IRIS. The 1
I told you that I was perfectly sure, beforehand, we should find some pleasing girlish or womanly shape to fill the blank at our table and match the dark-haired youth at the upper corner.

There she sits, at the very opposite corner, just as far off as accident could put her from this handsome fellow, by whose side she ought, of course, to be sitting. One of the “positive” blondes, as my friend, you may remember, used to call them. Tawny-haired, amber-eyed, full-throated, skin as white as a blanched almond. Looks dreamy to me, not self-conscious, though a black ribbon round her neck sets it off as a Marie-Antoinette’s diamond-necklace could not do. So in her dress, there is a harmony of tints that looks as if an artist had run his eye over her and given a hint or two like the finishing touch to a picture. I can’t help being struck with her, for she is at once rounded and fine in feature, looks calm, as[8] blondes are apt to, and as if she might run wild, if she were trifled with.——It is just as I knew it would be,——and anybody can see that our young Marylander will be dead in love with her in a week.

Then if that little man would only turn out immensely rich and have the good-nature to die and leave them all his money, it would be as nice as a three-volume novel.

The Little Gentleman is in a flurry, I suspect, with the excitement of having such a charming neighbor next him. I judge so mainly by his silence and by a certain rapt and serious look on his face, as if he were thinking of something that had happened, or that might happen, or that ought to happen,——or how beautiful her young life looked, or how hardly Nature had dealt with him, or something which struck him silent, at any rate. I made several conversational openings for him, but he did not fire up as he often does. I even went so far as to indulge in a fling at the State House, which, as we all know, is in truth a very imposing structure, covering less ground than St. Peter’s, but of similar general effect. The little man looked up, but did not reply to my taunt. He said to the young lady, however, that the State House was the Parthenon of our Acropolis, which seemed to please her, for she smiled, and he reddened a little,——so I thought. I don’t think it right to watch persons who are the subjects of special infirmity,——but we all do it.

I see that they have crowded the chairs a little at that end of the table, to make room for another new-comer of the lady sort. A well-mounted, middle-aged preparation, wearing her hair without a cap,——pretty wide in the[9] parting, though,——contours vaguely hinted,——features very quiet,——says little as yet, but seems to keep her eye on the young lady, as if having some responsibility for her.
IRIS. The 2
You remember, perhaps, in some papers published awhile ago, an odd poem written by an old Latin tutor? He brought up at the verb amo, I love, as all of us do, and by and by Nature opened her great living dictionary for him at the word filia, a daughter. The poor man was greatly perplexed in choosing a name for her. Lucretia and Virginia were the first that he thought of; but then came up those pictured stories of Titus Livius, which he could never read without crying, though he had read them a hundred times.

Lucretia sending for her husband and her father, each to bring one friend with him, and awaiting them in her chamber. To them her wrongs briefly. Let them see to the wretch,——she will take care of herself. Then the hidden knife flashes out and sinks into her heart. She slides from her seat, and falls dying. “Her husband and her father cry aloud.”——No,——not Lucretia.

——Virginius,——a brown old soldier, father of a nice girl. She engaged to a very promising young man. Decemvir Appius takes a violent fancy to her,——must have her at any rate. Hires a lawyer to present the arguments in favor of the view that she was another man’s daughter. There used to be lawyers in Rome that would do such things.——All right. There are two sides to everything. Audi alteram partem. The legal gentleman[10] has no opinion,——he only states the evidence.——A doubtful case. Let the young lady be under the protection of the Honorable Decemvir until it can be looked up thoroughly.——Father thinks it best, on the whole, to give in. Will explain the matter, if the young lady and her maid will step this way. That is the explanation,——a stab with a butcher’s knife, snatched from a stall, meant for other lambs than this poor bleeding Virginia!

The old man thought over the story. Then he must have one look at the original. So he took down the first volume and read it over. When he came to that part where it tells how the young gentleman she was engaged to and a friend of his took up the poor girl’s bloodless shape and carried it through the street, and how all the women followed, wailing, and asking if that was what their daughters were coming to,——if that was what they were to get for being good girls,——he melted down into his accustomed tears of pity and grief, and, through them all, of delight at the charming Latin of the narrative. But it was impossible to call his child Virginia. He could never look at her without thinking she had a knife sticking in her bosom.

Dido would be a good name, and a fresh one. She was a queen, and the founder of a great city. Her story had been immortalized by the greatest of poets,——for the old Latin tutor clove to “Virgilius Maro,” as he called him, as closely as ever Dante did in his memorable journey. So he took down his Virgil,——it was the smooth-leafed, open-lettered quarto of Baskerville,——and began reading the loves and mishaps of Dido. It wouldn’t do. A lady who had not learned discretion by experience,[11] and came to an evil end. He shook his head, as he sadly repeated,
“—— misera ante diem, subitoque accensa furore”;

but when he came to the lines,
“Ergo Iris croceis per cœlum roscida pennis
Mille trahens varios adverso Sole colores,”

he jumped up with a great exclamation, which the particular recording angel who heard it pretended not to understand, or it might have gone hard with the Latin tutor some time or other.

“Iris shall be her name!”——he said. So her name was Iris.
IRIS. The 3
The natural end of a tutor is to perish by starvation. It is only a question of time, just as with the burning of college libraries. These all burn up sooner or later, provided they are not housed in brick or stone and iron. I don’t mean that you will see in the registry of deaths that this or that particular tutor died of well-marked, uncomplicated starvation. They may, even, in extreme cases, be carried off by a thin, watery kind of apoplexy, which sounds very well in the returns, but means little to those who know that it is only debility settling on the head. Generally, however, they fade and waste away under various pretexts,——calling it dyspepsia, consumption, and so on, to put a decent appearance upon the case and keep up the credit of the family and the institution where they have passed through the successive stages of inanition.

In some cases it takes a great many years to kill a[12] tutor by the process in question. You see, they do get food and clothes and fuel, in appreciable quantities, such as they are. You will even notice rows of books in their rooms, and a picture or two,——things that look as if they had surplus money; but these superfluities are the water of crystallization to scholars, and you can never get them away till the poor fellows effloresce into dust. Do not be deceived. The tutor breakfasts on coffee made of beans, edulcorated with milk watered to the verge of transparency; his mutton is tough and elastic, up to the moment when it becomes tired out and tasteless; his coal is a sullen, sulphurous anthracite, which rusts into ashes, rather than burns, in the shallow grate; his flimsy broadcloth is too thin for winter and too thick for summer. The greedy lungs of fifty hot-blooded boys suck the oxygen from the air he breathes in his recitation-room. In short, he undergoes a process of gentle and gradual starvation.

——The mother of little Iris was not called Electra, like hers of the old story, neither was her grandfather Oceanus. Her blood-name, which she gave away with her heart to the Latin tutor, was a plain old English one, and her water-name was Hannah, beautiful as recalling the mother of Samuel, and admirable as reading equally well from the initial letter forwards and from the terminal letter backwards. The poor lady, seated with her companion at the chess-board of matrimony, had but just pushed forward her one little white pawn upon an empty square, when the Black Knight, that cares nothing for castles or kings or queens, swooped down upon her and swept her from the larger board of life.

[13]

The old Latin tutor put a modest blue stone at the head of his late companion, with her name and age and Eheu! upon it,——a smaller one at her feet, with initials; and left her by herself, to be rained and snowed on,——which is a hard thing to do for those whom we have cherished tenderly.

About the time that the lichens, falling on the stone, like drops of water, had spread into fair, round rosettes, the tutor had starved into a slight cough. Then he began to draw the buckle of his black pantaloons a little tighter, and took another reef in his never-ample waistcoat. His temples got a little hollow, and the contrasts of color in his cheeks more vivid than of old. After a while his walks fatigued him, and he was tired, and breathed hard after going up a flight or two of stairs. Then came on other marks of inward trouble and general waste, which he spoke of to his physician as peculiar, and doubtless owing to accidental causes; to all which the doctor listened with deference, as if it had not been the old story that one in five or six of mankind in temperate climates tells, or has told for him, as if it were something new. As the doctor went out, he said to himself,——“On the rail at last. Accommodation train. A good many stops, but will get to the station by and by.” So the doctor wrote a recipe with the astrological sign of Jupiter before it (just as your own physician does, inestimable reader, as you will see, if you look at his next prescription), and departed, saying he would look in occasionally. After this, the Latin tutor began the usual course of “getting better,” until he got so much better that his face was very sharp, and when he smiled,[14] three crescent lines showed at each side of his lips, and when he spoke, it was in a muffled whisper, and the white of his eye glistened as pearly as the purest porcelain,——so much better, that he hoped——by spring——he——might be able——to——attend——to his class again.——But he was recommended not to expose himself, and so kept his chamber, and occasionally, not having anything to do, his bed. The unmarried sister with whom he lived took care of him; and the child, now old enough to be manageable, and even useful in trifling offices, sat in the chamber, or played about.

Things could not go on so forever, of course. One morning his face was sunken and his hands were very, very cold. He was “better,” he whispered, but sadly and faintly. After a while he grew restless and seemed a little wandering. His mind ran on his classics, and fell back on the Latin grammar.

“Iris!” he said,——“filiola mea!”——The child knew this meant my dear little daughter as well as if it had been English.——“Rainbow!”——for he would translate her name at times,——“come to me,——veni”——and his lips went on automatically, and murmured, “vel venito!”——The child came and sat by his bedside and took his hand, which she could not warm, but which shot its rays of cold all through her slender frame. But there she sat, looking steadily at him. Presently he opened his lips feebly, and whispered, “Moribundus.” She did not know what that meant, but she saw that there was something new and sad. So she began to cry; but presently remembering an old book that seemed to comfort him at times, got up and[15] brought a Bible in the Latin version, called the Vulgate. “Open it,” he said,——“I will read,——segnius irritant,——don’t put the light out,——ah! hæret lateri,——I am going,——vale, vale, vale, good by, good by,——the Lord take care of my child!——Domine, audi——vel audito!” His face whitened suddenly, and he lay still, with open eyes and mouth. He had taken his last degree.

——Little Miss Iris could not be said to begin life with a very brilliant rainbow over her, in a worldly point of view. A limited wardrobe of man’s attire, such as poor tutors wear,——a few good books, principally classics,——a print or two, and a plaster model of the Pantheon, with some pieces of furniture which had seen service,——these, and a child’s heart full of tearful recollections and strange doubts and questions, alternating with the cheap pleasures which are the anodynes of childish grief; such were the treasures she inherited.——No,——I forgot. With that kindly sentiment which all of us feel for old men’s first children,——frost-flowers of the early winter season,——the old tutor’s students had remembered him at a time when he was laughing and crying with his new parental emotions, and running to the side of the plain crib in which his alter ego, as he used to say, was swinging, to hang over the little heap of stirring clothes, from which looked the minute, red, downy, still, round face, with unfixed eyes and working lips,——in that unearthly gravity which has never yet been broken by a smile, and which gives to the earliest moon-year or two of an infant’s life the character of a first old age, to counterpoise that second childhood which there is one chance in a dozen it may reach by and by. The boys had remembered[16] the old man and young father at that tender period of his hard, dry life. There came to him a fair, silver goblet, embossed with classical figures, and bearing on a shield the graven words, Ex dono pupillorum. The handle on its side showed what use the boys had meant it for, and a kind letter in it, written with the best of feeling, in the worst of Latin, pointed delicately to its destination. Out of this silver vessel, after a long, desperate, strangling cry, which marked her first great lesson in the realities of life, the child took the blue milk, such as poor tutors and their children get, tempered with water, and sweetened a little, so as to bring it nearer the standard established by the touching indulgence and partiality of Nature,——who has mingled an extra allowance of sugar in the blameless food of the child at its mother’s breast, as compared with that of its infant brothers and sisters of the bovine race.

But a willow will grow in baked sand wet with rainwater. An air-plant will grow by feeding on the winds. Nay, those huge forests that overspread great continents have built themselves up mainly from the air-currents with which they are always battling. The oak is but a foliated atmospheric crystal deposited from the aerial ocean that holds the future vegetable world in solution. The storm that tears its leaves has paid tribute to its strength, and it breasts the tornado clad in the spoils of a hundred hurricanes.

Poor little Iris! What had she in common with the great oak in the shadow of which we are losing sight of her?——She lived and grew like that,——this was all. The blue milk ran into her veins and filled them with[17] thin, pure blood. Her skin was fair, with a faint tinge, such as the white rosebud shows before it opens. The doctor who had attended her father was afraid her aunt would hardly be able to “raise” her,——“delicate child,”——hoped she was not consumptive,——thought there was a fair chance she would take after her father.

A very forlorn-looking person, dressed in black, with a white neckcloth, sent her a memoir of a child who died at the age of two years and eleven months, after having fully indorsed all the doctrines of the particular persuasion to which he not only belonged himself, but thought it very shameful that everybody else did not belong. What with foreboding looks and dreary death-bed stories, it was a wonder the child made out to live through it. It saddened her early years, of course,——it distressed her tender soul with thoughts which, as they cannot be fully taken in, should be sparingly used as instruments of torture to break down the natural cheerfulness of a healthy child, or, what is infinitely worse, to cheat a dying one out of the kind illusions with which the Father of All has strewed its downward path.

The child would have died, no doubt, and, if properly managed, might have added another to the long catalogue of wasting children who have been as cruelly played upon by spiritual physiologists, often with the best intentions, as ever the subject of a rare disease by the curious students of science.

Fortunately for her, however, a wise instinct had guided the late Latin tutor in the selection of the partner of his life, and the future mother of his child. The[18] deceased tutoress was a tranquil, smooth woman, easily nourished, as such people are,——a quality which is inestimable in a tutor’s wife,——and so it happened that the daughter inherited enough vitality from the mother to live through childhood and infancy and fight her way towards womanhood, in spite of the tendencies she derived from her other parent.

——Two and two do not always make four, in this matter of hereditary descent of qualities. Sometimes they make three, and sometimes five. It seems as if the parental traits at one time showed separate, at another blended,——that occasionally the force of two natures is represented in the derivative one by a diagonal of greater value than either original line of living movement,——that sometimes there is a loss of vitality hardly to be accounted for, and again a forward impulse of variable intensity in some new and unforeseen direction.

So it was with this child. She had glanced off from her parental probabilities at an unexpected angle. Instead of taking to classical learning like her father, or sliding quietly into household duties like her mother, she broke out early in efforts that pointed in the direction of Art. As soon as she could hold a pencil she began to sketch outlines of objects round her with a certain air and spirit. Very extraordinary horses, but their legs looked as if they could move. Birds unknown to Audubon, yet flying, as it were, with a rush. Men with impossible legs, which did yet seem to have a vital connection with their most improbable bodies. By and by the doctor, on his beast,——an old man with a face looking as if Time had kneaded it like dough with his knuckles,[19] with a rhubarb tint and flavor pervading himself and his sorrel horse and all their appurtenances. A dreadful old man! Be sure she did not forget those saddle-bags that held the detestable bottles out of which he used to shake those loathsome powders which, to virgin childish palates that find heaven in strawberries and peaches, are——Well, I suppose I had better stop. Only she wished she was dead sometimes when she heard him coming. On the next leaf would figure the gentleman with the black coat and white cravat, as he looked when he came and entertained her with stories concerning the death of various little children about her age, to encourage her, as that wicked Mr. Arouet said about shooting Admiral Byng. Then she would take her pencil, and with a few scratches there would be the outline of a child, in which you might notice how one sudden sweep gave the chubby cheek, and two dots darted at the paper looked like real eyes.

By and by she went to school, and caricatured the schoolmaster on the leaves of her grammars and geographies, and drew the faces of her companions, and, from time to time, heads and figures from her fancy, with large eyes, far apart, like those of Raffaelle’s mothers and children, sometimes with wild floating hair, and then with wings and heads thrown back in ecstasy. This was at about twelve years old, as the dates of these drawings show, and, therefore, three or four years before she came among us. Soon after this time, the ideal figures began to take the place of portraits and caricatures, and a new feature appeared in her drawing-books in the form of fragments of verse and short poems.

IRIS. The 4
It was dull work, of course, for such a young girl to live with an old spinster and go to a village school. Her books bore testimony to this; for there was a look of sadness in the faces she drew, and a sense of weariness and longing for some imaginary conditions of blessedness or other, which began to be painful. She might have gone through this flowering of the soul, and, casting her petals, subsided into a sober, human berry, but for the intervention of friendly assistance and counsel.

In the town where she lived was a lady of honorable condition, somewhat past middle age, who was possessed of pretty ample means, of cultivated tastes, of excellent principles, of exemplary character, and of more than common accomplishments. The gentleman in black broadcloth and white neckerchief only echoed the common voice about her, when he called her, after enjoying, beneath her hospitable roof, an excellent cup of tea, with certain elegances and luxuries he was unaccustomed to, “The Model of all the Virtues.”

She deserved this title as well as almost any woman. She did really bristle with moral excellences. Mention any good thing she had not done; I should like to see you try! There was no handle of weakness to take hold of her by; she was as unseizable, except in her totality, as a billiard-ball; and on the broad, green, terrestrial table, where she had been knocked about, like all of us, by the cue of Fortune, she glanced from every human contact, and “caromed” from one relation to another,[21] and rebounded from the stuffed cushion of temptation, with such exact and perfect angular movements, that the Enemy’s corps of Reporters had long given up taking notes of her conduct, as there was no chance for their master.

What an admirable person for the patroness and directress of a slightly self-willed child, with the lightning zigzag line of genius running like a glittering vein through the marble whiteness of her virgin nature! One of the lady-patroness’s peculiar virtues was calmness. She was resolute and strenuous, but still. You could depend on her for every duty; she was as true as steel. She was kind-hearted and serviceable in all the relations of life. She had more sense, more knowledge, more conversation, as well as more goodness, than all the partners you have waltzed with this winter put together.

Yet no man was known to have loved her, or even to have offered himself to her in marriage. It was a great wonder. I am very anxious to vindicate my character as a philosopher and an observer of Nature by accounting for this apparently extraordinary fact.

You may remember certain persons who have the misfortune of presenting to the friends whom they meet a cold, damp hand. There are states of mind in which a contact of this kind has a depressing effect on the vital powers that makes us insensible to all the virtues and graces of the proprietor of one of these life-absorbing organs. When they touch us, virtue passes out of us, and we feel as if our electricity had been drained by a powerful negative battery, carried about by an overgrown human torpedo.

[22]

“The Model of all the Virtues” had a pair of searching eyes as clear as Wenham ice; but they were slower to melt than that fickle jewelry. Her features disordered themselves slightly at times in a surface-smile, but never broke loose from their corners and indulged in the riotous tumult of a laugh,——which, I take it, is the mob-law of the features,——and propriety the magistrate who reads the riot-act. She carried the brimming cup of her inestimable virtues with a cautious, steady hand, and an eye always on them, to see that they did not spill. Then she was an admirable judge of character. Her mind was a perfect laboratory of tests and reagents; every syllable you put into breath went into her intellectual eudiometer, and all your thoughts were recorded on litmus-paper. I think there has rarely been a more admirable woman. Of course, Miss Iris was immensely and passionately attached to her.——Well,——these are two highly oxygenated adverbs,——grateful,——suppose we say,——yes,——grateful, dutiful, obedient to her wishes for the most part,——perhaps not quite up to the concert pitch of such a perfect orchestra of the virtues.

We must have a weak spot or two in a character before we can love it much. People that do not laugh or cry, or take more of anything than is good for them, or use anything but dictionary words, are admirable subjects for biographies. But we don’t always care most for those flat-pattern flowers that press best in the herbarium.

This immaculate woman,——why couldn’t she have a fault or two? Isn’t there any old whisper which will tarnish that wearisome aureole of saintly perfection?[23] Doesn’t she carry a lump of opium in her pocket? Isn’t her cologne-bottle replenished oftener than its legitimate use would require? It would be such a comfort!
IRIS. The 5
Not for the world would a young creature like Iris have let such words escape her, or such thoughts pass through her mind. Whether at the bottom of her soul lies any uneasy consciousness of an oppressive presence, it is hard to say, until we know more about her. Iris sits between the little gentleman and the “Model of all the Virtues,” as the black-coated personage called her. I will watch them all.

I am sure that the young girl can hide nothing from me. Her skin is so transparent that one can almost count her heart-beats by the flushes they send into her cheeks. She does not seem to be shy, either. I think she does not know enough of danger to be timid. She seems to me like one of those birds that travellers tell of, found in remote, uninhabited islands, who, having never received any wrong at the hand of man, show no alarm at and hardly any particular consciousness of his presence.

The first thing will be to see how she and our little deformed gentleman get along together. The next thing will be to keep an eye on the duenna,——the “Model” and so forth, as the white-neckcloth called her. The intention of that estimable lady is, I understand, to launch her and leave her. I suppose there is no help for it, and I don’t doubt this young lady knows how to take care of[24] herself, but I do not like to see young girls turned loose in boarding-houses. Look here now! There is that jewel of his race, whom I have called for convenience the Koh-i-noor (you understand it is quite out of the question for me to use the family names of our boarders, unless I want to get into trouble),——I say, the gentleman with the diamond is looking very often and very intently, it seems to me, down toward the farther corner of the table, where sits our amber-eyed blonde. The landlady’s daughter does not look pleased, it seems to me, at this, nor at those other attentions which the gentleman referred to has, as I have learned, pressed upon the newly-arrived young person. The landlady made a communication to me, within a few days after the arrival of Miss Iris, which I will repeat to the best of my remembrance.

He (the person I have been speaking of),——she said,——seemed to be kinder hankerin’ round after that young woman. It had hurt her daughter’s feelin’s a good deal, that the gentleman she was a-keepin’ company with should be offerin’ tickets and tryin’ to send presents to them that he’d never know’d till jest a little spell ago,——and he as good as merried, so fur as solemn promises went, to as respectable a young lady, if she did say so, as any there was round, whosomever they might be.

Tickets! presents!——said I.——What tickets, what presents, has he had the impertinence to be offering to that young lady?

Tickets to the Múseum,——said the landlady.——There is them that’s glad enough to go to the Múseum, when tickets is given ’em; but some of ’em ha’n’t had a[25] ticket sence Cenderilla was played,——and now he must be offerin’ ’em to this ridiculous young paintress, or whatever she is, that’s come to make more mischief than her board’s worth. But it a’n’t her fault,——said the landlady, relenting;——and that aunt of hers, or whatever she is, served him right enough.

Why, what did she do?

Do? Why, she took it up in the tongs and dropped it out o’ winder.

Dropped? dropped what?——I said.

Why, the soap,——said the landlady.

It appeared that the Koh-i-noor, to ingratiate himself, had sent an elegant package of perfumed soap, directed to Miss Iris, as a delicate expression of a lively sentiment of admiration, and that, after having met with the unfortunate treatment referred to, it was picked up by Master Benjamin Franklin, who appropriated it, rejoicing, and indulged in most unheard-of and inordinate ablutions in consequence, so that his hands were a frequent subject of maternal congratulation, and he smelt like a civet-cat for weeks after his great acquisition.

After watching daily for a time, I think I can see clearly into the relation which is growing up between the little gentleman and the young lady. She shows a tenderness to him that I can’t help being interested in. If he was her crippled child, instead of being more than old enough to be her father, she could not treat him more kindly. The landlady’s daughter said, the other day, she believed that girl was settin’ her cap for the Little Gentleman.

Some of them young folks is very artful,——said her[26] mother,——and there is them that would merry Lazarus, if he’d only picked up crumbs enough. I don’t think, though, this is one of that sort; she’s kinder childlike,——said the landlady,——and maybe never had any dolls to play with; for they say her folks was poor before Ma’am undertook to see to her teachin’ and board her and clothe her.

I could not help overhearing this conversation. “Board her and clothe her!”——speaking of such a young creature! O dear!——Yes,——she must be fed,——just like Bridget, maid-of-all-work at this establishment. Somebody must pay for it. Somebody has a right to watch her and see how much it takes to “keep” her, and growl at her, if she has too good an appetite. Somebody has a right to keep an eye on her and take care that she does not dress too prettily. No mother to see her own youth over again in those fresh features and rising reliefs of half-sculptured womanhood, and, seeing its loveliness, forget her lessons of neutral-tinted propriety, and open the cases that hold her own ornaments to find for her a necklace or a bracelet or a pair of ear-rings,——those golden lamps that light up the deep, shadowy dimples on the cheeks of young beauties,——swinging in a semibarbaric splendor that carries the wild fancy to Abyssinian queens and musky Odalisques! I don’t believe any woman has utterly given up the great firm of Mundus & Co., so long as she wears ear-rings.

I think Iris loves to hear the Little Gentleman talk. She smiles sometimes at his vehement statements, but never laughs at him. When he speaks to her, she keeps her eye always steadily upon him. This may be only[27] natural good-breeding, so to speak, but it is worth noticing. I have often observed that vulgar persons, and public audiences of inferior collective intelligence, have this in common: the least thing draws off their minds, when you are speaking to them. I love this young creature’s rapt attention to her diminutive neighbor while he is speaking.

He is evidently pleased with it. For a day or two after she came, he was silent and seemed nervous and excited. Now he is fond of getting the talk into his own hands, and is obviously conscious that he has at least one interested listener. Once or twice I have seen marks of special attention to personal adornment,——a ruffled shirt-bosom, one day, and a diamond pin in it,——not so very large as the Koh-i-noor’s, but more lustrous. I mentioned the death’s-head ring he wears on his right hand. I was attracted by a very handsome red stone, a ruby or carbuncle or something of the sort, to notice his left hand, the other day. It is a handsome hand, and confirms my suspicion that the cast mentioned was taken from his arm. After all, this is just what I should expect. It is not very uncommon to see the upper limbs, or one of them, running away with the whole strength, and, therefore, with the whole beauty, which we should never have noticed, if it had been divided equally between all four extremities. If it is so, of course he is proud of his one strong and beautiful arm; that is human nature. I am afraid he can hardly help betraying his favoritism, as people who have any one showy point are apt to do,——especially dentists with handsome teeth, who always smile back to their last molars.

[28]

Sitting, as he does, next to the young girl, and next but one to the calm lady who has her in charge, he cannot help seeing their relations to each other.

That is an admirable woman, Sir,——he said to me one day, as we sat alone at the table after breakfast,——an admirable woman, Sir,——and I hate her.

Of course, I begged an explanation.

An admirable woman, Sir, because she does good things, and even kind things,——takes care of this——this——young lady——we have here, talks like a sensible person, and always looks as if she was doing her duty with all her might. I hate her because her voice sounds as if it never trembled, and her eyes look as if she never knew what it was to cry. Besides, she looks at me, Sir, stares at me, as if she wanted to get an image of me for some gallery in her brain,——and we don’t love to be looked at in this way, we that have——I hate her,——I hate her,——her eyes kill me,——it is like being stabbed with icicles to be looked at so,——the sooner she goes home the better. I don’t want a woman to weigh me in a balance; there are men enough for that sort of work. The judicial character isn’t captivating in females, Sir. A woman fascinates a man quite as often by what she overlooks as by what she sees. Love prefers twilight to daylight; and a man doesn’t think much of, nor care much for, a woman outside of his household, unless he can couple the idea of love, past, present, or future, with her. I don’t believe the Devil would give half as much for the services of a sinner as he would for those of one of these folks that are always doing virtuous acts in a way to make them unpleasing.——That young girl wants a tender nature[29] to cherish her and give her a chance to put out her leaves,——sunshine, and not east winds.

He was silent,——and sat looking at his handsome left hand with the red stone ring upon it.——Is he going to fall in love with Iris?
IRIS. The 6
The young man John asked me to come up one day and try some “old Burbon,” which he said was A 1. On asking him what was the number of his room, he answered, that it was forty-’leven, sky-parlor floor, but that I shouldn’t find it, if he didn’t go ahead to show me the way. I followed him to his habitat, being very willing to see in what kind of warren he burrowed, and thinking I might pick up something about the boarders who had excited my curiosity.

The young man John fell into a train of reflections which ended in his producing a Bologna sausage, a plate of “crackers,” as we Boston folks call certain biscuits, and the bottle of whiskey described as being A 1.

Under the influence of the crackers and sausage, he grew cordial and communicative.

It was time, I thought, to sound him as to our boarders.

What do you think of our young Iris?——I began.

Fust-rate little filly;——he said.——Pootiest and nicest little chap I’ve seen since the schoolma’am left. Schoolma’am was a brown-haired one,——eyes coffee-color. This one has got wine-colored eyes,——’n’ that’s the reason they turn a fellah’s head, I suppose.

[30]

This is a splendid blonde,——I said,——the other was a brunette. Which style do you like best?

Which do I like best, boiled mutton or roast mutton?——said the young man John. Like ’em both,——it a’n’t the color of ’em makes the goodness. I’ve been kind of lonely since schoolma’am went away. Used to like to look at her. I never said anything particular to her, that I remember, but——

I don’t know whether it was the cracker and sausage, or that the young fellow’s feet were treading on the hot ashes of some longing that had not had time to cool, but his eye glistened as he stopped.

I suppose she wouldn’t have looked at a fellah like me,——he said,——but I come pretty near tryin’. If she had said, Yes, though, I shouldn’t have known what to have done with her. Can’t marry a woman nowadays till you’re so deaf you have to cock your head like a parrot to hear what she says, and so long-sighted you can’t see what she looks like nearer than arm’s-length.

Here is another chance for you,——I said.——What do you want nicer than such a young lady as Iris?

It’s no use,——he answered.——I look at them girls and feel as the fellah did when he missed catchin’ the trout.——’To’od ’a’ cost more butter to cook him ’n’ he’s worth,——says the fellah.——Takes a whole piece o’ goods to cover a girl up nowadays. I’d as lief undertake to keep a span of elephants,——and take an ostrich to board, too,——as to marry one of ’em. What’s the use? Clerks and counter-jumpers a’n’t anything. Sparragrass and green peas a’n’t for them,——not while they’re young and tender. Hossback-ridin’ a’n’t for them,——except[31] once a year,——on Fast-day. And marryin’ a’n’t for them. Sometimes a fellah feels lonely, and would like to have a nice young woman, to tell her how lonely he feels. And sometimes a fellah,——here the young man John looked very confidential, and, perhaps, as if a little ashamed of his weakness,——sometimes a fellah would like to have one o’ them small young ones to trot on his knee and push about in a little wagon,——a kind of a little Johnny, you know;——it’s odd enough, but, it seems to me, nobody can afford them little articles, except the folks that are so rich they can buy everything, and the folks that are so poor they don’t want anything. It makes nice boys of us young fellahs, no doubt! And it’s pleasant to see fine young girls sittin’, like shopkeepers behind their goods, waitin’, and waitin’, and waitin’, ’n’ no customers,——and the men lingerin’ round and lookin’ at the goods, like folks that want to be customers, but haven’t got the money!

Do you think the deformed gentleman means to make love to Iris?——I said.

What! Little Boston ask that girl to marry him! Well, now, that’s comin’ of it a little too strong. Yes, I guess she will marry him and carry him round in a basket, like a lame bantam! Look here!——he said, mysteriously;——one of the boarders swears there’s a woman comes to see him, and that he has heard her singin’ and screechin’. I should like to know what he’s about in that den of his. He lays low ’n’ keeps dark,——and, I tell you, there’s a good many of the boarders would like to get into his chamber, but he don’t seem to want ’em. Biddy could tell somethin’ about what[32] she’s seen when she’s been to put his room to rights. She’s a Paddy ’n’ a fool, but she knows enough to keep her tongue still. All I know is, I saw her crossin’ herself one day when she came out of that room. She looked pale enough, ’n’ I heard her mutterin’ somethin’ or other about the Blessed Virgin. If it hadn’t been for the double doors to that chamber of his, I’d have had a squint inside before this; but, somehow or other, it never seems to happen that they’re both open at once.

What do you think he employs himself about?——said I.

The young man John winked.

I waited patiently for the thought, of which this wink was the blossom, to come to fruit in words.

I don’t believe in witches,——said the young man John.

Nor I.

We were both silent for a few minutes.

——Did you ever see the young girl’s drawing-books,——I said, presently.

All but one,——he answered;——she keeps a lock on that, and won’t show it. Ma’am Allen (the young rogue sticks to that name, in speaking of the gentleman with the diamond), Ma’am Allen tried to peek into it one day when she left it on the sideboard. “If you please,” says she,——’n’ took it from him, ’n’ gave him a look that made him curl up like a caterpillar on a hot shovel. I only wished he hadn’t, and had jest given her a little saas, for I’ve been takin’ boxin’-lessons, ’n’[33] I’ve got a new way of counterin’ I want to try on to somebody.

——The end of all this was, that I came away from the young fellow’s room, feeling that there were two principal things that I had to live for, for the next six weeks or six months, if it should take so long. These were, to get a sight of the young girl’s drawing-book, which I suspected had her heart shut up in it, and to get a look into the Little Gentleman’s room.

I don’t doubt you think it rather absurd that I should trouble myself about these matters. You tell me, with some show of reason, that all I shall find in the young girl’s book will be some outlines of angels with immense eyes, traceries of flowers, rural sketches, and caricatures, among which I shall probably have the pleasure of seeing my own features figuring. Very likely. But I’ll tell you what I think I shall find. If this child has idealized the strange little bit of humanity over which she seems to have spread her wings like a brooding dove,——if, in one of those wild vagaries that passionate natures are so liable to, she has fairly sprung upon him with her clasping nature, as the sea-flowers fold about the first stray shell-fish that brushes their outspread tentacles, depend upon it, I shall find the marks of it in this drawing-book of hers,——if I can ever get a look at it,——fairly, of course, for I would not play tricks to satisfy my curiosity.

Then, if I can get into this Little Gentleman’s room under any fair pretext, I shall, no doubt, satisfy myself in five minutes that he is just like other people, and that there is no particular mystery about him.

IRIS. The 7
I love to look at this “Rainbow,” as her father used sometimes to call her, of ours. Handsome creature that she is in forms and colors, fit for a sea-king’s bride, it is not her beauty alone that holds my eyes upon her. Let me tell you one of my fancies, and then you will understand the strange sort of fascination she has for me.

It is in the hearts of many men and women——let me add children——that there is a Great Secret waiting for them,——a secret of which they get hints now and then, perhaps oftener in early than in later years. These hints come sometimes in dreams, sometimes in sudden startling flashes,——second wakings, as it were,——a waking out of the waking state, which last is very apt to be a half-sleep. I have many times stopped short and held my breath, and felt the blood leaving my cheeks, in one of these sudden clairvoyant flashes. Of course I cannot tell what kind of a secret this is; but I think of it as a disclosure of certain relations of our personal being to time and space, to other intelligences, to the procession of events, and to their First Great Cause. This secret seems to be broken up, as it were, into fragments, so that we find here a word and there a syllable, and then again only a letter of it; but it never is written out for most of us as a complete sentence, in this life. I do not think it could be; for I am disposed to consider our beliefs about such a possible disclosure rather as a kind of premonition of an enlargement of our faculties in some future state than as an expectation to be fulfilled for most of us in this life. Persons,[35] however, have fallen into trances,——as did the Reverend William Tennent, among many others,——and learned some things which they could not tell in our human words.

Now among the visible objects which hint to us fragments of this infinite secret for which our souls are waiting, the faces of women are those that carry the most legible hieroglyphics of the great mystery. There are women’s faces, some real, some ideal, which contain something in them that becomes a positive element in our creed, so direct and palpable a revelation is it of the infinite purity and love. I remember two faces of women with wings, such as they call angels, of Fra Angelico,——and I just now came across a print of Raphael’s Santa Apollina, with something of the same quality,——which I was sure had their prototypes in the world above ours. No wonder the Catholics pay their vows to the Queen of Heaven! The unpoetical side of Protestantism is that it has no women to be worshipped.

But mind you, it is not every beautiful face that hints the Great Secret to us, nor is it only in beautiful faces that we find traces of it. Sometimes it looks out from a sweet sad eye, the only beauty of a plain countenance; sometimes there is so much meaning in the lips of a woman, not otherwise fascinating, that we know they have a message for us, and wait almost with awe to hear their accents. But this young girl has at once the beauty of feature and the unspoken mystery of expression. Can she tell me anything? Is her life a complement of mine, with the missing element in it which I have been groping after through so many[36] friendships that I have tired of, and through——Hush! Is the door fast? Talking loud is a bad trick in these curious boarding-houses.

You must have sometimes noted this fact that I am going to remind you of and to use for a special illustration. Riding along over a rocky road, suddenly the slow monotonous grinding of the crushing gravel changes to a deep heavy rumble. There is a great hollow under your feet,——a huge unsunned cavern. Deep, deep beneath you, in the core of the living rock, it arches its awful vault, and far away it stretches its winding galleries, their roofs dripping into streams where fishes have been swimming and spawning in the dark until their scales are white as milk and their eyes have withered out, obsolete and useless.

So it is in life. We jog quietly along, meeting the same faces, grinding over the same thoughts,——the gravel of the soul’s highway,——now and then jarred against an obstacle we cannot crush, but must ride over or round as we best may, sometimes bringing short up against a disappointment, but still working along with the creaking and rattling and grating and jerking that belong to the journey of life, even in the smoothest-rolling vehicle. Suddenly we hear the deep underground reverberation that reveals the unsuspected depth of some abyss of thought or passion beneath us.

I wish the girl would go. I don’t like to look at her so much, and yet I cannot help it. Always that same expression of something that I ought to know,——something that she was made to tell and I to hear,——lying there ready to fall off from her lips, ready to leap out of[37] her eyes and make a saint of me, or a devil or a lunatic, or perhaps a prophet to tell the truth and be hated of men, or a poet whose words shall flash upon the dry stubble-field of worn-out thoughts and burn over an age of lies in an hour of passion.

It suddenly occurs to me that I may have put you on the wrong track. The Great Secret that I refer to has nothing to do with the Three Words. Set your mind at ease about that,——there are reasons I could give you which settle all that matter. I don’t wonder, however, that you confounded the Great Secret with the Three Words.

I love you is all the secret that many, nay, most women have to tell. When that is said, they are like China-crackers on the morning of the fifth of July. And just as that little patriotic implement is made with a slender train which leads to the magazine in its interior, so a sharp eye can almost always see the train leading from a young girl’s eye or lip to the “I love you” in her heart. But the Three Words are not the Great Secret I mean. No, women’s faces are only one of the tablets on which that is written in its partial, fragmentary symbols. It lies deeper than Love, though very probably Love is a part of it. Some, I think,——Wordsworth might be one of them,——spell out a portion of it from certain beautiful natural objects, landscapes, flowers, and others. I can mention several poems of his that have shadowy hints which seem to me to come near the region where I think it lies. I have known two persons who pursued it with the passion of the old alchemists,——all wrong evidently, but infatuated, and never giving[38] up the daily search for it until they got tremulous and feeble, and their dreams changed to visions of things that ran and crawled about their floor and ceilings, and so they died. The vulgar called them drunkards.

I told you that I would let you know the mystery of the effect this young girl’s face produces on me. It is akin to those influences a friend of mine has described, you may remember, as coming from certain voices. I cannot translate it into words,——only into feelings; and these I have attempted to shadow by showing that her face hinted that revelation of something we are close to knowing, which all imaginative persons are looking for either in this world or on the very threshold of the next.

This young girl, about whom I have talked so unintelligibly, is the unconscious centre of attraction to the whole solar system of our breakfast-table. The Little Gentleman leans towards her, and she again seems to be swayed as by some invisible gentle force towards him. That slight inclination of two persons with a strong affinity towards each other, throwing them a little out of plumb when they sit side by side, is a physical fact I have often noticed. Then there is a tendency in all the men’s eyes to converge on her; and I do firmly believe, that, if all their chairs were examined, they would be found a little obliquely placed, so as to favor the direction in which their occupants love to look.

That bland, quiet old gentleman, of whom I have spoken as sitting opposite to me, is no exception to the rule. She brought down some mignonette one morning, which she had grown in her chamber. She gave a sprig[39] to her little neighbor, and one to the landlady, and sent another by the hand of Bridget to this old gentleman.

——Sarvant, Ma’am! Much obleeged,——he said, and put it gallantly in his buttonhole. After breakfast he must see some of her drawings. Very fine performances,——very fine!——truly elegant productions,——truly elegant!——Had seen Miss Linley’s needlework in London, in the year (eighteen hundred and little or nothing, I think he said),——patronized by the nobility and gentry, and Her Majesty,——elegant, truly elegant productions, very fine performances; these drawings reminded him of them;——wonderful resemblance to Nature; an extraordinary art, painting; Mr. Copley made some very fine pictures that he remembered seeing when he was a boy. Used to remember some lines about a portrait written by Mr. Cowper, beginning,——
“O that those lips had language! Life has pass’d
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.”

And with this the old gentleman fell to thinking about a dead mother of his that he remembered ever so much younger than he now was, and looking, not as his mother, but as his daughter should look. The dead young mother was looking at the old man, her child, as she used to look at him so many, many years ago. He stood still as if in a waking dream, his eyes fixed on the drawings till their outlines grew indistinct and they ran into each other, and a pale, sweet face shaped itself out of the glimmering light through which he saw them.

How many drawing-books have you filled,——I said,——since you began to take lessons?——This was the first,——she[40] answered,——since she was here; and it was not full, but there were many separate sheets of large size she had covered with drawings.

I turned over the leaves of the book before us. Academic studies, principally of the human figure. Heads of sibyls, prophets, and so forth. Limbs from statues. Hands and feet from Nature. What a superb drawing of an arm! I don’t remember it among the figures from Michel Angelo, which seem to have been her patterns mainly. From Nature, I think, or after a cast from Nature.——Oh!——

——Your smaller studies are in this, I suppose,——I said, taking up the drawing-book with a lock on it.——Yes,——she said.——I should like to see her style of working on a small scale.——There was nothing in it worth showing,——she said; and presently I saw her try the lock, which proved to be fast. We are all caricatured in it, I haven’t the least doubt. I think, though, I could tell by her way of dealing with us what her fancies were about us boarders. Some of them act as if they were bewitched with her, but she does not seem to notice it much. Her thoughts seem to be on her little neighbor more than on anybody else. The young fellow John appears to stand second in her good graces. I think he has once or twice sent her what the landlady’s daughter calls bó-kays of flowers,——somebody has, at any rate.——I saw a book she had, which must have come from the divinity-student. It had a dreary title-page, which she had enlivened with a fancy portrait of the author,——a face from memory, apparently,——one of those faces that small children loathe without knowing why,[41] and which give them that inward disgust for heaven so many of the little wretches betray, when they hear that these are “good men,” and that heaven is full of such.——The gentleman with the diamond——the Koh-i-noor, so called by us——was not encouraged, I think, by the reception of his packet of perfumed soap. He pulls his purple mustache and looks appreciatingly at Iris, who never sees him as it should seem. The young Marylander, who I thought would have been in love with her before this time, sometimes looks from his corner across the long diagonal of the table, as much as to say, I wish you were up here by me, or I were down there by you,——which would, perhaps, be a more natural arrangement than the present one. But nothing comes of all this,——and nothing has come of my sagacious idea of finding out the girl’s fancies by looking into her locked drawing-book.

Not to give up all the questions I was determined to solve, I made an attempt also to work into the Little Gentleman’s chamber. For this purpose, I kept him in conversation, one morning, until he was just ready to go up stairs, and then, as if to continue the talk, followed him as he toiled back to his room. He rested on the landing and faced round toward me. There was something in his eye which said, Stop there! So we finished our conversation on the landing. The next day, I mustered assurance enough to knock at his door, having a pretext ready.——No answer.——Knock again. A door, as if of a cabinet, was shut softly and locked, and presently I heard the peculiar dead beat of his thick-soled, misshapen boots. The bolts and the lock of the inner[42] door were unfastened,——with unnecessary noise, I thought,——and he came into the passage. He pulled the inner door after him and opened the outer one at which I stood. He had on a flowered silk dressing-gown, such as “Mr. Copley” used to paint his old-fashioned merchant-princes in; and a quaint-looking key in his hand. Our conversation was short, but long enough to convince me that the Little Gentleman did not want my company in his chamber, and did not mean to have it.

I have been making a great fuss about what is no mystery at all,——a school-girl’s secrets and a whimsical man’s habits. I mean to give up such nonsense and mind my own business.——Hark! What the deuse is that odd noise in his chamber?
IRIS. The 8
——If Iris does not love this Little Gentleman, what does love look like when one sees it? She follows him with her eyes, she leans over toward him when he speaks, her face changes with the changes of his speech, so that one might think it was with her as with Christabel,——
That all her features were resigned
To this sole image in her mind.

But she never looks at him with such intensity of devotion as when he says anything about the soul and the soul’s atmosphere, religion.

Women are twice as religious as men;——all the world knows that. Whether they are any better, in the eyes[43] of Absolute Justice, might be questioned; for the additional religious element supplied by sex hardly seems to be a matter of praise or blame. But in all common aspects they are so much above us that we get most of our religion from them,——from their teachings, from their example,——above all, from their pure affections.

Now this poor little Iris had been talked to strangely in her childhood. Especially she had been told that she hated all good things,——which every sensible parent knows well enough is not true of a great many children, to say the least. I have sometimes questioned whether many libels on human nature had not been a natural consequence of the celibacy of the clergy, which was enforced for so long a period.

The child had met this and some other equally encouraging statements as to her spiritual conditions, early in life, and fought the battle of spiritual independence prematurely, as many children do. If all she did was hateful to God, what was the meaning of the approving or else the disapproving conscience, when she had done “right” or “wrong”? No “shoulder-striker” hits out straighter than a child with its logic. Why, I can remember lying in my bed in the nursery and settling questions which all that I have heard since and got out of books has never been able to raise again. If a child does not assert itself in this way in good season, it becomes just what its parents or teachers were, and is no better than a plaster image.——How old was I at the time?——I suppose about 5823 years old,——that is, counting from Archbishop Usher’s date of the Creation, and adding the life of the race, whose accumulated[44] intelligence is a part of my inheritance, to my own. A good deal older than Plato, you see, and much more experienced than my Lord Bacon and most of the world’s teachers.——Old books, as you well know, are books of the world’s youth, and new books are fruits of its age. How many of all these ancient folios round me are like so many old cupels! The gold has passed out of them long ago, but their pores are full of the dross with which it was mingled.

And so Iris——having thrown off that first lasso, which not only fetters, but chokes those whom it can hold, so that they give themselves up trembling and breathless to the great soul-subduer, who has them by the windpipe——had settled a brief creed for herself, in which love of the neighbor, whom we have seen, was the first article, and love of the Creator, whom we have not seen, grew out of this as its natural development, being necessarily second in order of time to the first unselfish emotions which we feel for the fellow-creatures who surround us in our early years.

The child must have some place of worship. What would a young girl be who never mingled her voice with the songs and prayers that rose all around her with every returning day of rest? And Iris was free to choose. Sometimes one and sometimes another would offer to carry her to this or that place of worship; and when the doors were hospitably opened, she would often go meekly in by herself. It was a curious fact, that two churches as remote from each other in doctrine as could well be divided her affections.

The Church of Saint Polycarp had very much the look[45] of a Roman Catholic chapel. I do not wish to run the risk of giving names to the ecclesiastical furniture which gave it such a Romish aspect; but there were pictures, and inscriptions in antiquated characters, and there were reading-stands, and flowers on the altar, and other elegant arrangements. Then there were boys to sing alternately in choirs responsive to each other, and there was much bowing, with very loud responding, and a long service and a short sermon, and a bag, such as Judas used to hold in the old pictures, was carried round to receive contributions. Everything was done not only “decently and in order,” but, perhaps one might say, with a certain air of magnifying their office on the part of the dignified clergymen, often two or three in number. The music and the free welcome were grateful to Iris, and she forgot her prejudices at the door of the chapel. For this was a church with open doors, with seats for all classes and all colors alike,——a church of zealous worshippers after their faith, of charitable and serviceable men and women, one that took care of its children and never forgot its poor, and whose people were much more occupied in looking out for their own souls than in attacking the faith of their neighbors. In its mode of worship there was a union of two qualities,——the taste and refinement, which the educated require just as much in their churches as elsewhere, and the air of stateliness, almost of pomp, which impresses the common worshipper, and is often not without its effect upon those who think they hold outward forms as of little value. Under the half-Romish aspect of the Church of Saint Polycarp, the young[46] girl found a devout and loving and singularly cheerful religious spirit. The artistic sense, which betrayed itself in the dramatic proprieties of its ritual, harmonized with her taste. The mingled murmur of the loud responses, in those rhythmic phrases, so simple, yet so fervent, almost as if every tenth heart-beat, instead of its dull tic-tac, articulated itself as “Good Lord, deliver us!”——the sweet alternation of the two choirs, as their holy song floated from side to side,——the keen young voices rising like a flight of singing-birds that passes from one grove to another, carrying its music with it back and forward,——why should she not love these gracious outward signs of those inner harmonies which none could deny made beautiful the lives of many of her fellow-worshippers in the humble, yet not inelegant Chapel of Saint Polycarp?

The young Marylander, who was born and bred to that mode of worship, had introduced her to the chapel, for which he did the honors for such of our boarders as were not otherwise provided for. I saw them looking over the same prayer-book one Sunday, and I could not help thinking that two such young and handsome persons could hardly worship together in safety for a great while. But they seemed to mind nothing but their prayer-book. By and by the silken bag was handed round.——I don’t believe she will;——so awkward, you know;——besides, she only came by invitation. There she is, with her hand in her pocket, though,——and sure enough, her little bit of silver tinkled as it struck the coin beneath. God bless her! she hasn’t much to give; but her eye glistens when she gives it, and that is all Heaven asks.——That was the[47] first time I noticed these young people together, and I am sure they behaved with the most charming propriety,——in fact, there was one of our silent lady-boarders with them, whose eyes would have kept Cupid and Psyche to their good behavior. A day or two after this I noticed that the young gentleman had left his seat, which you may remember was at the corner diagonal to that of Iris, so that they have been as far removed from each other as they could be at the table. His new seat is three or four places farther down the table. Of course I made a romance out of this, at once. So stupid not to see it! How could it be otherwise?——Did you speak, Madam? I beg your pardon. (To my lady-reader.)

I never saw anything like the tenderness with which this young girl treats her little deformed neighbor. If he were in the way of going to church, I know she would follow him. But his worship, if any, is not with the throng of men and women and staring children.
IRIS. The 9
These young girls that live in boarding-houses can do pretty much as they will. The female gendarmes are off guard occasionally. The sitting-room has its solitary moments, when any two boarders who wish to meet may come together accidentally (accidentally, I said, Madam, and I had not the slightest intention of italicizing the word) and discuss the social or political questions of the day, or any other subject that may prove interesting. Many charming conversations take place at the foot of the stairs, or while one of the parties is holding the latch[48] of a door,——in the shadow of porticos, and especially on those outside balconies which some of our Southern neighbors call “stoops,” the most charming places in the world when the moon is just right and the roses and honeysuckles are in full blow,——as we used to think in eighteen hundred and never mention it.

On such a balcony or “stoop,” one evening, I walked with Iris. We were on pretty good terms now, and I had coaxed her arm under mine,——my left arm, of course. That leaves one’s right arm free to defend the lovely creature, if the rival——odious wretch!——attempt to ravish her from your side. Likewise if one’s heart should happen to beat a little, its mute language will not be without its meaning, as you will perceive when the arm you hold begins to tremble,——a circumstance like to occur, if you happen to be a good-looking young fellow, and you two have the “stoop” to yourselves.

We had it to ourselves that evening. The Koh-i-noor, as we called him, was in a corner with our landlady’s daughter. The young fellow John was smoking out in the yard. The gendarme was afraid of the evening air, and kept inside. The young Marylander came to the door, looked out and saw us walking together, gave his hat a pull over his forehead and stalked off. I felt a slight spasm, as it were, in the arm I held, and saw the girl’s head turn over her shoulder for a second. What a kind creature this is! She has no special interest in this youth, but she does not like to see a young fellow going off because he feels as if he were not wanted.

She had her locked drawing-book under her arm.——Let me take it,——I said.

[49]

She gave it to me to carry.

This is full of caricatures of all of us, I am sure,——said I.

She laughed, and said,——No,——not all of you.

I was there, of course?

Why, no,——she had never taken so much pains with me.

Then she would let me see the inside of it?

She would think of it.

Just as we parted, she took a little key from her pocket and handed it to me.——This unlocks my naughty book,——she said,——you shall see it. I am not afraid of you.

I don’t know whether the last words exactly pleased me. At any rate, I took the book and hurried with it to my room. I opened it, and saw, in a few glances, that I held the heart of Iris in my hand.

IRIS, HER BOOK.
I pray thee by the soul of her that bore thee,
By thine own sister’s spirit I implore thee,
Deal gently with the leaves that lie before thee!
For Iris had no mother to infold her,
Nor ever leaned upon a sister’s shoulder,
Telling the twilight thoughts that Nature told her.
She had not learned the mystery of awaking
Those chorded keys that soothe a sorrow’s aching,
Giving the dumb heart voice, that else were breaking.
Yet lived, wrought, suffered. Lo, the pictured token!
Why should her fleeting day-dreams fade unspoken,
Like daffodils that die with sheaths unbroken?
[50]
She knew not love, yet lived in maiden fancies,——
Walked simply clad, a queen of high romances,
And talked strange tongues with angels in her trances.
Twin-souled she seemed, a twofold nature wearing,——
Sometimes a flashing falcon in her daring,
Then a poor mateless dove that droops despairing.
Questioning all things: Why her Lord had sent her?
What were these torturing gifts, and wherefore lent her?
Scornful as spirit fallen, its own tormentor.
And then all tears and anguish: Queen of Heaven,
Sweet Saints, and Thou by mortal sorrows riven,
Save me! O, save me! Shall I die forgiven?
And then——Ah, God! But nay, it little matters:
Look at the wasted seeds that autumn scatters,
The myriad germs that Nature shapes and shatters!
If she had——Well! She longed, and knew not wherefore
Had the world nothing she might live to care for?
No second self to say her evening prayer for?
She knew the marble shapes that set men dreaming,
Yet with her shoulders bare and tresses streaming
Showed not unlovely to her simple seeming.
Vain? Let it be so! Nature was her teacher.
What if a lonely and unsistered creature
Loved her own harmless gift of pleasing feature,
Saying, unsaddened,——This shall soon be faded,
And double-hued the shining tresses braided,
And all the sunlight of the morning shaded?
[51]
——This her poor book is full of saddest follies,
Of tearful smiles and laughing melancholies,
With summer roses twined and wintry hollies.
In the strange crossing of uncertain chances,
Somewhere, beneath some maiden’s tear-dimmed glances
May fall her little book of dreams and fancies.
Sweet sister! Iris, who shall never name thee,
Trembling for fear her open heart may shame thee,
Speaks from this vision-haunted page to claim thee.
Spare her, I pray thee! If the maid is sleeping,
Peace with her! she has had her hour of weeping.
No more! She leaves her memory in thy keeping.

These verses were written in the first leaves of the locked volume. As I turned the pages, I hesitated for a moment. Is it quite fair to take advantage of a generous, trusting impulse to read the unsunned depths of a young girl’s nature, which I can look through, as the balloon-voyagers tell us they see from their hanging-baskets through the translucent waters which the keenest eye of such as sail over them in ships might strive to pierce in vain? Why has the child trusted me with such artless confessions,——self-revelations, which might be whispered by trembling lips, under the veil of twilight, in sacred confessionals, but which I cannot look at in the light of day without a feeling of wronging a sacred confidence?

To all this the answer seemed plain enough after a little thought. She did not know how fearfully she had[52] disclosed herself; she was too profoundly innocent. Her soul was no more ashamed than the fair shapes that walked in Eden without a thought of over-liberal loveliness. Having nobody to tell her story to,——having, as she said in her verses, no musical instrument to laugh and cry with her,——nothing, in short, but the language of pen and pencil,——all the veinings of her nature were impressed on these pages, as those of a fresh leaf are transferred to the blank sheets which enclose it. It was the same thing which I remember seeing beautifully shown in a child of some four or five years we had one day at our boarding-house. This child was a deaf-mute. But its soul had the inner sense that answers to hearing, and the shaping capacity which through natural organs realizes itself in words. Only it had to talk with its face alone; and such speaking eyes, such rapid alternations of feeling and shifting expressions of thought as flitted over its face, I have never seen in any other human countenance.

I found the soul of Iris in the book that lay open before me. Sometimes it was a poem that held it, sometimes a drawing,——angel, arabesque, caricature, or a mere hieroglyphic symbol of which I could make nothing. A rag of cloud on one page, as I remember, with a streak of red zigzagging out of it across the paper as naturally as a crack runs through a china bowl. On the next page a dead bird,——some little favorite, I suppose; for it was worked out with a special love, and I saw on the leaf that sign with which once or twice in my life I have had a letter sealed,——a round spot where the paper is slightly corrugated, and, if there is writing[53] there, the letters are somewhat faint and blurred. Most of the pages were surrounded with emblematic traceries. It was strange to me at first to see how often she introduced those homelier wild-flowers which we call weeds,——for it seemed there was none of them too humble for her to love, and none too little cared for by Nature to be without its beauty for her artist eye and pencil. By the side of the garden-flowers,——of Spring’s curled darlings, the hyacinths, of rosebuds, dear to sketching maidens, of flower-de-luces and morning-glories,——nay, oftener than these, and more tenderly caressed by the colored brush that rendered them,——were those common growths which fling themselves to be crushed under our feet and our wheels, making themselves so cheap in this perpetual martyrdom that we forget each of them is a ray of the Divine beauty.

Yellow japanned buttercups and star-disked dandelions,——just as we see them lying in the grass, like sparks that have leaped from the kindling sun of summer; the profuse daisy-like flower which whitens the fields, to the great disgust of liberal shepherds, yet seems fair to loving eyes, with its button-like mound of gold set round with milk-white rays; the tall-stemmed succory, setting its pale blue flowers aflame, one after another, sparingly, as the lights are kindled in the candelabra of decaying palaces where the heirs of dethroned monarchs are dying out; the red and white clovers; the broad, flat leaves of the plantain,——“the white man’s foot,” as the Indians called it,——the wiry, jointed stems of that iron creeping plant which we call “knot-grass,” and which loves its life so dearly that it is next to[54] impossible to murder it with a hoe, as it clings to the cracks of the pavement;——all these plants, and many more, she wove into her fanciful garlands and borders.——On one of the pages were some musical notes. I touched them from curiosity on a piano belonging to one of our boarders. Strange! There are passages that I have heard before, plaintive, full of some hidden meaning, as if they were gasping for words to interpret them. She must have heard the strains that have so excited my curiosity, coming from my neighbor’s chamber. The illuminated border she had traced round the page that held these notes took the place of the words they seemed to be aching for. Above, a long monotonous sweep of waves, leaden-hued, anxious and jaded and sullen, if you can imagine such an expression in water. On one side an Alpine needle, as it were, of black basalt, girdled with snow. On the other a threaded waterfall. The red morning-tint that shone in the drops had a strange look,——one would say the cliff was bleeding;——perhaps she did not mean it. Below, a stretch of sand, and a solitary bird of prey, with his wings spread over some unseen object.——And on the very next page a procession wound along, after the fashion of that on the title-page of Fuller’s “Holy War,” in which I recognized without difficulty every boarder at our table in all the glory of the most resplendent caricature,——three only excepted,——the Little Gentleman, myself, and one other.

