Since the day when the town of Haslau first became the seat of a Court, no man could remember that any one event in its annals (always excepting the birth of the hereditary prince) had been looked for with so anxious a curiosity as the opening of the last will and testament left by Van der Kabel. This Van der Kabel may be styled the Haslau Croesus; and his whole life might be termed, according to the pleasure of the wits, one long festival of G.o.d-sends, or a daily washing of golden sands nightly impregnated by golden showers of Danae. Seven distant surviving relatives of seven distant relatives deceased of the said Van der Kabel, entertained some little hopes of a place amongst his legatees, grounded upon an a.s.surance which he had made, "that upon his oath he would not fail to _remember them_ in his will." These hopes, however, were but faint and weakly; for they could not repose any extraordinary confidence in his good faith--not only because in all cases he conducted his affairs in a disinterested spirit, and with a perverse obstinacy of moral principle, whereas his seven relatives were mere novices, and young beginners in the trade of morality,--but also because, in all these moral extravagances of his (so distressing to the feelings of the sincere rascal), he thought proper to be very satirical, and had his heart so full of odd caprices, tricks, and snares for unsuspicious scoundrels, that (as they all said) no man who was but raw in the art of virtue could deal with him, or place any reliance upon his intentions.
Indeed the covert laughter which played about his temples, and the falsetto tones of his sneering voice, somewhat weakened the advantageous impression which was made by the n.o.ble composition of his face, and by a pair of large hands, from which were daily dropping favours little and great--benefit nights, Christmas-boxes and New-Year"s gifts; for this reason it was that, by the whole flock of birds who sought shelter in his boughs, and who fed and built their nests on him, as on any wild service-tree, he was, notwithstanding, reputed a secret magazine of springes; and they were scarce able to find eyes for the visible berries which fed them, in their scrutiny after the supposed gossamer snares.
In the interval between two apoplectic fits he had drawn up his will, and had deposited it with the magistrate. When he was just at the point of death he transferred to the seven presumptive heirs the certificate of this deposit; and even then said, in his old tone--how far it was from his expectation, that by any such antic.i.p.ation of his approaching decease, he could at all depress the spirits of men so steady and sedate, whom, for his own part, he would much rather regard in the light of laughing than of weeping heirs; to which remark one only of the whole number, namely, Mr. Harprecht, inspector of police, replied as a cool ironist to a bitter one--"that the total amount of concern and of _interest_, which might severally belong to them in such a loss, was not (they were sincerely sorry it was not) in their power to determine."
At length the time is come when the seven heirs have made their appearance at the town-hall, with their certificate--of deposit; _videlicet_, the ecclesiastical councillor Glantz; Harprecht, the inspector of police; Neupeter, the court-agent; the court-fiscal, Knoll; Pasvogel, the bookseller; the reader of the morning lecture, Flacks; and Monsieur Flitte, from Alsace. Solemnly, and in due form, they demanded of the magistrate the schedule of effects consigned to him by the late Kabel, and the opening of his will. The princ.i.p.al executor of this will was Mr Mayor himself; the sub-executors were the rest of the town-council. Thereupon, without delay, the schedule and the will were fetched from the register office of the council to the council chamber: both were exhibited in rotation to the members of the council and the heirs, in order that they might see the privy seal of the town impressed upon them: the registry of consignment, indorsed upon the schedule, was read aloud to the seven heirs by the town-clerk: and by that registry it was notified to them, that the deceased had actually consigned the schedule to the magistrate, and entrusted it to the corporation-chest; and that on the day of consignment he was still of sound mind: finally, the seven seals, which he had himself affixed to the instrument, were found unbroken. These preliminaries gone through, it was now (but not until a brief registry of all these forms had been drawn up by the town-clerk) lawful, in G.o.d"s name, that the will should be opened and read aloud by Mr Mayor, word for word as follows:--
"I, Van der Kabel, on this 7th day of May, 179-, being in my house at Haslau, situate in Dog-street, deliver and make known this for my last will; and without many millions of words, notwithstanding I have been both a German notary and a Dutch schoolmaster. Howsoever I may disgrace my old professions by this parsimony of words, I believe myself to be so far at home in the art and calling of a notary, that I am competent to act for myself as a testator in due form, and as a regular devisor of property.
