HEADLOIG HALL AND IIGHTMARE ABBEY NEW EDITION, COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME. NEW YORK: GEORGE P. PUTNAM, 155 BROADWAY. 1850. 9S5 h V ^ PUBLISHER'S ADVERTISEMENT. The Edinlurgh Review of January, 1839, contains a long and •profound article on the works and character of the author of " Headlong Hall,''\from which the following full length is taken. " A wandering and contemplative turn of mind ; a patient conviction of the vanity of all human conclusions ; an impa- tient sense of the absurdity of all human pretensions, quick- ened by an habitual suspicion of their insincerity ; an eye and a heart open enough to impressions and opinions of all kinds, so that vanity be the end of all ; a perception of the strange- ness and mystery which involves our life, — keen enough to enliven the curiosity, but not to disturb or depress the spiiit ; with faith in some possible but unattainable solution just suffi- cient to make him watch with interest the abortive endeavours of more sanguine men, but not to engage him in the pursuit himself; a questioning, not a denying spirit, — but questioning without waiting for an answer ; an understanding very quick and bright, — not narrow in its range, though wanting in the depth which only deeper purposes can impart ; a fancy of sin- gular play and delicacy ; a light spmpathy with the common hopes and fears, joys and sorrows of mankind, which gives him an interest in their occupations, just enough for the pur- poses of observation and intelligent amusement ; a poetical faculty, not of a very high order, but quite capable of har- monizing the scattered notes of fancy and observation, and reproducing them in a grateful whole ; such, if we have read 96t7ri3 VI f UBLISHER S ADVERTISEMENT. him rightly, are the dispositions and faculties \vith which he has been turned forth into this bustling world of speculation, enterprise, imposture, and credulity, with its multiplying spawn of cant, quackery, and pretension ; — such the original constitution which seems to point out as his natural and ge- nial vocation the hue and cry after folly in its giave disguises ; the philosophy of irreverence and incredulity ; the hght and bloodless warfare, between jest and earnest, agamst all new doctrines, accepted or proclaimed for acceptance, — clamorously hailed by the many, or maintained in defiant complacency by the self-constituted fit and few." The satirical force and interest of such a book, reflecting every shade and variety of opinion of the nineteenth cen- tury, will be felt in a country where every ism is fully de- veloped, where the old Latin proverb may be Uterally appUed, " So many men, so many opinions." There is scarcely a topic upon which men have thought and written in this much vexed age which is not here embodied and set forth ; every one has his hobby, and rides it at full tilt, while the author stands by, hke the man conducting the whirligig at the fair, setting all in motion, apparently indifferent to either. HEADLONG HALL [First published in 1816 All philosophers, who rind Some favourite system to theu* mind, In every point to make it fit, Will force all nature to submit. CONTENTS ('hap. I. The Mail . II. The Squire. The Breakfast III. The Arrivals . IV. The Grounds . V. The Dinner VI. The Evening . VII. The Walk . VIII. The Tower . IX. The Sexton X. The Skull XI. The Anniversary XII. The Lecture . XIII. The Ball . XIV. The Proposals XV. The Conclusion Page . 1 6 . 11 15 . 20 32 . 38 46 . 51 56 . 60 64 . 68 79 . 86 HEADLONG HALL CHAPTER I. THE MAIL. The ambiguous light of a December morning, peeping through the windows of the Holyhead mail, dispelled the soft visions of the four insides, who had slept, or seemed to sleep, through the first seventy miles of the road, with as much comfort as may be supposed consistent with the jolting of the vehicle, and an occa- sional admonition to remember the coacJunan, thundered through the open door, accompanied by the gentle breath of Boreas, into the ears of the drowsy traveller. A lively remark, that the day was none of the finest, having elicited a repartee of quite the contrary, the various knotty points of meteorology, which usually form the exordium of an English conversation, were successively discussed and exhausted ; and, the ice being thus broken, the colloquy rambled to other topics, in the course of which it appeared, to the surprise of every one, that all four, though perfect strangers to each other, were actu- ally bound to the same point, namely, Headlong Hall, the seat of the ancient and honourable family of the Headlongs, of the vale of Llanberris, in Caernarvonshire. This name may appear at first sight not to be truly Cambrian, like those of the Rices, and Prices, and Morgans, and Owens, and Williamses, and Evanses, and Parrys, and Joneses ; but, nevertheless, the Headlongs claim to be not less genuine derivatives from the antique branch of Cad- wallader than any of the last named multiramified families, 2 HPAPLONG HALL. [chap, i They claim, indeed* by one account, superior antiquity to all of them, and even to Cadwallader himself ; a tradition having been handed down in Headlong Hall for some f^e^v thousand years, that the founder of the family was preserved in the deluge on the sum- mit of Snowdon, and took the name of Rhaiader, which signifies a waterfall, in consequence of his having accompanied the water in its descent or diminution, till he found himself comfortably seated on the rocks of Llanberris. But, in later days, when com- mercial bagsmen began to scour the country, the ambiguity of the sound induced his descendants to drop the suspicious denomi- nation of Riders, and translate the word into English ; when, not being well pleased with the sound of the thing, they substituted that of the quality, and accordingly adopted the name Headlong, die appropriate epithet of waterfall. I cannot tell how the truth may be : I say the tale as 't was said to me. The present representative of this ancient and dignified house, Harry Headlong, Esquire, v.'as, like all other Welsh squires, fond of shooting, hunting, racing, drinking, and other such innocent amusements, nci^nvos 6* aWov npos, as Menander expresses it. But, unlike other Welsh squires, he had actually suffered certain phenomena, called books, to find their way into his house ; and, by dint of lounging over them after dinner, on those occasions when he was compelled to take his bottle alone, he became seized with a violent passion to be thought a philosopher, and a man of taste ; and accordingly set off on an expedition to Oxford, to in- quire for other varieties of the same genera, namely, men of taste and philosophers ; but, being assured by a learned professor that there were no such things in the University, he proceeded to Lon- don, where, after beating up in several booksellers' shops, thea- tres, exhibition-rooms, and other resorts of literature and taste, he formed as extensive an acquaintance with philosophers and dilet- tanti as his utmost ambition could desire ; and it now became his chief wish to have them all together in Headlong Hall, arguing, over his old Port and Burgundy, the various knotty points which had puzzled his pericranium. He had, therefore, sent them invi- tations in due form to pass their Christmas at Headlong Hall ; which invitations the extensive fame of his kitchen fire had in- CHAP, i] THE MAIL. duced the greater part of them to accept ; and four of the chosen guests had, from different parts of the metropolis, ensconced them- selves in the four corners of the Holyhead mail. These four persons were, Mr. Foster,* the perfectibilian ; Mr. Escot,-|- the deteriorationist ; Mr. Jenkison, J the statu-quo-ite ; and the Reverend Doctor Gaster,§ who, though of course neither a philosopher nor a man of taste, had so won on the Squire's fancy, by a learned dissertation on the art of stuffing a turkey, that he concluded no Christmas party would be complete without him. The conversation among these illuminati soon became ani- mated ; and Mr. Foster, who, ^^e must observe, was a thin gen- tleman, about thirty years of age, with an aquiline nose, black eyes, white teeth, and black hair — took occasion to panegyrize the vehicle in which they were then travelling, and observed what remarkable improvements had been made in the means of facilitating intercourse between distant parts of the kingdom : he held forth with great energy on the subject of roads and railways, canals and tunnels, manufactures and machinery : " In short," said he, " every thing we look on attests the progress of mankind in all the arts of life, and demonstrates their gradual advance- ment towards a state of unlimited perfection." Mr. Escot, who was somewhat younger than Mr. Foster, but rather more pale and saturnine in his aspect, here took up the thread of the discourse, observing, that the proposition just ad- * Foster, quasi ^coo-Trjp, — from faos and rripcM, lucem servo, conservo, ob- servo, custodio, — one who watches over and guards the light ; a sense in which the word is often used amongst us, when we speak of fostering a flame. t Escot, quasi es okotov, in tenebras, scihcet, intuens ; one who is always looking into the dark side of the question. % Jenkison: This name may be derived from aiev e^ ktcjv, semper ex cequali- hus — scilicet, mensuris, omnia metiens : one who from equal meeisures divides and distributes all things : one who from equal measures can always produce arguments on both sides of a question, with so much nicety and exactness, as to keep the said question eternally pending, and the balance of the controversy pei-petually in statu quo. By an aphaeresis of the a, an elision of the second e, and an easy and natural mutation of ^ into k, the derivation of this name pro- ceeds according to the strictest principles of etymology : auv t^ iguv — Itv e^ iff(i>v — liv EK iffuiv — Lj/ V leojp — ItvKKTOJv — leukisou — Jenkison. § Gaster : scilicet TaoTrip — Venter, — et praeterea nihil. HEADLONG HALL. vanced seemed to him perfectly contrary to the true state of the case: "for," said he, "these improvements, as you call them^ appear to me only so many links in the great chain of corruption, which will soon fetter the whole human race in irreparable slavery and incurable wretchedness : your improvements proceed in a simple ratio, while the factitious wants and unnatural appe- tites they engender proceed in a compound one ; and thus one generation acquires fifty wants, and fifty means of supplying them are invented, which each in its turn engenders two new ones ; so that the next generation has a hundred, the next two hundred, the next four hundred, till every human being becomes such a help- less compound of perverted inclinations, that he is altogether at the mercy of external circumstances, loses all independence and singleness of character, and degenerates so rapidly from the prim- itive dignity of his sylvan origin, that it is scarcely possible to in- dulge in any other expectation, than that the whole species must at length be exterminated by its own infinite imbecility and vile- ness." " iTour opinions," said Mr. Jenkison, a round-faced little gen- tleman of about forty-five, " seem to differ toto cobIo. I have often debated the matter in my own mind, pro and con, and have at length arrived at this conclusion, — that there is not in the hu- man race a tendency either to moral perfectibility or deteriora- tion ; but that the quantities of each are so exactly balanced by their reciprocal results, that the species, with respect to the sum of good and evil, knowledge and ignorance, happiness and misery, remains exactly and perpetually in statu quo.'' " Surely," said Mr. Foster, " you cannot maintain such a proposition in the face of evidence so luminous. Look at the proo-. ress of all the arts and sciences, — see chemistry, botany, astron- omy ." " Surely," said Mr. Escot, " experience deposes against you. Look at the rapid growth of corruption, luxury, selfishness ." " Really, gentlemen," said the Reverend Doctor Gaster, after clearing the husk in his throat with two or three hems, " this is a very sceptical, and, I must say, atheistical conversation, and I should have thought, out of respect to my cloth ." Here the coach stopped, and the coachman, opening the door, vo- ciferated — " Breakfast, gentlemen ;'' a sound which so gladdened CHAP. I.] THE BREAKFAST. the ears of the divine, that the alacrity with which he sprang from the vehicle superinduced a distortion of his ankle, and he was obliged to limp into the inn between Mr. Escot and Mr. Jen- kison ; the former observing, that he ought to look for nothing but evil, and, therefore, should not be surprised at this little ac- cident ; the latter remarking, that the comfort of a good break- fast, and the pain of a sprained ankle, pretty exactly balanced each other. 2* HEADLONG HALL. [chap. n. CHAPTER II. THE SQUIRE.— THE BREAKFAST. Squire Headlong, in the mean while, was quadripartite in his locality ; that is to say, he was superintending the operations in four scenes of action — namely, the cellar, the library, the pic- ture-gallery, and the dining-room, — preparing for the reception of his philosophical and dilettanti visitors. His myrmidon on this occasion was a little red-nosed butler, whom nature seemed to have cast in the genuine mould of an antique Silenus, and who vv^addled about the house after his master, wiping his fore- head and panting for breath, while the latter bounced from room to room like a cracker, and was indefatigable in his requisitions for the proximity of his vinous Achates, whose advice and co-op- eration he deemed no less necessary in the library than in the cellar. Multitudes of packages had arrived, by land and water, from London, and Liverpool, and Chester, and Manchester, and Birmingham, and various other parts of the mountains : books, wine, cheese, globes, mathematical instruments, turkeys, tele- scopes, hams, tongues, microscopes, quadrants, sextants, fiddles, flutes, tea, sugar, electrical machines, figs, spices, air-pumps, soda-water, chemical apparatus, eggs, French-horns, drawing books, palettes, oils, and colours, bottled ale and porter, scenery for a private theatre, pickles and fish-sauce, patent lamps and chandeliers, barrels of oysters, sofas, chairs, tables, carpets, beds, looking-glasses, pictures, fruits and confections, nuts, oranges, lemons, packages of salt salmon, and jars of Portugal grapes. These, arriving with infinite rapidity, and in inexhaustible suc- cession, had been deposited at random, as the convenience of the moment dictated, — sofas in the cellar, chandeliers in the kitchen, hampers of ale in the drawing-room, and fiddles and fish-sauce in the library. The servants, unpacking all these in furious haste, and flying with them from place to place, according to the CH.^P. II.] THE BREAKFAST. tumultuous directions of Squire Headlong and the little fat butler who fumed at his heels, chafed, and crossed, and clashed, and tumbled over one another up stairs and down. All was bustle, uproar, and confusion ; yet nothing seemed to advance : while the rage and impetuosity of the Squire continued fermenting to the highest degree of exasperation, which he signified, from time to time, by converting some newly unpacked article, such as a book, a bottle, a ham, or a fiddle, into a missile against the head of some unfortunate servant who did not seem to move in a ratio of velocity corresponding to the intensity of his master's desires. In this state of eager preparation we shall leave the happy in- habitants of Headlong Hall, and return to the three philosophers and the unfortunate divine, whom we left limping with a sprained ankle into the breakfast-room of the inn ; where his two sup- porters deposited him safely in a large arm-chair, with his wounded leg comfortably stretched out on another. The morning being extremely cold, he contrived to be seated as near the fire as was consistent with his other object of having a perfect command of the table and its apparatus ; which consisted not only of the ordinary comforts of tea and toast, but of a delicious supply of new-laid eggs, and a magnificent round of beef; against vvhich Mr. Escot immediately pouited all the artillery of his eloquence, declaring the use of animal food, conjointly with that of fire, to be one of the principal causes of the present degeneracy of mankind. " The natural and original man," said he, "lived in the woods : the roots and fruits of the earth supplied his simple nutriment : he had fev/ desires, and no diseases. But, when he began to sacrifice victims on the altar of superstition, to pursue the goat and the deer, and, by the pernicious invention of fire, to pervert their flesh into food, luxury, disease, and premature death, were let loose upon the world. Such is clearly the correct interpreta- tion of the fable of Prometheus, which is a symbolical portrai- ture of that disastrous epoch, when man first applied fire to culi- nary purposes, and thereby surrendered his liver to the vulture of disease. From that period the stature of mankind has been in a state of gradual diminution, and I have not the least doubt that it will continue to grow small by degrees, and lamentahly lesSj till the whole race will vanish imperceptibly from the face of the earth." HEADLONG HALL. [chap. ii. " I cannot agree," said Mr. Foster, " in the consequences be- ing so very disastrous. I admit, that in some respects the use of animal food retards, thougli it cannot materially inhibit, the per- fectibility of the species. But the use of fire was indispensably necessary, as ^Eschylus and Virgil expressly assert, to give being to the various arts of life, which, in their rapid and interminable progress, will finally conduct every individual of the race to the philosophic pinnacle of pure and perfect felicity." " In the controversy concerning animal and vegetable food," said Mr. Jenkison, " there is much to be said on both sides ; and, the question being in equipoise, I content myself with a mixed diet, and make a point of eating whatever is placed before me, provided it be good in its kind." In this opinion his two brother philosophers practically coin- cided, though they both ran down the theory as highly detrimen- tal to the best interests of man. " I am really astonished," said the Reverend Doctor Gaster, gracefully picking off the supernal fragments of an egg he had just cracked, and clearing away a space at the top for the recep- tion of a small piece of butter — " I am really astonished, gen- tlemen, at the very heterodox opinions I have heard you deliver : since nothing can be more obvious than that all animals were created solely and exclusively for the use of man." " Even the tiger that devours him ?" said Mr. Escot. " Certainly," said Doctor Gaster. " How do you prove it ?" said Mr. Escot. " It refjuires no proof," said Doctor Gaster : " it is a point of doctrine. It is written, therefore it is so." '* Nothing can be more logical," said Mr. Jenkison. " It has been said," continued he, " that the ox was expressly made to be eaten by man : it may be said, by a parity of reasoning, that man was expressly made to be eaten by the tiger : but as wild oxen exist where there are no men, and men where there are no tigers, it would seem that in these instances they do not properly answer the ends of their creation." " It is a mystery," said Dr. Gaster. " Not to launch into the question of final causes," said Mr. Escot, helping himself at the same time to a slice of beef, " con- cerning which I will candidly acknowledge I am as profoundly CHAP. II.] THE BREAKFAST. 9 ignorant as the most dogmatical theologian possibly can be, I just wish to observe, that the pure and peaceful manners which Homer ascribes to the Lotophagi, and which at this day characterise many nations (the Hindoos, for example, who subsist exclusively on the fruits of the earth), depose very strongly in favour of a vegetable regimen." " It may be said, on the contrary," said Mr. Foster, " that ani- mal food acts on. the mind as manure does on flowers, forcins: them into a degree of expansion they would not otherwise have attained. If we can imagine a philosophical auricula falling into a train of theoretical meditation on its orio-inal and natural nutriment, till it should work itself up into a profound abomination of bullock's blood, sugar-baker's scum, and other unnatural in- gredients of that rich composition of soil which had brought it to perfection,* and insist on being planted in common earth, it would have all the advantage of natural theory on its side that the most strenuous advocate of the vegetable system could desire ; but it would soon discover the practical error of its retrograde experi- ment by its lamentable inferiority in strength and beauty to all the auriculas around it. I am afraid, in some instances at least, this analogy holds true with respect to mind. No one will make a comparison, in point of mental power, between the Hindoos and the ancient Greeks." " The anatomy of the human stomach," said Mr. Escot, " and the formation of the teeth, clearly place man in the class of fru- givorous animals." " Many anatomists," said Mr. Foster, " are of a different opin- ion, and agree in discerning the characteristics of the carnivorous classes." " I am no anatomist," said Mr. Jenkison, " and cannot decide where doctors disagree ; in the mean time, I conclude that man is omnivorous, and on that conclusion I act." " Your conclusion is truly orthodox," said the Reverend Doc- tor Gaster : " indeed the loaves and fishes are typical of a mixed diet ; and the practice of the Church in all ages shows " " That it never loses sight of the loaves and fishes," said Mr. Escot. * See Emmerton on the Auricula. 10 HEADLONG HALL. [chap, ii " It never loses sight of any point of sound doctrine," said the reverend doctor. The coachman now informed them their time was elapsed ; nor could all the pathetic remonstrances of the reverend divine, who declared he had not half breakfasted, succeed in gaining one minute from the inexorable Jehu. " You will allow," said Mr. Foster, as soon as they were again in motion, "that the wild man of the woods could not transport himself over two hundred miles of forest, with as much facility as one of these vehicles transports you and me through the heart of this cultivated country." " I am certain," said Mr. Escot, " that a wild man can travel an immense distance without fatigue ; but what is the advantage of locomotion ? The wild man is happy in one spot, and there he remains : the civilised man is wretched in every place he hap- pens to be in, and then congratulates himself on being accommo- dated with a machine, that v/ill whirl him to another, where he will be just as miserable as ever." We shall now leave the mail-coach to find its way to Capel Cerig, the nearest point of the Holyliead road to the dwelling of Squire Headlong. THE ARRIVALS. 11 CHAPTER III. THE ARRIVALS. In the midst of tliat scone of confusion thrice confounded, in which v/e left the inhabitants of Headlong Hall, arrived the lovely Caprioletta Headlong, the Squire's sister (whom he had sent for, from the residence of her maiden aunt at Caernarvon, to do the hon- ours of his house), beaming like light on chaos, to arrange disorder and harmonise discord. The tempestuous spirit of her brother became instantaneously as smooth as the surface of the lake of Llanberris ; and the little fat butler " plessed Cot, and St. Tafit, and the peautiful tamsel," for being permitted to move about the house in his natural pace. In less than twenty-four hours after her arrival, every thing was disposed in its proper station, and the Squire began to be all impatience for the appearance of his promised guests. The first visitor with whom he had the felicity of shaking hands was Marmaduke Milestone, Esquire, who arrived with a portfolio under his arm. Mr. Milestone* was a picturesque landscape * Mr. Knight, in a note to the Landscape, having taken the liberty of laughing at a notable device of a celebrated improver, for giving greatness of character to a place, and showing an undivided extent of property, by placing the family arms on the neighbouring milestones, the improver retorted on him with a charge of misquotation, misrepresentation, and malice prepense. Mr. Knight, in the preface to the second edition of his poem, quotes the improvers words : — " The market-house, or other public edifice, or even a iiiere stone with distances, may bear the arms of the family :" and adds : — " By a mere stone with distances the author of the Landscape certainly thought he meant a milestone ; but, if he did not, any other interpretation which he may think more advantageous to himself shall readily be adopted, as it will equally an- swer the purpose of the quotation." The improver, however, did not conde- scend to explain what he really meant by a mere stone with distances, though he strenuously maintained that he did not mean a milestone. His idea, there- fore, stands on record, invested with all the sublimity that obscurity can confer. 12 HEADLONG HALL. [chap. hi. gardener of the first celebrity, who was not without hopes of per- suading Squire Headlong to put his romantic pleasure-grounds under a process of improvement, promising himself a signal tri- umph for his incomparable art in the difficult and, therefore, glo- rious achievement of polishing and trimming the rocks of Llan- bcrris. Next arrived a post-chaise from the inn at Capel Cerig, con- taining the Reverend Doctor Gaster. It appeared, that, when the mail-coach deposited its valuable cargo, early on the second morning, at the inn at Capel Cerig, there was onlj^ one post- chaise to be had ; it was therefore determined that the reverend Doctor and the luggage should proceed in the chaise, and that the three philosophers should walk. When the reverend gentle- man first seated himself in the chaise, the windows were down all round ; but he allowed it to drive off under the idea that he could easily pull them up. This task, however, he had consider- able difficulty in accomplishing, and when he had succeeded, it availed him little ; for the frames and glasses had long since dis- continued their ancient familiarity. He had, however, no alter- native but to proceed, and to comfort himself, as he went, with some choice quotations from the book of Job. The road led along the edges of tremendous chasms, with torrents dashing in the bot- tom ; so that, if his teeth had not chattered with cold, they would have done so with fear. The Squire shook him heartily by the hand, and congratulated him on his safe arrival at Headlong Hall. The Doctor returned the squeeze, and assured him that the con- gratulation was by no means misapplied. Next came the three philosophers, highly delighted with their walk, and full of rapturous exclamations on the sublime beauties of the scenery. The Doctor shrugged up his shoulders, and confessed he pre- ferred the scenery of Putney and Kew, where a man could go comfortably to sleep in his chaise, without being in momentary terror of being hurled headlong down a precipice. Mr. Milestone observed, that there were great capabilities in the scenery, but it wanted shaving and polishing. If he could but have it under his care for a single twelvemonth, he assured them no one would be able to know it again. CHAP. III.] THE ARRIVALS. 13 Mr. Jenkison thought the scenery was just what it ought to be, and required no alteration. Mr. Foster thought it could be improved, but doubted if that ef- fect would be produced by the system of Mr. Milestone. Mr. Escot did not think that any human being could improve it, but had no doubt of its having changed very considerably for the worse, since the days when the now barren rocks were cov- ered with the immense forest of Snowdon, which must have con- tained a very fine race of wild men, not less than ten feet high. The next arrival was that of Mr. Cranium, and his lovely daughter Miss Cephalis Cranium, who flew to the arms of her dear friend Caprioletta, with all that warmth of friendship which young ladies usually assume towards each other in the presence of young gentlemen.* Miss Cephalis blushed like a carnation at the sight of Mr. Es- cot, and Mr. Escot glowed like a corn-poppy at the sight of Miss Cephalis. It was at least obvious to all observers, that he could imagine the possibility of one change for the better, even in this terrestrial theatre of universal deterioration. Mr. Cranium's eyes wandered from Mr. Escot to his daughter, and from his daughter to Mr. Escot ; and his complexion, in the course of the scrutiny, underwent several variations, from the dark red of the piony to the deep blue of the convolvulus. Mr. Escot had formerly been the received lover of Miss Cepha- lis, till he incurred the indignation of her father by laughing at a very profound craniological dissertation which the old geptleman delivered ; nor had Mr. Escot yet discovered the means of molli- fying his wrath. Mr. Cranium carried in his own hands a bag, the contents of which were too precious to be intrusted to any one but himself; and earnestly entreated to be shown to the chamber appropriated for his reception, that he might deposit his treasure in safety. The little butler was accordingly summoned to conduct him to his cuUculum. Next arrived a post-chaise, carrying four insides, whose ex- * " II est constant qu'elles se baisent de meilleur coeur, et se caressent avec plus de grace devant les hommes, fieres d'aiguiser impun^ment leur convoitise par rimage ded faveurs qu'elles savent leur faire envier." — Rousseau, Emile liv 5. 14 HEADLONG HALL. [chap, in treme thinness enabled them to travel thus economically without experiencing the slightest inconvenience. These four personages were, two very profound critics, Mr. Gall and Mr. Treacle, who followed the trade of reviewers, but occasionally indulged them- selves in the composition of bad poetry ; and two very multitudi- nous versifiers, Mr. Nightshade and Mr. Mac Laurel, who fol- lowed the trade of poetry, but occasionally indulged themselves in the composition of bad criticism. Mr. Nightshade and Mr. Mac Laurel were the two senior lieutenants of a very formidable corps of critics, of whom Timothy Treacle, Esquire, was captain, and Geoffrey Gall, Esquire, generalissimo. The last arrivals were Mr. Cornelius Chromatic, the most pro- found and scientific of all amateurs of the fiddle, with his two blooming daughters. Miss Tenorina and Miss Graziosa ; Sir Pat- rick OTrism, a dilettante painter of high renown, and his maiden aunt. Miss Philomela Poppyseed, an indefatigable compounder of novels, written for the express purpose of supporting every species of superstition and prejudice; and Mr. Panscope, the chemical, botanical, geological, astronomical, mathematical, metaphysical, meteorological, anatomical, physiological, galvanistical, musical, pictorial, bibliographical, critical philosopher, who had run through the whole circle of the sciences, and understood them all equally well. Mr. Milestone v/as impatient to take a walk round the grounds, that he might examine how far the system of clumping and level- ling cou^ld be carried advantageously into effect. The ladies re- tired to enjoy each other's society in the first happy m.oments of meeting : the Reverend Doctor Gaster sat by the library fire, in profound meditation over a volume of the " Almanach des Gour- mands .•" Mr. Panscope sat in the opposite corner with a volume of Rees's Cyclopsedia : Mr. Cranium was busy up stairs : Mr. Chromatic retreated to the music-room, where he fiddled through a book of solos before the ringing of the first dinner-bell. The remainder of the party supported Mr. Milestone's proposition ; and, accordingly. Squire Headlong and Mr. Milestone leading the van, they commenced their perambulation. CHAP. IV.] THE GROUNDS. 15 CHAPTER IV. THE GROUNDS. " I PERCEIVE," said Mr. Milestone, after they had walked a few paces, " these grounds have never been touched by the lin- ger of taste." " The place is quite a wilderness," said Squire Headlong : " for, during the latter part of my father's life, while I ^va.sJinish- ing my education, he troubled himself about nothing but the cel- lar, and suffered every thing else to go to rack and ruin. A mere wilderness, as you see, even now in December ; but in sum- mer a complete nursery of briers, a forest of thistles, a plantation of nettles, without any live stock but goats, that have eaten up all the bark of the trees. Here you see is the pedestal of a statue, with only half a leg and four toes remaining : there were many here once. When I was a boy, I used to sit every day on the shoulders of Hercules : what became of him I have never been able to ascertain. Neptune has been lying these seven years in the dust-hole ; Atlas had his head knocked off to fit him for prop- ping a shed ; and only the day before yesterday we fished Bac- chus out of the horse-pond." " My dear sir," said Mr. Milestone, " accord me your permis- sion to wave the wand of enchantment over your grounds. The rocks shall be blown up, the trees shall be cut down, the wilder- ness and all its goats shall vanish like mist. Pagodas and Chinese bridges, gravel walks and shrubberies, bowling-greens, canals, and clumps of larch, shall rise upon its ruins. One age, sir, has brought to light the treasures of ancient learning ; a sec- ond has penetrated into the depths of metaphysics ; a third has brought to perfection the science of astronomy ; but it was re- served for the exclusive genius of the present times, to invent the noble art of picturesque gardening, which has given, as it were, a new tint to the complexion of nature, and a new outline to the physiognomy of the universe !" 16 HEADLONG HALL. [chap, iv " Give me leave," said Sir Patrick O'Prism, "to take an ex- ception to that same. Your system of levelling, and trimming, and clipping, and docking, and clumping, and polishing, and cropping, and shaving, destroys all the beautiful intricacies of natural luxuriance, and all the graduated harmonies of light and shade, melting into one another, as you see them on that rock over yonder. I never saw one of your improved places, as you call them, and which are nothing but big bowling-greens, like sheets of green paper, with a parcel of round clumps scattered over them, like so many spots of ink, flicked at random out of a pen,* and a solitary animal here and there looking as if it were lost, that I did not think it was for all the world like Hounslow Heath, thinly sprinkled over with bushes and highwaymen." " Sir," said Mr. Milestone, " you will have the goodness to make a distinction between the picturesque and the beautiful." " Will I ?" said Sir Patrick, " och ! but I won't. For what is beautiful ? That which pleases the eye. And what pleases the eye ? Tints variously broken and blended. Now, tints variously broken and blended constitute the picturesque." " Allow me," said Mr. Gall. " I distinguish the picturesque and the beautiful, and I add to them, in the laying out of grounds, a third and distinct character, which I call unexpectedness.^' " Pray, sir," said Mr. Milestone, " by what name do you dis., tinguish this character, when a person walks round the grounds for the second time ?"f Mr. Gall bit his lips, and inwardly vowed to revenge himself on Milestone, by cutting up his next publication. A long controversy now ensued concerning the picturesque and the beautiful, highly edifying to Squire Headlong. The three philosophers stopped, as they wound round a pro- jecting point of rock, to contemplate a little boat which was gli- ding over the tranquil surface of the lake below." " The blessings of civilisation," said Mr. Foster, " extend themselves to the meanest individuals of the community. That boatman, singing as he sails along, is, I have no doubt, a very happy, and, comparatively to the men of his class some centuries back, a very enlightened and intelligent man." * See Price on the Picturesque. t See Knight on Taste, and the Edinburgh Review, No. XIV. CHAP. IV.] THE GROUNDS. 17 " As a partisan of the system of the moral perfectibility of the human race," said Mr. Escot, — who was always for considering things on a large scale, and whose thoughts immediately wan- dered from the lake to the ocean, from the little boat to a ship of the line, — " you will probably be able to point out to me the de- gree of improvement that you suppose to have taken place in the character of a sailor, from the days when Jason sailed through the Cyanean Symplegades, or Noah moored his ark on the summit of Ararat." " If you talk to me," said Mr. Foster, " of mythological per- sonages, of course I cannot meet you on fair grounds." " We will begin, if you please, then," said Mr. Escot, " no further back than the battle of Salamis ; and I will ask you if you think the mariners of England are, in any one respect, mor- ally or intellectually, superior to those who then preserved the liberties of Greece, under the direction of Themistocles ?" " I will venture to assert," said Mr. Foster, " that, considered merely as sailors, which is the only fair mode of judging them, they are as far superior to the Athenians, as the structure of our ships is superior to that of theirs. Would not one English sev- enty-four, think you, have been sufficient to have sunk, burned, and put to flight, all the Persian and Grecian vessels in that mem- orable bay ? Contemplate the progress of naval architecture, and the slow, but immense, succession of concatenated intelli- gence, by which it has gradually attained its present stage of per- fectibility. In this, as in all other branches of art and science, every generation possesses all the knowledge of the preceding, and adds to it its own discoveries in a progression to which there seems no limit. The skill requisite to direct these immense machines is proportionate to their magnitude and complicated mechanism ; and, therefore, the English sailor, considered merely as a sailor, is vastly superior to the ancient Greek." " You make a distinction, of course," said Mr. Escot, " be- tween scientific and moral perfectibility." " I conceive," said Mr. Foster, " that men are virtuous in pro- portion as they are enlightened ; and that, as every generation increases in knowledge, it also increases in virtue." " I wish it were so," said Mr. Escot ; " but to me the very re- verse appears to be the fact. The progress of knowledge is not 3 18 HEADLONG HALL. general : it is confined to a chosen few of every age. How far these are better than their neighbours, we may examine by and bye. The mass of mankind is composed of beasts of burden, mere clods, and tools of their superiors. By enlarging and com- plicating your machines, you degrade, not exalt, the human ani- mals you employ to direct them,. When the boatswain of a sev- enty-four pipes all hands to the main tack, and flourishes his rope's end over the shoulders of the poor fellows who are tugging at the ropes, do you perceive so dignified, so gratifying a picture, as Ulysses exhorting his dear friends, his EPIHPEi: 'ETAIPOI, to ply their oars with energy ? You will say, Ulysses was a fabulous character. But the economy of his vessel is drawn from nature. Every man on board has a character and a will of his own. He talks to them, argues with them, convinces them ; and they obey him, because they love him, and know the reason of his orders. Now, as I have said before, all singleness of character is lost. We di- vide men into herds like cattle : an individual m.an, if you strip him of all that is extraneous to himself, is the most wretched and contemptible creature on the face of the earth. The sciences advance. True. A few years of study puts a tnodern mathe- matician in possession of more than Newton knew, and leaves him at leisure to add new discoveries of his own. Agreed. But does this make him a Newton ? Does it put him in possession of that range of intellect, that grasp of mind, from which the discoveries of Newton sprang ? It is mental power that I look for : if you can demonstrate the increase of that, I will give up the field. Energy — independence — individuality — disinterested virtue — active benevolence — self-oblivion — universal philanthropy — these are the qualities I desire to find, and of which I contend that every succeeding age produces fewer examples. I repeat it ; there is scarcely such a thing to be found as a single indi- vidual man : a few classes compose the whole frame of society, and when you know one of a class you know the whole of it. Give me the wild man of the woods ; the original, unthinking, unscientific, unlogical savage : in him there is at least some good ; but, in a civilised, sophisticated, cold-blooded, mechanical, calcu- lating slave of Mammon and the world, there is none — absolutely none. Sir, if I fall into a river, an unsophisticated man will jump in and bring me out ; but a philosopher will look on with CHAP. IV.] THE GROUNDS. 19 the utmost calmness, and consider me in the light of a projectile, and, making a calculation of the degree of force with which I have impinged the surface, the resistance of the fluid, the velocity of the current, and the depth of the water in that particular place, he will ascertain with the greatest nicety in what part of the mud at the bottom I may probably be found, at any given distance of time from the moment of my first immersion." Mr. Foster was preparing to reply, when the first dinner-bell rang, and he immediately commenced a precipitate return towards the house ; followed by his two companions, who both admitted that he was now leading the way to at least a temporary period of physical amelioration : " but, alas !" added Mr. Escot, after a moment's reflection, " Epulse nocuere repostse !"* * Protracted banquets have been copious sources of evil 20 HEADLONG HALL. [chap. v. CHAPTER V. THE DINNER. The sun was now terminating his diurnal course, and the lights were glittering on the festal board. When the ladies had retired, and the Burgundy had taken two or three tours of the ta- ble, the following conversation took place : — squire headlong. Push about the bottle : Mr. Escot, it stands with you. No heeltaps. As to skylight, liberty-hall. MR. MAC LAUREL. Really, Squire Headlong, this is the vara nactar itsel. Ye hae saretainly descovered the tarrestrial paradise, but it flows wi' a better leecor than milk an' honey. THE REVEREND DOCTOR GASTER. Hem ! Mr. Mac Laurel ! there is a degree of profaneness in that observation, which I should not have looked for in so staunch a supporter of church and state. Milk and honey was the pure food of the antediluvian patriarchs, who knew not the use of the grape, happily for them. — ( Tossing off a lumper of Burgundy.) MR. ESCOT. Happily, indeed ! The first inhabitants of the world knew not the use either of wine or animal food ; it is, therefore, by no means incredible that they lived to the age of several centuries, free from war, and commerce, and arbitrary government, and every other species of desolating wickedness. But man was then a very different animal to what he now is : he had not the faculty of speech ; he was not encumbered with clothes ; he lived in the open air ; his first step out of which, as Hamlet truly observes, is into his grave.* His first dwellings, of course, were the hol- * See Lord Monboddo's Ancient Metaphysics. CHAP, v.] THE DINNER. 21 lows of trees and rocks. In process of time he began to build : thence grew villages ; thence grew cities. Luxury, oppression, poverty, misery, and disease kept pace with the progress of his pretended improvements, till, from a free, strong, healthy, peace- ful animal, he has become a weak, distempered, cruel, carnivo- rous slave. THE REVEREND DOCTOR GASTER. Your doctrine is orthodox, in so far as you assert that the origi- nal man was not encumbered with clothes, and that he lived in the open air ; but, as to the faculty of speech, that, it is certain, he had, for the authority of Moses MR. ESCOT. Of course, sir, I do not presume to dissent from the very ex- alted authority of that most enlightened astronomer and profound cosmogonist, who had, moreover, the advantage of being inspired ; but when I indulge myself with a ramble in the fields of specula- tion, and attempt to deduce what is probable and rational from the sources of analysis, experience, and comparison, I confess I am too often apt to lose sight of the doctrines of that great foun- tain of theological and geological philosophy. SQUIRE HEADLONG. Push about the bottle. MR. FOSTER. Do you suppose the mere animal life of a wild man, living on acorns, and sleeping on the ground, comparable in felicity to that of a Newton, ranging through unlimited space, and penetrating into the arcana of universal motion — to that of a Locke, unravel- ling the labyrinth of mind — to that of a Lavoisier, detecting the minutest combinations of matter, and reducing all nature to its elements — to that of a Shakspeare, piercing and developing the springs of passion — or of a Milton, identifying himself, as it were, with the beings of an invisible world ! MR. ESCOT. You suppose extreme cases : but, on the score of happiness, what comparison can you make between the tranquil being of the wild man of the woods and the wretched and turbulent existence of Milton, the victim of persecution, poverty, blindness, and neg- 22 HEADLONG HALL. lect ? The records of literature demonstrate that Happiness and Intelligence are seldom sisters. Even if it were otherwise, it would prove nothing. The many are always sacrificed to the few. Where one man advances, hundreds retrograde ; and the balance is always in favour of universal deterioration. MR. FOSTER. Virtue is independent of external circumstances. The exalted understanding looks into the truth of things, and in its own peace- ful contemplations, rises superior to the world. No philosopher would resign his mental acquisitions for the purchase of any ter- restrial good. MR. ESCOT. In other words, no man whatever would resign his identity, which is nothing more than the consciousness of his perceptions, as the price of any acquisition. But every man, without excep- tion, would willingly effect a very material change in his relative situation to other individuals. Unluckily for the rest of your ar- gument, the understanding of literary people is for the most part exalted, as you express it, not so much by the love of truth and virtue, as by arrogance and self-sufficiency ; and there is, per- haps, less disinterestedness, less liberality, less general benevo- lence, and more envy, hatred, and uncharitablencss among them, than among any other description of men. {The eye of Mr. Escot, as lie 'pronounced these words, rested very innocently and unintentionally on Mr. Gall.) MR. GALL. You allude, sir, I presume, to my review. MR. ESCOT. Pardon me, sir. You will be convinced it is impossible I can allude to your review, when I assure you that I have never read a single page of it. MR. GALL, MR. TREACLE, MR. NIGHTSHADE, AND MR. MAC LAUREL. Never read our review ! ! ! ! MR. ESCOT. Never. I look on periodical criticism in general to be a spe- cies of shop, where panegyric and defamation are sold, wholesale, retail, and for exportation. 