Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

I insist on you putting on dry clothes. Don't try my temper.

TALBOYS.

By-and-by I began to have my suspicions that I had been distracted from the road--and was in the Channel of the Airey. But on looking down I saw the Airey in his own channel--almost as drumly as the mire-burn--vulgarly called road--I was plashing up. Altogether the scene was most animating--and in a moment of intense exhilaration--not to weather-fend, but in defiance--I unfurled my Umbrella.

NORTH.

What, a Plover with a Parapluie?

TALBOYS.

I use it, sir, but as a Parasol. Never but on this one occasion had it affronted rain.

NORTH.

The same we sat under, that dog-day, at Dunoon?

TALBOYS.

The same. Whew! Up into the sky like the incarnation of a whirlwind! No turning outside in--too strong-ribbed for inversion--before the wind he flew--like a creature of the element--and gracefully accomplished the descent on an eminence about a mile off.

NORTH.

Near Orain-imali-chauan-mala-chuilish?

TALBOYS.

I eyed him where he lay--not without anger. It had manifestly been a wilful act--he had torn himself from my grasp--and now he kept looking at me--at safe distance as he thought--like a wild animal suddenly undomesticated--and escaped into his native liberty. If he had sailed before the wind--why might not I? No need to _stalk_ him--so I went at him right in front--but such another flounder! Then, sir, I first knew fatigue.

NORTH.

"So eagerly THE FIEND
O'er bog, or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare,
With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way,
And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies."

TALBOYS.

Finally I reached him--closed on him--when Eolus, or Eurus, or Notus, or Favonius--for all the heathen wind-gods were abroad--inflated him, and away he flew--rustling like a dragon-fly--and zig-zagging all fiery-green in the gloom--sat down--as composedly as you would yourself, sir--on a knoll, in another region--engirdled with young birch-groves--as beautiful a resting-place, I must acknowledge as, after a lyrical flight, could have been selected for repose by Mr Wordsworth.

NORTH.

I know it--Arash-alaba-chalin-ora-begota-la-chona-hurie. Archy will go for it in the evening--all safe. But do go and put on dry clothes. What now, Billy?

BILLY BALMER.

Here are Mr Talboys' trunk, sir.

NORTH.

Who brought it?

BILLY.

Nea, Maister--I dan't kna'--I s'pose Carrier. I ken't reet weell--ance at Windermere-watter.

NORTH.

Swiss Giantess--Billy.

BILLY.

Ay--ay--sir.

NORTH.

You will find the Swiss Giantess as complete a dormitory as man can desire, Talboys. I reserve it for myself, in event of rheumatism. Though lined with velvet, it is always cool--ventilated on a new principle--of which I took merely a hint from the Punka. My cot hangs in what used to be the Exhibition-room--and her Retreat is now a commodious Dressing-room. Billy, show Mr Talboys to the Swiss Giantess.

BILLY.

Ay--ay, sir. This way, Mr Talboy--this way, sir.

TALBOYS.

What is your dinner-hour, Mr North?

NORTH.

Sharp seven--seven sharp.

TALBOYS.

And now 'tis but half-past two. Four hours for work. The Cladich--or whatever you call him--is rumbling disorderly in the wood; and I noted, as I crossed the bridge, that he was proud as a piper of being in Spate--but he looks more rational down in yonder meadows--and----HEAVEN HAVE MERCY ON ME! THERE'S LOCH AWE!!

NORTH.

I thought it queer that you never looked at it.

TALBOYS.

Looked at it? How could I look at it? I don't believe it was there. If it was--from the hill-top I had eyes but for the Camp--the Tents and the Trees--and "Thee the spirit of them all!" Let me have another eye-full--another soul-full of the Loch. But 'twill never do to be losing time in this way. Where's my creel--where's my creel?

NORTH.

On your shoulders--

TALBOYS.

And my Book? Lost--lost--lost! Not in any one of all my pockets. I shall go mad.

NORTH.

Not far to go. Why your Book's in your hand.

TALBOYS.

At eight?

NORTH.

Seven. Archy, follow him--In that state of excitement he will be walking with his spectacles on over some precipice. Keep your eye on him, Archy--

ARCHY.

I can pretend to be carrying the landing-net, sir.

NORTH.

There's a specimen of a Scottish Lawyer, gentlemen. What do you think of him?

BULLER.

That he is without exception the most agreeable fellow, at first sight, I ever met in my life.

NORTH.

And so you would continue to think him, were you to see him twice a-week for twenty years. But he is far more than that--though, as the world goes, that is much: his mind is steel to the back-bone--his heart is sound as his lungs--his talents great--in literature, had he liked it, he might have excelled; but he has wisely chosen a better Profession--and his character now stands high as a Lawyer and a Judge. Yonder he goes! As fresh as a kitten after a score and three quarter miles at the least.

BULLER.

Seward--let's after him. Billy--the minnows.

BILLY.

Here's the Can, sirs.

_Scene closes._

* * * * *

SCENE II.

_Interior of Deeside._--TIME--_Seven_ P.M.

NORTH--TALBOYS--BULLER--SEWARD.

NORTH.

Seward, face Buller. Talboys, face North. Fall too, gentlemen; to-day we dispense with regular service. Each man has his own distinct dinner before him, or in the immediate vicinity--soup, fish, flesh, fowl--and with all necessary accompaniments and sequences. How do you like the arrangement of the table, Talboys?

TALBOYS.

The principle shows a profound knowledge of human nature, sir. In theory, self-love and social are the same--but in practice, self-love looks to your own plate--social to your neighbours. By this felicitous multiplication of dinners--this One in Four--this Four in One--the harmony of the moral system is preserved--and all works together for the general good. Looked at artistically, we have here what the Germans and others say is essential to the beautiful and the sublime--Unity.

