it from decay, and bequeathing it
+untainted to posterity. Such is the duty of his friends. A dearer one
+belongs to you, Perdita, mother of his child. Do you remember in her
+infancy, with what transport you beheld Clara, recognizing in her the
+united being of yourself and Raymond; joying to view in this living
+temple a manifestation of your eternal loves. Even such is she still.
+You say that you have lost Raymond. O, no!—yet he lives with you and in
+you there. From him she sprung, flesh of his flesh, bone of his
+bone—and not, as heretofore, are you content to trace in her downy
+cheek and delicate limbs, an affinity to Raymond, but in her
+enthusiastic affections, in the sweet qualities of her mind, you may
+still find him living, the good, the great, the beloved. Be it your
+care to foster this similarity—be it your care to render her worthy of
+him, so that, when she glory in her origin, she take not shame for what
+she is.”
+
+I could perceive that, when I recalled my sister’s thoughts to her
+duties in life, she did not listen with the same patience as before.
+She appeared to suspect a plan of consolation on my part, from which
+she, cherishing her new-born grief, revolted. “You talk of the future,”
+she said, “while the present is all to me. Let me find the earthly
+dwelling of my beloved; let us rescue that from common dust, so that in
+times to come men may point to the sacred tomb, and name it his—then to
+other thoughts, and a new course of life, or what else fate, in her
+cruel tyranny, may have marked out for me.”
+
+After a short repose I prepared to leave her, that I might endeavour to
+accomplish her wish. In the mean time we were joined by Clara, whose
+pallid cheek and scared look shewed the deep impression grief had made
+on her young mind. She seemed to be full of something to which she
+could not give words; but, seizing an opportunity afforded by Perdita’s
+absence, she preferred to me an earnest prayer, that I would take her
+within view of the gate at which her father had entered Constantinople.
+She promised to commit no extravagance, to be docile, and immediately
+to return. I could not refuse; for Clara was not an ordinary child; her
+sensibility and intelligence seemed already to have endowed her with
+the rights of womanhood. With her therefore, before me on my horse,
+attended only by the servant who was to re-conduct her, we rode to the
+Top Kapou. We found a party of soldiers gathered round it. They were
+listening. “They are human cries,” said one: “More like the howling of
+a dog,” replied another; and again they bent to catch the sound of
+regular distant moans, which issued from the precincts of the ruined
+city. “That, Clara,” I said, “is the gate, that the street which
+yestermorn your father rode up.” Whatever Clara’s intention had been in
+asking to be brought hither, it was balked by the presence of the
+soldiers. With earnest gaze she looked on the labyrinth of smoking
+piles which had been a city, and then expressed her readiness to return
+home. At this moment a melancholy howl struck on our ears; it was
+repeated; “Hark!” cried Clara, “he is there; that is Florio, my
+father’s dog.” It seemed to me impossible that she could recognise the
+sound, but she persisted in her assertion till she gained credit with
+the crowd about. At least it would be a benevolent action to rescue the
+sufferer, whether human or brute, from the desolation of the town; so,
+sending Clara back to her home, I again entered Constantinople.
+Encouraged by the impunity attendant on my former visit, several
+soldiers who had made a part of Raymond’s body guard, who had loved
+him, and sincerely mourned his loss, accompanied me.
+
+It is impossible to conjecture the strange enchainment of events which
+restored the lifeless form of my friend to our hands. In that part of
+the town where the fire had most raged the night before, and which now
+lay quenched, black and cold, the dying dog of Raymond crouched beside
+the mutilated form of its lord. At such a time sorrow has no voice;
+affliction, tamed by its very vehemence, is mute. The poor animal
+recognised me, licked my hand, crept close to its lord, and died. He
+had been evidently thrown from his horse by some falling ruin, which
+had crushed his head, and defaced his whole person. I bent over the
+body, and took in my hand the edge of his cloak, less altered in
+appearance than the human frame it clothed. I pressed it to my lips,
+while the rough soldiers gathered around, mourning over this worthiest
+prey of death, as if regret and endless lamentation could re-illumine
+the extinguished spark, or call to its shattered prison-house of flesh
+the liberated spirit. Yesterday those limbs were worth an universe;
+they then enshrined a transcendant power, whose intents, words, and
+actions were worthy to be recorded in letters of gold; now the
+superstition of affection alone could give value to the shattered
+mechanism, which, incapable and clod-like, no more resembled Raymond,
+than the fallen rain is like the former mansion of cloud in which it
+climbed the highest skies, and gilded by the sun, attracted all eyes,
+and satiated the sense by its excess of beauty.
+
+Such as he had now become, such as was his terrene vesture, defaced and
+spoiled, we wrapt it in our cloaks, and lifting the burthen in our
+arms, bore it from this city of the dead. The question arose as to
+where we should deposit him. In our road to the palace, we passed
+through the Greek cemetery; here on a tablet of black marble I caused
+him to be laid; the cypresses waved high above, their death-like gloom
+accorded with his state of nothingness. We cut branches of the funereal
+trees and placed them over him, and on these again his sword. I left a
+guard to protect this treasure of dust; and ordered perpetual torches
+to be burned around.
+
+When I returned to Perdita, I found that she had already been informed
+of the success of my undertaking. He, her beloved, the sole and eternal
+object of her passionate tenderness, was restored her. Such was the
+maniac language of her enthusiasm. What though those limbs moved not,
+and those lips could no more frame modulated accents of wisdom and
+love! What though like a weed flung from the fruitless sea, he lay the
+prey of corruption— still that was the form she had caressed, those the
+lips that meeting hers, had drank the spirit of love from the
+commingling breath; that was the earthly mechanism of dissoluble clay
+she had called her own. True, she looked forward to another life; true,
+the burning spirit of love seemed to her unextinguishable throughout
+eternity. Yet at this time, with human fondness, she clung to all that
+her human senses permitted her to see and feel to be a part of Raymond.
+
+Pale as marble, clear and beaming as that, she heard my tale, and
+enquired concerning the spot where he had been deposited. Her features
+had lost the distortion of grief; her eyes were brightened, her very
+person seemed dilated; while the excessive whiteness and even
+transparency of her skin, and something hollow in her voice, bore
+witness that not tranquillity, but excess of excitement, occasioned the
+treacherous calm that settled on her countenance. I asked her where he
+should be buried. She replied, “At Athens; even at the Athens which he
+loved. Without the town, on the acclivity of Hymettus, there is a rocky
+recess which he pointed out to me as the spot where he would wish to
+repose.”
+
+My own desire certainly was that he should not be removed from the spot
+where he now lay. But her wish was of course to be complied with; and I
+entreated her to prepare without delay for our departure.
+
+Behold now the melancholy train cross the flats of Thrace, and wind
+through the defiles, and over the mountains of Macedonia, coast the
+clear waves of the Peneus, cross the Larissean plain, pass the straits
+of Thermopylae, and ascending in succession Œrta and Parnassus, descend
+to the fertile plain of Athens. Women bear with resignation these long
+drawn ills, but to a man’s impatient spirit, the slow motion of our
+cavalcade, the melancholy repose we took at noon, the perpetual
+presence of the pall, gorgeous though it was, that wrapt the rifled
+casket which had contained Raymond, the monotonous recurrence of day
+and night, unvaried by hope or change, all the circumstances of our
+march were intolerable. Perdita, shut up in herself, spoke little. Her
+carriage was closed; and, when we rested, she sat leaning her pale
+cheek on her white cold hand, with eyes fixed on the ground, indulging
+thoughts which refused communication or sympathy.
+
+We descended from Parnassus, emerging from its many folds, and passed
+through Livadia on our road to Attica. Perdita would not enter Athens;
+but reposing at Marathon on the night of our arrival, conducted me on
+the following day, to the spot selected by her as the treasure house of
+Raymond’s dear remains. It was in a recess near the head of the ravine
+to the south of Hymettus. The chasm, deep, black, and hoary, swept from
+the summit to the base; in the fissures of the rock myrtle underwood
+grew and wild thyme, the food of many nations of bees; enormous crags
+protruded into the cleft, some beetling over, others rising
+perpendicularly from it. At the foot of this sublime chasm, a fertile
+laughing valley reached from sea to sea, and beyond was spread the blue
+Aegean, sprinkled with islands, the light waves glancing beneath the
+sun. Close to the spot on which we stood, was a solitary rock, high and
+conical, which, divided on every side from the mountain, seemed a
+nature-hewn pyramid; with little labour this block was reduced to a
+perfect shape; the narrow cell was scooped out beneath in which Raymond
+was placed, and a short inscription, carved in the living stone,
+recorded the name of its tenant, the cause and aera of his death.
+
+Every thing was accomplished with speed under my directions. I agreed
+to leave the finishing and guardianship of the tomb to the head of the
+religious establishment at Athens, and by the end of October prepared
+for my return to England. I mentioned this to Perdita. It was painful
+to appear to drag her from the last scene that spoke of her lost one;
+but to linger here was vain, and my very soul was sick with its
+yearning to rejoin my Idris and her babes. In reply, my sister
+requested me to accompany her the following evening to the tomb of
+Raymond. Some days had passed since I had visited the spot. The path to
+it had been enlarged, and steps hewn in the rock led us less
+circuitously than before, to the spot itself; the platform on which the
+pyramid stood was enlarged, and looking towards the south, in a recess
+overshadowed by the straggling branches of a wild fig-tree, I saw
+foundations dug, and props and rafters fixed, evidently the
+commencement of a cottage; standing on its unfinished threshold, the
+tomb was at our right-hand, the whole ravine, and plain, and azure sea
+immediately before us; the dark rocks received a glow from the
+descending sun, which glanced along the cultivated valley, and dyed in
+purple and orange the placid waves; we sat on a rocky elevation, and I
+gazed with rapture on the beauteous panorama of living and changeful
+colours, which varied and enhanced the graces of earth and ocean.
+
+“Did I not do right,” said Perdita, “in having my loved one conveyed
+hither? Hereafter this will be the cynosure of Greece. In such a spot
+death loses half its terrors, and even the inanimate dust appears to
+partake of the spirit of beauty which hallows this region. Lionel, he
+sleeps there; that is the grave of Raymond, he whom in my youth I first
+loved; whom my heart accompanied in days of separation and anger; to
+whom I am now joined for ever. Never—mark me—never will I leave this
+spot. Methinks his spirit remains here as well as that dust, which,
+uncommunicable though it be, is more precious in its nothingness than
+aught else widowed earth clasps to her sorrowing bosom. The myrtle
+bushes, the thyme, the little cyclamen, which peep from the fissures of
+the rock, all the produce of the place, bear affinity to him; the light
+that invests the hills participates in his essence, and sky and
+mountains, sea and valley, are imbued by the presence of his spirit. I
+will live and die here!
+
+“Go you to England, Lionel; return to sweet Idris and dearest Adrian;
+return, and let my orphan girl be as a child of your own in your house.
+Look on me as dead; and truly if death be a mere change of state, I am
+dead. This is another world, from that which late I inhabited, from
+that which is now your home. Here I hold communion only with the has
+been, and to come. Go you to England, and leave me where alone I can
+consent to drag out the miserable days which I must still live.”
+
+A shower of tears terminated her sad harangue. I had expected some
+extravagant proposition, and remained silent awhile, collecting my
+thoughts that I might the better combat her fanciful scheme. “You
+cherish dreary thoughts, my dear Perdita,” I said, “nor do I wonder
+that for a time your better reason should be influenced by passionate
+grief and a disturbed imagination. Even I am in love with this last
+home of Raymond’s; nevertheless we must quit it.”
+
+“I expected this,” cried Perdita; “I supposed that you would treat me
+as a mad, foolish girl. But do not deceive yourself; this cottage is
+built by my order; and here I shall remain, until the hour arrives when
+I may share his happier dwelling.”
+
+“My dearest girl!”
+
+“And what is there so strange in my design? I might have deceived you;
+I might have talked of remaining here only a few months; in your
+anxiety to reach Windsor you would have left me, and without reproach
+or contention, I might have pursued my plan. But I disdained the
+artifice; or rather in my wretchedness it was my only consolation to
+pour out my heart to you, my brother, my only friend. You will not
+dispute with me? You know how wilful your poor, misery-stricken sister
+is. Take my girl with you; wean her from sights and thoughts of sorrow;
+let infantine hilarity revisit her heart, and animate her eyes; so
+could it never be, were she near me; it is far better for all of you
+that you should never see me again. For myself, I will not voluntarily
+seek death, that is, I will not, while I can command myself; and I can
+here. But drag me from this country; and my power of self control
+vanishes, nor can I answer for the violence my agony of grief may lead
+me to commit.”
+
+“You clothe your meaning, Perdita,” I replied, “in powerful words, yet
+that meaning is selfish and unworthy of you. You have often agreed with
+me that there is but one solution to the intricate riddle of life; to
+improve ourselves, and contribute to the happiness of others: and now,
+in the very prime of life, you desert your principles, and shut
+yourself up in useless solitude. Will you think of Raymond less at
+Windsor, the scene of your early happiness? Will you commune less with
+his departed spirit, while you watch over and cultivate the rare
+excellence of his child? You have been sadly visited; nor do I wonder
+that a feeling akin to insanity should drive you to bitter and
+unreasonable imaginings. But a home of love awaits you in your native
+England. My tenderness and affection must soothe you; the society of
+Raymond’s friends will be of more solace than these dreary
+speculations. We will all make it our first care, our dearest task, to
+contribute to your happiness.”
+
+Perdita shook her head; “If it could be so,” she replied, “I were much
+in the wrong to disdain your offers. But it is not a matter of choice;
+I can live here only. I am a part of this scene; each and all its
+properties are a part of me. This is no sudden fancy; I live by it. The
+knowledge that I am here, rises with me in the morning, and enables me
+to endure the light; it is mingled with my food, which else were
+poison; it walks, it sleeps with me, for ever it accompanies me. Here I
+may even cease to repine, and may add my tardy consent to the decree
+which has taken him from me. He would rather have died such a death,
+which will be recorded in history to endless time, than have lived to
+old age unknown, unhonoured. Nor can I desire better, than, having been
+the chosen and beloved of his heart, here, in youth’s prime, before
+added years can tarnish the best feelings of my nature, to watch his
+tomb, and speedily rejoin him in his blessed repose.
+
+“So much, my dearest Lionel, I have said, wishing to persuade you that
+I do right. If you are unconvinced, I can add nothing further by way of
+argument, and I can only declare my fixed resolve. I stay here; force
+only can remove me. Be it so; drag me away—I return; confine me,
+imprison me, still I escape, and come here. Or would my brother rather
+devote the heart-broken Perdita to the straw and chains of a maniac,
+than suffer her to rest in peace beneath the shadow of His society, in
+this my own selected and beloved recess?”—
+
+All this appeared to me, I own, methodized madness. I imagined, that it
+was my imperative duty to take her from scenes that thus forcibly
+reminded her of her loss. Nor did I doubt, that in the tranquillity of
+our family circle at Windsor, she would recover some degree of
+composure, and in the end, of happiness. My affection for Clara also
+led me to oppose these fond dreams of cherished grief; her sensibility
+had already been too much excited; her infant heedlessness too soon
+exchanged for deep and anxious thought. The strange and romantic scheme
+of her mother, might confirm and perpetuate the painful view of life,
+which had intruded itself thus early on her contemplation.
+
+On returning home, the captain of the steam packet with whom I had
+agreed to sail, came to tell me, that accidental circumstances hastened
+his departure, and that, if I went with him, I must come on board at
+five on the following morning. I hastily gave my consent to this
+arrangement, and as hastily formed a plan through which Perdita should
+be forced to become my companion. I believe that most people in my
+situation would have acted in the same manner. Yet this consideration
+does not, or rather did not in after time, diminish the reproaches of
+my conscience. At the moment, I felt convinced that I was acting for
+the best, and that all I did was right and even necessary.
+
+I sat with Perdita and soothed her, by my seeming assent to her wild
+scheme. She received my concurrence with pleasure, and a thousand times
+over thanked her deceiving, deceitful brother. As night came on, her
+spirits, enlivened by my unexpected concession, regained an almost
+forgotten vivacity. I pretended to be alarmed by the feverish glow in
+her cheek; I entreated her to take a composing draught; I poured out
+the medicine, which she took docilely from me. I watched her as she
+drank it. Falsehood and artifice are in themselves so hateful, that,
+though I still thought I did right, a feeling of shame and guilt came
+painfully upon me. I left her, and soon heard that she slept soundly
+under the influence of the opiate I had administered. She was carried
+thus unconscious on board; the anchor weighed, and the wind being
+favourable, we stood far out to sea; with all the canvas spread, and
+the power of the engine to assist, we scudded swiftly and steadily
+through the chafed element.
+
+It was late in the day before Perdita awoke, and a longer time elapsed
+before recovering from the torpor occasioned by the laudanum, she
+perceived her change of situation. She started wildly from her couch,
+and flew to the cabin window. The blue and troubled sea sped past the
+vessel, and was spread shoreless around: the sky was covered by a rack,
+which in its swift motion shewed how speedily she was borne away. The
+creaking of the masts, the clang of the wheels, the tramp above, all
+persuaded her that she was already far from the shores of
+Greece.—“Where are we?” she cried, “where are we going?”—
+
+The attendant whom I had stationed to watch her, replied, “to
+England.”—
+
+“And my brother?”—
+
+“Is on deck, Madam.”
+
+“Unkind! unkind!” exclaimed the poor victim, as with a deep sigh she
+looked on the waste of waters. Then without further remark, she threw
+herself on her couch, and closing her eyes remained motionless; so that
+but for the deep sighs that burst from her, it would have seemed that
+she slept.
+
+As soon as I heard that she had spoken, I sent Clara to her, that the
+sight of the lovely innocent might inspire gentle and affectionate
+thoughts. But neither the presence of her child, nor a subsequent visit
+from me, could rouse my sister. She looked on Clara with a countenance
+of woful meaning, but she did not speak. When I appeared, she turned
+away, and in reply to my enquiries, only said, “You know not what you
+have done!”—I trusted that this sullenness betokened merely the
+struggle between disappointment and natural affection, and that in a
+few days she would be reconciled to her fate.
+
+When night came on, she begged that Clara might sleep in a separate
+cabin. Her servant, however, remained with her. About midnight she
+spoke to the latter, saying that she had had a bad dream, and bade her
+go to her daughter, and bring word whether she rested quietly. The
+woman obeyed.
+
+The breeze, that had flagged since sunset, now rose again. I was on
+deck, enjoying our swift progress. The quiet was disturbed only by the
+rush of waters as they divided before the steady keel, the murmur of
+the moveless and full sails, the wind whistling in the shrouds, and the
+regular motion of the engine. The sea was gently agitated, now shewing
+a white crest, and now resuming an uniform hue; the clouds had
+disappeared; and dark ether clipt the broad ocean, in which the
+constellations vainly sought their accustomed mirror. Our rate could
+not have been less than eight knots.
+
+Suddenly I heard a splash in the sea. The sailors on watch rushed to
+the side of the vessel, with the cry—some one gone overboard. “It is
+not from deck,” said the man at the helm, “something has been thrown
+from the aft cabin.” A call for the boat to be lowered was echoed from
+the deck. I rushed into my sister’s cabin; it was empty.
+
+With sails abaft, the engine stopt, the vessel remained unwillingly
+stationary, until, after an hour’s search, my poor Perdita was brought
+on board. But no care could re-animate her, no medicine cause her dear
+eyes to open, and the blood to flow again from her pulseless heart. One
+clenched hand contained a slip of paper, on which was written, “To
+Athens.” To ensure her removal thither, and prevent the irrecoverable
+loss of her body in the wide sea, she had had the precaution to fasten
+a long shawl round her waist, and again to the staunchions of the cabin
+window. She had drifted somewhat under the keel of the vessel, and her
+being out of sight occasioned the delay in finding her. And thus the
+ill-starred girl died a victim to my senseless rashness. Thus, in early
+day, she left us for the company of the dead, and preferred to share
+the rocky grave of Raymond, before the animated scene this cheerful
+earth afforded, and the society of loving friends. Thus in her
+twenty-ninth year she died; having enjoyed some few years of the
+happiness of paradise, and sustaining a reverse to which her impatient
+spirit and affectionate disposition were unable to submit. As I marked
+the placid expression that had settled on her countenance in death, I
+felt, in spite of the pangs of remorse, in spite of heart-rending
+regret, that it was better to die so, than to drag on long, miserable
+years of repining and inconsolable grief. Stress of weather drove us up
+the Adriatic Gulph; and, our vessel being hardly fitted to weather a
+storm, we took refuge in the port of Ancona. Here I met Georgio Palli,
+the vice-admiral of the Greek fleet, a former friend and warm partizan
+of Raymond. I committed the remains of my lost Perdita to his care, for
+the purpose of having them transported to Hymettus, and placed in the
+cell her Raymond already occupied beneath the pyramid. This was all
+accomplished even as I wished. She reposed beside her beloved, and the
+tomb above was inscribed with the united names of Raymond and Perdita.
+
+I then came to a resolution of pursuing our journey to England
+overland. My own heart was racked by regrets and remorse. The
+apprehension, that Raymond had departed for ever, that his name,
+blended eternally with the past, must be erased from every anticipation
+of the future, had come slowly upon me. I had always admired his
+talents; his noble aspirations; his grand conceptions of the glory and
+majesty of his ambition: his utter want of mean passions; his fortitude
+and daring. In Greece I had learnt to love him; his very waywardness,
+and self-abandonment to the impulses of superstition, attached me to
+him doubly; it might be weakness, but it was the antipodes of all that
+was grovelling and selfish. To these pangs were added the loss of
+Perdita, lost through my own accursed self-will and conceit. This dear
+one, my sole relation; whose progress I had marked from tender
+childhood through the varied path of life, and seen her throughout
+conspicuous for integrity, devotion, and true affection; for all that
+constitutes the peculiar graces of the female character, and beheld her
+at last the victim of too much loving, too constant an attachment to
+the perishable and lost, she, in her pride of beauty and life, had
+thrown aside the pleasant perception of the apparent world for the
+unreality of the grave, and had left poor Clara quite an orphan. I
+concealed from this beloved child that her mother’s death was
+voluntary, and tried every means to awaken cheerfulness in her
+sorrow-stricken spirit.
+
+One of my first acts for the recovery even of my own composure, was to
+bid farewell to the sea. Its hateful splash renewed again and again to
+my sense the death of my sister; its roar was a dirge; in every dark
+hull that was tossed on its inconstant bosom, I imaged a bier, that
+would convey to death all who trusted to its treacherous smiles.
+Farewell to the sea! Come, my Clara, sit beside me in this aerial bark;
+quickly and gently it cleaves the azure serene, and with soft
+undulation glides upon the current of the air; or, if storm shake its
+fragile mechanism, the green earth is below; we can descend, and take
+shelter on the stable continent. Here aloft, the companions of the
+swift-winged birds, we skim through the unresisting element, fleetly
+and fearlessly. The light boat heaves not, nor is opposed by
+death-bearing waves; the ether opens before the prow, and the shadow of
+the globe that upholds it, shelters us from the noon-day sun. Beneath
+are the plains of Italy, or the vast undulations of the wave-like
+Apennines: fertility reposes in their many folds, and woods crown the
+summits. The free and happy peasant, unshackled by the Austrian, bears
+the double harvest to the garner; and the refined citizens rear without
+dread the long blighted tree of knowledge in this garden of the world.
+We were lifted above the Alpine peaks, and from their deep and brawling
+ravines entered the plain of fair France, and after an airy journey of
+six days, we landed at Dieppe, furled the feathered wings, and closed
+the silken globe of our little pinnace. A heavy rain made this mode of
+travelling now incommodious; so we embarked in a steam-packet, and
+after a short passage landed at Portsmouth.
+
+A strange story was rife here. A few days before, a tempest-struck
+vessel had appeared off the town: the hull was parched-looking and
+cracked, the sails rent, and bent in a careless, unseamanlike manner,
+the shrouds tangled and broken. She drifted towards the harbour, and
+was stranded on the sands at the entrance. In the morning the
+custom-house officers, together with a crowd of idlers, visited her.
+One only of the crew appeared to have arrived with her. He had got to
+shore, and had walked a few paces towards the town, and then,
+vanquished by malady and approaching death, had fallen on the
+inhospitable beach. He was found stiff, his hands clenched, and pressed
+against his breast. His skin, nearly black, his matted hair and bristly
+beard, were signs of a long protracted misery. It was whispered that he
+had died of the plague. No one ventured on board the vessel, and
+strange sights were averred to be seen at night, walking the deck, and
+hanging on the masts and shrouds. She soon went to pieces; I was shewn
+where she had been, and saw her disjoined timbers tossed on the waves.
+The body of the man who had landed, had been buried deep in the sands;
+and none could tell more, than that the vessel was American built, and
+that several months before the Fortunatas had sailed from Philadelphia,
+of which no tidings were afterwards received.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+I returned to my family estate in the autumn of the year 2092. My heart
+had long been with them; and I felt sick with the hope and delight of
+seeing them again. The district which contained them appeared the abode
+of every kindly spirit. Happiness, love and peace, walked the forest
+paths, and tempered the atmosphere. After all the agitation and sorrow
+I had endured in Greece, I sought Windsor, as the storm-driven bird
+does the nest in which it may fold its wings in tranquillity.
+
+How unwise had the wanderers been, who had deserted its shelter,
+entangled themselves in the web of society, and entered on what men of
+the world call “life,”—that labyrinth of evil, that scheme of mutual
+torture. To live, according to this sense of the word, we must not only
+observe and learn, we must also feel; we must not be mere spectators of
+action, we must act; we must not describe, but be subjects of
+description. Deep sorrow must have been the inmate of our bosoms; fraud
+must have lain in wait for us; the artful must have deceived us;
+sickening doubt and false hope must have chequered our days; hilarity
+and joy, that lap the soul in ecstasy, must at times have possessed us.
+Who that knows what “life” is, would pine for this feverish species of
+existence? I have lived. I have spent days and nights of festivity; I
+have joined in ambitious hopes, and exulted in victory: now,—shut the
+door on the world, and build high the wall that is to separate me from
+the troubled scene enacted within its precincts. Let us live for each
+other and for happiness; let us seek peace in our dear home, near the
+inland murmur of streams, and the gracious waving of trees, the
+beauteous vesture of earth, and sublime pageantry of the skies. Let us
+leave “life,” that we may live.
+
+Idris was well content with this resolve of mine. Her native
+sprightliness needed no undue excitement, and her placid heart reposed
+contented on my love, the well-being of her children, and the beauty of
+surrounding nature. Her pride and blameless ambition was to create
+smiles in all around her, and to shed repose on the fragile existence
+of her brother. In spite of her tender nursing, the health of Adrian
+perceptibly declined. Walking, riding, the common occupations of life,
+overcame him: he felt no pain, but seemed to tremble for ever on the
+verge of annihilation. Yet, as he had lived on for months nearly in the
+same state, he did not inspire us with any immediate fear; and, though
+he talked of death as an event most familiar to his thoughts, he did
+not cease to exert himself to render others happy, or to cultivate his
+own astonishing powers of mind. Winter passed away; and spring, led by
+the months, awakened life in all nature. The forest was dressed in
+green; the young calves frisked on the new-sprung grass; the
+wind-winged shadows of light clouds sped over the green cornfields; the
+hermit cuckoo repeated his monotonous all-hail to the season; the
+nightingale, bird of love and minion of the evening star, filled the
+woods with song; while Venus lingered in the warm sunset, and the young
+green of the trees lay in gentle relief along the clear horizon.
+
+Delight awoke in every heart, delight and exultation; for there was
+peace through all the world; the temple of Universal Janus was shut,
+and man died not that year by the hand of man.
+
+“Let this last but twelve months,” said Adrian; “and earth will become
+a Paradise. The energies of man were before directed to the destruction
+of his species: they now aim at its liberation and preservation. Man
+cannot repose, and his restless aspirations will now bring forth good
+instead of evil. The favoured countries of the south will throw off the
+iron yoke of servitude; poverty will quit us, and with that, sickness.
+What may not the forces, never before united, of liberty and peace
+achieve in this dwelling of man?”
+
+“Dreaming, for ever dreaming, Windsor!” said Ryland, the old adversary
+of Raymond, and candidate for the Protectorate at the ensuing election.
+“Be assured that earth is not, nor ever can be heaven, while the seeds
+of hell are natives of her soil. When the seasons have become equal,
+when the air breeds no disorders, when its surface is no longer liable
+to blights and droughts, then sickness will cease; when men’s passions
+are dead, poverty will depart. When love is no longer akin to hate,
+then brotherhood will exist: we are very far from that state at
+present.”
+
+“Not so far as you may suppose,” observed a little old astronomer, by
+name Merrival, “the poles precede slowly, but securely; in an hundred
+thousand years—”
+
+“We shall all be underground,” said Ryland.
+
+“The pole of the earth will coincide with the pole of the ecliptic,”
+continued the astronomer, “an universal spring will be produced, and
+earth become a paradise.”
+
+“And we shall of course enjoy the benefit of the change,” said Ryland,
+contemptuously.
+
+“We have strange news here,” I observed. I had the newspaper in my
+hand, and, as usual, had turned to the intelligence from Greece. “It
+seems that the total destruction of Constantinople, and the supposition
+that winter had purified the air of the fallen city, gave the Greeks
+courage to visit its site, and begin to rebuild it. But they tell us
+that the curse of God is on the place, for every one who has ventured
+within the walls has been tainted by the plague; that this disease has
+spread in Thrace and Macedonia; and now, fearing the virulence of
+infection during the coming heats, a cordon has been drawn on the
+frontiers of Thessaly, and a strict quarantine exacted.” This
+intelligence brought us back from the prospect of paradise, held out
+after the lapse of an hundred thousand years, to the pain and misery at
+present existent upon earth. We talked of the ravages made last year by
+pestilence in every quarter of the world; and of the dreadful
+consequences of a second visitation. We discussed the best means of
+preventing infection, and of preserving health and activity in a large
+city thus afflicted—London, for instance. Merrival did not join in this
+conversation; drawing near Idris, he proceeded to assure her that the
+joyful prospect of an earthly paradise after an hundred thousand years,
+was clouded to him by the knowledge that in a certain period of time
+after, an earthly hell or purgatory, would occur, when the ecliptic and
+equator would be at right angles.[4] Our party at length broke up; “We
+are all dreaming this morning,” said Ryland, “it is as wise to discuss
+the probability of a visitation of the plague in our well-governed
+metropolis, as to calculate the centuries which must escape before we
+can grow pine-apples here in the open air.”
+
+But, though it seemed absurd to calculate upon the arrival of the
+plague in London, I could not reflect without extreme pain on the
+desolation this evil would cause in Greece. The English for the most
+part talked of Thrace and Macedonia, as they would of a lunar
+territory, which, unknown to them, presented no distinct idea or
+interest to the minds. I had trod the soil. The faces of many of the
+inhabitants were familiar to me; in the towns, plains, hills, and
+defiles of these countries, I had enjoyed unspeakable delight, as I
+journied through them the year before. Some romantic village, some
+cottage, or elegant abode there situated, inhabited by the lovely and
+the good, rose before my mental sight, and the question haunted me, is
+the plague there also?—That same invincible monster, which hovered over
+and devoured Constantinople—that fiend more cruel than tempest, less
+tame than fire, is, alas, unchained in that beautiful country—these
+reflections would not allow me to rest.
+
+The political state of England became agitated as the time drew near
+when the new Protector was to be elected. This event excited the more
+interest, since it was the current report, that if the popular
+candidate (Ryland) should be chosen, the question of the abolition of
+hereditary rank, and other feudal relics, would come under the
+consideration of parliament. Not a word had been spoken during the
+present session on any of these topics. Every thing would depend upon
+the choice of a Protector, and the elections of the ensuing year. Yet
+this very silence was awful, shewing the deep weight attributed to the
+question; the fear of either party to hazard an ill-timed attack, and
+the expectation of a furious contention when it should begin.
+
+But although St. Stephen’s did not echo with the voice which filled
+each heart, the newspapers teemed with nothing else; and in private
+companies the conversation however remotely begun, soon verged towards
+this central point, while voices were lowered and chairs drawn closer.
+The nobles did not hesitate to express their fear; the other party
+endeavoured to treat the matter lightly. “Shame on the country,” said
+Ryland, “to lay so much stress upon words and frippery; it is a
+question of nothing; of the new painting of carriage-pannels and the
+embroidery of footmen’s coats.”
+
+Yet could England indeed doff her lordly trappings, and be content with
+the democratic style of America? Were the pride of ancestry, the
+patrician spirit, the gentle courtesies and refined pursuits, splendid
+attributes of rank, to be erased among us? We were told that this would
+not be the case; that we were by nature a poetical people, a nation
+easily duped by words, ready to array clouds in splendour, and bestow
+honour on the dust. This spirit we could never lose; and it was to
+diffuse this concentrated spirit of birth, that the new law was to be
+brought forward. We were assured that, when the name and title of
+Englishman was the sole patent of nobility, we should all be noble;
+that when no man born under English sway, felt another his superior in
+rank, courtesy and refinement would become the birth-right of all our
+countrymen. Let not England be so far disgraced, as to have it imagined
+that it can be without nobles, nature’s true nobility, who bear their
+patent in their mien, who are from their cradle elevated above the rest
+of their species, because they are better than the rest. Among a race
+of independent, and generous, and well educated men, in a country where
+the imagination is empress of men’s minds, there needs be no fear that
+we should want a perpetual succession of the high-born and lordly. That
+party, however, could hardly yet be considered a minority in the
+kingdom, who extolled the ornament of the column, “the Corinthian
+capital of polished society;” they appealed to prejudices without
+number, to old attachments and young hopes; to the expectation of
+thousands who might one day become peers; they set up as a scarecrow,
+the spectre of all that was sordid, mechanic and base in the commercial
+republics.
+
+The plague had come to Athens. Hundreds of English residents returned
+to their own country. Raymond’s beloved Athenians, the free, the noble
+people of the divinest town in Greece, fell like ripe corn before the
+merciless sickle of the adversary. Its pleasant places were deserted;
+its temples and palaces were converted into tombs; its energies, bent
+before towards the highest objects of human ambition, were now forced
+to converge to one point, the guarding against the innumerous arrows of
+the plague.
+
+At any other time this disaster would have excited extreme compassion
+among us; but it was now passed over, while each mind was engaged by
+the coming controversy. It was not so with me; and the question of rank
+and right dwindled to insignificance in my eyes, when I pictured the
+scene of suffering Athens. I heard of the death of only sons; of wives
+and husbands most devoted; of the rending of ties twisted with the
+heart’s fibres, of friend losing friend, and young mothers mourning for
+their first born; and these moving incidents were grouped and painted
+in my mind by the knowledge of the persons, by my esteem and affection
+for the sufferers. It was the admirers, friends, fellow soldiers of
+Raymond, families that had welcomed Perdita to Greece, and lamented
+with her the loss of her lord, that were swept away, and went to dwell
+with them in the undistinguishing tomb.
+
+The plague at Athens had been preceded and caused by the contagion from
+the East; and the scene of havoc and death continued to be acted there,
+on a scale of fearful magnitude. A hope that the visitation of the
+present year would prove the last, kept up the spirits of the merchants
+connected with these countries; but the inhabitants were driven to
+despair, or to a resignation which, arising from fanaticism, assumed
+the same dark hue. America had also received the taint; and, were it
+yellow fever or plague, the epidemic was gifted with a virulence before
+unfelt. The devastation was not confined to the towns, but spread
+throughout the country; the hunter died in the woods, the peasant in
+the corn-fields, and the fisher on his native waters.
+
+A strange story was brought to us from the East, to which little credit
+would have been given, had not the fact been attested by a multitude of
+witnesses, in various parts of the world. On the twenty-first of June,
+it was said that an hour before noon, a black sun arose: an orb, the
+size of that luminary, but dark, defined, whose beams were shadows,
+ascended from the west; in about an hour it had reached the meridian,
+and eclipsed the bright parent of day. Night fell upon every country,
+night, sudden, rayless, entire. The stars came out, shedding their
+ineffectual glimmerings on the light-widowed earth. But soon the dim
+orb passed from over the sun, and lingered down the eastern heaven. As
+it descended, its dusky rays crossed the brilliant ones of the sun, and
+deadened or distorted them. The shadows of things assumed strange and
+ghastly shapes. The wild animals in the woods took fright at the
+unknown shapes figured on the ground. They fled they knew not whither;
+and the citizens were filled with greater dread, at the convulsion
+which “shook lions into civil streets;”—birds, strong-winged eagles,
+suddenly blinded, fell in the market-places, while owls and bats shewed
+themselves welcoming the early night. Gradually the object of fear sank
+beneath the horizon, and to the last shot up shadowy beams into the
+otherwise radiant air. Such was the tale sent us from Asia, from the
+eastern extremity of Europe, and from Africa as far west as the Golden
+Coast. Whether this story were true or not, the effects were certain.
+Through Asia, from the banks of the Nile to the shores of the Caspian,
+from the Hellespont even to the sea of Oman, a sudden panic was driven.
+The men filled the mosques; the women, veiled, hastened to the tombs,
+and carried offerings to the dead, thus to preserve the living. The
+plague was forgotten, in this new fear which the black sun had spread;
+and, though the dead multiplied, and the streets of Ispahan, of Pekin,
+and of Delhi were strewed with pestilence-struck corpses, men passed
+on, gazing on the ominous sky, regardless of the death beneath their
+feet. The christians sought their churches,—christian maidens, even at
+the feast of roses, clad in white, with shining veils, sought, in long
+procession, the places consecrated to their religion, filling the air
+with their hymns; while, ever and anon, from the lips of some poor
+mourner in the crowd, a voice of wailing burst, and the rest looked up,
+fancying they could discern the sweeping wings of angels, who passed
+over the earth, lamenting the disasters about to fall on man.
+
+In the sunny clime of Persia, in the crowded cities of China, amidst
+the aromatic groves of Cashmere, and along the southern shores of the
+Mediterranean, such scenes had place. Even in Greece the tale of the
+sun of darkness encreased the fears and despair of the dying multitude.
+We, in our cloudy isle, were far removed from danger, and the only
+circumstance that brought these disasters at all home to us, was the
+daily arrival of vessels from the east, crowded with emigrants, mostly
+English; for the Moslems, though the fear of death was spread keenly
+among them, still clung together; that, if they were to die (and if
+they were, death would as readily meet them on the homeless sea, or in
+far England, as in Persia,)— if they were to die, their bones might
+rest in earth made sacred by the relics of true believers. Mecca had
+never before been so crowded with pilgrims; yet the Arabs neglected to
+pillage the caravans, but, humble and weaponless, they joined the
+procession, praying Mahomet to avert plague from their tents and
+deserts.
+
+I cannot describe the rapturous delight with which I turned from
+political brawls at home, and the physical evils of distant countries,
+to my own dear home, to the selected abode of goodness and love; to
+peace, and the interchange of every sacred sympathy. Had I never
+quitted Windsor, these emotions would not have been so intense; but I
+had in Greece been the prey of fear and deplorable change; in Greece,
+after a period of anxiety and sorrow, I had seen depart two, whose very
+names were the symbol of greatness and virtue. But such miseries could
+never intrude upon the domestic circle left to me, while, secluded in
+our beloved forest, we passed our lives in tranquillity. Some small
+change indeed the progress of years brought here; and time, as it is
+wont, stamped the traces of mortality on our pleasures and
+expectations. Idris, the most affectionate wife, sister and friend, was
+a tender and loving mother. The feeling was not with her as with many,
+a pastime; it was a passion. We had had three children; one, the second
+in age, died while I was in Greece. This had dashed the triumphant and
+rapturous emotions of maternity with grief and fear. Before this event,
+the little beings, sprung from herself, the young heirs of her
+transient life, seemed to have a sure lease of existence; now she
+dreaded that the pitiless destroyer might snatch her remaining
+darlings, as it had snatched their brother. The least illness caused
+throes of terror; she was miserable if she were at all absent from
+them; her treasure of happiness she had garnered in their fragile
+being, and kept forever on the watch, lest the insidious thief should
+as before steal these valued gems. She had fortunately small cause for
+fear. Alfred, now nine years old, was an upright, manly little fellow,
+with radiant brow, soft eyes, and gentle, though independent
+disposition. Our youngest was yet in infancy; but his downy cheek was
+sprinkled with the roses of health, and his unwearied vivacity filled
+our halls with innocent laughter.
+
+Clara had passed the age which, from its mute ignorance, was the source
+of the fears of Idris. Clara was dear to her, to all. There was so much
+intelligence combined with innocence, sensibility with forbearance, and
+seriousness with perfect good-humour, a beauty so transcendant, united
+to such endearing simplicity, that she hung like a pearl in the shrine
+of our possessions, a treasure of wonder and excellence.
+
+At the beginning of winter our Alfred, now nine years of age, first
+went to school at Eton. This appeared to him the primary step towards
+manhood, and he was proportionably pleased. Community of study and
+amusement developed the best parts of his character, his steady
+perseverance, generosity, and well-governed firmness. What deep and
+sacred emotions are excited in a father’s bosom, when he first becomes
+convinced that his love for his child is not a mere instinct, but
+worthily bestowed, and that others, less akin, participate his
+approbation! It was supreme happiness to Idris and myself, to find that
+the frankness which Alfred’s open brow indicated, the intelligence of
+his eyes, the tempered sensibility of his tones, were not delusions,
+but indications of talents and virtues, which would “grow with his
+growth, and strengthen with his strength.” At this period, the
+termination of an animal’s love for its offspring,—the true affection
+of the human parent commences. We no longer look on this dearest part
+of ourselves, as a tender plant which we must cherish, or a plaything
+for an idle hour. We build now on his intellectual faculties, we
+establish our hopes on his moral propensities. His weakness still
+imparts anxiety to this feeling, his ignorance prevents entire
+intimacy; but we begin to respect the future man, and to endeavour to
+secure his esteem, even as if he were our equal. What can a parent have
+more at heart than the good opinion of his child? In all our
+transactions with him our honour must be inviolate, the integrity of
+our relations untainted: fate and circumstance may, when he arrives at
+maturity, separate us for ever—but, as his aegis in danger, his
+consolation in hardship, let the ardent youth for ever bear with him
+through the rough path of life, love and honour for his parents.
+
+We had lived so long in the vicinity of Eton, that its population of
+young folks was well known to us. Many of them had been Alfred’s
+playmates, before they became his school-fellows. We now watched this
+youthful congregation with redoubled interest. We marked the difference
+of character among the boys, and endeavoured to read the future man in
+the stripling. There is nothing more lovely, to which the heart more
+yearns than a free-spirited boy, gentle, brave, and generous. Several
+of the Etonians had these characteristics; all were distinguished by a
+sense of honour, and spirit of enterprize; in some, as they verged
+towards manhood, this degenerated into presumption; but the younger
+ones, lads a little older than our own, were conspicuous for their
+gallant and sweet dispositions.
+
+Here were the future governors of England; the men, who, when our
+ardour was cold, and our projects completed or destroyed for ever,
+when, our drama acted, we doffed the garb of the hour, and assumed the
+uniform of age, or of more equalizing death; here were the beings who
+were to carry on the vast machine of society; here were the lovers,
+husbands, fathers; here the landlord, the politician, the soldier; some
+fancied that they were even now ready to appear on the stage, eager to
+make one among the dramatis personae of active life. It was not long
+since I was like one of these beardless aspirants; when my boy shall
+have obtained the place I now hold, I shall have tottered into a
+grey-headed, wrinkled old man. Strange system! riddle of the Sphynx,
+most awe-striking! that thus man remains, while we the individuals pass
+away. Such is, to borrow the words of an eloquent and philosophic
+writer, “the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body composed of
+transitory parts; wherein, by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom,
+moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race,
+the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young, but, in
+a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied
+tenour of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression.”[5]
+
+Willingly do I give place to thee, dear Alfred! advance, offspring of
+tender love, child of our hopes; advance a soldier on the road to which
+I have been the pioneer! I will make way for thee. I have already put
+off the carelessness of childhood, the unlined brow, and springy gait
+of early years, that they may adorn thee. Advance; and I will despoil
+myself still further for thy advantage. Time shall rob me of the graces
+of maturity, shall take the fire from my eyes, and agility from my
+limbs, shall steal the better part of life, eager expectation and
+passionate love, and shower them in double portion on thy dear head.
+Advance! avail thyself of the gift, thou and thy comrades; and in the
+drama you are about to act, do not disgrace those who taught you to
+enter on the stage, and to pronounce becomingly the parts assigned to
+you! May your progress be uninterrupted and secure; born during the
+spring-tide of the hopes of man, may you lead up the summer to which no
+winter may succeed!
+
+ [4] See an ingenious Essay, entitled, “The Mythological Astronomy of
+ the Ancients Demonstrated,” by Mackey, a shoemaker, of Norwich printed
+ in 1822.
+
+
+ [5] Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Some disorder had surely crept into the course of the elements,
+destroying their benignant influence. The wind, prince of air, raged
+through his kingdom, lashing the sea into fury, and subduing the rebel
+earth into some sort of obedience.
+
+The God sends down his angry plagues from high,
+Famine and pestilence in heaps they die.
+Again in vengeance of his wrath he falls
+On their great hosts, and breaks their tottering walls;
+Arrests their navies on the ocean’s plain,
+And whelms their strength with mountains of the main.[6]
+
+
+Their deadly power shook the flourishing countries of the south, and
+during winter, even, we, in our northern retreat, began to quake under
+their ill effects.
+
+That fable is unjust, which gives the superiority to the sun over the
+wind. Who has not seen the lightsome earth, the balmy atmosphere, and
+basking nature become dark, cold and ungenial, when the sleeping wind
+has awoke in the east? Or, when the dun clouds thickly veil the sky,
+while exhaustless stores of rain are poured down, until, the dank earth
+refusing to imbibe the superabundant moisture, it lies in pools on the
+surface; when the torch of day seems like a meteor, to be quenched; who
+has not seen the cloud-stirring north arise, the streaked blue appear,
+and soon an opening made in the vapours in the eye of the wind, through
+which the bright azure shines? The clouds become thin; an arch is
+formed for ever rising upwards, till, the universal cope being
+unveiled, the sun pours forth its rays, re-animated and fed by the
+breeze.
+
+Then mighty art thou, O wind, to be throned above all other vicegerents
+of nature’s power; whether thou comest destroying from the east, or
+pregnant with elementary life from the west; thee the clouds obey; the
+sun is subservient to thee; the shoreless ocean is thy slave! Thou
+sweepest over the earth, and oaks, the growth of centuries, submit to
+thy viewless axe; the snow-drift is scattered on the pinnacles of the
+Alps, the avalanche thunders down their vallies. Thou holdest the keys
+of the frost, and canst first chain and then set free the streams;
+under thy gentle governance the buds and leaves are born, they flourish
+nursed by thee.
+
+Why dost thou howl thus, O wind? By day and by night for four long
+months thy roarings have not ceased—the shores of the sea are strewn
+with wrecks, its keel-welcoming surface has become impassable, the
+earth has shed her beauty in obedience to thy command; the frail
+balloon dares no longer sail on the agitated air; thy ministers, the
+clouds, deluge the land with rain; rivers forsake their banks; the wild
+torrent tears up the mountain path; plain and wood, and verdant dell
+are despoiled of their loveliness; our very cities are wasted by thee.
+Alas, what will become of us? It seems as if the giant waves of ocean,
+and vast arms of the sea, were about to wrench the deep-rooted island
+from its centre; and cast it, a ruin and a wreck, upon the fields of
+the Atlantic.
+
+What are we, the inhabitants of this globe, least among the many that
+people infinite space? Our minds embrace infinity; the visible
+mechanism of our being is subject to merest accident. Day by day we are
+forced to believe this. He whom a scratch has disorganized, he who
+disappears from apparent life under the influence of the hostile agency
+at work around us, had the same powers as I—I also am subject to the
+same laws. In the face of all this we call ourselves lords of the
+creation, wielders of the elements, masters of life and death, and we
+allege in excuse of this arrogance, that though the individual is
+destroyed, man continues for ever.
+
+Thus, losing our identity, that of which we are chiefly conscious, we
+glory in the continuity of our species, and learn to regard death
+without terror. But when any whole nation becomes the victim of the
+destructive powers of exterior agents, then indeed man shrinks into
+insignificance, he feels his tenure of life insecure, his inheritance
+on earth cut off.
+
+I remember, after having witnessed the destructive effects of a fire, I
+could not even behold a small one in a stove, without a sensation of
+fear. The mounting flames had curled round the building, as it fell,
+and was destroyed. They insinuated themselves into the substances about
+them, and the impediments to their progress yielded at their touch.
+Could we take integral parts of this power, and not be subject to its
+operation? Could we domesticate a cub of this wild beast, and not fear
+its growth and maturity?
+
+Thus we began to feel, with regard to many-visaged death let loose on
+the chosen districts of our fair habitation, and above all, with regard
+to the plague. We feared the coming summer. Nations, bordering on the
+already infected countries, began to enter upon serious plans for the
+better keeping out of the enemy. We, a commercial people, were obliged
+to bring such schemes under consideration; and the question of
+contagion became matter of earnest disquisition.
+
+That the plague was not what is commonly called contagious, like the
+scarlet fever, or extinct small-pox, was proved. It was called an
+epidemic. But the grand question was still unsettled of how this
+epidemic was generated and increased. If infection depended upon the
+air, the air was subject to infection. As for instance, a typhus fever
+has been brought by ships to one sea-port town; yet the very people who
+brought it there, were incapable of communicating it in a town more
+fortunately situated. But how are we to judge of airs, and pronounce—in
+such a city plague will die unproductive; in such another, nature has
+provided for it a plentiful harvest? In the same way, individuals may
+escape ninety-nine times, and receive the death-blow at the hundredth;
+because bodies are sometimes in a state to reject the infection of
+malady, and at others, thirsty to imbibe it. These reflections made our
+legislators pause, before they could decide on the laws to be put in
+force. The evil was so wide-spreading, so violent and immedicable, that
+no care, no prevention could be judged superfluous, which even added a
+chance to our escape.
+
+These were questions of prudence; there was no immediate necessity for
+an earnest caution. England was still secure. France, Germany, Italy
+and Spain, were interposed, walls yet without a breach, between us and
+the plague. Our vessels truly were the sport of winds and waves, even
+as Gulliver was the toy of the Brobdignagians; but we on our stable
+abode could not be hurt in life or limb by these eruptions of nature.
+We could not fear—we did not. Yet a feeling of awe, a breathless
+sentiment of wonder, a painful sense of the degradation of humanity,
+was introduced into every heart. Nature, our mother, and our friend,
+had turned on us a brow of menace. She shewed us plainly, that, though
+she permitted us to assign her laws and subdue her apparent powers,
+yet, if she put forth but a finger, we must quake. She could take our
+globe, fringed with mountains, girded by the atmosphere, containing the
+condition of our being, and all that man’s mind could invent or his
+force achieve; she could take the ball in her hand, and cast it into
+space, where life would be drunk up, and man and all his efforts for
+ever annihilated.
+
+These speculations were rife among us; yet not the less we proceeded in
+our daily occupations, and our plans, whose accomplishment demanded the
+lapse of many years. No voice was heard telling us to hold! When
+foreign distresses came to be felt by us through the channels of
+commerce, we set ourselves to apply remedies. Subscriptions were made
+for the emigrants, and merchants bankrupt by the failure of trade. The
+English spirit awoke to its full activity, and, as it had ever done,
+set itself to resist the evil, and to stand in the breach which
+diseased nature had suffered chaos and death to make in the bounds and
+banks which had hitherto kept them out.
+
+At the commencement of summer, we began to feel, that the mischief
+which had taken place in distant countries was greater than we had at
+first suspected. Quito was destroyed by an earthquake. Mexico laid
+waste by the united effects of storm, pestilence and famine. Crowds of
+emigrants inundated the west of Europe; and our island had become the
+refuge of thousands. In the mean time Ryland had been chosen Protector.
+He had sought this office with eagerness, under the idea of turning his
+whole forces to the suppression of the privileged orders of our
+community. His measures were thwarted, and his schemes interrupted by
+this new state of things. Many of the foreigners were utterly
+destitute; and their increasing numbers at length forbade a recourse to
+the usual modes of relief. Trade was stopped by the failure of the
+interchange of cargoes usual between us, and America, India, Egypt and
+Greece. A sudden break was made in the routine of our lives. In vain
+our Protector and his partizans sought to conceal this truth; in vain,
+day after day, he appointed a period for the discussion of the new laws
+concerning hereditary rank and privilege; in vain he endeavoured to
+represent the evil as partial and temporary. These disasters came home
+to so many bosoms, and, through the various channels of commerce, were
+carried so entirely into every class and division of the community,
+that of necessity they became the first question in the state, the
+chief subjects to which we must turn our attention.
+
+Can it be true, each asked the other with wonder and dismay, that whole
+countries are laid waste, whole nations annihilated, by these disorders
+in nature? The vast cities of America, the fertile plains of Hindostan,
+the crowded abodes of the Chinese, are menaced with utter ruin. Where
+late the busy multitudes assembled for pleasure or profit, now only the
+sound of wailing and misery is heard. The air is empoisoned, and each
+human being inhales death, even while in youth and health, their hopes
+are in the flower. We called to mind the plague of 1348, when it was
+calculated that a third of mankind had been destroyed. As yet western
+Europe was uninfected; would it always be so?
+
+O, yes, it would—Countrymen, fear not! In the still uncultivated wilds
+of America, what wonder that among its other giant destroyers, plague
+should be numbered! It is of old a native of the East, sister of the
+tornado, the earthquake, and the simoon. Child of the sun, and nursling
+of the tropics, it would expire in these climes. It drinks the dark
+blood of the inhabitant of the south, but it never feasts on the
+pale-faced Celt. If perchance some stricken Asiatic come among us,
+plague dies with him, uncommunicated and innoxious. Let us weep for our
+brethren, though we can never experience their reverse. Let us lament
+over and assist the children of the garden of the earth. Late we envied
+their abodes, their spicy groves, fertile plains, and abundant
+loveliness. But in this mortal life extremes are always matched; the
+thorn grows with the rose, the poison tree and the cinnamon mingle
+their boughs. Persia, with its cloth of gold, marble halls, and
+infinite wealth, is now a tomb. The tent of the Arab is fallen in the
+sands, and his horse spurns the ground unbridled and unsaddled. The
+voice of lamentation fills the valley of Cashmere; its dells and woods,
+its cool fountains, and gardens of roses, are polluted by the dead; in
+Circassia and Georgia the spirit of beauty weeps over the ruin of its
+favourite temple—the form of woman.
+
+Our own distresses, though they were occasioned by the fictitious
+reciprocity of commerce, encreased in due proportion. Bankers,
+merchants, and manufacturers, whose trade depended on exports and
+interchange of wealth, became bankrupt. Such things, when they happen
+singly, affect only the immediate parties; but the prosperity of the
+nation was now shaken by frequent and extensive losses. Families, bred
+in opulence and luxury, were reduced to beggary. The very state of
+peace in which we gloried was injurious; there were no means of
+employing the idle, or of sending any overplus of population out of the
+country. Even the source of colonies was dried up, for in New Holland,
+Van Diemen’s Land, and the Cape of Good Hope, plague raged. O, for some
+medicinal vial to purge unwholesome nature, and bring back the earth to
+its accustomed health!
+
+Ryland was a man of strong intellects and quick and sound decision in
+the usual course of things, but he stood aghast at the multitude of
+evils that gathered round us. Must he tax the landed interest to assist
+our commercial population? To do this, he must gain the favour of the
+chief land-holders, the nobility of the country; and these were his
+vowed enemies—he must conciliate them by abandoning his favourite
+scheme of equalization; he must confirm them in their manorial rights;
+he must sell his cherished plans for the permanent good of his country,
+for temporary relief. He must aim no more at the dear object of his
+ambition; throwing his arms aside, he must for present ends give up the
+ultimate object of his endeavours. He came to Windsor to consult with
+us. Every day added to his difficulties; the arrival of fresh vessels
+with emigrants, the total cessation of commerce, the starving multitude
+that thronged around the palace of the Protectorate, were circumstances
+not to be tampered with. The blow was struck; the aristocracy obtained
+all they wished, and they subscribed to a twelvemonths’ bill, which
+levied twenty per cent on all the rent-rolls of the country. Calm was
+now restored to the metropolis, and to the populous cities, before
+driven to desperation; and we returned to the consideration of distant
+calamities, wondering if the future would bring any alleviation to
+their excess. It was August; so there could be small hope of relief
+during the heats. On the contrary, the disease gained virulence, while
+starvation did its accustomed work. Thousands died unlamented; for
+beside the yet warm corpse the mourner was stretched, made mute by
+death.
+
+On the eighteenth of this month news arrived in London that the plague
+was in France and Italy. These tidings were at first whispered about
+town; but no one dared express aloud the soul-quailing intelligence.
+When any one met a friend in the street, he only cried as he hurried
+on, “You know!”— while the other, with an ejaculation of fear and
+horror, would answer,— “What will become of us?” At length it was
+mentioned in the newspapers. The paragraph was inserted in an obscure
+part: “We regret to state that there can be no longer a doubt of the
+plague having been introduced at Leghorn, Genoa, and Marseilles.” No
+word of comment followed; each reader made his own fearful one. We were
+as a man who hears that his house is burning, and yet hurries through
+the streets, borne along by a lurking hope of a mistake, till he turns
+the corner, and sees his sheltering roof enveloped in a flame. Before
+it had been a rumour; but now in words uneraseable, in definite and
+undeniable print, the knowledge went forth. Its obscurity of situation
+rendered it the more conspicuous: the diminutive letters grew gigantic
+to the bewildered eye of fear: they seemed graven with a pen of iron,
+impressed by fire, woven in the clouds, stamped on the very front of
+the universe.
+
+The English, whether travellers or residents, came pouring in one great
+revulsive stream, back on their own country; and with them crowds of
+Italians and Spaniards. Our little island was filled even to bursting.
+At first an unusual quantity of specie made its appearance with the
+emigrants; but these people had no means of receiving back into their
+hands what they spent among us. With the advance of summer, and the
+increase of the distemper, rents were unpaid, and their remittances
+failed them. It was impossible to see these crowds of wretched,
+perishing creatures, late nurslings of luxury, and not stretch out a
+hand to save them. As at the conclusion of the eighteenth century, the
+English unlocked their hospitable store, for the relief of those driven
+from their homes by political revolution; so now they were not backward
+in affording aid to the victims of a more wide-spreading calamity. We
+had many foreign friends whom we eagerly sought out, and relieved from
+dreadful penury. Our Castle became an asylum for the unhappy. A little
+population occupied its halls. The revenue of its possessor, which had
+always found a mode of expenditure congenial to his generous nature,
+was now attended to more parsimoniously, that it might embrace a wider
+portion of utility. It was not however money, except partially, but the
+necessaries of life, that became scarce. It was difficult to find an
+immediate remedy. The usual one of imports was entirely cut off. In
+this emergency, to feed the very people to whom we had given refuge, we
+were obliged to yield to the plough and the mattock our
+pleasure-grounds and parks. Live stock diminished sensibly in the
+country, from the effects of the great demand in the market. Even the
+poor deer, our antlered proteges, were obliged to fall for the sake of
+worthier pensioners. The labour necessary to bring the lands to this
+sort of culture, employed and fed the offcasts of the diminished
+manufactories.
+
+Adrian did not rest only with the exertions he could make with regard
+to his own possessions. He addressed himself to the wealthy of the
+land; he made proposals in parliament little adapted to please the
+rich; but his earnest pleadings and benevolent eloquence were
+irresistible. To give up their pleasure-grounds to the agriculturist,
+to diminish sensibly the number of horses kept for the purposes of
+luxury throughout the country, were means obvious, but unpleasing. Yet,
+to the honour of the English be it recorded, that, although natural
+disinclination made them delay awhile, yet when the misery of their
+fellow-creatures became glaring, an enthusiastic generosity inspired
+their decrees. The most luxurious were often the first to part with
+their indulgencies. As is common in communities, a fashion was set. The
+high-born ladies of the country would have deemed themselves disgraced
+if they had now enjoyed, what they before called a necessary, the ease
+of a carriage. Chairs, as in olden time, and Indian palanquins were
+introduced for the infirm; but else it was nothing singular to see
+females of rank going on foot to places of fashionable resort. It was
+more common, for all who possessed landed property to secede to their
+estates, attended by whole troops of the indigent, to cut down their
+woods to erect temporary dwellings, and to portion out their parks,
+parterres and flower-gardens, to necessitous families. Many of these,
+of high rank in their own countries, now, with hoe in hand, turned up
+the soil. It was found necessary at last to check the spirit of
+sacrifice, and to remind those whose generosity proceeded to lavish
+waste, that, until the present state of things became permanent, of
+which there was no likelihood, it was wrong to carry change so far as
+to make a reaction difficult. Experience demonstrated that in a year or
+two pestilence would cease; it were well that in the mean time we
+should not have destroyed our fine breeds of horses, or have utterly
+changed the face of the ornamented portion of the country.