1 am not inclined to be a purchaser CHAP, v.] THE DINNER. 23 of these commodities, or to encourage a trade which I consider pregnant with mischief. MR. MAC LAUREL. I can readily conceive, sir, ye wou'd na wullinly encoorage ony dealer in panegeeric : but, frae the manner in which ye speak o' the first creetics an' scholars o' the age, I shou'd think ye wou'd hae a leetle mair predilaction for deefamation. MR. ESCOT. I have no predilection, sir, for defamation. I make a point of speaking the truth on all occasions ; and it seldom happens that the truth can be spoken without some stricken deer pronouncing it a libel. MR. NIGHTSHADE. You are perhaps, sir, an enemy to literature in general ? MR. ESCOT. If I were, sir, I should be a better friend to periodical critics. SQUIRE HEADLONG. Buz! MR. TREACLE. May I simply take the liberty to inquire into the basis of your objection ? MR. ESCOT. I conceive that periodical criticism disseminates superficial knowledge, and its perpetual adjunct, vanity ; that it checks in the youthful mind the habit of thinking for itself; that it delivers partial opinions, and thereby misleads the judgment ; that it is never conducted with a view to the general interests of literature, but to serve the interested ends of individuals, and the miserable purposes of party. MR. MAC LAUREL. Ye ken, sir, a mon mun leeve. MR. ESCOT. While he can live honourably, naturally, justly, certainly : no longer. MR. MAC LAUREL. Every mon, sir, leeves according to his ain notions of honour 24 HEADLONG HALL. [chap, t an' justice : there is a wee defference amang the learned wi' re- spact to the defineetion o' the terms. MR. ESCOT. I believe it is generally admitted, that one of the ingredients of justice is disinterestedness. MR. MAC LAUREL. It is na admetted, Sir, amang the pheelosophers of Edinbroo', that there is ony sic thing as desenterestedness in the warld, or that a mon can care for onything sae much as his ain sel : for ye mun observe, sir, every mon has his ain parteecular feelings of what is gude, an' beautifu', an' consentaneous to his ain indi- veedual nature, an' desires to see every thing aboot him in that parteecular state which is maist conformable to his ain notions o' the moral an' poleetical fetness o' things. Twa men, sir, sh^U purchase a piece o' grund atween 'em, and ae mon shall cov^r his half wi' a park MR. MILESTONE. Beautifully laid out in lawns and clumps, with a belt of trees at the circumference, and an artifical lake in the centre. MR. MAC LAUREL. Exactly, sir : an' shall keep it a' for his ain sel : an' the other mon shall divide his half into leetle farms of twa or three acres MR. ESCOT. Like those of the Roman republic, and build a cottage on each of them, and cover his land with a simple, innocent, and smiling population, who shall owe, not only their happiness, but their ex- istence, to his benevolence. MR. MAC LAUREL. Exactly, sir : an' ye will ca' the first mon selfish, an' the second desenterested ; but the pheelosophical truth is semply this, that the ane is pleased wi' looking at trees, an' the other wi' seeing people happy and comfortable. It is aunly a matter of indiveed-- ual feeling. A paisant saves a mon's life for the same reason that a hero or a footpad cuts his thrapple : an' a pheelosopher de- livers a mon frae a preson, for the same reason that a tailor or a prime menester puts him into it ; because it is conformable to his CHAP, v.] THE DINNER. 25 ain parteecular feelings o' the moral an' poleetical fetness o* things. SQUIRE HEADLONG. Wake the Reverend Doctor. Doctor, the bottle stands with you. THE REVEREND DOCTOR GASTER. It is an error of which I am seldom guilty. MR. MAC LAUREL. Noo, ye ken, sir, every mon is the centre of his ain system, an' endaivours as much as possible to adapt every thing aroond him to his ain parteecular views. MR. ESCOT. Thus, sir, I presume, it suits the particular views of a poet, at one time to take the part of the people against their oppressors, and at another, to take the part of the oppressors against the people. MR. MAC LAUREL. Ye mun alloc, sir, that poetry is a sort of ware or commodity, that is brought into the public market wi' a' other descreptions of merchandise, an' that a mon is pairfectly justified in getting the best price he can for his article. Noo, there are three rea- sons for taking the part o' the people : the first is, when general leeberty an' public happiness are conformable to your ain par- teecular feelings o' the moral an' poleetical fetness o' things : the second is, when they happen to be, as it were, in a state of ex- ceetabeelity, an' ye think ye can get a gude price for your com- modity, by flingin' in a leetle seasoning o' pheelanthropy an' re- publican speerit : the third is, when ye think ye can bully the menestry into gieing ye a place or a pansion to hau'd your din, an' in that case, ye point an attack against them within the pale o' the law ; an' if they tak nae heed o' ye, ye open a stronger fire ; an' the less heed they tak, the mair ye bawl ; an' the mair fac- tious ye grow, always within the pale o' the law, till they send a plenipotentiary to treat wi' ye for yoursel, an' then the mair pop- ular ye happen to be, the better price ye fetch. SQUIRE HEADLONG. • • Off with your heeltaps. MR. CRANIUM. I perfectly agree with Mr. Mac Laurel in his definition of self- 86 HEADLONG HALL. [chap. v. love and disinterestedness : every man's actions are determined by his peculiar views, and those views are determined by the organization of his skull. A man in whom the organ of benevo- lence is not developed, cannot be benevolent : he in whom it is so, cannot be otherwise. The organ of self-love is prodigiously de- veloped in the greater number of subjects that have fallen under my observation. MR. ESCOT. Much less, I presume, among savage than civilised men, who, constant only to the love of self, and consistent only in their aim to deceive, are always actuated hy the hope of personal advantage^ or hy the dread of personal pu7iishment.* MR. CRANIUM. Very probably. MR. ESCOT. You have, of course, found very copious specimens of the or- gans of hypocrisy, destruction, and avarice. BIR. CRANIUM. Secretiveness, destructiveness, and covetiveness. You may add, if you please, that of constructiveness. MR. ESCOT. Meaning, I presume, the organ of building ; which I contend to be not a natural organ of the featherless biped. MR. CRANIUM. Pardon me : it is here. — (As he said these words, he produced a skull from his pocket, and placed it on the table, to the great surprise of the company.) — This was the skull of Sir Christopher Wren. You observe this protuberance — [The skull was handed round the table.) MR. ESCOT. I contend that the original unsophisticated man was by no means constructive. He lived in the open air, under a tree. THE REVEREND DOCTOR GASTER. The tree of life. Unquestionably. Till he had tasted the for- bidden fruit. * Drummond's Academical Questions. ciup. v.] THE DINNER. 27 MR. JENKISON. At which period, probably, the organ of constructiveness was added to his anatomy, as a punishment for his transgression. MR. ESCOT. There could not have been a more severe one, since the pro- pensity which has led him to building cities has proved the great- est curse of his existence. SQUIRE HEADLONG — {taking the skull.) Memento mori. Come, a bumper of Burgundy. MR. NIGHTSHADE. A very classical application, Squire Headlong. The Romans were in the practice of adhibiting skulls at their banquets, and sometimes little skeletons of silver, as a silent admonition to the guests to enjoy life while it lasted. THE REVEREND DOCTOR GASTER. Sound doctrine, Mr. Nightshade. MR. ESCOT. I question its soundness. The use of vinous spirit has a tre- mendous influence in the deterioration of the human race. MR. FOSTER. I fear, indeed, it operates as a considerable check to the prog- ress of the species towards moral and intellectual perfection. Yet many great men have been of opinion that it exalts the imagina- tion, fires the genius, accelerates the flow of ideas, and imparts to dispositions naturally cold and deliberative, that enthusiastic sublimation which is the source of greatness and energy. MR. NIGHTSHADE. Laudibus arguitur vini vinosus Homerus.* ■MR. JENKISON. I conceive the use of wine to be always pernicious in excess, but often useful in moderation : it certainly kills some, but it saves the lives of others : I find that an occasional glass, taken with judgment and caution, has a very salutary effect in maintaining * Homer is proved to have been a lover of wine by the praises he bestows upon it. HEADLONG HALL. [chap. v. that equilibrium of the system, which it is always my aim to pre- serve ; and this calm and temperate use of wine was, no doubt, what Homer meant to inculcate, when he said : Tlap Ss Seiras otvoio^ mciv ot£ Ovjxos avuiyoi,''^ SQUIRE HEADLONG. Good. Pass the bottle. (Un morne silence.) Sir Christopher does not seem to have raised our spirits. Chro- matic, favour us with a specimen of your vocal powers. Some- thing in point. Mr. Chromatic, without further preface, immediately struck up the following SONG. In his last blnn Sir Peter lies, Who knew not what it was to frown : Death took him mellow, by surprise, And in his cellar stopped him down. Through all our land we could not boast A knight more gay, more prompt than he, To rise and fill a bumper toast, And pass it round with three times three. None better knew the feast to sway, Or keep Mirth's boat in better trim ; For Nature had but little clay Like that of which she moulded him. The meanest guest that graced his board Was there the freest of the free, His bumper toast when Peter poured, And passed it round with three times three He kept at true good humour's mark The social flow of pleasure's tide : He never made a brow look dark. Nor caused a tear, but when he died. No sorrow round his tomb should dwell : More pleased his gay old ghost would be, For funeral song, and passing bell. To hear no sound but three times three. (Hammering of knuckles and glasses, and shouts of Bravo .') * A cup of wine at hand, to drink as inclination prompts. CHAP, v.] THE DINNER. 29 MR. PANSCOPE. (^Suddenly emerging from a deep reverie.) I have heard, with the most profound attention, every thing which the gentleman on the other side of the table has thought proper to advance on the subject of human deterioration ; and I must take the liberty to remark, that it augurs a very considera- ble degree of presumption in any individual, to set himself up against the authority of so many great men, as may be marshalled in metaphysical phalanx under the opposite banners of the con- troversy ; such as Aristotle, Plato, the scholiast on Aristophanes, St. Chrysostom, St. Jerome, St. Athanasius, Orpheus, Pindar, Simonides, Gronovius, Hemsterhusius, Longinus, Sir Isaac New- ton, Thomas Paine, Doctor Paley, the King of Prussia, the King of Poland, Cicero, Monsieur Gautier, Hippocrates, Machiavelli, Milton, Colley Gibber, Bojardo, Gregory Nazianzenus, Locke, D'Alembert, Boccaccio, Daniel Defoe, Erasmus, Doctor Smollett, Zimmermann, Solomon, Confucius, Zoroaster, and Thomas-a- Kempis. MR. ESCOT. 1 presume, sir, you are one of those who value an authority more than a reason. MR. PANSCOPE. The authority, sir, of all these great men, whose works, as well as the whole of the Encyclopsedia Britannica, the entire series of the Monthly Review, the complete set of the Variorum Classics, and the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions, I have read through from beginning to end, deposes, with irrefragable refuta- tion, against your ratiocinative speculations, wherein you seem desirous, by the futile process of analytical dialectics, to subvert the pyramidal structure of synthetically deduced opinions, which have withstood the secular revolutions of physiological disquisition, and which I maintain to be transcendentally self-evident, categor- ically certain, and syllogistically demonstrable. SQUIRE HEADLONG. Bravo ! Pass the bottle. The very best speech that ever was made. MR. ESCOT. It has only the slight disadvantage of being unintelligible. 30 HEADLONG HALL. [chap. v. BIR. PANSCOPE. I am not obliged, sir, as Dr. Johnson observed on a similar occasion, to furnish you with an understanding. DIR. ESCOT. I fear, sir, you would have some difficulty in furnishing me with such an article from your own stock. MR. PANSCOPE. 'Sdeath, sir, do you question my understanding ? MR. ESCOT. I only question, sir, where I expect a reply ; which, from things that have no existence, I am not visionary enough to an- ticipate. BIR. PANSCOPE. I beg leave to observe, sir, that my language was perfectly perspicuous, and etymologically correct ; and, I conceive, I have demonstrated what I shall now take the liberty to say in plain terms, that all your opinions are extremely absurd. MR. ESCOT. I should be sorry, sir, to advance any opinion that you would not think absurd. MR. PANSCOPE. Death and fury, sir MR. ESCOT. Say no more, sir. That apology is quite sufficient. BIR. PANSCOPE. Apology, sir? MR. ESCOT. Even so, sir. You have lost your temper, which I consider equivalent to a confession that you have the v/orst of the argu- ment. MR. PANSCOPE. Lightning and devils ! sir SQUIRE HEADLONG. No civil war ! — Temperance, in the name of Bacchus ! — A glee ! a glee ! Music has charms to lend the knotted oak. Sir Patrick, you'll join ? CHAP, v.] THE DINNER. 31 SIR PATRICK O'PRISM. Troth, with all my heart : for, by my soul, I'm bothered com- pletely. SQUIRE HEADLONG. Agreed, then : you, and I, and Chromatic. Bumpers ! — bum- pers ! Come, strike up. Squire Headlong, Mr. Chromatic, and Sir Patrick O'Prism, each holding a bumper, immediately vociferated the following GLEE. A heeltap ! a heeltap ! I never could bear it ! So fill me a bumper, a bumber of claret ! Let the bottle pass freely, don't shirk it nor spare it, For a heeltap I a heeltap ! I never could bear it ! No skylight ! no twilight ! while Bacchus rules o'er us : No thinking ! no shrinking ! all drinking in chorus : Let us moisten our clay, since 'tis tliii-sty and porous : No thinking ! no shrinking ! all drinking in chorus I GRAND CHORUS. By Squire Headlong, Mr. Chromatic, Sir Patrick O'Prism, Mr. Panscope, Mr. Jenkison, Mr. Gall, Mr. Treacle, Mr. Night- shade, Mr. Mac Laurel, Mr. Cranium, Mr. Milestone, and the Reverend Doctor Gaster. A heeltap ! a heeltap ! I never could bear it ! So fill me a bumper, a bumber of claret ! Let the bottle pass freely, don't shirk it nor spare it ! For a heeltap ! a heeltap ! I never could bear it ! 'OMAAOE KAI AOYHOE OPQPEI!' The little butler was waddled in with a summons from the la- dies to tea and coffee. The squire was unwilling to. leave his Burgundy. Mr. Escot strenuously urged the necessity of imme- diate adjournment, observing, that the longer they continued drink- ing the worse they should be. Mr. Foster seconded the motion, declaring the transition from the bottle to female society to be an indisputable amelioration of the state of the sensitive man. Mr. Jenkison allowed the squire and his two brother philosophers to settle the point between them, concluding that he was just as well in one place as another. The question of adjournment was then put, and carried by a large majority. 32 HEADLONG HALL. [chap. vi. CHAPTER VI. THE EVENING. Mr. Panscope, highly irritated by the cool contempt with which Mr. Escot had treated him, sate sipping his coffee and meditating revenge. He was not long in discovering the passion of his an- tagonist for the beautiful Cephalis, for whom he had himself a species of predilection ; and it was also obvious to him, that there was some lurking ang-er in the mind of her father, unfavourable to the hopes of his rival. The stimulus of revenge, superadded to that of preconceived inclination, determined him, after due de- liberation, to cut out Mr. Escot in the young lady's favour. The practicability of this design he did not trouble himself to investi- gate ; for the havoc he had made in the hearts of some silly girls, who were extremely vulnerable to flattery, and v/ho, not under- standing a word he said, considered him a prodigious clever man, had impressed him with an unhesitating idea of his own irresisti- bility. He had not only the requisites already specified for fas- cinating female vanity, he could likewise fiddle with tolerable dexterity, though by no means so quick as Mr. Chromatic (for our readers are of course aware that rapidity of execution, not delica- cy of expression, constitutes the scientific perfection of modern mu- sic), and could warble a fashionable love-ditty with considerable affectation of feeling : besides this, he was always extremely well dressed, and was heir-apparent to an estate of ten thousand a-year. The influence which the latter consideration might have on the minds of the majority of his female acquaintance, whose morals had been formed by the novels of such writers as Miss Philomela Poppyseed, did not once enter into his calculation of his own per- sonal attractions. Relying, therefore, on past success, he deter- mined to appeal to his fortune, and already, in imagination, con- sidered himself sole lord and master of the affections of the beau- tiful Cephalis. CHAP. VI.] THE EVENING. 33 Mr. Escot and Mr. Foster were the only two of the party who had entered the library (to which the ladies had retired, and which was interior to the music-room) in a state of perfect sobriety. Mr. Escot had placed himself next to the beautiful Cephalis : Mr. Cranium had laid aside m.uch of the terror of his frown ; the short craniological conversation, which had passed between him and Mr. Escot, had softened his heart in his favour ; and the copious libations of Burgundy in which he had indulged had smoothed his brow into unusual serenity. Mr. Foster placed himself near the lovely Caprioletta, whose artless and innocent conversation had already made an impres- sion on his susceptible spirit. The Reverend Doctor Gaster seated himself in the corner of a sofa near Miss Philomela Poppyseed. Miss Philomela detailed to him the plan of a very moral and aristocratical novel she was pre- paring for the press, and continued holding forth, with her eyes half shut, till a long-drawn nasal tone from the reverend divine compelled her suddenly to open them in all the indignation of surprise. The cessation of the hum of her voice awakened the reverend gentle- man, who, lifting up first one eyelid, then the other, articulated, or rather murmured, " Admirably planned, indeed !" " I have not quite finished, sir," said Miss Philomela, bridling. " Will you have the goodness to inform me where I left off?" The doctor hummed a while, and at length answered : " I think you had just laid it down as a position, that a thousand a-year is an indispensable ingredient in the passion of love, and that no man, who is not so far gifted by nature, can reasonably presume to feel that passion himself, or be correctly the object of it with a well-educated female." " That, sir," said Miss Philomela, highly incensed, " is the fundamental principle which I lay down in the first chapter, and which the whole four volumes, of which I detailed to you the out- line, are intended to set in a strong practical light." " Bless me !" said the doctor, " what a nap I must have had !" Miss Philomela flung away to the side of her dear friends Gall and Treacle, under whose fostering patronage she had been puffed into an extensive reputation, much to the advantage of the young ladies of the age, whom she taught to consider themselves as a sort of commodity, to be put up at public auction, and knocked 4 34 IIEADLOXG HALL. [chap. vi. down to the higliest bidder. Mr. Nightshade and Mr. Mac Lau- rel joined the trio ; and it was secretly resolved, that Miss Philo- mela should furnish them with a portion of her manuscripts, and that Messieurs Gall and Co. should devote the following morning to cutting and drying a critique on a work calculated to prove so extensively beneficial, that Mr. Gall protested he really envied the writer. While this amiable and enlightened quintetto v/ere busily em- ployed in flattering one another, Mr. Cranium retired to complete the preparations he had begun in the morning for a lecture, v»ith which he intended, on some furture evening, to favour the compa- ny : Sir Patrick O'Prism v.'alked out into the grounds to study the effect of moonlight on the snow-clad mountains : Mr. Foster and Mr. Escot continued to make love, and Mr. Panscope to digest his^plan of attack on the heart of Miss Cephalis : Mr. Jenkison sate by the fire, reading Aluch Ado ahout Nothing : the Reverend Doctor Gaster was still enjoying the benefit of Miis Philomela's opiate, and serenading the company from his solitary corner : Mr. Chromatic was reading music, and occasionally humming a note : and Mr. Milestone had produced his portfolio for the edifi- cation and amusement of Miss Tenorina, Miss Graziosa, and Squire Headlong, to whom he was pointing out the various beau- ties of his plan for Lord Littlcbrain's park. MFt. MILESTONE. This, you perceive, is the natural state of one part of the grounds. Here is a wood, never yet touched by the finger of taste ; thick, intricate, and gloomy. Here is a little stream, dashing from stone to stone, and overshadowed with these un- trimmed boughs. MISS TENORINA. The sweet romantic spot ! How beautifully the birds must sing there on a summer evening ! MISS GRAZIOSA. Dear sister ! how can you endure the horrid thicket ? MR. MILESTONE. You are right, Miss Graziosa : your taste is correct — perfectly en regie. Now, here is the same place corrected — trimmed — CHAP. VI.] THE EVENING. 35 polished — decorated — adorned. Here sweeps a plantation, in that beautiful regular ^curve : there winds a gravel walk : here are parts of the old wood, left in these majestic circular clumps, dis- posed at equal distances with wonderful symmetry : there are some single shrubs scattered in elegant profusion : here a Portugal laurel, there a juniper ; here a lauristinus, there a spruce fir ; here a larch, there a lilac ; here a rhododendron, there an arbu- tus. Tlie stream, you sec, is become a canal : the banks are per* fectly smooth and green, sloping to the water's edge : and there is Lord Littlebrain, rowing in an elegant boat. SQUIRE HEADLONG. Magical, faith ! MR. MILESTONE. Here is another part of the grounds in its natural state. Here is a large rock, with the mountain-ash rooted in its fissures, over- grown, as you see, with ivy and moss ; and from this part of it bursts a little fountain, that runs bubbling down its rugged sides. MISS TENORINA. O how beautiful ! How I should love the melody of that min- iature cascade ! MR. MILESTONE. Beautiful, ]\Iiss Tenorina ! Hideous. Base, common, and popular. Such a thing as you may see anywhere, in wild and mountainous districts. Now, observe the metamorphosis. Here is the same rock, cut into the shape of a giant. In one hand he holds a horn, through which that little fountain is thrown to a prodigious elevation. In the other is a ponderous stone, so ex- actly balanced as to be apparently ready to fall on the head of any person who may happen to be beneath :* and there is Lord Littlebrain walking under it. SQUIRE HEADLONG. Miraculous, by Mahomet ! MR. MILESTONE. This is the summit of a hill, covered, as you perceive, with wood, and with those mossy stones scattered at random under the trees. * See KnijrHt on Taste. 36 HEADLONG HALL. [chap. vi. MISS TENORINA. What a delightful spot to read in, on a summer's day ! The air must be so pure, and the wind must sound so divinely in the tops of those old pines ! MR. MILESTONE. Bad taste, Miss Tenorina. Bad taste, I assure you. Here is the spot improved. The trees are cut down : the stones are cleared away : this is an octagonal pavilion, exactly on the cen- tre of the summit : and there you see Lord Littlebrain, on the top of the pavilion, enjoying the prospect with a telescope. SQUIRE HEADLONG. Glorious, egad! MR. MILESTONE. Here is a rugged mountainous road, leading through imper- vious shades : the ass and the four goats characterise a wild un- cultured scene. Here, as you perceive, it is totally changed into a beautiful gravel-road, gracefully curving through a belt of limes : and there is Lord Littlebrain driving four-in-hand. SQUIRE HEADLONG. Egregious, by Jupiter ! MR. MILESTONE. " Here is Littlebrain Castle, a Gothic, moss-grown structure, half-bosomed in trees. Near the casement of that turret is an owl peeping from the ivy. SQUIRE HEADLONG. And devilish wise he looks. MR. MILESTONE. Here is the new house, without a tree near it, standing in the midst of an undulating lawn : a white, polished, angular building, reflected to a nicety in this waveless lake : and there you see Lord Littlebrain looking out of the window. SQUIRE HEADLONG. And devilish wise he looks too. You shall cut me a giant be- ibre you go. MR. MILESTONE. Good. I'll order down my little corps of pioneers. THE EVENING. 37 During this conversation, a hot dispute had arisen between ]\Iessieurs Gall and Nightshade ; the latter pertinaciously insist- ing on having his new poem reviewed by Treacle, who he knew would extol it most loftily, and not by Gall, whose sarcastic com- mendation he held in superlative horror. The remonstrances of Squire Headlong silenced the disputants, but did not mollify the inflexible Gall, nor appease the irritated Nightshade, who secretly resolved that, on his return to London, he would beat his drum in Grub Street, form a mastigophoric corps of his own, and hoist the standard of determined opposition against this critical Napoleon. Sir Patrick O'Prism now entered, and, after some rapturous exclamations on the effect of the mountain-moonlight, entreated that one of the young ladies would favour him with a song. Miss Tenorina and Miss Graziosa now enchanted the company with some very scientific compositions, which, as usual, excited admi- ration and astonishment in every one, without a single particle of genuine pleasure. The beautiful Cephalis being then summoned to take her station at the harp, sang with feeling and simplicity the following air : — LOVE AND OPPORTUNITY. Oh ! who art thou, so swiftly flying ? My name is Love, the child replied : Swifter I pass than south-winds sighing, Or streams, through summer vales that glide. And who art thou, his flight pursuing? 'T is cold Neglect whom now you see: The little god you there are viewing, Will die, if once he 's touched by me. * Oh ! who art thou so fast proceeding, Ne'er glancing back thine eyes of flame ? Marked but by fev/, through earth I 'm speeding, And Opportunity 's my name. What form is that, which scowls beside thee ? Repentance is the form you see : Learn then, the fate may yet betide thee : She seizes them who seize not me. The little butler now appeared with a summons to supper, shortly after which the party dispersed for the night. * This stanza is imitated from Machiavelli's Capitolo delV Occasione. 38 HEADLONG HALL. [chap, vil CHAPTER VIL THE WALK. It was an old custom in Headlong Hall to have breakfast ready at eight, and continue it till two ; that the various guests might rise at their own hour, breakfast when they came dov/n, and em- ploy the morning as they thought proper ; the squire only expect- ing that they should punctually assemble at dinner. During the whole of this period, the little butler stood sentineUat.a side-table near the fire, copiously furnished with all the apparatus of tea, coffee, chocolate, milk, cream, eggs, rolls, toast, raufhns, bread, butter, potted beef, cold fowl and partridge, ham, tongue, and an- chovy. The Reverend Doctor Gaster found himself rather queasij in the morning, therefore preferred breakfasting in bed, on a mug of buttered ale and an anchovy toast. The three philosophers made their appearance at eight, and enjoyed les i^remices des de- poidlles. Mr. Foster proposed that, as it was a fine frosty morn- ing, and they were all good pedestrians, they should take a walk to Tremadoc, to see the improvements carrying on in that vicinity. This being readily acceded to, they began their walk. After their departure, appeared Squire Headlong and Mr. Mile- stone, who agreed, over their muffin and partridge, to walk to- gether to a ruined tower, within the precincts of the squire's grounds, which Mr. Milestone thought he could improve. The other guests dropped in by one's and two's, and made their respective arrangements for the morning. Mr. Panscope took a little ramble with Mr. Cranium, in the course of which, the for- mer professed a great enthusiasm for the science of craniology, and a great deal of love for the beautiful Cephalis, adding a few words about his expectations : the old gentleman w^as unable to withstand this triple battery, and it was accordingly determined — after the manner of the heroic age, in which it was deemed super- fluous to consult the opinions and feelings of the lady, as to thf» CHAP, vii.] THE WALK. 39 manner in which she should be disposed of — that the lovely Miss Cranium should be made the happy bride of the accomplished Mr. Panscope. We sliall leave them for the present to settle pre- liminaries, while we accompany the three philosophers in their walk to Tremadoc. The vale contracted as they advanced, and, when they had passed the termination of the lake, their road wound along a nar- row and romantic pass, through the middle of which an impetuous torrent dashed over vast fragments of stone. The pass was bor- dered on both sides by perpendicular rocks, broken into the wild- est forms of fantastic magnificence. " These are, indeed," said Mr. Escot, " confracti mundi ru- dera ;"* yet they must be feeble images of the valleys of the Andes, where the philosophic eye may contemplate, in their utmost extent, the effects of that tremendous convulsion which destroyed the perpendicularity of the poles, and inundated this globe with that torrent of physical evil, from which the greater torrent of moral evil has issued, that will continue to roll on, with an ex- pansive power and an accelerated impetus, till the whole human race shall be swept away in its vortex." " The precession of the equinoxes," said Mr. Foster, " will gradually ameliorate the physical state of our planet, till the ecliptic shall again coincide with the equator, and the equal dif- fusion of light and heat over the v»'hole surface of the earth typify the equal and happy existence of man, who will then have attained the final step of pure and perfect intelligence." " It is by no means clear," said Mr. Jekinson, " that the axis of the earth was ever perpendicular to the plane of its orbit, or that it ever will be so. Explosion and convulsion are necessary to the maintenance of either hypothesis : for La Place has demon- strated, that the precession of the equinoxes is only a secular equation of a very long period, which, of course, proves nothing either on one side or the other." They now emerged, by a winding ascent, from the vale of Llanberris, and after some little time arrived at Bedd Gelert. Proceeding through the sublimely romantic pass of Aberglaslynn, their road led along the edge of Traeth Mawr, a vast arm of * Fragments of a demolished world. 40 HEADLONG HALL. [chap. vii. the sea, which they then beheld in all the magnificence of the flow- ing tide. Another five miles brought them to the embankment, which has since been completed, and which, by connecting the two counties of Meirionnydd and Caernarvon, excludes the sea from an extensive tract. The embankment, which was carried on at the same time from both the opposite coasts, was then very nearly meeting in the centre. They walked to the extremity of that part of it which was thrown out from the Caernarvonshire shore. The tide was now ebbing : it had filled the vast basin within, forming a lake about five miles in length and more than one in breadth. As they looked upwards with their backs to the open sea, they beheld a scene which no other in this country can parallel, and which the admirers of the magnificence of nature will ever remember with regret, whatever consolation may be derived from the probable utility of the works which have excluded the waters from their ancient receptacle. Vast rocks and preci- pices, intersected with little torrents, formed the barrier on the left : on the right, the triple summit of Moelwyn reared its majes- tic boundary : in the depth was that sea of mountains, the wild and stormy outline of the Snowdonian chain, with the giant Wyddfa towering in the midst. The mountain-frame remains unchanged, unchangeable ; but the liquid mirror it enclosed is gone. The tide ebbed with rapidity : the waters within, retained by the embankment, poured through its two points an impetuous cateract, curling and boiling in innumerable eddies, and making a tumultuous melody admirably in unison with the surrounding scene. The three philosophers looked on in silence ; and at length unwillingly turned away and proceeded to the little town of Tre- madoc, which is built on land recovered in a similar manner from the sea. After inspecting the manufactories, and refreshing themselves at the inn on a cold saddle of mutton and a bottle of sherry, they retraced their steps towards Headlong Hall, com- menting as they went on the various objects they had seen. MR. ESCOT. I regret that time did not allow us to see the caves on the sea- shore. There is one of which the depth is said to be unknown. There is a tradition in the country, that an adventurous fiddler CHAP. VII.] THE WALK. 41 once resolved to explore it ; that he entered, and never returned ; but that the subterranean sound of a fiddle was heard at a farm- house seven miles inland. It is, therefore, concluded that he lost his way in the labyrinth of caverns supposed to exist under the rocky soil of this part of the country. MR. JENKISON. A supposition that must always remain in force, unless a second fiddler, equally adventurous and more successful, should return with an accurate report of the true state of the fact. MR. FOSTER. What think you of the little colony we have just been inspect- ing ; a city, as it were, in its cradle ? MR. ESCOT. With all the weakness of infancy, and all the vices of maturer age. I confess, the sight of those manufactories, which have suddenly sprung up, like fungous excrescences, in the bosom of these wild and desolate scenes, impressed me with as much hor- ror and amazement as the sudden appearance of the stocking manufactory struck into the mind of Rousseau, when, in a lonely valley of the Alps, he had just congratulated himself on finding a spot where man had never been. MR. FOSTER. The manufacturing system is not yet purified from some evils which necessarily attend it, but which I conceive are greatly overbalanced by their concomitant advantages. Contemplate the vast sum of human industry to which this system so essen- tially contributes : seas covered with vessels, ports resounding with life, profound researches, scientific inventions, complicated mechanism, canals carried over deep valleys and through the bosoms of hills : employment and existence thus given to innu- merable families, and the multiplied comforts and conveniences of life diffused over the whole community. ]\rR. ESCOT. You present to me a complicated picture of artificial life, and require me to admire it. Seas covered with vessels : every one of which contains two or three tyrants, and from fifty to a thou- sand slaves, ignorant, gross, perverted, and active only in mis- 42 HEADLONG HALL. [chap. vii. chief. Ports resounding with life : in other words, with noise and drunkenness, the mingled din of avarice, intemperance, and pros- titution. Profound researches, scientific inventions : to what end 1 To contract the sum of human wants ? to teach the art of living on a little ? to disseminate independence, liberty, and health ? No ; to multiply factitious desires, to stimulate depraved appetites, to invent unnatural wants, to heap up incense on the shrine of luxury, and accumulate expedients of selfish and ruinous profu- sion. Complicated machinery : behold its blessings. Twenty years ago, at the door of every cottage sate the good woman with her spinning-wheel : the children, if not more profitably employed than in gathering heath and sticks, at least laid in a stock of health and strength to sustain the labours of maturer years. Where is the spinning-wheel now, and every simple and insulated occupation of the industrious cottager ? Wherever this boasted machinery is establislied, the children of the poor are death- doomed from their cradles. Look for one moment at midnight into a cotton-mill, amidst the smell of oil, the smoke of lamps, the rattling of wheels, the dizzy and complicated motions of dia- bolical mechanism : contemplate the little human machines that keep play with the revolutions of the iron work, robbed at that hour of their natural rest, as of air and exercise by day : observe their pale and ghastly features, more ghastly in that baleful and malignant light, and tell me if you do not fancy yourself on the threshold of Virgil's hell, where Continub audit^e voces, vagitus et ingens, Infantvmque anhncE fientes, in limine primo, Quos dulcis vitce exsortes, et ab ubere raptos, AhsiuUt air a dies, et fuxere mersit acerbo ! As Mr. Escot said this, a little rosy-checked girl, with a basket of heath on her head, came tripping down the side of one of the rocks on the left. The force of contrast struck even on the phlegmatic spirit of Mr. Jenkison, and he almost inclined for a moment to the doctrine of deterioration. Mr. Escot continued : " Nor is the lot of the parents more enviable. Sedentary vic- tims of unhealthy toil, they have neither the corporeal energy of the savage, nor the mental acquisitions of the civilised man. ]\Ihid, indeed, they have none, and scarcely animal life. They CHAP. VII.] THE WALK. 43 are mere automata, component parts of the enormous machines which administer to the pampered appetites of the few, who con- sider themselves the most valuable portion of a state, because they consume in indolence the fruits of the earth, and contribute no- thing to the benefit of the community. MR. JENKISON. That these are evils cannot be denied ; but they have their counterbalancing advantages. That a man should pass the day in a furnace and the night in a cellar, is bad for the individual, but good for others who enjoy the benefit of his labour. MR. ESCOT. By what right do they so ? BIR. JENKISON. By the right of all property and all possession : Jc droit du pkia fort. MR. ESCOT. Do you justify that principle ? MR. JENKISON. I neither justify nor condemn it. It is practically recognised in all societies ; and, though it is certainly the source of enormous evil, I conceive it is also the source of abundant good, or it would not have so many supporters. MR. ESCOT. That is by no means a consequence. Do v/e not every day see men supporting the most enormous evils, which they know to be so with respect to others, and which in reality are so with re- spect to themselves, though an erroneous view of their own miser- able self-interest induces them to think otherwise ? MR. JENKISON. Good and evil exist only as they are perceived. I cannot there- fore understand, how that which a man perceives to be good can be in reality an evil to him : indeed, the word reality only signifies strong belief, MR. ESCOT. The views of such a man I contend are false. If he could be made to see the truth 44 HEADLONG HALL. [chap. vii. MR. JENKISON. He sees his own truth. Truth is that which a man troweih. Where there is no man there is no truth. Thus the truth of one is not the truth of another.* MR. ESCOT. I am aware of the etymology ; but I contend that there is an universal and immutable truth, deducible from the nature of things. MR. JENKISON. By whom deducible ? Philosophers have investigated the na- ture of things for centuries, yet no two of them will agree in trow- ing the same conclusion. MR. FOSTER. The progress of philosophical investigation, and the rapidly in- creasing accuracy of human knowledge, approximate by degrees the diversities of opinion ; so that, in process of time, moral science will be susceptible of mathematical demonstration ; and, clear and indisputable principles being universally recognised, the coin- cidence of deduction will necessarily follow. MR. ESCOT. Possibly, when the inroads of luxury and disease shall have exterminated nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine of every million of the human race, the remain- ing fractional units may congregate into one point, and come to something like the same conclusion. MR. JENKISON. I doubt it much. I conceive, if only we three were survivors of the whole system of terrestrial being, we should never agree in our decisions as to the cause of the calamity. MR. ESCOT. Be that as it may, I think you must at least assent to the fol- lowing positions : that the many are sacrificed to the few ; that ninety-nine in a hundred are occupied in a perpetual struggle for the preservation of a perilous and precarious existence, while the remaining one wallows in all the redundancies of luxury that can * Tooke's Diversions of Parley. CHAP, vii.] THE WALK. 45 be wrung from their labours and privations ; that luxury and lib- erty are incompatible ; and that every new want you invent for civilised man is a new instrument of torture for him who cannot indulge it. They had now regained the shores of the lake, when the con- versation was suddenly interrupted by a tremendous explosion, followed by a violent splashing of water, and various sounds of tumult and confusion, which induced them to quicken their pace towards the spot whence they proceeded. 46 HEADLONG HALL. [chap, viii CHAPTER Vm. THE TOWER. In all the thoughts, v/ords, and actions of Squire Headlong, there was a remarkable alacrity of progression, which almost an- nihilated the interval between conception and execution. He was utterly regardless of obstacles, and seemed to have expunged their very name from his vocabulary. His designs were never nipped in their infancy by the contemplation of those trivial difficulties which often turn awry the current of enterprise ; and, though the rapidity of his movements was sometimes arrested by a more formidable barrier, either naturally existing in the pursuit he had undertaken, or created by bis own impetuosity, he seldom failed to succeed either in knocking it down or cutting his way through it. He had little idea of gradation : he saw no interval between the first step and the last, but pounced upon his object with the impetus of a mountain cataract. This rapidity of movement, in- deed, subjected him to some disasters v/hich cooler spirits would have escaped. He was an excellent sportsman, and almost always killed his game ; but now and then he killed his dog.* Rocks, streams, hedges, gates, and ditches, were objects of no account in his estimation ; though a dislocated shoulder, several severe bruises^ and two or three narrow escapes for his neck, might have been expected to teach him a certain degree of caution in effecting his transitions. He was so singularly alert in climbing precipices * Some readers will, perhaps, recollect the Archbishop of Prague, who also was an excellent sportsman, and who, Com' era scrilto in certi suoi giornali, Uccso avea con le sue proprie mani Un numero infinito d'animali : Cinquemila con quindici fagiani, Seimila lepri, ottantatr^ cignali, £ per disgrazia, aucor tredici cani, &c. CHAP, viii.] THE TOWER. 