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+Project Gutenberg’s The Disowned, Complete, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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
+
+
+Title: The Disowned, Complete
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 16, 2009 [EBook #7639]
+Last Updated: August 28, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DISOWNED, COMPLETE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE DISOWNED
+
+by Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+     I’ll tell you a story if you please to attend. G. KNIGHT:
+     Limbo.
+
+It was the evening of a soft, warm day in the May of 17--. The sun had
+already set, and the twilight was gathering slowly over the large, still
+masses of wood which lay on either side of one of those green lanes
+so peculiar to England. Here and there, the outline of the trees
+irregularly shrunk back from the road, leaving broad patches of waste
+land covered with fern and the yellow blossoms of the dwarf furze, and
+at more distant intervals thick clusters of rushes, from which came the
+small hum of gnats,--those “evening revellers” alternately rising and
+sinking in the customary manner of their unknown sports,--till, as
+the shadows grew darker and darker, their thin and airy shapes were no
+longer distinguishable, and no solitary token of life or motion broke
+the voiceless monotony of the surrounding woods.
+
+The first sound which invaded the silence came from the light, quick
+footsteps of a person whose youth betrayed itself in its elastic and
+unmeasured tread, and in the gay, free carol which broke out by fits and
+starts upon the gentle stillness of the evening.
+
+There was something rather indicative of poetical taste than musical
+science in the selection of this vesper hymn, which always commenced
+with,--
+
+  “‘T is merry, ‘t is merry, in good green wood,”
+
+and never proceeded a syllable further than the end of the second
+line,--
+
+  “when birds are about and singing;”
+
+from the last word of which, after a brief pause, it invariably started
+forth into joyous “iteration.”
+
+Presently a heavier, yet still more rapid, step than that of the
+youth was heard behind; and, as it overtook the latter, a loud, clear,
+good-humoured voice gave the salutation of the evening. The tone in
+which this courtesy was returned was frank, distinct, and peculiarly
+harmonious.
+
+“Good evening, my friend. How far is it to W----? I hope I am not out of
+the direct road?”
+
+“To W----, sir?” said the man, touching his hat, as he perceived,
+in spite of the dusk, something in the air and voice of his new
+acquaintance which called for a greater degree of respect than he was
+at first disposed to accord to a pedestrian traveller,--“to W----, sir?
+why, you will not surely go there to-night? it is more than eight miles
+distant, and the roads none of the best.”
+
+“Now, a curse on all rogues!” quoth the youth, with a serious sort of
+vivacity. “Why, the miller at the foot of the hill assured me I should
+be at my journey’s end in less than an hour.”
+
+“He may have said right, sir,” returned the man, “yet you will not reach
+W---- in twice that time.”
+
+“How do you mean?” said the younger stranger.
+
+“Why, that you may for once force a miller to speak truth in spite of
+himself, and make a public-house, about three miles hence, the end of
+your day’s journey.”
+
+“Thank you for the hint,” said the youth. “Does the house you speak of
+lie on the road-side?”
+
+“No, sir: the lane branches off about two miles hence, and you must then
+turn to the right; but till then our way is the same, and if you would
+not prefer your own company to mine we can trudge on together.”
+
+“With all my heart,” rejoined the younger stranger; “and not the less
+willingly from the brisk pace you walk. I thought I had few equals
+in pedestrianism; but it should not be for a small wager that I would
+undertake to keep up with you.”
+
+“Perhaps, sir,” said the man, laughing, “I’ll have had in the course
+of my life a better usage and a longer experience of my heels than you
+have.”
+
+Somewhat startled by a speech of so equivocal a meaning, the youth,
+for the first time, turned round to examine, as well as the increasing
+darkness would permit, the size and appearance of his companion. He was
+not perhaps too well satisfied with his survey. His fellow pedestrian
+was about six feet high, and of a corresponding girth of limb and frame,
+which would have made him fearful odds in any encounter where bodily
+strength was the best means of conquest. Notwithstanding the mildness
+of the weather, he was closely buttoned in a rough great-coat, which was
+well calculated to give all due effect to the athletic proportions of
+the wearer.
+
+There was a pause of some moments.
+
+“This is but a wild, savage sort of scene for England, sir, in this
+day of new-fashioned ploughs and farming improvements,” said the tall
+stranger, looking round at the ragged wastes and grim woods, which lay
+steeped in the shade beside and before them.
+
+“True,” answered the youth; “and in a few years agricultural innovation
+will scarcely leave, even in these wastes, a single furze-blossom for
+the bee or a tuft of green-sward for the grasshopper; but, however
+unpleasant the change may be for us foot-travellers, we must not repine
+at what they tell us is so sure a witness of the prosperity of the
+country.”
+
+“They tell us! who tell us?” exclaimed the stranger, with great
+vivacity. “Is it the puny and spiritless artisan, or the debased and
+crippled slave of the counter and the till, or the sallow speculator
+on morals, who would mete us out our liberty, our happiness, our very
+feelings by the yard and inch and fraction? No, no, let them follow
+what the books and precepts of their own wisdom teach them; let them
+cultivate more highly the lands they have already parcelled out by dikes
+and fences, and leave, though at scanty intervals, some green patches of
+unpolluted land for the poor man’s beast and the free man’s foot.”
+
+“You are an enthusiast on this subject,” said the younger traveller, not
+a little surprised at the tone and words of the last speech; “and if I
+were not just about to commence the world with a firm persuasion that
+enthusiasm on any matter is a great obstacle to success, I could be as
+warm though not so eloquent as yourself.”
+
+“Ah, sir,” said the stranger, sinking into a more natural and careless
+tone, “I have a better right than I imagine you can claim to repine or
+even to inveigh against the boundaries which are, day by day and hour
+by hour, encroaching upon what I have learned to look upon as my own
+territory. You were, just before I joined you, singing an old song; I
+honour you for your taste: and no offence, sir, but a sort of fellowship
+in feeling made me take the liberty to accost you. I am no very great
+scholar in other things; but I owe my present circumstances of life
+solely to my fondness for those old songs and quaint madrigals. And
+I believe no person can better apply to himself Will Shakspeare’s
+invitation,--
+
+  ‘Under the greenwood tree
+   Who loves to lie with me,
+   And tune his merry note
+   Unto the sweet bird’s throat,
+   Come hither, come hither, come hither,
+   Here shall he see
+   No enemy
+   But winter and rough weather.’”
+
+Relieved from his former fear, but with increased curiosity at this
+quotation, which was half said, half sung, in a tone which seemed to
+evince a hearty relish for the sense of the words, the youth replied,--
+
+“Truly, I did not expect to meet among the travellers of this wild
+country with so well-stored a memory. And, indeed, I should have
+imagined that the only persons to whom your verses could exactly have
+applied were those honourable vagrants from the Nile whom in vulgar
+language we term gypsies.”
+
+“Precisely so, sir,” answered the tall stranger, indifferently;
+“precisely so. It is to that ancient body that I belong.”
+
+“The devil you do!” quoth the youth, in unsophisticated surprise; “the
+progress of education is indeed astonishing!”
+
+“Why,” answered the stranger, laughing, “to tell you the truth, sir,
+I am a gypsy by inclination, not birth. The illustrious Bamfylde Moore
+Carew is not the only example of one of gentle blood and honourable
+education whom the fleshpots of Egypt have seduced.”
+
+“I congratulate myself,” quoth the youth, in a tone that might have
+been in jest, “upon becoming acquainted with a character at once so
+respectable and so novel; and, to return your quotation in the way of
+a compliment, I cry out with the most fashionable author of Elizabeth’s
+days,--
+
+  ‘O for a bowl of fat Canary,
+   Rich Palermo, sparkling Sherry,’
+
+in order to drink to our better acquaintance.”
+
+“Thank you, sir,--thank you,” cried the strange gypsy, seemingly
+delighted with the spirit with which his young acquaintance appeared to
+enter into his character, and his quotation from a class of authors at
+that time much less known and appreciated than at present; “and if you
+have seen already enough of the world to take up with ale when neither
+Canary, Palermo, nor Sherry are forthcoming, I will promise, at least,
+to pledge you in large draughts of that homely beverage. What say you
+to passing a night with us? our tents are yet more at hand than the
+public-house of which I spoke to you.” The young man hesitated a moment,
+then replied,--
+
+“I will answer you frankly, my friend, even though I may find cause to
+repent my confidence. I have a few guineas about me, which, though not
+a large sum, are my all. Now, however ancient and honourable your
+fraternity may be, they labour under a sad confusion, I fear, in their
+ideas of meum and tuum.”
+
+“Faith, sir, I believe you are right; and were you some years older, I
+think you would not have favoured me with the same disclosure you have
+done now; but you may be quite easy on that score. If you were made of
+gold, the rascals would not filch off the corner of your garment as long
+as you were under my protection. Does this assurance satisfy you?”
+
+“Perfectly,” said the youth; “and now how far are we from your
+encampment? I assure you I am all eagerness to be among a set of which I
+have witnessed such a specimen.”
+
+“Nay, nay,” returned the gypsy, “you must not judge of all my brethren
+by me: I confess that they are but a rough tribe. However, I love them
+dearly; and am only the more inclined to think them honest to each
+other, because they are rogues to all the rest of the world.”
+
+By this time our travellers had advanced nearly two miles since they had
+commenced companionship; and at a turn in the lane, about three hundred
+yards farther on, they caught a glimpse of a distant fire burning
+brightly through the dim trees. They quickened their pace, and striking
+a little out of their path into a common, soon approached two tents,
+the Arab homes of the vagrant and singular people with whom the gypsy
+claimed brotherhood and alliance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+   Here we securely live and eat
+   The cream of meat;
+  And keep eternal fires
+   By which we sit and do divine.
+        HERRICK: Ode to Sir Clipseby Crew.
+
+Around a fire which blazed and crackled beneath the large seething-pot,
+that seemed an emblem of the mystery and a promise of the good cheer
+which are the supposed characteristics of the gypsy race, were grouped
+seven or eight persons, upon whose swarthy and strong countenances the
+irregular and fitful flame cast a picturesque and not unbecoming glow.
+All of these, with the exception of an old crone who was tending the
+pot, and a little boy who was feeding the fire with sundry fragments of
+stolen wood, started to their feet upon the entrance of the stranger.
+
+“What ho! my bob cuffins,” cried the gypsy guide, “I have brought you a
+gentry cove, to whom you will show all proper respect: and hark ye, my
+maunders, if ye dare beg, borrow, or steal a single croker,--ay, but a
+bawbee of him, I’ll--but ye know me.” The gypsy stopped abruptly, and
+turned an eye, in which menace vainly struggled with good-humour, upon
+each of his brethren, as they submissively bowed to him and his protege,
+and poured forth a profusion of promises, to which their admonitor did
+not even condescend to listen. He threw off his great-coat, doubled
+it down by the best place near the fire, and made the youth forthwith
+possess himself of the seat it afforded. He then lifted the cover of the
+mysterious caldron. “Well, Mort,” cried he to the old woman, as he bent
+wistfully down, “what have we here?”
+
+“Two ducks, three chickens, and a rabbit, with some potatoes,” growled
+the old hag, who claimed the usual privilege of her culinary office, to
+be as ill-tempered as she pleased.
+
+“Good!” said the gypsy; “and now, Mim, my cull, go to the other tent,
+and ask its inhabitants, in my name, to come here and sup; bid them
+bring their caldron to eke out ours: I’ll find the lush.”
+
+With these words (which Mim, a short, swarthy member of the gang, with a
+countenance too astute to be pleasing, instantly started forth to obey)
+the gypsy stretched himself at full length by the youth’s side, and
+began reminding him, with some jocularity and at some length, of his
+promise to drink to their better acquaintance.
+
+Something there was in the scene, the fire, the caldron, the intent
+figure and withered countenance of the old woman, the grouping of the
+other forms, the rude but not unpicturesque tent, the dark still woods
+on either side, with the deep and cloudless skies above, as the stars
+broke forth one by one upon the silent air, which (to use the orthodox
+phrase of the novelist) would not have been wholly unworthy the bold
+pencil of Salvator himself.
+
+The youth eyed, with that involuntary respect which personal advantages
+always command, the large yet symmetrical proportions of his wild
+companion; nor was the face which belonged to that frame much less
+deserving of attention. Though not handsome, it was both shrewd and
+prepossessing in its expression; the forehead was prominent, the brows
+overhung the eyes, which were large, dark, and, unlike those of the
+tribe in general, rather calm than brilliant; the complexion, though
+sun-burnt, was not swarthy, and the face was carefully and cleanly
+shaved, so as to give all due advantage of contrast to the brown
+luxuriant locks which fell rather in flakes than curls, on either side
+of the healthful and manly cheeks. In age, he was about thirty-five,
+and, though his air and mien were assuredly not lofty nor aristocratic,
+yet they were strikingly above the bearing of his vagabond companions:
+those companions were in all respects of the ordinary race of gypsies;
+the cunning and flashing eye, the raven locks, the dazzling teeth, the
+bronzed colour, and the low, slight, active form, were as strongly their
+distinguishing characteristics as the tokens of all their tribe.
+
+But to these, the appearance of the youth presented a striking and
+beautiful contrast.
+
+He had only just passed the stage of boyhood, perhaps he might have
+seen eighteen summers, probably not so many. He had, in imitation of his
+companion, and perhaps from mistaken courtesy to his new society, doffed
+his hat; and the attitude which he had chosen fully developed the noble
+and intellectual turn of his head and throat. His hair, as yet preserved
+from the disfiguring fashions of the day, was of a deep auburn, which
+was rapidly becoming of a more chestnut hue, and curled in short close
+curls from the nape of the neck to the commencement of a forehead
+singularly white and high. His brows finely and lightly pencilled, and
+his long lashes of the darkest dye, gave a deeper and perhaps softer
+shade than they otherwise would have worn to eyes quick and observant
+in their expression and of a light hazel in their colour. His cheek
+was very fair, and the red light of the fire cast an artificial tint of
+increased glow upon a complexion that had naturally rather bloom than
+colour; while a dark riding frock set off in their full beauty the fine
+outline of his chest and the slender symmetry of his frame.
+
+But it was neither his features nor his form, eminently handsome as they
+were, which gave the principal charm to the young stranger’s appearance:
+it was the strikingly bold, buoyant, frank, and almost joyous expression
+which presided over all. There seemed to dwell the first glow and life
+of youth, undimmed by a single fear and unbaffled in a single hope.
+There were the elastic spring, the inexhaustible wealth of energies
+which defied in their exulting pride the heaviness of sorrow and the
+harassments of time. It was a face that, while it filled you with some
+melancholy foreboding of the changes and chances which must, in the
+inevitable course of fate, cloud the openness of the unwrinkled brow,
+and soberize the fire of the daring and restless eye, instilled also
+within you some assurance of triumph, and some omen of success,--a vague
+but powerful sympathy with the adventurous and cheerful spirit which
+appeared literally to speak in its expression. It was a face you might
+imagine in one born under a prosperous star; and you felt, as you gazed,
+a confidence in that bright countenance, which, like the shield of
+the British Prince, [Prince Arthur.--See “The Faerie Queene.”] seemed
+possessed with a spell to charm into impotence the evil spirits who
+menaced its possessor.
+
+“Well, sir,” said his friend, the gypsy, who had in his turn been
+surveying with admiration the sinewy and agile frame of his young guest,
+“well, sir, how fares your appetite? Old Dame Bingo will be mortally
+offended if you do not do ample justice to her good cheer.”
+
+“If so,” answered our traveller, who, young as he was, had learnt
+already the grand secret of making in every situation a female friend,
+“if so, I shall be likely to offend her still more.”
+
+“And how, my pretty master?” said the old crone with an iron smile.
+
+“Why, I shall be bold enough to reconcile matters with a kiss, Mrs.
+Bingo,” answered the youth.
+
+“Ha! Ha!” shouted the tall gypsy; “it is many a long day since my old
+Mort slapped a gallant’s face for such an affront. But here come our
+messmates. Good evening, my mumpers; make your bows to this gentleman
+who has come to bowse with us to-night. ‘Gad, we’ll show him that old
+ale’s none the worse for keeping company with the moon’s darlings. Come,
+sit down, sit down. Where’s the cloth, ye ill-mannered loons, and the
+knives and platters? Have we no holiday customs for strangers, think
+ye? Mim, my cove, off to my caravan; bring out the knives, and all other
+rattletraps; and harkye, my cuffin, this small key opens the inner hole,
+where you will find two barrels; bring one of them. I’ll warrant it of
+the best, for the brewer himself drank some of the same sort but two
+hours before I nimm’d them. Come, stump, my cull, make yourself wings.
+Ho, Dame Bingo, is not that pot of thine seething yet? Ah, my young
+gentleman, you commence betimes; so much the better; if love’s a
+summer’s day, we all know how early a summer morning begins,” added
+the jovial Egyptian in a lower voice (feeling perhaps that he was only
+understood by himself), as he gazed complacently on the youth, who, with
+that happy facility of making himself everywhere at home so uncommon
+to his countrymen, was already paying compliments suited to their
+understanding to two fair daughters of the tribe who had entered with
+the new-comers. Yet had he too much craft or delicacy, call it which you
+will, to continue his addresses to that limit where ridicule or jealousy
+from the male part of the assemblage might commence; on the contrary, he
+soon turned to the men, and addressed them with a familiarity so frank
+and so suited to their taste that he grew no less rapidly in their
+favour than he had already done in that of the women, and when the
+contents of the two caldrons were at length set upon the coarse but
+clean cloth which in honour of his arrival covered the sod, it was in
+the midst of a loud and universal peal of laughter which some broad
+witticism of the young stranger had produced that the party sat down to
+their repast.
+
+Bright were the eyes and sleek the tresses of the damsel who placed
+herself by the side of the stranger, and many were the alluring glances
+and insinuated compliments which replied to his open admiration
+and profuse flattery; but still there was nothing exclusive in his
+attentions; perhaps an ignorance of the customs of his entertainers, and
+a consequent discreet fear of offending them, restrained him; or perhaps
+he found ample food for occupation in the plentiful dainties which his
+host heaped before him.
+
+“Now tell me,” said the gypsy chief (for chief he appeared to be), “if
+we lead not a merrier life than you dreamt of? or would you have us
+change our coarse fare and our simple tents, our vigorous limbs and
+free hearts, for the meagre board, the monotonous chamber, the diseased
+frame, and the toiling, careful, and withered spirit of some miserable
+mechanic?”
+
+“Change!” cried the youth, with an earnestness which, if affected, was
+an exquisite counterfeit, “by Heaven, I would change with you myself.”
+
+“Bravo, my fine cove!” cried the host, and all the gang echoed their
+sympathy with his applause.
+
+The youth continued: “Meat, and that plentiful; ale, and that strong;
+women, and those pretty ones: what can man desire more?”
+
+“Ay,” cried the host, “and all for nothing,--no, not even a tax; who
+else in this kingdom can say that? Come, Mim, push round the ale.”
+
+And the ale was pushed round, and if coarse the merriment, loud at least
+was the laugh that rang ever and anon from the old tent; and though, at
+moments, something in the guest’s eye and lip might have seemed, to
+a very shrewd observer, a little wandering and absent, yet, upon the
+whole, he was almost as much at ease as the rest, and if he was not
+quite as talkative he was to the full as noisy.
+
+By degrees, as the hour grew later and the barrel less heavy, the
+conversation changed into one universal clatter. Some told their feats
+in beggary; others, their achievements in theft; not a viand they had
+fed on but had its appropriate legend; even the old rabbit, which had
+been as tough as old rabbit can well be, had not been honestly taken
+from his burrow; no less a person than Mim himself had purloined it from
+a widow’s footman who was carrying it to an old maid from her nephew the
+Squire.
+
+“Silence,” cried the host, who loved talking as well as the rest, and
+who for the last ten minutes had been vainly endeavouring to obtain
+attention. “Silence! my maunders, it’s late, and we shall have the queer
+cuffins [magistrates] upon us if we keep it up much longer. What, ho,
+Mim, are you still gabbling at the foot of the table when your betters
+are talking? As sure as my name’s King Cole, I’ll choke you with your
+own rabbit skin, if you don’t hush your prating cheat,--nay, never look
+so abashed: if you will make a noise, come forward, and sing us a gypsy
+song. You see, my young sir,” turning to his guest, “that we are not
+without our pretensions to the fine arts.”
+
+At this order, Mim started forth, and taking his station at the right
+hand of the soi-disant King Cole, began the following song, the chorus
+of which was chanted in full diapason by the whole group, with the
+additional force of emphasis that knives, feet, and fists could
+bestow:--
+
+  THE GYPSY’S SONG.
+
+  The king to his hall, and the steed to his stall,
+   And the cit to his bilking board;
+  But we are not bound to an acre of ground,
+   For our home is the houseless sward.
+  We sow not, nor toil; yet we glean from the soil
+   As much as its reapers do;
+  And wherever we rove, we feed on the cove
+   Who gibes at the mumping crew.
+      CHORUS.--So the king to his hall, etc.
+
+  We care not a straw for the limbs of the law,
+   Nor a fig for the cuffin queer;
+  While Hodge and his neighbour shall lavish and labour,
+   Our tent is as sure of its cheer.
+      CHORUS.--So the king to his hall, etc.
+
+  The worst have an awe of the harman’s [constable] claw,
+   And the best will avoid the trap; [bailiff]
+  But our wealth is as free of the bailiff’s see
+   As our necks of the twisting crap. [gallows]
+      CHORUS.--So the king to his hall, etc.
+
+  They say it is sweet to win the meat
+   For the which one has sorely wrought;
+  But I never could find that we lacked the mind
+   For the food that has cost us nought!
+      CHRUS.--So the king to his hall, etc.
+
+  And when we have ceased from our fearless feast
+   Why, our jigger [door] will need no bars;
+  Our sentry shall be on the owlet’s tree,
+   And our lamps the glorious stars.
+
+           CHORUS.
+  So the king to his hall, and the steed to his stall,
+   And the cit to his bilking board;
+  But we are not bound to an acre of ground,
+   For our home is the houseless sward.
+
+Rude as was this lawless stave, the spirit with which it was sung atoned
+to the young stranger for its obscurity and quaintness; as for his host,
+that curious personage took a lusty and prominent part in the chorus;
+nor did the old woods refuse their share of the burden, but sent back a
+merry echo to the chief’s deep voice and the harsher notes of his jovial
+brethren.
+
+When the glee had ceased, King Cole rose, the whole band followed
+his example, the cloth was cleared in a trice, the barrel--oh! what a
+falling off was there!--was rolled into a corner of the tent, and the
+crew to whom the awning belonged began to settle themselves to rest;
+while those who owned the other encampment marched forth, with King Cole
+at their head. Leaning with no light weight upon his guest’s arm, the
+lover of ancient minstrelsy poured into the youth’s ear a strain of
+eulogy, rather eloquent than coherent, upon the scene they had just
+witnessed.
+
+“What,” cried his majesty in an enthusiastic tone, “what can be so truly
+regal as our state? Can any man control us? Are we not above all laws?
+Are we not the most despotic of kings? Nay, more than the kings of
+earth, are we not the kings of Fairyland itself? Do we not realize the
+golden dreams of the old rhymers, luxurious dogs that they were? Who
+would not cry out,--
+
+    ‘Blest silent groves! Oh, may ye be
+     Forever Mirth’s best nursery!
+      May pure Contents
+      Forever pitch their tents
+  Upon these downs, these meads, these rocks, these mountains.’”
+
+Uttering this notable extract from the thrice-honoured Sir Henry Wotton,
+King Cole turned abruptly from the common, entered the wood which
+skirted it, and, only attended by his guest and his minister Mim, came
+suddenly, by an unexpected and picturesque opening in the trees, upon
+one of those itinerant vehicles termed caravans, he ascended the few
+steps which led to the entrance, opened the door, and was instantly in
+the arms of a pretty and young woman. On seeing our hero (for such we
+fear the youth is likely to become), she drew back with a blush not
+often found upon regal cheeks.
+
+“Pooh,” said King Cole, half tauntingly, half fondly, “pooh, Lucy,
+blushes are garden flowers, and ought never to be found wild in the
+woods:” then changing his tone, he said, “come, put some fresh straw
+in the corner, this stranger honours our palace to-night; Mim, unload
+thyself of our royal treasures; watch without and vanish from within!”
+
+Depositing on his majesty’s floor the appurtenances of the regal
+supper-table, Mim made his respectful adieus and disappeared; meanwhile
+the queen scattered some fresh straw over a mattress in the narrow
+chamber, and, laying over all a sheet of singularly snowy hue, made
+her guest some apology for the badness of his lodging; this King Cole
+interrupted by a most elaborately noisy yawn and a declaration of
+extreme sleepiness. “Now, Lucy, let us leave the gentleman to what he
+will like better than soft words even from a queen. Good night, sir, we
+shall be stirring at daybreak;” and with this farewell King Cole took
+the lady’s arm, and retired with her into an inner compartment of the
+caravan.
+
+Left to himself, our hero looked round with surprise at the exceeding
+neatness which reigned over the whole apartment. But what chiefly
+engrossed the attention of one to whose early habits books had always
+been treasures were several volumes, ranged in comely shelves, fenced
+with wirework, on either side of the fireplace. “Courage,” thought
+he, as he stretched himself on his humble couch, “my adventures have
+commenced well: a gypsy tent, to be sure, is nothing very new; but a
+gypsy who quotes poetry, and enjoys a modest wife, speaks better than
+books do for the improvement of the world!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
+  Than that of painted pomp?--As You Like It.
+
+The sun broke cheerfully through the small lattice of the caravan, as
+the youth opened his eyes and saw the good-humoured countenance of his
+gypsy host bending over him complacently.
+
+“You slept so soundly, sir, that I did not like to disturb you; but my
+good wife only waits your rising to have all ready for breakfast.”
+
+“It were a thousand pities,” cried the guest, leaping from his bed,
+“that so pretty a face should look cross on my account, so I will not
+keep her waiting an instant.”
+
+The gypsy smiled, as he answered, “I require no professional help from
+the devil, sir, to foretell your fortune.”
+
+“No!--and what is it?”
+
+“Honour, reputation, success: all that are ever won by a soft tongue, if
+it be backed by a bold heart.”
+
+Bright and keen was the flash which shot over the countenance of the one
+for whom this prediction was made, as he listened to it with a fondness
+for which his reason rebuked him.
+
+He turned aside with a sigh, which did not escape the gypsy, and bathed
+his face in the water which the provident hand of the good woman had set
+out for his lavations.
+
+“Well,” said his host, when the youth had finished his brief toilet,
+“suppose we breathe the fresh air, while Lucy smooths your bed and
+prepares the breakfast?”
+
+“With all my heart,” replied the youth, and they descended the steps
+which led into the wood. It was a beautiful, fresh morning; the air was
+like a draught from a Spirit’s fountain, and filled the heart with new
+youth and the blood with a rapturous delight; the leaves--the green,
+green leaves of spring--were quivering on the trees, among which the
+happy birds fluttered and breathed the gladness of their souls in song.
+While the dewdrops that--
+
+       “strewed
+  A baptism o’er the flowers”--
+
+gave back in their million mirrors the reflected smiles of the cloudless
+and rejoicing sun.
+
+“Nature,” said the gypsy, “has bestowed on her children a gorgeous
+present in such a morning.”
+
+“True,” said the youth; “and you, of us two, perhaps only deserve it; as
+for me, when I think of the long road of dust, heat, and toil, that lies
+before me, I could almost wish to stop here and ask an admission into
+the gypsy’s tents.”
+
+“You could not do a wiser thing!” said the gypsy, gravely.
+
+“But fate leaves me no choice,” continued the youth, as seriously as
+if he were in earnest; “and I must quit you immediately after I have a
+second time tasted of your hospitable fare.”
+
+“If it must be so,” answered the gypsy, “I will see you, at least, a
+mile or two on your road.” The youth thanked him for a promise which his
+curiosity made acceptable, and they turned once more to the caravan.
+
+The meal, however obtained, met with as much honour as it could possibly
+have received from the farmer from whom its materials were borrowed.
+
+It was not without complacency that the worthy pair beheld the notice
+their guest lavished upon a fair, curly-headed boy of about three years
+old, the sole child and idol of the gypsy potentates. But they did not
+perceive, when the youth rose to depart, that he slipped into the folds
+of the child’s dress a ring of some value, the only one he possessed.
+
+“And now,” said he, after having thanked his entertainers for their
+hospitality, “I must say good-by to your flock, and set out upon my
+day’s journey.”
+
+Lucy, despite her bashfulness, shook hands with her handsome guest;
+and the latter, accompanied by the gypsy chief, strolled down to the
+encampments.
+
+Open and free was his parting farewell to the inmates of the two tents,
+and liberal was the hand which showered upon all--especially on the
+damsel who had been his Thais of the evening feast--the silver coins
+which made no inconsiderable portion of his present property.
+
+It was amidst the oracular wishes and favourable predictions of the
+whole crew that he recommenced his journey with the gypsy chief.
+
+When the tents were fairly out of sight, and not till then, King Cole
+broke the silence which had as yet subsisted between them.
+
+“I suppose, my young gentleman, that you expect to meet some of your
+friends or relations at W----? I know not what they will say when they
+hear where you have spent the night.”
+
+“Indeed!” said the youth; “whoever hears my adventures, relation or not,
+will be delighted with my description; but in sober earnest, I expect to
+find no one at W---- more my friend than a surly innkeeper, unless it be
+his dog.”
+
+“Why, they surely do not suffer a stripling of your youth and evident
+quality to wander alone!” cried King Cole, in undisguised surprise.
+
+The young traveller made no prompt answer, but bent down as if to pluck
+a wild-flower which grew by the road-side: after a pause, he said,--
+
+“Nay, Master Cole, you must not set me the example of playing the
+inquisitor, or you cannot guess how troublesome I shall be. To tell you
+the truth, I am dying with curiosity to know something more about you
+than you may be disposed to tell me: you have already confessed that,
+however boon companions your gypsies may be, it is not among gypsies
+that you were born and bred.”
+
+King Cole laughed: perhaps he was not ill pleased by the curiosity of
+his guest, nor by the opportunity it afforded him of being his own hero.
+
+“My story, sir,” said he, “would be soon told, if you thought it worth
+the hearing, nor does it contain anything which should prevent my
+telling it.”
+
+“If so,” quoth the youth, “I shall conceive your satisfying my request a
+still greater favour than those you have already bestowed upon me.”
+
+The gypsy relaxed his pace into an indolent saunter, as he commenced:--
+
+“The first scene that I remember was similar to that which you witnessed
+last night. The savage tent, and the green moor; the fagot blaze; the
+eternal pot, with its hissing note of preparation; the old dame who
+tended it, and the ragged urchins who learned from its contents the
+first reward of theft and the earliest temptation to it,--all these
+are blended into agreeable confusion as the primal impressions of my
+childhood. The woman who nurtured me as my mother was rather capricious
+than kind, and my infancy passed away, like that of more favoured scions
+of fortune, in alternate chastisement and caresses. In good truth,
+Kinching Meg had the shrillest voice and the heaviest hand of the whole
+crew; and I cannot complain of injustice, since she treated me no worse
+than the rest. Notwithstanding the irregularity of my education, I grew
+up strong and healthy, and my reputed mother had taught me so much fear
+for herself that she left me none for anything else; accordingly, I
+became bold, reckless, and adventurous, and at the age of thirteen
+was as thorough a reprobate as the tribe could desire. At that time
+a singular change befell me: we (that is, my mother and myself) were
+begging not many miles hence at the door of a rich man’s house in which
+the mistress lay on her death-bed. That mistress was my real mother,
+from whom Meg had stolen me in the first year of existence. Whether it
+was through the fear of conscience or the hope of reward, no sooner had
+Meg learnt the dangerous state of my poor mother, the constant grief,
+which they said had been the sole though slow cause of her disease, and
+the large sums which had been repeatedly offered for my recovery; no
+sooner, I say, did Meg ascertain all these particulars than she fought
+her way up to the sick-chamber, fell on her knees before the bed, owned
+her crime, and produced myself. Various little proofs of time, place,
+circumstance; the clothing I had worn when stolen, and which was still
+preserved, joined to the striking likeness I bore to both my parents,
+especially to my father, silenced all doubt and incredulity: I was
+welcomed home with a joy which it is in vain to describe. My return
+seemed to recall my mother from the grave; she lingered on for many
+months longer than her physicians thought it possible, and when she died
+her last words commended me to my father’s protection.”
+
+“My surviving parent needed no such request. He lavished upon me all
+that superfluity of fondness and food of which those good people who are
+resolved to spoil their children are so prodigal. He could not bear the
+idea of sending me to school; accordingly he took a tutor for me,--a
+simple-hearted, gentle, kind man, who possessed a vast store of
+learning rather curious than useful. He was a tolerable, and at least an
+enthusiastic antiquarian, a more than tolerable poetaster; and he had a
+prodigious budget full of old ballads and songs, which he loved
+better to teach and I to learn, than all the ‘Latin, Greek, geography,
+astronomy, and the use of the globes,’ which my poor father had so
+sedulously bargained for.”
+
+“Accordingly, I became exceedingly well-informed in all the ‘precious
+conceits’ and ‘golden garlands’ of our British ancients, and continued
+exceedingly ignorant of everything else, save and except a few of
+the most fashionable novels of the day, and the contents of six lying
+volumes of voyages and travels, which flattered both my appetite for the
+wonderful and my love of the adventurous. My studies, such as they were,
+were not by any means suited to curb or direct the vagrant tastes my
+childhood had acquired: on the contrary, the old poets, with their
+luxurious description of the ‘green wood’ and the forest life; the
+fashionable novelists, with their spirited accounts of the wanderings
+of some fortunate rogue, and the ingenious travellers, with their wild
+fables, so dear to the imagination of every boy, only fomented within
+me a strong though secret regret at my change of life, and a restless
+disgust to the tame home and bounded roamings to which I was condemned.
+When I was about seventeen, my father sold his property (which he had
+become possessed of in right of my mother), and transferred the purchase
+money to the security of the Funds. Shortly afterwards he died; the bulk
+of his fortune became mine; the remainder was settled upon a sister,
+many years older than myself, whom, in consequence of her marriage and
+residence in a remote part of Wales, I had never yet seen.”
+
+“Now, then, I was perfectly free and unfettered; my guardian lived in
+Scotland, and left me entirely to the guidance of my tutor, who was both
+too simple and too indolent to resist my inclinations. I went to London,
+became acquainted with a set of most royal scamps, frequented the
+theatres and the taverns, the various resorts which constitute the
+gayeties of a blood just above the middle class, and was one of the
+noisiest and wildest ‘blades’ that ever heard the ‘chimes by midnight’
+and the magistrate’s lecture for matins. I was a sort of leader among
+the jolly dogs I consorted with.”
+
+“My earlier education gave a raciness and nature to my delineations of
+‘life’ which delighted them. But somehow or other I grew wearied of this
+sort of existence. About a year after I was of age my fortune was more
+than three parts spent; I fell ill with drinking and grew dull with
+remorse: need I add that my comrades left me to myself? A fit of
+the spleen, especially if accompanied with duns, makes one wofully
+misanthropic; so, when I recovered from my illness, I set out on a tour
+through Great Britain and France,--alone, and principally on foot. Oh,
+the rapture of shaking off the half friends and cold formalities of
+society and finding oneself all unfettered, with no companion but
+Nature, no guide but youth, and no flatterer but hope!”
+
+“Well, my young friend, I travelled for two years, and saw even in that
+short time enough of this busy world to weary and disgust me with
+its ordinary customs. I was not made to be polite, still less to be
+ambitious. I sighed after the coarse comrades and the free tents of my
+first associates; and a thousand remembrances of the gypsy wanderings,
+steeped in all the green and exhilarating colours of childhood,
+perpetually haunted my mind. On my return from my wanderings I found a
+letter from my sister, who, having become a widow, had left Wales, and
+had now fixed her residence in a well visited watering-place in the west
+of England. I had never yet seen her, and her letter was a fine-ladylike
+sort of epistle, with a great deal of romance and a very little sense,
+written in an extremely pretty hand, and ending with a quotation from
+Pope (I never could endure Pope, nor indeed any of the poets of the days
+of Anne and her successors). It was a beautiful season of the year: I
+had been inured to pedestrian excursions; so I set off on foot to see
+my nearest surviving relative. On the way, I fell in (though on a very
+different spot) with the very encampment you saw last night. By heavens,
+that was a merry meeting to me! I joined, and journeyed with them for
+several days: never do I remember a happier time. Then, after many years
+of bondage and stiffness, and accordance with the world, I found myself
+at ease, like a released bird; with what zest did I join in the rude
+jokes and the knavish tricks, the stolen feasts and the roofless nights
+of those careless vagabonds!”
+
+“I left my fellow-travellers at the entrance of the town where my sister
+lived. Now came the contrast. Somewhat hot, rather coarsely clad, and
+covered with the dust of a long summer’s day, I was ushered into a
+little drawing-room, eighteen feet by twelve, as I was afterwards
+somewhat pompously informed. A flaunting carpet, green, red, and yellow,
+covered the floor. A full-length picture of a thin woman, looking most
+agreeably ill-tempered, stared down at me from the chimney-piece;
+three stuffed birds--how emblematic of domestic life!--stood stiff
+and imprisoned, even after death, in a glass cage. A fire-screen and a
+bright fireplace; chairs covered with holland, to preserve them from
+the atmosphere; and long mirrors, wrapped as to the frame-work in
+yellow muslin, to keep off the flies,--finish the panorama of this
+watering-place mansion. The door opened, silks rustled, a voice shrieked
+‘My Brother!’ and a figure, a thin figure, the original of the picture
+over the chimney-piece, rushed in.”
+
+“I can well fancy her joy,” said the youth.
+
+“You can do no such thing, begging your pardon, sir,” resumed King Cole.
+“She had no joy at all: she was exceedingly surprised and disappointed.
+In spite of my early adventures, I had nothing picturesque or romantic
+about me at all. I was very thirsty, and I called for beer; I was very
+tired, and I lay down on the sofa; I wore thick shoes and small buckles;
+and my clothes were made God knows where, and were certainly put on God
+knows how. My sister was miserably ashamed of me: she had not even the
+manners to disguise it. In a higher rank of life than that which she
+held she would have suffered far less mortification; for I fancy great
+people pay but little real attention to externals. Even if a man of rank
+is vulgar, it makes no difference in the orbit in which he moves: but
+your ‘genteel gentlewomen’ are so terribly dependent upon what Mrs.
+Tomkins will say; so very uneasy about their relations and the opinion
+they are held in; and, above all, so made up of appearances and clothes;
+so undone if they do not eat, drink, and talk a la mode,--that I can
+fancy no shame like that of my poor sister at having found, and being
+found with, a vulgar brother.”
+
+“I saw how unwelcome I was and I did not punish myself by a long visit.
+I left her house and returned towards London. On my road, I again met
+with my gypsy friends: the warmth of their welcome enchanted me; you
+may guess the rest. I stayed with them so long that I could not bear
+to leave them; I re-entered their crew: I am one among them. Not that
+I have become altogether and solely of the tribe: I still leave
+them whenever the whim seizes me, and repair to the great cities and
+thoroughfares of man. There I am soon driven back again to my favourite
+and fresh fields, as a reed upon a wild stream is dashed back upon the
+green rushes from which it has been torn. You perceive that I have many
+comforts and distinctions above the rest; for, alas, sir, there is no
+society, however free and democratic, where wealth will not create
+an aristocracy; the remnant of my fortune provides me with my
+unostentatious equipage and the few luxuries it contains; it repays
+secretly to the poor what my fellow-vagrants occasionally filch from
+them; it allows me to curb among the crew all the grosser and heavier
+offences against the law to which want might otherwise compel them;
+and it serves to keep up that sway and ascendency which my superior
+education and fluent spirits enabled me at first to attain. Though not
+legally their king, I assume that title over the few encampments with
+which I am accustomed to travel; and you perceive that I have given my
+simple name both to the jocular and kingly dignity of which the old song
+will often remind you. My story is done.”
+
+“Not quite,” said his companion: “your wife? How came you by that
+blessing?”
+
+“Ah! thereby hangs a pretty and a love-sick tale, which would not
+stand ill in an ancient ballad; but I will content myself with briefly
+sketching it. Lucy is the daughter of a gentleman farmer: about four
+years ago I fell in love with her. I wooed her clandestinely, and at
+last I owned I was a gypsy: I did not add my birth nor fortune; no, I
+was full of the romance of the Nut-brown Maid’s lover, and attempted
+a trial of woman’s affection, which even in these days was not
+disappointed. Still her father would not consent to our marriage, till
+very luckily things went bad with him; corn, crops, cattle,--the deuce
+was in them all; an execution was in his house, and a writ out against
+his person. I settled these matters for him, and in return received a
+father-in-law’s blessing, and we are now the best friends in the world.
+Poor Lucy is perfectly reconciled to her caravan and her wandering
+husband, and has never, I believe, once repented the day on which she
+became the gypsy’s wife!”
+
+“I thank you heartily for your history,” said the youth, who had
+listened very attentively to this detail; “and though my happiness and
+pursuits are centred in that world which you despise, yet I confess that
+I feel a sensation very like envy at your singular choice; and I would
+not dare to ask of my heart whether that choice is not happier, as it is
+certainly more philosophical, than mine.”
+
+They had now reached a part of the road where the country assumed a
+totally different character; the woods and moors were no longer visible,
+but a broad and somewhat bleak extent of country lay before them. Here
+and there only a few solitary trees broke the uniformity of the wide
+fields and scanty hedgerows, and at distant intervals the thin spires
+of the scattered churches rose, like the prayers of which they were the
+symbols, to mingle themselves with heaven.
+
+The gypsy paused: “I will accompany you,” said he, “no farther; your way
+lies straight onwards, and you will reach W---- before noon; farewell,
+and may God watch over you!”
+
+“Farewell!” said the youth, warmly pressing the hand which was extended
+to him. “If we ever meet again, it will probably solve a curious riddle;
+namely, whether you are not disgusted with the caravan and I with the
+world!”
+
+“The latter is more likely than the former,” said the gypsy, for one
+stands a much greater chance of being disgusted with others than with
+one’s self; so changing a little the old lines, I will wish you adieu
+after my own fashion, namely, in verse,--
+
+  ‘Go, set thy heart on winged wealth,
+   Or unto honour’s towers aspire;
+   But give me freedom and my health,
+   And there’s the sum of my desire!’”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  The letter, madam; have you none for me?--The Rendezvous.
+  Provide surgeons.--Lover’s Progress.
+
+Our solitary traveller pursued his way with the light step and gay
+spirits of youth and health.
+
+“Turn gypsy, indeed!” he said, talking to himself; “there is something
+better in store for me than that. Ay, I have all the world before me
+where to choose--not my place of rest. No, many a long year will pass
+away ere any place of rest will be my choice! I wonder whether I shall
+find the letter at W----; the letter, the last letter I shall ever have
+from home but it is no home to me now; and I--I, insulted, reviled,
+trampled upon, without even a name--well, well, I will earn a still
+fairer one than that of my forefathers. They shall be proud to own
+me yet.” And with these words the speaker broke off abruptly, with a
+swelling chest and a flashing eye; and as, an unknown and friendless
+adventurer, he gazed on the expanded and silent country around him, he
+felt like Castruccio Castrucani that he could stretch his hands to the
+east and to the west and exclaim, “Oh, that my power kept pace with my
+spirit, then should it grasp the corners of the earth!”
+
+The road wound at last from the champaign country, through which it had
+for some miles extended itself, into a narrow lane, girded on either
+side by a dead fence. As the youth entered this lane, he was somewhat
+startled by the abrupt appearance of a horseman, whose steed leaped the
+hedge so close to our hero as almost to endanger his safety. The rider,
+a gentleman of about five-and-twenty, pulled up, and in a tone of
+great courtesy apologized for his inadvertency; the apology was readily
+admitted, and the horseman rode onwards in the direction of W----.
+
+Trifling as this incident was, the air and mien of the stranger were
+sufficient to arrest irresistibly the thoughts of the young traveller;
+and before they had flowed into a fresh channel he found himself in the
+town and at the door of the inn to which his expedition was bound. He
+entered the bar; a buxom landlady and a still more buxom daughter were
+presiding over the spirits of the place.
+
+“You have some boxes and a letter for me, I believe,” said the young
+gentleman to the comely hostess.
+
+“To you, sir!--the name, if you please?”
+
+“To--to--to C---- L----,” said the youth; “the initials C. L., to be
+left till called for.”
+
+“Yes, sir, we have some luggage; came last night by the van; and a
+letter besides, sir, to C. L. also.”
+
+The daughter lifted her large dark eyes at the handsome stranger,
+and felt a wonderful curiosity to know what the letter to C. L. could
+possibly be about; meanwhile mine hostess, raising her hand to a shelf
+on which stood an Indian slop-basin, the great ornament of the bar at
+the Golden Fleece, brought from its cavity a well-folded and well-sealed
+epistle.
+
+“That is it,” cried the youth; “show me a private room instantly.”
+
+“What can he want a private room for?” thought the landlady’s daughter.
+
+“Show the gentleman to the Griffin, No. 4, John Merrylack,” said the
+landlady herself.
+
+With an impatient step the owner of the letter followed a slipshod and
+marvellously unwashed waiter into No. 4,--a small square asylum for town
+travellers, country yeomen, and “single gentlemen;” presenting, on the
+one side, an admirable engraving of the Marquis of Granby, and on the
+other an equally delightful view of the stable-yard.
+
+Mr. C. L. flung himself on a chair (there were only four chairs in No.
+4), watched the waiter out of the room, seized his letter, broke open
+the seal, and read--yea, reader, you shall read it too--as follows:--
+
+“Enclosed is the sum to which you are entitled; remember, that it is all
+which you can ever claim at my hands; remember also that you have made
+the choice which now nothing can persuade me to alter. Be the name you
+have so long iniquitously borne henceforth and always forgotten; upon
+that condition you may yet hope from my generosity the future assistance
+which you must want, but which you could not ask from my affection.
+Equally by my heart and my reason you are forever DISOWNED.”
+
+The letter fell from the reader’s hands. He took up the inclosure: it
+was an order payable in London for 1,000 pounds; to him it seemed like
+the rental of the Indies.
+
+“Be it so!” he said aloud, and slowly; “be it so! With this will I carve
+my way: many a name in history was built upon a worse foundation!”
+
+With these words he carefully put up the money, re-read the brief note
+which enclosed it, tore the latter into pieces, and then, going towards
+the aforesaid view of the stable-yard, threw open the window and
+leaned out, apparently in earnest admiration of two pigs which marched
+gruntingly towards him, one goat regaling himself upon a cabbage, and a
+broken-winded, emaciated horse, which having just been what the hostler
+called “rubbed down,” was just going to be what the hostler called
+“fed.”
+
+While engaged in this interesting survey, the clatter of hoofs was
+suddenly heard upon the rough pavement, a bell rang, a dog barked, the
+pigs grunted, the hostler ran out, and the stranger, whom our hero had
+before met on the road, trotted into the yard.
+
+It was evident from the obsequiousness of the attendants that the
+horseman was a personage of no mean importance; and indeed there was
+something singularly distinguished and highbred in his air and carriage.
+
+“Who can that be?” said the youth, as the horseman, having dismounted,
+turned towards the door of the inn: the question was readily answered,
+“There goes pride and poverty!” said the hostler, “Here comes Squire
+Mordaunt!” said the landlady.
+
+At the farther end of the stable-yard, through a narrow gate, the youth
+caught a glimpse of the green sward and the springing flowers of a small
+garden. Wearied with the sameness of No. 4 rather than with his journey,
+he sauntered towards the said gate, and, seating himself in a small
+arbour within the garden, surrendered himself to reflection.
+
+The result of this self-conference was a determination to leave the
+Golden Fleece by the earliest conveyance which went to that great object
+and emporium of all his plans and thoughts, London. As, full of
+this resolution and buried in the dream which it conjured up, he
+was returning with downcast eyes and unheeding steps through the
+stable-yard, to the delights of No. 4, he was suddenly accosted by a
+loud and alarmed voice,--
+
+“For God’s sake, sir, look out, or--”
+
+The sentence was broken off, the intended warning came too late, our
+hero staggered back a few steps, and fell, stunned and motionless,
+against the stable door. Unconsciously he had passed just behind the
+heels of the stranger’s horse, which being by no means in good humour
+with the clumsy manoeuvres of his shampooer, the hostler, had taken
+advantage of the opportunity presented to him of working off his
+irritability, and had consequently inflicted a severe kick upon the
+right shoulder of Mr. C. L.
+
+The stranger, honoured by the landlady with the name and title of
+Squire Mordaunt, was in the yard at the moment. He hastened towards the
+sufferer, who as yet was scarcely sensible, and led him into the house.
+The surgeon of the village was sent for and appeared. This disciple of
+Galen, commonly known by the name of Jeremiah Bossolton, was a gentleman
+considerably more inclined to breadth than length. He was exactly five
+feet one inch in height, but thick and solid as a milestone; a wig of
+modern cut, carefully curled and powdered, gave somewhat of a modish
+and therefore unseemly grace to a solemn eye; a mouth drawn down at
+the corners; a nose that had something in it exceedingly consequential;
+eyebrows sage and shaggy; ears large and fiery; and a chin that would
+have done honour to a mandarin. Now Mr. Jeremiah Bossolton had a certain
+peculiarity of speech to which I shall find it difficult to do
+justice. Nature had impressed upon his mind a prodigious love of the
+grandiloquent; Mr. Bossolton, therefore, disdained the exact language of
+the vulgar, and built unto himself a lofty fabric of words in which his
+sense managed very frequently to lose itself. Moreover, upon beginning
+a sentence of peculiar dignity, Mr. Bossolton was, it must be
+confessed, sometimes at a loss to conclude it in a period worthy of the
+commencement; and this caprice of nature which had endowed him with
+more words than thoughts (necessity is, indeed, the mother of invention)
+drove him into a very ingenious method of remedying the deficiency; this
+was simply the plan of repeating the sense by inverting the sentence.
+
+“How long a period of time,” said Mr. Bossolton, “has elapsed since
+this deeply-to-be-regretted and seriously-to-be-investigated accident
+occurred?”
+
+“Not many minutes,” said Mordaunt; “make no further delay, I beseech
+you, but examine the arm; it is not broken, I trust?”
+
+“In this world, Mr. Mordaunt,” said the practitioner, bowing very low,
+for the person he addressed was of the most ancient lineage in the
+county, “in this world, Mr. Mordaunt, even at the earliest period of
+civilization, delay in matters of judgment has ever been considered of
+such vital importance, and--and such important vitality, that we find
+it inculcated in the proverbs of the Greeks and the sayings of the
+Chaldeans as a principle of the most expedient utility, and--and--the
+most useful expediency!”
+
+“Mr. Bossolton,” said Mordaunt, in a tone of remarkable and even
+artificial softness and civility, “have the kindness immediately to
+examine this gentleman’s bruises.”
+
+Mr. Bossolton looked up to the calm but haughty face of the speaker,
+and without a moment’s hesitation proceeded to handle the arm, which was
+already stripped for his survey.
+
+“It frequently occurs,” said Mr. Bossolton, “in the course of my
+profession, that the forcible, sudden, and vehement application of any
+hard substance, like the hoof of a quadruped, to the soft, tender,
+and carniferous parts of the human frame, such as the arm, occasions a
+pain--a pang, I should rather say--of the intensest acuteness, and--and
+of the acutest intensity.”
+
+“Pray, Mr. Bossolton, is the bone broken?” asked Mordaunt.
+
+By this time the patient, who had been hitherto in that languor which
+extreme pain always produces at first, especially on young frames, was
+sufficiently recovered to mark and reply to the kind solicitude of
+the last speaker: “I thank you, sir,” said he with a smile, “for your
+anxiety, but I feel that the bone is not broken; the muscles are a
+little hurt, that is all.”
+
+“Young gentleman,” said Mr. Bossolton, “you must permit me to say that
+they who have all their lives been employed in the pursuit, and the
+investigation, and the analysis of certain studies are in general better
+acquainted with those studies than they who have neither given them any
+importance of consideration--nor--nor any consideration of importance.
+Establishing this as my hypothesis, I shall now proceed to--”
+
+“Apply immediate remedies, if you please, Mr. Bossolton,” interrupted
+Mr. Mordaunt, in that sweet and honeyed tone which somehow or other
+always silenced even the garrulous practitioner.
+
+Driven into taciturnity, Mr. Bossolton again inspected the arm, and
+proceeded to urge the application of liniments and bandages, which he
+promised to prepare with the most solicitudinous despatch and the most
+despatchful solicitude.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  Your name, Sir!
+     Ha! my name, you say--my name?
+  ‘T is well--my name--is--nay, I must consider.--Pedrillo.
+
+This accident occasioned a delay of some days in the plans of the young
+gentleman, for whom we trust very soon, both for our own convenience and
+that of our reader, to find a fitting appellation.
+
+Mr. Mordaunt, after seeing every attention paid to him both surgical
+and hospitable, took his departure with a promise to call the next day;
+leaving behind him a strong impression of curiosity and interest to
+serve our hero as some mental occupation until his return. The bonny
+landlady came up in a new cap, with blue ribbons, in the course of the
+evening, to pay a visit of inquiry to the handsome patient, who was
+removed from the Griffin, No. 4, to the Dragon, No. 8,--a room whose
+merits were exactly in proportion to its number, namely, twice as great
+as those of No. 4.
+
+“Well, sir,” said Mrs. Taptape, with a courtesy, “I trust you find
+yourself better.”
+
+“At this moment I do,” said the gallant youth, with a significant air.
+
+“Hem,” quoth the landlady.
+
+A pause ensued. In spite of the compliment, a certain suspicion suddenly
+darted across the mind of the hostess. Strong as are the prepossessions
+of the sex, those of the profession are much stronger.
+
+“Honest folk,” thought the landlady, “don’t travel with their initials
+only; the last ‘Whitehall Evening’ was full of shocking accounts of
+swindlers and cheats; and I gave nine pounds odd shillings for the
+silver teapot John has brought him up,--as if the delft one was not good
+enough for a foot traveller!”
+
+Pursuing these ideas, Mrs. Taptape, looking bashfully down, said,--
+
+“By the by, sir; Mr. Bossolton asked me what name he should put down in
+his book for the medicines; what would you please me to say, sir?”
+
+“Mr. who?” said the youth, elevating his eyebrows.
+
+“Mr. Bossolton, sir, the apothecary.”
+
+“Oh! Bossolton! very odd name that,--not near so pretty as--dear me,
+what a beautiful cap that is of yours!” said the young gentleman.
+
+“Lord, sir, do you think so? The ribbon is pretty enough; but--but, as
+I was saying, what name shall I tell Mr. Bossolton to put in his book?”
+ “This,” thought Mrs. Taptape, “is coming to the point.”
+
+“Well!” said the youth, slowly, and as if in a profound reverie, “well,
+Bossolton is certainly the most singular name I ever heard; he does
+right to put it in a book: it is quite a curiosity! is he clever?”
+
+“Very, sir,” said the landlady, somewhat sharply; “but it is your name,
+not his, that he wishes to put into his book.”
+
+“Mine?” said the youth, who appeared to have been seeking to gain time
+in order to answer a query which most men find requires very little
+deliberation, “mine, you say; my name is Linden--Clarence Linden--you
+understand?”
+
+“What a pretty name!” thought the landlady’s daughter, who was listening
+at the keyhole; “but how could he admire that odious cap of Ma’s!”
+
+“And, now, landlady, I wish you would send up my boxes; and get me a
+newspaper, if you please.”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said the landlady, and she rose to retire.
+
+“I do not think,” said the youth to himself, “that I could have hit on a
+prettier name, and so novel a one too!--Clarence Linden,--why, if I were
+that pretty girl at the bar I could fall in love with the very words.
+Shakspeare was quite wrong when he said,--
+
+  ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’”
+
+“A rose by any name would not smell as sweet; if a rose’s name was
+Jeremiah Bossolton, for instance, it would not, to my nerves at least,
+smell of anything but an apothecary’s shop!”
+
+When Mordaunt called the next morning, he found Clarence much better,
+and carelessly turning over various books, part of the contents of the
+luggage superscribed C. L. A book of whatever description was among the
+few companions for whom Mordaunt had neither fastidiousness nor reserve;
+and the sympathy of taste between him and the sufferer gave rise to
+a conversation less cold and commonplace than it might otherwise have
+been. And when Mordaunt, after a stay of some length, rose to depart,
+he pressed Linden to return his visit before he left that part of the
+country; his place, he added, was only about five miles distant from
+W----. Linden, greatly interested in his visitor, was not slow in
+accepting the invitation, and, perhaps for the first time in his life,
+Mordaunt was shaking hands with a stranger he had only known two days.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  While yet a child, and long before his time,
+  He had perceived the presence and the power
+  Of greatness.
+ .....
+  But eagerly he read, and read again.
+ .....
+     Yet still uppermost
+  Nature was at his heart, as if he felt,
+  Though yet he knew not how, a wasting power
+  In all things that from her sweet influence
+  Might seek to wean him. Therefore with her hues,
+  Her forms, and with the spirit of her forms,
+  He clothed the nakedness of austere truth.
+                      WORDSWORTH.
+
+Algernon Mordaunt was the last son of an old and honourable race, which
+had centuries back numbered princes in its line. His parents had had
+many children, but all (save Algernon, the youngest) died in their
+infancy. His mother perished in giving him birth. Constitutional
+infirmity and the care of mercenary nurses contributed to render
+Algernon a weakly and delicate child: hence came a taste for loneliness
+and a passion for study; and from these sprung, on the one hand, the
+fastidiousness and reserve which render us apparently unamiable, and, on
+the other, the loftiness of spirit and the kindness of heart which are
+the best and earliest gifts of literature, and more than counterbalance
+our deficiencies in the “minor morals” due to society by their tendency
+to increase our attention to the greater ones belonging to mankind. Mr.
+Mordaunt was a man of luxurious habits and gambling propensities: wedded
+to London, he left the house of his ancestors to moulder into desertion
+and decay; but to this home Algernon was constantly consigned during
+his vacations from school; and its solitude and cheerlessness gave to
+a disposition naturally melancholy and thoughtful those colours which
+subsequent events were calculated to deepen, not efface.
+
+Truth obliges us to state, despite our partiality to Mordaunt, that,
+when he left his school after a residence of six years, it was with the
+bitter distinction of having been the most unpopular boy in it. Why,
+nobody could exactly explain, for his severest enemies could not accuse
+him of ill-nature, cowardice, or avarice, and these make the three
+capital offences of a school-boy; but Algernon Mordaunt had already
+acquired the knowledge of himself, and could explain the cause, though
+with a bitter and swelling heart. His ill health, his long residence at
+home, his unfriended and almost orphan situation, his early habits of
+solitude and reserve, all these, so calculated to make the spirit shrink
+within itself, made him, on his entrance at school, if not unsocial,
+appear so: this was the primary reason of his unpopularity; the second
+was that he perceived, for he was sensitive (and consequently acute) to
+the extreme, the misfortune of his manner, and in his wish to rectify
+it, it became doubly unprepossessing; to reserve, it now added
+embarrassment, to coldness, gloom; and the pain he felt in addressing or
+being addressed by another was naturally and necessarily reciprocal, for
+the effects of sympathy are nowhere so wonderful, yet so invisible, as
+in the manners.
+
+By degrees he shunned the intercourse which had for him nothing but
+distress, and his volatile acquaintances were perhaps the first to set
+him the example. Often in his solitary walks he stopped afar off to gaze
+upon the sports which none ever solicited him to share; and as the shout
+of laughter and of happy hearts came, peal after peal, upon his ear, he
+turned enviously, yet not malignantly away, with tears, which not all
+his pride could curb, and muttered to himself, “And these, these hate
+me!”
+
+There are two feelings common to all high or affectionate natures,--that
+of extreme susceptibility to opinion and that of extreme bitterness at
+its injustice. These feelings were Mordaunt’s: but the keen edge which
+one blow injures, the repetition blunts; and by little and little,
+Algernon became not only accustomed, but, as he persuaded himself,
+indifferent, to his want of popularity; his step grew more lofty, and
+his address more collected, and that which was once diffidence gradually
+hardened into pride.
+
+His residence at the University was neither without honour nor profit.
+A college life was then, as now, either the most retired or the most
+social of all others; we need scarcely say which it was to Mordaunt, but
+his was the age when solitude is desirable, and when the closet forms
+the mind better than the world. Driven upon itself, his intellect became
+inquiring and its resources profound; admitted to their inmost recesses,
+he revelled among the treasures of ancient lore, and in his dreams of
+the Nymph and Naiad, or his researches after truth in the deep wells of
+the Stagyrite or the golden fountains of Plato, he forgot the loneliness
+of his lot and exhausted the hoarded enthusiasm of his soul.
+
+But his mind, rather thoughtful than imaginative, found no idol like
+“Divine Philosophy.” It delighted to plunge itself into the mazes of
+metaphysical investigation; to trace the springs of the intellect; to
+connect the arcana of the universe; to descend into the darkest caverns,
+or to wind through the minutest mysteries of Nature, and rise, step
+by step, to that arduous elevation on which Thought stands dizzy and
+confused, looking beneath upon a clouded earth, and above upon an
+unfathomable heaven.
+
+Rarely wandering from his chamber, known personally to few and
+intimately by none, Algernon yet left behind him at the University
+the most remarkable reputation of his day. He had obtained some of the
+highest of academical honours, and by that proverbial process of vulgar
+minds which ever frames the magnificent from the unknown, the seclusion
+in which he lived and the recondite nature of his favourite pursuits
+attached to his name a still greater celebrity and interest than all the
+orthodox and regular dignities he had acquired. There are few men who
+do not console themselves for not being generally loved, if they can
+reasonably hope that they are generally esteemed. Mordaunt had now grown
+reconciled to himself and to his kind. He had opened to his interest a
+world in his own breast, and it consoled him for his mortification in
+the world without. But, better than this, his habits as well as studies
+had strengthened the principles and confirmed the nobility of his mind.
+He was not, it is true, more kind, more benevolent, more upright than
+before; but those virtues now emanated from principle, not emotion:
+and principle to the mind is what a free constitution is to a people;
+without that principle or that free constitution, the one may be for
+the moment as good, the other as happy; but we cannot tell how long the
+goodness and the happiness will continue.
+
+On leaving the University, his father sent for him to London. He stayed
+there a short time, and mingled partially in its festivities; but the
+pleasures of English dissipation have for a century been the same,
+heartless without gayety, and dull without refinement. Nor could
+Mordaunt, the most fastidious, yet warm-hearted of human beings,
+reconcile either his tastes or his affections to the cold insipidities
+of patrician society. His father’s habits and evident distresses
+deepened his disgust to his situation; for the habits were incurable and
+the distresses increasing; and nothing but a circumstance which Mordaunt
+did not then understand prevented the final sale of an estate already
+little better than a pompous incumbrance.
+
+It was therefore with the half painful, half pleasurable sensation with
+which we avoid contemplating a ruin we cannot prevent that Mordaunt
+set out upon that Continental tour deemed then so necessary a part of
+education. His father, on taking leave of him, seemed deeply affected.
+“Go, my son,” said he, “may God bless you, and not punish me too
+severely. I have wronged you deeply, and I cannot bear to look upon your
+face.”
+
+To these words Algernon attached a general, but they cloaked a peculiar,
+meaning: in three years, he returned to England; his father had been
+dead some months, and the signification of his parting address was
+already deciphered,--but of this hereafter.
+
+In his travels Mordaunt encountered an Englishman whose name I will not
+yet mention: a person of great reputed wealth; a merchant, yet a man
+of pleasure; a voluptuary in life, yet a saint in reputation; or, to
+abstain from the antithetical analysis of a character which will not
+be corporeally presented to the reader till our tale is considerably
+advanced, one who drew from nature a singular combination of shrewd
+but false conclusions, and a peculiar philosophy, destined hereafter to
+contrast the colours and prove the practical utility of that which was
+espoused by Mordaunt.
+
+There can be no education in which the lessons of the world do not form
+a share. Experience, in expanding Algernon’s powers, had ripened his
+virtues. Nor had the years which had converted knowledge into wisdom
+failed in imparting polish to refinement. His person had acquired a
+greater grace, and his manners an easier dignity than before. His noble
+and generous mind had worked its impress upon his features and his mien;
+and those who could overcome the first coldness and shrinking hauteur of
+his address found it required no minute examination to discover the real
+expression of the eloquent eye and the kindling lip.
+
+He had not been long returned before he found two enemies to his
+tranquillity,--the one was love, the other appeared in the more
+formidable guise of a claimant to his estate. Before Algernon was aware
+of the nature of the latter he went to consult with his lawyer.
+
+“If the claim be just, I shall not, of course, proceed to law,” said
+Mordaunt.
+
+“But without the estate, sir, you have nothing!”
+
+“True,” said Algernon, calmly.
+
+But the claim was not just, and to law he went.
+
+In this lawsuit, however, he had one assistant in an old relation, who
+had seen, indeed, but very little of him, but who compassionated his
+circumstances, and above all hated his opponent. This relation was rich
+and childless; and there were not wanting those who predicted that his
+money would ultimately discharge the mortgages and repair the house of
+the young representative of the Mordaunt honours. But the old kinsman
+was obstinate, self-willed, and under the absolute dominion of patrician
+pride; and it was by no means improbable that the independence of
+Mordaunt’s character would soon create a disunion between them, by
+clashing against the peculiarities of his relation’s temper.
+
+It was a clear and sunny morning when Linden, tolerably recovered of his
+hurt, set out upon a sober and aged pony, which after some natural pangs
+of shame he had hired of his landlord, to Mordaunt Court.
+
+Mordaunt’s house was situated in the midst of a wild and extensive park,
+surrounded with woods, and interspersed with trees of the stateliest
+growth, now scattered into irregular groups, now marshalled into
+sweeping avenues; while, ever and anon, Linden caught glimpses of
+a rapid and brawling rivulet, which in many a slight but sounding
+waterfall gave a music strange and spirit-like to the thick copses and
+forest glades through which it went exulting on its way. The deer lay
+half concealed by the fern among which they couched, turning their
+stately crests towards the stranger, but not stirring from their rest;
+while from the summit of beeches which would have shamed the pavilion
+of Tityrus the rooks--those monks of the feathered people--were loud in
+their confused but not displeasing confabulations.
+
+As Linden approached the house, he was struck with the melancholy air
+of desolation which spread over and around it: fragments of stone,
+above which clomb the rank weed, insolently proclaiming the triumph of
+Nature’s meanest offspring over the wrecks of art; a moat dried up; a
+railing once of massive gilding, intended to fence a lofty terrace on
+the right from the incursions of the deer, but which, shattered and
+decayed, now seemed to ask with the satirist,--
+
+  “To what end did our lavish ancestors
+   Erect of old these stately piles of ours?”
+
+--a chapel on the left, perfectly in ruins,--all appeared strikingly
+to denote that time had outstripped fortune, and that the years, which
+alike hallow and destroy, had broken the consequence, in deepening the
+antiquity, of the House of Mordaunt.
+
+The building itself agreed but too well with the tokens of decay around
+it; most of the windows were shut up, and the shutters of dark oak,
+richly gilt, contrasted forcibly with the shattered panes and mouldered
+framing of the glass. It was a house of irregular architecture.
+Originally built in the fifteenth century, it had received its last
+improvement, with the most lavish expense, during the reign of Anne; and
+it united the Gallic magnificence of the latter period with the strength
+and grandeur of the former; it was in a great part overgrown with ivy,
+and, where that insidious ornament had not reached, the signs of decay,
+and even ruin, were fully visible. The sun itself, bright and cheering
+as it shone over Nature, making the green sod glow like emeralds, and
+the rivulet flash in its beam, like one of those streams of real light,
+imagined by Swedenborg in his visions of heaven, and clothing tree and
+fell, brake and hillock, with the lavish hues of infant summer,--the sun
+itself only made more desolate, because more conspicuous, the venerable
+fabric, which the youthful traveller frequently paused more accurately
+to survey, and its laughing and sportive beams playing over chink and
+crevice, seemed almost as insolent and untimeous as the mirth of the
+young mocking the silent grief of some gray-headed and solitary mourner.
+
+Clarence had now reached the porch, and the sound of the shrill bell he
+touched rang with a strange note through the general stillness of the
+place. A single servant appeared, and ushered Clarence through a screen
+hall, hung round with relics of armour, and ornamented on the side
+opposite the music gallery with a solitary picture of gigantic size, and
+exhibiting the full length of the gaunt person and sable steed of that
+Sir Piers de Mordaunt who had so signalized himself in the field in
+which Henry of Richmond changed his coronet for a crown. Through this
+hall Clarence was led to a small chamber clothed with uncouth and
+tattered arras, in which, seemingly immersed in papers, he found the
+owner of the domain.
+
+“Your studies,” said Linden, after the salutations of the day, “seem to
+harmonize with the venerable antiquity of your home;” and he pointed to
+the crabbed characters and faded ink of the papers on the table.
+
+“So they ought,” answered Mordaunt, with a faint smile; “for they are
+called from their quiet archives in order to support my struggle for
+that home. But I fear the struggle is in vain, and that the quibbles of
+law will transfer into other hands a possession I am foolish enough to
+value the more from my inability to maintain it.”
+
+Something of this Clarence had before learned from the communicative
+gossip of his landlady; and less desirous to satisfy his curiosity than
+to lead the conversation from a topic which he felt must be so unwelcome
+to Mordaunt, he expressed a wish to see the state apartments of the
+house. With something of shame at the neglect they had necessarily
+experienced, and something of pride at the splendour which no neglect
+could efface, Mordaunt yielded to the request, and led the way up a
+staircase of black oak, the walls and ceiling of which were covered with
+frescoes of Italian art, to a suite of apartments in which time and dust
+seemed the only tenants. Lingeringly did Clarence gaze upon the rich
+velvet, the costly mirrors, the motley paintings of a hundred ancestors,
+and the antique cabinets, containing, among the most hoarded relics of
+the Mordaunt race, curiosities which the hereditary enthusiasm of a line
+of cavaliers had treasured as the most sacred of heirlooms, and which,
+even to the philosophical mind of Mordaunt, possessed a value he did not
+seek too minutely to analyze. Here was the goblet from which the first
+prince of Tudor had drunk after the field of Bosworth. Here the ring
+with which the chivalrous Francis the First had rewarded a signal feat
+of that famous Robert de Mordaunt, who, as a poor but adventurous
+cadet of the house, had brought to the “first gentleman of France”
+ the assistance of his sword. Here was the glove which Sir Walter had
+received from the royal hand of Elizabeth, and worn in the lists upon
+a crest which the lance of no antagonist in that knightly court could
+abase. And here, more sacred than all, because connected with the memory
+of misfortune, was a small box of silver which the last king of a fated
+line had placed in the hands of the gray-headed descendant of that Sir
+Walter after the battle of the Boyne, saying, “Keep this, Sir Everard
+Mordaunt, for the sake of one who has purchased the luxury of gratitude
+at the price of a throne!”
+
+As Clarence glanced from these relics to the figure of Mordaunt, who
+stood at a little distance leaning against the window, with arms folded
+on his breast and with eyes abstractedly wandering over the noble woods
+and extended park, which spread below, he could not but feel that if
+birth had indeed the power of setting its seal upon the form, it was
+never more conspicuous than in the broad front and lofty air of the last
+descendant of the race by whose memorials he was surrounded. Touched by
+the fallen fortunes of Mordaunt, and interested by the uncertainty which
+the chances of law threw over his future fate, Clarence could not resist
+exclaiming, with some warmth and abruptness,--
+
+“And by what subterfuge or cavil does the present claimant of these
+estates hope to dislodge their rightful possessor?”
+
+“Why,” answered Mordaunt, “it is a long story in detail, but briefly
+told in epitome. My father was a man whose habits greatly exceeded
+his fortune, and a few months after his death, Mr. Vavasour, a distant
+relation, produced a paper, by which it appeared that my father had,
+for a certain sum of ready money, disposed of his estates to this Mr.
+Vavasour, upon condition that they should not be claimed nor the treaty
+divulged till after his death; the reason for this proviso seems to
+have been the shame my father felt for his exchange, and his fear of the
+censures of that world to which he was always devoted.”
+
+“But how unjust to you!” said Clarence.
+
+“Not so much so as it seems,” said Mordaunt, deprecatingly; “for I was
+then but a sickly boy, and according to the physicians, and I sincerely
+believe according also to my poor father’s belief, almost certain of a
+premature death. In that case Vavasour would have been the nearest heir;
+and this expectancy, by the by, joined to the mortgages on the property,
+made the sum given ridiculously disproportioned to the value of the
+estate. I must confess that the news came upon me like a thunderbolt.
+I should have yielded up possession immediately, but was informed by my
+lawyers that my father had no legal right to dispose of the property;
+the discussion of that right forms the ground of the present lawsuit.
+But,” continued Mordaunt, proudly, yet mournfully, “I am prepared for
+the worst; if, indeed, I should call that the worst which can affect
+neither intellect nor health nor character nor conscience.”
+
+Clarence was silent, and Mordaunt after a brief pause once more resumed
+his guidance. Their tour ended in a large library filled with books, and
+this Mordaunt informed his guest was his chosen sitting-room.
+
+An old carved table was covered with works which for the most part
+possessed for the young mind of Clarence, more accustomed to imagine
+than reflect, but a very feeble attraction; on looking over them, he,
+however, found, half hid by a huge folio of Hobbes, and another of
+Locke, a volume of Milton’s poems; this paved the way to a conversation
+in which both had an equal interest, for both were enthusiastic in the
+character and genius of that wonderful man, for whom “the divine and
+solemn countenance of Freedom” was dearer than the light of day, and
+whose solitary spell, accomplishing what the whole family of earth
+once vainly began upon the plain of Shinar, has built of materials more
+imperishable than “slime and brick” “a city and a tower whose summit has
+reached to heaven.”
+
+It was with mutual satisfaction that Mordaunt and his guest continued
+their commune till the hour of dinner was announced to them by a bell,
+which, formerly intended as an alarum, now served the peaceful purpose
+of a more agreeable summons.
+
+The same servant who had admitted Clarence ushered them through the
+great hall into the dining-room, and was their solitary attendant during
+their repast.
+
+The temper of Mordaunt was essentially grave and earnest, and his
+conversation almost invariably took the tone of his mind; this made
+their conference turn upon less minute and commonplace topics than one
+between such new acquaintances, especially of different ages, usually
+does.
+
+“You will positively go to London to-morrow, then?” said Mordaunt, as
+the servant, removing the appurtenances of dinner, left them alone.
+
+“Positively,” answered Clarence. “I go there to carve my own fortunes,
+and, to say truth, I am impatient to begin.” Mordaunt looked earnestly
+at the frank face of the speaker, and wondered that one so young, so
+well-educated, and, from his air and manner, evidently of gentle blood,
+should appear so utterly thrown upon his own resources.
+
+“I wish you success,” said he, after a pause; “and it is a noble part
+of the organization of this world that, by increasing those riches which
+are beyond fortune, we do in general take the surest method of obtaining
+those which are in its reach.”
+
+Clarence looked inquiringly at Mordaunt, who, perceiving it, continued,
+“I see that I should explain myself further. I will do so by using the
+thoughts of a mind not the least beautiful and accomplished which this
+country has produced. ‘Of all which belongs to us,’ said Bolingbroke,
+‘the least valuable parts can alone fall under the will of others.
+Whatever is best is safest; lies out of the reach of human power; can
+neither be given nor taken away. Such is this great and beautiful work
+of Nature, the world. Such is the mind of man, which contemplates
+and admires the world whereof it makes the noblest part. These are
+inseparably ours, and as long as we remain in one we shall enjoy the
+other.’”
+
+“Beautiful, indeed!” exclaimed Clarence, with the enthusiasm of a young
+and pure heart, to which every loftier sentiment is always beautiful.
+
+“And true as beautiful!” said Mordaunt. “Nor is this all, for the mind
+can even dispense with that world ‘of which it forms a part’ if we can
+create within it a world still more inaccessible to chance. But (and I
+now return to and explain my former observation) the means by which we
+can effect this peculiar world can be rendered equally subservient to
+our advancement and prosperity in that which we share in common with
+our race; for the riches which by the aid of wisdom we heap up in the
+storehouses of the mind are, though not the only, the most customary
+coin by which external prosperity is bought. So that the philosophy
+which can alone give independence to ourselves becomes; under the name
+of honesty, the best policy in commerce with our kind.”
+
+In conversation of this nature, which the sincerity and lofty enthusiasm
+of Mordaunt rendered interesting to Clarence, despite the distaste
+to the serious so ordinary to youth, the hours passed on, till the
+increasing evening warned Linden to depart.
+
+“Adieu!” said he to Mordaunt. “I know not when we shall meet again,
+but if we ever do, I will make it my boast, whether in prosperity or
+misfortune, not to have forgotten the pleasure I have this day enjoyed!”
+
+Returning his guest’s farewell with a warmth unusual to his manner,
+Mordaunt followed him to the door and saw him depart.
+
+Fate ordained that they should pursue in very different paths their
+several destinies; nor did it afford them an opportunity of meeting
+again, till years and events had severely tried the virtue of one and
+materially altered the prospects of the other.
+
+The next morning Clarence Linden was on his road to London.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+     “Upon my word,” cries Jones, “thou art a very odd fellow,
+     and I like thy humour extremely.”--FIELDING.
+
+The rumbling and jolting vehicle which conveyed Clarence to the
+metropolis stopped at the door of a tavern in Holborn. Linden was
+ushered into a close coffee-room and presented with a bill of fare.
+While he was deliberating between the respective merits of mutton chops
+and beefsteaks, a man with a brown coat, brown breeches, and a brown
+wig, walked into the room; he cast a curious glance at Clarence and then
+turned to the waiter.
+
+“A pair of slippers!”
+
+“Yes, sir,” and the waiter disappeared.
+
+“I suppose,” said the brown gentleman to Clarence, “I suppose, sir, you
+are the gentleman just come to town?”
+
+“You are right, sir,” said Clarence.
+
+“Very well, very well indeed,” resumed the stranger, musingly. “I took
+the liberty of looking at your boxes in the passage; I knew a lady, sir,
+a relation of yours, I think.”
+
+“Sir!” exclaimed Linden, colouring violently.
+
+“At least I suppose, for her name was just the same as yours, only, at
+least, one letter difference between them: yours is Linden I see, sir;
+hers was Minden. Am I right in my conjecture that you are related to
+her?”
+
+“Sir,” answered Clarence, gravely, “notwithstanding the similarity of
+our names, we are not related.”
+
+“Very extraordinary,” replied the stranger.
+
+“Very,” repeated Linden.
+
+“I had the honour, sir,” said the brown gentleman, “to make Mrs. Minden
+many presents of value, and I should have been very happy to have
+obliged you in the same manner, had you been in any way connected with
+that worthy gentlewoman.”
+
+“You are very kind,” said Linden, “you are very kind; and since such
+were your intentions, I believe I must have been connected with
+Mrs. Minden. At all events, as you justly observe, there is only the
+difference of a letter between our names, a discrepancy too slight, I am
+sure, to alter your benevolent intentions.”
+
+Here the waiter returned with the slippers.
+
+The stranger slowly unbuttoned his gaiters. “Sir,” said he to Linden,
+“we will renew our conversation presently.”
+
+No sooner had the generous friend of Mrs. Minden deposited his feet in
+their easy tenements than he quitted the room. “Pray,” said Linden
+to the waiter, when he had ordered his simple repast, “who is that
+gentleman in brown?”
+
+“Mr. Brown,” replied the waiter.
+
+“And who or what is Mr. Brown?” asked our hero.
+
+Before the waiter could reply, Mr. Brown returned, with a large bandbox,
+carefully enveloped in a blue handkerchief. “You come from ----, sir?”
+ said Mr. Brown, quietly seating himself at the same table as Linden.
+
+“No, sir, I do not.”
+
+“From ----, then?”
+
+“No, sir,--from W----.”
+
+“W----?--ay--well. I knew a lady with a name very like W---- (the late
+Lady Waddilove) extremely well. I made her some valuable presents: her
+ladyship was very sensible of it.”
+
+“I don’t doubt it, sir,” replied Clarence; “such instances of general
+beneficence rarely occur!”
+
+“I have some magnificent relics of her ladyship in this box,” returned
+Mr. Brown.
+
+“Really! then she was no less generous than yourself, I presume?”
+
+“Yes, her ladyship was remarkably generous. About a week before she died
+(the late Lady Waddilove was quite sensible of her danger), she called
+me to her,--‘Brown,’ said she, ‘you are a good creature; I have had my
+most valuable things from you. I am not ungrateful: I will leave you--my
+maid! She is as clever as you are and as good.’ I took the hint, sir,
+and married. It was an excellent bargain. My wife is a charming woman;
+she entirely fitted up Mrs. Minden’s wardrobe and I furnished the house.
+Mrs. Minden was greatly indebted to us.”
+
+“Heaven help me!” thought Clarence, “the man is certainly mad.”
+
+The waiter entered with the dinner; and Mr. Brown, who seemed to have a
+delicate aversion to any conversation in the presence of the Ganymede
+of the Holborn tavern, immediately ceased his communications; meanwhile,
+Clarence took the opportunity to survey him more minutely than he had
+hitherto done.
+
+His new acquaintance was in age about forty-eight; in stature, rather
+under the middle height; and thin, dried, withered, yet muscular withal,
+like a man who, in stinting his stomach for the sake of economy, does
+not the less enjoy the power of undergoing any fatigue or exertion that
+an object of adequate importance may demand. We have said already that
+he was attired, like twilight, “in a suit of sober brown;” and there
+was a formality, a precision, and a cat-like sort of cleanliness in
+his garb, which savoured strongly of the respectable coxcombry of the
+counting-house. His face was lean, it is true, but not emaciated; and
+his complexion, sallow and adust, harmonized well with the colours of
+his clothing. An eye of the darkest hazel, sharp, shrewd, and flashing
+at times, especially at the mention of the euphonious name of Lady
+Waddilove,--a name frequently upon the lips of the inheritor of her
+abigail,--with a fire that might be called brilliant, was of that
+modest species which can seldom encounter the straightforward glance
+of another; on the contrary, it seemed restlessly uneasy in any settled
+place, and wandered from ceiling to floor, and corner to corner, with
+an inquisitive though apparently careless glance, as if seeking for
+something to admire or haply to appropriate; it also seemed to be the
+especial care of Mr. Brown to veil, as far as he was able, the vivacity
+of his looks beneath an expression of open and unheeding good-nature, an
+expression strangely enough contrasting with the closeness and sagacity
+which Nature had indelibly stamped upon features pointed, aquiline, and
+impressed with a strong mixture of the Judaical physiognomy. The manner
+and bearing of this gentleman partook of the same undecided character
+as his countenance: they seemed to be struggling between civility and
+importance; a real eagerness to make the acquaintance of the person
+he addressed, and an assumed recklessness of the advantages which that
+acquaintance could bestow;--it was like the behaviour of a man who is
+desirous of having the best possible motives imputed to him, but is
+fearful lest that desire should not be utterly fulfilled. At the first
+glance you would have pledged yourself for his respectability; at the
+second, you would have half suspected him to be a rogue; and, after you
+had been half an hour in his company, you would confess yourself in the
+obscurest doubt which was the better guess, the first or the last.
+
+“Waiter!” said Mr. Brown, looking enviously at the viands upon which
+Linden, having satisfied his curiosity, was now with all the appetite of
+youth regaling himself. “Waiter!”
+
+“Yes, sir!”
+
+“Bring me a sandwich--and--and, waiter, see that I have plenty
+of--plenty of--”
+
+“What, sir?”
+
+“Plenty of mustard, waiter.”
+
+“Mustard” (and here Mr. Brown addressed himself to Clarence) “is a very
+wonderful assistance to the digestion. By the by, sir, if you want any
+curiously fine mustard, I can procure you some pots quite capital,--a
+great favour, though,--they were smuggled from France, especially for
+the use of the late Lady Waddilove.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Linden, dryly; “I shall be very happy to accept
+anything you may wish to offer me.”
+
+Mr. Brown took a pocket-book from his pouch. “Six pots of mustard,
+sir,--shall I say six?”
+
+“As many as you please,” replied Clarence; and Mr. Brown wrote down “Six
+pots of French mustard.”
+
+“You are a very young gentleman, sir,” said Mr. Brown, “probably
+intended for some profession: I don’t mean to be impertinent, but if I
+can be of any assistance--”
+
+“You can, sir,” replied Linden, “and immediately--have the kindness to
+ring the bell.”
+
+Mr. Brown, with a grave smile, did as he was desired; the waiter
+re-entered, and, receiving a whispered order from Clarence, again
+disappeared.
+
+“What profession did you say, sir?” renewed Mr. Brown, artfully.
+
+“None!” replied Linden.
+
+“Oh, very well,--very well indeed. Then as an idle, independent
+gentleman, you will of course be a bit of a beau; want some shirts,
+possibly; fine cravats, too; gentlemen wear a particular pattern now;
+gloves, gold, or shall I say gilt chain, watch and seals, a ring or two,
+and a snuff-box?”
+
+“Sir, you are vastly obliging,” said Clarence, in undisguised surprise.
+
+“Not at all, I would do anything for a relation of Mrs. Minden.”
+
+The waiter re-entered; “Sir,” said he to Linden, “your room is quite
+ready.”
+
+“I am glad to hear it,” said Clarence, rising. “Mr. Brown, I have the
+honour of wishing you a good evening.”
+
+“Stay, sir--stay; you have not looked into these things belonging to the
+late Lady Waddilove.”
+
+“Another time,” said Clarence, hastily.
+
+“To-morrow, at ten o’clock,” muttered Mr. Brown.
+
+“I am exceedingly glad I have got rid of that fellow,” said Linden to
+himself, as he stretched his limbs in his easy-chair, and drank off
+the last glass of his pint of port. “If I have not already seen, I have
+already guessed, enough of the world, to know that you are to look to
+your pockets when a man offers you a present; they who ‘give,’ also
+‘take away.’ So here I am in London, with an order for 1000 pounds in my
+purse, the wisdom of Dr. Latinas in my head, and the health of eighteen
+in my veins; will it not be my own fault if I do not both enjoy and make
+myself--”
+
+And then, yielding to meditations of future success, partaking strongly
+of the inexperienced and sanguine temperament of the soliloquist,
+Clarence passed the hours till his pillow summoned him to dreams no less
+ardent and perhaps no less unreal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+     “Oh, how I long to be employed!”--Every Man in his Humour.
+
+Clarence was sitting the next morning over the very unsatisfactory
+breakfast which tea made out of broomsticks, and cream out of chalk
+(adulteration thrived even in 17--) afforded, when the waiter threw open
+the door and announced Mr. Brown.
+
+“Just in time, sir, you perceive,” said Mr. Brown; “I am punctuality
+itself: exactly a quarter of a minute to ten. I have brought you the
+pots of French mustard, and I have some very valuable articles which you
+must want, besides.”
+
+“Thank you, sir,” said Linden, not well knowing what to say; and Mr.
+Brown, untying a silk handkerchief, produced three shirts, two pots
+of pomatum, a tobacco canister with a German pipe, four pair of silk
+stockings, two gold seals, three rings, and a stuffed parrot!
+
+“Beautiful articles these, sir,” said Mr. Brown, with a snuffle “of
+inward sweetness long drawn out,” and expressive of great admiration of
+his offered treasures; “beautiful articles, sir, ar’n’t they?”
+
+“Very, the parrot in particular,” said Clarence.
+
+“Yes, sir,” returned Mr. Brown, “the parrot is indeed quite a jewel; it
+belonged to the late Lady Waddilove; I offer it to you with considerable
+regret, for--”
+
+“Oh!” interrupted Clarence, “pray do not rob yourself of such a jewel;
+it really is of no use to me.”
+
+“I know that, sir,--I know that,” replied Mr. Brown; “but it will be of
+use to your friends; it will be inestimable to any old aunt, sir, any
+maiden lady living at Hackney, any curious elderly gentleman fond of a
+knack-knack. I knew you would know some one to send it to as a present,
+even though you should not want it yourself.”
+
+“Bless me!” thought Linden, “was there ever such generosity? Not content
+with providing for my wants, he extends his liberality even to any
+possible relations I may possess!”
+
+Mr. Brown now re-tied “the beautiful articles” in his handkerchief.
+“Shall I leave them, sir?” said he.
+
+“Why, really,” said Clarence, “I thought yesterday that you were in
+jest; but you must be aware that I cannot accept presents from any
+gentleman so much,--so much a stranger to me as you are.”
+
+“No, sir, I am aware of that,” replied Mr. Brown; “and in order to
+remove the unpleasantness of such a feeling, sir, on your part,--merely
+in order to do that, I assure you with no other view, sir, in the
+world,--I have just noted down the articles on this piece of paper; but
+as you will perceive, at a price so low as still to make them actually
+presents in everything but the name. Oh, sir, I perfectly understand
+your delicacy, and would not for the world violate it.”
+
+So saying, Mr. Brown put a paper into Linden’s hands, the substance
+of which a very little more experience of the world would have enabled
+Clarence to foresee; it ran thus:--
+
+  CLARENCE LINDEN, ESQ., DR.
+                     TO Mr. MORRIS BROWN.
+                                l. s. d.
+  To Six Pots of French Mustard.........  1 4 0
+  To Three Superfine Holland Shirts, with Cambric Bosoms,
+   Complete................ 4 1 0
+  To Two Pots of Superior French Pomatum......  0 10 0
+  To a Tobacco Canister of enamelled Tin, with a finely
+   Executed Head of the Pretender; slight flaw in the same. 0 12 6
+  To a German Pipe, second hand, as good as new, belonging
+   to the late Lady Waddilove.......... 1 18 0
+  To Four Pair of Black Silk Hose, ditto, belonging to her
+   Ladyship’s Husband............. 2 8 0
+  To Two Superfine Embossed Gold Watch Seals, with a
+   Classical Motto and Device to each, namely, Mouse Trap,
+   and “Prenez Garde,” to one, and “Who the devil can this
+   be from?” [One would not have thought these ingenious
+   devices had been of so ancient a date as the year 17--.]
+   to the other............... 1 1 0
+  To a remarkably fine Antique Ring, having the head of a
+   Monkey................. 0 16 6
+  A ditto, with blue stones........... 0 12 6
+  A ditto, with green ditto........... 0 12 6
+  A Stuffed Green Parrot, a remarkable favourite of the late
+   Lady W................. 2 2 0
+                               --------
+   Sum Total...............  15 18 0
+   Deduction for Ready Money..........  0 13 6
+                               --------
+                               15 4 6
+   Mr. Brown’s Profits for Brokerage........ 1 10 0
+                               --------
+   Sum Total............... 16 14 6
+
+  Received of Clarence Linden, Esq., this  day of  17--.
+
+It would have been no unamusing study to watch the expression of
+Clarence’s face as it lengthened over each article until he had reached
+the final conclusion. He then carefully folded up the paper, restored it
+to Mr. Brown, with a low bow, and said, “Excuse me, sir, I will not take
+advantage of your generosity; keep your parrot and other treasures for
+some more worthy person. I cannot accept of what you are pleased to term
+your very valuable presents!”
+
+“Oh, very well, very well,” said Mr. Brown, pocketing the paper, and
+seeming perfectly unconcerned at the termination of his proposals;
+“perhaps I can serve you in some other way?”
+
+“In none, I thank you,” replied Linden.
+
+“Just consider, sir!--you will want lodgings; I can find them for you
+cheaper than you can yourself; or perhaps you would prefer going into a
+nice, quiet, genteel family where you can have both board and lodging,
+and be treated in every way as the pet child of the master?”
+
+A thought crossed Linden’s mind. He was going to stay in town some time;
+he was ignorant of its ways; he had neither friends nor relations, at
+least none whom he could visit and consult; moreover, hotels, he
+knew, were expensive; lodgings, though cheaper, might, if tolerably
+comfortable, greatly exceed the sum prudence would allow him to expend
+would not this plan proposed by Mr. Brown, of going into a “nice quiet
+genteel family,” he the most advisable one he could adopt? The generous
+benefactor of the late and ever-to-be-remembered Lady Waddilove
+perceived his advantage, and making the most of Clarence’s hesitation,
+continued,--
+
+“I know of a charming little abode, sir, situated in the suburbs
+of London, quite rus in urbe, as the scholars say; you can have a
+delightful little back parlour, looking out upon the garden, and all to
+yourself, I dare say.”
+
+“And pray, Mr. Brown,” interrupted Linden, “what price do you think
+would be demanded for such enviable accommodation? If you offer me them
+as ‘a present,’ I shall have nothing to say to them.”
+
+“Oh, sir,” answered Mr. Brown, “the price will be a trifle,--a mere
+trifle; but I will inquire, and let you know the exact sum in the course
+of the day: all they want is a respectable gentlemanlike lodger; and I
+am sure so near a relation of Mrs. Minden will upon my recommendation
+be received with avidity. Then you won’t have any of these valuable
+articles, sir? You’ll repent it, sir; take my word for it--hem!
+
+“Since,” replied Clarence, dryly, “your word appears of so much more
+value than your articles, pardon me, if I prefer taking the former
+instead of the latter.”
+
+Mr. Brown forced a smile,--“Well, sir, very well, very well indeed. You
+will not go out before two o’clock? and at that time I shall call upon
+you respecting the commission you have favoured me with.”
+
+“I will await you,” said Clarence; and he bowed Mr. Brown out of the
+room.
+
+“Now, really,” said Linden to himself, as he paced the narrow limits of
+his apartment, “I do not see what better plan I can pursue; but let me
+well consider what is my ultimate object. A high step in the world’s
+ladder! how is this to be obtained? First, by the regular method
+of professions; but what profession should I adopt? The Church is
+incompatible with my object, the army and navy with my means. Next come
+the irregular methods of adventure and enterprise, such as marriage with
+a fortune,”--here he paused and looked at the glass,--“the speculation
+of a political pamphlet, or an ode to the minister; attendance on some
+dying miser of my own name, without a relation in the world; or, in
+short, any other mode of making money that may decently offer itself.
+Now, situated as I am, without a friend in this great city, I might as
+well purchase my experience at as cheap a rate and in as brief a time
+as possible, nor do I see any plan of doing so more promising than that
+proposed by Mr. Brown.”
+
+These and such like reflections, joined to the inspiriting pages of the
+“Newgate Calendar” and “The Covent Garden Magazine,” two works which
+Clarence dragged from their concealment under a black tea-tray, afforded
+him ample occupation till the hour of two, punctual to which time Mr.
+Morris Brown returned.
+
+“Well, sir,” said Clarence, “what is your report?”
+
+The friend of the late Lady W. wiped his brow and gave three long sighs
+before he replied: “A long walk, sir--a very long walk I have had; but I
+have succeeded. No thanks, sir,--no thanks,--the lady, a most charming,
+delightful, amiable woman, will receive you with pleasure; you will have
+the use of a back parlour (as I said) all the morning, and a beautiful
+little bedroom entirely to yourself; think of that, sir. You will
+have an egg for breakfast, and you will dine with the family at three
+o’clock: quite fashionable hours you see, sir.”
+
+“And the terms?” said Linden, impatiently.
+
+“Why, sir,” replied Mr. Brown, “the lady was too genteel to talk to
+me about them; you had better walk with me to her house and see if you
+cannot yourself agree with her.”
+
+“I will,” said Clarence. “Will you wait here till I have dressed?”
+
+Mr. Brown bowed his assent.
+
+“I might as well,” thought Clarence, as he ascended to his bedroom,
+“inquire into the character of this gentleman to whose good offices I
+am so rashly intrusting myself.” He rang his bell; the chambermaid
+appeared, and was dismissed for the waiter. The character was soon
+asked, and soon given. For our reader’s sake we will somewhat enlarge
+upon it.
+
+Mr. Morris Brown originally came into the world with the simple
+appellation of Moses, a name which his father--honest man--had, as
+the Minories can still testify, honourably borne before him. Scarcely,
+however, had the little Moses attained the age of five, when his father,
+for causes best known to himself, became a Christian. Somehow or other
+there is a most potent connection between the purse and the conscience,
+and accordingly the blessings of Heaven descended in golden showers upon
+the proselyte. “I shall die worth a plum,” said Moses the elder (who had
+taken unto himself the Christian cognomen of Brown); “I shall die worth
+a plum,” repeated he, as he went one fine morning to speculate at the
+Exchange. A change of news, sharp and unexpected as a change of wind,
+lowered the stocks and blighted the plum. Mr. Brown was in the “Gazette”
+ that week, and his wife in weeds for him the next. He left behind him,
+besides the said wife, several debts and his son Moses. Beggared by the
+former, our widow took a small shop in Wardour Street to support
+the latter. Patient, but enterprising--cautious of risking pounds,
+indefatigable in raising pence--the little Moses inherited the
+propensities of his Hebrew ancestors; and though not so capable as
+his immediate progenitor of making a fortune, he was at least far less
+likely to lose one. In spite, however, of all the industry both of
+mother and son, the gains of the shop were but scanty; to increase
+them capital was required, and all Mr. Moses Brown’s capital lay in his
+brain. “It is a bad foundation,” said the mother, with a sigh. “Not at
+all!” said the son, and leaving the shop, he turned broker. Now a broker
+is a man who makes an income out of other people’s funds,--a gleaner of
+stray extravagances; and by doing the public the honour of living upon
+them may fairly be termed a little sort of state minister in his way.
+What with haunting sales, hawking china, selling the curiosities of one
+old lady and purchasing the same for another, Mr. Brown managed to enjoy
+a very comfortable existence. Great pains and small gains will at last
+invert their antithesis, and make little trouble and great profit; so
+that by the time Mr. Brown had attained his fortieth year, the petty
+shop had become a large warehouse; and, if the worthy Moses, now
+christianized into Morris, was not so sanguine as his father in the
+gathering of plums, he had been at least as fortunate in the collecting
+of windfalls. To say truth, the abigail of the defunct Lady Waddilove
+had been no unprofitable helpmate to our broker. As ingenious as
+benevolent, she was the owner of certain rooms of great resort in the
+neighbourhood of St. James’s,--rooms where caps and appointments were
+made better than anywhere else, and where credit was given and character
+lost upon terms equally advantageous to the accommodating Mrs. Brown.
+
+Meanwhile her husband, continuing through liking what he had begun
+through necessity, slackened not his industry in augmenting his fortune;
+on the contrary, small profits were but a keener incentive to large
+ones,--as the glutton only sharpened by luncheon his appetite for
+dinner. Still was Mr. Brown the very Alcibiades of brokers, the
+universal genius, suiting every man to his humour. Business of whatever
+description, from the purchase of a borough to that of a brooch, was
+alike the object of Mr. Brown’s most zealous pursuit: taverns, where
+country cousins put up; rustic habitations, where ancient maidens
+resided; auction or barter; city or hamlet,--all were the same to that
+enterprising spirit, which made out of every acquaintance--a commission!
+Sagacious and acute, Mr. Brown perceived the value of eccentricity in
+covering design, and found by experience that whatever can be laughed at
+as odd will be gravely considered as harmless. Several of the broker’s
+peculiarities were, therefore, more artificial than natural; and
+many were the sly bargains which he smuggled into effect under the
+comfortable cloak of singularity. No wonder, then, that the crafty
+Morris grew gradually in repute as a person of infinite utility and
+excellent qualifications; or that the penetrating friends of his
+deceased sire bowed to the thriving itinerant, with a respect which they
+denied to many in loftier professions and more general esteem.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+     Trust me you have an exceeding fine lodging here,--very neat
+     and private.--BEN JONSON.
+
+It was a tolerably long walk to the abode of which the worthy broker
+spoke in such high terms of commendation. At length, at the suburbs
+towards Paddington, Mr. Brown stopped at a very small house; it stood
+rather retired from its surrounding neighbours, which were of a loftier
+and more pretending aspect than itself, and, in its awkward shape
+and pitiful bashfulness, looked exceedingly like a school-boy finding
+himself for the first time in a grown up party, and shrinking with all
+possible expedition into the obscurest corner he can discover. Passing
+through a sort of garden, in which a spot of grass lay in the embraces
+of a stripe of gravel, Mr. Brown knocked upon a very bright knocker at a
+very new door. The latter was opened, and a foot-boy appeared.
+
+“Is Mrs. Copperas within?” asked the broker.
+
+“Yees, sir,” said the boy.
+
+“Show this gentleman and myself up stairs,” resumed Brown.
+
+“Yees,” reiterated the lackey.
+
+Up a singularly narrow staircase, into a singularly diminutive
+drawing-room, Clarence and his guide were ushered. There, seated on a
+little chair by a little work-table, with one foot on a little stool and
+one hand on a little book, was a little--very little lady.
+
+“This is the young gentleman,” said Mr. Brown; and Clarence bowed low,
+in token of the introduction.
+
+The lady returned the salutation with an affected bend, and said, in
+a mincing and grotesquely subdued tone, “You are desirous, sir, of
+entering into the bosom of my family. We possess accommodations of a
+most elegant description; accustomed to the genteelest circles, enjoying
+the pure breezes of the Highgate hills, and presenting to any guest we
+may receive the attractions of a home rather than of a lodging, you will
+find our retreat no less eligible than unique. You are, I presume, sir,
+in some profession, some city avocation--or--or trade?”
+
+“I have the misfortune,” said he, smiling, “to belong to no profession.”
+
+The lady looked hard at the speaker, and then at the broker. With
+certain people to belong to no profession is to be of no respectability.
+
+“The most unexceptionable references will be given--and required,”
+ resumed Mrs. Copperas.
+
+“Certainly,” said Mr. Brown, “certainly, the gentleman is a relation of
+Mrs. Minden, a very old customer of mine.”
+
+“In that case,” said Mrs. Copperas, “the affair is settled;” and,
+rising, she rang the bell, and ordered the foot-boy, whom she addressed
+by the grandiloquent name of “De Warens” to show the gentleman the
+apartments. While Clarence was occupied in surveying the luxuries of
+a box at the top of the house, called a bed-chamber, which seemed just
+large and just hot enough for a chrysalis, and a corresponding box
+below, termed the back parlour, which would certainly not have been
+large enough for the said chrysalis when turned into a butterfly,
+Mr. Morris Brown, after duly, expatiating on the merits of Clarence,
+proceeded to speak of the terms; these were soon settled, for Clarence
+was yielding and the lady not above three times as extortionate as she
+ought to have been.
+
+Before Linden left the house, the bargain was concluded. That night
+his trunks were removed to his new abode, and having with incredible
+difficulty been squeezed into the bedroom, Clarence surveyed them
+with the same astonishment with which the virtuoso beheld the flies in
+amber,--
+
+  “Not that the things were either rich or rare,
+   He wondered how the devil they got there!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+  Such scenes had tempered with a pensive grace
+  The maiden lustre of that faultless face;
+  Had hung a sad and dreamlike spell upon
+  The gliding music of her silver tone,
+  And shaded the soft soul which loved to lie
+  In the deep pathos of that volumed eye.--O’Neill; or, The Rebel.
+
+     The love thus kindled between them was of no common or
+     calculating nature: it was vigorous and delicious, and at
+     times so suddenly intense as to appear to their young hearts
+     for a moment or so with almost an awful character.--
+     Inesilla.
+
+The reader will figure to himself a small chamber, in a remote wing of
+a large and noble mansion. The walls were covered with sketches whose
+extreme delicacy of outline and colouring betrayed the sex of the
+artist; a few shelves filled with books supported vases of flowers. A
+harp stood neglected at the farther end of the room, and just above
+hung the slender prison of one of those golden wanderers from the Canary
+Isles which bear to our colder land some of the gentlest music of their
+skies and zephyrs. The window, reaching to the ground, was open,
+and looked, through the clusters of jessamine and honeysuckle which
+surrounded the low veranda, beyond upon thick and frequent copses of
+blossoming shrubs, redolent of spring and sparkling in the sunny tears
+of a May shower which had only just wept itself away. Embosomed in these
+little groves lay plots of flowers, girdled with turf as green as ever
+wooed the nightly dances of the fairies; and afar off, through one
+artful opening, the eye caught the glittering wanderings of water, on
+whose light and smiles the universal happiness of the young year seemed
+reflected.
+
+But in that chamber, heedless of all around, and cold to the joy with
+which everything else, equally youthful, beautiful, and innocent, seemed
+breathing and inspired, sat a very young and lovely female. Her cheek
+leaned upon her hand, and large tears flowed fast and burningly over the
+small and delicate fingers. The comb that had confined her tresses lay
+at her feet, and the high dress which concealed her swelling breast had
+been loosened, to give vent to the suffocating and indignant throbbings
+which had rebelled against its cincture; all appeared to announce that
+bitterness of grief when the mind, as it were, wreaks its scorn upon
+the body in its contempt for external seemings, and to proclaim that the
+present more subdued and softened sorrow had only succeeded to a burst
+far less quiet and uncontrolled. Woe to those who eat the bread of
+dependence their tears are wrung from the inmost sources of the heart.
+
+Isabel St. Leger was the only child of a captain in the army who died
+in her infancy; her mother had survived him but a few months; and to the
+reluctant care and cold affections of a distant and wealthy relation
+of the same name the warm-hearted and penniless orphan was consigned.
+Major-General Cornelius St. Leger, whose riches had been purchased in
+India at the price of his constitution, was of a temper as hot as his
+curries, and he wreaked it the more unsparingly on his ward, because the
+superior ill-temper of his maiden sister had prevented his giving
+vent to it upon her. That sister, Miss Diana St. Leger, was a meagre
+gentlewoman of about six feet high, with a loud voice and commanding
+aspect. Long in awe of her brother, she rejoiced at heart to find some
+one whom she had such right and reason to make in awe of herself; and
+from the age of four to that of seventeen Isabel suffered every insult
+and every degradation which could be inflicted upon her by the tyranny
+of her two protectors. Her spirit, however, was far from being broken
+by the rude shocks it received; on the contrary, her mind, gentleness
+itself to the kind, rose indignantly against the unjust. It was true
+that the sense of wrong did not break forth audibly; for, though
+susceptible, Isabel was meek, and her pride was concealed by the outward
+softness and feminacy of her temper: but she stole away from those who
+had wounded her heart or trampled upon its feelings, and nourished with
+secret but passionate tears the memory of the harshness or injustice she
+had endured. Yet she was not vindictive: her resentment was a noble
+not a debasing feeling; once, when she was yet a child, Miss Diana was
+attacked with a fever of the most malignant and infectious kind; her
+brother loved himself far too well to risk his safety by attending her;
+the servants were too happy to wreak their hatred under the pretence
+of obeying their fears; they consequently followed the example of their
+master; and Miss Diana St. Leger might have gone down to her ancestors
+“unwept, unhonoured, and unsung,” if Isabel had not volunteered and
+enforced her attendance. Hour after hour her fairy form flitted around
+the sick-chamber; or sat mute and breathless by the feverish bed; she
+had neither fear for contagion nor bitterness for past oppression;
+everything vanished beneath the one hope of serving, the one
+gratification of feeling herself, in the wide waste of creation, not
+utterly without use, as she had been hitherto without friends.
+
+Miss St. Leger recovered. “For your recovery, in the first place,” said
+the doctor, “you will thank Heaven; in the second, you will thank your
+young relation;” and for several days the convalescent did overwhelm the
+happy Isabel with her praises and caresses. But this change did not last
+long: the chaste Diana had been too spoiled by the prosperity of many
+years for the sickness of a single month to effect much good in her
+disposition. Her old habits were soon resumed; and though it is probable
+that her heart was in reality softened towards the poor Isabel, that
+softening by no means extended to her temper. In truth, the brother and
+sister were not without affection for one so beautiful and good, but
+they had been torturing slaves all their lives, and their affection was,
+and could be, but that of a taskmaster or a planter.
+
+But Isabel was the only relation who ever appeared within their walls;
+and among the guests with whom the luxurious mansion was crowded, she
+passed no less for the heiress than the dependant; to her, therefore,
+was offered the homage of many lips and hearts, and if her pride was
+perpetually galled and her feelings insulted in private, her vanity (had
+that equalled her pride and her feelings in its susceptibility) would
+in no slight measure have recompensed her in public. Unhappily, however,
+her vanity was the least prominent quality she possessed; and the
+compliments of mercenary adulation were not more rejected by her heart
+than despised by her understanding.
+
+Yet did she bear within her a deep fund of buried tenderness, and a
+mine of girlish and enthusiastic romance,--dangerous gifts to one so
+situated, which, while they gave to her secret moments of solitude a
+powerful but vague attraction, probably only prepared for her future
+years the snare which might betray them into error or the delusion which
+would colour them with regret.
+
+Among those whom the ostentatious hospitality of General St. Leger
+attracted to his house was one of very different character and
+pretensions to the rest. Formed to be unpopular with the generality of
+men, the very qualities that made him so were those which principally
+fascinate the higher description of women of ancient birth, which
+rendered still more displeasing the pride and coldness of his mien; of
+talents peculiarly framed to attract interest as well as esteem; of
+a deep and somewhat morbid melancholy, which, while it turned from
+ordinary ties, inclined yearningly towards passionate affections; of
+a temper where romance was only concealed from the many to become more
+seductive to the few; unsocial, but benevolent; disliked, but respected;
+of the austerest demeanour, but of passions the most fervid, though
+the most carefully concealed,--this man united within himself all that
+repels the common mass of his species, and all that irresistibly wins
+and fascinates the rare and romantic few. To these qualities were added
+a carriage and bearing of that high and commanding order which men
+mistake for arrogance and pretension, and women overrate in proportion
+to its contrast to their own. Something of mystery there was in the
+commencement of the deep and eventful love which took place between this
+person and Isabel, which I have never been able to learn whatever it
+was, it seemed to expedite and heighten the ordinary progress of love;
+and when in the dim twilight, beneath the first melancholy smile of
+the earliest star, their hearts opened audibly to each other, that
+confession had been made silently long since and registered in the
+inmost recesses of the soul.
+
+But their passion, which began in prosperity, was soon darkened. Whether
+he took offence at the haughtiness of Isabel’s lover, or whether
+he desired to retain about him an object which he could torment and
+tyrannize over, no sooner did the General discover the attachment of his
+young relation than he peremptorily forbade its indulgence, and assumed
+so insolent and overbearing an air towards the lover that the latter
+felt he could no longer repeat his visits to or even continue his
+acquaintance with the nabob.
+
+To add to these adverse circumstances, a relation of the lover, from
+whom his expectations had been large, was so enraged, not only at the
+insult his cousin had received, but at the very idea of his forming an
+alliance with one in so dependent a situation and connected with
+such new blood as Isabel St. Leger, that, with that arrogance which
+relations, however distant, think themselves authorized to assume, he
+enjoined his cousin, upon pain of forfeiture of favour and fortune, to
+renounce all idea of so disparaging an alliance. The one thus addressed
+was not of a temper patiently to submit to such threats: he answered
+them with disdain; and the breach, so dangerous to his pecuniary
+interest, was already begun.
