Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 404, June, 1849

But neither father nor uncle made any opposition when, with a basket laden with wine and arrowroot, and a neat little Bible, bound in brown, my mother took her way to the excommunicated cottage. Her visit was as signal a failure as those that preceded it. Miles Square refused the basket; 'he was not going to accept alms, and eat the bread of charity;' and on my mother meekly suggesting that, 'if Mr Miles Square would condescend to look into the Bible, he would see that even charity was no sin in giver or recipient,' Mr Miles Square had undertaken to prove 'that, according to the Bible, he had as much a right to my mother's property as she had – that all things should be in common – and that, when things were in common, what became of charity? No; he could not eat my uncle's arrowroot, and drink his wine, while my uncle was improperly withholding from him and his fellow-creatures so many unprofitable acres: the land belonged to the people.' It was now the turn of Pisistratus to go. He went once, and he went often. Miles Square and Pisistratus wrangled and argued – argued and wrangled – and ended by taking a fancy to each other; for this poor Miles Square was not half so bad as his doctrines. His errors arose from intense sympathy with the sufferings he had witnessed, amidst the misery which accompanies the reign of millocratism, and from the vague aspirations of a half-taught, impassioned, earnest nature. By degrees, I persuaded him to drink the wine and eat the arrowroot, en attendant that millennium which was to restore the land to the people. And then my mother came again and softened his heart, and, for the first time in his life, let into its cold crotchets the warm light of human gratitude. I lent him some books, amongst others a few volumes on Australia. A passage in one of the latter, in which it was said "that an intelligent mechanic usually made his way in the colony, even as a shepherd, better than a dull agricultural labourer," caught hold of his fancy, and seduced his aspirations into a healthful direction. Finally, as he recovered, he entreated me to let him accompany me. And as I may not have to return to Miles Square, I think it right here to state, that he did go with me to Australia, and did succeed, first as shepherd, and, on saving money, as landowner; and that, in spite of his opinions on the unholiness of war, he was no sooner in possession of a comfortable log homestead, than he defended it with uncommon gallantry against an attack of the aborigines, whose right to the soil was, to say the least of it, as good as his claim to my uncle's acres; that he commemorated his subsequent acquisition of a fresh allotment, with the stock on it, by a little pamphlet, published at Sydney, on the Sanctity of the Rights of Property; and that, when I left the colony, having been much pestered by two refractory "helps" that he had added to his establishment, he had just distinguished himself by a very anti-levelling lecture upon the duties of servants to their employers. What would the Old World have done for this man!

CHAPTER LXX

I had not been in haste to conclude my arrangements, for, independently of my wish to render myself acquainted with the small useful crafts that might be necessary to me in a life that makes the individual man a state in himself, I naturally desired to habituate my kindred to the idea of our separation, and to plan and provide for them all such substitutes or distractions, in compensation for my loss, as my fertile imagination could suggest. And first, for the sake of Blanche, Roland, and my mother, I talked the Captain into reluctant sanction of his sister-in-law's proposal, to unite their incomes and share alike, without considering which party brought the larger proportion into the firm. I represented to him that, unless he made that sacrifice of his pride, my mother would be wholly without those little notable uses and objects – those small household pleasures – so dear to woman; that all society in the neighbourhood would be impossible, and that my mother's time would hang so heavily on her hands that her only resource would be to muse on the absent one and fret. Nay, if he persisted in so false a pride, I told him, fairly, that I should urge my father to leave the tower. These representations succeeded; and hospitality had commenced in the old hall, and a knot of gossips had centred round my mother – groups of laughing children had relaxed the still brow of Blanche – and the Captain himself was a more cheerful and social man. My next point was to engage my father in the completion of the Great Book. "Ah, sir," said I, "give me an inducement to toil, a reward for my industry. Let me think, in each tempting pleasure, each costly vice – No, no; I will save for the Great Book! and the memory of the father shall still keep the son from error. Ah, look you, sir! Mr Trevanion offered me the loan of the £1500 necessary to commence with; but you generously and at once said – 'No; you must not begin life under the load of debt.' And I knew you were right, and yielded – yielded the more gratefully, that I could not but forfeit something of the just pride of manhood in incurring such an obligation to the father of – Miss Trevanion. Therefore I have taken that sum from you – a sum that would almost have sufficed to establish your younger and worthier child in the world for ever. To that child let me repay it, otherwise I will not take it. Let me hold it as a trust for the Great Book; and promise me that the Great Book shall be ready when your wanderer returns, and accounts for the missing talent."