"It is a custom of testators to premise the moving causes of their wills. These, in my case, as in most others, are regard for my happy departure, and for the disposal of the succession to my property--which, by the way, is the object of a tender pa.s.sion in various quarters. To say anything about my funeral, and all that, would be absurd and stupid.
This, and what shape my remains shall take, let the eternal sun settle above, not in any gloomy winter, but in some of his most verdant springs.
"As to those charitable foundations and memorial inst.i.tutions of benevolence, about which notaries are so much occupied, in my case I appoint as follows: to three thousand of my poor townsmen of every cla.s.s, I a.s.sign just the same number of florins, which sum I will that, on the anniversary of my death, they shall spend in feasting upon the town common, where they are previously to pitch their camp, unless the military camp of his Serene Highness shall be already pitched there, in preparation for the reviews; and when the gala is ended, I would have them cut up the tents into clothes. Item, to all the school-masters in our locality I bequeath one golden augustus. Item, to the Jews of this place I bequeath my pew in the high church.--As I would wish that my will should be divided into clauses, this is considered to be the first.
CLAUSE II.
"Amongst the important offices of a will, it is universally agreed to be one, that from amongst the presumptive and presumptuous expectants, it should name those who are, and those who are not, to succeed to the inheritance; that it should create heirs and destroy them. In conformity to this notion, I give and bequeath to Mr Glantz, the councillor for ecclesiastical affairs, as also to Mr Knoll, the exchequer officer; likewise to Mr Peter Neupeter, the court-agent; item to Mr Harprecht, director of police; furthermore to Mr Flacks, the morning lecturer; in like manner to the court-bookseller, Mr Pasvogel; and finally to Monsieur Flitte,--nothing; not so much because they have no just claims upon me--standing, as they do, in the remotest possible degree of consanguinity; nor again, because they are for the most part themselves rich enough to leave handsome inheritances; as because I am a.s.sured, indeed I have it from their own lips, that they entertain a far stronger regard for my insignificant person than for my splendid property; my body, therefore, or as large a portion of it as they can get, I bequeath to them."
At this point seven faces, like those of the Seven Sleepers, gradually elongated into preternatural extent. The ecclesiastical councillor, a young man, but already famous throughout Germany for his sermons printed or preached, was especially aggrieved by such offensive personality; Monsieur Flitte rapped out a curse that rattled even in the ears of magistracy; the chin of Flacks the morning lecturer gravitated downwards into the dimensions of a patriarchal beard; and the town-council could distinguish an a.s.sortment of audible reproaches to the memory of Mr Kabel, such as prig, rascal, profane wretch, &c. But the Mayor motioned with his hand, and immediately the fiscal and the bookseller recomposed their features and set their faces like so many traps with springs, and triggers, at full c.o.c.k, that they might catch every syllable; and then with a gravity that cost him some efforts:--
CLAUSE III.
"Excepting always, and be it excepted, my present house in Dog-street: which house by virtue of this third clause is to descend and to pa.s.s in full property just as it now stands, to that one of my seven relatives above-mentioned, who shall, within the s.p.a.ce of one half-hour (to be computed from the reciting of this clause), shed, to the memory of me his departed kinsman, sooner than the other six compet.i.tors, one, or, if possible, a couple of tears, in the presence of a respectable magistrate, who is to make a protocol thereof. Should, however, _all remain dry_, in that case, the house must lapse to the heir-general--whom I shall proceed to name."
Here Mr Mayor closed the will: doubtless, he observed, the condition annexed to the bequest was an unusual one, but yet, in no respect contrary to law: to him that wept the first the court was bound to adjudge the house: and then placing his watch on the session table, the pointers of which indicated that it was now just half-past eleven, he calmly sat down--that he might duly witness in his official character of executor, a.s.sisted by the whole court of aldermen, who should be the first to produce the requisite tear or tears on behalf of the testator.
