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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Falkland, 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: Falkland, Complete
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 16, 2009 [EBook #7761]
+Last Updated: August 28, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FALKLAND, COMPLETE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FALKLAND
+
+By Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE TO THE PRESENT EDITION.
+
+“FALKLAND” is the earliest of Lord Lytton’s prose fictions. Published
+before “Pelham,” it was written in the boyhood of its illustrious
+author. In the maturity of his manhood and the fulness of his literary
+popularity he withdrew it from print. This is one of the first English
+editions of his collected works in which the tale reappears. It is
+because the morality of it was condemned by his experienced judgment,
+that the author of “Falkland” deliberately omitted it from each of the
+numerous reprints of his novels and romances which were published in
+England during his lifetime.
+
+With the consent of the author’s son, “Falkland” is included in the
+present edition of his collected works.
+
+In the first place, this work has been for many years, and still is,
+accessible to English readers in every country except England. The
+continental edition of it, published by Baron Tauchnitz, has a wide
+circulation; and since for this reason the book cannot practically be
+withheld from the public, it is thought desirable that the
+publication of it should at least be accompanied by some record of the
+abovementioned fact.
+
+In the next place, the considerations which would naturally guide an
+author of established reputation in the selection of early compositions
+for subsequent republication, are obviously inapplicable to the
+preparation of a posthumous standard edition of his collected works.
+Those who read the tale of “Falkland” eight-and-forty years ago’ have
+long survived the age when character is influenced by the literature of
+sentiment. The readers to whom it is now presented are not Lord Lytton’s
+contemporaries; they are his posterity. To them his works have already
+become classical. It is only upon the minds of the young that the works
+of sentiment have any appreciable moral influence. But the sentiment
+of each age is peculiar to itself; and the purely moral influence
+of sentimental fiction seldom survives the age to which it was first
+addressed. The youngest and most impressionable reader of such works as
+the “Nouvelle Hemise,” “Werther,” “The Robbers,” “Corinne,” or “Rene,”
+ is not now likely to be morally influenced, for good or ill, by the
+perusal of those masterpieces of genius. Had Byron attained the age
+at which great authors most realise the responsibilities of fame and
+genius, he might possibly have regretted, and endeavoured to suppress,
+the publication of “Don Juan;” but the possession of that immortal poem
+is an unmixed benefit to posterity, and the loss of it would have been
+an irreparable misfortune.
+
+“Falkland,” although the earliest, is one of the most carefully finished
+of its author’s compositions. All that was once turbid, heating,
+unwholesome in the current of sentiment which flows through this history
+of a guilty passion, “Death’s immortalising winter” has chilled and
+purified. The book is now a harmless, and, it may be hoped, a not
+uninteresting, evidence of the precocity of its author’s genius. As
+such, it is here reprinted.
+
+[It was published in 1827]
+
+
+
+
+FALKLAND.
+
+BOOK I.
+
+FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO THE HON. FREDERICK MONKTON.
+
+L---, May --, 1822.
+
+You are mistaken, my dear Monkton! Your description of the gaiety of
+“the season” gives me no emotion. You speak of pleasure; I remember no
+labour so wearisome; you enlarge upon its changes; no sameness appears
+to me so monotonous. Keep, then, your pity for those who require it.
+From the height of my philosophy I compassionate you. No one is so
+vain as a recluse; and your jests at my hermitship and hermitage cannot
+penetrate the folds of a self-conceit, which does not envy you in your
+suppers at D---- House, nor even in your waltzes with Eleanor.
+
+It is a ruin rather than a house which I inhabit. I have not been at
+L----- since my return from abroad, and during those years the place
+has gone rapidly to decay; perhaps, for that reason, it suits me better,
+_tel maitre telle maison_.
+
+Of all my possessions this is the least valuable in itself, and derives
+the least interest from the associations of childhood, for it was not at
+L----- that any part of that period was spent. I have, however, chosen
+it from my present retreat, because here only I am personally unknown,
+and therefore little likely to be disturbed. I do not, indeed, wish for
+the interruptions designed as civilities; I rather gather around myself,
+link after link, the chains that connected me with the world; I find
+among my own thoughts that variety and occupation which you only
+experience in your intercourse with others; and I make, like the
+Chinese, my map of the universe consist of a circle in a square--the
+circle is my own empire and of thought and self; and it is to the scanty
+corners which it leaves without, that I banish whatever belongs to the
+remainder of mankind.
+
+About a mile from L----- is Mr. Mandeville’s beautiful villa of E-----,
+in the midst of grounds which form a delightful contrast to the savage
+and wild scenery by which they are surrounded. As the house is at
+present quite deserted, I have obtained, through the gardener, a free
+admittance into his domains, and I pass there whole hours, indulging,
+like the hero of the _Lutrin, “une sainte oisivete,”_ listening to a
+little noisy brook, and letting my thoughts be almost as vague and idle
+as the birds which wander among the trees that surround me. I could
+wish, indeed, that this simile were in all things correct--that
+those thoughts, if as free, were also as happy as the objects of my
+comparison, and could, like them, after the rovings of the day, turn
+at evening to a resting-place, and be still. We are the dupes and the
+victims of our senses: while we use them to gather from external things
+the hoards that we store within, we cannot foresee the punishments we
+prepare for ourselves; the remembrance which stings, and the hope which
+deceives, the passions which promise us rapture, which reward us with
+despair, and the thoughts which, if they constitute the healthful
+action, make also the feverish excitement of our minds. What sick man
+has not dreamt in his delirium everything that our philosophers have
+said?* But I am growing into my old habit of gloomy reflection, and it
+is time that I should conclude. I meant to have written you a letter as
+light as your own; if I have failed, it is no wonder.--“Notre coeur est
+un instrument incomplet--une lyre ou il manque des cordes, et ou nous
+sommes forces de rendre les accens de la joie, sur le ton consacre aux
+soupirs.”
+
+   * Quid aegrotus unquam somniavit quod philosophorum aliquis non
+   dixerit?--LACTANTIUS.
+
+
+
+FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
+
+You ask me to give you some sketch of my life, and of that _bel mondo_
+which wearied me so soon. Men seldom reject an opportunity to talk of
+themselves; and I am not unwilling to re-examine the past, to re-connect
+it with the present, and to gather from a consideration of each what
+hopes and expectations are still left to me for the future.
+
+But my detail must be rather of thought than of action; most of those
+whose fate has been connected with mine are now living, and I would not,
+even to you, break that tacit confidence which much of my history would
+require. After all, you will have no loss. The actions of another may
+interest--but, for the most part, it is only his reflections which come
+home to us; for few have acted, nearly all of us have thought.
+
+My own vanity too would be unwilling to enter upon incidents which had
+their origin either in folly or in error. It is true that those follies
+and errors have ceased, but their effects remain. With years our faults
+diminish, but our vices increase.
+
+You know that my mother was Spanish, and that my father was one of
+that old race of which so few scions remain, who, living in a distant
+country, have been little influenced by the changes of fashion, and,
+priding themselves on the antiquity of their names, have looked with
+contempt upon the modern distinctions and the mushroom nobles which have
+sprung up to discountenance and eclipse the plainness of more venerable
+and solid respectability. In his youth my father had served in the army.
+He had known much of men and more of books; but his knowledge, instead
+of rooting out, had rather been engrafted on his prejudices. He was one
+of that class (and I say it with a private reverence, though a public
+regret), who, with the best intentions, have made the worst citizens,
+and who think it a duty to perpetuate whatever is pernicious by having
+learnt to consider it as sacred. He was a great country gentleman, a
+great sportsman, and a great Tory; perhaps the three worst enemies which
+a country can have. Though beneficent to the poor, he gave but a cold
+reception to the rich; for he was too refined to associate with his
+inferiors, and too proud to like the competition of his equals. One ball
+and two dinners a-year constituted all the aristocratic portion of
+our hospitality, and at the age of twelve, the noblest and youngest
+companions that I possessed were a large Danish dog and a wild mountain
+pony, as unbroken and as lawless as myself. It is only in later years
+that we can perceive the immeasurable importance of the early scenes
+and circumstances which surrounded us. It was in the loneliness of my
+unchecked wanderings that my early affection for my own thoughts
+was conceived. In the seclusion of nature--in whatever court she
+presided--the education of my mind was begun; and, even at that early
+age, I rejoiced (like the wild heart the Grecian poet [Eurip. Bambae,
+1. 874.] has described) in the stillness of the great woods, and the
+solitudes unbroken by human footstep.
+
+The first change in my life was under melancholy auspices; my father
+fell suddenly ill, and died; and my mother, whose very existence seemed
+only held in his presence, followed him in three months. I remember
+that, a few hours before her death, she called me to her: she reminded
+me that, through her, I was of Spanish extraction; that in her country,
+I received my birth, and that, not the less for its degradation and
+distress, I might hereafter find in the relations which I held to it a
+remembrance to value, or even a duty to fulfil. On her tenderness to me
+at that hour, on the impression it made upon my mind, and on the keen
+and enduring sorrow which I felt for months after her death, it would be
+useless to dwell.
+
+My uncle became my guardian. He is, you know, a member of parliament
+of some reputation; very sensible and very dull; very much respected by
+men, very much disliked by women; and inspiring all children, of either
+sex, with the same unmitigated aversion which he feels for them himself.
+
+I did not remain long under his immediate care. I was soon sent to
+school--that preparatory world, where the great primal principles of
+human nature, in the aggression of the strong and the meanness of the
+weak, constitute the earliest lesson of importance that we are taught;
+and where the forced _primitiae_ of that less universal knowledge which
+is useless to the many who in after life, neglect, and bitter to the
+few who improve it, are the first motives for which our minds are to be
+broken to terror, and our hearts initiated into tears.
+
+Bold and resolute by temper, I soon carved myself a sort of career among
+my associates. A hatred to all oppression, and a haughty and unyielding
+character, made me at once the fear and aversion of the greater powers
+and principalities of the school; while my agility at all boyish games,
+and my ready assistance or protection to every one who required it, made
+me proportionally popular with, and courted by, the humbler multitude of
+the subordinate classes. I was constantly surrounded by the most lawless
+and mischievous followers whom the school could afford; all eager for my
+commands, and all pledged to their execution.
+
+In good truth, I was a worthy Rowland of such a gang; though I excelled
+in, I cared little for the ordinary amusements of the school: I was
+fonder of engaging in marauding expeditions contrary to our legislative
+restrictions, and I valued myself equally upon my boldness in planning
+our exploits, and my dexterity in eluding their discovery. But exactly
+in proportion as our school terms connected me with those of my own
+years, did our vacations unfit me for any intimate companionship but
+that which I already began to discover in myself.
+
+Twice in the year, when I went home, it was to that wild and romantic
+part of the country where my former childhood had been spent. There,
+alone and unchecked, I was thrown utterly upon my own resources. I
+wandered by day over the rude scenes which surrounded us; and at evening
+I pored, with an unwearied delight, over the ancient legends which
+made those scenes sacred to my imagination. I grew by degrees of a more
+thoughtful and visionary nature. My temper imbibed the romance of my
+studies; and whether, in winter, basking by the large hearth of our old
+hall, or stretched, in the indolent voluptuousness of summer, by the
+rushing streams which formed the chief characteristic of the country
+around us, my hours were equally wasted in those dim and luxurious
+dreams, which constituted, perhaps, the essence of that poetry I had
+not the genius to embody. It was then, by that alternate restlessness
+of action and idleness of reflection, into which my young years were
+divided, that the impress of my character was stamped: that fitfulness
+of temper, that affection for extremes, has accompanied me through life.
+Hence, not only all intermediums of emotion appear to me as tame, but
+even the most overwrought excitation can bring neither novelty nor zest.
+I have, as it were, feasted upon the passions; I have made that my
+daily food, which, in its strength and excess, would have been poison to
+others; I have rendered my mind unable to enjoy the ordinary aliments of
+nature; and I have wasted, by a premature indulgence, my resources and
+my powers, till I have left my heart, without a remedy or a hope, to
+whatever disorders its own intemperance has engendered.
+
+
+
+FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
+
+When I left Dr. -----‘s, I was sent to a private tutor in D-----e. Here
+I continued for about two years. It was during that time that--but what
+then befell me is for no living ear! The characters of that history are
+engraven on my heart in letters of fire; but it is a language that none
+but myself have the authority to read. It is enough for the purpose of
+my confessions that the events of that period were connected with
+the first awakening of the most powerful of human passions, and that,
+whatever their commencement, their end was despair! and she--the object
+of that love--the only being in the world who ever possessed the secret
+and the spell of my nature--her life was the bitterness and the fever of
+a troubled heart,--her rest is the grave--
+
+        Non la conobbe il mondo mentre l’ebbe
+        Con ibill’io, ch’a pianger qui rimasi.
+
+That attachment was not so much a single event, as the first link in
+a long chain which was coiled around my heart. It were a tedious and
+bitter history, even were it permitted, to tell you of all the sins and
+misfortunes to which in afterlife that passion was connected. I will
+only speak of the more hidden but general effect it had upon my
+mind; though, indeed, naturally inclined to a morbid and melancholy
+philosophy, it is more than probable, but for that occurrence, that
+it would never have found matter for excitement. Thrown early among
+mankind, I should early have imbibed their feelings, and grown like them
+by the influence of custom. I should not have carried within the one
+unceasing remembrance, which was to teach me, like Faustus, to find
+nothing in knowledge but its inutility, or in hope but its deceit; and
+to bear like him, through the blessings of youth and the allurements of
+pleasure, the curse and the presence of a fiend.
+
+
+
+FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
+
+It was after the first violent grief produced by that train of
+circumstances to which I must necessarily so darkly allude, that I
+began to apply with earnestness to books. Night and day I devoted myself
+unceasingly to study, and from this fit I was only recovered by the long
+and dangerous illness it produced. Alas! there is no fool like him
+who wishes for knowledge! It is only through woe that we are taught to
+reflect, and we gather the honey of worldly wisdom, not from flowers,
+but thorns.
+
+“Une grande passion malheureuse est un grand moyen de sagesse.” From
+the moment in which the buoyancy of my spirit was first broken by real
+anguish, the losses of the heart were repaired by the experience of the
+mind. I passed at once, like Melmoth, from youth to age. What were
+any longer to me the ordinary avocations of my contemporaries? I had
+exhausted years in moments--I had wasted, like the Eastern Queen, my
+richest jewel in a draught. I ceased to hope, to feel, to act, to burn;
+such are the impulses of the young! I learned to doubt, to reason, to
+analyse: such are the habits of the old! From that time, if I have not
+avoided the pleasures of life, I have not enjoyed them. Women, wine,
+the society of the gay, the commune of the wise, the lonely pursuit of
+knowledge, the daring visions of ambition, all have occupied me in turn,
+and all alike have deceived me; but, like the Widow in the story of
+Voltaire, I have built at last a temple to “Time, the Comforter:” I have
+grown calm and unrepining with years; and, if I am now shrinking from
+men, I have derived at least this advantage from the loneliness first
+made habitual by regret; that while I feel increased benevolence to
+others, I have learned to look for happiness only in myself.
+
+They alone are independent of Fortune who have made themselves a
+separate existence from the world.
+
+
+
+FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
+
+I went to the University with a great fund of general reading, and
+habits of constant application. My uncle, who, having no children of
+his own, began to be ambitious for me, formed great expectations of my
+career at Oxford. I staid there three years, and did nothing! I did
+not gain a single prize, nor did I attempt anything above the ordinary
+degree. The fact is, that nothing seemed to me worth the labour of
+success. I conversed with those who had obtained the highest academical
+reputation, and I smiled with a consciousness of superiority at the
+boundlessness of their vanity, and the narrowness of their views. The
+limits of the distinction they had gained seemed to them as wide as the
+most extended renown; and the little knowledge their youth had acquired
+only appeared to them an excuse for the ignorance and the indolence of
+maturer years. Was it to equal these that I was to labour? I felt that
+I already surpassed them! Was it to gain their good opinion, or, still
+worse, that of their admirers? Alas! I had too long learned to live for
+myself to find any happiness in the respect of the idlers I despised.
+
+I left Oxford at the age of twenty-one. I succeeded to the large estates
+of my inheritance, and for the first time I felt the vanity so natural
+to youth when I went up to London to enjoy the resources of the Capital,
+and to display the powers I possessed to revel in whatever those
+resources could yield. I found society like the Jewish temple: any one
+is admitted into its threshold; none but the chiefs of the institution
+into its recesses.
+
+Young, rich, of an ancient and honourable name, pursuing pleasure rather
+as a necessary excitement than an occasional occupation, and agreeable
+to the associates I drew around me because my profusion contributed
+to their enjoyment, and my temper to their amusement--I found myself
+courted by many, and avoided by none. I soon discovered that all
+civility is but the mask of design. I smiled at the kindness of the
+fathers who, hearing that I was talented, and knowing that I was rich,
+looked to my support in whatever political side they had espoused. I saw
+in the notes of the mothers their anxiety for the establishment of their
+daughters, and their respect for my acres; and in the cordiality of the
+sons who had horses to sell and rouge-et-noir debts to pay, I detected
+all that veneration for my money which implied such contempt for its
+possessor. By nature observant, and by misfortune sarcastic, I looked
+upon the various colourings of society with a searching and philosophic
+eye: I unravelled the intricacies which knit servility with arrogance
+and meanness with ostentation; and I traced to its sources that
+universal vulgarity of inward sentiment and external manner, which,
+in all classes, appears to me to constitute the only unvarying
+characteristic of our countrymen. In proportion as I increased my
+knowledge of others, I shrunk with a deeper disappointment and dejection
+into my own resources. The first moment of real happiness which I
+experienced for a whole year was when I found myself about to seek,
+beneath the influence of other skies, that more extended acquaintance
+with my species which might either draw me to them with a closer
+connection, or at last reconcile me to the ties which already existed.
+
+I will not dwell upon my adventures abroad: there is little to interest
+others in a recital which awakens no interest in one’s self. I sought
+for wisdom, and I acquired but knowledge. I thirsted for the truth, the
+tenderness of love, and I found but its fever and its falsehood. Like
+the two Florimels of Spenser, I mistook, in my delirium, the delusive
+fabrication of the senses for the divine reality of the heart; and I
+only awoke from my deceit when the phantom I had worshipped melted into
+snow. Whatever I pursued partook of the energy, yet fitfulness of my
+nature; mingling to-day in the tumults of the city, and to-morrow alone
+with my own heart in the solitude of unpeopled nature; now revelling
+in the wildest excesses, and now tracing, with a painful and unwearied
+search, the intricacies of science; alternately governing others, and
+subdued by the tyranny which my own passions imposed--I passed through
+the ordeal unshrinking yet unscathed. “The education of life,” says De
+Stael, “perfects the thinking mind, but depraves the frivolous.” I do
+not inquire, Monkton, to which of these classes I belong; but I feel
+too well, that though my mind has not been depraved, it has found no
+perfection but in misfortune; and that whatever be the acquirements of
+later years, they have nothing which can compensate for the losses of
+our youth.
+
+
+
+FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
+
+I returned to England. I entered again upon the theatre of its world;
+but I mixed now more in its greater than its lesser pursuits. I looked
+rather at the mass than the leaven of mankind; and while I felt aversion
+for the few whom I knew, I glowed with philanthropy for the crowd which
+I knew not.
+
+It is in contemplating men at a distance that we become benevolent. When
+we mix with them, we suffer by the contact, and grow, if not malicious
+from the injury, at least selfish from the circumspection which our
+safety imposes but when, while we feel our relationship, we are not
+galled by the tie; when neither jealousy, nor envy, nor resentment are
+excited, we have nothing to interfere with those more complacent and
+kindliest sentiments which our earliest impressions have rendered
+natural to our hearts. We may fly men in hatred because they have galled
+us, but the feeling ceases with the cause: none will willingly feed long
+upon bitter thoughts. It is thus that, while in the narrow circle in
+which we move we suffer daily from those who approach us, we can, in
+spite of our resentment to them, glow with a general benevolence to the
+wider relations from which we are remote; that while smarting
+beneath the treachery of friendship, the stinging of ingratitude, the
+faithfulness of love, we would almost sacrifice our lives to realise
+some idolised theory of legislation; and that, distrustful, calculating,
+selfish in private, there are thousands who would, with a credulous
+fanaticism, fling themselves as victims before that unrecompensing
+Moloch which they term the Public.
+
+Living, then, much by myself, but reflecting much upon the world,
+I learned to love mankind. Philanthropy brought ambition; for I was
+ambitious, not for my own aggrandisement, but for the service of
+others--for the poor--the toiling--the degraded; these constituted that
+part of my fellow-beings which I the most loved, for these were bound to
+me by the most engaging of all human ties--misfortune! I began to enter
+into the intrigues of the state; I extended my observation and inquiry
+from individuals to nations; I examined into the mysteries of the
+science which has arisen in these later days to give the lie to the
+wisdom of the past, to reduce into the simplicity of problems the
+intricacies of political knowledge, to teach us the fallacy of the
+system which had governed by restriction, and imagined that the
+happiness of nations depended upon the perpetual interference of its
+rulers, and to prove to us that the only unerring policy of art is
+to leave a free and unobstructed progress to the hidden energies and
+province of Nature. But it was not only the theoretical investigation of
+the state which employed me. I mixed, though in secret, with the agents
+of its springs. While I seemed only intent upon pleasure, I locked in my
+heart the consciousness and vanity of power. In the levity of the lip I
+disguised the workings and the knowledge of the brain; and I looked,
+as with a gifted eye, upon the mysteries of the hidden depths, while
+I seemed to float an idler, with the herd, only on the surface of the
+stream.