I confess I did expect to see something that would remind me of the girl’s little deformed neighbor, if not portraits of him.——There is a left arm again, though;——no,——that is from the “Fighting Gladiator,”——the[55] “Jeune Héros combattant” of the Louvre;——there is the broad ring of the shield. From a cast, doubtless. [The separate casts of the “Gladiator’s” arm look immense; but in its place the limb looks light, almost slender,——such is the perfection of that miraculous marble. I never felt as if I touched the life of the old Greeks until I looked on that statue.]——Here is something very odd, to be sure. An Eden of all the humped and crooked creatures! What could have been in her head when she worked out such a fantasy? She has contrived to give them all beauty or dignity or melancholy grace. A Bactrian camel lying under a palm. A dromedary flashing up the sands,——spray of the dry ocean sailed by the “ship of the desert.” A herd of buffaloes, uncouth, shaggy-maned, heavy in the forehand, light in the hind-quarter. [The buffalo is the lion of the ruminants.] And there is a Norman horse, with his huge, rough collar, echoing, as it were, the natural form of the other beast. And here are twisted serpents; and stately swans, with answering curves in their bowed necks, as if they had snake’s blood under their white feathers; and grave, high-shouldered herons, standing on one foot like cripples, and looking at life round them with the cold stare of monumental effigies.——A very odd page indeed! Not a creature in it without a curve or a twist, and not one of them a mean figure to look at. You can make your own comment; I am fanciful, you know. I believe she is trying to idealize what we vulgarly call deformity, which she strives to look at in the light of one of Nature’s eccentric curves, belonging to her system of beauty, as the hyperbola and parabola belong[56] to the conic sections, though we cannot see them as symmetrical and entire figures, like the circle and ellipse. At any rate, I cannot help referring this paradise of twisted spines to some idea floating in her head connected with her friend whom Nature has warped in the moulding.——That is nothing to another transcendental fancy of mine. I believe her soul thinks itself in his little crooked body at times,——if it does not really get freed or half freed from her own. Did you ever see a case of catalepsy? You know what I mean,——transient loss of sense, will, and motion; body and limbs taking any position in which they are put, as if they belonged to a lay-figure. She had been talking with him and listening to him one day when the boarders moved from the table nearly all at once. But she sat as before, her cheek resting on her hand, her amber eyes wide open and still. I went to her,——she was breathing as usual, and her heart was beating naturally enough,——but she did not answer. I bent her arm; it was as plastic as softened wax, and kept the place I gave it.——This will never do, though,——and I sprinkled a few drops of water on her forehead. She started and looked round.——I have been in a dream,——she said;——I feel as if all my strength were in this arm;——give me your hand!——She took my right hand in her left, which looked soft and white enough, but——Good Heaven! I believe she will crack my bones! All the nervous power in her body must have flashed through those muscles; as when a crazy lady snaps her iron window-bars,——she who could hardly glove herself when in her common health. Iris turned pale, and the tears came to her eyes;——she saw[57] she had given pain. Then she trembled, and might have fallen but for me;——the poor little soul had been in one of those trances that belong to the spiritual pathology of higher natures, mostly those of women.

To come back to this wondrous book of Iris. Two pages faced each other which I took for symbolical expressions of two states of mind. On the left hand, a bright blue sky washed over the page, specked with a single bird. No trace of earth, but still the winged creature seemed to be soaring upward and upward. Facing it, one of those black dungeons such as Piranesi alone of all men has pictured. I am sure she must have seen those awful prisons of his, out of which the Opium-Eater got his nightmare vision, described by another as “cemeteries of departed greatness, where monstrous and forbidden things are crawling and twining their slimy convolutions among mouldering bones, broken sculpture, and mutilated inscriptions.” Such a black dungeon faced the page that held the blue sky and the single bird; at the bottom of it something was coiled,——what, and whether meant for dead or alive, my eyes could not make out.

I told you the young girl’s soul was in this book. As I turned over the last leaves I could not help starting. There were all sorts of faces among the arabesques which laughed and scowled in the borders that ran round the pages. They had mostly the outline of childish or womanly or manly beauty, without very distinct individuality. But at last it seemed to me that some of them were taking on a look not wholly unfamiliar to me; there were features that did not seem new.——Can it be so? Was there ever such innocence in a creature so full of life?[58] She tells her heart’s secrets as a three-years-old child betrays itself without need of being questioned! This was no common miss, such as are turned out in scores from the young-lady-factories, with parchments warranting them accomplished and virtuous,——in case anybody should question the fact. I began to understand her;——and what is so charming as to read the secret of a real femme incomprise?——for such there are, though they are not the ones who think themselves uncomprehended women.

I found these stanzas in the book, among many others. I give them as characterizing the tone of her sadder moments:

UNDER THE VIOLETS.
Her hands are cold; her face is white;
No more her pulses come and go;
Her eyes are shut to life and light;——
Fold the white vesture, snow on snow,
And lay her where the violets blow.
But not beneath a graven stone,
To plead for tears with alien eyes;
A slender cross of wood alone
Shall say, that here a maiden lies
In peace beneath the peaceful skies.
And gray old trees of hugest limb
Shall wheel their circling shadows round
To make the scorching sunlight dim
That drinks the greenness from the ground,
And drop their dead leaves on her mound.
[59]
When o’er their boughs the squirrels run,
And through their leaves the robins call,
And, ripening in the autumn sun,
The acorns and the chestnuts fall,
Doubt not that she will heed them all.
For her the morning choir shall sing
Its matins from the branches high,
And every minstrel-voice of spring,
That trills beneath the April sky,
Shall greet her with its earliest cry.
When, turning round their dial-track,
Eastward the lengthening shadows pass,
Her little mourners, clad in black,
The crickets, sliding through the grass,
Shall pipe for her an evening mass.
At last the rootlets of the trees
Shall find the prison where she lies,
And bear the buried dust they seize
In leaves and blossoms to the skies.
So may the soul that warmed it rise!
If any, born of kindlier blood,
Should ask, What maiden lies below?
Say only this: A tender bud,
That tried to blossom in the snow,
Lies withered where the violets blow.

——I locked the book and sighed as I laid it down. The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius. Talent is a docile creature. It bows its head[60] meekly while the world slips the collar over it. It backs into the shafts like a lamb. It draws its load cheerfully, and is patient of the bit and of the whip. But genius is always impatient of its harness; its wild blood makes it hard to train.
IRIS. The 10
Iris has told me that the Scottish gift of second-sight runs in her family, and that she is afraid she has it. Those who are so endowed look upon a well man and see a shroud wrapt about him. According to the degree to which it covers him, his death will be near or more remote. It is an awful faculty; but science gives one too much like it. Luckily for our friends, most of us who have the scientific second-sight school ourselves not to betray our knowledge by word or look.

Day by day, as the Little Gentleman comes to the table, it seems to me that the shadow of some approaching change falls darker and darker over his countenance. Nature is struggling with something, and I am afraid she is under in the wrestling-match. You do not care much, perhaps, for my particular conjectures as to the nature of his difficulty. I should say, however, from the sudden flushes to which he is subject, and certain other marks which, as an expert, I know how to interpret, that his heart was in trouble; but then he presses his hand to the right side, as if there were the centre of his uneasiness.

When I say difficulty about the heart, I do not mean any of those sentimental maladies of that organ which figure more largely in romances than on the returns which furnish our Bills of Mortality. I mean some[61] actual change in the organ itself, which may carry him off by slow and painful degrees, or strike him down with one huge pang and only time for a single shriek,——as when the shot broke through the brave Captain Nolan’s breast, at the head of the Light Brigade at Balaklava, and with a loud cry he dropped dead from his saddle.

I thought it only fair to say something of what I apprehended to some who were entitled to be warned. The landlady’s face fell when I mentioned my fears.

Poor man!——she said.——And will leave the best room empty! Hasn’t he got any sisters or nieces or anybody to see to his things, if he should be took away? Such a sight of cases, full of everything! Never thought of his failin’ so suddin. A complication of diseases, she expected. Liver-complaint one of ’em?

I must tell Iris that I think her poor friend is in a precarious state. She seems nearer to him than anybody.

I did tell her. Whatever emotion it produced, she kept a still face, except, perhaps, a little trembling of the lip.——Could I be certain that there was any mortal complaint?——Why, no, I could not be certain; but it looked alarming to me.——He shall have some of my life,——she said.

I suppose this to have been a fancy of hers, of a kind of magnetic power she could give out;——at any rate, I cannot help thinking she wills her strength away from herself, for she has lost vigor and color from that day. I have sometimes thought he gained the force she lost; but this may have been a whim, very probably.

One day she came suddenly to me, looking deadly pale. Her lips moved, as if she were speaking; but I could not[62] at first hear a word. Her hair looked strangely, as if lifting itself, and her eyes were full of wild light. She sunk upon a chair, and I thought was falling into one of her trances. Something had frozen her blood with fear; I thought, from what she said, half audibly, that she believed she had seen a shrouded figure.

That night, at about eleven o’clock, I was sent for to see the Little Gentleman, who was taken suddenly ill. Bridget, the servant, went before me with a light. The doors were both unfastened, and I found myself ushered, without hindrance, into the dim light of the mysterious apartment I had so longed to enter....

The house was deadly still, and the night-wind, blowing through an open window, struck me as from a field of ice, at the moment I passed back again into the creaking corridor. As I turned into the common passage, a white figure, holding a lamp, stood full before me. I thought at first it was one of those images made to stand in niches and hold a light in their hands. But the illusion was momentary, and my eyes speedily recovered from the shock of the bright flame and snowy drapery to see that the figure was a breathing one. It was Iris, in one of her statue-trances. She had come down, whether sleeping or waking, I knew not at first, led by an instinct that told her she was wanted,——or, possibly, having overheard and interpreted the sound of our movements,——or, it may be, having learned from the servant that there was trouble which might ask for a woman’s hand. I sometimes think women have a sixth sense, which tells them that others, whom they cannot see or hear, are in suffering. How surely we find them at the bedside of the dying! How[63] strongly does Nature plead for them, that we should draw our first breath in their arms, as we sigh away our last upon their faithful breasts!

With white, bare feet, her hair loosely knotted, dressed as the starlight knew her, and the morning when she rose from slumber, save that she had twisted a scarf round her long dress, she stood still as a stone before me, holding in one hand a lighted coil of wax-taper, and in the other a silver goblet. I held my own lamp close to her, as if she had been a figure of marble, and she did not stir. There was no breach of propriety then, to scare the Poor Relation with and breed scandal out of. She had been “warned in a dream,” doubtless suggested by her waking knowledge and the sounds which had reached her exalted sense. There was nothing more natural than that she should have risen and girdled her waist, and lighted her taper, and found the silver goblet with “Ex dono pupillorum” on it, from which she had taken her milk and possets through all her childish years, and so gone blindly out to find her place at the bedside,——a Sister of Charity without the cap and rosary; nay, unknowing whither her feet were leading her, and with wide, blank eyes seeing nothing but the vision that beckoned her along.——Well, I must wake her from her slumber or trance.——I called her name, but she did not heed my voice.

The Devil put it into my head that I would kiss one handsome young girl before I died, and now was my chance. She never would know it, and I should carry the remembrance of it with me into the grave, and a rose perhaps grow out of my dust, as a brier did out of Lord[64] Lovel’s, in memory of that immortal moment! Would it wake her from her trance? and would she see me in the flush of my stolen triumph, and hate and despise me ever after? Or should I carry off my trophy undetected, and always from that time say to myself, when I looked upon her in the glory of youth and the splendor of beauty, “My lips have touched those roses and made their sweetness mine forever”? You think my cheek was flushed, perhaps, and my eyes were glittering with this midnight flash of opportunity. On the contrary, I believe I was pale, very pale, and I know that I trembled. Ah, it is the pale passions that are the fiercest,——it is the violence of the chill that gives the measure of the fever! The fighting-boy of our school always turned white when he went out to a pitched battle with the bully of some neighboring village; but we knew what his bloodless cheeks meant,——the blood was all in his stout heart,——he was a slight boy, and there was not enough to redden his face and fill his heart both at once.

Perhaps it is making a good deal of a slight matter, to tell the internal conflicts in the heart of a quiet person something more than juvenile and something less than senile, as to whether he should be guilty of an impropriety, and if he were, whether he would get caught in his indiscretion. And yet the memory of the kiss that Margaret of Scotland gave to Alain Chartier has lasted four hundred years, and put it into the head of many an ill-favored poet, whether Victoria or Eugénie would do as much by him, if she happened to pass him when he was asleep. And have we ever forgotten that the fresh cheek of the young John Milton tingled under the lips of[65] some high-born Italian beauty, who, I believe, did not think to leave her card by the side of the slumbering youth, but has bequeathed the memory of her pretty deed to all coming time? The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a deal longer.

There is one disadvantage which the man of philosophical habits of mind suffers, as compared with the man of action. While he is taking an enlarged and rational view of the matter before him, he lets his chance slip through his fingers. Iris woke up, of her own accord, before I had made up my mind what I was going to do about it.

When I remember how charmingly she looked, I don’t blame myself at all for being tempted; but if I had been fool enough to yield to the impulse, I should certainly have been ashamed to tell of it. She did not know what to make of it, finding herself there alone, in such guise, and me staring at her. She looked down at her white robe and bare feet, and colored,——then at the goblet she held in her hand,——then at the taper; and at last her thoughts seemed to clear up.

I know it all,——she said.——He is going to die, and I must go and sit by him. Nobody will care for him as I shall, and I have nobody else to care for.

I assured her that nothing was needed for him that night but rest, and persuaded her that the excitement of her presence could only do harm. Let him sleep, and he would very probably awake better in the morning. There was nothing to be said, for I spoke with authority; and the young girl glided away with noiseless step and sought her own chamber.

IRIS. The 11
——On my second visit, I found Iris sitting by the Little Gentleman’s pillow. To my disappointment, the room was darkened. He did not like the light, and would have the shutters kept nearly closed. It was good enough for me;——what business had I to be indulging my curiosity, when I had nothing to do but to exercise such skill as I possessed for the benefit of my patient? There was not much to be said or done in such a case; but I spoke as encouragingly as I could, as I think we are always bound to do. He did not seem to pay any very anxious attention, but the poor girl listened as if her own life and more than her own life were depending on the words I uttered. She followed me out of the room, when I had got through my visit.

How long?——she said.

Uncertain. Any time; to-day,——next week,——next month,——I answered.——One of those cases where the issue is not doubtful, but may be sudden or slow.

The women of the house were kind, as women always are in trouble. But Iris pretended that nobody could spare the time as well as she, and kept her place, hour after hour, until the landlady insisted that she’d be killin’ herself, if she begun at that rate, ’n’ haf to give up, if she didn’t want to be clean beat out in less ’n a week.

At the table we were graver than common. The high chair was set back against the wall, and a gap left between that of the young girl and her nearest neighbor’s on the right. But the next morning, to our great surprise,[67] that good-looking young Marylander had very quietly moved his own chair to the vacant place. I thought he was creeping down that way, but I was not prepared for a leap spanning such a tremendous parenthesis of boarders as this change of position included. There was no denying that the youth and maiden were a handsome pair as they sat side by side. But whatever the young girl may have thought of her new neighbor, she never seemed for a moment to forget the poor little friend who had been taken from her side. There are women, and even girls, with whom it is of no use to talk. One might as well reason with a bee as to the form of his cell, or with an oriole as to the construction of his swinging nest, as try to stir these creatures from their own way of doing their own work. It was not a question with Iris, whether she was entitled by any special relation or by the fitness of things to play the part of a nurse. She was a wilful creature that must have her way in this matter. And it so proved that it called for much patience and long endurance to carry through the duties, say rather the kind offices, the painful pleasures, that she had chosen as her share in the household where accident had thrown her. She had that genius of ministration which is the special province of certain women, marked even among their helpful sisters by a soft, low voice, a quiet footfall, a light hand, a cheering smile, and a ready self-surrender to the objects of their care, which such trifles as their own food, sleep, or habits of any kind never presume to interfere with.

Day after day, and too often through the long watches of the night, she kept her place by the pillow.——That[68] girl will kill herself over me, Sir,——said the poor Little Gentleman to me, one day,——she will kill herself, Sir, if you don’t call in all the resources of your art to get me off as soon as may be. I shall wear her out, Sir, with sitting in this close chamber and watching when she ought to be sleeping, if you leave me to the care of Nature without dosing me.

This was rather strange pleasantry, under the circumstances. But there are certain persons whose existence is so out of parallel with the larger laws in the midst of which it is moving, that life becomes to them as death and death as life.
IRIS. The 12
The apron-strings of an American mother are made of india-rubber. Her boy belongs where he is wanted; and that young Marylander of ours spoke for all our young men, when he said that his home was wherever the stars and stripes blew over his head.

And that leads me to say a few words of this young gentleman, who made that audacious movement,——jumping over the seats of I don’t know how many boarders to put himself in the place which the Little Gentleman’s absence had left vacant at the side of Iris. When a young man is found habitually at the side of any one given young lady,——when he lingers where she stays, and hastens when she leaves,——when his eyes follow her as she moves, and rest upon her when she is still,——when he begins to grow a little timid, he who was so bold, and a little pensive, he who was so gay, whenever accident finds them alone,——when he thinks very often[69] of the given young lady, and names her very seldom,——

What do you say about it, my charming young expert in that sweet science in which, perhaps, a long experience is not the first of qualifications?

——But we don’t know anything about this young man, except that he is good-looking, and somewhat high-spirited, and strong-limbed, and has a generous style of nature,——all very promising, but by no means proving that he is a proper lover for Iris, whose heart we turned inside out when we opened that sealed book of hers.

Ah, my dear young friend! When your mamma——then, if you will believe it, a very slight young lady, with very pretty hair and figure——came and told her mamma that your papa had——had——asked——No, no, no! she couldn’t say it; but her mother——O, the depth of maternal sagacity!——guessed it all without another word!——When your mother, I say, came and told her mother she was engaged, and your grandmother told your grandfather, how much did they know of the intimate nature of the young gentleman to whom she had pledged her existence? I will not be so hard as to ask how much your respected mamma knew at that time of the intimate nature of your respected papa, though, if we should compare a young girl’s man-as-she-thinks-him with a forty-summered matron’s man-as-she-finds-him, I have my doubts as to whether the second would be a fac-simile of the first in most cases.

I have been a good while coming at a secret, for which I wished to prepare you before telling it. I think there[70] is a kindly feeling growing up between Iris and our young Marylander. Not that I suppose there is any distinct understanding between them, but that the affinity which has drawn him from the remote corner where he sat to the side of the young girl is quietly bringing their two natures together. Just now she is all given up to another; but when he no longer calls upon her daily thoughts and cares, I warn you not to be surprised, if this bud of friendship open like the evening primrose, with a sound as of a sudden stolen kiss, and lo! the flower of full-blown love lies unfolded before you.
IRIS. The 13
And now the days had come for our little friend, whose whims and weaknesses had interested us, perhaps, as much as his better traits, to make ready for that long journey which is easier to the cripple than to the strong man, and on which none enters so willingly as he who has borne the life-long load of infirmity during his earthly pilgrimage.

The divinity-student was exercised in his mind about the Little Gentleman, and, in the kindness of his heart,——for he was a good young man,——and in the strength of his convictions,——for he took it for granted that he and his crowd were right, and other folks and their crowd were wrong,——he determined to bring the Little Gentleman round to his faith before he died, if he could. So he sent word to the sick man, that he should be pleased to visit him and have some conversation with him; and received for answer that he would be welcome.

[71]

The divinity-student made him a visit, therefore, and had a somewhat remarkable interview with him, which I shall briefly relate, without attempting to justify the positions taken by the Little Gentleman. He found him weak, but calm. Iris sat silent by his pillow.

After the usual preliminaries, the divinity-student said, in a kind way, that he was sorry to find him in failing health, that he felt concerned for his soul, and was anxious to assist him in making preparations for the great change awaiting him.

I thank you, Sir,——said the Little Gentleman;——permit me to ask you, what makes you think I am not ready for it, Sir, and that you can do anything to help me, Sir?

I address you only as a fellow-man,——said the divinity-student,——and therefore a fellow-sinner.

I am not a man, Sir!——said the Little Gentleman.——I was born into this world the wreck of a man, and I shall not be judged with a race to which I do not belong. Look at this!——he said, and held up his withered arm.——See there!——and he pointed to his misshapen extremities.——Lay your hand here!——and he laid his own on the region of his misplaced heart.——I have known nothing of the life of your race. When I first came to my consciousness, I found myself an object of pity, or a sight to show. The first strange child I ever remember hid its face and would not come near me. I was a broken-hearted as well as broken-bodied boy. I grew into the emotions of ripening youth, and all that I could have loved shrank from my presence. I became a man in years, and had nothing[72] in common with manhood but its longings. My life is the dying pang of a worn-out race, and I shall go down alone into the dust, out of this world of men and women, without ever knowing the fellowship of the one or the love of the other. I will not die with a lie rattling in my throat. If another state of being has anything worse in store for me, I have had a long apprenticeship to give me strength that I may bear it. I don’t believe it, Sir! I have too much faith for that. God has not left me wholly without comfort, even here. I love this old place where I was born;——the heart of the world beats under the three hills of Boston, Sir! I love this great land, with so many tall men in it, and so many good, noble women.——His eyes turned to the silent figure by his pillow.——I have learned to accept meekly what has been allotted to me, but I cannot honestly say that I think my sin has been greater than my suffering. I bear the ignorance and the evil-doing of whole generations in my single person. I never drew a breath of air nor took a step that was not a punishment for another’s fault. I may have had many wrong thoughts, but I cannot have done many wrong deeds,——for my cage has been a narrow one, and I have paced it alone. I have looked through the bars and seen the great world of men busy and happy, but I had no part in their doings. I have known what it was to dream of the great passions; but since my mother kissed me before she died, no woman’s lips have pressed my cheek,——nor ever will.

——The young girl’s eyes glittered with a sudden film, and almost without a thought, but with a warm[73] human instinct that rushed up into her face with her heart’s blood, she bent over and kissed him. It was the sacrament that washed out the memory of long years of bitterness, and I should hold it an unworthy thought to defend her.

The Little Gentleman repaid her with the only tear any of us ever saw him shed.

The divinity-student rose from his place, and, turning away from the sick man, walked to the other side of the room, where he bowed his head and was still. All the questions he had meant to ask had faded from his memory. The tests he had prepared by which to judge of his fellow-creature’s fitness for heaven seemed to have lost their virtue. He could trust the crippled child of sorrow to the Infinite Parent. The kiss of the fair-haired girl had been like a sign from heaven, that angels watched over him whom he was presuming but a moment before to summon before the tribunal of his private judgment.

Shall I pray with you?——he said, after a pause.——A little before he would have said, Shall I pray for you?——The Christian religion, as taught by its Founder, is full of sentiment. So we must not blame the divinity-student, if he was overcome by those yearnings of human sympathy which predominate so much more in the sermons of the Master than in the writings of his successors, and which have made the parable of the Prodigal Son the consolation of mankind, as it has been the stumbling-block of all exclusive doctrines.

Pray!——said the Little Gentleman.

The divinity-student prayed, in low, tender tones, that[74] God would look on his servant lying helpless at the feet of his mercy; that he would remember his long years of bondage in the flesh; that he would deal gently with the bruised reed. Thou hast visited the sins of the fathers upon this their child. O, turn away from him the penalties of his own transgressions! Thou hast laid upon him, from infancy, the cross which thy stronger children are called upon to take up; and now that he is fainting under it, be Thou his stay, and do Thou succor him that is tempted! Let his manifold infirmities come between him and Thy judgment; in wrath remember mercy! If his eyes are not opened to all thy truth, let thy compassion lighten the darkness that rests upon him, even as it came through the word of thy Son to blind Bartimeus, who sat by the wayside, begging!

Many more petitions he uttered, but all in the same subdued tone of tenderness. In the presence of helpless suffering, and in the fast-darkening shadow of the Destroyer, he forgot all but his Christian humanity, and cared more about consoling his fellow-man than making a proselyte of him.

This was the last prayer to which the Little Gentleman ever listened. Some change was rapidly coming over him during this last hour of which I have been speaking. The excitement of pleading his cause before his self-elected spiritual adviser,——the emotion which overcame him, when the young girl obeyed the sudden impulse of her feelings and pressed her lips to his cheek,——the thoughts that mastered him while the divinity-student poured out his soul for him in prayer, might well hurry on the inevitable moment. When the divinity-student[75] had uttered his last petition, commending him to the Father through his Son’s intercession, he turned to look upon him before leaving his chamber. His face was changed.——There is a language of the human countenance which we all understand without an interpreter, though the lineaments belong to the rudest savage that ever stammered in an unknown barbaric dialect. By the stillness of the sharpened features, by the blankness of the tearless eyes, by the fixedness of the smileless mouth, by the deadening tints, by the contracted brow, by the dilating nostril, we know that the soul is soon to leave its mortal tenement, and is already closing up its windows and putting out its fires.——Such was the aspect of the face upon which the divinity-student looked, after the brief silence which followed his prayer. The change had been rapid, though not that abrupt one which is liable to happen at any moment in these cases.——The sick man looked towards him.——Farewell,——he said——I thank you. Leave me alone with her.

When the divinity-student had gone, and the Little Gentleman found himself alone with Iris, he lifted his hand to his neck, and took from it, suspended by a slender chain, a quaint, antique-looking key,——the same key I had once seen him holding. He gave this to her, and pointed to a carved cabinet opposite his bed, one of those that had so attracted my curious eyes and set me wondering as to what it might contain.

Open it,——he said,——and light the lamp.——The young girl walked to the cabinet and unlocked the door.[76] A deep recess appeared, lined with black velvet, against which stood in white relief an ivory crucifix. A silver lamp hung over it. She lighted the lamp and came back to the bedside. The dying man fixed his eyes upon the figure of the dying Saviour.——Give me your hand,——he said; and Iris placed her right hand in his left. So they remained, until presently his eyes lost their meaning, though they still remained vacantly fixed upon the white image. Yet he held the young girl’s hand firmly, as if it were leading him through some deep-shadowed valley and it was all he could cling to. But presently an involuntary muscular contraction stole over him, and his terrible dying grasp held the poor girl as if she were wedged in an engine of torture. She pressed her lips together and sat still. The inexorable hand held her tighter and tighter, until she felt as if her own slender fingers would be crushed in its gripe. It was one of the tortures of the Inquisition she was suffering, and she could not stir from her place. Then, in her great anguish, she, too, cast her eyes upon that dying figure, and, looking upon its pierced hands and feet and side and lacerated forehead, she felt that she also must suffer uncomplaining. In the moment of her sharpest pain she did not forget the duties of her tender office, but dried the dying man’s moist forehead with her handkerchief, even while the dews of agony were glistening on her own. How long this lasted she never could tell. Time and thirst are two things you and I talk about; but the victims whom holy men and righteous judges used to stretch on their engines knew better what they meant than you or I!——What is that great bucket of water[77] for? said the Marchioness de Brinvilliers, before she was placed on the rack.——For you to drink,——said the torturer to the little woman.——She could not think that it would take such a flood to quench the fire in her and so keep her alive for her confession. The torturer knew better than she.

After a time not to be counted in minutes, as the clock measures,——without any warning,——there came a swift change of his features; his face turned white, as the waters whiten when a sudden breath passes over their still surface; the muscles instantly relaxed, and Iris, released at once from her care for the sufferer and from his unconscious grasp, fell senseless, with a feeble cry,——the only utterance of her long agony.

——Iris went into mourning for the Little Gentleman. Although he left the bulk of his property, by will, to a public institution, he added a codicil, by which he disposed of various pieces of property as tokens of kind remembrance. It was in this way I became the possessor of the wonderful instrument I have spoken of, which had been purchased for him out of an Italian convent. The landlady was comforted with a small legacy. The following extract relates to Iris: “——in consideration of her manifold acts of kindness, but only in token of grateful remembrance, and by no means as a reward for services which cannot be compensated, a certain messuage, with all the land thereto appertaining, situate in —— Street, at the North End, so called, of Boston, aforesaid, the same being the house in which I was born, but now inhabited by several families, and known as[78] ‘the Rookery.’” Iris had also the crucifix, the portrait, and the red-jewelled ring. The funeral or death’s-head ring was buried with him.
IRIS. The 14
Some of the boarders were of opinion that Iris did not return the undisguised attentions of the handsome young Marylander. Instead of fixing her eyes steadily on him, as she used to look upon the Little Gentleman, she would turn them away, as if to avoid his own. They often went to church together, it is true; but nobody, of course, supposes there is any relation between religious sympathy and those wretched “sentimental” movements of the human heart upon which it is commonly agreed that nothing better is based than society, civilization, friendship, the relation of husband and wife, and of parent and child, and which many people must think were singularly overrated by the Teacher of Nazareth, whose whole life, as I said before, was full of sentiment, loving this or that young man, pardoning this or that sinner, weeping over the dead, mourning for the doomed city, blessing, and perhaps kissing, the little children,——so that the Gospels are still cried over almost as often as the last work of fiction!

But one fine June morning there rumbled up to the door of our boarding-house a hack containing a lady inside and a trunk on the outside. It was our friend the lady-patroness of Miss Iris, the same who had been called by her admiring pastor “The Model of all the Virtues.” Once a week she had written a letter, in a[79] rather formal hand, but full of good advice, to her young charge. And now she had come to carry her away, thinking that she had learned all she was likely to learn under her present course of teaching. The Model, however, was to stay awhile,——a week, or more,——before they should leave together.

Iris was obedient, as she was bound to be. She was respectful, grateful, as a child is with a just, but not tender parent. Yet something was wrong. She had one of her trances, and became statue-like, as before, only the day after the Model’s arrival. She was wan and silent, tasted nothing at table, smiled as if by a forced effort, and often looked vaguely away from those who were looking at her, her eyes just glazed with the shining moisture of a tear that must not be allowed to gather and fall. Was it grief at parting from the place where her strange friendship had grown up with the Little Gentleman? Yet she seemed to have become reconciled to his loss, and rather to have a deep feeling of gratitude that she had been permitted to care for him in his last weary days.

The Sunday after the Model’s arrival, that lady had an attack of headache, and was obliged to shut herself up in a darkened room alone. Our two young friends took the opportunity to go together to the Church of the Galileans. They said but little going,——“collecting their thoughts” for the service, I devoutly hope. My kind good friend the pastor preached that day one of his sermons that make us all feel like brothers and sisters, and his text was that affectionate one from John, “My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue,[80] but in deed and in truth.” When Iris and her friend came out of church, they were both pale, and walked a space without speaking.

At last the young man said,——You and I are not little children, Iris!

She looked in his face an instant, as if startled, for there was something strange in the tone of his voice. She smiled faintly, but spoke never a word.

In deed and in truth, Iris,——

What shall a poor girl say or do, when a strong man falters in his speech before her, and can do nothing better than hold out his hand to finish his broken sentence?

The poor girl said nothing, but quietly laid her ungloved hand in his,——the little soft white hand which had ministered so tenderly and suffered so patiently.

The blood came back to the young man’s cheeks, as he lifted it to his lips, even as they walked there in the street, touched it gently with them, and said,——“It is mine!”

Iris did not contradict him.
IRIS. The 15
The seasons pass by so rapidly, that I am startled to think how much has happened since these events I was describing. Those two young people would insist on having their own way about their own affairs, notwithstanding the good lady, so justly called the Model, insisted that the age of twenty-five years was as early as any discreet young lady should think of incurring the[81] responsibilities, etc., etc. Long before Iris had reached that age, she was the wife of a young Maryland engineer, directing some of the vast constructions of his native State,——where he was growing rich fast enough to be able to decline that famous Russian offer which would have made him a kind of nabob in a few years. Iris does not write verse often, nowadays, but she sometimes draws. The last sketch of hers I have seen in my Southern visits was of two children, a boy and girl, the youngest holding a silver goblet, like the one she held that evening when I——I was so struck with her statue-like beauty. If in the later summer months you find the grass marked with footsteps around a grave on Copp’s Hill, and flowers scattered over it, you may be sure that Iris is here on her annual visit to the home of her childhood and that excellent lady whose only fault was, that Nature had written out her list of virtues on ruled paper, and forgotten to rub out the lines.

One thing more I must mention. Being on the Common, last Sunday, I was attracted by the cheerful spectacle of a well-dressed and somewhat youthful papa wheeling a very elegant little carriage containing a stout baby. A buxom young lady watched them from one of the stone seats, with an interest which could be nothing less than maternal. I at once recognized my old friend, the young fellow whom we called John. He was delighted to see me, introduced me to “Madam,” and would have the lusty infant out of the carriage, and hold him up for me to look at.

Now, then,——he said to the two-year-old,——show the gentleman how you hit from the shoulder.——Whereupon[82] the little imp pushed his fat fist straight into my eye, to his father’s intense satisfaction.

Fust-rate little chap,——said the papa.——Chip of the old block. Regl’r little Johnny, you know.

I was so much pleased to find the young fellow settled in life, and pushing about one of “them little articles” he had seemed to want so much, that I took my “punishment” at the hands of the infant pugilist with great equanimity.——And how is the old boarding-house? I asked.

A 1, he answered. Painted and papered as good as new. Gahs in all the rooms up to the sky-parlors. Old woman’s layin’ up money, they say. Means to send Ben Franklin to college.——Just then the first bell rang for church, and my friend, who, I understand, has become a most exemplary member of society, said he must be off to get ready for meetin’, and told the young one to “shake dada,” which he did with his closed fist, in a somewhat menacing manner. And so the young man John, as we used to call him, took the pole of the miniature carriage, and pushed the small pugilist before him homewards, followed, in a somewhat leisurely way, by his pleasant-looking lady-companion, and I sent a sigh and a smile after him.
THE ROSICRUCIAN. The 1
I know not if men would say that the face of Basil Wolgemuth was beautiful. There were no darkly gleaming eyes, no sculptured features, no clustering raven locks; all was fair, clear, and sunny as his own soul. And what a soul was that! It lighted up his whole countenance, as the sun lights up a landscape,——making that which would else have been ordinary most glorious. It was mirrored in his eyes; it shone in his every gesture; it made music in his voice; it accompanied him like a fair presence, giving life, love, and beauty wherever he moved.

He sat in a low-roofed, half-darkened chamber, whose gloomy recesses looked almost fearful. Now and then passing sounds of human voices rose from the street below, and ever and anon the great bell of Cologne Cathedral boomed out the hours, making the after silence deeper still. The student——for such he evidently was——leaned his slight and rather diminutive form in the[84] attitude of one wearied; but there was no lassitude visible in his expressive face, and his eyes were fixed with a dreamy and thoughtful gaze on the blazing fagots that roared and sparkled on the hearth before him.

The fire was his sole companion; and it was good company, in sooth. Not mute either; for it seemed to talk like a human voice. How the live juices hissed out, when the damp pine-wood caught the blaze, and chattered and muttered like a vexed child! How furiously it struggled and roared, as the flames grew stronger! How it sunk into a low, complaining sound, and then into a dead stillness, being conquered at last, and breathing its life out in a ruddy but silent glow. Such was the voice of the fire, but the student beheld its form too. Quaint and mysterious were the long fiery alleys and red caverns which it made, mingled with black hollows, out of which mocking faces seemed to peep; while the light flames waving to and fro were like aerial shapes moving in a fantastic dance. Beautiful and mystic appeared the fire.

Basil Wolgemuth was a student and a dreamer. He had pierced into the secrets of nature and of philosophy, not as an idle seeker, mechanically following the bent of a vague curiosity, but as an enthusiastic lover, who would fathom the depths of his beloved’s soul. He knew that in this world all things bear two meanings; one for the common observer, one for the higher mind of him who, with an earnest purpose and a steadfast but loving heart, penetrates into those mines of hidden riches,——the treasures of science and of imagination.[85] Basil was still young; and yet men of learning and power listened with deference to his words; wisdom, rank, and beauty had trodden that poor chamber, and felt honored,——for it was the habitation of genius.

And was all this sunshine of fame lavished upon a barren tree, which brought forth at best only the dazzling fruits of mere intellect, beautiful to the eye but deceptive to the heart as the jewelled apples of Aladdin, or was it rich in all good fruits of human kindness? Ask the mother, to whom the very footsteps of her dutiful son brought light and gladness; ask the sister, whose pride in her noble kinsman was even less than her love for the gentle and forbearing brother who made the sunshine of their home. These would speak for Basil. There was one——one more; but he knew it not then.

The fire sank to a few embers, and through the small window at the farther end of the apartment the young moon looked with her quiet smile. At last the door was half opened, and a girlish face peeped in.

“Are you sleeping, Basil, or only musing?”

“Is that you, Margareta?” said the student, without changing his attitude.

“Yes; it is growing late, brother; will you not come to supper?”

“I do not need it, dear Margareta, thank you.”

“But we want you, Basil; my mother is asking for you; and Isilda, too, is here.”

A bright smile passed over the young man’s face; but his sister did not see it, and continued:[86]——

“Come, brother; do come; you have studied enough for to-day.”

He rose cheerfully: “Well, then, tell my mother I will come directly.”

Margareta closed the door, and Basil stood thoughtfully by the fire. At that moment a bright flame, springing up from some stray brand yet unkindled, illumined his face,——it was radiant with the light of love. His finely curved lips, the sole beautiful feature there, were trembling with a happy smile, as they murmured in low tones one beloved name,——“Isilda, Isilda!”
THE ROSICRUCIAN. The 2
Let us glance at the home of Basil Wolgemuth. It was a German habitation of the Middle Ages; a comfortable but not luxurious dwelling, such a one as we see in old German pictures. In homes like this was nurtured the genius of Rembrandt, of Rubens, of Vandyck; from such a peaceful German home sprang the fiery spirit and indomitable zeal of Luther; and in like home-nests were cradled the early years of most of the rude but noble men, who, either by the sword or the pen, have made their names famous throughout the fair land of the Rhine.

Basil, his mother, Margareta, and another young girl sat round a table, spread with the ample fare of bread and fruits. The mother was worthy of such a son,——a matron of placid but noble aspect; like him, too, in the deep clear eyes and open forehead. Margareta, a sweet bud, which only needed[87] time to burst forth into a perfect flower, sat by her brother’s side; the fourth of the group was Isilda.

I hardly know how to describe Isilda. There is one face only I have seen which pictures her to my idea; it is a Madonna of Guido Reni’s. Once beheld, that face imprints itself forever on the heart. It is the embodiment of a soul so pure, so angelic, that it might have been Eve’s when she was still in Eden; yet there is in the eyes that shadow of woman’s intense love, the handmaid of which is ever sorrow; and those deep blue orbs seemed thoughtfully looking into the dim future with a vague sadness, as if conscious that the peace of the present would not endure. Womanly sweetness, feelings suppressed, not slumbering, a soul attuned to high thoughts like a well-strung lyre, and only needing a breath to awaken its harmonious chords,——all these are visible in that face which shone into the painter’s heart, and has lived forever in the work of his hand. And such was Isilda.

Basil sat opposite to her; he looked into her eyes; he drank in her smile, and was happy. All traces of the careworn student had vanished; he was cheerful even to gayety; laughed and jested with his sister; bade her sing old ditties, and even joined in the strain, which made them all more mirthful still. Basil had little music in his voice, but much in his heart. When the songs ceased, Margareta prayed him to repeat some old ballad, he knew so many. The student looked towards Isilda; her eyes had more persuasive eloquence than even his sister’s words, and he began:[88]——

“THE ELLE-MAID GAY.[1]
“Ridest by the woodland, Ludwig, Ludwig,
Ridest by the woodland gray?
Who sits by the woodland, Ludwig, Ludwig?
It is the Elle-maid gay.
“A kiss on thy lips lies, Ludwig, Ludwig,
Pure as the dews of May:
Think on thine own love, brown-haired Ludwig,
And not on an Elle-maid gay.
“She sits ’neath a linden, singing, singing,
Though her dropped lids nothing say;
For her beauty lures whether smiling or singing,
For she is an Elle-maid gay.
“‘Thou hast drunk of my wine-cup, Ludwig, Ludwig,
Thou hast drunk of my lips this day;
I am no more false than thou, young Ludwig,
Though I am an Elle-maid gay.’
“‘Ride fast from the woodland, Ludwig, Ludwig,’
Her laughter tracks his way;
‘Didst thou clasp a fair woman, Ludwig, Ludwig,
And found her an Elle-maid gay?’
“‘Flee, flee!’ they cry, ‘he is mad, Count Ludwig;
He rides through the street to-day
With his beard unshorn, and his cloak brier-torn:
He has met with the Elle-maid gay!’
[89]
“‘I fear him not, my knight, my Ludwig’
(The bride’s dear lips did say),
‘Though he comes from the woodland, he is my Ludwig;
He saw not the Elle-maid gay.
“‘Welcome, my lord, my love, my Ludwig!’
But her smile grew ashen-gray,
As she knew by the glare of the mad eyes’ stare,
He had been with the Elle-maid gay.
“‘God love thee——God pity thee, O my Ludwig!’
Nor her true arms turned she away.
‘Thou art no sweet woman,’ cried fiercely Ludwig,
‘But a foul Elle-maid gay.
“‘I kiss thee——I slay thee;——I thy Ludwig’:
And the steel flashed bright to the day:
‘Better clasp a dead bride,’ laughed out Ludwig,
‘Than a false Elle-maid gay.
“‘I kissed thee, I slew thee; I——thy Ludwig;
And now will we sleep alway.’
Still fair blooms the woodland where rode Ludwig,
Still there sits the Elle-maid gay.”

The student ceased; and there was a deep silence. Basil’s young sister glanced round fearfully. Isilda moved not; but as the clear tones of Basil’s voice ended, one deep-drawn sigh was heard, as it were the unconscious relief of a full heart.

“You have chosen a gloomy story, Basil,” said the mother, at last.

Her voice broke the spell; and Margareta added,——

“I do not pity that false-hearted knight; his was a[90] just punishment for a heavy sin: for the poor bride to die thus in her youth and happiness,——O, it was very sad!”

“Not so,” said Isilda, and she spoke in a low dreamy tone, as if half to herself. “It was not sad, even to be slain by him she loved, since she died in his arms, having known that he loved her. It was a happy fate.”

There was such an expression of intense feeling in the girl’s face as she spoke, that Margareta looked at her in wondering silence; but Basil gave an involuntary start, as if a new light had broken in upon his mind. The living crimson rushed immediately over Isilda’s face and neck, she seemed shrinking into the earth with shame, and said no more. Basil, too, kept silence. No marvel was it in the timid girl who rarely gave utterance to her thoughts, but that he whose heart was so full of poetry, whose lips were ever brimming over with eloquence, should be dumb,——it was passing strange! The student felt as though there was a finger laid on his lips, an unseen presence compelling him to silence; but the finger and the presence were those of the Angel of Love.

There was a constraint visible in all but Margareta; she, too young to understand what was passing in the hearts of the two she loved so much, began to sport with her friend.

“Well! I should not envy Count Ludwig’s bride, Isilda; I would much rather live. Farewell, you dolorous folk. I will go spin.”

And she vanished with the swiftness of a young fawn. The mother followed her with her eyes.

“A sunny and loving heart is thine, my child,” she murmured. “God bless thee, and keep all care from[91] that gay spirit!” And Madame Wolgemuth leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes. The mother’s heart seemed absorbed in the past, or else dreaming of her child’s future.

But, by the two thus left together, past and future were alike unregarded. With Basil and Isilda it was all the present,——the blissful present, full of hope and love. They talked but little, and in broken sentences, flitting from subject to subject, lest each should lead to the unveiling of the delicious secret that was uppermost in both their hearts and which they at once feared, yet longed to utter. At last the lamp grew dim, and the moonlight streamed in through the narrow window. Isilda noticed and spoke of it,——it was a relief.

“How lovely the moon looks, setting behind the cathedral!” And, rising, she walked to the window; it might be she was glad to escape from the passionate tenderness of Basil’s gaze.

The young student followed her, moving noiselessly, for his aged mother had fallen asleep. And now the two stood together, silent, alone with their own hearts, looking up to the quiet, star-lit sky, and drinking in love, which seemed infinite as that heaven itself.

“How beautiful is this world!” murmured the girl.

“I feel it so; and most when thus with thee, Isilda,”——and with what unspeakable sweetness and tenderness the name lingered on his lips,——“Isilda,——my Isilda!”

There was a moment of tremulous silence, and then the girl felt herself drawn closer, until her head rested on his bosom, and she heard his voice whispering in her ear,[92]——

“May I call thee my Isilda——all mine——mine only——mine forever?”

She raised her head, and looked timidly but searchingly in his countenance.

“Is it indeed true? dost thou then love me?”

“As my own soul!” passionately answered the student.

Isilda hid her face again in his bosom, and burst into a shower of tears.

The girl and her lover went home together that night, through the cold, clear starlight, to Isilda’s abode. Many and many a time had they trod the same path, but now everything was changed. They had become all in all to each other; an infinity of love was around them; all was light, hope, and trembling gladness. The crisp snow crackled under Isilda’s feet, and the sharp frosty air made her shiver; but she felt it not. She only clung the closer to Basil’s arm; he was all her own now; he, her life’s joy, her pride, the idol of her dreams, the delight of her soul. Such happiness was almost too much to bear; and, therefore, when she first knew that he loved her, had Isilda wept,——nay, even when she had parted from Basil and was alone, her full heart poured itself forth in tears. That he,——the noble, the gifted, so rich in the greatest of all wealth,——the wealth of genius; honored among men, with a glorious harvest of fame yet unreaped before him,——that he should love her, who had nothing to give but a heart that worshipped him! The girl, in her humility, felt unworthy of such deep happiness; all that her lips would utter were the blessed, joyful words, “He loves me,——he loves me! my[93] Basil, mine own!” And even in her sleep she murmured the same.

Man’s love is not like woman’s, yet Basil was very happy,——happier than he had ever been in his life. The student, the philosopher, felt that all his wisdom was as nothing compared to the wondrous alchemy of love. So far from being weakened, his lofty mind seemed to grow richer beneath the light of beloved eyes; it was like the sunshine to the ripening corn. Basil now knew how long Isilda had filled his thoughts, and been mingled with all his hopes. He did not even then fathom the depths of her spirit, but he felt it was one with his; and man, proud man, ever rejoices to see his soul’s image reflected in a woman’s heart.
THE ROSICRUCIAN. The 3
A year had passed over the head of the student of Cologne. It had been a year full of changes. Death had entered the house and taken the tender mother; the strong-hearted but gentle matron, who had filled the place of both parents toward Basil and Margareta in their fatherless youth. The student had now only his sister to cheer his desolate home; and little joy was there in the young girl’s heart, or brightness on her face, for she was still in the shadow of past sorrow, her first grief, too; and heavily it weighed upon sweet Margareta.

Have we forgotten Isilda, the beautiful, the beloved? No change had taken place in her. She was now the betrothed of Basil Wolgemuth, loving him with a depth and steadfastness far beyond the first fresh love of girlhood[94] and romance. And Basil himself, was he still the same? Let us see.

The student was sitting, as we first beheld him, in the room more peculiarly his own; it looked the same as in former days; and the fire, the brilliant and beautiful fire, which Basil loved to have as a companion for his solitary hours, burned brightly as ever. He kept continually feeding it with new brands, and often looked up from his book to gaze at it. If the blaze grew dim for a moment, it seemed as if his powers of intellect and comprehension grew dim with it. Basil was dull and cheerless without his beloved fire; he needed its genial warmth, its inspiring brightness; even in the summer-time he could not study without it; and so it had been from his childhood.

There was a change in the young man, more than the one short year added to his age could have effected. He looked like a man who had thought much, suffered much. An expression of pain constantly hovered over his features, and the lines of his beautiful mouth were contracted. He read intently; but at intervals laid down the book, and fixed his eyes vacantly on the fire, absorbed in thought.

A light knock at the door broke in upon the student’s meditations, and a stranger entered. He was a man of middle age, tall, spare, and meagre. His face was calm, and his bearing dignified; while on his noble forehead, which bore not a single wrinkle, unmistakable intellect sat enthroned; but at times there was a wildness in his eyes, and a sudden kindling of his features, which almost belied his serene deportment. He advanced towards the young man, who arose and greeted him with deep respect.

[95]

“Michael Meyer need not stay to ask admittance of Basil Wolgemuth, I trust?” said the stranger, in tones of mingled gentleness and conscious dignity.

“My master,” answered Basil, meekly, “thou art ever most welcome; all that is mine is thine also.”

“I thank thee, gentle scholar,” returned the other, simply, with a slight inclination of the head, as he suffered the young man to take from him his outer garment, and sat down on the chair which Basil offered. The student himself continued standing until his guest pointed to a low stool, where Basil placed himself at a little distance from his master.

“And now let us talk,” said Michael Meyer; “for it is long since I have seen thee. What hast thou learned meanwhile?”

“Much, O master! I have been studying thy book.” And he pointed to the open page.

A gleam of pleasure illuminated Michael’s sallow features. “And dost thou ever regret that thou hast become one of us, one of the brethren of the Rosie Cross?”

“Never, honored master mine,” cried the student; “but I have yet so much to learn, before I am worthy even to kiss the hem of thy garment; and I am so young.”

“It may be that a young heart is purer than one which has longer mingled with the world. Thou hast not yet travelled out of sight of the home which thy spirit left at birth; the memory of that pristine existence dimly remains with thee still. Therefore it is well with thee, Basil.”

[96]

“Master, if I could only think so,——if I could only revive within me that higher life,——but I fear it is hard.”

“It is hard, my son; for it is a struggle of matter against spirit. O, didst thou but know the joys that are opened unto us who mortify the body for the sake of the soul; the glorious and beautiful world that is revealed to us,——a life within life, a double existence, our mortal eyes being strengthened to behold the Invisible,——our mortal frames endowed with the powers of angels!”

“It is glorious——glorious!” murmured the student as he gazed on his master, whose whole countenance gleamed with enthusiasm.

“It is indeed glorious,” continued Michael Meyer. “To be as a god to mankind; to bear in this human body the gift of healing; to know that the riches for which men toil, and pine, and slay one another, are at our will in such abundance that they seem to us like dust. And more than all, to have the power of holding communion with those good spirits which God created as he created man, more beautiful and yet less perfect, for they must remain as first made, while man may rise through various stages of existence, higher and higher, until he reach the footstool of divinity itself.”

“Hast thou ever seen those glorious beings?” asked Basil, glancing doubtfully round, his voice sinking into a low whisper.

“I have!” answered Michael Meyer. “But no more of this. To attain this state of perfection, thou must needs deaden thyself to all human pleasures; thou must[97] forsake the grossness of an appetite pampered with the flesh of beasts and the fruit of the poison-vine. As thou readest in my book, the soul must retire within itself,——must shut out all human feelings, all human love.”

A dark shadow came over the young student’s face.

“Must one attain all this, O father, to be a follower of Christian Rosencreutz?”[2]

“All this, and more. Does thy heart fail thee?” said Michael, sternly.

Basil cast down his eyes.

“No, my noble master, no! but human will is feeble, and the steep is hard to climb.”

“Then lie down, and perish at its foot, Basil Wolgemuth,” said the Rosicrucian; and then added, with a regretful tone, “After thou hadst journeyed half-way, I had not thought thy heart would have failed thee, my son.”

“It has not failed me,” cried the student, earnestly. “I have followed implicitly all thy precepts. No food, save what nature rigorously requires, has passed these lips; I have kept myself pure as a little child, yet still I seem further than ever from that blessed state when the soul is free from all mortal longings, and the eyes are purged to behold the Invisible.”

[98]

“Wait, my son; wait and faint not! the time will surely come at last; and when it does, oh, what joy for thee! Thou wilt count as nothing the pleasures of taste, when thou mayst banquet on celestial food; thou wilt scorn all earthly loveliness, to bask in the smile of immortal beauty. This, indeed, is an aim worthy of man’s aspiring.”

“It is——it is! O master, I follow thee!——teach me, guide me as thou wilt.” And he knelt at the feet of the Rosicrucian, kissing his hands and his garments with deep emotion.

“Thou art worthy to become one of us, my son,——nay, my brother,——for thou wilt erelong equal the wisest of us,” answered Michael Meyer, as he raised Basil from the earth. “Go on in that noble path; thou hast little need of me, for thine own soul is thy best teacher. Now farewell, for this night I leave Cologne; my work is accomplished, and I have added one more to the brethren of the Rosie Cross.”

“And hast thou no word, no parting admonition, for me, O my father?”

“None, save this: Strive ever after the highest; content thyself with nothing below perfection; be humble in thine own eyes; and more than all, keep thy heart and hand from evil: sin clouds the soul’s aspirations; and the highest life is a life of perfect holiness. With thy noble intellect and ardent mind, keep an unspotted heart!——and so fare thee well, my son.”

Thus Michael Meyer the Rosicrucian parted from Basil Wolgemuth.
THE ROSICRUCIAN. The 4
Passionately wringing his hands, or pressing them upon his hot brow, knelt the student alone in his chamber. He muttered wild tones. He had yearned after the tree of knowledge; he had penetrated within its shadow, and it had darkened his soul, yet he had not tasted of its delicious fruit for which he so longed.

“It is vain,——it is vain!” cried Basil; “I strive, but I cannot attain. I have cast all human bliss to the winds; I have poisoned my youth,——and thine, too, Isilda, joy of my life!——and all in vain. No immortal gifts are mine,——I would fain pierce into Nature’s depths, but she hides her face from me. O my master! thou didst tell me of the world of spirits which would surely be revealed unto me. I look up into the air, but no sylphs breathe soft zephyrs upon my hot cheek; I wander by the streams, but no sweet eyes, looking out from the depths of the fountains, meet my own; I am poor, but the gnomes of the earth answer not my bidding with treasures of silver and gold. And thou, O Fire, glorious element! art thou indeed peopled with these wonderful beings; or are they deaf to my voice, and invisible to my eyes alone, of all my brethren?”

And lo! as the student spoke, a bright pyramid of flame darted upward, and a voice, like that of the fire when it answers the soft breathing of the winds, replied,——

“I hear thee,——what wouldst thou with me?”

A paleness came over the young man’s cheek, and he drew back involuntarily.

[100]

“Dost thou then fear me, O mortal!” said the voice again, sadly. “Look again.”

Suddenly the pyramidal flame was cloven asunder, and there appeared in its centre a form, smaller than that of humanity, but perfect in feminine loveliness. Wavy wreaths of golden flame fell around her like a woman’s beautiful hair, and about her semi-transparent form twined an amber vesture, resembling in hue and airy substance the fire from which she sprung. Her hands were folded submissively on her breast, and her eyes were fixed earnestly on the young student’s face as she again repeated,——

“Dost thou fear me now?”

“How should I fear thee, beautiful vision?” cried Basil in ecstasy; “and what am I, that thou shouldst deign to visit me thus?”

“Thinkest thou that this is the first time I have visited thee?” said the Form. “I have been with thee, unseen, from thy childhood. When, in thy boyish days, thou wouldst sit gazing on the beautiful element which I rule, and from which I proceed, it was I who made it assume in thy fancy strange and lovely shapes. It was my voice thou heardest in the musical breathing of the flames, until thou didst love the beautiful fire; and it became to thee the source of inspiration. All this was my doing.”

“And now at last I behold thee, glorious creature!” exclaimed the student with rapture. “How shall I thank thee for thus watching over me invisibly, and at last revealing thyself to me!”

“We do but the will of our Creator,” answered[101] the Salamandrine. “I and my kindred are His offspring, even as man; but our being differs from thine; superior and yet how inferior! We tend thee, we influence thee, we guide thee,——in this doing alike His command who made us, and our own pleasure; for our natures are purer and better than thine.”

“I feel it,” said Basil. “I cannot look upon thy all-perfect loveliness without knowing that such a form must be the visible reflection of a soul equally pure and beautiful.”

“A soul!” sighed the fire-spirit; “alas! this blessing is not ours. We see generation after generation of men perish from the face of earth; we watch them from their cradles into their graves, and still we are the same, our beauty unfaded, our power unchanged. Yet we know there must come a time when the elements from which we draw our being must vanish away, and then we perish with them, for we have no immortal souls: for us there is no after-life!”

As the Salamandrine ceased, the vapors of the fire encircled her as with a mist, and a wailing came from the red caverns of flame, as of spirits in grief, the burden of which was ever,——

“Alas for us!——we have no after-life.”

“Is it even so?” said the student. “Then are ye unhappy in the midst of your divine existence.”

The mist which veiled the Salamandrine floated aside, and she stood once more revealed in her superhuman beauty.

“Not unhappy,” she answered, with a radiant and celestial smile,——“not unhappy, since we are the servants[102] of our beneficent Creator; we perform His will, and in that consists our happiness. We suffer no pain, no care; doing no sin, we have no sorrow; our life is a life of love to each other and to man, whose ministers we are. Are we not then happy?”

“It may be so,” said Basil, thoughtfully. “Ye are the creatures of Him who never made aught but good.” And he bowed his head in deep meditation, while there arose from the mystic fire an ethereal chorus; melodiously it pealed upon the opened ears of the enraptured student.

The spirits sang of praise; of the universal hymn which nature lifts up to the Origin of all good; of the perfect harmony of all His works, from the mighty planets that roll through illimitable space, down to the fresh green moss that springs up at the foot of the wayfaring child; of the world of spirits,——those essences which people the earth and float in the air like motes in the sunbeam, invisible, but yet powerful; how the good spirits strive with the fallen ones for dominion over man, and how the struggle must continue until evil is permitted to be overcome of good, and the earth becomes all holy, worthy to be the habitation of glorified beings.

“Happy art thou, O man!” they sang. “Even in thy infirmity, what is like unto thee? And earthly life is thine, half the sorrow of which thou mayst remove by patience and love; an earthly death is thine, which is the entrance to immortality. It is ours to guide thee to that gate of heaven which we ourselves may never enter.”

[103]

And all the spirits sang in a strain that died away as the fire sunk smouldering down, “Blessed art thou, O man!——strong in thy weakness, happy in thy sufferings. Thrice blessed art thou!”

The student was roused from his trance by a light footstep. A hand was laid on his shoulder, and a soft woman’s voice whispered,——

“Art thou then here all alone, and in darkness, my Basil?”

“All was light with me,——the darkness came with thee,” answered the student, harshly, like one roused from delicious slumbers by an unwelcome hand;——and yet the hand was none other than Isilda’s.

“Once thou used to call me thy light of life, Basil,” murmured the girl. “I would not come to anger thee.”

It was too dark to discern faces; but as Isilda turned to depart, Basil thought she was weeping, and his heart melted. What would he not have given, at the moment, for the days of old,——the feelings of old, when he would have drawn her to his bosom, and soothed her there with the assurances of never-ending love. But now he dared not; the link between him and earth was broken. He thought of the immortal gift just acquired, and he would not renounce its ecstatic joys,——no, not even for Isilda. He took her hand kindly, but coldly, saying,——

“Forgive me; I have been studying,——dreaming; I did not mean to say thou wert unwelcome.”

“Bless thee for that, my Basil, my beloved!” cried the girl, weeping, as she pressed his hand passionately to her heart and her lips. “Thou couldst not be unkind to me,——to thy betrothed wife.”

[104]

Basil turned away; he could not tell her that the tie was now only a name; and Isilda went on,——

“Thou hast not looked the same of late; thou art too anxious; or thou hast some hidden sorrow upon thee. Tell it to me, my Basil,” she continued, caressingly. “Who should share and lighten it but I, who love thee so?”