+
+It may be imagined that things were in a bad state indeed, before this
+spirit of benevolence could have struck such deep roots. The infection
+had now spread in the southern provinces of France. But that country
+had so many resources in the way of agriculture, that the rush of
+population from one part of it to another, and its increase through
+foreign emigration, was less felt than with us. The panic struck
+appeared of more injury, than disease and its natural concomitants.
+
+Winter was hailed, a general and never-failing physician. The
+embrowning woods, and swollen rivers, the evening mists, and morning
+frosts, were welcomed with gratitude. The effects of purifying cold
+were immediately felt; and the lists of mortality abroad were curtailed
+each week. Many of our visitors left us: those whose homes were far in
+the south, fled delightedly from our northern winter, and sought their
+native land, secure of plenty even after their fearful visitation. We
+breathed again. What the coming summer would bring, we knew not; but
+the present months were our own, and our hopes of a cessation of
+pestilence were high.
+
+ [6]Elton’s translation of Hesiod’s Works.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+I have lingered thus long on the extreme bank, the wasting shoal that
+stretched into the stream of life, dallying with the shadow of death.
+Thus long, I have cradled my heart in retrospection of past happiness,
+when hope was. Why not for ever thus? I am not immortal; and the thread
+of my history might be spun out to the limits of my existence. But the
+same sentiment that first led me to pourtray scenes replete with tender
+recollections, now bids me hurry on. The same yearning of this warm,
+panting heart, that has made me in written words record my vagabond
+youth, my serene manhood, and the passions of my soul, makes me now
+recoil from further delay. I must complete my work.
+
+Here then I stand, as I said, beside the fleet waters of the flowing
+years, and now away! Spread the sail, and strain with oar, hurrying by
+dark impending crags, adown steep rapids, even to the sea of desolation
+I have reached. Yet one moment, one brief interval before I put from
+shore— once, once again let me fancy myself as I was in 2094 in my
+abode at Windsor, let me close my eyes, and imagine that the
+immeasurable boughs of its oaks still shadow me, its castle walls
+anear. Let fancy pourtray the joyous scene of the twentieth of June,
+such as even now my aching heart recalls it.
+
+Circumstances had called me to London; here I heard talk that symptoms
+of the plague had occurred in hospitals of that city. I returned to
+Windsor; my brow was clouded, my heart heavy; I entered the Little
+Park, as was my custom, at the Frogmore gate, on my way to the Castle.
+A great part of these grounds had been given to cultivation, and strips
+of potatoe-land and corn were scattered here and there. The rooks cawed
+loudly in the trees above; mixed with their hoarse cries I heard a
+lively strain of music. It was Alfred’s birthday. The young people, the
+Etonians, and children of the neighbouring gentry, held a mock fair, to
+which all the country people were invited. The park was speckled by
+tents, whose flaunting colours and gaudy flags, waving in the sunshine,
+added to the gaiety of the scene. On a platform erected beneath the
+terrace, a number of the younger part of the assembly were dancing. I
+leaned against a tree to observe them. The band played the wild eastern
+air of Weber introduced in Abon Hassan; its volatile notes gave wings
+to the feet of the dancers, while the lookers-on unconsciously beat
+time. At first the tripping measure lifted my spirit with it, and for a
+moment my eyes gladly followed the mazes of the dance. The revulsion of
+thought passed like keen steel to my heart. Ye are all going to die, I
+thought; already your tomb is built up around you. Awhile, because you
+are gifted with agility and strength, you fancy that you live: but
+frail is the “bower of flesh” that encaskets life; dissoluble the
+silver cord that binds you to it. The joyous soul, charioted from
+pleasure to pleasure by the graceful mechanism of well-formed limbs,
+will suddenly feel the axle-tree give way, and spring and wheel
+dissolve in dust. Not one of you, O! fated crowd, can escape—not one!
+not my own ones! not my Idris and her babes! Horror and misery! Already
+the gay dance vanished, the green sward was strewn with corpses, the
+blue air above became fetid with deathly exhalations. Shriek, ye
+clarions! ye loud trumpets, howl! Pile dirge on dirge; rouse the
+funereal chords; let the air ring with dire wailing; let wild discord
+rush on the wings of the wind! Already I hear it, while guardian
+angels, attendant on humanity, their task achieved, hasten away, and
+their departure is announced by melancholy strains; faces all unseemly
+with weeping, forced open my lids; faster and faster many groups of
+these woe-begone countenances thronged around, exhibiting every variety
+of wretchedness—well known faces mingled with the distorted creations
+of fancy. Ashy pale, Raymond and Perdita sat apart, looking on with sad
+smiles. Adrian’s countenance flitted across, tainted by death—Idris,
+with eyes languidly closed and livid lips, was about to slide into the
+wide grave. The confusion grew—their looks of sorrow changed to
+mockery; they nodded their heads in time to the music, whose clang
+became maddening.
+
+I felt that this was insanity—I sprang forward to throw it off; I
+rushed into the midst of the crowd. Idris saw me: with light step she
+advanced; as I folded her in my arms, feeling, as I did, that I thus
+enclosed what was to me a world, yet frail as the waterdrop which the
+noon-day sun will drink from the water lily’s cup; tears filled my
+eyes, unwont to be thus moistened. The joyful welcome of my boys, the
+soft gratulation of Clara, the pressure of Adrian’s hand, contributed
+to unman me. I felt that they were near, that they were safe, yet
+methought this was all deceit;—the earth reeled, the firm-enrooted
+trees moved—dizziness came over me—I sank to the ground.
+
+My beloved friends were alarmed—nay, they expressed their alarm so
+anxiously, that I dared not pronounce the word _plague_, that hovered
+on my lips, lest they should construe my perturbed looks into a
+symptom, and see infection in my languor. I had scarcely recovered, and
+with feigned hilarity had brought back smiles into my little circle,
+when we saw Ryland approach.
+
+Ryland had something the appearance of a farmer; of a man whose muscles
+and full grown stature had been developed under the influence of
+vigorous exercise and exposure to the elements. This was to a great
+degree the case: for, though a large landed proprietor, yet, being a
+projector, and of an ardent and industrious disposition, he had on his
+own estate given himself up to agricultural labours. When he went as
+ambassador to the Northern States of America, he, for some time,
+planned his entire migration; and went so far as to make several
+journies far westward on that immense continent, for the purpose of
+choosing the site of his new abode. Ambition turned his thoughts from
+these designs—ambition, which labouring through various lets and
+hindrances, had now led him to the summit of his hopes, in making him
+Lord Protector of England.
+
+His countenance was rough but intelligent—his ample brow and quick grey
+eyes seemed to look out, over his own plans, and the opposition of his
+enemies. His voice was stentorian: his hand stretched out in debate,
+seemed by its gigantic and muscular form, to warn his hearers that
+words were not his only weapons. Few people had discovered some
+cowardice and much infirmity of purpose under this imposing exterior.
+No man could crush a “butterfly on the wheel” with better effect; no
+man better cover a speedy retreat from a powerful adversary. This had
+been the secret of his secession at the time of Lord Raymond’s
+election. In the unsteady glance of his eye, in his extreme desire to
+learn the opinions of all, in the feebleness of his hand-writing, these
+qualities might be obscurely traced, but they were not generally known.
+He was now our Lord Protector. He had canvassed eagerly for this post.
+His protectorate was to be distinguished by every kind of innovation on
+the aristocracy. This his selected task was exchanged for the far
+different one of encountering the ruin caused by the convulsions of
+physical nature. He was incapable of meeting these evils by any
+comprehensive system; he had resorted to expedient after expedient, and
+could never be induced to put a remedy in force, till it came too late
+to be of use.
+
+Certainly the Ryland that advanced towards us now, bore small
+resemblance to the powerful, ironical, seemingly fearless canvasser for
+the first rank among Englishmen. Our native oak, as his partisans
+called him, was visited truly by a nipping winter. He scarcely appeared
+half his usual height; his joints were unknit, his limbs would not
+support him; his face was contracted, his eye wandering; debility of
+purpose and dastard fear were expressed in every gesture.
+
+In answer to our eager questions, one word alone fell, as it were
+involuntarily, from his convulsed lips: _The Plague_.—“Where?”—“Every
+where—we must fly—all fly—but whither? No man can tell—there is no
+refuge on earth, it comes on us like a thousand packs of wolves—we must
+all fly—where shall you go? Where can any of us go?”
+
+These words were syllabled trembling by the iron man. Adrian replied,
+“Whither indeed would you fly? We must all remain; and do our best to
+help our suffering fellow-creatures.”
+
+“Help!” said Ryland, “there is no help!—great God, who talks of help!
+All the world has the plague!”
+
+“Then to avoid it, we must quit the world,” observed Adrian, with a
+gentle smile.
+
+Ryland groaned; cold drops stood on his brow. It was useless to oppose
+his paroxysm of terror: but we soothed and encouraged him, so that
+after an interval he was better able to explain to us the ground of his
+alarm. It had come sufficiently home to him. One of his servants, while
+waiting on him, had suddenly fallen down dead. The physician declared
+that he died of the plague. We endeavoured to calm him—but our own
+hearts were not calm. I saw the eye of Idris wander from me to her
+children, with an anxious appeal to my judgment. Adrian was absorbed in
+meditation. For myself, I own that Ryland’s words rang in my ears; all
+the world was infected;—in what uncontaminated seclusion could I save
+my beloved treasures, until the shadow of death had passed from over
+the earth? We sunk into silence: a silence that drank in the doleful
+accounts and prognostications of our guest. We had receded from the
+crowd; and ascending the steps of the terrace, sought the Castle. Our
+change of cheer struck those nearest to us; and, by means of Ryland’s
+servants, the report soon spread that he had fled from the plague in
+London. The sprightly parties broke up—they assembled in whispering
+groups. The spirit of gaiety was eclipsed; the music ceased; the young
+people left their occupations and gathered together. The lightness of
+heart which had dressed them in masquerade habits, had decorated their
+tents, and assembled them in fantastic groups, appeared a sin against,
+and a provocative to, the awful destiny that had laid its palsying hand
+upon hope and life. The merriment of the hour was an unholy mockery of
+the sorrows of man. The foreigners whom we had among us, who had fled
+from the plague in their own country, now saw their last asylum
+invaded; and, fear making them garrulous, they described to eager
+listeners the miseries they had beheld in cities visited by the
+calamity, and gave fearful accounts of the insidious and irremediable
+nature of the disease.
+
+We had entered the Castle. Idris stood at a window that over-looked the
+park; her maternal eyes sought her own children among the young crowd.
+An Italian lad had got an audience about him, and with animated
+gestures was describing some scene of horror. Alfred stood immoveable
+before him, his whole attention absorbed. Little Evelyn had endeavoured
+to draw Clara away to play with him; but the Italian’s tale arrested
+her, she crept near, her lustrous eyes fixed on the speaker. Either
+watching the crowd in the park, or occupied by painful reflection, we
+were all silent; Ryland stood by himself in an embrasure of the window;
+Adrian paced the hall, revolving some new and overpowering
+idea—suddenly he stopped and said: “I have long expected this; could we
+in reason expect that this island should be exempt from the universal
+visitation? The evil is come home to us, and we must not shrink from
+our fate. What are your plans, my Lord Protector, for the benefit of
+our country?”
+
+“For heaven’s love! Windsor,” cried Ryland, “do not mock me with that
+title. Death and disease level all men. I neither pretend to protect
+nor govern an hospital—such will England quickly become.”
+
+“Do you then intend, now in time of peril, to recede from your duties?”
+
+“Duties! speak rationally, my Lord!—when I am a plague-spotted corpse,
+where will my duties be? Every man for himself! the devil take the
+protectorship, say I, if it expose me to danger!”
+
+“Faint-hearted man!” cried Adrian indignantly—“Your countrymen put
+their trust in you, and you betray them!”
+
+“I betray them!” said Ryland, “the plague betrays me. Faint-hearted! It
+is well, shut up in your castle, out of danger, to boast yourself out
+of fear. Take the Protectorship who will; before God I renounce it!”
+
+“And before God,” replied his opponent, fervently, “do I receive it! No
+one will canvass for this honour now—none envy my danger or labours.
+Deposit your powers in my hands. Long have I fought with death, and
+much” (he stretched out his thin hand) “much have I suffered in the
+struggle. It is not by flying, but by facing the enemy, that we can
+conquer. If my last combat is now about to be fought, and I am to be
+worsted—so let it be!”
+
+“But come, Ryland, recollect yourself! Men have hitherto thought you
+magnanimous and wise, will you cast aside these titles? Consider the
+panic your departure will occasion. Return to London. I will go with
+you. Encourage the people by your presence. I will incur all the
+danger. Shame! shame! if the first magistrate of England be foremost to
+renounce his duties.”
+
+Meanwhile among our guests in the park, all thoughts of festivity had
+faded. As summer-flies are scattered by rain, so did this congregation,
+late noisy and happy, in sadness and melancholy murmurs break up,
+dwindling away apace. With the set sun and the deepening twilight the
+park became nearly empty. Adrian and Ryland were still in earnest
+discussion. We had prepared a banquet for our guests in the lower hall
+of the castle; and thither Idris and I repaired to receive and
+entertain the few that remained. There is nothing more melancholy than
+a merry-meeting thus turned to sorrow: the gala dresses—the
+decorations, gay as they might otherwise be, receive a solemn and
+funereal appearance. If such change be painful from lighter causes, it
+weighed with intolerable heaviness from the knowledge that the earth’s
+desolator had at last, even as an arch-fiend, lightly over-leaped the
+boundaries our precautions raised, and at once enthroned himself in the
+full and beating heart of our country. Idris sat at the top of the
+half-empty hall. Pale and tearful, she almost forgot her duties as
+hostess; her eyes were fixed on her children. Alfred’s serious air
+shewed that he still revolved the tragic story related by the Italian
+boy. Evelyn was the only mirthful creature present: he sat on Clara’s
+lap; and, making matter of glee from his own fancies, laughed aloud.
+The vaulted roof echoed again his infant tone. The poor mother who had
+brooded long over, and suppressed the expression of her anguish, now
+burst into tears, and folding her babe in her arms, hurried from the
+hall. Clara and Alfred followed. While the rest of the company, in
+confused murmur, which grew louder and louder, gave voice to their many
+fears.
+
+The younger part gathered round me to ask my advice; and those who had
+friends in London were anxious beyond the rest, to ascertain the
+present extent of disease in the metropolis. I encouraged them with
+such thoughts of cheer as presented themselves. I told them exceedingly
+few deaths had yet been occasioned by pestilence, and gave them hopes,
+as we were the last visited, so the calamity might have lost its most
+venomous power before it had reached us. The cleanliness, habits of
+order, and the manner in which our cities were built, were all in our
+favour. As it was an epidemic, its chief force was derived from
+pernicious qualities in the air, and it would probably do little harm
+where this was naturally salubrious. At first, I had spoken only to
+those nearest me; but the whole assembly gathered about me, and I found
+that I was listened to by all. “My friends,” I said, “our risk is
+common; our precautions and exertions shall be common also. If manly
+courage and resistance can save us, we will be saved. We will fight the
+enemy to the last. Plague shall not find us a ready prey; we will
+dispute every inch of ground; and, by methodical and inflexible laws,
+pile invincible barriers to the progress of our foe. Perhaps in no part
+of the world has she met with so systematic and determined an
+opposition. Perhaps no country is naturally so well protected against
+our invader; nor has nature anywhere been so well assisted by the hand
+of man. We will not despair. We are neither cowards nor fatalists; but,
+believing that God has placed the means for our preservation in our own
+hands, we will use those means to our utmost. Remember that
+cleanliness, sobriety, and even good-humour and benevolence, are our
+best medicines.”
+
+There was little I could add to this general exhortation; for the
+plague, though in London, was not among us. I dismissed the guests
+therefore; and they went thoughtful, more than sad, to await the events
+in store for them.
+
+I now sought Adrian, anxious to hear the result of his discussion with
+Ryland. He had in part prevailed; the Lord Protector consented to
+return to London for a few weeks; during which time things should be so
+arranged, as to occasion less consternation at his departure. Adrian
+and Idris were together. The sadness with which the former had first
+heard that the plague was in London had vanished; the energy of his
+purpose informed his body with strength, the solemn joy of enthusiasm
+and self-devotion illuminated his countenance; and the weakness of his
+physical nature seemed to pass from him, as the cloud of humanity did,
+in the ancient fable, from the divine lover of Semele. He was
+endeavouring to encourage his sister, and to bring her to look on his
+intent in a less tragic light than she was prepared to do; and with
+passionate eloquence he unfolded his designs to her.
+
+“Let me, at the first word,” he said, “relieve your mind from all fear
+on my account. I will not task myself beyond my powers, nor will I
+needlessly seek danger. I feel that I know what ought to be done, and
+as my presence is necessary for the accomplishment of my plans, I will
+take especial care to preserve my life.
+
+“I am now going to undertake an office fitted for me. I cannot
+intrigue, or work a tortuous path through the labyrinth of men’s vices
+and passions; but I can bring patience, and sympathy, and such aid as
+art affords, to the bed of disease; I can raise from earth the
+miserable orphan, and awaken to new hopes the shut heart of the
+mourner. I can enchain the plague in limits, and set a term to the
+misery it would occasion; courage, forbearance, and watchfulness, are
+the forces I bring towards this great work.
+
+“O, I shall be something now! From my birth I have aspired like the
+eagle —but, unlike the eagle, my wings have failed, and my vision has
+been blinded. Disappointment and sickness have hitherto held dominion
+over me; twin born with me, my _would_, was for ever enchained by the
+_shall not_, of these my tyrants. A shepherd-boy that tends a silly
+flock on the mountains, was more in the scale of society than I.
+Congratulate me then that I have found fitting scope for my powers. I
+have often thought of offering my services to the pestilence-stricken
+towns of France and Italy; but fear of paining you, and expectation of
+this catastrophe, withheld me. To England and to Englishmen I dedicate
+myself. If I can save one of her mighty spirits from the deadly shaft;
+if I can ward disease from one of her smiling cottages, I shall not
+have lived in vain.”
+
+Strange ambition this! Yet such was Adrian. He appeared given up to
+contemplation, averse to excitement, a lowly student, a man of visions—
+but afford him worthy theme, and—
+
+Like to the lark at break of day arising,
+From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate.[7]
+
+
+so did he spring up from listlessness and unproductive thought, to the
+highest pitch of virtuous action.
+
+With him went enthusiasm, the high-wrought resolve, the eye that
+without blenching could look at death. With us remained sorrow,
+anxiety, and unendurable expectation of evil. The man, says Lord Bacon,
+who hath wife and children, has given hostages to fortune. Vain was all
+philosophical reasoning—vain all fortitude—vain, vain, a reliance on
+probable good. I might heap high the scale with logic, courage, and
+resignation—but let one fear for Idris and our children enter the
+opposite one, and, over-weighed, it kicked the beam.
+
+The plague was in London! Fools that we were not long ago to have
+foreseen this. We wept over the ruin of the boundless continents of the
+east, and the desolation of the western world; while we fancied that
+the little channel between our island and the rest of the earth was to
+preserve us alive among the dead. It were no mighty leap methinks from
+Calais to Dover. The eye easily discerns the sister land; they were
+united once; and the little path that runs between looks in a map but
+as a trodden footway through high grass. Yet this small interval was to
+save us: the sea was to rise a wall of adamant—without, disease and
+misery—within, a shelter from evil, a nook of the garden of paradise—a
+particle of celestial soil, which no evil could invade—truly we were
+wise in our generation, to imagine all these things!
+
+But we are awake now. The plague is in London; the air of England is
+tainted, and her sons and daughters strew the unwholesome earth. And
+now, the sea, late our defence, seems our prison bound; hemmed in by
+its gulphs, we shall die like the famished inhabitants of a besieged
+town. Other nations have a fellowship in death; but we, shut out from
+all neighbourhood, must bury our own dead, and little England become a
+wide, wide tomb.
+
+This feeling of universal misery assumed concentration and shape, when
+I looked on my wife and children; and the thought of danger to them
+possessed my whole being with fear. How could I save them? I revolved a
+thousand and a thousand plans. They should not die—first I would be
+gathered to nothingness, ere infection should come anear these idols of
+my soul. I would walk barefoot through the world, to find an uninfected
+spot; I would build my home on some wave-tossed plank, drifted about on
+the barren, shoreless ocean. I would betake me with them to some wild
+beast’s den, where a tyger’s cubs, which I would slay, had been reared
+in health. I would seek the mountain eagle’s eirie, and live years
+suspended in some inaccessible recess of a sea-bounding cliff—no labour
+too great, no scheme too wild, if it promised life to them. O! ye
+heart-strings of mine, could ye be torn asunder, and my soul not spend
+itself in tears of blood for sorrow!
+
+Idris, after the first shock, regained a portion of fortitude. She
+studiously shut out all prospect of the future, and cradled her heart
+in present blessings. She never for a moment lost sight of her
+children. But while they in health sported about her, she could cherish
+contentment and hope. A strange and wild restlessness came over me—the
+more intolerable, because I was forced to conceal it. My fears for
+Adrian were ceaseless; August had come; and the symptoms of plague
+encreased rapidly in London. It was deserted by all who possessed the
+power of removing; and he, the brother of my soul, was exposed to the
+perils from which all but slaves enchained by circumstance fled. He
+remained to combat the fiend—his side unguarded, his toils
+unshared—infection might even reach him, and he die unattended and
+alone. By day and night these thoughts pursued me. I resolved to visit
+London, to see him; to quiet these agonizing throes by the sweet
+medicine of hope, or the opiate of despair.
+
+It was not until I arrived at Brentford, that I perceived much change
+in the face of the country. The better sort of houses were shut up; the
+busy trade of the town palsied; there was an air of anxiety among the
+few passengers I met, and they looked wonderingly at my carriage—the
+first they had seen pass towards London, since pestilence sat on its
+high places, and possessed its busy streets. I met several funerals;
+they were slenderly attended by mourners, and were regarded by the
+spectators as omens of direst import. Some gazed on these processions
+with wild eagerness— others fled timidly—some wept aloud.
+
+Adrian’s chief endeavour, after the immediate succour of the sick, had
+been to disguise the symptoms and progress of the plague from the
+inhabitants of London. He knew that fear and melancholy forebodings
+were powerful assistants to disease; that desponding and brooding care
+rendered the physical nature of man peculiarly susceptible of
+infection. No unseemly sights were therefore discernible: the shops
+were in general open, the concourse of passengers in some degree kept
+up. But although the appearance of an infected town was avoided, to me,
+who had not beheld it since the commencement of the visitation, London
+appeared sufficiently changed. There were no carriages, and grass had
+sprung high in the streets; the houses had a desolate look; most of the
+shutters were closed; and there was a ghast and frightened stare in the
+persons I met, very different from the usual business-like demeanour of
+the Londoners. My solitary carriage attracted notice, as it rattled
+along towards the Protectoral Palace—and the fashionable streets
+leading to it wore a still more dreary and deserted appearance. I found
+Adrian’s anti-chamber crowded—it was his hour for giving audience. I
+was unwilling to disturb his labours, and waited, watching the ingress
+and egress of the petitioners. They consisted of people of the middling
+and lower classes of society, whose means of subsistence failed with
+the cessation of trade, and of the busy spirit of money-making in all
+its branches, peculiar to our country. There was an air of anxiety,
+sometimes of terror in the new-comers, strongly contrasted with the
+resigned and even satisfied mien of those who had had audience. I could
+read the influence of my friend in their quickened motions and cheerful
+faces. Two o’clock struck, after which none were admitted; those who
+had been disappointed went sullenly or sorrowfully away, while I
+entered the audience-chamber.
+
+I was struck by the improvement that appeared in the health of Adrian.
+He was no longer bent to the ground, like an over-nursed flower of
+spring, that, shooting up beyond its strength, is weighed down even by
+its own coronal of blossoms. His eyes were bright, his countenance
+composed, an air of concentrated energy was diffused over his whole
+person, much unlike its former languor. He sat at a table with several
+secretaries, who were arranging petitions, or registering the notes
+made during that day’s audience. Two or three petitioners were still in
+attendance. I admired his justice and patience. Those who possessed a
+power of living out of London, he advised immediately to quit it,
+affording them the means of so doing. Others, whose trade was
+beneficial to the city, or who possessed no other refuge, he provided
+with advice for better avoiding the epidemic; relieving overloaded
+families, supplying the gaps made in others by death. Order, comfort,
+and even health, rose under his influence, as from the touch of a
+magician’s wand.
+
+“I am glad you are come,” he said to me, when we were at last alone; “I
+can only spare a few minutes, and must tell you much in that time. The
+plague is now in progress—it is useless closing one’s eyes to the
+fact—the deaths encrease each week. What will come I cannot guess. As
+yet, thank God, I am equal to the government of the town; and I look
+only to the present. Ryland, whom I have so long detained, has
+stipulated that I shall suffer him to depart before the end of this
+month. The deputy appointed by parliament is dead; another therefore
+must be named; I have advanced my claim, and I believe that I shall
+have no competitor. To-night the question is to be decided, as there is
+a call of the house for the purpose. You must nominate me, Lionel;
+Ryland, for shame, cannot shew himself; but you, my friend, will do me
+this service?”
+
+How lovely is devotion! Here was a youth, royally sprung, bred in
+luxury, by nature averse to the usual struggles of a public life, and
+now, in time of danger, at a period when to live was the utmost scope
+of the ambitious, he, the beloved and heroic Adrian, made, in sweet
+simplicity, an offer to sacrifice himself for the public good. The very
+idea was generous and noble,—but, beyond this, his unpretending manner,
+his entire want of the assumption of a virtue, rendered his act ten
+times more touching. I would have withstood his request; but I had seen
+the good he diffused; I felt that his resolves were not to be shaken,
+so, with an heavy heart, I consented to do as he asked. He grasped my
+hand affectionately:—“Thank you,” he said, “you have relieved me from a
+painful dilemma, and are, as you ever were, the best of my friends.
+Farewell—I must now leave you for a few hours. Go you and converse with
+Ryland. Although he deserts his post in London, he may be of the
+greatest service in the north of England, by receiving and assisting
+travellers, and contributing to supply the metropolis with food. Awaken
+him, I entreat you, to some sense of duty.”
+
+Adrian left me, as I afterwards learnt, upon his daily task of visiting
+the hospitals, and inspecting the crowded parts of London. I found
+Ryland much altered, even from what he had been when he visited
+Windsor. Perpetual fear had jaundiced his complexion, and shrivelled
+his whole person. I told him of the business of the evening, and a
+smile relaxed the contracted muscles. He desired to go; each day he
+expected to be infected by pestilence, each day he was unable to resist
+the gentle violence of Adrian’s detention. The moment Adrian should be
+legally elected his deputy, he would escape to safety. Under this
+impression he listened to all I said; and, elevated almost to joy by
+the near prospect of his departure, he entered into a discussion
+concerning the plans he should adopt in his own county, forgetting, for
+the moment, his cherished resolution of shutting himself up from all
+communication in the mansion and grounds of his estate.
+
+In the evening, Adrian and I proceeded to Westminster. As we went he
+reminded me of what I was to say and do, yet, strange to say, I entered
+the chamber without having once reflected on my purpose. Adrian
+remained in the coffee-room, while I, in compliance with his desire,
+took my seat in St. Stephen’s. There reigned unusual silence in the
+chamber. I had not visited it since Raymond’s protectorate; a period
+conspicuous for a numerous attendance of members, for the eloquence of
+the speakers, and the warmth of the debate. The benches were very
+empty, those by custom occupied by the hereditary members were vacant;
+the city members were there—the members for the commercial towns, few
+landed proprietors, and not many of those who entered parliament for
+the sake of a career. The first subject that occupied the attention of
+the house was an address from the Lord Protector, praying them to
+appoint a deputy during a necessary absence on his part.
+
+A silence prevailed, till one of the members coming to me, whispered
+that the Earl of Windsor had sent him word that I was to move his
+election, in the absence of the person who had been first chosen for
+this office. Now for the first time I saw the full extent of my task,
+and I was overwhelmed by what I had brought on myself. Ryland had
+deserted his post through fear of the plague: from the same fear Adrian
+had no competitor. And I, the nearest kinsman of the Earl of Windsor,
+was to propose his election. I was to thrust this selected and
+matchless friend into the post of danger— impossible! the die was
+cast—I would offer myself as candidate.
+
+The few members who were present, had come more for the sake of
+terminating the business by securing a legal attendance, than under the
+idea of a debate. I had risen mechanically—my knees trembled;
+irresolution hung on my voice, as I uttered a few words on the
+necessity of choosing a person adequate to the dangerous task in hand.
+But, when the idea of presenting myself in the room of my friend
+intruded, the load of doubt and pain was taken from off me. My words
+flowed spontaneously—my utterance was firm and quick. I adverted to
+what Adrian had already done—I promised the same vigilance in
+furthering all his views. I drew a touching picture of his vacillating
+health; I boasted of my own strength. I prayed them to save even from
+himself this scion of the noblest family in England. My alliance with
+him was the pledge of my sincerity, my union with his sister, my
+children, his presumptive heirs, were the hostages of my truth.
+
+This unexpected turn in the debate was quickly communicated to Adrian.
+He hurried in, and witnessed the termination of my impassioned
+harangue. I did not see him: my soul was in my words,—my eyes could not
+perceive that which was; while a vision of Adrian’s form, tainted by
+pestilence, and sinking in death, floated before them. He seized my
+hand, as I concluded— “Unkind!” he cried, “you have betrayed me!” then,
+springing forwards, with the air of one who had a right to command, he
+claimed the place of deputy as his own. He had bought it, he said, with
+danger, and paid for it with toil. His ambition rested there; and,
+after an interval devoted to the interests of his country, was I to
+step in, and reap the profit? Let them remember what London had been
+when he arrived: the panic that prevailed brought famine, while every
+moral and legal tie was loosened. He had restored order—this had been a
+work which required perseverance, patience, and energy; and he had
+neither slept nor waked but for the good of his country.—Would they
+dare wrong him thus? Would they wrest his hard-earned reward from him,
+to bestow it on one, who, never having mingled in public life, would
+come a tyro to the craft, in which he was an adept. He demanded the
+place of deputy as his right. Ryland had shewn that he preferred him.
+Never before had he, who was born even to the inheritance of the throne
+of England, never had he asked favour or honour from those now his
+equals, but who might have been his subjects. Would they refuse him?
+Could they thrust back from the path of distinction and laudable
+ambition, the heir of their ancient kings, and heap another
+disappointment on a fallen house.
+
+No one had ever before heard Adrian allude to the rights of his
+ancestors. None had ever before suspected, that power, or the suffrage
+of the many, could in any manner become dear to him. He had begun his
+speech with vehemence; he ended with unassuming gentleness, making his
+appeal with the same humility, as if he had asked to be the first in
+wealth, honour, and power among Englishmen, and not, as was the truth,
+to be the foremost in the ranks of loathsome toils and inevitable
+death. A murmur of approbation rose after his speech. “Oh, do not
+listen to him,” I cried, “he speaks false—false to himself,”—I was
+interrupted: and, silence being restored, we were ordered, as was the
+custom, to retire during the decision of the house. I fancied that they
+hesitated, and that there was some hope for me—I was mistaken—hardly
+had we quitted the chamber, before Adrian was recalled, and installed
+in his office of Lord Deputy to the Protector.
+
+We returned together to the palace. “Why, Lionel,” said Adrian, “what
+did you intend? you could not hope to conquer, and yet you gave me the
+pain of a triumph over my dearest friend.”
+
+“This is mockery,” I replied, “you devote yourself,—you, the adored
+brother of Idris, the being, of all the world contains, dearest to our
+hearts—you devote yourself to an early death. I would have prevented
+this; my death would be a small evil—or rather I should not die; while
+you cannot hope to escape.”
+
+“As to the likelihood of escaping,” said Adrian, “ten years hence the
+cold stars may shine on the graves of all of us; but as to my peculiar
+liability to infection, I could easily prove, both logically and
+physically, that in the midst of contagion I have a better chance of
+life than you.
+
+“This is my post: I was born for this—to rule England in anarchy, to
+save her in danger—to devote myself for her. The blood of my
+forefathers cries aloud in my veins, and bids me be first among my
+countrymen. Or, if this mode of speech offend you, let me say, that my
+mother, the proud queen, instilled early into me a love of distinction,
+and all that, if the weakness of my physical nature and my peculiar
+opinions had not prevented such a design, might have made me long since
+struggle for the lost inheritance of my race. But now my mother, or, if
+you will, my mother’s lessons, awaken within me. I cannot lead on to
+battle; I cannot, through intrigue and faithlessness rear again the
+throne upon the wreck of English public spirit. But I can be the first
+to support and guard my country, now that terrific disasters and ruin
+have laid strong hands upon her.
+
+“That country and my beloved sister are all I have. I will protect the
+first—the latter I commit to your charge. If I survive, and she be
+lost, I were far better dead. Preserve her—for her own sake I know that
+you will—if you require any other spur, think that, in preserving her,
+you preserve me. Her faultless nature, one sum of perfections, is wrapt
+up in her affections—if they were hurt, she would droop like an
+unwatered floweret, and the slightest injury they receive is a nipping
+frost to her. Already she fears for us. She fears for the children she
+adores, and for you, the father of these, her lover, husband,
+protector; and you must be near her to support and encourage her.
+Return to Windsor then, my brother; for such you are by every tie—fill
+the double place my absence imposes on you, and let me, in all my
+sufferings here, turn my eyes towards that dear seclusion, and
+say—There is peace.”
+
+ [7] Shakespeare’s Sonnets.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+I did proceed to Windsor, but not with the intention of remaining
+there. I went but to obtain the consent of Idris, and then to return
+and take my station beside my unequalled friend; to share his labours,
+and save him, if so it must be, at the expence of my life. Yet I
+dreaded to witness the anguish which my resolve might excite in Idris.
+I had vowed to my own heart never to shadow her countenance even with
+transient grief, and should I prove recreant at the hour of greatest
+need? I had begun my journey with anxious haste; now I desired to draw
+it out through the course of days and months. I longed to avoid the
+necessity of action; I strove to escape from thought—vainly—futurity,
+like a dark image in a phantasmagoria, came nearer and more near, till
+it clasped the whole earth in its shadow.
+
+A slight circumstance induced me to alter my usual route, and to return
+home by Egham and Bishopgate. I alighted at Perdita’s ancient abode,
+her cottage; and, sending forward the carriage, determined to walk
+across the park to the castle. This spot, dedicated to sweetest
+recollections, the deserted house and neglected garden were well
+adapted to nurse my melancholy. In our happiest days, Perdita had
+adorned her cottage with every aid art might bring, to that which
+nature had selected to favour. In the same spirit of exaggeration she
+had, on the event of her separation from Raymond, caused it to be
+entirely neglected. It was now in ruin: the deer had climbed the broken
+palings, and reposed among the flowers; grass grew on the threshold,
+and the swinging lattice creaking to the wind, gave signal of utter
+desertion. The sky was blue above, and the air impregnated with
+fragrance by the rare flowers that grew among the weeds. The trees
+moved overhead, awakening nature’s favourite melody—but the melancholy
+appearance of the choaked paths, and weed-grown flower-beds, dimmed
+even this gay summer scene. The time when in proud and happy security
+we assembled at this cottage, was gone—soon the present hours would
+join those past, and shadows of future ones rose dark and menacing from
+the womb of time, their cradle and their bier. For the first time in my
+life I envied the sleep of the dead, and thought with pleasure of one’s
+bed under the sod, where grief and fear have no power. I passed through
+the gap of the broken paling—I felt, while I disdained, the choaking
+tears—I rushed into the depths of the forest. O death and change,
+rulers of our life, where are ye, that I may grapple with you! What was
+there in our tranquillity, that excited your envy—in our happiness,
+that ye should destroy it? We were happy, loving, and beloved; the horn
+of Amalthea contained no blessing unshowered upon us, but, alas!
+
+        la fortuna
+deidad barbara importuna,
+oy cadaver y ayer flor,
+no permanece jamas![8]
+
+
+As I wandered on thus ruminating, a number of country people passed me.
+They seemed full of careful thought, and a few words of their
+conversation that reached me, induced me to approach and make further
+enquiries. A party of people flying from London, as was frequent in
+those days, had come up the Thames in a boat. No one at Windsor would
+afford them shelter; so, going a little further up, they remained all
+night in a deserted hut near Bolter’s lock. They pursued their way the
+following morning, leaving one of their company behind them, sick of
+the plague. This circumstance once spread abroad, none dared approach
+within half a mile of the infected neighbourhood, and the deserted
+wretch was left to fight with disease and death in solitude, as he best
+might. I was urged by compassion to hasten to the hut, for the purpose
+of ascertaining his situation, and administering to his wants.
+
+As I advanced I met knots of country-people talking earnestly of this
+event: distant as they were from the apprehended contagion, fear was
+impressed on every countenance. I passed by a group of these
+terrorists, in a lane in the direct road to the hut. One of them
+stopped me, and, conjecturing that I was ignorant of the circumstance,
+told me not to go on, for that an infected person lay but at a short
+distance.
+
+“I know it,” I replied, “and I am going to see in what condition the
+poor fellow is.”
+
+A murmur of surprise and horror ran through the assembly. I
+continued:—“This poor wretch is deserted, dying, succourless; in these
+unhappy times, God knows how soon any or all of us may be in like want.
+I am going to do, as I would be done by.”
+
+“But you will never be able to return to the Castle—Lady Idris—his
+children—” in confused speech were the words that struck my ear.
+
+“Do you not know, my friends,” I said, “that the Earl himself, now Lord
+Protector, visits daily, not only those probably infected by this
+disease, but the hospitals and pest houses, going near, and even
+touching the sick? yet he was never in better health. You labour under
+an entire mistake as to the nature of the plague; but do not fear, I do
+not ask any of you to accompany me, nor to believe me, until I return
+safe and sound from my patient.”
+
+So I left them, and hurried on. I soon arrived at the hut: the door was
+ajar. I entered, and one glance assured me that its former inhabitant
+was no more—he lay on a heap of straw, cold and stiff; while a
+pernicious effluvia filled the room, and various stains and marks
+served to shew the virulence of the disorder.
+
+I had never before beheld one killed by pestilence. While every mind
+was full of dismay at its effects, a craving for excitement had led us
+to peruse De Foe’s account, and the masterly delineations of the author
+of Arthur Mervyn. The pictures drawn in these books were so vivid, that
+we seemed to have experienced the results depicted by them. But cold
+were the sensations excited by words, burning though they were, and
+describing the death and misery of thousands, compared to what I felt
+in looking on the corpse of this unhappy stranger. This indeed was the
+plague. I raised his rigid limbs, I marked the distortion of his face,
+and the stony eyes lost to perception. As I was thus occupied, chill
+horror congealed my blood, making my flesh quiver and my hair to stand
+on end. Half insanely I spoke to the dead. So the plague killed you, I
+muttered. How came this? Was the coming painful? You look as if the
+enemy had tortured, before he murdered you. And now I leapt up
+precipitately, and escaped from the hut, before nature could revoke her
+laws, and inorganic words be breathed in answer from the lips of the
+departed.
+
+On returning through the lane, I saw at a distance the same assemblage
+of persons which I had left. They hurried away, as soon as they saw me;
+my agitated mien added to their fear of coming near one who had entered
+within the verge of contagion.
+
+At a distance from facts one draws conclusions which appear infallible,
+which yet when put to the test of reality, vanish like unreal dreams. I
+had ridiculed the fears of my countrymen, when they related to others;
+now that they came home to myself, I paused. The Rubicon, I felt, was
+passed; and it behoved me well to reflect what I should do on this
+hither side of disease and danger. According to the vulgar
+superstition, my dress, my person, the air I breathed, bore in it
+mortal danger to myself and others. Should I return to the Castle, to
+my wife and children, with this taint upon me? Not surely if I were
+infected; but I felt certain that I was not—a few hours would determine
+the question—I would spend these in the forest, in reflection on what
+was to come, and what my future actions were to be. In the feeling
+communicated to me by the sight of one struck by the plague, I forgot
+the events that had excited me so strongly in London; new and more
+painful prospects, by degrees were cleared of the mist which had
+hitherto veiled them. The question was no longer whether I should share
+Adrian’s toils and danger; but in what manner I could, in Windsor and
+the neighbourhood, imitate the prudence and zeal which, under his
+government, produced order and plenty in London, and how, now
+pestilence had spread more widely, I could secure the health of my own
+family.
+
+I spread the whole earth out as a map before me. On no one spot of its
+surface could I put my finger and say, here is safety. In the south,
+the disease, virulent and immedicable, had nearly annihilated the race
+of man; storm and inundation, poisonous winds and blights, filled up
+the measure of suffering. In the north it was worse—the lesser
+population gradually declined, and famine and plague kept watch on the
+survivors, who, helpless and feeble, were ready to fall an easy prey
+into their hands.
+
+I contracted my view to England. The overgrown metropolis, the great
+heart of mighty Britain, was pulseless. Commerce had ceased. All resort
+for ambition or pleasure was cut off—the streets were grass-grown—the
+houses empty—the few, that from necessity remained, seemed already
+branded with the taint of inevitable pestilence. In the larger
+manufacturing towns the same tragedy was acted on a smaller, yet more
+disastrous scale. There was no Adrian to superintend and direct, while
+whole flocks of the poor were struck and killed. Yet we were not all to
+die. No truly, though thinned, the race of man would continue, and the
+great plague would, in after years, become matter of history and
+wonder. Doubtless this visitation was for extent unexampled—more need
+that we should work hard to dispute its progress; ere this men have
+gone out in sport, and slain their thousands and tens of thousands; but
+now man had become a creature of price; the life of one of them was of
+more worth than the so called treasures of kings. Look at his
+thought-endued countenance, his graceful limbs, his majestic brow, his
+wondrous mechanism—the type and model of this best work of God is not
+to be cast aside as a broken vessel—he shall be preserved, and his
+children and his children’s children carry down the name and form of
+man to latest time.
+
+Above all I must guard those entrusted by nature and fate to my
+especial care. And surely, if among all my fellow-creatures I were to
+select those who might stand forth examples of the greatness and
+goodness of man, I could choose no other than those allied to me by the
+most sacred ties. Some from among the family of man must survive, and
+these should be among the survivors; that should be my task—to
+accomplish it my own life were a small sacrifice. There then in that
+castle—in Windsor Castle, birth-place of Idris and my babes, should be
+the haven and retreat for the wrecked bark of human society. Its forest
+should be our world—its garden afford us food; within its walls I would
+establish the shaken throne of health. I was an outcast and a vagabond,
+when Adrian gently threw over me the silver net of love and
+civilization, and linked me inextricably to human charities and human
+excellence. I was one, who, though an aspirant after good, and an
+ardent lover of wisdom, was yet unenrolled in any list of worth, when
+Idris, the princely born, who was herself the personification of all
+that was divine in woman, she who walked the earth like a poet’s dream,
+as a carved goddess endued with sense, or pictured saint stepping from
+the canvas—she, the most worthy, chose me, and gave me herself—a
+priceless gift.
+
+During several hours I continued thus to meditate, till hunger and
+fatigue brought me back to the passing hour, then marked by long
+shadows cast from the descending sun. I had wandered towards Bracknel,
+far to the west of Windsor. The feeling of perfect health which I
+enjoyed, assured me that I was free from contagion. I remembered that
+Idris had been kept in ignorance of my proceedings. She might have
+heard of my return from London, and my visit to Bolter’s Lock, which,
+connected with my continued absence, might tend greatly to alarm her. I
+returned to Windsor by the Long Walk, and passing through the town
+towards the Castle, I found it in a state of agitation and disturbance.
+
+“It is too late to be ambitious,” says Sir Thomas Browne. “We cannot
+hope to live so long in our names as some have done in their persons;
+one face of Janus holds no proportion to the other.” Upon this text
+many fanatics arose, who prophesied that the end of time was come. The
+spirit of superstition had birth, from the wreck of our hopes, and
+antics wild and dangerous were played on the great theatre, while the
+remaining particle of futurity dwindled into a point in the eyes of the
+prognosticators. Weak-spirited women died of fear as they listened to
+their denunciations; men of robust form and seeming strength fell into
+idiotcy and madness, racked by the dread of coming eternity. A man of
+this kind was now pouring forth his eloquent despair among the
+inhabitants of Windsor. The scene of the morning, and my visit to the
+dead, which had been spread abroad, had alarmed the country-people, so
+they had become fit instruments to be played upon by a maniac.
+
+The poor wretch had lost his young wife and lovely infant by the
+plague. He was a mechanic; and, rendered unable to attend to the
+occupation which supplied his necessities, famine was added to his
+other miseries. He left the chamber which contained his wife and
+child—wife and child no more, but “dead earth upon the earth”—wild with
+hunger, watching and grief, his diseased fancy made him believe himself
+sent by heaven to preach the end of time to the world. He entered the
+churches, and foretold to the congregations their speedy removal to the
+vaults below. He appeared like the forgotten spirit of the time in the
+theatres, and bade the spectators go home and die. He had been seized
+and confined; he had escaped and wandered from London among the
+neighbouring towns, and, with frantic gestures and thrilling words, he
+unveiled to each their hidden fears, and gave voice to the soundless
+thought they dared not syllable. He stood under the arcade of the
+town-hall of Windsor, and from this elevation harangued a trembling
+crowd.
+
+“Hear, O ye inhabitants of the earth,” he cried, “hear thou, all
+seeing, but most pitiless Heaven! hear thou too, O tempest-tossed
+heart, which breathes out these words, yet faints beneath their
+meaning! Death is among us! The earth is beautiful and flower-bedecked,
+but she is our grave! The clouds of heaven weep for us—the pageantry of
+the stars is but our funeral torchlight. Grey headed men, ye hoped for
+yet a few years in your long-known abode—but the lease is up, you must
+remove—children, ye will never reach maturity, even now the small grave
+is dug for ye— mothers, clasp them in your arms, one death embraces
+you!”
+
+Shuddering, he stretched out his hands, his eyes cast up, seemed
+bursting from their sockets, while he appeared to follow shapes, to us
+invisible, in the yielding air—“There they are,” he cried, “the dead!
+They rise in their shrouds, and pass in silent procession towards the
+far land of their doom—their bloodless lips move not—their shadowy
+limbs are void of motion, while still they glide onwards. We come,” he
+exclaimed, springing forwards, “for what should we wait? Haste, my
+friends, apparel yourselves in the court-dress of death. Pestilence
+will usher you to his presence. Why thus long? they, the good, the
+wise, and the beloved, are gone before. Mothers, kiss you
+last—husbands, protectors no more, lead on the partners of your death!
+Come, O come! while the dear ones are yet in sight, for soon they will
+pass away, and we never never shall join them more.”
+
+From such ravings as these, he would suddenly become collected, and
+with unexaggerated but terrific words, paint the horrors of the time;
+describe with minute detail, the effects of the plague on the human
+frame, and tell heart-breaking tales of the snapping of dear
+affinities—the gasping horror of despair over the death-bed of the last
+beloved—so that groans and even shrieks burst from the crowd. One man
+in particular stood in front, his eyes fixt on the prophet, his mouth
+open, his limbs rigid, while his face changed to various colours,
+yellow, blue, and green, through intense fear. The maniac caught his
+glance, and turned his eye on him— one has heard of the gaze of the
+rattle-snake, which allures the trembling victim till he falls within
+his jaws. The maniac became composed; his person rose higher; authority
+beamed from his countenance. He looked on the peasant, who began to
+tremble, while he still gazed; his knees knocked together; his teeth
+chattered. He at last fell down in convulsions. “That man has the
+plague,” said the maniac calmly. A shriek burst from the lips of the
+poor wretch; and then sudden motionlessness came over him; it was
+manifest to all that he was dead.
+
+Cries of horror filled the place—every one endeavoured to effect his
+escape—in a few minutes the market place was cleared—the corpse lay on
+the ground; and the maniac, subdued and exhausted, sat beside it,
+leaning his gaunt cheek upon his thin hand. Soon some people, deputed
+by the magistrates, came to remove the body; the unfortunate being saw
+a jailor in each—he fled precipitately, while I passed onwards to the
+Castle.
+
+Death, cruel and relentless, had entered these beloved walls. An old
+servant, who had nursed Idris in infancy, and who lived with us more on
+the footing of a revered relative than a domestic, had gone a few days
+before to visit a daughter, married, and settled in the neighbourhood
+of London. On the night of her return she sickened of the plague. From
+the haughty and unbending nature of the Countess of Windsor, Idris had
+few tender filial associations with her. This good woman had stood in
+the place of a mother, and her very deficiencies of education and
+knowledge, by rendering her humble and defenceless, endeared her to
+us—she was the especial favourite of the children. I found my poor
+girl, there is no exaggeration in the expression, wild with grief and
+dread. She hung over the patient in agony, which was not mitigated when
+her thoughts wandered towards her babes, for whom she feared infection.
+My arrival was like the newly discovered lamp of a lighthouse to
+sailors, who are weathering some dangerous point. She deposited her
+appalling doubts in my hands; she relied on my judgment, and was
+comforted by my participation in her sorrow. Soon our poor nurse
+expired; and the anguish of suspense was changed to deep regret, which
+though at first more painful, yet yielded with greater readiness to my
+consolations. Sleep, the sovereign balm, at length steeped her tearful
+eyes in forgetfulness.
+
+She slept; and quiet prevailed in the Castle, whose inhabitants were
+hushed to repose. I was awake, and during the long hours of dead night,
+my busy thoughts worked in my brain, like ten thousand mill-wheels,
+rapid, acute, untameable. All slept—all England slept; and from my
+window, commanding a wide prospect of the star-illumined country, I saw
+the land stretched out in placid rest. I was awake, alive, while the
+brother of death possessed my race. What, if the more potent of these
+fraternal deities should obtain dominion over it? The silence of
+midnight, to speak truly, though apparently a paradox, rung in my ears.
+The solitude became intolerable—I placed my hand on the beating heart
+of Idris, I bent my head to catch the sound of her breath, to assure
+myself that she still existed—for a moment I doubted whether I should
+not awake her; so effeminate an horror ran through my frame.—Great God!
+would it one day be thus? One day all extinct, save myself, should I
+walk the earth alone? Were these warning voices, whose inarticulate and
+oracular sense forced belief upon me?
+
+Yet I would not call _them_
+Voices of warning, that announce to us
+Only the inevitable. As the sun,
+Ere it is risen, sometimes paints its image
+In the atmosphere—so often do the spirits
+Of great events stride on before the events,
+And in to-day already walks to-morrow.[9]
+
+
+ [8] Calderon de la Barca.
+
+
+ [9] Coleridge’s Translation of Schiller’s Wallenstein.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+After a long interval, I am again impelled by the restless spirit
+within me to continue my narration; but I must alter the mode which I
+have hitherto adopted. The details contained in the foregoing pages,
+apparently trivial, yet each slightest one weighing like lead in the
+depressed scale of human afflictions; this tedious dwelling on the
+sorrows of others, while my own were only in apprehension; this slowly
+laying bare of my soul’s wounds: this journal of death; this long drawn
+and tortuous path, leading to the ocean of countless tears, awakens me
+again to keen grief. I had used this history as an opiate; while it
+described my beloved friends, fresh with life and glowing with hope,
+active assistants on the scene, I was soothed; there will be a more
+melancholy pleasure in painting the end of all. But the intermediate
+steps, the climbing the wall, raised up between what was and is, while
+I still looked back nor saw the concealed desert beyond, is a labour
+past my strength. Time and experience have placed me on an height from
+which I can comprehend the past as a whole; and in this way I must
+describe it, bringing forward the leading incidents, and disposing
+light and shade so as to form a picture in whose very darkness there
+will be harmony.
+
+It would be needless to narrate those disastrous occurrences, for which
+a parallel might be found in any slighter visitation of our gigantic
+calamity. Does the reader wish to hear of the pest-houses, where death
+is the comforter—of the mournful passage of the death-cart—of the
+insensibility of the worthless, and the anguish of the loving heart—of
+harrowing shrieks and silence dire—of the variety of disease,
+desertion, famine, despair, and death? There are many books which can
+feed the appetite craving for these things; let them turn to the
+accounts of Boccaccio, De Foe, and Browne. The vast annihilation that
+has swallowed all things—the voiceless solitude of the once busy
+earth—the lonely state of singleness which hems me in, has deprived
+even such details of their stinging reality, and mellowing the lurid
+tints of past anguish with poetic hues, I am able to escape from the
+mosaic of circumstance, by perceiving and reflecting back the grouping
+and combined colouring of the past.
+
+I had returned from London possessed by the idea, with the intimate
+feeling that it was my first duty to secure, as well as I was able, the
+well-being of my family, and then to return and take my post beside
+Adrian. The events that immediately followed on my arrival at Windsor
+changed this view of things. The plague was not in London alone, it was
+every where—it came on us, as Ryland had said, like a thousand packs of
+wolves, howling through the winter night, gaunt and fierce. When once
+disease was introduced into the rural districts, its effects appeared
+more horrible, more exigent, and more difficult to cure, than in towns.
+There was a companionship in suffering there, and, the neighbours
+keeping constant watch on each other, and inspired by the active
+benevolence of Adrian, succour was afforded, and the path of
+destruction smoothed. But in the country, among the scattered
+farm-houses, in lone cottages, in fields, and barns, tragedies were
+acted harrowing to the soul, unseen, unheard, unnoticed. Medical aid
+was less easily procured, food was more difficult to obtain, and human
+beings, unwithheld by shame, for they were unbeheld of their fellows,
+ventured on deeds of greater wickedness, or gave way more readily to
+their abject fears.
+
+Deeds of heroism also occurred, whose very mention swells the heart and
+brings tears into the eyes. Such is human nature, that beauty and
+deformity are often closely linked. In reading history we are chiefly
+struck by the generosity and self-devotion that follow close on the
+heels of crime, veiling with supernal flowers the stain of blood. Such
+acts were not wanting to adorn the grim train that waited on the
+progress of the plague.
+
+The inhabitants of Berkshire and Bucks had been long aware that the
+plague was in London, in Liverpool, Bristol, Manchester, York, in
+short, in all the more populous towns of England. They were not however
+the less astonished and dismayed when it appeared among themselves.
+They were impatient and angry in the midst of terror. They would do
+something to throw off the clinging evil, and, while in action, they
+fancied that a remedy was applied. The inhabitants of the smaller towns
+left their houses, pitched tents in the fields, wandering separate from
+each other careless of hunger or the sky’s inclemency, while they
+imagined that they avoided the death-dealing disease. The farmers and
+cottagers, on the contrary, struck with the fear of solitude, and madly
+desirous of medical assistance, flocked into the towns.
+
+But winter was coming, and with winter, hope. In August, the plague had
+appeared in the country of England, and during September it made its
+ravages. Towards the end of October it dwindled away, and was in some
+degree replaced by a typhus, of hardly less virulence. The autumn was
+warm and rainy: the infirm and sickly died off—happier they: many young
+people flushed with health and prosperity, made pale by wasting malady,
+became the inhabitants of the grave. The crop had failed, the bad corn,
+and want of foreign wines, added vigour to disease. Before Christmas
+half England was under water. The storms of the last winter were
+renewed; but the diminished shipping of this year caused us to feel
+less the tempests of the sea. The flood and storms did more harm to
+continental Europe than to us—giving, as it were, the last blow to the
+calamities which destroyed it. In Italy the rivers were unwatched by
+the diminished peasantry; and, like wild beasts from their lair when
+the hunters and dogs are afar, did Tiber, Arno, and Po, rush upon and
+destroy the fertility of the plains. Whole villages were carried away.
+Rome, and Florence, and Pisa were overflowed, and their marble palaces,
+late mirrored in tranquil streams, had their foundations shaken by
+their winter-gifted power. In Germany and Russia the injury was still
+more momentous.
+
+But frost would come at last, and with it a renewal of our lease of
+earth. Frost would blunt the arrows of pestilence, and enchain the
+furious elements; and the land would in spring throw off her garment of
+snow, released from her menace of destruction. It was not until
+February that the desired signs of winter appeared. For three days the
+snow fell, ice stopped the current of the rivers, and the birds flew
+out from crackling branches of the frost-whitened trees. On the fourth
+morning all vanished. A south-west wind brought up rain—the sun came
+out, and mocking the usual laws of nature, seemed even at this early
+season to burn with solsticial force. It was no consolation, that with
+the first winds of March the lanes were filled with violets, the fruit
+trees covered with blossoms, that the corn sprung up, and the leaves
+came out, forced by the unseasonable heat. We feared the balmy air—we
+feared the cloudless sky, the flower-covered earth, and delightful
+woods, for we looked on the fabric of the universe no longer as our
+dwelling, but our tomb, and the fragrant land smelled to the
+apprehension of fear like a wide church-yard.
+
+Pisando la tierra dura
+de continuo el hombre està
+y cada passo que dà
+es sobre su sepultura.[10]
+
+
+Yet notwithstanding these disadvantages winter was breathing time; and
+we exerted ourselves to make the best of it. Plague might not revive
+with the summer; but if it did, it should find us prepared. It is a
+part of man’s nature to adapt itself through habit even to pain and
+sorrow. Pestilence had become a part of our future, our existence; it
+was to be guarded against, like the flooding of rivers, the
+encroachments of ocean, or the inclemency of the sky. After long
+suffering and bitter experience, some panacea might be discovered; as
+it was, all that received infection died— all however were not
+infected; and it became our part to fix deep the foundations, and raise
+high the barrier between contagion and the sane; to introduce such
+order as would conduce to the well-being of the survivors, and as would
+preserve hope and some portion of happiness to those who were
+spectators of the still renewed tragedy. Adrian had introduced
+systematic modes of proceeding in the metropolis, which, while they
+were unable to stop the progress of death, yet prevented other evils,
+vice and folly, from rendering the awful fate of the hour still more
+tremendous. I wished to imitate his example, but men are used to
+
+—move all together, if they move at all,[11]
+
+
+and I could find no means of leading the inhabitants of scattered towns
+and villages, who forgot my words as soon as they heard them not, and
+veered with every baffling wind, that might arise from an apparent
+change of circumstance.
+
+I adopted another plan. Those writers who have imagined a reign of
+peace and happiness on earth, have generally described a rural country,
+where each small township was directed by the elders and wise men. This
+was the key of my design. Each village, however small, usually contains
+a leader, one among themselves whom they venerate, whose advice they
+seek in difficulty, and whose good opinion they chiefly value. I was
+immediately drawn to make this observation by occurrences that
+presented themselves to my personal experience.
+
+In the village of Little Marlow an old woman ruled the community. She
+had lived for some years in an alms-house, and on fine Sundays her
+threshold was constantly beset by a crowd, seeking her advice and
+listening to her admonitions. She had been a soldier’s wife, and had
+seen the world; infirmity, induced by fevers caught in unwholesome
+quarters, had come on her before its time, and she seldom moved from
+her little cot. The plague entered the village; and, while fright and
+grief deprived the inhabitants of the little wisdom they possessed, old
+Martha stepped forward and said— “Before now I have been in a town
+where there was the plague.”—“And you escaped?”—“No, but I
+recovered.”—After this Martha was seated more firmly than ever on the
+regal seat, elevated by reverence and love. She entered the cottages of
+the sick; she relieved their wants with her own hand; she betrayed no
+fear, and inspired all who saw her with some portion of her own native
+courage. She attended the markets—she insisted upon being supplied with
+food for those who were too poor to purchase it. She shewed them how
+the well-being of each included the prosperity of all. She would not
+permit the gardens to be neglected, nor the very flowers in the cottage
+lattices to droop from want of care. Hope, she said, was better than a
+doctor’s prescription, and every thing that could sustain and enliven
+the spirits, of more worth than drugs and mixtures.
+
+It was the sight of Little Marlow, and my conversations with Martha,
+that led me to the plan I formed. I had before visited the manor houses
+and gentlemen’s seats, and often found the inhabitants actuated by the
+purest benevolence, ready to lend their utmost aid for the welfare of
+their tenants. But this was not enough. The intimate sympathy generated
+by similar hopes and fears, similar experience and pursuits, was
+wanting here. The poor perceived that the rich possessed other means of
+preservation than those which could be partaken of by themselves,
+seclusion, and, as far as circumstances permitted, freedom from care.
+They could not place reliance on them, but turned with tenfold
+dependence to the succour and advice of their equals. I resolved
+therefore to go from village to village, seeking out the rustic archon
+of the place, and by systematizing their exertions, and enlightening
+their views, encrease both their power and their use among their
+fellow-cottagers. Many changes also now occurred in these spontaneous
+regal elections: depositions and abdications were frequent, while, in
+the place of the old and prudent, the ardent youth would step forward,
+eager for action, regardless of danger. Often too, the voice to which
+all listened was suddenly silenced, the helping hand cold, the
+sympathetic eye closed, and the villagers feared still more the death
+that had selected a choice victim, shivering in dust the heart that had
+beat for them, reducing to incommunicable annihilation the mind for
+ever occupied with projects for their welfare.