+
+Why was I disgusted, when I had but to put forth my hand and grasp
+whatever object my ambition might desire? Alas! there was in my heart
+always something too soft for the aims and cravings of my mind. I felt
+that I was wasting the young years of my life in a barren and wearisome
+pursuit. What to me, who had outlived vanity, would have been the
+admiration of the crowd! I sighed for the sympathy of the one! and I
+shrunk in sadness from the prospect of renown to ask my heart for the
+reality of love! For what purpose, too, had I devoted myself to the
+service of men? As I grew more sensible of the labour of pursuing, I saw
+more of the inutility of accomplishing, individual measures. There is
+one great and moving order of events which we may retard, but we cannot
+arrest, and to which, if we endeavour to hasten them, we only give
+a dangerous and unnatural impetus. Often, when in the fever of the
+midnight, I have paused from my unshared and unsoftened studies, to
+listen to the deadly pulsation of my heart,--[Falkland suffered much,
+from very early youth, from a complaint in his heart]--when I have felt
+in its painful and tumultuous beating the very life waning and wasting
+within me, I have sickened to my inmost soul to remember that, amongst
+all those whom I was exhausting the health and enjoyment of youth to
+benefit, there was not one for whom my life had an interest, or by whom
+my death would be honoured by a tear. There is a beautiful passage in
+Chalmers on the want of sympathy we experience in the world. From my
+earliest childhood I had one deep, engrossing, yearning desire,--and
+that was to love and to be loved. I found, too young, the realisation of
+that dream--it passed! and I have never known it again. The experience
+of long and bitter years teaches me to look with suspicion on that
+far recollection of the past, and to doubt if this earth could indeed
+produce a living form to satisfy the visions of one who has dwelt
+among the boyish creations of fancy--who has shaped out in his heart an
+imaginary idol, arrayed it in whatever is most beautiful in nature, and
+breathed into the image the pure but burning spirit of that innate love
+from which it sprung! It is true that my manhood has been the undeceiver
+of my youth, and that the meditation upon the facts has disenthralled me
+from the visionary broodings over fiction; but what remuneration have I
+found in reality? If the line of the satirist be not true, “Souvent
+de tous nos maux la raison est le pire,” [Boileau]--at least, like the
+madman of whom he speaks, I owe but little gratitude to the act which,
+“in drawing me from my error, has robbed me also of a paradise.”
+
+I am approaching the conclusion of my confessions. Men who have no ties
+in the world, and who have been accustomed to solitude, find, with every
+disappointment in the former, a greater yearning for the enjoyments
+which the latter can afford. Day by day I relapsed more into myself;
+“man delighted me not, nor women either.” In my ambition, it was not
+in the means, but the end, that I was disappointed. In my friends, I
+complained not of treachery, but insipidity; and it was not because I
+was deserted, but wearied by more tender connections, that I ceased to
+find either excitement in seeking, or triumph in obtaining, their love.
+It was not, then, in a momentary disgust, but rather in the calm of
+satiety, that I formed that resolution of retirement which I have
+adopted now.
+
+Shrinking from my kind, but too young to live wholly for myself, I have
+made a new tie with nature; I have come to cement it here. I am like
+a bird which has wandered, afar, but has returned home to its nest at
+last. But there is one feeling which had its origin in the world, and
+which accompanies me still; which consecrates my recollections of the
+past; which contributes to take its gloom from the solitude of the
+present:-Do you ask me its nature, Monkton? It is my friendship for you.
+
+
+
+FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
+
+I wish that I could convey to you, dear Monkton, the faintest idea of
+the pleasures of indolence. You belong to that class which is of all the
+most busy, though the least active. Men of pleasure never have time
+for anything. No lawyer, no statesman, no bustling, hurrying, restless
+underling of the counter or the Exchange, is so eternally occupied as a
+lounger “about town.” He is linked to labour by a series of undefinable
+nothings. His independence and idleness only serve to fetter and engross
+him, and his leisure seems held upon the condition of never having a
+moment to himself. Would that you could see me at this instant in the
+luxury of my summer retreat, surrounded by the trees, the waters, the
+wild birds, and the hum, the glow, the exultation which teem visibly and
+audibly through creation in the noon of a summer’s day! I am undisturbed
+by a single intruder. I am unoccupied by a single pursuit. I suffer one
+moment to glide into another, without the remembrance that the next must
+be filled up by some laborious pleasure, or some wearisome enjoyment.
+It is here that I feel all the powers, and gather together all the
+resources, of my mind. I recall my recollections of men; and, unbiassed
+by the passions and prejudices which we do not experience alone, because
+their very existence depends upon others, I endeavour to perfect my
+knowledge of the human heart. He who would acquire that better science
+must arrange and analyse in private the experience he has collected in
+the crowd. Alas, Monkton, when you have expressed surprise at the gloom
+which is so habitual to my temper, did it never occur to you that my
+acquaintance--with the world would alone be sufficient to account for
+it?--that knowledge is neither for the good nor the happy. Who can touch
+pitch, and not be defiled? Who can look upon the workings of grief and
+rejoice, or associate with guilt and be pure? It has been by mingling
+with men, not only in their haunts but their emotions, that I have
+learned to know them. I have descended into the receptacles of vice; I
+have taken lessons from the brothel and the hell; I have watched feeling
+in its unguarded sallies, and drawn from the impulse of the moment
+conclusions which gave the lie to the previous conduct of years. But
+all knowledge brings us disappointment, and this knowledge the most--the
+satiety of good, the suspicion of evil, the decay of our young
+dreams, the premature iciness of age, the reckless, aimless, joyless
+indifference which follows an overwrought and feverish excitation--These
+constitute the lot of men who have renounced _hope_ in the acquisition
+of _thought_, and who, in learning the motives of human actions, learn
+only to despise the persons and the things which enchanted them like
+divinities before.
+
+
+
+FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
+
+I told you, dear Monkton, in my first letter, of my favorite retreat in
+Mr. Mandeville’s grounds. I have grown so attached to it, that I spend
+the greater part of the day there.
+
+I am not one of those persons who always perambulate with a book in
+their hands, as if neither nature nor their own reflections could afford
+them any rational amusement. I go there more frequently _en paresseux_
+than _en savant_: a small brooklet which runs through the grounds
+broadens at last into a deep, clear, transparent lake. Here fir and elm
+and oak fling their branches over the margin and beneath their shade I
+pass all the hours of noon-day in the luxuries of a dreamer’s reverie.
+It is true, however, that I am never less idle than when I appear the
+most so. I am like Prospero in his desert island, and surround myself
+with spirits. A spell trembles upon the leaves; every wave comes fraught
+to me with its peculiar music: and an Ariel seems to whisper the secrets
+of every breeze, which comes to my forehead laden with the perfumes of
+the West. But do not think, Mounton, that it is only good spirits
+which haunt the recesses of my solitude. To push the metaphor to
+exaggeration--Memory is my Sycorax, and Gloom is the Caliban
+she conceives. But let me digress from myself to my less idle
+occupations;--I have of late diverted my thoughts in some measure by a
+recurrence to a study to which I once was particularly devoted--history.
+Have you ever remarked, that people who live the most by themselves
+reflect the most upon others; and that he who lives surrounded by the
+million never thinks of any but the one individual--himself?
+
+Philosophers--moralists-historians, whose thoughts, labours, lives, have
+been devoted to the consideration of mankind, or the analysis of public
+events, have usually been remarkably attached to solitude and seclusion.
+We are indeed so linked to our fellow-beings, that, where we are not
+chained to them by action, we are carried to and connected with them by
+thought.
+
+I have just quitted the observations of my favourite Bolingbroke upon
+history. I cannot agree with him as to its utility. The more I
+consider, the more I am convinced that its study has been upon the
+whole pernicious to mankind. It is by those details, which are always
+as unfair in their inference as they must evidently be doubtful in their
+facts, that party animosity and general prejudice are supported and
+sustained. There is not one abuse--one intolerance--one remnant of
+ancient barbarity and ignorance existing at the present day, which is
+not advocated, and actually confirmed, by some vague deduction from the
+bigotry of an illiterate chronicler, or the obscurity of an uncertain
+legend. It is through the constant appeal to our ancestors that we
+transmit wretchedness and wrong to our posterity: we should require,
+to corroborate an evil originating in the present day, the clearest and
+most satisfactory proof; but the minutest defence is sufficient for an
+evil handed down to us by the barbarism of antiquity. We reason from
+what even in old tunes was dubious, as if we were adducing what was
+certain in those in which we live. And thus we have made no sanction
+to abuses so powerful as history, and no enemy to the present like the
+past.
+
+
+
+
+
+FROM THE LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE TO MRS. ST. JOHN.
+
+At last, my dear Julia, I am settled in my beautiful retreat. Mrs.
+Dalton and Lady Margaret Leslie are all whom I could prevail upon to
+accompany me. Mr. Mandeville is full of the corn-laws. He is
+chosen chairman to a select committee in the House. He is murmuring
+agricultural distresses in his sleep; and when I asked him occasionally
+to come down here to see me, he started from a reverie, and exclaimed,
+“--Never, Mr. Speaker, as a landed proprietor; never will I consent to
+my own ruin.”
+
+My boy, my own, my beautiful companion, is with me. I wish you could see
+how fast he can run, and how sensibly he can talk. “What a fine figure
+he has for his age!” said I to Mr. Mandeville the other day. “Figure!
+age!” said his father; “in the House of Commons he shall make a figure
+to every age.” I know that in writing to you, you will not be contented
+if I do not say a great deal about myself. I shall therefore proceed to
+tell you, that I feel already much better from the air and exercise! the
+journey, from the conversation of my two guests, and, above all, from
+the constant society of my dear boy. He was three last birthday. I think
+that at the age of twenty-one, I am the least childish of the two.
+Pray remember me to all in town who have not quite forgotten me. Beg
+Lady------ to send Elizabeth a subscription ticket for Almack’s, an
+ talking of Almack’s, I think my boy’s eyes are even more blue and
+beautiful than Lady C-----‘s.
+
+Adieu, my dear Julia, Ever, &c. E. M.
+
+
+
+Lady Emily Mandeville was the daughter of the Duke of Lindvale. She
+married, at the age of sixteen, a man of large fortune, and some
+parliamentary reputation. Neither in person nor in character was he much
+beneath or above the ordinary standard of men. He was one of Nature’s
+Macadamised achievements. His great fault was his equality; and you
+longed for a hill though it were to climb, or a stone though it were
+in your way. Love attaches itself to something prominent, even if that
+something be what others would hate. One can scarce feel extremes for
+mediocrity. The few years Lady Emily had been married had but little
+altered her character. Quick in feeling, though regulated in temper; gay
+less from levity, than from that first _spring-tide_ of a heart which
+has never yet known occasion to be sad; beautiful and pure, as an
+enthusiast’s dream of heaven, yet bearing within the latent and powerful
+passion and tenderness of earth: she mixed with all a simplicity and
+innocence which the extreme earliness of her marriage, and the ascetic
+temper of her husband, had tendered less to diminish than increase. She
+had much of what is termed genius--its warmth of emotion--its vividness
+of conception--its admiration for the grand--its affection for the good,
+and that dangerous contempt for whatever is mean and worthless, the very
+indulgence of which is an offence against the habits of the world.
+Her tastes were, however, too feminine and chaste ever to render her
+eccentric: they were rather calculated to conceal than to publish the
+deeper recesses of her nature; and it was beneath that polished
+surface of manner common to those with whom she mixed, that she hid the
+treasures of a mine which no human eye had beheld.
+
+Her health, naturally delicate, had lately suffered much from the
+dissipation of London, and it was by the advice of physicians that she
+had now come to spend the summer at E------. Lady Margaret Leslie,
+who was old enough to be tired with the caprices of society, and Mrs.
+Dalton, who, having just lost her husband, was forbidden at present to
+partake of its amusements, had agreed to accompany her to her retreat.
+Neither of them was perhaps much suited to Emily’s temper, but youth and
+spirits make almost any one congenial to us: it is from the years which
+confirm our habits, and the reflections which refine our taste, that it
+becomes easy to revolt us, and difficult to please.
+
+On the third day after Emily’s arrival at E------, she was sitting after
+breakfast with Lady Margaret and Mrs. Dalton. “Pray,” said the former,
+“did you ever meet my relation, Mr. Falkland? he is in your immediate
+neighbourhood.” “Never; though I have a great curiosity: that fine old
+ruin beyond the village belongs to him, I believe.” “It does. You ought
+to know him: you would like him so!” “Like him!” repeated Mrs. Dalton,
+who was one of those persons of ton who, though everything collectively,
+are nothing individually: “like him? impossible!” “Why?” said Lady
+Margaret, indignantly--“he has every requisite to please--youth, talent,
+fascination of manner, and great knowledge of the world.” “Well,” said
+Mrs. Dalton, “I cannot say I discovered his perfections. He seemed to
+me conceited and satirical, and--and--in short, very disagreeable;
+but then, to be sure, I have only seen him once.” “I have heard many
+accounts of him,” said Emily, “all differing from each other: I think,
+however, that the generality of people rather incline to Mrs. Dalton’s
+opinion than to yours, Lady Margaret.” “I can easily believe it. It is
+very seldom that he takes the trouble to please; but when he does, he is
+irresistible. Very little, however, is generally known respecting him.
+Since he came of age, he has been much abroad; and when in England, he
+never entered with eagerness into society. He is supposed to possess
+very extraordinary powers, which, added to his large fortune and ancient
+name, have procured him a consideration and rank rarely enjoyed by one
+so young. He had refused repeated offers to enter into public life; but
+he is very intimate with one of the ministers, who, it is said, has
+had the address to profit much by his abilities. All other particulars
+concerning him are extremely uncertain. Of his person and manners you
+had better judge yourself; for I am sure, Emily, that my petition for
+inviting him here is already granted.” “By all means,” said Emily: “you
+cannot be more anxious to see him than I am.” And so the conversation
+dropped. Lady Margaret went to the library; Mrs. Dalton seated herself
+on the ottoman, dividing her attention between the last novel and her
+Italian greyhound; and Emily left the room in order to revisit her
+former and favourite haunts. Her young son was her companion, and she
+was not sorry that he was her only one. To be the instructress of an
+infant, a mother should be its playmate; and Emily was, perhaps, wiser
+than she imagined, when she ran with a laughing eye and a light foot
+over the grass, occupying herself almost with the same earnestness as
+her child in the same infantine amusements. As they passed the wood
+which led to the lake at the bottom of the grounds, the boy, who was
+before Emily, suddenly stopped. She came hastily up to him; and scarcely
+two paces before, though half hid by the steep bank of the lake beneath
+which he reclined, she saw a man apparently asleep. A volume of;
+Shakespeare lay beside him: the child had seized it. As she took it from
+him in order to replace it, her eyes rested upon the passage the boy had
+accidentally opened. How often in after days was that passage recalled
+as an omen! It was the following:
+
+        Ah me! for aught that ever I could read,
+        Could ever hear by tale or history
+        The course of true love never did run smooth!
+                    Midsummer Night’s Dream.
+
+As she laid the book gently down she caught a glimpse of the
+countenance of the sleeper: never did she forget the expression which it
+wore,--stern, proud, mournful even in repose!
+
+She did not wait for him to wake. She hurried home through the trees.
+All that day she was silent and abstracted; the face haunted her like a
+dream. Strange as it may seem, she spoke neither to Lady Margaret nor to
+Mrs. Dalton of her adventure. Why? Is there in our hearts any prescience
+of their misfortunes?
+
+On the next day, Falkland, who had received and accepted Lady Margaret’s
+invitation, was expected to dinner. Emily felt a strong yet
+excusable curiosity to see one of whom she had heard so many and such
+contradictory reports. She was alone in the saloon when he entered. At
+the first glance she recognised the person she had met by the lake on
+the day before, and she blushed deeply as she replied to his salutation.
+To her great relief Lady Margaret and Mrs. Dalton entered in a few
+minutes, and the conversation grew general.
+
+Falkland had but little of what is called animation in manner; but his
+wit, though it rarely led to mirth, was sarcastic, yet refined, and the
+vividness of his imagination threw a brilliancy and originality over
+remarks which in others might have been commonplace and tame.
+
+The conversation turned chiefly upon society; and though Lady Margaret
+had told her he had entered but little into its ordinary routine, Emily
+was struck alike by his accurate acquaintance with men, and the justice
+of his reflections upon manners. There also mingled with his satire
+an occasional melancholy of feeling, which appeared to Emily the more
+touching because it was always unexpected and unassumed. It was after
+one of these remarks, that for the first time she ventured to examine
+into the charm and peculiarity of the countenance of the speaker. There
+was spread over it that expression of mingled energy and languor, which
+betokens that much, whether of thought, sorrow, passion, or action, has
+been undergone, but resisted: has wearied, but not subdued. In the broad
+and noble brow, in the chiselled lip, and the melancholy depths of the
+calm and thoughtful eye, there sat a resolution and a power, which,
+though mournful, were not without their pride; which, if they had borne
+the worst, had also defied it. Notwithstanding his mother’s country, his
+complexion was fair and pale; and his hair, of a light chestnut, fell
+in large antique curls over his forehead. That forehead, indeed,
+constituted the principal feature of his countenance. It was neither in
+its height nor expansion alone that its remarkable beauty consisted;
+but if ever thought to conceive and courage to execute high designs were
+embodied and visible, they were imprinted there.
+
+Falkland did not stay long after dinner; but to Lady Margaret he
+promised all that she required of future length and frequency in his
+visits. When he left the room, Lady Emily went instinctively to the
+window to watch him depart; and all that night his low soft voice rung
+in her ear, like the music of an indistinct and half-remembered dream.
+
+
+
+FROM MR. MANDEVILLE TO LADY EMILY.
+
+DEAR, EMILY,--Business of great importance to the country has, prevented
+my writing to you before. I hope you have continued well since I heard
+from you last, and that you do all you can to preserve that retrenchment
+of unnecessary expenses, and observe that attention to a prudent
+economy, which is no less incumbent upon individuals than nations.
+
+Thinking that you must be dull at E------, and ever anxious both to
+entertain and to improve you, I send you an excellent publication by Mr.
+Tooke, together with my own two last speeches, corrected by myself.
+
+Trusting to hear from you soon, I am, with best love to Henry,
+
+Very affectionately yours,
+
+JOHN MANDEVILLE.
+
+
+
+FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO THE HON. FREDERICK MONKTON.
+
+Well, Monkton, I have been to E-----; that important event in my
+monastic life has been concluded. Lady Margaret was as talkative as
+usual; and a Mrs. Dalton, who, I find, is an acquaintance of yours,
+asked very tenderly after your poodle and yourself. But Lady Emily!
+Ay, Monkton, I know not well how to describe her to you. Her beauty
+interests not less than it dazzles. There is that deep and eloquent
+softness in her every word and action, which, of all charms, is the most
+dangerous. Yet she is rather of a playful than of the melancholy and
+pensive nature which generally accompanies such gentleness of manner;
+but there is no levity in her character; nor is that playfulness of
+spirit ever carried into the exhilaration of what we call “mirth.” She
+seems, if I may use the antithesis, at once too feeling to be gay, and
+too innocent to be sad. I remember having frequently met her husband.
+Cold and pompous, without anything to interest the imagination, or
+engage the affections, I am not able to conceive a person less congenial
+to his beautiful and romantic wife. But she must have been exceedingly
+young when she married him; and she, probably, knows not yet that she is
+to be pitied, because she has not yet learned that she can love.
+
+        Le veggio in fronte amor come in suo seggio
+        Sul crin, negli occhi--su le labra amore
+        Sol d’intorno al suo cuore amor non veggio.
+
+I have been twice to her house since my first admission there. I love to
+listen to that soft and enchanting voice, and to escape from the gloom
+of my own reflections to the brightness, yet simplicity, of hers. In my
+earlier days this comfort would have been attended with danger; but we
+grow callous from the excess of feeling. We cannot re-illumine ashes! I
+can gaze upon her dream-like beauty, and not experience a single desire
+which can sully the purity of my worship. I listen to her voice when
+it melts in endearment over her birds, her flowers, or, in a deeper
+devotion, over her child; but my heart does not thrill at the tenderness
+of the sound. I touch her hand, and the pulses of my own are as calm as
+before. Satiety of the past is our best safeguard from the temptations
+of the future; and the perils of youth are over when it has acquired
+that dulness and apathy of affection which should belong only to the
+insensibility of age.
+
+
+
+Such were Falkland’s opinions at the time he wrote. Ah! what is so
+delusive as our affections? Our security is our danger--our defiance
+our defeat! Day after day he went to E-------. He passed the mornings
+in making excursions with Emily over that wild and romantic country by
+which they were surrounded; and in the dangerous but delicious stillness
+of the summer twilights, they listened to the first whispers of their
+hearts.
+
+In his relationship to Lady Margaret, Falkland found his excuse for the
+frequency of his visits: and even Mrs. Dalton was so charmed with the
+fascination of his manner, that (in spite of her previous dislike) she
+forgot to inquire how far his intimacy at E------ was at variance with
+the proprieties of the world she worshipped, or in what proportion it
+was connected with herself.
+
+It is needless for me to trace through all its windings the formation
+of that affection, the subsequent records of which I am about to relate.
+What is so unearthly, so beautiful, as the first birth of a woman’s
+love? The air of heaven is not purer in its wanderings--its sunshine not
+more holy in its warmth. Oh! why should it deteriorate in its nature,
+even while it increases in its degree? Why should the step which prints,
+sully also the snow? How often, when Falkland met that guiltless yet
+thrilling eye, which revealed to him those internal secrets that Emily
+was yet awhile too happy to discover; when, like a fountain among
+flowers, the goodness of her heart flowed over the softness of her
+manner to those around her, and the benevolence of her actions to those
+beneath; how often he turned away with a veneration too deep for the
+selfishness of human passion, and a tenderness too sacred for its
+desires! It was in this temper (the earliest and the most fruitless
+prognostic of real love) that the following letter was written.