NORTH.

I believe the Four Dinners--if weighed separately--would be found not to differ by a pound. This man's fish might prove in the scale a few ounces heavier than that man's--but in such case, his fowl would be found just so many ounces lighter. And so on. The Puddings are cast in the same mould--and things equal to the same thing, are equal to one another.

TALBOYS.

The weight of each repast?

NORTH.

Calculated at twenty-five pounds.

TALBOYS.

Grand total, one hundred. The golden mean.

NORTH.

From these general views, to descend to particulars. Soup (turtle) two pounds--Hotch, ditto--Fish (Trout) two pounds--Flesh, (Jigot--black face five-year-old,) six pounds--Fowl (Howtowdie boiled) five pounds--Duck, (wild) three pounds--Tart (gooseberry) one pound--Pud (Variorum Edition) two pounds.

BULLER.

That is but twenty-three, sir! I have taken down the gentleman's words.

NORTH.

Polite--and grateful. But you have omitted sauces and creams, breads and cheeses. Did you ever know me incorrect in my figures, in any affirmation or denial, private or public?

BULLER.

Never. Beg pardon.

NORTH.

Now that the soups and fishes seem disposed of, I boldly ask you, one and all, gentlemen, if you ever beheld Four more tempting Jigots?

TALBOYS.

I am still at my Fish. No fish so sweet as of one's own catching--so I have the advantage of you all. This one here--the one I am eating at this blessed moment--I killed in what the man with the Landing-net called the Birk Pool. I know him by his peculiar physiognomy--an odd cast in his eye--which has not left him on the gridiron. That Trout of my killing on your plate, Mr Seward, made the fatal plunge at the tail of the stream so overhung with Alders that you can take it successfully only by the tail--and I know him by his colour, almost as silvery as a whitling. Yours, Mr Buller, was the third I killed--just where the river--for a river he is to-day, whatever he may be to-morrow--goes whirling into the Loch--and I can swear to him from his leopard spots. Illustrious sir, of him whom you have now disposed of--the finest of the Four--I remember saying inwardly, as with difficulty I encreeled him--for his shoulders were like a hog's--this for the King.

NORTH.

Your perfect Pounder, Talboys, is the beau-ideal of a Scottish Trout. How he cuts up! If much heavier--you are frustrated in your attempts to eat him thoroughly--have to search--probably in vain--for what in a perfect Pounder lies patent to the day--he is to back-bone comeatable--from gill to fork, Seward, you are an artist. Good creel?

SEWARD.

I gave Mr Talboys the first of the water, and followed him--a mere caprice--with the Archimedean Minnow. I had a run--but just as the monster opened his jaws to absorb--he suddenly eschewed the scentless phenomenon, and with a sullen plunge, sunk into the deep.

BULLER.

I tried the natural minnow after Seward--but I wished Archimedes at Syracuse--for the Screw had spread a panic--and in a panic the scaly people lose all power of discrimination, and fear to touch a minnow, lest it turn up a bit of tin or some other precious metal.

NORTH.

I have often been lost in conjecturing how you always manage to fill your creel, Talboys; for the truth is--and it must be spoken--you are no angler.

TALBOYS.

I can afford to smile! I was no angler, sir, ten years ago--now I am. But how did I become one? By attending you, sir--for seven seasons--along the Tweed and the Yarrow, the Clyde and the Daer, the Tay and the Tummel, the Don and the Dee--and treasuring up lessons from the Great Master of the Art.

NORTH.

You surprise me! Why, you never put a single question to me about the art--always declined taking rod in hand--seemed reading some book or other, held close to your eyes--or lying on banks a-dose or poetising--or facetious with the Old Man--or with the Old Man serious--and sometimes more than serious, as, sauntering along our winding way, we conversed of man, of nature, and of human life.

TALBOYS.

I never lost a single word you said, sir, during those days, breathing in every sense "vernal delight and joy," yet all the while I was taking lessons in the art. The flexure of your shoulder--the sweep of your arm--the twist of your wrist--your Delivery, and your Recover--that union of grace and power--the utmost delicacy, with the most perfect precision--All these qualities of a heaven-born Angler, by which you might be known from all other men on the banks of the Whittadder on a Fast-day----

NORTH.

I never angled on a Fast-day.

TALBOYS.

A _lapsus linguæ_--From a hundred anglers on the Daer, on the Queen's Birthday----

NORTH.

My dear Friend, you ex----

TALBOYS.

All those qualities of a heaven-born Angler I learned first to admire--then to understand--and then to imitate. For three years I practised on the carpet--for three I essayed on a pond--for three I strove by the running waters--and still the Image of Christopher North was before me--till emboldened by conscious acquisition and constant success, I came forth and took my place among the Anglers of my country.

BULLER.

To-day I saw you fast in a tree.

TALBOYS.

You mean my Fly.

BULLER.

First your Fly, and then, I think, yourself.

TALBOYS.

I have seen _Il Maestro_ himself in Timber, and in brushwood too. From him I learned to disentangle knots, intricate and perplexed far beyond the Gordian--"with frizzled hair implicit"--round twig, branch, or bole. Not more than half-a-dozen times of the forty that I may have been fast aloft--I speak mainly of my noviciate--have I had to effect liberation by sacrifice.

SEWARD.

Pardon me, Mr Talboys, for hinting that you smacked off your tail-fly to-day--I knew it by the sound.

TALBOYS.

The sound! No trusting to an uncertain sound, Mr Seward. Oh! I did so once--but intentionally--the hook had lost the barb--not a fish would it hold--so I whipped it off, and on with a Professor.

BULLER.

You lost one good fish in rather an awkward manner, Mr Talboys.

TALBOYS.