+
+So far had the history of our lover proceeded at the time in which we
+have introduced Isabel to the reader, and described to him the chamber
+to which, in all her troubles and humiliations, she was accustomed to
+fly, as to a sad but still unviolated sanctuary of retreat.
+
+The quiet of this asylum was first broken by a slight rustling among
+the leaves; but Isabel’s back was turned towards the window, and in
+the engrossment of her feelings she heard it not. The thick copse that
+darkened the left side of the veranda was pierced, and a man passed
+within the covered space, and stood still and silent before the window,
+intently gazing upon the figure, which (though the face was turned
+from him) betrayed in its proportions that beauty which in his eyes had
+neither an equal nor a fault.
+
+The figure of the stranger, though not very tall, was above the ordinary
+height, and gracefully rather than robustly formed. He was dressed in
+the darkest colours and the simplest fashion, which rendered yet more
+striking the nobleness of his mien, as well as the clear and almost
+delicate paleness of his complexion; his features were finely and
+accurately formed; and had not ill health, long travel, or severe
+thought deepened too much the lines of the countenance, and sharpened
+its contour, the classic perfection of those features would have
+rendered him undeniably and even eminently handsome. As it was, the
+paleness and the somewhat worn character of his face, joined to an
+expression at first glance rather haughty and repellent, made him lose
+in physical what he certainly gained in intellectual beauty. His eyes
+were large, deep, and melancholy, and had the hat which now hung over
+his brow been removed, it would have displayed a forehead of remarkable
+boldness and power.
+
+Altogether, the face was cast in a rare and intellectual mould, and,
+if wanting in those more luxuriant attractions common to the age of the
+stranger, who could scarcely have attained his twenty-sixth year, it
+betokened, at least, that predominance of mind over body which in some
+eyes is the most requisite characteristic of masculine beauty.
+
+With a soft and noiseless step, the stranger moved from his station
+without the window, and, entering the room, stole towards the spot on
+which Isabel was sitting. He leaned over her chair, and his eye rested
+upon his own picture, and a letter in his own writing, over which the
+tears of the young orphan flowed fast.
+
+A moment more of agitated happiness for one, of unconscious and
+continued sadness for the other,--
+
+  “‘T is past, her lover’s at her feet.”
+
+And what indeed “was to them the world beside, with all its changes
+of time and tide”? Joy, hope, all blissful and bright sensations, lay
+mingled, like meeting waters, in one sunny stream of heartfelt and
+unfathomable enjoyment; but this passed away, and the remembrance of
+bitterness and evil succeeded.
+
+“Oh, Algernon!” said Isabel, in a low voice, “is this your promise?”
+
+“Believe me,” said Mordaunt, for it was indeed he, “I have struggled
+long with my feelings, but in vain; and for both our sakes, I rejoice at
+the conquest they obtained. I listened only to a deceitful delusion when
+I imagined I was obeying the dictates of reason. Ah, dearest, why should
+we part for the sake of dubious and distant evils, when the misery of
+absence is the most certain, the most unceasing evil we can endure?”
+
+“For your sake, and therefore for mine!” interrupted Isabel, struggling
+with her tears. “I am a beggar and an outcast. You must not link your
+fate with mine. I could bear, Heaven knows how willingly, poverty and
+all its evils for you and with you; but I cannot bring them upon you.”
+
+“Nor will you,” said Mordaunt, passionately, as he covered the hand he
+held with his burning kisses. “Have I not enough for both of us? It is
+my love, not poverty, that I beseech you to share.”
+
+“No! Algernon, you cannot deceive me; your own estate will be torn from
+you by the law: if you marry me, your cousin will not assist you; I, you
+know too well, can command nothing; and I shall see you, for whom in
+my fond and bright dreams I have presaged everything great and exalted,
+buried in an obscurity from which your talents can never rise, and
+suffering the pangs of poverty and dependence and humiliation like
+my own; and--and--I--should be the wretch who caused you all. Never,
+Algernon, never!--I love you too--too well!”
+
+But the effort which wrung forth the determination of the tone in which
+these words were uttered was too violent to endure; and, as the full
+desolation of her despair crowded fast and dark upon the orphan’s mind,
+she sank back upon her chair in very sickness of soul, nor heeded, in
+her unconscious misery, that her hand was yet clasped by her lover and
+that her head drooped upon his bosom.
+
+“Isabel,” he said, in a low, sweet tone, which to her ear seemed the
+concentration of all earthly music,--“Isabel, look up,--my own, my
+beloved,--look up and hear me. Perhaps you say truly when you tell me
+that the possessions of my house shall melt away from me, and that my
+relation will not offer to me the precarious bounty which, even if he
+did offer, I would reject; but, dearest, are there not a thousand
+paths open to me,--the law, the state, the army?--you are silent,
+Isabel,--speak!”
+
+Isabel did not reply, but the soft eyes which rested upon his told, in
+their despondency, how little her reason was satisfied by the arguments
+he urged.
+
+“Besides,” he continued, “we know not yet whether the law may not decide
+in my favour: at all events years may pass before the judgment is given;
+those years make the prime and verdure of our lives; let us not waste
+them in mourning over blighted hopes and severed hearts; let us snatch
+what happiness is yet in our power, nor anticipate, while the heavens
+are still bright above us, the burden of the thunder or the cloud.”
+
+Isabel was one of the least selfish and most devoted of human beings,
+yet she must be forgiven if at that moment her resolution faltered, and
+the overpowering thought of being in reality his forever flashed upon
+her mind. It passed from her the moment it was formed; and, rising from
+a situation in which the touch of that dear hand and the breath of
+those wooing lips endangered the virtue and weakened the strength of her
+resolves, she withdrew herself from his grasp, and while she averted her
+eyes, which dared not encounter his, she said in a low but firm voice,--
+
+“It is in vain, Algernon; it is in vain. I can be to you nothing but a
+blight or burden, nothing but a source of privation and anguish. Think
+you that I will be this?--no, I will not darken your fair hopes and
+impede your reasonable ambition. Go (and here her voice faltered for a
+moment, but soon recovered its tone), go, Algernon, dear Algernon; and
+if my foolish heart will not ask you to think of me no more, I can at
+least implore you to think of me only as one who would die rather than
+cost you a moment of that poverty and debasement, the bitterness of
+which she has felt herself, and who for that very reason tears herself
+away from you forever.”
+
+“Stay, Isabel, stay!” cried Mordaunt, as he caught hold of her robe,
+“give me but one word more, and you shall leave me. Say that if I can
+create for myself a new source of independence; if I can carve out a
+road where the ambition you erroneously impute to me can be gratified,
+as well as the more moderate wishes our station has made natural to us
+to form,--say, that if I do this, I may permit myself to hope,--say,
+that when I have done it, I may claim you as my own!”
+
+Isabel paused, and turned once more her face towards his own. Her lips
+moved, and though the words died within her heart, yet Mordaunt read
+well their import in the blushing cheek and the heaving bosom, and the
+lips which one ray of hope and comfort was sufficient to kindle into
+smiles. He gazed, and all obstacles, all difficulties, disappeared; the
+gulf of time seemed passed, and he felt as if already he had earned and
+won his reward.
+
+He approached her yet nearer; one kiss on those lips, one pressure
+of that thrilling hand, one long, last embrace of that shrinking and
+trembling form,--and then, as the door closed upon his view, he felt
+that the sunshine of Nature had passed away, and that in the midst of
+the laughing and peopled earth he stood in darkness and alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+ He who would know mankind must be at home with all men.
+                     STEPHEN MONTAGUE.
+
+We left Clarence safely deposited in his little lodgings. Whether
+from the heat of his apartment or the restlessness a migration of beds
+produces in certain constitutions, his slumbers on the first night of
+his arrival were disturbed and brief. He rose early and descended to the
+parlour; Mr. de Warens, the nobly appellatived foot-boy, was laying
+the breakfast-cloth. From three painted shelves which constituted the
+library of “Copperas Bower,” as its owners gracefully called their
+habitation, Clarence took down a book very prettily bound; it was “Poems
+by a Nobleman.” No sooner had he read two pages than he did exactly what
+the reader would have done, and restored the volume respectfully to its
+place. He then drew his chair towards the window, and wistfully eyed
+sundry ancient nursery maids, who were leading their infant charges to
+the “fresh fields and pastures new” of what is now the Regent’s Park.
+
+In about an hour Mrs. Copperas descended, and mutual compliments were
+exchanged; to her succeeded Mr. Copperas, who was well scolded for his
+laziness: and to them, Master Adolphus Copperas, who was also chidingly
+termed a naughty darling for the same offence. Now then Mrs. Copperas
+prepared the tea, which she did in the approved method adopted by all
+ladies to whom economy is dearer than renown, namely, the least possible
+quantity of the soi-disant Chinese plant was first sprinkled by the
+least possible quantity of hot water; after this mixture had become as
+black and as bitter as it could possibly be without any adjunct from the
+apothecary’s skill, it was suddenly drenched with a copious diffusion,
+and as suddenly poured forth--weak, washy, and abominable,--into four
+cups, severally appertaining unto the four partakers of the matutinal
+nectar.
+
+Then the conversation began to flow. Mrs. Copperas was a fine lady, and
+a sentimentalist,--very observant of the little niceties of phrase and
+manner. Mr. Copperas was a stock-jobber and a wit,--loved a good hit
+in each capacity; was very round, very short, and very much like a John
+Dory; and saw in the features and mind of the little Copperas the exact
+representative of himself.
+
+“Adolphus, my love,” said Mrs. Copperas, “mind what I told you, and sit
+upright. Mr. Linden, will you allow me to cut you a leetle piece of this
+roll?”
+
+“Thank you,” said Clarence, “I will trouble you rather for the whole of
+it.”
+
+Conceive Mrs. Copperas’s dismay! From that moment she saw herself eaten
+out of house and home; besides, as she afterwards observed to her friend
+Miss Barbara York, the “vulgarity of such an amazing appetite!”
+
+“Any commands in the city, Mr. Linden?” asked the husband; “a coach will
+pass by our door in a few minutes,--must be on ‘Change in half an hour.
+Come, my love, another cup of tea; make haste; I have scarcely a
+moment to take my fare for the inside, before coachee takes his for the
+outside. Ha! ha! ha! Mr. Linden.”
+
+“Lord, Mr. Copperas,” said his helpmate, “how can you be so silly?
+setting such an example to your son, too; never mind him, Adolphus, my
+love; fie, child! a’n’t you ashamed of yourself? never put the spoon
+in your cup till you have done tea: I must really send you to school to
+learn manners. We have a very pretty little collection of books
+here, Mr. Linden, if you would like to read an hour or two after
+breakfast,--child, take your hands out of your pockets,--all the best
+English classics I believe,--‘Telemachus,’ and Young’s ‘Night Thoughts,’
+and ‘Joseph Andrews,’ and the ‘Spectator,’ and Pope’s Iliad, and
+Creech’s Lucretius; but you will look over them yourself! This is
+Liberty Hall, as well as Copperas Bower, Mr. Linden!”
+
+“Well, my love,” said the stock-jobber, “I believe I must be off. Here
+Tom,” Tom (Mr. de Warens had just entered the room with some more hot
+water, to weaken still further “the poor remains of what was once”--the
+tea!), “Tom, just run out and stop the coach; it will be by in five
+minutes.”
+
+“Have not I prayed and besought you, many and many a time, Mr.
+Copperas,” said the lady, rebukingly, “not to call De Warens by his
+Christian name? Don’t you know that all people in genteel life, who only
+keep one servant, invariably call him by his surname, as if he were the
+butler, you know?”
+
+“Now, that is too good, my love,” said Copperas. “I will call poor Tom
+by any surname you please, but I really can’t pass him off for a butler!
+Ha--ha--ha--you must excuse me there, my love!”
+
+“And pray, why not, Mr. Copperas? I have known many a butler bungle
+more at a cork than he does; and pray tell me who did you ever see wait
+better at dinner?”
+
+“He wait at dinner, my love! it is not he who waits.”
+
+“Who then, Mr. Copperas?”
+
+“Why we, my love; it’s we who wait for dinner; but that’s the cook’s
+fault, not his.”
+
+“Pshaw! Mr. Copperas; Adolphus, my love, sit upright, darling.”
+
+Here De Warens cried from the bottom of the stairs,--“Measter, the coach
+be coming up.”
+
+“There won’t be room for it to turn then,” said the facetious Mr.
+Copperas, looking round the apartment as if he took the words literally.
+
+“What coach is it, boy?”
+
+Now that was not the age in which coaches scoured the city every half
+hour, and Mr. Copperas knew the name of the coach as well as he knew his
+own.
+
+“It be the Swallow coach, sir.”
+
+“Oh, very well: then since I have swallowed in the roll, I will now roll
+in the Swallow--ha--ha--ha! Good-by, Mr. Linden.”
+
+No sooner had the witty stock-jobber left the room than Mrs. Copperas
+seemed to expand into a new existence. “My husband, sir,” said she,
+apologetically, “is so odd, but he’s an excellent sterling character;
+and that, you know, Mr. Linden, tells more in the bosom of a family than
+all the shining qualities which captivate the imagination. I am sure,
+Mr. Linden, that the moralist is right in admonishing us to prefer the
+gold to the tinsel. I have now been married some years, and every year
+seems happier than the last; but then, Mr. Linden, it is such a pleasure
+to contemplate the growing graces of the sweet pledge of our mutual
+love.--Adolphus, my dear, keep your feet still, and take your hands out
+of your pockets!”
+
+A short pause ensued.
+
+“We see a great deal of company,” said Mrs. Copperas, pompously, “and of
+the very best description. Sometimes we are favoured by the society
+of the great Mr. Talbot, a gentleman of immense fortune and quite the
+courtier: he is, it is true, a little eccentric in his dress: but then
+he was a celebrated beau in his young days. He is our next neighbour;
+you can see his house out of the window, just across the garden--there!
+We have also, sometimes, our humble board graced by a very elegant
+friend of mine, Miss Barbara York, a lady of very high connections, her
+first cousin was a lord mayor.--Adolphus, my dear, what are you about?
+Well, Mr. Linden, you will find your retreat quite undisturbed; I
+must go about the household affairs; not that I do anything more
+than superintend, you know, sir; but I think no lady should be above
+consulting her husband’s interests; that’s what I call true old English
+conjugal affection. Come, Adolphus, my dear.”
+
+And Clarence was now alone. “I fear,” thought he, “that I shall get on
+very indifferently with these people. But it will not do for me to be
+misanthropical, and (as Dr. Latinas was wont to say) the great merit of
+philosophy, when we cannot command circumstances, is to reconcile us to
+them.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+ A retired beau is one of the most instructive spectacles in the world.
+           STEPHEN MONTAGUE.
+
+It was quite true that Mrs. Copperas saw a great deal of company, for
+at a certain charge, upon certain days, any individual might have the
+honour of sharing her family repast; and many, of various callings,
+though chiefly in commercial life, met at her miscellaneous board.
+Clarence must, indeed, have been difficult to please, or obtuse
+of observation, if, in the variety of her guests, he had not found
+something either to interest or amuse him. Heavens! what a motley
+group were accustomed, twice in the week, to assemble there! the little
+dining-parlour seemed a human oven; and it must be owned that Clarence
+was no slight magnet of attraction to the female part of the guests.
+Mrs. Copperas’s bosom friend in especial, the accomplished Miss Barbara
+York, darted the most tender glances on the handsome young stranger;
+but whether or not a nose remarkably prominent and long prevented the
+glances from taking full effect, it is certain that Clarence seldom
+repaid them with that affectionate ardour which Miss Barbara York had
+ventured to anticipate. The only persons indeed for whom he felt any
+sympathetic attraction were of the same sex as himself. The one was
+Mr. Talbot, the old gentleman whom Mrs. Copperas had described as the
+perfect courtier; the other, a young artist of the name of Warner.
+Talbot, to Clarence’s great astonishment (for Mrs. Copperas’s eulogy had
+prepared him for something eminently displeasing) was a man of birth,
+fortune, and manners peculiarly graceful and attractive. It is true,
+however, that, despite of his vicinity, and Mrs. Copperas’s urgent
+solicitations, he very seldom honoured her with his company, and he
+always cautiously sent over his servant in the morning to inquire the
+names and number of her expected guests; nor was he ever known to
+share the plenteous board of the stock-jobber’s lady whenever any
+other partaker of its dainties save Clarence and the young artist were
+present. The latter, the old gentleman really liked; and as for one
+truly well born and well bred there is no vulgarity except in the mind,
+the slender means, obscure birth, and struggling profession of Warner
+were circumstances which, as they increased the merit of a gentle manner
+and a fine mind, spoke rather in his favour than the reverse. Mr. Talbot
+was greatly struck by Clarence Linden’s conversation and appearance;
+and indeed there was in Talbot’s tastes so strong a bias to aristocratic
+externals that Clarence’s air alone would have been sufficient to win
+the good graces of a man who had, perhaps, more than most courtiers of
+his time, cultivated the arts of manner and the secrets of address.
+
+“You will call upon me soon?” said he to Clarence, when, after dining
+one day with the Copperases and their inmate, he rose to return home.
+And Clarence, delighted with the urbanity and liveliness of his new
+acquaintance, readily promised that he would.
+
+Accordingly the next day Clarence called upon Mr. Talbot. The house, as
+Mrs. Copperas had before said, adjoined her own, and was only separated
+from it by a garden. It was a dull mansion of brick, which had disdained
+the frippery of paint and whitewashing, and had indeed been built
+many years previously to the erection of the modern habitations which
+surrounded it. It was, therefore, as a consequence of this priority
+of birth, more sombre than the rest, and had a peculiarly forlorn and
+solitary look. As Clarence approached the door, he was struck with the
+size of the house; it was of very considerable extent, and in the more
+favourable situations of London, would have passed for a very desirable
+and spacious tenement. An old man, whose accurate precision of dress
+bespoke the tastes of the master, opened the door, and after ushering
+Clarence through two long, and, to his surprise, almost splendidly
+furnished rooms, led him into a third, where, seated at a small
+writing-table, he found Mr. Talbot. That person, one whom Clarence then
+little thought would hereafter exercise no small influence over his
+fate, was of a figure and countenance well worthy the notice of a
+description.
+
+His own hair, quite white, was carefully and artificially curled, and
+gave a Grecian cast to features whose original delicacy, and exact
+though small proportions, not even age could destroy. His eyes were
+large, black, and sparkled with almost youthful vivacity; and his mouth,
+which was the best feature he possessed, developed teeth white and
+even as rows of ivory. Though small and somewhat too slender in the
+proportions of his figure, nothing could exceed the ease and the grace
+of his motions and air; and his dress, though singularly rich in
+its materials, eccentric in its fashion, and from its evident study,
+unseemly to his years, served nevertheless to render rather venerable
+than ridiculous a mien which could almost have carried off any
+absurdity, and which the fashion of the garb peculiarly became. The tout
+ensemble was certainly that of a man who was still vain of his exterior,
+and conscious of its effect; and it was as certainly impossible to
+converse with Mr. Talbot for five minutes without merging every less
+respectful impression in the magical fascination of his manner.
+
+“I thank you, Mr. Linden,” said Talbot, rising, “for your accepting so
+readily an old man’s invitation. If I have felt pleasure in discovering
+that we were to be neighbours, you may judge what that pleasure is
+to-day at finding you my visitor.”
+
+Clarence, who, to do him justice, was always ready at returning a fine
+speech, replied in a similar strain, and the conversation flowed on
+agreeably enough. There was more than a moderate collection of books
+in the room, and this circumstance led Clarence to allude to literary
+subjects; these Mr. Talbot took up with avidity, and touched with a
+light but graceful criticism upon many of the then modern and some of
+the older writers. He seemed delighted to find himself understood and
+appreciated by Clarence, and every moment of Linden’s visit served
+to ripen their acquaintance into intimacy. At length they talked upon
+Copperas Bower and its inmates.
+
+“You will find your host and hostess,” said the gentleman, “certainly of
+a different order from the persons with whom it is easy to see you
+have associated; but, at your happy age, a year or two may be very well
+thrown away upon observing the manners and customs of those whom, in
+later life, you may often be called upon to conciliate or perhaps to
+control. That man will never be a perfect gentleman who lives only with
+gentlemen. To be a man of the world, we must view that world in every
+grade and in every perspective. In short, the most practical art of
+wisdom is that which extracts from things the very quality they least
+appear to possess; and the actor in the world, like the actor on the
+stage, should find ‘a basket-hilted sword very convenient to carry milk
+in.’ [See the witty inventory of a player’s goods in the “Tatler.”] As
+for me, I have survived my relations and friends. I cannot keep late
+hours, nor adhere to the unhealthy customs of good society; nor do
+I think that, to a man of my age and habits, any remuneration would
+adequately repay the sacrifice of health or comfort. I am, therefore,
+well content to sink into a hermitage in an obscure corner of this great
+town, and only occasionally to revive my ‘past remembrances of higher
+state,’ by admitting a few old acquaintances to drink my bachelor’s tea
+and talk over the news of the day. Hence, you see, Mr. Linden, I pick
+up two or three novel anecdotes of state and scandal, and maintain my
+importance at Copperas Bower by retailing them second-hand. Now that
+you are one of the inmates of that abode, I shall be more frequently its
+guest. By the by, I will let you into a secret: know that I am somewhat
+a lover of the marvellous, and like to indulge a little embellishing
+exaggeration in any place where there is no chance of finding me
+out. Mind, therefore, my dear Mr. Linden, that you take no ungenerous
+advantage of this confession; but suffer me, now and then, to tell my
+stories my own way, even when you think truth would require me to tell
+them in another.”
+
+“Certainly,” said Clarence, laughing; “let us make an agreement: you
+shall tell your stories as you please, if you will grant me the same
+liberty in paying my compliments; and if I laugh aloud at the stories,
+you shall promise me not to laugh aloud at the compliments.”
+
+“It is a bond,” said Talbot; “and a very fit exchange of service it is.
+It will be a problem in human nature to see who has the best of it: you
+shall pay your court by flattering the people present, and I mine by
+abusing those absent. Now, in spite of your youth and curling locks, I
+will wager that I succeed the best; for in vanity there is so great a
+mixture of envy that no compliment is like a judicious abuse: to enchant
+your acquaintance, ridicule his friends.”
+
+“Ah, sir,” said Clarence, “this opinion of yours is, I trust, a little
+in the French school, where brilliancy is more studied than truth, and
+where an ill opinion of our species always has the merit of passing for
+profound.”
+
+Talbot smiled, and shook his head. “My dear young friend,” said he, “it
+is quite right that you, who are coming into the world, should think
+well of it; and it is also quite right that I, who am going out of it,
+should console myself by trying to despise it. However, let me tell you,
+my young friend, that he whose opinion of mankind is not too elevated
+will always be the most benevolent, because the most indulgent, to
+those errors incidental to human imperfection: to place our nature in
+too flattering a view is only to court disappointment, and end in
+misanthropy. The man who sets out with expecting to find all his
+fellow-creatures heroes of virtue will conclude by condemning them as
+monsters of vice; and, on the contrary, the least exacting judge of
+actions will be the most lenient. If God, in His own perfection, did not
+see so many frailties in us, think you He would be so gracious to our
+virtues?”
+
+“And yet,” said Clarence, “we remark every day examples of the highest
+excellence.”
+
+“Yes,” replied Talbot, “of the highest but not of the most constant
+excellence. He knows very little of the human heart who imagines we
+cannot do a good action; but, alas! he knows still less of it who
+supposes we can be always doing good actions. In exactly the same ratio
+we see every day the greatest crimes are committed; but we find no
+wretch so depraved as to be always committing crimes. Man cannot be
+perfect even in guilt.”
+
+In this manner Talbot and his young visitor conversed, till Clarence,
+after a stay of unwarrantable length, rose to depart.
+
+“Well,” said Talbot, “if we now rightly understand each other, we shall
+be the best friends in the world. As we shall expect great things from
+each other sometimes, we will have no scruple in exacting a heroic
+sacrifice every now and then; for instance, I will ask you to punish
+yourself by an occasional tete-a-tete with an ancient gentleman; and, as
+we can also by the same reasoning pardon great faults in each other, if
+they are not often committed, so I will forgive you, with all my heart,
+whenever you refuse my invitations, if you do not refuse them often. And
+now farewell till we meet again.”
+
+It seemed singular and almost unnatural to Linden that a man like
+Talbot, of birth, fortune, and great fastidiousness of taste and temper,
+should have formed any sort of acquaintance, however slight and distant,
+with the facetious stock-jobber and his wife; but the fact is easily
+explained by a reference to the vanity which we shall see hereafter
+made the ruling passion of Talbot’s nature. This vanity, which
+branching forth into a thousand eccentricities, displayed itself in the
+singularity of his dress, the studied yet graceful warmth of his
+manner, his attention to the minutiae of life, his desire, craving and
+insatiate, to receive from every one, however insignificant, his obolus
+of admiration,--this vanity, once flattered by the obsequious homage it
+obtained from the wonder and reverence of the Copperases, reconciled his
+taste to the disgust it so frequently and necessarily conceived; and,
+having in great measure resigned his former acquaintance and wholly
+outlived his friends, he was contented to purchase the applause
+which had become to him a necessary of life at the humble market more
+immediately at his command.
+
+There is no dilemma in which Vanity cannot find an expedient to develop
+its form, no stream of circumstances in which its buoyant and light
+nature will not rise to float upon the surface. And its ingenuity is as
+fertile as that of the player who (his wardrobe allowing him no other
+method of playing the fop) could still exhibit the prevalent passion for
+distinction by wearing stockings of different colours.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+               Who dares
+  Interpret then my life for me as ‘t were
+  One of the undistinguishable many?
+               COLERIDGE: Wallenstein.
+
+The first time Clarence had observed the young artist, he had taken a
+deep interest in his appearance. Pale, thin, undersized, and slightly
+deformed, the sanctifying mind still shed over the humble frame a spell
+more powerful than beauty. Absent in manner, melancholy in air, and
+never conversing except upon subjects on which his imagination was
+excited, there was yet a gentleness about him which could not fail to
+conciliate and prepossess; nor did Clarence omit any opportunity
+to soften his reserve, and wind himself into his more intimate
+acquaintance. Warner, the only support of an aged and infirm grandmother
+(who had survived her immediate children), was distantly related to Mrs.
+Copperas; and that lady extended to him, with ostentatious benevolence,
+her favour and support. It is true that she did not impoverish the
+young Adolphus to enrich her kinsman, but she allowed him a seat at her
+hospitable board, whenever it was not otherwise filled; and all that she
+demanded in return was a picture of herself, another of Mr. Copperas,
+a third of Master Adolphus, a fourth of the black cat, and from time to
+time sundry other lesser productions of his genius, of which, through
+the agency of Mr. Brown, she secretly disposed at a price that
+sufficiently remunerated her for whatever havoc the slender appetite of
+the young painter was able to effect.
+
+By this arrangement, Clarence had many opportunities of gaining that
+intimacy with Warner which had become to him an object; and though the
+painter, constitutionally diffident and shy, was at first averse to, and
+even awed by, the ease, boldness, fluent speech, and confident address
+of a man much younger than himself, yet at last he could not resist the
+being decoyed into familiarity; and the youthful pair gradually advanced
+from companionship into friendship. There was a striking contrast
+between the two: Clarence was bold and frank, Warner close and timid.
+Both had superior abilities; but the abilities of Clarence were for
+action, those of Warner for art: both were ambitious; but the ambition
+of Clarence was that of circumstances rather than character. Compelled
+to carve his own fortunes without sympathy or aid, he braced his mind to
+the effort, though naturally too gay for the austerity, and too genial
+for the selfishness of ambition. But the very essence of Warner’s nature
+was the feverish desire of fame: it poured through his veins like lava;
+it preyed as a worm upon his cheek; it corroded his natural sleep;
+it blackened the colour of his thoughts; it shut out, as with an
+impenetrable wall, the wholesome energies and enjoyments and objects of
+living men; and, taking from him all the vividness of the present, all
+the tenderness of the past, constrained his heart to dwell forever and
+forever amidst the dim and shadowy chimeras of a future he was fated
+never to enjoy.
+
+But these differences of character, so far from disturbing, rather
+cemented their friendship; and while Warner (notwithstanding his
+advantage of age) paid involuntary deference to the stronger character
+of Clarence, he, in his turn, derived that species of pleasure by which
+he was most gratified, from the affectionate and unenvious interest
+Clarence took in his speculations of future distinction, and the
+unwearying admiration with which he would sit by his side, and watch the
+colours start from the canvas, beneath the real though uncultured genius
+of the youthful painter.
+
+Hitherto, Warner had bounded his attempts to some of the lesser efforts
+of the art; he had now yielded to the urgent enthusiasm of his nature,
+and conceived the plan of an historical picture. Oh! what sleepless
+nights, what struggles of the teeming fancy with the dense brain, what
+labours of the untiring thought wearing and intense as disease itself,
+did it cost the ambitious artist to work out in the stillness of his
+soul, and from its confused and conflicting images, the design of this
+long meditated and idolized performance! But when it was designed;
+when shape upon shape grew and swelled, and glowed from the darkness of
+previous thought upon the painter’s mind; when, shutting his eyes in the
+very credulity of delight, the whole work arose before him, glossy with
+its fresh hues, bright, completed, faultless, arrayed as it were, and
+decked out for immortality,--oh! then what a full and gushing moment of
+rapture broke like a released stream upon his soul! What a recompense
+for wasted years, health, and hope! What a coronal to the visions and
+transports of Genius: brief, it is true, but how steeped in the very
+halo of a light that might well be deemed the glory of heaven!
+
+But the vision fades, the gorgeous shapes sweep on into darkness, and,
+waking from his revery, the artist sees before him only the dull walls
+of his narrow chamber; the canvas stretched a blank upon its frame; the
+works, maimed, crude, unfinished, of an inexperienced hand, lying idly
+around; and feels himself--himself, but one moment before the creator of
+a world of wonders, the master spirit of shapes glorious and majestical
+beyond the shapes of men--dashed down from his momentary height, and
+despoiled both of his sorcery and his throne.
+
+It was just in such a moment that Warner, starting up, saw Linden (who
+had silently entered his room) standing motionless before him.
+
+“Oh, Linden!” said the artist, “I have had so superb a dream,--a dream
+which, though I have before snatched some such vision by fits and
+glimpses, I never beheld so realized, so perfect as now; and--but you
+shall see, you shall judge for yourself; I will sketch out the design
+for you;” and, with a piece of chalk and a rapid hand, Warner conveyed
+to Linden the outline of his conception. His young friend was eager in
+his praise and his predictions of renown, and Warner listened to him
+with a fondness which spread over his pale cheek a richer flush than
+lover ever caught from the whispers of his beloved.
+
+“Yes,” said he, as he rose, and his sunken and small eye flashed out
+with a feverish brightness, “yes, if my hand does not fail my thought,
+it shall rival even--” Here the young painter stopped short, abashed at
+that indiscretion of enthusiasm about to utter to another the hoarded
+vanities hitherto locked in his heart of hearts as a sealed secret,
+almost from himself.
+
+“But come,” said Clarence, affectionately, “your hand is feverish and
+dry, and of late you have seemed more languid than you were wont,--come,
+Warner, you want exercise: it is a beautiful evening, and you shall
+explain your picture still further to me as we walk.”
+
+Accustomed to yield to Clarence, Warner mechanically and abstractedly
+obeyed; they walked out into the open streets.
+
+“Look around us,” said Warner, pausing, “look among this toiling and
+busy and sordid mass of beings who claim with us the fellowship of clay.
+The poor labour; the rich feast: the only distinction between them is
+that of the insect and the brute; like them they fulfil the same end and
+share the same oblivion; they die, a new race springs up, and the very
+grass upon their graves fades not so soon as their memory. Who that is
+conscious of a higher nature would not pine and fret himself away to be
+confounded with these? Who would not burn and sicken and parch with
+a delirious longing to divorce himself from so vile a herd? What have
+their petty pleasures and their mean aims to atone for the abasement of
+grinding down our spirits to their level? Is not the distinction from
+their blended and common name a sufficient recompense for all that
+ambition suffers or foregoes? Oh, for one brief hour (I ask no more) of
+living honour, one feeling of conscious, unfearing certainty that Fame
+has conquered Death! and then for this humble and impotent clay, this
+drag on the spirit which it does not assist but fetter, this wretched
+machine of pains and aches, and feverish throbbings, and vexed
+inquietudes, why, let the worms consume it, and the grave hide--for Fame
+there is no grave.”
+
+At that moment one of those unfortunate women who earn their polluted
+sustenance by becoming the hypocrites of passions abruptly accosted
+them.
+
+“Miserable wretch!” said Warner, loathingly, as he pushed her aside; but
+Clarence, with a kindlier feeling, noticed that her haggard cheek was
+wet with tears, and that her frame, weak and trembling, could scarcely
+support itself; he, therefore, with that promptitude of charity which
+gives ere it discriminates put some pecuniary assistance in her hand and
+joined his comrade.
+
+“You would not have spoken so tauntingly to the poor girl had you
+remarked her distress,” said Clarence.
+
+“And why,” said Warner, mournfully, “why be so cruel as to prolong,
+even for a few hours, an existence which mercy would only seek to bring
+nearer to the tomb? That unfortunate is but one of the herd, one of the
+victims to pleasures which debase by their progress and ruin by their
+end. Yet perhaps she is not worse than the usual followers of love,--of
+love, that passion the most worshipped, yet the least divine,--selfish
+and exacting,--drawing its aliment from destruction, and its very nature
+from tears.”
+
+“Nay,” said Clarence, “you confound the two loves, the Eros and the
+Anteros; gods whom my good tutor was wont so sedulously to distinguish:
+you surely do not inveigh thus against all love?”
+
+“I cry you mercy,” said Warner, with something of sarcasm in his
+pensiveness of tone. “We must not dispute; so I will hold my peace: but
+make love all you will; what are the false smiles of a lip which a few
+years can blight as an autumn leaf? what the homage of a heart as feeble
+and mortal as your own? Why, I, with a few strokes of a little hair
+and an idle mixture of worthless colours, will create a beauty in whose
+mouth there shall be no hollowness, in whose lip there shall be no
+fading; there, in your admiration, you shall have no need of flattery
+and no fear of falsehood; you shall not be stung with jealousy nor
+maddened with treachery; nor watch with a breaking heart over the waning
+bloom, and departing health, till the grave open, and your perishable
+paradise is not. No: the mimic work is mightier than the original, for
+it outlasts it; your love cannot wither it, or your desertion destroy;
+your very death, as the being who called it into life, only stamps it
+with a holier value.”
+
+“And so then,” said Clarence, “you would seriously relinquish, for the
+mute copy of the mere features, those affections which no painting can
+express?”
+
+“Ay,” said the painter, with an energy unusual to his quiet manner, and
+slightly wandering in his answer from Clarence’s remark, “ay, one serves
+not two mistresses: mine is the glory of my art. Oh! what are the
+cold shapes of this tame earth, where the footsteps of the gods have
+vanished, and left no trace, the blemished forms, the debased brows, and
+the jarring features, to the glorious and gorgeous images which I can
+conjure up at my will? Away with human beauties, to him whose nights
+are haunted with the forms of angels and wanderers from the stars, the
+spirits of all things lovely and exalted in the universe: the universe
+as it was; when to fountain, and stream, and hill, and to every tree
+which the summer clothed, was allotted the vigil of a Nymph! when
+through glade, and by waterfall, at glossy noontide, or under the silver
+stars, the forms of Godhead and Spirit were seen to walk; when the
+sculptor modelled his mighty work from the beauty and strength of
+Heaven, and the poet lay in the shade to dream of the Naiad and the
+Faun, and the Olympian dwellers whom he walked in rapture to behold;
+and the painter, not as now, shaping from shadow and in solitude the dim
+glories of his heart, caught at once his inspiration from the glow of
+earth and its living wanderers, and, lo, the canvas breathed! Oh! what
+are the dull realities and the abortive offspring of this altered and
+humbled world--the world of meaner and dwarfish men--to him whose realms
+are peopled with visions like these?”
+
+And the artist, whose ardour, long excited and pent within, had at last
+thus audibly, and to Clarence’s astonishment, burst forth, paused, as
+if to recall himself from his wandering enthusiasm. Such moments of
+excitement were indeed rare with him, except when utterly alone, and
+even then, were almost invariably followed by that depression of spirit
+by which all over-wrought susceptibility is succeeded. A change came
+over his face, like that of a cloud when the sunbeam which gilded leaves
+it; and, with a slight sigh and a subdued tone, he resumed,--
+
+“So, my friend, you see what our art can do even for the humblest
+professor, when I, a poor, friendless, patronless artist, can thus
+indulge myself by forgetting the present. But I have not yet explained
+to you the attitude of my principal figure;” and Warner proceeded once
+more to detail the particulars of his intended picture. It must be
+confessed that he had chosen a fine though an arduous subject: it was
+the Trial of Charles the First; and as the painter, with the enthusiasm
+of his profession and the eloquence peculiar to himself, dwelt upon
+the various expressions of the various forms which that extraordinary
+judgment-court afforded, no wonder that Clarence forgot, with the artist
+himself, the disadvantages Warner had to encounter in the inexperience
+of an unregulated taste and an imperfect professional education.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+  All manners take a tincture from our own,
+  Or come discoloured through our passions shown.--POPE.
+
+What! give up liberty, property, and, as the Gazeteer says, lie down to
+be saddled with wooden shoes?--Vicar of Wakefield.
+
+There was something in the melancholy and reflective character of Warner
+resembling that of Mordaunt; had they lived in these days perhaps both
+the artist and the philosopher had been poets. But (with regard to the
+latter) at that time poetry was not the customary vent for deep thought
+or passionate feeling. Gray, it is true, though unjustly condemned as
+artificial and meretricious in his style, had infused into the scanty
+works which he has bequeathed to immortality a pathos and a richness
+foreign to the literature of the age; and, subsequently, Goldsmith,
+in the affecting yet somewhat enervate simplicity of his verse, had
+obtained for Poetry a brief respite from a school at once declamatory
+and powerless, and led her forth for a “Sunshine Holiday” into the
+village green and under the hawthorn shade. But, though the softer and
+meeker feelings had struggled into a partial and occasional vent, those
+which partook more of passion and of thought, the deep, the wild, the
+fervid, were still without “the music of a voice.” For the after century
+it was reserved to restore what we may be permitted to call the spirit
+of our national literature; to forsake the clinquant of the French
+mimickers of classic gold; to exchange a thrice-adulterated Hippocrene
+for the pure well of Shakspeare and of Nature; to clothe philosophy
+in the gorgeous and solemn majesty of appropriate music; and to invest
+passion with a language as burning as its thought and rapid as
+its impulse. At that time reflection found its natural channel in
+metaphysical inquiry or political speculation; both valuable, perhaps,
+but neither profound. It was a bold, and a free, and an inquisitive age,
+but not one in which thought ran over its set and stationary banks, and
+watered even the common flowers of verse: not one in which Lucretius
+could have embodied the dreams of Epicurus; Shakspeare lavished the
+mines of a superhuman wisdom upon his fairy palaces and enchanted isles;
+or the Beautifier [Wordsworth] of this common earth have called forth
+
+  “The motion of the spirit that impels
+   All thinking things, all objects of all thought;”
+
+or Disappointment and Satiety have hallowed their human griefs by a
+pathos wrought from whatever is magnificent and grand and lovely in
+the unknown universe; or the speculations of a great but visionary mind
+[Shelley] have raised, upon subtlety and doubt, a vast and irregular
+pile of verse, full of dim-lighted cells, and winding galleries, in
+which what treasures lie concealed! That was an age in which poetry
+took one path and contemplation another; those who were addicted to the
+latter pursued it in its orthodox roads; and many, whom Nature, perhaps
+intended for poets, the wizard Custom converted into speculators or
+critics.
+
+It was this which gave to Algernon’s studies their peculiar hue; while,
+on the other hand, the taste for the fine arts which then universally
+prevailed, directed to the creations of painting, rather than those of
+poetry, more really congenial to his powers, the intense imagination and
+passion for glory which marked and pervaded the character of the artist.
+
+But as we have seen that that passion for glory made the great
+characteristic difference between Clarence and Warner, so also did
+that passion terminate any resemblance which Warner bore to Algernon
+Mordaunt. With the former a rank and unwholesome plant, it grew up to
+the exclusion of all else; with the latter, subdued and regulated, it
+sheltered, not withered, the virtues by which it was surrounded. With
+Warner, ambition was a passionate desire to separate himself by fame
+from the herd of other men; with Mordaunt, to bind himself by charity
+yet closer to his kind: with the one, it produced a disgust to his
+species; with the other, a pity and a love: with the one, power was the
+badge of distinction; with the other, the means to bless! But our story
+lingers.
+
+It was now the custom of Warner to spend the whole day at his work, and
+wander out with Clarence, when the evening darkened, to snatch a brief
+respite of exercise and air. Often, along the lighted and populous
+streets, would the two young and unfriended competitors for this world’s
+high places roam with the various crowd, moralizing as they went or
+holding dim conjecture upon their destinies to be. And often would they
+linger beneath the portico of some house where, “haunted with great
+resort,” Pleasure and Pomp held their nightly revels, to listen to the
+music that, through the open windows, stole over the rare exotics with
+which wealth mimics the southern scents, and floated, mellowing by
+distance, along the unworthy streets; and while they stood together,
+silent and each feeding upon separate thoughts, the artist’s pale
+lip would curl with scorn, as he heard the laugh and the sounds of a
+frivolous and hollow mirth ring from the crowd within, and startle the
+air from the silver spell which music had laid upon it. “These,” would
+he say to Clarence, “these are the dupes of the same fever as ourselves:
+like us, they strive and toil and vex their little lives for a
+distinction from their race. Ambition comes to them, as to all: but they
+throw for a different prize than we do; theirs is the honour of a day,
+ours is immortality; yet they take the same labour and are consumed by
+the same care. And, fools that they are, with their gilded names and
+their gaudy trappings, they would shrink in disdain from that comparison
+with us which we, with a juster fastidiousness, blush at this moment to
+acknowledge.”
+
+From these scenes they would rove on, and, both delighting in contrast,
+enter some squalid and obscure quarter of the city. There, one night,
+quiet observers of their kind, they paused beside a group congregated
+together by some common cause of obscene merriment or unholy
+fellowship--a group on which low vice had set her sordid and hideous
+stamp--to gaze and draw strange humours or a motley moral from that
+depth and ferment of human nature into whose sink the thousand streams
+of civilization had poured their dregs and offal.
+
+“You survey these,” said the painter, marking each with the curious eye
+of his profession: “they are a base horde, it is true; but they have
+their thirst of fame, their aspirations even in the abyss of crime or
+the loathsomeness of famished want. Down in yon cellar, where a farthing
+rushlight glimmers upon haggard cheeks, distorted with the idiotcy
+of drink; there, in that foul attic, from whose casement you see the
+beggar’s rags hang to dry, or rather to crumble in the reeking and
+filthy air; farther on, within those walls which, black and heavy as the
+hearts they hide, close our miserable prospect,--there, even there, in
+the mildewed dungeon, in the felon’s cell, on the very scaffold’s self,
+Ambition hugs her own hope or scowls upon her own despair. Yes! the
+inmates of those walls had their perilous game of honour, their ‘hazard
+of the die,’ in which vice was triumph and infamy success. We do but
+share their passion, though we direct it to a better object.”
+
+Pausing for a moment, as his thoughts flowed into a somewhat different
+channel of his character, Warner continued, “We have now caught a
+glimpse of the two great divisions of mankind; they who riot in palaces,
+and they who make mirth hideous in rags and hovels: own that it is but
+a poor survey in either. Can we be contemptible with these or loathsome
+with those? Or rather have we not a nobler spark within us, which
+we have but to fan into a flame that shall burn forever, when these
+miserable meteors sink into the corruption from which they rise?”
+
+“But,” observed Clarence, “these are the two extremes; the pinnacle of
+civilization, too worn and bare for any more noble and vigorous fruit,
+and the base upon which the cloud descends in rain and storm. Look to
+the central portion of society; there the soil is more genial, and its
+produce more rich.”
+
+“Is it so, in truth?” answered Warner; “pardon me, I believe not: the
+middling classes are as human as the rest. There is the region, the
+heart, of Avarice,--systematized, spreading, rotting, the very fungus
+and leprosy of social states; suspicion, craft, hypocrisy, servility to
+the great, oppression to the low, the waxlike mimicry of courtly vices,
+the hardness of flint to humble woes; thought, feeling, the faculties
+and impulses of man, all ulcered into one great canker, Gain,--these
+make the general character of the middling class, the unleavened mass of
+that mediocrity which it has been the wisdom of the shallow to applaud.
+Pah! we too are of this class, this potter’s earth, this paltry mixture
+of mud and stone; but we, my friend, we will knead gold into our clay.”
+
+“But look,” said Clarence, pointing to the group before them, “look, yon
+wretched mother, whose voice an instant ago uttered the coarsest accents
+of maudlin and intoxicated prostitution, is now fostering her infant,
+with a fondness stamped upon her worn cheek and hollow eye, which might
+shame the nice maternity of nobles; and there, too, yon wretch whom, in
+the reckless effrontery of hardened abandonment, we ourselves heard a
+few minutes since boast of his dexterity in theft, and openly exhibit
+its token,--look, he is now, with a Samaritan’s own charity, giving the
+very goods for which his miserable life was risked to that attenuated
+and starving stripling! No, Warner, no! even this mass is not
+unleavened. The vilest infamy is not too deep for the Seraph Virtue to
+descend and illumine its abyss!”
+
+“Out on the weak fools!” said the artist, bitterly: “it would be
+something, if they could be consistent even in crime!” and, placing his
+arm in Linden’s, he drew him away.
+
+As the picture grew beneath the painter’s hand, Clarence was much struck
+with the outline and expression of countenance given to the regicide
+Bradshaw.
+
+“They are but an imperfect copy of the living original from whom I have
+borrowed them,” said Warner, in answer to Clarence’s remark upon the
+sternness of the features. “But that original--a relation of mine, is
+coming here to-day: you shall see him.”
+
+While Warner was yet speaking, the person in question entered. His
+were, indeed, the form and face worthy to be seized by the painter.
+The peculiarity of his character made him affect a plainness of dress
+unusual to the day, and approaching to the simplicity, but not the
+neatness, of Quakerism. His hair--then, with all the better ranks, a
+principal object of cultivation--was wild, dishevelled, and, in wiry
+flakes of the sablest hue, rose abruptly from a forehead on which either
+thought or passion had written its annals with an iron pen; the lower
+part of the brow, which overhung the eye, was singularly sharp and
+prominent; while the lines, or rather furrows, traced under the eyes and
+nostrils, spoke somewhat of exhaustion and internal fatigue. But this
+expression was contrasted and contradicted by the firmly compressed lip;
+the lighted, steady, stern eye; the resolute and even stubborn front,
+joined to proportions strikingly athletic and a stature of uncommon
+height.
+
+“Well, Wolfe,” said the young painter to the person we have described,
+“it is indeed a kindness to give me a second sitting.”
+
+“Tusk, boy!” answered Wolfe, “all men have their vain points, and I own
+that I am not ill pleased that these rugged features should be assigned,
+even in fancy, to one of the noblest of those men who judged the
+mightiest cause in which a country was ever plaintiff, a tyrant
+criminal, and a world witness!” While Wolfe was yet speaking his
+countenance, so naturally harsh, took a yet sterner aspect, and the
+artist, by a happy touch, succeeded in transferring it to the canvas.
+
+“But, after all,” continued Wolfe, “it shames me to lend aid to an art
+frivolous in itself, and almost culpable in times when Freedom wants the
+head to design, and perhaps the hand to execute, far other and nobler
+works than the blazoning of her past deeds upon perishable canvas.”
+
+A momentary anger at the slight put upon his art crossed the pale brow
+of the artist; but he remembered the character of the man and continued
+his work in silence. “You consider then, sir, that these are times in
+which liberty is attacked?” said Clarence.
+
+“Attacked!” repeated Wolfe,--“attacked!” and then suddenly sinking his
+voice into a sort of sneer, “why, since the event which this painting
+is designed to commemorate, I know not if we have ever had one solitary
+gleam of liberty break along the great chaos of jarring prejudice and
+barbarous law which we term forsooth a glorious constitution. Liberty
+attacked! no, boy; but it is a time when liberty may be gained.”
+
+Perfectly unacquainted with the excited politics of the day, or the
+growing and mighty spirit which then stirred through the minds of men,
+Clarence remained silent; but his evident attention flattered the fierce
+republican, and he proceeded.
+
+“Ay,” he said slowly, and as if drinking in a deep and stern joy from
+his conviction in the truth of the words he uttered,--“ay, I have
+wandered over the face of the earth, and I have warmed my soul at the
+fires which lay hidden under its quiet surface; I have been in the city
+and the desert,--the herded and banded crimes of the Old World, and the
+scattered but bold hearts which are found among the savannahs of the
+New; and in either I have beheld that seed sown which, from a mustard
+grain, too scanty for a bird’s beak, shall grow up to be a shelter and
+a home for the whole family of man. I have looked upon the thrones of
+kings, and lo, the anointed ones were in purple and festive pomp; and
+I looked beneath the thrones, and I saw Want and Hunger, and despairing
+Wrath gnawing the foundations away. I have stood in the streets of that
+great city where Mirth seems to hold an eternal jubilee, and beheld the
+noble riot while the peasant starved; and the priest built altars to
+Mammon, piled from the earnings of groaning Labour and cemented with
+blood and tears. But I looked farther, and saw, in the rear, chains
+sharpened into swords, misery ripening into justice, and famine
+darkening into revenge; and I laughed as I beheld, for I knew that the
+day of the oppressed was at hand.”
+
+Somewhat awed by the prophetic tone, though revolted by what seemed to
+him the novelty and the fierceness of the sentiments of the republican,
+Clarence, after a brief pause, said,--
+
+“And what of our own country?”
+
+Wolfe’s brow darkened. “The oppression here,” said he, “has not been
+so weighty, therefore the reaction will be less strong; the parties
+are more blended, therefore their separation will be more arduous; the
+extortion is less strained, therefore the endurance will be more meek;
+but, soon or late, the struggle must come: bloody will it be, if the
+strife be even; gentle and lasting, if the people predominate.”
+
+“And if the rulers be the strongest?” said Clarence.
+
+“The struggle will be renewed,” replied Wolfe, doggedly.
+
+“You still attend those oratorical meetings, cousin, I think?” said
+Warner.
+
+“I do,” said Wolfe; “and if you are not so utterly absorbed in your vain
+and idle art as to be indifferent to all things nobler, you will learn
+yourself to take interest in what concerns--I will not say your
+country, but mankind. For you, young man” (and the republican turned to
+Clarence), “I would fain hope that life has not already been diverted
+from the greatest of human objects; if so, come to-morrow night to our
+assembly, and learn from worthier lips than mine the precepts and the
+hopes for which good men live or die.”
+
+“I will come at all events to listen, if not to learn,” said Clarence,
+eagerly, for his curiosity was excited. And the republican, having now
+fulfilled the end of his visit, rose and departed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+  Bound to suffer persecution
+  And martyrdom with resolution,
+  T’oppose himself against the hate
+  And vengeance of the incensed state.--Hudibras.
+
+Born of respectable though not wealthy parents, John Wolfe was one
+of those fiery and daring spirits which, previous to some mighty
+revolution, Fate seems to scatter over various parts of the earth, even
+those removed from the predestined explosion,--heralds of the events in
+which they are fitted though not fated to be actors. The period at which
+he is presented to the reader was one considerably prior to that French
+Revolution so much debated and so little understood. But some such
+event, though not foreseen by the common, had been already foreboded
+by the more enlightened, eye; and Wolfe, from a protracted residence
+in France among the most discontented of its freer spirits, had brought
+hope to that burning enthusiasm which had long made the pervading
+passion of his existence.
+
+Bold to ferocity, generous in devotion to folly in self-sacrifice,
+unflinching in his tenets to a degree which rendered their ardour
+ineffectual to all times, because utterly inapplicable to the present,
+Wolfe was one of those zealots whose very virtues have the semblance
+of vice, and whose very capacities for danger become harmless from the
+rashness of their excess.
+
+It was not among the philosophers and reasoners of France that Wolfe had
+drawn strength to his opinions: whatever such companions might have
+done to his tenets, they would at least have moderated his actions. The
+philosopher may aid or expedite a change; but never does the philosopher
+in any age or of any sect countenance a crime. But of philosophers Wolfe
+knew little, and probably despised them for their temperance: it was
+among fanatics--ignorant, but imaginative--that he had strengthened the
+love without comprehending the nature of republicanism. Like Lucian’s
+painter, whose flattery portrayed the one-eyed prince in profile, he
+viewed only that side of the question in which there was no defect, and
+gave beauty to the whole by concealing the half. Thus, though on
+his return to England herding with the common class of his reforming
+brethren, Wolfe possessed many peculiarities and distinctions of
+character which, in rendering him strikingly adapted to the purpose of
+the novelist, must serve as a caution to the reader not to judge of the
+class by the individual.
+
+With a class of Republicans in England there was a strong tendency to
+support their cause by reasoning. With Wolfe, whose mind was little
+wedded to logic, all was the offspring of turbulent feelings, which, in
+rejecting argument, substituted declamation for syllogism. This effected
+a powerful and irreconcilable distinction between Wolfe and the better
+part of his comrades; for the habits of cool reasoning, whether true or
+false, are little likely to bias the mind towards those crimes to which
+Wolfe’s unregulated emotions might possibly urge him, and give to the
+characters to which they are a sort of common denominator something of
+method and much of similarity. But the feelings--those orators which
+allow no calculation and baffle the tameness of comparison--rendered
+Wolfe alone, unique, eccentric in opinion or action, whether of vice or
+virtue.
+
+Private ties frequently moderate the ardour of our public enthusiasm.
+Wolfe had none. His nearest relation was Warner, and it may readily
+be supposed that with the pensive and contemplative artist he had very
+little in common. He had never married, nor had ever seemed to wander
+from his stern and sterile path, in the most transient pursuit of the
+pleasures of sense. Inflexibly honest, rigidly austere,--in his moral
+character his bitterest enemies could detect no flaw,--poor, even to
+indigence, he had invariably refused all overtures of the government;
+thrice imprisoned and heavily fined for his doctrines, no fear of a
+future, no remembrance of the past punishment could ever silence his
+bitter eloquence or moderate the passion of his distempered zeal;
+kindly, though rude, his scanty means were ever shared by the less
+honest and disinterested followers of his faith; and he had been known
+for days to deprive himself of food, and for nights of shelter, for the
+purpose of yielding food and shelter to another.
+
+Such was the man doomed to forsake, through a long and wasted life,
+every substantial blessing, in pursuit of a shadowy good; with the
+warmest benevolence in his heart, to relinquish private affections, and
+to brood even to madness over public offences; to sacrifice everything
+in a generous though erring devotion for that freedom whose cause,
+instead of promoting, he was calculated to retard; and, while he
+believed himself the martyr of a high and uncompromising virtue, to
+close his career with the greatest of human crimes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+     Faith, methinks his humour is good, and his purse will buy
+     good company.--The Parson’s Wedding.
+
+When Clarence returned home, after the conversation recorded in our last
+chapter, he found a note from Talbot, inviting him to meet some friends
+of the latter at supper that evening. It was the first time Clarence had
+been asked, and he looked forward with some curiosity and impatience to
+the hour appointed in the note.
+
+It is impossible to convey any idea of the jealous rancour felt by Mr.
+and Mrs. Copperas on hearing of this distinction,--a distinction which
+“the perfect courtier” had never once bestowed upon themselves.
+
+Mrs. Copperas tossed her head, too indignant for words; and the
+stock-jobber, in the bitterness of his soul, affirmed, with a meaning
+air, “that he dared say, after all, that the old gentleman was not so
+rich as he gave out.”
+
+On entering Talbot’s drawing-room, Clarence found about seven or eight
+people assembled; their names, in proclaiming the nature of the party,
+indicated that the aim of the host was to combine aristocracy and
+talent. The literary acquirements and worldly tact of Talbot, joined
+to the adventitious circumstances of birth and fortune, enabled him to
+effect this object, so desirable in polished society, far better than
+we generally find it effected now. The conversation of these guests was
+light and various. The last bon mot of Chesterfield, the last sarcasm
+of Horace Walpole, Goldsmith’s “Traveller,” Shenstone’s “Pastorals,” and
+the attempt of Mrs. Montagu to bring Shakspeare into fashion,--in all
+these subjects the graceful wit and exquisite taste of Talbot shone
+pre-eminent; and he had almost succeeded in convincing a profound critic
+that Gray was a poet more likely to live than Mason, when the servant
+announced supper.
+
+That was the age of suppers! Happy age! Meal of ease and mirth; when
+Wine and Night lit the lamp of Wit! Oh, what precious things were said
+and looked at those banquets of the soul! There epicurism was in the
+lip as well as the palate, and one had humour for a hors d’oeuvre and
+repartee for an entremet. At dinner there is something too pompous, too
+formal, for the true ease of Table Talk. One’s intellectual appetite,
+like the physical, is coarse but dull. At dinner one is fit only for
+eating; after dinner only for politics. But supper was a glorious relic
+of the ancients. The bustle of the day had thoroughly wound up the
+spirit, and every stroke upon the dial-plate of wit was true to the
+genius of the hour. The wallet of diurnal anecdote was full, and craved
+unloading. The great meal--that vulgar first love of the appetite--was
+over, and one now only flattered it into coquetting with another.
+The mind, disengaged and free, was no longer absorbed in a cutlet or
+burdened with a joint. The gourmand carried the nicety of his physical
+perception to his moral, and applauded a bon mot instead of a bonne
+bouche.
+
+Then, too, one had no necessity to keep a reserve of thought for the
+after evening; supper was the final consummation, the glorious funeral
+pyre of day. One could be merry till bedtime without an interregnum.
+Nay, if in the ardour of convivialism one did,--I merely hint at the
+possibility of such an event,--if one did exceed the narrow limits of
+strict ebriety, and open the heart with a ruby key, one had nothing to
+dread from the cold, or, what is worse, the warm looks of ladies in the
+drawing-room; no fear that an imprudent word, in the amatory fondness
+of the fermented blood, might expose one to matrimony and settlements.
+There was no tame, trite medium of propriety and suppressed confidence,
+no bridge from board to bed, over which a false step (and your wine-cup
+is a marvellous corrupter of ambulatory rectitude) might precipitate
+into an irrecoverable abyss of perilous communication or unwholesome
+truth. One’s pillow became at once the legitimate and natural bourne
+to “the overheated brain;” and the generous rashness of the coenatorial
+reveller was not damped by untimeous caution or ignoble calculation.
+
+But “we have changed all that now.” Sobriety has become the successor
+of suppers; the great ocean of moral encroachment has not left us one
+little island of refuge. Miserable supper-lovers that we are, like the
+native Indians of America, a scattered and daily disappearing race, we
+wander among strange customs, and behold the innovating and invading
+Dinner spread gradually over the very space of time in which the majesty
+of Supper once reigned undisputed and supreme!
+
+       O, ye heavens, be kind,
+  And feel, thou earth, for this afflicted race.--WORDSWORTH.
+
+As he was sitting down to the table, Clarence’s notice was arrested by
+a somewhat suspicious and unpleasing occurrence. The supper room was
+on the ground floor, and, owing to the heat of the weather, one of the
+windows, facing the small garden, was left open. Through this window
+Clarence distinctly saw the face of a man look into the room for
+one instant, with a prying and curious gaze, and then as instantly
+disappear. As no one else seemed to remark this incident, and the
+general attention was somewhat noisily engrossed by the subject
+of conversation, Clarence thought it not worth while to mention a
+circumstance for which the impertinence of any neighbouring servant or
+drunken passer-by might easily account. An apprehension, however, of a
+more unpleasant nature shot across him, as his eye fell upon the costly
+plate which Talbot rather ostentatiously displayed, and then glanced to
+the single and aged servant, who was, besides his master, the only male
+inmate of the house. Nor could he help saying to Talbot, in the course
+of the evening, that he wondered he was not afraid of hoarding so many
+articles of value in a house at once so lonely and ill guarded.
+
+“Ill guarded!” said Talbot, rather affronted, “why, I and my servant
+always sleep here!”
+
+To this Clarence thought it neither prudent nor well-bred to offer
+further remark.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+  Meetings or public calls he never missed,
+  To dictate often, always to assist.
+ .....
+  To his experience and his native sense,
+  He joined a bold, imperious eloquence;
+  The grave, stern look of men informed and wise,
+  A full command of feature, heart and eyes,
+  An awe-compelling frown, and fear-inspiring size.--CRABBE.
+
+The next evening Clarence, mindful of Wolfe’s invitation, inquired from
+Warner (who repaid the contempt of the republican for the painter’s
+calling by a similar feeling for the zealot’s) the direction of the
+oratorical meeting, and repaired there alone. It was the most celebrated
+club (of that description) of the day, and well worth attending, as a
+gratification to the curiosity, if not an improvement to the mind.
+
+On entering, he found himself in a long room, tolerably well lighted,
+and still better filled. The sleepy countenances of the audience, the
+whispered conversation carried on at scattered intervals, the listless
+attitudes of some, the frequent yawns of others, the eagerness with
+which attention was attracted to the opening door, when it admitted some
+new object of interest, the desperate resolution with which some of the
+more energetic turned themselves towards the orator, and then, with a
+faint shake of the head, turned themselves again hopelessly away,--were
+all signs that denoted that no very eloquent declaimer was in possession
+of the “house.” It was, indeed, a singularly dull, monotonous voice
+which, arising from the upper end of the room, dragged itself on towards
+the middle, and expired with a sighing sound before it reached the end.
+The face of the speaker suited his vocal powers; it was small, mean, and
+of a round stupidity, without anything even in fault that could possibly
+command attention or even the excitement of disapprobation: the very
+garments of the orator seemed dull and heavy, and, like the Melancholy
+of Milton, had a “leaden look.” Now and then some words, more emphatic
+than others,--stones breaking, as it were with a momentary splash,
+the stagnation of the heavy stream,--produced from three very quiet,
+unhappy-looking persons seated next to the speaker, his immediate
+friends, three single isolated “hears!”
+
+  “The force of friendship could no further go.”
+
+At last, the orator having spoken through, suddenly stopped; the whole
+meeting seemed as if a weight had been taken from it; there was a
+general buzz of awakened energy, each stretched his limbs, and resettled
+himself in his place,--
+
+  “And turning to his neighbour said,
+        ‘Rejoice!’”
+
+A pause ensued, the chairman looked round, the eyes of the meeting
+followed those of the president, with a universal and palpable
+impatience, towards an obscure corner of the room: the pause deepened
+for one moment, and then was broken; a voice cried “Wolfe!” and at that
+signal the whole room shook with the name. The place which Clarence had
+taken did not allow him to see the object of these cries, till he rose
+from his situation, and, passing two rows of benches, stood forth in the
+middle space of the room; then, from one to one went round the general
+roar of applause; feet stamped, hands clapped, umbrellas set their sharp
+points to the ground, and walking-sticks thumped themselves out of shape
+in the universal clamour. Tall, gaunt, and erect, the speaker possessed,
+even in the mere proportions of his frame, that physical power which
+never fails, in a popular assembly, to gain attention to mediocrity
+and to throw dignity over faults. He looked very slowly round the room,
+remaining perfectly still and motionless, till the clamour of applause
+had entirely subsided, and every ear, Clarence’s no less eagerly than
+the rest, was strained, and thirsting to catch the first syllables of
+his voice.
+
+It was then with a low, very deep, and somewhat hoarse tone, that he
+began; and it was not till he had spoken for several minutes that the
+iron expression of his face altered, that the drooping hand was raised,
+and that the suppressed, yet powerful, voice began to expand and vary
+in its volume. He had then entered upon a new department of his subject.
+The question was connected with the English constitution, and Wolfe was
+now preparing to put forth, in long and blackened array, the alleged
+evils of an aristocratical form of government. Then it was as if the
+bile and bitterness of years were poured forth in a terrible and stormy
+wrath,--then his action became vehement, and his eye flashed forth
+unutterable fire: his voice, solemn, swelling, and increasing with each
+tone in its height and depth, filled, as with something palpable
+and perceptible, the shaking walls. The listeners,--a various and
+unconnected group, bound by no tie of faith or of party, many attracted
+by curiosity, many by the hope of ridicule, some abhorring the tenets
+expressed, and nearly all disapproving their principles or doubting
+their wisdom,--the listeners, certainly not a group previously formed
+or moulded into enthusiasm, became rapt and earnest; their very breath
+forsook them.
+
+Linden had never before that night heard a public speaker; but he was
+of a thoughtful and rather calculating mind, and his early habits of
+decision, and the premature cultivation of his intellect, rendered
+him little susceptible, in general, to the impressions of the vulgar:
+nevertheless, in spite of himself, he was hurried away by the stream,
+and found that the force and rapidity of the speaker did not allow him
+even time for the dissent and disapprobation which his republican maxims
+and fiery denunciations perpetually excited in a mind aristocratic both
+by creed and education. At length after a peroration of impetuous and
+magnificent invective, the orator ceased.
+
+In the midst of the applause that followed, Clarence left the assembly;
+he could not endure the thought that any duller or more commonplace
+speaker should fritter away the spell which yet bound and engrossed his
+spirit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+     At the bottom of the staircase was a small door, which gave
+     way before Nigel, as he precipitated himself upon the scene
+     of action, a cocked pistol in one hand, etc.--Fortunes of
+     Nigel.
+
+The night, though not utterly dark, was rendered capricious and dim by
+alternate wind and rain; and Clarence was delayed in his return homeward
+by seeking occasional shelter from the rapid and heavy showers which
+hurried by. It was during one of the temporary cessations of the rain
+that he reached Copperas Bower; and, while he was searching in his
+pockets for the key which was to admit him, he observed two men
+loitering about his neighbour’s house. The light was not sufficient
+to give him more than a scattered and imperfect view of their motions.
+Somewhat alarmed, he stood for several moments at the door, watching
+them as well as he was able; nor did he enter the house till the
+loiterers had left their suspicious position, and, walking onwards, were
+hid entirely from him by the distance and darkness.
+
+“It really is a dangerous thing for Talbot,” thought Clarence, as he
+ascended to his apartment, “to keep so many valuables, and only one
+servant, and that one as old as himself too. However, as I am by no
+means sleepy, and my room is by no means cool, I may as well open my
+window, and see if those idle fellows make their re-appearance.” Suiting
+the action to the thought, Clarence opened his little casement, and
+leaned wistfully out.
+
+He had no light in his room, for none was ever left for him. This
+circumstance, however, of course enabled him the better to penetrate the
+dimness and haze of the night; and, by the help of the fluttering lamps,
+he was enabled to take a general though not minute survey of the scene
+below.
+
+I think I have before said that there was a garden between Talbot’s
+house and Copperas Bower; this was bounded by a wall, which confined
+Talbot’s peculiar territory of garden, and this wall, describing a
+parallelogram, faced also the road. It contained two entrances,--one the
+principal adytus, in the shape of a comely iron gate, the other a wooden
+door, which, being a private pass, fronted the intermediate garden
+before mentioned and was exactly opposite to Clarence’s window.
+
+Linden had been more than ten minutes at his post, and had just begun to
+think his suspicions without foundation and his vigil in vain, when he
+observed the same figures he had seen before advance slowly from the
+distance and pause by the front gate of Talbot’s mansion.
+
+Alarmed and anxious, he redoubled his attention; he stretched himself,
+as far as his safety would permit, out of the window; the lamps,
+agitated by the wind, which swept by in occasional gusts, refused to
+grant to his straining sight more than an inaccurate and unsatisfying
+survey. Presently, a blast, more violent than ordinary, suspended as
+it were the falling columns of rain and left Clarence in almost total
+darkness; it rolled away, and the momentary calm which ensued enabled
+him to see that one of the men was stooping by the gate, and the other
+standing apparently on the watch at a little distance. Another gust
+shook the lamps and again obscured his view; and when it had passed
+onward in its rapid course, the men had left the gate, and were in the
+garden beneath his window. They crept cautiously, but swiftly, along
+the opposite wall, till they came to the small door we have before
+mentioned; here they halted, and one of them appeared to occupy himself
+in opening the door. Now, then, fear was changed into certainty, and
+it seemed without doubt that the men, having found some difficulty or
+danger in forcing the stronger or more public entrance, had changed
+their quarter of attack. No more time was to be lost; Clarence shouted
+aloud, but the high wind probably prevented the sound reaching the ears
+of the burglars, or at least rendered it dubious and confused. The next
+moment, and before Clarence could repeat his alarm, they had opened the
+door, and were within the neighbouring garden, beyond his view. Very
+young men, unless their experience has outstripped their youth, seldom
+have much presence of mind; that quality, which is the opposite to
+surprise, comes to us in those years when nothing seems to us strange or
+unexpected. But a much older man than Clarence might have well been at
+a loss to know what conduct to adopt in the situation in which our
+hero was placed. The visits of the watchman to that (then) obscure and
+ill-inhabited neighborhood were more regulated by his indolence than his
+duty; and Clarence knew that it would be in vain to listen for his cry
+or tarry for his assistance. He himself was utterly unarmed, but the
+stock-jobber had a pair of horse-pistols, and as this recollection
+flashed upon him, the pause of deliberation ceased.
+
+With a swift step he descended the first flight of stairs, and pausing
+at the chamber door of the faithful couple, knocked upon its panels with
+a loud and hasty summons. The second repetition of the noise produced
+the sentence, uttered in a very trembling voice, of “Who’s there?”
+
+“It is I, Clarence Linden,” replied our hero; “lose no time in opening
+the door.”
+
+This answer seemed to reassure the valorous stock-jobber. He slowly
+undid the bolt, and turned the key.
+
+“In Heaven’s name, what do you want, Mr. Linden?” said he.
+
+“Ay,” cried a sharp voice from the more internal recesses of the
+chamber, “what do you want, sir, disturbing us in the bosom of our
+family and at the dead of night?”
+
+With a rapid voice, Clarence repeated what he had seen, and requested
+the broker to accompany him to Talbot’s house, or at least to lend him
+his pistols.
+
+“He shall do no such thing,” cried Mrs. Copperas. “Come here, Mr. C.,
+and shut the door directly.”
+
+“Stop, my love,” said the stock-jobber, “stop a moment.”
+
+“For God’s sake,” cried Clarence, “make no delay; the poor old man may
+be murdered by this time.”
+
+“It’s no business of mine,” said the stock-jobber. “If Adolphus had not
+broken the rattle I would not have minded the trouble of springing it;
+but you are very much mistaken if you think I am going to leave my warm
+bed in order to have my throat cut.”
+
+“Then give me your pistols,” cried Clarence; “I will go alone.”
+
+“I shall commit no such folly,” said the stock-jobber; “if you are
+murdered, I may have to answer it to your friends and pay for your
+burial. Besides, you owe us for your lodgings: go to your bed, young
+man, as I shall to mine.” And, so saying, Mr. Copperas proceeded to
+close the door.
+
+But enraged at the brutality of the man and excited by the urgency of
+the case, Clarence did not allow him so peaceable a retreat. With
+a strong and fierce grasp, he seized the astonished Copperas by the
+throat, and shaking him violently, forced his own entrance into the
+sacred nuptial chamber.
+
+“By Heaven,” cried Linden, in a savage and stern tone, for his blood
+was up. “I will twist your coward’s throat, and save the murderer his
+labour, if you do not instantly give me up your pistols.”
+
+The stock-jobber was panic-stricken. “Take them,” he cried, in the
+extremest terror; “there they are on the chimney-piece close by.”
+
+“Are they primed and loaded?” said Linden, not relaxing his gripe.
+
+“Yes, yes!” said the stock-jobber, “loose my throat, or you will choke
+me!” and at that instant, Clarence felt himself clasped by the invading
+hands of Mrs. Copperas.
+
+“Call off your wife,” said he, “or I will choke you!” and he tightened
+his hold, “and tell her to give me the pistols.”
+
+The next moment Mrs. Copperas extended the debated weapons towards
+Clarence. He seized them, flung the poor stock-jobber against the
+bedpost, hurried down stairs, opened the back door, which led into the
+garden, flew across the intervening space, arrived at the door, and
+entering Talbot’s garden, paused to consider what was the next step to
+be taken.
+
+A person equally brave as Clarence, but more cautious, would not have
+left the house without alarming Mr. de Warens, even in spite of the
+failure with his master; but Linden only thought of the pressure of time
+and the necessity of expedition, and he would have been a very unworthy
+hero of romance had he felt fear for two antagonists, with a brace of
+pistols at his command and a high and good action in view.
+
+After a brief but decisive halt, he proceeded rapidly round the
+house, in order to ascertain at which part the ruffians had admitted
+themselves, should they (as indeed there was little doubt) have already
+effected their entrance.
+
+He found the shutters of one of the principal rooms on the ground-floor
+had been opened, and through the aperture he caught the glimpse of a
+moving light, which was suddenly obscured. As he was about to enter, the
+light again flashed out: he drew back just in time, carefully screened
+himself behind the shutter, and, through one of the chinks, observed
+what passed within. Opposite to the window was a door which conducted to
+the hall and principal staircase; this door was open, and in the hall at
+the foot of the stairs Clarence saw two men; one carried a dark lantern,
+from which the light proceeded, and some tools, of the nature of which
+Clarence was naturally ignorant: this was a middle-sized muscular man,
+dressed in the rudest garb of an ordinary labourer; the other was much
+taller and younger, and his dress was of a rather less ignoble fashion.
+
+“Hist! hist!” said the taller one, in a low tone, “did you not hear a
+noise, Ben?”
+
+“Not a pin fall; but stow your whids, man!”
+
+This was all that Clarence heard in a connected form; but as the
+wretches paused, in evident doubt how to proceed, he caught two or three
+detached words, which his ingenuity readily formed into sentences. “No,
+no! sleeps to the left--old man above--plate chest; we must have the
+blunt too. Come, track up the dancers, and douse the glim.” And at
+the last words the light was extinguished, and Clarence’s quick and
+thirsting ear just caught their first steps on the stairs; they died
+away, and all was hushed.
+
+It had several times occurred to Clarence to rush from his hiding-place,
+and fire at the ruffians, and perhaps that measure would have been the
+wisest he could have taken; but Clarence had never discharged a pistol
+in his life, and he felt, therefore, that his aim must be uncertain
+enough to render a favourable position and a short distance essential
+requisites. Both these were, at present, denied to him; and although he
+saw no weapons about the persons of the villains, yet he imagined they
+would not have ventured on so dangerous an expedition without firearms;
+and if he failed, as would have been most probable, in his two shots, he
+concluded that, though the alarm would be given, his own fate would be
+inevitable.
+
+If this was reasoning upon false premises, for housebreakers seldom
+or never carry loaded firearms, and never stay for revenge, when their
+safety demands escape, Clarence may be forgiven for not knowing the
+customs of housebreakers, and for not making the very best of an
+extremely novel and dangerous situation.
+
+No sooner did he find himself in total darkness than he bitterly
+reproached himself for his late backwardness, and, inwardly resolving
+not again to miss any opportunity which presented itself, he entered
+the window, groped along the room into the hall, and found his way very
+slowly and after much circumlocution to the staircase.
+
+He had just gained the summit, when a loud cry broke upon the stillness:
+it came from a distance, and was instantly hushed; but he caught at
+brief intervals, the sound of angry and threatening voices. Clarence
+bent down anxiously, in the hope that some solitary ray would escape
+through the crevice of the door within which the robbers were engaged.
+But though the sounds came from the same floor as that on which he now
+trod, they seemed far and remote, and not a gleam of light broke the
+darkness.
+
+He continued, however, to feel his way in the direction from which the
+sounds proceeded, and soon found himself in a narrow gallery; the voices
+seemed more loud and near, as he advanced; at last he distinctly heard
+the words--
+
+“Will you not confess where it is placed?”
+
+“Indeed, indeed,” replied an eager and earnest voice, which Clarence
+recognized as Talbot’s, “this is all the money I have in the house,--the
+plate is above,--my servant has the key,--take it,--take all,--but save
+his life and mine.”
+
+“None of your gammon,” said another and rougher voice than that of the
+first speaker: “we know you have more blunt than this,--a paltry sum of
+fifty pounds, indeed!”
+
+“Hold!” cried the other ruffian, “here is a picture set with diamonds,
+that will do, Ben. Let go the old man.”
+
+Clarence was now just at hand, and probably from a sudden change in the
+position of the dark lantern within, a light abruptly broke from beneath
+the door and streamed along the passage.
+
+“No, no, no!” cried the old man, in a loud yet tremulous voice,--“no,
+not that, anything else, but I will defend that with my life.”
+
+“Ben, my lad,” said the ruffian, “twist the old fool’s neck we have no
+more time to lose.”
+
+At that very moment the door was flung violently open, and Clarence
+Linden stood within three paces of the reprobates and their prey. The
+taller villain had a miniature in his hand, and the old man clung to his
+legs with a convulsive but impotent clasp; the other fellow had
+already his gripe upon Talbot’s neck, and his right hand grasped a long
+case-knife.
+
+With a fierce and flashing eye, and a cheek deadly pale with internal
+and resolute excitement, Clarence confronted the robbers.
+
+“Thank Heaven,” cried he, “I am not too late!” And advancing yet another
+step towards the shorter ruffian, who struck mute with the suddenness
+of the apparition, still retained his grasp of the old man, he fired his
+pistol, with a steady and close aim; the ball penetrated the wretch’s
+brain, and without sound or sigh, he fell down dead, at the very feet
+of his just destroyer. The remaining robber had already meditated, and
+a second more sufficed to accomplish, his escape. He sprang towards the
+door: the ball whizzed beside him, but touched him not. With a safe
+and swift step, long inured to darkness, he fled along the passage; and
+Linden, satisfied with the vengeance he had taken upon his comrade, did
+not harass him with an unavailing pursuit.
+
+Clarence turned to assist Talbot. The old man was stretched upon the
+floor insensible, but his hand grasped the miniature which the plunderer
+had dropped in his flight and terror, and his white and ashen lip was
+pressed convulsively upon the recovered treasure.
+
+Linden raised and placed him on his bed, and while employed in
+attempting to revive him, the ancient domestic, alarmed by the report of
+the pistol, came, poker in hand, to his assistance. By little and little
+they recovered the object of their attention. His eyes rolled wildly
+round the room, and he muttered,--“Off, off! ye shall not rob me of my
+only relic of her,--where is it?--have you got it?--the picture, the
+picture!”
+
+“It is here, sir, it is here,” said the old servant; “it is in your own
+hand.”
+
+Talbot’s eye fell upon it; he gazed at it for some moments, pressed it
+to his lips, and then, sitting erect and looking wildly round, he seemed
+to awaken to the sense of his late danger and his present deliverance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+  Ah, fleeter far than fleetest storm or steed,
+   Or the death they bear,
+  The heart which tender thought clothes like a dove
+   With the wings of care!
+  In the battle, in the darkness, in the need,
+   Shall mine cling to thee!
+  Nor claim one smile for all the comfort, love,
+   It may bring to thee!--SHELLEY.
+
+
+
+LETTER FROM ALGERNON MORDAUNT TO ISABEL ST. LEGER.
+
+You told me not to write to you. You know how long, but not how
+uselessly I have obeyed you. Did you think, Isabel, that my love was
+of that worldly and common order which requires a perpetual aliment
+to support it? Did you think that, if you forbade the stream to flow
+visibly, its sources would be exhausted, and its channel dried up? This
+may be the passion of others; it is not mine. Months have passed since
+we parted, and since then you have not seen me; this letter is the first
+token you have received from a remembrance which cannot die. But do you
+think that I have not watched and tended upon you, and gladdened my eyes
+with gazing on your beauty when you have not dreamed that I was by? Ah,
+Isabel, your heart should have told you of it; mine would, had you been
+so near me!
+
+You receive no letters from me, it is true: think you that my hand and
+heart are therefore idle? No. I write to you a thousand burning lines:
+I pour out my soul to you; I tell you of all I suffer; my thoughts, my
+actions, my very dreams, are all traced upon the paper. I send them not
+to you, but I read them over and over, and when I come to your name, I
+pause and shut my eyes, and then “Fancy has her power,” and lo! “you are
+by my side!”
+
+Isabel, our love has not been a holiday and joyous sentiment; but I feel
+a solemn and unalterable conviction that our union is ordained.
+
+Others have many objects to distract and occupy the thoughts which are
+once forbidden a single direction, but we have none. At least, to me you
+are everything. Pleasure, splendour, ambition, all are merged into one
+great and eternal thought, and that is you!
+
+Others have told me, and I believed them, that I was hard and cold
+and stern: so perhaps I was before I knew you, but now I am weaker and
+softer than a child. There is a stone which is of all the hardest and
+the chillest, but when once set on fire it is unquenchable. You smile
+at my image, perhaps, and I should smile if I saw it in the writing of
+another; for all that I have ridiculed in romance as exaggerated seems
+now to me too cool and too commonplace for reality.
+
+But this is not what I meant to write to you; you are ill, dearest and
+noblest Isabel, you are ill! I am the cause, and you conceal it from
+me; and you would rather pine away and die than suffer me to lose one
+of those worldly advantages which are in my eyes but as dust in the
+balance,--it is in vain to deny it. I heard from others of your impaired
+health; I have witnessed it myself. Do you remember last night, when you
+were in the room with your relations, and they made you sing,--a song
+too which you used to sing to me, and when you came to the second stanza
+your voice failed you, and you burst into tears, and they, instead of
+soothing, reproached and chid you, and you answered not, but wept on?
+Isabel, do you remember that a sound was heard at the window and a
+groan? Even they were startled, but they thought it was the wind, for
+the night was dark and stormy, and they saw not that it was I: yes, my
+devoted, my generous love, it was I who gazed upon you, and from whose
+heart that voice of anguish was wrung; and I saw your cheek was pale and
+thin, and that the canker at the core had preyed upon the blossom.
+
+Think you, after this, that I could keep silence or obey your request?
+No, dearest, no! Is not my happiness your object? I have the vanity
+to believe so; and am I not the best judge how that happiness is to be
+secured? I tell you, I say it calmly, coldly, dispassionately,--not
+from the imagination, not even from the heart, but solely from the
+reason,--that I can bear everything rather than the loss of you; and
+that if the evil of my love scathe and destroy you, I shall consider
+and curse myself as your murderer! Save me from this extreme of misery,
+my--yes, my Isabel! I shall be at the copse where we have so often met
+before, to-morrow, at noon. You will meet me; and if I cannot convince
+you, I will not ask you to be persuaded. A. M.
+
+And Isabel read this letter, and placed it at her heart, and felt less
+miserable than she had done for months; for, though she wept, there
+was sweetness in the tears which the assurance of his love and the
+tenderness of his remonstrance had called forth. She met him: how could
+she refuse? and the struggle was past. Though not “convinced” she was
+“persuaded;” for her heart, which refused his reasonings, melted at his
+reproaches and his grief. But she would not consent to unite her fate
+with him at once, for the evils of that step to his interests
+were immediate and near; she was only persuaded to permit their
+correspondence and occasional meetings, in which, however imprudent they
+might be for herself, the disadvantages to her lover were distant and
+remote. It was of him only that she thought; for him she trembled; for
+him she was the coward and the woman; for herself she had no fears, and
+no forethought.
+
+And Algernon was worthy of this devoted love, and returned it as it was
+given. Man’s love, in general, is a selfish and exacting sentiment: it
+demands every sacrifice and refuses all. But the nature of Mordaunt was
+essentially high and disinterested, and his honour, like his love, was
+not that of the world: it was the ethereal and spotless honour of a
+lofty and generous mind, the honour which custom can neither give nor
+take away; and, however impatiently he bore the deferring of a union, in
+which he deemed that he was the only sufferer, he would not have uttered
+a sigh or urged a prayer for that union, could it, in the minutest or
+remotest degree, have injured or degraded her.
+
+These are the hearts and natures which make life beautiful; these are
+the shrines which sanctify love; these are the diviner spirits for whom
+there is kindred and commune with everything exalted and holy in heaven
+and earth. For them Nature unfolds her hoarded poetry and her hidden
+spells; for their steps are the lonely mountains, and the still woods
+have a murmur for their ears; for them there is strange music in the
+wave, and in the whispers of the light leaves, and rapture in the voices
+of the birds: their souls drink, and are saturated with the mysteries of
+the Universal Spirit, which the philosophy of old times believed to
+be God Himself. They look upon the sky with a gifted vision, and its
+dove-like quiet descends and overshadows their hearts; the Moon and the
+Night are to them wells of Castalian inspiration and golden dreams; and
+it was one of them who, gazing upon the Evening Star, felt in the inmost
+sanctuary of his soul its mysterious harmonies with his most worshipped
+hope, his most passionate desire, and dedicated it to--LOVE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+     Maria. Here’s the brave old man’s love, Bianca. That loves
+     the young man.         The Woman’s Prize; or, The Tamer
+     Tamed.
+
+“No, my dear Clarence, you have placed confidence in me, and it is now
+my duty to return it; you have told me your history and origin, and I
+will inform you of mine, but not yet. At present we will talk of you.
+You have conferred upon me what our universal love of life makes us
+regard as the greatest of human obligations; and though I can bear a
+large burden of gratitude, yet I must throw off an atom or two in using
+my little power in your behalf. Nor is this all: your history has also
+given you another tie upon my heart, and, in granting you a legitimate
+title to my good offices, removes any scruple you might otherwise have
+had in accepting them.”
+
+“I have just received this letter from Lord ----, the minister for
+foreign affairs: you will see that he has appointed you to the office
+of attache at ----. You will also oblige me by looking over this other
+letter at your earliest convenience; the trifling sum which it contains
+will be repeated every quarter; it will do very well for an attache:
+when you are an ambassador, why, we must equip you by a mortgage on
+Scarsdale; and now, my dear Clarence, tell me all about the Copperases.”
+
+I need not say who was the speaker of the above sentences: sentences
+apparently of a very agreeable nature; nevertheless, Clarence seemed to
+think otherwise, for the tears gushed into his eyes, and he was unable
+for several moments to reply.
+
+“Come, my young friend,” said Talbot, kindly; “I have no near relations
+among whom I can choose a son I like better than you, nor you any
+at present from whom you might select a more desirable father:
+consequently, you must let me look upon you as my own flesh and blood;
+and, as I intend to be a very strict and peremptory father, I expect the
+most silent and scrupulous obedience to my commands. My first parental
+order to you is to put up those papers, and to say nothing more about
+them; for I have a great deal to talk to you about upon other subjects.”
+
+And by these and similar kind-hearted and delicate remonstrances, the
+old man gained his point. From that moment Clarence looked upon him with
+the grateful and venerating love of a son; and I question very much,
+if Talbot had really been the father of our hero, whether he would have
+liked so handsome a successor half so well.
+
+The day after this arrangement, Clarence paid his debt to the Copperases
+and removed to Talbot’s house. With this event commenced a new era in
+his existence: he was no longer an outcast and a wanderer; out of alien
+ties he had wrought the link of a close and even paternal friendship;
+life, brilliant in its prospects and elevated in its ascent, opened
+flatteringly before him; and the fortune and courage which had so
+well provided for the present were the best omens and auguries for the
+future.
+
+One evening, when the opening autumn had made its approaches felt, and
+Linden and his new parent were seated alone by a blazing fire, and had
+come to a full pause in their conversation, Talbot, shading his face
+with the friendly pages of the “Whitehall Evening Paper,” as if to
+protect it from the heat, said,--
+
+“I told you, the other day, that I would give you, at some early
+opportunity, a brief sketch of my life. This confidence is due to you in
+return for yours; and since you will soon leave me, and I am an old
+man, whose life no prudent calculation can fix, I may as well choose the
+present time to favour you with my confessions.”
+
+Clarence expressed and looked his interest, and the old man thus
+commenced,--
+
+
+THE HISTORY OF A VAIN MAN.
+
+I was the favourite of my parents, for I was quick at my lessons, and my
+father said I inherited my genius from him; and comely in my person, and
+my mother said that my good looks came from her. So the honest pair saw
+in their eldest son the union of their own attractions, and thought they
+were making much of themselves when they lavished their caresses upon
+me. They had another son, poor Arthur,--I think I see him now! He was a
+shy, quiet, subdued boy, of a very plain personal appearance. My father
+and mother were vain, showy, ambitious people of the world, and they
+were as ashamed of my brother as they were proud of myself. However, he
+afterwards entered the army and distinguished himself highly. He died in
+battle, leaving an only daughter, who married, as you know, a nobleman
+of high rank. Her subsequent fate it is now needless to relate.
+
+Petted and pampered from my childhood, I grew up with a profound belief
+in my own excellences, and a feverish and irritating desire to impress
+every one who came in my way with the same idea. There is a sentence
+in Sir William Temple, which I have often thought of with a painful
+conviction of its truth: “A restlessness in men’s minds to be something
+they are not, and to have something they have not, is the root of all
+immorality.” [And of all good.--AUTHOR.] At school, I was confessedly
+the cleverest boy in my remove; and, what I valued equally as much, I
+was the best cricketer of the best eleven. Here, then, you will say
+my vanity was satisfied,--no such thing! There was a boy who shared my
+room, and was next me in the school; we were, therefore, always thrown
+together. He was a great stupid, lubberly cub, equally ridiculed by the
+masters and disliked by the boys. Will you believe that this individual
+was the express and almost sole object of my envy? He was more than
+my rival, he was my superior; and I hated him with all the unleavened
+bitterness of my soul.
+
+I have said he was my superior: it was in one thing. He could balance a
+stick, nay, a cricket-bat, a poker, upon his chin, and I could not; you
+laugh, and so can I now, but it was no subject of laughter to me
+then. This circumstance, trifling as it may appear to you, poisoned my
+enjoyment. The boy saw my envy, for I could not conceal it; and as all
+fools are malicious, and most fools ostentatious, he took a particular
+pride and pleasure in displaying his dexterity and showing off my
+discontent. You can form no idea of the extent to which this petty
+insolence vexed and disquieted me. Even in my sleep, the clumsy and
+grinning features of this tormenting imp haunted me like a spectre:
+my visions were nothing but chins and cricket-bats; walking-sticks,
+sustaining themselves upon human excrescences, and pokers dancing a
+hornpipe upon the tip of a nose. I assure you that I have spent hours in
+secret seclusion, practising to rival my hated comrade, and my face--see
+how one vanity quarrels with another--was little better than a mass of
+bruises and discolorations.
+
+I actually became so uncomfortable as to write home, and request to
+leave the school. I was then about sixteen, and my indulgent father, in
+granting my desire, told me that I was too old and too advanced in my
+learning to go to any other academic establishment than the University.
+The day before I left the school, I gave, as was usually the custom, a
+breakfast to all my friends; the circumstance of my tormentor’s sharing
+my room obliged me to invite him among the rest. However, I was in
+high spirits, and being a universal favourite with my schoolfellows, I
+succeeded in what was always to me an object of social ambition, and set
+the table in a roar; yet, when our festival was nearly expired, and I
+began to allude more particularly to my approaching departure, my
+vanity was far more gratified, for my feelings were far more touched, by
+observing the regret and receiving the good wishes of all my companions.
+I still recall that hour as one of the proudest and happiest of my
+life; but it had its immediate reverse. My evil demon put it into my
+tormentor’s head to give me one last parting pang of jealousy. A large
+umbrella happened accidentally to be in my room; Crompton--such was my
+schoolfellow’s name--saw and seized it. “Look here, Talbot,” said he,
+with his taunting and hideous sneer, “you can’t do this;” and placing
+the point of the umbrella upon his forehead, just above the eyebrow, he
+performed various antics round the room.
+
+At that moment I was standing by the fireplace, and conversing with
+two boys upon whom, above all others, I wished to leave a favourable
+impression. My foolish soreness on this one subject had been often
+remarked; and, as I turned in abrupt and awkward discomposure from the
+exhibition, I observed my two schoolfellows smile and exchange looks.
+I am not naturally passionate, and even at that age I had in ordinary
+cases great self-command; but this observation, and the cause which led
+to it, threw me off my guard. Whenever we are utterly under the command
+of one feeling, we cannot be said to have our reason: at that instant
+I literally believe I was beside myself. What! in the very flush of
+the last triumph that that scene would ever afford me; amidst the last
+regrets of my early friends, to whom I fondly hoped to bequeath a long
+and brilliant remembrance, to be thus bearded by a contemptible rival,
+and triumphed over by a pitiful yet insulting superiority; to close my
+condolences with laughter; to have the final solemnity of my career
+thus terminating in mockery; and ridicule substituted as an ultimate
+reminiscence in the place of an admiring regret; all this, too, to be
+effected by one so long hated, one whom I was the only being forbidden
+the comparative happiness of despising? I could not brook it; the
+insult, the insulter, were too revolting. As the unhappy buffoon
+approached me, thrusting his distorted face towards mine, I seized and
+pushed him aside, with a brief curse and a violent hand. The sharp
+point of the umbrella slipped; my action gave it impetus and weight; it
+penetrated his eye, and--spare me, spare me the rest. [This instance
+of vanity, and indeed the whole of Talbot’s history, is literally from
+facts.]
+
+The old man bent down, and paused for a few moments before he resumed.
+
+Crompton lost his eye, but my punishment was as severe as his. People
+who are very vain are usually equally susceptible, and they who feel
+one thing acutely will so feel another. For years, ay, for many years
+afterwards, the recollection of my folly goaded me with the bitterest
+and most unceasing remorse. Had I committed murder, my conscience could
+scarce have afflicted me more severely. I did not regain my self-esteem
+till I had somewhat repaired the injury I had done. Long after that
+time Crompton was in prison, in great and overwhelming distress. I
+impoverished myself to release him; I sustained him and his family till
+fortune rendered my assistance no longer necessary; and no triumphs were
+ever more sweet to me than the sacrifice I was forced to submit to, in
+order to restore him to prosperity.
+
+It is natural to hope that this accident had at least the effect of
+curing me of my fault; but it requires philosophy in yourself, or your
+advisers, to render remorse of future avail. How could I amend my
+fault, when I was not even aware of it? Smarting under the effects,
+I investigated not the cause, and I attributed to irascibility and
+vindictiveness what had a deeper and more dangerous origin.
+
+At college, in spite of all my advantages of birth, fortune, health, and
+intellectual acquirements, I had many things besides the one enemy of
+remorse to corrode my tranquillity of mind. I was sure to find some one
+to excel me in something, and this was enough to embitter my peace. Our
+living Goldsmith is my favourite poet, and I perhaps insensibly
+venerate the genius the more because I find something congenial in the
+infirmities of the man. I can fully credit the anecdotes recorded
+of him. I, too, could once have been jealous of a puppet handling a
+spontoon; I, too, could once have been miserable if two ladies at the
+theatre were more the objects of attention than myself! You, Clarence,
+will not despise me for this confession; those who knew me less would.
+Fools! there is no man so great as not to have some littleness more
+predominant than all his greatness. Our virtues are the dupes, and often
+only the playthings, of our follies! smile, but it is mournfully, in
+looking back to that day. Though rich, high-born, and good-looking, I
+possessed not one of these three qualities in that eminence which could
+alone satisfy my love of superiority and desire of effect. I knew this
+somewhat humiliating truth, for, though vain, I was not conceited.
+Vanity, indeed, is the very antidote to conceit; for while the former
+makes us all nerve to the opinion of others, the latter is perfectly
+satisfied with its opinion of itself.
+
+I knew this truth, and as Pope, if he could not be the greatest of
+poets, resolved to be the most correct, so I strove, since I could not
+be the handsomest, the wealthiest, and the noblest of my contemporaries,
+to excel them, at least, in the grace and consummateness of manner; and
+in this after incredible pains, after diligent apprenticeship in the
+world and intense study in the closet, I at last flattered myself that
+I had succeeded. Of all success, while we are yet in the flush of youth
+and its capacities of enjoyment, I can imagine none more intoxicating or
+gratifying than the success of society, and I had certainly some years
+of its triumph and eclat. I was courted, followed, flattered, and sought
+by the most envied and fastidious circles in England and even in Paris;
+for society, so indifferent to those who disdain it, overwhelms with
+its gratitude--profuse though brief--those who devote themselves to its
+amusement. The victim to sameness and ennui, it offers, like the pallid
+and luxurious Roman, a reward for a new pleasure: and as long as our
+industry or talent can afford the pleasure, the reward is ours. At
+that time, then, I reaped the full harvest of my exertions: the
+disappointment and vexation were of later date.
+
+I now come to the great era of my life,--Love. Among my acquaintance was
+Lady Mary Walden, a widow of high birth, and noble though not powerful
+connections. She lived about twenty miles from London in a beautiful
+retreat; and, though not rich, her jointure, rendered ample by economy,
+enabled her to indulge her love of society. Her house was always as
+full as its size would permit, and I was among the most welcome of its
+visitors. She had an only daughter: even now, through the dim mists of
+years, that beautiful and fairy form rises still and shining before me,
+undimmed by sorrow, unfaded by time. Caroline Walden was the object
+of general admiration, and her mother, who attributed the avidity with
+which her invitations were accepted by all the wits and fine gentlemen
+of the day to the charms of her own conversation, little suspected the
+face and wit of her daughter to be the magnet of attraction. I had no
+idea at that time of marriage, still less could I have entertained such
+a notion, unless the step had greatly exalted my rank and prospects.
+
+The poor and powerless Caroline Walden was therefore the last person
+for whom I had what the jargon of mothers term “serious intentions.”
+ However, I was struck with her exceeding loveliness and amused by the
+vivacity of her manners; moreover, my vanity was excited by the hope
+of distancing all my competitors for the smiles of the young beauty.
+Accordingly I laid myself out to please, and neglected none of those
+subtle and almost secret attentions which, of all flatteries, are the
+most delicate and successful; and I succeeded. Caroline loved me with
+all the earnestness and devotion which characterize the love of woman.
+It never occurred to her that I was only trifling with those affections
+which it seemed so ardently my intention to win. She knew that my
+fortune was large enough to dispense with the necessity of fortune with
+my wife, and in birth she would have equalled men of greater pretensions
+to myself; added to this, long adulation had made her sensible though
+not vain of her attractions, and she listened with a credulous ear to
+the insinuated flatteries I was so well accustomed to instil.
+
+Never shall I forget--no, though I double my present years--the shock,
+the wildness of despair with which she first detected the selfishness
+of my homage; with which she saw that I had only mocked her trusting
+simplicity; and that while she had been lavishing the richest treasures
+of her heart before the burning altars of Love, my idol had been Vanity
+and my offerings deceit. She tore herself from the profanation of my
+grasp; she shrouded herself from my presence. All interviews with me
+were rejected; all my letters returned to me unopened; and though, in
+the repentance of my heart, I entreated, I urged her to accept vows that
+were no longer insincere, her pride became her punishment, as well as
+my own. In a moment of bitter and desperate feeling; she accepted the
+offers of another, and made the marriage bond a fatal and irrevocable
+barrier to our reconciliation and union.
+
+Oh, how I now cursed my infatuation! how passionately I recalled the
+past! how coldly I turned from the hollow and false world, to whose
+service I had sacrificed my happiness, to muse and madden over the
+prospects I had destroyed and the loving and noble heart I had rejected!
+Alas! after all, what is so ungrateful as that world for which we
+renounce so much? Its votaries resemble the Gymnosophists of old, and
+while they profess to make their chief end pleasure, we can only learn
+that they expose themselves to every torture and every pain!
+
+Lord Merton, the man whom Caroline now called husband, was among the
+wealthiest and most dissipated of his order; and two years after our
+separation I met once more with the victim of my unworthiness, blazing
+in “the full front” of courtly splendour, the leader of its gayeties and
+the cynosure of her followers. Intimate with the same society, we were
+perpetually cast together, and Caroline was proud of displaying the
+indifference towards me, which, if she felt not, she had at least learnt
+artfully to assume. This indifference was her ruin. The depths of my
+evil passion were again sounded and aroused, and I resolved yet to
+humble the pride and conquer the coldness which galled to the very quick
+the morbid acuteness of my self-love. I again attached myself to her
+train; I bowed myself to the very dust before her. What to me were
+her chilling reply and disdainful civilities?---only still stronger
+excitements to persevere.
+
+I spare you and myself the gradual progress of my schemes. A woman may
+recover her first passion, it is true; but then she must replace it with
+another. That other was denied to Caroline: she had not even children
+to engross her thoughts and to occupy her affections; and the gay world,
+which to many becomes an object, was to her only an escape.
+
+Clarence, my triumph came! Lady Walden (who had never known our secret)
+invited me to her house: Caroline was there. In the same spot where we
+had so often stood before, and in which her earliest affections were
+insensibly breathed away, in that same spot I drew from her colourless
+and trembling lips the confession of her weakness, the restored and
+pervading power of my remembrance.
+
+But Caroline was a proud and virtuous woman: even while her heart
+betrayed her, her mind resisted; and in the very avowal of her
+unconquered attachment, she renounced and discarded me forever. I was
+not an ungenerous though a vain man; but my generosity was wayward,
+tainted, and imperfect. I could have borne the separation; I could have
+severed myself from her; I could have flown to the uttermost parts of
+the earth; I could have hoarded there my secret yet unextinguished
+love, and never disturbed her quiet by a murmur: but then the fiat of
+separation must have come from me! My vanity could not bear that her
+lips should reject me, that my part was not to be the nobility of
+sacrifice, but the submission of resignation. However, my better
+feelings were aroused, and though I could not stifle I concealed my
+selfish repinings. We parted: she returned to town; I buried myself in
+the country; and, amidst the literary studies to which, though by fits
+and starts, I was passionately devoted, I endeavoured to forget my
+ominous and guilty love.
+
+But I was then too closely bound to the world not to be perpetually
+reminded of its events. My retreat was thronged with occasional
+migrators from London; my books were mingled with the news and scandal
+of the day. All spoke to me of Lady Merton; not as I loved to picture
+her to myself, pale and sorrowful, and brooding over my image; but gay,
+dissipated, the dispenser of smiles, the prototype of joy. I contrasted
+this account of her with the melancholy and gloom of my own feelings,
+and I resented her seeming happiness as an insult to myself.
+
+In this angry and fretful mood I returned to London. My empire was
+soon resumed; and now, Linden, comes the most sickening part of my
+confessions. Vanity is a growing and insatiable disease: what seems to
+its desires as wealth to-day, to-morrow it rejects as poverty. I was at
+first contented to know that I was beloved; by degrees, slow, yet sure,
+I desired that others should know it also. I longed to display my power
+over the celebrated and courted Lady Merton; and to put the last crown
+to my reputation and importance. The envy of others is the food of
+our own self-love. Oh, you know not, you dream not, of the galling
+mortifications to which a proud woman, whose love commands her pride,
+is subjected! I imposed upon Caroline the most humiliating, the most
+painful trials; I would allow her to see none but those I pleased; to
+go to no place where I withheld my consent; and I hesitated not to exert
+and testify my power over her affections, in proportion to the publicity
+of the opportunity.
+
+Yet, with all this littleness, would you believe that I loved Caroline
+with the most ardent and engrossing passion? I have paused behind her,
+in order to kiss the ground she trod on; I have stayed whole nights
+beneath her window, to catch one glimpse of her passing form, even
+though I had spent hours of the daytime in her society; and, though my
+love burned and consumed me like a fire, I would not breathe a single
+wish against her innocence, or take advantage of my power to accomplish
+what I knew from her virtue and pride no atonement could possibly repay.
+Such are the inconsistencies of the heart, and such, while they prevent
+our perfection, redeem us from the utterness of vice! Never, even in
+my wildest days, was I blind to the glory of virtue, yet never, till
+my latest years, have I enjoyed the faculty to avail myself of my
+perception. I resembled the mole, which by Boyle is supposed to possess
+the idea of light, but to be unable to comprehend the objects on which
+it shines.
+
+Among the varieties of my prevailing sin, was a weakness common enough
+to worldly men. While I ostentatiously played off the love I had excited
+I could not bear to show the love I felt. In our country, and perhaps,
+though in a less degree, in all other highly artificial states,
+enthusiasm or even feeling of any kind is ridiculous; and I could not
+endure the thought that my treasured and secret affections should be
+dragged from their retreat to be cavilled and carped at by--
+
+  “Every beardless, vain comparative.”
+
+This weakness brought on the catastrophe of my love; for, mark me,
+Clarence, it is through our weaknesses that our vices are punished!
+One night I went to a masquerade; and, while I was sitting in a remote
+corner, three of my acquaintances, whom I recognized, though they knew
+it not, approached and rallied me upon my romantic attachment to Lady
+Merton. One of them was a woman of a malicious and sarcastic wit; the
+other two were men whom I disliked, because their pretensions interfered
+with mine; they were diners-out and anecdote-mongers. Stung to the
+quick by their sarcasms and laughter, I replied in a train of mingled
+arrogance and jest; at last I spoke slightingly of the person in
+question; and these profane and false lips dared not only to disown the
+faintest love to that being who was more to me than all on earth, but
+even to speak of herself with ridicule and her affection with disdain.
+
+In the midst of this, I turned and beheld, within hearing, a figure
+which I knew upon the moment. O Heaven! the burning shame and agony of
+that glance! It raised its mask--I saw that blanched cheek, and that
+trembling lip! I knew that the iron had indeed entered into her soul.
+
+Clarence, I never beheld her again alive. Within a week from that time
+she was a corpse. She had borne much, suffered much, and murmured not;
+but this shock pressed too hard, came too home, and from the hand of
+him for whom she would have sacrificed all! I stood by her in death;
+I beheld my work; and I turned away, a wanderer and a pilgrim upon the
+face of the earth. Verily, I have had my reward.
+
+The old man paused, in great emotion; and Clarence, who could offer
+him no consolation, did not break the silence. In a few minutes Talbot
+continued--
+
+From that time the smile of woman was nothing to me: I seemed to grow
+old in a single day. Life lost to me all its objects. A dreary and
+desert blank stretched itself before me: the sounds of creation had only
+in my ears one voice; the past, the future, one image. I left my country
+for twenty years, and lived an idle and hopeless man in the various
+courts of the Continent.
+
+At the age of fifty I returned to England; the wounds of the past had
+not disappeared, but they were scarred over; and I longed, like the rest
+of my species, to have an object in view. At that age, if we have seen
+much of mankind and possess the talents to profit by our knowledge, we
+must be one of two sects,--a politician or a philosopher. My time was
+not yet arrived for the latter, so I resolved to become the former; but
+this was denied me, for my vanity had assumed a different shape. It is
+true that I cared no longer for the reputation women can bestow; but I
+was eager for the applause of men, and I did not like the long labour
+necessary to attain it. I wished to make a short road to my object, and
+I eagerly followed every turn but the right one, in the hopes of its
+leading me sooner to my goal.
+
+The great characteristic of a vain man in contradistinction to an
+ambitious man, his eternal obstacle to a high and honourable fame, is
+this: he requires for any expenditure of trouble too speedy a reward;
+he cannot wait for years, and climb, step by step, to a lofty object;
+whatever he attempts, he must seize at a single grasp. Added to this, he
+is incapable of an exclusive attention to one end; the universality of
+his cravings is not contented, unless it devours all; and thus he is
+perpetually doomed to fritter away his energies by grasping at the
+trifling baubles within his reach, and in gathering the worthless fruit
+which a single sun can mature.
+
+This, then, was my fault, and the cause of my failure. I could not give
+myself up to finance, nor puzzle through the intricacies of commerce:
+even the common parliamentary drudgeries of constant attendance and
+late hours were insupportable to me; and so after two or three “splendid
+orations,” as my friends termed them, I was satisfied with the puffs of
+the pamphleteers and closed my political career. I was now, then, the
+wit and the conversationalist. With my fluency of speech and variety
+of information, these were easy distinctions; and the popularity of a
+dinner-table or the approbation of a literary coterie consoled me for
+the more public and more durable applause I had resigned.
+
+But even this gratification did not last long. I fell ill; and the
+friends who gathered round the wit fled from the valetudinarian. This
+disgusted me, and when I was sufficiently recovered I again returned to
+the Continent. But I had a fit of misanthropy and solitude upon me, and
+so it was not to courts and cities, the scenes of former gayeties,
+that I repaired; on the contrary, I hired a house by one of the most
+sequestered of the Swiss lakes, and, avoiding the living, I surrendered
+myself without interruption or control to commune with the dead. I
+surrounded myself with books and pored with a curious and searching eye
+into those works which treat particularly upon “man.” My passions were
+over, my love of pleasure and society was dried up, and I had now
+no longer the obstacles which forbid us to be wise; I unlearned
+the precepts my manhood had acquired, and in my old age I commenced
+philosopher; Religion lent me her aid, and by her holy lamp my studies
+were conned and my hermitage illumined.
+
+There are certain characters which in the world are evil, and in
+seclusion are good: Rousseau, whom I knew well, is one of them. These
+persons are of a morbid sensitiveness, which is perpetually galled by
+collision with others. In short, they are under the dominion of VANITY;
+and that vanity, never satisfied and always restless in the various
+competitions of society, produces “envy, hatred, malice, and
+all uncharitableness!” but, in solitude, the good and benevolent
+dispositions with which our self-love no longer interferes have room to
+expand and ripen without being cramped by opposing interests: this will
+account for many seeming discrepancies in character. There are also
+some men in whom old age supplies the place of solitude, and Rousseau’s
+antagonist and mental antipodes, Voltaire, is of this order. The pert,
+the malignant, the arrogant, the lampooning author in his youth and
+manhood, has become in his old age the mild, the benevolent, and the
+venerable philosopher. Nothing is more absurd than to receive the
+characters of great men so implicitly upon the word of a biographer;
+and nothing can be less surprising than our eternal disputes upon
+individuals: for no man throughout life is the same being, and each
+season of our existence contradicts the characteristics of the last.
+
+And now in my solitude and my old age, a new spirit entered within me:
+the game in which I had engaged so vehemently was over for me; and I
+joined to my experience as a player my coolness as a spectator; I no
+longer struggled with my species, and I began insensibly to love them.
+I established schools and founded charities; and, in secret but active
+services to mankind, I employed my exertions and lavished my desires.
+
+From this amendment I date the peace of mind and elasticity which I now
+enjoy; and in my later years the happiness which I pursued in my youth
+and maturity so hotly, yet so ineffectually, has flown unsolicited to my
+breast.