+
+
+
+FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO THE HON. FREDERICK MONKTON.
+
+I have had two or three admonitory letters from my uncle. “The summer
+(he says) is advancing, yet you remain stationary in your indolence.
+There is still a great part of Europe which you have not seen; and since
+you will neither enter society for a wife, nor the House of Commons for
+fame, spend your life, at least while it is yet free and unshackled, in
+those active pursuits which will render idleness hereafter more sweet;
+or in that observation and enjoyment among others, which will increase
+your resources in yourself.” All this sounds well; but I have already
+acquired more knowledge than will be of use either to others or myself,
+and I am not willing to lose tranquillity here for the chance of
+obtaining pleasure elsewhere. Pleasure is indeed a holiday sensation
+which does not occur in ordinary life. We lose the peace of years when
+we hunt after the rapture of moments.
+
+I do not know if you ever felt that existence was ebbing away without
+being put to its full value: as for me, I am never conscious of life
+without being also conscious that it is not enjoyed to the utmost. This
+is a bitter feeling, and its worst bitterness is our ignorance how to
+remove it. My indolence I neither seek nor wish to defend, yet it is
+rather from necessity than choice: it seems to me that there is nothing
+in the world to arouse me. I only ask for action, but I can find no
+motive sufficient to excite it: let me then, in my indolence, not, like
+the world, be idle, yet dependent on others; but at least dignify the
+failing by some appearance of that freedom which retirement only can
+bestow.
+
+My seclusion is no longer solitude; yet I do not value it the less. I
+spend a great portion of my time at E------. Loneliness is attractive to
+men of reflection, nor so much because they like their own thoughts, as
+because they dis like the thoughts of others. Solitude ceases to charm
+the moment we can find a single being whose ideas are more agreeable to
+us than our own. I have not, I think, yet described to you the person of
+Lady Emily. She is tall, and slightly, yet beautifully, formed. The ill
+health which obliged her to leave London for E------, in the height of
+the season, has given her cheek a more delicate hue than I should think
+it naturally wore. Her eyes are light, but their lashes are long and
+dark; her hair is black and luxuriant, and worn in a fashion peculiar
+to herself; but her manners, Monkton! how can I convey to you their
+fascination! so simple, and therefore so faultless--so modest, and yet
+so tender--she seems, in acquiring the intelligence of the woman, to
+have only perfected the purity of the child; and now, after all that
+I have said, I am only more deeply sensible of the truth of Bacon’s
+observation, that “the best part of beauty is that which no picture can
+express.” I am loth to finish this description, because it seems to me
+scarcely begun; I am unwilling to continue it, because every word seems
+to show me more clearly those recesses of my heart, which I would have
+hidden even from myself. I do not yet love, it is true, for the time
+is past when I was lightly moved to passion; but I will not incur that
+danger, the probability of which I am seer enough to foresee. Never
+shall that pure and innocent heart be sullied by one who would die to
+shield it from the lightest misfortune. I find in myself a powerful
+seconder to my uncle’s wishes. I shall be in London next week; till
+then, fare well. E. F.
+
+
+
+When the proverb said, that “Jove laughs at lovers’ vows,” it meant not
+(as in the ordinary construction) a sarcasm on their insincerity, but
+inconsistency. We deceive others far less than we deceive ourselves.
+What to Falkland were resolutions which a word, a glance, could over
+throw? In the world he might have dissipated his thoughts in loneliness
+he concentred them; for the passions are like the sounds of Nature,
+only heard in her solitude! He lulled his soul to the reproaches of his
+conscience; he surrendered himself to the intoxication of so golden a
+dream; and amidst those beautiful scenes there arose, as an offering to
+the summer heaven, the incense of two hearts which had, through those
+very fires so guilty in themselves, purified and ennobled every other
+emotion they had conceived,
+
+        God made the country, and man made the town.
+
+says the hackneyed quotation; and the feeling awakened in each, differ
+with the genius of the place. Who can compare the frittered and divided
+affections formed in cities with that which crowds cannot distract by
+opposing temptations, or dissipation infect with its frivolities?
+
+I have often thought that had the execution of Atala equalled its
+design, no human work could have surpassed it in its grandeur. What
+picture is more simple, though more sublime, than the vast solitude of
+an unpeopled wilderness, the woods, the mountains, the face of Nature,
+cast in the fresh yet giant mould of a new and unpolluted world; and,
+amidst those most silent and mighty temples of THE GREAT GOD, the lone
+spirit of Love reigning and brightening over all?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+It is dangerous for women, however wise it be for men, “to commune with
+their own hearts, and to be still!” Continuing to pursue the follies of
+the world had been to Emily more prudent than to fly them; to pause, to
+separate herself from the herd, was to discover, to feel, to murmur at
+the vacuum of her being; and to occupy it with the feelings which it
+craved, could in her be but the hoarding a provision for despair.
+
+Married, before she had begun the bitter knowledge of herself, to a man
+whom it was impossible to love, yet deriving from nature a tenderness
+of soul, which shed itself over everything around, her only escape from
+misery had been in the dormancy of feeling. The birth of her son had
+opened to her a new field of sensations, and she drew the best charm of
+her own existence from the life she had given to another. Had she not
+met Falkland, all the deeper sources of affection would have flowed into
+one only and legitimate channel; but those whom he wished to fascinate
+had never resisted his power, and the attachment he inspired was in
+proportion to the strength and ardour of his own nature.
+
+It was not for Emily Mandeville to love such as Falkland without feeling
+that from that moment a separate and selfish existence had ceased to be.
+Our senses may captivate us with beauty; but in absence we forget, or
+by reason we can conquer, so superficial an impression. Our vanity may
+enamour us with rank; but the affections of vanity are traced in sand;
+but who can love Genius, and not feel that the sentiments it excites
+partake of its own intenseness and its own immortality? It arouses,
+concentrates, engrosses all our emotions, even to the most subtle and
+concealed. Love what is common, and ordinary objects can replace or
+destroy a sentiment which an ordinary object has awakened. Love what we
+shall not meet again amidst the littleness and insipidity which surround
+us, and where can we turn for a new object to replace that which has no
+parallel upon earth? The recovery from such a delirium is like return
+from a fairy land; and still fresh in the recollections of a bright and
+immortal clime, how can we endure the dulness of that human existence to
+which for the future we are condemned?
+
+It was some weeks since Emily had written to Mrs. St. John; and her last
+letter, in mentioning Falkland, had spoken of him with a reserve which
+rather alarmed than deceived her friend. Mrs. St. John had indeed a
+strong and secret reason for fear. Falkland had been the object of her
+own and her earliest attachment, and she knew well the singular and
+mysterious power which he exercised at will over the mind. He had, it is
+true, never returned, nor even known of, her feelings towards him; and
+during the years which had elapsed since she last saw him, and in the
+new scenes which her marriage with Mr. St. John had opened, she had
+almost forgotten her early attachment, when Lady Emily’s letter renewed
+its remembrance. She wrote in answer an impassioned and affectionate
+caution to her friend. She spoke much (after complaining of Emily’s late
+silence) in condemnation of the character of Falkland, and in warning of
+its fascinations; and she attempted to arouse alike the virtue and the
+pride which so often triumph in alliance, when separately they would so
+easily fail. In this Mrs. St. John probably imagined she was actuated
+solely by friendship; but in the best actions there is always some
+latent evil in the motive; and the selfishness of a jealousy, though
+hopeless not conquered, perhaps predominated over the less interested
+feelings which were all that she acknowledged to herself.
+
+In this work it has been my object to portray the progress of the
+passions; to chronicle a history rather by thoughts and feelings than
+by incidents and events; and to lay open those minuter and more subtle
+mazes and secrets of the human heart, which in modern writings have been
+so sparingly exposed. It is with this view that I have from time to time
+broken the thread of narration, in order to bring forward more vividly
+the characters it contains; and in laying no claim to the ordinary
+ambition of tale-writers, I have deemed myself at liberty to deviate
+from the ordinary courses they pursue. Hence the motive and the excuse
+for the insertion of the following extracts, and of occasional letters.
+They portray the interior struggle when Narration would look only to
+the external event, and trace the lightning “home to its cloud,” when
+History would only mark the spot where it scorched or destroyed.
+
+
+
+EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE.
+
+Tuesday.--More than seven years have passed since I began this journal!
+I have just been looking over it from the commencement. Many and various
+are the feelings which it attempts to describe--anger, pique, joy,
+sorrow, hope, pleasure, weariness, ennui; but never, never once,
+humiliation or remorse!--these were not doomed to be my portion in the
+bright years of my earliest youth. How shall I describe them now? I have
+received--I have read, as well as my tears would let me, a long letter
+from Julia. It is true that I have not dared to write to her: when shall
+I answer this? She has showed me the state of my heart; I more than
+suspected it before. Could I have dreamed two months--six weeks--since
+that I should have a single feeling of which I could be ashamed? He has
+just been here He--the only one in the world, for all the world seems
+concentred in him. He observed my distress, for I looked on him; and my
+lips quivered and my eyes were full of tears. He came to me--he sat next
+to me--he whispered his interest, his anxiety--and was this all? Have
+I loved before I even knew that I was beloved? No, no; the tongue was
+silent, but the eye, the cheek, the manner--alas! these have been but
+too eloquent!
+
+Wednesday.--It was so sweet to listen to his low and tender voice; to
+watch the expression of his countenance--even to breathe the air that he
+inhaled. But now that I know its cause, I feel that this pleasure is a
+crime, and I am miserable even when he is with me. He has not been here
+to-day. It is past three. Will he come? I rise from my seat--I go to
+the window for breath--I am restless, agitated, disturbed. Lady Margaret
+speaks to me--I scarcely answer her. My boy--yes, my dear, dear Henry
+comes, and I feel that I am again a mother. Never will I betray that
+duty, though I have forgotten one as sacred though less dear! Never
+shall my son have cause to blush for his parent! I will fly hence--I
+will see him no more!
+
+
+
+FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO THE HON. FREDERICK MONKTON.
+
+Write to me, Monkton--exhort me, admonish me, or forsake me for ever.
+I am happy yet wretched: I wander in the delirium of a fatal fever, in
+which I see dreams of a brighter life, but every one of them only brings
+me nearer to death. Day after day I have lingered here, until weeks have
+flown--and for what? Emily is not like the women of the world--virtue,
+honour, faith, are not to her the mere _convenances_ of society. “There
+is no crime,” said Lady A., “where there is concealment.” Such can never
+be the creed of Emily Mandeville. She will not disguise guilt either in
+the levity of the world, or in the affectations of sentiment. She will
+be wretched, and for ever. I hold the destinies of her future life, and
+yet I am base enough to hesitate whether to save or destroy her. Oh, how
+fearful, how selfish, how degrading, is unlawful love!
+
+You know my theoretical benevolence for everything that lives; you have
+often smiled at its vanity. I see now that you were right; for it seems
+to me almost superhuman virtue not to destroy the person who is dearest
+to me on earth.
+
+I remember writing to you some weeks since that I would come to London
+Little did I know of the weakness of my own mind. I told her that I
+intended to depart. She turned pale--she trembled--but she did not
+speak. Those signs which should have hastened my departure have taken
+away the strength even to think of it.
+
+I am here still! I go to E------ every day. Sometimes we sit in silence;
+I dare not trust myself to speak. How dangerous are such moments!
+_Ammutiscon lingue parlen l’alme_.
+
+Yesterday they left us alone. We had been conversing with Lady Margaret
+on indifferent subjects. There was a pause for some minutes. I looked
+up; Lady Margaret had left the room. The blood rushed into my cheek--my
+eyes met Emily’s; I would have given worlds to have repeated with my
+lips what those eyes expressed. I could not even speak--I felt choked
+with contending emotions. There was not a breath stirring; I heard my
+very heart beat. A thunderbolt would have been a relief. Oh God! if
+there be a curse, it is to burn, swell, madden with feelings which you
+are doomed to conceal! This is, indeed, to be “a cannibal of one’s own
+heart.” [Bacon]
+
+It was sunset. Emily was alone upon the lawn which sloped towards the
+lake, and the blue still waters beneath broke, at bright intervals,
+through the scattered and illuminated trees. She stood watching the sun
+sink with wistful and tearful eyes. Her soul was sad within her. The ivy
+which love first wreathes around his work had already faded away, and
+she now only saw the desolation of the ruin it concealed. Never more
+for her was that freshness of unwakened feeling which invests all things
+with a perpetual daybreak of sunshine, and incense, and dew. The
+heart may survive the decay or rupture of an innocent and lawful
+affection--“la marque reste, mais la blessure guerit”--but the love of
+darkness and guilt is branded in a character ineffaceable--eternal!
+The one is, like lightning, more likely to dazzle than to destroy, and,
+divine even in its danger, it makes holy what it sears; but the other
+is like that sure and deadly fire which fell upon the cities of old,
+graving in the barrenness of the desert it had wrought the record and
+perpetuation of a curse. A low and thrilling voice stole upon Emily’s
+ear. She turned--Falkland stood beside her. “I felt restless and
+unhappy,” he said, “and I came to seek you. If (writes one of the
+fathers) a guilty and wretched man could behold, though only for a few
+minutes, the countenance of an angel, the calm and glory which it wears
+would so sink into his heart, that he would pass at once over the gulf
+of gone years into his first unsullied state of purity and hope; perhaps
+I thought of that sentence when I came to you.”
+
+“I know not,” said Emily, with a deep blush at this address, which
+formed her only answer to the compliment it conveyed; “I know not why
+it is, but to me there is always something melancholy in this
+hour--something mournful in seeing the beautiful day die with all its
+pomp and music, its sunshine, and songs of birds.”
+
+“And yet,” replied Falkland, “if I remember the time when my feelings
+were more in unison with yours (for at present external objects have
+lost for me much of their influence and attraction), the melancholy you
+perceive has in it a vague and ineffable sweetness not to be exchanged
+for more exhilarated spirits. The melancholy which arises from no cause
+within ourselves is like music--it enchants us in proportion to its
+effect upon our feelings. Perhaps its chief charm (though this it
+requires the contamination of after years before we can fathom and
+define) is in the purity of the sources it springs from. Our feelings
+can be but little sullied and worn while they can yet respond to the
+passionless and primal sympathies of Nature; and the sadness you speak
+of is so void of bitterness, so allied to the best and most delicious
+sensations we enjoy, that I should imagine the very happiness of Heaven
+partook rather of melancholy than mirth.”
+
+There was a pause of some moments. It was rarely that Falkland alluded
+even so slightly to the futurity of another world; and when he did, it
+was never in a careless and commonplace manner, but in a tone which sank
+deep into Emily’s heart. “Look,” she said, at length, “at that beautiful
+star! the first and brightest! I have often thought it was like the
+promise of life beyond the tomb--a pledge to us that, even in the depths
+of midnight, the earth shall have a light, unquenched and unquenchable,
+from Heaven!”
+
+Emily turned to Falkland as she said this, and her countenance sparkled
+with the enthusiasm she felt. But his face was deadly pale. There
+went over it, like a cloud, an expression of changeful and unutterable
+thought; and then, passing suddenly away, it left his features calm and
+bright in all their noble and intellectual beauty. Her soul yearned to
+him, as she looked, with the tenderness of a sister.
+
+They walked slowly towards the house. “I have frequently,” said Emily,
+with some hesitation, “been surprised at the little enthusiasm you
+appear to possess even upon subjects where your conviction must be
+strong.”
+
+“_I have thought enthusiasm away!_” replied Falkland; “it was the loss
+of hope which brought me reflection, and in reflection I forgot to feel.
+Would that I had not found it so easy to recall what I thought I had
+lost for ever!” Falkland’s cheek changed as he said this, and Emily
+sighed faintly, for she felt his meaning. In him that allusion to his
+love had aroused a whole train of dangerous recollections; for Passion
+is the avalanche of the human heart--a single breath can dissolve it
+from its repose.
+
+They remained silent; for Falkland would not trust himself to speak,
+till, when they reached the house, he faltered out his excuses for not
+entering, and departed. He turned towards his solitary home. The grounds
+at E------ had been laid out in a classical and costly manner which
+contrasted forcibly with the wild and simple nature of the surrounding
+scenery. Even the short distance between Mr. Mandeville’s house and
+L------ wrought as distinct a change in the character of the country as
+any length of space could have effected. Falkland’s ancient and ruinous
+abode, with its shattered arches and moss-grown parapets, was situated
+on a gentle declivity, and surrounded by dark elm and larch trees. It
+still retained some traces both of its former consequence, and of
+the perils to which that consequence had exposed it. A broad ditch,
+overgrown with weeds, indicated the remains of what once had been a
+moat; and huge rough stones, scattered around it, spoke of the outworks
+the fortification had anciently possessed, and the stout resistance they
+had made in “the Parliament Wars” to the sturdy followers of Ireton and
+Fairfax. The moon, that flatterer of decay, shed its rich and softening
+beauty over a spot which else had, indeed, been desolate and cheerless,
+and kissed into light the long and unwaving herbage which rose at
+intervals from the ruins, like the false parasites of fallen greatness.
+But for Falkland the scene had no interest or charm, and he turned with
+a careless and unheeding eye to his customary apartment. It was the
+only one in the house furnished with luxury, or even comfort. Large
+bookcases, inlaid with curious carvings in ivory; busts of the few
+public characters the world had ever produced worthy, in Falkland’s
+estimation, of the homage of posterity; elaborately-wrought hangings
+from Flemish looms; and French fauteuils and sofas of rich damask,
+and massy gilding (relics of the magnificent days of Louis Quatorze),
+bespoke a costliness of design suited rather to Falkland’s wealth than
+to the ordinary simplicity of his tastes.
+
+A large writing-table was overspread with books in various languages,
+and upon the most opposite subjects. Letters and papers were scattered
+amongst them; Falkland turned carelessly over the latter. One of the
+epistolary communications was from Lord ------, the --. He smiled
+bitterly, as he read the exaggerated compliments it contained, and saw
+to the bottom of the shallow artifice they were meant to conceal. He
+tossed the letter from him, and opened the scattered volumes, one after
+another, with that languid and sated feeling common to all men who have
+read deeply enough to feel how much they have learned, and how little
+they know. “We pass our lives,” thought he, “in sowing what we are never
+to reap! We endeavour to erect a tower, which shall reach the heavens,
+in order to escape one curse, and lo! we are smitten by another! We
+would soar from a common evil, and from that moment we are divided by
+a separate language from our race! Learning, science, philosophy, the
+world of men and of imagination, I ransacked--and for what? I centred
+my happiness in wisdom. I looked upon the aims of others with a scornful
+and loathing eye. I held commune with those who have gone before me;
+I dwelt among the monuments of their minds, and made their records
+familiar to me as friends: I penetrated the womb of nature, and went
+with the secret elements to their home: I arraigned the stars before
+me, and learned the method and the mystery of their courses: I asked the
+tempest its bourn, and questioned the winds of their path. This was not
+sufficient to satisfy my thirst for knowledge, and I searched in this
+lower world of new sources to content it. Unseen and unsuspected, I saw
+and agitated the springs of the automaton that we call ‘the Mind.’ I
+found a clue for the labyrinth of human motives, and I surveyed the
+hearts of those around me as through a glass. Vanity of vanities! What
+have I acquired? I have separated myself from my kind, but not from
+those worst enemies, my passions! I have made a solitude of my soul, but
+I have not mocked it with the appellation of Peace.
+
+     “Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.”--TACITUS.
+     “They make a solitude, and call it peace.”--BYRON.
+
+“In flying the herd, I have not escaped from myself; like the wounded
+deer, the barb was within me, and that I could not fly!” With these
+thoughts he turned from his reverie, and once more endeavoured to charm
+his own reflections by those which ought to speak to us of quiet, for
+they are graven on the pages of the dead; but his attempts were as idle
+as before. His thoughts were still wandering and confused, and could
+neither be quieted nor collected: he read, but he scarcely distinguished
+one page from another: he wrote--the ideas refused to flow at his call;
+and the only effort at connecting his feelings which even partially
+succeeded, was in the verses which I am about to place before the
+reader. It is a common property of poetry, however imperfectly the gift
+be possessed, to speak to the hearts of others in proportion as the
+sentiments it would express are felt in our own; and I subjoin the lines
+which bear the date of that evening, in the hope that, more than many
+pages, they will show the morbid yet original character of the
+writer, and the particular sources of feeling from which they took the
+bitterness that pervades them.
+
+
+                KNOWLEDGE.
+
+     Ergo hominum genus incassum frustraque laborat
+     Semper, et in curis consumit inanibus aevum.--Lucret.
+
+        ‘Tis midnight! Round the lamp which o’er
+        My chamber sheds its lonely beam,
+        Is wisely spread the varied lore
+        Which feeds in youth our feverish dream
+
+        The dream--the thirst--the wild desire,
+        Delirious yet divine-to know;
+        Around to roam--above aspire
+        And drink the breath of Heaven below!
+
+        From Ocean-Earth-the Stars-the Sky
+        To lift mysterious Nature’s pall;
+        And bare before the kindling eye
+        In MAN the darkest mist of all--
+
+        Alas! what boots the midnight oil?
+        The madness of the struggling mind?
+        Oh, vague the hope, and vain the toil,
+        Which only leave us doubly blind!
+
+        What learn we from the Past? the same
+        Dull course of glory, guilt, and gloom--
+        I ask’d the Future, and there came
+        No voice from its unfathom’d womb.
+
+        The Sun was silent, and the wave;
+        The air but answer’d with its breath
+        But Earth was kind; and from the grave
+        Arose the eternal answer--Death!
+
+        And this was all! We need no sage
+        To teach us Nature’s only truth!
+        O fools! o’er Wisdom’s idle page
+        To waste the hours of golden youth!
