UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES 6 u ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. Kill I HINTED BY J. JOHNSTON! y C/- " *- *- «■ - ^ r - CHAPTERS S < ' ON CHURCHYARDS. BY THE AUTHORESS OF ELLEN FITZARTHUR, WIDOW'S TALE, SOLITARY HOURS, ETC. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. • • - - WILLIAM BLACKWOOD, EDINBURGH; AM) T. CADELL, LONDON. MDCCCXXIX. '/M/ . . . • • • I ■o 57Zci / CONTENTS OF VOLUME FIRST. PAGE. Churchyards Cha P* * l Chap. II. 12 Chap. III. 24 Chap. IV 51 Chap. V. «7 ^ Chap. VI 89 A Chap. VII Ill Chap. VIII. .... 134 k Chap. IX. 154 \ Broad Summerford Chap. X. ----- 188 ! Chap. XI 213 Chap. XII 245 The Haunted Churchyard. Chap. XIII. ... - 271 r-u. CHAPTERS ON CHURCHYARDS. CHAPTElt I. Many are the idle tourists who have bahbled of country churchyards— many are the able pens which have been employed on the same subjects. One in particular, in the delightful olio of the " Sketch-book," has traced a picture so true to na- ture, so beautifully simple and pathetic, that suc- ceeding- essayists might well despair of success in attempting similiar descriptions, were not the theme, in fact, inexhaustible, a source of endless variety, a volume of instructive records, whereof those marked with least incident are yet replete* vol. i. A 2 CHURCHYARDS. with interest for that human being - who stands alone amongst the quiet graves, musing on the mystery of his own existence, and on the past and present state of those poor relies of mortality which everywhere surround him, mouldering beneath his feet — mingling with the common soil — feeding the rank churchyard vegetation — once sentient like himself with vigorous life, subject to all the tumul- tuous passions that agitate his own heart, pregnant with a thousand busy schemes, elevated and de- pressed by alternate hopes and fears — liable, in a word, to all the pains, the pleasures, and " the ills, that flesh is heir to." The leisurely traveller arriving at a country inn, with the intention of tarrying a day, an hour, or a yet shorter period, in the town or village, gener- ally finds time to saunter towards the church, and even to loiter about its surrounding graves, as if his nature (solitary in the midst of the living crowd) claimed affinity, and sought communion, with the populous (lust beneath his feet. Such, at least, are the feelings with which I have often lingered in (he churchyard of a strange place, and about tin: church itself — to which, indeed, in CHAPTER I. all places, and in all countries, the heart of the Christian pilgrim feels itself attracted as towards his very home, for there at least, though alone amongst a strange people, he is no stranger : It is his Father's house. I am not sure that I heartily approve the cus- tom — rare in this country, hut frequent in many others — of planting flowers and flowering shrubs about the graves. I am quite sure that I hate all the sentimental mummery with which the far-fam- ed burying-place of Pere La Chaise is garnished out. It is faithfully in keeping with Parisian taste, and perfectly in unison with French feeling ; but I should wonder at the profound sympathy with which numbers of my own countrymen expatiate on that pleasure-ground of Death, if it were still possible to feel surprise at any instance of degen- erate taste and perverted feeling in our travelled islanders — if it were not, too, the vulgarest thing in the world to wonder at anything. The custom, so general in Switzerland, and so common in our own principality of Wales, of strewing flowers over the graves of departed friends, either on the anniversaries of their deaths, 4- CHURCHYARDS. or on other memorable days, is touching and beautiful. Those frail blossoms scattered over the green sod, in their morning freshness, but for a little space retain their balmy odours, and their glowing tints, till the sun goes down, and the breeze of evening sighs over them, and the dews of night fall on their pale beauty, and the wither- ed and fading wreath becomes a yet more appro- priate tribute to the silent dust beneath. But rose-trees in full bloom, and tall staring lilies, and flaunting lilacs, and pert priggish spirafrutexes, are, methinks, ill in harmony with that holiness of perfect repose which should pervade the last rest- ing-place of mortality. Even in our own unsenti- mental England, I have seen two or three of these flower-plot graves. One, in particular, I remem- ber, had been planned and planted by a young dis- consolate widow, to the memory of her deceased partner. The tomb itself was a common square rrection of freestone, covered over with a slab of black marble, on which, under the name, age, &c. of the defunct, was engraven an elaborate epitaph, commemorating his many virtues, and pathetically intimating, that, at no distant period, the vacant CHAI'TKR I. space remaining' on the same marble would receive the name of " his inconsolable Eugenia." The tomb was hedged about by a basket-work of honey- suckles. A Persian lilac drooped over its foot, and, at the head, (substituted for the elegant cy- press, coy denizen of our ungenial clime,) a young poplar perked up its pyramidical form. Divers other shrubs and flowering plants completed the ring-fence, plentifully interspersed with " the fra- grant weed, the Frenchman's darling," whose per- fume, when I visited the spot, was wafted over the whole churchyard. It was then the full flush of summer. The garden had been planted but a month ; but the lady had tended, and propped, and watered those gay strangers with her own delicate hands, evermore in the dusk of even- ing returning to her tender task, so that they had taken their removal kindly, and grew and flourish- ed as carelessly round that cold marble, and in that field of graves, as they had done heretofore in their own sheltered nursery. A year afterwards — a year almost to a day — I stood once more on that same spot, in the same month — " the leafy month of June." But — it was CHURCHYARDS. leafless there. The young poplar still stood senti- nel in its former station, hut dry, withered, and sticky, like an old broom at the mast-head of a vessel on sale. The parson's cow, and his half- score fatting wethers, had violated the sacred en- closure, and trodden down its flowery basket-work into the very soil. The plants and shrubs were nibbled down to miserable stumps, and from the sole survivor, the poor straggling lilac, a fat old waddling ewe had just cropped the last sickly flower-branch, and stood staring at me with a pathetic vacancy of countenance, the half-munched consecrated blossom dangling from her sacrilegious jaws. " And is it even so ?" I half- articulated, with a sudden thrill of irrepressible emotion. " Poor widowed mourner ! lovely Eugenia ! Art thou already re-united to the object of thy faith- ful affection ? And so lately ! Not yet on that awaiting space on the cold marble have they in- scribed thy gentle name. And those fragile me- morials ! were there none to tend them for thy sake ?" Such was my sentimental apostrophe ; and the unwonted impulse so far incited me, thai I actually pelted away the sheep from that last CHAPTER. I. 7 resting-place of faithful love, and reared against its side the trailing branches of the neglected lilac. Well satisfied with myself for the performance of this pious act, I turned from the spot in a mood of calm, pleasing melancholy, that, by degrees, (while I yet lingered about the churchyard,) resolved itself into a train of poetic reverie, and I was already far advanced in a sort of elegiac tribute to the memory of that fair being, whose tender nature had sunk under the stroke " that reft her mutual heart," when the horrid interruption of a loud shrill whistle startled me from my poetic vision, cruelly disar- ranging the beautiful combination of high-wrought, tender, pathetic feelings, which were flowing natu- rally into verse, as from the very fount of Helicon. Lifting my eyes towards the vulgar cause of this vulgar disturbance, the cow-boy (for it was he, " who whistled as he went, for want of thought") nodded to me his rustic apology for a bow, and passed on towards the very tomb I had just quit- ted, near which his milky charge, the old brindled cow, still munched on, avaricious of the last mouth- ful. If the clown's obstreperous mirth had before broken in on my mood of inspiration, its last deli- 8 CHURCHYARDS. cate glow traa utterly dispelled by the uncouth vo- ciferation, and rude expletives, with which he pro- ceeded to dislodge the persevering animal from her rich pasture-ground. Insensible alike to his remonstrances, his threats, or his tender persuasion — to his " Whoy ! whoy ! old girl ! Whoy, Blos- som ! whoy, my lady ! — I say, come up, do ; come up ye plaguey baste !" Blossom continued to munch and ruminate with the most imperturbable calm- ness — backing and sideling away, however, as her pursuer made nearer advances, and ever and anon looking up at him with most provoking as- surance, as if to calculate how many tufts she might venture to pull before he got fairly within reach of her. And so, retrograding and manoeuvring, she at last intrenched herself behind the identical tomb- stone beside which I had stood so lately in solemn contemplation. Here — the cow-boy's patience be- ing completely exhausted — with the intention of switching old Blossom from her last stronghold, he caught up, and began tearing from the earth, that one long straggling stem of lilac which I had en- diavoun-il to replace in somewhat of its former po- sition. M Hold ! hold !" I cried, springing forward CHAPTER I. U with the vehement gesture of impassioned feeling- — " Have you no respect for the ashes of the dead ? Dare you thus violate with sacrilegious hands the last sad sanctuary of faithful love ?" The hoy stood like one petrified, stared at me for a moment, with a look of indescribable perplexity, then screwing one corner of his mouth almost into contact with the corresponding corner of one crinkled-up eye — at the same time shoving up his old ragged hat, and scratching his curly pate ; and having, as I suppose, by the help of that operation, construed my vehement address into the language of inquiry, he set himself very methodically about satisfying my curiosity on every point wherever he conceived it possible I might have interrogated him — taking his cue, with some ingenuity, from the one word of my oration, which was familiar to his ear " Dead ! Ees, Squoire been dead twelve months last Whitsuntide ; and thick be his'n moni- ment, an' madam was married last week to our measter, an' thick be our cow — " Oh, Reader ! Is it to be wondered at, that, sincr that adventure, I have never been disposed to look with an uit- 10 CHURCHYARDS. glistening 1 , and even cynical eye, on those same flower-plot graves ? Nay, that, at sight of them, I feel an extraordinary degree of hard-heartedness stealing over me ? I cannot quit the subject without offering a word or two of well-meant advice to all disconsolate survivors — widows more especially — as to the expediency or non-expediency of indul- ging this flowery grief. Possibly, were I to obey the dictates of my own tastes and feelings, I should say, " Be content with a simple record — perhaps a scriptural sentence, on a plain headstone. Suffer not the inscription to become defaced and illegible, nor rank weeds to wave over it ; and smooth be the turf of the green hillock ! But if — to use a French phrase — Ilfaut afficher ses regrets — if there must be effect, sentimentalities, prettinesses, urns, flowers — not only a few scattered blossoms, but a regular planted border, like the garnish of a plateau ; — then, let me beseech you, fair inconsolables ! bo cautious in your proceedings — Temper with dis- creet foresight (if that be possible) tho first agon- izing burst of sensibility — Take the counsels of sage experience — Temporize with the as yet unas- certained nature of your own feelings — Proclaim CHAPTER I. 11 not those vegetable vows of eternal fidelity — Re- frain, at least, from the trowel and the spade — Dig not — plant not — For one year only — for the first year, at least — For one year only, I beseech you — sow annuals. 12 CHURCHYARDS. CHAPTER II. In parts of Warwickshire, and some of the ad- jacent counties, more especially in the churchyards of the larger towns, the frightful fashion of black tombstones is almost universal. Black tombstones, tall and slim, and lettered in gold, looking, for all the world, like bolt upright coffin lids. I marvel the worthy natives do not go a step farther in their tasteful system, and coat their churches over with the same lugubrious hue, exempting only the brass weathercocks, and the gilded figures on the clock faces. The whole scene would unquestionably be far more in keeping, and even sublime in stu- pendous ugliness. Some village burying grounds have, however, escaped this barbarous adornment ; and in Warwickshire particularly, and within the circuit of a few miles round Warwick itself, are very many small, picturesque, hamlet churches, CHAPTER II. 13 each surrounded by its lowly flock of green graves, and grey headstones ; the churchyards, for the most part, separated only by a sunk fence, or a slight railing, from the little sheltered grass-plot of a small neat rectory, the casements of which gen- erally front the long east window of the church. I like this proximity of the pastor's dwelling to his Master's house ; nay, of the abode of the living to the sanctuary of the dead. It seems to me to re- move in part the great barrier of separation between the two worlds. The end of life, it is true, lies before us. The end of this life, with all its host of vanities and perturbations; — but imme- diately from thence, we step upon the threshold of the holy place, before the gates of which no com- missioned angel stands with a flaming sword, bar- ring our entrance to the tree of life. It would seem to me that tbus abiding, as it were, under the very shadow of the sacred walls, and within sight of man's last earthly resting-place, I should feel, as in a charmed circle, more secure from the power of evil influences, than if exposed to their assaults, on the great open desert of the busy world. There- fore, I like this proximity so frequently observable 14 CHURCHYARDS. in the little hamlets I have described. In one or two instances, indeed, I perceived that attempts had been made to exclude the view of the church and churchyard from the rectory windows, by plant- ing a few clumps of evergreens, that looked as un- meaningly stuck there, as heart could wish. Mi- serable taste that ! " but let it pass," as the Cou- rier said lately of one of your finest poetical ar- ticles, Mr. North. I never saw a more perfect picture of beautiful repose, than presented itself to me in one of my evening walks last summer. One of the few even- ing walks it was possible to enjoy during the no- minal reign of that freezing, dripping summer. I came abruptly upon a small church, and burial ground, and rectory, all combined and embowered within a space that the eye could take in at one glance, and a pleasant glance it was ! The west window of the church was lighted up with red and glowing refulgence — not with the gor- geous hues of artificial colouring, but with the bright banners of the setting sun ; and strongly de- fined shadows, and mouldings of golden light, marked out the rude tracery of the low ivied tower, CHAPTER II. 15 and the heavy stone- work of the deep narrow win- dows, and the projections of the low massy but- tresses, irregularly applied, in defiance of all archi- tectural proportion, as they had become neces- sary to the support of the ancient edifice. And here and there on the broken slanting of the but- tresses, and on their projecting ledges, might be seen patches of green and yellow moss, so exqui- sitely bright, that methought the jewellery with which Aladdin enchased the windows of his en- chanted palace, was dull and colourless, compared with the vegetable emeralds and topazes, where- with " Nature's own sweet and cunning hand" had blazoned that old church. And the low head- stones also — some half sunk into the churchyard mould — many carved out into cherubim, with their trumpeters' cheeks and expanded wings, or with the awful emblems of death's-heads, cross-bones, and hour-glasses ! The low head-stones, with their rustic scrolls, " that teach us to live and die," those also were edged and tinted with the golden gleam, and it stretched in long floods of amber light a- th wart the soft green turf, kissing the nameless hil- locks ; and, on one little grave in particular, (it 16 CHURCHYARDS. must have been that of an infant,) niethought the departing glory lingered with peculiar brightness. Oh ! it was a beautiful churchyard. A stream of running water intersected it almost close to the church wall. It was clear as crystal, running over grey pebbles, with a sound that chimed har- moniously in with the general character of the scene, low, soothing, monotonous, dying away into a liquid whisper, as the rivulet shrank into a shallow and still shallower channel, matted with moss and water plants, and closely overhung by the low underwood of an adjoining coppice, within whose leafy labyrinth it stole at last silently away. It was an unusual and a lovely thing to see the grave-stones, and the green hillocks, with the very wild flowers (daisies and buttercups) growing on them, reflected in the little rill as it wound among them — the reversed objects, and glancing colours, shifting, blending, and trembling, in the broken ripple. That and the voice of tho water ! It was " Life in Death." One felt that the sleepers below were but gathered for a while into their quiet chamber!. Nay, their very sleep was not voice- less. On the edges of the graves — on the moist CHAPTER II. 17 margin of the stream, grew many tufts of the beautiful " Forget me not." Never, sure, was such appropriate station for that meek eloquent flower ! Such was the churchyard, from which, at about ten yards distance from the church, a slight low railing, with a latch wicket, divided off a patch of the loveliest green sward, (yet but a continuation of the churchyard turf,) backed with tall elm, and luxuriant evergreens, amongst which peeped mo- destly out the little neat rectory. It was construc- ted of the same rough grey stone with the church. Long, low, with far projecting eaves, and casement windows facing that large west window of the church, still flaming with the reflected splendour of the setting sun. His orb was sinking to rest be- hind the grove, half-embowering the small dwell- ing, which stood in the perfect quietness of its own shadow, the dark green masses of jasmine, cluster- ing round its porch and windows, scarcely reveal- ing (but by their exquisite odour) the pure white blossoms that starred " its lovely gloom." But their fragrance floated on the gentle breath of evening, mingled with the purfume of ir.ignon- VOL. I. k IS CHURCHYARDS. ette, and the long-fingered marvels of Peru, (the pale daughters of twilight,) and innumerable sweet flowers, blooming in their beds of rich black mould, close under the lattice windows. These were all flung wide, for the evening was still and sultry ; and one, opening down to the ground, shewed the inte- rior of a very small parlour, plainly and modestly furnished, but panelled all round with well-filled book-cases. A lady's harp stood iu one