“Dost thou indeed love me so well, Isilda?”

“Thou art my all,——my life,——my soul! It were death itself to part from thee,” cried the girl, in a burst of impassioned feeling, as she knelt beside the bending form of her lover, and strove to wind her arms round his neck. She hardly dared to do so now to him who had once wooed that fondness with so many prayers.

“Woe is me, alas!” muttered the student. “Must thou also be sacrificed, Isilda?”

She did not hear his words, but she felt him unclasp her arms from his neck; and Isilda sank insensible at Basil’s feet.

The die was cast. Slowly the student laid her down,——her, the once beloved,——on the cold floor. He called “Margareta!” and before his sister entered, went out into the open air.
THE ROSICRUCIAN. The 5
Basil Wolgemuth had now gained the summit of his wishes. He had panted for the river of knowledge,——had found it, and allayed his burning thirst in its waters, which were to him a Lethe, bringing oblivion of all else. He walked as one in a dream, or like the false prophet of old, falling into a trance, but having his eyes open.[105] He was gentle to his sister, and to the patient, sorrowful Isilda; but he shrank from their society, as he did from that of every living soul. He would disappear for days together, wandering in the woods and mountains, far from his home. There the student was alone, with his newly acquired sense,——there he penetrated into the marvels of the invisible world. He saw the Sylphs of the air floating over him, and fanning his slumbers with their ambrosial wings. The beautiful Undines spread their cool, wavy arms around him, and through the riven earth he beheld the Gnomes and Cobolds at work in their treasure-caves. Borne by the Salamandrines, he viewed the caves of the volcanoes; their lurid recesses were exposed to his gaze, and he saw the central fires smouldering beneath the surface of the globe,——the cradles of the earthquake.

Then, when the student returned, he would shut himself up in his chamber, and invoke the being who had first appeared to him,——the Salamandrine. He imbibed from her lips wisdom beyond that of man; he sunned himself in the light of her glorious beauty, and became insensible to all earthly things.

“O my master,” Basil would often murmur, “thou wert right! What count I now the cup of mortal pleasure while that of heaven is at my lips? I could torture, almost destroy this poor frail body for the sake of my soul.”

And while the student revelled in these ecstasies, his slight form grew more shadowy, his dreamy eyes became of a more fathomless depth, and his whole appearance was that of a spirit which had for a season assumed this[106] mortal coil. No thought of Isilda, no yearning for her forsaken love, crossed his memory; the lesser feeling was all absorbed in the greater, for the one reigning passion of Basil Wolgemuth’s soul was a thirst after knowledge.

And Isilda, the devoted one, how fared it with her? She knew that no other maiden had stolen her lover’s heart, and yet it was changed toward her. She saw it to be so. Some overpowering passion had extinguished that of love; and her life’s hope was gone. She did not pine nor weep; she felt no anger towards Basil, for in her eyes he could do no wrong. Isilda had worshipped him from her girlhood, with a love mixed with idolatry, for it long seemed like “the desire of the moth for the star.” None other had ever won a thought from the maiden, though many had wooed her; but having once loved him, none else could have filled her heart forever. Even Basil, when he came to measure her love by his own, dreamed not of its intensity. So absorbing was this one passionate love, that even the sad change in him who was its object could not weaken it. She desired no more but to be near her betrothed; to see him; to hover round him as silently as his shadow,——only to have the blessed privilege of loving him, and the memory, sweet though mournful, that he had once loved her.
THE ROSICRUCIAN. The 6
Basil Wolgemuth lay asleep on his couch. He had outwatched midnight, and was very weary. The follower of Rosencreutz, the philosopher, the man of genius, had not passed the limits of mortality; his earth-vesture[107] clung about him still. Fatigue had overtaken him in the midst of his vigils; he had thrown himself down on the hard pallet, and fallen asleep, as sound as if the rude couch of the Rosicrucian were the monarch’s bed of down. The morning stars looked in at his casement, and the dim light of a single lamp fell on the countenance of the student. He lay calm as a little child, with folded hands, as if his mother had lulled him to sleep with songs. O, if that mother could have beheld him now, how would she have wept over the child of so many prayers!

I have said before that there was little beauty in Basil’s face, at least that mere beauty of form, which is so dazzling,——and it is good that it should be so, for a lovely face seems fresh from the impress of God’s hand; we naturally love it, cling to it, and worship it as such. But Basil’s sole charm had been the genius so plainly visible in his face, and a sunny, youthful, happy look, which made it pleasant to behold. Now, all this was long gone. But while he slept, a little of his olden self returned; a smile wandered over his lips, and his sunny hair fell carelessly, as in the days when Isilda’s fingers used to part it, and kiss his white, beautiful forehead. Suddenly a red glare lighted up the still shadow of the chamber,——it flashed on the eyes of the sleeper.

“Art thou here, O spirit?” murmured Basil, half roused, and dazzled by the brilliant light, which seemed a continuation of his dream.

But it was no celestial presence that shone into the student’s room. He awoke fully, rose up, and looked out into the night. The city lay hushed beneath the[108] starlight like a palace of the dead; it seemed as though no mortal turmoil would ever more ruffle its serene repose. But far down the dark street, in a direction where Basil’s eyes had in former times been fondly turned waiting for the one solitary lamp which was to him like a star, lurid flames and white smoke burst forth, and contended with the gloom around. There was in the city the fearful presence of fire, and the burning house was Isilda’s.

With a sudden impulse, Basil leaped at once through the low window, and fled rather than ran to the scene. This time human love had the pre-eminence; he forgot all but Isilda,——Isilda perishing in the flames!

Wildly raged the fierce element, as if kindled by a hundred demons, who fanned it with their fiery breath, and leaped, and howled, and shouted, as it spread on with mad swiftness. Now it writhed in serpent-coils, now it darted upwards in forked tongues, and now it made itself a veil of dusky vapors, and beneath that shade went on in its devastating way. Its glare put out the dim stars overhead, and hung on the skirts of the clouds that were driven past, until the sky itself seemed in flames. House after house caught the blaze, and cries of despair, mingled with shrieks of frantic terror, rose up through the horrible stillness of night. The beautiful element which Basil had so loved——the cheering, inspiring fire——was turned into a fearful scourge.

The student reached the spot, and looked wildly up to the window he had so often watched. A passing gust blew the flames aside, and he distinguished there a white figure,——it was Isilda. Her hands were crossed on her[109] bosom, and her head was bowed meekly, as if she knew there was no hope, and was content to die.

Basil saw, and in a moment he had rushed into the burning dwelling. He gained the room, and with a wild cry of joy, Isilda sprung into his arms. Without a word, he bore her, insensible as she was, through the smoke and flame, to a spot where the fire had not reached. Farther he could not go, for his strength failed him. He laid his burden down, and leaned against the wall.

“I might not live for thee, Isilda,” cried the student, “but I can die for thee. Yet is there no help,——no hope? Where are the spirits that were once subject unto me? And thou, my guardian,——spirit of fire!——is this thy work? Where art thou?”

“I am here!” answered a voice; and the Salamandrine appeared. The flames drew nearer, and Basil saw myriads of aerial shapes flitting among them in mazy wreaths. They came nigh,——they hovered over his mortal love,——their robes of seeming flame swept her form.

“Touch her not!” shrieked the student, as he bent over Isilda, his human fear overpowering him.

“The good and pure like her are ever safe,” replied the Salamandrine. “We harm her not.” And she breathed over the maiden, who awoke.

“O my Basil!” murmured the girl, “is death then past? Thou didst come to save me,——thou lovest me,——thou art mine again!” And she stretched out to him her loving arms; but Basil turned away.

“Hush!” he said, “dost thou not see them,——the spirits?”

[110]

Isilda looked round fearfully. “I see nothing,——only thee.”

The student’s eyes flashed with insanity. “See!” he cried, “they fill the air, they gather round us, they come between thee and me. Now,——now their forms grow fainter,——they are vanishing,——it is thou, woman! who art driving them from my sight forever. Stay, glorious beings, stay! I give up all,——even her.”

“Nothing shall part me from thee!” shrieked the girl, as she clung to her lover, and wound her arms round him. “No power in heaven or earth shall tear us asunder,——thou art mine, Basil,——let me live for thee,——die for thee.”

“Thou shalt have thy desire!” the student cried, as he struggled in her frantic clasp.

There was the gleam of steel,——one faint, bubbling sigh,——the arms relaxed their hold, and Basil was alone,——with the dead!

The fire stayed in its dire path, and a wailing sound rose as the spirits fled away. Heaven and earth had alike forsaken the murderer.

He knelt beside his victim; he wept, he laughed, he screamed; for madness was in his brain.

“I may clasp thee now, Isilda,” he shouted, “thou art all my own!” And he strained the cold, still form to his breast, kissing the lips and cheeks with passionate vehemence.

“I will make thee a pyre,——a noble funereal pyre,” he continued; “I will purify this mortal clay, and thou shalt become a spirit, Isilda,——a beautiful, immortal spirit.”

[111]

He bore the dead to where the fire raged fiercest; he laid his beloved on a couch; composed the frigid limbs, folded the hands, and, kissing the cold lips once more, retired to a distance, while the flames played round the still beautiful form that was once Isilda. Lovingly they inwreathed and enshrouded it, until at last they concealed it from the student’s gaze. He turned and fled. The fire hid in its mysterious bosom the ashes of that noble and devoted heart. Isilda had found the death she once thought so blest,——death by the hand of the beloved.
THE ROSICRUCIAN. The 7
Fearfully did morning dawn on the eyes of the murderer. He had regained his chamber unobserved, and there he crouched in its most gloomy nook. His frenzy had passed away, and left the freezing coldness of despair. The darkness was terrible to him, and yet when the light of morning came, he shrank from it in horror, and buried his face in his garments to shut out the fearful glare. All day he remained motionless. Margareta’s loud weeping came to him from within. From her brother’s bolted door, she thought he had departed on one of his usual rambles, and Basil heard his name repeated often, mingled with Isilda’s,——whom all supposed to have perished in the flames.

Basil heard his sister’s sobs; but they fell idly on his stony ears. Many sounds rose from the street,——the widow’s cry, the orphan’s moan, and the despairing lament of the houseless and homeless,——but all were nothing to him. He kept the same immovable attitude[112] until daylight waned, and then he rose and lit the fire on his hearth.

Brighter and brighter grew the blaze, and wilder gleamed the eyes of the student. He swayed his body to and fro with a low murmuring, and then he passionately invoked the Salamandrine.

“The sacrifice is complete——I have no bond to earth——my desire is free. Why delayest thou, O spirit? Come, teach me; let me know the past. Give me wisdom,——I thirst!——I thirst! Let me become as a god in knowledge!”

But the vision came not; there was no voice.

“Spirit of Fire! art thou deaf to me still? I have done all,——I have broken every human tie,——I have become what men would loathe. Hear me,——answer me, or I die!”

Wreaths of dusky vapor overshadowed the fire, and from them proceeded a melancholy voice:——

“O mortal, sin has entered thine heart; blood is on thy hand, and the polluted can have no fellowship with the pure. Thine eyes may behold us no more forever!”

A fearful shudder passed through the student’s frame.

“It is false! Cursed spirits, ye have deceived me!”

“It is not we who have deceived thee, but thine own soul,” answered the Salamandrine. “We are not evil; unseen, we would have watched over thee thy whole life through. It was thou who didst long after what is permitted but to few,——to hold commune with the invisible. To do this with safety, man must keep a heart pure as fearless, and such was not thine. Thou[113] didst seek us,——we allured not thee. Blame not us, therefore, but thy own weakness. Thou hast sinned, and henceforth we are invisible to thee!”

“Woe! woe!” cried Basil, in agony; “have I then lost all? Adorable spirit, guide of my life, have mercy!——forsake me not!”

“I do not forsake thee, O poor mortal!” answered the voice, sadly. “I am here, beautiful and tender as before; but thou art no longer able to behold me. Sin has darkened thine eyes, and thou wilt see me no more——forever.”

“No more?” echoed the student in tones of thrilling misery.

“No more,” replied the mournful accents of the Salamandrine; and a faint chorus, like the sighing of the wind, echoed plaintively,——

“No more, O, poor mortal, no more!”

The vapor swept away from the fire, and the student was left to his despair.
VIII.

Two days after the terrible fire, some who loved and pitied the desolate Margareta forcibly entered her brother’s room. They found Basil dead. He lay on the floor, his marble face upturned to their horror-stricken view. There might have been agony in his last moments, for the hands were tightly pressed upon the heart; but all was calmness now. The features had settled into their eternal repose. How or when the spirit parted none knew, save Him who gave it, and who had now reclaimed his gift. The book of[114] Michael Meyer lay beside the student; and firmly clasped in the stiffened fingers was a long tress of woman’s hair. More than this, all was mystery.

Many years after, when the memory of the student of Cologne had long been forgotten, an aged nun died in a convent not far from the city. It was Margareta, the only sister of Basil Wolgemuth the Rosicrucian.

THE SOUTH BREAKER.
BY HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.

Just a capful of wind, and Dan shook loose the linen, and a straight shining streak with specks of foam shot after us. The mast bent like eel-grass, and our keel was half out of the water. Faith belied her name, and clung to the sides with her ten finger-nails; but as for me, I liked it.

“Take the stick, Georgie,” said Dan, suddenly, his cheeks white. “Head her up the wind. Steady. Sight the figure-head on Pearson’s loft. Here’s too much sail for a frigate.”

But before the words were well uttered, the mast doubled up and coiled like a whip-lash, there was a report like the crack of doom, and half of the thing crashed short over the bows, dragging the heavy sail in the waves.

Then there came a great laugh of thunder close above, and the black cloud dropped like a curtain round us: the squall had broken.

“Cut it off, Dan! quick!” I cried.

“Let it alone,” said he, snapping together his jack-knife;[116] “it’s as good as a best bower-anchor. Now I’ll take the tiller, Georgie. Strong little hand,” said he, bending so that I didn’t see his face. “And lucky it’s good as strong. It’s saved us all. My God, Georgie! where’s Faith?”

I turned. There was no Faith in the boat. We both sprang to our feet, and so the tiller swung round and threw us broadside to the wind, and between the dragging mast and the centre-board drowning seemed too good for us.

“You’ll have to cut it off,” I cried again; but he had already ripped half through the canvas, and was casting it loose.

At length he gave his arm a toss. With the next moment, I never shall forget the look of horror that froze Dan’s face.

“I’ve thrown her off!” he exclaimed,——“I’ve thrown her off!”

He reached his whole length over the boat, I ran to his side, and perhaps our motion impelled it, or perhaps some unseen hand; for he caught at an end of rope, drew it in a second, let go and clutched at a handful of the sail, and then I saw how it had twisted round and swept poor little Faith over, and she had swung there in it, like a dead butterfly in a chrysalis. The lightnings were slipping down into the water like blades of fire everywhere around us, with short, sharp volleys of thunder, and the waves were more than I ever rode this side of the bar before or since, and we took in water every time our hearts beat; but we never once thought of our own danger while we bent to pull dear[117] little Faith out of hers; and that done, Dan broke into a great hearty fit of crying that I’m sure he’d no need to be ashamed of. But it didn’t last long; he just up and dashed off the tears and set himself at work again, while I was down on the floor rubbing Faith. There she lay like a broken lily, with no life in her little white face, and no breath, and maybe a pulse and maybe not. I couldn’t hear a word Dan said, for the wind; and the rain was pouring through us. I saw him take out the oars, but I knew they’d do no good in such a chop, even if they didn’t break; and pretty soon he found it so, for he drew them in and began to untie the anchor-rope and wind it round his waist. I sprang to him.

“What are you doing, Dan?” I exclaimed.

“I can swim, at least,” he answered.

“And tow us?——a mile? You know you can’t! It’s madness!”

“I must try. Little Faith will die, if we don’t get ashore.”

“She’s dead now, Dan.”

“What! No, no, she isn’t. Faith isn’t dead. But we must get ashore.”

“Dan,” I cried, clinging to his arm, “Faith’s only one. But if you die so,——and you will!——I shall die too.”

“You?”

“Yes; because, if it hadn’t been for me, you wouldn’t have been here at all.”

“And is that all the reason?” he asked, still at work.

“Reason enough,” said I.

“Not quite,” said he.

[118]

“Dan,——for my sake——”

“I can’t, Georgie. Don’t ask me. I mustn’t——” And here he stopped short, with the coil of rope in his hand, and fixed me with his eye, and his look was terrible,——“we mustn’t let Faith die.”

“Well,” I said, “try it, if you dare; and as true as there’s a Lord in heaven, I’ll cut the rope!”

He hesitated, for he saw I was resolute; and I would, I declare I would have done it; for, do you know, at the moment, I hated the little dead thing in the bottom of the boat there.

Just then there came a streak of sunshine through the gloom where we’d been plunging between wind and water, and then a patch of blue sky, and the great cloud went blowing down river. Dan threw away the rope and took out the oars again.

“Give me one, Dan,” said I; but he shook his head. “O Dan, because I’m so sorry!”

“See to her, then,——fetch Faith to,” he replied, not looking at me, and making up with great sturdy pulls.

So I busied myself, though I couldn’t do a bit of good. The instant we touched bottom, Dan snatched her, sprang through the water and up the landing. I stayed behind; as the boat recoiled, pushed in a little, fastened the anchor and threw it over, and then followed.

Our house was next the landing, and there Dan had carried Faith; and when I reached it, a great fire was roaring up the chimney, and the teakettle hung over it, and he was rubbing Faith’s feet hard enough to strike sparks. I couldn’t understand exactly what made Dan[119] so fiercely earnest, for I thought I knew just how he felt about Faith; but suddenly, when nothing seemed to answer, and he stood up and our eyes met, I saw such a haggard, conscience-stricken face that it all rushed over me. But now we had done what we could, and then I felt all at once as if every moment that I effected nothing was drawing out murder. Something flashed by the window, I tore out of the house and threw up my arms, I don’t know whether I screamed or not, but I caught the doctor’s eye, and he jumped from his gig and followed me in. We had a siege of it. But at length, with hot blankets, and hot water, and hot brandy dribbled down her throat, a little pulse began to play upon Faith’s temple, and a little pink to beat up and down her cheek, and she opened her pretty dark eyes and lifted herself and wrung the water out of her braids; then she sank back.

“Faith! Faith! speak to me!” said Dan, close in her ear. “Don’t you know me?”

“Go away,” she said hoarsely, pushing his face with her flat wet palm. “You let the sail take me over and drown me, while you kissed Georgie’s hand.”

I flung my hand before her eyes.

“Is there a kiss on those fingers?” I cried, in a blaze. “He never kissed my hands or my lips. Dan is your husband, Faith!”

For all answer Faith hid her head and gave a little moan. Somehow I couldn’t stand that; so I ran and put my arms round her neck and lifted her face and kissed it, and then we cried together. And Dan, walking the floor, took up his hat and went out, while she never cast a look after him. To think of such a great strong nature[120] and such a powerful depth of feeling being wasted on such a little limp rag! I cried as much for that as anything. Then I helped Faith into my bedroom, and, running home, I got her some dry clothes,——after rummaging enough, dear knows! for you’d be more like to find her nightcap in the tea-caddy than elsewhere,——and I made her a corner on the settle, for she was afraid to stay in the bedroom, and when she was comfortably covered there she fell asleep. Dan came in soon and sat down beside her, his eyes on the floor, never glancing aside nor smiling, but gloomier than the grave. As for me, I felt at ease now, so I went and laid my hand on the back of his chair and made him look up. I wanted he should know the same rest that I had, and perhaps he did; for, still looking up, the quiet smile came floating round his lips, and his eyes grew steady and sweet as they used to be before he married Faith. Then I went bustling lightly about the kitchen again.

“Dan,” I said, “if you’d just bring me in a couple of those chickens stalking out there like two gentlemen from Spain.”

While he was gone I flew round and got a cake into the bake-kettle, and a pan of biscuit down before the fire; and I set the tea to steep on the coals, because father always likes his tea strong enough to bear up an egg, after a hard day’s work, and he’d had that to-day; and I put on the coffee to boil, for I knew Dan never had it at home, because Faith liked it and it didn’t agree with her. And then he brought me in the chickens all ready for the pot, and so at last I sat down, but at the opposite side of the chimney. Then he rose, and, without[121] exactly touching me, swept me back to the other side, where lay the great net I was making for father; and I took the little stool by the settle, and not far from him, and went to work.

“Georgie,” said Dan, at length, after he’d watched me a considerable time, “if any word I may have said to-day disturbed you a moment, I want you to know that it hurt me first, and just as much.”

“Yes, Dan,” said I.

I’ve always thought there was something real noble between Dan and me then. There was I,——well, I don’t mind telling you. And he,——yes, I’m sure he loved me perfectly,——you mustn’t be startled, I’ll tell you how it was,——and always had, only maybe he hadn’t known it; but it was deep down in his heart just the same, and by and by it stirred. There we were, both of us thoroughly conscious, yet neither of us expressing it by a word, and trying not to by a look,——both of us content to wait for the next life, when we could belong to one another. In those days I contrived to have it always pleasure enough for me just to know that Dan was in the room; and though that wasn’t often, I never grudged Faith her right in him, perhaps because I knew she didn’t care anything about it. You see, this is how it was.

When Dan was a lad of sixteen, and took care of his mother, a ship went to pieces down there on the island. It was one of the worst storms that ever whistled, and though crowds were on the shore, it was impossible to reach her. They could see the poor wretches hanging in the rigging, and dropping one by one, and they could[122] only stay and sicken, for the surf stove the boats, and they didn’t know then how to send out ropes on rockets or on cannon-balls, and so the night fell, and the people wrung their hands and left the sea to its prey, and felt as if blue sky could never come again. And with the bright, keen morning not a vestige of the ship, but here a spar and there a door, and on the side of a sand-hill a great dog watching over a little child that he’d kept warm all night. Dan, he’d got up at turn of tide, and walked down,——the sea running over the road knee-deep,——for there was too much swell for boats; and when day broke, he found the little girl, and carried her up to town. He didn’t take her home, for he saw that what clothes she had were the very finest,——made as delicately,——with seams like the hair-strokes on that heart’s-ease there; and he concluded that he couldn’t bring her up as she ought to be. So he took her round to the rich men, and represented that she was the child of a lady, and that a poor fellow like himself——for Dan was older than his years, you see——couldn’t do her justice: she was a slight little thing, and needed dainty training and fancy food, maybe a matter of seven years old, and she spoke some foreign language, and perhaps she didn’t speak it plain, for nobody knew what it was. However, everybody was very much interested, and everybody was willing to give and to help, but nobody wanted to take her, and the upshot of it was that Dan refused all their offers and took her himself.

His mother’d been in to our house all the afternoon before, and she’d kept taking her pipe out of her mouth,——she had the asthma, and smoked,——and kept sighing.

[123]

“This storm’s going to bring me something,” says she, in a mighty miserable tone. “I’m sure of it!”

“No harm, I hope, Miss Devereux,” said mother.

“Well, Rhody,”——mother’s father, he was a queer kind, called his girls all after the thirteen States, and there being none left for Uncle Mat, he called him after the state of matrimony,——“well, Rhody,” she replied, rather dismally, and knocking the ashes out of the bowl, “I don’t know; but I’ll have faith to believe that the Lord won’t send me no ill without distincter warning. And that it’s good I have faith to believe.”

And so when the child appeared, and had no name, and couldn’t answer for herself, Mrs. Devereux called her Faith.

We’re a people of presentiments down here on the Flats, and well we may be. You’d own up yourself, maybe, if in the dark of the night, you locked in sleep, there’s a knock on the door enough to wake the dead, and you start up and listen and nothing follows; and falling back, you’re just dozing off, and there it is once more, so that the lad in the next room cries out, “Who’s that, mother?” No one answering, you’re half lost again, when rap comes the hand again, the loudest of the three, and you spring to the door and open it, and there’s naught there but a wind from the graves blowing in your face; and after a while you learn that in that hour of that same night your husband was lost at sea. Well, that happened to Mrs. Devereux. And I haven’t time to tell you the warnings I’ve known of. As for Faith, I mind that she said herself, as we were in the boat for that clear midnight sail, that the[124] sea had a spite against her, but third time was trying time.

So Faith grew up, and Dan sent her to school what he could, for he set store by her. She was always ailing,——a little wilful, pettish thing, but pretty as a flower; and folks put things into her head, and she began to think she was some great shakes; and she may have been a matter of seventeen years old when Mrs. Devereux died. Dan, as simple at twenty-six as he had been ten years before, thought to go on just in the old way, but the neighbors were one too many for him; and they all represented that it would never do, and so on, till the poor fellow got perplexed and vexed and half beside himself. There wasn’t the first thing she could do for herself, and he couldn’t afford to board her out, for Dan was only a laboring-man, mackerelling all summer and shoemaking all winter, less the dreadful times when he stayed out on the Georges; and then he couldn’t afford, either, to keep her there and ruin the poor girl’s reputation;——and what did Dan do but come to me with it all?

Now for a number of years I’d been up in the other part of the town with Aunt Netty, who kept a shop that I tended between schools and before and after, and I’d almost forgotten there was such a soul on earth as Dan Devereux,——though he’d not forgotten me. I’d got through the Grammar and had a year in the High, and suppose I should have finished with an education and gone off teaching somewhere, instead of being here now, cheerful as heart could wish, with a little black-haired hussy tiltering on the back of my chair. Rolly, get[125] down! Her name’s Laura,——for his mother. I mean I might have done all this, if at that time mother hadn’t been thrown on her back, and been bedridden ever since. I haven’t said much about mother yet, but there all the time she was, just as she is to-day, in her little tidy bed in one corner of the great kitchen, sweet as a saint, and as patient;——and I had to come and keep house for father. He never meant that I should lose by it, father didn’t; begged, borrowed, or stolen, bought or hired, I should have my books, he said: he’s mighty proud of my learning, though between you and me it’s little enough to be proud of; but the neighbors think I know ’most as much as the minister,——and I let ’em think. Well, while Mrs. Devereux was sick I was over there a good deal,——for if Faith had one talent, it was total incapacity,——and there had a chance of knowing the stuff that Dan was made of; and I declare to man ’t would have touched a heart of stone to see the love between the two. She thought Dan held up the sky, and Dan thought she was the sky. It’s no wonder,——the risks our men lead can’t make common-sized women out of their wives and mothers. But I hadn’t been coming in and out, busying about where Dan was, all that time, without making any mark; though he was so lost in grief about his mother that he didn’t take notice of his other feelings, or think of himself at all. And who could care the less about him for that? It always brings down a woman to see a man wrapt in some sorrow that’s lawful and tender as it is large. And when he came and told me what the neighbors said he must do with Faith, the blood stood still in my heart.

[126]

“Ask mother, Dan,” says I; for I couldn’t have advised him. “She knows best about everything.”

So he asked her.

“I think——I’m sorry to think, for I fear she’ll not make you a good wife,” said mother, “but that perhaps her love for you will teach her to be——you’d best marry Faith.”

“But I can’t marry her!” said Dan, half choking; “I don’t want to marry her,——it——it makes me uncomfortable-like to think of such a thing. I care for the child plenty——Besides,” said Dan, catching at a bright hope, “I’m not sure that she’d have me.”

“Have you, poor boy! What else can she do?”

Dan groaned.

“Poor little Faith!” said mother. “She’s so pretty, Dan, and she’s so young, and she’s pliant. And then how can we tell what may turn up about her some day? She may be a duke’s daughter yet,——who knows? Think of the stroke of good-fortune she may give you!”

“But I don’t love her,” said Dan, as a finality.

“Perhaps——It isn’t——You don’t love any one else?”

“No,” said Dan, as a matter of course, and not at all with reflection. And then, as his eyes went wandering, there came over them a misty look, just as the haze creeps between you and some object away out at sea, and he seemed to be sifting his very soul. Suddenly the look swept off them, and his eyes struck mine, and he turned, not having meant to, and faced me entirely, and there came such a light into his countenance, such a smile round his lips, such a red stamped his cheek, and[127] he bent a little,——and it was just as if the angel of the Lord had shaken his wings over us in passing, and we both of us knew that here was a man and here was a woman, each for the other, in life and death; and I just hid my head in my apron, and mother turned on her pillow with a little moan. How long that lasted I can’t say, but by and by I heard mother’s voice, clear and sweet as a tolling bell far away on some fair Sunday morning,——

“The Lord is in his holy temple, the Lord’s throne is in heaven: his eyes behold, his eyelids try the children of men.”

And nobody spoke.

“Thou art my Father, my God, and the rock of my salvation. Thou wilt light my candle: the Lord my God will enlighten my darkness. For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light.”

Then came the hush again, and Dan started to his feet, and began to walk up and down the room as if something drove him; but, wearying, he stood and leaned his head on the chimney there. And mother’s voice broke the stillness anew, and she said,——

“Hath God forgotten to be gracious? His mercy endureth forever. And none of them that trust in him shall be desolate.”

There was something in mother’s tone that made me forget myself and my sorrow, and look; and there she was, as she hadn’t been before for six months, half risen from the bed, one hand up, and her whole face white and shining with confident faith. Well, when I see all that such trust has buoyed mother over, I wish to goodness[128] I had it: I take more after Martha. But never mind, do well here and you’ll do well there, say I. Perhaps you think it wasn’t much, the quiet and the few texts breathed through it; but sometimes when one’s soul’s at a white heat, it may be moulded like wax with a finger. As for me, maybe God hardened Pharaoh’s heart,——though how that was Pharaoh’s fault I never could see;——but Dan,——he felt what it was to have a refuge in trouble, to have a great love always extending over him like a wing; he longed for it; he couldn’t believe it was his now, he was so suddenly convicted of all sin and wickedness; and something sprang up in his heart, a kind of holy passion that he felt to be possible for this great and tender Divine Being; and he came and fell on his knees by the side of the bed, crying out for mother to show him the way; and mother, she put her hand on his head and prayed,——prayed, oh! so beautifully, that it makes the water stand in my eyes now to remember what she said. But I didn’t feel so then, my heart and my soul were rebellious, and love for Dan alone kept me under, not love for God. And in fact, if ever I’d got to heaven then, love for Dan ’d have been my only saving grace; for I was mighty high-spirited, as a girl. Well, Dan he never made open profession; but when he left the house, he went and asked Faith to marry him.

Now Faith didn’t care anything about Dan,——except the quiet attachment that she couldn’t help, from living in the house with him, and he’d always petted and made much of her, and dressed her like a doll,——he wasn’t the kind of man to take her fancy; she’d have maybe liked some slender, smooth-faced chap; but Dan was a black,[129] shaggy fellow, with shoulders like the cross-tree, and a length of limb like Saul’s, and eyes set deep, like lamps in caverns. And he had a great, powerful heart,——and, oh! how it was lost! for she might have won it, she might have made him love her, since I would have stood wide away and aside for the sake of seeing him happy. But Faith was one of those that, if they can’t get what they want, haven’t any idea of putting up with what they have,——God forgive me, if I am hard on the child! And she couldn’t give Dan an answer right off, but was loath to think of it, and went flirting about among the other boys; and Dan, when he saw she wasn’t so easily gotten, perhaps set more value on her. For Faith, she grew prettier every day; her great brown eyes were so soft and clear, and had a wide, sorrowful way of looking at you; and her cheeks, that were usually pale, blossomed to roses when you spoke to her, her hair drooping over them dark and silky; and though she was slack and untidy and at loose ends about her dress, she somehow always seemed like a princess in disguise; and when she had on anything new,——a sprigged calico and her little straw bonnet with the pink ribbons and Mrs. Devereux’s black scarf, for instance,——you’d have allowed that she might have been daughter to the Queen of Sheba. I don’t know, but I rather think Dan wouldn’t have said any more to Faith, from various motives, you see, notwithstanding the neighbors were still remonstrating with him, if it hadn’t been that Miss Brown——she that lived round the corner there; the town’s well quit of her now, poor thing!——went to saying the same stuff to Faith, and telling her all that other folks said. And Faith went[130] home in a passion,——some of your timid kind nothing ever abashes, and nobody gets to the windward of them,——and, being perfectly furious, fell to accusing Dan of having brought her to this, so that Dan actually believed he had, and was cut to the quick with contrition, and told her that all the reparation he could make he was waiting and wishing to make, and then there came floods of tears. Some women seem to have set out with the idea that life’s a desert for them to cross, and they’ve laid in a supply of water-bags accordingly, but it’s the meanest weapon! And then, again, there’s men that are iron, and not to be bent under calamities, that these tears can twist round your little finger. Well, I suppose Faith concluded ’t was no use to go hungry because her bread wasn’t buttered on both sides, but she always acted as if she’d condescended ninety degrees in marrying Dan, and Dan always seemed to feel that he’d done her a great injury; and there it was.

I kept in the house for a time; mother was worse,——and I thought the less Dan saw of me the better; I kind of hoped he’d forget, and find his happiness where it ought to be. But the first time I saw him, when Faith had been his wife all the spring, there was the look in his eyes that told of the ache in his heart. Faith wasn’t very happy herself, of course, though she was careless; and she gave him trouble,——keeping company with the young men just as before; and she got into a way of flying straight to me, if Dan ventured to reprove her ever so lightly; and stormy nights, when he was gone, and in his long trips, she always locked up her doors and came over and got into my bed; and she was[131] one of those that never listened to reason, and it was none so easy for me, you may suppose.

Things had gone on now for some three years, and I’d about lived in my books,——I’d tried to teach Faith some, but she wouldn’t go any further than newspaper stories,——when one day Dan took her and me to sail, and we were to have had a clam-chowder on the Point, if the squall hadn’t come. As it was, we’d got to put up with chicken-broth, and it couldn’t have been better, considering who made it. It was getting on toward the cool of the May evening, the sunset was round on the other side of the house, but all the east looked as if the sky had been stirred up with currant-juice, till it grew purple and dark, and then the two lighthouses flared out and showed us the lip of froth lapping the shadowy shore beyond, and I heard father’s voice, and he came in.

There was nothing but the firelight in the room, and it threw about great shadows, so that at first entering all was indistinct; but I heard a foot behind father’s, and then a form appeared, and something, I never could tell what, made a great shiver rush down my back, just as when a creature is frightened in the dark at what you don’t see; and so, though my soul was unconscious, my body felt that there was danger in the air. Dan had risen and lighted the lamp that swings in the chimney, and father first of all had gone up and kissed mother, and left the stranger standing; then he turned round, saying,——

“A tough day,——it’s been a tough day; and here’s some un to prove it. Georgie, hope that pot’s steam[132] don’t belie it, for Mr. Gabriel Verelay and I want a good supper and a good bed.”

At this, the stranger, still standing, bowed.

“Here’s the one, father,” said I. “But about the bed,——Faith’ll have to stay here,——and I don’t see,——unless Dan takes him over——”

“That I’ll do,” said Dan.

“All right,” said the stranger, in a voice that you didn’t seem to notice while he was speaking, but that you remembered afterwards like the ring of any silver thing that has been thrown down; and he dropped his hat on the floor and drew near the fireplace, warming hands that were slender and brown, but shapely as a woman’s. I was taking up the supper; so I only gave him a glance or two, and saw him standing there, his left hand extended to the blaze, and his eye resting lightly and then earnestly on Faith in her pretty sleep, and turning away much as one turns from a picture. At length I came to ask him to sit by, and at that moment Faith’s eyes opened.

Faith always woke up just as a baby does, wide and bewildered, and the fire had flushed her cheeks, and her hair was disordered, and she fixed her gaze on him as if he had stepped out of her dream, her lips half parted and then curling in a smile; but in a second he moved off with me, and Faith slipped down and into the little bedroom.

Well, we didn’t waste many words until father’d lost the edge of his appetite, and then I told about Faith.

“’F that don’t beat the Dutch!” said father. “Here’s Mr.——Mr.——”

[133]

“Gabriel,” said the stranger.

“Yes,——Mr. Gabriel Verelay been served the same trick by the same squall, only worse and more of it,——knocked off the yacht——What’s that you call her?”

“La belle Louise.”

“And left for drowned,——if they see him go at all. But he couldn’t ’a’ sinked in that sea, if he’d tried. He kep’ afloat; we blundered into him; and here he is.”

Dan and I looked round in considerable surprise, for he was dry as an August leaf.

“O,” said the stranger, coloring, and with the least little turn of his words, as if he didn’t always speak English, “the good capitain reached shore, and, finding sticks, he kindled a fire, and we did dry our clothes until it made fine weather once more.”

“Yes,” said father; “but ’t wouldn’t been quite such fine weather, I reckon, if this’d gone to the fishes!” And he pushed something across the table.

It was a pouch with steel snaps, and well stuffed. The stranger colored again, and held his hand for it, and the snap burst, and great gold pieces, English coin and very old French ones, rolled about the table, and father shut his eyes tight; and just then Faith came back and slipped into her chair. I saw her eyes sparkle as we all reached, laughing and joking, to gather them; and Mr. Gabriel——we got into the way of calling him so,——he liked it best——hurried to get them out of sight as if he’d committed some act of ostentation. And then, to make amends, he threw off what constraint he had worn in this new atmosphere of ours, and was so gay, so full of questions and quips and conceits, all spoken in his[134] strange way, his voice was so sweet, and he laughed so much and so like a boy, and his words had so much point and brightness, that I could think of nothing but the showers of colored stars in fireworks. Dan felt it like a play, sat quiet, but enjoying, and I saw he liked it;——the fellow had a way of attaching every one. Father was uproarious, and kept calling out, “Mother, do you hear?——d’you hear that, mother?” And Faith, she was near, taking it all in as a flower does sunshine, only smiling a little, and looking utterly happy. Then I hurried to clear up, and Faith sat in the great arm-chair, and father got out the pipes, and you could hardly see across the room for the wide tobacco-wreaths; and then it was father’s turn, and he told story after story of the hardships and the dangers and the charms of our way of living. And I could see Mr. Gabriel’s cheek blanch, and he would bend forward, forgetting to smoke, and his breath coming short, and then right himself like a boat after lurching,——he had such natural ways, and except that he’d maybe been a spoiled child, he would have had a good heart, as hearts go. And nothing would do at last but he must stay and live the same scenes for a little; and father told him ’t wouldn’t pay,——they weren’t so much to go through with as to tell of,——there was too much prose in the daily life, and too much dirt, and ’t wa’n’t fit for gentlemen. O, he said, he’d been used to roughing it,——woodsing, camping and gunning and yachting, ever since he’d been a free man. He was a Canadian, and had been cruising from the St. Lawrence to Florida; and now, as his companions would go on without him, he had a mind to[135] try a bit of coast-life. And could he board here? or was there any handy place? And father said, there was Dan,——Dan Devereux, a man that hadn’t his match at oar or helm. And Mr. Gabriel turned his keen eye and bowed again,——and couldn’t Dan take Mr. Gabriel? And before Dan could answer, for he’d referred it to Faith, Mr. Gabriel had forgotten all about it, and was humming a little French song and stirring the coals with the tongs. And that put father off in a fresh remembrance; and as the hours lengthened, the stories grew fearful, and he told them deep into the midnight, till at last Mr. Gabriel stood up.

“No more, good friend,” said he. “But I will have a taste of this life perilous. And now where is it that I go?”

Dan also stood up.

“My little woman,” said he, glancing at Faith, “thinks there’s a corner for you, sir.”

“I beg your pardon——” And Mr. Gabriel paused, with a shadow skimming over his clear dark face.

Dan wondered what he was begging pardon for, but thought perhaps he hadn’t heard him, so he repeated,——

“My wife,”——nodding over his shoulder at Faith, “she’s my wife,——thinks there’s a——”

“She’s your wife?” said Mr. Gabriel, his eyes opening and brightening the way an aurora runs up the sky, and looking first at one and then at the other, as if he couldn’t understand how so delicate a flower grew on so thorny a stem.

The red flushed up Dan’s face,——and up mine, too,[136] for the matter of that,——but in a minute the stranger had dropped his glance.

“And why did you not tell me,” he said, “that I might have found her less beautiful?”

Then he raised his shoulders, gave her a saucy bow, with his hand on Dan’s arm,——Dan, who was now too well pleased at having Faith made happy by a compliment to sift it,——and they went out.

But I was angry enough; and you may imagine I wasn’t much soothed by seeing Faith, who’d been so die-away all the evening, sitting up before my scrap of looking-glass, trying in my old coral ear-rings, bowing up my ribbons, and plaiting and prinking till the clock frightened her into bed.

The next morning, mother, who wasn’t used to such disturbance, was ill, and I was kept pretty busy tending on her for two or three days. Faith had insisted on going home the first thing after breakfast, and in that time I heard no more of anybody,——for father was out with the night-tides, and, except to ask how mother did, and if I’d seen the stray from the Lobblelyese again, was too tired for talking when he came back. That had been——let me see——on a Monday, I think,——yes, on a Monday; and Thursday evening, as in-doors had begun to tell on me, and mother was so much improved, I thought I’d run out for a walk along the sea-wall. The sunset was creeping round everything, and lying in great sheets on the broad, still river, the children were frolicking in the water, and all was so gay, and the air was so sweet, that I went lingering along farther than I’d meant, and by and by who should I see but a couple[137] sauntering toward me at my own gait, and one of them was Faith. She had on a muslin with little roses blushing all over it, and she floated along in it as if she were in a pink cloud, and she’d snatched a vine of the tender young woodbine as she went, and, throwing it round her shoulders, held the two ends in one hand like a ribbon, while with the other she swung her white sunbonnet. She laughed, and shook her head at me, and there, large as life, under the dark braids dangled my coral ear-rings, that she’d adopted without leave or license. She’d been down to the lower landing to meet Dan,——a thing she’d done before——I don’t know when,——and was walking up with Mr. Gabriel while Dan stayed behind to see to things. I kept them talking, and Mr. Gabriel was sparkling with fun, for he’d got to feeling acquainted, and it had put him in high spirits to get ashore at this hour, though he liked the sea, and we were all laughing, when Dan came up. Now I must confess I hadn’t fancied Mr. Gabriel over and above; I suppose my first impression had hardened into a prejudice; and after I’d fathomed the meaning of Faith’s fine feathers I liked him less than ever. But when Dan came up, he joined right in, gay and hearty, and liking his new acquaintance so much, that, thinks I, he must know best, and I’ll let him look out for his interests himself. It would ’a’ been no use, though, for Dan to pretend to beat the Frenchman at his own weapons,——and I don’t know that I should have cared to have him. The older I grow, the less I think of your mere intellect; throw learning out of the scales, and give me a great, warm heart,——like Dan’s.

[138]

Well, it was getting on in the evening, when the latch lifted, and in ran Faith. She twisted my ear-rings out of her hair, exclaiming,——

“O Georgie, are you busy? Can’t you perse my ears now?”

“Pierce them yourself, Faith.”

“Well, pierce, then. But I can’t,——you know I can’t. Won’t you now, Georgie?” And she tossed the ear-rings into my lap.

“Why, Faith,” said I, “how’d you contrive to wear these, if your ears aren’t——”

“O, I tied them on. Come now, Georgie!”

So I got the ball of yarn and the darning-needle.

“O, not such a big one!” cried she.

“Perhaps you’d like a cambric needle,” said I.

“I don’t want a winch,” she pouted.

“Well, here’s a smaller one. Now kneel down.”

“Yes, but you wait a moment, till I screw up my courage.”

“No need. You can talk, and I’ll take you at unawares.”

So Faith knelt down, and I got all ready.

“And what shall I talk about?” said she. “About Aunt Rhody, or Mr. Gabriel, or——I’ll tell you the queerest thing, Georgie! Going to now?”

“Do be quiet, Faith, and not keep your head flirting about so!”——for she’d started up to speak. Then she composed herself once more.

“What was I saying? O, about that! Yes, Georgie, the queerest thing! You see this evening, when Dan was out, I was sitting talkin’ with Mr. Gabriel, and he[139] was wondering how I came to be dropped down here, so I told him all about it. And he was so interested that I went and showed him the things I had on when Dan found me,——you know they’ve been kept real nice. And he took them, and looked them over close, admiring them, and——and——admiring me,——and finally he started, and then held the frock to the light, and then lifted a little plait, and in the under side of the belt lining there was a name very finely wrought,——Virginie des Violets; and he looked at all the others, and in some hidden corner of every one was the initials of the same name,——V. des V.

“‘That should be your name, Mrs. Devereux,’ says he.

“‘O, no!’ says I. ‘My name’s Faith.’

“Well, and on that he asked, was there no more; and so I took off the little chain that I’ve always worn and showed him that, and he asked if there was a face in it, in what we thought was a coin, you know; and I said, O, it didn’t open; and he turned it over and over, and finally something snapped, and there was a face,——here, you shall see it, Georgie.”

And Faith drew it from her bosom, and opened and held it before me; for I’d sat with my needle poised, and forgetting to strike. And there was the face indeed, a sad, serious face, dark and sweet, yet the image of Faith, and with the same mouth,——that so lovely in a woman becomes weak in a man,——and on the other side there were a few threads of hair, with the same darkness and fineness as Faith’s hair, and under them a little picture chased in the gold and enamelled, which from what[140] I’ve read since I suppose must have been the crest of the Des Violets.

“And what did Mr. Gabriel say then?” I asked, giving it back to Faith, who put her head into the old position again.

“O, he acted real queer! Talked French, too,——O, so fast! ‘The very man!’ then he cried out. ‘The man himself! His portrait,——I have seen it a hundred times!’ And then he told me that about a dozen years ago or more, a ship sailed from——from——I forget the place exactly, somewhere up there where he came from,——Mr. Gabriel, I mean,——and among the passengers was this man and his wife, and his little daughter, whose name was Virginie des Violets, and the ship was never heard from again. But he says that without a doubt I’m the little daughter and my name is Virginie, though I suppose every one’ll call me Faith. O, and that isn’t the queerest! The queerest is, this gentleman,” and Faith lifted her head, “was very rich. I can’t tell you how much he owned. Lands that you can walk on a whole day and not come to the end, and ships, and gold. And the whole of it’s lying idle and waiting for an heir,——and I, Georgie, am the heir.”

And Faith told it with cheeks burning and eyes shining, but yet quite as if she’d been born and brought up in the knowledge.

“It don’t seem to move you much, Faith,” said I, perfectly amazed, although I’d frequently expected something of the kind.

“Well, I may never get it, and so on. If I do, I’ll give you a silk dress and set you up in a bookstore. But[141] here’s a queerer thing yet. Des Violets is the way Mr. Gabriel’s own name is spelt, and his father and mine——his mother and——Well, some way or other we’re sort of cousins. Only think, Georgie! isn’t that——I thought, to be sure, when he quartered at our house, Dan’d begin to take me to do, if I looked at him sideways,——make the same fuss that he does if I nod to any of the other young men.”

“I don’t think Dan speaks before he should, Faith.”

“Why don’t you say Virginie?” says she, laughing.

“Because Faith you’ve always been, and Faith you’ll have to remain, with us, to the end of the chapter.”

“Well, that’s as it may be. But Dan can’t object now to my going where I’m a mind to with my own cousin!” And here Faith laid her ear on the ball of yarn again.

“Hasten, headsman!” said she, out of a novel, “or they’ll wonder where I am.”

“Well,” I answered, “just let me run the needle through the emery.”

“Yes, Georgie,” said Faith, going back with her memories while I sharpened my steel, “Mr. Gabriel and I are kin. And he said that the moment he laid eyes on me he knew I was of different blood from the rest of the people——”

“What people?” asked I.

“Why, you, and Dan, and all these. And he said he was struck to stone when he heard I was married to Dan,——I must have been entrapped,——the courts would annul it,——any one could see the difference between us——”

[142]

Here was my moment, and I didn’t spare it, but jabbed the needle into the ball of yarn, if her ear did lie between them.

“Yes!” says I, “anybody with half an eye can see the difference between you, and that’s a fact! Nobody’d ever imagine for a breath that you were deserving of Dan,——Dan, who’s so noble he’d die for what he thought was right; you, who are so selfish and idle and fickle and——”

And at that Faith burst out crying.

“O, I never expected you’d talk about me so, Georgie!” said she between her sobs. “How could I tell you were such a mighty friend of Dan’s? And besides, if ever I was Virginie des Violets, I’m Faith Devereux now, and Dan’ll resent any one’s speaking so about his wife!”

And she stood up, the tears sparkling like diamonds in her flashing dark eyes, her cheeks red, and her little fist clinched.

“That’s the right spirit, Faith,” says I, “and I’m glad to see you show it. And as for this young Canadian, the best thing to do with him is to send him packing. I don’t believe a word he says; it’s more than likely nothing but to get into your good graces.”

“But there’s the names,” said she, so astonished that she didn’t remember she was angry.

“Happened so.”

“O, yes! ‘Happened so’! A likely story! It’s nothing but your envy, and that’s all!”

“Faith!” says I, for I forgot she didn’t know how close she struck.

[143]

“Well,——I mean——There, don’t let’s talk about it any more! How under the sun am I going to get these ends tied?”

“Come here. There! Now for the other one.”

“No, I sha’n’t let you do that; you hurt me dreadfully, and you got angry, and took the big needle.”

“I thought you expected to be hurt.”

“I didn’t expect to be stabbed.”

“Well, just as you please. I suppose you’ll go round with one ear-ring.”

“Like a little pig with his ear cropped? No, I shall do it myself. See there, Georgie!” And she threw a bit of a box into my hands.

I opened it, and there lay inside, on their velvet cushion, a pair of the prettiest things you ever saw,——a tiny bunch of white grapes, and every grape a round pearl, and all hung so that they would tinkle together on their golden stems every time Faith shook her head,——and she had a cunning little way of shaking it often enough.

“These must have cost a penny, Faith,” said I. “Where’d you get them?”

“Mr. Gabriel gave them to me just now. He went up town and bought them. And I don’t want him to know that my ears weren’t bored.”

“Mr. Gabriel? And you took them?”

“Of course I took them, and mighty glad to get them.”

“Faith dear,” said I, “don’t you know that you shouldn’t accept presents from gentlemen, and especially now you’re a married woman, and especially from those of higher station?”

[144]

“But he isn’t higher.”

“You know what I mean. And then, too, he is; for one always takes rank from one’s husband.”

Faith looked rather downcast at this.

“Yes,” said I; “and pearls and calico——”

“Just because you haven’t got a pair yourself! There, be still! I don’t want any of your instructions in duty!”

“You ought to put up with a word from a friend, Faith,” said I. “You always come to me with your grievances. And I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You used to like these coral branches of mine; and if you’ll give those back to Mr. Gabriel, you shall have the coral.”

Well, Faith, she hesitated, standing there trying to muster her mind to the needle, and it ended by her taking the coral, though I don’t believe she returned the pearls; but we none of us ever saw them afterwards.

We’d been talking in a pretty low tone, because mother was asleep; and just as she’d finished the other ear, and a little drop of blood stood up on it like a live ruby, the door opened and Dan and Mr. Gabriel came in. There never was a prettier picture than Faith at that moment, and so the young stranger thought, for he stared at her, smiling and at ease, just as if she’d been hung in a gallery and he’d bought a ticket. So then he sat down and repeated to Dan and mother what she’d told me, and he promised to send for the papers to prove it all. But he never did send for them,——delaying and delaying, till the summer wore away; and perhaps there were such papers and perhaps there weren’t. I’ve always thought he didn’t want his own friends to know where he was.[145] Dan might be a rich man to-day, if he chose to look them up; but he’d scorch at a slow fire before he’d touch a copper of it. Father never believed a word about it, when we recited it again to him.

“So Faith’s come into her fortune, has she?” said he. “Pretty child! She ’a’n’t had so much before sence she fell heir to old Miss Devereux’s best chany, her six silver spoons, and her surname.”

So the days passed, and the greater part of every one Mr. Gabriel was dabbling in the water somewhere. There wasn’t a brook within ten miles that he didn’t empty of trout, for Dan knew the woods as well as the shores, and he knew the clear nights when the insects can keep free from the water so that next day the fish rise hungry to the surface; and so sometimes in the brightest of May noons they’d bring home a string of those beauties, speckled with little tongues of flame; and Mr. Gabriel would have them cooked, and make us all taste them,——for we don’t care much for that sort, down here on the Flats; we should think we were famished if we had to eat fish. And then they’d lie in wait all day for the darting pickerel in the little Stream of Shadows above; and when it came June, up the river he went trolling for bass, and he used a different sort of bait from the rest,——bass won’t bite much at clams,——and he hauled in great forty-pounders. And sometimes, in the afternoons, he took out Faith and me,——for, as Faith would go, whether or no, I always made it a point to put by everything and go too; and I used to try and get some of the other girls in, but Mr. Gabriel never would take them, though he was hail-fellow-well-met[146] with everybody, and was everybody’s favorite, and it was known all round how he found out Faith, and that alone made him so popular, that I do believe, if he’d only taken out naturalization papers, we’d have sent him to General Court. And then it grew time for the river mackerel, and they used to bring in at sunset two or three hundred in a shining heap, together with great lobsters, that looked as if they’d been carved out of heliotrope-stone, and so old that they were barnacled. And it was so novel to Mr. Gabriel, that he used to act as if he’d fallen in fairy-land.

After all, I don’t know what we should have done without him that summer; he always paid Dan or father a dollar a day and the hire of the boat; and the times were so hard, and there was so little doing, that, but for this, and packing the barrels of clam-bait, they’d have been idle and fared sorely. But we’d rather have starved: though, as for that, I’ve heard father say there never was a time when he couldn’t go out and catch some sort of fish and sell it for enough to get us something to eat. And then this Mr. Gabriel, he had such a winning way with him, he was as quick at wit as a bird on the wing, he had a story or a song for every point, he seemed to take to our simple life as if he’d been born to it, and he was as much interested in all our trifles as we were ourselves. Then, he was so sympathetic, he felt everybody’s troubles, he went to the city and brought down a wonderful doctor to see mother, and he got her queer things that helped her more than you’d have thought anything could, and he went himself and set honeysuckles out all round Dan’s house, so that[147] before summer was over it was a bower of great sweet blows, and he had an alms for every beggar, and a kind word for every urchin, and he followed Dan about as a child would follow some big shaggy dog. He introduced, too, a lot of new-fangled games; he was what they called a gymnast, and in feats of rassling there wasn’t a man among them all but he could stretch as flat as a flounder. And then he always treated. Everybody had a place for him soon,——even I did; and as for Dan, he’d have cut his own heart out of his body, if Mr. Gabriel’d had occasion to use it. He was a different man from any Dan’d ever met before, something finer, and he might have been better, and Dan’s loyal soul was glad to acknowledge him master, and I declare I believe he felt just as the Jacobites in the old songs used to feel for royal Charlie. There are some men born to rule with a haughty, careless sweetness, and others born to die for them with stern and dogged devotion.

Well, and all this while Faith wasn’t standing still; she was changing steadily, as much as ever the moon changed in the sky. I noticed it first one day when Mr. Gabriel’d caught every child in the region and given them a picnic in the woods of the Stack-Yard-Gate, and Faith was nowhere to be seen tiptoeing round every one as she used to do, but I found her at last standing at the head of the table,——Mr. Gabriel dancing here and there, seeing to it that all should be as gay as he seemed to be,——quiet and dignified as you please, and feeling every one of her inches. But it wasn’t dignity really that was the matter with Faith,——it was just gloom. She’d brighten[148] up for a moment or two, and then down would fall the cloud again; she took to long fits of dreaming, and sometimes she’d burst out crying at any careless word, so that my heart fairly bled for the poor child,——for one couldn’t help seeing that she’d some secret unhappiness or other,——and I was as gentle and soothing to her as it’s in my nature to be. She was in to our house a good deal; she kept it pretty well out of Dan’s way, and I hoped she’d get over it sooner or later, and make up her mind to circumstances. And I talked to her a sight about Dan, praising him constantly before her, though I couldn’t bear to do it; and finally, one very confidential evening, I told her that I’d been in love with Dan myself once a little, but I’d seen that he would marry her, and so had left off thinking about it; for, do you know, I thought it might make her set more price on him now, if she knew somebody else had ever cared for him. Well, that did answer awhile: whether she thought she ought to make it up to Dan, or whether he really did grow more in her eyes, Faith got to being very neat and domestic and praiseworthy. But still there was the change, and it didn’t make her any the less lovely. Indeed, if I’d been a man, I should have cared for her more than ever: it was like turning a child into a woman: and I really think, as Dan saw her going about with such a pleasant gravity, her pretty figure moving so quietly, her pretty face so still and fair, as if she had thoughts and feelings now, he began to wonder what had come over Faith, and, if she were really as charming as this, why he hadn’t felt it before; and then, you know, whether you love a woman or not, the mere fact that[149] she’s your wife, that her life is sunk in yours, that she’s something for you to protect, and that your honor lies in doing so, gives you a certain kindly feeling that might ripen into love any day under sunshine and a south wall.

Blue-fish were about done with, when one day Dan brought in some mackerel from Boon Island: they hadn’t been in the harbor for some time, though now there was a probability of their return. So they were going out when the tide served——the two boys——at midnight for mackerel, and Dan had heard me wish for the experience so often, a long while ago, that he said, Why shouldn’t they take the girls? and Faith snatched at the idea, and with that Mr. Gabriel agreed to fetch me at the hour, and so we parted. I was kind of sorry, but there was no help for it.

When we started, it was in that clear crystal dark that looks as if you could see through it forever till you reached infinite things, and we seemed to be in a great hollow sphere, and the stars were like living beings who had the night to themselves. Always, when I’m up late, I feel as if it were something unlawful, as if affairs were in progress which I had no right to witness, a kind of grand freemasonry. I’ve felt it nights when I’ve been watching with mother, and there has come up across the heavens the great caravan of constellations, and a star that I’d pulled away the curtain on the east side to see came by and by and looked in at the south window; but I never felt it as I did this night. The tide was near the full, and so we went slipping down the dark water by the starlight; and as we saw them shining above us, and[150] then looked down and saw them sparkling up from beneath,——the stars,——it really seemed as if Dan’s oars must be two long wings, as if we swam on them through a motionless air. By and by we were in the island creek, and far ahead, in a streak of wind that didn’t reach us, we could see a pointed sail skimming along between the banks, as if some ghost went before to show us the way; and when the first hush and mystery wore off, Mr. Gabriel was singing little French songs in tunes like the rise and fall of the tide. While he sang he rowed, and Dan was gangeing the hooks. At length Dan took the oars again, and every now and then he paused to let us float along with the tide as it slacked, and take the sense of the night. And all the tall grass that edged the side began to wave in a strange light, and there blew on a little breeze, and over the rim of the world tipped up a waning moon. If there’d been anything needed to make us feel as if we were going to find the Witch of Endor, it was this. It was such a strange moon, pointing such a strange way, with such a strange color, so remote, and so glassy,——it was like a dead moon, or the spirit of one, and was perfectly awful.

“She has come to look at Faith,” said Mr. Gabriel; for Faith, who once would have been nodding here and there all about the boat, was sitting up pale and sad, like another spirit, to confront it. But Dan and I both felt a difference.