+
+        In Science wildly do we seek
+        What only withering years should bring
+        The languid pulse--the feverish cheek
+        The spirits drooping on their wing!
+
+        To think--is but to learn to groan
+        To scorn what all beside adore
+        To feel amid the world alone,
+        An alien on a desert shore;
+
+        To lose the only ties which seem
+        To idler gaze in mercy given!
+        To find love, faith, and hope, a dream,
+        And turn to dark despair from heaven!
+
+
+I pass on to a wilder period of my history. The passion, as yet only
+revealed by the eye, was now to be recorded by the lip; and the scene
+which witnessed the first confession of the lovers was worthy of the
+last conclusion of their loves!
+
+E------ was about twelve miles from a celebrated cliff on the seashore,
+and Lady Margaret had long proposed an excursion to a spot, curious
+alike for its natural scenery and the legends attached to it. A day was
+at length fixed for accomplishing this plan. Falkland was of the party.
+In searching for something in the pockets of the carriage, his hand met
+Emily’s, and involuntarily pressed it. She withdrew it hastily, but he
+felt it tremble. He did not dare to look up: that single contact had
+given him a new life: intoxicated with the most delicious sensations, he
+leaned back in silence. A fever had entered his veins--the thrill of
+the touch had gone like fire into his system--all his frame seemed one
+nerve.
+
+Lady Margaret talked of the weather and the prospect, wondered how far
+they had got, and animadverted on the roads, till at last, like a
+child, she talked herself to rest. Mrs. Dalton read “Guy Mannering;” but
+neither Emily nor her lover had any occupation or thought in common with
+their companions: silent and absorbed, they were only alive to the vivid
+existence of the present. Constantly engaged, as we are, in looking
+behind us or before, if there be one hour in which we feel only the time
+being--in which we feel sensibly that we live, and that those moments of
+the present are full of the enjoyment, the rapture of existence--it is
+when we are with the one person whose life and spirits have become the
+great part and principle of our own. They reached their destination--a
+small inn close by the shore. They rested there a short time, and then
+strolled along the sands towards the cliff. Since Falkland had known
+Emily, her character was much altered. Six weeks before the time I write
+of, and in playfulness and lightness of spirits she was almost a
+child: now those indications of an unawakened heart had mellowed into a
+tenderness full of that melancholy so touching and holy, even amid
+the voluptuous softness which it breathes and inspires. But this day,
+whether from that coquetry so common to all women, or from some cause
+more natural to her, she seemed gayer than Falkland ever remembered to
+have seen her. She ran over the sands, picking up shells, and tempting
+the waves with her small and fairy feet, not daring to look at him, and
+yet speaking to him at times with a quick tone of levity which hurt and
+offended him, even though he knew the depth of those feelings she could
+not disguise either from him or from herself. By degrees his answers and
+remarks grew cold and sarcastic. Emily affected pique; and when it was
+discovered that the cliff was still nearly two miles off, she refused to
+proceed any farther. Lady Margaret talked her at last into consent,
+and they walked on as sullenly as an English party of pleasure possibly
+could do, till they were within three quarters of a mile of the place,
+when Emily declared she was so tired that she really could not go on.
+Falkland looked at her, perhaps, with no very amiable expression of
+countenance, when he perceived that she seemed really pale and fatigued;
+and when she caught his eyes, tears rushed into her own.
+
+“Indeed, indeed, Mr. Falkland,” she said, eagerly, “this is not
+affectation. I am very tired; but rather than prevent your amusement, I
+will endeavour to go on.” “Nonsense, child,” said Lady Margaret, “you
+do seem tired. Mrs. Dalton and Falkland shall go to the rock, and I will
+stay here with you.” This proposition, however, Lady Emily (who knew
+Lady Margaret’s wish to see the rock) would not hear of; she insisted
+upon staying by herself. “Nobody will run away with me; and I can very
+easily amuse myself with picking up shells till you comeback.” After
+along remonstrance, which produced no effect, this plan was at last
+acceded to. With great reluctance Falkland set off with his two
+companions; but after the first step, he turned to look back. He caught
+her eye, and felt from that moment that their reconciliation was sealed.
+They arrived, at last, at the cliff. Its height, its excavations, the
+romantic interest which the traditions respecting it had inspired, fully
+repaid the two women for the fatigue of their walk. As for Falkland,
+he was unconscious of everything around him; he was full of “sweet and
+bitter thoughts.” In vain the man whom they found loitering there,
+in order to serve as a guide, kept dinning in his ear stories of the
+marvellous, and exclamations of the sublime. The first words which
+aroused him were these; “It’s lucky, please your Honour, that you have
+just saved the tide. It is but last week that three poor people were
+drowned in attempting to come here; as it is, you will have to go home
+round the cliff.” Falkland started: he felt his heart stand still. “Good
+God!” cried Lady Margaret, “what will become of Emily?”
+
+They were--at that instant in one of the caverns, where they had already
+been loitering too long. Falkland rushed out to the sands. The tide was
+hurrying in with a deep sound, which came on his soul like a knell.
+He looked back towards the way they had come: not one hundred yards
+distant, and the waters had already covered the path! An eternity would
+scarcely atone for the horror of that moment! One great characteristic
+of Falkland was his presence of mind. He turned to the man who stood
+beside him--he gave him a cool and exact description of the spot where
+he had left Emily. He told him to repair with all possible speed to his
+home--to launch his boat--to row it to the place he had described. “Be
+quick,” he added, “and you must be in time: if you are, you shall never
+know poverty again.” The next moment he was already several yards from
+the spot. He ran, or rather flew, till he was stopped by the waters. He
+rushed in; they were over a hollow between two rocks--they were already
+up to his chest. “There is yet hope,” thought he, when he had passed
+the spot, and saw the smooth sand before him. For some minutes he was
+scarcely sensible of existence; and then he found himself breathless at
+her feet. Beyond, towards T----- (the small inn I spoke of), the waves
+had already reached the foot of the rocks, and precluded all hope of
+return. Their only chance was the possibility that the waters had not
+yet rendered impassable the hollow through which Falkland had just
+waded. He scarcely spoke; at least he was totally unconscious of what he
+said. He hurried her on breathless and trembling, with the sound of the
+booming waters ringing in his ear, and their billows advancing to his
+very feet. They arrived at the hollow: a single glance sufficed to show
+him that their solitary hope was past! The waters, before up to his
+chest, had swelled considerably: he could not swim. He saw in that
+instant that they were girt with a hastening and terrible death. Can it
+be believed that with that certainty ceased his fear? He looked in
+the pale but calm countenance of her who clung to him, and a strange
+tranquillity, even mingled with joy, possessed him. Her breath was on
+his cheek--her form was reclining on his own--his hand clasped hers; if
+they were to die, it was thus. What would life afford to him more dear?
+“It is in this moment,” said he, and he knelt as he spoke, “that I dare
+tell you what otherwise my lips never should have revealed. I love--I
+adore you! Turn not away from me thus. In life our persons were severed;
+if our hearts are united in death, then death will be sweet.” She
+turned--her cheek was no longer pale! He rose--he clasped her to
+his bosom: his lips pressed hers. Oh! that long, deep, burning
+pressure!--youth, love, life, soul, all concentrated in that one kiss!
+Yet the same cause which occasioned the avowal hallowed also the madness
+of his heart. What had the passion, declared only at the approach of
+death, with the more earthly desires of life? They looked to heaven--it
+was calm and unclouded: the evening lay there in its balm and perfume,
+and the air was less agitated than their sighs. They turned towards the
+beautiful sea which was to be their grave: the wild birds flew over it
+exultingly: the far vessels seemed “rejoicing to run their course.” All
+was full of the breath, the glory, the life of nature; and in how many
+minutes was all to be as nothing! Their existence would resemble the
+ships that have gone down at sea in the very smile of the element that
+destroyed them. They looked into each other’s eyes, and they drew still
+nearer together. Their hearts, in safety apart, mingled in peril and
+became one. Minutes rolled on, and the great waves came dashing round
+them. They stood on the loftiest eminence they could reach. The spray
+broke over their feet: the billows rose--rose--they were speechless. He
+thought he heard her heart beat, but her lip trembled not. A
+speck--a boat! “Look up, Emily! look up! See how it cuts the waters.
+Nearer--nearer! but a little longer, and we are safe. It is but a
+few yards off;--it approaches--it touches the rock!” Ah! what to them
+henceforth was the value of life, when the moment of discovering its
+charm became also the date of its misfortunes, and when the death
+they had escaped was the only method of cementing their--union without
+consummating their guilt?
+
+
+
+FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO THE HON. FREDERICK MONKTON.
+
+I will write to you at length to-morrow. Events have occurred to alter,
+perhaps, the whole complexion of the future. I am now going to Emily to
+propose to her to fly. We are not _les gens du monde_, who are ruined by
+the loss of public opinion. She has felt that I can be to her far more
+than the world; and as for me, what would I not forfeit for one touch of
+her hand?
+
+
+
+EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE.
+
+Friday.--Since I wrote yesterday in these pages the narrative of our
+escape, I have done nothing but think over those moments, too dangerous
+because too dear; but at last I have steeled my heart--I have yielded
+to my own weakness too long--I shudder at the abyss from which I have
+escaped. I can yet fly. He will come here to-day--he shall receive my
+farewell.
+
+Saturday morning, four o’clock.--I have sat in this room alone since
+eleven o’clock. I cannot give vent to my feelings; they seem as if
+crushed by some load from which it is impossible to rise. “He is gone,
+and for ever!” I sit repeating those words to myself, scarcely conscious
+of their meaning. Alas! when to-morrow comes, and the next day, and the
+next, and yet I see him not, I shall awaken, indeed, to all the agony of
+my loss! He came here--he saw me alone--he implored me to fly. I did not
+dare to meet his eyes; I hardened my heart against his voice. I knew the
+part I was to take--I have adopted it; but what struggles, what misery,
+has it not occasioned me! Who could have thought it had been so hard
+to be virtuous! His eloquence drove me from one defence to another,
+and then I had none but his mercy. I opened my heart--I showed him its
+weakness--I implored his forbearance. My tears, my anguish, convinced
+him of my sincerity. We have parted in bitterness, but, thank Heaven,
+not in guilt! He has entreated permission to write to me. How could
+I refuse him? Yet I may not--cannot-write to him again! How could, I
+indeed, suffer my heart to pour forth one of its feelings in reply? for
+would there be one word of regret, or one term of endearment, which my
+inmost soul would not echo?
+
+Sunday.--Yes, that day--but I must not think of this; my very religion
+I dare not indulge. Oh God! how wretched I am! His visit was always the
+great aera in the clay; it employed all my hopes till he came, and all
+my memory when he was gone. I sit now and look at the place he used to
+fill, till I feel the tears rolling silently down my cheek: they come
+without an effort--they depart without relief.
+
+Monday.--Henry asked me where Mr. Falkland was gone; I stooped down to
+hide my confusion. When shall I hear from him? To-morrow? Oh that it
+were come! I have placed the clock before me, and I actually count the
+minutes. He left a book here; it is a volume of “Melmoth.” I have read
+over every word of it, and whenever I have come to a pencil-mark by him,
+I have paused to dream over that varying and eloquent countenance, the
+low soft tone of that tender voice, till the book has fallen from my
+hands, and I have started to find the utterness of my desolation!
+
+
+
+FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE. ------ Hotel,
+London.
+
+For the first time in my life I write to you! How my hand trembles--how
+my cheek flushes! a thousand, thousand thoughts rush upon me, and almost
+suffocate me with the variety and confusion of the emotions they awaken!
+I am agitated alike with the rapture of writing to you, and with the
+impossibility of expressing the feelings which I cannot distinctly
+unravel even to myself. You love me, Emily, and yet I have fled from
+you, and at your command; but the thought that, though absent, I am not
+forgotten, supports me through all.
+
+It was with a feverish sense of weariness and pain that I found myself
+entering this vast reservoir of human vices. I became at once sensible
+of the sterility of that polluted soil so incapable of nurturing
+affection, and I clasped your image the closer to my heart. It is you,
+who, when I was most weary of existence, gifted me with a new life.
+You breathed into me a part of your own spirit; my soul feels that
+influence, and becomes more sacred. I have shut myself from the idlers
+who would molest me: I have built a temple in my heart: I have set
+within it a divinity; and the vanities of the world shall not profane
+the spot which has been consecrated to you. Our parting, Emily,--do you
+recall it? Your hand clasped in mine; your cheek resting, though but
+for an instant, on my bosom; and the tears which love called forth, but
+which virtue purified even at their source. Never were hearts so near,
+yet so divided; never was there an hour so tender, yet so unaccompanied
+with danger. Passion, grief, madness, all sank beneath your voice, and
+lay hushed like a deep sea within my soul! “Tu abbia veduto il leone
+ammansarsi alla sola tua voce.”
+
+        ‘Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis.
+
+I tore myself from you; I hurried through the wood; I stood by the lake,
+on whose banks I had so often wandered with you: I bared my breast to
+the winds; I bathed my temples with the waters. Fool that I was! the
+fever, the fever was within! But it is not thus, my adored and beautiful
+friend, that I should console and support you. Even as I write,
+passion melts into tenderness, and pours itself in softness over your
+remembrance. The virtue so gentle, yet so strong; the feelings so
+kind, yet so holy; the tears which wept over the decision your lips
+proclaimed--these are the recollections which come over me like dew. Let
+your own heart, my Emily, be your reward; and know that your lover only
+forgets that he adores, to remember that he respects you.
+
+
+
+FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. ---------- Park.
+
+I could not bear the tumult and noise of London. I sighed for solitude,
+that I might muse over your remembrance undisturbed. I came here
+yesterday. It is the home of my childhood. I am surrounded on all sides
+by the scenes and images consecrated by the fresh recollections of my
+unsullied years. They are not changed. The seasons which come and depart
+renew in them the havoc which they make. If the December destroys, the
+April revives; but man has but one spring, and the desolation of the
+heart but one winter! In this very room have I sat and brooded over
+dreams and hopes which--but no matter--those dreams could never show
+me a vision to equal you, or those hopes hold out to me a blessing so
+precious as your love.
+
+Do you remember, or rather can you ever forget, that moment in which the
+great depths of our souls were revealed? Ah! not in the scene in which
+such vows should have been whispered to your ear and your tenderness
+have blushed its reply. The passion concealed in darkness was revealed
+in danger; and the love, which in life was forbidden, was our comfort
+amidst the terrors of death! And that long and holy kiss, the first,
+the only moment in which our lips shared the union of our souls!--do not
+tell me that it is wrong to recall it!--do not tell me that I sin,
+when I own to you the hours I sit alone, and nurse the delirium of that
+voluptuous remembrance. The feelings you have excited may render me
+wretched, but not guilty; for the love of you can only hallow the
+heart--it is a fire which consecrates the altar on which it burns. I
+feel, even from the hour that I loved, that my soul has become more
+pure. I could not believe that I was capable of so unearthly an
+affection, or that the love of woman could possess that divinity of
+virtue which I worship in yours. The world is no fosterer of our young
+visions of purity and passion: embarked in its pursuits, and acquainted
+with its pleasures, while the latter sated me with what is evil, the
+former made me incredulous to what is pure. I considered your sex as
+a problem which my experience had already solved. Like the French
+philosophers, who lose truth by endeavouring to condense it, and who
+forfeit the moral from their regard to the maxim, I concentrated my
+knowledge of women into aphorism and antitheses; and I did not dream
+of the exceptions, if I did not find myself deceived in the general
+conclusion. I confess that I erred; I renounce from this moment
+the colder reflections of my manhood,--the fruits of a bitter
+experience,--the wisdom of an inquiring yet agitated life. I return with
+transport to my earliest visions of beauty and love; and I dedicate them
+upon the altar of my soul to you, who have embodied, and concentrated,
+and breathed them into life!
+
+
+
+EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE.
+
+Monday.--This is the most joyless day in the whole week; for it can
+bring me no letter from him. I rise listlessly, and read over again and
+again the last letter I received from him--useless task! it is graven on
+my heart! I long only for the day to be over, because to-morrow I may,
+perhaps, hear from him again. When I wake at night from my disturbed and
+broken sleep, I look if the morning is near; not because it gives light
+and life, but because it may bring tidings of him. When his letter is
+brought to me, I keep it for minutes unopened--I feed my eyes on the
+handwriting--I examine the seal--I press it with my kisses, before I
+indulge myself in the luxury of reading it. I then place it in my bosom,
+and take it thence only to read it again and again,--to moisten it with
+my tears of gratitude and love, and, alas! of penitence and remorse!
+What can be the end of this affection? I dare neither to hope that it
+may continue or that it may cease; in either case I am wretched for
+ever!
+
+Monday night, twelve o’clock.--They observe my paleness; the tears which
+tremble in my eyes; the listlessness and dejection of my manner. I think
+Mrs. Dalton guesses the cause. Humbled and debased in my own mind, I
+fly, Falkland, for refuge to you! Your affection cannot raise me to my
+former state, but it can reconcile--no--not reconcile, but support me in
+my present. This dear letter, I kiss it again--oh! that to-morrow were
+come!
+
+Tuesday.--Another letter, so kind, so tender, so encouraging: would that
+I deserved his praises! alas! I sin even in reading them. I know that
+I ought to struggle more against my feelings--once I attempted it; I
+prayed to Heaven to support me; I put away from me everything that could
+recall him to my mind--for three days I would not open his letters. I
+could then resist no longer; and my weakness became the more confirmed
+from the feebleness of the struggle. I remember one day that he told us
+of a beautiful passage in one of the ancients, in which the bitterest
+curse against the wicked is, that they may see virtue, but not be able
+to obtain it; [Persius]--that punishment is mine!
+
+Wednesday.--My boy has been with me: I see him now from the windows
+gathering the field-flowers, and running after every butterfly which
+comes across him. Formerly he made all my delight and occupation; now
+he is even dearer to me than ever; but he no longer engrosses all my
+thoughts. I turn over the leaves of this journal; once it noted down the
+little occurrences of the day; it marks nothing now but the monotony of
+sadness. He is not here--he cannot come. What event then could I notice?
+
+
+
+FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE.
+
+   [Most of the letters from Falkland to Lady E. Mandeville
+   I have thought it expedient to suppress.]
+--------- Park.
+
+If you knew how I long, how I thirst, for one word from you--one word
+to say you are well, and have not forgotten me!--but I will not distress
+you. You will guess my feelings, and do justice to the restraint I
+impose on them, when I make no effort to alter your resolution not to
+write. I know that it is just, and I bow to my sentence; but can you
+blame me if I am restless and if I repine? It is past twelve; I always
+write to you at night. It is then, my own love, that my imagination can
+be the more readily transport me to you: it is then that my spirit holds
+with you a more tender and undivided commune. In the day the world can
+force itself upon my thoughts, and its trifles usurp the place which
+“I love to keep for only thee and Heaven;” but in the night all things
+recall you the more vividly: the stillness of the gentle skies,--the
+blandness of the unbroken air,--the stars, so holy in their loveliness,
+all speak and breathe to me of you. I think your hand is clasped in
+mine; and I again drink the low music of your voice, and imbibe again
+in the air the breath which has been perfumed by your lips. You seem to
+stand in my lonely chamber in the light and stillness of a spirit, who
+has wandered on earth to teach us the love which is felt in Heaven.
+
+I cannot, believe me, I cannot endure this separation long; it must be
+more or less. You must be mine for ever, or our parting must be without
+a mitigation, which is rather a cruelty than a relief. If you will not
+accompany me, I will leave this country alone. I must not wean myself
+from your image by degrees, but break from the enchantment at once. And
+when Emily, I am once more upon the world, when no tidings of my fate
+shall reach your ear, and all its power of alienation be left to the
+progress of time--then, when you will at last have forgotten me,
+when your peace of mind will be restored, and, having no struggles of
+conscience to undergo, you will have no remorse to endure; then, Emily,
+when we are indeed divided, let the scene which has witnessed our
+passion, the letters which have recorded my vow, the evil we have
+suffered, and the temptation we have overcome; let these in our old age
+be remembered, and in declaring to Heaven that we were innocent, add
+also--that, we loved.
+
+
+
+FROM DON ALPHONSO D’AQUILAR TO DON --------.
+
+London.
+
+Our cause gains ground daily. The great, indeed the only ostensible
+object of my mission is nearly fulfilled; but I have another charge
+and attraction which I am now about to explain to you. You know that
+my acquaintance with the English language and country arose from my
+sister’s marriage with Mr. Falkland. After the birth of their only child
+I accompanied them to England: I remained with them for three years,
+and I still consider those days among the whitest in my restless and
+agitated career. I returned to Spain; I became engaged in the troubles
+and dissensions which distracted my unhappy country. Years rolled on,
+how I need not mention to you. One night they put a letter into my
+hands; it was from my sister; it was written on her death-bed. Her
+husband had died suddenly. She loved him as a Spanish woman loves, and
+she could not survive his loss. Her letter to me spoke of her country
+and her son. Amid the new ties she had formed in England, she had never
+forgotten the land of her fathers. “I have already,” she said, “taught
+my boy to remember that he has two countries; that the one, prosperous
+and free; may afford him his pleasures; that the other, struggling and
+debased, demands from him his duties. If, when he has attained the age
+in which you can judge of his character, he is respectable only from
+his rank, and valuable only from his wealth; if neither his head nor
+his heart will make him useful to our cause, suffer him to remain
+undisturbed in his prosperity _here_: but if, as I presage, he becomes
+worthy of the blood which he bears in his veins, then I conjure you, my
+brother, to remind him that he has been sworn by me on my death-bed to
+the most sacred of earthly altars.”
