Autobiographic Sketches Part 5

1. "Rar antecedentem scelestum _Deseruit_ pede poena claudo;"

2. "saepe Diespiter Neglectus incesto _addidit_ integrum."

That is--"oftentimes the supreme ruler, when treated with neglect, confounds or unites (not _has united_, as the tyro might fancy) the impure man with the upright in one common fate."

Exceedingly common is this usage in Latin poetry, when the object is to generalize a remark--as not connected with one mode of time more than another. In reality, all three modes of time--past, present, future--are used (though not equally used) in all languages for this purpose of generalization. Thus,--

1. The _future_; as, Sapiens dominabitur astris; 2. The _present_; as, Fortes fortuna juvat; 3. The _past_; as in the two cases cited from Horace.

But this practice holds equally in English: as to the future and the present, n.o.body will doubt it; and here is a case from the past: "The fool _hath said_ in his heart, There is no G.o.d;" not meaning, that in some past time he has said so, but that generally in all times he _does_ say so, and _will_ say so.

[17] "_Too obstinate a preconception_."--Until the birth of geology, and fossil paleontology, concurring with vast strides ahead in the science of comparative anatomy, it is a well-established fact, that oftentimes the most scientific museum admitted as genuine fragments of the human osteology what in fact belonged to the gigantic brutes of our earth in her earliest stages of development. This mistake would go some way in accounting for the absurd disposition in all generations to view themselves as abridged editions of their forefathers. Added to which, as a separate cause of error, there can be little doubt, that intermingled with the human race there has at most periods of the world been a separate and t.i.tanic race, such as the Anakim amongst the peoples of Palestine, the Cyclopean race diffused over the Mediterranean in the elder ages of Greece, and certain tribes amongst the Alps, known to Evelyn in his youth (about Cromwell's time) by an unpleasant travelling experience. These gigantic races, however, were no arguments for a degeneration amongst the rest of mankind. They were evidently a variety of man, coexistent with the ordinary races, but liable to be absorbed and gradually lost by intermarriage amongst other tribes of the ordinary standard. Occasional exhumations of such t.i.tan skeletons would strengthen the common prejudice. They would be taken, not for a local variety, but for an antediluvian or prehistoric type, from which the present races of man had arisen by gradual degeneration.

These cases of actual but misinterpreted experience, at the same time that they naturally must tend to fortify the popular prejudice, would also, by accounting for it, and ingrafting it upon a reasonable origin, so far tend to take from it the reproach of a prejudice. Though erroneous, it would yet seem to us, in looking back upon it, a rational and even an inevitable opinion, having such plausible grounds to stand upon; plausible, I mean, until science and accurate examination of the several cases had begun to read them into a different construction. Yet, on the other hand, in spite of any colorable excuses that may be pleaded for this prejudice, it is pretty plain that, after all, there is in human nature a deep-laid predisposition to an obstinate craze of this nature.

Else why is it that, in every age alike, men have a.s.serted or even a.s.sumed the downward tendency of the human race in all that regards _moral_ qualities. For the _physical_ degeneration of man there really were some apparent (though erroneous) arguments; but, for the moral degeneration, no argument at all, small or great. Yet a bigotry of belief in this idle notion has always prevailed amongst moralists, pagan alike and Christian. Horace, for example, informs us that

"Aetas parentum, pejor avis, tulit Nos nequiores--mox daturos Progeniem vitiosiorem."

The last generation was worse, it seems, than the penultimate, as the present is worst than the last. We, however, of the present, bad as we may be, shall be kept in countenance by the coming generation, which will prove much worse than ourselves. On the same precedent, all the sermons through the last three centuries, if traced back through decennial periods, so as to form thirty successive strata, will be found regularly claiming the precedency in wickedness for the immediate period of the writer. Upon which theories, as men ought physically to have dwindled long ago into pygmies, so, on the other hand, morally they must by this time have left Sodom and Gomorrah far behind. What a strange animal must man upon this scheme offer to our contemplation; shrinking in size, by graduated process, through every century, until at last he would not rise an inch from the ground; and, on the other hand, as regards villany, towering evermore and more up to the heavens. What a dwarf! what a giant!

Why, the very crows would combine to destroy such a little monster.

[18] The names and history of the Pyrenean Cagots are equally obscure.