Mr. Gabriel, he stepped across and went and sat down behind Faith, and laid his hand lightly on her arm. Perhaps he didn’t mind that he touched her,——he had a kind of absent air; but if any one had looked at the[151] nervous pressure of the slender fingers, they would have seen as much meaning in that touch as in many an embrace; and Faith lifted her face to his, and they forgot that I was looking at them, and into the eyes of both there stole a strange, deep smile,——and my soul groaned within me. It made no odds to me then that the air blew warm off the land from scented hay-ricks, that the moon hung like some exhumed jewel in the sky, that all the perfect night was widening into dawn. I saw and felt nothing but the wretchedness that must break one day on Dan’s head. Should I warn him? I couldn’t do that. And what then?

The sail was up, we had left the headland and the hills, and when they furled it and cast anchor we were swinging far out on the back of the great monster that was frolicking to itself and thinking no more of us than we do of a mote in the air. Elder Snow, he says that it’s singular we regard day as illumination and night as darkness,——day that really hems us in with narrow light and shuts us upon ourselves, night that sets us free and reveals to us all the secrets of the sky. I thought of that when one by one the stars melted and the moon became a breath, and up over the wide grayness crept color and radiance and the sun himself,——the sky soaring higher and higher, like a great thin bubble of flaky hues,——and, all about, nothing but the everlasting wash of waters broke the sacred hush. And it seemed as if God had been with us, and withdrawing we saw the trail of his splendid garments; and I remembered the words mother had spoken to Dan once before, and why couldn’t I leave him in heavenly hands? And then it came into my heart[152] to pray. I knew I hadn’t any right to pray expecting to be heard; but yet mine would be the prayer of the humble, and wasn’t Faith of as much consequence as a sparrow? By and by, as we all sat leaning over the gunwale, the words of a hymn that I’d heard at camp-meetings came into my mind, and I sang them out, loud and clear. I always had a good voice, though Dan’d never heard me do anything with it except hum little low things, putting mother to sleep; but here I had a whole sky to sing in, and the hymns were trumpet-calls. And one after another they kept thronging up, and there was a rush of feeling in them that made you shiver, and as I sang them they thrilled me through and through. Wide as the way before us was, it seemed to widen; I felt myself journeying with some vast host towards the city of God, and its light poured over us, and there was nothing but joy and love and praise and exulting expectancy in my heart. And when the hymn died on my lips because the words were too faint and the tune was too weak for the ecstasy, and when the silence had soothed me back again, I turned and saw Dan’s lips bitten, and his cheek white, and his eyes like stars, and Mr. Gabriel’s face fallen forward in his hands, and he shaking with quick sobs; and as for Faith,——Faith, she had dropped asleep, and one arm was thrown above her head, and the other lay where it had slipped from Mr. Gabriel’s loosened grasp. There’s a contagion, you know, in such things, but Faith was never of the catching kind.

Well, this wasn’t what we’d come for,——turning all out-doors into a church,——though what’s a church but a place of God’s presence? and for my part, I never see[153] high blue sky and sunshine without feeling that. And all of a sudden there came a school of mackerel splashing and darkening and curling round the boat, after the bait we’d thrown out on anchoring. ’Twould have done you good to see Dan just at that moment; you’d have realized what it was to have a calling. He started up, forgetting everything else, his face all flushed, his eyes like coals, his mouth tight and his tongue silent; and how many hooks he had out I’m sure I don’t know, but he kept jerking them in by twos and threes, and finally they bit at the bare barb and were taken without any bait at all, just as if they’d come and asked to be caught. Mr. Gabriel, he didn’t pay any attention at first, but Dan called to him to stir himself, and so gradually he worked back into his old mood; but he was more still and something sad all the rest of the morning. Well, when we’d gotten about enough, and they were dying in the boat there, as they cast their scales, like the iris, we put in-shore; and building a fire, we cooked our own dinner and boiled our own coffee. Many’s the icy winter night I’ve wrapped up Dan’s bottle of hot coffee in rolls on rolls of flannel, that he might drink it hot and strong far out at sea in a wherry at daybreak!

But as I was saying,——all this time, Mr. Gabriel, he scarcely looked at Faith. At first she didn’t comprehend, and then something swam all over her face as if the very blood in her veins had grown darker, and there was such danger in her eye that before we stepped into the boat again I wished to goodness I had a life-preserver. But in the beginning the religious impression lasted and gave him great resolutions; and then strolling[154] off and along the beach, he fell in with some men there and did as he always did, scraped acquaintance. I verily believe that these men were total strangers, that he’d never laid eyes on them before, and after a few words he wheeled about. As he did so, his glance fell on Faith standing there alone against the pale sky, for the weather’d thickened, and watching the surf break at her feet. He was motionless, gazing at her long, and then, when he had turned once or twice irresolutely, he ground his heel into the sand and went back. The men rose and wandered on with him, and they talked together for a while, and I saw money pass; and pretty soon Mr. Gabriel returned, his face vividly pallid, but smiling, and he had in his hand some little bright shells that you don’t often find on these Northern beaches, and he said he had bought them of those men. And all this time he’d not spoken with Faith, and there was the danger yet in her eye. But nothing came of it, and I had accused myself of nearly every crime in the Decalogue, and on the way back we had put up the lines, and Mr. Gabriel had hauled in the lobster-net for the last time. He liked that branch of the business; he said it had all the excitement of gambling,——the slow settling downwards, the fading of the last ripple, the impenetrable depth and shade and the mystery of the work below, five minutes of expectation, and it might bring up a scale of the sea-serpent, or the king of the crabs might have crept in for a nap in the folds, or it might come up as if you’d dredged for pearls, or it might hold the great backward-crawling lobsters, or a tangle of sea-weed, or the long yellow locks of some drowned girl,——or nothing at all. So he always drew[155] in that net, and it needed muscle, and his was like steel,——not good for much in the long pull, but just for a breathing could handle the biggest boatman in the harbor. Well,——and we’d hoisted the sail and were in the creek once more, for the creek was only to be used at high-water, and I’d told Dan I couldn’t be away from mother over another tide and so we mustn’t get aground, and he’d told me not to fret, there was nothing too shallow for us on the coast. “This boat,” said Dan, “she’ll float in a heavy dew.” And he began singing a song he liked:——
“I cast my line in Largo Bay,
And fishes I caught nine:
There’s three to boil, and three to fry,
And three to bait the line.”

And Mr. Gabriel’d never heard it before, and he made him sing it again and again.
“The boatie rows, the boatie rows,
The boatie rows indeed,”

repeated Mr. Gabriel, and he said it was the only song he knew that held the click of the oar in the rowlock.

The little birds went skimming by us, as we sailed, their breasts upon the water, and we could see the gunners creeping through the marshes beside them.

“The wind changes,” said Mr. Gabriel. “The equinox treads close behind us. Sst! Is it that you do not feel its breath? And you hear nothing?”

“It’s the Soul of the Bar,” said Dan; and he fell to telling us one of the wild stories that fishermen can tell each other by the lantern, rocking outside at night in the dory.

[156]

The wind was dead east, and now we flew before it, and now we tacked in it, up and up the winding stream, and always a little pointed sail came skimming on in suit.

“What sail is that, Dan?” asked I. “It looks like the one that flitted ahead this morning.”

“It is the one,” said Dan,——for he’d brought up a whole horde of superstitious memories, and a gloom that had been hovering off and on his face settled there for good. “As much of a one as that was. It’s no sail at all. It’s a death-sign. And I’ve never been down here and seen it but trouble was on its heels. Georgie! there’s two of them!”

We all looked, but it was hidden in a curve, and when it stole in sight again there were two of them, filmy and faint as spirits’ wings; and while we gazed they vanished, whether supernaturally or in the mist that was rising mast-high I never thought, for my blood was frozen as it ran.

“You have fear?” asked Mr. Gabriel,——his face perfectly pale, and his eye almost lost in darkness. “If it is a phantom, it can do you no harm.”

Faith’s teeth chattered,——I saw them. He turned to her, and as their look met, a spot of carnation burned into his cheek almost as a brand would have burned. He seemed to be balancing some point, to be searching her and sifting her; and Faith half rose, proudly, and pale, as if his look pierced her with pain. The look was long,——but before it fell, a glow and sparkle filled the eyes, and over his face there curled the deep, strange smile of the morning, till the long lids and heavy lashes dropped and made it sad. And Faith,——she started in[157] a new surprise, the darkness gathered and crept off her face as cream wrinkles from milk, and spleen or venom or what-not became absorbed again and lost, and there was nothing in her glance but passionate forgetfulness. Some souls are like the white river-lilies,——fixed, yet floating; but Mr. Gabriel had no firm root anywhere, and was blown about with every breeze, like a leaf on the flood. His purposes melted and made with his moods.

The wind got round more to the north, the mist fell upon the waters or blew away over the meadows, and it was cold. Mr. Gabriel wrapped the cloak about Faith and fastened it, and tied her bonnet. Just now Dan was so busy handling the boat,——and it’s rather risky, you have to wriggle up the creek so,——that he took little notice of us. Then Mr. Gabriel stood up, as if to change his position; and taking off his hat, he held it aloft, while he passed the other hand across his forehead. And leaning against the mast, he stood so, many minutes.

“Dan,” I said, “did your spiritual craft ever hang out a purple pennant?”

“No,” said Dan.

“Well,” says I. And we all saw a little purple ribbon running up the rope and streaming on the air behind us.

“And why do we not hoist our own?” said Mr. Gabriel, putting on his hat. And suiting the action to the word, a little green signal curled up and flaunted above us like a bunch of the weed floating there in the water beneath and dyeing all the shallows so that they looked like caves of cool emerald, and wide off and over[158] them the west burned smoulderingly red like a furnace. Many a time since, I’ve felt the magical color between those banks and along those meadows, but then I felt none of it; every wit I had was too awake and alert and fast-fixed in watching.

“Is it that the phantoms can be flesh and blood?” said Mr. Gabriel, laughingly; and, lifting his arm again, he hailed the foremost.

“Boat ahoy! What names?” said he.

The answer came back on the wind full and round.

“Speed, and Follow.”

“Where from?” asked Dan, with just a glint in his eye: for usually he knew every boat on the river, but he didn’t know these.

“From the schooner Flyaway, taking in sand over at Black Rocks.”

Then Mr. Gabriel spoke again, as they drew near; but whether he spoke so fast that I couldn’t understand, or whether he spoke French, I never knew; and Dan, with some kind of feeling that it was Mr. Gabriel’s acquaintance, suffered the one we spoke to pass us.

Once or twice Mr. Gabriel had begun some question to Dan about the approaching weather, but had turned it off again before anybody could answer. You see he had some little nobility left, and didn’t want the very man he was going to injure to show him how to do it. Now, however, he asked him that was steering the Speed by, if it was going to storm.

The man thought it was.

“How is it, then, that your schooner prepares to sail?”

[159]

“O, wind’s backed in; we’ll be on blue water before the gale breaks, I reckon, and then beat off where there’s plenty of sea-room.”

“But she shall make shipwreck!”

“‘Not if the court know herself, and he think she do,’” was the reply from another, as they passed.

Somehow I began to hate myself, I was so full of poisonous suspicions. How did Mr. Gabriel know the schooner prepared to sail? And this man, could he tell boom from bowsprit? I didn’t believe it; he had the hang of the up-river folks. But there stood Mr. Gabriel, so quiet and easy, his eyelids down, and he humming an underbreath of song; and there sat Faith, so pale and so pretty, a trifle sad, a trifle that her conscience would brew for her, whether or no. Yet, after all, there was an odd expression in Mr. Gabriel’s face, an eager, restless expectation; and if his lids were lowered, it was only to hide the spark that flushed and quenched in his eye like a beating pulse.

We had reached the draw, it was lifted for the Speed, she had passed, and the wind was in her sail once more. Yet, somehow, she hung back. And then I saw that the men in her were of those with whom Mr. Gabriel had spoken at noon. Dan’s sail fell slack, and we drifted slowly through, while he poled us along with an oar.

“Look out, Georgie!” said Dan, for he thought I was going to graze my shoulder upon the side there. I looked; and when I turned again, Mr. Gabriel was rising up from some earnest and hurried sentence to Faith. And Faith, too, was standing, standing and swaying with indecision, and gazing away out before her,——so[160] flushed and so beautiful,——so loath and so willing. Poor thing! poor thing! as if her rising in itself were not the whole!

Mr. Gabriel stepped across the boat, stooped a minute, and then also took an oar. How perfect he was, as he stood there that moment!——perfect like a statue, I mean,——so slender, so clean-limbed, his dark face pale to transparency in the green light that filtered through the draw! and then a ray from the sunset came creeping over the edge of the high fields and smote his eyes sidelong so that they glowed like jewels, and he with his oar planted firmly hung there bending far back with it, completely full of strength and grace.

“It is not the bateaux in the rapids,” said he.

“What are you about?” asked Dan, with sudden hoarseness. “You are pulling the wrong way!”

Mr. Gabriel laughed, and threw down his oar, and stepped back again; gave his hand to Faith, and half led, half lifted her, over the side, and into the Speed, followed, and never looked behind him. They let go something they had held, the Speed put her nose in the water and sprinkled us with spray, plunged, and dashed off like an arrow.

It was like him,——daring and insolent coolness! Just like him! Always the soul of defiance! None but one so reckless and impetuous as he would have dreamed of flying into the teeth of the tempest in that shell of a schooner. But he was mad with love, and they——there wasn’t a man among them but was the worse for liquor.

For a moment Dan took it, as Mr. Gabriel had expected him to do, as a joke, and went to trim the boat[161] for racing, not meaning they should reach town first. But I——I saw it all.

“Dan!” I sung out, “save her! She’s not coming back! They’ll make for the schooner at Black Rocks! O Dan, he’s taken her off!”

Now one whose intelligence has never been trained, who shells his five wits and gets rid of the pods as best he can, mayn’t be so quick as another, but like an animal, he feels long before he sees; and a vague sense of this had been upon Dan all day. Yet now he stood thunderstruck; and the thing went on before his very eyes. It was more than he could believe at once,——and perhaps his first feeling was, Why should he hinder? And then the flood fell. No thought of his loss,——though loss it wa’n’t,——only of his friend,——of such stunning treachery, that, if the sun fell hissing into the sea at noon, it would have mattered less,——only of that loss that tore his heart out with it.

“Gabriel!” he shouted,——“Gabriel!” And his voice was heart-rending. I know that Mr. Gabriel felt it, for he never turned nor stirred.

Then I don’t know what came over Dan: a blind rage swelling in his heart seemed to make him larger in every limb; he towered like a flame. He sprang to the tiller, but, as he did so, saw with one flash of his eye that Mr. Gabriel had unshipped the rudder and thrown it away. He seized an oar to steer with in its place; he saw that they, in their ignorance fast edging on the flats, would shortly be aground; more fisherman than sailor, he knew a thousand tricks of boat-craft that they had never heard of. We flew, we flew through cloven ridges, we[162] became a wind ourselves, and while I tell it he was beside them, had gathered himself as if to leap the chasm between time and eternity, and had landed among them in the Speed. The wherry careened with the shock and the water poured into her, and she flung headlong and away as his foot spurned her. Heaven knows why she didn’t upset, for I thought of nothing but the scene before me as I drifted off from it. I shut the eyes in my soul now, that I mayn’t see that horrid scuffle twice. Mr. Gabriel, he rose, he turned. If Dan was the giant beside him, he himself was so well-knit, so supple, so adroit, that his power was like the blade in the hand. Dan’s strength was lying round loose, but Mr. Gabriel’s was trained, it hid like springs of steel between brain and wrist, and from him the clap fell with the bolt. And then, besides, Dan did not love Faith, and he did love Gabriel. Any one could see how it would go. I screamed. I cried, “Faith! Faith!” And some natural instinct stirred in Faith’s heart, for she clung to Mr. Gabriel’s arm to pull him off from Dan. But he shook her away like rain. Then such a mortal weakness took possession of me that I saw everything black, and when it was clean gone, I looked, and they were locked in each other’s arms, fierce, fierce and fell, a death-grip. They were staggering to the boat’s edge: only this I saw, that Mr. Gabriel was inside: suddenly the helmsman interposed with an oar, and broke their grasps. Mr. Gabriel reeled away, free, for a second; then, the passion, the fury, the hate in his heart feeding his strength as youth fed the locks of Samson, he darted, and lifted Dan in his two arms and threw him like a[163] stone into the water. Stiffened to ice, I waited for Dan to rise; the other craft, the Follow, skimmed between us, and one man managing her that she shouldn’t heel, the rest drew Dan in,——it’s not the depth of two foot there,——tacked about, and after a minute came alongside, seized our painter, and dropped him gently into his own boat. Then——for the Speed had got afloat again——the thing stretched her two sails wing and wing, and went ploughing up a great furrow of foam before her.

I sprang to Dan. He was not senseless, but in a kind of stupor: his head had struck the fluke of a half-sunk anchor and it had stunned him, but as the wound bled he recovered slowly and opened his eyes. Ah, what misery was in them! I turned to the fugitives. They were yet in sight, Mr. Gabriel sitting and seeming to adjure Faith, whose skirts he held; but she stood, and her arms were outstretched, and, pale as a foam-wreath her face, and piercing as a night-wind her voice, I heard her cry, “O Georgie! Georgie!” It was too late for her to cry or to wring her hands now. She should have thought of that before. But Mr. Gabriel rose and drew her down, and hid her face in his arms and bent over it; and so they fled up the basin and round the long line of sand, and out into the gloom and the curdling mists.

I bound up Dan’s head. I couldn’t steer with an oar,——that was out of the question,——but, as luck would have it, could row tolerably; so I got down the little mast, and at length reached the wharves. The town-lights flickered up in the darkness and flickered back from the black rushing river, and then out blazed the great mills; and as I felt along, I remembered times[164] when we’d put in by the tender sunset, as the rose faded out of the water and the orange ebbed down the west, and one by one the sweet evening-bells chimed forth, so clear and high, and each with a different tone, that it seemed as if the stars must flock, tinkling, into the sky. And here were the bells ringing out again, ringing out of the gray and the gloom, dull and brazen, as if they rang from some cavern of shadows, or from the mouth of hell,——but no, that was down river! Well, I made my way, and the men on the landing took up Dan, and helped him in and got him on my little bed, and no sooner there than the heavy sleep with which he had struggled fell on him like lead.

The story flew from mouth to mouth, the region rang with it; nobody had any need to add to it, or to make it out a griffin or a dragon that had gripped Faith and carried her off in his talons. But everybody declared that those boats could be no ship’s yawls at all, but must belong to parties from up river camping out on the beach, and that a parcel of such must have gone sailing with some of the hands of a sand-droger: there was one in the stream now, that had got off with the tide, said the Jerdan boys who’d been down there that afternoon, though there was no such name as “Flyaway” on her stern, and they were waiting for the master of her, who’d gone off on a spree,——a dare-devil fellow, that used to run a smuggler between Bordeaux and Bristol, as they’d heard say: and all agreed that Mr. Gabriel could never have had to do with them before that day, or he’d have known what a place a sand-droger would be for a woman; and everybody made excuses for[165] Gabriel, and everybody was down on Faith. So there things lay. It was raw and chill when the last neighbor left us, the sky was black as a cloak, not a star to be seen, the wind had edged back to the east again and came in wet and wild from the sea and fringed with its thunder. O, poor little Faith, what a night! what a night for her!

I went back and sat down by Dan, and tried to keep his head cool. Father was up walking the kitchen floor till late, but at length he lay down across the foot of mother’s bed, as if expecting to be called. The lights were put out, there was no noise in the town, every one slept,——every one, except they watched like me, on that terrible night. No noise in the town, did I say? Ah, but there was! It came creeping round the corners, it poured rushing up the street, it rose from everywhere,——a voice, a voice of woe, the heavy booming rote of the sea. I looked out, but it was pitch-dark, light had forsaken the world, we were beleaguered by blackness. It grew colder, as if one felt a fog fall, and the wind, mounting slowly, now blew a gale. It eddied in clouds of dead and whirling leaves, and sent big torn branches flying aloft; it took the house by the four corners and shook it to loosening the rafters, and I felt the chair rock under me; it rumbled down the chimney as if it would tear the life out of us. And with every fresh gust of the gale the rain slapped against the wall, the rain that fell in rivers, and went before the wind in sheets; and sheltered as I was, the torrents seemed to pour over me like cataracts, and every drop pierced me like a needle, and I put my fingers in my ears to shut out the howl of the wind and[166] the waves. I couldn’t keep my thoughts away from Faith. O, poor girl, this wasn’t what she’d expected! As plainly as if I were aboard-ship I felt the scene, the hurrying feet, the slippery deck, the hoarse cries, the creaking cordage, the heaving and plunging and straining, and the wide wild night. And I was beating off those dreadful lines with them, two dreadful lines of white froth through the blackness, two lines where the horns of breakers guard the harbor,——all night long beating off the lee with them, my life in my teeth, and chill, blank, shivering horror before me. My whole soul, my whole being, was fixed in that one spot, that little vessel driving on the rocks: it seemed as if a madness took possession of me, I reeled as I walked, I forefelt the shivering shock, I waited till she should strike. And then I thought I heard cries, and I ran out in the storm, and down upon the causey, but nothing met me but the hollow night and the roaring sea and the wind. I came back, and hurried up and down and wrung my hands in an agony. Pictures of summer nights flashed upon me and faded,——where out of deep blue vaults the stars hung like lamps, great and golden,——or where soft films just hazing heaven caught the rays till all above gleamed like gauze faintly powdered and spangled with silver,——or heavy with heat, slipping over silent waters, through scented airs, under purple skies. And then storms rolled in and rose before my eyes, distinct for a moment, and breaking,——such as I’d seen them from the Shoals in broad daylight, when tempestuous columns scooped themselves up from the green gulfs and shattered in foam on the shuddering rock,——ah! but that was day, and this was midnight and[167] murk!——storms as I’d heard tell of them off Cape Race, when great steamers went down with but one cry, and the waters crowded them out of sight,——storms where, out of the wilderness of waves that far and wide wasted white around, a single one came ploughing on straight to the mark, gathering its grinding masses mast-high, poising, plunging, and swamping and crashing them into bottomless pits of destruction,——storms where waves toss and breakers gore, where, hanging on crests that slip from under, reefs impale the hull, and drowning wretches cling to the crags with stiffening hands, and the sleet ices them, and the spray, and the sea lashes and beats them with great strokes and sucks them down to death; and right in the midst of it all there burst a gun,——one, another, and no more. “O Faith! Faith!” I cried again, and I ran and hid my head in the bed.

How long did I stay so? An hour, or maybe two. Dan was still dead with sleep, but mother had no more closed an eye than I. There was no rain now, the wind had fallen, the dark had lifted; I looked out once more, and could just see dimly the great waters swinging in the river from bank to bank. I drew the bucket fresh, and bound the cloths cold on Dan’s head again. I hadn’t a thought in my brain, and I fell to counting the meshes in the net that hung from the wall, but in my ears there was the everlasting rustle of the sea and shore. It grew clearer,——it got to being a universal gray; there’d been no sunrise, but it was day. Dan stirred,——he turned over heavily; then he opened his eyes wide and looked about him.

[168]

“I’ve had such a fright!” he said. “Georgie! is that you?”

With that it swept over him afresh, and he fell back. In a moment or two he tried to rise, but he was weak as a child. He contrived to keep on his elbow a moment, though, and to give a look out of the window.

“It came on to blow, didn’t it?” he asked; but there he sank down again.

“I can’t stay so!” he murmured soon. “I can’t stay so! Here,——I must tell you. Georgie, get out the spy-glass, and go up on the roof and look over. I’ve had a dream, I tell you! I’ve had a dream. Not that either,——but it’s just stamped on me! It was like a storm,——and I dreamed that that schooner——the Flyaway——had parted. And the half of her’s crashed down just as she broke, and Faith and that man are high up on the bows in the middle of the South Breaker! Make haste, Georgie! Christ! make haste!”

I flew to the drawers and opened them, and began to put the spy-glass together. Suddenly he cried out again,——

“O, here’s where the fault was! What right had I ever to marry the child, not loving her? I bound her! I crushed her! I stifled her! If she lives, it is my sin; if she dies, I murder her!”

He hid his face, as he spoke, so that his voice came thick, and great choking groans rent their way up from his heart.

All at once, as I looked up, there stood mother, in her long white gown, beside the bed, and bending over and taking Dan’s hot head in her two hands.

[169]

“Behold, He cometh with clouds!” she whispered.

It always did seem to me as if mother had the imposition of hands,——perhaps every one feels just so about their mother,——but only her touch always lightens an ache for me, whether it’s in the heart or the head.

“O Aunt Rhody,” said Dan, looking up in her face with his distracted eyes, “can’t you help me?”

“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help,” said mother.

“There’s no help there!” called Dan. “There’s no God there! He wouldn’t have let a little child run into her damnation!”

“Hush, hush, Dan!” murmured mother. “Faith never can have been at sea in such a night as this, and not have felt God’s hand snatching her out of sin. If she lives, she’s a changed woman; and if she dies, her soul is whitened and fit to walk with saints. Through much tribulation.”

“Yes, yes,” muttered father, in the room beyond, spitting on his hands, as if he were going to take hold of the truth by the handle,——“it’s best to clean up a thing with the first spot, and not wait for it to get all rusty with crime.”

“And he!” said Dan,——“and he,——that man,——Gabriel!”
“Between the saddle and the ground
If mercy’s asked, mercy’s found,”

said I.

“Are you there yet, Georgie?” he cried, turning to me. “Here! I’ll go myself!” But he only stumbled and fell on the bed again.

[170]

“In all the terror and the tempest of these long hours,——for there’s been a fearful storm, though you haven’t felt it,” said mother,——“in all that, Mr. Gabriel can’t have slept. But at first it must have been that great dread appalled him, and he may have been beset with sorrow. He’d brought her to this. But at last, for he’s no coward, he has looked death in the face and not flinched; and the danger, and the grandeur there is in despair, have lifted his spirit to great heights,——heights found now in an hour, but which in a whole life long he never would have gained,——heights from which he has seen the light of God’s face and been transfigured in it,——heights where the soul dilates to a stature it can never lose. O Dan, there’s a moment, a moment when the dross strikes off, and the impurities, and the grain sets, and there comes out the great white diamond! For by grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God,——of Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning. O, I will believe that Mr. Gabriel hadn’t any need to grope as we do, but that suddenly he saw the Heavenly Arm and clung to it, and the grasp closed round him, and death and hell can have no power over him now! Dan, poor boy, is it better to lie in the earth with the ore than to be forged in the furnace and beaten to a blade fit for the hands of archangels?”

And mother stopped, trembling like a leaf.

I’d been wiping and screwing the glass, and I’d waited a breath, for mother always talked so like a preacher; but when she’d finished, after a second or two Dan looked up, and said, as if he’d just come in,[171]——

“Aunt Rhody, how come you out of bed?”

And then mother, she got upon the bed, and she took Dan’s head on her breast and fell to stroking his brows, laying her cool palms on his temples and on his eyelids, as once I’d have given my ears to do,——and I slipped out of the room.

O, I hated to go up those stairs, to mount that ladder, to open the scuttle! And once there, I waited and waited before I dared to look. The night had unnerved me. At length I fixed the glass. I swept the broad swollen stream, to the yellowing woods, and over the meadows, where a pale transient beam crept under and pried up the haycocks,——the smoke that began to curl from the chimneys and fall as soon,——the mists blowing off from Indian Hill, but brooding blue and dense down, the turnpike, and burying the red spark of the moon, that smothered like a half-dead coal in her ashes,——anywhere, anywhere but that spot! I don’t know why it was, but I couldn’t level the glass there,——my arm would fall, my eye haze. Finally I brought it round nearer and tried again. Everywhere, as far as your eye could reach, the sea was yeasty and white with froth, and great streaks of it were setting up the inky river, and against it there were the twin lighthouses quivering their little yellow rays as if to mock the dawn, and far out on the edge of day the great light at the Isles of Shoals blinked and blinked, crimson and gold, fainter and fainter, and lost at last. It was no use, I didn’t dare point it, my hand trembled so I could see nothing plain, when suddenly an engine went thundering over the bridge and startled me into stillness. The tube[172] slung in my hold and steadied against the chimney, and there——What was it in the field? what ghastly picture?

The glass crashed from my hand, and I staggered shrieking down the ladder.

The sound wasn’t well through my lips, when the door slammed, and Dan had darted out of the house and to the shore. I after him. There was a knot sitting and standing round there in the gray, shivering, with their hands in their pockets and their pipes set in their teeth; but the gloom was on them as well, and the pipes went out between the puffs.

“Where’s Dennis’s boat?” Dan demanded, as he strode.

“The six-oar’s all the one not——”

“The six-oar I want. Who goes with me?”

There wasn’t a soul in the ward but would have followed Dan’s lead to the end of the world and jumped off; and before I could tell their names there were three men on the thwart, six oars in the air, Dan stood in the bows, a word from him, and they shot away.

I watched while I could see, and then in and up to the attic, forgetting to put mother in her bed, forgetting all things but the one. And there lay the glass broken. I sat awhile with the pieces in my hand, as if I’d lost a kingdom; then down, and mechanically put things to rights, and made mother comfortable,——and she’s never stood on her feet from that day to this. At last I seated myself before the fire, and stared into it to blinding.

“Won’t some one lend you a glass, Georgie?” said mother.

[173]

“Of course they will!” I cried,——for, you see, I hadn’t a wit of my own,——and I ran out.

There’s a glass behind every door in the street, you should know, and there’s no day in the year that you’ll go by and not see one stretching from some roof where the heart of the house is out on the sea. O, sometimes I think all the romance of the town is clustered down here on the Flats and written in pale cheeks and starting eyes! But what’s the use? After one winter, one, I gave mine away, and never got another. It’s just an emblem of despair. Look, and look again, and look till your soul sinks, and the thing you want never crosses it; but you’re down in the kitchen stirring a porridge, or you’re off at a neighbor’s asking the news, and somebody shouts at you round the corner, and there, black and dirty and dearer than gold, she lies between the piers.

All the world was up on their house-tops spying, that morning, but there was nobody would keep their glass while I had none; so I went back armed, and part of it all I saw, and part of it father told me.

I waited till I thought they were ’most across, and then I rubbed the lens. At first I saw nothing, and I began to quake with a greater fear than any that had yet taken root in me. But with the next moment there they were, pulling close up. I shut my eyes for a flash with some kind of a prayer that was most like an imprecation, and when I looked again they had dashed over and dashed over, taking the rise of the long roll, and were in the midst of the South Breaker. O God! that terrible South Breaker! The oars bent lithe as willow-switches,[174] a moment they skimmed on the caps, a moment were hid in the snow of the spray. Dan, red-shirted, still stood there, his whole soul on the aim before him, like that of some leaper flying through the air; he swayed to the stroke, he bowed, he rose, perfectly balanced, and flexile as the wave. The boat behaved beneath their hands like a live creature: she bounded so that you almost saw the light under her; her whole stem lifted itself slowly out of the water, caught the back of a roller and rode over upon the next; the very things that came rushing in with their white rage to devour her bent their necks and bore her up like a bubble. Constantly she drew nearer that dark and shattered heap up to which the fierce surf raced, and over which it leaped. And there all the time, all the time, they had been clinging, far out on the bowsprit, those two figures, her arms close-knit about him, he clasping her with one, the other twisted in the hawser whose harsh thrilling must have filled their ears like an organ-note as it swung them to and fro,——clinging to life,——clinging to each other more than to life. The wreck scarcely heaved with the stoutest blow of the tremendous surge; here and there, only, a plank shivered off and was bowled on and thrown high upon the beach beside fragments of beams broken and bruised to a powder; it seemed to be as firmly planted there as the breaker itself. Great feathers of foam flew across it, great waves shook themselves thin around it and veiled it in shrouds, and with their every breath the smothering sheets dashed over them,——the two. And constantly the boat drew nearer, as I said; they were almost within hail; Dan saw her hair streaming on the wind; he waited only for[175] the long wave. On it came, that long wave,——oh! I can see it now!——plunging and rearing and swelling, a monstrous billow, sweeping and swooping and rocking in. Its hollows gaped with slippery darkness, it towered and sent the scuds before its trembling crest, breaking with a mighty rainbow as the sun burst forth, it fell in a white blindness everywhere, rushed seething up the sand,——and the bowsprit was bare!——

When father came home, the rack had driven down the harbor and left clear sky; it was near nightfall; they’d been searching the shore all day,——to no purpose. But that rainbow,——I always took it for a sign. Father was worn out, yet he sat in the chimney-side, cutting off great quids and chewing and thinking and sighing. At last he went and wound up the clock,——it was the stroke of twelve,——and then he turned to me and said,——

“Dan sent you this, Georgie. He hailed a pilot-boat, and’s gone to the Cape to join the fall fleet to the fish’ries. And he sent you this.”

It was just a great hand-grip to make your nails purple, but there was heart’s-blood in it. See, there’s the mark to-day.

So there was Dan off in the Bay of Chaleur. ’Twas the best place for him. And I went about my work once more. There was a great gap in my life, but I tried not to look at it. I durstn’t think of Dan, and I wouldn’t think of them,——the two. Always in such times it’s as if a breath had come and blown across the pool and you could see down its dark depths and into the very bottom, but time scums it all over again. And I tell you it’s best to look trouble in the face; if you don’t you’ll have[176] more of it. So I got a lot of shoes to bind, and what part of my spare time I wa’n’t at my books the needle flew. But I turned no more to the past than I could help, and the future trembled too much to be seen.

Well, the two months dragged away, it got to be Thanksgiving week, and at length the fleet was due. I mind me I made a great baking that week; and I put brandy into the mince for once, instead of vinegar and dried-apple juice,——and there were the fowls stuffed and trussed on the shelf,——and the pumpkin-pies like slices of split gold,——and the cranberry-tarts, plats of crimson and puffs of snow,——and I was brewing in my mind a right-royal red Indian pudding to come out of the oven smoking hot and be soused with thick clots of yellow cream,——when one of the boys ran in and told us the fleet’d got back, but no Dan with it,——he’d changed over to a fore-and-after, and wouldn’t be home at all, but was to stay down in the Georges all winter, and he’d sent us word. Well, the baking went to the dogs, or the Thanksgiving beggars, which is the same thing.

Then days went by, as days will, and it was well into the New Year. I used to sit there at the window, reading,——but the lines would run together, and I’d forget what ’twas all about, and gather no sense, and the image of the little fore-and-after, the Feather, raked in between the leaves, and at last I had to put all that aside; and then I sat stitching, stitching, but got into a sad habit of looking up and looking out each time I drew the thread. I felt it was a shame of me to be so glum, and mother missed my voice; but I could no more talk than I could have given conundrums to King Solomon, and[177] as for singing——O, I used to long so for just a word from Dan!

We’d had dry fine weeks all along, and father said he’d known we should have just such a season, because the goose’s breast-bone was so white; but St. Valentine’s day the weather broke, broke in a chain of storms that the September gale was a whisper to. Ah, it was a dreadful winter, that! You’ve surely heard of it. It made forty widows in one town. Of the dead that were found on Prince Edward’s Island’s shores there were four corpses in the next house yonder, and two in the one behind. And what waiting and watching and cruel pangs of suspense for them that couldn’t have even the peace of certainty! And I was one of those.

The days crept on, I say, and got bright again; no June days ever stretched themselves to half such length; there was perfect stillness in the house,——it seemed to me that I counted every tick of the clock. In the evenings the neighbors used to drop in and sit mumbling over their fearful memories till the flesh crawled on my bones. Father, then, he wanted cheer, and he’d get me to singing “Caller Herrin’.” Once, I’d sung the first part, but as I reached the lines,——
“When ye were sleepin’ on your pillows,
Dreamt ye aught o’ our puir fellows
Darklin’ as they face the billows,
A’ to fill our woven willows,”——

as I reached those lines, my voice trembled so’s to shake the tears out of my eyes, and Jim Jerdan took it up himself and sung it through for me to words of his own[178] invention. He was always a kindly fellow, and he knew a little how the land lay between me and Dan.

“When I was down in the Georges,” said Jim Jerdan——

“You? When was you down there?” asked father.

“Well,——once I was. There’s worse places.”

“Can’t tell me nothing about the Georges,” said father. “’Ta’n’t the rivers of Damascus exactly, but ’ta’n’t the Marlstrom neither.”

“Ever ben there, Cap’n?”

“A few. Spent more nights under cover roundabouts than Georgie’ll have white hairs in her head,——for all she’s washing the color out of her eyes now.”

You see, father knew I set by my hair,——for in those days I rolled it thick as a cable, almost as long, black as that cat’s back,——and he thought he’d touch me up a little.

“Wash the red from her cheek and the light from her look, and she’ll still have the queen’s own tread,” said Jim.

“If Loisy Currier’d heern that, you’d wish your cake was dough,” says father.

“I’ll resk it,” says Jim. “Loisy knows who’s second choice, as well as if you told her.”

“But what about the Georges, Jim?” I asked; for though I hated to hear, I could listen to nothing else.

“Georges? O, not much! Just like any other place.”

“But what do you do down there?”

“Do? Why, we fish,——in the pleasant weather.”

“And when it’s not pleasant?”

“O, then we make things taut, hoist fores’l, clap the[179] hellum into the lee becket, and go below and amuse ourselves.”

“How?” I asked, as if I hadn’t heard it all a hundred times.

“One way ’n’ another. Pipes, and mugs, and poker, if it a’n’t too rough; and if it is, we just bunk and snooze till it gets smooth.”

“Why, Jim,——how do you know when that is?”

“Well, you can jedge,——’f the pipe falls out of your pocket and don’t light on the ceiling.”

“And who’s on deck?”

“There’s no one on deck. There’s no danger, no trouble, no nothing. Can’t drive ashore, if you was to try: hundred miles off, in the first place. Hatches are closed, she’s light as a cork, rolls over and over just like any other log in the water, and there can’t a drop get into her, if she turns bottom-side up.”

“But she never can right herself!”

“Can’t she? You just try her. Why, I’ve known ’em to keel over and rake bottom and bring up the weed on the topmast. I tell you now! there was one time we knowed she’d turned a somerset, pretty well. Why? Because, when it cleared and we come up, there was her two masts broke short off!”

And Jim went home thinking he’d given me a night’s sleep. But it was cold comfort; the Georges seemed to me a worse place than the Hellgate. And mother she kept murmuring, “He layeth the beams of His chambers in the waters, His pavilion round about Him is dark waters and thick clouds of the skies.” And I knew by that she thought it pretty bad.

[180]

So the days went in cloud and wind. The owners of the Feather’d been looking for her a month and more, and there were strange kind of rumors afloat; and nobody mentioned Dan’s name, unless they tripped. I went glowering like a wild thing. I knew I’d never see Dan now nor hear his voice again, but I hated the Lord that had done it, and I made my heart like the nether millstone. I used to try and get out of folks’s sight; and roaming about the back streets one day, as the snow went off, I stumbled on Miss Catharine. “Old Miss Catharine” everybody called her, though she was but a pauper, and had black blood in her veins. Eighty years had withered her,——a little woman at best, and now bent so that her head and shoulders hung forward and she couldn’t lift them, and she never saw the sky. Her face to the ground as no beast’s face is turned even, she walked with a cane, and fixing it every few steps she would throw herself back, and so get a glimpse of her way and go on. I looked after her, and for the first time in weeks my heart ached for somebody beside myself. The next day mother sent me with a dish to Miss Catharine’s room, and I went in and sat down. I didn’t like her at first; she’d got a way of looking sidelong that gave her an evil air; but soon she tilted herself backward, and I saw her face,——such a happy one!

“What’s the matter of ye, honey?” said she. “D’ye read your Bible?”

Read my Bible!

“Is that what makes you happy, Miss Catharine?” I asked.

“Well, I can’t read much myself,——I don’t know the[181] letters,” says she; “but I’ve got the blessed promises in my heart.”

“Do you want me to read to you?”

“No, not to-day. Next time you come, maybe.”

So I sat awhile and listened to her little humming voice, and we fell to talking about mother’s ailments, and she said how fine it would be, if we could only afford to take mother to Bethesda.

“There’s no angel there now,” said I.

“I know it, dear,——but then——there might be, you know. At any rate, there’s always the living waters running to make us whole: I often think of that.”

“And what else do you think of, Miss Catharine?”

“Me?” said she. “O, I ha’n’t got no husband nor no child to think about and hope for, and so I think of myself, and what I should like, honey. And sometimes I remember them varses,——here! you read ’em now,——Luke xiii. 11.”

So I read:——

“And, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself. And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, ‘Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity.’ And he laid his hands on her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.”

“Ay, honey, I see that all as if it was me. And I think, as I’m setting here, What if the latch should lift, and the gracious stranger should come in, his gown a-sweepin’ behind him and a-sweet’nin’ the air, and he should look down on me with his heavenly eyes, and he[182] should smile, and lay his hands on my head, warm,——and I say to myself, ‘Lord, I am not worthy,’——and he says, ‘Miss Catharine, thou art loosed from thine infirmity!’ And the latch lifts as I think, and I wait,——but it’s not Him.”

Well, when I went out of that place I wasn’t the same girl that had gone in. My will gave way; I came home and took up my burden and was in peace. Still I couldn’t help my thoughts,——and they ran perpetually to the sea. I hadn’t need to go up on the house-tops, for I didn’t shut my eyes but there it stretched before me. I stirred about the rooms and tried to make them glad once more; but I was thin and blanched as if I’d been rising from a fever. Father said it was the salt air I wanted; and one day he was going out for frost-fish, and he took me with him, and left me and my basket on the sands while he was away. It was this side of the South Breaker that he put me out, but I walked there; and where the surf was breaking in the light, I went and sat down and looked over it. I could do that now.

There was the Cape sparkling miles and miles across the way, unconcerned that he whose firm foot had rung last on its flints should ring there no more; there was the beautiful town lying large and warm along the river; here gay craft went darting about like gulls, and there up the channel sped a larger one, with all her canvas flashing in the sun, and shivering a little spritsail in the shadow, as she went; and fawning in upon my feet came the foam from the South Breaker, that still perhaps cradled Faith and Gabriel. But as I looked, my eye fell, and there came the sea-scenes again,——other scenes than[183] this, coves and corners of other coasts, sky-girt regions of other waters. The air was soft, that April day, and I thought of the summer calms; and with that rose long sheets of stillness, far out from any strand, purple beneath the noon; fields slipping close in-shore, emerald-backed and scaled with sunshine; long sleepy swells that hid the light in their hollows, and came creaming along the cliffs. And if upon these broke suddenly a wild glimpse of some storm careering over a merciless mid-ocean, of a dear dead face tossing up on the surge and snatched back again into the depths, of mad wastes rushing to tear themselves to fleece above clear shallows and turbid sand-bars,——they melted and were lost in peaceful glimmers of the moon on distant flying foam-wreaths, in solemn midnight tides chanting in under hushed heavens, in twilight stretches kissing twilight slopes, in rosy morning waves flocking up the singing shores. And sitting so, with my lids still fallen, I heard a quick step on the beach, and a voice that said, “Georgie!” And I looked, and a figure, red-shirted, towered beside me, and a face, brown and bearded and tender, bent above me.


THE SNOW-STORM.
BY JOHN WILSON.

In summer there is beauty in the wildest moors of Scotland, and the wayfaring man who sits down for an hour’s rest beside some little spring that flows unheard through the brightened moss and water-cresses feels his weary heart revived by the silent, serene, and solitary prospect. On every side sweet sunny spots of verdure smile towards him from among the melancholy heather,——unexpectedly in the solitude a stray sheep, it may be with its lamb, starts half alarmed at his motionless figure,——insects large, bright, and beautiful come careering by him through the desert air,——nor does the Wild want its own songsters, the gray linnet, fond of the blooming furze, and now and then the lark mounting up to heaven above the summits of the green pastoral hills. During such a sunshiny hour, the lonely cottage on the waste seems to stand in a paradise; and as he rises to pursue his journey, the traveller looks back and blesses it with a mingled emotion of delight and envy. There, thinks he, abide the children of Innocence and Contentment, the two most benign spirits that watch over human life.

[185]

But other thoughts arise in the mind of him who may chance to journey through the same scene in the desolation of winter. The cold bleak sky girdles the moor as with a belt of ice,——life is frozen in air and on earth. The silence is not of repose, but extinction; and should a solitary human dwelling catch his eye half buried in the snow, he is sad for the sake of them whose destiny it is to abide far from the cheerful haunts of men, shrouded up in melancholy, by poverty held in thrall, or pining away in unvisited and untended disease.

But, in good truth, the heart of human life is but imperfectly discovered from its countenance; and before we can know what the summer or what the winter yields for enjoyment or trial to our country’s peasantry, we must have conversed with them in their fields and by their firesides, and made ourselves acquainted with the powerful ministry of the seasons, not over those objects alone that feed the eye and the imagination, but over all the incidents, occupations, and events that modify or constitute the existence of the poor.

I have a short and simple story to tell of the winter life of the moorland cottager,——a story but of one evening,——with few events and no signal catastrophe,——but which may haply please those hearts whose delight it is to think on the humble under-plots that are carrying on in the great Drama of Life.

Two cottagers, husband and wife, were sitting by their cheerful peat-fire one winter evening, in a small lonely hut on the edge of a wide moor, at some miles’ distance from any other habitation. There had been, at one time, several huts of the same kind erected close together, and[186] inhabited by families of the poorest class of day-laborers, who found work among the distant farms, and at night returned to dwellings which were rent-free, with their little garden won from the waste. But one family after another had dwindled away, and the turf-built huts had all fallen into ruins, except one that had always stood in the centre of this little solitary village, with its summer walls covered with the richest honeysuckles, and in the midst of the brightest of all the gardens. It alone now sent up its smoke into the clear winter sky; and its little end window, now lighted up, was the only ground-star that shone towards the belated traveller, if any such ventured to cross, on a winter night, a scene so dreary and desolate. The affairs of the small household were all arranged for the night. The little rough pony that had drawn in a sledge, from the heart of the Black-moss, the fuel by whose blaze the cotters were now sitting cheerily, and the little Highland cow, whose milk enabled them to live, were standing amicably together, under cover of a rude shed, of which one side was formed by the peat-stack, and which was at once byre and stable and hen-roost. Within, the clock ticked cheerfully as the firelight reached its old oak-wood case across the yellow-sanded floor; and a small round table stood between, covered with a snow-white cloth, on which were milk and oat-cakes, the morning, midday, and evening meal of these frugal and contented cotters. The spades and the mattocks of the laborer were collected into one corner, and showed that the succeeding day was the blessed Sabbath; while on the wooden chimney-piece was seen lying an open Bible ready for family worship.

[187]

The father and the mother were sitting together without opening their lips, but with their hearts overflowing with happiness; for on this Saturday night they were, every minute, expecting to hear at the latch the hand of their only daughter, a maiden of about fifteen years, who was at service with a farmer over the hills. This dutiful child was, as they knew, to bring home to them “her sair-worn penny fee,” a pittance which, in the beauty of her girlhood, she earned singing at her work, and which, in the benignity of that sinless time, she would pour with tears into the bosoms she so dearly loved. Forty shillings a year were all the wages of sweet Hannah Lee; but though she wore at her labor a tortoise-shell comb in her auburn hair, and though in the kirk none were more becomingly arrayed than she, one half, at least, of her earnings were to be reserved for the holiest of all purposes, and her kind innocent heart was gladdened when she looked on the little purse that was, on the long-expected Saturday night, to be taken from her bosom, and put, with a blessing, into the hand of her father, now growing old at his daily toils.

Of such a child the happy cotters were thinking in their silence. And well indeed might they be called happy. It is at that sweet season that filial piety is most beautiful. Their own Hannah had just outgrown the mere unthinking gladness of childhood, but had not yet reached that time when inevitable selfishness mixes with the pure current of love. She had begun to think on what her affectionate heart had left so long; and when she looked on the pale face and bending frame of her mother, on the deepening wrinkles and whitening[188] hairs of her father, often would she lie weeping for their sakes on her midnight bed, and wish that she were beside them as they slept, that she might kneel down and kiss them, and mention their names over and over again in her prayer. The parents whom before she had only loved, her expanding heart now also venerated. With gushing tenderness was now mingled a holy fear and an awful reverence. She had discerned the relation in which she, an only child, stood to her poor parents, now that they were getting old, and there was not a passage in Scripture that spake of parents or of children, from Joseph sold into slavery, to Mary weeping below the Cross, that was not written, never to be obliterated, on her uncorrupted heart.

The father rose from his seat, and went to the door, to look out into the night. The stars were in thousands,——and the full moon was risen. It was almost light as day, and the snow, that seemed incrusted with diamonds, was so hardened by the frost, that his daughter’s homeward feet would leave no mark on its surface. He had been toiling all day among the distant Castle-woods, and, stiff and wearied as he now was, he was almost tempted to go to meet his child; but his wife’s kind voice dissuaded him, and, returning to the fireside, they began to talk of her, whose image had been so long passing before them in their silence.

“She is growing up to be a bonnie lassie,” said the mother; “her long and weary attendance on me during my fever last spring kept her down awhile; but now she is sprouting fast and fair as a lily, and may the blessing of God be as dew and as sunshine to our sweet[189] flower all the days she bloometh upon this earth.” “Ay, Agnes,” replied the father, “we are not very old yet,——though we are getting older,——and a few years will bring her to woman’s estate, and what thing on this earth, think ye, human or brute, would ever think of injuring her? Why, I was speaking about her yesterday to the minister as he was riding by, and he told me that none answered at the examination in the kirk so well as Hannah. Poor thing,——I well think she has all the Bible by heart,——indeed, she has read but little else,——only some stories,——too true ones, of the blessed martyrs, and some of the auld sangs o’ Scotland, in which there is nothing but what is good, and which, to be sure, she sings, God bless her, sweeter than any laverock.” “Ay, were we both to die this very night, she would be happy. Not that she would forget us all the days of her life. But have you not seen, husband, that God always makes the orphan happy? None so little lonesome as they! They come to make friends o’ all the bonny and sweet things in the world, around them, and all the kind hearts in the world make o’ them. They come to know that God is more especially the Father o’ them on earth whose parents he has taken up to heaven; and therefore it is that they for whom so many have fears, fear not at all for themselves, but go dancing and singing along like children whose parents are both alive! Would it not be so with our dear Hannah? So douce and thoughtful a child,——but never sad nor miserable,——ready, it is true, to shed tears for little, but as ready to dry them up and break out into smiles! I know not why it is, husband, but this night[190] my heart warms towards her beyond usual. The moon and stars are at this moment looking down upon her, and she looking up to them, as she is glinting homewards over the snow. I wish she were but here, and taking the comb out o’ her bonny hair and letting it fall down in clusters before the fire, to melt away the cranreuch.”

While the parents were thus speaking of their daughter, a loud sough of wind came suddenly over the cottage, and the leafless ash-tree, under whose shelter it stood, creaked and groaned dismally as it passed by. The father started up, and, going again to the door, saw that a sudden change had come over the face of the night. The moon had nearly disappeared, and was just visible in a dim, yellow, glimmering den in the sky. All the remote stars were obscured, and only one or two faintly seemed in a sky that half an hour before was perfectly cloudless, but that was now driving with rack and mist and sleet, the whole atmosphere being in commotion. He stood for a single moment to observe the direction of this unforeseen storm, and then hastily asked for his staff. “I thought I had been more weatherwise. A storm is coming down from the Cairnbraehawse, and we shall have nothing but a wild night.” He then whistled on his dog,——an old sheep-dog, too old for its former labors,——and set off to meet his daughter, who might then, for aught he knew, be crossing the Black-moss. The mother accompanied her husband to the door, and took a long, frightened look at the angry sky. As she kept gazing, it became still more terrible. The last shred of blue was extinguished; the wind went whirling in roaring[191] eddies, and great flakes of snow circled about in the middle air, whether drifted up from the ground, or driven down from the clouds, the fear-stricken mother knew not, but she at last knew that it seemed a night of danger, despair, and death. “Lord have mercy on us, James, what will become of our poor bairn!” But her husband heard not her words, for he was already out of sight in the snow-storm, and she was left to the terror of her own soul in that lonesome cottage.

Little Hannah Lee had left her master’s house, soon as the rim of the great moon was seen by her eyes, that had been long anxiously watching it from the window, rising, like a joyful dream, over the gloomy mountain-tops; and all by herself she tripped along beneath the beauty of the silent heaven. Still as she kept ascending and descending the knolls that lay in the bosom of the glen, she sung to herself a song, a hymn, or a psalm, without the accompaniment of the streams, now all silent in the frost; and ever and anon she stopped to try to count the stars that lay in some more beautiful part of the sky, or gazed on the constellations that she knew, and called them in her joy by the names they bore among the shepherds. There were none to hear her voice, or see her smiles, but the ear and eye of Providence. As on she glided, and took her looks from heaven, she saw her own little fireside,——her parents waiting for her arrival,——the Bible opened for worship,——her own little room kept so neatly for her, with its mirror hanging by the window, in which to braid her hair by the morning light,——her bed prepared for her by her mother’s hand,——the primroses in the garden peeping through the snow,——old[192] Tray, who ever welcomed her home with his dim white eyes,——the pony and the cow; friends all, and inmates of that happy household. So stepped she along, while the snow diamonds glittered around her feet, and the frost wove a wreath of lucid pearls round her forehead.

She had now reached the edge of the Black-moss, which lay half-way between her master’s and her father’s dwelling, when she heard a loud noise coming down Glen-Scrae, and in a few seconds she felt on her face some flakes of snow. She looked up the glen, and saw the snow-storm coming down, fast as a flood. She felt no fears; but she ceased her song; and had there been a human eye to look upon her there, it might have seen a shadow on her face. She continued her course, and felt bolder and bolder every step that brought her nearer to her parents’ house. But the snow-storm had now reached the Black-moss, and the broad line of light that had lain in the direction of her home was soon swallowed up, and the child was in utter darkness. She saw nothing but the flakes of snow, interminably intermingled, and furiously wafted in the air, close to her head; she heard nothing but one wild, fierce, fitful howl. The cold became intense, and her little feet and hands were fast being benumbed into insensibility.

“It is a fearful change,” muttered the child to herself; but still she did not fear, for she had been born in a moorland cottage, and lived all her days among the hardships of the hills. “What will become of the poor sheep!” thought she; but still she scarcely thought of her own danger, for innocence and youth and joy are[193] slow to think of aught evil befalling themselves, and, thinking benignly of all living things, forget their own fear in their pity for others’ sorrow. At last she could no longer discern a single mark on the snow, either of human steps, or of sheep-track, or the footprint of a wild-fowl. Suddenly, too, she felt out of breath and exhausted,——and, shedding tears for herself at last, sank down in the snow.

It was now that her heart began to quake with fear. She remembered stories of shepherds lost in the snow,——of a mother and child frozen to death on that very moor,——and in a moment she knew that she was to die. Bitterly did the poor child weep, for death was terrible to her, who, though poor, enjoyed the bright little world of youth and innocence. The skies of heaven were dearer than she knew to her,——so were the flowers of earth. She had been happy at her work,——happy in her sleep,——happy in the kirk on Sabbath. A thousand thoughts had the solitary child,——and in her own heart was a spring of happiness, pure and undisturbed as any fount that sparkles unseen all the year through in some quiet nook among the pastoral hills. But now there was to be an end of all this,——she was to be frozen to death,——and lie there till the thaw might come; and then her father would find her body, and carry it away to be buried in the kirk-yard.

The tears were frozen on her cheeks as soon as shed; and scarcely had her little hands strength to clasp themselves together, as the thought of an overruling and merciful Lord came across her heart. Then, indeed, the fears of this religious child were calmed, and she heard[194] without terror the plover’s wailing cry, and the deep boom of the bittern sounding in the moss. “I will repeat the Lord’s Prayer.” And, drawing her plaid more closely around her, she whispered, beneath its ineffectual cover, “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,——thy kingdom come,——thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Had human aid been within fifty yards, it could have been of no avail,——eye could not see her,——ear could not hear her in that howling darkness. But that low prayer was heard in the centre of eternity; and that little sinless child was lying in the snow, beneath the all-seeing eye of God.

The maiden having prayed to her Father in heaven, then thought of her father on earth. Alas! they were not far separated! The father was lying but a short distance from his child; he too had sunk down in the drifting snow, after having, in less than an hour, exhausted all the strength of fear, pity, hope, despair, and resignation, that could rise in a father’s heart blindly seeking to rescue his only child from death, thinking that one desperate exertion might enable them to perish in each other’s arms. There they lay, within a stone’s throw of each other, while a huge snow-drift was every moment piling itself up into a more insurmountable barrier between the dying parent and his dying child.

There was all this while a blazing fire in the cottage, a white-spread table, and beds prepared for the family to lie down in peace. Yet was she who sat therein more to be pitied than the old man and the child stretched upon the snow. “I will not go to seek them, that would be tempting Providence, and wilfully putting[195] out the lamp of life. No! I will abide here and pray for their souls!” Then, as she knelt down, looked she at the useless fire burning away so cheerfully, when all she loved might be dying of cold; and, unable to bear the thought, she shrieked out a prayer, as if she might pierce the sky to the very throne of God, and send with it her own miserable soul to plead before him for the deliverance of her child and husband. She then fell down in blessed forgetfulness of all trouble, in the midst of the solitary cheerfulness of that bright-burning hearth; and the Bible, which she had been trying to read in the pauses of her agony, remained clasped in her hands.

Hannah Lee had been a servant for more than six months, and it was not to be thought that she was not beloved in her master’s family. Soon after she had left the house, her master’s son, a youth of about eighteen years, who had been among the hills looking after the sheep, came home, and was disappointed to find that he had lost an opportunity of accompanying Hannah part of the way to her father’s cottage. But the hour of eight had gone by, and not even the company of young William Grieve could induce the kind-hearted daughter to delay setting out on her journey a few minutes beyond the time promised to her parents. “I do not like the night,” said William; “there will be a fresh fall of snow soon, or the witch of Glen-Scrae is a liar, for a snow-cloud is hanging o’er the Birch-tree-lin, and it may be down to the Black-moss as soon as Hannah Lee.” So he called his two sheep-dogs that had taken their place under the long table before the window,[196] and set out, half in joy, half in fear, to overtake Hannah, and see her safely across the Black-moss.

