Book: Blackwood\'s Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX.

V >> Various >> Blackwood\'s Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX.




It was a soft rich afternoon in June, and chance made me the companion
of Miss Fairman. We were alone: I had encountered her at a distance of
about a mile from the parsonage, on the sea-shore, whither I had walked
distressed in spirit, and grateful for the privilege of listening in
gloomy quietude to the soothing sounds of nature--medicinal ever. The
lady was at my side almost before I was aware of her approach. My heart
throbbed whilst she smiled upon me, sweetly as she smiled on all. Her
deep hazel eye was moist. Could it be from weeping?

"What has happened, Miss Fairman?" I asked immediately.

"Do I betray my weakness, then?" she answered. "I am sorry for it; for
dear papa tells all the villagers that no wise man weeps--and no wise
woman either, I suppose. But I cannot help it. We are but a small family
in the village, and it makes me very sad to miss the old faces one after
another, and to see old friends dropping and dropping into the silent
grave."

As she spoke the church-bell tolled, and she turned pale, and ceased. I
offered her my arm, and we walked on.

"Whom do you mourn, Miss Fairman?" I asked at length.

"A dear good friend--my best and oldest. When poor mamma was dying, she
made me over to her care. She was her nurse, and was mine for years. It
is very wrong of me to weep for her. She was good and pious, and is
blest."

The church-bell tolled again, and my companion shuddered.

"Oh! I cannot listen to that bell," she said. "I wish papa would do away
with it. What a withering sound it has! I heard it first when it was
tolling for my dear mother. It fell upon my heart like iron then, and it
falls so now."

"I cannot say that I dislike the melancholy chime. Death is sad. Its
messenger should not be gay."

"It is the soul that sees and hears. Beauty and music are created
quickly if the heart be joyful. So my book says, and it is true. You
have had no cause to think that bell a hideous thing."

"Yet I have suffered youth's severest loss. I have lost a mother."

"You speak the truth. Yes, I have a kind father left me--and you"--

"I am an orphan, friendless and deserted. God grant, Miss Fairman, you
may be spared my fate for years."

"Not friendless or deserted either, Mr Stukely," answered the young lady
kindly; "papa does not deserve, I am sure, that you should speak so
harshly."

"Pardon me, Miss Fairman. I did not mean to say that. He has been most
generous to me--kinder than I deserve. But I have borne much, and still
must bear. The fatherless and motherless is in the world alone. He needs
no greater punishment."

"You must not talk so. Papa will, I am sure, be a father to you, as he
is to all who need one. You do not know him, Mr Stukely. His heart is
overflowing with tenderness and charity. You cannot judge him by his
manner. He has had his share of sorrow and misfortune; and death has
been at his door oftener than once. Friends have been unfaithful and men
have been ungrateful; but trial and suffering have not hardened him. You
have seen him amongst the poor, but you have not seen him as I have; nor
have I beheld him as his Maker has, in the secret workings of his
spirit, which is pure and good, believe me. He has received injury like
a child, and dealt mercy and love with the liberality of an angel. Trust
my father, Mr Stukely."--

The maiden spoke quickly and passionately, and her neck and face
crimsoned with animation. I quivered, for her tones communicated
fire--but my line of conduct was marked, and it shone clear in spite of
the clouds of emotion which strove to envelope and conceal it--as they
did too soon.

"I would trust him, Miss Fairman, and I do," I answered with a faltering
tongue. "I appreciate his character and I revere him. I could have made
my home with him. I prayed that I might do so. Heaven seemed to have
directed my steps to this blissful spot, and to have pointed out at
length a resting place for my tired feet. I have been most happy
here--too happy--I have proved ungrateful, and I know how rashly I have
forfeited this and every thing. I cannot live here. This is no home for
me. I will go into the world again--cast myself upon it--do any thing. I
could be a labourer on the highways, and be contented if I could see
that I had done my duty, and behaved with honour. Believe me, Miss
Fairman, I have not deliberately indulged--I have struggled, fought, and
battled, till my brain has tottered. I am wretched and forlorn--but I
will leave you--to-morrow--would that I had never come----." I could say
no more. My full heart spoke its agony in tears.

"What has occurred? What afflicts you? You alarm me, Mr Stukely."

I had sternly determined to permit no one look to give expression to the
feeling which consumed me, to obstruct by force the passage of the
remotest hint that should struggle to betray me; but as the maiden
looked full and timidly upon me, I felt in defiance of me, and against
all opposition, the tell-tale passion rising from my soul, and creeping
to my eye. It would not be held back. In an instant, with one
treacherous glance, all was spoken and revealed.

