Blue-Stocking Hall, (Vol. 3 of 3)
Date: 2017-08-21T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Epistolary fiction; Women -- Conduct of life -- Fiction; Women -- Education -- Fiction

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Blue-Stocking Hall, (Vol. 3 of 3)

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Title: Blue-Stocking Hall, (Vol. 3 of 3)

Author: William Pitt Scargill

Release date: August 21, 2017 [eBook #55407]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLUE-STOCKING HALL, (VOL. 3 OF 3) ***

BLUE-STOCKING HALL.

J. D. NICHOLS, 25, PARLIAMENT STREET.

BLUE-STOCKING HALL.

“From woman’s eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,

That show, contain, and nourish all the world.”

Love’s Labour Lost.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. III.

LONDON:
HENRY COLBURN, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
1827.

BLUE-STOCKING HALL.

LETTER XXVII.
Frederick to Emily Douglas.

This, my dearest Emily, is the last letter which you will receive from Frederick in London; and though time speeds on rapid wing in this focus of attraction, I reckon the days with impatience till the heath-clad tops of our dear mountains break upon my view. To travel, and see new men and manners, would be too delightful, if mother and sisters were with me, but, unfashionable as the confession may be, I own to the weakness of loving mine enough to make me wish to be always near them. In a few days we are to set out, and Arthur starts for France, when we turn our faces towards Glenalta. I fear that my uncle is not gaining ground; there is a consultation every day, but it seems to me as if many of these great doctors make up in mannerism of one sort or other what they want in penetration. One assumes a rough tone, and thinks it for his advantage to act the brute, in order to assure his patients that he is an honest man. Another looks as smooth as satin, and prescribes such numerous and expensive remedies, that none but a nabob could afford to be cured. A third experiments upon all the vegetables and minerals in the modern Pharmacopœia, and “thrice slays the slain,” before he stumbles by accident on the disease. If I am to be killed by Esculapian skill, I would rather receive my quietus from a sober practitioner in the country, who had never heard of arsenic, digitalis, or the prussic acid, than be torn piece-meal by a triad of London physicians, who, ten to one, know as little of the case as of the constitution submitted to them, and ceremoniously agree to put one out of the world with the profoundest adherence to etiquette. I cannot help thinking the business altogether a solemn farce, which I long to see brought to a conclusion, and as I am growing every day more and more attached to this near and dear relation, I look anxiously for his removal, from what appears to me, a pick-pocket confederacy. The dread with which my uncle’s manner at first inspired me, is gradually wearing away. With Phil. and me he is charming, full of information, classical taste, and literary criticism. He has a fund of humour also, which gives variety to his powers of pleasing; and when bodily pain does not weigh upon his spirits, he is a delightful companion, whose society will add considerably to the pleasures of our winter fire-side. But his frown is as awful as his smile is beaming, and would have petrified me long ago, if I had ever encountered his brow in the act of concentrating its forces upon me, as it does when aunt Howard and Louisa appear in his presence. The whole horizon of his forehead is then hung thickly in clouds, a morose expression marks his countenance, and a sullen silence indicates displeasure, as far as the rules of common civility will permit. With Arthur he is less unconstrained than with me; but I hope that ere we quit London, there will be no difference in his feelings towards us. The kind partiality with which he treats your Frederick is easily accounted for, and arises not from any comparison between the individuals in question, or I could not be his favourite. I should write with more satisfaction than I feel at present, if I were not so soon to see you; but the slowness of my pen makes me impatient, when I reflect on the glibness of tongue with which I hope in less than a fortnight to pour out all my news vivâ voce, for your amusement. Besides, when once the novelty of the thing is over, there is a tiresome monotony in the routine of a London life.

I have met with very few who deserve to be recorded for any qualifications that distinguish individuals from each other. A certain number of airs, and affectations, mixed with accomplishments and French flounces, in proportions a little varying, but producing generally the same result, may serve as a recipe by which to compound the modern belle; and for the beau, a mixture somewhat different, without being in the least more solid, will suffice as universally as the former; but Arthur procured me an invitation the other day to a dinner party, which being unlike its predecessors, I must particularize, reserving the names of the dramatis personæ, till we meet, lest my letter should miss stays, and its writer be prosecuted for a libel.

This dinner was given by a literary amateur, to several authors and authoresses, who furnish our running account of novels, essays, disquisitions reviews, articles, fugitive poems, squibs, and bon mots. And in the evening we had a numerous accession of both sexes, who were brought together as professedly bookish people, and therefore fit audience for the writers who, I suppose, were expected to be speakers also. I know, that I for one, went fully possessed with the idea, that at least I should hear a great quantity of discourse, however I might chance to think of its quality; and, moreover, I was rejoicing for two entire days at the prospect that lay before me: but disappointment was the portion of every novice, who, like myself, looked for “a feast of reason and a flow of soul.” Of all the dull uninteresting meetings of which I ever happened to be a member, I willingly vote the palm of pre-eminence to that at Sir Marmaduke Liston’s. However, as knowledge is always valuable, I stand indebted to that assembly for one piece of information, which, till now, I have taken upon hearsay evidence.

It was in Lady Liston’s drawing room that I first saw that gorgon, yclept “Blue-stocking,” which we used to think was like other spectres, the offspring of a distempered imagination. I can assure you that such things are, and, if I was heartily disgusted with the authors at dinner, I was no less heartily nauseated by the Blues at tea. The former only reminded me of rival tradesmen, who forgot a part of their craft, namely, adulation of their patron, in the absorbing energy of their hatred towards each other. As to conversation, we had none, for every man seemed afraid to utter a sentence, lest his neighbour should slip it into a book, and thus defraud the real owner. A few nods, shrugs, and hahs, which might be interpreted ad libitum, occupied the place of language, and constituted nearly the whole intercourse of mind which was not directed to the matter of fish, flesh, and fowls. On these, indeed, and their individual merits, our wittenagemot were eloquent “with all alliteration’s artful aid;” and they also proved themselves nothing loath to exercise whatever critical acumen any of them possessed on Sir Marmaduke’s wines which were discussed from humble port to imperial tokay, with glistening eyes, glazed noses, and expanding vests. Yet you may tell Mr. Oliphant that we had not even allusion to a feast of the ancients, not a word of old Falernian, nor a single glimmering of classic lore, though in the fields of Horace one would imagine that the company might have expatiated on neutral ground without danger of petty larceny on any side. One prodigious person, who seemed like “Behemoth, biggest born,” and who quaffed accordingly, particularly diverted me: he sat next to a tall thin phantom who looked of Pharoah’s lean kine, and wore a little black cap on his skull, which appeared as if “moulded on a porringer,” This shadowy form was, I was told, a metaphysician, and certainly he gave me the idea of having come into the world for the express purpose of illustrating the extension of tenuity. He drank nothing but toast and water, and consequently had the advantage of preserving such store of faculties as he brought to the entertainment, in all their clearness, when his neighbours were “veiled in mist;” but either the measure was so small, or the nature of his wares prevented them from being pilfered. Whatever the reason, so it was, that he seemed to enjoy all the ease of a sinecure in guarding his mental property from depredation. He, and his ample companion, threw glances at each other of mutual contempt every now and then, and from time to time, as opportunity presented itself, kept up at intervals a meagre snarl, altogether divested of wit or point, till the big man, who, of a class that it might be presumed

“Had but seldom known the use

Of the grape’s surprising juice,”

became so top heavy, that I saw his head gently let down, as if by a pully and tackle, on the shoulder of the metaphysician, who not inclined to enact the prop to a fallen foe, disengaged himself so abruptly from this mountain of the muses (for Behemoth is a poet), that the chair on which he sat, having glided away, the latter came down on the floor plump, like a full sack that had broken from the crane. My gravity was not proof against this downfall of Parnassus, and I made my way up stairs as quickly as I could, only lagging behind a sufficient length of time for the water-drinking philosopher to be lodged before me. Oh ye gods, what an exhibition did I open upon! the only similitude which I can find at hand for the drawing-room that presented itself, was a glass of some highly bottled liquid, in which a froth of white muslin occupied the upper, and a sediment of black cloth its lower extremity. Not a sound was to be heard as I entered the room; but I soon perceived that the et ceteras of coffee, tea, cakes, and bread and butter, were not at all more indifferent in the superior, than soups, meats, and wine had been in the inferior regions of this intellectual festum. It quite astonished me to see the quantity of all these appurtenances of the soireé, that almost immediately vanished, “leaving not a wreck behind.” During the consumption of these mere creatures of the entertainment, certain solemn sentences were fired at intervals, after the manner of minute guns, each succeeded by a deadly pause.

The gentlemen below stairs sat a long time, but I was resolved to see out the evening, ere I passed judgment on a party of the literati. At length the authors ascended, and, had I been a young lady, I should have felt most unwilling

——“to meet the rudeness and swilled insolence

Of such late wassailers;”

but the habits of the trade triumphed over the occasional excess which Sir Marmaduke’s hospitality had caused his guests to commit, and so profoundly discreet was this book-making assembly, that while, on the one hand, not a syllable that betrayed either taste or genius escaped, and laid them open to plagiarism, I must do justice to the equal taciturnity which they observed upon every subject less immediately connected with the direct views of their calling; insomuch, that, for the greater number, they withstood the most pedantic efforts, on the side of the blues, to draw them out, and—with the exception of some tedious verbiage pronounced, ex cathedrâ, by the man in the black cap, who, perceiving the advantage which his abstemiousness gave him over the rest, grew loquacious and collected a circle of ladies around him—One might have imagined that rumination was the object of the meeting, and that the members of this tiresome confraternity had come together principally for the purpose of feeding first, and then chewing the cud on the subjects of their next lucubrations. I never was so weary of the “human face divine,” as on the memorable occasion which I have mentioned, and gladly banished all recollection of a party, over which the goddess of dulness had especially presided—in the most leaden slumber that I have experienced since my arrival in the British capital.

I shall part from Arthur with such sorrow as a brother’s love might feel. He must positively be a changeling in his mother’s house, so entirely does he differ from his family. Yet in Louisa there are, as our country taylor would say, “the makings” of something good, had she received a decent education. But empty heads and flinty hearts are quite the thing; and if nature throw away her labours, and, forgetting the class on which she is operating, lavish fine faculties and gentle affections on one of your exquisites, whether male or female, these, like troublesome excrescences, must be amputated; and a better hand at performing such a species of excision cannot exist than that of my aunt. Her influence is enough to eradicate the deepest sensibilities, and cut to the quick the most promising intellect. She cannot bear me, because my uncle takes kind notice of me, and it is time that we should part; for a day in Grosvenor Square seems to me as if passed in purgatory; though Arthur is there.

With true loves, adieu, and believe me

Your affectionate

Frederick.

LETTER XXVIII.
Arthur Howard to Frederick Douglas.

Paris.

My dear Fred.

Your letter, announcing safe return to the “happy valley,” found me on the very eve of my departure to Dover. Need I say how welcome it was?—Yes, you did indeed describe your feelings to one who could participate in every sensation, and feel every beat of your heart, as the well known land marks, the termini that bound your glen of enchantment, rose smiling in the western beam, above the misty fleece which had rolled over their summits from the sea. I saw the first faggot blaze on the peak of Lisfarne; I heard the first joyous announcement of Tom Collins, the eager bark of Gelert, Eva, and Bran, the din of voices, the pattering of bare feet across every path-way in the bog; in short, what incident, however trifling, was a stranger to my breast that prepared for the final folding in your mother’s arms?

How different my journey and my arrival at its termination! I could have joined several gay parties, proceeding in the same route which I was about to tread; but I was not in a humour for such company as they offered, and so I preferred commencing my travels solus, Lewis being only an appendage who permits me to be more alone than I should be without him, by taking all the minor cares that belong to chemin faisant off my shoulders.

My mother and Louisa were to leave town on the day after I set out, and are by this time at Selby—would that I could say enjoying the quiet of that beautiful place; but the former, poor soul, is not happy any where, and my sister, alas, though she feels little pleasure in the scenes which she has left behind, cannot be expected to derive much from those which in providing food, and giving time for meditation, bring no peace to a bosom at war within itself. Louisa, I predict, will be an altered character, but the work will be slow, and experience many interruptions. I see, however, some very promising circumstances on which to build my hopes. Adelaide’s marriage is already acting as a salutary beacon; and I have extorted a faithful promise from Louisa that she will no longer give encouragement to Lord G. Villiers, whose attentions, if they ended in a serious address, would be directed by the same base motives which brought Crayton and Adelaide together. Thus one great point is gained, but every step which I achieve with Louisa, throws me farther back in my mother’s regard; so the task is like that of Sisyphus, and very disheartening.

On reaching this place, I received letters from Falkland, and one from my brother-in-law, entreating my interference with my uncle for a loan. This I must peremptorily refuse, and cordially do I wish that the latter had returned home a poor man, that such of his family, as are inclined to love him, might indulge the feeling without suspicion of its purity; and that such as would prey upon his very vitals, without regard to any thing but the most sordid self-interest, should be kept from persecuting and injuring his fine mind, by increasing the measure of its distrust. He is not fond of me, but I love him because he has good taste enough to distinguish you. Say every thing kind and respectful to him for me, which you do not think him likely to reject, and with tender loves to the rest of the dear group, I am, dearest Frederick, in haste,

Your affectionate,

A. Howard.

LETTER XXIX.
Mrs. Douglas to Mrs. E. Sandford.

You would have reason, my Elizabeth, to complain of my silence, were your heart less alive than it is to the interesting occupations which have devolved upon your friends of the valley; and though I am blessed with such coadjutors as few can boast, there is employment for us all in our several departments.

My dear brother’s health declines so slowly, that the progress of disease is scarcely perceptible, and deceives all the young group, as well as the sanguine Oliphant; but I feel that Edward Otway and I are prophets but too true when we agree in prognosticating a termination to all his sufferings, whether of mind or body, that belong to this world, and that too at no great distance of time. He has been so wearied out by medicines, that he now resolves on trying the effects of a system in which nature and affection shall be chief instruments. I submit to his views in the full belief that a winter’s repose is necessary to his existence, and as my solicitude is increased by the responsibility which we encounter in permitting this dear invalid to remain so far removed from what is called “the best advice,” you may suppose how continually my thoughts are employed about him.

I had been prepared by Edward Otway’s letters, while he remained in London, for finding my brother’s character deeply interesting; but I had no notion in what degree, and my heart still lingers with him in the moments of our necessary separation. He is a theme so engrossing, that I could dilate much more upon it than the limits which I have prescribed to myself will allow; but all that I have not time to write, you shall one day hear, for I lay up every word that he utters, not only because of the intrinsic value which I attach to his sentiments and opinions, but they derive a sacredness from his present situation (hovering as the bright spirit now is upon the confines of eternity), which keeps me almost breathless in his company, lest I should lose a syllable that falls from his lips. You already know what a mine we have discovered, of the richest treasure, under that scaly armour, in which he had fortified himself against the anticipated assaults of such sordid principles as he was accustomed to see govern the conduct of those men with whom early habit had associated him. Imagine then the happiness of seeing all this rough coating drop off, and present the sweetest, most confiding nature to our view.

You and I have often watched the unfolding of that beautiful zoophyte, the sea anemone, when, after having been left exposed, by the retreat of the waves from its rocky asylum, to the chilling influence of a northern blast, it expanded its delicate fibres to the soft returning tide; and from a shrunk and shapeless thing, opened into a star of glowing and transparent brilliancy. Just in such manner has the noble mind of our precious invalid been blighted by the pitiless storms which rage along the coasts of avarice and self-interest. In such manner also has he unlocked his soul in this little sheltered bay, to the gentle flow of affection. How thankful do I feel for the blessing of being permitted to see this hour, and bear a part in the scene which Glenalta now exhibits!

The process of change too has been as quick as it is gratifying; a cautious and alternating advance and recession would have been the history of an ordinary mind, but the impulses of a generous character are instinctive and uncalculating. They yielded at once in my brother to the force of truth; and that reserve which is still occasionally observable in his manner, expresses nothing like the coldness of doubt, but seems only to say, “alas! why has this native element of kindness, this congenial sympathy, been so long withheld, and why am I only learning, for the first time, to bask in the warm sunshine, when the orb of day is descending from his meridian, and hastening to hide his radiant beams in the deep?” So powerfully do I feel impressed with a belief that this is the secret language of his heart, that my eyes too often betray me, and I am obliged to hurry from his presence, that I may avoid discovering my emotion.

One little incident alone proclaimed the slightest vacillation in his mind since he came here, and as it ended happily, and bore evidence to the delicacy of my dear Frederick’s feeling, I have pleasure in recording it.

A letter from Arthur, in which he expressed a wish that his uncle had returned poor, in order to enjoy the luxury of being loved, with freedom from the base insinuations that restrain the manifestation of affection, and also speaking the pleasure which he experienced in the certainty that his cousin is more highly considered than himself, was received, and shewn to me some time ago, by my dear boy. Some allusion being made to news from Arthur, my brother asked one or two questions about him, which Frederick’s first unguarded movement led him to answer, by putting his friend’s letter into his uncle’s hands; but instantly recollecting the passage which I have mentioned, he altered his purpose, and blushed so violently while he made an awkward reply, that a brow for the first time overcast by clouds of suspicion, met my poor fellow’s eye, and occasioned an unspeakable agony in his mind, which he saw no means of relieving; for the same nice feeling that had stayed his first impulse, forbade him to explain the subsequent embarrassment; yet he saw that an unfavourable surmise, perhaps detracting from Arthur’s honorable motives, was the alternative. Mr. Otway was in the room when this incident occurred, and mentioned it to me in private. I immediately unravelled the mystery, produced the letter for this dear friend, who shewed it without Frederick’s knowledge, or mine, to his uncle; and the result has been the most perfect understanding on all sides, and the completest re-establishment of confidence on the part of my amiable guest.

My brother speaks with joy of never parting from me, and as every consideration must give place to the hope of protracting his existence, I shall not oppose his wishes, though I augur a removal from my cell, which I never before contemplated, in fulfilling them. My poor invalid talks of the Continent for next spring, and has heard so much of Turin, that thither he has set his heart on going in quest of that which he will never find. What is so far distant, may never come to pass; but I must prepare for it, and you know how painful to me is change of place; yet the bitterest potion is mercifully diluted for us, if we attempt to perform a duty with cheerfulness; and He who “tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,” will sustain me through whatever trials may be in prospect.

Winter has been for many years a heavy season with me. Long nights of watchfulness, and sad musing, impede the progress of our daily task; and the summer has been my comforter—its warm sunshine tempts abroad; its bowery shades invite to rest; its long days furnish occupation, and its short nights are often sweetly passed in gazing on the starry host, and pondering on those mansions of eternal blessedness that lie beyond the firmament. But this is mere indulgence, selfish indulgence, and my present cares have taught me a lesson, which I ought to have learned before. Engaged now from morning till night in trying to assuage the sufferings of another, I have not time to dwell on sorrow of my own; and winter glides away unperceived, except by the rapidity of its flight.

It will rejoice you to learn that our great concern prospers; and the earnest desire to infuse “that peace which passeth all understanding” into the sinking spirit, has been blessed with success beyond our hopes. No formal siege, no angry attack, no querulous disputation has been opened here upon error and scepticism. We read, we converse, but we patiently wait for the troubling of the waters ere assistance is offered. The forcing system surely deters many from entering the lists of proselytism from the evil of their ways. You have often heard me say that there is nothing like Butler’s Analogy for minds of a certain calibre, which must have strong food. Here is a new instance in proof of its excellence. Our invalid is charmed with this masterly work, and pores over it incessantly. We have got Tremaine too, of which so many various opinions are in circulation: but as we have not yet finished it, I do not say more at present.

Adieu, dearest friend,

All, to all, with true affection, ever yours is

C. Douglas.

LETTER XXX.
Frederick Douglas to Arthur Howard.

Glenalta.

Dearest Arthur,

Our letters to and fro, seem all to have reached their several destinations in safety, and yours have truly been a rich resource this winter in our retirement. Little did I imagine when we parted, that you and I were likely to meet in a foreign territory before we shook hands once more at Glenalta; but this letter is actually to be your manifesto of full power to treat in my uncle’s name for all such accommodations as may suit his circumstances and the number of our party at Turin, whither you are directing your steps, you say, and where you may expect to see us all, Mr. Oliphant excepted, in two months, should no unforeseen interventions mar the present plan of proceeding.

How extraordinarily the most unlooked for events come round, and sometimes turn up the very thing that we most desire, and which seemed the least within our own power to accomplish!

My college course just finished, my degree taken, and the mind experiencing the pains of liberty, not its pleasures, how delightful is this new direction of its activity! I cannot describe the feelings with which I paid my last accounts to Alma Mater, and took leave for ever of a heap of books which now that I am not obliged to read, I dare say I shall never be likely to open again.

Well, man is surely a perfect enigma! Venteroli, La Place, La Croix, all those volumes with the red, blue, and yellow, covers, which when lying on my table you used to call my parterre of tulips, and at which I have often worked till my mind was reduced to a state of complete inanition, became objects of affection when the task was finished,—not that I had any inclination to continue the toil, when the necessity for it had ceased; but I regretted the absence of that necessity, and sat mournfully gazing on those books which I had longed so often to lay upon the shelf. I felt exactly, I dare say, as a piece of clock-work would tell us that it does, were it able to speak, when the main spring, after being wound up to the utmost extremity of tension, is suddenly let go, and flies back with proportionate and painful velocity. In short, I know not how to express the collapsed, unstrung, nerveless condition of my mind, which I suppose was somewhat over wrought by study, and the repose for which I had so often sighed, had so little rest for me when it arrived, that I should gladly have preferred the labour of a coal porter to the relaxation which I had been anticipating with such impatience.

Doctor Evelyn is certainly right, when he says that every gratification to be truly felt, must be earned; and when I ceased to earn, I ceased to enjoy. All this egotism would be unpardonable if it were not necessary to your right understanding of my present gratitude for the delightful excitement in prospect.

Emily, Charlotte, Fanny, and I, have something new and stimulating to talk of, and our preparations for quitting home already occupy hands as well as heads. We build castles, lay plans, read books with reference to our travels, and, by-the-bye, Em. and I are so completely bitten by the idea of visiting the vallies of Piémont, that I prepare you now for being pressed into the service. We are longing, too, to be acquainted with your friend Falkland: and dear Phil. who has promised my poor uncle to accompany the party, writes to Stanhope to meet us at Turin with Mr. Oliphant, junior. So really it is quite an embarras de richesses, and I should be too happy were it not for a few counteracting circumstances which put a wholesome log about my neck, and restrain my buoyancy from breaking into any indecorous exuberance.

The first in magnitude of these, is my uncle’s state of health, which hangs a cloud over our spirits. He is so much beloved by us all, that to witness his decline, gentle and almost imperceptible as it is, gives the truest pain to every heart at Glenalta. For a long time after he arrived here, I resisted conviction, and could not believe that my dearest mother was not influenced by morbid melancholy in her forebodings; but she was too well skilled in every symptom of the disease to doubt its progress; and I grieve to say that every day adds testimony to the correctness of her predictions. Nothing immediate is to be dreaded, however, while so much bodily strength remains: but how sad it is to watch the increasing emaciation, and witness the gradual decay of one who is dear to your affections! You never saw a character so changed, or rather so developed under a new aspect, as that of our uncle. All appearance of harshness has subsided, every semblance of suspicion has given place to the kindest expression of trust and affection. The effects are painful as they are pleasing, as in learning to love we are taught to fear; and dread to lose what we have so lately known how to estimate in all its excellence.

In considering him, he suggests the analogy of a fine instrument of music that had been consigned to the cobwebs of neglect by the rude hands of some ferocious banditti, who, in their barbarous attempts to draw forth harmony, which refused to flow for them, crushed the sound-board and tore the strings, then flung the sweet cremona to the crowd, who knew nothing of its worth. Falling at length into the possession of one whose delicate ear recognizes its full perfections, the structure is repaired, the strings are tuned anew; and now the liquid tones are poured with generous freedom, to repay that skilful touch, that refined taste, which alone has power to unlock all its stores of melody. Such a musician is my mother, and the attachment with which she has inspired my uncle, is reflected on us all. Of you also dear Arthur he speaks as he ought to do; and I have pleasure in thinking, that when we meet, you will be loved by him, as you deserve to be by all who know you. Another grief is, that Domine is not to accompany us. His enthusiasm in pursuit of knowledge, and the abundant store which he already possesses, so peculiarly qualify him for travelling with delight to himself and benefit to others, that it is cruelly vexatious to go without him. To see his younger brother also, to whom he is attached with paternal tenderness, would be a great indulgence. Yet all this he insists on relinquishing, well aware, though my mother did not utter a syllable on the subject, that her mind was suffering a martyrdom at the idea of leaving Lawrence and all her poor people without some hostage in their hands, to give security of return, supply a channel of communication, disburse her weekly bounties, and watch over the old, the sick, the helpless, and forlorn. Even the assurance that Mr. Oliphant will remain at Glenalta, which is hailed as a blessing by the people, cannot prevent the bitterness of their lamentations; and these have such an effect in depressing the spirits of our little party, that I long till we are absolutely under weigh; I will not write again till we reach our journey’s end, as you may easily suppose how completely I shall be occupied in the interim.

The sisters will depend on me for shewing them every thing worth seeing as we go along, and I must try and not disappoint their expectations of my skill in quality of cicerone. Adieu. All unite in loves.

Ever your affectionate,

F. Douglas.

LETTER XXXI.
Miss Douglas to Miss Sandford.

Dearest Julia,

Here is my last letter from Glenalta, but as I promised to stake the course for you from hence to Turin, you may expect short notices at least from every resting place, and thus be enabled, as you affectionately wish, to enter into all the feelings of your friends, as they proceed in a journey which would be such unmixed happiness in prospect, were we not leaving sorrowful hearts behind, and taking with us a beloved relation whose fading form presents continual comment on the vanity of human joys.