I did--that metal minnow of yours came with a splash within an inch of his nose--and no wonder he broke me--nay, I believe it was the minnow that broke me--and yet you can speak of _my_ losing a good fish in rather an awkward manner!

NORTH.

It is melancholy to think that I have taught young Scotland to excel myself in all the Arts that adorn and dignify life. Till I rose, Scotland was a barbarous country--

TALBOYS.

Do say, my dear sir, semi-civilised.

NORTH.

Now it heads the Nations--and I may set.

TALBOYS.

And why should that be a melancholy thought, sir?

NORTH.

Oh, Talboys--National Ingratitude! They are fast forgetting the man who made them what they are--in a few fleeting centuries the name of Christopher North will be in oblivion! Would you believe it possible, gentlemen, that even now, there are Scotsmen who never heard of the Fly that bears the name of me, its Inventor--Killing Kit!

BULLER.

In Cornwall it is a household word.

SEWARD.

And in all the Devons.

BULLER.

Men in Scotland who never heard the name of North!

NORTH.

Christopher North--who is he? Who do you mean by the Man of the Crutch?--The Knight of the Knout? Better never to have been born than thus to be virtually dead.

SEWARD.

Sir, be comforted--you are under a delusion--Britain is ringing with your name.

NORTH.

Not that I care for noisy fame--but I do dearly love the still.

TALBOYS.

And you have it, sir--enjoy it and be thankful.

NORTH.

But it may be too still.

TALBOYS.

My dear sir, what would you have?

NORTH.

I taught you, Talboys, to play Chess--and now you trumpet Staunton.

TALBOYS.

Chess--where's the board? Let us have a game.

NORTH.

Drafts--and you quote Anderson and the Shepherd Laddie.

TALBOYS.

Mr North, why so querulous?

NORTH.

Where was the Art of Criticism? Where Prose? Young Scotland owes all her Composition to me--buries me in the earth--and then claims inspiration from heaven. "How sharper than a Serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless Child!" Peter--Peterkin--Pym--Stretch--where are your lazinesses--clear decks.

"Away with Melancholy--
Nor doleful changes ring
On Life and human Folly,
But merrily, merrily sing--fal la!"

BULLER.

What a sweet pipe! A single snatch of an old song from you, sir--

NORTH.

Why are you glowering at me, Talboys?

TALBOYS.

It has come into my head, I know not how, to ask you a question.

NORTH.

Let it be an easy one--for I am languid.

TALBOYS.

Pray, sir, what is the precise signification of the word "Classical?"

NORTH.

My dear Talboys, you seem to think that I have the power of answering, off-hand, any and every question a first-rate fellow chooses to ask me. Classical--classical! Why, I should say, in the first place--One and one other Mighty People--Those, the Kings of Thought--These, the Kings of the Earth.

TALBOYS.

The Greeks--and Romans.

NORTH.

In the second place--

TALBOYS.

Attend--do attend, gentlemen. And I hope I am not too much presuming on our not ancient friendship--for I feel that a few hours on Lochawe-side give the privilege of years--in suggesting that you will have the goodness to use the metal nut-crackers; they are more euphonious than ivory with walnuts.

NORTH.

In the second place--let me consider--Mr Talboys--I should say--in the second place--yes, I have it--a Character of Art expressing itself by words: a mode--a mode of Poetry and Eloquence--FITNESS AND BEAUTY.

TALBOYS.

Thank you, sir. Fitness and Beauty. Anything more?

NORTH.

Much more. We think of the Greeks and Romans, sir, as those in whom the Human Mind reached Superhuman Power.

TALBOYS.

Superhuman?

NORTH.

We think so--comparing ourselves with them, we cannot help it. In the Hellenic Wit, we suppose Genius and Taste met at their height--the Inspiration Omnipotent--the Instinct unerring! The creations of Greek Poetry!--~Poiêsis~--a Making! There the soul seems to be free from its chains--happily self-lawed. "The Earth we pace" is there peopled with divine Forms. Sculpture was the human Form glorified--deified. And as in Marble, so in Song. Something common--terrestrial--adheres to _our_ being, and weighs _us_ down. They--the Hellenes--appear to us to have _really_ walked--as we walk in our visions of exaltation--as if the Graces and the Muses held sway over daily and hourly existence, and not alone over work of Art and solemn occasion. No moral stain or imperfection can hinder them from appearing to us as the Light of human kind. Singular, that in Greece we reconcile ourselves to Heathenism.

TALBOYS.

It may be that we are all Heathens at heart.

NORTH.

The enthusiast adores Greece--not knowing that Greece monarchies over him, only because it is a miraculous mirror that resplendently and more beautifully reflects--himself--

"Divisque videbit
Permixtos Heroas, et IPSE, videbitur illis."

SEWARD.

Very fine.

NORTH.

O life of old, and long, long ago! In the meek, solemn, soul-stilling hush of Academic Bowers!

SEWARD.

The Isis!

NORTH.

My youth returns. Come, spirits of the world that has been! Throw open the valvules of these your shrines, in which you stand around me, niched side by side, in visible presence, in this cathedral-like Library! I read Historian, Poet, Orator, Voyager--a life that slid silently away in shades, or that bounded like a bark over the billows. I lift up the curtain of all ages--I stand under all skies--on the Capitol--on the Acropolis. Like that magician whose spirit, with a magical word, could leave his own bosom to inhabit another, I take upon myself every mode of existence. I read Thucydides, and I would be a Historian--Demosthenes, and I would be an Orator--Homer, and I dread to believe myself called to be, in some shape or other, a servant of the Muse. Heroes and Hermits of Thought--Seers of the Invisible--Prophets of the Ineffable--Hierophants of profitable mysteries--Oracles of the Nations--Luminaries of that spiritual Heaven! I bid ye, hail!

BULLER.

