Chapter IV: Part 4

John had got on thus far before his enemy could rally at all; but the dean grew desperate, and resolved to make a diversion at all hazards; and as he reached his hand out, apparently in quest of a slice of toast, cup, saucer, and a pile of empty plates, went crashing on the floor.

"Bless me, how very awkward!" said he, with a face as red as fire.

"Never mind, sir," said a freshman from Shrewsbury, just entered who had not opened his lips before, and thought it a good opportunity; "it's all for the good of trade."

Never was a stale jest so unconsciously pointed in its application. Brown laughed of course, and so did we all; while the dean tried to cover his confusion by wiping his clothes--the cup having been an empty one. The freshman, seeing our amusement, thought he had said a very good thing, and began to talk very fast; but nobody listened to him.

"Talking of trade," mercilessly continued the tormentor, "I was uncommonly pleased with Nottingham the other day. Your brother-in-law, Mr Mogg, was exceedingly civil to me, (I took the liberty of mentioning your name, sir;) he showed me the whole process of stocking-making; very interesting indeed it is--but of course you have seen it often; and I really think, for a small establishment, Mr Mogg's is one of the best conducted I ever saw. You don't know Mr Mogg, Hawthorne, do you? Get the dean to give you a letter to him, if you ever go to Nottingham; a very good sort of man he is, and has his whole heart in his business. 'Some men are ashamed of their trade, sir' said he; 'I a'n't. What should I do, I should like to know, if trade was ashamed of me?' And really Mrs Mogg"----

"Ah yes!" said Mr Hodgett, hitherto overwhelmed by John's eloquence, (he never talked so fast,) and utterly at a loss how to meet it, "Mogg is a great man in his line at Nottingham. I shouldn't wonder if he was member some day; he has a large wholesale connexion."

"And retail, too, sir," chimed in John. "I bought six pair of the nicest sort of stockings there I have seen for a long time: did I show them to you, Hawthorne? 'These,' said Mr Mogg, 'I can recommend; I always'"----

"If you won't take any more coffee, gentlemen," said the dean, jumping up and looking at his watch, "I am afraid, as I have an appointment at ten"----

"I declare, so have I," said Brown; "but I had quite forgotten it, our conversation has been so very agreeable. Good-morning, sir; and if you are writing to Mrs Hodgett, pray make my compliments." And with this Parthian shaft he quitted the field.

Having adjusted the difficult questions which are apt to arise as to the ownership of caps and gowns, the rest of the party took leave. The facetious freshman, after putting in an ineffectual claim upon one or two of the most respectable of the caps, at last marched off with the dean's, as being certainly more like the new one he had bought the day before, than the dilapidated article with a broken board and half a tassel, which was the tempting alternative, and possessing also the common property of having a red seal in it. He was not allowed, however, to remain long in peaceful possession of his prize. Scarcely had he reached his rooms, when Robert, the dean's scout, came to inform him that he had left his own cap (which Robert presented to him with a grin) behind him, and taken away Mr Hodgett's in mistake; enlightening him, at the same time, as to the fact, that fellows' caps, by special exemption, were "not transferable." And when he ventured to send back by Robert an apology, to the effect that the very ancient specimen could not at all events be his, and a humble request that the dean would endeavour to ascertain which of his friends whom he had met at breakfast had also "made a mistake," that official, remembering his happy _debût_ as a conversationalist, instantly sent for him, and read him a severe lecture upon impertinence.

Of course we were no sooner fairly landed in the quadrangle, than all who had any acquaintance with Brown surrounded him with entreaties for an explanation. What possessed him to make such a dead set at the dean? How came he to be so well up in the family history? How long had he had the pleasure of an acquaintance with dear old Mrs Hodgett? And who introduced him to Mr Mogg?

It turned out that John had made an expedition to Nottingham during the vacation on purpose; he had called on the old lady, whose address he had with some difficulty obtained; presented his card, "Mr John Brown, ---- Coll.;" stated that he was a stranger, very desirous to see the lions of Nottingham, of which he had heard so much; and having the honour of knowing her son, and the advantage of being at the same college with him, and having so often heard her name mentioned in their many conversations, that he almost felt as if she was his intimate acquaintance, had ventured to intrude upon her with a request that she would put him in the way of seeing the town and its manufactures to the best advantage. Much taken, no doubt, by John's polite address, which by his own recapitulation of it must have been highly insinuating, and delighted to see any one who could talk to her about her son, and to learn that she herself was talked about among his grand friends in Oxford, the worthy Mrs Hodgett begged John Brown to walk in; and finding that there was nothing high about him, and that he listened with the greatest interest to all her family details and reminiscences, she took courage to ask him to eat a bit of dinner with her and her daughter at two o'clock, after which she promised him the escort of her son-in-law, Mr Mogg, the principal (that was what they called them up at Nottingham, just as they did in Oxford, she observed) of the great stocking-house over the way. Such a man he was! she said; every bit as good as a book to a stranger; "he knowed every think and every body." John assured her such universal knowledge was not common among principals of houses in Oxford; and declared that he should appreciate the services of such a guide proportionately. And as an introduction to the whole family was just the thing he wanted, he at once accepted the invitation with many thanks. In short, an arrangement was made which pleased all parties; all, that is, with the exception of Mr Spriggins, the head shopman, who usually took his meals with the family, but on that day, to his great disgust, not being considered of quality to meet their unexpected guest, (not being a principal,) received intimation that his dinner would be served in the counting-house. The dinner passed off, no doubt, much more satisfactorily than more formal affairs of the kind. John had a good appetite and good-humour, and so had the old lady; and no doubt, even in Miss Hodgett's eyes, the young Oxonian was no bad substitute for Mr Spriggins. Even that gentleman, could he have foreseen all that was to follow from this visit, would have exchanged for his blandest smile the stern glance with which he regarded, from the little back window of the counting-house, the procession of John, with Miss Hodgett under his arm, from the drawing-room, to take the seat which should have been his; would have made him his most obsequious bow, and regarded him as the best customer that had ever come inside their doors.

