n -7- .b r V >^ ''t. .A^ ,^^ ^^ v^' -^^ V ,^\^ O '^^ ,^^^^' -^^. •i^^" V ^/ v^ .H -i-M. .^y^^■ '^ vNJ-^ v"^' \: ^OO^ -> '^^^^ ..V .^ -^^^ ^^> .^^' BEAUTIES, SELECTED FROM* THE WRITINGS THOMAS t>E QUINCEY, AUTHOR OF " CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM EATEK," ETC. BOSTON: TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 1862. TK^^ O c>- Entered aecording to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by TiCKNOR AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's OfBce of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 2-1 r 3 1 CONT ENTS. DE QUINCEY'S EARLY LIFE. Tagb I. The De Quincets 13 n. Childhood 15 III. Introduction to the World of Stkifb ... 30 rv. I AM Introduced to the Warfare of a Public School 41 V. I Enter the World 47 VI. The Nation of London 53 Vn. Dublin .63 Vill. Premature Manhood ...... .67 IX. The Runaway 90 X. The Priory Ill XI. Oxford 120 Xn. Opium 131 Xm. First Plunge into Authoedom .... 142 XIV. My Home 144 DREAMS. Introductory Notice 147 Lev ANA and our Ladies of Sorrow . . . . 157 The Daughter of Lebanon . . .... 167 The Vision of Sudden Death 176 Dream Fugue . 198 NARRATIVES. The Spanish Nun 211 The Easedale Romance 266 IV CONTENTS. ESSAYS. Pago Joan of Ahc 297 The Palimpsest . , 330 Conversation 341 CRITIQUES AND REMINISCENCES. Shakspeare 357 Milton 359 Wordsworth 362 Samuel Taylor Coleridoe 371 The Ancient Mariner 374 SOUTHEY 376 Chari.es Lamb 379 Sir Hdmphrt Davy 387 Mrs. Siddons and Mrs. Hannah More .... 389 Sir William Hamilton 892 DETACHED GEMS 401 PREFACE. The writings of Thomas de Quincey occupy more than a score of volumes. Comparatively few persons have leisure for the pe- reusal of so many miscellaneous works by the same au- thor ; yet, all who pretend to a knowledge of English Literature should be familiar with the chefs-d'ceuvre of De Quincey — one of the greatest masters of the English Language. His autobiography, scattered through many volumes, is here collected and so arranged as to give a com- plete view of his early life and his peculiar charac- ter. The other selections from his various works, furnish striking examples of the pathetic and the humorous, the quaint and the ludicrous, the serious and the sublime. The miscellaneous nature of De Quincey's writings renders them specially fit for this kind of eclecticism. It is hoped that the present volume will prove an acceptable addition to our cur- rent literature, and induce a desire for a still farther acquaintance with the elegant author. INTRODUCTORY NOTICE DE QUINCEY'S LIFE AND WRITINGS. Great men seldom appear in the literary hemisphere isola- ted, " Like a star When only one is shining in the sky," but in brilliant clusters, as in the Augustine age, and in the reign of Elizabeth of England. Such a constellation loomed above the horizon of England near the close of the last century, and shed its effulgence over more than half of the present cen- tury. Scott, Byron, Southey, Coleridge, "Wordsworth, Lamb, Lan- der, Rogers, Macaulay, De Quinccy, (and may we not add our own Irving?) with others of less magnitude, formed this Orion- like constellation, with its attendant Hyades and Pleiads. ,A11 — all have set, — excepting the octogenarian, Walter Savage Laiidor. Thomas de Quincey was one of the last survivors of this glorious band. He died at Edinburgh, December 8, 1859.* * De Quincey left five children. Two sons ; one, a Captain in the army, in India; the other, a physician in Brazil. Of his three daugh- ters, the eldest, Mrs. Robert Craig, and the youngest, (unmarried), were with their father at the time of his decease. The other daughter was vrith her husband, Colonel Baird Smith, in India. Vm INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. His last illness was of short duration. For a long time, how- ever, the earthly tenement had seemed too slight to hold the restless, powerful mind within its narrow bounds. That mind retained its vivid perceptions and its characteristic capaciousness and acuteness till his last fatal illness. Strange that a life held by so frail a tenure should have been continued beyond the threescore and ten years allotted to man ! For some years past De Quincey had secluded himself from general society, finding solace and occupation among the mute companions of his library. Occasionally, he went from Lass- wade, his home, to Edinburgh, and there he had remained for some months previous to his decease. De Quincey was, by temperament, exceedingly susceptible to all external impressions ; indued with a delicate sensibility that thrilled in sympathy with human joy and human woe, as the iEolian harp responds to the lightest breeze, passing over its vibratile chords. Though saddened by the keen sufferings and sorrows of early life, he cast no gloom over the social circle. Even in later years, he was the promoter of innocent mirth, and charmed with his delightful conversation an admiring circle of friends, young and old. In his conversation, De Quincey avoided that usurpation which he so frequently and so severely denounces. " Conversation," says some one, "should be like an Orches- tra, where every player has liis own part to perform." TJie conversational " Orchestra " in which De Quincey was a per- former must have demanded of him a frequent solo. In addi- tion to his remarkable responsiveness, his boundless field of illustration, his felicitous language, his exquisite taste, his aerial fancy, and his odd humor, gave to his conversation its irresis- tible charm. His manners were polished and refined ; yet conciliatory and cordial. Towards women, especially, he was chivalrous in his INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. IX politeness — one of that class now, unfortunately, in its deca- dence, — namely, the " Gentlemen of the old-school." His affec- tions were deep, tender, and enduring ; consequently, he had troops of friends. Thomas De Quincey was, undeniably, one of the greatest masters of the English Lan(rua2;o, who have committed thought to writing. In addition to his happy choice of words, fitting the thought to a hair's breadth, there is a striking peculiarity in his style, which can be best explained by himself. He says, — "A sentence, even when insulated and viewed apart for itself, is a subject for complex art : even so far it is capable of multiform beauty, and liable to a whole nosology of malconfor- mations. But it is in the relation of sentences, in what Horace terms their "juncturaj" that the true life of composi- tion resides. The mode of their nexus, — the way in which one sentence is made to arise out of another, and to prepare the opening for a third, — this is the great loom in which the textile process of the moving intellect reveals itself and prospers. Here the separate clauses of a period become architectural parts, aiding, relieving, supporting each other. But how can any ap- proach to that effect, or any suggestion of it, exist for him who hides and buries all openings for parts and graceful correspond- ences in one monotonous continuity of period, stretching over three octavo pages? Kant was a great man, but he was obtuse and deaf as an antediluvian boulder with regard to language and its capacities. He has sentences which have been measured by a carpenter, and some of them run two feet eight by six inches. Now, a sentence with that enormous span is fit only for the use of a megatherium or a pre- Adamite. Parts so re- mote as the beginning and the end of such a sentence can have no sensible relation to each other ; not much as regards their logic, but none at all as regai-ds their more sejisuous qualities, — rhythmus, for instance, or the continuity of metaphor. And it is clear that, if tlie internal relations of a sentence fade under 1* X INTRODDCTOBT NOTICE. the extravagant misproportion of its scale, a fortiori must the outer relations. If two figures, or other objects, are meant to modify each other visually by means of color, of outline, or of expression, they must be brought into juxtaposition, or at least into neighborhood. A chasm between them so vast as to pre- vent the synthesis of the two objects in one co -existing field of vison, interrupts the play of all genial comparison. Periods, and clauses of periods, modify each other, and build up a whole then, only, when the parts are shown as parts, cohering and con- spiring to a common result. But if each part is separately so vast as to eclipse the disc of the adjacent parts, then substan- tially tbey are separate wholes, and do not coalesce to any joint or complex impression. It is certain that style, or (to speak by the most general ex- pression) the management of language, ranks amongst the fine arts, and is able therefore to yield a separate intellectual pleasure quite apart from the interest of the subject treated. So far, it is already one error to rate the value of style as if it were ne- cessarily a dependent or subordinate thing. On the contrary, style has an absolute value, like the product of any other ex- quisite art, quite distinct from the value of the subject about which it is employed, and irrelatively to the subject ; precisely as the fine workmanship of Sccpas the Greek, or of Cellini the Florentine, is equally valued by the connoisseur, whether em- bodied in bronze or marble, in an ivory or golden vase. Style has two separate functions — fii-st, to brighten the in- telligibility of a subject which is obscure to the understanding ; secondly, to regenerate the normal power and impressiveness of a subject which has become dormant to the sensibilities. Darkness gathers upon many a theme, sometimes from previous mistreatment but oftener from original perplexities inverting its very nature. Upon the style it is that these perplexities greatly depend for their illumination.-' This wonderful " illumination " is cast by De Quincey's own INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. XI style over every topic it touches, like the brilliant illumination of a great city, for some national jubilee. And how various and how dissimilar were these topics, — "War, Religion, History, Political Economy, Philo«ophy, Biography, Romance, Dreams, Murders, Opium-eating ! Of his Dreams, one of his most acute and discriminating critics* says : — " We suppose it will be agreed that there is nothing in our language to be compared with De Quincey's Dreams ; nay, to speak of comparison is inadmissible, for they are absolutely alone. To the ' Dream Fugue,' founded on the 'Vision of Sudden Death,' we point with calmest assurance, as illustrating our general remark, — The wondrous picture has the vividness and truth of reality." " Taken in connection with the incident which was its occa- sion ; considered as a poetic idealization of reality, and an effort of linguistio power ; tried by the severe rules of Art, as demanding the very highest manifestation of order and har- mony possible by man, we think we could maintain against all comers that this is, for its size, the noblest production in English prose." " We think it were difficult," says Bayne, " to match in our whole late literature, the pathetic effect realized in his paper on the Maid of Orleans. And who does not see that, be- sides all else of instruction and of consolation which arises from the pyres of the martyrs of Christianity, besides the deathless lessons of courage, of devotion, of purest holiness which they convey, there is also in the legacy of the fathers to the human race, that, by sympathizing sorrow over their woes each gene- ration is elevated, and humanized and ennobled. This great lesson De Ouincey has embodied with an almost unexampled felicity in his paper on Joan of Arc." In every mind where pathos is found, there too will be found its antipode, — humor. This was eminently true of De Quincey. His quaint and original humor excites a quiet smile in the midst * Peter Bayne. XU INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. of his gravest writings. Even his exquisite taste did not pre- vent. an occasional ebullition of this humor — manifestly out of place. With his brilliant imagination, subtile mysticism, extensive erudition, it surprises us to find that he possessed the analytic faculty, in an eminent degree. " My proper vocation," he says, " as I well knew, was the exercise of the analytic under- standing." De Quincey has given so much of his outer and his inner life in his multitudinous pages, that little is left to be added by future biographers. He has portrayed himself with candor and openness, — without extenuation, and almost without apology. We recognize it, if not as a photograph, yet, as a true, unideal- ized likeness of Thomas de Quincey. DEQUINCET'S EARLY LIFE: GATHEKED FROM HIS VARIOUS WRITINGS. I. THE DE QUINCETS. This family, which split into three national divisions, — English, French, and American, — was originally Norwegian ; and in the year of our Christian era One Thousand spoke the most undeniable Norse. Through- out the eleventh century, the heads of this family held themselves in readiness to join any likely leader ; and did join William the Norman. This Norwegian family having assumed a territorial denomination from the district or village of Quincey, in the province now called Normandy, transplanted themselves to England ; where, and subsequently by marriage in Scotland, they ascended to the highest rank in both kingdoms, and held the highest offices open to a subject. Early in the seventh century, when it seemed likely that the interests of a particular family would be entangled with the principles at issue, multi- tudes became anxious to evade the strife by retiring to the asylum of forests. Amongst these was one branch of the De Quinceys. Enamored of Democracy, this family, laying aside the aristocratic De attached to their name, settled in New-England where they subsequently rose, through long public services, to the highest moral rank — as measured by all possible expressions of public esteem that are consistent with the simplicities of the great (13^ 14 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. republic. Mr. Josiah Quincy, as head of this distin- guished family, is appealed to as one who takes rank by age and large political experience, with the founders of the American Union. Another branch of the same family had, at a much earlier period, settled in France. Finally, the squires and squireens natually remained in England. The last of them who enjoyed any relics, whatever, of that ancient territorial domain, was an elder kinsman of my father. I never had the honor of seeing him ; in fact, it was impossible that I should have such an honor, since he died during the American war, which war had closed, although it had not paid its bills, some time before my birth. He enacted the part of squireen, I have been told, creditably enough in a village belong- ing either to the county of Leicester, Nottingham, or Eutland. With his death, a new era commenced for this historical family, which now, (as if expressly to irritate its ambition) finds itself distributed amongst three mighty nations, — France, America, and England, and precisely those three that are usually regarded as the leaders of civilization. II. CHILDHOOD. My father was a merchant ; not in the sense of Scot- land, where it means a retail dealer, one, for instance, who sells groceries in a cellar, but in the English sense, a sense rigorously exclusive ; tl\at is, he was a man engaged in foreign commerce, and no other ; therefore, in wholesale commerce, and no other. He died at an early age, leaving to his family, then consisting of a wife and six children, an unburdened estate producing exactly sixteen hundred pounds a year. Naturally, therefore, at the date of my narrative, — whilst he was still living, — he had an income very much larger, from the addition of current commercial profits. Now, to any man who is acquainted witli commercial life as it exists in England, it will readily occur that in an opulent English family of that class — opulent though not emphatically rich in a mercantile estimate — the domestic economy is pretty sure to move upon a scale of liberality altogether unknown amongst the corre- sponding orders in foreign nations. We, the children of the house, stood, in fact, upon the very happiest tier in the social scaffolding for all good influences. The prayer of Agur — "Give me ncitlier poverty nor riches" — was realized for us. That blessing we had, being neither too high nor too low. High enough we were to see models of good (15) 16 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. manners, of self-respect, and of simple dignity ; obscure enough to be left in the sweetest of solitudes. Grateful also to this hour I am, that, amidst luxuries in all things else, we were trained to a Spartan simplicity of diet — that we fared, in fact, very much less sumptuously than the servants. And if (after the model of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius) I should return thanks to Providence for all the separate blessings of my early situation, these four I would single out as worthy of special com- memoration — that I lived in a rustic solitude ; that this solitude was in England ; that my infant feelings were moulded by the gentlest of sisters, and not by horrid, pugilistic brothers ; finally, that I and they were dutiful and loving members of a pure, holy, and magnificent church. ********* The earliest incidents in my life, which left stings in my memory so as to be remembered at this day, were two, and both before I could have completed my second year ; namely, first, a remarkable dream of terrific grandeur about a favorite nurse, which is interesting to myself for this reason — that it demonstrates my dream- ing tendencies to have been constitutional, and not dependent upon laudanum ; and, secondly, the fact of having connected a profound sense of pathos with the reappearance, very early in the spring, of some cro- cuses. This I mention as inexplicable : for such annual resurrections of plants and flowers affect us only as memorials, or suggestions of some higher change, and therefore in connection with the idea of death ; yet of death I could, at that time, have had no experience whatever. CHILDHOOD. 17 This, however, I was speedily to acquire. My two eldest sisters — eldest of three then living, and also elder than myself — were summoned to an early death. The first who died was Jane, about two years older than myself. She was three and a half, 1 one and a half, more or less, by some trifle that I do not recollect. But death was then scarcely intelligible to me, and I could not so properly be said to suffer sorrow as a sad perplexity. So passed away from earth one of those three sisters tliat made up my nursery playmates ; and so did ray acquaintance (if such it could be called) commence with mortality. Yet, in fact I knew little more of mortality than that Jane had disappeared. She had gone away ; but perhaps she would come back. Happy interval of heaven-born ignorance ! Gracious immu- nity of infancy from sorrow disproportioned to its strength ! I was sad for Jane's absence. But still in my heart I trusted that she would come again. Summer and winter came again — crocuses and roses ; why not little Jane ? Thus easily was healed, then, the first wound in my infant heart. Not so the second. For thou, dear, noble Elizabeth, around whose ample brow, as often as thy sweet countenance rises upon the darkness, I fancy a tiara of light or a gleaming aureola in token of thy premature intellectual grandeur, — thou whose head, for its superb developments, was the astonishment of science, — thou next, but after an interval of hap{)y years, thou also wert summoned away from our nursery ; and tlie night, which for me gatliered u))on that event, ran after my steps far into life ; and perhaps at this 18 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. day I resemble little for good or for illtliat which else I should have been. Pillar of fire that didst go before me to guide and to quicken, — pillar of darkness, when thy countenance was turned away to God, that didst too truly reveal to ray dawning fears the secret shadow of death, — by what mysterious gravitation was it that my heart had been drawn to tliine ? " Love, the holy sense, Best gift of God, in thee was most intense." It is needless to pursue, circumstantially, the course of that sickness which carried off my leader and com- panion. She (according to my recollection at this moment,) was just as near to nine as I to six. And per- haps this natural precedency in authority of years and judgment, united to the tender humility with which she declined to assert it, had been amongst the fascina- tions of her presence. I grieved that my sister should lie in bed ; I grieved still more to hear her moan. But all this appeared lo me no more than as a night of trouble, on which the dawn would soon arise. mo- ment of darkness and delirium, when the elder nurse awakened me from that delusion, and launched God's thunderbolt at my heart in the assurance that my sister MUST die ! Rightly it is said of utter, utter misery, that it " can not be remembered."* Itself, as a remem- berable thing, is swallowed up in its own chaos. Blank anarchy and confusion of mind fell upon me. Deaf and blind I was as I reeled under the revelation. I * " I stood in unimaginable trance And agony which can not be remembered." ■^ — Speech of Alhadra, in Coleridge's Remorse. CHILDHOOD. 19 "w^ish not to recall the circumstances of that time, when my agony was at its height, and hers, in another sense, was approaching. Enough it is to say that all was soon over ; and the morning of that day had at last arrived wliich looked down upon her innocent face, sleeping the sleep from which there is no awaking, and upon me sor- rowing the sorrow for which there is no consolation. On the day after my sister's death, whilst the sweet temple of her brain was yet unviolated by human scru- tiny, I formed my own scheme for seeing her once more. Not for the world would I liavc made this known, nor have suffered a witness to accompany me. I had never heard of feelings tliat take the name of " sentimental," nor dreamed of such a possibility. But grief, even in a child, hates the light, and shrinks from human eyes. The house was large enough to have two staircases ; and by one of these I knew that about midday, when all would be quiet, (for the ser- vants dined at one o'clock), I could steal up into her cliamber. I imagine that it was about an hour after high noon wlien I reached the chamber door ; it was locked, but the key was not taken away. Entering, I closed the door so softly, that, although it opened upon a hall wliich ascended through all the stories, no echo ran along the silent walls. Then, turning round, I sought my sister's face. But the bed had been moved, and the back was now turned towards myself. Nothing met my eyes but one large window, wide open, through which the sun of midsummer, at midday, was showering down torrents of splendor. The weather was dry, the sky was cloudless, the blue depths seemed the express types of infinity ; and it was not possible for eye to be- 20 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. hold, or for heart to conceive, any symbols more pa- thetic of life and the glory of life. Prom the gorgeous sunlight I turned around to the corpse. There lay the sweet childish figure ; there the angel face ; and, as people usually fancy, it was said in the house that no features had suffered any change. Had they not? The forehead, indeed, — the serene and noble forehead, — that might be the same ; but the frozen eyelids, the darkness that seemed to steal from beneath them, the mai-ble lips, the stiffening hands, laid palm to palm, as if repeating the supplications of closing anguish, — could these be mistaken for life ? Had it been so, wherefore did I not spring to those heavenly lips with tears and never ending kisses ? But so it was not. I stood checked for a moment ; awe, not fear, fell upon me ; and, whilst I stood, a solemn, wind began to blow — the saddest that ear ever heard. It was a wind that might have swept the fields of mor- tality for a thousand centuries. Many times since, upon summer days, when the sun is about the hottest, I have remarked the same wind arising and uttering the same hollow, solemn, Memnonian, but saintly swell : it is in this world the one great audible symbol of eternity. And three times in my life have I happened to hear the same sound in the same circumstances — namely, when standing between an open window and a dead body on a summer day. Instantly, when my ear caught this vast ^olian into- nation, when my eye filled with the golden fulness of life, the pomps of the heavens above, or the glory of the flowers below, and turning when it settled upon the frost which overspread my sister's face, instantly a CHILDHOOD. 21 trance fell upon me. A vault seemed to open in the zenith of the far blue sky, a shaft which ran up forever. I, in spirit, rose as if on billows that also ran up the shaft forever ; and the billows seemed to pursue the throne of God ; but that also ran before us and fled away continually. The flight and the pursuit seemed to go on for ever and ever. Frost gathering frost, some Sarsar wind of death, seemed to repel me ; some mighty relation between God and death dimly struggled to evolve itself from the dreadful antagonism between them ; shadowy meanings even yet continued to exer- cise and torment, in dreams, the deciphering oracle within me. I slept — for how long I cannot say: slowly I recovered my self-possession ; and when I woke, found myself standing, as before, close to my sister's bed. 1 have reason to believe that a very long interval had elapsed during this wandering or suspension of my perfect mind. When I returned to myself, there was a foot (or I fancied so) on the stairs. I was alarmed ; for, if any body had detected me, means would have been taken to prevent my coming again. Hastily, therefore, I kissed the lips that I should kiss no more, and slunk, like a guilty thing, with stealthy steps from the room. Thus perished the vision, loveliest amongst all the shows which earth has revealed to me ; thus mutilated was the parting which should have lasted for ever ; tainted thus with fear was that farewell sacred to love and grief, to perfect love and to grief that could not be healed. At this time, and under this impulse of rapacious grief, that grasped at what it could not obtain, the 22 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. faculty of shaping images in the distance out of slight elements, and grouping them after the yearnings of the heart, grew upon me in morbid excess. And I recall at the present moment one instance of that sort which may show how merely shadows, or a gleam of brightness, or nothing at all, could furnish a sufficient basis for this creative faculty. On Sunday mornings I went with the rest of my family to church : it was a church on the ancient model of England, having aisles, galleries,* organ, all things ancient and venerable, and the proportions majestic. Here, whilst the congregation knelt through the long litany, as often as we came to that passage, so beautiful amongst many that are so, where God is supplicated on behalf of " all sick pei*sons and young children," and that he would " show his pity upon all prisoners and captives," I wept in secret ; and raising my streaming eyes to the upper windows of the galleries, saw, on days when the sun was shining, a spectacle as affecting as ever prophet can have beheld. The sides of the windows were rich with storied glass ; through the deep purples and crimsons streamed the golden light ; emblazonries of heavenly illumination (from the sun) mingling with the earthly emblazonries (from art and Its gorgeous coloring) of what is grandest in man. Tliere were the apostles that had trampled upon earth, and the glories of earth, out of celestial love to man. * " Qalleries.''^ — These, though condemned on some grounds by the restorers of authentic church architecture, have, nevertheless, this one advantage — that, when the height of a church is that dimension which most of all expresses its sacred character, galleries expound and inter- pret that height. CHILDHOOD. 23 There were the martyrs that had borne witness to the truth through flames, through torments, and through armies of fierce, insulting faces. There were the saints who, under intolerable pangs, had glorified God by- meek submission to his will. And all the time, whilst this tumult of sublime memorials held on as the deep chords from some accompaniment in the bass, I saw through the wide central field of the window, where the glass was ?le shotted my guns ; double applause descended on myself; but I remarked with some awe, though not repenting of what I had done, that double confusion seemed to agitate the ranks of my enemies. Amongst them loomed out in the distance my " annihi- lating " friend, who shook his huge fist at me, but with something like a grim smile about his eyes. Pie took an early opportunity of paying his respects to me again, saying, " You little devil, do you call this writing your worst ? " " No," 1 replied ; " I call it writing my best." The anuihilator, as it turned out, was really a good natured young man ; but he was on the wing for Cambridge ; and with the rest, or some of them, I con- tinued to wage war for more than a year. And yet. WARFARE OP A PUBLIC 8CH00L. 45 for a word spoken with kindness, how readily I would have resigned (had it been altogether at my own choice to do so) the peacock's feather in my cap as the merest of baubles. Undoubtedly, praise sounded sweet in my ears also ; but that was nothing by comparison with what stood on the other side. I detested distinc- tions that were connected with mortification to others ; and, even if I could have got over thal^ the eternal feud fretted and tormented my nature. The contest was terminated for me by my removal from the school, in consequence of a very threatening illness affecting my head ; but it lasted more than a year, and it did not close before several among my public enemies had become my private friends. From the Bath Grammar school I was removed, in consequence of an accident, by which at first it was supposed that my skull had been fractured ; and the surgeon who attended me at one time talked of trepan- ning. This was an awful word ; but at present I doubt whether in reality any thing very serious had hap- pened. In fact, I was always under a nervous panic for my head, and certainly exaggerated my internal feelings without meaning to do ^ ; and this misled the medical attendants. During a long illness which suc- ceeded, my mother, amongst other books past all count- ing, read to me, in Hoolc's translation, the whole of the " Orlando Furioso ; " meaning by the whole the entire twenty-four books into which Iloole had con- densed the original forty-six of Ariosto ; and, from my own experience at that time, I am disposed to think that the homeliness of this version is an advantage, from not calling off the attention at all from the nar- 46 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. ration to the narrator. At this time also I first read the " Paradise Lost ; " but, oddly enough, in the edition of Bentley, that great diogdom]?, (or pseudo restorer of the text). At the close of my illness, the head master called upon my mother, in company with his son-in-law, Mr. Wilkins, as did a certain Irish Colonel Bowes, who had sons at the school, requesting earnestly, in terms most flattering to myself, that 1 might be suffered to remain there. But it illustrates my mother's moral austerity, that she was shocked at my hearing compliments to my own merits, and was altogether disturbed at what doubtless these gentlemen expected to see received with maternal pride. She declined to let me continue at the Bath School ; and I went to another, at Winkfield, in the county of Wilts, of which the chief recommendation lay in the religious character of the master. V. I ENTER THE WORLD. Yes, at this stage of my life, viz., in my fifteenth year, and from this sequestered school, ankle deep I first stepped into the world. At Winkfield I had staid about a year, or not much more, when I received a letter from a young friend of my own age. Lord West- port, the son of Lord Altamont, inviting me to accom- pany him to Ireland for the ensuing summer and au- tumn. Tliis invitation was repeated by his tutor ; and my mother, after some consideration, allowed me to accept it. In the spring of 1800, accordingly, I went up to Eton, for the purpose of joining my friend. Here I several times visited the gardens of the queen's villa at Frogmore ; and, privileged by my young friend's intro- duction, I had opportunities of seeing and hearing the queen and all the princesses ; which at that time was a novelty in my life, naturally a good deal prized. Lord Westport's mother had been, before her marriage, Lady Louisa Howe, daughter to the great admiral, Earl Howe, and intimately known to the royal family, who, on her account, took a continual and especial notice of her son. On one of these occasions I had the honor of a brief interview with the king. Lord TVestport and I were (47) 48 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. amusing ourselves when a turn brought us full in view of a royal party coming along one of the walks at Frogmore. We were, in fact, theorizing and practi- cally commenting on the art of throwing stones. Boys have a peculiar contempt f jr female attempts in that way. For, besides that girls fling wide of the mark, with a certainty that might have won the applause of Galerius, there is a peculiar sling and rotary motiou of the arm in launching a stone, which no girl ever caii attain. From ancient practice, I was somewhat of a proficient in this art, and was discussing the philoso- phy of female failures, illustrating my doctrines with pebbles, as the case happened to demand ; whilst Lord Westport was practising on the peculiar whirl of the wrist with a shilling ; when suddenly he turned the head of the coin towards me with a significant glance, and in a low voice he muttered some words, of which I caught " Grace of God,^' " France and Ireland,''^ " Defender of the Faith, and so forth.''^ This solemn recitation of the legend on the coin was meant as a fanciful way of apprising me that the king was ap- proaching ; for Lord W. had himself lost somewhat of the awe natural to a young person in a first situation of this nature, through his frequent admissions to the royal presence. For my own part, I was yet a stran- ger even to the king's person. I had, indeed, seen most or all the princesses in the way I have mentioned above ; and occasionally, in the streets of Windsor, the sudden disappearance of all hats from all heads had admonished me that some royal personage or other was then traversing (or, if not traversing, was cross- I ENTER THR WORLD. 49 ing) the street ; but either his majesty had never been of the party, or, from distance, I had failed to distin- guish him. Now, for the first time, I was meeting him nearly face to face ; for, though the walk we occupied was not that in which the royal party were moving, it ran so near it, and was connected by so many cross walks at short intervals, that it was a matter of neces- sity for us, as we were now observed, to go and present ourselves. What happened was pretty nearly as fol- lows: The king, having first spoken with great kind- ness to my companion, inquiring circumstantially about his mother and grandmother, as persons particularly well known to himself, then turned his eye upon me. My name, it seems, had been communicated to him ; he did not, therefore, inquire about that. Was I of Eton? This was his first question. I rei^lied that I was not, but hoped I should be. Had I a father living ? 1 had not : my father had been dead about eight years. "But you have a mother?" I had. " And she thinks of sending you to Eton ?" I answered, that she had expressed such an intention in my hearing ; but I was not sure whether that might not be in order to waive an argument with the person to whom she spoke, who happened to have been an Etonian. " 0, but all peo- ple think highly of Eton ; every body praises Eton. Your mother does right to inquire ; there can be no harm in that ; but the more she inquires, the more she will be satisfied — that I can answer for." Next came a question which had been suggested by my name. Had my family come into England with the Huguenots at the revocation of the edict of Nantz ? 3 60 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. This was a tender point with me : of all things I could not endure to be supposed of French descent ; yet it was a vexation I had constantly to face, as most peo- ple supposed that my name argued a French origin ; whereas a Norman origin argued pretty certainly an origin not French. I replied, with some haste, " Please your majesty, the family has been in England since the conquest." It is probable that I colored, or showed some mark of discomposure, with which, however, the king was not displeased, for he smiled, and said, " How do you know that ? " Here I was at a loss for a mo- ment how to answer ; for I was sensible that it did not become me to occupy the king's attention with any long stories or traditions about a subject so unimpor- tant as my own family ; and yet it was necessary that I should say something, unless I would be thought to have denied my Huguenot descent upon no reason or authority. After a moment's hesitation, I said, in ef- fect, that the family from which I traced my descent had certainly been a great and leading one at the era of the barons' wars, as also in one at least of the cru- sades ; and that I had myself seen many notices of this family, not only in books of heraldry, &c., but in the very earliest of all English books. " And what book was that? " " Robert of Gloucester's ' Metrical Chron- icle,' which I understood, from internal evidence, to have been written about 1280," The king smiled again, and said, " I know, I know." But what it was that he knew, long afterwards puzzled me to conjec- ture. I now imagine, however, that he meant to claim a knowledge of the book I referred to — a thing which I ENTER THE WORLD. 51 at that time I thought improbable, supposing the king's acquaintance with literature not to be very extensive, nor likely to have comprehended any knowledge at all of the black-letter period. But in this belief I was greatly mistaken, as I was afterwards fully convinced by the best evidence from various quarters. During the whole dialogue, I did not even once re- mark that hesitation and iteration of words generally attributed to George III. ; indeed, so generally, that it must often have existed ; but in this case, I suppose that the brevity of his sentences operated to deliver him from any embarrassment of utterance, such as might have attended longer and more complex senten- ces, where some anxiety was natural to overtake the thoughts as they arose. When we observed that the king had paused in his stream of questions, which suc- ceeded rapidly to each other, we understood it was a signal of dismissal ; and making a profound obeisance, we retired backwards a few steps. His majesty smiled in a very gracious manner, waved his hand towards us, and said something (I did not know what) in a pecu- liarly kind accent ; he then turned round, and the whole party along with him ; which set us at liberty without impropriety to turn to the right about ourselves, and make our egress from the gardens. This incident, to me at my age, was very naturally one of considerable interest. One reflection it suggest- ed afterwards, which was this ; Could it be likely that much truth of a general nature, bearing upon man and social interests, could ever reach the ear of a king, un- der the etiquette of a court, and under that one rule which seemed singly sufficient to foreclose all natural 52 BEAUTIES OF DE QDINCEY. avenues to truth ? — the rule, I mean, by which it is forbidden to address a question to the king. However, to leave dissertation behind me, and to re- sume the thread of my narrative, an incident, which about this period impressed me even more profoundly than my introduction to a royal presence, was my first visit to London. VI. THE NATION OF LONDON. It was a most heavenly day in May of this year (1800) when I first beheld and first entered this mighty wilderness, the city — no, not the city, but the nation — of London. We, upon this occasion, were in an open carriage, and, . chiefly (as I imagine) to avoid the dust, we approached London by rural lanes, where any such could be found, or, at least, along by-roads, quiet and shady, collateral to the main roads. In that mode of approach we missed some features of the sublimity belonging to any of the common approaches upon a main road ; we missed the whirl and the uproar, the tumult, and the agitation, which continually thicken and thicken throughout the last dozen miles before you reach the suburbs. Already at three stages' distance, (say forty miles from London), upon some of the greatest roads, the dim presentiment of some vast capital reaches you obscurely and like a misgiving. This blind sympathy with a mighty but unseen object, some vast magnetic range of Alps, in your neighbor- hood, continues to increase you know not how. Much of the feeling which belongs to the outside of London, in its approaches for the last few miles, I had lost, in consequence of the stealthy route of by-roads, lying near Uxbridge and "Watford, through which we creot into the suburbs. But for that reason, the more (53) 54 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCET. abrupt and startling had been the efifect of emersiDg somewhere into the Edgeware Road, and soon after- wards into the very streets of London itself; through what streets, or even what quarter of London, is now totally obliterated from my mind, having perhaps never been comprehended. All that I remember is one mo- notonous awe and blind sense of mysterious grandeur and Babylonian confusion, which seemed to pursue and to invest the whole equipage of human life, as we moved for nearly two hours* through streets ; some- times brought to anchor for ten minutes or more by what is technically called a "lock," that is, a line of carriages of every description inextricably massed, and obstructing each other, far as the eye could stretch ; and then, as if under an enchanter's rod, the " lock" seemed to thaw ; motion spread with the fluent race of light or sound through the whole ice-bound mass, until the subtile influence reached us also, who were again absorbed into the great rush of flying carriages ; or, at times, we turned off into some less tumultuous street, but of the same mile-long character ; and finally, drawing up about noon, we alighted at some place, which is as little within my distinct remembrance as the route by which we reached it. For what had we come ? To see London. And what were the limits within which we proposed to crowd that little feat ? At 6 o'clock we were to dine at Porters , a seat of Lord Westport's grand - * ''Two hours.' ^ — This slow progress must, however, in part be ascrib- ed to Mr. G 's non-acquaintance with the roads, both town and rural, and the whole line of our progress from Uxbridge. THE NATION OP LONDON. 55 father ; and, from the distance, it was necessary that we should leave London at half past three ; so that a little more than three hours were all that we had for London. Our charioteer, my friend's tutor, was sum- moned away from us on business until that hour ; and we were left, therefore, entirely to ourselves and to our own skill in turning the time to the best account, for contriving (if such a thing were possible) to do some thing or other which, by any fiction of courtesy, or constructively, so as to satisfy a lawyer, or in a sense sufficient to win a wager, might be taken and received for having " seen London." what could be done ? We sat down, I remember, in a mood of despondency, to consider. The spectacles were too many by thousands ; inopes nos copia fecit ; our very wealth made us poor ; and the choice was distracted. But which of them all could be thought general or representative enough to stand for the uni- verse of London ? We could not traverse the whole circumference of this mighty orb ; that was clear ; and, therefore, the next best -thing was to place ourselves as much as possible in some relation to the spectacles of London, which might answer to the centre. Yet how ? That sounded well and metaphysical ; but what did it mean if acted upon ? What was the centre of London for any purpose whatever, latitudinarian or longitudi- narian, literary, social, or mercantile, geographical, astronomical, or (as Mrs. Malaprop kindly suggests) diabolical ? Apparently that we should stay at our inn ; for in that way wo seemed best to distribute our pres- ence equally amongst all, viz., by going to none in par- ticular. 66 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCET. In debating the matter, we lost half an hour ; but at length we reduced the question to a choice between Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral. I know not that we could have chosen better. The rival edi- fices, as we understood from the waiter, were about equidistant from our own station ; but, being too remote from each other to allow of our seeing both, " we tossed up," to settle the question between the elder lady and the younger. " Heads " came up, which stood for the Abbey. But, as neither of us was quite satisfied with this decision, we agreed to make another appeal to the wisdom of chance, second thoughts being best. This time the Cathedral turned up ; and so it came to pass that, with us, the having seen London meant having seen St. Paul's. The first view of St. Paul's, it may be supposed, overwhelmned us with awe ; and I did not at that time imagine that the sense of magnitude could be more deeply impressed. One thing interrupted our pleasure. The superb objects of curiosity within the cathedral were shown for separate fees. There were seven, I think ; and any one could be seen independently of the rest for a few pence. The whole amount was a trifle ; fourteen pence, I think ; but we were followed by a sort of persecution — "Would we not see the bell?" " Would we not see the model ? " " Surely we would not go away without visiting the whispering gallery ? " — solicitations which troubled the silence and sanctity of the place, and must tease others as it then teased us, who wished to contemplate in quiet this great monument of the national grandeur, which was at that very time beginning to take a station also in the land, as a de- THE NATION OP LONDON. 57 pository for the dust of her heroes.* What struck us most in the whole interior of the pile was the view taken from the spot immediately under the dome, being, in fact, the very same which, five years afterwards, received the remains of Lord Nelson. In one of the aisles going oif from this centre, we saw the flags of France, Spain, and Holland, the whole trophies of the war, swinging pompously, and expanding their massy draperies, slowly and heavily, in the upper gloom, as they were swept at intervals by currents of air. At tliis moment we were provoked by the showman at our elbow renewing his vile iteration of " Two-pence, gentle- men ; no more than two-pence for each ;" and so on, until we left the place. The same complaint has often been made as to Westminster Abbey. Where the wrong lies, or where it commences, I know not. Cer- tainly I nor any man can have a right to expect that the poor men who attended us should give up their time for nothing, or even to be angry with them for a sort of persecution, on the degree of which possibly might depend the comfort of their own families. — Thoughts of famishing children at home leave little room for nice regards of delicacy abroad. The indi- viduals, therefore, might or might not be blamable. But in any case, the system is palpably wrong. The nation is entitled to a free enjoyment of its own public monuments ; not free only in the sense of being gratui- tous, but free also from the molestation of showmen. * Already monuments had been voted by the House of Commons in this cathedral, and I am not sure but they were nearly completed, to two captains who had fallen at the Nile. 3* 58 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. with their imperfect knowledge and their vulgar senti- ment. Loudon we left in haste, to keep an engagement of some standing at the Earl Howe's, my friend's grand- father. This great admiral, who had filled so large a station in the public eye, being the earliest among the naval heroes of England in the first war of the revolu- tion, and the only one of noble birth, I should have been delighted to see ; St. Paul's, and its naval monu- ments to Captain Riou and Captain , together with its floating pageantries of conquered flags, having awakened within me, in a form of peculiar solemnity, those patriotic remembrances of past glories, which all boys feel so much more vividly than men can do, in whom the sensibility to such impressions is blunted. Lord Howe, however, I was not destined to see ; he had died about a year before. Another death there had been, and very recently, in the family, and under circumstances peculiarly startling ; and the spirits of the whole house were painfully depressed by that event at the time of our visit. From Porters, after a few days' visit, we returned to Eton. Her majesty about this time gave some splendid fetes at Frogmore, to one or two of which she had directed that we should be invited. The invitation was, of course, on my friend's account ; but her ma- jesty had condescended to direct that I, as his visitor, should be specially included. Lord Westport, young as he was, had become tolerably indifferent about such things ; but to me such a scene was a novelty ; and, on that account, it was settled we should go as early as was permissible. We did go ; and I was not sorry to THE NATION OF LONDON. 69 have had the gratification of witnessing (if it were but for once or twice) the splendors of a royal party. But, after the first edge of expectation was taken off, — after the vague uncertainties of rustic ignorance had given place to absolute realities, and the eye had become a little familiar with the flashing of the jewelry, — I began to suffer under the constraints incident to a young person in such a situation — the situation, namely, of sedentary passiveness, where one is acted upon, but does not act. The music, in fact, was all that continu- ed to delight me ; and, but for that^ I believe I should have had some difficulty in avoiding so monstrous an indecorum as yawning. I revise this faulty expression, however, on the spot ; not the music only it was, but the music combined with the dancing, that so deeply impressed me. The ball room — a temporary erection, with something of the character of a pavilion about it — wore an elegant and festal air; the part allotted to the dancers being fenced off by a gilded lattice work, and ornamented beautifully from the upper part with drooping festoons of flowers. But all the luxury that spoke to the eye merely faded at once by the side of impassioned dancing sustained by impassioned music. Of all the scenes which this world offers, none is to me so profoundly interesting, none (I say it deliberately) so affecting, as the spectacle of men and women floating through the mazes of a dance ; under these conditions, however, that the music shall be rich, resonant, and festal, the execution of the dancers perfect, and the dance itself of a cliaracter to admit of free, fluent, and conl'muoKS motion. This pleasure, as always on similar occasions, I had 60 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. at present ; but naturally in a degree corresponding to the circumstances of royal splendor through which the scene revolved ; and, if I have spent rather more words than should reasonably have been requisite in describing any obvious state of emotion, it is not be- cause, in itself, it is either vague or doubtful, but be- cause it is difficult, without calling upon a reader for a little reflection, to convince him that there is not some- thing paradoxical in the assertion, that joy and festal pleasure, of the highest kind, are liable to a natural combination with solemnity, or even with melancholy the most profound. Yet, to speak in the mere simplici- ty of truth, so mysterious is human nature, and so little to be read by him who runs, that almost every weighty aspect of truth upon that theme will be found at first sight to be startling, or sometimes paradoxical. The pleasure of which I have been speaking belongs to all such scenes ; but on this particular occasion there was also something more. To see persons in " the body " of whom you have been reading in newspapers from the very earliest of your reading days, — those, who have hitherto been great ideas in your childish thoughts, to see and to hear moving and talking as carnal existences amongst other human beings, — had, for the first half hour or so, a singular and strange effect. But this naturally waned rapidly after it had once begun to wane. And when these first startling impressions of novelty had worn off, it must be con- fessed that the peculiar circumstances attaching to a royal ball were not favorable to its joyousness or genial spirit of enjoyment. Meantime, as respected myself individually, I had THE NATION OP LONDON. 61 reason to be grateful : every kindness and attention were shown to me. My invitation I was sensible that I owed entirely to my noble friend. But, having- been invited, I felt assured, from what passed, that it was meant and provided that I should not, by any possi- bility, be suffered to think myself overlooked. My friend and I having staid nearly four hours, a time quite sufficient to express a proper sense of the honor, we departed ; and, on emerging into the open high road, we tlirew up our hats and huzzaed, meaning no sort of disrespect, but from uncontrollable pleasure in recovered liberty. Soon after this we left Eton for Ireland. Our first destination being Dublin, of course we went by Holy- head. The route at that time, from Southern England to Dublin, did not (as in elder and in later days) go round by Chester. A few miles after leaving Shrews- bury, somewhere about Oswestry, it entered North "Wales ; a stage farther brought us to the celebrated vale of Llangollen ; and, on reaching the approach to this about sunset on a beautiful evening of June, I first found myself amongst the mountains — a feature in natural scenery for wliich, from my earliest days, it was not extravagant to say tliat I liad hungered and thirsted. In no one expectation of ray life have I been less disap- pointed ; and I may add, that no one enjoyment has less decayed or palled upon my continued experience. At the Head (to call it by its common colloquial name) we were detained a few days in those unstcaming times by foul winds. Our time, however, thanks to the hospitality of a certain Captain Skinner on that station, did not hang heavy on our hands, though we were im- 62 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. prisoned, as it were, on a dull rock ; for Holyhead itself is a little island of rock, an insulated dependency of Anglesea ; which, again, is a little insulated dependency of North-Wales. Landing about three miles from Dublin, (according to my present remembrance at Dunleary), we were not long in reaching Sackviile Street. YII. DUBLIN. In Sackville Street stood the town house of Lord Al- tamont ; and here, in the breakfast room, we found the Earl seated. Long and intimately as I had known Lord Westport, it so happened that 1 had never seen his father, who had, indeed, of late almost pledged him- self to a continued residence in Ireland by his own patriotic earnestness as an agricultural improver ; whilst for his son, under the difficulties and delays at that time of all travelling, any residence whatever in Eng- land seemed preferable, but especially a residence with his mother amongst the relatives of his distinguished English grandfather, and in such close neighborhood to Eton. Hence the long three-years' interval which had sepa- rated father and son ; and hence my own nervous a|> prehension, as we were racing through the suburbs of Dublin, that I should unavoidably lay a freezing re- straint upon tliat reiinion to which, after such a separa- tion, both father and son must have looked forward with anticipation so anxious. Such cases of uninten- tional intrusion are at times inevitable ; but, even to tlie least sensitive, they arc always distressing ; most of all they are so to the intruder, who in fact feels himself in the odd position of a criminal without a crime. But there was no cause for similar fears at present ; (63^ 64 BEAUTIEK OF DK QUINCEY. SO uniformly considerate in his kindness was Lord Alta- mont. It is true, that Lord Westport, as an only child, and a child to be proud of, — for he was at that time rather handsome, and conciliated general good will by his engaging manners, — was viewed by his father with an anxiety of love that sometimes became almost pain- ful to witness. But this natural self-surrender to a first involuntary emotion. Lord Altamont did not suffer to usurp any such lengthened expression as might too pain- fully have reminded me of being " one too many." One solitary half minute being paid down as a tribute to the sanctities of the case, his next care was to withdraw mc, the stranger, from an oppressive feeling of stranger- ship. And accordingly, so far from realizing the sense of being an intruder, in one minute under his courteous welcome I had come to feel that, as the companion of his one darling upon earth, me also he comprehended within his paternal regards. Amongst the splendid spectacles which I witnessed, as the most splendid I may mention an installation of the Knights of St. Patrick. There were six knights installed on this occasion, one of the six being Lord Altamont. One chief reason, indeed, which detained us in Dublin, was the necessity of staying for this par- ticular installation. At one time. Lord Altamont had designed to take his son and myself for the two esquires who attend the new made knight, according to tlie ritual of this ceremony ; but that plan was laid aside, on learning that the other five knights were to be at- tended by adults ; and thus, from being partakers as actors, my friend and I became simple spectators of this DUBLIN. 65 splendid scene, which took place in the Cathedral of St. Patrick. One other public scene there was, about this time, in Dublin, to the eye less captivating, but far more so in a moral sense ; more significant practically, more burden- ed with hope and fear. This was the final ratification of the bill which united Ireland to Great Britain. 