Chapter III: Father and Son (1)

The house of the Antwerp executioner stood hard by the fortifications, and was surrounded by a high stone wall, over whose solid portal a red flag, denoting the occupation of the tenant, was displayed during the day. The grim ensign had been some hours removed when Gerard knocked for admission.

"Has the judge been here, Jan?" inquired the young man of the varlet who opened.

"Yes, he has but just left. Your father desires to speak to you."

Gerard ascended the stairs, and entered the room where his sick father lay stretched upon his bed.

The old headsman was ashy pale, and worn to the very bone; the ravages of a terrible malady were legible in his hollow cheeks and sunken glassy eyes. But, although sick and weak of body, his mind was still active and vigorous as that of one in health. With a quick glance he noted his son's entrance; but he uttered no greeting. Gerard took a chair beside his father's pillow, sought under the bed-clothes for his thin and feeble hand, and pressed it anxiously and affectionately.

"Father!" he cried in an unsteady voice, "tell me my doom! The judge has been here! Say, must I assume the headsman's office?"

"My son," replied the old man, mournfully, "I have done my utmost, but in vain. The judge will not hear of my varlet's doing the duty. Neither gold nor entreaties softened him. My unhappy son, there is no alternative. Headsman you must become!"

Although Gerard had foreseen his fate, this confirmation, destroying the last ray of hope, was a terrible shock. A cold sweat broke out upon his forehead, and he convulsively squeezed his father's hand. But the emotion was of brief duration, and he relapsed into his habitual calm dejection.

"To-morrow!" he exclaimed, after a short pause--"Father, to-morrow destroys my last hope of a future happier than the past. To-morrow I must dip my hands in the blood of a fellow-creature. To-morrow is the first day of a life of agony. Thenceforward I am a hired murderer!"

"My son!" said the old headsman anxiously but firmly, "what must be must, and against destiny 'tis vain to strive. It were sin to deceive you. Be prepared for a joyless and weary existence. But there is a God above, who takes account of human suffering, to repay it in His own good time."

Gerard heard but the bitter portion of his father's speech--the concluding words of comfort escaped his ear. He replied as if he had heard nothing.

"I can conceive," he said, "my fellow-citizens' hatred of me. May I not be called upon, any day and every day, to strike off the head of one of them, and he perhaps innocent? They think the headsman takes pleasure in bloodshed, that he gloats over his victim; and yet, if he shrinks at sight of the sufferer's naked throat, if his trembling hands refuse to wield the sword, then, indeed, they slay him with stones, because he is no true headsman, but suffers himself to be touched by pity!"

"Often, my son, has this inexplicable contradiction struck me."

"Methinks, father, 'tis not hard to interpret. In every society of men a scapegoat is needed, on whom to pour out the superabundant hate and malice of the human heart, to serve as a ready butt for the brutal, a safe laughingstock for cowards. But, father!--is there no possible outlet, no means of escape, unthought of or untried? Is my fate inevitable--_must_ I steep myself in blood?"

"My son!" said the headsman, "there is no remedy. See yonder book, left me by the judge. It is open at the page that seals thy doom."

Gerard read; then dashed the book violently to the ground.

"Accursed be the unjust law," he cried, "that sentenced me, whilst yet in my mother's womb, to a life of infamy and blood! Thrice accursed, I say, be the law and its makers! What! whilst I lay in my cradle, smiling at life and at God's glorious works, in happy ignorance of the future, men had already doomed me to live loathed and detested of all, like the venomous reptile against which every hand is lifted? Oh, shame, shame!"

"Despair carries you too far, Gerard," replied his father, with a sigh. "I appreciate your sufferings--too long have I endured the like; but, remember that the headsman's is a necessary office, and must be filled. God has allotted it to thee, and submission to His will is the Christian's duty. In resignation and humility wilt thou find peace."

"Peace!--have you found it, my father? Is it resignation that has laid you thus prematurely upon the bed of sickness? Were they from the springs of peace and contentment, those tears that during twenty long years you shed upon your son's head? You have had courage thus long to bear it; but I feel not such strength. Oh, that our souls might depart together, to find mercy and peace before the judgment-seat of the Most High! But no; I am young, and healthy, and grief does not kill,--at least not as fast as I would have it. But, praise be to heaven! the man who fears not death is ever master of his destiny!"

The headsman raised himself in his bed, and drawing his son towards him, embraced him tenderly, whilst a flood of bitter tears coursed over his cheeks, worn and wrinkled by sorrow rather than by years.

"O Gerard!" he said, "my beloved son, can you cherish thoughts of suicide, and delight in the sinful project? What! would you precede me to the tomb, leaving me to drag out in solitude my few remaining days of misery? Is this kind, Gerard?--is it generous, unselfish? Think of Him who for our sakes bore a cross, compared to which thine is of feather's weight. Bear it, in imitation of Him, patiently and humbly. So shall we meet hereafter in that bright and blessed world where persecutors are not, and where the weary find rest!"

These touching and pious words made a deep impression upon Gerard. He reproached himself for his egotism, and his whole feelings underwent a sudden and total change. All that day and evening he had nursed thoughts of self-destruction, which he looked upon as an enviable lot compared to the long career of blood prescribed to him by the cruel laws of his country. And now, out of love to his dying father, he must abandon the idea, and cling to an existence he viewed with deepest loathing! It cost a severe effort, but generosity and filial duty finally prevailed, and he made up his mind to the sacrifice.