corner, and in another two fine globes, and an orrery. Some small flower-baskets, filled with roses, were dis- persed about the room ; and at a table near the window sat a gentleman writing, or rather leaning over a writing-desk with a pen in his hand, for his eyes were directed towards the gravel-walk before the window, where a lady — an elegant-looking wo- man, whose plain white robe and dark uncovered hair well became the sweet matronly expression of her face and figure — was anxiously stretching out her encouraging arms to her little daughter, who came laughing and tottering towards her on the soft green turf, her tiny feet, as they essayed their first independent steps in the eventful walk of life, twisting and turning with graceful awkwardness, CHAPTER II. 19 and unsteady pressure, under the disproportionate weight of her fair fat person. It was a sweet, heart-thrilling sound, the joyous, crowing laugh of that little creature, when with one last, hold, mighty effort, she reached the maternal arms, and was caught up to the maternal bosom, and half de- voured with kisses, in an ecstacy of unspeakable love. As if provoked to emulous loudness by that mirthful outcry, and impatient to mingle its clear notes with that young, innocent voice, a blackbird, embowered in a tall, neighbouring bay-tree, poured out forthwith such a flood of full, rich melody, as stilled the baby's laugh, and for a moment arrested its observant ear. — But for a moment — The kin- dred natures burst out into full chorus ; — the baby clapped her hands, and laughed aloud, and, after her fashion, mocked the unseen songstress. The bird redoubled her tuneful efforts ; and still the baby laughed, and still the bird rejoined; and both together raised such a melodious din, that the echoes of the old ehurch rang again ; and never •■'mco J he contest of the nightingale with her hu- 20 CHURCHYARDS. man rival, was heard such an emulous conflict of musical skill. J could have laughed for company, from my un- seen lurking-place, within the dark shadow of one of the church huttresses. It was altogether such a scene as I shall never forget — one from which I could hardly tear myself away. Nay, I did not. I stood motionless as a statue in my dark grey niche, till the objects before me became indistinct in twi- light, — till the last slanting sunbeams had with- drawn from the highest panes of the church win- dow, — till the blackbird's song was hushed, and the baby's voice was still, and the mother and her nursling had retreated into their quiet dwelling, and the evening taper gleamed through the fallen white curtain, and still open window. But yet be- fore that curtain fell, another act of the beautiful pantomime had passed in review before me. The mother, with her infant in her arms, had seated herself iu a low chair within the little parlour. She untied the frock-strings, drew off that and the se- cond upper garments dexterously, and at intervals, :i> the restless frolics of the still unwearied babe af- forded opportunity; and there it was in its little CHAPTER II. 21 coat and stay, the fat white shoulders shrugged up in antic merriment far above the slackened shoul- der-straps. Then the mother's hand slipped off one soft red shoe ; and, having done so, her lips were pressed, almost, as it seemed, involuntarily, to the little naked foot she still held. The other, as if in proud love of liberty, had spurned off to a distance the fellow shoe ; and now the darling, disarrayed for its innocent slumbers, was hushed and quieted, but not yet to rest ; the night-dress was still to be put on, and the little crib was not there : — not yet to rest, but to the mighty duty already required of the young Christian ! — And in a moment it was hushed, — and in a moment the small hands were pressed together between the mother's bands, and the sweet serious eyes were raised and fixed upon the mother's eyes, (there beamed, as yet, the in- fant's heaven,) and one saw that it was lisping out its unconscious prayer — unconscious, not surely unaccepted. A kiss from the maternal lips was the token of God's approval : — and then she rose, and gathering up the scattered garments in the same clasp with the half-naked babe, she held it smiling to its father, and one saw in the expression of his 22 CHURCHYARDS. face, as he upraised it after having imprinted a kiss on that of his child, — one saw in it all the holy fer- rour of a father's blessing. Then the mother withdrew with her little one — and then the curtain fell, — and still I lingered ; for, after the interval of a few minutes, sweet sounds arrested my departing footsteps. A few notes of the harp, a low prelude stole sweetly out, — a voice still sweeter, mingling its tones with a simple, fjuiet accompaniment, swelled out gradually into a strain of sacred harmony, and the words of the evening hymn came wafted towards the house of prayer. Then all was still in the cottage, and around it ; and the perfect silence, and the deepen- ing shadows, brought to my mind more forcibly the lateness of the hour, and warned me to turn my face homewards. So I moved a few steps, and yet again I lingered, lingered still ; for the moon was rising, and the stars were shining out in the clear, cloudless Heaven, and the bright reflection of one danced and glittered, like a liquid fire-fly, on the ii|i|)le of the stream, just where it glided into a darker, deeper pool, beneath a littlo rustic foot- bridge, which led from the churchyard into a shady CHAPTER ir. 23 green lane, communicating with the neighbouring hamlet. On that bridge I stopped a minute longer, — and yet another and another minute, — for I listened to the voice of the running water ; and methought it was yet more mellifluous, more soothing, more elo- quent, at that still shadowy hour, when only that little star looked down upon it with its tremulous beam, than when it danced and glittered in the warm glow of sunshine. There are hearts like that 6tream, and they Will understand the metaphor. The unutterable things I felt and heard in that mysterious music ! — Every sense became absorbed in that of hearing; and so spell-bound, I might have staid on that very spot till midnight, nay, till the stars paled before the morning beam, if the deep, solemn sound of the old church clock had not broken in on my dream of profound abstraction, and startled me away with half incredulous sur- prise, as its iron tongue proclaimed, stroke after stroke, the tenth hour of the night. 24 CHURCHYARDS. CHAPTER III. Within a short distance of my own habitation stands a picturesque old church, remote from any town or hamlet, save that village of the dead con- tained within the precincts of its own sequestered burial-ground. It is, however, the parish church of a large rural district, comprising several small hamlets, and numerous farms and cottages, together with the scattered residences of the neighbouring gentry ; and hither (there being no other place of worship within the parish boundary) its population may be seen for the most part resorting on Sun- days, by various roads, lanes, heath-tracks, coppice and field-paths, all diverging from that consecrated centre. The church itself, nearly in the midst of a very beautiful churchyard, rich in old carved head- stones, and bright verdure roofing the nameless graves — the church itself stands on the brow of a CHAPTER III. 25 finely wooded knoll, commanding a diversified ex- panse of heath, forest, and cultivated land ; and it is a beautiful sight on Sundays, on a fine autumn Sunday in particular, when the ferns are assuming their rich browns, and the forest trees their exqui- site gradations of colour, such as no limner upon earth can paint — to see the people approaching in all directions, now winding in long straggling files over the open common, now abruptly disappearing a- mongst its innumerable shrubby declivities, and again emerging into sight through the boles of the old oaks that encircle the churchyard, standing in their majestic beauty, like sentinels over the slum- bers of the dead. From two several quarters across the heath, approach the more condensed currents of the living stream ; one, the inhabitants of a far dis- tant hamlet, the other, comprising the population of two smaller ones within a shorter distance of the church. And from many lanes and leafy glades, and through many field-paths and stiles, advance small groups of neighbours, and families, and social pairs, and here and there ;i Solitary aged person, who totters leisurely along, Mijqiorted by his trusty companion, his stout oak staff, not undutifully con- 26 CHURCHYARDS. signed by his neglectful children to that silent com- panionship, but willingly loitering behind to enjoy the luxury of the aged, the warmth of the cheerful sunbeams, the serene beauty of nature, the fruit- ful aspect of the ripening corn-fields, the sound of near and mirthful voices, the voices of children and grandchildren, and a sense of quiet happiness, par- taking surely of that peace which passeth all un- derstanding. And sometimes the venerable Elder comes, ac- companied by his old faithful helpmate ; and then they may be seen once more side by side, her arm again locked within his as in the days of courtship, not, as then, resting on his more vigorous frame, for they have grown old and feeble together ; and of the twain, the burthen of years lies heaviest upon the husband, for his has been the hardest portion of labour. In the prime of life, during the full flush of his manly vigour, and of her healthful comeliness, he was wont to walk sturdily onward, discoursing between whiles with his buxom part- ner, as she followed with her little ones ; but now ilny are grown up into men and women, dispersed about in their several stations, and have themselves CHAPTER III. 2 7 young ones to care and provide for ; and the old couple are, as it were, left to begin the world a- gain, alone in their quiet cottage. Those two alone together, as when they entered it fifty years agone, bridegroom and bride — alone, but not for- saken — sons, and daughters, and grandchildren, a3 each can snatch an interval of leisure, or when the labours of the day are over, come dropping in under the honeysuckle porch, with their hearty greet- ings ; and many a chubby great-grandchild finds its frequent way to Grannum's cottage ; many a school truant, and many a " toddlin' wee thing," whose little hand can hardly reach the latch of the low wicket, but whose baby call of "flichterin' noise an' glee" gains free and fond admittance. And now they are on their way together, the old man and his wife. See! — they have just passed through the last field-gate leading thitherward to the church. They are on their way together towards the house of God, and towards the place where they shall soon lie down to rest " in sure and certain hope;" and they lean on one another for mutual support ; and would it not seem as they are thus again drawn closer together, as 28 CHURCHYARDS. they approach nearer to the term of their earthly union, as if it were a type and token of an eternal reunion in a better and a happier state ? I love to gaze upon that venerable pair, — ay, even to note their decent, antiquated Sabbath rai- ment. What mortal tailor — no modern one to be « sure — can have carved out that coat of indescrib- able colour — something- of orange tawny with a reddish tinge ! I suspect it has once been a rich Devonshire brown, and perhaps the wedding-suit of the squire's grandfather, for it has had a silk lining, and it has been trimmed with some sort of lace, gold probably ; and there adown each side are still the resplendent rows of embossed, basket- work, gilt buttons, as large as crown-pieces — it must have been the squire's grandfather's wedding- suit. And how snowy-white, and how neatly plaited is the single edge of his old dame's plain mob cap, surmounted by that little black poke bonnet, flounced with rusty lace, and secured upon her head, not by strings, but by two long black corking pins ! That bit of black lace, of real lace, is a treasured remnant of what once trimmed her mistress's best cloak, when she herself was a blithe CHAPTER 111. 29 and buxom lass, in the days of her happy servi- tude ; and the very cloak itself, once a rich mode silk of ample dimensions, now narrowed and cur- tailed to repair, with many cunning ingraftings, the ravages of time — the very cloak itself, with a scrap of the same lace frilled round the neck, is still worn on Sundays, through the summer and autumn, till early frosts and keener winds pierce through the thin old silk, and the good red hooded cloak is substituted in its stead. They have reached the church-yard wicket ; they have passed through it now, and wherefore do they turn aside from the path, a few steps beyond it, and stop and look down upon that grassy hillock ? It is no recent grave, the daisies are thickly matted on its green sod, and the heap itself has sunk to a level nearly even with the flat ground. The little headstone is half-buried too, but you may read thereon the few words, the only ones ever en- graven there — " William Moss, aged 22." Few living now remember William Moss. Few at least think of him. The playmates of his childhood, the companions of his youth, his brothers and sisters, pass weekly by his lonely grave, and none turn a- 30 CHURCHYARDS. side to look upon it, or to think of him who sleeps beneath. But in the hearts of his parents, the memory of their dead child is as fresh as their af- fections for their living children. He is not dead to them, though, eight-and-twenty years ago, they saw that turf heaped over his coffin — over the cof- fin of their eldest born. He is not dead to them ; and every Sabbath-day they tarry a moment by his lowly grave, and even now, as they look thereon in silence, does not the heart of each parent whis- per, as if to the sleeper below — " My son ! we shall go to thee, though thou shalt not return to us." Look down yonder under those arching haw- thorns ! — what mischief is confederating there amongst those sunburnt, curly-pated boys, cluster- ing together, over the stile and about it, like a bunch of swarming bees ? The confused sound of their voices is like the hum of a swarm too ; and they are debating of grave and weighty matters,— of nuts ripening in thick clusters down in Fairlee Copse, — of trouts, of prodigious magnitude, leaping by the bridge below the Mill-head, — of apples, — aud the young heads crowd closer together^ and CHAPTER III. 31 the buzzing voices sink to a whisper, — " of cherry- cheeked apples, hanging just within reach of one who should climb upon the roof of the old shed, by the corner of the south wall of Squire Mills's or- chard." — Ah, Squire Mills ! I would not give six- pence for all the apples you shall gather off that famous red-streak to-morrow. But who comes there across the field towards the stile ? A very youthful couple, — sweethearts, one should guess, if it were not that they were so far asunder, and look as if they had not spoken a word to each other this half hour. Ah ! they were not so far asunder before they turned out of the shady lane into that open field, in sight of all the folk gathering into the churchyard, and of those mischievous boys, one of whom is brother to that pretty Fanny Payne, whose downcast looks, and grave sober walk, so far from the young miller, will not save her from running the gauntlet of their teasing jokes as she passes, — and pass she must, through the knot of conspirators. Never mind it, Fanny Payne ! put a good face on the matter, and above all, beware of knitting up that fair brow into any thing like a frown, as you steal a passing 32 CHURCHYARDS. glance at that provoking brother of yours ; it will only bring down upon you a thicker shower of sau- cy jests. See, see ! that little old man, — so old and shrivel- led, and lean and wizen, and mummy-coloured ; he looks as if he had been embalmed and inhumed a century ago, and had just now walked out of his swathing bands, a specimen of the year one thou- sand seven hundred and ten. His periwig is so well plastered with flour and hog's lard, that its large sausage side curls look as durably consistent, as the " eternal buckles cut in Parian stone" that have immortalized Sir Cloudesley Shovel ; and from behind dangles half-way down his back, a long ta- per pig-tail, wound round with black ribbon, the which, about half-way, is tied into an elegant ro- sette. On the top of that same periwig is perched a diminutive cocked hat — with such a cock! — so fierce ! — so triangular ! — the little squat crown so buried within its triple; fortification ! The Hive was never seen, save in the shape of those coloured su- gar comfits called cocked hats, that are stuck up in long L'i.t-M's in the confectioners' windows, to at- tract the eyes of poor longing urchins ; and his luce CHAPTER III. 33 is triangular too, the exact centre of his forehead, where it meets the periwig, being the apex thereof; his nose is triangular ; his little red eyes are trian- gular ; his person is altogether triangular, from the sloping narrow shoulders, to where it widens out, corresponding with the broad, square, fan-tail flaps of that green velveteen coat. He is a walking tri- angle ! and he carries his cane behind him, holding it with both hands wide apart, exactly parallel with the square line of his coat flaps. See ! he is bust- ling up to join that small group of substantial farm- ers, amongst whom he is evidently a person of no small consequence ; they think him, " as one should say, Sir Oracle," for he knows every fluctuation of stocks to a fraction ; criticises the minister's dis- courses ; expounds the prophecies ; explains all about the millenium, and the number of the beast ; foretells changes of weather ; knows something of physic and surgery ; gives charms for the ague and rheumatiz ; makes ink, mends pens, and writes a wonderful fine hand, with such flourishes, that, without taking his pen oft' the paper, he can repre- sent the figures of Adam and Ere, in the involu- tions composing the initial capitals of their names ! vol. i. c 34 CHURCHYARDS. He is " Sir Oracle ;" and not the less so, because people do not exactly know what he has been, and where he comes from. Some think he has been a schoolmaster; others conjecture that he has been a doctor of some sort, or a schemer in mechanics, about which he talks very scientifically ; or in the funds ; or in some foreign commercial concern ; for he has certainly lived long in foreign parts, and is often heard talking to his old grey parrot in some outlandish tongue, and the bird seems to under- stand it well, and replies in the same language. There are not wanting some who suspect that he has not been always in his perfect mind; but how- ever that may be, he is perfectly harmless now, and has conducted himself unexceptionably ever since he came to settle in the village of Downe, ten years ago. In all that time he has never been known to receive within his dwelling any former friend or kinsman, and he has never stirred beyond the boundary of the parish, but to go once a-year to the banker's in the nearest town, to receive a small sum of money, for which he draws on a mercan- tile house in Lombard Street. He boards and lodges with a widow, who has a neat little cottage CHAPTER in. 35 in the village, and he cultivates the finest polyan- thuses and auriculas in the flower-plot, of which she has yielded up the