The Life of Mansie Wauch Part 5

Where doth Beauty brightest glow, With each rich and radiant charm, Eye of light, and brow of snow, Cherry lip, and bosom warm; In the south--the gentle south-- There she waits, and works her harm.

V

Say, shines the Star of Love, From the clear and cloudless sky, The shadowy groves above, Where the nestling ringdoves lie; From the south--the gentle south-- Gleams its lone and lucid eye.

VI

Then turn ye to the home Of your brethren and your bride; Far astray your steps may roam, But more joys for thee abide, In the south--our gentle south-- Than in all the world beside.

After reading a lot of the unknown gentleman's compositions in prose and verse, something like his private history, James Batter informs me, can be made out, provided we are allowed to eke a little here and there.

That he was an Englisher we both think amounts to a probability; and, from having an old "Taffy was a Welshman" for a flunkie, it would not be out of the order of nature to jealouse, that he may have resided somewhere among the hills, where he had picked him up and taken him into his kitchen, promoting him thereafter, for sobriety and good conduct, to be his body servant, and gentleman's gentleman. Where he was born, however, is a matter of doubt, and also who were his folks; but of a surety, he was either born with a silver spoon in his mouth, or rose from the ranks like many another great man. That, however, is a matter of moonshine; we are all descended in a direct line from Adam. Where he was educated does not appear; but there can scarcely be a shadow of doubt, that he was for a considerable while at some school or other, where he had a number of cronies. In proof of this, and to show that we have good reasons for our suppositions, James recommends me to print the following rigmarole meditations, on the top of which is written in half-text,

SCHOOL RECOLLECTIONS.

"--They who in the vale of years advance, And the dark eve is closing on their way, When on the mind the recollections glance Of early joy, and Hope's delightful day, Behold, in brighter hues than those of truth, The light of morning on the fields of youth."

SOUTHEY.

The morning being clear and fine, full of Milton's "vernal delight and joy," I determined on a saunter; the inclemency of the weather having, for more than a week, kept me a prisoner at home. Although now advanced into the heart of February, a great fall of snow had taken place; the roads were blocked up; the mails obstructed; and, while the merchant grumbled audibly for his letters, the politician, no less chagrined, conned over and over again his dingy rumpled old newspaper, compelled "to eat the leek of his disappointment." The wind, which had blown inveterately steady from the surly north-east, had veered, however, during the preceding night, to the west; and, as it were by the spell of an enchanter, an instant thaw commenced. In the low grounds the snow gleamed forth in patches of a pearly whiteness; but, on the banks of southern exposure, the green gra.s.s and the black trodden pathway again showed themselves. The vicissitudes of twenty-four hours were indeed wonderful. Instead of the sharp frost, the pattering hail, and the congealed streams, we had the blue sky, the vernal zephyr, and the genial sunshine; the stream murmuring with a broader wave, as if making up for the season spent in the fetters of congelation; and that luxurious flow of the spirits, which irresistibly comes over the heart, at the re-a.s.sertion of Nature's suspended vigour.

As I pa.s.sed on under the budding trees, how delightful it was to hear the lark and the linnet again at their cheerful songs, to be aware that now "the winter was over and gone;" and to feel that the prospect of summer, with its lengthening days, and its rich variety of fruits and flowers, lay fully before us. There is something within us that connects the spring of the year with the childhood of our existence, and it is more especially at that season, that the thrilling remembrances of long departed pleasures are apt to steal into the thoughts; the re-awakening of nature calling us, by a fearful contrast, to the contemplation of joys that never can return, while all the time the heart is rendered more susceptible by the beauteous renovation in the aspect of the external world.

This sensation pressed strongly on my mind, as I chanced to be pa.s.sing the door of the village school, momentarily opened for the admission of one, creeping along somewhat tardily with satchel on back, and "shining morning face." What a sudden burst of sound was emitted--what harmonious discord--what a commixture of all the tones in the vocal gamut, from the shrill treble to the deep underhum! A chord was touched which vibrated in unison; boyish days and school recollections crowded upon me; pleasures long vanished; feelings long stifled; and friendships--aye, everlasting friendships--cut asunder by the sharp stroke of death!