"Father!" he exclaimed, "forgive my senseless words--heedlessly and cruelly spoken. I forget not my duty to you; and, since such is your desire, I will ascend the scaffold and do my office firmly, horrible though it be. Let shame and scandal fall on those who force me to a work so repugnant to my nature. Fear not, my father, but that I will strike the blow with a veteran's coolness, and bathe my hands in my brother's blood, as calmly as ever butcher in that of unresisting lamb. I have said it; the sin is not mine, but theirs who compel me. Weep no move, father! thy son will become headsman; ay, and with a headsman's heart!"

Those who, hearing this bold speech, should have discerned in it a strong and sudden resolution, to be afterwards borne out by the deeds of the speaker, would have deceived themselves, even as Gerard deceived both himself and his father. It was but one of those fleeting flashes of determination, which persons wavering in an alternative of terrible evils sometimes exhibit. The resolution was dissipated with the sound of the words it dictated. These, however, answered their chief purpose, by carrying joy and consolation to the old man's heart.

"I am weary, my son," he said, "yet will I give thee brief word of advice, the fruit of long experience. To-morrow, when you mount the scaffold, look not at the mob; the ocean of eyes will confuse you, and make you falter. Fancy you are alone with the condemned man, and deal your blow steadily and carefully. If the head falls not at the first stroke, a thousand voices will cry haro on the bungling headsman: a thousand arms will be uplifted against him, and I shall never again behold thee alive. I will pray to God that He mercifully strengthen thee for the terrible task. Go, my son, and His blessing be upon thee."

Whilst the old man thus spoke, with a coolness resulting from long habit, all Gerard's apprehensions returned with redoubled violence, and he longed to throw himself on his knees before his father, to declare his inability to carry out his instructions, and to recall his promise of supporting the burthen of existence. But affection for his sole surviving parent, and fear of accelerating the fatal termination of his malady, stimulated him to self-restraint; and, after a last embrace, and a murmured "good-night," he retired to his chamber. There, however, he neither sought his bed nor found repose. The rays of the morning sun shone upon the unhappy youth sitting in the same place, almost in the very same posture, he had taken on entering his room--as mute, as motionless, and nearly as pale, as statue of whitest marble.

CHAP. IV--THE EXECUTION.

The execution of Hendrik the Mariner was fixed for six in the evening. Long before the appointed hour, crowds of people, eager to see the horrible spectacle, thronged through the St George's Gate, in the direction of the place of punishment. Nothing was more seductive to the populace of that day than the sight of a grisly head rolling upon the scaffold, and reddening the boards with its blood. The Antwerp burghers were not exempt from this horrible curiosity; and Headsman's Acre, as the field was called in which capital punishments then took place, was crowded with spectators of all ages and classes, including women, many of them with their children in their arms, urchins of tender age, and old men who, already on the brink of the grave, tottered from their easy chair and chimney corner to behold a fellow-creature expiate, by a premature death, his sin against society. Noisy and merry was the mob collected round the tall black gallows and the grim rusty wheel.

In the crowd, close to the scaffold, stood Lina, her heart beating quickly and anxiously, her tears restrained from flowing only by the reflection that she was there to give Gerard courage, and that weeping was the worst way to do it. Her brother Franz stood beside her, in holiday suit, his broad-leafed Spanish hat upon his head, and his brown cloak over his shoulder, according to the fashion of the time. Lina had represented to him, in lively colours, the frightful danger incurred by Gerard; and he, with his usual rough good-heartedness, swore to break the neck of the first man who threw a stone at the new headsman.

It was late, and the shades of evening fell upon the earth, before the executioner's varlets completed the necessary arrangements on the scaffold. At the moment these terminated, a cart pierced the throng amidst general stir and hum of curiosity. The criminal, attired in a black linen gown, sat with a priest in the hinder part of the vehicle. Gerard was on the foremost bench, his broad bright sword in his hand, and one of his assistants beside him. None could divine, from his countenance, what passed in his mind; his features were fixed and rigid; his eyes, bent upon the ground, avoided the people's gaze; and but for the weapon he bore, none could have told which of the two, he or Hendrik, was the condemned man. Unconscious of his own movements, he ascended the scaffold, so confused in spirit that he saw nothing, not even Lina, although Franz several times made signs to catch his attention.

And now the varlets would have removed the prisoner from the cart to the scaffold; but he pretended he had not finished his confession, which he wished now, for the first time, to make full and complete, seeing all chance of pardon gone. Perhaps he nourished a vague hope of escape in the darkness; for heavy clouds drifted across the sky, and night approached so rapidly that already those upon the outskirts of the crowd could scarcely distinguish what passed upon the scaffold. So that the people, fearing the increasing darkness would deprive them altogether of the show they coveted, began to clamour loudly for the execution of the sentence. The culprit, still resisting, and claiming delay, was brought upon the scaffold by force, and made to kneel down. The headsman's assistant bared the condemned wretch's neck, and pointed to it with a significant look, as if to say, "Master, strike."

At sight of the naked flesh into which he was to cut, Gerard started as from a heavy sleep, and his limbs trembled till the scaffold shook under him, and the broad-bladed sword fell from his hand. The varlet picked up the weapon and gave it back to his master, who clutched it convulsively, whilst the red rod of the superintending official gave the signal to strike. But Gerard neither saw the rod nor heard the voice of its bearer. Already a murmur arose amongst the crowd. "Quick, master! quick!" said the varlet, whose ear caught the ill-omened sound.