But perhaps I am wronging Mr Spriggins in assuming that he thought the usurper of his rights worthy of a glance at all: and certainly I am anticipating my story. John dined with the old lady; drank her currant wine in preference to her port, ate her seed biscuits, and when Mr Mogg, in pursuance of a message from his mother-in-law, called to renew in his own person the offer to show his relation's distinguished friend, (Mrs Hodgett had hinted her suspicions that John Brown was a nobleman,) he was ready, though rather sleepy, to commence his lionizing. Mr Mogg was exceedingly civil, showed him every thing worth seeing, from the castle to the stocking-frames; and by the time they returned together to supper at the old lady's, they had become very thick indeed. John called the next day and took his leave of both parties, with a promise not to pass through Nottingham without renewing his acquaintance, and that he would not fail to mention to his friend the dean how much he had been gratified by his reception; both which pledges he scrupulously redeemed.

Mr Hodgett's indignation was unbounded; if the united powers of vice-chancellor, doctors, proctors, and convocation, could, by rummaging up some old statute, have expelled John Brown for paying a visit to Nottingham, he would have moved the university to strive to effect it. Happily these powers never are united, or there is no saying what they might not do. So John remained a member of the college still. The dean seldom looked at him if he could help it; he tried once the soothing system by praising him at collections, but it only elicited from John a polite enquiry after Mr and Mrs Mogg.

What man could do to extricate himself from his unfortunate position, the dean did. He wrote off immediately to his mother, entreating her, by her hopes of his advancement in life, not to allow the name of Hodgett to be any longer contaminated by any touch of linen-drapery. He suggested that she should at once make over the business to her foreman, Spriggins, reserving to herself an interest in the profits, and retire to a small and genteel cottage in the suburbs, where no impertinent intruder could detect the linen-draper's widow. She, worthy old soul, though it did grieve her, no doubt, to part with her shop, in which were centred the interests and associations of so many years, yet would have set fire to it with her own hands, and emigrated to America--though she knew it only as a place where banks always broke, and people never paid their debts--if it could in anyway have furthered his interests whom she loved better than he deserved. She always looked upon him as a gentleman, and did not wonder he wished to be one, though she herself had no manner of taste for becoming a lady.

But in the simplicity of her heart, she planned that even this sacrifice to her motherly affection might be turned to some account in the way of trade. Accordingly, there appeared in the _Nottingham Herald_ an advertisement, extending across two columns, headed with imposing capitals, by which the public were informed that Mrs Hodgett being about to decline her long-established linen-drapery business in favour of Mr Spriggins, the whole stock was to be turned into ready money immediately, "considerably below prime cost;" by which means the public had no doubt an opportunity of giving full value to Mrs H. for sundry old-fashioned patterns and faded remnants, which the incoming Spriggins would otherwise have "taken to" for a mere song.

Now, since the time that John Brown began first to take so deep an interest in the Hodgett family, he had regularly invested fourpence weekly in a copy of the _Nottingham Herald_. By this means he had the satisfaction of congratulating the dean upon the birth of a nephew, in the person of a son and heir of the Moggs: and though so carefully did that gentleman avoid all communication with his tormentor, that he was obliged for two whole days to watch an opportunity to convey the intelligence; yet, as he finally succeeded in announcing it in the presence of the tutor of a neighbouring college, who was a profound genealogist and a great gossip, his pains, he declared, were sufficiently repaid. The eagerness with which he pounced upon the advertisement may be imagined; and finding, from a little _N. B._ at the bottom, that handbills with further particulars were to be had at the office, he lost no time in procuring half a dozen by post; and one morning the usual receptacles for university notices, the hall-door and the board by the buttery, were placarded with staring announcements, in red and black letters, six inches long, of Mrs HODGETT'S speculation. One was pushed under the dean's door; one stuck under the knocker at the principal's; one put into the college letterbox for "the senior common-room;" in short, had good Mrs Hodgett herself wished to have the college for her customers, she could hardly have distributed them more judiciously.

In short, no pains were spared by John Brown to tease and worry the dean with all the particulars of his family history, which he would most have wished to bury in oblivion. And to do him justice, he in his turn spared no pains to get rid of John Brown. He would have allowed him to cut lectures and chapels _ad libitum_, if he thus could have spared all personal intercourse, and escaped his detested civilities. Finding that would not do, he tried the opposite course, and endeavoured either to get him rusticated at once, or to disgust him with the college, and thus induce him to take his name off. John was cautious--very cautious; but a war against the powers that be, is always pretty much of an uphill game; and so at last it proved in his case.