I look upon my dear uncle’s expressive countenance, and sometimes fix my thoughts so intently on the world of spirits, while I contemplate the mild intelligence of that deep-sunk eye, that I lose all idea of an earthly travel, and could fancy that he is setting out upon a heaven-ward pilgrimage, in which it is graciously permitted us to be the companions of his way.

In some sort surely, this reverie is not the work of mere imagination; for that he is not long for this world I begin to believe. That he is destined for communion with the just made perfect in another, I cannot doubt.

He has an angel to pilot his progress, and in all things he obeys that voice which calls upon him to follow in the only path that leads to a life of immortal blessedness. Mamma is for ever employed in reading to, and conversing with him; and it is impossible to conceive any thing more interesting than the dialogues to which I am sometimes a listener.

We are to go to Marsden before we set out on our tour. My uncle wishes to see the place which he calls home—a word which fills me with melancholy when he pronounces it. Alas! I fear that Marsden will not be long a home to him; but some repose will be required before he proceeds on his journey. I think that we are to sail from Southampton, and travel through Normandy to Paris, which my uncle insists on our seeing before we take up our abode at Turin. My mind is at present in such a state of agitation, that I scarcely know how to define the emotions which are in continual conflict, at one moment presenting nothing but images of grief, and in the next exhibiting bright hope and trust, with all the airy train of “pleasures yet untried.” If I could take Glenalta, and all the dear Penates that I must leave behind; but if, and if, would lead us into labyrinths which I must not enter, or perhaps I might feel not satisfied with dislodging this little valley, but increasing in my demands, might pray that the kingdom of Kerry, perhaps the whole of Ireland might accompany me; and improved as are the powers of accommodation by the magical working of steam, I question the capacity of any packet, on any construction, to transport the hundredth part of those objects which my troublesome affections would have ever present, were such things possible.

Fairies are out of date, and we must be resigned. Worthy Mr. Bentley takes the approaching departure of my uncle so much to heart, that I shall not be surprised if Mount Prospect, like Birnam Wood, should put itself in march, and come to Turin instead of Dunsinane. Mrs. Fitzroy used to be very entertaining in her attacks on our good friend Mr. Bentley, and asked him one day, when he had said something that provoked her, what could possess him to give such a name to his place; adding, “I assure you, Mr. Bentley, that sort of name is quite generic; it marks a class so decidedly that I could not be mistaken in peopling a Mount Prospect, a Bettyville, or O’Sullivan’s Lodge, with exactly appropriate inhabitants, and such as I do not imagine that you would like to acknowledge for your relations.”

Our neighbour comically replied, “Madam, if what you say be true, a name is of more importance than I thought, and I feel less inclined than ever to part with that which has the power of conjuring up to your view my grandfather, honest Roger Bentley, who named the farm which I inhabit Mount Prospect. No, Madam, fond as I am of my ancestors, though they were neither possessed of rank or fortune, I should be ashamed, if, instead of being sheltered by a solid lump of a house fit for our climate, I was perched upon the top of a hill in some fine Italian edifice, spread out with corridors, supported on piazzas, and looking as if it had been blown, by contrary winds, like a tropical bird, into our bogs by accident. Your Tivolis, Valambrosas, and Rialtas are capital absurdities, Madam; and I should blush were I obliged by filial respect to defend them; but, thank God, my parents were plain worthy people, who built a snug square house, and called it Mount Prospect.”

Mrs. Fitzroy told him that the wings, colonnades, and transalpine nomenclature, were as ridiculous in her eyes as in his, “but,” added she, “I find you very ready to inveigh against one class of follies, while you are all clemency towards others; and as to the names of your country seats in Ireland, they are quite a reproach to you as a nation. If I hear that I am going to visit at Oakpark, I am certain that I shall see a desert moor, with a few ten-year old elms, thinly scattered, and paled in with hurdles, to prevent the sheep from barking them. If I am to call at Hazlewood, I am equally sure to find no wood at all, or at most an old hawthorn bush in solitary abstraction. Hollybrook has, I am convinced, neither brook nor holly near it. Rockview has, probably, not a stone larger than an orange to be seen within its precincts; and so on of a thousand other misnomers that I could enumerate.”

I remember that Mr. Bentley was rising in choler, as he felt lowered from not being ready at reply; but dear Domine flew to the rescue, and seeing the commotion of our worthy friend, he brought him off with a sort of triumph, by assuring Mrs. Fitzroy that oaks had stood where now there are only the ghosts of these forest kings; that rocks had been where now the quarryman’s pick-axe has left a level plain; that brooks, which meandered once, are now dry; and that our names are often remnants of our former, not indications of our present pride. I forget how the conversation ended, but it amused me at the time that it happened, and slipped out of my recollection, till having written Mount Prospect, that name revived the remembrance of a combat which diverted us.

I shall pity George Bentley, when he loses so many friends with whom he is accustomed to pass a part of almost every day, but he will bear it better than Frederick would do in the same situation. How wonderfully the good and evil of life are balanced! Sensibility increases every pleasure, but as certainly augments every pain. George seems always to enjoy a sort of calm tranquillity, which generally defends him from any species of excitement. Is he happier than those of more sensitive structure? perhaps about the same. He gains on the one side what he loses on the other. He is an excellent young man, but he wants light and shade, that is, he wants variety. Characters, like countries, may be too little diversified, and in the midst of the highest cultivation, I should sigh for the sweet glens, and bowery labyrinths that lie in retreat, and offer their refreshing charms to those alone who love to seek their deep recesses. We hear from Arthur frequently, and I grieve to tell you that his letters bring us sad accounts of the Craytons. Mr. Otway, I believe, has made an effort to obtain some money from my uncle, but with what success I know not; however I greatly fear that no moderate sum would be of more than temporary use, for Lord C. is a determined gambler, and poor Adelaide has plunged into every sort of extravagance without supplies adequate to sustain it. Dear Arthur’s anxiety is corroding his spring time of life; and my poor aunt, I am told, is not lightening his uneasiness. These are gloomy subjects, and I will release my dearest Julia from their melancholy influence.—Adieu dear friend,

Your affectionate,

Emily Douglas.

LETTER XXXII.
From the Same to the Same.

Marsden.

My dearest Julia,

Here we are, and my letters have so punctually informed you of each stage in our journey, that I resolved on arriving at this beautiful place to look about me, and grant a respite to my pen, ere I gave you an account of Marsden and its surrounding scenery. The mere fact of our arrival was mentioned by mamma to your dear aunt; and at the distance of a fortnight from the short letter which conveyed that intelligence to our beloved friends at Checkley, I gladly resume my office of journalist, recommencing my task with the delightful news that my uncle is a great deal better than when we first reached this house. The symptoms of his disorder, at least, appear to be suspended, and it is impossible not to yield, in some measure, to the sweet persuasions of hope. Mamma shakes her head, and, though she will not repress our joyful anticipations, I perceive with pain that we, the young and inexperienced, make no impression on her mind, when we endeavour to gain her over to our own bright visions of recovery. Whether it be the change of air, the novelty of the scene, or that we are naturally inclined to feel a particular interest in whatever is our own, I will not pretend to determine; but certain it is, that from some happy cause my dear uncle is apparently much invigorated, and seems to enjoy life doubly himself, since he has come to a place where he is the immediate dispenser of pleasure to all around him. His desire to see us gratified, stimulates every action; and we are obliged to suppress, with care, every half-formed wish, lest he should be led into more exertion to indulge our curiosity than is good for him. Julia, you bid me tell you truly how I like your noble country, and you tell me also to employ the same candour in describing my feelings respecting the people with whom I meet. Fortunately for me you were born in Ireland, though all your early associations are English, and therefore I feel bold in taking some liberties with this country, which all your encouragement could not induce me to venture upon, were it your actual birthplace. The beauty of England indeed I admit, without any drawback, and if I confess that I love my own hills and vallies better, such predilection is easily resolvable into affections which may often bestow pre-eminence where it is intrinsically wanting, and raise the barren wild without depressing the cultured garden. This kingdom with which I was only acquainted before as a child, and which therefore possesses all the charms of novelty in addition to its other attractions, in my eyes appears a perfect paradise, so rich, so cultivated is every part of it; and if I sometimes long for a tangled dell like that of the “Retreat,” I am bound in honesty to confess what an extent of cheerless waste I must travel over, ere I could be indulged by a sight of its soft shades again.

Here then there is a fair set-off which squares accounts; but I come now to the people, who bold the same relation, in every country, with the land which they inhabit that the kernel of a nut bears to the shell; and here I unhesitatingly declare my preference for the Irish character beyond any specimens which I have as yet met with in English society, provided always that you suppose me to compare people of education with each other. If you descend in the scale, the balance is greatly in favour of the English, whose trading and yeomen classes exhibit patterns which I wish my countrymen would copy; but in the extreme of the series we Hibernians hold up our heads again, and though our peasants may be, and alas are, more meanly fed, clothed, and lodged, than the sleek sons of Albion, there is a union of heart and intelligence to be found in every Kerry cabin, of which I would not give up one little grain, for all the artificial benefits in the power of bacon and beans to confer upon these votaries of good cheer. Certainly, one half at least of every Englishman amongst the lower orders must be stomach, and if so, a stranger need not be surprised at the unceasing anxiety expressed to provide for the due support of such extensive capacity; but there is more room for the exercise of our affections, where the mere animal range of the human economy is not the Aaron’s rod that swallows up all the rest. The eating and drinking here are quite astonishing to one accustomed to our aërial diet; and I have no doubt that an English mind is subdued by weight of matter, as effectually as fire is smothered by the pressure of wet sods.

There is something so beneath the dignity of human kind, when compared with the inferior creation, in submitting thus entirely to animal control, and being only the thing which a full or scanty meal may determine, that, much as I desire to behold some amelioration of my dear Paddy’s lot, I hope I shall never live to see his bright imagination quenched in ale, nor his light heels fettered by the leaden influence of over-feeding on beef and pork.

But to return to Marsden (which, though sold from the caprice of its former possessor for £50,000, is said to be worth double that sum), it seems to me a fit residence for a prince. We have a splendid house, magnificent grounds, hot-houses, conservatories, and all the long line of fine and handsome appendages to rank and fortune, for which I have made the discovery, that I possess no taste, unless upon the quiet scale of Glenalta, where, by the bye, we have just as good and as pretty things in the fruit and flower way as any situation can boast. The views from Marsden are superb, and on a clear day command an immense extent.

We have had crowds of visitors coming to pay their compliments to my uncle, who has the reputation of being enormously rich; and whether it be that there is really nothing to interest in the character of our neighbourhood, or that the heartlessness of an acquaintance formed on the ground of mere wealth, has nothing congenial with my disposition in the nature of its cement, I perhaps ought not to determine too hastily; but though we have seen a great many people, I have not as yet met with any who has left on my mind a distinct impression. I had often heard that the English are reserved, and I expected to find them silent. This is not the case as far as my experience extends; but were I to furnish a motto for the talkers who have fallen in my way, it should be “beaucoup parler et rien dire.” To be sure we have come at a bad time, for we are in the midst of an election for the county, which occupies every creature, rich and poor, to the exclusion of every topic unconnected with itself; and yet, though I have tried to interest myself in that which engages the attention of all, down to the little children who have got party badges for play-things, and have learned to shout for the candidates to which they severally belong, I have not heard a single syllable in which a stranger could sympathize—not a word of parliamentary fitness—no mention of head or heart that could induce one to hope for this one or the other amongst the combatants. I am sick of the sounds, “weight of influence, county men, borough interests, large estates, numerous tenantry,” &c.

My uncle has made a point of our accepting several invitations, though he is not able to dine out himself; and the only pleasure which I derive from compliance with his wishes in this matter, is found in the amusement which our remarks afford to this dear and pleasant host, who would be a gem in society himself were bodily weakness not to impede the flow of a mind replete with sense and information. To enjoy at home the conversation of three such beings as mamma, Mr. Otway, and my uncle, has the effect perhaps of making me fastidious; but the goddess of dulness seems to have taken under her especial care every dinner-party in which I have been forced to mingle since I came into Hampshire. While we are in the drawing-room there is an attempt sometimes made to take us into the circle, which would be very diverting to witness as a mere looker on, but which is very fatiguing to those who must reply. There is a certain activity of manner, apparently quite distinct from natural good spirits, which seems to be the fashion at present amongst the young people of my own sex; and they assail me with an incessant giggle, forming a running accompaniment to the silliest, most objectless questions about Ireland, as if it were a kingdom in the moon. One tells me that she wonders I do not speak with a brogue; another asks whether there are public amusements in Dublin, a third inquires whether “the castle” is really a castle or not, and before it is possible to answer, hops off to something else; a fourth absolutely entreated me to tell her whether there were not still existing in the remoter parts of the island, a few of the aboriginal wild Irish with wings, and laughed immoderately at her own wit. All these flat stupidities are uttered with an air of hilarity so perfectly uncalled for, by the occasion, that it makes me stare. If the object be to proclaim that the spirits never flag, the method is round-about, only proving the fact by implication that if people can laugh without reason, they must, by an irresistible argument, be supposed capable of excitement when any cause of merriment appears.

From girls of my own age I have flown to the matrons, in hope of some relief from “lively dulness which ever loves a joke;” and so far I have not been disappointed, that in joining the elder groups I have found rest, because, not being prepared to enter upon the subjects which they discussed, I have quietly sat by, recovering my spirits while they talked of their nurseries, indispositions, and all the births, marriages, and deaths, past, present, and to come, of the whole county.

As mamma never leaves my uncle, she is spared much weariness of mind, which would not be counterpoised to her by the novelty which makes some amends to us, the younger branches of the household. Mr. Otway performs the part of Chaperone; and on our return home we find the cords of affection more tightly drawn towards that delightful society with which heaven, in its bounteous mercy has blessed our happy fire-side. It is, however, only doing justice to inform you, that we have not yet seen some charming people who are reported to inhabit this vicinity. One family is in France, and two others, who are I am told really worth knowing, are prevented from coming to see us by domestic affliction. You are to take my saucy criticisms, then, with due allowance, and not conclude me to be an indiscriminating bigot, who finds fault with all things exterior to her own particular pale. With this qualification I will continue my comments, and venture to express a wonder, that where wealth and situation lead us to expect good breeding, there should be such a deficiency of it as to exclude from conversation all who are not intimate through locality with a petty circle of subjects that possess no general interest, and are incapable of eliciting any one observation in which a stranger can participate. How can people fancy themselves agreeable while they are telling the minutest particulars of a teething fit, or cackling over an interminable list of weddings and wedding wardrobes? Amongst the gentlemen, the elders devote to prophecying upon the probable effects of the present drought, all their mental powers which are not absorbed by the election, and amongst the more youthful there is the most deplorable lack of intellect in all that I have heard them say to each other, while to the female part of their acquaintance nothing can exceed the inanity of their addresses: “Were you at the flower-shew?” “Shall you go to the race-balls?” “Do you ride?” “Do you like rowing?” are the only sounds that live upon my memory, and the above questions have been asked to Charlotte and me so repeatedly, that we might almost be excused if, like Dr. Franklin on entering an American town, to save the trouble of inquiry, we were to set up a little placard answering in large letters, Yes or No, to these and some similar interrogatories, under a supposition that they will be proposed anew at every turn of the street. It is sometimes almost ludicrous to see a young man suddenly start from long forgetfulness that a lady was sitting on one side while he had been discussing the merits, perhaps of a fishing-fly on the other; and turning rapidly round, propose some interrogation quite unconnected with what he had uttered the moment before. This division of topics into male and female genders is very unlike what I have been accustomed to, and strikes me as a marked difference between English and Irish society, by no means favourable to the former. We were the day before yesterday at a great dinner, and I sat next to a Mr. Johnson, who is eldest son to a baronet of large fortune in this neighbourhood. So long a time had elapsed before he condescended to speak to me, that I had hopes of being entirely forgotten, which, however mortifying to my pride, was compensated by the kindness of a nice crisp little elderly gentleman on my left hand, who, with great goodnature, talked to me of his crops in such a manner as to make me feel that he thought himself conversing with a rational creature, capable of estimating the signs of the times, and understanding the difference between wheat and barley, turnips and mangel worsel. But though Mr. Johnson had sat during half an hour with his back turned upon me while he was talking over, in horrible detail, a pugilistic match fought near Portsmouth a few days ago, the movement of my head in bowing to some one who had asked me to drink wine, brought me in a flash of recollection to his mind, and I could scarcely preserve my gravity, when, like lightning, he whisked round, and said, as if for a wager, it was so rapidly done, “Do you waltz?” I feared that this was a beginning which augured a long list of balls, respecting which I should have the humiliating confession to make that I had not been at one in my life; but I was spared this lowering avowal as the entire notice which he took of the simple negative with which I replied was contained in the monosyllable “Oh,” which, by the bye, is the most comprehensive little word except nice in the colloquial intercourse of England; and from the variety of meaning which the several intonations of voice with which it is pronounced, are capable of imparting, assumes as wide a range of interpretation as the “Spectator” allots to the exercise of the fan. There is the oh, inquiring; the oh, surprised; the oh, satisfied; the oh, contemptuous; the oh, affected; the oh, languid; the oh, inquisitive; the oh, doubtful; in short, there is scarcely a state of the mind which an English provincialist cannot contrive to convey by a correct modulation of the many keys upon which may be played those two letters; and as for the twin-brother of this multum in parvo—nice, I heard it on one day lately, applied to Lord Eldon, who, a lady near me, said, was a “nice chancellor.” Afterwards to the French nation, who, a gentleman opposite, declared, are the nicest people in the world; then to Der Freischütz, Miss Stephens, a calve’s head, wild ducks, the Hampshire breed of pigs, red Lammas wheat, Cheshire cheese, cream, coffee, and the Courier! Does nice mean any, or every thing?

An old gentleman called here this morning, who amused me so much by a dry good humour, which brought Mr. Bentley, and visions of my beloved Glenalta to memory, that I long to be better acquainted with him. I owe him my gratitude also for entering the lists most gallantly, in quality of my defender, and saying for me, to that tiresome Mr. Johnson, whom I have already introduced to you, what I never could have said for myself. They entered the library together, and found me reading the newspapers to my uncle, who, on perceiving that I was going to make my escape, gently restrained my movement by laying his hand on my arm, and desiring that I should stay and help him to entertain his visitors. When they came in, and the usual comments on the weather and state of the roads were ended, the old gentleman appeared occupied in conversation with my uncle, when the young one turned round to me, and taking up the paper which I had laid down, with that self-sufficient air of conscious superiority which so many young men ridiculously assume, and in a tone which implied as much contempt as indifference would permit him to express, drawled out “Pray, Miss Douglas, are you a politician?” I knew not what to say, and I suppose looked as foolish as I felt, which old Mr. Bolton appeared to observe, and with an alacrity of kindness worthy of the chivalrous ages, he made an answer for me, which, if it did not satisfy, at least silenced the enquirer. “I hope that Miss Douglas takes pleasure in reading the newspapers,” said my knight, “newspapers contain the history of the present time, and while that of the past is read by all who do not desire to be branded for their ignorance (here he cast a sidelong glance at the younger visitor), I see no reason why a lady should disdain useful knowledge, because it is not yet presented to her in the form of a book;” then changing the subject, before I had power to speak, he added, “But, Miss Douglas, pray tell me how you like Hampshire, and what you think of John Bull, who, I am afraid, seems a rude sort of animal in your eyes?”

This was said so gaily, that I did not suffer the least confusion, and resolving that I would not bring discredit by my niaiserie on dear Ireland, I took courage, and replied, that Hampshire was beautiful, and when the election was over I would tell him how I liked the inhabitants, as then I might hope to become acquainted with them.

Mr. Bolton laughed heartily, and answered with the pleasantest animation, “Be assured, my dear young lady, that the election which you deprecate, is a better friend than you think, and saves you from the fancy-ring and white mustard-seed, which are the favourite topics that have succeeded the Catholic question just gone by. Now I conceive, from your countenance, that you would not like the pugilistic platform better than the hustings, nor find the stomach a more interesting subject of conversation than the poll: what say you?”

I was delighted with my champion, and told him merrily that he was very right, and I would take care how I repined again.

“Believe me,” continued he, “that you, who seem to have been brought up in the school of nature and reason, have little idea how widely what is called the world, departs from both. It is not enough now-a-days to furnish your house, and adorn your person according to a received rule, you must eat, drink, sleep, think, or not think, fashionably. You must be of one consent in sickness as in health; if indisposed, you must be fashionably indisposed, and as fashionably cured. Four or five years ago every body of any pretension was afflicted by determination of blood to the head, and hence, lancet, leeches, and cupping, were in wonderful activity. The head is now entirely out of fashion, except amongst the dandies and phrenologists, and the stomach takes precedence of every other topic, in a well organized society. As you are young, and have not perhaps made your debut, I will give you a hint or two to prepare you for good company. Young ladies of your age, play, sing, waltz, and dress; talk of Der Freischütz, Weber, and Pasta; laugh a great deal when there is nothing to laugh at, which shews ability, for any one could be merry if a subject were allowed, and are silly, envious, and unfeeling ad libitum. Young gentlemen of my friend Mr. Johnson’s age, ride, fight, row, play whist, hunt, fish, shoot, and talk nonsense; occasionally dancing and flirting, as the necessity of circumstances may require; but by no means spoiling your sex, by paying any of those polite attentions which might lead to insubordination, the more alarming, as were your masters to lose any thing of their presumed superiority, they might be ill prepared to recover the lapse of power, unless by a barbarous appeal to physical strength. The matron class you will find as well as the well-bred men of a certain standing, eating mutton chops, at intervals, to the amount of a certain number of ounces, with which no mixture of liquid is permitted, from eight o’clock in the morning till the same hour in the evening. You will see them likewise swallowing white mustard-seed by wholesale, and swearing to its sovereign efficacy in every possible disorder of the human frame. It will naturally suggest itself to you, that any demand upon the brains would be unreasonable, now that the casket which contains them is less carefully attended to than before, and therefore, as an act of justice, fashion very equitably dispenses altogether with the presence of intellect, which is enjoying a long vacation.”

I love this old man for his good humour and good sense; and, more than for either, because his sallies excessively diverted the invalid left in my charge by the rest of the party, who had gone to return a visit at some distance from Marsden, and who came back before Mr. Bolton had taken his departure.

Mr. Johnson went first, and when he had made his bow, my uncle asked whether his father, Sir Thomas Johnson, were not a very rich man.

“Yes,” replied Mr. Bolton, “he is called by courtesy a rich man. He has an immense extent of property, which gives him considerable influence; but he is so poor, notwithstanding, that he cannot command a hundred pounds in ready money, while he is governed by such an inordinate pride that he would rather die than shorten his rental by an inch of paper, in selling off land enough to pay the charges on his estate. He is, however, a kind hearted, hospitable man, who married late in life, and thinks his only child, who has just been paying his respects to you, a sans pareil, whose hand will amply recompense the largest sacrifice of fortune that can be made to attain it. It is now his great object in life to marry his son, and, though he idolizes pedigree, he thinks his own so transcendent that it will ennoble any inferior race; for which reason he gives it to be understood that family is less an object with him than wealth.”

“And pray,” said my uncle, “what sort of young man is Mr. Johnson?”

“Empty, pompous, and good-natured,” answered Mr. Bolton. “He has walked so many years up and down a long gallery of portraits, that he honestly believes ‘the boast of heraldry’ to belong peculiarly to his house. As he was never sent to school, he had no opportunity of comparing himself with his superiors, and was not compelled to find his true level by the discipline of a fagging system, or the aristocracy of rank. A private tutor indulged his early indolence; toad-eaters and retainers flattered his youthful vanity; and a short stay at Oxford has put the finish to his education by sending him home an accomplished boxer, rower, and judge of champagne. He is, as may naturally be expected, very extravagant, and such a darling with his parents, that, notwithstanding the difficulty of raising supplies, no curb has ever been put upon his expenditure.”

“Then,” observed my uncle, “I suppose that he is himself also looking after a wife.”

“Precisely so,” answered Mr. Bolton, “and I have no doubt is certain of success wherever he may fix his attention.”

I could not help thinking how little I should envy the future Lady Johnson, whoever she might be, but the conversation was interrupted here by mamma’s return; and in a few minutes Mr. Bolton took his leave.

I have written a long letter, but I know that you are interested in all that we say and do, so I need never apologize for being minute in my details. My uncle has some business to do which will detain him here for some weeks longer, and I shall hope to hear from you and write again before we sail for France.

Well, though we are here in the midst of all that is beautiful and luxurious, my heart pines after Glenalta, and I dream continually of the scene at parting from so many dear objects that we left behind. Switzerland, however, will charm me I am sure, and I promise myself a rich feast in those Alpine wilds which we are to visit. How astonishing to me is the preference which I often hear expressed for the artificial world over that of nature! Not all the splendour of this fine place could ever win me from the dear heathy mountains of Kerry. Fine things do not warm my heart, nor captivate my imagination; and I never find myself coveting my neighbours’ goods as I pass through the sumptuous dwellings that surround us here. All my violations of the tenth commandment are kept for an humbler scale of beauty, but one far more interesting in my view of the matter.

The sisters unite in kindest love; and now, dearest Julia, farewell.

Your affectionate,

Emily Douglas.

LETTER XXXIII.
Ed. Otway, Esq. to Rev. Mr. Oliphant.

Marsden.