47 and traversing torrents, that, when he went out on a shooting party, he was very soon left to continue his sport alone, for he was sure to dash up or down some nearly perpendicular path, where no one else had either ability or inclination to follow. He had a pleasure boat on the lake, which he steered with amazing dexterity ; but as he always indulged himself in the utmost possible latitude of sail, he was occasionally upset by a sudden gust, and was indebted to his skill in the art of swimming for the opportunity of tempering with a copious libation of wine the unnatural frigidity introduced into his stomach by the extraordinary intrusion of water, an ele- ment which he had religiously determined should never pass his lips, but of which, on these occasions, he was sometimes compelled to swallow no inconsiderable quantity. This circumstance alone, of the various disasters that befel him, occasioned him any per- manent affliction, and he accordingly noted the day in his pocket book as a dies nefastus, with this simple abstract, and brief chron- icle of the calamity : Mem. Swallowed two or three pints of water : without any notice whatever of the concomitant circum- stances. These days, of v/hich there were several, were set apart in Headlong Hall for the purpose of anniversary expiation ; and, as often as the day returned on v/hich the squire had swallowed water, he not only made a point of swallowing a treble allowance of wine himself, but imposed a heavy mulct on every one of his servants who should be detected in a state of sobriety after sunset : but their conduct on these occasions was so uniformly exemplary, that no instance of the infliction of the penalty appears on record. The squire and Mr. IMilestone, as we have already said, had set out immediately after breakfast to examine the capabilities of the scenery. The object that most attracted Mr. Milestone's ad- miration was a ruined tower on a pr9Jecting point of rock, almost totally overgrown with ivy. This ivy, Mr. Milestone observed, required trimming and clearing in various parts : a little pointing and polishing was also necessary for the dilapidated walls : and the whole eftect would be materially increased by a plantation of spruce fir, interspersed with cypress and juniper, the present rug- ged and broken ascent from the land side being first converted into a beautiful slope, which might be easily efiected by blowing up a part of the rock with gunpowder, laying on a quantity of fine mould, and covering the whole with an elegant stratum of turf. 48 HEADLONG HALL. [chap. viii. Squire Headlong caught with avidity at this suggestion ; and, as he had always a store of gunpo^vtler in the house, for the ac- commodation of himself and his shooting visitors, and for the sup- ply of a small battery of cannon, which he kept for his private ainuserrient, he insisted on commencing operations immediately. Accordingly, he bounded back to the house, and very speedily re- turned, accompanied by the little butler, and half a dozen ser- vants and labourers, with pickaxes and gunpowder, a hanging stove and a poker, together with a basket of cold meat and two or three bottles of Madeira : for the Squire thought, with many others, that a copious supply of provision is a very necessary ingredient in all rural amusements. Mr. Milestone superintended the proceedings. The rock was excavated, the powder introduced, the apertures strongly block- aded with fragments of stone : a long train was laid to a spot which Mr. Milestone fixed on as sufficiently remote from the pos- sibility of harm : the Squire seized the poker, and, after flourish- ing it in the air with a degree of dexterity which induced the rest of the party to leave him in solitary possession of an extensive cir- cumference, applied the end of it to the train ; and the rapidly communicated ignition ran hissing along the surface of the soil. At this critical moment, Mr. Cranium and Mr. Panscope ap- peared at the top of the tower, which, unseeing and unseen, they had ascended on the opposite side to that where the Squire and Mr. Milestone were conducting their operations. Their sudden appearance a little dismayed the Squire, who, however, comforted himself with the reflection, that the tower was perfectly safe, or at least was intended to be so, and that his friends were in no probable danger but of a knock on the head from a flying frag- ment of stone. The succession of these thoughts in the mind of the Squire was commensurate in rapidity to the progress of the ignition, v/hich having reached its extremity, the explosion took place, and the shattered rock was hurled into the air in the midst of fire and smoke. Mr. Milestone had properly calculated the force of the explo- sion ; for the tower remained untouched : but the Squire, in his consolatory reflections, had omitted the consideration of the influ- ence of sudden fear, which had so violent an effect on Mr. Cra- CHAP, vin.] THE TOWER. 49 nium, who was just commencing a speech concerning the very fme prospect from the top of the tower, that, cutting short the thread of his observations, he bounded, under the elastic influence of terror, several feet into the air. His ascent being unluckily a little out of the perpendicular, he descended with a proportionate curve from the apex of his projection, and alighted, not on the wall of the tower, but in an ivy-bush by its side, which, giving way beneath him, transferred him to a tuft of hazel at its base, which, after upholding him an instant, consigned him to the boughs of an ash that had rooted itself in a fissure about half way down the rock, which finally transmitted him to the waters below. Squire Headlong anxiously watched the tower as the smoke which at first enveloped it rolled away ; but when this shadowy curtain was withdrawn, and Mr. Panscope was discovered, solus, in a tragical attitude, his apprehensions became boundless, and he concluded that the unlucky collision of a flying frao;ment of rock had indeed emancipated the spirit of the craniologist from its terrestrial bondage. Mr. Escot had considerably outstripped his companions, and ar- rived at the scene of the disaster just as Mr. Cranium, being ut- terly destitute of natatorial skill, was in imminent danger of final submersion. The deteriorationist, who had cultivated this valua- ble art with great success, immediately plunged in to his assist- ance, and brought him alive and in safety to a shelving part of the shore. Their landing was hailed with a vievz-holla from the delighted Squire, who, shaking them both heartily by the hand, and making ten thousand lame apologies to Mr. Cranium, con- cluded by asking, in a pathetic tone, Hoiu much water he had swallowed ? and without waiting for his answer, filled a large tumbler with Madeira, and insisted on his tossing it off", which was no sooner said than done. Mr. Jenkison and Mr. Foster now made their appearance. Mr. Panscope descended the tower, which he vowed never again to approach within a quarter of a nr.ile. The tumbler of Madeira was replenished, and handed yound to recruit the spirits of the party, which now began to move towards Headlong Hall, the Squire capering for joy in the van, and the little fat butler waddling in the rear. The Squire took care that Mr. Cranium should be seated next to him at dinner, and plied him so hard with Madeira to prevent 5 50 HEADLONG HALL. [cha . vii> him, as he said, from taking cold, that long before the ladies sent in their summons to coffee, every organ in his brain was in a com- plete state of revolution, and the Squire was under the necessity of ringing for three or four servants to carry him to bed, observ- ing, with a smile of great satisfaction, that he was in a very ex- cellent way for escaping any ill consequences that might have resulted from his accident. The beautiful Cephalis, being thus freed from his surveillance^ was enabled, during the course of the evening, to develope to his preserver the full extent of her gratitude. CHAP. IX.] THE SEXTON. 51 CHAPTER IX. THE SEXTON. Mr. Escot passed a sleepless night, the ordinary effect of love, according to some amatory poets, who seem to have composed their whining ditties for the benevolent purpose of bestowing on others that gentle slumber of which they so pathetically lament the privation. The deteriorationist entered into a profound moral soliloquy, in which he first examined whether a 'philosopher ought to he in love ? Having decided this point affirmatively against Plato and Lucretius, he next examined, whether that passion ought to have the effect of keeping a philosopher awake ? Having de- cided this negatively, he resolved to go to sleep immediately : not being able to accomplish this to his satisfaction, he tossed and tumbled, like Achilles or Orlando, first on one side, then on the other ; repeated to himself several hundred lines of poetry ; counted a thousand ; began again, and counted another thousand : in vain : the beautiful Cephalis was the predominant image in all his soliloquies, in all his repetitions : even in the numerical pro- cess from which he sought relief, he did but associate the idea of number with that of his dear tormentor, till she appeared to his mind's eye in a thousand similitudes, distinct, not different. These thousand images, indeed, were but one ; and yet the one was a thousand, a sort of uni-multiplex phantasma, which will be very intelligible to some understandings. He arose with the first peep of day, and sallied forth to enjoy the balmy breeze of morning, which any but a lover might have thought too cool ; for it was an intense frost, the sun had not risen, and the wind was rather fresh from north-east and by north. But a lover, who, like Ladurlad in the curse of Kehama, always has, or at least is supposed to have, " a fire in his heart and a fire in his brain," feels a wintry breeze from N. E. and by N. steal over his cheek like the south over a bank of violets : there- HEADLONG HALL. [chap. ix. fore, on walked the philosopher, with his coat unbuttoned and his hat in his hand, careless of whither he went, till he found himself near the enclosure of a little mountain-chapel. Passing through the wicket, and stepping over two or three graves, he stood on a rustic tombstone, and peeped through the chapel window, examin- ing the interior with as much curiosity as if he had " forgotten what the inside of a church was made of," which, it is rather to be feared, was the case. Before him and beneath him were the font, the altar, and the grave ; which gave rise to a train of moral reflections on the three great epochs in the course of the feather- less Inped, — birth, marriage, and death. The middle stage of the process arrested his attention ; and his imagination placed before him several figures, which he thought, vv^th the addition of his own, would make a very picturesque group ; the beautiful Cephalis, " arrayed in her bridal apparel of white ;" her friend Caprioletta officiating as bridemaid ; Mr. Cranium giving her away ; and last, not least, the Reverend Doctor Gaster, intoning the marriage ceremony with the regular orthodox allowance of nasal recitative. Whilst he was feasting his eyes on this ima- ginary picture, the demon of mistrust insinuated himself into the storehouse of his conceptions, and, removing his figure from the group, substituted that of Mr. Panscope, which gave such a vio- lent shock to his feelings, that he suddenly exclaimed, with an extraordinary elevation of voice, Otjuoi KaKoSatjicov, Km rpn KaKoSatnoiv, km TCTpaKis, Kai nevTUKis, Kui SuSsKaKi?, /cat jxvpiaKu !* to the great tcrror of the sexton, who was just entering the churchyard, and, not knowing from whence the voice proceeded, pensa que fut un diahleteau. The sight of the philosopher dispelled his apprehensions, when, growing suddenly valiant, he immediately addressed him : — " Cot pless your honour, I should n't have thought of meeting any pody here at this time of the morning, except, look you, it was the tevil — who, to pe sure, toes not often come upon conse- crated cround — put for all that, I think I have seen him now and then, in former tays, when old Nanny Llwyd of Llyn-isa was living — Cot teliver us ! a terriple old witch to pe sure she was — I tid n't much like tigging her crave — put I prought two cocks * Me miserable ! and thrice miserable ! and four times, and five times, aii4 twelve times, and ten thousand times miserable ! CHAP. IX.] THE SEXTON. 53 with me — the tevil hates cocks — and tied them py the leg on two tombstones — and I tug, and the cocks crowed, and the tevil kept at a tistance. To pe sure now, if I had n't peen very prave py nature — as I ought to pe truly — for my father was Owen Ap- Llwyd Ap-Gryffydd Ap-Shenkin Ap- Williams Ap-Thomas Ap- Morgan Ap-Parry Ap-Evan Ap-Rhys, a coot preacher and a lover of cwno* — I should have thought just now pefore I saw your honour, that the foice I heard was the tevil's calling Nanny Llwyd — Cot pless us ! to pe sure she should have been puried in the middle of the river, where the tevil can't come, as your hon- our fery well knows." *'I am perfectly aware of it," said Mr. Escot. " True, true," continued the sexton ; " put to pe sure, Owen Thomas of Morfa-Bach will have it that one summer evening — when he went over to Cwm Cynfael in Meirionnydd, apout some catties he wanted to puy — he saw a strange figure — pless us ! — with five horns ! — Cot save us ! sitting on Hugh Llwyd 's pulpit, which, your honour fery well knows, is a pig rock in the middle of the river " " Of course he was mistaken," said Mr. Escot. " To pe sure he was," said the sexton. " For there is no toubt put the tevil, when Owen Thomas saw him, must have peen sit- ting on a piece of rock in a straight line from him on the other side of the river, wliere he used to sit, look you, for a whole sum- mer's tay, while Hugh Llwyd was on his pulpit, and there they used to talk across the water ! for Hugh Llwyd, please your hon- our, never raised the tevil except when he was safe in the middle of the river, which proves that Owen Thomas, in his fright, did n't pay proper attention to the exact spot where the tevil was." The sexton concluded his speech with an approving smile at his own sagacity, in so luminously expounding the nature of Owen Thomas's mistake. " I perceive," said Mr. Escot, " you have a very deep insight into things, and can, therefore, perhaps, facilitate the resolution of a question, concerning which, though I have little doubt on the subject, I am desirous of obtaining the most extensive and accurate information." * Pronounced cooroo — the Welsh word for ale. 54 HEADLONG HALL. [chap, ix The sexton scratched his head, the language of Mr. Escot not being to his apprehension quite so luminous as his own. " You have been sexton here," continued Mr. Escot, in the language of Hamlet, " man and boy, forty years." The sexton turned pale. The period Mr. Escot named was so nearly the true one, that he began to suspect the personage before him of being rather too familiar with Hugh Llwyd's sable visitor. Recovering himself a little, he said, " Why, thereapouts, sure enough." " During this period, you have of course dug up many bones of the people of ancient times." " Pones ! Cot pless you, yes ! pones as old as the 'orlt." " Perhaps you can show me a few.'' The sexton grinned horribly a ghastly smile. " Will you take your Pible oath you ton't want them to raise the tevil with ?" " Willingly," said Mr. Escot, smiling ; " I have an abstruse reason for the inquiry." " Why, if you have an obtuse reason," said the sexton, who thought this a good opportunity to show that he could pronounce hard words as well as other people ; "if you have an obtuse rea- son, that alters the case." So saying he led the way to the bone-house, from which he be- gan to throw out various bones and skulls of more than common dimensions, and amongst them a skull of very extraordinary magnitude, which he swore by St. David was the skull of Cad- wallader. " How do you know this to be his skull ?" said Mr. Escot. " He was the piggest man that ever lived, and he Avas puried here ; and this is the piggest skull I ever found : you see now " " Nothing can be more logical," said Mr. Escot. " My good friend, will you allow me to take this skull away with me ?" " St. Winifred pless us !" exclaimed the sexton : " would you have me haunted py his chost for taking his plessed pones out of consecrated cround ? Would you have him come in the tead of the night, and fly away with the roof of my house ? Would you have all the crop of my carden come to nothing ? for, look you, his epitaph says, **6c tl)at mn poncB sl}aU ill pestoto, £eek in Ijis rrounb sljall ntvcx crotu." CHAP. IX.] THE SEXTON. 55 " You will ill bestow them," said Mr. Escot, " in confounding them with those of the sons of little men, the degenerate dwarfs of later generations : you will well bestow them in giving them to me ; for I will have this illustrious skull bound with a silver rim, and filled with mantling wine, with this inscription, nunc TANDEM : signifying that that pernicious liquor has at length found its proper receptacle ; for, when the wine is in, the brain is out." Saying these words, he put a dollar into the hands of the sex- ton, who instantly stood spell-bound by the talismanic influence of the coin, while Mr. Escot walked off in triumph with the skull of Cadwallader. 56 HEADLONG HALL. [chap. X CHAPTER X. THE SKULL. When Mr. Escot entered the breakfast-room he found the ma- jority of the party assembled, and the little butler very active at his station. Several of the ladies shrieked at the sight of the skull ; and Miss Tenorina, starting up in great haste and terror, caused the subversion of a cup of chocolate, which a servant was handing to the Reverend Doctor Gaster, into the nape of the neck of Sir Patrick O'Prism.. Sir Patrick, rising impetuously, to clap an extinguisher, as he expressed himself, on iJie farthing rushlight of the rascal's life, pushed over the chair of Marmaduke Mile- stone, Esquire, who, catching for support at the first thing that came in his way, v/hich happened unluckily to be the corner of the table-cloth, drew it instantaneously with him to the floor, in- volving plates, cups and saucers, in one promiscuous ruin. But, as the principal materiel of the breakfast apparatus was on the little butler's side-table, the confusion occasioned by this accident was happily greater than the damage. Miss Tenorina was so agitated that she was obliged to retire : Miss Graziosa accom- panied her through pure sisterly affection and sympathy, not without a lingering look at Sir Patrick, who likewise retired to change his coat, but was very expeditious in returning to resume his attack on the cold partridge. The broken cups were cleared av.-ay, the cloth relaid, and the array of the table restored with wonderful celerity. Mr. Escot was a little surprised at the scene of confusion which signalised his entrance ; but, perfectly unconscious that it originated with the skull of Cadwallader, he advanced to seat himself at the table by the side of the beautiful Cephalis, first placing the skull in a corner, out of the reach of Mr. Cranium, who sate eyeing it with lively curiosity, and after several efforts CHAP. X.] THE SKULL. 57 to restrain his impatience, exclaimed, " You seem to have found a rarity." "A rarity indeed," said Mr. Escot, cracking an egg as he spoke ; " no less than the genuine and indubitable skull of Cad- wallader." '' The skull of Cadwallader !" vociferated Mr. Cranium : " O treasure of treasures !" Mr. Escot then detailed by what means he had become pos- sessed of it, which gave birth to various remarks from the other individuals of the party : after which, rising from table, and taking the skull again in his hand, " This skull," said he, " is the skull of a hero, iraXai Kararte- vfitcjroy,* and sufficiently demonstrates a point, concerning which I never myself entertained a doubt, that the human race is undergoing a gradual process of diminution in length, breadth, and thickness. Observe this skull. Even the skull of our rev- erend friend, which is the largest and thickest in the company, is not more than half its size. The frame this skull belonged to could scarcely have been less than nine feet high. Such is the lamentable progress of degeneracy and decay. In the course of ages, a boot of the present generation would form an ample chateau for a large family of our remote posterity. The mind, too, participates in the contraction of the body. Poets and philos- ophers of all ages and nations have lamented this too visible pro- cess of physical and moral deterioration. ' The sons of little men,' says Ossian. 'Owl wv Pporoi £.«:«»', says Homer : ' such men as live in these degenerate days.' ' All things,' says Vir- gilj'l' ' have a retrocessive tendency, and grow worse and worse by the inevitable doom of fate.' ' We live in the ninth age,' says Juvenaljij: ' an age worse than the age of iron ; nature has no metal sufficiently pernicious to give a denomination to its wicked- ness.' ' Our fathers,' says Horace, § ' worse than our grand- fathers, have given birth to us, their more vicious progeny, who, in our turn, shall become the parents of a still viler generation.' You all know the fable of the buried Pict, who bit off the end of a pickaxe, with which sacrilegious hands were breaking open his * Long since dead. t Georg. I. 199. t Sat. XIII. 28. § Carra. III. 6. 46. 68 HEADLONG HALL. [chap. x. grave, and called out with a voice like subterranean thunder, / perceive the degeneracy of your race by the smallness of your little finger ! videlicet, the pickaxe. This, to be sure, is a fiction ; but it shows the prevalent opinion, the feeling, the conviction, of abso- lute, universal, irremediable deterioration." " I should be sorry," said Mr. Foster, " that such an opinion should become universal, independently of my conviction of its fallacy. Its general admission would tend, in a great measure, to produce the very evils it appears to lament. What could be its effect, but to check the ardour of investigation, to extinguish the zeal of philanthropy, to freeze the current of enterprising hope, to bury in the torpor of scepticism and in the stagna- tion of despair, every better faculty of the human mind, which will necessarily become retrograde in ceasing to be progres- sive ?" " I am inclined to think, on the contrary," said Mr. Escot, " that the deterioration of man is accelerated by his blindness — in many respects wilful blindness — to the truth of the fact itself, and to the causes which produce it ; that there is no hope what- ever of ameliorating his condition but in a total and radical change of the whole scheme of human life, and that the advocates of his indefinite perfectibility are in reality the greatest enemies to the practical possibility of their own system, by so strenuously labouring to impress on his attention that he is going on in a good way, while he is really in a deplorably bad one." " I admit," said Mr. Foster, " there are many things that may, and therefore will, be changed for the better." " Not on the present system," said Mr. Escot, " in which every change is for the worse." '' In matters of taste I am sure it is," said Mr. Gall : "there is, in fact, no such thing as good taste left in the world." " O, Mr. Gall !" said Miss Philomela Poppyseed, " I thought my novel " " My paintings," said Sir Patrick O'Prism " My ode," said Mr. Mac Laurel " My ballad," said Mr. Nightshade- " My plan for Lord Littlebrain's park," said Marmaduke Mile- stone, Esquire " My essay," said Mr. Treacle CHAP. X.] THE SKULL. 59 " My sonata," said Mr. Chromatic " My claret," said Squire Headlong " My lectures," said Mr. Cranium- " Vanity of vanities," said the Reverend Doctor Gaster, turn- ing down an empty egg-shell ; "all is vanity and vexation of spirit." CO HEADLONG HALL. [chap, m, I CHAPTER XL THE ANNIVERSARY. Among the dies alba cretd notandos, which the beau monde of the Cambrian mountains was in the habit of remembering with the greatest pleasure, and anticipating with the most lively satisfac- tion, was the Christmas ball which the ancient family of the Headlongs had been accustomed to give from time immemorial. Tradition attributed the honour of its foundation to Headlong Ap- Headlong Ap-Breakneck Ap-Headlong Ap-Cataract Ap-Pistyll* Ap-Rhaidr Ap-Headlong, who lived about the time of the Trojan war. Certain it is, at least, that a grand chorus was always sung after supper in honour of this illustrious ancestor of the squire. This ball was, indeed, an era in the lives of all the beauty and fashion of Caernarvon, Meirionnydd, and Anglesea, and, like the Greek Olympiads and the Roman consulates, served as the main pillar of memory, round which all the events of the year were suspended and entwined. Thus, in recalling to mind any circumstance imperfectly recollected, the principal point to be ascertained was, whether it had occurred in the year of the first, second, third, or fourth ball of Headlong Ap-Breakneck, or Headlong Ap-Torrent, or Headlong Ap-Hurricane ; and, this be- ing satisfactorily established, the remainder followed of course in the natural order of its ancient association. This eventful anniversary being arrived, every chariot, coach, barouche, and barouchette, landau and landaulet, chaise, curricle, buggy, whiskey, and tilbury, of the three counties, was in motion : not a horse was left idle within five miles of any gentleman's seat, from the high-mettled hunter to the heath-cropping galloway. The ferrymen of the Menai were at their stations before day- break, taking a double allowance of rum and cwrw to strengthen * Pistyll, in Welch, signifies a cataract, and Rhaidr a cascade CHAP. XI.] THE ANNIVERSARY. 61 them for the fatigues of the day. The ivied towers of Caernar- von, the romantic woods of Tan-y-bwlcli, the heathy hills of Ker- nioggau, the sandy shores of Tremadoc, the mountain recesses of Bedd-Gelert, and the lonely lakes of Capel-Cerig, re-echoed to the voices of the delighted ostlers and postillions, who reaped on this happy day their wintry harvest. Landlords and landladies, waiters, chambermaids, and toll-gate keepers, roused themselves from the torpidity which the last solitary tourist, flying with the yellow leaves on the wings of the autumnal wind, had left them to enjoy till the returning spring : the bustle of August was re- newed on all the mountain roads, and, in the meanwhile. Squire Headlong and his little fat butler carried most energetically into effect the lessons of the savant in the Court of Quintessence, qui par engin mirijicque jectoit les maisons par les fenestres .^^ It was the custom for the guests to assemble at dinner on the day of the ball, and depart on the following morning after break- fast. Sleep during this interval was out of the question : the ancient harp of Cambria suspended the celebration of the noble race of Shenkin, and the songs of Hoel and Cyveilioc, to ring to the profaner but more lively modulation of Vaulez vous danser, Mademoiselle ? in conjunction with the symphonious scraping of fiddles, the tinkling of triangles, and the beating of tambourines. Comus and Momus were the deities of the night ; and Bacchus of course was not forgotten by the male part of the assembly (with them, indeed, a ball was invariably a scene of " tipsy dance and jollity^ ^) : the servants flew about with wine and negus, and the little butler was indefatigable with his cork-screw, which is reported on one occasion to have grown so hot under the influence of perpetual friction that it actually set fire to the cork. The company assembled. The dinner, which on this occasion was a secondary object, was despatched with uncommon celerity. When the cloth was removed, and the bottle had taken its first round, Mr. Cranium stood up and addressed the company. " Ladies and gentlemen," said he, " the golden key of mental pheenomena, which has lain buried for ages in the deepest vein of the mine of physiological research, is now, by a happy combi- nation of practical and speculative investigations, grasped, if I * Rabelais. 62 HEADLONG HALL. [chap. xi. may so express myself, firmly and inexcussibly, in the hands of physiognomical empiricism." The Cambrian visitors listened with profound attention, not comprehending a single syllable he said, but concluding he would finish his speech by proposing the health of Squire Headlong. The gentlemen accordingly tossed off their heeltaps, and Mr. Cranium proceeded : " Ardently de- sirous, to the extent of my feeble capacity, of disseminating, as much as possible, the inexhaustible treasures to which this golden key admits the humblest votary of pjiilosophical truth, I invite you, when you have sufHciently restored, replenished, refreshed, and exhilarated that osteosarchsematosplanchnochondroneuromuel- ous, or to employ a more intelligible term, osseocarnisanguineo- viscericartilaginonervomedullary, compages, or shell, the body, which at once envelopes and developes that mysterious and inesti- mable kernel, the desiderative, determinative, ratiocinative, imagi- native, inquisitive, appetitive, comparative, reminiscent, congeries of ideas and notions, simple and compound, comprised in the com- prehensive denomination of mind, to take a peep with me into the mechanical arcana of the anatomico-metaphysical universe. Being not in the least dubitative of your spontaneous compliance, I proceed," added he, suddenly changing his tone, " to get every thing ready in the library." Saying these words, he vanished. The Welsh squires now imagined they had caught a glimpse of his meaning, and set him down in their minds for a sort of gentleman conjuror, who intended to amuse them before the ball with some tricks of legerdemain. Under this impression, they became very impatient to follow him, as they had made up their minds not to be drunk before supper. The ladies, too, were extreme- ly curious to witness an exhibition which had been announced in so singular a preamble ; and the squire, having previously insisted on every gentleman tossing ofT a half-pint bumper, adjourned the whole party to the library, where they were not a little surprised to discover Mr. Cranium seated, in a pensive attitude, at a large table, decorated with a copious variety of skulls. Some of the ladies were so much shocked at this extraordinary display, that a scene of great confusion ensued. Fans were very actively exercised, and water was strenuously called for by some of the most officious of the gentlemen ; on which the little butler entered with a large allowance of liquid, which bore, indeed, the CHAP, xi.] THE ANNIVERSARY. C3 name of water, but was in reality a very powerful spirit. This Avas the only species of water which the little butler had ever heard called for in Headlong Hall. The mistake was not at- tended with any evil efTecis : for the fluid was no sooner applied to the lips of the fainting fair ones, than it resuscitated them with an expedition truly miraculous. Order was at length restored ; the audience took their seats ; and the craniological orator held forth in the following terms : — 64 HEADLONG HALL. CHAPTER XII. THE LECTURE. *' Physiologists have been much puzzled to account for the varieties of moral character in men, as well as for the remarka- ble similarity of habit and disposition in all the individual animals of every other respective species. A few brief sentences, per- spicuously worded, and scientifically arranged, will enumerate all the characteristics of a lion, or a tiger, or a wolf, or a bear, or a squirrel, or a goat, or a horse, or an ass, or a rat, or a cat, or a hog, or a dog ; and whatever is physiologically predicated of any individual lion, tiger, wolf, bear, squirrel, goat, horse, ass, hog, or dog, will be found to hold ti'ue of all lions, tigers, wolves, bears, squirrels, goats, horses, asses, hogs, and dogs, whatsoever. Now, in man, the very reverse of this appears to be the case ; for he has so few distinct and characteristic marks which hold true of all his species, that philosophers in all ages have found it a task of infinite difficulty to give him a definition. Hence one has defined him to be a featherless Mped, a definition Avhich is equally applicable to an unfledged fowl : another, to be an ani- mal which forms opiniojis, than which nothing can be more inac- curate, for a very small number of the species form opinions, and the remainder take them upon trust, without investigation or inquiry. " Again, man has been defined to be an animal that carries a stick : an attribute which undoubtedly belongs to man only, but not to all men always ; though it uniformly characterises some of the graver and more imposing varieties, such as physicians, oran-outangs, and lords in waiting. " We cannot define man to be a reasoning animal, for we do not dispute that idiots are men ; to say nothing of that very nu- merous description of persons who consider themselves reasoning animals, and are so denominated by the ironical courtesy of the THE LECTURE. 65 world, who labour, nevertheless, under a very gross delusion in that essential particular. •' It appears to me, that man may be correctly defined an ani- mal, which, without any peculiar or distinguishing faculty of its own, is, as it were, a bundle or compound of faculties of other animals, by a distinct enumeration of which any individual of the species may be satisfactorily described. This is manifest, even in the ordinary language of conversation, when, in summing up, for example, the qualities of an accomplished courtier, we say he has the vanity of a peacock, the cunning of a fox, the treachery of an hyasna, the cold-heartedness of a cat, and the servility of a jackall. That this is perfectly consentaneous to scientific truth, will appear in the further progress of these observations. " Every particular faculty of the mind has its corresponding organ in the brain. In proportion as any particular faculty or propensity acquires paramount activity in any individual, these organs develope themselves, and their developement becomes ex- ternally obvious by corresponding lumps and bumps, exuberances and protuberances, on the osseous compages of the occiput and sinciput. In all animals but man, the same organ is equally de- veloped in every individual of the species : for instance, that of migration in the swallow, that of destruction in the tiger, that of architecture in the beaver, and that of parental affection in the bear. The human brain, however, consists, as I have said, of a bundle or compound of all the faculties of all other animals ; and from the greater developement of one or more of these, in the infinite varieties of combination, result all the peculiarities of individual character. " Here is the skull of a beaver, and that of Sir Christopher Wren. You observe, in both these specimens, the prodigious de- velopement of the organ of constructiveness. " Here is the skull of a bullfinch, and that of an eminent fiddler. You may compare the organ of music. " Here is the skull of a tiger. You observe the organ of car- nage. Here is the skull of a fox. You observe the organ of plunder. Here is the skull of a peacock. You observe the or- gan of vanity. Here is the skull of an illustrious robber, who, after a long and triumphant process of depredation and murder, was suddenly checked in his career by means of a certain quali- 6 66 HEADLONG HALL. [chap. xii. ty inherent in preparations of hemp, which, for the sake of per- spicuity, I shall call suspensiveness. Here is the skull of a con- queror, who, after over-running several kingdoms, burning a number of cities, and causing the deaths of two or three millions of men, women, and children, was entombed with all the pagean- try of public lamentation, and figured as the hero of several thou- sand odes and a round dozen of epics ; while the poor highway- man was twice executed — " At the gallows first, and after in a ballad, Sung to a villanous tune." You observe, in both these skulls, the combined developement of the organs of carnage, plunder, and vanity, which I have sepa- rately pointed out in the tiger, the fox, and the peacock. The greater enlargement of the organ of vanity in the hero is the only criterion by which I can distinguish them from each other. Born with the same faculties, and the same propensities, these two men were formed by nature to run the same career : the different com- binations of external circumstances decided the differences of their destinies. " Here is the skull of a Newfoundland dog. You observe the organ of benevolence, and that of attachment. Here is a human skull, in which you may observe a very striking negation of both these organs ; and an equally striking developement of those of destruction, cunning, avarice, and self-love. This was one of the most illustrious statesmen that ever flourished in the page of history. " Here is the skull of a turnspit, which, after a wretched life of dirty work, was turned out of doors to die on a dunghill. I have been induced to preserve it, in consequence of its remark- able similarity to this, which belonged to a courtly poet, who having grown grey in flattering the great, was cast off in the same manner to perish by the same catastrophe." After these, and several other illustrations, during which the skulls were handed round for the inspection of the company, Mr. Cranium proceeded thus : — " It is obvious, from what I have said, that no man can hope for worldly honour or advancement, who is not placed in such a relation to external circumstances as may be consentaneous to his peculiar cerebral organs ; and I would advise every parent, who CHAP, xii.] THE LECTURE. 67 has the welfare of his son at heart, to procure as extensive a col- lection as possible of the skulls of animals, and, before determin- ing on the choice of a profession, to compare with the utmost nicety their bumps and protuberances with those of the skull of his son. If the developement of the organ of destruction point out a similiarity between the youth and the tiger, let him be brought to some profession (whether that of a butcher, a soldier, or a physician, may be regulated by circumstances) in which he may be furnished with a licence to kill : as, without such licence, the indulgence of his natural propensity may lead to the untimely rescission of his vital thread, ' with edge of penny cord and vile re- proach.' If he show an analogy with the jackal, let all possible influence be used to procure him a place at court, where he will infallibly thrive. If his skull bear a marked resemblance to that of a magpie, it cannot be doubted that he will prove an admirable lawyer ; and if with this advantageous conformation be combined any similitude to that of an owl, very confident hopes may be formed of his becoming a judge." A furious flourish of music was now heard from the ball-room, the squire having secretly despatched the little butler to order it to strike up, by way of a hint to Mr. Cranium to finish his har- angue. The company took the hint and adjourned tumultuously, having just understood as much of the lecture as furnished them with amusement for the ensuing twelvemonth, in feeling the skulls of all their acquaintance. 68 HEADLONG HALL. [chap. xiii. CHAPTER XIII. THE BALL. The ball-room \yas adorned with great taste and elegance, under the direction of Miss Caprioletta and her friend Miss Ce- phalis, who were themselves its most beautiful ornaments, even though romantic Meirion, the pre-eminent in loveliness, sent many of its loveliest daughters to grace the festive scene. Numberless were the solicitations of the dazzled swains of Cambria for the honour of the two first dances with the one or the other of these fascinating friends ; but little availed, on this occasion, the pedi- gree lineally traced from Caractacus or King Arthur: their two philosophical lovers, neither of whom could have given the least account of his great-great-grandfather, had engaged them many days before. Mr. Panscope chafed and fretted like Llugwy in his bed of rocks, when the object of his adoration stood up with his rival : but he consoled himself with a lively damsel from the vale of Edeirnion, having first compelled Miss Cephalis to promise him her hand for the fourth set. The ball was accordingly opened by Miss Caprioletta and Mr. Foster, which gave rise to much speculation among the Welsh gentry, as to who this Mr. Foster could be ; some of the more learned among them secretly resolving to investigate most pro- foundly the antiquity of the name of Foster, and ascertain what right a person so denominated could have to open the most illus- trious of all possible balls with the lovely Caprioletta Headlong, the only sister of Harry Headlong, Esquire, of Headlong Hall, in the Vale of Llanberris, the only surviving male representative of the antediluvian family of Headlong Ap-Rhaiader. When the two first dances were ended, Mr. Escot, who did not choose to dance with any one but his adorable Cephalis, looking round for a convenient seat, discovered Mr. Jenkison in a corner by the side of the Reverend Doctor Gaster, who was keeping THE BALL. excellent time with his nose to the lively melody of the harp and fiddle. Mr. Escot seated himself by the side of Mr. Jenkison, and inquired if he took no part in the amusement of the night ? MR. JENKISON. No. The universal cheerfulness of the company induces me to rise : the trouble of sucJi violent exercise induces me to sit still. Did I see a young lady in want of a partner, gallantry would incite me to offer myself as her devoted knight for half an hour : but as I perceive there are enough without me, that motive is null. I have been v/eighing these points pro and con, and remain in statu quo. MR. ESCOT. I have danced contrary to my system, as I have done many other things since I have been here, from a motive that you will easily guess. (Mr. Jenkison smiled.) I have great objections to dancing. The wild and original man is a calm and contempla- tive animal. The stings of natural appetite alone rouse him to action. He satisfies his hunger with roots and fruits, unvitiated by the malignant adhibition of fire, and all its diabolical processes of elixion and assation : he slakes his thirst in the mountain- stream, (rvjJiiKiycrai ry cinTvxovji;!^ and rctums to his pcaccful statc of meditative repose. MR. JENKISON. Like the metaphysical statue of Condillac. MR. ESCOT. With all its senses and purely natural faculties developed, cer- tainly. Imagine this tranquil and passionless being, occupied in his first meditation on the simple question of Where am I? Whence do I come ? And what is the end of my existence ? Then sud- denly place before him a chandelier, a fiddler, and a magnificent beau in silk stockings and pumps, bounding, skipping, swinging, capering, and throwing himself into ten thousand attitudes, till his face glows with fever, and distils with perspiration : the first im- pulse excited in his mind by such an apparition will be that of violent fear, which, by the reiterated perception of its harmless- ness, will subside into simple astonishment. Then let any genius, sufficiently powerful to impress on his mind all the terms of the communication, impart to him, that after a long process of ages, 70 HEADLONG HALL. [chap. xiu. when his race shall have attained what some people think proper to denominate a very advanced stage of perfectibility, the most favoured and distinguished of the community shall meet by hun- dreds, to grin, and labour, and gesticulate, like the phantasma, before him, from sunset to sunrise, while all nature is at rest, and that they shall consider this a happy and pleasurable mode of exist- ence, and furnishing the most delightful of all possible contrasts to what they will call his vegetative state : would he not groan from his inmost soul for the lamentable condition of his posterity ? MR. JENKISON. I know not what your wild and original man might think of the matter in the abstract ; but comparatively, I conceive, he would be better pleased with the vision of such a scene as this, than with that of a party of Indians (who would have all the ad- vantage of being nearly as wild as himself), dancing their infer- nal war-dance round a midnight fire in a North American forest. MR. ESCOT. Not if you should impart to him the true nature of both, by laying open to his view the springs of action in both parties. MR. JENKISON. To do this with effect, you must make him a profound meta- physician, and thus transfer him at once from his wild and origi- nal state to a very advanced stage of intellectual progression ; whether that progression be towards good or evil, I leave you and our friend Foster to settle between you. MR. ESCOT. I wish to make no change in his habits and feelings, but to give him, hypothetically, so much mental illumination, as will enable him to take a clear view of two distinct stages of the deterioration of his posterity, that he may be enabled to compare them with each other, and with his own more happy condition. The Indian, dancing round the midnight fire, is very far deteriorated ; but the magnificent beau, dancing to the light of chandeliers, is infinitely more so. The Indian is a hunter : he makes great use of fire, and subsists almost entirely on animal food. Th© malevolent passions that spring from these pernicious habits involve him in perpetual war. He is, therefore, necessitated, for his own pres- CHAP. XIII.] THE BALL. 71 ervation, to keep all the energies of his nature in constant ac- tivity : to this end his midnight war.dance is very powerfully sub- servient, and, though in itself a frightful spectacle, is at least justifiable on the iron plea of necessity. MR. JENKISON. On the same iron plea, the modern system of dancing is more justifiable. The Indian dances to prepare himself for killing his enemy : but while the beaux and belles of our assemblies dance, they are in the very act of killing theirs — time ! — a more invete- rate and formidable foe than any the Indian has to contend with ; for, however completely and ingeniously killed, he is sure to rise again, " with twenty mortal murders on his crown," leading his army of blue devils, with ennui in the van, and vapours in the rear. MR. ESCOT. Your observation militates on my side of the question ; and it is a strong argument in favour of the Indian, that he has no such enemy to kill. MR. JENKISON. There is certainly a great deal to be said against dancing : there is also a great deal to be said in its favour. The first side of the question I leave for the present to you : on the latter, I may venture to allege that no amusement seems more natural and more congenial to youth than this. It has the advantage of bring- ing young persons of both sexes together, in a manner which its publicity renders perfectly unexceptionable, enabling them to see and know each other better than, perhaps, any other mode of general association. Tete-d-tetes are dangerous things. Small family parties are too much under mutual observation. A ball- room appears to me almost the only scene uniting that degree of rational and innocent liberty of intercourse, which it is desirable to promote as much as possible between young persons, with that scrupulous attention to the delicacy and propriety of female con- duct, which I consider the fundamental basis of all our most valu- able social relations. MR. ESCOT. There would be some plausibility in your argument, if it were not the very essence of this species of intercourse to exhibit them 72 HEADLONG HALL. [chap, xm, to each other under false colours. Here all is show, and varnish, and hypocrisy, and coquetry ; they dress up their moral charac- ter for the evening at the same toilet where they manufacture their shapes and faces. Ill-temper lies buried under a studied accumulation of smiles. Envy, hatred, and malice, retreat from the countenance, to entrench themselves more deeply in the heart. Treachery lurks under the flowers of courtesy. Ignorance and folly take refuge in that unmeaning gabble which it would be profanation to call language, and which even those whom long experience in " the dreary intercourse of daily life " has screwed up to such a pitch of stoical endurance that they can listen to it by the hour, have branded with the ignominious appellation of " small talk.'' Small indeed ! — the absolute minimum of the in- finitely little. MR. JENKISON. Go on. I have said all I intended to say on the favourable side. I shall have great pleasure in hearing you balance the ar- gument. MR. ESCOT. I expect you to confess that I shall have more than balanced it. A ball-room is an epitome of all that is most worthless and unamiable in the great sphere of human life. Every petty and malignant passion is called into play. Coquetry is perpetually on the alert to captivate, caprice to mortify, and vanity to take offence. One amiable female is rendered miserable for the even- ing by seeing another, whom she intended to outshine, in a more attractive dress than her own ; vrhile the other omits no method of giving stings to her triumph, which she enjoys with all the se- cret arrogance of an oriental sultana. Another is compelled to dance with a monster she abhors. A third has set her heart on dancing with a particular partner, perhaps for the amiable mo- tive of annoying one of her dear friends : not only he does not ask her, but she sees him dancing with that identical dear friend, whom from that moment she hates more cordially than ever. Perhaps, what is worse than all, she has set her heart on refusing some impertinent fop, who does not give her the opportunity. — As to the men, the case is very nearly the same with them. To be sure, they have the privilege of making the first advances, and CHAP. XIII.] THE BALL. 73 are, therefore, less liable to have an odious partner forced upon them ; though this sometimes happens, as I know by woful expe- rience : but it is seldom they can procure the very partner they prefer ; and when they do, the absurd necessity of changing every two dances forces them away, and leaves them only the miserable alternative of taking up with something disagreeable perhaps in itself, and at all events rendered so by contrast, or of retreating into some solitary corner, to vent their spleen on the first idle coxcomb they can find. MR. JENKISON. I hope that is not the motive which brings you to me, MR. ESCOT. Clearly not. But the most afflicting consideration of all is, that these malignant and miserable feelings are masked under that uniform disguise of pretended benevolence, that jine and deli- cate irony, called jpoliteness, which gives so much ease and pli- ability to the mutual intercourse of civilised man, and enahles him to assume the appearance of every virtue, without the reality of one* The second set of dances was now terminated, and Mr. Escot flew oflfto reclaim the hand of the beautiful Cephalis, with whom he figured away with surprising alacrity, and probably felt at least as happy among the chandeliers and silk stockings, at which he had just been railing, as he would have been in an American forest, making one in an Indian ring, by the light of a blazing fire, even though his hand had been locked in that of the most beauti- ful squaw that ever listened to the roar of Niagara. Squire Headlong was now beset by his maiden aunt, Miss Brindle-mew Grimalkin Phoebe Tabitha Ap-Headlong, on one side, and Sir Patrick O'Prism on the other ; the former insisting that he should immediately procure her a partner; the latter earnestly requesting the same interference in behalf of Miss Philomela Poppyseed. The squire thought to emancipate him- self from his two petitioners by making them dance with each other ; but Sir Patrick vehemently pleading a prior engagement, * Rousseaa, Discours sur les Sciences. 