That since the terraqueous globe has moved or existed, there can ever have met a more lugubrious congress, or one more out of temper and enraged than this of Seven United Provinces, as it were, all dry and all confederated for the purpose of weeping,--I suppose no impartial judge will believe. At first some invaluable minutes were lost in pure confusion of mind, in astonishment, in peals of laughter: the congress found itself too suddenly translated into the condition of the dog to which, in the very moment of his keenest a.s.sault upon some object of his appet.i.te, the fiend cried out--Halt! Whereupon, standing up as he was, on his hind legs, his teeth grinning, and snarling with the fury of desire, he halted and remained petrified:--from the graspings of hope, however distant, to the necessity of weeping for a wager, the congress found the transition too abrupt and harsh.
One thing was evident to all--that for a shower that was to come down at such a full gallop, for a baptism of the eyes to be performed at such a hunting pace, it was vain to think of any pure water of grief: no hydraulics could effect this: yet in twenty-six minutes (four unfortunately were already gone), in one way or other, perhaps, some business might be done.
"Was there ever such a cursed act," said the merchant Neupeter, "such a price of buffoonery enjoined by any man of sense and discretion? For my part, I can"t understand what the d----l it means." However, he understood this much, that a house was by possibility floating in his purse upon a tear: and _that_ was enough to cause a violent irritation in his lachrymal glands.
Knoll, the fiscal, was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up, twisting, and distorting his features pretty much in the style of a poor artisan on Sat.u.r.day night, whom some fellow-workman is bar_ber_ously razoring and sc.r.a.ping by the light of a cobbler"s candle: furious was his wrath at this abuse and profanation of the t.i.tle _Last Will and Testament_: and at one time, poor soul! he was near enough to tears--of vexation.
The wily bookseller, Pasvogel, without loss of time, sate down quietly to business: he ran through a cursory retrospect of all the works any ways moving or affecting that he had himself either published or sold on commission;--took a flying survey of the pathetic in general: and in this way of going to work, he had fair expectations that in the end he should brew something or other: as yet, however, he looked very much like a dog who is slowly licking off an emetic which the Parisian surgeon Demet has administered by smearing it on his nose: time--gentlemen, time was required for the operation.
Monsieur Flitte, from Alsace, fairly danced up and down the sessions chamber; with bursts of laughter he surveyed the rueful faces around him: he confessed that he was not the richest among them, but for the whole city of Strasburg, and Alsace to boot, he was not the man that could or would weep on such a merry occasion. He went on with his unseasonable laughter and indecent mirth, until Harprecht, the police inspector, looked at him very significantly, and said--that perhaps Monsieur flattered himself that he might by means of laughter squeeze or express the tears required from the well-known meibomian glands, the caruncula, &c., and might thus piratically provide himself with surrept.i.tious rain;[18] but in that case, he must remind him that he would no more win the day with any such secretions than he could carry to account a course of sneezes or wilfully blowing his nose; a channel into which it was well known that very many tears, far more than were now wanted, flowed out of the eyes through the nasal duct; more indeed by a good deal than were ever known to flow downwards to the bottom of most pews at a funeral sermon. Monsieur Flitte of Alsace, however, protested that he was laughing out of pure fun, for his own amus.e.m.e.nt; and, upon his honour, with no _ulterior views_.
[18] In the original, the word is Fenster schweiss, window-sweat, _i.
e._ (as the translator understands the pa.s.sage) Monsieur Flitte was suspected of a design to swindle the company by exhibiting his two windows streaming with spurious moisture, such as h.o.a.r frost produces on the windows when melted by the heat of the room, rather than with the genuine and unadulterated rain which Mr Kabel demanded.
The inspector on his side, being pretty well acquainted with the hopeless condition of his own dephlegmatised heart, endeavoured to force into his eyes something that might meet the occasion by staring with them wide open and in a state of rigid expansion.