management to him, that were ever heheld in that neighbourhood. He is very fond of flowers, and dumb animals, and chil- dren ; and all the children in the place love him, and the old white Pomeranian dog, blind of one eye, who follows his master everywhere except to church. Now, you know as much as I or any one knows of Master Jacob Marks, more, perhaps, than was worth telling, but I could not leave such an original subject half-sketched. Behold that jolly-looking farmer and his family approaching up the green lane that leads from their habitation, that old substantial-looking farm-house yonder, half embowered in its guardian elms. They are a portly couple, the farmer and his wife! He, a hale, florid, fine-looking man, on whose broad open brow time has scarcely imprinted a furrow, though it has changed to silky whiteness the raven hue of those locks, once so thickly cluster- ed about his temples. There is a consciousness of wealth and prosperity, and of rural consequence, in 36 CHURCHYARDS. bis general aspect and deportment ; but if he loves the good tbings of tbis world, and prides bimself in possessing them, there is nothing in the expres- sion of his countenance that bespeaks a selfish and narrow heart, or a covetous disposition. He looks willing to distribute of his abundance ; and greet- ings of cordial goodwill, on both sides, are exchang- ed between the farmer and such of his labourers as fall into the same path, in their way to the church. Arm-in-arm with her spouse marches his portly helpmate, fat, florid, and, like himself, " redolent" of the good things of this world, corn, and wine, and oil, that sustaineth the heart of man, and maketh him of a cheerful countenance. A comely and a stately dame is the lady of Far- mer Buckwheat, when, as now, she paces by his side, resplendent in her Sunday-going garb of ample and substantial materials, and all of the very best that can be bought for money. One can cal- culate the profits of the dairy and the bee-hives, the pin-money of the farmer's lady — not to men- tion his weightier accumulations — by the richness of that black satin cloak and bonnet, full trimmed CHAPTER II J. 37 with real lace, and by the multitudinous plaits of that respectable-looking snuff-coloured silk gown and coat. It is true, her old-fashioned prejudices would have been in favour of a large double silk-handkerc'hief, pinned neatly down, and a flowered chintz gown, drawn up through the pocket-holes over a white quilted petticoat; but the worthy dame has two fair daughters, and they have been brought up at a boarding-school ; and they have half-coaxed, half-teazed their Ma'a out of such antiquated vul- gar tastes, though even those pertinacious reform- ists have been obliged to concede the point of a pelisse in favour of the satin cloak. But when they have conceded one point, they have gained at least two. See the old lady's short sleeves, neatly frilled just below the elbow, are elongated down to the wrists, and finished there by a fashionable cuff, out of which protrudes the red, fat, fubsy hand, with short dumpty fingers webbed between, broad, and turning up at the tips, looking as if they had been created on purpose to knead dough, press curds, and pat up butter ; and, lo ! on the fore- finger of the right hand a great garnet ring set in fW 1 38 CHURCHYARDS. silver, massy enough for the edge of a soup tureen. It is an heirloom from some great-grandmother, who was somehow related to somebody who was first cousin to a " Barrow-knight" and was her- self so very rich a lady — and so the misses have rummaged it out, and forced it down upon their Ma'a's poor dear fat finger, which sticks out as stiffly from the sensation of that unwonted com- pression, as if it were tied up and poulticed for a whitlow ; and the poor lady, in spite of all hints and remonstrances, will walk with her gloves dangling in her hands instead of on them ; and, al- together, the short pillowy arms cased up in those tight cearments, with both the hands and all the fingers spread out as if in act to swim, look, for all the world, like the fins of a turtle, or the flaps of a frightened gosling. Poor worthy dame ! but a sense of conscious grandeur supports her under the infliction of this fashionable penance. And then come the Misses Buckwheat, mincing delicately in the wake of their Pa'a and Ma'a, with artificial flowers in their Leghorn bonnets, sky-blue spen- cers, fawn-coloured boots, flounces up to their knees, a pink parasol in one hand, and a pocket- CHAPTER III. 39 handkerchief dangling from the other ; not neatly folded and carried with the handsome prayer-book, in the pretty fashion that so well becomes that fair modest girl, their neighbour's daughter, whose pro- found ignorance of fashionable dress and manners is looked on as quite pitiable, " poor thing !" by the Misses Buckwheat. For what are they intend- ed, I wonder ! For farmers' wives ? To strain milk, churn butter, fat pigs, feed poultry, weigh out cheeses, and cure bacon hogs ? Good lack ! They paint landskips ! and play on the piano ! and dance quadrilles ! and make bead purses I and keep Albums ! and dote on Moore's Melodies and Lord Byron's Poems ! They are to be " tutoresses," or companions, or — something or other — very genteel — Ladies, for certain, anyway. So they have settled themselves, and so the weak doting mother fondly anticipates, though the father talks as yet only of their prosperous establishment, (all classes talk of establishing young ladies now) as the wives of wealthy graziers, or substantial yeomen, or far- mers, or thriving tradesmen. Hut he drinks his port wine, and follows the hounds. And then, bringing up the rear of the family procession 40 CHURCHYARDS. lounges on its future representative, its sole son and heir. And he is a smart buck, far too genteel to walk arm-in-arm with his sisters ; so he saunters behind, cutting off the innocent heads of the dang- ling brier-roses, and the tender hazel-shoots, with that little jemmy switch, wherewith ever and anon he flaps the long-looped sides of his yellow-topped boots ; and his white hat is set knowingly on one side, and he wears a coloured silk-handkerchief knotted closely round his throat, and fastened down to the shirt bosom by a shining brooch, — and waist- coat of three colours, pink, blue, and buff, — a grass- green coat, with black velvet collar, — and on his little finger, (the wash leather glove is off on that hand,) a Belcher ring as thick as the coil of a ship's cable. Well done, young Hopeful ! That was a clever aim ! There goes a whole shower of hazel- tops. What a pity your shearing ingenuity is not as active among the thistles in your father's fields. The family has reached the church-gate ; they are entering now ; and the farmer, as he passes through, vouchsafes a patronising nod, and a good- humoured word or two, to that poor widow and her daughter who stand aside holding the gate open CHAPTER III. 41 for him, and dropping humhle curtsies to every member of the family. The farmer gives them now and then a few days' work, — hoeing, weeding, or stoning, or, at hay and harvest time, on his broad acres ; but his daughters wonder " Pa'a should demean himself so far as to nod familiarly to such poor objects." They draw up their chins, flirt their handkerchiefs, and pass on as stiff as po- kers. And last, in straggles Master Timothy — (He hates that name, by the by, and wishes his sponsors had favoured him with one that might have shortened buckishly into Frank, or Tom, or — Tim won't do, and his sisters scout the barbarous appellation, and have re-christened him " Alonzo." They would fain have bestowed on him the name of Madame Cottin's interesting Saracen, Malek Adhel, but it was impossible to teach their mamma the proper pronunciation of that word, which she persisted in calling " Molly Coddle") — In straggles Timothy Alonzo, but he is even more condescend- ing than his papa, and bestows a very tenderly ex- pressive glance at the widow's daughter, as she drops her eyes, with her last and lowest curtsy to him. 42 CHURCHYARDS. Well, they are gone by, thank Heaven ! and the poor woman and her child follow at humble dis- tance to their Master's house. — They will not al- ways be abased there. The widow Maythorn and her daughter Rachel are a very poor, but a very happy pair. Her daughter is sickly and delicate ; and folks say, in our country phrase, " hardly so sharp as she should be ;" but she has sense enough to be a dutiful child, — to suifer meekly, — to hope humbly, — to believe steadfastly. What profiteth other knowledge ? The mother and daughter pos- sess a little cottage, a bit of garden, and a cow that picks its scanty pasture on the waste. They work hard, — they want often, — but they contrive to live, and are content. The widow Maythorn and her daughter are a happy pair ! Yonder, winding slowly up that shady green lane, come the inmates of the parish workhouse — the in- door poor. First, the master, a respectable-looking middle-aged man, with somewhat of pompous stern- ness in his deportment ; but there is nothing hard or cruel in the expression of his eye, as ever and anon he looks back along the line of paupers, of all ages and sexes, so decently marshalled under his CHAPTER III. 43 command. On the contrary, he hangs back, to speak a few words of hearty encouragement to that weary old man, who totters along so feebly on his crutches, under the burden of his fourscore years of toil and trouble, and the increasing load of his bodily infirmities. And the grateful look of old Matthew, and his cheerful, " Lord love ye, mas- ter !" are eloquent vouchers, that, for once, the man " armed with a little brief authority" abu- seth not his trust. The mistress has less dignity, but more severity of aspect, as her sharp, quick glance runs back, often and suspiciously, along the line of females ; and she calls them peremptorily to order if their voices are heard too voluble, — and she rebukes the straggling children, and denounces exemplary vengeance against those two detected urchins in particular — detected in the misdemean- our of skulking behind to pull those tempting clus- ters of almost ripe nuts, that peep so invitingly from the high hazel hedge. But her denunciations are not listened to, it should appear, with any very vehement demonstrations of dread. I believe, o* my conscience, " her bark is waur than her bite ;" and that half her terrors lie in that long bowsprit 44 CHURCHYARDS. nose, that looks as if it were sharpened to a point hy the cross fire of those little red gimblet eyes, and^ in the sound of a voice, shrill, cracked, and squeaking - , like the tone of a penny trumpet. Very neat, decent, and respectable is the appearance of the long line of parish poor. They are all com- fortably clad in whole and clean apparel ; and even that poor idiot, who brings up the rear, straggling in and out of the file of children, — (who can re- strain his vagaries ?) — Even he is clothed in good grey woollen, and a whole new hat, in lieu of the scarlet tatters, and old battered soldier's helmet, with its ragged red and white feather, in which he delights to decorate his poor little deformed figure on week-days, calling himself corporal, captain, ge- neral, or drum-major, as the whim of the moment rules his wayward fancy, — each grade, as he as- sumes it, the most honourable in his estimation. They are gone by, all of them, — men, women, and children — the two culprits still lagging in the rear. I wager they have another pluck at the forbidden fruit, on their way back to the workhouse. More children still ! — marshalled in double files ! Boys and girls, three scores at least; each sex uni- CHAPTER III. 45 formly clad; the master and mistress leading the van of their respective divisions. That is the sub- scription charity-school, and the children have just donned their new clothing ; and do but see, poor urchins ! what hogs in armour some of them look like ? Good clothing it is — warm and decent, and of durable material ; thick grey frieze for the boys, with dark blue worsted hose, and black beaver hats —black hats, at least ; and for the girls, grogram gowns, and wild-boar petticoats ; (reader, did you ever hear of such materials?) and stiff enough they are, Heaven knows ; and as the things are all sent down ready made from a London warehouse, they are of necessity pretty much of the same size, as having the better chance to fit, or, at all events, to do for all. So you shall see a poor little boy muffled up in a coat that looks like his grandfather's great-coat, the flaps of which dangle almost to the ground ; the collar is turned half way down his back, or it would mount up so high as to bury his head, which is indeed already buried under a hat, the brim of which rests upon his shoulders and the bridge of his nose ; and when he hangs down his arms, you cannot see so much as the tip of his fin- 46 CHURCHYARDS. It gers peeping from within those long enormous sleeves. To complete the picture of eomfort, he skuffs along in a pair of shoes, the stiff upper lea- thers of which reach up to the middle of his shins, and the poor little legs stick in them like two chumpers in a couple of butter churns. Altogether, he looks like a dangling scare-crow set up in a corn-field. But, then, the little muffled man presents a fine contrast to his alongside mate. His long-tailed coat makes him a short jacket. His arms are squeezed through the sleeves to be sure, but then they stick out like wooden pins on either side, with excessive tightness ; and there, see ! dangles half a yard of red lean wrist, and all the blood in his body seems forced down into those great, blue, bony knuckles. It was a good hearty thump, certes, that jammed down that stiff skimming-dish of a hat, even to where it now reaches on his unlucky pate. The great, flat, unhcmmcd red ears stick out from under it like two red-cabbage leaves ; and for his shoes ! — the blacksmith would have shod him better, and have inflicted less pain in the operation ; for, see ! his feet are doubled up in them, into the form of CHAPTER III. 47 hoofs, and he hobbles along, poor knave ! like a cat in pattens, or as if the smooth green lane were paved with red-hot flints. And the girls are not much better off. Some draggle long trains after them, and have waists down to their hips ; others are well nigh kilted ; and that long lanky girl there, Jenny Andrews, would reveal far more than a de- cent proportion of those heron legs of hers, were it not that she has ingeniously contrived to tie the wild-boar petticoat a reef below the grogram gown, thereby supplying the deficiencies of the latter. — Well, they are all new clothed, however, spick and span, and all very proud of being so. Even he of the crumpt-up toes, who will soon poke his way through those leathern fetters, and in the meantime limps along in contented misery. " New clothes," thinks he. — " Good clothes ! handsome clothes !" thinks Madam Buckwheat. — " Fine clothes ! fa- shionable clothes !" think the Misses Buckwheat. — " Brave clothes ! pretty clothes !" thinks the poor idiot, when Monday comes, and he is allowed to re- sume his old scarlet tatters. All are puffed up with the self-same species of conceit, variously modified, and so are many greater and many finer folks than 48 CHURCHYARDS. they — ay, and many wiser ones too — many more talented. Witness Goldsmith, in his peach-blos- som coat ; and Johnson, (who ridiculed the poor poet's puerile vanity,) in his gala suit of fine brown broad-cloth. One spread his tail like a peacock, and strutted about to show off its gaudy colours ; the other, arrayed like the bird of wisdom, in grave and sombre plumage, was equally proud of the dig- nity it conferred, and oraculously opined, that a gentleman was twice a gentleman in a full dress suit. Vanity ! vanity ! thou universal leaven ! from what human heart art thou absolutely excluded ? Hark ! the trampling of horses, and the sound of wheels. The Squire's carriage sweeps round the corner of the churchyard. He and his family ar- rive thus early, that the horses may be stabled in that long low shed, appropriated for the purpose, and the servants ready to enter the church at the same time with their master, and to partake with him of the benefit and comfort of the confession and absolution. Some people seem to consider those parts of the service as a mere prelude, — a sort of overture, as hackneyed, and about as solemn, ;i> that to Lodoiska ; and if they reach their pews by CHAPTER III. 49 the time they are half over, it is well. As for the servants, what can it signify to them ? — There alights another carriage load, — and another, — and another, — and the comers in a car, and in two tax- carts, and on sundry steeds ; and there the patri- cian party is congregating together round the great east door ; and there stands the clerk, with hat in hand, peering down the vicarage lane, under the penthouse of his other shading hand, for the first glimpse of the minister. Now, he descries the white face of the old roan mare. Another look, to be sure ; — it is indeed that sober-footed palfrey, bearing her reverend burthen. And then he turns hastily into the belfry ; and immediately the crack- ed chimes subside into a few quick single strokes, announcing the near approach of the clergyman, and the speedy commencement of divine service. That fine ruddy lad, with the white smock-frock, has been immovably posted at the churchyard wicket for the last half hour. His patience will ac- complish its purpose. He is the first to start for- ward — hat in hand, and smoothing down his glossy yellow hair — to receive the bridle of the old man, which the vicar resigns into the hand of careful VOL. i. d 50 CHURCHYARDS. Will, with the usual charges, and a smile, and a few words of kind notice. The minister has passed into the vestry; the clerk has followed him. A few more strokes and the bell ceases ; a few more seconds and the church- yard is left to its lonely silence, and to its quiet occupants ; and the living are gathered together, within those sacred walls, to hear the words of eternal life, on the surety whereof, the sleepers without — with whom they must one day lie down in the dust — have been committed to their narrow beds " in sure and certain hope." But my discourse purported to be of Church- yards only, and I have rambled from my text. No matter ; I am come, as we all must, to the church- yard at last, and my next chapter shall be of " graves, and stones, and epitaphs." CHAPTER IV. 51 CHAPTER IV. My next chapter, I think, was to be of " graves, and stones, and epitaphs." Come then to the churchyard with me, whoever shrinketh not from thoughtful inspection of those eloquent sermon books. Come to that same churchyard where late- ly we saw the assembled congregation — the aged and the young — the proud and the lowly — the rich and poor collecting together on the Sabbath morn- ing to worship their Creator within those sacred walls. Many months since then have slipt away — the green leaves have withered, and dropt, and de- cayed, and the bare branches have been hung with icicles, and bent down under the weight of winter snows ; and again they have budded and put forth their tender shoots, and the thick foliage of summer has cast its broad shadow on the dark green sod ; 52 CHURCHYARDS. and again " decay's effacing fingers" are at work, and the yellow tints of autumn are gaining on the rich verdure of summer. And man ! — the ephe- meron ! who perisheth as a flower of the field — whose time on earth is like the shadow that de- parteth — how hath it fared with him during the re- volving seasons ! How many are gone to their long home, and their place on earth knoweth them no more ! How many of those who, when last we looked upon this scene, stood here among their friends and neighbours, full of life and health, and the anticipation of long years to come, full of schemes, and hopes, and expectations, and restless thoughts, and cumbersome cares, and troubles and pleasures of this life ! How many of these are since returned to this spot ! — Yea — but to tarry here — to occupy the house appointed for all living — to lie down and sleep, and take their rest, un- disturbed by winter winds, or summer storms — un- awakened by the chime of the church-bells when they summon hither the Sabbath congregation, or by the voices of those they loved in life, who pass by their lowly graves, already, perhaps, forgetful CHAPTER IV. 53 of " the form beloved" so recently deposited there ! " So music past is obsolete — And yet 'twas sweet ! 