The fit is on him--he has not the slightest idea that he is in Deeside.

NORTH.

Ay--from the beginning a part of the race have separated themselves from the dusty, and the dust-devoured, turmoil of Action to Contemplation. Have thought--known--worshipped! And such knowledge Books keep. Books now crumbling like Towers and Pyramids--now outlasting them! Books that, from age to age, and all the sections of mankind helping, build up the pile of Knowledge--a trophied Citadel. He who can read Books as they should be read, peruses the operation of the Creator in his conscious, and in his unconscious Works, which yet we call upon to join, as if conscious, in our worship. Yet why--oh! why all this pains to attain that, through the labour of ages, which in the dewy, sunny prime of morn, one thrill of transport gives to me and to the Lark alike, summoning, lifting both heavenwards? Ah! perchance because the dewy, sunny prime does not last through the day! Because light poured into the eyes, and sweet breath inhaled, are not the whole of man's life here below--and because there is an Hereafter!

SEWARD.

I know where he is, Buller. He called it well a Cathedral-like Library.

NORTH.

The breath of departed years floats here for my respiration. The pure air of heaven flows round about, but enters not. The sunbeams glide in, bedimmed as if in some haunt half-separated from Life, yet on our side of Death. Recess, hardly accessible--profound--of which I, the sole inmate, held under an uncomprehended restraint, breathe, move, and follow my own way and wise, apart from human mortals! Ye! tall, thick Volumes, that are each a treasure-house of austere or blazing thoughts, which of you shall I touch with sensitive fingers, of which violate the calmly austere repose? I dread what I desire. You may disturb--you may destroy me! Knowledge _pulsates_ in me, as I receive it, communing with myself on my unquiet or tearful pillow--or as it visits me, brought on the streaming moonlight, or from the fields afire with noon-splendour, or looking at me from human eyes, and stirring round and around me in the tumult of men--Your knowledge comes in a holy stillness and chillness, as if spelt off tombstones.

SEWARD.

Magdalen College Library, I do believe. Mr North--Mr North--awake--awake--here we are all in Deeside.

NORTH.

Ay--ay--you say well, Seward. "Look at the studies of the Great Scholar, and see from how many quarters of the mind impulses may mingle to compose the motives that bear him on with indefatigable strength in his laborious career."

SEWARD.

These were not my very words, sir--

NORTH.

Ay, Seward, you say well. From how many indeed! First among the prime, that peculiar aptitude and faculty, which may be called--a Taste and Genius for--Words.

BULLER.

I rather failed there in the Schools.

NORTH.

Yet you were in the First Class. There is implied in it, Seward, a readiness of logical discrimination in the Understanding, which apprehends the propriety of Words.

BULLER.

I got up my Logic passably and a little more.

NORTH.

For, Seward, the Thoughts, the Notions themselves--must be distinctly dissevered in the mind, which shall exactly apply to each Thought--Notion--its appropriate sign, its own Word.

BULLER.

You might as well have said "Buller"--for I beat Seward in my Logic.

NORTH.

But even to this task, Seward, of rightly distinguishing the meaning of Words, more than a mere precision of thinking--more than a clearness and strictness of the intellectual action is requisite.

BULLER.

And in Classics we were equal.

NORTH.

You will be convinced of this, Buller, if you recollect what Words express. The mind itself. For all its affections and sensibilities, Talboys, furnish a whole host of meanings, which must have names in Language. For mankind do not rest from enriching and refining their languages, until they have made them capable of giving the representation of their whole Spirit.

TALBOYS.

The pupil of language, therefore, sir--pardon my presumption--before he can recognise the appropriation of the Sign, must recognise the Thing signified?

NORTH.

And if the Thing signified, Talboys, by the Word, be some profound, solemn, and moral affection--or if it be some wild, fanciful impression--or if it be some delicate shade or tinge of a tender sensibility--can anything be more evident than that the Scholar must have experienced in himself the solemn, or the wild, or the tenderly delicate feeling before he is in the condition of affixing the right and true sense to the Word that expresses it?

TALBOYS.

I should think so, sir.

SEWARD.

The Words of Man paint the spirit of Man. The Words of a People depicture the Spirit of a People.

NORTH.

Well said, Seward. And, therefore, the Understanding that is to possess the Words of a language, in the Spirit in which they were or are spoken and written, must, by self-experience and sympathy, be able to converse, and have conversed, with the Spirit of the People, now and of old.

BULLER.

And yet what coarse fellows hold up their dunderheads as Scholars, forsooth, in these our days!

NORTH.

Hence it is an impossibility that a low and hard moral nature should furnish a high and fine Scholar. The intellectual endowments must be supported and made available by the concurrence of the sensitive nature--of the moral and the imaginative sensibilities.

BULLER.

What moral and imaginative sensibilities have they--the blear-eyed--the purblind--the pompous and the pedantic! But we have some true scholars--for example----

NORTH.

No names, Buller. Yes, Seward, the knowledge of Words is the Gate of Scholarship. Therefore I lay down upon the threshold of the Scholar's Studies this first condition of his high and worthy success, that he will not pluck the loftiest palm by means of acute, quick, clear, penetrating, sagacious, intellectual faculties alone--let him not hope it: that he requires to the highest renown also a capacious, profound, and tender soul.

SEWARD.

Ay, sir, and I say so in all humility, this at the gateway, and upon the threshold. How much more when he _reads_.

NORTH.

Ay, Seward, you laid the emphasis well there--_reads_.

SEWARD.

When the written Volumes of Mind from different and distant ages of the world, from its different and distant climates, are successively unrolled before his insatiable sight and his insatiable soul!

BULLER.

Take all things in moderation.

NORTH.

No--not the sacred hunger and thirst of the soul.

BULLER.

Greed--give--give.