Summoning all the strength and courage his recent sufferings had left him, Gerard raised the sword, with the fixed determination to strike a bold and steady blow, when at that moment the victim turned his head, and at sight of the impending steel, uttered a lamentable yell. No more was wanting to upset Gerard's resolution and presence of mind. They left him on the instant: his arms lost their strength, and he let the sword fall on Hendrik's shoulder, but so feebly that it did not even wound him.

At the chill touch of the blade, the criminal's whole frame quivered with agony; but the next instant, feeling himself unhurt, and perceiving the advantage to be derived from his executioner's irresolution, he sprang to his feet, and stretching out his fettered arms to the people, implored help and pity, for that he was wilfully tortured.

At this appeal the fury of the mob burst forth with uncontrollable vehemence.

"Strike him dead!" was the universal cry; "strike the torturer dead!"

And stones flew about Gerard's head, but in no great number, since, fortunately for him, they were not plentiful on the field. The unhappy youth stood for a moment stunned by the uproar; then, folding his arms, he stepped forward to the edge of the scaffold with the air of one for whom death has no terrors.

"Wolves!" he exclaimed;--"wolves in the garb of men! ye came for blood--take mine, and slake your fiendish thirst!"

This rash defiance excited to madness the fury of the rabble. Women, children, and men of the better classes, fled in all haste from the field, leaving it occupied by the very dregs and refuse of Antwerp, who pressed fiercely forward to the scaffold, making violent efforts to seize the headsman, in spite of the resistance of the police and officials. The uproar and confusion were tremendous. Around Gerard a number of officers of justice assembled--less, however, for his protection, than to prevent the escape of the culprit, who made furious efforts to get rid of his manacles, and continued to appeal to the people and shout for assistance. At this moment of confusion, when scarcely anyone knew what his neighbour did, a man ascended the scaffold, and approached the executioner. It was Franz.

"Gerard," he said, "Lina conjures you, in God's name, and by your love for her, to speak to her for one moment. She is below; follow me!" And he leaped from the scaffold, on the side where the mob was thinnest. Gerard obeyed the charm of Lina's name. How gladly, he thought, would he bid his beloved one more farewell before encountering the death he deemed inevitable. In another second he stood by her side. At the same instant Franz, stripping off his cloak, muffled Gerard in its folds, pressed his broad hat over his eyes, and placing Lina's arm in that of the bewildered headsman, drew them gently from the spot.

"Go quietly and fearlessly through the crowd," he said, "and wait for me in the copse beyond the farthest gibbet."

And seeing that Lina obeyed his directions and led away Gerard, who followed passively as a child, Franz ran round to the other side of the scaffold, and set up such a shouting, that the mob, thinking he had seized the delinquent headsman, rushed furiously in that direction, leaving a free passage to the lovers. Franz continued to shout with all his might, and to affect the most violent indignation.

"Strike him dead!" he cried; "strike him dead! Down with the base torturer! Throw his carcass to the ravens!"

And he hurled stones at the scaffold, headed a charge on the police, and behaved altogether like a madman let loose. Favoured by this attracting of the attention from them, and under cover of the darkness, Lina succeeded in getting her lover away unrecognised, for Franz's cloak and hat completely concealed the headsman's well-known costume. But before they reached the thicket, the mob got possession of the scaffold, released the prisoner, and began ill-treating the officials, to compel them to confess what had become of the executioner. On finding that this latter personage, the cause of the whole tumult, had disappeared, a man, one of the lowest of the people, who had seen Franz throw his cloak over Gerard's shoulders, and who had watched the direction taken by Lina and her disguised companion, guessed that the fugitive was no other than the headsman himself, and immediately started in pursuit. Before he could overtake them, Lina and Gerard disappeared amongst the trees. His suspicions confirmed by this mysterious conduct, the ruffian, blaspheming with exultation and fury, rushed upon the lovers; and, tearing off Gerard's cloak, beheld the headsman's livery. Thereupon, without word or question, he lifted a heavy cudgel, and struck the poor fellow violently upon the head. Gerard fell senseless to the ground. The murderer would have repeated his blow, but Lina, with the courage of a lioness defending her young, grappled him vigorously, and clasping her arms around his, impeded his further movements. The sight of her lover, stunned and bleeding at her feet, seemed to give her superhuman strength; and bethinking her that it was better to have one enemy to contend with than a hundred, she abstained from calling out, lest her cries should bring foes instead of friends. Fortunately the uproar of the mob drowned the imprecations of Gerard's assailant, who vociferated horrible curses as he strove, with brutal violence, to shake off the heroic girl. At the very moment when, her last strength exhausted, she was about to succumb, Franz entered the copse, and, seeing Gerard motionless on the ground and his sister struggling with a stranger, immediately guessed what had occurred. A cry of rage burst from his lips, and before Lina remarked his presence, his powerful hands were upon the shoulders of her antagonist, who lay, the next instant, upon the grass at his feet.

"Lina!" cried Franz, seizing the fallen man and dragging him in the direction of the scaffold, "hide Gerard in the bushes; if he still lives, he is rescued from all he most dreads. Quick! I will return."

With these words he hurried from the copse, dragging his prisoner after him so rapidly, that the prostrate man, his legs in Franz's iron grasp, his head trailing in the dust, and striking violently against each stock and stone, could make no effectual resistance. As soon as Franz was within earshot of the mob, he shouted, more loudly than ever--

"The headsman! here I have him--the headsman!"