74 HEADLONG HALL. [chap. xiii. the squire threw his eyes around till they alighted on Mr. Jenki- son and the Reverend Doctor Gaster ; both of whom, after wa- king the latter, he pressed into the service. The doctor, arising with a strange kind of guttural sound, which was half a yawn and half a groan, was handed by the officious squire to Miss Philomela, who received him with sullen dignity : she had not yet forgotten his falling asleep during the first chapter of her novel, while she was condescending to detail to him the outlines of four superlative volumes. The doctor, on his part, had most com- pletely forgotten it ; and though he thought there was something in her physiognomy rather more forbidding than usual, he gave himself no concern about the cause, and had not the least suspi- cion that it was at all connected with himself. Miss Brindle- mew was very well contented with Mr. Jenkinson, and gave him two or three ogles, accompanied by a most risible distortion of the countenance which she intended for a captivating smile. As to Mr. Jenkison, it was all one to him with whom he danced, or whether he danced or not : he was therefore just as well pleased as if he had been left alone in his corner ; which is probably more than could have been said of any other human being under similar circumstances. At the end of the third set, supper was announced ; and the party, pairing off like turtles, adjourned to the supper-room. The squire was now the happiest of mortal men, and the little butler the most laborious. The centre of the largest table was decorated with a model of Snowdon, surmounted with an enormous artificial leek, the leaves of angelica, and the bulb of blanc-mange. A little way from the summit was a tarn, or mountain-pool, supplied through concealed tubes with an inexhaustible flow of milk- punch, which, dashing in cascades down the miniature rocks, fell into the more capacious lake below, washing the mimic founda- tions of Headlong Hall. The reverend doctor handed Miss Phi- lomela to the chair most conveniently situated for enjoying this interesting scene, protesting he had never before been sufficiently impressed with the magnificence of that mountain, which he now perceived to be well worthy of all the fame it had obtained. " Now, when they had eaten and were satisfied," Squire Head- long called on Mr. Chromatic for a song ; who, with the assist- CHAP, xiil] the ball. 75 ance of his two accomplished daughters, regaled the ears of the company with the following TERZETTO* Grey Twilight, from her shadowy hill, Discolours Nature's vernal bloom, And slieds on grove, and field, and rill, One placid tint of deepening gloom. The sailor sighs 'mid shoreless seas, Touched by the thought of friends afar, As, fanned by ocean's flowing breeze. He gazes on the western star. The wanderer hears, in pensive dream. The accents of the last farewell, As, pausing by the mountain stream. He listens to the evening bell. This terzetto was of course much applauded ; Mr. Milestone observing, that he thought the figure in the last verse would have been more picturesque, if it had been represented with its arms folded and its back against a tree ; or leaning on its staff, with a cockle-shell in its hat, like a pilgrim of ancient times. Mr. Chromatic professed himself astonished that a gentleman of genuine modern taste, like Mr. Milestone, should consider the words of a song of any consequence whatever, seeing that they were at the best only a species of pegs, for the more convenient suspension of crochets and quavers. This remark drew on him a very severe reprimand from Mr. Mac Laurel, who said to him, " Dinna ye ken, sir, that soond is a thing utterly worthless in it- sel, and only effectual in agreeable excitements, as far as it is an aicho to sense ? Is there ony soond mair meeserable an' peetifu' than the scrape o' a feddle, when it does na touch ony chord i' the human sensorium ? Is there ony mair divine than the deep note o' a bagpipe, when it breathes the auncient meelodies o' leeberty an' love ? It is true, there are peculiar trains o' feeling an' sentiment, which parteecular combinations o' meelody are calculated to excite ; an' sae far music can produce its effect without words : but it does i^ follow, that, when ye put words to * Imitated from a passage in the Purgatorio of Dante. 76 HEADLONG HALL. [chap. xiu. it, it becomes a matter of indefference what they are ; for a gude strain of impassioned poetry will greatly increase the effect, and a tessue o' nonsensical doggrel will destroy it a' thegither. Noo, as gude poetry can produce its effect without music, sae will gude music without poetry ; and as gude music will be mair pooerfu' by itsel' than wi' bad poetry, sae will gude poetry than wi' bad music : but, when ye put gude music an' gude poetry thegither, ye produce the divinest compound o' sentimental har- mony that can possibly find its way through the lug to the saul." Mr. Chromatic admitted that there was much justice in these observations, but still maintained the subserviency of poetry to music. Mr. Mac Laurel as strenuously maintained the con- trary ; and a furious war of words was proceeding to perilous lengths, when the squire interposed his authority towards the re- production of peace, which was forthwith concluded, and all ani- mosities drowned in a libation of milk-punch, the Reverend Doc- tor Gaster officiating as high priest on the occasion. Mr. Chromatic now requested Miss Caprioletta to favour the company with an air. The young lady immediately complied, and sung the following simple BALLAD. " O Mary, my sister, thy sorrow give o'er, I soon shall return, girl, and leave thee no more : But with children so fair, and a husband so kind, I shall feel less regret when I leave thee behind. " I have made thee a bench for the door of thy cot, And more would I give thee, but more I have not : Sit and think of me there, in the warm summer day, And give me three kisses, my labour to pay." She gave him three kisses, and forth did he fare, And long did he wander, and no one knew where ; And long from her cottage, through sunshine and rain, She watched liis return, but he came not again Her children grew up, and her husband grew grey ; She sate on the bench through the long sunomer day, One evening, when twilight was deep on the shore. There came an old soldier, and stood by the door. In English he spoke, and none knew what he said. But her oatcake and milk on the table she spread ; CHAP, xin.] THE BALL. 77 Then he sate to his supper, and blithely he sung, And she knew the dear sounds of her own native tongue : " O rich are the feasts in the Englishman's hall, And the wine sparkles bright in the goblets of Gaul : But their mingled attractions I well could withsand. For the milk and the oatcake of Meirion's dear land." " And art thou a Welchman, old soldier?" she cried. " Many years have I wandered," the stranger replied : " 'Twixt Danube and Thames many rivers there be. But the bright waves of Cynfael are fairest to me. " I felled the grey oak, ere I hastened to roam, And I fashioned a bench for tli« door of my home ; And well my dear sister my labour repaid. Who gave me three kisses when first it was made. *' In the old English soldier thy brother appears : Here is gold in abundance, the saving of years : Give me oatcake and milk in return for my store, And a seat by thy side on the bench at the door." Various other songs succeeded, which, as we are not compo- sing a song book, we shall lay aside for the present. An old squire, who had not missed one of these anniversaries, during more than half a century, now stood up, and filling a half- pint bumper, pronounced, with a stentorian voice — " To the im- mortal memory of Headlong Ap-Rhaiader, and to the health of his noble descendant and worthy representative !" This exam- ple was followed by all the gentlemen present. The harp struck up a triumphal strain ; and, the old squire already mentioned vociferating the first stave, they sang,- or rather roared, the fol- lowing CHORUS. Hail to the Headlong ! the Headlong Ap-Headlong ! All hail to the Headlong, the Headlong Ap-Headlong ! The Headlong Ap-Headlong Ap-Breakneck Ap-Headlong Ap-Cataract Ap-Pistyll Ap-Rhaiader Ap-Headlong ! The bright bowl we steep in the name of the Headlong : Let the youtlis pledge it deep to the Headlong Ap-Headlong, And the rosy-lipped lasses Touch the brim as it passes. And kiss the red tide for the Headlong Ap-Headlong I 78 HEADLONG HALL. [chap. xin. The loud harp resounds in the hall of the Headlong: The light step rebounds in the hall of the Headlong : Where shall music invite us, Or beauty delight us, If not in the hall of the Headlong Ap-Headlong? Huzza ! to the health of the Headlong Ap-Headlong I Fill the bowl, fill in floods, to the health of the Headlong ! Till the stream ruby -glowing, On all sides o'erflowmg, Shall fall in cascades to the health of the Headlong ! The Headlong Ap-Headlong Ap-Breakneck Ap-Headlong Ap-Cataract Ap-Pistyll Ap-Rhaider Ap-Headlong ! Squire Headlong returned thanks with an appropriate libation, and the company re-adjourned to the ball-room, where they kept it up till sun-rise, when the little butler summoned them to break- fast. CHAP. XIV.] THE PROPOSALS. 79 CHAPTER XIV. THE PROPOSALS. The chorus, which celebrated the antiquity of her lineage, had been ringing all night in the ears of Miss Brindle-mew Grimalkin Phcebe Tabitha Ap-Headlong, when, taking the squire aside, while the visitors were sipping their tea and coffee, " Nephew Harry," said she, " I have been noting your behaviour, during the several stages of the ball and supper ; and, though I cannot tax you with any want of gallantry, for you are a very gallant young man, nephew Harry, very gallant — I wish I could say as much for every one" (added she, throwing a spiteful look towards a distant corner, where Mr. Jenkison was sitting with great non- chalance, and at the moment dipping a rusk in a cup of choco- late) ; " but I lament to perceive that you were at least as pleased with your lakes of milk-punch, and your bottles of Champagne and Burgundy, as with any of your delightful partners. Now, though I can readily excuse this degree of incombustibility in the descendant of a family so remarkable in all ages for personal beauty as ours, yet I lament it exceedingly, when I consider that, in conjunction with your present predilection for the easy life of a bachelor, it may possibly prove the means of causing our ancient genealogical tree, which has its roots, if I may so speak, in the foundations of the world, to terminate suddenly in a point : unless you feel yourself moved by my exhortations to follow the example of all your ancestors, by choosing yourself a fitting and suitable helpmate to immortalise the pedigree of Headlong Ap- Rhaiader." " Egad !" said Squire Headlong, " that is very true. I'll marry directly. A good opportunity to fix on some one, now they are all here ; and I'll pop the question without further cere- mony." 80 HEADLONG HALL. [chap, xiv " What think you/' said the old lady, " of Miss Nanny Glyn- Du, the lineal descendant of Llewelyn Ap-Yorvverth ?" " She won't do," said Squire Headlong. " What say you, then," said the lady, " to Miss Williams, of Pontyglasrhydyrallt, the descendant of the ancient family of ?" " 1 don't like her," said Squire Headlong ; " and as to her ancient family, that is a matter of no consequence. I have an- tiquity enough for two. They are all moderns, people of yester- day, in comparison with us. What signify six or seven centuries, which are the most they can make up ?" " Why, to be sure," said the aunt, " on that view of the ques- tion, it is of no consequence. What think you, then, of Miss Owen, of Nidd-y-Gygfraen ? She will have six thousand a year." " I would not have her," said Squire Headlong, " if she had fifty. I'll think of somebody presently. I should like to be mar- ried on the same day with Caprioletta." " Caprioletta !" said Miss Brindle-mew ; " without my being consulted !" " Consulted !" said the squire : " I v/as commissioned to tell you, but somehow or other I let it slip. However, she is going to be m^arried to my friend Mr. Foster, the philosopher." " Oh !" said the maiden aunt, " that a daughter of our ancient family should marry a philosopher ! It is enough to make the bones of all the Ap-Rhaiaders turn in their graves !" "I happen to be more enlightened," said Squire Headlong, " than any of my ancestors were. Besides, it is Caprioletta's af- fair, not mine. I tell you, the matter is settled, fixed, deter- mined ; and so am I, to be married on the same day. I don't know, now I think of it, whom I can choose better than one of the daughters of my friend Chromatic." " A Saxon !" said the aunt, turning up her nose, and was com- mencing a vehement remonstrance ; but the squire, exclaiming " Music has charms !" flew over to Mr. Chromatic, and, with a hearty slap on the shoulder, asked him " how he should like him for a son-in-law ?'' Mr. Chromatic, rubbing his shoulder, and highly delighted with the proposal, answered, " Very much in- deed :" but, proceeding to ascertain which of his daughters had captivated the squire, the squire demurred, and was unable to satisfy his curiosity. " I hope," said Mr. Chromatic, " it may be CHAP. XIV.] THE PROPOSALS. 81 Tenorina ; for I imagine Graziosa has conceived a penchant for Sir Patrick O'Prism." — " Tenorina, exactly," said Squire Head- long ; and became so impatient to bring the matter to a conclusion, that Mr. Chromatic undertook to communicate with his daughter immediately. The young lady proved to be as ready as the squire, and the preliminaries were arranged in little more than five minutes. Mr. Chromatic's words, that he imagined his daughter Grazi- osa had conceived a penchant for Sir Patrick O'Prism, were not lost on the squire, who at once determined to have as many com- panions in the scrape as possible, and who, as soon as he could tear himself from Mrs. Headlong elect, took three flying bounds across the room to the baronet, and said, " So, Sir Patrick, I find you and I are going to be married ?" " Are we ?" said Sir Patrick : " then sure won't I wish you joy, and myself too ? for this is the first I have heard of it." " Well," said Squire Headlong, " I have made up my mind to it, and you must not disappoint me." " To be sure I won't, if I can help it," said Sir Patrick ; " and I am very much obliged to you for taking so much trouble off my hands. And pray, now, who is it that I am to be metamorphosing into Lady OTrism ?" " Miss Graziosa Chromatic," said the squire. " Och violet and vermilion !" said Sir Patrick ; " though I never thought of it before, I dare say she will suit me as well as another : but then you must persuade the ould Orpheus to draw out a few notes of rather a more magigal description than those he is so fond of scraping on his crazy violin." " To be sure he shall," said the squire ; and, immediately re- turning to Mr. Chromatic, concluded the negotiation for Sir Pat- rick as expeditiously as he had done for himself. The squire next addressed himself to Mr. Escot : " Here are three couple of us going to throw oflT together, with the Reverend Doctor Gaster for whipper-in : now, I think you cannot do better than make the fourth with Miss Cephalis ; and then, as my father-in-law that is to be would say, we shall compose a very harmonious octave." " Indeed," said Mr. Escot, " nothing would be more agreeable to both of us than such an arrangement : but the old gentleman, 7 HEADLONG HALL. [chap. xiv. since I first knew him, has changed, like the rest of the world, very lamentably for the worse : now, we wish to bring him to reason, if possible, though we mean to dispense with his consent, if he should prove much longer refractory." " I'll settle him," said Squire Headlong ; and immediately posted up to Mr. Cranium, informing him that four marriages were about to take place by way of a merry winding up of the Christmas festivities. " Indeed !" said Mr. Cranium ; " and who are the parties ?" " In the first place," said the squire, " my sister and Mr. Fos- ter : in the second. Miss Graziosa Chromatic and Sir Patrick O'Prism : in the third. Miss Tenorina Chromatic and your humble servant : and in the fourth — to v/hich, by the by, your consent is wanted " " Oho !" said Mr. Cranium. " Your daughter," said Squire Headlong. "And Mr. Panscope?" said Mr. Cranium. " And Mr. Escot," said Squire Headlong. " What would you have better ? He has ten thousand virtues." " So has Mr. Panscope," said Mr. Cranium ; " he has ten thou- sand a year." " Virtues ?" said Squire Headlong. "Pounds," said Mr. Cranium. " I have set my mind on Mr. Escot," said the squire. " I am much obliged to you," said Mr. Cranium, " for dethron- ing me from my paternal authority." " . "Who fished you out of the water?" said Squire Headlong. yV^ "What is that to the purpose?" said Mr. Cranium. "The whole process of the action was mechanical and necessary. The application of the poker necessitated the ignition of the powder : the ignition necessitated the explosion : the explosion necessitated my sudden fright, which necessitated my sudden jump, which, from a necessity equally powerful, was in a curvilinear ascent : the descent, being in a corresponding curve, and commencing at a point perpendicular to the extreme line of the edge of the tower, I was, by the necessity of gravitation, attracted, first, through the ivy, and secondly through the hazel, and thirdly through the ash, into the water beneath. The motive or impulse thus adhibited in whe person of a drowning man, was as powerful on his material CHAP. XIV.] THE PROPOSALS. 83 compages as the force of gravitation on mine; and he could no more help jumping into the water than I could help falling into it." "All perfectly true," said Squire Headlong; "and, on the same principle, you make no distinction between the man who knocks you down and him who picks you up." " I make this distinction," said Mr. Cranium, " that I avoid the former as a machine containing a peculiar catahallitive quality, which I have found to be not consentaneous to my mode of plea- surable existence ; but I attach no moral merit or demerit to either of them, as these terms are usually employed, seeing that they are equally creatures of necessity, and must act as they do from the nature of their organization. I no more blame or praise a man for what is called vice or virtue, than I tax a tuft of hemlock with malevolence, or discover great philanthropy in a field of po- tatoes, seeing that the men and the plants are equally incapaci- tated, by their original internal organization, and the combinations and modifications of external circumstances, from being any thing but what they are. Quod victus fateare necesse est.'' " Yet you destroy the hemlock," said Squire Headlong, " and cultivate the potatoe : that is my way, at least." " I do," said Mr. Cranium ; " because I know that the farina- ceous qualities of the potatoe will tend, to preserve the great requi- sites of unity and coalescence in the various constituent portions of my animal republic ; and that the hemlock, if gathered by mistake for parsley, chopped up small with butter, and eaten with a boiled chicken, would necessitate a great derangement, and perhaps a total decomposition, of my corporeal mechanism." " Very well," said the squire ; " then you are necessitated to like Mr. Escot better than Mr. Panscope ?" " That is a non sequitur,'' said Mr. Cranium. " Then this is a sequitur,'" said the squire : " your daughter and Mr. Escot are necessitated to love one another ; and unless you feel necessitated to adhibit your consent, they will feel neces- sitated to dispense with h ; since it does appear to moral and political economists to be essentially inherent in the eternal fitness of things." Mr. Cranium fell into a profound reverie : emerging from which, he said, looking Squire Headlong full in the face, " Do you think Mr. Escot would give me that skull ?" 84 HEADLONG HALL. [chap, xiv " Skull !" said Squire Headlong. "Yes," said Mr. Cranium, "the skull of Cadwallader." " To be sure he will," said the squire. " Ascertain the point," said Mr. Cranium. " How can you doubt it ?" said the squire. " I simply know," said Mr. Cranium, " that if it were once in my" possession, I would not part with it for any acquisition on earth, much less for a wife. I have had one : and, as marriage has been compared to a pill, I can very safely assert that one is a dose ; and my reason for thinking that he will not part with it is, that its extraordinary magnitude tends to support his system, as much as its very marked protuberances tend to support mine ; and you know his own system is of all things the dearest to every man of liberal thinking and a philosophical tendency." The squire flew over to Mr. Escot. " I told you," said he, "I would settle him : but there is a very hard condition attached to his compliance." " I submit to it," said Mr. Escot, " be it what it may." " Nothing less," said Squire Headlong, " than the absolute and unconditional surrender of the skull of Cadwallader." "' I resign it," said Mr. Escot. " The skull is yours," said the squire, skipping over to Mr. Cranium. " I am perfectly satisfied," said Mr. Cranium. " The lady is yours," said the squire, skipping back to Mr. Escot. " I am the happiest man alive," said Mr. Escot. " Come," said the squire, " then there is an amelioration in the state of the sensitive man." " A slight oscillation of good in the instance of a solitary indi- vidual," answered Mr. Escot, " by no means affects the solidity of my opinions concerning the general deterioration of the civil- ised world ; which when I can be induced to contemplate with feelings of satisfaction, I doubt not but that I may be persuaded to he in love with tortures, and to think charitably of the rack.''* Saying these words, he flew off* as nimbly as Squire Headlong himself, to impart the happy intelligence to his beautiful Cephalis. * Jeremy Taylor. CHAP. XIV.] THE PROPOSALS. 85 Mr. Cranium now walked up to Mr. Panscope, to condole with him on the disappointment of their mutual hopes. Mr. Panscope begged him not to distress himself on the subject, observing, that the monotonous system of female education brought every indi- vidual of the sex to so remarkable an approximation of similarity, that no wise man would suffer himself to be annoyed by a loss so easily repaired ; and that there was much truth, though not much elegance, in a remark which he had heard made on a simi- lar occasion by a post-captain of his acquaintance, " that there never was a fish taken out of the sea, but left another as good behind." Mr. Cranium replied, that no two individuals having all the organs of the skull similarly developed, the universal resemblance of which Mr. Panscope had spoken could not possibly exist. Mr. Panscope rejoined ; and a long discussion ensued, concerning the comparative influence of natural organisation and artificial edu- cation, in which the beautiful Cephalis was totally lost sight of, and which ended, as most controversies do, by each party con- tinuing firm in his own opinion, and professing his profound as- tonishment at the blindness and prejudices of the other. In the meanwhile, a great confusion had arisen at the outer doors, the departure of the ball-visitors being impeded by a cir- cumstance which the experience of ages had discovered no means to obviate. The grooms, coachmen, and postillions, were all drunk. It was proposed that the gentlemen should officiate in their places : but the gentlemen were almost all in the same con- dition. This was a fearful dilemma : but a very diligent inves- tigation brought to light a few servants and a few gentlemen not above half-seas-over ; and by an equitable distribution of these rarities, the greater part of the guests were enabled to set for- ward, with very nearly an even chance of not having their necks broken before they reached home. 86 HEADLONG HALL. [ciup. CHAPTER XV. THE CONCLUSION. The squire and his select party of philosophers and dilettanti were again left in peaceful possession of Headlong Hall : and, as the former made a point of never losing a moment in the accom- plishment of a favourite object, he did not suffer many days to elapse, before the spiritual metamorphosis of eight into four was effected by the clerical dexterity of the Reverend Doctor Gaster. Immediately after the ceremony, the v/hole party dispersed, the squire having first extracted fronl every one of his chosen guests a positive promise to re-assemble in August, when they would be better enabled, in its most appropriate season, to form a correct judgment of Cambrian hospitality. Mr. Jenkison shook hands at parting with his two brother phi- losophers. " According to your respective systems," said he, " I ought to congratulate you on a change for the better, which I do most cordially : and to condole with you on a change for the worse, though, when I consider whom you have chosen, I should violate every principle of probability in doing so." "You will do well,'* said Mr. Foster, "to follow our example. The extensive circle of general philanthropy, which, in the pres- ent advanced stage of human nature, comprehends in its circum- ference the destinies of the whole species, originated, and still pro- ceeds, from that narrower circle of domestic affection, which first set limits to the empire of selfishness, and, by purifying the pas- sions and enlarging the affections of mankind, has given to the views of benevolence an increasing and illimitable expansion, which will finally diffuse happiness and peace over the whole sur- face of the world." " The affection," said Mr. Escot, " of two congenial spirits, y/ united not by legal bondage and superstitious imposture, but by mutual confidence and reciprocal virtues, is the only counterbal- THE CONCLUSION. 87 ancing consolation in. this scene of mischief and misery. But how rarely is this the case according to the present system of mar- riage ! So far from being a central point of expansion to the great circle of universal benevolence, it serves only to concentrate the feelings of natural sympathy in the reflected selfishness of family interest, and to substitute for the humani nihil alienum puto of youthful philanthropy, the charity begins at home of maturer years. And what accession of individual happiness is acquired by. this oblivion of the general good ? Luxury, despotism, and avarice have so seized and entangled nine hundred and ninety- nine out of every thousand of the human race, that the matrimo- nial compact, which ought to be the most easy, the most free, and the most simple of all engagements, is become the most slavish and complicated, — a mere question of finance, — a system of bar- gain, and barter, and commerce, and trick, and chicanery, and dissimulation, and fraud. Is there one instance in ten thousand, in which the buds of first affection are not most cruelly and hope- lessly blasted, by avarice, or ambition, or arbitrary power ? Fe- males, condemned during the whole flower of their youth to a worse than monastic celibacy, irrevocably debarred from the hope to which their first afiections pointed, will, at a certain period of life, as the natural delicacy of taste and feeling is gradually worn away by the attrition of society, become v/illing to take up with any coxcomb or scoundrel, whom that merciless and mercenary gang of cold-blooded slaves and assassins, called, in the ordinary prostitution of language, friends, may agree in designating as a prudent choice. Young men, on the other hand, are driven by the same vile superstitions from the company of the most amiable and modest of the opposite sex, to that of those miserable victims and outcasts of a world which dares to call itself virtuous, whom that very society whose pernicious institutions first caused their aberrations, — consigning them, without one tear of pity or one struggle of remorse, to penury, infamy, and disease, — condemns to bear the burden of its own atrocious absurdities ! Thus, the youth of one sex is consumed in slavery, disappointment, and spleen ; that of the other, in frantic folly and selfish intemper- ance : till at length, on the necks of a couple so enfeebled, so per- verted, so distempered both in body and soul, society throws the yoke of marriage : that yoke which, once ri vetted on the necks of HEADLONG HALL. [chap. xv. its victims, clings to them like the poisoned garments of Nessus or Medea. What can be expected from these ill-assorted yoke-fel- lows, but that, like two ill-tempered hounds, coupled by a tyran- nical sportsman, they should drag on their indissoluble fetter, snarling and grow^ling, and pulling in different directions ? What can be expected for their wretched offspring, but sickness and suffering, premature decrepitude, and untimely death ? In this, as in every other institution of civilised society, avarice, luxury, and disease constitute the triangular harmony of the life of man. Avarice conducts him to the abyss of toil and crime ; luxury seizes on his ill-gotten spoil ; and, while he revels in her enchant- ments, or groans beneath her tyranny, disease bursts upon him, and sweeps him from the earth." " Your theory," said Mr. Jenkison, " forms an admirable counterpoise to your example. As far as I am attracted by the one, I am repelled by the other. Thus, the scales of my philo- sophical balance remain eternally equiponderant, and I see no reason to say of either of them, OIXETAI EIS AIAAO."* * It descends to the shades : or, in other words, it goes to the devil. NIGHTMARE ABBEY, There's a dark lantern of the spirit, Which none see by but those who bear it, That makes them in the dark see visions And hag themselves with apparitions, Find racks for their own minds, and vaunt Of their own misery and want. — Butler. [First published in ISIS.] Matthew. Oh! it's your only fine humour, sir. Your tnie melancholy breeds your perfect fine wit, sir. I am melancholy myself, divers times, sir ; and then do I no more but take pen and paper presently, and overflow you half a score or a dozen of sonnets at a sitting. Stephen. Truly, sir, and I love such things out of measure. Matthew. Why, I pray you, sir, make use of my study : it's at your ser- vice. Stephen. I thank you, sir, I shall be bold, I warrant you. Have you a stool there, to be melancholy upon ? Ben JoxNson. Every Man in his Hmnour, Act 3. So. 1. NIGHTMARE ABBEY Ay esleu gazoiiiller et siffler oye, comme dit le commun proverbe, entre lea cygnes, plutoust que d'estre entre tant de gentils poetes et faconds orateui's mut du tout estim^. — Rabelais, ProL L. 5. CHAPTER I. Nightmare Abbey, a venerable family-mansion, in a highly picturesque state of semi-dilapidation, pleasantly situated on a strip of dry land between the sea and the fens, at the ver^e of the county of Lincoln, had the honour to be the seat of Christopher Glowry, Esquire. This gentleman was naturally of an atrabila- riaus temperament, and much troubled with those phantoms of in- digestion which are commonly called blue devils. He had been deceived in an early friendship : he had been crossed in love ; and had offered his hand, from pique, to a lady, who accepted it from interest, and who, in so doing, violently tore asunder the bonds of a tried and youthful attachment. Her vanity was grati- fied by being the mistress of a very extensive, if not very lively, establishment ; but all the springs of her sympathies were frozen. Riches she possessed, but that which enriches them, the partici- pation of affection, was v/anting. All that they could purchase for her became indifferent to her, because that which they could not purchase, and which was more valuable than themselves, she had, for their sake, thrown away. She discovered, when it was too late, that she had mistaken the means for the end — that riches, rightly used, are instruments of happiness, but are not in them- selves happiness. In this v/ilful blight of her affections, she found them valueless as means : they had been the end to which she 92 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap, i had immolated all her afTections, and were now the only end that remained to her. She did not confess this to herself as a princi- ple of action, but it operated through the medium of unconscious self-deception, and terminated in inveterate avarice. She laid on external things the blame of her mind's internal disorder, and thus became by degrees an accomplished scold. She often went her daily rounds through a series of deserted apartments, every creature m the house vanishing at the creak of her shoe, much more at tRe sound of her voice, to which the nature of things affords no simile ; for, as far as the voice of woman, when attuned by gentleness and love, transcends all other sounds in harmony, so far does it surpass all others in discord, when stretched into unnatural shrillness by anger and impatience. Mr. Glowry used to say that his house was no better than a spacious kennel, for every one in it led the life of a dog. Disap- pointed both in love and in friendship, and looking upon human learning as vanity, he had come to a conclusion that there was but one good thing in the world, videlicet, a good dinner : and this his parsimonious lady seldom suffered him to enjoy : but, one morning, like Sir Leoline in Christabel, " he woke and found his lady dead," and remained a very consolate widower, with one small child. This only son and heir Mr. Glowry had christened Scythrop, from the name of a maternal ancestor, who had hanged himself one rainy day in a fit of fcedium vita, and had been eulogised by a coroner's, jury in the comprehensive phrase of /eZo de se : on which account, Mr. Glowry held his memory in high honour, and made a punchbowl of his skull. When Scythrop grew up, he was sent, as usual, to a public school, where a little learning was painfully beaten into him, and from thence to the university, where it was carefully taken out of him ; and he was sent home like a well-threshed ear of corn, with nothing in his head : having finished his education to the high satisfaction of the master and fellows of his college, who had, in testimony of their approbation, presented him with a silver fish-slice, on which his name figured at the head of a laudatory inscription in some semi-barbarous dialect of Anglo-Saxonised Latin. His fellow- students, however, who drove tandem and random CHAP. I.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 93 in great perfection, and were connoisseurs in good inns, had taught him to drink deep ere he departed. He had passed much of Jiis time with these choice spirits, and had seen the rays of the midnight lamp tremble on many a lengthening file of empty bot- tles. He passed his vacations sometimes at Nightmare Abbey, sometimes in London, at the house of his uncle, Mr. Hilary, a very cheerful and elastic gentleman, who had married the sister of the melancholy Mr. Glowry. The company that frequented his house was the gayest of the gay. Scythrop danced with the ladies and drank with the gentlemen, and was pronounced by both a very accomplished charming fellow, and an honour to the university. At the house of Mr. Hilary, Scythrop first saw the beautiful Miss Emily Girouette. He fell in love ; which is nothing new. He was favourably received ; which is nothing strange. Mr. Glowry and Mr. Girouette had a meeting on the occasion, and quarrelled about the terms of the bargain ; which is neither new nor strange. The lovers were torn asunder, weeping and vow- ing everlasting constancy ; and, in three weeks after this tragical event, the lady was led a smiling bride to the altar, by the Hon- ourable Mr. Lackwit ; which is neither strange nor new. Scythrop received this intelligence at Nightmare Abbey, and was half distracted on the occasion. It was his first disappoint- ment, and preyed deeply on his sensitive spirit. His father, to comfort him, read him a Com.mentary on Ecclesiastes, which he had himself composed, and which demonstrated incontrovertibly that all is vanity. -He insisted particularly on the text, "One man among a thousand have I found, but a woman amongst all those have I not found." " How could he expect it," said Scythrop, " when the whole thousand were locked up in his seraglio ? His experience is no precedent for a free state of society like that in which we live." " Locked up or at large," said Mr. Glowry, "the result is the same : their minds are always locked up, and vanity and interest keep the key. I speak feelingly, Scythrop." "I am. sorry for it, sir," said Scythrop. "But how is it that their minds are locked up ? The fault is in their artificial edu- cation, which studiously models them into mere musical dolls, to be set out for sale in the great toy-shop of society." 34 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [cHAr. i. " To be sure," said Mr. Glowry, " their education is not so well finished as yours has been ; and your idea of a musical doll is good. I bought one myself, but it was confoundedly out of tune ; but, whatever be the cause, Schthrop, the effect is certainly this, that one is pretty nearly as good as another, as far as any judgment can be formed of them before marriage. It is only after marriage that they show their true qualities, as I know by bitter experience. Marriage is, therefore, a lottery, and the less choice and selection a man bestows on his ticket the better ; for, if he has incurred considerable pains and expense to obtain a lucky number, and his lucky number proves a blank, he expe- riences not a simple, but a complicated disappointment ; the loss of labour and money being superadded to the disappointment of drawing a blank, which, constituting simply and entirely the grievance of him who has chosen his ticket at random, is, from its simplicity, the more endurable." This very excellent reason- ing was thrown away upon Scythrop, who retired to his tower as dismal and disconsolate as before. The tower v/hich Scythrop inhabited stood at the south-eastern angle of the Abbey ; and, on the southern side, the foot of the tower opened on a terrace, which was called the garden, though nothing grew on it but ivy, and a few amphibious weeds. The south-western tower, which was ruinous and full of owls, might, with equal propriety, have been called the aviary. This terrace or garden, or terrace-garden, or garden-terrace (the reader may name it ad libitum), took in an oblique view of the open sea, and fronted a long tract of level sea-coast, and a fine monotony of fens and windmills. The reader will judge, from what we have said, that this build- ing was a sort of castellated abbey ; and it will, probably, occur to him to inquire if it had been one of the strong-holds of the ancient church militant. Whether this was the case, or how far it had been indebted to the taste of Mr. Glowry's ancestors for any transmutations from its original state, are, unfortunately, cir- cumstances not within the pale of our knowledge. The north-western tower contained the apartments of Mr. Glowry. The moat at its base, and the fens beyond, comprised the whole of his prospect. This moat surrounded the Abbey, CHAP. I.