My dear and excellent Friend,

I begin my letter with news which, if it convey to you in any proportion the pleasure which its announcement imparts to me, may well be called cheering intelligence. From the time that General Douglas heard of our late rector’s illness, he was anxious to procure the succession of that parish, in which Glenalta stands, for you; but doubtful of his power to accomplish the end in view, he begged that you might not be informed of his design. Last night’s post put us in possession at the same moment of the papers which mention Mr. Green’s death, and a letter stating the agreeable information that all difficulties in the way to your preferment are smoothed by the general’s promise to provide for a young person, by the gift of a small living, of which he has the advowson, in this country. The joy of this little circle is quite vociferous. Your young friends have not slept, I believe, since the glad tidings were communicated; and would gladly resign the happiness of travelling into new scenes, for the gratification of helping to make the bonfires which they think will redden the horizon in token of good will upon the present occasion. I heard Fanny telling her brother this morning that she had no doubt St. John’s Eve never presented such a blaze upon the Beacon Hill, as your appointment will kindle. This is a bold prophecy, but she stakes her credit on the justness of her prediction.

Now, my dear Oliphant, I have a request to make, which you will not refuse. The glebe house wants a library to make it comfortable. I enclose you a draught for £500, and desire that, by the time of my return, I may find you in possession of a room in which you can write your sermons, and pore over your Elzevirs in all the quiet of abstraction from household cares. Poor Mrs. Green and her children will be desirous to leave their present abode, I dare say; and you will oblige me by requesting them, in my name, to make use of Lisfarne, as an asylum, while it may suit their convenience. When they have evacuated your new premises, desire Barnes, my steward, to send trees, shrubs, and plants, of whatever kind you may want, to furnish your garden and shrubbery.

And now I must tell you an anecdote of your friend Frederick, which will delight your heart. His uncle, who wins hourly upon our affections, alarmed us a few days ago by a fainting fit, which seemed to threaten sudden dissolution, but before the arrival of a physician, for whom we sent to the next town, his sister’s skill had brought him back to life, and his eyes opened on a group of such tender and genuine mourners, as must have gratified the best feelings of his breast. For a day or two Dr. Pancras looked grave, and paused in giving his opinion; but the dear general has rallied considerably, and wishes to hasten his departure.

On Tuesday evening Mr. Peltry, the solicitor, reached Marsden from town, bringing with him the title deeds of this place, and some other papers of consequence. On the following day, after breakfast, my valued friend sent for me to his study, desiring that Frederick should join us immediately. As soon as we were together he took his nephew by the hand and said, “My dear boy, I have sent to London for the gentleman who arrived last night, in order that I may legally dispose of my property, and provide for some who are dear to me before ‘I go hence, and am no more seen.’ I intend Marsden for you, and wish that this kind guardian (turning his eyes upon me), who has aided your beloved mother in the task which she has so admirably performed, should be witness to my purposes. There is but one condition which I desire to propose in leaving Marsden to you. It is that you should all live here during the next five years, or till the marriage of your sisters may naturally occasion a dispersion of the family. After this trial, which will be of sufficient length to ascertain the wishes of each individual, if you should prefer Ireland to England, you are at liberty to bring this place to the hammer. I bought it myself; it is no hereditary possession. I shall soon leave it, and should inflict rather than confer a kindness were I to impose a restriction on your inclinations that might have the effect of converting what I mean to be a benefit into a burthen.”

Frederick, whose face had expressed every variety and gradation of feeling which such an address was calculated to inspire in a breast which is the abode of all that is most noble, and most tenderly affectionate, could restrain his emotion no longer. He pressed his uncle’s pale hand to his lips with ardour, and bathed it with tears of honest grief and affection. My poor friend was deeply agitated, which his nephew perceiving, he struggled with his own feelings to avoid exciting those of the invalid; and, making an effort, thanked his benefactor with that warm yet dignified expression of countenance and manner, which, while it bespoke the vividness of gratitude, betrayed no symptom whatsoever of joy in the mere acquisition of fortune.

“Now then, we will call in Mr. Peltry, and you may go, my dear Frederick,” said the general.

“Oh not yet,” replied the generous youth. “Do not banish me for a little while; I have an earnest request to make, and only hesitate lest you, my dear uncle, should think me for a moment, either ungrateful or presumptuous.”

“I cannot think you either,” answered General Douglas; “proceed, tell me what you would have, and if I can, I will indulge you.”

“Forgive me then,” said Frederick, “if I speak all that is on my heart. I say nothing to deter you from making a final disposition of your property, because every man must feel a weight of anxiety taken from his mind when he has performed an act by which he provides for the future interest of those who are dear to him. Such an act, far from shortening his days, is likely to prolong them, by removing a painful pressure from his mind; and therefore I shall have pleasure in thinking that this deed is done, as well as in being thought worthy of mention in it. But, dearest uncle, a slight remembrance in point of vulgar estimation may be rendered supremely valuable by the manner of bestowing it, and should I survive you, any mark of your affection will be preserved with love and veneration while I live. May I then, without dread of offending, by the appearance of dictating to your better judgment, suggest Arthur Howard as a fitter representative of your fortune than I am. He is a noble fellow; and by the disinterestedness of his conduct, likely to be reduced from high expectations to almost abject poverty. He is at this moment raising money to keep his brother-in-law, Lord Crayton, out of jail, and prevent the effects of such event upon his mother’s shattered nerves. I, on the contrary, have been educated with the view to improving my patrimony by professional labour, the idea of which is not at all displeasing to me; and I frankly own that the love of my native soil is so strongly impressed upon my heart, that little Glenalta has greater charms for me than a ducal residence in any other place could possess.”

Frederick sat on the sofa by his uncle, and held his hand while he spoke. When he paused, the general clasped him round the neck, and concealing his tears, which were flowing fast, by leaning his head on his nephew’s shoulder, he exclaimed, “There I recognize the son of Henry Douglas! Yes, Frederick, you are worthy of the father and the mother from whom you spring. Your fine disposition shall be indulged, though not in exactly the manner which you suggest. You shall be lord of Marsden: but I promise you to take care of Arthur by leaving him such a sum, as shall free his estate from a portion, at least, of its incumbrances; and now, dear boy, leave me; I must not lose time, and I am anxious to see Mr. Peltry. Say nothing, I charge you, of this conversation to your mother and sisters, I know them too well not to be assured that the recital of what has passed between us, would give them pain, and I wish to spare them every uneasiness in my power to prevent them from suffering.”

Your young friend then left the room, the solicitor was sent for, and such testamentary arrangements were made by this interesting being, who has just come to make us feel the full value of what we are about to lose, as reflect the highest honour on his justice and impartiality.

We shall soon set out, and I feel a mournful presentiment that we shall return to England a diminished number. The progress of my poor friend’s disease is very slow, and imperceptible, and he has intervals of apparent improvement, so encouraging to our hopes, that had experience not frequently proved how delusive are these temporary amendments, we should be led from time to time to increase the measure of disappointment by giving way to fallacious expectations.

I am summoned to attend him in an airing, and must say adieu.

Your faithful friend,

Ed. Otway.

LETTER XXXIV.
Mrs. Douglas to the Rev. Mr. Oliphant.

My very dear good Friend,

If my pen had kept pace with my heart, my congratulations would have reached you long ere this; but you know me too well to doubt their truth; and it would be equally injurious to your confidence, and my sincerity, were I to expend the short time I allow myself for writing, in apologies which are unnecessary.

Accept my heart-felt rejoicings on your preferment, which I consider as providential to myself. Your task was concluded. You had safely piloted my beloved child through his collegiate course; and would have missed your wonted employment, while no other sufficiently marked to occupy your whole time, seemed to detain you henceforward at Glenalta, I dreaded to hear that you must leave me; but wherever duty called you would have followed her voice, and could I have asked you to stay if conscience disapproved the lengthened sojourn? Now you belong to us. All the energies of your admirable nature will be employed where your old friends may still benefit by them. You will continue to be our teacher and friend. You will become our pastor, and be reverenced and beloved by the poor, whose blessings you have so often felt in grateful showers on your head. I have settled in my own mind that you will not possess a comfortable home without inviting your worthy sister and her only child, to share it with you; and if such be your intention, you must permit me to assist in furnishing your dwelling for a lady’s reception. Much as we have been in the habit of looking up to you, I am not sure that we should defer to your taste in such a matter.

I write by this post to Dublin, from whence you will receive my “bread and salt,” as the Russians call this species of offering to a new establishment. Oh, my dear friend, how deep is my gratitude to the Almighty giver of good, for the mercies I continually experience! It would have been a great alloy to the happiness of knowing how comfortably you are placed beyond the reach of those sordid cares which depress the spirit, had you owed the independence now conferred, to a stranger. I must have felt some pleasure under any circumstances at your being enabled to continue that character to which your pupils once assigned the appellation of the “good Benefico (the good giant),” but your little volatile friend Fanny, said to me a few days ago, and reflected my own feelings as she spoke, “Mamma, there are but two people in the world besides you to whom I cannot grudge the delight of making dear Mr. Oliphant a man of easy fortune; and those two are my uncle and Mr. Otway.” But this theme, all inspiring as it is, must not make me forgetful of your request.

You earnestly desire to be made acquainted as minutely as possible with the progress of my dearly loved brother’s mind towards that heavenly rest, without the possession of which, the approach of that mysterious change which awaits all created beings, must be awful beyond description. You know that I was fortunate in seizing upon the character of my brother’s mind at an early period of our acquaintance. One of the first outlines that I took, discovered to me his strong aversion to control, even in conversation. I perceived that having been long accustomed to exert an unrestrained free will in the regulation of his own occupations as well as amusements, and having also seen so much of design in the ordinary intercourse of the world as to make him suspicious of every formal attack upon his opinions, he met with a sort of predetermined opposition the slightest attempt to alter his views, upon any subject of interest. With this clue, I pursued my way, turning aside from, rather than courting, any opportunity of conversing upon topics respecting which I burned to know his thoughts. The usual style of our conversation was of that mixed nature which gave me an early insight into a mind replete with various powers. Its predominating tone was that of playfulness, and a common observer might have been borne out in calling General Douglas a humourist; but though possessed of all the requisites to inspire mirth, as well as taste its influence, I could see a dark cloud gathering underneath a smile, and catch a half breathed sigh, that wafted to my heart’s core the sounds, “All, all is vanity—delusion all,” when gaiety seemed to dance around his heart. What would I not have given at such moments to have seized a hand, and with affectionate energy pressed admission to the sacred repository of gloomy contemplation; but the time was not come. A premature remark, however tenderly whispered, would have alarmed a retiring and delicate, as well as proud mind, unaccustomed to see itself exposed to view. I therefore waited till opportunity should naturally invite communication; and such presented itself ere long after my brother’s arrival amongst us at Glenalta.

You may remember the time when you and Frederick were reading Butler’s Analogy as part of the College course. My dear boy was fond of talking over with me each chapter as he proceeded, and I determined to read that inestimable work anew, for the purpose of refreshing my memory, in conversation with him. One day, employed in this manner, I was sitting alone in my dressing-room, when my brother tapped at the door, saying that you wanted me for a few minutes in the study, and asked whether he might remain till my return, as he also wished to speak with me. On my return, I found him eagerly devouring the chapter on a future state; and so absorbed was he, that at first he did not perceive my entrance into the room. When he did, he started, and said, “Caroline, I have to apologize for taking up your book to see what you were reading, and I find something that has struck me: but I make a discovery that you are fond of these dark themes. Why have you never broached these subjects with me?” “Because,” said I, “that they are both dark and deep, and lie hidden between us and our Creator. The controversies of men are seldom beneficial, and more frequently excite the passions than satisfy the pride of human presumption.” “Do you mean, then, to say,” replied our dear inquirer, “that religion is incapable of proof?” “So far from it,” answered I, “that every object in nature bears proof to demonstration of the great leading tenets of religion; but I mean to say, such is the perverseness of our hearts, that we repel, when offered by another, those arguments which we should be proud to originate ourselves, and refuse conviction, unless our vanity be gratified by taking some credit to itself, at least in the selection of those reasons which operate a change of opinion. For this cause we suffer books to teach, though we deny a friend the delight of converting us from the evil of our ways, and why? Alas! in human weakness we have the answer. The choice of a book is a free act; the continuing to read it is a free act. The advocacy of its doctrines, if they be arrayed with power, talent, and genius, reflects honour on our discrimination, and, to a certain degree, identifies us with the author, who perhaps has vanished from the arena of our paltry rivalry, having been called to his account; or, should he still be alive, is removed from the immediate field of competition. I know these humiliating facts experimentally, for I have doubted, and I have been perverse.”

From this moment, every reserve on my brother’s part was at an end. He looked steadfastly in my face, with an expression which seemed to ask, is this indeed the truth, and not said to inveigle me into confidence? His own penetration assured him that I practised no deception. He took my hand, and spoke to the following effect:

“You are the very being to whom my whole soul shall be unfolded. Much is locked up within my breast that ‘ferments for want of air.’ You are right; you have in a few words drawn my picture; and so truly, that I now confess I should not have acknowledged this moment the fidelity of your portrait, had you boasted the superiority over me, of one who had not been drawn aside yourself from the path to which you have returned. But though your having once doubted, is a bond between us, like that of a common language in a foreign land; there is much room yet for discrepancy; and the nature of our stumbling blocks may be so extremely different that we may lose, rather than gain accession of sympathy by attempting to travel together in a course where so many intricate bye-paths present themselves to distract attention and divide our choice. Every thinking mind which has felt what it was to be perplexed, has been conscious of gradation in the difficulties that embarrassed its progress: some were but apparent, and vanished on the approach of knowledge; others, more stubborn, required more time and pains to conquer, but yielded at length to the force of reason, while there are some obstacles to Faith so harassing, that no efforts of the understanding are of any avail in breaking down the barriers which they present to sincere uncompromising belief:

‘Man never reasons but from what he knows,’

and if all attempts to comprehend, are rendered futile by the imperfection of his faculties, it is vain to call upon his faith. Credulity, indeed, may receive all things; but where Heaven has granted intellect, impalpable and unseen as are its operations, it excludes the dogmatizing influence of arbitrary control, and will not bend to mere authority. Tell me then, Caroline, what chiefly puzzled you—what were the obstructions which principally encumbered your path, and if they resemble those which block my way. I will next inquire how you removed them; ask you to be my Hannibal; and prepare to follow in that track which you shall excavate for me through the rocky defile.”

I told him that after avowing the fact on which I look back with pain, of having been sceptically inclined in that period of youthful arrogance when new-born reason, proud of her first flights, imagines that her wing can soar above the clouds, and penetrate the sanctuaries of the Most High, I could have no objection to inform him how far I had been enabled to overcome, as also where my presumption met with its first check, while Reason was my only guide. I then gave him a brief sketch of my former uneasy sensations, and the causes which had led to them. He listened with the deepest attention, and, when I concluded, answered that by a remarkable coincidence in our views, the only difficulties which had greatly harassed me were precisely those which still haunted him with ceaseless perplexity. “I never,” added he, “stuck at the historical discordances of the Bible, because, though I did not take the trouble of going minutely into the inquiry myself, I was aware that others of superior learning did do so; and when such a man as Sir William Jones, versed in Oriental literature, and examining the records of antiquity with critical acumen, was satisfied with his researches, so as to pronounce upon the increase of evidence which every added information produced to him, confirmatory of Scriptural truth, I could not tarry to believe that apparent contrarieties only require investigation to be satisfactorily reconciled to my understanding also, were I patiently to pursue the testimony which might be collected. I never felt that Herodotus was to be set aside as a historian, because superstition has deformed his work, and fable occasionally obscured the truth of his narrative. Nor have I ever doubted that Cæsar wrote the Commentaries imputed to his pen, though Hirtius has added a supplement to the book. Why then should I deny that Moses was author of the Pentateuch, because the account of that great lawgiver’s death and burial is supplied by another hand; or conclude it impossible that Joshua, the son of Nun, should have compiled the narrative ascribed to him, in consequence of finding a few mistakes in the arrangement of facts, for which he was, probably, not to blame, and which are the cause of certain unimportant anachronisms in the story? My difficulties have been of another kind, and the three points of free-will, the soul’s separate state, and personal identity, have been with me, as with you, the barrier over which I have hitherto been unable to pass. I have heard much of a Novel which has lately appeared, and I brought it with me, though I have not yet looked into it, feeling how idle it is to expect argument in a story.”

I told him that I had read Tremaine with great pleasure, that I thought it an excellent, though not a faultless work, and should be happy to go over it again with him.

“You must tell me first,” said he, “how you arrived at your present conclusions? You were not in need of Tremaine when you read that book.” “Tremaine,” answered I, “would have set me thinking, but would not have convinced me upon all the topics which he discusses, though some of his reasoning is admirable. He meets many difficult questions very ably, but to read any author on these subjects with advantage, the mind, if inclined to infidelity, must undergo a process for restoring it to its neutral state; and a few arguments of the negative kind are a very necessary preparation for those of a positive character.” “What are these negative arguments?” replied my brother. The first I told him presented itself in the form of a question, as to the spirit in which I had doubted; and a little serious self examination “landed” me in the mortifying, but salutary assurance, that in the strength of reason I had taken so much for granted, and assumed so many arbitrary positions on which to ground my scepticism, that, when brought back to first principles, I was obliged to confess the folly of my own inconsistency, and admit that the dogmas which I laid down required proof quite as much as those which they attempted to controvert. Till then I had misunderstood the Scriptural admonition to come as a little child for instruction; and conceived that it amounted to no less than a prohibition against the exercise of those faculties given us for the very purpose of discriminating between truth and falsehood. I now began to comprehend that the soundest philosophy called upon me for a total relinquishment of my own theories in learning any science. The empiric who sets up for medical skill, untaught by the rules of art, is not in a fit state to practice physic, nor even to become a student, till he has got rid of preconceived notions which militate against the best authority. Neither is the man who thinks himself a better lawyer than can be found in the Courts, without having been himself educated to the bar, in any condition to decide upon an intricate case. To learn any human branch of knowledge, requires that the person desirous to learn should come in a teachable state to the task, and not inflated with the vain idea of being already capable of communicating instruction. What more is demanded of us in the commencement of our religious course, than we see to be but reasonable in undertaking any earthly enterprize? And with what additional force does the injunction to prepare by an humble spirit for the reception of divine knowledge apply to the understanding, when we reflect on our utter inability to search into the counsels of God with our finite powers of capacity! When I had reached this conclusion, I saw every thing in a new light, and began to rest satisfied with the measure of information which the Almighty has seen fit to impart; determining no longer to waste life in prying into the hidden things which are not more suited to the present condition of our intellectual strength, than the unmitigated blaze of a meridian sun is fitted to the structure of our visual organs. I began to perceive the absurdity of expressions which had passed for sound sense upon my understanding. How often had I talked flippantly (at least thought within my own breast) of the course of nature, never recollecting that the poor Indian’s concatenation of supporters for the world, in his list of elephants and tortoises, is not more easily resolved into ignorance, than the arguments by which infidelity delays the confession that it is in utter darkness? Will the most sagacious reasoning on the formation of a bone, by the gradual accretion of calcareous matter; or the most ingenious display of physiological lore in tracing the growth of a plant from the cotyledon up to the forest’s king, apply to the first created animal, or the first formed oak? There the course of nature deserts us. The anatomist, and the naturalist, alike lay down their arms; here they are baffled and arrested. The former has no need of his animal laboratory in which the chyle is separated in the process of digestion from the daily food, and phosphate of lime is added to the soft cartilages that are intended to become the bony skeleton. The latter neither requires the acorn nor the “nursing leaves” to advance the oak from the seedling to the sapling, and thence to the full-grown monarch of the wood. He wants no gradual process of deposition by water; no metamorphosis produced by fire, neither calx, nor crystalization is demanded for the primary minerals of the earth—the great “back bone” of creation. In some period of time there was a beginning of these things. Remove that period indefinitely, and you may lose sight of the difficulty in its distance from your eye, but you cannot reduce its real dimensions; it exists in its full size and bulk, though placed without the range of your vision. Arrived at this point (and driven to it you must be sooner or later) you are involved in the absolute necessity of a revelation of some sort or other, unless you can believe that matter is self created, and carries within itself all the power, energy, and intelligence which we know that it does not possess, or that man is a being governed entirely by instinct, like the inferior animals, and capable, at his first entrance into life of performing all the functions requisite to sustain his existence, and perpetuate its succession, as a crow is to build its nest. Neither of these opinions being tenable without a surrender of that very experience derived through our senses, which we consider as the highest possible source of demonstration; the question which next occurs is what account is there of any instruction to the first pair who were placed in the vast expanse of an unknown world, in which they were to become the founders of an unborn race of creatures? Some record of a matter so vitally important to the new creation might reasonably be expected, and we naturally look for such. One narrative alone there is to satisfy the curiosity of inquirers on this interesting subject, and to cavil at that is easier than to supply another, or give a satisfactory reason why none whatsoever should have been preserved. Once admit, that those things most important are usually handed down in some way or other from generation to generation, and that it is therefore probable some attempt was made to continue the knowledge of God’s first intercourse with mankind to succeeding posterity, it then remains only to try the history which is presented to us by the rules that we employ in every subject of human testimony. Now, the wise and the learned declare that the more severely they investigate, the more thoroughly are they convinced that there is evidence for the Bible’s having been written by the various authors to whom the several books which compose the Sacred Volume have been attributed, beyond that which can be found to substantiate the genuineness of any other work which has ever been printed. The wise and the learned also protest that the farther they scrutinize into collateral testimony, the more completely are they satisfied that these authors recorded truth, and not falsehood; and that the farther the search is carried, the more certain is the result to corroborate the validity of Scripture. When such gigantic minds as those of Newton, Boyle, and Bacon, with the long list that might be added on their side, bear evidence to this declaration, shall we take the ipse dixit of a Voltaire, a Bayle, or a Bolingbroke, who may choose to deny, without being able to prove the negative, or set up any attested credentials to supply the place of that revelation which they are desirous to annul? Testimony, be it ever remembered, has no concern save with matters of fact. When human reason has taken cognizance of all the circumstances for or against the existence of any event which is said to have taken place, it has done its duty, and finished its work. With the nature of such an event, it may have nothing at all to do. If a hundred spectators, who have no motive for collusion, declare to having seen a stone three feet in length, and two in breadth, descend from the clouds, and if one of these witnesses happening to be a chemist, should report to me its analysis, which I find to differ from that of any stone on the surface of the earth, I am very unphilosophical in contradicting the possibility of an occurrence verified by so many credible spectators, upon the simple ground of my own ignorance. Though I may never have heard of an Aërolite, such things are, and, being a product of the atmosphere, it is not extraordinary that its composition should differ from that of stones produced on the earth. Thus all my reasoning to the non-existence of these meteoric phenomena grounded on analogy would be fallacious, like that of the king in some Eastern climate, who laughed incredulously when he first heard of ice, never having himself seen water, except in a liquid state. The more ignorant, the less are we enabled to believe, if we measure truth by the estimate of our understandings. So far then is scepticism from being proof of a powerful mind, that the reverse is oftener the fact; and every advance which we make in knowledge and intelligence increases the expansion of faith, not only by enlarging the sphere of experience, and multiplying those arguments of which the mind takes advantage in examining any new matter presented to its contemplation; but what is of higher value, we are taught at every step a lesson of humility by being compelled to acknowledge the narrow limits of those abilities on which we so arrogantly relied for scanning the attributes of Divinity. Had the Bible not told of things difficult to comprehend, I should have wanted one direct argument in favour of its coming from God. No scheme of merely human invention would have baffled all human sagacity to understand it in all its bearings, unless the difficulty of doing so arose from contradiction to reason, which is not the case. The Bible tells us that it contains mysteries too deep for human penetration; were such discovered, they would cease to be what the word of God has declared them; and of that word we are told that not a tittle shall pass away. We are desired to read and to search the Scriptures; but we are not told that the utmost limit of curiosity shall be satisfied in this world. It is vain to attempt the Penetralia which will be shut against us, till the soul shall awaken in the etherial regions of a spiritual existence, disencumbered of its “mortal coil.” Respecting internal evidence, the great stress rests with me in a small compass; I look no farther than into my own heart to see such depravity, such continual danger of yielding to temptation, which urges me to do the thing which my better spirit condemns, that I am ready to own my utter helplessness to attain, without a guide, either happiness or virtue. If I try the goods of this life, I am forced to cry with Solomon that all is vanity; pleasure but a bubble, which, glittering for a moment, passes away; that riches, fame, rank, power, beauty, are but gewgaws incapable of satisfying the cravings of an immortal soul; but even when the mind is of such mundane temperament that these things do seem sufficient, and that it would fain build its tabernacle amongst them, Death, ‘the great teacher Death,’ interposes to prevent the dreamer from long enjoying the illusion of his wishes. Death comes at last to force the unwelcome conviction on all who will not otherwise entertain it, that the idols of earth must inevitably be torn from our grasp, and that the cold grave must close on every tie which binds us to this sublunary scene. This strong and simple truth is one of those irresistible and universal arguments that apply to all capacities of intellect, and to all conditions of fortune. All shall die; all leave whatever ministered to pride or vanity behind them. ‘A little earth that saves the world a nuisance,’ once scattered on the silent remains, the inheritance is seized, and he who, but a week before, lived in every tongue, descends into the narrow house where all things are forgotten. No more trace exists to mark his brilliant career on earth than lingers on the bosom of yonder ocean, whose waves dance gladly in the sunbeams, as if laughing at the engulphment of that majestic sail which lately skimmed upon its surface. In this one general fact there is unspeakable reality of wretchedness—irrefragable assurance of human nothingness—and in this solitary certainty there is argument enough to make all mankind, from the emperor to the beggar, ponder on the possibility, if not the probability of an hereafter. All men hate to die. They are told that they shall not die, that the body only shall return to its dust, and ‘the spirit to God who gave it.’ Here is a motive the most powerful, to seek, in order to believe, and if to believe, to act as shall accord with the directions afforded for securing a blessed immortality. Driven by that motive I go to my Bible, and not only discover the only lamp which lights up a dark and dreary valley through which I must pass, however horrible to my imagination; but I find also, that even the most imperfect efforts to assimilate my actions to that conduct which the Scripture enjoins, the feeblest endeavours to cultivate those tempers and affections which the Sacred Volume enforces, are rewarded by an inward peace which nothing beside has power to impart; and that in proportion as I attempt to prepare for another world, I am happy in this, which is but its vestibule.