* * * * *




By that dejected city, Arno runs,
Where Ugolino clasps his famisht sons.
There wert thou born, my Julia! there thine eyes
Return'd as bright a blue to vernal skies.
And thence, my little wanderer! when the Spring
Advanced, thee, too, the hours on silent wing
Brought, while anemonies were quivering round,
And pointed tulips pierced the purple ground,
Where stood fair Florence: there thy voice first blest
My ear, and sank like balm into my breast:
For many griefs had wounded it, and more
Thy little hands could lighten were in store.
But why revert to griefs? Thy sculptured brow
Dispels from mine its darkest cloud even now.
What then the bliss to see again thy face,
And all that Rumour has announced of grace!
I urge, with fevered breast, the four-month day.
O! could I sleep to wake again in May.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

* * * * *




IMAGINARY CONVERSATION. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

SANDT AND KOTZEBUE.


_Sandt_.--Generally men of letters in our days, contrary to the practice
of antiquity, are little fond of admitting the young and unlearned into
their studies or their society.

_Kotzebue_.--They should rather those than others. The young _must_
cease to be young, and the unlearned _may_ cease to be unlearned.
According to the letters you bring with you, sir, there is only youth
against you. In the seclusion of a college life, you appear to have
studied with much assiduity and advantage, and to have pursued no other
courses than the paths of wisdom.

_Sandt_.--Do you approve of the pursuit?

_Kotzebue_.--Who does not?

_Sandt_.--None, if you will consent that they direct the chase, bag the
game, inebriate some of the sportsmen, and leave the rest behind in the
slough. May I ask you another question?

_Kotzebue_.--Certainly.

_Sandt_.--Where lie the paths of wisdom? I did not expect, my dear sir
to throw you back upon your chair. I hope it was no rudeness to seek
information from you?

_Kotzebue_.--The paths of wisdom, young man, are those which lead us to
truth and happiness.

_Sandt_.--If they lead us away from fortune, from employments, from
civil and political utility; if they cast us where the powerful
persecute, where the rich trample us down, and where the poorer (at
seeing it) despise us, rejecting our counsel and spurning our
consolation, what valuable truth do they enable us to discover, or what
rational happiness to expect? To say that wisdom leads to truth, is only
to say that wisdom leads to wisdom; for such is truth. Nonsense is
better than falsehood; and we come to that.

_Kotzebue_.--How?

_Sandt_.--No falsehood is more palpable than that wisdom leads to
happiness--I mean in this world; in another, we may well indeed believe
that the words are constructed of very different materials. But here we
are, standing on a barren molehill that crumbles and sinks under our
tread; here we are, and show me from hence, Von Kotzebue, a discoverer
who has not suffered for his discovery, whether it be of a world or of a
truth--whether a Columbus or a Galileo. Let us come down lower: Show me
a man who has detected the injustice of a law, the absurdity of a tenet,
the malversation of a minister, or the impiety of a priest, and who has
not been stoned, or hanged, or burnt, or imprisoned, or exiled, or
reduced to poverty. The chain of Prometheus is hanging yet upon his
rock, and weaker limbs writhe daily in its rusty links. Who then, unless
for others, would be a darer of wisdom? And yet, how full of it is even
the inanimate world? We may gather it out of stones and straws. Much
lies within the reach of all: little has been collected by the wisest of
the wise. O slaves to passion! O minions to power! ye carry your own
scourges about you; ye endure their tortures daily; yet ye crouch for
more. Ye believe that God beholds you; ye know that he will punish you,
even worse than ye punish yourselves; and still ye lick the dust where
the Old Serpent went before you.

_Kotzebue_.--I am afraid, sir, you have formed to yourself a romantic
and strange idea, both of happiness and of wisdom.

_Sandt_.--I too am afraid it may be so. My idea of happiness is, the
power of communicating peace, good-will, gentle affections, ease,
comfort, independence, freedom, to all men capable of them.

_Kotzebue_.--The idea is, truly, no humble one.

_Sandt_.--A higher may descend more securely on a stronger mind. The
power of communicating those blessings to the capable, is enough for my
aspirations. A stronger mind may exercise its faculties in the divine
work of creating the capacity.

_Kotzebue_.--Childish! childish!--Men have cravings enow already; give
them fresh capacities, and they will have fresh appetites. Let us be
contented in the sphere wherein it is the will of Providence to place
us; and let us render ourselves useful in it to the utmost of our power,
without idle aspirations after impracticable good.

_Sandt_.--O sir! you lead me where I tremble to step; to the haunts of
your intellect, to the recesses of your spirit. Alas! alas! how small
and how vacant is the central chamber of the lofty pyramid?