And my father pished a little, and rubbed off the dew that had gathered on his spectacles. But I would not leave him in peace till he had given me his word that the Great Book should go on à pas du géant– nay, till I had seen him sit down to it with good heart, and the wheel went round again in the quiet mechanism of that gentle life.

Finally, and as the culminating acme of my diplomacy, I effected the purchase of the neighbouring apothecary's practice and good-will for Squills, upon terms which he willingly subscribed to; for the poor man had pined at the loss of his favourite patients, though, Heaven knows, they did not add much to his income. And as for my father, there was no man who diverted him more than Squills, though he accused him of being a materialist, and set his whole spiritual pack of sages to worry and bark at him, from Plato and Zeno to Reid and Abraham Tucker.

Thus, although I have very loosely intimated the flight of time, more than a whole year elapsed from the date of our settlement at the tower and that affixed for my departure.

In the meanwhile, despite the rarity amongst us of that phenomenon a newspaper, we were not so utterly cut off from the sounds of the far-booming world beyond, but what the intelligence of a change in the administration, and the appointment of Mr Trevanion to one of the great offices of state, reached our ears. I had kept up no correspondence with Trevanion subsequent to the letter that occasioned Guy Bolding's visit; I wrote now to congratulate him: his reply was short and hurried.

Intelligence that startled me more, and more deeply moved my heart, was conveyed to me some three months or so before my departure, by Trevanion's steward. The ill health of Lord Castleton had deferred his marriage, intended originally to be celebrated as soon as he came of age. He left the university with the honours of "a double-first class;" and his constitution appeared to rally from the effects of studies more severe to him, than they might have been to a man of quicker and more brilliant capacities – when a feverish cold, caught at a county meeting, in which his first public appearance was so creditable as fully to justify the warmest hopes of his party, produced inflammation of the lungs, and ended fatally. The startling contrast forced on my mind – here sudden death, and cold clay – there youth in its first flower, princely rank, boundless wealth, the sanguine expectation of an illustrious career, and the prospect of that happiness which smiled from the eyes of Fanny – that contrast impressed me with a strange awe: death seems so near to us when it strikes those whom life most flatters and caresses. Whence is that curious sympathy that we all have with the possessors of worldly greatness, when the hour-glass is shaken and the scythe descends? If the famous meeting between Diogenes and Alexander had taken place not before, but after, the achievements which gave to Alexander the name of Great, the cynic would not, perhaps, have envied the hero his pleasures or his splendours, the charms of Statira, or the tiara of the Mede; but if, the day after, a cry had gone forth, "Alexander the Great is dead!" verily I believe that Diogenes would have coiled himself up in his tub, and felt that, with the shadow of the stately hero, something of glory and of warmth had gone from that sun, which it should darken never more. In the nature of man, the humblest or the hardest, there is a something that lives in all of the Beautiful or the Fortunate, which hope and desire have appropriated, even in the vanities of a childish dream.

CHAPTER LXXI

"Why are you here all alone, cousin? How cold and still it is amongst the graves!"

"Sit down beside me, Blanche; it is not colder in the churchyard than on the village green."

And Blanche sate down beside me, nestled close to me, and leant her head upon my shoulder. We were both long silent. It was an evening in the early spring, clear and serene – the roseate streaks were fading gradually from the dark gray of long, narrow, fantastic clouds. Tall, leafless poplars, that stood in orderly level line, on the lowland between the churchyard and the hill, with its crown of ruins, left their sharp summits distinct against the sky. But the shadows coiled dull and heavy round the evergreens that skirted the churchyard, so that their outline was vague and confused; and there was a depth in their gloomy stillness, broken only when the thrush flew out from the lower bushes, and the thick laurel leaves stirred reluctantly, and again were rigid in repose. There is a certain melancholy in the evenings of early spring which is among those influences of nature the most universally recognised, the most difficult to explain. The silent stir of reviving life, which does not yet betray signs in the bud and blossom – only in a softer clearness in the air, a more lingering pause in the slowly lengthening day; a more delicate freshness and balm in the twilight atmosphere; a more lively yet still unquiet note from the birds, settling down into their coverts; – the vague sense under all that hush, which still outwardly wears the bleak sterility of winter – of the busy change, hourly, momently, at work – renewing the youth of the world, reclothing with vigorous bloom the skeletons of things – all these messages from the heart of Nature to the heart of Man may well affect and move us. But why with melancholy? No thought on our part connects and construes the low, gentle voices. It is not thought that replies and reasons: it is feeling that hears and dreams. Examine not, O child of man! – examine not that mysterious melancholy with the hard eyes of thy reason; thou canst not impale it on the spikes of thy thorny logic, nor describe its enchanted circle by problems conned from thy schools. Borderer thyself of two worlds – the Dead and the Living – give thine ear to the tones, bow thy soul to the shadows, that steal, in the season of change, from the dim Border Land.