1 do not know that any one public act, or celebration, or solemnity, in my time, did, or could, so much engage my profoundcst sympathies. This great day of union had been long looked for- ward to by me ; with some mixed feelings also by my young friend, for he had an Irish lieart, and was jealous of whatever appeared to touch the banner of Ireland. Thus we were set at liberty from Dublin. Parlia- ments, and installations, and masked balls, with all other secondaiy splendors in celebration of primary splendors, reflex glories that reverberated original glories, at length had ceased to sliine upon the Irish metropolis. The " season," as it is called in great cities, was over ; unfortunately the last season that was ever destined to illuminate the society or to stiumlate the domestic trade of Dublin. It began to be tliougiit scandalous to be found in town ; nobody ^ in fact remain- ed, except some two hundred thousand people, who never did, nor ever would, wear ermine ; and in all Ire- land there remained nothing at all to attract, except tlnit which no king, and no two houses, can by any consi)ir- acy abolish, viz., the beauty of her most verdant scene- ry. I speak of that part which chiefly it is that I know, — the scenery of the west — Connaught beyond otlier provinces, and in Connaught, Mayo beyond otlicr coun- 66 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. ties. There it was, and in the county next adjoining that, Lord Altamont's large estates were situated, the family mansion and beautiful park being in Mayo. Thitlier, as nothing else now remained to divert us from what, in fact, we had thirsted for throughout the heats of summer, and throughout the magnificences of the capital, at length we set off l)y movemeuls as slow and circuituous as those of any royal progress in tlie roigu of Elizabeth. Making but short journeys on each day, and resting always at the house of some private friend, I thus obtained an opportunity of seeing the old Irish nobility and gentry more extensively, and on a more intimate footing than I had hoped for. I remarked that, in the midst of hospitality the most unbounded, and the amplest comfort, some of these were conspicuously in the rear of the English commercial gentry, as to modern refinements of luxury. There was at the same time an apparent strength of character, as if formed amidst turbulent scenes, and a raciness of manner, which were fitted to interest a stranger profoundly, and to impress themselves on his recollection. VIII. PREMATURE MANHOOD. It was late in October, or early in November, that I quitted Connaught with Lord Westport ; and very slowly, making many leisurely deviations from the direct route, travelled back to Dublin. Thence, after some little stay, we recrossed St. George's Channel, landed at Holyhead, and tlien,l)y exactly the same route as we had pursued in early June, we posted through Bangor, Conway, Llanrwst, Llangollen, until again we found ourselves in England, and, as a matter of course, mak- ing for Birmingham. But why making for Birmingham ? Simply because Birmingham, under the old dynasty of stage coaches and post chaises, was the centre of our travelling system, and held in England something of that rank which the golden mile-stone of Rome held in the Italian peninsula. At Birmingham it was (which I, like myriads beside, had traversed a score of times without ever yet having visited it as a terminus ad queni) that I parted with my friend Lord Westport. His route lay through Oxford ; and stopping, therefore, no longer than was necessary to harness fresh horses, — an operation, however, which was seldom accomplished in less than half an hour at that era, — he went on directly to Stratford. My own des- tination was yet doubtful. I had been directed, in Dublin, to inquire at the Birmingham post office for a (67) 68 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. letter which would guide my motions. There, accord- ingly, upon sending for it, lay the expected letter from my mother ; from which I learned that my sister was visiting at Laxton, a seat of Lord Carbery's in North- amptonshire, and giving me to understand, that, during my residence at this place, some fixed resolution would be taken and announced to me in regard to the future disposal of my time, during the two or three years be- fore I should be old enough on the English system for matriculating at Oxford or Cambridge. In the poor countries of Europe, where they cannot afford double sets of scholastic establishments, — having, therefore, no splendid schools, such as are, in fact, peculiar to Eng- land, — they are compelled to throw the duties of such schools upon their universities ; and consequently you see boys of thirteen and fourteen, or even younger, crowding such institutions, which, in fact, they ruin for all higher functions. But England, whose regal estab- lishments of both classes emancipate her from this de- pendency, sends her young men to college not until they have ceased to be boys — not earlier, therefore, than eighteen. But when, by what test, by what indication, does manhood commence ? Physically by one criterion, legally by another, morally by a third, intellectually by a fourth — and all indefinite. Equator, absolute equa- tor, there is none. Between the two spheres of youth and age, perfect and imperfect manhood, as in all anal- ogous cases there is no strict line of bisection. The change is a large process, accomplished within a large and corresponding space ; having, perhaps, some central or equatorial line, but lying, like that of our earth, be- PREMATURE MANHOOD. 69 tween certain tropics, or limits widely separated. This intertropical region may, and generally does, cover a number of years ; and tliercfore, it is hard to say, even for an assigned case, by any tolcra])le approximation, at what precise era it would be reasonable to describe the individual as having ceased to be a boy, and as having attained his inauguration as a man. One such criterion, and one only, as 1 believe, there is — all others are va- riable and uncertain. It lies in the reverential feeling, sometime suddenly developed, towards woman, and the idea of woman. From that moment when women cease to be regarded with carelessness, and when the ideal of womanhood, in its total pomp of loveliness and purity, dawns like some vast aurora upon the mind, boyhood has ended ; childish thoughts and inclinations have passed away for ever ; and the gravity of man- hood, with the self-respecting views of manhood, have commenced. " Mentemque priorem Expulit, atque hominem toto sibi cedere jussit Pectore. ' ' — Lucan . For more than a year, ever}'' thing connected with schools and the business of schools had been growing more and more hateful to me. At first, however, my disgust had Ijeon merely the disgust of weariness and pride. But now, at this crisis, (for crisis it was virtually to me), wlien a ju'cmature development of ray whole mind was rushing in like a cataract, forcing channels for itself and for the new tastes which it introduced, my disgust was no longer simply intellectual, ])ut had deepened into a moral sense as of some inner dignity continually vio- lated. Once the petty round of school tasks had been 70 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. felt as a molestation ; but now, at last, as a degrada- tion. Constant conversation with grown up men for the last half year, and upon topics oftentimes of the gravest order, — the- responsibility that had always in some slight degree settled upon myself since I had become the eldest surviving son of my family, but of late much more so when circumstances had thrown me as an Eng- lish stranger upon the society of distinguished Irish- men, — more, however, than all beside, the inevitable rebound and countergrowth of internal dignity from the everlasting commerce with lofty speculations, these agencies in constant operation had imbittered my school disgust, until it was travelling fast into a mania. Pre- cisely at this culminating point of my self-conflict did a scene occur which I have described with Miss Bl . In that hour another element, which assuredly was not wanted, fell into the seething caldron of new born im- pulses, that, like the magic caldron of Medea, was now transforming me into a new creature. Then first and suddenly I brought powerfully before myself the change ■which was worked in the aspects of society by the pres- ence of woman, pure, thoughtful, noble, coming before me as a Pandora crowned with perfections. Right over against this ennobling spectacle, with equal suddenness, I placed the odious spectacle of school-boy society — no matter in what region of the earth ; school-boy society, so frivolous in the matter of its disputes, often so brutal in the manner ; so childish, and yet so remote from sim- plicity ; so foolishly careless, and yet so revoltingly selfish; dedicated ostensibly to learning, and yet be- yond any section of human beings so conspicuously ignorant. Was it indeed tliat heavenly which I was PREMATURE MANHOOD. 71 soon to exchange for this earthly ? It seemed to me, when contemplating the possibility that I could yet have nearly three years to pass in such society as this, that I heard some irresistible voice saying. Lay aside thy fleshly robes of humanity, and enter for a season into some brutal incarnation. But what connection had this painful prospect with Laxton ? Why should it press upon my anxieties in approaching that mansion, more than it had done at Westport ? Naturally enough, in part, because every day brought me nearer to the horror from which I recoiled : my return to England would recall the atten- tion of my guardians to the question, which as yet had slumbered; and the knowledge that I had reached Northamptonshire would precipitate their decision. Ob- scurely, besides, through a hint which had reached me, I guessed what this decision was likely to be, and it took the very worst shape it could have taken. All this increased my agitation from hour to hour. But all this was quickened and barbed by the certainty of so immediately meeting Lady Carbery. To her it was, and to her only, that I could 1 ook for any useful advice or any eflcctual aid. She, over my mother, as in turn my mother over her, exercised considerable influence ; whilst my mother's power was very seldom disturbed liy the other guardians. The mistress of Laxton it was, therefore, whose opinion upon the case would vir- tually be decisive ; since, if she saw no reasonable en- couragement to any contest with my guardians, I felt too surely that my own uncounteuauced and unaided energies drooped too much for such an efl"ort. Lady Carbery was, to me, individually, the one sole friend 72 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. that ever I could regard as entirely fulfilling the offices of an honorable friendship. She had known me from infancy : when I was in my first year of life, she, an orphan and a great heiress, was in her tenth or eleventh ; and on her occasional visits to " the Farm," (a rustic old house then occupied by my father,) I, a household pet, suffering under an ague, which lasted from my first year to my third, naturally fell into her hands as a sort of superior toy, a toy that could breathe and talk. Every year our intimacy had been renew- ed, until her marriage interrupted it. But, after no very long interval, when my mother had transferred her household to Bath, in that city we frequently met again ; Lord Carbery liking Bath for itself, as well as for its easy connection with London, whilst Lady Car- bery's health was supposed to benefit by the waters. Her understanding was justly reputed a fine one ; but, in general, it was calculated to win respect rather than love, for it was masculine and austere, with very little toleration for sentiment or romance. But to myself she had always been indulgently kind ; I was protected in her regard, beyond any body's power to dislodge me, by her childish remembrances ; and of late years she had begun to entertain the higliest opinion of my intellectual promises. Whatever could bo done to as- sist my views, I most certainly might count upon her doing ; that is to say, within the limits of her conscien- tious judgment upon the propriety of my own plans. Having, besides, so much more knowledge of the world than myself, she might see cause to dissent widely from my view of what was expedient as well as what was right; in which case I was well assured that, in the PREMATUliK MANHOOD. 73 midst of kindness and unaffccteu sympathy, she would firmly adhere to the views o( my guardians. In any circumstances she would have done so. But at present a new element had begun to mix with the ordinary in- fluences which governed her estilnates of things : slie had, as I knew from my sister's report, become reli- gious ; and her new opinions were of a gloomy cast, Calvinistic, in fact, and tending to what is now techni- cally known in England as " LowChurcli," or " Evan- gelical Christianity." These views, being adopted in a great measure from my mother, were naturally the same as my mother's ; so that I could form some guess as to the general spirit, if not the exact direction, in which her counsels would flow. It is singular that, until this time, 1 had never regarded Lady Carbery under any relation whatever to female intellectual so- ciety. My early childish knowledge of her had shut out that mode of viewing her. But now, suddenly, under the newborn sympathies awakened by the scene with Miss Bl , I became aware of the distinguished place she was qualified to fill in such society. In that Eden — for such it had now consciously become to me — I had no necessity to cultivate an interest or so- licit an admission ; already, through Lady Carbery's too flattering estimate of my own pretensions, and through old, childish memories, I held the most distin- guished place. This Eden, she it was that lighted up suddenly to my new-born powers of appreciation in all its dreadful points of contrast with the killing society of schoolboys. She it was, fitted to be the glory of such an Eden, who probably would assist in banishing me for the present to the wilderness outside. My dis- 4 74 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. tress of mind was inexpressible. And, in the midst of glittering saloons, at times also in the midst of society the most fascinating, I — contemplating the idea of that gloomy academic dungeon to which for three long years I anticipated too certainly a sentence of exile — felt very much as in the middle ages must have felt some victim of evil destiny, inheritor of a false, fleeting pros- perity, that suddenly, in a moment of time, by signs blazing out past all concealment on his forehead, was detected as a leper ; and in that character, as a public nuisance and universal horror, was summoned instantly to withdraw from society ; prince or peasant, was in- dulged with no time for preparation or evasion ; and, from the midst of any society, the sweetest or the most dazzling, was driven violently to take up his abode amidst the sorrow-haunted chambers of a lazar house. ******** To teach is to learn : according to an old experi- ence, it is the very best mode of learning — the surest, and the shortest. And hence, perhaps, it may be, that in the middle ages by the monkish word scholaris was meant indifferently he that learned and he that taught. Never in any equal number of months did my under- standing so much expand as during this visit to Laxton. The incessant demand made upon me by Lady Carbery for solutions of the many difficulties besetting the study of divinity and the Greek Testament, or for such ap- proximations to solutions as my resources would fur- nish, forced me into a preternatural tension of all the faculties applicable to that purpose. Lady Carbery insisted upon calling me her " Admirable Crichton ;" and it was in vain that I demurred to this honorary PREMATURE MANHOOD. 75 title upon two grounds : first, as being one towards which I had no natural aptitudes or predisposing ad- vantages ; secondly (which made her stare), as carry- ing with it no real or enviable distinction. The splen- dor supposed to be connected with the attainments of Crichton I protested against, as altogether imaginary. How far that person really had the accomplishments ascribed to him, 1 waived as a question not worth in- vestigating. My objection commenced at an earlier point: real or not real, the accomi)lishments were, as 1 insisted, vulgar and trivial. Vulgar, that is, when put forward as exponents or adequate expressions of intellectual grandeur. The whole rested on a miscon- ception ; the limitary idea of knowledge was con- founded with the infinite idea of power. To have a quickness in copying or mimicking other men, and in learning to do dexterously what they did clumsily, — ostentatiously to keep glittering before men's eyes a thaumaturgic versatility such as that of a ropedancer, or of an Indian juggler, in petty accomplishments, — was a mode of the very vulgarest ambition : one effort of productive power, — a little book, for instance, which should impress or should agitate several succes- sive generations of men, even though far below the higher efforts of human creative art — as, for example, the " De Imitatione Christi," or '' The Pilgrim's Pro- gress," or " Robinson Crusoe," or " The Vicar of Wakefield," — was worth any conceivable amount of attainments when rated as an evidence of anything that could justly denominate a man " admirable." One felicitous ballad of fui'ty lines might have enthroned Crichton as really admirable, whilst the pretensions 76 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. actually put forward on his behalf simply install him as a clcverish or dexterous ape. However, as Lady Car- bery did not forego her purpose of causing me to shine under every angle, it would have been ungrateful in me to refuse my co-operation with her plans, how- ever little they might wear a face of promise. Ac- cordingly I surrendered myself for two hours- daily to the lessons in horsemanship of a principal groom who ranked as a first-rate rough-rider ; and 1 gathered man- ifold experiences amongst the horses — so dilfcrent from the wild, hard-mouthed horses at Westport, that were often vicious, and sometimes trained to vice. Here, though spirited, the horses were pretty generally gentle, and all had been regularly broke. My educa- tion was not entirely neglected even as regarded sports- manship ; that great branch of philosophy being con- fided to one of the keepers, who was very attentive to me, in deference to the interest in myself expressed by his idolized mistress, but otherwise regarded me proba- bly as an object of mysterious curiosity rather than of sublunary hope. Equally, in fact, as regarded my physics and my met- aphysics, — in short, upon all lines of advance that in- terested my ambition, — I was going rapidly ahead. And, speaking seriously, in what regarded my intellec- tual expansion, never before or since had I been so dis- tinctly made aware of it. No longer did it seem to move upon the hour hand, whose advance, though cer- tain, is yet a pure matter of inference, but upon the seconds' hand, which visiblij comes on at a trotting pace. Every thing prospered, except my own present happi-- ness, and the possibility of any happiness for some PREMATDKE MANHOOD. 77 years to come. About two montlis after leaving Lax- ton, my fate in the worst shape I had anticipated was solemnly and definitely settled. My guardians agreed that the most prudent course, with a view to my pecu- niary interests, was to place me at the Manchester Grammar School ; not with a view to further im- provement in my classical knowledge, though the head master was a sound scholar, but simply with a view to one of the school exhibitions* Amongst the countless establishments, scattered all over England by the noble munificence of English men and English women in past genenitions, for connecting the provincial towns with the two royal universities of the land, this Manchester school was one ; in addition to other great local ad- vantages (namely, inter alia, a fine old library and an ecclesiastical foundation, which in this present genera- tion has furnished the materials for a bishopric of Man- * " Exhibitions.'^ — This is the technical name in many cases, corre- sponding to the bursa or bursaries of the continent; from which word bursas is derived, I believe the German term Bursch, — that is, a bur- siii'ius, or student, who lives at college upon the s-dary allowed by such a bursary. Some years ago the editor of a Glasgow diily paper called upon Oxfonland Canil)ridge, witli a patronising flourish, to imitate some one or more of the Scottish universities in founding such systems of ali- ment for poor students otherwise excluded from academic advantages. Evidently he was unaware that they had existed for centuries befoi-e the sfcite of civilization in Scotland had allowed any opening for the foumla^ tio;i of colleges or academic life. Scottish bursaries, or exhibitions (a term which Shakespeare uses, very near the close of the first act in the " Two Gentlemen of Verona," as the technical expression in England), were few, and not generally, I l)clieve, exceeding ten pounds a-year. Tiie English were many, and of more ancient standing and running from forty pounds to one humlred pounds a-j-ear. Such was the simple differ- ence between the two countries : otherwise they agreed altogether. • 78 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. Chester, witli its deanery and chapter), this noble foundation secured a number of exhibitions at Brase- nose College, Oxford, to those pupils of the school who should study at Manchester for three consecutive years. The pecuniary amount of these exhibitions has since then increased considerably through the accumulation of funds, which the commercial character of that great city caused to be neglected. At that time, I believe each exhibition yielded about forty guineas a year, and was legally tenable for seven successive years. Now, to me this would have offered a most seasonable ad- vantage, had it been resorted to some two years earlier. My small patrimonial inheritance gave to me, as it did to my four brothers, exactly one hundred and fifty pounds a year : and to each of my sisters exactly one hundred pounds a year. The Manchester exhibition of forty guineas a year would have raised this income for seven years to a sum close upon two hundred pounds a year. But at present 1 was halfway on the road to the completion of my sixteenth year. Commencing my period of pupilage from that time, I should not have finished it until I had travelled half-way through my nine- teenth year. And the specific evil that already weighed upon mo with a sickening oppression was the premature expansion of my mind ; and, as a foremost consequoiice, intolerance of boyish society. I ought to have entered upon my triennium of school-boy servitude at the ago of thirteen. As things were, — a delay with whicli I had nothing to do myself, — this and the native charac- ter of my mind had thrown the whole arrangement awry. For the better half of the three years I endur- ed it patiently. But it had at length begun to eat more PREMATURE MANHOOD. 79 rorrosively into my peace of mind than ever I had an- ticipated. The head master was substantially superanu- atcd for the duties of tliis place. Not that intellectually he showed any symptoms of decay : but in the spirits and physical energies requisite for his duties he did: not so much age, as disease, it was that incapacitated him. In the course of a long day, beginning at seven A. M. and stretching down to five P. M., he succeeded in reaching the farther end of his duties. But how ? Simply by consolidating pretty nearly into one continu- ous scene of laI)or the entire ten hours. The full hour of relaxation whicli tlic traditions of this ancient school and the ])y-laws had consecrated to breakfast was narrow- ed into ten, or even seven minutes. The two hours' in- terval, in like manner prescribed by the old usages from twelve to two p. m., was pared down to forty minutes, or less. In this way he walked conscientiously through the services of the day, fulfilling to the letter every section the minutest of tlic traditional rubric. But he purclias- ed this consummation at the price of all comfort to him- self : and having done that^ he felt himself tlie more entitled to neglect the comfort of others. Precisely at the worst crisis of this intolerable dark- ness (for such, without exaggeration, it was in its effects upon my spirits) arose, and for five or six months stead- ily continued, a consolation of that nature which hardly in dreams I could have anticipated. For even in dreams would it have seemed reasonable, or natural, that Laxton, with its entire society, should transfer itself to Manchester ? Some mighty caliph, or lamp- bearing Aladdin, might have worked such marvels: but else who, or by what machinery? Nevertheless, with- 80 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. out either caliph or Aladdin, and by the most natural of mere human agencies, this change was suddenly accom- plished. Lady Carbery at this period made an effort to teach me Hebrew, by way of repaying in kind my pains in teaching Greek to her. Where, and upon what motive, she had herself begun to learn Hebrew, I forget : but in Manchester she had resumed this study with energy on a casual impulse derived from a certain Dr. Bailey, a clergyman of this city, who had published a Hebrew Grammar. The Hebrew studies, however, notwith- standing the personal assistance which we drew from the kindness of Dr. Bailey, languished. One day, in a pause of languor amongst these arid Hebrew studies, I read to her, with a beating heart, " The Ancient Mariner." It had been first published in 1798 ; and, about this time (1801), was re-published in the first two-\o\\xmQ edition of " The Lyrical Ballads." Well I knew Lady Carbery's constitutional inaptitude for poetry ; and not for the world would I have sought sympathy from her or from anybody else upon that part of the L. B. which belonged to Wordsworth. But I fancied that the wildness of this tale, and the triple majesties of Solitude, of Mist, and of the Ancient Un- known Sea, might have won her into relenting ; and, in fact, she listened with gravity and deep attention. But, on reviewing afterwards in conversation such pas- sages as she happened to remember, she laughed at the finest parts, and shocked me by calling the mariner himself " an old quiz ;" protesting that the latter part of his homily to the wedding guest clearly pointed him out as the very man meant by Providence for a sti- PREMATURE MANHOOD. 81 pendiary curate to the good Dr. Bailey in his over- crowded church.* With an albatross perched on his shoulder, and who might be introduced to the congre- gation as the immediate organ of his conversion, and supported by the droning of a bassoon, she represented the mariner lecturing to advantage in English ; the doctor overhead in the pulpit enforcing it in Hebrew. Angry I was, though forced to laugh. But of what use is anger or argument in a duel with female criti- cism ? Our ponderous masculine wits are no match for the mercurial f\incy of women. Once, however, I had a triumpli : to my great surprise, one day, she sud- denly repeated by heart, to Dr. Bailey, the beautiful passage — " It ceased, yet still tlie sails made on," &c. — asking what he thought of thai ? As it happened, the simple, childlike doctor had more sensibility than her- self; for, tliough he had never in his whole homely life read more of poetry than he had drunk of Tokay or Constantia, — in fact, liad scarcely heard tell of any poetry but Watts' Hymns, — he seemed petrified : and at last, with a deep sigh, as if recovering from the spasms of a new birth, said, " I never heard anything so beautiful in my whole life." During the long stay of tlie Laxton party in Man- chester, occurred a Christmas ; and at Christmas — tliat is, at the api)roach of this great Christian festival, so properly substituted in England for tlie Pagan festival of January and tlie New Year — there was, according to ancient usage, on tlio breaking up for tlie holidays, *St. James', according to my jircscnt rccollcction. 82 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. at the Grammar School, a solemn celebration of the season by public speeches. Among the six speakers, I, of course (as one of the three boys who composed the head class), held a distinguished place; and it fol- lowed, also, as a matter of course, that all ray friends congregated on this occasion to do me honor. What I had to recite was a copy of Latin verses (Alcaics) on the recent conquest of Malta. Melite Britannis Su- bacta — this was the title of my worshipful nonsense. The whole strength of the Laxton party liad mustered on this occasion. Lady Carbery made a point of bring- ing in her party every creature whom she could influ- ence. And, probably, there were in that crowded au- dience many old Manchester friends of my father, lov- ing his memory, and thinking to honor it by kindness to his son. Furious, at any rate, was the applause which greeted me : furious was my own disgust. Fran- tic were the clamors as I concluded my nonsense. Frantic was my inner sense of shame at the childish cxlnl)ition to whicli unavoidably, I was making myself a party. Lady Carl)cry had, at first, directed towards me occasional glances, expressing a comic sympathy with the thoughts whicli she supposed to be occupying my mind. But these glances ceased ; and I was re- called by the gloomy sadness in her altered counte- nance to some sense of my own extravagant and dis- proportionate frenzy on this occasion : from the indul- gent kindness with which she honored me, her counte- nance on this occasion became a mirror to my own. At night she assured me, when talking over the case, that she had never witnessed an expression of such settled misery, and also (so she fancied) of misanthro- PREMATURE MANHOOD, 83 py, as that whicli darkened my countenance in those moments of apparent public triumph, no matter how trivial the occasion, and amidst an uproar of friendly felicitation. I look back to that state of mind as al- most a criminal reproach to myself, if it were not for the facts of the case. But, in excuse for myself, this fact, al)ove all others, ought to be mentioned — that, over and above the killing oppression to my too sensi- tive system of the monotonous school tasks, and the ruinous want of exercise, I had fallen under medical advice the most misleading that it is possible to imag- ine. The physician and the surgeon of my family were men too eminent, it seemed to me, and, consequently, with time too notoriously bearing a high pecuniary val- ue, for any school-boy to detain them with complaints. Under these circumstances, I threw myself for aid, in a case so simple that any clever boy in a druggist's shop would have known how to treat it, upon the advice of an old, old apothecary, who had full authority from my guardians to run up a most furious account against me for medicine. This. being the regular mode of pay- ment, inevital)ly, and unconsciously, he was biased to a mode of treatment ; namely, by drastic medicines va- ried without end, which fearfully exasperated the com- plaint. This complaint, as 1 now know, was the simp- lest possible derangement of the liver, a torpor in its action that might have been put to rights in three days. In fact, one week's pedestrian travelling amongst the Caernarvonshire mountains effected a revolution in my health such as left me nothing to complain of. Some months after tliis, the Laxton party quitted Manchester, having no further motive for staying. La- 84 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. dy Carbery retired like some golden pageant amongst the clouds ; thick darkness succeeded ; the ancient tor- por reestablished itself ; and my health grew distress- ingly worse. Then it was, after dreadful self-conflicts^ that 1 took the unhappy resolution of which the results are recorded in the " Opium Confessions." It is a bad thing for a boy to be, and know himself, far be- yond his tutors, whether in knowledge or in power of mind. This was the case, so far as regarded knowl- edge at least, not with myself only ; for the two boys who jointly with myself composed the first form were better Grecians than the head-master, though not more elegant scliolars, nor at all more accustomed to sacri- fice to the graces. When I first entered, I remember that we read Sophocles ; and it was a constant matter of triumph to us, the learned triumvirate of the first form, to see our " Archididascalus" (as he loved to be called) conning our lesson before wo went up, and lay- ing a regular train, with lexicon and grammar, for blowing up and blasting (as it were) any difl&culties he found in the choruses ; whilst ive- never condescended to open our books, until the moment of going up, and were generally employed in writing epigrams upon his wig, or some such important matter. My two class- fellows were poor, and dependent, for their future pros- pects at the university, on the recommendation of the head-master ; but I, who had a small patrimonial prop- erty, the income of which was sufiicient to support me at college, wished to be sent thither immediately. I made earnest representations on the subject to my guar- dians, but all to no purpose. One, who was more rea- sonable, and had more knowledge of the world than PREMATURE MANHOOD. 85 the rest, lived at a distance ; two of the other three resigned all their authority into the hands of the fourth ; and this fourth, with whom I had to negotiate, was a worthy man, in his way, but haughty, obstinate, and intolerant of all opposition to his will. After a certain number of letters and personal interviews, I found that I had nothing to hope for, not even a compromise of the matter, from my guardian : unconditional submis- sion was what he demanded ; and I prepared myself, therefore, for other measures. Summer was now com- ing on with hasty steps, and my seventeenth birth-day was fast approaching ; after which day I had sworn within myself that I would no longer be numbered amongst school-boys. It is a just remark of Dr. Johnson's (and, what can- not often be said of his remarks, it is a very feeling one) that we never do anything consciously for the last time (of things, that is, which we have long been in the habit of doing), without sadness of heart. This truth I felt deeply when I came to leave , a place which I did not love, and where I had not been happy. On the evening before I left forever, I grieved when the ancient and lofty school-room resounded with the evening service, performed for the last time in my hearing ; and at night, when the muster-roll of names was called over, and mine (as usual) was called first, I stepped forward, and passing the head-master, who was standing by, I bowed to him, and looking earnestly in his face, thinking to myself, " He is old and infirm, and in this world I shall not see him again." I was right ; I never did see him again, nor never shall. He 86 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. looked at me complacently, smiled good-naturedly, re- turned my salutation (or rather ray valediction), and we parted (though he knew it not) forever. I could not reverence him intellectually ; but he had been uni- formly kind to me, and had allowed me many indul- gences ; and I grieved at the thought of the mortifica- tion I should inflict upon him. The morning came, which was to launch me into the world, and from which my whole succeeding life has, in many important points, taken its coloring. I lodged in the head-master's house, and had been allowed, from my first entrance, the indulgence of a private room, which I used both as a sleeping room and as a study. At half after three I rose, and gazed with deep emotion at the ancient towers of , " drest in earliest light," and beginning to crimson with the radiant lustre of a cloudless July morning. I was firm and immovable in my purpose, but yet agitated by anticipation of uncer- tain danger and troubles ; and if I could have foreseen the hurricane, and perfect hail-storm of aflQiction, which soon fell upon me, well might I have been agitated. To this agitation the deep peace of the morning pre- sented an affecting contrast, and in some degree a med- icine. The silence was more profound than that of midnight : and to me the silence of a summer morning is more touching than all other silence, because, the light being broad and strong, as that of noon-day at other seasons of the year, it seems to differ from per- fect day chiefly because man is not yet abroad ; and thus, tlie peace of nature, and of the innocent creatures of God, seems to be secure and deep, only so long as the presence of man, and his restless and unquiet spirit, PREMATURE MANHOOD. 87 arc not there to tronblo its sanctity. I dressed myself, took my hat and gloves, and lingered a little in the room. For the last year and a half this room had been my "pensive citadel :" here I had read and studied through all the hours of night ; and, though true it was, that, for the latter part of this time, I, who was framed for love and gentle affections, had lost my gay- ety and happiness, during the strife and fever of con- tention with my guardian, yet, on the other hand, as a boy so passionately fond of books, and dedicated to intellectual pursuits, I could not fail to have enjoyed many happy hours in the midst of general dejection. I wept as I looked round on the chair, hearth, writing- table, and other familiar objects, knowing too certainly that I looked upon them for the last time. Whilst 1 write this, it is eighteen years ago ; and yet, at this moment, I see distinctly, as if it were but yesterday, the lineaments and expressions of the object on which I fixed my parting gaze : it was a picture of the love- ly , which hung over the mantel-piece ; the eyes and mouth of which were so beautiful, and the whole countenance so radiant with benignity and divine tran- quillity, that I had a thousand times laid down my pen, or my book, to gather consolation from it, as a devotee from his patron saint. Whilst I was yet gaz- ing upon it, the deep tones of clock proclaimed tliat it was four o'clock. I went up to the picture, kissed it, and then gently walked out, and closed the door forever ! ******** Some anxiety I had, on leaving Manchester, lest my mother should suffer too much from this rash stop ; and 88 BEAUTIES OP DE QUfXCEY-. on tliat impulse I altered the direction of my wander- ings ; not going (as I had originally planned) to the English Lakes, but making first of all for St. John's Priory, Chester, at that time my mother's residence. There I found my maternal uncle, Captain Penson, of the Bengal establishment, just recently come home on a two years' leave of absence ; and there I had an in- terview with my mother. By a temporary arrange- ment I received a weekly allowance, which would have enabled me to live in any district of Wales, either North or South ; for Wales, both North and South, is (or at any rate was) a land of exemplary cheapness. For instance, at Talyllyn, in Merionethshire, or any- where off the line of tourists, I and a lieutenant in our English navy paid sixpence uniformly for a hand- some dinner; sixpence, I mean, apiece. But two months later came a golden blockhead, who instructed the people that it was " sinful" to charge less than three shillings. In Wales, meantime, I suffered griev- ously from want of books ; and fancying, in my pro- found ignorance of the world, that I could borrow money upon my own expectations, or at least, that I could do so with the joint security of Lord Westport (now Earl of Altamont, upon his father's elevation to the Marquisate of Sligo), or (failing thaV) with the se- curity of his amiable and friendly cousin, the Earl of Desart, I had the unpardonable folly to quit the deep tranquillities of North Wales for the uproars, and per- ils, and the certain miseries, of London. I had bor- rowed ten guineas from Lady Carbery ; and at that time, when my purpose was known to nobody, I might have borrowed any sum I pleased. But I could never PREMATURE MANHOOD. 89 again avail myself of that resource, because I must have given some address, in order to insure the receipt of Lady Carbery's answer ; and in that case, so sternly conscientious was she, that, under the notion of saving me from ruin, my address would have been immedi- ately communicated to my guardians, and by them would have been confided to the unrivalled detective talents, in those days, of Townsend, or some other Bow-street officer. IX. THE EUNAWAY. Soon after this, I contrived, by means which I must omit for want of room, to transfer myself to London. And now began the latter and fiercer stage of my long sufferings; without using a disproportionate expression, I might say, of my agony. For I now sufi^ered, for upwards of sixteen weeks, the physical anguish of hunger in various degrees of intensity ; but as bitter, perhaps, as ever any human being can have suffered who has survived it. I would not needlessly harass my reader's feelings by a detail of all that I endured ; for extremities such as these, under any circumstances of heaviest misconduct or guilt, cannot be contemplated, even in description, without a rueful pity that is painful to the natural goodness of the human heart. Let it suffice, at least on this occasion, to say, that a few frag- ments of bread from the breakfast-table of one individ- ual (who supposed me to be ill, but did not know of my being in utter want), and these at uncertain inter- vals, constituted my whole support. During the former part of my sufferings (that is, generally in Wales, and always for the first two months in London), I was houseless, and very seldom slept under a roof. To this constant exposure to the open air I ascribe it, mainly, that I did not sink under my torments. Latterly, how- ever, when cold and more inclement weather came on, (90) THE RUNAWAY. 91 and when, from the length of my sufferings, I had be- gun to sink into a more languishing condition, it was, no doubt, fortunate for me, that the same person to whose breakfast-table I had access, allowed me to sleep in a large unoccupied house, of which he was tenant. Unoccupied, I call it, for there was no household or establishment in it ; nor any furniture, indeed, except a table and a few chairs. But I found, on taking pos- session of my new quarters, that the liouse already con- tained one single inmate, a poor, friendless child, ap- parently ten years old ; but she seemed hunger-bitten ; and sufferings of that sort often make children look older than they are. From this forlorn child I learned, that she had slept and lived there alone, for some time before I came ; and great joy the poor creature express- ed, when she found that 1 was in future to be her com- panion through the hours of darkness. The house was large ; and, from the want of furniture, the noise of the rats made a prodigious echoing on the spacious stair- case and hall ; and, amidst the real flcslily ills of cold, and, I fear, hunger, the forsaken child had found leisure to suffer still more (it appeared) from the self-created one of ghosts. I promised licr protection against all ghosts whatsoever ; but alas ! I could offer her no other assistance. We lay upon the floor, with a Inindle of cursed law papers for a pillow, but with no other cover- ing than a sort of large horseman's cloak ; afterwards, however, we discovered, in a garret, an old sofa-cover, a small piece of rug, and some fragments of other arti- cles, which added a little to our warmth. The poor child crci)t close to me for warmth, and for security against her ghostly enemies. "Wlien I was not more 92 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. than usually ill, I took her in my arms, so that, in gen- eral, she was tolerably warm, and often slept when I could not ; for, during the last two months of my suf- ferings, I slept much in the daytime, and was apt to fall into transient dozings at all hours. But my sleep dis- tressed me more than my watching ; for, besides the tumultuousness of my dreams (which were only not so awful as those which I shall have to describe hereafter as produced by opium), my sleep was never more than what is called dog; sleep; so that I could hear myself moaning, and was often, as it seemed to me, awakened suddenly by my own voice ; and, about this time, a hid- eous sensation began to haunt me as soon as I fell into a slumber, which has since returned upon me, at different periods of my life, namely, a sort of twitching (I know not where, but apparently about the region of the stomach), which compelled me violently to throw out my feet for the sake of relieving it. This sensation coming on as soon as I began to sleep, and the effort to relieve it constantly awakening me, at length I slept only from exhaustion ; and, from increasing weakness (as I said before), I was constantly falling asleep, and constantly awaking. Meantime the master of the house sometimes came in upon us suddenly, and very early ; sometimes not till ten o'clock ; sometimes not at all. lie was in constant fear of baliffs ; improving on the plan of Cromwell, every night he slept in a different quarter of London ; and I observed that he never failed to examine, through a private window, the appearance of those who knocked at the door, before he would allow it to be opened. He breakfasted alone ; indeed, his tea equipage would hardly have admitted of his THE RUNAWAY. 93 hazarding an invitation to a second person, any more than the quantity of esculent material^ which for the most part, was little more than a roll, or a few biscuits, which he had bouglit on his road from the place where he had slept. During his breakfast, I generally con- trived a reason for lounging in ; and, with an air of as much indifference as I could assume, took up such fragments as he had left, — sometimes, indeed, there were none at all. In doing this, I committed no rolv bery, except upon the man himself, who was thus obliged (I believe), now and then, to send out at noon for an extra biscuit ; for, as to the poor child, s/ pose. His situation is generally felt as conferring a degree of rank not much less than episcopal ; and, in fact, the head of Brazcnnose at that time, who happen- ed to be the Bisliop of Bangor, was not held to rauic much above his brothers in office. Such being the rank of heads generally, a fortiori^ that of Christ Church was to be had in reverence ; and this I knew. He is always, ex officio, dean of the diocese ; and, in his quality of college head, he only, of all deans that ever were heard of, is uniformly considered a greater man than his own diocesan. But it happened that the pres- ent dean had even higher titles to consideration. Dr. Cyril Jackson had been tutor to the Prince of Wales (George IV.) ; he had repeatedly refused a bishopric ; and that, perhaps, is entitled to place a man one de- gree above him who has accepted one. He was also supposed to have made a bishop, and afterwards, at least, it is certain that he made his own brother a bish- op. All things weighed, Dr. Cyril Jackson seemed so very great a personage that 1 now felt the value of my long intercourse with great Dons in giving me confi- dence to face a lion of this magnitude. The Dean was sitting in a spacious library or study, elegantly, if not luxuriously furnished. Footmen, sta- tioned as rejieaters, as if at some fashionable rout, gave a momentary importance to my uiuniportant self, by tlie thundering tone of their annunciations. All tlic ma- chinery of aristocratic life seemed indeed to intrench tliis great Don's approaclies ; and I was really sur- prised that so very groat a man sliould condescend to 124 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. rise on my entrance. But I soon found that, if the Dean's station and relation to the higher orders had made him lofty, those same relations had given a pe- culiar suavity to his manners. Here, indeed, as on other occasions, I noticed the essential misconception, as to the demeanor of men of rank, which prevails amongst those who have no personal access to their presence. In the fabulous pictures of novels (such novels as once abounded), and in newspaper reports of conversations, real or pretended, between the king and inferior persons, we often find the writer expressing his sense of aristocratic assumption, by making the king address people without their titles. The Duke of Wel- lington, for instance, or Lord Liverpool, figures usually, in such scenes, as " Wellington," or " Arthur," and as " Liverpool." In a very long conversation of a gen- eral nature upon the course of my studies, and the pres- ent direction of my reading, Dr. Cyril Jackson treated me just as he would have done his equal in station and in age. Coming, at length, to the particular purpose of my visit at this time to himself, he assumed a little more of his official statcliness. He condescended to say that it would have given him pleasure to reckon me amongst his flock ; " but sir," he said, in a tone of some sharpness, " your guardians have acted improper- ly. It was their duty to have given me at least one year's notice of their intention to place you at Christ Church. At present I have not a dog-kennel in my college untenanted." Upon this, I observed that noth- ing remained for me to do but to apolgize for having occupied so much of his time ; that, for myself, I now first heard of this preliminary application ; and that, as OXFORD. 125 to my guardians, I was bound to acquit them of all oversight in tliis instance, they being no parties to my present scheme. The Dean expressed his astonishment at this statement. I, on ray part, was just then mak- ing my parting bows, and had reached the door, when a gesture of the Dean's, courteously waving me back to the sofa I had quitted, invited mo to resume my ex- planations ; and I had a conviction at the moment that the interview would have terminated in the Dean's suspending his standing rule in my favor. But, just at that moment, the thundering heralds of the Dean's hall announced some man of high rank : the sovereign of Christ Church seemed distressed for a moment ; but then recollecting himself, bowed in a way to indicate tlmt I was dismissed. And thus it happened that I did not become a member of Christ Church. A few days passed in thoughtless indecision. At the end of that time, a trivial difficulty arose to settle my determination. I had brought about fifty guineas to Oxford ; but the expenses of an Oxford inn, with al- most daily entertainments to young friends, had made such inroads upon this sum, that, after allowing for the contingencies incident to a college initiation, enough would not remain to meet the usual demand for what is called " caution money." This is a small sum, properly enough demanded of every student, when matriculated, as a pledge for meeting any loss from unsettled arrears, such as his sudden death or his unannounced departure might else continually be inllicting upon liis college. By releasing the college, therefore, from all necessity for degrading vigilance or persecution, this demand 126 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY, does, in effect, operate beneficially to the feelings of all parties. In most colleges it amounts to twenty-five pounds : in one only it was considerably less. And this trifling consideration it was, concurring with a rep- utation at that time for relaxed discipline, which finally determined me in preferring W College to all others. This college had the capital disadvantage, in my eyes, that its chapel possessed no organ, and no musical service. But any other choice would have driven me to an instant call for more money — a meas- ure which, as too flagrantly in contradiction to the whole terms on which I had volunteered to undertake an Oxford life, I could not find nerves to face. The reader will understand that a year spent either in the valleys of Wales, or upon the streets of Lon- don, a wanderer, too often houseless in both situa- tions, might naturally have peopled the mind of one constitutionally disposed to solemn contemplations with memorials of human sorrow and strife too profound to pass away for years. Thus, then, it was — past experience of a very pe- culiar kind, the agitations of many lives crowded into the compass of a year or two, in combination with a 2:)cculiar structure of mind — offered one explanation of the very remarkable and unsocial habits which I adopted at college ; but there was another not less powerful, and not less unusual. In stating this, I shall seem to some persons, covertly designing an affront to Oxford. But that is far from my intention. It is no- ways peculiar to Oxfoi-d, but will, doubtless, be found in every university tliroughout tlie world, that the OXFORD. 127 younger part of the members — the undergraduates, 1 mean, generally, whose chief business must have laia amongst the great writers of Greece and Rome — can- not have found leisure to cultivate extensively their own domestic literature. Not so much that time will have been wanting ; but that the whole energy of the mind, and the main course of the subsidiary studies and re- searches, will naturally have been directed to those difiScult languages amongst which lie their daily tasks. I make it no subject of complaint or scorn, therefore, but simply state it as a fact, that few or none of tlie Oxford undergraduates, with whom parity of standing threw me into collision at my first outset,, knew any- thing at all of English literature. The Spectator seem- ed to me the only English book of a classical rank which they had read ; and even this less for its inimi- table delicacy, humor, and refined pleasantry in dealing with manners and characters, than for its insipid and meagre essays, ethical or critical. This was no fault of theirs : tliey had been sent to tlie book chiefly as a sub- ject for Latin translations, or of other exercises ; and, in such a view, the vague generalities of superficial morality were more useful and more manageable than sketches of manner or character, steeped in national peculiarities. To translate the terms of whig politics into classical Latin, would be as difficult as it might be for a whig himself to give a consistent account of those politics from the year 1688. Natural, however, and excusable, as this ignorance might be, to myself it was intoleraljlc and incomprehcnsi1)lo. Already, at fifteen, I had made myself familiar with the great English poets. 128 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. About sixteen, or not long after, my interest in the story of Chatterton had carried me over the whole ground of the Rowley controversy ; and that contro- versy, by a necessary consequence, had so familiarized me with the " Black Letter," that I had begun to find an im affected pleasure in the ancient English metrical romances ; and in Chaucer, though acquainted as yet only with part of his works, I had perceived and had felt profoundly those divine qualities, which, even at this day, are so languidly acknowledged by his unjust countrymen. With this knowledge, and this enthusias- tic knowledge of the elder poets — of those most re- mote from easy access — I could not well be a stranger in other walks of our literature, more on a level with the general taste, and nearer to modern diction, and, therefore, more extensively multiplied by the press. In some parts, then, having even a profound knowl- edge of our literature, in all parts having some, I felt it to be impossible that I should familiarly associate with those who had none at all ; not so much as a mere historical knowledge of the literature in its capital names and their chronological succession. Do I men- tion this in disparagement of Oxford ? By no means. Among the undergraduates of higher standing, and oc- casionally, perhaps, of my own, I have since learn- ed that many might have been found eminently accom- plished in this particular. But seniors do not seek after juniors ; they must be sought ; and, with my previous bias to solitude, a bias equally composed of impulses and motives, I had no disposition to take trouble in seeking any man for any purpose. OXFORD. 129 But, on this su1)jcct, a fact still remains to be told, of which I am justly proud ; and it will serve, beyond anything else that I can say, to measure the degree of my intellectual development. On coming to Oxford, I had taken up one position in advance of my age by full thirty years : that appreciation of Wordsworth, which it has taken full thirty years to establish amongst the public, I had already made, and had made operative to my own intellectual culture in the same year when I clandestinely quitted school. Already, in 1802, I had addressed a letter of fervent admiration to Mr. Words- worth. I did not send it until the spring of 1803 ; and, from misdirection, it did not come into his hands for some months. But I had an answer from Mr. Words- worth before I was eighteen ; and that my letter was thought to express the homage of an enlightened ad- mirer, may be inferred from the fact that his answer was long and full. *** * * iff * * Oxford, ancient mother ! and thou, Cambridge, twin- light of England ! be vigilant and erect, for the enemy stands at all your gates ! Two centuries almost have passed since the boar was within your vineyards, laying waste and desolating your heritage. Yet that storm was not final, nor that eclipse total. IVfay this also prove but a trial and a shadow of affliction ! which affliction, may it prove to you, mighty incorporations, ^hat, sometimes, it is to us, poor, frail homunculi — a 'jn'occss of purification, a solemn and oracular warning! And, when that cloud is overpast, then, rise, ancient powers, wiser and better — ready, like the Xannadrjcpoqoi 6* 130 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. of oldj to enter upon a second stadium, and to transmit the sacred torch through a second period of twice* five hundred years. So prays a loyal alumuus, whose pre- sumption, if any be, in taking upon himself a monitory tone, is privileged by zeal and filial anxiety. * Oxford may confessedly claim a duration of that extent ; and the pretensions of Cambridge, in that respect, if less aspiring, are however, as I believe, less accurately determined. XII. OPIUM. It is so long since I first took opium, that if it had been a trifling incident in mj life, I might have forgot- ten its date : but cardinal events are not to be forgot- ten ; and, from circumstances connected with it, I re- member that it must be referred to the autumn of 1804. During that season I was in London, having come thith- er for the first time since my entrance at college. And my introduction to opium arose in the following way : From an early age I had been accustomed to wash my head in cold water at least once a day ; being suddenly seized with tooth-ache, I attributed it to some relaxa- tion caused by an accidental intermission of that prac- tice ; jumped out of bed, plunged my head into a basin of cold water, and, with hair thus wetted, went to sleep. The next morning, as I need hardly say, I awoke with excruciating rheumatic pains of the head and face, from which I liad hardly any respite for about twenty days. On the twenty-first day I think it was, and on a Sunday, that I went out into the streets ; rath- er to run away, if possible, from my torments, than with any distinct purpose. By accident, I met a college ac- quaintance, who recommended opium. Opium ! dread agent of unimaginable pleasure and pain ! I had heard of it as I had heard of manna or of ambrosia, but no further ; how unmeaning a sound was it at that time I (131) 132 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. what solemn chords does it now strike upon my heart ! what heart-quaking vibrations of sad and happy remem- brances ! Reverting for a moment to these, I feel a mystic importance attached to the minutest circumstan- ces connected with the place, and the time, and the man (if man he was), that first laid open to me tlie paradise of opium-eaters. It was a Sunday afternooii, wet and cheerless ; and a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London. My road homewards lay through Oxford-street ; and near " the stately Pantheon " (as Mr. Wordsworth has obligingly called it) I saw a druggist's shop. The druggist (unconscious minister of celestial pleasures ! ) as if in sympathy with the rainy Sunday, looked dull and stupid, just as any mortal druggist might be ex- pected to look on a Sunday ; and when I asked for the tincture of opium, he gave it to me as any other man might do ; and, furthermore, out of my shilling return- ed to me what seemed to be a real copper half-penny, taken out of a real wooden drawer. Nevertheless, in spite of such indications of humanity, he has ever since existed in my mind as a beatific vision of an immortal druggist, sent down to earth on a special mission to myself. Arrived at my lodgings, it may be supposed that I lost not a moment in taking the quantity prescribed. I was necessarily ignorant of the whole art and mystery of opium-taking ; and what I took, I took under every disadvantage. But I took it; and in an hour, — oh heavens ! what a revulsion ! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of the inner spirit ! what an apoca- lypse of the world within me ! That my pains had OPIUM. 133 vanished was now a trifle in my eyes ; this negative effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those posi- tive effects which had opened before mc, in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here was a panacea, a (paqnunov venevdeg^ for all human woes ; here was the secret of happiness, about which philos- ophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discov- ered ; happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat-pocket ; portable ecstasies might be had corked up in a pint-bottle ; and peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail-coach. But, if I talk in this way, the reader will think I am laughing ; and I can assure him that nobody will laugh long who deids much with opium : its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion ; and, in his happiest state, the opium-eater cannot present himself in the character of U Allegro ; even then, he speaks and thinks as becomes H Pcnseroso. Nevertheless, I have a very reprehensible way of jesting, at times, in the midst of my own misery ; and, unless when I am checked by some more powerful feelings, I am afraid I shall be guilty of this indecent practice even in these annals of suffering or enjoyment. Courteous, and, I hope, indulgent reader (for all ray readers must be indulgent ones, or else, I fear, I shall shock them too much to count on their courtesy), hav- ing accompanied me thus far, now let mc request you to move onwards, for about eight years ; that is to say, from 1804 (when I said that my acquaintance with opium first began) to 1812. The years of aca- demic life arc now over and gone, — almost forgotten ; 134 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. tlie student's cap no longer presses my temples ; if my cap exists at all, it presses those of some youthful schol- ar, I trust, as happy as myself, and as passionate a lover of knowledge. My gown is, by this time, I dare to say, in the same condition with many thousands of excellent books in the Bodleian, namely, diligently perused by certain studious moths and worms ; or de- parted, however (which is all that I know of its fate), to that great reservoir of somewhere, to which all the tea-cups, tea-caddies, tea-pots, tea-kettles, &c., have de- parted (not to speak of still frailer vessels, such as glasses, decanters, bed-makers, &c.), which occasional resemblances in the present generation of teacups, erhaps, have taken it uni)lushingly ever smce "the rainy Smiday," and " the stately Pantheon," and 136 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. " the beatific druggist" of 1804 ? Even so. And how do I find my health after all this opium-eating ? in short, how do I do ? Why, pretty well, I thank you, reader. At the same time, I have been only a dilettante eater of opium ; eight years' practice, even, with the single precaution of allowing sufficient intervals be- tween every indulgence, has not been sufficient to make opium necessary to me as an article of daily diet. But now comes a difi'erent era. Move on, if you please, reader, to 1813. In the summer of the year we have just quitted, I had suffered much in bodily health from distress of mind connected with a very melancholy event. This event, being no ways related to the sub- ject now before me, further than through bodily illness which it produced, I need not more particularly notice. Whether this illness of 1812 had any share in that of 1813, I know not; but so it was, that, in the latter year, I was attacked by a most appalling irritation of the stomach, in all respects the same as that which had caused me so much suffering in youth, and accompa- nied by a revival of all the old dreams. I postulate that at the time I began to take opium daily, I could not have done otherwise. Whether, in- deed, afterwards, I might not have succeeded in break- ing off the habit, even when it seemed to me that all efforts would be unavailing, and whether many of the innumerable efforts which I did make might not have been carried much further, and my gradual re-conquests of ground lost might not have been followed up much more energetically, — these are questions which I must decline. Perhaps I might make out a case of pallia- tion ; but — shall I speak ingenuously ? — I confess it, OPIUM. 