Some have supposed that, during the period of the Gothic warfare with the Moors, the Cagots were a Christian tribe that betrayed the Christian cause and interests at a critical moment. But all is conjecture. As to the name, Southey has somewhere offered a possible interpretation of it; but it struck me as far from felicitous, and not what might have been expected from Southey, whose vast historical research and commanding talent should naturally have unlocked this most mysterious of modern secrets, if any unlocking does yet lie within the resources of human skill and combining power, now that so many ages divide us from the original steps of the case. I may here mention, as a fact accidentally made known to myself, and apparently not known to Southey, that the Cagots, under a name very slightly altered, are found in France also, as well as Spain, and in provinces of France that have no connection at all with Spain.

[19] "_Strulbrugs_."--Hardly _strulbrugs_, will be the thought of the learned reader, who knows that _young_ women could not be strulbrugs; since the true strulbrug was one who, from base fear of dying, had lingered on into an old age, omnivorous of every genial or vital impulse.

The strulbrug of Swift (and Swift, being his horrid creator, ought to understand his own horrid creation) was a wreck, a sh.e.l.l, that had been burned hollow, and cancered by the fierce furnace of life. His clockwork was gone, or carious; only some miserable fragment of a pendulum continued to oscillate paralytically from mere incapacity of any thing so abrupt, and therefore so vigorous, as a decided HALT! However, the use of this dreadful word may be reasonably extended to the young who happen to have become essentially old in misery. Intensity of a suffering existence may compensate the want of extension; and a boundless depth of misery may be a transformed expression for a boundless duration of misery. The most aged person, to all appearance, that ever came under my eyes, was an infant--hardly eight months old. He was the illegitimate son of a poor idiot girl, who had herself been shamefully ill treated; and the poor infant, falling under the care of an enraged grandmother, who felt herself at once burdened and disgraced, was certainly not better treated.

He was dying, when I saw him, of a lingering malady, with features expressive of frantic misery; and it seemed to me that he looked at the least three centuries old. One might have fancied him one of Swift's strulbrugs, that, through long attenuation and decay, had dwindled back into infancy, with one organ only left perfect--the organ of fear and misery.

[20] This was a manoeuvre regularly taught to the Austrian cavalry in the middle of the last century; as a ready way of opening the doors of cottages.

CHAPTER III.

INFANT LITERATURE.

"_The child_," says Wordsworth, "_is father of the man;_" thus calling into conscious notice the fact, else faintly or not at all perceived, that whatsoever is seen in the maturest adult, blossoming and bearing fruit, must have preexisted by way of germ in the infant. Yes; all that is now broadly emblazoned in the man once was latent--seen or not seen--as a vernal bud in the child. But not, therefore, is it true inversely, that all which preexists in the child finds its development in the man. Rudiments and tendencies, which _might_ have found, sometimes by accidental, _do_ not find, sometimes under the killing frost of counter forces, _cannot_ find, their natural evolution.

Infancy, therefore, is to be viewed, not only as part of a larger world that waits for its final complement in old age, but also as a separate world itself; part of a continent, but also a distinct peninsula. Most of what he has, the grown-up man inherits from his infant self; but it does not follow that he always enters upon the whole of his natural inheritance.

Childhood, therefore, in the midst of its intellectual weakness, and sometimes even by means of this weakness, enjoys a limited privilege of strength. The heart in this season of life is apprehensive, and, where its sensibilities are profound, is endowed with a special power of listening for the tones of truth--hidden, struggling, or remote; for the knowledge being then narrow, the interest is narrow in the objects of knowledge; consequently the sensibilities are not scattered, are not multiplied, are not crushed and confounded (as afterwards they are) under the burden of that distraction which lurks in the infinite littleness of details.

That mighty silence which infancy is thus privileged by nature and by position to enjoy cooperates with another source of power,--almost peculiar to youth and youthful circ.u.mstances,--which Wordsworth also was the first person to notice. It belongs to a profound experience of the relations subsisting between ourselves and nature--that not always are we called upon to seek; sometimes, and in childhood above all, we are sought.

"Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum Of things forever speaking, That noting _of itself_ will come, But we must still be seeking?"

And again:--

"Nor less I deem that there are powers Which _of themselves_ our minds impress; And we can feed this mind of ours In a wise pa.s.siveness."