_Kotzebue_.--Is this to me?

_Sandt_.--To you, and many mightier. Reverting to your own words; could
not you yourself have remained in the sphere you were placed in?

_Kotzebue_.--What sphere? I have written dramas, and novels, and
travels. I have been called to the Imperial Court of Russia.

_Sandt_.--You sought celebrity.--I blame not that. The thick air of
multitudes may be good for some constitutions of mind, as the thinner of
solitudes is for others. Some horses will not run without the clapping
of hands; others fly out of the course rather than hear it. But let us
come to the point. Imperial courts! What do they know of letters? What
letters do they countenance--do they tolerate?

_Kotzebue_.--Plays.

_Sandt_.--Playthings.

_Kotzebue_.--Travels.

_Sandt_.--On their business. O ye paviours of the dreary road along
which their cannon rolls for conquest! my blood throbs at every stroke
of your rammers. When will ye lay them by?

_Kotzebue_.--We are not such drudges.

_Sandt_.--Germans! Germans! Must ye never have a rood on earth ye can
call your own, in the vast inheritance of your fathers?

_Kotzebue_.--Those who strive and labour, gain it; and many have rich
possessions.

_Sandt_.--None; not the highest.

_Kotzebue_.--Perhaps you may think them insecure; but they are not lost
yet, although the rapacity of France does indeed threaten to swallow
them up. But her fraudulence is more to be apprehended than her force.
The promise of liberty is more formidable than the threat of servitude.
The wise know that she never will bring us freedom; the brave know that
she never can bring us thraldom. She herself is alike impatient of both;
in the dazzle of arms she mistakes the one for the other, and is never
more agitated than in the midst of peace.

_Sandt_.--The fools that went to war against her, did the only thing
that could unite her; and every sword they drew was a conductor of that
lightening which fell upon their heads. But we must now look at our
homes. Where there is no strict union, there is no perfect love; and
where no perfect love, there is no true helper. Are you satisfied, sir,
at the celebrity and the distinctions you have obtained?

_Kotzebue_.--My celebrity and distinctions, if I must speak of them,
quite satisfy me. Neither in youth nor in advancing age--neither in
difficult nor in easy circumstances, have I ventured to proclaim myself
the tutor or the guardian of mankind.

_Sandt_.--I understand the reproof, and receive it humbly and
gratefully. You did well in writing the dramas, and the novels, and the
travels; but, pardon my question, who called you to the courts of
princes in strange countries?

_Kotzebue_.--They themselves.

_Sandt_.--They have no more right to take you away from your country,
than to eradicate a forest, or to subvert a church in it. You belong to
the land that bore you, and were not at liberty--(if right and liberty
are one, and unless they are, they are good for nothing)--you were not
at liberty, I repeat it, to enter into the service of an alien.

_Kotzebue_.--No magistrate, higher or lower, forbade me. Fine notions of
freedom are these!

_Sandt_.--A man is always a minor in regard to his fatherland; and the
servants of his fatherland are wrong and criminal, if they whisper in
his ear that he may go away, that he may work in another country, that
he may ask to be fed in it, and that he may wait there until orders and
tasks are given for his hands to execute. Being a German, you
voluntarily placed yourself in a position where you might eventually be
coerced to act against Germans.

_Kotzebue_.--I would not.

_Sandt_.--Perhaps you think so.

_Kotzebue_.--Sir, I know my duty.

_Sandt_.--We all do; yet duties are transgressed, and daily. Where the
will is weak in accepting, it is weaker in resisting. Already have you
left the ranks of your fellow-citizens--already have you taken the
enlisting money and marched away.

_Kotzebue_.--Phrases! metaphors! and let me tell you, M. Sandt, not very
polite ones. You have hitherto seen little of the world, and you speak
rather the language of books than of men.

_Sandt_.--What! are books written by some creatures of less intellect
than ours? I fancied them to convey the language and reasonings of men.
I was wrong, and you are right, Von Kotzebue! They are, in general, the
productions of such as have neither the constancy of courage, nor the
continuity of sense, to act up to what they know to be right, or to
maintain it, even in words, to the end of their lives. You are aware
that I am speaking now of political ethics. This is the worst I can
think of the matter, and bad enough is this.

_Kotzebue_.--You misunderstand me. Our conduct must fall in with our
circumstances. We may be patriotic, yet not puritanical in our
patriotism, not harsh, nor intolerant, nor contracted. The philosophical
mind should consider the whole world as its habitation, and not look so
minutely into it as to see the lines that divide nations and
governments; much less should it act the part of a busy shrew, and take
pleasure in giving loose to the tongue, at finding things a little out
of place.