The morning-lecturer, Flacks, looked like a Jew beggar mounted on a stallion which is running away with him: meantime, what by domestic tribulations, what by those he witnessed at his own lecture, his heart was furnished with such a promising bank of heavy-laden clouds, that he could easily have delivered upon the spot the main quant.i.ty of water required had it not been for the house which floated on the top of the storm; and which, just as all was ready, came driving in with the tide, too gay and gladsome a spectacle not to banish his gloom, and thus fairly dammed up the waters.
The ecclesiastical councillor--who had become acquainted with his own nature by long experience in preaching funeral sermons, and sermons on the New Year, and knew full well that he was himself always the first person and frequently the last, to be affected by the pathos of his own eloquence--now rose with dignified solemnity, on seeing himself and the others hanging so long by the dry rope, and addressed the chamber:--No man, he said, who had read his printed works, could fail to know that he carried a heart about him as well as other people; and a heart, he would add, that had occasion to repress such holy testimonies of its tenderness as tears, lest he should thereby draw too heavily on the sympathies and the purses of his fellow-men, rather than elaborately to provoke them by stimulants for any secondary views, or to serve an indirect purpose of his own: "This heart," said he, "has already shed tears (but they were already shed secretly), for Kabel was my friend;"
and, so saying, he paused for a moment and looked about him.
With pleasure he observed that all were sitting as dry as corks: indeed, at this particular moment, when he himself, by interrupting their several water-works, had made them furiously angry, it might as well have been expected that crocodiles, fallow-deer, elephants, witches, or ravens should weep for Van der Kabel, as his presumptive heirs. Among them all, Flacks was the only one who continued to make way: he kept steadily before his mind the following little extempore a.s.sortment of objects:--Van der Kabel"s good and beneficent acts; the old petticoats so worn and tattered, and the gray hair of his female congregation at morning service; Lazarus with his dogs; his own long coffin; innumerable decapitations; the Sorrows of Werther; a miniature field of battle; and finally, himself and his own melancholy condition at this moment, itself enough to melt any heart, condemned as he was in the bloom of youth by the second clause of Van der Kabel"s will to tribulation, and tears, and struggles:--Well done, Flacks! Three strokes more with the pump-handle, and the water is pumped up and the house along with it.
Meantime Glantz, the ecclesiastical councillor, proceeded in his pathetic harangue--"Oh, Kabel, my Kabel!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, and almost wept with joy at the near approach of his tears, "the time shall come that by the side of thy loving breast, covered with earth, mine also shall lie mouldering and in cor----" _ruption_ he would have said; but Flacks, starting up in trouble, and with eyes overflowing, threw a hasty glance around him, and said, "With submission, gentlemen, to the best of my belief I am weeping." Then sitting down, with great satisfaction he allowed the tears to stream down his face; that done, he soon recovered his cheerfulness and his _aridity_. Glantz the councillor thus saw the prize fished away before his eyes--those very eyes which he had already brought into an _Accessit_,[19] or inchoate state of humidity; this vexed him: and his mortification was the greater on thinking of his own pathetic exertions, and the abortive appet.i.te for the prize which he had thus uttered in words as ineffectual as his own sermons; and at this moment he was ready to weep for spite--and "to weep the more because he wept in vain." As to Flacks, a protocol was immediately drawn up of his watery compliance with the will of Van der Kabel: and the messuage in Dog-street was knocked down to him for ever. The Mayor adjudged it to the poor devil with all his heart: indeed, this was the first occasion ever known in Haslau, on which the tears of a schoolmaster and a curate had converted themselves--not into mere amber that incloses only a worthless insect, like the tears of Heliodes, but like those of the G.o.ddess Freia, into heavy gold. Glantz congratulated Flacks very warmly; and observed with a smiling air, that possibly he had himself lent him a helping hand by his pathetic address. As to the others, the separation between them and Flacks was too palpable, in the mortifying distinction of _wet_ and _dry_, to allow of any cordiality between them; and they stood aloof therefore: but they stayed to hear the rest of the will, which they now awaited in a state of anxious agitation.