John had another enemy in the college, of his own making too; this was Mr Silver, the junior tutor. He was a man of some scholarship and much conceit; took a first class when very young, having entered college a mere schoolboy, and read hard; got his appointment as tutor soon after, and sneered at older men on the strength of it. He pretended to be exceedingly jocular and familiar with his pupils, but was really always on the alarm for his dignity. His great delight was to impress the freshmen with an idea of his abilities and his condescension. "Always come to me, Mr ----, if you find any difficulties in your reading--I shall be most happy to assist you." This language, repeated to all in turn, was, not unnaturally, literally understood by the matter-of-fact John Brown; who, perhaps, could see no good reason why a college tutor should _not_ be ready to aid, as far as he could, the private studies of those who are so often in want of sensible advice and encouragement. However, it did not occur to him, when he took up to Mr Silver's rooms one morning after lecture, a passage that had puzzled him, that he was doing a very odd thing, and that the tutor thought so. As these consultations became more frequent, however, he began to perceive, what other men were not slow to tell him, that Mr Silver thought him a bore. And the moment this flashed upon him, with his unfortunate antipathy to any thing like humbug, he began another war of independence. He selected crabbed passages; got them up carefully by the help of translations, scholiasts, and clever friends; and then took them up hot to Mr Silver. And when he detected him slurring a difficulty instead of explaining it, or saying there was no difficulty at all, John would bring up against him his array of objections to this or that rendering, and arguments for and against various readings, &c., till Mr Silver found himself fairly out of his depth. At first this puzzled him, and he very nearly committed the mistake of pronouncing John Brown a first-rate scholar in the common-room; but when he found his performance at lecture did not by any means keep pace with the remarkable erudition sometimes displayed by him in private, he began in his turn to suspect the trick. He dared not refuse to play his part, when called upon, in these learned discussions, though he dreaded them more and more; for his college reputation was at stake, and there were some among the older fellows who looked upon him as rather an assuming young man for understanding what they did not pretend to, and would have been glad to have had a joke against him; but he began cordially to hate John Brown; he gave him all the difficult bits he could at lecture; sneered at him when he dared; and practised all those amiable embellishments which make schoolmasters and tutors usually so beloved, and learning in all its branches so delightful.

It is not to be wondered at, then, if John's kind friends somewhat damaged his reputation among the Dons, and watched their opportunity to annihilate him. It came, and they were down upon him at once. Some half-dozen noisy men, the survivors of a supper-party, had turned into Brown's rooms (he seldom sat up so late) for a parting cigar. Having accomplished this, they took it into their heads to dance a quadrille in the middle of the covered thoroughfare, for the benefit of the echo, to the music of six individual tunes sung in chorus. So strange a performance brought down some of the fellows; the men were not recognised, but traced to Brown's rooms. He refused to give up their names--was declared contumacious; and, in spite of the good-natured remonstrances of the principal and one or two of the others, his enemies obtained a majority in the common-room; and it was decided that John Brown was too dangerous a character to be allowed to remain in college during vacation. But they had not got rid of him yet.

About two miles out of Oxford, on the C---- road, if any one takes the trouble to turn up a narrow lane, and then follow a footpath by the side of the canal, he will come to one of the most curious-looking farmhouses that he (or at least I) ever met with. It is a large rambling uninhabited-looking place; the house, as is not unusual, forming one side of a square enclosure, of which the barns and outhouses make up the rest. The high blank walls of these latter, pierced only here and there by two or three of the narrowest possible lancet-holes, give it something the air of a fortification. Indeed, if well garrisoned, it would be almost as strong a post as the Chateau of Hougoumont; with this additional advantage, that it has a moat on two sides of it, and a canal, only divided from it by a narrow towing-path, on a third. The front (for it has a front, though, upon my first visit, it took me some time to find it, it being exactly on the opposite side to the approach at present in use, and requiring two pretty deep ditches to be crossed, in order to get at it from the direction)--the front only has any regular windows; and of these, most of the largest are boarded up, (some, indeed, more substantially closed with brick and mortar) in order to render it as independent as possible of the glazier and the assessor of taxes. There is a little bridge, very much decayed, thrown across the narrow moat to what was, in former days, the main entrance; but now the door was nailed up, the bridge ruinous, and the path leading to it no longer distinguishable in the long rank grass that covered the wet meadows upon which the house looked out. It was a place that filled you involuntarily with melancholy feelings; it breathed of loneliness and desolation, changed times and fallen fortunes. I never beheld it but I thought of Tennyson's "Mariana in the moated Grange"--

"Unlifted was the clicking latch,
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated Grange."