A public school is a petty world within itself--a wheel within a wheel--in so far as it is entirely occupied with its own concerns, affords its peculiar catalogue of virtues and vices, its own cares, pleasures, regrets, antic.i.p.ations, and disappointments--in fact, a Lilliputian facsimile of the great one. By grown men, nothing is more common than the a.s.sertion that childhood is a perfect Elysium; but it is a false supposition that school-days are those of unalloyed carelessness and enjoyment. It seems to be a great deal too much overlooked, that "little things are great to little men;" and perhaps the mind of boyhood is more active in its conceptions--more alive to the impulses of pleasure and pain--in other words, has a more extended scope of sensations, than during any other portion of our existence. Its days are not those of lack-occupation; they are full of stir, animation, and activity, for it is then we are in training for after life; and, when the hours of school restraint glide slowly over, "like wounded snakes," the clock, that chimes to liberty, sends forth the blood with a livelier flow; and pleasure thus derives a double zest from the bridle that duty has imposed, joy being generally measured according to the difficulty of its attainment. What delight in life have we ever experienced more exquisite than that, which flowed at once in upon us from the teacher's "_bene_, _bene_," our own self-approbation, and release from the tasks of the day?--the green fields around us wherein to ramble, the stream beside us wherein to angle, the world of games and pastimes, "before us where to choose." Words are inadequate to express the thrill of transport, with which, on the rush from the school-house door, the hat is waved in air, and the shout sent forth!

Then what a variety of amus.e.m.e.nts succeed each other. Every month has its favourite ones. The sports-man does not more keenly scrutinize his kalendar for the commencement of the trouting, grouse shooting, or hare-hunting season, than the younker for the time of flying kites, bowling at cricket, football, spinning peg-tops, and playing at marbles.

Pleasure is the focus, which it is the common aim to approximate; and the ma.s.s is guided by a sort of unpremeditated social compact, which draws them out of doors as soon as meals are discussed, with a sincere thirst of amus.e.m.e.nt, as certainly as rooks congregate in spring to discuss the propriety of building nests, or swallows in autumn to deliberate in conclave on the expediency of emigration.

Then how perfectly glorious was the antic.i.p.ation of a holiday--a long summer day of liberty and ease! In antic.i.p.ation it was a thing boundless and endless, a foretaste of Elysium. It extended from the _prima luce_, from the earliest dawn of radiance that streaked the "severing clouds in yonder east," through the sun's matin, meridian, postmeridian, and vesper circuit; from the disappearance of Lucifer in the re-illumined skies, to his evening entree in the character of Hesperus. Complain not of the brevity of life; 'tis _men_ that are idle; a thousand things could be contrived and accomplished in that s.p.a.ce, and a thousand schemes were devised by us, when _boys_, to prevent any portion of it pa.s.sing over without improvement. We pursued the fleet angel of time through all his movements till he blessed us.

With these and similar thoughts in my mind, I strayed down to the banks of the river, and came upon the very spot, which, in those long-vanished years, had been a favourite scene of our boyish sports. The impression was overpowering; and as I gazed silently around me, my mind was subdued to that tone of feeling which Ossian so finely designates "the joy of grief." The trees were the same, but older, like myself; seemingly unscathed by the strife of years--and herein was a difference. Some of the very bushes I recognized as our old lurking-places at "hunt the hare"; and, on the old fantastic beech-tree, I discovered the very bough from which we were accustomed to suspend our swings. What alterations--what sad havoc had time, circ.u.mstances, the hand of fortune, and the stroke of death, made among us since then! How were the thoughts of the heart, the hopes, the pursuits, the feelings changed; and, in almost every instance, it is to be feared, for the worse! As I gazed around me, and paused, I could not help reciting aloud to myself the lines of Charles Lamb, so touching in their simple beauty.