[19] To the English reader it may be necessary to explain, that in the continental universities, etc., when a succession of prizes is offered, graduated according to the degrees of merit, the illiptical formula of "_Accessit_" denotes the second prize; and hence, where only a single prize is offered, the second degree of merit may properly be expressed by the term here used.
THE HOUSEHOLD WRECK.
"_To be weak_," we need not the great archangel"s voice to tell us, "_is to be miserable_." All weakness is suffering and humiliation, no matter for its mode or its subject. Beyond all other weakness, therefore, and by a sad prerogative, as more miserable than what is most miserable in all, that capital weakness of man which regards the _tenure_ of his enjoyments and his power to protect, even for a moment, the crown of flowers--flowers, at the best, how frail and few!--which sometimes settles upon his haughty brow. There is no end, there never will be an end, of the lamentations which ascend from earth and the rebellious heart of her children, upon this huge opprobrium of human pride--the everlasting mutabilities of all which man can grasp by his power or by his aspirations, the fragility of all which he inherits, and the hollowness visible amid the very raptures of enjoyment to every eye which looks for a moment underneath the draperies of the shadowy _present_--the hollowness--the blank treachery of hollowness, upon which all the pomps and vanities of life ultimately repose. This trite but unwearying theme, this impa.s.sioned commonplace of humanity, is the subject in every age of variation without end, from the Poet, the Rhetorician, the Fabulist, the Moralist, the Divine, and the Philosopher. All, amidst the sad vanity of their sighs and groans, labour to put on record and to establish this monotonous complaint, which needs not other record or evidence than those very sighs and groans. What is life? Darkness and formless vacancy for a beginning, or something beyond all beginning--then next a dim lotos of human consciousness, finding itself afloat upon the bosom of waters without a sh.o.r.e--then a few sunny smiles and many tears--a little love and infinite strife--whisperings from paradise and fierce mockeries from the anarchy of chaos--dust and ashes--and once more darkness circling round, as if from the beginning, and in this way rounding or making an island of our fantastic existence,--_that_ is human life; _that_ the inevitable amount of man"s laughter and his tears--of what he suffers and he does--of his motions this way and that way--to the right or to the left--backwards or forwards--of all his seeming realities and all his absolute negations--his shadowy pomps and his pompous shadows--of whatsoever he thinks, finds, makes or mars, creates or animates, loves, hates, or in dread hope antic.i.p.ates;--so it is, so it has been, so it will be, for ever and ever.
Yet in the lowest deep there still yawns a lower deep; and in the vast halls of man"s frailty there are separate and more gloomy chambers of a frailty more exquisite and consummate. We account it frailty that threescore years and ten make the upshot of man"s pleasurable existence, and that, far before that time is reached, his beauty and his power have fallen among weeds and forgetfulness. But there is a frailty, by comparison with which this ordinary flux of the human race seems to have a vast duration. Cases there are, and those not rare, in which a single week--a day--an hour sweeps away all vestiges and landmarks of a memorable felicity; in which the ruin travels faster than the flying showers upon the mountain-side, faster "than a musician scatters sounds;" in which "it was" and "it is not" are words of the self-same tongue, in the self-same minute; in which the sun that at noon beheld all sound and prosperous, long before its setting hour looks out upon a total wreck, and sometimes upon the total abolition of any fugitive memorial that there ever had been a vessel to be wrecked, or a wreck to be obliterated.
These cases, though here spoken of rhetorically, are of daily occurrence; and, though they may seem few by comparison with the infinite millions of the species, they are many indeed, if they be reckoned absolutely for themselves; and throughout the limits of a whole nation, not a day pa.s.ses over us but many families are robbed of their heads, or even swallowed up in ruin themselves, or their course turned out of the sunny beams into a dark wilderness. Shipwrecks and nightly conflagrations are sometimes, and especially among some nations, wholesale calamities; battles yet more so; earthquakes, the famine, the pestilence, though rarer, are visitations yet wider in their desolation.
