Nature and Art Part 7

"You amaze me," cried the dean, "by your question. Do not you live in ease, in plenty, and happiness?"

"And do the poor and the unhappy thank Him too, uncle?"

"No doubt; every human being glorifies Him, for having been made a rational creature."

"And does my aunt and all her card-parties glorify Him for that?"

The dean again made no reply, and Henry went on to other questions, till his uncle had fully instructed him as to the nature and the form of _prayer_; and now, putting into his hands a book, he pointed out to him a few short prayers, which he wished him to address to Heaven in his presence.

Whilst Henry bent his knees, as his uncle had directed, he trembled, turned pale, and held, for a slight support, on the chair placed before him.

His uncle went to him, and asked him "What was the matter."

"Oh!" cried Henry, "when I first came to your door with my poor father's letter, I shook for fear you would not look upon me; and I cannot help feeling even more now than I did then."

The dean embraced him with warmth--gave him confidence--and retired to the other side of the study, to observe his whole demeanour on this new occasion.

As he beheld his features varying between the pa.s.sions of humble fear and fervent hope, his face sometimes glowing with the rapture of thanksgiving, and sometimes with the blushes of contrition, he thus exclaimed apart:--

"This is the true education on which to found the principles of religion.

The favour conferred by Heaven in granting the freedom of pet.i.tions to its throne, can never be conceived with proper force but by those whose most tedious moments during their infancy were _not_ pa.s.sed in prayer.

Unthinking governors of childhood! to insult the Deity with a form of worship in which the mind has no share; nay, worse, has repugnance, and by the thoughtless habits of youth, prevent, even in age, devotion."

Henry's attention was so firmly fixed that he forgot there was a spectator of his fervour; nor did he hear young William enter the chamber and even speak to his father.

At length closing his book and rising from his knees, he approached his uncle and cousin, with a sedateness in his air, which gave the latter a very false opinion of the state of his youthful companion's mind.

"So, Mr. Henry," cried William, "you have been obliged, at last, to say your prayers."

The dean informed his son "that to Henry it was no punishment to pray."

"He is the strangest boy I ever knew!" said William, inadvertently.

"To be sure," said Henry, "I was frightened when I first knelt; but when I came to the words, _Father_, _which art in Heaven_, they gave me courage; for I know how merciful and kind a _father_ is, beyond any one else."

The dean again embraced his nephew, let fall a tear to his poor brother Henry's misfortunes; and admonished the youth to show himself equally submissive to other instructions, as he had done to those which inculcate piety.

CHAPTER XVIII.

The interim between youth and manhood was pa.s.sed by young William and young Henry in studious application to literature; some casual mistakes in our customs and manners on the part of Henry; some too close adherences to them on the side of William.

Their different characters, when boys, were preserved when they became men: Henry still retained that natural simplicity which his early destiny had given him; he wondered still at many things he saw and heard, and at times would venture to give his opinion, contradict, and even act in opposition to persons whom long experience and the approbation of the world had placed in situations which claimed his implicit reverence and submission.

Unchanged in all his boyish graces, young William, now a man, was never known to infringe upon the statutes of good-breeding; even though sincerity, his own free will, duty to his neighbour, with many other plebeian virtues and privileges, were the sacrifice.

William inherited all the pride and ambition of the dean--Henry, all his father's humility. And yet, so various and extensive is the acceptation of the word pride, that, on some occasions, Henry was proud even beyond his cousin. He thought it far beneath his dignity ever to honour, or contemplate with awe, any human being in whom he saw numerous failings.

Nor would he, to ingratiate himself into the favour of a man above him, stoop to one servility, such as the haughty William daily practised.

"I know I am called proud," one day said William to Henry.

"Dear cousin," replied Henry, "it must be only, then, by those who do not know you; for to me you appear the humblest creature in the world."

"Do you really think so?"

"I am certain of it; or would you always give up your opinion to that of persons in a superior state, however inferior in their understanding?

Would else their weak judgment immediately change yours, though, before, you had been decided on the opposite side? Now, indeed, cousin, I have more pride than you; for I never will stoop to act or to speak contrary to my feelings."

"Then you will never be a great man."

"Nor ever desire it, if I must first be a mean one."

There was in the reputation of these two young men another mistake, which the common retailers of character committed. Henry was said to be wholly negligent, while William was reputed to be extremely attentive to the other s.e.x. William, indeed, was gallant, was amorous, and indulged his inclination to the libertine society of women; but Henry it was who _loved_ them. He admired them at a reverential distance, and felt so tender an affection for the virtuous female, that it shocked him to behold, much more to a.s.sociate with, the depraved and vicious.