+
+About five years ago I came again to England, with the intention of
+breathing my last in the country which gave me birth. I retired to
+my family home; I endeavoured to divert myself in agricultural
+improvements, and my rental was consumed in speculation. This did not
+please me long: I sought society,--society in Yorkshire! You may
+imagine the result: I was out of my element; the mere distance from
+the metropolis, from all genial companionship, sickened me with a vague
+feeling of desertion and solitude; for the first time in my life I
+felt my age and my celibacy. Once more I returned to town, a complaint
+attacked my lungs, the physicians recommended the air of this
+neighbourhood, and I chose the residence I now inhabit. Without being
+exactly in London, I can command its advantages, and obtain society as
+a recreation without buying it by restraint. I am not fond of new faces
+nor any longer covetous of show; my old servant therefore contented me:
+for the future, I shall, however, to satisfy your fears, remove to
+a safer habitation, and obtain a more numerous guard. It is, at all
+events, a happiness to me that Fate, in casting me here and exposing me
+to something of danger, has raised up in you a friend for my old age,
+and selected from this great universe of strangers one being to convince
+my heart that it has not outlived affection. My tale is done; may you
+profit by its moral!
+
+When Talbot said that our characters were undergoing a perpetual change
+he should have made this reservation,--the one ruling passion remains
+to the last; it may be modified, but it never departs; and it is these
+modifications which do, for the most part, shape out the channels of our
+change; or as Helvetius has beautifully expressed it, “we resemble those
+vessels which the waves still carry towards the south, when the north
+wind has ceased to blow;” but in our old age, this passion, having
+little to feed on, becomes sometimes dormant and inert, and then our
+good qualities rise, as it were from an incubus, and have their sway.
+
+Yet these cases are not common, and Talbot was a remarkable instance,
+for he was a remarkable man. His mind had not slept while the age
+advanced, and thus it had swelled as it were from the bondage of
+its earlier passions and prejudices. But little did he think, in the
+blindness of self-delusion,--though it was so obvious to Clarence,
+that he could have smiled if he had not rather inclined to weep at the
+frailties of human nature,--little did he think that the vanity which
+had cost him so much remained “a monarch still,” undeposed alike by
+his philosophy, his religion, or his remorse; and that, debarred
+by circumstances from all wider and more dangerous fields, it still
+lavished itself upon trifles unworthy of his powers and puerilities
+dishonouring his age. Folly is a courtesan whom we ourselves seek,
+whose favours we solicit at an enormous price, and who, like Lais,
+finds philosophers at her door scarcely less frequently than the rest of
+mankind!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+ Mrs. Trinket. What d’ye buy, what d’ye lack, gentlemen? Gloves, ribbons,
+ and essences,--ribbons, gloves, and essences.
+                          ETHEREGE.
+
+“And so, my love,” said Mr. Copperas, one morning at breakfast, to his
+wife, his right leg being turned over his left, and his dexter hand
+conveying to his mouth a huge morsel of buttered cake,--“and, so my
+love, they say that the old fool is going to leave the jackanapes all
+his fortune?”
+
+“They do say so, Mr. C.; for my part I am quite out of patience with the
+art of the young man; I dare say he is no better than he should be; he
+always had a sharp look, and for aught I know there may be more in
+that robbery than you or I dreamed of, Mr. Copperas. It was a pity,”
+ continued Mrs. Copperas, upbraiding her lord with true matrimonial
+tenderness and justice, for the consequences of his having acted from
+her advice,--“it was a pity, Mr. C., that you should have refused to
+lend him the pistols to go to the old fellow’s assistance, for then who
+knows but--”
+
+“I might have converted them into pocket pistols,” interrupted Mr. C.,
+“and not have overshot the mark, my dear--ha, ha, ha!”
+
+“Lord, Mr. Copperas, you are always making a joke of everything.”
+
+“No, my dear, for once I am making a joke of nothing.”
+
+“Well, I declare it’s shameful,” cried Mrs. Copperas, still following
+up her own indignant meditations, “and after taking such notice of
+Adolphus, too, and all!”
+
+“Notice, my dear! mere words,” returned Mr. Copperas, “mere words, like
+ventilators, which make a great deal of air, but never raise the wind;
+but don’t put yourself in a stew, my love, for the doctors say that
+copperas in a stew is poison!”
+
+At this moment Mr. de Warens, throwing open the door, announced Mr.
+Brown; that gentleman entered, with a sedate but cheerful air. “Well,
+Mrs. Copperas, your servant; any table-linen wanted? Mr. Copperas, how
+do you do? I can give you a hint about the stocks. Master Copperas,
+you are looking bravely; don’t you think he wants some new pinbefores,
+ma’am? But Mr. Clarence Linden, where is he? Not up yet, I dare say. Ah,
+the present generation is a generation of sluggards, as his worthy aunt,
+Mrs. Minden, used to say.”
+
+“I am sure,” said Mrs. Copperas, with a disdainful toss of the head,
+“I know nothing about the young man. He has left us; a very mysterious
+piece of business indeed, Mr. Brown; and now I think of it, I can’t help
+saying that we were by no means pleased with your introduction: and, by
+the by, the chairs you bought for us at the sale were a mere take-in, so
+slight that Mr. Walruss broke two of them by only sitting down.”
+
+“Indeed, ma’am?” said Mr. Brown, with expostulating gravity; “but then
+Mr. Walruss is so very corpulent. But the young gentleman, what of him?”
+ continued the broker, artfully turning from the point in dispute.
+
+“Lord, Mr. Brown, don’t ask me: it was the unluckiest step we ever made
+to admit him into the bosom of our family; quite a viper, I assure you;
+absolutely robbed poor Adolphus.”
+
+“Lord help us!” said Mr. Brown, with a look which “cast a browner
+horror” o’er the room, “who would have thought it? and such a pretty
+young man!”
+
+“Well,” said Mr. Copperas, who, occupied in finishing the buttered cake,
+had hitherto kept silence, “I must be off. Tom--I mean de Warens--have
+you stopped the coach?”
+
+“Yees, sir.”
+
+“And what coach is it?”
+
+“It be the Swallow, sir.”
+
+“Oh, very well. And now, Mr. Brown, having swallowed in the roll, I
+will e’en roll in the Swallow--Ha, ha, ha!--At any rate,” thought Mr.
+Copperas, as he descended the stairs, “he has not heard that before.”
+
+“Ha, ha!” gravely chuckled Mr. Brown, “what a very facetious, lively
+gentleman Mr. Copperas is. But touching this ungrateful young man, Mr.
+Linden, ma’am?”
+
+“Oh, don’t tease me, Mr. Brown, I must see after my domestics: ask Mr.
+Talbot, the old miser in the next house, the havarr, as the French say.”
+
+“Well, now,” said Mr. Brown, following the good lady down stairs, “how
+distressing for me! and to say that he was Mrs. Minden’s nephew, too!”
+
+But Mr. Brown’s curiosity was not so easily satisfied, and finding Mr.
+de Warens leaning over the “front” gate, and “pursuing with wistful
+eyes” the departing “Swallow,” he stopped, and, accosting him, soon
+possessed himself of the facts that “old Talbot had been robbed and
+murdered, but that Mr. Linden had brought him to life again; and that
+old Talbot had given him a hundred thousand pounds, and adopted him as
+his son; and that how Mr. Linden was going to be sent to foreign parts,
+as an ambassador, or governor, or great person; and that how meester and
+meeses were quite ‘cut up’ about it.”
+
+All these particulars having been duly deposited in the mind of
+Mr. Brown, they produced an immediate desire to call upon the young
+gentleman, who, to say nothing of his being so very nearly related to
+his old customer, Mrs. Minden, was always so very great a favourite with
+him, Mr. Brown.
+
+Accordingly, as Clarence was musing over his approaching departure,
+which was now very shortly to take place, he was somewhat startled by
+the apparition of Mr. Brown--“Charming day, sir,--charming day,” said
+the friend of Mrs. Minden,--“just called in to congratulate you. I have
+a few articles, sir, to present you with,--quite rarities, I assure
+you,--quite presents, I may say. I picked them up at a sale of the late
+Lady Waddilove’s most valuable effects. They are just the things, sir,
+for a gentleman going on a foreign mission. A most curious ivory
+chest, with an Indian padlock, to hold confidential letters,--belonged
+formerly, sir, to the Great Mogul; and a beautiful diamond snuff-box,
+sir, with a picture of Louis XIV. on it, prodigiously fine, and will
+look so loyal too: and, sir, if you have any old aunts in the country,
+to send a farewell present to, I have some charming fine cambric, a
+superb Dresden tea set, and a lovely little ‘ape,’ stuffed by the late
+Lady W. herself.”
+
+“My good sir,” began Clarence.
+
+“Oh, no thanks, sir,--none at all,--too happy to serve a relation of
+Mrs. Minden,--always proud to keep up family connections. You will be
+at home to-morrow, sir, at eleven; I will look in; your most humble
+servant, Mr. Linden.” And almost upsetting Talbot, who had just entered,
+Mr. Brown bowed himself out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+  He talked with open heart and tongue,
+   Affectionate and true;
+  A pair of friends, though I was young
+   And Matthew seventy-two.--WORDSWORTH.
+
+Meanwhile the young artist proceeded rapidly with his picture. Devoured
+by his enthusiasm, and utterly engrossed by the sanguine anticipation
+of a fame which appeared to him already won, he allowed himself no
+momentary interval of relaxation; his food was eaten by starts, and
+without stirring from his easel; his sleep was brief and broken by
+feverish dreams; he no longer roved with Clarence, when the evening
+threw her shade over his labours; all air and exercise he utterly
+relinquished; shut up in his narrow chamber, he passed the hours in a
+fervid and passionate self-commune, which, even in suspense from his
+work, riveted his thoughts the closer to its object. All companionship,
+all intrusion, he bore with irritability and impatience. Even Clarence
+found himself excluded from the presence of his friend; even his nearest
+relation, who doted on the very ground which he hallowed with his
+footstep, was banished from the haunted sanctuary of the painter; from
+the most placid of human beings, Warner seemed to have grown the most
+morose.
+
+Want of rest, abstinence from food, the impatience of the strained
+spirit and jaded nerves, all contributed to waste the health while they
+excited the genius of the artist. A crimson spot, never before seen
+there, burned in the centre of his pale cheek; his eye glowed with a
+brilliant but unnatural fire; his features grew sharp and attenuated;
+his bones worked from his whitening and transparent skin; and the soul
+and frame, turned from their proper and kindly union, seemed contesting,
+with fierce struggles, which should obtain the mastery and the triumph.
+
+But neither his new prospects nor the coldness of his friend diverted
+the warm heart of Clarence from meditating how he could most effectually
+serve the artist before he departed from the country, It was a peculiar
+object of desire to Warner that the most celebrated painter of the day,
+who was on terms of intimacy with Talbot, and who with the benevolence
+of real superiority was known to take a keen interest in the success
+of more youthful and inexperienced genius,--it was a peculiar object of
+desire to Warner, that Sir Joshua Reynolds should see his picture before
+it was completed; and Clarence, aware of this wish, easily obtained from
+Talbot a promise that it should be effected. That was the least service
+of his zeal touched by the earnestness of Linden’s friendship, anxious
+to oblige in any way his preserver, and well pleased himself to be the
+patron of merit, Talbot readily engaged to obtain for Warner whatever
+the attention and favour of high rank or literary distinction could
+bestow. “As for his picture,” said Talbot (when, the evening before
+Clarence’s departure, the latter was renewing the subject), “I shall
+myself become the purchaser, and at a price which will enable our friend
+to afford leisure and study for the completion of his next attempt; but
+even at the risk of offending your friendship, and disappointing your
+expectations, I will frankly tell you that I think Warner overrates,
+perhaps not his talents, but his powers; not his ability for doing
+something great hereafter, but his capacity of doing it at present. In
+the pride of his heart, he has shown me many of his designs, and I am
+somewhat of a judge: they want experience, cultivation, taste, and,
+above all, a deeper study of the Italian masters. They all have the
+defects of a feverish colouring, an ambitious desire of effect, a
+wavering and imperfect outline, an ostentatious and unnatural strength
+of light and shadow; they show, it is true, a genius of no ordinary
+stamp, but one ill regulated, inexperienced, and utterly left to its own
+suggestions for a model. However, I am glad he wishes for the opinion
+of one necessarily the best judge: let him bring the picture here by
+Thursday; on that day my friend has promised to visit me; and now let us
+talk of you and your departure.”
+
+The intercourse of men of different ages is essentially unequal: it must
+always partake more or less of advice on one side and deference on
+the other; and although the easy and unpedantic turn of Talbot’s
+conversation made his remarks rather entertaining than obviously
+admonitory, yet they were necessarily tinged by his experience, and
+regulated by his interest in the fortunes of his young friend.
+
+“My dearest Clarence,” said he, affectionately, “we are about to bid
+each other a long farewell. I will not damp your hopes and anticipations
+by insisting on the little chance there is that you should ever see me
+again. You are about to enter upon the great world, and have within
+you the desire and power of success; let me flatter myself that you can
+profit by my experience. Among the ‘Colloquia’ of Erasmus, there is a
+very entertaining dialogue between Apicius and a man who, desirous of
+giving a feast to a very large and miscellaneous party, comes to consult
+the epicure what will be the best means to give satisfaction to all.
+Now you shall be this Spudaeus (so I think he is called), and I will be
+Apicius; for the world, after all, is nothing more than a great feast of
+different strangers, with different tastes and of different ages, and
+we must learn to adapt ourselves to their minds, and our temptations to
+their passions, if we wish to fascinate or even to content them. Let me
+then call your attention to the hints and maxims which I have in this
+paper amused myself with drawing up for your instruction. Write to me
+from time to time, and I will, in replying to your letters, give you
+the best advice in my power. For the rest, my dear boy, I have only to
+request that you will be frank, and I, in my turn, will promise that
+when I cannot assist, I will never reprove. And now, Clarence, as the
+hour is late and you leave us early tomorrow, I will no longer detain
+you. God bless you and keep you. You are going to enjoy life,--I
+to anticipate death; so that you can find in me little congenial to
+yourself; but as the good Pope said to our Protestant countryman,
+‘Whatever the difference between us, I know well that an old man’s
+blessing is never without its value.’”
+
+As Clarence clasped his benefactor’s hand, the tears gushed from his
+eyes. Is there one being, stubborn as the rock to misfortune, whom
+kindness does not affect? For my part, kindness seems to me to come with
+a double grace and tenderness from the old; it seems in them the hoarded
+and long purified benevolence of years; as if it had survived and
+conquered the baseness and selfishness of the ordeal it had passed; as
+if the winds, which had broken the form, had swept in vain across the
+heart, and the frosts which had chilled the blood and whitened the thin
+locks had possessed no power over the warm tide of the affections. It
+is the triumph of nature over art; it is the voice of the angel which
+is yet within us. Nor is this all: the tenderness of age is twice
+blessed,--blessed in its trophies over the obduracy of encrusting and
+withering years, blessed because it is tinged with the sanctity of the
+grave; because it tells us that the heart will blossom even upon
+the precincts of the tomb, and flatters us with the inviolacy and
+immortality of love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+             Cannot I create,
+  Cannot I form, cannot I fashion forth
+  Another world, another universe?--KEATS.
+
+The next morning Clarence, in his way out of town, directed his carriage
+(the last and not the least acceptable present from Talbot) to stop at
+Warner’s door. Although it was scarcely sunrise, the aged grandmother
+of the artist was stirring, and opened the door to the early visitor.
+Clarence passed her with a brief salutation, hurried up the narrow
+stairs, and found himself in the artist’s chamber. The windows were
+closed, and the air of the room was confined and hot. A few books,
+chiefly of history and poetry, stood in confused disorder upon some
+shelves opposite the window. Upon a table beneath them lay a flute, once
+the cherished recreation of the young painter, but now long neglected
+and disused; and, placed exactly opposite to Warner, so that his eyes
+might open upon his work, was the high-prized and already more than
+half-finished picture.
+
+Clarence bent over the bed; the cheek of the artist rested upon his arm
+in an attitude unconsciously picturesque; the other arm was tossed
+over the coverlet, and Clarence was shocked to see how emaciated it had
+become. But ever and anon the lips of the sleeper moved restlessly, and
+words, low and inarticulate, broke out. Sometimes he started abruptly,
+and a bright but evanescent flush darted over his faded and hollow
+cheek; and once the fingers of the thin hand which lay upon the bed
+expanded and suddenly closed in a firm and almost painful grasp; it was
+then that for the first time the words of the artist became distinct.
+
+“Ay, ay,” he said, “I have thee, I have thee at last. Long, very long
+thou hast burnt up my heart like fuel, and mocked me, and laughed at
+my idle efforts; but now, now, I have thee. Fame, Honour, Immortality,
+whatever thou art called, I have thee, and thou canst not escape; but it
+is almost too late!” And, as if wrung by some sudden pain, the sleeper
+turned heavily round, groaned audibly, and awoke.
+
+“My friend,” said Clarence, soothingly, and taking his hand, “I have
+come to bid you farewell. I am just setting off for the Continent, but I
+could not leave England without once more seeing you. I have good news,
+too, for you.” And Clarence proceeded to repeat Talbot’s wish that
+Warner should bring the picture to his house on the following Thursday,
+that Sir Joshua might inspect it. He added also, in terms the flattery
+of which his friendship could not resist exaggerating, Talbot’s desire
+to become the purchaser of the picture.
+
+“Yes,” said the artist, as his eye glanced delightedly over his labour;
+“yes, I believe when it is once seen there will be many candidates!”
+
+“No doubt,” answered Clarence; “and for that reason you cannot blame
+Talbot for wishing to forestall all other competitors for the prize;”
+ and then, continuing the encouraging nature of the conversation,
+Clarence enlarged upon the new hopes of his friend, besought him to
+take time, to spare his health, and not to injure both himself and his
+performance by over-anxiety and hurry. Clarence concluded by retailing
+Talbot’s assurance that in all cases and circumstances he (Talbot)
+considered himself pledged to be Warner’s supporter and friend.
+
+With something of impatience, mingled with pleasure, the painter
+listened to all these details; nor was it to Linden’s zeal nor to
+Talbot’s generosity, but rather to the excess of his own merit, that he
+secretly attributed the brightening prospect offered him.
+
+The indifference which Warner, though of a disposition naturally kind,
+evinced at parting with a friend who had always taken so strong an
+interest in his behalf, and whose tears at that moment contrasted
+forcibly enough with the apathetic coldness of his own farewell, was a
+remarkable instance how acute vividness on a single point will deaden
+feeling on all others. Occupied solely and burningly with one intense
+thought, which was to him love, friendship, health, peace, wealth,
+Warner could not excite feelings, languid and exhausted with many and
+fiery conflicts, to objects of minor interest, and perhaps he inwardly
+rejoiced that his musings and his study would henceforth be sacred even
+from friendship.
+
+Deeply affected, for his nature was exceedingly unselfish, generous,
+and susceptible, Clarence tore himself away, placed in the grandmother’s
+hand a considerable portion of the sum he had received from Talbot,
+hurried into his carriage, and found himself on the high road to
+fortune, pleasure, distinction, and the Continent.
+
+But while Clarence, despite of every advantage before him, hastened to
+a court of dissipation and pleasure, with feelings in which regretful
+affection for those he had left darkened his worldly hopes and mingled
+with the sanguine anticipations of youth, Warner, poor, low-born, wasted
+with sickness, destitute of friends, shut out by his temperament from
+the pleasures of his age, burned with hopes far less alloyed than those
+of Clarence, and found in them, for the sacrifice of all else, not only
+a recompense, but a triumph.
+
+Thursday came. Warner had made one request to Talbot, which had with
+difficulty been granted: it was that he himself might unseen be the
+auditor of the great painter’s criticisms, and that Sir Joshua should be
+perfectly unaware of his presence. It had been granted with difficulty,
+because Talbot wished to spare Warner the pain of hearing remarks which
+he felt would be likely to fall far short of the sanguine self-elation
+of the young artist; and it had been granted because Talbot imagined
+that, even should this be the case, the pain would be more than
+counterbalanced by the salutary effect it might produce. Alas! vanity
+calculates but poorly upon the vanity of others! What a virtue we should
+distil from frailty; what a world of pain we should save our brethren,
+if we would suffer our own weakness to be the measure of theirs!
+
+Thursday came: the painting was placed by the artist’s own hand in the
+most favourable light; a curtain, hung behind it, served as a screen
+for Warner, who, retiring to his hiding-place, surrendered his heart to
+delicious forebodings of the critic’s wonder and golden anticipations of
+the future destiny of his darling work. Not a fear dashed the full and
+smooth cup of his self-enjoyment. He had lain awake the whole of the
+night in restless and joyous impatience for the morrow. At daybreak he
+had started from his bed, he had unclosed his shutters, he had hung over
+his picture with a fondness greater, if possible, than he had ever known
+before! like a mother, he felt as if his own partiality was but a part
+of a universal tribute; and, as his aged relative, turning her dim eyes
+to the painting, and, in her innocent idolatry, rather of the artist
+than his work, praised and expatiated and foretold, his heart whispered,
+“If it wring this worship from ignorance, what will be the homage of
+science?”
+
+He who first laid down the now hackneyed maxim that diffidence is the
+companion of genius knew very little of the workings of the human heart.
+True, there may have been a few such instances, and it is probable that
+in this maxim, as in most, the exception made the rule. But what could
+ever reconcile genius to its sufferings, its sacrifices, its fevered
+inquietudes, the intense labour which can alone produce what the shallow
+world deems the giant offspring of a momentary inspiration: what
+could ever reconcile it to these but the haughty and unquenchable
+consciousness of internal power; the hope which has the fulness of
+certainty that in proportion to the toil is the reward; the sanguine and
+impetuous anticipation of glory, which bursts the boundaries of time and
+space, and ranges immortality with a prophet’s rapture? Rob Genius of
+its confidence, of its lofty self-esteem, and you clip the wings of the
+eagle: you domesticate, it is true, the wanderer you could not hitherto
+comprehend, in the narrow bounds of your household affections; you abase
+and tame it more to the level of your ordinary judgments, but you take
+from it the power to soar; the hardihood which was content to brave the
+thundercloud and build its eyrie on the rock, for the proud triumph of
+rising above its kind, and contemplating with a nearer eye the majesty
+of heaven.
+
+But if something of presumption is a part of the very essence of genius,
+in Warner it was doubly natural, for he was still in the heat and flush
+of a design, the defects of which he had not yet had the leisure to
+examine; and his talents, self-taught and self-modelled, had
+never received either the excitement of emulation or the chill of
+discouragement from the study of the masterpieces of his art.
+
+The painter had not been long alone in his concealment before he heard
+steps; his heart beat violently, the door opened, and he saw, through
+a small hole which he had purposely made in the curtain, a man with a
+benevolent and prepossessing countenance, whom he instantly recognized
+as Sir Joshua Reynolds, enter the room, accompanied by Talbot. They
+walked up to the picture, the painter examined it closely, and in
+perfect silence. “Silence,” thought Warner, “is the best homage of
+admiration;” but he trembled with impatience to hear the admiration
+confirmed by words,--those words came too soon.
+
+“It is the work of a clever man, certainly,” said Sir Joshua; “but”
+ (terrible monosyllable) “of one utterly unskilled in the grand
+principles of his art--look here, and here, and here, for instance;” and
+the critic, perfectly unconscious of the torture he inflicted, proceeded
+to point out the errors of the work. Oh! the agony, the withering agony
+of that moment to the ambitious artist! In vain he endeavoured to bear
+up against the judgment,--in vain he endeavoured to persuade himself
+that it was the voice of envy which in those cold, measured, defining
+accents, fell like drops of poison upon his heart. He felt at once, and
+as if by a magical inspiration, the truth of the verdict; the scales
+of self-delusion fell from his eyes; by a hideous mockery, a kind of
+terrible pantomime, his goddess seemed at a word, a breath, transformed
+into a monster: life, which had been so lately concentrated into
+a single hope, seemed now, at once and forever, cramped, curdled,
+blistered into a single disappointment.
+
+“But,” said Talbot, who had in vain attempted to arrest the criticisms
+of the painter (who, very deaf at all times, was, at that time in
+particular, engrossed by the self-satisfaction always enjoyed by one
+expatiating on his favourite topic),--“but,” said Talbot, in a louder
+voice, “you own there is great genius in the design?”
+
+“Certainly, there is genius,” replied Sir Joshua, in a tone of calm and
+complacent good-nature; “but what is genius without culture? You say
+the artist is young, very young; let him take time: I do not say let
+him attempt a humbler walk; let him persevere in the lofty one he has
+chosen, but let him first retrace every step he has taken; let him
+devote days, months, years, to the most diligent study of the immortal
+masters of the divine art, before he attempts (to exhibit, at least)
+another historical picture. He has mistaken altogether the nature of
+invention: a fine invention is nothing more than a fine deviation
+from, or enlargement on, a fine model: imitation, if noble and general,
+insures the best hope of originality. Above all, let your young friend,
+if he can afford it, visit Italy.”
+
+“He shall afford it,” said Talbot, kindly, “for he shall have
+whatever advantages I can procure him; but you see the picture is only
+half-completed: he could alter it!”
+
+“He had better burn it!” replied the painter, with a gentle smile.
+
+And Talbot, in benevolent despair, hurried his visitor out of the room.
+He soon returned to seek and console the artist, but the artist was
+gone; the despised, the fatal picture, the blessing and curse of so many
+anxious and wasted hours, had vanished also with its creator.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+  What is this soul, then? Whence
+  Came it?--It does not seem my own, and I
+  Have no self-passion or identity!
+  Some fearful end must be--
+ ......
+  There never lived a mortal man, who bent
+  His appetite beyond his natural sphere,
+  But starved and died.--KEATS: Endymion.
+
+On entering his home, Warner pushed aside, for the first time in his
+life with disrespect, his aged and kindly relation, who, as if in
+mockery of the unfortunate artist stood prepared to welcome and
+congratulate his return. Bearing his picture in his arms, he rushed
+upstairs, hurried into his room, and locked the door. Hastily he tore
+aside the cloth which had been drawn over the picture; hastily and
+tremblingly he placed it upon the frame accustomed to support it, and
+then, with a long, long, eager, searching, scrutinizing glance, he
+surveyed the once beloved mistress of his worship. Presumption, vanity,
+exaggerated self-esteem, are, in their punishment, supposed to excite
+ludicrous not sympathetic emotion; but there is an excess of feeling,
+produced by whatever cause it may be, into which, in spite of ourselves,
+we are forced to enter. Even fear, the most contemptible of the
+passions, becomes tragic the moment it becomes an agony.
+
+“Well, well!” said Warner, at last, speaking very slowly, “it is
+over,--it was a pleasant dream,--but it is over,--I ought to be thankful
+for the lesson.” Then suddenly changing his mood and tone, he repeated,
+“Thankful! for what? that I am a wretch,--a wretch more utterly hopeless
+and miserable and abandoned than a man who freights with all his wealth,
+his children, his wife, the hoarded treasures and blessings of an
+existence, one ship, one frail, worthless ship, and, standing himself
+on the shore, sees it suddenly go down! Oh, was I not a fool,--a
+right noble fool,--a vain fool,--an arrogant fool,--a very essence and
+concentration of all things that make a fool, to believe such delicious
+marvels of myself! What, man!” (here his eye saw in the opposite
+glass his features, livid and haggard with disease, and the exhausting
+feelings which preyed within him)--“what, man! would nothing serve
+thee but to be a genius,--thee, whom Nature stamped with her curse!
+Dwarf-like and distorted, mean in stature and in lineament, thou wert,
+indeed, a glorious being to perpetuate grace and beauty, the majesties
+and dreams of art! Fame for thee, indeed--ha-ha! Glory--ha-ha! a
+place with Titian, Correggio, Raphael--ha--ha--ha! O, thrice modest,
+thrice-reasonable fool! But this vile daub; this disfigurement of
+canvas; this loathed and wretched monument of disgrace; this notable
+candidate for--ha--ha--immortality! this I have, at least, in my power.”
+ And seizing the picture, he dashed it to the ground, and trampled it
+with his feet upon the dusty boards, till the moist colours presented
+nothing but one confused and dingy stain.
+
+This sight seemed to recall him for a moment. He paused, lifted up
+the picture once more, and placed it on the table. “But,” he
+muttered, “might not this critic be envious? am I sure that he judged
+rightly--fairly? The greatest masters have looked askant and jealous at
+their pupils’ works. And then, how slow, how cold, how damned cold, how
+indifferently he spoke; why, the very art should have warmed him more.
+Could he have--No, no, no: it was true, it was! I felt the conviction
+thrill through me like a searing iron. Burn it--did he say--ay--burn it:
+it shall be done this instant.”
+
+And, hastening to the door, he undid the bolt. He staggered back as he
+beheld his old and nearest surviving relative, the mother of his father,
+seated upon the ground beside the door, terrified by the exclamations
+she did not dare to interrupt. She rose slowly, and with difficulty as
+she saw him; and, throwing around him the withered arms which had nursed
+his infancy, exclaimed, “My child!--my poor--poor child! what has come
+to you of late? you, who were so gentle, so mild, so quiet,--you are no
+longer the same,--and oh, my son, how ill you look: your father looked
+so just before he died!”
+
+“Ill!” said he, with a sort of fearful gayety, “ill--no: I never was so
+well; I have been in a dream till now; but I have woke at last. Why,
+it is true that I have been silent and shy, but I will be so no more.
+I will laugh, and talk, and walk, and make love, and drink wine, and be
+all that other men are. Oh, we will be so merry! But stay here, while I
+fetch a light.”
+
+“A light, my child, for what?”
+
+“For a funeral!” shouted Warner, and, rushing past her, he descended the
+stairs, and returned almost in an instant with a light.
+
+Alarmed and terrified, the poor old woman had remained motionless and
+weeping violently. Her tears Warner did not seem to notice; he pushed
+her gently into the room, and began deliberately, and without uttering a
+syllable, to cut the picture into shreds.
+
+“What are you about, my child?” cried the old woman “you are mad; it is
+your beautiful picture that you are destroying!”
+
+Warner did not reply, but going to the hearth, piled together, with nice
+and scrupulous care, several pieces of paper, and stick, and matches,
+into a sort of pyre; then, placing the shreds of the picture upon it, he
+applied the light, and the whole was instantly in a blaze.
+
+“Look, look!” cried he, in an hysterical tone, “how it burns and
+crackles and blazes! What master ever equalled it now?--no fault now
+in those colours,--no false tints in that light and shade! See how that
+flame darts up and soars!--that flame is my spirit! Look--is it not
+restless?--does it not aspire bravely?--why, all its brother flames
+are grovellers to it!--and now,--why don’t you look!--it
+falters--fades--droops--and--ha--ha--ha! poor idler, the fuel is
+consumed--and--it is darkness.”
+
+As Warner uttered these words his eyes reeled; the room swam before him;
+the excitement of his feeble frame had reached its highest pitch; the
+disease of many weeks had attained its crisis; and, tottering back a
+few paces, he fell upon the floor, the victim of a delirious and raging
+fever.
+
+But it was not thus that the young artist was to die. He was reserved
+for a death that, like his real nature, had in it more of gentleness and
+poetry. He recovered by slow degrees, and his mind, almost in spite of
+himself, returned to that profession from which it was impossible to
+divert the thoughts and musings of many years. Not that he resumed the
+pencil and the easel: on the contrary, he could not endure them in his
+sight; they appeared, to a mind festered and sore, like a memorial and
+monument of shame. But he nursed within him a strong and ardent desire
+to become a pilgrim to that beautiful land of which he had so often
+dreamed, and which the innocent destroyer of his peace had pointed out
+as the theatre of inspiration and the nursery of future fame.
+
+The physicians who, at Talbot’s instigation, attended him, looked at his
+hectic cheek and consumptive frame, and readily flattered his desire;
+and Talbot, no less interested in Warner’s behalf on his own account
+than bound by his promise to Clarence, generously extended to the
+artist that bounty which is the most precious prerogative of the rich.
+Notwithstanding her extreme age, his grandmother insisted upon attending
+him: there is in the heart of woman so deep a well of love that no
+age can freeze it. They made the voyage: they reached the shore of the
+myrtle and the vine, and entered the Imperial City. The air of Rome
+seemed at first to operate favourably upon the health of the English
+artist. His strength appeared to increase, his spirit to expand; and
+though he had relapsed into more than his original silence and reserve,
+he resumed, with apparent energy, the labours of the easel: so that
+they who looked no deeper than the surface might have imagined the scar
+healed, and the real foundation of future excellence begun.
+
+But while Warner most humbled himself before the gods of the pictured
+world; while the true principles of the mighty art opened in their
+fullest glory on his soul; precisely at this very moment shame and
+despondency were most bitter at his heart: and while the enthusiasm of
+the painter kindled, the ambition of the man despaired. But still he
+went on, transfusing into his canvas the grandeur and simplicity of the
+Italian school; still, though he felt palpably within him the creeping
+advance of the deadliest and surest enemy to fame, he pursued, with
+an unwearied ardour, the mechanical completion of his task; still, the
+morning found him bending before the easel, and the night brought to his
+solitary couch meditation rather than sleep. The fire, the irritability
+which he had evinced before his illness had vanished, and the original
+sweetness of his temper had returned; he uttered no complaint, he dwelt
+upon no anticipation of success; hope and regret seemed equally dead
+within him; and it was only when he caught the fond, glad eyes of his
+aged attendant that his own filled with tears, or that the serenity of
+his brow darkened into sadness.
+
+This went on for some months; till one evening they found the painter
+by his window, seated opposite to an unfinished picture. The pencil
+was still in his hand; the quiet of settled thought was still upon
+his countenance; the soft breeze of a southern twilight waved the hair
+livingly from his forehead; the earliest star of a southern sky lent
+to his cheek something of that subdued lustre which, when touched by
+enthusiasm, it had been accustomed to wear; but these were only the
+mockeries of life: life itself was no more! He had died, reconciled,
+perhaps, to the loss of fame, in discovering that Art is to be loved for
+itself, and not for the rewards it may bestow upon the artist.
+
+There are two tombs close to each other in the strangers’ burial-place
+at Rome: they cover those for whom life, unequally long, terminated in
+the same month. The one is of a woman, bowed with the burden of many
+years: the other darkens over the dust of the young artist.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+      Think upon my grief,
+  And on the justice of my flying hence,
+  To keep me from a most unholy match.--SHAKSPEARE.
+
+“But are you quite sure,” said General St. Leger, “are you quite sure
+that this girl still permits Mordaunt’s addresses?”
+
+“Sure!” cried Miss Diana St. Leger, “sure, General! I saw it with my own
+eyes. They were standing together in the copse, when I, who had long had
+my suspicions, crept up, and saw them; and Mr. Mordaunt held her hand,
+and kissed it every moment. Shocking and indecorous!”
+
+“I hate that man! as proud as Lucifer,” growled the General. “Shall we
+lock her up, or starve her?”
+
+“No, General, something better than that.”
+
+“What, my love? flog her?”
+
+“She’s too old for that, brother; we’ll marry her.”
+
+“Marry her!”
+
+“Yes, to Mr. Glumford; you know that he has asked her several times.”
+
+“But she cannot bear him.”
+
+“We’ll make her bear him, General St. Leger.”
+
+“But if she marries, I shall have nobody to nurse me when I have the
+gout.”
+
+“Yes, brother: I know of a nice little girl, Martha Richardson, your
+second cousin’s youngest daughter; you know he has fourteen children,
+and you may have them all, one after another, if you like.”
+
+“Very true, Diana; let the jade marry Mr. Glumford.”
+
+“She shall,” said the sister; “and I’ll go about it this very moment:
+meantime I’ll take care that she does not see her lover any more.”
+
+About three weeks after this conversation, Mordaunt, who had in vain
+endeavoured to see Isabel, who had not even heard from her, whose
+letters had been returned to him unopened, and who, consequently, was in
+despair, received the following note:--
+
+This is the first time I have been able to write to you, at least to get
+my letter conveyed: it is a strange messenger that I have employed, but
+I happened formerly to make his acquaintance; and accidentally
+seeing him to-day, the extremity of the case induced me to give him a
+commission which I could trust to no one else. Algernon, are not the
+above sentences written with admirable calmness? are they not very
+explanatory, very consistent, very cool? and yet do you know that I
+firmly believe I am going mad? My brain turns round and round, and my
+hand burns so that I almost think that, like our old nurse’s stories of
+the fiend, it will scorch the paper as I write. And I see strange faces
+in my sleep and in my waking, all mocking at me, and they torture and
+aunt met and when I look at those faces I see no human relenting, no!
+though I weep and throw myself on my knees and implore them to save me.
+Algernon, my only hope is in you. You know that I have always hitherto
+refused to ruin you, and even now, though I implore you to deliver me, I
+will not be so selfish as--as--I know not what I write, but if I cannot
+be your wife--I will not be his! No! if they drag me to church, it shall
+be to my grave, not my bridal.                     ISABEL ST. LEGER.
+
+When Mordaunt had read this letter, which, in spite of its incoherence,
+his fears readily explained, he rose hastily; his eyes rested upon a
+sober-looking man, clad in brown. The proud love no spectators to their
+emotions.
+
+“Who are you, sir?” said Algernon, quickly.
+
+“Morris Brown,” replied the stranger, coolly and civilly. “Brought that
+letter to you, sir; shall be very happy to serve you with anything
+else; just fitted out a young gentleman as ambassador, a nephew to Mrs.
+Minden,--very old friend of mine. Beautiful slabs you have here, sir,
+but they want a few knick-knacks; shall be most happy to supply you; got
+a lovely little ape, sir, stuffed by the late Lady Waddilove; it would
+look charming with this old-fashioned carving; give the room quite the
+air of a museum.”
+
+“And so,” said Mordaunt, for whose ear the eloquence of Mr. Brown
+contained only one sentence, “and so you brought this note, and will
+take back my answer?”
+
+“Yes, sir; anything to keep up family connections; I knew a Lady Morden
+very well,--very well indeed, sir,--a relation of yours, I presume, by
+the similarity of the name; made her very valuable presents; shall be
+most happy to do the same to you, when you are married, sir. You will
+refurnish the house, I suppose? Let me see; fine proportions to this
+room, sir; about thirty-six feet by twenty-eight; I’ll do the thing
+twenty per cent cheaper than the trade; and touching the lovely
+little--”
+
+“Here,” interrupted Mordaunt, “you will take back this note, and be
+sure that Miss Isabel St. Leger has it as soon as possible; oblige me by
+accepting this trifle,--a trifle indeed compared with my gratitude, if
+this note reaches its destination safely.”
+
+“I am sure,” said Mr. Brown, looking with surprise at the gift, which
+he held with no unwilling hand, “I am sure, sir, that you are very
+generous, and strongly remind me of your relation, Lady Morden; and
+if you would like the lovely little ape as a present--I mean really a
+present--you shall have it, Mr. Mordaunt.”
+
+But Mr. Mordaunt had left the room, and the sober Morris, looking round,
+and cooling in his generosity, said to himself, “It is well he did not
+hear me, however; but I hope he will marry the nice young lady, for I
+love doing a kindness. This house must be refurnished; no lady will like
+these old-fashioned chairs.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+  Squire and fool are the same thing here--FARQUHAR.
+
+        In such a night
+  Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew,
+  And, with an unthrift love, did run from Venice.---SHAKSPEARE.
+
+The persecutions which Isabel had undergone had indeed preyed upon her
+reason as well as her health; and, in her brief intervals of respite
+from the rage of the uncle, the insults of the aunt, and, worse than
+all, the addresses of the intended bridegroom, her mind, shocked and
+unhinged, reverted with such intensity to the sufferings she endured as
+to give her musings the character of insanity. It was in one of these
+moments that she had written to Mordaunt; and had the contest continued
+much longer the reason of the unfortunate and persecuted girl would have
+totally deserted her.
+
+She was a person of acute, and even poignant, sensibilities, and these
+the imperfect nature of her education had but little served to guide
+or to correct; but as her habits were pure and good, the impulses which
+spring from habit were also sinless and exalted, and, if they erred,
+“they leaned on virtue’s side,” and partook rather of a romantic
+and excessive generosity than of the weakness of womanhood or the
+selfishness of passion. All the misery and debasement of her equivocal
+and dependent situation had not been able to drive her into compliance
+with Mordaunt’s passionate and urgent prayers; and her heart was proof
+even to the eloquence of love, when that eloquence pointed towards the
+worldly injury and depreciation of her lover: but this new persecution
+was utterly unforeseen in its nature and intolerable from its cause. To
+marry another; to be torn forever from one in whom her whole heart was
+wrapped; to be forced not only to forego his love, but to feel that the
+very thought of him was a crime,--all this, backed by the vehement and
+galling insults of her relations, and the sullen and unmoved meanness of
+her intended bridegroom, who answered her candour and confession with a
+stubborn indifference and renewed overtures, made a load of evil which
+could neither be borne with resignation nor contemplated with patience.
+
+She was sitting, after she had sent her letter, with her two relations,
+for they seldom trusted her out of their sight, when Mr. Glumford was
+announced. Now, Mr. George Glumford was a country gentleman of what
+might be termed a third-rate family in the county: he possessed about
+twelve hundred a year, to say nothing of the odd pounds, shillings, and
+pence, which, however, did not meet with such contempt in his memory or
+estimation; was of a race which could date as far back as Charles the
+Second; had been educated at a country school with sixty others, chiefly
+inferior to himself in rank; and had received the last finish at a
+very small hall at Oxford. In addition to these advantages, he had been
+indebted to nature for a person five feet eight inches high, and stout
+in proportion; for hair very short, very straight, and of a red hue,
+which even through powder cast out a yellow glow; for an obstinate
+dogged sort of nose, beginning in snub, and ending in bottle; for cold,
+small, gray eyes, a very small mouth, pinched up and avaricious; and
+very large, very freckled, yet rather white hands, the nails of which
+were punctiliously cut into a point every other day, with a pair of
+scissors which Mr. Glumford often boasted had been in his possession
+since his eighth year; namely, for about thirty-two legitimate
+revolutions of the sun.
+
+He was one of those persons who are equally close and adventurous; who
+love the eclat of a little speculation, but take exceeding good care
+that it should be, in their own graceful phrase, “on the safe side of
+the hedge.” In pursuance of this characteristic of mind, he had
+resolved to fall in love with Miss Isabel St. Leger; for she being very
+dependent, he could boast to her of his disinterestedness, and hope that
+she would be economical through a principle of gratitude; and being
+the nearest relation to the opulent General St. Leger and his unmarried
+sister there seemed to be every rational probability of her inheriting
+the bulk of their fortunes. Upon these hints of prudence spake Mr.
+George Glumford.
+
+Now, when Isabel, partly in her ingenuous frankness, partly from the
+passionate promptings of her despair, revealed to him her attachment to
+another, and her resolution never, with her own consent, to become his,
+it seemed to the slow but not uncalculating mind of Mr. Glumford not by
+any means desirable that he should forego his present intentions, but
+by all means desirable that he should make this reluctance of Isabel
+an excuse for sounding the intentions and increasing the posthumous
+liberality of the East Indian and his sister.
+
+“The girl is of my nearest blood,” said the Major-General, “and if I
+don’t leave my fortune to her, who the devil should I leave it to, sir?”
+ and so saying, the speaker, who was in a fell paroxysm of the gout,
+looked so fiercely at the hinting wooer that Mr. George Glumford, who
+was no Achilles, was somewhat frightened, and thought it expedient to
+hint no more.
+
+“My brother,” said Miss Diana, “is so odd; but he is the most generous
+of men: besides, the girl has claims upon him.” Upon these speeches Mr.
+Glumford thought himself secure; and inly resolving to punish the
+fool for her sulkiness and bad taste as soon as he lawfully could, he
+continued his daily visits and told his sporting acquaintance that his
+time was coming.
+
+Revenons a nos moutons. Forgive this preliminary detail, and let us
+return to Mr. Glumford himself, whom we left at the door, pulling and
+fumbling at the glove which covered his right hand, in order to present
+the naked palm to Miss Diana St. Leger. After this act was performed,
+he approached Isabel, and drawing his chair near to her, proceeded
+to converse with her as the Ogre did with Puss in Boots; namely, “as
+civilly as an Ogre could do.”
+
+This penance had not proceeded far, before the door was again opened,
+and Mr. Morris Brown presented himself to the conclave.
+
+“Your servant, General; your servant, Madam. I took the liberty of
+coming back again, Madam, because I forgot to show you some very fine
+silks, the most extraordinary bargain in the world,--quite presents;
+and I have a Sevres bowl here, a superb article, from the cabinet of the
+late Lady Waddilove.”
+
+Now Mr. Brown was a very old acquaintance of Miss Diana St. Leger, for
+there is a certain class of old maids with whom our fair readers are no
+doubt acquainted, who join to a great love of expense a great love of
+bargains, and who never purchase at the regular place if they can find
+any irregular vendor. They are great friends of Jews and itinerants,
+hand-in-glove with smugglers, Ladies Bountiful to pedlers, are diligent
+readers of puffs and advertisements, and eternal haunters of sales and
+auctions. Of this class was Miss Diana a most prominent individual:
+judge, then, how acceptable to her was the acquaintance of Mr. Brown.
+That indefatigable merchant of miscellanies had, indeed, at a time
+when brokers were perhaps rather more rare and respectable than now, a
+numerous country acquaintance, and thrice a year he performed a sort
+of circuit to all his customers and connections; hence his visit to St.
+Leger House, and hence Isabel’s opportunity of conveying her epistle.
+
+“Pray,” said Mr. Glumford, who had heard much of Mr. Brown’s “presents”
+ from Miss Diana,--“pray don’t you furnish rooms, and things of that
+sort?”
+
+“Certainly, sir, certainly, in the best manner possible.”
+
+“Oh, very well; I shall want some rooms furnished soon,--a bedroom and
+a dressing-room, and things of that sort, you know. And so--perhaps
+you may have something in your box that will suit me, gloves or
+handkerchiefs or shirts or things of that sort.”
+
+“Yes, sir, everything, I sell everything,” said Mr. Brown, opening his
+box. “I beg pardon, Miss Isabel, I have dropped my handkerchief by your
+chair; allow me to stoop,” and Mr. Brown, stooping under the table,
+managed to effect his purpose; unseen by the rest, a note was slipped
+into Isabel’s hand, and under pretence of stooping too, she managed to
+secure the treasure. Love need well be honest if, even when it is most
+true, it leads us into so much that is false!
+
+Mr. Brown’s box was now unfolded before the eyes of the crafty Mr.
+Glumford, who, having selected three pair of gloves, offered the exact
+half of the sum demanded.
+
+Mr. Brown lifted up his hands and eyes.
+
+“You see,” said the imperturbable Glumford, “that if you let me have
+them for that, and they last me well, and don’t come unsewn, and stand
+cleaning, you’ll have my custom in furnishing the house, and rooms,
+and--things of that sort.”
+
+Struck with the grandeur of this opening, Mr. Brown yielded, and the
+gloves were bought.
+
+“The fool!” thought the noble George, laughing in his sleeve, “as if
+I should ever furnish the house from his box!” Strange that some men
+should be proud of being mean! The moment Isabel escaped to dress for
+dinner, she opened her lover’s note. It was as follows.--
+
+Be in the room, your retreat, at nine this evening. Let the window be
+left unclosed. Precisely at that hour I will be with you. I shall have
+everything in readiness for your flight. Be sure, dearest Isabel, that
+nothing prevents your meeting me there, even if all your house follow
+or attend you. I will bear you from all. Oh, Isabel! in spite of the
+mystery and wretchedness of your letter, I feel too happy, too blest at
+the thought that our fates will be at length united, and that the union
+is at hand. Remember nine.                          A. M.
+
+Love is a feeling which has so little to do with the world, a passion
+so little regulated by the known laws of our more steady and settled
+emotions, that the thoughts which it produces are always more or
+less connected with exaggeration and romance. To the secret spirit of
+enterprise which, however chilled by his pursuits and habits, still
+burned within Mordaunt’s breast, there was a wild pleasure in the
+thought of bearing off his mistress and his bride from the very home and
+hold of her false friends and real foes; while in the contradictions
+of the same passion, Isabel, so far from exulting at her approaching
+escape, trembled at her danger and blushed for her temerity; and the
+fear and the modesty of woman almost triumphed over her brief energy and
+fluctuating resolve.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+  We haste,-the chosen and the lovely bringing;
+   Love still goes with her from her place of birth;
+  Deep, silent joy, within her soul is springing,
+   Though in her glance the light no more is mirth.--Mrs. HEMANS.
+
+“Damn it!” said the General.
+
+“The vile creature!” cried Miss Diana.
+
+“I don’t understand things of that sort,” ejaculated the bewildered Mr.
+Glumford.
+
+“She has certainly gone,” said the valiant General.
+
+“Certainly!” grunted Miss Diana.
+
+“Gone!” echoed the bridegroom not to be.
+
+And she was gone! Never did more loving and tender heart forsake all,
+and cling to a more loyal and generous nature. The skies were darkened
+with clouds,--
+
+  “And the dim stars rushed through them rare and fast;”
+
+and the winds wailed with a loud and ominous voice; and the moon came
+forth, with a faint and sickly smile, from her chamber in the mist, and
+then shrank back, and was seen no more; but neither omen nor fear was
+upon Mordaunt’s breast, as it swelled beneath the dark locks of Isabel,
+which were pressed against it.
+
+As Faith clings the more to the cross of life, while the wastes deepen
+around her steps, and the adders creep forth upon her path, so love
+clasps that which is its hope and comfort the closer, for the desert
+which encompasses and the dangers which harass its way.
+
+They had fled to London, and Isabel had been placed with a very distant
+and very poor, though very high-born, relative of Algernon, till the
+necessary preliminaries could be passed and the final bond knit. Yet
+still the generous Isabel would have refused, despite the injury to
+her own fame, to have ratified a union which filled her with gloomy
+presentiments for Mordaunt’s fate; and still Mordaunt by little and
+little broke down her tender scruples and self-immolating resolves, and
+ceased not his eloquence and his suit till the day of his nuptials was
+set and come.
+
+The morning was bright and clear; the autumn was drawing towards its
+close, and seemed willing to leave its last remembrance tinged with the
+warmth and softness of its parent summer, rather than with the stern
+gloom and severity of its chilling successor.
+
+And they stood beside the altar, and their vows were exchanged. A
+slight tremor came over Algernon’s frame, a slight shade darkened
+his countenance; for even in that bridal hour an icy and thrilling
+foreboding curdled to his heart; it passed,--the ceremony was over,
+and Mordaunt bore his blushing and weeping bride from the church. His
+carriage was in attendance; for, not knowing how long the home of
+his ancestors might be his, he was impatient to return to it. The old
+Countess d’Arcy, Mordaunt’s relation, with whom Isabel had been staying,
+called them back to bless them; for, even through the coldness of old
+age, she was touched by the singularity of their love and affected by
+their nobleness of heart. She laid her wan and shrivelled hand upon
+each, as she bade them farewell, and each shrank back involuntarily, for
+the cold and light touch seemed like the fingers of the dead.
+
+Fearful, indeed, is the vicinity of death and life,--the bridal chamber
+and the charnel. That night the old woman died. It appeared as if Fate
+had set its seal upon the union it had so long forbidden, and had woven
+a dark thread even in the marriage-bond. At least, it tore from two
+hearts, over which the cloud and the blast lay couched in a “grim
+repose,” the last shelter, which, however frail and distant, seemed left
+to them upon the inhospitable earth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+  Live while ye may, yet happy pair; enjoy
+  Short pleasures, for long woes are to succeed.--MILTON.
+
+The autumn and the winter passed away; Mordaunt’s relation continued
+implacable. Algernon grieved for this, independent of worldly
+circumstances; for, though he had seldom seen that relation, yet he
+loved him for former kindness--rather promised, to be sure, than
+yet shown--with the natural warmth of an affection which has but few
+objects. However, the old gentleman (a very short, very fat person; very
+short and very fat people, when they are surly, are the devil and all;
+for the humours of their mind, like those of their body, have something
+corrupt and unpurgeable in them) wrote him one bluff, contemptuous
+letter, in a witty strain,--for he was a bit of a humourist,--disowned
+his connection, and very shortly afterwards died, and left all his
+fortune to the very Mr. Vavasour who was at law with Mordaunt, and for
+whom he had always openly expressed the strongest personal dislike:
+spite to one relation is a marvellous tie to another. Meanwhile the
+lawsuit went on less slowly than lawsuits usually do, and the final
+decision was very speedily to be given.
+
+We said the autumn and the winter were gone; and it was in one of those
+latter days in March, when, like a hoyden girl subsiding into dawning
+womanhood, the rude weather mellows into a softer and tenderer month,
+that, by the side of a stream, overshadowed by many a brake and tree,
+sat two persons.
+
+“I know not, dearest Algernon,” said one, who was a female, “if this is
+not almost the sweetest month in the year, because it is the month of
+Hope.”
+
+“Ay, Isabel; and they did it wrong who called it harsh, and dedicated it
+to Mars. I exult even in the fresh winds which hardier frames than mine
+shrink from, and I love feeling their wild breath fan my cheek as I ride
+against it. I remember,” continued Algernon, musingly, “that on this
+very day three years ago, I was travelling through Germany, alone and on
+horseback, and I paused, not far from Ens, on the banks of the Danube;
+the waters of the river were disturbed and fierce, and the winds came
+loud and angry against my face, dashing the spray of the waves upon me,
+and filling my spirit with a buoyant and glad delight; and at that time
+I had been indulging old dreams of poetry, and had laid my philosophy
+aside; and, in the inspiration of the moment, I lifted up my hand
+towards the quarter whence the winds came, and questioned them audibly
+of their birthplace and their bourne; and, as the enthusiasm increased,
+I compared them to our human life, which a moment is, and then is not;
+and, proceeding from folly to folly, I asked them, as if they were the
+interpreters of heaven, for a type and sign of my future lot.”
+
+“And what said they?” inquired Isabel, smiling, yet smiling timidly.
+
+“They answered not,” replied Mordaunt; “but a voice within me seemed
+to say, ‘Look above!’ and I raised my eyes,--but I did not see thee,
+love,--so the Book of Fate lied.”
+
+“Nay, Algernon, what did you see?” asked Isabel, more earnestly than the
+question deserved.
+
+“I saw a thin cloud, alone amidst many dense and dark ones scattered
+around; and as I gazed it seemed to take the likeness of a funeral
+procession--coffin, bearers, priests, all--as clear in the cloud as I
+have seen them on the earth: and I shuddered as I saw; but the winds
+blew the vapour onwards, and it mingled with the broader masses of
+cloud; and then, Isabel, the sun shone forth for a moment, and I
+mistook, love, when I said you were not there, for that sun was you; but
+suddenly the winds ceased, and the rain came on fast and heavy: so my
+romance cooled, and my fever slacked; I thought on the inn at Ens,
+and the blessings of a wood fire, which is lighted in a moment, and I
+spurred on my horse accordingly.”
+
+“It is very strange,” said Isabel.
+
+“What, love?” whispered Algernon, kissing her cheek.
+
+“Nothing, dearest, nothing.”
+
+At that instant, the deer, which lay waving their lordly antlers to and
+fro beneath the avenue which sloped upward from the stream to the house,
+rose hurriedly and in confusion, and stood gazing, with watchful eyes,
+upon a man advancing towards the pair.
+
+It was one of the servants with a letter. Isabel saw a faint change
+(which none else could have seen) in Mordaunt’s countenance, as he
+recognized the writing and broke the seal. When he had read the letter,
+his eyes fell upon the ground, and then, with a slight start, he lifted
+them up, and gazed long and eagerly around. Wistfully did he drink,
+as it were, into his heart the beautiful and expanded scene which lay
+stretched on either side; the noble avenue which his forefathers had
+planted as a shelter to their sons, and which now in its majestic growth
+and its waving boughs seemed to say, “Lo! ye are repaid!” and the never
+silent and silver stream, by which his boyhood had sat for hours, lulled
+by its music, and inhaling the fragrance of the reed and wild flower
+that decoyed the bee to its glossy banks; and the deer, to whose
+melancholy belling be had listened so often in the gray twilight with
+a rapt and dreaming ear; and the green fern waving on the gentle hill,
+from whose shade his young feet had startled the hare and the infant
+fawn; and far and faintly gleaming through the thick trees, which
+clasped it as with a girdle, the old Hall, so associated with vague
+hopes and musing dreams, and the dim legends of gone time, and the lofty
+prejudices of ancestral pride,--all seemed to sink within him, as he
+gazed, like the last looks of departing friends; and when Isabel, who
+had not dared to break a silence which partook so strongly of gloom,
+at length laid her hand upon his arm, and lifted her dark, deep, tender
+eyes to his, he said, as he drew her towards him, and a faint and sickly
+smile played upon his lips,--
+
+“It is past, Isabel: henceforth we have no wealth but in each other. The
+cause has been decided--and--and--we are beggars!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+     We expose our life to a quotidian ague of frigid
+     impertinences, which would make a wise man tremble to think
+     of.--COWLEY.
+
+We must suppose a lapse of four years from the date of those events
+which concluded the last chapter; and, to recompence the reader, who I
+know has a little penchant for “High Life,” even in the last century,
+for having hitherto shown him human beings in a state of society
+not wholly artificial, I beg him to picture to himself a large room,
+brilliantly illuminated, and crowded “with the magnates of the land.”
+ Here, some in saltatory motion, some in sedentary rest, are dispersed
+various groups of young ladies and attendant swains, talking upon the
+subject of Lord Rochester’s celebrated poem,--namely, “Nothing!”--and
+lounging around the doors, meditating probably upon the same subject,
+stand those unhappy victims of dancing daughters, denominated “Papas.”
+
+The music has ceased; the dancers have broken up; and there is a general
+but gentle sweep towards the refreshment-room. In the crowd--having
+just entered--there glided a young man of an air more distinguished and
+somewhat more joyous than the rest.
+
+“How do you do, Mr. Linden?” said a tall and (though somewhat passe)
+very handsome woman, blazing with diamonds; “are you just come?”
+
+And, here, by the way, I cannot resist pausing to observe that a friend
+of mine, meditating a novel, submitted a part of the manuscript to
+a friendly publisher. “Sir,” said the bookseller, “your book is very
+clever, but it wants dialogue.”
+
+“Dialogue!” cried my friend: “you mistake; it is all dialogue.”
+
+“Ay, sir, but not what we call dialogue; we want a little conversation
+in fashionable life,--a little elegant chit-chat or so: and, as you must
+have seen so much of the beau monde, you could do it to the life: we
+must have something light and witty and entertaining.”
+
+“Light, witty, and entertaining!” said our poor friend; “and how the
+deuce, then, is it to be like conversation in ‘fashionable life’? When
+the very best conversation one can get is so insufferably dull, how do
+you think people will be amused by reading a copy of the very worst?”
+
+“They are amused, sir,” said the publisher; “and works of this kind
+sell!”
+
+“I am convinced,” said my friend; for he was a man of a placid temper:
+he took the hint, and his book did sell!
+
+Now this anecdote rushed into my mind after the penning of the little
+address of the lady in diamonds,--“How do you do, Mr. Linden? Are
+you just come?”--and it received an additional weight from my utter
+inability to put into the mouth of Mr. Linden--notwithstanding my desire
+of representing him in the most brilliant colours--any more happy and
+eloquent answer than, “Only this instant!”
+
+However, as this is in the true spirit of elegant dialogue, I trust my
+readers find it as light, witty, and entertaining as, according to the
+said publisher, the said dialogue is always found by the public.
+
+While Clarence was engaged in talking with this lady, a very pretty,
+lively, animated girl, with laughing blue eyes, which, joined to the
+dazzling fairness of her complexion, gave a Hebe-like youth to her
+features and expression, was led up to the said lady by a tall young
+man, and consigned, with the ceremonious bow of the vieille tour, to her
+protection.
+
+“Ah, Mr. Linden,” cried the young lady, “I am very glad to see
+you,--such a beautiful ball!--Everybody here that I most like. Have you
+had any refreshments, Mamma? But I need not ask, for I am sure you have
+not; do come, Mr. Linden will be our cavalier.”
+
+“Well, Flora, as you please,” said the elderly lady, with a proud
+and fond look at her beautiful daughter; and they proceeded to the
+refreshment-room.
+
+No sooner were they seated at one of the tables, than they were accosted
+by Lord St. George, a nobleman whom Clarence, before he left England,
+had met more than once at Mr. Talbot’s.
+
+“London,” said his lordship to her of the diamonds, “has not seemed like
+the same place since Lady Westborough arrived; your presence brings
+out all the other luminaries: and therefore a young acquaintance of
+mine--God bless me, there he is, seated by Lady Flora--very justly
+called you the ‘evening star.’”
+
+“Was that Mr. Linden’s pretty saying?” said Lady Westborough, smiling.
+
+“It was,” answered Lord St. George; “and, by the by, he is a very
+sensible, pleasant person, and greatly improved since he left England
+last.”
+
+“What!” said Lady Westborough, in a low tone (for Clarence, though in
+earnest conversation with Lady Flora, was within hearing), and making
+room for Lord St. George beside her, “what! did you know him before he
+went to ----? You can probably tell me, then, who--that is to say--what
+family he is exactly of--the Lindens of Devonshire, or--or--”
+
+“Why, really,” said Lord St. George, a little confused, for no man likes
+to be acquainted with persons whose pedigree he cannot explain, “I don’t
+know what may be his family: I met him at Talbot’s four or five years
+ago; he was then a mere boy, but he struck me as being very clever, and
+Talbot since told me that he was a nephew of his own.”
+
+“Talbot,” said Lady Westborough, musingly, “what Talbot?”
+
+“Oh! the Talbot--the ci-devant jeune homme!”
+
+“What, that charming, clever, animated old gentleman, who used to dress
+so oddly, and had been so celebrated a beau garcon in his day?”
+
+“Exactly so,” said Lord St. George, taking snuff, and delighted to find
+he had set his young acquaintance on so honourable a footing.
+
+“I did not know he was still alive,” said Lady Westborough, and
+then, turning her eyes towards Clarence and her daughter, she added
+carelessly, “Mr. Talbot is very rich, is he not?”
+
+“Rich as Croesus,” replied Lord St. George, with a sigh.
+
+“And Mr. Linden is his heir, I suppose?”
+
+“In all probability,” answered Lord St. George; “though I believe I can
+boast a distant relationship to Talbot. However, I could not make him
+fully understand it the other day, though I took particular pains to
+explain it.”
+
+While this conversation was going on between the Marchioness of
+Westborough and Lord St. George, a dialogue equally interesting to the
+parties concerned, and I hope, equally light, witty, and entertaining to
+readers in general, was sustained between Clarence and Lady Flora.
+
+“How long shall you stay in England?” asked the latter, looking down.
+
+“I have not yet been able to decide,” replied Clarence, “for it rests
+with the ministers, not me. Directly Lord Aspeden obtains another
+appointment, I am promised the office of Secretary of Legation; but till
+then, I am--
+
+  “‘A captive in Augusta’s towers
+   To beauty and her train.’”
+
+“Oh!” cried Lady Flora, laughing, “you mean Mrs. Desborough and her
+train: see where they sweep! Pray go and render her homage.”
+
+“It is rendered,” said Linden, in a low voice, “without so long a
+pilgrimage, but perhaps despised.”
+
+Lady Flora’s laugh was hushed; the deepest blushes suffused her cheeks,
+and the whole character of that face, before so playful and joyous,
+seemed changed, as by a spell, into a grave, subdued, and even timid
+look.
+
+Linden resumed, and his voice scarcely rose above a whisper. A whisper!
+O delicate and fairy sound! music that speaketh to the heart, as if loth
+to break the spell that binds it while it listens! Sigh breathed into
+words, and freighting love in tones languid, like homeward bees, by the
+very sweets with which they are charged! “Do you remember,” said he,
+“that evening at ---- when we last parted? and the boldness which at
+that time you were gentle enough to forgive?”
+
+Lady Flora replied not.
+
+“And do you remember,” continued Clarence, “that I told you that it was
+not as an unknown and obscure adventurer that I would claim the hand of
+her whose heart as an adventurer I had won?”
+
+Lady Flora raised her eyes for one moment, and encountering the ardent
+gaze of Clarence, as instantly dropped them.
+
+“The time is not yet come,” said Linden, “for the fulfilment of this
+promise; but may I--dare I hope, that when it does, I shall not be--”
+
+“Flora, my love,” said Lady Westborough, “let me introduce to you Lord
+Borodaile.”
+
+Lady Flora turned: the spell was broken; and the lovers were instantly
+transformed into ordinary mortals. But, as Flora, after returning Lord
+Borodaile’s address, glanced her eye towards Clarence, she was struck
+with the sudden and singular change of his countenance; the flush of
+youth and passion was fled, his complexion was deadly pale, and his eyes
+were fixed with a searching and unaccountable meaning upon the face of
+the young nobleman, who was alternately addressing, with a quiet and
+somewhat haughty fluency, the beautiful mother, and the more lovely
+though less commanding daughter. Directly Linden perceived that he was
+observed, he rose, turned away, and was soon lost among the crowd.
+
+Lord Borodaile, the son and heir of the powerful Earl of Ulswater,
+was about the age of thirty, small, slight, and rather handsome than
+otherwise, though his complexion was dark and sallow; and a very
+aquiline nose gave a stern and somewhat severe air to his countenance.
+He had been for several years abroad, in various parts of the Continent,
+and (no other field for an adventurous and fierce spirit presenting
+itself) had served with the gallant Earl of Effingham, in the war
+between the Turks and Russians, as a volunteer in the armies of the
+latter. In this service he had been highly distinguished for courage and
+conduct; and, on his return to England about a twelvemonth since, had
+obtained the command of a cavalry regiment. Passionately fond of his
+profession, he entered into its minutest duties with a zeal not exceeded
+by the youngest and poorest subaltern in the army.
+
+His manners were very cold, haughty, collected, and self-possessed, and
+his conversation that of a man who has cultivated his intellect rather
+in the world than the closet. I mean, that, perfectly ignorant of
+things, he was driven to converse solely upon persons, and, having
+imbibed no other philosophy than that which worldly deceits and
+disappointments bestow, his remarks, though shrewd, were bitterly
+sarcastic, and partook of all the ill-nature for which a very scanty
+knowledge of the world gives a sour and malevolent mind so ready an
+excuse.
+
+“How very disagreeable Lord Borodaile is!” said Lady Flora, when the
+object of the remark turned away and rejoined some idlers of his corps.
+
+“Disagreeable!” said Lady Westborough. “I think him charming: he is so
+sensible. How true his remarks on the world are!”
+
+Thus is it always; the young judge harshly of those who undeceive or
+revolt their enthusiasm; and the more advanced in years, who have not
+learned by a diviner wisdom to look upon the human follies and errors by
+which they have suffered with a pitying and lenient eye, consider
+every maxim of severity on those frailties as the proof of a superior
+knowledge, and praise that as a profundity of thought which in reality
+is but an infirmity of temper.
+
+Clarence is now engaged in a minuet de la tour with the beautiful
+Countess of ----, the best dancer of the day in England. Lady Flora is
+flirting with half a dozen beaux, the more violently in proportion as
+she observes the animation with which Clarence converses, and the grace
+with which his partner moves; and, having thus left our two principal
+personages occupied and engaged, let us turn for a moment to a room
+which we have not entered.
+
+This is a forlorn, deserted chamber, destined to cards, which are never
+played in this temple of Terpsichore. At the far end of this room,
+opposite to the fireplace, are seated four men, engaged in earnest
+conversation.
+
+The tallest of these was Lord Quintown, a nobleman remarkable at that
+day for his personal advantages, his good fortune with the beau sexe,
+his attempts at parliamentary eloquence, in which he was lamentably
+unsuccessful, and his adherence to Lord North. Next to him sat Mr. St.
+George, the younger brother of Lord St. George, a gentleman to whom
+power and place seemed married without hope of divorce; for, whatever
+had been the changes of ministry for the last twelve years, he,
+secure in a lucrative though subordinate situation, had “smiled at
+the whirlwind and defied the storm,” and, while all things shifted and
+vanished round him, like clouds and vapours, had remained fixed and
+stationary as a star. “Solid St. George,” was his appellative by his
+friends, and his enemies did not grudge him the title. The third was the
+minister for ----; and the fourth was Clarence’s friend, Lord Aspeden.
+Now this nobleman, blessed with a benevolent, smooth, calm countenance,
+valued himself especially upon his diplomatic elegance in turning a
+compliment.
+
+Having a great taste for literature as well as diplomacy, this respected
+and respectable peer also possessed a curious felicity for applying
+quotation; and nothing rejoiced him so much as when, in the same phrase,
+he was enabled to set the two jewels of his courtliness of flattery
+and his profundity of erudition. Unhappily enough, his compliments
+were seldom as well taken as they were meant; and, whether from the
+ingratitude of the persons complimented or the ill fortune of the noble
+adulator, seemed sometimes to produce indignation in place of delight.
+It has been said that his civilities had cost Lord Aspeden four duels
+and one beating; but these reports were probably the malicious invention
+of those who had never tasted the delicacies of his flattery.
+
+Now these four persons being all members of the Privy Council, and being
+thus engaged in close and earnest conference were, you will suppose,
+employed in discussing their gravities and secrets of state: no such
+thing; that whisper from Lord Quintown, the handsome nobleman, to Mr.
+St. George, is no hoarded and valuable information which would rejoice
+the heart of the editor of an Opposition paper, no direful murmur,
+“perplexing monarchs with the dread of change;” it is only a recent
+piece of scandal, touching the virtue of a lady of the court, which
+(albeit the sage listener seems to pay so devout an attention to the
+news) is far more interesting to the gallant and handsome informant than
+to his brother statesman; and that emphatic and vehement tone with which
+Lord Aspeden is assuring the minister for ---- of some fact, is merely
+an angry denunciation of the chicanery practised at the last Newmarket.
+
+“By the by, Aspeden,” said Lord Quintown, “who is that good-looking
+fellow always flirting with Lady Flora Ardenne,--an attache of yours, is
+he not?”
+
+“Oh! Linden, I suppose you mean. A very sensible, clever young fellow,
+who has a great genius for business and plays the flute admirably. I
+must have him for my secretary, my dear lord, mind that.”
+
+“With such a recommendation, Lord Aspeden,” said the minister, with a
+bow, “the state would be a great loser did it not elect your attache,
+who plays so admirably on the flute, to the office of your secretary.
+Let us join the dancers.”
+
+“I shall go and talk with Count B----,” quoth Mr. St. George.
+
+“And I shall make my court to his beautiful wife,” said the minister,
+sauntering into the ballroom, to which his fine person and graceful
+manners were much better adapted than was his genius to the cabinet or
+his eloquence to the senate.
+
+The morning had long dawned, and Clarence, for whose mind pleasure was
+more fatiguing than business, lingered near the door, to catch one last
+look of Lady Flora before he retired. He saw her leaning on the arm of
+Lord Borodaile, and hastening to join the dancers with her usual light
+step and laughing air; for Clarence’s short conference with her had, in
+spite of his subsequent flirtations, rendered her happier than she had
+ever felt before. Again a change passed over Clarence’s countenance,--a
+change which I find it difficult to express without borrowing from those
+celebrated German dramatists who could portray in such exact colours “a
+look of mingled joy, sorrow, hope, passion, rapture, and despair;” for
+the look was not that of jealousy alone, although it certainly partook
+of its nature, but a little also of interest, and a little of sorrow;
+and when he turned away, and slowly descended the stairs, his eyes were
+full of tears, and his thoughts far--far away;--whither?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+  Quae fert adolescentia
+  Ea ne me celet consuefeci filium.--TERENCE.
+
+  [“The things which youth proposes I accustomed
+  my son that he should never conceal from me.”]
+
+The next morning Clarence was lounging over his breakfast, and glancing
+listlessly now at the pages of the newspapers, now at the various
+engagements for the week, which lay confusedly upon his table, when he
+received a note from Talbot, requesting to see him as soon as possible.
+
+“Had it not been for that man,” said Clarence to himself, “what should
+I have been now? But, at least, I have not disgraced his friendship. I
+have already ascended the roughest because the lowest steps on the hill
+where Fortune builds her temple. I have already won for the name I have
+chosen some ‘golden opinions’ to gild its obscurity. One year more
+may confirm my destiny and ripen hope into success: then--then, I may
+perhaps throw off a disguise that, while it befriended, has not degraded
+me, and avow myself to her! Yet how much better to dignify the name
+I have assumed than to owe respect only to that which I have not been
+deemed worthy to inherit! Well, well, these are bitter thoughts; let me
+turn to others. How beautiful Flora looked last night! and, he--he--but
+enough of this: I must dress, and then to Talbot.”
+
+Muttering these wayward fancies, Clarence rose, completed his toilet,
+sent for his horses, and repaired to a village about seven miles
+from London, where Talbot, having yielded to Clarence’s fears and
+solicitations, and left his former insecure tenement, now resided under
+the guard and care of an especial and private watchman.
+
+It was a pretty, quiet villa, surrounded by a plantation and
+pleasure-ground of some extent for a suburban residence, in which the
+old philosopher (for though in some respects still frail and prejudiced,
+Talbot deserved that name) held his home. The ancient servant, on
+whom four years had passed lightly and favouringly, opened the door to
+Clarence, with his usual smile of greeting and familiar yet respectful
+salutation, and ushered our hero into a room, furnished with the usual
+fastidious and rather feminine luxury which characterized Talbot’s
+tastes. Sitting with his back turned to the light, in a large
+easy-chair, Clarence found the wreck of the once gallant, gay Lothario.
+
+There was not much alteration in his countenance since we last saw him;
+the lines, it is true, were a little more decided, and the cheeks
+a little more sunken; but the dark eye beamed with all its wonted
+vivacity, and the delicate contour of the mouth preserved all its
+physiognomical characteristics of the inward man. He rose with somewhat
+more difficulty than he was formerly wont to do, and his limbs had lost
+much of their symmetrical proportions; yet the kind clasp of his hand
+was as firm and warm as when it had pressed that of the boyish attache
+four years since; and the voice which expressed his salutation yet
+breathed its unconquered suavity and distinctness of modulation. After
+the customary greetings and inquiries were given and returned, the young
+man drew his chair near to Talbot’s, and said,--
+
+“You sent for me, dear sir; have you anything more important than usual
+to impart to me?--or--and I hope this is the case--have you at last
+thought of any commission, however trifling, in the execution of which I
+can be of use?”
+
+“Yes, Clarence, I wish your judgment to select me some
+strawberries,--you know that I am a great epicure in fruit,--and get me
+the new work Dr. Johnson has just published. There, are you contented?
+And now, tell me all about your horse; does he step well? Has he the
+true English head and shoulder? Are his legs fine, yet strong? Is he
+full of spirit and devoid of vice?”
+
+“He is all this, sir, thanks to you for him.”
+
+“Ah!” cried Talbot,--
+
+  “‘Old as I am, for riding feats unfit,
+   The shape of horses I remember yet’”
+
+“And now let us hear how you like Ranelagh; and above all how you liked
+the ball last night.”
+
+And the vivacious old man listened with the profoundest appearance
+of interest to all the particulars of Clarence’s animated detail. His
+vanity, which made him wish to be loved, had long since taught him the
+surest method of becoming so; and with him, every visitor, old, young,
+the man of books, or the disciple of the world, was sure to find the
+readiest and even eagerest sympathy in every amusement or occupation.
+But for Clarence, this interest lay deeper than in the surface of
+courtly breeding. Gratitude had first bound to him his adopted son,
+then a tie yet unexplained, and lastly, but not least, the pride of
+protection. He was vain of the personal and mental attractions of his
+protege, and eager for the success of one whose honours would reflect
+credit on himself.
+
+But there was one part of Clarence’s account of the last night to which
+the philosopher paid a still deeper attention, and on which he was more
+minute in his advice; what this was, I cannot, as yet, reveal to the
+reader.
+
+The conversation then turned on light and general matters,--the scandal,
+the literature, the politics, the on dits of the day; and lastly upon
+women; thence Talbot dropped into his office of Mentor.
+
+“A celebrated cardinal said, very wisely, that few ever did anything
+among men until women were no longer an object to them. That is the
+reason, by the by, why I never succeeded with the former, and why people
+seldom acquire any reputation, except for a hat, or a horse, till they
+marry. Look round at the various occupations of life. How few bachelors
+are eminent in any of them! So you see, Clarence, you will have my leave
+to marry Lady Flora as soon as you please.”
+
+Clarence coloured, and rose to depart. Talbot followed him to the door,
+and then said, in a careless way, “By the by, I had almost forgotten
+to tell you that, as you have now many new expenses, you will find
+the yearly sum you have hitherto received doubled. To give you this
+information is the chief reason why I sent for you this morning. God
+bless you, my dear boy.”
+
+And Talbot shut the door, despite his politeness, in the face and thanks
+of his adopted son.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+     There is a great difference between seeking to raise a laugh from
+     everything, and seeking in everything what justly may be laughed
+     at.                       LORD SHAFTESBURY.
+
+Behold our hero, now in the zenith of distinguished dissipations!
+Courteous, attentive, and animated, the women did not esteem him the
+less for admiring them rather than himself; while, by the gravity of
+his demeanour to men,--the eloquent, yet unpretending flow of his
+conversation, whenever topics of intellectual interest were discussed,
+the plain and solid sense which he threw into his remarks, and the
+avidity with which he courted the society of all distinguished for
+literary or political eminence,--he was silently but surely establishing
+himself in esteem as well as popularity, and laying the certain
+foundation of future honour and success.
+
+Thus, although he had only been four months returned to England, he was
+already known and courted in every circle, and universally spoken of
+as among “the most rising young gentlemen” whom fortune and the
+administration had marked for their own. His history, during the four
+years in which we have lost sight of him, is briefly told.
+
+He soon won his way into the good graces of Lord Aspeden; became his
+private secretary and occasionally his confidant. Universally admired
+for his attraction of form and manner, and, though aiming at reputation,
+not averse to pleasure, he had that position which fashion confers at
+the court of ----, when Lady Westborough and her beautiful daughter,
+then only seventeen, came to ----, in the progress of a Continental
+tour, about a year before his return to England. Clarence and Lady Flora
+were naturally brought much together in the restricted circle of a small
+court, and intimacy soon ripened into attachment.
+
+Lord Aspeden being recalled, Clarence accompanied him to England; and
+the ex-minister, really liking much one who was so useful to him, had
+faithfully promised to procure him the office and honour of secretary
+whenever his lordship should be reappointed minister.
+
+Three intimate acquaintances had Clarence Linden. The one was the
+Honourable Henry Trollolop, the second Mr. Callythorpe, and the third
+Sir Christopher Findlater. We will sketch them to you in an instant.
+Mr. Trollolop was a short, stout gentleman, with a very thoughtful
+countenance,-that is to say, he wore spectacles and took snuff.
+
+Mr. Trollolop--we delight in pronouncing that soft liquid name--was
+eminently distinguished by a love of metaphysics,--metaphysics were in
+a great measure the order of the day; but Fate had endowed Mr. Trollolop
+with a singular and felicitous confusion of idea. Reid, Berkeley,
+Cudworth, Hobbes, all lay jumbled together in most edifying chaos at
+the bottom of Mr. Trollolop’s capacious mind; and whenever he opened
+his mouth, the imprisoned enemies came rushing and scrambling out,
+overturning and contradicting each other in a manner quite astounding
+to the ignorant spectator. Mr. Callythorpe was meagre, thin, sharp,
+and yellow. Whether from having a great propensity for nailing stray
+acquaintances, or being particularly heavy company, or from any
+other cause better known to the wits of the period than to us, he was
+occasionally termed by his friends the “yellow hammer.” The peculiar
+characteristics of this gentleman were his sincerity and friendship.
+These qualities led him into saying things the most disagreeable, with
+the civilest and coolest manner in the world,--always prefacing them
+with, “You know, my dear so-and-so, I am your true friend.” If
+this proof of amity was now and then productive of altercation,
+Mr. Callythorpe, who was ha great patriot, had another and a nobler
+plea,--“Sir,” he would say, putting his hand to his heart,--“sir, I’m an
+Englishman: I know not what it is to feign.” Of a very different stamp
+was Sir Christopher Findlater. Little cared he for the subtleties of
+the human mind, and not much more for the disagreeable duties of “an
+Englishman.” Honest and jovial, red in the cheeks, empty in the head,
+born to twelve thousand a year, educated in the country, and heir to an
+earldom, Sir Christopher Findlater piqued himself, notwithstanding his
+worldly advantages, usually so destructive to the kindlier affections,
+on having the best heart in the world, and this good heart, having a
+very bad head to regulate and support it, was the perpetual cause of
+error to the owner and evil to the public.
+
+One evening, when Clarence was alone in his rooms, Mr. Trollolop
+entered.
+
+“My dear Linden,” said the visitor, “how are you?”
+
+“I am, as I hope you are, very well,” answered Clarence.
+
+“The human mind,” said Trollolop, taking off his greatcoat,--
+
+“Sir Christopher Findlater and Mr. Callythorpe, sir,” said the valet.
+
+“Pshaw! What has Sir Christopher Findlater to do with the human mind?”
+ muttered Mr. Trollolop.
+
+Sir Christopher entered with a swagger and a laugh. “Well, old fellow,
+how do you do? Deuced cold this evening.”
+
+“Though it is an evening in May,” observed Clarence; “but then, this
+cursed climate.”
+
+“Climate!” interrupted Mr. Callythorpe, “it is the best climate in the
+world: I am an Englishman, and I never abuse my country.”
+
+  “‘England, with all thy faults, I love thee still!’”
+
+“As to climate,” said Trollolop, “there is no climate, neither here nor
+elsewhere: the climate is in your mind, the chair is in your mind, and
+the table too, though I dare say you are stupid enough to think the two
+latter are in the room; the human mind, my dear Findlater--”
+
+“Don’t mind me, Trollolop,” cried the baronet, “I can’t bear your clever
+heads: give me a good heart; that’s worth all the heads in the world;
+d--n me if it is not! Eh, Linden?”
+
+“Your good heart,” cried Trollolop, in a passion (for all your
+self-called philosophers are a little choleric), “your good heart is all
+cant and nonsense: there is no heart at all; we are all mind.”
+
+“I be hanged if I’m all mind,” said the baronet.
+
+“At least,” quoth Linden, gravely, “no one ever accused you of it
+before.”
+
+“We are all mind,” pursued the reasoner; “we are all mind, un moulin
+a raisonnement. Our ideas are derived from two sources, sensation or
+memory. That neither our thoughts nor passions, nor our ideas formed
+by the imagination, exist without the mind, everybody will allow;
+[Berkeley, Sect. iii., “Principles of Human Knowledge.”] therefore, you
+see, the human mind is--in short, there is nothing in the world but the
+human mind!”
+
+“Nothing could be better demonstrated,” said Clarence.
+
+“I don’t believe it,” quoth the baronet.
+
+“But you do believe it, and you must believe it,” cried Trollolop; “for
+‘the Supreme Being has implanted within us the principle of credulity,’
+and therefore you do believe it!”
+
+“But I don’t,” cried Sir Christopher.
+
+“You are mistaken,” replied the metaphysician, calmly; “because I must
+speak truth.”
+
+“Why must you, pray?” said the baronet.
+
+“Because,” answered Trollolop, taking snuff, “there is a principle of
+veracity implanted in our nature.”
+
+“I wish I were a metaphysician,” said Clarence, with a sigh.
+
+“I am glad to hear you say so; for you know, my dear Linden,” said
+Callythorpe, “that I am your true friend, and I must therefore tell you
+that you are shamefully ignorant. You are not offended?”
+
+“Not at all!” said Clarence, trying to smile.
+
+“And you, my dear Findlater” (turning to the baronet), “you know that I
+wish you well; you know that I never flatter; I’m your real friend, so
+you must not be angry; but you really are not considered a Solomon.”
+
+“Mr. Callythorpe!” exclaimed the baronet in a rage (the best-hearted
+people can’t always bear truth), “what do you mean?”
+
+“You must not be angry, my good sir; you must not, really. I can’t help
+telling you of your faults; for I am a true Briton, sir, a true Briton,
+and leave lying to slaves and Frenchmen.”
+
+“You are in an error,” said Trollolop; “Frenchmen don’t lie, at least
+not naturally, for in the human mind, as I before said, the Divine
+Author has implanted a principle of veracity which--”
+
+“My dear sir,” interrupted Callythorpe, very affectionately, “you remind
+me of what people say of you.”
+
+“Memory may be reduced to sensation, since it is only a weaker
+sensation,” quoth Trollolop; “but proceed.”
+
+“You know, Trollolop,” said Callythorpe, in a singularly endearing
+intonation of voice, “you know that I never flatter; flattery is
+unbecoming a true friend,--nay, more, it is unbecoming a native of our
+happy isles, and people do say of you that you know nothing whatsoever,
+no, not an iota, of all that nonsensical, worthless philosophy of which
+you are always talking. Lord St. George said the other day ‘that you
+were very conceited.’--‘No, not conceited,’ replied Dr. ----, ‘only
+ignorant;’ so if I were you, Trollolop, I would cut metaphysics; you’re
+not offended?”
+
+“By no means,” cried Trollolop, foaming at the mouth.
+
+“For my part,” said the good-hearted Sir Christopher, whose wrath had
+now subsided, rubbing his hands,--“for my part, I see no good in any
+of those things: I never read--never--and I don’t see how I’m a bit the
+worse for it. A good man, Linden, in my opinion, only wants to do his
+duty, and that is very easily done.”
+
+“A good man; and what is good?” cried the metaphysician, triumphantly.
+“Is it implanted within us? Hobbes, according to Reid, who is our last,
+and consequently best, philosopher, endeavours to demonstrate that there
+is no difference between right and wrong.”
+
+“I have no idea of what you mean,” cried Sir Christopher.
+
+“Idea!” exclaimed the pious philosopher. “Sir, give me leave to tell you
+that no solid proof has ever been advanced of the existence of ideas:
+they are a mere fiction and hypothesis. Nay, sir, ‘hence arises
+that scepticism which disgraces our philosophy of the mind.’
+Ideas!--Findlater, you are a sceptic and an idealist.”
+
+“I?” cried the affrighted baronet; “upon my honour I am no such thing.
+Everybody knows that I am a Christian, and--”
+
+“Ah!” interrupted Callythorpe, with a solemn look, “everybody knows that
+you are not one of those horrid persons,--those atrocious deists and
+atheists and sceptics, from whom the Church and freedom of old England
+have suffered such danger. I am a true Briton of the good old school;
+and I confess, Mr. Trollolop, that I do not like to hear any opinions
+but the right ones.”
+
+“Right ones being only those which Mr. Callythorpe professes,” said
+Clarence.
+
+“Exactly so!” rejoined Mr. Callythorpe.
+
+“The human mind,” commenced Mr. Trollolop, stirring the fire; when
+Clarence, who began to be somewhat tired of this conversation, rose.
+“You will excuse me,” said he, “but I am particularly engaged, and it
+is time to dress. Harrison will get you tea or whatever else you are
+inclined for.”
+
+“The human mind,” renewed Trollolop, not heeding the interruption; and
+Clarence forthwith left the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+     You blame Marcius for being proud.--Coriolanus. Here is
+     another fellow, a marvellous pretty hand at fashioning a
+     compliment.-The Tanner of Tyburn.
+
+There was a brilliant ball at Lady T----‘s, a personage who, every
+one knows, did in the year 17-- give the best balls, and have the
+best-dressed people at them, in London. It was about half-past
+twelve, when Clarence, released from his three friends, arrived at the
+countess’s. When he entered, the first thing which struck him was Lord
+Borodaile in close conversation with Lady Flora.
+
+Clarence paused for a few moments, and then, sauntering towards them,
+caught Flora’s eye,--coloured, and advanced. Now, if there was a haughty
+man in Europe, it was Lord Borodaile. He was not proud of his birth, nor
+fortune, but he was proud of himself; and, next to that pride, he was
+proud of being a gentleman. He had an exceeding horror of all common
+people; a Claverhouse sort of supreme contempt to “puddle blood;”
+ his lip seemed to wear scorn as a garment; a lofty and stern
+self-admiration, rather than self-love, sat upon his forehead as on a
+throne. He had, as it were, an awe of himself; his thoughts were so many
+mirrors of Viscount Borodaile dressed en dieu. His mind was a little
+Versailles, in which self sat like Louis XIV., and saw nothing but
+pictures of its self, sometimes as Jupiter and sometimes as Apollo. What
+marvel then, that Lord Borodaile was a very unpleasant companion? for
+every human being he had “something of contempt.” His eye was always
+eloquent in disdaining; to the plebeian it said, “You are not a
+gentleman;” to the prince, “You are not Lord Borodaile.”
+
+Yet, with all this, he had his good points. He was brave as a lion;
+strictly honourable; and though very ignorant, and very self-sufficient,
+had that sort of dogged good sense which one very often finds in men of
+stern hearts, who, if they have many prejudices, have little feeling, to
+overcome.
+
+Very stiffly and very haughtily did Lord Borodaile draw up, when
+Clarence approached and addressed Lady Flora; much more stiffly and much
+more haughtily did he return, though with old-fashioned precision of
+courtesy, Clarence’s bow, when Lady Westborough introduced them to each
+other. Not that this hauteur was intended as a particular affront: it
+was only the agreeability of his lordship’s general manner.
+
+“Are you engaged?” said Clarence to Flora.
+
+“I am, at present, to Lord Borodaile.”
+
+“After him, may I hope?”
+
+Lady Flora nodded assent, and disappeared with Lord Borodaile.
+
+His Royal Highness the Duke of ---- came up to Lady Westborough; and
+Clarence, with a smiling countenance and an absent heart, plunged into
+the crowd. There he met Lord Aspeden, in conversation with the Earl of
+Holdenworth, one of the administration.
+
+“Ah, Linden,” said the diplomatist, “let me introduce you to Lord
+Holdenworth,--a clever young man, my dear lord, and plays the flute
+beautifully.” With this eulogium, Lord Aspeden glided away; and Lord
+Holdenworth, after some conversation with Linden, honoured him by an
+invitation to dinner the next day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+  ‘T is true his nature may with faults abound;
+  But who will cavil when the heart is sound?--STEPHEN MONTAGUE.
+
+  Dum vitant stulti vitia, in contraria currant.-HORACE.
+  [“The foolish while avoiding vice run into the opposite
+  extremes.”]
+
+The next day Sir Christopher Findlater called on Clarence. “Let us
+lounge in the park,” said he.
+
+“With pleasure,” replied Clarence; and into the park they lounged.
+
+By the way they met a crowd, who were hurrying a man to prison. The
+good-hearted Sir Christopher stopped: “Who is that poor fellow?” said
+he.
+
+“It is the celebrated” (in England all criminals are celebrated.
+Thurtell was a hero, Thistlewood a patriot, and Fauntleroy was
+discovered to be exactly like Buonaparte!) “it is the celebrated robber,
+John Jefferies, who broke into Mrs. Wilson’s house, and cut the throats
+of herself and her husband, wounded the maid-servant, and split the
+child’s skull with the poker.” Clarence pressed forward: “I have seen
+that man before,” thought he. He looked again, and recognized the face
+of the robber who had escaped from Talbot’s house on the eventful night
+which had made Clarence’s fortune. It was a strongly-marked and rather
+handsome countenance, which would not be easily forgotten; and a single
+circumstance of excitement will stamp features on the memory as deeply
+as the commonplace intercourse of years.
+
+“John Jefferies!” exclaimed the baronet; “let us come away.”
+
+“Linden,” continued Sir Christopher, “that fellow was my servant once.
+He robbed me to some considerable extent. I caught him. He appealed to
+my heart; and you know, my dear fellow, that was irresistible, so I let
+him off. Who could have thought he would have turned out so?” And the
+baronet proceeded to eulogize his own good-nature, by which it is just
+necessary to remark that one miscreant had been saved for a few years
+from transportation, in order to rob and murder ad libitum, and, having
+fulfilled the office of a common pest, to suffer on the gallows at last.
+What a fine thing it is to have a good heart! Both our gentlemen now
+sank into a revery, from which they were awakened, at the entrance of
+the park, by a young man in rags who, with a piteous tone, supplicated
+charity. Clarence, who, to his honour be it spoken, spent an allotted
+and considerable part of his income in judicious and laborious
+benevolence, had read a little of political morals, then beginning to be
+understood, and walked on. The good-hearted baronet put his hand in his
+pocket, and gave the beggar half a guinea, by which a young, strong man,
+who had only just commenced the trade, was confirmed in his imposition
+for the rest of his life; and, instead of the useful support, became the
+pernicious incumbrance of society.
+
+Sir Christopher had now recovered his spirits. “What’s like a good
+action?” said he to Clarence, with a swelling breast.
+
+The park was crowded to excess; our loungers were joined by Lord St.
+George. His lordship was a stanch Tory. He could not endure Wilkes,
+liberty, or general education. He launched out against the enlightenment
+of domestics. [The ancestors of our present footmen, if we may believe
+Sir William Temple, seem to have been to the full as intellectual as
+their descendants. “I have had,” observes the philosophic statesman,
+“several servants far gone in divinity, others in poetry; have known, in
+the families of some friends; a keeper deep in the Rosicrucian mysteries
+and a laundress firm in those of Epicurus.”]
+
+“What has made you so bitter?” said Sir Christopher.
+
+“My valet,” cried Lord St. George,--“he has invented a new
+toasting-fork, is going to take out a patent, make his fortune, and
+leave me; that’s what I call ingratitude, Sir Christopher; for I ordered
+his wages to be raised five pounds but last year.”
+
+“It was very ungrateful,” said the ironical Clarence.
+
+“Very!” reiterated the good-hearted Sir Christopher.
+
+“You cannot recommend me a valet, Findlater,” renewed his lordship, “a
+good, honest, sensible fellow, who can neither read nor write?”
+
+“N-o-o,--that is to say, yes! I can; my old servant Collard is out of
+place, and is as ignorant as--as--”
+
+“I--or you are?” said Lord St. George, with a laugh.
+
+“Precisely,” replied the baronet.
+
+“Well, then, I take your recommendation: send him to me to-morrow at
+twelve.”
+
+“I will,” said Sir Christopher.
+
+“My dear Findlater,” cried Clarence, when Lord St. George was gone, “did
+you not tell me, some time ago, that Collard was a great rascal, and
+very intimate with Jefferies? and now you recommend him to Lord St.
+George!”
+
+“Hush, hush, hush!” said the baronet; “he was a great rogue to be sure:
+but, poor fellow, he came to me yesterday with tears in his eyes, and
+said he should starve if I would not give him a character; so what could
+I do?”
+
+“At least, tell Lord St. George the truth,” observed Clarence.
+
+“But then Lord St. George would not take him!” rejoined the good-hearted
+Sir Christopher, with forcible naivete. “No, no, Linden, we must not be
+so hard-hearted; we must forgive and forget;” and so saying, the baronet
+threw out his chest, with the conscious exultation of a man who has
+uttered a noble sentiment. The moral of this little history is that
+Lord St. George, having been pillaged “through thick and thin,” as the
+proverb has it, for two years, at last missed a gold watch, and Monsieur
+Collard finished his career as his exemplary tutor, Mr. John Jefferies,
+had done before him. Ah! what a fine thing it is to have a good heart!
+
+But to return. Just as our wanderers had arrived at the farther end
+of the park, Lady Westborough and her daughter passed them. Clarence,
+excusing himself to his friend, hastened towards them, and was soon
+occupied in saying the prettiest things in the world to the prettiest
+person, at least in his eyes; while Sir Christopher, having done as much
+mischief as a good heart well can do in a walk of an hour, returned home
+to write a long letter to his mother, against “learning and all such
+nonsense, which only served to blunt the affections and harden the
+heart.”
+
+“Admirable young man!” cried the mother, with tears in her eyes. “A good
+heart is better than all the heads in the world.”
+
+Amen!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+     “Make way, Sir Geoffrey Peveril, or you will compel me to do
+     that I may be sorry for!”
+
+     “You shall make no way here but at your peril,” said Sir
+     Geoffrey; “this is my ground.”--Peveril of the Peak.
+
+One night on returning home from a party at Lady Westborough’s in
+Hanover Square, Clarence observed a man before him walking with an
+uneven and agitated step. His right hand was clenched, and he frequently
+raised it as with a sudden impulse, and struck fiercely as if at some
+imagined enemy.
+
+The stranger slackened his pace. Clarence passed him, and, turning round
+to satisfy the idle curiosity which the man’s eccentric gestures had
+provoked, his eye met a dark, lowering, iron countenance, which, despite
+the lapse of four years, he recognized on the moment: it was Wolfe, the
+republican.
+
+Clarence moved, involuntarily, with a quicker step; but in a few
+minutes, Wolfe, who was vehemently talking to himself, once more passed
+him; the direction he took was also Clarence’s way homeward, and he
+therefore followed the republican, though at some slight distance,
+and on the opposite side of the way. A gentleman on foot, apparently
+returning from a party, met Wolfe, and, with an air half haughty, half
+unconscious, took the wall; though, according to old-fashioned rules of
+street courtesy, he was on the wrong side for asserting the claim.
+The stern republican started, drew himself up to his full height, and
+sturdily and doggedly placed himself directly in the way of the unjust
+claimant. Clarence was now nearly opposite to the two, and saw all that
+was going on.
+
+With a motion a little rude and very contemptuous, the passenger
+attempted to put Wolfe aside, and win his path. Little did he know
+of the unyielding nature he had to do with; the next instant the
+republican, with a strong hand, forced him from the pavement into the
+very kennel, and silently and coldly continued his way.
+
+The wrath of the discomfited passenger was vehemently kindled.
+
+“Insolent dog!” cried he, in a loud and arrogant tone, “your baseness is
+your protection.” Wolfe turned rapidly, and made but two strides before
+he was once more by the side of his defeated opponent.
+
+“What did you say?” he asked, in his low, deep, hoarse voice.
+
+Clarence stopped. “There will be mischief done here,” thought he, as he
+called to mind the stern temper of the republican.
+
+“Merely,” said the other, struggling with his rage, “that it is not for
+men of my rank to avenge the insults offered us by those of yours!”
+
+“Your rank!” said Wolfe, bitterly retorting the contempt of the
+stranger, in a tone of the loftiest disdain; “your rank! poor
+changeling! And what are you, that you should lord it over me? Are your
+limbs stronger? your muscles firmer? your proportions juster? your
+mind acuter? your conscience clearer? Fool! fool! go home and measure
+yourself with lackeys!”
+
+The republican ceased, and pushing the stranger aside, turned slowly
+away. But this last insult enraged the passenger beyond all prudence.
+Before Wolfe had proceeded two paces, he muttered a desperate but brief
+oath, and struck the reformer with a strength so much beyond what
+his figure (which was small and slight) appeared to possess, that the
+powerful and gaunt frame of Wolfe recoiled backward several steps, and,
+had it not been for the iron railing of the neighbouring area, would
+have fallen to the ground.
+
+Clarence pressed forward: the face of the rash aggressor was turned
+towards him; the features were Lord Borodaile’s. He had scarcely time to
+make this discovery, before Wolfe had recovered himself. With a wild
+and savage cry, rather than exclamation, he threw himself upon his
+antagonist, twined his sinewy arms round the frame of the struggling but
+powerless nobleman, raised him in the air with the easy strength of a
+man lifting a child, held him aloft for one moment with a bitter and
+scornful laugh of wrathful derision, and then dashed him to the ground,
+and planting his foot upon Borodaile’s breast said,--
+
+“So shall it be with all of you: there shall be but one instant between
+your last offence and your first but final debasement. Lie there! it is
+your proper place! By the only law which you yourself acknowledge, the
+law which gives the right divine to the strongest; if you stir limb or
+muscle, I will crush the breath from your body.”
+
+But Clarence was now by the side of Wolfe, a new and more powerful
+opponent.
+
+“Look you,” said he: “you have received an insult, and you have done
+justice yourself. I condemn the offence, and quarrel not with you for
+the punishment; but that punishment is now past: remove your foot, or--”
+
+“What?” shouted Wolfe, fiercely, his lurid and vindictive eye flashing
+with the released fire of long-pent and cherished passions.
+
+“Or,” answered Clarence, calmly, “I will hinder you from committing
+murder.”
+
+At that instant the watchman’s voice was heard, and the night’s guardian
+himself was seen hastening from the far end of the street towards the
+place of contest. Whether this circumstance, or Clarence’s answer,
+somewhat changed the current of the republican’s thoughts, or whether
+his anger, suddenly raised, was now as suddenly subsiding, it is not
+easy to decide; but he slowly and deliberately moved his foot from
+the breast of his baffled foe, and bending down seemed endeavouring
+to ascertain the mischief he had done. Lord Borodaile was perfectly
+insensible.
+
+“You have killed him!” cried Clarence in a voice of horror, “but you
+shall not escape;” and he placed a desperate and nervous hand on the
+republican.
+
+“Stand off,” said Wolfe, “my blood is up! I would not do more violence
+to-night than I have done. Stand off! the man moves; see!”
+
+And Lord Borodaile, uttering a long sigh, and attempting to rise,
+Clarence released his hold of the republican, and bent down to assist
+the fallen nobleman. Meanwhile, Wolfe, muttering to himself, turned from
+the spot, and strode haughtily away.
+
+The watchman now came up, and, with his aid, Clarence raised Lord
+Borodaile. Bruised, stunned, half insensible as he was, that personage
+lost none of his characteristic stateliness; he shook off the watchman’s
+arm, as if there was contamination in the touch; and his countenance,
+still menacing and defying in its expression, turned abruptly towards
+Clarence, as if he yet expected to meet and struggle with a foe.
+
+“How are you, my lord?” said Linden; “not severely hurt, I trust?”
+
+“Well, quite well,” cried Borodaile. “Mr. Linden, I think?--I thank you
+cordially for your assistance; but the dog, the rascal, where is he?”
+
+“Gone,” said Clarence.
+
+“Gone! Where--where?” cried Borodaile; “that living man should insult
+me, and yet escape!”
+
+“Which way did the fellow go?” said the watchman, anticipative of
+half-a-crown. “I will run after him in a trice, your honour: I warrant I
+nab him.”
+
+“No--no--” said Borodaile, haughtily, “I leave my quarrels to no man;
+if I could not master him myself, no one else shall do it for me. Mr.
+Linden, excuse me, but I am perfectly recovered, and can walk very well
+without your polite assistance. Mr. Watchman, I am obliged to you: there
+is a guinea to reward your trouble.”
+
+With these words, intended as a farewell, the proud patrician,
+smothering his pain, bowed with extreme courtesy to Clarence, again
+thanked him, and walked on unaided and alone.
+
+“He is a game blood,” said the watchman, pocketing the guinea.
+
+“He is worthy his name,” thought Clarence; “though he was in the wrong,
+my heart yearns to him.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+     Things wear a vizard which I think to like not.--Tanner of
+     Tyburn.
+
+Clarence, from that night, appeared to have formed a sudden attachment
+to Lord Borodaile. He took every opportunity of cultivating his
+intimacy, and invariably treated him with a degree of consideration
+which his knowledge of the world told him was well calculated to gain
+the good will of his haughty and arrogant acquaintance; but all this
+was in effectual in conquering Borodaile’s coldness and reserve. To
+have been once seen in a humiliating and degrading situation is quite
+sufficient to make a proud man hate the spectator, and, with the
+confusion of all prejudiced minds, to transfer the sore remembrance
+of the event to the association of the witness. Lord Borodaile, though
+always ceremoniously civil, was immovably distant; and avoided as well
+as he was able Clarence’s insinuating approaches and address. To add to
+his indisposition to increase his acquaintance with Linden, a friend of
+his, a captain in the Guards, once asked him who that Mr. Linden was?
+and, on his lordship’s replying that he did not know, Mr. Percy Bobus,
+the son of a wine-merchant, though the nephew of a duke, rejoined,
+“Nobody does know.”
+
+“Insolent intruder!” thought Lord Borodaile: “a man whom nobody knows to
+make such advances to me!”
+
+A still greater cause of dislike to Clarence arose from jealousy.
+Ever since the first night of his acquaintance with Lady Flora, Lord
+Borodaile had paid her unceasing attention. In good earnest, he was
+greatly struck by her beauty, and had for the last year meditated the
+necessity of presenting the world with a Lady Borodaile. Now, though his
+lordship did look upon himself in as favourable a light as a man well
+can do, yet he could not but own that Clarence was very handsome, had
+a devilish gentlemanlike air, talked with a better grace than the
+generality of young men, and danced to perfection. “I detest that
+fellow!” said Lord Borodaile, involuntarily and aloud, as these
+unwilling truths forced themselves upon his mind.
+
+“Whom do you detest?” asked Mr. Percy Bobus, who was lying on the sofa
+in Lord Borodaile’s drawing-room, and admiring a pair of red-heeled
+shoes which decorated his feet.
+
+“That puppy Linden!” said Lord Borodaile, adjusting his cravat.
+
+“He is a deuced puppy, certainly!” rejoined Mr. Percy Bobus, turning
+round in order to contemplate more exactly the shape of his right shoe.
+“I can’t bear conceit, Borodaile.”
+
+“Nor I: I abhor it; it is so d--d disgusting!” replied Lord Borodaile,
+leaning his chin upon his two hands, and looking full into the glass.
+“Do you use MacNeile’s divine pomatum?”
+
+“No, it’s too hard; I get mine from Paris: shall I send you some?”
+
+“Do,” said Lord Borodaile.
+
+“Mr. Linden, my lord,” said the servant, throwing open the door; and
+Clarence entered.
+
+“I am very fortunate,” said he, with that smile which so few ever
+resisted, “to find you at home, Lord Borodaile; but as the day was
+wet, I thought I should have some chance of that pleasure; I therefore
+wrapped myself up in my roquelaure, and here I am.”
+
+Now, nothing could be more diplomatic than the compliment of choosing a
+wet day for a visit, and exposing one’s self to “the pitiless shower,”
+ for the greater probability of finding the person visited at home. Not
+so thought Lord Borodaile; he drew himself up, bowed very solemnly, and
+said, with cold gravity,--
+
+“You are very obliging, Mr. Linden.”
+
+Clarence coloured, and bit his lip as he seated himself. Mr. Percy
+Bobus, with true insular breeding, took up the newspaper.
+
+“I think I saw you at Lady C.’s last night,” said Clarence; “did you
+stay there long?”
+
+“No, indeed,” answered Borodaile; “I hate her parties.”
+
+“One does meet such odd people there,” observed Mr. Percy Bobus;
+“creatures one never sees anywhere else:”
+
+“I hear,” said Clarence, who never abused any one, even the givers of
+stupid parties, if he could help it, and therefore thought it best to
+change the conversation,--“I hear, Lord Borodaile, that some hunters of
+yours are to be sold. I purpose being a bidder for Thunderbolt.”
+
+“I have a horse to sell you, Mr. Linden,” cried Mr. Percy Bobus,
+springing from the sofa into civility; “a superb creature.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Clarence, laughing; “but I can only afford to buy one,
+and I have taken a great fancy to Thunderbolt.”
+
+Lord Borodaile, whose manners were very antiquated in their affability,
+bowed. Mr. Bobus sank back into his sofa, and resumed the paper.
+
+A pause ensued. Clarence was chilled in spite of himself. Lord Borodaile
+played with a paper-cutter.
+
+“Have you been to Lady Westborough’s lately?” said Clarence, breaking
+silence.
+
+“I was there last night,” replied Lord Borodaile.
+
+“Indeed!” cried Clarence. “I wonder I did not see you there, for I dined
+with them.”
+
+Lord Borodaile’s hair curled of itself. “He dined there, and I only
+asked in the evening!” thought he; but his sarcastic temper suggested a
+very different reply.
+
+“Ah,” said he, elevating his eyebrows, “Lady Westborough told me she had
+had some people to dinner whom she had been obliged to ask. Bobus, is
+that the ‘Public Advertiser’? See whether that d--d fellow Junius has
+been writing any more of his venomous letters.”
+
+Clarence was not a man apt to take offence, but he felt his bile rise.
+“It will not do to show it,” thought he; so he made some further remark
+in a jesting vein; and, after a very ill-sustained conversation of
+some minutes longer, rose, apparently in the best humour possible, and
+departed, with a solemn intention never again to enter the house. Thence
+he went to Lady Westborough’s.
+
+The marchioness was in her boudoir: Clarence was as usual admitted;
+for Lady Westborough loved amusement above all things in the world, and
+Clarence had the art of affording it better than any young man of her
+acquaintance. On entering, he saw Lady Flora hastily retreating through
+an opposite door. She turned her face towards him for one moment: that
+moment was sufficient to freeze his blood: the large tears were rolling
+down her cheeks, which were as white as death, and the expression of
+those features, usually so laughing and joyous, was that of utter and
+ineffable despair.
+
+Lady Westborough was as lively, as bland, and as agreeable as ever:
+but Clarence thought he detected something restrained and embarrassed
+lurking beneath all the graces of her exterior manner; and the single
+glance he had caught of the pale and altered face of Lady Flora was not
+calculated to reassure his mind or animate his spirits. His visit was
+short; when he left the room, he lingered for a few moments in the
+ante-chamber in the hope of again seeing Lady Flora. While thus
+loitering, his ear caught the sound of Lady Westborough’s voice: “When
+Mr. Linden calls again, you have my orders never to admit him into this
+room; he will be shown into the drawing-room.”
+
+With a hasty step and a burning cheek Clarence quitted the house, and
+hurried, first to his solitary apartments, and thence, impatient of
+loneliness, to the peaceful retreat of his benefactor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+  A maiden’s thoughts do check my trembling hand.--DRAYTON.
+
+There is something very delightful in turning from the unquietness and
+agitation, the fever, the ambition, the harsh and worldly realities of
+man’s character to the gentle and deep recesses of woman’s more secret
+heart. Within her musings is a realm of haunted and fairy thought, to
+which the things of this turbid and troubled life have no entrance. What
+to her are the changes of state, the rivalries and contentions which
+form the staple of our existence? For her there is an intense and fond
+philosophy, before whose eye substances flit and fade like shadows, and
+shadows grow glowingly into truth. Her soul’s creations are not as the
+moving and mortal images seen in the common day: they are things, like
+spirits steeped in the dim moonlight, heard when all else are still, and
+busy when earth’s labourers are at rest! They are
+
+          “Such stuff
+  As dreams are made of, and their little life
+  Is rounded by a sleep.”
+
+Hers is the real and uncentred poetry of being, which pervades and
+surrounds her as with an air, which peoples her visions and animates
+her love, which shrinks from earth into itself, and finds marvel and
+meditation in all that it beholds within, and which spreads even over
+the heaven in whose faith she so ardently believes the mystery and the
+tenderness of romance.