"I have had playmates, I have had companions, In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days; All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

Some they have died, and some they have left me, And some are taken from me, all are departed; All, all are gone, the old familiar faces."

The fresh green plat, by the brink of the stream, lay before me. It was there that we played at leap-frog, or gathered dandelions for our tame rabbits; and, at its western extremity, were still extant the reliques of the deal-seat, at which we used to a.s.semble on autumn evenings to have our round of stories. Many a witching tale and wondrous tradition hath there been told; many a marvel of "figures that visited the glimpses of the moon"; many a recital of heroic and chivalrous enterprise, accomplished ere warriors dwindled away to the mere puny strength of mortals. Sapped by the wind and rain, the planks lay in a sorely decayed and rotten state, looking in their mossiness like a sign-post of desolation, a memento of terrestrial instability. Traces of the knife were still here and there visible upon the trunks of the supporting trees; and with little difficulty I could decipher some well-remembered initials.

"Cold were the hands that carved them there."

It is, no doubt, wonderful that the human mind can retain such a ma.s.s of recollections; yet we seem to be, in general, little aware that for one solitary incident in our lives, preserved by memory, hundreds have been buried in the silent charnel-house of oblivion. We peruse the past, like a map of pleasing or melancholy recollections, and observe lines crossing and re-crossing each other in a thousand directions; some spots are almost blank; others faintly traced; and the rest a confused and perplexed labyrinth. A thousand feelings that, in their day and hour, agitated our bosoms, are now forgotten; a thousand hopes, and joys, and apprehensions, and fears, are vanished without a trace. Schemes, which cost us much care in their formation, and much anxiety in their fulfilment, have glided, like the clouds of yesterday, from our remembrance. Many a sharer of our early friendships, and of our boyish sports, we think of no more; they are as if they had never been, till perhaps some accidental occurrence, some words in conversation, some object by the wayside, or some pa.s.senger in the street, attract our notice--and then, as if awaking from a perplexing trance, a light darts in upon our darkness; and we discover that thus some one long ago spoke; that there something long ago happened; or that the person, who just pa.s.sed us like a vision, shared smiles with us long, long years ago, and added a double zest to the enjoyments of our childhood.

Of our old cla.s.s-fellows, of those whose days were of "a mingled yarn"

with ours, whose hearts blended in the warmest reciprocities of friendship, whose joys, whose cares, almost whose wishes were in common, how little do we know? how little will even the severest scrutiny enable us to discover? Yet, at one time, we were inseparable "like Juno's swans"; we were as brothers, nor dreamt we of ought else, in the susceptibility of our youthful imagination, than that we were to pa.s.s through all the future scenes of life, side by side; and, mutually supporting and supported, lengthen out the endearments, the ties, and the feelings of boyhood unto the extremities of existence. What a fine but a fond dream--alas, how wide of the cruel reality! The casual relation of a traveller may discover to us where one of them resided or resides. The page of an obituary may accidentally inform us how long one of them lingered on the bed of sickness, and by what death he died. Some we may perhaps discover in elevated situations, from which worldly pride might probably prevent their stooping down to recognize us. Others, immersed in the labyrinths of business, have forgot all, in the selfish pursuits of earthly acc.u.mulation. While the rest, the children of misfortune and disappointment, we may occasionally find out amid the great mult.i.tude of the streets, to whom life is but a desert of sorrow, and against whom prosperity seems to have shut for ever her golden gates.

Such are the diversities of condition, the varieties of fortune to which man is exposed, while climbing the hill of probationary difficulty. And how sublimely applicable are the words of Job, expatiating on the uncertainty of human existence: "Man dieth and wasteth away; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up; so man lieth down and riseth not till the heavens be no more."

While standing on the same spot, where of yore the boyish mult.i.tude congregated in pursuit of their eager sports, a silent awe steals over the bosom, and the heart desponds at the thought, that all these once smiling faces are scattered now! Some, mayhap, tossing on the waste and perilous seas; some the merchants of distant lands; some fighting the battles of their country; others dead--inhabitants of the dark and narrow house, and hearing no more the billows of life, that thunder and break above their low and lonely dwelling-place!