+
+Some months since, when I arrived in England; before I ventured to find
+him out in person, I resolved to inquire into his character. Had he been
+as the young and the rich generally are--had dissipation become habitual
+to him, and frivolity grown around him as a second nature, then I
+should have acquiesced in the former injunction of my sister much more
+willingly than I shall now obey the latter. I find that he is perfectly
+acquainted with our language, that he has placed a large sum in our
+funds, and that from the general liberality of his sentiments he is as
+likely to espouse, as (in that case) he would be certain, from his high
+reputation for talent, to serve our cause. I am, therefore, upon the eve
+of seeking him out. I understand that he is living in perfect retirement
+in the county of -------, in the immediate neighbourhood of Mr.
+Mandeville, an Englishman of considerable fortune, and warmly attached
+to our cause.
+
+Mr. Mandeville has invited me to accompany him down to his estate for
+some days, and I am too anxious to see my nephew not to accept eagerly
+of the invitation. If I can persuade Falkland to aid us, it will be by
+the influence of his name, his talents, and his wealth. It is not of
+him that we can ask the stern and laborious devotion to which we have
+consecrated ourselves. The perfidy of friends, the vigilance of foes,
+the rashness of the bold, the cowardice of the wavering; strife in the
+closet, treachery in the senate, death in the field; these constitute
+the fate we have pledged ourselves to bear. Little can any, who do not
+endure it, imagine of the life to which those who share the contests of
+an agitated and distracted country are doomed; but if they know not
+our griefs, neither can they dream of our consolation. We move like the
+delineation of Faith, over a barren and desert soil; the rock, and the
+thorn, and the stings of the adder, are round our feet; but we clasp
+a crucifix to our hearts for our comfort, and we fix our eyes upon the
+heavens for our hope!
+
+
+
+EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF LADY EMILY MANDE VILLE.
+
+Wednesday.--His letters have taken a different tone: instead of
+soothing, they add to my distress; but I deserve all--all that can be
+inflicted upon me. I have had a letter from Mr. Mandeville. He is coming
+down here for a few days, and intends bringing some friends with him: he
+mentions particularly a Spaniard--the uncle of Mr Falkland, whom he
+asks if I have seen. The Spaniard is particularly anxious to meet his
+nephew--he does not then know that Falkland is gone. It will be some
+relief to see Mr. Mandeville alone; but even then how shall I meet him?
+What shall I say when he observes my paleness and alteration? I feel
+bowed to the very dust.
+
+Thursday evening.--Mr. Mandeville has arrived: fortunately, it was late
+in the evening before he came, and the darkness prevented his observing
+my confusion and alteration. He was kinder than usual. Oh! how bitterly
+my heart avenged him! He brought with him the Spaniard, Don Alphonso
+d’Aguilar; I think there is a faint family likeness between him and
+Falkland. Mr. Mandeville brought also a letter from Julia. She will be
+here the day after to-morrow. The letter is short, but kind: she does
+not allude to him; it is some days since I heard from him.
+
+
+
+FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO THE HON. FREDERICK MONKTON.
+
+I have resolved, Monkton, to go to her again! I am sure that it will
+be better for both of us to meet once more; perhaps, to unite for ever!
+None who have once loved me can easily forget me. I do not say this
+from vanity, because I owe it not to my being superior to, but different
+from, others. I am sure that the remorse and affliction she feels now
+are far greater than she would experience, even were she more guilty,
+and with me. Then, at least, she would have some one to soothe and
+sympathise in whatever she might endure. To one so pure as Emily, the
+full crime is already incurred. It is not the innocent who insist upon
+that nice line of morality between the thought and the action: such
+distinctions require reflection, experience, deliberation, prudence of
+head, or coldness of heart; these are the traits, not of the guileless,
+but of the worldly. It is the reflections, not the person, of a virtuous
+woman, which it is difficult to obtain: that difficulty is the safeguard
+to her chastity; that difficulty I have, in this instance, overcome.
+I have endeavoured to live without Emily, but in vain. Every moment of
+absence only taught me the impossibility. In twenty-four hours I shall
+see her again. I feel my pulse rise into fever at the very thought.
+
+Farewell, Monkton. My next letter, I hope, will record my triumph.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE.
+
+Friday.--Julia is here, and so kind! She has not mentioned his name, but
+she sighed so deeply when she saw my pale and sunken countenance, that
+I threw myself into her arms and cried like a child. We had no need
+of other explanation: those tears spoke at once my confession and my
+repentance. No letter from him for several days! Surely he is not ill!
+how miserable that thought makes me!
+
+Saturday.--A note has just been brought me from him. He is come
+back-here! Good heavens! how very imprudent! I am so agitated that I can
+write no more.
+
+Sunday.--I have seen him! Let me repeat that sentence--I have seen him.
+Oh that moment! did it not atone for all that I have suffered? I
+dare not write everything he said, but he wished me to fly with
+him--him--what happiness, yet what guilt, in the very thought! Oh! this
+foolish heart--would that it might break! I feel too well the sophistry
+of his arguments, and yet I cannot resist them. He seems to have thrown
+a spell over me, which precludes even the effort to escape.
+
+Monday.--Mr. Mandeville has asked several people in the country to dine
+here to-morrow, and there is to be a ball in the evening. Falkland is
+of course invited. We shall meet then, and how? I have been so little
+accustomed to disguise my feelings, that I quite tremble to meet him
+with so many witnesses around. Mr. Mandeville has been so harsh to me
+to-day; if Falkland ever looked at me so, or ever said one such word, my
+heart would indeed break. What is it Alfieri says about the two demons
+to whom he is for ever a prey? “_La mente e il cor in perpetua lite_.”
+ Alas! at times I start from my reveries with such a keen sense of agony
+and shame! How, how am I fallen!
+
+Tuesday.--He is to come here to-day and I shall see him!
+
+Wednesday morning.--The night is over, thank Heaven! Falkland came late
+to dinner: every one else was assembled. How gracefully he entered! how
+superior he seemed to all the crowd that stood around him! He appeared
+as if he were resolved to exert powers which he had disdained before. He
+entered into the conversation, not only with such brilliancy, but with
+such a blandness and courtesy of manner! There was no scorn on his lip,
+no haughtiness on his forehead--nothing which showed him for a moment
+conscious of his immeasurable superiority over every one present. After
+dinner, as we retired, I caught his eyes. What volumes they told! and
+then I had to listen to his praises, and say nothing. I felt angry even
+in my pleasure. Who but I had a right to speak of him so well!
+
+The ball came on: I felt languid and dispirited. Falkland did not dance.
+He sat: himself by me--he urged me to--O God! O God! would that I were
+dead!
+
+
+
+FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE.
+
+How are you this morning, my adored friend? You seemed pale and ill when
+we parted last night, and I shall be so unhappy till I hear something of
+you. Oh, Emily, when you listened to me with those tearful and downcast
+looks; when I saw your bosom heave at every word which I whispered in
+your ear; when, as I accidentally touched your hand, I felt it tremble
+beneath my own; oh! was there nothing in those moments at your heart
+which pleaded for me more eloquently than words? Pure and holy as you
+are, you know not, it is true, the feelings which burn and madden in me.
+When you are beside me, your hand, if it trembles, is not on fire, your
+voice, if it is more subdued, does not falter with the emotions it dares
+not express: your heart is not like mine, devoured by a parching and
+wasting flame: your sleep is not turned by restless and turbulent dreams
+from the healthful renewal, into the very consumer, of life. No, Emily!
+God forbid that you should feel the guilt, the agony which preys upon
+me; but, at least, in the fond and gentle tenderness of your heart,
+there must be a voice you find it difficult to silence. Amidst all the
+fictitious ties and fascinations of art, you cannot dismiss from your
+bosom the unconquerable impulse of nature. What is it you fear?--you
+will answer, disgrace! But can you feel it, Emily, when you share it
+with me? Believe me that the love which is nursed through shame and
+sorrow is of a deeper and holier nature than that which is reared in
+pride, fostered in joy. But, if not shame, it is guilt, perhaps, which
+you dread? Are you then so innocent now? The adultery of the heart is no
+less a crime than that of the deed; and--yet I will not deceive you--it
+is guilt to which I tempt you!--it is a fall from the proud eminence
+you hold now. I grant this, and I offer you nothing in recompense but
+my love. If you loved like me, you would feel that it was something of
+pride--of triumph--to dare all things, even crime, for the one to whom
+all things are as nought! As for me, I know that if a voice from Heaven
+told me to desert you, I would only clasp you the closer to my heart!
+
+I tell you, my own love, that when your hand is in mine, when your head
+rests upon my bosom, when those soft and thrilling eyes shall be fixed
+upon my own, when every sigh shall be mingled with my breath, and every
+tear be kissed away at the very instant it rises from its source--I tell
+you that then you shall only feel that every pang of the past, and every
+fear for the future, shall be but a new link to bind us the firmer to
+each other. Emily, my life, my love, you cannot, if you would, desert
+me. Who can separate the waters which are once united, or divide the
+hearts which have met and mingled into one?
+
+
+Since they had once more met, it will be perceived that Falkland had
+adopted a new tone in expressing his passion to Emily. In the book of
+guilt another page, branded in a deeper and more burning character, had
+been turned. He lost no opportunity of summoning the earthlier emotions
+to the support of his cause. He wooed her fancy with the golden language
+of poetry, and strove to arouse the latent feelings of her sex by the
+soft magic of his voice, and the passionate meaning it conveyed. But
+at times there came over him a deep and keen sentiment of remorse; and
+even, as his experienced and practised eye saw the moment of his triumph
+approach, he felt that the success he was hazarding his own soul
+and hers to obtain, might bring him a momentary transport, but not a
+permanent happiness. There is always this difference in the love of
+women and of men; that in the former, when once admitted, it engrosses
+all the sources of thought, and excludes every object but itself; but
+in the latter, it is shared with all the former reflections and feelings
+which the past yet bequeaths us, and can neither (however powerful be
+its nature) constitute the whole of our happiness or woe. The love
+of man in his maturer years is not indeed so much a new emotion, as a
+revival and concentration of all his departed affections to others; and
+the deep and intense nature of Falkland’s passion for Emily was linked
+with the recollections of whatever he had formerly cherished as tender
+or dear; it touched--it awoke a long chain of young and enthusiastic
+feelings, which arose, perhaps, the fresher from their slumber. Who,
+when he turns to recall his first and fondest associations; when he
+throws off, one by one, the layers of earth and stone which have grown
+and hardened over the records of the past: who has not been surprised to
+discover how fresh and unimpaired those buried treasures rise again upon
+his heart? They have been laid up in the storehouse of Time; they have
+not perished; their very concealment has preserved them! _We remove the
+lava, and the world of a gone day is before us_!
+
+The evening of the day on which Falkland had written the above letter
+was rude and stormy. The various streams with which the country abounded
+were swelled by late rains into an unwonted rapidity and breadth;
+and their voices blended with the rushing sound of the winds, and the
+distant roll of the thunder, which began at last sullenly to subside.
+The whole of the scene around L------ was of that savage yet sublime
+character, which suited well with the wrath of the aroused elements.
+Dark woods, large tracts of unenclosed heath, abrupt variations of
+hill and vale, and a dim and broken outline beyond of uninterrupted
+mountains, formed the great features of that romantic country.
+
+It was filled with the recollections of his youth, and of the wild
+delight which he took then in the convulsions and varieties of nature,
+that Falkland roamed abroad that evening. The dim shadows of years,
+crowded with concealed events and corroding reflections, all gathered
+around his mind, and the gloom and tempest of the night came over him
+like the sympathy of a friend.
+
+He passed a group of terrified peasants; they were cowering under a
+tree. The oldest hid his head and shuddered; but the youngest looked
+steadily at the lightning which played at fitful intervals over the
+mountain stream that rushed rapidly by their feet. Falkland stood beside
+them unnoticed and silent, with folded arms and a scornful lip. To
+him, nature, heaven, earth had nothing for fear, and everything for
+reflection. In youth, thought he (as he contrasted the fear felt at
+one period of life with the indifference at another), there are so many
+objects to divide and distract life, that we are scarcely sensible of
+the collected conviction that we live. We lose the sense of what is by
+thinking rather of what is to be. But the old, who have no future to
+expect, are more vividly alive to the present, and they feel death more,
+because they have a more settled and perfect impression of existence.
+
+He left the group, and went on alone by the margin of the winding and
+swelling stream. “It is (said a certain philosopher) in the conflicts
+of Nature that man most feels his littleness.” Like all general maxims,
+this is only partially true. The mind, which takes its first ideas from
+perception, must take also its tone from the character of the objects
+perceived. In mingling our spirits with the great elements, we partake
+of their sublimity; we awaken thought from the secret depths where it
+had lain concealed; our feelings are too excited to remain riveted to
+ourselves; they blend with the mighty powers which are abroad; and as,
+in the agitations of men, the individual arouses from himself to become
+a part of the crowd, so in the convulsions of nature we are equally
+awakened from the littleness of self, to be lost in the grandeur of the
+conflict by which we are surrounded.
+
+Falkland still continued to track the stream: it wound its way through
+Mandeville’s grounds, and broadened at last into the lake which was
+so consecrated to his recollections. He paused at that spot for some
+moments, looking carelessly over the wide expanse of waters, now dark
+as night, and now flashing into one mighty plain of fire beneath the
+coruscations of the lightning. The clouds swept on in massy columns,
+dark and aspiring-veiling, while they rolled up to, the great heavens,
+like the shadows of human doubt. Oh! weak, weak was that dogma of the
+philosopher! There is a pride in the storm which, according to his
+doctrine, would debase us; a stirring music in its roar; even a savage
+joy in its destruction: for we can exult in a defiance of its power,
+even while we share in its triumphs, in a consciousness of a superior
+spirit within us to that which is around. We can mock at the fury of the
+elements, for they are less terrible than the passions of the heart; at
+the devastations of the awful skies, for they are less desolating than
+the wrath of man; at the convulsions of that surrounding nature which
+has no peril, no terror to the soul, which is more indestructible and
+eternal than itself. Falkland turned towards the house which contained
+his world; and as the lightning revealed at intervals the white columns
+of the porch, and wrapt in sheets of fire, like a spectral throng, the
+tall and waving trees by which it was encircled, and then as suddenly
+ceased, and “the jaws of darkness” devoured up the scene; he compared,
+with that bitter alchymy of feeling which resolves all into one crucible
+of thought, those alternations of sight and shadow to the history of
+his own guilty love--that passion whose birth was the womb of Night;
+shrouded in darkness, surrounded by storms, and receiving only from the
+angry heavens a momentary brilliance, more terrible than its customary
+gloom.
+
+As he entered the saloon, Lady Margaret advanced towards him. “My dear
+Falkland,” said she, “how good it is in you to come in such a night. We
+have been watching the skies till Emily grew terrified at the lightning;
+formerly it did not alarm her.” And Lady Margaret turned, utterly
+unconscious of the reproach she had conveyed, towards Emily.
+
+Did not Falkland’s look turn also to that spot? Lady Emily was sitting
+by the harp which Mrs. St. John appeared to be most seriously employed
+in tuning: her countenance was bent downwards, and burning beneath the
+blushes called forth by the gaze which she felt was upon her.
+
+There was in Falkland’s character a peculiar dislike to all outward
+display of less worldly emotions. He had none of the vanity most men
+have in conquest; he would not have had any human being know that he was
+loved. He was right! No altar should be so unseen and inviolable as
+the human heart! He saw at once and relieved the embarrassment he
+had caused. With the remarkable fascination and grace of manner
+so peculiarly his own, he made his excuses to Lady Margaret of his
+disordered dress; he charmed his uncle, Don Alphonso, with a quotation
+from Lope de Vega; he inquired tenderly of Mrs. Dalton touching the
+health of her Italian greyhound; and then, nor till then--he ventured to
+approach Emily, and speak to her in that soft tone, which, like a fairy
+language, is understood only by the person it addresses. Mrs. St. John
+rose and left the harp; Falkland took her seat. He bent down to whisper
+Emily. His long hair touched her cheek! it was still wet with the night
+dew. She looked up as she felt it, and met his gaze: better had it been
+to have lost earth than to have drunk the soul’s poison from that eye
+when it tempted to sin.
+
+Mrs. St. John stood at some distance: Don Alphonso was speaking to her
+of his nephew, and of his hopes of ultimately gaining him to the cause
+of his mother’s country. “See you not,” said Mrs. St. John, and her
+colour went and came, “that while he has such attractions to detain him,
+your hopes are in vain?” “What mean you?” replied the Spaniard; but his
+eye had followed the direction she had given it, and the question came
+only from his lips. Mrs. St. John drew him to a still remoter corner of
+the room, and it was in the conversation that then ensued between them,
+that they agreed to unite for the purpose of separating Emily from
+her lover--“I to save my friend,” said Mrs. St. John, “and you your
+kinsman.” Thus is it with human virtue:--the fair show and the good
+deed without--the one eternal motive of selfishness within. During the
+Spaniard’s visit at E------, he had seen enough of Falkland to perceive
+the great consequence he might, from his perfect knowledge of the
+Spanish language, from his singular powers, and, above all, from his
+command of wealth, be to the cause of that party he himself had adopted.
+His aim, therefore, was now no longer confined to procuring Falkland’s
+goodwill and aim at home: he hoped to secure his personal assistance in
+Spain: and he willingly coincided with Mrs. St. John in detaching his
+nephew from a tie so likely to detain him from that service to which
+Alphonso wished he should be pledged.
+
+Mandeville had left E------ that morning: he suspected nothing of
+Emily’s attachment. This, on his part, was Bulwer, less confidence than
+indifference. He was one of those persons who have no existence
+separate from their own: his senses all turned inwards; they reproduced
+selfishness. Even the House of Commons was only an object of interest,
+because he imagined it a part of him, not he of it. He said, with the
+insect on the wheel, “Admire our rapidity.” But did the defects of his
+character remove Lady Emily’s guilt? No! and this, at times, was her
+bitterest conviction. Whoever turns to these pages for an apology
+for sin will be mistaken. They contain the burning records of its
+sufferings, its repentance, and its doom. If there be one crime in the
+history of woman worse than another, it is adultery. It is, in fact,
+the only crime to which, in ordinary life, she is exposed. Man has a
+thousand temptations to sin--woman has but one; if she cannot resist it,
+she has no claim upon our mercy. The heavens are just! Her own guilt is
+her punishment! Should these pages, at this moment, meet the eyes of one
+who has become the centre of a circle of disgrace--the contaminator of
+her house--the dishonour of her children,--no matter what the excuse for
+her crime--no matter what the exchange of her station--in the very
+arms of her lover, in the very cincture of the new ties which she has
+chosen--I call upon her to answer me if the fondest moments of rapture
+are free from humiliation, though they have forgotten remorse; and if
+the passion itself of her lover has not become no less the penalty than
+the recompense of her guilt? But at that hour of which I now write,
+there was neither in Emily’s heart, nor in that of her seducer, any
+recollection of their sin. Those hearts were too full for thought--they
+had forgotten everything but each other. Their love was their creation:
+beyond all was night--chaos--nothing!
+
+Lady Margaret approached them. “You will sing to us, Emily, to-night?
+it is so long since we have heard you!” It was in vain that Emily
+tried--her voice failed. She looked at Falkland, and could scarcely
+restrain her tears. She had not yet learned the latest art which sin
+teaches us-its concealment! “I will supply Lady Emily’s place,” said
+Falkland. His voice was calm, and his brow serene the world had left
+nothing for him to learn. “Will you play the air,” he said to Mrs. St.
+John, “that you gave us some nights ago? I will furnish the words.” Mrs.
+St. John’s hand trembled as she obeyed.
+
+
+                SONG.
+
+        1.
+        Ah, let us love while yet we may,
+        Our summer is decaying;
+        And woe to hearts which, in their gray
+        December, go a-maying.
+
+        2.
+        Ah, let us love, while of the fire
+        Time hath not yet bereft us
+        With years our warmer thoughts expire,
+        Till only ice is left us!
+
+        3.
+        We’ll fly the bleak world’s bitter air
+        A brighter home shall win us;
+        And if our hearts grow weary there,
+        We’ll find a world within us.
+
+        4.
+        They preach that passion fades each hour,
+        That nought will pall like pleasure;
+        My bee, if Love’s so frail a flower,
+        Oh, haste to hive its treasure.
+
+        5.
+        Wait not the hour, when all the mind
+        Shall to the crowd be given;
+        For links, which to the million bind,
+        Shall from the one be riven.
+
+        6.
+        But let us love while yet we may
+        Our summer is decaying;
+        And woe to hearts which, in their gray
+        December, go a-maying.
+
+
+The next day Emily rose ill and feverish. In the absence of Falkland,
+her mind always awoke to the full sense of the guilt she had incurred.
+She had been brought up in the strictest, even the most fastidious,
+principles; and her nature was so pure, that merely to err appeared like
+a change in existence--like an entrance into some new and unknown world,
+from which she shrank back, in terror, to herself.
+
+Judge, then, if she easily habituated her mind to its present
+degradation. She sat, that morning, pale and listless; her book lay
+unopened before her; her eyes were fixed upon the ground, heavy with
+suppressed tears. Mrs. St. John entered: no one else was in the room.
+She sat by her, and took her hand. Her countenance was scarcely less
+colourless than Emily’s, but its expression was more calm and composed.
+“It is not too late, Emily,” she said; “you have done much that you
+should repent--nothing to render repentance unavailing. Forgive me, if
+I speak to you on this subject. It is time--in a few days your fate will
+be decided. I have looked on, though hitherto I have been silent: I have
+witnessed that eye when it dwelt upon you; I have heard that voice when
+it spoke to your heart. None ever resisted their influence long: do
+you imagine that you are the first who have found the power? Pardon me,
+pardon me, I beseech you, my dearest friend, if I pain you. I have known
+you from your childhood, and I only wish to preserve you spotless to
+your old age.”
+
+Emily wept, without replying. Mrs. St. John continued to argue and
+expostulate. What is so wavering as passion? When, at last, Mrs. St.