+
+
+
+LETTER I.
+
+FROM LADY FLORA ARDENNE TO MISS ELEANOR TREVANION.
+
+You say that I have not written to you so punctually of late as I used
+to do before I came to London, and you impute my negligence to the
+gayeties and pleasures by which I am surrounded. Eh bien! my dear
+Eleanor, could you have thought of a better excuse for me? You know how
+fond we--ay, dearest, you as well as I--used to be of dancing, and
+how earnestly we were wont to anticipate those children’s balls at my
+uncle’s, which were the only ones we were ever permitted to attend.
+I found a stick the other day, on which I had cut seven notches,
+significant of seven days more to the next ball; we reckoned time by
+balls then, and danced chronologically. Well, my dear Eleanor, here I
+am now, brought out, tolerably well-behaved, only not dignified enough,
+according to Mamma,--as fond of laughing, talking, and dancing as ever;
+and yet, do you know, a ball, though still very delightful, is far from
+being the most important event in creation; its anticipation does
+not keep me awake of a night: and what is more to the purpose,
+its recollection does not make me lock up my writing-desk, burn my
+portefeuille, and forget you, all of which you seem to imagine it has
+been able to effect.
+
+No, dearest Eleanor, you are mistaken; for, were she twice as giddy
+and ten times as volatile as she is, your own Flora could never, never
+forget you, nor the happy hours we have spent together, nor the pretty
+goldfinches we had in common, nor the little Scotch duets we used to
+sing together, nor our longings to change them into Italian, nor our
+disappointment when we did so, nor our laughter at Signor Shrikalini,
+nor our tears when poor darling Bijou died. And do you remember,
+dearest, the charming green lawn where we used to play together, and
+plan tricks for your governess? She was very, very cross, though, I
+think, we were a little to blame too. However, I was much the worst!
+And pray, Eleanor, don’t you remember how we used to like being called
+pretty, and told of the conquests we should make? Do you like all that
+now? For my part, I am tired of it, at least from the generality of
+one’s flatterers.
+
+Ah! Eleanor, or “heigho!” as the young ladies in novels write, do you
+remember how jealous I was of you at ----, and how spiteful I was, and
+how you were an angel, and bore with me, and kissed me, and told me
+that--that I had nothing to fear? Well, Clar--I mean Mr. Linden, is now
+in town and so popular, and so admired! I wish we were at ---- again,
+for there we saw him every day, and now we don’t meet more than three
+times a week; and though I like hearing him praised above all things,
+yet I feel very uncomfortable when that praise comes from very, very
+pretty women. I wish we were at ---- again! Mamma, who is looking more
+beautiful than ever, is, very kind! she says nothing to be sure, but she
+must see how--that is to say--she must know that--that I--I mean that
+Clarence is very attentive to me, and that I blush and look exceedingly
+silly whenever he is; and therefore I suppose that whenever Clarence
+thinks fit to ask me, I shall not be under the necessity of getting
+up at six o’clock, and travelling to Gretna Green, through that odious
+North Road, up the Highgate Hill, and over Finchley Common.
+
+“But when will he ask you?” My dearest Eleanor, that is more than I
+can say. To tell you the truth, there is something about Linden which I
+cannot thoroughly understand. They say he is nephew and heir to the Mr.
+Talbot whom you may have heard Papa talk of; but if so, why the hints,
+the insinuations, of not being what he seems, which Clarence perpetually
+throws out, and which only excite my interest without gratifying my
+curiosity? ‘It is not,’ he has said, more than once, ‘as an obscure
+adventurer that I will claim your love;’ and if I venture, which is very
+seldom (for I am a little afraid of him), to question his meaning, he
+either sinks into utter silence, for which, if I had loved according to
+book, and not so naturally, I should be very angry with him, or twists
+his words into another signification, such as that he would not claim me
+till he had become something higher and nobler than he is now. Alas,
+my dear Eleanor, it takes a long time to make an ambassador out of an
+attache.
+
+See now if you reproached me justly with scanty correspondences. If I
+write a line more, I must begin a new sheet, and that will be beyond the
+power of a frank,--a thing which would, I know, break the heart of your
+dear, good, generous, but a little too prudent aunt, and irrevocably
+ruin me in her esteem. So God bless you, dearest Eleanor, and believe me
+most affectionately yours,      FLORA ARDENNE.
+
+
+
+LETTER II. FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
+
+Pray, dearest Eleanor, does that good aunt of yours--now don’t frown,
+I am not going to speak disrespectfully of her--ever take a liking to
+young gentlemen whom you detest, and insist upon the fallacy of your
+opinion and the unerring rectitude of hers? If so, you can pity and
+comprehend my grief. Mamma has formed quite an attachment to a very
+disagreeable person! He is Lord Borodaile, the eldest, and I believe,
+the only son of Lord Ulswater. Perhaps you may have met him abroad, for
+he has been a great traveller: his family is among the most ancient in
+England, and his father’s estate covers half a county. All this Mamma
+tells me, with the most earnest air in the world, whenever I declaim
+upon his impertinence or disagreeability (is there such a word? there
+ought to be). “Well,” said I to-day, “what’s that to me?” “It may be a
+great deal to you,” replied Mamma, significantly, and the blood rushed
+from my face to my heart. She could not, Eleanor, she could not mean,
+after all her kindness to Clarence, and in spite of all her penetration
+into my heart,--oh, no, no,--she could not. How terribly suspicious this
+love makes one!
+
+But if I disliked Lord Borodaile at first, I have hated him of late;
+for, somehow or other, he is always in the way. If I see Clarence
+hastening through the crowd to ask me to dance, at that very instant
+up steps Lord Borodaile with his cold, changeless face, and his haughty
+old-fashioned bow, and his abominable dark complexion; and Mamma smiles;
+and he hopes he finds me disengaged; and I am hurried off; and poor
+Clarence looks so disappointed and so wretched! You have no idea how
+ill-tempered this makes me. I could not help asking Lord Borodaile
+yesterday if he was never going abroad again, and the hateful creature
+played with his cravat, and answered “Never!” I was in hopes that my
+sullenness would drive his lordship away: tout au contraire; “Nothing,”
+ said he to me the other day, when he was in full pout, “nothing is so
+plebeian as good-humour!”
+
+I wish, then, Eleanor, that he could see your governess: she must be
+majesty itself in his eyes!
+
+Ah, dearest, how we belie ourselves! At this moment, when you might
+think, from the idle, rattling, silly flow of my letter, that my heart
+was as light and free as it was when we used to play on the green lawn,
+and under the sunny trees, in the merry days of our childhood, the tears
+are running down my cheeks; see where they have fallen on the page,
+and my head throbs as if my thoughts were too full and heavy for it to
+contain. It is past one! I am alone, and in my own room. Mamma is gone
+to a rout at H---- House, but I knew I should not meet Clarence there,
+and so said I was ill, and remained at home. I have done so often of
+late, whenever I have learned from him that he was not going to the same
+place as Mamma. Indeed, I love much better to sit alone and think
+over his words and looks; and I have drawn, after repeated attempts, a
+profile likeness of him; and oh, Eleanor, I cannot tell you how dear
+it is to me; and yet there is not a line, not a look of his countenance
+which I have not learned by heart, without such useless aids to my
+memory. But I am ashamed of telling you all this, and my eyes ache so,
+that I can write no more.
+
+Ever, as ever, dearest Eleanor, your affectionate friend.
+
+F. A.
+
+
+
+LETTER III. FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
+
+Eleanor, I am undone! My mother--my mother has been so cruel; but she
+cannot, she cannot intend it, or she knows very little of my heart. With
+some ties may be as easily broken as formed; with others they are twined
+around life itself.
+
+Clarence dined with us yesterday, and was unusually animated and
+agreeable. He was engaged on business with Lord Aspeden afterwards, and
+left us early. We had a few people in the evening, Lord Borodaile among
+the rest; and my mother spoke of Clarence, and his relationship to
+and expectations from Mr. Talbot. Lord Borodaile sneered; “You are
+mistaken,” said he, sarcastically; “Mr. Linden may feel it convenient to
+give out that he is related to so old a family as the Talbots; and since
+Heaven only knows who or what he is, he may as well claim alliance with
+one person as another; but he is certainly not the nephew of Mr.
+Talbot of Scarsdale Park, for that gentleman had no sisters and but
+one brother, who left an only daughter; that daughter had also but one
+child, certainly no relation to Mr. Linden. I can vouch for the truth
+of this statement; for the Talbots are related to, or at least nearly
+connected with, myself; and I thank Heaven that I have a pedigree, even
+in its collateral branches, worth learning by heart.” And then Lord
+Borodaile--I little thought, when I railed against him, what serious
+cause I should have to hate him--turned to me and harassed me with his
+tedious attentions the whole of the evening.
+
+This morning Mamma sent for me into her boudoir. “I have observed,” said
+she, with the greatest indifference, “that Mr. Linden has, of late, been
+much too particular in his manner towards you: your foolish and undue
+familiarity with every one has perhaps given him encouragement. After
+the gross imposition which Lord Borodaile exposed to us last night, I
+cannot but consider the young man as a mere adventurer, and must not
+only insist on your putting a total termination to civilities which we
+must henceforth consider presumption, but I myself shall consider it
+incumbent upon me greatly to limit the advances he has thought proper to
+make towards my acquaintance.”
+
+You may guess how thunderstruck I was by this speech. I could not
+answer; my tongue literally clove to my mouth, and I was only relieved
+by a sudden and violent burst of tears. Mamma looked exceedingly
+displeased, and was just going to speak, when the servant threw open the
+door and announced Mr. Linden. I rose hastily, and had only just time to
+escape, as he entered; but when I heard that dear, dear voice, I could
+not resist turning for one moment. He saw me; and was struck mute, for
+the agony of my soul was stamped visibly on my countenance. That moment
+was over: with a violent effort I tore myself away.
+
+Eleanor, I can now write no more. God bless you! and me too; for I am
+very, very unhappy. F. A.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+    What a charming character is a kind old man.--STEPHEN MONTAGUE.
+
+“Cheer up, my dear boy,” said Talbot, kindly, “we must never despair.
+What though Lady Westborough has forbidden you the boudoir, a boudoir is
+a very different thing from a daughter, and you have no right to suppose
+that the veto extends to both. But now that we are on this subject, do
+let me reason with you seriously. Have you not already tasted all the
+pleasures, and been sufficiently annoyed by some of the pains, of acting
+the ‘Incognito’? Be ruled by me: resume your proper name; it is at least
+one which the proudest might acknowledge; and its discovery will remove
+the greatest obstacle to the success which you so ardently desire.”
+
+Clarence, who was labouring under strong excitement, paused for some
+moments, as if to collect himself, before he replied: “I have been
+thrust from my father’s home; I have been made the victim of another’s
+crime; I have been denied the rights and name of son; perhaps (and I
+say this bitterly) justly denied them, despite of my own innocence. What
+would you have me do? Resume a name never conceded to me,--perhaps not
+righteously mine,--thrust myself upon the unwilling and shrinking hands
+which disowned and rejected me; blazon my virtues by pretensions which
+I myself have promised to forego, and foist myself on the notice of
+strangers by the very claims which my nearest relations dispute? Never!
+never! never! With the simple name I have assumed; the friend I myself
+have won,--you, my generous benefactor, my real father, who never
+forsook nor insulted me for my misfortunes,--with these I have gained
+some steps in the ladder; with these, and those gifts of nature, a stout
+heart and a willing hand, of which none can rob me, I will either ascend
+the rest, even to the summit, or fall to the dust, unknown, but not
+contemned; unlamented, but not despised.”
+
+“Well, well,” said Talbot, brushing away a tear which he could not
+deny to the feeling, even while he disputed the judgment, of the young
+adventurer,--“well, this is all very fine and very foolish; but you
+shall never want friend or father while I live, or when I have ceased to
+live; but come,--sit down, share my dinner, which is not very good, and
+my dessert, which is: help me to entertain two or three guests who are
+coming to me in the evening, to talk on literature, sup, and sleep; and
+to-morrow you shall return home, and see Lady Flora in the drawing-room
+if you cannot in the boudoir.”
+
+And Clarence was easily persuaded to accept the invitation. Talbot
+was not one of those men who are forced to exert themselves to be
+entertaining. He had the pleasant and easy way of imparting his great
+general and curious information, that a man, partly humourist, partly
+philosopher, who values himself on being a man of letters, and is in
+spite of himself a man of the world, always ought to possess. Clarence
+was soon beguiled from the remembrance of his mortifications, and,
+by little and little, entirely yielded to the airy and happy flow of
+Talbot’s conversation.
+
+In the evening, three or four men of literary eminence (as many as
+Talbot’s small Tusculum would accommodate with beds) arrived, and in a
+conversation, free alike from the jargon of pedants and the insipidities
+of fashion, the night fled away swiftly and happily, even to the lover.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+     We are here (in the country) among the vast and noble scenes
+     of Nature; we are there (in the town) among the pitiful
+     shifts of policy. We walk here in the light and open ways of
+     the divine bounty,--we grope therein the dark and confused
+     labyrinths of human malice; our senses are here feasted with
+     all the clear and genuine taste of their objects, which are
+     all sophisticated there, and for the most part overwhelmed
+     with their contraries: here pleasure, methinks, looks like a
+     beautiful, constant, and modest wife; it is there an
+     impudent, fickle, and painted harlot.--COWLEY.
+
+Draw up the curtain! The scene is the Opera.
+
+The pit is crowded; the connoisseurs in the front row are in a very ill
+humour. It must be confessed that extreme heat is a little trying to the
+temper of a critic.
+
+The Opera then was not what it is now, nor even what it had been in a
+former time. It is somewhat amusing to find Goldsmith questioning,
+in one of his essays, whether the Opera could ever become popular in
+England. But on the night--on which the reader is summoned to that
+“theatre of sweet sounds” a celebrated singer from the Continent made
+his first appearance in London, and all the world thronged to “that
+odious Opera-house” to hear, or to say they had heard, the famous
+Sopraniello.
+
+With a nervous step, Clarence proceeded to Lady Westborough’s box; and
+it was many minutes that he lingered by the door before he summoned
+courage to obtain admission.
+
+He entered; the box was crowded; but Lady Flora was not there. Lord
+Borodaile was sitting next to Lady Westborough. As Clarence entered,
+Lord Borodaile raised his eyebrows, and Lady Westborough her glass.
+However disposed a great person may be to drop a lesser one, no one of
+real birth or breeding ever cuts another. Lady Westborough, therefore,
+though much colder, was no less civil than usual; and Lord Borodaile
+bowed lower than ever to Mr. Linden, as he punctiliously called him.
+But Clarence’s quick eye discovered instantly that he was no welcome
+intruder, and that his day with the beautiful marchioness was over. His
+visit, consequently, was short and embarrassed. When he left the box,
+he heard Lord Borodaile’s short, slow, sneering laugh, followed by Lady
+Westborough’s “hush” of reproof.
+
+His blood boiled. He hurried along the passage, with his eyes fixed upon
+the ground and his hand clenched.
+
+“What ho! Linden, my good fellow; why, you look as if all the ferocity
+of the great Figg were in your veins,” cried a good-humoured voice.
+Clarence started, and saw the young and high-spirited Duke of
+Haverfield.
+
+“Are you going behind the scenes?” said his grace. “I have just come
+thence; and you had much better drop into La Meronville’s box with me.
+You sup with her to-night, do you not?
+
+“No, indeed!” replied Clarence; “I scarcely know her, except by sight.”
+
+“Well, and what think you of her?”
+
+“That she is the prettiest Frenchwoman I ever saw.”
+
+“Commend me to secret sympathies!” cried the duke. “She has asked
+me three times who you were, and told me three times you were the
+handsomest man in London and had quite a foreign air; the latter
+recommendation being of course far greater than the former. So,
+after this, you cannot refuse to accompany me to her box and make her
+acquaintance.”
+
+“Nay,” answered Clarence, “I shall be too happy to profit by the taste
+of so discerning a person; but it is cruel in you, Duke, not to feign
+a little jealousy,--a little reluctance to introduce so formidable a
+rival.”
+
+“Oh, as to me,” said the duke, “I only like her for her mental, not
+her personal, attractions. She is very agreeable, and a little witty;
+sufficient attractions for one in her situation.”
+
+“But do tell me a little of her history,” said Clarence, “for, in spite
+of her renown, I only know her as La belle Meronville. Is she not living
+en ami with some one of our acquaintance?”
+
+“To be sure,” replied the duke, “with Lord Borodaile. She is
+prodigiously extravagant; and Borodaile affects to be prodigiously fond:
+but as there is only a certain fund of affection in the human heart, and
+all Lord Borodaile’s is centred in Lord Borodaile, that cannot really be
+the case.”
+
+“Is he jealous of her?” said Clarence.
+
+“Not in the least! nor indeed, does she give him any cause. She is very
+gay, very talkative, gives excellent suppers, and always has her box at
+the Opera crowded with admirers; but that is all. She encourages many,
+and favours but one. Happy Borodaile! My lot is less fortunate! You
+know, I suppose, that Julia has deserted me?”
+
+“You astonish me,--and for what?”
+
+“Oh, she told me, with a vehement burst of tears, that she was convinced
+I did not love her, and that a hundred pounds a month was not sufficient
+to maintain a milliner’s apprentice. I answered the first assertion by
+an assurance that I adored her: but I preserved a total silence with
+regard to the latter; and so I found Trevanion tete-a-tete with her the
+next day.”
+
+“What did you?” said Clarence.
+
+“Sent my valet to Trevanion with an old coat of mine, my compliments,
+and my hopes that, as Mr. Trevanion was so fond of my cast-off
+conveniences, he would honour me by accepting the accompanying trifle.”
+
+“He challenged you, without doubt?”
+
+“Challenged me! No: he tells all his friends that I am the wittiest man
+in Europe.”
+
+“A fool can speak the truth, you see,” said Clarence, laughing.
+
+“Thank you, Linden; you shall have my good word with La Meronville for
+that: mais allons.”
+
+Mademoiselle de la Meronville, as she pointedly entitled herself, was
+one of those charming adventuresses, who, making the most of a
+good education and a prepossessing person, a delicate turn for
+letter-writing, and a lively vein of conversation, came to England for
+a year or two, as Spaniards were wont to go to Mexico, and who return
+to their native country with a profound contempt for the barbarians whom
+they have so egregiously despoiled. Mademoiselle de la Meronville was
+small, beautifully formed, had the prettiest hands and feet in the
+world, and laughed musically. By the by, how difficult it is to laugh,
+or even to smile, at once naturally and gracefully! It is one of
+Steele’s finest touches of character, where he says of Will Honeycombe,
+“He can smile when one speaks to him, and laughs easily.”
+
+In a word, the pretty Frenchwoman was precisely formed to turn the head
+of a man like Lord Borodaile, who loved to be courted and who required
+to be amused. Mademoiselle de la Meronville received Clarence with a
+great deal of grace, and a little reserve, the first chiefly natural,
+the last wholly artificial.
+
+“Well,” said the duke (in French), “you have not told me who are to be
+of your party this evening,--Borodaile, I suppose, of course?”
+
+“No, he cannot come to-night.”
+
+“Ah, quel malheur! then the hock will not be iced enough: Borodaile’s
+looks are the best wine-coolers in the world.”
+
+“Fie!” cried La Meronville, glancing towards Clarence, “I cannot endure
+your malevolence; wit makes you very bitter.”
+
+“And that is exactly the reason why La belle Meronville loves me so:
+nothing is so sweet to one person as bitterness upon another; it is
+human nature and French nature (which is a very different thing) into
+the bargain.”
+
+“Bah! my Lord Duke, you judge of others by yourself.”
+
+“To be sure I do,” cried the duke; “and that is the best way of forming
+a right judgment. Ah! what a foot, that little figurante has; you don’t
+admire her, Linden?”
+
+“No, Duke; my admiration is like the bird in the cage,--chained here,
+and cannot fly away!” answered Clarence, with a smile at the frippery of
+his compliment.
+
+“Ah, Monsieur,” cried the pretty Frenchwoman, leaning back, “you have
+been at Paris, I see: one does not learn those graces of language in
+England. I have been five months in your country; brought over the
+prettiest dresses imaginable, and have only received three compliments,
+and (pity me!) two out of the three were upon my pronunciation of ‘How
+do you do?’”
+
+“Well,” said Clarence, “I should have imagined that in England, above
+all other countries, your vanity would have been gratified, for you know
+we pique ourselves on our sincerity, and say all we think.”
+
+“Yes? then you always think very unpleasantly. What an alternative!
+which is the best, to speak ill or to think ill of one?”
+
+“Pour l’amour de Dieu,” cried the duke, “don’t ask such puzzling
+questions; you are always getting into those moral subtleties, which
+I suppose you learn from Borodaile. He is a wonderful metaphysician, I
+hear; I can answer for his chemical powers: the moment he enters a room
+the very walls grow damp; as for me, I dissolve; I should flow into
+a fountain, like Arethusa, if happily his lordship did not freeze one
+again into substance as fast as he dampens one into thaw.”
+
+“Fi donc!” cried La Meronville. “I should be very angry had you not
+taught me to be very indifferent--”
+
+“To him!” said the duke, dryly. “I’m glad to hear it. He is not worth
+une grande passion, believe me; but tell me, ma belle, who else sups
+with you?”
+
+“D’abord, Monsieur Linden, I trust,” answered La Meronville, with a look
+of invitation, to which Clarence bowed and smiled his assent, “Milord
+D----, and Monsieur Trevanion, Mademoiselle Caumartin, and Le Prince
+Pietro del Ordino.”
+
+“Nothing can be better arranged,” said the duke. “But see, they are just
+going to drop the curtain. Let me call your carriage.”
+
+“You are too good, milord,” replied La Meronville, with a bow which
+said, “of course;” and the duke, who would not have stirred three paces
+for the first princess of the blood, hurried out of the box (despite
+of Clarence’s offer to undertake the commission) to inquire after the
+carriage of the most notorious adventuress of the day.
+
+Clarence was alone in the box with the beautiful Frenchwoman. To
+say truth, Linden was far too much in love with Lady Flora, and too
+occupied, as to his other thoughts, with the projects of ambition, to
+be easily led into any disreputable or criminal liaison; he therefore
+conversed with his usual ease, though with rather more than his usual
+gallantry, without feeling the least touched by the charms of La
+Meronville or the least desirous of supplanting Lord Borodaile in her
+favour.
+
+The duke reappeared, and announced the carriage. As, with La Meronville
+leaning on his arm, Clarence hurried out, he accidentally looked up,
+and saw on the head of the stairs Lady Westborough with her party (Lord
+Borodaile among the rest) in waiting for her carriage. For almost the
+first time in his life, Clarence felt ashamed of himself; his cheek
+burned like fire, and he involuntarily let go the fair hand which was
+leaning upon his arm. However, the weaker our course the better face we
+should put upon it, and Clarence, recovering his presence of mind, and
+vainly hoping he had not been perceived, buried his face as well as he
+was able in the fur collar of his cloak, and hurried on.
+
+“You saw Lord Borodaile?” said the duke to La Meronville, as he handed
+her into her carriage.
+
+“Yes, I accidentally looked back after we had passed him, and then I saw
+him.”
+
+“Looked back!” said the duke; “I wonder he did not turn you into a
+pillar of salt.”
+
+“Fi donc!” cried La belle Meronville, tapping his grace playfully on the
+arm, in order to do which she was forced to lean a little harder upon
+Clarence’s, which she had not yet relinquished--“Fi donc! Francois, chez
+moi!”
+
+“My carriage is just behind,” said the duke. “You will go with me to La
+Meronville’s, of course?”
+
+“Really, my dear duke,” said Clarence, “I wish I could excuse myself
+from this party. I have another engagement.”
+
+“Excuse yourself? and leave me to the mercy of Mademoiselle Caumartin,
+who has the face of an ostrich, and talks me out of breath! Never, my
+dear Linden, never! Besides, I want you to see how well I shall behave
+to Trevanion. Here is the carriage. Entrez, mon cher.”
+
+And Clarence, weakly and foolishly (but he was very young and very
+unhappy, and so, longing for an escape from his own thoughts) entered
+the carriage, and drove to the supper party, in order to prevent the
+Duke of Haverfield being talked out of breath by Mademoiselle Caumartin,
+who had the face of an ostrich.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+  Yet truth is keenly sought for, and the wind
+  Charged with rich words, poured out in thought’s defence;
+  Whether the Church inspire that eloquence,
+  Or a Platonic piety, confined
+  To the sole temple of the inward mind;
+  And one there is who builds immortal lays,
+  Though doomed to tread in solitary ways;
+  Darkness before, and danger’s voice behind!
+  Yet not alone--
+                     WORDSWORTH.
+
+London, thou Niobe, who sittest in stone, amidst thy stricken and fated
+children; nurse of the desolate, that hidest in thy bosom the shame, the
+sorrows, the sins of many sons; in whose arms the fallen and the outcast
+shroud their distresses, and shelter from the proud man’s contumely;
+Epitome and Focus of the disparities and maddening contrasts of this
+wrong world, that assemblest together in one great heap the woes, the
+joys, the elevations, the debasements of the various tribes of man;
+mightiest of levellers, confounding in thy whirlpool all ranks, all
+minds, the graven labours of knowledge, the straws of the maniac, purple
+and rags, the regalities and the loathsomeness of earth,--palace and
+lazar-house combined! Grave of the living, where, mingled and massed
+together, we couch, but rest not,--“for in that sleep of life what
+dreams do come,”--each vexed with a separate vision,--“shadows” which
+“grieve the heart,” unreal in their substance, but faithful in their
+warnings, flitting from the eye, but graving unfleeting memories on
+the mind, which reproduce new dreams over and over, until the phantasm
+ceases, and the pall of a heavier torpor falls upon the brain, and all
+is still and dark and hushed! “From the stir of thy great Babel,”
+ and the fixed tinsel glare in which sits pleasure like a star, “which
+shines, but warms not with its powerless rays,” we turn to thy deeper
+and more secret haunts. Thy wilderness is all before us--where to choose
+our place of rest; and, to our eyes, thy hidden recesses are revealed.
+
+The clock of St. Paul’s had tolled the second hour of morning. Within
+a small and humble apartment in the very heart of the city, there sat
+a writer, whose lucubrations, then obscure and unknown, were destined,
+years afterwards, to excite the vague admiration of the crowd and the
+deeper homage of the wise. They were of that nature which is slow in
+winning its way to popular esteem; the result of the hived and hoarded
+knowledge of years; the produce of deep thought and sublime aspirations,
+influencing, in its bearings, the interests of the many, yet only
+capable of analysis by the judgment of the few. But the stream broke
+forth at last from the cavern to the daylight, although the source was
+never traced; or, to change the image,--albeit none know the hand which
+executed and the head which designed, the monument of a mighty intellect
+has been at length dug up, as it were, from the envious earth, the
+brighter for its past obscurity, and the more certain of immortality
+from the temporary neglect it has sustained.
+
+The room was, as we before said, very small, and meanly furnished; yet
+were there a few articles of costliness and luxury scattered about,
+which told that the tastes of its owner had not been quite humbled to
+the level of his fortunes. One side of the narrow chamber was covered
+with shelves, which supported books in various languages, and though
+chiefly on scientific subjects, not utterly confined to them. Among the
+doctrines of the philosopher, and the golden rules of the moralist,
+were also seen the pleasant dreams of poets, the legends of Spenser,
+the refining moralities of Pope, the lofty errors of Lucretius, and the
+sublime relics of our “dead kings of melody.” [Shakspeare and Milton]
+And over the hearth was a picture, taken in more prosperous days, of
+one who had been and was yet to the tenant of that abode, better than
+fretted roofs and glittering banquets, the objects of ambition, or
+even the immortality of fame. It was the face of one very young and
+beautiful, and the deep, tender eyes looked down, as with a watchful
+fondness, upon the lucubrator and his labours. While beneath the window,
+which was left unclosed, for it was scarcely June, were simple yet not
+inelegant vases, filled with flowers,--
+
+  “Those lovely leaves, where we
+   May read how soon things have
+   Their end, though ne’er so brave.” [Herrick]
+
+The writer was alone, and had just paused from his employment; he was
+leaning his face upon one hand, in a thoughtful and earnest mood, and
+the air which came chill, but gentle, from the window, slightly stirred
+the locks from the broad and marked brow, over which they fell in thin
+but graceful waves. Partly owing perhaps to the waning light of the
+single lamp and the lateness of the hour, his cheek seemed very pale,
+and the complete though contemplative rest of the features partook
+greatly of the quiet of habitual sadness, and a little of the languor
+of shaken health; yet the expression, despite the proud cast of the
+brow and profile, was rather benevolent than stern or dark in its
+pensiveness, and the lines spoke more of the wear and harrow of deep
+thought than the inroads of ill-regulated passion.
+
+There was a slight tap at the door; the latch was raised, and the
+original of the picture I have described entered the apartment.
+
+Time had not been idle with her since that portrait had been taken: the
+round elastic figure had lost much of its youth and freshness; the step,
+though light, was languid, and in the centre of the fair, smooth cheek,
+which was a little sunken, burned one deep bright spot,--fatal sign to
+those who have watched the progress of the most deadly and deceitful of
+our national maladies; yet still the form and countenance were eminently
+interesting and lovely; and though the bloom was gone forever, the
+beauty, which not even death could wholly have despoiled, remained to
+triumph over debility, misfortune, and disease.
+
+She approached the student, and laid her hand upon his shoulder.
+
+“Dearest!” said he, tenderly yet reproachfully, “yet up, and the hour so
+late and yourself so weak? Fie, I must learn to scold you.”
+
+“And how,” answered the intruder, “how could I sleep or rest while you
+are consuming your very life in those thankless labours?”
+
+“By which,” interrupted the writer, with a faint smile, “we glean our
+scanty subsistence.”
+
+“Yes,” said the wife (for she held that relation to the student), and
+the tears stood in her eyes, “I know well that every morsel of bread,
+every drop of water, is wrung from your very heart’s blood, and I--I am
+the cause of all; but surely you exert yourself too much, more than can
+be requisite? These night damps, this sickly and chilling air, heavy
+with the rank vapours of the coming morning, are not suited to thoughts
+and toils which are alone sufficient to sear your mind and exhaust your
+strength. Come, my own love, to bed; and yet first come and look upon
+our child, how sound she sleeps! I have leaned over her for the last
+hour, and tried to fancy it was you whom I watched, for she has learned
+already your smile and has it even when she sleeps.”
+
+“She has cause to smile,” said the husband, bitterly.
+
+“She has, for she is yours! and even in poetry and humble hopes, that is
+an inheritance which may well teach her pride and joy. Come, love, the
+air is keen, and the damp rises to your forehead,--yet stay, till I have
+kissed it away.”
+
+“Mine own love,” said the student, as he rose and wound his arm round
+the slender waist of his wife, “wrap your shawl closer over your bosom,
+and let us look for one instant upon the night. I cannot sleep till I
+have slaked the fever of my blood: the air has nothing of coldness in
+its breath for me.”
+
+And they walked to the window and looked forth. All was hushed and still
+in the narrow street; the cold gray clouds were hurrying fast along the
+sky; and the stars, weak and waning in their light, gleamed forth at
+rare intervals upon the mute city, like expiring watch-lamps of the
+dead.
+
+They leaned out and spoke not; but when they looked above upon the
+melancholy heavens, they drew nearer to each other, as if it were their
+natural instinct to do so whenever the world without seemed discouraging
+and sad.
+
+At length the student broke the silence; but his thoughts, which were
+wandering and disjointed, were breathed less to her than vaguely and
+unconsciously to himself. “Morn breaks,--another and another!--day upon
+day!--while we drag on our load like the blind beast which knows not
+when the burden shall be cast off and the hour of rest be come.”
+
+The woman pressed her hand to her bosom, but made no rejoinder--she knew
+his mood--and the student continued,--“And so life frets itself away!
+Four years have passed over our seclusion--four years! a great segment
+in the little circle of our mortality; and of those years what day has
+pleasure won from labour, or what night has sleep snatched wholly
+from the lamp? Weaker than the miser, the insatiable and restless
+mind traverses from east to west; and from the nooks, and corners, and
+crevices of earth collects, fragment by fragment, grain by grain, atom
+by atom, the riches which it gathers to its coffers--for what?--to
+starve amidst the plenty! The fantasies of the imagination bring a ready
+and substantial return: not so the treasures of thought. Better that I
+had renounced the soul’s labour for that of its hardier frame--better
+that I had ‘sweated in the eye of Phoebus,’ than ‘eat my heart with
+crosses and with cares,’--seeking truth and wanting bread--adding to the
+indigence of poverty its humiliation; wroth with the arrogance of men,
+who weigh in the shallow scales of their meagre knowledge the product of
+lavish thought, and of the hard hours for which health, and sleep, and
+spirit have been exchanged;--sharing the lot of those who would
+enchant the old serpent of evil, which refuses the voice of the
+charmer!--struggling against the prejudice and bigoted delusion of the
+bandaged and fettered herd to whom, in our fond hopes and aspirations,
+we trusted to give light and freedom; seeing the slavish judgments we
+would have redeemed from error clashing their chains at us in ire;--made
+criminal by our very benevolence;--the martyrs whose zeal is rewarded
+with persecution, whose prophecies are crowned with contempt!--Better,
+oh, better that I had not listened to the vanity of a heated
+brain--better that I had made my home with the lark and the wild bee,
+among the fields and the quiet hills, where life, if obscurer, is
+less debased, and hope, if less eagerly indulged, is less bitterly
+disappointed. The frame, it is true, might have been bowed to a harsher
+labour, but the heart would at least have had its rest from anxiety, and
+the mind its relaxation from thought.”
+
+The wife’s tears fell upon the hand she clasped. The student turned, and
+his heart smote him for the selfishness of his complaint. He drew her
+closer and closer to his bosom; and gazing fondly upon those eyes which
+years of indigence and care might have robbed of their young lustre, but
+not of their undying tenderness, he kissed away her tears, and addressed
+her in a voice which never failed to charm her grief into forgetfulness.
+
+“Dearest and kindest,” he said, “was I not to blame for accusing those
+privations or regrets which have only made us love each other the more?
+Trust me, mine own treasure, that it is only in the peevishness of an
+inconstant and fretful humour that I have murmured against my fortune.
+For, in the midst of all, I look upon you, my angel, my comforter,
+my young dream of love, which God, in His mercy, breathed into waking
+life--I look upon you, and am blessed and grateful. Nor in my juster
+moments do I accuse even the nature of these studies, though they
+bring us so scanty a reward. Have I not hours of secret and overflowing
+delight, the triumphs of gratified research--flashes of sudden light,
+which reward the darkness of thought, and light up my solitude as a
+revel?--These feelings of rapture, which nought but Science can afford,
+amply repay her disciples for worse evils and severer handships than
+it has been my destiny to endure. Look along the sky, how the vapours
+struggle with the still yet feeble stars: even so have the mists of
+error been pierced, though not scattered, by the dim but holy lights of
+past wisdom, and now the morning is at hand, and in that hope we journey
+on, doubtful, but not utterly in darkness. Nor is this all my hope;
+there is a loftier and more steady comfort than that which mere
+philosophy can bestow. If the certainty of future fame bore Milton
+rejoicing through his blindness, or cheered Galileo in his dungeon,
+what stronger and holier support shall not be given to him who has loved
+mankind as his brothers, and devoted his labours to their cause?--who
+has not sought, but relinquished, his own renown?---who has braved the
+present censures of men for their future benefit, and trampled upon
+glory in the energy of benevolence? Will there not be for him something
+more powerful than fame to comfort his sufferings and to sustain his
+hopes? If the wish of mere posthumous honour be a feeling rather vain
+than exalted, the love of our race affords us a more rational and noble
+desire of remembrance. Come what will, that love, if it animates our
+toils and directs our studies, shall when we are dust make our relics
+of value, our efforts of avail, and consecrate the desire of fame,
+which were else a passion selfish and impure, by connecting it with the
+welfare of ages and the eternal interests of the world and its Creator!
+Come, we will to bed.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+     A man may be formed by nature for an admirable citizen, and
+     yet, from the purest motives, be a dangerous one to the
+     State in which the accident of birth has placed him.--
+     STEPHEN MONTAGUE.
+
+The night again closed., and the student once more resumed his labours.
+The spirit of his hope and comforter of his toils sat by him, ever and
+anon lifting her fond eyes from her work to gaze upon his countenance,
+to sigh, and to return sadly and quietly to her employment.
+
+A heavy step ascended the stairs, the door opened, and the tall figure
+of Wolfe, the republican, presented itself. The female rose, pushed a
+chair towards him with a smile and grace suited to better fortunes, and,
+retiring from the table, reseated herself silent and apart.
+
+“It is a fine night,” said the student, when the mutual greetings were
+over. “Whence come you?”
+
+“From contemplating human misery and worse than human degradation,”
+ replied Wolfe, slowly seating himself.
+
+“Those words specify no place: they apply universally,” said the
+student, with a sigh.
+
+“Ay, Glendower, for misgovernment is universal,” rejoined Wolfe.
+
+Glendower made no answer.
+
+“Oh!” said Wolfe, in the low, suppressed tone of intense passion which
+was customary to him, “it maddens me to look upon the willingness with
+which men hug their trappings of slavery,--bears, proud of the rags
+which deck and the monkeys which ride them. But it frets me yet more
+when some lordling sweeps along, lifting his dull eyes above the fools
+whose only crime and debasement are--what?--their subjection to him!
+Such a one I encountered a few nights since; and he will remember the
+meeting longer than I shall. I taught that ‘god to tremble.’”
+
+The female rose, glanced towards her husband, and silently withdrew.
+
+Wolfe paused for a few moments, looked curiously and pryingly round,
+and then rising went forth into the passage to see that no loiterer or
+listener was near; returned, and drawing his chair close to Glendower,
+fixed his dark eye upon him, and said,--
+
+“You are poor, and your spirit rises against your lot, you are just, and
+your heart swells against the general oppression you behold: can you not
+dare to remedy your ills and those of mankind?”
+
+“I can dare,” said Glendower, calmly, though haughtily, “all things but
+crime.”
+
+“And which is crime?--the rising against, or the submission to, evil
+government? Which is crime, I ask you?”
+
+“That which is the most imprudent,” answered Glendower.
+
+“We may sport in ordinary cases with our own safeties, but only in rare
+cases with the safety of others.”
+
+Wolfe rose, and paced the narrow room impatiently to and fro. He paused
+by the window and threw it open. “Come here,” he cried,--“come and look
+out.”
+
+Glendower did so; all was still and quiet.
+
+“Why did you call me?” said he; “I see nothing.”
+
+“Nothing!” exclaimed Wolfe; “look again; look on yon sordid and squalid
+huts; look at yon court, that from this wretched street leads to abodes
+to which these are as palaces; look at yon victims of vice and famine,
+plying beneath the midnight skies their filthy and infectious trade.
+Wherever you turn your eyes, what see you? Misery, loathsomeness, sin!
+Are you a man, and call you these nothing? And now lean forth still
+more; see afar off, by yonder lamp, the mansion of ill-gotten and
+griping wealth. He who owns those buildings, what did he that he should
+riot while we starve? He wrung from the negro’s tears and bloody sweat
+the luxuries of a pampered and vitiated taste; he pandered to the
+excesses of the rich; he heaped their tables with the product of a
+nation’s groans. Lo!--his reward! He is rich, prosperous, honoured! He
+sits in the legislative assembly; he declaims against immorality;
+he contends for the safety of property and the equilibrium of ranks.
+Transport yourself from this spot for an instant; imagine that you
+survey the gorgeous homes of aristocracy and power, the palaces of the
+west. What see you there?--the few sucking, draining, exhausting the
+blood, the treasure, the very existence of the many. Are we, who are of
+the many, wise to suffer it?”
+
+“Are we of the many?” said Glendower.
+
+“We could be,” said Wolfe, hastily.
+
+“I doubt it;” replied Glendower.
+
+“Listen,” said the republican, laying his hand upon Glendower’s
+shoulder, “listen to me. There are in this country men whose spirits not
+years of delayed hope, wearisome persecution, and, bitterer than all,
+misrepresentation from some and contempt from others, have yet quelled
+and tamed. We watch our opportunity; the growing distress of the
+country, the increasing severity and misrule of the administration, will
+soon afford it us. Your talents, your benevolence, render you worthy to
+join us. Do so, and--”
+
+“Hush!” interrupted the student; “you know not what you say: you weigh
+not the folly, the madness of your design! I am a man more fallen, more
+sunken, more disappointed than you. I, too, have had at my heart the
+burning and lonely hope which, through years of misfortune and want, has
+comforted me with the thought of serving and enlightening mankind,--I,
+too, have devoted to the fulfilment of that hope, days and nights, in
+which the brain grew dizzy and the heart heavy and clogged with the
+intensity of my pursuits. Were the dungeon and the scaffold my reward
+Heaven knows that I would not flinch eye or hand or abate a jot of heart
+and hope in the thankless prosecution of my toils. Know me, then, as
+one of fortunes more desperate than your own; of an ambition more
+unquenchable; of a philanthropy no less ardent; and, I will add, of a
+courage no less firm: and behold the utter hopelessness of your projects
+with others, when to me they only appear the visions of an enthusiast.”
+
+Wolfe sank down in the chair.
+
+“Is it even so?” said he, slowly and musingly. “Are my hopes but
+delusions? Has my life been but one idle, though convulsive dream? Is
+the goddess of our religion banished from this great and populous earth
+to the seared and barren hearts of a few solitary worshippers, whom all
+else despise as madmen or persecute as idolaters? And if so, shall we
+adore her the less?---No! though we perish in her cause, it is around
+her altar that our corpses shall be found!”
+
+“My friend,” said Glendower, kindly, for he was touched by the sincerity
+though opposed to the opinions of the republican, “the night is yet
+early: we will sit down to discuss our several doctrines calmly and in
+the spirit of truth and investigation.”
+
+“Away!” cried Wolfe, rising and slouching his hat over his bent
+and lowering brows; “away! I will not listen to you: I dread your
+reasonings; I would not have a particle of my faith shaken. If I err,
+I have erred from my birth,--erred with Brutus and Tell, Hampden and
+Milton, and all whom the thousand tribes and parties of earth consecrate
+with their common gratitude and eternal reverence. In that error I will
+die! If our party can struggle not with hosts, there may yet arise some
+minister with the ambition of Caesar, if not his genius,--of whom a
+single dagger can rid the earth!”
+
+“And if not?” said Glendower.
+
+“I have the same dagger for myself!” replied Wolfe, as he closed the
+door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+     Bolingbroke has said that “Man is his own sharper and his
+     own bubble;” and certainly he who is acutest in duping
+     others is ever the most ingenious in outwitting himself. The
+     criminal is always a sophist; and finds in his own reason a
+     special pleader to twist laws human and divine into a
+     sanction of his crime. The rogue is so much in the habit of
+     cheating, that he packs the cards even when playing at
+     Patience with himself.--STEPHEN MONTAGUE.
+
+The only two acquaintances in this populous city whom Glendower
+possessed who were aware that in a former time he had known a better
+fortune were Wolfe and a person of far higher worldly estimation, of the
+name of Crauford. With the former the student had become acquainted by
+the favour of chance, which had for a short time made them lodgers in
+the same house. Of the particulars of Glendower’s earliest history Wolfe
+was utterly ignorant; but the addresses upon some old letters, which
+he had accidentally seen, had informed him that Glendower had formerly
+borne another name; and it was easy to glean from the student’s
+conversation that something of greater distinction and prosperity than
+he now enjoyed was coupled with the appellation he had renounced.
+Proud, melancholy, austere,--brooding upon thoughts whose very loftiness
+received somewhat of additional grandeur from the gloom which encircled
+it,--Glendower found, in the ruined hopes and the solitary lot of the
+republican, that congeniality which neither Wolfe’s habits nor the
+excess of his political fervour might have afforded to a nature which
+philosophy had rendered moderate and early circumstances refined.
+Crauford was far better acquainted than Wolfe with the reverses
+Glendower had undergone. Many years ago he had known and indeed
+travelled with him upon the Continent; since then they had not met till
+about six months prior to the time in which Glendower is presented to
+the reader. It was in an obscure street of the city that Crauford had
+then encountered Glendower, whose haunts were so little frequented by
+the higher orders of society that Crauford was the first, and the only
+one of his former acquaintance with whom for years he had been brought
+into contact. That person recognized him at once, accosted him, followed
+him home, and three days afterwards surprised him with a visit. Of
+manners which, in their dissimulation, extended far beyond the ordinary
+ease and breeding of the world, Crauford readily appeared not to notice
+the altered circumstances of his old acquaintance; and, by a tone
+of conversation artfully respectful, he endeavoured to remove from
+Glendower’s mind that soreness which his knowledge of human nature told
+him his visit was calculated to create.
+
+There is a certain species of pride which contradicts the ordinary
+symptoms of the feeling, and appears most elevated when it would be
+reasonable to expect it should be most depressed. Of this sort was
+Glendower’s. When he received the guest who had known him in his former
+prosperity, some natural sentiment of emotion called, it is true, to his
+pale cheek a momentary flush, as he looked round his humble apartment,
+and the evident signs of poverty it contained; but his address was calm
+and self-possessed, and whatever mortification he might have felt, no
+intonation of his voice, no tell-tale embarrassment of manner, revealed
+it. Encouraged by this air, even while he was secretly vexed by it,
+and perfectly unable to do justice to the dignity of mind which gave
+something of majesty rather than humiliation to misfortune, Crauford
+resolved to repeat his visit, and by intervals, gradually lessening,
+renewed it, till acquaintance seemed, though little tinctured, at least
+on Glendower’s side, by friendship, to assume the semblance of intimacy.
+It was true, however, that he had something to struggle against in
+Glendower’s manner, which certainly grew colder in proportion to the
+repetition of the visits; and at length Glendower said, with an ease and
+quiet which abashed for a moment an effrontery of mind and manner which
+was almost parallel, “Believe me, Mr. Crauford, I feel fully sensible of
+your attentions; but as circumstances at present are such as to render
+an intercourse between us little congenial to the habits and sentiments
+of either, you will probably understand and forgive my motives in
+wishing no longer to receive civilities which, however I may feel them,
+I am unable to return.”
+
+Crauford coloured and hesitated before he replied. “Forgive me then,”
+ said he, “for my fault. I did venture to hope that no circumstances
+would break off an acquaintance to me so valuable. Forgive me if I
+did imagine that an intercourse between mind and mind could be equally
+carried on, whether the mere body were lodged in a palace or a hovel;”
+ and then suddenly changing his tone into that of affectionate warmth,
+Crauford continued, “My dear Glendower, my dear friend, I would say, if
+I durst, is not your pride rather to blame here? Believe me, in my turn,
+I fully comprehend and bow to it; but it wounds me beyond expression.
+Were you in your proper station, a station much higher than my own,
+I would come to you at once, and proffer my friendship: as it is, I
+cannot; but your pride wrongs me, Glendower,--indeed it does.”
+
+And Crauford turned away, apparently in the bitterness of wounded
+feeling.
+
+Glendower was touched: and his nature, as kind as it was proud,
+immediately smote him for conduct certainly ungracious and perhaps
+ungrateful. He held out his hand to Crauford; with the most respectful
+warmth that personage seized and pressed it: and from that time
+Crauford’s visits appeared to receive a license which, if not perfectly
+welcome, was at least never again questioned.
+
+“I shall have this man now,” muttered Crauford, between his ground
+teeth, as he left the house, and took his way to his counting-house.
+There, cool, bland, fawning, and weaving in his close and dark mind
+various speculations of guilt and craft, he sat among his bills and
+gold, like the very gnome and personification of that Mammon of gain to
+which he was the most supple though concealed adherent.
+
+Richard Crauford was of a new but not unimportant family. His father had
+entered into commerce, and left a flourishing firm and a name of great
+respectability in his profession to his son. That son was a man whom
+many and opposite qualities rendered a character of very singular and
+uncommon stamp. Fond of the laborious acquisition of money, he was
+equally attached to the ostentatious pageantries of expense. Profoundly
+skilled in the calculating business of his profession, he was devoted
+equally to the luxuries of pleasure; but the pleasure was suited well
+to the mind which pursued it. The divine intoxication of that love where
+the delicacies and purities of affection consecrate the humanity of
+passion was to him a thing of which not even his youngest imagination
+had ever dreamed. The social concomitants of the wine-cup (which have
+for the lenient an excuse, for the austere a temptation), the generous
+expanding of the heart, the increased yearning to kindly affection, the
+lavish spirit throwing off its exuberance in the thousand lights and
+emanations of wit,--these, which have rendered the molten grape, despite
+of its excesses, not unworthy of the praises of immortal hymns,
+and taken harshness from the judgment of those averse to its
+enjoyment,--these never presented an inducement to the stony temperament
+and dormant heart of Richard Crauford.
+
+He looked upon the essences of things internal as the common eye upon
+outward nature, and loved the many shapes of evil as the latter does the
+varieties of earth, not for their graces, but their utility. His
+loves, coarse and low, fed their rank fires from an unmingled and gross
+depravity. His devotion to wine was either solitary and unseen--for he
+loved safety better than mirth--or in company with those whose station
+flattered his vanity, not whose fellowship ripened his crude and nipped
+affections. Even the recklessness of vice in him had the character of
+prudence; and in the most rapid and turbulent stream of his excesses,
+one might detect the rocky and unmoved heart of the calculator at the
+bottom.
+
+Cool, sagacious, profound in dissimulation, and not only observant of,
+but deducing sage consequences from, those human inconsistencies and
+frailties by which it was his aim to profit, he cloaked his deeper vices
+with a masterly hypocrisy; and for those too dear to forego and too
+difficult to conceal he obtained pardon by the intercession of virtues
+it cost him nothing to assume. Regular in his attendance at worship;
+professing rigidness of faith beyond the tenets of the orthodox church;
+subscribing to the public charities, where the common eye knoweth what
+the private hand giveth; methodically constant to the forms of business;
+primitively scrupulous in the proprieties of speech; hospitable, at
+least to his superiors, and, being naturally smooth, both of temper and
+address, popular with his inferiors,--it was no marvel that one part
+of the world forgave to a man rich and young the irregularities of
+dissipation, that another forgot real immorality in favour of affected
+religion, or that the remainder allowed the most unexceptionable
+excellence of words to atone for the unobtrusive errors of a conduct
+which did not prejudice them.
+
+“It is true,” said his friends, “that he loves women too much: but he is
+young; he will marry and amend.”
+
+Mr. Crauford did marry; and, strange as it may seem, for love,--at least
+for that brute-like love, of which alone he was capable. After a few
+years of ill-usage on his side, and endurance on his wife’s, they
+parted. Tired of her person, and profiting by her gentleness of temper,
+he sent her to an obscure corner of the country, to starve upon the
+miserable pittance which was all he allowed her from his superfluities.
+Even then--such is the effect of the showy proprieties of form and
+word--Mr. Crauford sank not in the estimation of the world.
+
+“It was easy to see,” said the spectators of his domestic drama, “that
+a man in temper so mild, in his business so honourable, so civil of
+speech, so attentive to the stocks and the sermon, could not have
+been the party to blame. One never knew the rights of matrimonial
+disagreements, nor could sufficiently estimate the provoking disparities
+of temper. Certainly Mrs. Crauford never did look in good humour, and
+had not the open countenance of her husband; and certainly the very
+excesses of Mr. Crauford betokened a generous warmth of heart, which the
+sullenness of his conjugal partner might easily chill and revolt.”
+
+And thus, unquestioned and unblamed, Mr. Crauford walked onward in
+his beaten way; and, secretly laughing at the toleration of the crowd,
+continued at his luxurious villa the orgies of a passionless yet brutal
+sensuality.
+
+So far might the character of Richard Crauford find parallels in
+hypocrisy and its success. Dive we now deeper into his soul. Possessed
+of talents which, though of a secondary rank, were in that rank
+consummate, Mr. Crauford could not be a villain by intuition or the
+irregular bias of his nature: he was a villain upon a grander scale; he
+was a villain upon system. Having little learning and less knowledge,
+out of his profession his reflection expended itself upon apparently
+obvious deductions from the great and mysterious book of life. He saw
+vice prosperous in externals, and from this sight his conclusion was
+drawn. “Vice,” said he, “is not an obstacle to success; and if so, it
+is at least a pleasanter road to it than your narrow and thorny ways of
+virtue.” But there are certain vices which require the mask of virtue,
+and Crauford thought it easier to wear the mask than to school his soul
+to the reality. So to the villain he added the hypocrite. He found the
+success equalled his hopes, for he had both craft and genius; nor was he
+naturally without the minor amiabilities, which to the ignorance of the
+herd seem more valuable than coin of a more important amount. Blinded
+as we are by prejudice, we not only mistake but prefer decencies to
+moralities; and, like the inhabitants of Cos, when offered the choice of
+two statues of the same goddess, we choose, not that which is the most
+beautiful, but that which is the most dressed.
+
+Accustomed easily to dupe mankind, Crauford soon grew to despise them;
+and from justifying roguery by his own interest, he now justified it by
+the folly of others; and as no wretch is so unredeemed as to be without
+excuse to himself, Crauford actually persuaded his reason that he was
+vicious upon principle, and a rascal on a system of morality. But why
+the desire of this man, so consummately worldly and heartless, for an
+intimacy with the impoverished and powerless student? This question is
+easily answered. In the first place, during Crauford’s acquaintance with
+Glendower abroad, the latter had often, though innocently, galled the
+vanity and self-pride of the parvenu affecting the aristocrat, and in
+poverty the parvenu was anxious to retaliate. But this desire would
+probably have passed away after he had satisfied his curiosity, or
+gloated his spite, by one or two insights into Glendower’s home,--for
+Crauford, though at times a malicious, was not a vindictive, man,--had
+it not been for a much more powerful object which afterwards occurred to
+him. In an extensive scheme of fraud, which for many years this man had
+carried on and which for secrecy and boldness was almost unequalled, it
+had of late become necessary to his safety to have a partner, or rather
+tool. A man of education, talent, and courage was indispensable, and
+Crauford had resolved that Glendower should be that man. With the
+supreme confidence in his own powers which long success had given him;
+with a sovereign contempt for, or rather disbelief in, human integrity;
+and with a thorough conviction that the bribe to him was the bribe with
+all, and that none would on any account be poor if they had the offer
+to be rich,--Crauford did not bestow a moment’s consideration upon
+the difficulty of his task, or conceive that in the nature and mind of
+Glendower there could exist any obstacle to his design.
+
+Men addicted to calculation are accustomed to suppose those employed in
+the same mental pursuit arrive, or ought to arrive, at the same final
+conclusion. Now, looking upon Glendower as a philosopher, Crauford
+looked upon him as a man who, however he might conceal his real
+opinions, secretly laughed, like Crauford’s self, not only at the
+established customs, but at the established moralities of the world.
+Ill-acquainted with books, the worthy Richard was, like all men
+similarly situated, somewhat infected by the very prejudices he affected
+to despise; and he shared the vulgar disposition to doubt the hearts
+of those who cultivate the head. Glendower himself had confirmed this
+opinion by lauding, though he did not entirely subscribe to, those
+moralists who have made an enlightened self-interest the proper measure
+of all human conduct; and Crauford, utterly unable to comprehend this
+system in its grand, naturally interpreted it in a partial, sense.
+Espousing self-interest as his own code, he deemed that in reality
+Glendower’s principles did not differ greatly from his; and, as there
+is no pleasure to a hypocrite like that of finding a fit opportunity to
+unburden some of his real sentiments, Crauford was occasionally wont
+to hold some conference and argument with the student, in which his
+opinions were not utterly cloaked in their usual disguise; but cautious
+even in his candour, he always forbore stating such opinions as his own:
+he merely mentioned them as those which a man beholding the villanies
+and follies of his kind, might be tempted to form; and thus Glendower,
+though not greatly esteeming his acquaintance, looked upon him as one
+ignorant in his opinions, but not likely to err in his conduct.
+
+These conversations did, however, it is true, increase Crauford’s
+estimate of Glendower’s integrity, but they by no means diminished his
+confidence of subduing it. Honour, a deep and pure sense of the divinity
+of good, the steady desire of rectitude, and the supporting aid of a
+sincere religion,--these he did not deny to his intended tool: he rather
+rejoiced that he possessed them. With the profound arrogance, the sense
+of immeasurable superiority, which men of no principle invariably feel
+for those who have it, Crauford said to himself, “Those very virtues
+will be my best dupes; they cannot resist the temptations I shall offer;
+but they can resist any offer to betray me afterwards; for no man can
+resist hunger: but your fine feelings, your nice honour, your precise
+religion,--he! he! he!--these can teach a man very well to resist
+a common inducement; they cannot make him submit to be his own
+executioner; but they can prevent his turning king’s evidence and being
+executioner to another. No, no: it is not to your common rogues that I
+may dare trust my secret,--my secret, which is my life! It is precisely
+of such a fine, Athenian, moral rogue as I shall make my proud friend
+that I am in want. But he has some silly scruples; we must beat them
+away: we must not be too rash; and above all, we must leave the best
+argument to poverty. Want is your finest orator; a starving wife,
+a famished brat,--he! he!--these are your true tempters,--your true
+fathers of crime, and fillers of jails and gibbets. Let me see: he
+has no money, I know, but what he gets from that bookseller. What
+bookseller, by the by? Ah, rare thought! I’ll find out, and cut off that
+supply. My lady wife’s cheek will look somewhat thinner next month, I
+fancy--he! he! But ‘t is a pity, for she is a glorious creature! Who
+knows but I may serve two purposes? However, one at present! business
+first, and pleasure afterwards; and, faith, the business is damnably
+like that of life and death.”
+
+Muttering such thoughts as these, Crauford took his way one evening to
+Glendower’s house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+     Iago.--Virtue; a fig!--‘t is in ourselves that we are thus
+     and thus.--Othello.
+
+“So, so, my little one, don’t let me disturb you. Madam, dare I venture
+to hope your acceptance of this fruit? I chose it myself, and I am
+somewhat of a judge. Oh! Glendower, here is the pamphlet you wished to
+see.”
+
+With this salutation, Crauford drew his chair to the table by which
+Glendower sat, and entered into conversation with his purposed victim. A
+comely and a pleasing countenance had Richard Crauford! the lonely light
+of the room fell upon a face which, though forty years of guile had
+gone over it, was as fair and unwrinkled as a boy’s. Small, well-cut
+features; a blooming complexion; eyes of the lightest blue; a forehead
+high, though narrow; and a mouth from which the smile was never
+absent,--these, joined to a manner at once soft and confident, and an
+elegant though unaffected study of dress, gave to Crauford a personal
+appearance well suited to aid the effect of his hypocritical and
+dissembling mind.
+
+“Well, my friend,” said he, “always at your books, eh? Ah! it is a happy
+taste; would that I had cultivated it more; but we who are condemned to
+business have little leisure to follow our own inclinations. It is only
+on Sundays that I have time to read; and then (to say truth) I am an
+old-fashioned man, whom the gayer part of the world laughs at, and then
+I am too occupied with the Book of Books to think of any less important
+study.”
+
+Not deeming that a peculiar reply was required to this pious speech,
+Glendower did not take that advantage of Crauford’s pause which it was
+evidently intended that he should. With a glance towards the student’s
+wife, our mercantile friend continued: “I did once--once in my young
+dreams--intend that whenever I married I would relinquish a profession
+for which, after all, I am but little calculated. I pictured to myself a
+country retreat, well stored with books; and having concentrated in one
+home all the attractions which would have tempted my thoughts abroad, I
+had designed to surrender myself solely to those studies which, I lament
+to say, were but ill attended to in my earlier education. But--but”
+ (here Mr. Crauford sighed deeply, and averted his face) “fate willed it
+otherwise!”
+
+Whatever reply of sympathetic admiration or condolence Glendower might
+have made was interrupted by one of those sudden and overpowering
+attacks of faintness which had of late seized the delicate and declining
+health of his wife. He rose, and leaned over her with a fondness and
+alarm which curled the lip of his visitor.
+
+“Thus it is,” said Crauford to himself, “with weak minds, under the
+influence of habit. The love of lust becomes the love of custom, and the
+last is as strong as the first.”
+
+When--she had recovered, she rose, and (with her child) retired to
+rest, the only restorative she ever found effectual for her complaint.
+Glendower went with her, and, after having seen her eyes, which swam
+with tears of gratitude at his love, close in the seeming slumber
+she affected in order to release him from his watch, he returned to
+Crauford. He found that gentleman leaning against the chimney-piece with
+folded arms, and apparently immersed in thought. A very good opportunity
+had Glendower’s absence afforded to a man whose boast it was never
+to lose one. Looking over the papers on the table, he had seen and
+possessed himself of the address of the bookseller the student dealt
+with. “So much for business, now for philanthropy,” said Mr. Crauford,
+in his favorite antithetical phrase, throwing himself in his attitude
+against the chimney-piece.
+
+As Glendower entered, Crauford started from his revery, and with a
+melancholy air and pensive voice said,--
+
+“Alas, my friend, when I look upon this humble apartment, the weak
+health of your unequalled wife, your obscurity, your misfortunes; when I
+look upon these, and contrast them with your mind, your talents, and all
+that you were born and fitted for, I cannot but feel tempted to believe
+with those who imagine the pursuit of virtue a chimera, and who justify
+their own worldly policy by the example of all their kind.”
+
+“Virtue,” said Glendower, “would indeed be a chimera, did it require
+support from those whom you have cited.”
+
+“True,--most true,” answered Crauford, somewhat disconcerted in reality,
+though not in appearance; “and yet, strange as it may seem, I have known
+some of those persons very good, admirably good men. They were extremely
+moral and religious: they only played the great game for worldly
+advantage upon the same terms as the other players; nay, they never made
+a move in it without most fervently and sincerely praying for divine
+assistance.”
+
+“I readily believe you,” said Glendower, who always, if possible,
+avoided a controversy: “the easiest person to deceive is one’s own
+self.”
+
+“Admirably said,” answered Crauford, who thought it nevertheless one of
+the most foolish observations he had ever heard, “admirably said! and
+yet my heart does grieve bitterly for the trials and distresses it
+surveys. One must make excuses for poor human frailty; and one is often
+placed in such circumstances as to render it scarcely possible without
+the grace of God” (here Crauford lifted up his eyes) “not to be urged,
+as it were, into the reasonings and actions of the world.”
+
+Not exactly comprehending this observation, and not very closely
+attending to it, Glendower merely bowed, as in assent, and Crauford
+continued,--
+
+“I remember a remarkable instance of this truth. One of my partner’s
+clerks had, through misfortune or imprudence, fallen into the greatest
+distress. His wife, his children (he had a numerous family), were on
+the literal and absolute verge of starvation. Another clerk, taking
+advantage of these circumstances, communicated to the distressed man
+a plan for defrauding his employer. The poor fellow yielded to the
+temptation, and was at last discovered. I spoke to him myself, for I
+was interested in his fate, and had always esteemed him. ‘What,’ said
+I, ‘was your motive for this fraud?’ ‘My duty!’ answered the man,
+fervently; ‘my duty! Was I to suffer my wife, my children, to starve
+before my face, when I could save them at a little personal risk? No:
+my duty forbade it!’ and in truth, Glendower, there was something very
+plausible in this manner of putting the question.”
+
+“You might, in answering it,” said Glendower, “have put the point in a
+manner equally plausible and more true: was he to commit a great crime
+against the millions connected by social order, for the sake of serving
+a single family, and that his own?”
+
+“Quite right,” answered Crauford: “that was just the point of view
+in which I did put it; but the man, who was something of a reasoner,
+replied, ‘Public law is instituted for public happiness. Now if mine and
+my children’s happiness is infinitely and immeasurably more served by
+this comparatively petty fraud than my employer’s is advanced by my
+abstaining from, or injured by my committing it, why, the origin of
+law itself allows me to do it.’ What say you to that, Glendower? It is
+something in your Utilitarian, or, as you term it, Epicurean [See the
+article on Mr. Moore’s “Epicurean” in the “Westminster Review.” Though
+the strictures on that work are harsh and unjust, yet the part relating
+to the real philosophy of Epicurus is one of the most masterly things in
+criticism.] principle; is it not?” and Crauford, shading his eyes, as
+if from the light, watched narrowly Glendower’s countenance, while he
+concealed his own.
+
+“Poor fool!” said Glendower; “the man was ignorant of the first lesson
+in his moral primer. Did he not know that no rule is to be applied to
+a peculiar instance, but extended to its most general bearings? Is it
+necessary even to observe that the particular consequence of fraud
+in this man might, it is true, be but the ridding his employer of
+superfluities, scarcely missed, for the relief of most urgent want in
+two or three individuals; but the general consequences of fraud and
+treachery would be the disorganization of all society? Do not think,
+therefore, that this man was a disciple of my, or of any, system of
+morality.”
+
+“It is very just, very,” said Mr. Crauford, with a benevolent sigh; “but
+you will own that want seldom allows great nicety in moral distinctions,
+and that when those whom you love most in the world are starving, you
+may be pitied, if not forgiven, for losing sight of the after laws of
+Nature and recurring to her first ordinance, self-preservation.”
+
+“We should be harsh, indeed,” answered Glendower, “if we did not pity;
+or, even while the law condemned, if the individual did not forgive.”
+
+“So I said, so I said,” cried Crauford; “and in interceding for the
+poor fellow, whose pardon I am happy to say I procured, I could not help
+declaring that, if I were placed in the same circumstances, I am not
+sure that my crime would not have been the same.”
+
+“No man could feel sure!” said Glendower, dejectedly. Delighted and
+surprised with this confession, Crauford continued: “I believe,--I
+fear not; thank God, our virtue can never be so tried: but even you,
+Glendower, even you, philosopher, moralist as you are,--just, good,
+wise, religious,--even you might be tempted, if you saw your angel wife
+dying for want of the aid, the very sustenance, necessary to existence,
+and your innocent and beautiful daughter stretch her little hands to you
+and cry in the accents of famine for bread.”
+
+The student made no reply for a few moments, but averted his
+countenance, and then in a slow tone said, “Let us drop this subject:
+none know their strength till they are tried; self-confidence should
+accompany virtue, but not precede it.”
+
+A momentary flash broke from the usually calm, cold eye of Richard
+Crauford. “He is mine,” thought he: “the very name of want abases his
+pride: what will the reality do? O human nature, how I know and mock
+thee!”
+
+“You are right,” said Crauford, aloud; “let us talk of the pamphlet.”
+
+And after a short conversation upon indifferent subjects, the visitor
+departed. Early the next morning was Mr. Crauford seen on foot, taking
+his way to the bookseller whose address he had learnt. The bookseller
+was known as a man of a strongly evangelical bias. “We must insinuate a
+lie or two,” said Crauford, inly, “about Glendower’s principles. He! he!
+it will be a fine stroke of genius to make the upright tradesman suffer
+Glendower to starve out of a principle of religion. But who would have
+thought my prey had been so easily snared? why, if I had proposed the
+matter last night, I verily think he would have agreed to it.”
+
+Amusing himself with these thoughts, Crauford arrived at the
+bookseller’s. There he found Fate had saved him from one crime at least.
+The whole house was in confusion: the bookseller had that morning died
+of an apoplectic fit.
+
+“Good God! how shocking!” said Crauford to the foreman; “but he was a
+most worthy man, and Providence could no longer spare him. The ways of
+Heaven are inscrutable! Oblige me with three copies of that precious
+tract termed the ‘Divine Call.’ I should like to be allowed permission
+to attend the funeral of so excellent a man. Good morning, sir. Alas!
+alas!” and, shaking his head piteously, Mr. Crauford left the shop.
+
+“Hurra!” said he, almost audibly, when he was once more in the street,
+“hurra! my victim is made; my game is won: death or the devil fights for
+me. But, hold: there are other booksellers in this monstrous city!--ay,
+but not above two or three in our philosopher’s way. I must forestall
+him there,--so, so,--that is soon settled. Now, then, I must leave him a
+little while, undisturbed, to his fate. Perhaps my next visit may be to
+him in jail: your debtor’s side of the Fleet is almost as good a pleader
+as an empty stomach,--he! he! He!--but the stroke must be made soon,
+for time presses, and this d--d business spreads so fast that if I don’t
+have a speedy help, it will be too much for my hands, griping as they
+are. However, if it holds on a year longer, I will change my seat in the
+Lower House for one in the Upper; twenty thousand pounds to the minister
+may make a merchant a very pretty peer. O brave Richard Crauford, wise
+Richard Crauford, fortunate Richard Crauford, noble Richard Crauford!
+Why, if thou art ever hanged, it will be by a jury of peers. ‘Gad, the
+rope would then have a dignity in it, instead of disgrace. But stay,
+here comes the Dean of ----; not orthodox, it is said,--rigid Calvinist!
+out with the ‘Divine Call’!”
+
+When Mr. Richard Crauford repaired next to Glendower, what was his
+astonishment and dismay at hearing he had left his home, none knew
+whither nor could give the inquirer the slightest clew.
+
+“How long has he left?” said Crauford to the landlady.
+
+“Five days, sir.”
+
+“And will he not return to settle any little debts he may have
+incurred?” said Crauford.
+
+“Oh, no, sir: he paid them all before he went. Poor gentleman,--for
+though he was poor, he was the finest and most thorough gentleman I ever
+saw!--my heart bled for him. They parted with all their valuables to
+discharge their debts: the books and instruments and busts,--all went;
+and what I saw, though he spoke so indifferently about it, hurt him the
+most,--he sold even the lady’s picture. ‘Mrs. Croftson,’ said he, ‘Mr.
+----, the painter, will send for that picture the day after I leave
+you. See that he has it, and that the greatest care is taken of it in
+delivery.’”
+
+“And you cannot even guess where he has gone to?”
+
+“No, sir; a single porter was sufficient to convey his remaining goods,
+and he took him from some distant part of the town.”
+
+“Ten thousand devils!” muttered Crauford, as he turned away; “I should
+have foreseen this! He is lost now. Of course he will again change
+his name; and in the d--d holes and corners of this gigantic puzzle of
+houses, how shall I ever find him out? and time presses too! Well, well,
+well! there is a fine prize for being cleverer, or, as fools would say,
+more rascally than others; but there is a world of trouble in winning
+it. But come; I will go home, lock myself up, and get drunk! I am as
+melancholy as a cat in love, and about as stupid; and, faith, one
+must get spirits in order to hit on a new invention. But if there be
+consistency in fortune, or success in perseverance, or wit in Richard
+Crauford, that man shall yet be my victim--and preserver!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+  Revenge is now the cud
+  That I do chew.--I’ll challenge him.
+              BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
+
+We return to “the world of fashion,” as the admirers of the polite novel
+of would say. The noon-day sun broke hot and sultry through half-closed
+curtains of roseate silk, playing in broken beams upon rare and fragrant
+exotics, which cast the perfumes of southern summers over a chamber,
+moderate, indeed, as to its dimensions, but decorated with a splendour
+rather gaudy than graceful, and indicating much more a passion for
+luxury than a refinement of taste.
+
+At a small writing-table sat the beautiful La Meronville. She had just
+finished a note, written (how Jean Jacques would have been enchanted)
+upon paper couleur de rose, with a mother-of-pearl pen, formed as one of
+Cupid’s darts, dipped into an ink-stand of the same material, which was
+shaped as a quiver, and placed at the back of a little Love, exquisitely
+wrought. She was folding this billet when a page, fantastically dressed,
+entered, and, announcing Lord Borodaile, was immediately followed by
+that nobleman. Eagerly and almost blushingly did La Meronville thrust
+the note into her bosom, and hasten to greet and to embrace her adorer.
+Lord Borodaile flung himself on one of the sofas with a listless and
+discontented air. The experienced Frenchwoman saw that there was a cloud
+on his brow.
+
+“My dear friend,” said she, in her own tongue, “you seem vexed: has
+anything annoyed you?”
+
+“No, Cecile, no. By the by, who supped with you last night?”
+
+“Oh! the Duke of Haverfield, your friend.”
+
+“My friend!” interrupted Borodaile, haughtily: “he’s no friend of mine;
+a vulgar, talkative fellow; my friend, indeed!”
+
+“Well, I beg your pardon: then there was Mademoiselle Caumartin, and the
+Prince Pietro del Orbino, and Mr. Trevanion, and Mr. Lin--Lin--Linten,
+or Linden.”
+
+“And pray, will you allow me to ask how you became acquainted with Mr.
+Lin--Lin--Linten, or Linden?”
+
+“Assuredly; through the Duke of Haverfield.”
+
+“Humph! Cecile, my love, that young man is not fit to be the
+acquaintance of my friend: allow me to strike him from your list.”
+
+“Certainly, certainly!” said La Meronville, hastily; and stooping as
+if to pick up a fallen glove, though, in reality, to hide her face from
+Lord Borodaile’s searching eye, the letter she had written fell from her
+bosom. Lord Borodaile’s glance detected the superscription, and before
+La Meronville could regain the note he had possessed himself of it.
+
+“A Monsieur, Monsieur Linden!” said he, coldly, reading the address;
+“and, pray, how long have you corresponded with that gentleman?”
+
+Now La Meronville’s situation at that moment was by no means agreeable.
+She saw at one glance that no falsehood or artifice could avail her; for
+Lord Borodaile might deem himself fully justified in reading the note,
+which would contradict any glossing statement she might make. She
+saw this. She was a woman of independence; cared not a straw for Lord
+Borodaile at present, though she had had a caprice for him; knew that
+she might choose her bon ami out of all London, and replied,--
+
+“That is the first letter I ever wrote to him; but I own that it will
+not be the last.”
+
+Lord Borodaile turned pale.
+
+“And will you suffer me to read it?” said he; for even in these cases he
+was punctiliously honourable.
+
+La Meronville hesitated. She did not know him. “If I do not consent,”
+ thought she, “he will do it without the consent: better submit with a
+good grace.--Certainly!” she answered, with an air of indifference.
+
+Borodaile opened and read the note; it was as follows:--
+
+You have inspired me with a feeling for you which astonishes myself.
+Ah, why should that love be the strongest which is the swiftest in its
+growth? I used to love Lord Borodaile: I now only esteem him; the love
+has flown to you. If I judge rightly from your words and your eyes, this
+avowal will not be unwelcome to you. Come and assure me, in person, of a
+persuasion so dear to my heart. C. L. M.
+
+“A very pretty effusion!” said Lord Borodaile, sarcastically, and only
+showing his inward rage by the increasing paleness of his complexion and
+a slight compression of his lip. “I thank you for your confidence in me.
+All I ask is that you will not send this note till to-morrow. Allow me
+to take my leave of you first, and to find in Mr. Linden a successor
+rather than a rival.”
+
+“Your request, my friend,” said La Meronville, adjusting her hair, “is
+but reasonable. I see that you understand these arrangements; and, for
+my part, I think that the end of love should always be the beginning of
+friendship: let it be so with us!”
+
+“You do me too much honour,” said Borodaile, bowing profoundly.
+“Meanwhile I depend upon your promise, and bid you, as a lover, farewell
+forever.”
+
+With his usual slow step Lord Borodaile descended the stairs, and
+walked towards the central quartier of town. His meditations were of no
+soothing nature. “To be seen by that man in a ridiculous and degrading
+situation; to be pestered with his d--d civility; to be rivalled by him
+with Lady Flora; to be duped and outdone by him with my mistress!
+Ay, all this have I been; but vengeance shall come yet. As for La
+Meronville, the loss is a gain; and, thank Heaven, I did not betray
+myself by venting my passion and making a scene. But it was I. who ought
+to have discarded her, not the reverse; and--death and confusion--for
+that upstart, above all men! And she talked in her letter about his eyes
+and words. Insolent coxcomb, to dare to have eyes and words for one
+who belonged to me. Well, well, he shall smart for this. But let me
+consider: I must not play the jealous fool, must not fight for a ----,
+must not show the world that a man, nobody knows who, could really
+outwit and outdo me,--me,--Francis Borodaile! No, no: I must throw the
+insult upon him, must myself be the aggressor and the challenged; then,
+too, I shall have the choice of weapons,--pistols of course. Where shall
+I hit him, by the by? I wish I shot as well as I used to do at Naples. I
+was in full practice then. Cursed place, where there was nothing else to
+do but to practise!”
+
+Immersed in these or somewhat similar reflections did Lord Borodaile
+enter Pall Mall.
+
+“Ah, Borodaile!” said Lord St. George, suddenly emerging from a shop.
+“This is really fortunate: you are going my way exactly; allow me to
+join you.”
+
+Now Lord Borodaile, to say nothing of his happening at that time to be
+in a mood more than usually unsocial, could never at any time bear the
+thought of being made an instrument of convenience, pleasure, or good
+fortune to another. He therefore, with a little resentment at Lord St.
+George’s familiarity, coldly replied, “I am sorry that I cannot avail
+myself of your offer. I am sure my way is not the same as yours.”
+
+“Then,” replied Lord St. George, who was a good-natured, indolent man,
+who imagined everybody was as averse to walking alone as he was, “then I
+will make mine the same as yours.”
+
+Borodaile coloured: though always uncivil, he did not like to be
+excelled in good manners; and therefore replied, that nothing but
+extreme business at White’s could have induced him to prefer his own way
+to that of Lord St. George.
+
+The good-natured peer took Lord Borodaile’s arm. It was a natural
+incident, but it vexed the punctilious viscount that any man should
+take, not offer, the support.
+
+“So, they say,” observed Lord St. George, “that young Linden is to marry
+Lady Flora Ardenne.”
+
+“Les on-dits font la gazette des fous,” rejoined Borodaile with a
+sneer. “I believe that Lady Flora is little likely to contract such a
+misalliance.”
+
+“Misalliance!” replied Lord St. George. “I thought Linden was of a very
+old family; which you know the Westboroughs are not, and he has great
+expectations--”
+
+“Which are never to be realized,” interrupted Borodaile, laughing
+scornfully.
+
+“Ah, indeed!” said Lord St. George, seriously. “Well, at all events he
+is a very agreeable, unaffected young man: and, by the by, Borodaile,
+you will meet him chez moi to-day; you know you dine with me?”
+
+“Meet Mr. Linden! I shall be proud to have that honour,” said Borodaile,
+with sparkling eyes; “will Lady Westborough be also of the party?”
+
+“No, poor Lady St. George is very ill, and I have taken the opportunity
+to ask only men.”
+
+“You have done wisely, my lord,” said Borodaile, secum multa revolvens;
+“and I assure you I wanted no hint to remind me of your invitation.”
+
+Here the Duke of Haverfield joined them. The duke never bowed to any
+one of the male sex; he therefore nodded to Borodaile, who, with a very
+supercilious formality, took off his hat in returning the salutation.
+The viscount had at least this merit in his pride,--that if it was
+reserved to the humble, it was contemptuous to the high: his inferiors
+he wished to remain where they were; his equals he longed to lower.
+
+“So I dine with you, Lord St. George, to-day,” said the duke; “whom
+shall I meet?”
+
+“Lord Borodaile, for one,” answered St. George; “my brother, Aspeden,
+Findlater, Orbino, and Linden.”
+
+“Linden!” cried the duke; “I’m very glad to hear it, c’est un homme fait
+expres pour moi. He is very clever, and not above playing the fool; has
+humour without setting up for a wit, and is a good fellow without being
+a bad man. I like him excessively.”
+
+“Lord St. George;” said Borodaile, who seemed that day to be the very
+martyr of the unconscious Clarence, “I wish you good morning. I have
+only just remembered an engagement which I must keep before I go to
+White’s.”
+
+And with a bow to the duke, and a remonstrance from Lord St. George,
+Borodaile effected his escape. His complexion was, insensibly to
+himself, more raised than usual, his step more stately; his mind, for
+the first time for years, was fully excited and engrossed. Ah, what a
+delightful thing it is for an idle man, who has been dying of ennui, to
+find an enemy!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+  You must challenge him
+  There’s no avoiding; one or both must drop.
+                 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
+
+“Ha! ha! ha! bravo, Linden!” cried Lord St. George, from the head of his
+splendid board, in approbation of some witticism of Clarence’s; and ha!
+ha! ha! or he! he! he! according to the cachinnatory intonations of the
+guests rang around.
+
+“Your lordship seems unwell,” said Lord Aspeden to Borodaile; “allow me
+to take wine with you.”
+
+Lord Borodaile bowed his assent.
+
+“Pray,” said Mr. St. George to Clarence, “have you seen my friend Talbot
+lately?”
+
+“This very morning,” replied Linden: “indeed, I generally visit him
+three or four times a week; he often asks after you.”
+
+“Indeed!” said Mr. St. George, rather flattered; “he does me much
+honour; but he is a distant connection of mine, and I suppose I must
+attribute his recollection of me to that cause. He is a near relation of
+yours, too, I think: is he not?”
+
+“I am related to him,” answered Clarence, colouring.
+
+Lord Borodaile leaned forward, and his lip curled. Though, in some
+respects, a very unamiable man, he had, as we have said, his good
+points. He hated a lie as much as Achilles did; and he believed in his
+heart of hearts that Clarence had just uttered one.
+
+“Why,” observed Lord Aspeden, “why, Lord Borodaile, the Talbots of
+Scarsdale are branches of your genealogical tree; therefore your
+lordship must be related to Linden; ‘you are two cherries on one
+stalk’!”
+
+“We are by no means related,” said Lord Borodaile, with a distinct and
+clear voice, intended expressly for Clarence; “that is an honour which I
+must beg leave most positively to disclaim.”
+
+There was a dead silence; the eyes of all who heard a remark so
+intentionally rude were turned immediately towards Clarence. His cheek
+burned like fire; he hesitated a moment, and then said, in the same key,
+though with a little trembling in his intonation,--
+
+“Lord Borodaile cannot be more anxious to disclaim it than I am.”
+
+“And yet,” returned the viscount, stung to the soul, “they who advance
+false pretensions ought at least to support them!”
+
+“I do not understand you, my lord,” said Clarence.
+
+“Possibly not,” answered Borodaile, carelessly: “there is a maxim which
+says that people not accustomed to speak truth cannot comprehend it in
+others.”
+
+Unlike the generality of modern heroes, who are always in a passion,--
+off-hand, dashing fellows, in whom irascibility is a virtue,--Clarence
+was peculiarly sweet-tempered by nature, and had, by habit, acquired a
+command over all his passions to a degree very uncommon in so young a
+man. He made no reply to the inexcusable affront he had received. His
+lip quivered a little, and the flush of his countenance was succeeded
+by an extreme paleness; this was all: he did not even leave the room
+immediately, but waited till the silence was broken by some well-bred
+member of the party; and then, pleading an early engagement as an excuse
+for his retiring so soon, he rose and departed.
+
+There was throughout the room a universal feeling of sympathy with the
+affront and indignation against the offender; for, to say nothing of
+Clarence’s popularity and the extreme dislike in which Lord Borodaile
+was held, there could be no doubt as to the wantonness of the outrage or
+the moderation of the aggrieved party. Lord Borodaile already felt
+the punishment of his offence: his very pride, while it rendered him
+indifferent to the spirit, had hitherto kept him scrupulous as to the
+formalities of social politeness; and he could not but see the grossness
+with which he had suffered himself to violate them and the light in
+which his conduct was regarded. However, this internal discomfort only
+rendered him the more embittered against Clarence and the more
+confirmed in his revenge. Resuming, by a strong effort, all the external
+indifference habitual to his manner, he attempted to enter into a
+conversation with those of the party who were next to him but his
+remarks produced answers brief and cold; even Lord Aspeden forgot his
+diplomacy and his smile; Lord St. George replied to his observations by
+a monosyllable; and the Duke of Haverfield, for the first time in his
+life, asserted the prerogative which his rank gave him of setting the
+example,--his grace did not reply to Lord Borodaile at all. In truth,
+every one present was seriously displeased. All civilized societies
+have a paramount interest in repressing the rude. Nevertheless, Lord
+Borodaile bore the brunt of his unpopularity with a steadiness and
+unembarrassed composure worthy of a better cause; and finding, at last,
+a companion disposed to be loquacious in the person of Sir Christopher
+Findlater (whose good heart, though its first impulse resented more
+violently than that of any heart present the discourtesy of the
+viscount, yet soon warmed to the desagremens of his situation, and
+hastened to adopt its favourite maxim of forgive and forget), Lord
+Borodaile sat the meeting out; and if he did not leave the latest, he
+was at least not the first to follow Clarence: “L’orgueil ou donne le
+courage, ou il y supplee.” [“Pride either gives courage or supplies the
+place of it.”]
+
+Meanwhile Linden had returned to his solitary home. He hastened to
+his room, locked the door, flung himself on his sofa, and burst into a
+violent and almost feminine paroxysm of tears. This fit lasted for
+more than an hour; and when Clarence at length stilled the indignant
+swellings of his heart, and rose from his supine position, he started,
+as his eye fell upon the opposite mirror, so haggard and exhausted
+seemed the forced and fearful calmness of his countenance. With a
+hurried step; with arms now folded on his bosom, now wildly tossed from
+him; and the hand so firmly clenched that the very bones seemed working
+through the skin; with a brow now fierce, now only dejected; and a
+complexion which one while burnt as with the crimson flush of a fever,
+and at another was wan and colourless, like his whose cheek a spectre
+has blanched,--Clarence paced his apartment, the victim not only of
+shame,--the bitterest of tortures to a young and high mind,--but of
+other contending feelings, which alternately exasperated and palsied his
+wrath, and gave to his resolves at one moment an almost savage ferocity
+and at the next an almost cowardly vacillation.
+
+The clock had just struck the hour of twelve when a knock at the door
+announced a visitor. Steps were heard on the stairs and presently a
+tap at Clarence’s room-door. He unlocked it and the Duke of Haverfield
+entered. “I am charmed to find you at home,” cried the duke, with his
+usual half kind, half careless address. “I was determined to call upon
+you, and be the first to offer my services in this unpleasant affair.”
+
+Clarence pressed the duke’s hand, but made no answer.
+
+“Nothing could be so unhandsome as Lord Borodaile’s conduct,” continued
+the duke. “I hope you both fence and shoot well. I shall never forgive
+you, if you do not put an end to that piece of rigidity.”
+
+Clarence continued to walk about the room in great agitation; the duke
+looked at him with some surprise. At last Linden paused by the window,
+and said, half unconsciously, “It must be so: I cannot avoid fighting!”
+
+“Avoid fighting!” cried his grace, in undisguised astonishment. “No,
+indeed: but that is the least part of the matter; you must kill as well
+as fight him.”
+
+“Kill him!” cried Clarence, wildly, “whom?” and then sinking into a
+chair, he covered his face with his hands for a few moments, and seemed
+to struggle with his emotions.
+
+“Well,” thought the duke, “I never was more mistaken in my life. I could
+have bet my black horse against Trevanion’s Julia, which is certainly
+the most worthless thing I know, that Linden had been a brave fellow:
+but these English heroes almost go into fits at a duel; one manages such
+things, as Sterne says, better in France.”
+
+Clarence now rose, calm and collected. He sat down; wrote a brief note
+to Borodaile, demanding the fullest apology, or the earliest meeting;
+put it into the duke’s hands, and said with a faint smile, “My dear
+duke, dare I ask you to be a second to a man who has been so grievously
+affronted and whose genealogy has been so disputed?”
+
+“My dear Linden,” said the duke, warmly, “I have always been grateful
+to my station in life for this advantage,--the freedom with which it has
+enabled me to select my own acquaintance and to follow my own pursuits.
+I am now more grateful to it than ever, because it has given me a better
+opportunity than I should otherwise have had of serving one whom I have
+always esteemed. In entering into your quarrel I shall at least show
+the world that there are some men not inferior in pretensions to Lord
+Borodaile who despise arrogance and resent overbearance even to others.
+Your cause I consider the common cause of society; but I shall take it
+up, if you will allow me, with the distinguishing zeal of a friend.”
+
+Clarence, who was much affected by the kindness of this speech, replied
+in a similar vein; and the duke, having read and approved the letter,
+rose. “There is, in my opinion,” said he, “no time to be lost. I will
+go to Borodaile this very evening: adieu, mon cher! you shall kill the
+Argus, and then carry off the Io. I feel in a double passion with that
+ambulating poker, who is only malleable when he is red-hot, when I
+think how honourably scrupulous you were with La Meronville last night,
+notwithstanding all her advances; but I go to bury Caesar, not to scold
+him. Au revoir.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+     Conon.--You’re well met, Crates. Crates.--If we part so,
+     Conon.-Queen of Corinth.
+
+It was as might be expected from the character of the aggressor. Lord
+Borodaile refused all apology, and agreed with avidity to a speedy
+rendezvous. He chose pistols (choice, then, was not merely nominal), and
+selected Mr. Percy Bobus for his second, a gentleman who was much
+fonder of acting in that capacity than in the more honourable one of
+a principal. The author of “Lacon” says “that if all seconds were as
+averse to duels as their principals, there would be very little blood
+spilt in that way;” and it was certainly astonishing to compare the
+zeal with which Mr. Bobus busied himself about this “affair” with
+that testified by him on another occasion when he himself was more
+immediately concerned.
+
+The morning came. Mr. Bobus breakfasted with his friend. “Damn it,
+Borodaile,” said he, as the latter was receiving the ultimate polish of
+the hairdresser, “I never saw you look better in my life. It will be a
+great pity if that fellow shoots you.”
+
+“Shoots me!” said Lord Borodaile, very quietly,--“me! no! that is quite
+out of the question; but joking apart, Bobus, I will not kill the young
+man. Where shall I hit him?”
+
+“In the cap of the knee,” said Mr. Percy, breaking an egg.
+
+“Nay, that will lame him for life,” said Lord Borodaile, putting on his
+cravat with peculiar exactitude.
+
+“Serve him right,” said Mr. Bobus. “Hang him, I never got up so early
+in my life: it is quite impossible to eat at this hour. Oh!--a propos,
+Borodaile, have you left any little memoranda for me to execute?”
+
+“Memoranda!--for what?” said Borodaile, who had now just finished his
+toilet.
+
+“Oh!” rejoined Mr. Percy Bobus, “in case of accident, you know: the man
+may shoot well, though I never saw him in the gallery.”
+
+“Pray,” said Lord Borodaile, in a great though suppressed passion,
+“pray, Mr. Bobus, how often have I to tell you that it is not by Mr.
+Linden that my days are to terminate: you are sure that Carabine saw to
+that trigger?”
+
+“Certain,” said Mr. Percy, with his mouth full, “certain. Bless me,
+here’s the carriage, and breakfast not half done yet.”
+
+“Come, come,” cried Borodaile, impatiently, “we must breakfast
+afterwards. Here, Roberts, see that we have fresh chocolate and some
+more cutlets when we return.”
+
+“I would rather have them now,” said Mr. Bobus, foreseeing the
+possibility of the return being single: “Ibis! redibis?” etc.
+
+“Come, we have not a moment to lose,” exclaimed Borodaile, hastening
+down the stairs; and Mr. Percy Bobus followed, with a strange mixture of
+various regrets, partly for the breakfast that was lost and partly for
+the friend that might be.
+
+When they arrived at the ground, Clarence and the duke were already
+there: the latter, who was a dead shot, had fully persuaded himself that
+Clarence was equally adroit, and had, in his providence for Borodaile,
+brought a surgeon. This was a circumstance of which the viscount, in
+the plenitude of his confidence for himself and indifference for his
+opponent, had never once dreamed.
+
+The ground was measured; the parties were about to take the ground. All
+Linden’s former agitation had vanished; his mien was firm, grave, and
+determined: but he showed none of the careless and fierce hardihood
+which characterized his adversary; on the contrary, a close observer
+might have remarked something sad and dejected amidst all the
+tranquillity and steadiness of his brow and air.
+
+“For Heaven’s sake,” whispered the duke, as he withdrew from the spot,
+“square your body a little more to your left and remember your exact
+level. Borodaile is much shorter than you.”
+
+There was a brief, dread pause: the signal was given; Borodaile fired;
+his ball pierced Clarence’s side; the wounded man staggered one step,
+but fell not. He raised his pistol; the duke bent eagerly forward; an
+expression of disappointment and surprise passed his lips; Clarence had
+fired in the air. The next moment Linden felt a deadly sickness come
+over him; he fell into the arms of the surgeon. Borodaile, touched by
+a forbearance which he had so little right to expect, hastened to the
+spot. He leaned over his adversary in greater remorse and pity than he
+would have readily confessed to himself. Clarence unclosed his eyes;
+they dwelt for one moment upon the subdued and earnest countenance of
+Borodaile.
+
+“Thank God,” he said faintly, “that you were not the victim,” and with
+those words he fell back insensible. They carried him to his lodgings.
+His wound was accurately examined. Though not mortal, it was of a
+dangerous nature; and the surgeons ended a very painful operation by
+promising a very lingering recovery.
+
+What a charming satisfaction for being insulted!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+     Je me contente de ce qui peut s’ecrire, et je reve tout ce
+     qui peut se rever.--DE SEVIGNE.
+
+[“I content myself with writing what I am able, and I dream all I
+possibly can dream.”]
+
+About a week after his wound, and the second morning of his return to
+sense and consciousness, when Clarence opened his eyes, they fell upon
+a female form seated watchfully and anxiously by his bedside. He raised
+himself in mute surprise, and the figure, startled by the motion, rose,
+drew the curtain, and vanished. With great difficulty he rang his bell.
+His valet, Harrison, on whose mind, though it was of no very exalted
+order, the kindness and suavity of his master had made a great
+impression, instantly appeared.
+
+“Who was that lady?” asked Linden. “How came she here?”
+
+Harrison smiled: “Oh, sir, pray please to lie down, and make yourself
+easy: the lady knows you very well and would come here; she insists upon
+staying in the house, so we made up a bed in the drawing-room and she
+has watched by you night and day. She speaks very little English to
+be sure, but your honour knows, begging your pardon, how well I speak
+French.”
+
+“French?” said Clarence, faintly,--“French? In Heaven’s name, who is
+she?”
+
+“A Madame--Madame--La Melonveal, or some such name, sir,” said the
+valet.
+
+Clarence fell back. At that moment his hand was pressed. He turned, and
+saw Talbot by his side. The kind old man had not suffered La Meronville
+to be Linden’s only nurse: notwithstanding his age and peculiarity of
+habits, he had fixed his abode all the day in Clarence’s house, and at
+night, instead of returning to his own home, had taken up his lodgings
+at the nearest hotel.
+
+With a jealous and anxious eye to the real interest and respectability
+of his adopted son, Talbot had exerted all his address, and even all his
+power, to induce La Meronville, who had made her settlement previous to
+Talbot’s, to quit the house, but in vain. With that obstinacy which a
+Frenchwoman when she is sentimental mistakes for nobility of heart, the
+ci-devant amante of Lord Borodaile insisted upon watching and tending
+one of whose sufferings she said and believed she was the unhappy though
+innocent cause: and whenever more urgent means of removal were hinted at
+La Meronville flew to the chamber of her beloved, apostrophized him in
+a strain worthy of one of D’Arlincourt’s heroines, and in short was so
+unreasonably outrageous that the doctors, trembling for the safety of
+their patient, obtained from Talbot a forced and reluctant acquiescence
+in the settlement she had obtained.
+
+Ah! what a terrible creature a Frenchwoman is, when, instead of
+coquetting with a caprice, she insists upon conceiving a grande passion.
+Little, however, did Clarence, despite his vexation when he learned
+of the bienveillance of La Meronville, foresee the whole extent of the
+consequences it would entail upon him: still less did Talbot, who in his
+seclusion knew not the celebrity of the handsome adventuress, calculate
+upon the notoriety of her motions or the ill effect her ostentatious
+attachment would have upon Clarence’s prosperity as a lover to Lady
+Flora. In order to explain these consequences the more fully, let us,
+for the present, leave our hero to the care of the surgeon, his friends,
+and his would-be mistress; and while he is more rapidly recovering than
+the doctors either hoped or presaged, let us renew our acquaintance with
+a certain fair correspondent.
+
+
+
+LETTER FROM THE LADY FLORA ARDENNE TO MISS ELEANOR TREVANION.
+
+My Dearest Eleanor,--I have been very ill, or you would sooner have
+received an answer to your kind,-too kind and consoling letter. Indeed
+I have only just left my bed: they say that I have been delirious, and I
+believe it; for you cannot conceive what terrible dreams I have had. But
+these are all over now, and everyone is so kind to me,--my poor mother
+above all! It is a pleasant thing to be ill when we have those who love
+us to watch our recovery.
+
+I have only been in bed a few days; yet it seems to me as if a long
+portion of my existence were past,--as if I had stepped into a new era.
+You remember that my last letter attempted to express my feelings at
+Mamma’s speech about Clarence, and at my seeing him so suddenly. Now,
+dearest, I cannot but look on that day, on these sensations, as on a
+distant dream. Every one is so kind to me, Mamma caresses and soothes me
+so fondly, that I fancy I must have been under some illusion. I am sure
+they could not seriously have meant to forbid his addresses. No, no: I
+feel that all will yet be well,--so well, that even you, who are of so
+contented a temper, will own that if you were not Eleanor you would be
+Flora.
+
+I wonder whether Clarence knows that I have been ill? I wish you knew
+him. Well, dearest, this letter--a very unhandsome return, I own, for
+yours--must content you at present, for they will not let me write more;
+though, so far as I am concerned, I am never so weak, in frame I mean,
+but what I could scribble to you about him.
+
+Addio, carissima. F. A.
+
+I have prevailed on Mamma, who wished to sit by me and amuse me, to go
+to the Opera to-night, the only amusement of which she is particularly
+fond. Heaven forgive me for my insincerity, but he always comes into our
+box, and I long to hear some news of him.
+
+
+
+LETTER II. FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
+
+Eleanor, dearest Eleanor, I am again very ill, but not as I was before,
+ill from a foolish vexation of mind: no, I am now calm and even happy.
+It was from an increase of cold only that I have suffered a relapse. You
+may believe this, I assure you, in spite of your well meant but bitter
+jests upon my infatuation, as you very rightly call it, for Mr. Linden.
+You ask me what news from the Opera? Silly girl that I was, to lie awake
+hour after hour, and refuse even to take my draught, lest I should be
+surprised into sleep, till Mamma returned. I sent Jermyn down directly
+I heard her knock at the door (oh, how anxiously I had listened for
+it!) to say that I was still awake and longed to see her. So, of course,
+Mamma came up, and felt my pulse, and said it was very feverish, and
+wondered the draught had not composed me; with a great deal more to the
+same purpose, which I bore as patiently as I could, till it was my turn
+to talk; and then I admired her dress and her coiffure, and asked if it
+was a full house, and whether the prima donna was in voice, etc.: till,
+at last, I won my way to the inquiry of who were her visitors. “Lord
+Borodaile,” said she, “and the Duke of ----, and Mr. St. George,
+and Captain Leslie, and Mr. De Retz, and many others.” I felt so
+disappointed, Eleanor, but did not dare ask whether he was not of the
+list; till, at last, my mother observing me narrowly, said, “And by the
+by, Mr. Linden looked in for a few minutes. I am glad, my dearest Flora,
+that I spoke to you so decidedly about him the other day.” “Why, Mamma?”
+ said I, hiding my face under the clothes. “Because,” said she, in rather
+a raised voice, “he is quite unworthy of you! but it is late now, and
+you should go to sleep; to-morrow I will tell you more.” I would have
+given worlds to press the question then, but could not venture. Mamma
+kissed and left me. I tried to twist her words into a hundred meanings,
+but in each I only thought that they were dictated by some worldly
+information,--some new doubts as to his birth or fortune; and, though
+that supposition distressed me greatly, yet it could not alter my love
+or deprive me of hope; and so I cried and guessed, and guessed and
+cried, till at last I cried myself to sleep.
+
+When I awoke, Mamma was already up, and sitting beside me: she talked
+to me for more than an hour upon ordinary subjects, till at last,
+perceiving how absent or rather impatient I appeared, she dismissed
+Jermyn, and spoke to me thus:--
+
+“You know, Flora, that I have always loved you, more perhaps than I
+ought to have done, more certainly than I have loved your brothers
+and sisters; but you were my eldest child, my first-born, and all the
+earliest associations of a mother are blent and entwined with you. You
+may be sure therefore that I have ever had only your happiness in view,
+and that it is only with a regard to that end that I now speak to you.”
+
+I was a little frightened, Eleanor, by this opening, but I was much more
+touched, so I took Mamma’s hand and kissed and wept silently over it;
+she continued: “I observed Mr. Linden’s attention to you, at ----; I
+knew nothing more of his rank and birth then than I do at present:
+but his situation in the embassy and his personal appearance naturally
+induced me to suppose him a gentleman of family, and, therefore, if
+not a great at least not an inferior match for you, so far as worldly
+distinctions are concerned. Added to this, he was uncommonly handsome,
+and had that general reputation for talent which is often better than
+actual wealth or hereditary titles. I therefore did not check, though I
+would not encourage any attachment you might form for him; and nothing
+being declared or decisive on either side when we left--, I imagined
+that if your flirtation with him did even amount to a momentary and
+girlish phantasy, absence and change of scene would easily and rapidly
+efface the impression. I believe that in a great measure it was effaced
+when Lord Aspeden returned to England, and with him Mr. Linden. You
+again met the latter in society almost as constantly as before; a
+caprice nearly conquered was once more renewed; and in my anxiety that
+you should marry, not for aggrandizement, but happiness, I own to my
+sorrow that I rather favoured than forbade his addresses. The young
+man--remember, Flora--appeared in society as the nephew and heir of a
+gentleman of ancient family and considerable property; he was rising
+in diplomacy, popular in the world, and, so far as we could see, of
+irreproachable character; this must plead my excuse for tolerating
+his visits, without instituting further inquiries respecting him, and
+allowing your attachment to proceed without ascertaining how far it had
+yet extended. I was awakened to a sense of my indiscretion by an inquiry
+which Mr. Linden’s popularity rendered general; namely, if Mr. Talbot
+was his uncle, who was his father? who his more immediate relations? and
+at that time Lord Borodaile informed us of the falsehood he had either
+asserted or allowed to be spread in claiming Mr. Talbot as his relation.
+This you will observe entirely altered the situation of Mr. Linden
+with respect to you. Not only his rank in life became uncertain, but
+suspicious. Nor was this all: his very personal respectability was no
+longer unimpeachable. Was this dubious and intrusive person, without a
+name and with a sullied honour, to be your suitor? No, Flora; and it
+was from this indignant conviction that I spoke to you some days since.
+Forgive me, my child, if I was less cautious, less confidential than
+I am now. I did not imagine the wound was so deep, and thought that I
+should best cure you by seeming unconscious of your danger. The case is
+now changed; your illness has convinced me of my fault, and the extent
+of your unhappy attachment: but will my own dear child pardon me if I
+still continue, if I even confirm, my disapproval of her choice? Last
+night at the Opera Mr. Linden entered my box. I own that I was cooler to
+him than usual. He soon left us, and after the Opera I saw him with
+the Duke of Haverfield, one of the most incorrigible roues of the
+day, leading out a woman of notoriously bad character and of the most
+ostentatious profligacy. He might have had some propriety, some decency,
+some concealment at least, but he passed just before me,--before the
+mother of the woman to whom his vows of honourable attachment were due
+and who at that very instant was suffering from her infatuation for him.
+Now, Flora, for this man, an obscure and possibly a plebeian adventurer,
+whose only claim to notice has been founded on falsehood, whose only
+merit, a love of you, has been, if not utterly destroyed, at least
+polluted and debased,--for this man, poor alike in fortune, character,
+and honour, can you any longer profess affection or esteem?”
+
+“Never, never, never!” cried I, springing from the bed, and throwing
+myself upon my mother’s neck. “Never: I am your own Flora once more.
+I will never suffer any one again to make me forget you,” and then I
+sobbed so violently that Mamma was frightened, and bade me lie down and
+left me to sleep. Several hours have passed since then, and I could not
+sleep nor think, and I would not cry, for he is no longer worthy of my
+tears; so I have written to you.
+
+Oh, how I despise and hate myself for having so utterly, in my vanity
+and folly, forgotten my mother, that dear, kind, constant friend, who
+never cost me a single tear, but for my own ingratitude! Think, Eleanor,
+what an affront to me,--to me, who, he so often said, had made all other
+women worthless in his eyes. Do I hate him? No, I cannot hate. Do I
+despise? No, I will not despise, but I will forget him, and keep my
+contempt and hatred for myself.
+
+God bless you! I am worn out. Write soon, or rather come, if possible,
+to your affectionate but unworthy friend, F. A.
+
+Good Heavens! Eleanor, he is wounded. He has fought with Lord
+Borodaile. I have just heard it; Jermyn told me. Can it, can it be true?
+What,--what have I said against him? Hate? forget? No, no: I never loved
+him till now.
+
+
+
+LETTER III. FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
+
+(After an interval of several weeks.)
+
+Time has flown, my Eleanor, since you left me, after your short but kind
+visit, with a heavy but healing wing. I do not think I shall ever again
+be the giddy girl I have been; but my head will change, not my heart;
+that was never giddy, and that shall still be as much yours as ever.
+You are wrong in thinking I have not forgotten, at least renounced all
+affection for Mr. Linden. I have, though with a long and bitter effort.
+The woman for whom he fought went, you know, to his house, immediately
+on hearing of his wound. She has continued with him ever since. He had
+the audacity to write to me once; my mother brought me the note, and
+said nothing. She read my heart aright. I returned it unopened. He has
+even called since his convalescence. Mamma was not at home to him. I
+hear that he looks pale and altered. I hope not,--at least I cannot
+resist praying for his recovery. I stay within entirely; the season
+is over now, and there are no parties: but I tremble at the thought of
+meeting him even in the Park or the Gardens. Papa talks of going into
+the country next week. I cannot tell you how eagerly I look forward to
+it: and you will then come and see me; will you not, dearest Eleanor?
+
+Ah! what happy days we will have yet: we will read Italian together, as
+we used to do; you shall teach me your songs, and I will instruct you
+in mine; we will keep birds as we did, let me see, eight years ago. You
+will never talk to me of my folly: let that be as if it had never been;
+but I will wonder with you about your future choice, and grow happy in
+anticipating your happiness. Oh, how selfish I was some weeks ago! then
+I could only overwhelm you with my egotisms: now, Eleanor, it is your
+turn; and you shall see how patiently I will listen to yours. Never fear
+that you can be too prolix: the diffuser you are, the easier I shall
+forgive myself.
+
+Are you fond of poetry, Eleanor? I used to say so, but I never felt that
+I was till lately. I will show you my favourite passages in my favourite
+poets when you come to see me. You shall see if yours correspond with
+mine. I am so impatient to leave this horrid town, where everything
+seems dull, yet feverish,--insipid, yet false. Shall we not be happy
+when we meet? If your dear aunt will come with you, she shall see how I
+(that is my mind) am improved.
+
+Farewell.     Ever your most affectionate,
+                             F. A.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+     Brave Talbot, we will follow thee.--Henry the Sixth.
+
+“My letter insultingly returned--myself refused admittance; not a
+single inquiry made during my illness; indifference joined to positive
+contempt. By Heaven, it is insupportable!”
+
+“My dear Clarence,” said Talbot to his young friend, who, fretful from
+pain and writhing beneath his mortification, walked to and fro his
+chamber with an impatient stride; “my dear Clarence, do sit down, and
+not irritate your wound by such violent exercise. I am as much enraged
+as yourself at the treatment you have received, and no less at a loss to
+account for it. Your duel, however unfortunate the event, must have
+done you credit, and obtained you a reputation both for generosity
+and spirit; so that it cannot be to that occurrence that you are to
+attribute the change. Let us rather suppose that Lady Flora’s attachment
+to you has become evident to her father and mother; that they naturally
+think it would be very undesirable to marry their daughter to a man
+whose family nobody knows, and whose respectability he is forced
+into fighting in order to support. Suffer me then to call upon Lady
+Westborough, whom I knew many years ago, and explain your origin, as
+well as your relationship to me.”
+
+Linden paused irresolutely.
+
+“Were I sure that Lady Flora was not utterly influenced by her mother’s
+worldly views, I would gladly consent to your proposal, but--”
+
+“Forgive me, Clarence,” cried Talbot; “but you really argue much more
+like a very young man than I ever heard you do before,--even four years
+ago. To be sure Lady Flora is influenced by her mother’s views.
+Would you have her otherwise? Would you have her, in defiance of all
+propriety, modesty, obedience to her parents, and right feeling for
+herself, encourage an attachment to a person not only unknown, but who
+does not even condescend to throw off the incognito to the woman he
+addresses? Come, Clarence, give me your instructions, and let me act as
+your ambassador to-morrow.”
+
+Clarence was silent.
+
+“I may consider it settled then,” replied Talbot: “meanwhile you shall
+come home and stay with me; the pure air of the country, even so
+near town, will do you more good than all the doctors in London; and,
+besides, you will thus be enabled to escape from that persecuting
+Frenchwoman.”
+
+“In what manner?” said Clarence.
+
+“Why, when you are in my house, she cannot well take up her abode with
+you; and you shall, while I am forwarding your suit with Lady Flora,
+write a very flattering, very grateful letter of excuses to Madame la
+Meronville. But leave me alone to draw it up for you: meanwhile, let
+Harrison pack up your clothes and medicines; and we will effect our
+escape while Madame la Meronville yet sleeps.”
+
+Clarence rang the bell; the orders were given, executed, and in less
+than an hour he and his friends were on their road to Talbot’s villa.
+
+As they drove slowly through the grounds to the house, Clarence was
+sensibly struck with the quiet and stillness which breathed around. On
+either side of the road the honeysuckle and rose cast their sweet scents
+to the summer wind, which, though it was scarcely noon, stirred freshly
+among the trees, and waved as if it breathed a second youth over the wan
+cheek of the convalescent. The old servant’s ear had caught the sound of
+wheels, and he came to the door, with an expression of quiet delight on
+his dry countenance, to welcome in his master. They had lived together
+for so many years that they were grown like one another. Indeed, the
+veteran valet prided himself on his happy adoption of his master’s dress
+and manner. A proud man, we ween, was that domestic, whenever he had
+time and listeners for the indulgence of his honest loquacity; many an
+ancient tale of his master’s former glories was then poured from his
+unburdening remembrance. With what a glow, with what a racy enjoyment,
+did he expand upon the triumphs of the past; how eloquently did he
+particularize the exact grace with which young Mr. Talbot was wont to
+enter the room, in which he instantly became the cynosure of ladies’
+eyes; how faithfully did he minute the courtly dress, the exquisite
+choice of colour, the costly splendour of material, which were the envy
+of gentles, and the despairing wonder of their valets; and then the zest
+with which the good old man would cry, “I dressed the boy!” Even still,
+this modern Scipio (Le Sage’s Scipio, not Rome’s) would not believe that
+his master’s sun was utterly set: he was only in a temporary retirement,
+and would, one day or other, reappear and reastonish the London world.