'twas passing sweet ! But now 'tis gone away." This is again a Sabbath day — the evening of an autumnal Sabbath — morning and afternoon divine service has been performed within those walls, and now Nature is offering up her own pure homage. The hymns of her winged choristers — the incense of her flowery censor — the flames of her great al- tar, that glorious setting sun. See ! how his de- parting beams steal athwart the churchyard be- tween those old oaks, whose stately trunks, half defined in the blackness of their own shadow, half gilded by the passing brightness, prop that broad canopy of " many twinkling leaves" now glittering underneath with amber light, while above, the dense mass of foliage, towering in heavy grandeur, stands out in bold and bleak relief against the gol- den glory of the western horizon. How magnifi- cent that antique colonnade ! How grand that massy superstructure ! Lo ! the work of the great Architect, which might well put to shame the puny efforts of his creatures, and the frail structures they 54 CHURCHYARDS. erect to his glory, were it not, that He whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain, hath vouchsafed to promise, that where a few faithful hearts are gathered together to worship him in spirit and in truth, He will be there in the midst of them, even in their perishable temples. Therefore, though yon majestic oaks overtop with their proud shadow the low walls, and even the ivied tower of that rustic church, yet are they but a fitting portico, an " outer porch," to the sanctuary more especially hallowed by His presence. Neither is their spread- ing arch, too magnificent a canopy for those ob- scure graves, so peacefully ranged beneath it. Many a sincere and humble Christian rests from his labours beneath those green hillocks. Many a faithful believer, who has drunk without a murmur his earthly cup of bitterness, because it was award- ed to him by the divine will, and because, trusting in the merits of his Redeemer, he cast down his burden at His feet, looking forward, through His promises, to be a partaker of the glory which shall be revealed hereafter. Many a one, " to fortune and to fame unknown," who walked thus humbly with liis God, sleeps unrecorded in l In- majestic CHAPTER IV. bb shadow of those venerable trees. But when those giants of the earth shall have stood their appointed season — shall have lived their life of centuries — them also, the unsparing hand shall smite, and they too shall lie prostrate in the dust ; and for their sapless trunks there shall be no renovation, while the human grain, now hidden beneath their roots, retains, even in corruption, the principles of immor- tality, and shall, in the fulness of time, spring up to life eternal. What histories — not of great actions, or of proud fortunes, or of splendid attainments, but of the human heart, (that inexhaustible volume !) — might be told over these graves, by one who should have known their quiet tenants, and been a keen and feeling observer of their infinitely varying natures ! nay , by one who should relate, from his own remembrance, even the more obvious circum- stances of their obscure lives ! What tales of love, and hope, and disappointment, and struggling care, and unmerited contumely, and uncomplaining pa- tience, and untold suffering, and broken hearts, might be extracted from this told earth we tread on ! What heart-wrun^ tears have been showered 56 CHURCHYARDS. down upon these quiet graves ! What groans, and sighs, and sobs of uncontrollable grief, have burst out in this spot from the bosoms of those who have stood even here, on the brink of the fresh-opened grave, while the coffin was lowered into it, and the grating cords were withdrawn, and the first spade- ful of earth rattled on the lid, and the solemn words were uttered — "Dust to dust!" And where are those mourners now, and how doth it fare with them ? — Here ! they are here ! And it fareth well with thorn, for their troubles are over, and they sleep in peace amongst their friends and kindred ; and other mourners have wept beside their graves, and those, in turn, shall be brought back here, to mingle their dust with that of foregone genera- tions. Even of tin; living multitude assembled here this day twelvemonths, how many, in the short inter- val between that and the present time, have taken ii |> their rest within these consecrated precincts ! And already, over the graves of many, the green suds have again united in velvet smoothness. Here, beside that of William Moss, is a fn-sli.-i and higher hillock, to which his headstone like- CHAPTEIt IV. 57 wise serves for a memorial ; and underneath his name there are engraven on it — yes — two other names. The aged parents and the blooming son at last repose together ; and what matters now that the former went down to the grave by the slow and gradual descent of good old age, and that the latter was cut off in the prime and vigour of his manhood ? If each performed faithfully the task allotted to him, then was his time on earth sufficient ; and, after the brief separation of a few years, they are reunited in eternity. But here — Behold a magnificent contrast to that poor plain stone ! — Here stands a fine tall freestone, the top of which is ornamented in basso-relievo, with a squat white urn swaddled up in ponderous drapery, over which droops a gilt weeping willow — it looks like a sprig of samphire — the whole set off by a blue ground, encircled by a couple of goose wings. — Oh ! no — I cry the sculptor mercy — they are the pinions of a pair of cherubim. There are the little trumpeters' liieoks puffing out from under them ; and the obituary is engraven on a black ground in grand gold Letters ; and it records — Ah! Madam Buckwheat — is it come to this? 58 CHURCHYARDS. Is all that majesty of port laid low? That fair exuberance of well-fed flesh ! That broad expanse of comely red and white, " by Nature's sweet and cunning hand laid on." — Doth all this mingle with the common earth ? That goodly person clad in rustling silks ! is it shrunken within the scanty folds of the shroud, and the narrow limits of a cold brick grave ? VThat ! in the very flush of worldly prosperity — when the farmer's granaries were over- flowing with all manner of store — when your dairy had yielded double produce — when the stock of cheeses was unprecedented — when your favourite Norman had presented you with twin calves — when you had reared three broods of milk-white turkeys, and the China sow had littered thirteen pigs ! — just as the brindled heifer of that famous cross was coming into milk — and just as the new barn was built, and the parish rates were lowered, and the mulberry tree was beginning to bear — and just as you had brought yourself to feel at home in your long sleeves, and unfettered l»y the great garnet ring, and to wear gloves when you were out visiting; and, to crown all, just as your youngest hope — your favourite daughter — had made :i aplen- CHAPTER IV. 59 did conquest of a real gentleman — one who had come down from Lunnon in his own shay, and talked about " Hastleys," and " the Hoppera," and " Wauxhall," and the Vild Beasts, and Vaterloo Bridge, and all them there things, and was to in- stall Betsey (the old lady always forgot to say Eliza) lady and mistress of a beautiful ouse in Fleet Street. Oh ! at such a time to be torn from " Life and all the joys it yields ! Ah, Madam Buckwheat ! is it so indeed ? Alas ! too true — :< A heap of dust is all remains of thee, 'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be." Take care ! — never tread upon a grave — .What ! you saw it not, that scarce distinguishable hillock, overshadowed by its elevated neighbour. It is, however, recently thrown up, but hastily and carelessly, and has of late been trodden down al- most to a surface, by the workmen employed in erecting that gilded " tribute of affection," to the memory of the farmer's deceased spouse. A few more weeks and it will be quite level with the even sod, and the village children will gambol over it unmindful of their old friend, whom yet they follow- 60 CHURCHYARDS. ed to that grave with innocent regretful tears, the only tears that were shed for the poor outcast of reason. The parish pauper sleeps in that grave — the workhouse idiot. He for whom no heart was tenderly interested ; for he had long, long outlived the poor parents to whom their only child, their harmless Johnny (for they thought him not an idiot), was an object of the fondest affection. There were none to take to him when they were gone, so the workhouse afforded him refuge, and sustenance, and humane treatment ; and his long life — for it was extended nearly to the term of seventy years — was not, on the whole, joyless or forsaken. His intellect was darkened and distorted, but not so as to render him an object of disgust or terror, or to incapacitate him from performing many tasks of trifling utility. He even exercised a sort of rude ingenuity in many little rustic handicrafts. He wove rush baskets and mats, and neatly and strong- ly wove them, and of the refuse straw he plaited coarse hats, such as are worn by ploughboys ; and he could make wicker cages for blackbirds and magpies, and mouse-traps, and rabbit-hutches ; and In' had apivtty notion of knitting too, only that he CHAPTER IV. 61 could never be brought to sit still long enough to make any great proficiency in that way. But he was useful, besides, in many offices of household drudgery ; and though his kind master never suf- fered poor Johnny to be " put upon," he had many employers, and as far as his simple wits enabled him to comprehend their several wills, he was con- tent to fulfil them. So he was sent to fetch water, and to watch that the coppers did not boil over, and to feed the fire, and blow the bellows, and sift the cinders, and to scrape carrots and potatoes, and to shell beans, and to sweep the floor, (but then he would always waste time in making waves and zigzags on the sand,) and to rock the cradles ; and that office he seemed to take peculiar delight in, and would even pretend to hush the babies, as he had seen practised by their mothers, with a sort of droning hum which he called singing. But besides all these, and other tasks innumerable, more extended trust was committed to him, and he was never known but to discbarge it faithfully. He was allowed (in exception of those rules of the house imperative on its sane inmates) to wan- der out whole days, having the charge of a few 62 CHURCHYARDS. cows, or pigs, aud for a trifling remuneration, which lie brought regularly home to his master, who expended it for him with judicious kindness, in the purchase of such simple luxuries as the poor idiot delighted in, — a little snuff and tobacco, or the occasional treat of a little coarse tea, and brown sugar. Then was old Johnny in his glory, when, seated on some sunny road-side bank, or nestling among the fern leaves in some bosky dingle, within ken of his horned or grunting charge, of which he ne- ver lost sight, he had collected about him a little cluster of idle urchins, with whom he would vie in dexterity in threading daisy necklaces, or sticking the little white flowers on a leafless thorn branch, or in tying up cowslip balls, or in making whistles, or arrow heads of hollow elder stalks ; or in weav- ing high conical caps of green rushes; and then was < Isesar in his element, for then would he arm with those proud helmets the heads of his childish mates, and marshal them (nothing loath) in military or- der, each shouldering a stick, his supposed musket ; and, flourishing his wooden sword, and taking the command of his new levies, he marched up and CHAPTER IV. 63 down before the line of ragged rogues, gobbling like a turkey cock, with swelling pride, in all the martial magnificence of his old cocked-hat and fea- thers, and of his scarlet tatters with their tarnished lace. But sometimes was he suddenly cast down from that pinnacle of eartbly grandeur, by the malicious wantonness of an unlucky boy, who would slyly breathe out a few notes from an old flute, well an- ticipating their effect on poor Johnny. Rude as were those notes, they " entered into his soul." In a moment his proud step was arrested, his authori- tative, uplifted hand fell nerveless by his side ; his erect head dropt, and large tears rolled down his aged face ; and at last sobs — deep, heavy, convul- sive sobs ! burst from the bosom of the poor idiot, and then even his mischievous tormentor almost wept to see the pain he had inflicted. Yes, such was the power of music, of its rudest, simplest tones, over some spring of sensibility, deep hidden in the benighted soul of that harmless creature ; and he had apparently no control over the tempestuous ebullition of its excited vehemence, except at church during the time of divine service. ■ J CHURCHYARDS. There, while the Psalm was being sung, he was still, and profoundly silent. But when others rose up from the form beside him, he sunk still lower in his sitting posture, and cowering down, bent for- ward his head upon his knees, hiding his face there within the fold of his crossed arms, and no sound or sob escaped him, but his poor frame trembled universally ; and when the singing was over, and he looked up again, the thin grey hair on his wrinkled forehead was wet with perspiration. Noiu, let the clarion sound, or the sweet hautboy pour out its melodious fulness, or the thrilling flute discourse, or the solemn organ roll over his grave its deep and mighty volume, and he will sleep on undisturbed — ay, till the call of the last trumpet shall awaken him, and the mystery of his earthly exis- tence shall be unfolded, and the soul, emerging from its long eclipse, shall shine out in the light of immortality. At that day of solemn reckoning, how many, whose brilliant talents and luminous intellect have blazed out with meteoric splendour not to enlighten, but to dazzle and mislead, and bewilder the minds of their fellow-mortals in the mazes of inextricable error — how nianvot'lli' CHAPTER IV. 65 who have so miserably abused the great trust re- posed in them, shall he fain to exchange places with that unoffending innocent, crying out, in the agony of their despair, " to the mountains, fall on us, and to the hills, cover us !" Farewell, old Johnny — quiet be thy rest ! — harm- less and lowly was thy life ! — peaceful and unno- ticed thy departure ! Few had marked the gradual decline of the poor creature ; but for many months he had wasted away, and his feeble, deformed frame had bowed nearer and nearer to the earth ; and he cared little for any nourishment, except his favourite regale of tea, and the mistress's occasional bounty, a slice of white bread and butter ; and there was less willingness to exert himself than formerly. He still crept about his accustomed tasks, but slowly and silently, and would sometimes fall asleep over his more seden- tary employment ; and when spoken to, he seldom replied but by a nod and a smile — that peculiar smile of idiotic; intelligence. Some said the old man grew lazy and sullen, for " what could ail him?" they wondered. Nothing — nothing ailed him — nothing to signify — only the cold hand of VOL. I. K ; 66 CHURCHYARDS. death was on him, and be dropt at last with the leaves in autumn. One evening, long after milking- time, the cows he had been intrusted to watch came straggling home without their keeper. Search was made for him, and he was soon discovered by the children, who were well acquainted with his favourite haunts and hiding-places. They found him gathered up in his usual form, among the dry fern leaves, at the foot of an old hawthorn near which run a reedy streamlet. His back rested agaiust the hawthorn's twisted stem, his old grey head was bare, and a few withered leaves had dropt upon it. Beside him lay a half-finished cap of woven rushes, one hand was on it, and the other still grasped the loose materials of his simple fabric. There was a smile upon his countenance, (he was al- ways smiling to himself,)buthis head had droptdown on his bosom, and his eyes were closed as if in sleep. He was dead — quite cold and stiff: — so they took him from his pleasant fern bank, to his late home, the Avorkhouse, and the next day he was screwed down in the shell of rough boards, the last allow- ance of parish bounty, and before sunset, those i. u sods were trampled down over the pauper's grave. — Farewell, old Johnny! CHAPTER V. 67 CHAPTER V. A little longer, yet a little longer, let us tarry- in this secluded burial ground. The sun's golden rim touches not yet the line of that bright horizon. Not yet have the small birds betaken themselves to their leafy homes, nor the bees to their hives, nor the wild rabbits to their burrows on the heath. Not yet, sailing like a soft fleecy cloud through the grey depths of twilight, hath the light-shunning owl ventured abroad on her wide winnowing vans, nor is the bat come forth, cleaving the dewy air with his eccentric circles. Tarry a little longer, even till the moon, that pale, dull, silvery orb, shines out uneclipsed by the glories of her effulgent brother. Then will her tender light, glancing in between those ancient oaks, sleep sweetly on the green graves, and partially illumine that south-east angle of the Church Tower, and those two long narrow 68 CHURCHYARDS. windows. And then will our walk homeward be delightful — far more so than even in the warm glow of sunset ; for then every bank and hedge-row will he glittering with dew in the pale silvery light, and every fern leaf will be a diamond spray, and every blade of grass a crystal spear ; and sparks of living fire will tremble on them, and glance out with their emerald rays from between the broad leaves of the coltsfoot and the arum. And then the wild honey- suckles (our hedge-rows are full of them) will ex- hale such sweets as I would not exchange for all the odours of the gardens of Damascus ; or if we go home by the heath-track, the wild thyme, and the widows'-wail, will enrich the air with their aroma- tic fragrance. On such a night as this will be, I never unreluctantly re-enter the formal dwellings of man, or resign myself to oblivious slumbers. Methinks how exquisite it would be, to revel, like ;i creature of the elements, the long night through in the broad flood of