NORTH.

From what unknown recesses, from what unlocked fountains in the depth of his own being, shall he bring into the light of day the thoughts by means of which he shall understand Homer, Pindar, Æschylus, Demosthenes, Plato, Aristotle--DISCOURSING! Shall understand them, as the younger did the elder--the contemporaries did the contemporaries--as each sublime spirit understood--himself?

BULLER.

Did each sublime spirit always understand himself?

TALBOYS.

Urge that, Mr Buller.

NORTH.

So--and so only--to read, is to be a Scholar.

BULLER.

Then I am none.

NORTH.

I did not say you were.

BULLER.

Thank you. What do you think of that, Mr Talboys? Address Seward, sir.

NORTH.

I address you all three. Is the student smitten with the sacred love of Song? Is he sensible to the profound allurement of philosophic truth? Does he yearn to acquaint himself with the fates and fortunes of his kind? All these several desires are so many several inducements of learned study.

BULLER.

I understand that.

TALBOYS.

Ditto.

NORTH.

And another inducement to such study is--an ear sensible to the Beauty of the Music of Words--and the metaphysical faculty of unravelling the causal process which the human mind followed in imparting to a Word, originally the sign of one Thought only, the power to signify a cognate second Thought, which shall displace the first possessor and exponent, usurp the throne, and rule for ever over an extended empire in the minds, or the hearts, or the souls of men.

BULLER.

Let him have his swing, Mr Talboys.

TALBOYS.

He has it in that chair.

NORTH.

A Taste and a Genius for Words! An ear for the beautiful music of Words! A happy justness in the perception of their strict proprieties! A fine skill in apprehending the secret relations of Thought with Thought--relations along which the mind moves with creative power, to find out for its own use, and for the use of all minds to come, some hitherto uncreated expression of an idea--an image--a sentiment--a passion! These dispositions, and these faculties of the Scholar in another Mind falling in with other faculties of genius, produce a student of a different name--THE POET.

BULLER.

Oh! my dear dear sir, of Poetry we surely had enough--I don't say more than enough--a few days ago, sir.

NORTH.

Who is the Poet?

BULLER.

I beseech you let the Poet alone for this evening.

NORTH.

Well--I will. I remember the time, Seward, when there was a great clamour for a Standard of Taste. A definite measure of the indefinite!

TALBOYS.

Which is impossible.

NORTH.

And there is a great clamour for a Standard of Morals. A definite measure of the indefinite!

TALBOYS.

Which is impossible.

NORTH.

Why, gentlemen, the Faculty of Beauty _lives_; and in finite beings, which we are, Life changes incessantly. The Faculty of Moral Perception _lives_--and thereby it too changes for better and for worse. This is the Divine Law--at once encouraging and fearful--that Obedience brightens the moral eyesight--Sin darkens. Let all men know this, and keep it in mind always--that a single narrowest, simplest Duty, steadily practised day after day, does more to support, and may do more to enlighten the soul of the Doer, than a course of Moral Philosophy taught by a tongue which a soul compounded of Bacon, Spenser, Shakspeare, Homer, Demosthenes, and Burke--to say nothing of Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle, should inspire.

BULLER.

You put it strongly, sir.

TALBOYS.

Undeniable doctrine.

NORTH.

Gentlemen, you will often find this question--"Is there a Standard of Taste?" inextricably confused with the question "Is there a true and a false Taste?" He who denies the one seems to deny the other. In like manner, "Is there a Right and Wrong?" And "is there accessible to us an infallible measure of Right and Wrong" are two questions entirely distinct, but often confused--for Logic fled the earth with Astræa.

TALBOYS.

She did.

NORTH.

Talboys, you understand well enough the sense and culture of the Beautiful?

TALBOYS.

Something of it perhaps I do.

NORTH.

To feel--to love--to be swallowed up in the spirit and works of the Beautiful--in verse and in the visible Universe! That is a life--an enthusiasm--a worship. You find those who would if they could, and who pretend they can, attain the same end at less cost. They have taken lessons, and they will have their formalities go valid against the intuitions of the dedicated soul.

TALBOYS.

But the lessons perish--the dedicated soul is a Power in all emergencies and extremities.

NORTH.

There are Pharisees of Beauty--and Pharisees of Morality.

SEWARD.

At this day spiritual Christians lament that nine-tenths of Christians Judaise.

NORTH.

Nor without good reason. The Gospel is the Standard of Christian Morality. That is unquestionable. It is an authority without appeal, and under which undoubtedly all matters, uncertain before, will fall. But pray mark this--it is not a _positive standard_, in the ordinary meaning of that word--it is not one of which our common human understanding has only to require and to obtain the indications--which it has only to apply and observe.

SEWARD.

I see your meaning, sir. The Gospel refers all moral intelligence to the Light of Love within our hearts. Therefore, the very reading of the canons, of every prescriptive line in it, must be by this light.

NORTH.

That is my meaning--but not my whole meaning, dear Seward. For take it, as it unequivocally declares itself to be, a Revelation--not simply of instruction, committed now and for ever to men in written human words, and so left--but accompanied with a perpetual agency to enable Will and Understanding to receive it; and then it will follow, I believe, that it is at every moment intelligible and applicable in its full sense, only by a direct and present inspiration--is it too much to say--anew revealing itself? "They shall be taught of God."

SEWARD.

So far, then, from the Christian Morality being one of which the Standard is applicable by every Understanding, with like result in given cases, it is one that is different to every Christian in proportion to his obedience?

NORTH.

Even so. I suppose that none have ever reached the full understanding of it. It is an evergrowing illumination--a light more and more unto the perfect day--which day I suppose cannot be of the same life, in which we see as through a glass darkly.

TALBOYS.