When I had proceeded so far in my little sketch of a “Confession of Faith,” my dear brother said, “You prove to me, that the subjects on which my mind has been long and anxiously revolving, are familiar to you; and from the little that you have said respecting these obscure points, I anticipate much comfort in entering more at large with you into the field of inquiry, but remember, that my chief difficulties remain untouched, and before I let you entirely behind the scenes of my own incertitude, I must know how you get over a barrier which seems in my mind so insurmountable. You must also tell me whether you are one of those who hold belief to be within our own power. If you are, I fear that we shall have to combat on the threshold, for I confess nothing irritates me half so much as to be told that I can believe if I please. I feel that my will has nothing to do with my understanding. Nay, so far from adopting the popular maxim, that we have faith according to our wishes, I find the tendency of my mind is rather to suspect in proportion to the desire that any proposition may be true, and, dreading disappointment, I investigate with more precision whatever I am most interested in hoping may prove to be a fact, than those matters of common occurrence, which are indifferent to me in their consequences.”

I replied, that I had purposely left the topics to which he alluded for the last. “You desired,” said I, “to know on what shore I had been landed, what haven of rest I have found, after having been tempest-tossed like yourself upon the ocean of doubt and vacillation. I complied with your requisition, and have told you that my bark is, I trust, safely moored in the harbour of conviction. I will now retrace my way, and tell you how I have been enabled to meet the tremendous questions of free-will, spiritual immortality, and personal identity, so far as to satisfy myself completely, that while in the flesh it is a vain attempt to explain them in any other way than by saying, that they are too high, and elude mortal grasp altogether. To know this is something, and we arrive at the knowledge by means of reason, it is doubly satisfactory. Whether my reasoning will carry any weight to your mind, I will not presume to anticipate; but, as briefly as possible I will give you an idea of the course which I pursued myself with success.”

As my letter has run on to an overgrown length, I will conclude it here, where the subject naturally divides itself; and in my next will proceed with my narrative, in the hope that you will aid my purpose by observing on every defect in the chain of my endeavours, and furnishing strength to my weakness from the stores of your own information. My whole soul is engrossed in the cause which heaven has blessed already beyond my most sanguine expectations. Our dear friend, Mr. Otway, is a powerful auxiliary. I should say that he were the principal instrument, if his knowledge of human nature did not teach him to lie by in a great degree, till I, as a pioneer, have cleared the path. “The still small voice” of female affection, like the mouse in the fable, will sometimes achieve more than the lion’s force, and I am heartily contented to rank no higher than “yon wee bit sleek, and cowering beastie.” as our favourite Burns styles this tiny animal, if I may only be permitted by my humble efforts, to unloose the cords which would restrain the spirit’s flight, and bind to groveling earth an angel of the skies.

Adieu, dear friend,

Your faithful and affectionate,

Caroline Douglas.

LETTER XXXV.
From the same to the same.

Marsden.

My dear Friend,

You are expecting a letter, and it shall be delayed no longer. To return to the subject of my last: my brother confessed, as I told you, that his great difficulties lay in questions without the range of Bible testimony, considered either as a system of moral virtue, or a history of mankind.

“I know enough,” added he, “to give it the palm of excellence over the several claims of Confucius, Menu, Zoroaster, and Mohammed. The nobleness of its principle, in making the love of God stand forward grandly as the only test of true religion, is sufficient to raise it beyond the finest compositions of human skill, which rest their foundations in convenience or necessity. I am likewise aware that much of what is to be admired in the best specimens of ancient wisdom, is directly imitated from the laws of Moses. I know that this lawgiver has been the means of preserving the people committed to his charge, and that too amidst the most tremendous reverses and astonishing vicissitudes of fortune for almost four thousand years by the same laws; while the boasted Grecian philosophy of the Lycurgus’, the Solons, the Platos, though indebted to him, has passed away in empty air. I know also, that the infidel hue and cry that Moses borrowed his plans of jurisprudence and morality from the Egyptians, has been transmitted through the crowd as mere sound divested of sense, and is easily arrested by the least degree of acquaintance with that mythology from which unbelievers pretend to derive the Hebraical Institutes. Could I be assured that I am to live hereafter, the Bible should unquestionably be the light and staff of my journey towards that unseen world which you are so certain of beholding, and in the existence of which there is nothing revolting to my understanding, except the difficulty of knowing myself in a disembodied state. What is to convince me of my identity?”

To this question I ventured to reply, “The argument of identity has been much misunderstood by a large portion of mankind, including almost all the sceptics whose writings I am acquainted with, and who confound this idea with that of consciousness. Now, Butler, whose book you see before you, has admirably and clearly drawn the true distinction, and shewn that consciousness takes cognizance of identity, but is not the thing itself. You may sleep for a million of years as for a single night, without destroying your identity. Were it not so, each interruption from forgetfulness, however short, or from whatever cause, whether a natural slumber, lapse of memory, epileptic fit, swoon, or contusion of the brain, would be as fatal to the continuity of self, as the longest term of oblivion.

“How then do I arrive at the idea of identity? I say by intuitive knowledge, so totally independent of the circumstances with which it is combined in the body, that these may undergo every variety of change without impairing its force. Suppose that you were taken at your birth, like Hunter, and brought up amongst the North American Indians; that you believed a tatooed chief of a particular village to be your father, and a certain squaw to be your mother. At one-and-twenty, you are brought to Europe, and discover, by a remarkable chain of circumstances, that you are not a North American Indian, but a child of British parents. You are not what you believed yourself to be; yet this has nothing to do with your identity—you are still yourself.

“Suppose again, that by successive cannon shots, you have been deprived of your limbs; your arms and legs have been shot away, and, as nearly as is compatible with continued existence, you are reduced to a mere trunk. No diminution takes place in the consciousness of your personal identity, any more than results from the gradual substitution of new particles which, it is calculated, replace those which composed the whole of the former body, once in every seven years. Memory of the past is not necessary to our belief that we are ourselves. Whole years may be blotted from our recollection, and still we have some invisible, intuitive assurance that we have continuity of being, and have not gone through any metempsychosis, which destroys it; but this knowledge is limited by certain boundaries, beyond which we have absolutely nothing to guide us, except the evidence of other people. Ask yourself solemnly, and searchingly, what is your ground for believing that, ere you saw the light, you lived during nine months in another state as different from your present condition of existence, as the present union of body and spirit can possibly be from a future mode of being in which the soul, freed from human restraint, shall expatiate with as much more liberty than it can now exert, as it enjoys at present, when compared with the former period of its imprisonment.

“Is there one human creature who could be so certain that you are absolutely the person for whom we take you, as not by possibility to be deceived? Even your mother, after her heart had yearned to the first faint cry of her own baby, may have been deceived. Suppose that her own had died, and that you were presented to her. How do you know what or where you were before sensible objects began to make impression on your faculties? You have no more actual connection with your former being, even during the first six or eight months,—I might go on to say the first year of childhood—when you slept in your nurse’s arms, than you have with that oak that overshadows your window, if you estimate that connection by your power of tracing its links without any hiatus in the chain.

“You were pleased the other day with that admirable essay, which you were reading, entitled “Historical doubts respecting the existence of Napoleon Buonaparte,” in which the argument is so perfectly established that, if we give reins to scepticism, we have no demonstrative proof, at this moment, that the wonderful Buonaparte who swayed the world by the magic of an almost preternatural influence for a few years, and is now forgotten, put himself under the protection of Captain Maitland, and visited Spithead on board the Bellerophon. What wonder that you should know no more than that your boat put off from the shore, on which you saw a dense crowd of assembled spectators, that you neared the stern of a great vessel, saw a little man with a star on his breast and a cocked hat upon his head, were told and believed that it was the royal prisoner, the usurper of France, the wizard Corsican at whom you gazed from your wherry, when you have no demonstration that you are General Douglas, no irrefragable proof that you belong to that line of Scottish heroes from whom you believe yourself to be sprung, and may not be, on the contrary, a foundling transplanted from the parish of St. Giles’ into your splendid cradle, where first you received the fond caresses of your reputed parents.

“See then how much we are obliged to take for granted; and is there any greater difficulty in believing that consciousness of identity, which we never doubted, may form a part of our essence hereafter, than that it is inseparable from our existence here, however the continuity of remembrance may be interrupted? All analogy is with me, and I now find this idea, which once was a stumbling block, easy and familiar.

“Then, as to the soul’s existence after being separated from the body. Let us only consider how unreasonably we argue, when we confound the mental and corporeal functions, simply because we see them combined. Analogy here also is against such reasoning. A spark of electricity or galvanism is only rendered apparent to the eye by certain circumstances. As long as these subtle fluids pass quietly through conductors, they are wholly invisible, and pervade the earth and atmosphere entirely unseen: yet we doubt not the existence of electricity and magnetism, because they float invisibly in æther. We never doubt the existence of the sun’s light, though the substitution of a wooden block for a transparent window of glass shall totally obstruct his rays. These are mere analogies; but they are in our favour. We see the operations of the spirit through the means of our bodily organs, as we perceive the light of the sun through glass, which is so constituted as to transmit its beams to our senses; but we have no more right to confound the vehicle, or medium, with the matter of light, or the power of thought, conveyed in the one case than in the other. Will you call me fanciful if I say that I consider all intellectual energy, all that we denominate soul, as emanating from divinity; and I find no more difficulty now in imagining a certain portion of this divine principle arrested and concentrated in the organic structure which we call man, than I find in collecting the sun’s rays in a burning glass or a prism.

“Mingling with the dross incident to a temporary junction with the base particles of matter, the spirit partakes of the feculence of the channel through which it permeates (if you will permit me to use the language of metaphor), just as the rays of the sun are broken, refracted, or reflected by the cloudy atmosphere, or shattered glass, through which they pass. Remove the medium, and the emancipated essence regains its source; with this difference, that while the light, which is only material, the magnetism and electricity, which are unconscious forces, recover all their purity with their liberated expansion, the soul of man, on which the boon of immortality is conferred,—the soul which shall not be extinguished like that splendid orb that illumines our nether sphere shall receive its final billet, and be admitted into one or the other of two classes of spiritualized existence, according to the use which has been made during its sojournment in the body, of free will, bestowed upon the human species at its creation.”

Here my brother heaved a sigh, which seemed to issue from the very centre of his heart: “Aye, Caroline,” said he, “there’s the rub; there is the inscrutable mystery, the impenetrable veil;” “Which,” answered I, “no mortal intellect—no human eye will ever pierce.”—“Then how believe what I despair of comprehending?” “If,” replied I, “we turn a subject according to two opposite theories, and after the clearest investigation which we are enabled to bestow upon each, find that both involve an equal measure of incompatibility with our reason and experience, we arrive at least naturally at a state of neutrality which would leave us unbiased and ready to lean to one side or the other, as new motives might be suggested to incline the understanding through force of evidence or probability, towards the adoption of one scheme in preference to the other, its own powers being confessedly unequal to unravel the difficulties of either. Let us view the wonderful question of free-will in this light: that the Almighty could decree man to be free, we have no reason to deny. Omnipotence can achieve all things; and even were we inclined to declare, that not being satisfied that free-will exists, we will not give credit to the Great Framer of the universe for more than we see, still we are pinned on the other side; for if we only admit what we see, we cannot by the same rule consistently negative that which we do not see. Ignorance is not entitled to predicate for or against. We can only with propriety say, that what is hidden, is hidden. But my experience tells me that I am free; and that when not coerced from without, when not restrained by extrinsic force, I follow the dictates of my will, I find that no temptation assails me with such violence as to make it impossible that I should not have resisted its approaches: and find that the common sense of all mankind is with me, since every human law is founded on the distinction between voluntary and compulsory action. Every species of control, moral or physical, is taken into account; every aberration which disturbs the balance of the mental faculties is allowed to operate favourably in excusing the delinquent who is brought to judgment; and nothing but free, determined wickedness is punished by the laws of man. Whatever injury has been sustained by society, crime is not imputed to the person who has been an unwilling instrument of wrong. So far there is no contrariety in the decisions; no variety amongst the opinions of men. What says the Bible, which we have already agreed should be the lamp of our feet, provided that we submit to be guided where our own light is not sufficient? It tells us, that God placing us here in a merely probationary state, and designing us for an ulterior destiny, made us free in order to our being accountable. Now that we should be accountable without being free is a solecism which no human sagacity could comprehend, not merely because it is too high for us to reach, but because it absolutely contradicts that reason through the means of which we come at the ideas of truth and falsehood. The Bible says, that “good and evil are placed before us,” and that we are responsible at the bar of a future Tribunal for the choice which we make between them. Here is an exact accordance between revelation and the natural conclusions of reason. Again, if we consider what is most suitable to our ideas of grandeur and power in the Deity, we hesitate not in saying, that to form a free creature is a much more magnificent exhibition of Divinity than is manifested in the creation of puppets that must obey the original impulse imparted to them. How much grander is the idea of an Almighty Ruler who, giving the greatest latitude of action within its individual sphere, to each separate congeries of nerves and muscles, which He has ordained to be the seat of a human soul, can so order the ends of His astonishing plan, that not a tittle of His word shall be frustrated; not a particle of the great scheme subverted; than any notion which we can substitute of a Creator who had tied down and limited the work of His hands in the moment of casting the first specimen of its existence, so as to secure a monotonous and necessary result from the mechanical revolution of certain wheels, or the mindless operation of certain fixed springs, not one of which could by possibility vary in its round, or be altered in the quantum of its elasticity. Thus far reason and experience move harmoniously together, and authority confirms their joint conclusion. We feel that we are free; reason tells us that we ought to be free; and Scripture, which professes to be the revealed Word of God, informs us that we are free. The mass of probability appears, then, entirely on this side: let us now consider the other.

“If man be a mere machine, irresistibly governed according to fixed laws, from which he cannot swerve, and performing every action through the influence of an impelling power, which he is unable to resist; it is plain, first, that he cannot be an accountable creature, for accountableness can only be understood when there is liberty to do, or abstain from doing; and, secondly, this scheme involves an absolute contradiction between our experience and the fact, supposing us to be creatures of necessity, by which, if we be really overruled, and placed in duresse from which we have no power to emancipate ourselves; we are, then, put into the extraordinary predicament of being one thing, while we are so constituted as to believe ourselves to be another. That is to say, in fine, that we are conscious of freedom, though in reality we are bound; and are thus practically and irresistibly acting all our lives upon a fraud, a delusion, which compels us to give up the testimony of our senses, at the same time that we declare their evidence to furnish the most unquestionable source of knowledge that we possess, and to afford the principal rule upon which our whole conduct is regulated, either in public or private life.

“There is a sublime simplicity in the works of Providence, in comparison with which the strange incongruity which I have been describing would present a case so completely anomalous as to disturb the harmony of creation, and leave us a bewildered race, without helm or compass to guide our course. But a contradiction still more monstrous and difficult to reconcile would result from such an order of things as we are now supposing. The necessity which we are considering must either be independent of, or immediately proceeding from, God. If the former, it supersedes the Deity, or, identified with Him, is itself the sovereign ruler of the universe. If the latter, all the evil deeds of man are performed by the express order of that Being who threatens with eternal punishment those of his creatures who will not obey His commandment to be “holy even as He is holy.” The preposterous absurdities involved in this view are levelled at once by the belief that man at his birth is decreed to be a free agent, all whose actions are in his own power; who will never be tempted above what he is enabled to bear; and who, if he sincerely desire after righteousness, will never fail in attaining it.

“How far the ultimate ends of all that we see may be fixed by the fiat of Divine ordinances, is not our business to inquire into, any more than what future worlds the Creator may please to form when our planetary system shall have passed away. Our own actions are our immediate concern: thousands of events may hinge upon every one of them, with which we do not design the remotest connection; while the ends which we intend to bring about are never achieved. Yet, in secular matters, no man ever believes his free will to have been restrained. If he make a bad bargain, or act upon a false calculation, he may regret his want of prudence, or lament a deficiency of information; but it never occurs to the most sceptical amongst those with whom I have ever met, to fancy, for a single moment, that he might not have done differently, inquired farther, or been less precipitate.

“Whence this division? Why are temporal affairs regulated by the law of responsibility while spiritual conduct only is to be considered under the inflexible control of a necessary compulsion? The reason is plain: the creed of the fatalist is only adopted to screen him from the examination which he dreads, and serve as an opiate to his conscience. The fatalism of the ancient heathen world was more rational and consistent than that of modern infidelity, inasmuch as it was applied to earthly concerns, and frequently led to contentment under misfortune and privation. Perhaps you are ready to say how much less puzzling you would find the doctrine of free-will than that of necessity were it not for one stumbling block. How can fore-knowledge be reconciled with freedom? Were human analogies to satisfy our inquiry, there would be no difficulty to encounter in this question. In this world, the prophetic wisdom which, like that of Edmund Burke, looks deeply into the volume of futurity, and predicts events to come, is rarely, if ever concerned in the practical occurrence of them; but on the contrary, is generally in diametrical opposition, as he was to the horrors of that revolution which he so clearly foresaw. So far analogy separates fore-knowledge from necessity. Imagine once that man is created free by the Almighty’s decree, and the difficulty vanishes. If free, man is empowered to act for himself; and though beyond a certain limit he may not be able to see or to do, he has liberty within a given circuit, and that liberty once conferred, there is nothing more incomprehensible in the fore-knowledge of God, than in that of an earthly parent, who having endowed his children with a certain measure of power, limited by his discretion, and recallable at his will, foresees, without choosing to control its exercise. That species of active interference sometimes employed to bring about the designs of self-interest by people who plan devices, and then are busied in executing them; is not what we mean by fore-knowledge humanly speaking. What we speak of as such, is founded on information from without, and derived from our own judgment in drawing conclusions relative to future events from certain data presented to our understandings. I repeat, therefore, that so far from being accustomed to couple this species of wisdom with the facts which it predicts, there is, generally speaking, not the most remote connection between the prognostic and its fulfilment. Now, as all our ideas respecting the divine attributes, when we depend on reason alone for believing in them, are but an extension of those which we see in each other, we are not instructed by any analogy to expect that the prescience of the Almighty brings about the downfall of a nation as its necessary consequence, any more than that Burke’s foresight of the effects which would follow on the spread of infidelity and disloyalty should be instrumental in compassing the overthrow of monarchy in France. Nor should we reason so anomalously, were it not that in considering God as the creator of all those beings whose conduct he foresees, looking in short, upon the divine fore-knowledge as infallible, and not subject to the contingencies which accompany even the highest degree of human sagacity, we attach a characteristic to the prescience of the Deity which does not belong to that of man; and therefore while reason and analogy are professedly our guides, we desert their standard, and set up a new light for ourselves which is as remote from revealed as from natural religion, and leaves us inextricably bogged in a morass from which we shall in vain attempt to disentangle ourselves. If the Almighty made us free, we can imagine how he may fore-know our actions without controlling them; though he formed all created things, because in the very idea of freedom, such independence is essential; any compulsion would destroy liberty, and involve a contradiction in terms; but here is the final limit to which human understanding can attain.

“How this wonderful union of divine power, and the creature’s free agency is effected, belongs to higher matters than we can reach. We only know, as I said before, that we know nothing, if we are not free. The arguments of a necessitarian may seem irrefragable, and convince you that you are impelled to every action; but in the moment that you close his book you feel that you can open or shut it at pleasure, and call up, or dismiss at will, those motives from your mind, which shall be the proximate and immediate causes of your so doing.

“In like manner Berkeley has perhaps convinced you in the abstract that you cannot vouch for the existence of matter, and that ideas or shadows are all that you can answer for; but do you really and substantially believe less in the existence of a bullet which blows out the brains of a fellow creature, or that of the sword which pierces his body, because Berkeley assures you that they are only ideas, and you are not able metaphysically to contradict him?

“You have, my beloved brother, honoured me so far as to consult my understanding upon these great, these awful subjects, and nothing could tempt me to accept the office of guide, conscious as I am of my own weakness, were I not firmly persuaded, that while mortal affairs require human strength to unravel their intricacies, and overcome their obstructions, humility is the only pilot to heaven.

“I was once led astray in the mazes of a bewildering philosophy which grew darker and more uncertain the farther I presumed to penetrate its recesses. I found torches, indeed, blazing at the portals, and proud of a little daring, I entered on the labyrinth, vain-gloriously resolved to reject all clue, and clear a passage for myself; but the damps of ignorance and doubt soon extinguished the glaring lights that illuminated the entrance. I found myself ere long involved in the thickest obscurity, and when the abyss threatened to engulph the groping wanderer, was grateful for that aid which in the pride of my own strength, I had indignantly rejected. Assisted by revelation, I retraced my erring steps; and am now contented with such measure of knowledge as God vouchsafes to his creatures, as well as resolved never more to tempt the paths which lead but to confusion worse confounded.

“Where difficulties present themselves, I thankfully incline to that side which is the least obscure; and, as a belief in necessity, besides the natural contrariety of its existence with the evidence of our senses, which proclaim us free agents, would involve an absolute and unqualified rejection of the Christian scheme, I find no hesitation in abandoning it to the winds.

“Natural religion presents God to our contemplation in the wonderful unapproachable character of sovereignty, wisdom, and power. The Christian sees him brought home to our hearts, and domesticated with our gratitude, our tenderness, and admiration. In Jesus Christ we behold the Emanuel, the God with us; redeeming in his love, sustaining by his spirit, astonishing by his mercy. If I turn from the only door, the only way, the only shepherd that is provided for me, and look to myself for a staff of support through the valley of death, what do I find? Alas! infirmity so pitiable, sin so inseparable from every purpose and every performance, that I am ready to give my suffrage to the truth of Hooker’s eloquent, but melancholy avowal, that ‘the very best action of the most virtuous human being, requires to be forgiven.’”

You have now, my dear friend, an outline of the plan upon which we set out with our search after Truth: and from the moment in which the conversation that I have reported took place, my brother has passed some hours of every day in reading and talking on these solemn subjects.

Butler’s Analogy with Wilson’s excellent Letters of Explanation; Gregory’s Letters and Chalmers’ Evidences, have particularly delighted him. We have read Tremaine together, and some parts of the reasoning contained in the third volume of that valuable little work have most powerfully impressed his mind, while others have failed of satisfying him. My principal objections to Tremaine are, that the author contents himself with allowing us to suppose that the hero becomes a Christian. Secondly, Dr. Evelyn, though a very worthy, and a very sensible man, appears more like a good humoured country gentleman, than a clergyman, the professional piety of whom might have been added to his counsel without detracting from its force. It is a pity also that so strong a stimulant as love should be allowed by possibility to mingle in the motives to conversion, and by so doing, sully the integrity of change. With these defects, however, and some inequalities in the argument, Tremaine is a charming work, and breathes nothing from beginning to end, which is not calculated, in some way or other, to render people wiser and better who read it; a character which it would be a great happiness were to be able with truth to attribute in this age of novels to many of the most celebrated amongst them.

Having said so much of my invalid’s mind, I must mournfully add of his bodily frame, that it gradually declines, yet so imperceptibly, that it requires such minute observation as strong affection can alone awaken, to perceive the progress of decay. My dear children, and our friend Mr. Otway, unite in kindest remembrances to you. Speak of us all to our poor neighbours with affectionate recollection, and tell them that I long to re-visit my little valley, and am only supported through the pain of absence from home, and the fatigue of more society, than for many years I have been accustomed to, by the pleasant assurance that I am not uselessly employed. The remarks of my young people, in a land of strangers, furnish me too with a perpetual source of gratification, they are so true to nature and good sense, as well as feeling. We continue to hear constantly from Arthur, who is happy in the company of Mr. Charles Falkland, a young man whose friendship I anticipate for my Frederick with great pleasure. We hear also of Lord and Lady Crayton, of whom I wish I could add that our accounts are agreeable. Lord C. is, I fear, ill calculated to make my poor niece happy; and they both exhibit, but too faithfully, a specimen of fashionable marriage. I tremble, as I look forward, and bless God when I gaze with thankfulness on my children, that they have been preserved from the vortex of folly, which draws thousands daily into its dangerous and seductive abyss. Can all the riches of the East, added to all “the boast of heraldry, and pomp of power,” supply the place of domestic love, or compensate for the absence of moral virtue? I sometimes feel like an old picture that, after having been hung up during a century, has suddenly received the gift of animation, and descended from its frame to mingle in the social group. The world, even as seen at this distance from our metropolis, appears almost as new to me as to my girls; and, I am sorry to confess, how little find in it to gratify my mental taste. Perhaps retirement may have soured my disposition, but if this be not the case, society is not improved in this kingdom. We are encircled by people of princely fortune; and luxury, in all its fertility of invention, reigns throughout this rich and beautiful country. But, oh! how much I miss the England of my early recollections! Mr. Otway and I often mourn over the progress of what is falsely called refinement, which has made the lower classes forget the simple sobriety, the active industry, the nice cleanliness of former times, and has rendered the higher orders a disgusting engraftment of foreign manners, customs, and language, upon a British stock. My dear home! My pure mountain breezes and rational fire-side, I sigh to behold you once more! Adieu, my valued friend. I hope to hear from you before we leave Marsden, and am,

Sincerely yours,

Caroline Douglas.

LETTER XXXVI.
From Emily Douglas to Miss Sandford.