Sickness and commercial ill-luck, if narrower, are more frequent scourges. And most of all, or with most darkness in its train, comes the sickness of the brain--lunacy--which, visiting nearly one thousand in every million, must, in every populous nation, make many ruins in each particular day. "Babylon in ruins," says a great author, "is not so sad a sight as a human soul overthrown by lunacy." But there is a sadder even than _that_,--the sight of a family-ruin wrought by crime is even more appalling. Forgery, breaches of trust, embezzlement, of private or public funds--(a crime sadly on the increase since the example of Fauntleroy, and the suggestion of its great feasibility first made by him)--these enormities, followed too often, and countersigned for their final result to the future happiness of families, by the appalling catastrophe of suicide, must naturally, in every wealthy nation, or wherever property and the modes of property are much developed, const.i.tute the vast majority of all that come under the review of public justice. Any of these is sufficient to make shipwreck of all peace and comfort for a family; and often, indeed, it happens that the desolation is accomplished within the course of one revolving sun; often the whole dire catastrophe, together with its total consequences, is both accomplished and made known to those whom it chiefly concerns within one and the same hour. The mighty Juggernaut of social life, moving onwards with its everlasting thunders, pauses not for a moment to spare--to pity--to look aside, but rushes forward for ever, impa.s.sive as the marble in the quarry--caring not for whom it destroys, for the how many, or for the results, direct and indirect, whether many or few. The increasing grandeur and magnitude of the social system, the more it multiplies and extends its victims, the more it conceals them; and for the very same reason: just as in the Roman amphitheatres, when they grew to the magnitude of mighty cities (in some instances accommodating 400,000 spectators, in many a fifth part of that amount), births and deaths became ordinary events, which, in a small modern theatre, are rare and memorable; and exactly as these prodigious accidents multiplied, _pari pa.s.su_, they were disregarded and easily concealed: for curiosity was no longer excited; the sensation attached to them was little or none.
From these terrific tragedies, which, like monsoons or tornadoes, accomplish the work of years in an hour, not merely an impressive lesson is derived, sometimes, perhaps, a warning, but also (and this is of universal application) some consolation. Whatever may have been the misfortunes or the sorrows of a man"s life, he is still privileged to regard himself and his friends as amongst the fortunate by comparison, in so far as he has escaped these wholesale storms, either as an actor in producing them, or a contributor to their violence--or even more innocently (though oftentimes not less miserably)--as a partic.i.p.ator in the instant ruin, or in the long arrears of suffering which they entail.
The following story falls within the cla.s.s of hasty tragedies, and sudden desolations here described. The reader is a.s.sured that every incident is strictly true: nothing, in that respect, has been altered; nor, indeed, anywhere except in the conversations, of which, though the results and general outline are known, the separate details have necessarily been lost under the agitating circ.u.mstances which produced them. It has been judged right and delicate to conceal the name of the great city, and therefore of the nation in which these events occurred, chiefly out of consideration for the descendants of one person concerned in the narrative: otherwise, it might not have been requisite: for it is proper to mention, that every person directly a party to the case has been long laid in the grave: all of them, with one solitary exception, upwards of fifty years.
It was early spring in the year 17--; the day was the 6th of April; and the weather, which had been of a wintry fierceness for the preceding six or seven weeks--cold indeed beyond anything known for many years, gloomy for ever, and broken by continual storms--was now by a Swedish transformation all at once bright--genial--heavenly. So sudden and so early a prelusion of summer, it was generally feared, could not last. But that only made everybody the more eager to lose no hour of an enjoyment that might prove so fleeting. It seemed as if the whole population of the place, a population among the most numerous in Christendom, had been composed of hybernating animals suddenly awakened by the balmy sunshine from their long winter"s torpor. Through every hour of the golden morning the streets were resonant with female parties of young and old, the timid and the bold, nay even of the most delicate valetudinarians, now first tempted to lay aside their wintry clothing together with their fireside habits, whilst the whole rural environs of our vast city, the woodlands, and the interminable meadows began daily to re-echo the glad voices of the young and jovial awaking once again, like the birds and the flowers, and universal nature, to the luxurious happiness of this most delightful season.