Blanche (in a whisper.) – What are you thinking of? – speak, pray!

Pisistratus. – I was not thinking, Blanche; or, if I were, the thought is gone at the mere effort to seize or detain it.

Blanche (after a pause.) – I know what you mean. It is the same with me often – so often, when I am sitting by myself, quite still. It is just like the story Primmins was telling us the other evening, how there was a woman in her village who saw things and people in a piece of crystal, not bigger than my hand:2 they passed along as large as life, but they were only pictures in the crystal. Since I heard the story, when aunt asks me what I am thinking of, I long to say, "I'm not thinking! I am seeing pictures in the crystal!"

Pisistratus. – Tell my father that; it will please him. There is more philosophy in it than you are aware of, Blanche. There are wise men who have thought the whole world, "its pride, pomp, and circumstance," only a phantom image – a picture in the crystal.

Blanche. – And I shall see you – see us both, as we are sitting here – and that star which has just risen yonder – see it all in my crystal – when you are gone! – gone, cousin!

And Blanche's head drooped.

There was something so quiet and deep in the tenderness of this poor motherless child, that it did not affect one superficially, like a child's loud momentary affection, in which we know that the first toy will replace us. I kissed my little cousin's pale face, and said, "And I too, Blanche, have my crystal; and when I consult it, I shall be very angry if I see you sad and fretting, or seated alone. For you must know, Blanche, that that is all selfishness. God made us, not to indulge only in crystal pictures, weave idle fancies, pine alone, and mourn over what we cannot help – but to be alert and active – givers of happiness. Now, Blanche, see what a trust I am going to bequeath you. You are to supply my place to all whom I leave. You are to bring sunshine wherever you glide with that shy, soft step – whether to your father, when you see his brows knit and his arms crossed, (that, indeed, you always do,) or to mine, when the volume drops from his hand – when he walks to and fro the room, restless, and murmuring to himself – then you are to steal up to him, put your hand in his, lead him back to his books, and whisper, 'What will Sisty say if his younger brother, the Great Book, is not grown up when he comes back?' – And my poor mother, Blanche! – ah, how can I counsel you there – how tell you where to find comfort for her? Only, Blanche, steal into her heart and be her daughter. And, to fulfil this threefold trust, you must not content yourself with seeing pictures in the crystal – do you understand me?"

"Oh yes," said Blanche, raising her eyes, while the tears rolled from them, and folding her arms resolutely on her breast.

"And so," said I, "as we two, sitting in this quiet burial-ground, take new heart for the duties and cares of life, so see, Blanche, how the stars come out, one by one, to smile upon us, for they too, glorious orbs as they are, perform their appointed tasks. Things seem to approximate to God in proportion to their vitality and movement. Of all things, least inert and sullen should be the soul of man. How the grass grows up over the very graves – quickly it grows and greenly – but neither so quick and so green, my Blanche, as hope and comfort from human sorrows."

CHAPTER LXXII

There is a beautiful and singular passage in Dante, (which has not perhaps attracted the attention it deserves,) wherein the stern Florentine defends Fortune from the popular accusations against her. According to him, she is an angelic power appointed by the Supreme Being to direct and order the course of human splendours; she obeys the will of God; she is blessed, and, hearing not those who blaspheme her, calm and aloft amongst the other angelic powers, revolves her spheral course, and rejoices in her beatitude.3

This is a conception very different from the popular notion which Aristophanes, in his true instinct of things popular, expresses by the sullen lips of his Plutus. That deity accounts for his blindness by saying, that "when a boy he had indiscreetly promised to visit only the good," and Jupiter was so envious of the good that he blinded the poor money-god. Whereon Chremylus asks him, whether, "if he recovered his sight, he would frequent the company of the good?" "Certainly," quoth Plutus, "for I have not seen them ever so long." "Nor I either," rejoins Chremylus pithily, "for all I can see out of both eyes!"