137 as a besettmg infirmity of mine, that I am too much of an Eudasmonist ; I hanker too much after a state of happiness, both for myself and others ; I cannot face misery, whether my own or not, with an eye of sufficient firmness ; and am little capable of encountering pres- ent pain for the sake of any reversionary benefit. Whether desperate or not, however, the issue of the struggle in 1813 was what I have mentioned ; and from this date the reader is to consider me as a regular and confirmed opium-eater, of whom to ask whether on any l)articulaa' day he had or had not taken opium, would be to ask whether his lungs had performed respiration, or the heart fulfilled its functions. You understand now, reader, what I am ; and your are by this time aware, tliat no old gentleman, " with a snow-white beard," will have any chance of persuading me to surrender " the little golden receptacle of the pernicious drug." No. I give notice to all, whether moralists or surgeons, that whatever be their pretensions and skill in their respective lines of practice, they must not hope for any counte- nance from me, if they tliink to begin by any savage jn-oposition for a Lent or Ramadam of abstinence from opium. This, then, being all fully understood between us, we shall in future sail before the wind. Now, then, reader, from 1813, where all tliis time we have been sitting down and loitering, rise up, if you please, and walk forward about three years more. Now draw up the curtain, and you shall see me in a new character. Let there be a cottage, standing in a valley, eighteen miles from any town ; no spacious valley, but about two miles long by three quarters of a mile in average width, • — the benefit of which provision is, that all the families 138 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCET. resident within its circuit will compose, as it were, one larger household, personally familiar to your eye, and more or less interesting to your affections. Let tho mountains be real mountains, between three and four thousand feet high, and the cottage a real cottage, not (as a witty author has it) " a cottage with a double coach-house ; " let it be, in fact (for I must abide by the actual scene), a white cottage, embowered with flowering shrubs, so chosen as to unfold a succession of flowers upon the walls, and clustering around .the win- dows, through all the months of spring, summer, and autumn ; beginning, in fact, with May roses, and ending with jasmine. Let it, however, not be spring, nor sum- mer, nor autumn ; but winter, in its sternest shape. From the latter weeks of October to Christmas-eve, therefore, is the period during which happiness is in season, which, in my judgment, enters the room with the tea-tray ; for tea, though ridiculed by those who are naturally of coarse nerves, or are become so from wine- drinking, and are not susceptible of influence from so refined a stimulant, will always be the favorite beverage of the intellectual ; and, for my part, I would have joined Dr. Johnson in a helium inLernecinum against Jonas Hanway, or any other impious person who should presume to disparage it. But here, to save myself the trouble of too much verbal description, I will introduce a painter, and give him directions for the rest of the picture. Painters do not like white cottages, unless a good deal weather-stained ; but, as the reader now understands that it is a winter night, his services will not be required except for the inside of the house. Paint mCj then, a room seventeen feet by twelve, and OPIUM. 189 not more tliau seven and a half feet high. This, reader, is somcwliat ambitiously styled, in my family, the draw- ing-room ; but, being contrived " a double debt to pay," it is also, and more justly, termed the library ; for it happens that books are the only article of property in which I am richer than my neighbors. Of these I have about five thousand, collected gradually since my eight- eenth year. Therefore, painter, put as many as you can into this room. Make it populous with books, and furthermore, paint me a good fire; and furniture plain and modest, befitting the nn])rctending cottage of a scholar. And near the fire paint me a tea-tal)lc ; and (as it is clear tlmt no creature can come to see one, such a stormy night) place only two cups and saucers on the tea-tray ; and if you know how to paint such a thing symbolically, or otherwise, paint me an eternal tea-pot, — a parte awYfi, and a parte post; fori usually drink tea from eight o'clock at night to four in the morning. Anu, as it is very unpleasant to make tea, or to pour it out for one's self, paint me a lovely young woman, sit- ting at the table. Paint her arms like Aurora's, and lier smiles like Hebe's ; — but no, dear Af., not even in jest let rac insinuate that thy power to illuminate my cottage rests upon a tenure so perishable as mere per- sonal beauty ; or that the witchcraft of angelic smiles lies within the empire of any earthly pencil. Pass, then, my good painter, to something more within its power ; and the next article brought forward should naturally 1)0 myself, — a picture of the Opium-cater, with his " little golden receptacle of tlie pernicious drug" lying beside him on tlic table. As to the opium, I have no objection to see a picture of that, though I 140 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. ■would rather see the original ; you may paint it if you choose : but I apprize you that no " little" receptacle would even in 1816, answer my purpose, who was at a dis- tance from the " stately Pantheon," and all druggists (mortal or otherwise). No : you may as well paint the real receptacle, which was not of gold, but of glass, and as much like a wine decanter as possible. Into this you may put a quart of ruby-colored laudanum ; that, and a book of German metaphysics placed by its side, will suf&ciently attest my being in the neighborhood ; but as to myself, there I demur. I admit that, naturally, I ought to occupy the foreground of the picture; that being the hero of the piece, or, (if you choose) the criminal at the bar, my body should be had into court. This seems reasonable ; but why should I confess, on this point, to a painter ? or, why confess at all ? If the public) into whose private ear I am confidentially whispering my confessions, and not into any painter's) should chance to have framed some agreeable picture for itself of the Opium-eater's exterior, — should have ascribed to him, romantically, an elegant person, or a handsome face, why should I barbarously tear from it so pleasing a delusion, — pleasing both to the public and to me ? No : paint me, if at all, according to your own fancy ; and, as a painter's fancy should teem with beautiful creations, I cannot fail, in that way, to be a gainer. And now, reader, we have run through all the ten categories of my condition, as it stood about 1816 — 1817, up to the middle of which latter year I judge myself to have been a happy man ; and the elements of that happiness I have endeavored to place before you, in the above sketch of the interior of a scholar's library, OPITBI. 141 in a cottage among the mountains, on a stormy winter evening. But now farewell, along farewell, to happiness, winter or summer ! farewell to smiles and laughter ! farewell to peace of mind ! farewell to hope and tranquil dreams, and to the blessed consolations of sleep ! For more than three years and a half I am summoned away from these ; I am how arrived at an Iliad of woes. ******** XIII. FIRST PLUNGE INTO AUTHORDOM. In 1821, when I went up to London, avowedly for the purpose of exercising my pen, as the one sole sourco then open to me for extricating myself from a special embarassment, (failing which case of dire necessity, I believe that I should never have written a line for the press ; ) I obtained an introduction, from Mr. Talfourd, to Messrs. Taylor and Hersey, who had very recently purchased " The London Magazine^^^ and were them- selves joint editors of that journal. Tlie terms they held out to contributors were ultra- munificent, — more so than had yet been heard of in any quarter whatsoever ; and upon that understanding — ■ seeing that money was just then of necessity, the one sole object to which I looked in the cultivation of lite- rature, — naturally enough it happened that to them I offered my earliest paper, viz., " The Confessions of an English Opium Eater." The London Magazine was at that time brilliantly supported and, in 1821-23, amongst my own collabo raleurs were : — Charles Lamb ; Hazlitt ; Allan Cun- ningham ; Hood; Hamilton. Reynolds ; Carey, the un- rivalled translator of Dante ; Crow, the Public Orator of Oxford. Certainly a literary Pleiad might have been gathered out of the stars connected with this journal. (142) FIRST PLUNGE INTO AUTHORDOM. 143 In London I lived in the most austere retirement ; and the few persons wliom I saw occasionally, or whose hospitalities I received, were g-ens de plume, and pro- fessedly of my own order a-5 ^iractising- literati, but of the highest pretensions. XIV. MY HOME. From 1808-9, through a period of about twenty years in succession, I may describe my domicil as be- ing amongst the lakes and mountains of Westmoreland. It is true, I often made excursions to London, Bath, and its neighborhood, or northwards to Edinburgh ; and, perhaps, on an average, passed one fourth of each year at a distance from this district ; but here only it was that henceforwards I had a house and a small es- tablishment. The house, for a very long course of years, was the cottage in Grasmere, hallowed to the ad- mirers of Mr. Wordsworth, by his seven years' occupa- tion of its pretty chambers and its rocky orchard ; a little domain which he has himself apostrophised as the " lowest stair in that magnificent temple, forming the north-eastern boundary of Grasmere." In Westmoreland, I found more and more a shelter and an anchor for my own feelings. Originally, the motive which drew me to this - country, in combination with its own exceeding beauty, had been the society of Wordsworth. Other attractions l)ad arisen ; different in kind ; equally potent in degree. These stepped in to enchain me, precisely as my previous chains were unlinking themselves, and leaving me in freedom. (144) DREAMS. INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. In 1821, as a contribution to a periodical work, — in 1822, as a separate volume, — appeared the " Con- fessions of an English Opium-Eater." The object of that work was to reveal something of the grandeur which belongs potentially to human dreams. Whatever may be the number of those in whom tliis faculty of dreaming splendidly can be supposed to lurk, there are not perhaps very many in Avhom it is developed. He whose talk is of oxen, will probably dream of oxen, and tlie condition of human life whicli yokes so vast a majority to a daily experience incompatible with mucli elevation of thought, oftentimes neutralizes the tone of grandeur in the reproductive faculty of dreaming, even for those whose minds are populous with solemn im- agery. Habitually to dream magnificently, a man must Inive a constitutional determination to reverie. This in the first place, and even this, where it exists strongly, is too much liable to disturbance from the gathering agitation of our present English life. Already, in this year 1845, what by the procession tlirough fifty years of mighty revolutions amongst the kingdoms of the earth, what by the continual development of vast phy- sical agencies, — steam in all its applications, light getting under harness as a slave for man,* powers from heaven descending ui)on education and accelerations of the press, powers from hell (as it might seem, but tlicse * DagiiciTCotj'pe, &c. (147) 148 BEAUTlEo OF DE QUINCEY. also celestial) coming round upon artillery and the forces of destruction, — the eye of the calmest observ- er is troubled ; the brain is haunted as if by some jealousy of ghostly beings moving amongst us ; and it becomes too evident that, unless this colossal pace of advance can be retarded (a thing not to be expected), or, which is happily more probable, can be met by counter forces of corresponding magnitude, forces in the direction of religion or profound philosophy, that shall radiate centrifugally against this storm of life so perilously centripetal towards the vortex of the merely human, left to itself, the natural tendency of so chaotic a tumult must be to evil ; for some minds to lunacy, for others to a reagency of fleshly torpor. How much this fierce condition of eternal hurry upon an arena too exclusively human in its interests is likely to defeat the grandeur which is latent in all men, may be seen in the ordinary effect from living too constantly in varied com- pany. The word dissipation, in one of its uses, ex- presses that effect ; the action of thought and feeling is too much dissipated and squandered. To reconcen- trate them into meditative habits, a necessity is felt by all observing persons for sometimes retiring from crowds. No man ever will unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least checker his life with solitude. IIow much solitude, so much power. Or, if not true in that rigor of expression, to this for- mula undoubtedly it is that the wise rule of life must approximate. Among the powers in man which suffers by this too intense life of the social instincts, none suffers more than the power of dreaming. Let no man think this a DREAMS. 149 trifle. Tlic machinery for dreaming planted in the lin- man brain was not planted for nothing. That faculty, in alliance with the mystery of darkness, is the one great tube tlirougli which man conmiunicates with the shadowy. And the dreaming organ, in connection with the heart, the eye and tlie car, compose the magnificent a])paratus which forces the infinite into the chanil)ers of a human brain, and throws dark reflections from eternities below all life upon the mirrors of the slee]> ing mind. But if this faculty suffers from the decay of solitude, which is becoming a visionary idea in England, on the other hand, it is certain that some merely physical agencies can and do assist the faculty of dreaming al- most preternaturally. Amongst these is intense exer- cise ; to some extent at least, and for some persons ; but beyond all others is opium, which indeed seems to possess a specific })ower in that direction ; not merely for exalting the colors of dream-scenery, but for deep- ening its shadows ; and, above all, for strengthening the sense of its fearful realities. The first notice I had of any important change going on in this part of my physical economy, was from the reiiwaking of a state of eye generally incident to childhood, or exalted states of irritability. I know not whether my reader is aware that many children, perhaps most, have a power of painting, as it were, upon the darkness, all sorts of phantoms : in some that power is simply a mechanic affection of the eye ; others have a voluntary or semi-voluntary power to dismiss oi* summon them ; or, as a cliild once said to me, when I questioned him €n this matter, " I can tell them to go, 150 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. and thoy go ; but sometimes they come when I don't tell them to come." In the middle of 1817, I think it was, that this faculty became positively distressing to me : at night, when I lay awake in bed, vast proces- sions passed along in mournful pomp ; friezes of never- ending stories, that to my feelings were as sad and solemn as if they were stories drawn from times before (Edipus or Priam, before Tyre, before Memphis. And, at tlie same time, a corresponding change took place in my dreams ; a theatre seemed suddenly opened and lighted up within my brain, which presented, nightly, spectacles of more than earthly splendor. And the four following facts may be mentioned, as noticeable at this time : I. That, as the creative state of the eye increased, a sympathy seemed to arise between the waking and the dreaming states of the brain in one point, — that what- soever I happened to call up and to trace by a volun- tary act upon the darkness was very apt to transfer it^ self to my dreams ; so that I feared to exercise this faculty ; for, as Midas turned all things to gold, that yet baiSed his hopes and defrauded his human desires, so whatsoever things capable of being visually repre- sented I did but think of in the darkness, immediately shapecl, themselves into phantoms of the eye ; and, by a process apparently no less inevitable, when thus once traced in faint and visionary colors, like writings in sympathetic ink, they were drawn out, by the tierce cheiiiistry of my dreams, into insufferable splendor that fretted my licart. II. For this, and all other changes in my dreams, Avere accompanied by deep seated anxiety and gloomy DREAMS. 151 melancholy, such as are wliolly incommunicable by words. I seemed every night to descend — not meta- phorically, but literally to descend — into chasms and sunless abysses, depths below depths, from which it ! eemed hopeless that 1 could ever reiiscend. Nor did I, by waking, feel that I had reiiscended. This I do not dwell upon ; because the state of gloom \yhich at- tended these gorgeous spectacles, amounting at least to utter darkness, as of some suicidal despondency, can- not be approached by words. III. The sense of space, and in the end the sense of time, were both powerfully affected. Buildings, land- scapes, (fee, were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive. Space swelled, and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity. This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time. I sometimes seemed to have lived for seventy or one hundred years in one night ; nay, sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium, passed in that time, or, however, of a duration far be- yond the limits of any human experience. IV. The minutest incidents of childhood, or forgot- ten scenes of later years, were often revived. I could not be said to recollect them ; for if I had been told of them when waking, I sliould not have been able to acknowledge tlieui as parts of my past experience. But placed as they were before me, in dreams like intui- tions, and dollied iu all their evanescent circumstances and acc(^mpauyiiig feelings, I recognized them instan- taneously. I was once told by a near relative of mine, that having in her childhood fallen into a river, and being on tlie very verge of death but for the critical 152 DEAUTIE:^ OF DK QUINCEY. assistance which reached her, she saw in a moment her whole life, in its minutest incidents, arrayed before her simultaneously as in a mirror ; and she had a faculty developed as suddenly for comprehending the whole and every part. This, from some opium experiences of mine, I can believe ; I have, indeed, seen the same thing asserted twice in modern books, and accompanied by a remark which I am convinced is true, namely, that the dread book of account, which the Scriptures speak of, is, in fact, the mind itself of each individual. Of this, at least, I feel assured, that there is no such thing as forg-etting- possible to the mind ; a thousand accidents may and will interpose a veil between our present consciousness and the secret inscriptions on the mind. Accidents of the same sort will also rend away this veil ; but alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains forever ; just as the stars seem to withdraw before the common light of day, whereas, in fact, we all know that it is the light which is drawn over them as a veil ; and that they are waiting to be reveal- ed, when the obscuring daylight shall have withdrawn. June, 1819. — I have had occasion to remark, at various periods of my life, that the deaths of those whom we love, and, indeed, the contemplation of death generally, is {cccteris paribus') more afiecting in sum- mer than in any other season of the year. And the reasons are these three, I think : first, that the visible heavens in summer appear far higher, more distant, and (if such a solecism may be excused) more infinite ; the clouds by which chiefly the eye expounds the distance of the blue pavilion stretched over our heads are in summer more voluminous, massed, and accumulated in DREAMS. 153 fill- grander and more towering piles : secondly, the light and the appearance of the declining and the set- ting sun are much more fitted to be types and charac- ters of the infinite : and, thirdly (which is the main reason), the exuberant and riotous prodigality of life naturally forces the mind more powerfully upon the an- tagonist thought of death, and the wintry sterility of tlie grave. For it may be observed, generally, that wliorever two thoughts stand related to each other by a law of antagonism, and exist, as it were, by mutual repulsion, they are apt to suggest each other. On these accounts it is that I find it impossible to banish the thouglit of death when I am walking alone in the end- less days of summer ; and any particular death, if not uiovc affecting, at least haunts my mind more obsti- nately and besiegingly, in that season. Perhaps this cause, and a slight incident which I omit, might have been the immediate occasion of the following dream, to which, however, a predisposition must always have existed in my mind; but having been once housed, it never left me, and split into a tliousand fantastic va- rieties, which often suddenly reunited, and composed again the original dream. 1 thought that it was a Sunday morning in May ; that it was Easter Sunday, and as yet very early in the morning. I was standing, as it seemed to me, at the door of my own cottage, Right before me lay the very scene which could really be commanded from that situ- ation, but exalted, as was usual, and solemnized by the power. of dreams. There were the same mountains, and the same lovely valley at their feet ; but the moun- tains were raised to more than Alpine hciglit, and tliere 7* 154 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. was interspace far larger between them of meadows and forest lawns ; the hedges were rich with white roses ; and no living creature was to be seen, except- ing that in the green church-yard there were cattle tranquilly reposing upon the verdant graves, and par- ticularly round about the grave of a child whom I had tenderly loved, just as I had really beheld them, a lit- tle before sunrise, in the same summer, when that child died. I gazed upon the well-known scene, and I said aloud (as I thought) to myself, " It yet wants much of sunrise ; and it is Easter Sunday ; and that is the day on which they celebrate the first fruits of resurrection. I will walk abroad ; old griefs sliall be forgotten to- day ; for the air is cool and still, and the hills are high, and stretch away to heaven ; and the forest glades are as quiet as the church-yard ; and with the dew I can wash the fever from my forehead, and then I shall be unhappy no longer." And I turned, as if to open my garden gate ; and immediately I saw upon the left a scene far different ; but which yet the power of dreams had reconciled into, harmony with the other. The scene was an oriental one ; and there also it was Easter Sun- day, and very early in the morning. And at a vast distance were visible, as a stain upon the horizon, tlie domes and cupolas of a great city — an image or faint abstraction, caught, perhaps, in childhood, from some picture of Jerusalem. And not a bow-shot from me, upon a stone, and shaded by Judean palms, there sat a woman; audi looked, and it was — Ann! Slie fixed her eyes upon me earnestly ; and I said to her, at-lengtli, " So, then, I have found you, at last." I waited ; but she answered me not a word. Her face was the same DREAMS. 155 as when I saw it last, and yet, again, how cliflFerent ! Seventeen years ago, when the lamp-light fell upon her face, as for the last time I kissed her lips (lips. Ann, that to me were not polluted !), her eyes were stream- ing with tears ; — her tears were now wiped away ; she seemed more beautiful than she was at that time, but in all other points the same, and not older. Her looks were tranquil, but with unusual solemnity of expression, and I now gazed upon her with some awe ; but sud- denly her countenance grew dim, and, turning to the mountains, I perceived vapors rolling between us ; in a moment, all had vanished ; thick darkness came on ; and in the twinkling of an eye I was far away from mountains, and by lamp-light in Oxford-street, walking again with Ann — just as we walked seventeen years before, when we were both children. I cite one of a different character, from 1820. The dream commenced with a music which now I often heard in dreams — a music of preparation and of awakening suspense ; a music like the opening of the Coi'onation Anthem, and which, like that, gave the feeling of a vast march, of infinite cavalcades filing off, and the tread of innumerable armies. The morning was come of a mighty day — a day of crisis and of final hope for human nature, then suffering some mysterious eclipse, and laboring in some dread extremity. Some- where,! knew not where — somehow, I knew not how — by some beings, I knew not whom — a battle, a strife, an agony, was conducting, — was evolving like a great drama, jor piece of music ; with which my sympathy was the more insupportable from my confusion as to its place, its cause, its nature, and its possible issue. I, 156 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. as is usual in dreams (where, of necessity, we make ourselves central to every movement), had the power, and yet had not the power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself, to will it ; and yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. " Deeper than ever plummet sounded," I lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, the passion deepened. Some greater interest was at stake ; some mightier cause than ever yet the sword had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms ; hurryings to and fro ; trepidations of innumerable fugitives. I knew not whether from the good cause or the bad ; darkness and lights ; tempest and human faces ; and at last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were worth all the world to me, and but a moment allowed, — and clasped hands, and heart- breaking partings, and then — everlasting farewells ! and, with a sigh, such as the caves of hell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of death, the sound was reverberated — everlasting fare- wells ! and again, and yet again reverberated — ever- lasting farewells ! And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud — "1 will sleep no more !" LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OP SORROW. Oftentimes at Oxford I saw Levana in my dreams. I knew her by her Roman symbols. Who is Levana ? Reader, that do not pretend to have leisure for very much scholarship, you will not be angry with me for telling you. Levana was the Roman goddess that per- formed for the new-born infant the earliest office of en- nobling kindness, — typical, by its mode, of that gran- deur which belongs to man everywhere, and of that be- nignity in powers invisible which even in Pagan worlds sometimes descends to sustain it. At the very moment of birth, jnst as the infant tasted for the first time the atmosphere of our troubled planet, it was laid on the ground. That might bear different interpretations. But innnediately, lest so grand a creature should gro- vel tliere for more than one instant, either the paternal luind, as proxy for the goddess Levana, or some near kinsman, as proxy for the father, raised it upright, bade it look erect as the king of all this world, and presented its forehead to the stars, saying, perhaps, in his heart, " Behold what is greater than yourselves I " This symbolic act represented the function of Levana. And that mysterious lady, who never revealed her face (except to me in dreams), but always acted by delega- tion, had her name from the Latin verb (as still it is the Italian verb) levare, to raise aloft. This is the explanation of Levana. And hence it (157) 158 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. has arisen that some people have understood by Levana the tutelary power that controls the education of the nursery. She, that would not suffer at his birth even a prefigurative or mimic degradation for her awful ward, far less could be supposed to suffer the real degradation attacliing to the non-development of his powers. She therefore watches over human education. Now, the word ediico, with the penultimate short, was derived (by a process often exemplified in the crystallization of languages) from the word educo, with the penultimate long. Whatsoever educes^ or develops, educates. By the education of Levana, therefore, is meant, — not the poor machinery tliat moves by spelling-books and gram- mars, but by that mighty system of central forces hid- den in the deep bosom of human life, which by passion, by strife, by temptation, by the energies of resistance, works forever upon children, — resting not day or night, any more than the mighty wheel of day and night themselves, whose moments, like restless spokes, are glimmering forever as they revolve. If, then, these are the ministries by whicli Levana works, how profoundly must" she reverence the agen- cies of grief ! But you, reader ! think, — that children generally are not liable to grief such as mine. There are two senses in the word generally, — the sense of Euclid, where it means universally (or in the whole extent of the genus}, and a foolish sense of this world, where it means usually. Now, I am far from saying that children universally are capable of grief lilve mine. But there are more than you ever lieard of who die of grief in this island of ours. I will tell you a common case. The rules of Eton require that a boy on the LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW. 159 foundation should be there twelve years : he is super- annuated at eighteen, consequently he must come at six. Children torn away from mothers and sisters at that age not unfrequeutly die. I speak of what I know. The conii)laint is not entered by the registrar as grief ; but that it is. Grief of that sort, and at that age, has killed more than ever have been counted amongst its martyrs. Therefore it is that Levana often communes with the powers that shake man's heart : therefore it is that she dotes upon grief. " These ladies," said I softly to my- self, on seeing the ministers with whom Levana was conversing, " these are the Sorrows ; and they are three in number, as the Graces arc three, who dress man's life with beauty : the Parcm are three, who weave the dark arras of man's life in their mysterious loom al- ways with colors sad in part, sometimes angry with tragic crimson and black ; the Furies are three, who visit with retributions called from the other side of the grave offences that walk upon this ; and at once even the Muses were but three, who fit the harp, the trum- pet, or the lute, to the great burdens of man's impas- sioned creations. These are the Sorrows, all three of whom I know." The last words I say now ; but in Oxford I said, '* one of whom I know, and the others too surely I shall know." For already, in my fervent youth, I saw (dimly relieved upon the dark back-ground of my dreams) the imperfect lineaments of the awful sisters. These sisters — by what name shall we call them ? If I say simply, " The Sorrows," there will be a chance of mistaking the term ; it might be understood 160 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. of individual sorrow, — separate cases of sorrow, — whereas I want a term expressing the mighty abstrac- tions that incarnate themselves in all individual suffer- ings of man's heart ; and I wish to have these abstrac- tions presented as impersonations, that is, as clothed with human attributes of life, and with functions point- ing to flesh. Let us call them, therefore. Our Ladies of Sorroiv. I know them thoroughly, and have walk- ed in all their kingdoms. Three sisters they are, of one mysterious household ; and their paths are wide apart ; but of their dominion there is no end. Them I saw often conversing with Levana, and sometimes about myself. Do they talk, then ? 0, No ! Mighty phan- toms like these disdain the infirmities of language. They may utter voices through the organs of man when they dwell in human hearts, but amongst themselves is no voice nor sound ; eternal silence reigns in their kingdoms. They spoke not, as they talked with Le- vana ; they whispered not ; they sang not ; though of- tentimes methought they might have sung : for I upon earth had heard their mysteries oftentimes deciphered by harp and timbrel, by dulcimer and organ. Like God, whose servants they are, they utter their pleasure not by sounds that perish, or by words that go astray, but by signs in heaven, by changes on earth, by pulses in secret rivers, heraldries painted on darkness, and hieroglyphics written on the tablets of the brain. They wheeled in mazes ; / spelled the steps. They tele- graphed from afar ; / read the signals. TJiey con- spired together ; and on the mirrors of darkness »«.?/ eye traced the plots. Theirs were the symbols ; mine are the words. LEVAXA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW. 101 What is it the sisters arc ? What is it that they do ? Let me describe their form, and their presence ; if form it were that still fluctuated in its outline ; or presence it were that forever advanced to the front, or forever receded amongst shades. The eldest of the three is named Mater Lachry- tnarvm, Our Lady of Tears. She it is that night and day raves and moans, calling for vanished faces. She stood in Rama, where a voice was heard of lanienta- tiou, — Rachel weei)ing for her children, and refused to be comforted. She it was that stood in Bethlehem on the night when Herod's sword swept its nurseries of Innocents, and the little feet were stiffened forever, which, heard at times as they tottered along floors overhead, woke pulses of love in household hearts that were not unmarked in heaven. Her eyes are sweet and subtile, wild and sleepy, by turns ; oftentimes rising to the clouds, oftentimes chal- lenging the heavens. She wears a diadem round her head. And I knew by childish memories that she could go abroad upon the winds, when she heard that sobbing of litanies, or the thundering of organs, and when she beheld the mustering of summer clouds. This sister, the elder, it is that carries keys more than papal at her girdle, wliicli open every cottage and every palace. She, to my knowledge, sate all last summer by the bed- side of the blind beggar, him that so often and so gladly 1 talked with, whose pious daughter, eight years old, with tlie sunny countenance, resisted the temptations of play and village mirth to travel all day long on dusty roads with her afflicted father. For this did God send her a great reward, hi the spring-time of 162 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINOEY. the year, and whilst yet her own spring was budding, he recalled her to himself. But her blind father mourns forever over her ; still he dreams at midnight that the little guiding hand is locked within his own ; and still he wakens to a darkness that is novj witliin a second and a deeper darkness. This Mater Larhrymarum also has been sitting all this winter of 1844-5 within the bedchamber of the Czar, bringing before liis eyes a daughter (not less pious) that vanished to God not less suddenly, and left behind her a darkness not less profound. By the power of her keys it is that Our Lady of Tears glides a ghostly intruder into the cham- ber of sleepless men, sleepless wonlen, sleepless chil- dren, from Ganges to the Nile, from Nile to Mississippi. And her, because she is the first-born of her house, and has the widest empire, let us honor with the title of " Madonna." The second sister is called Mater Suspiriorum, Our Lady of Sighs. She never scales the clouds, nor walks abroad upon the winds. She wears no diadem.- And her eyes, if they were ever seen, would be neither sweet nor subtile ; no man could read their story; they would be found filled with perishing dreams, and with wrecks of forgotten delirium. But she raises not her eyes ; her head, on which sits a dilapidated turban, droops forever, forever fastens on the dust. She weeps not. She groans not. But she sighs inaudibly at in- tervals. Her sister Madonna is oftentimes stormy and fi-antic, raging in the higliest against heaven, and dc- uuuidiug back her . darlings. But Our Lady of Sighs never clamors, never defies, dreams not of rebellious aspirations. She is humble to abjectness. Hers is the LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SOiriOW. 163 meekness that belongs to the hopeless. Murmur she may, but it is in her sleep. Whisper she may, but it is to herself in the twilight, flutter she does at times, but it is in solitary places that are desolate as she is desolate, in ruined cities, and when the sun has gone down to his rest. This sister is the visitor of the Pa- riah, of the Jew, of the bondsman to the oar in the Mediterranean galleys ; of the English criminal in Nor- folk Island, blotted out from the books of remembrance in sweet far-off England ; of the baffled penitent revert- ing his eyes forever upon a solitary grave, which to him seems the altar overthrown of some past and bloody sacrifice, on which altar no oblations can now be avail- ing, whether towards pardon that he might implore, or towards reparation that he might attempt. Every slave that at noonday looks up to the tropical sun witli timid reproach, as he points with one hand to the earth, our general mother, but for him a step-mother, — as he points with the other hand to the Bible, our general teacher, but against him sealed and sequestered; — every woman sitting in darkness, without love to shel- ter her head, or hope to illumine her solitude, because the heaven-born instincts kindling in her nature germs of holy affections, which God implanted in her wo- manly bosom, having been stifled by social necessities, now burn sullenly to waste, like sepulchral lamps amongst the ancients ; every nun defrauded of her un- returning May-time by wicked kinsman, whom God will judge ; every captive in every dungeon ; all that are betrayed, and all that are rejected ; outcasts by tradi- tionary law, and children of hereditary disgrace, — all these walk with Our Lady of Sighs. She also carries 164 BEAUTIES OF DR (^UINCEY. a key ; but she needs it little. For her kingdom is chiefly amongst the tents of Shem, and the houseless vagrant of every clime. Yet in the very highest ranks of man she finds chapels of her own ; and even in glo- rious England there are some that, to the world, carry their heads as proudly as the reindeer, who yet se- cretly have received her mark upon their foreheads. But the third sister, who is also the youngest ! Hush ! whisper whilst we talk of her ! Her kingdom is not large, or else no flesh should live ; but witlihi that kingdom all power is hers. Her head, turrctod like that of Cybele, rises almost beyond the reach of sight. She droops not ; and her eyes rising so high might be hidden by distance. But, being what they are, they cannot be hidden ; through the treble veil of crape which she wears, the fierce liglit of a blazing misery, that rests not for matins or for vespers, for noon of day or noon of night, for ebbing or for flowing tide, may be read from the very ground. She is the defier of God. She also is the mother of lunacies, and the sug- gestress of suicides. Deep lie the roots of her power ; but narrow is the nation that she rules. For she can approach only those in whom a profound nature has been upheaved by central convulsions ; in whom the heart trembles and the brain rocks under conspiracies of tempest from without and tempest from within. Ma- donna moves with uncertain steps, fast or slow, but still with tragic grace. Our Lady of Sighs creeps tim- idly and stealthily. But this youngest sister moves with incalculable motions, bounding, and with a tiger's leaps. She carries no key ; for, though coming rarely amongst men, she storms all doors at which she is per- LEVANA AND OUR LADIKS OP'SOIUIOW. 165 initlcd to enter at all. Aud her name is Mater Tene- brarum, — Our Lady of Darkness. These were the Semnai Theai, or Sublime Goddess- es,* these were the Eumenides, or Gracious Ladies (so called by antiquity in shuddering propitiation) of my Oxford dreams. Madonna spoke. She spoke by her mysterious hand. Touching my head, she beckoned to Our Lady of Sighs ; and ivhat she spoke, translated out of the signs which (except in dreams) no man reads, was this : " Lo I here is he, whom in childhood I dedicated to my altars. This is he that once I made my darling. Him I led astray, him I beguiled, and from heaven I stole away his young heart to mine. Through me did he become idolatrous ; and through me it was, by lan- guishing desires, that he worshipped the worm, and prayed to the wormy grave. Holy was the grave to him ; lovely was its darkness ; saintly its corruption. Him, this young idolater, I have seasoned for thee dear gentle Sister of Sighs ! Do thou take him now to ihi/ heart, and season him for our dreadful sister. And tliou," — turning to the Mater Tcnebrarum, she said, — " wicked sister, that temptest and hatest, do thou take him from her. See that thy sceptre lie heavy on his head. Suffer not woman and her tenderness to sit near him in his darkness. Banish the frailties of hope, wither the relenting of love, scorch the fountains of *" Sublime Goddesses." — The word ae/iiog is usually rendered venerable in dictionaries ; not a very flattering epithet for females. But l)y wcighinn; a number of passages in which the word is used pointedly, I am disposed to think that it comes nearest to oui* idea of the sublime, OB near as a Greek word could come. 166 BEAUTIES OF DK QUINCEY. tears, curse him as only thou canst curse. So sliall he be accomplished in the furnace, so shall he see the things that ought not to be seen, sights that are abom- inable, and secrets that are unutterable. So shall he read elder truths, sad truths, grand truths, fearful truths. So shall he rise again before he dies. And so shall our commission be accomplished which from God we had, — to plague his heart until we had un- folded the capacities of his spirit." THE DAUGHTER OF LEBANON. Damascus, first-born of cities. Oni el Denia, moth- er of generations, that waist before Abraham, that wast before the Pyramids ! what sounds are those that, from a postern gate, looking eastwards over secret paths that Avind away to tlie far distant desert, break the solemn silence of an oriental night ? Whose voice is that which calls upon the spearmen, keeping watch forever in the turret surmounting the gate, to receive him back into his Syrian home ? Thou knowest him, Damascus, and hast known him in seasons of trouble as one learned in the afflictions of man ; wise alike to take counsel for the suffering spirit or for the suffering body. The voice that breaks upon the night is the voice of a great evangelist — one of the four ; and he is also a great physician. This do the watchmen at the gate thankfully acknowledge, and joyfully they give him entrance. His sandals are white w^ith dust for he has been roaming for weeks beyond the desert, under the guidance of the Arabs, on missions of hopeful benigni- ty to Palmyra ; and in spirit he is weary of all things, except faithfulness to God, and burning love to man. Eastern cities are asleep betimes ; and sounds few or none fretted the quiet of all around him, as the evangelist paced onward to tlie market-place ; but there another scene awaited him. On the right liand, in an upper chamber, with lattices widely expanded, (167) 168 BEAUTIES OF VK QUINCEY. sat a festal company of youths, revelling under a ; 'on- day blaze of light, from cressets and from bright tri- pods that burned fragrant woods — all joining in choral songs, all crowned with odorous wreaths from Daphne and the banks of the Orontes. Them the evangelist heeded not, but far away upon the left, close upon a sheltered nook, lighted up by a solitary vase of iron fret-work filled with cedar boughs, and hoisted high upon a spear, behold there sat a woman of loveliness so transcendent, that, when sud- denly revealed, as now, out of deepest darkness, she appalled men as a mockery, or a birth of the air. Was she born of woman ? Was it perhaps the angel — so the evangelist argued with himself — that met him in the desert after sunset, and strengthened him with se- cret talk ? The evangelist went up and touched her forehead : and when he found that she was indeed hu- man, and guessed from the station which she had chos- en, that she waited for some one amongst this dissolute crew as her companion, he groaned heavily in spirit, and said, half to himself, but half to her, " Wert thou, poor, ruined flower, adorned so divinely at thy birth — glorified in such excess, that not Solomon in all his pomp, no, nor even the lilies of the field, can approach thy gifts — only that thou shouldst grieve the Holy Spirit of God ? The woman trembled exceedingly and said, " Rabbi, what should I do ? For behold ! all men forsake me ! '* The evangelist mused a little, and then secretly to him- self he said, " Now will I search this woman's heart, whether in very truth it inclinetli itself to God, and hath strayed only before fiery compulsion." Turning THE DAUGHTER OF LEBANON. 169 therefore to the womau, the Prophet said, " Listen : I am the messsenger of Him whom tliou hast not known ; of Him that made Lebanon, and the cedars of Lebanon ; that made the sea, and the lieavens, and tlie host of the stars ; that made the light ; that made the darkness ; that blew the spirit of life into the nostrils of man. His messenger I am : and from him all power is given me to bind and to loose, to build and to pull down. Ask, therefore, whatsoever thou wilt — great or small — and through me thou shalt receive it from God. But, my child, ask not amiss. For God is able out of thy own evil asking to weave snares for thy footing. And oftentimes to the lambs whom he loves he gives by seeming to refuse ; gives in some better sense, or " (and his voice swelled into the power of anthems) " in some far happier world. Now, there- fore, my daughter, be wise on thy own behalf, and say Avhat it is that I shall ask for thee from God." But the daughter of Lebanon needed not his caution ; for immediately dropping on one knee to God's ambas- sador, whilst the full radiance from the cedar torch fell upon the glory of a penitential eye, she raised her clasped hands in supplication, and said, in answer to the evangelist asking for a second time what gift he should call down upon her from Heaven, " Lord, that thou wouldst put me back into my father's house." And the evangelist, because he was human, dropped a tear as he stooped to kiss her forehead, saying, " Daughter, thy prayer is heard in heaven ; and I tell thee that the dayliglit shall not come and go for thirty times, not for the thirtieth time shall the sun drop be- 8 170 IKAUTJES OF DE (^UINCEY. hind Lebanon, before I will put thee back into thy father's house." Thus the lovely lady came into the guardianship of the evangelist. She sought not to varnish her history, or to palliate her own transgressions. In so far as she had offended at all, her case was that of millions in every generation. Her father was a prince in Leba- non, — proud, unforgiving, austere. The wrongs done to his daughter, by her dishonorable lover, because done under favor of opportunities created by her con- fidence in his integrity, her father persisted in resent- ing as wrongs done by this injured daughter herself ; and, refusing to her all protection, drove her, whilst yet confessedly innocent, into criminal compliances un- der sudden necessities of seeking daily bread, from her own uninstructed efforts. Great was the wrong she suffered both from father and lover ; great was the retribution. She lost a churlish father and a wicked lover ; she gained an apostolic guardian. She lost a princely station in Lebanon ; she gained an early heri- tage in heaven. For this heritage is hers within thirty days, if she will not defeat it herself. And, whilst the stealthy motion of time travelled towards this thirtieth day, behold ! a burning fever desolated Damascus, which also laid its arrest upon the Daughter of Leba- non, yet gently, and so that hardly for an hour did it withdraw her from the heavenly teachings of the evan- gelist. And thus daily the doubt was strengthened, would the holy apostle suddenly touch her with his hand and say, " Woman, be thou whole ! " or would he present her on the thirtieth day as a pure bride to THE DAUGHTER OF LEBANON. 171 Christ ? But perfect freedom belongs to Christian ser- vice, and she only must make the election. Up rose the sun on the thirtieth morning in all his pomp, but suddenly was darkened by driving storms. Not until noon was the heavenly orb again revealed ; tlien the glorious light was again unmasked, and again tlic Syrian valleys rejoiced. This was the hour already appointed for the baptism of the new Christian daugh- ter. Heaven and Earth shed gratulation on the happy festival ; and, when all was finished, under an awning raised above the level roof of her dwelling house, the regenerate daughter of Lebanon, looking over the rose gardens of Damascus, with amplest prospect of her native hills, lay, in blissful trance, making proclama- tion, by her white baptismal robes, of recovered inno- cence and of reconciliation with God. And, when the sun was declining to the west, the evangelist, who had sat from noon by the bedside of his spiritual daughter, rose solemnly and said, " Lady of Lebanon, the d-ay is already come, and the hour is coming, in which my covenant must be fulfilled with thee. Wilt thou, there- fore, being now wiser in thy thoughts, suffer God, thy new father, to give by seeming to refuse ; to give in some better sense, or in some far happier world ? " But the Daughter of Lebanon sorrowed at these words ; she yearned after her native hills ; not for themselves, l)ut because there it was that she had left that sweet twin-born sister, with whom from infant days hand-in- haiid she had wandered amongst the everlasting cedars. And again the evangelist sat down by her bedside ; whilst she V)y intervals communed with him, and by in- 172 BEAUTIES OF DI^ QIJINCEY. t^rvals slept gently under the oppression of her fever. But as evening drew near, and it wanted now but a brief space to the going down of the sun, once again, and with deeper solemnity, the evangelist rose to his feet and said " Daughter ! this is the thirtieth day, and the sun is drawing near to his rest ; brief, there- fore, is the time within which I must fulfil the word which God spoke to thee by me." Then, because light clouds of delirium were playing about her brain, ho caised his pastoral staff, and, pointing it to her temples, rebuked the clouds, and bade that no more they should trouble her vision, or stand between her and the for- ests of Lebanon. And the delirious clouds parted asunder, breaking away to the right and the left. But upon the forests of Lebanon there hung a mighty mass of overshadowing vapors, bequeathed by the morning's storm. And a second time the evangelist raised his pastoral staff, and pointing it to the gloomy vapors, re- buked them, and bade that no more they should stand between his daughter and her father's house. And inmiediately the dark vapors l)roke away from Leba- non to the right and to the left; and the farewell radi- ance of the sun lighted up all the paths that ran be- tween the everlasting cedars and her father's palace. But vainly the Lady of Lebanon searched every paih with her eyes for memorials of her sister. And tlie evangelist pitying her sorrow, turned away her eyes to the clear blue sky, which the departing vapoi's had ex- posed. And he showed her the peace which was there. And then he said, " Daugliter ! this also is ]jut a mask." And immediately for the third time he raised THE DAUGHTER OF LEBANON. 17o his pastoral staff, and pointing it to the fair blue sky, he rebuked it, and bade that no more it should stand between her and the vision of God. Immediately the blue sky parted to tlie right and to the left, laying bare the infinite revelations that can be made visible only to dying eyes. And the Daughter of Lebanon said to the evangelist, " Father ! what armies are these that I see mustering within the infinite chasm ? " And the evangelist replied, " these are the armies of Christ, and they are mustering to receive some dear human blos- som, some first fruits of Christian faith, that shall rise this night to Christ from Damascus." Suddenly as thus the child of Lebanon gazed upon the mighty vision, she saw bending forward from the heavenly host, as if in gratulation to herself, the one countenance for which she hungered and thirsted. The twin sister that should have w^aited for her in Lebanon, had died of grief and was waiting for her in Paradise. Immediately in rapture she soared upwards from her couch ; immediately in weakness she fell back ; and, being caught by the evangelist, she flung her arms around his neck, whilst he breathed into her ear his final whisper, " Wilt thou now sufler that God should give by seeming to refuse ? " "0 yes — yes — yes ! " was the fervent answer from the Daughter of Lebanon. Inunediately the evangelist gave the signal to the heavens, and the heavens gave the signal to the sun ; and in one minute after the Daughter of Lebanon had fallen back a marble corpse amongst her white baptis- mal robes ; the solar orb dropped behind Lel^anon ; and the evangelist, with eyes glorified l)y mortal and by 174 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCET. immortal tears, rendered thanks to God that had thus accomplished the word which he spoke through himself to the Magdalen of Lebanon — that not for the thirti- eth time should the sun go down behind her native hills, before he had put her back into her Father's house. THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. What is to be taken as the predominaut opinioa of man, reflective and philosophic, upon sudden death ? It is remarkable that, in different conditions of society, sudden death has been variously regarded as the con- summation of an earthly career most fervently to be desired, or, again, as tliat consummation which is with most horror to be deprecated. Caesar the Dictator, at his last dinner party (ccewa), on the very evening before his assassination, when the minutes of his earth- ly career were numbered, being asked what death, in / hand of him. On this present occasion, great joy was at our meeting. But what was Cyclops doing here ? Had the medical men recommended northern air, or how? I collected, from such explanations as he vol- unteered, that he had an interest at stake in some suit- at-law now pending at Lancaster ; so tliat probably he had got himself transferred to this station, for the pur- pose of connecting with his professional pursuits an in- stant readiness for the calls of his lawsuit. Meantime, what are we stopping for ? Surely we 184 BEAUTIES OB^ DE QUINCEY. have now waited long enough. Oh, this procrastina- ting mail, and this procrastinating post-office ! Can't they take a lesson upon that subject from me ? Some people have called me procrastinating. Yet you are witness, reader, that I was kept here waiting for the post-office. Will the post-office lay its hand on its heart, in its moments of sobriety, and assert that ever it waited for me ? What are they about ? The guard tells me that there is a large extra accumulation of for- eign mails this night, owing to irregularities caused by war, by wind, by weather, in the packet service, which as yet does not benefit at all by steam. For an extra hour, it seems, the post-office has been engaged in threshing out the pure wheaten correspondence of Glas- gow, and winnowing it from the chaff of all baser in- termediate towns. But at last all is finished. Sound your horn, guard. Manchester, good-by ; we've lost an hour by your criminal conduct at the post-office : which, however, though I do not mean to part with a serviceable ground of complaint, and one which really is such for the horses, to me secretly is an advantage, since it compels us to look sharply for this lost hour amongst the next eight or nine, and to recover it (if we can) at the rate of one mile extra per hour. Off we are at last, and at eleven miles per hour : and for the moment I detect no changes in the energy or in the skill of Cyclops. From Manchester to Kendal, which virtually (though not in law) is the capital of Westmoreland, there were at this time seven stages of eleven miles each. The first five of these, counting from Manchester, terminate in Lancaster, which is therefore fifty-five miles north THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 185 of Manhcester, and the same distance exactly from Liverpool. The first three stages terminate in Preston (called, by way of distinction from other towns of that name, proud Preston), at which place it is that the separate roads from Liverpool and from Manchester to the north become confluent. Within these first three stages lay the foundation, the progress, and termina- tion of our night's adventure. During the first stage, I found out that Cyclops was mortal : he was liable to tlie shocking aflcction of sleep — a thing which pre- viously I had never suspected. If a man indulges in the vicious habit of sleeping, all the skill in aurigation of Apollo himself, with the horses of Aurora to exe- cute his notions, avail him nothing. " Oh, Cyclops ! " I exclaimed, " thou art mortal. My friend thou snor- est." Through the first eleven miles, however, this infirmity — which I grieve to say that he shared with the whole Pagan Pantheon — betraye I "itself only by brief snatches. On waking up, he made an apology for himself, which, instead of mending matters, laid open a gloomy vista of coming disasters. The sum- mer assizes, he reminded me, were now going on at Lancaster : in consequence of which, for three nights and three days, he had not lain down in a bed. Dur- ing the day, he was waiting for his own summons as a witness on the trial in which he was interested : or else, lest he should be missing at the critical moment, was drinking with the other witnesses, under the pas- toral surveillance of the attorneys. During the night, or that part of it which at sea would form the middle watch, he was driving. This explanation certainly accounted for his drowsiness, but in a way which made 186 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. it much more alarming ; since now after several days' resistance to this infirmity, at length he was steadily giving way. Throughout the second stage he grew more and more drowsy. In the second mile of the third stage, he surrendered himself finally and without a struggle to his perilous temptation. All his past resistance had but deepened the weight of this final oppression. Seven atmospheres of sleep rested upon him ; and to consummate the case, our worthy guard, after singing " Love amongst the Roses " for perhaps thirty times, without invitation, and without applause, had in revenge moodily resigned himself to slumber — not so deep, doubtless, as the coachman's, but deep enough for mischief. And thus at last, about ten miles from Preston, it came about that I found myself left in charge of his Majesty's London and Glasgow mail, then running at the least twelve miles an hour. What made this negligence less criminal than else it must have been thought, was the condition of the roads at night during the assizes. At that time, all the law business of populous Liverpool, and also of populous Manchester, with its vast cincture of popu lous rural districts, was called up by ancient usage to the tribunal of Lilliputian Lancaster. To break up this old traditional usage required, 1, a conflict with powerful estal)lished interests ; 2, a large system of new arrangments ; and 3, a new parliamentary statute. But as yet this change was merely in contemplation. As things were at present, twice in the year so vast a body of business rolled northwards, from the southern quarter of the county, that for a fortnight at least it occupied the severe exertions of two judges in its de- THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 187 spatch. The consequence of this was, that every horse available for such a service, along the whole line of road, was exhausted in carrjung down the multitudes of people who were parties to the different suits. By sunset, therefore, it usually happened that, through utter exhaustion amongst men and horses, the roads sank into profound silence. Except the exhaustion in the vast adjacent county of York from a contested election, no such silence succeeding to no such fiery up- roar was ever witnessed in England. On this occasion, the usual silence and solitude pre- vailed along the road. Not a hoof nor a wheel was to be heard. And to strengthen this false luxurious con- fidence in the noiseless roads, it happened also that the night was one of peculiar solemnity and peace. For my own part, though slightly alive to the possibili- ties of peril, I had so far yielded to the influence of the mighty calm as to sink into a profound reverie. The month was August, in the middle )f which lay my own birth-day — a festival to every thouglitful man suggesting solemn and often sigh-born thoughts. The county was my own native county — upon which, in its southern section, more than upon any equal area known to man past or present, had descended the original curse of labor in its heaviest form, not mastering the bodies only of men as of slaves, or criminals in mines, but working through the firey will. Upon no equal space of earth was, or ever had been, the same energy of human power put forth daily. At this particular season also of the assizes, that dreadful hurricane of fliglit and pursuit, as it might have seemed to a stranger, which swept to and from Lajicaster all day long, hunting the 188 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. county up and down, and regularly subsiding back into silence about sunset, could not fail (when united with this permanent distinction of Lancashire as the very metropolis and citadel of labor) to point the thoughts pathetically upon that counter vision of rest, of saintly repose from strife and sorrow, towards which, as to their secret haven, the profounder aspirations of man's heart are in solitude continually travelling. Obliquely upon our left we were nearing the sea, which also must, under the present circumstances, be repeating the gene- ral state of halcyon repose. The sea, the atmosphere, the light, bore each an orchestral part in this universal lull. Moonlight, and the first timid tremblings of the dawn, were by this time blending ; and the blendings were brought into a still more exquisite state of unity by a slight silvery mist, motionless and dreamy, that covered the woods and fields, but with a veil of equable transparency. Except the feet of our own horses, which, running on a sandy margin of the road, made but little disturbance, there was no sound abroad. In the clouds, and on the earth, prevailed the same ma- jestic peace ; and in spite of all that the villain of a school-master has done for the ruin of our sublimer thoughts, which are the thoughts of our infancy, we still believe in no such nonsense as a limited atmosphere. Whatever we may swear with our false feigning lips, in our faithful hearts we still believe, and must forever be- lieve, in fields of air traversing the total gulf between earth and the central heavens. Still in the confidence of children tliat tread without fear every chamber in their father's house, and to whom no door is closed, we, in that Sabbatic vision which sometimes is revealed for THE VISIDN UF SUDDEN DEATH. 