Happiness do I say? Yes, happiness; happiness to me above all others. For I also in those days was among the young and the gay; I was healthy; I was strong; I was prosperous in a worldly sense! I owed no man a shilling; feared no man"s face; shunned no man"s presence. I held a respectable station in society; I was myself, let me venture to say it, respected generally for my personal qualities, apart from any advantages I might draw from fortune or inheritance; I had reason to think myself popular amongst the very slender circle of my acquaintance; and finally, which perhaps was the crowning grace to all these elements of happiness, I suffered not from the presence of _ennui_; nor ever feared to suffer: for my temperament was const.i.tutionally ardent; I had a powerful animal sensibility; and I knew the one great secret for maintaining its equipoise, viz. by powerful daily exercise; and thus I lived in the light and presence, or (if I should not be suspected of seeking rhetorical expressions, I would say)--in one eternal solstice, of unclouded hope.
These, you will say, were blessings; these were golden elements of felicity.
They were so; and yet, with the single exception of my healthy frame and firm animal organisation, I feel that I have mentioned hitherto nothing but what by comparison might be thought of a vulgar quality. All the other advantages that I have enumerated, had they been yet wanting, might have been acquired; had they been forfeited, might have been reconquered; had they been even irretrievably lost, might, by a philosophic effort, have been dispensed with; compensations might have been found for any of them, many equivalents, or if not, consolations at least, for their absence. But now it remains to speak of other blessings too mighty to be valued, not merely as transcending in rank and dignity all other const.i.tuents of happiness, but for a reason far sadder than that--because, once lost, they were incapable of restoration, and because not to be dispensed with; blessings in which "either we must live or have no life:" lights to the darkness of our paths and to the infirmity of our steps--which, once extinguished, never more on this side the gates of Paradise can any man hope to see re-illumined for himself. Amongst these I may mention an intellect, whether powerful or not in itself, at any rate most elaborately cultivated; and, to say the truth, I had little other business before me in this life than to pursue this lofty and delightful task. I may add, as a blessing, not in the same _positive_ sense as that which I have just mentioned, because not of a nature to contribute so hourly to the employment of the thoughts, but yet in this sense equal, that the absence of either would have been an equal affliction,--namely, a conscience void of all offence. It was little indeed that I, drawn by no necessities of situation into temptations of that nature, had done no injury to any man. That was fortunate; but I could not much value myself upon what was so much an accident of my situation.
Something, however, I might pretend to beyond this _negative_ merit; for I had originally a benign nature; and, as I advanced in years and thoughtfulness, the grat.i.tude which possessed me for my own exceeding happiness led me to do that by principle and system which I had already done upon blind impulse; and thus upon a double argument I was incapable of turning away from the prayer of the afflicted, whatever had been the sacrifice to myself. Hardly, perhaps, could it have been said in a sufficient sense at that time that I was a religious man: yet undoubtedly I had all the foundations within me upon which religion might hereafter have grown. My heart overflowed with thankfulness to Providence: I had a natural tone of unaffected piety; and thus far at least I might have been called a religious man, that in the simplicity of truth I could have exclaimed,
"O, Abner, I fear G.o.d, and I fear none beside."