The snow began to drift so fast, that before he had reached the head of the glen, there was nothing to be seen but a little bit of the wooden rail of the bridge across the Sauch-burn. William Grieve was the most active shepherd in a large pastoral parish; he had often passed the night among the wintry hills for the sake of a few sheep, and all the snow that ever fell from heaven would not have made him turn back when Hannah Lee was before him, and, as his terrified heart told him, in imminent danger of being lost. As he advanced, he felt that it was no longer a walk of love or friendship, for which he had been glad of an excuse. Death stared him in the face, and his young soul, now beginning to feel all the passions of youth, was filled with frenzy. He had seen Hannah every day,——at the fireside,——at work,——in the kirk,——on holidays,——at prayers,——bringing supper to his aged parents,——smiling and singing about the house from morning till night. She had often brought his own meal to him among the hills; and he now found that though he had never talked to her about love, except smilingly and playfully, he loved her beyond father or mother, or his own soul. “I will save thee, Hannah,” he cried, with a loud sob, “or lie down beside thee in the snow; and we will die together in our youth.” A wild, whistling wind went by him, and the snow-flakes whirled so fiercely around his head, that he staggered on for a while in utter blindness. He knew the path that Hannah must have taken, and went forward shouting aloud, and stopping every twenty[197] yards to listen for a voice. He sent his well-trained dogs over the snow in all directions; repeating to them her name, “Hannah Lee,” that the dumb animals might, in their sagacity, know for whom they were searching; and as they looked up in his face, and set off to scour the moor, he almost believed that they knew his meaning (and it is probable they did), and were eager to find in her bewilderment the kind maiden by whose hand they had so often been fed. Often went they off into the darkness, and as often returned, but their looks showed that every quest had been in vain. Meanwhile the snow was of a fearful depth, and falling without intermission or diminution. Had the young shepherd been thus alone, walking across the moor on his ordinary business, it is probable that he might have been alarmed for his own safety; nay, that, in spite of all his strength and agility, he might have sunk down beneath the inclemency of the night and perished. But now the passion of his soul carried him with supernatural strength along, and extricated him from wreath and pitfall. Still there was no trace of poor Hannah Lee: and one of his dogs at last came close to his feet, worn out entirely, and afraid to leave its master; while the other was mute, and, as the shepherd thought, probably unable to force its way out of some hollow or through some floundering drift. Then he all at once knew that Hannah Lee was dead,——and dashed himself down in the snow in a fit of passion. It was the first time that the youth had ever been sorely tried; all his hidden and unconscious love for the fair lost girl had flowed up from the bottom of his heart; and at once the sole[198] object which had blest his life and made him the happiest of the happy was taken away and cruelly destroyed, so that, sullen, wrathful, baffled, and despairing, there he lay, cursing his existence, and in too great agony to think of prayer. “God,” he then thought, “has forsaken me, and why should he think on me, when he suffers one so good and beautiful as Hannah to be frozen to death?” God thought both of him and of Hannah, and through his infinite mercy forgave the sinner in his wild turbulence of passion. William Grieve had never gone to bed without joining in prayer; and he revered the Sabbath day and kept it holy. Much is forgiven to the human heart by him who so fearfully framed it; and God is not slow to pardon the love which one human being bears to another, in his frailty, even though that love forget or arraign his own unsleeping providence. His voice has told us to love one another; and William loved Hannah in simplicity, innocence, and truth. That she should perish, was a thought so dreadful, that, in its agony, God seemed a ruthless being——“Blow——blow——blow, and drift us up forever,——we cannot be far asunder. O Hannah,——Hannah!——think ye not that the fearful God has forsaken us?”

As the boy groaned these words passionately through his quivering lips, there was a sudden lowness in the air, and he heard the barking of his absent dog, while the one at his feet hurried off in the direction of the sound, and soon loudly joined the cry. It was not a bark of surprise, or anger, or fear, but of recognition and love. William sprang up from his bed in the snow, and with[199] his heart knocking at his bosom even to sickness, he rushed headlong through the drifts, with a giant’s strength, and fell down half dead with joy and terror beside the body of Hannah Lee.

But he soon recovered from that fit, and, lifting the cold corpse in his arms, he kissed her lips, and her cheeks, and her forehead, and her closed eyes, till, as he kept gazing on her face in utter despair, her head fell back on his shoulder, and a long, deep sigh came from her inmost bosom. “She is yet alive, thank God!” And as that expression left his lips for the first time that night, he felt a pang of remorse. “I said, O God, that thou hadst forsaken us; I am not worthy to be saved; but let not this maiden perish, for the sake of her parents, who have no other child.” The distracted youth prayed to God with the same earnestness as if he had been beseeching a fellow-creature, in whose hand was the power of life and of death. The presence of the Great Being was felt by him in the dark and howling wild, and strength was imparted to him as to a deliverer. He bore along the fair child in his arms, even as if she had been a lamb. The snow-drift blew not,——the wind fell dead,——a sort of glimmer, like that of an upbreaking and disparting storm, gathered about him,——his dogs barked and jumped, and burrowed joyfully in the snow,——and the youth, strong in sudden hope, exclaimed, “With the blessing of God, who has not deserted us in our sore distress, will I carry thee, Hannah, in my arms, and lay thee down alive in the house of thy father.”

At this moment there were no stars in heaven, but she[200] opened her dim blue eyes upon him in whose bosom she was unconsciously lying, and said, as in a dream, “Send the riband that ties up my hair as a keepsake to William Grieve.”

“She thinks that she is on her death-bed, and forgets not the son of her master. It is the voice of God that tells me she will not now die, and that, under His grace, I shall be her deliverer.”

The short-lived rage of the storm was soon over, and William could attend to the beloved being on his bosom. The warmth of his heart seemed to infuse life into hers; and as he gently placed her feet on the snow, till he muffled her up in his plaid, as well as in her own, she made an effort to stand, and with extreme perplexity and bewilderment faintly inquired where she was, and what fearful misfortune had befallen them. She was, however, too weak to walk; and as her young master carried her along, she murmured, “O William! what if my father be in the moor? For if you, who need care so little about me, have come hither, as I suppose, to save my life, you may be sure that my father sat not within doors during the storm.”

As she spoke, it was calm below, but the wind was still alive in the upper air, and cloud, rack, mist, and sleet were all driving about in the sky. Out shone for a moment the pallid and ghostly moon, through a rent in the gloom, and by that uncertain light came staggering forward the figure of a man. “Father, father,” cried Hannah, and his gray hairs were already on her cheek. The barking of the dogs and the shouting of the young shepherd had struck his ear, as the sleep of death was[201] stealing over him, and with the last effort of benumbed nature he had roused himself from that fatal torpor, and pressed through the snow-wreath that had separated him from his child. As yet they knew not of the danger each had endured; but each judged of the other’s suffering from their own, and father and daughter regarded one another as creatures rescued, and hardly yet rescued, from death.

But a few minutes ago, and the three human beings who loved each other so well, and now feared not to cross the moor in safety, were, as they thought, on their death-beds. Deliverance now shone upon them all like a gentle fire, dispelling that pleasant but deadly drowsiness; and the old man was soon able to assist William Grieve in leading Hannah along through the snow. Her color and her warmth returned, and her lover——for so might he well now be called——felt her heart gently beating against his side. Filled as that heart was with gratitude to God, joy in her deliverance, love to her father, and purest affection for her master’s son, never before had the innocent maiden known what was happiness, and nevermore was she to forget it.

The night was now almost calm, and fast returning to its former beauty, when the party saw the first twinkle of the fire through the low window of the Cottage of the Moor. They soon were at the garden gate; and to relieve the heart of the wife and mother within, they talked loudly and cheerfully, naming each other familiarly, and laughing between, like persons who had known neither danger nor distress.

[202]

No voice answered from within, no footstep came to the door, which stood open as when the father had left it in his fear; and now he thought with affright that his wife, feeble as she was, had been unable to support the loneliness, and had followed him out into the night, never to be brought home alive. As they bore Hannah into the house, this fear gave way to worse, for there upon the hard clay floor lay the mother upon her face, as if murdered by some savage blow. She was in the same deadly swoon into which she had fallen on her husband’s departure, three hours before. The old man raised her up, and her pulse was still; so was her heart; her face pale and sunken, and her body cold as ice. “I have recovered a daughter,” said the old man, “but I have lost a wife.” And he carried her, with a groan, to the bed, on which he laid her lifeless body. The sight was too much for Hannah, worn out as she was, and who had hitherto been able to support herself in the delightful expectation of gladdening her mother’s heart by her safe arrival. She, too, now swooned away, and as she was placed on the bed, beside her mother, it seemed, indeed, that death, disappointed of his prey on the wild moor, had seized it in the cottage and by the fireside. The husband knelt down by the bedside, and held his wife’s icy hand in his, while William Grieve, appalled and awe-stricken, hung over his Hannah, and inwardly implored God that the night’s wild adventure might not have so ghastly an end. But Hannah’s young heart soon began once more to beat; and soon as she came to her recollection, she rose with a face whiter than ashes, and free from all smiles, as if none had ever played[203] there, and joined her father and young master in their efforts to restore her mother to life.

It was the mercy of God that had struck her down to the earth, insensible to the shrieking winds, and the fears that would otherwise have killed her. Three hours of that wild storm had passed over her head, and she heard nothing more than if she had been asleep in a breathless night of the summer dew. Not even a dream had touched her brain; and when she opened her eyes, which, as she thought, had been but a moment shut, she had scarcely time to recall to her recollection the image of her husband rushing out into the storm and of a daughter therein lost, till she beheld that very husband kneeling tenderly by her bedside, and that very daughter smoothing the pillow on which her aching temples reclined. But she knew from the white, steadfast countenances before her that there had been tribulation and deliverance, and she looked on the beloved beings ministering by her bed, as more fearfully dear to her from the unimagined danger from which she felt assured they had been rescued by the arm of the Almighty.

There is little need to speak of returning recollection and returning strength. They had all now power to weep and power to pray. The Bible had been lying in its place ready for worship; and the father read aloud that chapter in which is narrated our Saviour’s act of miraculous power, by which he saved Peter from the sea. Soon as the solemn thoughts awakened by that act of mercy, so similar to that which had rescued themselves from death, had subsided, and they had all risen from prayer, they gathered themselves in gratitude around the[204] little table which had stood so many hours spread; and exhausted nature was strengthened and restored by a frugal and simple meal partaken of in silent thankfulness. The whole story of the night was then recited; and when the mother heard how the stripling had followed her sweet Hannah into the storm, and borne her in his arms through a hundred drifted heaps,——and then looked upon her in her pride, so young, so innocent, and so beautiful, she knew that, were the child indeed to become an orphan, there was one who, if there was either trust in nature or truth in religion, would guard and cherish her all the days of her life.

It was not nine o’clock when the storm came down from Glen Scrae upon the Black-moss, and now in a pause of silence the clock struck twelve. Within these three hours William and Hannah had led a life of trouble and of joy, that had enlarged and kindled their hearts within them, and they felt that henceforth they were to live wholly for each other’s sake. His love was the proud and exulting love of a deliverer who, under Providence, had saved from the frost and the snow, the innocence and the beauty of which his young passionate heart had been so desperately enamored; and he now thought of his own Hannah Lee evermore moving about his father’s house, not as a servant, but as a daughter; and when some few happy years had gone by his own most beautiful and most loving wife. The innocent maiden still called him her young master, but was not ashamed of the holy affection which she now knew that she had long felt for the fearless youth on whose bosom she had thought herself dying in that cold and miserable moor.[205] Her heart leaped within her when she heard her parents bless him by his name; and when he took her hand into his before them, and vowed before that Power who had that night saved them from the snow, that Hannah Lee should erelong be his wedded wife, she wept and sobbed as if her heart would break in a fit of strange and insupportable happiness.

The young shepherd rose to bid them farewell. “My father will think I am lost,” said he, with a grave smile, “and my Hannah’s mother knows what it is to fear for a child.” So nothing was said to detain him, and the family went with him to the door. The skies smiled as serenely as if a storm had never swept before the stars; the moon was sinking from her meridian, but in cloudless splendor, and the hollow of the hills was hushed as that of heaven. Danger there was none over the placid night-scene; the happy youth soon crossed the Black-moss, now perfectly still; and, perhaps, just as he was passing, with a shudder of gratitude, the very spot where his sweet Hannah Lee had so nearly perished, she was lying down to sleep in her innocence, or dreaming of one now dearer to her than all on earth but her parents.

THE KING OF THE PEAK.
BY ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.

It happened once in a northern county that I found myself at a farmer’s fireside, and in company which the four winds of heaven seemed to have blown together. The farmer was a joyous old man; and the evening, a wintry one, and wild with wind and snow, flew away with jest and mirth and tale and song. Our entertainer had no wish that our joy should subside; for he heaped the fire till the house shone to its remotest rafter, loaded his table with rustic delicacies, and once when a pause ensued after the chanting of one of Robin Hood’s ballads, he called out, “Why stays the story, and what stops the rhyme? Have I heated my hearth, have I spread my tables and poured forth my strong drink, for the poor in fancy and the lame in speech? Up, up; and give me a grave tale or a gay, to gladden or sadden the present moment, and lend wings to the leaden feet of evening time. Rise, I say: else may the fire that flames so high; the table which groans with food, for which water and air and earth have been sought; and the board that perfumes you with the odor[207] of ale and mead,——may the first cease to warm, and the rest to nourish ye.”

“Master,” said a hale and joyous personage, whose shining and gladsome looks showed sympathy and alliance with the good cheer and fervent blood of merry old England, “since thy table smokes, and thy brown ale flows more frankly for the telling of a true old tale, then a true old tale thou shalt have; shame fall me if I balk thee, as the peasant folks say, in the dales of bonny Derby.

“Those who have never seen Haddon Hall, the ancient residence of the Vernons of Derbyshire, can have but an imperfect notion of the golden days of old England. Though now deserted and dilapidated, its halls silent, the sacred bell of its chapel mute; though its tables no longer send up the cheering smell of roasted boars and spitted oxen; though the music and the voice of the minstrel are silenced, and the light foot of the dancer no longer sounds on the floor; though no gentle knights and gentler dames go trooping hand in hand, and whispering among the twilight groves, and the portal no longer sends out its shining helms and its barbed steeds,——where is the place that can recall the stately hospitality and glory of former times, like the Hall of old Haddon?

“It happened on a summer evening, when I was a boy, that several curious old people had seated themselves on a little round knoll near the gate of Haddon Hall; and their talk was of the Vernons, the Cavendishes, the Manners, and many old names once renowned in Derbyshire. I had fastened myself to the apron-string[208] of a venerable dame, at whose girdle hung a mighty iron key, which commanded the entrance of the hall; her name was Dolly Foljambe; and she boasted her descent from an ancient red cross knight of that name, whose alabaster figure, in mail, may be found in Bakewell church. This high origin, which, on consulting family history, I find had not the concurrence of clergy, seemed not an idle vanity of the humble portress; she had the straight frame, and rigid, demure, and even warlike cast of face, which alabaster still retains of her ancestor; and had she laid herself by his side, she might have passed muster, with an ordinary antiquarian, for a coeval figure. At our feet the river Wye ran winding and deep; at our side rose the hall huge and gray; and the rough heathy hills, renowned in Druidic and Roman and Saxon and Norman story, bounded our wish for distant prospects, and gave us the mansion of the Vernons for our contemplation, clear of all meaner encumbrances of landscape.

“‘Ah! dame Foljambe,’ said an old husbandman, whose hair was whitened by acquaintance with seventy winters, ‘it’s a sore and a sad sight to look at that fair tower and see no smoke ascending. I remember it in a brighter day, when many a fair face gazed out at the windows, and many a gallant form appeared at the gate. Then were the days when the husbandman could live,——could whistle as he sowed, dance and sing as he reaped, and could pay his rent in fatted oxen to my lord and in fatted fowls to my lady. Ah! dame Foljambe, we remember when men could cast their lines in the Wye; could feast on the red deer and the fallow deer, on the plover and the ptarmigan; had right of the common for[209] their flocks, of the flood for their nets, and of the air for their harquebuss. Ah! dame, old England is no more the old England it was, than that hall, dark and silent and desolate, is the proud hall that held Sir George Vernon, the King of the Peak, and his two lovely daughters, Margaret and Dora. Those were days, dame; those were days!’ And as he ceased, he looked up to the tower, with an eye of sorrow, and shook and smoothed down his white hairs.

“‘I tell thee,’ replied the ancient portress, sorely moved in mind between present duty and service to the noble owner of Haddon and her lingering affection for the good old times, of which memory shapes so many paradises,——‘I tell thee the tower looks as high and as lordly as ever; and there is something about its silent porch and its crumbling turrets which gives it a deeper hold of our affections than if an hundred knights even now came prancing forth at its porch, with trumpets blowing and banners displayed.’

“‘Ah! dame Foljambe,’ said the husbandman, ‘yon deer now bounding so blithely down the old chase, with his horny head held high, and an eye that seems to make naught of mountain and vale, it is a fair creature. Look at him! see how he cools his feet in the Wye, surveys his shadow in the stream, and now he contemplates his native hills again. So! away he goes, and we gaze after him, and admire his speed and his beauty. But were the hounds at his flanks, and the bullets in his side, and the swords of the hunters bared for the brittling, ah! dame, we should change our cheer; we should think that such shapely limbs and such stately antlers might[210] have reigned in wood and on hill for many summers. Even so we think of that stately old hall, and lament its destruction.’

“‘Dame Foljambe thinks not so deeply on the matter,’ said a rustic; ‘she thinks, the less the hall fire, the less is the chance of the hall being consumed; the less the company, the longer will the old hall floor last, which she sweeps so clean, telling so many stories of the tree that made it, that the seven Virtues in tapestry would do well in avoiding wild company; and that the lass with the long shanks, Diana, and her nymphs, will hunt more to her fancy on her dusty acre of old arras, than in the dubious society of the lords and the heroes of the court gazette. Moreover, the key at her girdle is the commission by which she is keeper of this cast-off and moth-eaten garment of the noble name of Manners; and think ye that she holds that power lightly, which makes her governess of ten thousand bats and owls, and gives her the awful responsibility of an armory containing almost an entire harquebuss, the remains of a pair of boots, and the relique of a buff jerkin?’

“What answer to this unceremonious attack on ancient things committed to her keeping the portress might have made, I had not an opportunity to learn; her darkening brow indicated little meekness of reply; a voice, however, much sweeter than the dame’s intruded on the debate. In the vicinity of the hall, at the foot of a limestone rock, the summer visitors of Haddon may and do refresh themselves at a small fount of pure water, which love of the clear element induced one of the old ladies to confine within the limits of a large stone basin.[211] Virtues were imputed to the spring, and the superstition of another proprietor erected beside it a cross of stone, lately mutilated and now removed, but once covered with sculptures and rude emblems, which conveyed religious instruction to an ignorant people. Towards this fountain a maiden from a neighboring cottage was observed to proceed, warbling, as she went, a fragment of one of those legendary ballads which the old minstrels, illiterate or learned, scattered so abundantly over the country.

DORA VERNON.
It happened between March and May-day,
When wood-buds wake which slumbered late,
When hill and valley grow green and gayly,
And every wight longs for a mate;
When lovers sleep with an open eyelid,
Like nightingales on the orchard tree,
And sorely wish they had wings for flying,
So they might with their true love be;
A knight all worthy, in this sweet season,
Went out to Cardiff with bow and gun,
Not to chase the roebuck, nor shoot the pheasant,
But hunt the fierce fox so wild and dun.
And by his side was a young maid riding,
With laughing blue eyes and sunny hair;
And who was it but young Dora Vernon,
Young Rutland’s true love, and Haddon’s heir.
Her gentle hand was a good bow bearing;
The deer at speed or the fowl on wing
[212]
Stayed in their flight, when the bearded arrow
Her white hand loosed from the sounding string.
Old men made bare their locks, and blest her,
As blithe she rode down the Durwood side,
Her steed rejoiced in his lovely rider,
Arched his neck proudly, and pranced in pride.

“This unexpected minstrelsy was soon interrupted by dame Foljambe, whose total devotion to the family of Rutland rendered her averse to hear the story of Dora Vernon’s elopement profaned in the familiar ballad strain of a forgotten minstrel. ‘I wonder at the presumption of that rude minion,’ said the offended portress, ‘in chanting such ungentle strains in my ear. Home to thy milk-pails, idle hussy,——home to thy distaff, foolish maiden; or, if thou wilt sing, come over to my lodge when the sun is down, and I will teach thee a strain of a higher sort, made by a great court lord, on the marriage of her late Grace. It is none of your rustic chants, but full of fine words, both long and lordly; it begins:
“Come burn your incense, ye godlike graces,
Come, Cupid, dip your darts in light;
Unloose her starry zone, chaste Venus,
And trim the bride for the bridal night.”

“‘None of your vulgar chants, minion, I tell thee; but stuffed with spiced words, and shining with gods and garters and stars and precious stones, and odors thickly dropping; a noble strain indeed.’ The maiden smiled, nodded acquiescence, and, tripping homeward, renewed her homely and interrupted song, till the riverbank[213] and the ancient towers acknowledged, with their sweetest echoes, the native charms of her voice.

“‘I marvel much,’ said the hoary portress, ‘at the idle love for strange and incredible stories which possesses as with a demon the peasants of this district. Not only have they given a saint, with a shirt of haircloth and a scourge, to every cavern, and a druid with his golden sickle and his mistletoe to every circle of shapeless stones, but they have made the Vernons, the Cavendishes, the Cockaynes, and the Foljambes erect on every wild place crosses or altars of atonement for crimes which they never committed; unless fighting ankle-deep in heathen blood, for the recovery of Jerusalem and the holy sepulchre, required such outlandish penance. They cast, too, a supernatural light round the commonest story; if you credit them, the ancient chapel bell of Haddon, safely lodged on the floor for a century, is carried to the top of the turret, and, touched by some invisible hand, is made to toll forth midnight notes of dolor and woe, when any misfortune is about to befall the noble family of Rutland. They tell you, too, that wailings of no earthly voice are heard around the decayed towers and along the garden terraces, on the festival night of the saint who presided of old over the fortunes of the name of Vernon. And no longer agone than yesterday, old Edgar Ferrars assured me that he had nearly as good as seen the apparition of the King of the Peak himself, mounted on his visionary steed, and with imaginary horn and hound and halloo pursuing a spectre stag over the wild chase of Haddon. Nay, so far has vulgar credulity and assurance gone, that the great garden[214] entrance, called the Knight’s porch, through which Dora Vernon descended step by step among her twenty attendant maidens, all rustling in embroidered silks, and shining and sparkling like a winter sky, in diamonds, and such-like costly stones,——to welcome her noble bridegroom, Lord John Manners, who came cap in hand with his company of gallant gentlemen——’

“‘Nay, now, dame Foljambe,’ interrupted the husbandman, ‘all this is fine enough, and lordly too, I’ll warrant; but thou must not apparel a plain old tale in the embroidered raiment of thy own brain, nor adorn it in the precious stones of thy own fancy. Dora Vernon was a lovely lass, and as proud as she was lovely: she bore her head high, dame; and well she might, for she was a gallant knight’s daughter; and lords and dukes, and what not, have descended from her. But, for all that, I cannot forget that she ran away in the middle of a moonlight night with young Lord John Manners, and no other attendant than her own sweet self. Ay, dame, and for the diamonds, and what not, which thy story showers on her locks and her garments, she tied up her berry brown locks in a menial’s cap, and ran away in a mantle of Bakewell brown, three yards for a groat. Ay, dame, and instead of going out regularly by the door, she leapt out of a window; more by token she left one of her silver-heeled slippers fastened in the grating, and the place has ever since been called the Lady’s Leap.’

“Dame Foljambe, like an inexperienced rider, whose steed refuses obedience to voice and hand, resigned the contest in despair, and allowed her rustic companion to enter full career into the debatable land, where she had[215] so often fought and vanquished in defence of the decorum of the mode of alliance between the houses of Haddon and Rutland.

“‘And now, dame,’ said the husbandman, ‘I will tell thee the story in my own and my father’s way. The last of the name of Vernon was renowned far and wide for the hospitality and magnificence of his house, for the splendor of his retinue, and more for the beauty of his daughters, Margaret and Dorothy. This is speaking in thy own manner, dame Foljambe; but truth’s truth. He was much given to hunting and hawking, and jousting, with lances either blunt or sharp; and though a harquebuss generally was found in the hand of the gallant hunters of that time, the year of grace 1560, Sir George Vernon despised that foreign weapon; and well he might, for he bent the strongest bow, and shot the surest shaft, of any man in England. His chase-dogs, too, were all of the most expert and famous kinds, his falcons had the fairest and most certain flight; and though he had seen foreign lands, he chiefly prided himself in maintaining unimpaired the old baronial grandeur of his house. I have heard my grandsire say, how his great-grandsire told him, that the like of the Knight of Haddon, for a stately form and a noble, free, and natural grace of manner, was not to be seen in court or camp. He was hailed, in common tale and in minstrel song, by the name of the King of the Peak; and it is said his handsome person and witchery of tongue chiefly prevented his mistress, good Queen Bess, from abridging his provincial designation with the headsman’s axe.

[216]

“‘It happened in the fifth year of the reign of his young and sovereign mistress, that a great hunting festival was held at Haddon, where all the beauty and high blood of Derbyshire assembled. Lords of distant counties came; for to bend a bow or brittle the deer, under the eye of Sir George Vernon, was an honor sought for by many. Over the chase of Haddon, over the Hill of Stanton, over Bakewell-Edge, over Chatsworth Hill and Hardwicke Plain, and beneath the ancient Castle of Bolsover, as far as the edge of the forest of old Sherwood, were the sounds of harquebuss and bowstring heard, and the cry of dogs and the cheering of men. The brown-mouthed and white-footed dogs of Derbyshire were there among the foremost; the snow-white hound and the coal-black, from the Scottish border and bonny Westmoreland, preserved or augmented their ancient fame; nor were the dappled hounds of old Godfrey Foljambe, of Bakewell bank, far from the throat of the red deer when they turned at bay, and gored horses and riders. The great hall floor of Haddon was soon covered with the produce of wood and wild.

“‘Nor were the preparations for feasting this noble hunting-party unworthy the reputation for solid hospitality which characterized the ancient King of the Peak. Minstrels had come from distant parts, as far even as the Scottish border; bold, free-spoken, rude, rough-witted men; “for the selvage of the web,” says the northern proverb, “is aye the coarsest cloth.” But in the larder the skill of man was chiefly employed, and a thousand rarities were prepared for pleasing the eye and appeasing the appetite. In the kitchen, with its huge chimneys[217] and prodigious spits, the menial maidens were flooded nigh ankle-deep in the richness of roasted oxen and deer; and along the passage, communicating with the hall of state, men might have slided along, because of the fat droppings of that prodigious feast, like a slider on the frozen Wye. The kitchen tables, of solid plank, groaned and yielded beneath the roasted beeves and the spitted deer; while a stream of rich smoke, massy and slow and savory, sallied out at the grated windows, and sailed round the mansion, like a mist exhaled by the influence of the moon. I tell thee, dame Foljambe, I call those the golden days of old England.

“‘But I wish you had seen the hall prepared for this princely feast. The floor, of hard and solid stone, was strewn deep with rushes and fern; and there lay the dogs of the chase in couples, their mouths still red with the blood of stags, and panting yet from the fervor and length of their pursuit. At the lower end of the hall, where the floor subsided a step, was spread a table for the stewards and other chiefs over the menials. There sat the keeper of the bows, the warder of the chase, and the head falconer, together with many others of lower degree, but mighty men among the retainers of the noble name of Vernon. Over their heads were hung the horns of stags, the jaws of boars, the skulls of the enormous bisons, and the foreheads of foxes. Nor were there wanting trophies, where the contest had been more bloody and obstinate,——banners and shields and helmets, won in the Civil and Scottish and Crusading wars, together with many strange weapons of annoyance or defence, borne in the Norwegian and Saxon broils.[218] Beside them were hung rude paintings of the most renowned of these rustic heroes, all in the picturesque habiliments of the times. Horns and harquebusses and swords and bows and buff coats and caps were thrown in negligent groups all about the floor; while their owners sat in expectation of an immediate and ample feast, which they hoped to wash down with floods of that salutary beverage, the brown blood of barley.

“‘At the upper end of the hall, where the floor was elevated exactly as much in respect as it was lowered in submission at the other, there the table for feasting the nobles stood; and well was it worthy of its station. It was one solid plank of white sycamore, shaped from the entire shaft of an enormous tree, and supported on squat columns of oak, ornamented with the arms of the Vernons, and grooved into the stone floor, beyond all chance of being upset by human powers. Benches of wood, curiously carved, and covered, in times of more than ordinary ceremony, with cushions of embroidered velvet, surrounded this ample table; while in the recess behind appeared a curious work in arras, consisting of festivals and processions and bridals, executed from the ancient poets; and for the more staid and grave, a more devout hand had wrought some scenes from the controversial fathers and the monkish legends of the ancient church. The former employed the white hands of Dora Vernon herself; while the latter were the labors of her sister Margaret, who was of a serious turn, and never happened to be so far in love as to leap from a window.’

“‘And now,’ said dame Foljambe, ‘I will describe[219] the Knight of Haddon, with his fair daughters and principal guests, myself.’ ‘A task that will last thee to doomsday, dame,’ muttered the husbandman. The portress heeded not this ejaculation, but with a particular stateliness of delivery proceeded. ‘The silver dinner-bell rung on the summit of Haddon Hall, the warder thrice wound his horn, and straightway the sound of silver spurs was heard in the passage, the folding-door opened, and in marched my own ancestor, Ferrars Foljambe by name. I have heard his dress too often described not to remember it. A buff jerkin, with slashed and ornamented sleeves, a mantle of fine Lincoln green, fastened round his neck with wolf-claws of pure gold, a pair of gilt spurs on the heels of his brown hunting-boots, garnished above with taslets of silver, and at the square and turned-up toes, with links of the same metal connected with the taslets. On his head was a boar-skin cap, on which the white teeth of the boar were set, tipt with gold. At his side was a hunting-horn, called the white hunting-horn of Tutbury, banded with silver in the middle, belted with black silk at the ends, set with buckles of silver, and bearing the arms of Edmund, the warlike brother of Edward Longshanks. This fair horn descended by marriage to Stanhope, of Elvaston, who sold it to Foxlowe, of Staveley. The gift of a king and the property of heroes was sold for some paltry pieces of gold.’

“‘Dame Foljambe,’ said the old man, ‘the march of thy tale is like the course of the Wye, seventeen miles of links and windings down a fair valley five miles long. A man might carve thy ancestor’s figure in alabaster in[220] the time thou describest him. I must resume my story, dame; so let thy description of old Ferrars Foljambe stand; and suppose the table filled about with the gallants of the chase and many fair ladies, while at the head sat the King of the Peak himself, his beard descending to his broad girdle, his own natural hair of dark brown——blessings on the head that keeps God’s own covering on it, and scorns the curled inventions of man!——falling in thick masses on his broad, manly shoulders. Nor silver nor gold wore he; the natural nobleness of his looks maintained his rank and pre-eminence among men; the step of Sir George Vernon was one that many imitated, but few could attain,——at once manly and graceful. I have heard it said that he carried privately in his bosom a small rosary of precious metal, in which his favorite daughter Dora had entwined one of her mother’s tresses. The ewer-bearers entered with silver basins full of water; the element came pure and returned red; for the hands of the guests were stained with the blood of the chase. The attendant minstrels vowed that no hands so shapely, nor fingers so taper and long and white and round, as those of the Knight of Haddon, were that day dipped in water.

“‘There is wondrous little pleasure in describing a feast of which we have not partaken: so pass we on to the time when the fair dames retired, and the red wine in cups of gold, and the ale in silver flagons, shone and sparkled as they passed from hand to lip beneath the blaze of seven massy lamps. The knights toasted their mistresses, the retainers told their exploits, and the minstrels with harp and tongue made music and song[221] abound. The gentles struck their drinking-vessels on the table till they rang again; the menials stamped with the heels of their ponderous boots on the solid floor; while the hounds, imagining they heard the call to the chase, leaped up, and bayed in hoarse but appropriate chorus.

“‘The ladies now reappeared in the side galleries, and overlooked the scene of festivity below. The loveliest of many counties were there; but the fairest was a young maid of middle size, in a dress disencumbered of ornament, and possessed of one of those free and graceful forms which may be met with in other counties, but for which our own Derbyshire alone is famous. Those who admired the grace of her person were no less charmed with her simplicity and natural meekness of deportment. Nature did much for her, and art strove in vain to rival her with others; while health, that handmaid of beauty, supplied her eye and her cheek with the purest light and the freshest roses. Her short and rosy upper lip was slightly curled, with as much of maiden sanctity, perhaps, as pride; her white high forehead was shaded with locks of sunny brown, while her large and dark hazel eyes beamed with free and unaffected modesty. Those who observed her close might see her eyes, as she glanced about, sparkling for a moment with other lights, but scarce less holy, than those of devotion and awe. Of all the knights present, it was impossible to say who inspired her with those love-fits of flushing joy and delicious agitation; each hoped himself the happy person; for none could look on Dora Vernon without awe and love. She leaned her white bosom, shining through the[222] veil which shaded it, near one of the minstrel’s harps; and looking round on the presence, her eyes grew brighter as she looked; at least so vowed the knights and so sang the minstrels.

“‘All the knights arose when Dora Vernon appeared. “Fill all your wine-cups, knights,” said Sir Lucas Peverel. “Fill them to the brim,” said Sir Henry Avenel. “And drain them out, were they deeper than the Wye,” said Sir Godfrey Gernon. “To the health of the Princess of the Peak,” said Sir Ralph Cavendish. “To the health of Dora Vernon,” said Sir Hugh de Wodensley; “beauty is above titles, she is the loveliest maiden a knight ever looked on, with the sweetest name too.” “And yet, Sir Knight,” said Peverel, filling his cup, “I know one who thinks so humbly of the fair name of Vernon, as to wish it charmed into that of De Wodensley.” “He is not master of a spell so profound,” said Avenel. “And yet he is master of his sword,” answered De Wodensley, with a darkening brow. “I counsel him to keep it in his sheath,” said Cavendish, “lest it prove a wayward servant.” “I will prove its service on thy bosom where and when thou wilt, Lord of Chatsworth,” said De Wodensley. “Lord of Darley,” answered Cavendish, “it is a tempting moonlight, but there is a charm over Haddon to-night it would be unseemly to dispel. To-morrow, I meet Lord John Manners to try whose hawk has the fairer flight and whose love the whiter hand. That can be soon seen; for who has so fair a hand as the love of young Rutland? I shall be found by Durwood-Tor when the sun is three hours up, with my sword drawn,——there’s my hand on ’t, De Wodensley.” And he wrung the[223] knight’s hand till the blood seemed starting from beneath his finger-nails.

“‘“By the saints, Sir Knights,” said Sir Godfrey Gernon, “you may as well beard one another about the love of ‘some bright particular star and think to wed it,’ as the wild wizard of Warwick says, as quarrel about this unattainable love. Hearken, minstrels: while we drain our cups to this beauteous lass, sing some of you a kindly love-strain, wondrously mirthful and melancholy. Here’s a cup of Rhenish, and a good gold Harry in the bottom on’t, for the minstrel who pleases me.” The minstrels laid their hands on the strings, and a sound was heard like the swarming of bees before summer thunder. “Sir Knight,” said one, “I will sing ye Cannie Johnnie Armstrong with all the seventeen variations.” “He was hanged for cattle stealing,” answered the knight; “I’ll have none of him.” “What say you to Dick of the Cow, or the Harper of Lochmaben?” said another, with something of a tone of diffidence. “What! you northern knaves, can you sing of nothing but thievery and jail-breaking?” “Perhaps your knightship,” humbly suggested a third, “may have a turn for the supernatural, and I’m thinking the Fairy Legend of young Tamlane is just the thing that suits your fancy.” “I like the naïveté of the young lady very much,” answered the knight, “but the fair dames of Derbyshire prize the charms of lovers with flesh and blood, before the gayest Elfin-knight that ever ran a course from Carlisle to Caerlaverock.” “What would your worship say to William of Cloudesley?” said a Cumberland minstrel. “Or to the Friar of Orders Grey?” said a harper from the halls of the Percys.

[224]

“‘“Minstrels,” said Sir Ralph Cavendish, “the invention of sweet and gentle poesy is dead among you. Every churl in the Peak can chant us these beautiful but common ditties. Have you nothing new for the honor of the sacred calling of verse and the beauty of Dora Vernon? Fellow,——harper,——what’s your name?——you with the long hair and the green mantle,” said the knight, beckoning to a young minstrel who sat with his harp held before him, and his face half buried in his mantle’s fold; “come, touch your strings and sing; I’ll wager my gold-hilted sword against that pheasant feather in thy cap, that thou hast a new and a gallant strain; for I have seen thee measure more than once the form of fair Dora Vernon with a ballad-maker’s eye. Sing, man, sing.”

“‘The young minstrel, as he bowed his head to this singular mode of request, blushed from brow to bosom; nor were the face and neck of Dora Vernon without an acknowledgment of how deeply she sympathized in his embarrassment. A finer instrument, a truer hand, or a more sweet and manly voice hardly ever united to lend grace to rhyme.

THE MINSTREL’S SONG.
Last night a proud page came to me;
Sir Knight, he said, I greet you free;
The moon is up at midnight hour,
All mute and lonely is the bower:
To rouse the deer my lord is gone,
And his fair daughter’s all alone,
[225]
As lily fair, and as sweet to see;
Arise, Sir Knight, and follow me.
The stars streamed out, the new-woke moon
O’er Chatsworth hill gleamed brightly down,
And my love’s cheeks, half seen, half hid,
With love and joy blushed deeply red:
Short was our time, and chaste our bliss,
A whispered vow and a gentle kiss;
And one of those long looks, which earth
With all its glory is not worth.
The stars beamed lovelier from the sky,
The smiling brook flowed gentlier by;
Life, fly thou on; I’ll mind that hour
Of sacred love in greenwood bower;
Let seas between us swell and sound,
Still at her name my heart shall bound;
Her name——which like a spell I’ll keep,
To soothe me and to charm my sleep.

“‘“Fellow,” said Sir Ralph Cavendish, “thou hast not shamed my belief of thy skill; keep that piece of gold, and drink thy cup of wine in quiet to the health of the lass who inspired thy strain, be she lordly or be she low.” The minstrel seated himself, and the interrupted mirth recommenced, which was not long to continue. When the minstrel began to sing, the King of the Peak fixed his large and searching eyes on his person, with a scrutiny from which nothing could escape, and which called a flush of apprehension to the face of his daughter Dora. Something like a cloud came upon his brow at the first verse, which, darkening down through the second, became[226] as dark as a December night at the close of the third, when rising, and motioning Sir Ralph Cavendish to follow, he retired into the recess of the southern window.

“‘“Sir Knight,” said the lord of Haddon, “thou art the sworn friend of John Manners, and well thou knowest what his presumption dares at, and what are the lets between him and me. Cavendo tutus? ponder on thy own motto well. ‘Let seas between us swell and sound’:——let his song be prophetic for Derbyshire,——for England has no river deep enough and broad enough to preserve him from a father’s sword, whose peace he seeks to wound.” “Knight of Haddon,” said Sir Ralph, “John Manners is indeed my friend, and the friend of a Cavendish can be no mean person; a braver and a better spirit never aspired after beauty.” “Sir Knight,” said the King of the Peak, “I court no man’s counsel; hearken to my words. Look at the moon’s shadow on Haddon-dial; there it is beside the casement; the shadow falls short of twelve. If it darkens the midnight hour, and John Manners be found here, he shall be cast fettered, neck and heel, into the deepest dungeon of Haddon.”

“‘All this passed not unobserved of Dora Vernon, whose fears and affections divined immediate mischief from the calm speech and darkened brow of her father. Her heart sank within her when he beckoned her to withdraw; she followed him into the great tapestried room. “My daughter,——my love Dora,” said the not idle fears of a father, “wine has done more than its usual good office with the wits of our guests to-night; they look on thee with bolder eyes and speak of thee[227] with a bolder tongue than a father can wish. Retire, therefore, to thy chamber. One of thy wisest attendants shall be thy companion. Adieu, my love, till sunrise!” He kissed her white temples and white brow; and Dora clung to his neck, and sobbed in his bosom, while the secret of her heart rose near her lips. He returned to his guests, and mirth and music, and the march of the wine-cup, recommenced with a vigor which promised reparation for the late intermission.

“‘The chamber, or, rather, temporary prison, of Dora Vernon was nigh the cross-bow room, and had a window which looked out on the terraced garden and the extensive chase toward the hill of Haddon. All that side of the hall lay in deep shadow, and the moon, sunk to the very summit of the western heath, threw a level and a farewell beam over river and tower. The young lady of Haddon seated herself in the recessed window, and lent her ear to every sound, and her eye to every shadow that flitted over the garden and chase. Her attendant maiden——shrewd, demure, and suspicious, of the ripe age of thirty, yet of a merry pleasant look, which had its admirers——sat watching every motion with the eye of an owl.

“‘It was past midnight, when a foot came gliding along the passage, and a finger gave three slight scratches on the door of the chamber. The maid went out, and after a brief conference suddenly returned, red with blushes from ear to ear. “O my lady!” said the trusty maiden,——“O my sweet young lady, here’s that poor young lad,——ye know his name,——who gave me three yards of crimson ribbon to trim my peach-bloom mantle,[228] last Bakewell fair. An honester or a kinder heart never kept a promise; and yet I may not give him the meeting. O my young lady, my sweet young lady, my beautiful young lady, could you not stay here for half an hour by yourself?” Ere her young mistress could answer, the notice of the lover’s presence was renewed. The maiden again went; whispers were heard, and the audible salutation of lips; she returned again more resolute than ever to oblige her lover. “O my lady, my young lady, if ye ever hope to prosper in true love yourself, spare me but one half-hour with this harmless kind lad. He has come seven long miles to see my fair face, he says; and, O my lady, he has a handsome face of his own. O, never let it be said that Dora Vernon sundered true lovers! But I see consent written in your own lovely face,——so I will run; and, O my lady, take care of your own sweet, handsome self, when your faithful Nan’s away!” And the maiden retired with her lover.

“‘It was half an hour after midnight when one of the keepers of the chase, as he lay beneath a holly-bush listening, with a prolonged groan, to the audible voice of revelry in the hall, from which his duty had lately excluded him, happened to observe two forms approaching; one of low stature, a light step, and muffled in a common mantle; the other with the air and in the dress of a forester, a sword at his side and pistols in his belt. The ale and the wine had invaded the keeper’s brain and impaired his sight; yet he roused himself up with a hiccup and a “Hilloah,” and “Where go ye, my masters?” The lesser form whispered to the other, who[229] immediately said, “Jasper Jugg, is this you? Heaven be praised I have found you so soon; here’s that north-country pedler, with his beads and blue ribbon, he has come and whistled out pretty Nan Malkin, the lady’s favorite and the lord’s trusty maid. I left them under the terrace, and came to tell you.”

“‘The enraged keeper scarce heard this account of the faithlessness of his love to an end; he started off with the swiftness of one of the deer which he watched, making the boughs crash, as he forced his way through bush and glade direct for the hall, vowing desertion to the girl and destruction to the pedler. “Let us hasten our steps, my love,” said the lesser figure, in a sweet voice; and unmantling as she spoke, turned back to the towers of Haddon the fairest face that ever left them,——the face of Dora Vernon herself. “My men and my horses are nigh, my love,” said the taller figure; and taking a silver call from his pocket, he imitated the sharp, shrill cry of the plover; then turning round, he stood and gazed towards Haddon, scarcely darkened by the setting of the moon, for the festal lights flashed from turret and casement, and the sound of mirth and revelry rang with augmenting din. “Ah, fair and stately Haddon,” said Lord John Manners, “little dost thou know thou hast lost thy jewel from thy brow, else thy lights would be dimmed, thy mirth would turn to wailing, and swords would be flashing from thy portals in all the haste of hot pursuit. Farewell, for a while, fair tower, farewell for a while. I shall return and bless the time I harped among thy menials and sang of my love, and charmed her out of thy little chamber window.” Several armed men now[230] came suddenly down from the hill of Haddon, horses richly caparisoned were brought from among the trees of the chase, and the ancestors of the present family of Rutland sought shelter, for a time, in a distant land, from the wrath of the King of the Peak.’”

The End
POPULAR NOTIONS CONCERNING THE SIDHE RACE.
From the earliest ages the world has believed in the existence of a race midway between the angel and man, gifted with power to exercise a strange mysterious influence over human destiny. The Persians called this mystic race Peris; the Egyptians and the Greeks named them demons, not as evil, but as mysterious allies of man, invisible though ever present; capable of kind acts but implacable if offended.

The Irish called them the Sidhe, or spirit-race, or the Feadh-Ree, a modification of the word Peri. Their country is the Tir-na-oge, the land of perpetual youth, where they live a life of joy and beauty, never knowing disease or death, which is not to come on them till the judgment day, when they are fated to pass into annihilation, to perish utterly and be seen no more. They can assume any form and they make horses out of bits of straw, on which they ride over the country, and to Scotland and back. They have no religion, but a great dread of the Scapular (Latin words from the Gospels written by a priest and hung round the neck). Their power is great over unbaptized children, and such generally grow up evil and have the evil eye, and bring ill luck, unless the name of God is instantly invoked when they look at any one fixedly and in silence.

All over Ireland the fairies have the reputation of being very beautiful, with long yellow hair sweeping the ground, and lithe light forms. They love milk and honey, and sip the nectar from the cups of the flowers, which is their fairy wine.

Underneath the lakes, and deep down in the heart of the hills, they have their fairy palaces of pearl and gold, where they live in splendour and luxury, with music and song and dancing and laughter and all joyous things as befits the gods of the earth. If our eyes were touched by a fairy salve we could see them dancing on the hill in the moonlight. They are served on vessels of gold, and each fairy chief, to mark his rank, wears a circlet of gold round his head.

The Sidhe race were once angels in heaven, but were cast out as257 a punishment for their pride. Some fell to earth, others were cast into the sea, while many were seized by demons and carried down to hell, whence they issue as evil spirits, to tempt men to destruction under various disguises; chiefly, however, as beautiful young maidens, endowed with the power of song and gifted with the most enchanting wiles. Under the influence of these beautiful sirens a man will commit any and every crime. Then when his soul is utterly black they carry him down to hell, where he remains for ever tortured by the demons to whom he sold himself.

The fairies are very numerous, more numerous than the human race. In their palaces underneath the hills and in the lakes and the sea they hide away much treasure. All the treasure of wrecked ships is theirs; and all the gold that men have hidden and buried in the earth when danger was on them, and then died and left no sign of the place to their descendants. And all the gold of the mine and the jewels of the rocks belong to them; and in the Sifra, or fairy-house, the walls are silver and the pavement is gold, and the banquet-hall is lit by the glitter of the diamonds that stud the rocks.

If you walk nine times round a fairy rath at the full of the moon, you will find the entrance to the Sifra; but if you enter, beware of eating the fairy food or drinking the fairy wine. The Sidhe will, indeed, wile and draw many a young man into the fairy dance, for the fairy women are beautiful, so beautiful that a man’s eyes grow dazzled who looks on them, with their long hair floating like the ripe golden corn and their robes of silver gossamer; they have perfect forms, and their dancing is beyond all expression graceful; but if a man is tempted to kiss a Sigh-oge, or young fairy spirit, in the dance, he is lost for ever—the madness of love will fall on him, and he will never again be able to return to earth or to leave the enchanted fairy palace. He is dead to his kindred and race for ever more.
 
THE HURLING MATCH.
The fairies, with their true artistic love of all the gentle graces of life, greatly dislike coarse and violent gestures, and all athletic sports, such as hurling and wrestling; and they often try to put an end to them by some evil turn.

One day a great cloud of dust came along the road during a hurling match and stopped the game. On this the people grew alarmed, for they said the fairies are out hunting and260 will do us harm by blinding us; and thousands of the Sidhe swept by, raising a terrific dust, though no mortal eye could see them.

Then one man, a good player and musician, ran for his fiddle and began to play some vigorous dance tunes, “for now,” said he, “the fairies will begin to dance and forget us, and they will be off in no time to hold a revel on the rath to the music of their own fairy pipes.”

And so it was, for at once the whirlwind of dust swept on to the hill of the fairy rath, and the hurling ground was left clear for the game to go on again in safety.

It must be acknowledged that the fairies are a little selfish, or they would not have interfered with the great national sport of hurling, which is the favourite amusement of the country, and used to be held as a high festival, and arranged with all the ceremonial of a tournament; at least before the bad times destroyed all the fun and frolic of the peasant life.

The prettiest girl of the village was chosen as the hurling girl—the Colleen-a-bhailia. Dressed in white, and accompanied by her maidens, she proceeded to the hurling ground, the piper and fiddlers going before her playing gay dance tunes.

There she was met by the procession of the young men surrounding the chief hurler—always a stalwart youth of over six feet. And the youth and the maiden joined hands and began the dance—all the people cheering.

This was called the opening of the hurling. And for the next match another pair would be selected, each village girl anxiously hoping to be the Colleen-a-bhailia chosen to lead the ceremonial dance for the second or following games. Naturally the hurling tournament ended with a festive supper, much love-making, and many subsequent marriages between the pretty colleens and stalwart young hurlers, despite all the envy and jealousy of the fairies, who maliciously tried to mar the pleasures of the festival.
THE RIDE WITH THE FAIRIES.
The fairies take great delight in horsemanship, and are splendid riders. Many fine young men are enticed to ride with them, when they dash along with the fairies like the wind, Finvarra himself leading, on his great black horse with the red nostrils, that look like flames of fire. And ever after the young men are the most fearless riders in the country, so the people know at once that they have hunted with the fairies. And after the hunt some favourite of the party is taken to a magnificent supper in the261 fairy palace, and when he has drunk of the bright red wine they lull him to sleep with soft music. But never again can he find the fairy palace, and he looks in vain for the handsome horseman on his fine black steed, with all the gay young huntsmen in their green velvet dresses, who rushed over the field with him, like a flash of the storm wind. They have passed away for ever from his vision, like a dream of the night.

Once on a time a gentleman, also one of the Kirwans of Galway, was riding by the fairy hill—where all the fairies of the West hold their councils and meetings, under the rule of Finvarra the king—when a strange horseman, mounted on a fiery black steed, suddenly appeared. But as the stranger bid him the time of day with distinguished grace, Mr. Kirwan returned his greeting courteously, and they rode on together side by side, discoursing pleasantly—for the stranger seemed to know every one and everything, though Mr. Kirwan could not remember ever having seen him before.

“Now,” said the black horseman, “I know that you are to be at the races to-morrow, so just let me give you a hint: if you wish to be certain of winning, allow me to send you my man to ride your horse. He never failed in a race yet, and he shall be with you early, before the start.”

With that, at a turn of the road, the stranger disappeared; for he was no other than Finvarra himself, who had a friendly liking for the tribe of the Kirwans, because all the men were generous who came of the blood, and all the women handsome.

Next morning, as Mr. Kirwan was setting out for the race, his groom told him that a young jockey was waiting to see him. He was the strangest looking little imp, Mr. Kirwan thought, he had ever set eyes on, but he felt compelled to give him all the rights and power that was necessary for the race, and the young imp was off in a moment, like a flash of lightning.

Mr. Kirwan knew no more—he seemed like one in a dream—till the silver cup was handed to him as winner of the race, and congratulations poured down on him, and every one asked eagerly where he got the wonderful jockey who seemed to make the horse fly like the spirit of the wind itself. But the jockey by this time had disappeared. However, the stranger on the black horse was there, and he constrained Mr. Kirwan to come with him to dinner; and they rode on pleasantly, as before, till they reached a grand, beautiful house, with a crowd of gorgeous servants waiting on the steps to receive the lord and master and his guest.

One of them led Mr. Kirwan to his room to dress for dinner, and there he found a costly suit of violet velvet ready, in which the valet arrayed him. Then he entered the dining-hall. It was all lit up splendidly, and there were garlands of flowers twining262 round crystal columns, and golden cups set with jewels for the wine, and golden dishes.

The host seemed an accomplished man of the world, and did the honours with perfect grace. Conversation flowed freely, while soft music was heard at intervals from invisible players, and Mr. Kirwan could not resist the charm and beauty of the scene, nor the bright red wine that his host poured out for him into the jewelled cups.

Then, when the banquet was over, a great crowd of ladies and gentlemen came in and danced to sweet low music, and they circled round the guest and tried to draw him into the dance. But when he looked at them it seemed to him that they were all the dead he had once known; for his own brother was there, that had been drowned in the lake a year before; and a man who had been killed by a fall when hunting; and others whose faces he knew well. And they were all pale as death, but their eyes burned like coals of fire.

And as he looked and wondered, a lovely lady came over to him, wearing a necklace of pearls. And she clasped his wrist with her little hand, and tried to draw him into the circle.

“Dance with me,” she whispered, “dance with me again. Look at me, for you once loved me.”

And when he looked at her he knew that she was dead, and the clasp of her hand was like a ring of fire round his wrist; and he drew back in terror, for he saw that she was a beautiful girl he had loved in his youth, and to whom he had given a necklace of pearls, but who died before he could make her his bride.

Then his heart sank with fear and dread, and he said to his host—

“Take me from this place. I know the dancers; they are dead. Why have you brought them up from their graves?”

But the host only laughed and said, “You must take more wine to keep up your courage.” And he poured him out a goblet of wine redder than rubies.

And when he drank it, all the pageant and the music and the crowd faded away from before his eyes, and he fell into a profound sleep, and knew no more till he found himself at home, laid on his bed. And the servant told him that a strange horseman had accompanied him to the door late in the night, who had charged them to lay the master gently in his bed and by no means to awake him till noon next day, for he was weary after the race; and he bade them take the hunter to the stables and tend him carefully, for the animal was covered with foam, and all trembling.

At noon Mr. Kirwan awoke, and rose up as well as ever: but of all the fairy revels nothing remained to him but the mark round his wrist of the clasp of a woman’s hand, that seemed burned into his flesh.

263

So he knew the night’s adventure was no mere dream of the fancy, and the mark of the dead hand remained with him to his last hour, and the form of the young girl with her necklace of pearls often came before him in a vision of the night; but he never again visited the fairy palace, and never saw the dark horseman any more. As to the silver cup, he flung it into the lake, for he thought it had come to him by devil’s magic and would bring no good luck to him or to his race. So it sank beneath the waves, and the silver cup was seen no more.
THE FAIRY SPY.
Sometimes the fairies appear like old men and women, and thus gain admission to houses that they may watch and spy, and bewitch the butter, and abduct the children, and carry off the young girls for fairy brides.

There was a man in the west who was bedridden for seven years, and could do no work and had to be lifted by others when he moved. Yet the amount of food he consumed was enormous, and as every one pitied him, people were constantly bringing him all sorts of good things; and he ate up everything but grew no stronger.

Now on Sundays when the family went to mass, they locked him up, but left him plenty of food, for there was no one in the house to help him. One Sunday, however, they left chapel earlier than usual, and as they were going by the shore they saw a great crowd of strangers hurling, and in the midst of them, hurling and running and leaping, was the sick man, as well and jolly as ever a man could be. They called out to him, on which he turned round to face them, but that instant he disappeared.

So the family hastened home, unlocked the door, and went straight up to the room, where they found the man in bed as usual, thin and weak and unable to move; but he had eaten up all the food and was now crying out for more. On this the family grew very angry and cried, “You have been deceiving us. You are in league with the witch-folk; but we’ll soon see what you really are, for if you don’t get up out of that bed at once, we’ll make down a fire and lay you on it, and make you walk.”

Then he cried and roared: but they seized him to drag him to the fire. So when he saw they were in earnest he jumped up and rushed to the door, and before they could touch him he had disappeared, and was seen no more.

Now, indeed, they knew that he was in league with the devil, and they burned his bed and everything belonging to him, and264 poured holy water on the room. And when all was burned, nothing remained but a black stone with strange signs on it. And by this, no doubt, he performed his enchantments. And the people were afraid of it and gave it to the priest, who has it to this day, so there can be no doubt as to the truth of the story.

And the priest knows the hidden meaning of the strange signs which give power to the stone; but will reveal the secret to no one, lest the people might try to work devil’s magic with it, and unlawful spells by the power of the stone and the power of the signs.
THE DARK HORSEMAN.
One day a fine, handsome young fellow, called Jemmy Nowlan, set off to walk to the fair at Slane, whither some cattle of his had been sent off for sale that same morning early. And he was dressed in his best clothes, spruce and neat; and not one in all the county round could equal Jemmy Nowlan for height, strength, or good looks. So he went along quite gay and merry in himself, till he came to a lonely bit of the road where never a soul was to be seen; but just then the sky became black-dark, as if thunder were in the air, and suddenly he heard the tramp of a horse behind him. On turning round he saw a very dark, elegant looking gentleman, mounted on a black horse, riding swiftly towards him.

“Jemmy Nowlan,” said the dark horseman, “I have been looking for you all along the road. Get up now, quickly, behind me, and I’ll carry you in no time to the great fair of Slane; for, indeed, I am going there myself, and it would be very pleasant to have your company.”

“Thank your honour kindly,” said Jemmy; “but it’s not for the likes of me to ride with your lordship; so I would rather walk, if it’s pleasing to your honour; but thanks all the same.”

Truth to tell, Jemmy in his own mind had a fear of the strange gentleman and his black horse, and distrusted them both, for had he not heard the people tell strange stories of how young men had been carried off by the fairies, and held prisoners by their enchantments down deep in the heart of the hill under the earth, where never a mortal could see them again or know their fate; and they were only allowed to come up and see their kindred on the nights the dead walked, and then they walked with them as they rose from the graves? So again he began to make his excuses, and meanwhile kept looking round for some path by which he could escape if possible.

“Come now,” said the dark horseman,265 “this is all nonsense, Jemmy Nowlan; you really must come with me.”

And with that he stooped down and touched him lightly on the shoulder with his whip, and in an instant Jemmy found himself seated on the horse, and galloping away like the wind with the dark horseman; and they never stopped nor stayed till they came to a great castle in a wood, where a whole set of servants in green and gold were waiting on the steps to receive them. And they were the smallest people Jemmy had ever seen in his life; but he made no remark, for they were very civil, and crowded round to know what they could do for him.

“Take him to a room and let him dress,” said the gentleman, who appeared to own the castle. And in the room Jemmy found a beautiful suit of velvet, and a cap and feather. And when the little servants had dressed him they led him to the large hall that was all lit up and hung with garlands of flowers; and music and dancing were going on, and many lovely ladies were present, but not one in the hall was handsomer than Jemmy Nowlan in his velvet suit and cap and feather.

“Will you dance with me, Jemmy Nowlan?” said one lovely lady.

“No, Jemmy: you must dance with me,” said another.

And they all fought for him, so he danced with them all, one after the other, the whole night through, till he was dead tired and longed to lie down and sleep.

“Take Jemmy Nowlan to his room, and put him to bed,” said the gentleman to a red-haired man; “but first he must tell me a story.”

“I have no story, your honour,” said Jemmy, “for I am not book-learned; but I am very tired, let me lie down and sleep.”

“Sleep, indeed,” said the gentleman; “not if I can help it. Here, Davy”—and he called the red-haired man—“take Jemmy Nowlan and put him out; he can tell no story. I will have no one here who can’t tell me a story. Put him out, he is not worth his supper.”

So the red-haired man thrust Jemmy out at the castle gate, and he was just settling himself to sleep on a bench outside, when three men came by bearing a coffin.

“Oho, Jemmy Nowlan,” they said, “you are welcome. We just wanted a fourth man to carry the coffin.”

And they made him get under it with them, and away they marched over hedge and ditch, and field and bog, through briars and thorns, till they reached the old churchyard in the valley, and then they stopped.

“Who will dig a grave?” said one.

“Let us draw lots,” said another.

And the lot fell on Jemmy. So they gave him a spade, and he worked and worked till the grave was dug broad and deep.

“This is not the right place at all for a grave,” said the leader266 of the party when the grave was finished. “I’ll have no one buried in this spot, for the bones of my father rest here.”

So they had to take up the coffin again, and carry it on over field and bog till they reached another churchward, where Jemmy was obliged to dig a second grave; and when it was finished, the leader cried out—

“Who shall we place in the coffin?”

And another voice answered—

“We need draw no lots; lay Jemmy Nowlan in the coffin!”

And the men seized hold of him and tried to cast him to the ground. But Jemmy was strong and powerful, and fought them all. Still they would not let go their hold, though he dealt them such blows as would have killed any other men. And at last he felt faint, for he had no weapon to fight with, and his strength was going.