May I offer an illustration? The land shall descend to the eldest son--you shall love your neighbour as yourself. In the two codes these are foundation-stones. But see how they differ! There is the land--here is the eldest son--the right is clear and fast--and the case done with. But--do to thy neighbour! Do what? and to whom?

NORTH.

All human actions, all human affections, all human thoughts are then contained in the one Law--as the _subject_ of which it defines the disposal. All mankind, but distributed into communities, and individuals all differently related to me are contained in it, as the parties in respect of whom it defines the disposal!

SEWARD.

And what is the Form? Do as thou wouldst it be done to thee!

NORTH.

Ay--my dear friend--The form resolves into a feeling. Love thy neighbour. That is all. Is a measure given? As thyself.

SEWARD.

And is there no limitation?

NORTH.

By the whole apposition, thy love to thyself and thy neighbour are both to be put together in subordination to, and limitation and regulation by--thy Love to God. Love Him utterly--infinitely--with all thy mind, all thy heart, all thy strength. This is the entire book or canon--THE STANDARD. How wholly indefinite and formless, to the Understanding! How full of light and form to the believing and loving Heart!

SEWARD.

The Moon is up--how calm the night after all that tempest--and how steady the Stars! Images of enduring peace in the heart of nature--and of man. They, too, are a Revelation.

NORTH.

They, too, are the legible Book of God. Try to conceive how different the World must be to its rational inhabitant--with or without a Maker! Think of it as a soulless--will-less World. In one sense, it abounds as much with good to enjoy. But there is no good-giver. The banquet spread, but the Lord of the Mansion away. The feast--and neither grace nor welcome. The heaped enjoyment, without the gratitude.

SEWARD.

Yet there have been Philosophers who so misbelieved!

NORTH.

Alas! there have been--and alas! there are. And what low souls must be theirs! The tone and temper of our feelings are determined by the objects with which we habitually converse. If we see beautiful scenes, they impart serenity--if sublime scenes, they elevate us. Will no serenity, no elevation come from contemplating Him, of whose Thought the Beautiful and the Sublime are but shadows!

SEWARD.

No sincere or elevating influence be lost out of a World out of which He is lost?

NORTH.

_Now_ we look upon Planets and Suns, and see Intelligence ruling them--on Seasons that succeed each other, we apprehend Design--on plant and animal fitted to its place in the world, and furnished with its due means of existence, and repeated for ever in its kind--and we admire Wisdom. Oh! Atheist or Sceptic--what a difference to Us if the marvellous Laws are here without a Lawgiver--If Design be here without a Designer--all the Order that wisdom could mean and effect, and not the Wisdom--if Chance, or Necessity, or Fate reigns here, and not Mind--if this Universe is matter of Astonishment merely, and not of adoration!

SEWARD.

We are made better, nobler, sir, by the society of the good and the noble. Perhaps of ourselves unable to think high thoughts, and without the bold warmth that dares generously, we catch by degrees something of the mounting spirit, and of the ardour proper to the stronger souls with whom we live familiarly, and become sharers and imitators of virtues to which we could not have given birth. The devoted courage of a leader turns his followers into heroes--the patient death of one martyr inflames in a thousand slumbering bosoms a zeal answerable to his own. And shall Perfect Goodness contemplated move no goodness in us? Shall His Holiness and Purity raise in us no desire to be holy and pure?--His infinite Love towards His creatures kindle no spark of love in us towards our fellow-creatures!

NORTH.

God bless you, my dear Seward--but you speak well. Our fellow-creatures! The name, the binding title, dissolves in air, if He be not our common Creator. Take away that bond of relationship among men, and according to circumstances they confront one another as friends or foes--but Brothers no longer--if not children of one celestial Father.

TALBOYS.

And if they no longer have immortal souls!

NORTH.

Oh! my friends--if this winged and swift life be all our life, what a mournful taste have we had of possible happiness? We have, as it were, from some dark and cold edge of a bright world, just looked in and been plucked away again! Have we come to experience pleasure by fits and glimpses; but intertwined with pain, burdensome labour, with weariness, and with indifference? Have we come to try the solace and joy of a warm, fearless, and confiding affection, to be then chilled or blighted by bitterness, by separation, by change of heart, or by the dread sunderer of loves--Death? Have we found the gladness and the strength of knowledge, when some rays of truth have flashed in upon our souls, in the midst of error and uncertainty, or amidst continuous, necessitated, uninstructive avocations of the Understanding--and is that all? Have we felt in fortunate hour the charm of the Beautiful, that invests, as with a mantle, this visible Creation, or have we found ourselves lifted above the earth by sudden apprehension of sublimity? Have we had the consciousness of such feelings, which have seemed to us as if they might themselves make up a life--almost an angel's life--and were they "instant come and instant gone?" Have we known the consolation of DOING RIGHT, in the midst of much that we have done wrong? and was that also a corruscation of a transient sunshine? Have we lifted up our thoughts to see Him who is Love, and Light, and Truth, and Bliss, to be in the next instant plunged into the darkness of annihilation? Have all these things been but flowers that we have pulled by the side of a hard and tedious way, and that, after gladdening us for a brief season with hue and odour, wither in our hands, and are like ourselves--nothing?

BULLER.

I love you, sir, better and better every day.

NORTH.

We step the earth--we look abroad over it, and it seems immense--so does the sea. What ages had men lived--and knew but a small portion. They circumnavigate it now with a speed under which its vast bulk shrinks. But let the astronomer lift up his glass and he learns to believe in a total mass of matter, compared with which this great globe itself becomes an imponderable grain of dust. And so to each of us walking along the road of life, a year, a day, or an hour shall seem long. As we grow older, the time shortens; but when we lift up our eyes to look beyond this earth, our seventy years, and the few thousands of years which have rolled over the human race, vanish into a point; for then we are measuring Time against Eternity.