moonshine ! To pass from space to space with the flectness of thought, " put- ting ;i girdle round about the earth in forty mi- nates," or to skim silently along on the stealthy moonbeams, to lonely places, where wells of water CHAPTER V. 69 gush up in secret, where the wild deer come fearless- ly to drink, where the halcyon rears her young, and the water-lily floats like a fairy ship, unseen by human eye — and so, admitted to nature's sanctuary, blending as it were in essence with its pervading soul of rapturous repose — to be abstracted for a while from dull realities, the thoughts and cares of earth that clog the unextinguishable spirit with their dense vapours, and intercept its higher aspi- rations. What living soul, conscious of its divine origin, and of its immortal destination, hut must at times feel weary of this probationary state, impa- tient of the conditions of its human nature, and of bondage in its earthly tabernacle ! What living soul, that has proved the vanity of all sublunary things, but has at times aspirated with the royal Psalmist, " Oh that I had wings like a dove, for then would I flee away and be at rest !" Hark ! there's a stir near us — a stir of footsteps, and of human voices. It proceeds from within the church; and see ! tin- porch doors are ajar, and also that low-arched door-way opening into the belfry. Those steps are ascending its dark, narrow stair ; and then, hark again ! from within, a low. dull, 70 CHURCHYARDS. creaking sound ; and then one long, deep, startling toll — another, ere the echoes of the first have died away over the distant woods. That sound is the summons of the grave. Some neighbouring pea- sant is borne to-night to his long home ; and, see ! as we turn this angle of the church, there, beside that broad old maple, is a fresh-opened grave. The dark cavity is covered in by two boards laid loosely over, — but it will not be long untenanted. Let us look abroad for the approaching funeral, for, by the tolling of the bell, it must be already within sight. It comes not up that shady lane — no, nor by the broad heath road, from the further hamlet — nor from the direction of the Grange farm — but there, — ah ! there it is, and close at hand, emerging from that little shrubby hollow, through which the road dips to the near village of Downe. Is it not a beautiful thing to gaze on, in this lovely secluded spot, by the light of that yellow sunset, the mellow hue of which falls with such a rich yet tempered brightness on the white draperies of those fore- most in the procession ? It is a maiden's funeral, — that, probably, of some young poison; for, see J the pall is borne by MX CHAPTER V. 71 girls, each shrouded like a nun in her long white flowing hood, and, in lieu of the black pall, a white sheet is flung over the coffin. The lower classes are very tenacious of those distinctive observan- ces ; and many a young creature I have known, whose delight it seemed, during the last stages of some lingering malady, to arrange everything for her own burial, — the fashion of her shroud, and the flowers they should strew over her in the coffin — the friends who should follow her to the grave, and the six of her young companions to be select- ed for her pall-bearers. Almost the very poorest contrive, on such occasions, what they call " a cre- ditable burying" — even to the coarse refreshments distributed amongst the funeral guests. Poor souls ! long and sorely do they pinch for it, in their own few comforts, and in their scanty meals ; but the self-inflicted privation is unrepiningly endured, and who would take upon him, if it were possible, to restrain that holy and natural impulse, to honour the memory of the dead ? See! the train length- ens into sight as it winds iq> the ascent from that wild dingle. The beareis ftnd llieir insensible bur- then are already near, and there follow the female 72 CHURCHYARDS. mourners foremost. Ah ! I know now for whom that bell tolls — for whom that grave is prepared — whose remains are there borne along 1 to their last resting-place. Close behind the coffin comes a so- litary mourner — solitary in her grief — and yet she bears in her arms a helpless innocent, whose loss is even more deplorable than hers. That poor old woman is the widowed mother of Rachel Mav- thorne, whose corpse she is following to the grave ; and that unconscious baby, who stretches out its little hands with laughing glee towards the white drapery of the coffin, is the desolate orphan of her only child — alas ! of its unwedded mother. A dark and fold offence lies at his door who se- duced that simple creature from the paths of inno- cence ! — A few words will tell her story ; but let us stop till the funeral-train has passed on into the church, from which the minister now advances to meet it. That poor childless mother! with what rapid strides have age and infirmities overtaken her, since we saw hert his time twelvemonth hold- ing open that very gate for the farmer's prosper ous family, and following them into church with contented humility, accompanied by her dnteom CHAPTER V. IS Rachel. Then, she was still a comely matron, look- ing cheerful in her poverty, and strong to labour. Now, how bent down with age and feebleness does that poor frame appear ! The burthen of the little infant is one she can ill sustain, but to whom -would she resign the precious charge ? She has contrived a black frock for tbe little creature — probably from her own old gown — her widow's gown — for she herself has on no mourning garment ; only an old rusty black willow bonnet, with a little crape about it of still browner hue, and a large black cotton shawl, with which she has covered over, as nearly as possible, that dark linen gown. She holds up no handkerchief to her eyes with the idle parade of ceremonial wo, but her face is bent down over the baby's bosom, and drops are glistening tbere, and on its soft cheek, that never fell from those young, joyous eyes. A few neighbours follow her — a few poor wo- men — two and two, who have all contrived to make some show of decent mourning ; and those three or four labouring men, who walk last, have each a crape hat-band that has served for many funerals. They are all gone by now . (he dead and the living. 74 CHURCHYARDS. For the last time on earth the departed mortal has entered the House of God. While that part of the hurial-service appointed to he read there is pro- ceeding, a few words will tell her story. Rachel Maythorne was the only child of her mo- ther, and she was a widow, left early to struggle with extreme poverty, and with the hurden of a sickly infant, afflicted with epileptic fits, almost from its hirth. The neighbours, many of them, said, " it would be a mercy, if so be God Almighty were pleased to take away the poor baby; she would never thrive, or live to be a woman, and was a terrible hinderance to the industrious mo- ther." But she thought not so, neither would she have exchanged her puny wailing infant, for the healthiestand the loveliest in the land: — she thought it the loveliest, ay, and the most intelligent too, though everybody else saw well enough that it was more backward in everything, than almost any child of the same age. But it did weather out the precarious season of infancy, and it did live to be a woman, and even to enjoy a moderate share of health, though the fits were never wholly sub- dued, and they undoubtedly had weakened and im CHAPTER V. 75 paired, though not destroyed her intellect. Most people at first sight would have called Rachel a plain girl, and she was, in truth, far from pretty, slight and thin in her person, and, from the feeble- ness of her frame, stooping almost like a woman in years. Her complexion, which might have heen fair and delicate, had she been a lady and luxuri- ously reared up, was naturally pallid, and, expos- ure to sun and wind in her out-door labours, had thickened it to a dark and muddy hue ; but there was a meek and tender expression in her mild hazel eyes, and in her dimpled smile, and in the tone of her low quiet voice, even in the slight hesitation which impeded her utterance, that never failed to excite interest, when once they had attracted ob- servation. The mother and daughter lived a life of contented poverty ; the former, strong and healthful, found frequent employment as a char- woman, or in going out to wash, or in field-labour ; the latter, brought up almost delicately, though the child of indigence, and still occasionally subject to distressing fits, was principally occupied at borne, in the care of their cow, the management of the little dairy, in the cultivation of their small patch 76 CHURCHYARDS. of garden, (and small though it was, Rachel had her flower-knot in a sunny corner,) and in knitting and coarse needle-work. In summer, however, she shared her mother's task in the hay-field, in mush- room-picking, and in the pleasant lahour of the gleaners ; and how sweet was the frugal meal of that contented pair, when the burthen of the day was over, and they sat just within the open door of their little cottage, over which a luxuriant jessa- mine had wreathed itself into a natural porch ! If Nature had been niggardly in storing the simple head of poor Rachel, she had been but too prodigal of feeling to a heart which overflowed with the milk of human kindness, whose capacity of loving seemed boundless, embracing within its scope every created thing that breathed the breath of life. We hear fine ladies and sentimental misses making a prodigious fuss about sensibility, and barbarity, and " the poor beetle that we tread upon ;" but I do firmly believe simple Rachel, without even thinking of her feelings, much less saying a word about them, would have gone many -tcji- out of her way, rather than set her foot upon i worm, ll was a sore trouble to her, her animal CHAPTER V. 77 misery, when Daisey's calf, that she had petted so fondly, was consigned to the butcher's cart, and while the poor mother lowed disconsolately about in quest of her lost little one, there was no peace for Rachel. Every moan went to her heart. But her love, and pity, and kindness of nature, were not all expended (as are some folk's sensibilities) on birds, and beasts, and black beetles. Her poor services were at the command of all who needed them ; and Rachel was in truth a welcome and a useful guest in every neighbour's cottage. She was called in to assist at the wash-tub, to take a turn at the butter-churn, to nurse the baby while the mo- ther was more actively occupied, or to mind the house while the goodwoman stepped over to the shop, or to watch the sick, while others of the fa- mily were necessitated to be about the daily labour that gained their daily bread; she could even spell out a chapter of the Bible, when the sick person desired to hear its comfortable words. True, she was not always very happy in her selections. " It was '/// good ;" so she generally began reading first where the book fell open, no matter if at the num- bering of the twelve tribes, or at " The Song of 78 CHURCHYARDS. Solomon," or the story of " Bel and the Drag-on." — " It was all good," said Rachel ; so she read on boldly through thick and thin ; and fine work, to be sure, she made of some of the terrible hard names. But the simple soul was light, — It was " all good." The intention was perfect; and the spi- rit in which those inapplicable portions of scripture were almost unintelligibly read, found favour doubt- less with Him who claims the service of the heart, and cares little for the outward form of sacrifice. A child might have practised on the simplicity of Rachel Maythorne ; and when April-fool day came round, on many a bootless errand was she sent, and many a marvellous belief was palmed upon her by the village urchins, who yet, in the midst of their merry mischief, would have proved sturdy champions in her cause, had real insult or injury been ottered to the kind creature, from whom all their tormenting ingenuity could never provoke a more angry exclamation, than the short pathetic words, "Oh dear!" One would have thought none but a child could have had the heart to abuse even in jest the credulous innocence of that unoffending creature. But the human " heart CHAPTER V- 79 is desperately wicked ;" and one there was, so cal- lous and corrupt, and absorbed in its own selfish- ness, as to convert into " an occasion of falling," the very circumstances which should have been a wall of defence about poor Rachel. It chanced that, towards the end of last year's harvest, the widow Maythorne was confined to her cottage by a sprained ancle, so that, for the first time in her life, Rachel went out to the light labour of gleaning, unaccompanied by her tender parent. Through the remainder of the harvest season, she followed Farmer Buckwheat's reapers, and no gleaner returned at evening so heavily laden as the widow's daughter. For the farmer himself favour- ed the industry of simple Rachel, and no reaper looked sharply towards her, though she followed him so close, as to glean a chance handful, even from the sheaf he was binding together. And she followed in the wake of the loaded waggons, from whose toppling treasures, as they rustled through the deep narrow lanes, the high bodges on either side took tribute; and though her sheaf acquired bulk more considerably than even from (he golden hang- ings of the road side, no oue rebuked the widow's 80 CHURCHYARDS. daughter, or repelled her outstretched hand ; and one there was, who gave more than passive en- couragement to her humble encroachments. And when the last waggon turned into the spacious rick- yard, and the gleaners retired slowly from the gate, to retrace their way homeward through the same lanes, where a few golden ears might yet be added to their goodly sheaves, then Rachel also turned towards her home, but not in company with her fellow gleaners. For the young farmer led her by a nearer and a pleasanter way, through the Grange homestead, and the orchard, and the hazel copse, that opened just on the little common where stood her mother's cottage, the first of the scattered hamlet. But though the way was certainly shorter, and there were no stiles to clamber over, and the young far- mer helped Rachel with her load, by the time they reached the little common, lights were twinkling in all its skirting cottages, and the returned gleaners were gathered round their frugal supper-boards, and the "Widow Maythornc was standing in her jasmine porch, looking out for her long absent Rachel, and wondering that she lingered so late, till the sight of her heavy burthen, as she emerged CHAPTER V. 81 from the dark copse, accounted for her lagging footsteps and tardy return. Her companion never walked with her farther than the copse, and he ex- acted a promise Alas ! and it was given and kept, though the poor thing comprehended not why she might not make her dear mother partaker of her happy hopes ; but it was his wish, so she promised all he exacted, and too faithfully kept si- lence. So time passed on. The bright broad har- vest moon dwindled away to a pale crescent, and retired into the starry depths of heaven, and then, again emerging from her unseen paths, she hung out her golden lamp, to light the hunter's month. Then came the dark days and cloudy nights of No- vember, and the candle was lit early in the widow's cottage, and the mother and daughter resumed their winter tasks of the spinning wheel and the knitting needles. And the widow's heart was cheery, for the meal-chest was full, and the po- tato-patch had yielded abundantly, and there stood a goodly peat-stack by the door ; and, through the blessing of Providence on their careful industry, they should bo fed and warmed all the long winter VOL. I. F 82 CHURCHYARDS. months : so there was gladness in the widow's heart. But Rachel drooped ; at first unobserved by the fond parent, for the girl was ever gentle and quiet, and withal not given to much talking, or to noisy merriment ; but then she would sit and sing to herself like a bird, over her work, and she was ever ready with a smiling look and a cheerful an- swer, when her mother spoke to, or asked a ques- tion of her. Now she was silent, but unquiet, and would start as if from sleep when spoken to, and fifty times in an hour lay by her work hastily, and walk to the door, or the window, or the little cup- board, as if for some special purpose, which yet seemed ever to slip away unaccomplished from her bewildered mind ; and sometimes she would wan- der away from her home for an hour or more to- gether, and from those lonely rambles she was sure to return with looks of deeper dejection, and eyes still heavy with the traces of recent tears. The mother's observation once aroused, her tender anxiety soon fathomed the cruel secret. Alas ! unhappy mother — thou hadst this only treasure — this one poor lamb — who drank of thy cup, and lay in thy bosom, and was to thee a loving and a duti- CHAPTER V. 83 ful child ; and the spoiler came, and broke down thy little fence of earthly comfort, and laid waste the peaceful fold of nature's sweetest charities. The rustic libertine, whose ruthless sport, the amusement of a vacant hour, had been the seduc- tion of poor Rachel, soon wearied of his easy con- quest, and cast her " like a loathsome weed away." He found it not at first an easy task to convince her of his own baseness, and intended desertion of her ; but when at last he roughly insisted on the discontinuance of her importunate claims, and the simple mind of his poor victim once fully compre- hended his inhuman will, she would have obeyed it in upbraiding silence ; but, alas ! her injuries were not to be concealed, and it was the hard task of the afflicted mother to appeal for such miserable com- pensation as the parish could enforce, to support her unhappy child in the hour of trial, and to assist in maintaining the fatherless little one. Three months ago it was born into this hard, bleak world ; and though the child of shame, and poverty, and abandonment, never was the heir of a mighty duke- dom more fondly welcomed, more dotingly gazed on, more tenderly nursed, than that poor baby : and 84 CHURCHYARDS. it was a lovely infant. How many a rich and child- less pair would have yielded up even to the half of all their substance, to be the parents of such a goodly creature ! All the sorrows of the forsaken mother, all her rejected affections, all her intense capabilities of loving, became so absorbed and con- centrated in her maternal feelings, that when she looked upon her child, and hugged it to her bosom, and drank in at her eyes the sweetness of its inno- cent smiles, it would have been difficult, perhaps, to have kept alive in her poor simple mind a re- pentant sorrow for her past fault, as associated with the existence of that guiltless creature. No one judged hardly of poor Rachel, though many a muttered curse, " not loud, but deep," was impre- cated on her heartless seducer. She was still a welcome guest in every cottage — she who had ever been so ready with all her little services to every soul who needed them, was now welcome to sit with her infant in the low nursing-chair beside their humble hearths, or to lay it in the same cra- dle with their own little ones, while she busied Herself at her task of needle-work. It was a great comfort to the anxious mother to know, that, while CHAPTER V. 85 she was absent from her cottage, her daughter had many a friend, and many a