Then he saw that the leader carried a hazel switch in his hand, and he knew that a hazel switch brought luck; so he made a sudden spring and seized it, and whirled it three times round his head, and struck right and left at his assailants, when a strange and wondrous thing happened; for the three men who were ready to kill him, fell down at once to the ground, and remained there still as the dead. And the coffin stood white in the moonlight by itself, and no hand touched it, and no voice spoke.

But Jemmy never waited to look or think, for the fear of the men was on him, lest they should rise up again; so he fled away, still holding the hazel twig in his hand, and ran on over field and bog, through briars and thorns, till he found himself again at the castle gate. Then all the grand servants came out, and the little men, and they said—

“You are welcome, Jemmy Nowlan. Come in; his lordship is waiting for you.”

And they brought him to a room where the lord was lying on a velvet couch, and he said—

“Now, young man, tell me a story, for no one in my castle is allowed to eat, drink, or sleep till they have related something wonderful that has happened to them.”

“Then, my lord,” said Jemmy, “I can tell you the most wonderful of stories; and very proud I am to be able to amuse your lordship.”

So he told him the story of the three men and the coffin, and the lord was so pleased that he ordered the servants to bring the youth a fine supper, and the best of wine, and Jemmy ate like a prince from gold dishes, and drank from crystal cups of the wine, and had the best of everything; but after the supper he felt rather queer and dazed-like, and fell down on the ground asleep like one dead.

After that he knew nothing till he awoke next morning, and267 found himself lying under a haystack in his own field, and all his beautiful clothes were gone—the velvet suit and cap and feather that he had looked so handsome in at the dance, when all the fine ladies fell in love with him. Nothing was left to him of all the night’s adventure save the hazel twig, which he still held firmly in his hand.

And a very sad and down-hearted man was Jemmy Nowlan that day, especially when the herd came to tell him that none of the cattle were sold at the fair, for the men were waiting for the master, and wondering why he did not come to look after his money, while all the other farmers were selling their stock at the finest prices.

And Jemmy Nowlan has never yet made out why the fairies played him such a malicious and ill turn as to prevent him selling his cattle. But if ever again he meets that dark stranger on the black horse, he is determined to try the strength of his shillelagh on his head, were he ever such a grand man among the fairies. For at least he might have left him the velvet suit; and it was a shabby thing to take it away just when he couldn’t help himself, and had fallen down from fair weakness and exhaustion after all the dancing, and the wine he drank at supper, when the lovely ladies poured it out for him with their little hands covered with jewels.

It was truly a bad and shabby trick, as Jemmy said to himself that May morning, when he stood up from under the hay-rick; and just shows us never to trust the fairies, for with all their sweet words and pleasant ways and bright red wine, they are full of malice and envy and deceit, and are always ready to ruin a poor fellow and then laugh at him, just for fun, and for the spite and jealousy they have against the human race.
SHEELA-NA-SKEAN.
There is an old ruin of a farmhouse in the County Cork, near Fermoy, that has an evil reputation, and no one would build it up or inhabit it.

Years and years ago a rich farmer lived there, who was reputed to have hoards of gold hid away in his sleeping-room. Some said he never slept without the sack of gold being laid under his pillow. However, one night he was found cruelly murdered, and all the gold in the house was missing except a few pieces stained with blood, that had evidently been dropped by the murderers in their flight.

The old man at the time was living quite alone. His wife was268 dead, and his only son was away in a distant part of the country. But on news of the murder the son returned, and a close investigation was made. Suspicion finally fell on the housekeeper and a lover she used to bring to the house. They were arrested in consequence and brought to trial. The housekeeper, Sheela-na-Skean, or Sheela of the Knife, as she was called afterwards, was a dark, fierce, powerful woman, noted for her violent and vindictive temper. The lover was a weak, cowardly fellow, who at the last turned evidence to save his life. He had taken no part, he said, in the actual murder, though he had helped Sheela to remove and bury the gold. According to his story, Sheela entered the old man’s room at night, and taking a sharp short sword that always hung at the head of his bed, she stabbed him fiercely over and over till not a breath of life was left. Then, calling her lover, they ransacked the room, and found quantities of golden guineas, which they put in a bag and carried out to the field, where they buried it in a safe spot, known only to themselves; but this place neither Sheela nor the lover would reveal unless they received a pardon.

The murder, however, was too atrocious for pardon, and Sheela was hung amid the howlings and execrations of the people. But she remained fierce and defiant to the last, still refusing obstinately to reveal the place where the money was buried.

The lover, meanwhile, had died in prison from fright, for after sentence was pronounced, he fell down in a fit, from which he never recovered. So the secret of the gold died with them.

After this the son came to live in the place; and the tradition of the hidden gold was still kept alive in the family, but all efforts to find it proved useless.

Now a strange thing happened. The farmer dreamed for three nights in succession that if he went at midnight to an old ruined castle in the neighbourhood, he would hear words that might tell him the secret of the gold; but he must go alone. So after the third dream the farmer resolved to do as he was ordered, and he went forth at midnight to the place indicated. His two sons, grown-up young men, anxiously awaited his return. And about an hour after midnight the father came home pale as a ghost, haggard and trembling. They helped him to his bed, and after a little he was able to tell them his adventures. He said, on reaching the old ruin he leaned up straight against the wall, and waited for the promised words in silence. Then a breath seemed to pass over his face, and he heard a low voice whispering in his ear—

“If you want to find the bag of gold, take out the third stone.”

“But here,” said the farmer mournfully,269 “the voice stopped before the place was named where the gold lay; for at that instant a terrific screech was heard, and the ghost of Sheela appeared gigantic and terrible; her hands dripping with blood, and her eyes flaming fire; and she rushed to attack me, brandishing a short, sharp sword round her head, the very same, perhaps, with which she had committed the murder. At sight of this awful apparition I fled homeward, Sheela still pursuing me with leaps and yells till I reached the boundary of the castle grounds, when she sank into the earth and disappeared. But,” continued the farmer, “I am certain, from the voice, that the bag of gold lies hid under the third stone in——”

He could say no more, for at that instant the door of the bedroom was violently flung open, as if by a strong storm wind, the candle was blown out, and the unfortunate man was lifted from his bed by invisible hands, and dashed upon the floor with a terrible crash. In the darkness the young men could hear the groans, but they saw no one.

When the candle was relit they went over to help their father, but found he was already dead, with a black mark round his throat as if from strangulation by a powerful hand. So the secret of the gold remained still undiscovered.

After the funeral was over, and all affairs settled, the brothers agreed that they would still search for the gold in the old ruins of the castle, undeterred by the apparition of the terrible Sheela. So on a certain midnight they set forth with spades and big sticks for defence, and proceeded to examine every third stone in the huge walls, to the height of a man from the ground, seeking some secret mark or sign by which, perhaps, the true stone might be discovered. But as they worked, a thin blue light suddenly appeared at some distance in the inner court of the castle, and by it stood the ghost of their father, pointing with his outstretched hand to a certain stone in the wall. Now, they thought, that must certainly be the spot where the gold is hid; and they rushed on; but before they could reach the place, the terrible form of Sheela appeared, more awful than words could describe, clothed in white, and with a circle of flame round her head. And she seized the ghost with her gory hands, and dragged him away with horrible yells and imprecations. And far off in the darkness they could hear the fight going on, and the yells of Sheela as she pursued the ghost.

“Now,” said the young men, “let us work while they are fighting;” and they worked away at the third stone from the end, where the blue light had rested—a large flat stone, but easily lifted; and when they had rolled it away from the place, there underneath lay a huge bag of bright golden guineas. And as they raised it up from the earth, a terrific unearthly din was heard in the distance, and a shrill scream rang on the air. Then a rush of the wind came by them and the blue light vanished, but they heeded nothing, only lifted the bag from the clay, and270 carried it away with them through the darkness and storm. And the yells seemed to pursue them till they reached the boundary of the castle grounds, then all was still; and they traversed the rest of the way in peace, and reached home safely.

From that time the ghost of Sheela-na-Skean ceased to haunt the castle, but lamenting and cries used sometimes to be heard at night in and around the old farmhouse; so the brothers pulled it down and left it a ruin, and built a handsome residence with some of their treasure; for now they had plenty of gold, and they lived happily and prospered ever after, with all their family and possessions. And on the spot where the gold was found they erected a cross, in memory of their father, to whom they owed all their wealth, and through whom this prosperity had come; for by him the evil spirit of Sheela-na-Skean was conquered at last, and the gold restored to the family of the murdered farmer.
CAPTAIN WEBB, THE ROBBER CHIEF.
About a hundred years ago a most notorious robber, called Captain Webb, used to make the County Mayo his headquarters; and dreadful tales are still current amongst the people of his deeds of violence and cruelty.

Many beautiful young girls he carried off by force or fraud; and when he grew tired of them it was his practice to strip the unhappy victims naked, and plunge them down a deep hole near Lough Corrib, which is still known throughout the county as “Captain Webb’s Hole.”

One day, however, fate worked out a revenge on the audacious highwayman by the hands of a woman.

He had committed a daring robbery on the highroad—plundered a carriage, shot the horses, and carried off a noble and lovely girl, who was returning home with her mother from an entertainment, which had been given by a great lord in the vicinity. Consequently, as the robber knew, the ladies were dressed magnificently, and wore the most costly jewels. After stripping the mother of all her ornaments, he left her half dead upon the highway; but wrapping a cloak round the young lady, Captain Webb flung her on the horse before him and galloped off to one of the many hiding-places he had through the country.

For some time he gave up all his other favourites for the sake of the beautiful girl, and carried her about with him on all his wild expeditions, so great was the madness of his love for her.

But at length he grew tired even of her beauty, and resolved to271 get rid of her, in the same way as he had got rid of the others, by a cruel and sudden death.

So one day, when she was out riding beside him, as he always forced her to do, he brought her to the fatal hole where so many of his victims had perished, intending to cast her down headlong as he had done to so many others; but first he told her to dismount and to take off all her rich garments of silk and gold and her jewels, for she would need them no longer.

“For pity, then,” she said, “do not look on me while I undress, for it is not seemly or right to look on a woman undressing; but turn your back and I shall unclasp my robe and fling it off.”

So the captain turned his back as she desired him, for he could not refuse her last request; but still he kept close to the edge of the hole ready to throw her in; when suddenly she sprang upon him, and placing both hands on his shoulders, pushed him over the edge down into the fathomless gulf, from which no mortal ever rose alive, and in this manner the country was freed for evermore from the terrible robber fiend, by the courage of a brave and beautiful girl.
THE MAYO ROBBER AND FEENISH THE MARE.
Another desperate character that made an evil reputation in the same county was Captain Macnamara. Though a man of family and good means and of splendid appearance, he led a life of the wildest excess, and stopped at no crime so as he could gratify the passion or the caprice of the moment, or find money to spend on his pleasures, with the reckless, senseless, foolish extravagance of an evil, dissolute nature; for he had early squandered away all his own patrimony, and now only lived by fraud, lying, and insolent contempt of the rights and claims of others.

Just at the time when his finances were at the lowest, he was summoned to attend his trial at the county assizes for some malpractices concerning land and stock belonging to a wealthy widow lady, who had a fine place in the neighbourhood, though she seldom lived there, being constantly abroad, in Paris or Rome, with her only son, a young lad, the heir of the property. It happened, however, that she returned home just in time for the trial, which interested her, as it concerned an audacious appropriation of some of her best land from which the stock had been drawn off and sold by Macnamara. Highly indignant at the insult offered to her, the wealthy widow appeared in court resolved on vengeance; and was received by all the officials with the utmost272 distinction and deference. The defendant was put through a most torturing examination, in which all his evil practices were laid bare with ruthless severity. But the widow heeded nothing of the record of wicked deeds; she only saw before her a splendid stalwart man in the prime of life, with a magnificent presence, flashing eyes, and raven hair. At once she was subjugated, as if by magic, by the handsome prisoner in the dock, and calling over her counsel, she gave orders that the suit should be stopped and no damages claimed. After this, as was natural, a warm intimacy sprang up between plaintiff and defendant, which ended in a short time by the marriage of the rich widow and the spendthrift captain; the widow’s only son and heir to the estate being brought home from school to live with them, for, as the captain observed, it was necessary that the boy should be early instructed in the management of the property.

One evening, however, Macnamara set a rope across a lonely part of the road where he knew the lad must pass when riding home. In consequence the horse stumbled, and threw the rider; and at night when the servants and people went out with torches to look for the young heir, he was found lying quite dead by the roadside.

The whole property now devolved to the widow, who gave up the management entirely to Macnamara; and he lost no time in making good use of the large sums of money that came under his control, by constantly plunging into renewed courses of dissolute extravagance. How the home life went on no one knew, for little was seen of the wife while the husband carried on his orgies; but after a year had passed by, the country heard with surprise of the death of the rich widow, as she was still called—suddenly, it was said, by a fit, a stroke. She was found lying dead in her bed one morning, and her husband was in the greatest grief—this was the orthodox narrative. But strange whispers at the same time went through the neighbourhood, that round the neck of the poor dear lady was found a black mark, and many had grave suspicions of foul play, though they feared to take any measures against the captain, so great was the terror he inspired.

Meantime, he consoled himself with another wife, a young girl who had been a favourite of his long before his first wife’s death. And they led a reckless life together till all the widow’s money was gambled away or spent in dissolute frolics. Then he joined a wild band of sharpers and desperadoes who fought and cheated every one at the fairs and races, and were the terror of the whole country. But, especially they warred upon the Big Joyces of Connemara, who thereupon swore to be revenged.

Now the captain had a famous mare called Feenish, who could fly like the wind and live for days without food. And he taught her all sorts of strange tricks—to stand on her hind legs, to go in273 at a window and to walk upstairs; and the way the robber chief got the secret of power over men and animals was in this wise.

There was an old raven lived near him up in a big tree, and one day Macnamara stole the eggs, took them home, boiled them and then set them back again in the nest, to see what the old bird would do. Now he saw the wisdom of the raven, for she flew off at once to a neighbouring mountain, and having found a certain stone of magic virtue carried it back in her beak to the nest. With this stone she rubbed the eggs all over, till the life came back into them; and in due time the young ravens were flying about as strong and joyous as the rest.

Macnamara having observed this process, watched his opportunity, and one day when the raven was absent, he stole the magic stone from the nest. His first trial of the power was to rub himself all over, as he had seen the raven do with the eggs; and with a very remarkable result, for he at once became possessed of marvellous gifts. He could foresee events, and force people to do his will: he knew when danger was near, and what path to take to avoid his enemies when they were on his track. Then he rubbed Feenish, the mare, all over, and instantly she became as wise as a Christian, and knew every word that was said to her.

So Macnamara, armed with all these new powers, went on with his wild wicked life, and robbed and plundered worse than ever; and the blood of many a man, besides, was on his hands.

At last the Joyce faction resolved to make an end of the audacious robber, and all the Big Joyces of Connemara gathered in force and pursued him from place to place and over bog and mountain through half the country. At one time Macnamara plunged into a bog; where Feenish lost her four shoes; then he made her swim the river at Cong after a hard day’s ride through mountain passes; but when the poor mare got to the other side she fell down dead, to the great grief of the robber chief, who had her buried on an island in Lough Corrib that still bears her name—Innis-Feenish. However, when he had laid his faithful friend in the clay, all energy forsook him, and all his good luck departed—his riches melted away, his children squandered his property, and his two sons met a violent death; finally, broken in spirit, beggared, and alone in the world, the last of his race, he found himself with nothing left of his ill-gotten gains except an old grey pony. On this animal he rode to Cork, where he took his passage in an emigrant ship to America, and sailed away from the old country, laden with the curses of all who had ever known him; and from that hour he was heard of no more. So ended the wicked career of the spendthrift and gambler and the suspected murderer of many victims.
SKETCHES OF THE IRISH PAST.
THE BARDIC RACE.

The magi, the Sephoe, the gymnosophists, and the Irish adepts, held much the same creed and the same dogmas with regard to the conduct of life necessary to heighten the spiritual power. They all abstained from animal food at such times as the rush of inspiration was on them and the madness of prophetic rage; and at all times they favoured solitude, living apart in the House of Learning or Bardic College, where they admitted no obtrusive intimacies with lower intellects to disturb their lofty and exalted moods of thought. The means, also, by which they obtained mastery over diseases and the minds of men, with the strange and subtle use they made of herbs, were all kept secret amongst themselves; for they held that the prying eyes of shallow unbelievers should never be suffered to intrude upon the sacred mysteries. And it is certain that the bards possessed strange and mystic powers of wisdom beyond and above all other men. It was therefore very dangerous to offend a poet. If any one refused him a request he would take the lobe of the person’s ear and grind it between his fingers, and the man would die. Yet the bards were capable of much human emotion, and were the sweet singers of sympathy when sorrow touched a household.

The following elegy from the Irish, written about two hundred years ago by the Ard-Filé, or chief poet of the tribe, has many natural, pathetic touches, and when chanted in Irish to the harp had power to melt the hearts of all the hearers to tears.

AN ELEGY.
O Boyne, once famed for battles, sports, and conflicts,
And great heroes of the race of Conn,
Art thou grey after all thy blooms?
O aged old woman of grey-green pools,
O wretched Boyne of many tears.
275
Where is the glory of thy sires?
The glory of Art with the swift arrow;
Of Meiltan, with the swift-darting spears
Of the lordly race of the O’Neil?
To thee belonged red victory,
When the Fenian wrath was kindled,
And the heroes in thousands rode to war,
And the bridles clanked on the steeds.
O river of kings and the sons of kings,
Of the swift bark and the silver fish,
I lay my blessing on thee with my tears,
For thou art the watcher by a grave—
My treasures lie in the earth at thy side—
O Boyne of many tears.
My sons lie there in their strength,
My little daughter in her beauty—
Rory, and Brian, and Rose—
These have I given against my will,
My blood, my heart, my bone and kin,
My love and my life, to the grave.
The blessing of men was on them,
The blessings of thousands that loved them,
From Kells of the Crosses to Drogheda—
Eight thousand blessings to Dowth of the Trees.
Peace be on the earth where they lie!
By the royal stream of the kings,
In the land of the great O’Neil.

The Bardic song amongst all nations was the first expression of the human soul, with all its strong, passionate emotions and heroic impulses. It is remarkable that, although several invasions of Ireland are on record, yet but one language seems to have existed there from the earliest times down to the coming of the Anglo-Normans in the twelfth century. The Bards held it as their peculiar duty to raise this language to the highest perfection, and the laws of Celtic poetry, especially, were most elaborate and the structure of the verse exceedingly difficult. Ten years of study were allowed the students at the Druids’ College to gain perfection in the art, and also to practise the memory; for at the royal festivals the Ard-Filé was expected to recite fully and perfectly whatever heroic tale might be called for by the king at the banquet. On great occasions also, when the meeting was held in the open air, the chiefs sat round in a circle on mounds of turf, to the accompaniment of the harp, the chorus joining in the while the bards, standing in the centre, recited the heroic narrative lyrical portions at intervals, and a circle of harpists at the outermost ring of the assemblage introduced occasional symphonies of276 pure instrumental music to give the bards time for rest between the parts of the recitation.

There were three chief measures in music in use amongst the poets—“the Sorrowful,” or the chant for the dead; “the Delightful,” reserved for dances and festivities; and “the Reposing,” devoted entirely to love sonnets and the plaintive softness of lyrical expression. But the Ross-Catha, or battle-hymn, was the great war-song to which the warriors marched to battle, and which inspired them with the heroic madness that braved death for victory.

Everything connected with the bards is interesting. They were so gifted, so learned, and so beautiful. For even genius was not considered enough, without beauty, to warrant a young man being enrolled in the ranks of the poets. A noble, stately presence was indispensable, and the poet was required not only to be gifted, but to be handsome. Then he was promoted through all the grades until he reached the last and highest, called “The Wisdom of the Gods,” but the knowledge then acquired by the initiated was kept sacred from the crowd, and the adept swore by the sun, the stars, and the hosts of heaven never to reveal the mysteries acquired by his initiation, to the profane.

The high-born maidens amongst the noble families were also trained by the Druids in poetry and music, and in the exercise of the chase, such as archery and throwing the lance, to give their bodies health, vigour and beauty, while those endowed with peculiar intellect were admitted into the bardic orders, and became the priestess, prophetess, or poetess of the tribe; who inspired men by her eloquence and had power by her incantations over the deep mysteries of life. Such was Eodain, the chief poetess of Erin, the guide and inspirer of Eugene, the king of the South, the prophetess of her nation, who saved him and his kingdom from ruin by her wisdom, and redeemed him by her counsels from his dissolute and evil life.
THE ANCIENT RACE.
But thousands of years ago, long before kings, bards, and Druids, with all their learning and comparative civilization, flourished in Ireland, and before the traditions of a beautiful fairy race were brought from the far East by a people accustomed to the sight of beauty, grace and splendour, an ancient race existed in the world—a mysterious, primitive wave of human life that spread over all Europe, perhaps over all the earth, and even surged upon the shores of our own Western island; possibly a pre-Adamic race,277 inferior in all points, physical as well as mental, to the Adamic race that succeeded them.

They have left no name or history, yet evidences of their nature, habits, intellect, and modes of life can be scientifically deduced from the abundant strange and curious antiquarian remains to be seen in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, of which Sir William Wilde in his illustrated catalogue has given such a perfect and comprehensive description. Records of a period so remote that the use of metals even was unknown; yet these ancient records reveal the story of the rude half-developed, early humanity of the world in as clear a symbol to the expert and the archæologist, as if written in alphabetical letters on monoliths, like those of Babylon.

Without, therefore, being forced into shadowy theory or nebular hypothesis, we may readily construct the whole life of the primitive man, his mode of being and doing, of dressing and of eating, of living, dying and sepulture, simply from the rude implements fashioned by his hand that cover the walls of the Academy, and are the letters in which an eternal page of human history is written.

But, this first pre-Adamic rudimental humanity was not wholly extirpated by the subsequent Adamic race. Representatives of them still remained throughout the world, and are yet existing, though these half-souled specimens of an early, inferior humanity, are gradually dying out and disappearing before the advance of the higher Adamic race, the destined lords and rulers of earth.

In Ireland the inferior primitive tribes became the bond-slaves for the higher humanity—the Tuatha-de-Dananns and Milesians that succeeded them; and specimens of this slave people can still be seen in remote districts in Ireland along the coast-line of the West, and in the secluded mountain passes. They are held in much contempt by the descendants of the nobler race, and are stigmatized even now as “the slave people,” and the bondsmen of their forefathers.

It seems, then, an incontrovertible truth that the early inhabitants of Ireland, as of all Europe—in fact, the whole pre-Adamite humanity of the world—lived and died throughout how many ages we know not in a state little higher than the animal creation, without the knowledge of even the simplest elements of civilization, which all the Adamic races possess, from their higher organization and intellect, and which they seem to have had from the date of their earliest appearance on earth.

The clothing of the primitive man was of the skins of animals fastened with thongs, or tunics made of rushes, such as were found some years ago in Spain, on the skeleton forms of pre-historic date buried in a cave of the Sierra Nevada. Their only weapons and tools were of stone, manufactured by another stone.278 Their ornaments were of shells and fish-bones; and their dwellings such only as instinct has suggested to all animals.

There are abundant evidences in our National Museum to prove the existence of this primary stratum of barbarism underlying all the culture of modern Europe; and we might almost hesitate to link so low a type of humanity with our own if we did not recognize in it also the characteristic instinct of man, entirely wanting in the animals—an irrepressible tendency towards progression and improvement, and, above all, to ornamentation, which is a distinctive human quality.
THE ANTIQUITIES OF IRELAND.
We commence the study of this early race with the first rude stone implement with which a savage man killed an animal scarcely more savage. Then, simple designs of ornamentation are discernible—the first twilight dawning of soul through matter. The rude stone implement becomes decorated, more symmetrical in form, more adapted to its uses. There is evidence of a growing sense of beauty, and heightened reasoning powers. After the introduction of metals, we trace the original stone forms reproduced first in simple unalloyed copper, afterwards in that perfect and beautiful bronze of a ruddy yellow, like gold, which no modern bronze has ever equalled. There is no violent disruption of ideas, as if the new incoming race had entirely vanquished and crushed the earlier and elder; but on the contrary, a gradual and continuous development of the original ideas of this elder race itself, always co-working with whatever new influences may have come to it from without.

Many writers have held the belief that the first colonists of Ireland were a highly-civilized people, clothed with Tyrian silk, fine linen of Egypt, and adorned with costly ornaments of gold. But stern facts refute this theory. The same primitive race who used only stone weapons were unacquainted with the art of weaving, and knew of no other garment than the untanned skin of the animal they killed for food. Theorists might still, however, argue, doubt, and disbelieve, if one of the ancient race had not himself risen, as it were, from the grave, after a sleep of thousands of years, to give his testimony concerning his people. In 1821 this primitive Irishman, clad completely in skins laced with thongs, was found in a peat bog, ten feet below the surface. The teeth, long dark hair and beard, were perfect. Portions of this dress have been preserved in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy. The material used in sewing was fine gut, and the regularity and279 closeness of the stitching are most remarkable. Specimens of the antique skin mocassins and skin caps have been also found at various times in the peat bogs, and secured for the Museum, so that we have the dress of the ancient Irishman complete.

Long after this period of barbarism, but still at a time so distant that it is anterior to all historic record, we find that the Irish had attained some knowledge of metals and the art of weaving. The Museum contains numerous highly-finished illustrations of the beautifully-formed, slender, leaf-shaped swords and daggers of bronze, which began gradually to supersede the use of the primitive celt. Many of these swords are of the pure Grecian type, formed apparently on the model of the leaf of the aloe or the agave. One sword found on an ancient battle-field is curved like a Turkish yataghan; and in “The Book of Rights” “curved swords of battle” are frequently referred to. But the specimens of the broad scythe-shaped sword, “which is especially and peculiarly Irish,” are the most numerous, as many as forty-one of these heavy, thick, round-pointed battle-axe swords being in the Museum.

The same progress of artistic development is observable in the ancient swords as was noticed in the primitive celt—as the art advanced, the manufacturer began to exercise his artistic faculties in fanciful and costly decoration. The blade was adorned with either cast or engraved ornamentation, and the hilt inlaid or studded with gold. Thus, Brian Boroimhe is described as carrying a gold-hilted sword in his right hand at the battle of Clontarf.

It is very remarkable that, throughout the whole series, from the rudest to the most highly finished, a peculiar idea is traceable in the ornamentation, by which they can at once be recognized as Irish; and this idea seems to have travelled from Irish Paganism to Irish Christianism. The ornamentation on the sepulchral stones of New Grange is repeated on the stone celts; it is carried on into the age of Bronze; it decorated the swords and spears of the kings, as well as their costly diadems and ornaments of gold, and still continued to be traced, with a kind of loving fidelity to the ancient symbols, upon the manuscripts illuminated by priestly hands, so late as the tenth and eleventh centuries.

For the illustration of the costume of the early Irish, after it passed from primitive helpless barbarism to comparative civilization, by the aid of the knowledge of metals and the art of weaving, fortunately we are not left to mere theories; for, by a singular chance, the representative of the advanced period, like him of the barbaric age, arises also from the grave of the Past to bear witness for himself.

In 1824, a male body, completely clad in woollen antique garments, was found in a bog near Sligo, six feet below the surface; and so perfect was the body when first discovered, that280 a magistrate was called upon to hold an inquest on it. The garments also were in such complete preservation, that a photograph was made of a person clad in this antique suit, with the exception of the shoes, which were too small for an adult of our day, and a drawing from this photograph is one of the best and most beautifully executed illustrations of the Museum catalogue. The costume of this ancient Irish gentleman is exceedingly picturesque, consisting of trews of a plaid pattern, made wide above, like Turkish trousers, but fitting close to the leg and ankle; over them was a tunic of soft cloth, most elaborately gored and gussetted, showing high perfection in the tailoring art. The skirt of the tunic, which extends to the knee, is set on full, and measures eight feet in circumference at the bottom. The sleeves are tight, and open to the elbow, like an Albanian jacket; and over all was thrown the immemorial Irish mantle, so invariably worn, so indispensable a portion of Irish costume that it passed into a proverb among our neighbours, the Welsh, “like an Irishman for the cloak.”

This graceful garment, as found upon the hero of the bog, and now visible in our Museum, is composed of brown, soft cloth, made straight on the upper edge, which is nine feet long, but cut nearly into the segment of a circle on the lower. The form resembles closely that worn by the Calabrian peasant at this day. These cloaks were often of great value; kings were paid tribute of them. They were made of various colours, each colour being a symbol to denote the rank of the wearer. The number of colours also in a dress had a significant value, and was regulated by law. Thus, one colour only was allowed to slaves; two for soldiers; three for goodly heroes, or young lords; six for the learned men; five for a poetess; and seven was the regal number for kings and queens.

In the “Book of Rights,” the earliest accessible authority on the subject of costume prior to the Norman Invasion, we read of cloaks of various colours presented in tribute to the kings—cloaks of purple, red cloaks, green, white, black; in fact, cloaks of all colours. Some are mentioned as bordered with gold. The tunic is also described frequently, “with golden borders—with gold ornaments—with golden hems.” Another form of cloak was fashioned with a hood like the Arab bornous, and was bordered with a deep fringe of goat’s hairs.

Irish costume seems, in fact, to have been half-Oriental, half-Northern, like the compound race that peopled the island. The trews were the same as the Germanic braccœ; while the tunic was Albanian, and the mantle Eastern; as well as the high, conical head-dress, which is identical in form with the Persian cap of the present day. On this subject Sir William Wilde remarks—

“Every day’s observation and research bring to light new281 affinities with early Irish costume. In the great French work, ‘Herculaneum et Pompeii,’ there is a battle scene, copied from a mosaic at Pompeii, in which the arms and dress of the combatants are almost identical with those of ancient Ireland. The vanquished wear tight-fitting trousers, close tunics, several of which are plaided, and cloaks with the hood coming over the head precisely like the Irish cochall. The chief figures wear torques round the neck, and bracelets on the wrists, and the hood is retained in its place by a narrow frontlet, apparently of gold. The colours of the garments are also peculiarly Irish. In some, the cloak is yellow; the mantle, dark red; and the tunic, purple bordered with white; the latter spangled with triple stars of gold, precisely after the fashion figured in the ‘Book of Kells.’ The chariot in which the principal figure stands resembles some figured on our ancient crosses, and the charioteer wears a pointed cap, green tunic, and tartan vest. All the vanquished wear beards, and their hoods envelop their chins.”

The study of ancient costume has especial interest for the historian, as the culture, civilization, and commercial relations of a people can be readily deduced from it; and in the numerous and curious illustrations of the catalogue, taken from ancient records, illuminated manuscripts, and the ancient crosses and sepulchral monuments of the country, everything has been brought together that could throw light on this obscure subject. One most remarkable illustration is a full-length portrait of Dermot M’Morrough, king of Leinster, taken from an illuminated copy of Giraldus Cambrensis in the possession of Sir Thomas Philips, which portrait was very probably drawn from the life.

From all that is known on the subject, it would appear that linen and cloth of every degree of fineness, according to the rank of the wearer, were the principal materials used in ancient Irish dress. No remains of silk garments have been discovered; nor do the historical records, as far as we are aware, make any mention of silk being employed in personal wear. It is remarkable also, that while a traditional belief exists that linen has been known from time immemorial to Ireland, yet the Academy does not possess a single specimen of ancient linen. The linen shirts worn at the time of the Norman Invasion are said to have been of immense size, and dyed a saffron colour. But there is undeniable proof, that the tartan, or cloth of divers colours, which we are accustomed to associate only with Scotland, was worn universally in Ireland in ancient times. Portions of tartans are preserved in the Museum, and probably each grade of rank and clan possessed a characteristic plaid as well as a special dress. A love of variegated and glowing colours, and a tendency to gorgeous decoration, seem to have been always instinctive to the Irish nature.

The female dress of Ireland at a period subsequent to the282 barbaric age is also illustrated not from conjecture, but from actual observation; for in 1843 a complete female antique dress was discovered many feet below the surface in a bog (these museums of Nature, where she stores up and preserves her specimens of antique life with a care and perfection that no mortal curator can ever hope to equal), and is now to be seen in the Academy’s museum.

It consists of a boddice with a long waist, open in front, and attached to a full plaited skirt; which, like the Albanian fustanell, consists of several narrow gored breadths, gathered into small plaits at top, and spreading into a broad quilling at the bottom; each plait being stitched on the inside to preserve the form.

The bottom of the skirt measures twenty-two and a half feet in circumference, and there are ninety-two plaits, most elaborately arranged, so that the joining of each of the narrow breadths should fall within a plait. The material is of a brown woollen cloth.

No pictorial representations exist of female costume earlier than the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries but from the sculptured effigies on tombs, we find it consisted of either a flowing robe and veil, or of the plaited skirt and tight boddice already described, while the head-dress varied according to the fashion of the day.

The subject of personal decoration is perfectly illustrated in the Museum; the Academy possessing one of the largest collections in Europe, beginning at the first rude effort at adornment of the barbaric age, up to the rich golden ornaments of a later, though still pre-historic period.

It is not pleasant to national pride, after feeding on the gorgeous fables of our earliest annalists, to contemplate the primitive Irishman fastening his mantle of untanned deerskin with a fish-bone or a thorn, as we know the Germans did in the time of Tacitus; yet, unhappily, antiquarian research will not allow us to doubt the fact of the simple savageness of the first colonists. But when the intellect of the rude man stirred within him, he began to carve the bones of the animals he killed into articles of ornament and use. Thus the slender bones of fowls were fashioned into cloak pins, especially the leg bone, where the natural enlargement at one end suggested the form, and afforded surface for artistic display. From this first rude essay of the child-man can be traced the continuous development of his ideas in decorative art, from the carving of bones to the casting of metal, up to the most elaborate working in enamel, gold, and precious stones. Our Museum is rich in these objects, containing more than five hundred specimens. Pins, fibulæ,10 and brooches having been discovered in Ireland in immense283 quantities and variety, some of which are unsurpassed for beauty of design and workmanship.

“In these articles,” Sir William remarks, “the process of development is displayed in a most remarkable manner; for, from the simple unadorned pin or spike of copper, bronze or brass (the metallic representation of the thorn), to the most elaborately wrought ring-brooch of precious metal, the patterns of which are now used by our modern jewellers—every stage of art, both in form and handicraft, is clearly defined, not one single link is wanting. In the first stage all the artist’s powers were lavished on the decoration of the pin itself, or in the development of the head, which was enlarged and decorated into every possible shape and conceivable pattern. When it was almost impossible to improve the head, a ring or loop was added, passed through a hole in the neck. In the next stage, the ring was doubled, or many rings added. Finally, the ring was enlarged, flattened out, decorated, enamelled, covered with filigree, and jewelled, until, in those magnificent specimens of silver and gold found in Ireland of late years, it reached a degree of perfection which modern art can with difficulty imitate.”

The forms of many of the Irish brooches, pins, and fibulæ, are identical with numbers found in Scandinavia, but the peculiar ornamentation—a curiously involved spiral or serpent coil, which can be traced back through all ages of Irish art to the most remote antiquity—is met nowhere else; neither in Etruscan nor Teutonic art, though some assert its origin can be traced to Assyria and Egypt. However, this Opus Hibernicum, as it was termed by the learned Kemble, is one of the tests by which an antiquary can distinguish national from imported work. It is also remarkable that the ornaments of like form found so copiously in Scandinavia are all of bronze, while the Irish are of gold, a metal which, there is every reason to believe, existed in Ireland abundantly in former times, and is still found in small quantities. That it was used for ornament, even coeval with the stone celt, is also probable, as the rudest savage can make the ductile metal assume any form by simply flattening it between two stones.

Many centuries before the Christian era, according to the annals, gold was smelted in Wicklow, to the east of the Liffey. Goblets and brooches were covered with it, and the artificer’s name was Ucadan; but no further mention of native gold occurs throughout our ancient histories. However, two thousand years after, the story of the old annalist was singularly confirmed; for, in the year 1796, in the same part of Wicklow, perhaps on the very site of the furnace of Ucadan, upwards of £10,000 worth of native gold was obtained in about two months, and small quantities have been gathered there from time to time ever since.

284

The subject of the gold antiquities is one full of interest, and even of mystery. The quantity of antique manufactured gold ornaments dug up in Ireland, even in recent times, has been estimated as exceeding half a million of money. As much more may be lying beneath our feet, for, every year, as new cuttings are made for railroads, or bogs are drained, deposits of gold ornaments come to light. Two or three years ago a deposit of massive gold bracelets, in value nearly £5,000, as bright and beautiful as if just finished, was dug up in Carlow; and, still more recently, several antique golden frontlets were found by a labourer while working in a field, who, utterly unconscious of their value, threw them to his children, and the author of the Catalogue actually discovered, one day, the son of the man cutting them up into nose-rings for his pigs. They were happily rescued, and are now in the Academy. The form is beautiful and classic; it is a half-moon diadem, resembling accurately some seen in Etruscan sculpture.

What inestimable treasures may have been thus lost! not merely from ignorance, but also from cupidity; for numbers of gold articles have disappeared in the smelting-pot of the jewellers, who bought them from the country people at perhaps a fractional part of their value. The very small annual sum allowed to the Academy by Government is another cause why the work of destruction still goes on. Valuable gold ornaments are frequently offered there for sale—too valuable, unhappily, for the Academy to purchase, and with an indignant regret that is almost like a sense of shame, the members are obliged to leave them to their fate. Of course legislation could remedy all this, as it has done in Denmark, where the State has secured the possession of all antiquities found in the country for the National Museum, without any wrong being done to the finder, who is paid the full value of all he brings. But in Denmark there is a strong national pride in the subject, and the peasant, who is early taught by the local authorities the value of such things, would as soon think of destroying an antiquity as of burning his Bible.

It is still a question among the learned whether this enormous amount of manufactured gold, far exceeding all yet discovered in England and Scandinavia, was altogether native, or to some extent imported. An analysis of some of the gold has been made, to test the identity of its constituents with the gold of Wicklow, and in the instance selected the gold was found similar. This fact and the ornamentation are proofs to uphold the native theory: while opponents state that they came in the way of commerce from the Carthaginians who traded here. Ornaments identical with the Irish in form—the twisted torques, the bracelets, the diadems, and frontlets, having been found in the interior of285 Africa, and along the Gold Coast; in India, Barbary, Spain, and the islands of the Mediterranean.

Several ancient Irish musical instruments, the chief of which were the harp and trumpet, and numerous fragments of harps have been found also in the oldest crannoges, proving how ancient was the knowledge and the practice of music in Ireland—a fact confirmed by the Welsh Annals, which state that the Irish surpassed all nations in their proficiency on the harp.

The Museum possesses sixteen antique bronze trumpets, one of which—the finest specimen yet found in Europe—measures about eight feet in length, and the joining is curiously riveted with metal studs, a fact proving its antiquity, as it must have been formed in an age unacquainted with the art of soldering. With regard to coins, Sir William Wilde utterly denies that bronze ring-money was ever used in Ireland, as stated by Sir William Betham, who borrowed his idea from Vallancy: for all the articles hitherto described as ring-money, are now proved undeniably to belong to chain-dress or armour. The ancient medium of barter seems to have been so many head of cattle, or so many ounces of gold. A native coinage was utterly unknown. The amount of bronze discovered in Ireland is enormous, and proves the long duration of a period when it was in general use, before iron was known. Specimens of every object necessary to a people’s life have been found fabricated of it—weapons, tools, armour, swords, and spears; culinary vessels, caldrons, spoons, and other minor requisites; hair-pins for the flowing locks of the women; brooches for the graceful mantles of the chiefs, but not of the dark, dingy, modern compound that bears the name. Irish antique bronze was a metal of bright, glowing, golden beauty, and the effect of an army marching with spears of this metal in the flashing sunlight, we can imagine to have been truly magnificent.

The people of this remote age must have attained considerable skill in the manufacturing arts—must have had laws, religion, and social culture—yet how little would have been known of them if these mute witnesses of a past humanity had not been interpreted by science. Archæology and philology are the only solvents of the past; and no theory can henceforth be tolerated that will not stand the test of being assayed by them. The philologist traces the origin and affinities of our people in the roots of the Irish language; while their habits, modes of life, their position in the scale of civilization throughout the long duration of the unwritten age, can only be read in the letters of stone, bronze, and gold upon the walls of our Academy.

Irish manuscripts, though the oldest in North-western Europe, date back scarcely further than the fifth or sixth century. Beyond that period we enter a region of darkness, through which no286 literature or letters radiate their light; yet, unassisted by either, the archæologist can reconstruct the primitive world and the primitive man with greater truth and certainty than if he possessed both; for the facts of a museum are changeless and enduring, and can suffer no mutation from prejudice or ignorance, yet we must remember that it is science alone that gives value to these facts. Without its aid a museum would be only an aggregate of curious lumber. The archæologist must combine, in a synthetic and comprehensive view—must arrange in their proper sequence—must elucidate by a world-wide learning, these sibyline fragments of the past; or this writing on the wall, though it express the most irrefragable truths of history, will remain an undeciphered hieroglyphic, as useless and unprofitable to the student as the alphabet of an unknown language, which he is unable to form into intelligible words. All this Sir William Wilde accomplished for the Museum of the Academy, and in his clear and well-arranged volumes we can read the stone pages of our history by the light of all the learning and antiquarian research of the past and present age gathered to one focus.

The conclusion to be drawn from the facts laid before us is, that in an age of remote antiquity (M. Boucher de Perthes, the well-known French author and antiquarian, has written a book to prove that it was prior to the Deluge) the entire face of the earth was covered by a nomad people, speaking the one language, and living after the same rude fashion, with no other weapons than sharpened stone. This race passed away, and no research has ever yet discovered their name, their language, their religion, or the era of their existence. Not an inscription, not a word, not a letter graven on any stone have they left to allay the torturing curiosity of the inquirer. Yet traces of them have been found from Mexico to Japan; from the steppes of Tartary to the Pampas; round the shores of every European sea, and along the coasts of the two oceans. Wherever man’s foot has trodden within historic times, they trod before all history. Even in this outlying isle of ours vestiges of this people are strewn so thickly that the very soil seems made of their remains. Then another race swept across Europe—a comparatively cultured race, bearing with them the chief element of civilization—a knowledge of metals. They spread over both sides of the Danube; left their footprints in Italy and on the shores of the Baltic; overran Switzerland, France, and Belgium, giving names to the rivers they passed, the mountains they crossed, and the towns they founded, which names cling to them even to this day. From Belgium they spread to Britain, and from thence, or by the seacoast of Spain, they reached Ireland, where they founded the existing Irish race, and brought with them the knowledge of metals, the art of music and poetry, and the still existing Irish language. Historians name287 these people the Celts. On the Continent they were gradually crushed down beneath the Roman and Gothic races, and in Britain also by successive conquests. But Ireland suffered no conquest. Here the old Celtic race lived and flourished, and here alone their language, which everywhere else melted into a compound with the Gothic and Latin, maintained its distinct existence. The English language is the gradually formed product and result of the successive conquests of England. But no invading people ever gained sufficient strength in Ireland to influence the original language. It exists still amongst us, living and spoken the same as when thousands of years ago the Celtic people first crossed the Danube and gave it the name it now bears. For this reason all the archæologists of Europe turn their eyes to our sacred isle, as to the one great museum of the Celtic race. Thus, Professor Keller, of Zurich, anxiously studies the formation of Irish crannoges, to compare them with the Swiss; and the learned Pictet, of Geneva, demands the long-deferred completion of the Irish Dictionary, with an ardour that puts to shame our own apathy, as without it comparative philology wants its chief corner-stone. The great facts of our Museum, illustrated, described, and laid before the learned of Europe in a comprehensive form, will go far to correct the crude, imperfect notions of Continental writers concerning Irish antiquities. For instance, Professor Lindenschmidt, of Mayence, asserted in one of his earlier published works, that all the ancient bronze articles found on this side of the Alps were imported from Etruria, as a people so barbarous as the Irish could never have produced them. The fact being, that the largest, most varied, most highly decorated collection of bronze celts existing is to be found in our Museum, along with numerous specimens of the moulds in which they were cast, discovered on the very spot where the ancient workman had lit his furnace. This universal interest and demand for information are enough to stimulate our learned men to exertion, seeing that they are, in a measure, answerable to Europe for the proper preservation of our antiquities, the very rudest of which can tell some tale of the past, as the mere furrows along the streets of the dead Pompeii show that life once passed there.
EARLY IRISH ART.
Early Irish art illustrates in a very remarkable manner those distinctive qualities of Irish nature, which we know from the legendary traditions have characterized our people from the earliest times. The earnest religious faith, the love of gorgeous288 colouring, the tendency to express ideas by symbol, and the vivid imagination that delights in the strange and unusual, often fantastic and grotesque, in place of the absolute and real, combined with the patient and minute elaboration of details, so truly Oriental in its spirit, specially mark Irish ornamentation. All these reverential, artistic, fanciful, and subtle evidences of the peculiar Celtic spirit find a full and significant expression in the wonderful splendours of early Irish art, as seen chiefly in the ancient illuminated manuscripts.

The reputation of Irish artists for excellence in these costly productions became so extended throughout Christian Europe in the early ages, that at the request of many nations Ireland sent forth numbers of her most cultured artists as teachers and scribes to the great foreign schools and colleges; and numerous examples of skilled Irish work are still existing in Continental Libraries, where they are held as amongst the most sacred of the national treasures. For a full and comprehensive illustration of this subject it would be impossible to over-estimate the artistic and historic value of Mr. Westwood’s magnificent book on Anglo-Saxon and Irish Manuscripts. The volume contains facsimiles from all the principal illuminated Celtic manuscripts of Europe, executed with the most scrupulous care, chiefly by Mr. Westwood himself, the majority of them with the aid of a magnifying glass, so minute and delicate are the lines of ornamentation to be represented. In fact, for accuracy of information and richness of illustration, the volume surpasses anything yet published on Celtic art in the United Kingdom, and may claim equality with the grand, but enormously expensive work of Count Bastard, on early French Manuscripts. Mr. Westwood, in a learned preliminary dissertation, gives his views on the origin and development of Hiberno-Saxon art during the first thousand years of the Christian era, and finds in the ornamentation, as observed by Kemble and others, a distinct Opus Hibernicum and an Opus Anglicum, but the Irish the more perfect of the two, and wholly different from Continental art of the same era.

The earliest manuscripts of Greece and Rome show nothing like this distinctive Celtic art; nor the Italian mosaics, nor the wall paintings of Herculaneum or Pompeii—beautiful as are the representations of the human figure found there; nor does Byzantine art afford any similar types. From whence, then, did the Irish, the acknowledged founders of Celtic art in Europe, derive their ideas of ornamentation? This is one of the historical mysteries which, like the origin of the Round Towers, still awaits solution. One must travel a long way, even to the far East, before finding in the decorations of the ancient Hindoo temples anything approaching to the typical idea that runs through all Irish ornamentation. It is, however, an incontrovertible fact, and one proved289 to demonstration by Mr. Westwood’s learning, labour, and researches, that a time when the pictorial art was almost extinct in Italy and Greece, and indeed scarcely existed in other parts of Europe—namely, from the fifth to the end of the eighth century—a style of art had been originated, cultivated, and brought into a most marvellous state of perfection in Ireland absolutely distinct from that of any other part of the civilized world; and which being carried abroad by Irish and Saxon missionaries was adopted and imitated in the schools of Charlemagne, and in all the other great schools and monasteries founded by them upon the Continent.

In the middle of the ninth century the influence of the artists of Germany reacted on the productions of England, and in consequence of the more frequent communications of learned men with Rome, classical models began to be adopted, floral decorations were introduced, and figures in the Byzantine style. With these the Irish ornamentation was combined, principally in the framework of the design. Then it gradually disappeared from England, where it was replaced by Franco-Saxon and Teutonic art; so that after the tenth century Mr. Westwood has not found any Anglo-Saxon manuscript executed in the Lindisfarne or Irish style. But it remained for several centuries longer in use in Ireland, though the ornamental details exhibit little of the extreme delicacy of the earlier productions. With reference to these, Mr. Digby Wyatt observes that, in delicacy of handling and minute but faultless execution, the whole range of palæography offers nothing comparable to the early Irish manuscripts, especially “The Book of Kells,” the most marvellous of them all. One cannot wonder, therefore, that Giraldus Cambrensis, when over in Ireland in the reign of Henry II., on being shown an illuminated Irish manuscript, exclaimed, “This is more like the work of angels than of men!”

The peculiarities which characterize true Celtic art, whether in stone, metal work, or manuscript illumination, consist in the excessive and minute elaborations of intricate ornamental details, such as the spirals, the interlaced ribands, and the entwined serpents and other animal forms, so familiar to the students of our national art treasures in the museum of the Royal Irish Academy. These forms are invariably found in all Irish decoration. The initial letters and ornamentations of the ancient manuscripts are reproduced in the gigantic stone crosses and the more delicate metal work of the shrines and reliquaries; and from this identity of ornamentation the age can be determined of all art monuments or remains, and objects readily classified as cotemporaneous. The Irish adhered with wonderful fidelity to their peculiar art ideas for at least eight hundred years; and while the Saxons coquetted with Frankish art, and finally gave themselves up wholly to290 Norman influence, the Irish continued their exclusive devotion to the ancient and national Celtic type. Intensely national, indeed, were those early artists; they gave ideas to the world, but received none in exchange. In their pictures Goliath appears as an Irish warrior, and David bears an Irish harp in his hands while our Lord Himself, in one of the Irish sculptures, is represented wearing the Irish dress. When the nation fell under Norman sway in the twelfth century, Norman ideas naturally became triumphant; but everything that is most beautiful and interesting in antique Irish art belongs to the pre-Norman period—the gold ornaments, the gorgeous manuscripts, such as the Gospels of Durrow and of Kells; the grandest of the sculptured crosses, Cormac’s Chapel, that architectural gem of Western Europe; the richly decorated shrines, such as that of St. Monchan, “the most important ancient shrine now in existence in these islands,” Mr. Westwood states; and specially interesting to us Irish, from the recorded fact that it was covered with pure gold by Roderick O’Connor, the last king of Ireland, and was, as the Annals state, the most beautiful piece of art ever made in Erin. All these evidences of high cultivation and artistic skill were in existence long before the Norman adventurers set foot on our shores. Irish art, however, died out with Irish Nationality; and in two centuries or so, after the Norman Conquest, it ceased to exist, and was replaced by the pseudo-Roman or Irish Romanesque style. Irish art can be easily traced throughout the Continent by the peculiar ornamentation which characterized it; and wherever, amongst the early manuscripts in foreign libraries, one is found surpassing all the rest in the singular beauty and firmness of the writing, and the exquisite delicacy of the minute and elaborate illuminations, there at once an Irish hand is recognized as worker, or an Irish intellect as teacher. The same symbols and ideas run through all of them—there are the same strange, elongated, contorted, intertwined figures; the same rich mosaics of interlaced lines—so minute, so delicate, so rich in brilliant colours, that the border of the page seems powdered with crushed jewels. There is something almost melancholy in this devotion to a species of art in which there was nothing to stimulate the feelings or to warm the heart. No representation of nature’s glories in tree or flower, or the splendour of human beauty; the artist’s aim being rather, it would seem, to kill the human in him, by forcing his genius to work only on the cold abstractions of spirals and curves, and endless geometrical involutions, and the infinite monotony of those interlaced lines, still coiling on, for ever and ever, through the centuries, like the windings of the serpent of evil, which they were meant to symbolize, through the successive generations of our fated humanity. Truly, these artists offered up the sacrifice of love. Their lives and the labour of their lives were given291 humbly, silently, reverently to God, and the glory of God’s Word. They had no other aim in life, and when the work was done, a work so beautiful that even now the world cannot equal it, there was no vainglorious boast of himself came from the lips of the artist worker, but the manuscript ends with some simple devotional words, his name, and the desire to be remembered as the writer, like the orate pro me on the ancient tombstones; this was all he asked or hoped for in return for the years of youth and life he had incarnated in the illuminated pages of the Gospels. For in those early ages art had no existence save in union with religion. Humanity brought together all its most precious ointments to pour upon the feet of Jesus. In Ireland especially—the Island of Saints—whatever genius could devise or the hand of the artist could execute was lavished upon some work that would recall the presence of God to the people, stimulate His worship, or make known His word; upon the Psalters, the Gospels, the crosses, the costly shrines, the jewelled cases for a saint’s relics, the golden covers for the holy books. But nothing of that period has come down to us that shows a luxury in domestic life. The Word of God was shrined in gold, made rich with gems and enamels, but the people lived their old simple life in their old rude huts; and even the kings gave their wealth, not to erect palaces, but to build churches, to endow abbeys, to help the cause of God, and speed the holy men who were His ministers, in their crusade against evil, ignorance and darkness.

It is no idle boast to say that the Irish were the teachers of Europe from the seventh to the tenth century in art and religion. Mr. Westwood has visited all the great libraries of England and the Continent and found abundant evidence that Irish art, or Hiberno-Saxon art, was diffused over Europe during that period. The Greek and Latin manuscripts are not illuminated, but are adorned with intercalated pictures; Irish art differs from them in many respects—amongst others, in having the figures and rich ornamentations printed on the leaves and borders of the book itself. He has given facsimiles from Irish manuscripts now existing in the libraries of Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Lichfield, Salisbury, Lambeth, the British Museum, and other places; and, passing to the Continent, has laid under contribution the great libraries of Paris, Rouen, Boulogne, St. Gall, Milan, Rome, Munich, Darmstadt, Stockholm, Copenhagen, and even St. Petersburg, and thus proved the excellence to which Irish artists, or Saxon artists educated in Irish schools, attained more than a thousand years ago. Nor is it strange that Ireland should have been the teacher, considering its early Christianity, which had made some progress amongst the people even in St. Jerome’s time; a little later amongst the Britons; but at the end of the sixth century Augustine and his monks found the stolid Anglo-Saxons292 still in the bonds of their ancient paganism and Wodenism. The Celtic race received the Christian faith gladly as early as the fourth century, but it was a difficult matter to bring light to the Saxon soul. It has at all times proved itself rather opaque in nature. The Saxon tribes of Germany did not renounce their idols till forced to it by the strong coercive power and keen sword of Charlemagne, in the latter half of the eighth century.

With Christianity came to Ireland the knowledge of letters; at least no older inscription has been found than that on the pillar stone of Lugnadon, St. Patrick’s nephew, which may still be seen beside the ruin of St. Patrick’s oratory in one of the beautiful islands of Lough Corrib;11 and the oldest manuscript existing in Ireland is the Book of Armagh, a copy of St. Jerome’s Latin version of the Gospels written in the old Roman letters, and very valuable for the beauty of the writing and the various drawings it contains. Learning was at once consecrated to the service of God in those early days, and to multiply copies of the Gospels was the praiseworthy and devout task of the first great teachers and missionaries. The Book of Durrow and the Book of Kells, both of the early part of the sixth century, are believed to be the work of St. Columba himself. The latter, the Book of Kells, has filled all critics with wonder and admiration. It is more decorated than any existing copy of the Gospels, and is pronounced by learned authorities to be “the most beautiful manuscript in existence of so early a date, and the most magnificent specimen of penmanship and illumination in the Western World.” They are both written in the Latin uncial character, common to Europe at the time; and here it may be noticed, in passing, that the so-called Irish alphabet is simply the Latin alphabet modified by the first missionaries to suit the Irish sounds, as Ulphila, the apostle of the Goths, invented an alphabet of mingled Greek and Latin characters, in order to enable him to make his translation of the Gospels into Gothic; and as the Greek missionaries invented the Russian alphabet, which is a modified form of the Greek, for a like purpose. That the Irish should retain the old form of the Latin letters, while most of the other nations of Europe have discarded it, is to be regretted, as nothing would facilitate the study of Irish so much at the present day, when one has so little leisure to spell out with much painful endeavour the barbarous symbols of a bygone age, as the adoption of the modern English alphabet. The first Irish book that was ever printed appeared in 1571, and is now in the Bodleian Library. It is a catechism of Irish grammar, and the Irish alphabet has suffered no modification or improvement since. It was about the end of293 the sixth century that the fame of Irish learning and the skill of Irish artists began to extend to England, and from thence to the Continent; and Irish scribes were employed to make copies of the Gospels and teach the splendid art of illumination in the English monasteries. From that period till the end of the ninth century the Irish were a power in Europe from their learning and piety—eminent in Greek as well as Latin, and the great teachers of scholastic theology to the Christian world. The Gospels of Lindisfarne, executed by monks of Iona in the seventh century, and now “the glory of the British Museum,” form a most important element in the early history of Celtic art, as this book seems to have been the principal model for succeeding artists.

In the splendid folio copy of the Gospels at Copenhagen of the tenth century, supposed to have been brought to Denmark by King Canute, the figure of St. Matthew seated, while another saint draws back a curtain, is copied from the Gospels of Lindisfarne, while the border is in the tenth century style. The Gospels of St. Chad, now in Lichfield Library, are in the Irish style of the eighth century, and are very noticeable as having marginal notes in Latin, Anglo-Saxon, and ancient British, the latter being the oldest specimen of the ancient British language now in existence. The illuminations also are copied from the Lindisfarne book. St. Chad, it is known, was educated in Ireland, in the school of St. Finian. There are Irish Gospels at Durham of the eighth century. The Gospels of Mac-Regal are at Oxford, and the Gospels of Mac-Duran, the smallest and most beautiful known, are in the Archbishop’s palace at Lambeth. As Saxon art progressed and became influenced by Roman models, the Irish scribes were chiefly employed wherever elegance, harmony of colour, and extreme delicacy of touch were particularly requisite, as in the borders and initial letters. Thus, the Psalter of St. Augustine, said to be from Rome, and which resembles in style the manuscript Virgil of the fifth century, in the Vatican, is framed in pure Celtic art. On the Continent, also, the borders of the great manuscripts were generally confined to Irish hands. A Latin copy of the Gospels at Treves, evidently produced by one of the establishments founded by the Irish upon the Rhine, is remarkable for a combination of Celtic, Teutonic, and Franco-Byzantine art. The borders are Irish while the figures are Byzantine. These illuminated borders have the glitter and radiance of a setting of jewels, and are thus admirably suited to fulfil the true object of all ornamentation, which Mr. Ruskin defines as being “beautiful in its place, and perfect in its adaptation to the purpose for which it was employed.”

In the sixth century St. Gall, born in Ireland, accompanied St. Columbanus to the Continent, and founded the monastery in Switzerland that bears his name. Here many interesting manu294scripts and fragments are still preserved, remarkable for the old Irish marginal notes to the Latin text. Those are considered by philologists of such importance that thirteen quarto plates and facsimiles from them are given by Dr. Ferdinand Keller in the Zurich Society’s Transactions. An interesting relic of an Irish saint is also preserved in the Cathedral of Wurtzburg—a copy of the Gospels of St. Kilian, martyred in 689, and which was found stained with his blood on opening his tomb about fifty years after.