In the advantages of person Henry was still superior to William; and yet the latter had no common share of those attractions which captivate weak, thoughtless, or unskilful minds.

CHAPTER XIX.

About the time that Henry and William quitted college, and had arrived at their twentieth year, the dean purchased a small estate in a village near to the country residence of Lord and Lady Bendham; and, in the total want of society, the dean's family were frequently honoured with invitations from the great house.

Lord Bendham, besides a good estate, possessed the office of a lord of the bed-chamber to his Majesty. Historians do not ascribe much importance to the situation, or to the talents of n.o.bles in this department, nor shall this little history. A lord of the bed-chamber is a personage well known in courts, and in all capitals where courts reside; with this advantage to the inquirer, that in becoming acquainted with one of those n.o.ble characters, he becomes acquainted with all the remainder; not only with those of the same kingdom, but those of foreign nations; for, in whatever land, in whatever climate, a lord of the bed- chamber must necessarily be the self-same creature: one wholly made up of observance, of obedience, of dependence, and of imitation--a borrowed character--a character formed by reflection.

The wife of this ill.u.s.trious peer, as well as himself, took her hue, like the chameleon, from surrounding objects: her manners were not governed by her mind but were solely directed by external circ.u.mstances. At court, humble, resigned, patient, attentive: at b.a.l.l.s, masquerades, gaming-tables, and routs, gay, sprightly, and flippant; at her country seat, reserved, austere, arrogant, and gloomy.

Though in town her timid eye in presence of certain personages would scarcely uplift its trembling lid, so much she felt her own insignificance, yet, in the country, till Lady Clementina arrived, there was not one being of consequence enough to share in her acquaintance; and she paid back to her inferiors there all the humiliating slights, all the mortifications, which in London she received from those to whom _she_ was inferior.

Whether in town or country, it is but justice to acknowledge that in her own person she was strictly chaste; but in the country she extended that chast.i.ty even to the persons of others; and the young woman who lost her virtue in the village of Anfield had better have lost her life. Some few were now and then found hanging or drowned, while no other cause could be a.s.signed for their despair than an imputation on the discretion of their character, and dread of the harsh purity of Lady Bendham. She would remind the parish priest of the punishment allotted for female dishonour, and by her influence had caused many an unhappy girl to do public penance in their own or the neighbouring churches.

But this country rigour in town she could dispense withal; and, like other ladies of virtue, she there visited and received into her house the acknowledged mistresses of any man in elevated life. It was not, therefore, the crime, but the rank which the criminal held in society, that drew down Lady Bendham's vengeance. She even carried her distinction of cla.s.ses in female error to such a very nice point that the adulterous concubine of an elder brother was her most intimate acquaintance, whilst the less guilty unmarried mistress of the younger she would not sully her lips to exchange a word with.

Lord and Lady Bendham's birth, education, talents, and propensities, being much on the same scale of eminence, they would have been a very happy pair, had not one great misfortune intervened--the lady never bore her lord a child, while every cottage of the village was crammed with half-starved children, whose father from week to week, from year to year, exerted his manly youth, and wasted his strength in vain, to protect them from hunger; whose mother mourned over her new-born infant as a little wretch, sent into the world to deprive the rest of what already was too scanty for them; in the castle, which owned every cottage and all the surrounding land, and where one single day of feasting would have nourished for a mouth all the poor inhabitants of the parish, not one child was given to partake of the plenty. The curse of barrenness was on the family of the lord of the manor, the curse of fruitfulness upon the famished poor.

This lord and lady, with an ample fortune, both by inheritance and their sovereign's favour, had never yet the economy to be exempt from debts; still, over their splendid, their profuse table, they could contrive and plan excellent schemes "how the poor might live most comfortably with a little better management."

The wages of a labouring man, with a wife and half a dozen small children, Lady Bendham thought quite sufficient if they would only learn a little economy.

"You know, my lord, those people never want to dress--shoes and stockings, a coat and waistcoat, a gown and a cap, a petticoat and a handkerchief, are all they want--fire, to be sure, in winter--then all the rest is merely for provision."

"I'll get a pen and ink," said young Henry, one day, when he had the honour of being at their table, "and see what the _rest_ amounts to."

"No, no accounts," cried my lord, "no summing up; but if you were to calculate, you must add to the receipts of the poor my gift at Christmas--last year, during the frost, no less than a hundred pounds."