My dearest Julia,

This will, probably, be my last letter from Marsden, unless any unfavourable change in my dear uncle’s health should alter the present arrangements for our departure. We are to go by Brighton and Dieppe, instead of by the route first proposed; and you may expect to hear from me as frequently as possible, though I shall never persecute you with my travels as travels: for I do believe there is nothing left in France or Italy, which has not been served up in every practicable variety of form, to meet each different character of taste; but I trust to your affection for finding interest in every stage of our journey, though the map of it be so familiar to your memory as to deprive me of all hope to amuse you by descriptions of scenery or costumes. Since I wrote last, I have seen much that was new to me, without going abroad; and, though I should be very ungrateful not to acknowledge thankfully the great kindness with which we have been received in Hampshire, I cannot permit even gratitude to blind me, and confound distinctions which I never desire to see melted into an undistinguishable mass of uniform colouring. My dear Julia, I sometimes stare with such amazement at the things that present themselves, as to fear that my eye-lids may be overstrained, and lose the power of closing; but, instead of egotizing on the effects produced upon my mind, I will beg you to accompany me to three or four splendid mansions in our neighbourhood, where you shall judge for yourself. About a week ago, Mr. Otway, Frederick, Charlotte, and I, took a delightful ride through the New Forest, to pay our respects to Mrs. Hannaper, a Begum of this country, who commands several hundred votes, and who is, therefore, a grand bone of contention in this terrible electioneering struggle. She has a beautiful niece, Miss Ormsby, who is dressed all over in the colours of that party which her aunt espouses; and is so full of stripes that she might be supposed to have made her gown and shawl out of the flag of a ship belonging to the United States. This young lady assists Mrs. Hannaper in canvassing for her favourite candidate, to whom it is said that she is to be married; and I have heard many gentlemen complain of being attacked with such perseverance, as to find great difficulty in retreating from the united influence of beauty and supplication. As we rode along, several groups of riotous, drunken men, in smock frocks, bearing bunches of buff and blue ribbons in their hats, interrupted our progress, and startled our horses, by tumultuary shouts which rent the air with cries “Sir Christopher Cromie, and Mrs. Hannaper for ever!” As we approached to Lyndhurst, the vociferation increased, and we were just consulting whether it would not be prudent to turn about, when a crowd came rushing down the road, which branched off at right angles with that by which we were journeying forward; and we found ourselves immediately surrounded by three or four hundred people, who had taken Mrs. Hannaper’s horses from the carriage in which she and her niece were sitting, and insisted on drawing them home themselves, to testify their attachment to the cause which she patronizes. Mrs. Hannaper is apparently from sixty to sixty-five, with a face and form neither rough nor unpleasing; but a cloth habit, tight beaver hat, over a Brutus wig, a coloured silk handkerchief tied round her throat, and a collar rising almost to her cheek bones, gave so masculine an air as completely to deceive me, while the interposition of some drooping branches of an ash tree concealed the lower part of her dress from my view. She stood up in her barouchette, waved her hat to the multitude, huzzaed, and acted so like a man upon the occasion, that when I came near enough to see a petticoat, I blushed for the honour of my sex. Her niece held a parasol over her head, and seemed less inclined to make these outrageous demonstrations than her aunt; but she held a sort of banner in the left hand with Sir Christopher’s name worked in gold letters, and her hat was ornamented with a great cockade of his colours. The carriage stopped when we appeared, and Mrs. Hannaper covering her head sat down, and desiring Mr. Otway, whom she had previously seen, to present my brother, sister, and me, very politely requested us to breakfast on the following day, when she meant, as she told us, to turn out a bagged fox; and her “Liliputians”—the name by which she distinguished a favourite pack of some tiny breed, with the technical appellation of which I am unacquainted. “Come early,” added she, “Sir Christopher, and a few friends, will be at Parham, where I shall be happy to see you.” I was beginning to say why we could not accept her kind invitation, when, in the same moment, I read “do let us go” in Frederick’s eye, and a glance from Mr. Otway’s, in which was legibly written, “it is something new, do not refuse.” I suppose that I mismanaged my excuse, for Mrs. Hannaper, nothing daunted, replied, “oh really you must come, I never take refusals.” Mr. Otway told her that some of the party would certainly attend her; and the intoxicated leaders becoming impatient of so long a parley, threw up a cloud of hats into the air, with a deafening uproar, and the ladies were whirled along to our no small contentment, for our steeds threatened, by the noise, to become ungovernable. When we had resumed our peaceful track, we interchanged, as you may believe, some remarks upon the extraordinary vision that had just crossed our path. Mr. Otway was excessively amused by Charlotte’s asking whether Mrs. Hannaper, and her niece, were Blue-stockings. “No, I dare say not,” answered our friend. “Why do you suppose them to be so?” “Oh,” replied Charlotte, “I have no reason, further than that from the masculine air of these ladies, I conclude that they must be disliked extremely by the other sex, and perhaps considered intruders sufficiently to be called Blues.” An explanation ensued, and we learned that, though it is an inexcusable offence for a woman to fancy that she possesses any understanding, or is capable of any mental acquirement, notwithstanding that Heaven may have bestowed upon her the brightest abilities, it is perfectly admissible, under certain circumstances, to be a female Nimrod—to hunt and course, dress like a mail coachman, drive a curricle at full speed, ride like a Bedouin Arab, and be in at the death. Nay, Mr. Otway assured us, that Mrs. Hannaper is generally ornamented by the Fox’s brush in returning from the chase, and that she cries talliho with peculiar gusto! “But then,” added he, “she is a woman of immense fortune; and, however people might laugh at inferior folk, so many gentlemen are aspiring to the hand of this Diana, that a thousand knights would take the field to resent the slightest indignity offered to the goddess of their adoration.” No language can paint my astonishment to learn that this old lady went out hunting; to hear her huzzaing, and to see her manly costume, had been wonder enough for one day; but to fancy it possible, that a veteran belle of Mrs. Hannaper’s age, could dream of marriage, or, like queen Elizabeth, permit herself, in this age of the world, to be surrounded by people daring to talk of love to a woman of sixty, was something beyond my comprehension or credulity. For the first time in my life I thought, dearest Mr. Otway ill-natured, and, slackening my pace, fell back with Charlotte, allowing him, and Frederick, to take the lead—shall I own my weakness? I felt so humbled for my sex, that low spirits took possession of me; a melancholy dialogue succeeded, and a hearty fit of tears relieved the oppression which manners so novel had occasioned. My sister, and I, entreated that we might not be forced to attend the morning party; so Frederick went alone, and came back thoroughly disgusted with all that he saw. A gay party met at a breakfast à la fourchette, where the ladies, he told us, played their parts most vigorously at ham, dried fish, and all sorts of substantial fare, not disdaining to wash it down with a glass of champagne.

“To horse, to horse,” was the next order of the day, and the ladies, dressed in uniform, rode in the most sportsman-like manner, clearing gates, banks, and ditches. I cannot dwell upon the disgraceful theme. Alas! is learning decried? Are women ridiculed for improving their minds, and gaining useful knowledge, while such a surrender of every characteristic that distinguishes the feminine from the masculine gender, is tolerated and encouraged? I feel a nausea when I hear the name of Hannaper; but I have not done with her yet. In a day or two after our meeting, she came to see us, having duly ascertained that my uncle would not give his interest to either party at the approaching election; and certainly nothing can be more appropriate than the name by which she is called in the country. “Jack Hannaper,” exactly prepares one for the abrupt masculine unceremonious assault which she makes on the people at whose houses she visits. Mamma’s gentle and retiring manner, the gravity of her dress, and total absence of interest in the gossip of the neighbourhood, induced the Dame of Parham Hall, to address herself chiefly to my uncle, whom she overpowered with her volubility. After having talked of her dogs which have got the distemper, of a horse which she had shot, perhaps with her own hand, because it had the glanders, she proceeded, and with all the technicality of the hustings, proclaimed the state of the poll, her intention of appearing on a favourite charger at the head of her plumpers, and giving a coup de grace to the enemy. Perceiving, it may be, from the languid appearance of my dear uncle, that he was fatigued by this farrago of nonsense, Mrs. Hannaper suddenly turned to me, and said, “Oh, but my dear Miss Douglas, you really had a great loss in not coming to Parham the other day. We had very good fun I assure you, and I dare say you will be glad to hear that your brother was much admired. He rides particularly well, and no centaur ever sat a horse more firmly. Upon my word he is a very handsome fine young fellow, and I have no doubt will make a figure yet. I shall be always happy to see him at Parham Hall.” Frederick’s praises would go far to put me in good humour with any medium through which they met my ear; but these fell upon it in sounds so coarse, and unaccustomed, that I felt they were a sort of profanation, and wished that my brother had never joined the unrefined society of this unfeminine female. My cheeks glowed, but not with pleasure. It was a fevered flush. I longed for Mrs. Hannaper’s departure, and did not know how to answer her; but she did not leave me many seconds in a state of embarrassment on Frederick’s account. All minor vexation was presently merged in the shame which I felt on my own, when this “she wolf with unrelenting fangs,” seized my arm, and, starting with real or affected recollection, exclaimed, “Well, but only fancy my omitting to tell you before, that Sir Archibald Johnson is thinking of you for his son, who makes no kind of objection, and if your fortune can liberate the estate from some thousands of embarrassment, it will be quite a nice hit. Lady Johnson of Norbury Park will not sound badly. The settlements and pin money will be liberal I dare say, and any assistance which my work-people in London can give, I shall be vastly happy, I assure you, to offer. You know that you need not have much at present: a few things made by the first hands will do, till you go to town yourself, and choose your own jewels, and select your own favourite colours. I am sure that Sir Archibald will be anxious to hasten matters, for I know at this moment, that a sum of ten thousand is called in by Mr. Fletcher, who is going to marry one of his girls famously to that madcap, Colonel Anstruther, who will be as rich as a jew bye and bye. To be sure he is a sad roué at present, but either he will sow his wild oats or run a muck. If the latter, he will shoot himself, or end his days in the Fleet; but people must not look forward; if we did, what a dull sort of thing you know it would be. I doat on the little Scotch song, which says ‘the present moment is our ain, the next we never saw;’ how pretty!”

By this time I was burning indeed: shame, indignation, and surprise, were so strongly excited, that, like contrary forces, they had the effect of paralyzing all movement. I sat like a fool, totally unable to speak; and how long I should have been doomed to listen to a strain so uncouth, the more humiliating, because uttered in the presence of mamma and my uncle, I know not, if Mr. Bolton had not been announced in this crisis, when Mrs. Hannaper jumped up, called her niece, who had been talking to Charlotte in the music-room adjoining, and, hastily nodding to me, shook my hand with an air of intelligence, saying, “I hate old Bolton, so must take fresh ground; well, we will talk over matters when next we meet, and perhaps the neighbourhood may be enlivened by more than one wedding ere long.” Miss Ormsby laughed so loud as this sally burst upon her ear, that I was absolutely confounded. “Good morrow” being hurried over, the same opening of the door served to usher in the old gentleman, to whose rescue I had been once before indebted, and to float away the most intolerable specimen of inelegance and indelicacy that I ever met with in the form of woman. The dear little Mr. Bolton was received with rapture. He seemed like a guardian spirit, and I believe that he saw how truly he was welcome to me, as in the most good-humoured and playful manner possible, he said, “Oh, do you know I have had a great escape. Mrs. Hannaper looked as if she could have eaten me up; and only that your hall is so spacious, I question whether I could have avoided a bite at least. Miss Douglas, I take it into my head that this amazonian chieftainess is not a greater favourite of yours than she is of mine.” I confessed that she would not be my model, and Mr. Bolton continued, “But you and I shall have ample revenge, if I may depend on a little bit of backstairs intelligence which has reached me through my own man.

“Now, you must not set me down as an old gossip because I tell you so, and suppose that I am always employed in running to and fro, to pick up scandal; but really poetic justice requires that such a creature as Mrs. Hannaper should receive some check, and be reminded of her age, before she is called to her great account. So far therefore, from thinking myself ill-natured at chuckling in the anticipation of a disappointment, which I have good reason to believe is suspended by a hair over her head, I am bound as a Christian to rejoice in any thing that may awaken her to a sense of her folly, and drive her to more serious thoughts than those which possess her idle brain.”

Much as I dislike Mrs. Hannaper, there was something so repugnant to my feelings of humanity in suffering a fellow-creature to encounter any ill, which timely notice might prevent, that I expostulated with Mr. Bolton, and implored him to apprize the old lady of his apprehensions, that so the catastrophe, however it might threaten, should be averted. Mr. Bolton was silent for a moment, while he fixed his eyes intently upon me, then catching my hand affectionately, he pressed it like a friend of the “olden time,” and with a tear starting to his eye, said, “God bless you child! my heart opens to the voice of nature, and it has taken me by surprise to-day, for her’s is a language which I seldom hear.” Oh, Julia, when such a commonplace sentiment as that which I had expressed, in wishing to spare a fellow-creature pain, had power to astonish by its novelty, and delight for its moral virtue, what a comment is furnished by such an anecdote as this upon modern society. If this be the world (and people are the same I suppose, whether rolling through the streets of London, or over the roads in Hampshire), defend me from its attractions. I feel like the country mouse longing for my grey peas and peaceful Glenalta; but the lovely Alps will refresh my eyes with images of God’s creation, and I shall soon bid farewell to these disgusting scenes of artificial life.

Mr. Bolton, after the little episode which I have described, returned to the merry mood, and rubbing his hands in an ecstacy, said, “No, no, depend upon it I will be ‘mute as a coach-horse.’ You shall none of you know a word of the under-plot which is weaving. I will not be a tell-tale. Let all things take their course.”

This dear little man is the soul of pleasantry, and seems to have an excellent heart, though bound up in a quaint outside. He is very English, and has a snug facetiousness of manner irresistibly diverting. I hope that I may be fortunate enough to meet him often in this neighbourhood, for he has both tact and feeling; and while his uncommon drollery amuses, his keen observation protects. He seems to delight in young people, and to understand us. My uncle enjoys his company, and they had a great deal of conversation, after which he took his leave, entreating that we should not fail to meet him at Lady Campion’s, to whose house we were invited for the following morning, to a trial of skill in archery. The time for these revels is not yet come; but as several families are prevented this year, I am told, from being in town, through one cause or other, they are doing the best they can to keep up the ball of pleasure, and rehearse for a more full and fashionable season. Mr. Bolton was my allurement, and the hope of seeing him, emboldened me to go under the wing of Mr. Otway, accompanied by Charlotte and Frederick.

Lady Campion and her daughters are come home within the last month, from Italy. They are a lovely group. Mother and daughters beautiful, and dressed in the same way, like sisters, it was not easy to distinguish the parent from the offspring. I do not like this. Surely the most tender love may subsist without this confusion of relationships. In the deep attachment which binds my heart to the precious author of my being, how sorry I should be even for a moment, to forget that she is my mother. But though not yet twenty, I feel as if I were fourscore, when I look around me. Nothing could be prettier than the little lawn on which we marshalled to see the archers. The graceful figures, the skill with which they managed the bow, the beauty of the fair competitors, clad in a livery of “Lincoln green,” the exquisite flowers which perfumed the amphitheatre of their sports, altogether charmed Charlotte and me. We were asked to join the lists, but as we could truly plead ignorance of the art, we gladly dropped back upon a fringe of the finest rhododendrons I ever beheld, lined by a bank of arbutus, to witness the combat. There were from forty to fifty spectators, amongst whom were only two, besides Mr. Bolton, whom I ever desire to see again. These were a Mrs. and Miss Fraser, Scotch people, a mother and daughter, very unlike our pretty hostess, who, to my amazement, I found was a rival candidate for the prize with her children; and, alas, can you believe it! is jealous of a Lord Thornborough’s attentions to the elder of them. This young and vapid peer was of our party; the most finnikin object that you can imagine. He had called one day at Marsden, so that I did not see him for the first time at Lady Campion’s; and when he visited my uncle, Fanny, whose fresh naïveté supplies a constant source of amusement to us, said, “Well, if in one of my walks I met Lord Thornborough and his friend Mr. Freeman (a young man of fashion who has accompanied him to this country), I am sure that I could not help offering them my assistance were there any difficulty to be got over; for certainly those young men could not help themselves over a hedge, ditch, or stile.”

I must give you a sketch of this London pair. They have both such heads for size, from the abundance of curled hair and whiskers that disfigure them, that if their bodies were concealed you would expect to see giants, judging by the proportion of limb that would suit such prodigious capitals. On the contrary, however, they are both rather diminutive than tall; their hands are not larger than a young lady’s, and as white as alabaster. Add to this appearance, rings, pins, chains, &c., and judge whether Fanny was very wide of the mark, when, with the rosy glow of sixteen, “redolent of life and spring,” her humanity would prompt the offer of her aid to creatures so pale, so thin, so cadaverous, that Mr. Bolton very truly said, that “they looked like weavers just out of an hospital.” But I have not done. How can I believe the things that I hear? Two pink spots, which alone distinguished Lord Thornborough’s face from that of a corpse, and which I thought indicated consumption, are, Mr. Bolton declares, positively rouge! I blush as I write the word! But to return to the archery.—The gentlemen were not so successful as the ladies: Miss Campion sped her arrow right through the centre of the target, and claimed a victory, which her mother, who came within half an inch of the bull’s eye, refused to admit, demanding to be queen herself, and awarding only the second prize to her daughter. An altercation ensued, and the angry looks, the unkind taunts which I witnessed, live still in my memory.

Matters grew so serious, that Mr. Otway proposed lots: Lady Campion drew the longest, and darting a look of fire at her rival, was crowned by Lord Thornborough, whom she in turn voted to be winner in the teeth of justice and truth; and, after having reciprocally distinguished him by a wreath of Fame, caught him by the hand, and triumphantly led the way towards a fine Grecian temple in the grounds, where a magnificent collation was prepared, and where the pseudo king and queen occupied a throne of scarlet and gold, decorated with laurels; while the rightful monarchs had not even the satisfaction of mingling their complaints, as the real hero was a sweet young midshipman, son to Mrs. Fraser, who laughed heartily at being choused, as he said, out of his conquest, and who seemed of much too noble a stamp to kneel at the feet of a haughty regina, who, though herself mortified, treated him with sovereign contempt.

While we were seated at a table covered with refreshments, one of the Misses Campion asked me, so suddenly, the ridiculous question, “Have you been out yet?” that though I have heard that it is the technical phrase for being presented in the world, the more familiar meaning occurred to my mind, and, like an idiot, I answered, that I should think a walk round the grounds very pleasant. A loud and rude burst of laughter drew the attention of the company upon me, and would have overwhelmed me with confusion, if Mr. Bolton, who was sitting between me and my tormentor, had not, with the celerity of an arrow, upset a flask of Champagne into the lap of the fair follower of Diana, which produced such a prompt metamorphosis, as “turned the green one red” in an instant, and the laugh against her from me. The thing was done so adroitly, that it appeared accidental, and as no one was more busy than the perpetrator in offering the most gallant commiseration, I never knew till two days after that I was thus indebted in a third instance to my faithful knight.

We adjourned presently to a music-room, where harp and piano-forte, with all “means and appliances to boot,” challenged competition in a new form; and here another sad scene was exhibited. A charming Italian duet was asked for by Lord Thornborough, and Miss Campion, who was in the habit of singing the second, was called very authoritively by her mother to take her part: she was also to accompany on the piano-forte. With a cheerful alacrity which delighted me, as evincing, I thought, a sweet forgiving temper, she took her seat at the instrument; but the harmony was soon disturbed, for she had no sooner landed her mother in a solo recitative, which the latter was singing to admiration, than, jumping up, overturning the music-desk, and rushing towards a window, she exclaimed, “Look at the eagle!” The company followed; and a crow, which had crossed the house, and was picking up worms in the lawn, was the only winged animal that presented itself to view. Peals of unmeaning laughter succeeded. Lady Campion was outrageous, and could scarcely preserve an appearance of decency; but as I felt how very irritating her daughter intended to be, I begged Mrs. and Miss Fraser to come and make a little party at her side. We entreated her to excuse Miss Campion’s mistake, and to indulge us with a repetition of the delightful air in which she had been interrupted.

After much disquietude, matters were arranged once more, and the solo was achieved; but in the midst of the concluding movement, which was very brilliant, and calculated to make a striking impression in the winding up, Miss Campion uttered a piercing shriek, the effect of which was ludicrous in the extreme, mingling as it did with the full harmony, and vociferated, “a bee, a bee!” and a bee there certainly was, crawling up the leg of the piano-forte, so weak and so drowsy after the cold weather, that the last of its intentions, poor thing, seemed to be to inflict the slightest injury on any one. Frederick put the obnoxious insect out of the window, but Lady Campion was now inexorable: she lost all control over looks and manner, which seemed to affect every one, except the person to whom they were directed; and, quite shocked by the scene, I requested that we might take our departure, which we did without delay, leaving such a domestic broil as I had then witnessed for the first time, to cool as it might.

Lord Thornborough handed me to the carriage, and with an unfeeling “Hah! hah! hah!” said, Miss Douglas, “you have come in for a thunder-storm to-day. Her ladyship was rather sublime; don’t you think so?” I was too much disgusted to reply, and, contenting myself with a passing bow, was happy to find myself on the high road to Marsden.

Am I sure that my senses do not deceive me, and that such things are? Is the sacred relationship of parent and child out of fashion? And is it possible, that while a daughter forgets the respect due to a mother, mothers have forgotten to respect themselves? I am not surprised now, when I hear Mr. Otway and Mr. Bolton speak of the present times, and compare them with the period immediately preceding the Revolution in France. I heard them agree a day or two ago in drawing the parallel with mournful fidelity, and finding in the frightful demoralization of continental manners, which is making, they said, rapid progress in these countries, but too certain a prognostic of the fate that will follow, if the tide be not arrested, of which there seems but little hope.

If I had staid at home I should never have known these things; and however one may detest, I do not feel that we can become familiar with what is wrong, without being the worse for it.

In two days after Lady Campion’s popping-jay, we were forced by my uncle to attend an evening party at Lady Neville’s. It is not more than two months since she has lost a beautiful and accomplished daughter, who died of decline. If my beloved mother had hung over the dying couch of a child, would she——but I must curb myself, and relate facts, not comment upon them, or I shall never have done. Till ten o’clock at night we did not go to Neville Court, though the cards particularly notified “an early party;” and when we reached that splendid mansion, we found an immense assemblage of the beau monde, greater than it was possible to suppose could be mustered at such a distance from London which is the focus of all fashionable rays, a few of which only are scattered and refracted by various accidents in certain individual families, as cracks in a glass will disturb the transmission of the sun’s beams. Here was another lie direct, for the cards also informed us, that the party was to be a “small” one. Why this perversion of language? I cannot fathom it. If some lurking remnant of compunctious feeling crossed the heart of Lady Neville; and in the words “small” and “early” she discovered a slight palliation of the offence against decency (for I will not profane the sweet idea of maternal love by using its language in such company), which she had determined on committing, I should perceive the reason of the strange deception of which I am speaking, but all was gaiety and glitter. Lady Neville and her daughters sparkled with diamonds arranged upon a sort of gossamer drapery, so light, so graceful, so artificially adjusted, fashionable and becoming, that mourning was the last sentiment which such paraphernalia could excite or indicate. Their dress told lies as well as their cards.

The house at Neville Court is superb, and as I wandered from room to room with the amiable Frasers and my own Charlotte, I felt the luxury of kindred sentiment in a new world, and gave free course to thoughts that were little in unison with the passing scene. I fancied this magnificent ball-room, with its chandeliers, its lustres, and chalked floor, two short months ago, perhaps, the theatre of another sort of assembly. I marked the spot where, in imagination, I could descry the lonely tressels supporting their sad and youthful burthen——that opening flower untimely torn from its stalk, and snatched from the warm hopes of unfolding spring. I beheld the mutes, and saw the tables spread with funeral fare; the “cold baked meats” of death; the sable hangings; the hirelings of office, marshalling their dismal train, at least with features screwed to the occasion, and voices subdued to whisper. With the most painful feelings I asked within myself, “must we fly from the fondest ties of nature, to seek for sorrow in ‘those chambers of imagery supplied from the undertaker’s mercenary taste;’ and fail to find it enshrined within the breast of a mother or a sister?” My cheek curdled, and my breathing became oppressed, while these melancholy phantoms glided past my mental vision, and like spectres mingled in the dance. The brilliant ball-room seemed to me no other than Holbein’s “dance of Death;” and when I was roused from my reverie by, “Miss Douglas, will you daunce?” let slip, as if from the mouth of one just dropping asleep, whose muscles had become too flaccid to retain the words within its lips any longer, I started as if I had been shot by one of Lady Campion’s arrows, and turned round upon—Mr. Johnson. Though I delight in dancing, there was too much lead at my heart to allow of merriment in my feet at this moment; and I therefore instinctively declined, and for a time got rid of the consummate puppyism of this disagreeable young man.

To my utter astonishment I was asked to join in the next quadrille by Lord Thornborough, whose politeness I should not have supposed from any thing else I had witnessed, could have induced the remembrance of a country lass, and a stranger (though the latter is the highest claim to attention in my dear Ireland), amidst such dazzling beauty and attraction as solicited his regards. You see I did him injustice, and am ready to make the amende honorable; but as I had refused Mr. Johnson, I could not dance with any one else, and though I did not regret this circumstance from any admiration of milord, I confess to having found it difficult to sit still, when the gloomy contemplations with which the evening commenced, began to yield to the inspiring influence of lively music. I had, however, the great pleasure of seeing Charlotte enjoying a gratification which was denied to me; and, would you believe it, she had scarcely begun to move, when a crowd was collected to see her dance. Her figure is so like what one imagines of a Sylph, and her ear is so perfect, that to admire her performance in a quadrille, would appear nothing more than the necessary routine of cause and effect, if I had not believed the group by which we were surrounded quite too artificial in its construction to leave a corner for nature to slide in at. However, so it was, that I heard several of the gentlemen express their approbation in terms more energetic than I should have thought such indolent looking people likely to employ on any occasion, even of the moment; and dear unconscious Charlotte seemed for a time Reine de la fête.