These cases of infancy, reached at intervals by special revelations, or creating for itself, through it privileged silence of heart, authentic whispers of truth, or beauty, or power, have some a.n.a.logy to those other cases, more directly supernatural, in which (according to the old traditional faith of our ancestors) deep messages of admonition reached an individual through sudden angular deflexions of words, uttered or written, that had not been originally addressed to himself. Of these there were two distinct cla.s.ses--those where the person concerned had been purely pa.s.sive; and, secondly, those in which he himself had to some extent cooperated. The first cla.s.s have been noticed by Cowper, the poet, and by George Herbert, the well-known pious brother of the still better-known infidel, Lord Herbert, (of Cherbury,) in a memorable sonnet; scintillations they are of what seems nothing less than providential lights oftentimes arresting our attention, from the very centre of what else seems the blank darkness of chance and blind accident. "Books lying open, millions of surprises,"--these are among the cases to which Herbert (and to which Cowper) alludes,--books, that is to say, left casually open without design or consciousness, from which some careless pa.s.ser-by, when throwing the most negligent of glances upon the page, has been startled by a solitary word lying, as it were, in ambush, waiting and lurking for _him_, and looking at him steadily as an eye searching the haunted places of his conscience. These cases are in principle identical with those of the _second_ cla.s.s, where the inquirer himself cooperated, or was not entirely pa.s.sive; cases such as those which the Jews called Bath-col, or daughter of a voice, (the echo [1] augury,) viz., where a man, perplexed in judgment and sighing for some determining counsel, suddenly heard from a stranger in some unlooked-for quarter words not meant for himself, but clamorously applying to the difficulty besetting him. In these instances, the mystical word, that carried a secret meaning and message to one sole ear in the world, was unsought for: _that_ const.i.tuted its virtue and its divinity; and to arrange means wilfully for catching at such casual words, would have defeated the purpose.

A well-known variety of augury, conducted upon this principle, lay in the "Sortes Biblicae," where the Bible was the oracular book consulted, and far more extensively at a later period in the "Sortes Virgilianae,"

[2] where the Aeneid was the oracle consulted.

Something a.n.a.logous to these spiritual transfigurations of a word or a sentence, by a bodily organ (eye or ear) that has been touched with virtue for evoking the spiritual echo lurking in its recesses, belongs, perhaps, to every impa.s.sioned mind for the kindred result of forcing out the peculiar beauty, pathos, or grandeur that may happen to lodge (un.o.bserved by ruder forms of sensibility) in special pa.s.sages scattered up and down literature. Meantime, I wish the reader to understand that, in putting forward the peculiar power with which my childish eye detected a grandeur or a pomp of beauty not seen by others in some special instances, I am not arrogating more than it is lawful for every man the very humblest to arrogate, viz., an individuality of mental const.i.tution so far applicable to special and exceptionable cases as to reveal in _them_ a life and power of beauty which others (and sometimes which _all_ others) had missed.

The first case belongs to the march (or boundary) line between my eighth and ninth years; the others to a period earlier by two and a half years. But I notice the latest case before the others, as it connected itself with a great epoch in the movement of my intellect. There is a dignity to every man in the mere historical a.s.signing, if accurately he can a.s.sign, the first dawning upon his mind of any G.o.dlike faculty or apprehension, and more especially if that first dawning happened to connect itself with circ.u.mstances of individual or incommunicable splendor. The pa.s.sage which I am going to cite first of all revealed to me the immeasurableness of the morally sublime. What was it, and where was it? Strange the reader will think it, and strange [3] it is, that a case of colossal sublimity should first emerge from such a writer as Phaedrus, the Aesopian fabulist. A great mistake it was, on the part of Doctor S., that the second book in the Latin language which I was summoned to study should have been Phaedrus--a writer ambitious of investing the simplicity, or rather homeliness, of Aesop with aulic graces and satiric brilliancy. But so it was; and Phaedrus naturally towered into enthusiasm when he had occasion to mention that the most intellectual of all races amongst men, viz., the Athenians, had raised a mighty statue to one who belonged to the same cla.s.s in a social sense as himself, viz., the cla.s.s of slaves, and rose above that cla.s.s by the same intellectual power applying itself to the same object, viz., the moral apologue. These were the two lines in which that glory of the sublime, so stirring to my childish sense, seemed to burn as in some mighty pharos:--

"Aesopo statuam ingentem posuere Attici; Servumque collocarunt eterna in basi:"