"Death to the villain!" was re-echoed on all sides; and from all four corners of the field the mob, who had dispersed to seek the object of their hate, rushed towards Franz. When Lina's brother saw himself the centre of a dense crowd, howling and frantic for blood, he hurled amongst them the man whom he dragged by the feet, with the words--

"There is the headsman!"

"Death to him!" hoarsely repeated a hundred voices, and as many blows descended upon the shrieking wretch, whose expostulations and prayers for mercy were unheard in the mighty tumult, and whom the mob, blinded by fury, easily mistook in the darkness for the delinquent executioner. His cries were soon silenced by the cruel treatment he received; in a few minutes he was dead, his clothes were torn from his body, and his face was disfigured and mutilated so as to be wholly unrecognisable.

Leaving the mob to their bloody work, Franz returned to his sister, and found her weeping and praying beside the body of her lover, whom she believed dead. On examination, however, he found Gerard's pulse still beating. The violent blow he had received had stunned but not slain him. Fresh water thrown upon his face and chest restored him to consciousness, and to the caresses of his dear Lina, speechless and almost beside herself with joy at his recovery. When his strength returned, the trio crept stealthily from the copse, and safely reached the town, where Gerard concealed himself during the evening in the house of his mistress. When midnight came, and the streets of Antwerp were deserted, he betook himself, accompanied by Franz, to his own dwelling, and made his unexpected appearance in his father's chamber.

The old headsman, who lay broad awake upon his bed of sickness, weeping bitterly, and deploring the death of his unhappy son, deemed himself the sport of a deceitful vision when he saw the dead man approach his couch. But when convinced, by Gerard's voice and affectionate embrace, that he indeed beheld his child in solid flesh and bone, his joy knew no bounds, and for a moment inspired the young man with fears of his immediate dissolution.

"My son, my son!" he cried, "you know not half your good fortune. Not only have you miraculously escaped a cruel death, but you are also delivered from the horrible employment which has been mine, and was to be yours. The accursed obligation that weighed upon our race ceases with life, and you, my son, are _dead_!"

"And pure from the stain of blood!" joyfully exclaimed Gerard.

"Begone," continued the old man, "and dwell far from thine unjust brethren. Quit Antwerp, marry thy good Lina, be faithful and kind to her, and heaven bless thee in thy posterity! Thy sons will not be born to wield the axe, nor wilt thou weep over them, as I have wept over thee. The savings of thine ancestors and mine insure thee for ever from poverty; make good use of them and be happy!"

His voice grew weak with emotion, and died away in inarticulate benedictions. Gerard hung upon his father's neck, and stammered forth his thanks. The events of the day appeared to him like a dream. He could not realise the sudden transition from the depths of despair to the utmost height of happiness.

* * * * *

For many years after these incidents there lived at Brussels, under an assumed name, the son of the Antwerp headsman, and his beautiful wife Lina. The old man's blessing was heard, and when Gerard's turn came to quit a world of cares for a brighter and better abode, brave sons and fair daughters wept around the dying bed of the DOOMSTER'S FIRSTBORN.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT NOVELS--A DIALOGUE, IN A LETTER TO EUSEBIUS.

DEAR EUSEBIUS,--Whether it be a fable or not that the Lydians invented chess, to relieve themselves from pain and trouble, and were content to eat one day and play another, unquestionably amusement is a most salutary medicine to heal the "mind diseased," and even to mitigate hunger itself.

The utilitarian ant would not have had the best of the argument with the grasshopper,--"dance now,"--if the latter had not insisted on dancing too long--a whole summer. Even hunger would do its dire work in double-quick time, if left to fret incessantly on the mind as well as the fast failing substance. Avert the thought of it, and half a loaf will keep alive longer than a whole one, eaten together with cankering care. "Post equitem sedet atra Cura," said the most amiable of satirists; but Care, the real "gentleman in black," won't always be contented to sit behind, but is apt to assume an opposite seat at the table, and, grinning horribly, to take away your appetite "quite and entirely." You may try, Eusebius, to run away from him, and bribe the stoker to seventy or eighty miles an hour, but Care will telegraph you, and thus electrify you on your arrival, when you thought him a hundred miles or so off. I have ascertained a fact, Eusebius, that Care is not out of one, but _in_ one, and has a lodging somewhere in the stomach, where he sets up a diabolical laboratory, and sends his vile fumes up, up--and so all over the brain; and from that conjuration what blue devils do not arise, as he smokes at leisure his infernal cigar below! Charge me not, Eusebius, with being poetical--this is sober prose to the indescribable reality. Your friend has been hypochondriacal. It is a shameful truth; but confession is the demon's triumph, and so the sufferer is punished--mocked, scoffed at, unpitied, and uncured. The Lady Dorothea Dosewell had proposed a seventy-fifth remedy. My lady, I am in despair: I have not as yet completed the fifty-sixth prescription; the fifty-fifth has left me worse. The Curate, who happened to be present, laughed at me, as all do, and said, "No wonder--you are like the man who complained of inveterate deafness, had applied every recipe, and was cured by the most simple one--a cork-screw. Do set aside all your nostrums, and spend a week or two at the curacy, and I'll take care to pack in half-a-dozen novels, and you will soon forget your own in other folks' woes."