“Yes,” said Mr. Bolton, who came to sit by me for a little while, “there is the triumph of truth and native grace over all the contrivances of fashion. There is your sister, who has never seen London or Paris, bearing away the palm from all those painted dolls who are swinging their persons round the room.”

Quadrilles ended, how shall I express my feelings at seeing Lady Campion and Lord Thornborough get up to waltz! Timanthes, a painter of ancient times, drew a veil over the face of a father whose grief he felt unequal to pourtray. I must borrow his device, and let a curtain fall over an exhibition which I wish obliterated from my memory. I found a few lines by Frederick, which he wrote in London, after returning from a ball, part of the concluding stanza of which shall finish my descant upon this distasteful theme:

“But there is something in a waltz which wears

Off all the lovely bloom of virgin grace,
When round Belinda’s form a stranger dares
Fling the unhallowed arm in bold embrace,
And rudely gazes on her beauteous face.”

The dancing wanted that gaieté du cœur which alone renders it an agreeable and animating amusement. The ladies glided like silver eels, and the gentlemen groped about the room as if their eyes were shut, so that absolutely, if a stranger had been introduced, who never saw a modern ball-room before, he might have been excused for imagining that the dancers were playing blind man’s buff, and afraid of knocking their heads against the panels, if they moved their bodies without the utmost circumspection. In short, a child of nature would wonder why people should take the trouble of submitting their feet to a sort of rhythm just enough to shackle their freedom, and prevent the luxury of perfect inanition. Well, thought I to myself, this society is fashionable. These men and women move in what is called the first circle. The former will, many of them, become our Members of Parliament; senators, by whose collective wisdom we are to be directed. These asses in human form, the most idle, ignorant, effeminate animals possible to conceive, are to be husbands, fathers, landlords, masters! It is a melancholy prospect, and in looking to my own sex, on thoughts of which my mind from infancy has dwelt with pride and pleasure, as the sweet depository of religion, morals, fond affections, taste and talents softened down to social converse, and illuminating the domestic sphere, oh, what a contrast meets my eye! what will these creatures be when all that art can do to whiten the poor sepulchre shall fail, and wrinkles insurmountable will raise their fearful lines of circumvalation round the once bright orbs? when rouge itself, the last faithful handmaid of departing beauty, no longer sticks to the haggard cheek, no longer lights up the extinguished eye; when the ethereal form of finished symmetry is either swelled to the mountain size of those round matrons who in vain would try to grasp the pedal harp which shuns the corpulent embrace, or dwindled to the bony frame which only serves for draperies to be hung upon? What will be the fate of these hapless wrecks of vanished youth, when even cards, the ultimate resource of age, the last strong hold of veteran nothingness, shall cease to charm? Oh, my Julia, how will these miserable beings tremble, as the grave yawns beneath their feet! Eternity awaits all these butterflies, whether male or female; and I shudder, as imagination presents the grisly group of coxcombs, and of belles, stripped of their paint and patches, wigs, and waltzes, and standing to receive the final sentence at an Almighty tribunal.

I was interrupted in my sermon by a call to the library. It was to meet our new chaplain, for whom my uncle promised to provide, when he procured the appointment of Mr. Oliphant to the parish of Glenalta; and what words can describe our joy at finding in this young man, no other than your neighbour and intimate friend, Alfred Stanley. A person with whom we all feel so well acquainted, and have such reason, through your dear aunt’s eloquent sketches of his character, to admire and value without having ever seen him till now.

Mamma, you know of old, loves to play us a little trick sometimes; and in the present instance I find that all the Checkley family have been in league with her to surprise us. Judge then of our astonishment at receiving your packet by Mr. Stanley, whose groom returns to-morrow into Derbyshire, and shall take this volume to you.

A few days now will see us en route. I cannot hope to send you more than a line till I reach Paris.

Adieu, my dearest Julia; I would that we had done with towns, and were safely arrived in that beautiful region where the mighty “Alps have reared a throne” worthy of those skies which gild their everlasting snows with refulgent glory.

A thousand loves attend you all.

Ever your affectionate,

Emily Douglas.

LETTER XXXVII.
Rev. Mr. Oliphant to Mr. Otway.

To you, my dear friend, I address myself upon the present occasion, though gratitude has long ere this, dictated a return of my best acknowledgments to Mrs. Douglas, for two such letters as deserve indeed my heart-felt thanks. But I have been painfully occupied, and I leave to your discretion the time and method of explaining to my dear friend, the cause of my silence, which is no other than the death of our worthy and much lamented neighbour Mr. Bentley, an event, intelligence of which, I well know, will not be heard at Marsden with indifference. A fortnight ago he returned, as usual, from his ride, accompanied by George, and immediately on entering the house, fell into a sort of fit, which appeared to result from determination of blood towards the head. George sent directly for me, and we had Mr. Pigot immediately from Tralee, who acted with judgment, and ere the surgeon and physician, for whom we sent to Dublin, had reached Mount Prospect, our poor friend had recovered his sensibility. The devotion of George to his uncle could not be exceeded, and it was so purely disinterested, that the wealth of Potosi would have weighed but as a feather in the balance, against the re-establishment of Mr. Bentley’s health. The medical people, however, saw from the first, that his situation was precarious, of which he was conscious from the beginning himself. With Christian courage, he began to prepare for the awful change which he perceived to be approaching, and truly died the death of the righteous. Yesterday evening he breathed his last in the arms of his nephew. I never left him, except for the necessary purposes of refreshment, from the time of his first seizure, and have the happiness of believing that my presence afforded him comfort. As the short period of his indisposition spared him any great exhaustion of strength, he spoke without uneasiness, and in the most collected manner adverted to the nature of his hopes. Nothing could be more deeply interesting than his discourse, during the few latter hours which preceded the closing scene.

“Oliphant,” said he, “I have never in my life, been an unbeliever; but how small is the difference between infidelity, and a mere nominal Christianity: a meagre religion of form and habit! Nay, of the two, is there not a better chance, that the avowed scoffer, terrified by the abyss which lies before him, may turn from the evil of his ways, than the self-satisfied moralist, who depends on his miserable, his imperfect works, for eternal salvation? My friend, I was in the latter predicament. I received a commonplace Church of England education, said my prayers mechanically, went to church, gave alms, abstained from travelling on Sundays; and was for years of my life, so entirely persuaded, that as a Christian character, I stood on a high pedestal, removed from the vulgar level of mankind, that the Pharisee’s words, though not perhaps actually expressed by my lips, were never far from my heart; and, ‘Lord, I thank Thee, that I am not as other men,’ was a sentiment continually present to me, whenever I thought upon serious subjects. Oh, how far from God was I in those days, when I thought myself so near Him!”

Here he paused, and after the interval of a few minutes, resumed the train of solemn reflection upon which he had entered.

“Yes,” added he, “blessed be Heaven, such vain-glorious delusions are far from me now, and I am not ashamed to say, that I owe the change to this young man.”

Here poor George was completely overwhelmed. He pressed his uncle’s hand to his lips, and shed a torrent of tears.

“George,” continued the dying man, “first taught me the religion of the heart. Of what avail are the cold conclusions of reason? they teach not humility, they do not subdue the passions, they do not improve the temper, nor allay one demoniac ebullition of malice or revenge. My practice has been wretchedly vacillating. I have been continually led away from the right way; but it is something to know this, and to put no confidence in aught but the redeeming mercy of Him who suffered in our mortal form, for guilty man, and died upon the cross to save our souls alive.”

My poor friend told me that his worldly affairs were all settled.

“My temporal house,” said he, “has been set in order. May the heavenly mansions be opened to receive me!”

From time to time, he held this kind of language, placidly awaiting the awful mandate. The bursting of a blood vessel in the temple is not attended by much pain, and he suffered none that was not incident to the remedies employed. On Tuesday he gave me a key, and told me where I should find all his papers regularly labelled, adding, “George’s character is not one of shew. He will be sorry for me in the bottom of his heart: give him assistance now, and he will not need it long. Religion has taken fast hold upon him, and her consolations will quickly restore the equilibrium of his spirits. He will never forget, but he will soon cease to grieve.”

After so saying, he fell into a tranquil slumber, and spoke no more, except to ask for certain portions of the sacred volume. He repeated the 15th chapter of St. John with fervour; desired us to read the 53d of Isaiah, the 23d Psalm, and other favourite parts of scripture. A restless night proclaimed the approach of death, and the last afternoon witnessed his peaceful exit. He left his affectionate regards for all of you, and has bequeathed, he told me, some little memorial of respectful esteem to each individual at Glenalta and Lisfarne.

Thus has passed away our kind-hearted neighbour Roger Bentley, and his loss would be too sad to dwell upon, if his excellent nephew were not heir to his uncle’s virtues, as well as property. No change will be felt, I venture to assert, by any one who depended on the bounty of our departed friend. Poor George is absorbed in silent sorrow; he neither weeps nor talks, but the chalky paleness of his countenance, is a faithful index to what passes within. He courts solitude, and wishes no other companionship than his Bible. When the last ceremony is performed, I shall write to my dear friend, Mrs. Douglas, and in the mean time, with the most affectionate remembrances to her, the General, and my pupils, believe me, my dear sir,

Yours most sincerely,

J. Oliphant.

LETTER XXXVIII.
From Edward Otway, Esq. to Rev. Mr. Oliphant.

My dear Oliphant,

I cannot describe the shock which your intelligence imparted. It was but a week before that day, on which his final summons was issued, that I received a letter from my valued and lamented friend, full of project and futurity; warm with friendship, and seasoned with that peculiar and pungent humour which rendered him so singularly entertaining and lively a companion. Sic transit gloria mundi! In middle age, rich, healthy, divested of care, and happy in the society of that good young man, who would have thought the end so near? Who could have anticipated this sudden wreck of human hope? Such is life! And does not such a tragedy, as it often presents, call upon the actors in the drama for serious thoughts of what may follow? I will not say that

“We could have better spared a better man,”

for Bentley was an excellent character, but I may truly say, that many who fill a much larger circle than he did in the world’s estimation, would not have left such a chasm in society. To the poor, his loss would be irreparable, were it not that he leaves in George a representative so worthy of him. Oh! when I reflect upon the habit which prevails so generally at present, of taking young people abroad, educating them in distant climes, alienating their minds from the land that gave them birth, and forming their tastes to foreign manners; when I compare this dismal error, and its consequences, with the scene which we are contemplating at Mount Prospect, surely there is reason to apprehend a fatal overthrow for our hapless country. How few George Bentleys are ready to succeed the present generation amongst us! I have seen much of the world in my day, but have latterly lived in such abstraction from its vices and its follies, that they strike me with almost as much wonder in their modern dress, as if I had not before been familiar with their features. True it is, that they are to be found everywhere, and the deepest retirement is not necessarily virtuous, because it is solitary; but the fashionable community of the present day seems to “out-Herod Herod” in all that marks the absence of head and heart. These dear young people are quite an affecting study. I never saw such purity in mortal mould as breathes around them. Each seems to be provided by nature with a safety lamp that preserves them from contact with the noxious miasma of a vicious world; and I should be repaid for much greater dereliction from my usual habits than I submit to here, by the pleasure which I derive from the unsophisticated singleness, instinctive modesty, and fine feeling of my youthful associates, to whom it has fallen to my lot to act the part of Chaperone. Never had Duenna reason to be prouder of a trust than I have of the charge confided to my care; and my vanity has cause of excitement in full proportion with my pride, as the charm of nature in the midst of an artificial society is irresistibly refreshing, like the admittance of Heaven’s sweet breath, the pure mountain breeze, into a heated atmosphere, loaded with the costly, but insalubrious exhalation of a thousand perfumes. You are so much a part of the Glenalta family, through the claims of a long acquaintance and mutual regard, that I do not feel as if I were betraying the delicacy of my young friend Emily Douglas, in telling you of the proof which we have just received of her total indifference to rank and fortune. Two days ago, General Douglas was applied to in form on the part of an old Baronet in this neighbourhood, who requested permission to announce his only son in quality of suitor to his niece, promising that nothing should be wanting in the liberality of settlements to render the proposed alliance agreeable to the young lady and her mother. I need scarcely add, how unhesitatingly these advances were rejected. You are too well acquainted with the charming girl who was the object of them, to doubt her reception of such an offer. Emily’s hand will follow her heart, not precede it; and happy will he be for whom such a treasure may be destined.

When a favourable moment occurs, and that you find dear George capable of deriving pleasure from hearing of a tribute to his uncle’s memory, tell him, that all the gaieties of a week, in prospect, have been suspended at Marsden by the young people, as a mark of the sincere esteem in which our late friend was held by the inhabitants of Glenalta. Adieu, my dear Oliphant. All here unite in kindest remembrances with

Your faithful and affectionate,

Ed. Otway.

LETTER XXXIX.
Emily Douglas to Julia Sandford.

Brighton.

Here we are, dearest Julia, and, as I find that we are to stay here for some days, I cannot employ myself more agreeably than in writing you “a few more last words” ere we embark for the Continent. But I must carry you back to Marsden, where we remained full three weeks after the period which had been fixed upon for our departure, on account of the fluctuations in my uncle’s health. The day after I sent you my last letter, we received the sad news from Glenalta, which mamma conveyed to Checkley. Till we lost dear Mr. Bentley, I had no idea how much we all loved him; and I feel that his death has left a cruel blank in our social circle. The intelligence of an event so painful, naturally restrained the course of our amusement, if that deserve the name which owes to the weakness of our fellow creatures its whole power of affording entertainment. I am such a novice in the ways of polite life, that I have not yet learned to laugh at the people around me, without something of self-reproach, which sends me to my pillow in an uneasy state of mind, that “murders sleep;” and I was growing very weary of what is so falsely, in my opinion, called pleasure, when Mr. Oliphant’s melancholy letter occasioned a complete cessation of dinner and evening parties, so far as we were concerned. We had no spirits to join the insipid society of the neighbourhood, when our minds were transplanted to the awful scene at Mount Prospect. During several days we did not stir from the demesne of Marsden, and these, if not clouded by the death of our kind neighbour, would have been by far the happiest that I have passed since we left home—talismanic word, which I never write, nor speak, without an emotion peculiar to itself. We are greatly delighted with your friend Alfred Stanley. What a heavenly sight is that of a young heart devoted to its God? Mr. Stanley is, indeed, a clergyman, and his life and manners explain that text of Scripture so often cavilled at, which beautifully provides at once for the purity of the Apostle and the utility of his example, in the injunction to come out of the world; yet, while avoiding its contagion, not to mistake a local removal, or a cold abstraction from its concerns, for that holiness which the Great Founder of our religion urges on his followers. Mr. Stanley is a practical illustration of the precept intended, I am convinced, to be understood, as he enacts it.—Cheerful, elegant, informed, and pleasing, there is no society which is not rendered more agreeable by his presence; but there is none in which it would be possible to forget his sacred calling. Religion seems to have its rise in the centre of his heart, and to send forth streams into every action; yet not such as dash and foam, and startle by their impetuosity, but the existence of which, within the soil, is discovered from the verdure and fertility of the surface. His opinions seem, as far as I can judge in a short time, to be purely those of Gospel truth, equally remote from the lifeless formalism of what is now, by a strange and melancholy distinction, designated Orthodoxy; and, on the other side, those peculiar tenets so seldom honestly avowed, but sometimes defacing the Christian scheme, which derive their name and character from Geneva. Your friend, Alfred, realizes my idea of a faithful messenger. His piety is evangelical, but he is not a Calvinist—he is—what was I going to say? I had just begun a sentence when Fanny came flying into my room to tell me that the packet which sails on Monday is to waft us from the British shores. My uncle, it appears also, has received a letter stating, that the repairs of the parish church at Swainton, where Mr. Stanley is to officiate, cannot be completed under three months. In consequence of this intelligence, a warm invitation to accompany us on the Continent has been made and accepted; so we shall take our chaplain with us, and I have no doubt that we shall find him a great acquisition to our party. The concluding week of our sojournment at Marsden was marked by some extraordinary events. Sir Christopher Cromie, the most pudding-headed puffin that ever was destined to take his seat in the House of Commons, has now the privilege of franking in such a claw—for hand-writing you cannot call it—that if he should doze away, per force of segars, the recollection of his own name, as I have been assured that a gentleman, equally enlightened with our baronet, once did, Sir Christopher’s autograph has this advantage over all others, that it may stand for any, or for every thing, according to the skill employed in deciphering his pot-hooks and hangers. He was duly returned—chaired—feasted; and gave a foretaste of his Parliamentary eloquence at a great election “feed,” as Mr. Bolton told us, in a speech which, though evidently conned over long before it was spoken, proved such a desperate failure, that even the newspaper editor in his pay could not tack any epithet more flattering than “neat” to Sir Kit’s address to his constituents. Quere, may not this word neat, applied to gentlemen’s harangues, which are neither sensible, witty, eloquent, nor impressive, be a delicate cover for—calf? Well, shouts rent the air, and the sweet sounds of “Sir Christopher for ever!” struck upon the listening organs of Mrs. Hannaper, who was seated in a balcony of the Red Lion inn, glowing like a Chinese poppy, and surrounded with her attendant nymphs, though certainly very unlike Calypso herself, awaiting the happy moment of victory to buff and blue. No sooner did the glad tidings reach the portals of her ear, than Mrs. Hannaper, with her plumed hat in one hand, and a white handkerchief in the other, cheered the populace. A shower of silver next bestrewed the pavement. Tar barrels, beer barrels, and all the usual vulgarities of mobbish demonstration, had their turn, and the tables at Parham Hall groaned under the hecatomb sacrificed that day to this new pillar of the Constitution, this swollen, shining faced, addle pated, member of the British Senate, duly elected to represent that goodly portion of the British empire; the ale-steeped suffrages of which gave him a trifling majority over a sensible, worthy man, who was his opponent, and committed its interests to the head of one who would never have made the troublesome discovery through any appeal to his judgment, that he had a head at all on his shoulders, if it had not been for a reference once submitted to his fiat, to decide between the rival merits of unadulterated Lundy Foot, and the Duke of York’s mixture. On the evening of that auspicious day, Mrs. Hannaper, wound up to the highest height of generous enthusiasm, took her niece aside, and just as the dancing was about to commence, presented her with a power of attorney, duly executed to her agents in London, and enabling them to transfer £20,000 from her name to that of Miss Ormsby, in the New Four per Cents, saying, as she slipped the paper into her niece’s hand, “we do not know what is before us; this is a day of rejoicing, and you shall have your share in it. Here I have made you independent, and you may please yourself in the choice of a husband.” Little did the poor lady dream of what she was about, nor guess the prompt obedience of Miss Ormsby in adopting her aunt’s suggestion.

Mrs. Hannaper retired from the revels worn out with fatigue at twelve o’clock; but when Sol, drawing aside the golden curtains of the east, ventured to peep within the crimson hangings of Mrs. Hannaper’s pavilion, Sir Christopher Cromie and the fair Ormsby were dashing away towards London, carrying safely with them those credentials which, on their being presented at the Bank of England, put the young lady in possession of her fortune, and by so doing, kicked the beam, and sent poor Hannaper up in her scale, which had previously been kept by the pressure of her purse in trembling balance with its partner, in which Miss Ormsby’s beauty weighed but unsteadily against it. Words are inadequate to paint the surprise, rage, and disappointment which alternately struggled, and then burst all in a mess together from the lips of our heroine. After the first explosion was over, the spirit of intrigue raised its head over the troubled waters, and, re-asserting its wonted pre-eminence, suggested the idea of a glorious revenge, in setting aside Sir Christopher’s election, on the ground of bribery and corruption, most abundant proof of which, Mrs Hannaper was able to command, her own diminished caskets having chiefly supplied the sinews of the war, and bearing testimony to the truth of that plea, on which it is now her object to humble the god of her whilom idolatry. If she is able to succeed, it is imagined that she has two strings to her bow, as a corps of reserve, either to bring forward an old East Indian, who has a fine place in her neighbourhood for the borough of Jobton, and marry him out of spite to Sir Kit; or, to set up a numskull nephew, who sold out of the guards some time ago, and has been since trying to barter a fine figure for a heavy purse. It is thought that with M. P. gracefully appended to his name, he might prevail on Lady Florence Languish, to accept his hand upon a life insurance, and certain reversionary hopes connected with Parham Hall, in which case, Mrs. Hannaper will make him heir, and cut out her niece’s farther expectations.

Oh, Julia, what abominations have I been describing! This narrative, as I have given it to you, is as nearly as I can remember, in the very words of Mr. Bolton, our merry chronicler; and this was the mystery, to which he alluded, when he hinted at back stairs intelligence, but refused to explain farther, lest we should mar poetic justice, by revealing the plot. Alas! I have worse than this to tell you, and then my pen shall never be dipped again in subjects such as these. It is not good to talk, to write, to think on themes of this nature; were they simply disgusting, they would not be dangerous; but it is not in human nature to resist the ridiculous when Mr. Bolton is the Biographer, and such people as I have been introducing to your acquaintance are the subjects of a memoir compiled by him. I laughed till the tears made channels in my cheeks. Not so, when he told us a story of another neighbour, whose house I have journalized you into visiting along with me. Only conceive Lady Campion’s having made proposals of marriage to Lord Thornborough, who had, after too liberal a potation of Burgundy, made his to her daughter; and preparations are actually in train for this unnatural union, Lord T. having deserted his first love. The contemptible animal, miscalled nobleman, has made his terms: Lady Campion settles a thousand a-year upon him in perpetuity, of which she deprives her own offspring, and receives a coronet in exchange! Thank heaven that we have left Marsden, the air of which seems tainted by such corruption.

Before I close my letter I must refresh myself, and obey you, by looking into Frederick’s humourous diary, and trying whether I can give you another scrap out of it in the way of a vignette. I told you the dear fellow diverted himself by scribbling in verse, when he reached his lodgings at night, rehearsing for his diversion the principal circumstances that had struck him ludicrously in the course of each day, while in London. I find a ball at Lady Gosling’s mentioned in the three following stanzas, which are a good specimen of Frederick’s merry vein:—

There, as each dandy sidles round the room,
So like a crab, both in his claws and motion,
Whose head is a soft sponge to hold perfume,

Whose face a platter, shining with some lotion,

Who is the idol of his own devotion.

And thinks that all must hold the self same creed

On this important point. How little notion

Has he, of all the answers matrons need,

Ere with his favouring fiat they can be agreed.

“Has he got brothers?” “Yes.” “Is he the heir?”

“No, he’s a younger son of Viscount D——,”

“What are his prospects?” “None.” “then I declare

I think it very wrong of Lady E.
To have invited him.” Now, as for me,
I never see a younger brother’s face,
Unless the second’s, should the eldest be
Consumptive,—clearly a decided case,

For then in fact, the second soon must take his place.

Heavens! has she presented him to Jane!

I will not let her dance,—a younger brother

To waltz with Jane!—a beggar to profane

Her hand! no, he may go and seek some other.

I’m sure if Lady E. had been a mother,

She had not dared such impropriety.

Good heavens! to be the cause of such a pother;

It will get wind:—such notoriety,

A breach of every rule of civilized society!

I bid adieu to sarcasm here, and must not take the memory of such beings as I leave behind me, into the vallies of Piémont. I must purify myself by bathing in the Pelice, before I presume to penetrate farther into those enchanting regions of nature and simplicity. What have Mrs. Hannaper and Lady Campion in common with the glorious Alps? I wish that I had never seen or heard of them.

This Brighton is not worth a sketch; a meagre strand, a barren flat, dressed up indeed, and frequented as the seat of majesty. But the palace here is no better than a wart, a mere excrescence without either grace or beauty, bereft of all that constitutes grandeur, or excites an idea of tasteful feeling without, and within seeming like a mighty store-house, in which all sorts of splendid things from east, west, north, and south, are accumulated, as in a great bazaar. I wonder that the king did not grow weary of its dull monotony long ago. My uncle, dear soul, is much less well than he was a month ago, and I grow impatient till we arrive at Turin, in hope, (oh, what a desert would this world be but for its sweet influence), that change of climate may effect some happy alteration. Mamma has been employing all her rhetoric in vain, to persuade him into passing on at once to our destination, but he will halt in Paris, that we may gaze upon its wonders. Once more adieu. Wish us a fair wind and quick passage, dearest Julia, and with love to all you love, believe me, till death, your affectionate

Emily Douglas.

LETTER XL.
Frederick Douglas to the Rev. Mr. Oliphant.

Paris.

My dear Friend,

The first fruits of my pen in a foreign land, shall be dedicated to you. Though you have only travelled by the fire-side, there is not any thing in the route that we are to trace which could afford you the slightest pleasure from its novelty. The appearance of Dieppe, the country, the posting, Rouen, the windings of the Seine, the chateaux, what is there that I have yet seen, which is not as familiar to you in description, as the map of Dublin? We left Brighton on Monday, and I felt as I took a farewell view of Beachy-head, an undefined sensation, which I dare say that thousands have felt before me, compounded of pride, pleasure, and sorrow. To go abroad, though become so common, that the difficulty is to find any one now who stays at home, has something in the very sound of the words inspiring to one’s spirits; a vague hope of adventure, a sort of self-applause at having commenced an enterprise; and a kind of nameless triumph in touching a foreign shore, and finding oneself understood when speaking a strange tongue; all these circumstances elevate the mind to enthusiasm, while the parting pang on quitting home, country, friends, though but for a limited season, must chequer the gladness of any heart, in whatever breast it may reside. I wish for your company always, but I particularly desired to have you at my elbow when I passed St. Germain en Laye, Rosni, and Malmaison. What a crowd of recollections rushed upon my mind, as Sully, Louis the Fourteenth, Madame de Maintenon, James the Second, and Napoleon, pressed upon my thoughts, and struggled for a precedence, which the different ages in which they played their parts, arranged in an order very unlike that in which they rose to my imagination; the wonderful Corsican contriving generally to jostle out every reminiscence that was not connected with his astonishing appearance upon earth.