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 95 and was in immediate contact with the walls on every side but the south. The north-eastern tower was appropriated to the domestics, whom Mr. Glowry always chose by one of two criterions, — a long face, or a dismal name. His butler was Raven ; his steward was Crow ; his valet was Skellet. Mr. Glowry maintained that the valet was of French extraction, and that his name v/as Sque- lette. His grooms were Mattocks and Graves. On one occasion, being in want of a footman, he received a letter from a person signing himself Diggory Deathshead, and lost no time in securing this acquisition ; but on Diggory 's arrival, Mr. Glowry was hor- ror-struck by the sight of a round ruddy face, and a pair of laughing eyes. Deathshead was always grinning, — not a ghastly smile, but the grin of a comic mask ; and disturbed the echoes of the hall with so much unhallowed laughter, that Mr. Glowry gave him his discharge. Diggory, however, had staid long enough to make conquests of all the old gentleman's maids, and left him a flourishing colony of young Deathsheads to join chorus with the owls, that had before been the exclusive choristers of Nightmare Abbey. The main body of the building was divided into rooms of state, spacious apartments for feasting, and numerous bed-rooms for visitors, who, however, were few and far between. Family interests compelled Mr. Glowry to receive occasional visits from Mr. and Mrs. Hilary, who paid them from the same motive ; and, as the lively gentleman on these occasions found few conductors for his exuberant gaiety, he became like a double- charged electric jar, which often exploded in some burst of outrage- ous merriment to the signal discomposure of Mr. Glowry's nerves. Another occasional visitor, much more to Mr. Glowry's taste, was Mr. Flosky,* a very lachrymose and morbid gentleman, of some note in the literary world, but in his own estimation of much more merit than name. The part of his character which recom- mended him to Mr. Glowry, was his very fine sense of the grim and the tearful. No one could relate a dismal story with so many minutiae of supererogatory wretchedness. No one could call up a raw-head and bloody bones with so many adjuncts and * A corruption of Filosky, quasi ^iXovKiosy a lover, or sectator, of shadows 96 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap, l circumstances of ghastliness. Mystery was his mental element. He lived in the midst of that visionary world in which nothing is but what is not. He dreamed with his eyes open, and saw ghosts dancing round him at noontide. He had been in his youth an enthusiast for liberty, and had hailed the dawn of the French Revolution as the promise of a day that was to banish war and slavery, and every form of vice and misery, from the face of the earth. Because all this was not done, he deduced that nothing was done ; and from this deduction, according to his system of logic, he drew a conclusion that worse than nothing was done ; that the overthrow of the feudal fortresses of tyranny and super- stition was the greatest calamity that had ever befallen mankind ; and that their only hope now was to rake the rubbish together, and rebuild it without any of those loopholes by which the light had originally crept in. To qualify himself for a coadjutor in this laudable task, he plunged into the central opacity of Kantian metaphysics, and lay perdu several years in transcendental dark- ness, till the common daylight of common sense became intolera- ble to his eyes. He called the sun an ignis fatuus ; and ex- horted all who would listen to his friendly voice, which were about as many as called " God save King Richard," to shelter themselves from its delusive radiance in the obscure haunt of Old Philosophy. This word Old had great charms for him. The good old times were always on his lips ; meaning the days when polemic theology was in its prime, and rival prelates beat the drum ecclesiastic with Herculean vigour, till the one wound up his series of syllogisms with the very orthodox conclusion of roasting the other. But the dearest friend of Mr. Glowry, and his most welcome guest, was Mr. Toobad, the Manichsean Millenarian. The twelfth verse of the twelfth chapter of Revelations was always in his mouth : " Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea ! for the devil is come among you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time." He maintained that the supreme dominion of the world was, for wise purposes, given over for a while to the Evil Principle ; and that this precise period of time, commonly called the enlightened age, was the point of his plenitude of power. He used to add that by and by he would be cast down, and a high and happy order of things succeed ; but CHAP. I.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 97 he never omitted the saving clause, " Not in our time :" which last words were always echoed in doleful response by the sym- pathetic Mr. Glowry. Another and very frequent visitor, was the Reverend Mr. Lar- ynx, the vicar of Claydyke, a village about ten miles distant ;— a good-natured accommodating divine, who was always most obli- gingly ready to take a dinner and a bed at the house of any country gentleman in distress for a companion. Nothing came amiss to him, — a game at billiards, at chess, at draughts, at back- gammon, at piquet, or at all-fours in a tete-a-tete, — or any game on the cards, round, square, or triangular, in a party of any num- ber exceeding two. He would even dance among friends, rather than that a lady, even if she were on the wrong side of thirty, should sit still for want of a partner. For a ride, a walk, or a sail, in the morning, — a song after dinner, a ghost story after supper, — a bottle of port with the squire, or a cup of green tea with his lady, — for all or any of these, or for any thing else that was agreeable to any one else, consistently with the dye of his coat, the Reverend Mr. Larynx was at all times equally ready. When at Nightmare Abbey, he would condole with Mr. Glowry, — drink Madeira with Scythrop, — crack jokes with Mr. Hilary, — hand Mrs. Hilary to the piano, take charge of her fan and gloves, and turn over her music with surprising dexterity, — quote Reve- lations with Mr. Toobad, — and lament the good old times of feu- dal darkness with the transcendental Mr. Flosky. 8 98 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap, i, CHAPTER II. Shortly after the disastrous termination of Scythrop's passion for Miss Emily Girouette, Mr. Glowry found himself, much against his will, involved in a lawsuit, which compelled him to dance attendance on the High Court of Chancery. Scythrop was left alone at Nightmare Abbey. He was a burnt child, and dreaded the fire of female eyes. He wandered about the ample pile, or along the garden-terrace, with " his cogitative faculties im- mersed in cogibundity of cogitation." The terrace terminated at the south-western tower, which, as we have said, v.as ruinous and full of owls. Here vvould Scythrop take his evening seat, on a fallen fragment of mossy stone, with his back resting against the ruined wall, — a thick canopy of ivy, with an owl in it, over his head, — and the Sorrows of Werter in his hand. He had some taste for romance reading before he went to the university, where, we must confess, in justice to his college, he was cured of the love of reading in all its shapes ; and the cure would have been radical, if disappointment in love, and total solitude, had not con- spired to bring on a relapse. He began to devour romances and German tragedies, and, by the recommendation of Mr. Flosky, to pore over ponderous tomes of transcendental philosophy, which reconciled him to the labour of studying them by their mystical jargon and necromantic imagery. In the congenial solitude of Nightmare Abbey, the distempered ideas of metaphysical romance and romantic metaphysics had ample time and space to germinate into a fertile crop of chimeras, which rapidly shot up into vigor- ous and abundant vegetation. He now became troubled with the imssion for reforming the toorld.* He built many castles in the air, and peopled them with secret tribunals, and bands of illuminati, who were always the imaginary instruments of his projected regeneration of the hu- * See Forsyth's Principles of Moral Science. CHAP. 11.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 99 man species. As he intended to institute a perfect republic, he invested himself with absolute sovereignty over these mystical dispensers of liberty. He slept with Horrid Mysteries under his pillow, and dreamed of venerable eleutherarchs and ghastly con- federates holding midnight conventions in subterranean caves. He passed whole mornings in his study, immersed in gloomy reverie, stalking about the room in his nightcap, which he pulled over his eyes like a cowl, and folding his striped calico dressing-gown about him like the mantle of a conspirator. " Action," thus he soliloquised, " is the result of opinion, and to new-model opinion would be to new-model society. Knowl- edge is power ; it is in the hands of a few, who employ it to mis- lead the many, for their own selfish purposes of aggrandisement and appropriation. What if it were in the hands of a few who should employ it to lead the many ? What if it were universal, and the multitude were enlightened ? No. The many must be always in leading-strings ; but let them have wise and honest conductors. A i^GW to think, and many to act ; that is the only basis of perfect society. So thought the ancient philosophers : they had their esoterical and exoterical doctrines. So thinks the sublime Kant, who delivers his oracles in language which none but the initiated can comprehend. Such were the views of those secret associations of illuminati, which were the terror of superstition and tyranny, and which, carefully selecting wisdom and genius from the great wilderness of society, as the bee selects honey from the flowers of the thorn and the nettle, bound all hu- man excellence in a chain, which, if it had not been prematurely broken, would have commanded opinion, and regenerated the world." Scythrop proceeded to meditate on the practicability of reviving a confederation of regenerators. To get a clear view of his own ideas, and to feel the pulse of the wisdom and genius of the age, he wrote and published a treatise, in which his meanings were carefully wrapt up in the monk's hood of transcendental technol- ogy, but filled with hints of matter deep and dangerous, which he thought would set the whole nation in a ferment ; and he awaited the result in awful expectation, as a miner who has fired a train awaits the explosion of a rock. However, he listened and heard nothing ; for the explosion, if any ensued, was not sufficiently 100 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap, n loud to shake a single leaf of the ivy on the towers of Nightmare Abbey ; and some months afterwards he received a letter from his bookseller, informing him that only seven copies had been sold, and concluding with a polite request for the balance. Scythrop did not despair. " Seven copies," he thought, '• have been sold. Seven is a mystical number, and the omen is good. Let me find the seven purchasers of my seven copies, and they shall be the seven golden candlesticks with which I will illumi- nate the world." Scythrop had a certain portion of mechanical genius, which his romantic projects tended to develope. He constructed mod- els of cells and recesses, sliding panels and secret passages, that would have baffled the skill of the Parisian police. He took the opportunity of his father's absence to smuggle a dumb carpenter into the Abbey, and between them they gave reality to one of these models in Scythrop's tower. Scythrop foresaw that a great leader of human regeneration would be involved in fearful dilem- mas, and determined, for the benefit of mankind in general, to adopt all possible precautions for the preservation of himself. The servants, even the women, had been tutored into silence. Profound stillness reigned throughout and around the Abbey, ex- cept when the occasional shutting of a door would peal in long reverberations through the galleries, or the heavy tread of the pensive butler would wake the hollow echoes of the hall. Scy- throp stalked about like the grand inquisitor, and the servants flitted past him like familiars. In his evening meditations on the terrace, under the ivy of the ruined tower, the only sounds that came to his ear w^ere the rustling of the wind in the ivy, the plaintive voices of the feathered choristers, the owls, the occa- sional striking of the Abbey clock, and the monotonous dash of the sea on its low and level shore. In the mean time, he drank ]\Iadeira, and laid deep schemes for a thorough repair of the crazy fabric of human nature. CHAP. III.] NIGHTMARE AB^ETk;. . 101 CHAPTER III. Mr, Glowry returned from London with the loss of his law- suit. Justice was with him, but the law was against him. He found Scythrop in a mood most sympathetically tragic ; and they vied with each other in enlivening their cups by lamenting the depravity of this degenerate age, and occasionally interspersing divers grim jokes about graves, worms, and epitaphs. Mr. Glowry's friends, whom we have mentioned in the first chapter, availed themselves of his return to pay him a simultaneous visit. At the same time arrived Scythrop's friend and fellow-collegian, the Honourable Mr. Listless. Mr. Glowry had discovered this fashionable young gentleman in London, " stretched on the rack of a too easy chair," and devoured with a gloomy and misan- thropical nil euro, and had pressed him so earnestly to take the benefit of the pure country air, at Nightmare Abbey, that Mr. Listless, finding it would give him more trouble to refuse than to comply, summoned his French valet, Fatout, and told him he was going to Lincolnshire. On this simple hint, Fatout went to work, and the imperials were packed, and the post-chariot was at the door, without the Honourable Mr. Listless having said or thought another syllable on the subject. Mr. and Mrs. Hilary brought with them an orphan niece, a daughter of Mr. Glowry's youngest sister, who had made a run- away love-match with an Irish officer. The lady's fortune dis- appeared in the first year : love, by a natural consequence, dis- appeared in the second : the Irishman himself, by a still more natural consequence, disappeared in the third. Mr. Glowry had allowed his sister an annuity, and she had lived in retirement with her only daughter, whom, at her death, which had recently happened, she commended to the care of Mrs. Hilary. Miss Marionetta Celestina 'Carroll was a very blooming and accomplished young lady. Being a compound of the Allegro 102 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap. in. Vivace of the O'CaFrolls-, and 6f the Andante Dolorosa of the Glov.'i:ies,''5!hc 'exhibited ih hat own character all the diversities of an April sky. Her hair was light-brown ; her eyes hazel, and sparkling with a mild but fluctuating light ; her features regular ; her lips full, and of equal size ; and her person surpassingly graceful. She was a proficient in music. Her conversation was sprightly, but always on subjects light in their nature and limited in their interest: for moral sympathies, in any general sense, had no place in her mind. She had some coquetry, and more caprice, liking and disliking almost in the same moment ; pursu- ing an object with earnestness while it seemed unattainable, and rejecting it when in her power as not worth the trouble of pos- session. Whether she was touched with a jjenchant for her cousin Scy- throp, or was merely curious to see what effect the tender passion would have on so outre a person, she had not been three days in the Abbey before she threw out all the lures of her beauty and accomplishments to make a prize of his heart. Scythrop proved an easy conquest. The image of Miss Emily Girouette was already sufficiently dimmed by the power of philosophy and the exercise of reason : for to these influences, or to any influence but the true one, are usually ascribed the mental cures performed by the great physician Time. Scythrop's romantic dreams had indeed given him many pure anticipated cognitions of combina- tions of beauty and intelligence, which, he had some misgivings, were not exactly realised in his cousin Marionetta ; but, in spite of these misgivings, he soon became distractedly in love ; which, when the young lady clearly perceived, she altered her tactics, and assumed as much coldness and reserve as she had before shown ardent and ingenuous attachment. Scythrop was con- founded at the sudden change ; but, instead of falling at her feet and requesting an explanation, he retreated to his tower, muffled himself in his nightcap, seated himself in the president's chair of his imaginary secret tribunal, summoned Marionetta with all ter- rible formalities, frightened her out of her wits, disclosed himself, and clasped the beautiful penitent to his bosom. While he was acting this reverie — in the moment in which the awful president of the secret tribunal was throwing back his cowl and hpii mantle, and discovering himself to the lovely culprit as CHAP. III.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 103 her adoring and magnanimous lover, the door of the study opened, and the real Marionetta appeared. The motives which had led her to the tower were a little peni- tence, a little concern, a little affection, and a little fear as to what the sudden secession of Scythrop, occasioned by her sudden change of manner, might portend. She had tapped several times unheard, and of course unanswered ; and at length, timidly and cautiously opening the door, she discovered him standing up be- fore a black velvet chair, which was mounted on an old oak table, in the act of thi'owing open his striped calico dressing-gown, and flinging away his nightcap — which is what the French call an imposing attitude. Each stood a few moments fixed in their respective places — ^the lady in astonishment, and the gentleman in confusion. Marion- etta was the first to break silence. " For heaven's sake," said she, " my dear Scythrop, what is the matter ?" •' For heaven's sake, indeed !" said Scythrop, springing from the table ; " for your sake, Marionetta, and you are my heaven, — distraction is the matter. I adore you, Marionetta, and your cruelty drives me mad." He threw himself at her knees, de- voured her hand v/ith kisses, and breathed a thousand vows in the most passionate language of romance. Marionetta listened a long time in silence, till her lover had ex- hausted his eloquence and paused for a reply. She then said, with a very arch look, " I prithee deliver thyself like a man of ( this v/orld." The levity of this quotation, and of the manner in which it was delivered, jarred ^o discordantly on the high- wrought enthusiasm of the romantic inamorato, that he sprang upon his feet, and beat his forehead with his clenched fists. The young lady was terrified ; and, deeming it expedient to soothe him, took one of his hands in hers, placed the other hand on his shoulder, looked up in his face with a winning seriousness, and said, in the tenderest possible tone, " What would you have, Scythrop ?" Scythrop was in heaven again. " What would I have ? What but you, Marionetta ? You, for the companion of my studies, the partner of my thoughts, the auxiliary of my great designs for the emancipation of mankind." " I am afraid I should be but a poor auxiliary, Scythrop. What would you have me do ?" 104 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap. in. " Do as Rosalia does with Carlos, divine Marionetta. Let us each open a vein in the other's arm, mix our blood in a bowl, and drink it as a sacrament of love. Then we shall see visions of transcendental illumination, and soar on the wings of ideas into the space of pure intelligence." Marionetta could not reply ; she had not so strong a stomach as Rosalia, and turned sick at the proposition. She disengaged herself suddenly from Scythrop, sprang through the door of the tower, and fled with precipitation along the corridors. Scythrop pursued her, crying, " Stop, stop, Marionetta — my life, my love !" and was gaining rapidly on her flight, when, at an ill-omened corner, where two corridors ended in an angle, at the head of a staircase, he came into sudden and violent contact with Mr. Too- bad, and they both plunged together to the foot of the stairs, like two billiard-balls into one pocket. This gave the young lady time to escape, and enclose herself in her chamber ; vrhile Mr. Toobad, rising slowly, and rubbing his knees and shoulders, said, " You see, my dear Scythrop, in this little incident, one of the in- numerable proofs of the temporary supremacy of the devil ; for what but a systematic design and concurrent contrivance of evil could have made the angles of time and place coincide in our un- fortunate persons at the head of this accursed staircase ?" '•' Nothing else, certainly," said Scythrop : " you are perfectly in the right, Mr. Toobad. Evil, and mischief, and misery, and confusion, and vanity, and vexation of spirit, and death, and dis- ease, and assassination, and war, and poverty, and pestilence, and famine, and avarice, and selfishness, and rancour, and jealousy, and spleen, and malevolence, and the disappointments of philan- thropy, and the faithlessness of friendship, ^nd the crosses of love — all prove the accuracy of your views, and the truth of your system ; and it is not impossible that the infernal interruption of this fall down stairs may throw a colour of evil on the whole of my future existence." " My dear boy," said Mr. Toobad, " you have a fine eye for consequences." So saying, he embraced Scythrop, who retired, with a discon- solate step, to dress for dinner ; while Mr. Toobad stalked across the hall, repeating, " Woe to the inhabiters of the earth, and of the sea, for the devil is come among you, having great wrath.'* rv.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 105 CHAPTER IV. The flight of Marionetta, and the pursuit of Scythrop, had been witnessed by Mr. Glowry, who, in consequence, narrowly ob- served his son and his niece in the evening ; and, concluding from their manner, that there was a better understanding between them than he wished to see. he determined on obtaining the next morning from Scythrop a full and satisfactory explanation. He, therefore, shortly after breakfast, entered Scythrop's tower, with a very grave face, and said, without ceremony or preface, " So, sir, you are in love with your cousin." Scythrop, with as little hesitation, answered, "Yes, sir." " That is candid, at least ; and she is in love with you." " I wish she were, sir." " You know she is, sir." " Indeed, sir, I do not." " But you hope she is." "I do, from my soul." " Now that is very provoking, Scythrop, and very disappoint- ing : I could not have supposed that you, Scythrop Glowry, of Nightmare Abbey, would have been infatuated with such a dan- cing, laughing, singing, thoughtless, careless, merry-hearted thing, as Marionetta — in all respects the reverse of you and me. It is very disappointing, Scythrop. And do you know, sir, that Marionetta has no fortune ?" " It is the more reason, sir, that her husband should have one." " The more reason for her ; but not for you. My wife had no fortune, and I had no consolation in my calamity. And do you reflect, sir, what an enormous slice this law-suit has cut out of our family estate ? we who used to be the greatest landed pro- prietors in Lincolnshire." " To be sure, sir, we had more acres of fen than any man on this coast : but what are fens to love ? What are dykes and windmills to Marionetta 1" 106 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. Fchap. iv " And what, sir, is love to a windmill ? Not grist, I am cer- tain : besides, sir, I have made a choice for you. I have made a choice for you, Scythrop. Beauty, genius, accomplishments, and a great fortune into the bargain. Such a lovely, serious crea- ture, in a fine state of high dissatisfaction with the world, and every thing in it. Such a delightful surprise I had prepared foi you. Sir, I have pledged my honour to the contract — the honour of the Glowries of Nightmare Abbey : and now, sir, what is to be done ?" " Indeed, sir, I cannot say. I claim, on this occasion, that liberty of action which is the co-natal prerogative of every ra- tional being." " Liberty of action, sir ? there is no such thing as liberty of action. We are all slaves and puppets of a blind and unpathetic necessity." " Very true, sir ; but liberty of action, betu'een individuals, consists in their being differently influenced, or modified, by the same universal necessity ; so that the results are unconsentane- ous, and their respective necessitated volitions clash and fly off in a tangent." " Your logic is good, sir : but you are aware, too, that one in- dividual m.ay bo a medium of adhibiting to another a mode or form of necessity, which may have more or less influence in the production of consentaneity ; and, therefore, sir, if you do not comply v/ith my wishes in this instance (you have had your own way in every thing else), I shall be under the necessity of disin- heriting you, though I shall do it v/ith tears in my eyes." Hav- ing said these words, he vanished suddenly, in the dread of Scy- throp 's logic. Mr. Glowry immediately sought Mrs. Hilary, and communi- cated to her his views of the case in point. Mrs. Hilary, as the phrase is, was as fond of Marionetta as if she had been her own child : but — there is always a hut on these occasions — she could do nothing for her in the way of fortune, as she had two hopeful sons, who were finishing their education at Brazen-nose, and who would not like to encounter any diminution of their prospects, when they should be brought out of the house of mental bondage — i. 8. the university — to the land flowing with milk and honey — i. e. the west end of London. CKAP. IV.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 107 Mrs. Hilary hinted to Marionctta, that propriety, and delicac}-, and decorun-!. and dignity, &c. &c. &c.,* would require them to leave the Abbey immediately. Marionetta listened in silent sub- mission, for she knew that her inheritance was passive obedience ; but, v/lien Scythrop, who had watched the opportunity of Mrs. Hilary's departure, entered, and, without speaking a word, threw himself at her feet in a paroxysm of grief, the young lady, in equal silence and sorrow, threw her arms round his neck and burst into tears. A very tender scene ensued, which the sympa- thetic susceptibilities of the soft-hearted reader can more accurate- ly imagine than we can delineate. But when Marionetta hinted that she was to leave the Abbey immediately, Scytlirop snatched from its repository his ancestor's skull, filled it with Madeira, and presenting himself before Mr. Glowry, threatened to drink off the contents if Mr. Glowry did not immediately promise that Marion- etta should not be taken from the Abbey without her own con- sent. Mr. Glowry, who took the Madeira to be some deadly brewage, gave the required promise in dismal panic. Scythrop returned to Marionetta with a joyful heart, and drank the Madeira by the way. Mr. Glowry, during his residence in London, had come to an agreement with his friend Mr. Toobad, that a match between Scythrop and Mr. Toobad's daughter would be a very desirable occurrence. She was finishing her education in a German con- vent, but Mr. Toobad described her as being fully impressed with the truth of his Ahrimanicf philosophy, and being altogether as gloomy and antithalian a young lady as Mr. Glov/ry himself * We are not masters of the whole vocabulary. See any novel by any liter- ary lady. t Ahrimanes, in the Persian mythology, is the evil power, the prince of the kingdom of darkness. He is the rival of Oromazes, the prince of the kingdom of light. These two powers have divided and equal dominion. Sometimes one of the two has a temporary supremacy. — According to IMr. Toobad, the present period would be the reign of Ahrimanes. Lord B}Ton seems to be of the same opinion, by the use he h£is made o" Ahrimanes in " Manfred ;" where tlic great Alastor, or Kokos Aainnv, of Persia, is hailed king of the world by the Nemesi.'^ of Greece, in concert with three of the Scandinavian Valkyroe, under the name of the Destinies ; the astrological spirits of the alchemists of the middle ages , an elemental witch, transplanted from Demnark to the Alps ; and a chorus of Dr. Faustus's devils, who come in tlie last act for a soul. It is difficult to con ■ 108 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap. iv. could desire for the future mistress of Niglitmare Abbey. She had a great fortune in hci* own right, which was not, as we have seen, without its weight in inducing Mr. Glowry to set his heart upon her as his daughter-in-law that w^as to be ; he was therefore very much disturbed by Scythrop's untoward attachment to IMarionetta. He condoled on the occasion with Mr. Toobad ; who said, that he had been too long accustomed to the intermed- dling of the devil in all his affairs, to be astonished at this new trace of his cloven claw ; but that he hoped to outwit him yet, for he was sure there could be no comparison between his daughter and IMarionetta in the mind of any one who had a proper percep- tion of the fact, that, the world being a great theatre of evil, seriousness and solemnity are the characteristics of wisdom, and laughter and merriment make a human being no better than a baboon. IMr. Glowry comforted himself w^th this view of the subject, and urged Mr. Toobad to expedite his daughter's return from Germany. Mr. Toobad said he was in daily expectation of her arrivaj in London, and would set off immediately to meet her, that he might lose no time in bringing her to Nightmare Abbey. " Then," he added, " we shall see whether Thalia or Melpomene — whether the Allegra or the Penserosa — will carry off the symbol of victory." — " There can be no doubt," said Mr. Glowry, " which way the scale will incline, or Scythrop is no true scion of the venerable stem of the Glowrys." ceive where tliis heterogeneous mythological company could have originally met, except at a table d'hote, like the six kmgs in " Candide." CHAP, v.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 109 CHAPTER V. Marionetta felt secure of Scythrop's heart ; and notwithstand- ing the difficulties that surrounded her, she could not debar her- self from the pleasure of tormenting her lover, whom she kept in a perpetual fever. Sometimes she would meet him with the most unqualified affection ; sometimes with the most chilling in- difference ; rousing him to anger by artificial coldness — softening him to love by eloquent tenderness — or inflaming him to jealousy by coquetting with the Honourable Mr. Listless, who seemed, under her magical influence, to burst into sudden life, like the bud of the evening primrose. Sometimes she would sit ^ by the piano, and listen with becoming attention to Scythrop's pathetic remonstrances ; but, in the most impassioned part of his oratory, she would convert all his ideas into a chaos, by striking up some Rondo Allegro, and saying, "Is it not pretty ?" Scythrop would begin to storm ; and she would answer him with, " Zitti, zitti, piano, piano, Non facciamo confiisione,'* or some similar facezia, till he would start away from her, and enclose himself in his tower, in an agony of agitation, vowing to renounce her, and her whole sex, for ever ; and returning to her presence at the summons of the billet, which she never failed to send with many expressions of penitence and promises of amend- ment. Scythrop's schemes for regenerating the world, and de- tecting his seven golden candlesticks, went on very slowly in this fever of his spirit. Things proceeded in this train for several days; and Mr. Glowry began to be uneasy at receiving no intelligence from Mr. Toobad ; when one evening the latter rushed into the library, where the family and the visitors were assenbled, vociferating, " The devil is come among you, having great wrath !" He then drew Mr. Glowry aside into another apartment, and after remain- 110 NIGnT:^IATlE ABBEY. [chap. v. ing some time together, they re-entered the library with faces of great dismay, but did not condescend to explain to any one the cause of their discomfiture. The next morning, early, Mr. Toobad departed. Mr. Glowry sighed and groaned all day, and said not a word to any one. Scythrop had quarrelled, as usual, with Marionetta, and was en- closed in his tower, in a fit of morbid sensibility. Marionetta was comforting herself at the piano, with singing the airs of Nina pazza per amore ; and the Honourable Mr. Listless was listening to the harmony, as he lay supine on the sofa, with a book in his liand, into which he peeped at intervals. The Reverend Mr. Larynx approached the sofa, and proposed a game at billiards. HE HONOURABLE LLR. LISTLESS. Billiards ! Really I should be very happy ; but, in my present exhausted state, the exertion is too much for me. I do not knov/ when I have been equal to such an efibrt. (He rang the hell for his valet. Fatout entered.) Fatout ! Vvhen did I play at billiards last? FATOUT. De fourteen December de last year. Monsieur. [Fatout lowed and retired.) THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. So it was. Seven mojiths ago. You see, Mr. Larynx ; you see, sir. My nerves, Miss O'Carroll, my nerves are shattered. I have been advised to try Bath. Some of the faculty recom- mend Cheltenham. I think of trying both, as the seasons don't clash. The season, you know, Mr. Larynx — the season. Miss O'Carroll — the season is every thing. MARIONETTA. And health is something. Nest-ce pas, Mr. Larynx ? THE REVEREND MR. LARYNX. Most assuredly. Miss O'Carroll. For, however reasoners may dispute about the summum bonum, none of them will deny that a very good dinner is a very good thing : and what is a good din- ner without a good appetite ? and whence is a good appetite but from good health ? Now, Cheltenham, Mr. Listless, is famous for good appetites. CHAP, v.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. Ill THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. The best piece of logic I ever heard, Mr. Larynx ; the very- best, I assure you. I have thought very seriously of Chelten- ham : very seriously and profoundly. I thought of it — let me see — when did I tliink of it ? {He rang again, and Fatout re-ap- peared.) Fatout ! when did I think of going to Cheltenham, and did not go ? FATOUT. De Juillet tv/enty-von, de last summer, Monsieur. (Fatout retired.) THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. So it was. An invaluable fellow that, Mr. Larynx — invalua- ble, Miss O'Carroll. MARIONETTA. So I should judge, indeed. He seems to serve you as a walk- ing memory, and to be a living chronicle, not of your actions only, but of your thoughts. THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. An excellent definition of the fellovv% Miss O'Carroll, — excel- lent, upon my honour. Ha ! ha ! he ! Heigho ! Laughter is pleasant, but the exertion is too much for me. A parcel was brought in for Mr. Listless ; it had been sent ex- press. Fatout was summoned to unpack it : and it proved to contain a new novel, and a new poem, both of which had long been anxiously expected by the whole host of fashionable readers ; and the last number of a popular Review, of which the editor and his coadjutors were in high favour at court, and enjoyed ample pensions* for their services to church and state. As Fatout left the room, Mr. Flosky entered, and curiously inspected the lite- rary arrivals. MR. FLOSKY. (Turning over the leaves.) " Devilman, a novel." Hm. Ha- tred — revenge — misanthropy — and quotations from the Bible. Hm. This is the morbid anatomy of black bile. — " Paul Jones, a poem." Hm. I see how it is. Paul Jones, an amiable en- * " Pension. Pay given to a slave of state for treason to his country."— Johnson's Dictionary. 112 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap. v. thusiast — disappointed in his affections — ^turns pirate from ennui and magnanimity — cuts various masculine throats, wins various feminine liearts — is hanged at the yard-arm ! The catastrophe is very awkward, and very unpoetical. — " The Downing Street Review." Hm. First article — An Ode to the Red Book, by Roderick Sackbut, Esquire. Hm. His own poem reviewed by himself. Hm-m-m. {Mr. Fhsky proceeded in silence to look over the other articles of the review ; Marionetta inspected the novel, and Mr. List- less the jpoem.) THE REVEREND MR. LARYNX. For a young man of fashion and family, Mr. Listless, you seem to be of a very studious turn. THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. Studious ! You are pleased to be facetious, Mr. Larynx. I hope you do not suspect me of being studious. I have finished my education. But there are some fashionable books that one must read, because they are ingredients of the talk of the day ; otherwise, I am no fonder of books than I dare say you yourself are, Mr. Larynx. THE REVEREND MR. LARYNX. Why, sir, I cannot say that I am indeed particularly fond of books ; yet neither can I say that I never do read. A tale or a poem, now and then, to a circle of ladies over their work, is no very heterodox employment of the vocal energy. And I must say, for myself, that few men have a more Job-like endurance of the eternally recurring questions and answers that interweave themselves, on these occasions, with the crisis of an adventure, and heighten the distress of a tragedy. THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. And very often make the distress when the author has omit- ted it. MARIONETTA. I shall try your patience some rainy morning, Mr. Larynx ; and Mr. Listless shall recommend us the very newest new book, that every body reads. THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. You shall receive it, Miss O'Carroll, with all the gloss of nov. CHAP, v.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 113 elty ; fresh as a ripe green-gage in all the downiness of its bloom. A mail-coach copy from Edinburgh, forwarded express from London. MR. FLOSKY. This rage for novelty is the bane of literature. Except my works and those of my particular friends, nothing is good that is not as old a,s Jeremy Taylor : and, entre nous, the best parts of my friends' books were either written or suggested by myself. THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. Sir, I reverence you. But I must say, modern books are very consolatory and congenial to my feelings. There is, as it were, a delightful north-east wind, an intellectual blight breathing through them ; a delicious misanthropy and discontent, that dem- onstrates the nullity of virtue and energy, and puts me in good humoui' with myself and my sofa. MR. FLOSKY. Very true, sir. Modern literature is a north-east wind — a blight of the human soul. I take credit to myself for having helped to make it so. The way to produce fine fruit is to blight the flower. You call this a paradox. Marry, so be it. Ponder thereon. The conversation was interrupted by the re-appearance of Mr. Toobad, covered with mud. He just showed himself at the door, muttered " The devil is come among you !" and vanished. The road which connected Nightmare Abbey with the civilised world, was artificially raised above the level of the fens, and ran through them in a straight line as far as the eye could reach, with a ditch on each side, of which the water was rendered invisible by the aquatic vegetation that covered the surface. Into one of these ditches the sudden action of a shy horse, which took fright at a windmill, had precipitated the travelling chariot of Mr. Toobad, who had been reduced to the necessity of scrambling in dismal plight through the window. One of the wheels was found to be broken ; and Mr. Toobad, leaving the postilion to get the chariot as well as he could to Claydyke for the purposes of cleaning and repairing, had walked back to Nightmare Abbey, followed by his servant with the imperial, and repeating all the way his favourite quotation from the Revelations. 9 14 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap, vt CHAPTER VI. Mr. Toobad had found his daughter Celinda in London, and after the first joy of meeting was over, told her he had a husband ready for her. The young lady replied, very gravely, that she should take the liberty to choose for herself. Mr. Toobad said he saw the devil was determined to interfere with all his projects, but he was resolved on his own part, not to have on his conscience the crime of passive obedience and non-resistance to Lucifer, and therefore she should marry the person he had chosen for her. Miss Toobad replied, ires jposemcnt, she assuredly would not. " Celinda, Celinda," said Mr. Toobad, " you most assuredly shall." — " Have I not a fortune in my own right, sir ?" said Celinda. " The more is the pity," said Mr. Toobad : " but I can find means, miss ; I can find means. There are more ways than one of breaking in obstinate girls." They parted for the night v/ith the expression of opposite resolutions, and in the morn- ing the young lady's chamber was found empty, and what was become of her Mr. Toobad had no clue to conjecture. He con- tinued to investigate town and country in search of her ; visiting and revisiting Nightmare Abbey at intervals, to consult with his friend, Mr. Glowry. Mr. Glowry agreed with Mr. Toobad that this was a very flagrant instance of filial disobedience and rebel- lion ; and Mr. Toobad declared, that when he discovered the. fu- gitive, she should find that " the devil was come unto her, having great wrath." In the evening, the whole party met, as usual, in the library. Marionetta sat at the harp ; the Honourable Mr. Listless sat by her and turned over her music, though the exertion was almost too much for him. The Reverend Mr. Larynx relieved him oc- casionally in this delightful labour. Scythrop, tormented by the demon Jealousy, sat in the corner biting his lips and fingers. Marionetta looked at him every now and then with a smile of most provoking good humour, which he pretended not to see, and ciTAr. VI.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 115 which only the more exasperated his troubled spirit. He took down a volume of Dante, and pretended to be deeply interested in the Purgatorio, though he knew not a word he was reading, as Mari- onetta was well aware ; who, tripping across the room, peeped into his book, and said to him, '• I see you are in the middle of Pur- gatory." — "I am in the middle of hell," said Scythrop furiously. " Are you ?" said she ; " then come across the room, and I will sing you the finale of Don Giovanni." " Let me alone," said Scythrop. Marionetta looked at him with a deprecating smile, and said, " You unjust, cross creature, you." — " Let me alone," said Scythrop, but much less emphati- cally than at first, and by no means wishing to be taken at his word. Marionetta left him immediately, and returning to tiie harp, said, just loud enough for Scythrop to hear — " Did you ever read Dante, Mr. Listless ? Scythrop is reading Dante, and is just now in Purgatory." — " And I," said the Honourable Mr. Listless, " am not reading Dante, and am just now in Paradise," bowing to Marionetta. MARIONETTA. You are very gallant, Mr. Listless ; and I dare say you are very fond of reading Dante. THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. I don't know how it is, but Dante never came in my way till lately. I never had him in my collection, and if I had had him, I should not have read him. But 1 find he is growing fashionable, and I am afraid I must read him some wet morning. MARIONETTA. No, read him some evening, by all means. Were you ever in love, Mr. Listless ? THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. I assure you. Miss O'Carroll, never — till I came to Nightmare Abbey. I dare say it is very pleasant ; but it seems to give so much trouble that I fear the exertion would be too much for me. MARIONETTA. Shall I teach you a compendious method of courtship, that will give you no trouble whatever ? 116 NIGHTMARE ABBEY [chap. vi. THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. You will confer on me an inexpressible obligation. I am all impatience to learn it. MARIONETTA. Sit with your back to the lady and read Dante ; only be sure to begin in the middle, and turn over three or four pages at once — backwards as well as forwards, and she will immediately per- ceive that you are desperately in love with her — desperately. (The Honourable Mr. Listless sitting between Scythrop and Marionetta, and fixing all Ms attention on the beautiful speaker, did not observe Scythrop, who was doing as she de- scribed.) THE HONOURABLE BIR. LISTLESS. You are pleased to be facetious, Miss O'Carroll. The lady would infallibly conclude that I was the greatest brute in town. MARIONETTA. Far from it. She would say, perhaps, some people have odd methods of showing their affection. THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. But I should think, A\'ith submission MR. FLOSKY. {Joining them from another part of the room.) Did I not hear Mr. Listless observe that Dante is becoming fashionable ? THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. I did hazard a remark to that effect, Mr. Flosky, though I speak on such subjects with a consciousness of my own nothing- ness, in the presence of so great a man as Mr. Flosky. I know not what is the colour of Dante's devils, but as he is certainly be- coming fashionable I conclude they are blue ; for the blue devils, as it seems to me, Mr. Flosky, constitute the fundamental fea- ture of fashionable literature. MR. FLOSKY. The blue are, indeed, the staple commodity ; but as they will not always be commanded, the black, red, and grey may be ad- mitted as substitutes. Tea, late dinners, and the French Revo- lution, have played the devil, Mr. Listless, and brought the devil into play. CHAP. VI.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 117 MR. TOOBAD [starting up). Having great wrath. MR. FLOSKY. This is no play upon words, but the sober sadness of veritable fact. THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. Tea, late dinners, and the French Revolution. I cannot ex- actly see the connection of ideas. MR. FLOSKY. I should be sorry if you could ; I pity the man who can see the connection of his own ideas. Still more do I pity him, the connection of whose ideas any other person can see. Sir, the great evil is, that there is too much common-place light in our moral and political literature ; and light is a great enemy to mystery, and mystery is a great friend to enthusiasm. Now the enthusiasm for abstract truth is an exceedingly fine thing, as long as the truth, which is the object of the enthusiasm, is so com- pletely abstract as to be altogether out of the reach of the human faculties ; and, in that sense, I have myself an enthusiasm for truth, but in no other, for the pleasure of metaphysical investiga- tion lies in the means, not in the end ; and if the end could be found, the pleasure of the means would cease. The mind, to be kept in health, must be kept in exercise. The proper exercise of the mind is elaborate reasoning. Analytical reasoning is a base and mechanical process, which takes to pieces and examines, bit by bit, the rude material of knowledge, and extracts therefrom a few hard and obstinate things called facts, every thing in the shape of which I cordially hate. But syntethical reasoning, setting up as its goal some unattainable abstraction, like an im- aginary quantity in algebra, and commencing its course with taking for granted some two assertions which cannot be proved, from the union of these two assumed truths produces a third as- sumption, and so on in infinite series, to the unspeakable benefit of the human intellect. The beauty of this process is, that at every step it strikes out into two branches, in a compound ratio of ramification ; so that you are perfectly sure of losing your way, and keeping your mind in perfect health, by the perpetual exercise of an interminable quest ; and for these reasons I have christened my eldest son Emanuel Kant Flosky. 