"I will go," I replied; "but I protest against any woes whatsoever. When young as you, Mr Curate, I could bear them, and sit out a tragedy stoically; but shaken nerves and increasing years won't bear the tragic phantasmagoria now. Sentimental comedy is too much, and I positively, with shame, cry over a child's book."

"I fear," quoth the Curate, "it is a sure sign your heart is hardening. The sympathy that should soften it is too easily and too quickly drawn off by the fancy to waste, and leaves the interior dry. Come to us, and alternate your feelings between fancy and active realities; between reading imaginary histories and entering practically and interestingly into the true histories of the many homes I must visit, and you will soon be fresh in spirit and sound again."

Let me, Eusebius, use the dialogue form, as in some former letters: suffice it only to tell you previously, that I took the Curate's advice and invitation, and for a time did my best to throw off every ailment, and refresh myself by country-air exercise, in the society of the happy Curate and his wife, at the vicarage of ----, which you know well by description. And here we read novels. Even at the Curate's house did we read novels--those "Satan's books," as a large body of Puritans call them, whilst they read them privately; or, if seen, ostensibly that they may point out the wickedness in them, and thus forbid the use of them; as an elder of the demure sect excused himself when detected at a theatre, that he "came to see if any of their young folk were there." How often people do what is right, and defend it as if it was a wrong, and apologise for what gives them no shame! Thus the Curate commenced the defence of novel-reading:--

CURATE.--What is the meaning of the absurd cry against works of fiction? If it be true that "the proper study of mankind is man," is it not wise to foresee, as it were, life under all its possible contingencies? Are we not armed for coming events by knowing something of their nature beforehand? Who learns only from the world amid which he walks, learns from a master that conceals too much; and the greater portion of the lesson, after all, must come out of the learner's own mind, and it is a weary while before he has learnt by experience the requisite shrewdness. Life is too short to learn by a process so slow, that the pupil begins to decay before he has learnt one truth. The preparatory education is not amiss. The early tears that tales of fiction bid to flow scald not like the bitter ones of real sorrow; and they, as it were by a charm of inoculation, prepare the cheek for the after tears, that they burn not and furrow too deeply. I cannot conceive how people came to take it into their heads that plays and novels are wicked things necessarily. Your Lady Prudence will take infinite pains that her young people shall not contaminate even their fingers with the half-binding--and perhaps fail too--and for honest simplicity induce a practice of duplicity, for fiction will be read. It is the proper food to natural curiosity--an instinct given us to learn; and I dare to say that letters were invented by Cadmus purposely for that literature.

AQUILIUS.--Say nothing of Cadmus, or the serpent's teeth will be thrown against your argument. Their sowing was not unlike the setting up a press; and your literary men are as fierce combatants as ever sprang from the dragon's teeth, and have as strong a propensity to slaughter each other.

CURATE.--Yes, and even in works of fiction we have had the conflict of authors. They write now as much against each other as formerly. Fielding proposed to himself to write down Richardson; and religious novelists of our days take the field against real or imaginary opponents. Richardson, able as he was, very cunningly set about his work--his _Clarissa_. By an assumed gravity, and well-managed affectation of morality, he contrived to render popular among prudes a most indecent work. The book was actually put into the hands of young people as an antidote to novels in general. This appeared to Fielding abominable hypocrisy, corrupting under disguise. And to this honest indignation are we indebted to him for his _Joseph Andrews_, the antidote to the very questionable morality, and unquestionable moral, of the virtue-rewarded _Pamela_.

AQUILIUS.--I was told the other day by a lady, that there are few kitchens in which _Pamela_ is not to be found. She detected her own maid reading it, and was obliged to part with her, for setting her cap at her son, a youth just entered at College. The girl defended her conduct as a laudable and virtuous ambition, which the good author encouraged,--was not the title Virtue Rewarded? So much, for _Pamela_. You will not, however, surely defend the novel-writing system of nearly half a century ago--the sickly sentimentalities of the _All for Love_ school--that restless progeny not allowed to rest on circulating library shelves till their rest was final--whose tendency was to make young persons of either sex nothing but fools.

CURATE.--And whose authors had the fool's mark set upon them, not unhappily, by Jenner, in his _Town Eclogues_:--

"Thrice-happy authors, who with little skill
In two short weeks can two short volumes fill!
Who take some miss, of Christian name inviting,
And plunge her deep in love and letter-writing,
Perplex her well with jealous parents' cares,
Expose her virtue to a lover's snares,
Give her false friends and perjured swains by dozens,
With all the episodes of aunts and cousins;
Make parents thwart her, and her lover scorn her,
And some mishap spring up at every corner;
Make her lament her fate with ahs and ohs,
And tell some dear Miss Willis all her woes,
Whilst now with love and now with grief she rages;
Till, having brought her through two hundred pages,
Finding at length her father's heart obdurate,
Will make her take the squire, and leave the curate;
She scales the garden-wall, or fords a river,
Elopes, gets married, and her friends forgive her."

AQUILIUS.--And was it not whimsical enough that, in the presumption of their vanity, upstarted the Puritan school, who had ever declaimed against novels and dramas, to counteract the mischievous tendency of these silly love-tales, and wrote themselves much sillier, and quite as mischievous?

CURATE.--Are you then audacious enough to pass censure upon _Coelebs_, and suchlike?