home, to which she might resort when her own" was lonely, or when the peculiar symptoms with which she was familiar, warned her of an approaching fit. On such occa- sions, (and she had generally sufficient notice,) ex- perience had taught her, that by flinging herself flat down on her face, either on the bed or floor, the attack was greatly mitigated in violence, and sometimes wholly averted ; and it had been hither- to an especial mercy, that the afflictive malady had never made its terrific approaches in the night sea- son. Therefore it was, that the Widow May- thorne now and then ventured to sleep from home, when engaged in one of her various occupations, nurse-tending. So engaged, she left her cottage one evening of last week, and, not expecting to return to it before the afternoon of the ensuing day, she made it her provident request to a neigh- bour, that, if Rachel did not look in on her early in the morning, she would step across and see how it fared with her and her baby. Morning came, and the good-woman was stirring early ; and soon 86 CHURCHYARDS. every cottage lattice was flung open, and every door unclosed, and the blue smoke curled up from every chimney but that of the Widow Maythorne's dwelling. There, door and window continued fast, and the little muslin curtain was undrawn from within the chamber-window. So the friendly neigh- bour, mindful of her promise, stepped across to the silent cottage, and it was not without an apprehen- sive feeling, that she lifted up the latch of the garden wicket, before which stood the old cow waiting to be disburdened of her milky treasure, and lowing out, at intervals, her uneasy impatience at the unusual tardiness of her kind mistress. Fast was the door, and fast the chamber-window, and that of the little kitchen, and cold was the hearth within, and all was still as death, and no noise an- swered to the repeated knocks and calls of the friendly neighbour. She tried the chamber case- ment, but it was fastened within, and the little cur- tain drawn before it precluded all view of the in- terior. But, while the dame stood close to it, with her face glued to the glass, her ear caught an in- distinct sound, and in a moment she distinguished CHAPTER V. 87 the feeble wail of the little infant ; but no mother's voice was heard tenderly hushing that plaintive murmur. Quickly the good dame summoned the assistance of a few neighbours — the cottage door was forced open, and they passed on through the cold empty kitchen into the little bed-chamber. There stood the poor uncurtained bed whereon the widow and her daughter had slept side by side so lovingly, for so many quiet and innocent years, and where, of late, the new-born babe had nestled in his mother's bosom. It was still clinging there — alas ! — to a lifeless breast. The living infant was already chilled by the stiffening coldness of the dead mo- ther, who had been, to all appearance, for many hours a corpse. The immediate cause of her death was also too probably surmised. She had evi- dently expired in a fit ; and from the cramped pos- ture in which she was discovered, it was also evident her first impulse had been to turn herself round upon her face, so to baffle the approaching crisis. But even at that fearful moment, maternal love had prevailed over the powerful instinct of 88 CHURCHYARDS. self-preservation — she had turned half round, but stayed herself there, painfully supported in a cramp- ed posture by the elbow of her right arm, while the left still clasped the baby to her bosom, and had stiffened so in its last tender office. CHAPTER VI. 89 CHAPTER VI. Not far from the town of i , in shire, where I passed some weeks in the early part of the present summer, is the pleasant village of Halli- burn, much resorted to by persons visiting the county, sojourners in the adjacent town — health- hunters, view-hunters, antiquity-hunters, felicity- hunters, — Time-killers in short ; to whom any thing serves for a lion, and as a point in view for an hour's excursion. But there are really things worth see- ing in and about that same village of Halliburn, as those friends can bear witness — those dear fellow view-hunters in whose company I explored it. — They will remember, how, after sundry and various consultations, as to when we should go, and how we should go, and at what time, and for how long ; and, after consulting the Guide-book, and recalling all we had ever heard reported of this or that place 90 CHURCHYARDS. by such or such a person — and after all talking to- gether for an Lour, and each suggesting a different plan, and one premising, on the best authority, that such a road was in an impassable state, and a se- cond rejoining, from still better authority, that it was as smooth as a gravel walk — and one prophesying it would rain, and the rest staking their lives that it would not rain — and some proposing to walk, and others to ride — and one voting for a car that would hold all, and another for a brace of donkey carts — the matter in debate, at last, resolved itself into something of a settled plan, our clashing votes sub- siding like a parcel of little frothy waves into one great billow ; and it was definitively agreed, that we should go to Halliburn — that we should dine early, and set out early, to enjoy a fine, long, sum- mer evening in rambling about there with our books and pencils — that we should go in a car — and that we should go that very evening. Don't you remember all this, dear friends of mine? and how quickly we despatched our dinner, and how we packed up the pencils and sketch- books ? — and how James was sent off for a car, of which description of vehicle one of us averred there CHAPTER VI. 91 were hundreds to be hired at every corner — and how James was gone a mortal time — and how we called him all sorts of names, " loitering," and " stupid," and " blind," and what not — and how he came back at last looking as innocent as a dove, and puffing like a grampus — and how it turned out that there were but two cars in the whole place, and that by superhuman exertions he had at last secured one of them — and how we flew down stairs, and found it at the door — and how it was a very odd-looking vehicle, mounted up like a tub upon stilts ! — and how it cocked up so behind, we could hardly scramble in — and how, when we were in, we looked at the horse and did not like him, and then at one another and did not like each other's looks — and how we went off at last, bang ! with such a jerk, as jerked us altogether in a bunch, with our eight hands up in the middle, like four pigeons in a pie — and how we tore down the street like fury, and whisked round the corner like a whirl- wind — and how the beast of a horse pranced and snorted like a griffin — and how one of us vowed ho was a griffin and no mortal horse — and how ano- ther of us was partly of the same opinion — and 92 CHURCHYARDS. bow we all hated the irregularity of his proceed- ings, and the jolting, and swinging, and bumping of the tub — and how at last we all attacked the driver, and insisted on getting out — and how we all blessed our stars on once more touching terra fir- ma — and how we found out that we had narrowly- escaped the fate of Mazeppa, having actually been tied on to the tail of a wild horse, whose proprietor had allotted to us the honour of breaking his spi- rit, or our own necks. Out of evil often good proceedeth — our proud spirits were humbled. We had enough of prancing steeds and jumping chariots — we had tasted of ex- altation, and were satisfied — we had been set up aloft, and were glad to come down again — so, with meek minds, and amiable condescension, we intrust- ed ourselves, deux a deux, to a couple of donkey carts, and off we were once more ! — ours, you know, Lilias, leading the way ! And, don't you remember — can you ever forget — that blear-eyed goblin, that attended us as a running footman, shuffling along by tho side of his donkey, and regaling us, chemin faisant, with his amiable conversation ? One of his eyes, you know — the right — with its little rusty CHAPTER VI. 93 tuft of eyebrow, had wandered half way up into his forehead ; the other, leaving a long, black, shag- gy eyebrow in its natural place, had dropped down hill — languishingly half closed — towards the left corner of his mouth, which lovingly twitched up- wards to meet it half way ; and his nose was puck- ered down all on one side into the cheek, by a great red and purple seam ; and he was all over seamed and speckled with black, red, and purple, — for the poor wretch had evidently been blown up and half-roasted some time or other, though never the worse for it when we had the first happiness of be- holding him, excepting in the aforementioned trif- ling disarrangement of physiognomy, at which, for my part, I was so far from conceiving any manner of disgust, that I thought the countenance had more than gained in character and expression — which is every thing you know — what it had lost in the trif- ling point, regularity of features. There was some- thing infinitely piquant — something inexpressibly wild and picturesque (quite Salvatorish) in the tout ensemble ! The whole face had undergone a face- quake ; and sparks of the volcanic flame were yet visible in the one little ferret eye, that gleamed in 94 CHURCHYARDS. his forehead like a live coal as he ran on beside us, now vehemently exciting his donkey to super- donkeyish exertions, now declaiming to us, with all the fervour of a dilettante guide, on views, antiqui- ties, curiosities, fossils, minerals, snail-shells, and Roman pavements. He was a jewel of a guide ! — " take him for all in all, we shall not look upon his like again !" Well, you remember we alighted — M/dighted, as an old lady of my acquaintance used to say — at the entrance of the village ; and there again debate en- sued as to where we should first shape our course. There was the church, a fine old church ! to be seen, and per/iaps sketched. There was a famous grotto, of which the Guide-book told wonders ; and, lastly, there was, within a pretty walk of the church, an old, old house, the oldest in the county, a ma- nor-house, the property of one of the most ancient families in the kingdom, the family of the De la Veres. That venerable mansion was, I believe, the greatest attraction to us all ; but, like dainty child- ren, we set it aside for bonne Louche, and decided to begin with the grotto. Strange misgivings crept over us, when we were directed through the vil. CHAPTER VI. 95 lage street, to the door of a mean-looking house, and told, that was the entrance to " the cool ca- vern, the mysterious grot !" and when, instead of a nymph, a wood or water nymph, — an Oread, a Dryad, or a Hamadryad, — there came forth to greet, and introduce us to the romantic solitude, an old, frightful, painted hag, with her elf-locks brist- ling out in papers, like porcupine (mills, from un- der the frills and flappets of a high French cap, and in her ears (prodigious ears they were !) two monstrous gold rings, that looked like the handles of a copper tea-urn. We shrank back at sight of this gorgon ; but she strutted towards us with her arms a-kimbo, and there was a sinister determination in the tone in which she said to us, " Walk in, ladies, and see the grotto." She looked determined that we should see it, and we looked at her claws and her fierce eyes, and felt she was not a person to be affronted ; so, as our evil stars had led us to the entrance of her den, we submitted to fate, and followed tbe sylvan goddess — followed her through a dark, dirty, nar- row passage, out at a little mean door, into an en- closed back-yard, about forty feet square, divided 96 CHURCHYARDS. into four compartments, containing a parterre, a wilderness, a castle, and the Grotto ! — and over the entrance to this Elysium was flung a wooden arch, painted sky-blue, whereon it was notified, in gold letters, that " the whole was to he seen for the in- considerable sum of sixpence a-head ;" moreover, that " tea and rolls, and all other refreshments, were furnished on equally reasonable terms." Oh ye Gods ! — so we poor innocents had been betrayed into a sixpenny tea-garden ! — and, sure enough, there, just opposite to us, perched upon a grass mound, in the — the — the donjon-keep of the castle I suppose, sat six merry mortals, in a state of earthly beatitude, their faces shining in the red-hot evening sun like fresh-varnished vermilion coach- panels, swilling tea and negus, and stuffing down hot rolls, bread and butter, and cold ham, with most romantic fervour. We paid our sixpences, and made our retreat as quietly and civilly as pos- sible ; having first, to pacify our conductress, poked our noses into the dirty coal-hole, stuck with bits of glass, oyster and periwinkle shells, which she called " The Grotto /" and you, my dear Lilias, had the complaisance to mount up to the battlements of I 1IAPTKR VI. 97 the castle, (where, by the by, you looked like sister Anne in Bluebeard,) in compliance with the gor- gon's importunities. To you, therefore, we were in- debted for her gracious patronage, when, on in- quiring, as we left the enchanted garden, whether strangers were allowed to see Halliburn House, she replied, with a consecpiential toss of her head, that she was well known there, and that if we applied to the butler in the name of " Madam Simpson of the Grotto," we might be sure of immediate admit- tance. So much for the first of our three lions ; and, truly, we had obtained sixpenny worth for our sixpence, in the patronage of " Madam Simpson of the Grotto." Five minutes walk brought us to the next object in our itinerary, and here no shock awaited us. No human gorgon, no officious guide, no Madam Simp- son, to fling open the low white wicket, and cry, " Walk in, ladies, for sixpence a-head." Sole guardians of the gate, two fine old maples arched over it their interwoven boaghfl : and many others, and several majestic elms, wore grouped together, or stood singly, in and about the church- yard. A few cottages, with pretty, neat gardens. VOL. 1. G 98 CHURCHYARDS. were scattered around ; and, at the further end of a broad, smooth grass-plat, parallel with the church- yard, and separated from it only by a low stone wall, stood the rectory, a long, low, irregularly shaped building of common brick, and with a tiled roof, but made picturesque by the rich and mellow colouring of age, and by the porches, pent-houses, and buttresses, the additions of many successive in- cumbents, and by a noble old vine, that covered the entire front, a great part of the long, sloping roof, and had even been trained, round one of the gables, up to the very top of a high stack of clustered chimneys. Behind the church and rectory appeared an un- dulating sea of foliage, ancient oak and beecb, with here and there a graceful feathery birch, glancing and shivering in the sun, like silvery froth above the darker waves ; and beneath those venerable trees, winded away a broad, shady, park-like road, to which agate opened from the lane that ran along behind the church and rectory. That road was the more private approach to Halliburn House, the an- cient mansion of the De la Veres ; and every ob- ject in the surrounding scene was, in one way or CHAPTER VI. 99 other, associated with the past or present circum- stances of that venerable race. The whole village had, in former times, been a fief of their extensive lordsbip, and great part of it was still in their pos- session. The living was in their gift, and had al- ways been held by a younger son of their house, till the branches began to fail about the old family tree. The church had been erected by their pious progenitors ; and many succeeding De la Veres had beautified and enlarged it, and added gallery and organ-loft, and adorned the chancel with carved and gilded work, and its long window with painted glass, emblazoned with the twelve Apostles, and with the family escutcheon ; and had enriched its altar with pix and chalice of massy embossed sil- ver, and with fine damask napery, and with high branched candlesticks of silver gilt, and with scar- let cushions and hassocks, bordered with broad gold lace, and sumptuously fringed and tasselled witli the same. And these pious benefactions of theirs, and their good deeds that they did, and the ring of bells that they gave, and the gilt weathercock that they caused to be set up on the church-steeple, and the new face wherewith they did repair and 100 CHURCHYARDS. beautify the old clock that was therein, and the marble font that they presented, and the alms- houses that they built, and the school that they en- dowed — are not all these things recorded, in good- ly golden capitals, on divers tablets, conspicuously affixed in sundry and several places in the said church ; to wit, over the great door, and in the centre of the organ-loft, and in five several com- partments along the panelling of the long north gallery ; and to each and every one of those hon- ourable memorials, are not the names of the church- wardens, of the time being, duly and reverently ap- pended ? And on the left, as you go up the chancel, im- mediately beside the gilded rails of the altar, is the large, square, commodious pew of the De la Veres, to which you ascend two steps. And its floor is covered with what hath been a rich, bright, Turkey carpet ; and the damask with which it is lined and cushioned, was once resplendent crimson, now faded to tawny orange, and sorely perforated by the devouring moth. And all the testaments, prayer-books, and hymn-books, lying on the carved- oak reading-shelves, are bound in vellum, embla- CHAPTER VI. 101 zoned with the arms of the De la Veres, and clasp- ed, or have been once, Avith brazen or silver clasps. But some of them have bulged out of all bookish shape, and the fine parchment covers have shrunk up like sear and shrivelled leaves. That small, thick prayer-book, in particular, that "was once so splendidly emblazoned — One clasp still hangs, by half a hinge, on one remaining cover — the other is quite gone from the curled and tattered leaves. And see ! on that blank leaf before the title page is some pale discoloured writing. First, in a fine, delicate, Italian hand, comes the name of " Agnes de la Vere — her Book, Y e gifte of her Hon' 1 Mother, Dame Eleanor de la Vere, june p 80«m>, 1611." And lower down on the same page is again writ- ten, in larger and more antique characters — K Mye deare Cbilde dyed june y titi' 1 "-, 1614, in v i .in' of her ;u;e. — K Y Lord gave & j" Lord takethe away e. Bless d bey* name ol V Lord !" Those words have been blotted as they were writ- 102 CHURCHYARDS. ten, but not alone by the unsteady hand of the writer. The book falls open at the Psalms. — See ! at the xxth morning of the month — and there ! there ! — in that very place, almost incorporated by age into the very substance of the paper, are a few stiff, shrunken rose leaves ! They fell, doubtless, from the hosoni of that young Agnes, on that happy birth-day ; and before those leaves were withered, the human flower had dropt into the dust ! And now, what matters it, or to whom, that the lovely and the loved was taken hence so early ? And all the chancel, and many other parts of the church, are covered with hatchments and monu- mental tablets of the De la Veres. Of the former, some, so faded and blurred by age and damp, that the proud bend of the milk-white plume, towering from its coroneted crest, is scarce distinguishable from the skull that grins beneath, in the centre of its half-obliterated " Resurgam." — On the right of the altar, just opposite the family pew, is a railed- in space, containing two monuments. One of great antiquity ; tbe other very ancient also, but of a CHAPTER VI. 108 much later age. Both are altar tombs. The first — once deeply and richly wrought with curious carved work — is worn away (all its acute angles, and salient points, and bold projections, flattened and rounded off) to a mere oblong stone, one side of which has sunk deep into the pavement of the church. Two figures, rudely sculptured, are ex- tended on it. One of a knight in armour — (see ! that mailed hand is almost perfect,) and of a lady, whose square head-gear, descending in straight folds on either side the face, is still distinguishable, though the face itself has long been worn away to a flat, polished surface — just slightly indented at the place the mouth once occupied. The upper part of the knight's high Roman nose still projects from his demolished visage ; and one can still trace the prominent cheek-bones, and the bold martial brow — " Outstretch'd together, are express'd He and my ladye fair, With hands uplifted tin- village, "Miss Grace's maid," (for so the 'I dame called ber still more aged mistress, > CHAPTER VII. 183 who was sitting in her lady's sick chamber, and a footman, who was somewhere about the offices, she supposed, and whom she would seek out, and send to us. So we stood quietly waiting in this beautiful court-yard, caressing the old dog, and examining the rich bay windows, while the dame passed into the house, on the mission she had un- dertaken in our service. Whoever would know more of Halliburn House, will wait with us, till we learn the result of her embassy. 