I wanted you also at my side as we approached Paris, the coup d’œil of which as you enter the Place Louis Quinze is superb. In one point of view the eye takes in, as if in an immense panorama the entire circle of those objects which at once exalt and degrade man, exhibit his power, and prove his nothingness. Palaces that have stood for ages, the great triumphal pillar which records the conquests of that preternatural chief who frowned the world into fetters at his feet, then that spot where the martyred Bourbons ascended the scaffold, where that angel Elizabeth exchanged the horrors of her prison for the crown of glory that awaited such faith, such love, such heroism as her’s! But whither is my pen straying? What is there in Paris that you have not at your finger’s ends? Aye, you could direct me to the very shelf in the Royal Library on which any book is placed which you desired to consult. You could send me north, south, east, or west, in the Jardin des Plantes for this, that, or the other class of Linnæus. You could take a wand, and, pointing to the pictures of the Louvre, give me a history of every subject which they exhibit, and name the master who executed each. In short, the only thing which you at this moment in the county of Kerry could not describe much more accurately to me than I to you is precisely that which no pen is capable of conveying, namely, the direct impression made upon the senses by the objects themselves; and this is so exhilarating, that I seem to myself to tread on air, and to breathe an atmosphere, like that which Saussure found on the summit of Mont Blanc, almost threatening delirium by its rarefaction. How striking the difference between history and fiction in the effects produced upon the mind while we are visiting the several theatres allotted to the drama of one or the other! All the charms of association, the powers of memory, the magic of imagination, are called into vivid action as we take our seat in a chair which had held Henry the Fourth, or place ourselves at a table on which Sully wrote; but when we look upon a Prior Park as the seat of Mr. Allworthy, Tom Jones vanishes from the scene, and we feel almost ashamed when fictitious personages lay claim to any region of the brain except that which is inhabited by fancy. “Unreal mockery hence” is the sentiment which I felt on viewing the scene of Fielding’s tale, and being desired to mark the wood, the pond, the garden, which are supposed by the author to have witnessed the early squabbles of Bliffield and the youthful hero. Is not this an argument for keeping truth and fiction separate?

With few exceptions, I hate historical novels, which, losing the sobriety of fact, are equally divested of the grace which attaches to invention, and present all the whalebone and starch of ruffs and farthingales without being faithful to costume; thus producing a chaos in the memory, and blending incidents and people till we can no longer trace the line between substance and shadow.

Emily is the pupil who does you most credit; Charlotte and Fanny are very intelligent, and see their way so well, that if Em. were not of our party, the others would perhaps astonish; but old and young, we all flock to your Pulcheria, as you have called her from her childhood, to tell us whatever we want to know. Her memory is so admirable that nothing seems to run through it, and she has the whole story of every thing that we see by heart, while, as you know, she cannot imagine herself to be superior to any one with whom she converses.

I must tell you, that nothing could exceed the admiration which these amiable, unartificial sisters of mine have excited in Hampshire. How is it that people can relinquish all right and title to understanding or good feeling, in their own case, and yet retain enough of each to admire both when they have met with them in others?

I hope that George Bentley has received all my letters, and that he may turn in his thoughts the proposal which I made in my last, that he should meet us at Turin. My uncle talks of remaining here not less than a fortnight.

Stanley improves upon us every day: he is a very fine young man, and equally a favourite with us all.

I am on the tip-toe of expectation till the post comes in, which will decide whether Arthur and his friend Falkland can come here. It will be delightful if they can join us; and fortunately our hotel is large enough for us to be all together.

Huzza!—They will be in Paris to-morrow evening.—God bless you, my dear sir.—Love to Lawrence.

Vale, vale,

Ever your affectionate,

F. Douglas.

LETTER XLI.
Emily Douglas to Julia Sandford.

Dearest Julia,

Here we are, in that truly magnificent street, the Rue Royale, to which we removed immediately after I sent off my last letter. From our hotel we look upon such a world of monuments, that every object which the windows open upon seems to beckon like a ghost, and invite one to hear the tales which it could disclose; but you lived so near this spot when you were in Paris, that you can place yourself in the midst of us, and accompany your friends in every excursion.—I am bewildered! The beauty of the buildings, the foreign air of all things around me, the confusion of tongues, the quantity to be seen and heard on the one hand; then the anxiety which presses daily on our hearts, and mamma’s evident apprehension that the end so much dreaded is not far distant, hang a mill-stone round my neck and chequer every enjoyment; but I have a great deal to tell you, of one sort or other.

Here I broke off; my letter, only written thus far, has lain by during upwards of a week. Arthur and his friend are with us; and Time flies on golden pinions. If happiness be not made for mortals, why have we sometimes a cup of such sparkling brilliancy presented to our lips only to make us suffer the fate of Tantalus? I am driven to ask this murmuring discontented question on looking around, and casting up the sum of such treasures as I cannot bear to part with.

You know how we love Arthur, who is so improved that I should scarcely know him; and, oh, what a being is Charles Falkland! It would seem as if Nature, in one of her happiest moods, had sent him into our planet just to shew what she was able to perform. I had heard of him, and read his letters; I therefore expected something unlike the average of human kind, but I was not prepared for such a creature as I find, who seems to have been endowed at his birth by all the fairies, who, according to the ancient legends, used to subscribe “a virtue each, and each a grace,” to produce perfection! I rejoice for Frederick in such a companion; and as for the female part of our circle, every enjoyment afforded by the interminable delights of this surprising Paris, is rendered tenfold attractive by the society which it is our fortune to have assembled here.

We passed two days at Versailles most agreeably, and have been at St. Cloud. After all my resolutions to the contrary, I should find it impossible to avoid dilating on themes so fruitful of reflection, were my mind not too much taken up at present with thoughts that corrode and distress, to admit of musing on more abstract subjects.

Hardly is my dear Arthur happy in a reunion with so many who are dear to him, ere a fatal interruption occurs in a letter from Louisa Howard, and a second from young Annesley, dated Milan. The first informs him that my aunt is seriously ill, and so harassed by applications for money, both on her own and her unfortunate son-in-law’s account, that the most distressing consequences may be apprehended.

Poor Louisa writes in sad spirits, and entreats her brother to lose as little time as possible in setting out for Selby. Mr Annesley’s letter brings the painful tidings that Lord Crayton has had a quarrel with an officer, to whom he had lost a large sum of money. They fought; Lord C. killed his antagonist, and then absconded: Lady Crayton accompanied his flight. They left Milan deeply in debt, and no one is able to trace the fugitives. At this moment the family are in consultation respecting what is to be done; and before I close this, you shall hear the result of the council.

Well, our much loved Arthur, who is greatly depressed, sets out for Calais to-morrow; and Mr. Falkland, who gives your friend Stanley a seat in his carriage, has resolved on accompanying us. We have outstayed the time allotted to Paris, and are to commence our journey in three or four days.

Adieu, dearest Julia!

Your affectionate

Emily Douglas.

LETTER XLII.
From the Same to the Same.

Turin.

My dearest Julia,

Though it is not above a fortnight since I closed my last letter, my life has latterly become so full, that days, happily as they glide away, seem to occupy years in their passage, when I count the measure of their duration by the variety of scene, the stimulus of movement, and the excitement of mind, which I have to remember.

We left Paris on Thursday, and did not enter the Forest of Fontainebleau till its majestic shades were involved in twilight. No, never while I have life, can I forget the emotions which this scene, so noble in its solitude—so melancholy—yet so romantic, excited in my soul! The pensive drapery which approaching night cast over the venerable woods before us! the magnificence of the single trees, which stood out every now and then from the masses of mingled rock and foliage, as if to exhibit all the pride of individuality! the fantastic shapes of hill and crag—the silence only broken by a stream which murmured to the right of us as we moved slowly forwards: and all this, contrasted with the din of that noisy, vicious, and idle multitude that we had left behind, struck upon my heart an impression which, while “memory holds her seat,” can never be obliterated.

I could have lingered for ever in the dreary, yet beautiful Forest of Fontainebleau, regardless of the present and future, so wrapped was I in contemplation of the past. Henry the Great rose upon my vision, and the horns seemed to sound in my ear, that summoned him and his brilliant cortege to the royal sports, of which this splendid forest was the favourite scene. The ghost of Bayard, dear to France, and adored by all whose breasts own a sympathetic spark of those glowing fires kindled by the spirit of chivalry, glided across my imagination; but the images of grandeur, and the phantoms of romance, soon vanished from my mind, and left it fixed in the concluding act of that astonishing drama, over which the curtain dropped at Fontainebleau, when Napoleon, fallen from his high estate, resigned the sovereignty of Europe, and sealed the death-warrant of that power which had subdued the world, and drawn the nations captive at his chariot wheels. Forgive me, I have broken my resolution, and am wandering from my purpose; but I promised more than I find it possible to perform, a lesson you will say, to my presumption. No, to pass through such scenes as these, as if one were travelling over a turnpike-road in the west of England, would argue something either above or below human nature; and, as I profess to be a very mortal of earth, I feel that I may claim your pardon for my digression. I could tell you of the softest, stillest, most heavenly moon that ever lent its silver beams to heighten a prospect and inspire the genius of meditation. I could dilate in raptures on the landscape round Nemours; I could break from every restraining bond to expatiate on the transports with which, on arriving at the brow of the prodigious steep which overhangs Briare, I first beheld the Loire, rolling through a perfect Elysium: but I will hasten onwards. You shall not be detained at Moulins, though we staid there two days. You shall not halt in the lovely Nivernois, though we broke down, and had thence the happiness of remaining for several hours in one of the sweetest cottages imaginable, admiring the groups of peasants at their daily toil, so cheerful—so picturesque.

At Lyons, too, we rested; visited “Les Etroits,” though not for the sake of that bad man, Rousseau; and thence pursued our way. That odious Charles Emanuel, the tyrant of this region, haunted me as we passed through Savoy. It is true that I would fain stand still with you for a moment on Mont Cenis, and make you partake of my enthusiasm as I gazed from the plain of St. Nicholas; but it must not be; “Hark forward!” must be our motto. There! I have brought you safely into Turin, and you have not yawned over a single syllable of controversy respecting the station from which Hannibal encouraged his army by a sight of the Italian plains, nor gone to sleep over a single calculation upon the impossibility of traversing the Alps with a numerous host of elephants. My business is not with the truth or falsehood of Livy’s descriptions at present, though he was one of our travelling companions; but as I said before, you have stepped out of your traineau, and are with whole bones deposited in a large commodious dwelling in one of the finest streets of the capital of Piémont.

Thank Heaven, my beloved mother, and her precious charge, have surmounted the difficulties of our journey with far less of inconvenience than I could have anticipated. My uncle suffers no pain, but his languor increases with increasing weakness. The wonderful blessings of the Almighty warm my heart to unspeakable gratitude; and when I consider the chain of circumstances attending on the return of this once dreaded relation to his own country, I cannot call them less than providential. I told you not long ago, how happy he is in the removal of those doubts which harassed his mind; and no sooner have Mr. Otway and mamma finished this work, and arrived at a “consummation so devoutly to have been wished for,” than the saint-like voice and countenance of Alfred Stanley “take up the wondrous tale,” and truth that comes “mended from his tongue,” by the holy sincerity in which it is uttered, pours oil and honey over the wounds so newly cicatrized, and, with a sacred unction, prepares our dear invalid for his celestial rest. Of Falkland, like the Alps, I must not speak, lest I should say too much. His society is the best consolation which could be offered in the bereavement of Arthur, and we literally devour this magic scenery together, with our eyes and hearts. The beauties of nature are not like those of art, addressed only to the outward sense. They captivate the affections, and I always find that they point my mind to Heaven, there to glorify that creative wisdom and beneficence, which saw it good thus to adorn the earth. We are engaged in planning various schemes for seeing the surrounding country, and only wait to hear from Arthur, and learn whether we have a chance of his returning, and accompanying us in the excursion, to make arrangements for our darling project of visiting the vallies of the Waldenses. Adieu, dearest Julia,

Your ever after,

Emily Douglas.

LETTER XLIII.
Arthur Howard to Frederick Douglas.

Selby.

My dear Frederick,

Alas! I cannot rejoin your party for the present. I reached this place with as little delay as winds, waves, and mail coaches permitted, and found my poor mother so frightfully altered, that I should scarcely recognize her at the distance of a few paces. I was not aware, till I arrived at home that she had had a paralytic stroke, which she cannot endure to have known, and Louisa would not risk the communication by letter, lest I might, inadvertently, betray a knowledge of the fact on meeting her. Of this there is no danger in telling it to you, and in doing so, I explain at once how impossible it is for me to quit England while matters remain in their present precarious condition. You will rejoice to hear that domestic misfortunes have had the happiest effect on my sister’s mind. She is wonderfully changed, and her whole attention is devoted to the melancholy duty of watching our invalid, whose illness appeared immediately after a sudden and unlooked for demand of £2,000 on the miserable Crayton’s account, accompanied by an earnest request from Adelaide that her mother would honour the bill, or, at least, give security for its payment at a future day. This was impossible, for my poor mother was overwhelmed by debts of her own. The grief and mortification which are now her portion are not rendered more tolerable by the accompanying reflection that she brought them on herself; and it is the cruel nature of her complaint to aggravate every vexation by the dreadful irritability which is one of its constant symptoms, as I am informed by Doctor Leach, who is in daily attendance at Selby. Need I say that almost every hour is occupied in endeavouring to soothe our poor patient, and relieve Louisa’s care? You know nothing of the hopeless task which we have daily to encounter. The life that is led by fashion’s votaries, ill prepares the mind I see for finding refuge in the only consolations which a sick room supplies. How often am I irresistibly led to a comparison of my uncle’s couch with that on which my poor mother’s faded form reclines! We can impart no comfort. We fail of amusing, as of consoling her. Neither book nor conversation delights, the affrighted spirit turns in anguish from viewing the grave as it gapes beneath, and dares not seek for refuge in Him who is neglected while the blood circulates freely in the veins, and the wheel rolls on, as if it were never to meet obstruction. I never pondered on these things till I lived at Glenalta, and I am now endeavouring to impress them on Louisa. Cards are my poor mother’s only resource, and my sister, Turner, and I, are in constant requisition. We play whist to amuse her, and suffer her to win every game. Perhaps by keeping her mind as calm and unruffled as possible, I may prevail with her to see Mr. Arundel, an excellent clergyman in our neighbourhood, who has often proffered his service, but whose visits she has hitherto declined. The Doctor gives me no hope of her recovery, though he thinks that she may endure repeated attacks before her strength sinks entirely under them. Some of the good people of our country are loud, I am told in their abuse of my sister, and me, for permitting a card inside my mother’s apartment. We ought, they say, to insist on her seeing Mr. Arundel, and oblige her to listen to pious reading. Alas! what mischief may be wrought even by the best intentions, when zeal is so wholly unaccompanied by discretion! Should we hope to render a temper fitter for Heaven by exciting its utmost animosity, or secure a reception in the heart for doctrines forced upon the ear? So certain am I of the contrary, that I will take the whole responsibility on myself, and trust that the motive which impels me to brave the opinion of several who are older than I am, may insure forgiveness, if I am wrong. Ask Stanley for his advice, and tell Falkland to write to me. You must remember the life that Louisa and I are leading, and have pity on us. Let me hear often from you, and tell my dear Emily, and Charlotte, that I think a few words of cousinly kindness would produce a happy effect upon my poor sister’s mind; she would find too, perhaps, an interesting recreation in corresponding with them. It is a distressing circumstance to me, that I know not where to address Adelaide, nor does she know where to find me. Of her situation I must remain ignorant, till Annesley can trace the route by which she and her unfortunate husband have evaded pursuit. My dear uncle’s noble gift shall be forwarded to Milan for the payment of debts, and we must, if practicable, purchase off the prosecution for Castelli’s death. You will assist me, I am sure, in every possible way. God bless you, dearest Frederick. Loves to all.

Your affectionate, but harassed,

A. Howard.

LETTER XLIV.
Frederick Douglas to Arthur Howard.

Turin.

My dear Arthur,

An entire month has passed since the date of my last letter to you; and I have now to recount an adventure which has deeply interested me, and will, I have no doubt, produce as much excitement in your mind as it has done in my own. When we had been at Turin about ten days, Mr. Otway, Emily, and I, returned late one evening from a scramble amongst the rocky scenery by which we are surrounded, and found George Bentley seated with the rest of the party. You may imagine that the meeting affected us all. Poor fellow, he is a sincere mourner for his uncle’s loss, and is grown more serious than I ever saw him; but he is one whom I shall always love, and we all felt at sight of him as if Glenalta had come over to pay us a visit. After George had rested for a day or two we made our final arrangements, which had been pending for some time previous to his arrival, for the projected excursion into the vallies. It was ruled in congress that we juniors should not all desert the home party together; and as it was considered likely that at a future day when you rejoin us, another sortie may be determined upon; Stanley volunteered in remaining with my uncle, while Fanny begged to be left as guardian of my mother.

To begin then, methodically, you may fancy the travelling party consisting of Mr. Otway, Falkland, George Bentley, Emily, Charlotte, and myself, in full march, on the fifteenth ultimo, issuing from the Posta Nuova, and taking the high road to Pinerolo. The Po rolled impetuously on its course, and brought to my mind those lines of Virgil, which describe its rushing flood, when swelled by the tributary waters of spring:—

“Proluit insano contorquens vortice Sylvas,
Fluviorum rex Eridanus camposque per omnes,
Cum stabulis armenta tulit;”

appeared as just a character as could be given of this classic river, as we passed along for some miles in view of its winding course. The beautiful plains of the Cottian Alps were left behind us, when we quitted Pinerolo, and we soon opened on the rugged scenery which surrounds Pomaretto, which we entered on foot, so difficult was its approach. The valley of Perosa had much to interest us. We passed through that of Pragella, and wondered at the dreariness of the prospect.

“Man wants but little here below,

Nor wants that little long,”

burst simultaneously from the lips of Emily and Falkland, as we gazed on the barren district before us.

For the particulars of four delightful days spent in traversing the vallies of St. Martino, Clusone, and Luzerna, I shall refer you to our journals, which faithfully describe, and circumstantially narrate all that we saw and heard during our progress. I must hasten on to “metal more attractive” still, in the exquisite loveliness of San Giovanni. At La Torre we were arrested, as if by a spell of magical enchantment. There we halted during two days: visited the monument of Christina, sister of Elizabeth Smith, talked over Victor Amadeus with detestation, of the noble Henri Arnaud with enthusiasm, and were so lost in admiration of the Alpine beauties, and simple manners by which we were so hemmed in on every side, that after a week’s sojournment in this fascinating vale, we should all have been likely to forget the whole of what is called the civilized world, if certain thoughts of Turin, Selby, and Glenalta, had not been interwoven with the raptures to which we resigned ourselves. From La Torre, however, we tore ourselves (I am not so unworthy as to commit a pun amidst the mountains of Switzerland), and proceeded to Angrogna. Here we called a halt, and the result of our deliberations was, that the two girls being intent on achieving, if practicable, the difficult ascent of La Vachera, and visiting the famous Pre du Tour, it was judged expedient that they should remain quietly housed in the village of Angrogna, while some of the party, in quality of scouts, were to reconnoitre, and returning to the rendezvous, declare how far it might be possible for the ladies to realize their daring resolution.

The post of danger is the post of honour, and it might therefore be supposed that the gentlemen of our detachment were all ambitious of being heroes, and immortalizing their names amongst the brave of other days, who had vanquished or fallen near this impregnable fortress of nature’s workmanship; but no such thing, Mr. Otway honestly avowed that his love of adventure was cooled in the stream of time, and that, with the perils of the expedition he would surrender all title to a share in its glories. This was fair and reasonable, suitable to his years, and according with his generosity. But what will you say of Master Falkland, when I tell you that his youthful blood boiled not with either martial or romantic ardour? Protesting against the ungallant proceeding of leaving two damsels in the care of one knight, he sent forward Bentley and your humble servant to meet all the hazard of the undertaking. In short, George and I were decreed to be “les enfans perdus,” while Falkland, not contented with the privileges of exemption from our toils, laid claim to the rewards of chivalry, and sought in Emily’s approving smile a full ratification of his cowardly choice. Yes, Charles, if I mistake not, is no longer compos mentis; and if so, we must not be too hard upon him. I set out with George upon the most interesting perambulation I ever made in my life. We took a guide, and, followed by a peasant boy, struck out of the beaten track, and wandered for several hours through the Valleys of the Waldenses, amid pathless defiles of rock and glen, which presented such matchless variety, such astonishing contrast of the beautiful and sublime, as I should in vain attempt to pourtray with any hope of doing justice to the scenery.

On our return we gave a glowing picture of the romantic beauties which crowned our exertions, and engaged to pilot my sisters and their beaux into the defiles of the adjacent mountains on the following day, which we performed admirably, Emily and Charlotte bringing such freshness of Kerry practice to the task, that they struck our guides with the deepest astonishment. We made acquaintance in our way with several peasants, who charmed us by the ease and simplicity of their manners. All the adventitious distinctions which by introducing inequality, bring also in its train condescension on the one hand, meanness, servility, awkwardness, and presumption on the other, are unknown in the Valleys of Piémont. Here man is reduced to his elemental character: stars and garters, which glitter in the murky atmosphere of courts, and there assume the “Lux lucet in tenebris,” hide their diminished heads, and dare not radiate their sickly lustre in presence of that glorious luminary which seems to disport with peculiar rapture in this region of eternal snows, and to play off all the magic versatility of his powers, amid these giant prisms that reflect, and refract his beams in every possible variety of form and colour. Were I in love, I should grow like one of the lichens to these rocks, but as I am enabled to sing

“My heart’s my own,—my will is free.”

I prefer returning to the full tide of life, and coming from time to time to enjoy these fastnesses of nature with all the stimulus of contrast, added to their intrinsic sublimity. Emily wept as we left the banks of the Pelice on our return to Turin. Though longing to be with those who were left behind, and carrying with her the society which had lent its charms to the desert, her tears flowed as an irresistible tribute to scenes so congenial to her heart. Charlotte used to be always considered by us to live more in a world of sentiment than her elder sister, yet her eyes were not suffused; and though her pencil and her voice have borne away unnumbered memoranda from the mountains, she repassed the Porta Nuova with such transport, that I could scarcely keep her in the carriage and prevent her from running a race with the animals that were doing their best to reunite us with the group which we felt impatient to embrace.

Alas, my dear uncle has been very ill during our absence, and is much changed within these few days of our separation from him. We found my beloved mother looking pale from want of sleep, but rejoicing in the blessing of beholding the triumph of Faith and Hope, in the approaching scene which we cannot flatter ourselves is not in immediate prospect. Stanley, she says, is a celestial messenger.

Your next accounts of my poor aunt, will, I hope, be more favourable. Stanley entirely approves of your conciliating her affections by all the means in your power; and has no doubt that they are the very best handmaids to religion. He bids me say that you must not be discouraged if you cannot prevail at first. Be patient, and even five minutes seriously employed, when the heart is sincere, will not be lost.

A few bits of coloured paper have nothing in their manufacture more inimical to the great cause, than any other trifles which serve to alienate the mind from its most important concerns. This is Stanley’s opinion. Adieu, mon ami,

Ever your faithful friend

F. Douglas.

LETTER XLV.
Emily Douglas to Julia Sandford.

Turin.

Oh, my dearest Julia, in what words shall I describe the horror and consternation in which we have been thrown by the awful event mentioned to your aunt in Alfred Stanley’s last letter? A week has passed since the dreadful catastrophe, and I have not slept since, so great is the shock that it produced. The particulars are as I will now endeavour to detail them.

On the evening of this day se’nnight we were returning, a numerous party, from a walk in the direction of Rivoli, when passing by a large house removed at a little distance from the outskirts of this town, and separated from the road by a thick plantation, we were violently startled by the noise of a pistol-shot, followed by a shriek so piercing, that I shall never cease to remember its shrillness. Mr. Otway, Fanny, Charles Falkland, and I, were foremost, and reached the spot whence these affrighting sounds proceeded before the rest came up; and scarcely had we arrived opposite the door, ere a frantic figure rushed from it, and fell down at our feet! Charles and Mr. Otway raised her from the earth, but she was pale as death, and quite insensible. I ran eagerly to a stream which was just by, and filling the crown of my straw hat with water, was hastening back, when I perceived that she was supported by a young and beautiful woman in deep mourning, who was recognized at the first glance by Fanny to be the Madame de Lisle, of whom I told you in a former letter. The object of our anxiety remained motionless, while the gentlemen, who were now joined by Alfred, George, and Frederick, flew into the house, where all was confusion: servants running to and fro; some of whom were employed in placing the body of a young man, who had just blown his brains out, on a bed. It was growing dark, and the shade of the trees rendered it impossible to see any thing clearly; but on Frederick’s return from the house, where some of the people had told him that the lady who had fainted was wife to Monsieur le Marchand, who was a negociant from Bourdeaux, and had destroyed himself in consequence, they supposed of bad news contained in a letter which he had received on that day, he pressed forward to take her in his arms for the purpose of laying her on a mattrass which he had had brought out; and no sooner did the light fall directly on her corpse-like features, than Frederick exclaimed, “Good God! Adelaide Crayton! She is the very image of her portrait in Grosvenor Square!” The agitation produced by this discovery is more easily imagined than described. Adelaide, for she was indeed our unfortunate cousin, was removed; and as she was raised up a locket fell upon the ground, which contained hair, with a coronet and the letter C. in diamonds. This ornament confirmed my brother’s belief; but she was silent, her pulse appeared to cease, and the livid paleness of her countenance, gave reason to imagine that her spirit would not revive. Oh! who amongst us had heart to wish that her eyes should open again on such a scene? Yet open they did, at last, but it was only to utter another shriek, and look wildly round for an instant, after which, half uttering the name of La Tour, she relapsed into the same inanimate state from which she had but just awakened. We had sent for a surgeon, who was now conducted to the mattrass on which Adelaide lay by a young woman, who, on being questioned, I found was La Tour, and femme de chambre to my poor cousin. In reply to my inquiries, she told me, with very little feeling, that Le Marchand was a feigned name, that Lord Crayton, after killing Signior Castelli, was obliged to fly; that his extravagance knew no bounds, and that he played enormously high; that an hour before the fatal act of suicide he saw a person pass the windows of the room in which he sat, whom he recognized as a Milan man to whom he owed a large sum of money; and irritated by finding that he was no longer concealed, he resolved on the desperate deed which was hardly resolved on ere it was perpetrated. His pistols were charged, and in the presence of his wife he put one of them to his mouth, and was dead in an instant! I said something expressive of pity for the survivor, and was not a little shocked by La Tour’s reply, “Ma’amselle, ne vous mettez pas en peine, madame se consolera bientôt.”