+
+Whoever labours for man must often find ingratitude, watered by vice
+and folly, spring from the grain which he has sown. Death, which had in
+our younger days walked the earth like “a thief that comes in the
+night,” now, rising from his subterranean vault, girt with power, with
+dark banner floating, came a conqueror. Many saw, seated above his
+vice-regal throne, a supreme Providence, who directed his shafts, and
+guided his progress, and they bowed their heads in resignation, or at
+least in obedience. Others perceived only a passing casualty; they
+endeavoured to exchange terror for heedlessness, and plunged into
+licentiousness, to avoid the agonizing throes of worst apprehension.
+Thus, while the wise, the good, and the prudent were occupied by the
+labours of benevolence, the truce of winter produced other effects
+among the young, the thoughtless, and the vicious. During the colder
+months there was a general rush to London in search of amusement—the
+ties of public opinion were loosened; many were rich, heretofore
+poor—many had lost father and mother, the guardians of their morals,
+their mentors and restraints. It would have been useless to have
+opposed these impulses by barriers, which would only have driven those
+actuated by them to more pernicious indulgencies. The theatres were
+open and thronged; dance and midnight festival were frequented—in many
+of these decorum was violated, and the evils, which hitherto adhered to
+an advanced state of civilization, were doubled. The student left his
+books, the artist his study: the occupations of life were gone, but the
+amusements remained; enjoyment might be protracted to the verge of the
+grave. All factitious colouring disappeared—death rose like night, and,
+protected by its murky shadows the blush of modesty, the reserve of
+pride, the decorum of prudery were frequently thrown aside as useless
+veils. This was not universal. Among better natures, anguish and dread,
+the fear of eternal separation, and the awful wonder produced by
+unprecedented calamity, drew closer the ties of kindred and friendship.
+Philosophers opposed their principles, as barriers to the inundation of
+profligacy or despair, and the only ramparts to protect the invaded
+territory of human life; the religious, hoping now for their reward,
+clung fast to their creeds, as the rafts and planks which over the
+tempest-vexed sea of suffering, would bear them in safety to the
+harbour of the Unknown Continent. The loving heart, obliged to contract
+its view, bestowed its overflow of affection in triple portion on the
+few that remained. Yet, even among these, the present, as an
+unalienable possession, became all of time to which they dared commit
+the precious freight of their hopes.
+
+The experience of immemorial time had taught us formerly to count our
+enjoyments by years, and extend our prospect of life through a
+lengthened period of progression and decay; the long road threaded a
+vast labyrinth, and the Valley of the Shadow of Death, in which it
+terminated, was hid by intervening objects. But an earthquake had
+changed the scene—under our very feet the earth yawned—deep and
+precipitous the gulph below opened to receive us, while the hours
+charioted us towards the chasm. But it was winter now, and months must
+elapse before we are hurled from our security. We became ephemera, to
+whom the interval between the rising and setting sun was as a long
+drawn year of common time. We should never see our children ripen into
+maturity, nor behold their downy cheeks roughen, their blithe hearts
+subdued by passion or care; but we had them now—they lived, and we
+lived—what more could we desire? With such schooling did my poor Idris
+try to hush thronging fears, and in some measure succeeded. It was not
+as in summer-time, when each hour might bring the dreaded fate—until
+summer, we felt sure; and this certainty, short lived as it must be,
+yet for awhile satisfied her maternal tenderness. I know not how to
+express or communicate the sense of concentrated, intense, though
+evanescent transport, that imparadized us in the present hour. Our joys
+were dearer because we saw their end; they were keener because we felt,
+to its fullest extent, their value; they were purer because their
+essence was sympathy— as a meteor is brighter than a star, did the
+felicity of this winter contain in itself the extracted delights of a
+long, long life.
+
+How lovely is spring! As we looked from Windsor Terrace on the sixteen
+fertile counties spread beneath, speckled by happy cottages and
+wealthier towns, all looked as in former years, heart-cheering and
+fair. The land was ploughed, the slender blades of wheat broke through
+the dark soil, the fruit trees were covered with buds, the husbandman
+was abroad in the fields, the milk-maid tripped home with well-filled
+pails, the swallows and martins struck the sunny pools with their long,
+pointed wings, the new dropped lambs reposed on the young grass, the
+tender growth of leaves—
+
+Lifts its sweet head into the air, and feeds
+A silent space with ever sprouting green.[12]
+
+
+Man himself seemed to regenerate, and feel the frost of winter yield to
+an elastic and warm renewal of life—reason told us that care and sorrow
+would grow with the opening year—but how to believe the ominous voice
+breathed up with pestiferous vapours from fear’s dim cavern, while
+nature, laughing and scattering from her green lap flowers, and fruits,
+and sparkling waters, invited us to join the gay masque of young life
+she led upon the scene?
+
+Where was the plague? “Here—every where!” one voice of horror and
+dismay exclaimed, when in the pleasant days of a sunny May the
+Destroyer of man brooded again over the earth, forcing the spirit to
+leave its organic chrysalis, and to enter upon an untried life. With
+one mighty sweep of its potent weapon, all caution, all care, all
+prudence were levelled low: death sat at the tables of the great,
+stretched itself on the cottager’s pallet, seized the dastard who fled,
+quelled the brave man who resisted: despondency entered every heart,
+sorrow dimmed every eye.
+
+Sights of woe now became familiar to me, and were I to tell all of
+anguish and pain that I witnessed, of the despairing moans of age, and
+the more terrible smiles of infancy in the bosom of horror, my reader,
+his limbs quivering and his hair on end, would wonder how I did not,
+seized with sudden frenzy, dash myself from some precipice, and so
+close my eyes for ever on the sad end of the world. But the powers of
+love, poetry, and creative fancy will dwell even beside the sick of the
+plague, with the squalid, and with the dying. A feeling of devotion, of
+duty, of a high and steady purpose, elevated me; a strange joy filled
+my heart. In the midst of saddest grief I seemed to tread air, while
+the spirit of good shed round me an ambrosial atmosphere, which blunted
+the sting of sympathy, and purified the air of sighs. If my wearied
+soul flagged in its career, I thought of my loved home, of the casket
+that contained my treasures, of the kiss of love and the filial caress,
+while my eyes were moistened by purest dew, and my heart was at once
+softened and refreshed by thrilling tenderness.
+
+Maternal affection had not rendered Idris selfish; at the beginning of
+our calamity she had, with thoughtless enthusiasm, devoted herself to
+the care of the sick and helpless. I checked her; and she submitted to
+my rule. I told her how the fear of her danger palsied my exertions,
+how the knowledge of her safety strung my nerves to endurance. I shewed
+her the dangers which her children incurred during her absence; and she
+at length agreed not to go beyond the inclosure of the forest. Indeed,
+within the walls of the Castle we had a colony of the unhappy, deserted
+by their relatives, and in themselves helpless, sufficient to occupy
+her time and attention, while ceaseless anxiety for my welfare and the
+health of her children, however she strove to curb or conceal it,
+absorbed all her thoughts, and undermined the vital principle. After
+watching over and providing for their safety, her second care was to
+hide from me her anguish and tears. Each night I returned to the
+Castle, and found there repose and love awaiting me. Often I waited
+beside the bed of death till midnight, and through the obscurity of
+rainy, cloudy nights rode many miles, sustained by one circumstance
+only, the safety and sheltered repose of those I loved. If some scene
+of tremendous agony shook my frame and fevered my brow, I would lay my
+head on the lap of Idris, and the tumultuous pulses subsided into a
+temperate flow —her smile could raise me from hopelessness, her embrace
+bathe my sorrowing heart in calm peace. Summer advanced, and, crowned
+with the sun’s potent rays, plague shot her unerring shafts over the
+earth. The nations beneath their influence bowed their heads, and died.
+The corn that sprung up in plenty, lay in autumn rotting on the ground,
+while the melancholy wretch who had gone out to gather bread for his
+children, lay stiff and plague-struck in the furrow. The green woods
+waved their boughs majestically, while the dying were spread beneath
+their shade, answering the solemn melody with inharmonious cries. The
+painted birds flitted through the shades; the careless deer reposed
+unhurt upon the fern—the oxen and the horses strayed from their
+unguarded stables, and grazed among the wheat, for death fell on man
+alone.
+
+With summer and mortality grew our fears. My poor love and I looked at
+each other, and our babes.—“We will save them, Idris,” I said, “I will
+save them. Years hence we shall recount to them our fears, then passed
+away with their occasion. Though they only should remain on the earth,
+still they shall live, nor shall their cheeks become pale nor their
+sweet voices languish.” Our eldest in some degree understood the scenes
+passing around, and at times, he with serious looks questioned me
+concerning the reason of so vast a desolation. But he was only ten
+years old; and the hilarity of youth soon chased unreasonable care from
+his brow. Evelyn, a laughing cherub, a gamesome infant, without idea of
+pain or sorrow, would, shaking back his light curls from his eyes, make
+the halls re-echo with his merriment, and in a thousand artless ways
+attract our attention to his play. Clara, our lovely gentle Clara, was
+our stay, our solace, our delight. She made it her task to attend the
+sick, comfort the sorrowing, assist the aged, and partake the sports
+and awaken the gaiety of the young. She flitted through the rooms, like
+a good spirit, dispatched from the celestial kingdom, to illumine our
+dark hour with alien splendour. Gratitude and praise marked where her
+footsteps had been. Yet, when she stood in unassuming simplicity before
+us, playing with our children, or with girlish assiduity performing
+little kind offices for Idris, one wondered in what fair lineament of
+her pure loveliness, in what soft tone of her thrilling voice, so much
+of heroism, sagacity and active goodness resided.
+
+The summer passed tediously, for we trusted that winter would at least
+check the disease. That it would vanish altogether was an hope too
+dear— too heartfelt, to be expressed. When such a thought was
+heedlessly uttered, the hearers, with a gush of tears and passionate
+sobs, bore witness how deep their fears were, how small their hopes.
+For my own part, my exertions for the public good permitted me to
+observe more closely than most others, the virulence and extensive
+ravages of our sightless enemy. A short month has destroyed a village,
+and where in May the first person sickened, in June the paths were
+deformed by unburied corpses—the houses tenantless, no smoke arising
+from the chimneys; and the housewife’s clock marked only the hour when
+death had been triumphant. From such scenes I have sometimes saved a
+deserted infant—sometimes led a young and grieving mother from the
+lifeless image of her first born, or drawn the sturdy labourer from
+childish weeping over his extinct family.
+
+July is gone. August must pass, and by the middle of September we may
+hope. Each day was eagerly counted; and the inhabitants of towns,
+desirous to leap this dangerous interval, plunged into dissipation, and
+strove, by riot, and what they wished to imagine to be pleasure, to
+banish thought and opiate despair. None but Adrian could have tamed the
+motley population of London, which, like a troop of unbitted steeds
+rushing to their pastures, had thrown aside all minor fears, through
+the operation of the fear paramount. Even Adrian was obliged in part to
+yield, that he might be able, if not to guide, at least to set bounds
+to the license of the times. The theatres were kept open; every place
+of public resort was frequented; though he endeavoured so to modify
+them, as might best quiet the agitation of the spectators, and at the
+same time prevent a reaction of misery when the excitement was over.
+Tragedies deep and dire were the chief favourites. Comedy brought with
+it too great a contrast to the inner despair: when such were attempted,
+it was not unfrequent for a comedian, in the midst of the laughter
+occasioned by his disporportioned buffoonery, to find a word or thought
+in his part that jarred with his own sense of wretchedness, and burst
+from mimic merriment into sobs and tears, while the spectators, seized
+with irresistible sympathy, wept, and the pantomimic revelry was
+changed to a real exhibition of tragic passion.
+
+It was not in my nature to derive consolation from such scenes; from
+theatres, whose buffoon laughter and discordant mirth awakened
+distempered sympathy, or where fictitious tears and wailings mocked the
+heart-felt grief within; from festival or crowded meeting, where
+hilarity sprung from the worst feelings of our nature, or such
+enthralment of the better ones, as impressed it with garish and false
+varnish; from assemblies of mourners in the guise of revellers. Once
+however I witnessed a scene of singular interest at one of the
+theatres, where nature overpowered art, as an overflowing cataract will
+tear away the puny manufacture of a mock cascade, which had before been
+fed by a small portion of its waters.
+
+I had come to London to see Adrian. He was not at the palace; and,
+though the attendants did not know whither he had gone, they did not
+expect him till late at night. It was between six and seven o’clock, a
+fine summer afternoon, and I spent my leisure hours in a ramble through
+the empty streets of London; now turning to avoid an approaching
+funeral, now urged by curiosity to observe the state of a particular
+spot; my wanderings were instinct with pain, for silence and desertion
+characterized every place I visited, and the few beings I met were so
+pale and woe-begone, so marked with care and depressed by fear, that
+weary of encountering only signs of misery, I began to retread my steps
+towards home.
+
+I was now in Holborn, and passed by a public house filled with
+uproarious companions, whose songs, laughter, and shouts were more
+sorrowful than the pale looks and silence of the mourner. Such an one
+was near, hovering round this house. The sorry plight of her dress
+displayed her poverty, she was ghastly pale, and continued approaching,
+first the window and then the door of the house, as if fearful, yet
+longing to enter. A sudden burst of song and merriment seemed to sting
+her to the heart; she murmured, “Can he have the heart?” and then
+mustering her courage, she stepped within the threshold. The landlady
+met her in the passage; the poor creature asked, “Is my husband here?
+Can I see George?”
+
+“See him,” cried the woman, “yes, if you go to him; last night he was
+taken with the plague, and we sent him to the hospital.”
+
+The unfortunate inquirer staggered against a wall, a faint cry escaped
+her —“O! were you cruel enough,” she exclaimed, “to send him there?”
+
+The landlady meanwhile hurried away; but a more compassionate bar-maid
+gave her a detailed account, the sum of which was, that her husband had
+been taken ill, after a night of riot, and sent by his boon companions
+with all expedition to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. I had watched this
+scene, for there was a gentleness about the poor woman that interested
+me; she now tottered away from the door, walking as well as she could
+down Holborn Hill; but her strength soon failed her; she leaned against
+a wall, and her head sunk on her bosom, while her pallid cheek became
+still more white. I went up to her and offered my services. She hardly
+looked up—“You can do me no good,” she replied; “I must go to the
+hospital; if I do not die before I get there.”
+
+There were still a few hackney-coaches accustomed to stand about the
+streets, more truly from habit than for use. I put her in one of these,
+and entered with her that I might secure her entrance into the
+hospital. Our way was short, and she said little; except interrupted
+ejaculations of reproach that he had left her, exclamations on the
+unkindness of some of his friends, and hope that she would find him
+alive. There was a simple, natural earnestness about her that
+interested me in her fate, especially when she assured me that her
+husband was the best of men,—had been so, till want of business during
+these unhappy times had thrown him into bad company. “He could not bear
+to come home,” she said, “only to see our children die. A man cannot
+have the patience a mother has, with her own flesh and blood.”
+
+We were set down at St. Bartholomew’s, and entered the wretched
+precincts of the house of disease. The poor creature clung closer to
+me, as she saw with what heartless haste they bore the dead from the
+wards, and took them into a room, whose half-opened door displayed a
+number of corpses, horrible to behold by one unaccustomed to such
+scenes. We were directed to the ward where her husband had been first
+taken, and still was, the nurse said, if alive. My companion looked
+eagerly from one bed to the other, till at the end of the ward she
+espied, on a wretched bed, a squalid, haggard creature, writhing under
+the torture of disease. She rushed towards him, she embraced him,
+blessing God for his preservation.
+
+The enthusiasm that inspired her with this strange joy, blinded her to
+the horrors about her; but they were intolerably agonizing to me. The
+ward was filled with an effluvia that caused my heart to heave with
+painful qualms. The dead were carried out, and the sick brought in,
+with like indifference; some were screaming with pain, others laughing
+from the influence of more terrible delirium; some were attended by
+weeping, despairing relations, others called aloud with thrilling
+tenderness or reproach on the friends who had deserted them, while the
+nurses went from bed to bed, incarnate images of despair, neglect, and
+death. I gave gold to my luckless companion; I recommended her to the
+care of the attendants; I then hastened away; while the tormentor, the
+imagination, busied itself in picturing my own loved ones, stretched on
+such beds, attended thus. The country afforded no such mass of horrors;
+solitary wretches died in the open fields; and I have found a survivor
+in a vacant village, contending at once with famine and disease; but
+the assembly of pestilence, the banqueting hall of death, was spread
+only in London.
+
+I rambled on, oppressed, distracted by painful emotions—suddenly I
+found myself before Drury Lane Theatre. The play was Macbeth—the first
+actor of the age was there to exert his powers to drug with
+irreflection the auditors; such a medicine I yearned for, so I entered.
+The theatre was tolerably well filled. Shakspeare, whose popularity was
+established by the approval of four centuries, had not lost his
+influence even at this dread period; but was still “Ut magus,” the
+wizard to rule our hearts and govern our imaginations. I came in during
+the interval between the third and fourth act. I looked round on the
+audience; the females were mostly of the lower classes, but the men
+were of all ranks, come hither to forget awhile the protracted scenes
+of wretchedness, which awaited them at their miserable homes. The
+curtain drew up, and the stage presented the scene of the witches’
+cave. The wildness and supernatural machinery of Macbeth, was a pledge
+that it could contain little directly connected with our present
+circumstances. Great pains had been taken in the scenery to give the
+semblance of reality to the impossible. The extreme darkness of the
+stage, whose only light was received from the fire under the cauldron,
+joined to a kind of mist that floated about it, rendered the unearthly
+shapes of the witches obscure and shadowy. It was not three decrepid
+old hags that bent over their pot throwing in the grim ingredients of
+the magic charm, but forms frightful, unreal, and fanciful. The
+entrance of Hecate, and the wild music that followed, took us out of
+this world. The cavern shape the stage assumed, the beetling rocks, the
+glare of the fire, the misty shades that crossed the scene at times,
+the music in harmony with all witch-like fancies, permitted the
+imagination to revel, without fear of contradiction, or reproof from
+reason or the heart. The entrance of Macbeth did not destroy the
+illusion, for he was actuated by the same feelings that inspired us,
+and while the work of magic proceeded we sympathized in his wonder and
+his daring, and gave ourselves up with our whole souls to the influence
+of scenic delusion. I felt the beneficial result of such excitement, in
+a renewal of those pleasing flights of fancy to which I had long been a
+stranger. The effect of this scene of incantation communicated a
+portion of its power to that which followed. We forgot that Malcolm and
+Macduff were mere human beings, acted upon by such simple passions as
+warmed our own breasts. By slow degrees however we were drawn to the
+real interest of the scene. A shudder like the swift passing of an
+electric shock ran through the house, when Rosse exclaimed, in answer
+to “Stands Scotland where it did?”
+
+        Alas, poor country;
+Almost afraid to know itself! It cannot
+Be called our mother, but our grave: where nothing,
+But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;
+Where sighs, and groans, and shrieks that rent the air,
+Are made, not marked; where violent sorrow seems
+A modern extasy: the dead man’s knell
+Is there scarce asked, for who; and good men’s lives
+Expire before the flowers in their caps,
+Dying, or ere they sicken.
+
+
+Each word struck the sense, as our life’s passing bell; we feared to
+look at each other, but bent our gaze on the stage, as if our eyes
+could fall innocuous on that alone. The person who played the part of
+Rosse, suddenly became aware of the dangerous ground he trod. He was an
+inferior actor, but truth now made him excellent; as he went on to
+announce to Macduff the slaughter of his family, he was afraid to
+speak, trembling from apprehension of a burst of grief from the
+audience, not from his fellow-mime. Each word was drawn out with
+difficulty; real anguish painted his features; his eyes were now lifted
+in sudden horror, now fixed in dread upon the ground. This shew of
+terror encreased ours, we gasped with him, each neck was stretched out,
+each face changed with the actor’s changes— at length while Macduff,
+who, attending to his part, was unobservant of the high wrought
+sympathy of the house, cried with well acted passion:
+
+        All my pretty ones?
+Did you say all?—O hell kite! All?
+What! all my pretty chickens, and their dam,
+At one fell swoop!
+
+
+A pang of tameless grief wrenched every heart, a burst of despair was
+echoed from every lip.—I had entered into the universal feeling—I had
+been absorbed by the terrors of Rosse—I re-echoed the cry of Macduff,
+and then rushed out as from an hell of torture, to find calm in the
+free air and silent street.
+
+Free the air was not, or the street silent. Oh, how I longed then for
+the dear soothings of maternal Nature, as my wounded heart was still
+further stung by the roar of heartless merriment from the public-house,
+by the sight of the drunkard reeling home, having lost the memory of
+what he would find there in oblivious debauch, and by the more
+appalling salutations of those melancholy beings to whom the name of
+home was a mockery. I ran on at my utmost speed until I found myself I
+knew not how, close to Westminster Abbey, and was attracted by the deep
+and swelling tone of the organ. I entered with soothing awe the lighted
+chancel, and listened to the solemn religious chaunt, which spoke peace
+and hope to the unhappy. The notes, freighted with man’s dearest
+prayers, re-echoed through the dim aisles, and the bleeding of the
+soul’s wounds was staunched by heavenly balm. In spite of the misery I
+deprecated, and could not understand; in spite of the cold hearths of
+wide London, and the corpse-strewn fields of my native land; in spite
+of all the variety of agonizing emotions I had that evening
+experienced, I thought that in reply to our melodious adjurations, the
+Creator looked down in compassion and promise of relief; the awful peal
+of the heaven-winged music seemed fitting voice wherewith to commune
+with the Supreme; calm was produced by its sound, and by the sight of
+many other human creatures offering up prayers and submission with me.
+A sentiment approaching happiness followed the total resignation of
+one’s being to the guardianship of the world’s ruler. Alas! with the
+failing of this solemn strain, the elevated spirit sank again to earth.
+Suddenly one of the choristers died—he was lifted from his desk, the
+vaults below were hastily opened—he was consigned with a few muttered
+prayers to the darksome cavern, abode of thousands who had gone
+before—now wide yawning to receive even all who fulfilled the funeral
+rites. In vain I would then have turned from this scene, to darkened
+aisle or lofty dome, echoing with melodious praise. In the open air
+alone I found relief; among nature’s beauteous works, her God reassumed
+his attribute of benevolence, and again I could trust that he who built
+up the mountains, planted the forests, and poured out the rivers, would
+erect another state for lost humanity, where we might awaken again to
+our affections, our happiness, and our faith.
+
+Fortunately for me those circumstances were of rare occurrence that
+obliged me to visit London, and my duties were confined to the rural
+district which our lofty castle overlooked; and here labour stood in
+the place of pastime, to occupy such of the country people as were
+sufficiently exempt from sorrow or disease. My endeavours were directed
+towards urging them to their usual attention to their crops, and to the
+acting as if pestilence did not exist. The mower’s scythe was at times
+heard; yet the joyless haymakers after they had listlessly turned the
+grass, forgot to cart it; the shepherd, when he had sheared his sheep,
+would let the wool lie to be scattered by the winds, deeming it useless
+to provide clothing for another winter. At times however the spirit of
+life was awakened by these employments; the sun, the refreshing breeze,
+the sweet smell of the hay, the rustling leaves and prattling rivulets
+brought repose to the agitated bosom, and bestowed a feeling akin to
+happiness on the apprehensive. Nor, strange to say, was the time
+without its pleasures. Young couples, who had loved long and
+hopelessly, suddenly found every impediment removed, and wealth pour in
+from the death of relatives. The very danger drew them closer. The
+immediate peril urged them to seize the immediate opportunity; wildly
+and passionately they sought to know what delights existence afforded,
+before they yielded to death, and
+
+Snatching their pleasures with rough strife
+Thorough the iron gates of life,[13]
+
+
+they defied the conquering pestilence to destroy what had been, or to
+erase even from their death-bed thoughts the sentiment of happiness
+which had been theirs.
+
+One instance of this kind came immediately under our notice, where a
+high-born girl had in early youth given her heart to one of meaner
+extraction. He was a schoolfellow and friend of her brother’s, and
+usually spent a part of the holidays at the mansion of the duke her
+father. They had played together as children, been the confidants of
+each other’s little secrets, mutual aids and consolers in difficulty
+and sorrow. Love had crept in, noiseless, terrorless at first, till
+each felt their life bound up in the other, and at the same time knew
+that they must part. Their extreme youth, and the purity of their
+attachment, made them yield with less resistance to the tyranny of
+circumstances. The father of the fair Juliet separated them; but not
+until the young lover had promised to remain absent only till he had
+rendered himself worthy of her, and she had vowed to preserve her
+virgin heart, his treasure, till he returned to claim and possess it.
+
+Plague came, threatening to destroy at once the aim of the ambitious
+and the hopes of love. Long the Duke of L——derided the idea that there
+could be danger while he pursued his plans of cautious seclusion; and
+he so far succeeded, that it was not till this second summer, that the
+destroyer, at one fell stroke, overthrew his precautions, his security,
+and his life. Poor Juliet saw one by one, father, mother, brothers, and
+sisters, sicken and die. Most of the servants fled on the first
+appearance of disease, those who remained were infected mortally; no
+neighbour or rustic ventured within the verge of contagion. By a
+strange fatality Juliet alone escaped, and she to the last waited on
+her relatives, and smoothed the pillow of death. The moment at length
+came, when the last blow was given to the last of the house: the
+youthful survivor of her race sat alone among the dead. There was no
+living being near to soothe her, or withdraw her from this hideous
+company. With the declining heat of a September night, a whirlwind of
+storm, thunder, and hail, rattled round the house, and with ghastly
+harmony sung the dirge of her family. She sat upon the ground absorbed
+in wordless despair, when through the gusty wind and bickering rain she
+thought she heard her name called. Whose could that familiar voice be?
+Not one of her relations, for they lay glaring on her with stony eyes.
+Again her name was syllabled, and she shuddered as she asked herself,
+am I becoming mad, or am I dying, that I hear the voices of the
+departed? A second thought passed, swift as an arrow, into her brain;
+she rushed to the window; and a flash of lightning shewed to her the
+expected vision, her lover in the shrubbery beneath; joy lent her
+strength to descend the stairs, to open the door, and then she fainted
+in his supporting arms.
+
+A thousand times she reproached herself, as with a crime, that she
+should revive to happiness with him. The natural clinging of the human
+mind to life and joy was in its full energy in her young heart; she
+gave herself impetuously up to the enchantment: they were married; and
+in their radiant features I saw incarnate, for the last time, the
+spirit of love, of rapturous sympathy, which once had been the life of
+the world.
+
+I envied them, but felt how impossible it was to imbibe the same
+feeling, now that years had multiplied my ties in the world. Above all,
+the anxious mother, my own beloved and drooping Idris, claimed my
+earnest care; I could not reproach the anxiety that never for a moment
+slept in her heart, but I exerted myself to distract her attention from
+too keen an observation of the truth of things, of the near and nearer
+approaches of disease, misery, and death, of the wild look of our
+attendants as intelligence of another and yet another death reached us;
+for to the last something new occurred that seemed to transcend in
+horror all that had gone before. Wretched beings crawled to die under
+our succouring roof; the inhabitants of the Castle decreased daily,
+while the survivors huddled together in fear, and, as in a
+famine-struck boat, the sport of the wild, interminable waves, each
+looked in the other’s face, to guess on whom the death-lot would next
+fall. All this I endeavoured to veil, so that it might least impress my
+Idris; yet, as I have said, my courage survived even despair: I might
+be vanquished, but I would not yield.
+
+One day, it was the ninth of September, seemed devoted to every
+disaster, to every harrowing incident. Early in the day, I heard of the
+arrival of the aged grandmother of one of our servants at the Castle.
+This old woman had reached her hundredth year; her skin was shrivelled,
+her form was bent and lost in extreme decrepitude; but as still from
+year to year she continued in existence, out-living many younger and
+stronger, she began to feel as if she were to live for ever. The plague
+came, and the inhabitants of her village died. Clinging, with the
+dastard feeling of the aged, to the remnant of her spent life, she had,
+on hearing that the pestilence had come into her neighbourhood, barred
+her door, and closed her casement, refusing to communicate with any.
+She would wander out at night to get food, and returned home, pleased
+that she had met no one, that she was in no danger from the plague. As
+the earth became more desolate, her difficulty in acquiring sustenance
+increased; at first, her son, who lived near, had humoured her by
+placing articles of food in her way: at last he died. But, even though
+threatened by famine, her fear of the plague was paramount; and her
+greatest care was to avoid her fellow creatures. She grew weaker each
+day, and each day she had further to go. The night before, she had
+reached Datchet; and, prowling about, had found a baker’s shop open and
+deserted. Laden with spoil, she hastened to return, and lost her way.
+The night was windless, hot, and cloudy; her load became too heavy for
+her; and one by one she threw away her loaves, still endeavouring to
+get along, though her hobbling fell into lameness, and her weakness at
+last into inability to move.
+
+She lay down among the tall corn, and fell asleep. Deep in midnight,
+she was awaked by a rustling near her; she would have started up, but
+her stiff joints refused to obey her will. A low moan close to her ear
+followed, and the rustling increased; she heard a smothered voice
+breathe out, Water, Water! several times; and then again a sigh heaved
+from the heart of the sufferer. The old woman shuddered, she contrived
+at length to sit upright; but her teeth chattered, and her knees
+knocked together—close, very close, lay a half-naked figure, just
+discernible in the gloom, and the cry for water and the stifled moan
+were again uttered. Her motions at length attracted the attention of
+her unknown companion; her hand was seized with a convulsive violence
+that made the grasp feel like iron, the fingers like the keen teeth of
+a trap.—“At last you are come!” were the words given forth—but this
+exertion was the last effort of the dying—the joints relaxed, the
+figure fell prostrate, one low moan, the last, marked the moment of
+death. Morning broke; and the old woman saw the corpse, marked with the
+fatal disease, close to her; her wrist was livid with the hold loosened
+by death. She felt struck by the plague; her aged frame was unable to
+bear her away with sufficient speed; and now, believing herself
+infected, she no longer dreaded the association of others; but, as
+swiftly as she might, came to her grand-daughter, at Windsor Castle,
+there to lament and die. The sight was horrible; still she clung to
+life, and lamented her mischance with cries and hideous groans; while
+the swift advance of the disease shewed, what proved to be the fact,
+that she could not survive many hours.
+
+While I was directing that the necessary care should be taken of her,
+Clara came in; she was trembling and pale; and, when I anxiously asked
+her the cause of her agitation, she threw herself into my arms weeping
+and exclaiming—“Uncle, dearest uncle, do not hate me for ever! I must
+tell you, for you must know, that Evelyn, poor little Evelyn”—her voice
+was choked by sobs. The fear of so mighty a calamity as the loss of our
+adored infant made the current of my blood pause with chilly horror;
+but the remembrance of the mother restored my presence of mind. I
+sought the little bed of my darling; he was oppressed by fever; but I
+trusted, I fondly and fearfully trusted, that there were no symptoms of
+the plague. He was not three years old, and his illness appeared only
+one of those attacks incident to infancy. I watched him long—his heavy
+half-closed lids, his burning cheeks and restless twining of his small
+fingers—the fever was violent, the torpor complete—enough, without the
+greater fear of pestilence, to awaken alarm. Idris must not see him in
+this state. Clara, though only twelve years old, was rendered, through
+extreme sensibility, so prudent and careful, that I felt secure in
+entrusting the charge of him to her, and it was my task to prevent
+Idris from observing their absence. I administered the fitting
+remedies, and left my sweet niece to watch beside him, and bring me
+notice of any change she should observe.
+
+I then went to Idris, contriving in my way, plausible excuses for
+remaining all day in the Castle, and endeavouring to disperse the
+traces of care from my brow. Fortunately she was not alone. I found
+Merrival, the astronomer, with her. He was far too long sighted in his
+view of humanity to heed the casualties of the day, and lived in the
+midst of contagion unconscious of its existence. This poor man, learned
+as La Place, guileless and unforeseeing as a child, had often been on
+the point of starvation, he, his pale wife and numerous offspring,
+while he neither felt hunger, nor observed distress. His astronomical
+theories absorbed him; calculations were scrawled with coal on the bare
+walls of his garret: a hard-earned guinea, or an article of dress, was
+exchanged for a book without remorse; he neither heard his children
+cry, nor observed his companion’s emaciated form, and the excess of
+calamity was merely to him as the occurrence of a cloudy night, when he
+would have given his right hand to observe a celestial phenomenon. His
+wife was one of those wondrous beings, to be found only among women,
+with affections not to be diminished by misfortune. Her mind was
+divided between boundless admiration for her husband, and tender
+anxiety for her children—she waited on him, worked for them, and never
+complained, though care rendered her life one long-drawn, melancholy
+dream.
+
+He had introduced himself to Adrian, by a request he made to observe
+some planetary motions from his glass. His poverty was easily detected
+and relieved. He often thanked us for the books we lent him, and for
+the use of our instruments, but never spoke of his altered abode or
+change of circumstances. His wife assured us, that he had not observed
+any difference, except in the absence of the children from his study,
+and to her infinite surprise he complained of this unaccustomed quiet.
+
+He came now to announce to us the completion of his Essay on the
+Pericyclical Motions of the Earth’s Axis, and the precession of the
+equinoctial points. If an old Roman of the period of the Republic had
+returned to life, and talked of the impending election of some
+laurel-crowned consul, or of the last battle with Mithridates, his
+ideas would not have been more alien to the times, than the
+conversation of Merrival. Man, no longer with an appetite for sympathy,
+clothed his thoughts in visible signs; nor were there any readers left:
+while each one, having thrown away his sword with opposing shield
+alone, awaited the plague, Merrival talked of the state of mankind six
+thousand years hence. He might with equal interest to us, have added a
+commentary, to describe the unknown and unimaginable lineaments of the
+creatures, who would then occupy the vacated dwelling of mankind. We
+had not the heart to undeceive the poor old man; and at the moment I
+came in, he was reading parts of his book to Idris, asking what answer
+could be given to this or that position.
+
+Idris could not refrain from a smile, as she listened; she had already
+gathered from him that his family was alive and in health; though not
+apt to forget the precipice of time on which she stood, yet I could
+perceive that she was amused for a moment, by the contrast between the
+contracted view we had so long taken of human life, and the seven
+league strides with which Merrival paced a coming eternity. I was glad
+to see her smile, because it assured me of her total ignorance of her
+infant’s danger: but I shuddered to think of the revulsion that would
+be occasioned by a discovery of the truth. While Merrival was talking,
+Clara softly opened a door behind Idris, and beckoned me to come with a
+gesture and look of grief. A mirror betrayed the sign to Idris—she
+started up. To suspect evil, to perceive that, Alfred being with us,
+the danger must regard her youngest darling, to fly across the long
+chambers into his apartment, was the work but of a moment. There she
+beheld her Evelyn lying fever-stricken and motionless. I followed her,
+and strove to inspire more hope than I could myself entertain; but she
+shook her head mournfully. Anguish deprived her of presence of mind;
+she gave up to me and Clara the physician’s and nurse’s parts; she sat
+by the bed, holding one little burning hand, and, with glazed eyes
+fixed on her babe, passed the long day in one unvaried agony. It was
+not the plague that visited our little boy so roughly; but she could
+not listen to my assurances; apprehension deprived her of judgment and
+reflection; every slight convulsion of her child’s features shook her
+frame —if he moved, she dreaded the instant crisis; if he remained
+still, she saw death in his torpor, and the cloud on her brow darkened.
+
+The poor little thing’s fever encreased towards night. The sensation is
+most dreary, to use no stronger term, with which one looks forward to
+passing the long hours of night beside a sick bed, especially if the
+patient be an infant, who cannot explain its pain, and whose flickering
+life resembles the wasting flame of the watch-light,
+
+        Whose narrow fire
+Is shaken by the wind, and on whose edge
+Devouring darkness hovers.[14]
+
+
+With eagerness one turns toward the east, with angry impatience one
+marks the unchequered darkness; the crowing of a cock, that sound of
+glee during day-time, comes wailing and untuneable—the creaking of
+rafters, and slight stir of invisible insect is heard and felt as the
+signal and type of desolation. Clara, overcome by weariness, had seated
+herself at the foot of her cousin’s bed, and in spite of her efforts
+slumber weighed down her lids; twice or thrice she shook it off; but at
+length she was conquered and slept. Idris sat at the bedside, holding
+Evelyn’s hand; we were afraid to speak to each other; I watched the
+stars —I hung over my child—I felt his little pulse—I drew near the
+mother—again I receded. At the turn of morning a gentle sigh from the
+patient attracted me, the burning spot on his cheek faded—his pulse
+beat softly and regularly—torpor yielded to sleep. For a long time I
+dared not hope; but when his unobstructed breathing and the moisture
+that suffused his forehead, were tokens no longer to be mistaken of the
+departure of mortal malady, I ventured to whisper the news of the
+change to Idris, and at length succeeded in persuading her that I spoke
+truth.
+
+But neither this assurance, nor the speedy convalescence of our child
+could restore her, even to the portion of peace she before enjoyed. Her
+fear had been too deep, too absorbing, too entire, to be changed to
+security. She felt as if during her past calm she had dreamed, but was
+now awake; she was
+
+        As one
+In some lone watch-tower on the deep, awakened
+From soothing visions of the home he loves,
+Trembling to hear the wrathful billows roar;[15]
+
+
+as one who has been cradled by a storm, and awakes to find the vessel
+sinking. Before, she had been visited by pangs of fear—now, she never
+enjoyed an interval of hope. No smile of the heart ever irradiated her
+fair countenance; sometimes she forced one, and then gushing tears
+would flow, and the sea of grief close above these wrecks of past
+happiness. Still while I was near her, she could not be in utter
+despair— she fully confided herself to me—she did not seem to fear my
+death, or revert to its possibility; to my guardianship she consigned
+the full freight of her anxieties, reposing on my love, as a
+wind-nipped fawn by the side of a doe, as a wounded nestling under its
+mother’s wing, as a tiny, shattered boat, quivering still, beneath some
+protecting willow-tree. While I, not proudly as in days of joy, yet
+tenderly, and with glad consciousness of the comfort I afforded, drew
+my trembling girl close to my heart, and tried to ward every painful
+thought or rough circumstance from her sensitive nature.
+
+One other incident occurred at the end of this summer. The Countess of
+Windsor, Ex-Queen of England, returned from Germany. She had at the
+beginning of the season quitted the vacant city of Vienna; and, unable
+to tame her haughty mind to anything like submission, she had delayed
+at Hamburgh, and, when at last she came to London, many weeks elapsed
+before she gave Adrian notice of her arrival. In spite of her coldness
+and long absence, he welcomed her with sensibility, displaying such
+affection as sought to heal the wounds of pride and sorrow, and was
+repulsed only by her total apparent want of sympathy. Idris heard of
+her mother’s return with pleasure. Her own maternal feelings were so
+ardent, that she imagined her parent must now, in this waste world,
+have lost pride and harshness, and would receive with delight her
+filial attentions. The first check to her duteous demonstrations was a
+formal intimation from the fallen majesty of England, that I was in no
+manner to be intruded upon her. She consented, she said, to forgive her
+daughter, and acknowledge her grandchildren; larger concessions must
+not be expected.
+
+To me this proceeding appeared (if so light a term may be permitted)
+extremely whimsical. Now that the race of man had lost in fact all
+distinction of rank, this pride was doubly fatuitous; now that we felt
+a kindred, fraternal nature with all who bore the stamp of humanity,
+this angry reminiscence of times for ever gone, was worse than foolish.
+Idris was too much taken up by her own dreadful fears, to be angry,
+hardly grieved; for she judged that insensibility must be the source of
+this continued rancour. This was not altogether the fact: but
+predominant self-will assumed the arms and masque of callous feeling;
+and the haughty lady disdained to exhibit any token of the struggle she
+endured; while the slave of pride, she fancied that she sacrificed her
+happiness to immutable principle.
+
+False was all this—false all but the affections of our nature, and the
+links of sympathy with pleasure or pain. There was but one good and one
+evil in the world—life and death. The pomp of rank, the assumption of
+power, the possessions of wealth vanished like morning mist. One living
+beggar had become of more worth than a national peerage of dead lords—
+alas the day!—than of dead heroes, patriots, or men of genius. There
+was much of degradation in this: for even vice and virtue had lost
+their attributes—life—life—the continuation of our animal mechanism—
+was the Alpha and Omega of the desires, the prayers, the prostrate
+ambition of human race.
+
+ [10] Calderon de la Barca.
+
+
+ [11] [2] Wordsworth.
+
+
+ [12] Keats.
+
+
+ [13] Andrew Marvell.
+
+
+ [14] The Cenci
+
+
+ [15] The Brides’ Tragedy, by T. L. Beddoes, Esq.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+Half England was desolate, when October came, and the equinoctial winds
+swept over the earth, chilling the ardours of the unhealthy season. The
+summer, which was uncommonly hot, had been protracted into the
+beginning of this month, when on the eighteenth a sudden change was
+brought about from summer temperature to winter frost. Pestilence then
+made a pause in her death-dealing career. Gasping, not daring to name
+our hopes, yet full even to the brim with intense expectation, we
+stood, as a ship-wrecked sailor stands on a barren rock islanded by the
+ocean, watching a distant vessel, fancying that now it nears, and then
+again that it is bearing from sight. This promise of a renewed lease of
+life turned rugged natures to melting tenderness, and by contrast
+filled the soft with harsh and unnatural sentiments. When it seemed
+destined that all were to die, we were reckless of the how and when—now
+that the virulence of the disease was mitigated, and it appeared
+willing to spare some, each was eager to be among the elect, and clung
+to life with dastard tenacity. Instances of desertion became more
+frequent; and even murders, which made the hearer sick with horror,
+where the fear of contagion had armed those nearest in blood against
+each other. But these smaller and separate tragedies were about to
+yield to a mightier interest—and, while we were promised calm from
+infectious influences, a tempest arose wilder than the winds, a tempest
+bred by the passions of man, nourished by his most violent impulses,
+unexampled and dire.
+
+A number of people from North America, the relics of that populous
+continent, had set sail for the East with mad desire of change, leaving
+their native plains for lands not less afflicted than their own.
+Several hundreds landed in Ireland, about the first of November, and
+took possession of such vacant habitations as they could find; seizing
+upon the superabundant food, and the stray cattle. As they exhausted
+the produce of one spot, they went on to another. At length they began
+to interfere with the inhabitants, and strong in their concentrated
+numbers, ejected the natives from their dwellings, and robbed them of
+their winter store. A few events of this kind roused the fiery nature
+of the Irish; and they attacked the invaders. Some were destroyed; the
+major part escaped by quick and well ordered movements; and danger made
+them careful. Their numbers ably arranged; the very deaths among them
+concealed; moving on in good order, and apparently given up to
+enjoyment, they excited the envy of the Irish. The Americans permitted
+a few to join their band, and presently the recruits outnumbered the
+strangers—nor did they join with them, nor imitate the admirable order
+which, preserved by the Trans-Atlantic chiefs, rendered them at once
+secure and formidable. The Irish followed their track in disorganized
+multitudes; each day encreasing; each day becoming more lawless. The
+Americans were eager to escape from the spirit they had roused, and,
+reaching the eastern shores of the island, embarked for England. Their
+incursion would hardly have been felt had they come alone; but the
+Irish, collected in unnatural numbers, began to feel the inroads of
+famine, and they followed in the wake of the Americans for England
+also. The crossing of the sea could not arrest their progress. The
+harbours of the desolate sea-ports of the west of Ireland were filled
+with vessels of all sizes, from the man of war to the small fishers’
+boat, which lay sailorless, and rotting on the lazy deep. The emigrants
+embarked by hundreds, and unfurling their sails with rude hands, made
+strange havoc of buoy and cordage. Those who modestly betook themselves
+to the smaller craft, for the most part achieved their watery journey
+in safety. Some, in the true spirit of reckless enterprise, went on
+board a ship of an hundred and twenty guns; the vast hull drifted with
+the tide out of the bay, and after many hours its crew of landsmen
+contrived to spread a great part of her enormous canvass—the wind took
+it, and while a thousand mistakes of the helmsman made her present her
+head now to one point, and now to another, the vast fields of canvass
+that formed her sails flapped with a sound like that of a huge
+cataract; or such as a sea-like forest may give forth when buffeted by
+an equinoctial north-wind. The port-holes were open, and with every
+sea, which as she lurched, washed her decks, they received whole tons
+of water. The difficulties were increased by a fresh breeze which began
+to blow, whistling among the shrowds, dashing the sails this way and
+that, and rending them with horrid split, and such whir as may have
+visited the dreams of Milton, when he imagined the winnowing of the
+arch-fiend’s van-like wings, which encreased the uproar of wild chaos.
+These sounds were mingled with the roaring of the sea, the splash of
+the chafed billows round the vessel’s sides, and the gurgling up of the
+water in the hold. The crew, many of whom had never seen the sea
+before, felt indeed as if heaven and earth came ruining together, as
+the vessel dipped her bows in the waves, or rose high upon them. Their
+yells were drowned in the clamour of elements, and the thunder rivings
+of their unwieldy habitation—they discovered at last that the water
+gained on them, and they betook themselves to their pumps; they might
+as well have laboured to empty the ocean by bucketfuls. As the sun went
+down, the gale encreased; the ship seemed to feel her danger, she was
+now completely water-logged, and presented other indications of
+settling before she went down. The bay was crowded with vessels, whose
+crews, for the most part, were observing the uncouth sportings of this
+huge unwieldy machine—they saw her gradually sink; the waters now
+rising above her lower decks—they could hardly wink before she had
+utterly disappeared, nor could the place where the sea had closed over
+her be at all discerned. Some few of her crew were saved, but the
+greater part clinging to her cordage and masts went down with her, to
+rise only when death loosened their hold.
+
+This event caused many of those who were about to sail, to put foot
+again on firm land, ready to encounter any evil rather than to rush
+into the yawning jaws of the pitiless ocean. But these were few, in
+comparison to the numbers who actually crossed. Many went up as high as
+Belfast to ensure a shorter passage, and then journeying south through
+Scotland, they were joined by the poorer natives of that country, and
+all poured with one consent into England.
+
+Such incursions struck the English with affright, in all those towns
+where there was still sufficient population to feel the change. There
+was room enough indeed in our hapless country for twice the number of
+invaders; but their lawless spirit instigated them to violence; they
+took a delight in thrusting the possessors from their houses; in
+seizing on some mansion of luxury, where the noble dwellers secluded
+themselves in fear of the plague; in forcing these of either sex to
+become their servants and purveyors; till, the ruin complete in one
+place, they removed their locust visitation to another. When unopposed
+they spread their ravages wide; in cases of danger they clustered, and
+by dint of numbers overthrew their weak and despairing foes. They came
+from the east and the north, and directed their course without apparent
+motive, but unanimously towards our unhappy metropolis.
+
+Communication had been to a great degree cut off through the paralyzing
+effects of pestilence, so that the van of our invaders had proceeded as
+far as Manchester and Derby, before we received notice of their
+arrival. They swept the country like a conquering army, burning—laying
+waste— murdering. The lower and vagabond English joined with them. Some
+few of the Lords Lieutenant who remained, endeavoured to collect the
+militia—but the ranks were vacant, panic seized on all, and the
+opposition that was made only served to increase the audacity and
+cruelty of the enemy. They talked of taking London, conquering
+England—calling to mind the long detail of injuries which had for many
+years been forgotten. Such vaunts displayed their weakness, rather than
+their strength—yet still they might do extreme mischief, which, ending
+in their destruction, would render them at last objects of compassion
+and remorse.
+
+We were now taught how, in the beginning of the world, mankind clothed
+their enemies in impossible attributes—and how details proceeding from
+mouth to mouth, might, like Virgil’s ever-growing Rumour, reach the
+heavens with her brow, and clasp Hesperus and Lucifer with her
+outstretched hands. Gorgon and Centaur, dragon and iron-hoofed lion,
+vast sea-monster and gigantic hydra, were but types of the strange and
+appalling accounts brought to London concerning our invaders. Their
+landing was long unknown, but having now advanced within an hundred
+miles of London, the country people flying before them arrived in
+successive troops, each exaggerating the numbers, fury, and cruelty of
+the assailants. Tumult filled the before quiet streets—women and
+children deserted their homes, escaping they knew not whither—fathers,
+husbands, and sons, stood trembling, not for themselves, but for their
+loved and defenceless relations. As the country people poured into
+London, the citizens fled southwards—they climbed the higher edifices
+of the town, fancying that they could discern the smoke and flames the
+enemy spread around them. As Windsor lay, to a great degree, in the
+line of march from the west, I removed my family to London, assigning
+the Tower for their sojourn, and joining Adrian, acted as his
+Lieutenant in the coming struggle.
+
+We employed only two days in our preparations, and made good use of
+them. Artillery and arms were collected; the remnants of such
+regiments, as could be brought through many losses into any show of
+muster, were put under arms, with that appearance of military
+discipline which might encourage our own party, and seem most
+formidable to the disorganized multitude of our enemies. Even music was
+not wanting: banners floated in the air, and the shrill fife and loud
+trumpet breathed forth sounds of encouragement and victory. A practised
+ear might trace an undue faltering in the step of the soldiers; but
+this was not occasioned so much by fear of the adversary, as by
+disease, by sorrow, and by fatal prognostications, which often weighed
+most potently on the brave, and quelled the manly heart to abject
+subjection.
+
+Adrian led the troops. He was full of care. It was small relief to him
+that our discipline should gain us success in such a conflict; while
+plague still hovered to equalize the conqueror and the conquered, it
+was not victory that he desired, but bloodless peace. As we advanced,
+we were met by bands of peasantry, whose almost naked condition, whose
+despair and horror, told at once the fierce nature of the coming enemy.
+The senseless spirit of conquest and thirst of spoil blinded them,
+while with insane fury they deluged the country in ruin. The sight of
+the military restored hope to those who fled, and revenge took place of
+fear. They inspired the soldiers with the same sentiment. Languor was
+changed to ardour, the slow step converted to a speedy pace, while the
+hollow murmur of the multitude, inspired by one feeling, and that
+deadly, filled the air, drowning the clang of arms and sound of music.
+Adrian perceived the change, and feared that it would be difficult to
+prevent them from wreaking their utmost fury on the Irish. He rode
+through the lines, charging the officers to restrain the troops,
+exhorting the soldiers, restoring order, and quieting in some degree
+the violent agitation that swelled every bosom.
+
+We first came upon a few stragglers of the Irish at St. Albans. They
+retreated, and, joining others of their companions, still fell back,
+till they reached the main body. Tidings of an armed and regular
+opposition recalled them to a sort of order. They made Buckingham their
+head-quarters, and scouts were sent out to ascertain our situation. We
+remained for the night at Luton. In the morning a simultaneous movement
+caused us each to advance. It was early dawn, and the air, impregnated
+with freshest odour, seemed in idle mockery to play with our banners,
+and bore onwards towards the enemy the music of the bands, the
+neighings of the horses, and regular step of the infantry. The first
+sound of martial instruments that came upon our undisciplined foe,
+inspired surprise, not unmingled with dread. It spoke of other days, of
+days of concord and order; it was associated with times when plague was
+not, and man lived beyond the shadow of imminent fate. The pause was
+momentary. Soon we heard their disorderly clamour, the barbarian
+shouts, the untimed step of thousands coming on in disarray. Their
+troops now came pouring on us from the open country or narrow lanes; a
+large extent of unenclosed fields lay between us; we advanced to the
+middle of this, and then made a halt: being somewhat on superior
+ground, we could discern the space they covered. When their leaders
+perceived us drawn out in opposition, they also gave the word to halt,
+and endeavoured to form their men into some imitation of military
+discipline. The first ranks had muskets; some were mounted, but their
+arms were such as they had seized during their advance, their horses
+those they had taken from the peasantry; there was no uniformity, and
+little obedience, but their shouts and wild gestures showed the untamed
+spirit that inspired them. Our soldiers received the word, and advanced
+to quickest time, but in perfect order: their uniform dresses, the
+gleam of their polished arms, their silence, and looks of sullen hate,
+were more appalling than the savage clamour of our innumerous foe. Thus
+coming nearer and nearer each other, the howls and shouts of the Irish
+increased; the English proceeded in obedience to their officers, until
+they came near enough to distinguish the faces of their enemies; the
+sight inspired them with fury: with one cry, that rent heaven and was
+re-echoed by the furthest lines, they rushed on; they disdained the use
+of the bullet, but with fixed bayonet dashed among the opposing foe,
+while the ranks opening at intervals, the matchmen lighted the cannon,
+whose deafening roar and blinding smoke filled up the horror of the
+scene. I was beside Adrian; a moment before he had again given the word
+to halt, and had remained a few yards distant from us in deep
+meditation: he was forming swiftly his plan of action, to prevent the
+effusion of blood; the noise of cannon, the sudden rush of the troops,
+and yell of the foe, startled him: with flashing eyes he exclaimed,
+“Not one of these must perish!” and plunging the rowels into his
+horse’s sides, he dashed between the conflicting bands. We, his staff,
+followed him to surround and protect him; obeying his signal, however,
+we fell back somewhat. The soldiery perceiving him, paused in their
+onset; he did not swerve from the bullets that passed near him, but
+rode immediately between the opposing lines. Silence succeeded to
+clamour; about fifty men lay on the ground dying or dead. Adrian raised
+his sword in act to speak: “By whose command,” he cried, addressing his
+own troops, “do you advance? Who ordered your attack? Fall back; these
+misguided men shall not be slaughtered, while I am your general. Sheath
+your weapons; these are your brothers, commit not fratricide; soon the
+plague will not leave one for you to glut your revenge upon: will you
+be more pitiless than pestilence? As you honour me—as you worship God,
+in whose image those also are created—as your children and friends are
+dear to you,—shed not a drop of precious human blood.”
+
+He spoke with outstretched hand and winning voice, and then turning to
+our invaders, with a severe brow, he commanded them to lay down their
+arms: “Do you think,” he said, “that because we are wasted by plague,
+you can overcome us; the plague is also among you, and when ye are
+vanquished by famine and disease, the ghosts of those you have murdered
+will arise to bid you not hope in death. Lay down your arms, barbarous
+and cruel men—men whose hands are stained with the blood of the
+innocent, whose souls are weighed down by the orphan’s cry! We shall
+conquer, for the right is on our side; already your cheeks are pale—the
+weapons fall from your nerveless grasp. Lay down your arms, fellow men!
+brethren! Pardon, succour, and brotherly love await your repentance.
+You are dear to us, because you wear the frail shape of humanity; each
+one among you will find a friend and host among these forces. Shall man
+be the enemy of man, while plague, the foe to all, even now is above
+us, triumphing in our butchery, more cruel than her own?”
+
+Each army paused. On our side the soldiers grasped their arms firmly,
+and looked with stern glances on the foe. These had not thrown down
+their weapons, more from fear than the spirit of contest; they looked
+at each other, each wishing to follow some example given him,—but they
+had no leader. Adrian threw himself from his horse, and approaching one
+of those just slain: “He was a man,” he cried, “and he is dead. O
+quickly bind up the wounds of the fallen—let not one die; let not one
+more soul escape through your merciless gashes, to relate before the
+throne of God the tale of fratricide; bind up their wounds—restore them
+to their friends. Cast away the hearts of tigers that burn in your
+breasts; throw down those tools of cruelty and hate; in this pause of
+exterminating destiny, let each man be brother, guardian, and stay to
+the other. Away with those blood-stained arms, and hasten some of you
+to bind up these wounds.”
+
+As he spoke, he knelt on the ground, and raised in his arms a man from
+whose side the warm tide of life gushed—the poor wretch gasped—so still
+had either host become, that his moans were distinctly heard, and every
+heart, late fiercely bent on universal massacre, now beat anxiously in
+hope and fear for the fate of this one man. Adrian tore off his
+military scarf and bound it round the sufferer—it was too late—the man
+heaved a deep sigh, his head fell back, his limbs lost their sustaining
+power.— “He is dead!” said Adrian, as the corpse fell from his arms on
+the ground, and he bowed his head in sorrow and awe. The fate of the
+world seemed bound up in the death of this single man. On either side
+the bands threw down their arms, even the veterans wept, and our party
+held out their hands to their foes, while a gush of love and deepest
+amity filled every heart. The two forces mingling, unarmed and hand in
+hand, talking only how each might assist the other, the adversaries
+conjoined; each repenting, the one side their former cruelties, the
+other their late violence, they obeyed the orders of the General to
+proceed towards London.
+
+Adrian was obliged to exert his utmost prudence, first to allay the
+discord, and then to provide for the multitude of the invaders. They
+were marched to various parts of the southern counties, quartered in
+deserted villages,—a part were sent back to their own island, while the
+season of winter so far revived our energy, that the passes of the
+country were defended, and any increase of numbers prohibited.
+
+On this occasion Adrian and Idris met after a separation of nearly a
+year. Adrian had been occupied in fulfilling a laborious and painful
+task. He had been familiar with every species of human misery, and had
+for ever found his powers inadequate, his aid of small avail. Yet the
+purpose of his soul, his energy and ardent resolution, prevented any
+re-action of sorrow. He seemed born anew, and virtue, more potent than
+Medean alchemy, endued him with health and strength. Idris hardly
+recognized the fragile being, whose form had seemed to bend even to the
+summer breeze, in the energetic man, whose very excess of sensibility
+rendered him more capable of fulfilling his station of pilot in
+storm-tossed England.
+
+It was not thus with Idris. She was uncomplaining; but the very soul of
+fear had taken its seat in her heart. She had grown thin and pale, her
+eyes filled with involuntary tears, her voice was broken and low. She
+tried to throw a veil over the change which she knew her brother must
+observe in her, but the effort was ineffectual; and when alone with
+him, with a burst of irrepressible grief she gave vent to her
+apprehensions and sorrow. She described in vivid terms the ceaseless
+care that with still renewing hunger ate into her soul; she compared
+this gnawing of sleepless expectation of evil, to the vulture that fed
+on the heart of Prometheus; under the influence of this eternal
+excitement, and of the interminable struggles she endured to combat and
+conceal it, she felt, she said, as if all the wheels and springs of the
+animal machine worked at double rate, and were fast consuming
+themselves. Sleep was not sleep, for her waking thoughts, bridled by
+some remains of reason, and by the sight of her children happy and in
+health, were then transformed to wild dreams, all her terrors were
+realized, all her fears received their dread fulfilment. To this state
+there was no hope, no alleviation, unless the grave should quickly
+receive its destined prey, and she be permitted to die, before she
+experienced a thousand living deaths in the loss of those she loved.
+Fearing to give me pain, she hid as best she could the excess of her
+wretchedness, but meeting thus her brother after a long absence, she
+could not restrain the expression of her woe, but with all the
+vividness of imagination with which misery is always replete, she
+poured out the emotions of her heart to her beloved and sympathizing
+Adrian.
+
+Her present visit to London tended to augment her state of inquietude,
+by shewing in its utmost extent the ravages occasioned by pestilence.
+It hardly preserved the appearance of an inhabited city; grass sprung
+up thick in the streets; the squares were weed-grown, the houses were
+shut up, while silence and loneliness characterized the busiest parts
+of the town. Yet in the midst of desolation Adrian had preserved order;
+and each one continued to live according to law and custom—human
+institutions thus surviving as it were divine ones, and while the
+decree of population was abrogated, property continued sacred. It was a
+melancholy reflection; and in spite of the diminution of evil produced,
+it struck on the heart as a wretched mockery. All idea of resort for
+pleasure, of theatres and festivals had passed away. “Next summer,”
+said Adrian as we parted on our return to Windsor, “will decide the
+fate of the human race. I shall not pause in my exertions until that
+time; but, if plague revives with the coming year, all contest with her
+must cease, and our only occupation be the choice of a grave.”
+
+I must not forget one incident that occurred during this visit to
+London. The visits of Merrival to Windsor, before frequent, had
+suddenly ceased. At this time where but a hair’s line separated the
+living from the dead, I feared that our friend had become a victim to
+the all-embracing evil. On this occasion I went, dreading the worst, to
+his dwelling, to see if I could be of any service to those of his
+family who might have survived. The house was deserted, and had been
+one of those assigned to the invading strangers quartered in London. I
+saw his astronomical instruments put to strange uses, his globes
+defaced, his papers covered with abstruse calculations destroyed. The
+neighbours could tell me little, till I lighted on a poor woman who
+acted as nurse in these perilous times. She told me that all the family
+were dead, except Merrival himself, who had gone mad— mad, she called
+it, yet on questioning her further, it appeared that he was possessed
+only by the delirium of excessive grief. This old man, tottering on the
+edge of the grave, and prolonging his prospect through millions of
+calculated years,—this visionary who had not seen starvation in the
+wasted forms of his wife and children, or plague in the horrible sights
+and sounds that surrounded him—this astronomer, apparently dead on
+earth, and living only in the motion of the spheres—loved his family
+with unapparent but intense affection. Through long habit they had
+become a part of himself; his want of worldly knowledge, his absence of
+mind and infant guilelessness, made him utterly dependent on them. It
+was not till one of them died that he perceived their danger; one by
+one they were carried off by pestilence; and his wife, his helpmate and
+supporter, more necessary to him than his own limbs and frame, which
+had hardly been taught the lesson of self-preservation, the kind
+companion whose voice always spoke peace to him, closed her eyes in
+death. The old man felt the system of universal nature which he had so
+long studied and adored, slide from under him, and he stood among the
+dead, and lifted his voice in curses.—No wonder that the attendant
+should interpret as phrensy the harrowing maledictions of the
+grief-struck old man.