AQUILIUS.--"Great is Diana of Ephesus!" I abominate every thing Hannah More wrote--vain, clever, idolised, spoiled woman as she was--her style all riddle-ma-ree. Read her lauded _What is Prayer?_ and you are reading a conundrum. An affected woman, she wrote affectedly, with a kind of unwomanly dishonesty. There was good natural stuff in her too, but it was sadly spoilt in the making up.

CURATE.--You will shock the good, or rather the goody folk, who will insist upon the religious and moral purpose of all her works.

AQUILIUS.--They may insist, for they are an obstinate race. What moral, or what religion, is inculcated in this--"A brute of a husband"--selfish, a tyrant, a gourmandiser--ill-treats an amiable wife. He scorns patient virtue, and is an infidel. He must be _converted_--that is the religious object. He must be metamorphosed, not after Ovid's fashion--there is the moral object. How is it done, do you remember? If not, you will never guess. By what latent virtue is he to be reclaimed? Virtue, indeed! would the indignant Puritan proclaim--what virtue is in poor human rags? He shall be reclaimed through his vice! Indeed, Madam Puritan, that is a novelty. So, however, it is. The man is a glutton. On his conversion-day he is gifted with an extraordinary appetite and discriminating taste. It is a pie--yes, _a pie_, that converts him to piety.

CURATE.--Oh, oh, oh! you are mocking surely. A pie!

AQUILIUS.--Yes, a pie. It is remarkably good--quite delicious. It puts the brute in good humour with himself and every body, and he grunts applause, and promises his favour to the cook. At this stage--this incipient stage of his conversion--a pathetic butler bursts into tears, and affectionately sobs out the beautiful truth. The cook for the occasion was his mistress--the ill-treated wife. He becomes a perfect Christian on the instant; and with the conversion comes the moral metamorphosis, and the "brute of a husband" is, on a sudden, the best and most religious of men. Now, in what respect, Mr Curate, would you bid any of your flock to go and do likewise? Setting aside as worthless, then, to say the best of it, the moral, the set-up primness of the whole affair is so odious, that you long even for a little wickedness to set nature upon nature's legs, that we may at least acknowledge the presence of humanity.

CURATE.--We must ask Lydia to defend the writers of her sex. You are severe upon poor Hannah, who would have been good enough in spite of her extreme vanity, if the clique had let her alone. Her _Coelebs_ was to be the novel _par excellence_, the model tale,--and with no little contempt for all others.

AQUILIUS.--Your Lydia has too much good sense, and too much plain honesty, to defend any thing wrong because it is found in woman. The utmost you can expect from her is not to object to the saintly Hannah, as was the charity of the Wolverhampton audience, when her play was acted there. Master Betty was hissed, and this impromptu was uttered, during a lull, from the gallery--

"The age of childhood now is o'er,
Of folly and of whim--
We dont object to Hannah More,
But we'll _ha-na-more_ of him."

CURATE.--Yet she is supposed to have done some good by her minor tales for the poor. Possibly she did--the object was at all events good.

AQUILIUS.--And here she was the precursor to a worse set, so bad that it can hardly be said of them that they are "daturos progeniem vitiosiorem."

CURATE.--Yes, even wickedly religious. The scheme was, that the poor should teach the rich, and the infant the man. I remember reading some of these tales of Mrs Sherwood's. Is there not one where a little urchin, not long after he is able to run alone, is sent out on an errand,--an unconverted child,--commits the very natural sin of idleness, loiters by the way, and lies under a tree. There, you will suppose, sleep comes upon him--no, but grace. He rises a converted man-child, an infant apostle, goes home and converts his wicked grandfather, or great-grandfather. "Ex uno disce omnes." Great was the outcry against Maria Edgeworth's children's tales, because they did not inculcate religious dogmas. This was a great compliment to her genius, for it showed that every sect would have wished her theirs. She wisely left the catechism to fathers, mothers, and nurses, and preferred leaving to the parson of each parish the prerogative of sermonising.

AQUILIUS.--Some of you take your prerogative as a sanitary prescription, and sweeten your own tempers by throwing off their acerbities, _ad libitum_, one day in the week; abusing in very unmeasured terms all mankind, and their own congregation in particular--indeed, often in language that, used on week days, and by any other people, would be looked upon as nearly akin to what is called "cursing and swearing." So do extremes sometimes meet. A little thunder clears the air wonderfully; the _lightning may_ not always be evident.

CURATE.--All writers, especially novelists and reviewers, assume this privilege of bitterness, without the restriction to one day out of seven; hence, to say nothing of the better motives in the other case, they are more practised in acerbity than amiability. Your medicine becomes the habit, not the cure. We must have civil tongues the greater part of our lives. Your literary satirist uses the drunkard's remonstrance--

"Which is the properest day to drink--
Saturday, Sunday, Monday?
Each is the properest day, I think;
Why should you name but one day?"

AQUILIUS.--But to return to our subject. Novels are not objected to as they were; now that every sect in politics and religion have found their efficacy as a means, the form is adopted by all. And with a more vigorous health do each embody their principle. The sickly sentimentality school is sponged out--or nearly so. The novel now really represents the mind of a country in all its phases, and, if not the only, is nearly the best of its literature. It assumes to teach as well as to amuse. I could wish that, in their course down the stream of time, it had not taken the drama by the neck, and held it under water to the drowning.