But wherefore seek to delay ascending by a natural climax to that final consummation and perfect crown of my felicity--that almighty blessing which ratified their value to all the rest? Wherefore, oh! wherefore do I shrink in miserable weakness from----what? Is it from reviving, from calling up again into fierce and insufferable light the images and features of a long-buried happiness? That would be a natural shrinking and a reasonable weakness. But how escape from reviving, whether I give it utterance or not, that which is for ever vividly before me? What need to call into artificial light that which, whether sleeping or waking--by night or by day--for eight-and-thirty years has seemed by its miserable splendour to scorch my brain? Wherefore shrink from giving language, simple vocal utterance, to that burden of anguish which by so long an endurance has lost no atom of its weight, nor can gain any most surely by the loudest publication? Need there can be none, after this, to say that the priceless blessing, which I have left to the final place in this ascending review, was the companion of my life--my darling and youthful wife. Oh! dovelike woman! fated in an hour the most defenceless to meet with the ravening vulture,--lamb fallen amongst wolves,--trembling--fluttering fawn, whose path was inevitably to be crossed by the b.l.o.o.d.y tiger;--angel, whose most innocent heart fitted thee for too early a flight from this impure planet; if indeed it were a necessity that thou shouldst find no rest for thy footing except amidst thy native heavens, if indeed to leave what was not worthy of thee were a destiny not to be evaded--a summons not to be put by,--yet why, why, again and again I demand--why was it also necessary that this thy departure, so full of wo to me, should also to thyself be heralded by the pangs of martyrdom? Sainted love, if, like the ancient children of the Hebrews, like Meshech and Abednego, thou wert called by divine command, whilst yet almost a child, to walk, and to walk alone, through the fiery furnace,--wherefore then couldst not thou, like that Meshech and that Abednego, walk unsinged by the dreadful torment, and come forth unharmed? Why, if the sacrifice were to be total, was it necessary to reach it by so dire a struggle? and if the cup, the bitter cup, of final separation from those that were the light of thy eyes and the pulse of thy heart might not be put aside,--yet wherefore was it that thou mightst not drink it up in the natural peace which belongs to a sinless heart?
But these are murmurings, you will say, rebellious murmurings against the proclamations of G.o.d. Not so: I have long since submitted myself, resigned myself, nay even reconciled myself, perhaps, to the great wreck of my life, in so far as it was the will of G.o.d, and according to the weakness of my imperfect nature. But my wrath still rises, like a towering flame, against all the earthly instruments of this ruin; I am still at times as unresigned as ever to this tragedy, in so far as it was the work of human malice. Vengeance, as a mission for _me_, as a task for _my_ hands in particular, is no longer possible; the thunder-bolts of retribution have been long since launched by other hands; and yet still it happens that at times I do--I must--I shall perhaps to the hour of death, rise in maniac fury, and seek, in the very impotence of vindictive madness, groping as it were in blindness of heart, for that tiger from h.e.l.l-gates that tore away my darling from my heart. Let me pause, and interrupt this painful strain, to say a word or two upon what she was--and how far worthy of a love more honourable to her (that was possible) and deeper (but that was not possible) than mine. When first I saw her, she--my Agnes--was merely a child, not much (if anything) above sixteen. But, as in perfect womanhood she retained a most childlike expression of countenance, so even then in absolute childhood she put forward the blossoms and the dignity of a woman.
Never yet did my eye light upon creature that was born of woman, nor could it enter my heart to conceive one, possessing a figure more matchless in its proportions, more statuesque, and more deliberately and advisedly to be characterised by no adequate word but the word _magnificent_ (a word too often and lightly abused). In reality, speaking of women, I have seen many beautiful figures, but hardly one except Agnes that could without hyperbole be styled truly and memorably magnificent. Though in the first order of tall women, yet, being full in person, and with a symmetry that was absolutely faultless, she seemed to the random sight as little above the ordinary height. Possibly from the dignity of her person, a.s.sisted by the dignity of her movements, a stranger would have been disposed to call her at a distance a woman of _commanding_ presence; but never after he had approached near enough to behold her face. Every thought of artifice--of practised effect--or of haughty pretension, fled before the childlike innocence--the sweet feminine timidity--and the more than cherub loveliness of that countenance, which yet in its lineaments was n.o.ble, whilst its expression was purely gentle and confiding. A shade of pensiveness there was about her; but _that_ was in her manners, scarcely ever in her features; and the exquisite fairness of her complexion, enriched by the very sweetest and most delicate bloom that ever I have beheld, should rather have allied it to a tone of cheerfulness. Looking at this n.o.ble creature, as I first looked at her, when yet upon the early threshold of womanhood--
"With household motions light and free, And steps of virgin liberty"--
you might have supposed her some Hebe or young Aurora of the dawn. When you saw only her superb figure, and its promise of womanly development, with the measured dignity of her step, you might for a moment have fancied her some imperial Medea of the Athenian stage--some Volumnia from Rome,