_A colossal statue did the Athenians raise to Aesop; and a poor pariah slave they planted upon an everlasting pedestal._ I have not scrupled to introduce the word _pariah_, because in that way only could I decipher to the reader by what particular avenue it was that the sublimity which I fancy in the pa.s.sage reached my heart. This sublimity originated in the awful chasm, in the abyss that no eye could bridge, between the pollution of slavery,--the being a man, yet without right or lawful power belonging to a man,--between this unutterable degradation and the starry alt.i.tude of the slave at that moment when, upon the unveiling of his everlasting statue, all the armies of the earth might be conceived as presenting arms to the emanc.i.p.ated man, the cymbals and kettledrums of kings as drowning the whispers of his ignominy, and the harps of all his sisters that wept over slavery yet joining in one choral gratulation to the regenerated slave. I a.s.sign the elements of what I did in reality feel at that time, which to the reader may seem extravagant, and by no means of what it was reasonable to feel. But, in order that full justice may be done to my childish self, I must point out to the reader another source of what strikes me as real grandeur. Horace, that exquisite master of the lyre, and that most shallow of critics, it is needless to say that in those days I had not read. Consequently I knew nothing of his idle canon, that the opening of poems must be humble and subdued. But my own sensibility told me how much of additional grandeur accrued to these two lines as being the immediate and all-pompous _opening_ of the poem. The same feeling I had received from the crashing overture to the grand chapter of Daniel--"Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords." But, above all, I felt this effect produced in the two opening lines of "Macbeth:"--

"WHEN--(but watch that an emphasis of thunder dwells upon that word 'when')--

WHEN shall we three meet again-- In thunder, lightning, or in rain?"

What an orchestral crash bursts upon the ear in that all-shattering question! And one syllable of apologetic preparation, so as to meet the suggestion of Horace, would have the effect of emasculating the whole tremendous alarum. The pa.s.sage in Phaedrus differs thus far from that in "Macbeth," that the first line, simply stating a matter of fact, with no more of sentiment than belongs to the word _ingentem_, and to the ant.i.thesis between the two parties so enormously divided,--Aesop the slave and the Athenians,--must be read as an _appoggiatura_, or hurried note of introduction flying forward as if on wings to descend with the fury and weight of a thousand orchestras upon the immortal pa.s.sion of the second line--"Servumque collocarunt ETERNA IN BASI." This pa.s.sage from Phaedrus, which might be briefly designated _The Apotheosis of the Slave_, gave to me my first grand and jubilant sense of the moral sublime.

Two other experiences of mine of the same cla.s.s had been earlier, and these I had shared with my sister Elizabeth. The first was derived from the "Arabian Nights." Mrs. Barbauld, a lady now very nearly forgotten, [4] then filled a large s.p.a.ce in the public eye; in fact, as a writer for children, she occupied the place from about 1780 to 1805 which, from 1805 to 1835, was occupied by Miss Edgeworth. Only, as unhappily Miss Edgeworth is also now very nearly forgotten, this is to explain _ignotum per ingnotius_, or at least one _ignotum_ by another _ignotum_. However, since it cannot be helped, this unknown and also most well-known woman, having occa.s.sion, in the days of her glory, to speak of the "Arabian Nights," insisted on Aladdin, and secondly, on Sinbad, as the two jewels of the collection. Now, on the contrary, my sister and myself p.r.o.nounced Sinbad to be very bad, and Aladdin to be pretty nearly the worst, and upon grounds that still strike me as just. For, as to Sinbad, it is not a story at all, but a mere succession of adventures, having no unity of interest whatsoever; and in Aladdin, after the possession of the lamp has been once secured by a pure accident, the story ceases to move. All the rest is a mere record of upholstery: how this saloon was finished to-day, and that window on the next day, with no fresh incident whatever, except the single and transient misfortune arising out of the advantage given to the magician by the unpardonable stupidity of Aladdin in regard to the lamp. But, whilst my sister and I agreed in despising Aladdin so much as almost to be on the verge of despising the queen of all the bluestockings for so ill-directed a preference, one solitary section there was of that tale which was fixed and fascinated my gaze, in a degree that I never afterwards forgot, and did not at that time comprehend. The sublimity which it involved was mysterious and unfathomable as regarded any key which I possessed for deciphering its law or origin. Made restless by the blind sense which I had of its grandeur, I could not for a moment succeed in finding out _why_ it should be grand. Unable to explain my own impressions in "Aladdin,"