Brown and I, in some of our peregrinations, had stumbled upon this old house; and after having walked round it, and speculated upon its history, made our way through an open door into the spacious court-yard. If the outside looked desolate, however, the interior was lively enough: cattle, pigs, geese, ducks, and all the ordinary appurtenances of a well-stocked farm, gave token that the old place was still tenanted; and a large mastiff, who stalked towards us with a series of enquiring growls, evidently demanding our business, and suspicious of our good intentions, made us not at all sorry to see a stout good-natured-looking dame, a perfect contradiction to the poet's woe-worn "Mariana," who, after bidding Boxer hold his noise, volunteered a compendious history of herself and husband in answer to our simple question as to the name of the place. How good Farmer Nutt and herself had lived there for the last seventeen years; how the old place belonged to Squire somebody, and folks said that some gentry used to live in it in times past; what a lonesome-like life they thought it when they first came, after living in the gay town of Abingdon; how, by degrees, they got to think it pretty comfortable, and found the plashy meadows good pasturage, and the house "famous and roomy-like;" this, and much besides, did we listen to patiently, the more so because an attempt or two at interruption only served to widen the field of her discourse. The wind-up of it all, however, was, that we were asked to walk in and sit down, and so we did. A civil farmer's wife, a very common character in most parts of England, is, I am sorry to say, somewhat too much of a rarity about Oxford; whether their tempers are too severely tried by the "fast men," who hunt drags and ride steeple-chases to the detriment of young wheat and new-made fences; or by the reading-men, who, in their innocence, make pertinacious visits in search of strawberries and cream in the month of March, or call for the twentieth time to enquire the nearest way to Oxford, (being ignorant of all topography but that of ancient Rome and Athens;) or whether they regard all gownsmen as embryo parsons and tithe-owners, and therefore hereditary enemies; whatever be the reason, it generally requires some tact to establish any thing like a friendly relation with a farmer or his wife in the neighbourhood of the university. However, Mrs Nutt was an exception; and nothing could exceed the heartiness with which she set out her best wheaten bread and rich Gloucester cheese, and particular ale--an advance towards further acquaintance which we met with due readiness. In short, so well were we pleased with the good dame's hospitable ways, and her old-fashioned house, and even with her good-humoured loquacity, that our first visit was not our last. The farmer himself, a quiet, good-natured, honest yeoman of about sixty, who said very little indeed when his wife was present, (he had not much chance,) but could, when disposed, let out many a droll story of "College Gents" in bygone days, when he was a brewer's apprentice at Abingdon, came, by invitation, to taste the college tap, and carried home in each pocket a bottle of wine for "the missus."

When John Brown, Esquire, found his intentions of wintering within the walls of ---- so unexpectedly defeated, he cast about diligently in his own mind for a resting-place for himself, his books, and a nondescript animal which he called a Russian terrier. Home he was determined not to go--any where within the boundaries of the University, the College were equally determined he should not stay; and we all settled that he would fix himself for the vacation either at Woodstock, or Ensham, or Abingdon; the odds were in favour of the latter place, for John was a good judge of ale. It was not, therefore, without considerable astonishment that one morning, at breakfast in my room, after devouring in rigid silence a commons of broiled ham for two, and the last number of _Pickwick_, (John seldom laughed, but read "Boz" as gravely as he would Aristotle,) we heard him open his heart as follows:--

"I say, old fellow, where do you think I am going to put up this vacation?"

"Really, John, you're such an odd fellow it's impossible to guess; if it had been summer, I shouldn't have been at all surprised to hear of your having pitched a tent at Bullingdon, or hired a house-boat, and lived Chinese fashion on the river; but I suppose you would hardly think of that plan at this time of the year."

"Nonsense, man; you know the Moated Grange, as you call it--old Nutt's!--I've taken lodging there."

"The Grange! Well, there's no accounting for tastes; but if there were any empty rooms in the county jail, I almost think I should prefer them, especially when one might possibly get board and lodging there gratis."

"Don't be absurd; I shall be very comfortable there. I'm to have two rooms up-stairs, that will look very habitable when they've cleaned down the cobwebs, and got rid of the bats; Farmer Nutt is going to lay poison for the rats to-night, and I can go in, if I like, on Monday."

"Upon my honour, John, Chesterton and I can never come and see you in that miserable hole."

"Don't, then; I'm going there to read: I sha'n't want company."

It turned out that he was really in earnest; and the day after the University term was ended, the Grange received its new tenant. We went down there to instal him; it was the first time Chesterton had seen the place, and he was rather envious of our friend's selection, as he followed him up-stairs into the quaint old chambers, to which two blazing log-fires, and Mrs Nutt's unimpeachable cleanliness, had imparted an air of no little comfort. The old oaken floor of the sitting-room had been polished to something like its original richness and brilliancy of hue, and reflected the firelight in a way that warmed you to look at it. There was not a cobweb to be seen; and though old Bruin snuffed round the room suspiciously, Farmer Nutt gave it as his conscientious opinion that every rat had had a taste of the "pyson." There was no question but that if one could get over the dulness of the place, as far as accommodation went there need be little cause to complain.

"I shall get an 18-gallon of Hall and Tawney, and hire an easy-chair," said John, "and then _won't_ I read?"

Full of these virtuous resolutions we left him; and how he got on there my readers shall hear another day.

H.

THE TOMBLESS MAN. A DREAM.

BY DELTA.

I.