But that misanthropical answer of Chremylus is neither here nor there, and only diverts us from the real question, and that is, "Whether Fortune be a heavenly, Christian angel, or a blind, blundering, old heathen deity?" For my part, I hold with Dante – for which, if I were so pleased, or if, at this period of my memoirs, I had half a dozen pages to spare, I could give many good reasons. One thing, however, is quite clear – that, whether Fortune be more like Plutus or an angel, it is no use abusing her – one may as well throw stones at a star. And I think if one looked narrowly at her operations, one might perceive that she gives every man a chance, at least once in his life; if he take and make the best of it, she will renew her visits; if not —itur ad astra! And therewith I am reminded of an incident quaintly narrated by Mariana in his "History of Spain," how the army of the Spanish kings got out of a sad hobble among the mountains at the pass of Losa, by the help of a shepherd, who showed them the way. "But," saith Mariana, parenthetically, "some do say the shepherd was an angel; for after he had shown the way, he was never seen more." That is, the angelic nature of the guide was proved by being only once seen, and disappearing after having got the army out of the hobble, leaving it to fight or run away, as it had most mind to. Now I look upon that shepherd, or angel, as a very good type of my fortune at least. The apparition showed me my way in the rocks to the great "Battle of Life;" after that, – hold fast and strike hard!

Behold me in London with Uncle Roland. My poor parents naturally wished to accompany me, and take the last glimpse of the adventurer on board ship; but I, knowing that the parting would seem less dreadful to them by the hearthstone, and while they could say, "He is with Roland – he is not yet gone from the land" – insisted on their staying behind; and so the farewell was spoken. But Roland, the old soldier, had so many practical instructions to give – could so help me in the choice of the outfit, and the preparations for the voyage, that I could not refuse his companionship to the last. Guy Bolding, who had gone to take leave of his father, was to join me in town, as well as my humbler Cumberland colleagues.

As my uncle and I were both of one mind upon the question of economy, we took up our quarters at a lodging-house in the City; and there it was that I first made acquaintance with a part of London, of which few of my politer readers even pretend to be cognisant. I do not mean any sneer at the City itself, my dear alderman; that jest is worn out. I am not alluding to streets, courts, and lanes; what I mean may be seen at the west end, not so well as at the east, but still seen very fairly; I mean – the House-tops!

CHAPTER LXXIII

BEING A CHAPTER ON HOUSE-TOPS

The house-tops! what a soberising effect that prospect produces on the mind. But a great many requisites go towards the selection of the right point of survey. It is not enough to secure a lodging in the attic; you must not be fobbed off with a front attic that faces the street. First, your attic must be unequivocally a back attic; secondly, the house in which it is located must be slightly elevated above its neighbours; thirdly, the window must not lie slant on the roof, as is common with attics – in which case you only catch a peep of that leaden canopy which infatuated Londoners call the sky – but must be a window perpendicular, and not half blocked up by the parapets of that fosse called the gutter; and, lastly, the sight must be so humoured that you cannot catch a glimpse of the pavements: if you once see the world beneath, the whole charm of that world above is destroyed. Taking it for granted that you have secured these requisites, open your window, lean your chin on both hands, the elbows propped commodiously on the sill, and contemplate the extraordinary scene which spreads before you. You find it difficult to believe that life can be so tranquil on high, while it is so noisy and turbulent below. What astonishing stillness! Eliot Warburton (seductive enchanter) recommends you to sail down the Nile if you want to lull the vexed spirit. It is easier and cheaper to hire an attic in Holborn! You don't have the crocodiles, but you have animals no less hallowed in Egypt – the cats! And how harmoniously the tranquil creatures blend with the prospect – how noiselessly they glide along at the distance, pause, peer about, and disappear. It is only from the attic that you can appreciate the picturesque which belongs to our domesticated tiger-kin! The goat should be seen on the Alps, and the cat on the house-top.