I did not the less obstinately persist in believing a sublimity which I could not understand. It was, in fact, one of those many important cases which elsewhere I have called _involutes_ of human sensibility; combinations in which the materials of future thought or feeling are carried as imperceptibly into the mind as vegetable seeds are carried variously combined through the atmosphere, or by means of rivers, by birds, by winds, by waters, into remote countries. But the reader shall judge for himself. At the opening of the tale, a magician living in the central depths of Africa is introduced to us as one made aware by his secret art of an enchanted lamp endowed with supernatural powers available for the service of any man whatever who should get it into his keeping. But _there_ lies the difficulty. The lamp is imprisoned in subterraneous chambers, and from these it can be released only by the hands of an innocent child. But this is not enough: the child must have a special horoscope written in the stars, or else a peculiar destiny written in his const.i.tution, ent.i.tling him to take possession of the lamp. Where shall such a child be found? Where shall he be sought? The magician knows: he applies his ear to the earth; he listens to the innumerable sounds of footsteps that at the moment of his experiment are tormenting the surface of the globe; and amongst them all, at a distance of six thousand miles, playing in the streets of Bagdad, he distinguishes the peculiar steps of the child Aladdin.

Through this mighty labyrinth of sounds, which Archimedes, aided by his _arenarius_, could not sum or disentangle, one solitary infant's feet are distinctly recognized on the banks of the Tigris, distant by four hundred and forty days' march of an army or a caravan. These feet, these steps, the sorcerer knows, and challenges in his heart as the feet, as the steps of that innocent boy, through whose hands only he could have a chance for reaching the lamp.

It follows, therefore, that the wicked magician exercises two demoniac gifts. First, he has the power to disarm Babel itself of its confusion.

Secondly, after having laid aside as useless many billions of earthly sounds, and after having fastened his murderous [5] attention upon one insulated tread, he has the power, still more unsearchable, of reading in that hasty movement an alphabet of new and infinite symbols; for, in order that the sound of the child's feet should be significant and intelligible, that sound must open into a gamut of infinite compa.s.s. The pulses of the heart, the motions of the will, the phantoms of the brain must repeat themselves in secret hieroglyphics uttered by the flying footsteps. Even the inarticulate or brutal sounds of the globe must be all so many languages and ciphers that somewhere have their corresponding keys--have their own grammar and syntax; and thus the least things in the universe must be secret mirrors to the greatest.

Palmistry has something of the same dark sublimity. All this, by rude efforts at explanation that mocked my feeble command of words, I communicated to my sister; and she, whose sympathy with my meaning was always so quick and true, often outrunning electrically my imperfect expressions, felt the pa.s.sage in the same way as myself, [6] but not, perhaps, in the same degree. She was much beyond me in velocity of apprehension and many other qualities of intellect. Here only, viz., on cases of the _dark_ sublime, where it rested upon dim abstractions, and when no particular trait of _moral_ grandeur came forward, we differed--differed, that is to say, as by more or by less. Else, even as to the sublime, and numbers of other intellectual questions which rose up to us from our immense reading, we drew together with a perfect fidelity of sympathy; and therefore I pa.s.s willingly from a case which exemplified one of our rare differences to another, not less interesting for itself, which ill.u.s.trated (what occurred so continually) the intensity of our agreement.

No instance of n.o.ble revenge that ever I heard of seems so effective, if considered as applied to a n.o.ble-minded wrong doer, or in any case as so pathetic. From what quarter the story comes originally, was unknown to us at the time, and I have never met it since; so that possibly it may be new to the reader. We found it in a book written for the use of his own children by Dr. Percival, the physician who attended at Greenhay. Dr. P. was a literary man, of elegant tastes and philosophic habits. Some of his papers may be found in the "Manchester Philosophic Transactions;" and these I have heard mentioned with respect, though, for myself, I have no personal knowledge of them.