_Sandt_.--We will leave the shrew where we find her: she certainly is
better with the comedian than with the philosopher. But this
indistinctness in the moral and political line begets indifference. He
who does not keep his own country more closely in view than any other,
soon mixes land with sea, and sea with air, and loses sight of every
thing, at least, for which he was placed in contact with his fellow men.
Let us unite, if possible, with the nearest: Let usages and
familiarities bind us: this being once accomplished, let us confederate
for security and peace with all the people round, particularly with
people of the same language, laws, and religion. We pour out wine to
those about us, wishing the same fellowship and conviviality to others:
but to enlarge the circle would disturb and deaden its harmony. We
irrigate the ground in our gardens: the public road may require the
water equally: yet we give it rather to our borders; and first to those
that lie against the house! God himself did not fill the world at once
with happy creatures: he enlivened one small portion of it with them,
and began with single affections, as well as pure and unmixt. We must
have an object and an aim, or our strength, if any strength belongs to
us, will be useless.

_Kotzebue_.--There is much good sense in these remarks: but I am not at
all times at leisure and in readiness to receive instruction. I am old
enough to have laid down my own plans of life; and I trust I am by no
means deficient in the relations I bear to society.

_Sandt_.--Lovest thou thy children? Oh! my heart bleeds! But the birds
can fly; and the nest requires no warmth from the parent, no cover
against the rain and the wind.

_Kotzebue_.--This is wildness: this is agony. Your face is laden with
large drops; some of them tears, some not. Be more rational and calm, my
dear young man! and less enthusiastic.

_Sandt_.--They who will not let us be rational, make us enthusiastic by
force. Do you love your children? I ask you again. If you do, you must
love them more than another man's. Only they who are indifferent to all,
profess a parity.

_Kotzebue_.--Sir! indeed your conversation very much surprises me.

_Sandt_.--I see it does: you stare, and would look proud. Emperors and
kings, and all but maniacs, would lose that faculty with me. I could
speedily bring them to a just sense of their nothingness, unless their
ears were calked and pitched, although I am no Savonarola. He, too, died
sadly!

_Kotzebue_.--Amid so much confidence of power, and such an assumption of
authority, your voice is gentle--almost plaintive.

_Sandt_.--It should be plaintive. Oh, could it be but persuasive!

_Kotzebue_.--Why take this deep interest in me? I do not merit nor
require it. Surely any one would think we had been acquainted with each
other for many years.

_Sandt_.--What! should I have asked you such a question as the last,
after long knowing you?

_Kotzebue_, (_aside_.)--This resembles insanity.

_Sandt_.--The insane have quick ears, sir, and sometimes quick
apprehensions.

_Kotzebue_.--I really beg your pardon.

_Sandt_.--I ought not then to have heard you, and beg yours. My madness
could release many from a worse; from a madness which hurts them
grievously; a madness which has been and will be hereditary: mine, again
and again I repeat it, would burst asunder the strong swathes that
fasten them to pillar and post. Sir! sir! if I entertained not the
remains of respect for you, in your domestic state, I should never have
held with you this conversation. Germany is Germany: she ought to have
nothing political in common with what is not Germany. Her freedom and
security now demand that she celebrate the communion of the faithful.
Our country is the only one in all the explored regions on earth that
never has been conquered. Arabia and Russia boast it falsely; France
falsely; Rome falsely. A fragment off the empire of Darius fell and
crushed her: Valentinian was the footstool of Sapor, and Rome was buried
in Byzantium. Boys must not learn this, and men will not. Britain, the
wealthiest and most powerful of nations, and, after our own, the most
literate and humane, received from us colonies and laws. Alas! those
laws, which she retains as her fairest heritage, we value not: we
surrender them to gangs of robbers, who fortify themselves within walled
cities, and enter into leagues against us. When they quarrel, they push
us upon one another's sword, and command us to thank God for the
victories that enslave us. These are the glories we celebrate; these are
the festivals we hold, on the burial-mounds of our ancestors. Blessed
are those who lie under them! blessed are also those who remember what
they were, and call upon their names in the holiness of love.

_Kotzebue_.--Moderate the transport that inflames and consumes you.
There is no dishonour in a nation being conquered by a stronger.

_Sandt_.--There may be great dishonour in letting it be stronger; great,
for instance, in our disunion.

_Kotzebue_.--We have only been conquered by the French in our turn.

_Sandt_.--No, sir, no: we have not been, in turn or out. Our puny
princes were disarmed by promises and lies: they accepted paper crowns
from the very thief who was sweeping into his hat their forks and
spoons. A cunning traitor snared incautious ones, plucked them, devoured
them, and slept upon their feathers.