I woke from sleep at midnight, all was dark,
Solemn, and silent, an unbroken calm;
It was a fearful vision, and had made
A mystical impression on my mind;
For clouds lay o'er the ocean of my thoughts
In vague and broken masses, strangely wild;
And grim imagination wander'd on
'Mid gloomy yew-trees in a churchyard old,
And mouldering shielings of the eyeless hills,
And snow-clad pathless moors on moonless nights,
And icebergs drifting from the sunless Pole,
And prostrate Indian villages, when spent
The rage of the hurricane has pass'd away,
Leaving a landscape desolate with death;
And as I turn'd me to my vanish'd dream,
Clothed in its drapery of gloom, it rose
Upon my spirit, dreary as before.

II.

Alone--alone--a desolate dreary wild,
Herbless and verdureless; low swampy moss,
Where tadpoles grew to frogs, for leagues begirt
My solitary path. Nor sight nor sound
Of moving life, except a grey curlew--
As shrieking tumbled on the timid bird,
Aye glancing backward with its coal-black eye,
Even as by imp invisible pursued--
Was seen or heard; the last low level rays
Of sunset, gilded with a blood-red glow
That melancholy moor, with its grey stones
And stagnant water-pools. Aye floundering on,
And on, I stray'd, finding no pathway, save
The runlet of a wintry stream, begirt
With shelvy barren rocks; around, o'erhead,
Yea every where, in shapes grotesque and grim,
Towering they rose, encompassing my path,
As 'twere in savage mockery. Lo, a chasm
Yawning, and bottomless, and black! Beneath
I heard the waters in their sheer descent
Descending down, and down; and further down
Descending still, and dashing: Now a rush,
And now a roar, and now a fainter fall,
And still remoter, and yet finding still,
For the white anguish of their boiling whirl,
No resting-place. Over my head appear'd,
Between the jagged black rifts bluely seen,
Sole harbinger of hope, a patch of sky,
Of deep, clear, solemn sky, shrining a star
Magnificent; that, with a holy light,
Glowing and glittering, shone into the heart
As 'twere an angel's eye. Entranced I stood,
Drinking the beauty of that gem serene,
How long I wist not; but, when back to earth
Sank my prone eyes--I knew not where I was--
Again the scene had shifted, and the time,
From midnight to the hour when earliest dawn
Gleams in the orient, and with inky lines
The trees seem painted on the girding sky.

III.

A solemn hour!--so silent, that the sound
Even of a falling leaflet had been heard,
Was that, wherein, with meditative step,
With uncompanion'd step, measured and slow,
And wistful gaze, that to the left, the right,
Was often turn'd, as if in secret dread
Of something horrible that must be met--
Of unseen evil not to be eschew'd--
Up a long vista'd avenue I wound,
Untrodden long, and overgrown with moss.
It seem'd an entrance to the hall of gloom;
Grey twilight, in the melancholy shade
Of the hoar branches, show'd the tufted grass
With globules spangled of the fine night-dew--
So fine--that even a midge's tiny tread
Had caused them trickle down. Funereal yews
Notch'd with the growth of centuries, stretching round
Dismal in aspect, and grotesque in shape,
Pair after pair, were ranged: where ended these,
Girdling an open semicircle, tower'd
A row of rifted plane-trees, inky-leaved
With cinnamon-colour'd barks; and, in the midst,
Hidden almost by their entwining boughs,
An unshut gateway, musty and forlorn;
Its old supporting pillars roughly rich
With sculpturings quaint of intermingled flowers.

IV.

Each pillar held upon its top an urn,
Serpent-begirt; each urn upon its front
A face--and such a face! I turn'd away--
Then gazed again--'twas not to be forgot:--
There was a fascination in the eyes--
Even in their stony stare; like the ribb'd sand
Of ocean was the eager brow; the mouth
Had a hyena grin; the nose, compress'd
With curling sneer, of wolfish cunning spake;
O'er the lank temples, long entwisted curls
Adown the scraggy neck in masses fell;
And fancy, aided by the time and place,
Read in the whole the effigies of a fiend--
Who, and what art thou? ask'd my beating heart--
And but the silence to my heart replied!
That entrance pass'd, I found a grass-grown court,
Vast, void, and desolate--and there a house,
Baronial, grim, and grey, with Flemish roof
High-pointed, and with aspect all forlorn:--
Four-sided rose the towers at either end
Of the long front, each coped with mouldering flags:
Up from the silent chimneys went no smoke;
And vacantly the deep-brow'd windows stared,
Like eyeballs dead to daylight. O'er the gate
Of entrance, to whose folding-doors a flight
Of steps converging led, startled I saw,
Oh, horrible! the same reflected face
As that on either urn--but gloomier still
In shadow of the mouldering architrave.

V.

I would have turn'd me back--I would have fled
From that malignant, yet half-syren smile;
But magic held me rooted to the spot,
And some inquisitive horror led me on.--
Entering I stood beneath the spacious dome
Of a round hall, vacant, save here and there,
Where from the panelings, in mouldy shreds,
Hung what was arras loom-work; weather-stains
In mould appear'd on the mosaic floors,
Of marble black and white--or what was white,
For time had yellow'd all; and opposite,
High on the wall, within a crumbling frame
Of tarnish'd gold, scowl'd down a pictured form
In the habiliments of bygone days--
With ruff, and doublet slash'd, and studded belt--
'Twas the same face--the Gorgon curls the same,
The same lynx eye, the same peak-bearded chin,
And the same nose, with sneering upward curl.

VI.