189 an hour upon nights like this, ascend with easy steps from the sorrow-stricken fields of earth, upwards to the sandals of God. Suddenly, from thoughts like these, I was awakened to a sullen sound, as of some motion on the distant road. It stole upon the air for a moment ; I listened in awe ; but then it died away. Once roused, however, I could not but observe with alarm the quickened motion of our horses. Ten years' experience had made my eye learned in the valuing of motion ; and I saw that we were now running thirteen miles an hour. I pretend to no presence of mind. On the contrary, my fear is, that I am miserably and shamefully deficient in that quality as regards action. The palsy of doubt and dis- traction hangs like some guilty weight of dark un- fathomed remembrances upon my energies, when the signal is flying for action. But, on the other hand, this accursed gift I have, as regards thovght, that in the first step towards the possibility of a misfortune, I see its total evolution ; in the radix of the series I see too certainly and too instantly its entire expansion ; in the first syllable of the dreadful sentence, I read already the last. It was not that I feared for ourselves. fZs, our l)ulk and impetus charmed against peril in any collision. And I had ridden througli too many hun- dreds of perils that were frightful to approach, that were matter of laughter to look back upon, the first face of which was horror — the parting face a jest, for any anxiety to rest u}>on our interests. The mail was not ])uilt, I felt assured, nor bespoke, that could l)ctray me who trusted to its protection. But any carriage that we could meet would be frail and light in compari- 190 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. son of ourselves. And I remark this ominous accident of our situation. We were on the wrong side of the road. But then, it may be said, the other party, if other there was, might also be on the wrong side ; and two wrongs might make a right. That was not likely. The same motive which had drawn ns to the right-hand side of the road — viz., the luxury of the soft beaten sand, as contrasted with the paved centre — would prove attractive to others. The two adverse carriages would therefore, to a certainty, be travelling on the same side ; and from this side, as not being ours inlaw, the crossing over to the other would, of course, be looked for from us. Our lamps, still lighted, would give the impression of vigilance on our part. And every creature that met us, would rely upon us for quar- tering. All this, and if the separate links of the antici- pation had been a thousand times more, I saw, not dis- cursively, or by effort, or by succession, but by one flash of horrid simultaneous intuition. Under this steady though rapid anticipation of the evil which might be gathering ahead, ah ! what a sullen mystery of fear, what a sigh of wo, was that whicli stole upon the air, as again the far-off sound of a wheel was heard ? A whisper it was — a whisper from, per- haps, four miles off — secretly announcing a ruin that being foreseen, was not the less inevitable ; that, being known, was not, therefore, healed. "What could be done — who was it that could do it — to check the storm-flight of these maniacal horses ? Could I not seize the reins from the grasp of the slumbering coachman ? You, reader, think that it would have been in your power to do so. And I quarrel not with your estimate of your- THR VISrOX OF SUDDEN DEATH. 191 solf. But, from the way in which the coachman'o liand was viced between his upper and lower thigh, this was impossible. Easy, was it ? See, then, that bronze equestrian statue. The cruel rider has kept the l)it ia his horse's mouth for two centuries. Unbridle him, for a minute, if you please, and wash his mouth witli water. Easy, was it ? Unhorse me, then, that imperial rider ; knock me those marble feet from those marble stirrups of Charlemagne. The sounds ahead strengthened, and were now too clearly the sounds of wheels. Who and what could it be ? Was it industry in a taxed cart ? Was it youth- ful gaycty in a gig ? Was it sorrow that loitered, or joy that raced ? For as yet the snatches of sound were too intermitting, from distance, to decipher the character of the motion. Whoever were the travellers, something must be done to warn them. Upon the other party rests the active responsibility, but upon us — and, wo is me ! that us was reduced to my frail opium-shat- tered self — rests the responsibility of warning. Yet how should this be accomplished ? Might I not sound the guard's horn ? Already, on the first tliought, I was making my way over the roof to tlie guard's seat. But this, from the accident which I have mentioned, of the foreign mails' being piled upon the roof, was a difficult and even dangerous attempt to one cramped by nearly three hundred miles of outside travelling. And, for- tunately, before I had lost much time in the attempt, our frantic horses swept around an angle of the road, which opened upon us that final stage where the collis- ion must be accomplished, and the catastrophe sealed. All was apparently finished. The court was, sitting ; 192 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCE Y. the case was heard ; the judge had finished ; and the only verdict was yet in arrear. Before us lay an avenue, straight as an arrow, six hundred yards, perhaps, in length ; and the umbrageous trees, which rose in a regular line from either side, meeting high overhead, gave to it the character of a cathedral aisle. These trees lent a deeper solemnity to the early light ; but there was still light enough to perceive, at the further end of this Gothic aisle, a frail reedy gig, in which were seated a young man, and by his side a young lady. Ah, young sir ! what are you about ? If it is requisite that you should whisper your communications to this young lady — though really I see nobody, at an hour and on a road so solitary, likely to overhear you — is it therefore requisite that you sliould carry your lips forward to hers ? The little carriage is creeping on at one mile an hour ; and the parties within it being thus tenderly engaged, are natu- rally bending down their heads. Between them and eternity, to all human calculation, there is but a minute and a-half. Oh heavens ! what is it that I shall do ? Speaking or acting, what help can I oiTer ? Strange it is, and to a mere auditor of the tale might seem laughable, that I should need a suggestion from the " Iliad " to prompt the sole resource that remained. Yet so it was. Suddenly I remembered the shout of Achilles, and its effect. But could I pretend to shout like the son of Peleus, aided by Pallas ? No : but then I needed not the shout that should alarm all Asia militant ; such a shout would suffice as might carry terror into the hearts of two thoughtless young people, and one gig horse. I shouted — and the young man hear! me not. A second THE VISION OP SUDDEN DEATH. 193 time I shouted — and now he heard me, for now he raised his head. Here, then, all had been done that, by me, covld be done : more on my part was not possible. Mine had been the first step ; the second was for the young man ; tlie third was for God. If, said I, this stranger is a brave man, and if, indeed, he loves the young girl at his side — or, loving her not, if he feels the obligation, ))rcssing upon every man worthy to be called a man, of doing his utmost for a woman confided to his protection — lie will, at least, make some effort to save her. If that fiiils, he will not perish the more, or by a death more cruel, for having made it ; and he will die as a l^-ave man should, with his face to the danger, and with his arm aljout the woman that he sought in vain to save. But, if he makes no effort, shrinking, without a struggle, from his duty, he himself will not the less certainly perish for this baseness of poltroonery. He will die no less : and why not ? Wherefore should we grieve tliat there is one craven less in the world ? No ; let him perish, without a pitying thought of ours wasted u|)on liim ; and, in that case, all our grief will be re- served for the fate of the helpless girl who now, upon tlie least shadow of failure in him, must, by the fiercest of translations — must, without time for a prayer — must, within seventy seconds, stand before the judgment seat of God. But craven he was not : sudden had been the call upon him, and sudden was his answer to the call. He saw, he heard, he comprehended, the ruin that was coming down : already its gloomy shadow darkened above him ; and already he was measuring his strength 9 194 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. to deal with it. Ah ! what a vulgar thing does courage seem, when we see nations buying it and selling it for a shilling a day : ah ! what a sublime thing does cour- age seem, when some fearful summons on the great deeps of life carries a man, as if running before a hur- ricane, up to the giddy crest of some tumultuous crisis, from which lie two courses, and a voice says to him au- dibly, " One way lies hope ; take the other, and mourn for ever ! " How grand a triumph, if, even then, amidst the raving of all around him, and the frenzy of the danger, the man is able to confront his situation — is able to retire for a moment into solitude with God, and to seek his counsel from him ! ■ For seven seconds, it might be, of his seventy, the stranger settled his countenance steadfastly upon us, as if to search and value every element in the conflict be- fore him. For five seconds more of his seventy he sat immovably, like one that mused on some great purpose. For five more, perhaps, he sat with eyes upraised, like one that prayed in sorrow, under some extremity of doubt, for light that should guide him to the better choice. Then suddenly he rose ; stood upright ; and by a powerful strain upon the reins, raising his horse's fore-feet from the ground, he slewed him round on the pivot^of his hind-legs, so as to plant the little equipage in a position nearly at right angles to ours. Thus far his condition was not improved, except as a first step had been taken towards the possibility of a second. If no more were done, nothing was done ; for the little carriage still occupied the very centre of our path, though in an altered direction. Yet even now it may not be too late : fifteen of the seventy seconds may still TUE VISION OF SUDDKN DRATH. 195 be unexhausted ; and one almighty bound may avail to clear the ground. Hurry, then, hurry ! for the flying moments — they hurry ! Oh, hurry, hurry, my brave young man ! for the cruel hoofs of our horses — they also hurry ! Fast are the flying moments, faster are the hoofs of our horses. But fear not for Am, if human energy can suffice ; faithful was he that drove to his terrific duty ; faithful was the horse to his command. One blow, one impulse given with voice and hand, by the fitranger, one rush from the horse, one bound as if in the act of rising to a fence, landed the docile crea- ture's fore-feet upon the crown or arcliing centre of tlie road. The larger half of the little equipage had then cleared our overtowering shadow : that was evi- dent even to my own agitated sight. But it matter- ed little that one wreck should float off" in safety, if upon the wreck that perished were embarked the human freightage. The rear part of the carriage — was that certainly beyond the line of absolute ruin ? What power could answer the question ? Glance of eye, thought of man, wing of angel, which of these had e'peed enough to sweep between the question and the answer, and divide the one from the other? Light does not tread upon the steps of light more indivisibly, tlian did our all-conquering arrival upon the escaping efforts of the gig. That must the young man have felt too plainly. His back was now turned to us ; not by sight could he any longer communicate with the peril ; but by the dreadful rattle of our harness, too truly had his ear been instructed — that all was finished as regard- ed any further effbrt of his. Already in resignation he had rested from his struggle j and perhaps in his heart 196 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. lie was whispering, " Father, which art iu heaven, do thou finish above what I on earth have attempted." Faster than ever mill-race we ran past them in our inex- orable flight. Oh, raving of hurricanes that must have sounded in their young ears at the moment of our transit ! Even in that moment the thunder of collision spoke aloud. Either with the swingle-bar, or with the haunch of our near leader, we had struck the oflf-wheel : of the little gig, which stood rather obliquely, and not quite so far advanced, as to be accurately parallel with the near-wheel. The blow, from the fury of our passage, resounded terrifically. I rose in horror, to gaze upon the ruins we might have caused. From my elevated station I looked down and back upon the scene, which in a moment told its own tale, and wrote all its records on my heart for ever. Here was the map of the passion that now had finish- ed. The horse was planted immovably, with his fore- feet upon the paved crest of the central road. He of the whole party might be supposed untouched by the passion of death. The little cany carriage — partly, perhaps, from the violent torsion of the wheels in its recent movement, partly from the thundering blow we had given to it — as if it sympathized with human horror, was all alive with tremblings and shiverings. The young man trembled not, nor shivered. He sat like a rock. But his was the steadiness of agitation frozen into rest by horror. As yet he dared not to look round ; for he knew that, if anything remained to do, by him it could no longer be done. And as yet he knew not for certain if their safety were accomplished. But the lady THE VISION OK SUDDEN DEATH. 197 But the lady ! Oh, heavens ! will that spectacle ever depart from my dreams, as she rose and sank upon her seat, sank and rose, threw up her arms wildly to heaven, clutched at some visionary object in the air, fainting, praying, raving, despariug ? Figure to your- self, reader, the elements of the case ; suffer me to recall before your mind the circumstances of that unparalleled situation. From the silence and deep peace of this saintly summer night — from the pathetic blending of this sweet moonlight, dawnlight, dreamlight — from the niauly tenderness of this flattering, whispering, mur- muring love — suddenly as from the woods and fields — suddenly as from the chambers of the air opening in revelation — suddenly as from the ground yawning at her feet, leaped upon her, with the flashing of cataracts. Death the crowned phantom, with all the equipage of his terrors, and the tiger roar of his voice. The moments were numbered ; the strife was finished ; the vision was closed. In the twinkling of an eye, our flying horses had carried us to the termination of the umbrageous aisle ; at right angles we wheeled into our former direction ; the turn of the road caiTied the scene out of my eyes in an instant, and swept it into my dreams for ever. DREAM-FUGUE. FOUNDKD ON THE PRECEDINO THEME OF SITODEN DEATH. " Whence the sound Of instruments, that made melodious chime, Was heard, of liarp and organ ; and who moved Their stops and chords, was seen ; his volant touch Instinct throiigh all proportions, low and high. Fled and pui'sued transverse the resonant fugue." Paradise Lost, B. xi. TumuUiiosissimamente. Passion of sudden death ! that once in youth I read and interpreted by the shadows of thy averted signs ! — rapture of panic taking the shape (which amongst tombs in churches I have seen) of woman bursting her sepulchral bonds — of woman's Ionic form bending from the ruins of her grave with arching foot, with eyes up- raised, with clasped adoring hands — waiting, watching, trembling, praying for the trumpet's call to rise from dust for ever ! Ah, vision too fearful of shuddering humanity on the brink of almighty abysses ! — vision that didst start back, that didst reel away, like a shriv- elling scroll from before the wrath of fire racing on the wings of the wind ! Epilepsy so brief of horror, wherefore is it that thou canst not die ? Passing so suddenly into darkness, wherefore is it that still thou sheddest thy sad funeral blights upon the gorgeous mo- saics of dreams ? Fragment of music too passionate, heard once, and lieard no more, what aileth thee, that (U'8) DREAM-FUGUE. 190 thy deep rolling chords come up at intervals tlirough all the worlds of sleep, and after fortj jears, have lost no element of horror ? I, Lo, it is summer — almighty summer! The ever- lasting gates of life and summer are throw open wide ; and on the ocean, tranquil and verdant as a savannali, tlic unknown lady from the dreadful vision and I my- self arc floating — slie upon a fiery pinnace, and I upon an English three-decker. Both of us are wooing gales of festal happiness within the domain of our common country, within that ancient watery park, within that pathless chase of ocean, where England takes lier pleasure as a huntress through winter and summer, from the rising to the setting sun. Ah, what a wilderness of floral beauty was hidden, or was suddenly revealed, upon the tropic islands through which the pinnace moved ! And upon her deck what a bevy of human flowers — young women how lovely, young men how noble, that were dancing togetlier, and slowly drifting towards its amidst music and incense, amidst blossoms from forests and gorgeous corymbi from vintages, amidst natural carolling and the echoes of sweet girlish laugh- ter. Slowly the pinnace nears us, gaily she hails us, and silently she disappears beneath the shadow of our mighty bows. But then, as at some signal from heaven, the music, and the carols, and the sweet echoing of givlisli laughter — all are liushed. What evil has smit- ten the pinnace, meeting or overtaking her ? Did ruin to our friends couch within our own dreadful shadow ? Was our shadow the shadow of death ? I looked over 200 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. the bow for an answer, and behold ! the pinnace was dismantled ; the revel and the revellers were found no more ; the glory of the vintage was dust ; and the for- ests with their beauty were left without a witness upon the seas. " But where," and I turned to our crew — " where are the lovely women that danced beneath the awning of flowers and clustering corynibi ! Whither have fled the noble young men that danced with them ? " Answer there was none. But suddenly the man at the masthead, whose countenance darkened with alarm, cried out, " Sail on the weather beam ! Down she comes upon us : in seventy seconds she also will founder." II. I looked to the weather side, and the summer had departed. The sea was rocking, and shaken with gathering wrath. Upon its surface sat mighty mists, which grouped themselves into arches and long cathe- dral aisles. Down one of these, with the fiery pace of a quarrel from a cross-bow, ran a frigate right athwart our course. " Are they mad ? " some voice exclaimed from our deck. " Do they woo their ruin ? " But in a moment, she was close upon us, some impulse of a heady current or local vortex gave a wheeling bias to her course, and off she forged without a shock. As she ran past us, high aloft amongst the shrouds stood the lady of the pinnace. The deeps opened ahead in malice to receive her, towering surges of foam ran after her, the billows were fierce to catch her. But far away she was borne into desert spaces of the sea : whilst still by sight I followed her as she ran before the howling gale, chased by angry sea-birds and by maddening billows ; DRKAM-FUGUR. * 201 still I saw her, as at the moment when she ran past us, standing amongst the shrouds, with her white drape- ries streaming before the wind. There she stood, with hair dishevelled, one hand clutched amongst the tack- ling — rising, sinking, fluttering, trembling, praying — there for leagues I saw her as she stood, raising at in- tervals one hand to heaven, amidst the fiery crests of the pursuing waves and tlie raving of the storm ; until at last, upon a sound from afar of malicious laughter and mockery, all was hidden for ever iu driving showers ; and afterwards, but when I know not, nor how. m. Sweet funeral bells from some incalculable distance, wailing over the dead that die before the dawn, awak- ened me as I slept in a boat moored to some familiar shore. The morning twilight even then was breaking ; and, by the dusky revelations which it spread, I saw a girl, adorned with a garland of white roses about her liead for some great festival, running along the solitary strand in extremity of haste. Pier running was the running of panic ; and often she looked back as to some dreadful enemy in the rear. But when I leaped ashore, and followed on her steps to warn her of a peril in front, alas ! from me she fled as from another peril, and vainly I shouted to her of quicksands that lay ahead. Faster and faster she ran ; round a promontory of rocks she wheeled out of sight ; in an instant I also wheeled round it, but only to see the treacherous sands gathering above her head. Already her person was buried ; only the fair young head and the diadem of white roses around it were still visible to the pitying 9* 202 BHA.UTIES OF DE QUINCEY. heavens : and, last of all, was visible one white marble arm. I saw by the early twilight this fair young head, as it was sinking down to darkness — saw this marble arm, as it rose above her head and her treacherous grave, tossing, faltering, rising, clutching as at some false de- ceiving hand stretched out from the clouds — saw this marble arm uttering her dying hope, and then uttering her dying despair. The head, the diadem, the arm — these all had sunk ; at last over these also the cruel quicksand had closed ; and no memorial of the fair young girl remained on earth, except my own solitary tears and the funeral bells from the desert seas, that, rising again more softly, sang a requiem over the grave of the buried child, and over her blighted dawn. I sat, and wept in secret the tears that men have ever given to the memory of those that died before the dawn, and by the treachery of earth, our mother. But suddenly the tears and funeral bells were hushed by a shout as of many nations, and by a roar as from some great king's artillery, advancing rapidly along the val- leys, and heard afar by echoes from the mountains. " Hush ! " I said, as I bent my ear earthwards to listen — " hush ! — this either is the very anarchy of strife, or else " — and then I listened more profoundly, and whispered as I raised my head — " or else, oh heavens ! it is victory that is final, victory that swallows up all strife." IV. Immediately, in trance, I was carried over land and sea to some distant kingdom, and placed upon a tri- umphal car, amongst companions crowned with laurel. dream-fugue;. 203 The darkness of gathering midnight, brooding over all the land, hid from us the mighty crowds that were weaving restlessly about ourselves as a centre : we heard them, but saw them not. Tidings had arrived, within an hour, of a grandeur that measured itself against centuries ; too full of patlios they were, too full of joy, to utter them- selves V)y other language than by tears, by restless an- thems, and Te Deums reverberated from the choirs and orchestras of earth. These tidings we that sat upon the laurelled car had it for our privilege to publish amongst all nations. And already, by signs audible through the darkness, by snortings and tramplings, our angry horses, that knew no fear of fleshy weariness, upbraided us with delay. Wherefore was it that we delayed ? We waited for a secret word that should bear witness to the hope of nations, as now accomplished for ever. At midnight the secret word arrived ; which -word was — Waterloo and Recovered Christendom ! The dread- ful word shone by its own light ; before us it went ; high above our leaders' heads it rode, and spread a golden light over the paths which we traversed. Every city, at the presence of the secret word, threw open its gates. The rivers were conscious as we crossed. All the forests, as we ran along their margins, shivered in homage to the secret word. And the darkness com- prehended it. Two hours after midnight we approached a mighty Minster. Its gates, which rose to the clouds, wore closed. But when the dreadful word, that rode l)cfore us, reached them with its golden light, silently they moved back upon their hinges ; and at a flying gallop our equipage entered the grand aisle of the cathedral 204 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. Headlong was our pace ; and at every altar, in the lit- tle chapels and oratories to the right hand and left of our course, the lamps, dying or sickening, kindled anew in sympathy with the secret word that was flying past. Forty leagues we might have run in the cathedral, and as yet no strength of morning light had reached us, when before us we saw the aerial galleries of organ and choir. Every pinnacle of the fretwork, every station of advantage amongst the . traceries, was crested by white-robed choristers, that sang deliverance ; that wept no more tears, as once their fathers had wept ; but at intervals that sang together to the generations, saying, " Chant the deliverer's praise in every tongue," and receiving answers from afar, ♦ Such as once in heaven and earth were sung." And of their chanting was no end ; of our headlong pace was neither pause nor slackening. Thus, as we ran like torrents — thus, as we swept with bridal rapture over the Campo Santo of the cath- edral graves — suddenly we became aware of a vast necropolis rising upon the far-off horizon — a city of sepulchres, built within the saintly cathedral for the warrior dead that rested from their feuds on earth. Of purple granite was the necropolis ; yet, in the first minute, it lay like a purple stain upon the horizon, so mighty was the distance. In the second minute it ti'cmbled tlirough many changes, growing into terraces and towers of wondrous altitude, so mighty was the pace. In the third minute already, with our dreadful gallop, we were entering its suburbs. Vast sarcophagi lose on every side, having towers and turrets that, upon the limits of the central aisle, strode forward with DREAM-FUGUE. 205 haughty intrnsion, that ran back with mi'olity shadows into answering recesses. Every sarcophagus showed many bas-reliefs — bas-reliefs of battles and of battle- fields ; battles from forgotten ages — battles from yes- terday — battle-fields that, long sinco, nature had heal- ed and reconciled to herself with the sweet ol)livion of flowers — battle-fields that were yet angry and crimson with carnage. Where the terraces ran, there did we run ; where the towers curved, there did ipe curve. With the flight of swallows our horses swept round every angle. Like rivers in flood, wheeling round headlands — like hurricanes that ride into the secrets of forests — faster than ever light unwove the mazes of darkness, our flying equipage carried earthly passions, kindled warrior instincts, amongst the dust that lay around us — dust oftentimes of our noble fathers that had slept in God from Creci to Trafalgar. And now had we reached the last sarcophagus, now were wc abreast of the last bas-relief, already had we recovered the arrow-like flight of the illimitable central aisle, when coming up this aisle to meet us we^ beheld afar off" a female child, that rode in a carriage as frail as flow- ers. The mists, which went before her, hid the fawns tliat drew her, but could not hide the shells and tro)>ic flowers with which she played — but could not hide the lovely smiles by which she uttered her trust in the mighty cathedral, and in the cherubim that looked down upon her from the mighty shafts of its pillars. Face to face she was meeting us ; face to face she rode, as if danger there were none. " Oh, bal)y ! " I exclaim- ed, " shalt thou be the ransom for Waterloo ? Must we, that carry tidings of great joy to every people, bo 206 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. messengers of ruin to thee ! " In horror I rose at the thought ; but then also, in horror at the thought, rose one, that was sculptured on a bas-relief — a Dying Trumpeter. Solemnly from the field of battle he rose to his feet ; and, uuslinging his stony trumpet, carried it, in his dying anguish, to his stony lips — sounding once, and yet once again ; proclamation that, in tliy ears, oh baby ! spoke from the battlements of death." Immediately deep shadows fell between us, and aborig- inal silence. The choir had ceased to sing. The hoofs of our horses, the dreadful rattle of our harness, the groaning of our wheels, alarmed the graves no more. By horror the bas-relief had been unlocked into life. By horror we, that were so full of life, we men and our horses, with their fiery fore-legs rising in mid air to their everlasting gallop, were frozen to a bas-relief. Then a third time the trumpet sounded ; the seals were taken off all pulses ; life, and the frenzy of life, tore in- to their channels again ; again the choir burst forth in sunny grandeur, as from the muffling of storms and darkness ; again the thunderings of our horses carried temptation into the graves. One cry burst from our lips, as the clouds, drawing off from the aisle, showed it empty before us — " Whither has the infant fled ? — is the young child caught up to God ? " Lo ! afar off, in a vast recess, rose three mighty windows to the clouds ; and on a level with their summits, at height insuperable to man, rose an altar of purest alabaster. On its eastern face was trembling a crimson glory. A glory was it from the reddening dawn that now stream- ed through the windows ? Was it from the crimson robes of the martyrs painted on the windows ? Was DREAM - FUGUE. 207 it from the bloody bas-reliefs of earth ? There, sud- denly, withia that crimson radiance, rose the apparition of a woman's head, and then of a woman's figure. The child it was — grown up to woman's height. Clinging to the horns of the altar, voiceless she stood — sink- ing, rising,^ raving, despairing ; and behind the volume of incense, that, night and day, streamed upwards from the altar, dimly was seen the fiery font, and the shadow of that dreadful being who should have baptized her witli the baptism of death. But by her side was kneel- ing her better angel, that hid his face with wings ; tliat wept and pleaded for lier ; that prayed when she could not; that fought with Heaven by tears for lier deliver- ance ; which also, as he raised his immortal counte- nance from his wings, I saw, by the glory in his eye, tliat from Heaven he had won at last. V. _ Then was completed the passion of the mighty fugue. The golden tubes of the organ, which as yet had but muttered at intervals — gleaming amongst clouds and surges of incense — threw up, as from fountains un- fathomable, columns of heart-shattering music. Choir and anti-choir were filling fast with unknown voices. Tiiou also. Dying Trumpeter ! — with tliy love that was victorious, and thy anguish that was finishing — didst enter the tumult ; trumpet and echo — farewell love, and farewell anguish — rang through the dreadful sanrtus. Oh, darkness of the grave ! that from the crimson altar and from the fiery font wert visited and searched by the effulgence in the angel's eye — were these indeed thy children ? Pomps of life, that, from 208 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY the burials of centuries, rose again to the voice of per feet joy, did ye indeed mingle with the festivals of Death ? Lo ! as I looked back for seventy leagues through the mighty cathedral , I saw the quick and the dead that sang together to God, together that sang to the generations of man. All the hosts of .jubilation, like armies that ride in pursuit, moved with one step. Us, that, with laurelled heads, were passing from the cathedral, they overtook, and, as with a garment, they wrapped us round with thunders greater than our own. As brothers we moved together ; to the dawn that ad- vanced — to the stars that fled ; rendering thanks to God in the highest — that, having hid his face through one generation behind thick clouds of War, once again was ascending — from the Campo Santo of Waterloo was ascending — in the visions of Peace ; rendering thanks for thee, young girl ! whom, having overshadowed with his ineffable passion of death, suddenly did God re- lent ; suffered thy angel to turn aside his arm ; and even in thee, sister unknown ! shown to me for a moment only to be hidden for ever, found an occasion to glorify his goodness. A thousand times, amongst the phantoms of sleep, have I seen thee entering the gates of the gol- den dawn — with the secret word riding before thee — with the armies of the grave behind thee : seen thee sinking, rising, raving, despairing ; a thousand times in the worlds of sleep have seen thee followed by God's angel through storms ; through desert seas ; through the darkness of quicksands, through dreams, and the dread- ful revelations that are in dreams — only that at the last, with one sling of his victorious arm, he might snatch thee back from ruin, and might emblazon in thy deliv- erance the endless resurrections of his love ! NARRATIVES. THE SPANISH NUN. From the archives of the Royal Marine at Seville, from the autobiography of the heroine, from contemporary chronicles, and from several official sources scattered in and out of Spain, some of them ecclesiastical, the amplest proofs have been drawn, and may yet be greatly ex- tended, of the extraordinary events here recorded. M. de Ferrer, a Spaniard of much research, and originally incredulous as to the facts, published about seventeen years ago a selection from the leading documents, ac- companied by his palinode as to their accuracy. His materials have been since used for the basis of more than one narrative, not inaccurate, in French, German, and Spanish journals of high authority. It is seldom the case that French writers err by prolixity. They have done so in this case. The present narrative, which contains no sentence derived from any foreign one, has the great advantage of close compression ; my own pages, after equating the size, being as one to three of the shortest continental form. In the mode of narra- tion, I am vain enough to flatter myself that the reader will find little reason to hesitate between us. Mine, at least, weary nobody ; wliich is more that can be always said for the continental versions. On a night in the year 1592. (but which night is a secret liable to three hundred and sixty-five answers,) C211) 212 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCE Y, a Spanish " son of somebody,^' * in the fortified town of St. Sebastian, received the disagreeable intelligence from a nurse that his wife had just presented him with a daughter. No present that the poor misjudging lady could possibly have made him was so entirely useless for any purpose of his. He had three daughters already? "which happened to be more by 2 -}- 1 than his reckoning assumed as a reasonable allowance of daughters. A supernumerary son might have been stowed away ; but daughters in excess were the very nuisance of Spain. He did, therefore, what in such cases every proud and lazy Spanish gentleman was apt to do — he wrapped the new little daughter, odious to his paternal eyes, in a pocket handkerchief; and then", wrapping up his own throat with a good deal more care, off he bolted to the neighboring convent of St. Sebastian, not merely of that city, but also (amongst several convents) the one dedicated to that saint. It is well that in this quarrel- some world we quarrel furiously about tastes, since agreeing too closely about the objects to be liked and appropriated would breed much more fighting than is bred by disagreeing. That little human tadpole, which the old toad of a father would not sufi'er to stay ten minutes in his house, proved as welcome at the nun- nery of St. Sebastian as she was odious elsewhere. The superior of the convent was aunt, by the mother's side, to the newborn stranger. She therefore kissed and blessed the little lady. The poor nuns, who were never to have any babies of their own, and were languishing for some amusement, perfectly doted on this prospect * That is, " hidalgo." THE SPANISH NUN. 213 of a wee pet. The superior thanked the hidalgo for his very splendid present ; the nuns thanked him each and all ; until the old crocodile actually began to cry and whimper sentimentally at what he now perceived to \)Q excess of munificence in himself. Munificence, in- deed, he remarked, was his foible, next after parental tenderness. What a luxury it is sometimes to a cynic that there go two words to a bargain ! In the convent of St. Se- bastian all was gratitude, — gratitude (as aforesaid) to the hidalgo from all the convent for his present, — until at last the hidalgo began to express gratitude to Iheiu for their gratitude to him. Then came a rolling fire of thanks to St. Sebastian ; from the superior, for sending a future saint ; from the nuns, for sending such a love of a plaything ; and finally from papa, for sending such sub- stantial board and well-bolted lodgings," from which," said the malicious old fellow, "my pussy will never find her way out to a thorny and dangerous world." Won't she ? I suspect, son of somebody, that the next time you see " pussy," which may happen to be also the last, will not be in a convent of any kind. At present, whilst this general rendering of thanks was going on, one per- son only took no part in them. That person was " pus- sy," whose little figure lay quietly stretched out in the arms of a smiling young nun, with eyes nearly shut, yet peering a little at the candles. Fussy said nothing ; it's of no great use to say much when all the world is against you ; but if St. Sebastian had enabled her to speak out the whole truth, pussy would have said, " So, Mr. Hidalgo, you have been engaging lodgings for me — 214 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. lodgings for life. Wait a little. We'll try that ques- tion when my claws are grown a little longer." Disappointment, therefore, was gathering ahead ; but for the present there was nothing of the kind. That noble old crocodile, papa, was not in the least disap- pointed as regarded his expectation of having no anxiety to waste, and no money to pay, on account of his young- est daughter. He insisted on his right to forget her ; and in a week had forgotten her, never to think of her again but once. The lady superior, as regarded her de- mands, was equally content, and through a course of several years ; for, as often as she asked pussy if she would be a saint, pussy replied that she would, if saints were allowed plenty of sweetmeats. But least of all were the nuns disappointed. Every thing that they had fancied possible in a human plaything fell short of what pussy realized in racketing, racing, and eternal plots against the peace of the elder nuns. No fox ever kept a hen roost in such alarm as pussy kept the dormitory of the senior sisters ; whilst the younger ladies were run off their legs by the eternal wiles, and had their chapel gravity discomposed, even in chapel, by the eter- nal antics, of this privileged little kitten. The kitten had long ago received a baptismal name, which was Kitty : this is Catharine, or Kate, or Hispan- ice Catalina. It was a good name, as it recalled her original name of pussy. And, by the way, she had also an ancient and honorable surname, viz., De Erauso, which is to this day a name rooted in Biscay. Her fath- er, the hidalgo, was a military officer in the Spanish ser- vice, and had little care whether his kitten should turn THE SPANISH NUN. 215 out a wolf or a lamb, having made over the fee simple of his own interest in the little Kate to St. Sebastian, " to have and to hold " so long as Kate should keep her hold of this present life. Kate had no apparent intention to let slip that hold ; for she was blooming as a rosebush in June, tall and strong as a young cedar. Yet, not- withstanding tliis robust health and the strength of the convent walls, the time was drawing near when St. Se- bastian's lease in Kate must, in legal phrase, " deter- mine ; " and any chateaux en Espagne that the saint might have built on the cloisteral fidelity of his pet Oa- talina must suddenly give way in one hour, like many other vanities in our own days of Spanish bonds and promises. After reaching her tenth year, Catalina be- came thoughtful, and not very docile. At times she was even headstrong and turbulent, so that the gentle sister- hood of St. Sebastian, who had no other pet or plaything in the world, began to weep in secret, fearing that they might have been rearing by mistake some future tigress ; for, as to infancy, thai, you know, is playful and inno- cent even in the cubs of a tigress. But there the ladies were going too far. Catalina was impetuous and aspir- ing, but not cruel. She was gentle, if people would let her be so ; but woe to tliose that took liberties with her I The day is come, the evening is come, when our poor Kate, that had for fifteen years been so tenderly rocked in the arms of St. Sebastian and his daughters, and that henceforth shall hardly find a breathing space between eternal storms, must see her peaceful cell, must see the holy chapel, for the last time. It was at vespers, it was during the chanting of tlie vesper service, that she finally 216 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. read the secret signal for her departure, which long she had been looking for. It happened that her aunt, the lady principal, had forgotten her breviary. As this was in a private scrutoire, she did not choose to send a ser- vant for it, but gave the key to her niece. The niece, on opening the scrutoire, saw, with that rapidity of eye glance for the one thing needed in any great emergency which ever attended her through life, that now was the moment for an attempt which, if neglected, might never return. There lay the total keys, in one massive trous- seau, of that fortress impregnable even to armies from without. St. Sebastian ! do you see what your pet is going to do ? And do it she will, as sure as your name is St. Sebastian. Kate went back to her aunt with the breviary and the key, but taking good care to leave that awful door, on whose hinge revolved her whole life, un- locked. Delivering the two articles to the superior, she complained of a headache ; [ah, Kate ! what did you know of headaches, except now and then afterwards from a stray bullet or so ?] upon which her aunt, kissing her forehead, dismissed her to bed. Now, then, through three fourths of an hour Kate will have free elbow room for unanchoring her boat, for unshipping her oars, and for pulling ahead right out of St. Sebastian's cove into the main ocean of life. Kate's advantages for her role in this life lay in four things — viz., in a well-built person and a particularly strong wrist. 2d. In a heart that nothing could appall. 3d. In a sagacious head, never drawn aside from the hoc ag-e [from the instant question of life] by any weak- ness of imagination. 4th. In a tolerably thick skin — not literally ; for she was fair and blooming, and deci- THE SPANISH NUN. 217 dedly handsome, having such a skin as became a young woman of family in northernmost Spain. But her sen- sibilities were obtuse as regarded some modes of deli- cacy, some modes of equity, some modes of the world's opinion, and all modes whatever of personal hardship. Lay a stress on that word some ; for, as to delicacy, she never lost sight of the kind which peculiarly concerns her sex. Long afterwards she told the pope himself, when confessing without disguise her sad and infinite wanderings to the paternal old man, (and I feel convinced of her veracity,) that in this respect, even then, at mid- dle age, she was as pure as is a child. As to the third item, — the world's opinion, — I don't know that you need lay a stress on some ; for, generally speaking, all that the world did, said, or thought, was alike con- temptible in her eyes. I must add, though at the cost of interrupting the story by two or three more sen- tences, that Catalina had also a fifth advantage, which sounds humbly, but is really of use in a world where even to fold and seal a letter adroitly is not the least of accomplishments. She was a handy girl. She could turn her hand to any thing ; of which I will give you two memorable instances. Was there ever a girl in this world but herself that cheated and snapped her fingers at that awful Inquisition which brooded over the convents of Spain, that did this without collusion from outside, trusting to nobody but to herself, and what ? To one needle, two hanks of thread, and a very inferior pair of scissors. For that the scissors were bad, though Kate does not say so in her memoirs, I knew by an a priori argument — viz., because all scissors were bad in the year 1607. From this sketch of Catalina's char- 10 218 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. acter, the reader is prepared to understand the decision of her present proceeding. She had no time to lose ; the twilight favored her ; but she must get under hiding before pursuit commenced. Consequently she lost not one of her forty-five minutes in picking and choosing. No shilly slially in Kate. She saw with the eyeball of an eagle what was indispensable : some little money per- haps, to pay the first toll bar of life. So, out of four shillings in aunty's purse, she took one. You can't say that was exorbitant. Now she was ready — ready to cast off St. Sebastian's towing rope — ready to cut and run for port any where. The finishing touch of her preparations was to pick out the proper keys. Even there she showed the same discretion. She did do no gratuitous mischief. She did not take the wine celler key, which would have ir- ritated the good father confessor ; she took those keys only that belonged to her, if ever keys did ; for they were the keys that locked her out from her natural birth- right of liberty. " Show me," says the Romish casuist, " her right in law to let herself out of that nunnery." " Show us," we reply, " your right to lock her in." Right or wrong, however, in strict casuistry, Kate was resolved to let herself out, and did so ; and, for fear any man should creep in whilst vespers lasted and steal the kitchen grate, she locked her old friends in. Then she sought a shelter. The air was not cold. She hurried into a chestnut wood, and upon withered leaves slept till dawn. Spanish diet and youth leave the diges- tion undisordered and the slumbers light. When the lark rose, up rose Catalina. No time to lose ; for she was still in the dress of a nun, and liable to be arrested by THE SPANISH NUN. 219 any man in Spain. "With her armed finger (ay ; by the way, I forgot the thimble ; but Kate did not) she set to work upon her amply-embroidered petticoat. She turned it wrong side out ; and, with the magic that only female hands possess, she had soon sketched and finished a dashing pair of Wellington trousers. All other changes were made according to the materials she possessed, and quite sufficiently to disguise the two main perils — her sex and her monastic dedication. What was she to do next ? Speaking of Wellington trousers would re- mind us, but could hardly remind her, of Vittoria, where she dimly had heard of some maternal relative. To Vit- toria, therefore, she bent her course ; and, like the Duke of Wellington, but arriving more than two centuries ear- lier, (though he, too, is an early riser,) she gained a great victory at that place. She had made a two days' march, baggage far in the rear, and no provisions but wild berries. She depended for any thing better, as light- heartedly as the duke, upon attacking, sword in hand, storming, her dear friend's intrenchments, and effecting a lodgment in his breakfast room, should he happen to have one. This amiable relative, an elderly man, had but one foible, or perhaps one virtue, in this world ; but that he had in perfection : it was pedantry. On that hint Catalina spoke. She knew by heart, from the ser- vices of the convent, a few Latin phrases. Latin ! — 0, but that was charming ; and in one so young ! The grave don owned the soft impeachment, relented at once, and clasped the hopeful young gentleman in the Wel- lington trousers to his uncular and rather angular breast. In this house the yarn of life was of a mingled qual- ity. The table was good ; but that was exactly what 220 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. Kate cared little about. The amusement was of the worst kind. It consisted chiefly in conjugating Latin verbs, especially such as were obstinately irregular. To show him a withered, frostbitten verb that want- ed its preterite, wanted its supines, wanted, in fact, every thing in this world, fruits or blossoms, that make a verb desirable, was to earn the don's gratitude for life. All day long he was marching and countermarch- ing his favorite brigades of verbs — verbs frequenta- tive, verbs inceptive, verbs desiderative — horse, foot, and artillery ; changing front, advancing from the ' rear, throwing out skirmishing parties ; until Kate, not given to faint, must have thought of such a resource as once in her life she had thought so seasonably of a ves- per headache. This was really worse than St. Sebas- tian's. Now, you know, when the time comes that nous nous ennuyons, the best course is to part. Kate saw that; and she walked off from the don's, (of whose am- orous passion for defective verbs one would have wished to know the catastrophe,) and took from his mantel piece rather more silver than she had levied on her aunt. But the don, also, was a relative ; and really he owed her a small check on his banker for turning out on his field days. A man, if he is a kinsman, has no right to bore one gratis. Prom Vittoria, Kate was guided by a carrier to Yal- ladolid. Luckily, as it seemed at first, — but it made little difference in the end, — here, at Valladolid, were the king and his court ; consequently there was plenty of regiments and plenty of regimental bands. Attract- ed by one of these, Catalina was quietly listening to the music, when some street ruffians, in derision of the gay THE SPANISU NUN. 221 colors and the form of her forest-made costume, (ras- cals ! one would like to have seen what sort of trousers they would have made with no better scissors,) began to pelt her with stones. Ah, my friends of the genus blackguard, you little know who it is that you arc se- lecting for experiments. This is the one creature of fifteen in all Spain, be the other male or female, whom nature, and temper, and provocation have qualified for taking the conceit out of you. This she very soon did, laying open a head or two with a sharp stone, and let- ting out rather too little than too much of bad Vallado- lid blood. But mark the constant villany of this world. Certain alguazils, — very like some other alguazils that I know nearer home, — having stood by quietly to see the friendless stranger insulted and assaulted, now felt it their duty to apprehend the poor nun for murderous violence ; and, had there been such a thing as a tread- mill in Valladolid, Kate was booked for a place on it without further inquiry. Luckily, injustice does not al- ways prosper. A gallant young cavalier, who had wit- nessed from his windows the whole affair, had seen the provocation, and admired Catalina's behavior, — equally patient at first, and bold at last , — hastened into the street, pursued the officers, forced them to release their prisoner u])on stating the circumstances of the case, and instantly offered Catalina a situation amongst his retinue. He was a man of birth and fortune ; and the place offer- ed, that of an honorary page, not being at all degrading even to a " daughter of somebody," was cheerfully accept- ed. Here Catalina spent a happy month. She was now si)lcndidly dressed, in daik-blue velvet, by a tailor that did not work witliiu the gloom of a chestnut forest. She 222 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. and the young cavalier, Don Francisco de Cardenas, were mutually pleased and had mutual confidence. All went well ; when one evening, but, luckily, not until the sun had been set so long as to make all things indistinct, who should march into the antechamber of the cavalier but that sublime of crocodiles, papa, that we lost sight of fifteen years ago, and shall never see again after this night ! He had his crocodile tears all ready for use, in working order, like a good industrious fire engine. It was absolutely to Catalina herself that he advanced ; whom, for many reasons, he could not be supposed to recognize : lapse of years, male attire, twilight, were all against him. Still she might have the family counten- ance ; and Kate thought he looked with a suspicious scrutiny into her face as he inquired for the young don. To avert her own face, to announce him to Don Fran- cisco, to wish him on the shores of that ancient river for crocodiles, the Nile, furnished but one moment's work to the active Catalina. She lingered, however, as her place entitled her to do, at the door of the audience chamber. She guessed already, but in a moment she heard from papa's lips, what was the nature of his er- rand. His daughter Catharine, he informed the don, had eloped from the convent of St. Sebastian — a place rich in delight. Then he laid open the unparalleled ingrat- itude of such a step. the unseen treasure that had been spent upon that girl ! the untold sums of money that he had sunk in that unhappy speculation ! the nights of sleeplessness suffered during her infancy ! the fifteen years of solicitude thrown away in schemes for her im- provement ! It would have moved the heart of a stone. The hidalgo wept copiously at his own pathos. And THE SPANISH NUN. 223 to such a height of grandeur had he carried his Spanish sense of the sublime, that he disdained to mention the pocket handkerchief which he had loft at St. Sebastian's fifteen years ago, by way of envelope for " pussy," and which, to the best of pussy's knowledge, was the one sole memorandum of papa ever heard of at St. Sebas- tian's. Pussy, however, saw no use in revising^ and correcting the text of papa's rememljrancos. She show- ed her usual prudence and her usual incomparable de- cision. It did not appear, as yet, that she would be reclaimed or was at all suspected for the fugitive by her father ; for it is an instance of that singular fatality which pursued Catalina through life, that, to her own astonishment, (as she now collcctoed uj), 10* 226 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. needing no more toilet than the birds that already were singing in the gardens, or than the two muleteers, who, good, honest follows, saluted the handsome boy kindly — thinking no ill at his making free with their straw, though no leave had been asked. With these philo-garlic men Kate took her departure. The morning was divine ; and, leaving Yalladolid with the transpoi'ts that befitted such a golden dawn, feeling also already, in the very obscurity of her exit, the pledge of her escape, she cared no longer for the crocodile, or for St. Sebastian, or (in the way of fear) for the pro- tector of St. Sebastian; though of him she thought with some tenderness, so deep is the remembrance of kindness mixed with justice. Andalusia she reached rather slowly, but many months before she was sixteen years old, and quite in time for the expedition. St. Lucar being the port of rendezvous for the Peruvian ex- pedition, thither she went. All comers were welcome on board the fleet, much more a fine young fellow like Kate. She was at once engaged as a mate ; and her ship, in particular, after doubling Cape Horn without loss, made the coast of Peru. Paita was the port of her destination. Very near to this port they were when a storm threw them upon a coral reef. There was little hope of the ship from the first ; for she was unmanageable, and was not expected to hold together for twenty-four hours. In this condition, with death before their faces, mark what Kate did, and please to remember it for her benefit when she does any otlier little thing that angers you. The crew lowered the longboat. Vainly the captain protested against this disloyal desertion of a king's ship, which might yet, TUK .-I'AMSII NUX. 227 perhaps, be ruu on shore, so as to save the stores. All the crow, to a man, deserted the captain. You may say that literally ; for the single exception was not a man, being our boldhcartcd Kate. She was the only sailor that refused to leave her captain or the King of Spain's ship. The rest pulled away for the shore, and with fair hopes of reaching it. But one half hour told another tale. Just about that time came a broad sheet of lightning, which, through the darkness of evening, revealed the boat iu the very act of mounting like a horse upon an inner reef, instantly filling, and throwing out the crew, every man of whom disajjpeared amongst tlie breakers. The niglit which succeeded was gloomy for both the representatives of his Catholic majesty. It cannot be denied by the greatest of philosophers that the muleteer's stable at Valladolid was worth twenty such ships, though the stable was not insured against fire, and the ship taas insured against the sea and the wind by some fellow that thought very little of his en- gagements. But what's the use of sitting down to cry ? That was never any trick of Catalina's. By daybreak she was at work with an axe in her hand. I knew it before ever I came to this place in her memoirs, I felt, as sure as if I had read it, that when day broke we should find Kate hard at work. Thimble or axe, trousers or raft, all one to her. The captain, though true to his duty, seems to have desponded. lie gave no help towards the raft. Signs were speaking, however, pretty loudly, that he must do something ; for notice to quit was now served pretty liberally. Kate's raft was ready ; and she encouraged the captain to think that it would give both of them 228 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. something to hold on by in swimming, if not even carry double. At this moment, when all was waiting for a start, and the ship herself was waiting for a final lurch, to say Good hij to the King of Spain, Kate went and did a thing which some misjudging people will object to. She knew of a box laden with gold coins, reputed to be the King of Spain's, and meant for contingencies in the voyage out. This she smashed open with her axe, and took a sum equal to one hundred guineas English, which, having well securred in a pillow case, she then lashed firmly to the raft. Now, this, you know, though not '•'' flotsam.,^'' because it would not float, was certainly, by maritime law, ^'■jetsom.