CURATE.--You are wrong. The novel has not drowned the drama. It is the goody, the Puritan school, has done the work, and will, not drown, but suffocate, the noble art that gave us Shakspeare, by stopping up all avenues and entrance to the theatres--having first filled the inside with brimstone, or at least cautioned the world that the smell of brimstone will never quit those who enter. In discussing the subject, however, I would class the play and the novel together, under "works of fiction." Why, by the way, did the self-styled religious world that set up a crusade against novelists--and "fiction-mongers"--show such peculiar favour to John Bunyan, and his _Pilgrim's Progress_--the most daring fiction? I believe that very imaginative, nay, very powerful work, has gone through more editions than any other in our language: a proof at least that there is something innate in us all,--a natural power of curiosity to see and hear more than actual life presents to us--that sends all, from infancy to age, in every stage of life, either openly or secretly, to the reading tales of fiction. We all like to see Nature herself with a difference; and, loving "to hold the mirror up to nature," we prefer that the glass should be coloured, or at least a shade deeper, and love the image more than the thing.

AQUILIUS.--Yes; and we indulge in a double and seeming contrary propensity--excitement and repose. We are safe in the storm--look out "from our loopholes of retreat," as Cowper calls them, on the busy world--and in our search after that equally evasive philosopher's stone, the "~gnothi seauton~," like to squint at our deformities in private, and, by seeing them in other folks, we learn our faults by deputy.

CURATE.--And what a wonderful and wisely-given instinct is there in us all, that we may learn to the utmost in one short life--an instinct by which we recognise as nature, as belonging strictly to ourselves, what we have never seen or experienced, and have only portrayed to us in works of fiction. All people speak of the extensive range of Shakspeare's genius--that he appears to have been conversant with every mode of life, with the sentiments and language appropriate to each--that he is at once king, courtier, citizen, and clown; yet what do those who so admire him for this universality know themselves, but through him, of all these phases of life? We recognise them by an instinct, that enters readily into the possibilities of all nature which is akin to us; and if this be so, the busiest man who is no reader, may, in his walk through life, see much more of mankind than the reader, but know far less. Who teaches to read puts but the key of knowledge into the scholar's hand. It was well said by Aristophanes, "Masters for children, poets for men."

AQUILIUS.--True; and if all literary fiction could be withdrawn and forgotten, and its renovation prohibited, the greater part of us would be dolts, and, what is worse, unfeeling, ungenerous, and under the debasing dominion of the selfishness of simple reason. It has always appeared to me that those who cautiously keep novels from young people mistake the nature of mind, thinking it only intellect, and would cultivate the understanding alone. Imagination they look upon as an _ignis fatuus_, to be extinguished if possible--an _ignis fatuus_ arising out of a quagmire, and leading astray into one. There is nothing good comes from the intellect alone. The inventive faculty is compound, in which imagination does the most work; the intellectual portion selects and decides, but collects not the materials. All true sentiment, all noble, all tender feeling, comes not of the understanding, but of that mind--or heart, if we so please to call it--which imagination raises, educates, and perfects. Even feelings are to be made--are much the result of education. The wildest romances will, in this respect, teach nothing wrong. If they create a world somewhat unlike the daily visible, they create another, which is a reality to the possessor, to the romantic, from which he can extract much that is practical, though it may seem not so; for from hence may spring noble impulses, generosity and fortitude. It is not true that such reading enervates the mind: I firmly believe it strengthens it in every respect, and fits it for every action, by unchaining it from a lower and cowardly caution. Who ever read a romance that inculcated listless, shapeless idleness? It encourages action and endurance. We have not high natures till we learn to suffer. I have noted much the different effects troubles have upon different persons, and have seen the unromantic drop like sheep under the rot of their calamities, while the romantic have been buoyant, and mastered them. They have more resources in themselves, and are not bowed down to one thought nor limited to one feeling: in fact, they are higher beings.

CURATE.--The caution professes mainly to protect women; yet, among all the young women whom I have been acquainted with, I should say that the novel-readers are not only the best informed, but of the best nature, and some capable of setting examples of a sublime fortitude--the more sublime because shown in a secret and all-enduring patience. Who are they that will sit by the bed-side of the sick day and night, suffer privation, poverty, even undeserved disgrace, and shrink not from the self-imposed duty, but those very young women in whom the understanding and imagination have been equally cultivated, so as to render the feelings acute and impulsive?--and these are novel-readers. Love, it is said, is the only subject all novels are constructed upon; and such reading encourages extravagant thoughts, and gives rise to dangerous feelings. And why dangerous? And why should not such thoughts and feelings be encouraged? Are they bad? Are they not such as are requisite for wife and mother to hold, and best for the destiny of woman--best in every view--best if her lot be a happy one, and far best if her lot be an ill one? For the great mark of such an education is endurance--a power to create a high duty, and energy and patience where both are wanted. Women never sink under any calamity but blighted affection; and we love them not less, we admire them not less, that they do sink then, for their heroism is in the patience that brings and that awaits death.

AQUILIUS.--I have heard Eusebius say that he has made it a point, wherever he goes, to recommend earnestly to all young mothers to select no nurse for their children but such as have a good stock of nursery tales. He has often purposed to write an essay on the subject of the requisite education for nurses, asserting that there ought to be colleges for training to that one purpose alone; for, as the nurse gives the first education, the first impression, she gives the most important. The child that is not sung to, and whose ear has not been attentive to nursery tales, he would say, would be brought up to turn his father and mother out of doors, and deserve, if he did not come, to be hanged; and if such unfortunate child be a daughter, she would live to be a slut, a slattern, a fool, and a disgrace. He had no doubt, he said, believing that all Shakspeare's creations were realities, that Regan and Goneril were ill nursed, and no readers; and that Cordelia was in infancy well sung to, and being the youngest, was set to read romances to her old and wayward father,--

"Methinks that lady is my child Cordelia!"