Again I would have turned to flee--again
Tried to elude the snares around my feet;
But struggling could not--though I knew not why,
Self-will and self-possession vaguely lost.--
Horror thrill'd through me--to recede was vain;
Fear lurk'd behind in that sepulchral court,
In its mute avenue and grave-like grass;
And to proceed--where led my onward way?
Ranges of doorways branch'd on either side,
Each like the other:--one I oped, and lo!
A dim deserted room, its furniture
Withdrawn; gray, stirless cobwebs from the roof
Hanging; and its deep windows letting in
The pale, sad dawn--than darkness drearier far.
How desolate! Around its cornices
Of florid stucco shone the mimic flowers
Of art's device, carved to delight the eyes
Of those long since but dust within their graves!
The hollow hearth-place, with its fluted jambs
Of clammy Ethiop marble, whence, of yore,
Had risen the Yule-log's animating blaze
On festal faces, tomb-like, coldly yawn'd;
While o'er its centre, lined in hues of night,
Grinn'd the same features with the aspick eyes,
And fox-like watchful, though averted gaze,
The haunting demon of that voiceless home!

VII.

How silent! to the beating of my heart
I listen'd, and nought else around me heard.
How stirless! even a waving gossamer--
The mazy motes that rise and fall in air--
Had been as signs of life; when, suddenly,
As bursts the thunder-peal upon the calm,
Whence I had come the clank of feet was heard--
A noise remote, which near'd and near'd, and near'd--
Even to the threshold of that room it came,
Where, with raised hands, spell-bound, I listening stood;
And the door opening stealthily, I beheld
The embodied figure of the phantom head,
Garb'd in the quaint robes of the portraiture--
A veritable fiend, a life in death!

VIII.

My heart stood still, though quickly came my breath;
Headlong I rush'd away, I knew not where;
In frenzied hast rushing I ran; my feet
With terror wing'd, a hell-hound at my heels,
Yea! scarce three strides between us. Through a door
Right opposite I flew, slamming its weight,
To shut me from the spectre who pursued:
And lo! another room, the counterpart
Of that just left, but gloomier. On I rush'd,
Beholding o'er its hearth the grinning face,
Another and the same; the haunting face
Reflected, as it seem'd, from wall to wall!
There, opening as I shut, onward he came,
That Broucoloka, not to be escaped,
With measured tread unwearied, like the wolf's
When tracking its sure prey: forward I sprang,
And lo! another room--another face,
Alike, but gloomier still; another door,
And the pursuing fiend--and on--and on,
With palpitating heart and yielding knees,
From room to room, each mirror'd in the last.
At length I reach'd a porch--amid my hair
I felt his desperate clutch--outward I flung--
The open air was gain'd--I stood alone!

IX.

That welcome postern open'd on a court--
Say rather, grave-yard; gloomy yews begirt
Its cheerless walls; ranges of headstones show'd,
Each on its hoary tablature, half hid
With moss, with hemlock, and with nettles rank,
The sculptured leer of that hyena face,
Softening as backwards, through the waves of time,
Receded generations more remote.
It was a square of tombs--of old, grey tombs,
(The oldest of an immemorial date,)
Deserted quite--and rusty gratings black,
Along the yawning mouths of dreary vaults--
And epitaphs unread--and mouldering bones.
Alone, forlorn, the only breathing thing
In that unknown, forgotten cemetery,
Reeling, I strove to stand, and all things round
Flicker'd, and wavering, seem'd to wane away,
And earth became a blank; the tide of life
Ebbing, as backward ebbs the billowy sea,
Wave after wave, till nought is left behind,
Save casual foam-bells on the barren sand.

X.

From out annihilation's vacancy,
(The elements, as of a second birth,
Kindling within, at first a fitful spark,
And then a light which, glowing to a blaze,
Fill'd me with genial life,) I seemed to wake
Upon a bed of bloom. The breath of spring
Scented the air; mingling their odours sweet,
The bright jonquil, the lily of the vale,
The primrose, and the daffodil, o'erspread
The fresh green turf; and, as it were in love,
Around the boughs of budding lilac wreathed
The honeysuckle, rich in earlier leaves,
Gold-tinctured now, for sunrise fill'd the clouds
With purple glory, and with aureate beams
The dew-refreshen'd earth. Up, up, the larks
Mounted to heaven, as did the angel wings
Of old in Jacob's vision; and the fly,
Awakening from its wintry sleep, once more
Spread, humming, to the light its gauzy wings.

XI.

A happy being in a happy place,
As 'twere a captive from his chains released,
His dungeon and its darkness, there I lay
Nestling, amid the sun-illumined flowers,
Revolving silently the varied scenes,
Grotesque and grim, 'mid which my erring feet
Had stumbled; and a brightness darting in
On my mysterious night-mare, something told
The what and wherefore of the effigies grim--
The wolfish, never-resting, tombless man,
Voicelessly haunting that ancestral home--
Yea of his destiny for evermore
To suffer fearful life-in-death, until
A victim suffer'd from the sons of men,
To soothe the cravings of insatiate hell;
An agony for age undergone--
An agony for ages to be borne,
Hope, still elusive, baffled by despair.

XII.