+
+I had commenced my search late in the day, a November day, that closed
+in early with pattering rain and melancholy wind. As I turned from the
+door, I saw Merrival, or rather the shadow of Merrival, attenuated and
+wild, pass me, and sit on the steps of his home. The breeze scattered
+the grey locks on his temples, the rain drenched his uncovered head, he
+sat hiding his face in his withered hands. I pressed his shoulder to
+awaken his attention, but he did not alter his position. “Merrival,” I
+said, “it is long since we have seen you—you must return to Windsor
+with me—Lady Idris desires to see you, you will not refuse her
+request—come home with me.”
+
+He replied in a hollow voice, “Why deceive a helpless old man, why talk
+hypocritically to one half crazed? Windsor is not my home; my true home
+I have found; the home that the Creator has prepared for me.”
+
+His accent of bitter scorn thrilled me—“Do not tempt me to speak,” he
+continued, “my words would scare you—in an universe of cowards I dare
+think—among the church-yard tombs—among the victims of His merciless
+tyranny I dare reproach the Supreme Evil. How can he punish me? Let him
+bare his arm and transfix me with lightning—this is also one of his
+attributes”—and the old man laughed.
+
+He rose, and I followed him through the rain to a neighbouring
+church-yard —he threw himself on the wet earth. “Here they are,” he
+cried, “beautiful creatures—breathing, speaking, loving creatures. She
+who by day and night cherished the age-worn lover of her youth—they,
+parts of my flesh, my children—here they are: call them, scream their
+names through the night; they will not answer!” He clung to the little
+heaps that marked the graves. “I ask but one thing; I do not fear His
+hell, for I have it here; I do not desire His heaven, let me but die
+and be laid beside them; let me but, when I lie dead, feel my flesh as
+it moulders, mingle with theirs. Promise,” and he raised himself
+painfully, and seized my arm, “promise to bury me with them.”
+
+“So God help me and mine as I promise,” I replied, “on one condition:
+return with me to Windsor.”
+
+“To Windsor!” he cried with a shriek, “Never!—from this place I never
+go —my bones, my flesh, I myself, are already buried here, and what you
+see of me is corrupted clay like them. I will lie here, and cling here,
+till rain, and hail, and lightning and storm, ruining on me, make me
+one in substance with them below.”
+
+In a few words I must conclude this tragedy. I was obliged to leave
+London, and Adrian undertook to watch over him; the task was soon
+fulfilled; age, grief, and inclement weather, all united to hush his
+sorrows, and bring repose to his heart, whose beats were agony. He died
+embracing the sod, which was piled above his breast, when he was placed
+beside the beings whom he regretted with such wild despair.
+
+I returned to Windsor at the wish of Idris, who seemed to think that
+there was greater safety for her children at that spot; and because,
+once having taken on me the guardianship of the district, I would not
+desert it while an inhabitant survived. I went also to act in
+conformity with Adrian’s plans, which was to congregate in masses what
+remained of the population; for he possessed the conviction that it was
+only through the benevolent and social virtues that any safety was to
+be hoped for the remnant of mankind.
+
+It was a melancholy thing to return to this spot so dear to us, as the
+scene of a happiness rarely before enjoyed, here to mark the extinction
+of our species, and trace the deep uneraseable footsteps of disease
+over the fertile and cherished soil. The aspect of the country had so
+far changed, that it had been impossible to enter on the task of sowing
+seed, and other autumnal labours. That season was now gone; and winter
+had set in with sudden and unusual severity. Alternate frosts and thaws
+succeeding to floods, rendered the country impassable. Heavy falls of
+snow gave an arctic appearance to the scenery; the roofs of the houses
+peeped from the white mass; the lowly cot and stately mansion, alike
+deserted, were blocked up, their thresholds uncleared; the windows were
+broken by the hail, while the prevalence of a north-east wind rendered
+out-door exertions extremely painful. The altered state of society made
+these accidents of nature, sources of real misery. The luxury of
+command and the attentions of servitude were lost. It is true that the
+necessaries of life were assembled in such quantities, as to supply to
+superfluity the wants of the diminished population; but still much
+labour was required to arrange these, as it were, raw materials; and
+depressed by sickness, and fearful of the future, we had not energy to
+enter boldly and decidedly on any system.
+
+I can speak for myself—want of energy was not my failing. The intense
+life that quickened my pulses, and animated my frame, had the effect,
+not of drawing me into the mazes of active life, but of exalting my
+lowliness, and of bestowing majestic proportions on insignificant
+objects—I could have lived the life of a peasant in the same way—my
+trifling occupations were swelled into important pursuits; my
+affections were impetuous and engrossing passions, and nature with all
+her changes was invested in divine attributes. The very spirit of the
+Greek mythology inhabited my heart; I deified the uplands, glades, and
+streams, I
+
+Had sight of Proteus coming from the sea;
+And heard old Triton blow his wreathed horn.[16]
+
+
+Strange, that while the earth preserved her monotonous course, I dwelt
+with ever-renewing wonder on her antique laws, and now that with
+excentric wheel she rushed into an untried path, I should feel this
+spirit fade; I struggled with despondency and weariness, but like a
+fog, they choked me. Perhaps, after the labours and stupendous
+excitement of the past summer, the calm of winter and the almost menial
+toils it brought with it, were by natural re-action doubly irksome. It
+was not the grasping passion of the preceding year, which gave life and
+individuality to each moment—it was not the aching pangs induced by the
+distresses of the times. The utter inutility that had attended all my
+exertions took from them their usual effects of exhilaration, and
+despair rendered abortive the balm of self applause—I longed to return
+to my old occupations, but of what use were they? To read were
+futile—to write, vanity indeed. The earth, late wide circus for the
+display of dignified exploits, vast theatre for a magnificent drama,
+now presented a vacant space, an empty stage—for actor or spectator
+there was no longer aught to say or hear.
+
+Our little town of Windsor, in which the survivors from the
+neighbouring counties were chiefly assembled, wore a melancholy aspect.
+Its streets were blocked up with snow—the few passengers seemed
+palsied, and frozen by the ungenial visitation of winter. To escape
+these evils was the aim and scope of all our exertions. Families late
+devoted to exalting and refined pursuits, rich, blooming, and young,
+with diminished numbers and care-fraught hearts, huddled over a fire,
+grown selfish and grovelling through suffering. Without the aid of
+servants, it was necessary to discharge all household duties; hands
+unused to such labour must knead the bread, or in the absence of flour,
+the statesmen or perfumed courtier must undertake the butcher’s office.
+Poor and rich were now equal, or rather the poor were the superior,
+since they entered on such tasks with alacrity and experience; while
+ignorance, inaptitude, and habits of repose, rendered them fatiguing to
+the luxurious, galling to the proud, disgustful to all whose minds,
+bent on intellectual improvement, held it their dearest privilege to be
+exempt from attending to mere animal wants.
+
+But in every change goodness and affection can find field for exertion
+and display. Among some these changes produced a devotion and sacrifice
+of self at once graceful and heroic. It was a sight for the lovers of
+the human race to enjoy; to behold, as in ancient times, the
+patriarchal modes in which the variety of kindred and friendship
+fulfilled their duteous and kindly offices. Youths, nobles of the land,
+performed for the sake of mother or sister, the services of menials
+with amiable cheerfulness. They went to the river to break the ice, and
+draw water: they assembled on foraging expeditions, or axe in hand
+felled the trees for fuel. The females received them on their return
+with the simple and affectionate welcome known before only to the lowly
+cottage—a clean hearth and bright fire; the supper ready cooked by
+beloved hands; gratitude for the provision for to-morrow’s meal:
+strange enjoyments for the high-born English, yet they were now their
+sole, hard earned, and dearly prized luxuries.
+
+None was more conspicuous for this graceful submission to
+circumstances, noble humility, and ingenious fancy to adorn such acts
+with romantic colouring, than our own Clara. She saw my despondency,
+and the aching cares of Idris. Her perpetual study was to relieve us
+from labour and to spread ease and even elegance over our altered mode
+of life. We still had some attendants spared by disease, and warmly
+attached to us. But Clara was jealous of their services; she would be
+sole handmaid of Idris, sole minister to the wants of her little
+cousins; nothing gave her so much pleasure as our employing her in this
+way; she went beyond our desires, earnest, diligent, and unwearied,—
+
+Abra was ready ere we called her name,
+And though we called another, Abra came.[17]
+
+
+It was my task each day to visit the various families assembled in our
+town, and when the weather permitted, I was glad to prolong my ride,
+and to muse in solitude over every changeful appearance of our destiny,
+endeavouring to gather lessons for the future from the experience of
+the past. The impatience with which, while in society, the ills that
+afflicted my species inspired me, were softened by loneliness, when
+individual suffering was merged in the general calamity, strange to
+say, less afflicting to contemplate. Thus often, pushing my way with
+difficulty through the narrow snow-blocked town, I crossed the bridge
+and passed through Eton. No youthful congregation of gallant-hearted
+boys thronged the portal of the college; sad silence pervaded the busy
+school-room and noisy playground. I extended my ride towards Salt Hill,
+on every side impeded by the snow. Were those the fertile fields I
+loved—was that the interchange of gentle upland and cultivated dale,
+once covered with waving corn, diversified by stately trees, watered by
+the meandering Thames? One sheet of white covered it, while bitter
+recollection told me that cold as the winter-clothed earth, were the
+hearts of the inhabitants. I met troops of horses, herds of cattle,
+flocks of sheep, wandering at will; here throwing down a hay-rick, and
+nestling from cold in its heart, which afforded them shelter and
+food—there having taken possession of a vacant cottage. Once on a
+frosty day, pushed on by restless unsatisfying reflections, I sought a
+favourite haunt, a little wood not far distant from Salt Hill. A
+bubbling spring prattles over stones on one side, and a plantation of a
+few elms and beeches, hardly deserve, and yet continue the name of
+wood. This spot had for me peculiar charms. It had been a favourite
+resort of Adrian; it was secluded; and he often said that in boyhood,
+his happiest hours were spent here; having escaped the stately bondage
+of his mother, he sat on the rough hewn steps that led to the spring,
+now reading a favourite book, now musing, with speculation beyond his
+years, on the still unravelled skein of morals or metaphysics. A
+melancholy foreboding assured me that I should never see this place
+more; so with careful thought, I noted each tree, every winding of the
+streamlet and irregularity of the soil, that I might better call up its
+idea in absence. A robin red-breast dropt from the frosty branches of
+the trees, upon the congealed rivulet; its panting breast and
+half-closed eyes shewed that it was dying: a hawk appeared in the air;
+sudden fear seized the little creature; it exerted its last strength,
+throwing itself on its back, raising its talons in impotent defence
+against its powerful enemy. I took it up and placed it in my breast. I
+fed it with a few crumbs from a biscuit; by degrees it revived; its
+warm fluttering heart beat against me; I cannot tell why I detail this
+trifling incident—but the scene is still before me; the snow-clad
+fields seen through the silvered trunks of the beeches,—the brook, in
+days of happiness alive with sparkling waters, now choked by ice—the
+leafless trees fantastically dressed in hoar frost—the shapes of summer
+leaves imaged by winter’s frozen hand on the hard ground—the dusky sky,
+drear cold, and unbroken silence—while close in my bosom, my feathered
+nursling lay warm, and safe, speaking its content with a light chirp—
+painful reflections thronged, stirring my brain with wild
+commotion—cold and death-like as the snowy fields was all
+earth—misery-stricken the life-tide of the inhabitants—why should I
+oppose the cataract of destruction that swept us away?—why string my
+nerves and renew my wearied efforts—ah, why? But that my firm courage
+and cheerful exertions might shelter the dear mate, whom I chose in the
+spring of my life; though the throbbings of my heart be replete with
+pain, though my hopes for the future are chill, still while your dear
+head, my gentlest love, can repose in peace on that heart, and while
+you derive from its fostering care, comfort, and hope, my struggles
+shall not cease,—I will not call myself altogether vanquished.
+
+One fine February day, when the sun had reassumed some of its genial
+power, I walked in the forest with my family. It was one of those
+lovely winter-days which assert the capacity of nature to bestow beauty
+on barrenness. The leafless trees spread their fibrous branches against
+the pure sky; their intricate and pervious tracery resembled delicate
+sea-weed; the deer were turning up the snow in search of the hidden
+grass; the white was made intensely dazzling by the sun, and trunks of
+the trees, rendered more conspicuous by the loss of preponderating
+foliage, gathered around like the labyrinthine columns of a vast
+temple; it was impossible not to receive pleasure from the sight of
+these things. Our children, freed from the bondage of winter, bounded
+before us; pursuing the deer, or rousing the pheasants and partridges
+from their coverts. Idris leant on my arm; her sadness yielded to the
+present sense of pleasure. We met other families on the Long Walk,
+enjoying like ourselves the return of the genial season. At once, I
+seemed to awake; I cast off the clinging sloth of the past months;
+earth assumed a new appearance, and my view of the future was suddenly
+made clear. I exclaimed, “I have now found out the secret!”
+
+“What secret?”
+
+In answer to this question, I described our gloomy winter-life, our
+sordid cares, our menial labours:—“This northern country,” I said, “is
+no place for our diminished race. When mankind were few, it was not
+here that they battled with the powerful agents of nature, and were
+enabled to cover the globe with offspring. We must seek some natural
+Paradise, some garden of the earth, where our simple wants may be
+easily supplied, and the enjoyment of a delicious climate compensate
+for the social pleasures we have lost. If we survive this coming
+summer, I will not spend the ensuing winter in England; neither I nor
+any of us.”
+
+I spoke without much heed, and the very conclusion of what I said
+brought with it other thoughts. Should we, any of us, survive the
+coming summer? I saw the brow of Idris clouded; I again felt, that we
+were enchained to the car of fate, over whose coursers we had no
+control. We could no longer say, This we will do, and this we will
+leave undone. A mightier power than the human was at hand to destroy
+our plans or to achieve the work we avoided. It were madness to
+calculate upon another winter. This was our last. The coming summer was
+the extreme end of our vista; and, when we arrived there, instead of a
+continuation of the long road, a gulph yawned, into which we must of
+force be precipitated. The last blessing of humanity was wrested from
+us; we might no longer hope. Can the madman, as he clanks his chains,
+hope? Can the wretch, led to the scaffold, who when he lays his head on
+the block, marks the double shadow of himself and the executioner,
+whose uplifted arm bears the axe, hope? Can the ship-wrecked mariner,
+who spent with swimming, hears close behind the splashing waters
+divided by a shark which pursues him through the Atlantic, hope? Such
+hope as theirs, we also may entertain!
+
+Old fable tells us, that this gentle spirit sprung from the box of
+Pandora, else crammed with evils; but these were unseen and null, while
+all admired the inspiriting loveliness of young Hope; each man’s heart
+became her home; she was enthroned sovereign of our lives, here and
+here-after; she was deified and worshipped, declared incorruptible and
+everlasting. But like all other gifts of the Creator to Man, she is
+mortal; her life has attained its last hour. We have watched over her;
+nursed her flickering existence; now she has fallen at once from youth
+to decrepitude, from health to immedicinable disease; even as we spend
+ourselves in struggles for her recovery, she dies; to all nations the
+voice goes forth, Hope is dead! We are but mourners in the funeral
+train, and what immortal essence or perishable creation will refuse to
+make one in the sad procession that attends to its grave the dead
+comforter of humanity?
+
+Does not the sun call in his light? and day
+Like a thin exhalation melt away—
+Both wrapping up their beams in clouds to be
+Themselves close mourners at this obsequie.[18]
+
+
+ [16] Wordsworth.
+
+
+ [17] Prior’s “Solomon.”
+
+
+ [18] Cleveland’s Poems.
+
+
+
+
+VOL. III.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Hear you not the rushing sound of the coming tempest? Do you not behold
+the clouds open, and destruction lurid and dire pour down on the
+blasted earth? See you not the thunderbolt fall, and are deafened by
+the shout of heaven that follows its descent? Feel you not the earth
+quake and open with agonizing groans, while the air is pregnant with
+shrieks and wailings,— all announcing the last days of man? No! none of
+these things accompanied our fall! The balmy air of spring, breathed
+from nature’s ambrosial home, invested the lovely earth, which wakened
+as a young mother about to lead forth in pride her beauteous offspring
+to meet their sire who had been long absent. The buds decked the trees,
+the flowers adorned the land: the dark branches, swollen with
+seasonable juices, expanded into leaves, and the variegated foliage of
+spring, bending and singing in the breeze, rejoiced in the genial
+warmth of the unclouded empyrean: the brooks flowed murmuring, the sea
+was waveless, and the promontories that over-hung it were reflected in
+the placid waters; birds awoke in the woods, while abundant food for
+man and beast sprung up from the dark ground. Where was pain and evil?
+Not in the calm air or weltering ocean; not in the woods or fertile
+fields, nor among the birds that made the woods resonant with song, nor
+the animals that in the midst of plenty basked in the sunshine. Our
+enemy, like the Calamity of Homer, trod our hearts, and no sound was
+echoed from her steps—
+
+With ills the land is rife, with ills the sea,
+Diseases haunt our frail humanity,
+Through noon, through night, on casual wing they glide,
+Silent,—a voice the power all-wise denied.[19]
+
+
+Once man was a favourite of the Creator, as the royal psalmist sang,
+“God had made him a little lower than the angels, and had crowned him
+with glory and honour. God made him to have dominion over the works of
+his hands, and put all things under his feet.” Once it was so; now is
+man lord of the creation? Look at him—ha! I see plague! She has
+invested his form, is incarnate in his flesh, has entwined herself with
+his being, and blinds his heaven-seeking eyes. Lie down, O man, on the
+flower-strown earth; give up all claim to your inheritance, all you can
+ever possess of it is the small cell which the dead require. Plague is
+the companion of spring, of sunshine, and plenty. We no longer struggle
+with her. We have forgotten what we did when she was not. Of old navies
+used to stem the giant ocean-waves betwixt Indus and the Pole for
+slight articles of luxury. Men made perilous journies to possess
+themselves of earth’s splendid trifles, gems and gold. Human labour was
+wasted—human life set at nought. Now life is all that we covet; that
+this automaton of flesh should, with joints and springs in order,
+perform its functions, that this dwelling of the soul should be capable
+of containing its dweller. Our minds, late spread abroad through
+countless spheres and endless combinations of thought, now retrenched
+themselves behind this wall of flesh, eager to preserve its well-being
+only. We were surely sufficiently degraded.
+
+At first the increase of sickness in spring brought increase of toil to
+such of us, who, as yet spared to life, bestowed our time and thoughts
+on our fellow creatures. We nerved ourselves to the task: “in the midst
+of despair we performed the tasks of hope.” We went out with the
+resolution of disputing with our foe. We aided the sick, and comforted
+the sorrowing; turning from the multitudinous dead to the rare
+survivors, with an energy of desire that bore the resemblance of power,
+we bade them—live. Plague sat paramount the while, and laughed us to
+scorn.
+
+Have any of you, my readers, observed the ruins of an anthill
+immediately after its destruction? At first it appears entirely
+deserted of its former inhabitants; in a little time you see an ant
+struggling through the upturned mould; they reappear by twos and
+threes, running hither and thither in search of their lost companions.
+Such were we upon earth, wondering aghast at the effects of pestilence.
+Our empty habitations remained, but the dwellers were gathered to the
+shades of the tomb.
+
+As the rules of order and pressure of laws were lost, some began with
+hesitation and wonder to transgress the accustomed uses of society.
+Palaces were deserted, and the poor man dared at length, unreproved,
+intrude into the splendid apartments, whose very furniture and
+decorations were an unknown world to him. It was found, that, though at
+first the stop put to all circulation of property, had reduced those
+before supported by the factitious wants of society to sudden and
+hideous poverty, yet when the boundaries of private possession were
+thrown down, the products of human labour at present existing were
+more, far more, than the thinned generation could possibly consume. To
+some among the poor this was matter of exultation. We were all equal
+now; magnificent dwellings, luxurious carpets, and beds of down, were
+afforded to all. Carriages and horses, gardens, pictures, statues, and
+princely libraries, there were enough of these even to superfluity; and
+there was nothing to prevent each from assuming possession of his
+share. We were all equal now; but near at hand was an equality still
+more levelling, a state where beauty and strength, and wisdom, would be
+as vain as riches and birth. The grave yawned beneath us all, and its
+prospect prevented any of us from enjoying the ease and plenty which in
+so awful a manner was presented to us.
+
+Still the bloom did not fade on the cheeks of my babes; and Clara
+sprung up in years and growth, unsullied by disease. We had no reason
+to think the site of Windsor Castle peculiarly healthy, for many other
+families had expired beneath its roof; we lived therefore without any
+particular precaution; but we lived, it seemed, in safety. If Idris
+became thin and pale, it was anxiety that occasioned the change; an
+anxiety I could in no way alleviate. She never complained, but sleep
+and appetite fled from her, a slow fever preyed on her veins, her
+colour was hectic, and she often wept in secret; gloomy
+prognostications, care, and agonizing dread, ate up the principle of
+life within her. I could not fail to perceive this change. I often
+wished that I had permitted her to take her own course, and engage
+herself in such labours for the welfare of others as might have
+distracted her thoughts. But it was too late now. Besides that, with
+the nearly extinct race of man, all our toils grew near a conclusion,
+she was too weak; consumption, if so it might be called, or rather the
+over active life within her, which, as with Adrian, spent the vital oil
+in the early morning hours, deprived her limbs of strength. At night,
+when she could leave me unperceived, she wandered through the house, or
+hung over the couches of her children; and in the day time would sink
+into a perturbed sleep, while her murmurs and starts betrayed the
+unquiet dreams that vexed her. As this state of wretchedness became
+more confirmed, and, in spite of her endeavours at concealment more
+apparent, I strove, though vainly, to awaken in her courage and hope. I
+could not wonder at the vehemence of her care; her very soul was
+tenderness; she trusted indeed that she should not outlive me if I
+became the prey of the vast calamity, and this thought sometimes
+relieved her. We had for many years trod the highway of life hand in
+hand, and still thus linked, we might step within the shades of death;
+but her children, her lovely, playful, animated children—beings sprung
+from her own dear side—portions of her own being—depositories of our
+loves—even if we died, it would be comfort to know that they ran man’s
+accustomed course. But it would not be so; young and blooming as they
+were, they would die, and from the hopes of maturity, from the proud
+name of attained manhood, they were cut off for ever. Often with
+maternal affection she had figured their merits and talents exerted on
+life’s wide stage. Alas for these latter days! The world had grown old,
+and all its inmates partook of the decrepitude. Why talk of infancy,
+manhood, and old age? We all stood equal sharers of the last throes of
+time-worn nature. Arrived at the same point of the world’s age—there
+was no difference in us; the name of parent and child had lost their
+meaning; young boys and girls were level now with men. This was all
+true; but it was not less agonizing to take the admonition home.
+
+Where could we turn, and not find a desolation pregnant with the dire
+lesson of example? The fields had been left uncultivated, weeds and
+gaudy flowers sprung up,—or where a few wheat-fields shewed signs of
+the living hopes of the husbandman, the work had been left halfway, the
+ploughman had died beside the plough; the horses had deserted the
+furrow, and no seedsman had approached the dead; the cattle unattended
+wandered over the fields and through the lanes; the tame inhabitants of
+the poultry yard, baulked of their daily food, had become wild—young
+lambs were dropt in flower-gardens, and the cow stalled in the hall of
+pleasure. Sickly and few, the country people neither went out to sow
+nor reap; but sauntered about the meadows, or lay under the hedges,
+when the inclement sky did not drive them to take shelter under the
+nearest roof. Many of those who remained, secluded themselves; some had
+laid up stores which should prevent the necessity of leaving their
+homes;—some deserted wife and child, and imagined that they secured
+their safety in utter solitude. Such had been Ryland’s plan, and he was
+discovered dead and half-devoured by insects, in a house many miles
+from any other, with piles of food laid up in useless superfluity.
+Others made long journies to unite themselves to those they loved, and
+arrived to find them dead.
+
+London did not contain above a thousand inhabitants; and this number
+was continually diminishing. Most of them were country people, come up
+for the sake of change; the Londoners had sought the country. The busy
+eastern part of the town was silent, or at most you saw only where,
+half from cupidity, half from curiosity, the warehouses had been more
+ransacked than pillaged: bales of rich India goods, shawls of price,
+jewels, and spices, unpacked, strewed the floors. In some places the
+possessor had to the last kept watch on his store, and died before the
+barred gates. The massy portals of the churches swung creaking on their
+hinges; and some few lay dead on the pavement. The wretched female,
+loveless victim of vulgar brutality, had wandered to the toilet of
+high-born beauty, and, arraying herself in the garb of splendour, had
+died before the mirror which reflected to herself alone her altered
+appearance. Women whose delicate feet had seldom touched the earth in
+their luxury, had fled in fright and horror from their homes, till,
+losing themselves in the squalid streets of the metropolis, they had
+died on the threshold of poverty. The heart sickened at the variety of
+misery presented; and, when I saw a specimen of this gloomy change, my
+soul ached with the fear of what might befall my beloved Idris and my
+babes. Were they, surviving Adrian and myself, to find themselves
+protectorless in the world? As yet the mind alone had suffered—could I
+for ever put off the time, when the delicate frame and shrinking nerves
+of my child of prosperity, the nursling of rank and wealth, who was my
+companion, should be invaded by famine, hardship, and disease? Better
+die at once—better plunge a poinard in her bosom, still untouched by
+drear adversity, and then again sheathe it in my own! But, no; in times
+of misery we must fight against our destinies, and strive not to be
+overcome by them. I would not yield, but to the last gasp resolutely
+defended my dear ones against sorrow and pain; and if I were vanquished
+at last, it should not be ingloriously. I stood in the gap, resisting
+the enemy—the impalpable, invisible foe, who had so long besieged us—as
+yet he had made no breach: it must be my care that he should not,
+secretly undermining, burst up within the very threshold of the temple
+of love, at whose altar I daily sacrificed. The hunger of Death was now
+stung more sharply by the diminution of his food: or was it that
+before, the survivors being many, the dead were less eagerly counted?
+Now each life was a gem, each human breathing form of far, O! far more
+worth than subtlest imagery of sculptured stone; and the daily, nay,
+hourly decrease visible in our numbers, visited the heart with
+sickening misery. This summer extinguished our hopes, the vessel of
+society was wrecked, and the shattered raft, which carried the few
+survivors over the sea of misery, was riven and tempest tost. Man
+existed by twos and threes; man, the individual who might sleep, and
+wake, and perform the animal functions; but man, in himself weak, yet
+more powerful in congregated numbers than wind or ocean; man, the
+queller of the elements, the lord of created nature, the peer of
+demi-gods, existed no longer.
+
+Farewell to the patriotic scene, to the love of liberty and well earned
+meed of virtuous aspiration!—farewell to crowded senate, vocal with the
+councils of the wise, whose laws were keener than the sword blade
+tempered at Damascus!—farewell to kingly pomp and warlike pageantry;
+the crowns are in the dust, and the wearers are in their
+graves!—farewell to the desire of rule, and the hope of victory; to
+high vaulting ambition, to the appetite for praise, and the craving for
+the suffrage of their fellows! The nations are no longer! No senate
+sits in council for the dead; no scion of a time honoured dynasty pants
+to rule over the inhabitants of a charnel house; the general’s hand is
+cold, and the soldier has his untimely grave dug in his native fields,
+unhonoured, though in youth. The market-place is empty, the candidate
+for popular favour finds none whom he can represent. To chambers of
+painted state farewell!—To midnight revelry, and the panting emulation
+of beauty, to costly dress and birth-day shew, to title and the gilded
+coronet, farewell!
+
+Farewell to the giant powers of man,—to knowledge that could pilot the
+deep-drawing bark through the opposing waters of shoreless ocean,—to
+science that directed the silken balloon through the pathless air,—to
+the power that could put a barrier to mighty waters, and set in motion
+wheels, and beams, and vast machinery, that could divide rocks of
+granite or marble, and make the mountains plain!
+
+Farewell to the arts,—to eloquence, which is to the human mind as the
+winds to the sea, stirring, and then allaying it;—farewell to poetry
+and deep philosophy, for man’s imagination is cold, and his enquiring
+mind can no longer expatiate on the wonders of life, for “there is no
+work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou
+goest!”—to the graceful building, which in its perfect proportion
+transcended the rude forms of nature, the fretted gothic and massy
+saracenic pile, to the stupendous arch and glorious dome, the fluted
+column with its capital, Corinthian, Ionic, or Doric, the peristyle and
+fair entablature, whose harmony of form is to the eye as musical
+concord to the ear!—farewell to sculpture, where the pure marble mocks
+human flesh, and in the plastic expression of the culled excellencies
+of the human shape, shines forth the god!—farewell to painting, the
+high wrought sentiment and deep knowledge of the artists’s mind in
+pictured canvas—to paradisaical scenes, where trees are ever vernal,
+and the ambrosial air rests in perpetual glow:—to the stamped form of
+tempest, and wildest uproar of universal nature encaged in the narrow
+frame, O farewell! Farewell to music, and the sound of song; to the
+marriage of instruments, where the concord of soft and harsh unites in
+sweet harmony, and gives wings to the panting listeners, whereby to
+climb heaven, and learn the hidden pleasures of the eternals!—Farewell
+to the well-trod stage; a truer tragedy is enacted on the world’s ample
+scene, that puts to shame mimic grief: to high-bred comedy, and the low
+buffoon, farewell!—Man may laugh no more. Alas! to enumerate the
+adornments of humanity, shews, by what we have lost, how supremely
+great man was. It is all over now. He is solitary; like our first
+parents expelled from Paradise, he looks back towards the scene he has
+quitted. The high walls of the tomb, and the flaming sword of plague,
+lie between it and him. Like to our first parents, the whole earth is
+before him, a wide desart. Unsupported and weak, let him wander through
+fields where the unreaped corn stands in barren plenty, through copses
+planted by his fathers, through towns built for his use. Posterity is
+no more; fame, and ambition, and love, are words void of meaning; even
+as the cattle that grazes in the field, do thou, O deserted one, lie
+down at evening-tide, unknowing of the past, careless of the future,
+for from such fond ignorance alone canst thou hope for ease!
+
+Joy paints with its own colours every act and thought. The happy do not
+feel poverty—for delight is as a gold-tissued robe, and crowns them
+with priceless gems. Enjoyment plays the cook to their homely fare, and
+mingles intoxication with their simple drink. Joy strews the hard couch
+with roses, and makes labour ease.
+
+Sorrow doubles the burthen to the bent-down back; plants thorns in the
+unyielding pillow; mingles gall with water; adds saltness to their
+bitter bread; cloathing them in rags, and strewing ashes on their bare
+heads. To our irremediable distress every small and pelting
+inconvenience came with added force; we had strung our frames to endure
+the Atlean weight thrown on us; we sank beneath the added feather
+chance threw on us, “the grasshopper was a burthen.” Many of the
+survivors had been bred in luxury—their servants were gone, their
+powers of command vanished like unreal shadows: the poor even suffered
+various privations; and the idea of another winter like the last,
+brought affright to our minds. Was it not enough that we must die, but
+toil must be added?—must we prepare our funeral repast with labour, and
+with unseemly drudgery heap fuel on our deserted hearths —must we with
+servile hands fabricate the garments, soon to be our shroud?
+
+Not so! We are presently to die, let us then enjoy to its full relish
+the remnant of our lives. Sordid care, avaunt! menial labours, and
+pains, slight in themselves, but too gigantic for our exhausted
+strength, shall make no part of our ephemeral existences. In the
+beginning of time, when, as now, man lived by families, and not by
+tribes or nations, they were placed in a genial clime, where earth fed
+them untilled, and the balmy air enwrapt their reposing limbs with
+warmth more pleasant than beds of down. The south is the native place
+of the human race; the land of fruits, more grateful to man than the
+hard-earned Ceres of the north,—of trees, whose boughs are as a
+palace-roof, of couches of roses, and of the thirst-appeasing grape. We
+need not there fear cold and hunger.
+
+Look at England! the grass shoots up high in the meadows; but they are
+dank and cold, unfit bed for us. Corn we have none, and the crude
+fruits cannot support us. We must seek firing in the bowels of the
+earth, or the unkind atmosphere will fill us with rheums and aches. The
+labour of hundreds of thousands alone could make this inclement nook
+fit habitation for one man. To the south then, to the sun!—where nature
+is kind, where Jove has showered forth the contents of Amalthea’s horn,
+and earth is garden.
+
+England, late birth-place of excellence and school of the wise, thy
+children are gone, thy glory faded! Thou, England, wert the triumph of
+man! Small favour was shewn thee by thy Creator, thou Isle of the
+North; a ragged canvas naturally, painted by man with alien colours;
+but the hues he gave are faded, never more to be renewed. So we must
+leave thee, thou marvel of the world; we must bid farewell to thy
+clouds, and cold, and scarcity for ever! Thy manly hearts are still;
+thy tale of power and liberty at its close! Bereft of man, O little
+isle! the ocean waves will buffet thee, and the raven flap his wings
+over thee; thy soil will be birth-place of weeds, thy sky will canopy
+barrenness. It was not for the rose of Persia thou wert famous, nor the
+banana of the east; not for the spicy gales of India, nor the sugar
+groves of America; not for thy vines nor thy double harvests, nor for
+thy vernal airs, nor solstitial sun—but for thy children, their
+unwearied industry and lofty aspiration. They are gone, and thou goest
+with them the oft trodden path that leads to oblivion, —
+
+Farewell, sad Isle, farewell, thy fatal glory
+Is summed, cast up, and cancelled in this story.[20]
+
+
+ [19] Elton’s translation of Hesiod.
+
+
+ [20] Cleveland’s Poems.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+In the autumn of this year 2096, the spirit of emigration crept in
+among the few survivors, who, congregating from various parts of
+England, met in London. This spirit existed as a breath, a wish, a far
+off thought, until communicated to Adrian, who imbibed it with ardour,
+and instantly engaged himself in plans for its execution. The fear of
+immediate death vanished with the heats of September. Another winter
+was before us, and we might elect our mode of passing it to the best
+advantage. Perhaps in rational philosophy none could be better chosen
+than this scheme of migration, which would draw us from the immediate
+scene of our woe, and, leading us through pleasant and picturesque
+countries, amuse for a time our despair. The idea once broached, all
+were impatient to put it in execution.
+
+We were still at Windsor; our renewed hopes medicined the anguish we
+had suffered from the late tragedies. The death of many of our inmates
+had weaned us from the fond idea, that Windsor Castle was a spot sacred
+from the plague; but our lease of life was renewed for some months, and
+even Idris lifted her head, as a lily after a storm, when a last
+sunbeam tinges its silver cup. Just at this time Adrian came down to
+us; his eager looks shewed us that he was full of some scheme. He
+hastened to take me aside, and disclosed to me with rapidity his plan
+of emigration from England.
+
+To leave England for ever! to turn from its polluted fields and groves,
+and, placing the sea between us, to quit it, as a sailor quits the rock
+on which he has been wrecked, when the saving ship rides by. Such was
+his plan.
+
+To leave the country of our fathers, made holy by their graves!—We
+could not feel even as a voluntary exile of old, who might for pleasure
+or convenience forsake his native soil; though thousands of miles might
+divide him, England was still a part of him, as he of her. He heard of
+the passing events of the day; he knew that, if he returned, and
+resumed his place in society, the entrance was still open, and it
+required but the will, to surround himself at once with the
+associations and habits of boyhood. Not so with us, the remnant. We
+left none to represent us, none to repeople the desart land, and the
+name of England died, when we left her,
+
+In vagabond pursuit of dreadful safety.
+
+
+Yet let us go! England is in her shroud,—we may not enchain ourselves
+to a corpse. Let us go—the world is our country now, and we will choose
+for our residence its most fertile spot. Shall we, in these desart
+halls, under this wintry sky, sit with closed eyes and folded hands,
+expecting death? Let us rather go out to meet it gallantly: or
+perhaps—for all this pendulous orb, this fair gem in the sky’s diadem,
+is not surely plague-striken—perhaps, in some secluded nook, amidst
+eternal spring, and waving trees, and purling streams, we may find
+Life. The world is vast, and England, though her many fields and wide
+spread woods seem interminable, is but a small part of her. At the
+close of a day’s march over high mountains and through snowy vallies,
+we may come upon health, and committing our loved ones to its charge,
+replant the uprooted tree of humanity, and send to late posterity the
+tale of the ante-pestilential race, the heroes and sages of the lost
+state of things.
+
+Hope beckons and sorrow urges us, the heart beats high with
+expectation, and this eager desire of change must be an omen of
+success. O come! Farewell to the dead! farewell to the tombs of those
+we loved!—farewell to giant London and the placid Thames, to river and
+mountain or fair district, birth-place of the wise and good, to Windsor
+Forest and its antique castle, farewell! themes for story alone are
+they,—we must live elsewhere.
+
+Such were in part the arguments of Adrian, uttered with enthusiasm and
+unanswerable rapidity. Something more was in his heart, to which he
+dared not give words. He felt that the end of time was come; he knew
+that one by one we should dwindle into nothingness. It was not
+adviseable to wait this sad consummation in our native country; but
+travelling would give us our object for each day, that would distract
+our thoughts from the swift-approaching end of things. If we went to
+Italy, to sacred and eternal Rome, we might with greater patience
+submit to the decree, which had laid her mighty towers low. We might
+lose our selfish grief in the sublime aspect of its desolation. All
+this was in the mind of Adrian; but he thought of my children, and,
+instead of communicating to me these resources of despair, he called up
+the image of health and life to be found, where we knew not—when we
+knew not; but if never to be found, for ever and for ever to be sought.
+He won me over to his party, heart and soul.
+
+It devolved on me to disclose our plan to Idris. The images of health
+and hope which I presented to her, made her with a smile consent. With
+a smile she agreed to leave her country, from which she had never
+before been absent, and the spot she had inhabited from infancy; the
+forest and its mighty trees, the woodland paths and green recesses,
+where she had played in childhood, and had lived so happily through
+youth; she would leave them without regret, for she hoped to purchase
+thus the lives of her children. They were her life; dearer than a spot
+consecrated to love, dearer than all else the earth contained. The boys
+heard with childish glee of our removal: Clara asked if we were to go
+to Athens. “It is possible,” I replied; and her countenance became
+radiant with pleasure. There she would behold the tomb of her parents,
+and the territory filled with recollections of her father’s glory. In
+silence, but without respite, she had brooded over these scenes. It was
+the recollection of them that had turned her infant gaiety to
+seriousness, and had impressed her with high and restless thoughts.
+
+There were many dear friends whom we must not leave behind, humble
+though they were. There was the spirited and obedient steed which Lord
+Raymond had given his daughter; there was Alfred’s dog and a pet eagle,
+whose sight was dimmed through age. But this catalogue of favourites to
+be taken with us, could not be made without grief to think of our heavy
+losses, and a deep sigh for the many things we must leave behind. The
+tears rushed into the eyes of Idris, while Alfred and Evelyn brought
+now a favourite rose tree, now a marble vase beautifully carved,
+insisting that these must go, and exclaiming on the pity that we could
+not take the castle and the forest, the deer and the birds, and all
+accustomed and cherished objects along with us. “Fond and foolish
+ones,” I said, “we have lost for ever treasures far more precious than
+these; and we desert them, to preserve treasures to which in comparison
+they are nothing. Let us not for a moment forget our object and our
+hope; and they will form a resistless mound to stop the overflowing of
+our regret for trifles.”
+
+The children were easily distracted, and again returned to their
+prospect of future amusement. Idris had disappeared. She had gone to
+hide her weakness; escaping from the castle, she had descended to the
+little park, and sought solitude, that she might there indulge her
+tears; I found her clinging round an old oak, pressing its rough trunk
+with her roseate lips, as her tears fell plenteously, and her sobs and
+broken exclamations could not be suppressed; with surpassing grief I
+beheld this loved one of my heart thus lost in sorrow! I drew her
+towards me; and, as she felt my kisses on her eyelids, as she felt my
+arms press her, she revived to the knowledge of what remained to her.
+“You are very kind not to reproach me,” she said: “I weep, and a bitter
+pang of intolerable sorrow tears my heart. And yet I am happy; mothers
+lament their children, wives lose their husbands, while you and my
+children are left to me. Yes, I am happy, most happy, that I can weep
+thus for imaginary sorrows, and that the slight loss of my adored
+country is not dwindled and annihilated in mightier misery. Take me
+where you will; where you and my children are, there shall be Windsor,
+and every country will be England to me. Let these tears flow not for
+myself, happy and ungrateful as I am, but for the dead world—for our
+lost country—for all of love, and life, and joy, now choked in the
+dusty chambers of death.”
+
+She spoke quickly, as if to convince herself; she turned her eyes from
+the trees and forest-paths she loved; she hid her face in my bosom, and
+we— yes, _my_ masculine firmness dissolved—we wept together consolatory
+tears, and then calm—nay, almost cheerful, we returned to the castle.
+
+The first cold weather of an English October, made us hasten our
+preparations. I persuaded Idris to go up to London, where she might
+better attend to necessary arrangements. I did not tell her, that to
+spare her the pang of parting from inanimate objects, now the only
+things left, I had resolved that we should none of us return to
+Windsor. For the last time we looked on the wide extent of country
+visible from the terrace, and saw the last rays of the sun tinge the
+dark masses of wood variegated by autumnal tints; the uncultivated
+fields and smokeless cottages lay in shadow below; the Thames wound
+through the wide plain, and the venerable pile of Eton college, stood
+in dark relief, a prominent object; the cawing of the myriad rooks
+which inhabited the trees of the little park, as in column or thick
+wedge they speeded to their nests, disturbed the silence of evening.
+Nature was the same, as when she was the kind mother of the human race;
+now, childless and forlorn, her fertility was a mockery; her loveliness
+a mask for deformity. Why should the breeze gently stir the trees, man
+felt not its refreshment? Why did dark night adorn herself with
+stars—man saw them not? Why are there fruits, or flowers, or streams,
+man is not here to enjoy them?
+
+Idris stood beside me, her dear hand locked in mine. Her face was
+radiant with a smile.—“The sun is alone,” she said, “but we are not. A
+strange star, my Lionel, ruled our birth; sadly and with dismay we may
+look upon the annihilation of man; but we remain for each other. Did I
+ever in the wide world seek other than thee? And since in the wide
+world thou remainest, why should I complain? Thou and nature are still
+true to me. Beneath the shades of night, and through the day, whose
+garish light displays our solitude, thou wilt still be at my side, and
+even Windsor will not be regretted.”
+
+I had chosen night time for our journey to London, that the change and
+desolation of the country might be the less observable. Our only
+surviving servant drove us. We past down the steep hill, and entered
+the dusky avenue of the Long Walk. At times like these, minute
+circumstances assume giant and majestic proportions; the very swinging
+open of the white gate that admitted us into the forest, arrested my
+thoughts as matter of interest; it was an every day act, never to occur
+again! The setting crescent of the moon glittered through the massy
+trees to our right, and when we entered the park, we scared a troop of
+deer, that fled bounding away in the forest shades. Our two boys
+quietly slept; once, before our road turned from the view, I looked
+back on the castle. Its windows glistened in the moonshine, and its
+heavy outline lay in a dark mass against the sky—the trees near us
+waved a solemn dirge to the midnight breeze. Idris leaned back in the
+carriage; her two hands pressed mine, her countenance was placid, she
+seemed to lose the sense of what she now left, in the memory of what
+she still possessed.
+
+My thoughts were sad and solemn, yet not of unmingled pain. The very
+excess of our misery carried a relief with it, giving sublimity and
+elevation to sorrow. I felt that I carried with me those I best loved;
+I was pleased, after a long separation to rejoin Adrian; never again to
+part. I felt that I quitted what I loved, not what loved me. The castle
+walls, and long familiar trees, did not hear the parting sound of our
+carriage-wheels with regret. And, while I felt Idris to be near, and
+heard the regular breathing of my children, I could not be unhappy.
+Clara was greatly moved; with streaming eyes, suppressing her sobs, she
+leaned from the window, watching the last glimpse of her native
+Windsor.
+
+Adrian welcomed us on our arrival. He was all animation; you could no
+longer trace in his look of health, the suffering valetudinarian; from
+his smile and sprightly tones you could not guess that he was about to
+lead forth from their native country, the numbered remnant of the
+English nation, into the tenantless realms of the south, there to die,
+one by one, till the LAST MAN should remain in a voiceless, empty
+world.
+
+Adrian was impatient for our departure, and had advanced far in his
+preparations. His wisdom guided all. His care was the soul, to move the
+luckless crowd, who relied wholly on him. It was useless to provide
+many things, for we should find abundant provision in every town. It
+was Adrian’s wish to prevent all labour; to bestow a festive appearance
+on this funeral train. Our numbers amounted to not quite two thousand
+persons. These were not all assembled in London, but each day witnessed
+the arrival of fresh numbers, and those who resided in the neighbouring
+towns, had received orders to assemble at one place, on the twentieth
+of November. Carriages and horses were provided for all; captains and
+under officers chosen, and the whole assemblage wisely organized. All
+obeyed the Lord Protector of dying England; all looked up to him. His
+council was chosen, it consisted of about fifty persons. Distinction
+and station were not the qualifications of their election. We had no
+station among us, but that which benevolence and prudence gave; no
+distinction save between the living and the dead. Although we were
+anxious to leave England before the depth of winter, yet we were
+detained. Small parties had been dispatched to various parts of
+England, in search of stragglers; we would not go, until we had assured
+ourselves that in all human probability we did not leave behind a
+single human being.
+
+On our arrival in London, we found that the aged Countess of Windsor
+was residing with her son in the palace of the Protectorate; we
+repaired to our accustomed abode near Hyde Park. Idris now for the
+first time for many years saw her mother, anxious to assure herself
+that the childishness of old age did not mingle with unforgotten pride,
+to make this high-born dame still so inveterate against me. Age and
+care had furrowed her cheeks, and bent her form; but her eye was still
+bright, her manners authoritative and unchanged; she received her
+daughter coldly, but displayed more feeling as she folded her
+grand-children in her arms. It is our nature to wish to continue our
+systems and thoughts to posterity through our own offspring. The
+Countess had failed in this design with regard to her children; perhaps
+she hoped to find the next remove in birth more tractable. Once Idris
+named me casually—a frown, a convulsive gesture of anger, shook her
+mother, and, with voice trembling with hate, she said—“I am of little
+worth in this world; the young are impatient to push the old off the
+scene; but, Idris, if you do not wish to see your mother expire at your
+feet, never again name that person to me; all else I can bear; and now
+I am resigned to the destruction of my cherished hopes: but it is too
+much to require that I should love the instrument that providence
+gifted with murderous properties for my destruction.”
+
+This was a strange speech, now that, on the empty stage, each might
+play his part without impediment from the other. But the haughty
+Ex-Queen thought as Octavius Cæsar and Mark Antony,
+
+We could not stall together
+In the whole world.
+
+
+The period of our departure was fixed for the twenty-fifth of November.
+The weather was temperate; soft rains fell at night, and by day the
+wintry sun shone out. Our numbers were to move forward in separate
+parties, and to go by different routes, all to unite at last at Paris.
+Adrian and his division, consisting in all of five hundred persons,
+were to take the direction of Dover and Calais. On the twentieth of
+November, Adrian and I rode for the last time through the streets of
+London. They were grass-grown and desert. The open doors of the empty
+mansions creaked upon their hinges; rank herbage, and deforming dirt,
+had swiftly accumulated on the steps of the houses; the voiceless
+steeples of the churches pierced the smokeless air; the churches were
+open, but no prayer was offered at the altars; mildew and damp had
+already defaced their ornaments; birds, and tame animals, now homeless,
+had built nests, and made their lairs in consecrated spots. We passed
+St. Paul’s. London, which had extended so far in suburbs in all
+direction, had been somewhat deserted in the midst, and much of what
+had in former days obscured this vast building was removed. Its
+ponderous mass, blackened stone, and high dome, made it look, not like
+a temple, but a tomb. Methought above the portico was engraved the _Hic
+jacet_ of England. We passed on eastwards, engaged in such solemn talk
+as the times inspired. No human step was heard, nor human form
+discerned. Troops of dogs, deserted of their masters, passed us; and
+now and then a horse, unbridled and unsaddled, trotted towards us, and
+tried to attract the attention of those which we rode, as if to allure
+them to seek like liberty. An unwieldy ox, who had fed in an abandoned
+granary, suddenly lowed, and shewed his shapeless form in a narrow
+door-way; every thing was desert; but nothing was in ruin. And this
+medley of undamaged buildings, and luxurious accommodation, in trim and
+fresh youth, was contrasted with the lonely silence of the unpeopled
+streets.
+
+Night closed in, and it began to rain. We were about to return
+homewards, when a voice, a human voice, strange now to hear, attracted
+our attention. It was a child singing a merry, lightsome air; there was
+no other sound. We had traversed London from Hyde Park even to where we
+now were in the Minories, and had met no person, heard no voice nor
+footstep. The singing was interrupted by laughing and talking; never
+was merry ditty so sadly timed, never laughter more akin to tears. The
+door of the house from which these sounds proceeded was open, the upper
+rooms were illuminated as for a feast. It was a large magnificent
+house, in which doubtless some rich merchant had lived. The singing
+again commenced, and rang through the high-roofed rooms, while we
+silently ascended the stair-case. Lights now appeared to guide us; and
+a long suite of splendid rooms illuminated, made us still more wonder.
+Their only inhabitant, a little girl, was dancing, waltzing, and
+singing about them, followed by a large Newfoundland dog, who
+boisterously jumping on her, and interrupting her, made her now scold,
+now laugh, now throw herself on the carpet to play with him. She was
+dressed grotesquely, in glittering robes and shawls fit for a woman;
+she appeared about ten years of age. We stood at the door looking on
+this strange scene, till the dog perceiving us barked loudly; the child
+turned and saw us: her face, losing its gaiety, assumed a sullen
+expression: she slunk back, apparently meditating an escape. I came up
+to her, and held her hand; she did not resist, but with a stern brow,
+so strange in childhood, so different from her former hilarity, she
+stood still, her eyes fixed on the ground. “What do you do here?” I
+said gently; “Who are you?”—she was silent, but trembled violently.—“My
+poor child,” asked Adrian, “are you alone?” There was a winning
+softness in his voice, that went to the heart of the little girl; she
+looked at him, then snatching her hand from me, threw herself into his
+arms, clinging round his neck, ejaculating—“Save me! save me!” while
+her unnatural sullenness dissolved in tears.
+
+“I will save you,” he replied, “of what are you afraid? you need not
+fear my friend, he will do you no harm. Are you alone?”
+
+“No, Lion is with me.”
+
+“And your father and mother?—”
+
+“I never had any; I am a charity girl. Every body is gone, gone for a
+great, great many days; but if they come back and find me out, they
+will beat me so!”
+
+Her unhappy story was told in these few words: an orphan, taken on
+pretended charity, ill-treated and reviled, her oppressors had died:
+unknowing of what had passed around her, she found herself alone; she
+had not dared venture out, but by the continuance of her solitude her
+courage revived, her childish vivacity caused her to play a thousand
+freaks, and with her brute companion she passed a long holiday, fearing
+nothing but the return of the harsh voices and cruel usage of her
+protectors. She readily consented to go with Adrian.
+
+In the mean time, while we descanted on alien sorrows, and on a
+solitude which struck our eyes and not our hearts, while we imagined
+all of change and suffering that had intervened in these once thronged
+streets, before, tenantless and abandoned, they became mere kennels for
+dogs, and stables for cattle:—while we read the death of the world upon
+the dark fane, and hugged ourselves in the remembrance that we
+possessed that which was all the world to us—in the meanwhile—-
+
+We had arrived from Windsor early in October, and had now been in
+London about six weeks. Day by day, during that time, the health of my
+Idris declined: her heart was broken; neither sleep nor appetite, the
+chosen servants of health, waited on her wasted form. To watch her
+children hour by hour, to sit by me, drinking deep the dear persuasion
+that I remained to her, was all her pastime. Her vivacity, so long
+assumed, her affectionate display of cheerfulness, her light-hearted
+tone and springy gait were gone. I could not disguise to myself, nor
+could she conceal, her life-consuming sorrow. Still change of scene,
+and reviving hopes might restore her; I feared the plague only, and she
+was untouched by that.
+
+I had left her this evening, reposing after the fatigues of her
+preparations. Clara sat beside her, relating a story to the two boys.
+The eyes of Idris were closed: but Clara perceived a sudden change in
+the appearance of our eldest darling; his heavy lids veiled his eyes,
+an unnatural colour burnt in his cheeks, his breath became short. Clara
+looked at the mother; she slept, yet started at the pause the narrator
+made— Fear of awakening and alarming her, caused Clara to go on at the
+eager call of Evelyn, who was unaware of what was passing. Her eyes
+turned alternately from Alfred to Idris; with trembling accents she
+continued her tale, till she saw the child about to fall: starting
+forward she caught him, and her cry roused Idris. She looked on her
+son. She saw death stealing across his features; she laid him on a bed,
+she held drink to his parched lips.
+
+Yet he might be saved. If I were there, he might be saved; perhaps it
+was not the plague. Without a counsellor, what could she do? stay and
+behold him die! Why at that moment was I away? “Look to him, Clara,”
+she exclaimed, “I will return immediately.”
+
+She inquired among those who, selected as the companions of our
+journey, had taken up their residence in our house; she heard from them
+merely that I had gone out with Adrian. She entreated them to seek me:
+she returned to her child, he was plunged in a frightful state of
+torpor; again she rushed down stairs; all was dark, desert, and silent;
+she lost all self-possession; she ran into the street; she called on my
+name. The pattering rain and howling wind alone replied to her. Wild
+fear gave wings to her feet; she darted forward to seek me, she knew
+not where; but, putting all her thoughts, all her energy, all her being
+in speed only, most misdirected speed, she neither felt, nor feared,
+nor paused, but ran right on, till her strength suddenly deserted her
+so suddenly, that she had not thought to save herself. Her knees failed
+her, and she fell heavily on the pavement. She was stunned for a time;
+but at length rose, and though sorely hurt, still walked on, shedding a
+fountain of tears, stumbling at times, going she knew not whither, only
+now and then with feeble voice she called my name, adding with
+heart-piercing exclamations, that I was cruel and unkind. Human being
+there was none to reply; and the inclemency of the night had driven the
+wandering animals to the habitations they had usurped. Her thin dress
+was drenched with rain; her wet hair clung round her neck; she tottered
+through the dark streets; till, striking her foot against an unseen
+impediment, she again fell; she could not rise; she hardly strove; but,
+gathering up her limbs, she resigned herself to the fury of the
+elements, and the bitter grief of her own heart. She breathed an
+earnest prayer to die speedily, for there was no relief but death.
+While hopeless of safety for herself, she ceased to lament for her
+dying child, but shed kindly, bitter tears for the grief I should
+experience in losing her. While she lay, life almost suspended, she
+felt a warm, soft hand on her brow, and a gentle female voice asked
+her, with expressions of tender compassion, if she could not rise? That
+another human being, sympathetic and kind, should exist near, roused
+her; half rising, with clasped hands, and fresh springing tears, she
+entreated her companion to seek for me, to bid me hasten to my dying
+child, to save him, for the love of heaven, to save him!
+
+The woman raised her; she led her under shelter, she entreated her to
+return to her home, whither perhaps I had already returned. Idris
+easily yielded to her persuasions, she leaned on the arm of her friend,
+she endeavoured to walk on, but irresistible faintness made her pause
+again and again.
+
+Quickened by the encreasing storm, we had hastened our return, our
+little charge was placed before Adrian on his horse. There was an
+assemblage of persons under the portico of our house, in whose gestures
+I instinctively read some heavy change, some new misfortune. With swift
+alarm, afraid to ask a single question, I leapt from my horse; the
+spectators saw me, knew me, and in awful silence divided to make way
+for me. I snatched a light, and rushing up stairs, and hearing a groan,
+without reflection I threw open the door of the first room that
+presented itself. It was quite dark; but, as I stept within, a
+pernicious scent assailed my senses, producing sickening qualms, which
+made their way to my very heart, while I felt my leg clasped, and a
+groan repeated by the person that held me. I lowered my lamp, and saw a
+negro half clad, writhing under the agony of disease, while he held me
+with a convulsive grasp. With mixed horror and impatience I strove to
+disengage myself, and fell on the sufferer; he wound his naked
+festering arms round me, his face was close to mine, and his breath,
+death-laden, entered my vitals. For a moment I was overcome, my head
+was bowed by aching nausea; till, reflection returning, I sprung up,
+threw the wretch from me, and darting up the staircase, entered the
+chamber usually inhabited by my family. A dim light shewed me Alfred on
+a couch; Clara trembling, and paler than whitest snow, had raised him
+on her arm, holding a cup of water to his lips. I saw full well that no
+spark of life existed in that ruined form, his features were rigid, his
+eyes glazed, his head had fallen back. I took him from her, I laid him
+softly down, kissed his cold little mouth, and turned to speak in a
+vain whisper, when loudest sound of thunderlike cannon could not have
+reached him in his immaterial abode.
+
+And where was Idris? That she had gone out to seek me, and had not
+returned, were fearful tidings, while the rain and driving wind
+clattered against the window, and roared round the house. Added to
+this, the sickening sensation of disease gained upon me; no time was to
+be lost, if ever I would see her again. I mounted my horse and rode out
+to seek her, fancying that I heard her voice in every gust, oppressed
+by fever and aching pain.
+
+I rode in the dark and rain through the labyrinthine streets of
+unpeopled London. My child lay dead at home; the seeds of mortal
+disease had taken root in my bosom; I went to seek Idris, my adored,
+now wandering alone, while the waters were rushing from heaven like a
+cataract to bathe her dear head in chill damp, her fair limbs in
+numbing cold. A female stood on the step of a door, and called to me as
+I gallopped past. It was not Idris; so I rode swiftly on, until a kind
+of second sight, a reflection back again on my senses of what I had
+seen but not marked, made me feel sure that another figure, thin,
+graceful and tall, stood clinging to the foremost person who supported
+her. In a minute I was beside the suppliant, in a minute I received the
+sinking Idris in my arms. Lifting her up, I placed her on the horse;
+she had not strength to support herself; so I mounted behind her, and
+held her close to my bosom, wrapping my riding-cloak round her, while
+her companion, whose well known, but changed countenance, (it was
+Juliet, daughter of the Duke of L—-) could at this moment of horror
+obtain from me no more than a passing glance of compassion. She took
+the abandoned rein, and conducted our obedient steed homewards. Dare I
+avouch it? That was the last moment of my happiness; but I was happy.
+Idris must die, for her heart was broken: I must die, for I had caught
+the plague; earth was a scene of desolation; hope was madness; life had
+married death; they were one; but, thus supporting my fainting love,
+thus feeling that I must soon die, I revelled in the delight of
+possessing her once more; again and again I kissed her, and pressed her
+to my heart.
+
+We arrived at our home. I assisted her to dismount, I carried her up
+stairs, and gave her into Clara’s care, that her wet garments might be
+changed. Briefly I assured Adrian of her safety, and requested that we
+might be left to repose. As the miser, who with trembling caution
+visits his treasure to count it again and again, so I numbered each
+moment, and grudged every one that was not spent with Idris. I returned
+swiftly to the chamber where the life of my life reposed; before I
+entered the room I paused for a few seconds; for a few seconds I tried
+to examine my state; sickness and shuddering ever and anon came over
+me; my head was heavy, my chest oppressed, my legs bent under me; but I
+threw off resolutely the swift growing symptoms of my disorder, and met
+Idris with placid and even joyous looks. She was lying on a couch;
+carefully fastening the door to prevent all intrusion; I sat by her, we
+embraced, and our lips met in a kiss long drawn and breathless—would
+that moment had been my last!
+
+Maternal feeling now awoke in my poor girl’s bosom, and she asked: “And
+Alfred?”
+
+“Idris,” I replied, “we are spared to each other, we are together; do
+not let any other idea intrude. I am happy; even on this fatal night, I
+declare myself happy, beyond all name, all thought—what would you more,
+sweet one?”
+
+Idris understood me: she bowed her head on my shoulder and wept. “Why,”
+she again asked, “do you tremble, Lionel, what shakes you thus?”
+
+“Well may I be shaken,” I replied, “happy as I am. Our child is dead,
+and the present hour is dark and ominous. Well may I tremble! but, I am
+happy, mine own Idris, most happy.”
+
+“I understand thee, my kind love,” said Idris, “thus—pale as thou art
+with sorrow at our loss; trembling and aghast, though wouldest assuage
+my grief by thy dear assurances. I am not happy,” (and the tears
+flashed and fell from under her down-cast lids), “for we are inmates of
+a miserable prison, and there is no joy for us; but the true love I
+bear you will render this and every other loss endurable.”