How full are these few words of the old father's feeling, and reminiscent of the nursery, of songs, of tales, wherein he had seen the growth of his "child Cordelia!" Eusebius would be eloquent upon this subject: I cannot tell you half of what he thought and vigorously expressed. He used to delight in getting children together and telling them stories, and invariably began with "once upon a time," which, he used to say, had, if any words could have, a magical charm.

CURATE.--Bad, indeed, was the change when story reading and telling ceased to be a part of education: and what was put in its place?--stuff that no child could understand or care about. The good old method once abandoned, there was no end to the absurdities that followed; and they who wrote them knew nothing about children, or what would amuse, and, by interesting, improve them. The false system of cramming them with knowledge, which it was impossible for them to digest, really stopped their intellectual growth, and checked the natural spring of their feelings. Wisdom-mongering went on upon the "rational plan," till the wise-heads, full-grown infant pumpkins, fatuated, empty of anything solid or digestible; and so they grew, and grew from night to morn, and morn to night, stolid boobies, lulled into a melancholy sleep by the monotonous hum of "Hymns in Prose."

AQUILIUS.--"Hymns in Prose!" Is not that one of Mrs Barbauld's books for children, I have often heard mothers say, "that is so very good?"

CURATE.--Oh yes! Here it is in Lydia's library.

AQUILIUS.--Open it--any where.

CURATE.--Well, now, I do not think the information given to the child here is quite correct in its order, for I think the parent of the mother must be the child's grandmother. "The mother loveth her little child; she bringeth it up on her knees; she nourisheth its body with food."

AQUILIUS.--A very unnatural parent if she did not. It is very new information for a child. Well, go on.

CURATE.--"She feedeth its mind with knowledge. If it is sick, she nurseth it with tender love; she watcheth over it when asleep; she forgetteth it not for a moment."

AQUILIUS.--A most exemplary and extraordinary mother--not a moment! Go on.

CURATE.--"She teacheth it how to be good; she rejoiceth daily in its growth." I do not see the connexion between the "teaching to be good" and the growth. "But who is the parent of the mother? Who nourisheth her with good things, and watcheth over her with tender love, and remembereth her every moment? Whose arms are about her to guard her from harm?"

AQUILIUS.--Stay a moment--whose arms? Why, the husband's to be sure; which the child may have seen, and need not have been told as a lesson.

CURATE.--"And if she is sick, who shall heal her?" Now, you would say, the apothecary, and so would the child naturally answer; but that would not be according to the "rational plan." The riddle is to have a religious solution--"God is the parent of the mother; he is the parent of all, for he created all."

AQUILIUS.--Shut the book! shut the book! or rather put it in the fire, or one of these days one of your own babes will be so spoon-fed. So these are hymns for children! Why, the children brought up on this "rational plan" have set up themselves for teachers, and in a line, too, sometimes quite beyond Mrs Barbauld's intention. I took up a book of prayers off a goody-table the other day, written by a boy of six years old, with a preface by himself, to the purport that his object was to improve the thoughtless world. At the end were some verses--all such cherub children love to "lisp in numbers." As well as I can remember, they ran thus--they are lines on the occasion of its father's breaking his leg, or having some accidental sickness--

"O Lord! in mercy do look down,
And heal my dear papa;
Or if it please thee not to cure,
Do comfort dear mama!"

CURATE.--Well, I don't think there is a pin to choose between the hymn in prose and the hymn in verse, excepting that the infant versifier is rather more intelligible. I saw the little book a month or two ago at ----. I must have called after you; for I suspect some lines in pencil at the end were your work. Did you write these?--

"Defend me from such wretched stuff
As children write and parents puff!
Put the small hypocrites to bed,
And whip the big ones in their stead!"

AQUILIUS.--At least I will write them in Lydia's, to protect the future. The child would have been better employed in reading Jack the Giant-killer. But what think you of Bible stories, adopted for those of somewhat more advanced childhood--a religious novel made out of the history of Joseph, price eighteenpence? I picked it up at the same house, and had permission to put it in my pocket. It is a curious story to choose, as the writer says, "to entertain my young reader without vitiating his mind." I mean not the genuine story, but such as the writer promises it to be; for he says in his preface, "I am not at all aware of having at all departed from the spirit of the text, nor from the rules of probability. I have, indeed, ventured upon a few conjectures and fictious possibilities, which some very grave reader may perhaps be offended with." The author professes his object to be, to make the Bible popular; so what the conjectures and fictious possibilities that may offend very grave people may be, we must guess by the object--to make it fashionable. But the recommendation to the young on the score of love, and the "_letting down_" the Bible to the capacities of the young, must be given in the author's own words: "The sacred volume is fertile of subjects calculated both to please and instruct, when let down, by proper elucidation, within the reach of young capacities. And rather than one class of readers should want entertainment, let me tell them, that the Bible contains many histories of love affairs; perhaps this may tend more to recommend it to attention than all besides which I could say." You will not, however, conclude that I object to religious novels. It is a legitimate mode of enforcing doctrines by lives, and showing the pernicious effects of what is false, and the natural result of the good.