118 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap. vi. THE REVEREND MR. LARYNX. Nothino: can be more luminous. THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. And what has all that to do with Dante, and the blue devils ? MR. HILARY. Not much, I should think, with Dante, but a great deal with the blue devils. MR. FLO SKY. It is very certain, and much to be rejoiced at, that our litera- ture is hag-ridden. Tea has shattered our nerves ; late dinners make us slaves of indigestion ; the French Revolution has made us shrink from the name of philosophy, and has destroyed, in the more refilled part of the community (of which number I am one), all enthusiasm for political liberty. That part of the read- ing 'public which shuns the solid food of reason for the light diet of fiction, requires a perpetual adhibition of sauce piquante to the palate of its depraved imagination. It lived upon ghosts, goblins, and skeletons (I and my friend Mr. Sackbut served up a few of the best), till even the devil himself, though magnified to the size of Mount Athos, became too base, common, and popular, for its sur- feited appetite. The ghosts have therefore been laid, and the devil has been cast into outer darkness, and now the delight of our spirits is to dwell on all the vices and blackest passions of our nature, tricked out in a masquerade dress of heroism and disap- pointed benevolence ; the whole secret of which lies in forming combinations that contradict all our experience, and affixing the purple shred of some particular virtue to that precise character, in which we should be most certain not to find it in the living world ; and making . this single virtue not only redeem all the real and manifest vices of the character, but make them actually pass for necessary adjuncts, and indispensable accompaniments and characteristics of the said virtue. MR. TOOBAD. That is, because the devil is come among us, and finds it for his interest to destroy all our perceptions of the distinctions of right and wrong. t CHAP. VI.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 119 MARIONETTA. I do not precisely enter into your meaning, Mr. Flosky, and should be glad if you would make it a little more plain to me. MR. FLOSKY. One or two examples will do it, Miss O 'Carroll. If I were to take all the mean and sordid qualities of a money-dealing Jew, and tack on to them, as with a nail, the quality of extreme be- nevolence, I should have a ver}^ decent hero for a modern novel ; and should contribute my quota to the fashionable method of ad- ministering a mass of vice, under a thin and unnatural covering of virtue, like a spider wrapt in a bit of gold leaf, and adminis- tered as a vrholesomo pill. On the same principle, if a man knocks me down, and takes my purse and watch by main force, I turn him to account, and set him forth in a tragedy as a dash- ing young fellow, disinherited for Yds romantic generosity, and full of a most amiable hatred of the world in general, and his own country in particular, and of a most enlightened and chival- rous affection for himself: then, v>'ith tlic addition of a v»'ild girl to fall in love with him, and a series of adventures in which they break all the Ten Commandments in succession (always, you will observe, for some sublime motive, v/hich must be carefully analysed in its progress), I have as amiable a pair of tragic characters as ever issued from that new region of the belles let- tres, v/hich I have called the Morbid Anatomy of Black Bile, and which is greatly to be admired and rejoiced at, as affording a fine scope for the exhibition of mental power. MR. HILARY. Which is about as w^ell employed as the power of a hot-house would be in forcing up a nettle to the size of an elm. If we go on in this way, we shall have a new art of poetry, of which one of the first rules will be : To remember to forget that there are any such things as sunshine and music in the world. THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. tt seems to be the case with us at present, or we should not have interrupted Miss O 'Carroll's music with this exceedingly dry conversation. ^' 120 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap, vi MR. FLOSKY. I should be most happy if Miss O 'Carroll would remind us that there are yet both music and sunshine THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. In the voice and the smile of beauty. May I entreat the favour of — {turning over the pages of music?) ^W were silent, and Marionetta sung : — Why are thy looks so blank, grey friar? Why are thy looks so blue ? Thou seem'st more pale and lank, grey friar, Than thou wast used to do : — Say, what has made thee rue ? Thy form was plump, and a light did shine In thy round and ruby face. Which showed an outward visible sign Of an inward spiritual grace : — Say, what has changed thy case ? Yet will I tell thee true, grey friar, I veiy well can see, That, if thy looks are blue, grey friar, 'T is all for love of me, — 'T is all for love of me. But breathe not thy vows to me, grey friar, Oh, breathe them not, I pray ; For ill beseems in a reverend friar. The love of a mortal may ; And I needs must say thee nay. But, could'st thou think my heart to movo With that pale and silent scowl ? Know, he who would win a maiden's love, Whether clad in cap or cowl. Must be more of a lark than an owl. Scythrop immediately replaced Dante on the shelf, and joined the circle round the beautiful singer. Marionetta gave him a smile of approbation that fully restored his complacency, and they continued on the best possible terms during the remainder of the evening. The Honourable Mr. Listless turned over the leaves with double alacrity, saying, " You are severe upon invalids. Miss O'Carroll : to escape your satire, I must try to be sprightly, though the exertion is too much for me." CHAP, vn] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 121 CHAPTER VII. t t A NEW visitor arrived at the Abbey, in the person of Mr. As- terias, the ichthyologist. This gentleman had passed his life in seeking the living wonders of the deep through the four quarters of the world : he had a cabinet of stuffed and dried fishes, of shells, sea- weeds, corals, and madrepores, that was the admira- tion and envy of the Royal Society. He had penetrated into the watery den of the Sepia Octopus, disturbed the conjugal happi- ness of that turtle-dove of the ocean, and come off victorious in a sanguinary conflict. He had been becalmed in the tropical seas, and had watched, in eager expectation, though unhappily always in vain, to see the colossal polypus rise from the water, and en- twine its enormous arms round the masts and the rigging. He maintained the origin of all things from water, and insisted that the polypodes were the first of animated things, and that, from their round bodies and many-shooting arms, the Hindoos had taken their gods, the most ancient of deities. But the chief ob- ject of his ambition, the end and aim of his researches, was to discover a triton and a mermaid, the existence of which he most potently and implicitly believed, and was prepared to demonstrate, a priori, a posteriori, a fortiori, synthetically and analytically, syllogistically and inductively, by arguments deduced both from acknowledged facts and plausible hypotheses. A report that a mermaid had been seen " sleeking her soft alluring locks" on the sea-coast of Lincolnshire, had brought him in great haste from London, to pay a long-promised and often-postponed visit to his old acquaintance, Mr. Glowry. Mr. Asterias was accompanied by his son, to whom he had given the name of Aquarius — flattering himself that he would, in the process of time, become a constellation among the stars of ichthyological science. What charitable female had lent him the mould in which this son was cast, no one pretended to know ; and, as he never dropped the most distant allusion to Aquarius's 122 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap, vu mother, some of the wags of London maintained that he had re- ceived the favours of a mermaid, and that the scientific perquisi- tions which kept him always prowling about the sea-shore, were directed by the less philosophical motive of regaining his lost love. Mr. Asterias perlustrated the sea-coast for several days, and reaped disappointment, but not despair. One night, shortly after his arrival, he was sitting in one of the windows of the library, looking towards the sea, when his attention was attracted by a figure which was moving near the edge of the surf, and which was dimly visible through the moonless summer night. Its mo- tions were irregular, like those of a person in a state of indecision. It had extremely long hair, which floated in the wind. What- ever else it might be, it certainly was not a fisherman. It might be a lady ; but it was neither Mrs. Hilary nor Miss O'Carroll, for they were both in the library. It might be one of the female servants ; but it had too much grace, and too striking an air of habitual liberty, to render it probable. Besides, what should one of the female servants be doing there at this hour, moving to and fro, as it seemed, without any visible purpose ? It could scarcely be a stranger ; for Claydyke, the nearest village, was ten miles distant ; and what female would come ten miles across the fens, for no purpose but to hover over the surf under the walls of Nightmare Abbey ? Might it not be a mermaid ? It was possi- bly a mermaid. It was probably a mermaid. It was very prob- ably a mermaid. Nay, what else could it be but a mermaid ? It certainly was a mermaid. Mr. Asterias stole out of the library on tiptoe, with his finger on his lips, having beckoned Aquarius to follow him. The rest of the party was in great surprise at Mr. Asterias's movement, and some of them approached the window to see if the locality would tend to elucidate the mystery. Presently they saw him and Aquarius cautiously stealing along on the other side of the moat, but they saw nothing more ; and Mr. Asterias return- ing, told them, with accents of great disappointment, that he had had a glimpse of a mermaid, but she had eluded him in tha darkness, and was gone, he presumed, to sup with some en- amoured triton, in a submarine grotto. " But, seriously, Mr. AxSterias," said the Honourable Mr. List- CHAP. VII.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 123 less, " do you positively believe there are such things as mer- maids ?" MR. ASTERIAS. Most assuredly ; and tritons too. THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. What ! things that are half human and half fish ? BIR. ASTERIAS. Precisely. They are the oran-outangs of the sea. But I am persuaded that there are also complete sea men, differing in no respect from us, but that they are stupid, and covered with scales : for, though our organisation seems to exclude us essen- tially from the class of amphibious animals, yet anatomists well know that the foramen ovale may remain open in an adult, and that respiration is, in that case, not necessary to life : and how can it be otherwise explained that the Indian divers, employed in the pearl fishery, pass whole hours under the water ; and that the famous Swedish gardener of Troningholm lived a day and a half under the ice without being drowned 1 A nereid, or mer- maid, was taken in the year 1403 in a Dutch lake, and was in every respect like a French woman, except that she did not speak. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, an English ship, a hundred and fifty leagues from land, in the Greenland seas, discovered a flotilla of sixty or seventy little skiffs, in each of which was a triton, or sea man : at the approach of the English vessel the whole of them, seized with simultaneous fear, disappeared, skiffs and all, under the water, as if they had been a human variety of the nautilus. The illustrious Don Feijoo has preserved an authentic and well-attested story of a young Span- iard, named Francis de la Vega, who, bathing with some of his friends in June, 1674, suddenly dived under the sea and rose no more. His friends thought him drowned : they were plebeians and pious Catholics ; but a philosopher might very legitimately have drawn the same conclusion. THE REVEREND MR. LARYNX. Nothing could be more logical. MR. ASTERIAS. Five years afterwards, some fishermen near Cadiz found in 19A NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap. vn. their nets a triton, or sea man ; they spoke to him in several languages THE REVEREND MR. LARYNX. They were very learned fishermen. MR. HILARY. Thoy had the gift of tongues by especial favour of their brother fisherman, Saint Peter. THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. Is Saint Peter the tutelar saint of Cadiz ? {None of the company could answer this question, and Mr. As- TERiAs proceeded.) They spoke to him in several languages, but he was as mute as a fish. They handed him over to some holy friars, v/ho exor- cised him ; but the devil was mute too. After some days he pro- nounced the name Lierganes. A monk took him to that village. His mother and brothers recognised and embraced him ; but he was as insensible to their caresses as any other fish would have been. He had some scales on his body, which dropped off by degrees ; but his skin was as hard and rough as shagreen. He stayed at home nine years, without recovering his speech or his reason: he then disappeared again; and one of his old ac-- quaintance, some years after, saw him pop his head out of the water near the coast of the Asturias. These facts were certified by his brothers, and by Don Gaspardo de la Riba Aguero, Knight of Saint James, who lived near Lierganes, and often had the pleasure of our triton's company to dinner. — Pliny mentions an embassy of the Olyssiponians to Tiberius, to give him intelli- gence of a triton which had been heard playing on its shell in a certain cave ; v/ith several other authenticated facts on the sub- ject of tritons and nereids. THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. You astonish me. I have been much on the sea-shore, in the season, but I do not think I ever saw a mermaid. {He rang, and summoned Fatout, who made his appearance half-seas-over.) Fatout ! did I ever see a mermaid ? FATOUT. Mermaid I mer-r-m-m-aid ! Ah ! merry maid ! Oui, men- CHAP, vn.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 125 sieur ! Yes, sir, very many. I vish dere vas von or two here in de kitchen — ma foi ! Dey be all as melancholic as so many tombstone. THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. I mean, Fatout, an odd kind of human fish. FATOUT. De odd fish ! Ah, oui ! I understand de phrase : ve have seen nothing else since ve left town — ma foi ! THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. You seem to have a cup too much, sir. FATOUT. Non, monsieur : de cup too little. De fen be very unwhole- some, and I drink-a-de ponch vid Raven de butler, to keep out de bad air. THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. Fatout ! I insist on your being sober. FATOUT. Oui, monsieur ; I vil be as sober as de reverendissime pere Jean. I should be ver glad of de merry maid ; but de butler be de odd fish, and he swim in de bowl de ponch. Ah ! ah ! I do recollect de leetle-a song : — " About fair maids, and about fair maids, and about my merry maids all." (Fatout reeled out, singing.) THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. I am overwhelmed : I never saw the rascal in such a condition before. But will you allow me, Mr. Asterias, to inquire into the cui bono of all the pains and expense you have incurred to dis- cover a mermaid ? The cui bono, sir, is the question I always take the liberty to ask when I see any one taking much trouble for any object. I am myself a sort of Signor Pococurante, and should like to know if there be any thing better or pleasanter, than the state of existing and doing nothing ? MR. ASTERIAS. I have made many voyages, Mr. Listless, to remote and barren shores : I have travelled over desert and inhospitable lands : I have defied danger — I have endured fatigue — I have submitted to privation. In the midst of these I have experienced pleasures 126 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap. vii. which I would not at any time have exchanged for that of exist- ing and doing nothing. I have known many evils, but I have never known the worst of all, which, as it seems to me, are those which are comprehended in the inexhaustible varieties of ennui : spleen, chagrin, vapours, blue devils, time-killing, discontent, misanthropy, and all their interminable train of fretfulness, quer- ulousness, suspicions, jealousies, and fears, which have alike in- fected society, and the literature of society ; and which would make an arctic ocean of the human mind, if the more humane pursuits of philosophy and science did not keep alive the better feelings and more valuable energies of our nature. THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. You are pleased to be severe upon our fashionable belles let- tres. MR. ASTERIAS. Surely not without reason, when pirates, highv/aymen, and other varieties of the extensive genus Marauder, are the only beau ideal of the active, as splenetic and railing misanthropy is of the speculative energy. A gloomy brow and a tragical voice seem to have been of late the characteristics of fashionable manners : and a morbid, withering, deadly, antisocial sirocco, loaded with moral and political despair, breathes through all the groves and valleys of the modern Parnassus ; while science moves on in the calm dignity of its course, affording to youth delights equally pure and vivid — to maturity, calm and grateful occupation — to old age, the most pleasing recollections and inexhaustible mate- rials of agreeable and salutary reflection ; and, v/hile its votary enjoys the disinterested pleasure of enlarging the intellect and in- creasing the comforts of society, he is himself independent of the caprices of human intercourse and the accidents of human for- tune. Nature is his great and inexhaustible treasure. His days are always too short for his enjoyment : ennui is a stranger to his door. At peace with the world and with his own mind, he suf- fices to himself, makes all around him happy, and the close of his pleasing and beneficial existence is the evening of a beautiful day.* * See Denys Montfort : Histoire Naturelle des Mollusques ; Vues Gen^rales, pp. 37, 38. CHAP, vii] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 127 THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. Really I should like very well to lead such a life myself, but the exertion would be too much for me. Besides, I have been at college. I contrive to get through my day by sinking the morn- ing in bed, and killing the evening in company ; dressing and dining in the intermediate space, and stopping the chinks and crevices of the few vacant moments that remain with a little easy reading. And that amiable discontent and antisociality which you reprobate in our present drawing-room-table literature, I find, I do assure you, a very fine mental tonic, which reconciles me to my favourite pursuit of doing nothing, by showing me that nobody is worth doing any thing for. MARIONETTA. But is there not in such compositions a kind of unconscious self-detection, \vliich seems to carry their own antidote with them ? For surely no one who cordially and truly either hates or de- spises the world will publish a volume every three months to say so. MR. FLOSKY. There is a secret in all this, which I will elucidate with a dusky remark. According to Berkeley, the esse of things is per- dpi. They exist as they are perceived. But, leaving for the present, as far as relates to the material world, the materialists, hyloists, and antihyloists, to settle this point among them, which is indeed A subtle question, raised among Those out o' their wits, and those i' the wrong : for only we transcendentalists are in the right: we may very safely assert that the esse of happiness is percipi. It exists as it is perceived. "It is the mind that maketh well or ill." The elements of pleasure and pain are every where. The degree of happiness that any circumstances or objects can confer on us de- pends on the mental disposition with which we approach them. If you consider what is meant by the common phrases, a happy disposition and a discontented temper, you will perceive that the truth for which I am contending is universally admitted. (Mr. Flosky suddenly stopjjed : he found himself unintention- ally trespassing within the limits of common sense.) 128 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap, vii MR. HILARY. It is very true ; a happy disposition finds materials of enjoy- ment every where. In the city, or the country — in society, or in solitude — in the theatre, or the forest — in the hum of the multitude, or in the silence of the mountains, are alike materials of reflection and elements of pleasure. It is one mode of pleasure to listen to the music of " Don Giovanni," in a theatre glittering with light, and crowded with elegance and beauty : it is another to glide at sunset over the bosom of a lonely lake, where no sound disturbs the silence but the motion of the boat through the waters. A happy disposition derives pleasure from both, a discontented temper from neither, but is always busy in detecting deficiencies, and feeding dissatisfaction with comparisons. The one gathers all the flowers, the other all the nettles, in its path. The one has the faculty of enjoying every thing, the other of enjoying noth- ing. The one realises all the pleasure of the present good ; the other converts it into pain, by pining after something better, which is only better because it is not present, and which, if it v/ere pres- ent, v/ould not be enjoyed. These morbid spirits are in life what professed critics are in literature ; they see nothing but faults, because they are predetermined to shut their eyes to beauties. The critic does his utmost to blight genius in its infancy ; that which rises in spite of him he will not see ; and then he com- plains of the decline of literature. In like manner, these cankers of society complain of human nature and society, when they have wilfully debarred themselves from all the good they contain, and done their utmost to blight their ov»'n happiness and that of all around them. Misanthropy is sometimes the product of disap- pointed benevolence ; but it is more frequently the offspring of overweening and mortified vanity, quarrelling with the world for not being better treated than it deserves. scYTHROP (to Marionetta). These remarks are rather uncharitable. There is great good in human nature, but it is at present ill-conditioned. Ardent spirits cannot but be dissatisfied with things as they are ; and, ac- cording to their views of the probabilities of amelioration, they will rush into the extremes of either hope or despair — of which the first is enthusiasm, and the second misanthropy ; but their c^n^T. vu i NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 129 sources in this case are the same, as the Severn and the Wye run in different directions ; and both rise in Plinlinimon. MARIONETTA. " And there is salmon in both ;" for the resemblance is about as close as that between Macedon and Monmouth. 10 J30 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. Fcjup. CHAPTER VIII. Marionetta observed the next day a remarkable perturbation in Scythrop, for which she could not imagine any probable cause. She was willing to believe at first that it had some transient and trifling source, and would pass off in a day or two ; but, contrary to this expectation, it daily increased. She was well aware that Scythrop had a strong tendency to the love of mystery, for its own sake ; that is to say, he would employ mystery to serve a purpose, but would first choose his purpose by its capability of mystery. He seemed now to have more mystery on his hands than the laws of the system allowed, and to wear his coat of darkness with an air of great discomfort. All her little playful arts lost by degrees much of their power, either to irritate or to soothe ; and the first perception of her diminished influence produced in her an imme- diate depression of spirits, and a consequent sadness of demeanour, that rendered her very interesting to Mr. Gbwry ; who, duly considering the improbability of accomplishing his wishes with re- spect to Miss Toobad (which improbability naturally increased in the diurnal ratio of that young lady's absence), began to reconcile himself by degrees to the idea of Marionetta being his daughter. Marionetta made many ineffectual attempts to extract from Scy- throp the secret of his mystery ; and, in despair of drawing it from himself, began to form hopes that she might find a clue to it from Mr. Flosky, who was Scythrop's dearest friend, and was more frequently than any other person admitted to his solitary tower. Mr. Flosky, however, had ceased to be visible in a morning. He was engaged in the composition of a dismal ballad ; and, Marion- etta's uneasiness overcoming her scruples of decorum, she deter- mined to seek him in the apartment which he had chosen for his study. She tapped at the door, and at the sound " Come in," en- tered the apartment. It was noon, and the sun was shining in full spendour, much to the annoyance of Mr. Flosky, who had obviated the inconvenience by closing the shutters, and drawing CHAP, viii.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 131 the window-curtains. He was sitting at his table by the light of a solitary candle, with a pen in one hand, and a muffineer in the other, with which he occasionally sprinkled salt on the wick, to make it burn blue. He sate with " his eye in a fine frenzy roll- ing," and turned his inspired gaze on Marionetta as if she had been the ghastly ladie of a magical vision ; then placed his hand before his eyes, with an appearance of manifest pain — shook his head — withdrew his hand — rubbed his eyes, like a waking man — and said, in a tone of ruefulness most jeremitaylorically pathetic, *' To what am Pto attribute this very unexpected pleasure, my dear Miss O'Carroll ?" MARIONETTA. I must apolgoize for intruding on you, Mr. Flosky ; but the interest which I — you — take in my cousin Scythrop MR. FLOSKY. Pardon me. Miss O'Carroll ; I do not take any interest in any person or thing on the face of the earth ; which sentiment, if you analyse it, you will find to be the quintessence of the most refined philanthropy. MARIONETTA. I will take it for granted that it is so, Mr. Flosky ; I am not conversant with metaphysical subtleties, but MR. FLOSKY. Subtleties ! my dear Miss O'Carroll. I am sorry to find you participating in the vulgar error of the reading piihlic, to whom an unusual collocation of words, involving a juxtaposition of an- liperistatical ideas, immediately suggests the notion of hyperoxy- sophistical paradoxology. MARIONETTA. Indeed, Mr. Flosky, it suggests no such notion to me. I have sought you for the purpose of obtaining information. MR. FLOSKY (shaking his head). No one ever sought me for such a purpose before. MARIONETTA. 1 think, Mr. Flosky — that is, I believe — that is, I fancy — that is, I imagine ' 132 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap, viii MR. FLOSKY. The ravrtcrri, the id cst, the doc, the c^cst a dire, the that is, my dear Miss O'Carroll, is not applicable in this case — if you will permit me to take the liberty of saying so. Think is not synony- mous with believe — for belief, in many most important particu- lars, results from the total absence, the absolute negation of thought, and is thereby the sane and orthodox condition of mind ; and thought and belief are both essentially different from fancy, and fancy, again, is distinct from imagination. This distinction be- tween fancy and imagination is one of the most abstruse and im- portant points of metaphysics. I have written seven hundred pages of promise to elucidate it, which promise I shall keep as faithfully as the bank will its promise to pay. WARIONETTA. I assure you, Mr. Flosky, I care no more about metaphysics thaiJi I do about the bank ; and, if you will condescend to talk to a simple girl in intelligible terms MR. FLOSKY. Say not condescend ! Know you not that you talk to the most humble of men, to one who has buckled on the armour of sanctity, and clothed himself with humility as with a garment ? MARIONETTA. My cousin Scythrop has of late had an air of mystery about him, which gives me great uneasiness. MR. FLOSKY. That is strange : nothing is so becoming to a man as an air of mystery. Mystery is the very key-stone of all that is beautiful in poetry, all that is sacred in faith, and all that is recondite in transcendental psychology. I am writing a ballad which is all mystery ; it is " such stuff as dreams are made of," and is, in- deed, stuff made of a dream ; for, last night I fell asleep as usual over my book, and had a vision of pure reason. I composed five hundred lines in my sleep ; so that, having had a dream of a ballad, I am now officiating as my own Peter Quince, and making a ballad of my dream, and it shall be called Bottom's Dream, be- cause it has no bottom. MARIONETTA. I see, Mr. Flosky, you think my intrusion unseasonable, and CHAP. VIII.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 13j are inclined to punish it, by talking nonsense to mc. {Mr. Flosby gave a start at the loord nonsense, which almost overturned the table.) I assure you I v/ould not have intruded if I had not been very much interested in the question I v/ish to ask you. — [Mr. Flosky listened in sullen dignity.) — My cousin Scythrop seems to have some secret preying on his mand. — [Mr. Flosky was silent.) — He seems very unhappy — Mr. Flofeky. — Perhaps you are ac- quainted with the cause. — [Mr. Flosky ivas still silent.) — I only wish to know — Mr. Flosky — if it is any thing — that could be remedied by any thing — that any one — of whom I know any thing — could do. MR. FLOSKY (after a pause). There are various ways of getting at secrets. The most ap- proved methods, as recommended both theoretically and practi- cally in philosophical novels, are eaves-dropping at key-holes, picking the locks of chests and desks, peeping into letters, steam- ing wafers, and insinuating hot wire under sealing-wax ; none of which methods I hold it lawful to practise. MARIONETTA. Surely, Mr. Flosky, you cannot suspect me of wishing to adopt or encourage such base and contemptible arts. MR. FLOSKY. Yet are they recommended, and v/ith well-strung reasons, by writers of gravity and note, as simple and easy methods of study, ing character, and gratifying that laudible curiosity which aims at the knowledge of man. MARIONETTA. I am as ignorant of this morality which you do not approve, as of the metaphysics which you do : I should be glad to know by your means, what is the matter with my cousin ; I do not like to see him unhappy, and I suppose there is some reason for it. MR. FLOSKY. Now I should rather suppose there is no reason for it : it is the fashion to be unhappy. To have a reason for being so would be exceedingly common-place : to be so without any is the province of genius : the art of being miserable for misery's sake, has been brought 10 great perfection in our days ; and the ancient Odyssey, which held forth a shining example of the endurance of real mis- 134 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap. vm. fortune, Avill give place to a modern one, setting out a more in- structive picture of querulous impatience under imaginary evils. MARIONETTA. Will you oblige me, Mr. Flosky, by giving me a plain answer to a plain question ? MR. FLOSKY. It is impossible, my dear Miss O 'Carroll. I never gave a plain answer to a question in my life. MARIONETTA. Do you, or do you not, know what is the matter with my cou- sin ? MR. FLOSKY. To say that I do not know, would be to say that I am ignorant of something ; and God forbid, that a transcendental metaphysi- cian, who has pure anticipated cognitions of every thing, and carries the whole science of geometry in his head without ever having looked into Euclid, should fall into so empirical an error as to declare himself ignorant of any thing : to say that I do know, v/ould be to pretend to positive and circumstantial knowledge touching present matter of fact, which, when you consider the na- ture of evidence, and the various lights in which the same thing may be seen MARIONETTA. I see, Mr. Flosky, that either you have no information, or are determined not to impart it ; and I beg your pardon for having given you this unnecessary trouble. MR. FLOSKY. My dear Miss O'Carroll, it would have given me great pleasure to have said any thing that would have given you pleasure ; but if any person living could make report of having obtained any information on any subject from Ferdinando Flosky, my tran- scendental reputation would be ruined for ever. CHAP, ix.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 135 CHAPTER IX. ScYTHROP grew every day more reserved, mysterious, and dis- trait ; and gradually lengthened the duration of his diurnal se- clusions in his tower. Marionetta thought she perceived in all this very manifest symptoms of a warm love cooling. It was seldom that she found herself alone with him in the morning, and, on these occasions, if she was silent in the hope of his speaking first, not a syllable would he utter ; if she spoke to him indirectly, he assented monosyllabically ; if she questioned him, his answers were brief, constrained, and evasive. Still, though her spirits were depressed, her playfulness had not so totally forsaken her, but that it illuminated at intervals the gloom of Nightmare Abbey ; and if, on any occasion, she observed in Scythrop tokens of unextinguished or returning passion, her love of tormenting her lover immediately got the better both of her grief and her sympathy, though not of her curiosity, which Scy- tlirop seemed determined not to satisfy. This playfulness, how- ever, was in a great measure artificial, and usually vanished with the irritable Strephon, to whose annoyance it had been ex- erted. The Genius Loci, the tutela of Nightmare Abbey, the spirit of black melancholy, began to set his seal on her pallescent countenance. Scythrop perceived the change, found his tender sympathies awakened, and did his utmost to comfort the afflicted damsel, assuring her that his seeming inattention had only pro- ceeded from his being involved in a profound meditation on a very hopeful scheme for the regeneration of human society. Marion- etta called him ungrateful, cruel, cold-hearted, and accompanied her reproaches with many sobs and tears : poor Scythrop growing every moment more soft and submissive — till, at length, he threw himself at her feet, and declared that no competition of beauty, however dazzling, genius, however transcendent, talents, however cultivated, or philosophy, however enlightened, should ever make him renounce his divine Marionetta. 136 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap. ix. " Competition !" thought Marionetta, and suddenly, with an air of the most freezing indilibrence, she said, "You are perfectly at liberty, sir, to do as you please ; I beg you will follow your -wn plans, without any reference to me." Scythrop was confounded. What v/as become of all her pas-= sion and her tears ? Still kneeling, he kissed her hand with rue- ful timidity, and said, in most pathetic accents, " Do you not love me, Marionetta ?" " No," said Marionetta, with a look of cold composure : " No." Scythrop still looked up incredulously. " No, I tell you." " Oh ! very well, madam," said Scythrop, rising, " if that is the case, there are those in the world '' " To be sure there are, sir ; — and do you suppose I do not see through your designs, you ungenerous monster ?" " My designs ? Marionetta !" " Yes, your designs, Scythrop. You have come here to cast me off, and artfully contrive that it should appear to be my doing, and not yours, thinking to quiet your tender conscience with this pitiful stratagem. But do not suppose that you are of so much consequence to me : do not suppose it : you are of no consequence to me at all — none at all : therefore, leave me : I renounce you : leave me ; why do you not leave m.e ?" Scythrop endeavoured to remonstrate, but without success. She reiterated her injunctions to him to leave her, till, in the sim- plicity of his spirit, he was preparing to comply. When he had nearly reached the door, Marionetta said, " Farewell." Scythrop looked back. " Farewell, Scythrop," she repeated, " you will never see me again." " Never see you again, Marionetta ?" " I shall go from hence to-morrow, perhaps to-day ; and before we meet again, one of us will be married, and we might as well be dead, you know, Scythrop." The sudden change of her voice in the last few words, and the burst of tears that accompanied them, acted like electricity on the tender-hearted youth ; and, in another instant, a complete recon- ciliation was accomplished without the intervention of words. There are, indeed, some learned casuists, who maintain that love has no language, and that all the misunderstandings and dis- sensions of lovers arise from the fatal habit of employing words CHA?. IX.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 137 on a subject to which words are inapplicable ; that love, begin- ning with looks, that is to say, with the physiognomical expression of congenial mental dispositions, tends through a regular gradation of signs and symbols of affection, to that consummation which is most devoutly to be wished ; and that it neither is necessary that there should be, nor probable that there would be, a single word spoken from first to last between two sympathetic spirits, were it not that the arbitrary institutions of society have raised, at every step of this very simple process, so many complicated impedi- ments and barriers in the shape of settlements and ceremonies, parents and guardians, lawyers, Jew-brokers, and parsons, that many an adventurous knight (who, in order to obtain the conquest of the Hesperian fruit, is obliged to fight his v/ay through all these monsters,) is either repulsed at the onset, or vanquished be- fore the achievement of his enterprise : and such a quantity of unnatural talking is rendered inevitably necessary through all the stages of the progression, that the tender and volatile spirit of love often takes flight on the pinions of some of the e-a ^rrcpoevra, or loinged words, which are pressed into his service in despite of himself. At this conjuncture, ]Mr. Glowry entered, and sitting dov/n near them, said, " I see how it is ; and, as v/e are all sure to be miserable do what we may, there is no need of taking pains to make one another more so ; therefore, with God's blessing and mine, there " — joining their hands as he spoke. Scythrop was not exactly prepared for this decisive step ; but he could only stammer out, " Really, sir, you are too good ;" and Mr. Glowry departed to bring Mr. Hilary to ratify the act. Now, whatever truth there may be in the theory of love and language, of which we have so recently spoken, certain it is, that during Mr. Glowry's absence, which lasted half an hour, not a suigle word was said by either Scythrop or Marionetta. Mr. Glowry returned with Mr. Hilary, who vras delighted at the prospect of so advantageous an establishment for his orphan niece, of whom he considered himself in some manner the guar- dian, and nothing remained, as Mr. Glowry observed, but to fix the day. Marionetta blushed, and was silent. Scythrop was also silent 138 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap. ix. for a time, and at length hesitatingly said, " My dear sir, your goodness overpowers me ; but really you are so precipitate." Now, this remark, if the young lady had made it, would, whether she thought it or not — for sincerity is a thing of no ac- count on these occasions, nor indeed on any other, according to Mr. Flosky — this remark, if the young lady had made it, would have been perfectly comme ilfaut ; but, being made by the young gentleman, it was ioute autre chose, and was, indeed, in the eyes of his mistress, a most heinous and irremissible offence. Mari- onetta was angry, very angry, but she concealed her anger, and said, calmly and coldly, " Certainly, you are much too precipi- tate, Mr. Glowry. I assure you, sir, I have by no means made up my mind ; and, indeed, as far as I know it, it inclines the other way ; but it will be quite time enough to think of these matters seven je&Ys hence." Before surprise permitted reply, the young lady had locked herself up in her own apartment. " Why Scythrop," said Mr. Glowry, elongating his face ex- ceedingly, " the devil is come among us sure enough, as Mr. Too- bad observes : I thought you and Marionetta were both of a mind." " So we are, I believe, sir," said Scythrop, gloomily, and stalked away to nis tower. " Mr. Glowry," said Mr. Hilary, '• I do not very well under- stand all this." "Whims, brother Hilary," said Mr. Glowry; "some little foolish love quarrel, nothing more. Whims, freaks, April showers. They will be blown over by to-morrow\" " If not," said Mr. Hilary, " these April showers have made us April fools." " Ah !" said Mr. Glowry, " you are a happy man, and in all your afflictions you can console yourself with a joke, let it be ever so bad, provided you crack it yourself I should be very happy to laugh with you, if it would give you any satisfaction ; hut, really, at present, my heart is so sad, that I find it impossible to levy a contribution on my muscles." NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 139 CHAPTER X. On the evening on which Mr. Asterias had caught a glimpse of a female figure on the sea-shore, which he had translated into the visual sign of his interior cognition of a mermaid, Scythrop, retiring to his tower, found his study^prc-occupied. A stranger, muffled in a cloak, was sitting at liis tabic. Scythrop paused in surprise. The stranger rose at his entrance, and looked at him intently a few minutes, in silence. The eyes of the stranger alone were visible. All the rest of the figure was muffled and mantled in the folds of a black cloak, which was raised, by the right hand, to the level of the eyes. This scrutiny being com- pleted, the stranger, dropping the cloak, said, " I see, by your physiognomy, that you may be trusted ;" and revealed to the as- tonished Scythrop a female form and countenance of dazziing grace and beauty, with long flowing hair of raven blackness, and large black eyes of almost oppressive brilliancy, which stri- kingly contrasted with a complexion of snowy whiteness. Her dress was extremely elegant, but had an appearance of foreign fashion, as if both the lady and her mantaamaker were of '• a far countree." " I guess 't was frightful there to see A lady so richly clad as she, Beautiful exceedingly." For, if it be terrible to one young lady to find another under a tree at midnight, it must, a fortiori, be much more terrible to a young gentleman to find a young lady in his study at that hour. If the logical consecutiveness of this conclusion be not manifest to my readers, I am sorry for their dulness, and must refer them, for more ample elucidation, to a treatise which Mr. Flosky in- tends to write, on the Categories of Relation, which comprehend Substance and Accident, Cause and Effect, Action and Re-action. Scythrop, therefore, either was or ought to have been frighten- 140 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap. x. ed ; at all events, he was astonished ; and astonishment, though not in itself fear, is nevertheless a good stage towards it, and is, indeed, as it were, the half-way house between respect and ter- ror, according to Mr. Burke's graduated scale of the sublime.* ^' You are surprised," said the lady ; " yet why should you be surprised ? If you had met me in a drawing-room, and I had been introduced to you by an old wonan, it would have been a matter of course : can the division of two or three walls, and the absence of an unimportant personage, make the same object es- sentially difierent in the perception of a philosopher ?" " Certainly not," said Scythrop ; " but when any class of ob- jects has habitually presented itself to our perceptions in invariable conjunction with particular relations, then, on the sudden appear- ance of one object of the class divested of those accompaniments, the essential difference of the relation is, by an involuntary pro- cess, transferred to the object itself, which thus offers itself to our perceptions with all the strangeness of novelty." " You are a philosopher," said the lady, " and a lover of lib- erty. You are the author of a treatise, called ' Philosophical Gas ; or, a Project foi' a General Illumination of the Human Mind.' " " I am," said Scythrop, delighted at this first blossom of his renown. " I am a stranger in this country," said the lady ; " I have * There must be some mistake in this, for the whole honourable band of gen- tlemen pensioners has resolved unanimously, that Mr. Burke was a very sub- lune person, particularly after he had prostituted his own soul, and betrayed his country and mankind, for 1200Z. a year : yet he does not appear to have been a very terrible personage, and certainly went off with a very small portion of human respect, though he contrived to excite, in a great degree, the astonish- ment of all honest men. Our immaculate laureate (who gives us to mider- stand that, if he had not been purified by holy matrimony into a mystical type, he would have died a virgin,) is another sublime gentleman of the same genus ; he very much astonished some persons when he sold his birthright for a pot of sack ; but not even his Sosia has a grain of respect for him, though, doubtless, he thinks his name very terrible to the enemy, when he flourishes his critico- poeticopolitical tomahawk, and sets up his Indian yell for the blood^f his old friends: but, at best, lie is a mere political scarecrow, a man of straw, ridicu- lous to all who know of what materials he is made ; and to none more so, than to those who have stuffed him, and set him up, as the Priapus of the garden of the golden apples of corruption. CHAP, x.