+“I would give my right arm,” Jasper was wont to say, “to see Master at
+court. How fond the King would be of him! Ah! well, well; I wish he
+was not so melancholy-like with his books, but would go out like other
+people!”
+
+Poor Jasper! Time is, in general, a harsh wizard in his transformations;
+but the change which thou didst lament so bitterly was happier for thy
+master than all his former “palmy state” of admiration and homage. “Nous
+avons recherche le plaisir,” says Rousseau, in one of his own inimitable
+antitheses, “et le bonheur a fui loin de nous.” [“We have pursued
+pleasure, and happiness has fled far from our reach.”] But in the
+pursuit of Pleasure we sometimes chance on Wisdom, and Wisdom leads us
+to the right track, which, if it take us not so far as Happiness, is
+sure at least of the shelter of Content.
+
+Talbot leaned kindly upon Jasper’s arm as he descended from the
+carriage, and inquired into his servant’s rheumatism with the anxiety
+of a friend. The old housekeeper, waiting in the hall, next received his
+attention; and in entering the drawing-room, with that consideration,
+even to animals, which his worldly benevolence had taught him, he paused
+to notice and caress a large gray cat which rubbed herself against his
+legs. Doubtless there is some pleasure in making even a gray cat happy!
+
+Clarence having patiently undergone all the shrugs, and sighs, and
+exclamations of compassion at his reduced and wan appearance, which are
+the especial prerogatives of ancient domestics, followed the old man
+into the room. Papers and books, though carefully dusted, were left
+scrupulously in the places in which Talbot had last deposited them
+(incomparable good fortune! what would we not give for such chamber
+handmaidens!); fresh flowers were in all the stands and vases; the large
+library chair was jealously set in its accustomed place, and all
+wore, to Talbot’s eyes, that cheerful yet sober look of welcome and
+familiarity which makes a friend of our house. The old man was in high
+spirits.
+
+“I know not how it is,” said he, “but I feel younger than ever! You
+have often expressed a wish to see my family seat at Scarsdale: it
+is certainly a great distance hence; but as you will be my travelling
+companion, I think I will try and crawl there before the summer is over;
+or, what say you, Clarence, shall I lend it to you and Lady Flora for
+the honeymoon? You blush! A diplomatist blush! Ah, how the world has
+changed since my time! But come, Clarence, suppose you write to La
+Meronville?”
+
+“Not to-day, sir, if you please,” said Linden: “I feel so very weak.”
+
+“As you please, Clarence; but some years hence you will learn the value
+of the present. Youth is always a procrastinator, and, consequently,
+always a penitent.” And thus Talbot ran on into a strain of
+conversation, half serious, half gay, which lasted till Clarence went
+upstairs to lie down and muse on Lady Flora Ardenne.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+     La vie eat un sommeil. Les vieillards sont ceux donc le
+     sommeil a ete plus long: ils ne commencent a se reveiller
+     que quand il faut mourir. --LA BRUYERE.
+
+     [“Life is a sleep. The aged are those whose sleep has been
+     the longest they begin to awaken themselves just as they are
+     obliged to die.”]
+
+“You wonder why I have never turned author, with my constant love
+of literature and my former desire of fame,” said Talbot, as he and
+Clarence sat alone after dinner, discussing many things: “the fact is,
+that I have often intended it, and as often been frightened from
+my design. Those terrible feuds; those vehement disputes; those
+recriminations of abuse, so inseparable from literary life,--appear to
+me too dreadful for a man not utterly hardened or malevolent voluntarily
+to encounter. Good Heavens! what acerbity sours the blood of an author!
+The manifestoes of opposing generals, advancing to pillage, to burn, to
+destroy, contain not a tithe of the ferocity which animates the pages
+of literary controversialists! No term of reproach is too severe, no
+vituperation too excessive! the blackest passions, the bitterest, the
+meanest malice, pour caustic and poison upon every page! It seems as if
+the greatest talents, the most elaborate knowledge, only sprang from
+the weakest and worst-regulated mind, as exotics from dung. The private
+records, the public works of men of letters, teem with an immitigable
+fury! Their histories might all be reduced into these sentences: they
+were born; they quarrelled; they died!”
+
+“But,” said Clarence, “it would matter little to the world if
+these quarrels were confined merely to poets and men of imaginative
+literature, in whom irritability is perhaps almost necessarily allied to
+the keen and quick susceptibilities which constitute their genius. These
+are more to be lamented and wondered at among philosophers, theologians,
+and men of science; the coolness, the patience, the benevolence, which
+ought to characterize their works, should at least moderate their
+jealousy and soften their disputes.”
+
+“Ah!” said Talbot, “but the vanity of discovery is no less acute than
+that of creation: the self-love of a philosopher is no less self-love
+than that of a poet. Besides, those sects the most sure of their
+opinions, whether in religion or science, are always the most bigoted
+and persecuting. Moreover, nearly all men deceive themselves in
+disputes, and imagine that they are intolerant, not through private
+jealousy, but public benevolence: they never declaim against the
+injustice done to themselves; no, it is the terrible injury done
+to society which grieves and inflames them. It is not the bitter
+expressions against their dogmas which give them pain; by no means:
+it is the atrocious doctrines (so prejudicial to the country, if in
+polities; so pernicious to the world, if in philosophy), which their
+duty, not their vanity, induces them to denounce and anathematize.”
+
+“There seems,” said Clarence, “to be a sort of reaction in sophistry and
+hypocrisy: there has, perhaps, never been a deceiver who was not, by his
+own passions, himself the deceived.”
+
+“Very true,” said Talbot; “and it is a pity that historians have not
+kept that fact in view: we should then have had a better notion of the
+Cromwells and Mohammeds of the past than we have now, nor judged those
+as utter impostors who were probably half dupes. But to return to
+myself. I think you will already be able to answer your own question,
+why I did not turn author, now that we have given a momentary
+consideration to the penalties consequent on such a profession. But in
+truth, as I near the close of my life, I often regret that I had not
+more courage, for there is in us all a certain restlessness in the
+persuasion, whether true or false, of superior knowledge or intellect,
+and this urges us on to the proof; or, if we resist its impulse; renders
+us discontented with our idleness and disappointed with the past. I have
+everything now in my possession which it has been the desire of my later
+years to enjoy: health, retirement, successful study, and the affection
+of one in whose breast, when I am gone, my memory will not utterly
+pass away. With these advantages, added to the gifts of fortune, and an
+habitual elasticity of spirit, I confess that my happiness is not free
+from a biting and frequent regret: I would fain have been a better
+citizen; I would fain have died in the consciousness not only that I had
+improved my mind to the utmost, but that I had turned that improvement
+to the benefit of my fellow-creatures. As it is, in living wholly
+for myself, I feel that my philosophy has wanted generosity; and my
+indifference to glory has proceeded from a weakness, not, as I once
+persuaded myself, from a virtue but the fruitlessness of my existence
+has been the consequence of the arduous frivolities and the petty
+objects in which my early years were consumed; and my mind, in losing
+the enjoyments which it formerly possessed, had no longer the vigour to
+create for itself a new soil, from which labour it could only hope
+for more valuable fruits. It is no contradiction to see those who
+most eagerly courted society in their youth shrink from it the most
+sensitively in their age; for they who possess certain advantages,
+and are morbidly vain of them, will naturally be disposed to seek that
+sphere for which those advantages are best calculated: and when youth
+and its concomitants depart, the vanity so long fed still remains, and
+perpetually mortifies them by recalling not so much the qualities
+they have lost, as the esteem which those qualities conferred; and by
+contrasting not so much their own present alteration, as the change
+they experience in the respect and consideration of others. What wonder,
+then, that they eagerly fly from the world, which has only mortification
+for their self-love, or that we find, in biography, how often the most
+assiduous votaries of pleasure have become the most rigid of recluses?
+For my part, I think that that love of solitude which the ancients so
+eminently possessed, and which, to this day, is considered by some as
+the sign of a great mind, nearly always arises from a tenderness of
+vanity, easily wounded in the commerce of the rough world; and that
+it is under the shadow of Disappointment that we must look for the
+hermitage. Diderot did well, even at the risk of offending Rousseau,
+to write against solitude. The more a moralist binds man to man, and
+forbids us to divorce our interests from our kind, the more effectually
+is the end of morality obtained. They only are justifiable in seclusion
+who, like the Greek philosophers, make that very seclusion the means of
+serving and enlightening their race; who from their retreats send forth
+their oracles of wisdom, and render the desert which surrounds them
+eloquent with the voice of truth. But remember, Clarence (and let my
+life, useless in itself, have at least this moral), that for him who
+in no wise cultivates his talent for the benefit of others; who is
+contented with being a good hermit at the expense of being a bad
+citizen; who looks from his retreat upon a life wasted in the difficiles
+nugae of the most frivolous part of the world, nor redeems in the closet
+the time he has misspent in the saloon,--remember that for him seclusion
+loses its dignity, philosophy its comfort, benevolence its hope, and
+even religion its balm. Knowledge unemployed may preserve us from vice;
+but knowledge beneficently employed is virtue. Perfect happiness, in our
+present state, is impossible; for Hobbes says justly that our nature is
+inseparable from desires, and that the very word desire (the craving
+for something not possessed) implies that our present felicity is not
+complete. But there is one way of attaining what we may term, if not
+utter, at least mortal, happiness; it is this,--a sincere and unrelaxing
+activity for the happiness of others. In that one maxim is concentrated
+whatever is noble in morality, sublime in religion, or unanswerable in
+truth. In that pursuit we have all scope for whatever is excellent in
+our hearts, and none for the petty passions which our nature is heir
+to. Thus engaged, whatever be our errors, there will be nobility, not
+weakness, in our remorse; whatever our failure, virtue, not selfishness,
+in our regret; and, in success, vanity itself will become holy and
+triumph eternal. As astrologers were wont to receive upon metals ‘the
+benign aspect of the stars, so as to detain and fix, as it were, the
+felicity of that hour which would otherwise be volatile and fugitive,’
+[Bacon] even so will that success leave imprinted upon our memory a
+blessing which cannot pass away; preserve forever upon our names, as on
+a signet, the hallowed influence of the hour in which our great end was
+effected, and treasure up ‘the relics of heaven’ in the sanctuary of a
+human fane.”
+
+As the old man ceased, there was a faint and hectic flush over his face,
+an enthusiasm on his features, which age made almost holy, and which
+Clarence had never observed there before. In truth, his young listener
+was deeply affected, and the advice of his adopted parent was afterwards
+impressed with a more awful solemnity upon his remembrance. Already he
+had acquired much worldly lore from Talbot’s precepts and conversation.
+He had obtained even something better than worldly lore,--a kindly and
+indulgent disposition to his fellow-creatures; for he had seen that
+foibles were not inconsistent with generous and great qualities, and
+that we judge wrongly of human nature when we ridicule its littleness.
+The very circumstances which make the shallow misanthropical incline the
+wise to be benevolent. Fools discover that frailty is not incompatible
+with great men; they wonder and despise: but the discerning find that
+greatness is not incompatible with frailty; and they admire and indulge.
+
+But a still greater benefit than this of toleration did Clarence derive
+from the commune of that night. He became strengthened in his honourable
+ambition and nerved to unrelaxing exertion. The recollection of Talbot’s
+last words, on that night, occurred to him often and often, when sick at
+heart and languid with baffled hope, it roused him from that gloom and
+despondency which are always unfavourable to virtue, and incited him
+once more to that labour in the vineyard which, whether our hour be late
+or early, will if earnest obtain a blessing and reward.
+
+The hour was now waxing late; and Talbot, mindful of his companion’s
+health, rose to retire. As he pressed Clarence’s hand and bade him
+farewell for the night, Linden thought there was something more than
+usually impressive in his manner and affectionate in his words. Perhaps
+this was the natural result of their conversation.
+
+The next morning, Clarence was awakened by a noise. He listened, and
+heard distinctly an alarmed cry proceeding from the room in which Talbot
+slept, and which was opposite to his own. He rose hastily and hurried
+to the chamber. The door was open; the old servant was bending over the
+bed: Clarence approached, and saw that he supported his master in his
+arms.
+
+“Good God!” he cried, “what is the matter?” The faithful old man lifted
+up his face to Clarence, and the big tears rolled fast from eyes in
+which the sources of such emotion were well-nigh dried up.
+
+“He loved you well, sir!” he said, and could say no more. He dropped
+the body gently, and throwing himself on the floor sobbed aloud. With
+a foreboding and chilled heart, Clarence bent forward; the face of his
+benefactor lay directly before him, and the hand of death was upon
+it. The soul had passed to its account hours since, in the hush of
+night,--passed, apparently, without a struggle or a pang, like the wind,
+which animates the harp one moment, and the next is gone.
+
+Linden seized his hand; it was heavy and cold: his eye rested upon the
+miniature of the unfortunate Lady Merton, which, since the night of the
+attempted robbery, Talbot had worn constantly round his neck. Strange
+and powerful was the contrast of the pictured face--in which not a
+colour had yet faded, and where the hues and fulness and prime of youth
+dwelt, unconscious of the lapse of years--with the aged and shrunken
+countenance of the deceased.
+
+In that contrast was a sad and mighty moral: it wrought, as it were, a
+contract between youth and age, and conveyed a rapid but full history of
+our passions and our life.
+
+The servant looked up once more on the countenance; he pointed towards
+it, and muttered, “See, see how awfully it is changed!”
+
+“But there is a smile upon it!” said Clarence, as he flung himself
+beside the body and burst into tears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX.
+
+     Virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are
+     incensed or crushed; for prosperity doth best discover vice,
+     but adversity doth best discover virtue.--BACON.
+
+It is somewhat remarkable that while Talbot was bequeathing to Clarence,
+as the most valuable of legacies, the doctrines of a philosophy he had
+acquired, perhaps too late to practise, Glendower was carrying those
+very doctrines, so far as his limited sphere would allow, into the rule
+and exercise of his life.
+
+Since the death of the bookseller, which we have before recorded,
+Glendower had been left utterly without resource. The others to whom he
+applied were indisposed to avail themselves of an unknown ability. The
+trade of bookmaking was not then as it is now, and if it had been,
+it would not have suggested itself to the high-spirited and unworldly
+student. Some publishers offered, it is true, a reward tempting enough
+for an immoral tale; others spoke of the value of an attack upon the
+Americans; one suggested an ode to the minister, and another hinted that
+a pension might possibly be granted to one who would prove extortion not
+tyranny. But these insinuations fell upon a dull ear, and the tribe of
+Barabbas were astonished to find that an author could imagine interest
+and principle not synonymous.
+
+Struggling with want, which hourly grew more imperious and urgent;
+wasting his life on studies which brought fever to his pulse and
+disappointment to his ambition; gnawed to the very soul by the
+mortifications which his poverty gave to his pride; and watching with
+tearless eyes, but a maddening brain, the slender form of his wife, now
+waxing weaker and fainter, as the canker of disease fastened upon the
+core of her young but blighted life,--there was yet a high, though,
+alas! not constant consolation within him, whenever, from the troubles
+of this dim spot his thoughts could escape, like birds released from
+their cage, and lose themselves in the lustre and freedom of their
+native heaven.
+
+“If,” thought he, as he looked upon his secret and treasured work, “if
+the wind scatter or the rock receive these seeds, they were at least
+dispersed by a hand which asked no selfish return, and a heart which
+would have lavished the harvest of its labours upon those who know not
+the husbandman and trample his hopes into the dust.”
+
+But by degrees this comfort of a noble and generous nature, these
+whispers of a vanity rather to be termed holy than excusable, began to
+grow unfrequent and low. The cravings of a more engrossing and heavy
+want than those of the mind came eagerly and rapidly upon him; the fair
+cheek of his infant became pinched and hollow; his wife conquered nature
+itself by love, and starved herself in silence, and set bread before him
+with a smile and bade him eat.
+
+“But you,--you?” he would ask inquiringly, and then pause.
+
+“I have dined, dearest: I want nothing; eat, love, eat.” But he ate not.
+The food robbed from her seemed to him more deadly than poison; and
+he would rise, and dash his hand to his brow, and go forth alone, with
+nature unsatisfied, to look upon this luxurious world and learn content.
+
+It was after such a scene that, one day, he wandered forth into the
+streets, desperate and confused in mind, and fainting with hunger, and
+half insane with fiery and wrong thoughts, which dashed over his barren
+and gloomy soul, and desolated, but conquered not! It was evening: he
+stood (for he had strode on so rapidly, at first, that his strength was
+now exhausted, and he was forced to pause) leaning against the railed
+area of a house in a lone and unfrequented street. No passenger shared
+this dull and obscure thoroughfare. He stood, literally, in scene as in
+heart, solitary amidst the great city, and wherever he looked, lo, there
+were none!
+
+“Two days,” said he, slowly and faintly, “two days, and bread has only
+once passed my lips; and that was snatched from her,--from those lips
+which I have fed with sweet and holy kisses, and whence my sole comfort
+in this weary life has been drawn. And she,--ay, she starves,--and my
+child too. They complain not; they murmur not: but they lift up
+their eyes to me and ask for--Merciful God! Thou didst make man in
+benevolence; Thou dost survey this world with a pitying and paternal
+eye: save, comfort, cherish them, and crush me if Thou wilt!”
+
+At that moment a man darted suddenly from an obscure alley, and passed
+Glendower at full speed; presently came a cry, and a shout, and a rapid
+trampling of feet, and, in another moment, an eager and breathless crowd
+rushed upon the solitude of the street.
+
+“Where is he?” cried a hundred voices to Glendower,--“where,--which road
+did the robber take?” But Glendower could not answer: his nerves were
+unstrung, and his dizzy brain swam and reeled; and the faces which
+peered upon him, and the voices which shrieked and yelled in his ear,
+were to him as the forms and sounds of a ghastly and phantasmal world.
+His head drooped upon his bosom; he clung to the area for support: the
+crowd passed on; they were in pursuit of guilt; they were thirsting
+after blood; they were going to fill the dungeon and feed the gibbet;
+what to them was the virtue they could have supported, or the famine
+they could have relieved? But they knew not his distress, nor the extent
+of his weakness, or some would have tarried and aided: for there is,
+after all, as much kindness as cruelty in our nature; perhaps they
+thought it was only some intoxicated and maudlin idler; or, perhaps, in
+the heat of their pursuit, they thought not at all.
+
+So they rolled on, and their voices died away, and their steps were
+hushed, and Glendower, insensible and cold as the iron he clung to, was
+once more alone. Slowly he revived; he opened his dim and glazing eyes,
+and saw the evening star break from its chamber, and, though sullied by
+the thick and foggy air, scatter its holy smiles upon the polluted city.
+
+He looked quietly on the still night, and its first watcher among the
+hosts of heaven, and felt something of balm sink into his soul; not,
+indeed, that vague and delicious calm which, in his boyhood of poesy and
+romance, he had drunk in, by green solitudes, from the mellow twilight:
+but a quiet, sad and sober, circling gradually over his mind, and
+bringing it back from its confused and disordered visions and darkness
+to the recollection and reality of his bitter life.
+
+By degrees the scene he had so imperfectly witnessed, the fight of
+the robber and the eager pursuit of the mob, grew over him: a dark and
+guilty thought burst upon his mind.
+
+“I am a man like that criminal,” said he, fiercely. “I have nerves,
+sinews, muscles, flesh; I feel hunger, thirst, pain, as acutely: why
+should I endure more than he can? Perhaps he had a wife, a child, and
+he saw them starving inch by inch, and he felt that he ought to be their
+protector; and so he sinned. And I--I--can I not sin too for mine? can I
+not dare what the wild beast, and the vulture, and the fierce hearts of
+my brethren dare for their mates and young? One gripe from this hand,
+one cry from this voice, and my board might be heaped with plenty, and
+my child fed, and she smile as she was wont to smile,--for one night at
+least.”
+
+And as these thoughts broke upon him, Glendower rose, and with a step
+firm, even in weakness, he strode unconsciously onward.
+
+A figure appeared; Glendower’s heart beat thick. He slouched his hat
+over his brows, and for one moment wrestled with his pride and his stern
+virtue: the virtue conquered, but not the pride; the virtue forbade him
+to be the robber; the pride submitted to be the suppliant. He sprang
+forward, extended his hands towards the stranger, and cried in a sharp
+voice, the agony of which rang through the long dull street with a
+sudden and echoless sound, “Charity! food!”
+
+The stranger paused; one of the boldest of men in his own line, he
+was as timid as a woman in any other. Mistaking the meaning of the
+petitioner, and terrified by the vehemence of his gesture, he said, in a
+trembling tone, as he hastily pulled out his purse,--
+
+“There, there! do not hurt me; take it; take all!” Glendower knew the
+voice, as a sound not unfamiliar to him; his pride returned in full
+force. “None,” thought he, “who know me, shall know my full degradation
+also.” And he turned away; but the stranger, mistaking this motion,
+extended his hand to him, saying, “Take this, my friend: you will
+have no need of violence!” and as he advanced nearer to his supposed
+assailant, he beheld, by the pale lamplight, and instantly recognized,
+his features.
+
+“Ah!” cried he, in astonishment, but with internal rejoicing, “ah! is it
+you who are thus reduced?”
+
+“You say right, Crauford,” said Glendower, sullenly, and drawing himself
+up to his full height, “it is I: but you are mistaken; I am a beggar,
+not a ruffian!”
+
+“Good heavens!” answered Crauford; “how fortunate that we should meet!
+Providence watches over us unceasingly! I have long sought you in vain.
+But” (and here the wayward malignity, sometimes, though not always, the
+characteristic of Crauford’s nature, irresistibly broke out), “but that
+you, of all men, should suffer so,--you, proud, susceptible, virtuous
+beyond human virtue,--you, whose fibres are as acute as the naked
+eye,--that you should bear this and wince not!”
+
+“You do my humanity wrong!” said Glendower, with a bitter and almost
+ghastly smile; “I do worse than wince!”
+
+“Ay, is it so?” said Crauford; “have you awakened at last? Has your
+philosophy taken a more impassioned dye?”
+
+“Mock me not!” cried Glendower; and his eye, usually soft in its deep
+thoughtfulness, glared wild and savage upon the hypocrite, who stood
+trembling, yet half sneering, at the storm he had raised; “my passions
+are even now beyond my mastery; loose them not upon you!”
+
+“Nay,” said Crauford, gently, “I meant not to vex or wound you. I have
+sought you several times since the last night we met, but in vain; you
+had left your lodgings, and none knew whither. I would fain talk
+with you. I have a scheme to propose to you which will make you rich
+forever,--rich,--literally rich! not merely above poverty, but high in
+affluence!”
+
+Glendower looked incredulously at the speaker, who continued,--
+
+“The scheme has danger: that you can dare!”
+
+Glendower was still silent; but his set and stern countenance was
+sufficient reply. “Some sacrifice of your pride,” continued Crauford:
+“that also you can bear?” and the tempter almost grinned with pleasure
+as he asked the question.
+
+“He who is poor,” said Glendower, speaking at last, “has a right to
+pride. He who starves has it too; but he who sees those whom he loves
+famish, and cannot aid, has it not!”
+
+“Come home with me, then,” said Crauford; “you seem faint and weak:
+nature craves food; come and partake of mine; we will then talk over
+this scheme, and arrange its completion.”
+
+“I cannot,” answered Glendower, quietly. “And why?”
+
+“Because they starve at home!”
+
+“Heavens!” said Crauford, affected for a moment into sincerity; “it is
+indeed fortunate that business should have led me here: but meanwhile
+you will not refuse this trifle,--as a loan merely. By and by our scheme
+will make you so rich that I must be the borrower.”
+
+Glendower did hesitate for a moment; he did swallow a bitter rising of
+the heart: but he thought of those at home and the struggle was over.
+
+“I thank you,” said he; “I thank you for their sake: the time may
+come,”--and the proud gentleman stopped short, for his desolate fortunes
+rose before him and forbade all hope of the future.
+
+“Yes!” cried Crauford, “the time may come when you will repay me this
+money a hundredfold. But where do you live? You are silent. Well, you
+will not inform me: I understand you. Meet me, then, here, on this very
+spot, three nights hence: you will not fail?”
+
+“I will not,” said Glendower; and pressing Crauford’s hand with a
+generous and grateful warmth, which might have softened a heart less
+obdurate, he turned away.
+
+Folding his arms, while a bitter yet joyous expression crossed his
+countenance, Crauford stood still, gazing upon the retreating form of
+the noble and unfortunate man whom he had marked for destruction.
+
+“Now,” said he, “this virtue is a fine thing, a very fine thing to
+talk so loftily about. A little craving of the gastric juices, a little
+pinching of this vile body, as your philosophers and saints call our
+better part, and, lo! virtue oozes out like water through a leaky
+vessel,--and the vessel sinks! No, no; virtue is a weak game, and a
+poor game, and a losing game. Why, there is that man, the very pink of
+integrity and rectitude, he is now only wanting temptation to fall; and
+he will fall, in a fine phrase, too, I’ll be sworn! And then, having
+once fallen, there will be no medium: he will become utterly corrupt;
+while I, honest Dick Crauford, doing as other wise men do, cheat a trick
+or two, in playing with fortune, without being a whit the worse for it.
+Do I not subscribe to charities? am I not constant at church, ay, and
+meeting to boot? kind to my servants, obliging to my friends, loyal to
+my king? ‘Gad, if I were less loving to myself, I should have been far
+less useful to my country! And now, now let me see what has brought me
+to these filthy suburbs. Ah, Madame H----. Woman, incomparable
+woman! On, Richard Crauford, thou hast made a good night’s work of it
+hitherto!--business seasons pleasures!” and the villain upon system
+moved away.
+
+Glendower hastened to his home; it was miserably changed, even from the
+humble abode in which we last saw him. The unfortunate pair had chosen
+their present residence from a melancholy refinement in luxury; they had
+chosen it because none else shared it with them, and their famine and
+pride and struggles and despair were without witness or pity.
+
+With a heavy step Glendower entered the chamber where his wife sat. When
+at a distance he had heard a faint moan, but as he had approached it
+ceased; for she from whom it came knew his step, and hushed her grief
+and pain that they might not add to his own. The peevishness,
+the querulous and stinging irritations of want, came not to that
+affectionate and kindly heart; nor could all those biting and bitter
+evils of fate which turn the love that is born of luxury into rancour
+and gall scathe the beautiful and holy passion which had knit into one
+those two unearthly natures. They rather clung the closer to each other,
+as all things in heaven and earth spoke in tempest or in gloom around
+them, and coined their sorrows into endearment, and their looks into
+smiles, and strove each from the depth of despair to pluck hope and
+comfort for the other.
+
+This, it is true, was more striking and constant in her than in
+Glendower; for in love, man, be he ever so generous, is always outdone.
+Yet even when in moments of extreme passion and conflict the strife
+broke from his breast into words, never once was his discontent vented
+upon her, nor his reproaches lavished on any but fortune or himself, nor
+his murmurs mingled with a single breath wounding to her tenderness or
+detracting from his love.
+
+He threw open the door; the wretched light cast its sickly beams over,
+the squalid walls, foul with green damps, and the miserable yet clean
+bed, and the fireless hearth, and the empty board, and the pale cheek
+of the wife, as she rose and flung her arms round his neck, and murmured
+out her joy and welcome. “There,” said he, as he extricated himself from
+her, and flung the money upon the table, “there, love, pine no more,
+feed yourself and our daughter, and then let us sleep and be happy in
+our dreams.”
+
+A writer, one of the most gifted of the present day, has told the
+narrator of this history that no interest of a high nature can be given
+to extreme poverty. I know not if this be true yet if I mistake not our
+human feelings, there is nothing so exalted, or so divine, as a great
+and brave spirit working out its end through every earthly obstacle
+and evil; watching through the utter darkness, and steadily defying the
+phantoms which crowd around it; wrestling with the mighty allurements,
+and rejecting the fearful voice of that WANT which is the deadliest
+and surest of human tempters; nursing through all calamity the love
+of species, and the warmer and closer affections of private ties;
+sacrificing no duty, resisting all sin; and amidst every horror and
+every humiliation, feeding the still and bright light of that genius
+which, like the lamp of the fabulist, though it may waste itself for
+years amidst the depths of solitude, and the silence of the tomb, shall
+live and burn immortal and undimmed, when all around it is rottenness
+and decay!
+
+And yet I confess that it is a painful and bitter task to record the
+humiliations, the wearing, petty, stinging humiliations, of Poverty; to
+count the drops as they slowly fall, one by one, upon the fretted and
+indignant heart; to particularize, with the scrupulous and nice hand of
+indifference, the fractional and divided movements in the dial-plate of
+Misery; to behold the refinement of birth, the masculine pride of blood,
+the dignities of intellect, the wealth of knowledge, the delicacy, and
+graces of womanhood,--all that ennoble and soften the stony mass of
+commonplaces which is our life frittered into atoms, trampled into the
+dust and mire of the meanest thoroughfares of distress; life and soul,
+the energies and aims of man, ground into one prostrating want, cramped
+into one levelling sympathy with the dregs and refuse of his kind,
+blistered into a single galling and festering sore: this is, I own, a
+painful and a bitter task; but it hath its redemption,--a pride even in
+debasement, a pleasure even in woe,--and it is therefore that, while I
+have abridged, I have not shunned it. There are some whom the lightning
+of fortune blasts, only to render holy. Amidst all that humbles and
+scathes; amidst all that shatters from their life its verdure, smites
+to the dust the pomp and summit of their pride, and in the very heart
+of existence writeth a sudden and “strange defeature,”--they stand
+erect,--riven, not uprooted,--a monument less of pity than of awe! There
+are some who pass through the Lazar-House of Misery with a step more
+august than a Caesar’s in his hall. The very things which, seen alone,
+are despicable and vile, associated with them become almost venerable
+and divine; and one ray, however dim and feeble, of that intense
+holiness which, in the INFANT GOD, shed majesty over the manger and the
+straw, not denied to those who in the depth of affliction cherish His
+patient image, flings over the meanest localities of earth an emanation
+from the glory of Heaven!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L.
+
+  Letters from divers hands, which will absolve
+  Ourselves from long narration.--Tanner of Tyburn.
+
+One morning about a fortnight after Talbot’s death, Clarence was sitting
+alone, thoughtful and melancholy, when the three following letters were
+put into his hand:
+
+
+
+LETTER I. FROM THE DUKE OF HAVERFIELD.
+
+Let me, my dear Linden, be the first to congratulate you upon your
+accession of fortune: five thousand a year, Scarsdale, and 80,000 in the
+Funds, are very pretty foes to starvation! Ah, my dear fellow, if you
+had but shot that frosty Caucasus of humanity, that pillar of the state,
+made not to bend, that--but you know already whom I mean, and so I will
+spare you more of my lamentable metaphors: had you shot Lord Borodaile,
+your happiness would now be complete! Everybody talks of your luck. La
+Meronville tending on you with her white hands, the prettiest hands in
+the world: who would not be wounded even by Lord Borodaile, for such
+a nurse? And then Talbot’s--yet, I will not speak of that, for you are
+very unlike the present generation; and who knows but you may have some
+gratitude, some affection, some natural feeling in you? I had once;
+but that was before I went to France: those Parisians, with their
+fine sentiments, and witty philosophy, play the devil with one’s good
+old-fashioned feelings. So Lord Aspeden is to have an Italian ministry.
+By the by, shall you go with him, or will you not rather stay at home,
+and enjoy your new fortunes,--hunt, race, dine out, dance, vote in
+the House of Commons, and, in short, do all that an Englishman and a
+gentleman should do? Ornamento e splendor del secolo nostro. Write me a
+line whenever you have nothing better to do.
+
+And believe me, Most truly yours, HAVERFIELD.
+
+Will you sell your black mare, or will you buy my brown one? Utrum horum
+mavis accipe, the only piece of Latin I remember.
+
+
+
+LETTER FROM LORD ASPEDEN.
+
+My Dear Linden,--Suffer me to enter most fully into your feeling. Death,
+my friend, is common to all: we must submit to its dispensations. I
+heard accidentally of the great fortune left you by Mr. Talbot (your
+father, I suppose I may venture to call him). Indeed, though there is a
+silly prejudice against illegitimacy, yet as our immortal bard says,--
+
+        “Wherefore base?
+   When thy dimensions are as well compact,
+   Thy mind as generous and thy shape as true
+   As honest madam’s issue!”
+
+For my part, my dear Linden, I say, on your behalf, that it is very
+likely that you are a natural son, for such are always the luckiest and
+the best.
+
+You have probably heard of the honour his Majesty has conferred on me,
+in appointing to my administration the city of ----. As the choice of
+a secretary has been left to me, I need not say how happy I shall be to
+keep my promise to you. Indeed, as I told Lord ---- yesterday morning,
+I do not know anywhere a young man who has more talent, or who plays
+better on the flute.
+
+Adieu, my dear young friend, and believe me, Very truly yours,
+
+                          ASPEDEN.
+
+
+
+LETTER FROM MADAME DE LA MERONVILLE. (Translated.)
+
+You have done me wrong,--great wrong. I loved you,--I waited on
+you, tended you, nursed you, gave all up for you; and you forsook
+me,--forsook me without a word. True, that you have been engaged in a
+melancholy duty, but, at least, you had time to write a line, to cast a
+thought, to one who had shown for you the love that I have done. But we
+will pass over all this: I will not reproach you; it is beneath me. The
+vicious upbraid: the virtuous forgive! I have for several days left your
+house. I should never have come to it, had you not been wounded, and, as
+I fondly imagined, for my sake. Return when you will, I shall no longer
+be there to persecute and torment you.
+
+Pardon this letter. I have said too much for myself,--a hundred times
+too much to you; but I shall not sin again. This intrusion is my last.           CECILE DE LA MERONVILLE.
+
+These letters will probably suffice to clear up that part of Clarence’s
+history which had not hitherto been touched upon; they will show that
+Talbot’s will (after several legacies to his old servants, his nearest
+connections, and two charitable institutions, which he had founded, and
+for some years supported) had bequeathed the bulk of his property
+to Clarence. The words in which the bequest was made were kind, and
+somewhat remarkable. “To my relation and friend, commonly known by
+the name of Clarence Linden, to whom I am bound alike by blood and
+affection,” etc. These expressions, joined to the magnitude of the
+bequest, the apparently unaccountable attachment of the old man to
+his heir, and the mystery which wrapped the origin of the latter,
+all concurred to give rise to an opinion, easily received, and soon
+universally accredited, that Clarence was a natural son of the deceased;
+and so strong in England is the aristocratic aversion to an unknown
+lineage, that this belief, unflattering as it was, procured for Linden
+a much higher consideration, on the score of birth, than he might
+otherwise have enjoyed. Furthermore will the above correspondence
+testify the general eclat of Madame la Meronville’s attachment, and the
+construction naturally put upon it. Nor do we see much left for us to
+explain, with regard to the Frenchwoman herself, which cannot equally
+well be gleaned by any judicious and intelligent reader, from the
+epistle last honoured by his perusal. Clarence’s sense of gallantry did,
+indeed, smite him severely, for his negligence and ill requital to one
+who, whatever her faults or follies, had at least done nothing with
+which he had a right to reproach her. It must however, be considered
+in his defence that the fatal event which had so lately occurred, the
+relapse which Clarence had suffered in consequence, and the melancholy
+confusion and bustle in which the last week or ten days had been passed,
+were quite sufficient to banish her from his remembrance. Still she was
+a woman, and had loved, or seemed to love; and Clarence, as he wrote to
+her a long, kind, and almost brotherly letter, in return for her own,
+felt that, in giving pain to another, one often suffers almost as much
+for avoiding as for committing a sin.
+
+We have said his letter was kind; it was also frank, and yet prudent. In
+it he said that he had long loved another, which love alone could have
+rendered him insensible to her attachment; that he, nevertheless, should
+always recall her memory with equal interest and admiration; and then,
+with a tact of flattery which the nature of the correspondence and the
+sex of the person addressed rendered excusable, he endeavoured, as far
+as he was able, to soothe and please the vanity which the candour of his
+avowal was calculated to wound.
+
+When he had finished this letter he despatched another to Lord Aspeden,
+claiming a reprieve of some days before he answered the proposal of the
+diplomatist. After these epistolary efforts, he summoned his valet, and
+told him, apparently in a careless tone, to find out if Lady Westborough
+was still in town. Then throwing himself on the couch, he wrestled with
+the grief and melancholy which the death of a friend, and more than
+a father, might well cause in a mind less susceptible than his, and
+counted the dull hours crawl onward till his servant returned. Lady
+Westborough and all the family had been gone a week to their seat in
+----.
+
+“Well,” thought Clarence, “had he been alive, I could have intrusted
+my cause to a mediator; as it is, I will plead, or rather assert it,
+myself. Harrison,” said he aloud, “see that my black mare is ready by
+sunrise to-morrow: I shall leave town for some days.”
+
+“Not in your present state of health, sir, surely?” said Harrison, with
+the license of one who had been a nurse.
+
+“My health requires it: no more words, my good Harrison, see that I am
+obeyed.” And Harrison, shaking his head doubtfully, left the room.
+
+“Rich, independent, free to aspire to the heights which in England are
+only accessible to those who join wealth to ambition, I have at least,”
+ said Clarence, proudly, “no unworthy pretensions even to the hand of
+Lady Flora Ardenne. If she can love me for myself, if she can trust to
+my honour, rely on my love, feel proud in my pride, and aspiring in
+my ambition, then, indeed, this wealth will be welcome to me, and the
+disguised name which has cost me so many mortifications become grateful,
+since she will not disdain to share it.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI.
+
+           A little druid wight
+  Of withered aspect; but his eye was keen
+  With sweetness mixed,--a russet brown bedight.
+              THOMSON: Castle of Indolence.
+
+  Thus holding high discourse, they came to where
+  The cursed carle was at his wonted trade,
+  Still tempting heedless men into his snare,
+  In witching wise, as I before have said.--Ibid.
+
+It was a fine, joyous summer morning when Clarence set out, alone and
+on horseback, upon his enterprise of love and adventure. If there be
+anything on earth more reviving and inspiriting than another, it is, to
+my taste, a bright day,--a free horse, a journey of excitement before
+one, and loneliness! Rousseau--in his own way, a great though rather
+a morbid epicure of this world’s enjoyments--talks with rapture of
+his pedestrian rambles when in his first youth. But what are your
+foot-ploddings to the joy which lifts you into air with the bound of
+your mettled steed?
+
+But there are times when an iron and stern sadness locks, as it were,
+within itself our capacities of enjoyment; and the song of the birds,
+and the green freshness of the summer morning, and the glad motion of
+the eager horse, brought neither relief nor change to the musings of the
+young adventurer.
+
+He rode on for several miles without noticing anything on his road,
+and only now and then testifying the nature of his thoughts and
+his consciousness of solitude by brief and abrupt exclamations and
+sentences, which proclaimed the melancholy yet exciting subjects of
+his meditations. During the heat of the noon, he rested at a small
+public-house about ---- miles from town; and resolving to take his horse
+at least ten miles farther before his day’s journey ceased, he remounted
+towards the evening and slowly resumed his way.
+
+He was now entering the same county in which he first made his
+appearance in this history. Although several miles from the spot on
+which the memorable night with the gypsies had been passed, his thoughts
+reverted to its remembrance, and he sighed as he recalled the ardent
+hopes which then fed and animated his heart. While thus musing, he heard
+the sound of hoofs behind him, and presently came by a sober-looking
+man, on a rough, strong pony, laden (besides its master’s weight) with
+saddle-bags of uncommon size, and to all appearance substantially and
+artfully filled.
+
+Clarence looked, and, after a second survey, recognized the person of
+his old acquaintance, Mr. Morris Brown.
+
+Not equally reminiscent was the worshipful itinerant, who, in the
+great variety of forms and faces which it was his professional lot
+to encounter, could not be expected to preserve a very nice or
+distinguishing recollection of each.
+
+“Your servant, sir, your servant,” said Mr. Brown, as he rode his
+pony alongside of our traveller. “Are you going as far as W---- this
+evening?”
+
+“I hardly know yet,” answered Clarence; “the length of my ride depends
+upon my horse rather than myself.”
+
+“Oh, well, very well,” said Mr. Brown; “but you will allow me, perhaps,
+sir, the honour of riding with you as far as you go.”
+
+“You give me much gratification by your proposal, Mr. Brown!” said
+Clarence.
+
+The broker looked in surprise at his companion. “So you know me, sir?”
+
+“I do,” replied Clarence. “I am surprised that you have forgotten me.”
+
+Slowly Mr. Brown gazed, till at last his memory began to give itself the
+rousing shake. “God bless me, sir, I beg you a thousand pardons: I now
+remember you perfectly; Mr. Linden, the nephew of my old patroness, Mrs.
+Minden. Dear, dear, how could I be so forgetful! I hope, by the by, sir,
+that the shirts wore well? I am thinking you will want some more. I have
+some capital cambric of curiously fine quality and texture, from the
+wardrobe of the late Lady Waddilove.”
+
+“What, Lady Waddilove still!” cried Clarence. “Why, my good friend,
+you will offer next to furnish me with pantaloons from her ladyship’s
+wardrobe.”
+
+“Why, really, sir, I see you preserve your fine spirits; but I do think
+I have one or two pair of plum-coloured velvet inexpressibles, that
+passed into my possession when her ladyship’s husband died, which might,
+perhaps, with a leetle alteration, fit you, and, at all events, would be
+a very elegant present from a gentleman to his valet.”
+
+“Well, Mr. Brown, whenever I or my valet wear plum-coloured velvet
+breeches, I will certainly purchase those in your possession; but to
+change the subject, can you inform me what has become of my old host and
+hostess, the Copperases, of Copperas Bower?”
+
+“Oh, sir, they are the same as ever; nice, genteel people they are, too.
+Master Adolphus has grown into a fine young gentleman, very nearly as
+tall as you and I are. His worthy father preserves his jovial vein, and
+is very merry whenever I call there. Indeed it was but last week that he
+made an admirable witticism. ‘Bob,’ said he (Tom,--you remember Tom,
+or De Warens, as Mrs. Copperas was pleased to call him,--Tom is gone),
+‘Bob, have you stopped the coach?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said Bob. ‘And what coach
+is it?’ asked Mr. Copperas. ‘It be the Swallow, sir,’ said the boy.
+‘The Swallow! oh, very well,’ cried Mr. Copperas; ‘then, now, having
+swallowed in the roll, I will e’en roll in the swallow! ‘Ha! ha! ha!
+sir, very facetious, was it not?”
+
+“Very, indeed,” said Clarence; “and so Mr. de Warens has gone; how came
+that?”
+
+“Why, sir, you see, the boy was always of a gay turn, and he took to
+frisking about, as he called it, of a night, and so he was taken up for
+thrashing a watchman, and appeared before Sir John, the magistrate, the
+next morning.”
+
+“Caractacus before Caesar!” observed Linden; “and what said Caesar?”
+
+“Sir?” said Mr. Brown.
+
+“I mean, what said Sir John?”
+
+“Oh! he asked him his name, and Tom, whose head Mrs. Copperas (poor good
+woman!) had crammed with pride enough for fifty foot-boys, replied, ‘De
+Warens,’ with all the air of a man of independence. ‘De Warens!’ cried
+Sir John, amazed, ‘we’ll have no De’s here: take him to Bridewell!’ and
+so, Mrs. Copperas, being without a foot-boy, sent for me, and I supplied
+her--with Bob!”
+
+“Out of the late Lady Waddilove’s wardrobe too?” said Clarence.
+
+“Ha, ha! that’s well, very well, sir. No, not exactly; but he was a son
+of her late ladyship’s coachman. Mr. Copperas has had two other servants
+of the name of Bob before, but this is the biggest of all, so he
+humorously calls him ‘Triple Bob Major!’ You observe that road to the
+right, sir: it leads to the mansion of an old customer of mine, General
+Cornelius St. Leger; many a good bargain have I sold to his sister.
+Heaven rest her! when she died I lost a good friend, though she was a
+little hot or so, to be sure. But she had a relation, a young lady; such
+a lovely, noble-looking creature: it did one’s heart, ay, and one’s eyes
+also, good to look at her; and she’s gone too; well, well, one loses
+one’s customers sadly; it makes me feel old and comfortless to think of
+it. Now, yonder, as far as you can see among those distant woods, lived
+another friend of mine, to whom I offered to make some very valuable
+presents upon his marriage with the young lady I spoke of just now, but,
+poor gentleman, he had not time to accept them; he lost his property
+by a lawsuit, a few months after he was married, and a very different
+person now has Mordaunt Court.”
+
+“Mordaunt Court!” cried Clarence; “do you mean to say that Mr. Mordaunt
+has lost that property?”
+
+“Why, sir, one Mr. Mordaunt has lost it, and another has gained it: but
+the real Mr. Mordaunt has not an acre in this county or elsewhere, I
+fear, poor gentleman. He is universally regretted, for he was very
+good and very generous, though they say he was also mighty proud and
+reserved; but for my part I never perceived it. If one is not proud
+one’s self, Mr. Linden, one is very little apt to be hurt by pride in
+other people.”
+
+“And where is Mr. Algernon Mordaunt?” asked Clarence, as he recalled his
+interview with that person, and the interest with which Algernon then
+inspired him.
+
+“That, sir, is more than any of us can say. He has disappeared
+altogether. Some declare that he has gone abroad, others that he is
+living in Wales in the greatest poverty. However, wherever he is, I am
+sure that he cannot be rich; for the lawsuit quite ruined him, and the
+young lady he married had not a farthing.”
+
+“Poor Mordaunt!” said Clarence, musingly.
+
+“I think, sir, that the squire would not be best pleased if he heard you
+pity him. I don’t know why, but he certainly looked, walked, and moved
+like one whom you felt it very hard to pity. But I am thinking that
+it is a great shame that the general should not do anything for Mr.
+Mordaunt’s wife, for she was his own flesh and blood; and I am sure he
+had no cause to be angry at her marrying a gentleman of such old family
+as Mr. Mordaunt. I am a great stickler for birth, sir; I learned that
+from the late Lady W. ‘Brown,’ she said, and I shall never forget her
+ladyship’s air when she did say it, ‘Brown, respect your superiors, and
+never fall into the hands of the republicans and atheists’!”
+
+“And why,” said Clarence, who was much interested in Mordaunt’s fate,
+“did General St. Leger withhold his consent?”
+
+“That we don’t exactly know, sir; but some say that Mr. Mordaunt was
+very high and proud with the general, and the general was to the full
+as fond of his purse as Mr. Mordaunt could be of his pedigree; and so, I
+suppose, one pride clashed against the other, and made a quarrel between
+them.”
+
+“Would not the general, then, relent after the marriage?”
+
+“Oh! no, sir; for it was a runaway affair. Miss Diana St. Leger, his
+sister, was as hot as ginger upon it, and fretted and worried the poor
+general, who was never of the mildest, about the match, till at last he
+forbade the poor young lady’s very name to be mentioned. And when Miss
+Diana died about two years ago, he suddenly introduced a tawny sort of
+cretur, whom they call a mulatto or creole, or some such thing, into
+the house; and it seems that he has had several children by her, whom he
+never durst own during Miss Diana’s life, but whom he now declares to be
+his heirs. Well, they rule him with a rod of iron, and suck him as dry
+as an orange. They are a bad, griping set, all of them; and, I am sure,
+I don’t say so from any selfish feeling, Mr. Linden, though they have
+forbid me the house, and called me, to my very face, an old cheating
+Jew. Think of that, sir!--I, whom the late Lady W. in her exceeding
+friendship used to call ‘honest Brown,’--I whom your worthy--”
+
+“And who,” uncourteously interrupted Clarence, “has Mordaunt Court now?”
+
+“Why, a distant relation of the last squire’s, an elderly gentleman who
+calls himself Mr. Vavasour Mordaunt. I am going there to-morrow morning,
+for I still keep up a connection with the family. Indeed the old
+gentleman bought a lovely little ape of me, which I did intend as a
+present to the late (as I may call him) Mr. Mordaunt; so, though I will
+not say I exactly like him,--he is a hard hand at a bargain,--yet at
+least I will not deny him his due.”
+
+“What sort of a person is he? What character does he bear?” asked
+Clarence.
+
+“I really find it hard to answer that question,” said the gossiping Mr.
+Brown. “In great things he is very lavish and ostentatious, but in small
+things he is very penurious and saving, and miser-like; and all for one
+son, who is deformed and very sickly. He seems to dote on that boy; and
+now I have got two or three little presents in these bags for Mr. Henry.
+Heaven forgive me, but when I look at the poor creature, with his face
+all drawn up, and his sour, ill-tempered voice, and his limbs crippled,
+I almost think it would be better if he were in his grave, and the
+rightful Mr. Mordaunt, who would then be the next of kin, in his place.”
+
+“So then, there is only this unhappy cripple between Mr. Mordaunt and
+the property?” said Clarence.
+
+“Exactly so, sir. But will you let me ask where you shall put up at
+W----? I will wait upon you, if you will give me leave, with some very
+curious and valuable articles, highly desirable either for yourself or
+for little presents to your friends.”
+
+“I thank you,” said Clarence, “I shall make no stay at W----, but I
+shall be glad to see you in town next week. Favour me, meanwhile, by
+accepting this trifle.”
+
+“Nay, nay, sir,” said Mr. Brown, pocketing the money, “I really cannot
+accept this; anything in the way of exchange,--a ring, or a seal, or--”
+
+“No, no, not at present,” said Clarence; “the night is coming on, and I
+shall make the best of my way. Good-by, Mr. Brown;” and Clarence trotted
+off: but he had scarce got sixty yards before he heard the itinerant
+merchant cry out, “Mr. Linden, Mr. Linden!” and looking back, he beheld
+the honest Brown putting his shaggy pony at full speed, in order to
+overtake him; so he pulled up.
+
+“Well, Mr. Brown, what do you want?”
+
+“Why, you see, sir, you gave me no exact answer about the plum-colored
+velvet inexpressibles,” said Mr. Brown.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII.
+
+  Are we contemned?--The Double Marriage.
+
+It was dusk when Clarence arrived at the very same inn at which, more
+than five years ago, he had assumed his present name. As he recalled
+the note addressed to him, and the sum (his whole fortune) which it
+contained, he could not help smiling at the change his lot had since
+then undergone; but the smile soon withered when he thought of the kind
+and paternal hand from which that change had proceeded, and knew that
+his gratitude was no longer availing, and that that hand, in pouring its
+last favours upon him, had become cold. He was ushered into No. 4, and
+left to his meditations till bed-time.
+
+The next day he recommenced his journey. Westborough Park, was, though
+in another county, within a short ride of W----; but, as he approached
+it, the character of the scenery became essentially changed. Bare, bold,
+and meagre, the features of the country bore somewhat of a Scottish
+character. On the right side of the road was a precipitous and
+perilous descent, and some workmen were placing posts along a path for
+foot-passengers on that side nearest the carriage-road, probably with
+a view to preserve unwary coachmen or equestrians from the dangerous
+vicinity of the descent, which a dark night might cause them to incur.
+As Clarence looked idly on the workmen, and painfully on the crumbling
+and fearful descent I have described, he little thought that that spot
+would, a few years after, become the scene of a catastrophe affecting
+in the most powerful degree the interests of his future life. Our young
+traveller put up his horse at a small inn, bearing the Westborough arms,
+and situated at a short distance from the park gates. Now that he was so
+near his mistress--now that less than an hour, nay, than the fourth part
+of an hour, might place him before her, and decide his fate--his heart,
+which had hitherto sustained him, grew faint, and presented, first
+fear, then anxiety, and, at last, despondency to his imagination and
+forebodings.
+
+“At all events,” said he, “I will see her alone before I will confer
+with her artful and proud mother or her cipher of a father. I will then
+tell her all my history, and open to her all my secrets: I will only
+conceal from her my present fortunes; for even if rumour should have
+informed her of them, it will be easy to give the report no sanction;
+I have a right to that trial. When she is convinced that, at least,
+neither my birth nor character can disgrace her, I shall see if her love
+can enable her to overlook my supposed poverty and to share my uncertain
+lot. If so, there will be some triumph in undeceiving her error and
+rewarding her generosity; if not, I shall be saved from involving my
+happiness with that of one who looks only to my worldly possessions. I
+owe it to her, it is true, to show her that I am no low-born pretender:
+but I owe it also to myself to ascertain if my own individual qualities
+are sufficient to gain her hand.”
+
+Fraught with these ideas, which were natural enough to a man whose
+peculiar circumstances were well calculated to make him feel rather
+soured and suspicious, and whose pride had been severely wounded by the
+contempt with which his letter had been treated, Clarence walked into
+the park, and, hovering around the house, watched and waited that
+opportunity of addressing Lady Flora, which he trusted her habits of
+walking would afford him; but hours rolled away, the evening set in, and
+Lady Flora had not once quitted the house.
+
+More disappointed and sick at heart than he liked to confess, Clarence
+returned to his inn, took his solitary meal, and strolling once more
+into the park, watched beneath the windows till midnight, endeavouring
+to guess which were the casements of her apartments, and feeling his
+heart beat high at every light which flashed forth and disappeared,
+and every form which flitted across the windows of the great staircase.
+Little did Lady Flora, as she sat in her room alone, and, in tears,
+mused over Clarence’s fancied worthlessness and infidelity, and told her
+heart again and again that she loved no more,--little did she know
+whose eye kept vigils without, or whose feet brushed away the rank dews
+beneath her windows, or whose thoughts, though not altogether unmingled
+with reproach, were riveted with all the ardour of a young and first
+love upon her.
+
+It was unfortunate for Linden that he had no opportunity of personally
+pleading his suit; his altered form and faded countenance would at least
+have insured a hearing and an interest for his honest though somewhat
+haughty sincerity: but though that day, and the next, and the next, were
+passed in the most anxious and unremitting vigilance, Clarence only
+once caught a glimpse of Lady Flora, and then she was one amidst a large
+party; and Clarence, fearful of a premature and untimely discovery, was
+forced to retire into the thicknesses of the park, and lose the solitary
+reward of his watches almost as soon as he had won it.
+
+Wearied and racked by his suspense, and despairing of obtaining any
+favourable opportunity for an interview without such a request, Clarence
+at last resolved to write to Lady Flora, entreating her assent to a
+meeting, in which he pledged himself to clear up all that had hitherto
+seemed doubtful in his conduct or mysterious in his character. Though
+respectful, urgent, and bearing the impress of truth and feeling, the
+tone of the letter was certainly that of a man who conceived he had a
+right to a little resentment for the past and a little confidence for
+the future. It was what might well be written by one who imagined his
+affection had once been returned, but would as certainly have been
+deemed very presumptuous by a lady who thought that the affection itself
+was a liberty.
+
+Having penned this epistle, the next care was how to convey it. After
+much deliberation it was at last committed to the care of a little
+girl, the daughter of the lodge-keeper, whom Lady Flora thrice a
+week personally instructed in the mysteries of spelling, reading, and
+calligraphy. With many injunctions to deliver the letter only to the
+hands of the beautiful teacher, Clarence trusted his despatches to the
+little scholar, and, with a trembling frame and wistful eye, watched
+Susan take her road, with her green satchel and her shining cheeks, to
+the great house.
+
+One hour, two hours, three hours, passed, and the messenger had not
+returned. Restless and impatient, Clarence walked back to his inn, and
+had not been there many minutes before a servant, in the Westborough
+livery, appeared at the door of the humble hostelry, and left the
+following letter for his perusal and gratification:--
+
+WESTBOROUGH PASS.
+
+Sir,--The letter intended for my daughter has just been given to me by
+Lady Westborough. I know not what gave rise to the language, or the very
+extraordinary request for a clandestine meeting, which you have thought
+proper to address to Lady Flora Ardenne; but you will allow me to
+observe that, if you intend to confer upon my daughter the honour of a
+matrimonial proposal, she fully concurs with me and her mother in the
+negative which I feel necessitated to put upon your obliging offer.
+
+I need not add that all correspondence with my daughter must close here.
+I have the honour to be, sir,
+
+Your very obedient servant, WESTBOROUGH.
+
+TO CLARENCE LINDEN, Esq.
+
+Had Clarence’s blood been turned to fire, his veins could not have
+swelled and burned with a fiercer heat than they did, as he read the
+above letter,--a masterpiece, perhaps, in the line of what may be termed
+the “d--d civil” of epistolary favours. “Insufferable arrogance!”
+ he muttered within his teeth. “I will live to repay it. Perfidious,
+unfeeling woman: what an escape I have had of her! Now, now, I am on the
+world, and alone, thank Heaven. I will accept Aspeden’s offer, and leave
+this country; when I return, it shall not be as a humble suitor to Lady
+Flora Ardenne. Pish! how the name sickens me: but come, I have a father;
+at least a nominal one. He is old and weak, and may die before I
+return. I will see him once more, and then, hey for Italy! Oh! I am so
+happy,--so happy at my freedom and escape. What, ho! waiter! my horse
+instantly!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII.
+
+  Lucr.--What has thy father done?
+  Beat.--What have I done? Am I not innocent?--The Cenci.
+
+Tam twilight was darkening slowly over a room of noble dimensions and
+costly fashion. Although it was the height of summer, a low fire burned
+in the grate; and, stretching his hands over the feeble flame, an old
+man of about sixty sat in an armchair curiously carved with armorial
+bearings. The dim yet fitful flame cast its upward light upon a
+countenance, stern, haughty, and repellent, where the passions of youth
+and manhood had dug themselves graves in many an iron line and deep
+furrow: the forehead, though high, was narrow and compressed; the brows
+sullenly overhung the eyes; and the nose, which was singularly prominent
+and decided, age had sharpened, and brought out, as it were, till
+it gave a stubborn and very forbidding expression to the more sunken
+features over which it rose with exaggerated dignity. Two bottles of
+wine, a few dried preserves, and a water glass, richly chased, and
+ornamented with gold, showed that the inmate of the apartment had passed
+the hour of the principal repast, and his loneliness at a time usually
+social seemed to indicate that few olive branches were accustomed to
+overshadow his table.
+
+The windows of the dining-room reached to the ground, and without the
+closing light just enabled one to see a thick copse of wood, which, at
+a very brief interval of turf, darkened immediately opposite the house.
+While the old man was thus bending over the fire and conning his evening
+contemplations, a figure stole from the copse I have mentioned, and,
+approaching the window, looked pryingly into the apartment; then with a
+noiseless hand it opened the spring of the casement, which was framed on
+a peculiar and old-fashioned construction, that required a practised
+and familiar touch, entered the apartment, and crept on, silent and
+unperceived by the inhabitant of the room, till it paused and stood
+motionless, with folded arms, scarce three steps behind the high back of
+the old man’s chair.
+
+In a few minutes the latter moved from his position, and slowly rose;
+the abruptness with which he turned, brought the dark figure of the
+intruder full and suddenly before him: he started back, and cried in an
+alarmed tone, “Who is there?”
+
+The stranger made no reply.
+
+The old man, in a voice in which anger and pride mingled with fear,
+repeated the question. The figure advanced, dropped the cloak in which
+it was wrapped, and presenting the features of Clarence Linden, said, in
+a low but clear tone,--
+
+“Your son.”
+
+The old man dropped his hold of the bell-rope, which he had just before
+seized, and leaned as if for support against the oak wainscot; Clarence
+approached.
+
+“Yes!” said he, mournfully, “your unfortunate, your offending, but
+your guiltless son. More than five years I have been banished from your
+house; I have been thrown, while yet a boy, without friends, without
+guidance, without name, upon the wide world, and to the mercy of chance.
+I come now to you as a man, claiming no assistance, and uttering no
+reproach, but to tell you that him whom an earthly father rejected God
+has preserved; that without one unworthy or debasing act I have won
+for myself the friends who support and the wealth which dignifies
+life,--since it renders it independent. Through all the disadvantages
+I have struggled against I have preserved unimpaired my honour, and
+unsullied my conscience; you have disowned, but you might have claimed
+me without shame. Father, these hands are clean!”
+
+A strong and evident emotion shook the old man’s frame. He raised
+himself to his full height, which was still tall and commanding, and in
+a voice, the natural harshness of which was rendered yet more repellent
+by passion, replied, “Boy! your presumption is insufferable. What to
+me is your wretched fate? Go, go, go to your miserable mother: find her
+out; claim kindred there; live together, toil together, rot together,
+but come not to me! disgrace to my house, ask not admittance to my
+affections; the law may give you my name, but sooner would I be torn
+piecemeal than own your right to it. If you want money, name the sum,
+take it: cut up my fortune to shreds, seize my property, revel on it;
+but come not here. This house is sacred; pollute it not: I disown you; I
+discard you; I,--ay, I detest,--I loathe you!”
+
+And with these words, which came forth as if heaved from the inmost
+heart of the speaker, who shook with the fury he endeavoured to stifle,
+he fell back into his chair, and fixed his eyes, which glared fearfully
+through the increasing darkness upon Linden, who stood high, erect, and
+sorrowfully before him.
+
+“Alas, my lord!” said Clarence, with mournful bitterness, “have not the
+years which have seared your form and whitened your locks brought some
+meekness to your rancour, some mercy to your injustice, for one whose
+only crime against you seems to have been his birth. But I said I came
+not to reproach, nor do I. Many a bitter hour, many a pang of shame and
+mortification and misery, which have made scars in my heart that will
+never wear away, my wrongs have cost me; but let them pass. Let them not
+swell your future and last account whenever it be required. I am about
+to leave this country, with a heavy and foreboding heart; we may never
+meet again on earth. I have no longer any wish, any chance, of resuming
+the name you have deprived me of. I shall never thrust myself on your
+relationship or cross your view. Lavish your wealth upon him whom you
+have placed so immeasurably above me in your affections. But I have not
+deserved your curse, Father; give me your blessing, and let me depart in
+peace.”
+
+“Peace! and what peace have I had? what respite from gnawing shame, the
+foulness and leprosy of humiliation and reproach, since--since--? But
+this is not your fault, you say: no, no,--it is another’s; and you are
+only the mark of my stigma; my disgrace, not its perpetrator. Ha! a nice
+distinction, truly. My blessing you say! Come, kneel; kneel, boy, and
+have it!”
+
+Clarence approached, and stood bending and bareheaded before his father,
+but he knelt not.
+
+“Why do you not kneel?” cried the old man, vehemently.
+
+“It is the attitude of the injurer, not of the injured!” said Clarence,
+firmly.
+
+“Injured! insolent reprobate, is it not I who am injured? Do you not
+read it in my brow,--here, here?” and the old man struck his clenched
+hand violently against his temples. “Was I not injured?” he continued,
+sinking his voice into a key unnaturally low; “did I not trust
+implicitly? did I not give up my heart without suspicion? was I not
+duped deliciously? was I not kind enough, blind enough, fool enough
+and was I not betrayed,--damnably, filthily betrayed? But that was
+no injury. Was not my old age turned into a sapless tree, a poisoned
+spring? Were not my days made a curse to me, and my nights a torture?
+Was I not, am I not, a mock and a by-word, and a miserable, impotent,
+unavenged old man? Injured! But this is no injury! Boy, boy, what are
+your wrongs to mine?”
+
+“Father!” cried Clarence, deprecatingly, “I am not the cause of your
+wrongs: is it just that the innocent should suffer for the guilty?”
+
+“Speak not in that voice!” cried the old man, “that voice!--fie, fie on
+it. Hence! away! away, boy! why tarry you? My son! and have that voice?
+Pooh, you are not my son. Ha! ha!--my son?”
+
+“What am I, then?” said Clarence, soothingly: for he was shocked and
+grieved, rather than irritated by a wrath which partook so strongly of
+insanity.
+
+“I will tell you,” cried the father, “I will tell you what you are: you
+are my curse!”
+
+“Farewell!” said Clarence, much agitated, and retiring to the window by
+which he had entered; “may your heart never smite you for your cruelty!
+Farewell! may the blessing you have withheld from me be with you!”
+
+“Stop! stay!” cried the father; for his fury was checked for one moment,
+and his nature, fierce as it was, relented: but Clarence was already
+gone, and the miserable old man was left alone to darkness, and
+solitude, and the passions which can make a hell of the human heart!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV.
+
+  Sed quae praeclara et prospera tanti,
+  Ut rebus laetis par sit mensura malornm?--JUVENAL.
+
+  [“But what excellence or prosperity so great that there should be
+  an equal measure of evils for our joys?”]
+
+We are now transported to a father and a son of a very different stamp.
+
+It was about the hour of one p.m., when the door of Mr. Vavasour
+Mordaunt’s study was thrown open, and the servant announced Mr. Brown.
+
+“Your servant, sir; your servant, Mr. Henry,” said the itinerant,
+bowing low to the two gentlemen thus addressed. The former, Mr. Vavasour
+Mordaunt, might be about the same age as Linden’s father. A shrewd,
+sensible, ambitious man of the world, he had made his way from the
+state of a younger brother, with no fortune and very little interest, to
+considerable wealth, besides the property he had acquired by law, and
+to a degree of consideration for general influence and personal ability,
+which, considering he had no official or parliamentary rank, very few of
+his equals enjoyed. Persevering, steady, crafty, and possessing, to an
+eminent degree, that happy art of “canting” which opens the readiest way
+to character and consequence, the rise and reputation of Mr. Vavasour
+Mordaunt appeared less to be wondered at than envied; yet, even envy was
+only for those who could not look beyond the surface of things. He was
+at heart an anxious and unhappy man. The evil we do in the world is
+often paid back in the bosom of home. Mr. Vavasour Mordaunt was, like
+Crauford, what might be termed a mistaken utilitarian: he had lived
+utterly and invariably for self; but instead of uniting self-interest
+with the interest of others, he considered them as perfectly
+incompatible ends. But character was among the greatest of all objects
+to him; so that, though he had rarely deviated into what might fairly be
+termed a virtue, he had never transgressed what might rigidly be called
+a propriety. He had not the aptitude, the wit, the moral audacity of
+Crauford: he could not have indulged in one offence with impunity, by a
+mingled courage and hypocrisy in veiling others; he was the slave of
+the forms which Crauford subjugated to himself. He was only so far
+resembling Crauford as one man of the world resembles another
+in selfishness and dissimulation: he could be dishonest, not
+villanous,--much less a villain upon system. He was a canter, Crauford
+a hypocrite: his uttered opinions were, like Crauford’s, different from
+his conduct; but he believed the truth of the former even while sinning
+in the latter; he canted so sincerely that the tears came into his eyes
+when he spoke. Never was there a man more exemplary in words: people
+who departed from him went away impressed with the idea of an excess
+of honour, a plethora of conscience. “It was almost a pity,” said they,
+“that Mr. Vavasour was so romantic;” and thereupon they named him as
+executor to their wills and guardian to their sons. None but he
+could, in carrying the lawsuit against Mordaunt, have lost nothing
+in reputation by success. But there was something so specious, so
+ostensibly fair in his manner and words, while he was ruining Mordaunt,
+that it was impossible not to suppose he was actuated by the purest
+motives, the most holy desire for justice; not for himself, he said, for
+he was old, and already rich enough, but for his son! From that son came
+the punishment of all his offences,--the black drop at the bottom of a
+bowl seemingly so sparkling. To him, as the father grew old and desirous
+of quiet, Vavasour had transferred all his selfishness, as if to
+a securer and more durable firm. The child, when young, had been
+singularly handsome and intelligent; and Vavasour, as he toiled and
+toiled at his ingenious and graceful cheateries, pleased himself with
+anticipating the importance and advantages the heir to his labours would
+enjoy. For that son he certainly had persevered more arduously than
+otherwise he might have done in the lawsuit, of the justice of which he
+better satisfied the world than his own breast; for that son he rejoiced
+as he looked around the stately halls and noble domain from which the
+rightful possessor had been driven; for that son he extended economy
+into penuriousness, and hope into anxiety; and, too old to expect much
+more from the world himself, for that son he anticipated, with a wearing
+and feverish fancy, whatever wealth could purchase, beauty win, or
+intellect command.
+
+But as if, like the Castle of Otranto, there was something in Mordaunt
+Court which contained a penalty and a doom for the usurper, no sooner
+had Vavasour possessed himself of his kinsman’s estate, than the
+prosperity of his life dried and withered away, like Jonah’s gourd, in a
+single night. His son, at the age of thirteen, fell from a scaffold,
+on which the workmen were making some extensive alterations in the old
+house, and became a cripple and a valetudinarian for life. But still
+Vavasour, always of a sanguine temperament, cherished a hope that
+surgical assistance might restore him: from place to place, from
+professor to professor, from quack to quack, he carried the unhappy boy,
+and as each remedy failed he was only the more impatient to devise a new
+one. But as it was the mind as well as person of his son in which
+the father had stored up his ambition; so, in despite of this fearful
+accident and the wretched health by which it was followed, Vavasour
+never suffered his son to rest from the tasks and tuitions and lectures
+of the various masters by whom he was surrounded. The poor boy, it
+is true, deprived of physical exertion and naturally of a serious
+disposition, required very little urging to second his father’s wishes
+for his mental improvement; and as the tutors were all of the orthodox
+university calibre, who imagine that there is no knowledge (but
+vanity) in any other works than those in which their own education has
+consisted, so Henry Vavasour became at once the victor and victim of
+Bentleys and Scaligers, word-weighers and metre-scanners, till, utterly
+ignorant of everything which could have softened his temper, dignified
+his misfortunes, and reconciled him to his lot, he was sinking fast
+into the grave, soured by incessant pain into moroseness, envy, and
+bitterness; exhausted by an unwholesome and useless application to
+unprofitable studies; an excellent scholar (as it is termed), with
+the worst regulated and worst informed mind of almost any of his
+contemporaries equal to himself in the advantages of ability, original
+goodness of disposition, and the costly and profuse expenditure of
+education.
+
+But the vain father, as he heard, on all sides, of his son’s talents,
+saw nothing sinister in their direction; and though the poor boy grew
+daily more contracted in mind and broken in frame, Vavasour yet hugged
+more and more closely to his breast the hope of ultimate cure for the
+latter and future glory for the former. So he went on heaping money and
+extending acres, and planting and improving and building and hoping and
+anticipating, for one at whose very feet the grave was already dug!
+
+But we left Mr. Brown in the study, making his bow and professions of
+service to Mr. Vavasour Mordaunt and his son.
+
+“Good day, honest Brown,” said the former, a middle-sized and rather
+stout man, with a well-powdered head, and a sharp, shrewd, and very
+sallow countenance; “good day; have you brought any of the foreign
+liqueurs you spoke of, for Mr. Henry?”
+
+“Yes, sir, I have some curiously fine eau d’or and liqueur des files,
+besides the marasquino and curacoa. The late Lady Waddilove honoured my
+taste in these matters with her especial approbation.”
+
+“My dear boy,” said Vavasour, turning to his son, who lay extended on
+the couch, reading not the “Prometheus” (that most noble drama ever
+created), but the notes upon it, “my dear boy, as you are fond of
+liqueurs, I desired Brown to get some peculiarly fine; perhaps--”
+
+“Pish!” said the son, fretfully interrupting him, “do, I beseech you,
+take your hand off my shoulder. See now, you have made me lose my place.
+I really do wish you would leave me alone for one moment in the day.”
+
+“I beg your pardon, Henry,” said the father, looking reverently on the
+Greek characters which his son preferred to the newspaper. “It is very
+vexatious, I own; but do taste these liqueurs. Dr. Lukewarm said you
+might have everything you liked--”
+
+“But quiet!” muttered the cripple.
+
+“I assure you, sir,” said the wandering merchant, “that they are
+excellent; allow me, Mr. Vavasour Mordaunt, to ring for a corkscrew. I
+really do think, sir, that Mr. Henry looks much better. I declare he has
+quite a colour.”
+
+“No, indeed!” said Vavasour, eagerly. “Well, it seems to me, too, that
+he is getting better. I intend him to try Mr. E----‘s patent collar in
+a day or two; but that will in some measure prevent his reading. A great
+pity; for I am very anxious that he should lose no time in his studies
+just at present. He goes to Cambridge in October.”
+
+“Indeed, sir! Well, he will set the town in a blaze, I guess, sir!
+Everybody says what a fine scholar Mr. Henry is,--even in the servants’
+hall!”
+
+“Ay, ay,” said Vavasour, gratified even by this praise, “he is clever
+enough, Brown; and, what is more” (and here Vavasour’s look grew
+sanctified), “he is good enough. His principles do equal honour to his
+head and heart. He would be no son of mine if he were not as much the
+gentleman as the scholar.”
+
+The youth lifted his heavy and distorted face from his book, and a sneer
+raised his lip for a moment; but a sudden spasm of pain seizing him,
+the expression changed, and Vavasour, whose eyes were fixed upon him,
+hastened to his assistance.
+
+“Throw open the window, Brown, ring the bell, call--”
+
+“Pooh, Father,” cried the boy, with a sharp, angry voice, “I am not
+going to die yet, nor faint either; but it is all your fault. If you
+will have those odious, vulgar people here for your own pleasure, at
+least suffer me, another day, to retire.”
+
+“My son, my son!” said the grieved father, in reproachful anger, “it was
+my anxiety to give you some trifling enjoyment that brought Brown here:
+you must be sensible of that!”
+
+“You tease me to death,” grumbled the peevish unfortunate.
+
+“Well, sir,” said Mr. Brown, “shall I leave the bottles here? or do you
+please that I shall give them to the butler? I see that I am displeasing
+and troublesome to Mr. Henry; but as my worthy friend and patroness, the
+late Lady--”
+
+“Go, go, honest Brown!” said Vavasour (who desired every man’s good
+word), “go, and give the liqueurs to Preston. Mr. Henry is extremely
+sorry that he is too unwell to see you now; and I--I have the heart of a
+father for his sufferings.”
+
+Mr. Brown withdrew. “‘Odious and vulgar,’” said he to himself, in
+a little fury,--for Mr. Brown peculiarly valued himself on his
+gentility,--“‘odious and vulgar!’ To think of his little lordship
+uttering such shameful words! However, I will go into the steward’s
+room, and abuse him there. But, I suppose, I shall get no dinner in this
+house,--no, not so much as a crust of bread; for while the old gentleman
+is launching out into such prodigious expenses on a great scale,--making
+heathenish temples, and spoiling the fine old house with his new picture
+gallery and nonsense,--he is so close in small matters, that I warrant
+not a candle-end escapes him; griping and pinching and squeezing with
+one hand, and scattering money, as if it were dirt, with the other,--and
+all for that cross, ugly, deformed, little whippersnapper of a son.
+‘Odious and vulgar,’ indeed! What shocking language! Mr. Algernon
+Mordaunt would never have made use of such words, I know. And, bless me,
+now I think of it, I wonder where that poor gentleman is. The young heir
+here is not long for this world, I can see; and who knows but what Mr.
+Algernon may be in great distress; and I am sure, as far as four hundred
+pounds, or even a thousand, go, I would not mind lending it him, only
+upon the post-obits of Squire Vavasour and his hopeful. I like doing a
+kind thing; and Mr. Algernon was always very good to me; and I am sure
+I don’t care about the security, though I think it will be as sure as
+sixpence; for the old gentleman must be past sixty, and the young one is
+the worse life of the two. And when he’s gone, what relation so near as
+Mr. Algernon? We should help one another; it is but one’s duty: and
+if he is in great distress he would not mind a handsome premium. Well,
+nobody can say Morris Brown is not as charitable as the best Christian
+breathing; and, as the late Lady Waddilove very justly observed, ‘Brown,
+believe me, a prudent risk is the surest gain!’ I will lose no time in
+finding the late squire out.”
+
+Muttering over these reflections, Mr. Brown took his way to the
+steward’s room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV.
+
+     Clar.--How, two letters?--The Lover’s Progress. LETTER FROM
+     CLARENCE LINDEN, ESQ., TO THE DUKE OF HAVERFIELD. HOTEL ----,
+     CALAIS.
+
+My Dear Duke,--After your kind letter, you will forgive me for not
+having called upon you before I left England, for you have led me to
+hope that I may dispense with ceremony towards you; and, in sad and
+sober earnest, I was in no mood to visit even you during the few days
+I was in London, previous to my departure. Some French philosopher has
+said that, ‘the best compliment we can pay our friends, when in sickness
+or misfortune, is to avoid them.’ I will not say how far I disagree
+with this sentiment, but I know that a French philosopher will be an
+unanswerable authority with you; and so I will take shelter even under
+the battery of an enemy.
+
+I am waiting here for some days in expectation of Lord Aspeden’s
+arrival. Sick as I was of England and all that has lately occurred to
+me there, I was glad to have an opportunity of leaving it sooner than my
+chief could do; and I amuse myself very indifferently in this dull town,
+with reading all the morning, plays all the evening, and dreams of my
+happier friends all the night.
+
+And so you are sorry that I did not destroy Lord Borodaile. My dear
+duke, you would have been much more sorry if I had! What could you
+then have done for a living Pasquin for your stray lampoons and vagrant
+sarcasms? Had an unfortunate bullet carried away--
+
+  “That peer of England, pillar of the state,”
+
+as you term him, pray on whom could ‘Duke Humphrey unfold his
+griefs’?--Ah, Duke, better as it is, believe me; and, whenever you
+are at a loss for a subject for wit, you will find cause to bless my
+forbearance, and congratulate yourself upon the existence of its object.
+
+Dare I hope that, amidst all the gayeties which court you, you will
+find time to write to me? If so, you shall have in return the earliest
+intelligence of every new soprano, and the most elaborate criticisms on
+every budding figurante of our court.
+
+Have you met Trollolop lately, and in what new pursuit are his
+intellectual energies engaged? There, you see, I have fairly entrapped
+your Grace into a question which common courtesy will oblige you to
+answer.
+
+Adieu, ever, my dear Duke. Most truly yours, etc.
+
+
+
+LETTER FROM THE DUKE OF HAVERFIELD TO CLARENCE LINDEN, ESQ.
+
+A thousand thanks, mon cher, for your letter, though it was certainly
+less amusing and animated than I could have wished it for your sake, as
+well as my own; yet it could not have been more welcomely received,
+had it been as witty as your conversation itself. I heard that you had
+accepted the place of secretary to Lord Aspeden, and that you had
+passed through London on your way to the Continent, looking (the amiable
+Callythorpe, ‘who never flatters,’ is my authority) more like a ghost
+than yourself. So you may be sure, my dear Linden, that I was very
+anxious to be convinced under your own hand of your carnal existence.
+
+Take care of yourself, my good fellow, and don’t imagine, as I am apt
+to do, that youth is like my hunter, Fearnought, and will carry you
+over everything. In return for your philosophical maxim, I will give
+you another. “In age we should remember that we have been young, and in
+youth that we are to be old.” Ehem!--am I not profound as a moralist? I
+think a few such sentences would become my long face well; and, to say
+truth, I am tired of being witty; every one thinks he can be that: so I
+will borrow Trollolop’s philosophy,--take snuff, wear a wig out of curl,
+and grow wise instead of merry.
+
+A propos of Trollolop; let me not forget that you honour him with your
+inquiries. I saw him three days since, and he asked me if I had been
+impressed lately with the idea vulgarly called Clarence Linden; and he
+then proceeded to inform me that he had heard the atoms which composed
+your frame were about to be resolved into a new form. While I was
+knitting my brows very wisely at this intelligence, he passed on to
+apprise me that I had neither length, breadth, nor extension, nor
+anything but mind. Flattered by so delicate a compliment to my
+understanding, I yielded my assent: and he then shifted his ground,
+and told me that there was no such thing as mind; that we were but
+modifications of matter; and that, in a word, I was all body. I took
+advantage of this doctrine, and forthwith removed my modification of
+matter from his.
+
+Findlater has just lost his younger brother in a duel. You have no idea
+how shocking it was. Sir Christopher one day heard his brother, who had
+just entered the ---- Dragoons, ridiculed for his want of spirit, by
+Major Elton, who professed to be the youth’s best friend. The honest
+heart of our worthy baronet was shocked beyond measure at this perfidy,
+and the next time his brother mentioned Elton’s name with praise, out
+came the story. You may guess the rest: young Findlater called out
+Elton, who shot him through the lungs! “I did it for the best,” cried
+Sir Christopher.
+
+La pauvre petite Meronville! What an Ariadne! Just as I was thinking
+to play the Bacchus to your Theseus, up steps an old gentleman from
+Yorkshire, who hears it is fashionable to marry bonas robas, proposes
+honourable matrimony, and deprives me and the world of La Meronville!
+The wedding took place on Monday last, and the happy pair set out to
+their seat in the North. Verily, we shall have quite a new race in the
+next generation; I expect all the babes will skip into the world with a
+pas de zephyr, singing in sweet trebles,--
+
+  “Little dancing loves we are!
+   Who the deuce is our papa?”
+
+I think you will be surprised to hear that Lord Borodaile is beginning
+to thaw; I saw him smile the other day! Certainly, we are not so near
+the North Pole as we were! He is going, and so am I, in the course of
+the autumn, to your old friends the Westboroughs. Report says that he is
+un peu epris de la belle Flore; but, then, Report is such a liar! For my
+own part I always contradict her.
+
+I eagerly embrace your offer of correspondence, and assure you that
+there are few people by whose friendship I conceive myself so much
+honoured as by yours. You will believe this; for you know that, like
+Callythorpe, I never flatter. Farewell for the present.
+
+Sincerely yours, HAVERFIELD.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI.
+
+  Q. Eliz.--Shall I be tempted of the devil thus?
+  K. Rich.--Ay, if the devil tempt thee to do good.
+  Q. Eliz.--Shall I forget myself to be myself?--SHAKSPEARE.
+
+It wanted one hour to midnight, as Crauford walked slowly to the lonely
+and humble street where he had appointed his meeting with Glendower. It
+was a stormy and fearful night. The day had been uncommonly sultry, and,
+as it died away, thick masses of cloud came labouring along the air,
+which lay heavy and breathless, as if under a spell,--as if in those
+dense and haggard vapours the rider of the storm sat, like an incubus,
+upon the atmosphere beneath, and paralyzed the motion and wholesomeness
+of the sleeping winds. And about the hour of twilight, or rather when
+twilight should have been, instead of its quiet star, from one obscure
+corner of the heavens flashed a solitary gleam of lightning, lingered a
+moment,--
+
+  “And ere a man had power to say, Behold!
+   The jaws of darkness did devour it up.”
+
+But then, as if awakened from a torpor by a signal universally
+acknowledged, from the courts and quarters of heaven, came, blaze after
+blaze, and peal upon peal, the light and voices of the Elements when
+they walk abroad. The rain fell not: all was dry and arid; the mood of
+Nature seemed not gentle enough for tears; and the lightning, livid and
+forked, flashed from the sullen clouds with a deadly fierceness, made
+trebly perilous by the panting drought and stagnation of the air. The
+streets were empty and silent, as if the huge city had been doomed and
+delivered to the wrath of the tempest; and ever and anon the lightnings
+paused upon the housetops, shook and quivered as if meditating their
+stroke, and then, baffled as it were, by some superior and guardian
+agency, vanished into their gloomy tents, and made their next descent
+from some opposite corner of the skies.
+
+It was a remarkable instance of the force with which a cherished object
+occupies the thoughts, and of the all-sufficiency of the human mind to
+itself, the slowness and unconsciousness of danger with which Crauford,
+a man luxurious as well as naturally timid, moved amidst the angry fires
+of heaven and brooded, undisturbed and sullenly serene, over the project
+at his heart.
+
+“A rare night for our meeting,” thought he; “I suppose he will not fail
+me. Now let me con over my task. I must not tell him all yet. Such babes
+must be led into error before they can walk: just a little inkling will
+suffice, a glimpse into the arcana of my scheme. Well, it is indeed
+fortunate that I met him, for verily I am surrounded with danger, and a
+very little delay in the assistance I am forced to seek might exalt me
+to a higher elevation than the peerage.”
+
+Such was the meditation of this man, as with a slow, shufling walk,
+characteristic of his mind, he proceeded to the appointed spot.
+
+A cessation of unusual length in the series of the lightnings, and the
+consequent darkness, against which the dull and scanty lamps vainly
+struggled, prevented Crauford and another figure approaching from the
+opposite quarter seeing each other till they almost touched. Crauford
+stopped abruptly.
+
+“Is it you?” said he.
+
+“It is a man who has outlived fortune!” answered Glendower, in the
+exaggerated and metaphorical language which the thoughts of men who
+imagine warmly, and are excited powerfully, so often assume.
+
+“Then,” rejoined Crauford, “you are the more suited for my purpose.
+A little urging of necessity behind is a marvellous whetter of the
+appetite to danger before, he! he!” And as he said this, his low
+chuckling laugh jarringly enough contrasted with the character of the
+night and his companion.
+
+Glendower replied not: a pause ensued; and the lightning which,
+spreading on a sudden from east to west, hung over the city a burning
+and ghastly canopy, showed the face of each to the other, working and
+almost haggard as it was with the conception of dark thoughts, and
+rendered wan and unearthly by the spectral light in which it was beheld.
+“It is an awful night,” said Glendower.
+
+“True,” answered Crauford, “a very awful night; but we are all safe
+under the care of Providence. Jesus! what a flash! Think you it is a
+favourable opportunity for our conversation?”
+
+“Why not?” said Glendower; “what have the thunders and wrath of Heaven
+to do with us?”
+
+“H-e-m! h-e-m! God sees all things,” rejoined Crauford, “and avenges
+Himself on the guilty by His storms!”
+
+“Ay; but those are the storms of the heart! I tell you that even the
+innocent may have that within to which the loudest tempests without are
+peace! But guilt, you say; what have we to do with guilt?”
+
+Crauford hesitated, and, avoiding any reply to this question, drew
+Glendower’s arm within his own, and in a low half-whispered tone said,--
+
+“Glendower, survey mankind; look with a passionless and unprejudiced eye
+upon the scene which moves around us: what do you see anywhere but the
+same re-acted and eternal law of Nature,--all, all preying upon each
+other? Or if there be a solitary individual who refrains, he is as a man
+without a common badge, without a marriage garment, and the rest trample
+him under foot! Glendower, you are such a man! Now hearken, I will
+deceive you not; I honour you too much to beguile you, even to your
+own good. I own to you, fairly and at once, that in the scheme I shall
+unfold to you, there may be something repugnant, to the factitious
+and theoretical principles of education,--something hostile to the
+prejudices, though not to the reasonings, of the mind; but--”
+
+“Hold!” said Glendower, abruptly, pausing and fixing his bold and
+searching eye upon the tempter; “hold! there will be no need of argument
+or refinement in this case: tell me at once your scheme, and at once I
+will accept or reject it!”
+
+“Gently,” said Crauford; “to all deeds of contract there is a preamble.
+Listen to me yet further: when I have ceased, I will listen to you. It
+is in vain that you place man in cities; it is in vain that you fetter
+him with laws; it is in vain that you pour into his mind the light of an
+imperfect morality, of a glimmering wisdom, of an ineffectual religion:
+in all places he is the same,--the same savage and crafty being, who
+makes the passions which rule himself the tools of his conquest
+over others! There is in all creation but one evident
+law,--self-preservation! Split it as you like into hairbreadths and
+atoms, it is still fundamentally and essentially unaltered. Glendower,
+that self-preservation is our bond now. Of myself I do not at present
+speak; I refer only to you: self-preservation commands you to place
+implicit confidence in me; it impels you to abjure indigence, by
+accepting the proposal I am about to make to you.”
+
+“You, as yet, speak enigmas,” said Glendower; “but they are sufficiently
+clear to tell me their sense is not such as I have heard you utter.”
+
+“You are right. Truth is not always safe,--safe either to others, or to
+ourselves! But I dare open to you now my real heart: look in it; I dare
+to say that you will behold charity, benevolence, piety to God, love and
+friendship at this moment to yourself; but I own, also, that you will
+behold there a determination--which to me seems courage--not to be the
+only idle being in the world, where all are busy; or, worse still, to be
+the only one engaged in a perilous and uncertain game, and yet shunning
+to employ all the arts of which he is master. I will own to you that,
+long since, had I been foolishly inert, I should have been, at this
+moment, more penniless and destitute than yourself. I live happy,
+respected, wealthy! I enjoy in their widest range the blessings of life.
+I dispense those blessings to others. Look round the world: whose name
+stands fairer than mine? whose hand relieves more of human distresses?
+whose tongue preaches purer doctrines? None, Glendower, none. I offer to
+you means not dissimilar to those I have chosen, fortunes not unequal to
+those I possess. Nothing but the most unjustifiable fastidiousness will
+make you hesitate to accept my offer.”
+
+“You cannot expect that I have met you this night with a resolution to
+be unjustifiably fastidious,” said Glendower, with a hollow and cold
+smile.
+
+Crauford did not immediately answer, for he was considering whether
+it was yet the time for disclosing the important secret. While he was
+deliberating, the sullen clouds began to break from their suspense.
+A double darkness gathered around, and a few large drops fell on the
+ground in token of a more general discharge about to follow from the
+floodgates of heaven. The two men moved onward, and took shelter under
+an old arch. Crauford first broke silence. “Hist!” said he, “hist! do
+you hear anything?”
+
+“Yes! I heard the winds and the rain, and the shaking houses, and the
+plashing pavements, and the reeking housetops,--nothing more.”
+
+Looking long and anxiously around to certify himself that none was
+indeed the witness of their conference, Crauford approached close to
+Glendower and laid his hand heavily upon his arm. At that moment a vivid
+and lengthened flash of lightning shot through the ruined arch, and gave
+to Crauford’s countenance a lustre which Glendower almost started to
+behold. The face, usually so smooth, calm, bright in complexion, and
+almost inexpressive from its extreme composure, now agitated by the
+excitement of the moment, and tinged by the ghastly light of the skies,
+became literally fearful. The cold blue eye glared out from its socket;
+the lips blanched, and, parting in act to speak, showed the white
+glistening teeth; and the corners of the mouth, drawn down in a half
+sneer, gave to the cheeks, rendered green and livid by the lightning, a
+lean and hollow appearance contrary to their natural shape.
+
+“It is,” said Crauford, in a whispered but distinct tone, “a perilous
+secret that I am about to disclose to you. I indeed have no concern
+in it, but my lords the judges have, and you will not therefore be
+surprised if I forestall the ceremonies of their court and require an
+oath.”
+
+Then, his manner and voice suddenly changing into an earnest and deep
+solemnity, as excitement gave him an eloquence more impressive, because
+unnatural to his ordinary moments, he continued: “By those lightnings
+and commotions above; by the heavens in which they revel in their
+terrible sports; by the earth, whose towers they crumble, and herbs
+they blight, and creatures they blast into cinders at their will; by Him
+whom, whatever be the name He bears, all men in the living world worship
+and tremble before; by whatever is sacred in this great and mysterious
+universe, and at the peril of whatever can wither and destroy and
+curse,--swear to preserve inviolable and forever the secret I shall
+whisper in your ear!”
+
+The profound darkness which now, in the pause of the lightning, wrapped
+the scene, hid from Crauford all sight of the effect he had produced,
+and even the very outline of Glendower’s figure; but the gloom made more
+distinct the voice which thrilled through it upon Crauford’s ear.
+
+“Promise me that there is not dishonour, nor crime, which is dishonour,
+in this confidence, and I swear.”
+
+Crauford ground his teeth. He was about to reply impetuously, but he
+checked himself. “I am not going,” thought he, “to communicate my own
+share of this plot, but merely to state that a plot does exist, and
+then to point out in what manner he can profit by it; so far, therefore,
+there is no guilt in his concealment, and, consequently, no excuse for
+him to break his vow.”
+
+Rapidly running over this self-argument, he said aloud, “I promise!”
+
+“And,” rejoined Glendower, “I swear!”
+
+At the close of this sentence another flash of lightning again made
+darkness visible, and Glendower, beholding the countenance of his
+companion, again recoiled: for its mingled haggardness and triumph
+seemed to his excited imagination the very expression of a fiend!
+“Now,” said Crauford, relapsing into his usual careless tone, somewhat
+enlivened by his sneer, “now, then, you must not interrupt me in my
+disclosure by those starts and exclamations which break from your
+philosophy like sparks from flint. Hear me throughout.”
+
+And, bending down, till his mouth reached Glendower’s ear, he commenced
+his recital. Artfully hiding his own agency, the master-spring of
+the gigantic machinery of fraud, which, too mighty for a single hand,
+required an assistant,--throwing into obscurity the sin, while, knowing
+the undaunted courage and desperate fortunes of the man, he did not
+affect to conceal the danger; expatiating upon the advantages, the
+immense and almost inexhaustible resources of wealth which his scheme
+suddenly opened upon one in the deepest abyss of poverty, and slightly
+sketching, as if to excite vanity, the ingenuity and genius by which the
+scheme originated, and could only be sustained,--Crauford’s detail of
+temptation, in its knowledge of human nature, in its adaptation of
+act to principles, in its web-like craft of self-concealment, and the
+speciousness of its lure, was indeed a splendid masterpiece of villanous
+invention.
+
+But while Glendower listened, and his silence flattered Crauford’s
+belief of victory, not for one single moment did a weak or yielding
+desire creep around his heart. Subtly as the scheme was varnished, and
+scarce a tithe of its comprehensive enormity unfolded, the strong and
+acute mind of one long accustomed to unravel sophistry and gaze on the
+loveliness of truth, saw at once that the scheme proposed was of the
+most unmingled treachery and baseness. Sick, chilled, withering at
+heart, Glendower leaned against the damp wall; as every word which the
+tempter fondly imagined was irresistibly confirming his purpose, tore
+away the last prop to which, in the credulity of hope, the student had
+clung, and mocked while it crushed the fondness of his belief.
+
+Crauford ceased, and stretched forth his hand to grasp Glendower’s. He
+felt it not. “You do not speak, my friend,” said he; “do you deliberate,
+or have you not decided?” Still no answer came. Surprised, and half
+alarmed, he turned round, and perceived by a momentary flash of
+lightning, that Glendower had risen and was moving away towards the
+mouth of the arch.
+
+“Good Heavens! Glendower,” cried Crauford, “where are you going?”
+
+“Anywhere,” cried Glendower, in a sudden paroxysm of indignant passion,
+“anywhere in this great globe of suffering, so that the agonies of my
+human flesh and heart are not polluted by the accents of crime! And such
+crime! Why, I would rather go forth into the highways, and win bread by
+the sharp knife and the death-struggle, than sink my soul in such mire
+and filthiness of sin. Fraud! fraud! treachery! Merciful Father! what
+can be my state, when these are supposed to tempt me!”
+
+Astonished and aghast, Crauford remained rooted to the spot.
+
+“Oh!” continued Glendower, and his noble nature was wrung to the utmost;
+“Oh, MAN, MAN! that I should have devoted my best and freshest years to
+the dream of serving thee! In my boyish enthusiasm, in my brief day of
+pleasure and of power, in the intoxication of love, in the reverse of
+fortune, in the squalid and obscure chambers of degradation and poverty,
+that one hope animated, cheered, sustained me through all! In temptation
+did this hand belie, or in sickness did this brain forego, or in misery
+did this heart forget, thy great and advancing cause? In the wide world,
+is there one being whom I have injured, even in thought; one being who,
+in the fellowship of want, should not have drunk of my cup, or broken
+with me the last morsel of my bread?--and now, now, is it come to this?”
+
+And, hiding his face with his hands, he gave way to a violence of
+feeling before which the weaker nature of Crauford stood trembling
+and abashed. It lasted not long; he raised his head from its drooping
+posture, and, as he stood at the entrance of the arch, a prolonged flash
+from the inconstant skies shone full upon his form. Tall, erect, still,
+the gloomy and ruined walls gave his colourless countenance and haughty
+stature in bold and distinct relief; all trace of the past passion had
+vanished: perfectly calm and set, his features borrowed even dignity
+from their marble paleness, and the marks of suffering which the last
+few months had writ in legible characters on the cheek and brow. Seeking
+out, with an eye to which the intolerable lightnings seemed to have lent
+something of their fire, the cowering and bended form of his companion,
+he said,--
+
+“Go home, miserable derider of the virtue you cannot understand; go to
+your luxurious and costly home; go and repine that human nature is not
+measured by your mangled and crippled laws: amidst men, yet more fallen
+than I am, hope to select your victim; amidst prisons, and hovels, and
+roofless sheds; amidst rags and destitution, and wretches made mad by
+hunger, hope that you may find a villain. I leave you to that hope,
+and--to remembrance!”
+
+As Glendower moved away, Crauford recovered himself. Rendered desperate
+by the vital necessity of procuring some speedy aid in his designs, and
+not yet perfectly persuaded of the fallacy of his former judgment, he
+was resolved not to suffer Glendower thus easily to depart. Smothering
+his feelings by an effort violent even to his habitual hypocrisy, he
+sprang forward, and laid his hand upon Glendower’s shoulder.
+
+“Stay, stay,” said he, in a soothing and soft voice; “you have wronged
+me greatly. I pardon your warmth,--nay, I honour it; but hereafter you
+will repent your judgment of me. At least, do justice to my intentions.
+Was I an actor in the scheme proposed to you? what was it to me? Was
+I in the smallest degree to be benefited by it? Could I have any other
+motive than affection for you? If I erred, it was from a different view
+of the question; but is it not the duty of a friend to find expedients
+for distress, and to leave to the distressed person the right of
+accepting or rejecting them? But let this drop forever: partake of my
+fortune; be my adopted brother. Here, I have hundreds about me at this
+moment; take them all, and own at least that I meant you well.”
+
+Feeling that Glendower, who at first had vainly endeavoured to shake off
+his hand, now turned towards him, though at the moment it was too dark
+to see his countenance, the wily speaker continued, “Yes, Glendower, if
+by that name I must alone address you, take all I have: there is no one
+in this world dearer to me than you are. I am a lonely and disappointed
+man, without children or ties. I sought out a friend who might be my
+brother in life and my heir in death. I found you: be that to me!”
+
+“I am faint and weak,” said Glendower, slowly, “and I believe my senses
+cannot be clear; but a minute since, and you spoke at length, and with a
+terrible distinctness, words which it polluted my very ear to catch,
+and now you speak as if you loved me. Will it please you to solve the
+riddle?”
+
+“The truth is this,” said Crauford: “I knew your pride; I feared you
+would not accept a permanent pecuniary aid, even from friendship. I was
+driven, therefore, to devise some plan of independence for you. I could
+think of no plan but that which I proposed. You speak of it as wicked:
+it may be so; but it seemed not wicked to me. I may have formed a
+wrong--I own it is a peculiar--system of morals; but it is, at least,
+sincere. Judging of my proposal by that system, I saw no sin in it. I
+saw, too, much less danger than, in the honesty of my heart, I spoke of.
+In a similar distress, I solemnly swear, I myself would have adopted
+a similar relief. Nor is this all; the plan proposed would have placed
+thousands in your power. Forgive me if I thought your life, and the
+lives of those most dear to you, of greater value than these sums to the
+persons defrauded, ay, defrauded, if you will: forgive me if I thought
+that with these thousands you would effect far more good to the
+community than their legitimate owners. Upon these grounds, and on
+some others, too tedious now to state, I justified my proposal to my
+conscience. Pardon me, I again beseech you: accept my last proposal; be
+my partner, my friend, my heir; and forget a scheme never proposed
+to you, if I had hoped (what I hope now) that you would accept the
+alternative which it is my pride to offer, and which you are not
+justified, even by pride, to refuse.”
+
+“Great Source of all knowledge!” ejaculated Glendower, scarce audibly,
+and to himself. “Supreme and unfathomable God! dost Thou most loathe
+or pity Thine abased creatures, walking in their dim reason upon this
+little earth, and sanctioning fraud, treachery, crime, upon a principle
+borrowed from Thy laws? Oh! when, when will Thy full light of wisdom
+travel down to us, and guilt and sorrow, and this world’s evil
+mysteries, roll away like vapours before the blaze?”
+
+“I do not hear you, my friend,” said Crauford. “Speak aloud; you will, I
+feel you will, accept my offer, and become my brother!”
+
+“Away!” said Glendower; “I will not.”
+
+“He wanders; his brain is touched!” muttered Crauford, and then resumed
+aloud, “Glendower, we are both unfit for talk at present; both unstrung
+by our late jar. You will meet me again to-morrow, perhaps. I will
+accompany you now to your door.”
+
+“Not a step: our paths are different.”
+
+“Well, well, if you will have it so, be it as you please. I have
+offended: you have a right to punish me, and play the churl to-night;
+but your address?”
+
+“Yonder,” said Glendower, pointing to the heavens. “Come to me a month
+hence, and you will find me there!”
+
+“Nay, nay, my friend, your brain is heated; but you leave me? Well, as
+I said, your will is mine: at least take some of these paltry notes in
+earnest of our bargain; remember when next we meet you will share all I
+have.”
+
+“You remind me,” said Glendower, quietly, “that we have old debts to
+settle. When last I saw you, you lent me a certain sum: there it is;
+take it; count it; there is but one poor guinea gone. Fear not: even to
+the uttermost farthing you shall be repaid.”
+
+“Why, why, this is unkind, ungenerous. Stay, stay,--” but, waving
+his hand impatiently, Glendower darted away, and passing into another
+street, the darkness effectually closed upon his steps.
+
+“Fool! fool! that I am,” cried Crauford, stamping vehemently on the
+ground; “in what point did my wit fail me, that I could not win one whom
+very hunger had driven into my net? But I must yet find him; and I will;
+the police shall be set to work: these half confidences may ruin me.
+And how deceitful he has proved: to talk more diffidently than a whining
+harlot upon virtue, and yet be so stubborn upon trial! Dastard that I
+am, too, as well as fool: I felt sunk into the dust by his voice. But
+pooh, I must have him yet; your worst villains make the most noise about
+the first step. True that I cannot storm, but I will undermine. But,
+wretch that I am, I must win him or another soon, or I perish on a
+gibbet. Out, base thought!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII.
+
+     Formam quidem ipsam, Marce fili, et tanquam faciem honesti
+     video: quae, si oculis cerneretur, mirabiles amores (ut ait
+     Plato) excitaret sapientia.--TULLY.
+
+[“Son Marcus, you seethe form and as it were the face of Virtue: that
+Wisdom, which if it could be perceived by the eyes, would (as Plato
+saith) kindle absolute and marvellous affection.”]
+
+It was almost dawn when Glendower returned to his home. Fearful of
+disturbing his wife, he stole with mute steps to the damp and rugged
+chamber, where the last son of a princely line, and the legitimate
+owner of lands and halls which ducal rank might have envied, held his
+miserable asylum. The first faint streaks of coming light broke through
+the shutterless and shattered windows, and he saw that she reclined in
+a deep sleep upon the chair beside their child’s couch. She would not go
+to bed herself till Glendower returned, and she had sat up, watching and
+praying, and listening for his footsteps, till, in the utter exhaustion
+of debility and sickness, sleep had fallen upon her. Glendower bent over
+her.
+
+“Sleep,” said he, “sleep on! The wicked do not come to thee now. Thou
+art in a world that has no fellowship with this,--a world from which
+even happiness is not banished! Nor woe nor pain, nor memory of the
+past nor despair of all before thee, make the characters of thy present
+state! Thou forestallest the forgetfulness of the grave, and thy heart
+concentrates all earth’s comfort in one word,--‘Oblivion! ‘Beautiful,
+how beautiful thou art even yet! that smile, that momentary blush, years
+have not conquered them. They are as when, my young bride, thou didst
+lean first upon my bosom, and dream that sorrow was no more! And I have
+brought thee unto this! These green walls make thy bridal chamber, yon
+fragments of bread thy bridal board. Well! it is no matter! thou art on
+thy way to a land where all things, even a breaking heart, are at rest.
+I weep not; wherefore should I weep? Tears are not for the dead, but
+their survivors. I would rather see thee drop inch by inch into the
+grave, and smile as I beheld it, than save thee for an inheritance of
+sin. What is there in this little and sordid life that we should strive
+to hold it? What in this dreadful dream that we should fear to wake?”
+
+And Glendower knelt beside his wife, and, despite his words, tears
+flowed fast and gushingly down his cheeks; and wearied as he was, he
+watched upon her slumbers, till they fell from the eyes to which his
+presence was more joyous than the day.
+
+It was a beautiful thing, even in sorrow, to see that couple, whom want
+could not debase, nor misfortune, which makes even generosity selfish,
+divorce! All that Fate had stripped from the poetry and graces of life,
+had not shaken one leaf from the romance of their green and unwithered
+affections! They were the very type of love in its holiest and most
+enduring shape: their hearts had grown together; their being had flowed
+through caves and deserts, and reflected the storms of an angry Heaven;
+but its waters had indissolubly mingled into one! Young, gifted, noble,
+and devoted, they were worthy victims of this blighting and bitter
+world! Their garden was turned into a wilderness; but, like our first
+parents, it was hand in hand that they took their solitary way! Evil
+beset them, but they swerved not; the rains and the winds fell upon
+their unsheltered beads, but they were not bowed; and through the mazes
+and briers of this weary life, their bleeding footsteps strayed not,
+for they had a clew! The mind seemed, as it were, to become visible and
+external as the frame decayed, and to cover the body with something of
+its own invulnerable power; so that whatever should have attacked the
+mortal and frail part, fell upon that which, imperishable and divine,
+resisted and subdued it!
+
+It was unfortunate for Glendower that he never again met Wolfe: for
+neither fanaticism of political faith, nor sternness of natural temper,
+subdued in the republican the real benevolence and generosity which
+redeemed and elevated his character; nor could any impulse of party zeal
+have induced him, like Crauford, systematically to take advantage of
+poverty in order to tempt to participation in his schemes. From a more
+evil companion Glendower had not yet escaped: Crauford, by some means or
+other, found out his abode, and lost no time in availing himself of the
+discovery. In order fully to comprehend his unwearied persecution of
+Glendower, it must constantly be remembered that to this persecution
+he was bound by a necessity which, urgent, dark, and implicating life
+itself, rendered him callous to every obstacle and unsusceptible of all
+remorse. With the exquisite tact which he possessed, he never openly
+recurred to his former proposal of fraud: he contented himself with
+endeavouring to persuade Glendower to accept pecuniary assistance, but
+in vain. The veil once torn from his character no craft could restore.
+Through all his pretences and sevenfold hypocrisy Glendower penetrated
+at once into his real motives: he was not to be duped by assurances of
+friendship which he knew the very dissimilarities between their natures
+rendered impossible. He had seen at the first, despite all allegations
+to the contrary, that in the fraud Crauford had proposed, that person
+could by no means be an uninfluenced and cold adviser. In after
+conversations, Crauford, driven by the awful interest he had in
+success from his usual consummateness of duplicity, betrayed in various
+important minutiae how deeply he was implicated in the crime for which
+he had argued; and not even the visible and progressive decay of his
+wife and child could force the stern mind of Glendower into accepting
+those wages of iniquity which he knew well were only offered as an
+earnest or a snare.
+
+There is a royalty in extreme suffering, when the mind falls not with
+the fortunes, which no hardihood of vice can violate unabashed. Often
+and often, humble and defeated through all his dissimulation, was
+Crauford driven from the presence of the man whom it was his bitterest
+punishment to fear most when most he affected to despise; and as often,
+re-collecting his powers and fortifying himself in his experience of
+human frailty when sufficiently tried, did he return to his attempts.
+He waylaid the door and watched the paths of his intended prey. He knew
+that the mind which even best repels temptation first urged hath
+seldom power to resist the same suggestion, if daily--dropping,
+unwearying--presenting itself in every form, obtruded in every hour,
+losing its horror by custom, and finding in the rebellious bosom itself
+its smoothest vizard and most alluring excuse. And it was, indeed, a
+mighty and perilous trial to Glendower, when rushing from the presence
+of his wife and child, when fainting under accumulated evils, when
+almost delirious with sickening and heated thought, to hear at each
+prompting of the wrung and excited nature, each heave of the black
+fountain that in no mortal breast is utterly exhausted, one smooth,
+soft, persuasive voice forever whispering, “Relief!”--relief, certain,
+utter, instantaneous! the voice of one pledged never to relax an
+effort or spare a pang, by a danger to himself, a danger of shame
+and death,--the voice of one who never spoke but in friendship and
+compassion, profound in craft, and a very sage in the disguises with
+which language invests deeds. But VIRTUE has resources buried in itself,
+which we know not till the invading hour calls them from their retreats.
+Surrounded by hosts without, and when Nature itself, turned traitor, is
+its most deadly enemy within, it assumes a new and a superhuman power,
+which is greater than Nature itself. Whatever be its creed, whatever be
+its sect, from whatever segment of the globe its orisons arise, Virtue
+is God’s empire, and from His throne of thrones He will defend it.
+Though cast into the distant earth, and struggling on the dim arena of a
+human heart, all things above are spectators of its conflict or enlisted
+in its cause. The angels have their charge over it; the banners of
+archangels are on its side; and from sphere to sphere, through the
+illimitable ether, and round the impenetrable darkness at the feet of
+God, its triumph is hymned by harps which are strung to the glories of
+the Creator!
+
+One evening, when Crauford had joined Glendower in his solitary
+wanderings, the dissembler renewed his attacks.
+
+“But why not,” said he, “accept from my friendship what to my
+benevolence you would deny? I couple with my offers, my prayers
+rather, no conditions. How then do you, can you, reconcile it to your
+conscience, to suffer your wife and child to perish before your eyes?”
+
+“Man, man,” said Glendower, “tempt me no more: let them die! At present
+the worst is death: what you offer me is dishonour.”
+
+“Heavens, how uncharitable is this! Can you call the mere act of
+accepting money from one who loves you dishonour?”
+
+“It is in vain that you varnish your designs,” said Glendower, stopping
+and fixing his eyes upon him. “Do you not think that cunning ever
+betrays itself? In a thousand words, in a thousand looks which have
+escaped you, but not me, I know that, if there be one being on this
+earth whom you hate and would injure, that being is myself. Nay,
+start not: listen to me patiently. I have sworn that it is the last
+opportunity you shall have. I will not subject myself to farther
+temptation: I am now sane; but there are things which may drive me mad,
+and in madness you might conquer. You hate me it is out of the nature of
+earthly things that you should not. But even were it otherwise, do you
+think that I could believe you would come from your voluptuous home to
+these miserable retreats; that, among the lairs of beggary and theft,
+you would lie in wait to allure me to forsake poverty, without a
+stronger motive than love for one who affects it not for you? I know
+you: I have read your heart; I have penetrated into that stronger
+motive; it is your own safety. In the system of atrocity you proposed
+to me, you are the principal. You have already bared to me enough of
+the extent to which that system reaches to convince me that a single
+miscreant, however ingenious, cannot, unassisted, support it with
+impunity. You want help: I am he in whom you have dared to believe that
+you could find it. You are detected; now be undeceived!”
+
+“Is it so?” said Crauford; and as he saw that it was no longer possible
+to feign, the poison of his heart broke forth in its full venom. The
+fiend rose from the reptile, and stood exposed in its natural shape.