^^ It would be the idlest of scruples to fancy that the sea or a shark had a better right to it than a philosopher, or a splendid girl who showed herself capable of writing a very fair octavo, to say nothing of her decapitating in battle several of the king's enemies and recovering the king's banner. No sane moralist would hesitate to do the same thing under the same circumstances on board an English vessel, though the first lord of the admiralty should be looking on. The raft was now thrown into the sea. Kate jumped after it, and then entreated the captain to follow her. He attempted it ; but, wanting her youthful agility, he struck his head against a spar and sank like lead, giving notice below that his ship was coming. Kate mounted the raft and was gradually washed ashore, but so exhausted as to have lost all recollection. She lay for hours until the warmth of the sun revived her. On sitting up, she saw a desolate shore stretching both ways — nothing to eat, nothing to drink ; but fortunately the raft and the tm:-. spam, ii nux. 229 money had been thrown near her, none of tlio lashings having given way ; onl}'' what is the use of a guinea amongst tangle and seagulls ? The money she distrib- uted amongst her pockets, and soon found strength to rise and march forward. But which was forward ? and which backward ? She knew by the conversation of the sailors that Paita must be in the neighborhood ; and Paita, being a port, could not be in the inside of Peru, but of coui-se somewhere on its outside, and the outside of a maritime land must be the shore ; so that, if she kept the shore and went far enough, she could not fail of hitting her foot against Paita at last, in the very darkest night, provided only she could first find out wliich was Kp and which was doian; else she might Avalk her shoes off and find herself six thousand miles ill the wrong. Here was an awkward case, all for Avant of a guidepost. Still, when one thinks of Kate's prosperous horoscope, that, after so long a voyage, she only out of the total crew was thrown on the American shore, with one hundred and five pounds in her purse of clear gain on the voyage, a conviction arises that she could not guess wrongly. She might have tossed u}), having coins in her pocket, heads or tails ? But this kind of sortilege was then coming to be thought irreligious in Christendom, as a Jewish and a heathen mode of questioning the dark future. She simply guessed, therefore ; and very soon a thing happened w^hich, though adding nothing to strengthen her guess as a true one, did much to sweeten it if it should prove a false one. On turning a point of the shore, she came upon a barrel of biscuit washed ashore from the ship. Biscuit is about the best thin<>' I know ; but it is the 2o0 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. soonest spoiled ; and one would like to hear counsel on one puzzling point, why it is that a touch of water uttei'ly ruins it, taking its life, and leaving a caput mortmun corpse. Upon this caput Kate breakfasted, though her case was worse than mine ; for any water that ever plagued me was always fresh : now, hers was a present from the Pacific Ocean. She, that was always prudent, packed up some of the Catholic king's biscuit as she had previ- *>asly packed up far too little of his gold. About twi- light on the second day she found herself entering Paita, witliout having had to swim any river in her walk. The first thing in such a case of distress which a young lady does, even if she happens to be a young gentleman, is to beautify her dress. Kate always attended to that^ as we know, having overlooked her in the chestnut wood. The man she sent for was not properly a tailor, but one who employed tailors, he himself furnishing the mate- rials. His name was Urquiza — a fact of very little importance to us in 1847, if it had stood only at the head and foot of Kate's little account ; but, unhappily for Kate's debut on this vast American stage, the case was otherwise. Mr. Urquiza had the misfortune (equally common in the old world and the new) of be- ing a knave, and also a showy, specious knave. Kate, who had prospered under sea allowances of biscuit and hardship, was now expanding in proportions. With very little vanity or consciousness on that head, she now displayed a really fine person ; and, when dressed anew in the way that became a young ofiicer in the Span- ish service, she looked* the rej^resentative picture of a * " She looked," &c. — ^If ever the reader should visit Aix-la-Cha- •pelle^ lie will pvobiibly teel iutei-est euough in the poor, wild, impassioned THE SPANISH NUN. 231 Spanish cabaUador. It is strange that sueli an appear- ance and snch a rank should have suggested to Urquiza tlie presumptuous idea of wishing that Kate niiglit be- come his clerk. He did, however, wish it ; for Kate wrote a beautiful hand ; and a stranger tiling is, tiiat Kate accej)tcd his proposal. This might arise from the difficulty of moving in those days to any distance in Peru. The ship had been merely bringing stores to the station of Paita ; and no corps of the roval armies was readily to be reached, whilst soraetliing must be done at once for a livelihood. Urquiza had two mer- cantile establishments — one at Trujillo, to whicli ho repaired in person, on Kate's agreeing to undertake tlie management of the other in Paita. Like the sensi- ble girl that we have always found her, she demanded specific instructions for her guidance in duties so new. Mr. Urquiza's instructions were short, easy to be under- stood, but rather comic ; and yet which is odd, they led to tragic results. There were two debtors of the shop Qmany, it is to be hoped, but two meriting his affectionate notice) with respect to whom he left the most opposite directions. The one was a very hand- some lady ; and the rule as to lier was, that she Avas to have credit unlimited, strictly unlimited. That was plain. The other customer favored by Mr, Urquiza's girl to look out for a picture of her in that city, and the only one known certainly to be authentic. It- is in tlie collection of Mr. Senipeller. For some time it was supposed that the best (if not the only) portrait of her luikcd somcwhei-e in Italy. Since the discovery of the picture at Aix- la-ChapcUc, that notion has been abandoned; but there is great reason to believe that, both in Madrid and Rome, many portniits of her must have been painted to meet the intense interest which ai-ose in her history subsequently amongst all the men of rank, military or ecclesiastical, "whether in Italy or Spain. 232 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. valedictory thoughts was a young man, cousin to the handsome lady, and bearing the name of Reyes. This youth occupied in Mr. Urquiza's estimate the same hyperbolical rank as tlie handsome lady, but on the op- posite side of the equation. The rule as to him was, that he was to have no credit, strictly none. In this case, also, Kate saw no difficulty ; and, when she came to know Mr. Reyes a little, she found the path of pleas- ure coinciding with the path of duty. Mr. Urquiza could not be more precise in laying down the rule than Kate was in enforcing it. Thus stood matters, when a party of strolling players strolled into Paita. Kate, as a Spaniard, being one held of the Paita aristocracy, was expected to attend. She did so ; and there, also was the malignant Reyes. He came and seated himself purposely, so as to shut out Kate from all view of the stage. She, who had nothing of the bully in her nature, and was a gentle creature when her wild Biscayan blood had not been kindled by insult, courteously requested him to move a little ; upon which Reyes remarked that it was not in his power to oblige the clerk as to that, but that he could oblige him by cutting his throat. The tiger that slept in Catalina wakened at once. She seized him, and would have executed vengeance on the spot, but that a party of young men interposed to part them. The next day, when Kate (always ready to forget and for- give) was thinking no more of the row, Reyes passed. By spitting at the window, and other gestures insulting to Kate, again he roused her Spanish blood. Out she rushed, sword in hand. A duel began in the street, and very soon Kate's sword had passed into the heart THE SPANISH NUN. 233 of Reyes. Now tliat the mischief was done, the police were, as usual, all alive for the pleasure of avenging it. Kate found herself suddenly in a strong prison, and with small hopes of leaving it except for execution. The relations of the dead man were potent in Paita, and clamorous for justice ; so that the correg-idor, in a case where he saw a very poor cliance of being corrupt- ed by bribes, felt it his duty to be sublimely incorrupti- ble. The reader knows, however, that amongst the relatives of the deceased bully was that handsome lady, who differed as much from her cousin in her sentiments as to Kate as she did in the extent of her credit with Mr. Urquiza. To her Kate wrote a note, and, us^ing one of the Spanish king's gold coins for bribing the jailer, got it safely delivered. That, perhaps, Avas un- necessary ; for the lady had been already on the alert, and had summoned Urquiza from Trujillo. By some means, not very luminously stated, and by paying proper feos in pro])er quarters, Kate was smuggled out of the prison at nightfall and smuggled into a pretty house in the suburbs. Egress was left easy. But, when out and free once more in the bright starry niglit, which way should Kate turn ? The whole city would prove but a rat trap for her, as bad as Mr. Urquiza's if she was not off before morning. At a glance, she comprehended that the sea was her only chance. To the port she fled. All was silent. Watchmen there were none. She jumped into a boat. To use the oars was dangerous, for she had no means of muffling them. But she contrived to hoist a sail, pushed off with a boat hook, and was soon stretch- ing across the water for the mouth of the harbor before 234 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. a breeze light but favorable. Having cleared the diffi- culties of exit, she lay down, and unintentionally fell asleep. When she awoke, the sun had been up three or four hours ; all was right otherwise ; but, had she not served as a sailor, Kate would have trembled upon finding that, during her long sleep of perhaps seven or eight hours, she had lost sight of land, by what distance she could only guess, and in what direction was to some degree doubtful. All this, however, seemed a great advantage to the bold girl, throwing her thoughts back on the enemies she had left behind. The disadvantage was, having no breakfast, not even damaged biscuit ; and some anxiety naturally arose as to ulterior prospects a little beyond the horizon of breakfast. But who's afraid ? As sailors whistle for a wind, Cat-alina really • had but to wliistle for any thing with energy, and it was sure to come. Like Caesar to the pilot of Dyrrha- chium, she might have said, for the comfort of her poor timorous boat, (though destined soon to perish), " CaL- alinam vehis, et fortunas ejus." Meantime, being very doubtful as to the best course for sailing, and content if her course did but lie off shore, she " carried on," as sailors say, under easy sail, going, in fact, just whither and just how the Pacific breezes suggested in the gentlest of whispers. All right behind, was Kate's opinion ; and, what was better, very soon she might say. All right ahead for, some hour or two before sun- set, when dinner was for once becoming, even to Kate, the most interesting of subjects for meditation, suddenly a large ship began to swell upon the brilliant atmos- phere. In those latitudes, and in those years, any ship was pretty sure to be Spanish : sixty years later, the THE SPANISH NUN. 235 odds were in favor of its being an English buccaneer^ which would have given a new direction to Kate's energy. Kate continued to make signals with a hand- kerchief whiter than the crocodile's of Ann. Dom. 1592, else it wcidd hardly have been noticed. Perhaps, after all, it would not, but that the ship's course carried her very nearly across Kate's. The stranger lay-to for her It was dark by the time Kate steered herself under the shijj's quarter ; and then was seen an instance of this girl's eternal wakefulness. Something was painted on tlie stern of her boat, she could not see what ; but she judged that it would express some connection witli tlie port tliat she had just quitted. Now, it was her wisli to lireak the cliain of traces connecting her with such a scamp as Urquiza ; since else, through his commercial correspondence, he might disperse over Peru a portrait of herself by no means flattering. How should she accomplish this ? It was dark ; and she stood, as you iiKiv see an Etonian do at times, rocking her little boat from side to side to side until it had taken in water as mucli as might be agreeable. Too much it proved for the boat's constitution, and the boat perished of dropsy — Kate declining to tap it. She got a ducking herself ; l)ut what cared she ? Up the ship's side she went, as gayly as ever, in those years when she was called pussy, she had raced after the nuns of St. Sebastian, jumped upon deck, and told the first lieutenant, when he questioned her about her adventures, quite as much truth as any man, under the rank. of admiral, had a riglit to expect This ship was full of recruits for the Spanish army, and bound to Concepcion. Even in that, destiny was an iteration or repeating memorial of the significance 236 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. that ran through Catalina's most casual adventures. She had enlisted amongst the soldiers ; and, on reach- ing port, the very first person who came off from shore was a dashing young military officer, whom at once, by his name and rank, (though she had never consciously seen him,) she identified as her own brother. He was splendidly situated in the service, being the governor general's secretary, besides his rank as a cavalry officer; and, his errand on board being to inspect the recruits, naturally, on reading in the roll one of them described as a Biscayan, the ardent young man came up with highbred courtesy to Catalina, took the young recruit's hand with kindness, feeling that to be a compatriot at so great a distance was to be a sort of relative, and asked with emotion after old boyish remembrances. There was a scriptural pathos in what followed, as if it were some scene of domestic reunion opening itself from patriarchal ages. The young officer was the eldest son of the house, and had left Spain when Cata- lina was only three years old. But, singularly enough, Catalina it was, the little wild cat that he yet remem- bered seeing at St. Sebastian's, upon whom his earliest inquiries settled. " Did the recruit know his family, the De Eurasos ? " 0, yes ; everybody knew them. " Did the recruit know little Catalina ? " Catalina smiled as she replied that she did, and gave such an animated description of the little fiery wretch as made t]ie officer's eye flash with gratified tenderness, and with certainty that the recruit was no counterfeit Bis- cayan. Indeed, you know, if Kate couldn't give a good description of " pussy," who could ? The issue of the interview was, that the officer insisted on Kate's THE SPANISH NUN. 237 making a home of his quarters. He did other services for his unknown sister. He placed her as a trooper in his own regiment, and favored her in many a way that is open to one having authority. But tlic person, after all, that did most to serve our Kate, was Kate. War was then raging with Indians both from Chili and Peru. Kate had always done her duty in action ; but at lengtli, in the decisive battle of Puren, there was an opening for doing something more. Havoc had been made of her own squadron ; most of the officers wore killed, and the standard was carried off. Kate gathered around her a small party — galloped after the Indian column that was carrying away the trophy — charged — saw all her own party killed — but (in spite of wounds on her face and shoulder,) succeeded in bearing away the recovered standard. She rode up to the general and his staff ; she dismounted ; she rendered up her prize, and fainted away, much less from the blinding blood than from the tears of joy which dimmed her eyes as the general, waving his sword in admiration over her head, pronounced our Kate on the spot an alferez, or standard bearer, with a commission from the King of Spain and the Indies. Bonny Kate ! noble Kate ! I would there were not two centuries laid be- tween us, so that I might have the pleasure of kissing thy fair hand. Kate had tlie good sense to see the danger of reveal- ing her sex, or her relationship, even to her own brother. The grasp of the church never relaxed, never " prescribed," unless freely and by choice. The nun, if discovered, would have been taken out of the horse barracks or the dragoon saddle. She had the firmness, 238 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. therefore, for many years to resist the sisterly impulses that sometimes suggested such a confidence. For years, and those years the most important of her life, — the years that developed her character — she lived undetected as a brilliant cavalry officer under her brother's patronage. Years after this period, a young officer dining with Kate, entreated her to become his second in a duel. Such things were everj^-day affairs. However, Kate had reasons for declining the. ser- vice, and did so ; but the officer, as he was sullenly departing, said, tliat, if he were killed, fas he thought he should be) his death would lie at Kate's door. I do not take his view of the case, and am not moved by his rhetoric or his logic. Kate was, and relented. The duel was fixed for eleven at night, under the walls of a monastery. Unhappily the niglit proved unusually dark, so that the two principals had to tie white handker- chiefs round tlieir elbows in order to descry each other. In the confusion they wonnded each other mortally. Upon that, according to a usage not peculiar to Span- iards, but extending (as doubtless the reader knows) for a century longer to our own countrymen, the two seconds were obliged, in honor, to do something towards avenging their principals. Kate had her usual fatal luck. Her sword passed sheer through the body of her opponent. This unknown opponent, falling dead, had just breath left to cry out, " Ah, villain, you have kill- ed me !" in a voice of horrific reproach ; and the voice was the voice of her brother ! The monks of the monastery under whose silent shadows this murderous duel had taken place, roused by the clashing of swords and the angry shouts of com- THE SPANISH NUN. 239 batants, issued out with torches to find one only of the four officers surviving. Every convent and altar had a right of asylum for a short period. According to the custom, the monks carried Kate, insensible with anguish of mind, to the sanctuary of tlieir chapel. There, for some days they detained her ; but then, having furnish- ed her with a horse and some provisions, they turned her adrift. Which way should the unhappy fugitive turn ? In blindness of heart, she turned towards the sea. It was the sea that had brought her to Peru ; it was the sea that would, perhaps, carry her away. It was the sea that had first showed her this land and its golden liopes ; it was the sea that ouglit to hide from her its fear- ful rcmcmlu-ances. The sea it was that had twice spared lier life in extremities ; the sea it was that might now, if it chose, take back the bauble that it had spared in vain. Three days our poor heroine followed the coast. Her horse was then almost unable to move ; and, ou his account, she turned inland to a thicket for grass and shelter. As she drew near to it, a voice challenged, " Who goes there ? " Kate answered, '■'■ Spain.''^ " WJiat people?** '■'■ A friend.*'' It was two soldiers, desert- ers, and almost starving. Kate shared her provisions with these men ; and on hearing their plan, which was logo over the Cordilleras, she agreed to join tlic party. Their object was the wild one of seeking the river Do- /y/y/o, whose waters rolled along golden sands and whose pebbles were emeralds. Hers was to throw herself upon a line the least liable to pursuit, and the readiest for a new chapter of life in which oblivion might be found for the i)ast. After a few days of incessant climbing iiiid fatigue, they found themselves in the regions of 240 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. perpetual snow. Summer would come as vainly to this kingdom of frost as to the grave of her brother. No fire, but the fire of human blood in youthful veins, could ever be kept burning in these aerial solitudes. Fuel was rarely to be found, and kindling a secret hardly known except to Indians. However, our Kate can do every thing ; and she's the girl, if ever girl did such a thing, or ever girl did not such a thing, that I back at any odds for crossing the Cordilleras. I would bet you something now, reader, if I thought you would deposit your stakes by return of post, (as they play at chess through the post office,) that Kate does the trick ; that she gets down to the other side ; that the soldiers do not ; and that the horse, if preserved at all, is preserved in a way that will leave him very little to boast of. The party had gathered wild berries and esculent roots at the foot of the mountains, and the horse was of very great use in carrying them. But this larder was soon emptied. There was nothing then to carry ; so that the horse's value, as a beast of burden, fell cent, per cent. In fact, very soon he could not carry himself, and it became easy to calculate when he would reach the bottom on the wrong side the Cordilleras. He took three steps back for one upwards. A council of war being held, the small army resolved to slaughter their horse. He, though a member of the expedition, had no vote ; and, if he had, the votes would have stood three to one — majority, two against him. He was cut into quarters ; which surprises me ; for, unless one quarter was considered liis own share, it reminds one too much of this amongst the many facetice of English midshipmen, who ask (on any one of their number look- THE SPANISH NUN. 241 ing sulky) " if it is his intention to marry and rctiro from the service upon a superannuation of <£4 4^. 4W. a year, paid quarterly by way of botlieriiig tlie })urscr." The purser can't do it with the help of farthings; and, as respects aliquot parts, four shares among three per- sons are as incommensurable as a guinea is against any attempt at giving change in half crowns. However, tliis was all the preservation that the horse found. No salt- petre or sugar could be had ; but the frost was antisc]> tic ; and the horse was preserved in as useful a sense as ever apricots were preserved or strawberries. On a fire, painfully devised out of broom and wither- ed leaves, a horsesteak was dressed. For drink, snow was allowed a discretion. This ought to have revived the party ; and Kate, perhaps, it did. But the poor deserters were thinly clad, and they had not the boiling heart of Catalina. More and more they drooped. Kate did her best to cheer them. But the march was nearly at an end for them, and they were going in one half hour to receive their last billet. Yet, before this consummation, they have a strange spectacle to see, such as few places could show but the upper chambers of the Cordilleras. They had reached a billowy scene of rocky masses, large and small, looking shockingly black on their perpendicular sides as they rose out of the vast, snowy expanse. Upon the higliest of these that was accessible, Kate mounted to look around her ; and slie saw — 0, rapture at such an hour! — a man sitting on a shelf of rock, with a gun by his side. She shouted with joy to her comrades, and ran down to communicate tlie joyful news. Ilere was a sportsman, watching, perhaps, for an eagle ; and now they would 11 242 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. have relief. One man's cheek kindled with the hectic of sudden joy, and he rose eagerl}^ to march. The other was fast sinking under the fatal sleep that Frost sends before herself as her merciful minister of death ; but hearing in his dream the tidings of relief, and as- sisted by his friends, he also staggeringly arose. It could not be three minutes' walk, Kate thought, to the station of the sportsman. That tliought supported them all. Under Kate's guidance, who had taken a sailor's glance at the bearings, they soon unthreaded the lab- yrinth of rocks so far as to bring the man within view. He had not left his resting-place ; their steps on the soundless snow, naturally, he could not hear; and, as their road brought them upon him from the rear, still less could he see them. Kate hailed him ; but so keenly was he absorbed in some speculation, or in the object of his watching, that he took no notice of them, not even moving his head. Kate began to think there would be another man to rouse from sleep. Coming close behind him she touched his shoulder, and said, " My friend, are you sleeping ? " Yes, he ivas sleeping — sleeping- the sleep from which there is no awaking ; and the slight touch of Kate having disturbed the equilibrium of the corpse, down it rolled on the snow ; the frozen body rang like a hollow iron cylinder, the face uppermost and blue with mould, mouth open, teeth ghastly and bleaching in the frost, and a fright- ful grin upon the lips. This dreadful spectacle finish- ed the struggles of the weaker man, who sank and died at once. The other made an effort with so much spirit, that, in Kate's opinion, horror had acted u])on liim beneficially as a stimulant. But it was not really THE SPANISH NUN. 243 so; it was a spasm of morbid strength. A collapse succeeded ; his blood began to freeze ; he sat down in spite of Kate ; and he also died without further struggle. Gone are the poor, suflering deserters, stretched and bleaching upon the snow ; and insulted discipline is avenged. Great kings have long arms ; and sycophants are ever at hand for the errand of the potent. What had frost and snow to do with the quarrel ? Yet they made tliemselves sycophantic servants of the King of 8pain ; and they dogged his deserters up to the summit of the Cordilleras more surely than any Spanish l)lood- hound or any Spanish tirailleur's bullet. Now is our Kate standing alone on the summits of the Andes in solitude that is shocking ; for she is alone with her own afflicted conscience. Twice before, she had stood in solitude as deep upon the wild, wild waters of the Pacific ; but her conscience had been tJien un- troubled. Now is there nobody left that can help ; her horse is dead ; the soldiers arc dead. There is nobody that she can speak to except God ; and very soon you will find that she does speak to him ; for already on these vast aerial deserts he has been whispering to her. The condition of Kate is exactly tliat of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. Such, also, had been the offence of Kate ; such, also, was the punishment that now is dogging her steps. She, like the mariner, had slain the one sole creature that loved her upon the whole wide earth ; she, like the mar- iner, for this oflFence, had been hunted into frost and snow — very soon will be hunted into delirium; and from that (if she escapes witli life) will be hunted into the trouble of a heart that cannot rest. In this only 244 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. tlie darkness had been merciful to Kate — that it had hidden forever from her victim the hand that slew him. But now, in such utter solitude, her thoughts ran back to their earliest interview. She remembered with an- guish how, on first touching the shores of America, almost the very first word that met her ear had been from him, the brother whom she had killed, about the " pussy " of times long past ; how the gallant young man had hung upon her words as in her native Basque sho described her own mischievous little self of twelve years back ; how his color went and came whilst his loving memory of the little sister was revived by her own descriptive traits, giving back, as in a mir- ror the fawn-like grace, the squirrel-like restlessness, that once had kindled his own delighted laughter ; how he would take no denial, but showed on the spot, that simply to have touclicd, to liave kissed, to have played with the little wild thing that glorified by her innocence the gloom of St. Sc])astian's cloisters, gave a rii^ht to his hospitality ; liow, througli lihn only, she had found a welcome in camps ; how, through 1dm, she had found the avenue to honor and distinction. And yet this brothei-, so loving and generous, it was that sho had dismissed from life. Slie paused ; she turned round, as if looking back for his grave ; she saw the dreadful wildernesses of snow which already she had traversed. Silent they were at tliis season, even as, in the panting heats of noon, the Zaarrahs of the torrid zone are oftentimes silent. Dreadful was the silence ; it was the nearest thing to the silence of the grave. Graves were at the foot of the Andes — ///«/ she knew too well ; graves were at the summit of the Andes — THE SPANISH NUN. 245 that slic saw too well ; and as she gazed, a sudden thought flashed upon her when her eyes settled upon the coi-pses of the poor deserters : Could she, like them^ have been all tliis while unconsciously executing judg- ment upon herself — running from a wrath that was doubtful into the very jaws of a wrath that was inexor- able — flying in panic, and behold there was no man that pursued ? For the first time in her life, Kato trembled ; not for the first time, Kate wept ; far less for the first time Avas it that Kate bent her knee — that Kate clasped her hands — that Kate prayed ; but it ivaa the fii-st time that she prayed as they pray for whom no more hope is left but in prayer. verdure of human fields, cottages of men and women, (that now suddenly seemed all brothers and sisters,) cottages with children around them at play, that are so far below, — summer and spring, flowers and blossoms, to which, as to his symbols, God has given the gorgeous privilege of rehearsing forever upon earth his most mysterious perfection — life and the resurrections of life, — is it indeed true that poor Kate must never see you more ? Mutteringly she put tliat question to herself; but strange are the caprices of ebb and flow in the deep fountains of human scnsibilfties. At this very moment, when the utter incapacitation of despair was gathering fast at Kate's heart, a sudden lightening shot far into her spirit, a reflux almost su- pernatural, from the earliest effects of her prayer. A thouglit had struck her all at once ; and this thought prompted her immediately to turn round. Perhaps it was in some blind yearning after the only memorials of life in this frightful i-egion that she fixed her eye upon 246 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. a point of hilly ground, by which she identified the spot near which the three corpses were lying. The si- lence seemed deeper than ever. Neither was there any phantom memorial of life for the eye or for the car, nor wing of bird, nor echo, nor green leaf, nor creeping thing that moved or stirred upon the sound- less waste. 0, what a relief to this burden of silence would be a human groan ! Here seemed a motive for still darker despair ; and yet at that very moment a pulse of joy began to thaw the ice at her heart. It struck her, as she reviewed the ground, that undoubt- edly it had been for some time slowly descending. Her senses were much dulled by suffering ; but this thought it was, suggested by a sudden apprehension of a con- tinued descending movement, wliich had caused her to turn round. Sight had confirmed the suggestion first derived from her own steps. The distance attained was now sufficient to establish the tendency. 0, yes, yes, to a certainty she had been descending for some time. Frightful was the spasm of joy which whispered that the worst was over. It was as when the shadow of midnight, that murderers had relied on, is passing away from your beleaguered shelter, and dawn will soon be manifest. It was as when a flood, that all day long has raved against the walls of your house, has ceased (you suddenly think) to rise : yes, measured by a golden plummet, it is sinking beyond a doubt, and the darlings of your household are saved. Kate faced round in agitation to her proper direction. She saw, what previously in her stunning confusion she had not seen, that, hardly two stones' throw in advance, lay a mass of rock, split as into a gateway. Through that THE SPANISH NUN. 247 opening it now became probable tliat the road was ly- ing. Hurrying forward, she passed within the natural gates — gates of i)aradise they were. Ah, what a vista did that gateway expose before her dazzled eye ! what a revelation of heavenly promise ! Full two miles long stretched a long, narrow glen, every where descending, and in many parts rapidly. All was now placed be- yond a doubt. She ivas descending, for hours, per- haps, had been descending, insensibly, the mighty stair- case. Yes, Kate is leaving behind her the kingdom of frost and the victories of death. Two miles farther there may be rest, if there is not shelter. And A'cry soon, as the crest of her newborn happiness, she distin- guished at the other end of that rocky vista a pavilion- shaped mass of dark-green foliage — a belt of trees, such as we see in the lovely parks of England, but islanded by a screen (though not every where occupied by the usurpations) of a tliick, bushy undergrowth. verdure of dark olive foliage, offered suddenly to faint- ing eyes as if by some winged patriarclml herald of wrath relenting, — solitary Arab's tent rising with saint- ly signals of [icacc in the dreadful desert, — must Kate indeed die even yet whilst she sees but cannot reach you ? Outpost on the frontier of man's dominions, standing within life, but looking out upon everlasting death, wilt thou hold up the anguish of thy mocking invitation only to betray ? Never, perhaps, in this world was the line so exquisitely grazed that parts sal- vation and ruin. As the dove to her dovecot from the swooping hawk, as the Cliristian pinnace to Christian batteries from the bloody Mahometan corsair, so flew, so tried to fly, towards the anchoring thickets, that. 248 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. alas ! could not weigh tlieir anchors and make sail to meet her, the poor, exhausted Kate from the vengeance of pursuing frost. And she reached them. Staggering, fainting, reeling, she entered beneath the canopy of umbrageous trees. But, as oftentimes the Hebrew fugitive to a city of ref- uge, flying for his life before the avenger of blood, was pressed so hotly, that, on entering the archway of what seemed to him the heavenly city gate, as he kneeled in deep thankfulness to kiss its holy, merciful shadow, he could not rise again, but sank instantly with infant weak- ness into sleep, — sometimes to wake no more, — so sank, so collapsed upon the ground, without power to choose her couch, and with little prospect of ever rising again to her feet, the martial nun. She lay, as luck had ordered it, with her head screened by the undergrowth of bushes from any gales that might arise ; she lay ex- actly as she sank, with her eyes up to heaven. And thus it was that the nun saw, before falling asleep, the two sights that upon earth are fittest for the closing eyes of a nun, whether destined to open again or to close forever. She saw the interlacing of boughs overhead, forming a dome that seemed like the dome of a cathe- dral. She saw through the fretwork of the foliage another dome, far beyond — the dome of an evening sky — the dome of some heavenly cathedral not built with hands. She saw upon this upper dome the vesper lights, all alive with pathetic grandeur of coloring from a sun- set that had just been rolling down like a chorus. She had not till now consciously observed the time of day : whether it were morning, or whether it were afternoon, in her confusion she had not distinctly known. THE SPANISH NUN. 249 But now she whispered to herself, " ll is evening ; " and what lurked half unconsciously in these words might be : " The sun, that rejoices, lias finished his daily toil; man, that labors, has finished his; I, that suffer, have finished mine." All night long she slept in her verdurous St. Ber- nard's hospice without awaking ; and whether she would ever awake seemed to depend upon an accident. The slumber that towered above her l)rain was like tliat lluctuating, silvery column which stands in scientific tubes — sinking, rising, deepening, lightening, contract- ing, expanding ; or like the mist that sits through sultry afternoons upon the river of the American St. Peter, sometimes rarefying for minutes into sunny gauze, some- times condensing for hours into palls of funeral darkness. You fancy that, after twelve hours of any sleep, she must have been refreshed ; better, at least, than she was last niglit. Ah, but sleep is not always sent upon mis- sions of refreshment ; sleep is sometimes the secret chamber in which Death arranges his machinery : sleep is sometimes that deep, mysterious atmosphere in which the human spirit is slowly unsettling its wings for flight from earthly tenements. It is now eight o'clock in the morning ; and, to all appearance, if Kate should re- ceive no aid before noon, when next the sun is depart- ing to his rest, Kate will be departing to hers ; when next the sun is holding out his golden Christian signal to man that the hour is come for letting his anger go down, Kate will be sleeping away forever into the arms of brotherly forgiveness. Kate was ever lucky, though ever unfortunate ; and the world, being of my opinion, that Kate was worth 11* 250 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. saving, inado up its mind, about half past eiglit o'clock ill the morning, to save her. Just at that time, when the night was over and its sufferings were hidden in one of those intermitting gleams that for a moment or two lightened the clouds of her slumber, Kate's dull ear caught a sound that for years had spoken a familiar language to her. What was it ? It was the sound, though muffled and deadened, like the ear that heard it, of horsemen advancing. Interpreted l)y the tumul- tuous dreams of Kate, was it the cavalry of Spain, at whose head so often she had charged the bloody In- dian scalpers ? Was it, according to the legend of an- cient days, cavalry that had been sown by her brother's blood, cavalry that rose from the ground on an inquest of retribution, and were racing up the Andes to seize her ? Her dreams, that had opened sullenly to the sound, waited for no answer, but closed again into pom- pous darkness. Happily the horsemen had caught the glimpse of some bright ornament, clasp, or aigulet, on Kate's dress. They were hunters and foresters from below — servants in the household of a beneficent lady ; and, in some pursuit of flying game, had wandered be- yond their ordinary limits. Struck by the sudden scin- tillation from Kate's dress played upon by the morning sun, they rode up to the thicket. Great was their sur- prise, great their pity, to see a young officer in uniform stretched within the bushes upon the ground, and per- haps dying. Borderers from childhood on this dread- ful frontier, sacred to winter and death, they understood the. case at once. They dismounted ; and with the ten- derness of women, raising the poor frozen cornet in their arms, washed her temples with brandy, whilst one, at THE SPANISH NUN. 251 intervals, suflcrcrl a few drops to trieklc within lier lips. As the restoration of a warm bed was now most likely to be successful, they lifted the helpless stranger upon a horse, walking on each side with supporting arms. Once again our Kate is in the saddle — once again a Spanish caballador. But Kate's bridle hand is deadly cold ; and her spurs, that she had never unfastened since leaving the monastic asylum, hung as idle as the flapping sail that fills unsteadily with the breeze upon a stranded ship. This procession had some miles to go, and over diffi- cult ground ; but at length it reached the forest-like park and the cliateau of the wealthy proprietress. Kate was still half frozen and speechless except at intervals. Heavens ! can this corpselike, languishing young woman be the Kate that once in her radiant girlhood rode with a handful of comrades into a column of two thousand enemies ; that saw her comrades die ; that persisted when all were dead ; that tore from the heart of all resistance the banner of her native Spain ? Chance and change have " written strange defeatures in her face." Much is changed ; but some things are not changed : there is still kindness that overflows with pity ; there is still helplessness that asks for this pity with- out a voice. She is now received by a senora not less kind than that maternal aunt who, on the night of her birth, first welcomed her to a loving home ; and she, the heroine of Spain, is herself as helpless now as that little lady who, then at ten minutes of age, was kissed and blessed by all the household of St. Sebastian. Let us suppose Kate ])laced in a warm bed ; let us suppose her in a few hours recovering steady conscious- 252 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. ness ; in a few days recovering some power of self- support ; in a fortnight able to seek the gay saloon, where the senora was sitting alone, and rendering tlianks, with that deep sincerity which ever character- ized our wildhearted Kate, for the critical services re- ceived from that lady and her establishment. This lady, a widow, was what the French call a me- tisse, the Spaniards a mestizza ; that is, the daughter of a genuine Spaniard and an Indian mother. I shall call her simply a Creole, which will indicate her want of pure Spanish blood significantly to explain her deference for those who had it. She was a kind, liberal woman ; rich rather more than needed where there were no opera boxes to rent ; a widow about fifty years old in the wicked world's account, some forty-four in her own ; and happy, above all, in the possession of a most lovely daughter, whom even the wicked world did not accuse of more than sixteen years. This daughter, Juana, was . But stop : let her open the door of the saloon in which the senora and the cornet are con- versing, and speak for herself. She did so, after an hour had passed ; which length of time, to her, that never had any business whatever in her innocent life, seemed sufficient to settle the business of the old world and the new. Had Pietro Diaz (as Catalina now call- ed herself) been really a Peter, and not a sham Peter, what a vision of loveliness would have rushed upon his sensibilities as the door opened ! Do not expect me to describe her ; for which, however, there are materials extant, sleeping in archives, where they have slept for two hundred and twenty years. It is enough that she is reported to have united the stately tread of Anda- i THE SPANISH NUN. 253 lusian women with the innocent voluptuousness of Pe- ruvian eyes. As to her complexion and figure, be it known that Juana's father was a gentleman from Gre- nada, having in his veins the grandest blood of all this earth, blood of Goths and Vandals, tainted (for which lieaven be thanked ! ) twice over with blood of Arabs — once through Moors, once through Jews ; whilst from her grandmother Juana drew the deep subtle mel- ancholy and the beautiful contours of limb which belong to the Indian race — a race destined silently and slow- ly to fade from the earth. No awkwardness was, or could be, in this antelope, when gliding with forest grace into the room ; no townbrcd shame ; nothing but the unaffected pleasure of one who wishes to speak a fervent welcome, but knows not if she ought — tlie as- tonishment of a Miranda, bred in utter solitude, w^hen first beholding a princely Ferdinand ; and just so much reserve as to remind you that, if Catalina thought fit to dissemble her sex, she did not. And consider, reader, if you look back and are a great arithmetician, that, whilst the senora had only fifty per cent, of Spanish blood, Juana had seventy-five ; so that her Indian mel- ancholy, after all, was swallowed up for the present by her Vandal, by her Arab, by her Spanish fire. Catalina, seared as she w'as by the world, has left it evident in her memoirs that she was touched more than she wished to be by this innocent child. Juana formed a brief lull for Catalina in her too stormy existence ; and if for her in this life the sw^eet reality of a sister had been possible, here was the sister she would have chosen. On the other hand, what might Juana think of the cornet ? To have been thrown upon the kind 254 BEAUTIES OF DE QUIXCEY. hospitalities of her native home, to have been rescued by her mother's servants from that fearful death which, lying but a few miles off, had filled her nursery with traditionary tragedies, — that was sufficient to create an interest in the stranger. But his bold martial de- meanor, his yet youthful style of beauty, his frank manners, his animated conversation that reported a hundred contests with suffering and peril, wakened for the first time her admiration. Men she had never seen before, except menial servants or a casual j)riest ; but here was a gentleman, young like herself, that rode in the cavalry of Spain ; that carried the banner of the only potentate whom Peruvians knew of — the King of the Spains and the Indies; that had doubled Cape Horn ; that had crossed the Andes ; that had suffered shipwreck ; that had rocked upon fifty storms ; and had wrestled for life through fifty battles. The reader knows all that followed. The sisterly love which Catalina did really feel for this young moun- taineer was inevitably misconstrued. Embarrassed, but not able, from sincere affection, or almost in bare pro- priety, to refuse such expressions of feeling as corres- jjonded to the artless and involuntary kindnesses of the ingenuous Juana, one day the cornet was surprised by mamma in the act of encircling her daughter's waist with his martial arm, although waltzing was premature by at least two centuries in Peru. She taxed him in stantly with dishonorably abusing her confidence. The cornet made but a bad defence. He muttered some- thing about '•'■fraternal ajfection^'' about "esteem," and a great deal of metaphysical words that are des- tined to remain untranslated in their original Spanish. THE SPANISH NUN. 255 The good seriora, tliongh she could boast of only forty- four years' experience, was not altogether to be " Aorf" in that fashion : she was as learned as if she had been fif- ty ; and she brought matters to a speedy crisis. " You are a Spaniard," she said, "a gentleman, therefore; re- vicmbcr that you are a gentleman. This very night, if your intentions are not serious, quit my house. Go to Tucuman ; you shall command my horses and servants ; but stay no longer to increase the sorrow that already you will have left behind you. IMy daughter loves you. That is sorrow enough, if you are trifling with us ; but if not, and you also love her, and can be ha])py in our solitary mode of life, stay with us — stay forever. Marry Juana with my free consent. I ask not for wealth. Mine is sufficient for you both." The cornet protested that the honor was one never contemplated by him — that it was too great — that But of course, reader, you know that " gammon " flourishes in Peru amongst the silver mines as well as in some more boreal lands that produce little better than copper and tin. " Tin," however, has its uses. The delighted senora overruled all objections, great and small ; and she confirmed Juana's notion, that tlie business of two worlds could be transacted in an hour, by settling her daughter's future liajipiness in exactly twenty minutes. The poor, weak Catalina, not acting now in any spirit of recklessness, grieving sincerely for the gulf that was opening before her, and yet shrinking efl'cminately from the momentary shock that would be inflicted by a firm adherence to her duty, clinging to the anodyne of a short delay, allowed herself to be installed as the lover of Juana. Considerations of convenience, however, 256 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCBY. postponed the marriage. It was requisite to make various purchases ; and for this it was requisite to visit Tucuman, where also the marriage ceremony could be performed with more circumstantial splendor. To Tu- cuman, therefore, after some weeks' interval, the whole party repaired ; and at Tucuman it was that the tragi- cal events arose which, whilst interrupting such a mockery forever, left the poor Juana still happily de- ceived, and never believing for a moment that hers was a rejected or a deluded heart. Kate loved society and sought it at Tucuman among some Portuguese who happened to be there. A quarrel arose between one of these Portuguese and Catalina, and they resorted to arms. Catalina was so unfortunate as to run her sword through her opponent. Escape was impossible. Our Kate was seized by the corregidor and four alguazils and thrown into prison. A party trial, in which two false witnesses appeared against Kate, ended in her condemnation. She was sentenced to be executed in the public square. Catalina would not confess her crime, and after eight days confinement in prison, the principal judge issued his warrant for the execution. Accordingly, as the sun went down, the sad procession formed within the prison. Into the great square of Tucuman it moved, whei'e the scaffold had been built and the whole city had assembled for the spectacle. Catalina steadily ascended the ladder of the scaffold ; even then she resolved not to benefit by revealing her sex ; even then it was that she expressed her scorn for the lubberly executioner's mode of tying a knot ; did it herself in a " ship shape," orthodox manner ; received THE SPANISH NUN. 257 in return the enthusiastic plaudits of the crowd, and so far ran. the risk of precipitating her fate ; for the timid magistrates, fearing a rescue from the impetuous mob, angrily ordered the executioner to finish the scene. The clatter of a galloping horse, however, at this instant forced them to pause. The crowd opened a road for the agitated horseman, who was the bearer of an order from the president of La Plata to suspend the execution until two prisoners could be examined. The whole was the work of the senora and her daughter. The elder lady, having gathered informations against the witnesses, had pursued them to La Plata. There, by her influence with the governor, they w^ere arrested, recognized as old malefactors, and, in their terror, had partly con- fessed their perjury. Catalina was removed to La Pla- ta ; solemnly acquitted ; and, by the advice of the president, for the present the connection with the seno- ra's family was postponed indefinitely. Now was the last adventure approaching that ever Catalina should see in the new world. Some fine sights she may yet see in Europe, but nothing after this (ivhich she has recorded) in America. The senora — and, observe, whatever kindness she does to Catalina speaks secretly from two hearts, her own and Juana's — 'had, by the advice of Mr. President Mendouia, given sufficient money for Catalina's travel- ling expenses. So far well. But Mr. M. chose to add a little codicil to this bequest of tiie senora's, never sug- gested by her or by her daughter. " Pray," said this inquisitive president, who surely might have found busi- ness enough in La Plata, " pray, Senor Pietro Diaz, did you ever live at Conccpcion ? and were you ever ac- 258 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. quainted there with Senor Miguel de Erauso ? That man, sir, was my friend." From my kindness for poor Kate, I feel uncharitably towards the president for advising Senor Pietro, alias Kate, " to travel for his health." What had he to do with people's health ? However, Mr. Peter, as he had pocketed the senora's money, thought it right to pocket also the advice that accompanied its payment. That he might be in a condition to do so, he went off to buy a horse. He was in luck to-day ; for, beside money and advice, he obtained, at a low rate, a horse both beautiful and serviceable for a journey. To Paz it was, a city of prosperous name, that the cornet first moved. But Paz did not fulfil the promise of its name ; for it laid the grounds of a feud that drove our Kate out of America. Her first adventure was a bagatelle, and fitter for a jest book than a history ; yet it proved no jest either, since it led to the tragedy that followed. Riding into Paz, our gallant standard bearer and her bonny black horse drew all eyes, comme de raisori, upon their sepa- rate charms. This was inevitable amongst the indolent population of a Spanish town, and Kate was used to it ; but, having recently had a little too much of the public attention, she felt nervous on remarking two soldiers eyeing the handsome horse and the handsome rider with an attention that seemed too solemn for mere cBsthetics. However, Kate was not the kind of person to let any thing dwell on her spirits, especially if it took the shape of impudence ; and, whistling gayly, she was riding forward, when who should cross her path but the alcalde ! Ah, alcalde, you see a person now that has a mission against you, though quite unknown to herself. He looked THE SPANISH NUN. 259 SO sternly that Kate asked if his worship had any com- mands. " These men," said the alcalde, " these two soldiers, say that this horse is stolen." Kate was ner- vous, hut never disconcerted. In a moment she had twitched off a saddle cloth on which she sat, and throw*- ing it over the horse's head, so as to cover up all be- tween the ears and the mouth, she replied, " that she had bought and paid for the horse at La Plata. But now, your worship, if tliis horse has really been stolen from these men, they must know well of which eye it is blind ; for it can be only in the right eye or the left." One of the soldiers cried out instantly that it was the left eye ; but the other said, " No, no ; you foi-get ; it's the right." Kate maliciously called attention to this little schism. But the men said, " Ah, l/iat was nothing — they were hurried ; but now, on recollecting them- selves, they were agreed that it was the left eye." Did they stand to that ? " 0, yes, positive they were ; left eye — left." Upon which our Kate, twitching off the horse cloth, said gayly to the magistrate, " Now, sir, please to ob- serve tliat this horse has nothing the matter with either eye." And in fact it ivas so. Then his worship ordered his alguazils to apprehend the two witnesses, who posted off to liread and water, with other reversionary advan- tages, whilst Kate rode in quest of the best dinner that Paz could furnish. This alcalde's acquaintance, however, was not destined to drop here. Something had appeared in the young cabeUerd's bearing which made it painful to have ad- dressed liim with harshness or for a moment to have entertained such a charge against such a person. Ho 260 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCET. despatched his cousin, therefore, Don Antonio Calderon, to offer his apologies, and at the same time to request that the stranger, whose rank and quality he regretted not to have known, would do him the honor to come and dine with him. This explanation, and the fact that Don Antonio had already proclaimed his own position as cousin to the magistrate and nephew to the Bishop of Cuzco, obliged Catalina to say, after thanking the gentlemen for their obliging attentions, " I myself hold the rank of alferez in the service of his Catholic ma- jesty. I am a native of Biscay ; and I am now repair- ing to Cuzco on private business." " To Cuzco ! " ex- claimed Don Antonio. " How very fortunate ! My cousin is a Basque like you ; and, like you, he starts for Cuzco to-morrow morning ; so that, if it is agreeable to you, Senor Alferez, we will travel together." It was settled that they should. But the journey to Cuzco was made in a very different manner from that which Kate had anticipated, and came near a fatal termination. Kate got into a quarrel in which she killed the al- calde. The alguazils came to the rescue. They and the servants of the alcalde pressed furiously on Kate, who now again was fighting for life. Against such odds, she was rapidly losing ground ; when in an instant, on the opposite side of the street, the great gates of the episcopal palace rolled open. Thither it was that Calderon's servant had fled. The bishop and his attendants hurried across, " Senor Ca- ballador," said the bishop, " in the name of the Virgin, I enjoin you to surrender your sword." " My lord," said Kate, " I dare not do it with so many enemies about me." " But I," replied the bishop, " become THE SPANISH NUN. 261 answerable to the law for your safekeeping." Upon which, with filial reverence, all parties dropped their swords. Kate being severely wounded, the bishop led her into his palace. In an instant came the catastroi)hc. Kate's discovery could no longer be delayed ; the blood flowed too rapidly ; the wound was in her bosom. She requested a private interview with the bishop. All was known in a moment ; for surgeons and attendants were summoned hastily, and Kate had fainted. The good bishop pitied her and had her attended in his palace ; then removed to a convent ; then to a second at Lima ; and, after many months had passed, his report to the Spanish government at home of all the particulars drew from the King of Spain and from the pope an order that the nun should be transferred to Spain. Yes, at length the warrior lady, the blooming cornet, this nun that is so martial, this dragoon that is so lovely, must visit again the home of her childliood, which now for seventeen years she has not seen. All Spain, Por- tugal, Italy, rang with her adventures. Spain, from north to south, was frantic with desire to behold her fiery child, whose girlish romance, whose patriotic hero- ism, electrified the national imagination. The King of Spain must kiss his faithful daughter, that would not sufler his banner to see dishonor. The pope must kiss his wandering daughter, that henceforwards will be a lamb travelling back into the Christian fold . Potentates so great as these, when they speak words of love, do not speak in vain. All was forgiven — the sacrilege, the bloodshed, the flight, and the scorn of St. Peter's keys. The pardons were made out, were signed, were sealed ; and the chanceries of earth were satisfied- 262 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. Ah, what a day of sorrow and of joy was that one day, in the first week of November, 1624, when the returning Kate drew near to the shore of Andalusia ; when, descending into the ship's barge, she was rowed to the piers of Cadiz by bargemen in the royal liveries ; when she saw every ship, street, house, convent, church, crowded, like a day of judgment, with human faces, — with men, with women, with children, — all bending the lights of their flashing and their loving eyes upon herself ! Forty myriads of people had gathered in Cadiz alone. All Andalusia had turned out to receive her. Ah, what joy, if she had not looked back to the Andes, to their dreadful summits, and their more dreadful feet ! Ah, what sorrow, if she had not been forced, by music, and endless banners, and triumphant clamors, to turn away from the Andes to the joyous shore which she ap- proached ! Upon this shore stood, ready to receive her, in front of all this mighty crowd, the prime minister of Spain, the same Conde Olivarez who but one year before had been so haughty and so defying to our haughty and de- fying Duke of Buckingham. But a year ago the Prince of Wales was in Spain ; and he also was welcomed with tiiumph and great joy, but not with the hundredth part of that enthusiasm which now met the returning nun ; and Olivarez, that had spoken so roughly to the Eng- lish duke, to her " was sweet as summer." Through endless crowds of festive compatriots he conducted her to the king. The king folded her in his arms, and could never be satisfied with listening to her. He sent for her continually to his presence ; he delighted in her con- versation, so new, so natural, so spirited ; he settled a THE SPANISH NUN. 263 pension upon her at that time, of unprecedented amount in the case of a subaltern officer ; and by his desire, be- cause the year 1625 was a year of jubilee, she departed in a few months from Madrid to Rome. She went through Barcelona, there and every where welcomed as the lady whom the king delighted to honor. She travelled to Rome ; and all doors flew open to receive her. She was presented to his holiness, with letters from his most Catholic majesty. But letters there need- ed none. The pope admired her as much as all before had done. He caused her to recite all her adventures ; and what he loved most in her account was the sincere and sorrowing spirit in which she described herself, as neither better nor worse than she had been. Neither proud was Kate, nor sycophantishly and falsely humble. Urban VIII. it was that then filled the chair of St. Peter. He did not neglect to raise his daughter's thoughts from earthly things ; he pointed her eyes to the clouds that were above tiie dome of St. Peter's Cathedral ; he told her what the catliedral had told her in the gorgeous clouds of the Andes and the vesper lights, how sweet a thing, how divine a thing, it was, for Christ's sake, to forgive all injuries, and how he trusted that no more she would think of bloodshed. From Rome, Kate returned to Spain. She even went to St. Sebastian's, to the city, but — whether it Avas that her heart failed her or not — never to the convent. She roamed up and down ; every where she was welcome, every where an honored guest, but every where restless. The poor and humble never ceased from their admiration of her ; and amongst the rich and aristocratic of Spain, with the king at their head, 264 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. Kate found especial love from two classes of men. The cardinals and bishops all doted upon her, as their daugh- ter that was returning. The military men all doted upon her, as their sister that was retiring. You will ask me, What became of Kate ? What was her end ? Ah, reader ! but, if I answer that ques- tion, you will say I have not answered it. If I tell you that secret, you will say that the secret is still hidden. Yet, because I have promised, and because you will be angry if I do not, let me do my best ; and bad is the best. After ten years of restlessness in Spain, with thoughts always turning back to the Andes, Kate heard of an expedition on the point of sailing to Spanish America. All soldiers knew her, so that she had in- formation of every thing that stirred in camps. Men of the highest military rank were going out with the expedition ; but they all loved Kate as a sister, and were delighted to hear that she would join their mess on board ship. This ship, with others, sailed, whither finally bound I really forget ; but, on reaching America, all the expedition touched at Vera Cruz. Thither a great crowd of the military went on shore ; the leading officers made a separate party for the same purpose. Their intention was to have a gay, happy dinner, after their long confinement to a ship, at the chief hotel ; and happy in perfection it could not be unless Kate would consent to join it. She, that was ever kind to brother soldiers, agreed to do so. She descended into the boat along with them, and in twenty minutes the boat touched the shore. All the bevy of gay, laughing officers, junior and senior, like schoolboys escaping from school, jumped on shore, and walked hastily, as THE SPANISH NOTT. 265 their time was limited, up to the hotel. Arriving there, all turned round in eagerness, saying, " Where is our dear Kate ? " Ah, yes, my dear Kate, at that solemn moment, where, indeed, were you ? She had certainly taken her seat in the boat — that was sure. Nobody, in the general confusion, was certain of having seen her on coming ashore. The sea was searched for her — the forests were ransacked. The sea made no answer — the forests gave up no sign. I have a conjecture of my own ; but her brother soldiers were lost in sorrow and confusion, and could never arrive even at a conjecture. That happened two hundred and fourteen years ago. Here is the brief sum of all : This nun sailed from Spain to Peru ; and she found no rest for the sole of her foot. This nun sailed back from Peru to Spain ; -and she found no rest for the agitations of her heart. This nun sailed again from Spain to America ; and she found — the rest which all of us find. But where it was could never be made known to the father of Span- ish camps that sat in Madrid, nor to Kate's spiritual father that sat in Rome. Known it is to the great Father that once whispered to Kate on the Andes ; but else it has been a secret for two centuries ; and to man it remains a secret forever and ever. 12 THE EASEDALE EOMANCE. The little valley of Easedale, which, and the neigh- borhood of which, were the scenes of these interesting events, is, on its own account, one of the most impres- sive solitudes amongst the mountains of the lake dis- trict ; and I must pause to describe it. Easedale is im- pressive, first, as a solitude ; for the depth of the seclusion is brought out and forced more pointedly upon the feelings by the thin scattering of houses over its sides, and the surface of what may be called its floor. These are not above five or six at the most-^ and one, the remotest of the whole, was untenanted for all the thirty years of my acquaintance with the place. Sec- ondly, it is impressive from the excessive loveliness which adorns its little area. This is broken up into small fields and miniature meadows, separated not — as too often happens, with sad injury to the beauty of the lake country — by stone walls, but sometimes by little hedge-rows, sometimes by little sparkling, pebbly " beck," lustrous to the very bottom, and not too broad for a child's flying leap ; and sometimes by wild self- sown woodlands of birch, alder, holly, mountain ash, and hazel, that meander through the valley, intervening the different estates with natural sylvan marches, and giving cheerfulness in winter, by the bright scarlet of their barrier. It is the character of all the northern English valleys, as I have already remarked — and it is a character first noticed by Wordsworth — that they (266) THE EASEDALE ROMANCE. 