+John ceased, and Emily shed upon her bosom the hot tears of her anguish
+and repentance, she imagined that her resolution was taken, and that she
+could almost have vowed an eternal separation from her lover; Falkland
+came that evening, and she loved him more madly than before.
+
+Mrs. St. John was not in the saloon when Falkland entered. Lady Margaret
+was reading the well-known story of Lady T----- and the Duchess of ---,
+in which an agreement had been made and kept, that the one who died
+first should return once more to the survivor. As Lady Margaret
+spoke laughingly of the anecdote, Emily, who was watching Falkland’s
+countenance, was struck with the dark and sudden shade which fell over
+it. He moved in silence towards the window where Emily was sitting. “Do
+you believe,” she said, with a faint smile, “in the possibility of such
+an event?” “I believe--though I reject--nothing!” replied Falkland,
+“but I would give worlds for such a proof that death does not destroy.”
+ “Surely,” said Emily, “you do not deny that evidence of our immortality
+which we gather from the Scriptures?--are they not all that a voice from
+the dead could be?” Falkland was silent for a few moments: he did not
+seem to hear the question; his eyes dwelt upon vacancy; and when he at
+last spoke, it was rather in commune with himself than in answer to her.
+“I have watched,” said he, in a low internal tone, “over the tomb: I
+have called, in the agony of my heart, unto her--who slept beneath; I
+would have dissolved my very soul into a spell, could it have summoned
+before me for one, one moment the being who had once been the spirit of
+my life! I have been, as it were, entranced with the intensity of my own
+adjuration; I have gazed upon the empty air, and worked upon my mind to
+fill it with imaginings; I have called aloud unto the winds and
+tasked my soul to waken their silence to reply. All was a waste--a
+stillness--an infinity--without a wanderer or a voice! The dead answered
+me not, when I invoked them; and in the vigils of the still night I
+looked from the rank grass and the mouldering stones to the Eternal
+Heavens, as man looks from decay to immortality! Oh! that awful
+magnificence of repose--that living sleep--that breathing yet
+unrevealing divinity, spread over those still worlds! To them also I
+poured my thoughts--but in a whisper. I did not dare to breathe aloud
+the unhallowed anguish of my mind to the majesty of the unsympathising
+stars! In the vast order of creation--in the midst of the stupendous
+system of universal life, my doubt and inquiry were murmured forth--a
+voice crying in the wilderness and returning without an echo unanswered
+unto myself!”
+
+The deep light of the summer moon shone over Falkland’s countenance,
+which Emily gazed on, as she listened, almost tremblingly, to his words.
+His brow was knit and hueless, and the large drops gathered slowly over
+it, as if wrung from the strained yet impotent tension of the thoughts
+within. Emily drew nearer to him--she laid her hand upon his own.
+“Listen to me,” she said: “if a herald from the grave could satisfy your
+doubt, I would gladly die that I might return to you!” “Beware,” said
+Falkland, with an agitated but solemn voice; “the words, now so lightly
+spoken, may be registered on high.” “Be it so!” replied Emily firmly,
+and she felt what she said. Her love penetrated beyond the tomb, and she
+would have forfeited all here for their union hereafter.
+
+“In my earliest youth,” said Falkland, more calmly than he had yet
+spoken, “I found in the present and the past of this world enough to
+direct my attention to the futurity of another: if I did not credit all
+with the enthusiast, I had no sympathies with the scorner: I sat
+myself down to examine and reflect: I pored alike over the pages of the
+philosopher and the theologian; I was neither baffled by the subtleties
+nor deterred by the contradictions of either. As men first ascertained
+the geography of the earth by observing the signs of the heavens, I did
+homage to the Unknown God, and sought from that worship to inquire into
+the reasonings of mankind. I did not confine myself to books--all
+things breathing or inanimate constituted my study. From death itself
+I endeavoured to extract its secret; and whole nights I have sat in the
+crowded asylums of the dying, watching the last spark flutter and decay.
+Men die away as in sleep, without effort, or struggle, or emotion.
+I have looked on their countenances a moment before death, and the
+serenity of repose was upon them, waxing only more deep as it approached
+that slumber which, is never broken: the breath grew gentler and
+gentler, till the lips it came from fell from each other, and all was
+hushed; the light had departed from the cloud, but the cloud itself,
+gray, cold, altered as it seemed, was as before. They died and made no
+sign. They had left the labyrinth without bequeathing us its clew. It
+is in vain that I have sent my spirit into the land of shadows--it has
+borne back no witnesses of its inquiry. As Newton said of himself, ‘I
+picked up a few shells by the seashore, but the great ocean of truth lay
+undiscovered before me.’”
+
+There was a long pause. Lady Margaret had sat down to chess with the
+Spaniard. No look was upon the lovers: their eyes met, and with that one
+glance the whole current of their thoughts was changed. The blood, which
+a moment before had left Falkland’s cheek so colourless, rushed back
+to it again. The love which had so penetrated and pervaded his whole
+system, and which abstruser and colder reflection had just calmed,
+thrilled through his frame with redoubled power. As if by an involuntary
+and mutual impulse, their lips met: he threw his arm round her; he
+strained her to his bosom. “Dark as my thoughts are,” he whispered,
+“evil as has been my life, will you not yet soothe the one, and guide
+the other? My Emily! my love! the Heaven to the tumultuous ocean of my
+heart--will you not be mine--mine only--wholly--and for ever?” She did
+not answer--she did not turn from his embrace. Her cheek flushed as
+his breath stole over it, and her bosom heaved beneath the arm which
+encircled that empire so devoted to him. “Speak one word, only one
+word,” he continued to whisper: “will you not be mine? Are you not mine
+at heart even at this moment?” Her head sank upon his bosom. Those deep
+and eloquent eyes looked up to his through their dark lashes. “I will
+be yours,” she murmured: “I am at your mercy; I have no longer any
+existence but in you. My only fear is, that I shall cease to be worthy
+of your love!”
+
+Falkland pressed his lips once more to her own: it was his only answer,
+and the last seal to their compact. As they stood before the open
+lattice, the still and unconscious moon looked down upon that record of
+guilt. There was not a cloud in the heaven to dim her purity: the very
+winds of night had hushed themselves to do her homage: all was silent
+but their hearts. They stood beneath the calm and holy skies, a guilty
+and devoted pair--a fearful contrast of the sin and turbulence of this
+unquiet earth to the passionless serenity of the eternal heaven. The
+same stars, that for thousands of unfathomed years had looked upon the
+changes of this nether world, gleamed pale, and pure, and steadfast
+upon their burning but transitory vow. In a few years what of the
+condemnation or the recorders of that vow would remain? From other lips,
+on that spot, other oaths might be plighted; new pledges of unchangeable
+fidelity exchanged: and, year after year, in each succession of scene
+and time, the same stars will look from the mystery of their untracked
+and impenetrable home, to mock, as now, with their immutability, the
+variations and shadows of mankind!
+
+
+
+FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE.
+
+At length, then, you are to be mine--you have consented to fly with me.
+In three days we shall leave this country, and have no home--no world
+but in each other. We will go, my Emily, to those golden lands where
+Nature, the only companion we will suffer, woos us, like a mother, to
+find our asylum in her breast; where the breezes are languid beneath the
+passion of the voluptuous skies; and where the purple light that invests
+all things with its glory is only less tender and consecrating than the
+spirit which we bring. Is there not, my Emily, in the external nature
+which reigns over creation, and that human nature centred in ourselves,
+some secret and undefinable intelligence and attraction? Are not the
+impressions of the former as spells over the passions of the later? and
+in gazing upon the loveliness around us, do we not gather, as it were,
+and store within our hearts, an increase of the yearning and desire of
+love? What can we demand from earth but its solitudes--what from heaven
+but its unpolluted air? All that others would ask from either, we can
+find in ourselves. Wealth--honour--happiness--every object of ambition
+or desire, exist not for us without the circle of our arms! But the
+bower that surrounds us shall not be unworthy of your beauty or our
+love. Amidst the myrtle and the vine, and the valleys where the summer
+sleeps and “the rivers that murmur the memories and the legends of old
+amidst the hills and the glossy glades,” and the silver fountains,
+still as beautiful as if the Nymph and Spirit yet held and decorated an
+earthly home; amidst these we will make the couch of our bridals, and
+the moon of Italian skies shall keep watch on our repose.
+
+Emily!--Emily!--how I love to repeat and to linger over that beautiful
+name! If to see, to address, and, more than all, to touch you, has
+been a rapture, what word can I find in the vocabulary of happiness
+to express the realisation of that hope which now burns within me--to
+mingle our youth together into one stream, wheresoever it flows; to
+respire the same breath; to be almost blent in the same existence; to
+grow, as it were, on one stem, and knit into a single life the feelings,
+the wishes, the being of both!
+
+To-night I shall see you again: let one day more intervene, and--I
+cannot conclude the sentence. As I have written, the tumultuous
+happiness of hope has come over me to confuse and overwhelm everything
+else. At this moment my pulse riots with fever; the room swims before
+my eyes; everything is indistinct and jarring--a chaos of emotions. Oh!
+that happiness should ever have such excess!
+
+When Emily received and laid this letter to her heart, she felt nothing
+in common with the spirit which it breathed. With that quick transition
+and inconstancy of feeling common in women, and which is as frequently
+their safety as their peril, her mind had already repented of the
+weakness of the last evening, and relapsed into the irresolution and
+bitterness of her former remorse. Never had there been in the human
+breast a stronger contest between conscience and passion;--if, indeed,
+the extreme softness (notwithstanding its power) of Emily’s attachment
+could be called passion it was rather a love that had refined by the
+increase of its own strength; it contained nothing but the primary guilt
+of conceiving it, which that order of angels, whose nature is love,
+would have sought to purify away. To see him, to live with him, to
+count the variations of his countenance and voice, to touch his hand at
+moments when waking, and watch over his slumbers when he slept--this
+was the essence of her wishes, and constituted the limit to her desires.
+Against the temptations of the present was opposed the whole history of
+the past. Her mind wandered from each to each, wavering and wretched,
+as the impulse of the moment impelled it. Hers was not, indeed, a strong
+character; her education and habits had weakened, while they rendered
+more feminine and delicate, a nature originally too soft. Every
+recollection of former purity called to her with the loud voice of duty,
+as a warning from the great guilt she was about to incur; and whenever
+she thought of her child--that centre of fond and sinless sensations,
+where once she had so wholly garnered up her heart--her feelings melted
+at once from the object which had so wildly held them riveted as by a
+spell, to dissolve and lose themselves in the great and sacred fountain
+of a mother’s love.
+
+When Falkland came that evening, she was sitting at a corner of the
+saloon, apparently occupied in reading, but her eyes were fixed upon her
+boy, whom Mrs. St. John was endeavouring at the opposite end of the
+room to amuse. The child, who was fond of Falkland, came up to him as he
+entered: Falkland stooped to kiss him; and Mrs. St. John said, in a
+low voice which just reached his ear, “Judas, too, kissed before he
+betrayed.” Falkland’s colour changed: he felt the sting the words were
+intended to convey. On that child, now so innocently caressing him, he
+was indeed about to inflict a disgrace and injury the most sensible and
+irremediable in his power. But who ever indulges reflection in passion?
+He banished the remorse from his mind as instantaneously as it arose;
+and, seating himself by Emily, endeavoured to inspire her with a portion
+of the joy and hope which animated himself. Mrs. St. John watched them
+with a jealous and anxious eye: she had already seen how useless had
+been her former attempt to arm Emily’s conscience effectually against
+her lover; but she resolved at least to renew the impression she had
+then made. The danger was imminent, and any remedy must be prompt; and
+it was something to protract, even if she could not finally break off,
+an union against which were arrayed all the angry feelings of jealousy,
+as well as the better affections of the friend. Emily’s eye was already
+brightening beneath the words that Falkland whispered in her ear, when
+Mrs. St. John approached her. She placed herself on a chair beside them,
+and unmindful of Falkland’s bent and angry brow, attempted to create a
+general and commonplace conversation. Lady Margaret had invited two or
+three people in the neighbourhood; and when these came in, music and
+cards were resorted to immediately, with that English politesse, which
+takes the earliest opportunity to show that the conversation of our
+friends is the last thing for which we have invited them. But Mrs. St.
+John never left the lovers; and at last, when Falkland, in despair
+at her obstinacy, arose to join the card-table, she said, “Pray, Mr.
+Falkland, were you not intimate at one time with * * * *, who eloped
+with Lady * * *?” “I knew him but slightly,” said Falkland; and then
+added, with a sneer, “the only times I ever met him were at your house.”
+ Mrs. St. John, without noticing the sarcasm, continued:--“What an
+unfortunate affair that proved! They were very much attached to one
+another in early life--the only excuse, perhaps for a woman’s breaking
+her subsequent vows. They eloped. The remainder of their history is
+briefly told: it is that of all who forfeit everything for passion, and
+forget that of everything it is the briefest in duration. He who had
+sacrificed his honour for her, sacrificed her also as lightly for
+another. She could not bear his infidelity; and how could she reproach
+him? In the very act of yielding to, she had become unworthy of, his
+love. She did not reproach him--she died of a broken heart! I saw her
+just before her death, for I was distantly related to her, and I could
+not forsake her utterly even in her sin. She then spoke to me only of
+the child by her former marriage, whom she had left in the years when
+it most needed her care: she questioned me of its health--its
+education--its very growth: the minutest thing was not beneath her
+inquiry. His tidings were all that brought back to her mind ‘the
+redolence of joy and spring.’ I brought that child to her one day: he
+at least had never forgotten her. How bitterly both wept when they were
+separated! and she--poor, poor Ellen--an hour after their separation
+was no more!” There was a pause for a few minutes. Emily was deeply
+affected. Mrs. St. John had anticipated the effect she had produced,
+and concerted the method to increase it. “It is singular,” she resumed,
+“that, the evening before her elopement, some verses were sent to her
+anonymously--I do not think, Emily, that you have ever seen them. Shall
+I sing them to you now?” and, without waiting for a reply, she placed
+herself at the piano; and with a low but sweet voice, greatly aided
+in effect by the extreme feeling of her manner, she sang the following
+verses:
+
+        1.
+        And wilt thou leave that happy home,
+        Where once it was so sweet to live?
+        Ah! think, before thou seek’st to roam,
+        What safer shelter Guilt can give!
+
+        2.
+        The Bird may rove, and still regain
+        With spotless wings, her wonted rest,
+        But home, once lost, is ne’er again
+        Restored to Woman’s erring breast!
+
+        3.
+        If wandering o’er a world of flowers,
+        The heart at times would ask repose;
+        But thou wouldst lose the only bowers
+        Of rest amid a world of woes.
+
+        4.
+        Recall thy youth’s unsullied vow
+        The past which on thee smile so fair;
+        Then turn from thence to picture now
+        The frowns thy future fate must wear!
+
+        5.
+        No hour, no hope, can bring relief
+        To her who hides a blighted name;
+        For hearts unbow’d by stormiest _grief_
+        Will break beneath one breeze of _shame_!
+
+        6.
+        And when thy child’s deserted years
+        Amid life’s early woes are thrown,
+        Shall menial bosoms soothe the tears
+        That should be shed on thine alone?
+
+        7.
+        When on thy name his lips shall call,
+        (That tender name, the earliest taught!)
+        Thou wouldst not Shame and Sin were all
+        The memories link’d around its thought!
+
+        8.
+        If Sickness haunt his infant bed,
+        Ah! what could then replace thy care?
+        Could hireling steps as gently tread
+        As if a Mother’s soul was there?
+
+        9.
+        Enough! ‘tis not too late to shun
+        The bitter draught thyself wouldst fill;
+        The latest link is not undone
+        Thy bark is in the haven still.
+
+        10.
+        If doom’d to grief through life thou art,
+        ‘Tis thine at least unstain’d to die!
+        Oh! better break at once thy heart
+        Than rend it from its holiest tie!
+
+
+It were vain to attempt describing Emily’s feelings when the song
+ceased. The scene floated before her eyes indistinct and dark. The
+violence of the emotions she attempted to conceal pressed upon her
+almost to choking. She rose, looked at Falkland with one look of such
+anguish and despair that it froze his very heart, and left the room
+without uttering a word. A moment more--they heard a noise--a fall. They
+rushed out--Emily was stretched on the ground, apparently lifeless. She
+had broken a blood-vessel.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+FROM MRS. ST. JOHN TO ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ.
+
+At last I can give a more favourable answer to your letters. Emily is
+now quite out of danger. Since the day you forced yourself, with such a
+disinterested regard for her health and reputation, into her room, she
+grew (no thanks to your forbearance) gradually better. I trust that she
+will be able to see you in a few days. I hope this the more, because she
+now feels and decides that it will be for the last time. You have, it
+is true, injured her happiness for life her virtue, thank Heaven, is yet
+spared; and though you have made her wretched, you will never, I trust,
+succeed in making her despised.
+
+You ask me, with some menacing and more complaint, why I am so bitter
+against you. I will tell you. I not only know Emily, and feel confident,
+from that knowledge, that nothing can recompense her for the reproaches
+of conscience, but I know you, and am convinced that you are the last
+man to render her happy. I set aside, for the moment, all rules of
+religion and morality in general, and speak to you (to use the cant
+and abused phrase) “without prejudice” as to the particular instance.
+Emily’s nature is soft and susceptible, yours fickle and wayward in
+the extreme. The smallest change or caprice in you, which would not be
+noticed by a mind less delicate, would wound her to the heart. You
+know that the very softness of her character arises from its want of
+strength. Consider, for a moment, if she could bear the humiliation and
+disgrace which visit so heavily the offences of an English wife? She has
+been brought up in the strictest notions of morality; and, in a mind,
+not naturally strong, nothing can efface the first impressions of
+education. She is not--indeed she is not--fit for a life of sorrow or
+degradation. In another character, another line of conduct might be
+desirable; but with regard to her, pause, Falkland, I beseech you,
+before you attempt again to destroy her for ever. I have said all.
+Farewell.
+
+Your, and above all, Emily’s friend.
+
+
+
+FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE.
+
+You will see me, Emily, now that you are recovered sufficiently to do so
+without danger. I do not ask this as a favour. If my love has deserved,
+anything from yours, if past recollections give me any claim over you,
+if my nature has not forfeited the spell which it formerly possessed
+upon your own, I demand it as a right.
+
+The bearer waits for your answer.
+
+
+
+FROM LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE TO ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ.
+
+See you, Falkland! Can you doubt it? Can you think for a moment that
+your commands can ever cease to become a law to me? Come here whenever
+you please. If, during my illness, they have prevented it, it was
+without my knowledge. I await you; but I own that this interview will be
+the last, if I can claim anything from your mercy.
+
+
+
+FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE.
+
+I have seen you, Emily, and for the last time! My eyes are dry--my hand
+does not tremble. I live, move, breathe, as before--and yet I have seen
+you for the last time! You told me--even while you leaned on my bosom,
+even while your lip pressed mine--you told me (and I saw your sincerity)
+to spare you, and to see you no more. You told me you had no longer
+any will, any fate of your own; that you would, if I still continued to
+desire it, leave friends, home, honour, for me; but you did not disguise
+from me that you would, in so doing, leave happiness also. You did not
+conceal from me that I was not sufficient to constitute all your world:
+you threw yourself, as you had done once before, upon what you called
+my generosity: you did not deceive yourself then; you have not deceived
+yourself now. In two weeks I shall leave England, probably for ever.
+I have another country still more dear to me, from its afflictions and
+humiliation. Public ties differ but little in their nature from private;
+and this confession of preference of what is debased to what is exalted,
+will be an answer to Mrs. St. John’s assertion, that we cannot love in
+disgrace as we can in honour. Enough of this. In the choice, my poor
+Emily, that you have made, I cannot reproach you. You have done wisely,
+rightly, virtuously. You said that this separation must rest rather with
+me than with yourself; that you would be mine the moment I demanded it.
+I will not now or ever accept this promise. No one, much less one whom I
+love so intensely, so truly as I do you, shall ever receive disgrace at
+my hands, unless she can feel that that disgrace would be dearer to her
+than glory elsewhere; that the simple fate of being mine was not so much
+a recompense as a reward; and that, in spite of worldly depreciation and
+shame, it would constitute and concentrate all her visions of happiness
+and pride. I am now going to bid you farewell. May you--I say this
+disinterestedly, and from my very heart--may you soon forget how much
+you have loved and yet love me! For this purpose, you cannot have
+a better companion than Mrs. St. John. Her opinion of me is loudly
+expressed, and probably true; at all events, you will do wisely to
+believe it. You will hear me attacked and reproached by many. I do not
+deny the charges; you know best what I have deserved from you. God bless
+you, Emily. Wherever I go, I shall never cease to love you as I do now.
+May you be happy in your child and in your conscience! Once more, God
+bless you, and farewell!
+
+
+
+FROM LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE TO ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ.
+
+O Falkland! You have conquered! I am yours--yours only--Wholly and
+forever. When your letter came, my hand trembled so, that I could not
+open it for several minutes; and when I did, I felt as if the very earth
+had passed from my feet. You were going from your country; you were
+about to be lost to me for ever. I could restrain myself no longer; all
+my virtue, my pride, forsook me at once. Yes, yes, you are indeed
+my world. I will fly with you anywhere--everywhere. Nothing can be
+dreadful, but not seeing you; I would be a servant--a slave--a dog,
+as long as I could be with you; hear one tone of your voice, catch one
+glance of your eye. I scarcely see the paper before me, my thoughts are
+so straggling and confused. Write to me one word, Falkland; one word,
+and I will lay it to my heart, and be happy.
+
+
+
+FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND TO LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE. -------- Hotel, London.
+
+I hasten to you, Emily--my own and only love. Your letter has restored
+me to life. To-morrow we shall meet.