Nanse, who was sitting by the table, knitting a pair of light-blue worsted stockings for Benjie, and myself, who was sewing on the b.u.t.tons of a velveteen jacket for a country lad, were, I must say, not a little delighted, not only with the way in which the Welshman's late master had spoken of his school-fellows, but with the manner in which James Batter, with his specs on, had read it over to us. Upon my word--and that of an elder--I do not believe that even Mr Wiggie himself could have done the thing greater justice. It was just as if he had been a play-actor man, spouting Douglas's tragedy.

Having folded up that paper, and turned over not a few others, the docketings of which he read out to us, James at last says, "Ou ay, here it is. I think I can now prove to ye, that the gentlemen's sweetheart died abroad; and that, likely from her name--for it is here mentioned--she must have been a Portugee or Spaniard."

"Ay, let us hear it," cried Nanse. "Do, like a man, let us hear it, James; for I delight above a' things to hear about love-stories. Do ye mind, Maister," she said, "when ye was so deep in love aince yoursell?"

"Foolish woman," I said, giving her a kind of severe look; "is that all your manners to interrupt Mr Batter? If ye'll just keep a calm sough, ye'll hear the long and the short o't, in good time."

By this, James, who did not relish interruption, and was a thought fidgety in his natural temper, had laid down the paper on the table, snuffed the candle, and raised his spectacles on his brow. But I said to him, "Excuse freedoms, James, and be so good as resume your discourse."

Then wishing to smooth him down, I added, by way of compliment--"Do go on; for you really are a prime reader. Nature surely intended ye for a minister."

"Dinna flatter me," said James; looking, however, rather proudishly at what I had said, and replacing his gla.s.ses on the brig of his nose, he then read us a screed of metre to the following effect; part of which, I am free to confess, is rather above my comprehension. But, never mind.

ELEGIAC STANZAS

I

'Tis midnight deep; the full round moon, As 'twere a spectre, walks the sky; The balmy breath of gentlest June Just stirs the stream that murmurs by; Above me frowns the solemn wood; Nature, methinks, seems Solitude Embodied to the eye.

II

Yes, 'tis a season and a scene, Inez, to think on thee; the day, With stir and strife, may come between Affection and thy beauty's ray, But feeling here a.s.sumes control, And mourns my desolated soul That thou are rapt away!

III

Thou wert a rainbow to my sight, The storms of life before thee fled; The glory and the guiding light, That onward cheer'd and upward led; From boyhood to this very hour, For me, and only me, thy flower Its fragrance seem'd to shed.

IV

Dark though the world for me might show Its sordid faith and selfish gloom, Yet 'mid life's wilderness to know For me that sweet flower shed its bloom, Was joy, was solace:--thou art gone-- And hope forsook me, when the stone Sank darkly o'er thy tomb.

V

And art thou dead? I dare not think That thus the solemn truth can be; And broken is the only link That chain'd youth's pleasant thoughts to me!

Alas! that thou couldst know decay, That, sighing, I should live to say "The cold grave holdeth thee!"

VI

For me thou shon'st, as shines a star, Lonely, in clouds when Heaven is lost; Thou wert my guiding light afar, When on misfortune's billows tost: Now darkness hath obscured that light, And I am left in rayless night, On Sorrow's lowering coast.

VII

And art thou gone? I deem'd thee some Immortal essence--art thou gone?-- I saw thee laid within the tomb, And turn'd away to mourn alone: Once to have loved, is to have loved Enough; and, what with thee I proved, Again I'll seek in none.

VIII

Earth in thy sight grew faery land;-- Life was Elysium--thought was love,-- When, long ago, hand clasp'd in hand, We roam'd through Autumn's twilight grove; Or watch'd the broad uprising moon Shed, as it were, a wizard noon, The blasted heath above.