+
+“We have been happy together, at least,” I said; “no future misery can
+deprive us of the past. We have been true to each other for years, ever
+since my sweet princess-love came through the snow to the lowly cottage
+of the poverty-striken heir of the ruined Verney. Even now, that
+eternity is before us, we take hope only from the presence of each
+other. Idris, do you think, that when we die, we shall be divided?”
+
+“Die! when we die! what mean you? What secret lies hid from me in those
+dreadful words?”
+
+“Must we not all die, dearest?” I asked with a sad smile.
+
+“Gracious God! are you ill, Lionel, that you speak of death? My only
+friend, heart of my heart, speak!”
+
+“I do not think,” replied I, “that we have any of us long to live; and
+when the curtain drops on this mortal scene, where, think you, we shall
+find ourselves?” Idris was calmed by my unembarrassed tone and look;
+she answered:—“You may easily believe that during this long progress of
+the plague, I have thought much on death, and asked myself, now that
+all mankind is dead to this life, to what other life they may have been
+borne. Hour after hour, I have dwelt on these thoughts, and strove to
+form a rational conclusion concerning the mystery of a future state.
+What a scare-crow, indeed, would death be, if we were merely to cast
+aside the shadow in which we now walk, and, stepping forth into the
+unclouded sunshine of knowledge and love, revived with the same
+companions, the same affections, and reached the fulfilment of our
+hopes, leaving our fears with our earthly vesture in the grave. Alas!
+the same strong feeling which makes me sure that I shall not wholly
+die, makes me refuse to believe that I shall live wholly as I do now.
+Yet, Lionel, never, never, can I love any but you; through eternity I
+must desire your society; and, as I am innocent of harm to others, and
+as relying and confident as my mortal nature permits, I trust that the
+Ruler of the world will never tear us asunder.”
+
+“Your remarks are like yourself, dear love,” replied I, “gentle and
+good; let us cherish such a belief, and dismiss anxiety from our minds.
+But, sweet, we are so formed, (and there is no sin, if God made our
+nature, to yield to what he ordains), we are so formed, that we must
+love life, and cling to it; we must love the living smile, the
+sympathetic touch, and thrilling voice, peculiar to our mortal
+mechanism. Let us not, through security in hereafter, neglect the
+present. This present moment, short as it is, is a part of eternity,
+and the dearest part, since it is our own unalienably. Thou, the hope
+of my futurity, art my present joy. Let me then look on thy dear eyes,
+and, reading love in them, drink intoxicating pleasure.”
+
+Timidly, for my vehemence somewhat terrified her, Idris looked on me.
+My eyes were bloodshot, starting from my head; every artery beat,
+methought, audibly, every muscle throbbed, each single nerve felt. Her
+look of wild affright told me, that I could no longer keep my
+secret:—“So it is, mine own beloved,” I said, “the last hour of many
+happy ones is arrived, nor can we shun any longer the inevitable
+destiny. I cannot live long—but, again and again, I say, this moment is
+ours!”
+
+Paler than marble, with white lips and convulsed features, Idris became
+aware of my situation. My arm, as I sat, encircled her waist. She felt
+the palm burn with fever, even on the heart it pressed:—“One moment,”
+she murmured, scarce audibly, “only one moment.”—
+
+She kneeled, and hiding her face in her hands, uttered a brief, but
+earnest prayer, that she might fulfil her duty, and watch over me to
+the last. While there was hope, the agony had been unendurable;—all was
+now concluded; her feelings became solemn and calm. Even as Epicharis,
+unperturbed and firm, submitted to the instruments of torture, did
+Idris, suppressing every sigh and sign of grief, enter upon the
+endurance of torments, of which the rack and the wheel are but faint
+and metaphysical symbols.
+
+I was changed; the tight-drawn cord that sounded so harshly was
+loosened, the moment that Idris participated in my knowledge of our
+real situation. The perturbed and passion-tossed waves of thought
+subsided, leaving only the heavy swell that kept right on without any
+outward manifestation of its disturbance, till it should break on the
+remote shore towards which I rapidly advanced:—“It is true that I am
+sick,” I said, “and your society, my Idris is my only medicine; come,
+and sit beside me.”
+
+She made me lie down on the couch, and, drawing a low ottoman near, sat
+close to my pillow, pressing my burning hands in her cold palms. She
+yielded to my feverish restlessness, and let me talk, and talked to me,
+on subjects strange indeed to beings, who thus looked the last, and
+heard the last, of what they loved alone in the world. We talked of
+times gone by; of the happy period of our early love; of Raymond,
+Perdita, and Evadne. We talked of what might arise on this desert
+earth, if, two or three being saved, it were slowly re-peopled.—We
+talked of what was beyond the tomb; and, man in his human shape being
+nearly extinct, we felt with certainty of faith, that other spirits,
+other minds, other perceptive beings, sightless to us, must people with
+thought and love this beauteous and imperishable universe.
+
+We talked—I know not how long—but, in the morning I awoke from a
+painful heavy slumber; the pale cheek of Idris rested on my pillow; the
+large orbs of her eyes half raised the lids, and shewed the deep blue
+lights beneath; her lips were unclosed, and the slight murmurs they
+formed told that, even while asleep, she suffered. “If she were dead,”
+I thought, “what difference? now that form is the temple of a residing
+deity; those eyes are the windows of her soul; all grace, love, and
+intelligence are throned on that lovely bosom—were she dead, where
+would this mind, the dearer half of mine, be? For quickly the fair
+proportion of this edifice would be more defaced, than are the
+sand-choked ruins of the desert temples of Palmyra.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Idris stirred and awoke; alas! she awoke to misery. She saw the signs
+of disease on my countenance, and wondered how she could permit the
+long night to pass without her having sought, not cure, that was
+impossible, but alleviation to my sufferings. She called Adrian; my
+couch was quickly surrounded by friends and assistants, and such
+medicines as were judged fitting were administered. It was the peculiar
+and dreadful distinction of our visitation, that none who had been
+attacked by the pestilence had recovered. The first symptom of the
+disease was the death-warrant, which in no single instance had been
+followed by pardon or reprieve. No gleam of hope therefore cheered my
+friends.
+
+While fever producing torpor, heavy pains, sitting like lead on my
+limbs, and making my breast heave, were upon me; I continued insensible
+to every thing but pain, and at last even to that. I awoke on the
+fourth morning as from a dreamless sleep. An irritating sense of
+thirst, and, when I strove to speak or move, an entire dereliction of
+power, was all I felt.
+
+For three days and nights Idris had not moved from my side. She
+administered to all my wants, and never slept nor rested. She did not
+hope; and therefore she neither endeavoured to read the physician’s
+countenance, nor to watch for symptoms of recovery. All her thought was
+to attend on me to the last, and then to lie down and die beside me. On
+the third night animation was suspended; to the eye and touch of all I
+was dead. With earnest prayer, almost with force, Adrian tried to draw
+Idris from me. He exhausted every adjuration, her child’s welfare and
+his own. She shook her head, and wiped a stealing tear from her sunk
+cheek, but would not yield; she entreated to be allowed to watch me
+that one night only, with such affliction and meek earnestness, that
+she gained her point, and sat silent and motionless, except when, stung
+by intolerable remembrance, she kissed my closed eyes and pallid lips,
+and pressed my stiffening hands to her beating heart.
+
+At dead of night, when, though it was mid winter, the cock crowed at
+three o’clock, as herald of the morning change, while hanging over me,
+and mourning in silent, bitter thought for the loss of all of love
+towards her that had been enshrined in my heart; her dishevelled hair
+hung over her face, and the long tresses fell on the bed; she saw one
+ringlet in motion, and the scattered hair slightly stirred, as by a
+breath. It is not so, she thought, for he will never breathe more.
+Several times the same thing occurred, and she only marked it by the
+same reflection; till the whole ringlet waved back, and she thought she
+saw my breast heave. Her first emotion was deadly fear, cold dew stood
+on her brow; my eyes half opened; and, re-assured, she would have
+exclaimed, “He lives!” but the words were choked by a spasm, and she
+fell with a groan on the floor.
+
+Adrian was in the chamber. After long watching, he had unwillingly
+fallen into a sleep. He started up, and beheld his sister senseless on
+the earth, weltering in a stream of blood that gushed from her mouth.
+Encreasing signs of life in me in some degree explained her state; the
+surprise, the burst of joy, the revulsion of every sentiment, had been
+too much for her frame, worn by long months of care, late shattered by
+every species of woe and toil. She was now in far greater danger than
+I, the wheels and springs of my life, once again set in motion,
+acquired elasticity from their short suspension. For a long time, no
+one believed that I should indeed continue to live; during the reign of
+the plague upon earth, not one person, attacked by the grim disease,
+had recovered. My restoration was looked on as a deception; every
+moment it was expected that the evil symptoms would recur with
+redoubled violence, until confirmed convalescence, absence of all fever
+or pain, and encreasing strength, brought slow conviction that I had
+recovered from the plague.
+
+The restoration of Idris was more problematical. When I had been
+attacked by illness, her cheeks were sunk, her form emaciated; but now,
+the vessel, which had broken from the effects of extreme agitation, did
+not entirely heal, but was as a channel that drop by drop drew from her
+the ruddy stream that vivified her heart. Her hollow eyes and worn
+countenance had a ghastly appearance; her cheek-bones, her open fair
+brow, the projection of the mouth, stood fearfully prominent; you might
+tell each bone in the thin anatomy of her frame. Her hand hung
+powerless; each joint lay bare, so that the light penetrated through
+and through. It was strange that life could exist in what was wasted
+and worn into a very type of death.
+
+To take her from these heart-breaking scenes, to lead her to forget the
+world’s desolation in the variety of objects presented by travelling,
+and to nurse her failing strength in the mild climate towards which we
+had resolved to journey, was my last hope for her preservation. The
+preparations for our departure, which had been suspended during my
+illness, were renewed. I did not revive to doubtful convalescence;
+health spent her treasures upon me; as the tree in spring may feel from
+its wrinkled limbs the fresh green break forth, and the living sap rise
+and circulate, so did the renewed vigour of my frame, the cheerful
+current of my blood, the new-born elasticity of my limbs, influence my
+mind to cheerful endurance and pleasurable thoughts. My body, late the
+heavy weight that bound me to the tomb, was exuberant with health; mere
+common exercises were insufficient for my reviving strength; methought
+I could emulate the speed of the race-horse, discern through the air
+objects at a blinding distance, hear the operations of nature in her
+mute abodes; my senses had become so refined and susceptible after my
+recovery from mortal disease.
+
+Hope, among my other blessings, was not denied to me; and I did fondly
+trust that my unwearied attentions would restore my adored girl. I was
+therefore eager to forward our preparations. According to the plan
+first laid down, we were to have quitted London on the twenty-fifth of
+November; and, in pursuance of this scheme, two-thirds of our
+people—_the_ people— all that remained of England, had gone forward,
+and had already been some weeks in Paris. First my illness, and
+subsequently that of Idris, had detained Adrian with his division,
+which consisted of three hundred persons, so that we now departed on
+the first of January, 2098. It was my wish to keep Idris as distant as
+possible from the hurry and clamour of the crowd, and to hide from her
+those appearances that would remind her most forcibly of our real
+situation. We separated ourselves to a great degree from Adrian, who
+was obliged to give his whole time to public business. The Countess of
+Windsor travelled with her son. Clara, Evelyn, and a female who acted
+as our attendant, were the only persons with whom we had contact. We
+occupied a commodious carriage, our servant officiated as coachman. A
+party of about twenty persons preceded us at a small distance. They had
+it in charge to prepare our halting places and our nightly abode. They
+had been selected for this service out of a great number that offered,
+on account of the superior sagacity of the man who had been appointed
+their leader.
+
+Immediately on our departure, I was delighted to find a change in
+Idris, which I fondly hoped prognosticated the happiest results. All
+the cheerfulness and gentle gaiety natural to her revived. She was
+weak, and this alteration was rather displayed in looks and voice than
+in acts; but it was permanent and real. My recovery from the plague and
+confirmed health instilled into her a firm belief that I was now secure
+from this dread enemy. She told me that she was sure she should
+recover. That she had a presentiment, that the tide of calamity which
+deluged our unhappy race had now turned. That the remnant would be
+preserved, and among them the dear objects of her tender affection; and
+that in some selected spot we should wear out our lives together in
+pleasant society. “Do not let my state of feebleness deceive you,” she
+said; “I feel that I am better; there is a quick life within me, and a
+spirit of anticipation that assures me, that I shall continue long to
+make a part of this world. I shall throw off this degrading weakness of
+body, which infects even my mind with debility, and I shall enter again
+on the performance of my duties. I was sorry to leave Windsor: but now
+I am weaned from this local attachment; I am content to remove to a
+mild climate, which will complete my recovery. Trust me, dearest, I
+shall neither leave you, nor my brother, nor these dear children; my
+firm determination to remain with you to the last, and to continue to
+contribute to your happiness and welfare, would keep me alive, even if
+grim death were nearer at hand than he really is.”
+
+I was only half re-assured by these expressions; I could not believe
+that the over-quick flow of her blood was a sign of health, or that her
+burning cheeks denoted convalescence. But I had no fears of an
+immediate catastrophe; nay, I persuaded myself that she would
+ultimately recover. And thus cheerfulness reigned in our little
+society. Idris conversed with animation on a thousand topics. Her chief
+desire was to lead our thoughts from melancholy reflections; so she
+drew charming pictures of a tranquil solitude, of a beauteous retreat,
+of the simple manners of our little tribe, and of the patriarchal
+brotherhood of love, which would survive the ruins of the populous
+nations which had lately existed. We shut out from our thoughts the
+present, and withdrew our eyes from the dreary landscape we traversed.
+Winter reigned in all its gloom. The leafless trees lay without motion
+against the dun sky; the forms of frost, mimicking the foliage of
+summer, strewed the ground; the paths were overgrown; the unploughed
+cornfields were patched with grass and weeds; the sheep congregated at
+the threshold of the cottage, the horned ox thrust his head from the
+window. The wind was bleak, and frequent sleet or snow-storms, added to
+the melancholy appearance wintry nature assumed.
+
+We arrived at Rochester, and an accident caused us to be detained there
+a day. During that time, a circumstance occurred that changed our
+plans, and which, alas! in its result changed the eternal course of
+events, turning me from the pleasant new sprung hope I enjoyed, to an
+obscure and gloomy desert. But I must give some little explanation
+before I proceed with the final cause of our temporary alteration of
+plan, and refer again to those times when man walked the earth
+fearless, before Plague had become Queen of the World.
+
+There resided a family in the neighbourhood of Windsor, of very humble
+pretensions, but which had been an object of interest to us on account
+of one of the persons of whom it was composed. The family of the
+Claytons had known better days; but, after a series of reverses, the
+father died a bankrupt, and the mother heartbroken, and a confirmed
+invalid, retired with her five children to a little cottage between
+Eton and Salt Hill. The eldest of these children, who was thirteen
+years old, seemed at once from the influence of adversity, to acquire
+the sagacity and principle belonging to a more mature age. Her mother
+grew worse and worse in health, but Lucy attended on her, and was as a
+tender parent to her younger brothers and sisters, and in the meantime
+shewed herself so good-humoured, social, and benevolent, that she was
+beloved as well as honoured, in her little neighbourhood.
+
+Lucy was besides extremely pretty; so when she grew to be sixteen, it
+was to be supposed, notwithstanding her poverty, that she should have
+admirers. One of these was the son of a country-curate; he was a
+generous, frank-hearted youth, with an ardent love of knowledge, and no
+mean acquirements. Though Lucy was untaught, her mother’s conversation
+and manners gave her a taste for refinements superior to her present
+situation. She loved the youth even without knowing it, except that in
+any difficulty she naturally turned to him for aid, and awoke with a
+lighter heart every Sunday, because she knew that she would be met and
+accompanied by him in her evening walk with her sisters. She had
+another admirer, one of the head-waiters at the inn at Salt Hill. He
+also was not without pretensions to urbane superiority, such as he
+learnt from gentlemen’s servants and waiting-maids, who initiating him
+in all the slang of high life below stairs, rendered his arrogant
+temper ten times more intrusive. Lucy did not disclaim him—she was
+incapable of that feeling; but she was sorry when she saw him approach,
+and quietly resisted all his endeavours to establish an intimacy. The
+fellow soon discovered that his rival was preferred to him; and this
+changed what was at first a chance admiration into a passion, whose
+main springs were envy, and a base desire to deprive his competitor of
+the advantage he enjoyed over himself.
+
+Poor Lucy’s sad story was but a common one. Her lover’s father died;
+and he was left destitute. He accepted the offer of a gentleman to go
+to India with him, feeling secure that he should soon acquire an
+independence, and return to claim the hand of his beloved. He became
+involved in the war carried on there, was taken prisoner, and years
+elapsed before tidings of his existence were received in his native
+land. In the meantime disastrous poverty came on Lucy. Her little
+cottage, which stood looking from its trellice, covered with woodbine
+and jessamine, was burnt down; and the whole of their little property
+was included in the destruction. Whither betake them? By what exertion
+of industry could Lucy procure them another abode? Her mother nearly
+bed-rid, could not survive any extreme of famine-struck poverty. At
+this time her other admirer stept forward, and renewed his offer of
+marriage. He had saved money, and was going to set up a little inn at
+Datchet. There was nothing alluring to Lucy in this offer, except the
+home it secured to her mother; and she felt more sure of this, since
+she was struck by the apparent generosity which occasioned the present
+offer. She accepted it; thus sacrificing herself for the comfort and
+welfare of her parent.
+
+It was some years after her marriage that we became acquainted with
+her. The accident of a storm caused us to take refuge in the inn, where
+we witnessed the brutal and quarrelsome behaviour of her husband, and
+her patient endurance. Her lot was not a fortunate one. Her first lover
+had returned with the hope of making her his own, and met her by
+accident, for the first time, as the mistress of his country inn, and
+the wife of another. He withdrew despairingly to foreign parts; nothing
+went well with him; at last he enlisted, and came back again wounded
+and sick, and yet Lucy was debarred from nursing him. Her husband’s
+brutal disposition was aggravated by his yielding to the many
+temptations held out by his situation, and the consequent
+disarrangement of his affairs. Fortunately she had no children; but her
+heart was bound up in her brothers and sisters, and these his avarice
+and ill temper soon drove from the house; they were dispersed about the
+country, earning their livelihood with toil and care. He even shewed an
+inclination to get rid of her mother—but Lucy was firm here—she had
+sacrificed herself for her; she lived for her —she would not part with
+her—if the mother went, she would also go beg bread for her, die with
+her, but never desert her. The presence of Lucy was too necessary in
+keeping up the order of the house, and in preventing the whole
+establishment from going to wreck, for him to permit her to leave him.
+He yielded the point; but in all accesses of anger, or in his drunken
+fits, he recurred to the old topic, and stung poor Lucy’s heart by
+opprobrious epithets bestowed on her parent.
+
+A passion however, if it be wholly pure, entire, and reciprocal, brings
+with it its own solace. Lucy was truly, and from the depth of heart,
+devoted to her mother; the sole end she proposed to herself in life,
+was the comfort and preservation of this parent. Though she grieved for
+the result, yet she did not repent of her marriage, even when her lover
+returned to bestow competence on her. Three years had intervened, and
+how, in their pennyless state, could her mother have existed during
+this time? This excellent woman was worthy of her child’s devotion. A
+perfect confidence and friendship existed between them; besides, she
+was by no means illiterate; and Lucy, whose mind had been in some
+degree cultivated by her former lover, now found in her the only person
+who could understand and appreciate her. Thus, though suffering, she
+was by no means desolate, and when, during fine summer days, she led
+her mother into the flowery and shady lanes near their abode, a gleam
+of unmixed joy enlightened her countenance; she saw that her parent was
+happy, and she knew that this happiness was of her sole creating.
+
+Meanwhile her husband’s affairs grew more and more involved; ruin was
+near at hand, and she was about to lose the fruit of all her labours,
+when pestilence came to change the aspect of the world. Her husband
+reaped benefit from the universal misery; but, as the disaster
+encreased, the spirit of lawlessness seized him; he deserted his home
+to revel in the luxuries promised him in London, and found there a
+grave. Her former lover had been one of the first victims of the
+disease. But Lucy continued to live for and in her mother. Her courage
+only failed when she dreaded peril for her parent, or feared that death
+might prevent her from performing those duties to which she was
+unalterably devoted.
+
+When we had quitted Windsor for London, as the previous step to our
+final emigration, we visited Lucy, and arranged with her the plan of
+her own and her mother’s removal. Lucy was sorry at the necessity which
+forced her to quit her native lanes and village, and to drag an infirm
+parent from her comforts at home, to the homeless waste of depopulate
+earth; but she was too well disciplined by adversity, and of too sweet
+a temper, to indulge in repinings at what was inevitable.
+
+Subsequent circumstances, my illness and that of Idris, drove her from
+our remembrance; and we called her to mind at last, only to conclude
+that she made one of the few who came from Windsor to join the
+emigrants, and that she was already in Paris. When we arrived at
+Rochester therefore, we were surprised to receive, by a man just come
+from Slough, a letter from this exemplary sufferer. His account was,
+that, journeying from his home, and passing through Datchet, he was
+surprised to see smoke issue from the chimney of the inn, and supposing
+that he should find comrades for his journey assembled there, he
+knocked and was admitted. There was no one in the house but Lucy, and
+her mother; the latter had been deprived of the use of her limbs by an
+attack of rheumatism, and so, one by one, all the remaining inhabitants
+of the country set forward, leaving them alone. Lucy intreated the man
+to stay with her; in a week or two her mother would be better, and they
+would then set out; but they must perish, if they were left thus
+helpless and forlorn. The man said, that his wife and children were
+already among the emigrants, and it was therefore, according to his
+notion, impossible for him to remain. Lucy, as a last resource, gave
+him a letter for Idris, to be delivered to her wherever he should meet
+us. This commission at least he fulfilled, and Idris received with
+emotion the following letter:—
+
+“HONOURED LADY,
+
+
+“I am sure that you will remember and pity me, and I dare hope that you
+will assist me; what other hope have I? Pardon my manner of writing, I
+am so bewildered. A month ago my dear mother was deprived of the use of
+her limbs. She is already better, and in another month would I am sure
+be able to travel, in the way you were so kind as to say you would
+arrange for us. But now everybody is gone—everybody—as they went away,
+each said, that perhaps my mother would be better, before we were quite
+deserted. But three days ago I went to Samuel Woods, who, on account of
+his new-born child, remained to the last; and there being a large
+family of them, I thought I could persuade them to wait a little longer
+for us; but I found the house deserted. I have not seen a soul since,
+till this good man came. —What will become of us? My mother does not
+know our state; she is so ill, that I have hidden it from her.
+
+“Will you not send some one to us? I am sure we must perish miserably
+as we are. If I were to try to move my mother now, she would die on the
+road; and if, when she gets better, I were able, I cannot guess how, to
+find out the roads, and get on so many many miles to the sea, you would
+all be in France, and the great ocean would be between us, which is so
+terrible even to sailors. What would it be to me, a woman, who never
+saw it? We should be imprisoned by it in this country, all, all alone,
+with no help; better die where we are. I can hardly write—I cannot stop
+my tears—it is not for myself; I could put my trust in God; and let the
+worst come, I think I could bear it, if I were alone. But my mother, my
+sick, my dear, dear mother, who never, since I was born, spoke a harsh
+word to me, who has been patient in many sufferings; pity her, dear
+Lady, she must die a miserable death if you do not pity her. People
+speak carelessly of her, because she is old and infirm, as if we must
+not all, if we are spared, become so; and then, when the young are old
+themselves, they will think that they ought to be taken care of. It is
+very silly of me to write in this way to you; but, when I hear her
+trying not to groan, and see her look smiling on me to comfort me, when
+I know she is in pain; and when I think that she does not know the
+worst, but she soon must; and then she will not complain; but I shall
+sit guessing at all that she is dwelling upon, of famine and misery—I
+feel as if my heart must break, and I do not know what I say or do; my
+mother—mother for whom I have borne much, God preserve you from this
+fate! Preserve her, Lady, and He will bless you; and I, poor miserable
+creature as I am, will thank you and pray for you while I live.
+
+“Your unhappy and dutiful servant,
+LUCY MARTIN.”
+“_Dec_. 30_th_, 2097.
+
+
+This letter deeply affected Idris, and she instantly proposed, that we
+should return to Datchet, to assist Lucy and her mother. I said that I
+would without delay set out for that place, but entreated her to join
+her brother, and there await my return with the children. But Idris was
+in high spirits, and full of hope. She declared that she could not
+consent even to a temporary separation from me, but that there was no
+need of this, the motion of the carriage did her good, and the distance
+was too trifling to be considered. We could dispatch messengers to
+Adrian, to inform him of our deviation from the original plan. She
+spoke with vivacity, and drew a picture after her own dear heart, of
+the pleasure we should bestow upon Lucy, and declared, if I went, she
+must accompany me, and that she should very much dislike to entrust the
+charge of rescuing them to others, who might fulfil it with coldness or
+inhumanity. Lucy’s life had been one act of devotion and virtue; let
+her now reap the small reward of finding her excellence appreciated,
+and her necessity assisted, by those whom she respected and honoured.
+
+These, and many other arguments, were urged with gentle pertinacity,
+and the ardour of a wish to do all the good in her power, by her whose
+simple expression of a desire and slightest request had ever been a law
+with me. I, of course, consented, the moment that I saw that she had
+set her heart upon this step. We sent half our attendant troop on to
+Adrian; and with the other half our carriage took a retrograde course
+back to Windsor.
+
+I wonder now how I could be so blind and senseless, as thus to risk the
+safety of Idris; for, if I had eyes, surely I could see the sure,
+though deceitful, advance of death in her burning cheek and encreasing
+weakness. But she said she was better; and I believed her. Extinction
+could not be near a being, whose vivacity and intelligence hourly
+encreased, and whose frame was endowed with an intense, and I fondly
+thought, a strong and permanent spirit of life. Who, after a great
+disaster, has not looked back with wonder at his inconceivable
+obtuseness of understanding, that could not perceive the many minute
+threads with which fate weaves the inextricable net of our destinies,
+until he is inmeshed completely in it?
+
+The cross roads which we now entered upon, were even in a worse state
+than the long neglected high-ways; and the inconvenience seemed to
+menace the perishing frame of Idris with destruction. Passing through
+Dartford, we arrived at Hampton on the second day. Even in this short
+interval my beloved companion grew sensibly worse in health, though her
+spirits were still light, and she cheered my growing anxiety with gay
+sallies; sometimes the thought pierced my brain—Is she dying?—as I saw
+her fair fleshless hand rest on mine, or observed the feebleness with
+which she performed the accustomed acts of life. I drove away the idea,
+as if it had been suggested by insanity; but it occurred again and
+again, only to be dispelled by the continued liveliness of her manner.
+
+About mid-day, after quitting Hampton, our carriage broke down: the
+shock caused Idris to faint, but on her reviving no other ill
+consequence ensued; our party of attendants had as usual gone on before
+us, and our coachman went in search of another vehicle, our former one
+being rendered by this accident unfit for service. The only place near
+us was a poor village, in which he found a kind of caravan, able to
+hold four people, but it was clumsy and ill hung; besides this he found
+a very excellent cabriolet: our plan was soon arranged; I would drive
+Idris in the latter; while the children were conveyed by the servant in
+the former. But these arrangements cost time; we had agreed to proceed
+that night to Windsor, and thither our purveyors had gone: we should
+find considerable difficulty in getting accommodation, before we
+reached this place; after all, the distance was only ten miles; my
+horse was a good one; I would go forward at a good pace with Idris,
+leaving the children to follow at a rate more consonant to the uses of
+their cumberous machine.
+
+Evening closed in quickly, far more quickly than I was prepared to
+expect. At the going down of the sun it began to snow heavily. I
+attempted in vain to defend my beloved companion from the storm; the
+wind drove the snow in our faces; and it lay so high on the ground,
+that we made but small way; while the night was so dark, that but for
+the white covering on the ground we should not have been able to see a
+yard before us. We had left our accompanying caravan far behind us; and
+now I perceived that the storm had made me unconsciously deviate from
+my intended route. I had gone some miles out of my way. My knowledge of
+the country enabled me to regain the right road; but, instead of going,
+as at first agreed upon, by a cross road through Stanwell to Datchet, I
+was obliged to take the way of Egham and Bishopgate. It was certain
+therefore that I should not be rejoined by the other vehicle, that I
+should not meet a single fellow-creature till we arrived at Windsor.
+
+The back of our carriage was drawn up, and I hung a pelisse before it,
+thus to curtain the beloved sufferer from the pelting sleet. She leaned
+on my shoulder, growing every moment more languid and feeble; at first
+she replied to my words of cheer with affectionate thanks; but by
+degrees she sunk into silence; her head lay heavily upon me; I only
+knew that she lived by her irregular breathing and frequent sighs. For
+a moment I resolved to stop, and, opposing the back of the cabriolet to
+the force of the tempest, to expect morning as well as I might. But the
+wind was bleak and piercing, while the occasional shudderings of my
+poor Idris, and the intense cold I felt myself, demonstrated that this
+would be a dangerous experiment. At length methought she slept—fatal
+sleep, induced by frost: at this moment I saw the heavy outline of a
+cottage traced on the dark horizon close to us: “Dearest love,” I said,
+“support yourself but one moment, and we shall have shelter; let us
+stop here, that I may open the door of this blessed dwelling.”
+
+As I spoke, my heart was transported, and my senses swam with excessive
+delight and thankfulness; I placed the head of Idris against the
+carriage, and, leaping out, scrambled through the snow to the cottage,
+whose door was open. I had apparatus about me for procuring light, and
+that shewed me a comfortable room, with a pile of wood in one corner,
+and no appearance of disorder, except that, the door having been left
+partly open, the snow, drifting in, had blocked up the threshold. I
+returned to the carriage, and the sudden change from light to darkness
+at first blinded me. When I recovered my sight—eternal God of this
+lawless world! O supreme Death! I will not disturb thy silent reign, or
+mar my tale with fruitless exclamations of horror—I saw Idris, who had
+fallen from the seat to the bottom of the carriage; her head, its long
+hair pendent, with one arm, hung over the side.—Struck by a spasm of
+horror, I lifted her up; her heart was pulseless, her faded lips
+unfanned by the slightest breath.
+
+I carried her into the cottage; I placed her on the bed. Lighting a
+fire, I chafed her stiffening limbs; for two long hours I sought to
+restore departed life; and, when hope was as dead as my beloved, I
+closed with trembling hands her glazed eyes. I did not doubt what I
+should now do. In the confusion attendant on my illness, the task of
+interring our darling Alfred had devolved on his grandmother, the
+Ex-Queen, and she, true to her ruling passion, had caused him to be
+carried to Windsor, and buried in the family vault, in St. George’s
+Chapel. I must proceed to Windsor, to calm the anxiety of Clara, who
+would wait anxiously for us—yet I would fain spare her the
+heart-breaking spectacle of Idris, brought in by me lifeless from the
+journey. So first I would place my beloved beside her child in the
+vault, and then seek the poor children who would be expecting me.
+
+I lighted the lamps of my carriage; I wrapt her in furs, and placed her
+along the seat; then taking the reins, made the horses go forward. We
+proceeded through the snow, which lay in masses impeding the way, while
+the descending flakes, driving against me with redoubled fury, blinded
+me. The pain occasioned by the angry elements, and the cold iron of the
+shafts of frost which buffetted me, and entered my aching flesh, were a
+relief to me; blunting my mental suffering. The horses staggered on,
+and the reins hung loosely in my hands. I often thought I would lay my
+head close to the sweet, cold face of my lost angel, and thus resign
+myself to conquering torpor. Yet I must not leave her a prey to the
+fowls of the air; but, in pursuance of my determination place her in
+the tomb of her forefathers, where a merciful God might permit me to
+rest also.
+
+The road we passed through Egham was familiar to me; but the wind and
+snow caused the horses to drag their load slowly and heavily. Suddenly
+the wind veered from south-west to west, and then again to north-west.
+As Sampson with tug and strain stirred from their bases the columns
+that supported the Philistine temple, so did the gale shake the dense
+vapours propped on the horizon, while the massy dome of clouds fell to
+the south, disclosing through the scattered web the clear empyrean, and
+the little stars, which were set at an immeasurable distance in the
+crystalline fields, showered their small rays on the glittering snow.
+Even the horses were cheered, and moved on with renovated strength. We
+entered the forest at Bishopgate, and at the end of the Long Walk I saw
+the Castle, “the proud Keep of Windsor, rising in the majesty of
+proportion, girt with the double belt of its kindred and coeval
+towers.” I looked with reverence on a structure, ancient almost as the
+rock on which it stood, abode of kings, theme of admiration for the
+wise. With greater reverence and, tearful affection I beheld it as the
+asylum of the long lease of love I had enjoyed there with the
+perishable, unmatchable treasure of dust, which now lay cold beside me.
+Now indeed, I could have yielded to all the softness of my nature, and
+wept; and, womanlike, have uttered bitter plaints; while the familiar
+trees, the herds of living deer, the sward oft prest by her fairy-feet,
+one by one with sad association presented themselves. The white gate at
+the end of the Long Walk was wide open, and I rode up the empty town
+through the first gate of the feudal tower; and now St. George’s
+Chapel, with its blackened fretted sides, was right before me. I halted
+at its door, which was open; I entered, and placed my lighted lamp on
+the altar; then I returned, and with tender caution I bore Idris up the
+aisle into the chancel, and laid her softly down on the carpet which
+covered the step leading to the communion table. The banners of the
+knights of the garter, and their half drawn swords, were hung in vain
+emblazonry above the stalls. The banner of her family hung there, still
+surmounted by its regal crown. Farewell to the glory and heraldry of
+England!—I turned from such vanity with a slight feeling of wonder, at
+how mankind could have ever been interested in such things. I bent over
+the lifeless corpse of my beloved; and, while looking on her uncovered
+face, the features already contracted by the rigidity of death, I felt
+as if all the visible universe had grown as soulless, inane, and
+comfortless as the clay-cold image beneath me. I felt for a moment the
+intolerable sense of struggle with, and detestation for, the laws which
+govern the world; till the calm still visible on the face of my dead
+love recalled me to a more soothing tone of mind, and I proceeded to
+fulfil the last office that could now be paid her. For her I could not
+lament, so much I envied her enjoyment of “the sad immunities of the
+grave.”
+
+The vault had been lately opened to place our Alfred therein. The
+ceremony customary in these latter days had been cursorily performed,
+and the pavement of the chapel, which was its entrance, having been
+removed, had not been replaced. I descended the steps, and walked
+through the long passage to the large vault which contained the kindred
+dust of my Idris. I distinguished the small coffin of my babe. With
+hasty, trembling hands I constructed a bier beside it, spreading it
+with the furs and Indian shawls, which had wrapt Idris in her journey
+thither. I lighted the glimmering lamp, which flickered in this damp
+abode of the dead; then I bore my lost one to her last bed, decently
+composing her limbs, and covering them with a mantle, veiling all
+except her face, which remained lovely and placid. She appeared to rest
+like one over-wearied, her beauteous eyes steeped in sweet slumber.
+Yet, so it was not—she was dead! How intensely I then longed to lie
+down beside her, to gaze till death should gather me to the same
+repose.
+
+But death does not come at the bidding of the miserable. I had lately
+recovered from mortal illness, and my blood had never flowed with such
+an even current, nor had my limbs ever been so instinct with quick
+life, as now. I felt that my death must be voluntary. Yet what more
+natural than famine, as I watched in this chamber of mortality, placed
+in a world of the dead, beside the lost hope of my life? Meanwhile as I
+looked on her, the features, which bore a sisterly resemblance to
+Adrian, brought my thoughts back again to the living, to this dear
+friend, to Clara, and to Evelyn, who were probably now in Windsor,
+waiting anxiously for our arrival.
+
+Methought I heard a noise, a step in the far chapel, which was
+re-echoed by its vaulted roof, and borne to me through the hollow
+passages. Had Clara seen my carriage pass up the town, and did she seek
+me here? I must save her at least from the horrible scene the vault
+presented. I sprung up the steps, and then saw a female figure, bent
+with age, and clad in long mourning robes, advance through the dusky
+chapel, supported by a slender cane, yet tottering even with this
+support. She heard me, and looked up; the lamp I held illuminated my
+figure, and the moon-beams, struggling through the painted glass, fell
+upon her face, wrinkled and gaunt, yet with a piercing eye and
+commanding brow—I recognized the Countess of Windsor. With a hollow
+voice she asked, “Where is the princess?”
+
+I pointed to the torn up pavement: she walked to the spot, and looked
+down into the palpable darkness; for the vault was too distant for the
+rays of the small lamp I had left there to be discernible.
+
+“Your light,” she said. I gave it her; and she regarded the now
+visible, but precipitous steps, as if calculating her capacity to
+descend. Instinctively I made a silent offer of my assistance. She
+motioned me away with a look of scorn, saying in an harsh voice, as she
+pointed downwards, “There at least I may have her undisturbed.”
+
+She walked deliberately down, while I, overcome, miserable beyond
+words, or tears, or groans, threw myself on the pavement near—the
+stiffening form of Idris was before me, the death-struck countenance
+hushed in eternal repose beneath. That was to me the end of all! The
+day before, I had figured to my self various adventures, and communion
+with my friends in after time—now I had leapt the interval, and reached
+the utmost edge and bourne of life. Thus wrapt in gloom, enclosed,
+walled up, vaulted over by the omnipotent present, I was startled by
+the sound of feet on the steps of the tomb, and I remembered her whom I
+had utterly forgotten, my angry visitant; her tall form slowly rose
+upwards from the vault, a living statue, instinct with hate, and human,
+passionate strife: she seemed to me as having reached the pavement of
+the aisle; she stood motionless, seeking with her eyes alone, some
+desired object—till, perceiving me close to her, she placed her
+wrinkled hand on my arm, exclaiming with tremulous accents, “Lionel
+Verney, my son!” This name, applied at such a moment by my angel’s
+mother, instilled into me more respect than I had ever before felt for
+this disdainful lady. I bowed my head, and kissed her shrivelled hand,
+and, remarking that she trembled violently, supported her to the end of
+the chancel, where she sat on the steps that led to the regal stall.
+She suffered herself to be led, and still holding my hand, she leaned
+her head back against the stall, while the moon beams, tinged with
+various colours by the painted glass, fell on her glistening eyes;
+aware of her weakness, again calling to mind her long cherished
+dignity, she dashed the tears away; yet they fell fast, as she said,
+for excuse, “She is so beautiful and placid, even in death. No harsh
+feeling ever clouded her serene brow; how did I treat her? wounding her
+gentle heart with savage coldness; I had no compassion on her in past
+years, does she forgive me now? Little, little does it boot to talk of
+repentance and forgiveness to the dead, had I during her life once
+consulted her gentle wishes, and curbed my rugged nature to do her
+pleasure, I should not feel thus.”
+
+Idris and her mother were unlike in person. The dark hair, deep-set
+black eyes, and prominent features of the Ex-Queen were in entire
+contrast to the golden tresses, the full blue orbs, and the soft lines
+and contour of her daughter’s countenance. Yet, in latter days, illness
+had taken from my poor girl the full outline of her face, and reduced
+it to the inflexible shape of the bone beneath. In the form of her
+brow, in her oval chin, there was to be found a resemblance to her
+mother; nay in some moods, their gestures were not unlike; nor, having
+lived so long together, was this wonderful.
+
+There is a magic power in resemblance. When one we love dies, we hope
+to see them in another state, and half expect that the agency of mind
+will inform its new garb in imitation of its decayed earthly vesture.
+But these are ideas of the mind only. We know that the instrument is
+shivered, the sensible image lies in miserable fragments, dissolved to
+dusty nothingness; a look, a gesture, or a fashioning of the limbs
+similar to the dead in a living person, touches a thrilling chord,
+whose sacred harmony is felt in the heart’s dearest recess. Strangely
+moved, prostrate before this spectral image, and enslaved by the force
+of blood manifested in likeness of look and movement, I remained
+trembling in the presence of the harsh, proud, and till now unloved
+mother of Idris.
+
+Poor, mistaken woman! in her tenderest mood before, she had cherished
+the idea, that a word, a look of reconciliation from her, would be
+received with joy, and repay long years of severity. Now that the time
+was gone for the exercise of such power, she fell at once upon the
+thorny truth of things, and felt that neither smile nor caress could
+penetrate to the unconscious state, or influence the happiness of her
+who lay in the vault beneath. This conviction, together with the
+remembrance of soft replies to bitter speeches, of gentle looks
+repaying angry glances; the perception of the falsehood, paltryness and
+futility of her cherished dreams of birth and power; the overpowering
+knowledge, that love and life were the true emperors of our mortal
+state; all, as a tide, rose, and filled her soul with stormy and
+bewildering confusion. It fell to my lot, to come as the influential
+power, to allay the fierce tossing of these tumultuous waves. I spoke
+to her; I led her to reflect how happy Idris had really been, and how
+her virtues and numerous excellencies had found scope and estimation in
+her past career. I praised her, the idol of my heart’s dear worship,
+the admired type of feminine perfection. With ardent and overflowing
+eloquence, I relieved my heart from its burthen, and awoke to the sense
+of a new pleasure in life, as I poured forth the funeral eulogy. Then I
+referred to Adrian, her loved brother, and to her surviving child. I
+declared, which I had before almost forgotten, what my duties were with
+regard to these valued portions of herself, and bade the melancholy
+repentant mother reflect, how she could best expiate unkindness towards
+the dead, by redoubled love of the survivors. Consoling her, my own
+sorrows were assuaged; my sincerity won her entire conviction.
+
+She turned to me. The hard, inflexible, persecuting woman, turned with
+a mild expression of face, and said, “If our beloved angel sees us now,
+it will delight her to find that I do you even tardy justice. You were
+worthy of her; and from my heart I am glad that you won her away from
+me. Pardon, my son, the many wrongs I have done you; forget my bitter
+words and unkind treatment—take me, and govern me as you will.”
+
+I seized this docile moment to propose our departure from the church.
+“First,” she said, “let us replace the pavement above the vault.”
+
+We drew near to it; “Shall we look on her again?” I asked.
+
+“I cannot,” she replied, “and, I pray you, neither do you. We need not
+torture ourselves by gazing on the soulless body, while her living
+spirit is buried quick in our hearts, and her surpassing loveliness is
+so deeply carved there, that sleeping or waking she must ever be
+present to us.”
+
+For a few moments, we bent in solemn silence over the open vault. I
+consecrated my future life, to the embalming of her dear memory; I
+vowed to serve her brother and her child till death. The convulsive sob
+of my companion made me break off my internal orisons. I next dragged
+the stones over the entrance of the tomb, and closed the gulph that
+contained the life of my life. Then, supporting my decrepid
+fellow-mourner, we slowly left the chapel. I felt, as I stepped into
+the open air, as if I had quitted an happy nest of repose, for a dreary
+wilderness, a tortuous path, a bitter, joyless, hopeless pilgrimage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Our escort had been directed to prepare our abode for the night at the
+inn, opposite the ascent to the Castle. We could not again visit the
+halls and familiar chambers of our home, on a mere visit. We had
+already left for ever the glades of Windsor, and all of coppice,
+flowery hedgerow, and murmuring stream, which gave shape and intensity
+to the love of our country, and the almost superstitious attachment
+with which we regarded native England. It had been our intention to
+have called at Lucy’s dwelling in Datchet, and to have re-assured her
+with promises of aid and protection before we repaired to our quarters
+for the night. Now, as the Countess of Windsor and I turned down the
+steep hill that led from the Castle, we saw the children, who had just
+stopped in their caravan, at the inn-door. They had passed through
+Datchet without halting. I dreaded to meet them, and to be the bearer
+of my tragic story, so while they were still occupied in the hurry of
+arrival, I suddenly left them, and through the snow and clear
+moon-light air, hastened along the well known road to Datchet.
+
+Well known indeed it was. Each cottage stood on its accustomed site,
+each tree wore its familiar appearance. Habit had graven uneraseably on
+my memory, every turn and change of object on the road. At a short
+distance beyond the Little Park, was an elm half blown down by a storm,
+some ten years ago; and still, with leafless snow-laden branches, it
+stretched across the pathway, which wound through a meadow, beside a
+shallow brook, whose brawling was silenced by frost—that stile, that
+white gate, that hollow oak tree, which doubtless once belonged to the
+forest, and which now shewed in the moonlight its gaping rent; to whose
+fanciful appearance, tricked out by the dusk into a resemblance of the
+human form, the children had given the name of Falstaff;—all these
+objects were as well known to me as the cold hearth of my deserted
+home, and every moss-grown wall and plot of orchard ground, alike as
+twin lambs are to each other in a stranger’s eye, yet to my accustomed
+gaze bore differences, distinction, and a name. England remained,
+though England was dead—it was the ghost of merry England that I
+beheld, under those greenwood shade passing generations had sported in
+security and ease. To this painful recognition of familiar places, was
+added a feeling experienced by all, understood by none—a feeling as if
+in some state, less visionary than a dream, in some past real
+existence, I had seen all I saw, with precisely the same feelings as I
+now beheld them—as if all my sensations were a duplex mirror of a
+former revelation. To get rid of this oppressive sense I strove to
+imagine change in this tranquil spot—this augmented my mood, by causing
+me to bestow more attention on the objects which occasioned me pain.
+
+I reached Datchet and Lucy’s humble abode—once noisy with Saturday
+night revellers, or trim and neat on Sunday morning it had borne
+testimony to the labours and orderly habits of the housewife. The snow
+lay high about the door, as if it had remained unclosed for many days.
+
+    “What scene of death hath Roscius now to act?”
+
+I muttered to myself as I looked at the dark casements. At first I
+thought I saw a light in one of them, but it proved to be merely the
+refraction of the moon-beams, while the only sound was the crackling
+branches as the breeze whirred the snow flakes from them—the moon
+sailed high and unclouded in the interminable ether, while the shadow
+of the cottage lay black on the garden behind. I entered this by the
+open wicket, and anxiously examined each window. At length I detected a
+ray of light struggling through a closed shutter in one of the upper
+rooms—it was a novel feeling, alas! to look at any house and say there
+dwells its usual inmate—the door of the house was merely on the latch:
+so I entered and ascended the moon-lit staircase. The door of the
+inhabited room was ajar: looking in, I saw Lucy sitting as at work at
+the table on which the light stood; the implements of needlework were
+about her, but her hand had fallen on her lap, and her eyes, fixed on
+the ground, shewed by their vacancy that her thoughts wandered. Traces
+of care and watching had diminished her former attractions—but her
+simple dress and cap, her desponding attitude, and the single candle
+that cast its light upon her, gave for a moment a picturesque grouping
+to the whole. A fearful reality recalled me from the thought—a figure
+lay stretched on the bed covered by a sheet—her mother was dead, and
+Lucy, apart from all the world, deserted and alone, watched beside the
+corpse during the weary night. I entered the room, and my unexpected
+appearance at first drew a scream from the lone survivor of a dead
+nation; but she recognised me, and recovered herself, with the quick
+exercise of self-control habitual to her. “Did you not expect me?” I
+asked, in that low voice which the presence of the dead makes us as it
+were instinctively assume.
+
+“You are very good,” replied she, “to have come yourself; I can never
+thank you sufficiently; but it is too late.”
+
+“Too late,” cried I, “what do you mean? It is not too late to take you
+from this deserted place, and conduct you to—-”
+
+My own loss, which I had forgotten as I spoke, now made me turn away,
+while choking grief impeded my speech. I threw open the window, and
+looked on the cold, waning, ghastly, misshaped circle on high, and the
+chill white earth beneath—did the spirit of sweet Idris sail along the
+moon-frozen crystal air?—No, no, a more genial atmosphere, a lovelier
+habitation was surely hers!
+
+I indulged in this meditation for a moment, and then again addressed
+the mourner, who stood leaning against the bed with that expression of
+resigned despair, of complete misery, and a patient sufferance of it,
+which is far more touching than any of the insane ravings or wild
+gesticulation of untamed sorrow. I desired to draw her from this spot;
+but she opposed my wish. That class of persons whose imagination and
+sensibility have never been taken out of the narrow circle immediately
+in view, if they possess these qualities to any extent, are apt to pour
+their influence into the very realities which appear to destroy them,
+and to cling to these with double tenacity from not being able to
+comprehend any thing beyond. Thus Lucy, in desert England, in a dead
+world, wished to fulfil the usual ceremonies of the dead, such as were
+customary to the English country people, when death was a rare
+visitant, and gave us time to receive his dreaded usurpation with pomp
+and circumstance—going forth in procession to deliver the keys of the
+tomb into his conquering hand. She had already, alone as she was,
+accomplished some of these, and the work on which I found her employed,
+was her mother’s shroud. My heart sickened at such detail of woe, which
+a female can endure, but which is more painful to the masculine spirit
+than deadliest struggle, or throes of unutterable but transient agony.
+
+This must not be, I told her; and then, as further inducement, I
+communicated to her my recent loss, and gave her the idea that she must
+come with me to take charge of the orphan children, whom the death of
+Idris had deprived of a mother’s care. Lucy never resisted the call of
+a duty, so she yielded, and closing the casements and doors with care,
+she accompanied me back to Windsor. As we went she communicated to me
+the occasion of her mother’s death. Either by some mischance she had
+got sight of Lucy’s letter to Idris, or she had overheard her
+conversation with the countryman who bore it; however it might be, she
+obtained a knowledge of the appalling situation of herself and her
+daughter, her aged frame could not sustain the anxiety and horror this
+discovery instilled—she concealed her knowledge from Lucy, but brooded
+over it through sleepless nights, till fever and delirium, swift
+forerunners of death, disclosed the secret. Her life, which had long
+been hovering on its extinction, now yielded at once to the united
+effects of misery and sickness, and that same morning she had died.
+
+After the tumultuous emotions of the day, I was glad to find on my
+arrival at the inn that my companions had retired to rest. I gave Lucy
+in charge to the Countess’s attendant, and then sought repose from my
+various struggles and impatient regrets. For a few moments the events
+of the day floated in disastrous pageant through my brain, till sleep
+bathed it in forgetfulness; when morning dawned and I awoke, it seemed
+as if my slumber had endured for years.
+
+My companions had not shared my oblivion. Clara’s swollen eyes shewed
+that she had passed the night in weeping. The Countess looked haggard
+and wan. Her firm spirit had not found relief in tears, and she
+suffered the more from all the painful retrospect and agonizing regret
+that now occupied her. We departed from Windsor, as soon as the burial
+rites had been performed for Lucy’s mother, and, urged on by an
+impatient desire to change the scene, went forward towards Dover with
+speed, our escort having gone before to provide horses; finding them
+either in the warm stables they instinctively sought during the cold
+weather, or standing shivering in the bleak fields ready to surrender
+their liberty in exchange for offered corn.
+
+During our ride the Countess recounted to me the extraordinary
+circumstances which had brought her so strangely to my side in the
+chancel of St. George’s chapel. When last she had taken leave of Idris,
+as she looked anxiously on her faded person and pallid countenance, she
+had suddenly been visited by a conviction that she saw her for the last
+time. It was hard to part with her while under the dominion of this
+sentiment, and for the last time she endeavoured to persuade her
+daughter to commit herself to her nursing, permitting me to join
+Adrian. Idris mildly refused, and thus they separated. The idea that
+they should never again meet grew on the Countess’s mind, and haunted
+her perpetually; a thousand times she had resolved to turn back and
+join us, and was again and again restrained by the pride and anger of
+which she was the slave. Proud of heart as she was, she bathed her
+pillow with nightly tears, and through the day was subdued by nervous
+agitation and expectation of the dreaded event, which she was wholly
+incapable of curbing. She confessed that at this period her hatred of
+me knew no bounds, since she considered me as the sole obstacle to the
+fulfilment of her dearest wish, that of attending upon her daughter in
+her last moments. She desired to express her fears to her son, and to
+seek consolation from his sympathy with, or courage from his rejection
+of, her auguries.
+
+On the first day of her arrival at Dover she walked with him on the sea
+beach, and with the timidity characteristic of passionate and
+exaggerated feeling was by degrees bringing the conversation to the
+desired point, when she could communicate her fears to him, when the
+messenger who bore my letter announcing our temporary return to
+Windsor, came riding down to them. He gave some oral account of how he
+had left us, and added, that notwithstanding the cheerfulness and good
+courage of Lady Idris, he was afraid that she would hardly reach
+Windsor alive. “True,” said the Countess, “your fears are just, she is
+about to expire!”
+
+As she spoke, her eyes were fixed on a tomblike hollow of the cliff,
+and she saw, she averred the same to me with solemnity, Idris pacing
+slowly towards this cave. She was turned from her, her head was bent
+down, her white dress was such as she was accustomed to wear, except
+that a thin crape-like veil covered her golden tresses, and concealed
+her as a dim transparent mist. She looked dejected, as docilely
+yielding to a commanding power; she submissively entered, and was lost
+in the dark recess.
+
+“Were I subject to visionary moods,” said the venerable lady, as she
+continued her narrative, “I might doubt my eyes, and condemn my
+credulity; but reality is the world I live in, and what I saw I doubt
+not had existence beyond myself. From that moment I could not rest; it
+was worth my existence to see her once again before she died; I knew
+that I should not accomplish this, yet I must endeavour. I immediately
+departed for Windsor; and, though I was assured that we travelled
+speedily, it seemed to me that our progress was snail-like, and that
+delays were created solely for my annoyance. Still I accused you, and
+heaped on your head the fiery ashes of my burning impatience. It was no
+disappointment, though an agonizing pang, when you pointed to her last
+abode; and words would ill express the abhorrence I that moment felt
+towards you, the triumphant impediment to my dearest wishes. I saw her,
+and anger, and hate, and injustice died at her bier, giving place at
+their departure to a remorse (Great God, that I should feel it!) which
+must last while memory and feeling endure.”
+
+To medicine such remorse, to prevent awakening love and new-born
+mildness from producing the same bitter fruit that hate and harshness
+had done, I devoted all my endeavours to soothe the venerable penitent.
+Our party was a melancholy one; each was possessed by regret for what
+was remediless; for the absence of his mother shadowed even the infant
+gaiety of Evelyn. Added to this was the prospect of the uncertain
+future. Before the final accomplishment of any great voluntary change
+the mind vacillates, now soothing itself by fervent expectation, now
+recoiling from obstacles which seem never to have presented themselves
+before with so frightful an aspect. An involuntary tremor ran through
+me when I thought that in another day we might have crossed the watery
+barrier, and have set forward on that hopeless, interminable, sad
+wandering, which but a short time before I regarded as the only relief
+to sorrow that our situation afforded.
+
+Our approach to Dover was announced by the loud roarings of the wintry
+sea. They were borne miles inland by the sound-laden blast, and by
+their unaccustomed uproar, imparted a feeling of insecurity and peril
+to our stable abode. At first we hardly permitted ourselves to think
+that any unusual eruption of nature caused this tremendous war of air
+and water, but rather fancied that we merely listened to what we had
+heard a thousand times before, when we had watched the flocks of
+fleece-crowned waves, driven by the winds, come to lament and die on
+the barren sands and pointed rocks. But we found upon advancing
+farther, that Dover was overflowed— many of the houses were overthrown
+by the surges which filled the streets, and with hideous brawlings
+sometimes retreated leaving the pavement of the town bare, till again
+hurried forward by the influx of ocean, they returned with
+thunder-sound to their usurped station.
+
+Hardly less disturbed than the tempestuous world of waters was the
+assembly of human beings, that from the cliff fearfully watched its
+ravings. On the morning of the arrival of the emigrants under the
+conduct of Adrian, the sea had been serene and glassy, the slight
+ripples refracted the sunbeams, which shed their radiance through the
+clear blue frosty air. This placid appearance of nature was hailed as a
+good augury for the voyage, and the chief immediately repaired to the
+harbour to examine two steamboats which were moored there. On the
+following midnight, when all were at rest, a frightful storm of wind
+and clattering rain and hail first disturbed them, and the voice of one
+shrieking in the streets, that the sleepers must awake or they would be
+drowned; and when they rushed out, half clothed, to discover the
+meaning of this alarm, they found that the tide, rising above every
+mark, was rushing into the town. They ascended the cliff, but the
+darkness permitted only the white crest of waves to be seen, while the
+roaring wind mingled its howlings in dire accord with the wild surges.
+The awful hour of night, the utter inexperience of many who had never
+seen the sea before, the wailing of women and cries of children added
+to the horror of the tumult. All the following day the same scene
+continued. When the tide ebbed, the town was left dry; but on its flow,
+it rose even higher than on the preceding night. The vast ships that
+lay rotting in the roads were whirled from their anchorage, and driven
+and jammed against the cliff, the vessels in the harbour were flung on
+land like sea-weed, and there battered to pieces by the breakers. The
+waves dashed against the cliff, which if in any place it had been
+before loosened, now gave way, and the affrighted crowd saw vast
+fragments of the near earth fall with crash and roar into the deep.
+This sight operated differently on different persons. The greater part
+thought it a judgment of God, to prevent or punish our emigration from
+our native land. Many were doubly eager to quit a nook of ground now
+become their prison, which appeared unable to resist the inroads of
+ocean’s giant waves.
+
+When we arrived at Dover, after a fatiguing day’s journey, we all
+required rest and sleep; but the scene acting around us soon drove away
+such ideas. We were drawn, along with the greater part of our
+companions, to the edge of the cliff, there to listen to and make a
+thousand conjectures. A fog narrowed our horizon to about a quarter of
+a mile, and the misty veil, cold and dense, enveloped sky and sea in
+equal obscurity. What added to our inquietude was the circumstance that
+two-thirds of our original number were now waiting for us in Paris, and
+clinging, as we now did most painfully, to any addition to our
+melancholy remnant, this division, with the tameless impassable ocean
+between, struck us with affright. At length, after loitering for
+several hours on the cliff, we retired to Dover Castle, whose roof
+sheltered all who breathed the English air, and sought the sleep
+necessary to restore strength and courage to our worn frames and
+languid spirits.
+
+Early in the morning Adrian brought me the welcome intelligence that
+the wind had changed: it had been south-west; it was now north-east.
+The sky was stripped bare of clouds by the increasing gale, while the
+tide at its ebb seceded entirely from the town. The change of wind
+rather increased the fury of the sea, but it altered its late dusky hue
+to a bright green; and in spite of its unmitigated clamour, its more
+cheerful appearance instilled hope and pleasure. All day we watched the
+ranging of the mountainous waves, and towards sunset a desire to
+decypher the promise for the morrow at its setting, made us all gather
+with one accord on the edge of the cliff. When the mighty luminary
+approached within a few degrees of the tempest-tossed horizon,
+suddenly, a wonder! three other suns, alike burning and brilliant,
+rushed from various quarters of the heavens towards the great orb; they
+whirled round it. The glare of light was intense to our dazzled eyes;
+the sun itself seemed to join in the dance, while the sea burned like a
+furnace, like all Vesuvius a-light, with flowing lava beneath. The
+horses broke loose from their stalls in terror—a herd of cattle, panic
+struck, raced down to the brink of the cliff, and blinded by light,
+plunged down with frightful yells in the waves below. The time occupied
+by the apparition of these meteors was comparatively short; suddenly
+the three mock suns united in one, and plunged into the sea. A few
+seconds afterwards, a deafening watery sound came up with awful peal
+from the spot where they had disappeared.
+
+Meanwhile the sun, disencumbered from his strange satellites, paced
+with its accustomed majesty towards its western home. When—we dared not
+trust our eyes late dazzled, but it seemed that—the sea rose to meet
+it—it mounted higher and higher, till the fiery globe was obscured, and
+the wall of water still ascended the horizon; it appeared as if
+suddenly the motion of earth was revealed to us—as if no longer we were
+ruled by ancient laws, but were turned adrift in an unknown region of
+space. Many cried aloud, that these were no meteors, but globes of
+burning matter, which had set fire to the earth, and caused the vast
+cauldron at our feet to bubble up with its measureless waves; the day
+of judgment was come they averred, and a few moments would transport us
+before the awful countenance of the omnipotent judge; while those less
+given to visionary terrors, declared that two conflicting gales had
+occasioned the last phaenomenon. In support of this opinion they
+pointed out the fact that the east wind died away, while the rushing of
+the coming west mingled its wild howl with the roar of the advancing
+waters. Would the cliff resist this new battery? Was not the giant wave
+far higher than the precipice? Would not our little island be deluged
+by its approach? The crowd of spectators fled. They were dispersed over
+the fields, stopping now and then, and looking back in terror. A
+sublime sense of awe calmed the swift pulsations of my heart—I awaited
+the approach of the destruction menaced, with that solemn resignation
+which an unavoidable necessity instils. The ocean every moment assumed
+a more terrific aspect, while the twilight was dimmed by the rack which
+the west wind spread over the sky. By slow degrees however, as the wave
+advanced, it took a more mild appearance; some under current of air, or
+obstruction in the bed of the waters, checked its progress, and it sank
+gradually; while the surface of the sea became uniformly higher as it
+dissolved into it. This change took from us the fear of an immediate
+catastrophe, although we were still anxious as to the final result. We
+continued during the whole night to watch the fury of the sea and the
+pace of the driving clouds, through whose openings the rare stars
+rushed impetuously; the thunder of conflicting elements deprived us of
+all power to sleep.