134 CHURCHYARDS. CHAPTER VIII. Our old woman was so long absent on her mis- sion, that I suspect the footman she went in search of was also to be summoned from the hay-cart, or the rick-burton. At last, however, he made his appearance from the interior of the house, shrug- ging up, as he came towards us, (as if hastily slipt on,) a long brown livery-coat, ample enough in its dimensions to have served him for a surtout, and so gorgeously trimmed with broad blue and orange lace, and silver tags, as to be little in keeping with his grey worsted hose, clumsy hobnailed shoes, and soiled cravat, loosely knotted about the open shirt- collar. His honest, ruddy, shining face, gave evi- dence beside, that he had been hastily called off from his rural labour ; and his straight yellow hair was pasted down on his forehead, but not by the artificial medium of huile antique or pommadc t fanciful carved work in the 138 CHURCHYARDS. deep cornices, and the mouldings round the compart- ments. The vaulted ceiling was also groined in com- partments of the most curious and intricate work- manship ; the darker wood whereof the ground- work was composed, finely relieving the pale groin- ing, and showing, to the greatest advantage, the minutest beauties of its elegant combinations. The floor was tesselated in a pattern of large octagons, filled up with small chequers alternately red and yel- low, and surrounded by borders of a running cliain- work, a deeper edge of which, with some additional ornamental stripes, ran round the whole. Mantle- piece, brackets, skreens, chairs, table, — everything was in keeping in that delightful chamber ; and it was hung round with portraits, all interesting from their antiquity, and a few especially so, as rare and curious specimens of ancient art. There were two Holbeins, flat, shadowless, edgy compositions, but characteristic of the unquestionable merit of the artist, and as portraits deeply interesting. They were those of Elizabeth, then the Lady Elizabeth, and of her brother, the young royal Edward, (that brightest gem of England's buried hopes,) of whom •I"' world was not worthy, neither the inheritance CHAPTER VIII. 139 of a mortal crown. The effigies of many De la Veres, and of worthies lineally and collaterally allied to them, were ranged in the other compart- ments ; and I was particularly struck with that of a fair young creature in the earliest bloom of womanhood, whose full heavy eyelids cast the sha- dow of their long lashes on her soft pale cheek, as she looked down upon the white rose her delicate fingers were inserting in the jewelled stomacher. " Ah !" — thought I, " that must be the fair Agnes ; and that picture must have been finished on her nine- teenth birth-day ; and on that very day, fell from that same white rose, the leaves found so lately in that old prayer-book." — Having thus arranged the story entirely to my own satisfaction, I should not have thanked anybody for telling me I was mistaken — so I asked no questions. I could have dreamt away hours and hours — ay, days and days, in that interesting chamber ; but the door through which we were to pass into a third apartment was already open, ami I could only linger for a mo- ment on the threshold to indulge in a farewell survey. From that door of communication, one 140 CHURCHYARDS. looked down the whole length of the room to the beautiful bay window — "A slanting ray of evening light Shoots through the yellow pane ; And makes the faded crimson bright, And gilds the fringe again. The window's Gothic framework falls In oblique shadows on the walls. How many a setting sun had made That curious lattice work of shade !" I never beheld a chamber so adapted for the re- treat of a studious, meditative man — so quiet, so solemn, so almost holy, yet untinctured with gloom, was the character of chastened repose that per- vaded it ! Looking down from that further end, where I stood in shadow, it required no strong ef- fort of imagination to conjure up forms of the long- departed — a visionary group — harmonizing with the scene, tin; surrounding objects, and the mellow richness of that sunset hour. Place but a pile of ancient tomes on that carved table near the win- dow, a roll or two of vellum, and an antique stand- iah, and in that high-backed crimson chair a fair young lady, " of a sweet, serious aspect," and be- llde ber a venerable old man, to whose grave, plea- CHAPTER VIII. 141 sant countenance her eyes are raised with a ques- tioning 1 look of sweet intelligence, while the fore- finger of her small white hand points out a pas- sage in that open folio, whose crahbed character can be no other than Greek. And now she looks up at that opposite picture of the young princely Edward, and the eyes of her venerable companion follow the direction of hers ; and then a glance of sympathetic pleasure is exchanged, that tells they are discoursing of England's hope. And, see ! a slanting sunbeam stealing upward across the old man's snowy beard, plays on her silken ringlets of paly gold, and on the dazzling whiteness of her in- nocent brow, investing it with seraphic glory ! Master and pupil they must be, that interesting pair ; master and pupil — the learned and the love- ly — the beauty of youth and age ! Who other than the Lady Jane Grey, and her venerable Ascham ? All this passed before the eyes of my imagination in about the same space of time that it took the Saltan to dip his head into the pail of water, or the Dean of Badajoz to turn thai wonderful page, in the mere act whereof he passed through all grades of ecclesiastical rank, even to the chair of St. Peter, 142 CHURCHYARDS. before Dame Jacintha had put down the second partridge to roast. My recall from the realms of magic was less dis- agreeable than the worthy Dean's, however, as, casting behind me " one longing, lingering glance," I followed my friends into that third apartment, which had the appearance of being the common sitting-room of the ancient lady of the mansion. Our guide called it the drawing-room ; and, com- pared with those of the suite we had just seen, its fitting up might have been called almost modern. High panelled wainscoting, painted white, with gold mouldings, and the walls above — the narrow strip of wall — covered with a once costly India paper, the large running pattern of which, on a pale yellow ground, was of scrawly branches, with here and there a palm leaf and a flower, and birds, butterflies, and flying jars and baskets, all edged and veined with gold, dispersed over the whole in regular confusion. The high, carved mantle- piece was decorated by two stupendous girandoles, and loaded with precious porcelain monsters, and other antique china ; as was likewise a curious old Japan cabinet at the further end of the apartment. CHAPTER VIII. 143 There was only one table in the room — (Oh, Go- thic drawing-room !) — a very small, inlaid, Pem- broke table, placed geometrically in the centre of a rich, square, Turkey carpet, which reached not within a yard of the skirting-board. There were no volumes of the poets splendidly bound — no ele- gant ink-stands and morocco blotting-books — no sil- ver-clasped Albums — no musical-boxes, and agate- boxes, and ivory-boxes, and filigree-boxes, and pin- cushions in the shape of lyres, and pen-wipers in the shape of butterflies, and foreign curiosities, and curious nondescripts, disposed with happy careless- ness and picturesque effect on that same table.— No ; sacred was its polished surface from all such profane litter, — inviolate, no doubt, since its crea- tion, from all uses save those for which it was es- pecially ordained — to receive the silver tea-tray every evening duly as the clock struck six, and the chased tea-kettle and lamp, and the two rare, old, china plates of rich seed-cake, and wafer bread and butter. There were two settees in the room — not drag- ged out higgledy-piggledy into the middle of the floor, according to the indecorous fashion of our de- 141 CHURCHYARDS. generate days, but soberly and symmetrically placed on either side the old cabinet, from which, and from the wall behind them, in all likelihood they had never been divorced since their first esta- blishment there. Noways resembling our square, deep sofas, loaded with down-cushions, or our Gre- cian couches, or luxurious Ottomans, these vene- rable //^movables, with their four little brown legs with claw-feet — (no " wheeling" them round — they must have walked if they had moved at all) — their hard narrow seats, and high upright backs, sloping down at the sides into two little wings, spread out like those of an old buggy, looked just big enough to contain one lady with a hoop, or, haply, a pair of courting lovers — the fair one, perchance, in a full- trimmed yellow sacque, with deep ruffles, and peak- ed shoes, the points of which, " like little mice, peep out" from underneath the pinked and crimped furbelowed petticoat, and her hair strained up so tight over a high cushion, parapeted with little flowers and bodkins, and one small ostrich feather drooping eoquettishly over the left ear, as to draw up the outer corners of her eyes like button-holes, adding infinite piquancy of expression to the sweet, CHAPTER VIII. 145 simpering modesty with which she affects to look down on that great green fan. " Then the lover," in a hag and solitaire, a pea-green silk coat, lined with jonquil, an embroidered waistcoat, with pro- digious flaps — languishing towards her — the off-leg sticking straight out like the leg of a woodcock — one arm supported on the hack of the settee — the other, the ruffled hand at least, with a brilliant ring on the crooked-up little finger, presenting a full- blown rose to the goddess of his idolatry, while he warbles in falsetto, " Go, rose ! my Chloe's bosom grace .'" Many such tender passages, between the former occupants of those old settees, were doubtless re- hearsed thereon in the " mellow days" of genera- tions past. To far other purposes were they now devoted. On one of them we remarked a little, short, black satin cloak, lined with squirrel skin, and edged with ermine all round, and at the arm- holes. It wa^ carefully laid over one elbow of the settee, against which rested a tall, ivory, gold- headed walking-stick ; and upon the cloak was de- posited a very small, shallow-crowned bonnet, also VOL. I. K 146 CHURCHYARDS. of black satin, lined with white ; a deep lace cur- tain round the queer, little, flat poke, and no indi- cation of strings — the cockernonny being evidently fixed on, when worn, by a couple of black corking- pins, which were, indeed, stuck in readiness in a pair of long, brown, snuff-colour gloves, laid palm to palm beside the bonnet — the tip of the forefinger and thumb wanting from the right hand glove. There were three windows in the room looking into a fourth court, so far differing from the others, that the outer wall consisted of a mere pediment, finished by a stone balustrade, and opening into a fine orchard by a wrought-iron gate. On the mas- sy side pillars of the gateway, and all along the balustrade, were ranged stone vases, filled with white lilies, hollyhocks, red and yellow marvels of Peru, and branching larkspurs ; and in the centre of the grass-plot stood a fine old sundial on its rich-carved spiral pedestal. Such was the " look out" from those three windows. Between them we ic two pier glasses, in deep carved gilt frames, having branches for lights affixed to them. Un- derneath were two marble slabs ; on one of which were very methodically arranged, a Bible am! CHAPTER VIII. 147 Common Prayer Book, Mrs. Glass's Cookery, Broome's Poems, The Book of Martyrs, Pame- la, " A Funeral Sermon on the Death of the Lady Cuts," Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy, Jere- my Taylor's Golden Grove, " The Tcte-ci-Tete Magazine," and the Red Book for the year 1790. On the other stood a very antique-looking emboss- ed silver salver, bearing two delicately transparent chocolate cups of egg-shell china, yet exhaling the perfume of the grateful beverage they had recently contained ; and a chased, gold-handled knife lay be- side a very inviting rich seed-cake on a fine old china plate. Beneath those two pier tables stood two most magnificent china jars, containing such pot-pourris as could hardly have been concocted with the cloves, roses, and gillyflowers of these degenerate days — " Poperies," as I once heard the word pronounced by a worthy old gentlewoman, who believed, doubtless, that the fashion of those fragrant vases had been imported among us from the Vatican by some patriotic traveller, who had begged a receipt from the Pope, just as she would beg Mrs. Such-a-one's receipt for " muck turtle," or "calves' head surprised." Before cither end window 148 CHURCHYARDS. was placed a small claw table, or stand, supporting - , one, a glass globe, with gold fisb, the otber a splendid, gilt wire cage, containing an old grey par- rot with gouty legs, wbo sat winking and blinking in his swing, croaking every now and then an un- intelligible something, except that once or twice he articulated very distinctly, " Pretty Miss Grace ! — Poor Puss !— Noble Sir Richard !" A few framed pictures and fancy pieces were hung round the room in a straight line, very little below the cornice. There was a basket of artificial flowers, delicately and beautifully Avrought, from raised card. A shell piece, equally ingenious. A stuffed king-fisher, and a ditto cockatoo to match ; and betwixt the twain, a landscape, worked with black silk upon white satin, representing a castle, with four towers, like pepper-boxes. A rock with a tree upon it ; the sea washing its base, done in little zig-zag waves in herring-bone, and a tall three- decker overtopping rock, tree, and ca9tle, sailing in stem foremost, " The Cressy" being worked thereon in letters as long as the castle windows. In one corner of the picture, modestly wrought in- to tli.- basement of the castle, was the name of tin- CHAPTER VIII. 149 fair artist, " Grace De la Vere — her work, June 10, 1760," And that miracle of female taste and ingenuity was not without its pendant. Another picture, wrought with the same materials, on a si- milar ground, and in a style as fancifully chaste, but of more ambitious character. It was a scrip- ture-piece, showing forth (as the beholder was considerately informed by a labelled inscription at the top, festooned up by two little cherubims, one of whom was also slyly puffing out in one corner, the name of " Gertrude De la Vere,") the finding of Moses in the bulrushes — a stupendous piece ! There stood the Egyptian Princess and her maid- ens, and the bulrushes, (marvellous tall ones they were !) all in a row, like four-and-twenty fiddlers. And, lo ! Pharaoh's daughter was depicted in a hoop and lappets, and having on her head the crown-royal ; and then the genius of the artist had blazed out in a bold anachronism, having designed that golden circlet, in the fashion of an English ducal coronet, crested with the five ostrich plumes of the De la Veres ! And then one of the attend- ant damsels, agenouillee before her royal mistress, was handing up to her little Moses in his reedy 150 CHURCHYARDS. ark, in semblance very like a skinned rabbit in a butter basket. And then his sister, Jochebed, was seen sprawling away in the back-ground, like a great mosquito sailing off in the clouds. And the clouds were very like flying apple-dumplings — and the whole thing was admirable ! prodigious ! ini- mitable ! and well nigh indescribable, though, to the extent of my feeble powers, I have essayed to do it justice. Moreover, there stood in that apartment two large square fire-skreens, worked in tent-stitch ; and so well were they wrought, and so well had the worsteds retained their colours, that the large rich flowers in their fine vases — the anemones, roses, jonquils, and gillyflowers, seemed starting from the dark ground of the canvass. On one of those skreens, close to the fire-place, hung a capa- cious white net-work bag, lined with glazed cam- bric-muslin, and fringed all round; it hung by one string only, so that a shuttle and a ball of knot- ting bad fallen out from it on a chair along-side. There were a few grains of dust on that hard snow- ball, and on the blue damask chair-cushion, but they wen- of a nature that set me sneezing, when J toofc up, with a feeling of melancholy interest, CHAPTER VIII. 151 the monotonous work, which had probably consti- tuted, for so many silent hours, the chief and only amusement of the solitary old lady. That sprink- ling of snuff, and the scarcely extinguished ashes in the grate, (the ashes of a July fire !) looked as if she had recently occupied the apartment ; and on inquiring of the servant, we were told that she had been down that afternoon for a very short time, but that the exertion had quite overpowered her, and she had returned so ill to her chamber, that it was doubtful whether she would ever again leave it in life. " There had been a great change of late in liis lady," the man added ; and the parson and the old housekeeper had at last prevailed on her to let them send for a distant relation of the family's, on whom indeed the property was entailed, which very circumstance had hitherto excluded him from Halliburn House, — as Mrs. Grace had been wont to say, " it would be time enough for him — a Ra- venshaw ! — to come and take possession, when the last De la Vere was laid in her cold grave." I could not help thinking of this Mister Rich- ard Ravenshaw, with a sort of jealous aversion, as if I, too, were a last lineal descendant of the old 152 CHURCHYARDS. race whose name was so soon to be extinct in their ancient inheritance. Slowly, thoughtfully, almost sadly, we retraced back our steps to the door of entrance. Just as wo reached it, the last sunbeam was shrinking a- way from under the arch- way of the outer court, and the old turret-clock struck out the eighth hour of the evening. Its tone was peculiarly mellow, deep, and solemn ; or, perhaps the stillness of the place, and of the hour — the shadows that were falling round, and the corresponding seriousness of our feelings and thoughts, combined to swell and modulate a common sound into one of solemn in- tonation. It must have penetrated, however, (through that deep quietness,) into every coiner of the mansion, and was heard doubtless in the sick-chamber. How many De la Veres had listen- ed to that warning voice ! Of how many had it proclaimed the hours of their birth, and of their death ! — the setting forth of the marriage-train, and the departure of the funeral procession ! By how many had its strokes been numbered with youthful impatience, and eager hope, and joyful expectation ! By how many more with sad fore- CHAPTER VIII. 135 boding, and painful weariness, and sorrowful re- trospection ! By how many a quick ear and beat- ing heart, long since stopped with dust, and cold in the grave ! And still at its appointed hour that restless voice resounded — and still it told its awful tidings to a descendant of the ancient race — to " the dull cold ear" of age of the last living De la Vere ! A few more circles yet to be revolved by those dark hands around the dial-plate, and she too would have closed her account with Time, and the solemn hour of its summing up would be sound- ed forth by that iron tongue, through the quiet courts of Ilalliburn, and over its venerable woods ! Then, methought — fain would I silence for ever the voice from that old turret, that never sound thereof should announce the arrival of an alien and a stranger, to take rule and lordship over the lands of the De la Veres, and possession of their antique dwelling-place. 