Thus, the Irish can be tracked, as it were, across Europe by their illuminated footsteps. They were emphatically the witnesses of God, the light-bearers through the dark ages, and above all, the faithful guardians and preservers of God’s sacred Word. A hundred years before Alfred came to Ireland to be educated, and went back to civilize his native country by the knowledge he had acquired there, the Christian schools of Germany, under the direction of Irishmen, had been founded by Charlemagne. Through France, along the Rhine, through Switzerland, Italy, and Spain, the Irish missionaries taught and worked, founding schools and monasteries, and illuminating by their learning the darkest pages of European history. One of the great treasures of the Imperial Library of Paris is a beautiful Irish copy of the Latin Gospels. The College of St. Isidore, at Rome, possesses many Irish manuscripts—one of them is a Psalter, folio size, written throughout in letters a quarter of an inch long, and which is considered to be the finest of the later works of the Irish school. The celebrated Golden Gospels of Stockholm are of Hiberno-Saxon art of the ninth century. This book has a singular history. It was stolen from England, and disappeared for ages, but finally was discovered at Mantua in the seventeenth century, and purchased for the Royal Library at Stockholm. St. Petersburg also possesses a highly illuminated copy of the Gospels, which was taken from France at the time of the great Revolution, and found its way to the far North. It is a perfect and beautiful specimen of the Irish style of the eight century, and the initial letters can only be compared to those of the Book of Kells. All these Irish manuscript Gospels are, without exception, copies of St. Jerome’s Latin version. No Irish translation of the Gospels has ever been found. Learning was evidently considered a sacred thing, indispensable for the priesthood, but not necessary for the masses; yet it seems strange that while the learned and pious Irish saints and missionaries were devoting their lives to multiplying copies of the Gospels for other nations, and disseminating them over Europe, they never thought of giving the people of their own land the Word of God to read in their own native tongue. The leading Teutonic races, on the contrary, with their free spirit, were not satisfied with accepting the doctrines of the faith, simply as an act of obedience to their teachers. They demanded the right of295 private judgment, the exercise of individual reason, and the Gospels were translated into Gothic as early as the fourth century by Bishop Ulphila for the use of the Gothic nation.

This remarkable book, called the “Codex Argenteus,” is now in the Royal Library of Upsala, having, after many dangers and vicissitudes, at last found its way to the people who hold themselves the true descendants of the Goths, and whose king still bears the proud title of “King of the Swedes, Goths, and Vandals;” and an edition of it, with annotations, has been published by the learned Professor Andreas Uppstrom, of Upsala.

Towards the close of the tenth century the Frankish style of ornamentation, a blending of the classical and the Byzantine, had almost entirely superseded the beautiful and delicate Celtic art both in England and on the Continent, and about the fifteenth century it disappeared even from our own Ireland, the country of its origin. The gorgeous missals and illuminated Gospels, instinct with life, genius, holy reverence, and patient love, were destined to be replaced soon after by the dull mechanism of print; while Protestantism used all its new-found strength to destroy that innate tendency of our nature which seeks to manifest religious fervour, faith, and zeal by costly offerings and sacrifices. The golden-bordered holy books, the sculptured crosses, the jewelled shrines were crushed under the heel of Cromwell’s troopers; the majestic and beautiful abbeys were desecrated and cast down to ruin, while beside them rose the mean and ugly structures of the Reformed faith, as if the annihilation of all beauty were then considered to be the most acceptable homage which man could offer to the God who created all beauty, and fitted the human soul to enjoy and manifest the spiritual, mystic, and eternal loveliness of form, and colour, and symmetry.

Since that mournful period when the conquering iconoclasts cast down the temples and crushed the spirit of our people, there has been no revival of art in Ireland. It is not wonderful, therefore, that we cling with so much of fond, though sad, admiration to the beautiful memorials of the past, and welcome with warm appreciation the efforts of able, learned and distinguished men to illustrate and preserve them, as in this splendid and costly book which Mr. Westwood has contributed to Celtic art.
OUR ANCIENT CAPITAL.
The history of Dublin, so admirably narrated by Mr. Gilbert in his learned and instructive volumes,12 begins the modern period of296 Irish history when Ireland became indissolubly united with the British Empire—the greatest empire of the world—and legendary lore, like all the ancient usages and superstitions, began to fade and perish before advancing civilization, as the luxurious undergrowth of a primeval forest before advancing culture.

A sketch of the rise of the capital of Ireland, with all the changes produced in Irish life by the new modes of thought and action introduced by Norman influence, forms therefore a fitting close to the legendary and early-historic period, so full of poetry and charm for the imagination, with its splendour of kings and bards, its shadowy romance and mist-woven dreams, and its ideal fairy world of beauty and grace, of music and song; when the people lived the free, joyous life of the childhood of humanity under their native princes, and the terrible struggle of a crushed and oppressed nation against a foreign master had not yet begun; the struggle that has lasted for seven centuries, and still goes on with exhaustless force and fervour.

The history of cities is the history of nations—the most perfect index of the social altitude, mental development, physical perfection, and political freedom, which at any given period a people may have attained. Every stone within a city is a hieroglyphic of the century that saw it raised. By it we trace human progression through all its phases; from the first rude fisher’s hut, the altar of the primitive priest, the mound of the first nomad warrior, the stone fortalice or simple fane of the early Christian race, up to the stately and beautiful temples and palaces which evidence the luxury and refinement of a people in its proudest excess, or human genius in its climax of manifestation.

Thus Babylon, Thebes, Rome, Jerusalem, are words that express nations. The ever-during interest of the world circles round them, for their ruins are true and eternal pages of human history. Every fallen column is a fragment of a past ritual, or a symbol of a dynasty. The very dust is vital with great memories, and a philosopher, like the comparative anatomist, might construct the entire life of a people—its religion, literature, and laws—from these fragments of extinct generations—these fossil paleographs of man.

Statue and column, mausoleum and shrine, are trophies of a nation’s triumphs or its tragedies. The young children, as they gaze on them, learn the story of the native heroes, poets, saints, and martyrs, leaders and lawgivers, who have flung their own glory as a regal mantle over their country. Spirits of the past, from the phantom-land, dwell in the midst of them. We feel their presence, and hear their words of inspiration or warning, alike in the grandeur or decadence of an ancient city.

Modern capitals represent also, not only the history of the past, but the living concentrated will of the entire nation. Thus is it297 with London, Berlin, and Vienna, while Paris, the cité verbe, as Victor Hugo calls her, represents not only the tendencies of France, but of Europe.

Dublin, however, differs from all other capitals, past or present, in this wise—that by its history we trace, not the progress of the native race, but the triumphs of its enemies; and that the concentrated will of Dublin has always been in antagonism to the feelings of a large portion of the nation.

The truth is, that though our chief city of Ireland has an historical existence older than Christianity, yet this fair Ath-Cliath has no pretension to be called our ancient mother. From first to last, from a thousand years ago till now, Dublin has held the position of a foreign fortress within the kingdom; and its history has no other emblazonment beyond that of unceasing hostility or indifference to the native race.

“The inhabitants are mere English, though of Irish birth,” wrote Hooker, three hundred years ago. “The citizens,” says Holingshed, “have from time to time so galled the Irish, that even to this day the Irish fear a ragged and jagged black standard that the citizens have, though almost worn to the stumps.” Up to Henry the Seventh’s reign, an Englishman of Dublin was not punished for killing an Irishman, nor were Irishmen admitted to any office within the city that concerned the government either of the souls or bodies of the citizens. The Viceroys, the Archbishops, the Judges, the Mayors, the Corporations, were all and always English, down to the very guild of tailors, of whom it stands on record that they would allow no Irishman to be of their fraternity. As the American colonists treated the red man, as the Spaniards of Cortez treated the Mexicans, as the English colony of India treated the ancient Indian princes, tribes, and people, so the English race of Dublin treated the Irish nation. They were a people to be crushed, ruined, persecuted, tormented, extirpated; and the Irish race, it must be confessed, retorted the hatred with as bitter an animosity. The rising of 1641 was like all Irish attempts—a wild, helpless, disorganized effort at revenge; and seven years later we read that Owen Roe O’Neil burned the country about Dublin, so that from one steeple there two hundred fires could be seen at once.

This being the position of a country and its capital, it is evident that no effort for national independence could gain nourishment in Dublin. Our metropolis is associated with no glorious moment of a nation’s career, while in all the dark tragedies of our gloomy history its name and influence predominate. Dublin is connected with Irish patriotism only by the scaffold and the gallows. Statue and column do indeed rise there, but not to honour the sons of the soil. The public idols are foreign potentates and foreign heroes. Macaulay says eloquently on this subject, “The Irish people are298 doomed to see in every place the monuments of their subjugation; before the senate-house, the statue of their conqueror—within, the walls tapestried with the defeats of their fathers.”

No public statue of an illustrious Irishman until recently ever graced the Irish capital. No monument exists to which the gaze of the young Irish children can be directed, while their fathers tell them, “This was to the glory of your countrymen.” Even the lustre Dublin borrowed from her great Norman colonists has passed away. Her nobility are remembered only as we note the desecration of their palaces; the most beautiful of all our metropolitan buildings but reminds us that there the last remnant of political independence was sold; the stately Custom-house, that Dublin has no trade; the regal pile of Dublin Castle, that it was reared by foreign hands to “curb and awe the city.”

It is in truth a gloomy task to awaken the memories of Dublin, even of this century. There, in that obscure house of Thomas Street, visions rise of a ghastly night-scene, where the young, passionate-hearted Geraldine was struggling vainly in death-agony with his betrayers and captors. Pass on through the same street, and close by St. Catherine’s Church you can trace the spot where the gallows was erected for Robert Emmet. Before that sombre prison pile two young brothers, handsome, educated, and well-born, and many a fair young form after them, expiated by death their fatal aspirations for Irish freedom. Look at that magnificent portal, leading now to the tables of the money-changers; through it, not a century ago, men, entrusted with the nation’s rights, entered to sell them, and came forth, not branded traitors, but decorated, enriched, and rewarded with titles, pensions, and honours.

Yet the anomalous relation between our country and its capital springs naturally from the antecedents of both. Dublin was neither built by the Irish nor peopled by the Irish; it is a Scandinavian settlement in the midst of a southern nation. Long even before the Norman invasion two races existed in Ireland, as different as the lines of migration by which each had reached it; and though ages have rolled away since Scythian and Southern first met in this distant land, yet the elemental distinctions have never been lost: the races have never blended into one homogeneous nationality. Other nations, like the English, have blended with their conquerors, and progression and a higher civilization have been the result. Roman, Saxon, Dane, and Norman, each left their impress on the primitive Briton; and from Roman courage, Saxon thrift, and Norman pride has been evolved the strong, wise, proud island-nation that rules the world—the Ocean-Rome. A similar blending of opposite elements, but in different proportions, has produced Scotch national character—grave, wise, learned, provident, industrious, and unconquerably independent.299 But the Irish race remains distinct from all others, as Jew or Zincali. It has no elective affinities, enters into no new combinations, forms no new results, attracts to itself no Scythian qualities of stern self-reliance and the indomitable pride of independence, but still retains all the old virtues and vices of their semi-oriental nature, which make the history of Ireland so sad a record of mere passionate impulses ending mostly in failure and despair. The English, slow in speech and repellent in manner, are yet able not only to rule themselves well and ably, but to rule the world; while the Irish, so fascinating, eloquent, brave, and gifted, have never yet achieved a distinctive place in the political system of Europe. We had even the advantage of an earlier education; we taught England her letters, Christianized her people, sheltered her saints, educated her princes; we give her the best generals, the best statesmen, the best armies; yet, withal, we have never yet found the strength to govern our own kingdom. Ethnologists will tell you this comes of race. It may be so. Let us then sail up the stream of time to Ararat, and try to find our ancestry amongst the children of the eight primal gods, as the ancients termed them, who there stepped forth from their ocean prison to people the newly baptized world.

A very clever German advises all reviewers to begin from the Deluge, so that by no possibility can a single fact, direct or collateral, escape notice connected with the matter in hand. When treating of Ireland this rule becomes a necessity. Our nation dates from the dispersion, and our faults and failings, our features and our speech, have an authentic hereditary descent of four thousand years. Other primitive nations have been lost by migration, annihilated by war, swallowed up in empires, overwhelmed by barbarians: thus it was that the old kingdoms of Europe changed masters, and that the old nations and tongues passed away. Here only, in this island prison of the Atlantic, can the old race of primitive Europe be still found existing as a nation, speaking the same tongue as the early tribes that first wandered westward, when Europe itself was an unpeopled wilderness.

We learn from sacred record that the first migrations of the human family, with “one language and one speech,” were from the East; and every successive wave of population has still flowed from the rising towards the setting sun. The progression of intellect and science is ever westward. The march of humanity is opposed to the path of the planet. Life moves contrary to matter. A metaphor, it may be, of our spirit exile—this travelling “daily further from the East;” yet, when at the farthest limit, we are but approaching the glory of the East again.

Gradually, along the waters of the Mediterranean, the beautiful islands on its bosom serving as resting-places for the wanderers, or bridges for the tribes to pass over, the primal families of the300 Japhetian race reached in succession the three great Peninsulas of the Great Sea, in each leaving the germ of a mighty nation. Still onward, led by the providence of God, they passed the portals of the Atlantic, coasted the shores of the vine-clad France, and so reached at length the “Isles of the Setting Sun,” upon the very verge of Western Europe.

But many centuries may have elapsed during the slow progression of these maritime colonies, who have left their names indelibly stamped on the earth’s surface, from Ionia to the Tartessus of Spain; and Miriam may have chanted the death-song of Pharaoh, and Moses led forth the people of God, before the descendants of the first navigators landed amidst the verdant solitudes of Ireland.

The earliest tribes that reached our island, though removed so far from the centre of light and wisdom, must still have been familiar with all science necessary to preserve existence, and to organize a new country into a human habitation. They cleared the forests, worked the mines, built chambers for the dead, after the manner of their kindred left in Tyre and Greece, wrought arms, defensive and offensive, such as the heroes of Marathon used against the long-haired Persians; they raised altars and pillar-stones, still standing amongst us, mysterious and eternal symbols of a simple primitive creed; they had bards, priests, and lawgivers, the old tongue of Shinar, the dress of Nineveh, and the ancient faith whose ritual was prayer and sacrifice.

The kindred races who remained stationary, built cities and temples, still a world’s wonder, and arts flourished amongst them impossible to the nomads of the plains, or the wanderers by the ocean islands; but the destiny of dispersion was still on the race, and from these central points of civilization, tribes and families constantly went forth to achieve new conquests over the yet untamed earth.

Whatever wisdom the early island colonizers had brought with them, would have died out for want of nourishment, had not these new tribes, from countries where civilization had become developed and permanent, constantly given fresh impulses to progress. With stronger and more powerful arts and arms, they, in succession, gained dominion over their weaker predecessors, and by commerce, laws, arts, and learning, they organized families into nations, enlightening while they subjugated.

The conquest of Canaan gave the second great impetus to the human tides ever flowing westward. Irish tradition has even, in a confused manner, preserved the names of two amongst the leaders of the Sidonian fugitives who landed in Ireland. Partholan, with his wife Elga, and Gadelius, with his wife Scota.

“This Gadelius,” say the legends,301 “was a noble gentleman, right wise, valiant, and well spoken, who, after Pharaoh was drowned, sailed for Spain, and from thence to Ireland, with a colony of Greeks and Egyptians, and his wife Scota, a daughter of Pharaoh’s; and he taught letters to the Irish, and warlike feats after the Greek and Egyptian manner.”

These later tribes brought with them the Syrian arts and civilization, such as dyeing and weaving, working in gold, silver, and brass, besides the written characters, the same that Cadmus afterwards gave to Greece, and which remained in use amongst the Irish, it is said, until modified by Saint Patrick into their present form, to assimilate them to the Latin.

Continued intercourse with their Syrian kindred soon filled Ireland with the refinement of a luxurious civilization. From various sources, we learn that in those ancient times, the native dress was costly and picturesque, and the habits and modes of living of the chiefs and kings splendid and Oriental. The high-born and the wealthy wore tunics of fine linen of immense width, girdled with gold and with flowing sleeves after the Eastern fashion. The fringed cloak, or cuchula, with a hood, after the Arab mode, was clasped on the shoulders with a golden brooch. Golden circlets, of beautiful and classic form, confined their long, flowing hair, and, crowned with their diadems, the chiefs sat at the banquet, or went forth to war. Sandals upon the feet, and bracelets and signet rings, of rich and curious workmanship, completed the costume. The ladies wore the silken robes and flowing veils of Persia, or rolls of linen wound round the head like the Egyptian Isis, the hair curiously plaited down the back and fastened with gold or silver bodkins, while the neck and arms were profusely covered with jewels.13

For successive centuries, this race, half Tyrian and half Greek, held undisputed possession of Ireland, maintaining, it is said, constant intercourse with the parent state, and, when Tyre fell, commercial relations were continued with Carthage. Communication between such distant lands was nothing to Phœnician enterprise. Phœnicians in the service of an Egyptian king had sailed round Africa and doubled the Cape of Good Hope two thousand years before the Portuguese. The same people built the navy of King Solomon a thousand years before Christ; and led the fleet to India for the gold necessary for the Temple.302 They cast the brazen vessels for the altar, employing for the purpose the tin which their merchants must have brought from the British Isles. Thus, to use the words of Humboldt, there can be no doubt that three thousand years ago “the Tyrian flag waved from Britain to the Indian Ocean.”

A king of the race, long before Romulus founded Rome, erected a college at Tara, where the Druids taught the wisdom of Egypt, the mysteries of Samothrace, and the religion of Tyre. Then it was that Ireland was known as Innis-Alga—the Holy Island—held sacred by the Tyrian mariners as the “Temple of the Setting Sun:” the last limit of Europe, from whence they could watch his descent into the mysterious western ocean.

But onward still came the waves of human life, unceasing, unresting. Driven forth from Carthage, Spain, and Gaul, the ancient race fled to the limits of the coast, then surged back, fought and refought the battle, conquering and yielding by turns, till at length the Syrian and the Latin elements blended into a new compound, which laid the foundation of modern Europe. But some tribes, disdaining such a union, fled from Spain to Ireland, and thus a new race, but of the old kindred, was flung on our shores by destiny.

The leaders, brave, warlike, and of royal blood, speedily assumed kingly sway, and all the subsequent monarchs of Ireland, the O’Briens, the O’Connors, the O’Neils, the O’Donnels, and other noble races, claim descent from them; and very proud, even to this day, are the families amongst the Irish who can trace back their pedigree to these princely Spaniards.

We have spoken hitherto but of the maritime colonists—that portion of the primal race who launched their ships on the Mediterranean to found colonies and kingdoms along its shores; then passing out through the ocean straits, the human tides surged upon the western limits of Europe, till the last wave found a rest on the green sward of ancient Erin. The habits of these first colonists were agricultural, commercial, and unwarlike; and ancient historians have left us a record of their temperament; volatile and fickle; passionate in joy and grief, with quick vivid natures prone to sudden excesses; religious and superstitious; a small, dark-eyed race, lithe of limb and light of heart; the eternal children of humanity.

For illustrations we need not here refer to the Royal Irish Academy, for as they looked and lived three thousand years ago, they may be seen to this day in the mountains of Connemara and Kerry.

While this race travelled westward to the ocean by the great southern sea, other families of the Japhetian tribes were pressing westward also, but by the great northern plains. From Western India, by the Caspian and the Caucasus, past the shores of the303 Euxine, and still westward along the great rivers of Central Europe, up to the rude coasts of the Baltic, could be tracked “the westward marches of the unknown crowded nations,” carrying with them fragments of the early Japhetian wisdom, and memories of the ancient primal tongue brought from the far East; but, as they removed further from the great lines of human intercourse, and were subjected to the influence of rigorous climates and nomadic habits, gradually becoming a rude, fierce people of warriors and hunters, predatory and cruel, living by the chase, warring with the wild wolves for their prey, and with each other for the best pasture-grounds. Driven by the severity of the seasons to perpetual migration, they built no cities and raised no monuments, save the sepulchral mound, which can be traced from Tartary to the German Ocean.

Without the civilizing aids of commerce or literature, their language degenerated into barbarous dialects; their clothing was the skin of wild beasts; their religion, confused relics of ancient creeds, contributed by the wandering colonies of Egypt, Media, Greece, and Tyre, which occasionally blended with the Scythian hordes, wherein Isis, Mercury, and Hercules, the symbols of wisdom, eloquence, and courage, were the objects worshipped, though deteriorated by savage and sanguinary rites, whose sacrifices were human victims, and whose best votary was he who had slain most men.

From long wandering through the gloomy regions where the sun is darkened by perpetual clouds, they called themselves the “Children of the Night,” and looked on her as the primal mother of all things.

Their pastimes symbolized the fierce daring of their lives. At their banquets they quaffed mead from the skulls of the slain, and chanted war-songs to the music of their clashing bucklers, while their dances were amid the points of their unsheathed swords.

From the influence of climate, and from constant intermarriage amongst themselves, certain physical and mental types became permanently fixed, and the gigantic frame, the fair hair and “stern blue eyes”14 of the Scythian tribes, along with their bold, free, warlike, independent spirit, are still the marked characteristic of their descendants. For amidst these rude races of lion-hearted men, who cleared the forests of Central Europe for future empires, there were great and noble virtues born of their peculiar mode of life: a love of freedom, a lofty sense of individual dignity, bold defiance of tyranny, a fortitude and courage that rose to heroism—the spirit that brooks no fetter either on the mind or frame. We see that such men were destined for world-rulers. To them Europe is indebted for her free political systems; the chivalry304 that ennobled warfare and elevated women, and the religious reformation that freed Christianity from superstition. Every charter of human freedom dates from the Scythian forests.

The great northern concourse of fierce, wild tribes, comprehended originally under the name of Scythians, or Wanderers, having spread themselves over the north to the very kingdom of the Frost-Giants, amidst frozen seas and drifting glaciers, turned southward, tempted by softer climes and richer lands, and under the names of Goth, Vandal, Frank, and Norman, devastating tribes of the Scythian warriors poured their rude masses upon the early and refined civilization of the Mediterranean nations, conquering wherever they appeared and holding bravely whatever they conquered.

The Roman empire trembled and vanished before the terrible might of the long-haired Goths. They sacked Rome and threatened Constantinople: Africa, Italy, Spain, France, and Germany yielded to the barbaric power. Before the fifth century the Scythians had conquered the world, and every kingdom in Europe is ruled by them to this hour.

How strangely contrasted the destinies of the two great Japhetian races! What vicissitudes of fortune! The refined, lettered, oriental light-bringers to Europe—the founders of all kingdoms, the first teachers of all knowledge, the race that peopled Tyre, Carthage, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Gaul, degraded, humbled, and almost annihilated; the last poor remnant of them crushed up in the remote fastnesses of the hills along the coast-line of Europe; step by step driven backwards to the Atlantic, as the red man of America had been driven to the Pacific, till, over the whole earth they can be found nowhere as a nation, save only in Ireland, while the rude, fierce Scandinavian hordes have risen up to be the mightiest of the earth. Greece subdued Asia, and Rome subdued Greece, but Scythia conquered Rome! The children of night and of the dark forests rule the kingdoms that rule the world.

They have given language and laws to modern empires, and at the present day are at the head of all that is most powerful, most thoughtful, most enterprising, and most learned throughout the entire globe.

The story of how the Scythian first came to the British Islands, has been preserved in the Welsh annals, which date back three thousand years. The legend runs that their ancestors, the nation of the Cimbri, wandered long over Europe, forgetting God’s name, and the early wisdom. At length they crossed “the hazy sea” (the German Ocean) from the country of the pools (Belgium) and came to Britain, the sea-girt land, called by them Cambria,15305 or, first mother; and they were the first who trod the soil of Britain. There their poets and bards recovered the lost name of God, the sacred I.A.O., and the primal letters their forefathers had known, called the ten signs. And ever since they have possessed religion and literature, though the bards kept the signs secret for many ages, so that all learning might be limited to themselves.

The paramount monarch of the Cimbri nation reigned at London, and a state of poetry and peace long continued, till the Dragon-Aliens appeared on their coasts. The ancient Cimbri retreated into Wales, where they have ever since remained. The Picts seized on Caledonia, and the Saxons on England, until, in their turn, they were conquered by the Danes.

Ireland at that period was the most learned and powerful island of the West. Through all changes of European dynasties she retained her independence. From the Milesian to the Norman, no conqueror had trod her soil.16

Meanwhile England, who never yet successfully resisted an invading enemy, passed under many a foreign yoke. For five hundred years the Romans held her as a province to supply their legions with recruits, and the abject submission of the natives called forth the bitter sarcasm, that “the good of his country was the only cause in which a Briton had forgot to die.”

The acquisition of Ireland was eagerly coveted by the imperial race, but though Agricola boasted he would conquer it with a single legion, and even went so far towards the completion of his design as to line all the opposite coasts of Wales with his troops, yet no Roman soldier ever set foot on Irish soil.

Rome had enough of work on hand just then, for Alaric the Goth is at her gates, and Attila, the scourge of God, is ravaging her fairest provinces. The imperial mother of Colonies can no longer hold her own or aid her children; England is abandoned to her fate, and the Irish from the west, the Scythian from the north, the Saxon from the east, assault, and desolate, and despoil her.

The Scythian Picts pour down on her cities, “killing, burning, and destroying.” The Irish land in swarms from their corrahs, and “with fiery outrage and cruelty, carry, harry, and make havoc of all.” Thus bandied between two insolent enemies, the English sent ambassadors to Rome “with their garments rent, and sand upon their heads,” bearing that most mournful appeal of an humbled people—“to Ætius, thrice Consul: the groans of the Britons. The barbarians drive us to the sea, the sea drives us back to the barbarians; thus, between two kinds of death, we are either slaughtered or drowned.”

306

But no help comes, for Rome herself is devastated by Hun and Vandal, and the empire is falling like a shattered world.

Thus England passed helplessly under the Saxon yoke, and so rested some hundred years; Ireland the while remaining as free from Saxon thrall as she had been from Roman rule.

Through all these centuries the current of human life still flowed westward from the unknown mysterious regions of Central Asia.

It was about the close of the eighth century, when the Scythian Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of Rome in the city of the Cæsars, that the fierce children of Thor and Odin, after having swept across Northern Europe to the limit of the land, flung their fortunes to the stormy seas, and began to earn that terrible yet romantic renown with which history and saga have invested the deeds of the Scandinavian sea kings. The raven on their black banner was the dreaded symbol of havoc and devastation all along the sea coasts and islands of the Atlantic. In England, Saxon rule fell helplessly before the power of the new invaders, as wave after wave of the ruthless sea-ravagers dashed upon the sluggish masses of the heptarchy.

After two hundred years of protracted agony and strife, Saxon sway was annihilated for ever, and Canute the Dane reigned in England.

Meanwhile, the well-appointed fleets of Norsemen and Danes were prowling about the cost of Ireland, trying to obtain a footing on her yet unconquered soil.

When these pagan pirates first appeared on our shores, Ireland had enjoyed a Christian civilization of four centuries. The light of the true faith had been there long before it shone upon rude Saxon England. The Irish of that early era excelled in music, poetry, and many arts. They had a literature, colleges for the learned, an organized and independent hierarchy, churches and abbeys, whose ruins still attest the sense of the beautiful, as well as the piety which must have existed in the founders. Their manuscripts, dating from this period, are older than those of any other nation of Northern Europe; their music was distinguished by its pathetic beauty, and the ballads of their bards emulated in force of expression those of ancient Homer. At the time that the Scots were totally ignorant of letters, and that the princes of the heptarchy had to resort to Irish colleges for instruction in the liberal sciences, Ireland held the proud title of the “Island of Saints and Scholars;” and learned men went forth from her shores to evangelize Europe.

One Irish priest founded an abbey at Iona; another was the friend and counsellor of Charlemagne; a third, of equal celebrity, founded monasteries both in France and England. The Irish of eleven centuries ago were the apostles of Europe!

The Norsemen, or “white strangers,” as the Irish called them307 who swept like a hurricane over this early civilization, were fierce pagans, who respected neither God nor man. Not till three centuries after their arrival in Ireland were they converted to the Christian faith. They pillaged towns, burned churches, destroyed manuscripts of the past which no future can restore, plundered abbeys of all that learning, sanctity and civilization had accumulated of the sacred, the costly, and the beautiful, and gave the Irish nothing in return but lessons of their own barbarous ferocity. Then it was we hear how Irish mothers gave their infants food on the point of their father’s sword, and at the baptism left the right arms of their babes unchristened that they might strike the more relentlessly. The Syrian and the Scythian, the children of the one Japhetian race, met at last in this ultima thule of Europe, after a three thousand years’ divergence; and even then, though they met with fierce animosity and inextinguishable hatred, yet lingerings of a far-off ancient identity in the language, the traditions, and the superstitions of each, could still be traced in these children of the one mighty father.

Great consternation must have been in Ireland when the report spread that a fleet of sixty strange sail was in the Boyne, and that another of equal number was sailing up the Liffey. The foreigners leaped from their ships to conquest. Daring brought success; they sacked, burned, pillaged, murdered; put a captive king to death in his own gyves at their ships; drove the Irish before them from the ocean to the Shannon; till, with roused spirit and gathered force, the confederate kings of Ireland in return drove back the white foreigners from the Shannon to the ocean. But they had gained a footing, and inroads, with plunder and devastation, never ceased from that time till the whole eastern sea-border of Ireland was their own. There they established themselves for four centuries, holding their first conquests, but never gaining more, until they were finally expelled by the Normans.

To these red-haired pirates and marauders Dublin owes its existence as a city. The Ath-Cliath of the Irish, though of ancient fame, was but an aggregate of huts by the side of the Liffey, which was crossed by a bridge of hurdles. The kings of Ireland never made it a royal residence, even after Tara was cursed by St. Rodan. Their palaces were in the interior of the island; but no doubt exists that Ath-Cliath, the Eblana of Ptolemy, was a well-known port, the resort of merchantmen from the most ancient times. There were received the Spanish wines, the Syrian silks, the Indian gold, destined for the princes and nobles; and from thence the costly merchandize was transported to the interior.

But Dublin, with its fine plain watered by the Liffey, its noble bay, guarded by the sentinel hills, at once attracted the special308 notice of the bold Vikings. Their chiefs fixed their residence there, and assumed the title of Kings of Dublin, or Kings of the Dark Water, as the word may be translated. They erected a fortress on the very spot where the Norman Castle now rules the city, and, after their conversion, a cathedral, still standing amongst us, venerable with the memories of eight hundred years.

Their descendants are with us to this day, and many families might trace back their lineage to the Danish leaders, whose names have been preserved in Irish history. Amongst sundry of “these great and valiant captains” are named Swanchean, Griffin, Albert Roe, Torbert Duff, Goslyn, Walter English, Awley, King of Denmark, from whom descend the Macaulays, made more illustrious by the modern historian of their race than by the ancient pirate king. There are also named Randal O’Himer, Algot, Ottarduff Earl, Fyn Crossagh, Torkill, Fox Wasbagg, Trevan, Baron Robert, and others; names interesting, no doubt, to those who can claim them for their ancestry.

The Norsemen having walled and fortified Dublin, though including but a mile within its circumference—whereas now the city includes ten—proceeded to fortify Dunleary, now Kingstown, in order to secure free passage to their ships. Then, from their stronghold of Dublin, they made incessant inroads upon the broad rich plains of the interior. They spread all along Meath, which received its name from them, of “Fingall” (the land of the white stranger); they devastated as far north as Armagh, as far west as the Shannon; Wexford, Waterford, and Limerick became half Danish cities. Everywhere their course was marked by barbaric spoliation. At one time it is noticed that they carried off a “great prey of women”—thus the Romans woo’d their Sabine brides; indeed the accounts in the Irish annals of the shrines they burned, the royal graves they plundered, the treasures they pillaged, the ferocities they perpetrated, are as interminable as they are revolting.

When beaten back by the Irish princes they crouched within their walled city of Dublin, till an opportunity offered for some fresh exercise of murderous cunning, some act of audacious rapine. Thus the contest was carried on for four centuries between the colonists and the nation; mutual hatred ever increasing; the Irish kings of Leinster still claiming the rights of feudal lords over the Danes; the Danes resisting every effort made to dislodge them, though they were not unfrequently forced to pay tribute.

Sometimes the Irish kings hired them as mercenaries to assist in the civil wars which raged perennially amongst them. Sometimes there were intermarriages between the warring foes—the daughter of Brian Boro’ wedded Sitric, King of the Danes of Dublin. Occasionally the Irish kings got possession of Dublin,309 and ravaged and pillaged in return. Once the Danes were driven forth completely from the city, and forced to take refuge upon “Ireland’s Eye,” the lone sea rock, since made memorable by a tragic history. Malachy, King of Meath, besieged Dublin for three days and three nights, burned the fortress, and carried off the Danish regalia; hence the allusion in Moore’s song to “The Collar of Gold which he won from the proud invader.” But the most terrible defeat the Danes ever sustained was at Clontarf, when ten thousand men in coats of mail were opposed to King Brian; but “the ten thousand in armour were cut in pieces, and three thousand warriors slain besides.” Even the Irish children fought against the invader. The grandchild of King Brian, a youth of fifteen, was found dead with his hand fast bound in the hair of a Dane’s head, whom the child had dragged to the sea.17

Still the Danish colony was not uprooted, though after this defeat they grew more humble, kept within their city of Dublin, and paid tribute to the kings of Leinster, and to the paramount monarch of Ireland.

Up to this period, therefore, we see that the Irish race had no relationship whatever with their capital city; they never saw the inside of their metropolis unless they were carried there as prisoners, or that they entered with fire and sword; and, stranger still, during the many centuries of the existence of Dublin as a city, up to the present time, the Irish race have never ruled there, or held possession of the fortress of their capital.

But the time of judgment upon the Danes was approaching, though it did not come by Irish hands. As the Saxons in England fell before the Danes, so the Danes had fallen before the Normans. The Normans, a Scythian race likewise, but more beautiful, more brave, more chivalrous, courtly, and polished, than any race that had preceded them, came triumphant from Italy and France to achieve the conquest of England, which yielded almost without a struggle. One great battle, and then no more. William the Norman, or rather the Scythian Frenchman, ascends the throne of Alfred. Dane and Saxon fall helplessly beneath his feet, and his tyrannies, his robberies, his confiscations, are submitted to by the subjugated nation without an effort at resistance.

His handful of Norman nobles seized upon the lands, the wealth, the honours, the estates of the kingdom, and retain them to this hour. And justly; so noble a race as the Norman knights were310 made for masters. The Saxons sank at once to the level of serfs, of traders and menials, from which they have never risen, leaving England divided into a Norman aristocracy who have all the land, and a Saxon people who have all the toil; crushed by the final conquerors, they sank to be the sediment of the kingdom.

The Irish had a different destiny; for five hundred years they fought the battle for independence with the Normans, nor did their chiefs sink to be the pariahs of the kingdom, as the Saxons of England, but retain their princely pretensions to this day. The O’Connors, the O’Briens, O’Neils, Kavanaghs, O’Donnels, yield to no family in Europe in pride of blood and ancestral honours; while, by intermarriage with the Norman lords, a race was founded of Norman Irish—perhaps the finest specimens of aristocracy that Europe produced—the Geraldines at their head, loving Ireland, and of whom Ireland may be proud.

A hundred years passed by after the Norman conquest of England. Three kings of the Norman race had reigned and died, and still the conquest of Ireland was unattempted; no Norman knight had set foot on Irish soil.

The story of their coming begins with just such a domestic drama as Homer had turned into an epic two thousand years before. A fair and faithless woman, a king’s daughter, fled from her husband to the arms of a lover. All Ireland is outraged at the act. The kings assemble in conclave and denounce vengeance upon the crowned seducer, Dermot, King of Leinster.

He leagues with the Danes of Dublin, the abhorred of his countrymen, but the only allies he can find in his great need. A battle is fought in which Dermot is defeated, his castle of Ferns is burned, his kingdom is taken from him, and he himself is solemnly deposed by the confederate kings, and banished beyond the seas. Roderick, King of all Ireland, is the inexorable and supreme judge. He restores the guilty wife to her husband; but the husband disdains to receive her, and she retires to a convent, where she expiates her crime and the ruin of her country by forty years of penance. The only records of her afterwards are of her good deeds. She built a nunnery at Clonmacnoise; she gave a chalice of gold to the altar of Mary, and cloth for nine altars of the Church; and then Dervorgil, the Helen of our Iliad, is heard of no more.

Dermot, her lover, went to England, seeking aid to recover his kingdom of Leinster. In a year he returns with a band of Welsh mercenaries, and marches to Dublin; but is again defeated by the confederate kings, and obliged to pay a hundred ounces of gold to O’Rourke of Breffny, “for the wrong he had done him respecting his wife,” and to give up as hostage to King Roderick his only son. But while parleying with the Irish311 kings, Dermot was secretly soliciting English aid, and not unsuccessfully.

Memorable was the year 1170, when the renowned Strongbow, Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, and his Norman knights, landed at Wexford to aid the banished king; and when Dermot welcomed his illustrious allies, little he thought that by his hand
“The emerald gem of the Western world,
Was set in the crown of a stranger.”

The compact with the foreigners was sealed with his son’s blood. No sooner did King Roderick hear of the Norman landing, than he ordered the royal Kavanagh, the hostage of King Dermot, to be put to death; and henceforth a doom seemed to be on the male heirs of the line of Dermot, as fatal as that which rested upon the house of Atrides.

Dermot had an only daughter remaining. He offered her in marriage to the Earl of Pembroke, with the whole kingdom of Leinster for her dowry, so as he would help him to his revenge. After a great battle against the Danes, in which the Normans were victorious, the marriage was celebrated at Waterford.
“Sad Eva gazed
All round that bridal field of blood, amazed;
Spoused to new fortunes.”18

No record remains to us of the beauty of the bride, or in what language the Norman knight wooed her to his arms; this only we know, that Eva, Queen of Leinster in her own right, and Countess of Pembroke by marriage, can number amongst her descendants the present Queen of England. Of the bridegroom, Cambrensis tells us that he was “ruddy, freckle-faced, grey-eyed, his face feminine, his voice small, his neck little, yet of a high stature, ready with good words and gentle speeches.”

The same authority describes Dermot from personal observation—“A tall man of stature, of a large and great body, a valiant and bold warrior, and by reason of his continued hallooing his voice was hoarse. He rather chose to be feared than loved. Rough and generous, hateful unto strangers, he would be against all men and all men against him.”

From Waterford to Dublin was a progress of victory to Dermot and his allies, for they marched only through the Danish settlements of which Dermot was feudal lord. At Dublin King Roderick opposed them with an army. Three days the battle raged; then the Danes of Dublin, fearing Dermot’s wrath,312 opened their gates, and offered him gold and silver in abundance if he would spare their lives; but, heedless of treaties, the Norman knights rushed in, slew the Danes in their own fortress, drove the rest to the sea; and thus ended the Danish dynasty of four centuries. Never more did they own a foot of ground throughout the length or breadth of the land. An Irish army, aided by Norman skill, had effected their complete extinction. The Kingdom of Leinster was regained for Dermot, and he and his allies placed a garrison in Dublin. This was the last triumph of the ancient race. The kingdom was lost even at the moment it seemed regained. That handful of Scythian warriors, scarcely visible amid Dermot’s great Irish army, are destined to place the yoke upon the neck of ancient Ireland.

The brave Roderick gathered together another army, and, with sixty thousand men, laid siege to Dublin, O’Rourke of Breffny aiding him. They were repulsed. O’Rourke was taken prisoner, and hanged with his head downwards, then beheaded and the head stuck on one of the centre gates of the castle, “a spectacle of intense pity to the Irish;” and Roderick retired into Connaught to recruit more forces.

There is something heroic and self-devoted in the efforts which, for eighteen years, were made by Roderick against the Norman power. Brave, learned, just, and enlightened beyond his age, he alone of all the Irish princes saw the direful tendency of the Norman inroad. All the records of his reign prove that he was a wise and powerful monarch. He had a fleet on the Shannon, the like of which had never been seen before. He built a royal residence in Connaught, the ruins of which are still existing to attest its former magnificence, so far beyond all structures of the period, that it was known in Ireland as the beautiful house. He founded a chair of literature at Armagh, and left an endowment in perpetuity, to maintain it for the instruction of the youth of Ireland and Scotland. A great warrior, and a fervent patriot, his first effort, when he obtained the crown, was to humble the Danish power. Dublin was forced to pay him tribute, and he was inaugurated there with a grandeur and luxury unknown before. When Dermot outraged morality, he deposed and banished him. When Dermot further sinned, and traitorously brought over the foreigner, Roderick, with stern justice, avenged the father’s treason by the son’s life. His own son, the heir of his kingdom, leagued with the Normans, and was found fighting in their ranks. Roderick, like a second Brutus, unpitying, yet heroically just, when the youth was brought a prisoner before him, himself ordered his eyes to be put out. His second son also turned traitor, and covenanted with the Normans to deprive his father of the kingdom. Then Roderick, surrounded by foreign foes and domestic treachery, quitted Connaught, and went through the313 provinces of Ireland, seeking to stir up a spirit as heroic as his own in the hearts of his countrymen. Soon after his unworthy son was killed in some broil, and Roderick resumed the kingly functions; but while all the other Irish princes took the oath of fealty to King Henry, he kept aloof beyond the Shannon, equally disdaining treachery or submission. His last son, the only one worthy of him, being defeated in a battle by the Normans, slew himself in despair.

The male line of his house was now extinct; the independence of his country was threatened; Norman power was growing strong in the land, and his continued efforts for eighteen years to arouse the Irish princes to a sense of their danger was unavailing. Wearied, disgusted, heartbroken, it may be, he voluntarily laid down the sceptre and the crown, and retired to the monastery of Cong, where he became a monk, and thus, in penance and seclusion, passed ten years—the weary ending of a fated life.

He died there, twenty-eight years after the Norman invasion, “after exemplary penance, victorious over the world and the devil;” and the chroniclers record his title upon his grave where he is laid—

“Roderick O’Connor,
King of all Ireland, both of the Irish and English.”

Seven centuries have passed since then, yet even now, which of us could enter the beautiful ruins of that ancient abbey, wander through the arched aisles tapestried by ivy, or tread the lonely silent chapel, once vocal with prayer and praise, without sad thoughts of sympathy for the fate of the last monarch of Ireland, and perchance grave thoughts likewise over the destiny of a people who, on that grave of native monarchy, independence, and nationality, have as yet written no Resurgam.

Exactly ten months after the Normans took possession of Dublin, King Dermot, “by whom a trembling sod was made of all Ireland, died of an insufferable and unknown disease—for he became putrid while living—without a will, without penance, without the body of Christ, without unction, as his evil deeds deserved.”

Immediately the Earl of Pembroke assumed the title of King of Leinster in right of his wife Eva. Whereupon Henry of England grew alarmed at the independence of his nobility, and hastened over to assert his claims as lord paramount. To his remonstrances Strongbow answered, “What I won was with the sword; what was given me I give you.” An agreement was then made by which Strongbow retained Dublin, while Henry appointed what nobles he chose over the other provinces of Leinster.

When the first Norman monarch landed amongst us, the memorable 18th day of October, 1172, no resistance was offered by any party; no battle was fought. The Irish chiefs were so elated314 at the Danish overthrow, that they even volunteered oaths of fealty to the foreign prince who had been in some sort their deliverer. Calmly, as in a state pageant, Henry proceeded from Wexford to Dublin; his route lay only through the conquered Danish possessions, now the property of the Countess Eva; there was no fear therefore of opposition. On reaching the city, “he caused a royal palace to be built, very curiously contrived of smooth wattels, after the manner of the country, and there, with the kings and princes of Ireland, did keep Christmas with great solemnity,” on the very spot where now stands St. Andrew’s Church.

King Henry remained six months in Ireland, the longest period which a foreign monarch has ever passed amongst us, and during that time he never thought of fighting a battle with the Irish. As yet, the whole result of Norman victories was the downfall of the Danes, in which object the Irish had gladly assisted. Strongbow and Eva reigned peacefully in our capital. Henry placed governors over the other Danish cities, and in order that Dublin, from which the Danes had been expelled, might be repeopled, he made a present of our fair city to the good people of Bristol.

Accordingly a colony from that town, famed for deficiency in personal attractions, came over and settled here; but thirty years after, the Irish, whose instincts of beauty were no doubt offended by the rising generation of Bristolians, poured down from the Wicklow hills upon the ill-favoured colony, and made a quick ending of them by a general massacre.

In a fit of penitence, also, for the murdered À Becket, Henry founded the Abbey of Thomas Court, from which Thomas Street derives its name, and then the excommunicated king quitted Ireland, leaving it unchanged, save that Henry the Norman held the possessions of Torkil the Dane, and Dublin, from a Danish, had become a Norman city. Five hundred years more had to elapse before English jurisdiction extended beyond the ancient Danish pale, and a Cromwell or a William of Nassau was needed for the final conquest of Ireland, as well as for the redemption of England.

Nothing can be more absurd than to talk of a Saxon conquest of Ireland. The Saxons, an ignorant, rude, inferior race, could not even maintain their ascendency in England. They fell before the superior power, intelligence, and ability of the Norman, and the provinces of Ireland that fell to the first Norman nobles were in reality not gained by battles, but by the intermarriage of Norman lords with the daughters of Irish kings. Hence it was that in right of their wives the Norman nobles early set up claims independent of the English crown, and the hereditary rights, being transmitted through each generation, were perpetually tempting the Norman aristocracy into rebellion. English supremacy was as uneasily borne by the De Lacys, the Geraldines, the Butlers, and others315 of the Norman stock, as by the O’Connors, the Kavanaghs, the O’Neils, or the O’Briens. The great Richard de Burgho married Odierna, grand-daughter of Cathal Crovdearg, king of Connaught. Hence the De Burghos assumed the title of Lords of Connaught.

King Roderick, as we have said, left no male issue. His kingdom descended to his daughter, who married the Norman knight, Hugo de Lacy. Immediately De Lacy set up a claim as independent prince in right of his wife, assumed legal state, took the title of King of Meath, and appeared in public with a golden crown upon his head, and so early as twenty-five years after the invasion, John de Courcy and the son of this De Lacy marched against the English of Leinster and Munster. Many a romance could be woven of the destiny and vicissitudes of this great race, half Irish, half Norman; independent princes by the one side, and English subjects by the other.

The great Earl of Pembroke lived but a few years after his capture of Dublin. The Irish legends say that St. Bridget killed him. However, he and Eva had no male heir, and only one daughter, named Isabel, after the Earl’s mother, who was also aunt to the reigning king of Scotland.

This young girl was sole heiress of Leinster and of her father’s Welsh estates. Richard Cœur de Lion took her to his court at London, and she became his ward. In due time she married William Marshall, called the great Earl, hereditary Earl Marshal of England, and Earl of Pembroke and Leinster, in right of his wife. High in office and favour with the king, we read that he carried the sword of state before Richard at his coronation, and as a monument of his piety, he left Tintern Abbey, in the County Wexford, erected by him on his wife’s property.

Isabel and Earl William had five sons and five daughters. The five sons, William, Walter, Gilbert, Anselm, and Richard (Isabel called no son of hers after the royal traitor Dermot, her grandfather) inherited the title in succession, and all died childless. We have said there was a doom upon Dermot’s male posterity.

The inheritance was then divided between the five daughters, each of whom received a province for a dower. Carlow, Kilkenny, the Queen’s County, Wexford, and Kildare were the five portions. Maud, the eldest, married the Earl of Norfolk, who became Earl Marshal of England in right of his wife.

Isabel, the second, married the Earl of Gloucester, and her granddaughter, Isabel also, was mother to the great Robert Bruce, who was therefore great-great-great-grandson of Eva and Strongbow. Eva, the third daughter, married the Lord de Breos, and from a daughter of hers, named Eva likewise, descended Edward the Fourth, King of England, through whose granddaughter Margaret Queen of Scotland, daughter of Henry the316 Seventh, the present reigning family of England claim their right to the throne. Through two lines, therefore, our Most Gracious Majesty can trace back her pedigree to Eva the Irish princess.

Joan, whose portions were Wexford, married Lord Valentia, half-brother to King Henry the Third, and the male line failing, the inheritance was divided between two daughters, from one of whom the Talbots, Earls of Shrewsbury, inherit their Wexford estates.

From Sybil, the youngest, who married the Earl of Ferrars and Derby, descended the Earls of Winchester, the Lords Mortimer, and other noble races. She had seven daughters, who all married Norman lords, so that scarcely a family could be named of the high and ancient English nobility, whose wealth has not been increased by the estates of Eva, the daughter of King Dermot; and thus it came to pass that Leinster fell by marriage and inheritance, not by conquest, into the possession of the great Norman families, who, of course, acknowledged the King of England as their sovereign; and the English monarchs assumed thenceforth the title of Lords of Ireland—a claim which they afterwards enforced over the whole country.

The destiny of the descendants of De Lacy and King Roderick’s daughter was equally remarkable. They had two sons, Hugh and Walter, who, before they were twenty-one, threw off English allegiance, and set up as independent princes. To avoid the wrath of King John they fled to France, and took refuge in an abbey, where, disguised as menials, the two young noblemen found employment in garden-digging, preparing mud and bricks, and similar work. By some chance the abbot suspected the disguise, and finally detected the princes in the supposed peasants. He used his knowledge of their secret to obtain their pardon from King John, and Hugh De Lacy was created Earl of Ulster. He left an only daughter, his sole heir. She married a De Burgho, who, in right of his wife, became Earl of Ulster, and from them descended Ellen, wife of Robert Bruce, King of Scotland. It is singular that the mother of Robert Bruce should have been descended from Eva, and his wife from King Roderick’s daughter. The granddaughter of Robert Bruce, the Princess Margery, married the Lord High Steward of Scotland, and through her the Stuarts claimed the crown. From thence it is easy to trace how the royal blood of the three kingdoms meet in the reigning family of England. Another descendant of the Earls of Ulster (an only daughter likewise) married Lionel, Duke of Clarence, son of Edward the Third, who, in the right of his wife, became Earl of Ulster and Lord of Connaught, and these titles finally merged in the English crown in the person of Edward the Fourth. From all these genealogies one fact may be clearly deduced, that the present representative of the royal Irish races of Eva and Roderick,317 and the lineal heiress of their rights, is Her Majesty Queen Victoria.

The proud and handsome race of Norman Irish, that claimed descent from these intermarriages, were the nobles, of whom it was said, “They were more Irish than the Irish themselves.” The disposition to become independent of England was constantly manifested in them. They publicly asserted their rights, renounced the English dress and language, and adopted Irish names. Thus Sir Ulick Burke, ancestor of Lord Clanricarde, became MacWilliam Oughter (or upper), and Sir Edmond Albanagh, progenitor of the Earl of Mayo, became MacWilliam Eighter (or lower). Richard, son of the Earl of Norfolk, and grandson of Eva, set up a claim to be independent King of Leinster, and was slain by the English. We have seen that Walter and Hugh De Lacy, grandsons of Roderick, were in open rebellion against King John. A hundred years later, two of the same race, named Walter and Hugh likewise, were proclaimed traitors for aiding the army of Robert Bruce, who claimed the crown of Ireland for his brother Edward, and the two De Lacys were found dead by the side of Edward Bruce at the great battle of Dundalk, where the Scotch forces were overthrown.

Once, even the Geraldines and the Fitzmaurices took prisoner the Justiciary of Dublin, as the Lord-Lieutenant of that day was named. Meanwhile the Irish princes of the West retained their independence; sometimes at feud, sometimes in amity with the English of the Eastern coast. We read that “the English of Dublin invited Hugh, King of Connaught, to a conference, and began to deal treacherously with him; but William Mareschall, his friend, coming in with his forces, rescued him, in despite of the English, from the middle of the Court, and escorted him to Connaught.” Both races were equally averse to the domination of the English crown. The Geraldines and Butlers, the De Burghos and De Lacys, were as intractable as the O’Connors of Connaught, or the O’Neils of Tyrone; even more so. The Great O’Neil submitted to Elizabeth; but two hundred years later the Geraldines had still to add the name of another martyr for liberty to the roll of their illustrious ancestors.

Frequently the Normans fought amongst themselves as fiercely as if opposed to the Irish. The Earl of Ulster, a De Burgho, the same who is recorded to have given the first entertainment at Dublin Castle, took his kinsman, Walter Burke, prisoner, and had him starved to death in his own castle; a tragedy which might have been made as memorable as that of Ugolino in the Torre del Fame, had there been a Dante in Ireland to record it. For this act the kinsmen of Walter Burke murdered the Earl of Ulster on the Lord’s Day, as he was kneeling at his prayers, and cleft his head in two with a sword.

318

It was unfortunate for Ireland that her Irish princes were so unconquerable, and that her Norman lords should have caught the infection of resistance to the crown. Eight hundred years ago the Saxons of England peaceably settled down with the Normans to form one nation, with interests and objects identical.

The Norman conquerors, better fitted, perhaps, for rulers than any other existing in Europe, established at once a strong, vigorous government in England. The Kings, as individuals, may have been weak or tyrannous, but there was a unity of purpose, a sense of justice, and a vigour of will existing in the ruling class that brought the ruled speedily under the order and discipline of laws. Not a century and a half had elapsed from the Conquest before Magna Charta and representation by Parliament secured the liberty of the people against the caprices of kings; and the Norman temperament which united in a singular degree the instincts of loyalty with the love of freedom, became the hereditary national characteristic of Englishmen. But Ireland never, at any time, comprehended the word nationality. From of old it was broken up into fragments, ruled by chiefs whose principal aim was mutual destruction. There was no unity, therefore no strength.

If, at the time of the Norman invasion, a king of the race had settled here as in England, the Irish would gradually have become a nation under one ruler, in place of being an aggregate of warring tribes; but for want of this chief corner-stone the Norman nobles themselves became but isolated chiefs—new petty kings added to the old—each for himself, none for the country. It was contrary to all natural laws that the proud Irish princes, with the traditions of their race going back two thousand years, should at once serve with love and loyalty a foreign king whose face they never saw and from whom they derived no benefits. And thus it was that five hundred years elapsed, from Henry Plantagenet to William of Nassau, before Ireland was finally adjusted in her subordinate position to the English crown.

Meanwhile the Danish Dublin was fast rising into importance as the Norman city, the capital of the English pale. Within that circle the English laws, language, manners and religion were implicitly adopted; without, there was a fierce, warlike, powerful people, the ancient lords of the soil, but with them the citizens of Dublin had no affinity; and the object of the English rulers was to keep the two races as distinct as possible. Amongst other enactments tending to obliterate any feeling of kindred which might exist, the inhabitants of the pale were ordered to adopt English surnames, derived from everything which by the second commandment we are forbidden to worship. Hence arose the tribes of fishes—cod, haddock, plaice, salmon, gurnet, gudgeon, &c.; and of birds—crow, sparrow, swan, pigeon; and of trades,319 as carpenter, smith, baker, mason; and of colours—the blacks, whites, browns, and greens, which in Dublin so copiously replace the grand old historic names of the provinces. Determined also on annihilating the picturesque, at least in the individual, lest the outward symbol might be taken for an inward affinity, the long flowing hair and graceful mantle, after the Irish fashion, were forbidden to be worn within the pale.

Neither was the Irish language tolerated within the English jurisdiction, for which Holingshed gives good reason, after this fashion—“And here,” he says, “some snappish carpers will snuffingly snib me for debasing the Irish language, but my short discourse tendeth only to this drift, that it is not expedient that the Irish tongue should be so universally gagled in the English pale; for where the country is subdued, there the inhabitants should be ruled by the same laws that the conqueror is governed, wear the same fashion of attire with which the victor is vested, and speak the same language which the victor parleth; and if any of these lack, doubtless the conquest limpeth.” The English tongue, however, seems to have been held in utter contempt and scorn by the Irish allies of the pale. After the submission of the Great O’Neil, the last who held the title of king in Ireland, which he exchanged for that of Earl of Tyrone, as a mark and seal of his allegiance to Queen Elizabeth, “One demanded merrilie,” says Holingshed, “why O’Neil would not frame himself to speak English? ‘What,’ quoth the other in a rage, ‘thinkest thou it standeth with O’Neil his honour to writhe his mouth in clattering English.’”

As regarded religion, the English commanded the most implicit obedience to the Pope, under as strict and severe penalties as, five hundred years later, they enacted against those who acknowledged his authority. One provision of the ancient oath imposed upon the subjugated Irish was—“You acknowledge yourself to be of the Mother Church of Rome, now professed by all Christians.” But, that the Irish of that era little heeded papal or priestly ordinances may be inferred from the fact that, during the wars of Edward Bruce, the English complained that their Irish auxiliaries were more exhausting than the Scots, as they ate meat all the time of Lent; and it is recorded, that in 1133, when the Leinster Irish rose against the English, “they set fire to everything, even the churches, and burned the church of Dunleary, with eighty persons in it, and even when the priest in his sacred vestments, and carrying the Host in his hands, tried to get out, they drove him back with their spears and burned him. For this they were excommunicated by a Papal Bull, and the country was put under an interdict. But they despised these things, and again wasted the county of Wexford.”19

320

The energetic and organizing spirit of the Normans was, however, evidenced by better deeds than those we have named. Courts of law were established in Dublin, a mayor and corporation instituted, and Parliaments were convened after the English fashion. Within fifty years after the Norman settlement, the lordly pile of Dublin Castle rose upon the site of the old Danish fortress, built, indeed, to overawe the Irish, as William the Conqueror built the Tower of London to overawe the English; yet, by Norman hands, the first regal residence was given to our metropolis. St. Patrick’s Cathedral was next elected by the colonists, and gradually our fair city rose into beauty and importance through Norman wealth and Norman skill. From henceforth, the whole interest of Irish history centres in the chief city of the pale, and the history of Dublin becomes the history of English rule in Ireland. For centuries its position was that of a besieged city in the midst of a hostile country; for centuries it resisted the whole force of the native race; and finally triumphantly crushed, annihilated, and revenged every effort made for Irish independence.

In truth, Dublin is a right royal city, and never fails in reverential respect towards her English mother.

Many great names are associated with the attempt to write a history of Dublin. The work in all ages was laborious; there were no printed books to consult, and the records of Ireland, as Hooker complains three hundred years ago, “were verie slenderlie and disorderlie kept.” Whitelaw’s work, though it employed two editors ten hours a day for ten years, yet goes no farther than a description of the public buildings; but the object of Mr. Gilbert’s history is distinct from all that precedes it. It is from the decaying streets and houses that he disentombs great memories, great fragments of past life. It is not a mere record of Ionic pillars, Corinthian capitals, or Doric pediments he gives us. Whitelaw has supplied whole catalogues of these; but records of the human life, that has throbbed through the ancient dwellings of our city century after century; of the vicissitudes of families, to be read in their ruined mansions; of the vast political events which in some room, in some house, on some particular night, branded the stigmata deeper on the country; or the tragedies of great hopes crushed, young blood shed, victims hopelessly sacrificed, which have made some street, some house, some chamber, for ever sacred.

The labours of such an undertaking are manifest; yet none can appreciate them fully who has not known what it is to spend days, weeks, months buried in decaying parchments, endless pipe-rolls, worm-eaten records, dusty deeds and leases, excavating some fact, or searching for some link necessary for the completion of a tale, or the elucidation of a truth.