By degrees the curious eye takes the scenery in detail: and first, what fantastic variety in the heights and shapes of the chimney-pots! Some all level in a row, uniform and respectable, but quite uninteresting; others, again, rising out of all proportion, and imperatively tasking the reason to conjecture why they are so aspiring. Reason answers that it is but a homely expedient to give freer vent to the smoke; whereon Imagination steps in, and represents to you all the fretting, and fuming, and worry, and care, which the owners of that chimney, now the tallest of all, endured, before, by building it higher, they got rid of the vapours! You see the distress of the cook, when the sooty invader rushed down, "like a wolf on the fold," full spring on the Sunday joint. You hear the exclamations of the mistress, (perhaps a bride, – house newly furnished,) when, with white apron and cap, she ventured into the drawing-room, and was straightway saluted by a joyous dance of those monads, called vulgarly smuts. You feel manly indignation at the brute of a bridegroom, who rushes out from the door, with the smuts dancing after him, and swears, "Smoked out again – By the Arch-smoker himself, I'll go and dine at the club!" All this might well have been, till the chimney-pot was raised a few feet nearer heaven; and now perhaps that long-suffering family owns the happiest home in the Row. Such contrivances to get rid of the smoke! It is not every one who merely heightens his chimney; others clap on the hollow tormentor all sorts of odd headgear and cowls. Here patent contrivances act the purpose of weathercocks, swaying to and fro with the wind; there others stand as fixed as if by a "sic jubeo" they had settled the business. But of all those houses that, in the street, one passes by, unsuspicious of what's the matter within, there is not one in a hundred but what there has been the devil to do, to cure the chimneys of smoking! At that reflection, Philosophy dismisses the subject; and decides that, whether one lives in a hut or a palace, the first thing to do is to look to the hearth – and get rid of the vapours.

New beauties demand us. What endless undulations in the various declivities and ascents: here a slant, there a zig-zag! With what majestic disdain yon roof rises up to the left! – Doubtless, a palace of Genii or Gin, (which last is the proper Arabic word for those builders of halls out of nothing, employed by Aladdin.) Seeing only the roof of that palace boldly breaking the skyline – how serene your contemplations! Perhaps a star twinkles over it, and you muse on soft eyes far away; while below, at the threshold – No, phantoms, we see you not from our attic! Note, yonder, that precipitous fall – how ragged and jagged the roof-scene descends in a gorge. He who would travel on foot through the pass of that defile, of which we see but the picturesque summits, stops his nose, averts his eyes, guards his pockets, and hurries along through the squalor of the grim London lazzaroni. But seen above, what a noble break in the skyline! It would be sacrilege to exchange that fine gorge for a dead flat of dull roof-tops. Look here – how delightful! – that desolate house with no roof at all – gutted and skinned by the last London fire! You can see the poor green and white paper still clinging to the walls, and the chasm that once was a cupboard, and the shadows gathering black on the aperture that once was a hearth! Seen below, how quickly you would cross over the way! That great crack forbodes an avalanche; you would hold your breath, not to bring it down on your head. But seen above, what a compassionate inquisitive charm in the skeleton ruin! How your fancy runs riot – repeopling the chambers, hearing the last cheerful good-night of that destined Pompeii – creeping on tiptoe with the mother, when she gives her farewell look to the baby. Now all is midnight and silence; then the red, crawling serpent comes out. Lo! his breath; hark! his hiss. Now, spire after spire he winds and coils; now he soars up erect – crest superb, and forked tongue – the beautiful horror! Then the start from the sleep, and the doubtful awaking, and the run here and there, and the mother's rush to the cradle; the cry from the window, and the knock at the door, and the spring of those on high towards the stair that leads to safety below, and the smoke rushing up like the surge of a hell! And they run back stifled and blinded, and the floor heaves beneath them like a bark on the sea. Hark! the grating wheels thundering low; near and near comes the engine. Fix the ladders! – there! there! at the window, where the mother stands with the babe! Splash and hiss comes the water; pales, then flares out, the fire: foe defies foe; element, element. How sublime is the war! But the ladder, the ladder! – there at the window! All else are saved: the clerk and his books; the lawyer, with that tin box of title-deeds; the landlord, with his policy of insurance; the miser, with his bank-notes and gold: all are saved – all, but the babe and the mother. What a crowd in the streets! how the light crimsons over the gazers, hundreds on hundreds! All those faces seem as one face, with fear. Not a man mounts the ladder. Yes, there – gallant fellow! God inspires – God shall speed thee! How plainly I see him! – his eyes are closed, his teeth set. The serpent leaps up, the forked tongue darts upon him, and the reek of the breath wraps him round. The crowd has ebbed back like a sea, and the smoke rushes over them all. Ha! what dim forms are those on the ladder? Near and nearer – crash come the roof-tiles. Alas, and alas! – no; a cry of joy – a "Thank heaven!" and the women force their way through the men to come round the child and the mother. All is gone, save that skeleton ruin. But here, the ruin is seen from above. O Art, study life from the roof-tops!