267 apsume, in their bottom areas, the level floor-like shape, making everywhere a direct angle with the surrounding hills, and definitely marking out tlic margin of their outlines ; whereas the Welsh valleys have too often the glaring imperfection of the basin shape, which allows no sense of any absolute valley surface ; the hills are already commencing at the very centre of what is called the level area. The little valley of Easedale is, in this respect, as highly finished as in every other ; and in the Westmoreland spring, which may be considered May and the earlier half of June, whilst the grass in the mead- ows is yet short from the habit of keeping the sheep on it until a much later period than elsewhere, (viz. until the mountains are so far cleared of snow, and the proba- bility of storms, as to make it safe to send them out on their summer migration,) the little fields of Easedale have the most lawny appearance, and from the humidity of the Westmoreland climate, the most verdant that it is possible to imagine ; and on a gentle vernal day — when vegetation has been far enougli advanced to bring out the leaves, an April sun gleaming coyly through the clouds, and genial April rain gently pencilling the light spray of the wood with tiny pearl drops — I have often thought, whilst looking with silent admiration upon this exquisite composition of landscape, with its miniature fields running up like foi'cst glades into miniature woods ; its little columns of smoke, breathing up like incense to the houseliold gods, from the hearths of two or three picturesque cottages — abodes of simple primitive man- ners, and what, fro.u jKTsonal knowledge, I will call humbl; \irtuc — whilst my eyes rested on this charming combination of lawns and shrubberies, I have thought 268 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. that if a scene on this earth could deserve to be sealed up, like the valley of Rasselas, against the intrusion of the world — if there were one to which a man would willingly surrender himself a prisoner for the years of a long life — that it is this Easedale — which would justify the choice, and recompense the sacrifice. But there is a third advantage possessed by this Easedale, above other rival valleys, in the sublimity of its moun- tain barriers. In one of its many rocky recesses is seen a " force," (such is the local name for a cataract,) white with foam, descending at all seasons with respectable strength, and, after the melting of snows, with an Al- pine violence. Follow the leading of this " force" for three quarters of a mile, and you come to a little moun- tain lake, locally termed a " tarn" the very finest and most gloomy sublime of its class. From this tarn it was, I doubt not, though applying it to another, that Wordsworth drew the circumstances of his general description : — " Thither the rainbow comes, the cloud, And mists that spread the flying shroud; And winds That, if they could, would hurry past : But that enormous barrier binds it fast. &c. &c. &c. The rocks repeat the raven's croak, In symphony austere." And far beyond this " enormous barrier," that thus im- prisons the very winds, tower upwards the aspiring- heads (usually enveloped in cloud and mist) of Glara- mara. Bow Fell, and the other fells of Langdale Head and Borrowdale. Finally, superadded to the other circumstances of solitude, arising out of the rarity of THE EASEDALE ROMANCE. 269 human life, and of the signs which mark the goings on of human life, — two other accidents there arc of Ease- dale, whicli sequester it from the world, and intensify its depth of solitude beyond what could well be looked for or thought possible in any vale within a district so beaten by modern tourists. One is, that it is a cliam- ber Avithin a ciiamber, or rather a closet within a cham- ber — a chapel within a cathedral — a little private ora- tory within a chapel. For Easedale is, in fact, a de- pendency of Grasmere — a little recess lying within the same general basin of mountains, but partitioned off by a screen of rock and swelling uplands, so inconsider- able in height, that, when surveyed from the command- ing summits of Fairfield or Seat Scandal, they seem to subside into the level area, and melt into the general surface. But, viewed from below, these petty heights form a sufficient partition ; which is pierced, however, in two points — once by the little murmuring brook threading its silvery line onwards to the lake of Gras- mere, and again by a little rough lane, barely capable (and I think not capable in all points) of receiving a post-chaise. This little lane keeps ascending amongst wooded steeps for a quarter of a mile ; and then, by a downward course of a hundred yards or so, brings you to a point at which the little valley suddenly bursts upon you with as full a revelation of its tiny propor- tions, as the traversing of the wooded back-grounds will permit. The lane carries you at last to a little wooden bridge, practicable for pedestrians ; but, for carriages, even the doubtful road, already mentioned, ceases alto- gether : and this fact, coupled Avith the difficulty of suspecting such a lurking paradise from llie high road 270 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. through Grasmere, at every point of which the little hilly partition crowds up into one mass with the capital barriers in the rear, seeming in fact, not so much to blend with them as to be part of them, may account for the fortu- nate neglect of Easedale in the tourist's route ; and also because there is no one separate object, such as a lake or a splendid cataract, to bribe the interest of those who are hunting after sights ; for the " force" is com- paratively small, and the tarn is beyond the limits of the vale, as well as difficult of approach. One other circumstance there is about Easedale, which completes its demarcation, and makes it as entirely a landlocked little park, within a ring-fence of mountains, as ever human art, if rendered capable of dealing with mountains and their arrangement, could have contrived. The sole approach, as I have mentioned, is from Gras- mere ; and some one outlet there must inevitably be in every vale that can be interesting to a human occupant, since without water it would not be habitable ; and run- ning water must force an exit for itself, and, consequent- ly, an inlet for the world ; but, properly speaking, there is no other. For, when you explore the remoter end of the vale, at which you suspect some communication with the world outside, you find before you a most for- midable amount of climbing, the extent of which can hardly be measured where there is no solitary object of human workmanship or vestige of animal life, not a sheep-traclc even, not a shepherd's hovel, but rock and heath, heath and rock, tossed about in monotonous con- fusion. And, after the ascent is mastered, you descend into a second vale — long, narrow, sterile, known by the name of " Far Easedale : " from which point, if THE EASEDALE ROMANCE, 271 you could drive a tunnel below the everlasting hills, per- haps six or seven miles might bring you to the nearest habitation of man in Borrowdale ; but, crossing the mountains, the road cannot be less than twelve or four- teen, and in point of fatigue, at the least twenty. This long valley, which is really terrific at noon-day, from its utter loneliness and desolation, completes the de- fences of little sylvan Easedale. There is one door into it from the Grasmere side ; but that door is hidden ; and on every other quarter there is no door at all, nor any, the roughest, access, but what would demand a day's walking. Such is the solitude — so deep, so seventimes guarded and so rich in miniature beauty — of Easedale ; and in this solitude it was that George and Sarah Green, two poor and hard-working peasants, dwelt, with a numerous family of small children. Poor as they were, they had won the general respect of the neighborhood, from the un- complaining firmness with which they bore the hardships of their lot, and from the decent attire in which the good mother of the family contrived to send out her children to the Grasmere school. It is a custom, and a very ancient one, in Westmoreland — and I have soon the same usage prevailing in southern Scotland — that any sale by auction, whether of cattle, of farming pro- duce, farming stock, wood, or household furniture — and seldom a fortnight passes without something of the sort — forms an excuse for the good women, throughout the whole circumference of perliaps a dozen valleys, to assemble at the place of sale with the nominal purpose of aiding the sale, or of buying something they may want. No doubt the real business of the sale attracts 272 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. numbers ; although of late years — that is, for the last twenty-five years, through which so many sales of fur- niture the most expensive, (hastily made by casual set- tlers, on the wing for some fresher novelty,) — have made this particular article almost a drug in the coun- try ; and the interest in such sales has greatly declined. But, in 1807, this fever of founding villas or cottages ornees, was yet only beginning ; and a sale, except it were of the sort exclusively interesting to farming men, was a kind of general intimation to the country, from the owner of the property, that he would, on that after- noon be " at home " for all comers, and hoped to see as large an. attendance as possible. Accordingly, it was the almost invariable custom — and often, too, when the parties were far too poor for such an effort of hos- pitality — to make ample provision, not of eatables, but of liquor, for all who came. Even a gentleman, who should happen to present himself on such a festal occa- sion, by way of seeing the " humors " of the scene, was certain of meeting the most cordial welcome. The good woman of the house more particularly testified her sense of the honor done to her house, and was sure to seek out some cherished and solitary article of china — a wreck from a century back — in order that he, being a porcelain man amongst so many delf men and women, might have a porcelain cup to drink from. The main secret of attraction at these sales — many a score of which I have attended — was the social ren- dezvous thus efi"ected between parties so remote from each other, (either by real distance, or by the virtual distance which results from a separation by difficult tracts of hilly country,) that, in fact, without some such THE EASEDALE ROMANCE. 278 common object, and oftentimes something like a bisec- tion of the interval between them, they would not be likely to hear of each other for months, or actually to meet for years. This princii)al charm of the " gather- ing," seasoned, doubtless, to many by the certain antici- })ation that the whole budget of rural scandal would then and there be opened, was not assuredly dimiuished to the men by the anticipation of excellent ale, (usually brewed six or seven weeks before, in preparation for the event,) and possibly of still more excellent poio- sovhIij, (a combination of ale, spirits, and spices ;) nor to the women by some prospect, not so inevitably i'ullill- ed, but pretty certain in a liberal house, of communicat- ing their news over excellent tea. Even the auctioneer Avas always " part and parcel " of the mirth : he was always a rustic old humorist, a " character," and a jovial drunkard, privileged in certain good-humored liberties and jokes with all bidders, gentle or simple, and fur- nished with an ancient inheritance of jests appropriate to the articles offered for sale — jests that had, doubt- less, done their office from Elizabeth's golden days ; but no more on that account, failed of their expected effect, with either man or woman of this nineteenth century, than the sun fails to gladden the heart because it is that same old obsolete sun that has gladdened it for thousands of years. One thing, however, in mere justice to the poor in- digenous Dalesmen of Westmoreland and Cumberland, I am bound, in this place, to record, that often as 1 have been at these sales, and througii many a year l)efore even a scattering of gentry Ijegan to attend, yet so true to the natural standard of politeness was the decorum 12* 274 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. uniformly maintained, even the old bufifoon (as some- times he was) of an auctioneer never forgot himself so far as to found upon any article of furniture a jest that could have called up a painful blush in any woman's face. He might, perhaps, go so far as to awaken a little rosy confusion upon some young bride's countenance, when pressing a cradle upon her attention : but never did I hear him utter, nor would he have been tolerated in uttering a scurrilous or disgusting jest, such as might easily have been suggested by something offered at a household sale. Such jests as these I heard for the first time, at a sale in Grasmere in ISli ; and I am ashamed to say it, from some " gentlemen " of a great city. And it grieved me to see the effect, as it express- ed itself upon the manly faces of the grave Dalesmen — a sense of insult offered to their women, who met in confiding reliance upon the forbearance of the men, and upon their regard for the dignity of the female sex, this feeling struggling with the habitual respect they are in- clined to show towards what they suppose gentle blood and superior education. Taken generally, however, these were the most picturesque and festal meetings which the manners of the country produced. There you saw all ages and both sexes assembled : there you saw old men whose heads would have been studies for Guido ; there you saw the most colossal and stately figures amongst the young men that England has to show ; there the most beautiful young women. There it was that sometimes I saw a lovelier face than ever I shall see again: there it was that local peculiarities of usage or of language were best to be studied; there — at least in the earlier years of my residence in that dis- THE EASEDALE ROMANCE. 275 trict — that the social benevolence, tlie grave wisdom, the innocent mirth, and the neighborly kindness of the pcoi)le, most delightfully expanded and expressed them- selves with the least reserve. To such a scene it was, to a sale of domestic furniture at the house of some proprietor on the point of giving up housekeeping, perhaps in order to live with a mar- ried sou or daughter, that George and Sarah Green set forward in the forenoon of a day fated to be their last on earth. The sale was to take place in Langdale Head ; to wliich, from their own cottage in Easedale, it was possible in daylight, and supposing no mist upon the hills, to find out a short cut of not more than eight miles. By this route they went ; and notwithstanding the snow lay on the ground, they reached their destina- tion in safety. The attendance at the sale must have been diminished by the rigorous state of the weather ; but still the scene was a gay one as usual. Sarah Green, though a good and worthy woman in her matu- rer years, had been imprudent and — as the tender con- sideration of the country is apt to express it — " unfor- tunate " in her youth. She had an elder daughter who was illegitimate ; and I believe the father of this girl was dead. The girl herself was grown up ; and the peculiar solicitude of poor Sarah's maternal heart was at this time called forth on her behalf ; she wished to see her placed in a very respectable house, where the mistress was distinguished for her notable qualities and her suc- cess in forming good servants. This object, so important to Sarah Green in the narrow range of her cares, as in a more exalted family it might be to obtain a ship for a lieutenant that had passed as master and commander, 276 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCE Y. or to get him " posted " — occupied her almost tliroiigli- out the sale. A doubtful answer had been given to her application ; and Sarah was going about the crowd, and weaving her person in and out in order to lay hold of this or that intercessor, who might have, or might seem to have, some weight with the principal person concern- ed. This was the last occupation which is known to have stirred the pulses of her heart. An illegitimate child is everywhere, even in the indulgent society of Westmore- land Dalesmen, under some shade of discountenance; so that Sarah Green miglit consider her duty to be the stronger toward the child of her " misfortune." And she probably had another reason for her anxiety — as some words dropped by her on this evening led people to presume — in her conscientious desire to introduce her daughter into a situation less perilous than that which had compassed her own youthful steps with snares. If so, it is painful to know that the virtuous wish, whose " vital warmth Gave the last human motion to the heart," should not have been fulfilled. She was a woman of ardent and affectionate spirit, of which Miss Words- worth's memoir, or else her subsequent memorials in conversation, (I forget which), gave some circumstan- tial and affecting instances, which I cannot now recall with accuracy. This ardor it was, and her impassioned manner, that drew attention to what she did ; for other- wise, she was too poor a person to be important in the estimation of strangers, and, of all possible situations, to be important at a sale, where the public attention was naturally fixed upon the chief purchasers, and the at- THE EASEDALE ROMANCE. 277 tentioii of the purchasers, upon the chief competitors. Hence it happened, that, after she ceased to challenge notice by the emphasis of her solicitations for her daughter, she ceased to be noticed at all ; and nothing was recollected of her subsequent behavior until the time arrived for general separation. This time was considerably after sunset ; and the linal recollections of the crowd with respect to George and Sarah Green, were, that, upon their intention being understood to re- trace their morning- path and to attempt the perilous task of dropping down into Easedale from the moun- tains above Langdale Head, a sound of remonstrance arose from many quarters. However, at a moment when everybody was in a hurry of departure — and, to persons of their mature age, the opposition could not be very obstinate — party after party rode off ; the meeting melted away, or, as the northern phrase is, scaled ; and, at length, nobody was left of any weight tliat could pretend to influence the decision of elderly people. They quitted the scene, professing to obey some advice or other upon the choice of roads ; but, at as early a point as they could do so unobscrred, began to ascend the hills, everywhere open ft-om the rude car- riage way. After this, they were seen no more. They had disappeared into the cloud of death. Voices were heard some hours afterwards, from the mountains — voices, as some thought, of alarm ; others said, no — that it was only the voices of jovial people, carried by the wind into uncertain regions. The result was, that no attention was paid to the sounds. Tliat night, in little peaceful Easedale, six childreu sat by a peat lire, expecting the return of their parents, 278 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCE Y. upon whom they depended for their daily bread. Let a day pass, and they were starved. Every sound was heard witli anxiety ; for all this was reported many a hundred times to Miss Wordsworth, and those who, like myself, were never wearied of hearing the details. Every sound, every echo amongst the hills was listened to for five hours — from seven to twelve. At length, the eldest girl of the family — about nine years old — told her little brothers and sisters to go to bed. They had been taught obedience ; and all of them, at the voice of their eldest sister, went off fearfully to their beds. What could be their fears, it is difficult to say ! they had no knowledge to instruct them in the dangers of the hills ; but the eldest sister always averred that they had a deep solicitude, as she herself had about their parents. Doubtless she had communicated her fears to them. Some time, in the course of the evening — but it was late aiid after midnight — the moon arose and shed a torrent of light upon the Langdale fells, which had already, long hours before, witnessed in darkness the death of their parents. It may be well here to cite Mr. Wordsworth's stanzas : — " Who weeps for strangers? Many wept For George iind Sarah Green ; Wept for that pair's unhappy fate. Whose graves may here be seen. By night upon these stormy fells. Did wife and husband roam ; Six little ones at home had left. And could not find that home. For any dwelling-place of man As vainly did they seek. THE EASEDALE ROMANCE. 279 He perisheil ; and a voice was heard — The widow's lonely shriek. Not many steps, and she Wixs left A body without life — A few short steps were the chain that bound Tlie husband to the wife. Now do these sternly-featured hills Look gently on this grave ; And quiet now are the depths of air. As a sea without a wave. But deeper lies the heart of peace In quiet more profound ; The heart of quietness is here Within this churchyard bound. And from all agony of mind It keeps them safe, and far From fear and grief, and from all need Of sun or guiding star. darkness of the grave ! how deep. After that living night — That last and dreary li^•ing one Of sorrow and aflFright ! sacred marriage bed of death. That keeps them side by side In bond of peace, in bond of love, That may not be untied ! " That night, and the following morning, came a fur- ther and a licavicr fall of snow ; in consequence of which the poor cliildren were completely imprison- ed, and cut off from all possibility of communicating with their next neighbors. The brook was too much for them to leap ; and tiio little, crazy, wooden bridge could not bo crossed or even a{)proachcd with safety, 280 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. from the drifting of the snow having made it impos- sible to ascertain the exact situation of some treacher- ous hole in its timbers, which, if trod upon, would have let a small child drop through into the rapid waters. Their parents did not return. For some hours of the morning, the children clung to the hope that the ex- treme severity of the night had tempted them to sleep in Langdale ; but this hope forsook them as the day wore away. Their father, George Green, had served as a soldier, and was an active man, of ready resources, who would not, under any circumstances, have failed to force a road back to his family, had he been still living ; and this reflection, or rather semi-conscious feeling, which the awfulness of their situation forced upon the minds of all but the mere infants, taught them to feel the extremity of their danger. Wonderful it is to see the effect of sudden misery, sudden grief, or sudden fear, (where they do not utterly upset the faculties,) in sharpening the intellectual perceptions. Instances must have fallen in the way of most of us. And I have" noticed frequently that even sudden and intense bodily pain is part of the machinery employed by nature for quickening the development of the mind. The percep- tions of infants are not, in fact, excited g-radcUiiu and continuously, but per salttwi, and by unequal starts. At least, in the case of my own children, one and all, I have remarked, that, after any very severe fit of those peculiar pains to which the delicate digestive organs of most infants are liable, there always become apparent on the following day a very considerable increase of vital energy and of vivacious attention to the objects around them. The poor desolate children of Glentaru THE EASED ALE ROMANCE. 281 Ghyll, hourly becoming more ruefully convinced that they were orphans, gave many evidences of this awak- ing power, as lodged, by a providential arrangement, in situations of trial that most require it. They huddled together, in the evening, round their hearth-fire of peats, and held their little councils upon what was to be done towards any chance — if chance remained — of yet giving aid to their parents ; for a slender hope had sprung up that some hovel or sheep-fold might have furnished them a screen (or, in Westmoreland phrase, a bield,^ against the weather quarter of the storm, in which hovel they might be lying disabled or snowed up ; and, secondly, as regarded themselves, in what way they were to make known their situation, in case the snow should continue or increase ; for starvation stared them in the face, if they should be confined for many days to their house. Meantime, the eldest sister, little Agnes, though sadly alarmed, and feeling the sensation of eariness as twi- light came on, and she looked out from the cottage door to the dreadful fells, on which, too probably, her pa- rents were lying corpses, (and possibly not many hun- dred yards from their own threshold,) yet exerted her- self to take all the measures which their own prospects made prudent. And she told Miss Wordsworth, that, in the midst of the oppression on her little spirit, from the vague ghostly terrors, she did not fail, how- ever, to draw some comfort from the consideration, that the very same causes whicli produced their danger in one direction, sheltered them from danger of another kind — such dangers as she knew, from books that she had read, would have threatened a little desolate flock 282 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. of children in other parts of England ; that, if they could not get out into Grasmere, on the other hand, bad men, and wild seafaring foreigners, who sometimes passed along the high road in that vale, could not get to them ; and that, as to their neighbors, so far from having anything to fear in that quarter, their greatest apprehension was lest they might not be able to acquaint them with their situation ; but that, if that could be ac- complished, the very sternest amongst them were kind- hearted people, that would contend with each other for the privilege of assisting them. Somewhat cheered with these thoughts, and having caused all her brothers and sisters — except the two little things, not yet of a fit age — to kneel down and say the prayers which they had been taught, this admirable little maiden turned herself to every household task that could have proved useful to them in a long captivity. First of all, upon some recollection that the clock was nearly going down, she wound it up. Next, she took all the milk which re- mained from what the mother had provided for the children's consumption during her absence, and for the breakfast of the following morning — this luckily was still in sufficient plenty for two days' consumption, (skimmed or " blue " milk being only one half-penny a quart, and the quart a most redundant one, in Gras- mere) — this she took and scalded, so as to save it from turning sour. That done, she next examined the meal chest ; made the common oatmeal porridge of the coun- try, (the burgoo of the royal navy ;) but put all of the children, except the two youngest, on short allowance ; and by way of reconcihng them in some measure to this stinted meal, she found out a little hoard of flour, part THE EASEDALE ROMANCE. 283 of which she baked for them upon the hearth into little cakes ; and this unusual delicacy persuaded them to think that they had been celebrating a feast. Next, before night coming on should make it too trying lor licr own feelings, or before fresh snow coming on should make it impossible, she issued out of doors. There her first task was, with the assistance of two younger broth- ers, to carry in from the peatstack as many peats as might serve them for a week's consumption. That done, in the second place, she examined tlie potatoes buried in " brackens," (that is, withered fern :) these were not many ; and she thought it better to leave them where they were, excepting as many as would make a single meal, under a fear that the heat of their cottage would spoil them, if removed. Having thus made all the provision in her power for supporting their own lives, she turned her attention to the cow. Her she milked ; but, unfortunately, the milk she gave, either from being badly fed, or from some other cause, was too trifling to be of much con- sideration towards the wants of a large family. Here, however, her chief anxiety was to get down the hay for the cow's food from a loft above the outhouse ; and in this she succeeded but imperfectly, from want of strength and size to cope with the difficulties of the case ; besides that the increasing darkness by this time, together with the gloom of the place, made it a matter 01 great self-conquest for her to work at all ; and, as respected one night at any rate, she placed the cow in a situation of luxurious warmth and comfort. Then re- treating into the warm house, and " barring " the door, she sat down to undress the two youngest of the chil- 284 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. dren ; them she laid carefully and cosily in their little nests up stairs, and sang them to sleep. The rest she kept up to bear her company until the clock should tell them it was midnight ; up to which time she still had a lingering hope that some welcome shout from the hills above, which they were all to strain their ears to catch, might yet assure them that they were not wholly or- phans, even though one parent should have perished. No shout, it may be supposed, was ever heard ; nor could a shout, in any case, have been heard, for the night was one of tumultuous wind. And though, amidst its rav- ings, sometimes they fancied a sound of voices, still, in the dead lulls that now and then succeeded, they heard nothing to confirm their hopes. As last services to what she might now have called her own little family, Agnes took precautions against the drifting of the snow within the door and the imperfect window, which had caused some discomfort on the preceding day ; and, finally, she adopted the most systematic and elaborate plans for preventing the possibility of their fire being extinguished, which, in the event of their being thrown upon the ultimate resource of their potatoes, would be absolutely (and in any event nearly) indispensable to their existence. The night slipped away, and another morning came, bringing with it no better hopes of any kind. Change there had been none but for the worse. The snow had greatly increased in quantity ; and the drifts seemed far more formidable. A second day passed like the first ; little Agnes still keeping her little flock quiet, and tol- erably comfortable ; and still calling on all the elders in succession, to say their prayers, morning and night. THE EASEDALE ROMANCE. 285 A third day came ; and whether it was on that or on the fourth, I do not now recollect ; hut on one or other there came a welcome gleam of hope. The ar- rangement of the snow drifts had shifted during the night, and though the wooden bridge was still impracti- cable, a low Avail had been exposed, over which, by a very considerable circuit, and crossing the low shoulder of a hill, it seemed possible that a road might be found into Grasmcre. In some walls it was necessary to force gaps ; but this was effected without much difficulty, even by children ; for the Westmoreland walls are always " open," that is, uncemented with mortar ; and the push of a stick will readily detach so much from the upper part of an old crazy field wall, as to lower it sufficiently for female or for childish steps to pass. The little boys accompanied their sister until she came to the other side of the hill, which, lying more sheltered from the weather, and to windward, ofl'ered a path on- wards comparatively easy. Here they parted ; and little Agnes pursued her solitary mission to the nearest house she could find accessible in Grasmere. No house could have proved a wrong one in such a case. Miss Wordsworth and I often hoard the descri{> tion renewed, of the horror which, in an instant, dis- placed the smile of hospitable greeting, when little weeping Agnes told her sad tale. No tongue can ex- press the fervid sympathy wliich travelled through the vale, like the fire in an American forest, Avhen it was learned that neither George nor Sarah Green had been seen l)y their children since the day of the Langdale sale. Witliin half an hour, or little more, from the re- motest parts of the valley — some of them distant nearly 286 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. two miles from the point of rendezvous — all the men of Grrasmere had assembled at the little cluster of cot- tages called " Kirktown," from their adjacency to the veneraljle parish church of St. Oswald. There were at the time I settled in Grasmere, (viz. in the spring of 1809, and, therefore, I suppose at this time, fifteen months previously,) about sixty-three households in the vale ; and the total number of souls was about two hundred and sixty-five ; so that the number of fighting men would be about sixty or sixty-six, according to the common way of computing the proportion ; and the majority were so athletic and powerfully built, that, at the village games of wrestling and leaping, Professor Wilson, and some visitors of his and mine, scarcely one of whom was under five feet eleven in height, with proportionable breadth, seem but middle sized men amongst the towering forms of the Dalesmen. Sixty at least, after a short consultation as to the plan of op- erations, and for arranging the kind of signals by which they were to communicate from great distances, and in the perilous events of mists, or snow storms, set ofi", with the speed of Alpine hunters, to the hills. The dangers of the undertaking were considerable, under the uneasy and agitated state of the weather ; and all the women of the vale were in the greatest anxiety, until night brought them back, in a body, unsuccessful. Three days at the least, and I rather think five, the search was ineffectual ; which arose partly from the great extent of the ground to be examined, and partly from the natural mistake made of ranging almost exclu- sively, on the earlier days, on that part of the hills over which the path of Easedale might be presumed to have THE EASEDALE ROMANCE. 287 been selected under any reasonable latitude of circuit- ousness. But the fact is, when tlic fatal accident (for such it has often proved) of a povmanont mist surprises a man on the hills, if he turns and loses his direction, he is a lost man ; and without doing this so as to lose the power of s'orienter in one instant, it is well known how difficult it is to avoid losing- it insensibly and by degrees. Baffling snow showers are the worst kind of mists. And the poor Greens had, under that kind of confusion, wandered many a mile out of their proper track. The zeal of the people, meantime, was not in the least abated, but rather quickened, by the wearisome disap- pointments ; every hour of daylight was turned to ac- count; no man of the valley ever came home to dinner ; and the reply of a young shoemaker, on the fourth night's return, speaks sufficiently for the unabated spir- it of the vale. Miss Wordsworth asked what he would do on the next morning. " Go up again, of course," was his answer. But what if to-morrow also should turn out like all the rest ? " Why go up in stronger force on the next day." Yet this man was sacrificing his own daily earnings without a chance of recompense. At length sagacious dogs were taken up ; and, about noonday, a shout from an aerial height, amongst thick volumes of cloudy vapor, propagated through repeating bands of men from a distance of many miles, conveyed as by telegraph the news that the bodies were found. George Green was found lying at the bottom of a pre- cipice, from which he had fallen. Sarah Green was found on the summit of tlic precipice ; and, by laying together all the indications of wliat had passed, tlic sad 288 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. hieroglyphics of their last agonies, it was conjectured that the husband had desired his wife to pause for a few minutes, wrapping her, meantime, in his own great coat, whilst he should go forward and reconnoitre the ground, in order to catch a sight of some object (rocky peak, or tarn, or peat-field) which might ascertain their real situation. Either the snow above, already lying in drifts, or the blinding snow storms driving into his eyes, must have misled him as to the nature of the circumjacent ground ; for the precipice over which he had fallen was but a few yards from the spot in which he had quitted his wife. The depth of the descent, and the fury of the wind, (almost always violent on these cloudy altitudes,) would prevent any distinct com- munication between the dying husband below and his despairing wife above ; but it was believed by the shep- herds, best acquainted with the ground and the range of sound as regarded the capacities of the human ear, under the probable circumstances of the storm, that Sarah might have caught, at intervals, the groans of her unhappy partner, supposing that his death were at all a lingering one. Others, on the contrary, supposed her to have gathered this catastrophe rather from the want of any sounds, and from his continued absence, than from any one distinct or positive expression of it ; both because the smooth and unrufiled surface of the snow where he lay seemed to argue that he had died without a struggle, perhaps without a groan, and be- cause that tremendous sound of " hurtling" in the up- per chambers of the air, which often accompanies a snow storm, when combined with heavy gales of wind, would utterly oppress and stifle (as they conceived) THE EASEDALE ROMANCE. 289 any sounds so feeble as those from a dying man. In any case, and by whatever sad language of sounds or signs, positive or negative, she might have learned or guessed her loss, it was generally agreed that the wild shrieks heard towards midnight in Langdale* Head announced the agonizing moment which brought to her now widowed lieart the conviction of utter desolation and of final abandonment to her own fast-fleeting ener- gies. It seemed probable that the sudden disappear- ance of her husband from her pursuing eyes would teach her to understand his fate ; and that the consequent indefinite apprehension of instant death lying all around the point on which she sat, had kept her stationary to the very attitude in which her husband left her, until her failing powers and the increasing bitterness of the cold, to one no longer in motion, would soon make those changes of place impossible, which, at any rate, had appeared too dangerous. The footsteps in some places, wherever drifting had not obliterated them, yet traceable as to the outline, though partially filled up with later falls of snow, satisfactorily showed that how- * I once heard, also, in talking with a Langdale family upon this tragic tale, that the sounds had penetrated into the valley of Little Langdale ; which is possible enough. For although this interesting recess of the entire Langdale basin (which bears somewhat of the same relation to Great Langdale that Eascdale bears to Grasnierc) does, in fixct, lie beyond Langdale Head by the entire breadth of that dale, yet from the singular accident of having its area raised far above the level of the adjacent vales, one most solitary section of Little Langdale (in which lies a tiny lake, and on the banks of that lake dwells one solitary fimily) being exactly at right angles both to Langdale Head and to tlie Other complementary section of the Lesser Langdale, is t)rought into a position and an elevation virtually much nearer to objects (especially to audible objects; on the Langdale Fells. 1 o 290 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. ever much they might have rambled, after crossing and doul)liiig upon tlieir own patlis, and many a mile astray from their right track, still they must have kept to- gether to the very plateau or shelf of rock at which their wanderings had terminated ; for there were evidently no steps from this plateau in the retrograde order. By the time they had reached this final stage of their erroneous course, all possibility of escape must have been long over for both alike ; because their exhaustion must have been excessive before they could have reach- ed a point so remote and high ; and, unfortunately, the direct result of all this exhaustion had been to throw them farther oif their home, or from " any dwelling- place of man," than they were at starting. Here, there- fore, at this rocky pinnacle, hope was extinct for either party. But it was the impression of the vale, that, per- haps within lialf an hour before reaching this fatal point, George Green might, had his conscience or his heart allowed him in so base a desertion, have saved himself singly, without any very great difficulty. It is to be hoped, however — and, for my part, I think too well of human nature to hesitate in believing — that not many, even amongst the meaner-minded and the least generous of men, could have reconciled themselves to the abandon- ment of a poor, fainting female companion in such circum- stances. Still, tliough not more tlian a most imperative duty, it was one (I repeat) which most of his associates believed to have cost him (perhaps consciously) his life. For his wife not only must have disal)led him greatly by clinging to his arm for support ; but it was known, from her peculiar character and manner, that she would be likely to rob him of his coolness and presence of THE EASEDALE ROMANCE 291 mind by too painfully fixing his thoughts, where her own would be busiest, upon their helpless little family. ^^ Slung- with the thouglits of home" — to borrow the fine expression of Thompson in describing a similar ease — alternately thinking of tlie blessedness of that warm fireside at Blentarn Ghyll. which was not again to spread its genial glow through her freezing limbs, and of those darling little faces which, in this world, she was to sec no more ; unintentionally, and with- out being aware even of that result, she would rob the brave man (for such he was) of his fortitud*e, and tlie strong man of his animal resources. And yet — (such, in the very opposite direction, was equally the impression universally througli Grasmere) — had Sarah Green foreseen, could her affectionate heart have guess- ed even the tenth part of that love and neighborly respect for herself, which soon afterwards expressed tliemselves in showers of bounty to her children ; could she have looked behind the curtain of destiny sufficient- ly to learn that the very desolation of these poor chil- dren which wrung her maternal heart, and doubtless constituted to her the sting of death, would prove the signal and the pledge of such anxious guardianship as not many rich men's children receive, and that this overflowing offering to her own memory would not be a liasty or decaying tribute of the first sorrowing sensi- bilities, but would pursue her children steadily until their hopeful settlement in life — or anything approach- ing this, to have known or have guessed, would have caused (as all said who knew her) to welcome the bit- ter end by which such privileges were to be purchased. The funeral of the ill-fated Greens was, it may bo 292 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. supposed, attended by all the vale ; it took place about eight days after they were found ; and the day liappon- ed to be in the most perfect contrast to the sort of weather which prevailed at tlie time of their misfortune ; some snow still remained here and there upon the ground : but the azure of the sky was unstained by a cloud ; and a golden sunlight seemed to sleep, so babisy and tranquil was the season, upon the very hills wh'.TO they had wandered — then a howling wilderness, bsit now a green pastoral lawn, in its lower ranges, and a glittcri-ng expanse, smooth, apparently, and not difficult to the footing, of virgin snow, in its higher. George Green had, I believe, an elder family by a former wife ; and it was for some of these children, who lived at a distance, and who wished to give their attendance at the grave, that the funeral was delayed. After tins sol- emn ceremony was over — at which, by the way, I then heard Miss Wordsworth say that the grief of Sarah's illegitimate daughter was the most overwhelming she had ever witnessed — a regular distribution of the children was made amongst the wealthier families of the vale. There had already, and before the funeral, been a per- fect struggle to obtain one of the children, amongst all who had any facilities for discharging the duties of such a trust ; and even the poorest had put in their claim to bear some part in the expenses of the case. But it was judiciously decided, that none of the chil- dren should be entrusted to any persons who seemed likely, either from old age, or from slender means, or from nearer and more personal responsibilities, to bo under the necessity of devolving the trust, sooner or later, upon strangers, who might have none of that in- THE EASEDALE ROMANCE. 293 terest in the cliildren which attached, in their minds, the Grasraere people to the circumstances that made them orphans. Two twins, who had naturally played together and slept together from their birth, passed into the same family : the others were dispersed ; but into such kindhearted and intelligent families, with continu- ed opportunities of meeting each other on errands, or at church, or at sales, that it was hard to say which had the happier fate. And thus in so brief a period as one fortnight, a household that, by health and strength, by the humility of poverty, and by innocence of life, seem- ed sheltered from all attacks but those of time, came to be utterly brolcen up. George and Sarah Green slept in Grasmere churchyard, never more to know the want of " sun or guiding star." Their children were scattered over wealthier houses than those of their poor parents, through the vales of Grasmere or Rydal ; and Bleutarn Ghyll, after being shut up for a season, and ceasing for mouths to send up its little slender column of smoke at morning and evening, finally passed into the hands of a stranger. ESSAYS. JOAN OF ARC. What is to be thoiig-ht of her ? What is to be thought of the poor shepherd girl from tlie liills and forests of Lorraine, that — like the Hebrew shepherd boy from the hills and forests of Judaea — rose sudden- ly out of the quiet, out of tlie safety, out of the reli- gious inspiration, rooted in deep pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to the more perilous station at the right hand of kings ? The Hebrew boy inaugurated his patriotic mission by an act, by a victo- rious acty such as no man could deny. But so did the girl of Lorraine, if we read her story as it was read by those who saw her nearest. Adverse armies bore wit- ness to the boy as no pretender ; but so they did to the gentle girl. Judged by the voices of all who saw them from a station of g-ood-ivitl, both were found true and loyal to any promises involved in their first acts. En- emies it was that made the difference between their subsequent fortunes. The boy rose to a splendor and a noonday prosperity, both personal and public, that rang tlirough the records of his people, and became a by-word amongst his posterity for a thousand years, until the sceptre was departing from Judah. The poor, forsaken girl, on the contrary, drank not herself from that cup of rest which she had secured for France. She never sang together with the songs that rose in her native Domremy, as echoes to the departing steps of the invaders. She mingled not in the festal dances at Vau- 13* (297) 298 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. couleurs which celebrated in rapture the redemption of France. No ! for her voice was then silent : no ! for her feet were dust. Pure, innocent, noble-hearted girl ! whom, from earliest youth, ever I believed in, as full of truth and self-sacrifice, this was amongst the strongest pledges for Ihy truth, that never once — no, not for a moment of weakness — didst thou revel in the vision of coronets and honor from man. Coronets for thee ! no ! Honors, if they come when all is over, are for those that share thy blood. Daughter of Domremy, when the gratitude of thy king shall awaken, thou wilt be sleeping the sleep of the dead. Call her, King of France, but she will not hear thee ! Cite her by thy a{> pari tors to come and receive a robe of honor, but she will be found en contumace. When the thunders of universal France, as even yet may happen, shall pro- claim the grandeur of the poor shepherd girl that gave up all for her country, thy ear, young shepherd girl, will have been deaf for five centuries. To sufTer and to do, that was thy portion in this life ; that was thy des- tiny ; and not for a moment was it hidden from thyself. Life, thou saidst, is short : and the sleep which is in the grave is long ! Let me use that life, so transitory, for the glory of those heavenly dreams destined to comfort the sleep which is so long. This pure creature — pure from every suspicion of even a visionary self-interest, even as she was pure in senses more obvious — never once did this holy child, as regarded herself, relax from her belief in the darkness that was travelling to meet her. She might not prefigure the very manner of her death ; she saw not in vision, perhaps, the aerial alti- tude of the fiery scaffold, the spectators without end on JOAN OF ARC. 299 every road pourino- into Rouen as to a coronation, the surging smoke, the volleying flames, the hostile faces all around, the pitying eye that lurked but here and there, until nature and imperishable truth broke loose from artificial restraints; — these might not be apparent through the mists of the hurrying future. But tlie voice that called her to death, that she hoard for ever. Great was the throne of France even in those days, and great was he that sat upon it : but well Joanna knew that not the tlironc, nor he that sat upon it, was for her ; but, on the contrary, tliat slic was for them; not slie by tliem, but they by her, sliould rise from the dust. Gorgeous were the lilies of France, and for cen- turies had the privilege to spread their beauty over land and sea, until, in another century, the Avratli of God and man combined to wither them ; but well Joan- na knew, early at Domremy she had read that bitter truth, tlmt the lilies of France would decorate no gar- land for her. Flower nor bud, bell nor blossom, would ever bloom for her. *** * **** Joanna, as we in England should call her, but, ac- cording to her own statement, Jeanne (or, as M. Mi- chclet asserts, Jean) D'Arc, was born at Domr<^my, a village on the marches of Lorraine and Champagne, and dependent upon the town of Vaucouleurs. Domrt'my stood upon the frontiers, and, like other frontiers produced a mixed race representing the cis and the trans. A river (it is true) formed the boun- dary-line at this point — the river Mouse ; and that, in old days, might have divided the populations ; l)ut in these days it did not : there were bridges, there were 300 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. ferries, and weddings crossed from the right bank to the left. Here lay two great roads, not so much for travellers that were few, as for armies that were too many by half. These two roads, one of which was the great high road between France and Germany, de- cussated at this very point ; which is a learned way of saying, that they formed a St. Andrew's cross, or let- ter X. I hope the compositor will choose a good large X. in which case the point of intersection, the locus of conflux and intersection for these four diverging arms, will finish the reader's geographical education, by showing him to a hair's-breadth where it was that Domremy stood. Those roads, so grandly situated, as great trunk arteries between two mighty realms, and haunted for ever by wars, or rumors of wars, decuss- ated (for anything I know to the contrary) absolutely under Joanna's bedroom window ; one rolling away to the right, past Monsieur D'Arc's old barn, and the other unaccountably preferring to sweep round that odious man's pigsty to the left. On whichever side of the border chance had thrown Joanna, the same love to France would have been nur- tured. For it is a strange fact, noticed by M. Michelet and others, that tlie Dukes of Bar and Lorraine had for generations pursued the policy of eternal warfare with France on their own account, yet also of eternal amity and league with France, in case anybody else presumed to attack her. Let peace settle upon France, and before long you might rely upon seeing the little vixen Lorraine flying at the throat of France. Let France be assailed by a formidable enemy, and instant- ly you saw a Duke of Lorraine insisting on having his JOAN OP ARC. 301 own throat cut in support of France ; which favor ac- cordingly was cheerfully granted to him in three great successive battles — twice by the English, viz., at Cre- cy and Agincourt, once by the Sultan at Nicopolis. This sympathy with France during great eclipses, in those that during ordinary seasons were always teasing her with brawls and guerilla inroads, strengthened the natural piety to France of those that were confessedly the children of her own house. The outposts of France, as one may call the great frontier provinces, were of all localities the most devoted to the Fleurs de Lys. To witness, at any great crisis, the generous devotion to these lilies of the little fiery cousin that in gentler weather was for ever tilting at the breast of France, could not but fan the zeal of France's legitimate daugh- ters : whilst to occupy a post of honor on the frontiers against an old hereditary enemy of France, would natu- rally stimulate this zeal by a sentiment of martial pride, by a sense of danger always threatening, and of hatred always smouldering. That great four-headed road was a perpetual memento to patriotic ardor. To say, this way lies the road to Paris, and that other way to Aix-la-Cha- pelle — tliis to Prague, that to Vienna — nourished the warfare of the heart by daily ministrations of sense. The eye that watched for the gleams of lance or helmet from the hostile frontier, the ear that listened for the groaning of wheels, made the high road itself, with its relations to centres so remote, into a manual of i)atriotic duty. The situation, therefore, locallij^ of Joanna was full of profound suggestions to a heart that lisLoiii.'d for the stealthy steps of change and fear that too surely were in motion. But, if the place were grand, the time, the 302 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. burden of the time, was far more so. The air over- head in its upper chambers was hurtling- with the ob- scure sound ; was dark with sullen fermenting of storms that had been gathering for a hundred and thirty years. The battle of Agincourt in Joanna's childhood had re- opened the wounds of France. Crecy and Poictiers, those withering overthrows for the chivalry of France, had, before Agincourt occurred, been tranquillized by more than half a century ; but this resurrection of their trumpet wails made the whole series of battles and end- less skirmishes take their stations as parts in one drama. The graves that had closed sixty years ago, seemed to fly open in sympathy with a sorrow that echoed their own. The monarchy of France labored in extremity, rocked and reeled like a ship fighting with the dark- ness of monsoons. The madness of the poor king (Charles VI.) falling in at such a crisis, like the case of women laboring in childbirth during the storming of a city, trebled the awfulness of the time. Even the wild story of the incident which had immediately occa- sioned the explosion of this madness — the case of a man unknown, gloomy, and perhaps maniacal himself, coming out of a forest at noonday, laying his hand upon the bridle of the king's horse, checking him for a moment to say, " Oh, king, thou art betrayed," and then vanish- ing, no man knew whither, as lie had appeared for no man knew what — fell in with the universal prostration of mind that laid France on her knees, as before the slow unweaving of some ancient prophetic doom. The famines, the extraordinary diseases, the insurrections of the peasantry up and down Europe — these were chords struck from the same mysterious harp ; but these JOAN OF ARC. 303 were transitory chords. There have been others of deeper and more ominous sound. The termination of the Crusades, tlie destruction of the Templars, the Pa- ])nl interdicts, the tragedies caused or suffered by the house of Anjou, and by the emperor — these were full of a more permanent significance. But, since then, the colossal figure of feudalism was seen standing, as it were, on tiptoe, at Crecy, for fliglit from earth : that was a revolution unparalleled; yet that was a trifle, by comparison with the more fearful revolutions tliat were mining below the church. By her own internal schisms, by the abominable spectacle of a double pope — so that no man, except through political bias, could even guess which was Heaven's vicegerent, and which the creature of hell — the church was rehearsing, as in still earlier forms she had already rehearsed, those vast rents in her foundation which no man should ever heal. These were the loftiest peaks of the cloudland in tlie skies, that to the scientific gazer first caught the colors of the nev) morning in advance. But the whole vast range alike of sweeping glooms overhead, dwelt upon all meditative minds, even upon those that could not distinguish the tendencies nor decipher the forms. It was, therefore, not her own age alone, as affected by its immediate calamities, that lay with such weight upon Joanna's mind ; but her own age, as one section in avast mysterious drama, unweaving through a century back, and drawing nearer continually to some dreadful crisis. Cataracts and rapids were heard roaring ahead ; and signs were seen far l)ack, by help of old men's memories, which answered secretly to signs now coming forward on the eye, even as locks answer to keys. It was not 304 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. wonderful that in sucli a haunted solitude, with such a haunted heart, Joanna should see angelic visions, and hear angelic voices. These voices whispered to her for ever the duty, self-imposed, of delivering France. Five years she listened to these monitory voices with inter- nal struggles. At length she could resist no longer. Doubt gave way ; and she left her home forever in order to present herself at the dauphin's court. The education of this poor girl was mean according to the present standard : was ineffably grand, according to a purer philosophic standard : and only not good for our age, because for us it would be unattainable. She read nothing, for she could not read ; but she had heard others read parts of the Roman martyrology. She wept in sympathy with the sad Misereres of the Romish church ; she rose to heaven with the glad triumphant Te Deums of Rome : she drew her comfort and her vital strength from the rites of the same church. But, next after these spiritual advantages, she owed most to the advantages of her situation. The fountain of Domremy was on the brink of a boundless forest ; and it was haunted to that degree by fairies, that the parish priest {cure) was obliged to read mass there once a-year, in order to keep them in any decent bounds. Fairies are important, even in a statistical view : certain weeds mark poverty in the soil, fairies mark its solitude. As surely as the wolf retires before cities, does the fairy sequester herself from the haunts of the licensed vic- tualler. A village is too much for her nervous delicacy : at most, she can tolerate a distant view of a hamlet. We may judge, therefore by the uneasiness and extra trouble which they gave to the parson, in what strength JOAN OF. ARC. 305 the fairies mustered at Domreray ; and, by a satisfacto- ry couscqiicnco, how thinly sown with men and women must liavc been that region even in its inhaliited spots. But the forests of Domremy — those were the glories of the land : for in them abode mysterious power and an- cient secrets thai towered into tragic strength. " Al)- lieys there were, and abl)ey windows," — " like Moorish temples of the Hindoos," that exercised even princely power both in Lorraine and in tlie German Diets. These had their sweet bells that pierced the forests for many a league at matins or vespers, and each its own dreamy h'gcnd. Few enough, and scattered enough, were tliesc al)l)cys, so as in no degree to distui-b the deep solitude of the region ; yet many enough to spread a networlv or awning of Christian sanctity over what else might have seemed a heathen wilderness. This sort of religious talisman being secured, a man the most afraid of ghosts (lilce myself, suppose, or the reader) becomes armed into courage to wander for days in their sylvan recesses. Tiie mountains of tlie Vosges, on the eastern frontier of France, have never attracted much notice from Europe, except in 1813-14 for a few brief months, Avhcn they fell within Naj)oleon's line of defence against the Al- lies. But they are interesting for this, amongst other features, that they do not, like some loftier ranges, repel Avoods : the forests and the hills are on sociable terms. Live and let live, is their motto. For this reason, in part, these tracts in Lorraine were a favorite hunting- ground witli the Carlovingian princes. About six hun- dred years before Joanna's childhood, Charlemagne was known to have hunted there. That, of itself, was a grand incident in the traditions of a forest or a cliase. 