Thus as an eagle, from the altitude
Of the mid-sky, its pride of place attain'd,
Glances around the illimitable void,
And sees no goal, and finds no resting-place
In the blue, boundless depths--then, silently,
Pauses on wing, and with gyrations down
And down descends thorough the blinding clouds,
In billowy masses, many-hued, around
Floating, until their confines past, green earth
Once more appears, and on its loftiest crag
The nest, wherein 'tis bliss to rest his plumes
Flight-wearied--so, from farthest dreamland's shores,
Where clouds and chaos form the continents,
And reason reigns not, Fancy back return'd
To sights and sounds familiar--to the birds
Singing above--and the bright vale beneath,
With cottages and trees--and the blue sky--
And the glad waters murmuring to the sun.

FRENCH SOCIALISTS.[28]

Socialism, as well in this country as in France, may be regarded as an offset of the French Revolution. It is true that, in all times, the striking disparity between the conditions of men has given rise to Utopian speculations--to schemes of some new order of society, where the comforts of life should be enjoyed in a more equalized manner than seems possible under the old system of individual efforts and individual rights; and it may be added that, as this disparity of wealth becomes more glaring in proportion as the disparity of intelligence and political rights diminishes, such speculations may be expected in these later times to become more frequent and more bold. Nevertheless we apprehend that the courage or audacity requisite to attempt the realization of these speculative schemes, must confess its origin in the fever-heat of the French Revolution. It required the bold example of that great political subversion to prompt the design of these social subversions--to familiarize the mind with the project of reducing into practice what had been deemed sufficiently adventurous as reverie.

What a stride has been taken since those olden times, when the philosophic visionary devised his Utopian society with all the freedom, because with all the irresponsibility, of dreams! He so little contemplated any practical result, that he did not even venture to bring his new commonwealth on the old soil of Europe, lest it should appear too strange, and be put out of countenance by the broad reality: but he carried it out to some far-off island in the ocean, and created a new territory for his new people. A chancellor of England, the high administrator of the laws of property, could then amuse his leisure with constructing a Utopia, where property, with all its laws, would undergo strange mutation. How would he have started from his woolsack if any one had told him that his design would be improved upon in boldness, and that such men as his own carpenter and mason would set about the veritable realization of it! At the present time nothing is more common or familiar than the project of changing entirely the model of society. "To subvert a government," writes M. Reybaud of his own country men, "to change a dynasty or a political constitution, is now an insignificant project. Your socialist is at peace with kings and constitutions; he merely talks in the quietest manner imaginable of destroying every thing, of uprooting society from its very basis."

Indeed, if the power of these projectors bore any proportion to their presumption, our neighbours would be in a most alarming condition. To extemporize a social system, a new humanity, or at least a new Christianity, is now as common as it was formerly, on leaving college, to rhyme a tragedy. The social projector, sublimely confident in himself, seems to expect to realize, on a most gigantic scale, the fable of Mesmerism; he will put the whole world in _rapport_ with him, and it shall have no will but his, and none but such blind, imitative movements as he shall impress on it. And it is to a sort of _coma_ that these projectors would, for the most part, reduce mankind--a state where there is some shadow of thought and passion, but no will, no self-direction, no connexion between the past and present--a state aimless, evanescent, and of utter subjugation. Fortunately these social reformers, however daring, use no other instruments of warfare than speech and pamphlets; they do not betake themselves to the sharp weapons of political conspiracy. They must be permitted, therefore, to rave themselves out. And this they will do the sooner from their very number. There are too many prophets; they spoil the trade; the Mesmerizers disturb and distract each other's efforts; the _fixed idea_ that is in them will not fix any where else. Those who, in the natural order of things, should be dupes, aspire to be leaders, and the leaders are at a dead struggle for some novelty wherewith to attract followers. We have, for instance, M. Pierre Leroux, most distinguished of the _Humanitarians_, the last sect which figures on the scene, bidding for disciples--with what, will our readers think?--with the doctrine of metempsychosis! It is put forward as a fresh inducement to improve the world we live in, that we shall live in it again and again, and nowhere else, and be our own most remote posterity. We are not assured that there is any thread of consciousness connecting the successive apparitions of the same being; yet some slight filament of this kind must be traceable, for we are informed that M. Leroux gives himself out to have been formerly Plato. He has advanced thus far in the scale of progression, that he is at present M. Leroux.[29]

Still the frequent agitation of these social reforms cannot be, and has not been, without its influence on society. It is from this influence they gain their sole importance. Such schemes as those of St Simon, of Fourier, and of our own Robert Owen, viewed as projects to be realized, are not worth a serious criticism. In this point of view they are considered, at least in this country, as mere nullities. No one questions here whether they are feasible, or whether, if possible, they would be propitious to human happiness. But the constant agitation in society of such projects may be no nullity--may have, for a season, an indisputable and very pernicious influence. As systems of doctrine they may not be ineffective, nor undeserving of attention; and in this light M. Reybaud, in the work we now bring before our readers, mainly considers them.

M. Reybaud has given us a sketch of the biography and opinions of the most celebrated of those men who have undertaken to produce a new scheme of human life for us; he has introduced his description of them and their projects by some account of the previous speculations, of a kindred nature indeed, but conducted in a very different spirit, of Plato, Sir Thomas More, and others; and he has accompanied the whole with observations of his own, which bear the impress of a masculine understanding, a candid judgment, and a sound, healthy condition of the moral sentiments. The French Academy has distinguished the work by according to it the Montyon prize--a prize destined annually to the publication judged most beneficial to morals; and in this judgment of the Academy every private reader, unless he has some peculiar morality of his own, will readily acquiesce.