TALBOYS.

And if we can find ground for believing that this quickly-measured span of Life is but the beginning--the dim daybreak of a Life immeasurable, never attaining to its night--what _weight_ shall we any longer allow to the cares, fears, toils, troubles, afflictions--which here have sometimes bowed down our strength to the ground--a burden more than we could bear?

NORTH.

They then all acquire a new character. That they are then felt as transitory must do something towards lightening their load. But more is disclosed in them; for they then appear as having an unsuspected worth and use. If this life be but the beginning of another, then it may be believed that the accidents and passages thereof have some bearing upon the conditions of that other, and we learn to look on this as a state of Probation. Let us out, and look at the sky.

THE ISLAND OF SARDINIA.[1]

The opinion of Nelson with regard to the importance of Sardinia,--that it is "worth a hundred Maltas," is well known; and that he strongly recommended its purchase to our government, thinking it might be obtained for £500,000. We can scarcely believe that Nelson failed to make an impression on the government, and conjecture rather that it was with the King of Sardinia the precious inheritance of a Naboth's vineyard. We do not remember to have met with a Sardinian tourist. Travellers as we are, with our ready "Hand-Books" for the remote corners of the earth, we seem, by a general consent, to have cut Sardinia from the map of observable countries. "Nos numerus sumus"--we plead guilty to this ignorance and neglect, and should have remained unconcerned about Sardinia still, had we not, in the work of Mr Tyndale, dipped into a few extracts from Lord Nelson's letters. Extending our reading, we find in these three volumes so much research, learning, historical speculation, and interesting matter, interspersed with amusing narrative, that we think a notice in Maga of this valuable and agreeable work may be not unacceptable.

The very circumstance that Sardinia is little known, renders it an agreeable speculation. The _ignotum_ makes the charm. Our pleasure is in the fabulous, the dubious, the unexplained. In the ecstacy of ignorance the reader stands by the side of Mr Layard, watching the exhumation of the unknown gods or demons of Nineveh. "Ignorance is bliss,"--for the subject-matter of ignorance is fact--fact isolated--or the broken links in time's long chain. The mind longs to fabricate, and connect. Were it possible that other sibylline books should be offered for sale, it would be preferable that Mr Murray should act the part of Tarquin than publish them as "Hand-Books." In truth, curiosity, that happy ingredient in the clay of the human mind, if so material an expression be allowed, is fed by ignorance, but dies under a surfeit of knowledge. Now, to apply this to our subject--Sardinia. The island is full of monuments, as mysterious to us as the Pyramids. There is sufficient obscurity to make a "sublime." It is happy for the reader, who has not lost his natural propensity to wonder, that there is so little known respecting them, and yet such grounds for conjecture; for he may be sure that, if any documents existed anywhere, Mr Tyndale would have discovered them, for he is the most indefatigable of authors in exploring in all the mines of literature. But he has to treat of things that were before literature was. The traveller who should first discover a Stonehenge--one who, walking on a hitherto untrodden plain, should come suddenly upon two such great sedate sitting images in stone as look over Egyptian sands--is he not greatly to be envied? We, who peer about our cities and villages, raking out decayed stone and mortar for broken pieces of antique art or memorial, as we facetiously term the remnants of a few hundred years, and of whose "whereabouts," from the beginning, we can receive some tolerable assurance, have but a slight glimpse of the delight experienced by the first finder of a monument of the Pelasgi, or even Cyclopean walls. But to make conjecture upon monuments beyond centuries--to count by thousands of years, and make out of them a dream that shall, like an Arabian magician, take the dreamer back to the Flood--is a happiness enjoyed by few. We never envied traveller more than we once did that lady who came suddenly upon the Etrurian monument, in which there was just aperture enough to see for a moment only a sitting figure, with its look and drapery of more than thousands of years; who just saw it for a few seconds, preserved only in the stillness of antiquity, and falling to dust at her very breathing. Not so ancient the monument, but of like character the discovery of him who, digging within the walls of his own house at Portici, came upon marble steps that led him down and down, till he found before him, in the obscure, a white marble equestrian statue the size of life. If one could be _made_ a poet, these two incidents were enough. The interior of Sardinia has been hitherto a kind of "terra incognita." Mr Tyndale must therefore have ascended and descended its craggy or wooded mountains, and threaded its ravines, and crossed its fertile or desolate plains, with no common feeling of expectation; and though the frequent "Noraghe" and "Sepolture de is Gigantes," and their accompanying strange conical stones, were not of a character to fill him with that amazement produced by the above-mentioned incidents, they were sufficiently mysterious, and the attempt to reach them in some instances sufficiently adventurous--to keep alive the mind, and stir the imagination to the working out visions, and conjuring up the seeming-probable existences of the past, or wilder dreams, in such variety as reason deduced or fancy willed. On one occasion he descended an aperture, in a domed chamber of a Noraghe, groped his way through a subterranean passage, and came upon some finely-pulverised matter, "about fifteen inches deep, which at first appeared to be earth, but on scraping into it were several human bones, some broken and others mouldering away on being touched." But here the reader unacquainted with Sardinia, as it may be presumed very many are, may ask something about these Noraghe, with their domed chambers, and the Sepolture. There may be a preliminary inquiry into the origin of the inhabitants. Various are the statements of different authors: without following chronological order, we may readily concur in their conclusions, that the island was peopled by Phoenician, Libyan, Tyrrhenian, Greek, Trojan, and other colonies--unless the disquisitions of some historians of our day would compel us to reject the Trojans, in the doubt as to the existence of Troy itself. But many of these may have been only partial, temporary immigrations, which found a people in prior possession. The argument is strongly in favour of the supposition that the Sarde nation are of Phoenician origin, and that its antiquities are Phoenician, or of a still earlier epoch. In descending to more historic times, we find the Carthaginians exercising influence there as early as 700 B.C., and that the island suffered severely from the alternate sway of the rival powers of Rome and Carthage. And here we are disposed to rest, utterly disinclined to follow the labyrinth of cruelties which the history of every people, nation, and language under the sun presents.