I turned from this woman with abhorrence, just as Mr. Otway, who had been employed in examining the servants, came back to the place where we were surrounding Adelaide, and trying every method for her recovery. Madame de Lisle was kneeling at my side, and engaged in rubbing one of poor Adelaide’s hands, when Mr. Otway changed colour as his eyes met her’s. He seemed on the point of speaking, but repressed whatever he was going to say; and I concluded that he had mistaken her for one of us in the confusion of the moment. At length the surgeon succeeded in recalling poor Lady Crayton’s senses, and she was carried to her bed, where Frederick and I resolved to watch by her during the night. George Bentley and Charles Falkland insisted on remaining below stairs, and Mr. Otway took charge of Charlotte and Fanny, whom he hurried home to apprize mamma of the events of the evening. They found her so far prepared for the dreadful intelligence, that she knew through Mr. Stanley, whom we begged to hasten to our hotel, that a gentleman had shot himself, in consequence of which we were delayed, but she had yet to learn the melancholy particulars of the catastrophe, and that we were endeavouring to be of use to our near relations.

Madame de Lisle was like a sister, she and her maid remained with us all night; and there was nothing that sympathy and tenderness could dictate which this lovely young woman did not offer to us in the way of assistance. Mamma thought my uncle too ill to listen to an account of what had happened, and till the morning she did not come to me, as she judged it better that Adelaide should continue in perfect quiet. A sleeping-dose had been administered, and she lay in a sort of stupor, interrupted from time to time by words uttered in delirium: “Where are my jewels?” “Did you see Castelle?” “When will Arthur come?” were the only sentences that Frederick and I could hear distinctly, though she’ talked a great deal, and apparently with anger at intervals. It was determined upon to remove her as quickly as possible from the theatre of such horror, and accordingly apartments were immediately prepared in a house adjoining that in which we live. The body was disposed of, and every arrangement that we could devise carried into effect with the utmost celerity to change the scene for Adelaide.

When I look back upon the last week, the whole appears like a terrific dream! For an hour together I never lose sight of that corse, weltering in its blood; nor cease to think of that spirit, hurried into the presence of its God! The subject is too awful, and the mind will not dwell upon it. I sometimes feel as if I should lose my senses. Adelaide seems quite unconscious of all that has happened, and never mentions her husband. The physician assures us, that she is not in danger unless the fever increase.

After the lapse of many days I find my letter only half written; but anxiety thickens upon us, and my Julia will excuse me. My poor aunt Howard’s situation is so precarious, that we know not what a day may bring forth. My dear uncle declines, alas, too visibly to leave a doubt that the dreaded moment is at hand! and though Lady Crayton is recovering rapidly, she is, to my eye, a more melancholy object than even death itself. La Tour’s words vibrate on my senses: they are a true picture; “elle se consolera bientôt!” Yes; elle se console, and with so little reference to decency, that though at the arrival of every English mail we expect the last accounts of her mother’s existence, and her husband’s bleeding image seems to dwell amongst us, she is able to talk of indifferent matters, and her only solicitude literally appears at present to display itself only in contrivances for rendering her weeds becoming. She wishes for Arthur, not that she may enjoy a brother’s sympathy, but to know the utmost that can be done to make her independent. On hearing from mamma that a considerable sum had been remitted for the payment of Lord Crayton’s debts in Milan, conceive her proposing that Arthur should be written to directly, to desire that he might reserve this money for her use, and leave her husband’s debts unpaid! Oh, Julia, poor Adelaide was not worse than others by nature; and is this the end of a fashionable education?

I am sick at heart, and turn from the contemplation of my cousin’s future career to rest on the pleasing thought of Madame de Lisle, with whom we are delighted. Though evidently bent on seclusion, and desirous of avoiding even a limited society, she would not refuse us the pleasure of calling upon her; and, from her first interview with mamma, she has not required that we should again solicit her acquaintance. I never saw such sympathy between two beings so far separated by different age and country.

I told you that I had remarked a change in Mr. Otway’s colour when he first saw this deeply interesting young woman. Since that time he has been minutely inquiring about the handkerchief which Fanny picked up, and is fully confirmed by the letters marked upon it in the belief that he has known her family in former days, and seen her when a child; but some circumstances, which I am unable to fathom, deter him from putting any question to her that might determine the point. Perhaps she married without the consent of her friends; yet she seems so good that it would take much evidence to convince me that she had ever made her parents unhappy. Again, were she not so perfectly elegant, so modest and refined in her ways of thinking, it might be supposed that she had conformed to the vulgar views of high life, by marrying some mere man of fashion, in whom she had been disappointed, and by whom, perhaps, she may have been left to mourn over conduct, at the remembrance of which she blushes; but Madame de Lisle cannot be a hypocrite, and if not her husband must have been worthy of her. No ignoble motive could have induced this sweet and lovely creature to bestow her hand without her heart. Whatever be the reason, she desires concealment, and we alone, I believe, constitute her attraction to Turin. If Mr. Otway be right in his conjecture, she is the daughter of an English nobleman; but he will not tell us more till he brings the matter to a certainty.

I am this moment informed, that a letter is just received by Frederick from Arthur, announcing his mother’s death. Excellent young man! he rejoices in the idea of having been with her, and enabled, to the last moment, to minister to her comfort. He speaks of her tranquil exit with feelings of the deepest gratitude to heaven; and mentions, that she had from time to time derived the greatest relief from unburthening her heart to an admirable clergyman, who visited her frequently in the latter days of her life.

The letters which informed the family at Selby of all that had taken place here, had not reached England when Arthur wrote. It is his intention to come here as soon as possible, accompanied by my cousin Louisa.

You shall hear regularly from me of all that passes.

Loves from, to all.

Ever my dearest Julia’s affectionate,

Emily Douglas.

LETTER XLVI.
From Arthur Howard to the Reader.

My dear Reader,

If you have travelled thus far with me, you and I are kind friends; and I am, in duty bound, to do my best for your gratification. I told you, long ago, my motives for raking and rummaging through sundry trunks where papers were deposited, for the letters which I have picked out of an immense heap, and strung together—shall I venture to say for your amusement? That I was fired with the hope of affording you some entertainment is certain; but people often fail when they are most anxious to succeed; and the size of my manuscript begins to frighten me.

On returning to Glenalta, in the peaceful shades of which the idea first occurred to me of addressing you, I found, as you may imagine, much difficulty in collecting my materials, and making choice from amongst them, to say nothing of arranging and transcribing; but this trouble, and much more, I would willingly take for any one who has liked me sufficiently to accompany my steps during a period of nearly four years. If I resolve, then, on tying up the numerous packets which still lie piled on the table before me; and returning them to their several caskets to be forwarded to their rightful owners, it is not that I am tired of working for you, but I am afraid of fatiguing you, and losing your society, which has hitherto afforded me so much pleasure, that I would not for any consideration lose my hold on your regard, which our good fellowship during so long a journey may lead me to hope that I possess.

Actuated by these friendly feelings, it occurs to me that I will tell you the rest of the story myself, not, believe me, from the vain-glorious motive of desiring to push myself into an undue degree of notice, nor of securing that which attaches to the last speaker, but for the following reasons: First, my dear good friend, we are all alive and merry, I mean we who have written all the mounds of paper through which you have waded so patiently; and therefore you cannot expect a regular end of what is still going on; nor can I keep my book open any longer, lest you might suppose it endless, and throw it aside. Secondly, some of our party came to be involved in writing of another kind, and in the necessity of encountering law business, with which I could not think of wearying you, and thus had less time for the employment of their pens upon more interesting subjects. Again, other individuals of our society became gradually so devoted to each other’s conversation, that with grief of heart I saw myself in danger of losing the best contributors to my scheme. And you know if people will not separate for the accommodation of a compiler, adieu to letter-writing. In short, I grew very uneasy and after suffering those pangs which authors only understand, I determined on throwing up my correspondence, taking the matter at once into my own hands, and relieving your curiosity respecting people and things which I have been the means of introducing to your acquaintance.

You are able, no doubt, to anticipate a great deal, but that is no reason why I should not tell you all I know. And first you shall have such information as I can give you respecting Madame de Lisle, who has been rather abruptly introduced to your acquaintance in a letter from Emily Douglas. The letter to which Miss Douglas refers, for the history of Madame de Lisle, has been unfortunately lost; and you must therefore be contented with such particulars as I have collected since I had the pleasure of an introduction to her acquaintance. Mr. Otway one day saw her so violently agitated by Stanley’s occasional mention of a person who is a friend of his, and whose name is Alured, that he resolved at once on removing his doubts relating to her parentage. Alured was a family name in the pedigree to which he believed her to belong, and he was right. He went alone to visit her, and soon discovered that she was indeed Lady Laura Penshurst, the only surviving daughter of the proud and pompous Earl of Alton, whose sister he had loved in early life, before the “thick coming” honours of her house had tacked a title to her name. This disclosure once made, Lady Laura took Mr. Otway at once into her confidence, and told him that her mother, whose memory she adores, died a few months ago in the south of France, having survived Lord Alton, to whom no mortal could be attached, but three years. Her brother succeeded to the title and estates, and enjoyed them but a very short time, when he too was swept off the mortal stage, and they descended to an infant who is the present Lord Alton. Disgusted with the world in which she no longer possessed an object of affection, Lady Laura determined on remaining abroad, assuming a name and style which should protect her from curiosity, and ending her days where her mother’s remains were deposited.

Of our good friend, George Bentley, I have news which will probably surprise you not a little. He often talked, during our rambles in Switzerland, of taking up his abode in the midst of the romantic scenery which had excited our admiration. His declarations were received as the mere effusions of the moment, and we never believed him in earnest until he seriously declared his determination to carry his project into effect, and took decisive measures for the purpose. He went to Ireland, made arrangements of his property, by which he provided for three or four relations, who are all of his family that remain; settled an annual bounty on the parish poor, annuities on the old retainers, left Mount Prospect to be let by Mr. Oliphant, returned to Piémont, and was, ere long, established in a cottage near Angrogna.

General Douglas, his sister, and Mr. Otway, exerted all their skill in rhetoric to dissuade George from deserting his native country. They represented most forcibly that inversion of mind by which people, neglecting the good that lies within their grasp, bend all their energies to distant objects. They endeavoured to convince him that so much remained to be done at home, that it was criminal to quit the post in which heaven had placed him, and yielding to a spirit of adventure, instead of being governed by the sober desire of usefulness, prefer the notoriety of this romantic scheme, to the less shewy, but more valuable purpose of being a kind landlord, and a resident gentleman in his native land.

Bentley’s principal fault is obstinacy, which he sometimes mistakes for firmness. He had determined, and was ready with more fluency of words, than depth of argument, to answer the reasoning of his friends. “He thought that a call should not be resisted. He considered the remarkable chain of events which had brought him into the Vallies of Piémont, as a providential appointment, a cord that drew him invisibly forward to his true destiny.” In vain was it urged in reply, that such arguments would legitimatize every absurd dereliction of duty, every wild vagary of adventure; and were fantasies like these permitted to carry conviction to the understanding, a country might be drained of all its inhabitants who were capable of exerting beneficial influence within its circuit, and the population be committed to anarchy and want.

Bentley remained fixed as a rock, and perhaps, secretly gloried in the double character of martyr and missionary, since he now encountered what he technically denominated “persecution.” To the Vallies he would go, and perhaps the real motive may never be fully revealed to his own mind, though we lookers on could not help perceiving very clearly, that the devoted and mutual attachment of Falkland and Emily Douglas, had been the true pivot on which his purposes turned. Love, in its common acceptation, never found a place in Bentley’s breast. He never knew what it was to be impelled either by ungovernable passion, which hurries some to ruin and abasement; nor was his heart formed to those all-powerful, but delicate sympathies, which though fine as threads of gossamer, yet irresistibly entangle the affections, and produce entire dependence for happiness on the reciprocal devotion of a beloved object. No, Bentley had seen that men and women usually marry. He had therefore contemplated marriage for himself. He saw children in most families, and without loving them, he supposed that he should one day be a father, as well as husband; but the utmost which his mind had ever accomplished in reducing these wide abstractions and “loose generalities,” to any practical bearing on his individual lot, was summed up in the following hypothesis. “If I should ever think of engaging myself to any woman, and resigning my present freedom, become a married man, I must endeavour to select a suitable companion; money is a sordid motive, though it is a necessary adjunct; beauty is a fading flower, yet the eye is fascinated by its charms; intellect is inspiring, but it often leads to vanity; religion is essential, but how do we know it to be sincere. If I were to think of marrying, I wish that it might be to Emily Douglas; but would she marry me?” These ifs and ands, had been so often laid before the imagination of George Bentley, that they became as habitual as breakfast, dinner, and sleep, probably occupying at stated intervals that period of coma, which intervenes between a full meal and a sound slumber, till by daily recurrence of Emily’s image, he had marked her insensibly for his own, and that too, without the slightest degree of personal presumption either respecting his powers of pleasing, or her feelings towards him. When, therefore, his eyes were first opened to the truth that Emily loved, and was beloved by another, he woke, as from a dream. He was astounded, puzzled. He felt unsettled, set adrift, or, perhaps like an owl when it is suddenly brought into the sun’s light from the tranquil shade of its ivied tower. At last, however, his mental optics accommodated themselves to a new focus. He was no longer confused, and his eyes were no longer dim. He then began to examine himself, and was obliged to make the inward confession, that no one had injured him. He was not in love. He had never given any one reason to suppose that he felt more than friendship, and all the Douglas family treated him with unvarying kindness and affection which had never passed that sober limit; but things are not so easily settled with pride.

Bentley’s had in reality nothing to do in the matter, for his had not received offence, yet by some extraordinary fancy, he did appear to take umbrage at the attachment, which was evident; and he did so perhaps, because he did not at first perceive it, and at the critical time of its becoming manifest to his senses, the expedition to the Vallies, opened a new vista to his mind, and gave an unexpected bias to his resolutions.

Frederick and I were hammering at something not far removed from this statement, when Mr. Otway came into the room, and in five minutes drew up the case as I have recorded it.

As time rolled on, the delightful mother of Emily Douglas, was called upon to approve a union which cannot fail of happiness. Emily and Charles Falkland are formed for each other. Virtue and talents lend all their influence to lay a solid foundation, while the lighter graces which belong to manners and accomplishments, give a finish to the charm that binds them to each other. Simplicity is a decided characteristic of both; and when the day arrived which General Douglas begged to hasten, in order that he might bestow a blessing with ten thousand pounds, which he presented to his niece there was no idle parade of dress and equipage. Not a single preparation which had display for its object, or vanity for its motive, marked this nuptial scene. It was the only marriage, except her sister’s, at which Louisa Howard had ever assisted, and what a contrast did it not present to the gorgeous folly of poor Adelaide’s hymeneals? A short tour to Geneva, Lausanne and Vevay, separated the Falklands but a little time from Turin, to which place they returned, and the dying couch of a beloved uncle was attended with all the tenderness which true affection can alone inspire. He lingered till winter had clothed the Alps in a fresh mantle of snow, and breathed his last in the arms of Frederick. Some months of repose were necessary to the shattered health of Mrs. Douglas, and she preferred remaining in Switzerland till the following spring, when the whole party arrived in safety at Marsden.

Though Emily’s marriage afforded a pretext for selling off the English property according to the letter of General Douglas’ will, his sister considered that to delay its sale was more in agreement with the spirit of his intentions, and she had consequently no hesitation in determining that Frederick should try the experiment of remaining in Hampshire for some time, while her son, implicitly relying on the counsels of his mother, acquiesced with alacrity in whatever she thought right. Marsden became the abode of whatever most exalts human nature, and the Douglas family possess the art of rendering virtue and knowledge attractive in such a degree, that their anxiety is to avoid, not to court acquaintance with the great. Their society is universally sought after, and none can exceed it.

Emily and her husband, as the avant couriers of Mrs. Douglas, accompanied Mr. Otway to Ireland, and have purchased Mount Prospect, to which they have given its ancient Irish appellation of Cairndruid, and which they are altering and beautifying, for their future home, when the family of Glenalta shall return to their dearly-loved abode.

Mr. Oliphant, who is a perfect pattern of what every clergyman ought to be, and aided in his pious labours by an excellent sister, lives but to do good and make his parishioners happy. When he saw the circle of those friends, so justly valued, once more in their accustomed places, his glistening eye and uplifted hands seemed to say with old Simeon, “Let thy servant now depart in peace.”

The Sandfords, Stanleys, Mrs. Fitzroy, and various other agreeable people have had happy meetings at Marsden; and I will venture a prophecy, that Frederick, who longs to regain his native shores, will one day prevail upon the elegant Julia Sandford to bear him company thither. If strongly tempted, too, to lay a wager, though I do not consider bets to be the most convincing arguments, I might be persuaded to risk a few pounds upon the probability of two other matches, viz. one between Charlotte Douglas and Algernon Stanhope, and the other between an elder brother of Stanley’s and Louisa Howard. As to my own loves, if I have any, my dear Reader, you cannot expect me to divulge them: “Sink or swim, I carry my secrets with me,” which was the sagacious resolve of Mrs. Faulkner, wife to the celebrated George, of editorial memory, who asked her, on her death-bed, whether or not she had been a faithful sposa.

You will be glad to hear that Lawrence cleans the gravel walks still at Glenalta, and is never weary of recounting stories to his young mistress when she walks in the shrubbery, of all that had happened in her absence, Lisfarne looks glad once more, and the Beacon Hill is burned to brown from all the fires that have spread their glow over the beautiful bay which it overlooks.

Aunt Douglas shall close my narrative: she is the centre round which all these numerous rays converge, and the nearer they advance to her, the more nearly do they approach each other. How can human beings unite sincerely in loving the same object, and be at enmity amongst themselves? It is impossible. A year’s probation has so assured this self-denying mother that Marsden can never rival Glenalta in the hearts of her children, that a treaty is now on foot for disposing of a place which possesses no associations with past time to endear it to their memory. Frederick remains to complete the contract, and has hopes of bringing old Mr. Bolton with him to pay a visit in the Emerald Isle, which he has never seen, while it has fallen to my happy lot to attend the homeward bound group, Louisa making one of the party, and behold such joy as language fails me to describe. The roads were lined with happy faces, and welcome resounded from every mouth. Each step of the way produced increasing interest, till, in that verandah where I first met her sweet smile, I saw Glenalta’s guardian angel folded in the arms of her daughter.

Now, gentle reader, remember that it is not many years since I was one of that heartless multitude who laugh at all that they either do not comprehend, or that violates the rules which tyrant fashion imposes on her worshippers. I am, therefore, prepared for a shower of those epithets which I should once have liberally bestowed upon a book compounded of such materials as I have employed in mine. “Puerile”—“moral”—“prosy”—“dull,” are sounds familiar to my ear; and if they should be applied to me by those who still belong to the fraternity which I have quitted, I trust for ever, I must submit, yet not without reminding them, that I held out no false colours. I warned them of what was coming, and desired to be thrown aside at once by all who opened my pages, in expectation of finding a Novel full of striking events, or numerous incidents. I have been occupied in representing domestic life, and giving peeps into real character, not in furnishing scenes for the poet or the painter. But, though I am fully prepared both for yawners and revilers, I dare to cherish a hope, that some of those whose suffrage would repay me for a world of contumely, may find amusement as well as truth in my sketches. Amongst the fair sex I ought to be kindly received, for my anxious desire has been to assert their claims; and by endeavouring to exorcise the demon of Blueism, restore them to their just inheritance.

In order to this recovery of female birthright, I have attempted to illustrate in the memoirs of the Douglas family, that compatibility so frequently denied between the highest intellectual attainment, and the sweetest humility of heart I have tried to convince all who are not wilfully blind, that we have still under other names, our Lady Jane Greys, and Margaret Ropers, and that they can be as lovely and as feminine at the present moment, as in the age when those bright examples of excellence adorned society with their graces, virtues, and talents, though living under the tyranny of arbitrary government, while ours is the boasted æra of freedom, and “the march of mind.” Whatever be my fate, I must now bid you farewell. Even the kindest friends must part. Adieu, then, my dear reader. May you and I shake hands in affectionate brotherhood wherever we meet. If you were always of opinion that religion and virtue are indispensable to happiness; and that the most agreeable people in the world may also be the best; you have an advantage over me in never having strayed from the truth; but inasmuch as I have erred, I am desirous to proclaim my recantation, and returning to the nick-named Glenalta, lay down the follies of my youth, and sign myself a sincere and penitent convert.

Arthur Howard.

THE END.

PRINTED BY J. B. NICHOLS, 25, PARLIAMENT STREET.

ERRATA.

Transcriber’s Note: the errata in the present (third) volume have been corrected (along with numerous errors not in this list). Those wishing to apply corrections to the first and second volumes should note that the page and line references given here are not always entirely accurate.

FIRST VOLUME.

Line 6, page 15, read fitting for filling.—l. 9, p. 21, Serborian for Terborian.—l. 16, p. 30, selectæ for selecta.—l. 20, p. 33, confoundedly for confounded.—l. 23, p. 37, had for has.—p. 101, we for We. dele full stop.—l. 13, p. 106, insert and.—l. 17, p. 181, a for to.—l. 22, p. 182, alteratives for alterations.—l. 16, p. 189, it for I.—l. 11, p. 204, guileless for guiltless.—l. 17, p. 214, distinguish for distinguishes.—l. 4, p. 215, induce a for I—l. 7. p. 216, cacciata for caciata, and fugge for fuge.—l. 4, p. 218, for be exact, in exact.—l. 5, p. 238, retired for refined.—l. 1. p. 244, fully for full.—l. 12, p. 245, inanity for vanity.—l. 7, p. 256, full stop after time.—l. 13, p. 256, agreeably for agreeable.—l. 17, p. 276, give for gives.—l. 22, p. 292, facilities for facility.—l. 1, p. 315, lose for loose.

SECOND VOLUME.

Line 18, p. 130, for they not, read they are not.—l. 1, p. 131, for where once, where she once;—l. 15, p. 156, insert and, and dele and in the next line.—l. 12, p. 165, erase the.—l. 6, p. 181, Ronayne’s for Ronayve’s.—l. 7, p. 181, Ture for Lure.—l. 4, p. 186, we for he.—l. 10, p. 219, insert in after imagery.—l. 9, p. 241, erase the.—l. 6, p. 243, Causer for Cosé.—l. 24, p. 246, and for I.—l. 23, p. 253, insert Frederick.—l. 18, p. 303, bringing for bring.

THIRD VOLUME.

Line 19, page 44, read sometimes for something.—l. 13, p. 71, you for your.—l. 12, p. 77, Benefico (the good giant) for benefice.—l. 10, p. 84, fact for facts.—l. 19, p. 93, Bayle for Boyle.—l. 24, p. 95, before all, insert it.—l. 7, p. 120, bewildering for bewildered, we for be.—l. 20, p. 143, forces for foces.—l. 13, p. 195, Sully for Tully.—l. 1, p. 201, truly for happy.—l. 11, p. 228, erase “the particulars.”

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Table of Contents

- BLUE-STOCKING HALL.

- LETTER XXVII. Frederick to Emily Douglas.

- LETTER XXVIII. Arthur Howard to Frederick Douglas.

- LETTER XXIX. Mrs. Douglas to Mrs. E. Sandford.

- LETTER XXX. Frederick Douglas to Arthur Howard.

- LETTER XXXI. Miss Douglas to Miss Sandford.

- LETTER XXXII. From the Same to the Same.

- LETTER XXXIII. Ed. Otway, Esq. to Rev. Mr. Oliphant.

- LETTER XXXIV. Mrs. Douglas to the Rev. Mr. Oliphant.

- LETTER XXXV. From the same to the same.

- LETTER XXXVI. From Emily Douglas to Miss Sandford.

- LETTER XXXVII. Rev. Mr. Oliphant to Mr. Otway.

- LETTER XXXVIII. From Edward Otway, Esq. to Rev. Mr. Oliphant.

- LETTER XXXIX. Emily Douglas to Julia Sandford.

- LETTER XL. Frederick Douglas to the Rev. Mr. Oliphant.

- LETTER XLI. Emily Douglas to Julia Sandford.

- LETTER XLII. From the Same to the Same.

- LETTER XLIII. Arthur Howard to Frederick Douglas.

- LETTER XLIV. Frederick Douglas to Arthur Howard.

- LETTER XLV. Emily Douglas to Julia Sandford.

- LETTER XLVI. From Arthur Howard to the Reader.

- ERRATA.

- FIRST VOLUME.

- SECOND VOLUME.

- THIRD VOLUME.

- POPULAR WORKS LATELY PUBLISHED BY HENRY COLBURN, NEW BURLINGTON-STREET.

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