_Kotzebue_.--I would rather turn back with you to the ancient glories of
our country than fix my attention on the sorrowful scenes more near to
us. We may be justly proud of our literary men, who unite the suffrages
of every capital, to the exclusion of almost all their own.

_Sandt_.--Many Germans well deserve this honour, others are manger-fed
and hirelings.

_Kotzebue_.--The English and the Greeks are the only nations that rival
us in poetry, or in any works of imagination.

_Sandt_.--While on this high ground we pretend to a rivalship with
England and Greece, can we reflect, without a sinking of the heart, on
our inferiority in political and civil dignity? Why are we lower than
they? Our mothers are like their mothers; our children are like their
children; our limbs are as strong, our capacities are as enlarged, our
desire of improvement in the arts and sciences is neither less vivid and
generous, nor less temperate and well-directed. The Greeks were under
disadvantages which never bore in any degree on us; yet they rose
through them vigorously and erectly. They were Asiatic in what ought to
be the finer part of the affections; their women were veiled and
secluded, never visited the captive, never released the slave, never sat
by the sick in the hospital, never heard the child's lesson repeated in
the school. Ours are more tender, compassionate, and charitable, than
poets have feigned of the past, or prophets have announced of the
future; and, nursed at their breasts and educated at their feet, blush
we not at our degeneracy? The most indifferent stranger feels a pleasure
at finding, in the worst-written history of Spain, her various kingdoms
ultimately mingled, although the character of the governors, and perhaps
of the governed, is congenial to few. What delight, then, must overflow
on Europe, from seeing the mother of her noblest nation rear again her
venerable head, and bless all her children for the first time united!

_Kotzebue_.--I am bound to oppose such a project.

_Sandt_.--Say not so: in God's name, say not so.

_Kotzebue_.--In such confederacy I see nothing but conspiracy and
rebellion, and I am bound, I tell you again, sir, to defeat it, if
possible.

_Sandt._--Bound! I must then release you.

_Kotzebue_.--How should you, young gentleman, release me?

_Sandt_.--May no pain follow the cutting of the knot! But think again:
think better: spare me!

_Kotzebue_.--I will not betray you.

_Sandt_.--That would serve nobody: yet, if in your opinion betraying me
can benefit you or your family, deem it no harm; so much greater has
been done by you in abandoning the cause of Germany. Here is your paper;
here is your ink.

_Kotzebue_.--Do you imagine me an informer?

_Sandt_.--From maxims and conduct such as yours, spring up the brood,
the necessity, and the occupation of them. There would be none, if good
men thought it a part of goodness to be as active and vigilant as the
bad. I must go, sir! Return to yourself in time! How it pains me to
think of losing you! Be my friend!

_Kotzebue_.--I would be.

_Sandt_.--Be a German!

_Kotzebue_.--I am.

_Sandt_, (_having gone out_.)--Perjurer and profaner! Yet his heart is
kindly. I must grieve for him! Away with tenderness! I disrobe him of
the privilege to pity me or to praise me, as he would have done had I
lived of old. Better men shall do more. God calls them: me too he calls:
I will enter the door again. May the greater sacrifice bring the people
together, and hold them evermore in peace and concord. The lesser victim
follows willingly. (_Enters again_.)

Turn! die! (_strikes_.)

Alas! alas! no man ever fell alone. How many innocent always perish with
one guilty! and writhe longer!

Unhappy children! I shall weep for you elsewhere. Some days are left me.
In a very few the whole of this little world will lie between us. I have
sanctified in you the memory of your father. Genius but reveals
dishonour, commiseration covers it.

* * * * *




THE JEWELLER'S WIFE.

A PASSAGE IN THE CAREER OF EL EMPECINADO.


When the Empecinado, after escaping from the Burgo de Osma, rejoined his
band, and again repaired to the favourite skirmishing ground on the
banks of the Duero, he found the state of affairs in Old Castile
becoming daily less favourable for his operations. The French overran
the greater part of the province, and visited with severe punishment any
disobedience of their orders; so that the peasantry no longer dared to
assist the guerillas as they had previously done. Many of the villages
on the Duero had become _afrancesados_, not, it is true, through love,
but through dread of the invaders, and in the hope of preserving
themselves from pillage and oppression. However much the people in their
hearts might wish success to men like the Empecinado, the guerillas were
too few and too feeble to afford protection to those who, by giving them
assistance or information, would incur the displeasure of the French.
The clergy were the only class that, almost without an exception,
remained stanch to the cause of Spanish independence, and their purses
and refectories were ever open to those who took up arms in its defence.

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