15+ CHURCHYARDS. CHAPTER IX. I have no very poetical fancies about my last earthly resting-place — at least no Cockney poetical fancies. It would afford me no particular satisfac- tion to know that my ashes shall repose in the centre of a sweet little pet island, (as the young ladies say,) like a green velvet pincushion in the middle of a beautiful pond, inhabited by Muscovy ducks, and frilled round with lilacs and laburnums — that an urn of the purest alabaster and most classical form, appropriately inscribed with a few words condensing volumes of simple pathos, shall mark the consecrated spot, overhung by the vege- table weepers of the pale pensile willow. " All this to know," would afford me very little satisfac- tion. Yet I am by no means without my prepos- sessions oil this matter — equally absurd ones, per- haps, if subjected to the severe test of reason, and CHAPTER IX. 155 too much divested of sentimental elegance, to in- terest the feeling's of refined taste. I would fain lie down to rest under the same sod which has received the deposit of my kindred earth. It is in vain that I argue with myself: What mat- ters where the poor frame shall return to corrup- tion, from which its immortal inhabitant is depart- ed? — What matters it how far we sleep asunder from those beloved in life — when it is but for the night of slumber — when, at the dawn of the eternal day, the same clarion shall awaken all at the same moment, and assemble us together from the re- motest ends of the earth, and from the unfathomed depths of the great sea ? It is all in vain that I thus argue with myself, and in my wiser moments strive to think thus. Nature's resistless pleading — her tender infirmity, triumphs over the cold sug- gestions of reason ; and my heart cherishes the fond anticipation that I may be gathered in death to the sepulchre of my people. Moreover, I would fain make my bed with the lowly in death — I would fain lie laid decently at rest — not within the walls of my parish church — polluting the holy temple with corruption — but in 156 CHURCHYARDS. its outer court, the common burial-ground, in the midst of those of all stations, whose faces have been familiar to me, whether as those of friends, neigh- bours, or acquaintances, or as hearers of the same word, guests at the same altar with me, partakers of the same cup, professors of the same faith, sharers iu the same hopes, believers in the same resurrection. Amongst these would I lie down undistinguished, with no other monument than a plain headstone — no other covering than the green turf. Let no cold heavy tomb be laid upon its soft light tex- ture. Methinks I would not have even my grave excluded from the bright sunbeams and the blessed air, whose sweet influences are to me the elixir of life. Such are the most romantic fancies I have ever indulged with regard to my allotted place of sepul- chre. But I will confess one other weak preju- dice relating to it. I have a horror, an inexpres- sible horror,"of being committed to the earth of a London cemetery : — those dungeons of death — those black, dismal, wall-imprisoned fields of cor- ' nption, more abhorrent to my feelings than the Neapolitan pits of promiscuous sepulchre, or those CHAPTER IX. 157 appalling receptacles of mortality, where the dead of the Parsees are left exposed to blacken in the sun, or to gorge the carrion birds, who gather un- molested to their accustomed banquet. A London burying-ground is more horrible than these. There the stillness of death is indeed appalling, contrasted with the surrounding ceaseless roar of the living mul- titude — the stir of the vast city, pouring through all its avenues the tide of restless population. Those gloomy wall-surrounded fields of death are not, however, the most gloomy burial-grounds contained in the metropolis. I have passed some old black-looking parish churches — in the city, I think — half buried in their adjoining small crowded cemeteries — so crowded, it is frightful to think of it — elevated high above the dark narrow street — generation on generation — tier on tier — coffin on coffin piled, heaped up one above the other with unseemly haste — a mound of decomposed mortality, at thought of which, of the more recent deposits in particular, imagination recoils, and the heart sickens. — And then those dingy tombstones, with the black, filmy, sooty pall clinging about them ! — those dismal vaporous hangings ! — that rank black 158 CHURCHYARDS. grass ! — those long yellow sickly nettles ! and those pale livid fungi, looking like pestilent excrescences, the horrid fruitfulness of that tainted mould ! — I have hurried past those dismal receptacles with a- verted eyes and restrained respiration, as from the vicinity of a pest-house. And yet once — once in- deed, I lingered long and voluntarily within the precincts of St. . But I will not name the church. My visit was to one of its surrounding graves, to which I had heen attracted by some af- fecting circumstances which had been related to me of its poor tenant. England had afforded her that last gloomy resting-place, but she was not a native of its soil ; and the inscription on the modest head- stone placed over her remains, told that " Blanche D'Albi, born in 1801, in the canton of Zurich, Switzerland, departed this life in Lombard-street, London, in the year 1820." Oh, simple record ! more eloquent, more touching, than all that poetry and sentiment could have woven into the most dif- fuse epitaph. So far from her country, her kindred, and her home — taken away so early, in the very bud of life there, amongst the dust of strangers, under CHAPTER IX. 159 those black walls, beneath that rank soil, those baleful weeds, lay the daughter of that lovely- mountain land, to which, doubtless, in the happy, sanguine confidence of youth, she had so often an- ticipated the rapturous hour of her return. All this, and more than this, was suggested to the heart by that brief inscription. But it did not tell all. It did not tell that the young creature who slept be- low had been singularly beautiful, of the happiest and gentlest nature — engaging to a very uuusual degree, the darling of fond parents, the happiest maiden of her happy land, the blithest bird of her native mountains, till But why not relate at once the few simple notices which have fallen iu my way, connected with the brief existence of the young stranger? They will form, at best, but an imperfect and very uneventful story, but sucli a one as found its way to my heart, and may interest those whose tastes and feelings are yet unperverted by the feverish excitement and exaggerated tone of modern fiction. Blanche D'Albi, at the time of her decease, had been for more than a twelvemonth resident in the family of Mr. L , one of the wealthiest iner- 160 CHUROHYARD8. chants in the city of London. She had been engaged as French governess to his four little daughters, who were also provided with an English teacher, and attended by half the masters in the metropolis, the young Svvissess had been received on the most unexceptionable recommendation, as to character, connexions, and elegant acquirements ; but nothing more of her private history was communicated, than that she was the only daughter of a respect- able Protestant minister; that the sudden death of both her parents, occurring within a few months of each other, had left her, at the age of eighteen, a destitute orphan, deprived of the protection of an only brother, who, previous to the death of their parents, had taken service in the Swiss corps of De Meuron, and had accompanied that regiment to India. So situated, Blanche D'Albi had re- course for her future maintenance to the expedient so often resorted to, even under happier circum- stances, by numbers of her young countrywomen. In company with several young persons from her own canton, embaikcd on the same enterprise, and provided with such recommendations as could be obtained to mercantile houses in London, or to CHAPTER IX. 161 such of their own countrymen as were already es- tablished there, Blanche bade adieu to her " own romantic land ;" and very shortly after her arrival in England, it was her good fortune to be engaged in the family of Mr. L , where her situation might with truth have been called almost enviable, compared with the general lot of young persons in the same circumstances. She shared the school- room, and the task of educating four engaging, spoilt children, with an elderly English governess, to whose domineering, but not harsh temper, she willingly yielded supremacy, and was therefore treated by Miss Crawford with somewhat of the indulgent consideration she would have bestowed on an elder pupil. The little girls soon attached themselves fondlv to their young, indulgent gover- ness, and their affection soon obtained for her all the good-will and unbending kindness it was in the nature of Mrs. L to confer on any human be- ing in a dependent situation. Mr. L , a man of cold and formal manners*, fully impressed with the sense of his own wealth and consequence, but one whose better feelings were not all sacrificed at the shrine of Mammon, treated her with in- VOL. I. L. 162 CHURCHVARDS. variable and almost attentive politeness, during the stated intervals, when, in attendance on her young charges, she was admitted to his society. It is true, he exchanged but few words with her, and those appeared constrained, as if by the latent fear of compromising his dignified importance; but there was a gentleness in the tone of his voice when he addressed himself to the timid orphan, and a benevolence in his eyes, which carried with them to the young, bereaved heart of Blanche D'Albi, a far kindlier signification than was implied by the mere words of his unvaried formal salutation, " I hope you are well to-day, Ma'amselle ?" Blanche had not only every comfort but many luxuries at her command, especially that which she prized beyond all others, the disposal of her own time for some hours in the evening of each day. Taking all circumstances into consideration, there- fore, the young emigrant might be pronounced singularly fortunate, in having so soon found shel- ter in so secure a haven. And she felt that Provi- dence had been very gracious to her, and her heart •ru grateful and contented — But was she happy ? Who ever usked that question ? Who ever doubt- CHAPTER IX. 163 ed that she was so in a situation so favoured with peculiar advantages ? The home she lost, the friends she had left, the brother so widely separat- ed from her, the recollection of her own dear vil- lage, and of her young happy years — No one ever inquired into, or interested themselves about all these things. No voice inviting confidence ever interrupted those deep and silent spells of inward vision, when all the past was busy in her heart, and one frank kind question, one affectionate word, would have unlocked — as from the source of a fountain — all the ingenuous feelings, all the tender recollections, all the anxious thoughts and innocent hopes, that were crowded together in that pure sanctuary, cherished and brooded over in secret and in silence, till the playful vivacity of her nature (its characteristic charm in happier days) was subdued into a tone of almost reserved seriousness. At times, during the play-hours of the children, when they had coaxed her to mingle in their in- nocent sports — at such times the playful beauty of her nature would break out into a gleam oi its for- mer brightness ; and then her laugh was so joyous, her countenance so sparkling, her voice so mirth- 164 CHURCHYARDS. fully in unison with their childish glee, that a stranger would have taken her for the eldest sister, and the happiest of those four happy children. Those, also, were among her -whitest moments when, encircled by her young attentive auditory, she spoke to them — for to them she could speak of it — of her own native land ; of its high mountains, whose tops were white with snow in the hottest summer days ; of the seas of ice, with their hard frozen ridges ; of its beautiful, clear lakes, on one of which she and her little brother had been used to row their fairy bark. Of the Chalets, where, in their mountain rambles, they had been feasted on rural dainties by the hospitable peasants ; of the bounding chamois, and of their daring hunters, amongst whom her brother Theodore, and a young friend of his whom she called Horace, had been foremost in bold enterprise ; and then she told, how, once returning from a long and venturous chase, the friends had brought her home a little wounded chamois ; and the children never tired of hearing how she had nursed and reared, and at last, with success almost unexampled, brought to pcr- i< •< I lameness the vvild creature of the mountain CHAPTER IX. 165 and how Horace Vaudreuil (they had learnt to speak his name and that of Theodore familiarly) had encircled its slender, elegant neck with a small silver collar, on which was engraven, " J'ajipartiens a Blanche." Once the little inquisitive creatures had inno- cently questioned her about her parents — asking, if she had loved them as dearly as they did their papa and mamma ; but then the only answer they obtained was, that the mirthful voice of their cheer- ful playfellow died away into a tremulous, inarticu- late sound ; and that, suddenly hiding her face on the fair bosom of the youngest child, who was seat- ed on her lap, she gave way (for the first time be- fore them) to an agony of tears and sobs, that wrung their young hearts with distressful sympa- thy, .and soon melted them all to tears as they clung round her, with their sweet, loving, broken conso- lations. There is something more soothing in the caressing tenderness of childish sympathy, than in all the consolatory efforts of mature reason. In the first agony of a bereaved heart, or rather when the first benumbing shock is passing away, who would not shrink from rational comforters — from persua- 166 CHURCHYARDS. sive kindness — from the very voice of friendship it- self, to weep unrestrainedly in the clasping arms of an infant, on its pure, innocent bosom ? It is as if a commissioned angel spoke peace from Heaven — pouring the balm of heavenly comfort on a wound too recent to bear a touch less gentle, less divine ! From that hour the little girls spoke only of Theodore and Horace, when, collected round Blanche, they pleaded for one of her " pretty sto- ries about Switzerland." From the secret indul- gence of tender recollections, and dreamy hopes, Blanche insensibly fell into those habits of abstrac- tion too common to persons of imaginative minds, and deep and repressed sensibility ; and not unfre- quently she drew upon herself the sharp observa- tion of Miss Crawfurd, or the cold surprise of Mrs. L , by starting, in bashful confusion, at the re- petition of some question or remark which had failed in rousing her attention when first addressed to her. It was an evil habit, and Blanche was con- scious of its being so; and she listened with peni- t'ut humility to Miss Crawfurd's school lectures on the " affectation and ill-breeding of young persons who gave w:.v to absence of mind, - ' and to Mrs. CHAPTER IX. 167 -'9 wonder at " what Mademoiselle could be thinking of?" What could she be thinking of? — Oh, Heavens ! in that dull square — pacing those formal walks, un- der those dusty trees — in that more dull, more formal drawing-room, when the prattling tongues of her little charges were no longer at liberty — when she felt herself indeed a stranger and an alien —what could she think of, but of the days that were past, and of those that might be in store for her, if ever .... And then there swam before her eyes visions of a white, low dwelling, all embowered in honeysuckle — of a little green wicket in a sweet- briar hedge — and of one who leant over it, idling away the precious moments, long after he had pre- sented the garland or the nosegay, arranged for her hair or her bosom j and then the scene changed to a grass plat and a group of linden trees, and her own dear parents sat under their shade, with other ciders of the village, whose children were mingling with her in the merry dance on that fine green- sward, to the sweet tones of Theodore's flute ; and then there were parting tears, and inarticulate words — and the agony of young hearts at a first se- 168 CHURCH YARDS. panition — and a little boat lessening across the hike — and waving hands — and the last glimpse, on the opposite shore, of glittering uniforms and wav- ing plumes ; and then there was darkness, and fear, and trouble — and the shadow of death fell on the dear white cottage, and a sullen bell tolled — and, yet again — and one funeral, and then another, wound away, from its low entrance, across the grass plat beneath the linden trees, towards the church, where the new minister But the fond dreamer shut her eyes to exclude that torturing sight — and then — and then the harsh voice of some cold observer (all voices sound harshly to senses so absorbed) recalled her to real- ity, and to painfully confused consciousness of the surprise and displeasure her inattention had excited. Poor Blanche ! — Thou hadst been the beloved of many hearts ! — the darling of some ! — the object of almosl exclusive affection ! — How difficult to be contented with less! — How cold, by comparison, the after interest we may awaken in other hearts — even in gentle and tender ones — whose first aJfec- tiona are \