306 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. In these vast forests, also, were to be found (if any- where to be found) those mysterious fawns that tempted solitary hunters into visionary and perilous pursuits. Here was seen (if anywhere seen) that ancient stag who was already nine hundred years old, but possibly a hun- dred or two more, when met by Charlemagne ; and the thing was put beyond doubt by the inscription upon his golden collar. I believe Charlemagne knighted the stag ; and, if ever he is met again by a king, he ought to be made an earl — or, being upon the marches of France, a marquis. Observe, I don't absolutely vouch for all these things : my own opinion varies. On a fine breezy forenoon I am audaciously sceptical ; but, as twilight sets in, my credulity grows steadily, till it becomes equal to anything that could be desired. And I have heard can- did sportsmen declare that, outside of these very forests, they laughed loudly at all the dim tales connected with their haunted solitudes ; but, on reaching a spot notori- ously eighteen miles deep within them, they agreed with Sir Roger de Coverley, that a good deal might be said on both sides. Such traditions, or any others that (like the stag) connect distant generations with each other, are, for tlmt cause, sublime ; and the sense of the shadowy, con- nected with such appearances that reveal themselves or not according to circumstances, leaves a coloring of sanc- tity over ancient forests, even in those minds that utterly reject the legend as a fact. But, apart from all distant stories of that order, in any solitary frontier between two great empires, as here, for instance, or in the desert between Syria and the Eu- phrates, there is an inevitable tendency in minds of any JOAN OF ARC. 307 deep sensibility, to ])Cople the f-olitudcs with pliaiitom images of powers tliat wore of old so vast. Joanna, therefore, in her quiet occupation of a sliephcrdess, would be led continually to brood over the political condition of her countiy, by the tradition of the past no less than by the mementoes of the local present. M. Michelet, indeed, says that La Pucelle was not a shepherdess. I beg his pardon : she was. What he rests upon, I guess pretty well : it is the evidence of a woman called Hauinettc, the most confidential friend of Joanna. Now, she is a good witness, and a good girl, and I like her ; for she makes a natural and afl'ec- tionate report of Joanna's ordinary life. But still, however good she may be as a witness, Joanna is bet- ter ; and she, when speaking to the dauphin, calls her- self in the Latin report Bergereta. Even Haumette confesses, that Joanna tended sheep in her girlhood. Haumette clearly thinks it more dignified for Joanna to have been darning the stockings of her horny-hoofed father. Monsieur D'Arc, than keeping sheep, lest she might then be suspected of having ever done something worse. But, luckily, there was no danger of that : Joanna never w'as in service ; and my opinion is, that her father should have mended his own stockings, since probably he was the party to make holes in them, as many a better man than D'Arc does ; meaning by that not myself, because, though proljably a l)etter man than D'Arc, I protest against doing anything of the kind. If I lived even with Friday in Juan Fernandez, eitlier Friday must do all the darning, or else it must go un- done. The better men that I meant were the sailors in the British navy, every man of whom mends his own 308 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. stockings. Who else is to do it? Do you suppose, reader, that the junior lords of the admiralty are un- der articles to darn for the navy ? The reason, meantime, for my systematic hatred of D'Arc is this. There was a story current in France before the Revolution, framed to ridicule the pauper aristocracy, who happened to have long pedigrees and short rent rolls, viz.,. that a head of such a house, dat- ing from the Crusades, was overheard saying to his son, a Chevalier of St. Louis, " Chevalier, as-tu donne. au cochon a manger ! " Now, it is clearly made out by the surviving evidence, that D'Arc would much have preferred continuing to say, " Ma Jille, as-tu donne au cochon a manger ? ^^ to saying, '•'' Fucelle d' Orleans, as-tu saiive les flenrs-de-lys ? " There is an old Eng- lish copy of verses which argues thus : — " If the man that turnips cries. Cry not when his father dies — Then 'tis plain the man had rather — Have a turnip than his father." I cannot say that tlie logic in these verses was ever en- tirely to my satisfaction. I do not see my way through it as clearly as could be wished. But I see my way most clearly through D'Arc ; and the result is — that he would greatly have preferred not merely a turnip to his father, but saving a pound or so of bacon to saving the Oriflamme of Frace. It is probable (as M. Michelet suggests) that the ti- tle of Virgin, or Pucelle, had in itself, and apart from the miraculous stories about her, a secret power over the rude soldiery and partisan chiefs of that period ; for, in such a person, they saw a representative mani- JOAN OP ARC. 809 festation of the Virgin Maiy, wlio, in a course of cen- turies, had grown steadily upon the popular heart. As to Joanna's supernatural detection of the dauphin (Charles YII.) amongst three hundred lords and knights, I am surprised at the credulity which could ever lend itself to that theatrical juggle. Who admires more than myself the sublime enthusiasm, the rapturous faith in herself, of this pure creature ? But I am far from admiring stage artifices, which not La Pucelle, but the court, must have arranged ; nor can surrender myself to the conjurer's legerdemain, such as may be seen every day for a shilling. Southey's " Joan of Arc " was published in 1796. Twenty years after, talking with Southey, I was surprised to find him still owning a secret bias in favor of Joan, founded on her detection of the dauphin. The story, for the benefit of the reader new to the case, was this : — La Pucelle was first made known to the dauphin, and presented to his court, at Chinon : and here came her first trial. By way of testing her supernatural pretensions, she was to find out the royal personage amongst the whole ark of clean and unclean creatures. Failing in this coup cPessai, she would not simply disap}K)int many a beating heart in the glittering crowd that on different motives yearned for her success, but she would ruin herself — and, as the oracle within had told her, would, by ruin- ing herself, ruin France. Our own sovereign lady Vic- toria rehearses annually a trial not so severe in degree, but the same in kind. She " pricks " for sherilfi;. Jo- anna pricked for a king. But observe the difference: our own lady pricks for two men out of three ; Joanna for one man out of three hundred. Happy lady of the 810 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY islands and the orient! — slie can go astray in her choice only by one half; to tlie extent of one half she must have the satisfaction of being right. And yet, even with these tight limits to the misery of a bound- less discretion, permit me, liege Lady, with all loyalty, to submit — that now and then you prick with your pin the wrong man. But the poor child from Domruny, shrinking under the gaze of a dazzling court — not be- cause dazzling (for in visions she had seen those that were more so), but because some of them wore a scoff- ing smile on their features — how should &he throw her line into so deep a river to angle for a king, where many a gay creature was sporting that masqueraded as kings in dress ? Nay, even more than any true king would have done : for, in Southey's version of the story, the dauphin says, by way of trying the virgin's mag- netic sympathy with royalty, *' On the throne, I the while mingling with the menial throng. Some courtier shall be seated." This usurper is even crowned : " the Jewelled crown shines on a menial's head." But, really, that is " un feu fort ;" and the mob of spectators might raise a scruple whether our friend the jackdaw upon the throne, and the dauphin himself, were not grazing the shins of treason. For the dauphin could not lend more than belonged to him. According to the popular notion, he had no crown for himself; consequently none to lend, on any pretence whatever, until the consecrated Maid should take him to Rheims. This was the popular notion in France. But, certainly, it was the dauphin's interest to support the popular notion, as he meant to JOAN OP ARC. oil use the services of Joanna. For, if he were king al- ready, what was it that she could do for him beyond Orleans ? That is to say, -svliat more than a mere mili- tary service could she render him ? And, above all, if he were king without a coronation, and without the oil from the sacred ampulla, what advantage was yet open to him by celerity above liis competitor the English })oy ? Now was to be a race for a coronation : he that should win that race, carried the superstition of France along with him : he that should first be drawn from the ovens of Rheims, was under that superstition baked into a king. La Pucclle, before she could be allowed to practise as a warrior, was put through her manual and platoon exercise, as a pupil in divinity, at the bar of six emi- nent men in wigs. According to Southey (v. 393, Book III., in the original edition of his " Joan of Arc " she " appalled the doctors." It's not easy to do that : but they had some reason to feel bothered, as that surgeon would assuredly feel bothered, who, upon proceeding to dissect a subject, should find the subject retaliating as a dissector upon himself, especially if Joanna ever made the spoccli to them which occupies v. 354-391, B. III. It is a double impossibility: 1st, because a piracy from TindaFs " Christianity as old as the Creation " — a piracy a parte ante, and by three centuries ; 2dly, it is quite contrary to the evidence on Joanna's trial. Southey's " Joan, " of a. d. 1796 (Cot- lie, Bristol), tells the doctors, amongst other secrets, tliut she never in her life attended — 1st, Mass ; nor 2d, the Sacramental table ; nor 3d, Confession. In the meuutime, all this dcistical confession of Joanna's, be- 312 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. sides being suicidal for the interest of her cause, is op- posed to the depositions upon both trials. The very best witness called from first to last, deposes that Joan- na attended these rites of her church even too often ; was taxed with doing so ; and, by blushing, owned the charge as a fact, though certainly not as a fault. Jo- anna was a girl of natural piety, that saw God in forests, and hills, and fountains ; but did not the less seek him in chapels and consecrated oratories. This peasant girl was self-educated through her own natural meditativeness. If the reader turns to that divine passage in " Paradise Regained, " which Milton has put into the mouth of our Savior when first enter- ing the wilderness, and musing upon the tendency of those great impulses growing within himself — " Oh, what a multitude of thoughts at once Awaken'd in me swarm, while I consider What from within I feel myself, and hear What from without comes often to my ears, 111 sorting with my present state compared ! When I was yet a child, no childish play To me was pleasing; all my mind was set Serious to learn and know, and thence to do What might be public good ; myself I thought Born to that end" — he will have some notion of the vast reveries which brooded over the heart of Joanna in early girlhood, when the wings were budding that should carry her from Orleans to Rheims ; when the golden chariot was dimly revealing itself, tliat should carry her from the kingdom of France Delivered to the eternal kingdom. It is not requisite, for the honor of Joanna, nor is there, in this place, room to pursue her brief career of JOAN OF ARC. 313 action. That, though wonderful, forms the earthly part of her story : the spiritual part is the saintly passion of her imprisonment, trial, and execution. It is unfortu- nate, therefore, for Southcy's " Joan of Arc " (which, however, should always be regarded as a juvenile effort), that, precisely when her real glory begins, the poem ends. But this limitation of the interest grew, no doubt, from the constraint inseparably attached to the law of epic unity. Joanna's history bisects into two opposite hemispheres, and both could not have been presented to the eye in one poem, unless by sacrificing all unity of theme, or else by involving the earlier half, as a narrative episode, in the latter ; which, however, might have been done, for it might have been communicat- ed to a fellow-prisoner, or a confessor, by Joanna herself. It is sufficient, as concerns this section of Joanna's life, to say that she fulfilled, to the height of her promises, the restoration of the prostrate throne. France had become a province of England ; and for tlie ruin of both, if such a yoke could be maintained. Dreadful pecuniary exhaus- tion caused the English energy to droop ; and that critical opening La Pucelle used with a corresponding felicity of audacity and suddenness (that were in themselves portentous) for introducing the wedge of French native resources, for rekindling the national pride, and for planting the dauphin once more upon his feet. "When Joanna apj)eared, he had been on the point of giving up the struggle with the English, distressed as they were, and of flying to the south of France. She taught him to blush for such abject counsels. She liberated Orleans, that great city, so decisive by its fate for the issue of the war, and then beleagured by the English 14 314 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCE Y. with an elaborate application of engineering skill un- precedented in Europe. Entering the city after sunset, on the 29th of April, she sang mass on Sunday, May 8, for the entire disappearance of the besieging force. On the 29th of June, she fought and gained over the English the decisive battle of Patay ; on the 9th of July, she took Troyes by a coup-de-main from a mixed garrison of English and Burgundians ; on the 15th of that month, she carried the dauphin into Rheims ; on Sunday the 17th, she crowned him ; and there she rested from her labor of triumph. All that was to be done, she had now accomplished : what remained was — to suffer. All this forward movement was her own : excepting one man, the whole council was against her. Her ene- mies were all that drew power from earth. Her sup- porters were her own strong enthusiasm, and the head- long contagion by which she carried this sublime frenzy into the hearts of women, of soldiers, and of all who lived by labor. Henceforwards she was thwarted ; and the worst error that she committed was, to lend the sanction of her presence to counsels which she had ceased to approve. But she had now accomplished the capital objects which her own visions had dictated. These involved all the rest. Errors were now less im- portant ; and doubtless it had now become more difficult for herself to pronounce authentically what tcere errors. The noble girl had achieved, as by a rapture of motion, the capital end of clearing out a free space around her sovereign, giving him the power to move his arms with effect ; and, secondly, the inappreciable end of winning for that sovereign what seemed to all France the heav- enly ratification of his rights, by crowning him with the JOAN OP ARC. 315 ancient solemnities. She liad made it impossible for tlie English now to step before her. They were caught in an irretrievable blunder, owing partly to discord amongst the uncles of Henry VI., partly to a want of funds, but partly to the very impossibility which they be- lieved to i)ress with tenfold force upon any French at- tempt to forestall theirs. They lauglied at such a thought ; and whilst they laughed, she did it. Henceforth the single redress for the English of this capital oversight, l)ut which never couhl have redressed it effectually, was, to vitiate and taint the coronation of Charles YII. as the work of a witch. That policy, and not malice (as M. Michelet is so happy to believe), was the moving ])rinciple in the suljsequent prosecution of Joanna. Un- less they unhinged the force of the first coronation in the popular mind, by associating it with power given from hell, they felt that the sceptre of the invader was broken. But she, the child that, at nineteen, had wrought wonders so great for France, was she not elated ? Did she not lose, as men so often have lost, all sobriety of mind when standing upon the pinnacle of success so giddy? Let her enemies declare. During the progress of her movement, and in the centre of ferocious struggles, she had manifested the temper of her feelings, by the pity which she liad everywhere expressed for the suffering enemy. She forwarded to the English leaders a touching invitation to unite with the French, as l)i-others, in a common crusade against infidels, thus opening the road for a soldierly retreat. She interpos- ed to protect tlie captive or the wounded — she mourned over the excesses of her countrymen — she threw her- 316 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. self off her horse to kneel by the dying English soldier, and to comfort him with such ministrations, physical or spiritual, as his situation allowed. " Nolebat," says the evidence, " uti ense suo, aut quemquam interficere." She sheltered the English, that invoked her aid, in her own quarters. She wept as she beheld, stretched on the field of battle, so many brave enemies that had died without confession. And, as regarded her- self, her elation expressed itself thus : — On the day when she had finished her work, she wept ; for she knew that, when her triwnjy/ial task was done, her end must be approaching. Her aspirations pointed only to a place, which seemed to her more than usually full of natural piety, as one in which it would give her pleas- ure to die. And she uttered, between smiles and tears, as a wish that inexpressibly fascinated her heart, and yet was half-fantastic, a broken prayer, that God would return her to the solitudes from which he had drawn her, and sufier her to become a shepherdess once more. It was a natural prayer, because nature has laid a neces- sity upon every human heart to seek for rest, and to shrink from torment. Yet, again, it was a half-fantastic prayer, because, from childhood upwards, visions that she had no power to mistrust, and the voices which sounded in her ear for ever, had long since persuaded her mind, that for her no such prayer could be granted. Too well she felt that her mission must be worked out to the end, and that the end was now at hand. All went wrong from this time. She herself had created the fiends out of which the French restoration should grow ; but she was not suffered to witness their develop- ment, or their prosperous application. More than one JOAN OF ARC. 317 military plan was entered upon which she did not ap- prove. But she still continued to expose her person as before. Severe wounds had not taught her caution. And at length, in a sortie from Compeigne (whether through treacherous collusion on tlie i)art of her own friends is doubtful to tliis day), she was made prisoner by the Burgundians, and finally surrendered to the English. Now came her trial. This trial, moving of course under English influence, was conducted in chief by the Bishop of Beauvais. He was a Frenchman, sold to Englisli interests, and hoping, by favor of the English lead- ers, to reach the highest preferment. Bishop that art, Archbishop that shalt be, Cardinal that mayst be, were the words that sounded continually in his ear ; and doubtless, a whisper of visions still higher, of a triple crown, and feet ujjon the necks of kings, some- times stole into his heart. M. Michelet is anxious to keep us in mind that this bishop was but an agent of the English. True. But it does not better the case for his countryman — that, being an accomplice in the crime, making himself the leader in the persecution against the helpless girl, he was willing to be all this in the spirit, and with the conscious vileness of a cat's- paw. Never from the foundations of the earth was there such a trial as this, if il were laid open in all its beauty of defence, and all its hellishness of attack. Oh, child of France ! shepherdess, peasant girl ! trodden under foot by all around thee, liow I honor thy flashing intel- lect, quick as God's lightning, and true as God's light- ning to its mark, that ran before France and laggard Europe by many a century, confounding the malice of the ensnarer, and making dumb the oracles of false- 318 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. hood ! Is it not scandalous, is it not humiliating to civilization, that, even at this day, France exhibits the horrid spectacle of judges examining the prisoner against himself; seducing him, by fraud, into treacher- ous conclusions against liis own head ; using the terrors of their jDower for extorting confessions from the frailty of hope ; nay (which is worse), using the blandishments of condescension and snaky kindness for thawing into compliances of gratitude those whom they had failed to freeze into terror? Wicked judges! Barbarian juris- prudence ! that, sitting in your own conceit on the sum- mits of social wisdom, have yet failed to learn the first principles of criminal justice ; sit ye humbly and with docility at the feet of this girl from Doraremy, that tore your webs of cruelty into shreds and dust. " Would you examine me as a witness against myself? " was the question by which many times she defied their arts. Continually she showed that their interrogations were irrelevant to any business before the court, or that en- tered into the ridiculous charges against her. General questions were proposed to her on points of casuistical divinity ; two-edged questions, which not one of them- selves could have answered without, on the one side, landing himself in heresy (as then interpreted), or, on the other, in some presumptuous expression of self-es- teem. Next came a wretched Dominican, that pressed her with an objection, which, if applied to the Bible would tax every one of its miracles with unsoundness. The monk had the excuse of never having read the Bible. Her answer to this, if there were room to place the whole in a clear light, was as shattering as it was rapid. Another thought to entrap her by asking what JOAN OF ARC. 319 language the angelic visitors of her solitude had talked; as though heavenly counsels could want polyglot iuter- )ii'cters for every word, or that God needed language at all in whispering thoughts to a human heart. Then cauie a worse devil, who asked her whether the arch- angel Michael had appeared naked. Not comprehend- ing the vile insinuation, Joanna, whose poverty suggest- ed to her simplicity that it might be the costliness of suita1)le robes which caused the demur, asked them if they fancied God, who clothed the flowers of the valleys, unable to find raiment for his servants. The answer of Joanna moves a smile of tenderness, but the disappointment of her judges makes one laugh exultingly. Others succeeded by troops, who upbraided her with leaving her father ; as if that greater Father, whom she believed herself to have been serving, did not retain the power of dispensing with his own rules, or had not said, that for a less cause than martyrdom, man and woman should leave both father and mother. On Easter Sunday, when the trial had been long pro- ceeding, the poor girl fell so ill as to cause a belief that she had been poisoned. It was not poison. Nobody had any interest in hastening a death so certain. M. Michelet, whose sympathies with all feelings are so quick, that one would gladly see them always as justly directed, reads the case most truly. Joanna had a two- fold malady. She was visited by a paroxysm of the complaint called home-sickness ; the cruel nature of her imprisonment, and its length, could not but point her solitary thoughts, in darkness and in chains (for cliained she was), to Domrt'my. And the season, which was the most heavenly period of the spring, added stings to 320 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. this yearning. That was one of her maladies — nostal- gia, as medicine calls it ; the other was weariness and exhaustion from daily combats with malice. She saw that everybody hated her, and thirsted for her blood ; nay, many kind-hearted creatures that would have pitied her profoundly, as regarded all political charges, had their natural feelings warped by the belief that she had dealings with fiendish powers. She knew she was to die ; that was not the misery : the misery was, that this consummation could not be reached without so much intermediate strife, as if she were contending for some chance (where chance was none) of happiness, or were dreaming for a moment of escaping the inevitable. Why, then, did she contend ? Knowing that she would reap nothing from answering her persecutors, why did she not retire by silence from the superfluous contest ? It was because her quick and eager loyalty to truth would not suffer her to see it darkened by frauds, which she could expose, but others, even of candid listeners, perhaps could not ; it was through that imperishable grandeur of soul, which taught her to submit meekly and without a struggle to her punishment, but taught lier not to submit — no, not for a moment — to calumny as to facts, or to misconstruction as to motives. Besides, there were secretaries all around the court taking down lier words. That was meant for no good to her. But the end does not always correspoiid to the meaning. And Joanna might say to herself — these words that will be used against me to-morrow and the next day, perhaps in some nobler generation may rise again for my justification. Yes, Joanna, they are rising even now in Paris, and for more than justification. JOAN OP ARC. 321 Woman, sister — there arc some thing's which you do not execute as well as your brother, man ; no, nor ever will. Pardon me, if I doubt whether you will ever produce a great poet from your choirs, or a Mo- zart, or a Phidias, or a Michael Angelo, or a great philosopher, or a great scholar. By which last is meant — not one who depends simply on an infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical power of coml)i- nation ; bringing together from the four winds, like tlie angel of the resurrection, what else were du^t from dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing life. If you can create yourselves into any of these great crea- tors, why have you not ? Yet, sister woman, though I cannot consent to find a Mozart or a Michael Angelo in your sex, cheerfully, and with the love that burns in depths of admiration, I acknowledge that you can do one thing as well as the best of us men — a greater thing than even Milton is known to have done, or Michael Angelo — you can dio grandly, and as goddesses would die, were goddesses mortal. If any distant worlds (which mai/ be the case) are so far ahead of us Tellurians in optical rescourccs, as to see distinctly through their telescopes all that wo do on earth, what is the grandest sight to which wc ever treat them ? St. Peter's at Rome, do you fancy, on Easter Sunday, or Luxor, or perhaps the Himalayas ? Oh. no! my friend: suggest something better; these are baubles to them; they see in other worlds, in their own, far better toys of the same kind. These, take my word for it, are nothing. Do you give it up ? The finest thing, then, we have to show them, is a scafiuld on the morning of execution. I assure you there is 14* 822 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. a strong muster in those far telescopic worlds, on any such morning, of those who happen to find themselves occupying the right hemisphere for a peep at us. How, then, if it be announced in some such telescopic world by those who make a livelihood of catching glimpses at our newspapers, whose language they have long since deciphered, that the poor victim in the morning's sacri- fice is a woman ? How, if it be published in that dis- tant world, that the sufferer wears upon her head, in the eyes of many, the garlands of martyrdom ? How, if it should be some Marie Antoinette, the widowed queen, coming forward on the scaffold, and presenting to the morning air her head turned gray by sorrow, daughter of Caesars kneeling down humbly to kiss the guillotine, as one that worships death ? How, if it were the nol)le Charlotte Corday, that in the bloom of youth, that witli tlie loveliest of persons, that with homage waiting upon her smiles wherever she turned her face to scatter them — homage that followed those smiles as surely as the carols of birds, after showers in springy follow the reappearing sun and the racing of sunbeams over tlie hills — yet tliought all these things cheaper than the dust upon her sandals, in comparison of deliver- ance from hell for her dear suffering France ! All ! these were spectacles indeed for those sympathizing people in distant worlds ; and some, perhaps would suf- fer a sort of martyrdom themselves, because they could not testify their wrath, could not bear witness to the strength of love and to the fury of hatred that burned within them at such scenes ; could not gather into golden urns some of that glorious dust which rested in the catacombs of earth. JOAN OF ARC. iilo On the Wednesday after Trinity Siuiday in 1431, be- ing then about nineteen years of age, the maid of Arc underwent her martyrdom. She was conducted before mid-day, guarded by eight hundred spearmen, to a phU- form of prodigious height, constructed of wooden bil- lets supported by occasional walls of lath and plaster, and traversed by hollow spaces in every direction for the creation of air-currents. The pile " struck terror," says M. Michelet, " by its height ; " and, as usual, the English purpose in this is viewed as one of pure malig- nity. But there are two ways of explaining all that. It is probable that the purpose was merciful. The circumstancial incidents of the execution, unless with more space than I can now command, I should be unwilling to relate. I should fear to injure, by imper- fect report, a martyrdom which to myself appears so unspeakably grand. Yet for a purpose, pointing not at Joanna, but at M. Michelet — viz., to convince him that an Englishman is capable of thinking more highly of La Pucelle than even her admiring countrymen, 1 shall, in parting, allude to one or two traits in Joanna's de- meanor on the scafifold, and to one or two in that of the bystanders, which authorize me in questioning an opin- ion of his upon this martyr's firmness. The reader ought to be reminded that Joanna D'Arc was subjected to an unusually unfair trial of o})inion. Any of the elder Christian martyrs had not niucli to fear of per sonal rancor. The martyr was chiefly regarded as the enemy of Cajsar ; at times, also, where any knowledge of the Christian faith and morals existed, with the enriiity that arises spontaneously in the worldly against the spiritual. But the martyr, though disloyal, was not 324 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. supposed to be, therefore, anti-national ; and still less was individually hateful. What was hated (if any- thing) belonged to his class, not to himself separately. Now, Joanna, if hated at all, was hated personally, and in Rouen on national grounds. Hence there would be a certainty of calumny arising against her, such as would not affect martyrs in general. That being the case, it would follow of necessity that some people would impute to her a willingness to recant. No innocence could escape that. Now, had she really testified this willingness on the scaffold, it would have argued noth- ing at all but the weakness of a genial nature shrinking from the instant approach of torment. And those will often pity that weakness most, who, in their own per- sons, would yield to it least. Meantime, there never was a calumny uttered tlmt drew less support from the recorded circumstances. It rests upon wo positive testi- mony, and it has a weight of contradicting testimony to stem. And yet, strange to say, M. Michelet, who at times seems to admire the Maid of Arc as much as I do, is the one sole writer amongst her friends who lends some countenance to this odious slander. His words are, that, if she did not utter this word recant with her lips, she uttered it in her heart. " Whether she said the word is uncertain ; but I affirm that she thought it." Now, I affirm that she did not ; not in any sense of the word " thought" applicable to the case. Here is France calumniating La Pucelle : here is England de- fending her. M. Michelet can only mean that, on a priori principles, every woman must be liable to such a weak- ness : that Joanna was a woman ; erg-o, that she was liable to such a weakness. That is, he only supposes JOAN OF ARC. 325 hor to have uttered the word by an argumeut which presumes it impossible for anybody to have done other- wise. I, on the contrary, throw the onus of the argu- ment not on presumable tendencies of nature, but on the known facts of that morning's execution, as recorded by multitudes. What else, I demand, than mere weight of metal, absolute nobility of deportment, broke the vast line of battle then arrayed against her ? What else but her meek, saintly demeanor won from the enemies, that till now had believed her a witch, tears of raptur- ous admiration ? " Ten thousand men," says M. Miche- Ict himself, " ten thousand men wept ; " and of these ten thousand the majority were political enemies knitted together by cords of superstition. What else was it but her constancy, united with her angelic gentleness, tliat drove the fanatic English soldier — who had sworn to throw a faggot on her scaifold, as his tribute of ab- horrence, that did so, that fulfilled his vow — suddenly to turn away a penitent for life, saying everywhere that he had seen a dove rising upon wings to heaven from the ashes where she had stood ? What else drove the executioner to kneel at every shrine for pardon to his share in the tragedy ! And if all this were insuffi- cient, then I cite the closing act of her life, as valid on her behalf, were all other testimonies against her. The executioner had been directed to apply his torch from below. He did so. The fiery smoke rose upwards in billowing volumes. A Dominican monk was then stand- ing almost at her side. Wrapped up in his sublime office, he saw not the danger, but still persisted in his prayers. Even then, when the last enemy was racing up the fiery stairs to seize her, even at that moment did this 826 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. noblest of girls think ouly for hini^ the one friend that vvould not forsake her, and not for herself ; bidding him with her last breath to care for his own preserva- tion, but to leave her to God. That girl, whose latest breath ascended in this sublime expression of self- oblivion, did not utter the word recant either with her lips or in her heart. No; she did not, though one should rise from the dead to swear it. *** * **** Bishop of Beauvais ! thy victim died in fire upon a scaffold — thou upon a down bod. But for the depart- ing minutes of life, both are oftentimes alike. At tlie farewell crisis, when the gates of death are opening, and flesh is resting from its struggles, oftentimes the tortured and torturer have the same truce from carnal torment ; both sink together into sleep ; together both, sometimes, kindle into dreams. When the mortal mists were gathering fast upon you two, bishop and shepherd girl — when the pavilions of life were closing up their shadowy curtains about you — let us try, through the gigantic glooms, to decipher the flying features of your separate visions. The shepherd girl that had delivered France — she, from her dungeon, she, from her baiting at the stake, she, from her duel with fire, as she entered her last dream — saw Domremy, saw the fountain of Domremy, saw the pomp of forests in which her childhood had wandered. That Easter festival, which man had de- nied to her languishing heart — that resurrection of spring-time, which the darkness of dungeons had inter- cepted from her, hungering after the glorious liberty tif forests — were by God given back into her hands, JOAN OF Alia. 327 as jewels that had been stolen from her I)y robbers. With those, perhaps (for the minutes of dreams can stretch into ages), was given back to her by God tlio bliss of childhood. Dy special privilege, for her miglit be created, in this farewell dream, a second cliildhood, innocent as the first ; but not, like thai, sad with the gloom of a fearful mission in the rear. The mission had now been fulfilled. The storm was weathered, the • skirts even of that mighty storm were drawing off. Tlio blood that she was to reckon for had been exacted ; the tears that she Avas to shed in secret had been paid to the last. The hatred to herself in all eyes had been faced steadily, had been suffered, had been survived. And in her last fight upon the scaffold she had triinnph- ed gloriously ; victoriously she had tasted the stings of death. For all, except this comfort from her farewell dream, she had died — died, amidst the tears of ten thousand enemies — died, amidst the drums and trump- ets of armies — died, amidst peals redoubling upon peals, volleys upon volleys, from the saluting clarions of martyrs. Bishop of Eeauvais ! because the guilt-burdened man is in dreams haunted and waylaid hy the most frightful of his crimes, and because upon that fluctuating mir- ror — rising (like the mocking mirrors of mirag-e in Arabian deserts) from the fens of death — most of all are reflected the sweet countenances which the man has laid in ruins ; tlierefore I know, bishop, tliat you also, entering your final dream, saw Domremy. That foun- tain, of which the witnesses spoke so much, showed it- self to your eyes in pure morning dews : but ncitlier dews, nor the holy dawn, could cleanse away the bright 328 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. spots of innocent blood npon its surface. By the foun- tain, bishop, you saw a woman seated, that liid her face. But as you draw near, the woman raises her wasted features. Would Domremy know them again for the features of her child ? Ah, but you know them, bish- op, well ! Oh, mercy ! what a groan was thai which the servants, waiting outside the bishop's dream at his bedside, heard from his laboring heart, as at this mo- ment he turned away from the fountain and the woman, seeking rest in the forests afar off. Yet not so to es- cape the woman, whom once again he must behold be- fore he dies. In the forests to which he prays for pity, will he find a respite ? What a tumult, what a gath- ering of feet is there ! In glades, where only wild deer should run, armies and nations are assembling ; towering in the fluctuating crowd are phantoms that belong to departed hours. There is the great English Prince, Regent of France. There is my Lord of Win- chester, the princely cardinal, that died and made no sign. There is the Bishop of Beauvais, clinging to the shelter of thickets. What building is that which hands so rapid are raising ? Is it a martyr's scaffold ? Will they burn the child of Domremy a second time? No: it is a tribunal that rises to the clouds ; and two na- tions stand around it, waiting for a trial. Shall my Lord of Beauvais sit again upon the judgment-seat, and again number the hours for the innocent ? Ah ! no : he is the prisoner at the bar. Already all is waiting : the mighty audience is gathered, the Court is liurrying to their seats, the witnesses are arrayed, the trumpets are sounding, the judge is taking his place. Oh ! but this is sudden. My lord, have you no counsel ? '' Ooun- JOAN OF ARC. 32^ sol I have none : in heaven above, or on earth beneath, counsellor there is none now that would take a brief from me : all are silent." Is it, indeed, come to this ? Alas the time is short, the tumult is wondrous, the crowd stretches away into infinity, but yet I will search in it for somebody to take your brief: I know of some- bod}'' that will be your counsel. Who is this that com- eth from Domremy ? Who is she in bloody coronation robes from Rheims ? Who is she that cometh with blackened flesh from walking the furnaces of Rouen ? This is she, the shepherd girl, counsellor that had none for herself, whom I choose, bishop, for yours. She it is, 1 engage, that shall take my lord's brief. She it is, bishop, that would plead for you : yes, bishop, she —^ when heaven and earth are silent. THE PALIMPSEST. You know perhaps, masculine reader, better than I can tell you, what is a Palimpsest. Possibly, you have one in your own library. But yet, for the sake of others who may nut know, or may have forgotten, suffer me to explain it here, lest any female reader, who honors these papers with her notice, should tax me with explaining it once too seldom ; which would be worse to bear than a simultaneous complaint from twelve proud men, that I had explained it three times too often. You therefore, fair reader, understand, that for i/owr accom- modation exclusively, I explain the meaning of this word. It is Greek ; and our sex enjoys the office and privilege of standing counsel to yours, in all questions of Greek. We are, under favor, perpetual and heredi- tary dragomans to you. So that if, by accident you know tlie meaning of a Greek word, yet by courtesy to us, your counsel learned in that matter, you will always seem not to know it. A palimpsest, then, is a membrane or roll cleansed of its manuscript by reiterated successions. What was the reason that the Greeks and the Romans had not the advantage of printed books ? The answer will be, from ninety-nine persons in a hundred, — Be- cause the mystery of printing was not then discovered. But this is altogether a mistake. The secret of print- ing must have been discovered many thousands of times before it was used, or could be used. The inventive THE PALIMPSEST. 331 powers of man arc divine ; and also his stupidity is di- vine, as Cowper so playfully illustrates in the slow de- volopniout of the sofa through successive generations of immortal dulness. It took centuries of blockheads to raise a joint stool into a chair ; and it required some- tliing like a miracle of genius, in the estimate of elder generations, to reveal the possibility of lengthening a chair into a chaise-longue, or a sofa. Yes, these were inventions that cost mighty throes of intellectual power. But still, as respects printing, and admirable as is the stupidity of man, it was really not quite equal to the task of evading an object which stared him in the face with so broad a gaze. It did not require an Atlicnian intellect to read tlie main secret of printing in many scores of processes which the ordinary uses of life were dailij repeating. To say nothing of analogous artifices amongst various mechanic artisans, all that is essential in printing must have been known to every nation that struck coins and medals. Not, therefore, any want of a printing art, — that is, of an art for nuiltiplying im- pressions, — but the want of a cheap material for receiv- ing- such impressions, was the obstacle to an introduc- tion of printed books, even as early as Pisistratus. The ancients did apply printing to records of silver and gold ; to marble, and many other substances chen]ier than gold and silver, they did not, since each monument required a separate effort of inscrij)tion. Simply this defect it was of a cheap material for receiving im- presses, whicli froze in its very fountains the early re- sources of printing. Some twenty years ago, this view of the case was luminously expounded by Dr. Whateley, the present 382 r.EAUTTES OF DR gUTNCEY. Archbishop of Dublin, and with the merit, I believe, of having first suggested it. Since then, this theory ha-s received indirect confirmation. Now, out of that origi- nal scarcity aflecting all materials proper for durable books, which continued up to times comparatively mod- ern, grew the opening for palimpsests. Naturally, w^hen once a roll of parchment or of vellum had done its ofl&ce, by propagating through a series of generations what once had possessed an interest for them, but which, under changes of opinion or of taste, had faded to their feelings or had become obsolete for their undertakings, the whole membrana or vellum skin, the two-fold pro- duct of human skill, costly material, and costly freight of thought, which it carried, drooped in value concur- rently — supposing that each wore inalienably associated to the other. Once it had been the impress of a human mind which stamped its value upon the vellum ; the vellum, though costly, had contributed but a secondary element of value to the total result. At length, how- ever, this relation between the vehicle and its freight has gradually been undermined. The vellum, from having been the setting of the jewel, has risen at length to be the jewel itself; and the burden of thought, from having given the chief value to the vellum, has now become the chief obstacle to its value ; nay, has totally extinguished its value, unless it can be dissociat- ed from the connection. Yet, if this unlinking can be efi'ected, then, fast as the inscription upon the membrane is sinking into rubbish, the membrane itself is reviving in its separate importance; and, from bearing a minis- terial value, tlie vellum has come at last to absorb the whole value. THE PALIMPSK8T. 333 Hence the importance for our ancestors that the sep- aration slivuld be efiected. Hence it arose in the mid- dle ages, as a considerable object for chemistry, to dis- charge the writing from the roll, and tiius to make it available for a new succession of thoughts. The soil, if cleansed from what once had»been hot-house plants, but now were held to be weeds, would be ready to re- ceive a fresh and more appropriate crop. In that object the monkish chemist succeeded ; but after a fashion which seems almost incredible, — inci-edible not as re- gards the extent of their success, but as regards the delicacy of restraints under which it moved, — so equal- ly adjusted was their success to the immediate interests of that period, and to the reversionary objects of our own. They did the thing ; but was not so radically as to prevent us, their posterity, from wwdoing it. They expelled the writing sufficiently to leave a field for the new manuscript, and yet not sufficiently to make the traces of the elder manuscript irrecovera))le for us. Could magic, could Ilermes Trismegistus, have done more ? What would you think, fair reader, of a prob- lem such as this, — to write a book which should be sense for your own generation, nonsense for the next, should revive into sense for the next after that, but again become nonsense for the fourth ; and so on by alternate successions, sinking into night or blazing into day, like the Sicilian river Arethusa, and the English river Mole ; or like the undulating motions of a flat- tened stone which children cause to skim the breast of a river, now diving below the water, now grazing its surface, sinking lieavily into darkness, rising buoyantly into light, through a long vista of alternations ? Such 834 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. a problem, you say, is impossil)le. But really it is a problem not harder apparently than — to bid a genera- tion kill, but so that a subsequent generation may call back into life ; bury, but so that posterity may command to rise again. Yet that was what the rude chemistry of past ages effected when coming into combination with the reaction from the more refined chemistry of our own. Had they been better chemists, had we been worse, the mixed result, namely, that, dying for them^ the flower should revive for W5, could not have been effected. They did the thing proposed to them : they did it effectually, for they founded upon it all that was wanted : and yet ineffectually, since we unravelled their work ; effacing all above which they had superscribed ; restoring all below which they had effaced. Here, for instance, is a parchment wliich contained some Grecian tragedy, the Agamemnon of iEschylus, or the Phoenissae of Euripides. This had possessed a value almost inappreciable in the eyes of accomplished scholars, continually growing rarer through genera- tions. But four centuries are gone by since the de- struction of the Western Empire. Christianity, with towering grandeurs of another class, has founded a dif- ferent empire ; and some bigoted, yet perhaps holy monk, has washed away (as he persuades himself) the heathen's tragedy, replacing it with a monastic legend ; which legend is disfigured with fables in its incidents, and yet in a higher sense is true, because interwoven with Christian morals, and with the sublimest of Chris- tian revelations. Three, four, five centuries more, find man still devout as ever ; but the language has become obsolete, and even for Christian devotion a new era THE PALIMPSEST. 335 has arisen, throwing it into the channel of crusading zeal or of chivalrous enthusiasm. The membrana is wanted now for a knightly romance — for " my Cid," or Coeur do I-ion ; for Sir Tristrcm, or Lybgeus Dis- conus. In this way, by means of tlie imperfect chcm- i^lry known to the mediaeval period, the same roll has served as a conservatory for three separate generations of (lowers and fruits, all perfectly difierent, and yet all specially adai)ted to the wants of the successive pos- sessors. The Greek tragedy, the monkish legend, tlie knightly romance, each has ruled its own period. One harvest after anotlier has been gathered into the gar- ners of man through ages far apart. And the same hy- draulic machinery has distributed, through the same marble fountains, water, milk, or wine, according to the habits and training of the generations that came to quench their thirst. Such were the achievements of rude monastic chem- istry. But the more elaborate chemistry of our own days has reversed all these motions of our simple an- cestors, which results in every stage that to them would have realized the most fantastic amongst the promises of thauraaturgy. Insolent vaunt of Paracelsus, that he would restore the original rose or violet out of the ash- es settling from its combustion — that is now rivalled in this modern achievement. The traces of each suc- cessive handwriting, regularly eifaced, as had been im- agined, have, in the inverse order, been regularly called back : the footsteps of the game pursued, wolf or stag, in each several chase, have been unlinked, and hunted back through all their doubles ; and, as the chorus of tho Athenian stage unwove through the antistrophe 836 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. every step that had been mystically woven through the strophe, so by our modern conjurations of science, se- crets of ages remote from each other have been exor- cised* from the accumulated shadows of centuries. Chemistry, a witch as potent as the Erictho of Lucanto {Pharsalia, lib. vi, or vii.), has extorted by her tor- ments, from the dust and ashes of forgotten centuries, the secrets of a life extinct for the general eye, but still glowing in the embers. Even the fable of the Phoenix, that secular bird, who propagated his solitary existence, and his solitary births, along the line of cen- turies, through eternal relays of funeral mists, is but a type of what we have done with Palimpsests. We have backed upon each phoenix in the long reg-ressus, and forced him to expose his ancestral phoenix, sleep- ing in the ashes below his own ashes. Our good old forefathers would have been aghast at our sorceries ; and, if they speculated on the propriety of burning Dr. Faustus, us they would have burned by acclamation. Trial there would have been none ; and they could not otherwise have satisfied their horror of the brazen prof- ligacy marking our modern magic, than by ploughing up the houses of all who had been parties to it, and sowing the ground with salt. Fancy not, reader, that this tumult of images, illus- trative or allusive, moves under any impulse or pur- pose of mirth. It is but the coruscation of a restless understanding, often made ten times more so by irri- * Some readers may be apt to suppose, from all English experience, that the word exorcise means properly banishment to the shades. Not so. Citation from the shades, or sometimes the torturing coercion of mystic adjurations, is more truly the primary sense. THE PALIMPSEST. 837 tation of tlie nerves, such as you will first learn to com- prehend (its how and its 'why^ some stage or two ahead. The image, the memorial, the record, which for me is derived from a palimpsest, as to one great fact in our human being, and which immediately I will show you, is but too repellent of laughter ; or, even if laughter had been possible, it would have been such laughter as oftentimes is thrown oflf from the fields of ocean,* laughter that hides, or that seems to evade mustering tumult ; foam-bells that weave garlands of pliosphoric radiance for one moment round the eddies of gleaming abysses ; mimicries of earthborn flowers that for the eye raise phantoms of gayety, as oftentimes for the ear they raise the echoes of fugitive laughter, mixing with tlic ravings and choir-voices of an angry sea. What else than a natural and mighty palimpsest is the human brain ? Such a palimpsest is my brain ; such a palimpsest, oh reader ! is yours. Everlasting layers of ideas, images, feelings, have fallen upon your brain softly as light. Each succession has seemed to bury all that Avent before. And yet, in reality, not one has been extinguished. And if, in the vellum palimpsest, lying amongst the other diplomata of human archives *" Lav (jhter from the fields of ocean." — Many readers will recall, though, at the moment of writinff, my own thoughts did not recall, the well-known passage in the Prometheus — noviioiv If- y.vuujutv Ai'QiStiov yahiaij(t. " multitudinous laughter of the ocean billows !" It is not clear whether yEschylus contemplated the laughter as addressing the car or the eye. 15 338 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. or libraries, there is anything fantastic or which moves to laughter, as oftentimes there is in the grotesque col- lisions of those successive themes, having no natural connection, which by pure accident have consecutively occupied the roll, yet, in our own heaven-created pa- limpsest, the deep memorial palimpsest of the brain, there are not and cannot be such incoherencies. The fleeting accidents of a man's life, and its external shows, may indeed be irrelate and incongruous ; but the or- ganizing principles which fuse into harmony, and gath- er about fixed predetermined centres, whatever hetero- geneous elements life may have accumulated from with- out, will not permit the grandeur of human unity great- ly to be violated, or its ultimate repose to be troubled, in the retrospect from dying moments, or from other great convulsions. Such a convulsion is the struggle of gradual suffoca- tion, as in drowning ; and, in the original Opium Con- fessions, I mentioned a case of that nature communi- cated to me by a lady from her own childish experi- ence. The lady is still living, though now of unusually great age ; and I may mention that amongst her faults never was numbered any levity of principle, or care- lessness of the most scrupulous veracity ; but, on the contrary, such faults as arise from austerity, too harsh, perhaps, and gloomy, indulgent neither to others nor herself. And, at the time of relating this incident, when already very old, she had become religious to asceticism. According to my present belief, she had completed her ninth year, when, playing by the side of a solitary brook, she fell into one of its deepest pools. Eventually, but after what lapse of time nobody ever THE PALIMPSEST. 