321

Mr. Gilbert tells us that twelve hundred statutes and enactments of the Anglo-Irish Parliament still remain unpublished. From these and such-like decayed and decaying manuscripts, ancient records which have become almost hieroglyphics to the present age, he has gathered the life-history of an ancient city; he has made the stones to speak, and evoked the shadows of the past to fill up the outline of a great historical picture.

Fifty, even twenty years hence, the production of such a work would be impossible; the ancient records will probably have perished; the ancient houses, round which the curious may yet gather, will have fallen to the ground; and the ancient race, who cherished in their hearts the legends of the past with the fidelity of priests, and the fervour of bards, will have almost passed away.

Dublin is fortunate, therefore, in finding a historian endowed with the ability, the energetic literary industry, the untiring spirit of research, and the vast amount of antiquarian knowledge necessary for the production of so valuable a work, before records perish, mansions fall, or races vanish.

In a history illustrated by human lives and deeds, and localized in the weird old streets, once the proudest, now the meanest of our city, many a family will find an ancestral shadow starting suddenly to light, trailing long memories with it of departed fashion, grandeur, and magnificence.

Few amongst us who tread the Dublin of the present in all its beauty, think of the Dublin of the past in all its contrasted insignificance. True, the eternal features are the same; the landscape setting of the city is coeval with creation. Tyrian, Dane, and Norman have looked as we look, and with hearts as responsive to Nature’s loveliness, upon the emerald plains, the winding rivers, the hills draperied in violet and gold, the mountain gorges, thunder-riven, half veiled by the foam of the waterfall, and the eternal ocean encircling all; scenes where God said a city should arise, and the mountain and the ocean are still, as of old, the magnificent heritage of beauty conferred on our metropolis.

But the early races, whether from southern sea or northern plain, did little to aid the beauty of nature with the products of human intellect. Dublin, under the Danish rule, consisted only of a fortress, a church, and one rude street. Under the rule of the Normans, those great civilizers of the western world, those grand energetic organizers, temple and tower builders, it rose gradually into a beautiful capital, the chief city of Ireland, the second city of the empire. At first the rudimental metropolis gathered round the castle, as nebulæ round a central sun, and from this point it radiated westward and southward; the O’Briens on the south, the O’Connors on the west, the O’Neils on the north, perpetually hovering on the borders, but never able to regain the city, never able to dislodge the brave Norman garrison who had322 planted their banners on the castle walls. In that castle, during the seven hundred years of its existence, no Irishman of the old race has ever held rule for a single hour.

And what a history it has of tragedies and splendours; crowned and discrowned monarchs flit across the scene, and tragic destinies, likewise, may be recorded of many a viceroy! Piers Gravestone, Lord-Lieutenant of King Edward, murdered; Roger Mortimer—“The Gentle Mortimer”—hanged at Tyburn; the Lord Deputy of King Richard II. murdered by the O’Briens; whereupon the King came over to avenge his death, just a year before he himself was so ruthlessly murdered at Pomfret Castle. Two viceroys died of the plague; how many more were plagued to death, history leaves unrecorded; one was beheaded at Drogheda; three were beheaded on Tower Hill. Amongst the names of illustrious Dublin rulers may be found those of Prince John, the boy Deputy of thirteen; Prince Lionel, son of Edward III., who claimed Clare in right of his wife, and assumed the title of Clarence from having conquered it from the O’Briens.

The great Oliver Cromwell was the Lord-Lieutenant of the Parliament, and he in turn appointed his son Henry to succeed him. Dire are the memories connected with Cromwell’s reign here, both to his own party and to Ireland. Ireton died of the plague after the siege of Limerick; General Jones died of the plague after the surrender of Dungarvon; a thousand of Cromwell’s men died of the plague before Waterford. The climate, in its effect upon English constitutions, seems to be the great Nemesis of Ireland’s wrongs.

Strange scenes, dark, secret, and cruel, have been enacted in that gloomy pile. No one has told the full story yet. It will be a Ratcliffe romance of dungeons and treacheries, of swift death or slow murder. God and St. Mary were invoked in vain for the luckless Irish prince or chieftain that was caught in that Norman stronghold; but that was in the old time—long, long ago. Now the castle courts are crowded only with loyal and courtly crowds, gathered to pay homage to the illustrious successor of a hundred viceroys.

The strangest scene, perhaps, in the annals of vice-royalty, was when Lord Thomas Fitzgerald (Silken Thomas), son of the Earl of Kildare, and Lord-Lieutenant in his father’s absence, took up arms for Irish independence. He rode through the city with seven score horsemen, in shirts of mail and silken fringes on their head-pieces (hence the name Silken Thomas), to St. Mary’s Abbey, and there entering the council chamber, he flung down the sword of state upon the table, and bade defiance to the king and his ministers; then hastening to raise an army, he laid siege to Dublin Castle, but with no success. Silken Thomas and his five uncles were sent to London, and there executed; and sixteen323 Fitzgeralds were hanged and quartered at Dublin. By a singular fatality, no plot laid against Dublin Castle ever succeeded; though to obtain possession of this foreign fortress was the paramount wish of all Irish rebel leaders. This was the object with Lord Maguire and his Catholics, with Lord Edward Fitzgerald and his republicans, with Emmet and his enthusiasts, with Smith O’Brien and his nationalists—yet they all failed. Once only, during seven centuries, the green flag waved over Dublin Castle, with the motto—“Now or Never! Now and for Ever!” It was when Tyrconnel held it for King James.

In the ancient stormy times of Norman rule, the nobility naturally gathered round the Castle. Skinner’s Row was the “May Fair” of mediæval Dublin. Hoey’s Court, Castle Street, Cook Street, Fishamble Street, Bridge Street, Werburgh Street, High Street, Golden Lane, Back Lane, &c., were the fashionable localities inhabited by lords and bishops, chancellors and judges; and Thomas Street was the grand prado where viceregal pomp and Norman pride were oftenest exhibited. A hundred years ago the Lord-Lieutenant was entertained at a ball by Lord Mountjoy in Back Lane. Skinner’s Row was distinguished by the residence of the great race of the Geraldines, called “Carbrie House,” which from them passed to the Dukes of Ormond, and after many vicissitudes, the palace from which Silken Thomas went forth to give his young life for Irish independence, fell into decay, “and on its site now stand the houses known as 6, 7, and 8 Christ Church Place, in the lower stories of which still exist some of the old oak beams of the Carbrie House.”

In Skinner’s Row also, two hundred years ago, dwelt Sir Robert Dixon, Mayor of Dublin, who was knighted at his own house there by the Lord-Lieutenant, the afterwards unfortunate Strafford. The house has fallen to ruins, but the vast property conferred on him by Charles I. for his good services, has descended to the family of Sir Kildare Burrowes, of Kildare. In those brilliant days of Skinner’s Row, it was but seventeen feet wide, and the pathways but one foot broad. All its glories have vanished now; even the name no longer exists; yet the remains of residences once inhabited by the magnificent Geraldines and Butlers can still be traced.

Every stone throughout this ancient quarter of Dublin has a history. In Cook Street Lord Maguire was arrested at midnight, under circumstances very similar to the capture of Lord Edward Fitzgerald; and “to commemorate this capture in the parish it was the annual custom, down to the year 1829, to toll the bells of St. Andrew’s Church at twelve o’clock on the night of the 22nd of October.”

In Bridge Street great lords and peers of the realm resided. The Marquis of Antrim, the Duke of Marlborough’s father; West324enra, the Dutch merchant who founded the family afterwards ennobled, and others. It was the Merrion Square of the day. In Bridge Street the rebellion of ’98 was organized at the house of Oliver Bond; and one night Major Swan, led by Reynolds the informer, seized twelve gentlemen there, all of whom were summarily hanged as rebels. Castle Street was the focus of the rebellion of 1641; Sir Phelim O’Neill and Lord Maguire had their residences there, and concocted together how to seize the Castle, destroy all the lords and council, and re-establish Popery in Ireland. But a more useful man than either lived there also—Sir James Ware, whose indefatigable ardour in the cause of Irish literature caused him to collect, with great trouble and expense, a vast number of Irish manuscripts, which, after passing through many vicissitudes, are now deposited in the British Museum. The French family of Latouche came to Castle Street about one hundred years ago, and one of them, in 1778, upheld the shattered credit of the Government by a loan of £20,000 to the Lord-Lieutenant. Fishamble Street has historical and classic memories, and traditions of Handel consecrate this now obscure locality.

Handel spent a year in Dublin. His “Messiah” was composed there, and first performed for the benefit of Mercer’s Hospital. How content he was with his reception is expressed in a letter to a friend. “I cannot,” he says, “sufficiently express the kind treatment I receive here, but the politeness of this generous nation cannot be unknown to you.”

Dublin Quays are likewise illustrated by great names. On Usher’s Quay may still be seen the once magnificent Moira House, the princely residence of Lord Moira, afterwards Marquis of Hastings, Governor-General of India. A hundred years ago it was the Holland House of Dublin, sparkling with all the wit, splendour, rank, and influence of the metropolis. The decorations were unsurpassed in the kingdom for beauty and grandeur. The very windows were inlaid with mother-o’-pearl.

After the union, the family in disgust quitted Ireland; Moira house was left tenantless for some years, and then finally was sold for the use of the pauper poor of Dublin. The decorations were removed, the beautiful gardens turned into offices, the upper story of the edifice was taken off, and the entire building pauperized as much as possible to suit its inmates and its title—“The Mendicity.”

In the good old times the Lord Mayor treated the Lord-Lieutenant to a new play every Christmas, when the Corporation acted Mysteries upon the stage in Hoggin Green, where the College now stands. The Mysteries were on various subjects. In one, the tailors had orders to find Pilate and his wife clothed accordingly; the butchers were to supply the tormentors; the mariners and vintners represented Noah. At that period the Lord-Lieutenants held their court at Kilmainham, or Thomas Court,325 for Dublin Castle was not made a viceregal residence until the reign of Elizabeth. The parliaments, too, were ambulatory. Sometimes they met in the great aisle of Christ Church, that venerable edifice whose echoes have been destined to give back such conflicting sounds. What changes in its ritual and its worshippers! What scenes have passed before its high altar since first erected by the Danish bishop, whose body, in pallium and mitre, lay exposed to view but a few years since, after a sleep of eight hundred years. Irish kings and Norman conquerors have trod the aisles. There Roderick was inaugurated, the last king of Ireland; there Strongbow sleeps, first of the Norman conquerors, and, until the middle of the last century, all payments were made at his tomb, as if in him alone, living or dead, the citizens had their strength; there Lambert Simnel was crowned with a crown taken from the head of the Virgin Mary; there Cromwell worshipped before he went forth to devastate; there the last Stuart knelt in prayer before he threw the last stake at the Boyne for an empire; and there William of Nassau knelt in gratitude for the victory, with the crown upon his head, forgotten by James in his ignominious flight.

And how many rituals have risen up to heaven from that ancient altar, each anathema maranatha to the other—the solemn chants of the early church; the gorgeous ritual of the mass; in Elizabeth’s time, the simple liturgy of the English Church in the English tongue; this, too, was prohibited in its turn, and for ten years the Puritans wailed and howled against kings and liturgies in the ancient edifice; there the funeral oration for the death of Cromwell was pronounced, entitled, “Threni Hibernici, or Ireland sympathizing with England for the loss of their Josiah (Oliver Cromwell).” Once again rose the incense of the mass while King James was amongst us; but William quenched the lights on the altar, and established once more the English Liturgy in its simplicity and beauty. But so little, during all these changes, had the Irish to do with the cathedral of their capital, that by an Act passed in 1380 no Irishman was permitted to hold in it any situation or office; and so strictly was the law enforced, that Sir John Stevenson was the first Irishman admitted, as even vicar-choral.

Many are the themes of interest to be found in Mr. Gilbert’s “History of Dublin,” concerning those ancient times when Sackville Street was a marsh, Merrion Square an exhausted quarry, the undulations so beautiful in its present verdant state being but the accident of excavation; when St. Stephen’s Green, with its ten fine Irish acres, was a compound of meadow, quagmire, and ditch; when Mountjoy Square was a howling wilderness, and North Georges Street and Summer Hill were far away in the country, and when the Danes, rudely expelled by Norman swords from the326 south of the Liffey, were stealing over the river to found a settlement on the north side.

Our fathers have told us of Dublin in later times, before the union, when a hundred lords and two hundred commoners enriched and enlivened our city with their wealth and magnificence. Dublin was then at the summit of its glory; but when the colonists sold their parliament to England, and the Lords and Commons vanished, and their mansions became hospitals and poorhouses, and all wealth, power, influence, and magnificence were transferred to the loved mother country, then the “City of the Dark Water” sank into very pitiable insignificance. The proud Norman spirit of independence was broken at last, and there was no great principle to replace it. Having no large sympathies with the Irish nation, no idea of country, nationality, or any other grand word by which is expressed the resolve of self-reliant men to be self-governed, the colonists became petty, paltry, and selfish in aim; imitative in manners and feelings; apathetic, even antagonistic to all national advance; bound to England by helpless fear and servile hope; content so as they could rest under her great shadow, secure from the mysterious horrors of Popery, preserved in the blessing of a church establishment, and allowed to worship even the shadow of transcendent Majesty. Then Dublin ambition was satisfied and happy; for there is no word so instinctively abhorrent, so invincibly opposed to all the prejudices of Dublin society, as patriotism.

From this cursory glance over the antecedents of our metropolis, the cause of her anti-Irishism is plainly deducible from the fact, that at no epoch was Dublin an Irish city. The inhabitants are a blended race, descended of Danes, Normans, Saxon settlers, and mongrel Irish. The country of their affections is England. They have known no other mother. With the proud old princes and chiefs of the ancient Irish race they have no more affinity than (to use Mr. Macaulay’s illustration) the English of Calcutta with the nation of Hindustan, and from this colonial position a certain Dublin idiosyncrasy of character has resulted, which makes the capital distinct in feeling from the rest of Ireland.

Meanwhile the destiny of the ancient race is working out, not in happiness or prosperity, but in stern, severe discipline. Unchanged and unchangeable they remain, so far as change is effected by impulses arising from within. “Two thousand years,” says Moore, “have passed over the hovel of the Irish peasant in vain.” Such as they were when the first light of history rested on them, they are now; indolent and dreamy, patient and resigned as fatalists, fanatical as Bonzees, implacable as Arabs, cunning as Greeks, courteous as Spaniards, superstitious as savages, loving as children, clinging to the old home and the old sod and the old families with a tenderness that is always beautiful, sometimes327 heroic; loving to be ruled, with veneration in excess; ready to die like martyrs for a creed, a party, or the idol of the hour, but incapable of extending their sympathies beyond the family or the clan; content with the lowest place in Europe; stationary amid progression; isolated from the European family; without power or influence; lazily resting in the past while the nations are wrestling in the present for the future. Children of the ocean, yet without commerce; idle by thousands, yet without manufactures; gifted with quick intellect and passionate hearts, yet literature and art die out amongst them for want of aid or sympathy; without definite aims, without energy or the earnestness which is the vital life of heroic deeds; dark and blind through prejudice and ignorance, they can neither resist nobly nor endure wisely; chafing in bondage, yet their epileptic fits of liberty are marked only by wild excesses, and end only in sullen despair.

Yet it was not in the providence of God that the fine elements of humanity in such a people should still continue to waste and stagnate during centuries of inaction, while noble countries and fruitful lands, lying silent since creation, were waiting the destined toilers and workers, who, by the sweat of the brow, shall change them to living empires.

Two terrible calamities fell upon Ireland—famine and pestilence; and by these two dread ministers of God’s great purposes, the Irish race were uprooted and driven forth to fulfil their appointed destiny. A million of our people emigrated; a million of our people died under these judgments of God. Seventeen millions worth of property passed from time-honoured names into the hands of strangers. The echoes of the old tongue—call it Pelasgian, Phœnician, Celtic, Irish, what you will, still the oldest in Europe, is dying out at last along the stony plains of Mayo and the wild sea-cliffs of the storm-rent western shore. Scarcely a million and a half are left of people too old to emigrate, amidst roofless cabins and ruined villages, who speak that language now. Exile, confiscation, or death, was the final fate written on the page of history for the much-enduring children of Ireland. One day they may reassert themselves in the new world, or in other lands. Australia, with its skies of beauty and its pavement of gold, may be given to them as America to the Saxon, but how low must a nation have fallen at home when even famine and plague come to be welcomed as the levers of progression and social elevation. Some wise purpose of God’s providence lies, no doubt, at the reverse side, but we have not yet turned the leaf.

The ancient race who, thousands of years ago, left the cradle of the sun to track him to the ocean, are now flung on the coast of another hemisphere to begin once more their destined westward march; and like the Israelites of old, they, too, might tell in that new country:328 “A Syrian ready to perish was our father!”

They fled across the Atlantic like a drift of autumn leaves—“pestilence-stricken multitudes”—and the sea was furrowed by the dead as the plague-ships passed along.

One would say a doom had been laid upon our people—the wandering Io of humanity—a destiny of weeping and unrest.

Of old the kings at Tara sat throned with their faces to the west: was it a symbol or a prophecy of the future of their nation? when from every hill in Ireland could be seen—
“The remnant of our people
Sweeping westward, wild and woful,
Like the cloud-rack of a tempest,
Like the withered leaves of autumn.”

From the Atlantic to the Pacific, where the Rocky Mountains bar like a portal the land of gold—through the islands of the Southern Ocean to the great desolate world of Australia, seeking as it were the lost home of their fathers, and doomed to make the circuit of the earth—still onward flows the tide of human life—that inexhaustible race which has cleared the forests of Canada, built the cities and made all the railroads of the States, given thousands to the red plains of the Crimea, overran California and peopled Australia—the race whose destiny has made them the instruments of all civilization, though they have never reaped its benefits.

Yet we cannot believe that the Irish race is doomed for ever to work and suffer without the glory of success; for the Celtic element is necessary to humanity as a great factor in human progress. It is the subtle, spiritual fire that warms and permeates the ruder clay of other races, giving them new, vivid, and magnetic impulses to growth and expansion.

The children of the early wanderers from the Isles of the Sea will still continue to fulfil their mission as world-workers and world-movers. Across the breadth of earth they will found new nations, each a greater and a stronger Ireland, where they will have the certainty of power, station, and reward denied them at home. But neither change nor progress nor the severing ocean will destroy the electric chain that binds them lovingly to their ancient mother in that true sympathy with country and kinship that ever burns in the Irish heart.

The new Ireland across the seas, whether in America or in Australia, will still cherish with sacred devotion the beautiful legends, the pathetic songs, the poetry and history and the heroic traditions of the old, well-loved country as eternal verses of the Bible of humanity, with all the light and music of the fanciful fairy period, such as I have tried to gather into a focus in these volumes, along with the holy memories of those martyrs of our race whose names are for ever associated with the words Liberty and Nationhood, but whose tragic fate has illustrated so many mournful pages in the history of the Irish past.

ON THE ANCIENT RACES OF IRELAND.
That there was a time—after “the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters, and separated the dry land from the sea”—when the present British Isles formed a continuous and integral portion of the European Continent is the received opinion of the scientific. With that continuity of surface (whether before or after the glacial period matters not in the present inquiry) there was, we know, a uniform dispersion of vegetable and animal life over this portion of the globe; and so long as this country enjoyed the temperature and climate it now possesses, it must have been an emerald land—humid, green, and fertile, affording pasturage and provender for the largest herbivoræ—the mammoth, elephant, and musk ox, the reindeer, the wild boar, and perhaps even the woolly rhinoceros. The primitive races of horned cattle, possibly the red deer, and undoubtedly the largest and noblest of cervine creatures, the gigantic Irish deer, or Cervus megaceros, besides the wild pig, and smaller mammals, as well as birds and fishes innumerable, must then have existed here.

How long that condition of the land known now as Ireland existed, what geological revolutions occurred, or what time elapsed during its continuance, is but matter of speculation; but a “repeal of the union” took place, and Great Britain and Ireland became as they now are, and as they are likely to remain, geographically separated, although united in interest as well as government. In all probability the great pine forests, with some of the yews, the oaks, and the birch, had at this time been submerged beneath the lowest strata of our bogs.

It was after this epoch, I believe, that man first set foot upon the shores of Erin—a country well wooded, abundantly stocked with animals, and abounding in all nature’s blessings suited to the330 well-being of the human race; with fowls in its woods and on its shores; fish in its seas, lakes and rivers; deer and other game in its forest glades, oxen on its pastures, fuel in its bogs; and a climate, although moist and variable, on the whole mild and temperate.

Let us now go back for a moment and take a glance at the map of the world. The sacred writings tell us, and the investigations of historians, antiquarians, and philologists confirm the statement, that the cradle of mankind was somewhere between the Caspian Sea and the great River Euphrates. Without entering too minutely into the subject, I may state briefly that the human family separated in process of time into three great divisions—the African, the Asiatic, and the Indo-European. With the latter only we have to deal. As population increased, it threw off its outshoots; and emigration, the great safeguard of society, and the ordained means of peopling as well as cultivating and civilizing the earth, began to impel the races and tribes still farther and farther from the birthplace of humanity. But in those days the process was somewhat slower and more gradual than that which now sends an Irish family across 3,500 miles of ocean in a week.

With but the rudest means of transit, hordes of the primitive races passed up the banks of the great rivers, the Euphrates, the Nile, the Volga, the Danube, and the Rhone; while other tribes, in all likelihood more advanced and cultivated, wandered along the coasts, peopling as they went the northern shores of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

That an early and uncultivated people passed up the Danube in their immigration, and settled for centuries on its banks, when Europe was a tangled wilderness, inhabited by the auroch and the gigantic deer, there can be no manner of doubt; for they have left memorials of their existence in the unerring and enduring remains of their sepulchres, their tools, and weapons, from the Black Sea to Switzerland and Savoy. In Switzerland this primitive people rested for a considerable period, perhaps for many centuries, forming for themselves those peculiar piled lacustrine habitations on the shores of its picturesque inland waters, known as “Pfaulbauten”—the analogues, and in all probability the types, of the crannoges recently discovered in Ireland and Scotland, to which countries the scattered fragments of that race finally carried this special form of domestic architecture. The lowest strata of implements were deposited beneath the sites of these pfaulbauten; and in some of the more ancient ones the only remains are those of stone, flint, and pottery—the former resembling in a remarkable manner the stone tools and weapons of the primitive Irish.

What the language of this early Helvetian people was, we have no means of ascertaining; but that their exodus was one of haste331 and compulsion, and probably the result of invasion by a superior and more cultivated race, is almost certain. Driven from their mountain homes, they passed down the banks of the Rhine and the Elbe, and helped to people North-western Europe, forming with those who arrived coastwise the great nation of the Gauls and Belgæ. It is not unlikely that this littoral wave of population carried with them the metallurgic arts; for we find in their tombs and barrows on the coasts of Spain, France, and Brittany, bronze celts identical in shape with some of those discovered in our own country.

Still passing westwards towards the setting sun, some members of this early people stood at length face to face with the white cliffs of Kent. Impelled by curiosity and the thirst for knowledge, man’s undeviating enterprise soon sent these hardy people across the narrow strait that divides Britain from the continent of Europe, centuries before the ships of Tarshish voyaged from Tyre and Sidon to trade with Britain for the tin of Cornwall, to alloy, harden, and beautify into bronze the copper with which Solomon decorated the temple of Jerusalem.

To the restless Celt the breadth of this new possession was but a slight impediment to his western progress, and once more he looked upon the blue waters of the salt sea, and beyond them, to the green hills of Erin. A plank—a single-piece canoe—formed out of an oak-tree by fire and a sharp stone, or a wicker curragh covered with hides, would soon waft him from Portpatrick to Donaghadee, or even from Anglesea to Howth.

Here, then, the story of our race begins, and the immediate object of this inquiry commences. That man, as he first stood on this island, was in a rude, uncultivated state, without a knowledge of letters or manufactures—skilled in those arts only by which, as a nomad hunter and fisher, he supported life and ministered to his simple wants—there can be no manner of doubt. Clad in the skins of animals he slew, which were sewn together with their sinews or intestines—his weapons and tools formed of flint, stone, bone, wood or horn—his personal decoration, shells, amber, attractive pebbles collected on the beach, or the teeth of animals strung together in a rude necklace, or bound round the wrists and arms; and his religion, if any, Pagan, Sun-worship, or Druidism, man first stood, in all probability, on the north-eastern shores of Erin. It may be unpalatable to our national vanity to learn that the early colonists of Ireland did not come here clad in purple and gold direct from Phœnicia, in brazen-prowed triremes, with the mariner’s compass and the quadrant; or stood for the first time upon the shores of Hibernia armed cap-à-pied in glittering armour, as Minerva sprang from the front of Jove; but it is, nevertheless, indisputably true, that the first people were such as I have described them.

332

No date can be assigned to the period of the first inhabitation, but as evidence of the primitive condition of the race it is sufficient to state that human bodies clad in deer-skin have been discovered in our bogs; that flint weapons in abundance have been found all over Ireland, but especially in the North, where that peculiar lithological condition chiefly exists; and that stone tools have been dug up in thousands all over the country, but more particularly from the beds of our rivers, marking the sites of contested fords, which were the scenes of sanguinary conflicts, as on the Shannon and the Bann; and that all these are referrible to a period when the Irish had no knowledge of metals, and could neither spin nor weave.

To Northern archæologists belongs the credit of that theory which divides the ages of man according to the material evidences of the arts of bygone times, as into those of stone, of copper, gold, and bronze, and of iron and silver. While I have no doubt that, generally speaking, such was the usual progress of development in those particulars, I deny that this division can, as a rule, be applied to Ireland, where undoubtedly each period overlapped the succeeding, so as to mix the one class of implement with another, even as I myself have seen on the great cultivated plain of Tyre harrow-pins formed of flints and sharp stones stuck into the under surface of a broad board; and on that battle field—
“Where Persia’s victim hordes
First bowed beneath the brunt of Hella’s sword,”

I have picked up flint and obsidian arrow-heads, although we know that the Athenians, whose remains still lie beneath the tumulus of Marathon, gave way before the long-handled metallic spears of Asia; and the stone missile, in one of its most formidable shapes, is not yet abandoned in this country.

I hold it as susceptible of demonstration, that man in similar stages of his career all over the world acts alike, so far as is compatible with climate, his wants, and the materials that offer to his hand, even from the banks of the Niger or Zambesi to the islands of the South Sea, or the regions inhabited by the Laps and Esquimaux. Thus, whenever man acquires or discovers a new art, he first applies it to continue the fashion of its predecessor, until accident, necessity, or ingenuity induces him to modify the reproduction. The first arrow-head and spear is almost the same all over the world, and is the type of that in metal; and the stone celt or hatchet formed, as I have proved elsewhere, the model for the copper or bronze implement for a like use in both ancient Etruria and ancient Ireland.

Discussions may arise as to whether our knowledge of metals was a separate, independent discovery of our own, or was acquired333 by intercourse with other nations more advanced than ourselves. In answer thereto I can only say that we have no evidence or authority for the latter supposition; and that, as we possessed abundant materials on the one hand, and had sufficient native ingenuity on the other, it is most likely that our discovery of metals—at least of gold, copper, and tin—was independent of extrinsic influence. So far removed from the centres of civilization, unconquered by the Roman legion, uninfluenced by Saxon or Frankish art, and with undoubted evidences of development and styles of art peculiar to ourselves, both in form and decoration, it is but fair, until some stronger arguments have been brought against it, to believe that we were the discoverers and smelters of our minerals, and the fabricators of our metallic weapons, tools, and ornaments. That some Grecian influence pervaded the early Irish metallurgic art, as exhibited by some of our leaf-shaped sword blades, is true; but it is an exceptional instance, and the form is common to almost all countries in which bronze sword blades have been found.

With regard to the dwellings of the early race we are not left to mere conjecture, for not long ago a log hut was discovered fourteen feet below the surface of a bog in the county of Donegal. This very antique dwelling was twelve feet square, and nine high; and consisted of an upper and lower chamber, which were probably mere sleeping apartments. The oaken logs of which it was constructed are believed to have been hewn with stone hatchets, some of which were found on the premises, thus identifying it with the pre-metallic period of our history. Man soon becomes gregarious, and passes from the hunter and the fisher to the shepherd, and thence to the agriculturist. The land is cleared of wood; the wild animals either die out, or are rendered subservient to his will. The domestication of animals in most instances precedes, and always accompanies, the pastoral state of existence; and to that condition the patriarchal stage ensues, and afterwards that of the monarchical. To such phases of development, from the age of escape from the rudest barbarism, to the most cultivated condition in government, polite literature, art and science, Ireland was, I believe, no exception. Of the shepherd state we still possess the most abundant proofs, in the numerous earthen raths, lisses, and forts scattered all over the country, and from which so many of our townlands and other localities take their names; but especially marking the sites of the primitive inhabitation on our goodly pastures, although now mere grassy, annular elevations, varying in area from a few perches to several acres, and in many instances alone preserved by the hallowed traditions or popular superstitions of the people.

Such of those landmarks of the past as still remain, out of thousands that have been obliterated, show us that in those parts334 of Ireland, at least, where they exist, there was once a dense population, even during the shepherd stage of its inhabitation. And if in the progress of events, uncontrolled by human agency, and brought about by influences that we have so recently mourned over and still deplore, but could not prevent, we are now again becoming a pastoral people, we are only returning to that state of existence for which this country is peculiarly adapted, and was, I believe, originally intended—that of being the greatest grass and green-crop soil and climate in the world.

The pastoral was undoubtedly the normal, one of the oldest, and beyond all question, the longest continued state in Ireland; and, although changed by internal dissensions, invasion, confiscation, and foreign rule, is still remembered by the people among whom its influence, slumbering, but not dead, now and then crops out in questions of “tenant right.” Years ago I showed, from the animal remains found in our forts, bogs, and crannoges, that centuries upon centuries before short-horned improved breeds of cattle and sheep commanded at our agricultural shows the admiration of Europe, we had here breeds of oxen which are not now surpassed by the best races of Holland and Great Britain; and which are unequalled in the present day even by those on the fertile plains of Meath, Limerick, or Roscommon, or throughout the golden vale of Tipperary. We were then a cattle-rearing, flesh-eating people; our wealth was our cattle; our wars were for our cattle; the ransom of our chieftains was in cattle; our taxes were paid in cattle; the price paid for our most valuable manuscripts was so many cows. Even in comparatively modern times our battle cloaks were made of leather; our traffic and barter were the Pecuaniæ of our country; and the “Tain-bo-Cuailne,” the most famous metrical romance of Europe, after the “Niebelungenlied,” is but the recital of a cattle raid from Connaught into Louth during the reign of Mave, Queen of Connaught—a personage transmitted to us by Shakspeare, as the Queen Mab of the “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” And, although the Anglo-Norman invasion is usually attributed to the love of an old, one-eyed, hoarse-voiced King of Leinster, sixty years of age, for Dervorgil (attractive, we must presume, though but little his junior in years), and who became the Helen of the Irish Iliad, when “the valley lay smiling before her,” she was but an insignificant item in the stock abduction from the plains of Breffny along the boggy slopes of Shemore.

The Boromean, or cattle tribute, which the King of Tara demanded from the Leinstermen, was perhaps the cause of the greatest intestinal feud which ever convulsed so small a space of European ground for so great a length of time. This triennial cattle tax, besides 5,000 ounces of silver, 5,000 cloaks, and 5,000 brazen vessels, consisted of 15,000 head of cattle of different335 descriptions, the value of which, at the present price of stock, would amount to about £130,000. The cattle tribute also paid to the Prince or petty King of Cashel upwards of a thousand years ago was 6,500 cows, 4,500 oxen, 4,500 swine, and 1,200 sheep; in all, 16,700, or, at the present value of stock, between £80,000 and £100,000. In addition to which we read of horses and valuables of various descriptions.

Brian O’Kennedy, who drove the Norsemen from the shores of Clontarf, derived his cognomen of Borrome from his reimposition of this cattle tax. And in the Leabhar-na-Garth, or ancient Book of Rights and Privileges of the Kings of Erin, the cattle statistics, as they are there set forth, show that the Irish were solely a pastoral people; and the whole text and tenor of the Irish annals and histories, and the notices of the wars of the Desmonds and of O’Neil, confirm this view.

The great raths of Ireland, where the people enclosed their cattle by night, have been erroneously termed “Danish forts,” but when the shannaghees are pressed for further information as to the date of their erection they say, “They were made by them ould Danes that came over with Julius Cæsar.” If, however, inquiry be made of the old illiterate Irish-speaking population, they will tell you that they were made by “the good people,” and are inhabited by the fairies. Hence the veneration that has in a great measure tended to their preservation; and I have no doubt that the ancient indigenous and venerated thorns that still decorate their slopes or summits are the veritable descendants of the quickset hedges that helped to form the breastworks, or staked defences, on their summits.

These forts are almost invariably to be found in the fattest pastures; so that if any of my friends were in the present day to ask me where they could best invest in land, I would fearlessly answer, “Wherever you find most ancient raths remaining;” and I know that many of our cattle prizes have been carried off by sheep and oxen fed upon the grass lands cleared and fertilized by the early Celts more than a thousand years ago, and a sod of which has not been turned for centuries. They were not originally the gentle slopes that now diversify the surface, but consisted in steep ramparts or earthworks, with an external ditch, on which a stout paling was erected against man or beast, a form of structure still seen in the kraal of the New Zealander. The Irish rath-maker was an artificer of skill, and held in high esteem, and occupied a dignified position at the great feasts of Tara—second only to the ollamh and the physician. That the soil of which they were constructed had been not only originally rich, but had been subjected to man’s industry, is proved by the fact that it is now frequently turned out upon the neighbouring sward as one of the best of manures. Within these raths, some of which had336 double, and even treble entrenchments, were erected the dwellings of the people and their chiefs, the latter of whom were often interred within the mounds, or beneath the cromlechs that still exist in their interior, as, for example, in the “Giant’s Ring,” near Belfast. In some instances they also contained in their sides and centres stone caves, that were probably used as store-houses, granaries, or places of security.

The earliest historic race of Ireland was a pastoral people called Firbolgs, said to be of Greek or Eastern origin; probably a branch of that great Celtic race which, having passed through Europe and round its shores, found a resting-place at last in Ireland. Of the Fomorians, Nemedians, and other minor invaders, we need not speak, as they have left nothing by which to track their footsteps. The old annalists bring them direct from the Ark, and in a straight line from Japhet. The coming of Pharaoh’s daughter from Egypt with her ships may be also considered apocryphal. But the Firbolgs begin our authentic history. They had laws and social institutions, and established a monarchical government at the far-famed Hill of Tara, about which our early centres of civilization sprung, and where we have now most of those great pasturelands—those plains of Meath that can beat the world for their fattening qualities, and which supply neighbouring countries with their most admired meats.

I cannot say that the Firbolg was a cultivated man, but I think he was a shepherd and an agriculturist. I doubt if he knew anything, certainly not much, of metallurgy; but it does not follow that he was a mere savage, no more than the Maories of New Zealand were when we first came in contact with them.

The Firbolgs were a small, straight-haired, swarthy race, who have left a portion of their descendants with us to this very day. A genealogist (their own countryman resident in Galway about two hundred years ago) described them as dark-haired, talkative, guileful, strolling, unsteady, “disturbers of every Council and Assembly,” and “promoters of discord.” I believe they, together with the next two races about to be described, formed the bulk of our so-called Celtic population—combative, nomadic on opportunity, enduring, litigious, but feudal and faithful to their chiefs; hard-working for a spurt (as in their annual English emigration); not thrifty, but, when their immediate wants are supplied, lazy, especially during the winter.

To these physical and mental characters described by MacFirbis let me add those of the unusual combination of blue or blue-grey eyes and dark eyelashes with a swarthy complexion. This peculiarity I have only remarked elsewhere in Greece; the mouth and upper gum is not good, but the nose is usually straight. In many of this and the next following race there was a peculiarity that has not been alluded to by writers—the larynx, or, as it used to337 be called, the pomum Adami, was remarkably prominent, and became more apparent from the uncovered state of the neck. The sediment of this early people still exists in Ireland, along with the fair-complexioned Dananns, and forms the bulk of the farm-labourers, called in popular phraseology Spalpeens, that yearly emigrate to England. In Connaught they now chiefly occupy a circle which includes the junction of the counties of Mayo, Galway, Roscommon, and Sligo. They, with their fair-faced brothers (at present the most numerous), are also to be found in Kerry and Donegal; and they nearly all speak Irish.

By statistics procured from our Great Midland Western Railway alone I learn that on an average 30,000 of these people, chiefly the descendants of the dark Firbolgs and the fair Dananns, emigrate annually to England for harvest work, to the great advantage of the English farmer and the Irish landlord. The acreage of arable land for these people runs from two to six acres.

Connecting this race with the remains of the past, I am of opinion that they were the first rath or earthen-mound and enclosure makers; that they mostly buried their dead without cremation, and, in cases of distinguished personages, beneath the cromlech or the tumulus. Their heads were oval or long in the anteroposterior diameter, and rather flattened at the sides: examples of these I have given and descanted upon when I first published my Ethnological Researches, which have been fully confirmed by the late Andreas Retzius. It is, however, unnecessary, even if space or advisability permitted, for me to allude to such matters, as that great work the “Crania Britannica” has lithographed typical specimens of this long-headed race.

The next immigration we hear of in the “Annals” is that of the Tuatha-de-Dananns, a large, fair-complexioned, and very remarkable race; warlike, energetic, progressive, skilled in metal work, musical, poetical, acquainted with the healing art, skilled in Druidism, and believed to be adepts in necromancy and magic, no doubt the result of the popular idea respecting their superior knowledge, especially in smelting and in the fabrication of tools, weapons, and ornaments. From these two races sprang the Fairy Mythology of Ireland.

It is strange that, considering the amount of annals and legends transmitted to us, we have so little knowledge of Druidism or Paganism in ancient Ireland. However, it may be accounted for in this wise: That those who took down the legends from the mouths of the bards and annalists, or those who subsequently transcribed them, were Christian missionaries whose object was to obliterate every vestige of the ancient forms of faith.

The Dananns spoke the same language as their predecessors, the Firbolgs. They met and fought for the sovereignty. The “man of metal” conquered and drove a great part of the others338 into the islands on the coast, where it is said the Firbolg race took their last stand. Eventually, however, under the influence of a power hostile to them both, these two people coalesced, and have to a large extent done so up to the present day. They are the true old Irish peasant and small farming class.

The Firbolg was a bagman, so called, according to Irish authorities, because he had to carry up clay in earthen bags to those terraces in Greece now vine-clad. As regards the other race there is more difficulty in the name. Tuath or Tuatha means a tribe or tribe-district in Irish. Danann certainly sounds very Grecian; and if we consider their remains, we find the long, bronze, leaf-shaped sword, so abundant in Ireland, identical with weapons of the same class found in Attica and other parts of Greece.

Then, on the other hand, their physiognomy, their fair or reddish hair, their size, and other circumstances, incline one to believe that they came down from Scandinavian regions after they had passed up as far as they thought advisable into North-western Europe. If the word Dane was known at the time of their arrival here, it would account for the designation of many of our Irish monuments as applied by Molyneux and others. Undoubtedly the Danann tribes presented Scandinavian features, but did not bring anything but Grecian art. After the “Stone period,” so called, of which Denmark and the south of Sweden offer such rich remains, I look upon the great bulk of the metal work of the North, especially in the swords in the Copenhagen and Stockholm Museums, as Asiatic; while Ireland possesses not only the largest native collection of metal weapon-tools, usually denominated “celts,” of any country in the world, but the second largest amount of swords and battle-axes. And moreover these, and all our other metal articles, show a well-defined rise and development from the simplest and rudest form in size and use to that of the most elaborately constructed and the most beautifully adorned.

I believe that these Tuatha-de-Dananns, no matter from whence they came, were, in addition to their other acquirements, great masons, although not acquainted with the value of cementing materials. I think they were the builders of the great stone Cahirs, Duns, Cashels, and Caves in Ireland; while their predecessors constructed the earthen works, the raths, circles, and forts that diversify the fields of Erin. The Dananns anticipated Shakespeare’s grave-digger, for they certainly made the most lasting sepulchral monuments that exist in Ireland, such, for example, as New Grange, Douth, Knowth, and Slieve-na-Calleagh and other great cemeteries. Within the interior and around these tombs were carved, on unhewn stones, certain archaic markings, spires, volutes, convolutes, lozenge-shaped devices,339 straight, zigzag, and curved lines, and incised indentations, and a variety of other insignia, which, although not expressing language, were symbolical, and had an occult meaning known only to the initiated. These markings, as well as those upon the urns, were copied in the decorations of the gold and bronze work of a somewhat subsequent period. The Dananns conquered the inferior tribes in two celebrated pitched battles, those of the Northern and Southern Moytura. On these fields we still find the caves, the stone circles, the monoliths, and dolmans or cromlechs that marked particular events, and the immense cairns that were raised in honour of the fallen chieftains.

Although many of the warriors of the Firbolgs fled to their island fastnesses on the coasts of Galway and Donegal, no doubt a large portion of them remained in the inland parts of the country, and in that very locality to which I have adverted, which is almost midway between the sites of the two battles, in a line stretching between Mayo and Sligo, where in time the two races appear to have coalesced by that natural law which brings the dark and the fair together.

Moreover it has been recorded that the conquering race sent their small dark opponents into Connaught, while they themselves took possession of the rich lands further east, and not only established themselves at Tara but spread into the south. It is remarkable that in time large numbers of the Dananns themselves were banished to the West, and likewise that the last forcible deportation of the native Irish race (so late as the seventeenth century) was when the people of this province got the choice of going “to Connaught or Hell,” in the former of which, possibly, they joined some of the original stock. The natural beauty of the lakes and mountains of Connaught remains as it was thousands of years ago; but no doubt if some of the legislators of the period to which I have already referred could now behold its fat pasture-plains, they might prefer them to the flax lands of Ulster.

These Dananns had a globular form of head, of which I have already published examples. For the most part I believe they burned their dead or sacrificed to their manes, and placed an urn with its incinerated contents—human or animal—in the grave, where the hero was either stretched at length or crouched in an attitude similar to that adopted by the ancient Peruvians, as I have elsewhere explained. These Irish urns, which are the earliest relics of our ceramic art that have come down to the present time, are very graceful in form, and some of them most beautifully decorated, as may be seen in our various museums.

Specimens of this Danann race still exist, but have gradually mixed with their forerunners to the present day. Here is what old MacFirbis wrote of them two hundred years ago:340 “Every one who is fair-haired, vengeful, large, and every plunderer, professors of musical and entertaining performances, who are adepts of Druidical and magical arts, they are the descendants of the Tuatha-de-Dananns.” They were not only fair but sandy in many instances, and consequently extensively freckled.

It is affirmed that the Dananns ruled in Ireland for a long time, until another inroad was made into the island by the Milesians—said to be brave, chivalrous, skilled in war, good navigators, proud, boastful, and much superior in outward adornment as well as mental culture, but probably not better armed than their opponents. They deposed the three last Danann kings and their wives, and rose to be, it is said, the dominant race—assuming the sovereignty, becoming the aristocracy and landed proprietors of the country, and giving origin to those chieftains that afterwards rose to the title of petty kings, and from whom some of the best families in the land with anything like Irish names claim descent, and particularly those with the prefix of the “O” or the “Mac.” When this race arrived in Ireland I cannot tell, but it was some time prior to the Christian era. It is said they came from the coast of Spain, where they had long remained after their Eastern emigration.

Upon the site of what is believed to be the ancient Brigantium, now the entrance to the united harbours of Corunna and Ferrol, stands the great lighthouse known to all ships passing through the Bay of Biscay. Within this modern structure still exists the celebrated “Pharos of Hercules,” which I investigated and described many years ago. That tower, it was said in metaphorical language, commanded a view of Ireland, and as such became the theme of Irish poems and legends. Certain it is that sailing north or north-westward from it the ships of the sons of Milesius and their followers could have reached Ireland without much coasting. If the story of Breogan’s Tower is true, then it must have been erected in the time of lime-and-mortar building, and that is during the Roman occupation of Iberia and Gaul. How many thousands, rank and file, of these Spanish Milesians came here in their six or eight galleys and tried the fortunes of war from “the summit of the ninth wave from the shore” and conquered the entire Danann, Firbolg, and Fomorian population, I am unable to give the slightest inkling of, no more than I can of the so-called Phœnician intercourse with this country. Perhaps without going into the fanciful descriptions of the “Battle of Ventry Harbour,” or the southern conquest of Ireland by the Iberian Milesians, we may find some more trustworthy illustrations of Spanish dwellings in the architecture of the town of Galway, and some picturesque representatives in the lithe upright figures and raven-haired, but blue-eyed maidens of the City of the Tribes. Here is what old MacFirbis, who, I suppose, claimed341 descent from the sons of Milesius, wrote about them: “Every one who is white of skin, brown of hair, bold, honourable, daring, prosperous, bountiful in the bestowal of property, and who is not afraid of battle or combat, they are the descendants of the sons of Milesius in Erin.”

This high panegyric is only equalled by the prose and verse compositions of the ancient bards and rhymers and the modern historians, who have recorded the deeds of the great warriors, Ith, Heber, and Heremon, whose descendants boast to have been the rulers of the land. Even Moore, although he wrote such beautiful lyrics concerning this race in his early days, yet when he came to study history, he felt the same difficulty I do now. I do not dispute their origin or supremacy; but I fail to distinguish their early customs, their remains, or race from those of the Firbolgs or Dananns whom they conquered, and who left undoubted monuments peculiar to their time.

Now all these people—the piratical navigator along our coasts, the mid-Europe primitive shepherd and cultivator, the Northern warrior, and the Iberian ruler—were, according to my view, all derived from the one Celtic stock. They spoke the same language, and their descendants do so still. When they acquired a knowledge of letters they transmitted their history through the Irish language. No doubt they fused; but somehow a quick fusion of races has not been the general characteristic of the people of this country. Unlike the Anglo-Norman in later times, the Milesian was a long way from home; the rough sea of the Bay of Biscay rolled between him and his previous habitat; and if he became an absentee he was not likely to find much of his possessions on his return. It is to be regretted that while we have here such a quantity of poetical and traditional material respecting the Milesian invasion of Ireland, the Spanish annals or traditions have given us but very little information on that subject.

It would be most desirable if the Government or some Irish authority would send a properly instructed commissioner to investigate the Spanish annals, and see whether there is anything relating to the Spanish migrations to Ireland remaining in that country.

Besides the sparse introduction of Latin by Christian missionaries in the fifth century, some occasional Saxon words springing from peaceful settlers along our coasts and in commercial emporiums, and whatever Danish had crept into our tongue around those centres where the Scandinavians chiefly located themselves, and which were principally proper names of persons and places that became fixed in our vernacular, we find but one language among the Irish people until the arrival of the Anglo-Normans at the end of the twelfth century.

The linguistic or philological evidence on this subject is clearly342 decisive. The residue of the early races already described spoke one language, called Gaelic; so did the Scotch, the Welsh, and probably, in early times, the Britons and the Bretons. It was not only the popular conversational tongue used in the ordinary intercourse of life, but it was also employed in genealogies, annals, and other records in a special character, not quite peculiar to this country, but then common in Europe. Much has been said about the necessity for a glossary of our ancient MSS., such as those at Saint Gall, in Trinity College, in the Royal Irish Academy, and in Belgian and English libraries; but there are very few ancient languages that do not require to be glossed in the present day, even as the words of Chaucer do.

The Government are now, under the auspices of our Master of the Rolls, and the special direction and supervision of Mr. J. T. Gilbert, giving coloured photographs of some of our ancient writings, and have promised that some of our remaining manuscripts will be translated. I see no occasion now for waiting for more elaborated philological dictionaries or glossaries while there are still some few Irish scholars in this country capable of giving a free but tolerably literal translation of these records that do not require any great acumen in rendering them into English. Is history to wait upon the final decision of philologists respecting a word or two in a manuscript, and to decide as to whether it may be of Sanscrit or any other origin?

No doubt some of my hearers may ask, What about the Oghams (or Ohams)? do they not show a very early knowledge of an alphabet? As yet this is a moot question. A rude pillar-stone, having upon it a tolerably straight edge, was in early times notched along its angle which served as a stem-line by nicks formed on it, and straight or oblique lines, singly or in clusters, proceeding from the stem. The decipherers of these inscriptions have, one and all, agreed upon the fact that these lines represented letters, syllables, or words, and that the language is either Irish or Latin. Therefore the persons who made them must have been aware of alphabetic writing and grammar. These carved monoliths are chiefly found in Kerry and Cork. Upon some of them Christian emblems are figured. The incising of the stone has evidently been performed by some rude instrument, either a flint or metallic pick; and it is remarkable that these pillars present scarcely any amount of dressing.

In Connaught, in my youth, the exception in remote districts was where the person spoke both English and Irish. In 1851, when we first took a census of the Irish-speaking population, after the country had lost three-quarters of a million of people, chiefly of the Irish race, we had then (to speak in round numbers) one and a half millions of Irish-speaking population. In 1861 they had fallen off by nearly half a million; and upon the taking343 of the last census in 1871 the entire Irish-speaking population was only 817,865. The percentages, according to the total population in our different provinces, were these: in Leinster 1.2, in Munster 27.7, in Ulster 4.6, and in Connaught 39.0; for the total of Ireland 15.1. Kilkenny and Louth are the counties of Leinster where the language is most spoken. In Munster they are Kerry, Clare, and Waterford; in Ulster, Donegal, where 28 per cent. of the population speak Irish; but in Connaught, to which I have already alluded as containing the remnant of the early Irish races, we have no less than 56 per cent. of Irish-speaking population in the counties of Mayo and Galway respectively. Of my own knowledge I can attest that a great many of these people cannot speak English. We thus see that of the population of Ireland, which in the present day might be computed at about five and a half millions, there were, at the time of taking the census in April, 1871, only 817,865; and I think I may prophesy that that is the very largest number that in future we will ever have to record. On the causes of this decadence it is not my province to descant. These Celts have been the great pioneers of civilization, and are now a power in the world. Are they not now numerically the dominant race in America? and have they not largely peopled Australia and New Zealand?

We have now arrived at a period when you might naturally expect the native annalist to make some allusion to conquest or colonization by the then mistress of the world. Without offering any reason for it, I have here only to remark that neither as warriors nor colonizers did the Romans ever set foot in Ireland; and hence the paucity of any admixture of Roman art amongst us.

To fill up a hiatus which might here occur in our migrations, I will mention a remarkable circumstance. A Christian youth of Romano-Saxon parentage, and probably of patrician origin, was carried off in a raid of Irish marauders, and employed as a swineherd in this very Ulster, the country of the Dalaradians, and lived here for several years, learning our customs and speaking our language. He escaped, however, to Munster, and thence to his native land of Britain or Normandy, from whence he returned in A.D. 432 with friends, allies, and missionaries, and passing in his galley into the mouth of the Boyne, walked up the banks of that famed stream, raised the paschal fire at Slane, and speedily introduced Christianity throughout Ireland.

In thus briefly alluding to the labours of St. Patrick, I wish to be understood to say that about the time of his mission there was much Saxon intercourse with this country, and the great missionary had not only many friends but several relatives residing here, and some of them on the very banks of the Boyne; and I believe that a considerable amount of civilization and some knowledge of344 Christianity had been introduced long previously; so that, although old King Laoghaire or Loury and his Druids did not bow the knee to the Most High God, nor accept the teaching of the beautiful hymn that Patrick and his attendants chanted as they passed up the grassy slopes of Tara, still there were many hundred people in Ireland ready to receive the glad tidings of the gospel of salvation.

Having finished with the Milesians, we now come to the Danes (so-called), the Scandinavians or Norsemen—the pagan Sea-Kings who made inroads on our coasts, despoiled our churches and monasteries, but at the same time, it must be confessed, helped to establish the commercial prosperity of some of our cities and towns from 795 to the time of the battle of Clontarf, A.D. 1014, when the belligerent portion of the Scandinavians were finally expelled the country. During the time I have specified, Dublin, Limerick, and Waterford belonged to these Northern people. They not only coasted round the island and never lost an opportunity of pillage and plunder, but they passed through the interior and carried their arms into the very centre of the land. The Danes left us very little ornamental work beyond what they lavished upon their swords and helmets; but, on the other hand, it should be borne in mind that there are no Irish antiquities, either social, warlike, or ecclesiastical, in the Scandinavian Museums.

Concerning their ethnological characters, I must again refer to the “Crania Britannica.” In the records they were designated strangers, foreigners, pagans, gentiles, and also white and black foreigners, so that there were undoubtedly two races—the dark, and the fair or red, like as in the case of the Firbolgs or Dananns. They were also styled “Azure Danes,” probably on account of the shining hue of their armour.

I believe the fair section of that people to have been of Norwegian origin, while the dark race came from Jutland and the coast of Sweden; and both by the Orkneys, the coasts of Scotland, and the Isle of Man. Their skulls were large and well formed; they had a thorough knowledge of metal work, and especially iron; and, as I have shown elsewhere, their swords and spears were of great size and power, the former wielded as a slashing weapon, while those of their early opponents were of bronze, weak, and intended for stabbing. In nowhere else in Europe (that I am aware of) have these rounded, pointed, or bevelled heavy iron swords been found except in Ireland and Norway.

Large quantities of Danish remains have been discovered in deep sinkings made in Dublin; and several weapons, tools, and ornaments, believed to be of Scandinavian origin, have been found within a few inches of the surface on one of the battle-fields on the south side of the Liffey, within the last few years. Upon345 most of these I have already reported and given illustrations. I may mention one circumstance connected with this race. I never examined a battle-field of the Danes, nor a collection of Danish weapons or implements, that I did not find the well-adjusted scales and weights which the Viking had in his pocket for valuing the precious metals he procured either by conquest or otherwise.

Although considered hostile, these Scandinavian Vikings must have fraternized with the Irish. We know that they intermarried; for, among many other instances that might be adduced, I may mention that during the battle of Clontarf, when Sitric, the Danish king of Dublin, looked on the fight from the walls of the city, he was accompanied by his wife, the daughter of the aged king known as “Brian the Brave.”

When, however, the Irish chieftains were not fighting with one another, they were often engaged in petty wars with the Scandinavians, who, in turn, were attacked by their own countrymen, the “Black Gentiles,” especially on the plain of Fingall, stretching from Dublin to the Boyne, and which the white race chiefly occupied. It must not be supposed that the battle of Clontarf ended the Danish occupation of Ireland; they still held the cities of Dublin, Limerick, and Waterford at least, and largely promoted the commercial prosperity in these localities—a prosperity which has not quite yet departed. I should like to present you with some remains of the Scandinavian language in Ireland, but the materials are very scanty.

We are now coming to a later period. The Romans had occupied Britain, the Saxons followed; the Danes had partial possession for a time; the Heptarchy prevailed until Harold, the last of the Saxon kings, fell at Hastings, and England bowed beneath that mixture of Norman, Gaulish, Scandinavian, and general Celtic blood that William brought with him from the shores of France. The Saxon dynasty was at an end, but the Britons of the day accepted their fate; and not only the soldiers, but the Norman barons fused with the people of that kingdom, and largely contributed to make it what it now is. This fusion of races, this assimilation of sentiments, this interchange of thought, this kindly culture, the higher elevating the lower, among whom they permanently reside, must always tend to great and good ends in raising a people to a nobler intellectual state.

The Anglo-Normans came here in 1172, a very mixed race, but their leaders were chiefly of French or Norman extraction. Why they came, or what they did, it is not for me to expatiate upon. I wish, however, to correct an assertion commonly made, to the effect that the Norman barons of Henry II. then conquered Ireland. They occupied some towns, formed a “Pale,” levied taxes, sent in soldiery, distributed lands, and introduced a new346 language; but the “King’s writ did not run;” the subjugation of Ireland did not extend over the country at large, and it remained till 1846 and the five or six following years to complete the conquest of the Irish race, by the loss of a tuberous esculent and the Governmental alteration in the value of a grain of corn. Then there went to the workhouse or exile upwards of two millions of the Irish race, besides those who died of pestilence. Having carefully investigated and reported upon this last great European famine, I have come to the conclusion just stated, without taking into consideration its political, religious, or national aspects.

It appears to me that one of our great difficulties in Ireland has been the want of fusion—not only of races, but of opinions and sentiments, in what may be called a “give and take” system. As regards the intermixture, I think there cannot be a better one than the Saxon with the Celt. The Anglo-Normans, however, partially fused with the native Irish; for Strongbow married Eva the daughter of King Dermot; and from this marriage it has been clearly shown that Her Most Gracious Majesty the present Queen of Ireland and Great Britain is lineally descended. Several of the noble warriors who came over about that period have established great and widespread names in Ireland, among whom I may mention the Geraldines in Leinster, the De Burgos in Connaught, and the Butlers in Munster; and they and their descendants became, according to the old Latin adage, “more Irish than the Irish themselves.”

Look what the intermixture of races has done for us in Ireland; the Firbolg brought us agriculture; the Danann the chemistry and mechanics of metal work; the Milesians beauty and governing power; the Danes commerce and navigation; the Anglo-Normans chivalry and organized government; and, in later times, the French emigrants taught us an improved art of weaving.

It would be more political than ethnological were I to enter upon the discussion of that subsequent period which would conduct us to the days of Cromwell or the Boyne, or, perhaps, to later periods, involving questions not pertinent to the present subject.

But I must here say a word or two respecting Irish art. In architecture, in decorative tone-work, from archaic markings that gave a tone and character to all subsequent art, in our beauteous crosses, in our early metal work, in gold and bronze, carried on from the pagan to the Christian period, and in our gorgeously illuminated MS. books, we have got a style of art that is specially and peculiarly Irish, and that has no exact parallel elsewhere, and was only slightly modified by Norman or Frankish design.

Time passed, and events accumulated; political affairs intermingle, but the anthropologist should try and keep clear of them.347 At the end of the reign of Elizabeth a considerable immigration of English took place into the South of Ireland. Subsequently the historic episode of the “Flight of the Earls,” O’Neil and O’Donnell, brought matters to a climax; and the early part of the reign of the first James is memorable for the “Plantation of Ulster,” when a number of Celtic Scots with some Saxons returned to their brethren across the water; and about the same time the London companies occupied large portions of this fertile province, and the early Irish race were transplanted by the Protector to the West, as I have already stated. It must not be imagined that this was the first immigration. The Picts passed through Ireland, and no doubt left a remnant behind them. And in consequence of contiguity, the Scottish people must early have settled upon our northern coasts. When the adventurous Edward Bruce made that marvellous inroad into Ireland at the end of the fourteenth century and advanced into the bowels of the land, he carried with him a Gaelic population cognate with our own people, and in all probability left a residue in Ulster, thus leavening the original Firbolgs, Tuatha-de-Danann, and Milesians, with the exception of the county of Donegal, which still holds a large Celtic population speaking the old Irish tongue, and retaining the special characters of that people as I have already described them. This Scotic race, as it now exists in Ulster, and of which we have specimens before us, I would sum up with three characteristics. That they were courageous is proved by their shutting the gates and defending the walls of Derry; that they were independent and lovers of justice has been shown by their establishment of tenant right; and that they were industrious and energetic is manifest by the manufacturers of Belfast. Do not, I entreat my brethren of Ulster, allow these manufactures to be jeopardized, either by masters or men, by any disagreements, which must lead to the decay of the fairest and wealthiest province and one of the most beautiful cities in this our native land.

Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Frome and London.

The End