Our author is not one of those who at once, and without a question, reject all schemes for the amelioration of society; nor has he sat down to write the history of these social reformers for the mere purpose of throwing on them his contempt or irony. He has even been accused, it seems, by some of his critics, of manifesting too much sympathy with the enthusiasts he has undertaken to describe. He tells us, in the preface to his second edition, that he has encountered the contradictory accusations of being too severe, and too indulgent, towards them; from which he concludes, that he cannot have widely departed from the tone which truth and impartiality would prescribe. This is a conclusion which authors are very apt to draw; they very conveniently dispatch their several critics by opposing them to each other. But this conclusion may be drawn too hastily. Two contradictory accusations do not always destroy each other, even when they are made by judges equally competent. The inconsistency may be in the author himself, who may, in different portions of his work, have given foundation for very opposite censures. In the present case, although we have already intimated that M. Reybaud writes with a spirit of fairness and candour, we cannot admit him to the full benefit of the conclusion he draws in his own favour, from the opponent criticisms he has met with. There are individual passages in his work which it would be difficult to reconcile with each other, and which invite very different criticisms. On some occasions he appears to attribute a certain value to these tentatives at social reform, and intimates that they may probably be the precursors, or may contain the germ, of some substantial improvement; whilst at other times, he scourges them without pity or compunction, as a species of moral pestilence. He seems not to have been able, at all moments, to defend himself from the _vertige_ which possesses the personages of whom he is writing; like a certain historian of witchcraft, whom we have somewhere read of, who had so industriously studied his subject that a faith in the black art imperceptibly gained upon him. The narrative goes on to say, that the unfortunate historian of witchcraft attempted to practise the knowledge he had obtained, and was burned for a wizard. But there the analogy will certainly fail. M. Reybaud soon recovers from the visionary mood, and wakes himself thoroughly by inflicting the lash with renewed vigour upon all the other dreamers around him.

This shadow of inconsistency is still more perceptible when speaking of the lives and _characters_ of his socialists. Sometimes the reader receives the impression that an egregious vanity, an eccentric ambition, and perhaps a little touch of monomania, would complete the picture, and sufficiently explain that conduct, of a hero of socialism. At another time his enthusiasts assume a more imposing aspect. St Simon sacrificing his fortune, abjuring the patronage of the court, dying in extreme poverty--Charles Fourier refusing all entrance into commerce that would implicate him with a vicious system, and pursuing to the end, amidst want and ridicule, the labours of social regeneration--our own Robert Owen quitting ease and fortune, and crossing the Atlantic for the New World, there to try, upon a virgin soil, his bold experiment of a new society;--these men rise before us endowed with a certain courage and devotion which ought to command our admiration. We see them in the light of martyrs to a faith which no one shares with them--sacrificing all, enduring all, for a hope which _is_ of this world, for schemes which they will never see realized, for a heaven which they may prophesy, but which they cannot enter; manifesting, in short, the same obstinacy of idea, and the same renouncement of self, which distinguish the founders of new religions. And indeed we are not disposed to deny, that in their character they may bear a comparison, in many points, with religious impostors. There is this striking difference, however, in the effect of their teaching: the religious impostor has often promised a paradise of merely voluptuous enjoyment, but he has promised it as the reward of certain self-denying virtues to be practised here on earth; whilst the socialist insists upon bringing his sensual ill-ordered paradise, wherein all virtue is dispensed with as superfluous, here, at once, upon this earth we have to live and toil in.

The first volume of the work contains an account of the life and writings of St Simon, Fourier, and Owen. The second is very miscellaneous. We encounter, to our surprise, the name of Jeremy Bentham in the category of socialists, and are still more startled to learn that the Utilitarians derive their origin from Robert Owen! It is a jumble of all sects, religious and political, in which even our Quakers are included in the list of social reformers--our excellent _Friends_, who assuredly have no wish whatever to disturb the world, but seek merely to live in it as it is, with the additional advantage of being themselves particularly quiet and comfortable. But we are so accustomed to the haste of negligence of the majority of French writers whenever they leave their own soil, (unless the literature or concerns of a foreign country be their special subject,) that we are not disposed to pass any very severe censure on M. Reybaud; and still less should we do him the injustice to prejudge his qualifications as an historian of his own countrymen, by the measure of accuracy he may display in that part of his work which relates to England. It is a part of his work which we have but slightly perused; our attention has been confined to the socialists of France.

Amongst these founders of society, and constructors of Mahometan paradises, Fourier is, we believe, the least known in this country. Some brief account of him will, we think, be acceptable; more especially as some of his ideas, leaving the narrow circle of his disciples, have found partisans amongst men who, in other respects, have a reputation for sobriety of thought. Our readers need not fear that we shall overwhelm them with all the institutions, plans, projects, arrangements--the complete _cosmogony_, in short, of this most laborious of the tribe. A very little of such matter is quite enough. One may say with truth that it is such stuff,

"Whereof a little more than a little
Is by much too much."