339 knew, she was saved from death by a farmer, who, rid- ing in some distant lane, Imd seen her rise to the sur- face ; but not until she had descended within the abyss of death, and looked into its secrets^, as far, perhaps, as ever human eye can have looked that had permis- sion to return. At a certain stage of this descent, a blow seemed to strike her, phosphoric radiance sprang forth from licr eyeballs ; and immediately a mighty tlicatre expanded within her brain. In a moment, in tlie twinkling of an eye, every act, every design of her past life, lived again, arraying themselves not as a suc- cession, but as parts of a coexistence. Such a light fell upon the wliole path of her life backwards into tlio shades of infancy, as the light, perhaps, which wrapt tlie destined Apostle on his road to Damascus, Yet that light blinded for a season ; but hers poured celes- tial vision upon the brain, so that her consciousness became onmipresent at one moment to every feature in tlie infinite review. This anecdote was treated sceptically at the time by some critics. But, ))esides that it has since been confirmed by other experience essentially the same, re- ported by other parties in the same circumstances, who had never heard of each other, the true point for aston- ishment is not the simultaneity of arrangement under wliich the past events of life, though in fact successive, liad formed their dread line of revelation. This was but a secondary phenomenon ; tlie deeper lay in the resurrection itself, and the possibility of resurrection, for what had so long slept in the dust. A pall, deep as oblivion, had been thrown by life over every trace of these experiences ; and yet suddenly, at a silent com- 340 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. mand, at the signal of a blazing rocket sent up from the brain, the pall draws up, and the whole depths of the theatre are exposed. Here was the greater mystery : now this mystery is liable to no doubt ; for it is repeat- ed, and ten thousand times repeated, by opium, for those who are its martyrs. Yes, reader, countless are the mysterious hand-writ- ings of grief or joy which have inscribed themselves successively upon the palimpsest of your brain ; and, like the annual leaves of aboriginal forests, or the un- dissolving snows on the Himalaya, or light falling upou light, the endless strata have covered up each other in forgctfulness. But by the hour of death, but by fever, but by the searchiugs of opium, all these can revive in strength. They are not dead, but sleeping. In the illustration imagined by myself, from the case of some individual palimpsest, the Grecian tragedy had seemed to be displaced, but was not displaced, by the monkish legend ; and the monkish legend had seemed to be dis- placed, but was not displaced, by the knightly romance. In some potent convulsion of the system, all wheels back into its earliest elementary stage. The bewilder- ing romance, light tarnished with darkness, the semi- fabulous legend, truth celestial mixed with human false- hoods, these fade even of themselves, as life advances. The romance has perished that the young man adored ; the legend has gone that deluded the boy ; but the deep, deep tragedies of infancy, as when the child's hands wore unlinked forever from his mother's neck, or his lips forever from his sister's kisses, these remain lurking be- low all, and these lurk to the last. CONVERSATION. Our remarks must of necessity be cursory here, so tliat they will not need or permit much preparation ; but one distinction, which is likely to strike on some minds, as to the two different purposes of conversation, ought to be noticed, since otherwise it will seem doubt- ful whether we have not confounded them ; or, secondly, if we have not confounded them, which of the two it is that our remarks contemplate. In speaking above of conversation, we have fixed our view on those uses of conversation which are ministerial to intellectual cul- ture ; but, in relation to the majority of men, conversa- tion is far less valuable as an organ of intellectual cul- ture than of social enjoyment. For one man interested in conversation as a means of advancing his studies, there are fifty men whose interest in " conversation points ex- clusively to convivial pleasure. This, as being a more extensive function of conversation, is so far the more dignified function ; whilst, on the other hand, such a purpose as direct mental improvement seems by its superior gravity to challenge the higher rank. Yet, in fact, even here the more general purpose of conversation takes precedency ; for, when dedicated to the objects of festal delight, conversation rises by its tendency to the rank of a fine art. It is true that not one man in a million rises to any distinction in this art ; nor, what- ever France may conceit rf herself, has any one nation, (341) 342 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. amongst other nations, a real precedency in this art. The artists are rare indeed ; but still the art, as distin- guished from the artist, may, by its difficulties, by the quality of its graces, and by the range of its possible brilliances, take as Q.fine art ; or, at all events, according to its powers of execution, it tends to that rank ; whereas the best order of conversation that is simply ministerial to a purpose of use, cannot pretend to a higher name than that of a mechanic art. But these distinctions, though they would form the grounds of a separate treatment in a regular treatise on conversation, may be practically neg- lected on this occasion, because the hints offered, by the generality of the terms in which they express them- selves, may be applied indifferently to either class of conversation. The main diseases, indeed, which ob- struct the healthy movement of conversation, recur everywhere ; and alike whether the object be pleasure or profit in the free interchange of thought, almost universally that free interchange is obstructed in the very same way, by the very same defect of any control- ling principle for sustaining the general rights and in- terests of the company, and by the same vices of self- indulgent indolence, or of callous selfishness, or of inso- lent vanity, in the individual talkers. Let us fall back on the recollections of our own ex- perience. In the course of our life we have heard much of what was reputed to be the select conversation of the day, and we have heard many of those who figured at the moment as effective talkers ; yet in mere sincerity, and without a vestige of misanthropic retrospect, we must say, that never once has it happened to us to come away from any display of that nature without intense disai> CONVERSATION. 343 pointmcnt ; and it always appeared to us that this fail- ure (which soon ceased to be a disappointment) was in- evitable by a necessity of the case. For here lay the stress of the difficulty ; almost all depends, in most trials of skill, upon the parity of those who are matched against each other. An ignorant person supposes that, to an able disputer, it must be an advantage to have a feeble opponent ; whereas, on the contrary, it is ruin to liim ; for he cannot display his own powers but through souiething of a corresponding power in the resistance of his antagonist. A brilliant fencer is lost and con- founded in playing Avith a novice ; and the same thing takes place in playing at ball, or battledore, or in danc- ing, where a powerless partner does not enable you to shine the more, but reduces you to mere helplessness, and takes the wind altogether out of your sails. Now, if by some rare good luck the great talker — the pro- tagonist — of the evening has been provided with a commensurate second, it is just possible that something like a brilliant " passage of arms " may be the result, though much, even in that case, will depend on the chances of the moment for furnisliing a fortunate theme ; and even then, amongst the superior part of the com- pany, a feeling of deep vulgarity and of mountebank display is inseparable from such an ostentatious duel of wit. On the other hand, supposing your great talker to be received like any other visitor, and turned loose upon the company, then he must do one of two things ; citlier he will talk upon outre, subjects specially tabooed to his own private use, in which case the great man has the air of a quack-doctor addressing a mob from a street stage ; or else he will talk like ordinary people upon 344 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. popular topics ; in which case the company, out of natural politeness, that they may not seem to be staring at him as a lion, will hasten to meet him in the same style ; the conversation will become general ; the great man will seem reasonable and well-bred ; but, at the same time, we grieve to say it, the great man will have been extinguished by being drawn off from his exclusive ground. The dilemma, in short, is this : if the great talker attempts the plan of showing off by firing can- non shot when everybody else is contented with mus- ketry, then undoubtedly he produces an impression, but at the expense of insulating himself from the sympa- thies of the company, and standing aloof as a sort of monster hired to play tricks of funambulism for the night. Yet again, if he contents himself with a mus- ket like other people, then for ?/s, from whom he mod- estly hides his talent under a bushel, in what respect is he different from the man who lias no such talent ? " If she be not fair to me. What care I how fair she be?" The reader, therefore, may take it upon the c priori logic of this dilemma, or upon the evidence of our own experience, that all reputation for brilliant talking is a visionary thing, and rests upon a sheer impossibility, namely, upon such a histrionic performance in a state of insulation from the rest of the company as could not be effected, even for a single time, without a rare and difficult collusion, and could not, even for that single time, be endurable to a man of delicate and honorable sensibilities. Yet surely Coleridge had such a reputation, and without needing any collusion at all ; for Coleridge, CONVERSATION. 345 unless he could have all the talk, would have none. But then this was not conversation ; it was not collo- qinnm, or talking ivith the company, but al/oquium, or talking to the company. As Madame de Stael observ- ed, Coleridge talked, and could talk, only by mono- logue. Sucli a mode of systematic tresspass upon the conversational rights of a whole party, gathered to- gether under pretence of amusement, is fatal to every purpose of social intercourse, whether that ])ui-pose be connected with direct use and the service of the intel- lect, or with the general graces and amenities of life. The result is the same, under whatever impulse such an outrage is practised ; but the impulse is not always the same ; it varies ; and so far the criminal intention va- ries. In some i)eople this gross excess takes its rise in pure arrogance. They are fully aware of their own intrusion upon the general privileges of the company ; they are aware of the temper in which it is likely to lie received ; but they persist wilfully in the wrong, as a sort of homage levied compulsorily upon those who may wish to resist it, but hardly can do so without a violent interrujition, wearing the same shape of inde- corum as that which they resent. In most people, how- ever, it is not arrogance which prompts this capital offence against social rights, but a blind selfishness, yielding passively to its own instincts, without being distinctly aware of the degree in which this self-indul- gence trespasses on liio rights of others. We see the same temper illustrated at times in travelling ; a brutal person, as we are disposed at first to pronounce him, but more frequently one who yields unconsciously to a lethargy of selfishness, plants himself at the public 346 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. fireplace, so as to exclude his fellow-travellers from all but a fraction of the warmth. Yet he does not do this in a spirit of wilful aggression upon others ; he has but a glimmering suspicion of the odious shape which his own act assumes to others, for the luxurious torpor of self-indulgence has extended its mists to the energy and clearness of his perceptions. Meantime, Coleridge's habit of soliloquizing through a whole evening of four or five hours had its origin neither in arrogance nor in absolute selfishness. The fact was that he could not talk unless he were uninterrupted, and unless he were able to count upon this concession from the company. It was a silent contract between him and his hearers, that nobody should speak Imt himself. If any man objected to this arrangement, why did he come 1 For the custom of the place, the lex loci, being notorious, by coming at all he was understood to profess his alle- giance to the autocrat who presided. It was not, therefore, by an insolent usurpation that Coleridge per- sisted in monology through his whole life, but in virtue of a concession from the kindness and respect of his friends. You could not be angry with him for using his privilege, for it was a privilege conferred by others, and a privilege which he was ready to resign as soon as any man demurred to it. But though reconciled to it by these considerations, and by the ability with which he used it, you could not but feel that it worked ill for all parties. Himself it tempted oftentimes into pure garrulity of egotisui, and the listeners it reduced to a state of debilitated sympathy or of absolute torpor. Prevented by the custom from putting questions, from proposing doubts, from asking for explanations, reiict- CONVERSATION. 347 ing by no mode of mental activity, and condemned also to the mental distress of hearing opinions or doctrines stream past them by flights which they must not arrest for a moment, so as even to take a note of them, and which yet they could not often understand, or, seeming to understand, could not always approve, the audience sank at times into a listless condition of inanimate vacuity. To be acted upon forever, but never to react, is fatal to the very powers by wliich sympathy must grow, or by which intelligent admiration can be evoked. For his own sake, it was Coleridge's interest to have forced his liearcrs into the active commerce of question and answer, of objection and demur. Not otlierwisc was it possible that even the attention could be kept from drooping, or the coherency and dependency of the arguments be forced into light. The French rarely make a mistake of this nature. The graceful levity of the nation could not easily err in this direction, nor tolerate such dcliration in the greatest of men. Not the gay temperament only of the French people, but the particular qualities of the French language, (which however poor for the higher purposes of passion) is rich beyond all others for purposes of social intercourse, prompt them to rapid and vivacious exchange of thought. Tcdiousness, therefore, above all other vices, finds no countenance or indulgence amongst the French, excepting always in two memorable cases, namely, first, the case of tragic dialogue on the stage, Avhich is privileged to be tedious by usage and tradition ; and, secondly, the case (authorized by the best usages ill living society) of narrators or raconteurs. This is a Lliookiiig anomaly in the code of French good taste as 848 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. applied to conversation. Of all the bores whom man in his folly hesitates to hang, and heaven in its mysteri- ous wisdom snflfers to propagate their species, the most insufferable is the teller of " good stories," — a nuisance that should be put down by cudgelling, by submersion in horse-ponds, or any mode of abatement, as summarily as men would combine to suffocate a vampyre or a mad dog. This case excepted, however, the French have the keenest possible sense of all that is odious and all that is ludicrous in prosing, and universally have a horror of des long'uers. It is not strange, therefore, that Madame de Stael noticed little as extraordinary in Coleridge beyond this one capital monstrosity of unlimited solilo- quy, that being a peculiarity which she never could have witnessed in France ; and, considering the burnish of her French tastes in all that concerned colloquial charac- teristics, it is creditable to her forbearance that she no- ticed even this rather as a memorable fact than as the inhuman fault which it was. On the other hand, Cole- ridge was not so forbearing as regarded the brilliant French lady. He spoke of her to ourselves as a very frivolous person, and in short summary terms that dis- dained to linger upon a sulyect so inconsiderable. It is remarkable that Goethe and Schiller both conversed with Madame de Stael, like Coleridge, and both spoke of her afterwards in the same disparaging terms as Cole- ridge. But it is equally remarkable that Baron William. Humboldt, who was personally acquainted with all the four parties, — Madame de Stael, Goethe, Schiller, and Coleridge, — gave it as his opinion in (letters subse- quently published) that the lady had been calumniated tlirough a very ignoble cause, namely, mere ignorance CONVERSATION. 349 of the French language, or, at least, non-familiarity with the fluencies of oral French. Neither Goethe nor Schiller, though well acquainted with written French, had any command of it for j)urposes of rapid conversa- tion ; and Humboldt supposes that mere spite at the trouble which they found in limping after the lady so as to catch one thought that she uttered, had been the true cause of their unfavorable sentence upon her. Not malice aforethought, so much as vindictive fury for the sufferings they had endured, accounted for their severi- ty in the opinion of the diplomatic baron. He did not extend the same explanation to Coleridge's case, because, though even then in habits of intercourse with Coleridge, he had not heard of hh interview with the lady, nor of the results from that interview ; else what was true of the two German wits was true a fortiori of Coleridge ; the Germans at least read French and talked it slowly, and occasionally understood it when talked by others. But Coleridge did none of these things. We are all of us well aware that Madame de Stael was not a tri- fler ; nay, that she gave utterance at times to truths as worthy to be held oracular as any that were uttered by the three inspired wits — all jihilosophcrs, and bound to truth — but all poets, and ])rivilcged to be wayward. This we may collect from thej^e anecdotes, that people accustomed to colloquial despotism, and who wield a sceptre within a circle of their own, are no longer capa- ble of impartial judgments, and do not accommodate themselves with patience, or even with justice, to the pretensions of rivals ; and were it only for this result of conversational tyranny, it calls clamorously lor extinc- tion by some couibined action upon tlie j)art of society. 350 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. Is such a combination on the part of society possible as a sustained effort ? We imagine that it is in these times, and will be no more so in tlie times which are coming. Formerly tlie social meetings of men and women, except only in capital cities, were few ; and even in such cities the infusion of female influence was not broad and powerful enough for the correction of those great aberrations from just ideals which disfi- gured social intercourse. But great changes are proceed- ing ; were it only by the vast revolution in our vieans of intercourse, laying open every village to the conta- gion of social temptations, the world of western Europe is tending more and more to a mode of living in public. Under such a law of life, conversation becomes a vital interest of every hour, that can no more suffer inter- ruption from individual caprice or arrogance than the animal process of respiration from transient disturbances of health. Once, when travelling was rare, there was no fixed law for the usages of public rooms in inns or coffee-houses ; the courtesy of individuals was the tenure by which men held their rights. If a morose person de- tained the newspaper for hours, there was no remedy. At present, according to the circumstances of the case there are strict regulations, which secure to each indi- vidual his own share of the common rights. A corresponding change will gradually take place in the usages which regulate conversation. It will come to be considered an infringement of the general rights for any man to detain the conversation, or arrest its movement, for more than a short space of time, which gradually will be more and more defined. This one curtailment of arrogant pretensions will lead to CONVERSATION. 361 others. Egotism will no longer freeze the openings to intellectual discussions ; and conversation will then be- come, what it never has l)ecn before, a powerful ally of education, and generally of self-culture. The main diseases that besiege conversation at present are — 1st. The want of /twiV/o-. Those who are not recalled, by. a sense of courtesy and equity, to the continual re- membrance that, in appropriating too large a share of the conversation, they are committing a fraud upon their companions, are beyond all control of monitory hints or of reproof, which does not take a direct and open shape of personal remonstrance ; but this, where the purpose of the assembly is festive and convivial, bears too harsh an expression for most people's feel- ings. That objection, however, would not apply to any mode of admonition that was universally establish- ed. A public memento carries with it no personality. For instance, in the Roman law-courts, no advocate complained of the clepsydra, or water timepiece, which regulated the duration of his pleadings. Now, such a contrivance would not be impracticable at an after- dinner talk. To invert the clepsydra, when all the water had run out, would be an act open to any one of the guests, and liable to no misconstruction, when this check was generally applied, and understood to be a simple expression of pul)lic defence, not of private rudeness or personality. The clepsydra ought to be filled with some brilliantly-cohn-ed fluid, to be placed in the centre of the table, and with the capacity, at the very most, of the little minute-glasses used for regulat- ing the boiling of eggs. It would obviously be insup- portably tedious to turn the glass every two or three 852 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. minutes ; but to do so occasionally would avail as a sufficient memento to the company. 2d. Conversation suffers from the want of some discretional power lodged in an individual for controlling its movements. Very often it sinks into flats of insipidity through mere acci- dent. Some trifle has turned its current upon ground where few of the company have anything to say — the commerce of thought languishes ; and the consciousness that it is languishing about a narrow circle, " unde pe- dem proferre pudor vetat," operates for the general re- frigeration of the company. Now, the ancient Greeks had an officer appointed over every convivial meeting, whose functions applied to all cases of doubt or inter- ruption tliat could threaten the genial harmony of the company. We also have su€h officers — presidents, vice-presidents, &c. ; and we need only to extend their powers, so that they may exercise over the movement of the conversation the beneficial influence of the Athe- nian symposiarch. At present the evil is, that conver- sation has no authorized originator ; it is servile to the accidents of the moment ; and generally these acci- debts are merely verbal. Some word or some name is dropped casually in the course of an illustration ; and that is allowed to suggest a topic, though neither in- teresting to the majority of the persons present, nor leading naturally into other collateral topics that are more so. Now, in such cases it will be the business of the symposiarch to restore the interest of the conversa- tion, and to rekindle its animation, by recalling it from any tracks of dulness or sterility into which it may have rambled. The natural excursiveness of colloquial in- tercourse, its tendency to advance by subtle links of CONVERSATION. 353 association, is oue of its advantages; but mere vagran- cy from passive acquiescence in the direction given to it by chance or by any verbal accident, is amongst its ■worst diseases. The business of the symposiarch will be, to watch these morbid tendencies, which are not the deviations of graceful freedom, but the distortions of imbecility and collapse. His business it will also be to derive occasions of discussion bearing a general and permanent interest from the fleeting events of the casual disputes of the day. His business again it will be to bring back a subject that has been imperfectly discussed, and has yielded but half of the interest which it promises, under the interruption of any accident which may have carried the thoughts of the party into less attractive channels. Lastly, it should be an ex- press office of education to form a particular style, cleansed from verbiag-e, from elaborate parenthesis, and from circumlocution, as the only style fitted for a pur- pose which is one of pure enjoyment, and where every moment used by the speaker is deducted from a public stock. Many other suggestions for the improvement of con- versation might be brought forward within ampler limits ; and especially for that class of conversation which moves by discussion, a whole code of regulations might be proposed, that would equally promote the in- terests of the individual speakers and the public interests of the truth involved in the question discussed. Mean- time nobody is more aware than we are, that no style ot conversation is more essentially vulgar than that which moves by dis])utation. This is the vice of the young and the inexperienced, but especially of those amongst 354 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. them who are fresh from academic life. But discussion is not necessarily disputation ; and the two orders of conversation — that^ on the one hand, which contem- plates an interest of knowledge, and of the self-develop- ing intellect ; that, on the other hand, which forms one and the widest amongst the gay embellishments of life — will always advance together. Whatever there may remain of illiberal in the first (for, according to the re- mark of Burke, there is always something illiberal in the severer aspects of study until balanced by the in- fluence of social amenities), will correct itself, or will tend to correct itself, by the model held up in the se- cond ; and thus the great organ of social intercourse, by means of speech, which hitherto has done little for man, except through the channel of its ministrations to the direct business of daily necessities, will at length rise into a rivalship with books, and become fixed amongst the alliances of intellectual progress, not less than amongst the ornamental accomplishments of convivial life. CRITIQUES AND REMINISCENCES. SHAKSPEARE. The station of Shakspeare in literature, is now irre- vocably settled, not so much (which happens in other cases) by a vast overbalance of favorable suffrages as by acclamation ; not so much by the voices of those who admire him up to the verge of idolatry, as by the acts of those who everywhere seek for his works among the primal necessities of life, demand them, and crave them as they do their daily bread ; not so much by eulogy openly proclaiming itself, as Ijy the silent hom- age recorded in the endless multiplication of what he has be<]ueathed us ; not so much by !iis own compatriots, who, with regard to almost every other author, compose the total amount of his effective audience, as by the unanimous " all hail ! " of intellectual Christendom ; finally, not by the hasty partisanship of his own gene- ration, nor by the biased judgment of an age trained in the same modes of feeling and of thinking with himself, — but by the solemn award of generation succeeding to generation, of one age correcting the obliquities or pe- culiarities of another ; by the verdict of two hundred and thirty years, which have now elapsed since the very latest of his creations, or of two hundred and forty- seven years if we date from the earliest ; a verdict which has been continually revived and rcojKined, prol)- ed, searched, vexed by criticism in every spirit, from the most genial and intelligent, down to the most ma- lio;nant and scurrilously hostile which feeble heads and (357) 358 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. great ignorance suggest when cooperating with impure hearts and narrow sensibilities ; a verdict, in short, sus- tained, and countersigned by a longer series of writers, many of them eminent for wit or learning, than were ever before congregated upon any inquest relating to any author, be he who he might, ancient or modern, Pagan or Christian. It was a most witty saying with respect to a piratical and knavish publisher, who made a trade of insulting the memories of deceased authore by forged writings, that he was " among the new ter- rors of death." But in the gravest sense it may be affirmed of Shakspeare, that he is among the modern luxuries of life ; that life, in fact, is a new thing, and one more to be coveted, since Shakspeare has extended the domains of human consciousness, and pushed its dark frontiers into regions not so much as dimly descri- ed or even suspected before his time, far less illuminated (as now they are) by beauty and tropical luxuriance of life. O, mighty poet ! Thy works are not as those of other men, simply and merely great works of art ; but are also like the phenomena of nature, like the sun and the sea, the stars and the flowers, — like frost and snow, rain and dew, hail-storm and thunder, which are to be studied with entire submission of our own faculties, and in the perfect faith that in them there can be no too much or too little, nothing useless or inert, but that, the fur- ther we press in our discoveries, the more we shall see proofs of design and self-supporting arrangement where the careless eye had seen nothing but accident ! MILTON. So accustomed are we to survey a great man through the cloud of years that has gathered around him — so impossible is it to detach him from the pomp and equipage of all who have quoted him, copied him, echo- ed him, lectured about him, disputed about him, quar- relled about him, that in the case of any Anacharsis the Scythian coming amongst us — any savage, that is to say, uninstructed in our literature, but speaking our language, and feeling an interest in our great men — a man could hardly believe at first how perplexed he would feel — how utterly at a loss for any adequate answer to this question, suddenly proposed — "W7to and what was Milton ? " That is to say, what is the place which he fills in his own vernacular literature ? what station does he hold in universal literature ? We, if abruptly called upon in that summary fashion to convey a commensurate idea of Milton, one which might at once correspond to his pretensions, and yet be readily intelligible to the savage, should answer perhaps thus — Milton is not an author amongst authors, not a ])oct amongst poets, but a power amongst powers ; and the Paradise Lost is not a book amongst books, not a j)0cm amongst poems, but a central force amongst forces. Let us explain. There is this great distinction amongst books ; some, though possibly the best in their class, arc still no more tlian books — not indispensable, not incapable of supplementary representation by other 360 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. books. If they had never been — if their place had continued for ages unfilled — not the less, upon a suffi- cient excitement arising, there would always have been found the ability, either directly to fill up the vacancy, or at least to meet the same passion virtually, though by a work differing in form. But, with regard to Milton and the Miltonic power, the case is far otherwise. If the man had failed, the power would have failed. In that mode of power which he wielded, the function was exhausted in the man — species was identified with the individual — the poetry was incarnated in the poet. Let it be remembered, that, of all powers which act upon man through his intellectual nature, the very rarest is that which we moderns call the Sublime. The Grecians had apparently no word for it, unless it were that which they meant by to oyxotSeg .• for v\}io; was a comprehensive expression for all qualities which gave a character of grace or animation to the composition, such even as were philosophically opposed to the sublime. In the Roman poetry, and especially in Lucan, at times also Juvenal, there is an exhibition of a moral sublime, perfectly distinct from anything known to the Greek poetry. The delineations of republican grandeur, as expressing itself through the principal leaders in the Roman camps, or the trampling under foot of ordinary superstitions, as given in the reasons assigned to Labie- nus for passing the oracle of the Lybian Jupiter uncon- sulted, are in a style to which there is nothing corres- ponding in the whole Grecian literature, nor would they have been comprehensible to an Athenian. The famous line — " Jupiter est quodcunque vides, quodcunquo MILTON. 3G1 moveris," and the brief review of such questions as might be worthy of an oracular god, with the summary declaration, that every one of those points we know already by the light of nature, and could not know them better though Jupiter Ammon himself were to im- press them on our attention — *' Scimus, et hsec nobis non altius inseret Ammon : " all this is truly Eoman in its sublimity ; and so exclu- sively Roman, that there, and not in poets like the Au- gustan, expressly modelling their poems on Grecian types, ouglit the Roman mind to be studied. On tlic other hand, for that species of the sublime which does not rest purely and merely on moral ener- gies, but on a synthesis between man and nature — for what may properly be called the Ethico -physical Sub- lime — there is but one great model surviving in the Greek poetry, viz. the gigantic drama of the Prome- theus crucified on Mount Elborus. And this drama differs so much from everything else, even in the poetry of -rothei-s from a fancied incon- venience : and yet by that very act of cruelty, he had himself called destruction on their heads. The Neme- sis that followed punished him through them — him that wronged, through those that wrongfully he sought to benefit. That spirit who watches over the sanctities of love is a strong angel — is a jealous angel, and this angel it was " Tliiit loved the bird, that loved the man Tliat sliot him witli his bow." 376 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. He it was that followed the cruel archer into silent and slumbering seas : — " Nine fathoms deep he had followed him Through the realms of mist and snow." This jealous angel it was that pursued the man into noonday darkness, and the vision of dying oceans, into delirium, and finally, (when recovered from disease) into an unsettled mind. SOUTHEY. I HAD been directed to ask for Greta Hall, which, with some little difficulty, I found ; for it stands out of the town a few hundred yards, upon a little eminence overhanging the river Greta. It was about seven o'clock when I reached Southey's door ; for I had stop- ped to dine at a little public house in Threlkeld, and had walked slowly for the last two hours in the dark. The arrival of a stranger, occasioned a little sensation in the house ; and, by the time the front door could be open- ed, I saw Mrs. Coleridge, and a gentleman whom I could not doubt to be Southey, standing, very hospitably, to greet my entrance. Southey was, in person, somewhat taller than "Wordsworth, being about five feet eleven in height, or a trifle more, whilst Wordsworth was about five feet ten ; and, partly from having slender limbs, partly from being more symmetrically formed about the shoulders than Wordsworth, he struck one as a better and lighter figure, to the effect of which his dress con- SOUTHEY. 377 tributed ; for he wore pretty constantly a short jacket and pantaloons, and had much the air of a Tyrolese mountaineer. His face I profess myself unable to describe accurate- ly. His hair was black, and yet his complexion was fair ; his eyes I believe to be hazel and large ; but I will not vouch for that fact : his nose aquiline ; and lie has a remarkable habit of looking up into the air, as if looking at abstractions. The expression of his face was that of a very acute and an aspiring man. So far, it was even noble, as it conveyed a feeling of a serene and gentle pride, habitually familiar with elevating sulijects of contemplation. And yet it was impossible that this pride could have been offensive to anybody, chastened as it was by the most unaffected modesty ; jyid this mod- esty made evident and prominent by the constant ex- pression of reverence for the great men of the age, (when lie happened to esteem them such,) and for all the great patriarchs of our literature. The point in which Southey's manner failed the most in conciliating regard, was, in all which related to the external expres- sions of friendliness. No maji could be more sinccrcl}- hospitable — no man more essentially disposed to give up even his time (the possession which he most valued) to the service of his friends. But there was an air of reserve and distance about him — the reserve of a lofty, self-respecting mind, but, perliaps, a little too freezing — in his treatment of all persons who were not among tlie corps of his ancient fireside friends. Still, even towards the veriest strangers, it is but justice to notice liis extreme courtesy in sacrificing his literary employ- ments for the day, whatever they might be, to the duty 378 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCET. (for such lie made it) of doing the honors of the lake, and the adjacent mountains. Southey was at that time, (1807,) and has continued ever since, the most industrious of all literary men on record. A certain task he prescribed to himself every morning before breakfast. This could not be a very long one, for he breakfasted at nine, or soon after, and never rose before eight, though he went to bed duly at half-past ten ; but, as I have many times heard him say, less than nine hours' sleep he found insufficient. From breakfast to a latish dinner (about half after five or six) was his main period of literary toil. After dinner, according to the accident of having or not having visit- ors in the house, he sat over his wine ; or he retired to his library again, from which, about eight, he was summoned to tea. But generally speaking, he closed his literary toils at dinner ; the whole of the hours after that meal being dedicated to his correspondence. This, it may be supposed, was unusually large, to occupy so much of his time, for his letters rarely extended to any length. At that period, the post, by way of Penrith, reached Keswick about six or seven in the evening. And so pointedly regular was Southey in all his habits, that, short as the time was, all letters were answered on the same evening which brought them. At tea, he read the London papers. It was perfectly astonishing to men of less methodical habits, to find how much he got through of elaborate business by his unvarying system of arrangement in the distribution of his time. CHAELES LAMB. Let me describe my brief introductory call upon Lamb at the India House. I had been told that he was never to be found at home except in the evenings ; and to have called then would have been, in a manner, forcing myself upon his hospitalities, and at a moment when he might have confidential friends about him ; be- sides that, he was sometimes tempted away to the theatres. I went, therefore, to the India House ; made inquiries amongst the servants ; and, after some trouble, (for that was early in his Leadenhall Street career, and possibly, he was not much known), I was shown into a small room, or else a small section of a large one, (thirty -four years affects one's remembrance of some circumstances), in which was a very lofty writing-desk, separated by a still higher railing from that part of the floor on which the profane — the laity, like myself — were allowed to approach the clerus, or clerkly rulers of the room. Within tlie railing, sat, to the best of my remembrance, six quill-driving gentlemen ; not gentlemen whose duty or profession it was merely to drive the quill, but who were then driving it — g-ens de plume, such in esse, as well as in pnsse — in act as well as habit ; for, as if they supposed me a spy, sent hj some superior power, to report upon the situation of affairs as surprised by me, they were all too profoundly immersed in their oriental studies to have any sense of (379) 880 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. my presence. Consequently, I was reduced to a ne- cessity of announcing myself and my errand. I walked, therefore, into one of the two open doorways of the railing, and stood closely by the high stool of him who occupied the first place within the little aisle. I touch- ed bis arm, by way of recalling him from his lofty Lead- enhall speculations to this sublunary world ; and, pre- senting my letter, asked if that gentleman (pointing to the address) were really a citizen of the present room ; for I had been repeatedly misled, by the directions given me, into wrong rooms. The gentleman smiled ; it was a smile not to be forgotten. This was Lamb. And here occurred a very, veri/ little incident — one of those which pass so fugitively that they are gone and hurrying away into Lethe almost before your attention can have arrested them ; but it was an incident which, to me, who happened to notice it, served to express the courtesy and delicate consideration of Lamb's manners. The seat upon which he sat was a very high one ; so ab- surdly high, by the way, that I can imagine no possible use or sense in such an altitude, unless it were to restrain the occupant from playing truant at the fire, by opposing Alpine difficulties to his descent. Whatever might be the original purpose of this aspir- ing seat, one serious dilemma arose from it, and this it was which gave the occasion to Lamb's act of courtesy. Somewhere there is an anecdote, meant to illustrate the ultra-obsequiousness of the man : either I have heard of it in connection with some actual man known to my- self, or it is told in a book of some historical coxcomb — that being on horseback, and meeting some person or other whom it seemed advisable to flatter, he actually CI/ARLES LAMB. 881 dismounted, in order to pay liis court 1)y a more cere- monious bow. In Russia, as we all know, this was, at one time, upon meeting any of tlie Imperial family, an act of legal necessity : and there, accordingly, but tiicrc only, it would havo worn no ludicrous aspect. Now, in this situation of Lamb's, the act of descending from his throne, a very elaborate process, with steps and Btages analogous to those on horseback — of slipping your right foot out of the stirrup, throwing your leg over the crupjjer, &c. — was, to all intents and purj)oses, tlic same thing as dismounting froui a great elephant of a horse. Therefore it both was, and was felt to be by Lamb, supremely ludicrous. On the other hand, to have safe still and stately upon this aerial station, to have bowed condescendingly from this altitude, would have been — not ludicrous indeed ; performed by a very superb person, and supported by a very superb bow, it might have been vastly fine, and even terrifying to many young gentlemen under sixteen ; but it would have had an air of ungentlemanly r.isumption. Between these extremes, therefore. Lamb had to choose: — between appearing ridiculous himself for a moment, by going through a ridiculous evolution, which no man could ex- ecute with grace ; or, on the other hand, appearing lofty and assuming, in a degree which his truly humble nature (for he was the humblest of men in the preten- sions which he put forward for himself) must have shrunk from with horror. Nobody who knew Lamb can doul)t how the jH'oblem was solved ; he began to dismount instantly ; and as it happened that the very first round of his descent obliged him to turn his back upon me as if for a sudden purpose of flight, he had an 382 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. excuse for laughing ; which he did heartily — saying, at the same time, something to this effect, that I must not judge from first appearances ; that he should re- volve upon me ; that he was not going to fly ; and other facetiae, which challenged a general laugh from the clerical brotherhood. When he had reached the basis of terra firma on which I was standing, naturally, as a mode of thanking him for his courtesy, I presented my hand ; which, in a general case, I should certainly not have done ; for I cherished, in an ultra-English degree, the English cus- tom (a wise custom) of bowing in frigid silence on a first introduction to a stranger ; but to a man of literary talent, and one who had just practised so much kindness in my favor at so probable a hazard to himself of being laughed at for his pains, I could not maintain that frosty reserve. Larab took my hand ; did not absolutely reject it : but rather repelled my advance by his man- ner. This, however, long afterwards I found, was only a habit derived from Ir!? too great sensitiveness to the variety of people's feelings, which run through a gamut so infinite of degrees and modes as to make it unsafe for any man who respects himself, to be too hasty in his allowances of familiarity. Lamb had, as he was entitled to have, a high self-respect ; and me he proba- bly suspected (as a young Oxonian) of some aristocra- tic tendencies. The letter of introduction, containing (I iningine) no matters of business, was speedily run llu'oiigh ; and I instantly received an invitation to spend tlio evening with liim. Lamb was not one of those who catcli at the chniico of escaping from a bore by fixing some distant d;iy, when accidents (in duplicate propor- CHARLES LAMB. 383 tion, perhaps to the number of intervening days) may have carried you away from the place ; he sought to benefit by no luck of that kind ; for he was, with his limited income — and I say it deli])erately — positively the most hospitable man I have known in this world. That niglit, the same night, I was to come and spend the evening with him. I had gone to the India House with the express purpose of accepting whatever invita- tion he should give me ; and, therefore, I accepted this, took my leave, and left Lamb in the act of resuming his aerial position. It is for ever to be regretted that so many of Lamb's jests, repartees, and pointed sayings, should have per- ished irrecoverably ; and from their fugitive brilliancy, which, (as Sergeant Talfourd remarks,) often dazzled too much to allow of the memory coolly retracing them some hours afterwards ; it is also to be regretted that many have been improperly reported. One, for in- stance, which had been but half told to his biographei", was more circumstantially and more effectually related thus, in my hearing, at Professor Wilson's, by Dr. Bowring, soon after the occasion. It occurred at Mr. Coleridge's weekly party at Highgate. Somel^ody had happened to mention that letter of Dr. Pococke, upon the Aral)ic translation of Grotius de Veritate Fidei Christ., in whicli li<3 exposes the want of authority for the trite legend of Mahomet's pigeon, and justly in- sists upon the necessity of expunging a fable so certain to disgust learned Mussulmans, before the books were circulated in the East. This occasioned a conversation generally, upon the Mahometan creed, theology, and morals ; in the course of which, some young man, m- 384 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. troduced by Edward Irving, had thought fit to pro- nounce a splendid declamatory eulogium upon Mahomet and all his doctrines. This, as a pleasant extravagance, had amused all present. Some hours after, when the party came to separate, this philo-Mahometan missed his hat, upon which, whilst a general search for it was going on. Lamb, turning to the stranger, said — " Hat, sir ! — your hat ! Don't you think you came in a tur- ban ? " The fact that the hat luas missing, which could not have been anticipated by Lamb, shows his readiness, and so far improves the Sergeant's version of the story. Finally, without attempting, in this place, any elabo- rate analysis of Lamb's merits, (which would be no easy task,) one word or two may be said generally, about the position he is entitled to hold in our literature, and, comparatively, in European literature. His biographer thinks that Lamb had more points of resemblance to Professor Wilson, than to any other eminent person of the day. It would be presumptuous to dismiss too has- tily any opinion put forward by the author of " Ion ; " otherwise, I confess, that, for my own part, knowing both parties most intimately, I cannot perceive much closer resemblance than what must always be found be- tween two men of genius ; whilst the differences seem to me radical. To notice only two points, Professor Wilson's mind is, in its movement and style of feeling, eminently diffusive — Lamb's discontinuous and abrupt. Professor Wilson's humor is broad, overwhelming, riot- ously opulent — Lamb's is minute, delicate, and scin- tillating. In one feature, though otherwise as different as possible. Lamb resembles Sir Walter Scott — viz. in the dramatic character of his mind and taste. Both of CHARLES LAMH. 385 them recoiled from the high ideality of such a mind as Milton's ; both loved the mixed standards of the world as it is — the dramatic standards in which good and evil arc intermingled ; in sliort, that class of composition in which a human character is predominant. Hence, also, in the great national movements, and the revolu- tionary struggles, which, in our times, have gone on in so many interesting parts of the world, neither Sir Walter Scott nor Lamb much sympathized, nor much affected to sympathize, with the aspirations after some exaltation for human nature by means of liberty, or the purification of legal codes or of religious creeds. They were content with things as they are ; and, in the dra- matic interest attached to these old realities, they found sufficient gratification for all their sensibilities. In one thing, upon consideration, there does strike me, some resemblance between Lamb and Professor Wilson — viz. in the absence of affectation, and the courageous sincer- ity which belong to both ; and also, perhaps, as Serjeant Talfourd has remarked, in the comprehensiveness of their liberality towards all, however opposed to them- selves, who have any intellectual distinctions to recom- mend them. But, recurring to the question I have suggested of Lamb's general place in literature, I shall content myself with indicating my own views of that point, without how- ever, pausing to defend them. In the literature of every nation, we are naturally disposed to place in the highest rank those who have produced some great and colossal work — a " Paradise Lost," a "Hamlet," a "Novum Organum," — which presupposes an effort of intellect, a comprehensive grasp, and a sustaining power, for its 17 386 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. original conception, corresponding in grandeur to that effort, different in kind, which must preside in its exe- cution. But, after this highest class, in which the power to conceive and the power to execute are upon the same scale of grandeur, there comes a second, in which bril- liant powers of execution, applied to conceptions of a very inferior range, are allowed to establish a classical rank. Every literature possesses, besides its great national gallery, a cabinet of minor pieces, not less perfect in their polish, possibly more so. In reality, the charac- teristic of this class is elaborate perfection — the point of inferiority is not in the finishing, but in the compass and power of the original creation, which (however exquisite in its class) moves within a smaller sphere. To this class belong, for example, " Tlie Rape of the Lock," that finished jewel of English literature ; " Tlie Dunciad,'' (a still more exquisite gem ;) " The Vicar of Wakefield," (in its earlier part ;) in German, the " Luise " of Voss ; in French — what ? Omitting some others that might be named, above all others, the Fables of La Fontaine. He is the pet and darling, as it were, of the French literature. Now, I affirm tliat Charles Lamb occupies a corresponding station to his own literature. I am not speaking ^it will be observed) of kinds, but of degrees in literai-y merit ; and Lamb I hold to be, as with respect to English literature, that which La Fon- taine is with respect to French. For, though there may be little resemblance otherwise, in this, they agree, that both were wayward and eccentric humorists ; both con- fined their efforts to short flights ; and both, according to the standards of their several countries, were, occa- sionally, and, in a lower key, poets. SIR HUMPHRY DAVY. Sir Humphry Davy, of all those whom I have just mentioned — nay, of all the eminent persons whom 1 have ever seen even by a easual glimpse — was the most agreealile to know on the terms of a slight ac- (juaintance. What he miglit have proved upon a closer intinmcy, I cannot say ; not having had the honor of any such connection with him. My acquaintance liad never gone far enough to pass the barrier of stranger- ship, and the protection which lies in that conscious- ness, reciprocally felt ; for, if friendsliip and confiden- tial intimacy have the power to confer privileges, there are other privileges wliich they take away ; and many times it is better to be privileged as the " stranger " of a family than as its friend. Some I have known who, therefore, only called a man their friend, that they might have a license for taking lil)erties with him. Sir Humphry, I have no reason to believe, would have al- tered for the worse on a closer connection. But for myself I know him only within ceremonious bounds ; and I must say that nowhere, before or since, have I seen a man who had so felicitously caught the fascinat- ing tone of high-bred urbanity which distinguishes the best part of the British nobility. The first time of my seeing him was at the Courier office, in a drawing-room then occupied l)y Mr. Coleridge, and as a guest of that gentleman : this nmst have been eitlier in 1808 or 1800. Sir Uumphrv (I forget whether then a baronet, but I (387) 388 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. think not) had promised to drink tea with Mr, Cole- ridge, on his road to a meeting of the Royal Society ; l)efore which learned body he was on that evening to read some paper or other of his own composition. I had the honor to be invited as sole " respondent " to the learned philosopher ; sole supporter of the antis- tlirope in our choral performance. It sounded rather appalling to be engaged in a glee for three voices, with two performers such as these ; and I trepidated a little as I went up stairs, having previously understood tluit the great man svas already come. The door was thrown open by the servant wlio announced me ; arid I saw at once, in full proportions before me, the full- length figure of the young savant, not, perhaps, above ten years older than myself, whose name already filled all the post-horns of Europe, and levied homage from Napoleon. He was a little below the middle height ; agreeable in his person, and amiable in the expression of his countenance. His dress was elaborately accu- rate and fashionable — no traces of soot or furnace there; it might be said, also, that it was youthfid and almost gay in its character. But what chiefly distin- guished him from other men, was the captivating — one might call it the radiant — courtesy of his manner. It was at once animated and chastised by good-breeding ; graceful, and, at the same time, gracious. From a person so eminent it would not have been a sufl&cient encouragement that his manner should be, in a passive sense, courteous. This would have expressed only a consciousness of what was due to himself. But Sir Humphry's manner was conciliatory and intention- ally winning. To a person as obscure as myself, it held MRS. SIDDONS AND MRS. HANNAH MORE. 389 out the flattering expressions of a wish to recommend liimself, an assurance of interest in your person, and a desire both to know and to be known. MRS. SIDDONS AND MRS. HANNAH MORE. From the Lakes, I went annually southwards — chief- ly to Somersetshire or to London, and more rqj*ely to Edinlmrgh. In my Somersetshire visits, I never failed to see Mrs. Hannah More. My own relative's house, in fact, standing within one mile of Barley Wood, I sel- dom suffered a week to pass without calling to pay my respects. There was a stronger motive to this than simply what arose from Mrs. H. More's company, or even from that of her sisters, (one or two of whom were more entertaining because more filled with ani- mal spirits and less thoughtful than Mrs. Hannah ;) for it rarely happened that one called witliin the privileged calling hours, which, with these rural ladies, ranged be- tween twelve and four o'clock, but one met some per- son interesting by rank, station, political or literary eminence. Here, accordingly, it was, that, during one of my last visits to Somersetshire, either in 1813 or 1814, I met Mrs. Siddons, whom I had often seen upon the stage, but never before in private society. Mrs. Hannah More was too ])olislied a woman to al- low of any sectarian movement being impressed upon the conversation ; consequently, she soon directed it to 390 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. literature, upon wliich Mrs. Siddons was very amusing, from her recollections of Dr. Johnson, whose fine-turned compliment to herself, (so much in the spirit of those unique compliments addressed to eminent people by Louis Xiy.) had for ever planted the Doctor's memory in her heart. She spoke also of Garrick and of Mrs. Garrick ; but not, I think, with so much respect and affection as Mrs. Hannah More, who had, in her youthful days, received the most friendly attentions from both, though coming forward at that time in no higher char- acter than as the author of Percy, the most insipid of tragedies. Mrs. Siddons was prevailed on to read passages from both Shakspeare and Milton. The dra- matic readings were delightful ; in fact, they were al- most stage rehearsals, accompanied with appropriate gesticulation. One was the great somnambulist scene in Macbeth, which was the ne plus ultra in the whole range of Mrs. Siddons's scenical exhibitions, and can never be forgotten by any man who once had the happi- ness to witness that immortal performance of the divine artist. Another, given at the request of a Dutch lady, residing in the neighborhood of Barley Wood, was the scene from King John, of the Lady Constance, beginning — " Gone to be married ! gone to swear a peace ! " &c. The last, and truly superb for the musical intonation of the cadences, was that inimitable apology or pleading of Christian charity for Cardinal Wolsey, addressed to his bitterest enemy, Queen Catherine. All these, in different degrees and different ways, were exquisite. But the readings from Milton were not to my taste. And, some weeks after, when, at Mrs. Hannah More's request, I had read to her some of Lord Byron's most MRS. SIDDONS AND MRS. HANNAH MORE. 391 popular works, I got her to acknowldege, in then speak- ing upon the subject of reading, that perhaps the style of Mrs. Siddon's reading had been too luueh determin- ed to the dramatic cast of emphasis, and the pointed expression of character and situation which must al- ways belong to a speaker bearing a part in a dialogue, to admit of her assuming the tone of a rapt poetic inspiration. Meantime, whatever she did — whether it were in display of her own matchless talents, but always at the earnest request of the company or of her hostess — or whether it were in gentle acquiescent attention to the display made by others — or whether it were as one member of a general party, taking her part occasionally, for tlic amusement of the rest, and contributing to the general fund of social pleasure — nothing could exceed the amiable, kind, and unassuming deportment of Mrs. Siddons. She had retired from the stage,* and no longer regarded herself as a pul)lic character. But so much the stronger did she seem 'to think the claims of her friends upon anything she could do for their amusement. Meantime, amongst the many pleasurable impressions which Mrs. Siddon's presence never failed to make, there was one; which was positively painful and humiliat- ing : it was the degradation which it inflicted upon other * I s