Some presumption meantime arises in their favor from the fact that he had been a favored correspondent of the most eminent Frenchmen at that time who cultivated literature jointly with philosophy. Voltaire, Diderot, Maupertuis, Condorcet, and D'Alembert had all treated him with distinction; and I have heard my mother say that, in days before I or my sister could have known him, he attempted vainly to interest her in these French luminaries by reading extracts from their frequent letters; which, however, so far from reconciling her to the letters, or to the writers of the letters, had the unhappy effect of riveting her dislike (previously budding) to the doctor, as their reciever, and the _p.r.o.neur_ of their authors. The tone of the letters--hollow, insincere, and full of courtly civilities to Dr. P., as a known friend of "_the tolerance_" (meaning, of toleration)--certainly was not adapted to the English taste; and in this respect was specially offensive to my mother, as always a.s.suming of the doctor, that, by mere necessity, as being a philosopher, he must be an infidel. Dr. P. left that question, I believe, "_in medio_," neither a.s.senting nor denying; and undoubtedly there was no particular call upon him to publish his confession of Faith before one who, in the midst of her rigourous politeness, suffered it to be too transparent that she did not like him. It is always a pity to see any thing lost and wasted, especially love; and, therefore, it was no subject for lamentation, that too probably the philosophic doctor did not enthusiastically like _her_.

But, if really so, that made no difference in his feelings towards my sister and myself. Us he _did_ like; and, as one proof of his regard, he presented us jointly with such of his works as could be supposed interesting to two young literati, whos combined ages made no more at this period than a baker's dozen. These presentation copies amount to two at the lest, both _octavoes_, and one of them ent.i.tled _The Father's_--something or other; what was it?--_a.s.sistant_, perhaps. How much a.s.sistance the doctor might furnish to the fathers upon this wicked little planet, I cannot say. But fathers are a stubborn race; it is very little use trying to a.s.sist _them_. Better always to prescribe for the rising generation. And certainly the impression which he made upon us--my sister and myself--by the story in question was deep and memorable: my sister wept over it, and wept over the remembrance of it; and, not long after, carried its sweet aroma off with her to heaven; whilst I, for _my_ part, have never forgotten it.

Yet, perhaps, it is injudicious to have too much excited the reader's expectations; therefore, reader, understand what it is that you are invited to hear--not much of a story, but simply a n.o.ble sentiment, such as that of Louis XII, when he refused, as King of France, to avenge his own injuries as Duke of Orleans--such as that of Hadrian, when he said that a Roman imperator ought to die standing, meaning that Caesar, as the man who represented almighty Rome, should face the last enemy as the first in an att.i.tude of unconquerable defiance. Here is Dr. Percival's story, which (again I warn you) will collapse into nothing at all, unless you yourself are able to dilate it by expansive sympathy with its sentiment.

A young officer (in what army, no matter) had so far forgotten himself, in a moment of irritation, as to strike a private soldier, full of personal dignity, (as sometimes happens in all ranks,) and distinguished for his courage. The inexorable laws of military discipline forbade to the injured soldier any practical redress--he could look for no retaliation by acts. Words only were at his command; and, in a tumult of indignation, as he turned away, the soldier said to his officer that he would "make him repent it." This, wearing the shape of a menace, naturally rekindled the officer's anger, and intercepted any disposition which might be rising within him towards a sentiment of remorse; and thus the irritation between the two young men grew hotter than before.

Some weeks after this a partial action took place with the enemy.

Suppose yourself a spectator, and looking down into a valley occupied by the two armies. They are facing each other, you see, in martial array. But it is no more than a skirmish which is going on; in the course of which, however, an occasion suddenly arises for a desperate service. A redoubt, which has fallen into the enemy's hands, must be recaptured at any price, and under circ.u.mstances of all but hopeless difficulty. A strong party has volunteered for the service; there is a cry for somebody to head them; you see a soldier step out from the ranks to a.s.sume this dangerous leadership; the party moves rapidly forward; in a few minutes it is swallowed up from your eyes in clouds of smoke; for one half hour, from behind these clouds, you receive hieroglyphic reports of b.l.o.o.d.y strife--fierce repeating signals, flashes from the guns, rolling musketry, and exulting hurrahs advancing or receding, slackening or redoubling. At length all is over; the redoubt has been recovered; that which was lost is found again; the jewel which had been made captive is ransomed with blood. Crimsoned with glorious gore, the wreck of the conquering party is relieved, and at liberty to return. From the river you see it ascending. The plume-crested officer in command rushes forward, with his left hand raising his hat in homage to the blackened fragments of what once was a flag, whilst, with his right hand, he seizes that of the leader, though no more than a private from the ranks. _That_ perplexes you not; mystery you see none in _that_. For distinctions of order perish, ranks are confounded, "high and low" are words without a meaning, and to wreck goes every notion or feeling that divides the n.o.ble from the n.o.ble, or the brave man from the brave. But wherefore is it that now, when suddenly they wheel into mutual recognition, suddenly they pause? This soldier, this officer--who are they? O reader! once before they had stood face to face--the soldier it is that was struck; the officer it is that struck him. Once again they are meeting; and the gaze of armies is upon them.