+
+
+It was with mingled feelings, alloyed and embittered, in spite of the
+burning hope which predominated over all, that Falkland returned to
+E------. He knew that he was near the completion of his most ardent
+wishes; that he was within the grasp of a prize which included all the
+thousand objects of ambition, into which, among other men, the desires
+are divided; the only dreams he had ventured to form for years were
+about to kindle into life. He had every reason to be happy;--such is the
+inconsistency of human nature, that he was almost wretched. The morbid
+melancholy, habitual to him, threw its colourings over every emotion
+and idea. He knew the character of the woman whose affections he had
+seduced; and he trembled to think of the doom to which he was about to
+condemn her. With this, there came over his mind a long train of
+dark and remorseful recollections. Emily was not the only one whose
+destruction he had prepared. All who had loved him, he had repaid with
+ruin; and one--the first--the fairest--and the most loved, with death.
+
+That last remembrance, more bitterly than all, possessed him. It will
+be recollected that Falkland, in the letters which begin this work,
+speaking of the ties he had formed after the loss of his first love,
+says, that it was the senses, not the affections, that were engaged.
+Never, indeed, since her death, till he met Emily, had his heart been
+unfaithful to her memory. Alas! none but those who have cherished in
+their souls an image of the death; who have watched over it for long and
+bitter years in secrecy and gloom; who have felt that it was to them as
+a holy and fairy spot which no eye but theirs could profane; who have
+filled all things with recollections as with a spell, and made the
+universe one wide mausoleum of the lost;--none but those can understand
+the mysteries of that regret which is shed over every after passion,
+though it be more burning and intense; that sense of sacrilege with
+which we fill up the haunted recesses of the spirit with a new and a
+living idol and perpetrate the last act of infidelity to that buried
+love, which the heavens that now receive her, the earth where we beheld
+her, tell us, with, the unnumbered voices of Nature, to worship with the
+incense of our faith.
+
+His carriage stopped at the lodge. The woman who opened the gates gave
+him the following note:
+
+“Mr. Mandeville is returned; I almost fear that he suspects our
+attachment. Julia says, that if you come again to E------, she will
+inform him. I dare not, dearest Falkland, see you here. What is to be
+done? I am very ill and feverish: my brain burns so, that I can
+think, feel, remember nothing, but the one thought, feeling, and
+remembrance--that through shame, and despite of guilt, in life, and till
+death, I am yours. E. M.”
+
+As Falkland read this note, his extreme and engrossing love for Emily
+doubled with each word: an instant before, and the certainty of seeing
+her had suffered his mind to be divided into a thousand objects; now,
+doubt united them once more into one.
+
+He altered his route to L------, and despatched from thence a short note
+to Emily, imploring her to meet him that evening by the lake, in order
+to arrange their ultimate flight. Her answer was brief, and blotted with
+her tears; but it was assent.
+
+During the whole of that day, at least from the moment she received
+Falkland’s letter, Emily was scarcely sensible of a single idea: she sat
+still and motionless, gazing on vacancy, and seeing nothing within her
+mind, or in the objects which surrounded her, but one dreary blank.
+Sense, thought, feeling, even remorse, were congealed and frozen; and
+the tides of emotion were still, bid they were ice!
+
+As Falkland’s servant had waited without to deliver the note to Emily,
+Mrs. St. John had observed him: her alarm and surprise only served
+to quicken her presence of mind. She intercepted Emily’s answer under
+pretence of giving it herself to Falkland’s servant. She read it, and
+her resolution was formed. After carefully resealing and delivering it
+to the servant, she went at once to Mr. Mandeville, and revealed Lady
+Emily’s attachment to Falkland. In this act of treachery, she was solely
+instigated by her passions; and when Mandeville, roused from his wonted
+apathy to a paroxysm of indignation, thanked her again and again for
+the generosity of friendship which he imagined was all that actuated her
+communication, he dreamed not of the fierce and ungovernable jealousy
+which envied the very disgrace which her confession was intended to
+award. Well said the French enthusiast, “that the heart, the most serene
+to appearance, resembles that calm and glassy fountain which cherishes
+the monster of the Nile in the bosom of its waters.” Whatever reward
+Mrs. St. John proposed to herself in this action, verily she has had the
+recompense that was her due. Those consequences of her treachery, which
+I hasten to relate, have ceased to others--to her they remain. Amidst
+the pleasures of dissipation, one reflection has rankled at her mind;
+one dark cloud has rested between the sunshine and her soul; like the
+murderer in Shakespeare, the revel where she fled for forgetfulness
+has teemed to her with the spectres of remembrance. O thou untameable
+conscience! thou that never flatterest--thou that watchest over the
+human heart never to slumber or to sleep--it is thou that takest from
+us the present, barrest to us the future, and knittest the eternal chain
+that binds us to the rock and the vulture of the past!
+
+The evening came on still and dark; a breathless and heavy apprehension
+seemed gathered over the air: the full large clouds lay without motion
+in the dull sky, from between which, at long and scattered intervals,
+the wan stars looked out; a double shadow seemed to invest the grouped
+and gloomy trees that stood unwaving in the melancholy horizon. The
+waters of the lake lay heavy and unagitated as the sleep of death; and
+the broken reflections of the abrupt and winding banks rested upon their
+bosoms, like the dreamlike remembrance of a former existence.
+
+The hour of the appointment was arrived: Falkland stood by the spot,
+gazing upon the lake before him; his cheek was flushed, his hand was
+parched and dry with the consuming fire within him. His pulse beat thick
+and rapidly; the demon of evil passions was upon his soul. He stood so
+lost in his own reflections, that he did not for some moments perceive
+the fond and tearful eye which was fixed upon him on that brow and
+lip, thought seemed always so beautiful, so divine, that to disturb its
+repose was like a profanation of something holy; and though Emily came
+towards him with a light and hurried step, she paused involuntarily to
+gaze upon that noble countenance which realised her earliest visions of
+the beauty and majesty of love. He turned slowly, and perceived her;
+he came to her with his own peculiar smile; he drew her to his bosom in
+silence; he pressed his lips to her forehead: she leaned upon his bosom,
+and forgot all but him. Oh! if there be one feeling which makes Love,
+even guilty Love, a god, it is the knowledge that in the midst of
+this breathing world he reigns aloof and alone; and that those who are
+occupied with his worship know nothing of the pettiness, the strife,
+the bustle which, pollute and agitate the ordinary inhabitants of earth!
+What was now to them, as they stood alone in the deep stillness of
+Nature, everything that had engrossed them before they had met and
+loved? Even in her, the recollections of guilt and grief subsided: she
+was only sensible of one thought--the presence of the being who stood
+beside her,
+
+        That ocean to the rivers of her soul.
+
+They sat down beneath an oak: Falkland stooped to kiss the cold and pale
+cheek that still rested upon his breast. His kisses were like lava: the
+turbulent and stormy elements of sin and desire were aroused even to
+madness within him. He clasped her still nearer to his bosom: her lips
+answered to his own: they caught perhaps something of the spirit which
+they received: her eyes were half-closed; the bosom heaved wildly that
+was pressed to his beating and burning heart. The skies grew darker and
+darker as the night stole over them: one low roll of thunder broke upon
+the curtained and heavy air--they did not hear it; and yet it was the
+knell of peace--virtue--hope--lost, lost for ever to their souls!
+
+They separated as they had never done before. In Emily’s bosom there was
+a dreary void--a vast blank-over which there went a low deep voice like
+a Spirit’s--a sound indistinct and strange, that spoke a language she
+knew not; but felt that it told of woe-guilt-doom. Her senses were
+stunned: the vitality of her feelings was numbed and torpid: the first
+herald of despair is insensibility. “Tomorrow then,” said Falkland--and
+his voice for the first time seemed strange and harsh to her--“we
+will fly hence for ever: meet me at daybreak--the carriage shall be in
+attendance--we cannot now unite too soon--would that at this very moment
+we were prepared!”--“To-morrow!” repeated Emily, “at daybreak!” and as
+she clung to him, he felt her shudder: “to-morrow-ay-to-morrow!--” one
+kiss--one embrace--one word--farewell--and they parted.
+
+Falkland returned to L------, a gloomy foreboding rested upon his mind:
+that dim and indescribable fear, which no earthly or human cause
+can explain--that shrinking within self--that vague terror of the
+future--that grappling, as it were, with some unknown shade--that
+wandering of the spirit--whither?--that cold, cold creeping dread--of
+what? As he entered the house, he met his confidential servant. He gave
+him orders respecting the flight of the morrow, and then retired into
+the chamber where he slept. It was an antique and large room: the
+wainscot was of oak; and one broad and high window looked over the
+expanse of country which stretched beneath. He sat himself by the
+casement in silence--he opened it: the dull air came over his forehead,
+not with a sense of freshness, but, like the parching atmosphere of the
+east, charged with a weight and fever that sank heavy into his soul. He
+turned:--he threw himself upon the bed, and placed his hands over his
+face. His thoughts were scattered into a thousand indistinct forms, but
+over all, there was one rapturous remembrance; and that was, that
+the morrow was to unite him for ever to her whose possession had only
+rendered her more dear. Meanwhile, the hours rolled on; and as he lay
+thus silent and still, the clock of the distant church struck with
+a distinct and solemn sound upon his ear. It was the half-hour after
+midnight. At that moment an icy thrill ran, slow and curdling, through
+his veins. His heart, as if with a presentiment of what was to follow,
+beat violently, and then stopped; life itself seemed ebbing away; cold
+drops stood upon his forehead; his eyelids trembled, and the balls
+reeled and glazed, like those of a dying man; a deadly fear gathered
+over him, so that his flesh quivered, and every hair in his head seemed
+instinct with a separate life, the very marrow of his bones crept, and
+his blood waxed thick and thick, as if stagnating into an ebbless and
+frozen substance. He started in a wild and unutterable terror. There
+stood, at the far end of the room, a dim and thin shape like moonlight,
+without outline or form; still, and indistinct, and shadowy. He gazed
+on, speechless and motionless; his faculties and senses seemed locked in
+an unnatural trance. By degrees the shape became clearer and clearer to
+his fixed and dilating eye. He saw, as through a floating and mist-like
+veil, the features of Emily; but how changed!--sunken and hueless, and
+set in death. The dropping lip, from which there seemed to trickle a
+deep red stain like blood; the lead-like and lifeless eye; the calm,
+awful, mysterious repose which broods over the aspect of the dead;--all
+grew, as it were, from the hazy cloud that encircled them for one, one
+brief, agonising moment, and then as suddenly faded away. The spell
+passed from his senses. He sprang from the bed with a loud cry. All was
+quiet. There was not a trace of what he had witnessed. The feeble light
+of the skies rested upon the spot where the apparition had stood; upon
+that spot he stood also. He stamped upon the floor--it was firm beneath
+his footing. He passed his hands over his body--he was awake--he was
+unchanged: earth, air, heaven, were around him as before. What had thus
+gone over his soul to awe and overcome it to such weakness? To these
+questions his reason could return no answer. Bold by nature, and
+sceptical by philosophy, his mind gradually recovered its original tone:
+he did not give way to conjecture; he endeavoured to discard it; he
+sought by natural causes to account for the apparition he had seen or
+imagined; and, as he felt the blood again circulating in its accustomed
+courses, and the night air coming chill over his feverish frame, he
+smiled with a stern and scornful bitterness at the terror which had so
+shaken, and the fancy which had so deluded, his mind.
+
+Are there not “more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in
+our philosophy”? A Spirit may hover in the air that we breathe: the
+depth of our most secret solitudes may be peopled by the invisible;
+our uprisings and our downsittings may be marked by a witness from the
+grave. In our walks the dead may be behind us; in our banquets they may
+sit at the board; and the chill breath of the night wind that stirs the
+curtains of our bed may bear a message our senses receive not, from
+lips that once have pressed kisses on our own! Why is it that at moments
+there creeps over us an awe, a terror, overpowering, but undefined?
+Why is it that we shudder without a cause, and feel the warm life-blood
+stand still in its courses? Are the dead too near? Do unearthly wings
+touch us as they flit around? Has our soul any intercourse which
+the body shares not, though it feels, with the supernatural
+world--mysterious revealings--unimaginable communion--a language of
+dread and power, shaking to its centre the fleshly barrier that divides
+the spirit from its race?
+
+How fearful is the very life which we hold! We have our being beneath a
+cloud, and are a marvel even to ourselves. There is not a single thought
+which has its affixed limits. Like circles in the water, our researches
+weaken as they extend, and vanish at last into the immeasurable and
+unfathomable space of the vast unknown. We are like children in the
+dark; we tremble in a shadowy and terrible void, peopled with our
+fancies! Life is our real night, and the first gleam of the morning,
+which brings us certainty, is death.
+
+Falkland sat the remainder of that night by the window watching the
+clouds become gray as the dawn rose, and its earliest breeze awoke. He
+heard the trampling of the horses beneath: he drew his cloak round him,
+and descended. It was on a turning of the road beyond the lodge that
+he directed the carriage to wait, and he then proceeded to the place
+appointed. Emily was not yet there. He walked to and fro with an
+agitated and hurried step. The impression of the night had in a great
+measure been effaced from his mind, and he gave himself up without
+reserve to the warm and sanguine hopes which he had so much reason to
+conceive. He thought too, at moments, of those bright climates beneath
+which he designed their asylum, where the very air is music, and the
+light is like the colourings of love; and he associated the sighs of a
+mutual rapture with the fragrance of myrtles, and the breath of a Tuscan
+heaven. Time glided on. The hour was long past, yet Emily came not!
+The sun rose, and Falkland turned in dark and angry discontent from its
+beams. With every moment his impatience increased, and at last he could
+restrain himself no longer. He proceeded towards the house. He stood for
+some time at a distance; but as all seemed still hushed in repose, he
+drew nearer and nearer till he reached the door: to his astonishment
+it was open. He saw forms passing rapidly through the hall. He heard a
+confused and indistinct murmur. At length he caught a glimpse of Mrs.
+St. John. He could command himself no more. He sprang forwards--entered
+the door--the hall--and caught her by a part of her dress. He could not
+speak, but his countenance said all which his lips refused. Mrs. St.
+John burst into tears when she saw him. “Good God!” she said, “why are
+you here? Is it possible you have yet learned--” Her voice failed her.
+Falkland had by this time recovered himself. He turned to the servants
+who gathered around him. “Speak,” he said calmly. “What has occurred?”
+ “My lady--my lady!” burst at once from several tongues. “What of her:”
+ said Falkland, with a blanched cheek, but unchanging voice. There was a
+pause. At that instant a man, whom Falkland recognised as the physician
+of the neighbourhood, passed at the opposite end of the hall. A light,
+a scorching and intolerable light, broke upon him. “She is dying--she
+is dead, perhaps,” he said, in a low sepulchral tone, turning his eye
+around till it had rested upon every one present. Not one answered. He
+paused a moment, as if stunned by a sudden shock, and then sprang up the
+stairs. He passed the boudoir, and entered the room where Emily slept.
+The shutters were only partially closed a faint light broke through, and
+rested on the bed: beside it bent two women. Them he neither heeded nor
+saw. He drew aside the curtains. He beheld--the same as he had seen it
+in his vision of the night before--the changed and lifeless countenance
+of Emily Mandeville! That face, still so tenderly beautiful, was
+partially turned towards him. Some dark stains upon the lip and neck
+told how she had died--the blood-vessel she had broken before had
+burst again. The bland and soft eyes, which for him never had but one
+expression, were closed; and the long and disheveled tresses half hid,
+while they contrasted, that bosom, which had but the night before
+first learned to thrill beneath his own. Happier in her fate than she
+deserved, she passed from this bitter life ere the punishment of her
+guilt had begun. She was not doomed to wither beneath the blight of
+shame, nor the coldness of estranged affection. From him whom she had
+so worshipped, she was not condemned to bear wrong nor change. She died
+while his passion was yet in its spring--before a blossom, a leaf, had
+faded; and she sank to repose while his kiss was yet warm upon her lip,
+and her last breath almost mingled with his sigh. For the woman who has
+erred, life has no exchange for such a death. Falkland stood mute and
+motionless: not one word of grief or horror escaped his lips. At length
+he bent down. He took the hand which lay outside the bed; he pressed it;
+it replied not to the pressure, but fell cold and heavy from his own. He
+put his cheek to her lips; not the faintest breath came from them; and
+then for the first time a change passed over his countenance: he pressed
+upon those lips one long and last kiss, and, without word, or sign,
+or tear, he turned from the chamber. Two hours afterwards he was found
+senseless upon the ground; it was upon the spot where he had met Emily
+the night before.
+
+For weeks he knew nothing of this earth--he was encompassed with the
+spectres of a terrible dream. All was confusion, darkness, horror--a
+series and a change of torture! At one time he was hurried through the
+heavens in the womb of a fiery star, girt above and below and around
+with unextinguishable but unconsuming flames. Wherever he trod, as he
+wandered through his vast and blazing prison, the molten fire was his
+footing, and the breath of fire was his air. Flowers, and trees, and
+hills were in that world as in ours, but wrought from one lurid and
+intolerable light; and, scattered around, rose gigantic palaces and
+domes of the living flame, like the mansions of the city of Hell.
+With every moment there passed to and fro shadowy forms, on whose
+countenances was engraven unutterable anguish; but not a shriek, not a
+groan, rung through the red air; for the doomed, who fed and inhabited
+the flames, were forbidden the consolation of voice. Above there sat,
+fixed and black, a solid and impenetrable cloud-Night frozen into
+substance; and from the midst there hung a banner of a pale and sickly
+flame, on which was written “For Ever.” A river rushed rapidly beside
+him. He stooped to slake the agony of his thirst--the waves were waves
+of fire; and, as he started from the burning draught, he longed to
+shriek aloud, and could not. Then he cast his despairing eyes above for
+mercy; and saw on the livid and motionless banner “For Ever.”
+
+A change came o’er the spirit of his dream
+
+He was suddenly borne up on the winds and storms to the oceans of an
+eternal winter. He fell stunned and unstruggling upon the ebbless and
+sluggish waves. Slowly and heavily they rose over him as he sank: then
+came the lengthened and suffocating torture of that drowning death--the
+impotent and convulsive contest with the closing waters--the gurgle, the
+choking, the bursting of the pent breath, the flutter of the heart,
+its agony, and its stillness. He recovered. He was a thousand fathoms
+beneath the sea, chained to a rock round which the heavy waters rose as
+a wall. He felt his own flesh rot and decay, perishing from his limbs
+piece by piece; and he saw the coral banks, which it requires a thousand
+ages to form, rise slowly from their slimy bed; and spread atom by atom,
+till they became a shelter for the leviathan: their growth, was his only
+record of eternity; and ever and ever, around and above him, came
+vast and misshapen things--the wonders of the secret deeps; and the
+sea-serpent, the huge chimera of the north, made its resting-place by
+his side, glaring upon him with a livid and death-like eye, wan, yet
+burning as an expiring seta. But over all, in every change, in every
+moment of that immortality, there was present one pale and motionless
+countenance, never turning from his own. The fiends of hell, the
+monsters of the hidden ocean, had no horror so awful as _the human face
+of the dead whom he had loved_.
+
+The word of his sentence was gone forth. Alike through that delirium
+and its more fearful awakening, through the past, through the future,
+through the vigils of the joyless day, and the broken dreams of the
+night, there was a charm upon his soul--a hell within himself; and the
+curse of his sentence was--never to forget!
+
+When, Lady Emily returned home on that guilty and eventful night, she
+stole at once to her room: she dismissed her servant, and threw herself
+upon the ground in that deep despair which on this earth can never again
+know hope. She lay there without the power to weep, or the courage to
+pray--how long, she knew not. Like the period before creation, her
+mind was a chaos of jarring elements, and knew neither the method of
+reflection nor the division of time.
+
+As she rose, she heard a slight knock at the door, and her husband
+entered. Her heart misgave her; and when she saw him close the door
+carefully before he approached her, she felt as if she could have sunk
+into the earth, alike from her internal shame, and her fear of its
+detection.
+
+Mr. Mandeville was a weak, commonplace character; indifferent in
+ordinary matters, but, like most imbecile minds, violent and furious
+when aroused. “Is this, Madam, addressed to you?” he cried, in a voice
+of thunder, as he placed a letter before her (it was one of Falkland’s);
+“and this, and this, Madam?” said he, in a still louder tone, as he
+flung them out one after another from her own escritoire, which he had
+broken open.
+
+Emily sank back, and gasped for breath. Mandeville rose, and, laughing
+fiercely, seized her by the arm. He grasped it with all his force. She
+uttered a faint scream of terror: he did not heed it; he flung her from
+him, and as she fell upon the ground, the blood gushed in torrents from
+her lips. In the sudden change of feeling which alarm created, he raised
+her in his arms. She was a corpse! At that instant the clock struck upon
+his ear with a startling and solemn sound: it was the half-hour after
+midnight.
+
+The grave is now closed upon that soft and erring heart, with its
+guiltiest secret unrevealed. She went to that last home with a blest
+and unblighted name; for her guilt was unknown, and her virtues are yet
+recorded in the memories of the Poor.
+
+They laid her in the stately vaults of her ancient line, and her bier
+was honoured with tears from hearts not less stricken, because their
+sorrow, if violent, was brief. For the dead there are many mourners, but
+only one monument--the bosom which loved them best. The spot where the
+hearse rested, the green turf beneath, the surrounding trees, the gray
+tower of the village church, and the proud halls rising beyond,--all had
+witnessed the childhood, the youth, the bridal-day of the being whose
+last rites and solemnities they were to witness now. The very bell which
+rang for her birth had rung also for the marriage peal; it now tolled
+for her death. But a little while, and she had gone forth from that home
+of her young and unclouded years, amidst the acclamations and blessings
+of all, a bride, with the insignia of bridal pomp--in the first bloom
+of her girlish beauty--in the first innocence of her unawakened heart,
+weeping, not for the future she was entering, but for the past she was
+about to leave, and smiling through her tears, as if innocence had
+no business with grief. On the same spot, where he had then waved
+his farewell, stood the father now. On the grass which they had then
+covered, flocked the peasants whose wants her childhood had relieved; by
+the same priest who had blessed her bridals, bent the bridegroom who had
+plighted its vow. There was not a tree, not a blade of grass withered.