+
+This endured ceaselessly for three days and nights. The stoutest hearts
+quailed before the savage enmity of nature; provisions began to fail
+us, though every day foraging parties were dispersed to the nearer
+towns. In vain we schooled ourselves into the belief, that there was
+nothing out of the common order of nature in the strife we witnessed;
+our disasterous and overwhelming destiny turned the best of us to
+cowards. Death had hunted us through the course of many months, even to
+the narrow strip of time on which we now stood; narrow indeed, and
+buffeted by storms, was our footway overhanging the great sea of
+calamity—
+
+        As an unsheltered northern shore
+Is shaken by the wintry wave—
+And frequent storms for evermore,
+(While from the west the loud winds rave,
+Or from the east, or mountains hoar)
+The struck and tott’ring sand-bank lave.[21]
+
+
+It required more than human energy to bear up against the menaces of
+destruction that every where surrounded us.
+
+After the lapse of three days, the gale died away, the sea-gull sailed
+upon the calm bosom of the windless atmosphere, and the last yellow
+leaf on the topmost branch of the oak hung without motion. The sea no
+longer broke with fury; but a swell setting in steadily for shore, with
+long sweep and sullen burst replaced the roar of the breakers. Yet we
+derived hope from the change, and we did not doubt that after the
+interval of a few days the sea would resume its tranquillity. The
+sunset of the fourth day favoured this idea; it was clear and golden.
+As we gazed on the purple sea, radiant beneath, we were attracted by a
+novel spectacle; a dark speck—as it neared, visibly a boat—rode on the
+top of the waves, every now and then lost in the steep vallies between.
+We marked its course with eager questionings; and, when we saw that it
+evidently made for shore, we descended to the only practicable landing
+place, and hoisted a signal to direct them. By the help of glasses we
+distinguished her crew; it consisted of nine men, Englishmen, belonging
+in truth to the two divisions of our people, who had preceded us, and
+had been for several weeks at Paris. As countryman was wont to meet
+countryman in distant lands, did we greet our visitors on their
+landing, with outstretched hands and gladsome welcome. They were slow
+to reciprocate our gratulations. They looked angry and resentful; not
+less than the chafed sea which they had traversed with imminent peril,
+though apparently more displeased with each other than with us. It was
+strange to see these human beings, who appeared to be given forth by
+the earth like rare and inestimable plants, full of towering passion,
+and the spirit of angry contest. Their first demand was to be conducted
+to the Lord Protector of England, so they called Adrian, though he had
+long discarded the empty title, as a bitter mockery of the shadow to
+which the Protectorship was now reduced. They were speedily led to
+Dover Castle, from whose keep Adrian had watched the movements of the
+boat. He received them with the interest and wonder so strange a
+visitation created. In the confusion occasioned by their angry demands
+for precedence, it was long before we could discover the secret meaning
+of this strange scene. By degrees, from the furious declamations of
+one, the fierce interruptions of another, and the bitter scoffs of a
+third, we found that they were deputies from our colony at Paris, from
+three parties there formed, who, each with angry rivalry, tried to
+attain a superiority over the other two. These deputies had been
+dispatched by them to Adrian, who had been selected arbiter; and they
+had journied from Paris to Calais, through the vacant towns and
+desolate country, indulging the while violent hatred against each
+other; and now they pleaded their several causes with unmitigated
+party-spirit.
+
+By examining the deputies apart, and after much investigation, we
+learnt the true state of things at Paris. Since parliament had elected
+him Ryland’s deputy, all the surviving English had submitted to Adrian.
+He was our captain to lead us from our native soil to unknown lands,
+our lawgiver and our preserver. On the first arrangement of our scheme
+of emigration, no continued separation of our members was contemplated,
+and the command of the whole body in gradual ascent of power had its
+apex in the Earl of Windsor. But unforeseen circumstances changed our
+plans for us, and occasioned the greater part of our numbers to be
+divided for the space of nearly two months, from the supreme chief.
+They had gone over in two distinct bodies; and on their arrival at
+Paris dissension arose between them.
+
+They had found Paris a desert. When first the plague had appeared, the
+return of travellers and merchants, and communications by letter,
+informed us regularly of the ravages made by disease on the continent.
+But with the encreased mortality this intercourse declined and ceased.
+Even in England itself communication from one part of the island to the
+other became slow and rare. No vessel stemmed the flood that divided
+Calais from Dover; or if some melancholy voyager, wishing to assure
+himself of the life or death of his relatives, put from the French
+shore to return among us, often the greedy ocean swallowed his little
+craft, or after a day or two he was infected by the disorder, and died
+before he could tell the tale of the desolation of France. We were
+therefore to a great degree ignorant of the state of things on the
+continent, and were not without some vague hope of finding numerous
+companions in its wide track. But the same causes that had so fearfully
+diminished the English nation had had even greater scope for mischief
+in the sister land. France was a blank; during the long line of road
+from Calais to Paris not one human being was found. In Paris there were
+a few, perhaps a hundred, who, resigned to their coming fate, flitted
+about the streets of the capital and assembled to converse of past
+times, with that vivacity and even gaiety that seldom deserts the
+individuals of this nation.
+
+The English took uncontested possession of Paris. Its high houses and
+narrow streets were lifeless. A few pale figures were to be
+distinguished at the accustomed resort at the Tuileries; they wondered
+wherefore the islanders should approach their ill-fated city—for in the
+excess of wretchedness, the sufferers always imagine, that their part
+of the calamity is the bitterest, as, when enduring intense pain, we
+would exchange the particular torture we writhe under, for any other
+which should visit a different part of the frame. They listened to the
+account the emigrants gave of their motives for leaving their native
+land, with a shrug almost of disdain—“Return,” they said, “return to
+your island, whose sea breezes, and division from the continent gives
+some promise of health; if Pestilence among you has slain its hundreds,
+with us it has slain its thousands. Are you not even now more numerous
+than we are?—A year ago you would have found only the sick burying the
+dead; now we are happier; for the pang of struggle has passed away, and
+the few you find here are patiently waiting the final blow. But you,
+who are not content to die, breathe no longer the air of France, or
+soon you will only be a part of her soil.”
+
+Thus, by menaces of the sword, they would have driven back those who
+had escaped from fire. But the peril left behind was deemed imminent by
+my countrymen; that before them doubtful and distant; and soon other
+feelings arose to obliterate fear, or to replace it by passions, that
+ought to have had no place among a brotherhood of unhappy survivors of
+the expiring world.
+
+The more numerous division of emigrants, which arrived first at Paris,
+assumed a superiority of rank and power; the second party asserted
+their independence. A third was formed by a sectarian, a self-erected
+prophet, who, while he attributed all power and rule to God, strove to
+get the real command of his comrades into his own hands. This third
+division consisted of fewest individuals, but their purpose was more
+one, their obedience to their leader more entire, their fortitude and
+courage more unyielding and active.
+
+During the whole progress of the plague, the teachers of religion were
+in possession of great power; a power of good, if rightly directed, or
+of incalculable mischief, if fanaticism or intolerance guided their
+efforts. In the present instance, a worse feeling than either of these
+actuated the leader. He was an impostor in the most determined sense of
+the term. A man who had in early life lost, through the indulgence of
+vicious propensities, all sense of rectitude or self-esteem; and who,
+when ambition was awakened in him, gave himself up to its influence
+unbridled by any scruple. His father had been a methodist preacher, an
+enthusiastic man with simple intentions; but whose pernicious doctrines
+of election and special grace had contributed to destroy all
+conscientious feeling in his son. During the progress of the pestilence
+he had entered upon various schemes, by which to acquire adherents and
+power. Adrian had discovered and defeated these attempts; but Adrian
+was absent; the wolf assumed the shepherd’s garb, and the flock
+admitted the deception: he had formed a party during the few weeks he
+had been in Paris, who zealously propagated the creed of his divine
+mission, and believed that safety and salvation were to be afforded
+only to those who put their trust in him.
+
+When once the spirit of dissension had arisen, the most frivolous
+causes gave it activity. The first party, on arriving at Paris, had
+taken possession of the Tuileries; chance and friendly feeling had
+induced the second to lodge near to them. A contest arose concerning
+the distribution of the pillage; the chiefs of the first division
+demanded that the whole should be placed at their disposal; with this
+assumption the opposite party refused to comply. When next the latter
+went to forage, the gates of Paris were shut on them. After overcoming
+this difficulty, they marched in a body to the Tuileries. They found
+that their enemies had been already expelled thence by the Elect, as
+the fanatical party designated themselves, who refused to admit any
+into the palace who did not first abjure obedience to all except God,
+and his delegate on earth, their chief. Such was the beginning of the
+strife, which at length proceeded so far, that the three divisions,
+armed, met in the Place Vendome, each resolved to subdue by force the
+resistance of its adversaries. They assembled, their muskets were
+loaded, and even pointed at the breasts of their so called enemies. One
+word had been sufficient; and there the last of mankind would have
+burthened their souls with the crime of murder, and dipt their hands in
+each other’s blood. A sense of shame, a recollection that not only
+their cause, but the existence of the whole human race was at stake,
+entered the breast of the leader of the more numerous party. He was
+aware, that if the ranks were thinned, no other recruits could fill
+them up; that each man was as a priceless gem in a kingly crown, which
+if destroyed, the earth’s deep entrails could yield no paragon. He was
+a young man, and had been hurried on by presumption, and the notion of
+his high rank and superiority to all other pretenders; now he repented
+his work, he felt that all the blood about to be shed would be on his
+head; with sudden impulse therefore he spurred his horse between the
+bands, and, having fixed a white handkerchief on the point of his
+uplifted sword, thus demanded parley; the opposite leaders obeyed the
+signal. He spoke with warmth; he reminded them of the oath all the
+chiefs had taken to submit to the Lord Protector; he declared their
+present meeting to be an act of treason and mutiny; he allowed that he
+had been hurried away by passion, but that a cooler moment had arrived;
+and he proposed that each party should send deputies to the Earl of
+Windsor, inviting his interference and offering submission to his
+decision. His offer was accepted so far, that each leader consented to
+command a retreat, and moreover agreed, that after the approbation of
+their several parties had been consulted, they should meet that night
+on some neutral spot to ratify the truce. At the meeting of the chiefs,
+this plan was finally concluded upon. The leader of the fanatics indeed
+refused to admit the arbitration of Adrian; he sent ambassadors, rather
+than deputies, to assert his claim, not plead his cause.
+
+The truce was to continue until the first of February, when the bands
+were again to assemble on the Place Vendome; it was of the utmost
+consequence therefore that Adrian should arrive in Paris by that day,
+since an hair might turn the scale, and peace, scared away by intestine
+broils, might only return to watch by the silent dead. It was now the
+twenty-eighth of January; every vessel stationed near Dover had been
+beaten to pieces and destroyed by the furious storms I have
+commemorated. Our journey however would admit of no delay. That very
+night, Adrian, and I, and twelve others, either friends or attendants,
+put off from the English shore, in the boat that had brought over the
+deputies. We all took our turn at the oar; and the immediate occasion
+of our departure affording us abundant matter for conjecture and
+discourse, prevented the feeling that we left our native country,
+depopulate England, for the last time, to enter deeply into the minds
+of the greater part of our number. It was a serene starlight night, and
+the dark line of the English coast continued for some time visible at
+intervals, as we rose on the broad back of the waves. I exerted myself
+with my long oar to give swift impulse to our skiff; and, while the
+waters splashed with melancholy sound against its sides, I looked with
+sad affection on this last glimpse of sea-girt England, and strained my
+eyes not too soon to lose sight of the castellated cliff, which rose to
+protect the land of heroism and beauty from the inroads of ocean, that,
+turbulent as I had lately seen it, required such cyclopean walls for
+its repulsion. A solitary sea-gull winged its flight over our heads, to
+seek its nest in a cleft of the precipice. Yes, thou shalt revisit the
+land of thy birth, I thought, as I looked invidiously on the airy
+voyager; but we shall, never more! Tomb of Idris, farewell! Grave, in
+which my heart lies sepultured, farewell for ever!
+
+We were twelve hours at sea, and the heavy swell obliged us to exert
+all our strength. At length, by mere dint of rowing, we reached the
+French coast. The stars faded, and the grey morning cast a dim veil
+over the silver horns of the waning moon—the sun rose broad and red
+from the sea, as we walked over the sands to Calais. Our first care was
+to procure horses, and although wearied by our night of watching and
+toil, some of our party immediately went in quest of these in the wide
+fields of the unenclosed and now barren plain round Calais. We divided
+ourselves, like seamen, into watches, and some reposed, while others
+prepared the morning’s repast. Our foragers returned at noon with only
+six horses—on these, Adrian and I, and four others, proceeded on our
+journey towards the great city, which its inhabitants had fondly named
+the capital of the civilized world. Our horses had become, through
+their long holiday, almost wild, and we crossed the plain round Calais
+with impetuous speed. From the height near Boulogne, I turned again to
+look on England; nature had cast a misty pall over her, her cliff was
+hidden—there was spread the watery barrier that divided us, never again
+to be crossed; she lay on the ocean plain,
+
+In the great pool a swan’s nest.
+
+
+Ruined the nest, alas! the swans of Albion had passed away for ever—an
+uninhabited rock in the wide Pacific, which had remained since the
+creation uninhabited, unnamed, unmarked, would be of as much account in
+the world’s future history, as desert England.
+
+Our journey was impeded by a thousand obstacles. As our horses grew
+tired, we had to seek for others; and hours were wasted, while we
+exhausted our artifices to allure some of these enfranchised slaves of
+man to resume the yoke; or as we went from stable to stable through the
+towns, hoping to find some who had not forgotten the shelter of their
+native stalls. Our ill success in procuring them, obliged us
+continually to leave some one of our companions behind; and on the
+first of February, Adrian and I entered Paris, wholly unaccompanied.
+The serene morning had dawned when we arrived at Saint Denis, and the
+sun was high, when the clamour of voices, and the clash, as we feared,
+of weapons, guided us to where our countrymen had assembled on the
+Place Vendome. We passed a knot of Frenchmen, who were talking
+earnestly of the madness of the insular invaders, and then coming by a
+sudden turn upon the Place, we saw the sun glitter on drawn swords and
+fixed bayonets, while yells and clamours rent the air. It was a scene
+of unaccustomed confusion in these days of depopulation. Roused by
+fancied wrongs, and insulting scoffs, the opposite parties had rushed
+to attack each other; while the elect, drawn up apart, seemed to wait
+an opportunity to fall with better advantage on their foes, when they
+should have mutually weakened each other. A merciful power interposed,
+and no blood was shed; for, while the insane mob were in the very act
+of attack, the females, wives, mothers and daughters, rushed between;
+they seized the bridles; they embraced the knees of the horsemen, and
+hung on the necks, or enweaponed arms of their enraged relatives; the
+shrill female scream was mingled with the manly shout, and formed the
+wild clamour that welcomed us on our arrival.
+
+Our voices could not be heard in the tumult; Adrian however was eminent
+for the white charger he rode; spurring him, he dashed into the midst
+of the throng: he was recognized, and a loud cry raised for England and
+the Protector. The late adversaries, warmed to affection at the sight
+of him, joined in heedless confusion, and surrounded him; the women
+kissed his hands, and the edges of his garments; nay, his horse
+received tribute of their embraces; some wept their welcome; he
+appeared an angel of peace descended among them; and the only danger
+was, that his mortal nature would be demonstrated, by his suffocation
+from the kindness of his friends. His voice was at length heard, and
+obeyed; the crowd fell back; the chiefs alone rallied round him. I had
+seen Lord Raymond ride through his lines; his look of victory, and
+majestic mien obtained the respect and obedience of all: such was not
+the appearance or influence of Adrian. His slight figure, his fervent
+look, his gesture, more of deprecation than rule, were proofs that
+love, unmingled with fear, gave him dominion over the hearts of a
+multitude, who knew that he never flinched from danger, nor was
+actuated by other motives than care for the general welfare. No
+distinction was now visible between the two parties, late ready to shed
+each other’s blood, for, though neither would submit to the other, they
+both yielded ready obedience to the Earl of Windsor.
+
+One party however remained, cut off from the rest, which did not
+sympathize in the joy exhibited on Adrian’s arrival, or imbibe the
+spirit of peace, which fell like dew upon the softened hearts of their
+countrymen. At the head of this assembly was a ponderous, dark-looking
+man, whose malign eye surveyed with gloating delight the stern looks of
+his followers. They had hitherto been inactive, but now, perceiving
+themselves to be forgotten in the universal jubilee, they advanced with
+threatening gestures: our friends had, as it were in wanton contention,
+attacked each other; they wanted but to be told that their cause was
+one, for it to become so: their mutual anger had been a fire of straw,
+compared to the slow-burning hatred they both entertained for these
+seceders, who seized a portion of the world to come, there to entrench
+and incastellate themselves, and to issue with fearful sally, and
+appalling denunciations, on the mere common children of the earth. The
+first advance of the little army of the elect reawakened their rage;
+they grasped their arms, and waited but their leader’s signal to
+commence the attack, when the clear tones of Adrian’s voice were heard,
+commanding them to fall back; with confused murmur and hurried retreat,
+as the wave ebbs clamorously from the sands it lately covered, our
+friends obeyed. Adrian rode singly into the space between the opposing
+bands; he approached the hostile leader, as requesting him to imitate
+his example, but his look was not obeyed, and the chief advanced,
+followed by his whole troop. There were many women among them, who
+seemed more eager and resolute than their male companions. They pressed
+round their leader, as if to shield him, while they loudly bestowed on
+him every sacred denomination and epithet of worship. Adrian met them
+half way; they halted: “What,” he said, “do you seek? Do you require
+any thing of us that we refuse to give, and that you are forced to
+acquire by arms and warfare?”
+
+His questions were answered by a general cry, in which the words
+election, sin, and red right arm of God, could alone be heard.
+
+Adrian looked expressly at their leader, saying, “Can you not silence
+your followers? Mine, you perceive, obey me.”
+
+The fellow answered by a scowl; and then, perhaps fearful that his
+people should become auditors of the debate he expected to ensue, he
+commanded them to fall back, and advanced by himself. “What, I again
+ask,” said Adrian, “do you require of us?”
+
+“Repentance,” replied the man, whose sinister brow gathered clouds as
+he spoke. “Obedience to the will of the Most High, made manifest to
+these his Elected People. Do we not all die through your sins, O
+generation of unbelief, and have we not a right to demand of you
+repentance and obedience?”
+
+“And if we refuse them, what then?” his opponent inquired mildly.
+
+“Beware,” cried the man, “God hears you, and will smite your stony
+heart in his wrath; his poisoned arrows fly, his dogs of death are
+unleashed! We will not perish unrevenged—and mighty will our avenger
+be, when he descends in visible majesty, and scatters destruction among
+you.”
+
+“My good fellow,” said Adrian, with quiet scorn, “I wish that you were
+ignorant only, and I think it would be no difficult task to prove to
+you, that you speak of what you do not understand. On the present
+occasion however, it is enough for me to know that you seek nothing of
+us; and, heaven is our witness, we seek nothing of you. I should be
+sorry to embitter by strife the few days that we any of us may have
+here to live; when there,” he pointed downwards, “we shall not be able
+to contend, while here we need not. Go home, or stay; pray to your God
+in your own mode; your friends may do the like. My orisons consist in
+peace and good will, in resignation and hope. Farewell!”
+
+He bowed slightly to the angry disputant who was about to reply; and,
+turning his horse down Rue Saint Honore, called on his friends to
+follow him. He rode slowly, to give time to all to join him at the
+Barrier, and then issued his orders that those who yielded obedience to
+him, should rendezvous at Versailles. In the meantime he remained
+within the walls of Paris, until he had secured the safe retreat of
+all. In about a fortnight the remainder of the emigrants arrived from
+England, and they all repaired to Versailles; apartments were prepared
+for the family of the Protector in the Grand Trianon, and there, after
+the excitement of these events, we reposed amidst the luxuries of the
+departed Bourbons.
+
+ [21] Chorus in Œdipus Coloneus.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+After the repose of a few days, we held a council, to decide on our
+future movements. Our first plan had been to quit our wintry native
+latitude, and seek for our diminished numbers the luxuries and delights
+of a southern climate. We had not fixed on any precise spot as the
+termination of our wanderings; but a vague picture of perpetual spring,
+fragrant groves, and sparkling streams, floated in our imagination to
+entice us on. A variety of causes had detained us in England, and we
+had now arrived at the middle of February; if we pursued our original
+project, we should find ourselves in a worse situation than before,
+having exchanged our temperate climate for the intolerable heats of a
+summer in Egypt or Persia. We were therefore obliged to modify our
+plan, as the season continued to be inclement; and it was determined
+that we should await the arrival of spring in our present abode, and so
+order our future movements as to pass the hot months in the icy vallies
+of Switzerland, deferring our southern progress until the ensuing
+autumn, if such a season was ever again to be beheld by us.
+
+The castle and town of Versailles afforded our numbers ample
+accommodation, and foraging parties took it by turns to supply our
+wants. There was a strange and appalling motley in the situation of
+these the last of the race. At first I likened it to a colony, which
+borne over the far seas, struck root for the first time in a new
+country. But where was the bustle and industry characteristic of such
+an assemblage; the rudely constructed dwelling, which was to suffice
+till a more commodious mansion could be built; the marking out of
+fields; the attempt at cultivation; the eager curiosity to discover
+unknown animals and herbs; the excursions for the sake of exploring the
+country? Our habitations were palaces—our food was ready stored in
+granaries—there was no need of labour, no inquisitiveness, no restless
+desire to get on. If we had been assured that we should secure the
+lives of our present numbers, there would have been more vivacity and
+hope in our councils. We should have discussed as to the period when
+the existing produce for man’s sustenance would no longer suffice for
+us, and what mode of life we should then adopt. We should have
+considered more carefully our future plans, and debated concerning the
+spot where we should in future dwell. But summer and the plague were
+near, and we dared not look forward. Every heart sickened at the
+thought of amusement; if the younger part of our community were ever
+impelled, by youthful and untamed hilarity, to enter on any dance or
+song, to cheer the melancholy time, they would suddenly break off,
+checked by a mournful look or agonizing sigh from any one among them,
+who was prevented by sorrows and losses from mingling in the festivity.
+If laughter echoed under our roof, yet the heart was vacant of joy;
+and, when ever it chanced that I witnessed such attempts at pastime,
+they encreased instead of diminishing my sense of woe. In the midst of
+the pleasure-hunting throng, I would close my eyes, and see before me
+the obscure cavern, where was garnered the mortality of Idris, and the
+dead lay around, mouldering in hushed repose. When I again became aware
+of the present hour, softest melody of Lydian flute, or harmonious maze
+of graceful dance, was but as the demoniac chorus in the Wolf’s Glen,
+and the caperings of the reptiles that surrounded the magic circle.
+
+My dearest interval of peace occurred, when, released from the
+obligation of associating with the crowd, I could repose in the dear
+home where my children lived. Children I say, for the tenderest
+emotions of paternity bound me to Clara. She was now fourteen; sorrow,
+and deep insight into the scenes around her, calmed the restless spirit
+of girlhood; while the remembrance of her father whom she idolized, and
+respect for me and Adrian, implanted an high sense of duty in her young
+heart. Though serious she was not sad; the eager desire that makes us
+all, when young, plume our wings, and stretch our necks, that we may
+more swiftly alight tiptoe on the height of maturity, was subdued in
+her by early experience. All that she could spare of overflowing love
+from her parents’ memory, and attention to her living relatives, was
+spent upon religion. This was the hidden law of her heart, which she
+concealed with childish reserve, and cherished the more because it was
+secret. What faith so entire, what charity so pure, what hope so
+fervent, as that of early youth? and she, all love, all tenderness and
+trust, who from infancy had been tossed on the wide sea of passion and
+misfortune, saw the finger of apparent divinity in all, and her best
+hope was to make herself acceptable to the power she worshipped. Evelyn
+was only five years old; his joyous heart was incapable of sorrow, and
+he enlivened our house with the innocent mirth incident to his years.
+
+The aged Countess of Windsor had fallen from her dream of power, rank
+and grandeur; she had been suddenly seized with the conviction, that
+love was the only good of life, virtue the only ennobling distinction
+and enriching wealth. Such a lesson had been taught her by the dead
+lips of her neglected daughter; and she devoted herself, with all the
+fiery violence of her character, to the obtaining the affection of the
+remnants of her family. In early years the heart of Adrian had been
+chilled towards her; and, though he observed a due respect, her
+coldness, mixed with the recollection of disappointment and madness,
+caused him to feel even pain in her society. She saw this, and yet
+determined to win his love; the obstacle served the rather to excite
+her ambition. As Henry, Emperor of Germany, lay in the snow before Pope
+Leo’s gate for three winter days and nights, so did she in humility
+wait before the icy barriers of his closed heart, till he, the servant
+of love, and prince of tender courtesy, opened it wide for her
+admittance, bestowing, with fervency and gratitude, the tribute of
+filial affection she merited. Her understanding, courage, and presence
+of mind, became powerful auxiliaries to him in the difficult task of
+ruling the tumultuous crowd, which were subjected to his control, in
+truth by a single hair.
+
+The principal circumstances that disturbed our tranquillity during this
+interval, originated in the vicinity of the impostor-prophet and his
+followers. They continued to reside at Paris; but missionaries from
+among them often visited Versailles—and such was the power of
+assertions, however false, yet vehemently iterated, over the ready
+credulity of the ignorant and fearful, that they seldom failed in
+drawing over to their party some from among our numbers. An instance of
+this nature coming immediately under our notice, we were led to
+consider the miserable state in which we should leave our countrymen,
+when we should, at the approach of summer, move on towards Switzerland,
+and leave a deluded crew behind us in the hands of their miscreant
+leader. The sense of the smallness of our numbers, and expectation of
+decrease, pressed upon us; and, while it would be a subject of
+congratulation to ourselves to add one to our party, it would be doubly
+gratifying to rescue from the pernicious influence of superstition and
+unrelenting tyranny, the victims that now, though voluntarily
+enchained, groaned beneath it. If we had considered the preacher as
+sincere in a belief of his own denunciations, or only moderately
+actuated by kind feeling in the exercise of his assumed powers, we
+should have immediately addressed ourselves to him, and endeavoured
+with our best arguments to soften and humanize his views. But he was
+instigated by ambition, he desired to rule over these last stragglers
+from the fold of death; his projects went so far, as to cause him to
+calculate that, if, from these crushed remains, a few survived, so that
+a new race should spring up, he, by holding tight the reins of belief,
+might be remembered by the post-pestilential race as a patriarch, a
+prophet, nay a deity; such as of old among the post-diluvians were
+Jupiter the conqueror, Serapis the lawgiver, and Vishnou the preserver.
+These ideas made him inflexible in his rule, and violent in his hate of
+any who presumed to share with him his usurped empire.
+
+It is a strange fact, but incontestible, that the philanthropist, who
+ardent in his desire to do good, who patient, reasonable and gentle,
+yet disdains to use other argument than truth, has less influence over
+men’s minds, than he who, grasping and selfish, refuses not to adopt
+any means, nor awaken any passion, nor diffuse any falsehood, for the
+advancement of his cause. If this from time immemorial has been the
+case, the contrast was infinitely greater, now that the one could bring
+harrowing fears and transcendent hopes into play; while the other had
+few hopes to hold forth, nor could influence the imagination to
+diminish the fears which he himself was the first to entertain. The
+preacher had persuaded his followers, that their escape from the
+plague, the salvation of their children, and the rise of a new race of
+men from their seed, depended on their faith in, and their submission
+to him. They greedily imbibed this belief; and their over-weening
+credulity even rendered them eager to make converts to the same faith.
+
+How to seduce any individuals from such an alliance of fraud, was a
+frequent subject of Adrian’s meditations and discourse. He formed many
+plans for the purpose; but his own troop kept him in full occupation to
+ensure their fidelity and safety; beside which the preacher was as
+cautious and prudent, as he was cruel. His victims lived under the
+strictest rules and laws, which either entirely imprisoned them within
+the Tuileries, or let them out in such numbers, and under such leaders,
+as precluded the possibility of controversy. There was one among them
+however whom I resolved to save; she had been known to us in happier
+days; Idris had loved her; and her excellent nature made it peculiarly
+lamentable that she should be sacrificed by this merciless cannibal of
+souls.
+
+This man had between two and three hundred persons enlisted under his
+banners. More than half of them were women; there were about fifty
+children of all ages; and not more than eighty men. They were mostly
+drawn from that which, when such distinctions existed, was denominated
+the lower rank of society. The exceptions consisted of a few high-born
+females, who, panic-struck, and tamed by sorrow, had joined him. Among
+these was one, young, lovely, and enthusiastic, whose very goodness
+made her a more easy victim. I have mentioned her before: Juliet, the
+youngest daughter, and now sole relic of the ducal house of L—-. There
+are some beings, whom fate seems to select on whom to pour, in
+unmeasured portion, the vials of her wrath, and whom she bathes even to
+the lips in misery. Such a one was the ill-starred Juliet. She had lost
+her indulgent parents, her brothers and sisters, companions of her
+youth; in one fell swoop they had been carried off from her. Yet she
+had again dared to call herself happy; united to her admirer, to him
+who possessed and filled her whole heart, she yielded to the lethean
+powers of love, and knew and felt only his life and presence. At the
+very time when with keen delight she welcomed the tokens of maternity,
+this sole prop of her life failed, her husband died of the plague. For
+a time she had been lulled in insanity; the birth of her child restored
+her to the cruel reality of things, but gave her at the same time an
+object for whom to preserve at once life and reason. Every friend and
+relative had died off, and she was reduced to solitude and penury; deep
+melancholy and angry impatience distorted her judgment, so that she
+could not persuade herself to disclose her distress to us. When she
+heard of the plan of universal emigration, she resolved to remain
+behind with her child, and alone in wide England to live or die, as
+fate might decree, beside the grave of her beloved. She had hidden
+herself in one of the many empty habitations of London; it was she who
+rescued my Idris on the fatal twentieth of November, though my
+immediate danger, and the subsequent illness of Idris, caused us to
+forget our hapless friend. This circumstance had however brought her
+again in contact with her fellow-creatures; a slight illness of her
+infant, proved to her that she was still bound to humanity by an
+indestructible tie; to preserve this little creature’s life became the
+object of her being, and she joined the first division of migrants who
+went over to Paris.
+
+She became an easy prey to the methodist; her sensibility and acute
+fears rendered her accessible to every impulse; her love for her child
+made her eager to cling to the merest straw held out to save him. Her
+mind, once unstrung, and now tuned by roughest inharmonious hands, made
+her credulous: beautiful as fabled goddess, with voice of unrivalled
+sweetness, burning with new lighted enthusiasm, she became a stedfast
+proselyte, and powerful auxiliary to the leader of the elect. I had
+remarked her in the crowd, on the day we met on the Place Vendome; and,
+recollecting suddenly her providential rescue of my lost one, on the
+night of the twentieth of November, I reproached myself for my neglect
+and ingratitude, and felt impelled to leave no means that I could adopt
+untried, to recall her to her better self, and rescue her from the
+fangs of the hypocrite destroyer.
+
+I will not, at this period of my story, record the artifices I used to
+penetrate the asylum of the Tuileries, or give what would be a tedious
+account of my stratagems, disappointments, and perseverance. I at last
+succeeded in entering these walls, and roamed its halls and corridors
+in eager hope to find my selected convert. In the evening I contrived
+to mingle unobserved with the congregation, which assembled in the
+chapel to listen to the crafty and eloquent harangue of their prophet.
+I saw Juliet near him. Her dark eyes, fearfully impressed with the
+restless glare of madness, were fixed on him; she held her infant, not
+yet a year old, in her arms; and care of it alone could distract her
+attention from the words to which she eagerly listened. After the
+sermon was over, the congregation dispersed; all quitted the chapel
+except she whom I sought; her babe had fallen asleep; so she placed it
+on a cushion, and sat on the floor beside, watching its tranquil
+slumber.
+
+I presented myself to her; for a moment natural feeling produced a
+sentiment of gladness, which disappeared again, when with ardent and
+affectionate exhortation I besought her to accompany me in flight from
+this den of superstition and misery. In a moment she relapsed into the
+delirium of fanaticism, and, but that her gentle nature forbade, would
+have loaded me with execrations. She conjured me, she commanded me to
+leave her— “Beware, O beware,” she cried, “fly while yet your escape is
+practicable. Now you are safe; but strange sounds and inspirations come
+on me at times, and if the Eternal should in awful whisper reveal to me
+his will, that to save my child you must be sacrificed, I would call in
+the satellites of him you call the tyrant; they would tear you limb
+from limb; nor would I hallow the death of him whom Idris loved, by a
+single tear.”
+
+She spoke hurriedly, with tuneless voice, and wild look; her child
+awoke, and, frightened, began to cry; each sob went to the ill-fated
+mother’s heart, and she mingled the epithets of endearment she
+addressed to her infant, with angry commands that I should leave her.
+Had I had the means, I would have risked all, have torn her by force
+from the murderer’s den, and trusted to the healing balm of reason and
+affection. But I had no choice, no power even of longer struggle; steps
+were heard along the gallery, and the voice of the preacher drew near.
+Juliet, straining her child in a close embrace, fled by another
+passage. Even then I would have followed her; but my foe and his
+satellites entered; I was surrounded, and taken prisoner.
+
+I remembered the menace of the unhappy Juliet, and expected the full
+tempest of the man’s vengeance, and the awakened wrath of his
+followers, to fall instantly upon me. I was questioned. My answers were
+simple and sincere. “His own mouth condemns him,” exclaimed the
+impostor; “he confesses that his intention was to seduce from the way
+of salvation our well-beloved sister in God; away with him to the
+dungeon; to-morrow he dies the death; we are manifestly called upon to
+make an example, tremendous and appalling, to scare the children of sin
+from our asylum of the saved.”
+
+My heart revolted from his hypocritical jargon: but it was unworthy of
+me to combat in words with the ruffian; and my answer was cool; while,
+far from being possessed with fear, methought, even at the worst, a man
+true to himself, courageous and determined, could fight his way, even
+from the boards of the scaffold, through the herd of these misguided
+maniacs. “Remember,” I said, “who I am; and be well assured that I
+shall not die unavenged. Your legal magistrate, the Lord Protector,
+knew of my design, and is aware that I am here; the cry of blood will
+reach him, and you and your miserable victims will long lament the
+tragedy you are about to act.”
+
+My antagonist did not deign to reply, even by a look;—“You know your
+duty,” he said to his comrades,—“obey.”
+
+In a moment I was thrown on the earth, bound, blindfolded, and hurried
+away —liberty of limb and sight was only restored to me, when,
+surrounded by dungeon-walls, dark and impervious, I found myself a
+prisoner and alone.
+
+Such was the result of my attempt to gain over the proselyte of this
+man of crime; I could not conceive that he would dare put me to
+death.—Yet I was in his hands; the path of his ambition had ever been
+dark and cruel; his power was founded upon fear; the one word which
+might cause me to die, unheard, unseen, in the obscurity of my dungeon,
+might be easier to speak than the deed of mercy to act. He would not
+risk probably a public execution; but a private assassination would at
+once terrify any of my companions from attempting a like feat, at the
+same time that a cautious line of conduct might enable him to avoid the
+enquiries and the vengeance of Adrian.
+
+Two months ago, in a vault more obscure than the one I now inhabited, I
+had revolved the design of quietly laying me down to die; now I
+shuddered at the approach of fate. My imagination was busied in shaping
+forth the kind of death he would inflict. Would he allow me to wear out
+life with famine; or was the food administered to me to be medicined
+with death? Would he steal on me in my sleep; or should I contend to
+the last with my murderers, knowing, even while I struggled, that I
+must be overcome? I lived upon an earth whose diminished population a
+child’s arithmetic might number; I had lived through long months with
+death stalking close at my side, while at intervals the shadow of his
+skeleton-shape darkened my path. I had believed that I despised the
+grim phantom, and laughed his power to scorn.
+
+Any other fate I should have met with courage, nay, have gone out
+gallantly to encounter. But to be murdered thus at the midnight hour by
+cold-blooded assassins, no friendly hand to close my eyes, or receive
+my parting blessing—to die in combat, hate and execration—ah, why, my
+angel love, didst thou restore me to life, when already I had stepped
+within the portals of the tomb, now that so soon again I was to be
+flung back a mangled corpse!
+
+Hours passed—centuries. Could I give words to the many thoughts which
+occupied me in endless succession during this interval, I should fill
+volumes. The air was dank, the dungeon-floor mildewed and icy cold;
+hunger came upon me too, and no sound reached me from without.
+To-morrow the ruffian had declared that I should die. When would
+to-morrow come? Was it not already here?
+
+My door was about to be opened. I heard the key turn, and the bars and
+bolts slowly removed. The opening of intervening passages permitted
+sounds from the interior of the palace to reach me; and I heard the
+clock strike one. They come to murder me, I thought; this hour does not
+befit a public execution. I drew myself up against the wall opposite
+the entrance; I collected my forces, I rallied my courage, I would not
+fall a tame prey. Slowly the door receded on its hinges—I was ready to
+spring forward to seize and grapple with the intruder, till the sight
+of who it was changed at once the temper of my mind. It was Juliet
+herself; pale and trembling she stood, a lamp in her hand, on the
+threshold of the dungeon, looking at me with wistful countenance. But
+in a moment she re-assumed her self-possession; and her languid eyes
+recovered their brilliancy. She said, “I am come to save you, Verney.”
+
+“And yourself also,” I cried: “dearest friend, can we indeed be saved?”
+
+“Not a word,” she replied, “follow me!”
+
+I obeyed instantly. We threaded with light steps many corridors,
+ascended several flights of stairs, and passed through long galleries;
+at the end of one she unlocked a low portal; a rush of wind
+extinguished our lamp; but, in lieu of it, we had the blessed
+moon-beams and the open face of heaven. Then first Juliet spoke:—“You
+are safe,” she said, “God bless you!— farewell!”
+
+I seized her reluctant hand—“Dear friend,” I cried, “misguided victim,
+do you not intend to escape with me? Have you not risked all in
+facilitating my flight? and do you think, that I will permit you to
+return, and suffer alone the effects of that miscreant’s rage? Never!”
+
+“Do not fear for me,” replied the lovely girl mournfully, “and do not
+imagine that without the consent of our chief you could be without
+these walls. It is he that has saved you; he assigned to me the part of
+leading you hither, because I am best acquainted with your motives for
+coming here, and can best appreciate his mercy in permitting you to
+depart.”
+
+“And are you,” I cried, “the dupe of this man? He dreads me alive as an
+enemy, and dead he fears my avengers. By favouring this clandestine
+escape he preserves a shew of consistency to his followers; but mercy
+is far from his heart. Do you forget his artifices, his cruelty, and
+fraud? As I am free, so are you. Come, Juliet, the mother of our lost
+Idris will welcome you, the noble Adrian will rejoice to receive you;
+you will find peace and love, and better hopes than fanaticism can
+afford. Come, and fear not; long before day we shall be at Versailles;
+close the door on this abode of crime —come, sweet Juliet, from
+hypocrisy and guilt to the society of the affectionate and good.”
+
+I spoke hurriedly, but with fervour: and while with gentle violence I
+drew her from the portal, some thought, some recollection of past
+scenes of youth and happiness, made her listen and yield to me;
+suddenly she broke away with a piercing shriek:—“My child, my child! he
+has my child; my darling girl is my hostage.”
+
+She darted from me into the passage; the gate closed between us—she was
+left in the fangs of this man of crime, a prisoner, still to inhale the
+pestilential atmosphere which adhered to his demoniac nature; the
+unimpeded breeze played on my cheek, the moon shone graciously upon me,
+my path was free. Glad to have escaped, yet melancholy in my very joy,
+I retrod my steps to Versailles.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Eventful winter passed; winter, the respite of our ills. By degrees the
+sun, which with slant beams had before yielded the more extended reign
+to night, lengthened his diurnal journey, and mounted his highest
+throne, at once the fosterer of earth’s new beauty, and her lover. We
+who, like flies that congregate upon a dry rock at the ebbing of the
+tide, had played wantonly with time, allowing our passions, our hopes,
+and our mad desires to rule us, now heard the approaching roar of the
+ocean of destruction, and would have fled to some sheltered crevice,
+before the first wave broke over us. We resolved without delay, to
+commence our journey to Switzerland; we became eager to leave France.
+Under the icy vaults of the glaciers, beneath the shadow of the pines,
+the swinging of whose mighty branches was arrested by a load of snow;
+beside the streams whose intense cold proclaimed their origin to be
+from the slow-melting piles of congelated waters, amidst frequent
+storms which might purify the air, we should find health, if in truth
+health were not herself diseased.
+
+We began our preparations at first with alacrity. We did not now bid
+adieu to our native country, to the graves of those we loved, to the
+flowers, and streams, and trees, which had lived beside us from
+infancy. Small sorrow would be ours on leaving Paris. A scene of shame,
+when we remembered our late contentions, and thought that we left
+behind a flock of miserable, deluded victims, bending under the tyranny
+of a selfish impostor. Small pangs should we feel in leaving the
+gardens, woods, and halls of the palaces of the Bourbons at Versailles,
+which we feared would soon be tainted by the dead, when we looked
+forward to vallies lovelier than any garden, to mighty forests and
+halls, built not for mortal majesty, but palaces of nature’s own, with
+the Alp of marmoreal whiteness for their walls, the sky for their roof.
+
+Yet our spirits flagged, as the day drew near which we had fixed for
+our departure. Dire visions and evil auguries, if such things were,
+thickened around us, so that in vain might men say—
+
+These are their reasons, they are natural,[22]
+
+
+we felt them to be ominous, and dreaded the future event enchained to
+them. That the night owl should screech before the noon-day sun, that
+the hard-winged bat should wheel around the bed of beauty, that
+muttering thunder should in early spring startle the cloudless air,
+that sudden and exterminating blight should fall on the tree and shrub,
+were unaccustomed, but physical events, less horrible than the mental
+creations of almighty fear. Some had sight of funeral processions, and
+faces all begrimed with tears, which flitted through the long avenues
+of the gardens, and drew aside the curtains of the sleepers at dead of
+night. Some heard wailing and cries in the air; a mournful chaunt would
+stream through the dark atmosphere, as if spirits above sang the
+requiem of the human race. What was there in all this, but that fear
+created other senses within our frames, making us see, hear, and feel
+what was not? What was this, but the action of diseased imaginations
+and childish credulity? So might it be; but what was most real, was the
+existence of these very fears; the staring looks of horror, the faces
+pale even to ghastliness, the voices struck dumb with harrowing dread,
+of those among us who saw and heard these things. Of this number was
+Adrian, who knew the delusion, yet could not cast off the clinging
+terror. Even ignorant infancy appeared with timorous shrieks and
+convulsions to acknowledge the presence of unseen powers. We must go:
+in change of scene, in occupation, and such security as we still hoped
+to find, we should discover a cure for these gathering horrors.
+
+On mustering our company, we found them to consist of fourteen hundred
+souls, men, women, and children. Until now therefore, we were
+undiminished in numbers, except by the desertion of those who had
+attached themselves to the impostor-prophet, and remained behind in
+Paris. About fifty French joined us. Our order of march was easily
+arranged; the ill success which had attended our division, determined
+Adrian to keep all in one body. I, with an hundred men, went forward
+first as purveyor, taking the road of the Côte d’Or, through Auxerre,
+Dijon, Dole, over the Jura to Geneva. I was to make arrangements, at
+every ten miles, for the accommodation of such numbers as I found the
+town or village would receive, leaving behind a messenger with a
+written order, signifying how many were to be quartered there. The
+remainder of our tribe was then divided into bands of fifty each, every
+division containing eighteen men, and the remainder, consisting of
+women and children. Each of these was headed by an officer, who carried
+the roll of names, by which they were each day to be mustered. If the
+numbers were divided at night, in the morning those in the van waited
+for those in the rear. At each of the large towns before mentioned, we
+were all to assemble; and a conclave of the principal officers would
+hold council for the general weal. I went first, as I said; Adrian
+last. His mother, with Clara and Evelyn under her protection, remained
+also with him. Thus our order being determined, I departed. My plan was
+to go at first no further than Fontainebleau, where in a few days I
+should be joined by Adrian, before I took flight again further
+eastward.
+
+My friend accompanied me a few miles from Versailles. He was sad; and,
+in a tone of unaccustomed despondency, uttered a prayer for our speedy
+arrival among the Alps, accompanied with an expression of vain regret
+that we were not already there. “In that case,” I observed, “we can
+quicken our march; why adhere to a plan whose dilatory proceeding you
+already disapprove?”
+
+“Nay,” replied he, “it is too late now. A month ago, and we were
+masters of ourselves; now,—” he turned his face from me; though
+gathering twilight had already veiled its expression, he turned it yet
+more away, as he added —“a man died of the plague last night!”
+
+He spoke in a smothered voice, then suddenly clasping his hands, he
+exclaimed, “Swiftly, most swiftly advances the last hour for us all; as
+the stars vanish before the sun, so will his near approach destroy us.
+I have done my best; with grasping hands and impotent strength, I have
+hung on the wheel of the chariot of plague; but she drags me along with
+it, while, like Juggernaut, she proceeds crushing out the being of all
+who strew the high road of life. Would that it were over—would that her
+procession achieved, we had all entered the tomb together!”
+
+Tears streamed from his eyes. “Again and again,” he continued, “will
+the tragedy be acted; again I must hear the groans of the dying, the
+wailing of the survivors; again witness the pangs, which, consummating
+all, envelope an eternity in their evanescent existence. Why am I
+reserved for this? Why the tainted wether of the flock, am I not struck
+to earth among the first? It is hard, very hard, for one of woman born
+to endure all that I endure!”
+
+Hitherto, with an undaunted spirit, and an high feeling of duty and
+worth, Adrian had fulfilled his self-imposed task. I had contemplated
+him with reverence, and a fruitless desire of imitation. I now offered
+a few words of encouragement and sympathy. He hid his face in his
+hands, and while he strove to calm himself, he ejaculated, “For a few
+months, yet for a few months more, let not, O God, my heart fail, or my
+courage be bowed down; let not sights of intolerable misery madden this
+half-crazed brain, or cause this frail heart to beat against its
+prison-bound, so that it burst. I have believed it to be my destiny to
+guide and rule the last of the race of man, till death extinguish my
+government; and to this destiny I submit.
+
+“Pardon me, Verney, I pain you, but I will no longer complain. Now I am
+myself again, or rather I am better than myself. You have known how
+from my childhood aspiring thoughts and high desires have warred with
+inherent disease and overstrained sensitiveness, till the latter became
+victors. You know how I placed this wasted feeble hand on the abandoned
+helm of human government. I have been visited at times by intervals of
+fluctuation; yet, until now, I have felt as if a superior and
+indefatigable spirit had taken up its abode within me or rather
+incorporated itself with my weaker being. The holy visitant has for a
+time slept, perhaps to show me how powerless I am without its
+inspiration. Yet, stay for a while, O Power of goodness and strength;
+disdain not yet this rent shrine of fleshly mortality, O immortal
+Capability! While one fellow creature remains to whom aid can be
+afforded, stay by and prop your shattered, falling engine!”
+
+His vehemence, and voice broken by irrepressible sighs, sunk to my
+heart; his eyes gleamed in the gloom of night like two earthly stars;
+and, his form dilating, his countenance beaming, truly it almost seemed
+as if at his eloquent appeal a more than mortal spirit entered his
+frame, exalting him above humanity. He turned quickly towards me, and
+held out his hand. “Farewell, Verney,” he cried, “brother of my love,
+farewell; no other weak expression must cross these lips, I am alive
+again: to our tasks, to our combats with our unvanquishable foe, for to
+the last I will struggle against her.”
+
+He grasped my hand, and bent a look on me, more fervent and animated
+than any smile; then turning his horse’s head, he touched the animal
+with the spur, and was out of sight in a moment.
+
+A man last night had died of the plague. The quiver was not emptied,
+nor the bow unstrung. We stood as marks, while Parthian Pestilence
+aimed and shot, insatiated by conquest, unobstructed by the heaps of
+slain. A sickness of the soul, contagious even to my physical
+mechanism, came over me. My knees knocked together, my teeth chattered,
+the current of my blood, clotted by sudden cold, painfully forced its
+way from my heavy heart. I did not fear for myself, but it was misery
+to think that we could not even save this remnant. That those I loved
+might in a few days be as clay-cold as Idris in her antique tomb; nor
+could strength of body or energy of mind ward off the blow. A sense of
+degradation came over me. Did God create man, merely in the end to
+become dead earth in the midst of healthful vegetating nature? Was he
+of no more account to his Maker, than a field of corn blighted in the
+ear? Were our proud dreams thus to fade? Our name was written “a little
+lower than the angels;” and, behold, we were no better than ephemera.
+We had called ourselves the “paragon of animals,” and, lo! we were a
+“quint-essence of dust.” We repined that the pyramids had outlasted the
+embalmed body of their builder. Alas! the mere shepherd’s hut of straw
+we passed on the road, contained in its structure the principle of
+greater longevity than the whole race of man. How reconcile this sad
+change to our past aspirations, to our apparent powers!
+
+Sudden an internal voice, articulate and clear, seemed to say:—Thus
+from eternity, it was decreed: the steeds that bear Time onwards had
+this hour and this fulfilment enchained to them, since the void brought
+forth its burthen. Would you read backwards the unchangeable laws of
+Necessity?
+
+Mother of the world! Servant of the Omnipotent! eternal, changeless
+Necessity! who with busy fingers sittest ever weaving the indissoluble
+chain of events!—I will not murmur at thy acts. If my human mind cannot
+acknowledge that all that is, is right; yet since what is, must be, I
+will sit amidst the ruins and smile. Truly we were not born to enjoy,
+but to submit, and to hope.
+
+Will not the reader tire, if I should minutely describe our long-drawn
+journey from Paris to Geneva? If, day by day, I should record, in the
+form of a journal, the thronging miseries of our lot, could my hand
+write, or language afford words to express, the variety of our woe; the
+hustling and crowding of one deplorable event upon another? Patience,
+oh reader! whoever thou art, wherever thou dwellest, whether of race
+spiritual, or, sprung from some surviving pair, thy nature will be
+human, thy habitation the earth; thou wilt here read of the acts of the
+extinct race, and wilt ask wonderingly, if they, who suffered what thou
+findest recorded, were of frail flesh and soft organization like
+thyself. Most true, they were— weep therefore; for surely, solitary
+being, thou wilt be of gentle disposition; shed compassionate tears;
+but the while lend thy attention to the tale, and learn the deeds and
+sufferings of thy predecessors.
+
+Yet the last events that marked our progress through France were so
+full of strange horror and gloomy misery, that I dare not pause too
+long in the narration. If I were to dissect each incident, every small
+fragment of a second would contain an harrowing tale, whose minutest
+word would curdle the blood in thy young veins. It is right that I
+should erect for thy instruction this monument of the foregone race;
+but not that I should drag thee through the wards of an hospital, nor
+the secret chambers of the charnel-house. This tale, therefore, shall
+be rapidly unfolded. Images of destruction, pictures of despair, the
+procession of the last triumph of death, shall be drawn before thee,
+swift as the rack driven by the north wind along the blotted splendour
+of the sky.
+
+Weed-grown fields, desolate towns, the wild approach of riderless
+horses had now become habitual to my eyes; nay, sights far worse, of
+the unburied dead, and human forms which were strewed on the road side,
+and on the steps of once frequented habitations, where,
+
+        Through the flesh that wastes away
+Beneath the parching sun, the whitening bones
+Start forth, and moulder in the sable dust.[23]
+
+
+Sights like these had become—ah, woe the while! so familiar, that we
+had ceased to shudder, or spur our stung horses to sudden speed, as we
+passed them. France in its best days, at least that part of France
+through which we travelled, had been a cultivated desert, and the
+absence of enclosures, of cottages, and even of peasantry, was
+saddening to a traveller from sunny Italy, or busy England. Yet the
+towns were frequent and lively, and the cordial politeness and ready
+smile of the wooden-shoed peasant restored good humour to the
+splenetic. Now, the old woman sat no more at the door with her
+distaff—the lank beggar no longer asked charity in courtier-like
+phrase; nor on holidays did the peasantry thread with slow grace the
+mazes of the dance. Silence, melancholy bride of death, went in
+procession with him from town to town through the spacious region.
+
+We arrived at Fontainebleau, and speedily prepared for the reception of
+our friends. On mustering our numbers for the night, three were found
+missing. When I enquired for them, the man to whom I spoke, uttered the
+word “plague,” and fell at my feet in convulsions; he also was
+infected. There were hard faces around me; for among my troop were
+sailors who had crossed the line times unnumbered, soldiers who, in
+Russia and far America, had suffered famine, cold and danger, and men
+still sterner-featured, once nightly depredators in our over-grown
+metropolis; men bred from their cradle to see the whole machine of
+society at work for their destruction. I looked round, and saw upon the
+faces of all horror and despair written in glaring characters.
+
+We passed four days at Fontainebleau. Several sickened and died, and in
+the mean time neither Adrian nor any of our friends appeared. My own
+troop was in commotion; to reach Switzerland, to plunge into rivers of
+snow, and to dwell in caves of ice, became the mad desire of all. Yet
+we had promised to wait for the Earl; and he came not. My people
+demanded to be led forward— rebellion, if so we might call what was the
+mere casting away of straw-formed shackles, appeared manifestly among
+them. They would away on the word without a leader. The only chance of
+safety, the only hope of preservation from every form of indescribable
+suffering, was our keeping together. I told them this; while the most
+determined among them answered with sullenness, that they could take
+care of themselves, and replied to my entreaties with scoffs and
+menaces.
+
+At length, on the fifth day, a messenger arrived from Adrian, bearing
+letters, which directed us to proceed to Auxerre, and there await his
+arrival, which would only be deferred for a few days. Such was the
+tenor of his public letters. Those privately delivered to me, detailed
+at length the difficulties of his situation, and left the arrangement
+of my future plans to my own discretion. His account of the state of
+affairs at Versailles was brief, but the oral communications of his
+messenger filled up his omissions, and shewed me that perils of the
+most frightful nature were gathering around him. At first the
+re-awakening of the plague had been concealed; but the number of deaths
+encreasing, the secret was divulged, and the destruction already
+achieved, was exaggerated by the fears of the survivors. Some
+emissaries of the enemy of mankind, the accursed Impostors, were among
+them instilling their doctrine that safety and life could only be
+ensured by submission to their chief; and they succeeded so well, that
+soon, instead of desiring to proceed to Switzerland, the major part of
+the multitude, weak-minded women, and dastardly men, desired to return
+to Paris, and, by ranging themselves under the banners of the so called
+prophet, and by a cowardly worship of the principle of evil, to
+purchase respite, as they hoped, from impending death. The discord and
+tumult induced by these conflicting fears and passions, detained
+Adrian. It required all his ardour in pursuit of an object, and his
+patience under difficulties, to calm and animate such a number of his
+followers, as might counterbalance the panic of the rest, and lead them
+back to the means from which alone safety could be derived. He had
+hoped immediately to follow me; but, being defeated in this intention,
+he sent his messenger urging me to secure my own troop at such a
+distance from Versailles, as to prevent the contagion of rebellion from
+reaching them; promising, at the same time, to join me the moment a
+favourable occasion should occur, by means of which he could withdraw
+the main body of the emigrants from the evil influence at present
+exercised over them.
+
+I was thrown into a most painful state of uncertainty by these
+communications. My first impulse was that we should all return to
+Versailles, there to assist in extricating our chief from his perils. I
+accordingly assembled my troop, and proposed to them this retrograde
+movement, instead of the continuation of our journey to Auxerre. With
+one voice they refused to comply. The notion circulated among them was,
+that the ravages of the plague alone detained the Protector; they
+opposed his order to my request; they came to a resolve to proceed
+without me, should I refuse to accompany them. Argument and adjuration
+were lost on these dastards. The continual diminution of their own
+numbers, effected by pestilence, added a sting to their dislike of
+delay; and my opposition only served to bring their resolution to a
+crisis. That same evening they departed towards Auxerre. Oaths, as from
+soldiers to their general, had been taken by them: these they broke. I
+also had engaged myself not to desert them; it appeared to me inhuman
+to ground any infraction of my word on theirs. The same spirit that
+caused them to rebel against me, would impel them to desert each other;
+and the most dreadful sufferings would be the consequence of their
+journey in their present unordered and chiefless array. These feelings
+for a time were paramount; and, in obedience to them, I accompanied the
+rest towards Auxerre. We arrived the same night at
+Villeneuve-la-Guiard, a town at the distance of four posts from
+Fontainebleau. When my companions had retired to rest, and I was left
+alone to revolve and ruminate upon the intelligence I received of
+Adrian’s situation, another view of the subject presented itself to me.
+What was I doing, and what was the object of my present movements?
+Apparently I was to lead this troop of selfish and lawless men towards
+Switzerland, leaving behind my family and my selected friend, which,
+subject as they were hourly to the death that threatened to all, I
+might never see again. Was it not my first duty to assist the
+Protector, setting an example of attachment and duty? At a crisis, such
+as the one I had reached, it is very difficult to balance nicely
+opposing interests, and that towards which our inclinations lead us,
+obstinately assumes the appearance of selfishness, even when we
+meditate a sacrifice. We are easily led at such times to make a
+compromise of the question; and this was my present resource. I
+resolved that very night to ride to Versailles; if I found affairs less
+desperate than I now deemed them, I would return without delay to my
+troop; I had a vague idea that my arrival at that town, would occasion
+some sensation more or less strong, of which we might profit, for the
+purpose of leading forward the vacillating multitude—at least no time
+was to be lost—I visited the stables, I saddled my favourite horse, and
+vaulting on his back, without giving myself time for further reflection
+or hesitation, quitted Villeneuve-la-Guiard on my return to Versailles.
+
+I was glad to escape from my rebellious troop, and to lose sight for a
+time, of the strife of evil with good, where the former for ever
+remained triumphant. I was stung almost to madness by my uncertainty
+concerning the fate of Adrian, and grew reckless of any event, except
+what might lose or preserve my unequalled friend. With an heavy heart,
+that sought relief in the rapidity of my course, I rode through the
+night to Versailles. I spurred my horse, who addressed his free limbs
+to speed, and tossed his gallant head in pride. The constellations
+reeled swiftly by, swiftly each tree and stone and landmark fled past
+my onward career. I bared my head to the rushing wind, which bathed my
+brow in delightful coolness. As I lost sight of Villeneuve-la-Guiard, I
+forgot the sad drama of human misery; methought it was happiness enough
+to live, sensitive the while of the beauty of the verdure-clad earth,
+the star-bespangled sky, and the tameless wind that lent animation to
+the whole. My horse grew tired—and I, forgetful of his fatigue, still
+as he lagged, cheered him with my voice, and urged him with the spur.
+He was a gallant animal, and I did not wish to exchange him for any
+chance beast I might light on, leaving him never to be refound. All
+night we went forward; in the morning he became sensible that we
+approached Versailles, to reach which as his home, he mustered his
+flagging strength. The distance we had come was not less than fifty
+miles, yet he shot down the long Boulevards swift as an arrow; poor
+fellow, as I dismounted at the gate of the castle, he sunk on his
+knees, his eyes were covered with a film, he fell on his side, a few
+gasps inflated his noble chest, and he died. I saw him expire with an
+anguish, unaccountable even to myself, the spasm was as the wrenching
+of some limb in agonizing torture, but it was brief as it was
+intolerable. I forgot him, as I swiftly darted through the open portal,
+and up the majestic stairs of this castle of victories—heard Adrian’s
+voice—O fool! O woman nurtured, effeminate and contemptible being—I
+heard his voice, and answered it with convulsive shrieks; I rushed into
+the Hall of Hercules, where he stood surrounded by a crowd, whose eyes,
+turned in wonder on me, reminded me that on the stage of the world, a
+man must repress such girlish extacies. I would have given worlds to
+have embraced him; I dared not—Half in exhaustion, half voluntarily, I
+threw myself at my length on the ground— dare I disclose the truth to
+the gentle offspring of solitude? I did so, that I might kiss the dear
+and sacred earth he trod.
+
+I found everything in a state of tumult. An emissary of the leader of
+the elect, had been so worked up by his chief, and by his own fanatical
+creed, as to make an attempt on the life of the Protector and preserver
+of lost mankind. His hand was arrested while in the act of poignarding
+the Earl; this circumstance had caused the clamour I heard on my
+arrival at the castle, and the confused assembly of persons that I
+found assembled in the Salle d’Hercule. Although superstition and
+demoniac fury had crept among the emigrants, yet several adhered with
+fidelity to their noble chieftain; and many, whose faith and love had
+been unhinged by fear, felt all their latent affection rekindled by
+this detestable attempt. A phalanx of faithful breasts closed round
+him; the wretch, who, although a prisoner and in bonds, vaunted his
+design, and madly claimed the crown of martyrdom, would have been torn
+to pieces, had not his intended victim interposed. Adrian, springing
+forward, shielded him with his own person, and commanded with energy
+the submission of his infuriate friends—at this moment I had entered.