If, at least for the present moment, a disgust of history is a disqualification for the notice of such a work as this before us, the reader must be referred to the book itself at once; but there are in it so many subjects of interest, both as to customs, manners, and some characters that shine out from the dark pages of history here and there, that we venture on, not careful of the thread, but with a purpose of taking it up, wherever there may be a promise of amusement. There is little pleasure in recording how many hundreds of thousands were put to the sword by Carthaginians, Romans, and, subsequently, Vandals and Goths; nor the various tyrannies arising out of contests for the possession of the island, which have been continually inflicted upon the people by the European powers of Christian times. Mankind never did, and it may be supposed never will, let each other alone. We are willing to believe that peace and security, for any continuance, is not for man on earth, and that his nature requires this universal stirring activity of aggression and defence, for the development of his powers--and that out of this evil comes good. Where would be virtue without suffering? Yet we are not always in the humour to sit out the tragedy of human life. There are moments when the present and real troubles of our own times press too heavily on the spirits, and we shrink from the scrutiny of past results, through a dread of a similar future, and gladly seek relief from bitter truths in lighter speculations. In such a humour we confess a dislike to biography, in which kind of reading the future does cast its dark shadow before, and we are constantly haunted by the ghost of the last pages, amid the earnest pursuits and perhaps gaieties of the first. But what that last page of biography is, we find nearly every page of history to be, only far sadder, and far more cruel. The man's tale may tell us that at least he died in his bed; but history draws up the curtain at every act, presenting to the unquiet sight, scenes of wholesale tortures, poisonings, slaughters, and fields of unburied and mutilated carcases.

It is time to say something of these monuments of great antiquity, the Noraghe, and what they are, before speculating upon who built them. We extract the following account, unable to make it more concise:--

"All are built on natural or artificial mounds, whether in
valleys, plains, or on mountains, and some are partially enclosed
at a slight distance, by a low wall of a similar construction to
the building. Their essential architectural feature is a truncated
cone or tower, averaging from thirty to sixty feet in height, and
from one hundred to three hundred in circumference at the base.
The majority have no basement, but the rest are raised on one
extending either in corresponding or in irregular shape, and of
which the perimeter varies from three hundred to six hundred and
fifty-three feet, the largest yet measured. The inward inclination
of the exterior wall of the principal tower, which almost always
is the centre of the building, is so well executed as to present,
in its elevation, a perfect and continuously symmetrical line; but
sometimes a small portion of the external face of the outer-works
of the basements, which are not regular, is straight and
perpendicular: such instances are, however, very rare. There is
every reason to believe, though without positive proof--for none
of the Noraghe are quite perfect--that the cone was originally
truncated, and formed thereby a platform on its summit. The
material of which they are built being always the natural stone
of the locality, we accordingly find them of granite, limestone,
basalt, trachyte porphyry, lava, and tufa; the blocks varying in
shape and size from three to nine cubic feet, while those forming
the architraves of the passages are sometimes twelve feet long,
five feet wide, and the same in depth. The surfaces present that
slight irregularity which proves the blocks to have been rudely
worked by the hammer, but with sufficient exactness to form
regular horizontal layers. With few exceptions, the stones are not
polygonal, but, when so, are without that regularity of form which
would indicate the use of the rule; nor is their construction
of the Cyclopean and Pelasgic styles; neither have they any
sculpture, ornamental work, or cement. The external entrance,
invariably between the E.S.E. and S. by W., but generally to the
east of south, seldom exceeds five feet high and two feet wide,
and is often so small as to necessitate crawling on all fours. The
architrave, as previously mentioned, is very large; but having
once passed it, a passage varying from three to six feet high,
and two to four wide, leads to the principal domed chamber, the
entrance to which is sometimes by another low aperture as small
as the first. The interior of the cone consists of one, two, or
three domed chambers, placed one above the other, and diminishing
in size in proportion to the external inclination; the lowest
averaging from fifteen to twenty feet in diameter, and from twenty
to twenty-five in height. The base of each is always circular,
but, when otherwise, elliptical; the edges of the stones, where
the tiers overlay each other, are worked off, so that the exterior
assumes a semi-ovoidal form, or that of which the section would
be a parabola, the apex being crowned with a large flat stone,
resting on the last circular layer, which is reduced to a small
diameter." "In the interior of the lowest chamber, and on a
level with the floor, are frequently from two to four cells or
niches, formed in the thickness of the masonry without external
communication, varying from three to six feet long, two to four
wide, and two to five high, and only accessible by very small
entrances. The access to the second and third chambers, as well as
to the platform on the top of those Noraghe which have only one
chamber, is by a spiral corridor made in the building, either as a
simple ramp, with a gradual ascent, or with rough irregular steps
made in the stones. The corridor varies from three to six feet in
height, and from two to four in width, and the outer side either
inclines according to the external wall of the cone, and the inner
side according to the domed chamber, or resembles in the section
a segment of a circle. The entrance to this spiral corridor is
generally in the horizontal passage which leads from the external
entrance to the first-floor chamber of the cone; though sometimes
it is by a small aperture in the chamber, about six or eight feet
from the base, and very difficult of entry. The upper chambers are
entered by a small passage at right angles to this corridor; and
opposite to this passage, is often a small aperture in the outer
wall, having apparently no regular position, though frequently
over the external entrance to the ground floor; while, in some
instances, there are several apertures so made that only the sky,
or most distant objects in the horizon, are visible."