+Returning Glendower’s stern but lofty gaze with an eye to which all evil
+passions lent their unholy fire, he repeated, “Is it so? then you are
+more penetrating than I thought; but it is indifferent to me. It was for
+your sake, not mine, most righteous man, that I wished you might have
+a disguise to satisfy the modesty of your punctilios. It is all one to
+Richard Crauford whether you go blindfold or with open eyes into his
+snare. Go you must, and shall. Ay, frowns will not awe me. You have
+desired the truth: you shall have it. You are right: I hate you,--hate
+you with a soul whose force of hatred you cannot dream of. Your pride,
+your stubbornness, your coldness of heart, which things that would stir
+the blood of beggars cannot warm; your icy and passionless virtue,--I
+hate, I hate all! You are right also, most wise inquisitor, in supposing
+that in the scheme proposed to you, I am the principal: I am! You were
+to be the tool, and shall. I have offered you mild inducements,--pleas
+to soothe the technicalities of your conscience: you have rejected them;
+be it so. Now choose between my first offer and the gibbet. Ay, the
+gibbet! That night on which we made the appointment which shall not yet
+be in vain,--on that night you stopped me in the street; you demanded
+money; you robbed me; I will swear; I will prove it. Now, then, tremble,
+man of morality: dupe of your own strength, you are in my power;
+tremble! Yet in my safety is your escape: I am generous. I repeat my
+original offer,--wealth, as great as you will demand, or--the gibbet,
+the gibbet: do I speak loud enough? do you hear?”
+
+“Poor fool!” said Glendower, laughing scornfully and moving away. But
+when Crauford, partly in mockery, partly in menace, placed his hand upon
+Glendower’s shoulder, as if to stop him, the touch seemed to change his
+mood from scorn to fury; turning abruptly round, he seized the
+villain’s throat with a giant’s strength, and cried out, while his whole
+countenance worked beneath the tempestuous wrath within, “What if I
+squeeze out thy poisonous life from thee this moment!” and then once
+more bursting into a withering laughter, as he surveyed the terror which
+he had excited, he added, “No, no: thou art too vile!” and, dashing the
+hypocrite against the wall of a neighbouring house, he strode away.
+
+Recovering himself slowly, and trembling with rage and fear, Crauford
+gazed round, expecting yet to find he had sported too far with the
+passions he had sought to control. When, however, he had fully satisfied
+himself that Glendower was gone, all his wrathful and angry feelings
+returned with redoubled force. But their most biting torture was the
+consciousness of their impotence. For after the first paroxysm of rage
+had subsided he saw, too clearly, that his threat could not be executed
+without incurring the most imminent danger of discovery. High as his
+character stood, it was possible that no charge against him might excite
+suspicion, but a word might cause inquiry, and inquiry would be ruin.
+Forced, therefore, to stomach his failure, his indignation, his shame,
+his hatred, and his vengeance, his own heart became a punishment almost
+adequate to his vices.
+
+“But my foe will die,” said he, clinching his fist so firmly that the
+nails almost brought blood from the palm; “he will starve, famish, and
+see them--his wife, his child--perish first! I shall have my triumph,
+though I shall not witness it. But now, away to my villa: there, at
+least, will be some one whom I can mock and beat and trample, if I will!
+Would--would--would that I were that very man, destitute as he is! His
+neck, at least, is safe: if he dies, it will not be upon the gallows,
+nor among the hootings of the mob! Oh, horror! horror! What are my
+villa, my wine, my women, with that black thought ever following me like
+a shadow? Who, who while an avalanche is sailing over him, who would sit
+down to feast?”
+
+Leaving this man to shun or be overtaken by Fate, we return to
+Glendower. It is needless to say that Crauford visited him no more; and,
+indeed, shortly afterwards Glendower again changed his home. But
+every day and every hour brought new strength to the disease which
+was creeping and burning through the veins of the devoted wife; and
+Glendower, who saw on earth nothing before them but a jail, from which
+as yet they had been miraculously delivered, repined not as he beheld
+her approach to a gentler and benigner home. Often he sat, as she was
+bending over their child, and gazed upon her cheek with an insane and
+fearful joy at the characters which consumption had there engraved; but
+when she turned towards him her fond eyes (those deep wells of love,
+in which truth lay hid, and which neither languor nor disease could
+exhaust), the unnatural hardness of his heart melted away, and he would
+rush from the house, to give vent to an agony against which fortitude
+and manhood were in vain.
+
+There was no hope for their distress. His wife had, unknown to Glendower
+(for she dreaded his pride), written several times to a relation, who,
+though distant, was still the nearest in blood which fate had spared
+her, but ineffectually; the scions of a large and illegitimate family,
+which surrounded him, utterly prevented the success, and generally
+interrupted the application, of any claimant on his riches but
+themselves. Glendower, whose temper had ever kept him aloof from all but
+the commonest acquaintances, knew no human being to apply to. Utterly
+unable to avail himself of the mine which his knowledge and talents
+should have proved; sick, and despondent at heart, and debarred by the
+loftiness of honour, or rather principle that nothing could quell, from
+any unlawful means of earning bread, which to most minds would have been
+rendered excusable by the urgency of nature,--Glendower marked the days
+drag on in dull and protracted despair, and envied every corpse that he
+saw borne to the asylum in which all earth’s hopes seemed centred and
+confined.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII.
+
+  For ours was not like earthly love.
+  And must this parting be our very last?
+  No! I shall love thee still when death itself is past.
+ ......
+  Hush’d were his Gertrude’s lips! but still their bland
+  And beautiful expression seem’d to melt
+  With love that could not die! and still his hand
+  She presses to the heart, no more that felt.
+  Ah, heart! where once each fond affection dwelt.
+                         CAMPBELL.
+
+“I wonder,” said Mr. Brown to himself, as he spurred his shaggy pony
+to a speed very unusual to the steady habits of either party, “I wonder
+where I shall find him. I would not for the late Lady Waddilove’s best
+diamond cross have any body forestall me in the news. To think of my
+young master dying so soon after my last visit, or rather my last visit
+but one; and to think of the old gentleman taking on so, and raving
+about his injustice to the rightful possessor, and saying that he
+is justly punished, and asking me so eagerly if I could discover the
+retreat of the late squire, and believing me so implicitly when I
+undertook to do it, and giving me this letter!” And here Mr. Brown
+wistfully examined an epistle sealed with black wax, peeping into the
+corners, which irritated rather than satisfied his curiosity. “I wonder
+what the old gentleman says in it; I suppose he will, of course, give up
+the estate and house. Let me see; that long picture gallery, just built,
+will, at all events, want furnishing. That would be a famous opportunity
+to get rid of the Indian jars, and the sofas, and the great Turkey
+carpet. How lucky that I should just have come in time to get the
+letter. But let me consider how I shall find out?--an advertisement
+in the paper? Ah! that’s the plan. ‘Algernon Mordaunt, Esq.: something
+greatly to his advantage; apply to Mr. Brown, etc.’ Ah! that will do
+well, very well. The Turkey carpet won’t be quite long enough. I wish
+I had discovered Mr. Mordaunt’s address before, and lent him some money
+during the young gentleman’s life: it would have seemed more generous.
+However, I can offer it now, before I show the letter. Bless me, it’s
+getting dark. Come, Dobbin, ye-up!” Such were the meditations of the
+faithful friend of the late Lady Waddilove, as he hastened to London,
+charged with the task of discovering Mordaunt and with the delivery of
+the following epistle:--
+
+You are now, sir, the heir to that property which, some years ago,
+passed from your hands into mine. My son, for whom alone wealth or I may
+say life was valuable to me, is no more. I only, an old, childless man,
+stand between you and the estates of Mordaunt. Do not wait for my death
+to enjoy them. I cannot live here, where everything reminds me of my
+great and irreparable loss. I shall remove next month into another home.
+Consider this, then, as once more yours. The house, I believe, you will
+not find disimproved by my alterations: the mortgages on the estate have
+been paid off; the former rental you will perhaps allow my steward to
+account to you for, and after my death the present one will be yours. I
+am informed that you are a proud man, and not likely to receive favours.
+Be it so, sir! it is no favour you will receive, but justice; there are
+circumstances connected with my treaty with your father which have of
+late vexed my conscience; and conscience, sir, must be satisfied at any
+loss. But we shall meet, perhaps, and talk over the past; at present I
+will not enlarge on it. If you have suffered by me, I am sufficiently
+punished, and my only hope is to repair your losses.
+
+I am, etc., H. VAVASOUR MORDAUNT.
+
+Such was the letter, so important to Mordaunt, with which our worthy
+friend was charged. Bowed to the dust as Vavasour was by the loss of his
+son, and open to conscience as affliction had made him, he had lived
+too long for effect, not to be susceptible to its influence, even to the
+last. Amidst all his grief, and it was intense, there were some whispers
+of self-exaltation at the thought of the eclat which his generosity and
+abdication would excite; and, with true worldly morality, the hoped-for
+plaudits of others gave a triumph rather than humiliation to his
+reconcilement with himself.
+
+To say truth, there were indeed circumstances connected with his treaty
+with Mordaunt’s father calculated to vex his conscience. He knew that he
+had not only taken great advantage of Mr. Mordaunt’s distress, but
+that at his instigation a paper which could forever have prevented
+Mr. Mordaunt’s sale of the property, had been destroyed. These
+circumstances, during the life of his son, he had endeavoured to forget
+or to palliate. But grief is rarely deaf to remorse; and at the death of
+that idolized son the voice at his heart grew imperious, and he lost the
+power in losing the motive of reasoning it away.
+
+Mr. Brown’s advertisement was unanswered; and, with the zeal and
+patience of the Christian proselyte’s tribe and calling, the good man
+commenced, in person, a most elaborate and painstaking research. For
+a long time, his endeavours were so ineffectual that Mr. Brown, in
+despair, disposed of the two Indian jars for half their value, and
+heaved a despondent sigh, whenever he saw the great Turkey carpet rolled
+up in his warehouse with as much obstinacy as if it never meant to
+unroll itself again.
+
+At last, however, by dint of indefatigable and minute investigation, he
+ascertained that the object of his search had resided in London, under a
+feigned name; from lodging to lodging, and corner to corner, he tracked
+him, till at length he made himself master of Mordaunt’s present
+retreat. A joyful look did Mr. Brown cast at the great Turkey carpet,
+as he passed by it, on his way to his street door, on the morning of his
+intended visit to Mordaunt. “It is a fine thing to have a good heart,”
+ said he, in the true style of Sir Christopher Findlater, and he again
+eyed the Turkey carpet. “I really feel quite happy at the thought of the
+pleasure I shall give.”
+
+After a walk through as many obscure and filthy wynds and lanes and
+alleys and courts as ever were threaded by some humble fugitive from
+justice, the patient Morris came to a sort of court, situated among the
+miserable hovels in the vicinity of the Tower. He paused wonderingly at
+a dwelling in which every window was broken, and where the tiles, torn
+from the roof, lay scattered in forlorn confusion beside the door; where
+the dingy bricks looked crumbling away, from very age and rottenness,
+and the fabric, which was of great antiquity, seemed so rocking and
+infirm that the eye looked upon its distorted and overhanging position
+with a sensation of pain and dread; where the very rats had deserted
+their loathsome cells from the insecurity of their tenure, and the
+ragged mothers of the abject neighbourhood forbade their brawling
+children to wander under the threatening walls, lest they should keep
+the promise of their mouldering aspect, and, falling, bare to the
+obstructed and sickly day the secrets of their prison-house. Girt with
+the foul and reeking lairs of that extreme destitution which necessity
+urges irresistibly into guilt, and excluded, by filthy alleys and an
+eternal atmosphere of smoke and rank vapour, from the blessed sun and
+the pure air of heaven, the miserable mansion seemed set apart for every
+disease to couch within,--too perilous even for the hunted criminal;
+too dreary even for the beggar to prefer it to the bare hedge, or the
+inhospitable porch, beneath whose mockery of shelter the frost of winter
+had so often numbed him into sleep.
+
+Thrice did the heavy and silver-headed cane of Mr. Brown resound upon
+the door, over which was a curious carving of a lion dormant, and a
+date, of which only the two numbers 15 were discernable. Roused by a
+note so unusual, and an apparition so unwontedly smug as the worthy
+Morris, a whole legion of dingy and smoke-dried brats, came trooping
+from the surrounding huts, and with many an elvish cry, and strange
+oath, and cabalistic word, which thrilled the respectable marrow of Mr.
+Brown, they collected in a gaping, and, to his alarmed eye, a menacing
+group, as near to the house as their fears and parents would permit
+them.
+
+“It is very dangerous,” thought Mr. Brown, looking shiveringly up at the
+hanging and tottering roof, “and very appalling,” as he turned to the
+ragged crowd of infant reprobates which began with every moment to
+increase. At last he summoned courage, and inquired, in a tone half
+soothing and half dignified, if they could inform him how to obtain
+admittance or how to arouse the inhabitants.
+
+An old crone, leaning out of an opposite window, with matted hair
+hanging over a begrimed and shrivelled countenance, made answer. “No
+one,” she said, in her peculiar dialect, which the worthy man scarcely
+comprehended, “lived there or had done so for years:” but Brown knew
+better; and while he was asserting the fact, a girl put her head out of
+another hovel, and said that she had sometimes seen, at the dusk of the
+evening, a man leave the house, but whether any one else lived in it
+she could not tell. Again Mr. Brown sounded an alarm, but no answer came
+forth, and in great fear and trembling he applied violent hands to
+the door: it required but little force; it gave way; he entered; and,
+jealous of the entrance of the mob without, reclosed and barred, as well
+as he was able, the shattered door. The house was unnaturally large
+for the neighbourhood, and Brown was in doubt whether first to ascend a
+broken and perilous staircase or search the rooms below: he decided on
+the latter; he found no one, and with a misgiving heart, which nothing
+but the recollection of the great Turkey carpet could have inspired, he
+ascended the quaking steps. All was silent. But a door was unclosed. He
+entered, and saw the object of his search before him.
+
+Over a pallet bent a form, on which, though youth seemed withered and
+even pride broken, the unconquerable soul left somewhat of grace and of
+glory, that sustained the beholder’s remembrance of better days; a child
+in its first infancy knelt on the nearer side of the bed with clasped
+hands, and vacant eyes that turned towards the intruder with a listless
+and lacklustre gaze. But Glendower, or rather Mordaunt, as he bent over
+the pallet, spoke not, moved not: his eyes were riveted on one object;
+his heart seemed turned into stone and his veins curdled into ice. Awed
+and chilled by the breathing desolation of the spot, Brown approached,
+and spoke he scarcely knew what. “You are,” he concluded his address,
+“the master of Mordaunt Court;” and he placed the letter in the hands of
+the person he thus greeted.
+
+“Awake, hear me!” cried Algernon to Isabel, as she lay extended on the
+couch; and the messenger of glad tidings, for the first time seeing her
+countenance, shuddered, and knew that he was in the chamber of death.
+
+“Awake, my own, own love! Happy days are in store for us yet: our misery
+is past; you will live, live to bless me in riches, as you have done in
+want.”
+
+Isabel raised her eyes to his, and a smile, sweet, comforting, and
+full of love, passed the lips which were about to close forever. “Thank
+Heaven,” she murmured, “for your dear sake. It is pleasant to die now,
+and thus;” and she placed the hand that was clasped in her relaxing and
+wan fingers within the bosom which had been for anguished and hopeless
+years his asylum and refuge, and which now when fortune changed, as if
+it had only breathed in comfort to his afflictions, was for the first
+time and forever to be cold,--cold even to him!
+
+“You will live, you will live,” cried Mordaunt, in wild and incredulous
+despair, “in mercy live! You, who have been my angel of hope, do not,--O
+God, O God! do not desert me now!”
+
+But that faithful and loving heart was already deaf to his voice,
+and the film grew darkening and rapidly over the eye which still with
+undying fondness sought him out through the shade and agony of death.
+Sense and consciousness were gone, and dim and confused images whirled
+round her soul, struggling a little moment before they sank into the
+depth and silence where the past lies buried. But still mindful of him,
+and grasping, as it were, at his remembrance, she clasped, closer and
+closer, the icy hand which she held, to her breast. “Your hand is cold,
+dearest, it is cold,” said she, faintly, “but I will warm it here!” And
+so her spirit passed away, and Mordaunt felt afterwards, in a lone and
+surviving pilgrimage, that her last thought had been kindness to him,
+and that her last act had spoken forgetfulness even of death in the
+tenderness of love!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX
+
+  Change and time take together their flight.--Golden Violet.
+
+One evening in autumn, about three years after the date of our last
+chapter, a stranger on horseback, in deep mourning, dismounted at the
+door of the Golden Fleece, in the memorable town of W----. He walked
+into the taproom, and asked for a private apartment and accommodation
+for the night. The landlady, grown considerably plumper than when we
+first made her acquaintance, just lifted up her eyes to the stranger’s
+face, and summoning a short stout man (formerly the waiter, now the
+second helpmate of the comely hostess), desired him, in a tone which
+partook somewhat more of the authority indicative of their former
+relative situations than of the obedience which should have
+characterized their present, “to show the gentleman to the Griffin, No.
+4.”
+
+The stranger smiled as the sound greeted his ears, and he followed
+not so much the host as the hostess’s spouse into the apartment thus
+designated. A young lady, who some eight years ago little thought that
+she should still be in a state of single blessedness, and who always
+honoured with an attentive eye the stray travellers who, from their
+youth, loneliness, or that ineffable air which usually designates the
+unmarried man, might be in the same solitary state of life, turned to
+the landlady and said,--
+
+“Mother, did you observe what a handsome gentleman that was?”
+
+“No,” replied the landlady; “I only observed that he brought no servant”
+
+“I wonder,” said the daughter, “if he is in the army? he has a military
+air!”
+
+“I suppose he has dined,” muttered the landlady to herself, looking
+towards the larder.
+
+“Have you seen Squire Mordaunt within a short period of time?” asked,
+somewhat abruptly, a little thick-set man, who was enjoying his pipe and
+negus in a sociable way at the window-seat. The characteristics of this
+personage were, a spruce wig, a bottle nose, an elevated eyebrow,
+a snuff-coloured skin and coat, and an air of that consequential
+self-respect which distinguishes the philosopher who agrees with the
+French sage, and sees “no reason in the world why a man should not
+esteem himself.”
+
+“No, indeed, Mr. Bossolton,” returned the landlady; “but I suppose that,
+as he is now in the Parliament House, he will live less retired. It is
+a pity that the inside of that noble old Hall of his should not be more
+seen; and after all the old gentleman’s improvements too! They say
+that the estate now, since the mortgages were paid off, is above 10,000
+pounds a year, clear!”
+
+“And if I am not induced into an error,” rejoined Mr. Bossolton,
+refilling his pipe, “old Vavasour left a great sum of ready money
+besides, which must have been an aid, and an assistance, and an
+advantage, mark me, Mistress Merrylack, to the owner of Mordaunt
+Hall, that has escaped the calculation of your faculty,--and the--and
+the--faculty of your calculation!”
+
+“You mistake, Mr. Boss,” as, in the friendliness of diminutives, Mrs.
+Merrylack sometimes styled the grandiloquent practitioner, “you mistake:
+the old gentleman left all his ready money in two bequests,--the one to
+the College of ----, in the University of Cambridge, and the other to
+an hospital in London. I remember the very words of the will; they ran
+thus, Mr. Boss. ‘And whereas my beloved son, had he lived, would have
+been a member of the College of ---- in the University of Cambridge,
+which he would have adorned by his genius, learning, youthful virtue,
+and the various qualities which did equal honour to his head and heart,
+and would have rendered him alike distinguished as the scholar and the
+Christian, I do devise and bequeath the sum of thirty-seven thousand
+pounds sterling, now in the English Funds,’ etc; and then follows the
+manner in which he will have his charity vested and bestowed, and
+all about the prize which shall be forever designated and termed ‘The
+Vavasour Prize,’ and what shall be the words of the Latin speech which
+shall be spoken when the said prize be delivered, and a great deal more
+to that effect: so, then, he passes to the other legacy, of exactly the
+same sum, to the hospital, usually called and styled ----, in the city
+of London, and says, ‘And whereas we are assured by the Holy Scriptures,
+which, in these days of blasphemy and sedition, it becomes every true
+Briton and member of the Established Church to support, that “charity
+doth cover a multitude of sins,” so I do give and devise,’ etc., ‘to be
+forever termed in the deeds,’ etc., ‘of the said hospital, “The Vavasour
+Charity;” and always provided that on the anniversary of the day of
+my death a sermon shall be preached in the chapel attached to the
+said hospital by a clergyman of the Established Church, on any text
+appropriate to the day and deed so commemorated.’ But the conclusion is
+most beautiful, Mr. Bossolton: ‘And now having discharged my duties, to
+the best of my humble ability, to my God, my king, and my country,
+and dying in the full belief of the Protestant Church, as by law
+established, I do set my hand and seal,’ etc.”
+
+“A very pleasing and charitable and devout and virtuous testament or
+will, Mistress Merrylack,” said Mr. Bossolton; “and in a time when
+anarchy with gigantic strides does devastate and devour and harm the
+good old customs of our ancestors and forefathers, and tramples with
+its poisonous breath the Magna Charta and the glorious revolution, it
+is beautiful, ay, and sweet, mark you, Mrs. Merrylack, to behold
+a gentleman of the aristocratic classes or grades supporting the
+institutions of his country with such remarkable energy of sentiments
+and with--and with, Mistress Merrylack, with sentiments of such
+remarkable energy.”
+
+“Pray,” said the daughter, adjusting her ringlets by a little glass
+which hung over the tap, “how long has Mr. Mordaunt’s lady been dead?”
+
+“Oh! she died just before the squire came to the property,” quoth the
+mother. “Poor thing! she was so pretty! I am sure I cried for a whole
+hour when I heard it! I think it was three years last month when it
+happened. Old Mr. Vavasour died about two months afterwards.”
+
+“The afflicted husband” (said Mr. Bossolton, who was the victim of a
+most fiery Mrs. Boss at home) “went into foreign lands or parts, or,
+as it is vulgarly termed, the Continent, immediately after an event or
+occurrence so fatal to the cup of his prosperity and the sunshine of his
+enjoyment, did he not, Mrs. Merrylack?”
+
+“He did. And you know, Mr. Boss, he only returned about six months ago.”
+
+“And of what borough or burgh or town or city is he the member and
+representative?” asked Mr. Jeremiah Bossolton, putting another lump of
+sugar into his negus. “I have heard, it is true, but my memory is
+short; and, in the multitude and multifariousness of my professional
+engagements, I am often led into a forgetfulness of matters less
+important in their variety, and less--less various in their importance.”
+
+“Why,” answered Mrs. Merrylack, “somehow or other, I quite forget too;
+but it is some distant borough. The gentleman wanted him to stand for
+the county, but he would not hear of it; perhaps he did not like the
+publicity of the thing, for he is mighty reserved.”
+
+“Proud, haughty, arrogant, and assumptious!” said Mr. Bossolton, with a
+puff of unusual length.
+
+“Nay, nay,” said the daughter (young people are always the first to
+defend), “I’m sure he’s not proud: he does a mort of good, and has the
+sweetest smile possible! I wonder if he’ll marry again! He is very young
+yet, not above two or three and thirty.” (The kind damsel would not have
+thought two or three and thirty very young some years ago; but we
+grow wonderfully indulgent to the age of other people as we grow older
+ourselves!)
+
+“And what an eye he has!” said the landlady. “Well, for my part,--but,
+bless me. Here, John, John, John, waiter, husband I mean,--here’s a
+carriage and four at the door. Lizzy, dear, is my cap right?”
+
+And mother, daughter, and husband all flocked, charged with
+simper, courtesy, and bow, to receive their expected guests. With a
+disappointment which we who keep not inns can but very imperfectly
+conceive, the trio beheld a single personage,--a valet, descend from the
+box, open the carriage door, and take out--a desk! Of all things human,
+male or female, the said carriage was utterly empty.
+
+The valet bustled up to the landlady: “My master’s here, ma’am, I think;
+rode on before!”
+
+“And who is your master?” asked Mrs. Merrylack, a thrill of alarm, and
+the thought of No. 4, coming across her at the same time.
+
+“Who!” said the valet, rubbing his hands; “who!--why, Clarence Talbot
+Linden, Esq., of Scarsdale Park, county of York, late Secretary of
+Legation at the court of ----, now M.P., and one of his Majesty’s Under
+Secretaries of State.”
+
+“Mercy upon us!” cried the astounded landlady, “and No. 4! only think of
+it. Run, John,--John,--run, light a fire (the night’s cold, I think) in
+the Elephant, No. 16; beg the gentleman’s pardon; say it was occupied
+till now; ask what he’ll have for dinner,--fish, flesh, fowl, steaks,
+joints, chops, tarts; or, if it’s too late (but it’s quite early yet;
+you may put back the day an hour or so), ask what he’ll have for supper;
+run, John, run: what’s the oaf staying for? run, I tell you! Pray, sir,
+walk in (to the valet, our old friend Mr. Harrison)--you’ll be hungry
+after your journey, I think; no ceremony, I beg.”
+
+“He’s not so handsome as his master,” said Miss Elizabeth, glancing
+at Harrison discontentedly; “but he does not look like a married man,
+somehow. I’ll just step up stairs and change my cap: it would be but
+civil if the gentleman’s gentleman sups with us.”
+
+Meanwhile Clarence, having been left alone in the quiet enjoyment of
+No. 4, had examined the little apartment with an interest not altogether
+unmingled with painful reflections. There are few persons, however
+fortunate, who can look back to eight years of their life, and not
+feel somewhat of disappointment in the retrospect; few persons, whose
+fortunes the world envy, to whom the token of past time suddenly
+obtruded on their remembrance does not awaken hopes destroyed and wishes
+deceived which that world has never known. We tell our triumphs to
+the crowd, but our own hearts are the sole confidants of our sorrows.
+“Twice,” said Clarence to himself, “twice before have I been in this
+humble room; the first was when, at the age of eighteen, I was just
+launched into the world,--a vessel which had for its only hope the motto
+of the chivalrous Sidney,--
+
+  ‘Aut viam inveniam, aut--faciam;’
+  [“I will either find my way, or--make it.]
+
+yet, humble and nameless as I was, how well I can recall the exaggerated
+ambition, nay, the certainty of success, as well as its desire, which
+then burned within me. I smile now at the overweening vanity of those
+hopes,--some, indeed, realized, but how many nipped and withered
+forever! seeds, of which a few fell upon rich ground and prospered,
+but of which how far the greater number were scattered: some upon the
+wayside, and were devoured by immediate cares; some on stony places, and
+when the sun of manhood was up they were scorched, and because they had
+no root withered away; and some among thorns, and the thorns sprang up
+and choked them. I am now rich, honoured, high in the favour of courts,
+and not altogether unknown or unesteemed arbitrio popularis aurae:
+and yet I almost think I was happier when, in that flush of youth and
+inexperience, I looked forth into the wide world, and imagined that from
+every corner would spring up a triumph for my vanity or an object for my
+affections. The next time I stood in this little spot, I was no longer
+the dependant of a precarious charity, or the idle adventurer who had
+no stepping-stone but his ambition. I was then just declared the heir of
+wealth, which I could not rationally have hoped for five years before,
+and which was in itself sufficient to satisfy the aspirings of ordinary
+men. But I was corroded with anxieties for the object of my love, and
+regret for the friend whom I had lost: perhaps the eagerness of my
+heart for the one rendered me, for the moment, too little mindful of
+the other; but, in after years, memory took ample atonement for that
+temporary suspension of her duties. How often have I recalled, in this
+world of cold ties and false hearts, that true and generous friend, from
+whose lessons my mind took improvement, and from whose warnings example;
+who was to me, living, a father, and from whose generosity whatever
+worldly advantages I have enjoyed or distinctions I have gained are
+derived! Then I was going, with a torn yet credulous heart, to pour
+forth my secret and my passion to her, and, within one little week
+thence, how shipwrecked of all hope, object, and future happiness I was!
+Perhaps, at that time, I did not sufficiently consider the excusable
+cautions of the world: I should not have taken such umbrage at her
+father’s letter; I should have revealed to him my birth and accession of
+fortune; nor bartered the truth of certain happiness for the trials and
+manoeuvres of romance. But it is too late to repent now. By this time my
+image must be wholly obliterated from her heart: she has seen me in the
+crowd, and passed me coldly by; her cheek is pale, but not for me;
+and in a little, little while, she will be another’s, and lost to me
+forever! Yet have I never forgotten her through change or time, the
+hard and harsh projects of ambition, the labours of business, or the
+engrossing schemes of political intrigue. Never! but this is a vain and
+foolish subject of reflection now.”
+
+And not the less reflecting upon it for that sage and veracious
+recollection, Clarence turned from the window, against which he had been
+leaning, and drawing one of the four chairs to the solitary table, he
+sat down, moody and disconsolate, and leaning his face upon his hands,
+pursued the confused yet not disconnected thread of his meditations.
+
+The door abruptly opened, and Mr. Merrylack appeared.
+
+“Dear me, sir!” cried he, “a thousand pities you should have been put
+here, sir! Pray step upstairs, sir; the front drawing-room is just
+vacant, sir; what will you please to have for dinner, sir?” etc.,
+according to the instructions of his wife. To Mr. Merrylack’s
+great dismay, Clarence, however, resolutely refused all attempts at
+locomotion, and contenting himself with entrusting the dinner to
+the discretion of the landlady, desired to be left alone till it was
+prepared.
+
+Now, when Mr. John Merrylack returned to the taproom, and communicated
+the stubborn adherence to No. 4 manifested by its occupier, our good
+hostess felt exceedingly discomposed. “You are so stupid, John,” said
+she: “I’ll go and expostulate like with him;” and she was rising for
+that purpose when Harrison, who was taking particularly good care of
+himself, drew her back; “I know my master’s temper better than you do,
+ma’am,” said he; “and when he is in the humour to be stubborn, the very
+devil himself could not get him out of it. I dare say he wants to be
+left to himself: he is very fond of being alone now and then; state
+affairs, you know” (added the valet, mysteriously touching his
+forehead), “and even I dare not disturb him for the world; so make
+yourself easy, and I’ll go to him when he has dined, and I supped. There
+is time enough for No. 4 when we have taken care of number one. Miss,
+your health!”
+
+The landlady, reluctantly overruled in her design, reseated herself.
+
+“Mr. Clarence Linden, M. P., did you say, sir?” said the learned
+Jeremiah: “surely, I have had that name or appellation in my books, but
+I cannot, at this instant of time, recall to my recollection the exact
+date and circumstance of my professional services to the gentleman so
+designated, styled, or, I may say, termed.”
+
+“Can’t say, I am sure, sir,” said Harrison; “lived with my master many
+years; never had the pleasure of seeing you before, nor of travelling
+this road,--a very hilly road it is, sir. Miss, this negus is as bright
+as your eyes and as warm as my admiration.”
+
+“Oh, sir!”
+
+“Pray,” said Mr. Merrylack, who like most of his tribe was a bit of a
+politician; “is it the Mr. Linden who made that long speech in the House
+the other day?”
+
+“Precisely, sir. He is a very eloquent gentleman, indeed: pity he speaks
+so little; never made but that one long speech since he has been in
+the House, and a capital one it was too. You saw how the prime minister
+complimented him upon it. ‘A speech,’ said his lordship, ‘which had
+united the graces of youthful genius with the sound calculations of
+matured experience.”’
+
+“Did the prime minister really so speak?” said Jeremiah “what a
+beautiful, and noble, and sensible compliment! I will examine my
+books when I go home,--‘the graces of youthful genius with the sound
+calculations of matured experience’!”
+
+“If he is in the Parliament House,” quoth the landlady, “I suppose he
+will know our Mr. Mordaunt, when the squire takes his seat next--what do
+you call it--sessions?”
+
+“Know Mr. Mordaunt!” said the valet. “It is to see him that we have come
+down here. We intended to have gone there to-night, but Master thought
+it too late, and I saw he was in a melancholy humour: we therefore
+resolved to come here; and so Master took one of the horses from the
+groom, whom we have left behind with the other, and came on alone. I
+take it, he must have been in this town before, for he described the inn
+so well.--Capital cheese this! as mild,--as mild as your sweet smile,
+miss.”
+
+“Oh, sir!”
+
+“Pray, Mistress Merrylack,” said Mr. Jeremiah Bossolton, depositing his
+pipe on the table, and awakening from a profound revery, in which
+for the last five minutes his senses had been buried, “pray, Mistress
+Merrylack, do you not call to your mind or your reminiscence or
+your--your recollection, a young gentleman, equally comely in his aspect
+and blandiloquent (ehem!) in his address, who had the misfortune to
+have his arm severely contused and afflicted by a violent kick from Mr.
+Mordaunt’s horse, even in the yard in which your stables are situated,
+and who remained for two or three days in your house or tavern or hotel?
+I do remember that you were grievously perplexed because of his name,
+the initials of which only he gave or entrusted or communicated to you,
+until you did exam--”
+
+“I remember,” interrupted Miss Elizabeth, “I remember well,--a very
+beautiful young gentleman, who had a letter directed to be left here,
+addressed to him by the letters C. L., and who was afterwards kicked,
+and who admired your cap, Mother, and whose name was Clarence Linden.
+You remember it well enough, Mother, surely?”
+
+“I think I do, Lizzy,” said the landlady, slowly; for her memory, not so
+much occupied as her daughter’s by beautiful young gentlemen, struggled
+slowly amidst dim ideas of the various travellers and visitors with
+whom her house had been honoured, before she came, at last, to the
+reminiscence of Clarence Linden, “I think I do; and Squire Mordaunt was
+very attentive to him; and he broke one of the panes of glass in No. 8
+and gave me half a guinea to pay for it. I do remember perfectly, Lizzy.
+So that is the Mr. Linden now here?--only think!”
+
+“I should not have known him, certainly,” said Miss Elizabeth; “he is
+grown so much taller, and his hair looks quite dark now, and his face is
+much thinner than it was; but he’s very handsome still; is he not, sir?”
+ turning to the valet.
+
+“Ah! ah! well enough,” said Mr. Harrison, stretching out his right leg,
+and falling away a little to the left, in the manner adopted by the
+renowned Gil Blas, in his address to the fair Laura, “well enough; but
+he’s a little too tall and thin, I think.”
+
+Mr. Harrison’s faults in shape were certainly not those of being too
+tall and thin.
+
+“Perhaps so!” said Miss Elizabeth, who scented the vanity by a kindred
+instinct, and had her own reasons for pampering it, “perhaps so!”
+
+“But he is a great favourite with the ladies all the same; however, he
+only loves one lady. Ah, but I must not say who, though I know. However,
+she is so handsome: such eyes, they would go through you like a skewer;
+but not like yours,--yours, miss, which I vow and protest are as bright
+as a service of plate.”
+
+“Oh, sir!”
+
+And amidst these graceful compliments the time slipped away, till
+Clarence’s dinner and his valet’s supper being fairly over, Mr.
+Harrison presented himself to his master, a perfectly different being
+in attendance to what he was in companionship: flippancy, impertinence,
+forwardness, all merged in the steady, sober, serious demeanour which
+characterize the respectful and well-bred domestic.
+
+Clarence’s orders were soon given. They were limited to the
+appurtenances of writing; and as soon as Harrison reappeared with his
+master’s writing-desk, he was dismissed for the night.
+
+Very slowly did Clarence settle himself to his task, and attempt to
+escape the ennui of his solitude, or the restlessness of thought feeding
+upon itself, by inditing the following epistle:--
+
+TO THE DUKE OF HAVERFIELD.
+
+I was very unfortunate, my dear Duke, to miss seeing you, when I called
+in Arlington Street the evening before last, for I had a great deal to
+say to you,--something upon public and a little upon private affairs.
+I will reserve the latter, since I only am the person concerned, for a
+future opportunity. With respect to the former-- .........
+
+And now, having finished the political part of my letter, let me
+congratulate you most sincerely upon your approaching marriage with Miss
+Trevanion. I do not know her myself; but I remember that she was the
+bosom friend of Lady Flora Ardenne, whom I have often heard speak of
+her in the highest and most affectionate terms, so that I imagine her
+brother could not better atone to you for dishonestly carrying off
+the fair Julia some three years ago, than by giving you his sister in
+honourable and orthodox exchange,--the gold amour for the brazen.
+
+As for my lot, though I ought not, at this moment, to dim yours by
+dwelling upon it, you know how long, how constantly, how ardently I
+have loved Lady Flora Ardenne; how, for her sake, I have refused
+opportunities of alliance which might have gratified to the utmost that
+worldliness of heart which so many who saw me only in the crowd have
+been pleased to impute to me. You know that neither pleasure, nor
+change, nor the insult I received from her parents, nor the sudden
+indifference which I so little deserved from herself, has been able
+to obliterate her image. You will therefore sympathize with me, when
+I inform you that there is no longer any doubt of her marriage with
+Borodaile (or rather Lord Ulswater, since his father’s death), as soon
+as the sixth month of his mourning expires; to this period only two
+months remain.
+
+Heavens! when one thinks over the past, how incredulous one could become
+to the future: when I recall all the tokens of love I received from
+that woman, I cannot persuade myself that they are now all forgotten, or
+rather, all lavished upon another.
+
+But I do not blame her: may she be happier with him than she could have
+been with me! and that hope shall whisper peace to regrets which I have
+been foolish to indulge so long, and it is perhaps well for me that they
+are about to be rendered forever unavailing.
+
+I am staying at an inn, without books, companions, or anything to
+beguile time and thought, but this pen, ink, and paper. You will see,
+therefore, a reason and an excuse for my scribbling on to you, till my
+two sheets are filled, and the hour of ten (one can’t well go to bed
+earlier) arrived.
+
+You remember having often heard me speak of a very extraordinary man
+whom I met in Italy, and with whom I became intimate. He returned to
+England some months ago; and on hearing it my desire of renewing our
+acquaintance was so great that I wrote to invite myself to his house.
+He gave me what is termed a very obliging answer, and left the choice of
+time to myself. You see now, most noble Festus, the reason of my journey
+hitherwards.
+
+His house, a fine old mansion, is situated about five or six miles from
+this town: and as I arrived here late in the evening, and knew that his
+habits were reserved and peculiar, I thought it better to take “mine
+ease in my inn” for this night, and defer my visit to Mordaunt Court
+till to-morrow morning. In truth, I was not averse to renewing an
+old acquaintance,--not, as you in your malice would suspect, with my
+hostess, but with her house. Some years ago, when I was eighteen, I
+first made a slight acquaintance with Mordaunt at this very inn, and
+now, at twenty-six, I am glad to have one evening to myself on the same
+spot, and retrace here all that has since happened to me.
+
+Now do not be alarmed: I am not going to inflict upon you the unquiet
+retrospect with which I have just been vexing myself; no, I will rather
+speak to you of my acquaintance and host to be. I have said that I first
+met Mordaunt some years since at this inn,--an accident, for which his
+horse was to blame, brought us acquainted,--I spent a day at his house,
+and was much interested in his conversation; since then, we did not meet
+till about two years and a half ago, when we were in Italy together.
+During the intermediate interval Mordaunt had married; lost his property
+by a lawsuit; disappeared from the world (whither none knew) for some
+years; recovered the estate he had lost by the death of his kinsman’s
+heir, and shortly afterwards by that of the kinsman himself; and had
+become a widower, with one only child, a beautiful little girl of about
+four years old. He lived in perfect seclusion, avoided all intercourse
+with society, and seemed so perfectly unconscious of having ever seen me
+before, whenever in our rides or walks we met, that I could not venture
+to intrude myself on a reserve so rigid and unbroken as that which
+characterized his habits and life.
+
+The gloom and loneliness, however, in which Mordaunt’s days were
+spent, were far from partaking of that selfishness so common, almost
+so necessarily common, to recluses. Wherever he had gone in his travels
+through Italy, he had left light and rejoicing behind him. In his
+residence at ----, while unknown to the great and gay, he was familiar
+with the outcast and the destitute. The prison, the hospital, the sordid
+cabins of want, the abodes (so frequent in Italy, that emporium of
+artists and poets) where genius struggled against poverty and its own
+improvidence,--all these were the spots to which his visits were paid,
+and in which “the very stones prated of his whereabout.” It was a
+strange and striking contrast to compare the sickly enthusiasm of those
+who flocked to Italy to lavish their sentiments on statues, and
+their wealth on the modern impositions palmed upon their taste as the
+masterpieces of ancient art,--it was a noble contrast, I say, to compare
+that ludicrous and idle enthusiasm with the quiet and wholesome energy
+of mind and heart which led Mordaunt, not to pour forth worship and
+homage to the unconscious monuments of the dead but to console, to
+relieve, and to sustain the woes, the wants, the feebleness of the
+living.
+
+Yet while he was thus employed in reducing the miseries and enlarging
+the happiness of others, the most settled melancholy seemed to mark
+himself “as her own.” Clad in the deepest mourning, a stern and un
+broken gloom sat forever upon his countenance. I have observed, that
+if in his walks or rides any one, especially of the better classes,
+appeared to approach, he would strike into a new path. He could not bear
+even the scrutiny of a glance or the fellowship of a moment: and
+his mien, high and haughty, seemed not only to repel others, but to
+contradict the meekness and charity which his own actions so invariably
+and unequivocally displayed. It must, indeed, have been a powerful
+exertion of principle over feeling which induced him voluntarily to seek
+the abodes and intercourse of the rude beings he blessed and relieved.
+
+We met at two or three places to which my weak and imperfect charity had
+led me, especially at the house of a sickly and distressed artist: for
+in former life I had intimately known one of that profession; and I have
+since attempted to transfer to his brethren that debt of kindness which
+an early death forbade me to discharge to himself. It was thus that I
+first became acquainted with Mordaunt’s occupations and pursuits; for
+what ennobled his benevolence was the remarkable obscurity in which it
+was veiled. It was in disguise and in secret that his generosity flowed;
+and so studiously did he conceal his name, and hide even his features,
+during his brief visits to “the house of mourning,” that only one like
+myself, a close and minute investigator of whatever has once become an
+object of interest, could have traced his hand in the various works of
+happiness it had aided or created.
+
+One day, among some old ruins, I met him with his young daughter. By
+great good-fortune I preserved the latter, who had wandered away from
+her father, from a fall of loose stones, which would inevitably have
+crushed her. I was myself much hurt by my effort, having received
+upon my shoulder a fragment of the falling stones; and thus our old
+acquaintance was renewed, and gradually ripened into intimacy; not, I
+must own, without great patience and constant endeavour on my part; for
+his gloom and lonely habits rendered him utterly impracticable of access
+to any (as Lord Aspeden would say) but a diplomatist. I saw a great
+deal of him during the six months I remained in Italy, and--but you know
+already how warmly I admire his extraordinary powers and venerate his
+character--Lord Aspeden’s recall to England separated us.
+
+A general election ensued. I was returned for ----. I entered eagerly
+into domestic politics; your friendship, Lord Aspeden’s kindness, my
+own wealth and industry, made my success almost unprecedentedly rapid.
+Engaged heart and hand in those minute yet engrossing labours for which
+the aspirant in parliamentary and state intrigue must unhappily forego
+the more enlarged though abstruser speculations of general philosophy,
+and of that morality which may be termed universal, politics, I have
+necessarily been employed in very different pursuits from those to which
+Mordaunt’s contemplations are devoted, yet have I often recalled his
+maxims, with admiration at their depth, and obtained applause for
+opinions which were only imperfectly filtered from the pure springs of
+his own.
+
+It is about six months since he has returned to England, and he has very
+lately obtained a seat in Parliament: so that we may trust soon to see
+his talents displayed upon a more public and enlarged theatre than they
+hitherto have been; and though I fear his politics will be opposed to
+ours, I anticipate his public debut with that interest which genius,
+even when adverse to one’s self, always inspires. Yet I confess that I
+am desirous to see and converse with him once more in the familiarity
+and kindness of private intercourse. The rage of party, the narrowness
+of sectarian zeal, soon exclude from our friendship all those who differ
+from our opinions; and it is like sailors holding commune for the last
+time with each other, before their several vessels are divided by the
+perilous and uncertain sea, to confer in peace and retirement for a
+little while with those who are about to be launched with us on that
+same unquiet ocean where any momentary caprice of the winds may disjoin
+us forever, and where our very union is only a sympathy in toil and a
+fellowship in danger.
+
+Adieu, my dear duke! it is fortunate for me that our public opinions
+are so closely allied, and that I may so reasonably calculate in private
+upon the happiness and honour of subscribing myself your affectionate
+friend,              C. L.
+
+Such was the letter to which we shall leave the explanation of much that
+has taken place within the last three years of our tale, and which, in
+its tone, will serve to show the kindness and generosity of heart and
+feeling that mingled (rather increased than abated by the time which
+brought wisdom) with the hardy activity and resolute ambition that
+characterized the mind of our “Disowned.” We now consign him to such
+repose as the best bedroom in the Golden Fleece can afford, and conclude
+the chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LX.
+
+  Though the wilds of enchantment all vernal and bright,
+   In the days of delusion by fancy combined
+  With the vanishing phantoms of love and delight,
+  Abandon my soul, like a dream of the night,
+   And leave but a desert behind,
+
+  Be hush’d my dark spirit, for Wisdom condemns
+   When the faint and the feeble deplore;
+  Be strong as the rock of the ocean that stems
+   A thousand wild waves on the shore.--CAMPBELL.
+
+“Shall I order the carriage round, sir?” said Harrison; “it is past
+one.”
+
+“Yes; yet stay: the day is fine; I will ride; let the carriage come on
+in the evening; see that my horse is saddled; you looked to his mash
+last night?”
+
+“I did, sir. He seems wonderfully fresh: would you please to have me
+stay here with the carriage, sir, till the groom comes on with the other
+horse?”
+
+“Ay, do: I don’t know yet how far strange servants may be welcome where
+I am going.”
+
+“Now, that’s lucky!” said Harrison to himself, as he shut the door: “I
+shall have a good five hours’ opportunity of making my court here. Miss
+Elizabeth is really a very pretty girl, and might not be a bad match. I
+don’t see any brothers; who knows but she may succeed to the inn--hem! A
+servant may be ambitious as well as his master, I suppose.”
+
+So meditating, Harrison sauntered to the stables; saw (for he was an
+admirable servant, and could, at a pinch, dress a horse as well as its
+master) that Clarence’s beautiful steed received the utmost nicety of
+grooming which the ostler could bestow; led it himself to the door; held
+the stirrup for his master, with the mingled humility and grace of his
+profession, and then strutted away--“pride on his brow and glory in his
+eye”--to be the cynosure and oracle of the taproom.
+
+Meanwhile Linden rode slowly onwards. As he passed that turn of the town
+by which he had for the first time entered it, the recollection of the
+eccentric and would-be gypsy flashed upon him. “I wonder,” thought
+he, “where that singular man is now, whether he still preserves his
+itinerant and woodland tastes,--
+
+  ‘Si flumina sylvasque inglorius amet,’
+  [“If, unknown to fame, he love the streams and the woods.”]
+
+or whether, as his family increased in age or number, he has turned from
+his wanderings, and at length found out ‘the peaceful hermitage?’ How
+glowingly the whole scene of that night comes across me,--the wild
+tents, their wilder habitants, the mingled bluntness, poetry, honest
+good-nature, and spirit of enterprise which constituted the chief’s
+nature; the jovial meal and mirth round the wood fire, and beneath the
+quiet stars, and the eagerness and zest with which I then mingled in the
+merriment. Alas! how ill the fastidiousness and refinement of after days
+repay us for the elastic, buoyant, ready zeal with which our first youth
+enters into whatever is joyous, without pausing to ask if its cause and
+nature be congenial to our habits or kindred to our tastes. After all,
+there really was something philosophical in the romance of the jovial
+gypsy, childish as it seemed; and I should like much to know if the
+philosophy has got the better of the romance, or the romance, growing
+into habit, become commonplace and lost both its philosophy and its
+enthusiasm. Well, after I leave Mordaunt, I will try and find out my old
+friend.”
+
+With this resolution Clarence’s thoughts took a new channel, and he soon
+entered upon Mordaunt’s domain. As he rode through the park where brake
+and tree were glowing in the yellow tints which Autumn, like Ambition,
+gilds ere it withers, he paused for a moment to recall the scene as he
+last beheld it. It was then spring--spring in its first and flushest
+glory--when not a blade of grass but sent a perfume to the air, the
+happy air,--
+
+  “Making sweet music while the young leaves danced:”
+
+when every cluster of the brown fern, that now lay dull and motionless
+around him, and amidst which the melancholy deer stood afar off gazing
+upon the intruder, was vocal with the blithe melodies of the infant
+year,--the sharp, yet sweet, voices of birds,--and (heard at intervals)
+the chirp of the merry grasshopper or the hum of the awakened bee. He
+sighed, as he now looked around, and recalled the change both of time
+and season; and with that fondness of heart which causes man to knit his
+own little life to the varieties of time, the signs of heaven, or the
+revolutions of Nature, he recognized something kindred in the change of
+scene to the change of thought and feeling which years had wrought in
+the beholder.
+
+Awaking from his revery, he hastened his horse’s pace, and was soon
+within sight of the house. Vavasour, during the few years he had
+possessed the place, had conducted and carried through improvements and
+additions to the old mansion, upon a scale equally costly and judicious.
+The heavy and motley magnificence of the architecture in which the house
+had been built remained unaltered; but a wing on either side, though
+exactly corresponding in style to the intermediate building, gave, by
+the long colonnade which ran across the one and the stately windows
+which adorned the other, an air not only of grander extent, but more
+cheerful lightness to the massy and antiquated pile. It was, assuredly,
+in the point of view by which Clarence now approached it, a structure
+which possessed few superiors in point of size and effect; and
+harmonized so well with the nobly extent of the park, the ancient woods,
+and the venerable avenues, that a very slight effort of imagination
+might have poured from the massive portals the pageantries of old days,
+and the gay galliard of chivalric romance with which the scene was in
+such accordance, and which in a former age it had so often witnessed.
+
+Ah, little could any one who looked upon that gorgeous pile, and the
+broad lands which, beyond the boundaries of the park, swelled on the
+hills of the distant landscape, studded at frequent intervals with
+the spires and villages, which adorned the wide baronies of
+Mordaunt,--little could he who thus gazed around have imagined that the
+owner of all he surveyed had passed the glory and verdure of his manhood
+in the bitterest struggles with gnawing want, rebellious pride, and
+urgent passion, without friend or aid but his own haughty and supporting
+virtue, sentenced to bear yet in his wasted and barren heart the sign of
+the storm he had resisted, and the scathed token of the lightning he had
+braved. None but Crauford, who had his own reasons for taciturnity, and
+the itinerant broker, easily bribed into silence, had ever known of
+the extreme poverty from which Mordaunt had passed to his rightful
+possessions. It was whispered, indeed, that he had been reduced to
+narrow and straitened circumstances; but the whisper had been only the
+breath of rumour, and the imagined poverty far short of the reality:
+for the pride of Mordaunt (the great, almost the sole, failing in his
+character) could not endure that all he had borne and baffled should be
+bared to the vulgar eye; and by a rare anomaly of mind, indifferent as
+he was to renown, he was morbidly susceptible of shame.
+
+When Clarence rang at the ivy-covered porch, and made inquiry for
+Mordaunt, he was informed that the latter was in the park, by the river,
+where most of his hours during the day-time were spent.
+
+“Shall I send to acquaint him that you are come, sir?” said the servant.
+
+“No,” answered Clarence, “I will leave my horse to one of the grooms,
+and stroll down to the river in search of your master.”
+
+Suiting the action to the word, he dismounted, consigned his steed to
+the groom, and following the direction indicated to him, bent his way to
+the “river.”
+
+As he descended the hill, the brook (for it did not deserve, though it
+received, a higher name) opened enchantingly upon his view. Amidst the
+fragrant reed and the wild-flower, still sweet though fading, and tufts
+of tedded grass, all of which, when crushed beneath the foot, sent
+a mingled tribute to its sparkling waves, the wild stream took its
+gladsome course, now contracted by gloomy firs, which, bending over the
+water, cast somewhat of their own sadness upon its surface; now glancing
+forth from the shade, as it “broke into dimples and laughed in the sun;”
+ now washing the gnarled and spreading roots of some lonely ash,
+which, hanging over it still and droopingly, seemed--the hermit of the
+scene--to moralize on its noisy and various wanderings; now winding
+round the hill and losing itself at last amidst thick copses, where day
+did never more than wink and glimmer, and where, at night, its waters,
+brawling through their stony channel, seemed like a spirit’s wail, and
+harmonized well with the scream of the gray owl wheeling from her dim
+retreat, or the moaning and rare sound of some solitary deer.
+
+As Clarence’s eye roved admiringly over the scene before him, it dwelt
+at last upon a small building situated on the wildest part of the
+opposite bank; it was entirely overgrown with ivy, and the outline only
+remained to show the Gothic antiquity of the architecture. It was
+a single square tower, built none knew when or wherefore, and,
+consequently, the spot of many vagrant guesses and wild legends among
+the surrounding gossips. On approaching yet nearer, he perceived, alone
+and seated on a little mound beside the tower, the object of his search.
+
+Mordaunt was gazing with vacant yet earnest eye upon the waters beneath;
+and so intent was either his mood or look that he was unaware of
+Clarence’s approach. Tears fast and large were rolling from those
+haughty eyes, which men who shrank from their indifferent glance little
+deemed were capable of such weak and feminine emotion. Far, far through
+the aching void of time were the thoughts of the reft and solitary
+mourner; they were dwelling, in all the vivid and keen intensity of
+grief which dies not, upon the day when, about that hour and on that
+spot, he sat with Isabel’s young cheek upon his bosom, and listened to
+a voice now only heard in dreams. He recalled the moment when the fatal
+letter, charged with change and poverty, was given to him, and the pang
+which had rent his heart as he looked around upon a scene over which
+spring had just then breathed, and which he was about to leave to a
+fresh summer and a new lord; and then that deep, fond, half-fearful gaze
+with which Isabel had met his eye, and the feeling, proud even in its
+melancholy, with which he had drawn towards his breast all that earth
+had left to him, and thanked God in his heart of hearts that she was
+spared.
+
+“And I am once more master,” thought he, “not only of all I then held,
+but of all which my wealthier forefathers possessed. But she who was the
+sharer of my sorrows and want,--oh, where is she? Rather, ah, rather
+a hundredfold that her hand was still clasped in mine, her spirit
+supporting me through poverty and trial, and her soft voice murmuring
+the comfort that steals away care, than to be thus heaped with wealth
+and honour, and alone,--alone, where never more can come love or hope,
+or the yearnings of affection or the sweet fulness of a heart that seems
+fathomless in its tenderness, yet overflows! Had my lot, when she left
+me, been still the steepings of bitterness, the stings of penury, the
+moody silence of hope, the damp and chill of sunless and aidless years,
+which rust the very iron of the soul away; had my lot been thus, as it
+had been, I could have borne her death, I could have looked upon her
+grave, and wept not,--nay, I could have comforted my own struggles with
+the memory of her escape; but thus, at the very moment of prosperity, to
+leave the altered and promising earth, ‘to house with darkness and
+with death;’ no little gleam of sunshine, no brief recompense for the
+agonizing past, no momentary respite between tears and the tomb. Oh,
+Heaven! what--what avail is a wealth which comes too late, when she, who
+could alone have made wealth bliss, is dust; and the light that should
+have gilded many and happy days flings only a ghastly glare upon the
+tomb?”
+
+Starting from these reflections, Mordaunt half-unconsciously rose,
+and dashing the tears from his eyes, was about to plunge into the
+neighbouring thicket, when, looking up, he beheld Clarence, now within
+a few paces of him. He started, and seemed for one moment irresolute
+whether to meet or shun his advance, but probably deeming it too late
+for the latter, he banished, by one of those violent efforts with which
+men of proud and strong minds vanquish emotion, all outward sign of the
+past agony; and hastening towards his guest, greeted him with a welcome
+which, though from ordinary hosts it might have seemed cold, appeared
+to Clarence, who knew his temper, more cordial than he had ventured to
+anticipate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXI.
+
+  Mr father urged me sair,
+   But my mither didna speak,
+  Though she looked into my face,
+   Till my heart was like to break.--Auld Robin Gray.
+
+“It is rather singular,” said Lady Westborough to her daughter as they
+sat alone one afternoon in the music-room at Westborough Park,--“it is
+rather singular that Lord Ulswater should not have come yet. He said he
+should certainly be here before three o’clock.”
+
+“You know, Mamma, that he has some military duties to detain him
+at W----,” answered Lady Flora, bending over a drawing in which she
+appeared to be earnestly engaged.
+
+“True, my dear, and it was very kind in Lord ---- to quarter the troop
+he commands in his native county; and very fortunate that W----, being
+his head-quarters, should also be so near us. But I cannot conceive that
+any duty can be sufficiently strong to detain him from you,” added
+Lady Westborough, who had been accustomed all her life to a devotion
+unparalleled in this age. “You seem very indulgent, Flora.”
+
+“Alas! she should rather say very indifferent,” thought Lady Flora: but
+she did not give her thought utterance; she only looked up at her mother
+for a moment, and smiled faintly.
+
+Whether there was something in that smile or in the pale cheek of her
+daughter that touched her we know not, but Lady Westborough was touched:
+she threw her arms round Lady Flora’s neck, kissed her fondly, and said,
+“You do not seem well to-day, my love, are you?”
+
+“Oh!--very--very well,” answered Lady Flora, returning her mother’s
+caress, and hiding her eyes, to which the tears had started.
+
+“My child,” said Lady Westborough, “you know that both myself and your
+father are very desirous to see you married to Lord Ulswater,--of high
+and ancient birth, of great wealth, young, unexceptionable in person and
+character, and warmly attached to you, it would be impossible even for
+the sanguine heart of a parent to ask for you a more eligible match. But
+if the thought really does make you wretched,--and yet,--how can it?”
+
+“I have consented,” said Flora, gently; “all I ask is, do not speak to
+me more of the--the event than you can avoid.”
+
+Lady Westborough pressed her hand, sighed, and replied not.
+
+The door opened, and the marquis, who had within the last year become
+a cripple, with the great man’s malady, dire podagra, was wheeled in on
+his easy-chair; close behind him followed Lord Ulswater.
+
+“I have brought you,” said the marquis, who piqued himself on a vein of
+dry humour,--“I have brought you, young lady, a consolation for my ill
+humours. Few gouty old fathers make themselves as welcome as I do; eh,
+Ulswater?”
+
+“Dare I apply to myself Lord Westborough’s compliment?” said the young
+nobleman, advancing towards Lady Flora; and drawing his seat near her,
+he entered into that whispered conversation so significant of courtship.
+But there was little in Lady Flora’s manner by which an experienced eye
+would have detected the bride elect: no sudden blush, no downcast, yet
+sidelong look, no trembling of the hand, no indistinct confusion of
+the voice, struggling with unanalyzed emotions. No: all was calm, cold,
+listless; her cheek changed not tint nor hue, and her words, clear
+and collected, seemed to contradict whatever the low murmurs of
+her betrothed might well be supposed to insinuate. But, even in his
+behaviour, there was something which, had Lady Westborough been less
+contented than she was with the externals and surface of manner, would
+have alarmed her for her daughter. A cloud, sullen and gloomy, sat upon
+his brow; and his lip alternately quivered with something like scorn,
+or was compressed with a kind of stifled passion. Even in the exultation
+that sparkled in his eye, when he alluded to their approaching marriage,
+there was an expression that almost might have been termed fierce, and
+certainly was as little like the true orthodox ardour of “gentle
+swain,” as Lady Flora’s sad and half unconscious coldness resembled the
+diffident passion of the “blushing maiden.”
+
+“You have considerably passed the time in which we expected you, my
+lord,” said Lady Westborough, who, as a beauty herself, was a little
+jealous of the deference due to the beauty of her daughter.
+
+“It is true.,” said Lord Ulswater, glancing towards the opposite glass,
+and smoothing his right eyebrow with his forefinger, “it is true, but I
+could not help it. I had a great deal of business to do with my troop: I
+have put them into a new manoeuvre. Do you know, my lord [turning to the
+marquis], I think it very likely the soldiers may have some work on the
+---- of this month?”
+
+“Where, and wherefore?” asked Lord Westborough, whom a sudden twinge
+forced into the laconic.
+
+“At W----. Some idle fellows hold a meeting there on that day; and if I
+may judge by bills and advertisements, chalkings on the walls, and, more
+than all popular rumour, I have no doubt but what riot and sedition are
+intended: the magistrates are terribly frightened. I hope we shall have
+some cutting and hewing: I have no patience with the rebellious dogs.”
+
+“For shame! for shame!” cried Lady Westborough, who, though a worldly,
+was by no means an unfeeling, woman “the poor people are misguided; they
+mean no harm.”
+
+Lord Ulswater smiled scornfully. “I never dispute upon politics, but at
+the head of my men,” said he, and turned the conversation.
+
+Shortly afterwards Lady Flora, complaining of indisposition, rose, left
+the apartment, and retired to her own room. There she sat motionless
+and white as death for more than an hour. A day or two afterwards Miss
+Trevanion received the following letter from her:--
+
+Most heartily, most truly do I congratulate you, my dearest Eleanor,
+upon your approaching marriage. You may reasonably hope for all that
+happiness can afford; and though you do affect (for I do not think
+that you feel) a fear lest you should not be able to fix a character,
+volatile and light, like your lover’s; yet when I recollect his
+warmth of heart and high sense, and your beauty, gentleness, charms of
+conversation, and purely disinterested love for one whose great worldly
+advantages might so easily bias or adulterate affection, I own that I
+have no dread for your future fate, no feeling that can at all darken
+the brightness of anticipation. Thank you, dearest, for the delicate
+kindness with which you allude to my destiny: me indeed you cannot
+congratulate as I can you. But do not grieve for me, my generous
+Eleanor: if not happy, I shall, I trust, be at least contented. My poor
+father implored me with tears in his eyes; my mother pressed my hand,
+but spoke not; and I, whose affections were withered and hopes strewn,
+should I not have been hard-hearted indeed if they had not wrung from me
+a consent? And oh should I not be utterly lost, if in that consent which
+blessed them I did not find something of peace and consolation?
+
+Yes, dearest, in two months, only two months, I shall be Lord Ulswater’s
+wife; and when we meet, you shall look narrowly at me, and see if he or
+you have any right to complain of me.
+
+Have you seen Mr. Linden lately? Yet do not answer the question: I ought
+not to cherish still that fatal clinging interest for one who has so
+utterly forgotten me. But I do rejoice in his prosperity; and when I
+hear his praises, and watch his career, I feel proud that I should once
+have loved him! Oh, how could he be so false, so cruel, in the very
+midst of his professions of undying, unswerving faith to me; at the very
+moment when I was ill, miserable, wasting my very heart, for anxiety on
+his account,--and such a woman too! And had he loved me, even though his
+letter was returned, would not his conscience have told him he deserved
+it, and would he not have sought me out in person, and endeavoured to
+win from my folly his forgiveness? But without attempting to see me, or
+speak to me, or soothe a displeasure so natural, to leave the country
+in silence, almost in disdain; and when we met again, to greet me with
+coldness and hauteur, and never betray, by word, sign, or look, that he
+had ever been to me more than the merest stranger! Fool! Fool! that I
+am, to waste another thought upon him; but I will not, and ought not to
+do so. In two months I shall not even have the privilege of remembrance.
+
+I wish, Eleanor,--for I assure you that I have tried and tried,--that
+I could find anything to like and esteem (since love is out of the
+question) in this man, who seems so great, and, to me, so unaccountable
+a favourite with my parents. His countenance and voice are so harsh
+and stern; his manner at once so self-complacent and gloomy; his very
+sentiments so narrow, even in their notions of honour; his very courage
+so savage, and his pride so constant and offensive,--that I in vain
+endeavour to persuade myself of his virtues, and recur, at least, to the
+unwearying affection for me which he professes. It is true that he has
+been three times refused; that I have told him I cannot love him; that I
+have even owned former love to another: he still continues his suit,
+and by dint of long hope has at length succeeded. But at times I could
+almost think that he married me from very hate, rather than love: there
+is such an artificial smoothness in his stern voice, such a latent
+meaning in his eye; and when he thinks I have not noticed him, I have,
+on suddenly turning towards him, perceived so dark and lowering an
+expression upon his countenance that my heart has died within me for
+very fear.
+
+Had my mother been the least less kind, my father the least less urgent,
+I think, nay, I know, I could not have gained such a victory over myself
+as I have done in consenting to the day. But enough of this. I did not
+think I should have run on so long and so foolishly; but we, dearest,
+have been children and girls and women together: we have loved each
+other with such fondness and unreserve that opening my heart to you
+seems only another phrase for thinking aloud.
+
+However, in two months I shall have no right even to thoughts; perhaps
+I may not even love you: till then, dearest Eleanor, I am, as ever, your
+affectionate and faithful friend, F. A.
+
+Had Lord Westborough, indeed, been “less urgent,” or her mother “less
+kind,” nothing could ever have wrung from Lady Flora her consent to a
+marriage so ungenial and ill-omened.
+
+Thrice had Lord Ulswater (then Lord Borodaile) been refused, before
+finally accepted; and those who judge only from the ordinary effects of
+pride would be astonished that he should have still persevered. But his
+pride was that deep-rooted feeling which, so far from being repelled by
+a single blow, fights stubbornly and doggedly onward, till the battle is
+over and its object gained. From the moment he had resolved to address
+Lady Flora Ardenne he had also resolved to win her. For three years,
+despite of a refusal, first gently, then more peremptorily, urged, he
+fixed himself in her train. He gave out that he was her affianced. In
+all parties, in all places, he forced himself near her, unheeding alike
+of her frowns or indifference; and his rank, his hauteur, his fierceness
+of mien, and acknowledged courage kept aloof all the less arrogant and
+hardy pretenders to Lady Flora’s favour. For this, indeed, she rather
+thanked than blamed him; and it was the only thing which in the least
+reconciled her modesty to his advances or her pride to his presumption.
+
+He had been prudent as well as bold. The father he had served, and the
+mother he had won. Lord Westborough, addicted a little to politics,
+a good deal to show, and devotedly to gaming, was often greatly and
+seriously embarrassed. Lord Ulswater, even during the life of his father
+(who was lavishly generous to him), was provided with the means of
+relieving his intended father-in-law’s necessities; and caring little
+for money in comparison to a desired object, he was willing enough, we
+do not say to bribe, but to influence, Lord Westborough’s consent. These
+matters of arrangement were by no means concealed from the marchioness,
+who, herself ostentatious and profuse, was in no small degree benefited
+by them; and though they did not solely procure, yet they certainly
+contributed to conciliate, her favour.
+
+Few people are designedly and systematically wicked: even the worst find
+good motives for bad deeds, and are as intent upon discovering glosses
+for conduct to deceive themselves as to delude others. What wonder,
+then, that poor Lady Westborough, never too rigidly addicted to
+self-examination, and viewing all things through a very worldly
+medium, saw only, in the alternate art and urgency employed against
+her daughter’s real happiness, the various praiseworthy motives of
+permanently disentangling Lady Flora from an unworthy attachment, of
+procuring for her an establishment proportioned to her rank, and a
+husband whose attachment, already shown by such singular perseverance,
+was so likely to afford her everything which, in Lady Westborough’s
+eyes, constituted felicity?
+
+All our friends, perhaps, desire our happiness; but then it must
+invariably be in their own way. What a pity that they do not employ the
+same zeal in making us happy in ours!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXII.
+
+ If thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding;
+ If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures:
+ Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.
+ --Proverbs ii. 3, 4, 5.
+
+While Clarence was thus misjudged by one whose affections and conduct
+he, in turn, naturally misinterpreted; while Lady Flora was alternately
+struggling against and submitting to the fate which Lady Westborough saw
+approach with gladness, the father with indifference, and the bridegroom
+with a pride that partook less of rapture than revenge,--our unfortunate
+lover was endeavouring to glean, from Mordaunt’s conversation and
+example, somewhat of that philosophy so rare except in the theories
+of the civilized and the occasional practice of the barbarian, which,
+though it cannot give us a charm against misfortune, bestows, at least,
+upon us the energy to support it.
+
+We have said already that when the first impression produced by
+Mordaunt’s apparent pride and coldness wore away, it required little
+penetration to discover the benevolence and warmth of his mind. But none
+ignorant of his original disposition, or the misfortunes of his life,
+could ever have pierced the depth of his self-sacrificing nature,
+or measured the height of his lofty and devoted virtue. Many men may
+perhaps be found who will give up to duty a cherished wish or even a
+darling vice; but few will ever renounce to it their rooted tastes,
+or the indulgence of those habits which have almost become by long use
+their happiness itself. Naturally melancholy and thoughtful, feeding
+the sensibilities of his heart upon fiction, and though addicted to
+the cultivation of reason rather than fancy, having perhaps more of
+the deeper and acuter characteristics of the poet than those calm
+and half-callous properties of nature supposed to belong to the
+metaphysician and the calculating moralist, Mordaunt was above all men
+fondly addicted to solitude, and inclined to contemplations less useful
+than profound. The untimely death of Isabel, whom he had loved with that
+love which is the vent of hoarded and passionate musings long nourished
+upon romance, and lavishing the wealth of a soul that overflows with
+secreted tenderness upon the first object that can bring reality to
+fiction,--that event had not only darkened melancholy into gloom, but
+had made loneliness still more dear to his habits by all the ties
+of memory and all the consecrations of regret. The companionless
+wanderings; the midnight closet; the thoughts which, as Hume said of
+his own, could not exist in the world, but were all busy with life in
+seclusion,--these were rendered sweeter than ever to a mind for which
+the ordinary objects of the world were now utterly loveless; and the
+musings of solitude had become, as it were, a rightful homage and
+offering to the dead. We may form, then, some idea of the extent to
+which, in Mordaunt’s character, principle predominated over inclination,
+and regard for others over the love of self, when we see him tearing
+his spirit from its beloved retreats and abstracted contemplations,
+and devoting it to duties from which its fastidious and refined
+characteristics were particularly calculated to revolt. When we have
+considered his attachment to the hermitage, we can appreciate the virtue
+which made him among the most active citizens in the great world;
+when we have considered the natural selfishness of grief, the pride of
+philosophy, the indolence of meditation, the eloquence of wealth, which
+says, “Rest, and toil not,” and the temptation within, which says, “Obey
+the voice,”--when we have considered these, we can perhaps do justice
+to the man who, sometimes on foot and in the coarsest attire, travelled
+from inn to inn and from hut to hut; who made human misery the object
+of his search and human happiness of his desire; who, breaking aside an
+aversion to rude contact, almost feminine in its extreme, voluntarily
+sought the meanest companions, and subjected himself to the coarsest
+intrusions; for whom the wail of affliction or the moan of hunger was
+as a summons which allowed neither hesitation nor appeal; who seemed
+possessed of a ubiquity for the purposes of good almost resembling that
+attributed to the wanderer in the magnificent fable of Melmoth for the
+temptations to evil; who, by a zeal and labour that brought to habit and
+inclination a thousand martyrdoms, made his life a very hour-glass, in
+which each sand was a good deed or a virtuous design.
+
+Many plunge into public affairs, to which they have had a previous
+distaste, from the desire of losing the memory of a private affliction;
+but so far from wishing to heal the wounds of remembrance by the
+anodynes which society can afford, it was only in retirement that
+Mordaunt found the flowers from which balm could be distilled. Many are
+through vanity magnanimous, and benevolent from the selfishness of fame
+but so far from seeking applause where he bestowed favour, Mordaunt
+had sedulously shrouded himself in darkness and disguise. And by that
+increasing propensity to quiet, so often found among those addicted to
+lofty or abstruse contemplation, he had conquered the ambition of youth
+with the philosophy of a manhood that had forestalled the affections
+of age. Many, in short, have become great or good to the community by
+individual motives easily resolved into common and earthly elements of
+desire; but they who inquire diligently into human nature have not often
+the exalted happiness to record a character like Mordaunt’s, actuated
+purely by a systematic principle of love, which covered mankind, as
+heaven does earth, with an atmosphere of light extending to the remotest
+corners and penetrating the darkest recesses.
+
+It was one of those violent and gusty evenings which give to an English
+autumn something rude, rather than gentle, in its characteristics, that
+Mordaunt and Clarence sat together,
+
+  “And sowed the hours with various seeds of talk.”
+
+The young Isabel, the only living relic of the departed one, sat by her
+father’s side upon the floor; and though their discourse was far beyond
+the comprehension of her years, yet did she seem to listen with a quiet
+and absorbed attention. In truth, child as she was, she so loved, and
+almost worshipped, her father that the very tones of his voice had in
+them a charm which could always vibrate, as it were, to her heart; and
+hush her into silence; and that melancholy and deep though somewhat low
+voice, when it swelled or trembled with thought,--which in Mordaunt was
+feeling,--made her sad, she knew not why; and when she heard it, she
+would creep to his side, and put her little hand on his, and look up
+to him with eyes in whose tender and glistening blue the spirit of her
+mother seemed to float. She was serious and thoughtful and loving beyond
+the usual capacities of childhood; perhaps her solitary condition and
+habits of constant intercourse with one so grave as Mordaunt, and who
+always, when not absent on his excursions of charity, loved her to be
+with him, had given to her mind a precocity of feeling, and tinctured
+the simplicity of infancy with what ought to have been the colours of
+after years. She was not inclined to the sports of her age; she loved,
+rather, and above all else, to sit by Mordaunt’s side and silently pore
+over some books or feminine task, and to steal her eyes every now and
+then away from her employment, in order to watch his motions or provide
+for whatever her vigilant kindness of heart imagined he desired. And
+often, when he saw her fairy and lithe form hovering about him and
+attending on his wants, or her beautiful countenance glow with pleasure,
+when she fancied she supplied them, he almost believed that Isabel yet
+lived, though in another form, and that a love so intense and holy as
+hers had been, might transmigrate, but could not perish.
+
+The young Isabel had displayed a passion for music so early that it
+almost seemed innate; and as, from the mild and wise education she
+received, her ardour had never been repelled on the one hand or
+overstrained on the other, so, though she had but just passed her
+seventh year, she had attained to a singular proficiency in the art,--an
+art that suited well with her lovely face and fond feelings and innocent
+heart; and it was almost heavenly, in the literal acceptation of the
+word, to hear her sweet though childish voice swell along the still
+pure airs of summer, and to see her angelic countenance all rapt and
+brilliant with the enthusiasm which her own melodies created.
+
+Never had she borne the bitter breath of unkindness, nor writhed beneath
+that customary injustice which punishes in others the sins of our own
+temper and the varied fretfulness of caprice; and so she had none of
+the fears and meannesses and acted untruths which so usually pollute and
+debase the innocence of childhood. But the promise of her ingenuous brow
+(over which the silken hair flowed, parted into two streams of gold),
+and of the fearless but tender eyes, and of the quiet smile which sat
+forever upon the rosy mouth, like Joy watching Love, was kept in its
+fullest extent by the mind, from which all thoughts, pure, kind, and
+guileless, flowed like waters from a well which a spirit has made holy
+for its own dwelling.
+
+On this evening we have said that she sat by her father’s side
+and listened, though she only in part drank in its sense, to his
+conversation with his guest.
+
+The room was of great extent and surrounded with books, over which at
+close intervals the busts of the departed Great and the immortal Wise
+looked down. There was the sublime beauty of Plato, the harsher and
+more earthly countenance of Tully, the only Roman (except Lucretius) who
+might have been a Greek. There the mute marble gave the broad front of
+Bacon (itself a world), and there the features of Locke showed how the
+mind wears away the links of flesh with the file of thought. And over
+other departments of those works which remind us that man is made little
+lower than the angels, the stern face of the Florentine who sung of hell
+contrasted with the quiet grandeur enthroned on the fair brow of the
+English poet,--“blind but bold,”--and there the glorious but genial
+countenance of him who has found in all humanity a friend, conspicuous
+among sages and minstrels, claimed brotherhood with all.
+
+The fire burned clear and high, casting a rich twilight (for there
+was no other light in the room) over that Gothic chamber, and shining
+cheerily upon the varying countenance of Clarence and the more
+contemplative features of his host. In the latter you might see that
+care and thought had been harsh but not unhallowed companions. In the
+lines which crossed his expanse of brow, time seemed to have buried many
+hopes; but his mien and air, if loftier, were gentler than in younger
+days; and though they had gained somewhat in dignity, had lost greatly
+in reserve.
+
+There was in the old chamber, with its fretted roof and ancient
+“garniture,” the various books which surrounded it, walls that the
+learned built to survive themselves, and in the marble likenesses
+of those for whom thought had won eternity, joined to the hour, the
+breathing quiet, and the hearth-light, by whose solitary rays we
+love best in the eves of autumn to discourse on graver or subtler
+themes,--there was in all this a spell which seemed particularly to
+invite and to harmonize with that tone of conversation, some portions of
+which we are now about to relate.
+
+“How loudly,” said Clarence, “that last gust swept by; you remember that
+beautiful couplet in Tibullus,--
+
+  ‘Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem,
+   Et dominam tenero detinuisse sinu.’”
+   [“Sweet on our couch to hear the winds above,
+   And cling with closer heart to her we love.”]
+
+“Ay,” answered Mordaunt, with a scarcely audible sigh, “that is the
+feeling of the lover at the immites ventos, but we sages of the lamp
+make our mistress Wisdom, and when the winds rage without it is to her
+that we cling. See how, from the same object, different conclusions are
+drawn! The most common externals of nature, the wind and the wave, the
+stars and the heavens, the very earth on which we tread, never excite in
+different bosoms the same ideas; and it is from our own hearts, and not
+from an outward source, that we draw the hues which colour the web of
+our existence.”
+
+“It is true,” answered Clarence. “You remember that in two specks of the
+moon the enamoured maiden perceived two unfortunate lovers, while the
+ambitious curate conjectured that they were the spires of a cathedral?
+But it is not only to our feelings, but also to our reasonings, that we
+give the colours which they wear. The moral, for instance, which to one
+man seems atrocious, to another is divine. On the tendency of the same
+work what three people will agree? And how shall the most sanguine
+moralist hope to benefit mankind when he finds that, by the multitude,
+his wisest endeavours to instruct are often considered but as
+instruments to pervert?”
+
+“I believe,” answered Mordaunt, “that it is from our ignorance that our
+contentions flow: we debate with strife and with wrath, with bickering
+and with hatred; but of the thing debated upon we remain in the
+profoundest darkness. Like the labourers of Babel, while we endeavour
+in vain to express our meaning to each other, the fabric by which, for
+a common end, we would have ascended to heaven from the ills of earth
+remains forever unadvanced and incomplete. Let us hope that knowledge
+is the universal language which shall reunite us. As, in their sublime
+allegory, the Ancients signified that only through virtue we arrive at
+honour, so let us believe that only through knowledge can we arrive at
+virtue!”
+
+“And yet,” said Clarence, “that seems a melancholy truth for the mass of
+the people, who have no time for the researches of wisdom.”
+
+“Not so much so as at first we might imagine,” answered Mordaunt: “the
+few smooth all paths for the many. The precepts of knowledge it is
+difficult to extricate from error but, once discovered, they gradually
+pass into maxims; and thus what the sage’s life was consumed in
+acquiring becomes the acquisition of a moment to posterity. Knowledge
+is like the atmosphere: in order to dispel the vapour and dislodge
+the frost, our ancestors felled the forest, drained the marsh, and
+cultivated the waste, and we now breathe without an effort, in the
+purified air and the chastened climate, the result of the labour of
+generations and the progress of ages! As to-day, the common mechanic may
+equal in science, however inferior in genius, the friar [Roger Bacon]
+whom his contemporaries feared as a magician, so the opinions which now
+startle as well as astonish may be received hereafter as acknowledged
+axioms, and pass into ordinary practice. We cannot even tell how far
+the sanguine theories of certain philosophers [See Condorcet “On the
+Progress of the Human Mind,” written some years after the supposed date
+of this conversation, but in which there is a slight, but eloquent and
+affecting, view of the philosophy to which Mordaunt refers.] deceive
+them when they anticipate, for future ages, a knowledge which shall
+bring perfection to the mind, baffle the diseases of the body, and even
+protract to a date now utterly unknown the final destination of life:
+for Wisdom is a palace of which only the vestibule has been entered;
+nor can we guess what treasures are hid in those chambers of which the
+experience of the past can afford us neither analogy nor clew.”
+
+“It was, then,” said Clarence, who wished to draw his companion into
+speaking of himself, “it was, then, from your addiction to studies not
+ordinarily made the subject of acquisition that you date (pardon me)
+your generosity, your devotedness, your feeling for others, and your
+indifference to self?”
+
+“You flatter me,” said Mordaunt, modestly (and we may be permitted to
+crave attention to his reply, since it unfolds the secret springs of
+a character so singularly good and pure), “you flatter me: but I will
+answer you as if you had put the question without the compliment; nor,
+perhaps, will it be wholly uninstructive, as it will certainly be new,
+to sketch, without recurrence to events or what I may call exterior
+facts, a brief and progressive History of One Human Mind.”
+
+“Our first era of life is under the influence of the primitive feelings:
+we are pleased, and we laugh; hurt, and we weep: we vent our little
+passions the moment they are excited: and so much of novelty have we
+to perceive, that we have little leisure to reflect. By and by, fear
+teaches us to restrain our feelings: when displeased, we seek to revenge
+the displeasure, and are punished; we find the excess of our joy,
+our sorrow, our anger, alike considered criminal, and chidden into
+restraint. From harshness we become acquainted with deceit: the promise
+made is not fulfilled, the threat not executed, the fear falsely
+excited, and the hope wilfully disappointed; we are surrounded by
+systematized delusion, and we imbibe the contagion.”
+
+“From being forced into concealing thoughts which we do conceive, we
+begin to affect those which we do not: so early do we learn the two main
+tasks of life, To Suppress and To Feign, that our memory will not carry
+us beyond that period of artifice to a state of nature when the
+twin principles of veracity and belief were so strong as to lead the
+philosophers of a modern school into the error of terming them innate.”
+ [Reid: On the Human Mind.]
+
+“It was with a mind restless and confused, feelings which were
+alternately chilled and counterfeited (the necessary results of my first
+tuition), that I was driven to mix with others of my age. They did not
+like me, nor do I blame them. ‘Les manieres que l’on neglige comme de
+petites choses, sont souvent ce qui fait que les hommes decident de vous
+en bien ou en mal. [“Those manners which one neglects as trifling are
+often the cause of the opinion, good or bad, formed of you by men.”]
+Manner is acquired so imperceptibly that we have given its origin to
+Nature, as we do the origin of all else for which our ignorance can
+find no other source. Mine was unprepossessing: I was disliked, and I
+returned the feeling; I sought not, and I was shunned. Then I thought
+that all were unjust to me, and I grew bitter and sullen and morose: I
+cased myself in the stubbornness of pride; I pored over the books which
+spoke of the worthlessness of man; and I indulged the discontent of
+myself by brooding over the frailties of my kind.”
+
+“My passions were strong: they told me to suppress them. The precept was
+old, and seemed wise: I attempted to enforce it. I had already begun, in
+earlier infancy, the lesson: I had now only to renew it. Fortunately I
+was diverted from this task, or my mind in conquering its passions would
+have conquered its powers. I learned in after lessons that the passions
+are not to be suppressed; they are to be directed; and, when directed,
+rather to be strengthened than subdued.”
+
+“Observe how a word may influence a life: a man whose opinion I
+esteemed, made of me the casual and trite remark, that ‘my nature
+was one of which it was impossible to augur evil or good: it might be
+extreme in either.’ This observation roused me into thought: could
+I indeed be all that was good or evil? had I the choice, and could I
+hesitate which to choose? But what was good and what was evil? That
+seemed the most difficult inquiry.”
+
+“I asked and received no satisfactory reply: in the words of Erasmus,
+‘Totius negotii caput ac fontem ignorant, divinant, ac delirant omnes;’
+[“All ignore, guess, and rave about the head and fountain of the whole
+question at issue.”] so I resolved myself to inquire and to decide. I
+subjected to my scrutiny the moralist and the philosopher. I saw that
+on all sides they disputed, but I saw that they grew virtuous in the
+dispute: they uttered much that was absurd about the origin of good, but
+much more that was exalted in its praise; and I never rose from any work
+which treated ably upon morals, whatever were its peculiar opinions,
+but I felt my breast enlightened and my mind ennobled by my studies. The
+professor of one sect commanded me to avoid the dogmatist of another
+as the propagator of moral poison; and the dogmatist retaliated on the
+professor: but I avoided neither; I read both, and turned all ‘into
+honey and fine gold.’ No inquiry into wisdom, however superficial,
+is undeserving attention. The vagaries of the idlest fancy will often
+chance, as it were, upon the most useful discoveries of truth, and
+serve as a guide to after and to slower disciples of wisdom; even as
+the peckings of birds in an unknown country indicate to the adventurous
+seamen the best and the safest fruits.”
+
+“From the works of men I looked into their lives; and I found that there
+was a vast difference (though I am not aware that it has before
+been remarked) between those who cultivated a talent, and those who
+cultivated the mind: I found that the mere men of genius were often
+erring or criminal in their lives; but that vice or crime in the
+disciples of philosophy was strikingly unfrequent and rare. The
+extremest culture of reason had not, it is true, been yet carried far
+enough to preserve the labourer from follies of opinion, but a moderate
+culture had been sufficient to deter him from the vices of life. And
+only to the sons of Wisdom, as of old to the sages of the East, seemed
+given the unerring star, which, through the travail of Earth and the
+clouds of Heaven, led them at the last to their God!”
+
+“When I gleaned this fact from biography, I paused, and said, ‘Then
+must there be something excellent in Wisdom, if it can even in its
+most imperfect disciples be thus beneficial to morality.’ Pursuing this
+sentiment, I redoubled my researches, and, behold, the object of
+my quest was won! I had before sought a satisfactory answer to the
+question, ‘What is Virtue?’ from men of a thousand tenets, and my heart
+had rejected all I had received. ‘Virtue,’ said some, and my soul bowed
+reverently to the dictate, ‘Virtue is Religion.’ I heard and humbled
+myself before the Divine Book. Let me trust that I did not humble myself
+in vain! But the dictate satisfied less than it awed; for either it
+limited Virtue to the mere belief, or by extending it to the practice,
+of Religion, it extended also the inquiry to the method in which the
+practice should be applied. But with the first interpretation of the
+dictate who could rest contented?--for while, in the perfect enforcement
+of the tenets of our faith, all virtue may be found, so in the
+passive and the mere belief in its divinity, we find only an engine as
+applicable to evil as to good: the torch which should illumine the altar
+has also lighted the stake, and the zeal of the persecutor has been no
+less sincere than the heroism of the martyr. Rejecting, therefore, this
+interpretation, I accepted the other: I felt in my heart, and I rejoiced
+as I felt it, that in the practice of Religion the body of all virtue
+could be found. But, in that conviction, had I at once an answer to my
+inquiries? Could the mere desire of good be sufficient to attain it; and
+was the attempt at virtue synonymous with success? On the contrary, have
+not those most desirous of obeying the precepts of God often sinned the
+most against their spirit, and has not zeal been frequently the most
+ardent when crime was the most rife? [There can be no doubt that they
+who exterminated the Albigenses, established the Inquisition, lighted
+the fires at Smithfield, were actuated, not by a desire to do evil, but
+(monstrous as it may seem) to do good; not to counteract, but to enforce
+what they believed the wishes of the Almighty; so that a good intention,
+without the enlightenment to direct it to a fitting object, may be as
+pernicious to human happiness as one the most fiendish. We are told of
+a whole people who used to murder their guests, not from ferocity or
+interest, but from the pure and praiseworthy motive of obtaining the
+good qualities, which they believed, by the murder of the deceased,
+devolved upon them!] But what, if neither sincerity nor zeal was
+sufficient to constitute goodness; what if in the breasts of the
+best-intentioned crime had been fostered the more dangerously because
+the more disguised,--what ensued? That the religion which they
+professed, they believed, they adored, they had also misunderstood; and
+that the precepts to be drawn from the Holy Book they had darkened by
+their ignorance or perverted by their passions! Here then, at once,
+my enigma was solved; here then, at once, I was led to the goal of my
+inquiry! Ignorance and the perversion of passion are but the same thing,
+though under different names; for only by our ignorance are our passions
+perverted. Therefore, what followed?--that, if by ignorance the greatest
+of God’s gifts had been turned to evil, Knowledge alone was the light
+by which even the pages of Religion should be read. It followed that the
+Providence that knew that the nature it had created should be constantly
+in exercise, and that only through labour comes improvement, had wisely
+ordained that we should toil even for the blessing of its holiest and
+clearest laws. It had given us in Religion, as in this magnificent
+world, treasures and harvests which might be called forth in
+incalculable abundance; but had decreed that through our exertions only
+should they be called forth a palace more gorgeous than the palaces
+of enchantment was before us, but its chambers were a labyrinth which
+required a clew.”
+
+“What was that clew? Was it to be sought for in the corners of earth, or
+was it not beneficially centred in ourselves? Was it not the exercise
+of a power easy for us to use, if we would dare to do so? Was it not the
+simple exertion of the discernment granted to us for all else? Was it
+not the exercise of our reason? ‘Reason!’ cried the Zealot, ‘pernicious
+and hateful instrument, it is fraught with peril to yourself and to
+others: do not think for a moment of employing an engine so fallacious
+and so dangerous.’ But I listened not to the Zealot: could the steady
+and bright torch which, even where the Star of Bethlehem had withheld
+its diviner light, had guided some patient and unwearied steps to the
+very throne of Virtue, become but a deceitful meteor to him who kindled
+it for the aid of Religion, and in an eternal cause? Could it be
+perilous to task our reason, even to the utmost, in the investigation of
+the true utility and hidden wisdom of the works of God, when God himself
+had ordained that only through some exertion of our reason should we
+know either from Nature or Revelation that He himself existed? ‘But,’
+cried the Zealot again, ‘but mere mortal wisdom teaches men presumption,
+and presumption doubt.’ ‘Pardon me,’ I answered; ‘it is not Wisdom,
+but Ignorance, which teaches men presumption: Genius may be sometimes
+arrogant, but nothing is so diffident as Knowledge.’ ‘But,’ resumed
+the Zealot, ‘those accustomed to subtle inquiries may dwell only on the
+minutiae of faith,--inexplicable, because useless to explain, and argue
+from those minutiae against the grand and universal truth.’ Pardon me
+again: it is the petty not the enlarged mind which prefers casuistry
+to conviction; it is the confined and short sight of Ignorance which,
+unable to comprehend the great bearings of truth, pries only into its
+narrow and obscure corners, occupying itself in scrutinizing the atoms
+of a part, while the eagle eye of Wisdom contemplates, in its widest
+scale, the luminous majesty of the whole. Survey our faults, our errors,
+our vices,--fearful and fertile field! Trace them to their causes: all
+those causes resolve themselves into one,--Ignorance! For as we have
+already seen that from this source flow the abuses of Religion, so also
+from this source flow the abuses of all other blessings,--of talents, of
+riches, of power; for we abuse things, either because we know not their
+real use, or because, with an equal blindness, we imagine the abuse more
+adapted to our happiness. But as ignorance, then, is the sole spring
+of evil, so, as the antidote to ignorance is knowledge, it necessarily
+follows that, were we consummate in knowledge, we should be perfect in
+good. He, therefore, who retards the progress of intellect countenances
+crime,--nay, to a State, is the greatest of criminals; while he who
+circulates that mental light more precious than the visual is the
+holiest improver and the surest benefactor of his race. Nor let us
+believe, with the dupes, of a shallow policy, that there exists upon the
+earth one prejudice that can be called salutary or one error beneficial
+to perpetrate. As the petty fish which is fabled to possess the property
+of arresting the progress of the largest vessel to which it clings, even
+so may a single prejudice, unnoticed or despised, more than the adverse
+blast or the dead calm, delay the bark of Knowledge in the vast seas of
+Time.”
+
+“It is true that the sanguineness of philanthropists may have carried
+them too far; it is true (for the experiment has not yet been made) that
+God may have denied to us, in this state, the consummation of knowledge,
+and the consequent perfection in good; but because we cannot be perfect
+are we to resolve we will be evil? One step in knowledge is one step
+from sin: one step from sin is one step nearer to Heaven: Oh! never let
+us be deluded by those who, for political motives, would adulterate the
+divinity of religious truths; never let us believe that our Father in
+Heaven rewards most the one talent unemployed, or that prejudice and
+indolence and folly find the most favour in His sight! The very heathen
+has bequeathed to us a nobler estimate of His nature; and the same
+sentence which so sublimely declares ‘TRUTH IS THE BODY OF GOD’ declares
+also ‘AND LIGHT IS HIS SHADOW.’” [Plato.]
+
+“Persuaded, then, that knowledge contained the key to virtue, it was to
+knowledge that I applied. The first grand lesson which it taught me
+was the solution of a phrase most hackneyed, least understood; namely,
+‘common-sense.’ [Koinonoaemosunae, sensus communis.] It is in the
+Portico of the Greek sage that that phrase has received its legitimate
+explanation; it is there we are taught that ‘common-sense’ signifies
+‘the sense of the common interest.’ Yes! it is the most beautiful truth
+in morals that we have no such thing as a distinct or divided interest
+from our race. In their welfare is ours; and, by choosing the broadest
+paths to effect their happiness, we choose the surest and the shortest
+to our own. As I read and pondered over these truths, I was sensible
+that a great change was working a fresh world out of the former
+materials of my mind. My passions, which before I had checked into
+uselessness, or exerted to destruction, now started forth in a nobler
+shape, and prepared for a new direction: instead of urging me to
+individual aggrandizement, they panted for universal good, and coveted
+the reward of Ambition only for the triumphs of Benevolence.”
+
+“This is one stage of virtue; I cannot resist the belief that there is
+a higher: it is when we begin to love virtue, not for its objects, but
+itself. For there are in knowledge these two excellences: first, that it
+offers to every man, the most selfish and the most exalted, his peculiar
+inducement to good. It says to the former, ‘Serve mankind, and you serve
+yourself;’ to the latter, ‘In choosing the best means to secure your
+own happiness, you will have the sublime inducement of promoting the
+happiness of mankind.’”
+
+“The second excellence of Knowledge is that even the selfish man, when
+he has once begun to love Virtue from little motives, loses the motives
+as he increases the love; and at last worships the deity, where before
+he only coveted the gold upon its altar.”
+
+“And thus I learned to love Virtue solely for its own beauty. I said
+with one who, among much dross, has many particles of ore, ‘If it be not
+estimable in itself, I can see nothing estimable in following it for the
+sake of a bargain.’ [Lord Shaftesbury.]
+
+“I looked round the world, and saw often Virtue in rags and Vice in
+purple: the former conduces to happiness, it is true, but the happiness
+lies within and not in externals. I contemned the deceitful folly
+with which writers have termed it poetical justice to make the good
+ultimately prosperous in wealth, honour, fortunate love, or successful
+desires. Nothing false, even in poetry, can be just; and that pretended
+moral is, of all, the falsest. Virtue is not more exempt than Vice from
+the ills of fate, but it contains within itself always an energy
+to resist them, and sometimes an anodyne to soothe,--to repay your
+quotation from Tibullus,--
+
+  ‘Crura sonant ferro, sed canit inter opus!’”
+   [“The chains clank on its limbs, but it sings amidst its tasks.”]
+
+“When in the depths of my soul I set up that divinity of this nether
+earth, which Brutus never really understood, if, because unsuccessful in
+its efforts, he doubted its existence, I said in the proud prayer with
+which I worshipped it, ‘Poverty may humble my lot, but it shall not
+debase thee; Temptation may shake my nature, but not the rock on which
+thy temple is based; Misfortune may wither all the hopes that have
+blossomed around thine altar, but I will sacrifice dead leaves when the
+flowers are no more. Though all that I have loved perish, all that I
+have coveted fade away, I may murmur at fate, but I will have no voice
+but that of homage for thee! Nor, while thou smilest upon my way, would
+I exchange with the loftiest and happiest of thy foes! More bitter than
+aught of what I then dreamed have been my trials, but I have fulfilled
+my vow!’”
+
+“I believe that alone to be a true description of Virtue which makes
+it all-sufficient to itself, that alone a just portraiture of its
+excellence which does not lessen its internal power by exaggerating its
+outward advantages, nor degrade its nobility by dwelling only on its
+rewards. The grandest moral of ancient lore has ever seemed to me that
+which the picture of Prometheus affords; in whom neither the shaking
+earth, nor the rending heaven, nor the rock without, nor the vulture
+within, could cause regret for past benevolence, or terror for future
+evil, or envy, even amidst tortures, for the dishonourable prosperity
+of his insulter! [Mercury.--See the “Prometheus” of Aeschylus.] Who
+that has glowed over this exalted picture will tell us that we must make
+Virtue prosperous in order to allure to it, or clothe Vice with misery
+in order to revolt us from its image? Oh! who, on the contrary, would
+not learn to adore Virtue, from the bitterest sufferings of such a
+votary, a hundredfold more than he would learn to love Vice from the
+gaudiest triumphs of its most fortunate disciples?”
+
+Something there was in Mordaunt’s voice and air, and the impassioned
+glow of his countenance, that, long after he had ceased, thrilled in
+Clarence’s heart, “like the remembered tone of a mute lyre.” And when
+a subsequent event led him at rash moments to doubt whether Virtue was
+indeed the chief good, Linden recalled the words of that night and the
+enthusiasm with which they were uttered, repented that in his doubt he
+had wronged the truth, and felt that there is a power in the deep heart
+of man to which even Destiny is submitted!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIII.
+
+       Will you hear the letter?
+   .....
+  This is the motley-minded gentleman that I have before met in the
+  forest.--As You Like It.
+
+A morning or two after the conversation with which our last chapter
+concluded, Clarence received the following letter from the Duke of
+Haverfield:--
+
+Your letter, my dear Linden, would have been answered before, but for an
+occurrence which is generally supposed to engross the whole attention of
+the persons concerned in it. Let me see,--ay, three,--yes, I have been
+exactly three days married! Upon my honour, there is much less in the
+event than one would imagine; and the next time it happens I will not
+put myself to such amazing trouble and inconvenience about it. But one
+buys wisdom only by experience. Now, however, that I have communicated
+to you the fact, I expect you, in the first place, to excuse my
+negligence for not writing before; for (as I know you are fond of
+the literae humaniores, I will give the sentiment the dignity of a
+quotation)--
+
+  “Un veritable amant ne connoit point d’amis;”
+   [“A true lover recognizes no friends.”--CORNEILLE.]
+
+and though I have been three days married, I am still a lover! In
+the second place, I expect you to be very grateful that, all things
+considered, I write to you so soon; it would indeed not be an ordinary
+inducement that could make me “put pen to paper” (is not that the true
+vulgar, commercial, academical, metaphorical, epistolary style?) so
+shortly after the fatal ceremony. So, had I nothing to say but in reply
+to your comments on state affairs (hang them!) or in applause of your
+Italian friend, of whom I say, as Charles II. said of the honest yeoman,
+“I can admire virtue, though I can’t imitate it,” I think it highly
+probable that your letter might still remain in a certain box of
+tortoise-shell and gold (formerly belonging to the great Richelieu, and
+now in my possession), in which I at this instant descry, “with many
+a glance of woe and boding dire,” sundry epistles, in manifold
+handwritings, all classed under the one fearful denomination,--
+“unanswered.”
+
+No, my good Linden, my heart is inditing of a better matter than this.
+Listen to me, and then stay at your host’s or order your swiftest steed,
+as seems most meet to you.
+
+You said rightly that Miss Trevanion, now her Grace of Haverfield,
+was the intimate friend of Lady Flora Ardenne. I have often talked to
+her--namely, Eleanor, not Lady Flora--about you, and was renewing the
+conversation yesterday, when your letter, accidentally lying before me,
+reminded me of you.
+
+Sundry little secrets passed in due conjugal course from her possession
+into mine. I find that you have been believed by Lady Flora to have
+played the perfidious with La Meronville; that she never knew of your
+application to her father! and his reply; that, on the contrary, she
+accused you of indifference in going abroad without attempting to obtain
+an interview or excuse your supposed infidelity; that her heart is
+utterly averse to a union with that odious Lord Boro--bah! I mean Lord
+Ulswater; and that--prepare, Linden--she still cherishes your memory,
+even through time, change, and fancied desertion, with a tenderness
+which--which--deuce take it, I never could write sentiment: but you
+understand me; so I will not conclude the phrase. “Nothing in oratory,”
+ said my cousin D----, who was, entre nous, more honest than eloquent,
+“like a break!”--“down! you should have added,” said I.
+
+I now, my dear Linden, leave you to your fate. For my part, though I
+own Lord Ulswater is a lord whom ladies in love with the et ceteras of
+married pomp might well desire, yet I do think it would be no difficult
+matter for you to eclipse him. I cannot, it is true, advise you to run
+away with Lady Flora. Gentlemen don’t run away with the daughters of
+gentlemen; but, without running away, you may win your betrothed
+and Lord Ulswater’s intended. A distinguished member of the House of
+Commons, owner of Scarsdale, and representative of the most ancient
+branch of the Talbots,--mon Dieu! you might marry a queen dowager, and
+decline settlements!
+
+And so, committing thee to the guidance of that winged god, who, if
+three days afford any experience, has made thy friend forsake pleasure
+only to find happiness, I bid thee, most gentle Linden, farewell.                         HAVERFIELD.
+
+Upon reading this letter, Clarence felt as a man suddenly transformed.
+From an exterior of calm and apathy, at the bottom of which lay one
+bitter and corroding recollection, he passed at once into a state of
+emotion, wild, agitated, and confused; yet, amidst all, was foremost
+a burning and intense hope, which for long years he had not permitted
+himself to form.
+
+He descended into the breakfast parlour. Mordaunt, whose hours of
+appearing, though not of rising, were much later than Clarence’s, was
+not yet down; and our lover had full leisure to form his plans, before
+his host made his entree.
+
+“Will you ride to-day?” said Mordaunt; “there are some old ruins in the
+neighbourhood well worth the trouble of a visit.”
+
+“I grieve to say,” answered Clarence, “that I must take my leave of you.
+I have received intelligence this morning which may greatly influence my
+future life, and by which I am obliged to make an excursion to another
+part of the country, nearly a day’s journey, on horseback.”
+
+Mordaunt looked at his guest, and conjectured by his heightened colour,
+and an embarrassment which he in vain endeavoured to conceal, that the
+journey might have some cause for its suddenness and despatch which
+the young senator had his peculiar reasons for concealing. Algernon
+contented himself, therefore, with expressing his regret at Linden’s
+abrupt departure, without incurring the indiscreet hospitality of
+pressing a longer sojourn beneath his roof.
+
+Immediately after breakfast, Clarence’s horse was brought to the door,
+and Harrison received orders to wait with the carriage at W---- until
+his master returned. Not a little surprised, we trow, was the worthy
+valet at his master’s sudden attachment to equestrian excursions.
+Mordaunt accompanied his visitor through the park, and took leave of him
+with a warmth which sensibly touched Clarence, in spite of the absence
+and excitement of his thoughts; indeed, the unaffected and simple
+character of Linden, joined to his acute, bold, and cultivated mind, had
+taken strong hold of Mordaunt’s interest and esteem.
+
+It was a mild autumnal morning, but thick clouds in the rear
+prognosticated rain; and the stillness of the wind, the low flight of
+the swallows, and the lowing of the cattle, slowly gathering towards
+the nearest shelter within their appointed boundaries, confirmed the
+inauspicious omen. Clarence had passed the town of W----, and was
+entering into a road singularly hilly, when he “was aware,” as the
+quaint old writers of former days expressed themselves, of a tall
+stranger, mounted on a neat well-trimmed galloway, who had for the
+last two minutes been advancing towards a closely parallel line with
+Clarence, and had, by sundry glances and hems, denoted a desire of
+commencing acquaintance and conversation with his fellow traveller.
+
+At last he summoned courage, and said, with a respectful, though
+somewhat free, air, “That is a very fine horse of yours, sir; I have
+seldom seen so fast a walker: if all his other paces are equally good,
+he must be quite a treasure.”
+
+All men have their vanities. Clarence’s was as much in his horse’s
+excellence as his own; and, gratified even with the compliment of a
+stranger, he replied to it by joining in the praise, though with a
+modest and measured forbearance, which the stranger, if gifted with
+penetration, could easily have discerned was more affected than sincere.
+
+“And yet, sir;” resumed Clarence’s new companion, “my little palfrey
+might perhaps keep pace with your steed; look, I lay the rein on his
+neck, and, you see, he rivals--by heaven, he outwalks--yours.”
+
+Not a little piqued and incensed, Linden also relaxed his rein, and
+urged his horse to a quicker step: but the lesser competitor not only
+sustained, but increased, his superiority; and it was only by breaking
+into a trot that Linden’s impatient and spirited steed could overtake
+him. Hitherto Clarence had not honoured his new companion with more than
+a rapid and slight glance; but rivalry, even in trifles, begets respect,
+and our defeated hero now examined him with a more curious eye.
+
+The stranger was between forty and fifty,--an age in which, generally,
+very little of the boy has survived the advance of manhood; yet was
+there a hearty and frank exhilaration in the manner and look of the
+person we describe which is rarely found beyond the first stage of
+youth. His features were comely and clearly cut, and his air and
+appearance indicative of a man who might equally have belonged to the
+middle or the upper orders. But Clarence’s memory, as well as attention,
+was employed in his survey of the stranger; and he recognized, in a
+countenance on which time had passed very lightly, an old and ofttimes
+recalled acquaintance. However, he did not immediately make himself
+known. “I will first see,” thought he, “whether he can remember his
+young guest in the bronzed stranger after eight years’ absence.”
+
+“Well,” said Clarence, as he approached the owner of the palfrey, who
+was laughing with childish glee at his conquest, “well, you have won,
+sir; but the tortoise might beat the hare in walking, and I content
+myself with thinking that at a trot or a gallop the result of a race
+would have been very different.”
+
+“I am not so sure of that, sir,” said the sturdy stranger, patting the
+arched neck of his little favourite: “if you would like to try either, I
+should have no objection to venture a trifling wager on the event.”
+
+“You are very good,” said Clarence, with a smile in which urbanity was
+a little mingled with contemptuous incredulity; “but I am not now at
+leisure to win your money: I have a long day’s journey before me, and
+must not tire a faithful servant; yet I do candidly confess that I
+think” (and Clarence’s recollection of the person he addressed made him
+introduce the quotation) “that my horse
+
+        ‘Excels a common one
+   In shape, in courage, colour, pace, and bone.’”
+
+“Eh, sir,” cried our stranger, as his eyes sparkled at the verses: “I
+would own that your horse were worth all the horses in the kingdom,
+if you brought Will Shakspeare to prove it. And I am also willing to
+confess that your steed does fairly merit the splendid praise which
+follows the lines you have quoted,--
+
+  ‘Round hoofed, short jointed, fetlocks shag and long,
+    Broad breast, full eyes, small head, and nostril wide,
+   High crest, short ears, straight legs, and passing strong,
+    Thin mane, thick tale, broad buttock, tender hide.’”
+
+“Come,” said Clarence, “your memory has atoned for your horse’s victory,
+and I quite forgive your conquest in return for your compliment; but
+suffer me to ask how long you have commenced cavalier. The Arab’s
+tent is, if I err not, more a badge of your profession than the Arab’s
+steed.”
+
+King Cole (for the stranger was no less a person) looked at his
+companion in surprise. “So you know me, then, sir! Well, it is a hard
+thing for a man to turn honest, when people have so much readier a
+recollection of his sins than his reform.”
+
+“Reform!” quoth Clarence, “am I then to understand that your Majesty has
+abdicated your dominions under the greenwood tree?”
+
+“You are,” said Cole, eying his acquaintance inquisitively; “you are.
+
+  ‘I fear no more the heat of the sun,
+    Nor the furious winter’s rages;
+   I my worldly task have done,
+    Home am gone, and ta’en my wages.’”
+
+“I congratulate you,” said Clarence: “but only in part; for I have often
+envied your past state, and do not know enough of your present to say
+whether I should equally envy that.”
+
+“Why,” answered Cole, “after all, we commit a great error in imagining
+that it is the living wood or the dead wall which makes happiness. ‘My
+mind to me a kingdom is;’ and it is that which you must envy, if you
+honour anything belonging to me with that feeling.”
+
+“The precept is both good and old,” answered Clarence; “yet I think it
+was not a very favourite maxim of yours some years ago. I remember a
+time when you thought no happiness could exist out of ‘dingle and bosky
+dell.’ If not very intrusive on your secrets, may I know how long you
+have changed your sentiments and manner of life? The reason of the
+change I dare not presume to ask.”
+
+“Certainly,” said the quondam gypsy, musingly, “certainly I have seen
+your face before, and even the tone of your voice strikes me as not
+wholly unfamiliar: yet I cannot for the life of me guess whom I have the
+honour of addressing. However, sir, I have no hesitation in answering
+your questions. It was just five years ago, last summer, when I left
+the Tents of Kedar. I now reside about a mile hence. It is but a hundred
+yards off the high road, and if you would not object to step aside and
+suffer a rasher, or aught else, to be ‘the shoeing-horn to draw on a cup
+of ale,’ as our plain forefathers were wont wittily to say, why, I shall
+be very happy to show you my habitation. You will have a double welcome,
+from the circumstance of my having been absent from home for the last
+three days.”
+
+Clarence, mindful of his journey, was about to decline the invitation,
+when a few heavy drops falling began to fulfil the cloudy promise of the
+morning. “Trust,” said Cole, “one who has been for years a watcher of
+the signs and menaces of the weather: we shall have a violent shower
+immediately. You have now no choice but to accompany me home.”
+
+“Well,” said Clarence, yielding with a good grace, “I am glad of so good
+an excuse for intruding on your hospitality.
+
+           ‘O sky!
+  Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
+  And make me travel forth without my cloak?’”
+
+“Bravo!” cried the ex-chief, too delighted to find a comrade so well
+acquainted with Shakspeare’s sonnets to heed the little injustice
+Clarence had done the sky, in accusing it of a treachery its black
+clouds had by no means deserved. “Bravo, sir; and now, my palfrey
+against your steed,--trot, eh? or gallop?”
+
+“Trot, if it must be so,” said Clarence, superciliously; “but I am a few
+paces before you.”
+
+“So much the better,” cried the jovial chief. “Little John’s mettle will
+be the more up: on with you, sir; he who breaks into a canter loses;
+on!”
+
+And Clarence slightly touching his beautiful steed, the race was begun.