If for a moment a doubt divides them, in a moment the doubt has perished. One glance exchanged between them publishes the forgiveness that is sealed forever. As one who recovers a brother whom he had accounted dead, the officer sprang forward, threw his arms around the neck of the soldier, and kissed him, as if he were some martyr glorified by that shadow of death from which he was returning; whilst, on _his_ part, the soldier, stepping back, and carrying his open hand through the beautiful motions of the military salute to a superior, makes this immortal answer--that answer which shut up forever the memory of the indignity offered to him, even whilst for the last time alluding to it: "Sir," he said, "I told you before that I would _make you repent it._"

FOOTNOTES

[1] "_Echo augury_."--The daughter of a voice meant an echo, the original sound being viewed as the mother, and the reverberation, or secondary sound, as the daughter. a.n.a.logically, therefore, the direct and original meaning of any word, or sentence, or counsel, was the mother meaning but the secondary, or mystical meaning, created by the peculiar circ.u.mstances for one separate and peculiar ear, the daughter meaning, or echo meaning.

This mode of augury, through secondary interpretations of chance words, is not, as some readers may fancy, an old, obsolete, or merely Jewish form of seeking the divine pleasure. About a century ago, a man so famous, and by repute so unsuperst.i.tious, as Dr. Doddridge, was guided in a primary act of choice, influencing his whole after life, by a few chance words from a child reading aloud to his mother. With the other mode of augury viz., that noticed by Herbert, where not the ear but the eye presides, catching at some word that chance has thrown upon the eye in some book left open by negligence, or opened at random by one's self, Cowper, the poet, and his friend Newton, with scores of others that could be mentioned, were made acquainted through practical results and personal experiences that in _their_ belief were memorably important.

[2] "_Sortes Virgilianae_."--Upon what principle could it have been that Virgil was adopted as the oracular fountain in such a case? An author so limited even as to bulk, and much more limited as regards compa.s.s of thought and variety or situation or character, was about the worst that pagan literature offered. But I myself once threw out a suggestion, which (if it is sound) exposes a motive in behalf of such a choice that would be likely to overrule the strong motives against it. That motive was, unless my whole speculation is groundless, the very same which led Dante, in an age of ignorance, to select Virgil as his guide in Hades. The seventh son of a seventh son has always traditionally been honored as the depositary of magical and other supernatural gifts. And the same traditional privilege attached to any man whose maternal grandfather was a sorcerer. Now, it happened that Virgil's maternal grandfather bore the name of _Magus_. This, by the ignorant mult.i.tude in Naples, &c., who had been taught to reverence his tomb, was translated from its true acception as a proper name, to a false one as an appellative: it was supposed to indicate, not the name, but the profession of the old gentleman. And thus, according to the belief of the _lazzaroni_, that excellent Christian, P. Virgilius Maro, had stepped by mere succession and right of inheritance into his wicked old grandpapa's infernal powers and knowledge, both of which he exercised, doubtless, for centuries without blame, and for the benefit of the faithful.

[3] "_Strange_," &c.--Yet I remember that, in "The Pursuits of Literature,"--a satirical poem once universally famous,--the lines about Mnemosyne and her daughters, the Pierides, are cited as exhibiting matchless sublimity. Perhaps, therefore, if carefully searched, this writer may contain other jewels not yet appreciated.

[4] "_Very nearly forgotten_."--Not quite however. It must be hard upon eighty or eighty-five years since she first commenced authorship--a period which allows time for a great deal of forgetting; and yet, in the very week when I am revising this pa.s.sage, I observe advertised a new edition, attractively ill.u.s.trated, of the "Evenings at Home"--a joint work of Mrs. Barbauld's and her brother's, (the elder Dr. Aikin.) Mrs.

Barbauld was exceedingly clever. Her mimicry of Dr. Johnson's style was the best of all that exist. Her blank verse "Washing Day," descriptive of the discomforts attending a mistimed visit to a rustic friend, under the affliction of a family washing, is picturesquely circ.u.mstantiated. And her prose hymns for children have left upon my childish recollection a deep impression of solemn beauty and simplicity. Coleridge, who scattered his sneering compliments very liberally up and down the world, used to call the elder Dr. Aikin (allusively to Pope's well-known line--