+
+Discipline and peace were at length restored in the castle; and then
+Adrian went from house to house, from troop to troop, to soothe the
+disturbed minds of his followers, and recall them to their ancient
+obedience. But the fear of immediate death was still rife amongst these
+survivors of a world’s destruction; the horror occasioned by the
+attempted assassination, past away; each eye turned towards Paris. Men
+love a prop so well, that they will lean on a pointed poisoned spear;
+and such was he, the impostor, who, with fear of hell for his scourge,
+most ravenous wolf, played the driver to a credulous flock.
+
+It was a moment of suspense, that shook even the resolution of the
+unyielding friend of man. Adrian for one moment was about to give in,
+to cease the struggle, and quit, with a few adherents, the deluded
+crowd, leaving them a miserable prey to their passions, and to the
+worse tyrant who excited them. But again, after a brief fluctuation of
+purpose, he resumed his courage and resolves, sustained by the
+singleness of his purpose, and the untried spirit of benevolence which
+animated him. At this moment, as an omen of excellent import, his
+wretched enemy pulled destruction on his head, destroying with his own
+hands the dominion he had erected.
+
+His grand hold upon the minds of men, took its rise from the doctrine
+inculcated by him, that those who believed in, and followed him, were
+the remnant to be saved, while all the rest of mankind were marked out
+for death. Now, at the time of the Flood, the omnipotent repented him
+that he had created man, and as then with water, now with the arrows of
+pestilence, was about to annihilate all, except those who obeyed his
+decrees, promulgated by the _ipse dixit_ prophet. It is impossible to
+say on what foundations this man built his hopes of being able to carry
+on such an imposture. It is likely that he was fully aware of the lie
+which murderous nature might give to his assertions, and believed it to
+be the cast of a die, whether he should in future ages be reverenced as
+an inspired delegate from heaven, or be recognized as an impostor by
+the present dying generation. At any rate he resolved to keep up the
+drama to the last act. When, on the first approach of summer, the fatal
+disease again made its ravages among the followers of Adrian, the
+impostor exultingly proclaimed the exemption of his own congregation
+from the universal calamity. He was believed; his followers, hitherto
+shut up in Paris, now came to Versailles. Mingling with the coward band
+there assembled, they reviled their admirable leader, and asserted
+their own superiority and exemption. At length the plague, slow-footed,
+but sure in her noiseless advance, destroyed the illusion, invading the
+congregation of the elect, and showering promiscuous death among them.
+Their leader endeavoured to conceal this event; he had a few followers,
+who, admitted into the arcana of his wickedness, could help him in the
+execution of his nefarious designs. Those who sickened were immediately
+and quietly withdrawn, the cord and a midnight-grave disposed of them
+for ever; while some plausible excuse was given for their absence. At
+last a female, whose maternal vigilance subdued even the effects of the
+narcotics administered to her, became a witness of their murderous
+designs on her only child. Mad with horror, she would have burst among
+her deluded fellow-victims, and, wildly shrieking, have awaked the dull
+ear of night with the history of the fiend-like crime; when the
+Impostor, in his last act of rage and desperation, plunged a poignard
+in her bosom. Thus wounded to death, her garments dripping with her own
+life-blood, bearing her strangled infant in her arms, beautiful and
+young as she was, Juliet, (for it was she) denounced to the host of
+deceived believers, the wickedness of their leader. He saw the aghast
+looks of her auditors, changing from horror to fury—the names of those
+already sacrificed were echoed by their relatives, now assured of their
+loss. The wretch with that energy of purpose, which had borne him thus
+far in his guilty career, saw his danger, and resolved to evade the
+worst forms of it—he rushed on one of the foremost, seized a pistol
+from his girdle, and his loud laugh of derision mingled with the report
+of the weapon with which he destroyed himself.
+
+They left his miserable remains even where they lay; they placed the
+corpse of poor Juliet and her babe upon a bier, and all, with hearts
+subdued to saddest regret, in long procession walked towards
+Versailles. They met troops of those who had quitted the kindly
+protection of Adrian, and were journeying to join the fanatics. The
+tale of horror was recounted—all turned back; and thus at last,
+accompanied by the undiminished numbers of surviving humanity, and
+preceded by the mournful emblem of their recovered reason, they
+appeared before Adrian, and again and for ever vowed obedience to his
+commands, and fidelity to his cause.
+
+ [22] Shakespeare—Julius Cæsar.
+
+
+ [23] Elton’s Translation of Hesiod’s “Shield of Hercules.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+These events occupied so much time, that June had numbered more than
+half its days, before we again commenced our long-protracted journey.
+The day after my return to Versailles, six men, from among those I had
+left at Villeneuve-la-Guiard, arrived, with intelligence, that the rest
+of the troop had already proceeded towards Switzerland. We went forward
+in the same track.
+
+It is strange, after an interval of time, to look back on a period,
+which, though short in itself, appeared, when in actual progress, to be
+drawn out interminably. By the end of July we entered Dijon; by the end
+of July those hours, days, and weeks had mingled with the ocean of
+forgotten time, which in their passage teemed with fatal events and
+agonizing sorrow. By the end of July, little more than a month had gone
+by, if man’s life were measured by the rising and setting of the sun:
+but, alas! in that interval ardent youth had become grey-haired;
+furrows deep and uneraseable were trenched in the blooming cheek of the
+young mother; the elastic limbs of early manhood, paralyzed as by the
+burthen of years, assumed the decrepitude of age. Nights passed, during
+whose fatal darkness the sun grew old before it rose; and burning days,
+to cool whose baleful heat the balmy eve, lingering far in eastern
+climes, came lagging and ineffectual; days, in which the dial, radiant
+in its noon-day station, moved not its shadow the space of a little
+hour, until a whole life of sorrow had brought the sufferer to an
+untimely grave.
+
+We departed from Versailles fifteen hundred souls. We set out on the
+eighteenth of June. We made a long procession, in which was contained
+every dear relationship, or tie of love, that existed in human society.
+Fathers and husbands, with guardian care, gathered their dear relatives
+around them; wives and mothers looked for support to the manly form
+beside them, and then with tender anxiety bent their eyes on the infant
+troop around. They were sad, but not hopeless. Each thought that
+someone would be saved; each, with that pertinacious optimism, which to
+the last characterized our human nature, trusted that their beloved
+family would be the one preserved.
+
+We passed through France, and found it empty of inhabitants. Some one
+or two natives survived in the larger towns, which they roamed through
+like ghosts; we received therefore small encrease to our numbers, and
+such decrease through death, that at last it became easier to count the
+scanty list of survivors. As we never deserted any of the sick, until
+their death permitted us to commit their remains to the shelter of a
+grave, our journey was long, while every day a frightful gap was made
+in our troop—they died by tens, by fifties, by hundreds. No mercy was
+shewn by death; we ceased to expect it, and every day welcomed the sun
+with the feeling that we might never see it rise again.
+
+The nervous terrors and fearful visions which had scared us during the
+spring, continued to visit our coward troop during this sad journey.
+Every evening brought its fresh creation of spectres; a ghost was
+depicted by every blighted tree; and appalling shapes were manufactured
+from each shaggy bush. By degrees these common marvels palled on us,
+and then other wonders were called into being. Once it was confidently
+asserted, that the sun rose an hour later than its seasonable time;
+again it was discovered that he grew paler and paler; that shadows took
+an uncommon appearance. It was impossible to have imagined, during the
+usual calm routine of life men had before experienced, the terrible
+effects produced by these extravagant delusions: in truth, of such
+little worth are our senses, when unsupported by concurring testimony,
+that it was with the utmost difficulty I kept myself free from the
+belief in supernatural events, to which the major part of our people
+readily gave credit. Being one sane amidst a crowd of the mad, I hardly
+dared assert to my own mind, that the vast luminary had undergone no
+change—that the shadows of night were unthickened by innumerable shapes
+of awe and terror; or that the wind, as it sung in the trees, or
+whistled round an empty building, was not pregnant with sounds of
+wailing and despair. Sometimes realities took ghostly shapes; and it
+was impossible for one’s blood not to curdle at the perception of an
+evident mixture of what we knew to be true, with the visionary
+semblance of all that we feared.
+
+Once, at the dusk of the evening, we saw a figure all in white,
+apparently of more than human stature, flourishing about the road, now
+throwing up its arms, now leaping to an astonishing height in the air,
+then turning round several times successively, then raising itself to
+its full height and gesticulating violently. Our troop, on the alert to
+discover and believe in the supernatural, made a halt at some distance
+from this shape; and, as it became darker, there was something
+appalling even to the incredulous, in the lonely spectre, whose
+gambols, if they hardly accorded with spiritual dignity, were beyond
+human powers. Now it leapt right up in the air, now sheer over a high
+hedge, and was again the moment after in the road before us. By the
+time I came up, the fright experienced by the spectators of this
+ghostly exhibition, began to manifest itself in the flight of some, and
+the close huddling together of the rest. Our goblin now perceived us;
+he approached, and, as we drew reverentially back, made a low bow. The
+sight was irresistibly ludicrous even to our hapless band, and his
+politeness was hailed by a shout of laughter;—then, again springing up,
+as a last effort, it sunk to the ground, and became almost invisible
+through the dusky night. This circumstance again spread silence and
+fear through the troop; the more courageous at length advanced, and,
+raising the dying wretch, discovered the tragic explanation of this
+wild scene. It was an opera-dancer, and had been one of the troop which
+deserted from Villeneuve-la-Guiard: falling sick, he had been deserted
+by his companions; in an access of delirium he had fancied himself on
+the stage, and, poor fellow, his dying sense eagerly accepted the last
+human applause that could ever be bestowed on his grace and agility.
+
+At another time we were haunted for several days by an apparition, to
+which our people gave the appellation of the Black Spectre. We never
+saw it except at evening, when his coal black steed, his mourning
+dress, and plume of black feathers, had a majestic and awe-striking
+appearance; his face, one said, who had seen it for a moment, was ashy
+pale; he had lingered far behind the rest of his troop, and suddenly at
+a turn in the road, saw the Black Spectre coming towards him; he hid
+himself in fear, and the horse and his rider slowly past, while the
+moonbeams fell on the face of the latter, displaying its unearthly hue.
+Sometimes at dead of night, as we watched the sick, we heard one
+galloping through the town; it was the Black Spectre come in token of
+inevitable death. He grew giant tall to vulgar eyes; an icy atmosphere,
+they said, surrounded him; when he was heard, all animals shuddered,
+and the dying knew that their last hour was come. It was Death himself,
+they declared, come visibly to seize on subject earth, and quell at
+once our decreasing numbers, sole rebels to his law. One day at noon,
+we saw a dark mass on the road before us, and, coming up, beheld the
+Black Spectre fallen from his horse, lying in the agonies of disease
+upon the ground. He did not survive many hours; and his last words
+disclosed the secret of his mysterious conduct. He was a French noble
+of distinction, who, from the effects of plague, had been left alone in
+his district; during many months, he had wandered from town to town,
+from province to province, seeking some survivor for a companion, and
+abhorring the loneliness to which he was condemned. When he discovered
+our troop, fear of contagion conquered his love of society. He dared
+not join us, yet he could not resolve to lose sight of us, sole human
+beings who besides himself existed in wide and fertile France; so he
+accompanied us in the spectral guise I have described, till pestilence
+gathered him to a larger congregation, even that of Dead Mankind.
+
+It had been well, if such vain terrors could have distracted our
+thoughts from more tangible evils. But these were too dreadful and too
+many not to force themselves into every thought, every moment, of our
+lives. We were obliged to halt at different periods for days together,
+till another and yet another was consigned as a clod to the vast clod
+which had been once our living mother. Thus we continued travelling
+during the hottest season; and it was not till the first of August,
+that we, the emigrants,—reader, there were just eighty of us in
+number,—entered the gates of Dijon.
+
+We had expected this moment with eagerness, for now we had accomplished
+the worst part of our drear journey, and Switzerland was near at hand.
+Yet how could we congratulate ourselves on any event thus imperfectly
+fulfilled? Were these miserable beings, who, worn and wretched, passed
+in sorrowful procession, the sole remnants of the race of man, which,
+like a flood, had once spread over and possessed the whole earth? It
+had come down clear and unimpeded from its primal mountain source in
+Ararat, and grew from a puny streamlet to a vast perennial river,
+generation after generation flowing on ceaselessly. The same, but
+diversified, it grew, and swept onwards towards the absorbing ocean,
+whose dim shores we now reached. It had been the mere plaything of
+nature, when first it crept out of uncreative void into light; but
+thought brought forth power and knowledge; and, clad with these, the
+race of man assumed dignity and authority. It was then no longer the
+mere gardener of earth, or the shepherd of her flocks; “it carried with
+it an imposing and majestic aspect; it had a pedigree and illustrious
+ancestors; it had its gallery of portraits, its monumental
+inscriptions, its records and titles.”[24]
+
+This was all over, now that the ocean of death had sucked in the
+slackening tide, and its source was dried up. We first had bidden adieu
+to the state of things which having existed many thousand years, seemed
+eternal; such a state of government, obedience, traffic, and domestic
+intercourse, as had moulded our hearts and capacities, as far back as
+memory could reach. Then to patriotic zeal, to the arts, to reputation,
+to enduring fame, to the name of country, we had bidden farewell. We
+saw depart all hope of retrieving our ancient state—all expectation,
+except the feeble one of saving our individual lives from the wreck of
+the past. To preserve these we had quitted England—England, no more;
+for without her children, what name could that barren island claim?
+With tenacious grasp we clung to such rule and order as could best save
+us; trusting that, if a little colony could be preserved, that would
+suffice at some remoter period to restore the lost community of
+mankind.
+
+But the game is up! We must all die; nor leave survivor nor heir to the
+wide inheritance of earth. We must all die! The species of man must
+perish; his frame of exquisite workmanship; the wondrous mechanism of
+his senses; the noble proportion of his godlike limbs; his mind, the
+throned king of these; must perish. Will the earth still keep her place
+among the planets; will she still journey with unmarked regularity
+round the sun; will the seasons change, the trees adorn themselves with
+leaves, and flowers shed their fragrance, in solitude? Will the
+mountains remain unmoved, and streams still keep a downward course
+towards the vast abyss; will the tides rise and fall, and the winds fan
+universal nature; will beasts pasture, birds fly, and fishes swim, when
+man, the lord, possessor, perceiver, and recorder of all these things,
+has passed away, as though he had never been? O, what mockery is this!
+Surely death is not death, and humanity is not extinct; but merely
+passed into other shapes, unsubjected to our perceptions. Death is a
+vast portal, an high road to life: let us hasten to pass; let us exist
+no more in this living death, but die that we may live!
+
+We had longed with inexpressible earnestness to reach Dijon, since we
+had fixed on it, as a kind of station in our progress. But now we
+entered it with a torpor more painful than acute suffering. We had come
+slowly but irrevocably to the opinion, that our utmost efforts would
+not preserve one human being alive. We took our hands therefore away
+from the long grasped rudder; and the frail vessel on which we floated,
+seemed, the government over her suspended, to rush, prow foremost, into
+the dark abyss of the billows. A gush of grief, a wanton profusion of
+tears, and vain laments, and overflowing tenderness, and passionate but
+fruitless clinging to the priceless few that remained, was followed by
+languor and recklessness.
+
+During this disastrous journey we lost all those, not of our own
+family, to whom we had particularly attached ourselves among the
+survivors. It were not well to fill these pages with a mere catalogue
+of losses; yet I cannot refrain from this last mention of those
+principally dear to us. The little girl whom Adrian had rescued from
+utter desertion, during our ride through London on the twentieth of
+November, died at Auxerre. The poor child had attached herself greatly
+to us; and the suddenness of her death added to our sorrow. In the
+morning we had seen her apparently in health—in the evening, Lucy,
+before we retired to rest, visited our quarters to say that she was
+dead. Poor Lucy herself only survived, till we arrived at Dijon. She
+had devoted herself throughout to the nursing the sick, and attending
+the friendless. Her excessive exertions brought on a slow fever, which
+ended in the dread disease whose approach soon released her from her
+sufferings. She had throughout been endeared to us by her good
+qualities, by her ready and cheerful execution of every duty, and mild
+acquiescence in every turn of adversity. When we consigned her to the
+tomb, we seemed at the same time to bid a final adieu to those
+peculiarly feminine virtues conspicuous in her; uneducated and
+unpretending as she was, she was distinguished for patience,
+forbearance, and sweetness. These, with all their train of qualities
+peculiarly English, would never again be revived for us. This type of
+all that was most worthy of admiration in her class among my
+countrywomen, was placed under the sod of desert France; and it was as
+a second separation from our country to have lost sight of her for
+ever.
+
+The Countess of Windsor died during our abode at Dijon. One morning I
+was informed that she wished to see me. Her message made me remember,
+that several days had elapsed since I had last seen her. Such a
+circumstance had often occurred during our journey, when I remained
+behind to watch to their close the last moments of some one of our
+hapless comrades, and the rest of the troop past on before me. But
+there was something in the manner of her messenger, that made me
+suspect that all was not right. A caprice of the imagination caused me
+to conjecture that some ill had occurred to Clara or Evelyn, rather
+than to this aged lady. Our fears, for ever on the stretch, demanded a
+nourishment of horror; and it seemed too natural an occurrence, too
+like past times, for the old to die before the young. I found the
+venerable mother of my Idris lying on a couch, her tall emaciated
+figure stretched out; her face fallen away, from which the nose stood
+out in sharp profile, and her large dark eyes, hollow and deep, gleamed
+with such light as may edge a thunder cloud at sun-set. All was
+shrivelled and dried up, except these lights; her voice too was
+fearfully changed, as she spoke to me at intervals. “I am afraid,” said
+she, “that it is selfish in me to have asked you to visit the old woman
+again, before she dies: yet perhaps it would have been a greater shock
+to hear suddenly that I was dead, than to see me first thus.”
+
+I clasped her shrivelled hand: “Are you indeed so ill?” I asked.
+
+“Do you not perceive death in my face,” replied she, “it is strange; I
+ought to have expected this, and yet I confess it has taken me unaware.
+I never clung to life, or enjoyed it, till these last months, while
+among those I senselessly deserted: and it is hard to be snatched
+immediately away. I am glad, however, that I am not a victim of the
+plague; probably I should have died at this hour, though the world had
+continued as it was in my youth.”
+
+She spoke with difficulty, and I perceived that she regretted the
+necessity of death, even more than she cared to confess. Yet she had
+not to complain of an undue shortening of existence; her faded person
+shewed that life had naturally spent itself. We had been alone at
+first; now Clara entered; the Countess turned to her with a smile, and
+took the hand of this lovely child; her roseate palm and snowy fingers,
+contrasted with relaxed fibres and yellow hue of those of her aged
+friend; she bent to kiss her, touching her withered mouth with the
+warm, full lips of youth. “Verney,” said the Countess, “I need not
+recommend this dear girl to you, for your own sake you will preserve
+her. Were the world as it was, I should have a thousand sage
+precautions to impress, that one so sensitive, good, and beauteous,
+might escape the dangers that used to lurk for the destruction of the
+fair and excellent. This is all nothing now.
+
+“I commit you, my kind nurse, to your uncle’s care; to yours I entrust
+the dearest relic of my better self. Be to Adrian, sweet one, what you
+have been to me—enliven his sadness with your sprightly sallies; sooth
+his anguish by your sober and inspired converse, when he is dying;
+nurse him as you have done me.”
+
+Clara burst into tears; “Kind girl,” said the Countess, “do not weep
+for me. Many dear friends are left to you.”
+
+“And yet,” cried Clara, “you talk of their dying also. This is indeed
+cruel —how could I live, if they were gone? If it were possible for my
+beloved protector to die before me, I could not nurse him; I could only
+die too.”
+
+The venerable lady survived this scene only twenty-four hours. She was
+the last tie binding us to the ancient state of things. It was
+impossible to look on her, and not call to mind in their wonted guise,
+events and persons, as alien to our present situation as the disputes
+of Themistocles and Aristides, or the wars of the two roses in our
+native land. The crown of England had pressed her brow; the memory of
+my father and his misfortunes, the vain struggles of the late king, the
+images of Raymond, Evadne, and Perdita, who had lived in the world’s
+prime, were brought vividly before us. We consigned her to the
+oblivious tomb with reluctance; and when I turned from her grave, Janus
+veiled his retrospective face; that which gazed on future generations
+had long lost its faculty.
+
+After remaining a week at Dijon, until thirty of our number deserted
+the vacant ranks of life, we continued our way towards Geneva. At noon
+on the second day we arrived at the foot of Jura. We halted here during
+the heat of the day. Here fifty human beings—fifty, the only human
+beings that survived of the food-teeming earth, assembled to read in
+the looks of each other ghastly plague, or wasting sorrow, desperation,
+or worse, carelessness of future or present evil. Here we assembled at
+the foot of this mighty wall of mountain, under a spreading walnut
+tree; a brawling stream refreshed the green sward by its sprinkling;
+and the busy grasshopper chirped among the thyme. We clustered together
+a group of wretched sufferers. A mother cradled in her enfeebled arms
+the child, last of many, whose glazed eye was about to close for ever.
+Here beauty, late glowing in youthful lustre and consciousness, now wan
+and neglected, knelt fanning with uncertain motion the beloved, who lay
+striving to paint his features, distorted by illness, with a thankful
+smile. There an hard-featured, weather-worn veteran, having prepared
+his meal, sat, his head dropped on his breast, the useless knife
+falling from his grasp, his limbs utterly relaxed, as thought of wife
+and child, and dearest relative, all lost, passed across his
+recollection. There sat a man who for forty years had basked in
+fortune’s tranquil sunshine; he held the hand of his last hope, his
+beloved daughter, who had just attained womanhood; and he gazed on her
+with anxious eyes, while she tried to rally her fainting spirit to
+comfort him. Here a servant, faithful to the last, though dying, waited
+on one, who, though still erect with health, gazed with gasping fear on
+the variety of woe around.
+
+Adrian stood leaning against a tree; he held a book in his hand, but
+his eye wandered from the pages, and sought mine; they mingled a
+sympathetic glance; his looks confessed that his thoughts had quitted
+the inanimate print, for pages more pregnant with meaning, more
+absorbing, spread out before him. By the margin of the stream, apart
+from all, in a tranquil nook, where the purling brook kissed the green
+sward gently, Clara and Evelyn were at play, sometimes beating the
+water with large boughs, sometimes watching the summer-flies that
+sported upon it. Evelyn now chased a butterfly—now gathered a flower
+for his cousin; and his laughing cherub-face and clear brow told of the
+light heart that beat in his bosom. Clara, though she endeavoured to
+give herself up to his amusement, often forgot him, as she turned to
+observe Adrian and me. She was now fourteen, and retained her childish
+appearance, though in height a woman; she acted the part of the
+tenderest mother to my little orphan boy; to see her playing with him,
+or attending silently and submissively on our wants, you thought only
+of her admirable docility and patience; but, in her soft eyes, and the
+veined curtains that veiled them, in the clearness of her marmoreal
+brow, and the tender expression of her lips, there was an intelligence
+and beauty that at once excited admiration and love.
+
+When the sun had sunk towards the precipitate west, and the evening
+shadows grew long, we prepared to ascend the mountain. The attention
+that we were obliged to pay to the sick, made our progress slow. The
+winding road, though steep, presented a confined view of rocky fields
+and hills, each hiding the other, till our farther ascent disclosed
+them in succession. We were seldom shaded from the declining sun, whose
+slant beams were instinct with exhausting heat. There are times when
+minor difficulties grow gigantic —times, when as the Hebrew poet
+expressively terms it, “the grasshopper is a burthen;” so was it with
+our ill fated party this evening. Adrian, usually the first to rally
+his spirits, and dash foremost into fatigue and hardship, with relaxed
+limbs and declined head, the reins hanging loosely in his grasp, left
+the choice of the path to the instinct of his horse, now and then
+painfully rousing himself, when the steepness of the ascent required
+that he should keep his seat with better care. Fear and horror
+encompassed me. Did his languid air attest that he also was struck with
+contagion? How long, when I look on this matchless specimen of
+mortality, may I perceive that his thought answers mine? how long will
+those limbs obey the kindly spirit within? how long will light and life
+dwell in the eyes of this my sole remaining friend? Thus pacing slowly,
+each hill surmounted, only presented another to be ascended; each
+jutting corner only discovered another, sister to the last, endlessly.
+Sometimes the pressure of sickness in one among us, caused the whole
+cavalcade to halt; the call for water, the eagerly expressed wish to
+repose; the cry of pain, and suppressed sob of the mourner—such were
+the sorrowful attendants of our passage of the Jura.
+
+Adrian had gone first. I saw him, while I was detained by the loosening
+of a girth, struggling with the upward path, seemingly more difficult
+than any we had yet passed. He reached the top, and the dark outline of
+his figure stood in relief against the sky. He seemed to behold
+something unexpected and wonderful; for, pausing, his head stretched
+out, his arms for a moment extended, he seemed to give an All Hail! to
+some new vision. Urged by curiosity, I hurried to join him. After
+battling for many tedious minutes with the precipice, the same scene
+presented itself to me, which had wrapt him in extatic wonder.
+
+Nature, or nature’s favourite, this lovely earth, presented her most
+unrivalled beauties in resplendent and sudden exhibition. Below, far,
+far below, even as it were in the yawning abyss of the ponderous globe,
+lay the placid and azure expanse of lake Leman; vine-covered hills
+hedged it in, and behind dark mountains in cone-like shape, or
+irregular cyclopean wall, served for further defence. But beyond, and
+high above all, as if the spirits of the air had suddenly unveiled
+their bright abodes, placed in scaleless altitude in the stainless sky,
+heaven-kissing, companions of the unattainable ether, were the glorious
+Alps, clothed in dazzling robes of light by the setting sun. And, as if
+the world’s wonders were never to be exhausted, their vast immensities,
+their jagged crags, and roseate painting, appeared again in the lake
+below, dipping their proud heights beneath the unruffled waves—palaces
+for the Naiads of the placid waters. Towns and villages lay scattered
+at the foot of Jura, which, with dark ravine, and black promontories,
+stretched its roots into the watery expanse beneath. Carried away by
+wonder, I forgot the death of man, and the living and beloved friend
+near me. When I turned, I saw tears streaming from his eyes; his thin
+hands pressed one against the other, his animated countenance beaming
+with admiration; “Why,” cried he, at last, “Why, oh heart, whisperest
+thou of grief to me? Drink in the beauty of that scene, and possess
+delight beyond what a fabled paradise could afford.”
+
+By degrees, our whole party surmounting the steep, joined us, not one
+among them, but gave visible tokens of admiration, surpassing any
+before experienced. One cried, “God reveals his heaven to us; we may
+die blessed.” Another and another, with broken exclamations, and
+extravagant phrases, endeavoured to express the intoxicating effect of
+this wonder of nature. So we remained awhile, lightened of the pressing
+burthen of fate, forgetful of death, into whose night we were about to
+plunge; no longer reflecting that our eyes now and for ever were and
+would be the only ones which might perceive the divine magnificence of
+this terrestrial exhibition. An enthusiastic transport, akin to
+happiness, burst, like a sudden ray from the sun, on our darkened life.
+Precious attribute of woe-worn humanity! that can snatch extatic
+emotion, even from under the very share and harrow, that ruthlessly
+ploughs up and lays waste every hope.
+
+This evening was marked by another event. Passing through Ferney in our
+way to Geneva, unaccustomed sounds of music arose from the rural church
+which stood embosomed in trees, surrounded by smokeless, vacant
+cottages. The peal of an organ with rich swell awoke the mute air,
+lingering along, and mingling with the intense beauty that clothed the
+rocks and woods, and waves around. Music—the language of the immortals,
+disclosed to us as testimony of their existence—music, “silver key of
+the fountain of tears,” child of love, soother of grief, inspirer of
+heroism and radiant thoughts, O music, in this our desolation, we had
+forgotten thee! Nor pipe at eve cheered us, nor harmony of voice, nor
+linked thrill of string; thou camest upon us now, like the revealing of
+other forms of being; and transported as we had been by the loveliness
+of nature, fancying that we beheld the abode of spirits, now we might
+well imagine that we heard their melodious communings. We paused in
+such awe as would seize on a pale votarist, visiting some holy shrine
+at midnight; if she beheld animated and smiling, the image which she
+worshipped. We all stood mute; many knelt. In a few minutes however, we
+were recalled to human wonder and sympathy by a familiar strain. The
+air was Haydn’s “New-Created World,” and, old and drooping as humanity
+had become, the world yet fresh as at creation’s day, might still be
+worthily celebrated by such an hymn of praise. Adrian and I entered the
+church; the nave was empty, though the smoke of incense rose from the
+altar, bringing with it the recollection of vast congregations, in once
+thronged cathedrals; we went into the loft. A blind old man sat at the
+bellows; his whole soul was ear; and as he sat in the attitude of
+attentive listening, a bright glow of pleasure was diffused over his
+countenance; for, though his lack-lustre eye could not reflect the
+beam, yet his parted lips, and every line of his face and venerable
+brow spoke delight. A young woman sat at the keys, perhaps twenty years
+of age. Her auburn hair hung on her neck, and her fair brow shone in
+its own beauty; but her drooping eyes let fall fast-flowing tears,
+while the constraint she exercised to suppress her sobs, and still her
+trembling, flushed her else pale cheek; she was thin; languor, and
+alas! sickness, bent her form. We stood looking at the pair, forgetting
+what we heard in the absorbing sight; till, the last chord struck, the
+peal died away in lessening reverberations. The mighty voice, inorganic
+we might call it, for we could in no way associate it with mechanism of
+pipe or key, stilled its sonorous tone, and the girl, turning to lend
+her assistance to her aged companion, at length perceived us.
+
+It was her father; and she, since childhood, had been the guide of his
+darkened steps. They were Germans from Saxony, and, emigrating thither
+but a few years before, had formed new ties with the surrounding
+villagers. About the time that the pestilence had broken out, a young
+German student had joined them. Their simple history was easily
+divined. He, a noble, loved the fair daughter of the poor musician, and
+followed them in their flight from the persecutions of his friends; but
+soon the mighty leveller came with unblunted scythe to mow, together
+with the grass, the tall flowers of the field. The youth was an early
+victim. She preserved herself for her father’s sake. His blindness
+permitted her to continue a delusion, at first the child of
+accident—and now solitary beings, sole survivors in the land, he
+remained unacquainted with the change, nor was aware that when he
+listened to his child’s music, the mute mountains, senseless lake, and
+unconscious trees, were, himself excepted, her sole auditors.
+
+The very day that we arrived she had been attacked by symptomatic
+illness. She was paralyzed with horror at the idea of leaving her aged,
+sightless father alone on the empty earth; but she had not courage to
+disclose the truth, and the very excess of her desperation animated her
+to surpassing exertions. At the accustomed vesper hour, she led him to
+the chapel; and, though trembling and weeping on his account, she
+played, without fault in time, or error in note, the hymn written to
+celebrate the creation of the adorned earth, soon to be her tomb.
+
+We came to her like visitors from heaven itself; her high-wrought
+courage; her hardly sustained firmness, fled with the appearance of
+relief. With a shriek she rushed towards us, embraced the knees of
+Adrian, and uttering but the words, “O save my father!” with sobs and
+hysterical cries, opened the long-shut floodgates of her woe.
+
+Poor girl!—she and her father now lie side by side, beneath the high
+walnut-tree where her lover reposes, and which in her dying moments she
+had pointed out to us. Her father, at length aware of his daughter’s
+danger, unable to see the changes of her dear countenance, obstinately
+held her hand, till it was chilled and stiffened by death. Nor did he
+then move or speak, till, twelve hours after, kindly death took him to
+his breakless repose. They rest beneath the sod, the tree their
+monument;—the hallowed spot is distinct in my memory, paled in by
+craggy Jura, and the far, immeasurable Alps; the spire of the church
+they frequented still points from out the embosoming trees; and though
+her hand be cold, still methinks the sounds of divine music which they
+loved wander about, solacing their gentle ghosts.
+
+ [24] Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+We had now reached Switzerland, so long the final mark and aim of our
+exertions. We had looked, I know not wherefore, with hope and pleasing
+expectation on her congregation of hills and snowy crags, and opened
+our bosoms with renewed spirits to the icy Biz, which even at Midsummer
+used to come from the northern glacier laden with cold. Yet how could
+we nourish expectation of relief? Like our native England, and the vast
+extent of fertile France, this mountain-embowered land was desolate of
+its inhabitants. Nor bleak mountain-top, nor snow-nourished rivulet;
+not the ice-laden Biz, nor thunder, the tamer of contagion, had
+preserved them— why therefore should we claim exemption?
+
+Who was there indeed to save? What troop had we brought fit to stand at
+bay, and combat with the conqueror? We were a failing remnant, tamed to
+mere submission to the coming blow. A train half dead, through fear of
+death—a hopeless, unresisting, almost reckless crew, which, in the
+tossed bark of life, had given up all pilotage, and resigned themselves
+to the destructive force of ungoverned winds. Like a few furrows of
+unreaped corn, which, left standing on a wide field after the rest is
+gathered to the garner, are swiftly borne down by the winter storm.
+Like a few straggling swallows, which, remaining after their fellows
+had, on the first unkind breath of passing autumn, migrated to genial
+climes, were struck to earth by the first frost of November. Like a
+stray sheep that wanders over the sleet-beaten hill-side, while the
+flock is in the pen, and dies before morning-dawn. Like a cloud, like
+one of many that were spread in impenetrable woof over the sky, which,
+when the shepherd north has driven its companions “to drink Antipodean
+noon,” fades and dissolves in the clear ether—Such were we!
+
+We left the fair margin of the beauteous lake of Geneva, and entered
+the Alpine ravines; tracing to its source the brawling Arve, through
+the rock-bound valley of Servox, beside the mighty waterfalls, and
+under the shadow of the inaccessible mountains, we travelled on; while
+the luxuriant walnut-tree gave place to the dark pine, whose musical
+branches swung in the wind, and whose upright forms had braved a
+thousand storms—till the verdant sod, the flowery dell, and shrubbery
+hill were exchanged for the sky-piercing, untrodden, seedless rock,
+“the bones of the world, waiting to be clothed with every thing
+necessary to give life and beauty.”[25] Strange that we should seek
+shelter here! Surely, if, in those countries where earth was wont, like
+a tender mother, to nourish her children, we had found her a destroyer,
+we need not seek it here, where stricken by keen penury she seems to
+shudder through her stony veins. Nor were we mistaken in our
+conjecture. We vainly sought the vast and ever moving glaciers of
+Chamounix, rifts of pendant ice, seas of congelated waters, the
+leafless groves of tempest-battered pines, dells, mere paths for the
+loud avalanche, and hill-tops, the resort of thunder-storms. Pestilence
+reigned paramount even here. By the time that day and night, like twin
+sisters of equal growth, shared equally their dominion over the hours,
+one by one, beneath the ice-caves, beside the waters springing from the
+thawed snows of a thousand winters, another and yet another of the
+remnant of the race of Man, closed their eyes for ever to the light.
+
+Yet we were not quite wrong in seeking a scene like this, whereon to
+close the drama. Nature, true to the last, consoled us in the very
+heart of misery. Sublime grandeur of outward objects soothed our
+hapless hearts, and were in harmony with our desolation. Many sorrows
+have befallen man during his chequered course; and many a woe-stricken
+mourner has found himself sole survivor among many. Our misery took its
+majestic shape and colouring from the vast ruin, that accompanied and
+made one with it. Thus on lovely earth, many a dark ravine contains a
+brawling stream, shadowed by romantic rocks, threaded by mossy
+paths—but all, except this, wanted the mighty back-ground, the towering
+Alps, whose snowy capes, or bared ridges, lifted us from our dull
+mortal abode, to the palaces of Nature’s own.
+
+This solemn harmony of event and situation regulated our feelings, and
+gave as it were fitting costume to our last act. Majestic gloom and
+tragic pomp attended the decease of wretched humanity. The funeral
+procession of monarchs of old, was transcended by our splendid shews.
+Near the sources of the Arveiron we performed the rites for, four only
+excepted, the last of the species. Adrian and I, leaving Clara and
+Evelyn wrapt in peaceful unobserving slumber, carried the body to this
+desolate spot, and placed it in those caves of ice beneath the glacier,
+which rive and split with the slightest sound, and bring destruction on
+those within the clefts—no bird or beast of prey could here profane the
+frozen form. So, with hushed steps and in silence, we placed the dead
+on a bier of ice, and then, departing, stood on the rocky platform
+beside the river springs. All hushed as we had been, the very striking
+of the air with our persons had sufficed to disturb the repose of this
+thawless region; and we had hardly left the cavern, before vast blocks
+of ice, detaching themselves from the roof, fell, and covered the human
+image we had deposited within. We had chosen a fair moonlight night,
+but our journey thither had been long, and the crescent sank behind the
+western heights by the time we had accomplished our purpose. The snowy
+mountains and blue glaciers shone in their own light. The rugged and
+abrupt ravine, which formed one side of Mont Anvert, was opposite to
+us, the glacier at our side; at our feet Arveiron, white and foaming,
+dashed over the pointed rocks that jutted into it, and, with whirring
+spray and ceaseless roar, disturbed the stilly night. Yellow lightnings
+played around the vast dome of Mont Blanc, silent as the snow-clad rock
+they illuminated; all was bare, wild, and sublime, while the singing of
+the pines in melodious murmurings added a gentle interest to the rough
+magnificence. Now the riving and fall of icy rocks clave the air; now
+the thunder of the avalanche burst on our ears. In countries whose
+features are of less magnitude, nature betrays her living powers in the
+foliage of the trees, in the growth of herbage, in the soft purling of
+meandering streams; here, endowed with giant attributes, the torrent,
+the thunder-storm, and the flow of massive waters, display her
+activity. Such the church-yard, such the requiem, such the eternal
+congregation, that waited on our companion’s funeral!
+
+Nor was it the human form alone which we had placed in this eternal
+sepulchre, whose obsequies we now celebrated. With this last victim
+Plague vanished from the earth. Death had never wanted weapons
+wherewith to destroy life, and we, few and weak as we had become, were
+still exposed to every other shaft with which his full quiver teemed.
+But pestilence was absent from among them. For seven years it had had
+full sway upon earth; she had trod every nook of our spacious globe;
+she had mingled with the atmosphere, which as a cloak enwraps all our
+fellow-creatures—the inhabitants of native Europe—the luxurious
+Asiatic—the swarthy African and free American had been vanquished and
+destroyed by her. Her barbarous tyranny came to its close here in the
+rocky vale of Chamounix.
+
+Still recurring scenes of misery and pain, the fruits of this
+distemper, made no more a part of our lives—the word plague no longer
+rung in our ears—the aspect of plague incarnate in the human
+countenance no longer appeared before our eyes. From this moment I saw
+plague no more. She abdicated her throne, and despoiled herself of her
+imperial sceptre among the ice rocks that surrounded us. She left
+solitude and silence co-heirs of her kingdom.
+
+My present feelings are so mingled with the past, that I cannot say
+whether the knowledge of this change visited us, as we stood on this
+sterile spot. It seems to me that it did; that a cloud seemed to pass
+from over us, that a weight was taken from the air; that henceforth we
+breathed more freely, and raised our heads with some portion of former
+liberty. Yet we did not hope. We were impressed by the sentiment, that
+our race was run, but that plague would not be our destroyer. The
+coming time was as a mighty river, down which a charmed boat is driven,
+whose mortal steersman knows, that the obvious peril is not the one he
+needs fear, yet that danger is nigh; and who floats awe-struck under
+beetling precipices, through the dark and turbid waters—seeing in the
+distance yet stranger and ruder shapes, towards which he is
+irresistibly impelled. What would become of us? O for some Delphic
+oracle, or Pythian maid, to utter the secrets of futurity! O for some
+Œdipus to solve the riddle of the cruel Sphynx! Such Œdipus was I to
+be—not divining a word’s juggle, but whose agonizing pangs, and
+sorrow-tainted life were to be the engines, wherewith to lay bare the
+secrets of destiny, and reveal the meaning of the enigma, whose
+explanation closed the history of the human race.
+
+Dim fancies, akin to these, haunted our minds, and instilled feelings
+not unallied to pleasure, as we stood beside this silent tomb of
+nature, reared by these lifeless mountains, above her living veins,
+choking her vital principle. “Thus are we left,” said Adrian, “two
+melancholy blasted trees, where once a forest waved. We are left to
+mourn, and pine, and die. Yet even now we have our duties, which we
+must string ourselves to fulfil: the duty of bestowing pleasure where
+we can, and by force of love, irradiating with rainbow hues the tempest
+of grief. Nor will I repine if in this extremity we preserve what we
+now possess. Something tells me, Verney, that we need no longer dread
+our cruel enemy, and I cling with delight to the oracular voice. Though
+strange, it will be sweet to mark the growth of your little boy, and
+the development of Clara’s young heart. In the midst of a desert world,
+we are everything to them; and, if we live, it must be our task to make
+this new mode of life happy to them. At present this is easy, for their
+childish ideas do not wander into futurity, and the stinging craving
+for sympathy, and all of love of which our nature is susceptible, is
+not yet awake within them: we cannot guess what will happen then, when
+nature asserts her indefeasible and sacred powers; but, long before
+that time, we may all be cold, as he who lies in yonder tomb of ice. We
+need only provide for the present, and endeavour to fill with pleasant
+images the inexperienced fancy of your lovely niece. The scenes which
+now surround us, vast and sublime as they are, are not such as can best
+contribute to this work. Nature is here like our fortunes, grand, but
+too destructive, bare, and rude, to be able to afford delight to her
+young imagination. Let us descend to the sunny plains of Italy. Winter
+will soon be here, to clothe this wilderness in double desolation; but
+we will cross the bleak hill-tops, and lead her to scenes of fertility
+and beauty, where her path will be adorned with flowers, and the cheery
+atmosphere inspire pleasure and hope.”
+
+In pursuance of this plan we quitted Chamounix on the following day. We
+had no cause to hasten our steps; no event was transacted beyond our
+actual sphere to enchain our resolves, so we yielded to every idle
+whim, and deemed our time well spent, when we could behold the passage
+of the hours without dismay. We loitered along the lovely Vale of
+Servox; passed long hours on the bridge, which, crossing the ravine of
+Arve, commands a prospect of its pine-clothed depths, and the snowy
+mountains that wall it in. We rambled through romantic Switzerland;
+till, fear of coming winter leading us forward, the first days of
+October found us in the valley of La Maurienne, which leads to Cenis. I
+cannot explain the reluctance we felt at leaving this land of
+mountains; perhaps it was, that we regarded the Alps as boundaries
+between our former and our future state of existence, and so clung
+fondly to what of old we had loved. Perhaps, because we had now so few
+impulses urging to a choice between two modes of action, we were
+pleased to preserve the existence of one, and preferred the prospect of
+what we were to do, to the recollection of what had been done. We felt
+that for this year danger was past; and we believed that, for some
+months, we were secured to each other. There was a thrilling, agonizing
+delight in the thought—it filled the eyes with misty tears, it tore the
+heart with tumultuous heavings; frailer than the “snow fall in the
+river,” were we each and all—but we strove to give life and
+individuality to the meteoric course of our several existences, and to
+feel that no moment escaped us unenjoyed. Thus tottering on the dizzy
+brink, we were happy. Yes! as we sat beneath the toppling rocks, beside
+the waterfalls, near
+
+—Forests, ancient as the hills,
+And folding sunny spots of greenery,
+
+
+where the chamois grazed, and the timid squirrel laid up its
+hoard—descanting on the charms of nature, drinking in the while her
+unalienable beauties—we were, in an empty world, happy.
+
+Yet, O days of joy—days, when eye spoke to eye, and voices, sweeter
+than the music of the swinging branches of the pines, or rivulet’s
+gentle murmur, answered mine—yet, O days replete with beatitude, days
+of loved society—days unutterably dear to me forlorn—pass, O pass
+before me, making me in your memory forget what I am. Behold, how my
+streaming eyes blot this senseless paper—behold, how my features are
+convulsed by agonizing throes, at your mere recollection, now that,
+alone, my tears flow, my lips quiver, my cries fill the air, unseen,
+unmarked, unheard! Yet, O yet, days of delight! let me dwell on your
+long-drawn hours!
+
+As the cold increased upon us, we passed the Alps, and descended into
+Italy. At the uprising of morn, we sat at our repast, and cheated our
+regrets by gay sallies or learned disquisitions. The live-long day we
+sauntered on, still keeping in view the end of our journey, but
+careless of the hour of its completion. As the evening star shone out,
+and the orange sunset, far in the west, marked the position of the dear
+land we had for ever left, talk, thought enchaining, made the hours
+fly—O that we had lived thus for ever and for ever! Of what consequence
+was it to our four hearts, that they alone were the fountains of life
+in the wide world? As far as mere individual sentiment was concerned,
+we had rather be left thus united together, than if, each alone in a
+populous desert of unknown men, we had wandered truly companionless
+till life’s last term. In this manner, we endeavoured to console each
+other; in this manner, true philosophy taught us to reason.
+
+It was the delight of Adrian and myself to wait on Clara, naming her
+the little queen of the world, ourselves her humblest servitors. When
+we arrived at a town, our first care was to select for her its most
+choice abode; to make sure that no harrowing relic remained of its
+former inhabitants; to seek food for her, and minister to her wants
+with assiduous tenderness. Clara entered into our scheme with childish
+gaiety. Her chief business was to attend on Evelyn; but it was her
+sport to array herself in splendid robes, adorn herself with sunny
+gems, and ape a princely state. Her religion, deep and pure, did not
+teach her to refuse to blunt thus the keen sting of regret; her
+youthful vivacity made her enter, heart and soul, into these strange
+masquerades.
+
+We had resolved to pass the ensuing winter at Milan, which, as being a
+large and luxurious city, would afford us choice of homes. We had
+descended the Alps, and left far behind their vast forests and mighty
+crags. We entered smiling Italy. Mingled grass and corn grew in her
+plains, the unpruned vines threw their luxuriant branches around the
+elms. The grapes, overripe, had fallen on the ground, or hung purple,
+or burnished green, among the red and yellow leaves. The ears of
+standing corn winnowed to emptiness by the spendthrift winds; the
+fallen foliage of the trees, the weed-grown brooks, the dusky olive,
+now spotted with its blackened fruit; the chestnuts, to which the
+squirrel only was harvest-man; all plenty, and yet, alas! all poverty,
+painted in wondrous hues and fantastic groupings this land of beauty.
+In the towns, in the voiceless towns, we visited the churches, adorned
+by pictures, master-pieces of art, or galleries of statues—while in
+this genial clime the animals, in new found liberty, rambled through
+the gorgeous palaces, and hardly feared our forgotten aspect. The
+dove-coloured oxen turned their full eyes on us, and paced slowly by; a
+startling throng of silly sheep, with pattering feet, would start up in
+some chamber, formerly dedicated to the repose of beauty, and rush,
+huddling past us, down the marble staircase into the street, and again
+in at the first open door, taking unrebuked possession of hallowed
+sanctuary, or kingly council-chamber. We no longer started at these
+occurrences, nor at worse exhibition of change—when the palace had
+become a mere tomb, pregnant with fetid stench, strewn with the dead;
+and we could perceive how pestilence and fear had played strange
+antics, chasing the luxurious dame to the dank fields and bare cottage;
+gathering, among carpets of Indian woof, and beds of silk, the rough
+peasant, or the deformed half-human shape of the wretched beggar.
+
+We arrived at Milan, and stationed ourselves in the Vice-Roy’s palace.
+Here we made laws for ourselves, dividing our day, and fixing distinct
+occupations for each hour. In the morning we rode in the adjoining
+country, or wandered through the palaces, in search of pictures or
+antiquities. In the evening we assembled to read or to converse. There
+were few books that we dared read; few, that did not cruelly deface the
+painting we bestowed on our solitude, by recalling combinations and
+emotions never more to be experienced by us. Metaphysical disquisition;
+fiction, which wandering from all reality, lost itself in self-created
+errors; poets of times so far gone by, that to read of them was as to
+read of Atlantis and Utopia; or such as referred to nature only, and
+the workings of one particular mind; but most of all, talk, varied and
+ever new, beguiled our hours.
+
+While we paused thus in our onward career towards death, time held on
+its accustomed course. Still and for ever did the earth roll on,
+enthroned in her atmospheric car, speeded by the force of the invisible
+coursers of never-erring necessity. And now, this dew-drop in the sky,
+this ball, ponderous with mountains, lucent with waves, passing from
+the short tyranny of watery Pisces and the frigid Ram, entered the
+radiant demesne of Taurus and the Twins. There, fanned by vernal airs,
+the Spirit of Beauty sprung from her cold repose; and, with winnowing
+wings and soft pacing feet, set a girdle of verdure around the earth,
+sporting among the violets, hiding within the springing foliage of the
+trees, tripping lightly down the radiant streams into the sunny deep.
+“For lo! winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear
+on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice
+of the turtle is heard in our land; the fig tree putteth forth her
+green figs, and the vines, with the tender grape, give a good
+smell.”[26] Thus was it in the time of the ancient regal poet; thus was
+it now.
+
+Yet how could we miserable hail the approach of this delightful season?
+We hoped indeed that death did not now as heretofore walk in its
+shadow; yet, left as we were alone to each other, we looked in each
+other’s faces with enquiring eyes, not daring altogether to trust to
+our presentiments, and endeavouring to divine which would be the
+hapless survivor to the other three. We were to pass the summer at the
+lake of Como, and thither we removed as soon as spring grew to her
+maturity, and the snow disappeared from the hill tops. Ten miles from
+Como, under the steep heights of the eastern mountains, by the margin
+of the lake, was a villa called the Pliniana, from its being built on
+the site of a fountain, whose periodical ebb and flow is described by
+the younger Pliny in his letters. The house had nearly fallen into
+ruin, till in the year 2090, an English nobleman had bought it, and
+fitted it up with every luxury. Two large halls, hung with splendid
+tapestry, and paved with marble, opened on each side of a court, of
+whose two other sides one overlooked the deep dark lake, and the other
+was bounded by a mountain, from whose stony side gushed, with roar and
+splash, the celebrated fountain. Above, underwood of myrtle and tufts
+of odorous plants crowned the rock, while the star-pointing giant
+cypresses reared themselves in the blue air, and the recesses of the
+hills were adorned with the luxuriant growth of chestnut-trees. Here we
+fixed our summer residence. We had a lovely skiff, in which we sailed,
+now stemming the midmost waves, now coasting the over-hanging and
+craggy banks, thick sown with evergreens, which dipped their shining
+leaves in the waters, and were mirrored in many a little bay and creek
+of waters of translucent darkness. Here orange plants bloomed, here
+birds poured forth melodious hymns; and here, during spring, the cold
+snake emerged from the clefts, and basked on the sunny terraces of
+rock.
+
+Were we not happy in this paradisiacal retreat? If some kind spirit had
+whispered forgetfulness to us, methinks we should have been happy here,
+where the precipitous mountains, nearly pathless, shut from our view
+the far fields of desolate earth, and with small exertion of the
+imagination, we might fancy that the cities were still resonant with
+popular hum, and the peasant still guided his plough through the
+furrow, and that we, the world’s free denizens, enjoyed a voluntary
+exile, and not a remediless cutting off from our extinct species.
+
+Not one among us enjoyed the beauty of this scenery so much as Clara.
+Before we quitted Milan, a change had taken place in her habits and
+manners. She lost her gaiety, she laid aside her sports, and assumed an
+almost vestal plainness of attire. She shunned us, retiring with Evelyn
+to some distant chamber or silent nook; nor did she enter into his
+pastimes with the same zest as she was wont, but would sit and watch
+him with sadly tender smiles, and eyes bright with tears, yet without a
+word of complaint. She approached us timidly, avoided our caresses, nor
+shook off her embarrassment till some serious discussion or lofty theme
+called her for awhile out of herself. Her beauty grew as a rose, which,
+opening to the summer wind, discloses leaf after leaf till the sense
+aches with its excess of loveliness. A slight and variable colour
+tinged her cheeks, and her motions seemed attuned by some hidden
+harmony of surpassing sweetness. We redoubled our tenderness and
+earnest attentions. She received them with grateful smiles, that fled
+swift as sunny beam from a glittering wave on an April day.
+
+Our only acknowledged point of sympathy with her, appeared to be
+Evelyn. This dear little fellow was a comforter and delight to us
+beyond all words. His buoyant spirit, and his innocent ignorance of our
+vast calamity, were balm to us, whose thoughts and feelings were
+over-wrought and spun out in the immensity of speculative sorrow. To
+cherish, to caress, to amuse him was the common task of all. Clara, who
+felt towards him in some degree like a young mother, gratefully
+acknowledged our kindness towards him. To me, O! to me, who saw the
+clear brows and soft eyes of the beloved of my heart, my lost and ever
+dear Idris, re-born in his gentle face, to me he was dear even to pain;
+if I pressed him to my heart, methought I clasped a real and living
+part of her, who had lain there through long years of youthful
+happiness.
+
+It was the custom of Adrian and myself to go out each day in our skiff
+to forage in the adjacent country. In these expeditions we were seldom
+accompanied by Clara or her little charge, but our return was an hour
+of hilarity. Evelyn ransacked our stores with childish eagerness, and
+we always brought some new found gift for our fair companion. Then too
+we made discoveries of lovely scenes or gay palaces, whither in the
+evening we all proceeded. Our sailing expeditions were most divine, and
+with a fair wind or transverse course we cut the liquid waves; and, if
+talk failed under the pressure of thought, I had my clarionet with me,
+which awoke the echoes, and gave the change to our careful minds. Clara
+at such times often returned to her former habits of free converse and
+gay sally; and though our four hearts alone beat in the world, those
+four hearts were happy.
+
+One day, on our return from the town of Como, with a laden boat, we
+expected as usual to be met at the port by Clara and Evelyn, and we
+were somewhat surprised to see the beach vacant. I, as my nature
+prompted, would not prognosticate evil, but explained it away as a mere
+casual incident. Not so Adrian. He was seized with sudden trembling and
+apprehension, and he called to me with vehemence to steer quickly for
+land, and, when near, leapt from the boat, half falling into the water;
+and, scrambling up the steep bank, hastened along the narrow strip of
+garden, the only level space between the lake and the mountain. I
+followed without delay; the garden and inner court were empty, so was
+the house, whose every room we visited. Adrian called loudly upon
+Clara’s name, and was about to rush up the near mountain-path, when the
+door of a summer-house at the end of the garden slowly opened, and
+Clara appeared, not advancing towards us, but leaning against a column
+of the building with blanched cheeks, in a posture of utter
+despondency. Adrian sprang towards her with a cry of joy, and folded
+her delightedly in his arms. She withdrew from his embrace, and,
+without a word, again entered the summer-house. Her quivering lips, her
+despairing heart refused to afford her voice to express our misfortune.
+Poor little Evelyn had, while playing with her, been seized with sudden
+fever, and now lay torpid and speechless on a little couch in the
+summer-house.
+
+For a whole fortnight we unceasingly watched beside the poor child, as
+his life declined under the ravages of a virulent typhus. His little
+form and tiny lineaments encaged the embryo of the world-spanning mind
+of man. Man’s nature, brimful of passions and affections, would have
+had an home in that little heart, whose swift pulsations hurried
+towards their close. His small hand’s fine mechanism, now flaccid and
+unbent, would in the growth of sinew and muscle, have achieved works of
+beauty or of strength. His tender rosy feet would have trod in firm
+manhood the bowers and glades of earth— these reflections were now of
+little use: he lay, thought and strength suspended, waiting unresisting
+the final blow.
+
+We watched at his bedside, and when the access of fever was on him, we
+neither spoke nor looked at each other, marking only his obstructed
+breath and the mortal glow that tinged his sunken cheek, the heavy
+death that weighed on his eyelids. It is a trite evasion to say, that
+words could not express our long drawn agony; yet how can words image
+sensations, whose tormenting keenness throw us back, as it were, on the
+deep roots and hidden foundations of our nature, which shake our being
+with earth-quake-throe, so that we leave to confide in accustomed
+feelings which like mother-earth support us, and cling to some vain
+imagination or deceitful hope, which will soon be buried in the ruins
+occasioned by the final shock. I have called that period a fortnight,
+which we passed watching the changes of the sweet child’s malady—and
+such it might have been—at night, we wondered to find another day gone,
+while each particular hour seemed endless. Day and night were exchanged
+for one another uncounted; we slept hardly at all, nor did we even quit
+his room, except when a pang of grief seized us, and we retired from
+each other for a short period to conceal our sobs and tears. We
+endeavoured in vain to abstract Clara from this deplorable scene. She
+sat, hour after hour, looking at him, now softly arranging his pillow,
+and, while he had power to swallow, administered his drink. At length
+the moment of his death came: the blood paused in its flow —his eyes
+opened, and then closed again: without convulsion or sigh, the frail
+tenement was left vacant of its spiritual inhabitant.
+
+I have heard that the sight of the dead has confirmed materialists in
+their belief. I ever felt otherwise. Was that my child—that moveless
+decaying inanimation? My child was enraptured by my caresses; his dear
+voice cloathed with meaning articulations his thoughts, otherwise
+inaccessible; his smile was a ray of the soul, and the same soul sat
+upon its throne in his eyes. I turn from this mockery of what he was.
+Take, O earth, thy debt! freely and for ever I consign to thee the garb
+thou didst afford. But thou, sweet child, amiable and beloved boy,
+either thy spirit has sought a fitter dwelling, or, shrined in my
+heart, thou livest while it lives.
+
+We placed his remains under a cypress, the upright mountain being
+scooped out to receive them. And then Clara said, “If you wish me to
+live, take me from hence. There is something in this scene of
+transcendent beauty, in these trees, and hills and waves, that for ever
+whisper to me, leave thy cumbrous flesh, and make a part of us. I
+earnestly entreat you to take me away.”
+
+So on the fifteenth of August we bade adieu to our villa, and the
+embowering shades of this abode of beauty; to calm bay and noisy
+waterfall; to Evelyn’s little grave we bade farewell! and then, with
+heavy hearts, we departed on our pilgrimage towards Rome.
+
+ [25] Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters from Norway.
+
+
+ [26] Solomon’s Song.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+Now—soft awhile—have I arrived so near the end? Yes! it is all over
+now—a step or two over those new made graves, and the wearisome way is
+done. Can I accomplish my task? Can I streak my paper with words
+capacious of the grand conclusion? Arise, black Melancholy! quit thy
+Cimmerian solitude! Bring with thee murky fogs from hell, which may
+drink up the day; bring blight and pestiferous exhalations, which,
+entering the hollow caverns and breathing places of earth, may fill her
+stony veins with corruption, so that not only herbage may no longer
+flourish, the trees may rot, and the rivers run with gall—but the
+everlasting mountains be decomposed, and the mighty deep putrify, and
+the genial atmosphere which clips the globe, lose all powers of
+generation and sustenance. Do this, sad visaged power, while I write,
+while eyes read these pages.
+
+And who will read them? Beware, tender offspring of the re-born world—
+beware, fair being, with human heart, yet untamed by care, and human
+brow, yet unploughed by time—beware, lest the cheerful current of thy
+blood be checked, thy golden locks turn grey, thy sweet dimpling smiles
+be changed to fixed, harsh wrinkles! Let not day look on these lines,
+lest garish day waste, turn pale, and die. Seek a cypress grove, whose
+moaning boughs will be harmony befitting; seek some cave, deep
+embowered in earth’s dark entrails, where no light will penetrate, save
+that which struggles, red and flickering, through a single fissure,
+staining thy page with grimmest livery of death.
+
+There is a painful confusion in my brain, which refuses to delineate
+distinctly succeeding events. Sometimes the irradiation of my friend’s
+gentle smile comes before me; and methinks its light spans and fills
+eternity—then, again, I feel the gasping throes—
+
+We quitted Como, and in compliance with Adrian’s earnest desire, we
+took Venice in our way to Rome. There was something to the English
+peculiarly attractive in the idea of this wave-encircled,
+island-enthroned city. Adrian had never seen it. We went down the Po
+and the Brenta in a boat; and, the days proving intolerably hot, we
+rested in the bordering palaces during the day, travelling through the
+night, when darkness made the bordering banks indistinct, and our
+solitude less remarkable; when the wandering moon lit the waves that
+divided before our prow, and the night-wind filled our sails, and the
+murmuring stream, waving trees, and swelling canvass, accorded in
+harmonious strain. Clara, long overcome by excessive grief, had to a
+great degree cast aside her timid, cold reserve, and received our
+attentions with grateful tenderness. While Adrian with poetic fervour
+discoursed of the glorious nations of the dead, of the beauteous earth
+and the fate of man, she crept near him, drinking in his speech with
+silent pleasure. We banished from our talk, and as much as possible
+from our thoughts, the knowledge of our desolation. And it would be
+incredible to an inhabitant of cities, to one among a busy throng, to
+what extent we succeeded. It was as a man confined in a dungeon, whose
+small and grated rift at first renders the doubtful light more sensibly
+obscure, till, the visual orb having drunk in the beam, and adapted
+itself to its scantiness, he finds that clear noon inhabits his cell.