+At first his horse, which was a remarkable stepper, as the modern
+Messrs. Anderson and Dyson would say, greatly gained the advantage. “To
+the right,” cried the ci-devant gypsy, as Linden had nearly passed
+a narrow lane which led to the domain of the ex-king. The turn gave
+“Little John” an opportunity which he seized to advantage; and, to
+Clarence’s indignant surprise, he beheld Cole now close behind, now
+beside, and now--now--before! In the heat of the moment he put spurs
+rather too sharply to his horse, and the spirited animal immediately
+passed his competitor, but--in a canter!
+
+“Victoria!” cried Cole, keeping back his own steed. “Victoria! confess
+it!”
+
+“Pshaw,” said Clarence, petulantly.
+
+“Nay, sir, never mind it,” quoth the retired sovereign; “perhaps it was
+but a venial transgression of your horse, and on other ground I should
+not have beat you.”
+
+It is very easy to be generous when one is quite sure one is the victor.
+Clarence felt this, and, muttering out something about the sharp angle
+in the road, turned abruptly from all further comment on the subject by
+saying, “We are now, I suppose, entering your territory. Does not this
+white gate lead to your new (at least new to me) abode?”
+
+“It does,” replied Cole, opening the said gate, and pausing as if to
+suffer his guest and rival to look round and admire. The house, in full
+view, was of red brick, small and square, faced with stone copings,
+and adorned in the centre with a gable roof, on which was a ball of
+glittering metal. A flight of stone steps led to the porch, which was of
+fair size and stately, considering the proportions of the mansion: over
+the door was a stone shield of arms, surmounted by a stag’s head; and
+above this heraldic ornament was a window of great breadth, compared to
+the other conveniences of a similar nature. On either side of the house
+ran a slight iron fence, the protection of sundry plots of gay flowers
+and garden shrubs, while two peacocks were seen slowly stalking towards
+the enclosure to seek a shelter from the increasing shower. At the back
+of the building, thick trees and a rising hill gave a meet defence from
+the winds of winter; and, in front, a sloping and small lawn afforded
+pasture for few sheep and two pet deer. Towards the end of this lawn
+were two large fishponds, shaded by rows of feathered trees. On the
+margin of each of these, as if emblematic of ancient customs, was a
+common tent; and in the intermediate space was a rustic pleasure-house,
+fenced from the encroaching cattle, and half hid by surrounding laurel
+and the parasite ivy.
+
+All together there was a quiet and old-fashioned comfort, and even
+luxury, about the place, which suited well with the eccentric character
+of the abdicated chief; and Clarence, as he gazed around, really felt
+that he might perhaps deem the last state of the owner not worse than
+the first.
+
+Unmindful of the rain, which now began to pour fast and full, Cole
+suffered “Little John’s” rein to fall over his neck, and the spoiled
+favourite to pluck the smooth grass beneath, while he pointed out to
+Clarence the various beauties of his seat.
+
+“There, sir,” said he, “by those ponds in which, I assure you, old Isaac
+might have fished with delight, I pass many a summer’s day. I was
+always a lover of the angle, and the farthest pool is the most beautiful
+bathing-place imaginable;--as glorious Geoffrey Chaucer says,--
+
+  ‘The gravel’s gold; the water pure as glass,
+    The baukes round the well environing;
+   And softe as velvet the younge grass
+    That thereupon lustily come springing.’”
+
+“And in that arbour, Lucy--that is, my wife--sits in the summer evenings
+with her father and our children; and then--ah! see our pets come to
+welcome me,” pointing to the deer, who had advanced within a few yards
+of him, but, intimidated by the stranger, would not venture within
+reach--“Lucy loved choosing her favourites among animals which had
+formerly been wild, and, faith, I loved it too. But you observe the
+house, sir: it was built in the reign of Queen Anne; it belonged to
+my mother’s family; but my father sold it, and his son five years ago
+rebought it. Those arms belonged to my maternal ancestry. Look, look
+at the peacocks creeping along: poor pride theirs that can’t stand the
+shower! But, egad, that reminds me of the rain. Come, sir, let us make
+for our shelter.” And, resuming their progress, a minute more brought
+them to the old-fashioned porch. Cole’s ring summoned a man, not decked
+in “livery gay,” but, “clad in serving frock,” who took the horses with
+a nod, half familiar, half respectful, at his master’s injunctions of
+attention and hospitality to the stranger’s beast; and then our old
+acquaintance, striking through a small low hall, ushered Clarence into
+the chief sitting-room of the mansion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIV.
+
+  We are not poor; although we have
+  No roofs of cedar, nor our brave
+            Baiae, nor keep
+  Account of such a flock of sheep,
+            Nor bullocks fed
+  To lard the shambles; barbles bred
+  To kiss our hands; nor do we wish
+  For Pollio’s lampreys in our dish.
+
+  If we can meet and so confer
+  Both by a shining salt-cellar,
+            And have our roof,
+  Although not arched, yet weather-proof,
+            And ceiling free
+  From that cheap candle-bawdery,
+  We’ll eat our bean with that full mirth
+  As we were lords of all the earth.
+                HERRICK, from HORACE.
+
+On entering the room, Clarence recognized Lucy, whom eight years had
+converted into a sleek and portly matron of about thirty-two, without
+stealing from her countenance its original expression of mingled modesty
+and good-nature. She hastened to meet her husband, with an eager and
+joyous air of welcome seldom seen on matrimonial faces after so many
+years of wedlock.
+
+A fine, stout boy, of about eleven years old, left a crossbow, which on
+his father’s entrance he had appeared earnestly employed in mending, to
+share with his mother the salutations of the Returned. An old man sat
+in an armchair by the fire, gazing on the three with an affectionate and
+gladdening eye, and playfully detaining a child of about four years old,
+who was struggling to escape to dear “papa”!
+
+The room was of oak wainscot, and the furniture plain, solid, and
+strong, and cast in the fashion still frequently found in those country
+houses which have remained unaltered by innovation since the days of
+George II.
+
+Three rough-coated dogs, of a breed that would have puzzled a
+connoisseur, gave themselves the rousing shake, and, deserting the
+luxurious hearth, came in various welcome to their master.
+
+One rubbed himself against Cole’s sturdy legs, murmuring soft
+rejoicings: he was the grandsire of the canine race, and his wick of
+life burned low in the socket. Another sprang up almost to the face of
+his master, and yelled his very heart out with joy; that was the son,
+exulting in the vigour of matured doghood; and the third scrambled and
+tumbled over the others, uttering his paeans in a shrill treble, and
+chiding most snappishly at his two progenitors for interfering with his
+pretensions to notice; that was the infant dog, the little reveller
+in puppy childishness! Clarence stood by the door, with his fine
+countenance smiling benevolently at the happiness he beheld, and
+congratulating himself that for one moment the group had forgot that he
+was a stranger.
+
+As soon as our gypsy friend had kissed his wife, shaken hands with his
+eldest hope, shaken his head at his youngest, smiled his salutation at
+the father-in-law, and patted into silence the canine claimants of
+his favour, he turned to Clarence, and saying, half bashfully, half
+good-humouredly, “See what a troublesome thing it is to return home,
+even after three days’ absence. Lucy, dearest, welcome a new friend!”
+ he placed a chair by the fireside for his guest, and motioned him to be
+seated.
+
+The chief expression of Clarence’s open and bold countenance was centred
+in the eyes and forehead; and, as he now doffed his hat, which had
+hitherto concealed that expression, Lucy and her husband recognized him
+simultaneously.
+
+“I am sure, sir,” cried the former, “that I am glad to see you once
+more!”
+
+“Ah! my young guest under the gypsy awning!” exclaimed the latter,
+shaking him heartily by the hand: “where were my eyes that they did not
+recognize you before?
+
+“Eight years,” answered Clarence, “have worked more change with me and
+my friend here” (pointing to the boy, whom he had left last so mere a
+child) “than they have with you and his blooming mother. The wonder is,
+not that you did not remember me before, but that you remember me now!”
+
+“You are altered, sir, certainly,” said the frank chief. “Your face is
+thinner, and far graver, and the smooth cheeks of the boy (for, craving
+your pardon, you were little more then) are somewhat darkened by the
+bronzed complexion with which time honours the man.”
+
+And the good Cole sighed, as he contrasted Linden’s ardent countenance
+and elastic figure, when he had last beheld him, with the serious and
+thoughtful face of the person now before him: yet did he inly own that
+years, if they had in some things deteriorated from, had in others
+improved the effect of Clarence’s appearance; they had brought decision
+to his mien and command to his brow, and had enlarged, to an ampler
+measure of dignity and power, the proportions of his form. Something,
+too, there was in his look, like that of a man who has stemmed fate and
+won success; and the omen of future triumph, which our fortune-telling
+chief had drawn from his features when first beheld, seemed already in
+no small degree to have been fulfilled.
+
+Having seen her guest stationed in the seat of honour opposite her
+father, Lucy withdrew for a few moments, and, when she reappeared, was
+followed by a neat-handed sort of Phillis for a country-maiden, bearing
+such kind of “savoury messes” as the house might be supposed to afford.
+
+“At all events, mine host,” said Clarence, “you did not desert the
+flesh-pots of Egypt when you forsook its tents.”
+
+“Nay,” quoth the worthy Cole, seating himself at the table, “either
+under the roof or the awning we may say, in the words of the old
+epilogue,--[To the play of “All Fools,” by Chapman.]
+
+  ‘We can but bring you meat and set you stools,
+   And to our best cheer say,
+   You all are welcome.’”
+
+“We are plain people still; but if you can stay till dinner, you shall
+have a bottle of such wine as our fathers’ honest souls would have
+rejoiced in.”
+
+“I am truly sorry that I cannot tarry with you, after so fair a
+promise,” replied Clarence; “but before night I must be many miles
+hence.”
+
+Lucy came forward timidly. “Do you remember this ring, sir?” said she
+(presenting one); “you dropped it in my boy’s frock when we saw you
+last.”
+
+“I did so,” answered Clarence. “I trust that he will not now disdain
+a stranger’s offering. May it be as ominous of good luck to him as my
+night in your caravan has proved to me!”
+
+“I am heartily glad to hear that you have prospered,” said Cole; “now,
+let us fall to.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXV.
+
+         Out of these convertites
+  There is much matter to be heard and learned.--SHAKSPEARE.
+
+“If you are bent upon leaving us so soon,” said the honest Cole,
+as Clarence, refusing all further solicitation to stay, seized the
+opportunity which the cessation of the rain afforded him, and rose to
+depart, “if you are bent upon leaving us so soon, I will accompany you
+back again into the main road, as in duty bound.”
+
+“What, immediately on your return!” said Clarence. “No, no; not a step.
+What would my fair hostess say to me if I suffered it?”
+
+“Rather, what would she say to me if I neglected such a courtesy? Why,
+sir, when I meet one who knows Shakspeare’s sonnets, to say nothing
+of the lights of the lesser stars, as well as you, only once in eight
+years, do you not think I would make the most of him? Besides, it is but
+a quarter of a mile to the road, and I love walking after a shower.”
+
+“I am afraid, Mrs. Cole,” said Clarence, “that I must be selfish enough
+to accept the offer.” And Mrs. Cole, blushing and smiling her assent and
+adieu, Clarence shook hands with the whole party, grandfather and child
+included, and took his departure.
+
+As Cole was now a pedestrian, Linden threw the rein over his arm, and
+walked on foot by his host’s side.
+
+“So,” said he, smiling, “I must not inquire into the reasons of your
+retirement?”
+
+“On the contrary,” replied Cole: “I have walked with you the more
+gladly from my desire of telling them to you; for we all love to seem
+consistent, even in our chimeras. About six years ago, I confess that I
+began to wax a little weary of my wandering life: my child, in growing
+up, required playmates; shall I own that I did not like him to find them
+among the children of my own comrades? The old scamps were good enough
+for me, but the young ones were a little too bad for my son. Between you
+and me only be it said, my juvenile hope was already a little corrupted.
+The dog Mim--you remember Mim, sir--secretly taught him to filch as well
+as if he had been a bantling of his own; and, faith, our smaller goods
+and chattels, especially of an edible nature, began to disappear, with
+a rapidity and secrecy that our itinerant palace could very ill sustain.
+Among us (i.e. gypsies) there is a law by which no member of the gang
+may steal from another: but my little heaven-instructed youth would
+by no means abide by that distinction; and so boldly designed and well
+executed were his rogueries that my paternal anxiety saw nothing before
+him but Botany Bay on the one hand and Newgate courtyard on the other.”
+
+“A sad prospect for the heir apparent!” quoth Clarence.
+
+“It was so!” answered Cole; “and it made me deliberate. Then, as one
+gets older one’s romance oozes out a little in rheums and catarrhs. I
+began to perceive that, though I had been bred I had not been educated
+as a gypsy; and, what was worse, Lucy, though she never complained, felt
+that the walls of our palace were not exempt from the damps of winter,
+nor our royal state from the Caliban curses of--
+
+            ‘Cramps and
+  Side stitches that do pen our breath up.’”
+
+“She fell ill; and during her illness I had sundry bright visions of
+warm rooms and coal fires, a friend with whom I could converse upon
+Chaucer, and a tutor for my son who would teach him other arts than
+those of picking pockets and pilfering larders. Nevertheless, I was a
+little ashamed of my own thoughts; and I do not know whether they would
+have been yet put into practice, but for a trifling circumstance which
+converted doubt and longing into certainty.”
+
+“Our crank cuffins had for some time looked upon me with suspicion
+and coldness: my superior privileges and comforts they had at first
+forgiven, on account of my birth and my generosity to them; but by
+degrees they lost respect for the one and gratitude for the other;
+and as I had in a great measure ceased from participating in their
+adventures, or, during Lucy’s illness, which lasted several months,
+joining in their festivities, they at length considered me as a drone
+in a hive, by no means compensating by my services as an ally for my
+admittance into their horde as a stranger. You will easily conceive,
+when this once became the state of their feelings towards me, with how
+ill a temper they brooked the lordship of my stately caravan and my
+assumption of superior command. Above all, the women, who were very
+much incensed at Lucy’s constant seclusion from their orgies, fanned the
+increasing discontent; and, at last, I verily believe that no eyesore
+could have been more grievous to the Egyptians than my wooden habitation
+and the smoke of its single chimney.”
+
+“From ill-will the rascals proceeded to ill acts; and one dark night,
+when we were encamped on the very same ground as that which we occupied
+when we received you, three of them, Mim at their head, attacked me in
+mine own habitation. I verily believe, if they had mastered me, they
+would have robbed and murdered us all; except perhaps my son, whom they
+thought ill-used by depriving him of Mim’s instructive society. Howbeit,
+I was still stirring when they invaded me, and, by the help of the poker
+and a tolerably strong arm, I repelled the assailants; but that very
+night I passed from the land of Egypt, and made with all possible
+expedition to the nearest town, which was, as you may remember, W----.”
+
+“Here, the very next day, I learned that the house I now inhabit was to
+be sold. It had (as I before said) belonged to my mother’s family, and
+my father had sold it a little before his death. It was the home from
+which I had been stolen, and to which I had been returned: often in my
+star-lit wanderings had I flown to it in thought; and now it seemed as
+if Providence itself, in offering to my age the asylum I had above all
+others coveted for it, was interested in my retirement from the empire
+of an ungrateful people and my atonement in rest for my past sins in
+migration.”
+
+“Well, sir, in short, I became the purchaser of the place you have
+just seen, and I now think that, after all, there is more happiness in
+reality than romance: like the laverock, here will I build my nest,--
+
+  ‘Here give my weary spirit rest,
+   And raise my low-pitched thoughts above
+   Earth, or what poor mortals love.’”
+
+“And your son,” said Clarence, “has he reformed?”
+
+“Oh, yes,” answered Cole. “For my part, I believe the mind is less evil
+than people say it is; its great characteristic is imitation, and it
+will imitate the good as well as the bad, if we will set the example.
+I thank Heaven, sir, that my boy now might go from Dan to Beersheba and
+not filch a groat by the way.”
+
+“What do you intend him for?” said Clarence.
+
+“Why, he loves adventure, and, faith, I can’t break him of that, for
+I love it too; so I think I shall get him a commission in the army, in
+order to give him a fitting and legitimate sphere wherein to indulge his
+propensities.”
+
+“You could not do better,” said Clarence. “But your fine sister, what
+says she to your amendment?”
+
+“Oh! she wrote me a long letter of congratulation upon it and every
+other summer she is graciously pleased to pay me a visit of three months
+long; at which time, I observe, that poor Lucy is unusually smart
+and uncomfortable. We sit in the best room, and turn out the dogs;
+my father-in-law smokes his pipe in the arbour, instead of the
+drawing-room; and I receive sundry hints, all in vain, on the propriety
+of dressing for dinner. In return for these attentions on our part, my
+sister invariably brings my boy a present of a pair of white gloves, and
+my wife a French ribbon of the newest pattern; in the evening, instead
+of my reading Shakspeare, she tells us anecdotes of high life, and,
+when she goes away, she gives us, in return for our hospitality, a very
+general and very gingerly invitation to her house. Lucy sometimes talks
+to me about accepting it; but I turn a deaf ear to all such overtures,
+and so we continue much better friends than we should be if we saw more
+of each other.”
+
+“And how long has your father-in-law been with you?”
+
+“Ever since we have been here. He gave up his farm, and cultivates mine
+for me; for I know nothing of those agricultural matters. I made his
+coming a little surprise, in order to please Lucy: you should have
+witnessed their meeting.”
+
+“I think I have now learned all particulars,” said Clarence; “it only
+remains for me to congratulate you: but are you, in truth, never tired
+of the monotony and sameness of domestic life?”
+
+“Yes! and then I do, as I have just done, saddle Little John, and go
+on an excursion of three or four days, or even weeks, just as the whim
+seizes me; for I never return till I am driven back by the yearning for
+home, and the feeling that after all one’s wanderings there is no place
+like it. Whether in private life or public, sir, in parting with a
+little of one’s liberty one gets a great deal of comfort in exchange.”
+
+“I thank you truly for your frankness,” said Clarence; “it has solved
+many doubts with respect to you that have often occurred to me. And now
+we are in the main road, and I must bid you farewell: we part, but our
+paths lead to the same object; you return to happiness, and I seek it.”
+
+“May you find it, and I not lose it, sir,” said the wanderer reclaimed;
+and, shaking hands, the pair parted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVI.
+
+  Quicquid agit Rufus, nihil est, nisi Naevia Rufo,
+   Si gaudet, si flet, si tacet, hanc loquitur;
+  Coenat, propinat, poscit, negat, annuit, una est Naevia;
+   si non sit Naevia, mutus erit.
+  Scriberet hesterna patri cum luce salutem
+   Naevia lux, inquit, Naevia numen, ave.--MART.
+
+  [“Whatever Rufus does is nothing, except Naevia be at his elbow.
+  Be he joyful or sorrowful, be he even silent, he is still harping
+  upon her. He eats, he drinks, he talks, he denies, he assents;
+  Naevia is his sole theme: no Naevia, and he’s dumb. Yesterday at
+  daybreak, he would fain write a letter of salutation to his
+  father: ‘Hail, Naevia, light of my eyes,’ quoth he; ‘hail, Naevia,
+  my divine one.’”]
+
+“The last time,” said Clarence to himself, “that I travelled this road,
+on exactly the same errand that I travel now, I do remember that I was
+honoured by the company of one in all respects the opposite to mine
+honest host; for, whereas in the latter there is a luxuriant and wild
+eccentricity, an open and blunt simplicity, and a shrewd sense, which
+looks not after pence, but peace; so, in the mind of the friend of
+the late Lady Waddilove there was a flat and hedged-in primness and
+narrowness of thought; an enclosure of bargains and profits of all
+species,--mustard-pots, rings, monkeys, chains, jars, and plum-coloured
+velvet inexpressibles; his ideas, with the true alchemy of trade, turned
+them all into gold: yet was he also as shrewd and acute as he with whose
+character he contrasts,--equally with him seeking comfort and gladness,
+and an asylum for his old age. Strange that all tempers should have a
+common object, and never a common road to it! But since I have begun the
+contrast, let me hope that it may be extended in its omen unto me; let
+me hope that as my encountering with the mercantile Brown brought me
+ill-luck in my enterprise, thereby signifying the crosses and vexations
+of those who labour in the cheateries and overreachings which constitute
+the vocation of the world; so my meeting with the philosophical Cole,
+who has, both in vagrancy and rest, found cause to boast of happiness,
+authorities from his studies to favour his inclination to each, and
+reason to despise what he, with Sir Kenelm Digby, would wisely call--
+
+  ‘The fading blossoms of the earth;’
+
+so my meeting with him may prove a token of good speed to mine errand,
+and thereby denote prosperity to one who seeks not riches, nor honour,
+nor the conquest of knaves, nor the good word of fools, but happy love,
+and the bourne of its quiet home.”
+
+Thus, half meditating, half moralizing, and drawing, like a true lover,
+an omen of fear or hope from occurrences in which plain reason could
+have perceived neither type nor token, Clarence continued and concluded
+his day’s journey. He put up at the same little inn he had visited three
+years ago, and watched his opportunity of seeing Lady Flora alone. More
+fortunate in that respect than he had been before, such opportunity the
+very next day presented to him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVII.
+
+  Duke.--Sir Valentine! Thur.--Yonder is Silvia, and Silvia’s mine.
+  Val.--Thurio, give back.--The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
+
+“I think, Mamma,” said Lady Flora to her mother, “that as the morning is
+so beautiful, I will go into the pavilion to finish my drawing.”
+
+“But Lord Ulswater will be here in an hour, or perhaps less: may I tell
+him where you are, and suffer him to join you?”
+
+“If you will accompany him,” answered Lady Flora, coldly, as she took up
+her portefeuille and withdrew.
+
+Now the pavilion was a small summer-house of stone, situated in the
+most retired part of the grounds belonging to Westborough Park. It was
+a favourite retreat with Lady Flora, even in the winter months, for
+warm carpeting, a sheltered site, and a fireplace constructed more for
+comfort than economy made it scarcely less adapted to that season than
+to the more genial suns of summer.
+
+The morning was so bright and mild that Lady Flora left open the door
+as she entered; she seated herself at the table, and, unmindful of her
+pretended employment, suffered the portefeuille to remain unopened.
+Leaning her cheek upon her hand, she gazed vacantly on the ground, and
+scarcely felt the tears which gathered slowly to her eyes, but, falling
+not, remained within the fair lids, chill and motionless, as if the
+thought which drew them there was born of a sorrow less agitated than
+fixed and silent.
+
+The shadow of a man darkened the threshold, and there paused.
+
+Slowly did Flora raise her eyes, and the next moment Clarence Linden was
+by her side and at her feet.
+
+“Flora,” said he, in a tone trembling with its own emotions, “Flora,
+have years indeed separated us forever, or dare I hope that we have
+misconstrued each other’s hearts, and that at this moment they yearn to
+be united with more than the fondness and fidelity of old? Speak to me,
+Flora, one word.”
+
+But she had sunk on the chair overpowered, surprised, and almost
+insensible; and it was not for some moments that she could utter words
+rather wrung from than dictated by her thoughts.
+
+“Cruel and insulting, for what have you come? is it at such a time that
+you taunt me with the remembrance of my past folly, or your--your--” She
+paused for a moment, confused and hesitating, but presently recovering
+herself, rose, and added, in a calmer tone, “Surely you have no excuse
+for this intrusion: you will suffer me to leave you.”
+
+“No,” exclaimed Clarence, violently agitated, “no! Have you not wronged
+me, stung me, wounded me to the core by your injustice? and will you not
+hear now how differently I have deserved from you? On a bed of fever
+and pain I thought only of you; I rose from it animated by the hope of
+winning you! Though, during the danger of my wound and my consequent
+illness, your parents alone, of all my intimate acquaintances, neglected
+to honour with an inquiry the man whom you professed to consecrate with
+your regard, yet scarcely could my hand trace a single sentence before I
+wrote to you requesting an interview, in order to disclose my birth and
+claim your plighted faith! That letter was returned to me unanswered,
+unopened. My friend and benefactor, whose fortune I now inherit,
+promised to call upon your father and advocate my cause. Death
+anticipated his kindness. As soon as my sorrow for his loss permitted
+me, I came to this very spot! For three days I hovered about your house,
+seeking the meeting that you would fain deny me now. I could not any
+longer bear the torturing suspense I endured: I wrote to you; your
+father answered the letter. Here, here I have it still: read! note well
+the cool, the damning insult of each line. I see that you knew not of
+this: I rejoice at it! Can you wonder that, on receiving it, I subjected
+myself no more to such affronts? I hastened abroad. On my return I met
+you. Where? In crowds, in the glitter of midnight assemblies, in the
+whirl of what the vain call pleasure! I observed your countenance, your
+manner; was there in either a single token of endearing or regretful
+remembrance? None! I strove to harden my heart; I entered into politics,
+business, intrigue; I hoped, I longed, I burned to forget you, but in
+vain!”
+
+“At last I heard that Rumour, though it had long preceded, had not
+belied, the truth, and that you were to be married,--married to Lord
+Ulswater! I will not say what I suffered, or how idly I summoned pride
+to resist affection! But I would not have come now to molest you, Flora,
+to trouble your nuptial rejoicings with one thought of me, if, forgive
+me, I had not suddenly dreamed that I had cause to hope you had
+mistaken, not rejected my heart; that--you turn away, Flora, you blush,
+you weep! Oh, tell me, by one word, one look, that I was not deceived!”
+
+“No, no, Clarence,” said Flora, struggling with her tears: “it is
+too late, too late now! Why, why did I not know this before? I have
+promised, I am pledged; in less than two months I shall be the wife of
+another!”
+
+“Never!” cried Clarence, “never! You promised on a false belief: they
+will not bind you to such a promise. Who is he that claims you? I am
+his equal in birth, in the world’s name,--and oh, by what worlds
+his superior in love! I will advance my claim to you in his very
+teeth,--nay, I will not stir from these domains till you, your father,
+and my rival, have repaired my wrongs.”
+
+“Be it so, sir!” cried a voice behind, and Clarence turned and beheld
+Lord Ulswater! His dark countenance was flushed with rage, which he in
+vain endeavoured to conceal; and the smile of scorn that he strove
+to summon to his lip made a ghastly and unnatural contrast with the
+lowering of his brow and the fire of his eyes. “Be it so, sir,” he said,
+slowly advancing, and confronting Clarence. “You will dispute my claims
+to the hand Lady Flora Ardenne has long promised to one who, however
+unworthy of the gift, knows, at least, how to defend it. It is well; let
+us finish the dispute elsewhere. It is not the first time we shall have
+met, if not as rivals, as foes.”
+
+Clarence turned from him without reply, for he saw Lady Westborough had
+just entered the pavilion, and stood mute and transfixed at the door,
+with surprise, fear, and anger depicted upon her regal and beautiful
+countenance.
+
+“It is to you, madam,” said Clarence, approaching towards her, “that I
+venture to appeal. Your daughter and I, four long years ago, exchanged
+our vows: you flattered me with the hope that those vows were not
+displeasing to you; since then a misunderstanding, deadly to my
+happiness and to hers, divided us. I come now to explain it. My birth
+may have seemed obscure; I come to clear it: my conduct doubtful; I come
+to vindicate it. I find Lord Ulswater my rival. I am willing to compare
+my pretensions to his. I acknowledge that he has titles which I have
+not; that he has wealth, to which mine is but competence: but titles and
+wealth, as the means of happiness, are to be referred to your daughter,
+to none else. You have only, in an alliance with me, to consider my
+character and my lineage: the latter flows from blood as pure as that
+which warms the veins of my rival; the former stands already upon an
+eminence to which Lord Ulswater in his loftiest visions could never
+aspire. For the rest, madam, I adjure you, solemnly, as you value your
+peace of mind, your daughter’s happiness, your freedom from the agonies
+of future remorse and unavailing regret,--I adjure you not to divorce
+those whom God, who speaks in the deep heart and the plighted vow, has
+already joined. This is a question in which your daughter’s permanent
+woe or lasting happiness from this present hour to the last sand of life
+is concerned. It is to her that I refer it: let her be the judge.”
+
+And Clarence moved from Lady Westborough, who, agitated, confused, awed
+by the spell of a power and a nature of which she had not dreamed, stood
+pale and speechless, vainly endeavouring to reply: he moved from her
+towards Lady Flora, who leaned, sobbing and convulsed with contending
+emotions, against the wall; but Lord Ulswater, whose fiery blood
+was boiling with passion, placed himself between Clarence and the
+unfortunate object of the contention.
+
+“Touch her not, approach her not!” he said, with a fierce and menacing
+tone. “Till you have proved your pretensions superior to mine, unknown,
+presuming, and probably base-born as you are, you will only pass over my
+body to your claims.”
+
+Clarence stood still for one moment, evidently striving to master the
+wrath which literally swelled his form beyond its ordinary proportions;
+and Lady Westborough, recovering herself in the brief pause, passed
+between the two, and, taking her daughter’s arm, led her from the
+pavilion.
+
+“Stay, madam, for one instant!” cried Clarence, and he caught hold of
+her robe.
+
+Lady Westborough stood quite erect and still; and, drawing her stately
+figure to its full height, said with that quiet dignity by which a
+woman so often stills the angrier passions of men, “I lay the prayer and
+command of a mother upon you, Lord Ulswater, and on you, sir, whatever
+be your real rank and name, not to make mine and my daughter’s presence
+the scene of a contest which dishonours both. Still further, if Lady
+Flora’s hand and my approval be an object of desire to either, I make
+it a peremptory condition with both of you, that a dispute already
+degrading to her name pass not from word to act. For you, Mr. Linden,
+if so I may call you, I promise that my daughter shall be left free and
+unbiased to give that reply to your singular conduct which I doubt not
+her own dignity and sense will suggest.”
+
+“By Heaven!” exclaimed Lord Ulswater, utterly beside himself with rage
+which, suppressed at the beginning of Lady Westborough’s speech, had
+been kindled into double fury by its conclusion, “you will not suffer
+Lady Flora, no, nor any one but her affianced bridegroom, her only
+legitimate defender, to answer this arrogant intruder! You cannot think
+that her hand, the hand of my future wife, shall trace line or word to
+one who has so insulted her with his addresses and me with his rivalry.”
+
+“Man!” cried Clarence, abruptly, and seizing Lord Ulswater fiercely by
+the arm, “there are some causes which will draw fire from ice: beware,
+beware how you incense me to pollute my soul with the blood of a--”
+
+“What!” exclaimed Lord Ulswater.
+
+Clarence bent down and whispered one word in his ear.
+
+Had that word been the spell with which the sorcerers of old disarmed
+the fiend, it could not have wrought a greater change upon Lord
+Ulswater’s mien and face. He staggered back several paces, the glow
+of his swarthy cheek faded into a deathlike paleness; the word which
+passion had conjured to his tongue died there in silence; and he stood
+with eyes dilated and fixed on Clarence’s face, on which their gaze
+seemed to force some unwilling certainty.
+
+But Linden did not wait for him to recover his self-possession: he
+hurried after Lady Westborough, who, with her daughter, was hastening
+home.
+
+“Pardon me, Lady Westborough,” he said, as he approached, with a tone
+and air of deep respect, “pardon me; but will you suffer me to hope that
+Lady Flora and yourself will, in a moment of greater calmness, consider
+over all I have said? and-that she--that you, Lady Flora” (added
+he, changing the object of his address), “will vouchsafe one line of
+unprejudiced, unbiased reply, to a love which, however misrepresented
+and calumniated, has in it, I dare to say, nothing that can disgrace
+her to whom, with an enduring constancy, and undimmed, though unhoping,
+ardour, it has been inviolably dedicated?”
+
+Lady Flora, though she spoke not, lifted her eyes to his; and in that
+glance was a magic which made his heart burn with a sudden and flashing
+joy that atoned for the darkness of years.
+
+“I assure you, sir,” said Lady Westborough, touched, in spite of
+herself, with the sincerity and respect of Clarence’s bearing, “that
+Lady Flora will reply to any letter of explanation or proposal: for
+myself, I will not even see her answer. Where shall it be sent to you?”
+
+“I have taken my lodgings at the inn by your park gates. I shall remain
+there till--till--”
+
+Clarence paused, for his heart was full; and, leaving the sentence to
+be concluded as his listeners pleased, he drew himself aside from their
+path and suffered them to proceed.
+
+As he was feeding his eyes with the last glimpse of their forms, ere a
+turn in the grounds snatched them from his view, he heard a rapid step
+behind, and Lord Ulswater, approaching, laid his hand upon Linden’s
+shoulder, and said calmly,--
+
+“Are you furnished with proof to support the word you uttered?”
+
+“I am!” replied Clarence, haughtily.
+
+“And will you favour me with it?”
+
+“At your leisure, my lord,” rejoined Clarence.
+
+“Enough! Name your time and I will attend you.”
+
+“On Tuesday: I require till then to produce my witnesses.”
+
+“So be it; yet stay: on Tuesday I have military business at W----, some
+miles hence; the next day let it be; the place of meeting where you
+please.”
+
+“Here, then, my lord,” answered Clarence; “you have insulted me grossly
+before Lady Westborough and your affianced bride, and before them my
+vindication and answer should be given.”
+
+“You are right,” said Lord Ulswater; “be it here, at the hour of
+twelve.” Clarence bowed his assent and withdrew. Lord Ulswater remained
+on the spot, with downcast eyes, and a brow on which thought had
+succeeded passion.
+
+“If true,” said he aloud, though unconsciously, “if this be true, why,
+then I owe him reparation, and he shall have it at my hands. I owe it to
+him on my account, and that of one now no more. Till we meet, I will
+not again see Lady Flora; after that meeting, perhaps I may resign her
+forever.”
+
+And with these words the young nobleman, who, despite of many evil and
+overbearing qualities, had, as we have said, his redeeming virtues, in
+which a capricious and unsteady generosity was one, walked slowly to the
+house; wrote a brief note to Lady Westborough, the purport of which the
+next chapter will disclose; and then, summoning his horse, flung himself
+on its back, and rode hastily away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVIII.
+
+  We will examine if those accidents,
+  Which common fame calls injuries, happen to him
+  Deservedly or no.--The New Inn.
+FROM LORD ULSWATER TO LADY WESTBOROUGH.
+
+Forgive me, dearest Lady Westborough, for my violence: you know and
+will allow for the infirmities of my temper. I have to make you and Lady
+Flora one request, which I trust you will not refuse me.
+
+Do not see or receive any communication from Mr. Linden till Wednesday;
+and on that day at the hour of twelve suffer me to meet him at your
+house. I will then either prove him to be the basest of impostors, or,
+if I fail in this and Lady Flora honours my rival with one sentiment
+of preference, I will without a murmur submit to her decree and my
+rejection. Dare I trust that this petition will be accorded to one who
+is, with great regard and esteem, etc.
+
+“This is fortunate,” said Lady Westborough gently to her daughter, who,
+leaning her head on her mother’s bosom, suffered hopes, the sweeter for
+their long sleep, to divide, if not wholly to possess, her heart. “We
+shall have now time well and carefully to reflect over what will be best
+for your future happiness. We owe this delay to one to whom you have
+been affianced. Let us, therefore, now merely write to Mr. Linden, to
+inform him of Lord Ulswater’s request; and to say that if he will meet
+his lordship at the time appointed, we, that is I, shall be happy to see
+him.”
+
+Lady Flora sighed, but she saw the reasonableness of her mother’s
+proposal, and pressing Lady Westborough’s hand murmured her assent.
+
+“At all events,” thought Lady Westborough, as she wrote to Clarence,
+“the affair can but terminate to advantage. If Lord Ulswater proves
+Mr. Linden’s unworthiness, the suit of the latter is of course at
+rest forever: if not, and Mr. Linden be indeed all that he asserts,
+my daughter’s choice cannot be an election of reproach; Lord Ulswater
+promises peaceably to withdraw his pretensions; and though Mr. Linden
+may not possess his rank or fortune, he is certainly one with whom, if
+of ancient blood, any family would be proud of an alliance.”
+
+Blending with these reflections a considerable share of curiosity
+and interest in a secret which partook so strongly of romance, Lady
+Westborough despatched her note to Clarence. The answer returned was
+brief, respectful, and not only acquiescent in but grateful for the
+proposal.
+
+With this arrangement both Lady Westborough and Lady Flora were
+compelled, though with very different feelings, to be satisfied; and an
+agreement was established between them, to the effect that if Linden’s
+name passed unblemished through the appointed ordeal Lady Flora was to
+be left to, and favoured in, her own election; while, on the contrary,
+if Lord Ulswater succeeded in the proof he had spoken of, his former
+footing in the family was to be fully re-established and our unfortunate
+adventurer forever discarded.
+
+To this Lady Flora readily consented; for with a sanguine and certain
+trust in her lover’s truth and honour, which was tenfold more strong
+for her late suspicions, she would not allow herself a doubt as to the
+result; and with an impatience, mingled with a rapturous exhilaration
+of spirit, which brought back to her the freshness and radiancy of her
+youngest years, she counted the hours and moments to the destined day.
+
+While such was the state of affairs at Westborough Park, Clarence was
+again on horseback and on another excursion. By the noon of the day
+following that which had seen his eventful meeting with Lady Flora, he
+found himself approaching the extreme boundaries of the county in
+which Mordaunt Court and the memorable town of W---- were situated. The
+characteristics of the country were now materially changed from
+those which gave to the vicinity of Algernon’s domains its wild and
+uncultivated aspect.
+
+As Clarence slowly descended a hill of considerable steepness and
+length, a prospect of singular and luxurious beauty opened to his view.
+The noblest of England’s rivers was seen, through “turfs and shades and
+flowers,” pursuing “its silver-winding way.” On the opposite banks lay,
+embosomed in the golden glades of autumn, the busy and populous town
+that from the height seemed still and lifeless as an enchanted city,
+over which the mid-day sun hung like a guardian spirit. Behind, in
+sweeping diversity, stretched wood and dale, and fields despoiled of
+their rich harvest, yet still presenting a yellow surface to the eye;
+and ever and anon some bright patch of green, demanding the gaze as if
+by a lingering spell from the past spring; while, here and there, spire
+and hamlet studded the landscape, or some lowly cot lay, backed by the
+rising ground or the silent woods, white and solitary, and sending up
+its faint tribute of smoke in spires to the altars of Heaven. The river
+was more pregnant of life than its banks: barge and boat were gliding
+gayly down the wave, and the glad oar of the frequent and slender
+vessels consecrated to pleasure was seen dimpling the water, made by
+distance smoother than glass.
+
+On the right side of Clarence’s road, as he descended the hill, lay wide
+plantations of fir and oak, divided from the road by a park paling, the
+uneven sides of which were covered with brown moss, and which, at rare
+openings in the young wood, gave glimpses of a park, seemingly extending
+over great space, the theatre of many a stately copse and oaken grove,
+which might have served the Druids with fane and temple meet for the
+savage sublimity of their worship.
+
+Upon these unfrequent views, Clarence checked his horse, and gazed, with
+emotions sweet yet bitter, over the pales, along the green expanse which
+they contained. And once, when through the trees he caught a slight
+glimpse of the white walls of the mansion they adorned, all the years
+of his childhood seemed to rise on his heart, thrilling to its farthest
+depths with a mighty and sorrowful yet sweet melody, and--
+
+  “Singing of boyhood back, the voices of his home.”
+
+Home! yes, amidst those groves had the April of his life lavished its
+mingled smiles and tears! There was the spot hallowed by his earliest
+joys! and the scene of sorrows still more sacred than joys! and now,
+after many years, the exiled boy came back, a prosperous and thoughtful
+man, to take but one brief glance of that home which to him had been
+less hospitable than a stranger’s dwelling, and to find a witness among
+those who remembered him of his very birth and identity!
+
+He wound the ascent at last, and entering a small town at the foot of
+the hill, which was exactly facing the larger one on the opposite shore
+of the river, put up his horse at one of the inns, and then, with a
+beating heart, remounted the hill, and entering the park by one of its
+lodges found himself once more in the haunts of his childhood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIX.
+
+  Oh, the steward, the steward: I might have guessed as much.
+                     Tales of the Crusaders.
+
+The evening was already beginning to close, and Clarence was yet
+wandering in the park, and retracing, with his heart’s eye, each knoll
+and tree and tuft once so familiar to his wanderings.
+
+At the time we shall again bring him personally before the reader, he
+was leaning against an iron fence that, running along the left wing of
+the house, separated the pleasure-grounds from the park, and gazing
+with folded arms and wistful eyes upon the scene on which the dusk of
+twilight was gradually gathering.
+
+The house was built originally in the reign of Charles II.; it had since
+received alteration and additions, and now presented to the eye a vast
+pile of Grecian or rather Italian architecture, heterogeneously blended
+with the massive window, the stiff coping, and the heavy roof which the
+age immediately following the Revolution introduced. The extent of the
+building and the grandeur of the circling demesnes were sufficient to
+render the mansion imposing in effect; while, perhaps, the style of
+the architecture was calculated to conjoin a stately comfort with
+magnificence, and to atone in solidity for any deficiency in grace.
+
+At a little distance from the house, and placed on a much more
+commanding site, were some ancient and ivy-grown ruins, now scanty
+indeed and fast mouldering into decay, but sufficient to show the
+antiquarian the remains of what once had been a hold of no ordinary size
+and power. These were the wrecks of the old mansion, which was recorded
+by tradition to have been reduced to this state by accidental
+fire, during the banishment of its loyal owner in the time of the
+Protectorate. Upon his return the present house was erected.
+
+As Clarence was thus stationed he perceived an elderly man approach
+towards him. “This is fortunate,” said he to himself,--“the very person
+I have been watching for. Well, years have passed lightly over old
+Wardour: still the same precise garb, the same sturdy and slow step, the
+same upright form.”
+
+The person thus designated now drew near enough for parlance; and, in
+a tone a little authoritative, though very respectful, inquired if
+Clarence had any business to transact with him.
+
+“I beg pardon,” said Clarence, slouching his hat over his face, “for
+lingering so near the house at this hour: but I have seen it many years
+ago, and indeed been a guest within its walls; and it is rather my
+interest for an old friend, than my curiosity to examine a new one,
+which you are to blame for my trespass.”
+
+“Oh, sir,” answered Mr. Wardour, a short and rather stout man, of
+about sixty-four, attired in a chocolate coat, gray breeches, and silk
+stockings of the same dye, which, by the waning light, took a sombrer
+and sadder hue, “oh, sir, pray make no apology. I am only sorry the hour
+is so late that I cannot offer to show you the interior of the house:
+perhaps, if you are staying in the neighbourhood, you would like to see
+it to-morrow. You were here, I take it, sir, in my old lord’s time?
+
+“I was!--upon a visit to his second son: we had been boys together.”
+
+“What! Master Clinton?” cried the old man, with extreme, animation;
+and then, suddenly changing his voice, added, in a subdued and saddened
+tone, “Ah, poor young gentleman, I wonder where he is now?”
+
+“Why, is he not in this country?” asked Clarence.
+
+“Yes--no--that is, I can’t exactly say where he is; I wish I could: poor
+Master Clinton! I loved him as my own son.”
+
+“You surprise me,” said Clarence. “Is there anything in the fate of
+Clinton L’Estrange that calls forth your pity? If so, you would gratify
+a much better feeling than curiosity if you would inform me of it. The
+fact is that I came here to seek him; for I have been absent from the
+country many years, and on my return my first inquiry was for my old
+friend and schoolfellow. None knew anything of him in London, and
+I imagined therefore that he might have settled down into a country
+gentleman. I was fully prepared to find him marshalling the fox-hounds
+or beating the preserves; and you may consequently imagine my
+mortification on learning at my inn that he had not been residing here
+for many years; further I know not!”
+
+“Ay, ay, sir,” said the old steward, who had listened very attentively
+to Clarence’s detail, “had you pressed one of the village gossips a
+little closer, you would doubtless have learned more. But ‘t is a story
+I don’t much love telling, although formerly I could have talked of
+Master Clinton by the hour together to any one who would have had the
+patience to listen to me.”
+
+“You have really created in me a very painful desire to learn more,”
+ said Clarence; “and, if I am not intruding on any family secrets, you
+would oblige me greatly by whatever information you may think proper to
+afford to an early and attached friend of the person in question.”
+
+“Well, sir, well,” replied Mr. Wardour, who, without imputation on
+his discretion, loved talking as well as any other old gentleman of
+sixty-four, “if you will condescend to step up to my house, I shall feel
+happy and proud to converse with a friend of my dear young master; and
+you are heartily welcome to the information I can give you.”
+
+“I thank you sincerely,” said Clarence; “but suffer me to propose, as an
+amendment to your offer, that you accompany me for an hour or two to my
+inn.”
+
+“Nay, sir,” answered the old gentleman, in a piqued tone, “I trust you
+will not disdain to honour me with your company. Thank Heaven, I can
+afford to be hospitable now and then.”
+
+Clarence, who seemed to have his own reasons for the amendment he had
+proposed, still struggled against this offer, but was at last, from fear
+of offending the honest steward, obliged to accede.
+
+Striking across a path, which led through a corner of the plantation
+to a space of ground containing a small garden, quaintly trimmed in the
+Dutch taste, and a brick house of moderate dimensions, half overgrown
+with ivy and jessamine, Clarence and his inviter paused at the door of
+the said mansion, and the latter welcomed his guest to his abode.
+
+“Pardon me,” said Clarence, as a damsel in waiting opened the door, “but
+a very severe attack of rheumatism obliges me to keep on my hat: you
+will, I hope, indulge me in my rudeness.”
+
+“To be sure, to be sure, sir. I myself suffer terribly from rheumatism
+in the winter; though you look young, sir, very young, to have an
+old man’s complaint. Ah, the people of my day were more careful of
+themselves, and that is the reason we are such stout fellows in our
+age.”
+
+And the worthy steward looked complacently down at legs which very
+substantially filled their comely investments. “True, sir,” said
+Clarence, laying his hand upon that of the steward, who was just about
+to open the door of an apartment; “but suffer me at least to request you
+not to introduce me to any of the ladies of your family. I could not,
+were my very life at stake, think of affronting them by not doffing
+my hat. I have the keenest sense of what is due to the sex, and I must
+seriously entreat you, for the sake of my health during the whole of
+the coming winter, to suffer our conversation not to take place in their
+presence.”
+
+“Sir, I honour your politeness,” said the prim little steward: “I,
+myself, like every true Briton, reverence the ladies; we will therefore
+retire to my study. Mary, girl,” turning to the attendant, “see that we
+have a nice chop for supper in half an hour; and tell your mistress that
+I have a gentleman of quality with me upon particular business, and must
+not be disturbed.”
+
+With these injunctions, the steward led the way to the farther end of
+the house, and, having ushered his guest into a small parlour, adorned
+with sundry law-books, a great map of the estate, a print of the
+late owner of it, a rusty gun slung over the fireplace, two stuffed
+pheasants, and a little mahogany buffet,--having, we say, led Clarence
+to this sanctuary of retiring stewardship, he placed a seat for him and
+said,--“Between you and me, sir, be it respectfully said, I am not
+sorry that our little confabulation should pass alone. Ladies are very
+delightful, very delightful, certainly: but they won’t let one tell a
+story one’s own way; they are fidgety, you know, sir,--fidgety, nothing
+more; ‘t is a trifle, but it is unpleasant. Besides, my wife was Master
+Clinton’s foster-mother, and she can’t hear a word about him, without
+running on into a long rigmarole of what he did as a baby, and so
+forth. I like people to be chatty, sir, but not garrulous; I can’t bear
+garrulity, at least in a female. But, suppose, sir, we defer our story
+till after supper? A glass of wine or warm punch makes talk glide more
+easily; besides, sir, I want something to comfort me when I talk about
+Master Clinton. Poor gentleman, he was so comely, so handsome!”
+
+“Did you think so?” said Clarence, turning towards the fire.
+
+“Think so!” ejaculated the steward, almost angrily; and forthwith he
+launched out into an encomium on the perfections, personal, moral, and
+mental, of Master Clinton which lasted till the gentle Mary entered to
+lay the cloth. This reminded the old steward of the glass of wine which
+was so efficacious in making talk glide easily; and, going to the
+buffet before mentioned, he drew forth two bottles, both of port.
+Having carefully and warily decanted both, he changed the subject of his
+praise; and, assuring Clarence that the wine he was about to taste
+was at least as old as Master Clinton, having been purchased in joyous
+celebration of the young gentleman’s birthday, he whiled away the
+minutes with a glowing eulogy on its generous qualities, till Mary
+entered with the supper.
+
+Clarence, with an appetite sharpened, despite his romance, by a long
+fast, did ample justice to the fare; and the old steward, warming into
+familiarity with the virtues of the far-famed port, chatted and laughed
+in a strain half simple and half shrewd.
+
+The fire being stirred up to a free blaze, the hearth swept, and all
+the tokens of supper, save and except the kingly bottle and its subject
+glasses, being removed, the steward and his guest drew closer to each
+other, and the former began his story.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXX.
+
+  The actors are at hand, and by their show
+  You shall know all that you are like to know.
+                  Midsummer-Night’s Dream.
+
+“You know, probably, sir, that my late lord was twice married; by his
+first wife he had three children, only one of whom, the youngest, though
+now the present earl, survived the first period of infancy. When Master
+Francis, as we always called him, in spite of his accession to the
+title of viscount, was about six years old, my lady died, and a year
+afterwards my lord married again. His second wife was uncommonly
+handsome: she was a Miss Talbot (a Catholic), daughter of Colonel
+Talbot, and niece to the celebrated beau, Squire Talbot of Scarsdale
+Park. Poor lady! they say that she married my lord through a momentary
+pique against a former lover. However that may be, she was a fine,
+high-spirited creature: very violent in temper, to be sure, but generous
+and kind when her passion was over; and however haughty to her equals
+charitable and compassionate to the poor.”
+
+“She had but one son, Master Clinton. Never, sir, shall I forget the
+rejoicings that were made at his birth: for my lord doted on his second
+wife, and had disliked his first, whom he had married for her fortune;
+and it was therefore natural that he should prefer the child of the
+present wife to Master Francis. Ah, it is sad to think how love can
+change! Well, sir, my lord seemed literally to be wrapped up in the
+infant: he nursed it and fondled it, and hung over it, as if he had
+been its mother rather than its father. My lady desired that it might
+be christened by one of her family names; and my lord consenting, it was
+called Clinton. (The wine is with you, sir! Do observe that it has not
+changed colour in the least, notwithstanding its age.)”
+
+“My lord was fond of a quiet, retired life; indeed, he was a great
+scholar, and spent the chief part of his time among his books. Dr.
+Latinas, the young gentleman’s tutor, said his lordship made Greek
+verses better than Dr. Latinas could make English ones, so you may judge
+of his learning. But my lady went constantly to town, and was among the
+gayest of the gay; nor did she often come down here without bringing a
+whole troop of guests. Lord help us, what goings on there used to be at
+the great house!--such dancing and music, and dining and supping, and
+shooting-parties, fishing-parties, gypsy-parties: you would have thought
+all England was merrymaking there.”
+
+“But my lord, though he indulged my lady in all her whims and
+extravagance, seldom took much share in them himself. He was constantly
+occupied with his library and children, nor did he ever suffer either
+Master Francis or Master Clinton to mix with the guests. He kept them
+very close at their studies, and when the latter was six years old, I
+do assure you, sir, he could say his Propria quae maribus better than I
+can. (You don’t drink, sir.) When Master Francis was sixteen, and Master
+Clinton eight, the former was sent abroad on his travels with a
+German tutor, and did not return to England for many years afterwards;
+meanwhile Master Clinton grew up to the age of fourteen, increasing in
+comeliness and goodness. He was very fond of his studies, much more
+so than Master Francis had been, and was astonishingly forward for his
+years. So my lord loved him better and better, and would scarcely ever
+suffer him to be out of his sight.”
+
+“When Master Clinton was about the age I mentioned, namely, fourteen, a
+gentleman of the name of Sir Clinton Manners became a constant visitor
+at the house. Report said that he was always about my lady in London
+at Ranelagh, and the ball-rooms and routs, and all the fine places; and
+certainly he was scarcely ever from her side in the pleasure parties
+at the Park. But my lady said that he was a cousin of hers, and an old
+playmate in childhood, and so he was; and unhappily for her, something
+more too. My lord, however, shut up in his library, did not pay any
+attention to my lady’s intimacy with Sir Clinton; on the contrary, as he
+was a cousin and friend of hers, his lordship seemed always happy to see
+him, and was the only person in the neighbourhood who had no suspicion
+of what was going on.”
+
+“Oh, sir, it is a melancholy story, and I can scarcely persuade myself
+to tell it. (It is really delicious wine this-six-and-twenty years old
+last birthday--to say nothing of its age before I bought it.) Ah! well,
+sir, the blow came at last like a thunderclap: my lady, finding disguise
+was in vain, went off with Sir Clinton. Letters were discovered which
+showed that they had corresponded for years; that he was her lover
+before marriage; that she, in a momentary passion with him, had accepted
+my lord’s offer; that she had always repented her precipitation; and
+that she had called her son after his name: all this, and much more,
+sir, did my lord learn, as it were, at a single blow.”
+
+“He obtained a divorce, and Sir Clinton and my lady went abroad. But
+from that time my lord was never the same man. Always proud and gloomy,
+he now became intolerably violent and morose. He shut himself up, saw no
+company of any description, rarely left the house, and never the park;
+and, from being one of the gayest places in the country, sir, the
+mansion became as dreary and deserted as if it had been haunted. (It is
+for you to begin the second bottle, sir.)”
+
+“But the most extraordinary change in my lord was in his conduct to
+Master Clinton: from doting upon him, to a degree that would have spoilt
+any temper less sweet than my poor young master’s, he took the most
+violent aversion to him. From the circumstance of his name, and the long
+intimacy existing between my lady and her lover, his lordship would not
+believe that Master Clinton was his own child; and indeed I must confess
+there seemed good ground for his suspicions. Besides this, Master
+Clinton took very much after his mother. He had her eyes, hair, and
+beautiful features, so that my lord could never see him without being
+reminded of his disgrace; therefore whenever the poor young gentleman
+came into his presence, he would drive him out with oaths and threats
+which rang through the whole house. He could not even bear that
+he should have any attendance or respect from the servants, for he
+considered him quite as an alien like, and worse than a stranger; and
+his lordship’s only delight seemed to consist in putting upon him every
+possible indignity and affront. But Master Clinton was a high-spirited
+young gentleman; and, after having in vain endeavoured to soothe my lord
+by compliance and respect, he at last utterly avoided his lordship’s
+presence.”
+
+“He gave up his studies in a great measure, and wandered about the
+park and woods all day and sometimes even half the night; his mother’s
+conduct and his father’s unkindness seemed to prey upon his health and
+mind, and at last he grew almost as much altered as my lord. From being
+one of the merriest boys possible, full of life and spirits, he became
+thoughtful and downcast, his step lost its lightness, and his eye all
+the fire which used once quite to warm one’s heart when one looked at
+it; in short, sir, the sins of the mother were visited as much upon the
+child as the husband. (Not the least tawny, sir, you see, though it is
+so old!)”
+
+“My lord at first seemed to be glad that he now never saw his son, but,
+by degrees, I think he missed the pleasure of venting his spleen upon
+him; and so he ordered my young master not to stir out without his
+leave, and confined him closer than ever to his studies. (Well, sir, if
+it were not for this port I could not get out another sentence.)
+There used then to be sad scenes between them: my lord was a terribly
+passionate man, and said things sharper than a two-edged sword, as the
+psalms express it; and though Master Clinton was one of the mildest and
+best-tempered boys imaginable, yet he could not at all times curb his
+spirit; and, to my mind, when a man is perpetually declaring he is not
+your father, one may now and then be forgiven in forgetting that you are
+to behave as his son.”
+
+“Things went on in this way sadly enough for about three years and a
+half, when Master Clinton was nearly eighteen. One evening, after
+my lord had been unusually stormy, Master Clinton’s spirit warmed, I
+suppose, and, from word to word, the dispute increased, till my lord, in
+a furious rage, ordered in the servants, and told them to horsewhip his
+son. Imagine, sir, what a disgrace to that noble house! But there was
+not one of them who would not rather have cut off his right hand than
+laid a finger upon Master Clinton, so greatly was he beloved; and,
+at last, my lord summoned his own gentleman, a German, six feet high,
+entirely devoted to his lordship, and commanded him, upon pain of
+instant dismissal, to make use in his presence of a horsewhip which he
+put into his hand.”
+
+“The German did not dare refuse, so he approached Master Clinton. The
+servants were still in the room, and perhaps they would have been
+bold enough to rescue Master Clinton, had there been any need of their
+assistance; but he was a tall youth, as bold as a hero, and, when the
+German approached, he caught him by the throat, threw him down, and very
+nearly strangled him; he then, while my lord was speechless with rage,
+left the room, and did not return all night. (What a body it has,
+sir--ah!)”
+
+“The next morning I was in a little room adjoining my lord’s study,
+looking over some papers and maps. His lordship did not know of my
+presence, but was sitting alone at breakfast, when Master Clinton
+suddenly entered the study; the door leading to my room was ajar, and I
+heard all the conversation that ensued.”
+
+“My lord asked him very angrily how he had dared absent himself all
+night; but Master Clinton, making no reply to this question, said, in
+a very calm, loud voice, which I think I hear now, ‘My lord, after the
+insult you have offered to me, it is perhaps unnecessary to observe that
+nothing could induce me to remain under your roof. I come, therefore, to
+take my last leave of you.’”
+
+“He paused, and my lord (probably like me, being taken by surprise)
+making no reply, he continued, ‘You have often told me, my lord, that I
+am not your son; if this be possible, so much the more must you rejoice
+at the idea of ridding your presence of an intruder.’ ‘And how, sir,
+do you expect to live, except upon my bounty?’ exclaimed my lord. ‘You
+remember,’ answered my young master, ‘that a humble dependant of my
+mother’s family, who had been our governess in childhood, left me at
+her death the earnings of her life. I believe they amount to nearly
+a thousand pounds; I look to your lordship’s honour either for the
+principal or the yearly interest, as may please you best: further I ask
+not from you.’ ‘And do you think, sir,’ cried my lord, almost screaming
+with passion, ‘that upon that beggarly pittance you shall go forth to
+dishonour more than it is yet dishonoured the name of my ancient house?
+Do you think, sir, that that name to which you have no pretension,
+though the law iniquitously grants it you, shall be sullied either
+with trade or robbery? for to one or the other you must necessarily
+be driven.’ ‘I foresaw your speech, my lord, and am prepared with an
+answer. Far be it from me to thrust myself into any family, the head of
+which thinks proper to reject me; far be it from me to honour my humble
+fortunes with a name which I am as willing as yourself to disown: I
+purpose, therefore, to adopt a new one; and, whatever may be my future
+fate, that name will screen me both from your remembrance and the
+world’s knowledge. Are you satisfied now, my lord?’”
+
+“His lordship did not answer for some minutes: at last, he said
+sneeringly, ‘Go, boy, go! I am delighted to hear you have decided so
+well. Leave word with my steward where you wish your clothes to be sent
+to you: Heaven forbid I should rob you either of your wardrobe or your
+princely fortune. Wardour will transmit to you the latter, even to the
+last penny, by the same conveyance as that which is honoured by the
+former. And now good-morning, sir; yet stay, and mark my words: never
+dare to re-enter my house, or to expect an iota more of fortune or
+favour from me. And, hark you, sir: if you dare violate your word; if
+you dare, during my life, at least, assume a name which you were born
+to sully,--my curse, my deepest, heartiest, eternal curse, be upon
+your head in this world and the next!’ ‘Fear not, my lord: my word is
+pledged,’ said the young gentleman; and the next moment I heard his
+parting step in the hall.”
+
+“Sir, my heart was full (your glass is empty!) and my head spun round
+as if I were on a precipice: but I was determined my young master should
+not go till I had caught another glimpse of his dear face; so I gently
+left the room I was in, and, hastening out of the house by a private
+entrance, met Master Clinton in the park, not very far from the spot
+where I saw you, sir, just now. To my surprise there was no sign of
+grief or agitation upon his countenance. I had never seen him look so
+proud, or for years so happy.”
+
+“‘Wardour,’ said he, in a gay tone, when he saw me, ‘I was going to your
+house: my father has at last resolved that I should, like my brother,
+commence my travels; and I wish to leave with you the address of the
+place to which my clothes, etc., will be sent.’
+
+“I could not contain any longer when I heard this, sir: I burst into
+tears, confessed that I had accidentally heard his conversation with
+my lord, and besought him not to depart so hastily, and with so small
+a fortune; but he shook his head and would not hear me. ‘Believe me, my
+good Wardour,’ said he, ‘that since my unhappy mother’s flight, I have
+never felt so elated or so happy as I do now: one should go through what
+I have done, to learn the rapture of independence.’ He then told me to
+have his luggage sent to him, under his initials of C. L., at the Golden
+Fleece, the principal inn in the town of W----, which, you know, sir, is
+at the other end of the county, on the road to London; and then, kindly
+shaking me by the hand, he broke away from me: but he turned back before
+he had got three paces, and said (and then, for the first time, the
+pride of his countenance fell, and the tears stood in his eyes),
+‘Wardour, do not divulge what you have heard: put as good a face upon my
+departure as you can, and let the blame, if any, fall upon me, not upon
+your lord; after all he is to be pitied, not blamed, and I can never
+forget that he once loved me.’ He did not wait for my answer,--perhaps
+he did not like to show me how much he was affected,--but hurried down
+the park, and I soon lost sight of him. My lord that very morning sent
+for me, demanded what address his son had left, and gave me a letter,
+enclosing, I suppose, a bill for my poor young master’s fortune,
+ordering it to be sent with the clothes immediately.”
+
+“Sir, I have never seen or heard aught of the dear gentleman since; you
+must forgive me, I cannot help tears, sir--(the wine is with you).”
+
+“But the mother, the mother!” said Clarence, earnestly; “what became of
+her? she died abroad, two years since, did she not?”
+
+“She did, sir,” answered the honest steward, refilling his glass. “They
+say that she lived very unhappily with Sir Clinton, who did not marry
+her; till all of a sudden she disappeared, none knew whither.”
+
+Clarence redoubled his attention.
+
+“At last,” resumed the steward, “two years ago, a letter came from her
+to my lord; she was a nun in some convent (in Italy I think) to which
+she had, at the time of her disappearance, secretly retired. The letter
+was written on her death-bed, and so affectingly, I suppose, that even
+my stern lord was in tears for several days after he received it. But
+the principal passage in it was relative to her son: it assured my lord
+(for so with his own lips he told me just before he died, some months
+ago) that Master Clinton was in truth his son, and that it was not till
+she had been tempted many years after her marriage that she had fallen;
+she implored my lord to believe this ‘on the word of one for whom earth
+and earth’s objects were no more;’ those were her words.”
+
+“Six months ago, when my lord lay on the bed from which he never
+rose, he called me to him and said, ‘Wardour, you have always been the
+faithful servant of our house, and warmly attached to my second son;
+tell my poor boy, if ever you see him, that I did at last open my
+eyes to my error and acknowledge him as my child; tell him that I have
+desired his brother (who was then, sir, kneeling by my lord’s side), as
+he values my blessing, to seek him out and repair the wrong I have
+done him; and add that my best comfort in death was the hope of his
+forgiveness.’”
+
+“Did he, did he say that?” exclaimed Clarence, who had been violently
+agitated during the latter part of this recital, and now sprang from
+his seat. “My father, my father! would that I had borne with thee more!
+mine, mine was the fault; from thee should have come the forgiveness!”
+
+The old steward sat silent and aghast. At that instant his wife entered,
+with a message of chiding at the lateness of the hour upon her lip, but
+she started back when she saw Clarence’s profile, as he stood leaning
+against the wall.
+
+“Good heavens!” cried she, “is it, is it,--yes, it is my young master,
+my own foster-son!”
+
+Rightly had Clarence conjectured, when he had shunned her presence.
+Years had indeed wrought a change in his figure and face; acquaintance,
+servant, friend, relation,--the remembrance of his features had passed
+from all: but she who had nursed him as an infant on her lap and fed
+him from her breast, she who had joined the devotion of clanship to the
+fondness of a mother, knew him at a glance. “Yes,” cried he, as he threw
+himself into her withered and aged arms, “it is I, the child you reared,
+come, after many years, to find too late, when a father is no more, that
+he had a right to a father’s home.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXI.
+
+            Let us go in,
+  And charge us there upon inter’gatories.--SHAKSPEARE.
+
+“But did not any one recognize you in your change of name?” said the old
+foster-mother, looking fondly upon Clarence, as he sat the next morning
+by her side. “How could any one forget so winsome a face who had once
+seen it?”
+
+“You don’t remember,” said Clarence (as we will yet continue to call our
+hero), smiling, “that your husband had forgotten it.”
+
+“Ay, sir,” cried the piqued steward, “but that was because you wore your
+hat slouched over your eyes: if you had taken off that, I should have
+known you directly.”
+
+“However that may be,” said Clarence, unwilling to dwell longer on an
+occurrence which he saw hurt the feelings of the kind Mr. Wardour, “it
+is very easy to explain how I preserved my incognito. You recollect that
+my father never suffered me to mix with my mother’s guests: so that I
+had no chance of their remembering me, especially as during the last
+three years and a half no stranger had ever entered our walls. Add to
+this that I was in the very time of life in which a few years work the
+greatest change, and on going to London I was thrown entirely among
+people who could never have seen me before. Fortunately for me, I became
+acquainted with my mother’s uncle; circumstances subsequently led me to
+disclose my birth to him, upon a promise that he would never call me by
+any other name than that which I had assumed. He, who was the best,
+the kindest, the most generous of human beings, took a liking to me. He
+insisted not only upon his relationship to me, as my grand-uncle, but
+upon the justice of repairing to me the wrongs his unhappy niece had
+caused me. The delicacy of his kindness, the ties of blood, and
+an accident which had enabled me to be of some service to him, all
+prevented my resisting the weight of obligation with which he afterwards
+oppressed me. He procured me an appointment abroad: I remained there
+four years. When I returned, I entered, it is true, into very general
+society: but four years had, as you may perceive, altered me greatly;
+and even had there previously existed any chance of my being recognized,
+that alteration would probably have been sufficient to insure my
+secret.”
+
+“But your brother,--my present lord,--did you never meet him, sir?”
+
+“Often, my good mother; but you remember that I was little more than six
+years old when he left England, and when he next saw me I was about two
+and twenty: it would have been next to a miracle, or, at least, would
+have required the eyes of love like yours, to have recalled me to memory
+after such an absence.”
+
+“Well--to turn to my story--I succeeded, partly as his nearest relation,
+but principally from an affection dearer than blood, to the fortune
+of my grand-uncle, Mr. Talbot. Fate prospered with me: I rose in the
+world’s esteem and honour, and soon became prouder of my borrowed
+appellation than of all the titles of my lordly line. Circumstances
+occurring within the last week which it will be needless to relate,
+but which may have the greatest influence over my future life, made it
+necessary to do what I had once resolved I would never do,--prove my
+identity and origin. Accordingly I came here to seek you.”
+
+“But why did not my honoured young master disclose himself last night?”
+ asked the steward.
+
+“I might say,” answered Clarence, “because I anticipated great pleasure
+in a surprise; but I had another reason; it was this: I had heard of my
+poor father’s death, and I was painfully anxious to learn if at the last
+he had testified any relenting towards me, and yet more so to ascertain
+the manner of my unfortunate mother’s fate. Both abroad and in England,
+I had sought tidings of her everywhere, but in vain; in mentioning my
+mother’s retiring into a convent, you have explained the reason why my
+efforts were so fruitless. With these two objects in view, I thought
+myself more likely to learn the whole truth as a stranger than in my
+proper person; for in the latter case, I deemed it probable that your
+delicacy and kindness might tempt you to conceal whatever was calculated
+to wound my feelings, and to exaggerate anything that might tend to
+flatter or to soothe them. Thank Heaven, I now learn that I have a right
+to the name my boyhood bore, and that my birth is not branded with the
+foulest of private crimes, and that in death my father’s heart yearned
+to his too hasty but repentant son. Enough of this: I have now only to
+request you, my friend, to accompany me, before daybreak on Wednesday
+morning, to a place several miles hence. Your presence there will be
+necessary to substantiate the proof for which I came hither.”
+
+“With all my heart, sir,” cried the honest steward; “and after Wednesday
+you will, I trust, assume your rightful name.”
+
+“Certainly,” replied Clarence; “since I am no longer ‘the Disowned.’”
+
+Leaving Clarence now for a brief while to renew his acquaintance with
+the scenes of his childhood, and to offer the tribute of his filial
+tears to the ashes of a father whose injustice had been but “the
+stinging of a heart the world had stung,” we return to some old
+acquaintances in the various conduct of our drama.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXII.
+
+  Upon his couch the veiled Mokanna lay.--The Veiled Prophet.
+
+The autumn sun broke through an apartment in a villa in the
+neighbourhood of London, furnished with the most prodigal yet not
+tasteless attention to luxury and show, within which, beside a table
+strewed with newspapers, letters, and accounts, lay Richard Crauford,
+extended carelessly upon a sofa which might almost have contented the
+Sybarite who quarrelled with a rose-leaf. At his elbow was a bottle
+half emptied and a wineglass just filled. An expression of triumph
+and enjoyment was visible upon his handsome but usually inexpressive
+countenance.
+
+“Well,” said he, taking up a newspaper, “let us read this paragraph
+again. What a beautiful sensation it is to see one’s name in print. ‘We
+understand that Richard Crauford, Esq., M. P. for ----, is to be raised
+to the dignity of the peerage. There does not perhaps exist in the
+country a gentleman more universally beloved and esteemed’ (mark that,
+Dicky Crauford). ‘The invariable generosity with which his immense
+wealth has been employed, his high professional honour, the undeviating
+and consistent integrity of his political career’ (ay, to be sure, it is
+only your honest fools who are inconsistent: no man can deviate who has
+one firm principle, self-interest), ‘his manly and energetic attention
+to the welfare of religion’ (he! he! he!), ‘conjoined to a fortune
+almost incalculable, render this condescension of our gracious Sovereign
+no less judicious than deserved! We hear that the title proposed for the
+new peer is that of Viscount Innisdale, which, we believe, was formerly
+in the noble family of which Mr. Crauford is a distant branch.’
+
+“He! he! he! Bravo! bravo! Viscount Innisdale, noble family, distant
+branch,--the devil I am! What an ignoramus my father was not to know
+that! Why, rest his soul, he never knew who his grandfather was; but the
+world shall not be equally ignorant of that important point. Let me see,
+who shall be Viscount Innisdale’s great-grandfather? Well, well, whoever
+he is, here’s long life to his great-grandson! ‘Incalculable fortune!’
+Ay, ay, I hope at all events it will never be calculated. But now for
+my letters. Bah! this wine is a thought too acid for the cellars of
+Viscount Innisdale! What, another from Mother H----! Dark eyes, small
+mouth, sings like an angel, eighteen! Pish! I am too old for such
+follies now: ‘t is not pretty for Viscount Innisdale. Humph! Lisbon,
+seven hundred pounds five shillings and seven-pence--half-penny, is it,
+or farthing? I must note that down. Loan for King of Prussia. Well, must
+negotiate that to-morrow. Ah, Hockit, the wine-merchant, pipe of claret
+in the docks, vintage of 17--. Bravo! all goes smooth for Viscount
+Innisdale! Pish! from my damnable wife! What a pill for my lordship!
+What says she?”
+
+                        DAWLISH, DEVONSHIRE.
+You have not, my dearest Richard, answered my letters for months. I do
+not, however, presume to complain of your silence; I know well that you
+have a great deal to occupy your time, both in business and pleasure.
+But one little line, dear Richard,--one little line, surely that is not
+too much now and then. I am most truly sorry to trouble you again about
+money; and you must know that I strive to be as saving as possible;
+(“Pish--curse the woman; sent her twenty pounds three months ago!”) but
+I really am so distressed, and the people here are so pressing; and,
+at all events, I cannot bear the thought of your wife being disgraced.
+Pray, forgive me, Richard, and believe how painful it is in me to say so
+much. I know you will answer this! and, oh, do, do tell me how you are.
+
+Ever your affectionate wife, CAROLINE CRAUFORD.
+
+“Was there ever poor man so plagued? Where’s my note book? Mem.--Send
+Car. to-morrow 20 pounds to last her the rest of the year. Mem.--Send
+Mother H----, 100 pounds. Mem.--Pay Hockit’s bill, 830 pounds. Bless me,
+what shall I do with Viscountess Innisdale? Now, if I were not married,
+I would be son-in-law to a duke. Mem.--Go down to Dawlish, and see if
+she won’t die soon. Healthy situation, I fear,--devilish unlucky,--must
+be changed. Mem.--Swamps in Essex. Who’s that?”
+
+A knock at the door disturbed Mr. Crauford in his meditations. He
+started up, hurried the bottle and glass under the sofa, where the
+descending drapery completely hid them; and, taking up a newspaper, said
+in a gentle tone, “Come in.” A small thin man, bowing at every step,
+entered.
+
+“Ah! Bradley, is it you, my good fellow?” said Crauford: “glad to see
+you,--a fine morning: but what brings you from town so early?”
+
+“Why, sir,” answered Mr. Bradley, very obsequiously, “something
+unpleasant has--”
+
+“Merciful Heaven!” cried Crauford, blanched into the whiteness of death,
+and starting up from the sofa with a violence which frightened the
+timid Mr. Bradley to the other end of the room, “the counting-house, the
+books,--all safe?”
+
+“Yes, sir, yes, at present, but--”
+
+“But what, man?”
+
+“Why, honoured sir,” returned Mr. Bradley, bowing to the ground, “your
+partner, Mr. Jessopp, has been very inquisitive about the accounts.
+He says Mr. Da Costa, the Spanish merchant, has been insinuating very
+unpleasant hints, and that he must have a conversation with you at your
+earliest convenience; and when, sir, I ventured to remonstrate about the
+unreasonableness of attending to what Mr. Da Costa said, Mr. Jessopp
+was quite abusive, and declared that there seemed some very mysterious
+communication between you (begging your pardon, sir) and me, and that
+he did not know what business I, who had no share in the firm, had to
+interfere.”
+
+“But,” said Crauford, “you were civil to him; did not reply hotly, eh!
+my good Bradley?”
+
+“Lord forbid, sir; Lord forbid, that I should not know my place better,
+or that I should give an unbecoming word to the partner of my honoured
+benefactor. But, sir, if I dare venture to say so, I think Mr. Jessopp
+is a little jealous or so of you; he seemed quite in a passion at the
+paragraph in the paper about my honoured master’s becoming a lord.”
+
+“Right, honest Bradley, right; he is jealous: we must soothe him. Go, my
+good fellow, go to him with my compliments, and say that I will be with
+him by one. Never fear this business will be easily settled.”
+
+And, bowing himself out of the room, Bradley withdrew. Left alone, a
+dark cloud gathered over the brow of Mr. Crauford.
+
+“I am on a precipice,” thought he; “but if my own brain does not turn
+giddy with the prospect, all yet may be safe. Cruel necessity, that
+obliged me to admit another into the business, that foiled me of
+Mordaunt, and drove me upon this fawning rascal! So, so: I almost think
+there is a Providence, now that Mordaunt has grown rich; but then his
+wife died; ay, ay, God saved him, but the devil killed her. [Dieu a puni
+ce fripon, le diable a noye les autres.--VOLTAIRE: Candide.] He! he! he!
+But, seriously, seriously, there is danger in the very air I breathe! I
+must away to that envious Jessopp instantly; but first let me finish the
+bottle.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIII.
+
+  A strange harmonious inclination
+  Of all degrees to reformation.--Hudibras.
+
+About seven miles from W----, on the main road from ----, there was
+in 17-- a solitary public-house, which by the by is now a magnificent
+hotel. Like many of its brethren in the more courtly vicinity of the
+metropolis, this amoenum hospitium peregrinae gentis then had its
+peculiar renown for certain dainties of the palate; and various in
+degree and character were the numerous parties from the neighbouring
+towns and farms, which upon every legitimate holiday were wont to
+assemble at the mansion of mine host of the Jolly Angler, in order to
+feast upon eel-pie and grow merry over the true Herefordshire cider.
+
+But upon that special day on which we are about to introduce our reader
+into the narrow confines of its common parlour, the said hostelry was
+crowded with persons of a very different description from the peaceable
+idlers who were ordinarily wont to empty mine host’s larder, and forget
+the price of corn over the divine inspirations of pomarial nectar.
+Instead of the indolent, satisfied air of the saturnalian merrymaker,
+the vagrant angler, or the gentleman farmer, with his comely dame who
+“walked in silk attire, and siller had to spare;” instead of the quiet
+yet glad countenances of such hunters of pleasure and eaters of eel-pie,
+or the more obstreperous joy of urchins let loose from school to taste
+some brief and perennial recreation, and mine host’s delicacies at the
+same time; instead of these, the little parlour presented a various and
+perturbed group, upon whose features neither eel-pie nor Herefordshire
+cider had wrought the relaxation of a holiday or the serenity of a
+momentary content.
+
+The day to which we now refer was the one immediately preceding that
+appointed for the far-famed meeting at W----; and many of the patriots,
+false or real, who journeyed from a distance to attend that rendezvous,
+had halted at our host’s of the Jolly Angler, both as being within a
+convenient space from the appointed spot, and as a tabernacle where
+promiscuous intrusion and (haply) immoderate charges were less likely to
+occur than at the bustling and somewhat extraordinary hotels and inns of
+the town of W----.
+
+The times in which this meeting was held were those of great popular
+excitement and discontent; and the purport of the meeting proposed was
+to petition Parliament against the continuance of the American war and
+the King against the continuance of his ministers.
+
+Placards of an unusually inflammatory and imprudent nature had
+given great alarm to the more sober and well-disposed persons in the
+neighbourhood of W----; and so much fear was felt or assumed upon the
+occasion that a new detachment of Lord Ulswater’s regiment had been
+especially ordered into the town; and it was generally rumoured that the
+legal authorities would interfere, even by force, for the dispersion
+of the meeting in question. These circumstances had given the measure a
+degree of general and anxious interest which it would not otherwise
+have excited; and while everybody talked of the danger of attending the
+assembly, everybody resolved to thrust himself into it.
+
+It was about the goodly hour of noon, and the persons assembled were
+six in number, all members of the most violent party, and generally
+considered by friend and foe as embracers of republican tenets. One of
+these, a little, oily, corpulent personage, would have appeared far
+too sleek and well fed for a disturber of things existing, had not a
+freckled, pimpled, and fiery face, a knit brow, and a small black eye of
+intolerable fierceness belied the steady and contented appearance of his
+frame and girth. This gentleman, by name Christopher Culpepper, spoke in
+a quick, muffled, shuffling sort of tone, like the pace of a Welsh pony,
+somewhat lame, perfectly broken-winded, but an exemplary ambler for all
+that.
+
+Next to him sat, with hands clasped over his knees, a thin, small man,
+with a countenance prematurely wrinkled and an air of great dejection.
+Poor Castleton! his had been, indeed, the bitter lot of a man, honest
+but weak, who attaches himself, heart and soul, to a public cause which,
+in his life at least, is hopeless. Three other men were sitting by
+the open window, disputing, with the most vehement gestures, upon
+the character of Wilkes; and at the other window, alone, silent, and
+absorbed, sat a man whose appearance and features were singularly
+calculated to arrest and to concentrate attention. His raven hair,
+grizzled with the first advance of age, still preserved its strong, wiry
+curl and luxuriant thickness. His brows, large, bushy, and indicative of
+great determination, met over eyes which at that moment were fixed
+upon vacancy with a look of thought and calmness very unusual to their
+ordinary restless and rapid glances. His mouth, that great seat of
+character, was firmly and obstinately shut; and though, at the first
+observation, its downward curve and iron severity wore the appearance
+of unmitigated harshness, disdain, and resolve, yet a more attentive
+deducer of signs from features would not have been able to detect in its
+expression anything resembling selfishness or sensuality, and in
+that absence would have found sufficient to redeem the more repellent
+indications of mind which it betrayed.
+
+Presently the door was opened, and the landlord, making some apology
+to both parties for having no other apartment unoccupied, introduced a
+personage whose dress and air, as well as a kind of saddle-bag, which he
+would not intrust to any other bearer than himself, appeared to denote
+him as one rather addicted to mercantile than political speculations.
+Certainly he did not seem much at home among the patriotic reformers,
+who, having glared upon him for a single moment, renewed, without
+remark, their several attitudes or occupations.
+
+The stranger, after a brief pause, approached the solitary reformer
+whom we last described; and making a salutation, half timorous and half
+familiar, thus accosted him,--
+
+“Your servant, Mr. Wolfe, your servant. I think I had the pleasure of
+hearing you a long time ago at the Westminster election: very eloquent
+you were, sir, very!”
+
+Wolfe looked up for an instant at the face of the speaker, and, not
+recognizing it, turned abruptly away, threw open the window, and,
+leaning out, appeared desirous of escaping from all further intrusion on
+the part of the stranger; but that gentleman was by no means of a nature
+easily abashed.
+
+“Fine day, sir, for the time of year; very fine day, indeed. October
+is a charming month, as my lamented friend and customer, the late Lady
+Waddilove, was accustomed to say. Talking of that, sir, as the winter
+is now approaching, do you not think it would be prudent, Mr. Wolfe, to
+provide yourself with an umbrella? I have an admirable one which I might
+dispose of: it is from the effects of the late Lady Waddilove. ‘Brown,’
+said her ladyship, a short time before her death, ‘Brown, you are a good
+creature; but you ask too much for the Dresden vase. We have known each
+other a long time; you must take fourteen pounds ten shillings, and you
+may have that umbrella in the corner into the bargain.’ Mr. Wolfe,
+the bargain was completed, and the umbrella became mine: it may now be
+yours.”
+
+And so saying, Mr. Brown, depositing his saddle-bag on the ground,
+proceeded to unfold an umbrella of singular antiquity and form,--a very
+long stick, tipped with ivory, being surmounted with about a quarter of
+a yard of sea-green silk, somewhat discoloured by time and wear.
+
+“It is a beautiful article, sir,” said Mr. Brown, admiringly surveying
+it: “is it not?”
+
+“Pshaw!” said Wolfe, impatiently, “what have I to do with your goods
+and chattels? Go and palm the cheatings and impositions of your pitiful
+trade upon some easier gull.”
+
+“Cheatings and impositions, Mr. Wolfe!” cried the slandered Brown,
+perfectly aghast; “I would have you to know, sir, that I have served the
+first families in the country, ay, and in this county too, and never had
+such words applied to me before. Sir, there was the late Lady Waddilove,
+and the respected Mrs. Minden, and her nephew the ambassador, and the
+Duchess of Pugadale, and Mr. Mordaunt of Mordaunt Court, poor gentleman,
+though he is poor no more,” and Mr. Brown proceeded to enumerate the
+long list of his customers.
+
+Now, we have stated that Wolfe, though he had never known the rank of
+Mordaunt, was acquainted with his real name, and, as the sound caught
+his ear, he muttered, “Mordaunt, Mordaunt, ay, but not my former
+acquaintance,--not him who was called Glendower. No, no: the man cannot
+mean him.”
+
+“Yes, sir, but I do mean him,” cried Brown, in a rage. “I do mean
+that Mr. Glendower, who afterwards took another name, but whose real
+appellation is Mr. Algernon Mordaunt of Mordaunt Court, in this county,
+sir.”
+
+“What description of man is he?” said Wolfe; “rather tall, slender, with
+an air and mien like a king’s, I was going to say, but better than a
+king’s, like a freeman’s?”
+
+“Ay, ay--the same,” answered Mr. Brown, sullenly; “but why should I tell
+you? ‘Cheating and imposition,’ indeed! I am sure my word can be of no
+avail to you; and I sha’ n’t stay here any longer to be insulted, Mr.
+Wolfe, which, I am sure, talking of freemen, no freeman ought to submit
+to; but as the late Lady Waddilove once very wisely said to me, ‘Brown,
+never have anything to do with those republicans: they are the worst
+tyrants of all.’ Good morning, Mr. Wolfe; gentlemen, your servant;
+‘cheating and imposition,’ indeed! and Mr. Brown banged the door as he
+departed.
+
+“Wolfe,” said Mr. Christopher Culpepper, “who is that man?”
+
+“I know not,” answered the republican, laconically, and gazing on the
+ground, apparently in thought.
+
+“He has the air of a slave,” quoth the free Culpepper, and slaves cannot
+bear the company of freemen; therefore he did right to go, whe-w! Had
+we a proper and thorough and efficient reform, human nature would not
+be thus debased by trades and callings and barters and exchange, for
+all professions are injurious to the character and the dignity of man,
+whe-w! but, as I shall prove upon the hustings to-morrow, it is in vain
+to hope for any amendment in the wretched state of things until the
+people of these realms are fully, freely, and fairly represented, whe-w!
+Gentlemen, it is past two, and we have not ordered dinner, whe-w!” (N.
+B.--This ejaculation denotes the kind of snuffle which lent peculiar
+energy to the dicta of Mr. Culpepper.)
+
+“Ring the bell, then, and summon the landlord,” said, very pertinently,
+one of the three disputants upon the character of Wilkes.
+
+The landlord appeared; dinner was ordered.
+
+“Pray,” said Wolfe, “has that man, Mr. Brown I think he called himself,
+left the inn?”
+
+“He has, sir, for he was mightily offended at something which--”
+
+“And,” interrupted Wolfe, “how far hence does Mr. Mordaunt live?”
+
+“About five miles on the other side of W----,” answered mine host.
+
+Wolfe rose, seized his hat, and was about to depart.
+
+“Stay, stay,” cried citizen Christopher Culpepper; “you will not leave
+us till after dinner?”
+
+“I shall dine at W----,” answered Wolfe, quitting the room.
+
+“Then our reckoning will be heavier,” said Culpepper. “It is not
+handsome in Wolfe to leave us, whe-w! Really I think that our brother
+in the great cause has of late relaxed in his attentions and zeal to the
+goddess of our devotions, whe-w!”
+
+“It is human nature!” cried one of the three disputants upon the
+character of Wilkes.
+
+“It is not human nature!” cried the second disputant, folding his arms
+doggedly, in preparation for a discussion.
+
+“Contemptible human nature!” exclaimed the third disputant,
+soliloquizing with a supercilious expression of hateful disdain.
+
+“Poor human nature!” murmured Castleton, looking upward with a sigh; and
+though we have not given to that gentleman other words than these, we
+think they are almost sufficient to let our readers into his character.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIV.
+
+               Silvis, ubi passim
+  Palantes error certo de tramite pellit,
+  Ille sinistrorsum, hic dextrorsum abit; unus utrique
+  Error, sed variis illudit partibus.--HORACE.
+
+  [“Wandering in those woods where error evermore forces life’s
+  stragglers from the beaten path,--this one deflects to the left,
+  his fellow chooses the exact contrary. The fault is all the same
+  in each, but it excuses itself by a thousand different reasons.”]
+
+As Wolfe strode away from the inn, he muttered to himself,--
+
+“Can it be that Mordaunt has suddenly grown rich? If so, I rejoice at
+it. True, that he was not for our cause, but he had the spirit and the
+heart which belonged to it. Had he not been bred among the prejudices
+of birth, or had he lived in stormier times, he might have been the
+foremost champion of freedom. As it is, I rather lament than condemn.
+Yet I would fain see him once more. Perhaps prosperity may have altered
+his philosophy. But can he, indeed, be the same Mordaunt of whom that
+trading itinerant spoke? Can he have risen to the pernicious eminence of
+a landed aristocrat? Well, it is worth the journey; for if he have
+power in the neighbourhood, I am certain that he will exert it for our
+protection; and, at the worst, I shall escape from the idle words of my
+compatriots. Oh! if it were possible that the advocates could debase
+the glory of the cause, how long since should I have flinched from the
+hardship and the service to which my life is devoted! Self-interest;
+Envy, that snarls at all above it, without even the beast’s courage
+to bite; Folly, that knows not the substance of Freedom, but loves
+the glitter of its name; Fear, that falters; Crime, that seeks in
+licentiousness an excuse; Disappointment, only craving occasion to rail;
+Hatred; Sourness, boasting of zeal, but only venting the blackness of
+rancour and evil passion,--all these make our adherents, and give our
+foes the handle and the privilege to scorn and to despise. But man
+chooses the object, and Fate only furnishes the tools. Happy for our
+posterity, that when the object is once gained, the frailty of the tools
+will be no more!”
+
+Thus soliloquizing, the republican walked rapidly onwards, till a turn
+of the road brought before his eye the form of Mr. Brown, seated upon a
+little rough pony, and “whistling as he went for want of thought.”
+
+Wolfe quickened his pace, and soon overtook him.
+
+“You must forgive me, my good man,” said he, soothingly; “I meant not to
+impeach your honesty or your calling. Perhaps I was hasty and peevish;
+and, in sad earnest, I have much to tease and distract me.”
+
+“Well, sir, well,” answered Mr. Brown, greatly mollified; “I am sure no
+Christian can be more forgiving than I am; and, since you are sorry
+for what you were pleased to say, let us think no more about it. But
+touching the umbrella, Mr. Wolfe, have you a mind for that interesting
+and useful relic of the late Lady Waddilove?”
+
+“Not at present, I thank you,” said Wolfe, mildly; “I care little for
+the inclemencies of the heavens, and you may find many to whom your
+proffered defence from them may be more acceptable. But tell me if
+the Mr. Mordaunt you mentioned was ever residing in town, and in very
+indifferent circumstances?”
+
+“Probably he was,” said the cautious Brown, who, as we before said, had
+been bribed into silence, and who now grievously repented that passion
+had betrayed him into the imprudence of candour; “but I really do not
+busy myself about other people’s affairs. ‘Brown,’ said the late Lady
+Waddilove to me, ‘Brown, you are a good creature, and never talk of what
+does not concern you.’ Those, Mr. Wolfe, were her ladyship’s own words.”
+
+“As you please,” said the reformer, who did not want shrewdness, and saw
+that his point was already sufficiently gained; “as you please. And now,
+to change the subject, I suppose we shall have your attendance at the
+meeting at W---- to-morrow?”
+
+“Ay,” replied the worthy Brown: “I thought it likely I should meet many
+of my old customers in the town on such a busy occasion; so I went a
+little out of my way home to London, in order to spend a night or two
+there. Indeed, I have some valuable articles for Mr. Glumford, the
+magistrate, who will be in attendance to-morrow.”
+
+“They say,” observed Wolfe, “that the magistrates, against all law,
+right, and custom, will dare to interfere with and resist the meeting.
+Think you report says true?”
+
+“Nay,” returned Brown, prudently, “I cannot exactly pretend to decide
+the question: all I know is that Squire Glumford said to me, at his own
+house, five days ago, as he was drawing on his boots, ‘Brown,’ said he,
+‘Brown, mark my words, we shall do for those rebellious dogs!’”
+
+“Did he say so?” muttered Wolfe, between his teeth. “Oh, for the old
+times, or those yet to come, when our answer would have been, or shall
+be, the sword!”
+
+“And you know,” pursued Mr. Brown, “that Lord Ulswater and his regiment
+are in town, and have even made great preparations against the meeting a
+week ago.”
+
+“I have heard this,” said Wolfe; “but I cannot think that any body of
+armed men dare interrupt or attack a convocation of peaceable subjects,
+met solely to petition Parliament against famine for themselves and
+slavery for their children.”
+
+“Famine!” quoth Mr. Brown. “Indeed it is very true, very! times are
+dreadfully bad. I can scarcely get my own living; Parliament certainly
+ought to do something: but you must forgive me, Mr. Wolfe; it may be
+dangerous to talk with you on these matters; and, now I think of it, the
+sooner I get to W---- the better; good morning; a shower’s coming on.
+You won’t have the umbrella, then?”
+
+“They dare not,” said Wolfe to himself, “no, no,--they dare not attack
+us; they dare not;” and clenching his fist, he pursued, with a quicker
+step, and a more erect mien, his solitary way.
+
+When he was about the distance of three miles from W----, he was
+overtaken by a middle-aged man of a frank air and a respectable
+appearance. “Good day, sir,” said he; “we seem to be journeying the same
+way: will it be against your wishes to join company?”
+
+Wolfe assented, and the stranger resumed:--
+
+“I suppose, sir, you intend to be present at the meeting at W----
+to-morrow? There will be an immense concourse, and the entrance of a
+new detachment of soldiers, and the various reports of the likelihood of
+their interference with the assembly, make it an object of some interest
+and anxiety to look forward to.”
+
+“True, true,” said Wolfe, slowly, eying his new acquaintance with a
+deliberate and scrutinizing attention. “It will, indeed, be interesting
+to see how far an evil and hardy government will venture to encroach
+upon the rights of the people, which it ruins while it pretends to
+rule.”
+
+“Of a truth,” rejoined the other, “I rejoice that I am no politician.
+I believe my spirit is as free as any cooped in the narrow dungeon of
+earth’s clay can well be; yet I confess that it has drawn none of its
+liberty from book, pamphlet, speech, or newspaper, of modern times.”
+
+“So much the worse for you, sir,” said Wolfe, sourly: “the man who has
+health and education can find no excuse for supineness or indifference
+to that form of legislation by which his country decays or prospers.”
+
+“Why,” said the other, gayly, “I willingly confess myself less of a
+patriot than a philosopher; and as long as I am harmless, I strive
+very little to be useful, in a public capacity; in a private one, as a
+father, a husband, and a neighbour, I trust I am not utterly without my
+value.”
+
+“Pish!” cried Wolfe; “let no man who forgets his public duties prate of
+his private merits. I tell you, man, that he who can advance by a single
+hair’s-breadth the happiness or the freedom of mankind has done more to
+save his own soul than if he had paced every step of the narrow circle
+of his domestic life with the regularity of clockwork.”
+
+“You may be right,” quoth the stranger, carelessly; “but I look on
+things in the mass, and perhaps see only the superficies, while you,
+I perceive already, are a lover of the abstract. For my part, Harry
+Fielding’s two definitions seem to me excellent. ‘Patriot,--a candidate
+for a place!’ ‘Politics,--the art of getting such a place!’ Perhaps,
+sir, as you seem a man of education, you remember the words of our great
+novelist.”
+
+“No!” answered Wolfe, a little contemptuously; “I cannot say that I
+burden my memory with the deleterious witticisms and shallow remarks of
+writers of fancy. It has been a mighty and spreading evil to the world
+that the vain fictions of the poets or the exaggerations of novelists
+have been hitherto so welcomed and extolled. Better had it been for us
+if the destruction of the lettered wealth at Alexandria had included all
+the lighter works which have floated, from their very levity, down the
+stream of time, an example and a corruption to the degraded geniuses of
+later days.”
+
+The eyes of the stranger sparkled. “Why, you outgoth the Goth!”
+ exclaimed he, sharply. “But you surely preach against what you have not
+studied. Confess that you are but slightly acquainted with Shakspeare,
+and Spenser, and noble Dan Chaucer. Ay, if you knew them as well as I
+do, you would, like me, give--
+
+  ‘To hem faith and full credence,
+   And in your heart have hem in reverence.’”
+
+“Pish!” again muttered Wolfe; and then rejoined aloud, “It grieves me to
+see time so wasted, and judgment so perverted, as yours appears to have
+been; but it fills me with pity and surprise, as well as grief, to find
+that, so far from shame at the effeminacy of your studies, you appear to
+glory and exult in them.”
+
+“May the Lord help me, and lighten thee,” said Cole; for it was he.
+“You are at least not a novelty in human wisdom, whatever you may be in
+character; for you are far from the only one proud of being ignorant,
+and pitying those who are not so.”
+
+Wolfe darted one of his looks of fire at the speaker, who, nothing
+abashed, met the glance with an eye, if not as fiery, at least as bold.
+
+“I see,” said the republican, “that we shall not agree upon the topics
+you have started. If you still intrude your society upon me, you will,
+at least, choose some other subject of conversation.”
+
+“Pardon me,” said Cole, whose very studies, while they had excited, in
+their self-defence, his momentary warmth, made him habitually courteous
+and urbane, “pardon me for my hastiness of expression. I own myself in
+fault.” And, with this apology, our ex-king slid into the new topics
+which the scenery and the weather afforded him.
+
+Wolfe, bent upon the object of his present mission, made some inquiries
+respecting Mordaunt; and though Cole only shared the uncertain
+information of the country gossips as to the past history of that
+person, yet the little he did know was sufficient to confirm the
+republican in his belief of Algernon’s identity; while the ex-gypsy’s
+account of his rank and reputation in the country made Wolfe doubly
+anxious to secure, if possible, his good offices and interference on
+behalf of the meeting. But the conversation was not always restricted to
+neutral and indifferent ground, but ever and anon wandered into
+various allusions or opinions from the one, certain to beget retort or
+controversy in the other.
+
+Had we time and our reader patience, it would have been a rare and fine
+contrast to have noted more at large the differences of thought and
+opinion between the companions: each in his several way so ardent for
+liberty, and so impatient of the control and customs of society; each
+so enthusiastic for the same object, yet so coldly contemptuous to the
+enthusiasm of the other. The one guided only by his poetical and
+erratic tastes, the other solely by dreams, seeming to the world no less
+baseless, yet, to his own mind, bearing the name of stern judgment and
+inflexible truth. Both men of active and adventurous spirits, to whom
+forms were fetters and ceremonies odious; yet, deriving from that
+mutual similarity only pity for mutual perversion, they were memorable
+instances of the great differences congeniality itself will occasion,
+and of the never-ending varieties which minds, rather under the
+influence of imagination than judgment, will create.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXV.
+
+  Gratis anhelans, multa agendo, nihil agens.--PHAEDRUS.
+  [“Panting and labouring in vain; doing much,--effecting nothing.”]
+
+Upon entering the town, the streets displayed all the bustle and
+excitement which the approaching meeting was eminently calculated to
+create in a place ordinarily quiescent and undisturbed: groups of men
+were scattered in different parts, conversing with great eagerness;
+while here and there some Demosthenes of the town, impatient of the
+coming strife, was haranguing his little knot of admiring friends,
+and preparing his oratorical organs by petty skirmishing for the grand
+battle of the morrow. Now and then the eye roved upon the gaunt forms
+of Lord Ulswater’s troopers, as they strolled idly along the streets, in
+pairs, perfectly uninterested by the great event which set all the
+more peaceable inmates of the town in a ferment, and returning, with
+a slighting and supercilious glance, the angry looks and muttered
+anathemas which, ever and anon, the hardier spirits of the petitioning
+party liberally bestowed upon them.
+
+As Wolfe and his comrade entered the main street, the former was
+accosted by some one of his compatriots, who, seizing him by the arm,
+was about to apprise the neighbouring idlers, by a sudden exclamation,
+of the welcome entrance of the eloquent and noted republican. But Wolfe
+perceived and thwarted his design.
+
+“Hush!” said he, in a low voice; “I am only now on my way to an old
+friend, who seems a man of influence in these parts, and may be of avail
+to us on the morrow; keep silence, therefore, with regard to my coming
+till I return. I would not have my errand interrupted.”
+
+“As you will,” said the brother spirit: “but whom have you here,
+a fellow-labourer?” and the reformer pointed to Cole, who, with an
+expression of shrewd humour, blended with a sort of philosophical
+compassion, stood at a little distance waiting for Wolfe, and eying the
+motley groups assembled before him.
+
+“No,” answered Wolfe; “he is some vain and idle sower of unprofitable
+flowers; a thing who loves poetry, and, for aught I know, writes it: but
+that reminds me that I must rid myself of his company; yet stay; do you
+know this neighbourhood sufficiently to serve me as a guide?”
+
+“Ay,” quoth the other; “I was born within three miles of the town.”
+
+“Indeed!” rejoined Wolfe; “then perhaps you can tell me if there is any
+way of reaching a place called Mordaunt Court without passing through
+the more public and crowded thoroughfares.”
+
+“To be sure,” rejoined the brother spirit; “you have only to turn to the
+right up yon hill, and you will in an instant be out of the purlieus
+and precincts of W----, and on your shortest road to Mordaunt Court; but
+surely it is not to its owner that you are bound?”
+
+“And why not?” said Wolfe.
+
+“Because,” replied the other, “he is the wealthiest, the highest, and,
+as report says, the haughtiest aristocrat of these parts.”
+
+“So much the better, then,” said Wolfe, “can he aid us in obtaining a
+quiet hearing to-morrow, undisturbed by those liveried varlets of hire,
+who are termed, in sooth, Britain’s defence! Much better, when we think
+of all they cost us to pamper and to clothe, should they be termed
+Britain’s ruin: but farewell for the present; we shall meet to-night;
+your lodgings--?”
+
+“Yonder,” said the other, pointing to a small inn opposite; and Wolfe,
+nodding his adieu, returned to Cole, whose vivacious and restless nature
+had already made him impatient of his companion’s delay.
+
+“I must take my leave of you now,” said Wolfe, “which I do with a hearty
+exhortation that you will change your studies, fit only for effeminate
+and enslaved minds.”
+
+“And I return the exhortation,” answered Cole. “Your studies seem to me
+tenfold more crippling than mine: mine take all this earth’s restraints
+from me, and yours seem only to remind you that all earth is restraint:
+mine show me whatever worlds the fondest fancy could desire; yours only
+the follies and chains of this. In short, while ‘my mind to me a kingdom
+is,’ yours seems to consider the whole universe itself nothing but
+a great meeting for the purpose of abusing ministers and demanding
+reform!”
+
+Not too well pleased by this answer, and at the same time indisposed to
+the delay of further reply, Wolfe contented himself with an iron
+sneer of disdain, and, turning on his heel, strode rapidly away in the
+direction his friend had indicated.
+
+Meanwhile, Cole followed him with his eye till he was out of sight,
+and then muttered to himself, “Never was there a fitter addition to old
+Barclay’s ‘Ship of Fools’! I should not wonder if this man’s patriotism
+leads him from despising the legislature into breaking the law;
+and, faith, the surest way to the gallows is less through vice than
+discontent: yet I would fain hope better things for him; for, methinks,
+he is neither a common declaimer nor an ordinary man.”
+
+With these words the honest Cole turned away, and, strolling towards the
+Golden Fleece, soon found himself in the hospitable mansion of Mistress
+and Mister Merrylack.
+
+While the ex-king was taking his ease at his inn, Wolfe proceeded
+to Mordaunt Court. The result of the meeting that there ensued was a
+determination on the part of Algernon to repair immediately to W----.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXVI.
+
+  The commons here in Kent are up in arms.--Second Part of Henry VI.
+
+When Mordaunt arrived at W----, he found that the provincial deities
+(who were all assembled at dinner with the principal inhabitants of the
+town), in whose hands the fate of the meeting was placed, were in great
+doubt and grievous consternation. He came in time, first to balance the
+votes, and ultimately to decide them. His mind, prudent and acute, when
+turned to worldly affairs, saw at a glance the harmless though noisy
+nature of the meeting; and he felt that the worst course the government
+or the county could pursue would be to raise into importance, by
+violence, what otherwise would meet with ridicule from most and
+indifference from the rest.
+
+His large estates, his ancient name, his high reputation for talent,
+joined to that manner, half eloquent and half commanding, which rarely
+fails of effect when deliberation only requires a straw on either side
+to become decision,--all these rendered his interference of immediate
+avail; and it was settled that the meeting should, as similar assemblies
+had done before, proceed and conclude, undisturbed by the higher powers,
+so long as no positive act of sedition to the government or danger to
+the town was committed.
+
+Scarcely was this arrangement agreed upon, before Lord Ulswater, who had
+hitherto been absent, entered the room in which the magisterial conclave
+was assembled. Mr. Glumford (whom our readers will possibly remember as
+the suitor to Isabel St. Leger, and who had at first opposed, and then
+reluctantly subscribed to, Mordaunt’s interference) bustled up to him.
+
+“So, so, my lord,” said he, “since I had the honour of seeing your
+lordship, quite a new sort of trump has been turned up.”
+
+“I do not comprehend your metaphorical elegances of speech, Mr.
+Glumford,” said Lord Ulswater.
+
+Mr. Glumford explained. Lord Ulswater’s cheek grew scarlet. “So Mr.
+Mordaunt has effected this wise alteration,” said he.
+
+“Nobody else, my lord, nobody else: and I am sure, though your
+lordship’s estates are at the other end of the county, yet they are much
+larger than his; and since your lordship has a troop at your command,
+and that sort of thing, I would not, if I were your lordship, suffer any
+such opposition to your wishes.”
+
+Without making a reply to this harangue, Lord Ulswater stalked haughtily
+up to Mordaunt, who was leaning against the wainscot and conversing with
+those around him.
+
+“I cannot but conceive, Mr. Mordaunt,” said he, with a formal bow, “that
+I have been misinformed in the intelligence I have just received.”
+
+“Lord Ulswater will perhaps inform me to what intelligence he alludes.”
+
+“That Mr. Mordaunt, the representative of one of the noblest families in
+England, has given the encouragement and influence of his name and rank
+to the designs of a seditious and turbulent mob.”
+
+Mordaunt smiled slightly, as he replied, “Your lordship rightly believes
+that you are misinformed. It is precisely because I would not have the
+mob you speak of seditious or turbulent that I have made it my
+request that the meeting of to-morrow should be suffered to pass off
+undisturbed.”
+
+“Then, sir,” cried Lord Ulswater, striking the table with a violence
+which caused three reverend potentates of the province to start back
+in dismay, “I cannot but consider such interference on your part to the
+last degree impolitic and uncalled for: these, sir, are times of great
+danger to the State, and in which it is indispensably requisite to
+support and strengthen the authority of the law.”
+
+“I waive, at present,” answered Mordaunt, “all reply to language neither
+courteous nor appropriate. I doubt not but that the magistrates will
+decide as is most in accordance with the spirit of that law which, in
+this and in all times, should be supported.”
+
+“Sir,” said Lord Ulswater, losing his temper more and more, as he
+observed that the bystanders, whom he had been accustomed to awe, all
+visibly inclined to the opinion of Mordaunt, “sir, if your name has been
+instrumental in producing so unfortunate a determination on the part
+of the magistrates, I shall hold you responsible to the government for
+those results which ordinary prudence may calculate upon.”
+
+“When Lord Ulswater,” said Mordaunt, sternly, “has learned what is
+due not only to the courtesies of society, but to those legitimate
+authorities of his country, who (he ventures to suppose) are to be
+influenced contrary to their sense of duty by any individual, then he
+may perhaps find leisure to make himself better acquainted with the
+nature of those laws which he now so vehemently upholds.”
+
+“Mr. Mordaunt, you will consider yourself answerable to me for those
+words,” said Lord Ulswater, with a tone of voice unnaturally calm; and
+the angry flush of his countenance gave place to a livid paleness. Then,
+turning on his heel, he left the room.
+
+As he repaired homeward he saw one of his soldiers engaged in a loud
+and angry contest with a man in the plain garb of a peaceful citizen; a
+third person, standing by, appeared ineffectually endeavouring to pacify
+the disputants. A rigid disciplinarian, Lord Ulswater allowed not even
+party feeling, roused as it was, to conquer professional habits. He
+called off the soldier, and the man with whom the latter had been
+engaged immediately came up to Lord Ulswater, with a step as haughty as
+his own. The third person, who had attempted the peacemaker, followed
+him.
+
+“I presume, sir,” said he, “that you are an officer of this man’s
+regiment.”
+
+“I am the commanding officer, sir,” said Lord Ulswater, very little
+relishing the air and tone of the person who addressed him.
+
+“Then,” answered the man (who was, indeed, no other than Wolfe, who,
+having returned to W---- with Mordaunt, had already succeeded in
+embroiling himself in a dispute), “then, sir, I look to you for his
+punishment and my redress;” and Wolfe proceeded in his own exaggerated
+language to detail a very reasonable cause of complaint. The fact was
+that Wolfe, meeting one of his compatriots and conversing with him
+somewhat loudly, had uttered some words which attracted the spleen of
+the soldier, who was reeling home very comfortably intoxicated; and the
+soldier had most assuredly indulged in a copious abuse of the d--d rebel
+who could not walk the streets without chattering sedition.
+
+Wolfe’s friend confirmed the statement.
+
+The trooper attempted to justify himself; but Lord Ulswater saw his
+intoxication in an instant, and, secretly vexed that the complaint was
+not on the other side, ordered the soldier to his quarters, with a brief
+but sure threat of punishment on the morrow. Not willing, however, to
+part with the “d--d rebel” on terms so flattering to the latter, Lord
+Ulswater, turning to Wolfe with a severe and angry air, said,--
+
+“As for you, fellow, I believe the whole fault was on your side; and if
+you dare again give vent to your disaffected ravings, I shall have you
+sent to prison to tame your rank blood upon bread and water. Begone, and
+think yourself fortunate to escape now!”
+
+The fierce spirit of Wolfe was in arms on the instant; and his reply, in
+subjecting him to Lord Ulswater’s threat, might at least have prevented
+his enlightening the public on the morrow, had not his friend, a
+peaceable, prudent man, seized him by the arm, and whispered, “What
+are you about? Consider for what you are here: another word may rob the
+assembly of your presence. A man bent on a public cause must not, on the
+eve of its trial, enlist in a private quarrel.”
+
+“True, my friend, true,” said Wolfe, swallowing his rage and eying Lord
+Ulswater’s retreating figure with a menacing look; “but the time may yet
+come when I shall have license to retaliate on the upstart.”
+
+“So be it,” quoth the other; “he is our bitterest enemy. You know,
+perhaps, that he is Lord Ulswater of the ---- regiment? It has been at
+his instigation that the magistrates proposed to disturb the meeting. He
+has been known publicly to say that all who attended the assembly ought
+to be given up to the swords of his troopers.”
+
+“The butchering dastard, to dream even of attacking unarmed men: but
+enough of him; I must tarry yet in the street to hear what success our
+intercessor has obtained.” And as Wolfe passed the house in which the
+magisterial conclave sat, Mordaunt came out and accosted him.
+
+“You have sworn to me that your purpose is peaceable.” said Mordaunt.
+
+“Unquestionably,” answered Wolfe.
+
+“And you will pledge yourself that no disturbance, that can either be
+effected or counteracted by yourself and friends, shall take place?”
+
+“I will.”
+
+“Enough!” answered Mordaunt. “Remember that if you commit the least act
+that can be thought dangerous I may not be able to preserve you from the
+military. As it is, your meeting will be unopposed.”