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 141 been but a few days in it, yet I find myself immediately under the necessity of seeking refuge from an atrocious persecution. I had no friend to whom I could apply ; and, in the midst of my difficulties, accident threw your pamphlet in my way. I saw that I had, at least, one kindred mind in this nation, and deter- mined to apply to you." " And what would you have me do ?" said Scythrop, more and more amazed, and not a little perplexed. " I would have you," said the young lady, " assist me in find- ing some place of retreat, where I can remain concealed from the indefatigable search that is being made for me. I have been so nearly caught once or tvv'ice already, that I cannot confide any longer in my own ingenuity." Doubtless, thought ScytLvop, this is one of my golden candle- sticks. " I have constructed," said he, " in this tower, an en- trance to a small suite of unknov/n apartments in the main building, which I defy any creature living to detect. If you would like to remain there a day or two, till I can find you a more suitable concealment, you may rely on the honour of a transcendental eleutherarch." " I rely on myself," said the lady. " I act as I please, go where I please, and let the world say what it will. I am rich enough to set it at defiance. It is the tyrant of the poor and the feeble, but the slave of those who are above the reach of its in- jury." Scythrop ventured to inquire the name of his fair protegee. " What is a name ?" said the lady : " any name will serve the purpose of distinction. Call me Stella. I see by your looks," she added, " that you think all this very strange. When you know me better, your surprise will cease. I submit not to be an accomplice in my sex's slavery. I am, like yourself, a lover of freedom, and I carry my theory into practice. They alone are subject to Wind authority who have no reliance on their oiun strength. ^^ Stella took possession of the recondite apartments. Scythrop intended to find her another asylum ; but from day to day he postponed his intention, and by degrees forgot it. The young lady reminded him of it from day to day, till she also forgot it. Scythrop was anxious to learn her history j but she would add 142 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap, x nothing to what she had already communicated, that she was shunning an atrocious persecution. Scythrop thought of Lord C. and the Alien Act, and said, " As you will not tell your name, I suppose it is in the green bag." Stella, not understanding what he meant, was silent ; and Scythrop, translating silence into ac- quiescence, concluded that he was sheltering an illuminee whom Lord S. suspected of an intention to take the Tower, and set fire to the Bank : exploits, at least, as likely to be accomplished by the hands and eyes of a young beauty, as by a drunken cobbler and doctor, armed with a pamphlet and an old stocking. Stella, in her conversations with Scythrop, displayed a highly cultivated and energetic mind, full of impassioned schemes of liberty, and impatience of masculine usurpation. She had a lively sense of all the oppressions that are done under the sun ; and the vivid pictures which her imagination presented to her of the numberless scenes of injustice and misery which are being acted at every moment in every part of the inhabited world, gave an habitual seriousness to her physiognomy, that made it seem as if a smile had never once hovered on her lips. She was inti- mately conversant with the German lann-uao-e and literature ; and Scythrop listened with delight to her repetitions of her favour- ite passages from Schiller and Goethe, and to her encomiums on the sublime Spartacus Wcishaupt, the immortal founder of the sect of the Illuminati. Scythrop found that his soul had a greater capacity of love than the image of Marionetta had filled. The form of Stella took possession of every vacant corner of the cavity, and by degrees displaced that of Marionetta from many of the outworks of the citadel ; though the latter still held posses- sion of the keep. He judged, from his new friend calling herself Stella, that, if it were not her real name, she was an admirer of the principles of the German play from which she had taken it, and took an opportunity of leading the conversation to that sub- ject ; but to his great surprise, the lady spoke very ardently of the singleness and exclusiveness of love, and declared that the reign of affection was one and indivisible ; that it might be trans- ferred, but could not be participated. " If I ever love," said she, '' I shall do so without limit or restriction. I shall hold all diffi- culties light, all sacrifices cheap, all obstacles gossamer. But for love so total, I shall claim a return as absolute. I will have no CHAP. X.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 143 rival : whether more or less favoured will be of little moment. I will be neither first nor second — I will be alone. The heart which I shall possess I will possess entirely, or entirely renounce." Scythrop did not dare to mention the name of Marionetta : he trembled lest some unlucky accident should reveal it to Stella, though he scarcely knew what result to wish or anticipate, and lived in the double fever of a perpetual dilemma. He could not dissemble to himself that he was in love, at the same time, with two damsels of minds and habits as remote as the antipodes. The scale of predilection always inclined to the fair one who happened to be present ; but the absent was never effectually outweighed, though the degrees of exaltation and depression varied according to accidental variations in the outward and visible signs of the inward and spiritual graces of his respective charmers. Passing and repassing several times a day from the company of the one to that of the other, he was like a shuttlecock between two battle, dores, changing its direction as rapidly as the oscillations of a pendulum, receiving many a hard knock on the cork of a sensi- tive heart, and flying from point to point on the feathers of a su- per-sublimated head. This was an awful state of things. He had now as much mystery about him as any romantic transcen- dentalist or transcendental romancer could desire. He had his esoterical and his exoterical love. He could not endure the thought of losing either of them, but he trembled when he ima- gined the possibility that some fatal discovery might deprive him of both. The old proverb concerning two strings to a bow gave him some gleams of comfort ; but that concerning two stools oc- curred to him more frequently, and covered his forehead with a cold perspiration. With Stella, he could indulge freely in all his romantic and philosophical visions. He could build castles in the air, and she would pile towers and turrets on the imagin- ary edifices. With Marionetta it was otherwise : she knew no- thing of the world and society beyond the sphere of her own ex- perience. Her life was all music and sunshine, and she wonder- ed what any one could see to complain of in such a pleasant state of things. She loved Scythrop, she hardly knew why ; in- deed she was not always sure that she loved him at all : she felt her fondness increase or diminish in an inverse ratio to his. When she had manoeuvred him into a fever of passionate love, 144 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap. x. she often felt and always assumed indifTerence : if she found that her coldness was contagious, and that Scythrop either was, or pretended to be, as indifferent as herself, she would become doubly kind, and raise him again to that elevation from which she had previously thrown him down. Thus, when his love was flowing, hers was ebbing : when his was ebbing, hers was flowing. Now and then there were moments of level tide, v/hen reciprocal affec- tion seemed to promise imperturbable harmony ; but Scythrop could scarcely resign his spirit to the pleasing illusion, before the pinnace of the lover's affections was caught in some eddy of the lady's caprice, and he was whirled away from the shore of his hopes, without rudder or compass, into an ocean of mists and storms. It resulted, from this system of conduct, that all that passed between Scythrop and Marionetta consisted in making and unmaking love. He had no opportunity to take measure of her understanding by conversations on general subjects, and on his favourite designs ; and, being left in this respect to the exer- cise of indefinite conjecture, he took it for granted, as most lovers would do in similar circumstances, that she had great natural talents, which she wasted at present on trifles : but coquetry would end v/ith marriage, and leave room for philosophy to exert its influ- ence on her mind. Stella had no coquetry, no disguise : she was an enthusiast in subjects of general interest ; and her conduct to Scythrop was always uniform, or rather showed a regular pro- gression of partiality which seemed fast ripening into love. CHAP. XI.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 145 CHAPTER XI. ScYTHROP, attending one day the summons to dinner, found in the drawing-room his friend Mr. Cypress the poet, whom he had known at college, and who was a great favourite of Mr. Glowry. Mr. Cypress said, he was on the point of leaving England, but could not think of doing so without a farewell-look at Nightmare Abbey and his respected friends, the moody Mr. Glowry and the mysterious Mr. Scythrop, the sublime Mr. Flosky and the pathetic Mr, Listless ; to all of whom, and the morbid hospitality of the melancholy dwelling in which they were then assembled, he as- sured them he should always look back with as much affection as his lacerated spirit could feel for any thing. The sympathetic condolence of their respective replies was cut short by Raven's announcement of " dinner on table." The conversation that took place when the wine was in circu- lation, and the ladies were withdrawn, we shall report with our usual scrupulous fidelity. MR. GLOWRY. You are leaving England, Mr. Cypress. There is a delightful melancholy in saying farewell to an old acquaintance, when the chances are twenty to one against ever meeting again. A smiling bumper to a sad parting, and let us all be unhappy together. MR. CYPRESS (Jilling a bumper). This is the only social habit that the disappointed spirit never unlearns. THE REVEREND MR. LARYNX {jilling). It is the only piece of academical learning that the finished ed- ucatee retains. MR. FLOSKY {filling). It is the only objective fact which the sceptic can realise. • SCYTHROP {filling). It is the only styptic for a bleeding heart 11 146 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap, xl THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS {filling). It is the only trouble that is very well worth taking. MR. ASTERIAS {filling). It is the only key of conversational truth. MR. TOOBAD {filling). It is the only antidote to the great wrath of the devil. MR. HILARY {filling). It is the only symbol of perfect life. The inscription " hic NON BiBiTUR ^' wiU suit nothing but a tombstone. MR. GLOWRY. You will see many fine old ruins, Mr. Cypress ; crumbling pillars, and mossy walls — many a one-legged Venus and headless Minerva — many a Neptune buried in sand — many a Jupiter turned topsy-turvy — many a perforated Bacchus doing duty as a water- pipe — many reminiscences of the ancient world, which I hope was better worth living in tlian the modern ; though, for myself, I ca-re not a straw more for one than the other, and would not go twenty miles to see any thing that either could show. MR. CYPRESS. It is something to seek, Mr. Glowry. The mind is restless, and must persist in seeking, though to find is to be disappointed. Do you feel no aspirations towards the countries of Socrates and Cicero ? No wish to wander among the venerable remains of the greatness that has passed for ever 1 MR. GLOWRY. Not a grain. SCYTHROP. It is, indeed, much the same as if a lover should dig up the buried form of his mistress, and gaze upon relics which are any thing but herself, to wander among a few mouldy ruins, that are only imperfect indexes to lost volumes of glory, and meet at every step the more melancholy ruins of human nature — a degenerate race of stupid and shrivelled slaves, grovelling in the lowest depths of servility and superstition. THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. It is the fashion to go abroad. I have thought of it myself, but am hardly equal to the exertion. To be sure, a little eccen- CHAP. XI.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 147 tricity and originality are allowable in some cases ; and the most eccentric and original of all characters is an Englishman who stays at home. SCYTHROP. I should have no pleasure in visiting countries that are past all hope of regeneration. There is great hope of our own ; and it seems to me that an Englishman, who, either by his station in society, or by his genius, or (as in your instance, Mr. Cypress,) by both, has the power of essentially serving his country in its arduous struggle with its domestic enemies, yet forsakes his coun- try, which is still so rich in hope, to dwell in others which are only fertile in the ruins of memory, does what none of those an- cients, whose fragmentary memorials you venerate, would have done in similar circumstances. MR. CYPRESS. Sir, I have quarrelled with my wife ; and a man who has quarrelled with his wife is absolved from all duty to his country. I have written an ode to tell the people as much, and they may take it as they list. SCYTHROP. Do you suppose, if Brutus had quarrelled with his wife, he would have given it as a reason to Cassius for having nothing to do with his enterprise ? Or would Cassius have been satisfied with such an excuse ? MR. FLOSKY. Brutus was a senator ; so is our dear friend : but the cases are different. Brutus had some hope of political good : Mr. Cypress has none. How should he, after what we have seen in France ? SCYTHROP. A Frenchman is born in harness, ready saddled, bitted, and bridled, for any tyrant to ride. He will fawn under his rider one moment, and throw him and kick him to death the next ; but an- other adventurer springs on his back, and by dint of whip and spur on he goes as before. We may, without much vanity, hope better of ourselves. MR. CYPRESS. I have no hope for myself or for others. Our life is a false 148 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap. xi. nature ; it is not in the harmony of things ; it is an all-blasting upas, whose root is earth, and whose leaves are the skies which rain their poison-dews upon mankind. We wither from our youth ; we gasp with unslaked thirst for unattainable good ; lured from the first to the last by phantoms — love, fame, ambition, ava- rice — all idle, and all ill — one meteor of many names, that van- ishes in the smoke of death.* MR. FLOSKY. A most delightful speech. Mr. Cypress. A most amiable and instructive philosophy. You have only to impress its ti'uth on the minds of all living men, and life will then, indeed, be the desert and the solitude ; and I must do you myself, and our mu- tual jEi'iends, the justice to observe, that let society only give fair play at one and the same time, as I flatter myself it is inclined to do, to your system of morals, and my system of metaphysics, and Scythrop's system of politics, and Mr. Listless's system of man- ners, and Mr. Toobad's system of religion, and the result will be as fine a mental chaos as even the immortal Kant himself could ever have hoped to see ; in the prospect of which I rejoice. MR. HILARY. " Certainly, ancient, it is not a thing to rejoice at :" I am one of those who cannot see the good that is to result from all this mystifying and blue-devilling of society. The contrast it presents to the cheerful and solid wisdom of antiquity is too forcible not to strike any one who has the least knowledge of classical literature. To represent vice and misery as the necessary accompaniments of genius, is as mischievous as it is false, and the feeling is as unclassical as the language in which it is usually expressed. MR. TOOBAD. It is our calamity. The devil has come among us, and has begun by taking possession of all the cleverest fellows. Yet, for- sooth, this is the enlightened age. Marry, how ? Did our an- cestors go peeping about with dark lanterns, and do we walk at our ease in broad sunshine ? Where is the manifestation of our light ? By what symptoms do you recognise it ? What are its signs, its tokens, its symptoms, its symbols, its categories, its con- * Childe Harold, canto 4. cxxiv. cxxvi. CHAP, xi.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 149 ditions ? What is it, and why ? How, where, when is it to be seen, felt, and understood ? What do we see by it which our ancestors saw not, and which at the same time is worth seeing ? We see a hundred men hanged, where they saw one. We see five hundred transported, where they saw one. We see five thou- sand in the workhouse, where they saw one. We see scores of Bible Societies, where they saw none. We see paper, where they saw gold. We see men in stays, where they saw men in armour. We see painted faces, where they saw healthy ones. We see chil- dren perishing in manufactories, where they saw them flourishing in the fields. We see prisons, where they saw castles. We see masters, where they saw representatives. In short, they saw true men, where we see false knaves. They saw Milton, and we see Mr. Sackbut. MR. FLOSKY. The false knave, sir, is my honest friend ; therefore, I beseech you, let him be countenanced. God forbid but a knave should have some countenance at his friend's request. MR. TOOBAD. " Good men and true" was their common term, like the Ka\os Kdyados of the Athenians. It is so long since men have been either good or true, that it is to be questioned which is most obsolete, the fact or the phraseology. MR. CYPRESS. There is no worth nor beauty but in the mind's idea. Love sows the wind and reaps the whirlwind.* Confusion, thrice con- founded, is the portion of him who rests even for an instant on that most brittle of reeds — the affection of a human being. The sum of our social destiny is to inflict or to endure. f MR. HILARY. Rather to bear and forbear, Mr. Cypress — a maxim which you perhaps despise. Ideal beauty is not the mind's creation : it is real beauty, refined and purified in the mind's-alembic, from the alloy which always more or less accompanies it in our mixed and imperfect nature. But still the gold exists in a very ample de- gree. To expect too much is a disease in the expectant, for which human nature is not responsible ; and, in the common * Childe Harold, canto 4. cxxiii. t Ibid, canto 3. Ixxi. 150 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap. xi. name of humanity, I protest against these false and mischievous payings. To rail against humanity for not being abstract perfec- tion, and against human love for not realising all the splendid visions of the poets of chivalry, is to rail at the summer for not being all sunshine, and at the rose for not being always in bloom. MR. CYPRESS. Human love ! Love is not an inhabitant of the earth. We worship him as the Athenians did their unknown God : but bro- ken hearts are the martyrs of his faith, and the eye shall never see the form which phantasy paints, and which passion pursues through paths of delusive beauty, among flowers whose odours are agonies, and trees whose gums are poison.* MR. HILARY. 1 1 You talk like a Rosicrusian, who will love nothing but a sylph, |,lwho does not believe in the existence of a sylph, and who yet ' quarrels with the whole universe for not containing a sylph. MR. CYPRESS. The mind is diseased of its own beauty, and fevers into false creation. The forms which the sculptor's soul has seized exist only in himself. f MR. FLOSKY. Permit me to discept. They are the mediums of common forms combined and arranged into a common standard. The ideal beauty of the Helen of Zeuxis was the combined medium of the real beauty of the virgins of Crotona. MR. HILARY. But to make ideal beauty the shadow in the water, and, like the dog in the fable, to throw away the substance in catching at the shadow, is scarcely the characteristic of wisdom, whatever it may be of genius. To reconcile man as he is to the world as it is, to preserve and improve all that is good, and destroy or alle- viate all that is. evil, in physical and moral nature — have been the hope and aim of the greatest teachers and ornaments of our species. I will say, too, that the highest wisdom and the highest genius have been invariably accompanied with cheerfulness. We have sufficient proofs on record that Shakspeare and Socrates * Childe Harold, canto 4. cxxi. cxxxvi. t Ibid, canto 4. cxxii. CHAP. XI.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 151 were the most festive of companions. But now the little wis- dom and genius we have seem to be entering into a conspiracy against cheerfulness. BIR. TOOBAD. How can we be cheerful with the devil among us ? THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. How can we be cheerful when our nerves are shattered ? MR. FLOSKY. How can we be cheerful when we are surrounded by a reading public, that is growing too wise for its betters ? SCYTHROP. How can we be cheerful when our great general designs are crossed every moment by our little particular passions 1 MR. CYPRESS. How can we be cheerful in the midst of disapointment and despair ? MR. GLOWRY. Let us all be unhappy together. MR. HILARY. Let us sing a catch. MR. GLOWRY. No : a nice tragical ballad. The Norfolk Tragedy to the tune of the Hundredth Psalm. MR. HILARY. I say a catch. MR. GLOWRY. I say no. A song from Mr. Cypress. ALL. A song from Mr. Cypress. MR. CYPRESS sung There is a fever of the spirit, The brand of Cain's unresting doom, Wliich in the lone dark souls that bear it Glows like the lamp in TuUia's tomb : Unlike that lamp, its subtle fire Bums, blasts, consumes its cell, the heart, 152 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap, vni Till, one by one. hope, joy, desire, Like dreams of shadowy smoke depart. When hope, love, life itself, are only Dust — spectral memories — dead and cold — The unfed fire burns bright and lonely, Like that undying lamp of old : And by that drear illumination, Till time its clay-built home has rent, Thought broods on feeling's desolation — The soul is its own monument. MR. GLOWRY. Admirable. Let us all be unhappy together. MR. HILARY. Now, I say again, a catch. THE REVEREND MR. LARYNX. I am for you. MR. niLA.RY. " Seamen three." THE REVEREND MR. LARYNX. Agreed. I'll be Harry Gill, with the voice of three. Begin. MR. HILARY AND THE REVEREND MR. LARYNX. Seamen three ! What men be ye ? Gotham's three wise men we be. Whither in yonr bowl so free ? To rake the moon from out the sea. The bowl goes trim. The moon doth shine. And our ballast is old wine ; And your ballast is old wine. Who art thou, so fast adrift? I am he they call Old Care. Here on board we will thee lift. No : I may not enter there. Wherefore so? 'T is Jove's decree, In a bowl Care may not be ; In a bowl Care may not be. Fear ye not the waves that roU ? No : in charmed bowl we swim. CHAP. XI.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 153 What the charm that floats the bowl ? Water may not pass the brim. The bowl goes trim. The moon doth shine. And our ballast is old tvine ; And your ballast is old wine. This catch was so well executed by the spirit and science of Mr. Hilary, and the deep tri-une voice of the reverend gentleman, that the whole party, in spite of themselves, caught the contagion, and joined in chorus at the conclusion, each raising a bumper to his lips : The bowl goes trim : the moon doth shine : And oiu" ballast is old wine. Mr. Cypress, having his ballast on board, stepped, the same evening, into his bowl, or travelling chariot, and departed to rake seas and rivers, lakes and canals, for the moon of ideal beauty. 154 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap, xii CHAPTER XII. xi was the custom of the Honourable Mr. Listless, on adjourn- ing from the bottle to the ladies, to retire for a few moments to make a second toilette, that he might present himself in becoming taste. Fatout, attending as usual, appeared with a countenance of great dismay, and informed his master that he had just ascer- tained that the abbey was haunted. Mrs. Hilary's gentlewoman, for whom Fatout had lately conceived a tendresse, had been, as she expessed it, " fritted out of her seventeen senses " the pre- ceding night, as she was retiring to her bedchamber, by a ghastly figure which she had met stalking along one of the galleries, wrapped in a white shroud, with a bloody turban on its head. She had fainted away with fear ; and, when she recovered, she found herself in the dark, and the figure was gone. '•' Sucre — coclion — 'bleuV exclaimed Fatout, giving very deliberate em- phasis to every portion of his terrible oath — " I vould not meet de reve7iant, de ghost — noii — not for all de lowl-de-poncli in de vorld." " Fatout," said the Honourable Mr. Listless, " did I ever see a ghost ?" " Jamais, monsieur, never." " Then I hope I never shall, for, in the present shattered state of my nerves, I am afraid it would be too much for me. There — loosen the lace of my stays a little, for really this plebeian prac- tice of eating — Not too loose— consider my shape. That will do. And I desire that you bring me no more stories of ghosts ,• for, though I do not believe in such things, yet, when one is awake in the night, one is apt, if one thinks of them, to have fancies that give one a kind of a chill, particularly if one opens one's eyes suddenly on one's dressing gown, hanging in the moonlight, be- tween the bed and the window." The Honourable Mr. Listless, though he had prohibited Fatout from bringing him any more stories of ghosts, could not help CHAP, xn.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 155 thinking of that which Fatout had already brought ; and, as it was uppermost in his mind, when he descended to the tea and coffee cups, and the rest of the company in the library, he almost involuntarily asked Mr. Flosky, whom he looked up to as a most oraculous personage, whether any story of any ghost that had ever appeared to any one was entitled to any degree of belief ? MR. FLOSKY. By far the greater number, to a very great degree. THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. Really, that is very alarming ! MR. FLOSKY. Sunt gemincB somni portce. There are two gates through which ghosts find their way to the upper air : fraud and self-delusion. In the latter case, a ghost is a deceptio visus, an ocular spectrum, an idea with the force of a sensation. I have seen many ghosts myself. I dare say there are few in this company who have not seen a ghost. THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. I am happy to say, I never have, for one. THE REVEREND MR. LARYNX. We have such high authority for ghosts, that it is rank scepti- cism to disbelieve them. Job saw a ghost, which came for the express purpose of asking a question, and did not wait for an answer. THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. Because Job was too frightened to give one. THE REVEREND MR. LARYNX. Spectres appeared to the Egyptians during the darkness with'^ '' which Moses covered Egypt. The witch of Endor raised the ghost of Samuel. Moses and Elias appeared on Mount Tabor. An evil spirit was sent into the army of Sennacherib, and exter- minated it in a single night. MR. TOOBAD. Saying, The devil is come among you, having great wrath. MR. FLOSKY. Saint Macarius interrogated a skull, which was found in the 156 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap, xil desert, and made it relate, in presence of several witnesses, what was going forward in hell. Saint Martin of Tours, being jeal- ous of a pretended martyr, who was the rival saint of his neigh- bourhood, called up his ghost, and made him confess that he was damned. Saint Germain, being on his travels, turned out of an inn a large party of ghosts, who had every night taken posses- sion of the table dliote, and consumed a copious supper. MR. HILARY. Jolly ghosts, and no doubt all friars. A similar party took possession of the cellar of M. Swebach, the painter, in Paris, drank his wine, and threw the empty bottles at his head. THE REVEREND MR. LARYNX. An atrocious act. MR. FLOSKY. Pausanias relates, that the neighing of horses and the tumult of combatants were heard every night on the field of Marathon : that those who went purposely to hear these sounds suffered se- verely for their curiosity ; but those who heard them by accident passed with impunity. t^l THE REVEREND MR. LARYNX. - ^ I once saw a ghost myself, in my study, which is the last place where any one but a ghost would look for me. I had not been into it for three months, and was going to consult Tillotson, when, on opening the door, I saw a venerable figure in a flannel dress- ing gown, sitting in my arm-chair, and reading my Jeremy Tay- lor. It vanished in a moment, and so did I ; and what it was or what it wanted I have never been able to ascertain. MR. FLOSKY. It was an idea with the force of a sensation. It is seldom that ghosts appeal to two senses at once ; but, when I was in Devon- shire, the following story was well attested to me. A young wo- man, whose lover was at sea, returning one evening over some solitary fields, saw her lover sitting on a stile over which she was to pass. Her first emotions were surprise and joy, but there was a paleness and seriousness in his face that made them give place to alarm. She advanced towards him, and he said to her, in a solemn voice, " The eye that hath seen me shall see me no more. CHAP. XII.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 157 Thine eye is upon me, but I am not." And with these words he vanished ; and on that very day and hour, as it afterwards ap- peared, he had perished by shipwreck. The whole party now drew round in a circle, and each re- lated some ghostly anecdote, heedless of the flight of time, till, in a pause of the conversation, they heard the hollow tongue of midnight sounding twelve. MR. HILARY. All these anecdotes admit of solution on psychological prin- ciples. It is more easy for a soldier, a philosopher, or even a saint, to be frightened at his own shadow, than for a dead man to come out of his grave. Medical writers cite a thousand singular examples of the force of imagination. Persons of feeble, ner- vous, melancholy temperament, exhausted by fever, by labour, or by spare diet, will readily conjure up, in the magic ring of their own phantasy, spectres, gorgons, chimaeras, and all the objects of their hatred and their love. We are most of us like Don Quix- ote, to whom a windmill was a giant, and Dulcinea a magnifi- cent princess : all more or less the dupes of our own imagination, though we do not all go so far as to see ghosts, or to fancy our- selves pipkins and teapots. MR. FLOSKY. I can safely say I have seen too many ghosts myself to believe in their external existence. I have seen all kinds of ghosts : black spirits and white, red spirits and grey. Some in the shapes of venerable old men, who have met me in my rambles at noon ; some of beautiful young women, who have peeped through my curtains at midnight. THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS. And have proved, I doubt not, " palpable to feeling as to sight." MR. FLOSKY. By no means, sir. You reflect upon my purity. Myself and my friends, particularly my friend Mr. Sackbut, are famous for our purity. No. sir, genume untangible ghosts. I live in a world of ghosts. I see a ghost at this moment. Mr. Flosky fixed his eyes on a door at the farther end of the 158 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap. xn. library. The company looked in the same direction. The door silently opened, and a ghastly figure, shrouded in white drapery, with the semblance of a bloody turban on its head, entered and stalked slowly up the apartment. Mr. Flosky, familiar as he "vas with ghosts, was not prepared for this apparition, and made the best of his way out at the opposite door. Mrs. Hilary and Ma- rionetta followed, screaming. The Honourable Mr. Listless, by two turns of his body, rolled first off the sofa and then under it. The Reverend Mr. Larynx leaped up and fled with so much pre- cipitation, that he overturned the table on the foot of Mr. Glowry. Mr. Glowry roared with pain in the ear of Mr. Toobad. Mr. Toobad's alarm so bewildered his senses, that, missing the door, he threw up one of the windows, jumped out in his panic, and plunged over head and ears in the moat. Mr. Asterias and his son, who were on the watch for their mermaid, were attracted by the splashing, threw a net over him, and dragged him to land. Scythrop and Mr. Hilary meanwhile had hastened to his as- sistance, and, on arriving at the edge of the moat, followed by several servants with ropes and torches, found Mr. Asterias and Aquarius busy in endeavouring to extricate Mr. Toobad from the net, who was entangled in the meshes, and floundering with rage. Scythrop was lost in amazement ; but Mr. Hilary saw, at one view, all the circumstances of the adventure, and burst into an immoderate fit of laughter ; on recovering from which he said to Mr. Asterias, " You have caught an odd fish, indeed." Mr. Too- bad was highly exasperated at this unseasonable pleasantry ; but Mr. Hilary softened his anger by producing a knife, and cutting the Gordian knot of his reticular envelopement. " You see," said Mr. Toobad, " you see, gentlemen, in my unfortunate per- son proof upon proof of the present dominion of the devil in the afliairs of this world ; and I have no doubt but that the appari- tion of this night was ApoUyon himself in disguise, sent fcr the express purpose of terrifying me into this complication of misad- ventures. The devil is come among you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time." CHAP, xii.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 159 CHAPTER XIII. Mr. Glowry was much surprised, on occasionally visiting Scy- throp's tower, to find the door always locked, and to be kept sometimes waiting many minutes for admission : during which he invariably heard a heavy rolling sound like that of a ponderous mangle, or of a waggon on a weighing-bridge, or of theatrical thunder. He took little notice of this for some time ; at length his cu- riosity was excited, and, one day, instead of knocking at the door, as usual, the instant he reached it, he applied his ear to the key- hole, and like Bottom, in the Midsummer Night's Dream, " spied a voice," which he guessed to be of the feminine gender, and knew to be not Scythrop's, whose deeper tones he distinguished at intervals. Having attempted in vain to catch a syllable of the discourse, he knocked violently at the door, and roared for im- mediate admission. The voices ceased, the accustomed rolling sound was heard, the door opened, and Scythrop was discovered alone. Mr. Glowry looked round to every corner of the apart- ment, and then said, " Where is the lady ?" " The lady, sir ?" said Scythrop. " Yes, sir, the lady." " Sir, I do not understand you." « You don't, sir ?" " No, indeed, sir. There is no lady here." " But, sir, this is not the only apartment in the tower, and I make no doubt there is a lady up stairs." "You are welcome to search, sir." " Yes, and while I am searching, she will slip out from some lurking place, and make her escape." " You may lock this door, sir, and take the key with you." " But there is the terrace door : she has escaped by the ter- 160 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap, xin " The terrace, sir, has no other outlet, and the walls are too high for a lady to jump down." " Well, sir, give me the key." Mr. Glowry took the key, searched every nook of the tower, and returned. " You are a fox, Scythrop ; you are an exceedingly cunning fox, with that demure visage of yours. What was that lumber- ing sound I heard before you opened the door ?" " Sound, sir ?" '• Yes, sir, sound." " My dear sir, I am not aware of any sound, except my great table, which I moved on rising to let you in." " The table ! — let me see that. No, sir ; not a tenth part heavy enough, not a tenth part." " But, sir, you do not consider the laws of acoustics : a whis- per becomes a peal of thunder in the focus of reverberation. Al- low me to explain this : sounds striking on concave surfaces are reflected from them, and, after reflection, converge to points which are the foci of these surfaces. It follows, therefore, that the ear may be so placed in one, as that it shall hear a sound better than when situated nearer to the point of the first impulse • again, in the case of two concave surfaces placed opposite to each other " " Nonsense, sir. Don't tell me of foci. Pray, sir, will con- cave surfaces produce two voices when nobody speaks ? I heard two voices, and one was feminine ; feminine, sir : what say you to that ?" " Oh, sir, I perceive your mistake : I am writing a tragedy, and was acting over a scene to myself. To convince you, I will give you a specimen ; but you must first understand the plot. It is a tragedy on the German model. The Great Mogul is in ex- ile, and has taken lodgings at Kensington, with his only daughter, the Princess Rantrorina, who takes in needlework, and keeps a day school. The princess is discovered hemming a set of shirts for the parson of the parish : they are to be marked with a large R. Enter to her the Great Mogul. A pause ^ during which they look at each other expressively. The princess changes colour sev- eral times. The Mogul takes snuff in great agitation. Several grains are heard to fall on the stage. His heart is seen to heat CHAP. XIII.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 161 through his upper benjamin. — The Mogul (with a mournful look at his left shoe). " My shoe-string is broken." — The Princess {after an interval of melancholy refection.) " I know it." — The Mogul. " My second shoe-string ! The first broke when I lost my empire : the second has broken to-day. When will my poor heart break ?" — The Princess. " Shoe-strings, hearts, and em- pires ! Mysterious sympathy !" " Nonsense, sir," interrupted Mr. Glowry. " That is not at all like the voice I heard." " But, sir," said Scythrop, " a key-hole may be so constructed as to act like an acoustic tube, and an acoustic tube, sir, will modify sound in a very remarkable manner. Consider the con- struction of the ear, and the nature and causes of sound. The external part of the ear is a cartilaginous funnel." "It wo'n't do, Scythrop. There is a girl concealed in this tower, and find her I will. There are such things as sliding panels and secret closets." — He sounded round the room with his cane, but detected no hollowness. — " I have heard, sir," he con- tinued, "that during my absence, two years ago, you had a dumb carpenter closeted with you day after day. I did not dream that you were laying contrivances for carrying on secret intrigues. Young men will have their way : I had my way when I was a young man : but, sir, when your cousin Marion- etta " Scythrop now saw that the affair was growing serious. To have clapped his hand upon his father's mouth, to have entreated him to be silent, would, in the first place, not have made him so ; and, in the second, would have shown a dread of being overheard by somebody. His only resource, therefore, was to try to drown Mr. Glowry's voice ; and having no other subject, he continued his description of the ear, raising his voice continually as Mr. Glowry raised his. " When your cousin Marionetta," said Mr. Glowry, " whom you profess to love — whom you profess to love, sir " " The internal canal of the ear," said Scythrop, " is partly bony and partly cartilaginous. This internal canal is " " Is actually in the house, sir ; and, when you are so shortly to be — as I expect " " Closed at the further end by the membrana tympani — " 12 162 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap, xm " Joined together in holy matrimony — " " Under which is carried a branch of the fifth pair of nerves — " " I say, sir, when you are so shortly to be married to your cousin Marionetta — " " The cavitas tympani — " A loud noise was heard behind the book-case, which, to the as- tonishment of Mr. Glowry, opened in the middle, and the massy compartments, with all their weight of books, receding from each other in the manner of a theatrical scene, with a heavy rolling sound (which Mr. Glowry immediately recognised to be the same which had excited his curiosity), disclosed an interior apartment, in the entrance of which stood the beautiful Stella, who, stepping forward, exclaimed, " Married ! Is he going to be married ? The profligate !" " Really, madam," said Mr. Glowry, " 1 do not know what he is going to do, or what I am going to do, or what any one is go- ing to do; for all this is incomprehensible." " I can explain it all," said Scythrop, " in a most satisfactory manner, if you will but have the goodness to leave us alone." '' Pray, sir, to which act of the tragedy of the' Great Mogul does this incident belong ?" " I entreat you, my dear sir, leave us alone." Stella threw herself into a chair, and burst into a tempest of tears. Scythrop sat down by her, and took her hand. She snatched her hand away, and turned her back upon him. He rose, sat down on the other side, and took her other hand. She snatched it away, and turned from him again. Scythrop con- tinued entreating Mr. Glowry to leave them alone ; but the old gentleman was obstinate, and would not go. "I suppose, after all," said Mr. Glowry maliciously, "it is only a phenomenon in acoustics, and this young lady is a reflec- tion of sound from concave surfaces." Some one tapped at the door : Mr. Glowry opened it, and Mr. Hilary entered. He had been seeking Mr. Glowry, and had traced him to Scythrop's tower. He stood a few moments in silent surprise, and then addressed himself to Mr. Glowry for an explanation. " The explanation," said Mr. Glowry, " is very satisfactory. CHAP. XIII.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 163 The Great Mogul has taken lodgings at Kensington, and the ex- ternal part of the ear is a cartilaginous funnel." " Mr. Glowry, that is no explanation." " Mr. Hilary, it is all I know about the matter." " Si-", this pleasantry is very unseasonable. I perceive that my niece is sported with in a most unjustifiable manner, and I shall see if she will be more successful in obtaining an intelligible an- swer." And he departed in search of Marionetta. Scythrop was now in a hopeful predicament. Mr. Hilary made a hue and cry in the abbey, and summoned his wife and Marionetta to Scythrop's apartment. The ladies, not knowing what was the matter, hastened in great consternation. Mr. Too- bad saw them sweeping along the corridor, and judging from their manner that the devil had manifested his wrath in some new shape, followed from pure curiosity. Scythrop meanwhile vainly endeavoured to get rid of Mr. Glowry and to pacify Stella. The latter attempted to escape from the tower, declaring she would leave the abbey immediately, and he should never see her or hear of her more. Scythrop held her hand and detained her by force, till Mr. Hilary reappeared with Mrs. Hilary and Marionetta. Marionetta, seeing Scythrop grasping the hand of a strange beauty, fainted away in the arms of her aunt. Scythrop flew to her assistance ; and Stella with redoubled anger sprang towards the door, but was intercepted in her intended flight by being caught in the arms of Mr. Toobad, who exclaimed — " Celinda !" " Papa !" said the young lady disconsolately. "The devil is come among you," said Mr. Toobad, "how came my daughter here ?" " Your daughter !" exclaimed Mr. Glowry. "Your daughter!" exclaimed Scythrop, and Mr. and Mrs. Hilary. "Yes," said Mr. Toobad, "my daughter Celinda." Marionetta opened her eyes and fixed them on Celinda ; Ce- linda in return fixed hers on Marionetta. They were at remote points of the apartment. Scythrop was equidistant from both of them, central and motionless, like Mahomet's coflin. " Mr. Glowry," said Mr. Tcobad, " can you tell by what means my daughter came here V 164 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap. xiu. " I know no more," said Mr. Glowry, " than the Great Mogul." " Mr. Scythrop," said Mr. Toobad, " how came my daughter here ?" " I did not know, sir, that the lady was your daughter." " But how came she here ?" " By spontaneous locomotion," said Scythrop, sullenly. " Cclinda," said Mr. Toobad, " what does all this mean ?" "I really do not know, sir." " This is most unaccountable. When I told you in" London that I had chosen a husband for you, you thought proper to run away from him ; and now, to all appearance, you have run away to him." " How, sir ! was that your choice ?" " Precisely ; and if he is yours too we shall be both of a mind, for the first time in our lives." " He is not my choice, sir. This lady has a prior claim : I renounce him." " And I renounce him," said Marionetta. Scythrop knew not what to do. He could not attempt to con- ciliate the one without irreparably offending the other ; and he was so fond of both, that the idea of depriving himself for ever of the society of either was intolerable to him : he therefore retreated into his strong hold, mystery ; maintained an impenetrable si- lence ; and contented himself with stealing occasionally a depre- cating glance at each of the objects of his idolatry. Mr. Toobad and Mr. Hilary, in the mean time, were each insisting on an ex- planation from Mr. Glowry, who they thought had been playing a double game on this occasion. Mr. Glowry was vainly en- deavouring to persuade them of his innocence in the whole trans- action. Mrs. Hilary was endeavouring to mediate between her husband and brother. The Honourable Mr. Listless, the Rever- end Mr. Larynx, Mr. Flosky, Mr. Asterias, and Aquarius, were attracted by the tumult to the scene of action, and were appealed to severally and conjointly by the respective disputants. Multi- tudinous questions, and answers en masse, composed a charivari, to which the genius of Rossini alone could have given a suitable accompaniment, and which was only terminated by Mrs. Hilary and Mr. Toobad retreating with the captive damsels. The whole party followed, with the exception of Scythrop, who threw him- CHAP. XIII.