+The day itself was bright and glorious; such was it when it smiled
+upon her nuptials. And size--she-but four little years, and all youth’s
+innocence darkened, and earth’s beauty come to dust! Alas! not for her,
+but the mourner whom she left! In death even love is forgotten; but in
+life there is no bitterness so utter as to feel everything is unchanged,
+except the One Being who was the soul of all--to know the world is the
+same, but that its sunshine is departed.
+
+
+The noon was still and sultry. Along the narrow street of the small
+village of Lodar poured the wearied but yet unconquered band, which
+embodied in that district of Spain the last hope and energy of freedom.
+The countenances of the soldiers were haggard and dejected; they
+displayed even less of the vanity than their accoutrements exhibited of
+the pomp and circumstances of war. Yet their garments were such as even
+the peasants had disdained: covered with blood and dust, and tattered
+into a thousand rags, they betokened nothing of chivalry but its
+endurance of hardship; even the rent and sullied banners drooped
+sullenly along their staves, as if the winds themselves had become the
+minions of fortune, and disdained to swell the insignia of those whom
+she had deserted. The glorious music of battle was still. An air of
+dispirited and defeated enterprise hung over the whole army. “Thank
+Heaven,” said the chief, who closed the last file as it marched--on to
+its scanty refreshment and brief repose; “thank Heaven, we are at least
+out of the reach of pursuit; and the mountains, those last retreats of
+liberty, are before us!” “True, Don Rafael,” replied the youngest of two
+officers who rode by the side of the commander; “and if we can cut our
+passage to Mina, we may yet plant the standard of the Constitution in
+Madrid.” “Ay,” added the elder officer, “and I sing Riego’s hymn in the
+place of the Escurial!” “Our sons may!” said the chief, who was indeed
+Riego himself, “but for us--all hope is over! Were we united, we could
+scarcely make head against the armies of France; and divided as we are,
+the wonder is that we have escaped so long. Hemmed in by invasion, our
+great enemy has been ourselves. Such has been the hostility faction has
+created between Spaniard and Spaniard, that we seem to have none left to
+waste upon Frenchmen. We cannot establish freedom if men are willing to
+be slaves. We have no hope, Don Alphonso--no hope--but that of death!”
+ As Riego concluded this desponding answer, so contrary to his general
+enthusiasm, the younger officer rode on among the soldiers, cheering
+them with words of congratulation and comfort; ordering their several
+divisions; cautioning them to be prepared at a moment’s notice; and
+impressing on their remembrance those small but essential points of
+discipline, which a Spanish troop might well be supposed to disregard.
+When Riego and his companion entered the small and miserable hovel
+which constituted the headquarters of the place, this man still
+remained without; and it was not till he had slackened the girths of his
+Andalusian horse, and placed before it the undainty provender which the
+_ecurie_ afforded that he thought of rebinding more firmly the bandages
+wound around a deep and painful sabre cut in the left arm, which for
+several hours had been wholly neglected. The officer, whom Riego had
+addressed by the name of Alphonso, came out of the hut just as his
+comrade was vainly endeavouring, with his teeth and one hand, to replace
+the ligature. As he assisted him, he said, “You know not, my dear
+Falkland, how bitterly I reproach myself for having ever persuaded you
+to a cause where contest seems to have no hope, and danger no glory.”
+ Falkland smiled bitterly. “Do not deceive yourself, my dear uncle,” said
+he; “your persuasions would have been unavailing but for the suggestions
+of my own wishes. I am not one of those enthusiasts who entered on your
+cause with high hopes and chivalrous designs: I asked but forgetfulness
+and excitement--I have found them! I would not exchange a single pain
+I have endured for what would have constituted the pleasures of other
+men:--but enough of this. What time, think you, have we for repose?”
+ “Till the evening,” answered Alphonso; “our route will then most
+probably be directed to the Sierre Morena. The General is extremely
+weak and exhausted, and needs a longer rest than we shall gain. It is
+singular that with such weak health he should endure so great an excess
+of hardship and fatigue.” During this conversation they entered the
+hut. Riego was already asleep. As they seated themselves to the wretched
+provision of the place, a distant and indistinct noise was heard. It
+came first on their ears like the birth of the mountain wind-low, and
+hoarse, and deep: gradually it grew loud and louder, and mingled with
+other sounds which they defined too well--the hum, the murmur, the
+trampling of steeds, the ringing echoes of the rapid march of armed men!
+They heard and knew the foe was upon them!--a moment more, and the drum
+beat to arms. “By St. Pelagio,” cried Riego, who had sprung from his
+light sleep at the first sound of the approaching danger, unwilling to
+believe his fears, “it cannot be: the French are far behind:” and then,
+as the drum beat, his voice suddenly changed, “the enemy? the enemy!
+D’Aguilar, to horse!” and with those words he rushed out of the hut. The
+soldiers, who had scarcely begun to disperse, were soon re-collected. In
+the mean while the French commander, D’Argout, taking advantage of the
+surprise he had occasioned, poured on his troops, which consisted solely
+of cavalry, undaunted and undelayed by the fire of the posts. On, on
+they drove like a swift cloud charged with thunder, and gathering wrath
+as it hurried by, before it burst in tempest on the beholders. They did
+not pause till they reached the farther extremity of the village: there
+the Spanish infantry were already formed into two squares. “Halt!” cried
+the French commander: the troop suddenly stopped confronting the nearer
+square. There was one brief pause-the moment before the storm. “Charge!”
+ said D’ Argout, and the word rang throughout the line up to the clear
+and placid sky. Up flashed the steel like lightning; on went the troop
+like the clash of a thousand waves when the sun is upon them; and
+before the breath of the riders was thrice drawn, came the crash--the
+shock--the slaughter of battle. The Spaniards made but a faint
+resistance to the impetuosity of the onset: they broke on every side
+beneath the force of the charge, like the weak barriers of a rapid and
+swollen stream; and the French troops, after a brief but bloody victory
+(joined by a second squadron from the rear), advanced immediately upon
+the Spanish cavalry. Falkland was by the side of Riego. As the
+troop advanced, it would have been curious to notice the contrast of
+expression in the face of each; the Spaniard’s features lighted up with
+the daring enthusiasm of his nature; every trace of their usual languor
+and exhaustion vanished beneath the unconquerable soul that blazed
+out the brighter for the debility of the frame; the brow knit; the
+eye flashing; the lip quivering:--and close beside, the calm, stern;
+passionless repose that brooded over the severe yet noble beauty of
+Falkland’s countenance. To him danger brought scorn, not enthusiasm: he
+rather despised than defied it. “The dastards! they waver,” said Riego,
+in an accent of despair, as his troop faltered beneath the charge of the
+French: and so saying, he spurred his steed on to the foremost line. The
+contest was longer, but not less decisive, than the one just concluded.
+The Spaniards, thrown into confusion by the first shock, never recovered
+themselves. Falkland, who, in his anxiety to rally and inspirit the
+soldiers, had advanced with two other officers beyond the ranks, was
+soon surrounded by a detachment of dragoons: the wound in his left arm
+scarcely suffered him to guide his horse: he was in the most imminent
+danger. At that moment D’Aguilar, at the head of his own immediate
+followers, cut his way into the circle, and covered Falkland’s retreat;
+another detachment of the enemy came up, and they were a second time
+surrounded. In the mean while, the main body of the Spanish cavalry were
+flying in all directions, and Riego’s deep voice was heard at intervals,
+through the columns of smoke and dust, calling and exhorting them in
+vain. D’Aguilar and his scanty troop, after a desperate skirmish, broke
+again through the enemy’s line drawn up against their retreat. The rank
+closed after them like waters when the object that pierced them has
+sunk: Falkland and his two companions were again environed: he saw his
+comrades cut to the earth before him. He pulled up his horse for one
+moment, clove down with one desperate blow the dragoon with whom he was
+engaged, and then setting his spurs to the very rowels into his horse,
+dashed at once through the circle of his foes. His remarkable presence
+of mind, and the strength and sagacity of his horse, befriended him.
+Three sabres flashed before him, and glanced harmless from his raised
+sword, like lightning on the water. The circle was passed! As he
+galloped towards Riego, his horse started from a dead body that lay
+across his path. He reined up for one instant, for the countenance,
+which looked upwards, struck him as familiar. What was his horror,
+when in that livid and distorted face he recognised his uncle! The thin
+grizzled hairs were besprent with gore and brains, and the blood yet
+oozed from the spot where the ball had passed through his temple.
+Falkland had but a brief interval for grief; the pursuers were close
+behind: he heard the snort of the foremost horse before he again put
+spurs into his own. Riego was holding a hasty consultation with his
+principal officers. As Falkland rode breathless up to them, they had
+decided on the conduct expedient to adopt. They led the remaining square
+of infantry towards the chain of mountains against which the village,
+as it were, leaned; and there the men dispersed in all directions. “For
+us,” said Riego to the followers on horseback who gathered around him,
+“for us the mountains still promise a shelter. We must ride, gentlemen,
+for our lives--Spain will want them yet.”
+
+Wearied and exhausted as they were, that small and devoted troop fled on
+into the recesses of the mountains for the remainder of that day--twenty
+men out of the two thousand who had halted at Lodar. As the evening
+stole over them, they entered into a narrow defile: the tall hills rose
+on every side, covered with the glory of the setting sun, as if Nature
+rejoiced to grant her bulwarks as a protection to liberty. A small clear
+stream ran through the valley, sparkling with the last smile of the
+departing day; and ever and anon, from the scattered shrubs and the
+fragrant herbage, came the vesper music of the birds, and the hum of the
+wild bee.
+
+Parched with thirst, and drooping with fatigue, the wanderers sprung
+forward with one simultaneous cry of joy to the glassy and refreshing
+wave which burst so unexpectedly upon them: and it was resolved that
+they should remain for some hours in a spot where all things invited
+them to the repose they so imperiously required. They flung themselves
+at once upon the grass; and such was their exhaustion, that rest was
+almost synonymous with sleep. Falkland alone could not immediately
+forget himself in repose: the face of his uncle, ghastly and disfigured,
+glared upon his eyes whenever he closed them. Just, however, as he was
+sinking into an unquiet and fitful doze, he heard steps approaching: he
+started up, and perceived two men, one a peasant, the other in the dress
+of a hermit. They were the first human beings the wanderers had met;
+and when Falkland gave the alarm to Riego, who slept beside him, it was
+immediately proposed to detain them as guides to the town of Carolina,
+where Riego had hopes of finding effectual assistance, or the means
+of ultimate escape. The hermit and his companion refused, with much
+vehemence, the office imposed upon them; but Riego ordered them to be
+forcibly detained. He had afterwards reason bitterly to regret this
+compulsion.
+
+Midnight came on in all the gorgeous beauty of a southern heaven, and
+beneath its stars they renewed their march. As Falkland rode by the side
+of Riego, the latter said to him in a low voice, “There is yet escape
+for you and my followers: none for me: they have set a price on my
+head, and the moment I leave these mountains, I enter upon my own
+destruction.” “No, Rafael!” replied Falkland; “you can yet fly to
+England, that asylum of the free, though ally of the despotic; the
+abettor of tyranny, but the shelter of its victims!” Riego answered,
+with the same faint and dejected tone, “I care not now what becomes of
+me! I have lived solely for Freedom; I have made her my mistress, my
+hope, my dream: I have no existence but in her. With the last effort
+of my country let me perish also! I have lived to view liberty not only
+defeated, but derided: I have seen its efforts not aided, but mocked. In
+my own country, those only, who wore it, have been respected who used it
+as a covering to ambition. In other nations, the free stood aloof when
+the charter of their own rights was violated in the invasion of ours.
+I cannot forget that the senate of that England, where you promise me
+a home, rang with insulting plaudits when her statesman breathed
+his ridicule on our weakness, not his sympathy for our cause; and
+I--fanatic--dreamer--enthusiast, as I may be called, whose whole life
+has been one unremitting struggle for the opinion I have adopted, am
+at least not so blinded by my infatuation, but I can see the mockery
+it incurs. If I die on the scaffold to-morrow, I shall have nothing of
+martyrdom but its doom; not the triumph--the incense--the immortality of
+popular applause: I should have no hope to support me at such a moment,
+gleaned from the glories of the future--nothing but one stern and
+prophetic conviction of the vanity of that tyranny by which my sentence
+will be pronounced.” Riego paused for a moment before he resumed, and
+his pale and death-like countenance received an awful and unnatural
+light from the intensity of the feeling that swelled and burned within
+him. His figure was drawn up to its full height, and his voice rang
+through the lonely hills with a deep and hollow sound, that had in it a
+tone of prophecy, as he resumed “It is in vain that they oppose OPINION;
+anything else they may subdue. They may conquer wind, water, nature
+itself; but to the progress of that secret, subtle, pervading spirit,
+their imagination can devise, their strength can accomplish, no bar: its
+votaries they may seize, they may destroy; itself they cannot touch.
+If they check it in one place, it invades them in another. They cannot
+build a wall across the whole earth; and, even if they could, it
+would pass over its summit! Chains cannot bind it, for it is
+immaterial--dungeons enclose it, for it is universal. Over the faggot
+and the scaffold--over the bleeding bodies of its defenders which they
+pile against its path, it sweeps on with a noiseless but unceasing
+march. Do they levy armies against it, it presents to them no palpable
+object to oppose. Its camp is the universe; its asylum is the bosoms of
+their own soldiers. Let them depopulate, destroy as they please, to
+each extremity of the earth; but as long as they have a single supporter
+themselves--as long as they leave a single individual into whom that
+spirit can enter--so long they will have the same labours to encounter,
+and the same enemy to subdue.”
+
+As Riego’s voice ceased, Falkland gazed upon him with a mingled pity
+and admiration. Sour and ascetic as was the mind of that hopeless and
+disappointed man, he felt somewhat of a kindred glow at the pervading
+and holy enthusiasm of the patriot to whom he had listened; and though
+it was the character of his own philosophy to question the purity of
+human motives, and to smile at the more vivid emotions he had ceased to
+feel, he bowed his soul in homage to those principles whose sanctity he
+acknowledged, and to that devotion of zeal and fervour with which
+their defender cherished and enforced them. Falkland had joined the
+constitutionalists with respect, but not ardour, for their cause. He
+demanded excitation; he cared little where he found it. He stood in this
+world a being who mixed in all its changes, performed all its offices,
+took, as if by the force of superior mechanical power, a leading share
+in its events; but whose thoughts and soul were as offsprings of another
+planet, imprisoned in a human form, and _longing for their home_!
+
+As they rode on, Riego continued to converse with that imprudent
+unreserve which the openness and warmth of his nature made natural to
+him: not one word escaped the hermit and the peasant (whose name
+was Lopez Lara) as they rode on two mules behind Falkland and Riego.
+“Remember,” whispered the hermit to his comrade, “the reward!”
+
+“I do,” muttered the peasant.
+
+Throughout the whole of that long and dreary night, the--wanderers rode
+on incessantly, and found themselves at daybreak near a farm-house: this
+was Lara’s own home. They made the peasant Lara knock; his own brother
+opened the door. Fearful as they were of the detection to which so
+numerous a party might conduce, only Riego, another officer (Don Luis
+de Sylva), and Falkland entered the house. The latter, whom nothing ever
+seemed to render weary or forgetful, fixed his cold stern eye upon the
+two brothers, and, seeing some signs pass between them, locked the
+door, and so prevented their escape. For a few hours they reposed in the
+stables with their horses, their drawn swords by their sides. On waking,
+Riego found it absolutely necessary that his horse should be shod. Lopez
+started up, and offered to lead it to Arguillas for that purpose. “No,”
+ said Riego, who, though naturally imprudent, partook in this instance of
+Falkland’s habitual caution: “your brother shall go and bring hither the
+farrier.” Accordingly the brother went: he soon returned. “The farrier,”
+ he said, “was already on the road.” Riego and his companions, who were
+absolutely fainting with hunger, sat down to breakfast; but Falkland,
+who had finished first, and who had eyed the man since his return with
+the most scrutinising attention, withdrew towards the window, looking
+out from time to time with a telescope which they had carried about
+them, and urging them impatiently to finish. “Why?” said Riego,
+“famished men are good for nothing, either to fight or fly--and we
+must wait for the farrier.” “True,” said Falkland, “but--” he stopped
+abruptly. Sylva had his eyes on his face at that moment. Falkland’s
+colour suddenly changed: he turned round with a loud cry. “Up! up!
+Riego! Sylva! We are undone--the soldiers are upon us!” “Arm!” cried
+Riego, starting up. At that moment Lopez and his brother seized their
+own carbines, and levelled them at the betrayed constitutionalists.
+“The first who moves,” cried the former, “is a dead man!” “Fools!” said
+Falkland, with a calm bitterness, advancing deliberately towards them.
+He moved only three steps--Lopez fired. Falkland staggered a few paces,
+recovered himself, sprang towards Lara, clove him at one blow from the
+skull to the jaw, and fell with his victim, lifeless upon the floor.
+“Enough!” said Riego to the remaining peasant; “we are your prisoners;
+bind us!” In two minutes more the soldiers entered, and they were
+conducted to Carolina. Fortunately Falkland was known, when at Paris,
+to a French officer of high rank then at Carolina. He was removed to
+the Frenchman’s quarters. Medical aid was instantly procured. The first
+examination of his wound was decisive; recovery was hopeless!
+
+Night came on again, with her pomp of light and shade--the night that
+for Falkland had no morrow. One solitary lamp burned in the chamber
+where he lay alone with God and his own heart. He had desired his couch
+to be placed by the window and requested his attendants to withdraw. The
+gentle and balmy air stole over him, as free and bland as if it were to
+breathe for him for ever; and the silver moonlight came gleaming through
+the lattice and played upon his wan brow, like the tenderness of a bride
+that sought to kiss him to repose. “In a few hours,” thought he, as he
+lay gazing on the high stars which seemed such silent witnesses of an
+eternal and unfathomed mystery, “in a few hours either this feverish and
+wayward spirit will be at rest for ever, or it will have commenced a new
+career in an untried and unimaginable existence! In a very few hours
+I may be amongst the very heavens that I survey--a part of their
+own glory--a new link in a new order of beings--breathing amidst the
+elements of a more gorgeous world--arrayed myself in the attributes of a
+purer and diviner nature--a wanderer among the planets--an associate
+of angels--the beholder of the arcana of the great God-redeemed,
+regenerate, immortal, or--dust!
+
+“There is no OEdipus to solve the enigma of life. We are--whence came
+we? We are not--whither do we go? All things in our existence have
+their object: existence has none. We live, move, beget our species,
+perish--and for what? We ask the past its moral; we question the gone
+years of the reason of our being, and from the clouds of a thousand
+ages there goes forth no answer. Is it merely to pant beneath this weary
+load; to sicken of the sun; to grow old; to drop like leaves into the
+grave; and to bequeath to our heirs the worn garments of toil and labour
+that we leave behind? Is it to sail for ever on the same sea, ploughing
+the ocean of time with new furrows, and feeding its billows with new
+wrecks, or--” and his thoughts paused blinded and bewildered.
+
+No man, in whom the mind has not been broken by the decay of the body,
+has approached death in full consciousness as Falkland did that moment,
+and not thought intensely on the change he was about to undergo; and yet
+what new discoveries upon that subject has any one bequeathed us? There
+the wildest imaginations are driven from originality into triteness:
+there all minds, the frivolous and the strong, the busy and the idle,
+are compelled into the same path and limit of reflection. Upon that
+unknown and voiceless gulf of inquiry broods an eternal and impenetrable
+gloom; no wind breathes over it--no wave agitates its stillness:
+over the dead and solemn calm there is no change propitious to
+adventure--there goes forth no vessel of research, which is not driven,
+baffled and broken, again upon the shore.
+
+The moon waxed high in her career. Midnight was gathering slowly
+over the earth; the beautiful, the mystic hour, blent with a thousand
+memories, hallowed by a thousand dreams, made tender to remembrance by
+the vows our youth breathed beneath its star, and solemn by the olden
+legends which are linked to its majesty and peace--the hour in which,
+men should die; the isthmus between two worlds; the climax of the past
+day; the verge of that which is to come; wrapping us in sleep after a
+weary travail, and promising us a morrow which, since the first birth
+of Creation has never failed. As the minutes glided on, Falkland felt
+himself grow gradually weaker and weaker. The pain of his wound had
+ceased, but a deadly sickness gathered over his heart: the room reeled
+before his eyes, and the damp chill mounted from his feet up--up to the
+breast in which the life-blood waxed dull and thick.
+
+As the hand of the clock pointed to the half-hour after midnight the
+attendants who waited in the adjoining room heard a faint cry. They
+rushed hastily into Falkland’s chamber; they found him stretched half
+out of the bed. His hand was raised towards the opposite wall; it
+dropped gradually as they approached him; and his brow, which was at
+first stern and bent, softened, shade by shade, into his usual serenity.
+But the dim film gathered fast over his eye, and the last coldness upon
+his limbs. He strove to raise himself as if to speak; the effort failed,
+and he fell motionless on his face. They stood by the bed for some
+moments in silence: at length they raised him. Placed against his
+heart was an open locket of dark hair, which one hand still pressed
+convulsively. They looked upon his countenance--(a single glance was
+sufficient)--it was hushed--proud--passionless--the seal of Death was
+upon it.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg’s Falkland, Complete, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
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