+So we, a simple triad on empty earth, were multiplied to each other,
+till we became all in all. We stood like trees, whose roots are
+loosened by the wind, which support one another, leaning and clinging
+with encreased fervour while the wintry storms howl. Thus we floated
+down the widening stream of the Po, sleeping when the cicale sang,
+awake with the stars. We entered the narrower banks of the Brenta, and
+arrived at the shore of the Laguna at sunrise on the sixth of
+September. The bright orb slowly rose from behind its cupolas and
+towers, and shed its penetrating light upon the glassy waters. Wrecks
+of gondolas, and some few uninjured ones, were strewed on the beach at
+Fusina. We embarked in one of these for the widowed daughter of ocean,
+who, abandoned and fallen, sat forlorn on her propping isles, looking
+towards the far mountains of Greece. We rowed lightly over the Laguna,
+and entered Canale Grande. The tide ebbed sullenly from out the broken
+portals and violated halls of Venice: sea weed and sea monsters were
+left on the blackened marble, while the salt ooze defaced the matchless
+works of art that adorned their walls, and the sea gull flew out from
+the shattered window. In the midst of this appalling ruin of the
+monuments of man’s power, nature asserted her ascendancy, and shone
+more beauteous from the contrast. The radiant waters hardly trembled,
+while the rippling waves made many sided mirrors to the sun; the blue
+immensity, seen beyond Lido, stretched far, unspecked by boat, so
+tranquil, so lovely, that it seemed to invite us to quit the land
+strewn with ruins, and to seek refuge from sorrow and fear on its
+placid extent.
+
+We saw the ruins of this hapless city from the height of the tower of
+San Marco, immediately under us, and turned with sickening hearts to
+the sea, which, though it be a grave, rears no monument, discloses no
+ruin. Evening had come apace. The sun set in calm majesty behind the
+misty summits of the Apennines, and its golden and roseate hues painted
+the mountains of the opposite shore. “That land,” said Adrian, “tinged
+with the last glories of the day, is Greece.” Greece! The sound had a
+responsive chord in the bosom of Clara. She vehemently reminded us that
+we had promised to take her once again to Greece, to the tomb of her
+parents. Why go to Rome? what should we do at Rome? We might take one
+of the many vessels to be found here, embark in it, and steer right for
+Albania.
+
+I objected the dangers of ocean, and the distance of the mountains we
+saw, from Athens; a distance which, from the savage uncultivation of
+the country, was almost impassable. Adrian, who was delighted with
+Clara’s proposal, obviated these objections. The season was favourable;
+the north-west that blew would take us transversely across the gulph;
+and then we might find, in some abandoned port, a light Greek caique,
+adapted for such navigation, and run down the coast of the Morea, and,
+passing over the Isthmus of Corinth, without much land-travelling or
+fatigue, find ourselves at Athens. This appeared to me wild talk; but
+the sea, glowing with a thousand purple hues, looked so brilliant and
+safe; my beloved companions were so earnest, so determined, that, when
+Adrian said, “Well, though it is not exactly what you wish, yet
+consent, to please me”—I could no longer refuse. That evening we
+selected a vessel, whose size just seemed fitted for our enterprize; we
+bent the sails and put the rigging in order, and reposing that night in
+one of the city’s thousand palaces, agreed to embark at sunrise the
+following morning.
+
+When winds that move not its calm surface, sweep
+The azure sea, I love the land no more;
+The smiles of the serene and tranquil deep
+Tempt my unquiet mind—
+
+
+Thus said Adrian, quoting a translation of Moschus’s poem, as in the
+clear morning light, we rowed over the Laguna, past Lido, into the open
+sea—I would have added in continuation,
+
+        But when the roar
+Of ocean’s gray abyss resounds, and foam
+Gathers upon the sea, and vast waves burst—
+
+
+But my friends declared that such verses were evil augury; so in
+cheerful mood we left the shallow waters, and, when out at sea,
+unfurled our sails to catch the favourable breeze. The laughing morning
+air filled them, while sun-light bathed earth, sky and ocean—the placid
+waves divided to receive our keel, and playfully kissed the dark sides
+of our little skiff, murmuring a welcome; as land receded, still the
+blue expanse, most waveless, twin sister to the azure empyrean,
+afforded smooth conduct to our bark. As the air and waters were
+tranquil and balmy, so were our minds steeped in quiet. In comparison
+with the unstained deep, funereal earth appeared a grave, its high
+rocks and stately mountains were but monuments, its trees the plumes of
+a herse, the brooks and rivers brackish with tears for departed man.
+Farewell to desolate towns —to fields with their savage intermixture of
+corn and weeds—to ever multiplying relics of our lost species. Ocean,
+we commit ourselves to thee —even as the patriarch of old floated above
+the drowned world, let us be saved, as thus we betake ourselves to thy
+perennial flood.
+
+Adrian sat at the helm; I attended to the rigging, the breeze right aft
+filled our swelling canvas, and we ran before it over the untroubled
+deep. The wind died away at noon; its idle breath just permitted us to
+hold our course. As lazy, fair-weather sailors, careless of the coming
+hour, we talked gaily of our coasting voyage, of our arrival at Athens.
+We would make our home of one of the Cyclades, and there in
+myrtle-groves, amidst perpetual spring, fanned by the wholesome
+sea-breezes—we would live long years in beatific union—Was there such a
+thing as death in the world?—
+
+The sun passed its zenith, and lingered down the stainless floor of
+heaven. Lying in the boat, my face turned up to the sky, I thought I
+saw on its blue white, marbled streaks, so slight, so immaterial, that
+now I said— They are there—and now, It is a mere imagination. A sudden
+fear stung me while I gazed; and, starting up, and running to the
+prow,—as I stood, my hair was gently lifted on my brow—a dark line of
+ripples appeared to the east, gaining rapidly on us—my breathless
+remark to Adrian, was followed by the flapping of the canvas, as the
+adverse wind struck it, and our boat lurched—swift as speech, the web
+of the storm thickened over head, the sun went down red, the dark sea
+was strewed with foam, and our skiff rose and fell in its encreasing
+furrows.
+
+Behold us now in our frail tenement, hemmed in by hungry, roaring
+waves, buffeted by winds. In the inky east two vast clouds, sailing
+contrary ways, met; the lightning leapt forth, and the hoarse thunder
+muttered. Again in the south, the clouds replied, and the forked stream
+of fire running along the black sky, shewed us the appalling piles of
+clouds, now met and obliterated by the heaving waves. Great God! And we
+alone—we three— alone—alone—sole dwellers on the sea and on the earth,
+we three must perish! The vast universe, its myriad worlds, and the
+plains of boundless earth which we had left—the extent of shoreless sea
+around—contracted to my view—they and all that they contained, shrunk
+up to one point, even to our tossing bark, freighted with glorious
+humanity.
+
+A convulsion of despair crossed the love-beaming face of Adrian, while
+with set teeth he murmured, “Yet they shall be saved!” Clara, visited
+by an human pang, pale and trembling, crept near him—he looked on her
+with an encouraging smile—“Do you fear, sweet girl? O, do not fear, we
+shall soon be on shore!”
+
+The darkness prevented me from seeing the changes of her countenance;
+but her voice was clear and sweet, as she replied, “Why should I fear?
+neither sea nor storm can harm us, if mighty destiny or the ruler of
+destiny does not permit. And then the stinging fear of surviving either
+of you, is not here—one death will clasp us undivided.”
+
+Meanwhile we took in all our sails, save a gib; and, as soon as we
+might without danger, changed our course, running with the wind for the
+Italian shore. Dark night mixed everything; we hardly discerned the
+white crests of the murderous surges, except when lightning made brief
+noon, and drank the darkness, shewing us our danger, and restoring us
+to double night. We were all silent, except when Adrian, as steersman,
+made an encouraging observation. Our little shell obeyed the rudder
+miraculously well, and ran along on the top of the waves, as if she had
+been an offspring of the sea, and the angry mother sheltered her
+endangered child.
+
+I sat at the prow, watching our course; when suddenly I heard the
+waters break with redoubled fury. We were certainly near the shore—at
+the same time I cried, “About there!” and a broad lightning filling the
+concave, shewed us for one moment the level beach a-head, disclosing
+even the sands, and stunted, ooze-sprinkled beds of reeds, that grew at
+high water mark. Again it was dark, and we drew in our breath with such
+content as one may, who, while fragments of volcano-hurled rock darken
+the air, sees a vast mass ploughing the ground immediately at his feet.
+What to do we knew not —the breakers here, there, everywhere,
+encompassed us—they roared, and dashed, and flung their hated spray in
+our faces. With considerable difficulty and danger we succeeded at
+length in altering our course, and stretched out from shore. I urged my
+companions to prepare for the wreck of our little skiff, and to bind
+themselves to some oar or spar which might suffice to float them. I was
+myself an excellent swimmer—the very sight of the sea was wont to raise
+in me such sensations, as a huntsman experiences, when he hears a pack
+of hounds in full cry; I loved to feel the waves wrap me and strive to
+overpower me; while I, lord of myself, moved this way or that, in spite
+of their angry buffetings. Adrian also could swim—but the weakness of
+his frame prevented him from feeling pleasure in the exercise, or
+acquiring any great expertness. But what power could the strongest
+swimmer oppose to the overpowering violence of ocean in its fury? My
+efforts to prepare my companions were rendered nearly futile —for the
+roaring breakers prevented our hearing one another speak, and the
+waves, that broke continually over our boat, obliged me to exert all my
+strength in lading the water out, as fast as it came in. The while
+darkness, palpable and rayless, hemmed us round, dissipated only by the
+lightning; sometimes we beheld thunderbolts, fiery red, fall into the
+sea, and at intervals vast spouts stooped from the clouds, churning the
+wild ocean, which rose to meet them; while the fierce gale bore the
+rack onwards, and they were lost in the chaotic mingling of sky and
+sea. Our gunwales had been torn away, our single sail had been rent to
+ribbands, and borne down the stream of the wind. We had cut away our
+mast, and lightened the boat of all she contained—Clara attempted to
+assist me in heaving the water from the hold, and, as she turned her
+eyes to look on the lightning, I could discern by that momentary gleam,
+that resignation had conquered every fear. We have a power given us in
+any worst extremity, which props the else feeble mind of man, and
+enables us to endure the most savage tortures with a stillness of soul
+which in hours of happiness we could not have imagined. A calm, more
+dreadful in truth than the tempest, allayed the wild beatings of my
+heart—a calm like that of the gamester, the suicide, and the murderer,
+when the last die is on the point of being cast—while the poisoned cup
+is at the lips,—as the death-blow is about to be given.
+
+Hours passed thus—hours which might write old age on the face of
+beardless youth, and grizzle the silky hair of infancy—-hours, while
+the chaotic uproar continued, while each dread gust transcended in fury
+the one before, and our skiff hung on the breaking wave, and then
+rushed into the valley below, and trembled and spun between the watery
+precipices that seemed most to meet above her. For a moment the gale
+paused, and ocean sank to comparative silence—it was a breathless
+interval; the wind which, as a practised leaper, had gathered itself up
+before it sprung, now with terrific roar rushed over the sea, and the
+waves struck our stern. Adrian exclaimed that the rudder was gone;—“We
+are lost,” cried Clara, “Save yourselves—O save yourselves!” The
+lightning shewed me the poor girl half buried in the water at the
+bottom of the boat; as she was sinking in it Adrian caught her up, and
+sustained her in his arms. We were without a rudder—we rushed prow
+foremost into the vast billows piled up a-head— they broke over and
+filled the tiny skiff; one scream I heard—one cry that we were gone, I
+uttered; I found myself in the waters; darkness was around. When the
+light of the tempest flashed, I saw the keel of our upset boat close to
+me—I clung to this, grasping it with clenched hand and nails, while I
+endeavoured during each flash to discover any appearance of my
+companions. I thought I saw Adrian at no great distance from me,
+clinging to an oar; I sprung from my hold, and with energy beyond my
+human strength, I dashed aside the waters as I strove to lay hold of
+him. As that hope failed, instinctive love of life animated me, and
+feelings of contention, as if a hostile will combated with mine. I
+breasted the surges, and flung them from me, as I would the opposing
+front and sharpened claws of a lion about to enfang my bosom. When I
+had been beaten down by one wave, I rose on another, while I felt
+bitter pride curl my lip.
+
+Ever since the storm had carried us near the shore, we had never
+attained any great distance from it. With every flash I saw the
+bordering coast; yet the progress I made was small, while each wave, as
+it receded, carried me back into ocean’s far abysses. At one moment I
+felt my foot touch the sand, and then again I was in deep water; my
+arms began to lose their power of motion; my breath failed me under the
+influence of the strangling waters— a thousand wild and delirious
+thoughts crossed me: as well as I can now recall them, my chief feeling
+was, how sweet it would be to lay my head on the quiet earth, where the
+surges would no longer strike my weakened frame, nor the sound of
+waters ring in my ears—to attain this repose, not to save my life, I
+made a last effort—the shelving shore suddenly presented a footing for
+me. I rose, and was again thrown down by the breakers—a point of rock
+to which I was enabled to cling, gave me a moment’s respite; and then,
+taking advantage of the ebbing of the waves, I ran forwards— gained the
+dry sands, and fell senseless on the oozy reeds that sprinkled them.
+
+I must have lain long deprived of life; for when first, with a
+sickening feeling, I unclosed my eyes, the light of morning met them.
+Great change had taken place meanwhile: grey dawn dappled the flying
+clouds, which sped onwards, leaving visible at intervals vast lakes of
+pure ether. A fountain of light arose in an encreasing stream from the
+east, behind the waves of the Adriatic, changing the grey to a roseate
+hue, and then flooding sky and sea with aerial gold.
+
+A kind of stupor followed my fainting; my senses were alive, but memory
+was extinct. The blessed respite was short—a snake lurked near me to
+sting me into life—on the first retrospective emotion I would have
+started up, but my limbs refused to obey me; my knees trembled, the
+muscles had lost all power. I still believed that I might find one of
+my beloved companions cast like me, half alive, on the beach; and I
+strove in every way to restore my frame to the use of its animal
+functions. I wrung the brine from my hair; and the rays of the risen
+sun soon visited me with genial warmth. With the restoration of my
+bodily powers, my mind became in some degree aware of the universe of
+misery, henceforth to be its dwelling. I ran to the water’s edge,
+calling on the beloved names. Ocean drank in, and absorbed my feeble
+voice, replying with pitiless roar. I climbed a near tree: the level
+sands bounded by a pine forest, and the sea clipped round by the
+horizon, was all that I could discern. In vain I extended my researches
+along the beach; the mast we had thrown overboard, with tangled
+cordage, and remnants of a sail, was the sole relic land received of
+our wreck. Sometimes I stood still, and wrung my hands. I accused earth
+and sky —the universal machine and the Almighty power that misdirected
+it. Again I threw myself on the sands, and then the sighing wind,
+mimicking a human cry, roused me to bitter, fallacious hope. Assuredly
+if any little bark or smallest canoe had been near, I should have
+sought the savage plains of ocean, found the dear remains of my lost
+ones, and clinging round them, have shared their grave.
+
+The day passed thus; each moment contained eternity; although when hour
+after hour had gone by, I wondered at the quick flight of time. Yet
+even now I had not drunk the bitter potion to the dregs; I was not yet
+persuaded of my loss; I did not yet feel in every pulsation, in every
+nerve, in every thought, that I remained alone of my race,—that I was
+the LAST MAN.
+
+The day had clouded over, and a drizzling rain set in at sunset. Even
+the eternal skies weep, I thought; is there any shame then, that mortal
+man should spend himself in tears? I remembered the ancient fables, in
+which human beings are described as dissolving away through weeping
+into ever-gushing fountains. Ah! that so it were; and then my destiny
+would be in some sort akin to the watery death of Adrian and Clara. Oh!
+grief is fantastic; it weaves a web on which to trace the history of
+its woe from every form and change around; it incorporates itself with
+all living nature; it finds sustenance in every object; as light, it
+fills all things, and, like light, it gives its own colours to all.
+
+I had wandered in my search to some distance from the spot on which I
+had been cast, and came to one of those watch-towers, which at stated
+distances line the Italian shore. I was glad of shelter, glad to find a
+work of human hands, after I had gazed so long on nature’s drear
+barrenness; so I entered, and ascended the rough winding staircase into
+the guard-room. So far was fate kind, that no harrowing vestige
+remained of its former inhabitants; a few planks laid across two iron
+tressels, and strewed with the dried leaves of Indian corn, was the bed
+presented to me; and an open chest, containing some half mouldered
+biscuit, awakened an appetite, which perhaps existed before, but of
+which, until now, I was not aware. Thirst also, violent and parching,
+the result of the sea-water I had drank, and of the exhaustion of my
+frame, tormented me. Kind nature had gifted the supply of these wants
+with pleasurable sensations, so that I—even I!—was refreshed and
+calmed, as I ate of this sorry fare, and drank a little of the sour
+wine which half filled a flask left in this abandoned dwelling. Then I
+stretched myself on the bed, not to be disdained by the victim of
+shipwreck. The earthy smell of the dried leaves was balm to my sense
+after the hateful odour of sea-weed. I forgot my state of loneliness. I
+neither looked backward nor forward; my senses were hushed to repose; I
+fell asleep and dreamed of all dear inland scenes, of hay-makers, of
+the shepherd’s whistle to his dog, when he demanded his help to drive
+the flock to fold; of sights and sounds peculiar to my boyhood’s
+mountain life, which I had long forgotten.
+
+I awoke in a painful agony—for I fancied that ocean, breaking its
+bounds, carried away the fixed continent and deep rooted mountains,
+together with the streams I loved, the woods, and the flocks—it raged
+around, with that continued and dreadful roar which had accompanied the
+last wreck of surviving humanity. As my waking sense returned, the bare
+walls of the guard room closed round me, and the rain pattered against
+the single window. How dreadful it is, to emerge from the oblivion of
+slumber, and to receive as a good morrow the mute wailing of one’s own
+hapless heart —to return from the land of deceptive dreams, to the
+heavy knowledge of unchanged disaster!—Thus was it with me, now, and
+for ever! The sting of other griefs might be blunted by time; and even
+mine yielded sometimes during the day, to the pleasure inspired by the
+imagination or the senses; but I never look first upon the
+morning-light but with my fingers pressed tight on my bursting heart,
+and my soul deluged with the interminable flood of hopeless misery. Now
+I awoke for the first time in the dead world—I awoke alone—and the dull
+dirge of the sea, heard even amidst the rain, recalled me to the
+reflection of the wretch I had become. The sound came like a reproach,
+a scoff—like the sting of remorse in the soul—I gasped—the veins and
+muscles of my throat swelled, suffocating me. I put my fingers to my
+ears, I buried my head in the leaves of my couch, I would have dived to
+the centre to lose hearing of that hideous moan.
+
+But another task must be mine—again I visited the detested beach— again
+I vainly looked far and wide—again I raised my unanswered cry, lifting
+up the only voice that could ever again force the mute air to syllable
+the human thought.
+
+What a pitiable, forlorn, disconsolate being I was! My very aspect and
+garb told the tale of my despair. My hair was matted and wild—my limbs
+soiled with salt ooze; while at sea, I had thrown off those of my
+garments that encumbered me, and the rain drenched the thin
+summer-clothing I had retained—my feet were bare, and the stunted reeds
+and broken shells made them bleed—the while, I hurried to and fro, now
+looking earnestly on some distant rock which, islanded in the sands,
+bore for a moment a deceptive appearance—now with flashing eyes
+reproaching the murderous ocean for its unutterable cruelty.
+
+For a moment I compared myself to that monarch of the waste—Robinson
+Crusoe. We had been both thrown companionless—he on the shore of a
+desolate island: I on that of a desolate world. I was rich in the so
+called goods of life. If I turned my steps from the near barren scene,
+and entered any of the earth’s million cities, I should find their
+wealth stored up for my accommodation—clothes, food, books, and a
+choice of dwelling beyond the command of the princes of former
+times—every climate was subject to my selection, while he was obliged
+to toil in the acquirement of every necessary, and was the inhabitant
+of a tropical island, against whose heats and storms he could obtain
+small shelter.—Viewing the question thus, who would not have preferred
+the Sybarite enjoyments I could command, the philosophic leisure, and
+ample intellectual resources, to his life of labour and peril? Yet he
+was far happier than I: for he could hope, nor hope in vain—the
+destined vessel at last arrived, to bear him to countrymen and kindred,
+where the events of his solitude became a fire-side tale. To none could
+I ever relate the story of my adversity; no hope had I. He knew that,
+beyond the ocean which begirt his lonely island, thousands lived whom
+the sun enlightened when it shone also on him: beneath the meridian sun
+and visiting moon, I alone bore human features; I alone could give
+articulation to thought; and, when I slept, both day and night were
+unbeheld of any. He had fled from his fellows, and was transported with
+terror at the print of a human foot. I would have knelt down and
+worshipped the same. The wild and cruel Caribbee, the merciless
+Cannibal—or worse than these, the uncouth, brute, and remorseless
+veteran in the vices of civilization, would have been to me a beloved
+companion, a treasure dearly prized—his nature would be kin to mine;
+his form cast in the same mould; human blood would flow in his veins; a
+human sympathy must link us for ever. It cannot be that I shall never
+behold a fellow being more!—never! —never!—not in the course of
+years!—Shall I wake, and speak to none, pass the interminable hours, my
+soul, islanded in the world, a solitary point, surrounded by vacuum?
+Will day follow day endlessly thus? —No! no! a God rules the
+world—providence has not exchanged its golden sceptre for an aspic’s
+sting. Away! let me fly from the ocean-grave, let me depart from this
+barren nook, paled in, as it is, from access by its own desolateness;
+let me tread once again the paved towns; step over the threshold of
+man’s dwellings, and most certainly I shall find this thought a
+horrible vision—a maddening, but evanescent dream.
+
+I entered Ravenna, (the town nearest to the spot whereon I had been
+cast), before the second sun had set on the empty world; I saw many
+living creatures; oxen, and horses, and dogs, but there was no man
+among them; I entered a cottage, it was vacant; I ascended the marble
+stairs of a palace, the bats and the owls were nestled in the tapestry;
+I stepped softly, not to awaken the sleeping town: I rebuked a dog,
+that by yelping disturbed the sacred stillness; I would not believe
+that all was as it seemed—The world was not dead, but I was mad; I was
+deprived of sight, hearing, and sense of touch; I was labouring under
+the force of a spell, which permitted me to behold all sights of earth,
+except its human inhabitants; they were pursuing their ordinary
+labours. Every house had its inmate; but I could not perceive them. If
+I could have deluded myself into a belief of this kind, I should have
+been far more satisfied. But my brain, tenacious of its reason, refused
+to lend itself to such imaginations—and though I endeavoured to play
+the antic to myself, I knew that I, the offspring of man, during long
+years one among many—now remained sole survivor of my species.
+
+The sun sank behind the western hills; I had fasted since the preceding
+evening, but, though faint and weary, I loathed food, nor ceased, while
+yet a ray of light remained, to pace the lonely streets. Night came on,
+and sent every living creature but me to the bosom of its mate. It was
+my solace, to blunt my mental agony by personal hardship—of the
+thousand beds around, I would not seek the luxury of one; I lay down on
+the pavement,—a cold marble step served me for a pillow—midnight came;
+and then, though not before, did my wearied lids shut out the sight of
+the twinkling stars, and their reflex on the pavement near. Thus I
+passed the second night of my desolation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+I awoke in the morning, just as the higher windows of the lofty houses
+received the first beams of the rising sun. The birds were chirping,
+perched on the windows sills and deserted thresholds of the doors. I
+awoke, and my first thought was, Adrian and Clara are dead. I no longer
+shall be hailed by their good-morrow—or pass the long day in their
+society. I shall never see them more. The ocean has robbed me of
+them—stolen their hearts of love from their breasts, and given over to
+corruption what was dearer to me than light, or life, or hope.
+
+I was an untaught shepherd-boy, when Adrian deigned to confer on me his
+friendship. The best years of my life had been passed with him. All I
+had possessed of this world’s goods, of happiness, knowledge, or
+virtue—I owed to him. He had, in his person, his intellect, and rare
+qualities, given a glory to my life, which without him it had never
+known. Beyond all other beings he had taught me, that goodness, pure
+and single, can be an attribute of man. It was a sight for angels to
+congregate to behold, to view him lead, govern, and solace, the last
+days of the human race.
+
+My lovely Clara also was lost to me—she who last of the daughters of
+man, exhibited all those feminine and maiden virtues, which poets,
+painters, and sculptors, have in their various languages strove to
+express. Yet, as far as she was concerned, could I lament that she was
+removed in early youth from the certain advent of misery? Pure she was
+of soul, and all her intents were holy. But her heart was the throne of
+love, and the sensibility her lovely countenance expressed, was the
+prophet of many woes, not the less deep and drear, because she would
+have for ever concealed them.
+
+These two wondrously endowed beings had been spared from the universal
+wreck, to be my companions during the last year of solitude. I had
+felt, while they were with me, all their worth. I was conscious that
+every other sentiment, regret, or passion had by degrees merged into a
+yearning, clinging affection for them. I had not forgotten the sweet
+partner of my youth, mother of my children, my adored Idris; but I saw
+at least a part of her spirit alive again in her brother; and after,
+that by Evelyn’s death I had lost what most dearly recalled her to me;
+I enshrined her memory in Adrian’s form, and endeavoured to confound
+the two dear ideas. I sound the depths of my heart, and try in vain to
+draw thence the expressions that can typify my love for these remnants
+of my race. If regret and sorrow came athwart me, as well it might in
+our solitary and uncertain state, the clear tones of Adrian’s voice,
+and his fervent look, dissipated the gloom; or I was cheered unaware by
+the mild content and sweet resignation Clara’s cloudless brow and deep
+blue eyes expressed. They were all to me—the suns of my benighted
+soul—repose in my weariness—slumber in my sleepless woe. Ill, most ill,
+with disjointed words, bare and weak, have I expressed the feeling with
+which I clung to them. I would have wound myself like ivy inextricably
+round them, so that the same blow might destroy us. I would have
+entered and been a part of them—so that
+
+If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
+
+
+even now I had accompanied them to their new and incommunicable abode.
+
+Never shall I see them more. I am bereft of their dear converse—bereft
+of sight of them. I am a tree rent by lightning; never will the bark
+close over the bared fibres—never will their quivering life, torn by
+the winds, receive the opiate of a moment’s balm. I am alone in the
+world— but that expression as yet was less pregnant with misery, than
+that Adrian and Clara are dead.
+
+The tide of thought and feeling rolls on for ever the same, though the
+banks and shapes around, which govern its course, and the reflection in
+the wave, vary. Thus the sentiment of immediate loss in some sort
+decayed, while that of utter, irremediable loneliness grew on me with
+time. Three days I wandered through Ravenna—now thinking only of the
+beloved beings who slept in the oozy caves of ocean—now looking forward
+on the dread blank before me; shuddering to make an onward
+step—writhing at each change that marked the progress of the hours.
+
+For three days I wandered to and fro in this melancholy town. I passed
+whole hours in going from house to house, listening whether I could
+detect some lurking sign of human existence. Sometimes I rang at a
+bell; it tinkled through the vaulted rooms, and silence succeeded to
+the sound. I called myself hopeless, yet still I hoped; and still
+disappointment ushered in the hours, intruding the cold, sharp steel
+which first pierced me, into the aching festering wound. I fed like a
+wild beast, which seizes its food only when stung by intolerable
+hunger. I did not change my garb, or seek the shelter of a roof, during
+all those days. Burning heats, nervous irritation, a ceaseless, but
+confused flow of thought, sleepless nights, and days instinct with a
+frenzy of agitation, possessed me during that time.
+
+As the fever of my blood encreased, a desire of wandering came upon me.
+I remember, that the sun had set on the fifth day after my wreck, when,
+without purpose or aim, I quitted the town of Ravenna. I must have been
+very ill. Had I been possessed by more or less of delirium, that night
+had surely been my last; for, as I continued to walk on the banks of
+the Mantone, whose upward course I followed, I looked wistfully on the
+stream, acknowledging to myself that its pellucid waves could medicine
+my woes for ever, and was unable to account to myself for my tardiness
+in seeking their shelter from the poisoned arrows of thought, that were
+piercing me through and through. I walked a considerable part of the
+night, and excessive weariness at length conquered my repugnance to the
+availing myself of the deserted habitations of my species. The waning
+moon, which had just risen, shewed me a cottage, whose neat entrance
+and trim garden reminded me of my own England. I lifted up the latch of
+the door and entered. A kitchen first presented itself, where, guided
+by the moon beams, I found materials for striking a light. Within this
+was a bed room; the couch was furnished with sheets of snowy whiteness;
+the wood piled on the hearth, and an array as for a meal, might almost
+have deceived me into the dear belief that I had here found what I had
+so long sought—one survivor, a companion for my loneliness, a solace to
+my despair. I steeled myself against the delusion; the room itself was
+vacant: it was only prudent, I repeated to myself, to examine the rest
+of the house. I fancied that I was proof against the expectation; yet
+my heart beat audibly, as I laid my hand on the lock of each door, and
+it sunk again, when I perceived in each the same vacancy. Dark and
+silent they were as vaults; so I returned to the first chamber,
+wondering what sightless host had spread the materials for my repast,
+and my repose. I drew a chair to the table, and examined what the
+viands were of which I was to partake. In truth it was a death feast!
+The bread was blue and mouldy; the cheese lay a heap of dust. I did not
+dare examine the other dishes; a troop of ants passed in a double line
+across the table cloth; every utensil was covered with dust, with
+cobwebs, and myriads of dead flies: these were objects each and all
+betokening the fallaciousness of my expectations. Tears rushed into my
+eyes; surely this was a wanton display of the power of the destroyer.
+What had I done, that each sensitive nerve was thus to be anatomized?
+Yet why complain more now than ever? This vacant cottage revealed no
+new sorrow— the world was empty; mankind was dead—I knew it well—why
+quarrel therefore with an acknowledged and stale truth? Yet, as I said,
+I had hoped in the very heart of despair, so that every new impression
+of the hard-cut reality on my soul brought with it a fresh pang,
+telling me the yet unstudied lesson, that neither change of place nor
+time could bring alleviation to my misery, but that, as I now was, I
+must continue, day after day, month after month, year after year, while
+I lived. I hardly dared conjecture what space of time that expression
+implied. It is true, I was no longer in the first blush of manhood;
+neither had I declined far in the vale of years—men have accounted mine
+the prime of life: I had just entered my thirty-seventh year; every
+limb was as well knit, every articulation as true, as when I had acted
+the shepherd on the hills of Cumberland; and with these advantages I
+was to commence the train of solitary life. Such were the reflections
+that ushered in my slumber on that night.
+
+The shelter, however, and less disturbed repose which I enjoyed,
+restored me the following morning to a greater portion of health and
+strength, than I had experienced since my fatal shipwreck. Among the
+stores I had discovered on searching the cottage the preceding night,
+was a quantity of dried grapes; these refreshed me in the morning, as I
+left my lodging and proceeded towards a town which I discerned at no
+great distance. As far as I could divine, it must have been Forli. I
+entered with pleasure its wide and grassy streets. All, it is true,
+pictured the excess of desolation; yet I loved to find myself in those
+spots which had been the abode of my fellow creatures. I delighted to
+traverse street after street, to look up at the tall houses, and repeat
+to myself, once they contained beings similar to myself—I was not
+always the wretch I am now. The wide square of Forli, the arcade around
+it, its light and pleasant aspect cheered me. I was pleased with the
+idea, that, if the earth should be again peopled, we, the lost race,
+would, in the relics left behind, present no contemptible exhibition of
+our powers to the new comers.
+
+I entered one of the palaces, and opened the door of a magnificent
+saloon. I started—I looked again with renewed wonder. What
+wild-looking, unkempt, half-naked savage was that before me? The
+surprise was momentary.
+
+I perceived that it was I myself whom I beheld in a large mirror at the
+end of the hall. No wonder that the lover of the princely Idris should
+fail to recognize himself in the miserable object there pourtrayed. My
+tattered dress was that in which I had crawled half alive from the
+tempestuous sea. My long and tangled hair hung in elf locks on my
+brow—my dark eyes, now hollow and wild, gleamed from under them—my
+cheeks were discoloured by the jaundice, which (the effect of misery
+and neglect) suffused my skin, and were half hid by a beard of many
+days’ growth.
+
+Yet why should I not remain thus, I thought; the world is dead, and
+this squalid attire is a fitter mourning garb than the foppery of a
+black suit. And thus, methinks, I should have remained, had not hope,
+without which I do not believe man could exist, whispered to me, that,
+in such a plight, I should be an object of fear and aversion to the
+being, preserved I knew not where, but I fondly trusted, at length, to
+be found by me. Will my readers scorn the vanity, that made me attire
+myself with some care, for the sake of this visionary being? Or will
+they forgive the freaks of a half crazed imagination? I can easily
+forgive myself—for hope, however vague, was so dear to me, and a
+sentiment of pleasure of so rare occurrence, that I yielded readily to
+any idea, that cherished the one, or promised any recurrence of the
+former to my sorrowing heart. After such occupation, I visited every
+street, alley, and nook of Forli. These Italian towns presented an
+appearance of still greater desolation, than those of England or
+France. Plague had appeared here earlier—it had finished its course,
+and achieved its work much sooner than with us. Probably the last
+summer had found no human being alive, in all the track included
+between the shores of Calabria and the northern Alps. My search was
+utterly vain, yet I did not despond. Reason methought was on my side;
+and the chances were by no means contemptible, that there should exist
+in some part of Italy a survivor like myself—of a wasted, depopulate
+land. As therefore I rambled through the empty town, I formed my plan
+for future operations. I would continue to journey on towards Rome.
+After I should have satisfied myself, by a narrow search, that I left
+behind no human being in the towns through which I passed, I would
+write up in a conspicuous part of each, with white paint, in three
+languages, that “Verney, the last of the race of Englishmen, had taken
+up his abode in Rome.”
+
+In pursuance of this scheme, I entered a painter’s shop, and procured
+myself the paint. It is strange that so trivial an occupation should
+have consoled, and even enlivened me. But grief renders one childish,
+despair fantastic. To this simple inscription, I merely added the
+adjuration, “Friend, come! I wait for thee!—_Deh, vieni! ti aspetto!_”
+On the following morning, with something like hope for my companion, I
+quitted Forli on my way to Rome. Until now, agonizing retrospect, and
+dreary prospects for the future, had stung me when awake, and cradled
+me to my repose. Many times I had delivered myself up to the tyranny of
+anguish— many times I resolved a speedy end to my woes; and death by my
+own hands was a remedy, whose practicability was even cheering to me.
+What could I fear in the other world? If there were an hell, and I were
+doomed to it, I should come an adept to the sufferance of its
+tortures—the act were easy, the speedy and certain end of my deplorable
+tragedy. But now these thoughts faded before the new born expectation.
+I went on my way, not as before, feeling each hour, each minute, to be
+an age instinct with incalculable pain.
+
+As I wandered along the plain, at the foot of the Appennines—through
+their vallies, and over their bleak summits, my path led me through a
+country which had been trodden by heroes, visited and admired by
+thousands. They had, as a tide, receded, leaving me blank and bare in
+the midst. But why complain? Did I not hope?—so I schooled myself, even
+after the enlivening spirit had really deserted me, and thus I was
+obliged to call up all the fortitude I could command, and that was not
+much, to prevent a recurrence of that chaotic and intolerable despair,
+that had succeeded to the miserable shipwreck, that had consummated
+every fear, and dashed to annihilation every joy.
+
+I rose each day with the morning sun, and left my desolate inn. As my
+feet strayed through the unpeopled country, my thoughts rambled through
+the universe, and I was least miserable when I could, absorbed in
+reverie, forget the passage of the hours. Each evening, in spite of
+weariness, I detested to enter any dwelling, there to take up my
+nightly abode—I have sat, hour after hour, at the door of the cottage I
+had selected, unable to lift the latch, and meet face to face blank
+desertion within. Many nights, though autumnal mists were spread
+around, I passed under an ilex—many times I have supped on arbutus
+berries and chestnuts, making a fire, gypsy-like, on the ground—because
+wild natural scenery reminded me less acutely of my hopeless state of
+loneliness. I counted the days, and bore with me a peeled willow-wand,
+on which, as well as I could remember, I had notched the days that had
+elapsed since my wreck, and each night I added another unit to the
+melancholy sum.
+
+I had toiled up a hill which led to Spoleto. Around was spread a plain,
+encircled by the chestnut-covered Appennines. A dark ravine was on one
+side, spanned by an aqueduct, whose tall arches were rooted in the dell
+below, and attested that man had once deigned to bestow labour and
+thought here, to adorn and civilize nature. Savage, ungrateful nature,
+which in wild sport defaced his remains, protruding her easily renewed,
+and fragile growth of wild flowers and parasite plants around his
+eternal edifices. I sat on a fragment of rock, and looked round. The
+sun had bathed in gold the western atmosphere, and in the east the
+clouds caught the radiance, and budded into transient loveliness. It
+set on a world that contained me alone for its inhabitant. I took out
+my wand—I counted the marks. Twenty-five were already
+traced—twenty-five days had already elapsed, since human voice had
+gladdened my ears, or human countenance met my gaze. Twenty-five long,
+weary days, succeeded by dark and lonesome nights, had mingled with
+foregone years, and had become a part of the past—the never to be
+recalled—a real, undeniable portion of my life—twenty-five long, long
+days.
+
+Why this was not a month!—Why talk of days—or weeks—or months—I must
+grasp years in my imagination, if I would truly picture the future to
+myself—three, five, ten, twenty, fifty anniversaries of that fatal
+epoch might elapse—every year containing twelve months, each of more
+numerous calculation in a diary, than the twenty-five days gone by—Can
+it be? Will it be?—We had been used to look forward to death
+tremulously— wherefore, but because its place was obscure? But more
+terrible, and far more obscure, was the unveiled course of my lone
+futurity. I broke my wand; I threw it from me. I needed no recorder of
+the inch and barley-corn growth of my life, while my unquiet thoughts
+created other divisions, than those ruled over by the planets—and, in
+looking back on the age that had elapsed since I had been alone, I
+disdained to give the name of days and hours to the throes of agony
+which had in truth portioned it out.
+
+I hid my face in my hands. The twitter of the young birds going to
+rest, and their rustling among the trees, disturbed the still
+evening-air—the crickets chirped—the aziolo cooed at intervals. My
+thoughts had been of death—these sounds spoke to me of life. I lifted
+up my eyes—a bat wheeled round—the sun had sunk behind the jagged line
+of mountains, and the paly, crescent moon was visible, silver white,
+amidst the orange sunset, and accompanied by one bright star, prolonged
+thus the twilight. A herd of cattle passed along in the dell below,
+untended, towards their watering place—the grass was rustled by a
+gentle breeze, and the olive-woods, mellowed into soft masses by the
+moonlight, contrasted their sea-green with the dark chestnut foliage.
+Yes, this is the earth; there is no change—no ruin—no rent made in her
+verdurous expanse; she continues to wheel round and round, with
+alternate night and day, through the sky, though man is not her adorner
+or inhabitant. Why could I not forget myself like one of those animals,
+and no longer suffer the wild tumult of misery that I endure? Yet, ah!
+what a deadly breach yawns between their state and mine! Have not they
+companions? Have not they each their mate—their cherished young, their
+home, which, though unexpressed to us, is, I doubt not, endeared and
+enriched, even in their eyes, by the society which kind nature has
+created for them? It is I only that am alone—I, on this little hill
+top, gazing on plain and mountain recess—on sky, and its starry
+population, listening to every sound of earth, and air, and murmuring
+wave,—I only cannot express to any companion my many thoughts, nor lay
+my throbbing head on any loved bosom, nor drink from meeting eyes an
+intoxicating dew, that transcends the fabulous nectar of the gods.
+Shall I not then complain? Shall I not curse the murderous engine which
+has mowed down the children of men, my brethren? Shall I not bestow a
+malediction on every other of nature’s offspring, which dares live and
+enjoy, while I live and suffer?
+
+Ah, no! I will discipline my sorrowing heart to sympathy in your joys;
+I will be happy, because ye are so. Live on, ye innocents, nature’s
+selected darlings; I am not much unlike to you. Nerves, pulse, brain,
+joint, and flesh, of such am I composed, and ye are organized by the
+same laws. I have something beyond this, but I will call it a defect,
+not an endowment, if it leads me to misery, while ye are happy. Just
+then, there emerged from a near copse two goats and a little kid, by
+the mother’s side; they began to browze the herbage of the hill. I
+approached near to them, without their perceiving me; I gathered a
+handful of fresh grass, and held it out; the little one nestled close
+to its mother, while she timidly withdrew. The male stepped forward,
+fixing his eyes on me: I drew near, still holding out my lure, while
+he, depressing his head, rushed at me with his horns. I was a very
+fool; I knew it, yet I yielded to my rage. I snatched up a huge
+fragment of rock; it would have crushed my rash foe. I poized it—aimed
+it—then my heart failed me. I hurled it wide of the mark; it rolled
+clattering among the bushes into dell. My little visitants, all aghast,
+galloped back into the covert of the wood; while I, my very heart
+bleeding and torn, rushed down the hill, and by the violence of bodily
+exertion, sought to escape from my miserable self.
+
+No, no, I will not live among the wild scenes of nature, the enemy of
+all that lives. I will seek the towns—Rome, the capital of the world,
+the crown of man’s achievements. Among its storied streets, hallowed
+ruins, and stupendous remains of human exertion, I shall not, as here,
+find every thing forgetful of man; trampling on his memory, defacing
+his works, proclaiming from hill to hill, and vale to vale,—by the
+torrents freed from the boundaries which he imposed—by the vegetation
+liberated from the laws which he enforced—by his habitation abandoned
+to mildew and weeds, that his power is lost, his race annihilated for
+ever.
+
+I hailed the Tiber, for that was as it were an unalienable possession
+of humanity. I hailed the wild Campagna, for every rood had been trod
+by man; and its savage uncultivation, of no recent date, only
+proclaimed more distinctly his power, since he had given an honourable
+name and sacred title to what else would have been a worthless, barren
+track. I entered Eternal Rome by the Porta del Popolo, and saluted with
+awe its time-honoured space. The wide square, the churches near, the
+long extent of the Corso, the near eminence of Trinita de’ Monti
+appeared like fairy work, they were so silent, so peaceful, and so very
+fair. It was evening; and the population of animals which still existed
+in this mighty city, had gone to rest; there was no sound, save the
+murmur of its many fountains, whose soft monotony was harmony to my
+soul. The knowledge that I was in Rome, soothed me; that wondrous city,
+hardly more illustrious for its heroes and sages, than for the power it
+exercised over the imaginations of men. I went to rest that night; the
+eternal burning of my heart quenched,—my senses tranquil.
+
+The next morning I eagerly began my rambles in search of oblivion. I
+ascended the many terraces of the garden of the Colonna Palace, under
+whose roof I had been sleeping; and passing out from it at its summit,
+I found myself on Monte Cavallo. The fountain sparkled in the sun; the
+obelisk above pierced the clear dark-blue air. The statues on each
+side, the works, as they are inscribed, of Phidias and Praxiteles,
+stood in undiminished grandeur, representing Castor and Pollux, who
+with majestic power tamed the rearing animal at their side. If those
+illustrious artists had in truth chiselled these forms, how many
+passing generations had their giant proportions outlived! and now they
+were viewed by the last of the species they were sculptured to
+represent and deify. I had shrunk into insignificance in my own eyes,
+as I considered the multitudinous beings these stone demigods had
+outlived, but this after-thought restored me to dignity in my own
+conception. The sight of the poetry eternized in these statues, took
+the sting from the thought, arraying it only in poetic ideality.
+
+I repeated to myself,—I am in Rome! I behold, and as it were,
+familiarly converse with the wonder of the world, sovereign mistress of
+the imagination, majestic and eternal survivor of millions of
+generations of extinct men. I endeavoured to quiet the sorrows of my
+aching heart, by even now taking an interest in what in my youth I had
+ardently longed to see. Every part of Rome is replete with relics of
+ancient times. The meanest streets are strewed with truncated columns,
+broken capitals—Corinthian and Ionic, and sparkling fragments of
+granite or porphyry. The walls of the most penurious dwellings enclose
+a fluted pillar or ponderous stone, which once made part of the palace
+of the Cæsars; and the voice of dead time, in still vibrations, is
+breathed from these dumb things, animated and glorified as they were by
+man.
+
+I embraced the vast columns of the temple of Jupiter Stator, which
+survives in the open space that was the Forum, and leaning my burning
+cheek against its cold durability, I tried to lose the sense of present
+misery and present desertion, by recalling to the haunted cell of my
+brain vivid memories of times gone by. I rejoiced at my success, as I
+figured Camillus, the Gracchi, Cato, and last the heroes of Tacitus,
+which shine meteors of surpassing brightness during the murky night of
+the empire;—as the verses of Horace and Virgil, or the glowing periods
+of Cicero thronged into the opened gates of my mind, I felt myself
+exalted by long forgotten enthusiasm. I was delighted to know that I
+beheld the scene which they beheld—the scene which their wives and
+mothers, and crowds of the unnamed witnessed, while at the same time
+they honoured, applauded, or wept for these matchless specimens of
+humanity. At length, then, I had found a consolation. I had not vainly
+sought the storied precincts of Rome—I had discovered a medicine for my
+many and vital wounds.
+
+I sat at the foot of these vast columns. The Coliseum, whose naked ruin
+is robed by nature in a verdurous and glowing veil, lay in the sunlight
+on my right. Not far off, to the left, was the Tower of the Capitol.
+Triumphal arches, the falling walls of many temples, strewed the ground
+at my feet. I strove, I resolved, to force myself to see the Plebeian
+multitude and lofty Patrician forms congregated around; and, as the
+Diorama of ages passed across my subdued fancy, they were replaced by
+the modern Roman; the Pope, in his white stole, distributing
+benedictions to the kneeling worshippers; the friar in his cowl; the
+dark-eyed girl, veiled by her mezzera; the noisy, sun-burnt rustic,
+leading his herd of buffaloes and oxen to the Campo Vaccino. The
+romance with which, dipping our pencils in the rainbow hues of sky and
+transcendent nature, we to a degree gratuitously endow the Italians,
+replaced the solemn grandeur of antiquity. I remembered the dark monk,
+and floating figures of “The Italian,” and how my boyish blood had
+thrilled at the description. I called to mind Corinna ascending the
+Capitol to be crowned, and, passing from the heroine to the author,
+reflected how the Enchantress Spirit of Rome held sovereign sway over
+the minds of the imaginative, until it rested on me—sole remaining
+spectator of its wonders.
+
+I was long wrapt by such ideas; but the soul wearies of a pauseless
+flight; and, stooping from its wheeling circuits round and round this
+spot, suddenly it fell ten thousand fathom deep, into the abyss of the
+present— into self-knowledge—into tenfold sadness. I roused myself—I
+cast off my waking dreams; and I, who just now could almost hear the
+shouts of the Roman throng, and was hustled by countless multitudes,
+now beheld the desart ruins of Rome sleeping under its own blue sky;
+the shadows lay tranquilly on the ground; sheep were grazing untended
+on the Palatine, and a buffalo stalked down the Sacred Way that led to
+the Capitol. I was alone in the Forum; alone in Rome; alone in the
+world. Would not one living man —one companion in my weary solitude, be
+worth all the glory and remembered power of this time-honoured city?
+Double sorrow—sadness, bred in Cimmerian caves, robed my soul in a
+mourning garb. The generations I had conjured up to my fancy,
+contrasted more strongly with the end of all —the single point in
+which, as a pyramid, the mighty fabric of society had ended, while I,
+on the giddy height, saw vacant space around me.
+
+From such vague laments I turned to the contemplation of the minutiae
+of my situation. So far, I had not succeeded in the sole object of my
+desires, the finding a companion for my desolation. Yet I did not
+despair. It is true that my inscriptions were set up for the most part,
+in insignificant towns and villages; yet, even without these memorials,
+it was possible that the person, who like me should find himself alone
+in a depopulate land, should, like me, come to Rome. The more slender
+my expectation was, the more I chose to build on it, and to accommodate
+my actions to this vague possibility.
+
+It became necessary therefore, that for a time I should domesticate
+myself at Rome. It became necessary, that I should look my disaster in
+the face— not playing the school-boy’s part of obedience without
+submission; enduring life, and yet rebelling against the laws by which
+I lived.
+
+Yet how could I resign myself? Without love, without sympathy, without
+communion with any, how could I meet the morning sun, and with it trace
+its oft repeated journey to the evening shades? Why did I continue to
+live— why not throw off the weary weight of time, and with my own hand,
+let out the fluttering prisoner from my agonized breast?—It was not
+cowardice that withheld me; for the true fortitude was to endure; and
+death had a soothing sound accompanying it, that would easily entice me
+to enter its demesne. But this I would not do. I had, from the moment I
+had reasoned on the subject, instituted myself the subject to fate, and
+the servant of necessity, the visible laws of the invisible God—I
+believed that my obedience was the result of sound reasoning, pure
+feeling, and an exalted sense of the true excellence and nobility of my
+nature. Could I have seen in this empty earth, in the seasons and their
+change, the hand of a blind power only, most willingly would I have
+placed my head on the sod, and closed my eyes on its loveliness for
+ever. But fate had administered life to me, when the plague had already
+seized on its prey—she had dragged me by the hair from out the
+strangling waves—By such miracles she had bought me for her own; I
+admitted her authority, and bowed to her decrees. If, after mature
+consideration, such was my resolve, it was doubly necessary that I
+should not lose the end of life, the improvement of my faculties, and
+poison its flow by repinings without end. Yet how cease to repine,
+since there was no hand near to extract the barbed spear that had
+entered my heart of hearts? I stretched out my hand, and it touched
+none whose sensations were responsive to mine. I was girded, walled in,
+vaulted over, by seven-fold barriers of loneliness. Occupation alone,
+if I could deliver myself up to it, would be capable of affording an
+opiate to my sleepless sense of woe. Having determined to make Rome my
+abode, at least for some months, I made arrangements for my
+accommodation—I selected my home. The Colonna Palace was well adapted
+for my purpose. Its grandeur— its treasure of paintings, its
+magnificent halls were objects soothing and even exhilarating.
+
+I found the granaries of Rome well stored with grain, and particularly
+with Indian corn; this product requiring less art in its preparation
+for food, I selected as my principal support. I now found the hardships
+and lawlessness of my youth turn to account. A man cannot throw off the
+habits of sixteen years. Since that age, it is true, I had lived
+luxuriously, or at least surrounded by all the conveniences
+civilization afforded. But before that time, I had been “as uncouth a
+savage, as the wolf-bred founder of old Rome”—and now, in Rome itself,
+robber and shepherd propensities, similar to those of its founder, were
+of advantage to its sole inhabitant. I spent the morning riding and
+shooting in the Campagna—I passed long hours in the various galleries—I
+gazed at each statue, and lost myself in a reverie before many a fair
+Madonna or beauteous nymph. I haunted the Vatican, and stood surrounded
+by marble forms of divine beauty. Each stone deity was possessed by
+sacred gladness, and the eternal fruition of love. They looked on me
+with unsympathizing complacency, and often in wild accents I reproached
+them for their supreme indifference—for they were human shapes, the
+human form divine was manifest in each fairest limb and lineament. The
+perfect moulding brought with it the idea of colour and motion; often,
+half in bitter mockery, half in self-delusion, I clasped their icy
+proportions, and, coming between Cupid and his Psyche’s lips, pressed
+the unconceiving marble.
+
+I endeavoured to read. I visited the libraries of Rome. I selected a
+volume, and, choosing some sequestered, shady nook, on the banks of the
+Tiber, or opposite the fair temple in the Borghese Gardens, or under
+the old pyramid of Cestius, I endeavoured to conceal me from myself,
+and immerse myself in the subject traced on the pages before me. As if
+in the same soil you plant nightshade and a myrtle tree, they will each
+appropriate the mould, moisture, and air administered, for the
+fostering their several properties—so did my grief find sustenance, and
+power of existence, and growth, in what else had been divine manna, to
+feed radiant meditation. Ah! while I streak this paper with the tale of
+what my so named occupations were—while I shape the skeleton of my
+days—my hand trembles—my heart pants, and my brain refuses to lend
+expression, or phrase, or idea, by which to image forth the veil of
+unutterable woe that clothed these bare realities. O, worn and beating
+heart, may I dissect thy fibres, and tell how in each unmitigable
+misery, sadness dire, repinings, and despair, existed? May I record my
+many ravings—the wild curses I hurled at torturing nature—and how I
+have passed days shut out from light and food—from all except the
+burning hell alive in my own bosom?
+
+I was presented, meantime, with one other occupation, the one best
+fitted to discipline my melancholy thoughts, which strayed backwards,
+over many a ruin, and through many a flowery glade, even to the
+mountain recess, from which in early youth I had first emerged.
+
+During one of my rambles through the habitations of Rome, I found
+writing materials on a table in an author’s study. Parts of a
+manuscript lay scattered about. It contained a learned disquisition on
+the Italian language; one page an unfinished dedication to posterity,
+for whose profit the writer had sifted and selected the niceties of
+this harmonious language —to whose everlasting benefit he bequeathed
+his labours.
+
+I also will write a book, I cried—for whom to read?—to whom dedicated?
+And then with silly flourish (what so capricious and childish as
+despair?) I wrote,
+
+DEDICATION
+TO THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEAD.
+SHADOWS, ARISE, AND READ YOUR FALL!
+BEHOLD THE HISTORY OF THE
+LAST MAN.
+
+
+Yet, will not this world be re-peopled, and the children of a saved
+pair of lovers, in some to me unknown and unattainable seclusion,
+wandering to these prodigious relics of the ante-pestilential race,
+seek to learn how beings so wondrous in their achievements, with
+imaginations infinite, and powers godlike, had departed from their home
+to an unknown country?
+
+I will write and leave in this most ancient city, this “world’s sole
+monument,” a record of these things. I will leave a monument of the
+existence of Verney, the Last Man. At first I thought only to speak of
+plague, of death, and last, of desertion; but I lingered fondly on my
+early years, and recorded with sacred zeal the virtues of my
+companions. They have been with me during the fulfilment of my task. I
+have brought it to an end—I lift my eyes from my paper—again they are
+lost to me. Again I feel that I am alone.
+
+A year has passed since I have been thus occupied. The seasons have
+made their wonted round, and decked this eternal city in a changeful
+robe of surpassing beauty. A year has passed; and I no longer _guess_
+at my state or my prospects—loneliness is my familiar, sorrow my
+inseparable companion. I have endeavoured to brave the storm—I have
+endeavoured to school myself to fortitude—I have sought to imbue myself
+with the lessons of wisdom. It will not do. My hair has become nearly
+grey—my voice, unused now to utter sound, comes strangely on my ears.
+My person, with its human powers and features, seem to me a monstrous
+excrescence of nature. How express in human language a woe human being
+until this hour never knew! How give intelligible expression to a pang
+none but I could ever understand!— No one has entered Rome. None will
+ever come. I smile bitterly at the delusion I have so long nourished,
+and still more, when I reflect that I have exchanged it for another as
+delusive, as false, but to which I now cling with the same fond trust.
+
+Winter has come again; and the gardens of Rome have lost their leaves—
+the sharp air comes over the Campagna, and has driven its brute
+inhabitants to take up their abode in the many dwellings of the
+deserted city—frost has suspended the gushing fountains—and Trevi has
+stilled her eternal music. I had made a rough calculation, aided by the
+stars, by which I endeavoured to ascertain the first day of the new
+year. In the old out-worn age, the Sovereign Pontiff was used to go in
+solemn pomp, and mark the renewal of the year by driving a nail in the
+gate of the temple of Janus. On that day I ascended St. Peter’s, and
+carved on its topmost stone the aera 2100, last year of the world!
+
+My only companion was a dog, a shaggy fellow, half water and half
+shepherd’s dog, whom I found tending sheep in the Campagna. His master
+was dead, but nevertheless he continued fulfilling his duties in
+expectation of his return. If a sheep strayed from the rest, he forced
+it to return to the flock, and sedulously kept off every intruder.
+Riding in the Campagna I had come upon his sheep-walk, and for some
+time observed his repetition of lessons learned from man, now useless,
+though unforgotten. His delight was excessive when he saw me. He sprung
+up to my knees; he capered round and round, wagging his tail, with the
+short, quick bark of pleasure: he left his fold to follow me, and from
+that day has never neglected to watch by and attend on me, shewing
+boisterous gratitude whenever I caressed or talked to him. His
+pattering steps and mine alone were heard, when we entered the
+magnificent extent of nave and aisle of St. Peter’s. We ascended the
+myriad steps together, when on the summit I achieved my design, and in
+rough figures noted the date of the last year. I then turned to gaze on
+the country, and to take leave of Rome. I had long determined to quit
+it, and I now formed the plan I would adopt for my future career, after
+I had left this magnificent abode.
+
+A solitary being is by instinct a wanderer, and that I would become. A
+hope of amelioration always attends on change of place, which would
+even lighten the burthen of my life. I had been a fool to remain in
+Rome all this time: Rome noted for Malaria, the famous caterer for
+death. But it was still possible, that, could I visit the whole extent
+of earth, I should find in some part of the wide extent a survivor.
+Methought the sea-side was the most probable retreat to be chosen by
+such a one. If left alone in an inland district, still they could not
+continue in the spot where their last hopes had been extinguished; they
+would journey on, like me, in search of a partner for their solitude,
+till the watery barrier stopped their further progress.
+
+To that water—cause of my woes, perhaps now to be their cure, I would
+betake myself. Farewell, Italy!—farewell, thou ornament of the world,
+matchless Rome, the retreat of the solitary one during long months!—to
+civilized life—to the settled home and succession of monotonous days,
+farewell! Peril will now be mine; and I hail her as a friend—death will
+perpetually cross my path, and I will meet him as a benefactor;
+hardship, inclement weather, and dangerous tempests will be my sworn
+mates. Ye spirits of storm, receive me! ye powers of destruction, open
+wide your arms, and clasp me for ever! if a kinder power have not
+decreed another end, so that after long endurance I may reap my reward,
+and again feel my heart beat near the heart of another like to me.
+
+Tiber, the road which is spread by nature’s own hand, threading her
+continent, was at my feet, and many a boat was tethered to the banks. I
+would with a few books, provisions, and my dog, embark in one of these
+and float down the current of the stream into the sea; and then,
+keeping near land, I would coast the beauteous shores and sunny
+promontories of the blue Mediterranean, pass Naples, along Calabria,
+and would dare the twin perils of Scylla and Charybdis; then, with
+fearless aim, (for what had I to lose?) skim ocean’s surface towards
+Malta and the further Cyclades. I would avoid Constantinople, the sight
+of whose well-known towers and inlets belonged to another state of
+existence from my present one; I would coast Asia Minor, and Syria,
+and, passing the seven-mouthed Nile, steer northward again, till losing
+sight of forgotten Carthage and deserted Lybia, I should reach the
+pillars of Hercules. And then—no matter where—the oozy caves, and
+soundless depths of ocean may be my dwelling, before I accomplish this
+long-drawn voyage, or the arrow of disease find my heart as I float
+singly on the weltering Mediterranean; or, in some place I touch at, I
+may find what I seek—a companion; or if this may not be—to endless
+time, decrepid and grey headed—youth already in the grave with those I
+love— the lone wanderer will still unfurl his sail, and clasp the
+tiller—and, still obeying the breezes of heaven, for ever round another
+and another promontory, anchoring in another and another bay, still
+ploughing seedless ocean, leaving behind the verdant land of native
+Europe, adown the tawny shore of Africa, having weathered the fierce
+seas of the Cape, I may moor my worn skiff in a creek, shaded by spicy
+groves of the odorous islands of the far Indian ocean.
+
+These are wild dreams. Yet since, now a week ago, they came on me, as I
+stood on the height of St. Peter’s, they have ruled my imagination. I
+have chosen my boat, and laid in my scant stores. I have selected a few
+books; the principal are Homer and Shakespeare—But the libraries of the
+world are thrown open to me—and in any port I can renew my stock. I
+form no expectation of alteration for the better; but the monotonous
+present is intolerable to me. Neither hope nor joy are my
+pilots—restless despair and fierce desire of change lead me on. I long
+to grapple with danger, to be excited by fear, to have some task,
+however slight or voluntary, for each day’s fulfilment. I shall witness
+all the variety of appearance, that the elements can assume—I shall
+read fair augury in the rainbow— menace in the cloud—some lesson or
+record dear to my heart in everything. Thus around the shores of
+deserted earth, while the sun is high, and the moon waxes or wanes,
+angels, the spirits of the dead, and the ever-open eye of the Supreme,
+will behold the tiny bark, freighted with Verney—the LAST MAN.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAST MAN ***
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