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 165 self into his arm-chair, crossed his left foot over his right knee, placed the hollow of his left hand on the interior ancle of his left leg, rested his right elbow on the elbow of the chair, placed the ball of his right thumb against his right temple, curved the fore- finger along the upper part of his forehead, rested the point of the middle finger on the bridge of his nose, and the points of the two others on the lower part of the palm, fixed his eyes intently on the veins in the back of his left hand, and sat in this position like the immoveable Theseus, who, as is well known to many who have not been at college, and to some few who have, sedet, (Eternumque sedebit.* We hope the admirers of the minutice in poetry and romance will appreciate this accurate description of a pensive at- titude. * Sits, and will sit for ever. 166 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap. xiv. CHAPTER XIV. ScYTHROP was still in this position when Raven entered to an- nounce that dinner was on table. " I cannot come," said Scythrop. Raven sighed. " Something is the matter," said Raven : " but man is born to trouble." " Leave me," said Scythrop : " go, and croak elsewhere." " Thus it is," said Raven. " Five-and-tw-enty years have I lived in Nightmare Abbey, and now all the reward of my affec- tion is — Go, and croak elsewhere. I have danced you on my knee, and fed you with marrow." " Good Raven," said Scythrop, " I entreat you to leave me." " Shall I bring your dinner here ?" said Raven. " A boiled fowl and a glass of Madeira are prescribed by the faculty in cases of low spirits. But you had better join the party : it is very much reduced already." " Reduced ! how ?" " The Honourable Mr. Listless is gone. He declared that, what with family quarrels in the morning, and ghosts at night, he could get neither sleep nor peace ; and that the agitation was too much for his nerves : though Mr. Glowry assured him that the ghost was only poor Crow walking in his sleep, and that the shroud and bloody turban were a sheet and a red nightcap." " Well, sir ?" " The Reverend Mr. Larynx has been called off on duty, to marry or bury (I don't know which) some unfortunate person or persons, at Claydyke : but man is born to trouble !" " Is that all ?" " No. Mr. Toobad is gone too, and a strange lady with him." « Gone !" " Gone. And Mr. and Mrs. Hilary, and Miss O'Carroll : they CHAP. XIV.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 167 are all gone. There is nobody left but Mr. Asterias and his son, and they are going to-night." " Then I have lost them both.'' " Won't you come to dinner ?" « No." " Shall I bring your dinner here ?" '' Yes." " What will you have ?" "A pint of port and a pistol."* « A pistol !" " And a pint of port. I will make my exit like Werter. Go. Stay. Did Miss O'Carroll say any thing ?" " No." " Did Miss Toobad say any thing ?" " The strange lady ? No." " Did either of them cry ?" « No." " What did they do ?" " Nothing." " What did Mr. Toobad say ? " He said, fifty times over, the devil was come among us." " And they are gone ?" " Yes ; and the dinner is getting cold. There is a time for every thing under the sun. You may as well dine first, and be miserable afterwards." " True, Raven. There is something in that. I will take your advice : therefore, bring me " " The port and the pistol ?" " No ; the boiled fowl and Madeira." Scythrop had dined, and was sipping his Madeira alone, im- mersed in melancholy musing, when Mr. Glowry entered, fol- lowed by Raven, who, having placed an additional glass and set a chair for Mr. Glowry, withdrew. Mr. Glowry sat down oppo- site Scythrop. After a pause, during which each filled and drank in silence, Mr. Glowry said, " So, sir, you have played your cards well. I proposed Miss Toobad to you : you refused her. Mr. Toobad proposed you to her : she refused you. You fell in * See The Sorrows of Werter, Letter 93. 168 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap, xi love with Marionetta, and were going to poison yourself, because, from pure fatherly regard to your temporal interests, I withheld my consent. When, at length, I oflered you my consent, you told me I was too precipitate. And, after all, I find you and Miss Toobad living together in the same tower, and behaving in every respect like two plighted lovers. Now, sir, if there be any rational solution of all this absurdity, I shall be very much obliged to you for a small glimmering of information." " The solution, sir, is of little moment ; but I will leave it in writing for your satisfaction. The crisis of my fate is come : the world is a stage, and my direction is exit.^^ '' Do not talk so, sir ; — do not talk so, Scythrop. What would you have ?" " I would have my love." " And pray, sir, who is your love ?" " Celinda — Marionetta — either — both." '' Both ! That may do very well in a German tragedy ; and the Great Mogul might have found it very feasible in his lodgings at Kensington ; but it will not do in Lincolnshire. Will you have Miss Toobad ?" « Yes." " And renounce Marionetta ?" " No." " But you must renounce one." " I cannot." " And you cannot have both. What is to be done V' " I must shoot myself." " Don't talk so, Scythrop. Be rational, my dear Scythrop. Consider, and make a cool, calm choice, and I will exert myself in your behalf." " Why should I choose, sir 1 Both have renounced me : I have no hope of either." " Tell me which you will have, and I will plead your cause irresistibly." " Well, sir, — I will have — no, sir, I cannot renounce either. I cannot choose either. I am doomed to be the victim of eternal disappointments ; and I have no resource but a pistol." " Scythrop — Scythrop ; — if one of them should come to you — what then ?" CHAP. XIV.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 1G9 " That, sir, might alter the case : but that cannot be." " It can be, Scythrop ; it will be : I promise you it will be. Have but a little patience — but a week's patience — and it shall be." " A week, sir, is an age : but, to oblige you, as a last act of filial duty, I will live another week. It is now Thursday even- ing, twenty-five minutes past seven. At this hour and minute, on Thursday next, love and fate shall smile on me, or I will drink my last pint of port in this world." Mr. Glowry ordered his travelling chariot, and departed from the abbey. 170 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. CHAPTER XV. The day after Mr. Glowiy's departure was one of incessant rain, and Scythrop repented of the promise he had given. The next day was one of bright sunshine : he sat on the terrace, read a tragedy of Sophocles, and was not sorry, when Raven announced dinner, to find himself alive. On the third evening, the wind blev/, and the rain beat, and the ovd flapped against his windows ; and he put a new flint in his pistol. On the fourth day, the sun shone again ; and he locked the pistol up in a drawer, where he left it undisturbed, till the morning of the eventful Thursday, when he ascended the turret with a telescope, and spied anxiously along the road that crossed the fens from Claydyke : but nothing appeared on it. He watched in this manner from ten a.m. till Raven summoned him to dinner at five ; when he stationed Crow at the telescope, and descended to his own funeral-feast. He left open the communications betvv^een the tower and turret, and called aloud at intervals to Crow, — '•' Crow, Crow, is any thing coming ?" Crow answered, '-' The wind blov/s, and the windmills turn, but I see nothing coming ;"*and, at every answer, Scythrop found the necessity of raising his spirits v/ith a bumper. After dinner, he gave Raven his watch to set by the abbey clock. Raven brought it, Scythrop placed it on the table, and Raven departed. Scythrop called again to Crow : and Crow, who had fallen asleep, answered mechanically, " I see nothing coming." Scythrop laid his pistol betv/een his watch and his bottle. The hour-hand passed the VII. — the minute-hand moved on ; it was within three minutes of the appointed time. Scythrop called again to Crow. Crow an- swered as before. Scythrop rang the bell : Raven appeared. " Raven," said Scythrop, '• the clock is too fast." " No, indeed," said Raven, who knew nothing of Scythrop's intentions ; " if any thing, it is too slow." '" Villain !" said Scythrop, pointing the pistol at him : " it is too fast." CHAP. XV.] NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 171 " Yes — yes — ^too fast, I meant," said Raven, in manifest fear. " How much too fast?" said Scythrop. " As much as you please," said Raven. " How much, I say ?" said Scythrop, pointing the pistol again. " An hour, a full hour, sir," said the terrified butler. " Put back my watch," said Scythrop. Raven, with trembling hand, was putting back the watch, when the rattle of wheels was heard in the court, and Scythrop, springing down the stairs by three steps together, was at the door in sufRcient time to have handed either of the young ladies from the carriage, if she had happened to be in it ; but Mr. Glowry was alone. " I rejoice to see you," said Mr. Glowry ; " I was fearful of being too late, for I waited till the last moment in the hope of accomplishing my promise ; but all my endeavours have been vain, as these letters will show." Scythrop impatiently broke the seals. The contents were these : — " Almost a stranger in England, I fled from parental tyranny, and the dread of an arbitrary marriage, to the protection of a stranger and a philosopher, whom I expected to find something better than, or at least something different from, the rest of his worthless species. Could I, after what has occurred, have ex- pected nothing more from you than the common-place imperti- nence of sending your father to treat with me, and with mine for me ? I should be a little moved in your favour, if I could be- lieve you capable of carrying into effect the resolutions which your father says you have taken, in the event of my proving in- flexible ; though I doubt not you will execute them, as far as re- lates to the pint of wine, twice over, at least. I wish you much happiness with Miss O'Carroll. I shall always cherish a grateful recollection of Nightmare Abbey, for having been the means of introducing me to a true transcendentalist ; and, though he is a little older than myself, which is all one in Germany, I shall very soon have the pleasure of subscribing myself " Celinda Flosky." " I hope, my dear cousin, that you will not be angry with me, but that you will always think of me as a sincere friend, who 172 NIGHTMARE ABBEY. [chap. xv. will always feel interested in your welfare ; I am sure you love Miss Toobad much better than me, and I wish you much happi- ness with her. Mr. Listless assures me that people do not kill themselves for love now-a-days, though it is still the fashion to talk about it. I shall, in a Very short time, change my name and situation, and shall always be happy to see you in Berkeley Square, when, to the unalterable designation of your affectionate cousin, I shall subjoin the signature of " Marionetta Listless." Scythrop tore both the letters to atoms, and railed in good set terms against the fickleness of women. " Calm yourself, my dear Scythrop," said Mr. Glowry ; " there are yet maidens in England." " Very true, sir," said Scythrop. " And the next time," said Mr. Glowry, " have but one string to your bow." " Very good advice, sir," said Scythrop. " And, besides," said Mr. Glowry, " the fatal time is past, for it is now almost eight." " Then that villain. Raven," said Scythrop, " deceived me when he said that the clock was too fast ; but, as you observe very justly, the time has gone by, and I have just reflected that these repeated crosses in love qualify me to take a very advanced degree in misanthropy ; and there is, therefore, good hope that I may make a figure in the world. But I shall ring for the rascal Raven, and admonish him." Raven appeared. Scythrop looked at him very fiercely two or three minutes ; and Raven, still remembering the pistol, stood quaking in mute apprehension, till Scythrop, pointing significantly towards the dining-room, said, " Bring some Madeira." TEE END. 155 Broadway, New- York, July, ism G. P. PUTNAM^ S NEW PUBLICATIONS. €xmih, IhnratarEs, anh lisfnwrteg. IN THE EAST. N-ineveh and its Remains '^ With an Account of a Visit to the Chaldcean Christians of Kurdistan, and the Yezidis, or Devil- Worshippers ; and an Inquiry into the Manrers and Arts of the Ancient Assyrians. BY AgSTEN HENRY LAYARD, ESQ,, D, C. L. With Introductory Note by Prof. E. Robinson, D. D., LL. D. Illustrated with 13 Plates and Maps, and 90 Woodcuts. 2 vols. 8vo. Cloth. $4 50. "We cannot doubt it will find its way into the hands of scholars and thinkers at once, and we ihfcll be surprii'ed if it does not prove to be one of the most popular, as it certainly is one of the most useful issues of the season." — Evangelist. "As a record of discoveries it is equa;iv wonderful and important; confirming in many particu- lars the incidental histories of Sacred \Vnt, disentombing temple-palaces from the sepulclire of 2[es, and recovering the metropolis of a wonderful nation from the long night of oblivion."— CoJrt dvertiser, 1 Q. P. PUTNAJNIS NEW PUBLICATIONS. fra^irls, ahnitiirfs, ml BisrnHrrirs— 3ii tjjB fust, CONTINUED. NtTi'jveh arid its Remains. — Continued. " Taking this only as a book of travels, we have read none for a long time more interesting and instructive." — Quarterly Review. " We repeat that there has been no such pic- ture in any modern book of travels. Park is not braver or more adventurous, Burkhardt is not more truthful, Eothen not more gay or pictu- resque than the hero of the book before us." — Lundon Examiner. "This is. we think, THE MOST EXTRA- ORDINARY WORK OF THE PRESENT AGE. whether with reference to the wonderful dipcoveries it describes, its remarkable verifi- cation of our early bilbical histoiy, or of the talent, courage, and perseverance of its au- thor. ••«•-• ^g ^jll Qj^ly 3,jfJ ,^ conclusion, that in these days, when the fulfil- ment of prophecy is engaging so much atten- tion, we cannot but considerthat the work of Mr. Layard will be found to afford many ex- traordinary proofs of biblical history." — Lcm- don Times. " Of the historical value of his discoveries, too high an estimate can hardly be formed. "^A". Y. Recorder. " It has been truly said, that the narrative is like a romance. In its incidents and descriptions it does indeed remind one contmually of an Arabian tale of wonders and genii." — Dr. Robinson in Introductory Note. " The work of Mr. Layard has two prominent and distinct characters. 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Egypt aiid Its Monuments., As Illustrative of Scripture History. BY FRANCIS L. HAWKS, D. D., LL. D., &c., &.C. Illustrated with Engravings from the Works of Champollion, Roselliwi, Wilkinson, and others, and Architectural Views of the Principal Tem- ples, &c. One vol. 8vo., uniform with * Layard's Nineveh.' This work presents a comprehensive and authentic, and at the same time popular view of all that has been brought to liglu by modern travellers, illustrative of the manners and customs, art«, architecture, and dome=;tic life of the ancient Egyptians — with reference to other ancient remain* in the " Old and New World." *.* The following are some of the architectural illustrations, beautifully executed m tmt. by Sarony & Major : — Sphinx and Pyramids, Interior of a Tomb, Great Temnle of Karnac, Koom—Omhos, Statues of Memnon, Thebes, Interior of Great Temple, Aboo- Simbel, ^0. G. P. Putnam's new publications. €xmtb, %hukxn, nnir BiBinnBriBS— 3e tljB iBmt CONTINUED. Visits to Monasteries in tlie Levant, BY THE HON. ROBERT CURZON. One vol., post 8vo. Illustrated with 17 spirited Engravings. %\ 50. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Monastery of Meteora, Interior of Greek Monastery, Koord, or Native of Koordistan, Negress waiting to be sold, Bedouin Arab, Egyptian in Nizam Dress, Interior of Atiyssinian Library, Mendicant Dervish, Church of Holy Sepnichre, Monastery of St. Barlaam, Tartar, or Government Messenger, Turkish Common Soldier, Promontory of Mount Alhos, Chreek Sailor, Monastery of Simo-Petri, Circassian Lady, Turkish Lady. " A volume of more than ordinary interest, relating a series of most curious and often amusing adventures. ' * * The field occupied by the volume is almost entirely new." — Commercial Advertiser. " A very curious anrt unique work. We recommend it to those who are fond of cheerful inci- dent of travel, throush lands possessing the greatest interest." — Washington Union. " His wanderina-s in the Levant extnnd over a period of nearly ten years, abounding in adven- tures, many nf them atiended wiitt extreme peril, which are told with inimitable naivete and skill. * * * There is an elejance and picturesque simplicity in his lansrua^e equally rare and delight- ful. The book is profusely illustrated by wood engravings in the highest style of art, executed in London. It is issued simultaneously wiih Murray's English edition, and the author receives hia share of the profits arising from its sale here." — Tribune. Oriental Life Lllustrated : Being a new Edition of " Eothen, or. Traces of Travel brought Home from the East." Illustrated with fine Steel Engravings, viz , Travelling in THE Desert, Luxor, Karnac, Nazareth, the Pyramids. 12mo, cloth, extra gilt, $1 50. " Nothing so sparkling, so graphic, so truthful in sentiment, and so poetic in vein, has issued feom the pfess in many a day." — London Critic. Jov/rney from CornMU to Cairo. BY MICHAEL ANGELO TITMARSH. One vol. l2nio, green cloth, 50 cts. *It is wonderful what a description of people and things, what numerous pictures, what innn- merable remarks and allusions it contains." — Douglas Jerrold's Magazine. 8 G. P. PUTNA]\l's NEW PUBLICATIONS. CONTINUED. 1 Adventures in the Lybiaii Desert^ And the Oasis of Jupiter Ammon. BY BAYLE ST. JOHN. 12nio, cloth, 75 cts. " It is a very graphic and amusing description of the scenery and antiquities, and of the people whom he saw." — Washington Union. " Though written with an eye to antiquarian lore, there is no want of liveliness in the personal adventures of the author." — Albion. ' " A most interesting book." — N. Y. Recorder. " It will be read through by those who reach the middle of the first chapter." — Albany Journal. " It is a spirited description of the adventures of the author among the Bedouin Arabs."— T'n'. 6une. JEotlien / Or, Traces of Travel brought Home from the East. l2mo, green cloth, 50 cents. " Eothen is a book with which every body, fond of elegant prose and racy description, should be well acquainted." — U. S. Gazette. "The best book of Eastern travels we know."— Z,o7w?o» Examiner. The Crescent and the Gross ; Or, the Romance and Reality of Eastern Travel. BY ELLIOT WARBURTON. One vol. 12mo, green cloth, f I 25 •' This delightful work is, from first to last, a splendid Panorama of Eastern scenery, in the foD blaze of its magnificence." — London Morning News. * A brilliant, poetic, and yet most instructive book."— 2V. Y. Courier 4r Enquirer. Travels in Peru. BY DR. J. J. VON TSCHUDI. 1 vol. l2mo, cloth, $1 00. « Braving the dangers of a land where throat-cutting is a popular pastime, and earthquakes and fevers more or le.«s yellow, and vermin more or less venomous are amonjrst the indigenous com- forts of the aoil, a German, of hish reputation as a naturalist and man of letters, ha=! devoted four years of a life valuable to science to a residence and travels in the most interestins districts of South America, the ancient empire of tbe Incas, the scene of the conquests and cruelties of Fran risco Pizarro." G. ONS. IN THE WEST. Calif oimia and Oregon Trail^ Being Sketches of Prairie and Rocky Mountain Life. BY FRANCIS PARKMAN, JR. With Illustrations by Darley. 12mo. cloth, $1 25. "Written with the genuine inspiration of untamed nature." — Tribune. "A lively and well written account of divers adventures on mountains and plains, deaerts aa4 rivers in the Indian Country."— Churchman. " A series of graphic and apparently reliable sketches." — Albion. "Agreeably designed and ably executed." — Home Journal. " One of the few books from which we can obtain any thing like accurate information of the character of the country between the Mississippi and the Pacific. As descriptive of a race fast passing away, and of the wild and wonderful country from which they are perishins, and through which 'he march of civilization is forcing its way, to the dazzling treasii'-es of the Pacific borders, the work is attractive, and is got up in a style and character of most of the publications of Mr. Putnam. The cuts are very admirable specimens of the high perfection to which engraving on wood has an'ived." — Democratic Review. Astoria ; Or, Anecdotes of an Enterprise beyona the Rocky Mountains. BY WASHINGTON IRVING. With Map. l2mo. $1 50. "A beautiful edition of Irving's highly graphic and stirring sketch of the early enterprises of John Jacob Astor, which will now be read with even more interest than when first written." — Evangelist. " It is one of those rare works which belongs, by the value of its subject and the truthfulness of Us details, to authentic histoiy, and by its vivid descriptions, and exciting incidents to the more varied province of Romance." — Albany Atlas. "Loses nothing of its interest by the late discoveries, &c., beyond the Rocky Mountains." — Recorder. " One of Irving's most valuable works. • • • gtju fresh, instructive and entertciimng."— Holden's Magazine. A Tour on the Prairies; With Abbottsford and Newstead Abbey. BY WASHINGTON IRVING. 12mo. $1 25. " Its perusal leaves a positive sense of refreshment, which we should think would make th book invaluable to tlie thousands ol mortals whose lives are boimd up with ledgers and cash booica.' Tribune. Delightful reading for a leisure hour." — Albany Atlas. jk)enti(/i'es of Cajpt. Bonneville^ TJ. S. A., In the Rocky Mountains and the Far West. BY WASHINGTON IRVING. ]2mo, with a valuable Map. ^1 25. "Full o( wild and exciting incidents of/rontier and savage Ufe.^' -Providencp. Journal. 5 G. P. PUTNAM S NEW PUBLICATIONS. TJie Genius of Italy ; Being Sketches of Italian Life, Literature, and Religion. BY REV. ROBERT TURNBULL, Author of " The Genius of Scotland.^' 1 vol. 12mo, with two engravings. ^1 25. The edition with extra illustrations, handsomely bound, will be ready m the autumn. "Mr. Tunibull gives us the orange groves, and the fountains, and the gondolas, ar/o .tie frescoes and the ruins, with touches of personal adventure, and sketches of biography, and glimpses of the' life, literature, and religion of Modern Italy, seen with the quick, comprehensive glances of an American traveller, impulsive, inquisitive, and enthusiastic. His book is a pleasant record of a tourist's impressions, without the infliction of tho tiresome minutiae of his everyday experience." — Literary World. " At a moment when Italy is about to be regenerated— when the loiisr-slumbering spirit of the people is about assuming its ancient vigor, a work of this kind is desirable. * * * The country, Its people, and prominent features are given with much truth and force."— Democratic Review. 1 Views A-Foot ; Or, Europe seen with Kiaapsack and Staff. BY BAYARD TAYLOR. New edition, with an additional Chapter of Practical Information for Pedes- trians in Europe, and a Sketch of the Author m Pedestrian Costume, from a Drawing by T. Buchanan Read 12mo., cloth, $1 25. The same, fancy cloth, gilt extra, ,^1 75. ''There is a freshness and force in the book altogether unusual in a book of travels. « • • As a text-book for travellers the work is essentially valuable ; it tells how much can be accom- plished with very limited means, when energy, curiosity, and a love of adventure are the promp- ters; sympathy in his success likewise, is another source of interest to the book. * * ' The result of all this is, a wide-spread popularity as a writer, a very handsomely printed book, with a very handsome portrait of the author, and we congratulate liim upon the attainment of this and future honors." — Union Magazine. The Spaniards J and their Ocnmtry. BY RICHARD FORD. l2mo, green cloth. $1 00. "The best English book, beyond comparison, that ever has appeared for the illustration, not merely of the general topography and local curiosities, but of the national character and mannen of Spain "—Quarterly Revieic. "This is a very clever and amusing work." — Louisville Exam. "The style is light, dashing, and agreeable." — N. Y. Mirror. ",* Washington Irving commends this as the best modern popular account of Spain. Scenes and Thoughts in Europe. BY AN AMERICAN. (Geo. H. Calvert, Esq., Baltimore.) l2rno. 50 cts. •'This hook is a delightful instance of the transforming and recreative power of the mind upon •very ih-i.'o- M touches. The must hackneyed ground of Europe, persons and objects that have, been the thenie .■^f the last half dozen years of every literary remittance from abroad, appeal' t us clothed with new cnt.rms and meaninirs, because examined with a finer penetration than th . aave been by anv other English or American traveller."— Tr/^Mwe. 6 O. p. PUTN A:\rs NEW PUBLICATION'S. FMBtflri)~36iogra|i[ii]~6EOgrap!jq. The Life mul Voyages of Ohristopher Cohmilyiis. To which are added those of his Companions. BY WASHINGTON IRVING. New Edition, Revised and Corrected. Maps, Plates, and copious Index. 3 vols. l2mo, green cloth uniform with the new edition of Irving's Works, $4; half calf, .$6; half morocco, top edge gilt, .$6 75 ; full calf, gilt, $7 50. The Octavo Edition, in 3 vols., on superfine paper, uniform with Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella, ^6; half calf, ^8 50; full calf, $10 " One of the most fascinating and intensely interesting books m the whole compass of English Literature. ' * ' It has all the interest conferreil by the truth of history, and at the same time the varied excitement of a well written romance." — Western Continent. '• Perhaps the most truly valuable of the Author's writings." — Hoine Journal. '• The History of Columbus is admirably executed ; and though a true and faithful history, it is as interestit^ as a high wrought romance." The Conquest of Florida. BY THEODORE IRVING. Prof, of History and Belles Letters in the Free Academy. New and Revised Edition, Corrected, with Notes, and Illustrations from various recent sources. l2mo. In September, The Monuments of Oenl/ral and Western America; With Comparative Notices of those in Egypt, India, Assyria, &c. BY REV. F. L. HAWKS, D. D., LL. D. 1 vol. 8vo. This work is now in preparation, uniform with "Nineveh," and the "Monuments of Egypt." It will cnmprir=e a comprehensive, readable, and popular view of the whole subject of Ancient re- mair>s on the American continent — with ample Illustrations. Roman lAherty : A History / With a View of the Liberty of other Ancient Nations. BY SAMUEL ELLIOT, ESQ. Illustrated with twelve engravings, executed at Rome. 2 vols., Bvo, uniform with Prescott's Historical Works. History of the Hehreio Monarchy.^ From the Administration of Samuel to the Babylonish Captivity. BY FRANCIS NEWMAN, D. D., University of Oxford. 8vo, cloth, $2 50. G. P. PUTNAJVl's NEW PUBLICATIONS. Jjistnni— 36ingrnpliti--£rngraplji(, C O N T 1 N U E n . Itcdy ; Past and Present: Or General Views of its History, Religion, Politics, Literature and Art. BY L. MARIOTTI, Prof, of Italian Literature in London University, 2 vols., 8vo, cloth, $3 50, The Letters and Speeches of Oliver Groniwell^ With Elucidations, BY THOS. CARLYLE. The Fine Edition, in 2 vols,. Octavo, with Portrait. Reduced to $2 50. Borroiv's Autobiograpliy. — Life BY GEORGE BORROW, Author of " The Gipsies of Spain," " The Bible in Spain," Sfc To be published simultaneously by John Murray, London, and G. P. Putnam, New- York. In one volume, l2nio. In December. • * This will be a work of intense interest, including extraordinary adventures in various parta of the world. Jo'instoubS Universal Atlas. This splendid and important work — by far the most comprehensive, correct and useful Atlas now extant, was published recently in Edinburgh at the price of eight guineas, and the price in this country has been about $50. G. P. Putnam has made arrangements for an edition for the United States, rendered far more valuable by the addition of a COPIOUS and USEFUL INDEX of about 40,000 names ; but the maps being transferred in fac- simile on stone, the American publisher is enabled to supply it at the low price of $20 — elegantly and substantially bound in half morocco, gilt edges. The maps are clearly and beautifoUy executed, and are practically fully equal to the original edition. The work contains 41 large and splendid maps. '•'■ Having examined many of the Maps of the National Atlas, 1 have no hesitation in saying, Ihat they are aa accurate iri their geographical details as they are beautiful in their execution."— Sir David Brewster. " So far as I have yet examined the National Atlas, it is, in beauty of execution and accuracy of detail, unrivalled in this, and, I believe, in any other country." — Prof. Traill. "Those who are not familiar with the places referred to in theHisiory of the French Revolution will frequently find a reference to Maps of great service ; and the Military student of Napoleon's campaimis in Germany and France will see the theatre of war admirably delineated in ftlr. John- ston's Maps of those countries." — Alison's History of Europe. "I have devoted a considerable time to a rigorous examination of the National Atlas, just pub- lished, and. in impartiai justice, I must admit, that in accuracy of construction, and elegance of execution, it is superior to any other with which I am acquainted." — Willicini Galbraith, F.R.& S.A., F R.A.S. "These beautiful, accurate, and admirably engraved Maps and Illustrations, are deserving M eveiy praise and encouragement." — Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal. "The National Atlas is truly a splendid publication, and fully deserves not only the distinctive name it bears, but also national patronage." — Literary Gazette. 8 G. P. Putnam's new publications. Ii3tnrn™a6ingrflpljii™(0rngriiplnj. CONTINUED. Mohammed and his Successors, BY WASHINGTON IRVING. 12mo. In October. Oliver Goldsmith : a Biography, BY WASHINGTON IRVING. 12mo. $1 25. *,* This is a new work, just completed. Now ready. George Washington : a Biography BY WASHINGTON IRVING, With Illustrations. In preparation* The Ancient Monwments of the Mississippi Valley. Comprising the Results of Extensive Original Surveys and Explorations. BY E. G. SQUIER, A. M., AND E. H. DAVIS, M. D. With numerous Illustrations. Royal 4to, $10. Ten Years of American History : 1840-49 — including a History of the Mexican War and of California. BY EMMA WILLARD. With a valuable Map. l2mo, $1. 9 2 G. P. Putnam's new publications. Slrrljltnlure. Hints on Piiblic Arcliitecture^ Prepared, on behalf of the Building Committee of the Smithsonian Institurion. BY ROBERT DALE OWEN. In large Quarto, elegantly printed, with 113 Illustrations in the best style of the Art. Price $6. " While the Committee offer the result of these researches, not so much to the protession as to the public, and to public bodies, (as Vestries, Building Committees, and the like.) charged with the duties similar to their own, they indulge the hope that'the Architect also may find subject for inquiry and material for thought. ' * * " Money is expended even lavishly to obtain the rich, the showy, the comnionplace. But this period of transition may be shortened. The progress of painting and sculpture, which, in other lands, has been the slow growth of centuries, has been hastened in our country, thanks to the genius of a few self-taught men, beyond all former precedent. To stimulate genius in a kindred branch of art ; to supply suggestions which "may call off from devious paths, and mdicate to the student the true' line of progress; and thus to aid in abridging that season of experiment and of failure in which the glittering is preferred to the chaste, and the gaudy is mistaken for the beautiful, are objects of no light importance. In such con- siderations may be found the motive and the purpose of the follow- ing Tpa.^es.'" —Extract from the Preface. '•This work should be in the hands of every building committee, vei?try, city corporation, or other similar body, having the selections of plans for building, and of erery individual having in charire a similar duty. It is The only work with which we are acquainted especially prepared for their use. It should find its way to the shelves of every county library ; for by reference to its pages, thou- sands of dollars may be saved in the selection of a proper style for court-houses, chtirches. and other public edifices. " ^or, though not specially addressed to the profession, is it of jess value to the architect. There is much in this volume which every member of the profession would do well to study. "Of the numerous wood engravings which form the chief illus- trations of this vohime. we cannot speak too highly. Till we ex- amined them, we were not aware to what perfection the art had been carried in our country. The effect of several of the«e (especially of the frontispiece by Roberts) is equal to that of the best steei engravings ; and the whole of the illustrations are exceedingly creditable to American art. 10 G. P. PUTNAMS :NEW PUBLICATIONS. Jlrrljili-rturr. CONTINUED. '• In point of mechanical execution we have rarely seen its equal."— iV. Y. Mirror. A very valuable book. * ' * In point of typography ami embellishment one of the very ^ r,hoicept v'olumes that ever issued from the American Press, •' Mr Owen is a clear thi-^ker. and a mati of 2reat activity of mind, and these qualities have i in pressed themselves on his work, which is writ- ten with perspicuity and vivaciiy. The principles and sciences of architec- tural beauty are pointed out with much beauty of language and dexterity of illustration. •' We understand that Mr. Putnam has expend- eil on this work many hundreds of dollars be- yond the amount speci- fied in his contract with the Smithsonian Institu- tion ; and as the copyright is his, we trusi he will be amply remunerated for his liberality. ""iV. Y. Eve. Fust. " The best work on Architecture ever pub- lished in the U. States. The illustrations are very beautiful." — Pennsylva- nia Inquirer. " The book is one which will be read with interest and pleasure even by those who have considered architectuie Albion. ~!J";:"'"'*'.n a dry «tudy ''The work is exceedingly interesting, while to public bodies it is one ot great value; and we cannot say too much in coinmendation of the very superior style in which the publisher has pro- duced it."-.V. Y. Cum Adv. " The most compre- hensive and elegantly il- lustrated treatise on arch- itecture that has yet ap- peared m this country."- - Boston Transcript. "A truly admirable work — and creiliialile a- like to the institution, to the editor, and to the publisher."— Permsy/ra- nia Inquirer. " The subject of which it treats is one of vast importance to our peo- ple, in its economical not less than its omamenial relations ; ami it is pre- sented here in such a way as cannot fail both to gratify and instruct." Philadelphia N. Ameri can. 11 G. P. PUTNAM r^ N::\V rr-BLICATIONS. Tanij:iiaj!F Cari^rinng. A Tr^eatUe on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening and Rural Architecture^ Adapted to North America. With a view to the Improvement of Country Residences — comprising Historical Notices, and General Principles of the Art; Directions for laying out Grounds and arranging Plantations; the Description and Cultivation of Hardy Trees : Decorative Accompaniments to the House and Grounds ; the Formation of Pieces of Artificial Water, Flower Gardens, &,c ; wath Remarks on Rural Architecture. BY A. J. DOWNING. Fourth Edition, Revised. Enlarged, and Ne\ volume, --vm , fl,,;li, .n'I 50. •ly Illustrated. One handsome " John Bull looks at Brother Jonathan with a strange compourul of feeling.s. He dislike.^ him as a rival; he loves him. and is proud of him. as bein?. after all. of hia own flesh and blood. But whenever, in science, art. or literature. Jonathan treads rather sharply on the heels of John, the said John bellows out most lustiiy. Of all the arts of the univer&e which were likely to be the ground of competition between, progenitor and descendant, I.and.scape hardening woxild, in this case, seetn to be the last. "And yet, our American hrelhren. so far from being behind us in skill, en- /fiifsiasm, or execution, seem to be taking the lead most decidedly. ' " ' There iiew works have not yet seen the lisht. Amon? these is announced a Life of Mohammed, and a Life of Washineion. As to the latter subject for a volume, we can only say, that if another Life of Wash- ington needs be written — which we doubt— we shoidd prefer, of all men, to have Washington Irvine undertake it. The other promi^^ed biography, the Life of Mohammed, is a grand, an unex- hausted, and a most inviiins theme. It has never yet been well treated, nor is it probable that there is a man on this Continent better qualified to treat it with di.«crimination and power, and with faithfulness to the truth, than Washington Irvin?. If our country can be covered with a large issue of his writings, it will make some amends for the flood of trumpery which the Presa has poured over it." — Christian Register. "The most tasteful and elegant books which have ever issued from the American Press. " — T'rid 15 1 vol. 1 25. 1 vol. 1 25. 1vol. 1 50. 1 vol. 1 25. 1 vol. 1 25. 1vol. 1 25. 1 vol. 1vol. 1 25. 1 vol. 1 25. 1 vol. 1 25. G. P. PITJVA.MS ^EAV PUBLICATIONS. mt5 mn5--3\m 'iBorb. 1849-50. THE AUTHOR'S REVISED EDITION. The Spy : A Tale of the Neutn^al Ground. New Edition. Revised, &c., with Introduction and Notes, handsomely printed, uniform with the Sketch-Book, &c. 12mo, cloth, $1 25. The Pilot : A Tale of the Sea, 12mo. ^1 25. In Spptemher. To be followed by other vols, at intervals. MR. COOPER'S NEW WORK. The Ways of the Hour. 12mo, uniform with " The Spy." In press. " The public will cordially welcome a new and complete edition of this author's admirable tales, revised, corrected, and illustrated with notes by himself. This is No. 1 of the new series, and ia got up in the style of Irving's works, which we have over and over again commended. As for the tale itself, there is no need to speak of it. It has a place on every shelf, and at once made the fame of its author. It is an absolute pleasure to the lover of books to find the ultra-cheap system going out of vogue." — N. Y. Albion. " We are happy to see Mr. Putnam bringing out these American classics, the works of Cooper and Irving, to refresh the present generation as they amused the last. We belong, as their two fine authors do, to both, if men of a buoyant temper and an unflagging spirit ever pass from one generation to another. We remember, as of yesterday, with what eagerness we drank in the tale :>{ ' The Spy,' when it first saw the light ; and how we admired the genius of its author, from the beauty of us production. We can enjoy it still ; and so will every American who has taste enough to appreciate an American narrative, told so well by an American writer."— T^as/im^/o7i Union. '' ' The Spy ' is the most truly national fiction ever produced in America. * * * It is esteemed abroad even more than at home, for it has been translated into almost every European language, and the prejudiced critics of the North British Review have almost consented to give it rank wilh 'The Antiquary' and ' Old Mortality.' "—Richmond Times. Gla/rence ; or Twenty Years Since. The Author's Revised Edition ; complete in one vol. Uniform with Irving's Works. In August. Redwood. The Author's Revised Edition ; complete in one vol. In September, A New England Tah ; Complete in one vol. In October. 16 G. P. Putnam's i^^ew publications. %tlin ttiins—Mm Wuh. CONTINUED. EXTRAORDINAKY AND ROMANTIC ADVENTURES. "Kaloolah will be the book." Kaloolah ; or^ Journeying-s to tJie Djehel KwrrurL An Autobiography of Jona. Romer. EDITED BY W. S. MAYO, M. D. Illustrations by Darley, beautifully engraved and printed in tint, 12mo, cloth, .$1 50. " The most singular and captivating narrative since Robinson Crusoe." — Home Journal. " ' Kaloolah will be ' The Book.' If it does not excite a sensation in the reading public we will be perfectly contented to distrust our judgment in such matters in future." — Merchant's Journal. " Ry far the most attractive and entertaining book we have read since the days we were fasci- nated by the chef d'ccuvre of Defne or the graceful inventions of the Arabian Nights. It is truly an American novel— not v/holly American in scenery, but American in cliaracter and American in sentiment " — U. S. Magazine and Democratic Review. " We have never read a work of fiction with more interest, and we may add, profit — combining, as it does, with the most exciting and romantic adventures, a great deal of information of various kinds. The heroine, Kaloolah, is about as charming and delicate a specimen of feminine nature, as we recollect in any work of imagination or fancy. We will answer for it that all readers will be perfectly delighted with her." — Journal of Education. " We have met with no modern work of fiction that has so entranced us. The former part of Kaloolah carries the reader captive by the .<:ame irresi.'tible charm that is found in the pages of Robinson Crusoe, than which imperishable work, however, it presents a wider and more varied field of adventure ; while the latter part expands into scenes of splendor, magnificence, and en- chantment, unsurpassed by those of the Arabian Nights' Entertainment."— Cwn. Advertiser. Letters from the Alleghany Mountains. BY CHARLES LANMAN, Librarian of the War Department ; Author of '■'• A Summer in the Wilderness," d;c. l2mo, 75 cts. '.* The?:e letters are descriptive of one of the most interestine regions in the old states of the Union, which has never before been described by any traveller, and they will be found to contain a great amount of valuHble information, as well as many characteristic anecdotes and legends of the western parts of North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee. The TnrMsh Eh:ening JEntertainments : The Wonders of Memorials and the Rarities of Anecdotes. By Ahmed Bef Hempen, the Kiyaya. Translated from the Turkish. BY JOHN P. BROWN, ESQ., Dragoman of the Legation of the United States, at Constantinople. l2mo. hi September. "It is by far the most interesting book that has been published at Constantinople for a lone time. * * * The historical and amusing interest of the two hundred and seven curiosities, which 1 might call anecdotes, is so obvious," &c. — Von Hammer, the celebrated Orientalist, to the Translator. ' This book is one of the most interesting and amusing which has appeared." — Jour. Asintiqiie 17 G. P. Putnam's new publications. BuHjwer and Forhes on tJie Water Treatment. Edited, with additional matter, by Roland S. Houghton, A. M., M. D. One volume, l2mo, cloth, 75 cts. CONTENTS. I. Bulwer's "Confessions of a Water Patient." II. Dr. Forbes on Hydropathy. III. Remarks on Bathing: and the Water Treatment, by Erasmus Wilsoi., M. D., F. U. S, author of *• Wilhon'.s Anatomy," '• Wilson on Healthy Skin," «fec. IV. Medical Opinions, by Sir Charles S;udamoie, Herbert Mayo, Drs. Cooke, Freeman, Heaihcote, &c. V. Observations on Hygiene and the Water Treatment, by tiie Editor. The object of this work is to interest literary and professional men, and all other persons of se- dentary habiis or pursuits in the subjeci of Hyove's Requiem," by Charles Fenno Hoffman ; " The Mother of Moses," by Mrs. O.'frood ; "The Land of Dreams," by Wm. C. Bryant ; " Lees in the Cup of Life," by Mrs. S. G. Howe; "The Night Cometh," by Mrs. Embury; " The Tournament at Acre," by'H. W. Her- bert; "Greenwood," by Miss Pind'ar ; "Worship," by Miss Bayard; "The Child's Mission," by Mrs. Embury. Small folio, illuminated in the most superb manner by Mapleson, with Borders and Vignettes- printed in Gold, Silver, and Colors — bound in morocco, in a massive style — forming the most elegant and recherche book of the kind ever produced in this country. $12. Oriental lAfe Illustrated: Being a New Edition of " Eothen," or. Traces of Travel Brought Home from the East. Illustrated with fine Steel Engravings. l2mo, cloth, extra gilt, %\ 50. Ilhist/rated Grecian and Roman Mythology, BY M. A. 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