+
+Contrary to Lord Ulswater’s prediction, the meeting went off as quietly
+as an elderly maiden’s tea-party. The speakers, even Wolfe, not only
+took especial pains to recommend order and peace, but avoided, for the
+most part, all inflammatory enlargement upon the grievances of which
+they complained. And the sage foreboders of evil, who had locked up
+their silver spoons, and shaken their heads very wisely for the last
+week, had the agreeable mortification of observing rather an appearance
+of good humour upon the countenances of the multitude than that
+ferocious determination against the lives and limbs of the well-affected
+which they had so sorrowfully anticipated.
+
+As Mordaunt (who had been present during the whole time of the meeting)
+mounted his horse and quitted the ground, Lord Ulswater, having just
+left his quarters, where he had been all day in expectation of some
+violent act of the orators or the mob demanding his military services,
+caught sight of him with a sudden recollection of his own passionate
+threat. There had been nothing in Mordaunt’s words which would in our
+times have justified a challenge; but in that day duels were fought upon
+the slightest provocation. Lord Ulswater therefore rode up at once to
+a gentleman with whom he had some intimate acquaintance, and briefly
+saying that he had been insulted both as an officer and gentleman by Mr.
+Mordaunt, requested his friend to call upon that gentleman and demand
+satisfaction.
+
+“To-morrow,” said Lord Ulswater, “I have the misfortune to be
+unavoidably engaged. The next day you can appoint place and time of
+meeting.”
+
+“I must first see the gentleman to whom Mr. Mordaunt may refer me,” said
+the friend, prudently; “and perhaps your honour may be satisfied without
+any hostile meeting at all.”
+
+“I think not,” said Lord Ulswater, carelessly, as he rode away; “for Mr.
+Mordaunt is a gentleman, and gentlemen never apologize.”
+
+Wolfe was standing unobserved near Lord Ulswater while the latter thus
+instructed his proposed second. “Man of blood,” muttered the republican;
+“with homicide thy code of honour, and massacre thine interpretation of
+law, by violence wouldst thou rule, and by violence mayst thou perish!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXVII.
+
+  Jam te premet nox, fabulaeque Manes,
+  Et domus exilis Plutonis.--HORACE.
+
+  [“This very hour Death shall overcome thee, and the fabled Manes,
+  and the shadowy Plutonian realms receive thee.”]
+
+The morning was dull and heavy as Lord Ulswater mounted his horse,
+and unattended took his way towards Westborough Park. His manner was
+unusually thoughtful and absent; perhaps two affairs upon his hands,
+either of which seemed likely to end in bloodshed, were sufficient to
+bring reflection even to the mind of a cavalry officer.
+
+He had scarcely got out of the town before he was overtaken by our
+worthy friend Mr. Glumford. As he had been a firm ally of Lord Ulswater
+in the contest respecting the meeting, so, when he joined and saluted
+that nobleman, Lord Ulswater, mindful of past services, returned his
+greeting with an air rather of condescension than hauteur. To say truth,
+his lordship was never very fond of utter loneliness, and the respectful
+bearing of Glumford, joined to that mutual congeniality which sympathy
+in political views always occasions, made him more pleased with the
+society than shocked with the intrusion of the squire; so that when
+Glumford said, “If your lordship’s way lies along this road for the next
+five or six miles, perhaps you will allow me the honour of accompanying
+you,” Lord Ulswater graciously signified his consent to the proposal,
+and carelessly mentioning that he was going to Westborough Park, slid
+into that conversation with his new companion which the meeting and its
+actors afforded.
+
+Turn we for an instant to Clarence. At the appointed hour he had arrived
+at Westborough Park, and, bidding his companion, the trusty Wardour,
+remain within the chaise which had conveyed them, he was ushered with
+a trembling heart, but a mien erect and self-composed, into Lady
+Westborough’s presence; the marchioness was alone.
+
+“I am sensible, sir,” said she, with a little embarrassment, “that it is
+not exactly becoming to my station and circumstances to suffer a meeting
+of the present nature between Lord Ulswater and yourself to be held
+within this house; but I could not resist the request of Lord Ulswater,
+conscious from his character that it could contain nothing detrimental
+to the--to the consideration and delicacy due to Lady Flora Ardenne.”
+
+Clarence bowed. “So far as I am concerned,” said he, “I feel confident
+that Lady Westborough will not repent of her condescension.”
+
+There was a pause.
+
+“It is singular,” said Lady Westborough, looking to the clock upon an
+opposite table, “that Lord Ulswater has not yet arrived.”
+
+“It is,” said Clarence, scarcely conscious of his words, and wondering
+whether Lady Flora would deign to appear. Another pause. Lady
+Westborough felt the awkwardness of her situation.
+
+Clarence made an effort to recover himself.
+
+“I do not see,” said he, “the necessity of delaying the explanation I
+have to offer to your ladyship till my Lord Ulswater deems it suitable
+to appear. Allow me at once to enter upon a history, told in few words
+and easily proved.”
+
+“Stay,” said Lady Westborough, struggling with her curiosity; “it is due
+to one who has stood in so peculiar a situation in our family to wait
+yet a little longer for his coming. We will therefore, till the hour is
+completed, postpone the object of our meeting.”
+
+Clarence again bowed and was silent. Another and a longer pause
+ensued: it was broken by the sound of the clock striking; the hour was
+completed.
+
+“Now,” began Clarence, when he was interrupted by a sudden and violent
+commotion in the hall. Above all was heard a loud and piercing cry,
+in which Clarence recognized the voice of the old steward. He rose
+abruptly, and stood motionless and aghast; his eyes met those of
+Lady Westborough, who, pale and agitated, lost for the moment all her
+habitual self-command. The sound increased: Clarence rushed from the
+room into the hall; the open door of the apartment revealed to Lady
+Westborough, as to him, a sight which allowed her no further time for
+hesitation. She hurried after Clarence into the hall, gave one look,
+uttered one shriek of horror, and fainted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXVIII.
+
+     Iden.--But thou wilt brave me in these saucy terms. Cade.--
+     Brave thee I ay, by the best blood that ever was broached,
+     and beard thee too.--SHAKSPEARE.
+
+“You see, my lord,” said Mr. Glumford to Lord Ulswater, as they rode
+slowly on, “that as long as those rebellious scoundrels are indulged in
+their spoutings and meetings, and that sort of thing, that--that there
+will be no bearing them.”
+
+“Very judiciously remarked, sir,” replied Lord Ulswater. “I wish all
+gentlemen of birth and consideration viewed the question in the same
+calm, dispassionate, and profound light that you do. Would to Heaven
+it were left to me to clear the country of those mutinous and dangerous
+rascals: I would make speedy and sure work of it.”
+
+“I am certain you would, my lord; I am certain you would. It is a
+thousand pities that pompous fellow Mordaunt interfered yesterday, with
+his moderation, and policy, and all that sort of thing; so foolish,
+you know, my lord,--mere theory and romance, and that sort of thing: we
+should have had it all our own way, if he had not.”
+
+Lord Ulswater played with his riding-whip, but did not reply. Mr.
+Glumford continued,--
+
+“Pray, my lord, did your lordship see what an ugly ill-dressed set
+of dogs those meetingers were; that Wolfe, above all? Oh, he’s a
+horrid-looking fellow. By the by, he left the town this very morning; I
+saw him take leave of his friends in the street just before I set out.
+He is going to some other meeting,--on foot too. Only think of the folly
+of talking about the policy and prudence and humanity, and that sort
+of thing, of sparing such a pitiful poor fellow as that; can’t afford a
+chaise, or a stage-coach even, my lord,--positively can’t.”
+
+“You see the matter exactly in its true light, Mr. Glumford,” said his
+lordship, patting his fine horse, which was somewhat impatient of the
+slow pace of its companion.
+
+“A very beautiful animal of your lordship,” said Mr. Glumford, spurring
+his own horse,--a heavy, dull quadruped with an obstinate ill-set tail,
+a low shoulder, and a Roman nose. “I am very partial to horses myself,
+and love a fine horse as well as anybody.” Lord Ulswater cast a glance
+at his companion’s steed, and seeing nothing in its qualities to justify
+this assertion of attachment to fine horses was silent: Lord Ulswater
+never flattered even his mistress, much less Mr. Glumford.
+
+“I will tell you, my lord,” continued Mr. Glumford, “what a bargain
+this horse was;” and the squire proceeded, much to Lord Ulswater’s
+discontent, to retail the history of his craft in making the said
+bargain.
+
+The riders were now entering a part of the road, a little more than two
+miles from Westborough Park, in which the features of the neighbouring
+country took a bolder and ruder aspect than they had hitherto worn. On
+one side of the road, the view opened upon a descent of considerable
+depth, and the dull sun looked drearily over a valley in which large
+fallow fields, a distant and solitary spire, and a few stunted and
+withering trees formed the chief characteristics. On the other side of
+the road a narrow footpath was separated from the highway by occasional
+posts; and on this path Lord Ulswater (how the minute and daily
+occurrences of life show the grand pervading principles of character!)
+was, at the time we refer to, riding, in preference to the established
+thoroughfare for equestrian and aurigal travellers. The side of this
+path farthest from the road was bordered by a steep declivity of stony
+and gravelly earth, which almost deserved the dignified appellation of
+a precipice; and it was with no small exertion of dexterous horsemanship
+that Lord Ulswater kept his spirited and susceptible steed upon the
+narrow and somewhat perilous path, in spite of its frequent starts at
+the rugged descent below.
+
+“I think, my lord, if I may venture to say so,” said Mr. Glumford,
+having just finished the narration of his bargain, “that it would be
+better for you to take the high road just at present; for the descent
+from the footpath is steep and abrupt, and deuced crumbling! so that if
+your lordship’s horse shied or took a wrong step, it might be attended
+with unpleasant consequences,--a fall, or that sort of thing.”
+
+“You are very good, sir,” said Lord Ulswater, who, like most proud
+people, conceived advice an insult; “but I imagine myself capable of
+guiding my horse, at least upon a road so excellent as this.”
+
+“Certainly, my lord, certainly; I beg your pardon; but--bless me, who is
+that tall fellow in black, talking to himself yonder, my lord? The turn
+of the road hides him from you just at present; but I see him well.
+Ha! ha! what gestures he uses! I dare say he is one of the petitioners,
+and--yes, my lord, by Jupiter, it is Wolfe himself! You had better
+(excuse me, my lord) come down from the footpath: it is not wide enough
+for two people; and Wolfe, I dare say, a d--d rascal, would not get out
+of the way for the devil himself! He’s a nasty, black, fierce-looking
+fellow; I would not for something meet him in a dark night, or that sort
+of thing!”
+
+“I do not exactly understand, Mr. Glumford,” returned Lord Ulswater,
+with a supercilious glance at that gentleman, “what peculiarities of
+temper you are pleased to impute to me, or from what you deduce the
+supposition that I shall move out of my way for a person like Mr. Woolt,
+or Wolfe, or whatever be his name.”
+
+“I beg your pardon, my lord, I am sure,” answered Glumford: “of course
+your lordship knows best, and if the rogue is impertinent, why, I’m
+a magistrate, and will commit him; though, to be sure,” continued our
+righteous Daniel, in a lower key, “he has a right to walk upon the
+footpath without being ridden over, or that sort of thing.”
+
+The equestrians were now very near Wolfe, who, turning hastily round,
+perceived, and immediately recognized Lord Ulswater. “Ah-ha!” muttered
+he to himself, “here comes the insolent thirster for blood, grudging us
+seemingly even the meagre comfort of the path which his horse’s hoofs
+are breaking up; yet, thank Heaven,” added the republican, looking with
+a stern satisfaction at the narrowness of the footing, “he cannot very
+well pass me, and the free lion does not move out of his way for such
+pampered kine as those to which this creature belongs.”
+
+Actuated by this thought, Wolfe almost insensibly moved entirely into
+the middle of the path, so that with the posts on one side, and the
+abrupt and undefended precipice, if we may so call it, on the other,
+it was quite impossible for any horseman to pass the republican, unless
+over his body.
+
+Lord Ulswater marked the motion, and did not want penetration to
+perceive the cause. Glad of an opportunity to wreak some portion of
+his irritation against a member of a body so offensive to his mind, and
+which had the day before obtained a sort of triumph over his exertions
+against them, and rendered obstinate in his intention by the pique he
+had felt at Glumford’s caution, Lord Ulswater, tightening his rein
+and humming with apparent indifference a popular tune, continued his
+progress till he was within a foot of the republican. Then, checking his
+horse for a moment, he called, in a tone of quiet arrogance, to Wolfe to
+withdraw himself on one side till he had passed.
+
+The fierce blood of the republican, which the least breath of oppression
+sufficed to kindle, and which yet boiled with the remembrance of Lord
+Ulswater’s threat to him two nights before, was on fire at this command.
+He stopped short, and turning half round, stood erect in the strength
+and power of his singularly tall and not ungraceful form. “Poor and
+proud fool,” said he, with a voice of the most biting scorn, and fixing
+an eye eloquent of ire and menaced danger upon the calmly contemptuous
+countenance of the patrician, “poor and proud fool, do you think that
+your privileges have already reached so pleasant a pitch that you may
+ride over men like dust? Off, fool! the basest peasant in England,
+degraded as he is, would resist while he ridiculed your arrogance.”
+
+Without deigning any reply, Lord Ulswater spurred his horse; the
+spirited animal bounded forward almost on the very person of the
+obstructer of the path; with uncommon agility Wolfe drew aside from the
+danger, seized with a powerful grasp the bridle, and abruptly arresting
+the horse backed it fearfully towards the descent. Enraged beyond all
+presence of mind, the fated nobleman, raising his whip, struck violently
+at the republican. The latter, as he felt the blow, uttered a single
+shout of such ferocity that it curdled the timorous blood of Glumford,
+and with a giant and iron hand he backed the horse several paces down
+the precipice. The treacherous earth crumbled beneath the weight, and
+Lord Ulswater spurring his steed violently at the same instant that
+Wolfe so sharply and strongly curbed it, the affrighted animal reared
+violently, forced the rein from Wolfe, stood erect for a moment of
+horror to the spectator, and then, as its footing and balance alike
+failed, it fell backward, and rolled over and over its unfortunate and
+helpless rider.
+
+“Good heavens!” cried Glumford, who had sat quietly upon his dozing
+horse, watching the result of the dispute, “what have you done? you have
+killed his lordship,--positively killed him,--and his horse, too, I dare
+say. You shall be hanged for this, sir, as sure as I am a magistrate,
+and that sort of thing.”
+
+Unheeding this denunciation, Wolfe had made to the spot where rider and
+horse lay blent together at the foot of the descent; and assisting the
+latter to rise, bent down to examine the real effect of his violence.
+“Methinks,” said he, as he looked upon the hueless but still defying
+features of the horseman, “methinks I have seen that face years
+before,--but where? Perhaps my dreams have foretold me this.”
+
+Lord Ulswater was utterly senseless; and as Wolfe raised him, he saw
+that the right side of the head was covered with blood, and that one arm
+seemed crushed and broken. Meanwhile a carriage had appeared, was hailed
+by Glumford, stopped; and on being informed of the circumstance and
+the rank of the sufferer, the traveller, a single gentleman, descended,
+assisted to raise the unhappy nobleman, placed him in the carriage, and,
+obeying Glumford’s instructions, proceeded slowly to Westborough Park.
+
+“But the ruffian, the rebel, the murderer?” said Mr. Glumford, both
+querulously and inquiringly, looking towards Wolfe, who, without having
+attempted to assist his victim, stood aloof, with arms folded, and an
+expression of sated ferocity upon his speaking features.
+
+“Oh! as to him,” quoth the traveller, stepping into his carriage, in
+order to support the mangled man, “you, sir, and my valet can bring him
+along with you, or take him to the next town, or do, in short, with him
+just as you please, only be sure he does not escape; drive on, post-boy,
+very gently.” And poor Mr. Glumford found the muscular form of the stern
+Wolfe consigned to the sole care of himself and a very diminutive man in
+pea-green silk stockings, who, however excellently well he might perform
+the office of valet, was certainly by no means calculated in physical
+powers for the detention of a criminal.
+
+Wolfe saved the pair a world of trouble and anxiety.
+
+“Sir,” said he, gravely, turning to Glumford, “you beheld the affray,
+and whatever its consequences will do me the common justice of
+witnessing as to the fact of the first aggressor. It will, however, be
+satisfactory to both of us to seize the earliest opportunity of putting
+the matter upon a legal footing, and I shall therefore return to W----,
+to which town you will doubtless accompany me.”
+
+“With all my heart!” cried Mr. Glumford, feeling as if a mountain of
+responsibility were taken from his breast. “And I wish to Heaven you may
+be transported instead of hanged.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIX.
+
+  But gasping heaved the breath that Lara drew,
+  And dull the film along his dim eye grew.--BYRON.
+
+The light broke partially through the half-closed shutters of the room
+in which lay Lord Ulswater, who, awakened to sense and pain by the
+motion of the carriage, had now relapsed into insensibility. By the side
+of the sofa on which he was laid, knelt Clarence, bathing one hand with
+tears violent and fast; on the opposite side leaned over, with bald
+front, and an expression of mingled fear and sorrow upon his intent
+countenance, the old steward; while, at a little distance, Lord
+Westborough, who had been wheeled into the room, sat mute in his chair,
+aghast with bewilderment and horror, and counting every moment to the
+arrival of the surgeon, who had been sent for. The stranger to whom the
+carriage belonged stood by the window, detailing in a low voice to
+the chaplain of the house what particulars of the occurrence he was
+acquainted with, while the youngest scion of the family, a boy of about
+ten years, and who in the general confusion had thrust himself unnoticed
+into the room, stood close to the pair, with open mouth and thirsting
+ears and a face on which childish interest at a fearful tale was
+strongly blent with the more absorbed feeling of terror at the truth.
+
+Slowly Lord Ulswater opened his eyes; they rested upon Clarence.
+
+“My brother! my brother!” cried Clarence, in a voice of powerful
+anguish, “is it thus--thus that you have come hither to--” He stopped
+in the gushing fulness of his heart. Extricating from Clarence the only
+hand he was able to use, Lord Ulswater raised it to his brow, as if in
+the effort to clear remembrance; and then, turning to Wardour, seemed to
+ask the truth of Clarence’s claim,--at least so the old man interpreted
+the meaning of his eye, and the faint and scarce intelligible words
+which broke from his lips.
+
+“It is; it is, my honoured lord,” cried he, struggling with his emotion;
+“it is your brother, your lost brother, Clinton L’Estrange.” And as he
+said these words, Clarence felt the damp chill hand of his brother press
+his own, and knew by that pressure and the smile--kind, though brief
+from exceeding pain--with which the ill-fated nobleman looked upon him,
+that the claim long unknown was at last acknowledged, and the ties long
+broken united, though in death.
+
+The surgeon arrived: the room was cleared of all but Clarence; the first
+examination was sufficient. Unaware of Clarence’s close relationship to
+the sufferer, the surgeon took him aside. “A very painful operation,”
+ said he, “might be performed, but it would only torture, in vain, the
+last moments of the patient; no human skill can save or even protract
+his life.”
+
+The doomed man, who, though in great pain, was still sensible, stirred.
+His brother flew towards him. “Flora,” he murmured, “let me see her, I
+implore.”
+
+Curbing, as much as he was able, his emotion, and conquering his
+reluctance to leave the sufferer even for a moment, Clarence flew
+in search of Lady Flora. He found her; in rapid and hasty words,
+he signified the wish of the dying man, and hurried her, confused,
+trembling, and scarce conscious of the melancholy scene she was about to
+witness, to the side of her affianced bridegroom.
+
+I have been by the death-beds of many men, and I have noted that shortly
+before death, as the frame grows weaker and weaker, the fiercer passions
+yield to those feelings better harmonizing with the awfulness of the
+hour. Thoughts soft and tender, which seem little to belong to the
+character in the health and vigour of former years, obtain then an
+empire, brief, indeed, but utter for the time they last; and this is
+the more impressive because (as in the present instance I shall have
+occasion to portray) in the moments which succeed and make the very
+latest of life, the ruling passion, suppressed for an interval by such
+gentler feelings, sometimes again returns to take its final triumph over
+that frail clay, which, through existence, it has swayed, agitated, and
+moulded like wax unto its will.
+
+When Lord Ulswater saw Flora approach and bend weepingly over him, a
+momentary softness stole over his face. Taking her hand he extended
+it towards Clarence, and turning to the latter faltered out, “Let
+this--my--brother--atone--for--;” apparently unable to finish the
+sentence, he then relaxed his hold and sank upon the pillow; and so
+still, so apparently breathless did he remain for several minutes, that
+they thought the latest agony was over.
+
+As, yielding to this impression, Clarence was about to withdraw the
+scarce conscious Flora from the chamber, words, less tremulous and
+indistinct than aught which he had yet uttered, broke from Lord
+Ulswater’s lips. Clarence hastened to him; and bending over his
+countenance saw that even through the rapid changes and shades of death,
+it darkened with the peculiar characteristics of the unreleased soul
+within: the brow was knit into more than its wonted sternness and pride;
+and in the eye which glared upon the opposite wall, the light of the
+waning life broke into a momentary blaze,--that flash, so rapid and
+evanescent, before the air drinks in the last spark of the being it
+has animated, and night--the starless and eternal--falls over the
+extinguished lamp! The hand of the right arm (which was that unshattered
+by the fall) was clenched and raised; but, when the words which came
+upon Clarence’s ear had ceased, it fell heavily by his side, like a clod
+of that clay which it had then become. In those words it seemed as if,
+in the confused delirium of passing existence, the brave soldier mingled
+some dim and bewildered recollection of former battles with that of his
+last most fatal though most ignoble strife.
+
+“Down, down with them!” he muttered between his teeth, though in a
+tone startlingly deep and audible; “down with them! No quarter to the
+infidels! strike for England and Effingham. Ha!--who strives for
+flight there!--kill him! no mercy, I say,--none!--there, there, I have
+despatched him; ha! ha! What, still alive?--off, slave, off! Oh, slain!
+slain in a ditch, by a base-born hind; oh, bitter! bitter! bitter!” And
+with these words, of which the last, from their piercing anguish and
+keen despair, made a dread contrast with the fire and defiance of the
+first, the jaw fell, the flashing and fierce eye glazed and set, and all
+of the haughty and bold patrician which the earth retained was--dust!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXX.
+
+     Il n’est jamais permis de deteriorer une ame humaine pour
+     l’avantage des autres, ni de faire un scelerat pour le
+     service des honnetes gens.--ROUSSEAU.
+
+     [“It is not permitted us to degrade one single soul for the
+     sake of conferring advantage on others, nor to make a rogue
+     for the good of the honest.”]
+
+As the reader approaches the termination of this narrative, and
+looks back upon the many scenes he has passed, perhaps, in the mimic
+representation of human life, he may find no unfaithful resemblance to
+the true.
+
+As, amongst the crowd of characters jostled against each other in their
+course, some drop off at the first, the second, or the third stage, and
+leave a few only continuing to the last, while Fate chooses her agents
+and survivors among those whom the bystander, perchance, least noticed
+as the objects of her selection; and they who, haply, seemed to him, at
+first, among the most conspicuous as characters, sink, some abruptly,
+some gradually, into actors of the least importance in events; as the
+reader notes the same passion, in different strata, producing the most
+opposite qualities, and gathers from that notice some estimate of the
+vast perplexity in the code of morals, deemed by the shallow so plain
+a science; when he finds that a similar and single feeling will produce
+both the virtue we love and the vice we detest, the magnanimity we
+admire and the meanness we despise; as the feeble hands of the author
+force into contrast ignorance and wisdom, the affectation of philosophy
+and its true essence, coarseness and refinement, the lowest vulgarity
+of sentiment with an exaltation of feeling approaching to morbidity, the
+reality of virtue with the counterfeit, the glory of the Divinity with
+the hideousness of the Idol, sorrow and eager joy, marriage and death,
+tears and their young successors, smiles; as all, blent together, these
+varieties of life form a single yet many-coloured web, leaving us to
+doubt whether, in fortune the bright hue or the dark, in character the
+base material or the rich, predominate,--the workman of the web could
+almost reconcile himself to his glaring and great deficiency in art
+by the fond persuasion that he has, at least in his choice of tint and
+texture, caught something of the likeness of Nature: but he knows,
+to the abasement of his vanity, that these enumerated particulars of
+resemblance to life are common to all, even to the most unskilful of his
+brethren; and it is not the mere act of copying a true original, but
+the rare circumstance of force and accuracy in the copy, which can alone
+constitute a just pretension to merit, or flatter the artist with the
+hope of a moderate success.
+
+The news of Lord Ulswater’s untimely death soon spread around the
+neighbourhood, and was conveyed to Mordaunt by the very gentleman whom
+that nobleman had charged with his hostile message. Algernon repaired at
+once to W----, to gather from Wolfe some less exaggerated account of the
+affray than that which the many tongues of Rumour had brought to him.
+
+It was no difficult matter to see the precise share of blame to be
+attached to Wolfe; and, notwithstanding the biased account of Glumford
+and the strong spirit of party then existing in the country, no rational
+man could for a moment term the event of a sudden fray a premeditated
+murder, or the violence of the aggrieved the black offence of a wilful
+criminal. Wolfe, therefore, soon obtained a release from the confinement
+to which he had been at first committed; and with a temper still more
+exasperated by the evident disposition of his auditors to have treated
+him, had it been possible, with the utmost rigour, he returned to
+companions well calculated by their converse and bent of mind to inflame
+the fester of his moral constitution.
+
+It happens generally that men very vehement in any particular opinion
+choose their friends, not for a general similarity of character, but
+in proportion to their mutual congeniality of sentiment upon that
+particular opinion; it happens, also, that those most audibly violent,
+if we may so speak, upon any opinion, moral or political, are rarely the
+wisest or the purest of their party. Those with whom Wolfe was
+intimate were men who shared none of the nobler characteristics of the
+republican; still less did they participate in or even comprehend the
+enlightened and benevolent views for which the wise and great men of
+that sect--a sect to which all philanthropy is, perhaps too fondly,
+inclined to lean--have been so conspicuously eminent. On the contrary,
+Wolfe’s comrades, without education and consequently without principle,
+had been driven to disaffection by desperate fortunes and ruined
+reputations acting upon minds polluted by the ignorance and hardened
+among the dross of the populace. But the worst can by constant
+intercourse corrupt the best; and the barriers of good and evil, often
+confused in Wolfe’s mind by the blindness of his passions, seemed, as
+his intercourse with these lawless and ruffian associates thickened, to
+be at last utterly broken down and swept away.
+
+Unhappily too--soon after Wolfe’s return to London--the popular
+irritation showed itself in mobs, perhaps rather to be termed disorderly
+than seditious. The ministers, however, thought otherwise; the military
+were summoned, and much injury, resulting, it is to be hoped, from
+accident, not design, ensued to many of the persons assembled. Some
+were severely wounded by the swords of the soldiers; others maimed and
+trampled upon by the horses, which shared the agitation or irritability
+of their riders; and a few, among whom were two women and three
+children, lost their lives. Wolfe had been one of the crowd; and
+the scene, melancholy as it really was, and appearing to his temper
+unredeemed and inexcusable on the part of the soldiers, left on his mind
+a deep and burning impression of revenge. Justice (as they termed it)
+was demanded by strong bodies of the people upon the soldiers; but the
+administration, deeming it politic rather to awe than to conciliate, so
+far from censuring the military, approved their exertions.
+
+From that time Wolfe appears to have resolved upon the execution of a
+design which he had long imperfectly and confusedly meditated.
+
+This was no less a crime (and to him did conscientiously seem no less
+a virtue) than to seize a favourable opportunity for assassinating the
+most prominent member of the administration, and the one who, above all
+the rest, was the most odious to the disaffected. It must be urged,
+in extenuation of the atrocity of this design, that a man perpetually
+brooding over one scheme, which to him has become the very sustenance of
+existence, and which scheme, perpetually frustrated, grows desperate by
+disappointment, acquires a heat of morbid and oblique enthusiasm, which
+may be not unreasonably termed insanity; and that, at the very time
+Wolfe reconciled it to his conscience to commit the murder of his fellow
+creature, he would have moved out of his path for a worm. Assassination,
+indeed, seemed to him justice; and a felon’s execution the glory of
+martyrdom. And yet, O Fanatic, thou didst anathematize the Duellist as
+the Man of blood: what is the Assassin?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXI.
+
+  And thou that, silent at my knee,
+   Dost lift to mine thy soft, dark, earnest eyes,
+  Filled with the love of childhood, which I see
+   Pure through its depths,--a thing without disguise.
+  Thou that hast breathed in slumber on my breast,
+  When I have checked its throbs to give thee rest,
+   Mine own, whose young thoughts fresh before me rise,
+  Is it not much that I may guide thy prayer,
+  And circle thy young soul with free and healthful air?--HEMANS.
+
+The events we have recorded, from the time of Clarence’s visit to
+Mordaunt to the death of Lord Ulswater, took place within little more
+than a week. We have now to pass in silence over several weeks; and
+as it was the commencement of autumn when we introduced Clarence and
+Mordaunt to our reader, so it is the first opening of winter in which we
+will resume the thread of our narration.
+
+Mordaunt had removed to London; and, although he had not yet taken
+any share in public business, he was only watching the opportunity to
+commence a career the brilliancy of which those who knew aught of his
+mind began already to foretell. But he mixed little, if at all, with the
+gayer occupants of the world’s prominent places. Absorbed alternately in
+his studies and his labours of good, the halls of pleasure were seldom
+visited by his presence; and they who in the crowd knew nothing of
+him but his name, and the lofty bearing of his mien, recoiled from the
+coldness of his exterior; and, while they marvelled at his retirement
+and reserve, saw in both but the moroseness of the student and the gloom
+of the misanthropist.
+
+But the nobleness of his person; the antiquity of his birth; his wealth,
+his unblemished character, and the interest thrown over his name by
+the reputation of talent and the unpenetrated mystery of his life, all
+powerfully spoke in his favour to those of the gentler sex, who judge us
+not only from what we are to others, but from what they imagine we
+can be to them. From such allurements, however, as from all else, the
+mourner turned only the more deeply to cherish the memory of the dead;
+and it was a touching and holy sight to mark the mingled excess of
+melancholy and fondness with which he watched over that treasure in
+whose young beauty and guileless heart his departed Isabel had yet left
+the resemblance of her features and her love. There seemed between them
+to exist even a dearer and closer tie than that of daughter and sire;
+for, in both, the objects which usually divide the affections of the man
+or the child had but a feeble charm: Isabel’s mind had expanded beyond
+her years, and Algernon’s had outgrown his time; so that neither the
+sports natural to her age, nor the ambition ordinary to his, were
+sufficient to wean or to distract the unity of their love. When, after
+absence, his well-known step trod lightly in the hall, her ear, which
+had listened and longed and thirsted for the sound, taught her fairy
+feet to be the first to welcome his return; and when the slightest
+breath of sickness menaced her slender frame, it was his hand that
+smoothed her pillow, and his smile that cheered away her pain; and when
+she sank into sleep she knew that a father’s heart watched over her
+through the long but untiring night; that a father’s eye would be the
+first which, on waking, she would meet.
+
+“Oh! beautiful, and rare as beautiful,” was that affection; in the
+parent no earthlier or harder sternness in authority, nor weakness in
+doting, nor caprice in love; in the child no fear debasing reverence,
+yet no familiarity diminishing respect. But Love, whose pride is in
+serving, seemed to make at once soft and hallowed the offices mutually
+rendered; and Nature, never counteracted in her dictates, wrought,
+without a visible effort, the proper channels into which those offices
+should flow; and that Charity which not only covers sins, but lifts the
+veil from virtues, whose beauty might otherwise have lain concealed,
+linked them closer and closer, and threw over that link the sanctity of
+itself. For it was Algernon’s sweetest pleasure to make her young hands
+the ministers of good to others, and to drink at such times from the
+rich glow of her angel countenance the purified selfishness of his
+reward. And when after the divine joy of blessing, which, perhaps, the
+youngest taste yet more vividly than their sires, she threw her arms
+around his neck and thanked him with glad tears for the luxury he had
+bestowed upon her, how could they, in that gushing overflow of heart,
+help loving each other the more, or feeling that in that love there was
+something which justified the excess?
+
+Nor have we drawn with too exaggerating a pencil, nor, though Isabel’s
+mind was older than her years, extended that prematureness to her heart.
+For, where we set the example of benevolence, and see that the example
+is in nought corrupted, the milk of human kindness will flow not the
+less readily from the youngest breast, and out of the mouths of babes
+will come the wisdom of charity and love!
+
+Ever since Mordaunt’s arrival in town, he had sought out Wolfe’s abode,
+for the purpose of ministering to the poverty under which he rightly
+conjectured that the republican laboured. But the habitation of one,
+needy, distressed, seldom living long in one place, and far less
+notorious of late than he had formerly been, was not easy to discover;
+nor was it till after long and vain search that he ascertained the
+retreat of his singular acquaintance. The day in which he effected this
+object we shall have hereafter occasion to specify. Meanwhile we return
+to Mr. Crauford.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXII.
+
+  Plot on thy little hour, and skein on skein
+  Weave the vain mesh, in which thy subtle soul
+  Broods on its venom! Lo! behind, before,
+  Around thee, like an armament of cloud,
+  The black Fate labours onward--ANONYMOUS.
+
+The dusk of a winter’s evening gathered over a room in Crauford’s house
+in town, only relieved from the closing darkness by an expiring and
+sullen fire, beside which Mr. Bradley sat, with his feet upon the
+fender, apparently striving to coax some warmth into the icy palms of
+his spread hands. Crauford himself was walking up and down the room with
+a changeful step, and ever and anon glancing his bright, shrewd eye at
+the partner of his fraud, who, seemingly unconscious of the observation
+he underwent, appeared to occupy his attention solely with the
+difficulty of warming his meagre and withered frame.
+
+“Ar’n’t you very cold there, sir?” said Bradley, after a long pause, and
+pushing himself farther into the verge of the dying embers, “may I not
+ring for some more coals?”
+
+“Hell and the--: I beg your pardon, my good Bradley, but you vex me
+beyond patience; how can you think of such trifles when our very lives
+are in so imminent a danger?”
+
+“I beg your pardon, my honoured benefactor, they are indeed in danger!”
+
+“Bradley, we have but one hope,--fidelity to each other. If we persist
+in the same story, not a tittle can be brought home to us,--not a
+tittle, my good Bradley; and though our characters may be a little
+touched, why, what is a character? Shall we eat less, drink less,
+enjoy less, when we have lost it? Not a whit. No, my friend, we will go
+abroad: leave it to me to save from the wreck of our fortunes enough to
+live upon like princes.”
+
+“If not like peers, my honoured benefactor.”
+
+“‘Sdeath!--yes, yes, very good,--he! he! he! if not peers. Well, all
+happiness is in the senses, and Richard Crauford has as many senses as
+Viscount Innisdale; but had we been able to protract inquiry another
+week, Bradley, why, I would have been my Lord, and you Sir John.”
+
+“You bear your losses like a hero, sir,” said Mr. Bradley. “To be sure:
+there is no loss, man, but life,--none; let us preserve that--and it
+will be our own fault if we don’t--and the devil take all the rest. But,
+bless me, it grows late, and, at all events, we are safe for some hours;
+the inquiry won’t take place till twelve to-morrow, why should we not
+feast till twelve to-night? Ring, my good fellow: dinner must be nearly
+ready.”
+
+“Why, honoured sir,” said Bradley, “I want to go home to see my wife and
+arrange my house. Who knows but I may sleep in Newgate to-morrow?”
+
+Crauford, who had been still walking to and fro, stopped abruptly at
+this speech; and his eye, even through the gloom, shot out a livid and
+fierce light, before which the timid and humble glance of Mr. Bradley
+quailed in an instant.
+
+“Go home!--no, my friend, no: I can’t part with you tonight, no, not
+for an instant. I have many lessons to give you. How are we to learn our
+parts for to-morrow, if we don’t rehearse them beforehand? Do you not
+know that a single blunder may turn what I hope will be a farce into a
+tragedy? Go home!--pooh! pooh! why, man, I have not seen my wife, nor
+put my house to rights, and if you do but listen to me I tell you again
+and again that not a hair of our heads can be touched.”
+
+“You know best, honoured sir; I bow to your decision.”
+
+“Bravo, honest Brad! and now for dinner. I have the most glorious
+champagne that ever danced in foam to your lip. No counsellor like the
+bottle, believe me!”
+
+And the servant entering to announce dinner, Crauford took Bradley’s
+arm, and leaning affectionately upon it, passed through an obsequious
+and liveried row of domestics to a room blazing with light and plate. A
+noble fire was the first thing which revived Bradley’s spirit; and,
+as he spread his hands over it before he sat down to the table, he
+surveyed, with a gleam of gladness upon his thin cheeks, two vases of
+glittering metal formerly the boast of a king, in which were immersed
+the sparkling genii of the grape.
+
+Crauford, always a gourmand, ate with unusual appetite, and pressed the
+wine upon Bradley with an eager hospitality, which soon somewhat clouded
+the senses of the worthy man. The dinner was removed, the servants
+retired, and the friends were left alone.
+
+“A pleasant trip to France!” cried Crauford, filling a bumper. “That’s
+the land for hearts like ours. I tell you what, little Brad, we will
+leave our wives behind us, and take, with a new country and new names, a
+new lease of life. What will it signify to men making love at Paris what
+fools say of them in London? Another bumper, honest Brad,--a bumper to
+the girls! What say you to that, eh?”
+
+“Lord, sir, you are so facetious, so witty! It must be owned that a
+black eye is a great temptation,--Lira-lira, la-la!” and Mr. Bradley’s
+own eyes rolled joyously.
+
+“Bravo, Brad!--a song, a song! but treason to King Burgundy! Your glass
+is--”
+
+“Empty, honoured sir, I know it!--Lira-lira la!--but it is easily
+filled! We who have all our lives been pouring from one vessel into
+another know how to keep it up to the last!
+
+  ‘Courage then, cries the knight, we may yet be forgiven,
+   Or at worst buy the bishop’s reversion in heaven;
+   Our frequent escapes in this world show how true ‘t is
+   That gold is the only Elixir Salutis.
+                  Derry down, Derry down.’
+
+  ‘All you who to swindling conveniently creep,
+   Ne’er piddle; by thousands the treasury sweep
+   Your safety depends on the weight of the sum,
+   For no rope was yet made that could tie up a plum.
+                  Derry down, etc.’”
+
+  [From a ballad called “The Knight and the Prelate.”]
+
+“Bravissimo, little Brad!--you are quite a wit! See what it is to have
+one’s faculties called out. Come, a toast to old England, the land
+in which no man ever wants a farthing who has wit to steal it,--‘Old
+England forever!’ your rogue is your only true patriot!” and Crauford
+poured the remainder of the bottle, nearly three parts full, into a
+beaker, which he pushed to Bradley. That convivial gentleman emptied it
+at a draught, and, faltering out, “Honest Sir John!--room for my Lady
+Bradley’s carriage,” dropped down on the floor insensible.
+
+Crauford rose instantly, satisfied himself that the intoxication was
+genuine, and giving the lifeless body a kick of contemptuous disgust,
+left the room, muttering, “The dull ass, did he think it was on his
+back that I was going to ride off? He! he! he! But stay, let me feel my
+pulse. Too fast by twenty strokes! One’s never sure of the mind if one
+does not regulate the body to a hair! Drank too much; must take a powder
+before I start.”
+
+Mounting by a back staircase to his bedroom, Crauford unlocked a chest,
+took out a bundle of clerical clothes, a large shovel hat, and a huge
+wig. Hastily, but not carelessly, induing himself in these articles of
+disguise, he then proceeded to stain his fair cheeks with a preparation
+which soon gave them a swarthy hue. Putting his own clothes in the
+chest, which he carefully locked (placing the key in his pocket), he
+next took from a desk on his dressing-table a purse; opening this,
+he extracted a diamond of great size and immense value, which, years
+before, in preparation of the event that had now taken place, he had
+purchased.
+
+His usual sneer curled his lip as he gazed at it. “Now,” said he, “is
+it not strange that this little stone should supply the mighty wants
+of that grasping thing, man? Who talks of religion, country, wife,
+children? This petty mineral can purchase them all! Oh, what a bright
+joy speaks out in your white cheek, my beauty! What are all human charms
+to yours? Why, by your spell, most magical of talismans, my years may
+walk, gloating and revelling, through a lane of beauties, till they fall
+into the grave! Pish! that grave is an ugly thought,--a very, very ugly
+thought! But come, my sun of hope, I must eclipse you for a while! Type
+of myself, while you hide, I hide also; and when I once more let you
+forth to the day, then shine out Richard Crauford,--shine out!” So
+saying, he sewed the diamond carefully in the folds of his shirt; and,
+rearranging his dress, took the cooling powder, which he weighed out
+to a grain, with a scrupulous and untrembling hand; descended the back
+stairs; opened the door, and found himself in the open street.
+
+The clock struck ten as he entered a hackney-coach and drove to another
+part of London. “What, so late!” thought he; “I must be at Dover in
+twelve hours: the vessel sails then. Humph! some danger yet! What a
+pity that I could not trust that fool! He! he! he!--what will he think
+tomorrow, when he wakes and finds that only one is destined to swing!”
+
+The hackney-coach stopped, according to his direction, at an inn in the
+city. Here Crauford asked if a note had been left for Dr. Stapylton. One
+(written by himself) was given to him.
+
+“Merciful Heaven!” cried the false doctor, as he read it, “my daughter
+is on a bed of death!”
+
+The landlord’s look wore anxiety; the doctor seemed for a moment
+paralyzed by silent woe. He recovered, shook his head piteously, and
+ordered a post-chaise and four on to Canterbury without delay.
+
+“It is an ill wind that blows nobody good!” thought the landlord, as he
+issued the order into the yard.
+
+The chaise was soon out; the doctor entered; off went the post-boys; and
+Richard Crauford, feeling his diamond, turned his thoughts to safety and
+to France.
+
+A little, unknown man, who had been sitting at the bar for the last two
+hours sipping brandy and water, and who from his extreme taciturnity and
+quiet had been scarcely observed, now rose. “Landlord,” said he, “do you
+know who that gentleman is?”
+
+“Why,” quoth Boniface, “the letter to him was directed, ‘For the Rev.
+Dr. Stapylton; will be called for.’”
+
+“Ah,” said the little man, yawning, “I shall have a long night’s work of
+it. Have you another chaise and four in the yard?”
+
+“To be sure, sir, to be sure!” cried the landlord in astonishment.
+
+“Out with it, then! Another glass of brandy and water,--a little
+stronger, no sugar!”
+
+The landlord stared; the barmaid stared; even the head-waiter, a very
+stately person, stared too.
+
+“Hark ye,” said the little man, sipping his brandy and water, “I am a
+deuced good-natured fellow, so I’ll make you a great man to-night; for
+nothing makes a man so great as being let into a great secret. Did you
+ever hear of the rich Mr. Crauford?”
+
+“Certainly: who has not?”
+
+“Did you ever see him?”
+
+“No! I can’t say I ever did.”
+
+“You lie, landlord: you saw him to-night.”
+
+“Sir!” cried the landlord, bristling up.
+
+The little man pulled out a brace of pistols, and very quietly began
+priming them out of a small powder-flask.
+
+The landlord started back; the head-waiter cried “Rape!” and the barmaid
+“Murder!”
+
+“Who the devil are you, sir?” cried the landlord.
+
+“Mr. Tickletrout! the celebrated officer,--thief-taker, as they call
+it. Have a care, ma’am, the pistols are loaded. I see the chaise is out;
+there’s the reckoning, landlord.”
+
+“O Lord! I’m sure I don’t want any reckoning: too great an honour for my
+poor house to be favoured with your company; but [following the little
+man to the door] whom did you please to say you were going to catch?”
+
+“Mr. Crauford, alias Dr. Stapylton.”
+
+“Lord! Lord! to think of it,--how shocking! What has he done?”
+
+“Swindled, I believe.”
+
+“My eyes! And why, sir, did not you catch him when he was in the bar?”
+
+“Because then I should not have got paid for my journey to Dover. Shut
+the door, boy; first stage on to Canterbury.” And, drawing a woollen
+nightcap over his ears, Mr. Tickletrout resigned himself to his
+nocturnal excursion.
+
+On the very day on which the patent for his peerage was to have been
+made out, on the very day on which he had afterwards calculated on
+reaching Paris, on that very day was Mr. Richard Crauford lodged in
+Newgate, fully committed for a trial of life and death.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXIII.
+
+  There, if, O gentle love! I read aright
+  The utterance that sealed thy sacred bond,
+  ‘T was listening to those accents of delight
+  She hid upon his breast those eyes, beyond
+  Expression’s power to paint, all languishingly fond.--CAMPBELL.
+
+“And you will positively leave us for London,” said Lady Flora,
+tenderly, “and to-morrow too!” This was said to one who under the name
+of Clarence Linden has played the principal part in our drama, and whom
+now, by the death of his brother succeeding to the honours of his house,
+we present to our reader as Clinton L’Estrange, Earl of Ulswater.
+
+They were alone in the memorable pavilion; and though it was winter the
+sun shone cheerily into the apartment; and through the door, which was
+left partly open, the evergreens, contrasting with the leafless boughs
+of the oak and beech, could be just descried, furnishing the lover with
+some meet simile of love, and deceiving the eyes of those willing to be
+deceived with a resemblance to the departed summer. The unusual mildness
+of the day seemed to operate genially upon the birds,--those children of
+light and song; and they grouped blithely beneath the window and round
+the door, where the hand of the kind young spirit of the place had so
+often ministered to their wants. Every now and then, too, you might hear
+the shrill glad note of the blackbird keeping measure to his swift and
+low flight, and sometimes a vagrant hare from the neighbouring
+preserves sauntered fearlessly by the half-shut door, secure, from long
+experience, of an asylum in the vicinity of one who had drawn from the
+breast of Nature a tenderness and love for all its offspring.
+
+Her lover sat at Flora’s feet; and, looking upward, seemed to seek out
+the fond and melting eyes which, too conscious of their secret, turned
+bashfully from his gaze. He had drawn her arm over his shoulder; and
+clasping that small and snowy hand, which, long coveted with a miser’s
+desire, was at length won, he pressed upon it a thousand kisses, sweeter
+beguilers of time than even words. All had been long explained; the
+space between their hearts annihilated; doubt, anxiety, misconstruction,
+those clouds of love, had passed away, and left not a wreck to obscure
+its heaven.
+
+“And you will leave us to-morrow; must it be to-morrow?”
+
+“Ah! Flora, it must; but see, I have your lock of hair--your beautiful,
+dark hair--to kiss, when I am away from you, and I shall have your
+letters, dearest,--a letter every day; and oh! more than all, I shall
+have the hope, the certainty, that when we meet again, you will be mine
+forever.”
+
+“And I, too, must, by seeing it in your handwriting, learn to reconcile
+myself to your new name. Ah! I wish you had been still Clarence,--only
+Clarence. Wealth, rank, power,--what are all these but rivals to poor
+Flora?”
+
+Lady Flora sighed, and the next moment blushed; and, what with the sigh
+and the blush, Clarence’s lips wandered from the hands to the cheek, and
+thence to a mouth on which the west wind seemed to have left the sweets
+of a thousand summers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXIV.
+
+     A Hounsditch man, one of the devil’s near kinsmen,--a
+     broker.--Every Man in His Humour.
+
+We have here discovered the most dangerous piece of lechery that ever
+was known in the commonwealth.--Much Ado about Nothing.
+
+It was an evening of mingled rain and wind, the hour about nine, when
+Mr. Morris Brown, under the shelter of that admirable umbrella of
+sea-green silk, to which we have before had the honour to summon
+the attention of our readers, was, after a day of business, plodding
+homeward his weary way. The obscure streets through which his course was
+bent were at no time very thickly thronged, and at the present hour the
+inclemency of the night rendered them utterly deserted. It is true that
+now and then a solitary female, holding up, with one hand, garments
+already piteously bedraggled, and with the other thrusting her umbrella
+in the very teeth of the hostile winds, might be seen crossing the
+intersected streets, and vanishing amid the subterranean recesses
+of some kitchen area, or tramping onward amidst the mazes of the
+metropolitan labyrinth, till, like the cuckoo, “heard,” but no longer
+“seen,” the echo of her retreating pattens made a dying music to the
+reluctant ear; or indeed, at intervals of unfrequent occurrence, a
+hackney vehicle jolted, rumbling, bumping over the uneven stones, as if
+groaning forth its gratitude to the elements for which it was indebted
+for its fare. Sometimes also a chivalrous gallant of the feline species
+ventured its delicate paws upon the streaming pavement, and shook, with
+a small but dismal cry, the raindrops from the pyramidal roofs of its
+tender ears.
+
+But, save these occasional infringements on its empire, solitude, dark,
+comfortless, and unrelieved, fell around the creaking footsteps of Mr.
+Morris Brown. “I wish,” soliloquized the worthy broker, “that I had been
+able advantageously to dispose of this cursed umbrella of the late Lady
+Waddilove; it is very little calculated for any but a single lady of
+slender shape, and though it certainly keeps the rain off my hat, it
+only sends it with a double dripping upon my shoulders. Pish, deuce take
+the umbrella! I shall catch my death of cold.”
+
+These complaints of an affliction that was assuredly sufficient to
+irritate the naturally sweet temper of Mr. Brown, only ceased as that
+industrious personage paused at the corner of the street, for the
+purpose of selecting the driest path through which to effect the
+miserable act of crossing to the opposite side. Occupied in stretching
+his neck over the kennel, in order to take the fullest survey of its
+topography which the scanty and agitated lamps would allow, the unhappy
+wanderer, lowering his umbrella, suffered a cross and violent gust of
+wind to rush, as if on purpose, against the interior. The rapidity with
+which this was done, and the sudden impetus, which gave to the inflated
+silk the force of a balloon, happening to occur exactly at the moment
+Mr. Brown was stooping with such wistful anxiety over the pavement, that
+gentleman, to his inexpressible dismay, was absolutely lifted, as it
+were, from his present footing, and immersed in a running rivulet of
+liquid mire, which flowed immediately below the pavement. Nor was this
+all: for the wind, finding itself somewhat imprisoned in the narrow
+receptacle it had thus abruptly entered, made so strenuous an exertion
+to extricate itself, that it turned Lady Waddilove’s memorable relic
+utterly inside out; so that when Mr. Brown, aghast at the calamity of
+his immersion, lifted his eyes to heaven, with a devotion that had in
+it more of expostulation than submission, he beheld, by the melancholy
+lamps, the apparition of his umbrella,--the exact opposite to its
+legitimate conformation, and seeming, with its lengthy stick and
+inverted summit, the actual and absolute resemblance of a gigantic
+wineglass.
+
+“Now,” said Mr. Brown, with that ironical bitterness so common to
+intense despair, “now, that’s what I call pleasant.”
+
+As if the elements were guided and set on by all the departed souls
+of those whom Mr. Brown had at any time overreached in his profession,
+scarcely had the afflicted broker uttered this brief sentence, before
+a discharge of rain, tenfold more heavy than any which had yet fallen,
+tumbled down in literal torrents upon the defenceless head of the
+itinerant.
+
+“This won’t do,” said Mr. Brown, plucking up courage and splashing out
+of the little rivulet once more into terra firma, “this won’t do: I must
+find a shelter somewhere. Dear, dear, how the wet runs down me! I am for
+all the world like the famous dripping well in Derbyshire. What a beast
+of an umbrella! I’ll never buy one again of an old lady: hang me if I
+do.”
+
+As the miserable Morris uttered these sentences, which gushed out,
+one by one, in a broken stream of complaint, he looked round and
+round--before, behind, beside--for some temporary protection or retreat.
+In vain: the uncertainty of the light only allowed him to discover
+houses in which no portico extended its friendly shelter, and where even
+the doors seemed divested of the narrow ledge wherewith they are, in
+more civilized quarters, ordinarily crowned.
+
+“I shall certainly have the rheumatism all this winter,” said Mr. Brown,
+hurrying onward as fast as he was able. Just then, glancing desperately
+down a narrow lane, which crossed his path, he perceived the scaffolding
+of a house in which repair or alteration had been at work. A ray of hope
+flashed across him; he redoubled his speed, and, entering the welcome
+haven, found himself entirely protected from the storm. The extent of
+the scaffolding was, indeed, rather considerable; and though the extreme
+narrowness of the lane and the increasing gloom of the night left Mr.
+Brown in almost total darkness, so that he could not perceive the exact
+peculiarities of his situation, yet he was perfectly satisfied with
+the shelter he had obtained; and after shaking the rain from his hat,
+squeezing his coat sleeves and lappets, satisfying himself that it was
+only about the shoulders that he was thoroughly wetted, and thrusting
+two pocket-handkerchiefs between his shirt and his skin, as preventives
+to the dreaded rheumatism, Mr. Brown leaned luxuriously back against
+the wall in the farthest corner of his retreat, and busied himself with
+endeavouring to restore his insulted umbrella to its original utility of
+shape.
+
+Our wanderer had been about three minutes in this situation; when he
+heard the voices of two men, who were hastening along the lane.
+
+“But do stop,” said one; and these were the first words distinctly
+audible to the ear of Mr. Brown, “do stop, the rain can’t last much
+longer, and we have a long way yet to go.”
+
+“No, no,” said the other, in a voice more imperious than the first,
+which was evidently plebeian and somewhat foreign in its tone, “no, we
+have no time. What signify the inclemencies of weather to men feeding
+upon an inward and burning thought, and made, by the workings of the
+mind, almost callous to the contingencies of the frame?”
+
+“Nay, my very good friend,” said the first speaker, with positive though
+not disrespectful earnestness, “that may be all very fine for you, who
+have a constitution like a horse; but I am quite a--what call you it--an
+invalid, eh? and have a devilish cough ever since I have been in this
+d--d country; beg your pardon, no offence to it; so I shall just step
+under cover of this scaffolding for a few minutes, and if you like the
+rain so much, my very good friend, why, there is plenty of room in the
+lane to--(ugh! ugh! ugh!) to enjoy it.”
+
+As the speaker ended, the dim light, just faintly glimmering at the
+entrance of the friendly shelter, was obscured by his shadow, and
+presently afterwards his companion, joining him, said,--
+
+“Well, if it must be so; but how can you be fit to brave all the
+perils of our scheme, when you shrink, like a palsied crone, from the
+sprinkling of a few water-drops?”
+
+“A few water-drops, my very good friend,” answered the other, “a
+few--what call you them, ay, water-falls rather; (ugh! ugh!) but let me
+tell you, my brother citizen, that a man may not like to get his skin
+wet with waters and would yet thrust his arm up to the very elbow in
+blood! (ugh! ugh!)”
+
+“The devil!” mentally ejaculated Mr. Brown, who at the word “scheme” had
+advanced one step from his retreat, but who now at the last words of the
+intruder drew back as gently as a snail into his shell; and although his
+person was far too much enveloped in shade to run the least chance of
+detection, yet the honest broker began to feel a little tremor vibrate
+along the chords of his thrilling frame, and a new anathema against the
+fatal umbrella rise to his lips.
+
+“Ah!” quoth the second, “I trust that it may be so; but, to return to
+our project, are you quite sure that these two identical ministers are
+in the regular habit of walking homeward from that Parliament which
+their despotism has so degraded?”
+
+“Sure? ay, that I am; Davidson swears to it!”
+
+“And you are also sure of their persons, so that, even in the dusk, you
+can recognize them? for you know I have never seen them.”
+
+“Sure as fivepence!” returned the first speaker, to whose mind the lives
+of the persons referred to were of considerably less value than the sum
+elegantly specified in his metaphorical reply.
+
+“Then,” said the other, with a deep, stern determination of tone, “then
+shall this hand, by which one of the proudest of our oppressors has
+already fallen, be made a still worthier instrument of the wrath of
+Heaven!”
+
+“You are a d--d pretty shot, I believe,” quoth the first speaker, as
+indifferently as if he were praising the address of a Norfolk squire.
+
+“Never did my eye misguide me, or my aim swerve a hair’s-breadth from
+its target! I thought once, when I learned the art as a boy, that in
+battle, rather than in the execution of a single criminal, that skill
+would avail me.”
+
+“Well, we shall have a glorious opportunity to-morrow night!” answered
+the first speaker; “that is, if it does not rain so infernally as it
+does this night; but we shall have a watch of many hours, I dare say.”
+
+“That matters but little,” replied the other conspirator; “nor even if,
+night after night, the same vigil is renewed and baffled, so that it
+bring its reward at last.”
+
+“Right,” quoth the first; “I long to be at it!--ugh! ugh! ugh!--what a
+confounded cough I have! it will be my death soon, I’m thinking.”
+
+“If so,” said the other, with a solemnity which seemed ludicrously
+horrible, from the strange contrast of the words and object, “die at
+least with the sanctity of a brave and noble deed upon your conscience
+and your name!”
+
+“Ugh! ugh!--I am but a man of colour, but I am a patriot, for all
+that, my good friend! See, the violence of the rain has ceased; we
+will proceed;” and with these words the worthy pair left the place to
+darkness and Mr. Brown.
+
+“O Lord!” said the latter, stepping forth, and throwing, as it were, in
+that exclamation, a whole weight of suffocating emotion from his chest,
+“what bloody miscreants! Murder his Majesty’s ministers!--‘shoot them
+like pigeons!’--‘d--d pretty shot!’ indeed. O Lord! what would the late
+Lady Waddilove, who always hated even the Whigs so cordially, say, if
+she were alive? But how providential that I should have been here! Who
+knows but I may save the lives of the whole administration, and get
+a pension or a little place in the post-office? I’ll go to the prime
+minister directly,--this very minute! Pish! ar’n’t you right now,
+you cursed thing?” upbraiding the umbrella, which, half-right and
+half-wrong, seemed endued with an instinctive obstinacy for the sole
+purpose of tormenting its owner.
+
+However, losing this petty affliction in the greatness of his present
+determination, Mr. Brown issued out of his lair, and hastened to put his
+benevolent and loyal intentions into effect.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXV.
+
+  When laurelled ruffians die, the Heaven and Earth,
+  And the deep Air give warning. Shall the good
+  Perish and not a sign?--ANONYMOUS.
+
+It was the evening after the event recorded in our last chapter: all
+was hushed and dark in the room where Mordaunt sat alone; the low
+and falling embers burned dull in the grate, and through the unclosed
+windows the high stars rode pale and wan in their career. The room,
+situated at the back of the house, looked over a small garden, where the
+sickly and hoar shrubs, overshadowed by a few wintry poplars and grim
+firs, saddened in the dense atmosphere of fog and smoke, which broods
+over our island city. An air of gloom hung comfortless and chilling over
+the whole scene externally and within. The room itself was large and
+old, and its far extremities, mantled as they were with dusk and shadow,
+impressed upon the mind that involuntary and vague sensation, not
+altogether unmixed with awe, which the eye, resting upon a view that it
+can but dimly and confusedly define, so frequently communicates to the
+heart. There was a strange oppression at Mordaunt’s breast with which he
+in vain endeavoured to contend. Ever and anon, an icy but passing chill,
+like the shivers of a fever, shot through his veins, and a wild and
+unearthly and objectless awe stirred through his hair, and his eyes
+filled with a glassy and cold dew, and sought, as by a self-impulse, the
+shadowy and unpenetrated places around, which momently grew darker and
+darker. Little addicted by his peculiar habits to an over-indulgence of
+the imagination, and still less accustomed to those absolute conquests
+of the physical frame over the mental, which seem the usual sources of
+that feeling we call presentiment, Mordaunt rose, and walking to and
+fro along the room, endeavoured by the exercise to restore to his veins
+their wonted and healthful circulation. It was past the hour in which
+his daughter retired to rest: but he was often accustomed to steal up to
+her chamber, and watch her in her young slumbers; and he felt this night
+a more than usual desire to perform that office of love; so he left the
+room and ascended the stairs. It was a large old house that he tenanted.
+The staircase was broad, and lighted from above by a glass dome; and as
+he slowly ascended, and the stars gleamed down still and ghastly upon
+his steps, he fancied--but he knew not why--that there was an omen in
+their gleam. He entered the young Isabel’s chamber: there was a light
+burning within; he stole to her bed, and putting aside the curtain,
+felt, as he looked upon her peaceful and pure beauty, a cheering warmth
+gather round his heart. How lovely is the sleep of childhood! What
+worlds of sweet, yet not utterly sweet, associations, does it not
+mingle with the envy of our gaze! What thoughts and hopes and cares
+and forebodings does it not excite! There lie in that yet ungrieved and
+unsullied heart what unnumbered sources of emotion! what deep fountains
+of passion and woe! Alas! whatever be its earlier triumphs, the victim
+must fall at last! As the hart which the jackals pursue, the moment its
+race is begun the human prey is foredoomed for destruction, not by
+the single sorrow, but the thousand cares: it may baffle one race of
+pursuers, but a new succeeds; as fast as some drop off exhausted, others
+spring up to renew and to perpetuate the chase; and the fated, though
+flying victim never escapes but in death. There was a faint smile upon
+his daughter’s lip, as Mordaunt bent down to kiss it; the dark lash
+rested on the snowy lid--ah, that tears had no well beneath its
+surface!---and her breath stole from her rich lips with so regular and
+calm a motion that, like the “forest leaves,” it “seemed stirred with
+prayer!” [And yet the forest leaves seem stirred with prayer.--BYRON.]
+One arm lay over the coverlet, the other pillowed her head, in the
+unrivalled grace of infancy.
+
+Mordaunt stooped once more, for his heart filled as he gazed upon his
+child, to kiss her cheek again, and to mingle a blessing with the
+kiss. When he rose, upon that fair smooth face there was one bright and
+glistening drop; and Isabel stirred in sleep, and, as if suddenly vexed
+by some painful dream, she sighed deeply as she stirred. It was the last
+time that the cheek of the young and predestined orphan was ever pressed
+by a father’s kiss or moistened by a father’s tear! He left the room
+silently; no sooner had he left it, than, as if without the precincts
+of some charmed and preserving circle, the chill and presentiment at his
+heart returned. There is a feeling which perhaps all have in a momentary
+hypochondria felt at times: it is a strong and shuddering impression
+which Coleridge has embodied in his own dark and supernatural verse,
+that something not of earth is behind us; that if we turned our gaze
+backward we should behold that which would make the heart as a bolt of
+ice, and the eye shrivel and parch within its socket. And so intense
+is the fancy that when we turn, and all is void, from that very void we
+could shape a spectre, as fearful as the image our terror had foredrawn.
+Somewhat such feeling had Mordaunt now, as his steps sounded hollow and
+echoless on the stairs, and the stars filled the air around him with
+their shadowy and solemn presence. Breaking by a violent effort from a
+spell of which he felt that a frame somewhat overtasked of late was the
+real enchanter, he turned once more into the room which he had left to
+visit Isabel. He had pledged his personal attendance at an important
+motion in the House of Commons for that night, and some political papers
+were left upon his table which he had promised to give to one of the
+members of his party. He entered the room, purposing to stay only a
+minute; an hour passed before he left it: and his servant afterwards
+observed that, on giving him some orders as he passed through the hall
+to the carriage, his cheek was as white as marble, and that his step,
+usually so haughty and firm, reeled and trembled like a fainting man’s.
+Dark and inexplicable Fate! weaver of wild contrasts, demon of this
+hoary and old world, that movest through it, as a spirit moveth over
+the waters, filling the depths of things with a solemn mystery and an
+everlasting change! Thou sweepest over our graves, and Joy is born from
+the ashes: thou sweepest over Joy, and lo, it is a grave! Engine and
+tool of the Almighty, whose years cannot fade, thou changest the earth
+as a garment, and as a vesture it is changed; thou makest it one
+vast sepulchre and womb united, swallowing and creating life! and
+reproducing, over and over, from age to age, from the birth of creation
+to the creation’s doom, the same dust and atoms which were our fathers,
+and which are the sole heirlooms that through countless generations they
+bequeath and perpetuate to their sons.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXVI.
+
+  Methinks, before the issue of our fate,
+  A spirit moves within us, and impels
+  The passion of a prophet to our lips.--ANONYMOUS.
+
+  O vitae Philosophia dux, virtutis indagatrix!-CICERO.
+  [“O Philosophy, conductress of life, searcher after virtue!”]
+
+Upon leaving the House of Commons, Mordaunt was accosted by Lord
+Ulswater, who had just taken his seat in the Upper House. Whatever
+abstraction or whatever weakness Mordaunt might have manifested before
+he had left his home, he had now entirely conquered both; and it was
+with his usual collected address that he replied to Lord Ulswater’s
+salutations, and congratulated him on his change of name and accession
+of honours.
+
+It was a night of uncommon calm and beauty; and, although the moon
+was not visible, the frosty and clear sky, “clad in the lustre of its
+thousand stars,” [Marlowe] seemed scarcely to mourn either the hallowing
+light or the breathing poesy of her presence; and when Lord Ulswater
+proposed that Mordaunt should dismiss his carriage, and that they should
+walk home, Algernon consented not unwillingly to the proposal. He felt,
+indeed, an unwonted relief in companionship; and the still air and the
+deep heavens seemed to woo him from more unwelcome thoughts, as with a
+softening and a sister’s love.
+
+“Let us, before we return home,” said Lord Ulswater, “stroll for a few
+moments towards the bridge: I love looking at the river on a night like
+this.”
+
+Whoever inquires into human circumstances will be struck to find how
+invariably a latent current of fatality appears to pervade them. It is
+the turn of the atom in the scale which makes our safety or our peril,
+our glory or our shame, raises us to the throne or sinks us to the
+grave. A secret voice at Mordaunt’s heart prompted him to dissent
+from this proposal, trifling as it seemed and welcome as it was to his
+present and peculiar mood: he resisted the voice,--the moment passed
+away, and the last seal was set upon his doom; they moved onward towards
+the bridge. At first both were silent, for Lord Ulswater used the
+ordinary privilege of a lover and was absent and absorbed, and his
+companion was never the first to break a taciturnity natural to his
+habits. At last Lord Ulswater said, “I rejoice that you are now in
+the sphere of action most likely to display your talents: you have not
+spoken yet, I think; indeed, there has been no fitting opportunity, but
+you will soon, I trust.”
+
+“I know not,” said Mordaunt, with a melancholy smile, “whether you
+judge rightly in thinking the sphere of political exertion the one most
+calculated for me; but I feel at my heart a foreboding that my planet
+is not fated to shine in any earthly sphere. Sorrow and misfortune have
+dimmed it in its birth, and now it is waning towards its decline.”
+
+“Its decline!” repeated his companion, “no, rather its meridian. You are
+in the vigor of your years, the noon of your prosperity, the height of
+your intellect and knowledge; you require only an effort to add to these
+blessings the most lasting of all,--Fame!”
+
+“Well,” said Mordaunt, and a momentary light flashed over his
+countenance, “the effort will be made. I do not pretend not to have felt
+ambition. No man should make it his boast, for it often gives to our
+frail and earth-bound virtue both its weapon and its wings; but when the
+soil is exhausted its produce fails; and when we have forced our hearts
+to too great an abundance, whether it be of flowers that perish or of
+grain that endures, the seeds of after hope bring forth but a languid
+and scanty harvest. My earliest idol was ambition; but then came others,
+love and knowledge, and afterwards the desire to bless. That desire you
+may term ambition: but we will suppose them separate passions; for by
+the latter I would signify the thirst for glory, either in evil or in
+good; and the former teaches us, though by little and little, to gain
+its object, no less in secrecy than for applause; and Wisdom, which
+opens to us a world, vast, but hidden from the crowd, establishes also
+over that world an arbiter of its own, so that its disciples grow proud,
+and, communing with their own hearts, care for no louder judgment than
+the still voice within. It is thus that indifference not to the welfare
+but to the report of others grows over us; and often, while we are the
+most ardent in their cause, we are the least anxious for their esteem.”
+
+“And yet,” said Lord Ulswater, “I have thought the passion for esteem is
+the best guarantee for deserving it.”
+
+“Nor without justice: other passions may supply its place, and produce
+the same effects; but the love of true glory is the most legitimate
+agent of extensive good, and you do right to worship and enshrine it.
+For me it is dead: it Survived--ay, the truth shall out!--poverty, want,
+disappointment, baffled aspirations,--all, all, but the deadness, the
+lethargy of regret when no one was left upon this altered earth to
+animate its efforts, to smile upon its success, then the last spark
+quivered and died; and--and--but forgive me--on this subject I am not
+often wont to wander. I would say that ambition is for me no more; not
+so are its effects: but the hope of serving that race whom I have loved
+as brothers, but who have never known me,--who, by the exterior” (and
+here something bitter mingled with his voice), “pass sentence upon the
+heart; in whose eyes I am only the cold, the wayward, the haughty, the
+morose,--the hope of serving them is to me, now, a far stronger passion
+than ambition was heretofore; and whatever for that end the love of
+fame would have dictated, the love of mankind will teach me still more
+ardently to perform.”
+
+They were now upon the bridge. Pausing, they leaned over, and looked
+along the scene before them. Dark and hushed, the river flowed sullenly
+on, save where the reflected stars made a tremulous and broken beam on
+the black surface of the water, or the lights of the vast City, which
+lay in shadow on its banks, scattered at capricious intervals a pale but
+unpiercing wanness rather than lustre along the tide, or save where the
+stillness was occasionally broken by the faint oar of the boatman or the
+call of his rude voice, mellowed almost into music by distance and the
+element.
+
+But behind them, as they leaned, the feet of passengers on the great
+thoroughfare passed not oft,--but quick; and that sound, the commonest
+of earth’s, made rarer and rarer by the advancing night, contrasted
+rather than destroyed the quiet of the heaven and the solemnity of the
+silent stars.
+
+“It is an old but a just comparison,” said Mordaunt’s companion, “which
+has likened life to a river such as we now survey, gliding alternately
+in light or in darkness, in sunshine or in storm, to that great ocean in
+which all waters meet.”
+
+“If,” said Algernon, with his usual thoughtful and pensive smile, “we
+may be allowed to vary that simile, I would, separating the universal
+and eternal course of Destiny from the fleeting generations of human
+life, compare the river before us to that course, and not it, but the
+city scattered on its banks, to the varieties and mutability of life.
+There (in the latter) crowded together in the great chaos of social
+union, we herd in the night of ages, flinging the little lustre of
+our dim lights over the sullen tide which rolls beside us,--seeing the
+tremulous ray glitter on the surface, only to show us how profound is
+the gloom which it cannot break, and the depths which it is too faint
+to pierce. There Crime stalks, and Woe hushes her moan, and Poverty
+couches, and Wealth riots,--and Death, in all and each, is at his silent
+work. But the stream of Fate, unconscious of our changes and decay,
+glides on to its engulfing bourne; and, while it mirrors the faintest
+smile or the lightest frown of heaven, beholds, without a change upon
+its surface, the generations of earth perish, and be renewed, along its
+banks!”
+
+There was a pause; and by an involuntary and natural impulse, they
+turned from the waves beneath to the heaven which, in its breathing
+contrast, spread all eloquently, yet hushed, above. They looked upon
+the living and intense stars, and felt palpably at their hearts that
+spell--wild, but mute--which nothing on or of earth can inspire; that
+pining of the imprisoned soul, that longing after the immortality on
+high, which is perhaps no imaginary type of the immortality ourselves
+are heirs to.
+
+“It is on such nights as these,” said Mordaunt, who first broke the
+silence, but with a low and soft voice, “that we are tempted to believe
+that in Plato’s divine fancy there is as divine a truth; that ‘our souls
+are indeed of the same essence as the stars,’ and that the mysterious
+yearning, the impatient wish which swells and soars within us to mingle
+with their glory, is but the instinctive and natural longing to re-unite
+the divided portion of an immortal spirit, stored in these cells of
+clay, with the original lustre of the heavenly and burning whole!”
+
+“And hence then,” said his companion, pursuing the idea, “might we also
+believe in that wondrous and wild influence which the stars have been
+fabled to exercise over our fate; hence might we shape a visionary clew
+to their imagined power over our birth, our destinies, and our death.”
+
+“Perhaps,” rejoined Mordaunt, and Lord Ulswater has since said that his
+countenance as he spoke wore an awful and strange aspect, which lived
+long and long afterwards in the memory of his companion, “perhaps they
+are tokens and signs between the soul and the things of Heaven which do
+not wholly shame the doctrine of him [Socrates, who taught the belief in
+omens.] from whose bright wells Plato drew (while he coloured with his
+own gorgeous errors) the waters of his sublime lore.” As Mordaunt thus
+spoke, his voice changed: he paused abruptly, and, pointing to a distant
+quarter of the heavens, said,--
+
+“Look yonder; do you see, in the far horizon, one large and solitary
+star, that, at this very moment, seems to wax pale and paler, as my hand
+points to it?”
+
+“I see it; it shrinks and soars, while we gaze into the farther depths
+of heaven, as if it were seeking to rise to some higher orbit.”
+
+“And do you see,” rejoined Mordaunt, “yon fleecy but dusky cloud which
+sweeps slowly along the sky towards it? What shape does that cloud wear
+to your eyes?”
+
+“It seems to me,” answered Lord Ulswater, “to assume the exact semblance
+of a funeral procession: the human shape appears to me as distinctly
+moulded in the thin vapours as in ourselves; nor would it perhaps ask
+too great indulgence from our fancy to image amongst the darker forms in
+the centre of the cloud one bearing the very appearance of a bier,--the
+plume, and the caparison, and the steeds, and the mourners! Still, as I
+look, the likeness seems to me to increase!”
+
+“Strange!” said Mordaunt, musingly, “how strange is this thing which we
+call the mind! Strange that the dreams and superstitions of childhood
+should cling to it with so inseparable and fond a strength! I remember,
+years since, that I was affected even as I am now, to a degree which
+wiser men might shrink to confess, upon gazing on a cloud exactly
+similar to that which at this instant we behold. But see: that cloud has
+passed over the star; and now, as it rolls away, look, the star itself
+has vanished into the heavens.”
+
+“But I fear,” answered Lord Ulswater, with a slight smile, “that we can
+deduce no omen either from the cloud or the star: would, indeed, that
+Nature were more visibly knit with our individual existence! Would that
+in the heavens there were a book, and in the waves a voice, and on the
+earth a token of the mysteries and enigmas of our fate!”
+
+“And yet,” said Mordaunt, slowly, as his mind gradually rose from its
+dream-like oppression to its wonted and healthful tone, “yet, in truth,
+we want neither sign nor omen from other worlds to teach us all that it
+is the end of existence to fulfil in this; and that seems to me a far
+less exalted wisdom which enables us to solve the riddles, than that
+which elevates us above the chances, of the future.”
+
+“But can we be placed above those chances;--can we become independent
+of that fate to which the ancients taught that even their deities were
+submitted?”
+
+“Let us not so wrong the ancients,” answered Mordaunt; “their poets
+taught it, not their philosophers. Would not virtue be a dream, a
+mockery indeed, if it were, like the herb of the field, a thing of
+blight and change, of withering and renewal, a minion of the sunbeam and
+the cloud? Shall calamity deject it? Shall prosperity pollute? then let
+it not be the object of our aspiration, but the byword of our contempt.
+No: let us rather believe, with the great of old, that when it is based
+on wisdom, it is throned above change and chance! throned above the
+things of a petty and sordid world! throned above the Olympus of the
+heathen! throned above the Stars which fade, and the Moon which waneth
+in her course! Shall we believe less of the divinity of Virtue than
+an Athenian Sage? Shall we, to whose eyes have been revealed without a
+cloud the blaze and the glory of Heaven, make Virtue a slave to those
+chains of earth which the Pagan subjected to her feet? But if by her we
+can trample on the ills of life, are we not a hundredfold more by her
+the vanquishers of death? All creation lies before us: shall we cling
+to a grain of dust? All immortality is our heritage: shall we gasp and
+sicken for a moment’s breath? What if we perish within an hour?--what
+if already the black cloud lowers over us?--what if from our hopes and
+projects, and the fresh woven ties which we have knit around our life,
+we are abruptly torn?--shall we be the creatures or the conquerors of
+fate? Shall we be the exiled from a home, or the escaped from a dungeon?
+Are we not as birds which look into the Great Air only through a barred
+cage? Shall we shrink and mourn when the cage is shattered, and all
+space spreads around us,--our element and our empire? No; it was not
+for this that, in an elder day, Virtue and Valour received but a common
+name! The soul, into which that Spirit has breathed its glory, is not
+only above Fate,--it profits by her assaults! Attempt to weaken it, and
+you nerve it with a new strength; to wound it, and you render it more
+invulnerable; to destroy it, and you make it immortal! This, indeed,
+is the Sovereign whose realm every calamity increases, the Hero whose
+triumph every invasion augments; standing on the last sands of life, and
+encircled by the advancing waters of Darkness and Eternity, it becomes
+in its expiring effort doubly the Victor and the King!”
+
+Impressed by the fervour of his companion, with a sympathy almost
+approaching to awe, Lord Ulswater pressed Mordaunt’s hand, but offered
+no reply; and both, excited by the high theme of their conversation,
+and the thoughts which it produced, moved in silence from their post and
+walked slowly homeward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXVII.
+
+            Is it possible?
+  Is’t so? I can no longer what I would
+  No longer draw back at my liking! I
+  Must do the deed because I thought of it.
+ ......
+  What is thy enterprise,--thy aim, thy object?
+  Hast honestly confessed it to thyself?
+  O bloody, frightful deed!
+ ......
+  Was that my purpose when we parted?
+  O God of Justice!--COLERIDGE: Wallenstein.
+
+We need scarcely say that one of the persons overheard by Mr. Brown was
+Wolfe, and the peculiar tone of oratorical exaggeration, characteristic
+of the man, has already informed the reader with which of the two he is
+identified.
+
+On the evening after the conversation--the evening fixed for the
+desperate design on which he had set the last hazard of his life--the
+republican, parting from the companions with whom he had passed the day,
+returned home to compose the fever of his excited thoughts, and have a
+brief hour of solitary meditation, previous to the committal of that act
+which he knew must be his immediate passport to the jail and the gibbet.
+On entering his squalid and miserable home, the woman of the house, a
+blear-eyed and filthy hag, who was holding to her withered breast an
+infant, which, even in sucking the stream that nourished its tainted
+existence, betrayed upon its haggard countenance the polluted nature of
+the mother’s milk, from which it drew at once the support of life and
+the seeds of death,--this woman, meeting him in the narrow passage,
+arrested his steps to acquaint him that a gentleman had that day called
+upon him and left a letter in his room with strict charge of care and
+speed in its delivery. The visitor had not, however, communicated his
+name, though the curiosity excited by his mien and dress had prompted
+the crone particularly to demand it.
+
+Little affected by this incident, which to the hostess seemed no
+unimportant event, Wolfe pushed the woman aside with an impatient
+gesture, and, scarcely conscious of the abuse which followed this
+motion, hastened up the sordid stairs to his apartment. He sat himself
+down upon the foot of his bed, and, covering his face with his hands,
+surrendered his mind to the tide of contending emotions which rushed
+upon it.
+
+What was he about to commit? Murder!--murder in its coldest and most
+premeditated guise! “No!” cried he aloud, starting from the bed, and
+dashing his clenched hand violently against his brow, “no! no! no! it
+is not murder: it is justice! Did not they, the hirelings of Oppression,
+ride over their crushed and shrieking countrymen, with drawn blades and
+murderous hands? Was I not among them at the hour? Did I not with these
+eyes see the sword uplifted and the smiter strike? Were not my ears
+filled with the groans of their victims and the savage yells of the
+trampling dastards?--yells which rang in triumph over women and babes
+and weaponless men! And shall there be no vengeance? Yes, it shall fall,
+not upon the tools, but the master; not upon the slaves, but the despot.
+Yet,” said he, suddenly pausing, as his voice sank into a whisper,
+“assassination!--in another hour perhaps; a deed irrevocable; a seal set
+upon two souls,--the victim’s and the judge’s! Fetters and the felon’s
+cord before me! the shouting mob! the stigma!--no, no, it will not be
+the stigma; the gratitude, rather, of future times, when motives will
+be appreciated and party hushed! Have I not wrestled with wrong from my
+birth? have I not rejected all offers from the men of an impious power?
+have I made a moment’s truce with the poor man’s foe? have I not thrice
+purchased free principles with an imprisoned frame? have I not bartered
+my substance, and my hopes, and the pleasures of this world for my
+unmoving, unswerving faith in the Great Cause? am I not about to crown
+all by one blow,--one lightning blow, destroying at once myself and a
+criminal too mighty for the law? and shall not history do justice to
+this devotedness,--this absence from all self, hereafter--and admire,
+even if it condemn?”
+
+Buoying himself with these reflections, and exciting the jaded current
+of his designs once more into an unnatural impetus, the unhappy man
+ceased and paced with rapid steps the narrow limits of his chamber; his
+eye fell upon something bright, which glittered amidst the darkening
+shadows of the evening. At that sight his heart stood still for a
+moment: it was the weapon of intended death; he took it up, and as he
+surveyed the shining barrel, and felt the lock, a more settled sternness
+gathered at once over his fierce features and stubborn heart. The pistol
+had been bought and prepared for the purpose with the utmost nicety, not
+only for use but show; nor is it unfrequent to find in such instances
+of premeditated ferocity in design a fearful kind of coxcombry lavished
+upon the means.
+
+Striking a light, Wolfe reseated himself deliberately, and began with
+the utmost care to load the pistol; that scene would not have been an
+unworthy sketch for those painters who possess the power of giving to
+the low a force almost approaching to grandeur, and of augmenting the
+terrible by a mixture of the ludicrous. The sordid chamber, the damp
+walls, the high window, in which a handful of discoloured paper
+supplied the absence of many a pane; the single table of rough oak, the
+rush-bottomed and broken chair, the hearth unconscious of a fire, over
+which a mean bust of Milton held its tutelary sway; while the dull
+rushlight streamed dimly upon the swarthy and strong countenance of
+Wolfe, intent upon his work,--a countenance in which the deliberate
+calmness that had succeeded the late struggle of feeling had in it a
+mingled power of energy and haggardness of languor,--the one of the
+desperate design, the other of the exhausted body; while in the
+knit brow, and the iron lines, and even in the settled ferocity of
+expression, there was yet something above the stamp of the vulgar
+ruffian,--something eloquent of the motive no less than the deed, and
+significant of that not ignoble perversity of mind which diminished the
+guilt, yet increased the dreadness of the meditated crime, by mocking it
+with the name of virtue.
+
+As he had finished his task, and hiding the pistol on his person waited
+for the hour in which his accomplice was to summon him to the fatal
+deed, he perceived, close by him on the table, the letter which the
+woman had spoken of, and which till then, he had, in the excitement of
+his mind, utterly forgotten. He opened it mechanically; an enclosure
+fell to the ground. He picked it up; it was a bank-note of considerable
+amount. The lines in the letter were few, anonymous, and written in a
+hand evidently disguised. They were calculated peculiarly to touch the
+republican, and reconcile him to the gift. In them the writer professed
+to be actuated by no other feeling than admiration for the unbending
+integrity which had characterized Wolfe’s life, and the desire that
+sincerity in any principles, however they might differ from his own,
+should not be rewarded only with indigence and ruin.
+
+It is impossible to tell how far, in Wolfe’s mind, his own desperate
+fortunes might insensibly have mingled with the motives which led him to
+his present design: certain it is that wherever the future is hopeless
+the mind is easily converted from the rugged to the criminal; and
+equally certain it is that we are apt to justify to ourselves many
+offences in a cause where we have made great sacrifices; and, perhaps,
+if this unexpected assistance had come to Wolfe a short time before,
+it might, by softening his heart and reconciling him in some measure
+to fortune, have rendered him less susceptible to the fierce voice of
+political hatred and the instigation of his associates. Nor can we, who
+are removed from the temptations of the poor,--temptations to which ours
+are as breezes which woo to storms which “tumble towers,”--nor can we
+tell how far the acerbity of want, and the absence of wholesome
+sleep, and the contempt of the rich, and the rankling memory of better
+fortunes, or even the mere fierceness which absolute hunger produces in
+the humours and veins of all that hold nature’s life, nor can we tell
+how far these madden the temper, which is but a minion of the body,
+and plead in irresistible excuse for the crimes which our wondering
+virtue--haughty because unsolicited--stamps with its loftiest
+reprobation!
+
+The cloud fell from Wolfe’s brow, and his eye gazed, musingly and rapt,
+upon vacancy. Steps were heard ascending; the voice of a distant clock
+tolled with a distinctness which seemed like strokes palpable as well
+as audible to the senses; and, as the door opened and his accomplice
+entered, Wolfe muttered, “Too late! too late!”--and first crushing
+the note in his hands, then tore it into atoms, with a vehemence which
+astonished his companion, who, however, knew not its value.
+
+“Come,” said he, stamping his foot violently upon the floor, as if to
+conquer by passion all internal relenting, “come, my friend, not another
+moment is to be lost; let us hasten to our holy deed!”
+
+“I trust,” said Wolfe’s companion, when they were in the open street,
+“that we shall not have our trouble in vain; it is a brave night for it!
+Davidson wanted us to throw grenades into the ministers’ carriages, as
+the best plan; and, faith, we can try that if all else fails!”
+
+Wolfe remained silent: indeed he scarcely heard his companion; for
+a sullen indifference to all things around him had wrapped his
+spirit,--that singular feeling, or rather absence from feeling, common
+to all men, when bound on some exciting action, upon which their minds
+are already and wholly bent; which renders them utterly without thought,
+when the superficial would imagine they were the most full of it, and
+leads them to the threshold of that event which had before engrossed all
+their most waking and fervid contemplation with a blind and mechanical
+unconsciousness, resembling the influence of a dream.
+
+They arrived at the place they had selected for their station; sometimes
+walking to and fro in order to escape observation, sometimes hiding
+behind the pillars of a neighbouring house, they awaited the coming of
+their victims. The time passed on; the streets grew more and more empty;
+and, at last, only the visitation of the watchman or the occasional
+steps of some homeward wanderer disturbed the solitude of their station.
+
+At last, just after midnight, two men were seen approaching towards
+them, linked arm in arm, and walking very slowly.
+
+“Hist! hist!” whispered Wolfe’s comrade, “there they are at last; is
+your pistol cocked?”
+
+“Ay,” answered Wolfe, “and yours: man, collect yourself your hand
+shakes.”
+
+“It is with the cold then,” said the ruffian, using, unconsciously, a
+celebrated reply; “let us withdraw behind the pillar.”
+
+They did so: the figures approached them; the night, though star-lit,
+was not sufficiently clear to give the assassins more than the outline
+of their shapes and the characters of their height and air.
+
+“Which,” said Wolfe, in a whisper,--for, as he had said, he had never
+seen either of his intended victims,--“which is my prey?”
+
+“Oh, the nearest to you,” said the other, with trembling accents; “you
+know his d--d proud walk, and erect head that is the way he answers
+the people’s petitions, I’ll be sworn. The taller and farther one, who
+stoops more in his gait, is mine.”
+
+The strangers were now at hand.
+
+“You know you are to fire first, Wolfe,” whispered the nearer ruffian,
+whose heart had long failed him, and who was already meditating escape.
+
+“But are you sure, quite sure, of the identity of our prey?” said Wolfe,
+grasping his pistol.
+
+“Yes, yes,” said the other; and, indeed, the air of the nearest person
+approaching them bore, in the distance, a strong resemblance to that of
+the minister it was supposed to designate. His companion, who appeared
+much younger and of a mien equally patrician, but far less proud, seemed
+listening to the supposed minister with the most earnest attention.
+Apparently occupied with their conversation, when about twenty yards
+from the assassins they stood still for a few moments.
+
+“Stop, Wolfe, stop,” said the republican’s accomplice, whose Indian
+complexion, by fear, and the wan light of the lamps and skies, faded
+into a jaundiced and yellow hue, while the bony whiteness of his teeth
+made a grim contrast with the glare of his small, black, sparkling
+eyes. “Stop, Wolfe, hold your hand. I see, now, that I was mistaken; the
+farther one is a stranger to me, and the nearer one is much thinner than
+the minister: pocket your pistol,--quick! quick!--and let us withdraw.”
+
+Wolfe dropped his hand, as if dissuaded from his design but as he
+looked upon the trembling frame and chattering teeth of his terrified
+accomplice, a sudden, and not unnatural, idea darted across his mind
+that he was wilfully deceived by the fears of his companion; and that
+the strangers, who had now resumed their way, were indeed what his
+accomplice had first reported them to be. Filled with this impression,
+and acting upon the momentary spur which it gave, the infatuated
+and fated man pushed aside his comrade, with a muttered oath at his
+cowardice and treachery, and taking a sure and steady, though quick, aim
+at the person, who was now just within the certain destruction of his
+hand, he fired the pistol. The stranger reeled and fell into the arms of
+his companion.
+
+“Hurrah!” cried the murderer, leaping from his hiding place, and
+walking with rapid strides towards his victim, “hurrah! for liberty and
+England!”
+
+Scarce had he uttered those prostituted names, before the triumph of
+misguided zeal faded suddenly and forever from his brow and soul.
+
+The wounded man leaned back in the supporting arms of his chilled and
+horror-stricken friend; who, kneeling on one knee to support him, fixed
+his eager eyes upon the pale and changing countenance of his burden,
+unconscious of the presence of the assassin.
+
+“Speak, Mordaunt; speak! how is it with you?” he said. Recalled from his
+torpor by the voice, Mordaunt opened his eyes, and muttering, “My child,
+my child,” sank back again; and Lord Ulswater (for it was he) felt, by
+his increased weight, that death was hastening rapidly on its victim.
+
+“Oh!” said he, bitterly, and recalling their last conversation--“oh!
+where, where, when this man--the wise, the kind, the innocent, almost
+the perfect--falls thus in the very prime of existence, by a sudden blow
+from an obscure hand, unblest in life, inglorious in death,--oh! where,
+where is this boasted triumph of Virtue, or where is its reward?”
+
+True to his idol at the last, as these words fell upon his dizzy and
+receding senses, Mordaunt raised himself by a sudden though momentary
+exertion, and, fixing his eyes full upon Lord Ulswater, his moving lips
+(for his voice was already gone) seemed to shape out the answer, “It is
+here!”
+
+With this last effort, and with an expression upon his aspect which
+seemed at once to soften and to hallow the haughty and calm character
+which in life it was wont to bear, Algernon Mordaunt fell once more back
+into the arms of his companion and immediately expired.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXVIII.
+
+  Come, Death, these are thy victims, and the axe
+  Waits those who claimed the chariot.--Thus we count
+  Our treasures in the dark, and when the light
+  Breaks on the cheated eye, we find the coin
+  Was skulls--
+ ......
+            Yet the while
+  Fate links strange contrasts, and the scaffold’s gloom
+  Is neighboured by the altar.--ANONYMOUS.
+
+When Crauford’s guilt and imprisonment became known; when inquiry
+developed, day after day, some new maze in the mighty and intricate
+machinery of his sublime dishonesty; when houses of the most reputed
+wealth and profuse splendour, whose affairs Crauford had transacted,
+were discovered to have been for years utterly undermined and beggared,
+and only supported by the extraordinary genius of the individual by
+whose extraordinary guilt, now no longer concealed, they were suddenly
+and irretrievably destroyed; when it was ascertained that, for nearly
+the fifth part of a century, a system of villany had been carried on
+throughout Europe, in a thousand different relations, without a single
+breath of suspicion, and yet which a single breath of suspicion could
+at once have arrested and exposed; when it was proved that a man whose
+luxury had exceeded the pomp of princes, and whose wealth was supposed
+more inexhaustible than the enchanted purse of Fortunatus, had for
+eighteen years been a penniless pensioner upon the prosperity of others;
+when the long scroll of this almost incredible fraud was slowly, piece
+by piece, unrolled before the terrified curiosity of his public, an
+invading army at the Temple gates could scarcely have excited such
+universal consternation and dismay.
+
+The mob, always the first to execute justice, in their own inimitable
+way took vengeance upon Crauford by burning the house no longer his,
+and the houses of his partners, who were the worst and most innocent
+sufferers for his crime. No epithet of horror and hatred was too severe
+for the offender; and serious apprehension for the safety of Newgate,
+his present habitation, was generally expressed. The more saintly
+members of that sect to which the hypocrite had ostensibly belonged,
+held up their hands, and declared that the fall of the Pharisee was a
+judgment of Providence. Nor did they think it worth while to make, for a
+moment, the trifling inquiry how far the judgment of Providence was also
+implicated in the destruction of the numerous and innocent families he
+had ruined!
+
+But, whether from that admiration for genius, common to the vulgar,
+which forgets all crime in the cleverness of committing it, or from that
+sagacious disposition peculiar to the English, which makes a hero of any
+person eminently wicked, no sooner did Crauford’s trial come on than the
+tide of popular feeling experienced a sudden revulsion. It became, in an
+instant, the fashion to admire and to pity a gentleman so talented and
+so unfortunate. Likenesses of Mr. Crauford appeared in every print-shop
+in town; the papers discovered that he was the very fac-simile of the
+great King of Prussia. The laureate made an ode upon him, which was set
+to music; and the public learned, with tears of compassionate regret
+at so romantic a circumstance, that pigeon-pies were sent daily to his
+prison, made by the delicate hands of one of his former mistresses. Some
+sensation, also, was excited by the circumstance of his poor wife (who
+soon afterwards died of a broken heart) coming to him in prison, and
+being with difficulty torn away; but then, conjugal affection is so very
+commonplace, and there was something so engrossingly pathetic in the
+anecdote of the pigeon-pies!
+
+It must be confessed that Crauford displayed singular address and
+ability upon his trial; and fighting every inch of ground, even to the
+last, when so strong a phalanx of circumstances appeared against him
+that no hope of a favourable verdict could for a moment have supported
+him, he concluded the trial with a speech delivered by himself, so
+impressive, so powerful, so dignified, yet so impassioned, that the
+whole audience, hot as they were, dissolved into tears.
+
+Sentence was passed,--Death! But such was the infatuation of the people
+that every one expected that a pardon, for crime more complicated and
+extensive than half the “Newgate Calendar” could equal, would of course
+be obtained. Persons of the highest rank interested themselves in his
+behalf; and up to the night before his execution, expectations, almost
+amounting to certainty, were entertained by the criminal, his friends,
+and the public. On that night was conveyed to Crauford the positive and
+peremptory assurance that there was no hope. Let us now enter his cell,
+and be the sole witnesses of his solitude.
+
+Crauford was, as we have seen, a man in some respects of great moral
+courage, of extraordinary daring in the formation of schemes, of
+unwavering resolution in supporting them, and of a temper which rather
+rejoiced in, than shunned, the braving of a distant danger for the sake
+of an adequate reward. But this courage was supported and fed solely by
+the self-persuasion of consummate genius, and his profound confidence
+both in his good fortune and the inexhaustibility of his resources.
+Physically he was a coward! immediate peril to be confronted by the
+person, not the mind, had ever appalled him like a child. He had never
+dared to back a spirited horse. He had been known to remain for days in
+an obscure ale-house in the country, to which a shower had accidentally
+driven him, because it had been idly reported that a wild beast had
+escaped from a caravan and been seen in the vicinity of the inn. No dog
+had ever been allowed in his household lest it might go mad. In a
+word, Crauford was one to whom life and sensual enjoyments were
+everything,--the supreme blessings, the only blessings.
+
+As long as he had the hope, and it was a sanguine hope, of saving life,
+nothing had disturbed his mind from its serenity. His gayety had never
+forsaken him; and his cheerfulness and fortitude had been the theme of
+every one admitted to his presence. But when this hope was abruptly
+and finally closed; when Death, immediate and unavoidable,--Death, the
+extinction of existence, the cessation of sense,--stood bare and hideous
+before him, his genius seemed at once to abandon him to his fate, and
+the inherent weakness of his nature to gush over every prop and barrier
+of his art.
+
+“No hope!” muttered he, in a voice of the keenest anguish, “no
+hope; merciful God! none, none? What, I, I, who have shamed kings in
+luxury,--I to die on the gibbet, among the reeking, gaping, swinish
+crowd with whom--O God, that I were one of them even! that I were the
+most loathsome beggar that ever crept forth to taint the air with sores!
+that I were a toad immured in a stone, sweltering in the atmosphere of
+its own venom! a snail crawling on these very walls, and tracking his
+painful path in slime!--anything, anything, but death! And such death!
+The gallows, the scaffold, the halter, the fingers of the hangman
+paddling round the neck where the softest caresses have clung and sated.
+To die, die, die! What, I whose pulse now beats so strongly! whose blood
+keeps so warm and vigorous a motion! in the very prime of enjoyment and
+manhood; all life’s million paths of pleasure before me,--to die, to
+swing to the winds, to hang,--ay, ay--to hang! to be cut down, distorted
+and hideous; to be thrust into the earth with worms; to rot, or--or--or
+hell! is there a hell?--better that even than annihilation!”
+
+“Fool! fool!--damnable fool that I was” (and in his sudden rage he
+clenched his own flesh till the nails met in it); “had I but got to
+France one day sooner! Why don’t you save me, save me, you whom I have
+banqueted and feasted, and lent money to! one word from you might have
+saved me; I will not die! I don’t deserve it! I am innocent! I tell you,
+Not guilty, my lord,--not guilty! Have you no heart, no consciences?
+Murder! murder! murder!” and the wretched man sank upon the ground, and
+tried with his hands to grasp the stone floor, as if to cling to it from
+some imaginary violence.
+
+Turn we from him to the cell in which another criminal awaits also the
+awful coming of his latest morrow.
+
+Pale, motionless, silent, with his face bending over his bosom and hands
+clasped tightly upon his knees, Wolfe sat in his dungeon, and collected
+his spirit against the approaching consummation of his turbulent and
+stormy fate. His bitterest punishment had been already past; mysterious
+Chance, or rather the Power above chance, had denied to him the haughty
+triumph of self-applause. No sophistry, now, could compare his doom to
+that of Sidney, or his deed to the act of the avenging Brutus.
+
+Murder--causeless, objectless, universally execrated--rested, and would
+rest (till oblivion wrapped it) upon his name. It had appeared, too,
+upon his trial, that he had, in the information he had received, been
+the mere tool of a spy in the ministers’ pay; and that, for weeks before
+his intended deed, his design had been known, and his conspiracy only
+not bared to the public eye because political craft awaited a riper
+opportunity for the disclosure. He had not then merely been the blind
+dupe of his own passions, but, more humbling still, an instrument in the
+hands of the very men whom his hatred was sworn to destroy. Not a wreck,
+not a straw, of the vain glory for which he had forfeited life and
+risked his soul, could he hug to a sinking heart, and say, “This is my
+support.”
+
+The remorse of gratitude embittered his cup still further. On Mordaunt’s
+person had been discovered a memorandum of the money anonymously
+inclosed to Wolfe on the day of the murder; and it was couched in words
+of esteem which melted the fierce heart of the republican into the only
+tears he had shed since childhood. From that time, a sullen, silent
+spirit fell upon him. He spoke to none,--heeded none; he made no defence
+on trial, no complaint of severity, no appeal from judgment. The iron
+had entered into his soul; but it supported, while it tortured. Even
+now as we gaze upon his inflexible and dark countenance, no transitory
+emotion; no natural spasm of sudden fear for the catastrophe of the
+morrow; no intense and working passions, struggling into calm; no
+sign of internal hurricanes, rising as it were from the hidden depths,
+agitate the surface, or betray the secrets of the unfathomable world
+within. The mute lip; the rigid brow; the downcast eye; a heavy and
+dread stillness, brooding over every feature,--these are all we behold.
+
+Is it that thought sleeps, locked in the torpor of a senseless and
+rayless dream; or that an evil incubus weighs upon it, crushing its
+risings, but deadening not its pangs? Does Memory fly to the green
+fields and happy home of his childhood, or the lonely studies of his
+daring and restless youth, or his earliest homage to that Spirit of
+Freedom which shone bright and still and pure upon the solitary chamber
+of him who sang of heaven [Milton]; or (dwelling on its last and most
+fearful object) rolls it only through one tumultuous and convulsive
+channel,--Despair? Whatever be within the silent and deep heart, pride,
+or courage, or callousness, or that stubborn firmness, which, once
+principle, has grown habit, cover all as with a pall; and the strung
+nerves and the hard endurance of the human flesh sustain what the
+immortal mind perhaps quails beneath, in its dark retreat, but once
+dreamed that it would exult to bear.
+
+The fatal hour had come! and, through the long dim passages of the
+prison, four criminals were led forth to execution. The first was
+Crauford’s associate, Bradley. This man prayed fervently; and, though
+he was trembling and pale, his mien and aspect bore something of the
+calmness of resignation.
+
+It has been said that there is no friendship among the wicked. I
+have examined this maxim closely, and believe it, like most popular
+proverbs,--false. In wickedness there is peril, and mutual terror is the
+strongest of ties. At all events, the wicked can, not unoften, excite
+an attachment in their followers denied to virtue. Habitually courteous,
+caressing, and familiar, Crauford had, despite his own suspicions of
+Bradley, really touched the heart of one whom weakness and want, not
+nature, had gained to vice; and it was not till Crauford’s guilt was by
+other witnesses undeniably proved that Bradley could be tempted to make
+any confession tending to implicate him.
+
+He now crept close to his former partner, and frequently clasped his
+hand, and besought him to take courage and to pray. But Crauford’s eye
+was glassy and dim, and his veins seemed filled with water: so
+numbed and cold and white was his cheek. Fear, in him, had passed its
+paroxysms, and was now insensibility; it was only when they urged him to
+pray that a sort of benighted consciousness strayed over his countenance
+and his ashen lips muttered something which none heard.
+
+After him came the Creole, who had been Wolfe’s accomplice. On the night
+of the murder, he had taken advantage of the general loneliness and
+the confusion of the few present, and fled. He was found, however, fast
+asleep in a garret, before morning, by the officers of justice; and, on
+trial, he had confessed all. This man was in a rapid consumption. The
+delay of another week would have given to Nature the termination of his
+life. He, like Bradley, seemed earnest and absorbed in prayer.
+
+Last came Wolfe, his tall, gaunt frame worn by confinement and internal
+conflict into a gigantic skeleton; his countenance, too, had undergone a
+withering change; his grizzled hair seemed now to have acquired only the
+one hoary hue of age; and, though you might trace in his air and eye the
+sternness, you could no longer detect the fire, of former days. Calm, as
+on the preceding night, no emotion broke over his dark but not defying
+features. He rejected, though not irreverently, all aid from the
+benevolent priest, and seemed to seek in the pride of his own heart a
+substitute for the resignation of Religion.
+
+“Miserable man!” at last said the good clergyman, in whom zeal overcame
+kindness, “have you at this awful hour no prayer upon your lips?”
+
+A living light shot then for a moment over Wolfe’s eye and brow. “I
+have!” said he; and raising his clasped hands to Heaven, he continued in
+the memorable words of Sidney, “Lord, defend Thy own cause, and defend
+those who defend it! Stir up such as are faint; direct those that are
+willing; confirm those that waver; give wisdom and integrity to all:
+order all things so as may most redound to Thine own glory!
+
+“I had once hoped,” added Wolfe, sinking in his tone, “I had once hoped
+that I might with justice have continued that holy prayer; [“Grant that
+I may die glorifying Thee for all Thy mercies, and that at the last Thou
+hast permitted me to be singled out as a witness of Thy truth, and even
+by the confession of my opposers for that OLD CAUSE in which I was from
+my youth engaged, and for which Thou hast often and wonderfully declared
+Thyself.”--ALGERNON SIDNEY.] but--” he ceased abruptly; the glow passed
+from his countenance, his lip quivered, and the tears stood in his eyes;
+and that was the only weakness he betrayed, and those were his last
+words.
+
+Crauford continued, even while the rope was put round him, mute and
+unconscious of everything. It was said that his pulse (that of an
+uncommonly strong and healthy man on the previous day) had become so low
+and faint that, an hour before his execution, it could not be felt. He
+and the Creole were the only ones who struggled; Wolfe died, seemingly,
+without a pang.
+
+From these feverish and fearful scenes, the mind turns, with a feeling
+of grateful relief, to contemplate the happiness of one whose candid
+and high nature, and warm affections, Fortune, long befriending, had at
+length blessed.
+
+It was on an evening in the earliest flush of returning spring that Lord
+Ulswater, with his beautiful bride, entered his magnificent domains. It
+had been his wish and order, in consequence of his brother’s untimely
+death, that no public rejoicings should be made on his marriage: but
+the good old steward could not persuade himself entirely to enforce
+obedience to the first order of his new master; and as the carriage
+drove into the park-gates, crowds on crowds were assembled to welcome
+and to gaze.
+
+No sooner had they caught a glimpse of their young lord, whose
+affability and handsome person had endeared him to all who remembered
+his early days, and of the half-blushing, half-smiling countenance
+beside him, than their enthusiasm could be no longer restrained. The
+whole scene rang with shouts of joy; and through an air filled with
+blessings, and amidst an avenue of happy faces, the bridal pair arrived
+at their home.
+
+“Ah! Clarence (for so I must still call you),” said Flora, her beautiful
+eyes streaming with delicious tears, “let us never leave these kind
+hearts; let us live amongst them, and strive to repay and deserve the
+blessings which they shower upon us! Is not Benevolence, dearest, better
+than Ambition?”
+
+“Can it not rather, my own Flora, be Ambition itself?”
+
+
+
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+  So rest you, merry gentlemen.--Monsieur Thomas.
+
+The Author has now only to take his leave of the less important
+characters whom he has assembled together; and then, all due courtesy to
+his numerous guests being performed, to retire himself to repose.
+
+First, then, for Mr. Morris Brown: In the second year of Lord Ulswater’s
+marriage, the worthy broker paid Mrs. Minden’s nephew a visit, in which
+he persuaded that gentleman to accept, “as presents,” two admirable fire
+screens, the property of the late Lady Waddilove: the same may be now
+seen in the housekeeper’s room at Borodaile Park by any person
+willing to satisfy his curiosity and--the housekeeper. Of all further
+particulars respecting Mr. Morris Brown, history is silent.
+
+In the obituary for 1792, we find the following paragraph:
+
+“Died at his house in Putney, aged seventy-three, Sir Nicholas Copperas,
+Knt., a gentleman well known on the Exchange for his facetious humour.
+Several of his bons-mots are still recorded in the Common Council. When
+residing many years ago in the suburbs of London, this worthy gentleman
+was accustomed to go from his own house to the Exchange in a coach
+called ‘the Swallow,’ that passed his door just at breakfast-time;
+upon which occasion he was wont wittily to observe to his accomplished
+spouse, ‘And now, Mrs. Copperas, having swallowed in the roll, I will
+e’en roll in the Swallow!’ His whole property is left to Adolphus
+Copperas, Esq., banker.”
+
+And in the next year we discover,--
+
+“Died, on Wednesday last, at her jointure house, Putney, in her
+sixty-eighth year, the amiable and elegant Lady Copperas, relict of the
+late Sir Nicholas, Knt.”
+
+Mr. Trollolop, having exhausted the whole world of metaphysics, died
+like Descartes, “in believing he had left nothing unexplained.”
+
+Mr. Callythorpe entered the House of Commons at the time of the French
+Revolution. He distinguished himself by many votes in favour of Mr.
+Pitt, and one speech which ran thus: “Sir, I believe my right honourable
+friend who spoke last (Mr. Pitt) designs to ruin the country: but I will
+support him through all. Honourable Gentlemen may laugh; but I’m a true
+Briton, and will not serve my friend the less because I scorn to flatter
+him.”
+
+Sir Christopher Findlater lost his life by an accident arising from the
+upsetting of his carriage, his good heart not having suffered him to
+part with a drunken coachman.
+
+Mr. Glumford turned miser in his old age; and died of want, and an
+extravagant son.
+
+Our honest Cole and his wife were always among the most welcome visitors
+at Lord Ulswater’s. In his extreme old age, the ex-king took a journey
+to Scotland, to see the Author of “The Lay of the Last Minstrel.” Nor
+should we do justice to the chief’s critical discernment if we neglected
+to record that, from the earliest dawn of that great luminary of
+our age, he predicted its meridian splendour. The eldest son of the
+gypsy-monarch inherited his father’s spirit, and is yet alive, a
+general, and G.C.B.
+
+Mr. Harrison married Miss Elizabeth, and succeeded to the Golden Fleece.
+
+The Duke of Haverfield and Lord Ulswater continued their friendship
+through life; and the letters of our dear Flora to her correspondent,
+Eleanor, did not cease even with that critical and perilous period
+to all maiden correspondents,--Marriage. If we may judge from the
+subsequent letters which we have been permitted to see, Eleanor never
+repented her brilliant nuptials, nor discovered (as the Duchess of ----
+once said from experience) “that Dukes are as intolerable for husbands
+as they are delightful for matches.”
+
+And Isabel Mordaunt?--Ah! not in these pages shall her history be told
+even in epitome. Perhaps for some future narrative, her romantic and
+eventful fate may be reserved. Suffice it for the present, that the
+childhood of the young heiress passed in the house of Lord Ulswater,
+whose proudest boast, through a triumphant and prosperous life, was to
+have been her father’s friend; and that as she grew up, she inherited
+her mother’s beauty and gentle heart, and seemed to bear in her deep
+eyes and melancholy smile some remembrance of the scenes in which her
+infancy had been passed.
+
+But for Him, the husband and the father, whose trials through this wrong
+world I have portrayed,--for him let there be neither murmurs at the
+blindness of Fate, nor sorrow at the darkness of his doom. Better that
+the lofty and bright spirit should pass away before the petty business
+of life had bowed it, or the sordid mists of this low earth breathed a
+shadow on its lustre! Who would have asked that spirit to have struggled
+on for years in the intrigues, the hopes, the objects of meaner souls?
+Who would have desired that the heavenward and impatient heart should
+have grown insured to the chains and toil of this enslaved state, or
+hardened into the callousness of age? Nor would we claim the vulgar
+pittance of compassion for a lot which is exalted above regret! Pity
+is for our weaknesses: to our weaknesses only be it given. It is
+the aliment of love; it is the wages of ambition; it is the rightful
+heritage of error! But why should pity be entertained for the soul which
+never fell? for the courage which never quailed? for the majesty never
+humbled? for the wisdom which, from the rough things of the common
+world, raised an empire above earth and destiny? for the stormy
+life?--it was a triumph! for the early death?--it was immortality!
+
+I have stood beside Mordaunt’s tomb: his will had directed that he
+should sleep not in the vaults of his haughty line; and his last
+dwelling is surrounded by a green and pleasant spot. The trees shadow
+it like a temple; and a silver though fitful brook wails with a constant
+yet not ungrateful dirge at the foot of the hill on which the tomb is
+placed. I have stood there in those ardent years when our wishes know no
+boundary and our ambition no curb; yet, even then, I would have changed
+my wildest vision of romance for that quiet grave, and the dreams of the
+distant spirit whose relics reposed beneath it.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg’s The Disowned, Complete, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
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